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train · 762 rows

split stringclasses 3 values	document_id stringlengths 5 5	questions listlengths 4 10	options listlengths 4 10	gold_label listlengths 4 10	difficult listlengths 4 10	text listlengths 4 10
train	99912	[ "Which term best describes the author's tone toward delivering a 'baby' by C-section for the first time?", "What factor necessitates the change in frequency of performed C-sections?", "Which factor is the best predictor of necessity for an emergency C-section on a fetus?", "Describe how the frequency of C-sections has changed over time", "What risk, according to the author, is increased by practitioners who are wary of performing C-sections?", "What inspired Tydeman to develop his device?", "According to Tydeman, what has caused the Tydeman tube to not get sold/approved?", "What is the inspiration for the simulator's name?", "Which terms best describe the medical field's response to new development of medical technology?" ]	[ [ "befuddled", "petrified", "apprehensive", "confident" ], [ "Uterine environment", "Practitioner training", "Cranial growth", "Advanced technology" ], [ "Father's birth weight", "Mother's birth weight", "Practitioner's level of experience", "There is no agreed upon factor" ], [ "The frequency has gradually decreased", "The frequency has plateaued", "The frequency has no significant trend", "The frequency has steadily increased" ], [ "They could be sued for malpractice if the fetus does not survive childbirth", "They could be sued for malpractice if the mother does not survive childbirth", "They could increase the prevalence of impaction and, therefore, challenging births", "They could accidentally make the incision in the wrong location, necessitating further costly surgeries" ], [ "A mannequin", "A sound", "An advertisement", "A smell" ], [ "Any products that could possibly cause death during childbirth are generally viewed with more apprehension", "Because his device is so promising, investors want him to pay for its commercialization", "Too many investors are competing over the rights of commercialization", "Tydeman does not approve of the prototypes generated by potential investors" ], [ "Its emotional connotations", "Tydeman's mother", "Tydeman's wife", "Its use of literary device" ], [ "gratuitous and enthusiastic", "methodical and cumbersome", "equivocal and inconsistent", "deadpan and leisurely" ] ]	[ 3, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, 2, 4, 3 ]	[ 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Obstetrics for beginners\nIt's my first go at delivering a baby by caesarean section – and the foetal head is impacted, jammed in its mother's pelvis. To be honest I'm struggling. \n\n Incisions have been made in the lower part of the mother's abdomen and womb. I've pushed my gloved hand inside and managed to slide my fingers between the baby's head and the surrounding uterine tissue. But it's difficult. The baby is tightly wedged in. I've had to push hard to get my hand to the far side of its head, and even though I'm now cupping and grasping it in the approved manner, I can't seem to pull it out. Dare I grip its head more firmly? Dare I pull harder? \n\n The baby's mother – she's called Debra – remains impassive throughout these agonised fumblings. Her face reveals nothing of what she may be feeling. But then Debra has no feelings. Indeed she has no face…", "So you can stop worrying. Debra – Desperate Debra to use her full trade name – is a simulator designed to help doctors practise their skill at dealing with impacted foetuses: babies that get stuck trying to exit the womb by the normal route. She comprises the lower two thirds (ie from the mid-chest region downwards) of a life-sized but limbless female torso made of flesh-coloured silicone rubber. She comes with a vulva, a pre-cut incision in her abdomen and, most importantly, a uterus containing a foetal head that should, in the normal way of things, be free to emerge between her legs. But this fetus is going nowhere until an obstetrician – or in this case me – can successfully grasp and pull it out.", "When obstetricians doing planned caesareans slice open a mother's womb, what they usually see is the baby's head. By slipping a hand round and below it they can easily guide the baby out. \"When you do a caesarean for an impacted baby,\" says Tydeman, \"you make the incision in the same place, but what you might come across is a shoulder because the baby's so much further down [the birth canal].\" As I'd discovered for myself, sliding a hand around the baby's head is then far more difficult. \"It makes your fingers hurt,\" says Tydeman. \"It makes your pulse rate go up to about 200, and you break out in a sweat because know you've only got about five or 10 minutes before there are serious consequences. The clock is ticking.\"", "So how valuable in training medical staff is a simulator like this? Very, according to Annette Briley. Imagine it's the middle of the night and an unplanned emergency caesarean is required: \"Some poor junior doctor might find himself trying to manage it on his own.\" To have practised the knack of extracting a firmly impacted baby from a simulator is lot better than first honing your skill on a real woman.", "The standard response is to perform a caesarean section. Every year some 160,000 babies are born in the UK this way, with almost two thirds of them classified as emergencies. One audit has suggested that roughly 8,000 babies get stuck and have to be delivered by caesarean at a stage when their mothers are fully dilated. \"Some of the babies will be so close to coming out by the normal route,\" says Tydeman, \"that it's then difficult to get them back up and remove them through the hole in the woman's tummy.\" Which women are most at risk of this setback seems to be largely unpredictable. \"We just observe that it happens… It's been discussed in the medical literature since the 1940s, but until 10 years ago, and throughout my training and most of my life as a consultant, it wasn't really talked about.\"", "If a baby's head is jammed down in the mother's pelvic region, common sense suggests that it might help if a second person gives a gentle backward push on the area of its head visible through the mother's dilated cervix. \"In our unit,\" says Tydeman, \"when the woman is fully dilated and you'd expect the baby to come out normally [but it doesn't]… a registrar will be asking for a push-up about one in five times.\" Although registrars are doctors still in training, they're nonetheless experienced; which suggests requests for push-ups during unplanned caesareans are far from uncommon. The Tydeman tube is a gadget intended to make this manoeuvre safer and more effective.", "With a grant from the Guy's and St Thomas's Charity fund they made Debra more presentable. Tydeman showed the prototype to Adam Rouilly, an established company specialising in medical models and simulators. They were impressed. A year later, the first of Debra's smartened-up sisters was on the market. \n\n In Debra as she is now, the precise extent and nature of her desperation can be fine-tuned according to need. The foetal head inside her uterus can be moved to mimic the various positions that an unborn baby may adopt. By tightening a spring inside Debra's body, it's also possible vary the degree of impaction from mild to so severe that the head is virtually impossible to extract. In this way she simulates the full range of difficulty that obstetricians are likely to encounter.", "The inventor of the tube and of Desperate Debra is Dr Graham Tydeman, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife. Only after he'd built Debra did he realise that she might serve a purpose beyond his original intention. His is a decade-long tale of inspired insights, thwarted aims and shifting purposes; but with a good outcome. Although the Tydeman tube is still in gestation, Desperate Debra herself is now thriving.\nTo understand the desperation of Debra and how the Tydeman tube might help to relieve it requires a brief foray into basic obstetric knowhow. Evolution has endowed us with heads proportionally so large that even when labour runs according to plan, the delivery process involves a bit of a squeeze. For the baby's head to get stuck on the way out may not be usual, but it's by no means a rarity.", "At St Thomas's, midwives in training also get an opportunity to practise on Debra. The chances that midwives will find themselves having to do the actual extraction of an infant are slim; but they're quite likely to be asked to help the obstetrician by pushing a stuck baby from below. Debra's anatomy allows them to practise this skill; and to learn where and how hard to push on the infant skull. \"Any practice you've done in the cold light of day will help you stay calm and composed in an emergency, and that's what we're aiming for,\" says Briley.", "Creativity and innovation have many unlikely sources. What seems to have inspired Tydeman to develop his device was the characteristic sound of a Wellington boot being pulled free of wet, muddy ground: a slurpy, sucking, gurgling noise. When an impacted foetal head is pulled free of the uterus it's often accompanied by a similar sucking noise, the result of air rushing in between the obstetrician's fingers to fill the space vacated. \"What occurred to me years ago was that if the air can't get in, why not put a tube up into the vagina so that it can get in from below the baby's head.\" From time to time, if he felt he felt the baby might stick, Tydeman would slip a length of sterile silicone tubing through the woman's vagina and up into the womb next to the baby's head. Allowing air in by this route would release any suction forces tending to hold it where it was.", "When originally conceived, remember, Debra was simply a means of testing the effectiveness of the tube. What she looked like was neither here nor there. It was only once Debra was reborn as a teaching aid that she needed sprucing up. \n\n Tydeman can remember the exact moment when the idea of her having a greater role dawned on him. \"I was on the sleeper train down from Scotland to London,\" he says. \"Debra was with me because the first Tydeman tube had become available at St Thomas's… It was about midnight, I'd had my free whisky and I suddenly thought, 'Blow me! Even if the tube doesn't work, Debra could be useful as a teaching aid'.\"\nThe following morning, at St Thomas's, Tydeman asked a visiting professor of obstetrics to have a look at Debra and tell him what she thought. She put her hand into Debra's womb, grasped the foetal head and said it felt just like the real thing. \"Terribly flattering,\" Tydeman laughs.", "Considering the universality of childbirth, impaction and the best way of dealing with it are topics that seem to have gone remarkably unstudied. \"There are strong opinions about why it happens and what to do, but very little research evidence,\" says Tydeman, adding that many of these opinions are contradictory.", "As the material for a convincing simulation, glass clearly has its drawbacks. But another 18th-century contraption used a pink cloth-covered mannequin comprising a female torso complete with genitalia, a set of implantable foetuses of various ages, and even – a real\ncoup de théâtre\n, this – a facility for exuding suitably coloured liquids at the appropriate moment.\nOddly, as medicine became more scientific, most of these devices fell by the wayside. As an academic review of these and other devices has pointed out, much of the 20th century was something of Dark Ages for simulation. Its value in professional training has had to be rediscovered: an endeavour in which inventive people like Graham Tydeman, sometimes with workshops rich in discarded junk, are still fruitfully engaged.\nThis article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.", "In a protracted birth that's destined to end with a caesarean, the longer the labour is allowed to go on before the obstetrician decides to intervene, the greater the likelihood that the baby's head will become impacted. However, concern over the rising number of babies born by caesarean has made doctors more wary of doing them – one consequence of which is that medical staff may allow a difficult birth to continue for longer before they resort to surgery. This could be boosting the frequency of impaction. But, again, no one is certain.", "Tydeman didn't do much with the idea until 10 years ago when one trainee, who was experiencing real difficulty getting heads out, prompted him to think again about the problem. Around the same time, he met professor of obstetrics Andrew Shennan and consultant midwife Annette Briley, both of the Women's Health Academic Centre at St Thomas's hospital. Between them they came up with a device – the Tydeman tube – to make pushing on the foetus more controlled while simultaneously releasing any vacuum that might be holding it in place.", "A proper study of the clinical effectiveness of the Tydeman tube will necessarily involve women giving birth. Assessing the value of Debra as a simulator didn't require human subjects; and the team has already conducted such a study. Thirty obstetricians, from three NHS maternity units and with varying levels of experience, took part. They all received a brief explanation of how Debra works, and were then asked to try a timed removal of the foetal head at three different levels of difficulty. Overall, 87 per cent reported that the simulator offered a realistic experience of dealing with an impacted head, and 93 per cent thought it would be valuable as a training device.", "One of the treatments of choice in that era was, naturally, acupuncture. But how to teach tyro-acupuncturists where to place the needles? Simple. A life-size bronze statue dotted with small holes indicated the points of insertion. And how then to test the students' grasp of their subject? If the statute was hollow, filled with liquid and given an outer coating of wax to mask the holes, a correct needle insertion would be followed by a leak. \n\n Given the universality of childbirth it's no surprise that, then as now, the womb turns out to be the most simulated of our organs. For the benefit of 18th-century midwives and doctors-in-training, the Bologna surgeon Giovanni Antonio Galli devised a birthing simulator comprising a glass uterus supported by an artificial pelvis and containing a flexible foetus. Trainees had to deliver the baby while wearing a blindfold. Only the tutor could witness the fumbling of their hands.", "The clever and sophisticated simulator I'm playing with started life as a lash-up in an obstetrician's home workshop: a Heath Robinson-style contraption barely recognisable as a model of the human body. But it wasn't at that stage intended as a simulator for training medical staff. Its sole purpose was to test the effectiveness of a novel device called a Tydeman tube. Paradoxically, although the testing equipment, Debra, is now commercially available, the device it was intended to test has yet to reach the market.", "The instrument is made up of a rigid plastic tube opening into a softer silicone cup. Pressure to the foetal head is applied using four pads projecting forward from the cup's interior. Holding the device by the tube, the user places the cup against the part of the head exposed through the dilated cervix, and presses. This pushes the baby back up into the uterus while releasing any suction pressure that may have been holding it, so allowing the obstetrician to extract it more easily. Because pressure is distributed equally between the four pads with a greater combined surface area than that of a user's fingertips, the risk of inadvertent damage is minimised. \n\n The team found some money to employ a product designer who used computer-aided design technology and 3D printing to make a prototype. \"We were at the point of getting one made in silicone,\" says Tydeman, \"when we realised that before we started experimenting on women we really ought to test it on a simulator.\" No such simulator existed – so he decided to make one himself.", "That said, the team didn't want to leave the tube sitting on the shelf. So they eventually decided to go ahead and find a commercial partner willing to manufacture and market it. They have now identified one, and are fairly confident it will soon be in production. With sufficient users it should then be possible to compile factual – as opposed to anecdotal – evidence of benefit. Not ideal, Tydeman concedes, but the best they can do at present. \n\n In the meantime, back to Desperate Debra: so named, Tydeman says, not after any particular person but because the appellation is memorably alliterative. He put together the original Debra in a weekend. The skin was made out of a neoprene wetsuit fixed to a scaffolding formed from plastic tubing he'd found 20 years ago in skip outside a Glasgow pub; the head was cast in silicone from a model he'd made in plasticine, and the rest comprised old springs and other bits of stuff lying around his workshop. \"It wasn't actually that difficult,\" Tydeman says." ], [ "The standard response is to perform a caesarean section. Every year some 160,000 babies are born in the UK this way, with almost two thirds of them classified as emergencies. One audit has suggested that roughly 8,000 babies get stuck and have to be delivered by caesarean at a stage when their mothers are fully dilated. \"Some of the babies will be so close to coming out by the normal route,\" says Tydeman, \"that it's then difficult to get them back up and remove them through the hole in the woman's tummy.\" Which women are most at risk of this setback seems to be largely unpredictable. \"We just observe that it happens… It's been discussed in the medical literature since the 1940s, but until 10 years ago, and throughout my training and most of my life as a consultant, it wasn't really talked about.\"", "In a protracted birth that's destined to end with a caesarean, the longer the labour is allowed to go on before the obstetrician decides to intervene, the greater the likelihood that the baby's head will become impacted. However, concern over the rising number of babies born by caesarean has made doctors more wary of doing them – one consequence of which is that medical staff may allow a difficult birth to continue for longer before they resort to surgery. This could be boosting the frequency of impaction. But, again, no one is certain.", "When obstetricians doing planned caesareans slice open a mother's womb, what they usually see is the baby's head. By slipping a hand round and below it they can easily guide the baby out. \"When you do a caesarean for an impacted baby,\" says Tydeman, \"you make the incision in the same place, but what you might come across is a shoulder because the baby's so much further down [the birth canal].\" As I'd discovered for myself, sliding a hand around the baby's head is then far more difficult. \"It makes your fingers hurt,\" says Tydeman. \"It makes your pulse rate go up to about 200, and you break out in a sweat because know you've only got about five or 10 minutes before there are serious consequences. The clock is ticking.\"", "If a baby's head is jammed down in the mother's pelvic region, common sense suggests that it might help if a second person gives a gentle backward push on the area of its head visible through the mother's dilated cervix. \"In our unit,\" says Tydeman, \"when the woman is fully dilated and you'd expect the baby to come out normally [but it doesn't]… a registrar will be asking for a push-up about one in five times.\" Although registrars are doctors still in training, they're nonetheless experienced; which suggests requests for push-ups during unplanned caesareans are far from uncommon. The Tydeman tube is a gadget intended to make this manoeuvre safer and more effective.", "Obstetrics for beginners\nIt's my first go at delivering a baby by caesarean section – and the foetal head is impacted, jammed in its mother's pelvis. To be honest I'm struggling. \n\n Incisions have been made in the lower part of the mother's abdomen and womb. I've pushed my gloved hand inside and managed to slide my fingers between the baby's head and the surrounding uterine tissue. But it's difficult. The baby is tightly wedged in. I've had to push hard to get my hand to the far side of its head, and even though I'm now cupping and grasping it in the approved manner, I can't seem to pull it out. Dare I grip its head more firmly? Dare I pull harder? \n\n The baby's mother – she's called Debra – remains impassive throughout these agonised fumblings. Her face reveals nothing of what she may be feeling. But then Debra has no feelings. Indeed she has no face…", "So you can stop worrying. Debra – Desperate Debra to use her full trade name – is a simulator designed to help doctors practise their skill at dealing with impacted foetuses: babies that get stuck trying to exit the womb by the normal route. She comprises the lower two thirds (ie from the mid-chest region downwards) of a life-sized but limbless female torso made of flesh-coloured silicone rubber. She comes with a vulva, a pre-cut incision in her abdomen and, most importantly, a uterus containing a foetal head that should, in the normal way of things, be free to emerge between her legs. But this fetus is going nowhere until an obstetrician – or in this case me – can successfully grasp and pull it out.", "At St Thomas's, midwives in training also get an opportunity to practise on Debra. The chances that midwives will find themselves having to do the actual extraction of an infant are slim; but they're quite likely to be asked to help the obstetrician by pushing a stuck baby from below. Debra's anatomy allows them to practise this skill; and to learn where and how hard to push on the infant skull. \"Any practice you've done in the cold light of day will help you stay calm and composed in an emergency, and that's what we're aiming for,\" says Briley.", "Tydeman didn't do much with the idea until 10 years ago when one trainee, who was experiencing real difficulty getting heads out, prompted him to think again about the problem. Around the same time, he met professor of obstetrics Andrew Shennan and consultant midwife Annette Briley, both of the Women's Health Academic Centre at St Thomas's hospital. Between them they came up with a device – the Tydeman tube – to make pushing on the foetus more controlled while simultaneously releasing any vacuum that might be holding it in place.", "So how valuable in training medical staff is a simulator like this? Very, according to Annette Briley. Imagine it's the middle of the night and an unplanned emergency caesarean is required: \"Some poor junior doctor might find himself trying to manage it on his own.\" To have practised the knack of extracting a firmly impacted baby from a simulator is lot better than first honing your skill on a real woman.", "Considering the universality of childbirth, impaction and the best way of dealing with it are topics that seem to have gone remarkably unstudied. \"There are strong opinions about why it happens and what to do, but very little research evidence,\" says Tydeman, adding that many of these opinions are contradictory.", "With a grant from the Guy's and St Thomas's Charity fund they made Debra more presentable. Tydeman showed the prototype to Adam Rouilly, an established company specialising in medical models and simulators. They were impressed. A year later, the first of Debra's smartened-up sisters was on the market. \n\n In Debra as she is now, the precise extent and nature of her desperation can be fine-tuned according to need. The foetal head inside her uterus can be moved to mimic the various positions that an unborn baby may adopt. By tightening a spring inside Debra's body, it's also possible vary the degree of impaction from mild to so severe that the head is virtually impossible to extract. In this way she simulates the full range of difficulty that obstetricians are likely to encounter.", "The inventor of the tube and of Desperate Debra is Dr Graham Tydeman, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife. Only after he'd built Debra did he realise that she might serve a purpose beyond his original intention. His is a decade-long tale of inspired insights, thwarted aims and shifting purposes; but with a good outcome. Although the Tydeman tube is still in gestation, Desperate Debra herself is now thriving.\nTo understand the desperation of Debra and how the Tydeman tube might help to relieve it requires a brief foray into basic obstetric knowhow. Evolution has endowed us with heads proportionally so large that even when labour runs according to plan, the delivery process involves a bit of a squeeze. For the baby's head to get stuck on the way out may not be usual, but it's by no means a rarity.", "A proper study of the clinical effectiveness of the Tydeman tube will necessarily involve women giving birth. Assessing the value of Debra as a simulator didn't require human subjects; and the team has already conducted such a study. Thirty obstetricians, from three NHS maternity units and with varying levels of experience, took part. They all received a brief explanation of how Debra works, and were then asked to try a timed removal of the foetal head at three different levels of difficulty. Overall, 87 per cent reported that the simulator offered a realistic experience of dealing with an impacted head, and 93 per cent thought it would be valuable as a training device.", "Creativity and innovation have many unlikely sources. What seems to have inspired Tydeman to develop his device was the characteristic sound of a Wellington boot being pulled free of wet, muddy ground: a slurpy, sucking, gurgling noise. When an impacted foetal head is pulled free of the uterus it's often accompanied by a similar sucking noise, the result of air rushing in between the obstetrician's fingers to fill the space vacated. \"What occurred to me years ago was that if the air can't get in, why not put a tube up into the vagina so that it can get in from below the baby's head.\" From time to time, if he felt he felt the baby might stick, Tydeman would slip a length of sterile silicone tubing through the woman's vagina and up into the womb next to the baby's head. Allowing air in by this route would release any suction forces tending to hold it where it was.", "Although tests carried out with the Debra prototype showed that the tube would work as intended, Tydeman and his colleagues then faced what he calls a kind of medical catch-22. \"We had the tube finished about three years ago… but we were more interested in trying to save lives than selling a product. We thought that the right thing to do before commercialising it was to be sure we'd got the best design.\" They tried it on a dozen or so women in labour, and concluded that it did what it supposed to. But they held off trying to market it because they wanted to do more extensive, more rigorous clinical studies.\nThis presented a problem. \"If you've applied for research money,\" says Tydeman, \"but you've already got what seems to be a commercially viable design, potential funders are going to say that the company aiming to sell it should pay for the work.\" On the other hand, commercial interest is easier to drum up if you've already got evidence that a device is safe and effective.", "When originally conceived, remember, Debra was simply a means of testing the effectiveness of the tube. What she looked like was neither here nor there. It was only once Debra was reborn as a teaching aid that she needed sprucing up. \n\n Tydeman can remember the exact moment when the idea of her having a greater role dawned on him. \"I was on the sleeper train down from Scotland to London,\" he says. \"Debra was with me because the first Tydeman tube had become available at St Thomas's… It was about midnight, I'd had my free whisky and I suddenly thought, 'Blow me! Even if the tube doesn't work, Debra could be useful as a teaching aid'.\"\nThe following morning, at St Thomas's, Tydeman asked a visiting professor of obstetrics to have a look at Debra and tell him what she thought. She put her hand into Debra's womb, grasped the foetal head and said it felt just like the real thing. \"Terribly flattering,\" Tydeman laughs.", "The instrument is made up of a rigid plastic tube opening into a softer silicone cup. Pressure to the foetal head is applied using four pads projecting forward from the cup's interior. Holding the device by the tube, the user places the cup against the part of the head exposed through the dilated cervix, and presses. This pushes the baby back up into the uterus while releasing any suction pressure that may have been holding it, so allowing the obstetrician to extract it more easily. Because pressure is distributed equally between the four pads with a greater combined surface area than that of a user's fingertips, the risk of inadvertent damage is minimised. \n\n The team found some money to employ a product designer who used computer-aided design technology and 3D printing to make a prototype. \"We were at the point of getting one made in silicone,\" says Tydeman, \"when we realised that before we started experimenting on women we really ought to test it on a simulator.\" No such simulator existed – so he decided to make one himself.", "The clever and sophisticated simulator I'm playing with started life as a lash-up in an obstetrician's home workshop: a Heath Robinson-style contraption barely recognisable as a model of the human body. But it wasn't at that stage intended as a simulator for training medical staff. Its sole purpose was to test the effectiveness of a novel device called a Tydeman tube. Paradoxically, although the testing equipment, Debra, is now commercially available, the device it was intended to test has yet to reach the market.", "It's still too soon to make a final judgement about Debra’s impact. \"When we first brought Debra out,\" Briley recalls, \"some of the really experienced professors said things like, 'We always managed without one. Why would you need this?' But ask them to have a go at using it and then they admit it's really good.\" Medicine as a whole has an oddly ambivalent relationship to innovation. Some new findings, techniques or equipment take years to penetrate the profession; others are seized upon immediately.", "One of the treatments of choice in that era was, naturally, acupuncture. But how to teach tyro-acupuncturists where to place the needles? Simple. A life-size bronze statue dotted with small holes indicated the points of insertion. And how then to test the students' grasp of their subject? If the statute was hollow, filled with liquid and given an outer coating of wax to mask the holes, a correct needle insertion would be followed by a leak. \n\n Given the universality of childbirth it's no surprise that, then as now, the womb turns out to be the most simulated of our organs. For the benefit of 18th-century midwives and doctors-in-training, the Bologna surgeon Giovanni Antonio Galli devised a birthing simulator comprising a glass uterus supported by an artificial pelvis and containing a flexible foetus. Trainees had to deliver the baby while wearing a blindfold. Only the tutor could witness the fumbling of their hands." ], [ "The standard response is to perform a caesarean section. Every year some 160,000 babies are born in the UK this way, with almost two thirds of them classified as emergencies. One audit has suggested that roughly 8,000 babies get stuck and have to be delivered by caesarean at a stage when their mothers are fully dilated. \"Some of the babies will be so close to coming out by the normal route,\" says Tydeman, \"that it's then difficult to get them back up and remove them through the hole in the woman's tummy.\" Which women are most at risk of this setback seems to be largely unpredictable. \"We just observe that it happens… It's been discussed in the medical literature since the 1940s, but until 10 years ago, and throughout my training and most of my life as a consultant, it wasn't really talked about.\"", "When obstetricians doing planned caesareans slice open a mother's womb, what they usually see is the baby's head. By slipping a hand round and below it they can easily guide the baby out. \"When you do a caesarean for an impacted baby,\" says Tydeman, \"you make the incision in the same place, but what you might come across is a shoulder because the baby's so much further down [the birth canal].\" As I'd discovered for myself, sliding a hand around the baby's head is then far more difficult. \"It makes your fingers hurt,\" says Tydeman. \"It makes your pulse rate go up to about 200, and you break out in a sweat because know you've only got about five or 10 minutes before there are serious consequences. The clock is ticking.\"", "Obstetrics for beginners\nIt's my first go at delivering a baby by caesarean section – and the foetal head is impacted, jammed in its mother's pelvis. To be honest I'm struggling. \n\n Incisions have been made in the lower part of the mother's abdomen and womb. I've pushed my gloved hand inside and managed to slide my fingers between the baby's head and the surrounding uterine tissue. But it's difficult. The baby is tightly wedged in. I've had to push hard to get my hand to the far side of its head, and even though I'm now cupping and grasping it in the approved manner, I can't seem to pull it out. Dare I grip its head more firmly? Dare I pull harder? \n\n The baby's mother – she's called Debra – remains impassive throughout these agonised fumblings. Her face reveals nothing of what she may be feeling. But then Debra has no feelings. Indeed she has no face…", "In a protracted birth that's destined to end with a caesarean, the longer the labour is allowed to go on before the obstetrician decides to intervene, the greater the likelihood that the baby's head will become impacted. However, concern over the rising number of babies born by caesarean has made doctors more wary of doing them – one consequence of which is that medical staff may allow a difficult birth to continue for longer before they resort to surgery. This could be boosting the frequency of impaction. But, again, no one is certain.", "So you can stop worrying. Debra – Desperate Debra to use her full trade name – is a simulator designed to help doctors practise their skill at dealing with impacted foetuses: babies that get stuck trying to exit the womb by the normal route. She comprises the lower two thirds (ie from the mid-chest region downwards) of a life-sized but limbless female torso made of flesh-coloured silicone rubber. She comes with a vulva, a pre-cut incision in her abdomen and, most importantly, a uterus containing a foetal head that should, in the normal way of things, be free to emerge between her legs. But this fetus is going nowhere until an obstetrician – or in this case me – can successfully grasp and pull it out.", "Considering the universality of childbirth, impaction and the best way of dealing with it are topics that seem to have gone remarkably unstudied. \"There are strong opinions about why it happens and what to do, but very little research evidence,\" says Tydeman, adding that many of these opinions are contradictory.", "If a baby's head is jammed down in the mother's pelvic region, common sense suggests that it might help if a second person gives a gentle backward push on the area of its head visible through the mother's dilated cervix. \"In our unit,\" says Tydeman, \"when the woman is fully dilated and you'd expect the baby to come out normally [but it doesn't]… a registrar will be asking for a push-up about one in five times.\" Although registrars are doctors still in training, they're nonetheless experienced; which suggests requests for push-ups during unplanned caesareans are far from uncommon. The Tydeman tube is a gadget intended to make this manoeuvre safer and more effective.", "At St Thomas's, midwives in training also get an opportunity to practise on Debra. The chances that midwives will find themselves having to do the actual extraction of an infant are slim; but they're quite likely to be asked to help the obstetrician by pushing a stuck baby from below. Debra's anatomy allows them to practise this skill; and to learn where and how hard to push on the infant skull. \"Any practice you've done in the cold light of day will help you stay calm and composed in an emergency, and that's what we're aiming for,\" says Briley.", "The inventor of the tube and of Desperate Debra is Dr Graham Tydeman, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife. Only after he'd built Debra did he realise that she might serve a purpose beyond his original intention. His is a decade-long tale of inspired insights, thwarted aims and shifting purposes; but with a good outcome. Although the Tydeman tube is still in gestation, Desperate Debra herself is now thriving.\nTo understand the desperation of Debra and how the Tydeman tube might help to relieve it requires a brief foray into basic obstetric knowhow. Evolution has endowed us with heads proportionally so large that even when labour runs according to plan, the delivery process involves a bit of a squeeze. For the baby's head to get stuck on the way out may not be usual, but it's by no means a rarity.", "Creativity and innovation have many unlikely sources. What seems to have inspired Tydeman to develop his device was the characteristic sound of a Wellington boot being pulled free of wet, muddy ground: a slurpy, sucking, gurgling noise. When an impacted foetal head is pulled free of the uterus it's often accompanied by a similar sucking noise, the result of air rushing in between the obstetrician's fingers to fill the space vacated. \"What occurred to me years ago was that if the air can't get in, why not put a tube up into the vagina so that it can get in from below the baby's head.\" From time to time, if he felt he felt the baby might stick, Tydeman would slip a length of sterile silicone tubing through the woman's vagina and up into the womb next to the baby's head. Allowing air in by this route would release any suction forces tending to hold it where it was.", "So how valuable in training medical staff is a simulator like this? Very, according to Annette Briley. Imagine it's the middle of the night and an unplanned emergency caesarean is required: \"Some poor junior doctor might find himself trying to manage it on his own.\" To have practised the knack of extracting a firmly impacted baby from a simulator is lot better than first honing your skill on a real woman.", "Tydeman didn't do much with the idea until 10 years ago when one trainee, who was experiencing real difficulty getting heads out, prompted him to think again about the problem. Around the same time, he met professor of obstetrics Andrew Shennan and consultant midwife Annette Briley, both of the Women's Health Academic Centre at St Thomas's hospital. Between them they came up with a device – the Tydeman tube – to make pushing on the foetus more controlled while simultaneously releasing any vacuum that might be holding it in place.", "A proper study of the clinical effectiveness of the Tydeman tube will necessarily involve women giving birth. Assessing the value of Debra as a simulator didn't require human subjects; and the team has already conducted such a study. Thirty obstetricians, from three NHS maternity units and with varying levels of experience, took part. They all received a brief explanation of how Debra works, and were then asked to try a timed removal of the foetal head at three different levels of difficulty. Overall, 87 per cent reported that the simulator offered a realistic experience of dealing with an impacted head, and 93 per cent thought it would be valuable as a training device.", "With a grant from the Guy's and St Thomas's Charity fund they made Debra more presentable. Tydeman showed the prototype to Adam Rouilly, an established company specialising in medical models and simulators. They were impressed. A year later, the first of Debra's smartened-up sisters was on the market. \n\n In Debra as she is now, the precise extent and nature of her desperation can be fine-tuned according to need. The foetal head inside her uterus can be moved to mimic the various positions that an unborn baby may adopt. By tightening a spring inside Debra's body, it's also possible vary the degree of impaction from mild to so severe that the head is virtually impossible to extract. In this way she simulates the full range of difficulty that obstetricians are likely to encounter.", "The instrument is made up of a rigid plastic tube opening into a softer silicone cup. Pressure to the foetal head is applied using four pads projecting forward from the cup's interior. Holding the device by the tube, the user places the cup against the part of the head exposed through the dilated cervix, and presses. This pushes the baby back up into the uterus while releasing any suction pressure that may have been holding it, so allowing the obstetrician to extract it more easily. Because pressure is distributed equally between the four pads with a greater combined surface area than that of a user's fingertips, the risk of inadvertent damage is minimised. \n\n The team found some money to employ a product designer who used computer-aided design technology and 3D printing to make a prototype. \"We were at the point of getting one made in silicone,\" says Tydeman, \"when we realised that before we started experimenting on women we really ought to test it on a simulator.\" No such simulator existed – so he decided to make one himself.", "Although tests carried out with the Debra prototype showed that the tube would work as intended, Tydeman and his colleagues then faced what he calls a kind of medical catch-22. \"We had the tube finished about three years ago… but we were more interested in trying to save lives than selling a product. We thought that the right thing to do before commercialising it was to be sure we'd got the best design.\" They tried it on a dozen or so women in labour, and concluded that it did what it supposed to. But they held off trying to market it because they wanted to do more extensive, more rigorous clinical studies.\nThis presented a problem. \"If you've applied for research money,\" says Tydeman, \"but you've already got what seems to be a commercially viable design, potential funders are going to say that the company aiming to sell it should pay for the work.\" On the other hand, commercial interest is easier to drum up if you've already got evidence that a device is safe and effective.", "The clever and sophisticated simulator I'm playing with started life as a lash-up in an obstetrician's home workshop: a Heath Robinson-style contraption barely recognisable as a model of the human body. But it wasn't at that stage intended as a simulator for training medical staff. Its sole purpose was to test the effectiveness of a novel device called a Tydeman tube. Paradoxically, although the testing equipment, Debra, is now commercially available, the device it was intended to test has yet to reach the market.", "When originally conceived, remember, Debra was simply a means of testing the effectiveness of the tube. What she looked like was neither here nor there. It was only once Debra was reborn as a teaching aid that she needed sprucing up. \n\n Tydeman can remember the exact moment when the idea of her having a greater role dawned on him. \"I was on the sleeper train down from Scotland to London,\" he says. \"Debra was with me because the first Tydeman tube had become available at St Thomas's… It was about midnight, I'd had my free whisky and I suddenly thought, 'Blow me! Even if the tube doesn't work, Debra could be useful as a teaching aid'.\"\nThe following morning, at St Thomas's, Tydeman asked a visiting professor of obstetrics to have a look at Debra and tell him what she thought. She put her hand into Debra's womb, grasped the foetal head and said it felt just like the real thing. \"Terribly flattering,\" Tydeman laughs.", "One of the treatments of choice in that era was, naturally, acupuncture. But how to teach tyro-acupuncturists where to place the needles? Simple. A life-size bronze statue dotted with small holes indicated the points of insertion. And how then to test the students' grasp of their subject? If the statute was hollow, filled with liquid and given an outer coating of wax to mask the holes, a correct needle insertion would be followed by a leak. \n\n Given the universality of childbirth it's no surprise that, then as now, the womb turns out to be the most simulated of our organs. For the benefit of 18th-century midwives and doctors-in-training, the Bologna surgeon Giovanni Antonio Galli devised a birthing simulator comprising a glass uterus supported by an artificial pelvis and containing a flexible foetus. Trainees had to deliver the baby while wearing a blindfold. Only the tutor could witness the fumbling of their hands.", "As the material for a convincing simulation, glass clearly has its drawbacks. But another 18th-century contraption used a pink cloth-covered mannequin comprising a female torso complete with genitalia, a set of implantable foetuses of various ages, and even – a real\ncoup de théâtre\n, this – a facility for exuding suitably coloured liquids at the appropriate moment.\nOddly, as medicine became more scientific, most of these devices fell by the wayside. As an academic review of these and other devices has pointed out, much of the 20th century was something of Dark Ages for simulation. Its value in professional training has had to be rediscovered: an endeavour in which inventive people like Graham Tydeman, sometimes with workshops rich in discarded junk, are still fruitfully engaged.\nThis article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article." ], [ "The standard response is to perform a caesarean section. Every year some 160,000 babies are born in the UK this way, with almost two thirds of them classified as emergencies. One audit has suggested that roughly 8,000 babies get stuck and have to be delivered by caesarean at a stage when their mothers are fully dilated. \"Some of the babies will be so close to coming out by the normal route,\" says Tydeman, \"that it's then difficult to get them back up and remove them through the hole in the woman's tummy.\" Which women are most at risk of this setback seems to be largely unpredictable. \"We just observe that it happens… It's been discussed in the medical literature since the 1940s, but until 10 years ago, and throughout my training and most of my life as a consultant, it wasn't really talked about.\"", "In a protracted birth that's destined to end with a caesarean, the longer the labour is allowed to go on before the obstetrician decides to intervene, the greater the likelihood that the baby's head will become impacted. However, concern over the rising number of babies born by caesarean has made doctors more wary of doing them – one consequence of which is that medical staff may allow a difficult birth to continue for longer before they resort to surgery. This could be boosting the frequency of impaction. But, again, no one is certain.", "When obstetricians doing planned caesareans slice open a mother's womb, what they usually see is the baby's head. By slipping a hand round and below it they can easily guide the baby out. \"When you do a caesarean for an impacted baby,\" says Tydeman, \"you make the incision in the same place, but what you might come across is a shoulder because the baby's so much further down [the birth canal].\" As I'd discovered for myself, sliding a hand around the baby's head is then far more difficult. \"It makes your fingers hurt,\" says Tydeman. \"It makes your pulse rate go up to about 200, and you break out in a sweat because know you've only got about five or 10 minutes before there are serious consequences. The clock is ticking.\"", "Obstetrics for beginners\nIt's my first go at delivering a baby by caesarean section – and the foetal head is impacted, jammed in its mother's pelvis. To be honest I'm struggling. \n\n Incisions have been made in the lower part of the mother's abdomen and womb. I've pushed my gloved hand inside and managed to slide my fingers between the baby's head and the surrounding uterine tissue. But it's difficult. The baby is tightly wedged in. I've had to push hard to get my hand to the far side of its head, and even though I'm now cupping and grasping it in the approved manner, I can't seem to pull it out. Dare I grip its head more firmly? Dare I pull harder? \n\n The baby's mother – she's called Debra – remains impassive throughout these agonised fumblings. Her face reveals nothing of what she may be feeling. But then Debra has no feelings. Indeed she has no face…", "Considering the universality of childbirth, impaction and the best way of dealing with it are topics that seem to have gone remarkably unstudied. \"There are strong opinions about why it happens and what to do, but very little research evidence,\" says Tydeman, adding that many of these opinions are contradictory.", "So you can stop worrying. Debra – Desperate Debra to use her full trade name – is a simulator designed to help doctors practise their skill at dealing with impacted foetuses: babies that get stuck trying to exit the womb by the normal route. She comprises the lower two thirds (ie from the mid-chest region downwards) of a life-sized but limbless female torso made of flesh-coloured silicone rubber. She comes with a vulva, a pre-cut incision in her abdomen and, most importantly, a uterus containing a foetal head that should, in the normal way of things, be free to emerge between her legs. But this fetus is going nowhere until an obstetrician – or in this case me – can successfully grasp and pull it out.", "If a baby's head is jammed down in the mother's pelvic region, common sense suggests that it might help if a second person gives a gentle backward push on the area of its head visible through the mother's dilated cervix. \"In our unit,\" says Tydeman, \"when the woman is fully dilated and you'd expect the baby to come out normally [but it doesn't]… a registrar will be asking for a push-up about one in five times.\" Although registrars are doctors still in training, they're nonetheless experienced; which suggests requests for push-ups during unplanned caesareans are far from uncommon. The Tydeman tube is a gadget intended to make this manoeuvre safer and more effective.", "Tydeman didn't do much with the idea until 10 years ago when one trainee, who was experiencing real difficulty getting heads out, prompted him to think again about the problem. Around the same time, he met professor of obstetrics Andrew Shennan and consultant midwife Annette Briley, both of the Women's Health Academic Centre at St Thomas's hospital. Between them they came up with a device – the Tydeman tube – to make pushing on the foetus more controlled while simultaneously releasing any vacuum that might be holding it in place.", "The inventor of the tube and of Desperate Debra is Dr Graham Tydeman, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife. Only after he'd built Debra did he realise that she might serve a purpose beyond his original intention. His is a decade-long tale of inspired insights, thwarted aims and shifting purposes; but with a good outcome. Although the Tydeman tube is still in gestation, Desperate Debra herself is now thriving.\nTo understand the desperation of Debra and how the Tydeman tube might help to relieve it requires a brief foray into basic obstetric knowhow. Evolution has endowed us with heads proportionally so large that even when labour runs according to plan, the delivery process involves a bit of a squeeze. For the baby's head to get stuck on the way out may not be usual, but it's by no means a rarity.", "With a grant from the Guy's and St Thomas's Charity fund they made Debra more presentable. Tydeman showed the prototype to Adam Rouilly, an established company specialising in medical models and simulators. They were impressed. A year later, the first of Debra's smartened-up sisters was on the market. \n\n In Debra as she is now, the precise extent and nature of her desperation can be fine-tuned according to need. The foetal head inside her uterus can be moved to mimic the various positions that an unborn baby may adopt. By tightening a spring inside Debra's body, it's also possible vary the degree of impaction from mild to so severe that the head is virtually impossible to extract. In this way she simulates the full range of difficulty that obstetricians are likely to encounter.", "At St Thomas's, midwives in training also get an opportunity to practise on Debra. The chances that midwives will find themselves having to do the actual extraction of an infant are slim; but they're quite likely to be asked to help the obstetrician by pushing a stuck baby from below. Debra's anatomy allows them to practise this skill; and to learn where and how hard to push on the infant skull. \"Any practice you've done in the cold light of day will help you stay calm and composed in an emergency, and that's what we're aiming for,\" says Briley.", "So how valuable in training medical staff is a simulator like this? Very, according to Annette Briley. Imagine it's the middle of the night and an unplanned emergency caesarean is required: \"Some poor junior doctor might find himself trying to manage it on his own.\" To have practised the knack of extracting a firmly impacted baby from a simulator is lot better than first honing your skill on a real woman.", "A proper study of the clinical effectiveness of the Tydeman tube will necessarily involve women giving birth. Assessing the value of Debra as a simulator didn't require human subjects; and the team has already conducted such a study. Thirty obstetricians, from three NHS maternity units and with varying levels of experience, took part. They all received a brief explanation of how Debra works, and were then asked to try a timed removal of the foetal head at three different levels of difficulty. Overall, 87 per cent reported that the simulator offered a realistic experience of dealing with an impacted head, and 93 per cent thought it would be valuable as a training device.", "Creativity and innovation have many unlikely sources. What seems to have inspired Tydeman to develop his device was the characteristic sound of a Wellington boot being pulled free of wet, muddy ground: a slurpy, sucking, gurgling noise. When an impacted foetal head is pulled free of the uterus it's often accompanied by a similar sucking noise, the result of air rushing in between the obstetrician's fingers to fill the space vacated. \"What occurred to me years ago was that if the air can't get in, why not put a tube up into the vagina so that it can get in from below the baby's head.\" From time to time, if he felt he felt the baby might stick, Tydeman would slip a length of sterile silicone tubing through the woman's vagina and up into the womb next to the baby's head. Allowing air in by this route would release any suction forces tending to hold it where it was.", "When originally conceived, remember, Debra was simply a means of testing the effectiveness of the tube. What she looked like was neither here nor there. It was only once Debra was reborn as a teaching aid that she needed sprucing up. \n\n Tydeman can remember the exact moment when the idea of her having a greater role dawned on him. \"I was on the sleeper train down from Scotland to London,\" he says. \"Debra was with me because the first Tydeman tube had become available at St Thomas's… It was about midnight, I'd had my free whisky and I suddenly thought, 'Blow me! Even if the tube doesn't work, Debra could be useful as a teaching aid'.\"\nThe following morning, at St Thomas's, Tydeman asked a visiting professor of obstetrics to have a look at Debra and tell him what she thought. She put her hand into Debra's womb, grasped the foetal head and said it felt just like the real thing. \"Terribly flattering,\" Tydeman laughs.", "One of the treatments of choice in that era was, naturally, acupuncture. But how to teach tyro-acupuncturists where to place the needles? Simple. A life-size bronze statue dotted with small holes indicated the points of insertion. And how then to test the students' grasp of their subject? If the statute was hollow, filled with liquid and given an outer coating of wax to mask the holes, a correct needle insertion would be followed by a leak. \n\n Given the universality of childbirth it's no surprise that, then as now, the womb turns out to be the most simulated of our organs. For the benefit of 18th-century midwives and doctors-in-training, the Bologna surgeon Giovanni Antonio Galli devised a birthing simulator comprising a glass uterus supported by an artificial pelvis and containing a flexible foetus. Trainees had to deliver the baby while wearing a blindfold. Only the tutor could witness the fumbling of their hands.", "As the material for a convincing simulation, glass clearly has its drawbacks. But another 18th-century contraption used a pink cloth-covered mannequin comprising a female torso complete with genitalia, a set of implantable foetuses of various ages, and even – a real\ncoup de théâtre\n, this – a facility for exuding suitably coloured liquids at the appropriate moment.\nOddly, as medicine became more scientific, most of these devices fell by the wayside. As an academic review of these and other devices has pointed out, much of the 20th century was something of Dark Ages for simulation. Its value in professional training has had to be rediscovered: an endeavour in which inventive people like Graham Tydeman, sometimes with workshops rich in discarded junk, are still fruitfully engaged.\nThis article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.", "The use of simulators to teach technical skills is now common in medical schools. You can learn to sew up a knife wound, catheterise a bladder or intubate an airway. You can practise cardiopulmonary resuscitation or ear syringing or even go through the motions of a keyhole surgical procedure. The technology required to do these things may cost a few pounds, or tens of thousands. Either way, given that most of these devices were invented during the past three or four decades, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that simulation for medical purposes can be traced back as far as the Chinese Song dynasty of 960-1279 AD.", "It's still too soon to make a final judgement about Debra’s impact. \"When we first brought Debra out,\" Briley recalls, \"some of the really experienced professors said things like, 'We always managed without one. Why would you need this?' But ask them to have a go at using it and then they admit it's really good.\" Medicine as a whole has an oddly ambivalent relationship to innovation. Some new findings, techniques or equipment take years to penetrate the profession; others are seized upon immediately.", "The instrument is made up of a rigid plastic tube opening into a softer silicone cup. Pressure to the foetal head is applied using four pads projecting forward from the cup's interior. Holding the device by the tube, the user places the cup against the part of the head exposed through the dilated cervix, and presses. This pushes the baby back up into the uterus while releasing any suction pressure that may have been holding it, so allowing the obstetrician to extract it more easily. Because pressure is distributed equally between the four pads with a greater combined surface area than that of a user's fingertips, the risk of inadvertent damage is minimised. \n\n The team found some money to employ a product designer who used computer-aided design technology and 3D printing to make a prototype. \"We were at the point of getting one made in silicone,\" says Tydeman, \"when we realised that before we started experimenting on women we really ought to test it on a simulator.\" No such simulator existed – so he decided to make one himself." ], [ "The standard response is to perform a caesarean section. Every year some 160,000 babies are born in the UK this way, with almost two thirds of them classified as emergencies. One audit has suggested that roughly 8,000 babies get stuck and have to be delivered by caesarean at a stage when their mothers are fully dilated. \"Some of the babies will be so close to coming out by the normal route,\" says Tydeman, \"that it's then difficult to get them back up and remove them through the hole in the woman's tummy.\" Which women are most at risk of this setback seems to be largely unpredictable. \"We just observe that it happens… It's been discussed in the medical literature since the 1940s, but until 10 years ago, and throughout my training and most of my life as a consultant, it wasn't really talked about.\"", "When obstetricians doing planned caesareans slice open a mother's womb, what they usually see is the baby's head. By slipping a hand round and below it they can easily guide the baby out. \"When you do a caesarean for an impacted baby,\" says Tydeman, \"you make the incision in the same place, but what you might come across is a shoulder because the baby's so much further down [the birth canal].\" As I'd discovered for myself, sliding a hand around the baby's head is then far more difficult. \"It makes your fingers hurt,\" says Tydeman. \"It makes your pulse rate go up to about 200, and you break out in a sweat because know you've only got about five or 10 minutes before there are serious consequences. The clock is ticking.\"", "In a protracted birth that's destined to end with a caesarean, the longer the labour is allowed to go on before the obstetrician decides to intervene, the greater the likelihood that the baby's head will become impacted. However, concern over the rising number of babies born by caesarean has made doctors more wary of doing them – one consequence of which is that medical staff may allow a difficult birth to continue for longer before they resort to surgery. This could be boosting the frequency of impaction. But, again, no one is certain.", "So you can stop worrying. Debra – Desperate Debra to use her full trade name – is a simulator designed to help doctors practise their skill at dealing with impacted foetuses: babies that get stuck trying to exit the womb by the normal route. She comprises the lower two thirds (ie from the mid-chest region downwards) of a life-sized but limbless female torso made of flesh-coloured silicone rubber. She comes with a vulva, a pre-cut incision in her abdomen and, most importantly, a uterus containing a foetal head that should, in the normal way of things, be free to emerge between her legs. But this fetus is going nowhere until an obstetrician – or in this case me – can successfully grasp and pull it out.", "At St Thomas's, midwives in training also get an opportunity to practise on Debra. The chances that midwives will find themselves having to do the actual extraction of an infant are slim; but they're quite likely to be asked to help the obstetrician by pushing a stuck baby from below. Debra's anatomy allows them to practise this skill; and to learn where and how hard to push on the infant skull. \"Any practice you've done in the cold light of day will help you stay calm and composed in an emergency, and that's what we're aiming for,\" says Briley.", "Obstetrics for beginners\nIt's my first go at delivering a baby by caesarean section – and the foetal head is impacted, jammed in its mother's pelvis. To be honest I'm struggling. \n\n Incisions have been made in the lower part of the mother's abdomen and womb. I've pushed my gloved hand inside and managed to slide my fingers between the baby's head and the surrounding uterine tissue. But it's difficult. The baby is tightly wedged in. I've had to push hard to get my hand to the far side of its head, and even though I'm now cupping and grasping it in the approved manner, I can't seem to pull it out. Dare I grip its head more firmly? Dare I pull harder? \n\n The baby's mother – she's called Debra – remains impassive throughout these agonised fumblings. Her face reveals nothing of what she may be feeling. But then Debra has no feelings. Indeed she has no face…", "So how valuable in training medical staff is a simulator like this? Very, according to Annette Briley. Imagine it's the middle of the night and an unplanned emergency caesarean is required: \"Some poor junior doctor might find himself trying to manage it on his own.\" To have practised the knack of extracting a firmly impacted baby from a simulator is lot better than first honing your skill on a real woman.", "If a baby's head is jammed down in the mother's pelvic region, common sense suggests that it might help if a second person gives a gentle backward push on the area of its head visible through the mother's dilated cervix. \"In our unit,\" says Tydeman, \"when the woman is fully dilated and you'd expect the baby to come out normally [but it doesn't]… a registrar will be asking for a push-up about one in five times.\" Although registrars are doctors still in training, they're nonetheless experienced; which suggests requests for push-ups during unplanned caesareans are far from uncommon. The Tydeman tube is a gadget intended to make this manoeuvre safer and more effective.", "The inventor of the tube and of Desperate Debra is Dr Graham Tydeman, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife. Only after he'd built Debra did he realise that she might serve a purpose beyond his original intention. His is a decade-long tale of inspired insights, thwarted aims and shifting purposes; but with a good outcome. Although the Tydeman tube is still in gestation, Desperate Debra herself is now thriving.\nTo understand the desperation of Debra and how the Tydeman tube might help to relieve it requires a brief foray into basic obstetric knowhow. Evolution has endowed us with heads proportionally so large that even when labour runs according to plan, the delivery process involves a bit of a squeeze. For the baby's head to get stuck on the way out may not be usual, but it's by no means a rarity.", "Tydeman didn't do much with the idea until 10 years ago when one trainee, who was experiencing real difficulty getting heads out, prompted him to think again about the problem. Around the same time, he met professor of obstetrics Andrew Shennan and consultant midwife Annette Briley, both of the Women's Health Academic Centre at St Thomas's hospital. Between them they came up with a device – the Tydeman tube – to make pushing on the foetus more controlled while simultaneously releasing any vacuum that might be holding it in place.", "Considering the universality of childbirth, impaction and the best way of dealing with it are topics that seem to have gone remarkably unstudied. \"There are strong opinions about why it happens and what to do, but very little research evidence,\" says Tydeman, adding that many of these opinions are contradictory.", "A proper study of the clinical effectiveness of the Tydeman tube will necessarily involve women giving birth. Assessing the value of Debra as a simulator didn't require human subjects; and the team has already conducted such a study. Thirty obstetricians, from three NHS maternity units and with varying levels of experience, took part. They all received a brief explanation of how Debra works, and were then asked to try a timed removal of the foetal head at three different levels of difficulty. Overall, 87 per cent reported that the simulator offered a realistic experience of dealing with an impacted head, and 93 per cent thought it would be valuable as a training device.", "Although tests carried out with the Debra prototype showed that the tube would work as intended, Tydeman and his colleagues then faced what he calls a kind of medical catch-22. \"We had the tube finished about three years ago… but we were more interested in trying to save lives than selling a product. We thought that the right thing to do before commercialising it was to be sure we'd got the best design.\" They tried it on a dozen or so women in labour, and concluded that it did what it supposed to. But they held off trying to market it because they wanted to do more extensive, more rigorous clinical studies.\nThis presented a problem. \"If you've applied for research money,\" says Tydeman, \"but you've already got what seems to be a commercially viable design, potential funders are going to say that the company aiming to sell it should pay for the work.\" On the other hand, commercial interest is easier to drum up if you've already got evidence that a device is safe and effective.", "Creativity and innovation have many unlikely sources. What seems to have inspired Tydeman to develop his device was the characteristic sound of a Wellington boot being pulled free of wet, muddy ground: a slurpy, sucking, gurgling noise. When an impacted foetal head is pulled free of the uterus it's often accompanied by a similar sucking noise, the result of air rushing in between the obstetrician's fingers to fill the space vacated. \"What occurred to me years ago was that if the air can't get in, why not put a tube up into the vagina so that it can get in from below the baby's head.\" From time to time, if he felt he felt the baby might stick, Tydeman would slip a length of sterile silicone tubing through the woman's vagina and up into the womb next to the baby's head. Allowing air in by this route would release any suction forces tending to hold it where it was.", "With a grant from the Guy's and St Thomas's Charity fund they made Debra more presentable. Tydeman showed the prototype to Adam Rouilly, an established company specialising in medical models and simulators. They were impressed. A year later, the first of Debra's smartened-up sisters was on the market. \n\n In Debra as she is now, the precise extent and nature of her desperation can be fine-tuned according to need. The foetal head inside her uterus can be moved to mimic the various positions that an unborn baby may adopt. By tightening a spring inside Debra's body, it's also possible vary the degree of impaction from mild to so severe that the head is virtually impossible to extract. In this way she simulates the full range of difficulty that obstetricians are likely to encounter.", "The instrument is made up of a rigid plastic tube opening into a softer silicone cup. Pressure to the foetal head is applied using four pads projecting forward from the cup's interior. Holding the device by the tube, the user places the cup against the part of the head exposed through the dilated cervix, and presses. This pushes the baby back up into the uterus while releasing any suction pressure that may have been holding it, so allowing the obstetrician to extract it more easily. Because pressure is distributed equally between the four pads with a greater combined surface area than that of a user's fingertips, the risk of inadvertent damage is minimised. \n\n The team found some money to employ a product designer who used computer-aided design technology and 3D printing to make a prototype. \"We were at the point of getting one made in silicone,\" says Tydeman, \"when we realised that before we started experimenting on women we really ought to test it on a simulator.\" No such simulator existed – so he decided to make one himself.", "It's still too soon to make a final judgement about Debra’s impact. \"When we first brought Debra out,\" Briley recalls, \"some of the really experienced professors said things like, 'We always managed without one. Why would you need this?' But ask them to have a go at using it and then they admit it's really good.\" Medicine as a whole has an oddly ambivalent relationship to innovation. Some new findings, techniques or equipment take years to penetrate the profession; others are seized upon immediately.", "The clever and sophisticated simulator I'm playing with started life as a lash-up in an obstetrician's home workshop: a Heath Robinson-style contraption barely recognisable as a model of the human body. But it wasn't at that stage intended as a simulator for training medical staff. Its sole purpose was to test the effectiveness of a novel device called a Tydeman tube. Paradoxically, although the testing equipment, Debra, is now commercially available, the device it was intended to test has yet to reach the market.", "One of the treatments of choice in that era was, naturally, acupuncture. But how to teach tyro-acupuncturists where to place the needles? Simple. A life-size bronze statue dotted with small holes indicated the points of insertion. And how then to test the students' grasp of their subject? If the statute was hollow, filled with liquid and given an outer coating of wax to mask the holes, a correct needle insertion would be followed by a leak. \n\n Given the universality of childbirth it's no surprise that, then as now, the womb turns out to be the most simulated of our organs. For the benefit of 18th-century midwives and doctors-in-training, the Bologna surgeon Giovanni Antonio Galli devised a birthing simulator comprising a glass uterus supported by an artificial pelvis and containing a flexible foetus. Trainees had to deliver the baby while wearing a blindfold. Only the tutor could witness the fumbling of their hands.", "As the material for a convincing simulation, glass clearly has its drawbacks. But another 18th-century contraption used a pink cloth-covered mannequin comprising a female torso complete with genitalia, a set of implantable foetuses of various ages, and even – a real\ncoup de théâtre\n, this – a facility for exuding suitably coloured liquids at the appropriate moment.\nOddly, as medicine became more scientific, most of these devices fell by the wayside. As an academic review of these and other devices has pointed out, much of the 20th century was something of Dark Ages for simulation. Its value in professional training has had to be rediscovered: an endeavour in which inventive people like Graham Tydeman, sometimes with workshops rich in discarded junk, are still fruitfully engaged.\nThis article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article." ], [ "That Tydeman was able to do this comes as no great surprise once you've glanced at his website. His career may be rooted in medicine but his interests encompass sculpture, furniture making and much else. He works in wood, glass, metals and plastic. \"I've got a big workshop with a lathe and a forge,\" he says. \"I make stuff. I always have, ever since I was a child. My dad was a woodwork teacher, my mum was very creative with fabric.\"", "When originally conceived, remember, Debra was simply a means of testing the effectiveness of the tube. What she looked like was neither here nor there. It was only once Debra was reborn as a teaching aid that she needed sprucing up. \n\n Tydeman can remember the exact moment when the idea of her having a greater role dawned on him. \"I was on the sleeper train down from Scotland to London,\" he says. \"Debra was with me because the first Tydeman tube had become available at St Thomas's… It was about midnight, I'd had my free whisky and I suddenly thought, 'Blow me! Even if the tube doesn't work, Debra could be useful as a teaching aid'.\"\nThe following morning, at St Thomas's, Tydeman asked a visiting professor of obstetrics to have a look at Debra and tell him what she thought. She put her hand into Debra's womb, grasped the foetal head and said it felt just like the real thing. \"Terribly flattering,\" Tydeman laughs.", "Creativity and innovation have many unlikely sources. What seems to have inspired Tydeman to develop his device was the characteristic sound of a Wellington boot being pulled free of wet, muddy ground: a slurpy, sucking, gurgling noise. When an impacted foetal head is pulled free of the uterus it's often accompanied by a similar sucking noise, the result of air rushing in between the obstetrician's fingers to fill the space vacated. \"What occurred to me years ago was that if the air can't get in, why not put a tube up into the vagina so that it can get in from below the baby's head.\" From time to time, if he felt he felt the baby might stick, Tydeman would slip a length of sterile silicone tubing through the woman's vagina and up into the womb next to the baby's head. Allowing air in by this route would release any suction forces tending to hold it where it was.", "The clever and sophisticated simulator I'm playing with started life as a lash-up in an obstetrician's home workshop: a Heath Robinson-style contraption barely recognisable as a model of the human body. But it wasn't at that stage intended as a simulator for training medical staff. Its sole purpose was to test the effectiveness of a novel device called a Tydeman tube. Paradoxically, although the testing equipment, Debra, is now commercially available, the device it was intended to test has yet to reach the market.", "Tydeman didn't do much with the idea until 10 years ago when one trainee, who was experiencing real difficulty getting heads out, prompted him to think again about the problem. Around the same time, he met professor of obstetrics Andrew Shennan and consultant midwife Annette Briley, both of the Women's Health Academic Centre at St Thomas's hospital. Between them they came up with a device – the Tydeman tube – to make pushing on the foetus more controlled while simultaneously releasing any vacuum that might be holding it in place.", "That said, the team didn't want to leave the tube sitting on the shelf. So they eventually decided to go ahead and find a commercial partner willing to manufacture and market it. They have now identified one, and are fairly confident it will soon be in production. With sufficient users it should then be possible to compile factual – as opposed to anecdotal – evidence of benefit. Not ideal, Tydeman concedes, but the best they can do at present. \n\n In the meantime, back to Desperate Debra: so named, Tydeman says, not after any particular person but because the appellation is memorably alliterative. He put together the original Debra in a weekend. The skin was made out of a neoprene wetsuit fixed to a scaffolding formed from plastic tubing he'd found 20 years ago in skip outside a Glasgow pub; the head was cast in silicone from a model he'd made in plasticine, and the rest comprised old springs and other bits of stuff lying around his workshop. \"It wasn't actually that difficult,\" Tydeman says.", "The inventor of the tube and of Desperate Debra is Dr Graham Tydeman, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife. Only after he'd built Debra did he realise that she might serve a purpose beyond his original intention. His is a decade-long tale of inspired insights, thwarted aims and shifting purposes; but with a good outcome. Although the Tydeman tube is still in gestation, Desperate Debra herself is now thriving.\nTo understand the desperation of Debra and how the Tydeman tube might help to relieve it requires a brief foray into basic obstetric knowhow. Evolution has endowed us with heads proportionally so large that even when labour runs according to plan, the delivery process involves a bit of a squeeze. For the baby's head to get stuck on the way out may not be usual, but it's by no means a rarity.", "As the material for a convincing simulation, glass clearly has its drawbacks. But another 18th-century contraption used a pink cloth-covered mannequin comprising a female torso complete with genitalia, a set of implantable foetuses of various ages, and even – a real\ncoup de théâtre\n, this – a facility for exuding suitably coloured liquids at the appropriate moment.\nOddly, as medicine became more scientific, most of these devices fell by the wayside. As an academic review of these and other devices has pointed out, much of the 20th century was something of Dark Ages for simulation. Its value in professional training has had to be rediscovered: an endeavour in which inventive people like Graham Tydeman, sometimes with workshops rich in discarded junk, are still fruitfully engaged.\nThis article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.", "Although tests carried out with the Debra prototype showed that the tube would work as intended, Tydeman and his colleagues then faced what he calls a kind of medical catch-22. \"We had the tube finished about three years ago… but we were more interested in trying to save lives than selling a product. We thought that the right thing to do before commercialising it was to be sure we'd got the best design.\" They tried it on a dozen or so women in labour, and concluded that it did what it supposed to. But they held off trying to market it because they wanted to do more extensive, more rigorous clinical studies.\nThis presented a problem. \"If you've applied for research money,\" says Tydeman, \"but you've already got what seems to be a commercially viable design, potential funders are going to say that the company aiming to sell it should pay for the work.\" On the other hand, commercial interest is easier to drum up if you've already got evidence that a device is safe and effective.", "The instrument is made up of a rigid plastic tube opening into a softer silicone cup. Pressure to the foetal head is applied using four pads projecting forward from the cup's interior. Holding the device by the tube, the user places the cup against the part of the head exposed through the dilated cervix, and presses. This pushes the baby back up into the uterus while releasing any suction pressure that may have been holding it, so allowing the obstetrician to extract it more easily. Because pressure is distributed equally between the four pads with a greater combined surface area than that of a user's fingertips, the risk of inadvertent damage is minimised. \n\n The team found some money to employ a product designer who used computer-aided design technology and 3D printing to make a prototype. \"We were at the point of getting one made in silicone,\" says Tydeman, \"when we realised that before we started experimenting on women we really ought to test it on a simulator.\" No such simulator existed – so he decided to make one himself.", "A proper study of the clinical effectiveness of the Tydeman tube will necessarily involve women giving birth. Assessing the value of Debra as a simulator didn't require human subjects; and the team has already conducted such a study. Thirty obstetricians, from three NHS maternity units and with varying levels of experience, took part. They all received a brief explanation of how Debra works, and were then asked to try a timed removal of the foetal head at three different levels of difficulty. Overall, 87 per cent reported that the simulator offered a realistic experience of dealing with an impacted head, and 93 per cent thought it would be valuable as a training device.", "If a baby's head is jammed down in the mother's pelvic region, common sense suggests that it might help if a second person gives a gentle backward push on the area of its head visible through the mother's dilated cervix. \"In our unit,\" says Tydeman, \"when the woman is fully dilated and you'd expect the baby to come out normally [but it doesn't]… a registrar will be asking for a push-up about one in five times.\" Although registrars are doctors still in training, they're nonetheless experienced; which suggests requests for push-ups during unplanned caesareans are far from uncommon. The Tydeman tube is a gadget intended to make this manoeuvre safer and more effective.", "With a grant from the Guy's and St Thomas's Charity fund they made Debra more presentable. Tydeman showed the prototype to Adam Rouilly, an established company specialising in medical models and simulators. They were impressed. A year later, the first of Debra's smartened-up sisters was on the market. \n\n In Debra as she is now, the precise extent and nature of her desperation can be fine-tuned according to need. The foetal head inside her uterus can be moved to mimic the various positions that an unborn baby may adopt. By tightening a spring inside Debra's body, it's also possible vary the degree of impaction from mild to so severe that the head is virtually impossible to extract. In this way she simulates the full range of difficulty that obstetricians are likely to encounter.", "It's still too soon to make a final judgement about Debra’s impact. \"When we first brought Debra out,\" Briley recalls, \"some of the really experienced professors said things like, 'We always managed without one. Why would you need this?' But ask them to have a go at using it and then they admit it's really good.\" Medicine as a whole has an oddly ambivalent relationship to innovation. Some new findings, techniques or equipment take years to penetrate the profession; others are seized upon immediately.", "The use of simulators to teach technical skills is now common in medical schools. You can learn to sew up a knife wound, catheterise a bladder or intubate an airway. You can practise cardiopulmonary resuscitation or ear syringing or even go through the motions of a keyhole surgical procedure. The technology required to do these things may cost a few pounds, or tens of thousands. Either way, given that most of these devices were invented during the past three or four decades, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that simulation for medical purposes can be traced back as far as the Chinese Song dynasty of 960-1279 AD.", "One of the treatments of choice in that era was, naturally, acupuncture. But how to teach tyro-acupuncturists where to place the needles? Simple. A life-size bronze statue dotted with small holes indicated the points of insertion. And how then to test the students' grasp of their subject? If the statute was hollow, filled with liquid and given an outer coating of wax to mask the holes, a correct needle insertion would be followed by a leak. \n\n Given the universality of childbirth it's no surprise that, then as now, the womb turns out to be the most simulated of our organs. For the benefit of 18th-century midwives and doctors-in-training, the Bologna surgeon Giovanni Antonio Galli devised a birthing simulator comprising a glass uterus supported by an artificial pelvis and containing a flexible foetus. Trainees had to deliver the baby while wearing a blindfold. Only the tutor could witness the fumbling of their hands.", "So you can stop worrying. Debra – Desperate Debra to use her full trade name – is a simulator designed to help doctors practise their skill at dealing with impacted foetuses: babies that get stuck trying to exit the womb by the normal route. She comprises the lower two thirds (ie from the mid-chest region downwards) of a life-sized but limbless female torso made of flesh-coloured silicone rubber. She comes with a vulva, a pre-cut incision in her abdomen and, most importantly, a uterus containing a foetal head that should, in the normal way of things, be free to emerge between her legs. But this fetus is going nowhere until an obstetrician – or in this case me – can successfully grasp and pull it out.", "The standard response is to perform a caesarean section. Every year some 160,000 babies are born in the UK this way, with almost two thirds of them classified as emergencies. One audit has suggested that roughly 8,000 babies get stuck and have to be delivered by caesarean at a stage when their mothers are fully dilated. \"Some of the babies will be so close to coming out by the normal route,\" says Tydeman, \"that it's then difficult to get them back up and remove them through the hole in the woman's tummy.\" Which women are most at risk of this setback seems to be largely unpredictable. \"We just observe that it happens… It's been discussed in the medical literature since the 1940s, but until 10 years ago, and throughout my training and most of my life as a consultant, it wasn't really talked about.\"", "When obstetricians doing planned caesareans slice open a mother's womb, what they usually see is the baby's head. By slipping a hand round and below it they can easily guide the baby out. \"When you do a caesarean for an impacted baby,\" says Tydeman, \"you make the incision in the same place, but what you might come across is a shoulder because the baby's so much further down [the birth canal].\" As I'd discovered for myself, sliding a hand around the baby's head is then far more difficult. \"It makes your fingers hurt,\" says Tydeman. \"It makes your pulse rate go up to about 200, and you break out in a sweat because know you've only got about five or 10 minutes before there are serious consequences. The clock is ticking.\"", "Considering the universality of childbirth, impaction and the best way of dealing with it are topics that seem to have gone remarkably unstudied. \"There are strong opinions about why it happens and what to do, but very little research evidence,\" says Tydeman, adding that many of these opinions are contradictory." ], [ "Although tests carried out with the Debra prototype showed that the tube would work as intended, Tydeman and his colleagues then faced what he calls a kind of medical catch-22. \"We had the tube finished about three years ago… but we were more interested in trying to save lives than selling a product. We thought that the right thing to do before commercialising it was to be sure we'd got the best design.\" They tried it on a dozen or so women in labour, and concluded that it did what it supposed to. But they held off trying to market it because they wanted to do more extensive, more rigorous clinical studies.\nThis presented a problem. \"If you've applied for research money,\" says Tydeman, \"but you've already got what seems to be a commercially viable design, potential funders are going to say that the company aiming to sell it should pay for the work.\" On the other hand, commercial interest is easier to drum up if you've already got evidence that a device is safe and effective.", "The clever and sophisticated simulator I'm playing with started life as a lash-up in an obstetrician's home workshop: a Heath Robinson-style contraption barely recognisable as a model of the human body. But it wasn't at that stage intended as a simulator for training medical staff. Its sole purpose was to test the effectiveness of a novel device called a Tydeman tube. Paradoxically, although the testing equipment, Debra, is now commercially available, the device it was intended to test has yet to reach the market.", "That said, the team didn't want to leave the tube sitting on the shelf. So they eventually decided to go ahead and find a commercial partner willing to manufacture and market it. They have now identified one, and are fairly confident it will soon be in production. With sufficient users it should then be possible to compile factual – as opposed to anecdotal – evidence of benefit. Not ideal, Tydeman concedes, but the best they can do at present. \n\n In the meantime, back to Desperate Debra: so named, Tydeman says, not after any particular person but because the appellation is memorably alliterative. He put together the original Debra in a weekend. The skin was made out of a neoprene wetsuit fixed to a scaffolding formed from plastic tubing he'd found 20 years ago in skip outside a Glasgow pub; the head was cast in silicone from a model he'd made in plasticine, and the rest comprised old springs and other bits of stuff lying around his workshop. \"It wasn't actually that difficult,\" Tydeman says.", "The inventor of the tube and of Desperate Debra is Dr Graham Tydeman, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife. Only after he'd built Debra did he realise that she might serve a purpose beyond his original intention. His is a decade-long tale of inspired insights, thwarted aims and shifting purposes; but with a good outcome. Although the Tydeman tube is still in gestation, Desperate Debra herself is now thriving.\nTo understand the desperation of Debra and how the Tydeman tube might help to relieve it requires a brief foray into basic obstetric knowhow. Evolution has endowed us with heads proportionally so large that even when labour runs according to plan, the delivery process involves a bit of a squeeze. For the baby's head to get stuck on the way out may not be usual, but it's by no means a rarity.", "Tydeman didn't do much with the idea until 10 years ago when one trainee, who was experiencing real difficulty getting heads out, prompted him to think again about the problem. Around the same time, he met professor of obstetrics Andrew Shennan and consultant midwife Annette Briley, both of the Women's Health Academic Centre at St Thomas's hospital. Between them they came up with a device – the Tydeman tube – to make pushing on the foetus more controlled while simultaneously releasing any vacuum that might be holding it in place.", "If a baby's head is jammed down in the mother's pelvic region, common sense suggests that it might help if a second person gives a gentle backward push on the area of its head visible through the mother's dilated cervix. \"In our unit,\" says Tydeman, \"when the woman is fully dilated and you'd expect the baby to come out normally [but it doesn't]… a registrar will be asking for a push-up about one in five times.\" Although registrars are doctors still in training, they're nonetheless experienced; which suggests requests for push-ups during unplanned caesareans are far from uncommon. The Tydeman tube is a gadget intended to make this manoeuvre safer and more effective.", "When originally conceived, remember, Debra was simply a means of testing the effectiveness of the tube. What she looked like was neither here nor there. It was only once Debra was reborn as a teaching aid that she needed sprucing up. \n\n Tydeman can remember the exact moment when the idea of her having a greater role dawned on him. \"I was on the sleeper train down from Scotland to London,\" he says. \"Debra was with me because the first Tydeman tube had become available at St Thomas's… It was about midnight, I'd had my free whisky and I suddenly thought, 'Blow me! Even if the tube doesn't work, Debra could be useful as a teaching aid'.\"\nThe following morning, at St Thomas's, Tydeman asked a visiting professor of obstetrics to have a look at Debra and tell him what she thought. She put her hand into Debra's womb, grasped the foetal head and said it felt just like the real thing. \"Terribly flattering,\" Tydeman laughs.", "A proper study of the clinical effectiveness of the Tydeman tube will necessarily involve women giving birth. Assessing the value of Debra as a simulator didn't require human subjects; and the team has already conducted such a study. Thirty obstetricians, from three NHS maternity units and with varying levels of experience, took part. They all received a brief explanation of how Debra works, and were then asked to try a timed removal of the foetal head at three different levels of difficulty. Overall, 87 per cent reported that the simulator offered a realistic experience of dealing with an impacted head, and 93 per cent thought it would be valuable as a training device.", "That Tydeman was able to do this comes as no great surprise once you've glanced at his website. His career may be rooted in medicine but his interests encompass sculpture, furniture making and much else. He works in wood, glass, metals and plastic. \"I've got a big workshop with a lathe and a forge,\" he says. \"I make stuff. I always have, ever since I was a child. My dad was a woodwork teacher, my mum was very creative with fabric.\"", "Creativity and innovation have many unlikely sources. What seems to have inspired Tydeman to develop his device was the characteristic sound of a Wellington boot being pulled free of wet, muddy ground: a slurpy, sucking, gurgling noise. When an impacted foetal head is pulled free of the uterus it's often accompanied by a similar sucking noise, the result of air rushing in between the obstetrician's fingers to fill the space vacated. \"What occurred to me years ago was that if the air can't get in, why not put a tube up into the vagina so that it can get in from below the baby's head.\" From time to time, if he felt he felt the baby might stick, Tydeman would slip a length of sterile silicone tubing through the woman's vagina and up into the womb next to the baby's head. Allowing air in by this route would release any suction forces tending to hold it where it was.", "As the material for a convincing simulation, glass clearly has its drawbacks. But another 18th-century contraption used a pink cloth-covered mannequin comprising a female torso complete with genitalia, a set of implantable foetuses of various ages, and even – a real\ncoup de théâtre\n, this – a facility for exuding suitably coloured liquids at the appropriate moment.\nOddly, as medicine became more scientific, most of these devices fell by the wayside. As an academic review of these and other devices has pointed out, much of the 20th century was something of Dark Ages for simulation. Its value in professional training has had to be rediscovered: an endeavour in which inventive people like Graham Tydeman, sometimes with workshops rich in discarded junk, are still fruitfully engaged.\nThis article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.", "The instrument is made up of a rigid plastic tube opening into a softer silicone cup. Pressure to the foetal head is applied using four pads projecting forward from the cup's interior. Holding the device by the tube, the user places the cup against the part of the head exposed through the dilated cervix, and presses. This pushes the baby back up into the uterus while releasing any suction pressure that may have been holding it, so allowing the obstetrician to extract it more easily. Because pressure is distributed equally between the four pads with a greater combined surface area than that of a user's fingertips, the risk of inadvertent damage is minimised. \n\n The team found some money to employ a product designer who used computer-aided design technology and 3D printing to make a prototype. \"We were at the point of getting one made in silicone,\" says Tydeman, \"when we realised that before we started experimenting on women we really ought to test it on a simulator.\" No such simulator existed – so he decided to make one himself.", "It's still too soon to make a final judgement about Debra’s impact. \"When we first brought Debra out,\" Briley recalls, \"some of the really experienced professors said things like, 'We always managed without one. Why would you need this?' But ask them to have a go at using it and then they admit it's really good.\" Medicine as a whole has an oddly ambivalent relationship to innovation. Some new findings, techniques or equipment take years to penetrate the profession; others are seized upon immediately.", "With a grant from the Guy's and St Thomas's Charity fund they made Debra more presentable. Tydeman showed the prototype to Adam Rouilly, an established company specialising in medical models and simulators. They were impressed. A year later, the first of Debra's smartened-up sisters was on the market. \n\n In Debra as she is now, the precise extent and nature of her desperation can be fine-tuned according to need. The foetal head inside her uterus can be moved to mimic the various positions that an unborn baby may adopt. By tightening a spring inside Debra's body, it's also possible vary the degree of impaction from mild to so severe that the head is virtually impossible to extract. In this way she simulates the full range of difficulty that obstetricians are likely to encounter.", "Considering the universality of childbirth, impaction and the best way of dealing with it are topics that seem to have gone remarkably unstudied. \"There are strong opinions about why it happens and what to do, but very little research evidence,\" says Tydeman, adding that many of these opinions are contradictory.", "The standard response is to perform a caesarean section. Every year some 160,000 babies are born in the UK this way, with almost two thirds of them classified as emergencies. One audit has suggested that roughly 8,000 babies get stuck and have to be delivered by caesarean at a stage when their mothers are fully dilated. \"Some of the babies will be so close to coming out by the normal route,\" says Tydeman, \"that it's then difficult to get them back up and remove them through the hole in the woman's tummy.\" Which women are most at risk of this setback seems to be largely unpredictable. \"We just observe that it happens… It's been discussed in the medical literature since the 1940s, but until 10 years ago, and throughout my training and most of my life as a consultant, it wasn't really talked about.\"", "So you can stop worrying. Debra – Desperate Debra to use her full trade name – is a simulator designed to help doctors practise their skill at dealing with impacted foetuses: babies that get stuck trying to exit the womb by the normal route. She comprises the lower two thirds (ie from the mid-chest region downwards) of a life-sized but limbless female torso made of flesh-coloured silicone rubber. She comes with a vulva, a pre-cut incision in her abdomen and, most importantly, a uterus containing a foetal head that should, in the normal way of things, be free to emerge between her legs. But this fetus is going nowhere until an obstetrician – or in this case me – can successfully grasp and pull it out.", "The use of simulators to teach technical skills is now common in medical schools. You can learn to sew up a knife wound, catheterise a bladder or intubate an airway. You can practise cardiopulmonary resuscitation or ear syringing or even go through the motions of a keyhole surgical procedure. The technology required to do these things may cost a few pounds, or tens of thousands. Either way, given that most of these devices were invented during the past three or four decades, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that simulation for medical purposes can be traced back as far as the Chinese Song dynasty of 960-1279 AD.", "One of the treatments of choice in that era was, naturally, acupuncture. But how to teach tyro-acupuncturists where to place the needles? Simple. A life-size bronze statue dotted with small holes indicated the points of insertion. And how then to test the students' grasp of their subject? If the statute was hollow, filled with liquid and given an outer coating of wax to mask the holes, a correct needle insertion would be followed by a leak. \n\n Given the universality of childbirth it's no surprise that, then as now, the womb turns out to be the most simulated of our organs. For the benefit of 18th-century midwives and doctors-in-training, the Bologna surgeon Giovanni Antonio Galli devised a birthing simulator comprising a glass uterus supported by an artificial pelvis and containing a flexible foetus. Trainees had to deliver the baby while wearing a blindfold. Only the tutor could witness the fumbling of their hands.", "When obstetricians doing planned caesareans slice open a mother's womb, what they usually see is the baby's head. By slipping a hand round and below it they can easily guide the baby out. \"When you do a caesarean for an impacted baby,\" says Tydeman, \"you make the incision in the same place, but what you might come across is a shoulder because the baby's so much further down [the birth canal].\" As I'd discovered for myself, sliding a hand around the baby's head is then far more difficult. \"It makes your fingers hurt,\" says Tydeman. \"It makes your pulse rate go up to about 200, and you break out in a sweat because know you've only got about five or 10 minutes before there are serious consequences. The clock is ticking.\"" ], [ "The clever and sophisticated simulator I'm playing with started life as a lash-up in an obstetrician's home workshop: a Heath Robinson-style contraption barely recognisable as a model of the human body. But it wasn't at that stage intended as a simulator for training medical staff. Its sole purpose was to test the effectiveness of a novel device called a Tydeman tube. Paradoxically, although the testing equipment, Debra, is now commercially available, the device it was intended to test has yet to reach the market.", "So you can stop worrying. Debra – Desperate Debra to use her full trade name – is a simulator designed to help doctors practise their skill at dealing with impacted foetuses: babies that get stuck trying to exit the womb by the normal route. She comprises the lower two thirds (ie from the mid-chest region downwards) of a life-sized but limbless female torso made of flesh-coloured silicone rubber. She comes with a vulva, a pre-cut incision in her abdomen and, most importantly, a uterus containing a foetal head that should, in the normal way of things, be free to emerge between her legs. But this fetus is going nowhere until an obstetrician – or in this case me – can successfully grasp and pull it out.", "So how valuable in training medical staff is a simulator like this? Very, according to Annette Briley. Imagine it's the middle of the night and an unplanned emergency caesarean is required: \"Some poor junior doctor might find himself trying to manage it on his own.\" To have practised the knack of extracting a firmly impacted baby from a simulator is lot better than first honing your skill on a real woman.", "When originally conceived, remember, Debra was simply a means of testing the effectiveness of the tube. What she looked like was neither here nor there. It was only once Debra was reborn as a teaching aid that she needed sprucing up. \n\n Tydeman can remember the exact moment when the idea of her having a greater role dawned on him. \"I was on the sleeper train down from Scotland to London,\" he says. \"Debra was with me because the first Tydeman tube had become available at St Thomas's… It was about midnight, I'd had my free whisky and I suddenly thought, 'Blow me! Even if the tube doesn't work, Debra could be useful as a teaching aid'.\"\nThe following morning, at St Thomas's, Tydeman asked a visiting professor of obstetrics to have a look at Debra and tell him what she thought. She put her hand into Debra's womb, grasped the foetal head and said it felt just like the real thing. \"Terribly flattering,\" Tydeman laughs.", "The use of simulators to teach technical skills is now common in medical schools. You can learn to sew up a knife wound, catheterise a bladder or intubate an airway. You can practise cardiopulmonary resuscitation or ear syringing or even go through the motions of a keyhole surgical procedure. The technology required to do these things may cost a few pounds, or tens of thousands. Either way, given that most of these devices were invented during the past three or four decades, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that simulation for medical purposes can be traced back as far as the Chinese Song dynasty of 960-1279 AD.", "As the material for a convincing simulation, glass clearly has its drawbacks. But another 18th-century contraption used a pink cloth-covered mannequin comprising a female torso complete with genitalia, a set of implantable foetuses of various ages, and even – a real\ncoup de théâtre\n, this – a facility for exuding suitably coloured liquids at the appropriate moment.\nOddly, as medicine became more scientific, most of these devices fell by the wayside. As an academic review of these and other devices has pointed out, much of the 20th century was something of Dark Ages for simulation. Its value in professional training has had to be rediscovered: an endeavour in which inventive people like Graham Tydeman, sometimes with workshops rich in discarded junk, are still fruitfully engaged.\nThis article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.", "With a grant from the Guy's and St Thomas's Charity fund they made Debra more presentable. Tydeman showed the prototype to Adam Rouilly, an established company specialising in medical models and simulators. They were impressed. A year later, the first of Debra's smartened-up sisters was on the market. \n\n In Debra as she is now, the precise extent and nature of her desperation can be fine-tuned according to need. The foetal head inside her uterus can be moved to mimic the various positions that an unborn baby may adopt. By tightening a spring inside Debra's body, it's also possible vary the degree of impaction from mild to so severe that the head is virtually impossible to extract. In this way she simulates the full range of difficulty that obstetricians are likely to encounter.", "The instrument is made up of a rigid plastic tube opening into a softer silicone cup. Pressure to the foetal head is applied using four pads projecting forward from the cup's interior. Holding the device by the tube, the user places the cup against the part of the head exposed through the dilated cervix, and presses. This pushes the baby back up into the uterus while releasing any suction pressure that may have been holding it, so allowing the obstetrician to extract it more easily. Because pressure is distributed equally between the four pads with a greater combined surface area than that of a user's fingertips, the risk of inadvertent damage is minimised. \n\n The team found some money to employ a product designer who used computer-aided design technology and 3D printing to make a prototype. \"We were at the point of getting one made in silicone,\" says Tydeman, \"when we realised that before we started experimenting on women we really ought to test it on a simulator.\" No such simulator existed – so he decided to make one himself.", "One of the treatments of choice in that era was, naturally, acupuncture. But how to teach tyro-acupuncturists where to place the needles? Simple. A life-size bronze statue dotted with small holes indicated the points of insertion. And how then to test the students' grasp of their subject? If the statute was hollow, filled with liquid and given an outer coating of wax to mask the holes, a correct needle insertion would be followed by a leak. \n\n Given the universality of childbirth it's no surprise that, then as now, the womb turns out to be the most simulated of our organs. For the benefit of 18th-century midwives and doctors-in-training, the Bologna surgeon Giovanni Antonio Galli devised a birthing simulator comprising a glass uterus supported by an artificial pelvis and containing a flexible foetus. Trainees had to deliver the baby while wearing a blindfold. Only the tutor could witness the fumbling of their hands.", "A proper study of the clinical effectiveness of the Tydeman tube will necessarily involve women giving birth. Assessing the value of Debra as a simulator didn't require human subjects; and the team has already conducted such a study. Thirty obstetricians, from three NHS maternity units and with varying levels of experience, took part. They all received a brief explanation of how Debra works, and were then asked to try a timed removal of the foetal head at three different levels of difficulty. Overall, 87 per cent reported that the simulator offered a realistic experience of dealing with an impacted head, and 93 per cent thought it would be valuable as a training device.", "Obstetrics for beginners\nIt's my first go at delivering a baby by caesarean section – and the foetal head is impacted, jammed in its mother's pelvis. To be honest I'm struggling. \n\n Incisions have been made in the lower part of the mother's abdomen and womb. I've pushed my gloved hand inside and managed to slide my fingers between the baby's head and the surrounding uterine tissue. But it's difficult. The baby is tightly wedged in. I've had to push hard to get my hand to the far side of its head, and even though I'm now cupping and grasping it in the approved manner, I can't seem to pull it out. Dare I grip its head more firmly? Dare I pull harder? \n\n The baby's mother – she's called Debra – remains impassive throughout these agonised fumblings. Her face reveals nothing of what she may be feeling. But then Debra has no feelings. Indeed she has no face…", "That said, the team didn't want to leave the tube sitting on the shelf. So they eventually decided to go ahead and find a commercial partner willing to manufacture and market it. They have now identified one, and are fairly confident it will soon be in production. With sufficient users it should then be possible to compile factual – as opposed to anecdotal – evidence of benefit. Not ideal, Tydeman concedes, but the best they can do at present. \n\n In the meantime, back to Desperate Debra: so named, Tydeman says, not after any particular person but because the appellation is memorably alliterative. He put together the original Debra in a weekend. The skin was made out of a neoprene wetsuit fixed to a scaffolding formed from plastic tubing he'd found 20 years ago in skip outside a Glasgow pub; the head was cast in silicone from a model he'd made in plasticine, and the rest comprised old springs and other bits of stuff lying around his workshop. \"It wasn't actually that difficult,\" Tydeman says.", "Creativity and innovation have many unlikely sources. What seems to have inspired Tydeman to develop his device was the characteristic sound of a Wellington boot being pulled free of wet, muddy ground: a slurpy, sucking, gurgling noise. When an impacted foetal head is pulled free of the uterus it's often accompanied by a similar sucking noise, the result of air rushing in between the obstetrician's fingers to fill the space vacated. \"What occurred to me years ago was that if the air can't get in, why not put a tube up into the vagina so that it can get in from below the baby's head.\" From time to time, if he felt he felt the baby might stick, Tydeman would slip a length of sterile silicone tubing through the woman's vagina and up into the womb next to the baby's head. Allowing air in by this route would release any suction forces tending to hold it where it was.", "It's still too soon to make a final judgement about Debra’s impact. \"When we first brought Debra out,\" Briley recalls, \"some of the really experienced professors said things like, 'We always managed without one. Why would you need this?' But ask them to have a go at using it and then they admit it's really good.\" Medicine as a whole has an oddly ambivalent relationship to innovation. Some new findings, techniques or equipment take years to penetrate the profession; others are seized upon immediately.", "At St Thomas's, midwives in training also get an opportunity to practise on Debra. The chances that midwives will find themselves having to do the actual extraction of an infant are slim; but they're quite likely to be asked to help the obstetrician by pushing a stuck baby from below. Debra's anatomy allows them to practise this skill; and to learn where and how hard to push on the infant skull. \"Any practice you've done in the cold light of day will help you stay calm and composed in an emergency, and that's what we're aiming for,\" says Briley.", "The inventor of the tube and of Desperate Debra is Dr Graham Tydeman, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife. Only after he'd built Debra did he realise that she might serve a purpose beyond his original intention. His is a decade-long tale of inspired insights, thwarted aims and shifting purposes; but with a good outcome. Although the Tydeman tube is still in gestation, Desperate Debra herself is now thriving.\nTo understand the desperation of Debra and how the Tydeman tube might help to relieve it requires a brief foray into basic obstetric knowhow. Evolution has endowed us with heads proportionally so large that even when labour runs according to plan, the delivery process involves a bit of a squeeze. For the baby's head to get stuck on the way out may not be usual, but it's by no means a rarity.", "That Tydeman was able to do this comes as no great surprise once you've glanced at his website. His career may be rooted in medicine but his interests encompass sculpture, furniture making and much else. He works in wood, glass, metals and plastic. \"I've got a big workshop with a lathe and a forge,\" he says. \"I make stuff. I always have, ever since I was a child. My dad was a woodwork teacher, my mum was very creative with fabric.\"", "Although tests carried out with the Debra prototype showed that the tube would work as intended, Tydeman and his colleagues then faced what he calls a kind of medical catch-22. \"We had the tube finished about three years ago… but we were more interested in trying to save lives than selling a product. We thought that the right thing to do before commercialising it was to be sure we'd got the best design.\" They tried it on a dozen or so women in labour, and concluded that it did what it supposed to. But they held off trying to market it because they wanted to do more extensive, more rigorous clinical studies.\nThis presented a problem. \"If you've applied for research money,\" says Tydeman, \"but you've already got what seems to be a commercially viable design, potential funders are going to say that the company aiming to sell it should pay for the work.\" On the other hand, commercial interest is easier to drum up if you've already got evidence that a device is safe and effective.", "If a baby's head is jammed down in the mother's pelvic region, common sense suggests that it might help if a second person gives a gentle backward push on the area of its head visible through the mother's dilated cervix. \"In our unit,\" says Tydeman, \"when the woman is fully dilated and you'd expect the baby to come out normally [but it doesn't]… a registrar will be asking for a push-up about one in five times.\" Although registrars are doctors still in training, they're nonetheless experienced; which suggests requests for push-ups during unplanned caesareans are far from uncommon. The Tydeman tube is a gadget intended to make this manoeuvre safer and more effective.", "Tydeman didn't do much with the idea until 10 years ago when one trainee, who was experiencing real difficulty getting heads out, prompted him to think again about the problem. Around the same time, he met professor of obstetrics Andrew Shennan and consultant midwife Annette Briley, both of the Women's Health Academic Centre at St Thomas's hospital. Between them they came up with a device – the Tydeman tube – to make pushing on the foetus more controlled while simultaneously releasing any vacuum that might be holding it in place." ], [ "It's still too soon to make a final judgement about Debra’s impact. \"When we first brought Debra out,\" Briley recalls, \"some of the really experienced professors said things like, 'We always managed without one. Why would you need this?' But ask them to have a go at using it and then they admit it's really good.\" Medicine as a whole has an oddly ambivalent relationship to innovation. Some new findings, techniques or equipment take years to penetrate the profession; others are seized upon immediately.", "The clever and sophisticated simulator I'm playing with started life as a lash-up in an obstetrician's home workshop: a Heath Robinson-style contraption barely recognisable as a model of the human body. But it wasn't at that stage intended as a simulator for training medical staff. Its sole purpose was to test the effectiveness of a novel device called a Tydeman tube. Paradoxically, although the testing equipment, Debra, is now commercially available, the device it was intended to test has yet to reach the market.", "The use of simulators to teach technical skills is now common in medical schools. You can learn to sew up a knife wound, catheterise a bladder or intubate an airway. You can practise cardiopulmonary resuscitation or ear syringing or even go through the motions of a keyhole surgical procedure. The technology required to do these things may cost a few pounds, or tens of thousands. Either way, given that most of these devices were invented during the past three or four decades, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that simulation for medical purposes can be traced back as far as the Chinese Song dynasty of 960-1279 AD.", "As the material for a convincing simulation, glass clearly has its drawbacks. But another 18th-century contraption used a pink cloth-covered mannequin comprising a female torso complete with genitalia, a set of implantable foetuses of various ages, and even – a real\ncoup de théâtre\n, this – a facility for exuding suitably coloured liquids at the appropriate moment.\nOddly, as medicine became more scientific, most of these devices fell by the wayside. As an academic review of these and other devices has pointed out, much of the 20th century was something of Dark Ages for simulation. Its value in professional training has had to be rediscovered: an endeavour in which inventive people like Graham Tydeman, sometimes with workshops rich in discarded junk, are still fruitfully engaged.\nThis article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.", "One of the treatments of choice in that era was, naturally, acupuncture. But how to teach tyro-acupuncturists where to place the needles? Simple. A life-size bronze statue dotted with small holes indicated the points of insertion. And how then to test the students' grasp of their subject? If the statute was hollow, filled with liquid and given an outer coating of wax to mask the holes, a correct needle insertion would be followed by a leak. \n\n Given the universality of childbirth it's no surprise that, then as now, the womb turns out to be the most simulated of our organs. For the benefit of 18th-century midwives and doctors-in-training, the Bologna surgeon Giovanni Antonio Galli devised a birthing simulator comprising a glass uterus supported by an artificial pelvis and containing a flexible foetus. Trainees had to deliver the baby while wearing a blindfold. Only the tutor could witness the fumbling of their hands.", "With a grant from the Guy's and St Thomas's Charity fund they made Debra more presentable. Tydeman showed the prototype to Adam Rouilly, an established company specialising in medical models and simulators. They were impressed. A year later, the first of Debra's smartened-up sisters was on the market. \n\n In Debra as she is now, the precise extent and nature of her desperation can be fine-tuned according to need. The foetal head inside her uterus can be moved to mimic the various positions that an unborn baby may adopt. By tightening a spring inside Debra's body, it's also possible vary the degree of impaction from mild to so severe that the head is virtually impossible to extract. In this way she simulates the full range of difficulty that obstetricians are likely to encounter.", "Although tests carried out with the Debra prototype showed that the tube would work as intended, Tydeman and his colleagues then faced what he calls a kind of medical catch-22. \"We had the tube finished about three years ago… but we were more interested in trying to save lives than selling a product. We thought that the right thing to do before commercialising it was to be sure we'd got the best design.\" They tried it on a dozen or so women in labour, and concluded that it did what it supposed to. But they held off trying to market it because they wanted to do more extensive, more rigorous clinical studies.\nThis presented a problem. \"If you've applied for research money,\" says Tydeman, \"but you've already got what seems to be a commercially viable design, potential funders are going to say that the company aiming to sell it should pay for the work.\" On the other hand, commercial interest is easier to drum up if you've already got evidence that a device is safe and effective.", "That Tydeman was able to do this comes as no great surprise once you've glanced at his website. His career may be rooted in medicine but his interests encompass sculpture, furniture making and much else. He works in wood, glass, metals and plastic. \"I've got a big workshop with a lathe and a forge,\" he says. \"I make stuff. I always have, ever since I was a child. My dad was a woodwork teacher, my mum was very creative with fabric.\"", "So how valuable in training medical staff is a simulator like this? Very, according to Annette Briley. Imagine it's the middle of the night and an unplanned emergency caesarean is required: \"Some poor junior doctor might find himself trying to manage it on his own.\" To have practised the knack of extracting a firmly impacted baby from a simulator is lot better than first honing your skill on a real woman.", "So you can stop worrying. Debra – Desperate Debra to use her full trade name – is a simulator designed to help doctors practise their skill at dealing with impacted foetuses: babies that get stuck trying to exit the womb by the normal route. She comprises the lower two thirds (ie from the mid-chest region downwards) of a life-sized but limbless female torso made of flesh-coloured silicone rubber. She comes with a vulva, a pre-cut incision in her abdomen and, most importantly, a uterus containing a foetal head that should, in the normal way of things, be free to emerge between her legs. But this fetus is going nowhere until an obstetrician – or in this case me – can successfully grasp and pull it out.", "Creativity and innovation have many unlikely sources. What seems to have inspired Tydeman to develop his device was the characteristic sound of a Wellington boot being pulled free of wet, muddy ground: a slurpy, sucking, gurgling noise. When an impacted foetal head is pulled free of the uterus it's often accompanied by a similar sucking noise, the result of air rushing in between the obstetrician's fingers to fill the space vacated. \"What occurred to me years ago was that if the air can't get in, why not put a tube up into the vagina so that it can get in from below the baby's head.\" From time to time, if he felt he felt the baby might stick, Tydeman would slip a length of sterile silicone tubing through the woman's vagina and up into the womb next to the baby's head. Allowing air in by this route would release any suction forces tending to hold it where it was.", "When originally conceived, remember, Debra was simply a means of testing the effectiveness of the tube. What she looked like was neither here nor there. It was only once Debra was reborn as a teaching aid that she needed sprucing up. \n\n Tydeman can remember the exact moment when the idea of her having a greater role dawned on him. \"I was on the sleeper train down from Scotland to London,\" he says. \"Debra was with me because the first Tydeman tube had become available at St Thomas's… It was about midnight, I'd had my free whisky and I suddenly thought, 'Blow me! Even if the tube doesn't work, Debra could be useful as a teaching aid'.\"\nThe following morning, at St Thomas's, Tydeman asked a visiting professor of obstetrics to have a look at Debra and tell him what she thought. She put her hand into Debra's womb, grasped the foetal head and said it felt just like the real thing. \"Terribly flattering,\" Tydeman laughs.", "Obstetrics for beginners\nIt's my first go at delivering a baby by caesarean section – and the foetal head is impacted, jammed in its mother's pelvis. To be honest I'm struggling. \n\n Incisions have been made in the lower part of the mother's abdomen and womb. I've pushed my gloved hand inside and managed to slide my fingers between the baby's head and the surrounding uterine tissue. But it's difficult. The baby is tightly wedged in. I've had to push hard to get my hand to the far side of its head, and even though I'm now cupping and grasping it in the approved manner, I can't seem to pull it out. Dare I grip its head more firmly? Dare I pull harder? \n\n The baby's mother – she's called Debra – remains impassive throughout these agonised fumblings. Her face reveals nothing of what she may be feeling. But then Debra has no feelings. Indeed she has no face…", "A proper study of the clinical effectiveness of the Tydeman tube will necessarily involve women giving birth. Assessing the value of Debra as a simulator didn't require human subjects; and the team has already conducted such a study. Thirty obstetricians, from three NHS maternity units and with varying levels of experience, took part. They all received a brief explanation of how Debra works, and were then asked to try a timed removal of the foetal head at three different levels of difficulty. Overall, 87 per cent reported that the simulator offered a realistic experience of dealing with an impacted head, and 93 per cent thought it would be valuable as a training device.", "That said, the team didn't want to leave the tube sitting on the shelf. So they eventually decided to go ahead and find a commercial partner willing to manufacture and market it. They have now identified one, and are fairly confident it will soon be in production. With sufficient users it should then be possible to compile factual – as opposed to anecdotal – evidence of benefit. Not ideal, Tydeman concedes, but the best they can do at present. \n\n In the meantime, back to Desperate Debra: so named, Tydeman says, not after any particular person but because the appellation is memorably alliterative. He put together the original Debra in a weekend. The skin was made out of a neoprene wetsuit fixed to a scaffolding formed from plastic tubing he'd found 20 years ago in skip outside a Glasgow pub; the head was cast in silicone from a model he'd made in plasticine, and the rest comprised old springs and other bits of stuff lying around his workshop. \"It wasn't actually that difficult,\" Tydeman says.", "The inventor of the tube and of Desperate Debra is Dr Graham Tydeman, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife. Only after he'd built Debra did he realise that she might serve a purpose beyond his original intention. His is a decade-long tale of inspired insights, thwarted aims and shifting purposes; but with a good outcome. Although the Tydeman tube is still in gestation, Desperate Debra herself is now thriving.\nTo understand the desperation of Debra and how the Tydeman tube might help to relieve it requires a brief foray into basic obstetric knowhow. Evolution has endowed us with heads proportionally so large that even when labour runs according to plan, the delivery process involves a bit of a squeeze. For the baby's head to get stuck on the way out may not be usual, but it's by no means a rarity.", "At St Thomas's, midwives in training also get an opportunity to practise on Debra. The chances that midwives will find themselves having to do the actual extraction of an infant are slim; but they're quite likely to be asked to help the obstetrician by pushing a stuck baby from below. Debra's anatomy allows them to practise this skill; and to learn where and how hard to push on the infant skull. \"Any practice you've done in the cold light of day will help you stay calm and composed in an emergency, and that's what we're aiming for,\" says Briley.", "Tydeman didn't do much with the idea until 10 years ago when one trainee, who was experiencing real difficulty getting heads out, prompted him to think again about the problem. Around the same time, he met professor of obstetrics Andrew Shennan and consultant midwife Annette Briley, both of the Women's Health Academic Centre at St Thomas's hospital. Between them they came up with a device – the Tydeman tube – to make pushing on the foetus more controlled while simultaneously releasing any vacuum that might be holding it in place.", "If a baby's head is jammed down in the mother's pelvic region, common sense suggests that it might help if a second person gives a gentle backward push on the area of its head visible through the mother's dilated cervix. \"In our unit,\" says Tydeman, \"when the woman is fully dilated and you'd expect the baby to come out normally [but it doesn't]… a registrar will be asking for a push-up about one in five times.\" Although registrars are doctors still in training, they're nonetheless experienced; which suggests requests for push-ups during unplanned caesareans are far from uncommon. The Tydeman tube is a gadget intended to make this manoeuvre safer and more effective.", "The standard response is to perform a caesarean section. Every year some 160,000 babies are born in the UK this way, with almost two thirds of them classified as emergencies. One audit has suggested that roughly 8,000 babies get stuck and have to be delivered by caesarean at a stage when their mothers are fully dilated. \"Some of the babies will be so close to coming out by the normal route,\" says Tydeman, \"that it's then difficult to get them back up and remove them through the hole in the woman's tummy.\" Which women are most at risk of this setback seems to be largely unpredictable. \"We just observe that it happens… It's been discussed in the medical literature since the 1940s, but until 10 years ago, and throughout my training and most of my life as a consultant, it wasn't really talked about.\"" ] ]
valid	62261	[ "What is the relationship between Kerry Blane and Splinter Wood?", "Why doesn't Kerry Blane take the pills that Splinter offers him?", "Why does Kerry Blane leave retirement?", "Which is not a symptom of the space bends?", "How does Splinter Wood view Kerry Blane?", "How does Kerry Blane's experience help the two men on their mission?", "What is the main goal of their trip to Venus?", "Why does their spacecraft crash?", "What is Blane's reaction to the crash?", "Why don't the Zelta guns work?" ]	[ [ "Blane is Splinter's colleague", "Blane is Splinter's mentor", "Blane is Splinter's brother", "Blane is Splinter's father" ], [ "He thinks Splinter is trying to poison him", "He thinks he doesn't need the pills because he never took them when he was younger", "He thinks the pills are only for new pilots", "He thinks the pills do more harm than good" ], [ "He runs out of money in his pension", "Splinter Wood asks for him to be his mentor", "He misses flying spacecraft too much to quit", "He is called back to fly spacecraft because he is one of the best pilots" ], [ "A horrible headache", "Muscle cramps", "Numbness in the arms and legs", "A bloody nose" ], [ "He admires Blane but also views him as a friend", "He is angry at Blane for being stuck in his ways", "He is afraid of Blane", "He hates Blane for stealing his spotlight" ], [ "He knows Venus has light underneath the surface", "He is able to help them avoid the space bends without taking pills", "He knows how to communicate with the protoplasm they are supposed to kill", "He knows that solar charged weapons will not work on Venus" ], [ "To find the turtle that lives in Venus's ocean", "To bring home samples of the glowing marine worms", "To exterminate a particular protoplasm that killed another human ", "To observe the interactions between the sea creatures on Venus" ], [ "Wood makes a mistake and pulls the wrong switch", "The ship crashes because it runs on solar power and there is no sunlight on Venus", "A capsule gets stuck in the controls, causing them to stop working", "Blane loses control of the craft due to the arthritis in his fingers" ], [ "He has an outburst of anger but then becomes cheerful", "He is so injured that he does not realize what has happened", "He is furious with Splinter and refuses to speak to him after it", "He is completely calm and tells Splinter not to worry" ], [ "They are powered by the sun, which is not visible on Venus", "They were never loaded with ammunition", "They are defective models", "They were broken in the crash" ] ]	[ 2, 2, 3, 3, 1, 1, 3, 3, 1, 1 ]	[ 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "\"Splinter\" Wood grinned.\n\n\n \"Seems to me, Kerry,\" he remarked humorously, \"that you don't like much\n of anything!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane growled unintelligibly, batted the injector lever with a\n calloused hand. His grizzled hair was a stiff wiry mop on his small\n head, and his oversize jaw was thrust belligerently forward. But deep\n within his eyes, where he hoped it was hidden, was a friendly twinkle\n that gave the lie to his speech.\n\n\n \"You're a squirt!\" he snapped disagreeably. \"You're not dry behind\n the ears, yet. You're like the rest of these kids who call themselves\n pilots—only more so! And why the hell the chief had to sic you on me,\n on an exploration trip this important—well, I'll never understand.\"", "Kerry Blane crouched over the control panel, his hands moving deftly,\n his eyes flicking from one instrument to another. Tiny lines of\n concentration etched themselves about his mouth, and perspiration\n beaded his forehead. He rode that cruiser through the miles of clouds\n through sheer instinctive ability, seeming to fly it as though he were\n an integral part of the ship.\n\n\n Splinter Wood watched him with awe in his eyes, seeing for the first\n time the incredible instinct that had made Kerry Blane the idol of a\n billion people. He relaxed visibly, all instinctive fear allayed by the\n brilliant competence of his companion.", "Finally, as a last resort so that he would not be thrown entirely\n aside, he had taken a desk job in the squadron offices. For six years\n he had dry-rotted there, waiting hopefully for the moment when his\n active services would be needed again.\n\n\n It was there that he had met and liked the ungainly Splinter Wood.\n There was something in the boy that had found a kindred spirit in Kerry\n Blane's heart, and he had taken the youngster in hand to give him the\n benefits of experience that had become legendary.\n\n\n Splinter Wood was a probationary pilot, had been admitted to the\n Interplanetary Squadron because of his inherent skill, even though his\n formal education had been fairly well neglected.\nNow, the two of them rode the pounding jets of a DX cruiser, bound\n for Venus to make a personal survey of its floating islands for the\n Interplanetary Squadron's Medical Division.", "Kerry Blane rode the controls for the next three hours, searching the\n limitless ocean for the few specks of islands that followed the slow\n currents of the water planet. Always, there was the same misty light\n surrounding the ship, never dimming, giving a sense of unreality to the\n scene below. Nowhere was there the slightest sign of life until, in the\n fourth hour of flight, a tiny dot of blackness came slowly over the\n horizon's water line.\n\n\n Kerry Blane spun the ship in a tight circle, sent it flashing to the\n west. His keen eyes lighted, when he finally made out the turtle-like\n outline of the island, and he whistled softly, off-key, as he nudged\n the snoring Splinter.\n\n\n \"This is it, Sleeping Beauty,\" he called. \"Snap out of it!\"\n\n\n \"Huh? Whuzzat?\" Splinter grunted, rolled to his elbow.\n\n\n \"Here's the island.\"", "Splinter buckled on his dis-gun, excitement flaring in his eyes.\n\n\n \"Let's do a little exploring?\" he said eagerly.\n\n\n Kerry Blane shook his head, swung the cruiser north again.\n\n\n \"Plenty of time for that later,\" he said mildly. \"We'll find this\n turtle-island, make a landing, and take a look around. Later, if we're\n lucky enough to blow our objective to Kingdom Come, we'll do a little\n exploring of the other islands.\"\n\n\n \"Hell!\" Splinter scowled in mock disgust. \"An old woman like you should\n be taking in knitting for a living!\"", "\"Orders are orders!\" Kerry Blane shrugged.\nHe swung the cruiser in a wide arc to the north, trebling the flying\n speed within minutes, handling the controls with a familiar dexterity.\n He said nothing, searched the gleaming ocean for the smudge of\n blackness that would denote another island. His gaze flicked amusedly,\n now and then, to the lanky Splinter who scowled moodily and toyed with\n the dis-gun in his long hands.\n\n\n \"Cheer up, lad,\" Kerry Blane said finally. \"I think you'll find plenty\n to occupy your time shortly.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe?\" Splinter said gloomily.\n\n\n He idly swallowed another vitamin capsule, grinned, when he saw Kerry\n Blane's automatic grimace of distaste. Then he yawned hugely, twisted\n into a comfortable position, dozed sleepily.", "\"Seventy-eight new words—and you swore them beautifully!\" Splinter\n beamed. \"Some day you can teach them to me.\"\n\n\n They laughed then, Old Kerry Blane and young Splinter Wood, and\n the warmth of their friendship was a tangible thing in the small\n control-room of the cruiser.\n\n\n And in the midst of their laughter, Old Kerry Blane choked in agony,\n surged desperately against his bunk straps.\n\n\n He screamed unknowingly, feeling only the horrible excruciating agony\n of his body, tasting the blood that gushed from his mouth and nostrils.\n His muscles were knotted cords that he could not loosen, and his blood\n was a surging stream that pounded at his throbbing temples. The air he\n breathed seemed to be molten flame.", "\"\nMe!\nYou've got orders to take care of\nme\n?\" Kerry Blane choked\n incoherently for a moment, red tiding cholerically upward from his\n loosened collar.\n\n\n \"Of course!\" Splinter grinned.\n\n\n Kerry Blane exploded, words spewing volcanically forth. Splinter\n relaxed, his booted foot beating out a dull rhythm to the colorful\n language learned through almost fifty years of spacing. And at last,\n when Kerry Blane had quieted until he but smoldered, he leaned over and\n touched the old spacer on the sleeve.\n\n\n \"Seventy-eight!\" he remarked pleasantly.\n\n\n \"Seventy-eight what?\" Kerry Blane asked sullenly, the old twinkle\n beginning to light again deep in his eyes.", "Belts parted like rotten string; they were thrown forward with crushing\n force against the control panel. They groped feebly for support, their\n bodies twisting involuntarily, as the ship cartwheeled a dozen times in\n a few seconds. Almost instantly, consciousness was battered from them.\n\n\n With one final, grinding bounce, the cruiser rolled to its side,\n twisted over and over for a hundred yards, then came to a metal-ripping\n stop against a moss-grown boulder at the water's edge.\nIII\n\n\n Kerry Blane choked, tried to turn his head from the water that trickled\n into his face. He opened his eyes, stared blankly, uncomprehendingly\n into the bloody features of the man bending over him.\n\n\n \"What happened?\" he gasped.\n\n\n Splinter Wood laughed, almost hysterically, mopped at his forehead with\n a wet handkerchief.", "He swung lithely from the portal, reached down a hand to help the\n older man. After much puffing and grunting, Kerry Blane managed to\n clamber through the port. They stood for a moment in silent wonder,\n staring at the long lazy rollers of milky fluorescence that rolled\n endlessly toward the beach, then turned to gaze at the great fern-like\n trees that towered two hundred feet into the air.\n\n\n \"How big do you feel now?\" Kerry Blane asked quietly.\n\n\n Splinter Wood was silent, awed by the beauty and the tremendous size of\n the growths on the water world.\n\n\n Kerry Blane walked the length of the cruiser, examining the slight\n damage done by the crash, evaluating the situation with a practiced\n gaze. He nodded slowly, retraced his steps, and stood looking at the\n furrow plowed in the sand.", "And then the scaly monster flashed in a half-turn, drove forward with\n jaws agape, wrenched and ripped at the smooth black throat of the other\n creature. The second creature rippled and undulated in agony, whipping\n the ocean to foam, then went limp. The victorious monster circled the\n body of its dead foe, then, majestically, plunged from sight into the\n ocean's depths. An instant later, the water frothed, as hundreds of\n lesser marine monsters attacked and fed on the floating corpse.\n\n\n \"Brrrr!\" Splinter shivered in sudden horror.\n\n\n Kerry Blane chuckled dryly. \"Feel like going for a swim?\" he asked\n conversationally.\n\n\n Splinter shook his head, watched the scene disappear from view to the\n rear of the line of flight, then sank back onto his bunk.\n\n\n \"Not me!\" he said deprecatingly.", "Splinter rolled his six foot three of lanky body into a more\n comfortable position on the air-bunk. He yawned tremendously, fumbled a\n small box from his shirt pocket, and removed a marble-like capsule.\n\n\n \"Better take one of these,\" he warned. \"You're liable to get the space\n bends at any moment.\"\n\n\n Old Kerry Blane snorted, batted the box aside impatiently, scowled\n moodily at the capsules that bounced for a moment against the pilot\n room's walls before hanging motionless in the air.\n\n\n \"Mister Wood,\" he said icily, \"I was flying a space ship while they\n were changing your pants twenty times a day. When I want advice on how\n to fly a ship, how to cure space bends, how to handle a Zelta ray, or\n how to spit—I'll ask you! Until then, you and your bloody marbles can\n go plumb straight to the devil!\"", "\"Forget it, lad,\" he said more kindly, \"those things happen. Now, if\n you'll bind a splint about my arm, we'll see what we can do about\n righting the ship.\"\n\n\n Splinter nodded, opened the medical locker, worked with tape and\n splints for minutes. Great beads of perspiration stood out in high\n relief on Kerry Blane's forehead, but he made no sound. At last,\n Splinter finished, tucked the supplies away.\n\n\n \"Now what?\" he asked subduedly.\n\n\n \"Let's take a look outside, maybe set up the Zelta guns. Can't tell but\n what that protoplasmic nightmare might take a notion to pay us a visit\n in the near future!\"\n\n\n \"Right!\" Splinter unscrewed the port cogs, swung the portal back.", "\"All right, all right!\" Splinter tucked the capsule box back into his\n pocket, grinned mockingly. \"But don't say I didn't warn you. With this\n shielded ship, and with no sunlight reaching Venus' surface, you're\n gonna be begging for some of my vitamin, super-concentrated pills\n before we get back to Earth.\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane made a rich, ripe noise with his mouth.\n\n\n \"Pfuii!\" he said very distinctly.\n\n\n \"Gracious!\" Splinter said in mock horror.\nThey made a strange contrast as they lay in their air bunks. Splinter\n was fully a head taller than the dour Irishman, and his lanky build\n gave a false impression of awkwardness. While the vitriolic Kerry Blane\n was short and compact, strength and quickness evident in every movement.", "He stood, leaning against the ship, watching as Splinter picked up\n the first gun and leveled it at a gigantic tree. Splinter sighted\n carefully, winked at the older man, then pressed the firing stud.\n\n\n Nothing happened; there was no hissing crackle of released energy.\n\n\n Kerry Blane strode forward, puzzlement on his lined face, his hand\n out-stretched toward the defective weapon. Splinter gaped at the gun in\n his hands, held it out wordlessly.\n\n\n \"The crash must have broken something,\" Kerry Blane said slowly.\n\n\n Splinter shook his head. \"There's only one moving part,\" he said, \"and\n that's the force gate on the firing stud.\"\n\n\n \"Try the other,\" Kerry Blane said slowly.\n\n\n \"Okay!\"", "Now, his aged but steady fingers rested lightly on the controls,\n brought the patrol cruiser closer to the cloud-banks on the line of\n demarcation between the sunward and sunless sides of the planet. He\n hummed tunelessly, strangely happy, as he peered ahead.\n\n\n \"Val Kenton died there,\" Splinter whispered softly, \"Died to save the\n lives of three other people!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded. \"Yes,\" he agreed, and his voice changed subtly.\n \"Val was a blackguard, a criminal; but he died in the best traditions\n of the service.\" He sighed. \"He never had a chance.\"\n\n\n \"Murdered!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane smiled grimly. \"I guess I used too broad an interpretation\n of the word,\" he said gently. \"Anyway, one of our main tasks is to\n destroy the thing that killed him.\"\n\n\n His lean fingers tightened unconsciously.", "\"I thought you were dead!\" he said simply.\n\n\n Kerry Blane moved his arm experimentally, felt broken bones grate in\n an exquisite wave of pain. He fought back the nausea, gazed about the\n cabin, realized the ship lay on its side.\n\n\n \"Maybe I am,\" he said ruefully. \"No man could live through that crash.\"\n\n\n Splinter moved away, sat down tiredly on the edge of a bunk. He shook\n his head dazedly, inspected the long cut on his leg.\n\n\n \"We seem to have done it,\" he said dully.\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded, clambered to his feet, favoring his broken arm.\n He leaned over the control panel, inspecting the dials with a worried\n gaze. Slowly, his eyes lightened, and his voice was almost cheerful as\n he swung about.", "\"Ten to one we don't get back!\" Splinter said pessimistically.\n\n\n Kerry Blane scrubbed out his cigarette, scowled bleakly at the\n instrument panel. He sensed the faint thread of fear in the youngster's\n tone, and a nostalgic twinge touched his heart, for he was remembering\n the days of his youth when he had a full life to look forward to.\n\n\n \"If you're afraid, you can get out and walk back,\" he snapped\n disagreeably.\n\n\n A grin lifted the corners of Splinter's long mouth, spread into his\n eyes. His hand unconsciously came up, touched the tiny squadron pin on\n his lapel.\n\n\n \"Sorry to disappoint you, glory grabber,\" he said mockingly, \"but I've\n got definite orders to take care of you.\"", "\"Everything is more or less okay,\" he said. \"The board will have to\n be rewired, but nothing else seems to be damaged so that repairs are\n needed.\"\n\n\n Splinter looked up from his task of bandaging his leg. \"What caused\n the crash?\" he asked. \"One minute, everything was all right; the next,\n Blooey!\"\n\n\n Anger suddenly mottled Kerry Blane's face; he swore monotonously and\n bitterly for a moment.\n\n\n \"Those gol-damned pills you been taking caused the crash!\" he roared.\n \"One of them broke and shorted out the control board.\" He scowled at\n the incredulous Splinter. \"By the three tails of a Martian sand-pup, I\n ought to cram the rest of them down your throat, boxes and all!\"\n\n\n Splinter flushed, seemed to be fumbling for words. After a bit, Kerry\n Blane grinned.", "\"I'd like nothing better than to turn a Zelta-blaster on that chunk of\n living protoplasm and cremate it.\"\n\n\n Splinters shivered slightly. \"Do you think we'll find it?\" he asked.\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded. \"I think it will find us; after all, it's just an\n animated appetite looking for food.\"\n\n\n He turned back to the controls, flipped a switch, and the cutting of\n the nose rocket dropped the ship in an angling glide toward the clouds\n a few miles below. Gravity was full strength now, and although not as\n great as Earth's, was still strong enough to bring a sense of giddiness\n to the men.\n\n\n \"Here we go!\" Splinter said tonelessly." ], [ "\"Everything is more or less okay,\" he said. \"The board will have to\n be rewired, but nothing else seems to be damaged so that repairs are\n needed.\"\n\n\n Splinter looked up from his task of bandaging his leg. \"What caused\n the crash?\" he asked. \"One minute, everything was all right; the next,\n Blooey!\"\n\n\n Anger suddenly mottled Kerry Blane's face; he swore monotonously and\n bitterly for a moment.\n\n\n \"Those gol-damned pills you been taking caused the crash!\" he roared.\n \"One of them broke and shorted out the control board.\" He scowled at\n the incredulous Splinter. \"By the three tails of a Martian sand-pup, I\n ought to cram the rest of them down your throat, boxes and all!\"\n\n\n Splinter flushed, seemed to be fumbling for words. After a bit, Kerry\n Blane grinned.", "And then the scaly monster flashed in a half-turn, drove forward with\n jaws agape, wrenched and ripped at the smooth black throat of the other\n creature. The second creature rippled and undulated in agony, whipping\n the ocean to foam, then went limp. The victorious monster circled the\n body of its dead foe, then, majestically, plunged from sight into the\n ocean's depths. An instant later, the water frothed, as hundreds of\n lesser marine monsters attacked and fed on the floating corpse.\n\n\n \"Brrrr!\" Splinter shivered in sudden horror.\n\n\n Kerry Blane chuckled dryly. \"Feel like going for a swim?\" he asked\n conversationally.\n\n\n Splinter shook his head, watched the scene disappear from view to the\n rear of the line of flight, then sank back onto his bunk.\n\n\n \"Not me!\" he said deprecatingly.", "\"Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!\" Splinter reached out lazily, plucked the capsules from\n the air, one by one.\n\n\n Kerry Blane lit one of the five allotted cigarettes of the day.\n\n\n \"Don't 'tsk' me, you young squirt,\" he grunted around a mouthful of\n fragrant smoke. \"I know all the arguments you can put up; ain't that\n all I been hearing for a week? You take your vitamins A, B, C, D, all\n you want, but you leave me alone—or I'll stuff your head down your\n throat, P.D.Q.!\"", "\"All right, all right!\" Splinter tucked the capsule box back into his\n pocket, grinned mockingly. \"But don't say I didn't warn you. With this\n shielded ship, and with no sunlight reaching Venus' surface, you're\n gonna be begging for some of my vitamin, super-concentrated pills\n before we get back to Earth.\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane made a rich, ripe noise with his mouth.\n\n\n \"Pfuii!\" he said very distinctly.\n\n\n \"Gracious!\" Splinter said in mock horror.\nThey made a strange contrast as they lay in their air bunks. Splinter\n was fully a head taller than the dour Irishman, and his lanky build\n gave a false impression of awkwardness. While the vitriolic Kerry Blane\n was short and compact, strength and quickness evident in every movement.", "His body arced again and again against the restraining straps, and his\n mouth was open in a soundless scream. He sensed dimly that his partner\n had wrenched open a wall door, removed metal medicine kits, and was\n fumbling through their contents. He felt the bite of the hypodermic,\n felt a deadly numbness replace the raging torment that had been his\n for seconds. He swallowed three capsules automatically, passed into a\n coma-like sleep, woke hours later to stare clear-eyed into Splinter's\n concerned face.\n\n\n \"Close, wasn't it?\" he said weakly, conversationally.\n\n\n \"Close enough!\" Splinter agreed relievedly. \"If you had followed my\n advice and taken those vitamin capsules, you'd never have had the\n bends.\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane grinned, winced when he felt the dull ache in his body.", "\"Orders are orders!\" Kerry Blane shrugged.\nHe swung the cruiser in a wide arc to the north, trebling the flying\n speed within minutes, handling the controls with a familiar dexterity.\n He said nothing, searched the gleaming ocean for the smudge of\n blackness that would denote another island. His gaze flicked amusedly,\n now and then, to the lanky Splinter who scowled moodily and toyed with\n the dis-gun in his long hands.\n\n\n \"Cheer up, lad,\" Kerry Blane said finally. \"I think you'll find plenty\n to occupy your time shortly.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe?\" Splinter said gloomily.\n\n\n He idly swallowed another vitamin capsule, grinned, when he saw Kerry\n Blane's automatic grimace of distaste. Then he yawned hugely, twisted\n into a comfortable position, dozed sleepily.", "\"I've had the bends before, and lived through them!\" he said, still\n weakly defiant.\n\n\n \"That's the past,\" Splinter said quietly. \"This is the present, and you\n take your pills every day, just as I do—from now on.\"\n\n\n \"All right—and thanks!\"\n\n\n \"Forget it!\" Splinter flushed in quick embarrassment.\n\n\n A buzzer sounded from the instrument panel, and a tiny light glowed\n redly.\n\n\n \"Six hours more,\" Splinter said, turned to the instrument panel.\n\n\n His long hands played over the instrument panel, checking, controlling\n the rocket fire, adjusting delicate instruments to hairline marks.\n Kerry Blane nodded in silent approval.", "\"Splinter\" Wood grinned.\n\n\n \"Seems to me, Kerry,\" he remarked humorously, \"that you don't like much\n of anything!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane growled unintelligibly, batted the injector lever with a\n calloused hand. His grizzled hair was a stiff wiry mop on his small\n head, and his oversize jaw was thrust belligerently forward. But deep\n within his eyes, where he hoped it was hidden, was a friendly twinkle\n that gave the lie to his speech.\n\n\n \"You're a squirt!\" he snapped disagreeably. \"You're not dry behind\n the ears, yet. You're like the rest of these kids who call themselves\n pilots—only more so! And why the hell the chief had to sic you on me,\n on an exploration trip this important—well, I'll never understand.\"", "\"Seventy-eight new words—and you swore them beautifully!\" Splinter\n beamed. \"Some day you can teach them to me.\"\n\n\n They laughed then, Old Kerry Blane and young Splinter Wood, and\n the warmth of their friendship was a tangible thing in the small\n control-room of the cruiser.\n\n\n And in the midst of their laughter, Old Kerry Blane choked in agony,\n surged desperately against his bunk straps.\n\n\n He screamed unknowingly, feeling only the horrible excruciating agony\n of his body, tasting the blood that gushed from his mouth and nostrils.\n His muscles were knotted cords that he could not loosen, and his blood\n was a surging stream that pounded at his throbbing temples. The air he\n breathed seemed to be molten flame.", "\"Ten to one we don't get back!\" Splinter said pessimistically.\n\n\n Kerry Blane scrubbed out his cigarette, scowled bleakly at the\n instrument panel. He sensed the faint thread of fear in the youngster's\n tone, and a nostalgic twinge touched his heart, for he was remembering\n the days of his youth when he had a full life to look forward to.\n\n\n \"If you're afraid, you can get out and walk back,\" he snapped\n disagreeably.\n\n\n A grin lifted the corners of Splinter's long mouth, spread into his\n eyes. His hand unconsciously came up, touched the tiny squadron pin on\n his lapel.\n\n\n \"Sorry to disappoint you, glory grabber,\" he said mockingly, \"but I've\n got definite orders to take care of you.\"", "\"\nMe!\nYou've got orders to take care of\nme\n?\" Kerry Blane choked\n incoherently for a moment, red tiding cholerically upward from his\n loosened collar.\n\n\n \"Of course!\" Splinter grinned.\n\n\n Kerry Blane exploded, words spewing volcanically forth. Splinter\n relaxed, his booted foot beating out a dull rhythm to the colorful\n language learned through almost fifty years of spacing. And at last,\n when Kerry Blane had quieted until he but smoldered, he leaned over and\n touched the old spacer on the sleeve.\n\n\n \"Seventy-eight!\" he remarked pleasantly.\n\n\n \"Seventy-eight what?\" Kerry Blane asked sullenly, the old twinkle\n beginning to light again deep in his eyes.", "Kerry Blane rode the controls for the next three hours, searching the\n limitless ocean for the few specks of islands that followed the slow\n currents of the water planet. Always, there was the same misty light\n surrounding the ship, never dimming, giving a sense of unreality to the\n scene below. Nowhere was there the slightest sign of life until, in the\n fourth hour of flight, a tiny dot of blackness came slowly over the\n horizon's water line.\n\n\n Kerry Blane spun the ship in a tight circle, sent it flashing to the\n west. His keen eyes lighted, when he finally made out the turtle-like\n outline of the island, and he whistled softly, off-key, as he nudged\n the snoring Splinter.\n\n\n \"This is it, Sleeping Beauty,\" he called. \"Snap out of it!\"\n\n\n \"Huh? Whuzzat?\" Splinter grunted, rolled to his elbow.\n\n\n \"Here's the island.\"", "Splinter buckled on his dis-gun, excitement flaring in his eyes.\n\n\n \"Let's do a little exploring?\" he said eagerly.\n\n\n Kerry Blane shook his head, swung the cruiser north again.\n\n\n \"Plenty of time for that later,\" he said mildly. \"We'll find this\n turtle-island, make a landing, and take a look around. Later, if we're\n lucky enough to blow our objective to Kingdom Come, we'll do a little\n exploring of the other islands.\"\n\n\n \"Hell!\" Splinter scowled in mock disgust. \"An old woman like you should\n be taking in knitting for a living!\"", "He stood, leaning against the ship, watching as Splinter picked up\n the first gun and leveled it at a gigantic tree. Splinter sighted\n carefully, winked at the older man, then pressed the firing stud.\n\n\n Nothing happened; there was no hissing crackle of released energy.\n\n\n Kerry Blane strode forward, puzzlement on his lined face, his hand\n out-stretched toward the defective weapon. Splinter gaped at the gun in\n his hands, held it out wordlessly.\n\n\n \"The crash must have broken something,\" Kerry Blane said slowly.\n\n\n Splinter shook his head. \"There's only one moving part,\" he said, \"and\n that's the force gate on the firing stud.\"\n\n\n \"Try the other,\" Kerry Blane said slowly.\n\n\n \"Okay!\"", "\"Forget it, lad,\" he said more kindly, \"those things happen. Now, if\n you'll bind a splint about my arm, we'll see what we can do about\n righting the ship.\"\n\n\n Splinter nodded, opened the medical locker, worked with tape and\n splints for minutes. Great beads of perspiration stood out in high\n relief on Kerry Blane's forehead, but he made no sound. At last,\n Splinter finished, tucked the supplies away.\n\n\n \"Now what?\" he asked subduedly.\n\n\n \"Let's take a look outside, maybe set up the Zelta guns. Can't tell but\n what that protoplasmic nightmare might take a notion to pay us a visit\n in the near future!\"\n\n\n \"Right!\" Splinter unscrewed the port cogs, swung the portal back.", "Splinter rolled his six foot three of lanky body into a more\n comfortable position on the air-bunk. He yawned tremendously, fumbled a\n small box from his shirt pocket, and removed a marble-like capsule.\n\n\n \"Better take one of these,\" he warned. \"You're liable to get the space\n bends at any moment.\"\n\n\n Old Kerry Blane snorted, batted the box aside impatiently, scowled\n moodily at the capsules that bounced for a moment against the pilot\n room's walls before hanging motionless in the air.\n\n\n \"Mister Wood,\" he said icily, \"I was flying a space ship while they\n were changing your pants twenty times a day. When I want advice on how\n to fly a ship, how to cure space bends, how to handle a Zelta ray, or\n how to spit—I'll ask you! Until then, you and your bloody marbles can\n go plumb straight to the devil!\"", "Kerry Blane crouched over the control panel, his hands moving deftly,\n his eyes flicking from one instrument to another. Tiny lines of\n concentration etched themselves about his mouth, and perspiration\n beaded his forehead. He rode that cruiser through the miles of clouds\n through sheer instinctive ability, seeming to fly it as though he were\n an integral part of the ship.\n\n\n Splinter Wood watched him with awe in his eyes, seeing for the first\n time the incredible instinct that had made Kerry Blane the idol of a\n billion people. He relaxed visibly, all instinctive fear allayed by the\n brilliant competence of his companion.", "Finally, as a last resort so that he would not be thrown entirely\n aside, he had taken a desk job in the squadron offices. For six years\n he had dry-rotted there, waiting hopefully for the moment when his\n active services would be needed again.\n\n\n It was there that he had met and liked the ungainly Splinter Wood.\n There was something in the boy that had found a kindred spirit in Kerry\n Blane's heart, and he had taken the youngster in hand to give him the\n benefits of experience that had become legendary.\n\n\n Splinter Wood was a probationary pilot, had been admitted to the\n Interplanetary Squadron because of his inherent skill, even though his\n formal education had been fairly well neglected.\nNow, the two of them rode the pounding jets of a DX cruiser, bound\n for Venus to make a personal survey of its floating islands for the\n Interplanetary Squadron's Medical Division.", "\"Oh!\" Splinter swung his feet from the bunk, peered from the vision\n port, sleepiness instantly erased from his face.\n\n\n \"Hot damn!\" he chortled. \"Now we'll see a little action!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane grinned, tried to conceal the excitement he felt. He shook\n his head, his fingers flickering over the control studs.\n\n\n \"Don't get your hopes too high, lad,\" he counseled. \"With those super\n Zelta guns, it won't take ten minutes to wipe out that monster.\"\n\n\n Splinter rubbed his hands together, sighed like a boy seeing his first\n circus. \"Listen, for ten minutes of that, I'd ride this chunk of metal\n for a year!\"\n\n\n \"Could be!\" Kerry Blane agreed.", "Seconds flowed into moments, and the moments merged into one another,\n and still the clouds pressed with a visible strength against the\n ports. The rockets drummed steadily, holding the ship aloft, dropping\n it slowly toward the planet below. Then the clouds thinned, and,\n incredibly, were permeated with a dim and glowing light. A second\n later, and the clouds were gone, and a thousand feet below tumbled and\n tossed in a majestic display of ruthless strength an ocean that seemed\n to be composed of liquid fluorescence.\n\n\n Kerry Blane heard Splinter's instant sigh of unbelief.\n\n\n \"Good Lord!\" Splinter said, \"What—\"" ], [ "Kerry Blane had flown every type of ship that rode in space. In the\n passing years, he had flight-tested almost every new experimental ship,\n had flown them with increasing skill, had earned a reputation as a\n trouble shooter on any kind of craft.\n\n\n But even Kerry Blane had to retire eventually.\n\n\n A great retirement banquet had been given in his honor by the\n Interplanetary Squadron. There had been the usual speeches and\n presentations; and Kerry Blane had heard them all, had thanked the\n donors of the gifts. But it was not until the next morning, when he was\n dressed in civilian clothes for the first time in forty years, that he\n realized the enormity of the thing that had happened to his life.\n\n\n Something died within Kerry Blane's heart that morning, shriveled and\n passed away, leaving him suddenly shrunken and old. He had become like\n a rusty old freighter couched between the gleaming bodies of great\n space warriors.", "Kerry Blane crouched over the control panel, his hands moving deftly,\n his eyes flicking from one instrument to another. Tiny lines of\n concentration etched themselves about his mouth, and perspiration\n beaded his forehead. He rode that cruiser through the miles of clouds\n through sheer instinctive ability, seeming to fly it as though he were\n an integral part of the ship.\n\n\n Splinter Wood watched him with awe in his eyes, seeing for the first\n time the incredible instinct that had made Kerry Blane the idol of a\n billion people. He relaxed visibly, all instinctive fear allayed by the\n brilliant competence of his companion.", "Finally, as a last resort so that he would not be thrown entirely\n aside, he had taken a desk job in the squadron offices. For six years\n he had dry-rotted there, waiting hopefully for the moment when his\n active services would be needed again.\n\n\n It was there that he had met and liked the ungainly Splinter Wood.\n There was something in the boy that had found a kindred spirit in Kerry\n Blane's heart, and he had taken the youngster in hand to give him the\n benefits of experience that had become legendary.\n\n\n Splinter Wood was a probationary pilot, had been admitted to the\n Interplanetary Squadron because of his inherent skill, even though his\n formal education had been fairly well neglected.\nNow, the two of them rode the pounding jets of a DX cruiser, bound\n for Venus to make a personal survey of its floating islands for the\n Interplanetary Squadron's Medical Division.", "\"Orders are orders!\" Kerry Blane shrugged.\nHe swung the cruiser in a wide arc to the north, trebling the flying\n speed within minutes, handling the controls with a familiar dexterity.\n He said nothing, searched the gleaming ocean for the smudge of\n blackness that would denote another island. His gaze flicked amusedly,\n now and then, to the lanky Splinter who scowled moodily and toyed with\n the dis-gun in his long hands.\n\n\n \"Cheer up, lad,\" Kerry Blane said finally. \"I think you'll find plenty\n to occupy your time shortly.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe?\" Splinter said gloomily.\n\n\n He idly swallowed another vitamin capsule, grinned, when he saw Kerry\n Blane's automatic grimace of distaste. Then he yawned hugely, twisted\n into a comfortable position, dozed sleepily.", "Kerry Blane rode the controls for the next three hours, searching the\n limitless ocean for the few specks of islands that followed the slow\n currents of the water planet. Always, there was the same misty light\n surrounding the ship, never dimming, giving a sense of unreality to the\n scene below. Nowhere was there the slightest sign of life until, in the\n fourth hour of flight, a tiny dot of blackness came slowly over the\n horizon's water line.\n\n\n Kerry Blane spun the ship in a tight circle, sent it flashing to the\n west. His keen eyes lighted, when he finally made out the turtle-like\n outline of the island, and he whistled softly, off-key, as he nudged\n the snoring Splinter.\n\n\n \"This is it, Sleeping Beauty,\" he called. \"Snap out of it!\"\n\n\n \"Huh? Whuzzat?\" Splinter grunted, rolled to his elbow.\n\n\n \"Here's the island.\"", "Now, his aged but steady fingers rested lightly on the controls,\n brought the patrol cruiser closer to the cloud-banks on the line of\n demarcation between the sunward and sunless sides of the planet. He\n hummed tunelessly, strangely happy, as he peered ahead.\n\n\n \"Val Kenton died there,\" Splinter whispered softly, \"Died to save the\n lives of three other people!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded. \"Yes,\" he agreed, and his voice changed subtly.\n \"Val was a blackguard, a criminal; but he died in the best traditions\n of the service.\" He sighed. \"He never had a chance.\"\n\n\n \"Murdered!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane smiled grimly. \"I guess I used too broad an interpretation\n of the word,\" he said gently. \"Anyway, one of our main tasks is to\n destroy the thing that killed him.\"\n\n\n His lean fingers tightened unconsciously.", "\"\nMe!\nYou've got orders to take care of\nme\n?\" Kerry Blane choked\n incoherently for a moment, red tiding cholerically upward from his\n loosened collar.\n\n\n \"Of course!\" Splinter grinned.\n\n\n Kerry Blane exploded, words spewing volcanically forth. Splinter\n relaxed, his booted foot beating out a dull rhythm to the colorful\n language learned through almost fifty years of spacing. And at last,\n when Kerry Blane had quieted until he but smoldered, he leaned over and\n touched the old spacer on the sleeve.\n\n\n \"Seventy-eight!\" he remarked pleasantly.\n\n\n \"Seventy-eight what?\" Kerry Blane asked sullenly, the old twinkle\n beginning to light again deep in his eyes.", "Splinter buckled on his dis-gun, excitement flaring in his eyes.\n\n\n \"Let's do a little exploring?\" he said eagerly.\n\n\n Kerry Blane shook his head, swung the cruiser north again.\n\n\n \"Plenty of time for that later,\" he said mildly. \"We'll find this\n turtle-island, make a landing, and take a look around. Later, if we're\n lucky enough to blow our objective to Kingdom Come, we'll do a little\n exploring of the other islands.\"\n\n\n \"Hell!\" Splinter scowled in mock disgust. \"An old woman like you should\n be taking in knitting for a living!\"", "\"Ten to one we don't get back!\" Splinter said pessimistically.\n\n\n Kerry Blane scrubbed out his cigarette, scowled bleakly at the\n instrument panel. He sensed the faint thread of fear in the youngster's\n tone, and a nostalgic twinge touched his heart, for he was remembering\n the days of his youth when he had a full life to look forward to.\n\n\n \"If you're afraid, you can get out and walk back,\" he snapped\n disagreeably.\n\n\n A grin lifted the corners of Splinter's long mouth, spread into his\n eyes. His hand unconsciously came up, touched the tiny squadron pin on\n his lapel.\n\n\n \"Sorry to disappoint you, glory grabber,\" he said mockingly, \"but I've\n got definite orders to take care of you.\"", "And then the scaly monster flashed in a half-turn, drove forward with\n jaws agape, wrenched and ripped at the smooth black throat of the other\n creature. The second creature rippled and undulated in agony, whipping\n the ocean to foam, then went limp. The victorious monster circled the\n body of its dead foe, then, majestically, plunged from sight into the\n ocean's depths. An instant later, the water frothed, as hundreds of\n lesser marine monsters attacked and fed on the floating corpse.\n\n\n \"Brrrr!\" Splinter shivered in sudden horror.\n\n\n Kerry Blane chuckled dryly. \"Feel like going for a swim?\" he asked\n conversationally.\n\n\n Splinter shook his head, watched the scene disappear from view to the\n rear of the line of flight, then sank back onto his bunk.\n\n\n \"Not me!\" he said deprecatingly.", "\"I thought you were dead!\" he said simply.\n\n\n Kerry Blane moved his arm experimentally, felt broken bones grate in\n an exquisite wave of pain. He fought back the nausea, gazed about the\n cabin, realized the ship lay on its side.\n\n\n \"Maybe I am,\" he said ruefully. \"No man could live through that crash.\"\n\n\n Splinter moved away, sat down tiredly on the edge of a bunk. He shook\n his head dazedly, inspected the long cut on his leg.\n\n\n \"We seem to have done it,\" he said dully.\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded, clambered to his feet, favoring his broken arm.\n He leaned over the control panel, inspecting the dials with a worried\n gaze. Slowly, his eyes lightened, and his voice was almost cheerful as\n he swung about.", "\"Damn!\" Kerry Blane swore briefly.\n\n\n There was an instant, terrific explosion of the stern jets, and the\n cruiser hurtled toward the beach like a gravity-crazed comet.\n\n\n Kerry Blane said absolutely nothing, his breath driven from him by the\n suck of inertia. His hands darted for the controls, seeking to balance\n the forces that threw the ship about like a toy. He cut all rockets\n with a smashing swoop of his hand, tried to fire the bow rockets. But\n the short had ruined the entire control system.\n\n\n For one interminable second, he saw the uncanny uprush of the island\n below. He flicked his gaze about, saw the instant terror that wiped\n all other expression from his young companion's face. Then the cruiser\n plowed into the silvery sand.", "\"Everything is more or less okay,\" he said. \"The board will have to\n be rewired, but nothing else seems to be damaged so that repairs are\n needed.\"\n\n\n Splinter looked up from his task of bandaging his leg. \"What caused\n the crash?\" he asked. \"One minute, everything was all right; the next,\n Blooey!\"\n\n\n Anger suddenly mottled Kerry Blane's face; he swore monotonously and\n bitterly for a moment.\n\n\n \"Those gol-damned pills you been taking caused the crash!\" he roared.\n \"One of them broke and shorted out the control board.\" He scowled at\n the incredulous Splinter. \"By the three tails of a Martian sand-pup, I\n ought to cram the rest of them down your throat, boxes and all!\"\n\n\n Splinter flushed, seemed to be fumbling for words. After a bit, Kerry\n Blane grinned.", "\"Won't be any trouble at all to lift the ship,\" he called. \"After\n rewiring the board, we'll turn the ship with an underjet, swing it\n about, and head her toward the sea.\"\n\n\n Splinter nodded, dropped into the open port. A moment later, he flipped\n a rope ladder outside, where it dangled to the ground, then climbed out\n himself, carrying the two Zelta guns.\n\n\n \"We'd better test these,\" he said. \"We don't want any slip-ups when we\n do go into action.\"\n\n\n He climbed down the ladder, laid the guns aside, then reached up a\n hand to aid Kerry Blane's descent. Kerry Blane came down slowly and\n awkwardly, jumped the last few feet. He felt surprisingly light and\n strong in the lesser gravity.", "\"Splinter\" Wood grinned.\n\n\n \"Seems to me, Kerry,\" he remarked humorously, \"that you don't like much\n of anything!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane growled unintelligibly, batted the injector lever with a\n calloused hand. His grizzled hair was a stiff wiry mop on his small\n head, and his oversize jaw was thrust belligerently forward. But deep\n within his eyes, where he hoped it was hidden, was a friendly twinkle\n that gave the lie to his speech.\n\n\n \"You're a squirt!\" he snapped disagreeably. \"You're not dry behind\n the ears, yet. You're like the rest of these kids who call themselves\n pilots—only more so! And why the hell the chief had to sic you on me,\n on an exploration trip this important—well, I'll never understand.\"", "Belts parted like rotten string; they were thrown forward with crushing\n force against the control panel. They groped feebly for support, their\n bodies twisting involuntarily, as the ship cartwheeled a dozen times in\n a few seconds. Almost instantly, consciousness was battered from them.\n\n\n With one final, grinding bounce, the cruiser rolled to its side,\n twisted over and over for a hundred yards, then came to a metal-ripping\n stop against a moss-grown boulder at the water's edge.\nIII\n\n\n Kerry Blane choked, tried to turn his head from the water that trickled\n into his face. He opened his eyes, stared blankly, uncomprehendingly\n into the bloody features of the man bending over him.\n\n\n \"What happened?\" he gasped.\n\n\n Splinter Wood laughed, almost hysterically, mopped at his forehead with\n a wet handkerchief.", "Kerry Blane lit a cigarette, leaned toward a vision port. He felt again\n that thrill he had experienced when he had first flashed his single-man\n cruiser through the clouds years before. Then the breath caught in his\n throat, and he tapped his companion's arm.\n\n\n \"Take a look!\" he called excitedly.\n\n\n They fought in the ocean below, fought in a never-ending splashing of\n what seemed to be liquid fire. It was like watching a tri-dim screen of\n a news event, except for the utter lack of sound.", "He swung lithely from the portal, reached down a hand to help the\n older man. After much puffing and grunting, Kerry Blane managed to\n clamber through the port. They stood for a moment in silent wonder,\n staring at the long lazy rollers of milky fluorescence that rolled\n endlessly toward the beach, then turned to gaze at the great fern-like\n trees that towered two hundred feet into the air.\n\n\n \"How big do you feel now?\" Kerry Blane asked quietly.\n\n\n Splinter Wood was silent, awed by the beauty and the tremendous size of\n the growths on the water world.\n\n\n Kerry Blane walked the length of the cruiser, examining the slight\n damage done by the crash, evaluating the situation with a practiced\n gaze. He nodded slowly, retraced his steps, and stood looking at the\n furrow plowed in the sand.", "\"All right, all right!\" Splinter tucked the capsule box back into his\n pocket, grinned mockingly. \"But don't say I didn't warn you. With this\n shielded ship, and with no sunlight reaching Venus' surface, you're\n gonna be begging for some of my vitamin, super-concentrated pills\n before we get back to Earth.\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane made a rich, ripe noise with his mouth.\n\n\n \"Pfuii!\" he said very distinctly.\n\n\n \"Gracious!\" Splinter said in mock horror.\nThey made a strange contrast as they lay in their air bunks. Splinter\n was fully a head taller than the dour Irishman, and his lanky build\n gave a false impression of awkwardness. While the vitriolic Kerry Blane\n was short and compact, strength and quickness evident in every movement.", "\"I've had the bends before, and lived through them!\" he said, still\n weakly defiant.\n\n\n \"That's the past,\" Splinter said quietly. \"This is the present, and you\n take your pills every day, just as I do—from now on.\"\n\n\n \"All right—and thanks!\"\n\n\n \"Forget it!\" Splinter flushed in quick embarrassment.\n\n\n A buzzer sounded from the instrument panel, and a tiny light glowed\n redly.\n\n\n \"Six hours more,\" Splinter said, turned to the instrument panel.\n\n\n His long hands played over the instrument panel, checking, controlling\n the rocket fire, adjusting delicate instruments to hairline marks.\n Kerry Blane nodded in silent approval." ], [ "Splinter rolled his six foot three of lanky body into a more\n comfortable position on the air-bunk. He yawned tremendously, fumbled a\n small box from his shirt pocket, and removed a marble-like capsule.\n\n\n \"Better take one of these,\" he warned. \"You're liable to get the space\n bends at any moment.\"\n\n\n Old Kerry Blane snorted, batted the box aside impatiently, scowled\n moodily at the capsules that bounced for a moment against the pilot\n room's walls before hanging motionless in the air.\n\n\n \"Mister Wood,\" he said icily, \"I was flying a space ship while they\n were changing your pants twenty times a day. When I want advice on how\n to fly a ship, how to cure space bends, how to handle a Zelta ray, or\n how to spit—I'll ask you! Until then, you and your bloody marbles can\n go plumb straight to the devil!\"", "\"I've had the bends before, and lived through them!\" he said, still\n weakly defiant.\n\n\n \"That's the past,\" Splinter said quietly. \"This is the present, and you\n take your pills every day, just as I do—from now on.\"\n\n\n \"All right—and thanks!\"\n\n\n \"Forget it!\" Splinter flushed in quick embarrassment.\n\n\n A buzzer sounded from the instrument panel, and a tiny light glowed\n redly.\n\n\n \"Six hours more,\" Splinter said, turned to the instrument panel.\n\n\n His long hands played over the instrument panel, checking, controlling\n the rocket fire, adjusting delicate instruments to hairline marks.\n Kerry Blane nodded in silent approval.", "His body arced again and again against the restraining straps, and his\n mouth was open in a soundless scream. He sensed dimly that his partner\n had wrenched open a wall door, removed metal medicine kits, and was\n fumbling through their contents. He felt the bite of the hypodermic,\n felt a deadly numbness replace the raging torment that had been his\n for seconds. He swallowed three capsules automatically, passed into a\n coma-like sleep, woke hours later to stare clear-eyed into Splinter's\n concerned face.\n\n\n \"Close, wasn't it?\" he said weakly, conversationally.\n\n\n \"Close enough!\" Splinter agreed relievedly. \"If you had followed my\n advice and taken those vitamin capsules, you'd never have had the\n bends.\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane grinned, winced when he felt the dull ache in his body.", "\"All right, all right!\" Splinter tucked the capsule box back into his\n pocket, grinned mockingly. \"But don't say I didn't warn you. With this\n shielded ship, and with no sunlight reaching Venus' surface, you're\n gonna be begging for some of my vitamin, super-concentrated pills\n before we get back to Earth.\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane made a rich, ripe noise with his mouth.\n\n\n \"Pfuii!\" he said very distinctly.\n\n\n \"Gracious!\" Splinter said in mock horror.\nThey made a strange contrast as they lay in their air bunks. Splinter\n was fully a head taller than the dour Irishman, and his lanky build\n gave a false impression of awkwardness. While the vitriolic Kerry Blane\n was short and compact, strength and quickness evident in every movement.", "They could feel the first tug of gravity on their bodies, and through\n the vision port could see the greenish ball that was cloud-covered\n Venus. Excitement lifted their spirits, brought light to their eyes as\n they peered eagerly ahead.\n\n\n \"What's it really like?\" Splinter asked impatiently.\n\n\n Kerry Blane yawned, settled back luxuriously. \"I'll tell you later,\" he\n said, \"I'm going to take a nap and try to ease this bellyache of mine.\n Wake me up so that I can take over, when we land; Venus is a tricky\n place to set a ship on.\"\n\n\n He yawned again, drifted instantly into sleep, relaxing with the\n ability of a spaceman who sleeps when and if he can. Splinter smiled\n down at his sleeping partner, then turned back to the quartzite port.\n He shook his head a bit, remembering the stories he had heard about the\n water planet, wondering—wondering—\nII", "\"Seventy-eight new words—and you swore them beautifully!\" Splinter\n beamed. \"Some day you can teach them to me.\"\n\n\n They laughed then, Old Kerry Blane and young Splinter Wood, and\n the warmth of their friendship was a tangible thing in the small\n control-room of the cruiser.\n\n\n And in the midst of their laughter, Old Kerry Blane choked in agony,\n surged desperately against his bunk straps.\n\n\n He screamed unknowingly, feeling only the horrible excruciating agony\n of his body, tasting the blood that gushed from his mouth and nostrils.\n His muscles were knotted cords that he could not loosen, and his blood\n was a surging stream that pounded at his throbbing temples. The air he\n breathed seemed to be molten flame.", "Kerry Blane nodded. \"That was merely a pretext to keep foolhardy\n spacemen from losing their lives on the planet. In reality, the\n ocean is alive with an incredibly tiny marine worm that glows\n phosphorescently. The light generated from those billions of worms is\n reflected back from the clouds, makes Venus eternally lighted.\"\n\n\n He turned the ship to the North, relaxed a bit on the air bunk. He\n felt tired and worn, his body aching from the space bends of a few\n hours before.\n\n\n \"Take over,\" he said wearily. \"Take the ship North, and watch for any\n island.\"\n\n\n Splinter nodded, rested his long hands on the controls. The space\n cruiser lifted a bit in a sudden spurt of speed, and the rocket-sound\n was a solid thrum of unleashed power.", "\"Forget it, lad,\" he said more kindly, \"those things happen. Now, if\n you'll bind a splint about my arm, we'll see what we can do about\n righting the ship.\"\n\n\n Splinter nodded, opened the medical locker, worked with tape and\n splints for minutes. Great beads of perspiration stood out in high\n relief on Kerry Blane's forehead, but he made no sound. At last,\n Splinter finished, tucked the supplies away.\n\n\n \"Now what?\" he asked subduedly.\n\n\n \"Let's take a look outside, maybe set up the Zelta guns. Can't tell but\n what that protoplasmic nightmare might take a notion to pay us a visit\n in the near future!\"\n\n\n \"Right!\" Splinter unscrewed the port cogs, swung the portal back.", "Belts parted like rotten string; they were thrown forward with crushing\n force against the control panel. They groped feebly for support, their\n bodies twisting involuntarily, as the ship cartwheeled a dozen times in\n a few seconds. Almost instantly, consciousness was battered from them.\n\n\n With one final, grinding bounce, the cruiser rolled to its side,\n twisted over and over for a hundred yards, then came to a metal-ripping\n stop against a moss-grown boulder at the water's edge.\nIII\n\n\n Kerry Blane choked, tried to turn his head from the water that trickled\n into his face. He opened his eyes, stared blankly, uncomprehendingly\n into the bloody features of the man bending over him.\n\n\n \"What happened?\" he gasped.\n\n\n Splinter Wood laughed, almost hysterically, mopped at his forehead with\n a wet handkerchief.", "Seconds flowed into moments, and the moments merged into one another,\n and still the clouds pressed with a visible strength against the\n ports. The rockets drummed steadily, holding the ship aloft, dropping\n it slowly toward the planet below. Then the clouds thinned, and,\n incredibly, were permeated with a dim and glowing light. A second\n later, and the clouds were gone, and a thousand feet below tumbled and\n tossed in a majestic display of ruthless strength an ocean that seemed\n to be composed of liquid fluorescence.\n\n\n Kerry Blane heard Splinter's instant sigh of unbelief.\n\n\n \"Good Lord!\" Splinter said, \"What—\"", "Now, his aged but steady fingers rested lightly on the controls,\n brought the patrol cruiser closer to the cloud-banks on the line of\n demarcation between the sunward and sunless sides of the planet. He\n hummed tunelessly, strangely happy, as he peered ahead.\n\n\n \"Val Kenton died there,\" Splinter whispered softly, \"Died to save the\n lives of three other people!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded. \"Yes,\" he agreed, and his voice changed subtly.\n \"Val was a blackguard, a criminal; but he died in the best traditions\n of the service.\" He sighed. \"He never had a chance.\"\n\n\n \"Murdered!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane smiled grimly. \"I guess I used too broad an interpretation\n of the word,\" he said gently. \"Anyway, one of our main tasks is to\n destroy the thing that killed him.\"\n\n\n His lean fingers tightened unconsciously.", "He swung lithely from the portal, reached down a hand to help the\n older man. After much puffing and grunting, Kerry Blane managed to\n clamber through the port. They stood for a moment in silent wonder,\n staring at the long lazy rollers of milky fluorescence that rolled\n endlessly toward the beach, then turned to gaze at the great fern-like\n trees that towered two hundred feet into the air.\n\n\n \"How big do you feel now?\" Kerry Blane asked quietly.\n\n\n Splinter Wood was silent, awed by the beauty and the tremendous size of\n the growths on the water world.\n\n\n Kerry Blane walked the length of the cruiser, examining the slight\n damage done by the crash, evaluating the situation with a practiced\n gaze. He nodded slowly, retraced his steps, and stood looking at the\n furrow plowed in the sand.", "\"Everything is more or less okay,\" he said. \"The board will have to\n be rewired, but nothing else seems to be damaged so that repairs are\n needed.\"\n\n\n Splinter looked up from his task of bandaging his leg. \"What caused\n the crash?\" he asked. \"One minute, everything was all right; the next,\n Blooey!\"\n\n\n Anger suddenly mottled Kerry Blane's face; he swore monotonously and\n bitterly for a moment.\n\n\n \"Those gol-damned pills you been taking caused the crash!\" he roared.\n \"One of them broke and shorted out the control board.\" He scowled at\n the incredulous Splinter. \"By the three tails of a Martian sand-pup, I\n ought to cram the rest of them down your throat, boxes and all!\"\n\n\n Splinter flushed, seemed to be fumbling for words. After a bit, Kerry\n Blane grinned.", "\"Won't be any trouble at all to lift the ship,\" he called. \"After\n rewiring the board, we'll turn the ship with an underjet, swing it\n about, and head her toward the sea.\"\n\n\n Splinter nodded, dropped into the open port. A moment later, he flipped\n a rope ladder outside, where it dangled to the ground, then climbed out\n himself, carrying the two Zelta guns.\n\n\n \"We'd better test these,\" he said. \"We don't want any slip-ups when we\n do go into action.\"\n\n\n He climbed down the ladder, laid the guns aside, then reached up a\n hand to aid Kerry Blane's descent. Kerry Blane came down slowly and\n awkwardly, jumped the last few feet. He felt surprisingly light and\n strong in the lesser gravity.", "\"Splinter\" Wood grinned.\n\n\n \"Seems to me, Kerry,\" he remarked humorously, \"that you don't like much\n of anything!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane growled unintelligibly, batted the injector lever with a\n calloused hand. His grizzled hair was a stiff wiry mop on his small\n head, and his oversize jaw was thrust belligerently forward. But deep\n within his eyes, where he hoped it was hidden, was a friendly twinkle\n that gave the lie to his speech.\n\n\n \"You're a squirt!\" he snapped disagreeably. \"You're not dry behind\n the ears, yet. You're like the rest of these kids who call themselves\n pilots—only more so! And why the hell the chief had to sic you on me,\n on an exploration trip this important—well, I'll never understand.\"", "Kerry Blane had flown every type of ship that rode in space. In the\n passing years, he had flight-tested almost every new experimental ship,\n had flown them with increasing skill, had earned a reputation as a\n trouble shooter on any kind of craft.\n\n\n But even Kerry Blane had to retire eventually.\n\n\n A great retirement banquet had been given in his honor by the\n Interplanetary Squadron. There had been the usual speeches and\n presentations; and Kerry Blane had heard them all, had thanked the\n donors of the gifts. But it was not until the next morning, when he was\n dressed in civilian clothes for the first time in forty years, that he\n realized the enormity of the thing that had happened to his life.\n\n\n Something died within Kerry Blane's heart that morning, shriveled and\n passed away, leaving him suddenly shrunken and old. He had become like\n a rusty old freighter couched between the gleaming bodies of great\n space warriors.", "And then the scaly monster flashed in a half-turn, drove forward with\n jaws agape, wrenched and ripped at the smooth black throat of the other\n creature. The second creature rippled and undulated in agony, whipping\n the ocean to foam, then went limp. The victorious monster circled the\n body of its dead foe, then, majestically, plunged from sight into the\n ocean's depths. An instant later, the water frothed, as hundreds of\n lesser marine monsters attacked and fed on the floating corpse.\n\n\n \"Brrrr!\" Splinter shivered in sudden horror.\n\n\n Kerry Blane chuckled dryly. \"Feel like going for a swim?\" he asked\n conversationally.\n\n\n Splinter shook his head, watched the scene disappear from view to the\n rear of the line of flight, then sank back onto his bunk.\n\n\n \"Not me!\" he said deprecatingly.", "Venus was a fluffy cotton ball hanging motionless in bottomless\n space. Far to the left, Mercury gleamed like a polished diamond in\n the sunlight. Kerry Blane cut the driving rockets, let the cruiser\n sink into a fast gravity-dive, guiding it only now and then by a brief\n flicker of a side jet.\n\n\n Splinter Wood watched breathlessly from the vision port, his long face\n eager and reckless, his eyes seeking to pierce the clouds that roiled\n and twisted uneasily over the surface of the planet.\n\n\n Kerry Blane glanced tolerantly at his young companion, felt a nostalgic\n tug at his heart when he remembered the first time he had approached\n the water-planet years before. Then, he had been a young and reckless\n firebrand, his fame already spreading, an unquenchable fire of\n adventure flaming in his heart.", "\"I'd like nothing better than to turn a Zelta-blaster on that chunk of\n living protoplasm and cremate it.\"\n\n\n Splinters shivered slightly. \"Do you think we'll find it?\" he asked.\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded. \"I think it will find us; after all, it's just an\n animated appetite looking for food.\"\n\n\n He turned back to the controls, flipped a switch, and the cutting of\n the nose rocket dropped the ship in an angling glide toward the clouds\n a few miles below. Gravity was full strength now, and although not as\n great as Earth's, was still strong enough to bring a sense of giddiness\n to the men.\n\n\n \"Here we go!\" Splinter said tonelessly.", "Kerry Blane crouched over the control panel, his hands moving deftly,\n his eyes flicking from one instrument to another. Tiny lines of\n concentration etched themselves about his mouth, and perspiration\n beaded his forehead. He rode that cruiser through the miles of clouds\n through sheer instinctive ability, seeming to fly it as though he were\n an integral part of the ship.\n\n\n Splinter Wood watched him with awe in his eyes, seeing for the first\n time the incredible instinct that had made Kerry Blane the idol of a\n billion people. He relaxed visibly, all instinctive fear allayed by the\n brilliant competence of his companion." ], [ "\"Splinter\" Wood grinned.\n\n\n \"Seems to me, Kerry,\" he remarked humorously, \"that you don't like much\n of anything!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane growled unintelligibly, batted the injector lever with a\n calloused hand. His grizzled hair was a stiff wiry mop on his small\n head, and his oversize jaw was thrust belligerently forward. But deep\n within his eyes, where he hoped it was hidden, was a friendly twinkle\n that gave the lie to his speech.\n\n\n \"You're a squirt!\" he snapped disagreeably. \"You're not dry behind\n the ears, yet. You're like the rest of these kids who call themselves\n pilots—only more so! And why the hell the chief had to sic you on me,\n on an exploration trip this important—well, I'll never understand.\"", "Kerry Blane crouched over the control panel, his hands moving deftly,\n his eyes flicking from one instrument to another. Tiny lines of\n concentration etched themselves about his mouth, and perspiration\n beaded his forehead. He rode that cruiser through the miles of clouds\n through sheer instinctive ability, seeming to fly it as though he were\n an integral part of the ship.\n\n\n Splinter Wood watched him with awe in his eyes, seeing for the first\n time the incredible instinct that had made Kerry Blane the idol of a\n billion people. He relaxed visibly, all instinctive fear allayed by the\n brilliant competence of his companion.", "Finally, as a last resort so that he would not be thrown entirely\n aside, he had taken a desk job in the squadron offices. For six years\n he had dry-rotted there, waiting hopefully for the moment when his\n active services would be needed again.\n\n\n It was there that he had met and liked the ungainly Splinter Wood.\n There was something in the boy that had found a kindred spirit in Kerry\n Blane's heart, and he had taken the youngster in hand to give him the\n benefits of experience that had become legendary.\n\n\n Splinter Wood was a probationary pilot, had been admitted to the\n Interplanetary Squadron because of his inherent skill, even though his\n formal education had been fairly well neglected.\nNow, the two of them rode the pounding jets of a DX cruiser, bound\n for Venus to make a personal survey of its floating islands for the\n Interplanetary Squadron's Medical Division.", "Splinter buckled on his dis-gun, excitement flaring in his eyes.\n\n\n \"Let's do a little exploring?\" he said eagerly.\n\n\n Kerry Blane shook his head, swung the cruiser north again.\n\n\n \"Plenty of time for that later,\" he said mildly. \"We'll find this\n turtle-island, make a landing, and take a look around. Later, if we're\n lucky enough to blow our objective to Kingdom Come, we'll do a little\n exploring of the other islands.\"\n\n\n \"Hell!\" Splinter scowled in mock disgust. \"An old woman like you should\n be taking in knitting for a living!\"", "\"Orders are orders!\" Kerry Blane shrugged.\nHe swung the cruiser in a wide arc to the north, trebling the flying\n speed within minutes, handling the controls with a familiar dexterity.\n He said nothing, searched the gleaming ocean for the smudge of\n blackness that would denote another island. His gaze flicked amusedly,\n now and then, to the lanky Splinter who scowled moodily and toyed with\n the dis-gun in his long hands.\n\n\n \"Cheer up, lad,\" Kerry Blane said finally. \"I think you'll find plenty\n to occupy your time shortly.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe?\" Splinter said gloomily.\n\n\n He idly swallowed another vitamin capsule, grinned, when he saw Kerry\n Blane's automatic grimace of distaste. Then he yawned hugely, twisted\n into a comfortable position, dozed sleepily.", "Kerry Blane rode the controls for the next three hours, searching the\n limitless ocean for the few specks of islands that followed the slow\n currents of the water planet. Always, there was the same misty light\n surrounding the ship, never dimming, giving a sense of unreality to the\n scene below. Nowhere was there the slightest sign of life until, in the\n fourth hour of flight, a tiny dot of blackness came slowly over the\n horizon's water line.\n\n\n Kerry Blane spun the ship in a tight circle, sent it flashing to the\n west. His keen eyes lighted, when he finally made out the turtle-like\n outline of the island, and he whistled softly, off-key, as he nudged\n the snoring Splinter.\n\n\n \"This is it, Sleeping Beauty,\" he called. \"Snap out of it!\"\n\n\n \"Huh? Whuzzat?\" Splinter grunted, rolled to his elbow.\n\n\n \"Here's the island.\"", "He swung lithely from the portal, reached down a hand to help the\n older man. After much puffing and grunting, Kerry Blane managed to\n clamber through the port. They stood for a moment in silent wonder,\n staring at the long lazy rollers of milky fluorescence that rolled\n endlessly toward the beach, then turned to gaze at the great fern-like\n trees that towered two hundred feet into the air.\n\n\n \"How big do you feel now?\" Kerry Blane asked quietly.\n\n\n Splinter Wood was silent, awed by the beauty and the tremendous size of\n the growths on the water world.\n\n\n Kerry Blane walked the length of the cruiser, examining the slight\n damage done by the crash, evaluating the situation with a practiced\n gaze. He nodded slowly, retraced his steps, and stood looking at the\n furrow plowed in the sand.", "\"Seventy-eight new words—and you swore them beautifully!\" Splinter\n beamed. \"Some day you can teach them to me.\"\n\n\n They laughed then, Old Kerry Blane and young Splinter Wood, and\n the warmth of their friendship was a tangible thing in the small\n control-room of the cruiser.\n\n\n And in the midst of their laughter, Old Kerry Blane choked in agony,\n surged desperately against his bunk straps.\n\n\n He screamed unknowingly, feeling only the horrible excruciating agony\n of his body, tasting the blood that gushed from his mouth and nostrils.\n His muscles were knotted cords that he could not loosen, and his blood\n was a surging stream that pounded at his throbbing temples. The air he\n breathed seemed to be molten flame.", "Belts parted like rotten string; they were thrown forward with crushing\n force against the control panel. They groped feebly for support, their\n bodies twisting involuntarily, as the ship cartwheeled a dozen times in\n a few seconds. Almost instantly, consciousness was battered from them.\n\n\n With one final, grinding bounce, the cruiser rolled to its side,\n twisted over and over for a hundred yards, then came to a metal-ripping\n stop against a moss-grown boulder at the water's edge.\nIII\n\n\n Kerry Blane choked, tried to turn his head from the water that trickled\n into his face. He opened his eyes, stared blankly, uncomprehendingly\n into the bloody features of the man bending over him.\n\n\n \"What happened?\" he gasped.\n\n\n Splinter Wood laughed, almost hysterically, mopped at his forehead with\n a wet handkerchief.", "Splinter rolled his six foot three of lanky body into a more\n comfortable position on the air-bunk. He yawned tremendously, fumbled a\n small box from his shirt pocket, and removed a marble-like capsule.\n\n\n \"Better take one of these,\" he warned. \"You're liable to get the space\n bends at any moment.\"\n\n\n Old Kerry Blane snorted, batted the box aside impatiently, scowled\n moodily at the capsules that bounced for a moment against the pilot\n room's walls before hanging motionless in the air.\n\n\n \"Mister Wood,\" he said icily, \"I was flying a space ship while they\n were changing your pants twenty times a day. When I want advice on how\n to fly a ship, how to cure space bends, how to handle a Zelta ray, or\n how to spit—I'll ask you! Until then, you and your bloody marbles can\n go plumb straight to the devil!\"", "\"All right, all right!\" Splinter tucked the capsule box back into his\n pocket, grinned mockingly. \"But don't say I didn't warn you. With this\n shielded ship, and with no sunlight reaching Venus' surface, you're\n gonna be begging for some of my vitamin, super-concentrated pills\n before we get back to Earth.\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane made a rich, ripe noise with his mouth.\n\n\n \"Pfuii!\" he said very distinctly.\n\n\n \"Gracious!\" Splinter said in mock horror.\nThey made a strange contrast as they lay in their air bunks. Splinter\n was fully a head taller than the dour Irishman, and his lanky build\n gave a false impression of awkwardness. While the vitriolic Kerry Blane\n was short and compact, strength and quickness evident in every movement.", "\"\nMe!\nYou've got orders to take care of\nme\n?\" Kerry Blane choked\n incoherently for a moment, red tiding cholerically upward from his\n loosened collar.\n\n\n \"Of course!\" Splinter grinned.\n\n\n Kerry Blane exploded, words spewing volcanically forth. Splinter\n relaxed, his booted foot beating out a dull rhythm to the colorful\n language learned through almost fifty years of spacing. And at last,\n when Kerry Blane had quieted until he but smoldered, he leaned over and\n touched the old spacer on the sleeve.\n\n\n \"Seventy-eight!\" he remarked pleasantly.\n\n\n \"Seventy-eight what?\" Kerry Blane asked sullenly, the old twinkle\n beginning to light again deep in his eyes.", "Now, his aged but steady fingers rested lightly on the controls,\n brought the patrol cruiser closer to the cloud-banks on the line of\n demarcation between the sunward and sunless sides of the planet. He\n hummed tunelessly, strangely happy, as he peered ahead.\n\n\n \"Val Kenton died there,\" Splinter whispered softly, \"Died to save the\n lives of three other people!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded. \"Yes,\" he agreed, and his voice changed subtly.\n \"Val was a blackguard, a criminal; but he died in the best traditions\n of the service.\" He sighed. \"He never had a chance.\"\n\n\n \"Murdered!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane smiled grimly. \"I guess I used too broad an interpretation\n of the word,\" he said gently. \"Anyway, one of our main tasks is to\n destroy the thing that killed him.\"\n\n\n His lean fingers tightened unconsciously.", "And then the scaly monster flashed in a half-turn, drove forward with\n jaws agape, wrenched and ripped at the smooth black throat of the other\n creature. The second creature rippled and undulated in agony, whipping\n the ocean to foam, then went limp. The victorious monster circled the\n body of its dead foe, then, majestically, plunged from sight into the\n ocean's depths. An instant later, the water frothed, as hundreds of\n lesser marine monsters attacked and fed on the floating corpse.\n\n\n \"Brrrr!\" Splinter shivered in sudden horror.\n\n\n Kerry Blane chuckled dryly. \"Feel like going for a swim?\" he asked\n conversationally.\n\n\n Splinter shook his head, watched the scene disappear from view to the\n rear of the line of flight, then sank back onto his bunk.\n\n\n \"Not me!\" he said deprecatingly.", "\"Forget it, lad,\" he said more kindly, \"those things happen. Now, if\n you'll bind a splint about my arm, we'll see what we can do about\n righting the ship.\"\n\n\n Splinter nodded, opened the medical locker, worked with tape and\n splints for minutes. Great beads of perspiration stood out in high\n relief on Kerry Blane's forehead, but he made no sound. At last,\n Splinter finished, tucked the supplies away.\n\n\n \"Now what?\" he asked subduedly.\n\n\n \"Let's take a look outside, maybe set up the Zelta guns. Can't tell but\n what that protoplasmic nightmare might take a notion to pay us a visit\n in the near future!\"\n\n\n \"Right!\" Splinter unscrewed the port cogs, swung the portal back.", "\"I thought you were dead!\" he said simply.\n\n\n Kerry Blane moved his arm experimentally, felt broken bones grate in\n an exquisite wave of pain. He fought back the nausea, gazed about the\n cabin, realized the ship lay on its side.\n\n\n \"Maybe I am,\" he said ruefully. \"No man could live through that crash.\"\n\n\n Splinter moved away, sat down tiredly on the edge of a bunk. He shook\n his head dazedly, inspected the long cut on his leg.\n\n\n \"We seem to have done it,\" he said dully.\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded, clambered to his feet, favoring his broken arm.\n He leaned over the control panel, inspecting the dials with a worried\n gaze. Slowly, his eyes lightened, and his voice was almost cheerful as\n he swung about.", "\"Ten to one we don't get back!\" Splinter said pessimistically.\n\n\n Kerry Blane scrubbed out his cigarette, scowled bleakly at the\n instrument panel. He sensed the faint thread of fear in the youngster's\n tone, and a nostalgic twinge touched his heart, for he was remembering\n the days of his youth when he had a full life to look forward to.\n\n\n \"If you're afraid, you can get out and walk back,\" he snapped\n disagreeably.\n\n\n A grin lifted the corners of Splinter's long mouth, spread into his\n eyes. His hand unconsciously came up, touched the tiny squadron pin on\n his lapel.\n\n\n \"Sorry to disappoint you, glory grabber,\" he said mockingly, \"but I've\n got definite orders to take care of you.\"", "\"Oh!\" Splinter swung his feet from the bunk, peered from the vision\n port, sleepiness instantly erased from his face.\n\n\n \"Hot damn!\" he chortled. \"Now we'll see a little action!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane grinned, tried to conceal the excitement he felt. He shook\n his head, his fingers flickering over the control studs.\n\n\n \"Don't get your hopes too high, lad,\" he counseled. \"With those super\n Zelta guns, it won't take ten minutes to wipe out that monster.\"\n\n\n Splinter rubbed his hands together, sighed like a boy seeing his first\n circus. \"Listen, for ten minutes of that, I'd ride this chunk of metal\n for a year!\"\n\n\n \"Could be!\" Kerry Blane agreed.", "He stood, leaning against the ship, watching as Splinter picked up\n the first gun and leveled it at a gigantic tree. Splinter sighted\n carefully, winked at the older man, then pressed the firing stud.\n\n\n Nothing happened; there was no hissing crackle of released energy.\n\n\n Kerry Blane strode forward, puzzlement on his lined face, his hand\n out-stretched toward the defective weapon. Splinter gaped at the gun in\n his hands, held it out wordlessly.\n\n\n \"The crash must have broken something,\" Kerry Blane said slowly.\n\n\n Splinter shook his head. \"There's only one moving part,\" he said, \"and\n that's the force gate on the firing stud.\"\n\n\n \"Try the other,\" Kerry Blane said slowly.\n\n\n \"Okay!\"", "\"Everything is more or less okay,\" he said. \"The board will have to\n be rewired, but nothing else seems to be damaged so that repairs are\n needed.\"\n\n\n Splinter looked up from his task of bandaging his leg. \"What caused\n the crash?\" he asked. \"One minute, everything was all right; the next,\n Blooey!\"\n\n\n Anger suddenly mottled Kerry Blane's face; he swore monotonously and\n bitterly for a moment.\n\n\n \"Those gol-damned pills you been taking caused the crash!\" he roared.\n \"One of them broke and shorted out the control board.\" He scowled at\n the incredulous Splinter. \"By the three tails of a Martian sand-pup, I\n ought to cram the rest of them down your throat, boxes and all!\"\n\n\n Splinter flushed, seemed to be fumbling for words. After a bit, Kerry\n Blane grinned." ], [ "Kerry Blane crouched over the control panel, his hands moving deftly,\n his eyes flicking from one instrument to another. Tiny lines of\n concentration etched themselves about his mouth, and perspiration\n beaded his forehead. He rode that cruiser through the miles of clouds\n through sheer instinctive ability, seeming to fly it as though he were\n an integral part of the ship.\n\n\n Splinter Wood watched him with awe in his eyes, seeing for the first\n time the incredible instinct that had made Kerry Blane the idol of a\n billion people. He relaxed visibly, all instinctive fear allayed by the\n brilliant competence of his companion.", "\"Orders are orders!\" Kerry Blane shrugged.\nHe swung the cruiser in a wide arc to the north, trebling the flying\n speed within minutes, handling the controls with a familiar dexterity.\n He said nothing, searched the gleaming ocean for the smudge of\n blackness that would denote another island. His gaze flicked amusedly,\n now and then, to the lanky Splinter who scowled moodily and toyed with\n the dis-gun in his long hands.\n\n\n \"Cheer up, lad,\" Kerry Blane said finally. \"I think you'll find plenty\n to occupy your time shortly.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe?\" Splinter said gloomily.\n\n\n He idly swallowed another vitamin capsule, grinned, when he saw Kerry\n Blane's automatic grimace of distaste. Then he yawned hugely, twisted\n into a comfortable position, dozed sleepily.", "Kerry Blane rode the controls for the next three hours, searching the\n limitless ocean for the few specks of islands that followed the slow\n currents of the water planet. Always, there was the same misty light\n surrounding the ship, never dimming, giving a sense of unreality to the\n scene below. Nowhere was there the slightest sign of life until, in the\n fourth hour of flight, a tiny dot of blackness came slowly over the\n horizon's water line.\n\n\n Kerry Blane spun the ship in a tight circle, sent it flashing to the\n west. His keen eyes lighted, when he finally made out the turtle-like\n outline of the island, and he whistled softly, off-key, as he nudged\n the snoring Splinter.\n\n\n \"This is it, Sleeping Beauty,\" he called. \"Snap out of it!\"\n\n\n \"Huh? Whuzzat?\" Splinter grunted, rolled to his elbow.\n\n\n \"Here's the island.\"", "Finally, as a last resort so that he would not be thrown entirely\n aside, he had taken a desk job in the squadron offices. For six years\n he had dry-rotted there, waiting hopefully for the moment when his\n active services would be needed again.\n\n\n It was there that he had met and liked the ungainly Splinter Wood.\n There was something in the boy that had found a kindred spirit in Kerry\n Blane's heart, and he had taken the youngster in hand to give him the\n benefits of experience that had become legendary.\n\n\n Splinter Wood was a probationary pilot, had been admitted to the\n Interplanetary Squadron because of his inherent skill, even though his\n formal education had been fairly well neglected.\nNow, the two of them rode the pounding jets of a DX cruiser, bound\n for Venus to make a personal survey of its floating islands for the\n Interplanetary Squadron's Medical Division.", "\"I thought you were dead!\" he said simply.\n\n\n Kerry Blane moved his arm experimentally, felt broken bones grate in\n an exquisite wave of pain. He fought back the nausea, gazed about the\n cabin, realized the ship lay on its side.\n\n\n \"Maybe I am,\" he said ruefully. \"No man could live through that crash.\"\n\n\n Splinter moved away, sat down tiredly on the edge of a bunk. He shook\n his head dazedly, inspected the long cut on his leg.\n\n\n \"We seem to have done it,\" he said dully.\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded, clambered to his feet, favoring his broken arm.\n He leaned over the control panel, inspecting the dials with a worried\n gaze. Slowly, his eyes lightened, and his voice was almost cheerful as\n he swung about.", "\"All right, all right!\" Splinter tucked the capsule box back into his\n pocket, grinned mockingly. \"But don't say I didn't warn you. With this\n shielded ship, and with no sunlight reaching Venus' surface, you're\n gonna be begging for some of my vitamin, super-concentrated pills\n before we get back to Earth.\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane made a rich, ripe noise with his mouth.\n\n\n \"Pfuii!\" he said very distinctly.\n\n\n \"Gracious!\" Splinter said in mock horror.\nThey made a strange contrast as they lay in their air bunks. Splinter\n was fully a head taller than the dour Irishman, and his lanky build\n gave a false impression of awkwardness. While the vitriolic Kerry Blane\n was short and compact, strength and quickness evident in every movement.", "Splinter buckled on his dis-gun, excitement flaring in his eyes.\n\n\n \"Let's do a little exploring?\" he said eagerly.\n\n\n Kerry Blane shook his head, swung the cruiser north again.\n\n\n \"Plenty of time for that later,\" he said mildly. \"We'll find this\n turtle-island, make a landing, and take a look around. Later, if we're\n lucky enough to blow our objective to Kingdom Come, we'll do a little\n exploring of the other islands.\"\n\n\n \"Hell!\" Splinter scowled in mock disgust. \"An old woman like you should\n be taking in knitting for a living!\"", "Now, his aged but steady fingers rested lightly on the controls,\n brought the patrol cruiser closer to the cloud-banks on the line of\n demarcation between the sunward and sunless sides of the planet. He\n hummed tunelessly, strangely happy, as he peered ahead.\n\n\n \"Val Kenton died there,\" Splinter whispered softly, \"Died to save the\n lives of three other people!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded. \"Yes,\" he agreed, and his voice changed subtly.\n \"Val was a blackguard, a criminal; but he died in the best traditions\n of the service.\" He sighed. \"He never had a chance.\"\n\n\n \"Murdered!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane smiled grimly. \"I guess I used too broad an interpretation\n of the word,\" he said gently. \"Anyway, one of our main tasks is to\n destroy the thing that killed him.\"\n\n\n His lean fingers tightened unconsciously.", "\"Won't be any trouble at all to lift the ship,\" he called. \"After\n rewiring the board, we'll turn the ship with an underjet, swing it\n about, and head her toward the sea.\"\n\n\n Splinter nodded, dropped into the open port. A moment later, he flipped\n a rope ladder outside, where it dangled to the ground, then climbed out\n himself, carrying the two Zelta guns.\n\n\n \"We'd better test these,\" he said. \"We don't want any slip-ups when we\n do go into action.\"\n\n\n He climbed down the ladder, laid the guns aside, then reached up a\n hand to aid Kerry Blane's descent. Kerry Blane came down slowly and\n awkwardly, jumped the last few feet. He felt surprisingly light and\n strong in the lesser gravity.", "Belts parted like rotten string; they were thrown forward with crushing\n force against the control panel. They groped feebly for support, their\n bodies twisting involuntarily, as the ship cartwheeled a dozen times in\n a few seconds. Almost instantly, consciousness was battered from them.\n\n\n With one final, grinding bounce, the cruiser rolled to its side,\n twisted over and over for a hundred yards, then came to a metal-ripping\n stop against a moss-grown boulder at the water's edge.\nIII\n\n\n Kerry Blane choked, tried to turn his head from the water that trickled\n into his face. He opened his eyes, stared blankly, uncomprehendingly\n into the bloody features of the man bending over him.\n\n\n \"What happened?\" he gasped.\n\n\n Splinter Wood laughed, almost hysterically, mopped at his forehead with\n a wet handkerchief.", "\"Damn!\" Kerry Blane swore briefly.\n\n\n There was an instant, terrific explosion of the stern jets, and the\n cruiser hurtled toward the beach like a gravity-crazed comet.\n\n\n Kerry Blane said absolutely nothing, his breath driven from him by the\n suck of inertia. His hands darted for the controls, seeking to balance\n the forces that threw the ship about like a toy. He cut all rockets\n with a smashing swoop of his hand, tried to fire the bow rockets. But\n the short had ruined the entire control system.\n\n\n For one interminable second, he saw the uncanny uprush of the island\n below. He flicked his gaze about, saw the instant terror that wiped\n all other expression from his young companion's face. Then the cruiser\n plowed into the silvery sand.", "\"I've had the bends before, and lived through them!\" he said, still\n weakly defiant.\n\n\n \"That's the past,\" Splinter said quietly. \"This is the present, and you\n take your pills every day, just as I do—from now on.\"\n\n\n \"All right—and thanks!\"\n\n\n \"Forget it!\" Splinter flushed in quick embarrassment.\n\n\n A buzzer sounded from the instrument panel, and a tiny light glowed\n redly.\n\n\n \"Six hours more,\" Splinter said, turned to the instrument panel.\n\n\n His long hands played over the instrument panel, checking, controlling\n the rocket fire, adjusting delicate instruments to hairline marks.\n Kerry Blane nodded in silent approval.", "His body arced again and again against the restraining straps, and his\n mouth was open in a soundless scream. He sensed dimly that his partner\n had wrenched open a wall door, removed metal medicine kits, and was\n fumbling through their contents. He felt the bite of the hypodermic,\n felt a deadly numbness replace the raging torment that had been his\n for seconds. He swallowed three capsules automatically, passed into a\n coma-like sleep, woke hours later to stare clear-eyed into Splinter's\n concerned face.\n\n\n \"Close, wasn't it?\" he said weakly, conversationally.\n\n\n \"Close enough!\" Splinter agreed relievedly. \"If you had followed my\n advice and taken those vitamin capsules, you'd never have had the\n bends.\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane grinned, winced when he felt the dull ache in his body.", "He swung lithely from the portal, reached down a hand to help the\n older man. After much puffing and grunting, Kerry Blane managed to\n clamber through the port. They stood for a moment in silent wonder,\n staring at the long lazy rollers of milky fluorescence that rolled\n endlessly toward the beach, then turned to gaze at the great fern-like\n trees that towered two hundred feet into the air.\n\n\n \"How big do you feel now?\" Kerry Blane asked quietly.\n\n\n Splinter Wood was silent, awed by the beauty and the tremendous size of\n the growths on the water world.\n\n\n Kerry Blane walked the length of the cruiser, examining the slight\n damage done by the crash, evaluating the situation with a practiced\n gaze. He nodded slowly, retraced his steps, and stood looking at the\n furrow plowed in the sand.", "\"Splinter\" Wood grinned.\n\n\n \"Seems to me, Kerry,\" he remarked humorously, \"that you don't like much\n of anything!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane growled unintelligibly, batted the injector lever with a\n calloused hand. His grizzled hair was a stiff wiry mop on his small\n head, and his oversize jaw was thrust belligerently forward. But deep\n within his eyes, where he hoped it was hidden, was a friendly twinkle\n that gave the lie to his speech.\n\n\n \"You're a squirt!\" he snapped disagreeably. \"You're not dry behind\n the ears, yet. You're like the rest of these kids who call themselves\n pilots—only more so! And why the hell the chief had to sic you on me,\n on an exploration trip this important—well, I'll never understand.\"", "And then the scaly monster flashed in a half-turn, drove forward with\n jaws agape, wrenched and ripped at the smooth black throat of the other\n creature. The second creature rippled and undulated in agony, whipping\n the ocean to foam, then went limp. The victorious monster circled the\n body of its dead foe, then, majestically, plunged from sight into the\n ocean's depths. An instant later, the water frothed, as hundreds of\n lesser marine monsters attacked and fed on the floating corpse.\n\n\n \"Brrrr!\" Splinter shivered in sudden horror.\n\n\n Kerry Blane chuckled dryly. \"Feel like going for a swim?\" he asked\n conversationally.\n\n\n Splinter shook his head, watched the scene disappear from view to the\n rear of the line of flight, then sank back onto his bunk.\n\n\n \"Not me!\" he said deprecatingly.", "\"Ten to one we don't get back!\" Splinter said pessimistically.\n\n\n Kerry Blane scrubbed out his cigarette, scowled bleakly at the\n instrument panel. He sensed the faint thread of fear in the youngster's\n tone, and a nostalgic twinge touched his heart, for he was remembering\n the days of his youth when he had a full life to look forward to.\n\n\n \"If you're afraid, you can get out and walk back,\" he snapped\n disagreeably.\n\n\n A grin lifted the corners of Splinter's long mouth, spread into his\n eyes. His hand unconsciously came up, touched the tiny squadron pin on\n his lapel.\n\n\n \"Sorry to disappoint you, glory grabber,\" he said mockingly, \"but I've\n got definite orders to take care of you.\"", "\"\nMe!\nYou've got orders to take care of\nme\n?\" Kerry Blane choked\n incoherently for a moment, red tiding cholerically upward from his\n loosened collar.\n\n\n \"Of course!\" Splinter grinned.\n\n\n Kerry Blane exploded, words spewing volcanically forth. Splinter\n relaxed, his booted foot beating out a dull rhythm to the colorful\n language learned through almost fifty years of spacing. And at last,\n when Kerry Blane had quieted until he but smoldered, he leaned over and\n touched the old spacer on the sleeve.\n\n\n \"Seventy-eight!\" he remarked pleasantly.\n\n\n \"Seventy-eight what?\" Kerry Blane asked sullenly, the old twinkle\n beginning to light again deep in his eyes.", "Seconds flowed into moments, and the moments merged into one another,\n and still the clouds pressed with a visible strength against the\n ports. The rockets drummed steadily, holding the ship aloft, dropping\n it slowly toward the planet below. Then the clouds thinned, and,\n incredibly, were permeated with a dim and glowing light. A second\n later, and the clouds were gone, and a thousand feet below tumbled and\n tossed in a majestic display of ruthless strength an ocean that seemed\n to be composed of liquid fluorescence.\n\n\n Kerry Blane heard Splinter's instant sigh of unbelief.\n\n\n \"Good Lord!\" Splinter said, \"What—\"", "\"Seventy-eight new words—and you swore them beautifully!\" Splinter\n beamed. \"Some day you can teach them to me.\"\n\n\n They laughed then, Old Kerry Blane and young Splinter Wood, and\n the warmth of their friendship was a tangible thing in the small\n control-room of the cruiser.\n\n\n And in the midst of their laughter, Old Kerry Blane choked in agony,\n surged desperately against his bunk straps.\n\n\n He screamed unknowingly, feeling only the horrible excruciating agony\n of his body, tasting the blood that gushed from his mouth and nostrils.\n His muscles were knotted cords that he could not loosen, and his blood\n was a surging stream that pounded at his throbbing temples. The air he\n breathed seemed to be molten flame." ], [ "Venus was a fluffy cotton ball hanging motionless in bottomless\n space. Far to the left, Mercury gleamed like a polished diamond in\n the sunlight. Kerry Blane cut the driving rockets, let the cruiser\n sink into a fast gravity-dive, guiding it only now and then by a brief\n flicker of a side jet.\n\n\n Splinter Wood watched breathlessly from the vision port, his long face\n eager and reckless, his eyes seeking to pierce the clouds that roiled\n and twisted uneasily over the surface of the planet.\n\n\n Kerry Blane glanced tolerantly at his young companion, felt a nostalgic\n tug at his heart when he remembered the first time he had approached\n the water-planet years before. Then, he had been a young and reckless\n firebrand, his fame already spreading, an unquenchable fire of\n adventure flaming in his heart.", "They could feel the first tug of gravity on their bodies, and through\n the vision port could see the greenish ball that was cloud-covered\n Venus. Excitement lifted their spirits, brought light to their eyes as\n they peered eagerly ahead.\n\n\n \"What's it really like?\" Splinter asked impatiently.\n\n\n Kerry Blane yawned, settled back luxuriously. \"I'll tell you later,\" he\n said, \"I'm going to take a nap and try to ease this bellyache of mine.\n Wake me up so that I can take over, when we land; Venus is a tricky\n place to set a ship on.\"\n\n\n He yawned again, drifted instantly into sleep, relaxing with the\n ability of a spaceman who sleeps when and if he can. Splinter smiled\n down at his sleeping partner, then turned back to the quartzite port.\n He shook his head a bit, remembering the stories he had heard about the\n water planet, wondering—wondering—\nII", "Kerry Blane nodded. \"That was merely a pretext to keep foolhardy\n spacemen from losing their lives on the planet. In reality, the\n ocean is alive with an incredibly tiny marine worm that glows\n phosphorescently. The light generated from those billions of worms is\n reflected back from the clouds, makes Venus eternally lighted.\"\n\n\n He turned the ship to the North, relaxed a bit on the air bunk. He\n felt tired and worn, his body aching from the space bends of a few\n hours before.\n\n\n \"Take over,\" he said wearily. \"Take the ship North, and watch for any\n island.\"\n\n\n Splinter nodded, rested his long hands on the controls. The space\n cruiser lifted a bit in a sudden spurt of speed, and the rocket-sound\n was a solid thrum of unleashed power.", "His voice stilled, and he was silent, his eyes drinking in the weird\n incredible scene below.\nThe ocean was a shifting, white-capped wash of silvery light that\n gleamed with a bright phosphorescence of a hundred, intermingled,\n kaleidoscopic colors. And the unreal, unearthly light continued\n unbroken everywhere, reflected from the low-hanging clouds, reaching\n to the far horizon, bathing every detail of the planet in a brilliance\n more bright than moonlight.\n\n\n Splinter turned a wondering face. \"But the official reports say that\n there is no light on Venus,\" he exclaimed. \"That was one of the reasons\n given when exploration was forbidden!\"", "Finally, as a last resort so that he would not be thrown entirely\n aside, he had taken a desk job in the squadron offices. For six years\n he had dry-rotted there, waiting hopefully for the moment when his\n active services would be needed again.\n\n\n It was there that he had met and liked the ungainly Splinter Wood.\n There was something in the boy that had found a kindred spirit in Kerry\n Blane's heart, and he had taken the youngster in hand to give him the\n benefits of experience that had become legendary.\n\n\n Splinter Wood was a probationary pilot, had been admitted to the\n Interplanetary Squadron because of his inherent skill, even though his\n formal education had been fairly well neglected.\nNow, the two of them rode the pounding jets of a DX cruiser, bound\n for Venus to make a personal survey of its floating islands for the\n Interplanetary Squadron's Medical Division.", "Splinter lifted the second gun, pressed the stud, gazed white-faced at\n his companion.\n\n\n \"It won't work, either,\" he said stupidly. \"I don't get it? The source\n of power is limitless. Solar rays never—\"\n\n\n Old Kerry Blane dropped the first gun to his side, swore harshly.\n\n\n \"Damn it,\" he said. \"They didn't think of it; you didn't think of it;\n and I most certainly forgot! Solar rays can't penetrate the miles of\n clouds on Venus. Those guns are utterly useless as weapons!\"", "\"All right, all right!\" Splinter tucked the capsule box back into his\n pocket, grinned mockingly. \"But don't say I didn't warn you. With this\n shielded ship, and with no sunlight reaching Venus' surface, you're\n gonna be begging for some of my vitamin, super-concentrated pills\n before we get back to Earth.\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane made a rich, ripe noise with his mouth.\n\n\n \"Pfuii!\" he said very distinctly.\n\n\n \"Gracious!\" Splinter said in mock horror.\nThey made a strange contrast as they lay in their air bunks. Splinter\n was fully a head taller than the dour Irishman, and his lanky build\n gave a false impression of awkwardness. While the vitriolic Kerry Blane\n was short and compact, strength and quickness evident in every movement.", "Planet of No-Return\nBy WILBUR S. PEACOCK\nThe orders were explicit: \"Destroy the\n\n 'THING' of Venus.\" But Patrolmen Kerry\n\n Blane and Splinter Wood, their space-ship\n\n wrecked, could not follow orders—their\n\n weapons were useless on the Water-world.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Winter 1942.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nOld Kerry Blane exploded.\n\n\n \"Damn it!\" he roared. \"I don't like you; and I don't like this ship;\n and I don't like the assignment; and I don't like those infernal pills\n you keep eating; and I—\"", "Now, his aged but steady fingers rested lightly on the controls,\n brought the patrol cruiser closer to the cloud-banks on the line of\n demarcation between the sunward and sunless sides of the planet. He\n hummed tunelessly, strangely happy, as he peered ahead.\n\n\n \"Val Kenton died there,\" Splinter whispered softly, \"Died to save the\n lives of three other people!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded. \"Yes,\" he agreed, and his voice changed subtly.\n \"Val was a blackguard, a criminal; but he died in the best traditions\n of the service.\" He sighed. \"He never had a chance.\"\n\n\n \"Murdered!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane smiled grimly. \"I guess I used too broad an interpretation\n of the word,\" he said gently. \"Anyway, one of our main tasks is to\n destroy the thing that killed him.\"\n\n\n His lean fingers tightened unconsciously.", "\"I'd like nothing better than to turn a Zelta-blaster on that chunk of\n living protoplasm and cremate it.\"\n\n\n Splinters shivered slightly. \"Do you think we'll find it?\" he asked.\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded. \"I think it will find us; after all, it's just an\n animated appetite looking for food.\"\n\n\n He turned back to the controls, flipped a switch, and the cutting of\n the nose rocket dropped the ship in an angling glide toward the clouds\n a few miles below. Gravity was full strength now, and although not as\n great as Earth's, was still strong enough to bring a sense of giddiness\n to the men.\n\n\n \"Here we go!\" Splinter said tonelessly.", "He swung lithely from the portal, reached down a hand to help the\n older man. After much puffing and grunting, Kerry Blane managed to\n clamber through the port. They stood for a moment in silent wonder,\n staring at the long lazy rollers of milky fluorescence that rolled\n endlessly toward the beach, then turned to gaze at the great fern-like\n trees that towered two hundred feet into the air.\n\n\n \"How big do you feel now?\" Kerry Blane asked quietly.\n\n\n Splinter Wood was silent, awed by the beauty and the tremendous size of\n the growths on the water world.\n\n\n Kerry Blane walked the length of the cruiser, examining the slight\n damage done by the crash, evaluating the situation with a practiced\n gaze. He nodded slowly, retraced his steps, and stood looking at the\n furrow plowed in the sand.", "Kerry Blane rode the controls for the next three hours, searching the\n limitless ocean for the few specks of islands that followed the slow\n currents of the water planet. Always, there was the same misty light\n surrounding the ship, never dimming, giving a sense of unreality to the\n scene below. Nowhere was there the slightest sign of life until, in the\n fourth hour of flight, a tiny dot of blackness came slowly over the\n horizon's water line.\n\n\n Kerry Blane spun the ship in a tight circle, sent it flashing to the\n west. His keen eyes lighted, when he finally made out the turtle-like\n outline of the island, and he whistled softly, off-key, as he nudged\n the snoring Splinter.\n\n\n \"This is it, Sleeping Beauty,\" he called. \"Snap out of it!\"\n\n\n \"Huh? Whuzzat?\" Splinter grunted, rolled to his elbow.\n\n\n \"Here's the island.\"", "Seconds flowed into moments, and the moments merged into one another,\n and still the clouds pressed with a visible strength against the\n ports. The rockets drummed steadily, holding the ship aloft, dropping\n it slowly toward the planet below. Then the clouds thinned, and,\n incredibly, were permeated with a dim and glowing light. A second\n later, and the clouds were gone, and a thousand feet below tumbled and\n tossed in a majestic display of ruthless strength an ocean that seemed\n to be composed of liquid fluorescence.\n\n\n Kerry Blane heard Splinter's instant sigh of unbelief.\n\n\n \"Good Lord!\" Splinter said, \"What—\"", "He peered through the port, seeking any spot clear enough for a landing\n field. Except for a strip of open beach, the island was a solid mass of\n heavy fern-like growth.\n\n\n \"Belt yourself,\" Kerry Blane warned. \"If that beach isn't solid, I'll\n have to lift the ship in a hell of a hurry.\"\n\n\n \"Right!\" Splinter's fingers were all thumbs in his excitement.\n\n\n Kerry Blane set the controls for a shallow glide, his fingers moving\n like a concert pianist's. The cruiser yawed slightly, settled slowly\n in a flat shallow glide.\n\n\n \"We're going in,\" Kerry Blane said quietly.\n\n\n He closed a knife switch, seeing too late the vitamin capsule that was\n lodged in the slot. There was the sharp splutter of a short-circuit,\n and a thin tendril of smoke drifted upward.", "Splinter buckled on his dis-gun, excitement flaring in his eyes.\n\n\n \"Let's do a little exploring?\" he said eagerly.\n\n\n Kerry Blane shook his head, swung the cruiser north again.\n\n\n \"Plenty of time for that later,\" he said mildly. \"We'll find this\n turtle-island, make a landing, and take a look around. Later, if we're\n lucky enough to blow our objective to Kingdom Come, we'll do a little\n exploring of the other islands.\"\n\n\n \"Hell!\" Splinter scowled in mock disgust. \"An old woman like you should\n be taking in knitting for a living!\"", "\"Oh!\" Splinter swung his feet from the bunk, peered from the vision\n port, sleepiness instantly erased from his face.\n\n\n \"Hot damn!\" he chortled. \"Now we'll see a little action!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane grinned, tried to conceal the excitement he felt. He shook\n his head, his fingers flickering over the control studs.\n\n\n \"Don't get your hopes too high, lad,\" he counseled. \"With those super\n Zelta guns, it won't take ten minutes to wipe out that monster.\"\n\n\n Splinter rubbed his hands together, sighed like a boy seeing his first\n circus. \"Listen, for ten minutes of that, I'd ride this chunk of metal\n for a year!\"\n\n\n \"Could be!\" Kerry Blane agreed.", "\"Damn!\" Kerry Blane swore briefly.\n\n\n There was an instant, terrific explosion of the stern jets, and the\n cruiser hurtled toward the beach like a gravity-crazed comet.\n\n\n Kerry Blane said absolutely nothing, his breath driven from him by the\n suck of inertia. His hands darted for the controls, seeking to balance\n the forces that threw the ship about like a toy. He cut all rockets\n with a smashing swoop of his hand, tried to fire the bow rockets. But\n the short had ruined the entire control system.\n\n\n For one interminable second, he saw the uncanny uprush of the island\n below. He flicked his gaze about, saw the instant terror that wiped\n all other expression from his young companion's face. Then the cruiser\n plowed into the silvery sand.", "\"Ten to one we don't get back!\" Splinter said pessimistically.\n\n\n Kerry Blane scrubbed out his cigarette, scowled bleakly at the\n instrument panel. He sensed the faint thread of fear in the youngster's\n tone, and a nostalgic twinge touched his heart, for he was remembering\n the days of his youth when he had a full life to look forward to.\n\n\n \"If you're afraid, you can get out and walk back,\" he snapped\n disagreeably.\n\n\n A grin lifted the corners of Splinter's long mouth, spread into his\n eyes. His hand unconsciously came up, touched the tiny squadron pin on\n his lapel.\n\n\n \"Sorry to disappoint you, glory grabber,\" he said mockingly, \"but I've\n got definite orders to take care of you.\"", "\"I thought you were dead!\" he said simply.\n\n\n Kerry Blane moved his arm experimentally, felt broken bones grate in\n an exquisite wave of pain. He fought back the nausea, gazed about the\n cabin, realized the ship lay on its side.\n\n\n \"Maybe I am,\" he said ruefully. \"No man could live through that crash.\"\n\n\n Splinter moved away, sat down tiredly on the edge of a bunk. He shook\n his head dazedly, inspected the long cut on his leg.\n\n\n \"We seem to have done it,\" he said dully.\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded, clambered to his feet, favoring his broken arm.\n He leaned over the control panel, inspecting the dials with a worried\n gaze. Slowly, his eyes lightened, and his voice was almost cheerful as\n he swung about.", "\"Forget it, lad,\" he said more kindly, \"those things happen. Now, if\n you'll bind a splint about my arm, we'll see what we can do about\n righting the ship.\"\n\n\n Splinter nodded, opened the medical locker, worked with tape and\n splints for minutes. Great beads of perspiration stood out in high\n relief on Kerry Blane's forehead, but he made no sound. At last,\n Splinter finished, tucked the supplies away.\n\n\n \"Now what?\" he asked subduedly.\n\n\n \"Let's take a look outside, maybe set up the Zelta guns. Can't tell but\n what that protoplasmic nightmare might take a notion to pay us a visit\n in the near future!\"\n\n\n \"Right!\" Splinter unscrewed the port cogs, swung the portal back." ], [ "\"Damn!\" Kerry Blane swore briefly.\n\n\n There was an instant, terrific explosion of the stern jets, and the\n cruiser hurtled toward the beach like a gravity-crazed comet.\n\n\n Kerry Blane said absolutely nothing, his breath driven from him by the\n suck of inertia. His hands darted for the controls, seeking to balance\n the forces that threw the ship about like a toy. He cut all rockets\n with a smashing swoop of his hand, tried to fire the bow rockets. But\n the short had ruined the entire control system.\n\n\n For one interminable second, he saw the uncanny uprush of the island\n below. He flicked his gaze about, saw the instant terror that wiped\n all other expression from his young companion's face. Then the cruiser\n plowed into the silvery sand.", "\"I thought you were dead!\" he said simply.\n\n\n Kerry Blane moved his arm experimentally, felt broken bones grate in\n an exquisite wave of pain. He fought back the nausea, gazed about the\n cabin, realized the ship lay on its side.\n\n\n \"Maybe I am,\" he said ruefully. \"No man could live through that crash.\"\n\n\n Splinter moved away, sat down tiredly on the edge of a bunk. He shook\n his head dazedly, inspected the long cut on his leg.\n\n\n \"We seem to have done it,\" he said dully.\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded, clambered to his feet, favoring his broken arm.\n He leaned over the control panel, inspecting the dials with a worried\n gaze. Slowly, his eyes lightened, and his voice was almost cheerful as\n he swung about.", "He peered through the port, seeking any spot clear enough for a landing\n field. Except for a strip of open beach, the island was a solid mass of\n heavy fern-like growth.\n\n\n \"Belt yourself,\" Kerry Blane warned. \"If that beach isn't solid, I'll\n have to lift the ship in a hell of a hurry.\"\n\n\n \"Right!\" Splinter's fingers were all thumbs in his excitement.\n\n\n Kerry Blane set the controls for a shallow glide, his fingers moving\n like a concert pianist's. The cruiser yawed slightly, settled slowly\n in a flat shallow glide.\n\n\n \"We're going in,\" Kerry Blane said quietly.\n\n\n He closed a knife switch, seeing too late the vitamin capsule that was\n lodged in the slot. There was the sharp splutter of a short-circuit,\n and a thin tendril of smoke drifted upward.", "\"Everything is more or less okay,\" he said. \"The board will have to\n be rewired, but nothing else seems to be damaged so that repairs are\n needed.\"\n\n\n Splinter looked up from his task of bandaging his leg. \"What caused\n the crash?\" he asked. \"One minute, everything was all right; the next,\n Blooey!\"\n\n\n Anger suddenly mottled Kerry Blane's face; he swore monotonously and\n bitterly for a moment.\n\n\n \"Those gol-damned pills you been taking caused the crash!\" he roared.\n \"One of them broke and shorted out the control board.\" He scowled at\n the incredulous Splinter. \"By the three tails of a Martian sand-pup, I\n ought to cram the rest of them down your throat, boxes and all!\"\n\n\n Splinter flushed, seemed to be fumbling for words. After a bit, Kerry\n Blane grinned.", "Belts parted like rotten string; they were thrown forward with crushing\n force against the control panel. They groped feebly for support, their\n bodies twisting involuntarily, as the ship cartwheeled a dozen times in\n a few seconds. Almost instantly, consciousness was battered from them.\n\n\n With one final, grinding bounce, the cruiser rolled to its side,\n twisted over and over for a hundred yards, then came to a metal-ripping\n stop against a moss-grown boulder at the water's edge.\nIII\n\n\n Kerry Blane choked, tried to turn his head from the water that trickled\n into his face. He opened his eyes, stared blankly, uncomprehendingly\n into the bloody features of the man bending over him.\n\n\n \"What happened?\" he gasped.\n\n\n Splinter Wood laughed, almost hysterically, mopped at his forehead with\n a wet handkerchief.", "Now, his aged but steady fingers rested lightly on the controls,\n brought the patrol cruiser closer to the cloud-banks on the line of\n demarcation between the sunward and sunless sides of the planet. He\n hummed tunelessly, strangely happy, as he peered ahead.\n\n\n \"Val Kenton died there,\" Splinter whispered softly, \"Died to save the\n lives of three other people!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded. \"Yes,\" he agreed, and his voice changed subtly.\n \"Val was a blackguard, a criminal; but he died in the best traditions\n of the service.\" He sighed. \"He never had a chance.\"\n\n\n \"Murdered!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane smiled grimly. \"I guess I used too broad an interpretation\n of the word,\" he said gently. \"Anyway, one of our main tasks is to\n destroy the thing that killed him.\"\n\n\n His lean fingers tightened unconsciously.", "\"I'd like nothing better than to turn a Zelta-blaster on that chunk of\n living protoplasm and cremate it.\"\n\n\n Splinters shivered slightly. \"Do you think we'll find it?\" he asked.\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded. \"I think it will find us; after all, it's just an\n animated appetite looking for food.\"\n\n\n He turned back to the controls, flipped a switch, and the cutting of\n the nose rocket dropped the ship in an angling glide toward the clouds\n a few miles below. Gravity was full strength now, and although not as\n great as Earth's, was still strong enough to bring a sense of giddiness\n to the men.\n\n\n \"Here we go!\" Splinter said tonelessly.", "Venus was a fluffy cotton ball hanging motionless in bottomless\n space. Far to the left, Mercury gleamed like a polished diamond in\n the sunlight. Kerry Blane cut the driving rockets, let the cruiser\n sink into a fast gravity-dive, guiding it only now and then by a brief\n flicker of a side jet.\n\n\n Splinter Wood watched breathlessly from the vision port, his long face\n eager and reckless, his eyes seeking to pierce the clouds that roiled\n and twisted uneasily over the surface of the planet.\n\n\n Kerry Blane glanced tolerantly at his young companion, felt a nostalgic\n tug at his heart when he remembered the first time he had approached\n the water-planet years before. Then, he had been a young and reckless\n firebrand, his fame already spreading, an unquenchable fire of\n adventure flaming in his heart.", "Seconds flowed into moments, and the moments merged into one another,\n and still the clouds pressed with a visible strength against the\n ports. The rockets drummed steadily, holding the ship aloft, dropping\n it slowly toward the planet below. Then the clouds thinned, and,\n incredibly, were permeated with a dim and glowing light. A second\n later, and the clouds were gone, and a thousand feet below tumbled and\n tossed in a majestic display of ruthless strength an ocean that seemed\n to be composed of liquid fluorescence.\n\n\n Kerry Blane heard Splinter's instant sigh of unbelief.\n\n\n \"Good Lord!\" Splinter said, \"What—\"", "He stood, leaning against the ship, watching as Splinter picked up\n the first gun and leveled it at a gigantic tree. Splinter sighted\n carefully, winked at the older man, then pressed the firing stud.\n\n\n Nothing happened; there was no hissing crackle of released energy.\n\n\n Kerry Blane strode forward, puzzlement on his lined face, his hand\n out-stretched toward the defective weapon. Splinter gaped at the gun in\n his hands, held it out wordlessly.\n\n\n \"The crash must have broken something,\" Kerry Blane said slowly.\n\n\n Splinter shook his head. \"There's only one moving part,\" he said, \"and\n that's the force gate on the firing stud.\"\n\n\n \"Try the other,\" Kerry Blane said slowly.\n\n\n \"Okay!\"", "He swung lithely from the portal, reached down a hand to help the\n older man. After much puffing and grunting, Kerry Blane managed to\n clamber through the port. They stood for a moment in silent wonder,\n staring at the long lazy rollers of milky fluorescence that rolled\n endlessly toward the beach, then turned to gaze at the great fern-like\n trees that towered two hundred feet into the air.\n\n\n \"How big do you feel now?\" Kerry Blane asked quietly.\n\n\n Splinter Wood was silent, awed by the beauty and the tremendous size of\n the growths on the water world.\n\n\n Kerry Blane walked the length of the cruiser, examining the slight\n damage done by the crash, evaluating the situation with a practiced\n gaze. He nodded slowly, retraced his steps, and stood looking at the\n furrow plowed in the sand.", "Kerry Blane nodded. \"That was merely a pretext to keep foolhardy\n spacemen from losing their lives on the planet. In reality, the\n ocean is alive with an incredibly tiny marine worm that glows\n phosphorescently. The light generated from those billions of worms is\n reflected back from the clouds, makes Venus eternally lighted.\"\n\n\n He turned the ship to the North, relaxed a bit on the air bunk. He\n felt tired and worn, his body aching from the space bends of a few\n hours before.\n\n\n \"Take over,\" he said wearily. \"Take the ship North, and watch for any\n island.\"\n\n\n Splinter nodded, rested his long hands on the controls. The space\n cruiser lifted a bit in a sudden spurt of speed, and the rocket-sound\n was a solid thrum of unleashed power.", "Finally, as a last resort so that he would not be thrown entirely\n aside, he had taken a desk job in the squadron offices. For six years\n he had dry-rotted there, waiting hopefully for the moment when his\n active services would be needed again.\n\n\n It was there that he had met and liked the ungainly Splinter Wood.\n There was something in the boy that had found a kindred spirit in Kerry\n Blane's heart, and he had taken the youngster in hand to give him the\n benefits of experience that had become legendary.\n\n\n Splinter Wood was a probationary pilot, had been admitted to the\n Interplanetary Squadron because of his inherent skill, even though his\n formal education had been fairly well neglected.\nNow, the two of them rode the pounding jets of a DX cruiser, bound\n for Venus to make a personal survey of its floating islands for the\n Interplanetary Squadron's Medical Division.", "\"Oh!\" Splinter swung his feet from the bunk, peered from the vision\n port, sleepiness instantly erased from his face.\n\n\n \"Hot damn!\" he chortled. \"Now we'll see a little action!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane grinned, tried to conceal the excitement he felt. He shook\n his head, his fingers flickering over the control studs.\n\n\n \"Don't get your hopes too high, lad,\" he counseled. \"With those super\n Zelta guns, it won't take ten minutes to wipe out that monster.\"\n\n\n Splinter rubbed his hands together, sighed like a boy seeing his first\n circus. \"Listen, for ten minutes of that, I'd ride this chunk of metal\n for a year!\"\n\n\n \"Could be!\" Kerry Blane agreed.", "They could feel the first tug of gravity on their bodies, and through\n the vision port could see the greenish ball that was cloud-covered\n Venus. Excitement lifted their spirits, brought light to their eyes as\n they peered eagerly ahead.\n\n\n \"What's it really like?\" Splinter asked impatiently.\n\n\n Kerry Blane yawned, settled back luxuriously. \"I'll tell you later,\" he\n said, \"I'm going to take a nap and try to ease this bellyache of mine.\n Wake me up so that I can take over, when we land; Venus is a tricky\n place to set a ship on.\"\n\n\n He yawned again, drifted instantly into sleep, relaxing with the\n ability of a spaceman who sleeps when and if he can. Splinter smiled\n down at his sleeping partner, then turned back to the quartzite port.\n He shook his head a bit, remembering the stories he had heard about the\n water planet, wondering—wondering—\nII", "Kerry Blane crouched over the control panel, his hands moving deftly,\n his eyes flicking from one instrument to another. Tiny lines of\n concentration etched themselves about his mouth, and perspiration\n beaded his forehead. He rode that cruiser through the miles of clouds\n through sheer instinctive ability, seeming to fly it as though he were\n an integral part of the ship.\n\n\n Splinter Wood watched him with awe in his eyes, seeing for the first\n time the incredible instinct that had made Kerry Blane the idol of a\n billion people. He relaxed visibly, all instinctive fear allayed by the\n brilliant competence of his companion.", "\"Ten to one we don't get back!\" Splinter said pessimistically.\n\n\n Kerry Blane scrubbed out his cigarette, scowled bleakly at the\n instrument panel. He sensed the faint thread of fear in the youngster's\n tone, and a nostalgic twinge touched his heart, for he was remembering\n the days of his youth when he had a full life to look forward to.\n\n\n \"If you're afraid, you can get out and walk back,\" he snapped\n disagreeably.\n\n\n A grin lifted the corners of Splinter's long mouth, spread into his\n eyes. His hand unconsciously came up, touched the tiny squadron pin on\n his lapel.\n\n\n \"Sorry to disappoint you, glory grabber,\" he said mockingly, \"but I've\n got definite orders to take care of you.\"", "The great cottony batts of roiling clouds rushed up to meet the ship,\n bringing the first sense of violent movement in more than a week of\n flying. There was something awesome and breath-taking in the speed with\n which the ship dropped toward the planet.\n\n\n Tendrils of vapor touched the ports, were whipped aside, then were\n replaced by heavier fingers of cloud. Kerry Blane pressed a firing\n stud, and nose rockets thrummed in a rising crescendo as the free fall\n of the cruiser was checked. Heat rose in the cabin from the friction of\n the outer air, then dissipated, as the force-screen voltometer leaped\n higher.\n\n\n Then, as though it had never been, the sun disappeared, and there was\n only a gray blankness pressing about the ship. Gone was all sense of\n movement, and the ship seemed to hover in a gray nothingness.", "\"Forget it, lad,\" he said more kindly, \"those things happen. Now, if\n you'll bind a splint about my arm, we'll see what we can do about\n righting the ship.\"\n\n\n Splinter nodded, opened the medical locker, worked with tape and\n splints for minutes. Great beads of perspiration stood out in high\n relief on Kerry Blane's forehead, but he made no sound. At last,\n Splinter finished, tucked the supplies away.\n\n\n \"Now what?\" he asked subduedly.\n\n\n \"Let's take a look outside, maybe set up the Zelta guns. Can't tell but\n what that protoplasmic nightmare might take a notion to pay us a visit\n in the near future!\"\n\n\n \"Right!\" Splinter unscrewed the port cogs, swung the portal back.", "Splinter lifted the second gun, pressed the stud, gazed white-faced at\n his companion.\n\n\n \"It won't work, either,\" he said stupidly. \"I don't get it? The source\n of power is limitless. Solar rays never—\"\n\n\n Old Kerry Blane dropped the first gun to his side, swore harshly.\n\n\n \"Damn it,\" he said. \"They didn't think of it; you didn't think of it;\n and I most certainly forgot! Solar rays can't penetrate the miles of\n clouds on Venus. Those guns are utterly useless as weapons!\"" ], [ "\"I thought you were dead!\" he said simply.\n\n\n Kerry Blane moved his arm experimentally, felt broken bones grate in\n an exquisite wave of pain. He fought back the nausea, gazed about the\n cabin, realized the ship lay on its side.\n\n\n \"Maybe I am,\" he said ruefully. \"No man could live through that crash.\"\n\n\n Splinter moved away, sat down tiredly on the edge of a bunk. He shook\n his head dazedly, inspected the long cut on his leg.\n\n\n \"We seem to have done it,\" he said dully.\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded, clambered to his feet, favoring his broken arm.\n He leaned over the control panel, inspecting the dials with a worried\n gaze. Slowly, his eyes lightened, and his voice was almost cheerful as\n he swung about.", "\"Everything is more or less okay,\" he said. \"The board will have to\n be rewired, but nothing else seems to be damaged so that repairs are\n needed.\"\n\n\n Splinter looked up from his task of bandaging his leg. \"What caused\n the crash?\" he asked. \"One minute, everything was all right; the next,\n Blooey!\"\n\n\n Anger suddenly mottled Kerry Blane's face; he swore monotonously and\n bitterly for a moment.\n\n\n \"Those gol-damned pills you been taking caused the crash!\" he roared.\n \"One of them broke and shorted out the control board.\" He scowled at\n the incredulous Splinter. \"By the three tails of a Martian sand-pup, I\n ought to cram the rest of them down your throat, boxes and all!\"\n\n\n Splinter flushed, seemed to be fumbling for words. After a bit, Kerry\n Blane grinned.", "\"Damn!\" Kerry Blane swore briefly.\n\n\n There was an instant, terrific explosion of the stern jets, and the\n cruiser hurtled toward the beach like a gravity-crazed comet.\n\n\n Kerry Blane said absolutely nothing, his breath driven from him by the\n suck of inertia. His hands darted for the controls, seeking to balance\n the forces that threw the ship about like a toy. He cut all rockets\n with a smashing swoop of his hand, tried to fire the bow rockets. But\n the short had ruined the entire control system.\n\n\n For one interminable second, he saw the uncanny uprush of the island\n below. He flicked his gaze about, saw the instant terror that wiped\n all other expression from his young companion's face. Then the cruiser\n plowed into the silvery sand.", "Kerry Blane crouched over the control panel, his hands moving deftly,\n his eyes flicking from one instrument to another. Tiny lines of\n concentration etched themselves about his mouth, and perspiration\n beaded his forehead. He rode that cruiser through the miles of clouds\n through sheer instinctive ability, seeming to fly it as though he were\n an integral part of the ship.\n\n\n Splinter Wood watched him with awe in his eyes, seeing for the first\n time the incredible instinct that had made Kerry Blane the idol of a\n billion people. He relaxed visibly, all instinctive fear allayed by the\n brilliant competence of his companion.", "Belts parted like rotten string; they were thrown forward with crushing\n force against the control panel. They groped feebly for support, their\n bodies twisting involuntarily, as the ship cartwheeled a dozen times in\n a few seconds. Almost instantly, consciousness was battered from them.\n\n\n With one final, grinding bounce, the cruiser rolled to its side,\n twisted over and over for a hundred yards, then came to a metal-ripping\n stop against a moss-grown boulder at the water's edge.\nIII\n\n\n Kerry Blane choked, tried to turn his head from the water that trickled\n into his face. He opened his eyes, stared blankly, uncomprehendingly\n into the bloody features of the man bending over him.\n\n\n \"What happened?\" he gasped.\n\n\n Splinter Wood laughed, almost hysterically, mopped at his forehead with\n a wet handkerchief.", "And then the scaly monster flashed in a half-turn, drove forward with\n jaws agape, wrenched and ripped at the smooth black throat of the other\n creature. The second creature rippled and undulated in agony, whipping\n the ocean to foam, then went limp. The victorious monster circled the\n body of its dead foe, then, majestically, plunged from sight into the\n ocean's depths. An instant later, the water frothed, as hundreds of\n lesser marine monsters attacked and fed on the floating corpse.\n\n\n \"Brrrr!\" Splinter shivered in sudden horror.\n\n\n Kerry Blane chuckled dryly. \"Feel like going for a swim?\" he asked\n conversationally.\n\n\n Splinter shook his head, watched the scene disappear from view to the\n rear of the line of flight, then sank back onto his bunk.\n\n\n \"Not me!\" he said deprecatingly.", "\"Orders are orders!\" Kerry Blane shrugged.\nHe swung the cruiser in a wide arc to the north, trebling the flying\n speed within minutes, handling the controls with a familiar dexterity.\n He said nothing, searched the gleaming ocean for the smudge of\n blackness that would denote another island. His gaze flicked amusedly,\n now and then, to the lanky Splinter who scowled moodily and toyed with\n the dis-gun in his long hands.\n\n\n \"Cheer up, lad,\" Kerry Blane said finally. \"I think you'll find plenty\n to occupy your time shortly.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe?\" Splinter said gloomily.\n\n\n He idly swallowed another vitamin capsule, grinned, when he saw Kerry\n Blane's automatic grimace of distaste. Then he yawned hugely, twisted\n into a comfortable position, dozed sleepily.", "His body arced again and again against the restraining straps, and his\n mouth was open in a soundless scream. He sensed dimly that his partner\n had wrenched open a wall door, removed metal medicine kits, and was\n fumbling through their contents. He felt the bite of the hypodermic,\n felt a deadly numbness replace the raging torment that had been his\n for seconds. He swallowed three capsules automatically, passed into a\n coma-like sleep, woke hours later to stare clear-eyed into Splinter's\n concerned face.\n\n\n \"Close, wasn't it?\" he said weakly, conversationally.\n\n\n \"Close enough!\" Splinter agreed relievedly. \"If you had followed my\n advice and taken those vitamin capsules, you'd never have had the\n bends.\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane grinned, winced when he felt the dull ache in his body.", "Seconds flowed into moments, and the moments merged into one another,\n and still the clouds pressed with a visible strength against the\n ports. The rockets drummed steadily, holding the ship aloft, dropping\n it slowly toward the planet below. Then the clouds thinned, and,\n incredibly, were permeated with a dim and glowing light. A second\n later, and the clouds were gone, and a thousand feet below tumbled and\n tossed in a majestic display of ruthless strength an ocean that seemed\n to be composed of liquid fluorescence.\n\n\n Kerry Blane heard Splinter's instant sigh of unbelief.\n\n\n \"Good Lord!\" Splinter said, \"What—\"", "\"I've had the bends before, and lived through them!\" he said, still\n weakly defiant.\n\n\n \"That's the past,\" Splinter said quietly. \"This is the present, and you\n take your pills every day, just as I do—from now on.\"\n\n\n \"All right—and thanks!\"\n\n\n \"Forget it!\" Splinter flushed in quick embarrassment.\n\n\n A buzzer sounded from the instrument panel, and a tiny light glowed\n redly.\n\n\n \"Six hours more,\" Splinter said, turned to the instrument panel.\n\n\n His long hands played over the instrument panel, checking, controlling\n the rocket fire, adjusting delicate instruments to hairline marks.\n Kerry Blane nodded in silent approval.", "He swung lithely from the portal, reached down a hand to help the\n older man. After much puffing and grunting, Kerry Blane managed to\n clamber through the port. They stood for a moment in silent wonder,\n staring at the long lazy rollers of milky fluorescence that rolled\n endlessly toward the beach, then turned to gaze at the great fern-like\n trees that towered two hundred feet into the air.\n\n\n \"How big do you feel now?\" Kerry Blane asked quietly.\n\n\n Splinter Wood was silent, awed by the beauty and the tremendous size of\n the growths on the water world.\n\n\n Kerry Blane walked the length of the cruiser, examining the slight\n damage done by the crash, evaluating the situation with a practiced\n gaze. He nodded slowly, retraced his steps, and stood looking at the\n furrow plowed in the sand.", "Kerry Blane rode the controls for the next three hours, searching the\n limitless ocean for the few specks of islands that followed the slow\n currents of the water planet. Always, there was the same misty light\n surrounding the ship, never dimming, giving a sense of unreality to the\n scene below. Nowhere was there the slightest sign of life until, in the\n fourth hour of flight, a tiny dot of blackness came slowly over the\n horizon's water line.\n\n\n Kerry Blane spun the ship in a tight circle, sent it flashing to the\n west. His keen eyes lighted, when he finally made out the turtle-like\n outline of the island, and he whistled softly, off-key, as he nudged\n the snoring Splinter.\n\n\n \"This is it, Sleeping Beauty,\" he called. \"Snap out of it!\"\n\n\n \"Huh? Whuzzat?\" Splinter grunted, rolled to his elbow.\n\n\n \"Here's the island.\"", "\"Oh!\" Splinter swung his feet from the bunk, peered from the vision\n port, sleepiness instantly erased from his face.\n\n\n \"Hot damn!\" he chortled. \"Now we'll see a little action!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane grinned, tried to conceal the excitement he felt. He shook\n his head, his fingers flickering over the control studs.\n\n\n \"Don't get your hopes too high, lad,\" he counseled. \"With those super\n Zelta guns, it won't take ten minutes to wipe out that monster.\"\n\n\n Splinter rubbed his hands together, sighed like a boy seeing his first\n circus. \"Listen, for ten minutes of that, I'd ride this chunk of metal\n for a year!\"\n\n\n \"Could be!\" Kerry Blane agreed.", "\"Ten to one we don't get back!\" Splinter said pessimistically.\n\n\n Kerry Blane scrubbed out his cigarette, scowled bleakly at the\n instrument panel. He sensed the faint thread of fear in the youngster's\n tone, and a nostalgic twinge touched his heart, for he was remembering\n the days of his youth when he had a full life to look forward to.\n\n\n \"If you're afraid, you can get out and walk back,\" he snapped\n disagreeably.\n\n\n A grin lifted the corners of Splinter's long mouth, spread into his\n eyes. His hand unconsciously came up, touched the tiny squadron pin on\n his lapel.\n\n\n \"Sorry to disappoint you, glory grabber,\" he said mockingly, \"but I've\n got definite orders to take care of you.\"", "\"Seventy-eight new words—and you swore them beautifully!\" Splinter\n beamed. \"Some day you can teach them to me.\"\n\n\n They laughed then, Old Kerry Blane and young Splinter Wood, and\n the warmth of their friendship was a tangible thing in the small\n control-room of the cruiser.\n\n\n And in the midst of their laughter, Old Kerry Blane choked in agony,\n surged desperately against his bunk straps.\n\n\n He screamed unknowingly, feeling only the horrible excruciating agony\n of his body, tasting the blood that gushed from his mouth and nostrils.\n His muscles were knotted cords that he could not loosen, and his blood\n was a surging stream that pounded at his throbbing temples. The air he\n breathed seemed to be molten flame.", "\"Forget it, lad,\" he said more kindly, \"those things happen. Now, if\n you'll bind a splint about my arm, we'll see what we can do about\n righting the ship.\"\n\n\n Splinter nodded, opened the medical locker, worked with tape and\n splints for minutes. Great beads of perspiration stood out in high\n relief on Kerry Blane's forehead, but he made no sound. At last,\n Splinter finished, tucked the supplies away.\n\n\n \"Now what?\" he asked subduedly.\n\n\n \"Let's take a look outside, maybe set up the Zelta guns. Can't tell but\n what that protoplasmic nightmare might take a notion to pay us a visit\n in the near future!\"\n\n\n \"Right!\" Splinter unscrewed the port cogs, swung the portal back.", "Kerry Blane lit a cigarette, leaned toward a vision port. He felt again\n that thrill he had experienced when he had first flashed his single-man\n cruiser through the clouds years before. Then the breath caught in his\n throat, and he tapped his companion's arm.\n\n\n \"Take a look!\" he called excitedly.\n\n\n They fought in the ocean below, fought in a never-ending splashing of\n what seemed to be liquid fire. It was like watching a tri-dim screen of\n a news event, except for the utter lack of sound.", "Now, his aged but steady fingers rested lightly on the controls,\n brought the patrol cruiser closer to the cloud-banks on the line of\n demarcation between the sunward and sunless sides of the planet. He\n hummed tunelessly, strangely happy, as he peered ahead.\n\n\n \"Val Kenton died there,\" Splinter whispered softly, \"Died to save the\n lives of three other people!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded. \"Yes,\" he agreed, and his voice changed subtly.\n \"Val was a blackguard, a criminal; but he died in the best traditions\n of the service.\" He sighed. \"He never had a chance.\"\n\n\n \"Murdered!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane smiled grimly. \"I guess I used too broad an interpretation\n of the word,\" he said gently. \"Anyway, one of our main tasks is to\n destroy the thing that killed him.\"\n\n\n His lean fingers tightened unconsciously.", "Splinter buckled on his dis-gun, excitement flaring in his eyes.\n\n\n \"Let's do a little exploring?\" he said eagerly.\n\n\n Kerry Blane shook his head, swung the cruiser north again.\n\n\n \"Plenty of time for that later,\" he said mildly. \"We'll find this\n turtle-island, make a landing, and take a look around. Later, if we're\n lucky enough to blow our objective to Kingdom Come, we'll do a little\n exploring of the other islands.\"\n\n\n \"Hell!\" Splinter scowled in mock disgust. \"An old woman like you should\n be taking in knitting for a living!\"", "He peered through the port, seeking any spot clear enough for a landing\n field. Except for a strip of open beach, the island was a solid mass of\n heavy fern-like growth.\n\n\n \"Belt yourself,\" Kerry Blane warned. \"If that beach isn't solid, I'll\n have to lift the ship in a hell of a hurry.\"\n\n\n \"Right!\" Splinter's fingers were all thumbs in his excitement.\n\n\n Kerry Blane set the controls for a shallow glide, his fingers moving\n like a concert pianist's. The cruiser yawed slightly, settled slowly\n in a flat shallow glide.\n\n\n \"We're going in,\" Kerry Blane said quietly.\n\n\n He closed a knife switch, seeing too late the vitamin capsule that was\n lodged in the slot. There was the sharp splutter of a short-circuit,\n and a thin tendril of smoke drifted upward." ], [ "He stood, leaning against the ship, watching as Splinter picked up\n the first gun and leveled it at a gigantic tree. Splinter sighted\n carefully, winked at the older man, then pressed the firing stud.\n\n\n Nothing happened; there was no hissing crackle of released energy.\n\n\n Kerry Blane strode forward, puzzlement on his lined face, his hand\n out-stretched toward the defective weapon. Splinter gaped at the gun in\n his hands, held it out wordlessly.\n\n\n \"The crash must have broken something,\" Kerry Blane said slowly.\n\n\n Splinter shook his head. \"There's only one moving part,\" he said, \"and\n that's the force gate on the firing stud.\"\n\n\n \"Try the other,\" Kerry Blane said slowly.\n\n\n \"Okay!\"", "\"Won't be any trouble at all to lift the ship,\" he called. \"After\n rewiring the board, we'll turn the ship with an underjet, swing it\n about, and head her toward the sea.\"\n\n\n Splinter nodded, dropped into the open port. A moment later, he flipped\n a rope ladder outside, where it dangled to the ground, then climbed out\n himself, carrying the two Zelta guns.\n\n\n \"We'd better test these,\" he said. \"We don't want any slip-ups when we\n do go into action.\"\n\n\n He climbed down the ladder, laid the guns aside, then reached up a\n hand to aid Kerry Blane's descent. Kerry Blane came down slowly and\n awkwardly, jumped the last few feet. He felt surprisingly light and\n strong in the lesser gravity.", "Splinter lifted the second gun, pressed the stud, gazed white-faced at\n his companion.\n\n\n \"It won't work, either,\" he said stupidly. \"I don't get it? The source\n of power is limitless. Solar rays never—\"\n\n\n Old Kerry Blane dropped the first gun to his side, swore harshly.\n\n\n \"Damn it,\" he said. \"They didn't think of it; you didn't think of it;\n and I most certainly forgot! Solar rays can't penetrate the miles of\n clouds on Venus. Those guns are utterly useless as weapons!\"", "\"Oh!\" Splinter swung his feet from the bunk, peered from the vision\n port, sleepiness instantly erased from his face.\n\n\n \"Hot damn!\" he chortled. \"Now we'll see a little action!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane grinned, tried to conceal the excitement he felt. He shook\n his head, his fingers flickering over the control studs.\n\n\n \"Don't get your hopes too high, lad,\" he counseled. \"With those super\n Zelta guns, it won't take ten minutes to wipe out that monster.\"\n\n\n Splinter rubbed his hands together, sighed like a boy seeing his first\n circus. \"Listen, for ten minutes of that, I'd ride this chunk of metal\n for a year!\"\n\n\n \"Could be!\" Kerry Blane agreed.", "\"Forget it, lad,\" he said more kindly, \"those things happen. Now, if\n you'll bind a splint about my arm, we'll see what we can do about\n righting the ship.\"\n\n\n Splinter nodded, opened the medical locker, worked with tape and\n splints for minutes. Great beads of perspiration stood out in high\n relief on Kerry Blane's forehead, but he made no sound. At last,\n Splinter finished, tucked the supplies away.\n\n\n \"Now what?\" he asked subduedly.\n\n\n \"Let's take a look outside, maybe set up the Zelta guns. Can't tell but\n what that protoplasmic nightmare might take a notion to pay us a visit\n in the near future!\"\n\n\n \"Right!\" Splinter unscrewed the port cogs, swung the portal back.", "\"I'd like nothing better than to turn a Zelta-blaster on that chunk of\n living protoplasm and cremate it.\"\n\n\n Splinters shivered slightly. \"Do you think we'll find it?\" he asked.\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded. \"I think it will find us; after all, it's just an\n animated appetite looking for food.\"\n\n\n He turned back to the controls, flipped a switch, and the cutting of\n the nose rocket dropped the ship in an angling glide toward the clouds\n a few miles below. Gravity was full strength now, and although not as\n great as Earth's, was still strong enough to bring a sense of giddiness\n to the men.\n\n\n \"Here we go!\" Splinter said tonelessly.", "Splinter rolled his six foot three of lanky body into a more\n comfortable position on the air-bunk. He yawned tremendously, fumbled a\n small box from his shirt pocket, and removed a marble-like capsule.\n\n\n \"Better take one of these,\" he warned. \"You're liable to get the space\n bends at any moment.\"\n\n\n Old Kerry Blane snorted, batted the box aside impatiently, scowled\n moodily at the capsules that bounced for a moment against the pilot\n room's walls before hanging motionless in the air.\n\n\n \"Mister Wood,\" he said icily, \"I was flying a space ship while they\n were changing your pants twenty times a day. When I want advice on how\n to fly a ship, how to cure space bends, how to handle a Zelta ray, or\n how to spit—I'll ask you! Until then, you and your bloody marbles can\n go plumb straight to the devil!\"", "\"Everything is more or less okay,\" he said. \"The board will have to\n be rewired, but nothing else seems to be damaged so that repairs are\n needed.\"\n\n\n Splinter looked up from his task of bandaging his leg. \"What caused\n the crash?\" he asked. \"One minute, everything was all right; the next,\n Blooey!\"\n\n\n Anger suddenly mottled Kerry Blane's face; he swore monotonously and\n bitterly for a moment.\n\n\n \"Those gol-damned pills you been taking caused the crash!\" he roared.\n \"One of them broke and shorted out the control board.\" He scowled at\n the incredulous Splinter. \"By the three tails of a Martian sand-pup, I\n ought to cram the rest of them down your throat, boxes and all!\"\n\n\n Splinter flushed, seemed to be fumbling for words. After a bit, Kerry\n Blane grinned.", "\"Damn!\" Kerry Blane swore briefly.\n\n\n There was an instant, terrific explosion of the stern jets, and the\n cruiser hurtled toward the beach like a gravity-crazed comet.\n\n\n Kerry Blane said absolutely nothing, his breath driven from him by the\n suck of inertia. His hands darted for the controls, seeking to balance\n the forces that threw the ship about like a toy. He cut all rockets\n with a smashing swoop of his hand, tried to fire the bow rockets. But\n the short had ruined the entire control system.\n\n\n For one interminable second, he saw the uncanny uprush of the island\n below. He flicked his gaze about, saw the instant terror that wiped\n all other expression from his young companion's face. Then the cruiser\n plowed into the silvery sand.", "Splinter buckled on his dis-gun, excitement flaring in his eyes.\n\n\n \"Let's do a little exploring?\" he said eagerly.\n\n\n Kerry Blane shook his head, swung the cruiser north again.\n\n\n \"Plenty of time for that later,\" he said mildly. \"We'll find this\n turtle-island, make a landing, and take a look around. Later, if we're\n lucky enough to blow our objective to Kingdom Come, we'll do a little\n exploring of the other islands.\"\n\n\n \"Hell!\" Splinter scowled in mock disgust. \"An old woman like you should\n be taking in knitting for a living!\"", "Belts parted like rotten string; they were thrown forward with crushing\n force against the control panel. They groped feebly for support, their\n bodies twisting involuntarily, as the ship cartwheeled a dozen times in\n a few seconds. Almost instantly, consciousness was battered from them.\n\n\n With one final, grinding bounce, the cruiser rolled to its side,\n twisted over and over for a hundred yards, then came to a metal-ripping\n stop against a moss-grown boulder at the water's edge.\nIII\n\n\n Kerry Blane choked, tried to turn his head from the water that trickled\n into his face. He opened his eyes, stared blankly, uncomprehendingly\n into the bloody features of the man bending over him.\n\n\n \"What happened?\" he gasped.\n\n\n Splinter Wood laughed, almost hysterically, mopped at his forehead with\n a wet handkerchief.", "\"I thought you were dead!\" he said simply.\n\n\n Kerry Blane moved his arm experimentally, felt broken bones grate in\n an exquisite wave of pain. He fought back the nausea, gazed about the\n cabin, realized the ship lay on its side.\n\n\n \"Maybe I am,\" he said ruefully. \"No man could live through that crash.\"\n\n\n Splinter moved away, sat down tiredly on the edge of a bunk. He shook\n his head dazedly, inspected the long cut on his leg.\n\n\n \"We seem to have done it,\" he said dully.\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded, clambered to his feet, favoring his broken arm.\n He leaned over the control panel, inspecting the dials with a worried\n gaze. Slowly, his eyes lightened, and his voice was almost cheerful as\n he swung about.", "Now, his aged but steady fingers rested lightly on the controls,\n brought the patrol cruiser closer to the cloud-banks on the line of\n demarcation between the sunward and sunless sides of the planet. He\n hummed tunelessly, strangely happy, as he peered ahead.\n\n\n \"Val Kenton died there,\" Splinter whispered softly, \"Died to save the\n lives of three other people!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane nodded. \"Yes,\" he agreed, and his voice changed subtly.\n \"Val was a blackguard, a criminal; but he died in the best traditions\n of the service.\" He sighed. \"He never had a chance.\"\n\n\n \"Murdered!\"\n\n\n Kerry Blane smiled grimly. \"I guess I used too broad an interpretation\n of the word,\" he said gently. \"Anyway, one of our main tasks is to\n destroy the thing that killed him.\"\n\n\n His lean fingers tightened unconsciously.", "He peered through the port, seeking any spot clear enough for a landing\n field. Except for a strip of open beach, the island was a solid mass of\n heavy fern-like growth.\n\n\n \"Belt yourself,\" Kerry Blane warned. \"If that beach isn't solid, I'll\n have to lift the ship in a hell of a hurry.\"\n\n\n \"Right!\" Splinter's fingers were all thumbs in his excitement.\n\n\n Kerry Blane set the controls for a shallow glide, his fingers moving\n like a concert pianist's. The cruiser yawed slightly, settled slowly\n in a flat shallow glide.\n\n\n \"We're going in,\" Kerry Blane said quietly.\n\n\n He closed a knife switch, seeing too late the vitamin capsule that was\n lodged in the slot. There was the sharp splutter of a short-circuit,\n and a thin tendril of smoke drifted upward.", "Seconds flowed into moments, and the moments merged into one another,\n and still the clouds pressed with a visible strength against the\n ports. The rockets drummed steadily, holding the ship aloft, dropping\n it slowly toward the planet below. Then the clouds thinned, and,\n incredibly, were permeated with a dim and glowing light. A second\n later, and the clouds were gone, and a thousand feet below tumbled and\n tossed in a majestic display of ruthless strength an ocean that seemed\n to be composed of liquid fluorescence.\n\n\n Kerry Blane heard Splinter's instant sigh of unbelief.\n\n\n \"Good Lord!\" Splinter said, \"What—\"", "\"Ten to one we don't get back!\" Splinter said pessimistically.\n\n\n Kerry Blane scrubbed out his cigarette, scowled bleakly at the\n instrument panel. He sensed the faint thread of fear in the youngster's\n tone, and a nostalgic twinge touched his heart, for he was remembering\n the days of his youth when he had a full life to look forward to.\n\n\n \"If you're afraid, you can get out and walk back,\" he snapped\n disagreeably.\n\n\n A grin lifted the corners of Splinter's long mouth, spread into his\n eyes. His hand unconsciously came up, touched the tiny squadron pin on\n his lapel.\n\n\n \"Sorry to disappoint you, glory grabber,\" he said mockingly, \"but I've\n got definite orders to take care of you.\"", "\"Orders are orders!\" Kerry Blane shrugged.\nHe swung the cruiser in a wide arc to the north, trebling the flying\n speed within minutes, handling the controls with a familiar dexterity.\n He said nothing, searched the gleaming ocean for the smudge of\n blackness that would denote another island. His gaze flicked amusedly,\n now and then, to the lanky Splinter who scowled moodily and toyed with\n the dis-gun in his long hands.\n\n\n \"Cheer up, lad,\" Kerry Blane said finally. \"I think you'll find plenty\n to occupy your time shortly.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe?\" Splinter said gloomily.\n\n\n He idly swallowed another vitamin capsule, grinned, when he saw Kerry\n Blane's automatic grimace of distaste. Then he yawned hugely, twisted\n into a comfortable position, dozed sleepily.", "Kerry Blane had flown every type of ship that rode in space. In the\n passing years, he had flight-tested almost every new experimental ship,\n had flown them with increasing skill, had earned a reputation as a\n trouble shooter on any kind of craft.\n\n\n But even Kerry Blane had to retire eventually.\n\n\n A great retirement banquet had been given in his honor by the\n Interplanetary Squadron. There had been the usual speeches and\n presentations; and Kerry Blane had heard them all, had thanked the\n donors of the gifts. But it was not until the next morning, when he was\n dressed in civilian clothes for the first time in forty years, that he\n realized the enormity of the thing that had happened to his life.\n\n\n Something died within Kerry Blane's heart that morning, shriveled and\n passed away, leaving him suddenly shrunken and old. He had become like\n a rusty old freighter couched between the gleaming bodies of great\n space warriors.", "\"I've had the bends before, and lived through them!\" he said, still\n weakly defiant.\n\n\n \"That's the past,\" Splinter said quietly. \"This is the present, and you\n take your pills every day, just as I do—from now on.\"\n\n\n \"All right—and thanks!\"\n\n\n \"Forget it!\" Splinter flushed in quick embarrassment.\n\n\n A buzzer sounded from the instrument panel, and a tiny light glowed\n redly.\n\n\n \"Six hours more,\" Splinter said, turned to the instrument panel.\n\n\n His long hands played over the instrument panel, checking, controlling\n the rocket fire, adjusting delicate instruments to hairline marks.\n Kerry Blane nodded in silent approval.", "And then the scaly monster flashed in a half-turn, drove forward with\n jaws agape, wrenched and ripped at the smooth black throat of the other\n creature. The second creature rippled and undulated in agony, whipping\n the ocean to foam, then went limp. The victorious monster circled the\n body of its dead foe, then, majestically, plunged from sight into the\n ocean's depths. An instant later, the water frothed, as hundreds of\n lesser marine monsters attacked and fed on the floating corpse.\n\n\n \"Brrrr!\" Splinter shivered in sudden horror.\n\n\n Kerry Blane chuckled dryly. \"Feel like going for a swim?\" he asked\n conversationally.\n\n\n Splinter shook his head, watched the scene disappear from view to the\n rear of the line of flight, then sank back onto his bunk.\n\n\n \"Not me!\" he said deprecatingly." ] ]
valid	20007	[ "Why did people say the story about Clinton hiding under a blanket to meet a woman was untrue?", "What made it easier for previous presidents to get away with adultery?", "Why did the press not report on JFK's adultery?", "Where in the White House is it feasible for the president to meet a woman?", "What is the best way for a president to sneak a woman into the White House?", "Why would the president choose to let agents go with him to meet a woman?", "What is the risk involved in the president sneaking out to a woman's house?", "Which of the 4 scenarios involves the fewest people knowing?", "Which president's staffers did not help explain how adultery could be possible?", "Which president had staffers find and bring in women for him?" ]	[ [ "They know Clinton cheats on his wife", "They were Clinton-haters", "He could not have gotten back home without being found out", "It was published by the Washington Times" ], [ "Their staff did not know", "They always tried to hide it well", "The secret service budget was small", "The reporters never found out" ], [ "They suspected it but did not want to print this kind of story", "They knew about it but felt threatened", "They suspected it but did not know for sure", "They never suspected it" ], [ "Only the East Wing", "Only the private quarters", "Only the oval office, bowling alley, or East Wing", "Only the private quarters or the office restroom" ], [ "Through the service elevator", "Through the oval office", "Through the tunnel", "Through the gate" ], [ "They will not record the visit in their logs", "There is no way he can avoid it", "The agents will drive the car for him", "He would have to notify a cabinet member to get out of it" ], [ "The agents may refuse to go with him", "He has to inform the head of the secret service", "The agents will record the visit and make it public", "People living near the woman might notice the agents" ], [ "White House ", "Visiting the woman", "Camp David", "Hotel" ], [ "Clinton", "Carter", "Bush", "Ford" ], [ "Kennedy and Clinton", "Kennedy", "Clinton", "Harding" ] ]	[ 3, 3, 1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 2, 2 ]	[ 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "The logistics of presidential adultery. \n\n \n\n The Washington Times could hardly contain its excitement: \"A former FBI agent assigned to the White House describes in a new book how President Clinton slips past his Secret Service detail in the dead of night, hides under a blanket in the back of a dark-colored sedan, and trysts with a woman, possibly a celebrity, at the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Washington.\" For Clinton-haters, Gary Aldrich's tale sounded too good to be true.", "And it was. The not-so-Secret-Service agent's \"source\" turned out to be a thirdhand rumor passed on by Clinton scandalmonger David Brock. Those who know about White House security--Clinton staffers, the Secret Service, former aides to Presidents Reagan and Bush--demolished Aldrich's claims. Clinton couldn't give his Secret Service agents the slip (they shadow him when he walks around the White House), couldn't arrange a private visit without tipping off hotel staff, and couldn't re-enter the White House without getting nabbed. (Guards check all cars at the gate--especially those that arrive at 4 a.m.) \n\n Even so, the image resonates. For some Americans, it is an article of faith: Bill Clinton cheated on his wife when he was governor, and he cheats on her as president. But can he? Is it possible for the president of the United States to commit adultery and get away with it? Maybe, but it's tougher than you think.", "Historically, presidential adultery is common. Warren Harding cavorted with Nan Britton and Carrie Phillips. Franklin Roosevelt \"entertained\" Lucy Rutherford at the White House when Eleanor was away. America was none the wiser, even if White House reporters were. \n\n Those who know Clinton is cheating often point to the model of John F. Kennedy, who turned presidential hanky-panky into a science. Kennedy invited mistresses to the White House for afternoon (and evening, and overnight) liaisons. Kennedy seduced women on the White House staff (including, it seems, Jackie's own press secretary). Kennedy made assignations outside the White House, then escaped his Secret Service detail by scaling walls and ducking out back doors. If Kennedy did it, so can Clinton. \n\n Well, no. Though Clinton slavishly emulates JFK in every other way, he'd be a fool to steal Kennedy's MO d'amour . Here's why:", "1) Too many people would know. Kennedy hardly bothered to hide his conquests. According to Kennedy mistress (and mob moll) Judith Campbell's autobiography, those who knew about their affair included: Kennedy's personal aides and secretary (who pandered for him), White House drivers, White House gate guards, White House Secret Service agents, White House domestic staff, most of Campbell's friends, a lot of Kennedy's friends, and several Kennedy family members. Such broad circulation would be disastrous today because: \n\n 2) The press would report it. Kennedy conducted his affairs brazenly because he trusted reporters not to write about them. White House journalists knew about, or at least strongly suspected, Kennedy's infidelity, but never published a story about it. Ask Gary Hart if reporters would exercise the same restraint today. Clinton must worry about this more than most presidents. Not only are newspapers and magazines willing to publish an adultery story about him, but many are pursuing it.", "For the same reason, Clinton would find it difficult to hire a mistress. A lovely young secretary would set off alarm bells in any reporter investigating presidential misbehavior. Says a former Clinton aide, \"There has been a real tendency to have no good-looking women on the staff in order to protect him.\" \n\n 3) Clinton cannot avoid Secret Service protection. During the Kennedy era, the Secret Service employed fewer than 500 people and had an annual budget of about $4 million. Then came Lee Harvey Oswald, Squeaky Fromme, and John Hinckley. Now the Secret Service payroll tops 4,500 (most of them agents), and the annual budget exceeds $500 million (up 300 percent just since 1980). At any given time, more than 100 agents guard the president in the White House. Top aides from recent administrations are adamant: The Secret Service never lets the president escape its protection.", "So what's a randy president to do? Any modern presidential affair would need to meet stringent demands. Only a tiny number of trusted aides and Secret Service agents could know of it. They would need to maintain complete silence about it. And no reporters could catch wind of it. Such an affair is improbable, but--take heart, Clinton-haters--it's not impossible. Based on scuttlebutt and speculation from insiders at the Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Ford White Houses, here are the four likeliest scenarios for presidential adultery.", "That said, the current president has every reason not to trust his Secret Service detail. No one seriously compares Secret Service agents (who are pros) to Arkansas state troopers (who aren't). But Clinton might not trust any security guards after the beating he took from his Arkansas posse. Also, if other Secret Service agents are anything like Aldrich, they may dislike this president. One Secret Service leak--the lamp-throwing story--already damaged Clinton. Agents could tattle again.", "Late in the evening, the aide escorts a comely young woman back to the hotel. The Secret Service checks her, then waves her into the aide's room. She emerges three hours later, slightly disheveled. She kisses the aide in the hall as she leaves. Someone got lucky--but who? The Risks : The posted Secret Service agents might see through the charade. More awkwardly, the aide would be forced to play the seamy role of procurer. (He would probably do it. Kennedy's assistants performed this task dutifully.) \n\n In short, presidential adultery is just barely possible in 1996. But it would be extremely inconvenient, extremely risky, and potentially disastrous. It seems, in fact, a lot more trouble than it's worth. A president these days might be wiser to imitate Jimmy Carter, not Jack Kennedy, and only lust in his heart.", "Let us pause for a moment to demolish two of the splashier rumors about White House fornication. First, the residence is the only place in the White House where the president can have safe (i.e. uninterrupted) sex. He can be intruded upon or observed everywhere else--except, perhaps, the Oval Office bathroom. Unless the president is an exhibitionist or a lunatic, liaisons in the Oval Office, bowling alley, or East Wing are unimaginable. Second, the much-touted tunnel between the White House and the Treasury Department is all-but-useless to the presidential adulterer. It is too well-guarded. The president could smuggle a mistress through it, but it would attract far more attention from White House staff than a straightforward gate entry would.", "The president dials a \"friend\" on his private line. (Most presidents placed all their calls through the White House operators, who kept a record of each one; the Clintons installed a direct-dial line in the private quarters.) The president invites the friend over for a cozy evening at the White House. After he hangs up with the friend, he phones the guard at the East Executive Avenue gate and tells him to admit a visitor. He also notifies the Secret Service agent and the usher on duty downstairs that they should send her up to the residence.", "Meanwhile, back in the private quarters, the president and friend get comfortable in one of the 14 bedrooms (or, perhaps, the billiard room). After a pleasant 15 minutes (or two hours?), she says goodbye. Depending on how long she stays, she may pass a different shift of Secret Service agents as she departs. She exits the White House grounds, unescorted and unbothered, at the East gate. The Risks : A gate guard, an usher, and a handful of Secret Service agents see her. All of them have a very good idea of why she was there. The White House maid who changes the sheets sees other suspicious evidence. And the woman's--real--name is entered in a Secret Service computer. None of this endangers the president too much. The computer record of her visit is private, at least for several decades after he leaves office. No personal aides know about the visit. Unless they were staking out the East gate, no journalists do either. The Secret Service agents, the guard, the steward, and the maid owe their jobs to their discretion. Leaks get them fired.", "3. The Camp David Assignation. A bucolic, safer version of the White House Sneak. The president invites a group of friends and staffers--including his paramour but not his wife--to spend the weekend at Camp David. The girlfriend is assigned the cabin next to the president's lodge. Late at night, after the Hearts game has ended and everyone has retired to their cabins, she strolls next door. There is a Secret Service command post outside the cabin. The agents on duty (probably three of them) let her enter. A few hours later, she slips back to her own cabin. The Risks : Only a few Secret Service agents know about the liaison. Even though the guest list is not public, all the Navy and Marine personnel at Camp David, as well as the other guests, would know that the presidential entourage included an attractive woman, but not the first lady. That would raise eyebrows if it got back to the White House press room.", "Secret Service agents and their immediate supervisor know about the visit. It is recorded in the Secret Service log, which is not made public during the administration's tenure. Gate guards may suspect something fishy when they see the car. A reporter", "1) The White House Sneak. This is a discreet variation of the old Kennedy/Campbell liaison. It's late at night. The president's personal aides have gone home. The family is away. He is alone in the private quarters. The private quarters, a k a \"the residence,\" occupy the second and third floors of the White House. Secret Service agents guard the residence's entrances on the first floor and ground floors, but the first family has privacy in the quarters themselves. Maids and butlers serve the family there, but the president and first lady ask them to leave when they want to be alone.", "his Secret Service detail that he needs to take an \"off-the-record\" trip. He wants to leave the White House without his motorcade and without informing the press. He requests two agents and an unobtrusive sedan. The Secret Service shift leader", "A taxi drops the woman near the East gate. She identifies herself to the guard, who examines her ID, runs her name through a computer (to check for outstanding warrants), and logs her in a database. A White House usher escorts her into the East Wing of the White House. They walk through the East Wing and pass the Secret Service guard post by the White House movie theater. The agent on duty waves them on. The usher takes her to the private elevator, where another Secret Service agent is posted. She takes the elevator to the second floor. The president opens the door and welcomes her. Under no circumstances could she enter the living quarters without first encountering Secret Service agents.", "or passer-by could spy the president--even through tinted windows--as the car enters and exits the White House. The friend's neighbors might spot him, or they might notice the agents lurking outside her house. A neighbor might call the police to", "4. The Hotel Shuffle. The cleverest strategy, and the only one that cuts out the Secret Service. The president is traveling without his family. The Secret Service secures an entire hotel floor, reserving elevators and guarding the entrance to the president's suite. The president's personal aide (a man in his late 20s) takes the room adjoining the president's. An internal door connects the two rooms, so the aide can enter the president's room without alerting the agents in the hall. This is standard practice.", "2) The \"Off-the-Record\" Visit. Late at night, after his personal aides and the press have gone home, the president tells", "Treasury. The president and the two agents drive the unmarked car to a woman friend's house. Ideally, she has a covered garage. (An apartment building or a hotel would raise considerably the risk of getting caught.) The agents guard the outside" ], [ "Late in the evening, the aide escorts a comely young woman back to the hotel. The Secret Service checks her, then waves her into the aide's room. She emerges three hours later, slightly disheveled. She kisses the aide in the hall as she leaves. Someone got lucky--but who? The Risks : The posted Secret Service agents might see through the charade. More awkwardly, the aide would be forced to play the seamy role of procurer. (He would probably do it. Kennedy's assistants performed this task dutifully.) \n\n In short, presidential adultery is just barely possible in 1996. But it would be extremely inconvenient, extremely risky, and potentially disastrous. It seems, in fact, a lot more trouble than it's worth. A president these days might be wiser to imitate Jimmy Carter, not Jack Kennedy, and only lust in his heart.", "1) Too many people would know. Kennedy hardly bothered to hide his conquests. According to Kennedy mistress (and mob moll) Judith Campbell's autobiography, those who knew about their affair included: Kennedy's personal aides and secretary (who pandered for him), White House drivers, White House gate guards, White House Secret Service agents, White House domestic staff, most of Campbell's friends, a lot of Kennedy's friends, and several Kennedy family members. Such broad circulation would be disastrous today because: \n\n 2) The press would report it. Kennedy conducted his affairs brazenly because he trusted reporters not to write about them. White House journalists knew about, or at least strongly suspected, Kennedy's infidelity, but never published a story about it. Ask Gary Hart if reporters would exercise the same restraint today. Clinton must worry about this more than most presidents. Not only are newspapers and magazines willing to publish an adultery story about him, but many are pursuing it.", "So what's a randy president to do? Any modern presidential affair would need to meet stringent demands. Only a tiny number of trusted aides and Secret Service agents could know of it. They would need to maintain complete silence about it. And no reporters could catch wind of it. Such an affair is improbable, but--take heart, Clinton-haters--it's not impossible. Based on scuttlebutt and speculation from insiders at the Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Ford White Houses, here are the four likeliest scenarios for presidential adultery.", "Historically, presidential adultery is common. Warren Harding cavorted with Nan Britton and Carrie Phillips. Franklin Roosevelt \"entertained\" Lucy Rutherford at the White House when Eleanor was away. America was none the wiser, even if White House reporters were. \n\n Those who know Clinton is cheating often point to the model of John F. Kennedy, who turned presidential hanky-panky into a science. Kennedy invited mistresses to the White House for afternoon (and evening, and overnight) liaisons. Kennedy seduced women on the White House staff (including, it seems, Jackie's own press secretary). Kennedy made assignations outside the White House, then escaped his Secret Service detail by scaling walls and ducking out back doors. If Kennedy did it, so can Clinton. \n\n Well, no. Though Clinton slavishly emulates JFK in every other way, he'd be a fool to steal Kennedy's MO d'amour . Here's why:", "And it was. The not-so-Secret-Service agent's \"source\" turned out to be a thirdhand rumor passed on by Clinton scandalmonger David Brock. Those who know about White House security--Clinton staffers, the Secret Service, former aides to Presidents Reagan and Bush--demolished Aldrich's claims. Clinton couldn't give his Secret Service agents the slip (they shadow him when he walks around the White House), couldn't arrange a private visit without tipping off hotel staff, and couldn't re-enter the White House without getting nabbed. (Guards check all cars at the gate--especially those that arrive at 4 a.m.) \n\n Even so, the image resonates. For some Americans, it is an article of faith: Bill Clinton cheated on his wife when he was governor, and he cheats on her as president. But can he? Is it possible for the president of the United States to commit adultery and get away with it? Maybe, but it's tougher than you think.", "For the same reason, Clinton would find it difficult to hire a mistress. A lovely young secretary would set off alarm bells in any reporter investigating presidential misbehavior. Says a former Clinton aide, \"There has been a real tendency to have no good-looking women on the staff in order to protect him.\" \n\n 3) Clinton cannot avoid Secret Service protection. During the Kennedy era, the Secret Service employed fewer than 500 people and had an annual budget of about $4 million. Then came Lee Harvey Oswald, Squeaky Fromme, and John Hinckley. Now the Secret Service payroll tops 4,500 (most of them agents), and the annual budget exceeds $500 million (up 300 percent just since 1980). At any given time, more than 100 agents guard the president in the White House. Top aides from recent administrations are adamant: The Secret Service never lets the president escape its protection.", "The logistics of presidential adultery. \n\n \n\n The Washington Times could hardly contain its excitement: \"A former FBI agent assigned to the White House describes in a new book how President Clinton slips past his Secret Service detail in the dead of night, hides under a blanket in the back of a dark-colored sedan, and trysts with a woman, possibly a celebrity, at the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Washington.\" For Clinton-haters, Gary Aldrich's tale sounded too good to be true.", "Let us pause for a moment to demolish two of the splashier rumors about White House fornication. First, the residence is the only place in the White House where the president can have safe (i.e. uninterrupted) sex. He can be intruded upon or observed everywhere else--except, perhaps, the Oval Office bathroom. Unless the president is an exhibitionist or a lunatic, liaisons in the Oval Office, bowling alley, or East Wing are unimaginable. Second, the much-touted tunnel between the White House and the Treasury Department is all-but-useless to the presidential adulterer. It is too well-guarded. The president could smuggle a mistress through it, but it would attract far more attention from White House staff than a straightforward gate entry would.", "3. The Camp David Assignation. A bucolic, safer version of the White House Sneak. The president invites a group of friends and staffers--including his paramour but not his wife--to spend the weekend at Camp David. The girlfriend is assigned the cabin next to the president's lodge. Late at night, after the Hearts game has ended and everyone has retired to their cabins, she strolls next door. There is a Secret Service command post outside the cabin. The agents on duty (probably three of them) let her enter. A few hours later, she slips back to her own cabin. The Risks : Only a few Secret Service agents know about the liaison. Even though the guest list is not public, all the Navy and Marine personnel at Camp David, as well as the other guests, would know that the presidential entourage included an attractive woman, but not the first lady. That would raise eyebrows if it got back to the White House press room.", "Meanwhile, back in the private quarters, the president and friend get comfortable in one of the 14 bedrooms (or, perhaps, the billiard room). After a pleasant 15 minutes (or two hours?), she says goodbye. Depending on how long she stays, she may pass a different shift of Secret Service agents as she departs. She exits the White House grounds, unescorted and unbothered, at the East gate. The Risks : A gate guard, an usher, and a handful of Secret Service agents see her. All of them have a very good idea of why she was there. The White House maid who changes the sheets sees other suspicious evidence. And the woman's--real--name is entered in a Secret Service computer. None of this endangers the president too much. The computer record of her visit is private, at least for several decades after he leaves office. No personal aides know about the visit. Unless they were staking out the East gate, no journalists do either. The Secret Service agents, the guard, the steward, and the maid owe their jobs to their discretion. Leaks get them fired.", "The president dials a \"friend\" on his private line. (Most presidents placed all their calls through the White House operators, who kept a record of each one; the Clintons installed a direct-dial line in the private quarters.) The president invites the friend over for a cozy evening at the White House. After he hangs up with the friend, he phones the guard at the East Executive Avenue gate and tells him to admit a visitor. He also notifies the Secret Service agent and the usher on duty downstairs that they should send her up to the residence.", "1) The White House Sneak. This is a discreet variation of the old Kennedy/Campbell liaison. It's late at night. The president's personal aides have gone home. The family is away. He is alone in the private quarters. The private quarters, a k a \"the residence,\" occupy the second and third floors of the White House. Secret Service agents guard the residence's entrances on the first floor and ground floors, but the first family has privacy in the quarters themselves. Maids and butlers serve the family there, but the president and first lady ask them to leave when they want to be alone.", "4. The Hotel Shuffle. The cleverest strategy, and the only one that cuts out the Secret Service. The president is traveling without his family. The Secret Service secures an entire hotel floor, reserving elevators and guarding the entrance to the president's suite. The president's personal aide (a man in his late 20s) takes the room adjoining the president's. An internal door connects the two rooms, so the aide can enter the president's room without alerting the agents in the hall. This is standard practice.", "That said, the current president has every reason not to trust his Secret Service detail. No one seriously compares Secret Service agents (who are pros) to Arkansas state troopers (who aren't). But Clinton might not trust any security guards after the beating he took from his Arkansas posse. Also, if other Secret Service agents are anything like Aldrich, they may dislike this president. One Secret Service leak--the lamp-throwing story--already damaged Clinton. Agents could tattle again.", "or passer-by could spy the president--even through tinted windows--as the car enters and exits the White House. The friend's neighbors might spot him, or they might notice the agents lurking outside her house. A neighbor might call the police to", "2) The \"Off-the-Record\" Visit. Late at night, after his personal aides and the press have gone home, the president tells", "A taxi drops the woman near the East gate. She identifies herself to the guard, who examines her ID, runs her name through a computer (to check for outstanding warrants), and logs her in a database. A White House usher escorts her into the East Wing of the White House. They walk through the East Wing and pass the Secret Service guard post by the White House movie theater. The agent on duty waves them on. The usher takes her to the private elevator, where another Secret Service agent is posted. She takes the elevator to the second floor. The president opens the door and welcomes her. Under no circumstances could she enter the living quarters without first encountering Secret Service agents.", "Secret Service agents and their immediate supervisor know about the visit. It is recorded in the Secret Service log, which is not made public during the administration's tenure. Gate guards may suspect something fishy when they see the car. A reporter", "of the house while the president and his friend do their thing. Then the agents chauffeur the president back to the White House, re-entering through the Southwest or Southeast gate, away from the press station. The Risks : Only two", "his Secret Service detail that he needs to take an \"off-the-record\" trip. He wants to leave the White House without his motorcade and without informing the press. He requests two agents and an unobtrusive sedan. The Secret Service shift leader" ], [ "1) Too many people would know. Kennedy hardly bothered to hide his conquests. According to Kennedy mistress (and mob moll) Judith Campbell's autobiography, those who knew about their affair included: Kennedy's personal aides and secretary (who pandered for him), White House drivers, White House gate guards, White House Secret Service agents, White House domestic staff, most of Campbell's friends, a lot of Kennedy's friends, and several Kennedy family members. Such broad circulation would be disastrous today because: \n\n 2) The press would report it. Kennedy conducted his affairs brazenly because he trusted reporters not to write about them. White House journalists knew about, or at least strongly suspected, Kennedy's infidelity, but never published a story about it. Ask Gary Hart if reporters would exercise the same restraint today. Clinton must worry about this more than most presidents. Not only are newspapers and magazines willing to publish an adultery story about him, but many are pursuing it.", "Historically, presidential adultery is common. Warren Harding cavorted with Nan Britton and Carrie Phillips. Franklin Roosevelt \"entertained\" Lucy Rutherford at the White House when Eleanor was away. America was none the wiser, even if White House reporters were. \n\n Those who know Clinton is cheating often point to the model of John F. Kennedy, who turned presidential hanky-panky into a science. Kennedy invited mistresses to the White House for afternoon (and evening, and overnight) liaisons. Kennedy seduced women on the White House staff (including, it seems, Jackie's own press secretary). Kennedy made assignations outside the White House, then escaped his Secret Service detail by scaling walls and ducking out back doors. If Kennedy did it, so can Clinton. \n\n Well, no. Though Clinton slavishly emulates JFK in every other way, he'd be a fool to steal Kennedy's MO d'amour . Here's why:", "Late in the evening, the aide escorts a comely young woman back to the hotel. The Secret Service checks her, then waves her into the aide's room. She emerges three hours later, slightly disheveled. She kisses the aide in the hall as she leaves. Someone got lucky--but who? The Risks : The posted Secret Service agents might see through the charade. More awkwardly, the aide would be forced to play the seamy role of procurer. (He would probably do it. Kennedy's assistants performed this task dutifully.) \n\n In short, presidential adultery is just barely possible in 1996. But it would be extremely inconvenient, extremely risky, and potentially disastrous. It seems, in fact, a lot more trouble than it's worth. A president these days might be wiser to imitate Jimmy Carter, not Jack Kennedy, and only lust in his heart.", "For the same reason, Clinton would find it difficult to hire a mistress. A lovely young secretary would set off alarm bells in any reporter investigating presidential misbehavior. Says a former Clinton aide, \"There has been a real tendency to have no good-looking women on the staff in order to protect him.\" \n\n 3) Clinton cannot avoid Secret Service protection. During the Kennedy era, the Secret Service employed fewer than 500 people and had an annual budget of about $4 million. Then came Lee Harvey Oswald, Squeaky Fromme, and John Hinckley. Now the Secret Service payroll tops 4,500 (most of them agents), and the annual budget exceeds $500 million (up 300 percent just since 1980). At any given time, more than 100 agents guard the president in the White House. Top aides from recent administrations are adamant: The Secret Service never lets the president escape its protection.", "The logistics of presidential adultery. \n\n \n\n The Washington Times could hardly contain its excitement: \"A former FBI agent assigned to the White House describes in a new book how President Clinton slips past his Secret Service detail in the dead of night, hides under a blanket in the back of a dark-colored sedan, and trysts with a woman, possibly a celebrity, at the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Washington.\" For Clinton-haters, Gary Aldrich's tale sounded too good to be true.", "So what's a randy president to do? Any modern presidential affair would need to meet stringent demands. Only a tiny number of trusted aides and Secret Service agents could know of it. They would need to maintain complete silence about it. And no reporters could catch wind of it. Such an affair is improbable, but--take heart, Clinton-haters--it's not impossible. Based on scuttlebutt and speculation from insiders at the Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Ford White Houses, here are the four likeliest scenarios for presidential adultery.", "And it was. The not-so-Secret-Service agent's \"source\" turned out to be a thirdhand rumor passed on by Clinton scandalmonger David Brock. Those who know about White House security--Clinton staffers, the Secret Service, former aides to Presidents Reagan and Bush--demolished Aldrich's claims. Clinton couldn't give his Secret Service agents the slip (they shadow him when he walks around the White House), couldn't arrange a private visit without tipping off hotel staff, and couldn't re-enter the White House without getting nabbed. (Guards check all cars at the gate--especially those that arrive at 4 a.m.) \n\n Even so, the image resonates. For some Americans, it is an article of faith: Bill Clinton cheated on his wife when he was governor, and he cheats on her as president. But can he? Is it possible for the president of the United States to commit adultery and get away with it? Maybe, but it's tougher than you think.", "Let us pause for a moment to demolish two of the splashier rumors about White House fornication. First, the residence is the only place in the White House where the president can have safe (i.e. uninterrupted) sex. He can be intruded upon or observed everywhere else--except, perhaps, the Oval Office bathroom. Unless the president is an exhibitionist or a lunatic, liaisons in the Oval Office, bowling alley, or East Wing are unimaginable. Second, the much-touted tunnel between the White House and the Treasury Department is all-but-useless to the presidential adulterer. It is too well-guarded. The president could smuggle a mistress through it, but it would attract far more attention from White House staff than a straightforward gate entry would.", "Meanwhile, back in the private quarters, the president and friend get comfortable in one of the 14 bedrooms (or, perhaps, the billiard room). After a pleasant 15 minutes (or two hours?), she says goodbye. Depending on how long she stays, she may pass a different shift of Secret Service agents as she departs. She exits the White House grounds, unescorted and unbothered, at the East gate. The Risks : A gate guard, an usher, and a handful of Secret Service agents see her. All of them have a very good idea of why she was there. The White House maid who changes the sheets sees other suspicious evidence. And the woman's--real--name is entered in a Secret Service computer. None of this endangers the president too much. The computer record of her visit is private, at least for several decades after he leaves office. No personal aides know about the visit. Unless they were staking out the East gate, no journalists do either. The Secret Service agents, the guard, the steward, and the maid owe their jobs to their discretion. Leaks get them fired.", "3. The Camp David Assignation. A bucolic, safer version of the White House Sneak. The president invites a group of friends and staffers--including his paramour but not his wife--to spend the weekend at Camp David. The girlfriend is assigned the cabin next to the president's lodge. Late at night, after the Hearts game has ended and everyone has retired to their cabins, she strolls next door. There is a Secret Service command post outside the cabin. The agents on duty (probably three of them) let her enter. A few hours later, she slips back to her own cabin. The Risks : Only a few Secret Service agents know about the liaison. Even though the guest list is not public, all the Navy and Marine personnel at Camp David, as well as the other guests, would know that the presidential entourage included an attractive woman, but not the first lady. That would raise eyebrows if it got back to the White House press room.", "Secret Service agents and their immediate supervisor know about the visit. It is recorded in the Secret Service log, which is not made public during the administration's tenure. Gate guards may suspect something fishy when they see the car. A reporter", "The president dials a \"friend\" on his private line. (Most presidents placed all their calls through the White House operators, who kept a record of each one; the Clintons installed a direct-dial line in the private quarters.) The president invites the friend over for a cozy evening at the White House. After he hangs up with the friend, he phones the guard at the East Executive Avenue gate and tells him to admit a visitor. He also notifies the Secret Service agent and the usher on duty downstairs that they should send her up to the residence.", "1) The White House Sneak. This is a discreet variation of the old Kennedy/Campbell liaison. It's late at night. The president's personal aides have gone home. The family is away. He is alone in the private quarters. The private quarters, a k a \"the residence,\" occupy the second and third floors of the White House. Secret Service agents guard the residence's entrances on the first floor and ground floors, but the first family has privacy in the quarters themselves. Maids and butlers serve the family there, but the president and first lady ask them to leave when they want to be alone.", "That said, the current president has every reason not to trust his Secret Service detail. No one seriously compares Secret Service agents (who are pros) to Arkansas state troopers (who aren't). But Clinton might not trust any security guards after the beating he took from his Arkansas posse. Also, if other Secret Service agents are anything like Aldrich, they may dislike this president. One Secret Service leak--the lamp-throwing story--already damaged Clinton. Agents could tattle again.", "4. The Hotel Shuffle. The cleverest strategy, and the only one that cuts out the Secret Service. The president is traveling without his family. The Secret Service secures an entire hotel floor, reserving elevators and guarding the entrance to the president's suite. The president's personal aide (a man in his late 20s) takes the room adjoining the president's. An internal door connects the two rooms, so the aide can enter the president's room without alerting the agents in the hall. This is standard practice.", "his Secret Service detail that he needs to take an \"off-the-record\" trip. He wants to leave the White House without his motorcade and without informing the press. He requests two agents and an unobtrusive sedan. The Secret Service shift leader", "or passer-by could spy the president--even through tinted windows--as the car enters and exits the White House. The friend's neighbors might spot him, or they might notice the agents lurking outside her house. A neighbor might call the police to", "2) The \"Off-the-Record\" Visit. Late at night, after his personal aides and the press have gone home, the president tells", "of the house while the president and his friend do their thing. Then the agents chauffeur the president back to the White House, re-entering through the Southwest or Southeast gate, away from the press station. The Risks : Only two", "A taxi drops the woman near the East gate. She identifies herself to the guard, who examines her ID, runs her name through a computer (to check for outstanding warrants), and logs her in a database. A White House usher escorts her into the East Wing of the White House. They walk through the East Wing and pass the Secret Service guard post by the White House movie theater. The agent on duty waves them on. The usher takes her to the private elevator, where another Secret Service agent is posted. She takes the elevator to the second floor. The president opens the door and welcomes her. Under no circumstances could she enter the living quarters without first encountering Secret Service agents." ], [ "Let us pause for a moment to demolish two of the splashier rumors about White House fornication. First, the residence is the only place in the White House where the president can have safe (i.e. uninterrupted) sex. He can be intruded upon or observed everywhere else--except, perhaps, the Oval Office bathroom. Unless the president is an exhibitionist or a lunatic, liaisons in the Oval Office, bowling alley, or East Wing are unimaginable. Second, the much-touted tunnel between the White House and the Treasury Department is all-but-useless to the presidential adulterer. It is too well-guarded. The president could smuggle a mistress through it, but it would attract far more attention from White House staff than a straightforward gate entry would.", "A taxi drops the woman near the East gate. She identifies herself to the guard, who examines her ID, runs her name through a computer (to check for outstanding warrants), and logs her in a database. A White House usher escorts her into the East Wing of the White House. They walk through the East Wing and pass the Secret Service guard post by the White House movie theater. The agent on duty waves them on. The usher takes her to the private elevator, where another Secret Service agent is posted. She takes the elevator to the second floor. The president opens the door and welcomes her. Under no circumstances could she enter the living quarters without first encountering Secret Service agents.", "1) The White House Sneak. This is a discreet variation of the old Kennedy/Campbell liaison. It's late at night. The president's personal aides have gone home. The family is away. He is alone in the private quarters. The private quarters, a k a \"the residence,\" occupy the second and third floors of the White House. Secret Service agents guard the residence's entrances on the first floor and ground floors, but the first family has privacy in the quarters themselves. Maids and butlers serve the family there, but the president and first lady ask them to leave when they want to be alone.", "The president dials a \"friend\" on his private line. (Most presidents placed all their calls through the White House operators, who kept a record of each one; the Clintons installed a direct-dial line in the private quarters.) The president invites the friend over for a cozy evening at the White House. After he hangs up with the friend, he phones the guard at the East Executive Avenue gate and tells him to admit a visitor. He also notifies the Secret Service agent and the usher on duty downstairs that they should send her up to the residence.", "Meanwhile, back in the private quarters, the president and friend get comfortable in one of the 14 bedrooms (or, perhaps, the billiard room). After a pleasant 15 minutes (or two hours?), she says goodbye. Depending on how long she stays, she may pass a different shift of Secret Service agents as she departs. She exits the White House grounds, unescorted and unbothered, at the East gate. The Risks : A gate guard, an usher, and a handful of Secret Service agents see her. All of them have a very good idea of why she was there. The White House maid who changes the sheets sees other suspicious evidence. And the woman's--real--name is entered in a Secret Service computer. None of this endangers the president too much. The computer record of her visit is private, at least for several decades after he leaves office. No personal aides know about the visit. Unless they were staking out the East gate, no journalists do either. The Secret Service agents, the guard, the steward, and the maid owe their jobs to their discretion. Leaks get them fired.", "3. The Camp David Assignation. A bucolic, safer version of the White House Sneak. The president invites a group of friends and staffers--including his paramour but not his wife--to spend the weekend at Camp David. The girlfriend is assigned the cabin next to the president's lodge. Late at night, after the Hearts game has ended and everyone has retired to their cabins, she strolls next door. There is a Secret Service command post outside the cabin. The agents on duty (probably three of them) let her enter. A few hours later, she slips back to her own cabin. The Risks : Only a few Secret Service agents know about the liaison. Even though the guest list is not public, all the Navy and Marine personnel at Camp David, as well as the other guests, would know that the presidential entourage included an attractive woman, but not the first lady. That would raise eyebrows if it got back to the White House press room.", "So what's a randy president to do? Any modern presidential affair would need to meet stringent demands. Only a tiny number of trusted aides and Secret Service agents could know of it. They would need to maintain complete silence about it. And no reporters could catch wind of it. Such an affair is improbable, but--take heart, Clinton-haters--it's not impossible. Based on scuttlebutt and speculation from insiders at the Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Ford White Houses, here are the four likeliest scenarios for presidential adultery.", "And it was. The not-so-Secret-Service agent's \"source\" turned out to be a thirdhand rumor passed on by Clinton scandalmonger David Brock. Those who know about White House security--Clinton staffers, the Secret Service, former aides to Presidents Reagan and Bush--demolished Aldrich's claims. Clinton couldn't give his Secret Service agents the slip (they shadow him when he walks around the White House), couldn't arrange a private visit without tipping off hotel staff, and couldn't re-enter the White House without getting nabbed. (Guards check all cars at the gate--especially those that arrive at 4 a.m.) \n\n Even so, the image resonates. For some Americans, it is an article of faith: Bill Clinton cheated on his wife when he was governor, and he cheats on her as president. But can he? Is it possible for the president of the United States to commit adultery and get away with it? Maybe, but it's tougher than you think.", "The logistics of presidential adultery. \n\n \n\n The Washington Times could hardly contain its excitement: \"A former FBI agent assigned to the White House describes in a new book how President Clinton slips past his Secret Service detail in the dead of night, hides under a blanket in the back of a dark-colored sedan, and trysts with a woman, possibly a celebrity, at the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Washington.\" For Clinton-haters, Gary Aldrich's tale sounded too good to be true.", "of the house while the president and his friend do their thing. Then the agents chauffeur the president back to the White House, re-entering through the Southwest or Southeast gate, away from the press station. The Risks : Only two", "Late in the evening, the aide escorts a comely young woman back to the hotel. The Secret Service checks her, then waves her into the aide's room. She emerges three hours later, slightly disheveled. She kisses the aide in the hall as she leaves. Someone got lucky--but who? The Risks : The posted Secret Service agents might see through the charade. More awkwardly, the aide would be forced to play the seamy role of procurer. (He would probably do it. Kennedy's assistants performed this task dutifully.) \n\n In short, presidential adultery is just barely possible in 1996. But it would be extremely inconvenient, extremely risky, and potentially disastrous. It seems, in fact, a lot more trouble than it's worth. A president these days might be wiser to imitate Jimmy Carter, not Jack Kennedy, and only lust in his heart.", "Historically, presidential adultery is common. Warren Harding cavorted with Nan Britton and Carrie Phillips. Franklin Roosevelt \"entertained\" Lucy Rutherford at the White House when Eleanor was away. America was none the wiser, even if White House reporters were. \n\n Those who know Clinton is cheating often point to the model of John F. Kennedy, who turned presidential hanky-panky into a science. Kennedy invited mistresses to the White House for afternoon (and evening, and overnight) liaisons. Kennedy seduced women on the White House staff (including, it seems, Jackie's own press secretary). Kennedy made assignations outside the White House, then escaped his Secret Service detail by scaling walls and ducking out back doors. If Kennedy did it, so can Clinton. \n\n Well, no. Though Clinton slavishly emulates JFK in every other way, he'd be a fool to steal Kennedy's MO d'amour . Here's why:", "For the same reason, Clinton would find it difficult to hire a mistress. A lovely young secretary would set off alarm bells in any reporter investigating presidential misbehavior. Says a former Clinton aide, \"There has been a real tendency to have no good-looking women on the staff in order to protect him.\" \n\n 3) Clinton cannot avoid Secret Service protection. During the Kennedy era, the Secret Service employed fewer than 500 people and had an annual budget of about $4 million. Then came Lee Harvey Oswald, Squeaky Fromme, and John Hinckley. Now the Secret Service payroll tops 4,500 (most of them agents), and the annual budget exceeds $500 million (up 300 percent just since 1980). At any given time, more than 100 agents guard the president in the White House. Top aides from recent administrations are adamant: The Secret Service never lets the president escape its protection.", "4. The Hotel Shuffle. The cleverest strategy, and the only one that cuts out the Secret Service. The president is traveling without his family. The Secret Service secures an entire hotel floor, reserving elevators and guarding the entrance to the president's suite. The president's personal aide (a man in his late 20s) takes the room adjoining the president's. An internal door connects the two rooms, so the aide can enter the president's room without alerting the agents in the hall. This is standard practice.", "or passer-by could spy the president--even through tinted windows--as the car enters and exits the White House. The friend's neighbors might spot him, or they might notice the agents lurking outside her house. A neighbor might call the police to", "2) The \"Off-the-Record\" Visit. Late at night, after his personal aides and the press have gone home, the president tells", "Secret Service agents and their immediate supervisor know about the visit. It is recorded in the Secret Service log, which is not made public during the administration's tenure. Gate guards may suspect something fishy when they see the car. A reporter", "Treasury. The president and the two agents drive the unmarked car to a woman friend's house. Ideally, she has a covered garage. (An apartment building or a hotel would raise considerably the risk of getting caught.) The agents guard the outside", "1) Too many people would know. Kennedy hardly bothered to hide his conquests. According to Kennedy mistress (and mob moll) Judith Campbell's autobiography, those who knew about their affair included: Kennedy's personal aides and secretary (who pandered for him), White House drivers, White House gate guards, White House Secret Service agents, White House domestic staff, most of Campbell's friends, a lot of Kennedy's friends, and several Kennedy family members. Such broad circulation would be disastrous today because: \n\n 2) The press would report it. Kennedy conducted his affairs brazenly because he trusted reporters not to write about them. White House journalists knew about, or at least strongly suspected, Kennedy's infidelity, but never published a story about it. Ask Gary Hart if reporters would exercise the same restraint today. Clinton must worry about this more than most presidents. Not only are newspapers and magazines willing to publish an adultery story about him, but many are pursuing it.", "his Secret Service detail that he needs to take an \"off-the-record\" trip. He wants to leave the White House without his motorcade and without informing the press. He requests two agents and an unobtrusive sedan. The Secret Service shift leader" ], [ "1) The White House Sneak. This is a discreet variation of the old Kennedy/Campbell liaison. It's late at night. The president's personal aides have gone home. The family is away. He is alone in the private quarters. The private quarters, a k a \"the residence,\" occupy the second and third floors of the White House. Secret Service agents guard the residence's entrances on the first floor and ground floors, but the first family has privacy in the quarters themselves. Maids and butlers serve the family there, but the president and first lady ask them to leave when they want to be alone.", "3. The Camp David Assignation. A bucolic, safer version of the White House Sneak. The president invites a group of friends and staffers--including his paramour but not his wife--to spend the weekend at Camp David. The girlfriend is assigned the cabin next to the president's lodge. Late at night, after the Hearts game has ended and everyone has retired to their cabins, she strolls next door. There is a Secret Service command post outside the cabin. The agents on duty (probably three of them) let her enter. A few hours later, she slips back to her own cabin. The Risks : Only a few Secret Service agents know about the liaison. Even though the guest list is not public, all the Navy and Marine personnel at Camp David, as well as the other guests, would know that the presidential entourage included an attractive woman, but not the first lady. That would raise eyebrows if it got back to the White House press room.", "The president dials a \"friend\" on his private line. (Most presidents placed all their calls through the White House operators, who kept a record of each one; the Clintons installed a direct-dial line in the private quarters.) The president invites the friend over for a cozy evening at the White House. After he hangs up with the friend, he phones the guard at the East Executive Avenue gate and tells him to admit a visitor. He also notifies the Secret Service agent and the usher on duty downstairs that they should send her up to the residence.", "Let us pause for a moment to demolish two of the splashier rumors about White House fornication. First, the residence is the only place in the White House where the president can have safe (i.e. uninterrupted) sex. He can be intruded upon or observed everywhere else--except, perhaps, the Oval Office bathroom. Unless the president is an exhibitionist or a lunatic, liaisons in the Oval Office, bowling alley, or East Wing are unimaginable. Second, the much-touted tunnel between the White House and the Treasury Department is all-but-useless to the presidential adulterer. It is too well-guarded. The president could smuggle a mistress through it, but it would attract far more attention from White House staff than a straightforward gate entry would.", "Meanwhile, back in the private quarters, the president and friend get comfortable in one of the 14 bedrooms (or, perhaps, the billiard room). After a pleasant 15 minutes (or two hours?), she says goodbye. Depending on how long she stays, she may pass a different shift of Secret Service agents as she departs. She exits the White House grounds, unescorted and unbothered, at the East gate. The Risks : A gate guard, an usher, and a handful of Secret Service agents see her. All of them have a very good idea of why she was there. The White House maid who changes the sheets sees other suspicious evidence. And the woman's--real--name is entered in a Secret Service computer. None of this endangers the president too much. The computer record of her visit is private, at least for several decades after he leaves office. No personal aides know about the visit. Unless they were staking out the East gate, no journalists do either. The Secret Service agents, the guard, the steward, and the maid owe their jobs to their discretion. Leaks get them fired.", "And it was. The not-so-Secret-Service agent's \"source\" turned out to be a thirdhand rumor passed on by Clinton scandalmonger David Brock. Those who know about White House security--Clinton staffers, the Secret Service, former aides to Presidents Reagan and Bush--demolished Aldrich's claims. Clinton couldn't give his Secret Service agents the slip (they shadow him when he walks around the White House), couldn't arrange a private visit without tipping off hotel staff, and couldn't re-enter the White House without getting nabbed. (Guards check all cars at the gate--especially those that arrive at 4 a.m.) \n\n Even so, the image resonates. For some Americans, it is an article of faith: Bill Clinton cheated on his wife when he was governor, and he cheats on her as president. But can he? Is it possible for the president of the United States to commit adultery and get away with it? Maybe, but it's tougher than you think.", "The logistics of presidential adultery. \n\n \n\n The Washington Times could hardly contain its excitement: \"A former FBI agent assigned to the White House describes in a new book how President Clinton slips past his Secret Service detail in the dead of night, hides under a blanket in the back of a dark-colored sedan, and trysts with a woman, possibly a celebrity, at the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Washington.\" For Clinton-haters, Gary Aldrich's tale sounded too good to be true.", "Historically, presidential adultery is common. Warren Harding cavorted with Nan Britton and Carrie Phillips. Franklin Roosevelt \"entertained\" Lucy Rutherford at the White House when Eleanor was away. America was none the wiser, even if White House reporters were. \n\n Those who know Clinton is cheating often point to the model of John F. Kennedy, who turned presidential hanky-panky into a science. Kennedy invited mistresses to the White House for afternoon (and evening, and overnight) liaisons. Kennedy seduced women on the White House staff (including, it seems, Jackie's own press secretary). Kennedy made assignations outside the White House, then escaped his Secret Service detail by scaling walls and ducking out back doors. If Kennedy did it, so can Clinton. \n\n Well, no. Though Clinton slavishly emulates JFK in every other way, he'd be a fool to steal Kennedy's MO d'amour . Here's why:", "So what's a randy president to do? Any modern presidential affair would need to meet stringent demands. Only a tiny number of trusted aides and Secret Service agents could know of it. They would need to maintain complete silence about it. And no reporters could catch wind of it. Such an affair is improbable, but--take heart, Clinton-haters--it's not impossible. Based on scuttlebutt and speculation from insiders at the Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Ford White Houses, here are the four likeliest scenarios for presidential adultery.", "A taxi drops the woman near the East gate. She identifies herself to the guard, who examines her ID, runs her name through a computer (to check for outstanding warrants), and logs her in a database. A White House usher escorts her into the East Wing of the White House. They walk through the East Wing and pass the Secret Service guard post by the White House movie theater. The agent on duty waves them on. The usher takes her to the private elevator, where another Secret Service agent is posted. She takes the elevator to the second floor. The president opens the door and welcomes her. Under no circumstances could she enter the living quarters without first encountering Secret Service agents.", "For the same reason, Clinton would find it difficult to hire a mistress. A lovely young secretary would set off alarm bells in any reporter investigating presidential misbehavior. Says a former Clinton aide, \"There has been a real tendency to have no good-looking women on the staff in order to protect him.\" \n\n 3) Clinton cannot avoid Secret Service protection. During the Kennedy era, the Secret Service employed fewer than 500 people and had an annual budget of about $4 million. Then came Lee Harvey Oswald, Squeaky Fromme, and John Hinckley. Now the Secret Service payroll tops 4,500 (most of them agents), and the annual budget exceeds $500 million (up 300 percent just since 1980). At any given time, more than 100 agents guard the president in the White House. Top aides from recent administrations are adamant: The Secret Service never lets the president escape its protection.", "Late in the evening, the aide escorts a comely young woman back to the hotel. The Secret Service checks her, then waves her into the aide's room. She emerges three hours later, slightly disheveled. She kisses the aide in the hall as she leaves. Someone got lucky--but who? The Risks : The posted Secret Service agents might see through the charade. More awkwardly, the aide would be forced to play the seamy role of procurer. (He would probably do it. Kennedy's assistants performed this task dutifully.) \n\n In short, presidential adultery is just barely possible in 1996. But it would be extremely inconvenient, extremely risky, and potentially disastrous. It seems, in fact, a lot more trouble than it's worth. A president these days might be wiser to imitate Jimmy Carter, not Jack Kennedy, and only lust in his heart.", "4. The Hotel Shuffle. The cleverest strategy, and the only one that cuts out the Secret Service. The president is traveling without his family. The Secret Service secures an entire hotel floor, reserving elevators and guarding the entrance to the president's suite. The president's personal aide (a man in his late 20s) takes the room adjoining the president's. An internal door connects the two rooms, so the aide can enter the president's room without alerting the agents in the hall. This is standard practice.", "of the house while the president and his friend do their thing. Then the agents chauffeur the president back to the White House, re-entering through the Southwest or Southeast gate, away from the press station. The Risks : Only two", "1) Too many people would know. Kennedy hardly bothered to hide his conquests. According to Kennedy mistress (and mob moll) Judith Campbell's autobiography, those who knew about their affair included: Kennedy's personal aides and secretary (who pandered for him), White House drivers, White House gate guards, White House Secret Service agents, White House domestic staff, most of Campbell's friends, a lot of Kennedy's friends, and several Kennedy family members. Such broad circulation would be disastrous today because: \n\n 2) The press would report it. Kennedy conducted his affairs brazenly because he trusted reporters not to write about them. White House journalists knew about, or at least strongly suspected, Kennedy's infidelity, but never published a story about it. Ask Gary Hart if reporters would exercise the same restraint today. Clinton must worry about this more than most presidents. Not only are newspapers and magazines willing to publish an adultery story about him, but many are pursuing it.", "Treasury. The president and the two agents drive the unmarked car to a woman friend's house. Ideally, she has a covered garage. (An apartment building or a hotel would raise considerably the risk of getting caught.) The agents guard the outside", "Secret Service agents and their immediate supervisor know about the visit. It is recorded in the Secret Service log, which is not made public during the administration's tenure. Gate guards may suspect something fishy when they see the car. A reporter", "or passer-by could spy the president--even through tinted windows--as the car enters and exits the White House. The friend's neighbors might spot him, or they might notice the agents lurking outside her house. A neighbor might call the police to", "2) The \"Off-the-Record\" Visit. Late at night, after his personal aides and the press have gone home, the president tells", "his Secret Service detail that he needs to take an \"off-the-record\" trip. He wants to leave the White House without his motorcade and without informing the press. He requests two agents and an unobtrusive sedan. The Secret Service shift leader" ], [ "Treasury. The president and the two agents drive the unmarked car to a woman friend's house. Ideally, she has a covered garage. (An apartment building or a hotel would raise considerably the risk of getting caught.) The agents guard the outside", "3. The Camp David Assignation. A bucolic, safer version of the White House Sneak. The president invites a group of friends and staffers--including his paramour but not his wife--to spend the weekend at Camp David. The girlfriend is assigned the cabin next to the president's lodge. Late at night, after the Hearts game has ended and everyone has retired to their cabins, she strolls next door. There is a Secret Service command post outside the cabin. The agents on duty (probably three of them) let her enter. A few hours later, she slips back to her own cabin. The Risks : Only a few Secret Service agents know about the liaison. Even though the guest list is not public, all the Navy and Marine personnel at Camp David, as well as the other guests, would know that the presidential entourage included an attractive woman, but not the first lady. That would raise eyebrows if it got back to the White House press room.", "his Secret Service detail that he needs to take an \"off-the-record\" trip. He wants to leave the White House without his motorcade and without informing the press. He requests two agents and an unobtrusive sedan. The Secret Service shift leader", "The president dials a \"friend\" on his private line. (Most presidents placed all their calls through the White House operators, who kept a record of each one; the Clintons installed a direct-dial line in the private quarters.) The president invites the friend over for a cozy evening at the White House. After he hangs up with the friend, he phones the guard at the East Executive Avenue gate and tells him to admit a visitor. He also notifies the Secret Service agent and the usher on duty downstairs that they should send her up to the residence.", "A taxi drops the woman near the East gate. She identifies herself to the guard, who examines her ID, runs her name through a computer (to check for outstanding warrants), and logs her in a database. A White House usher escorts her into the East Wing of the White House. They walk through the East Wing and pass the Secret Service guard post by the White House movie theater. The agent on duty waves them on. The usher takes her to the private elevator, where another Secret Service agent is posted. She takes the elevator to the second floor. The president opens the door and welcomes her. Under no circumstances could she enter the living quarters without first encountering Secret Service agents.", "Meanwhile, back in the private quarters, the president and friend get comfortable in one of the 14 bedrooms (or, perhaps, the billiard room). After a pleasant 15 minutes (or two hours?), she says goodbye. Depending on how long she stays, she may pass a different shift of Secret Service agents as she departs. She exits the White House grounds, unescorted and unbothered, at the East gate. The Risks : A gate guard, an usher, and a handful of Secret Service agents see her. All of them have a very good idea of why she was there. The White House maid who changes the sheets sees other suspicious evidence. And the woman's--real--name is entered in a Secret Service computer. None of this endangers the president too much. The computer record of her visit is private, at least for several decades after he leaves office. No personal aides know about the visit. Unless they were staking out the East gate, no journalists do either. The Secret Service agents, the guard, the steward, and the maid owe their jobs to their discretion. Leaks get them fired.", "4. The Hotel Shuffle. The cleverest strategy, and the only one that cuts out the Secret Service. The president is traveling without his family. The Secret Service secures an entire hotel floor, reserving elevators and guarding the entrance to the president's suite. The president's personal aide (a man in his late 20s) takes the room adjoining the president's. An internal door connects the two rooms, so the aide can enter the president's room without alerting the agents in the hall. This is standard practice.", "or passer-by could spy the president--even through tinted windows--as the car enters and exits the White House. The friend's neighbors might spot him, or they might notice the agents lurking outside her house. A neighbor might call the police to", "Secret Service agents and their immediate supervisor know about the visit. It is recorded in the Secret Service log, which is not made public during the administration's tenure. Gate guards may suspect something fishy when they see the car. A reporter", "of the house while the president and his friend do their thing. Then the agents chauffeur the president back to the White House, re-entering through the Southwest or Southeast gate, away from the press station. The Risks : Only two", "For the same reason, Clinton would find it difficult to hire a mistress. A lovely young secretary would set off alarm bells in any reporter investigating presidential misbehavior. Says a former Clinton aide, \"There has been a real tendency to have no good-looking women on the staff in order to protect him.\" \n\n 3) Clinton cannot avoid Secret Service protection. During the Kennedy era, the Secret Service employed fewer than 500 people and had an annual budget of about $4 million. Then came Lee Harvey Oswald, Squeaky Fromme, and John Hinckley. Now the Secret Service payroll tops 4,500 (most of them agents), and the annual budget exceeds $500 million (up 300 percent just since 1980). At any given time, more than 100 agents guard the president in the White House. Top aides from recent administrations are adamant: The Secret Service never lets the president escape its protection.", "That said, the current president has every reason not to trust his Secret Service detail. No one seriously compares Secret Service agents (who are pros) to Arkansas state troopers (who aren't). But Clinton might not trust any security guards after the beating he took from his Arkansas posse. Also, if other Secret Service agents are anything like Aldrich, they may dislike this president. One Secret Service leak--the lamp-throwing story--already damaged Clinton. Agents could tattle again.", "The logistics of presidential adultery. \n\n \n\n The Washington Times could hardly contain its excitement: \"A former FBI agent assigned to the White House describes in a new book how President Clinton slips past his Secret Service detail in the dead of night, hides under a blanket in the back of a dark-colored sedan, and trysts with a woman, possibly a celebrity, at the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Washington.\" For Clinton-haters, Gary Aldrich's tale sounded too good to be true.", "And it was. The not-so-Secret-Service agent's \"source\" turned out to be a thirdhand rumor passed on by Clinton scandalmonger David Brock. Those who know about White House security--Clinton staffers, the Secret Service, former aides to Presidents Reagan and Bush--demolished Aldrich's claims. Clinton couldn't give his Secret Service agents the slip (they shadow him when he walks around the White House), couldn't arrange a private visit without tipping off hotel staff, and couldn't re-enter the White House without getting nabbed. (Guards check all cars at the gate--especially those that arrive at 4 a.m.) \n\n Even so, the image resonates. For some Americans, it is an article of faith: Bill Clinton cheated on his wife when he was governor, and he cheats on her as president. But can he? Is it possible for the president of the United States to commit adultery and get away with it? Maybe, but it's tougher than you think.", "So what's a randy president to do? Any modern presidential affair would need to meet stringent demands. Only a tiny number of trusted aides and Secret Service agents could know of it. They would need to maintain complete silence about it. And no reporters could catch wind of it. Such an affair is improbable, but--take heart, Clinton-haters--it's not impossible. Based on scuttlebutt and speculation from insiders at the Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Ford White Houses, here are the four likeliest scenarios for presidential adultery.", "Late in the evening, the aide escorts a comely young woman back to the hotel. The Secret Service checks her, then waves her into the aide's room. She emerges three hours later, slightly disheveled. She kisses the aide in the hall as she leaves. Someone got lucky--but who? The Risks : The posted Secret Service agents might see through the charade. More awkwardly, the aide would be forced to play the seamy role of procurer. (He would probably do it. Kennedy's assistants performed this task dutifully.) \n\n In short, presidential adultery is just barely possible in 1996. But it would be extremely inconvenient, extremely risky, and potentially disastrous. It seems, in fact, a lot more trouble than it's worth. A president these days might be wiser to imitate Jimmy Carter, not Jack Kennedy, and only lust in his heart.", "1) The White House Sneak. This is a discreet variation of the old Kennedy/Campbell liaison. It's late at night. The president's personal aides have gone home. The family is away. He is alone in the private quarters. The private quarters, a k a \"the residence,\" occupy the second and third floors of the White House. Secret Service agents guard the residence's entrances on the first floor and ground floors, but the first family has privacy in the quarters themselves. Maids and butlers serve the family there, but the president and first lady ask them to leave when they want to be alone.", "grumbles, but accepts the conditions. Theoretically, the president could refuse all Secret Service protection, but it would be far more trouble than it's worth. He would have to inform the head of the Secret Service and the secretary of the", "2) The \"Off-the-Record\" Visit. Late at night, after his personal aides and the press have gone home, the president tells", "Historically, presidential adultery is common. Warren Harding cavorted with Nan Britton and Carrie Phillips. Franklin Roosevelt \"entertained\" Lucy Rutherford at the White House when Eleanor was away. America was none the wiser, even if White House reporters were. \n\n Those who know Clinton is cheating often point to the model of John F. Kennedy, who turned presidential hanky-panky into a science. Kennedy invited mistresses to the White House for afternoon (and evening, and overnight) liaisons. Kennedy seduced women on the White House staff (including, it seems, Jackie's own press secretary). Kennedy made assignations outside the White House, then escaped his Secret Service detail by scaling walls and ducking out back doors. If Kennedy did it, so can Clinton. \n\n Well, no. Though Clinton slavishly emulates JFK in every other way, he'd be a fool to steal Kennedy's MO d'amour . Here's why:" ], [ "3. The Camp David Assignation. A bucolic, safer version of the White House Sneak. The president invites a group of friends and staffers--including his paramour but not his wife--to spend the weekend at Camp David. The girlfriend is assigned the cabin next to the president's lodge. Late at night, after the Hearts game has ended and everyone has retired to their cabins, she strolls next door. There is a Secret Service command post outside the cabin. The agents on duty (probably three of them) let her enter. A few hours later, she slips back to her own cabin. The Risks : Only a few Secret Service agents know about the liaison. Even though the guest list is not public, all the Navy and Marine personnel at Camp David, as well as the other guests, would know that the presidential entourage included an attractive woman, but not the first lady. That would raise eyebrows if it got back to the White House press room.", "Meanwhile, back in the private quarters, the president and friend get comfortable in one of the 14 bedrooms (or, perhaps, the billiard room). After a pleasant 15 minutes (or two hours?), she says goodbye. Depending on how long she stays, she may pass a different shift of Secret Service agents as she departs. She exits the White House grounds, unescorted and unbothered, at the East gate. The Risks : A gate guard, an usher, and a handful of Secret Service agents see her. All of them have a very good idea of why she was there. The White House maid who changes the sheets sees other suspicious evidence. And the woman's--real--name is entered in a Secret Service computer. None of this endangers the president too much. The computer record of her visit is private, at least for several decades after he leaves office. No personal aides know about the visit. Unless they were staking out the East gate, no journalists do either. The Secret Service agents, the guard, the steward, and the maid owe their jobs to their discretion. Leaks get them fired.", "1) The White House Sneak. This is a discreet variation of the old Kennedy/Campbell liaison. It's late at night. The president's personal aides have gone home. The family is away. He is alone in the private quarters. The private quarters, a k a \"the residence,\" occupy the second and third floors of the White House. Secret Service agents guard the residence's entrances on the first floor and ground floors, but the first family has privacy in the quarters themselves. Maids and butlers serve the family there, but the president and first lady ask them to leave when they want to be alone.", "The logistics of presidential adultery. \n\n \n\n The Washington Times could hardly contain its excitement: \"A former FBI agent assigned to the White House describes in a new book how President Clinton slips past his Secret Service detail in the dead of night, hides under a blanket in the back of a dark-colored sedan, and trysts with a woman, possibly a celebrity, at the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Washington.\" For Clinton-haters, Gary Aldrich's tale sounded too good to be true.", "Late in the evening, the aide escorts a comely young woman back to the hotel. The Secret Service checks her, then waves her into the aide's room. She emerges three hours later, slightly disheveled. She kisses the aide in the hall as she leaves. Someone got lucky--but who? The Risks : The posted Secret Service agents might see through the charade. More awkwardly, the aide would be forced to play the seamy role of procurer. (He would probably do it. Kennedy's assistants performed this task dutifully.) \n\n In short, presidential adultery is just barely possible in 1996. But it would be extremely inconvenient, extremely risky, and potentially disastrous. It seems, in fact, a lot more trouble than it's worth. A president these days might be wiser to imitate Jimmy Carter, not Jack Kennedy, and only lust in his heart.", "And it was. The not-so-Secret-Service agent's \"source\" turned out to be a thirdhand rumor passed on by Clinton scandalmonger David Brock. Those who know about White House security--Clinton staffers, the Secret Service, former aides to Presidents Reagan and Bush--demolished Aldrich's claims. Clinton couldn't give his Secret Service agents the slip (they shadow him when he walks around the White House), couldn't arrange a private visit without tipping off hotel staff, and couldn't re-enter the White House without getting nabbed. (Guards check all cars at the gate--especially those that arrive at 4 a.m.) \n\n Even so, the image resonates. For some Americans, it is an article of faith: Bill Clinton cheated on his wife when he was governor, and he cheats on her as president. But can he? Is it possible for the president of the United States to commit adultery and get away with it? Maybe, but it's tougher than you think.", "of the house while the president and his friend do their thing. Then the agents chauffeur the president back to the White House, re-entering through the Southwest or Southeast gate, away from the press station. The Risks : Only two", "Historically, presidential adultery is common. Warren Harding cavorted with Nan Britton and Carrie Phillips. Franklin Roosevelt \"entertained\" Lucy Rutherford at the White House when Eleanor was away. America was none the wiser, even if White House reporters were. \n\n Those who know Clinton is cheating often point to the model of John F. Kennedy, who turned presidential hanky-panky into a science. Kennedy invited mistresses to the White House for afternoon (and evening, and overnight) liaisons. Kennedy seduced women on the White House staff (including, it seems, Jackie's own press secretary). Kennedy made assignations outside the White House, then escaped his Secret Service detail by scaling walls and ducking out back doors. If Kennedy did it, so can Clinton. \n\n Well, no. Though Clinton slavishly emulates JFK in every other way, he'd be a fool to steal Kennedy's MO d'amour . Here's why:", "Let us pause for a moment to demolish two of the splashier rumors about White House fornication. First, the residence is the only place in the White House where the president can have safe (i.e. uninterrupted) sex. He can be intruded upon or observed everywhere else--except, perhaps, the Oval Office bathroom. Unless the president is an exhibitionist or a lunatic, liaisons in the Oval Office, bowling alley, or East Wing are unimaginable. Second, the much-touted tunnel between the White House and the Treasury Department is all-but-useless to the presidential adulterer. It is too well-guarded. The president could smuggle a mistress through it, but it would attract far more attention from White House staff than a straightforward gate entry would.", "The president dials a \"friend\" on his private line. (Most presidents placed all their calls through the White House operators, who kept a record of each one; the Clintons installed a direct-dial line in the private quarters.) The president invites the friend over for a cozy evening at the White House. After he hangs up with the friend, he phones the guard at the East Executive Avenue gate and tells him to admit a visitor. He also notifies the Secret Service agent and the usher on duty downstairs that they should send her up to the residence.", "For the same reason, Clinton would find it difficult to hire a mistress. A lovely young secretary would set off alarm bells in any reporter investigating presidential misbehavior. Says a former Clinton aide, \"There has been a real tendency to have no good-looking women on the staff in order to protect him.\" \n\n 3) Clinton cannot avoid Secret Service protection. During the Kennedy era, the Secret Service employed fewer than 500 people and had an annual budget of about $4 million. Then came Lee Harvey Oswald, Squeaky Fromme, and John Hinckley. Now the Secret Service payroll tops 4,500 (most of them agents), and the annual budget exceeds $500 million (up 300 percent just since 1980). At any given time, more than 100 agents guard the president in the White House. Top aides from recent administrations are adamant: The Secret Service never lets the president escape its protection.", "or passer-by could spy the president--even through tinted windows--as the car enters and exits the White House. The friend's neighbors might spot him, or they might notice the agents lurking outside her house. A neighbor might call the police to", "4. The Hotel Shuffle. The cleverest strategy, and the only one that cuts out the Secret Service. The president is traveling without his family. The Secret Service secures an entire hotel floor, reserving elevators and guarding the entrance to the president's suite. The president's personal aide (a man in his late 20s) takes the room adjoining the president's. An internal door connects the two rooms, so the aide can enter the president's room without alerting the agents in the hall. This is standard practice.", "So what's a randy president to do? Any modern presidential affair would need to meet stringent demands. Only a tiny number of trusted aides and Secret Service agents could know of it. They would need to maintain complete silence about it. And no reporters could catch wind of it. Such an affair is improbable, but--take heart, Clinton-haters--it's not impossible. Based on scuttlebutt and speculation from insiders at the Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Ford White Houses, here are the four likeliest scenarios for presidential adultery.", "1) Too many people would know. Kennedy hardly bothered to hide his conquests. According to Kennedy mistress (and mob moll) Judith Campbell's autobiography, those who knew about their affair included: Kennedy's personal aides and secretary (who pandered for him), White House drivers, White House gate guards, White House Secret Service agents, White House domestic staff, most of Campbell's friends, a lot of Kennedy's friends, and several Kennedy family members. Such broad circulation would be disastrous today because: \n\n 2) The press would report it. Kennedy conducted his affairs brazenly because he trusted reporters not to write about them. White House journalists knew about, or at least strongly suspected, Kennedy's infidelity, but never published a story about it. Ask Gary Hart if reporters would exercise the same restraint today. Clinton must worry about this more than most presidents. Not only are newspapers and magazines willing to publish an adultery story about him, but many are pursuing it.", "A taxi drops the woman near the East gate. She identifies herself to the guard, who examines her ID, runs her name through a computer (to check for outstanding warrants), and logs her in a database. A White House usher escorts her into the East Wing of the White House. They walk through the East Wing and pass the Secret Service guard post by the White House movie theater. The agent on duty waves them on. The usher takes her to the private elevator, where another Secret Service agent is posted. She takes the elevator to the second floor. The president opens the door and welcomes her. Under no circumstances could she enter the living quarters without first encountering Secret Service agents.", "Treasury. The president and the two agents drive the unmarked car to a woman friend's house. Ideally, she has a covered garage. (An apartment building or a hotel would raise considerably the risk of getting caught.) The agents guard the outside", "That said, the current president has every reason not to trust his Secret Service detail. No one seriously compares Secret Service agents (who are pros) to Arkansas state troopers (who aren't). But Clinton might not trust any security guards after the beating he took from his Arkansas posse. Also, if other Secret Service agents are anything like Aldrich, they may dislike this president. One Secret Service leak--the lamp-throwing story--already damaged Clinton. Agents could tattle again.", "Secret Service agents and their immediate supervisor know about the visit. It is recorded in the Secret Service log, which is not made public during the administration's tenure. Gate guards may suspect something fishy when they see the car. A reporter", "2) The \"Off-the-Record\" Visit. Late at night, after his personal aides and the press have gone home, the president tells" ], [ "3. The Camp David Assignation. A bucolic, safer version of the White House Sneak. The president invites a group of friends and staffers--including his paramour but not his wife--to spend the weekend at Camp David. The girlfriend is assigned the cabin next to the president's lodge. Late at night, after the Hearts game has ended and everyone has retired to their cabins, she strolls next door. There is a Secret Service command post outside the cabin. The agents on duty (probably three of them) let her enter. A few hours later, she slips back to her own cabin. The Risks : Only a few Secret Service agents know about the liaison. Even though the guest list is not public, all the Navy and Marine personnel at Camp David, as well as the other guests, would know that the presidential entourage included an attractive woman, but not the first lady. That would raise eyebrows if it got back to the White House press room.", "So what's a randy president to do? Any modern presidential affair would need to meet stringent demands. Only a tiny number of trusted aides and Secret Service agents could know of it. They would need to maintain complete silence about it. And no reporters could catch wind of it. Such an affair is improbable, but--take heart, Clinton-haters--it's not impossible. Based on scuttlebutt and speculation from insiders at the Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Ford White Houses, here are the four likeliest scenarios for presidential adultery.", "1) Too many people would know. Kennedy hardly bothered to hide his conquests. According to Kennedy mistress (and mob moll) Judith Campbell's autobiography, those who knew about their affair included: Kennedy's personal aides and secretary (who pandered for him), White House drivers, White House gate guards, White House Secret Service agents, White House domestic staff, most of Campbell's friends, a lot of Kennedy's friends, and several Kennedy family members. Such broad circulation would be disastrous today because: \n\n 2) The press would report it. Kennedy conducted his affairs brazenly because he trusted reporters not to write about them. White House journalists knew about, or at least strongly suspected, Kennedy's infidelity, but never published a story about it. Ask Gary Hart if reporters would exercise the same restraint today. Clinton must worry about this more than most presidents. Not only are newspapers and magazines willing to publish an adultery story about him, but many are pursuing it.", "Meanwhile, back in the private quarters, the president and friend get comfortable in one of the 14 bedrooms (or, perhaps, the billiard room). After a pleasant 15 minutes (or two hours?), she says goodbye. Depending on how long she stays, she may pass a different shift of Secret Service agents as she departs. She exits the White House grounds, unescorted and unbothered, at the East gate. The Risks : A gate guard, an usher, and a handful of Secret Service agents see her. All of them have a very good idea of why she was there. The White House maid who changes the sheets sees other suspicious evidence. And the woman's--real--name is entered in a Secret Service computer. None of this endangers the president too much. The computer record of her visit is private, at least for several decades after he leaves office. No personal aides know about the visit. Unless they were staking out the East gate, no journalists do either. The Secret Service agents, the guard, the steward, and the maid owe their jobs to their discretion. Leaks get them fired.", "4. The Hotel Shuffle. The cleverest strategy, and the only one that cuts out the Secret Service. The president is traveling without his family. The Secret Service secures an entire hotel floor, reserving elevators and guarding the entrance to the president's suite. The president's personal aide (a man in his late 20s) takes the room adjoining the president's. An internal door connects the two rooms, so the aide can enter the president's room without alerting the agents in the hall. This is standard practice.", "Secret Service agents and their immediate supervisor know about the visit. It is recorded in the Secret Service log, which is not made public during the administration's tenure. Gate guards may suspect something fishy when they see the car. A reporter", "or passer-by could spy the president--even through tinted windows--as the car enters and exits the White House. The friend's neighbors might spot him, or they might notice the agents lurking outside her house. A neighbor might call the police to", "Late in the evening, the aide escorts a comely young woman back to the hotel. The Secret Service checks her, then waves her into the aide's room. She emerges three hours later, slightly disheveled. She kisses the aide in the hall as she leaves. Someone got lucky--but who? The Risks : The posted Secret Service agents might see through the charade. More awkwardly, the aide would be forced to play the seamy role of procurer. (He would probably do it. Kennedy's assistants performed this task dutifully.) \n\n In short, presidential adultery is just barely possible in 1996. But it would be extremely inconvenient, extremely risky, and potentially disastrous. It seems, in fact, a lot more trouble than it's worth. A president these days might be wiser to imitate Jimmy Carter, not Jack Kennedy, and only lust in his heart.", "The president dials a \"friend\" on his private line. (Most presidents placed all their calls through the White House operators, who kept a record of each one; the Clintons installed a direct-dial line in the private quarters.) The president invites the friend over for a cozy evening at the White House. After he hangs up with the friend, he phones the guard at the East Executive Avenue gate and tells him to admit a visitor. He also notifies the Secret Service agent and the usher on duty downstairs that they should send her up to the residence.", "For the same reason, Clinton would find it difficult to hire a mistress. A lovely young secretary would set off alarm bells in any reporter investigating presidential misbehavior. Says a former Clinton aide, \"There has been a real tendency to have no good-looking women on the staff in order to protect him.\" \n\n 3) Clinton cannot avoid Secret Service protection. During the Kennedy era, the Secret Service employed fewer than 500 people and had an annual budget of about $4 million. Then came Lee Harvey Oswald, Squeaky Fromme, and John Hinckley. Now the Secret Service payroll tops 4,500 (most of them agents), and the annual budget exceeds $500 million (up 300 percent just since 1980). At any given time, more than 100 agents guard the president in the White House. Top aides from recent administrations are adamant: The Secret Service never lets the president escape its protection.", "2) The \"Off-the-Record\" Visit. Late at night, after his personal aides and the press have gone home, the president tells", "And it was. The not-so-Secret-Service agent's \"source\" turned out to be a thirdhand rumor passed on by Clinton scandalmonger David Brock. Those who know about White House security--Clinton staffers, the Secret Service, former aides to Presidents Reagan and Bush--demolished Aldrich's claims. Clinton couldn't give his Secret Service agents the slip (they shadow him when he walks around the White House), couldn't arrange a private visit without tipping off hotel staff, and couldn't re-enter the White House without getting nabbed. (Guards check all cars at the gate--especially those that arrive at 4 a.m.) \n\n Even so, the image resonates. For some Americans, it is an article of faith: Bill Clinton cheated on his wife when he was governor, and he cheats on her as president. But can he? Is it possible for the president of the United States to commit adultery and get away with it? Maybe, but it's tougher than you think.", "Treasury. The president and the two agents drive the unmarked car to a woman friend's house. Ideally, she has a covered garage. (An apartment building or a hotel would raise considerably the risk of getting caught.) The agents guard the outside", "The logistics of presidential adultery. \n\n \n\n The Washington Times could hardly contain its excitement: \"A former FBI agent assigned to the White House describes in a new book how President Clinton slips past his Secret Service detail in the dead of night, hides under a blanket in the back of a dark-colored sedan, and trysts with a woman, possibly a celebrity, at the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Washington.\" For Clinton-haters, Gary Aldrich's tale sounded too good to be true.", "That said, the current president has every reason not to trust his Secret Service detail. No one seriously compares Secret Service agents (who are pros) to Arkansas state troopers (who aren't). But Clinton might not trust any security guards after the beating he took from his Arkansas posse. Also, if other Secret Service agents are anything like Aldrich, they may dislike this president. One Secret Service leak--the lamp-throwing story--already damaged Clinton. Agents could tattle again.", "1) The White House Sneak. This is a discreet variation of the old Kennedy/Campbell liaison. It's late at night. The president's personal aides have gone home. The family is away. He is alone in the private quarters. The private quarters, a k a \"the residence,\" occupy the second and third floors of the White House. Secret Service agents guard the residence's entrances on the first floor and ground floors, but the first family has privacy in the quarters themselves. Maids and butlers serve the family there, but the president and first lady ask them to leave when they want to be alone.", "report the suspicious visitors. All in all, a risky, though not unthinkable, venture.", "his Secret Service detail that he needs to take an \"off-the-record\" trip. He wants to leave the White House without his motorcade and without informing the press. He requests two agents and an unobtrusive sedan. The Secret Service shift leader", "A taxi drops the woman near the East gate. She identifies herself to the guard, who examines her ID, runs her name through a computer (to check for outstanding warrants), and logs her in a database. A White House usher escorts her into the East Wing of the White House. They walk through the East Wing and pass the Secret Service guard post by the White House movie theater. The agent on duty waves them on. The usher takes her to the private elevator, where another Secret Service agent is posted. She takes the elevator to the second floor. The president opens the door and welcomes her. Under no circumstances could she enter the living quarters without first encountering Secret Service agents.", "Historically, presidential adultery is common. Warren Harding cavorted with Nan Britton and Carrie Phillips. Franklin Roosevelt \"entertained\" Lucy Rutherford at the White House when Eleanor was away. America was none the wiser, even if White House reporters were. \n\n Those who know Clinton is cheating often point to the model of John F. Kennedy, who turned presidential hanky-panky into a science. Kennedy invited mistresses to the White House for afternoon (and evening, and overnight) liaisons. Kennedy seduced women on the White House staff (including, it seems, Jackie's own press secretary). Kennedy made assignations outside the White House, then escaped his Secret Service detail by scaling walls and ducking out back doors. If Kennedy did it, so can Clinton. \n\n Well, no. Though Clinton slavishly emulates JFK in every other way, he'd be a fool to steal Kennedy's MO d'amour . Here's why:" ], [ "And it was. The not-so-Secret-Service agent's \"source\" turned out to be a thirdhand rumor passed on by Clinton scandalmonger David Brock. Those who know about White House security--Clinton staffers, the Secret Service, former aides to Presidents Reagan and Bush--demolished Aldrich's claims. Clinton couldn't give his Secret Service agents the slip (they shadow him when he walks around the White House), couldn't arrange a private visit without tipping off hotel staff, and couldn't re-enter the White House without getting nabbed. (Guards check all cars at the gate--especially those that arrive at 4 a.m.) \n\n Even so, the image resonates. For some Americans, it is an article of faith: Bill Clinton cheated on his wife when he was governor, and he cheats on her as president. But can he? Is it possible for the president of the United States to commit adultery and get away with it? Maybe, but it's tougher than you think.", "So what's a randy president to do? Any modern presidential affair would need to meet stringent demands. Only a tiny number of trusted aides and Secret Service agents could know of it. They would need to maintain complete silence about it. And no reporters could catch wind of it. Such an affair is improbable, but--take heart, Clinton-haters--it's not impossible. Based on scuttlebutt and speculation from insiders at the Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Ford White Houses, here are the four likeliest scenarios for presidential adultery.", "Late in the evening, the aide escorts a comely young woman back to the hotel. The Secret Service checks her, then waves her into the aide's room. She emerges three hours later, slightly disheveled. She kisses the aide in the hall as she leaves. Someone got lucky--but who? The Risks : The posted Secret Service agents might see through the charade. More awkwardly, the aide would be forced to play the seamy role of procurer. (He would probably do it. Kennedy's assistants performed this task dutifully.) \n\n In short, presidential adultery is just barely possible in 1996. But it would be extremely inconvenient, extremely risky, and potentially disastrous. It seems, in fact, a lot more trouble than it's worth. A president these days might be wiser to imitate Jimmy Carter, not Jack Kennedy, and only lust in his heart.", "For the same reason, Clinton would find it difficult to hire a mistress. A lovely young secretary would set off alarm bells in any reporter investigating presidential misbehavior. Says a former Clinton aide, \"There has been a real tendency to have no good-looking women on the staff in order to protect him.\" \n\n 3) Clinton cannot avoid Secret Service protection. During the Kennedy era, the Secret Service employed fewer than 500 people and had an annual budget of about $4 million. Then came Lee Harvey Oswald, Squeaky Fromme, and John Hinckley. Now the Secret Service payroll tops 4,500 (most of them agents), and the annual budget exceeds $500 million (up 300 percent just since 1980). At any given time, more than 100 agents guard the president in the White House. Top aides from recent administrations are adamant: The Secret Service never lets the president escape its protection.", "Historically, presidential adultery is common. Warren Harding cavorted with Nan Britton and Carrie Phillips. Franklin Roosevelt \"entertained\" Lucy Rutherford at the White House when Eleanor was away. America was none the wiser, even if White House reporters were. \n\n Those who know Clinton is cheating often point to the model of John F. Kennedy, who turned presidential hanky-panky into a science. Kennedy invited mistresses to the White House for afternoon (and evening, and overnight) liaisons. Kennedy seduced women on the White House staff (including, it seems, Jackie's own press secretary). Kennedy made assignations outside the White House, then escaped his Secret Service detail by scaling walls and ducking out back doors. If Kennedy did it, so can Clinton. \n\n Well, no. Though Clinton slavishly emulates JFK in every other way, he'd be a fool to steal Kennedy's MO d'amour . Here's why:", "The logistics of presidential adultery. \n\n \n\n The Washington Times could hardly contain its excitement: \"A former FBI agent assigned to the White House describes in a new book how President Clinton slips past his Secret Service detail in the dead of night, hides under a blanket in the back of a dark-colored sedan, and trysts with a woman, possibly a celebrity, at the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Washington.\" For Clinton-haters, Gary Aldrich's tale sounded too good to be true.", "1) Too many people would know. Kennedy hardly bothered to hide his conquests. According to Kennedy mistress (and mob moll) Judith Campbell's autobiography, those who knew about their affair included: Kennedy's personal aides and secretary (who pandered for him), White House drivers, White House gate guards, White House Secret Service agents, White House domestic staff, most of Campbell's friends, a lot of Kennedy's friends, and several Kennedy family members. Such broad circulation would be disastrous today because: \n\n 2) The press would report it. Kennedy conducted his affairs brazenly because he trusted reporters not to write about them. White House journalists knew about, or at least strongly suspected, Kennedy's infidelity, but never published a story about it. Ask Gary Hart if reporters would exercise the same restraint today. Clinton must worry about this more than most presidents. Not only are newspapers and magazines willing to publish an adultery story about him, but many are pursuing it.", "Let us pause for a moment to demolish two of the splashier rumors about White House fornication. First, the residence is the only place in the White House where the president can have safe (i.e. uninterrupted) sex. He can be intruded upon or observed everywhere else--except, perhaps, the Oval Office bathroom. Unless the president is an exhibitionist or a lunatic, liaisons in the Oval Office, bowling alley, or East Wing are unimaginable. Second, the much-touted tunnel between the White House and the Treasury Department is all-but-useless to the presidential adulterer. It is too well-guarded. The president could smuggle a mistress through it, but it would attract far more attention from White House staff than a straightforward gate entry would.", "3. The Camp David Assignation. A bucolic, safer version of the White House Sneak. The president invites a group of friends and staffers--including his paramour but not his wife--to spend the weekend at Camp David. The girlfriend is assigned the cabin next to the president's lodge. Late at night, after the Hearts game has ended and everyone has retired to their cabins, she strolls next door. There is a Secret Service command post outside the cabin. The agents on duty (probably three of them) let her enter. A few hours later, she slips back to her own cabin. The Risks : Only a few Secret Service agents know about the liaison. Even though the guest list is not public, all the Navy and Marine personnel at Camp David, as well as the other guests, would know that the presidential entourage included an attractive woman, but not the first lady. That would raise eyebrows if it got back to the White House press room.", "The president dials a \"friend\" on his private line. (Most presidents placed all their calls through the White House operators, who kept a record of each one; the Clintons installed a direct-dial line in the private quarters.) The president invites the friend over for a cozy evening at the White House. After he hangs up with the friend, he phones the guard at the East Executive Avenue gate and tells him to admit a visitor. He also notifies the Secret Service agent and the usher on duty downstairs that they should send her up to the residence.", "Meanwhile, back in the private quarters, the president and friend get comfortable in one of the 14 bedrooms (or, perhaps, the billiard room). After a pleasant 15 minutes (or two hours?), she says goodbye. Depending on how long she stays, she may pass a different shift of Secret Service agents as she departs. She exits the White House grounds, unescorted and unbothered, at the East gate. The Risks : A gate guard, an usher, and a handful of Secret Service agents see her. All of them have a very good idea of why she was there. The White House maid who changes the sheets sees other suspicious evidence. And the woman's--real--name is entered in a Secret Service computer. None of this endangers the president too much. The computer record of her visit is private, at least for several decades after he leaves office. No personal aides know about the visit. Unless they were staking out the East gate, no journalists do either. The Secret Service agents, the guard, the steward, and the maid owe their jobs to their discretion. Leaks get them fired.", "1) The White House Sneak. This is a discreet variation of the old Kennedy/Campbell liaison. It's late at night. The president's personal aides have gone home. The family is away. He is alone in the private quarters. The private quarters, a k a \"the residence,\" occupy the second and third floors of the White House. Secret Service agents guard the residence's entrances on the first floor and ground floors, but the first family has privacy in the quarters themselves. Maids and butlers serve the family there, but the president and first lady ask them to leave when they want to be alone.", "That said, the current president has every reason not to trust his Secret Service detail. No one seriously compares Secret Service agents (who are pros) to Arkansas state troopers (who aren't). But Clinton might not trust any security guards after the beating he took from his Arkansas posse. Also, if other Secret Service agents are anything like Aldrich, they may dislike this president. One Secret Service leak--the lamp-throwing story--already damaged Clinton. Agents could tattle again.", "4. The Hotel Shuffle. The cleverest strategy, and the only one that cuts out the Secret Service. The president is traveling without his family. The Secret Service secures an entire hotel floor, reserving elevators and guarding the entrance to the president's suite. The president's personal aide (a man in his late 20s) takes the room adjoining the president's. An internal door connects the two rooms, so the aide can enter the president's room without alerting the agents in the hall. This is standard practice.", "Secret Service agents and their immediate supervisor know about the visit. It is recorded in the Secret Service log, which is not made public during the administration's tenure. Gate guards may suspect something fishy when they see the car. A reporter", "or passer-by could spy the president--even through tinted windows--as the car enters and exits the White House. The friend's neighbors might spot him, or they might notice the agents lurking outside her house. A neighbor might call the police to", "A taxi drops the woman near the East gate. She identifies herself to the guard, who examines her ID, runs her name through a computer (to check for outstanding warrants), and logs her in a database. A White House usher escorts her into the East Wing of the White House. They walk through the East Wing and pass the Secret Service guard post by the White House movie theater. The agent on duty waves them on. The usher takes her to the private elevator, where another Secret Service agent is posted. She takes the elevator to the second floor. The president opens the door and welcomes her. Under no circumstances could she enter the living quarters without first encountering Secret Service agents.", "2) The \"Off-the-Record\" Visit. Late at night, after his personal aides and the press have gone home, the president tells", "of the house while the president and his friend do their thing. Then the agents chauffeur the president back to the White House, re-entering through the Southwest or Southeast gate, away from the press station. The Risks : Only two", "his Secret Service detail that he needs to take an \"off-the-record\" trip. He wants to leave the White House without his motorcade and without informing the press. He requests two agents and an unobtrusive sedan. The Secret Service shift leader" ], [ "Historically, presidential adultery is common. Warren Harding cavorted with Nan Britton and Carrie Phillips. Franklin Roosevelt \"entertained\" Lucy Rutherford at the White House when Eleanor was away. America was none the wiser, even if White House reporters were. \n\n Those who know Clinton is cheating often point to the model of John F. Kennedy, who turned presidential hanky-panky into a science. Kennedy invited mistresses to the White House for afternoon (and evening, and overnight) liaisons. Kennedy seduced women on the White House staff (including, it seems, Jackie's own press secretary). Kennedy made assignations outside the White House, then escaped his Secret Service detail by scaling walls and ducking out back doors. If Kennedy did it, so can Clinton. \n\n Well, no. Though Clinton slavishly emulates JFK in every other way, he'd be a fool to steal Kennedy's MO d'amour . Here's why:", "So what's a randy president to do? Any modern presidential affair would need to meet stringent demands. Only a tiny number of trusted aides and Secret Service agents could know of it. They would need to maintain complete silence about it. And no reporters could catch wind of it. Such an affair is improbable, but--take heart, Clinton-haters--it's not impossible. Based on scuttlebutt and speculation from insiders at the Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Ford White Houses, here are the four likeliest scenarios for presidential adultery.", "For the same reason, Clinton would find it difficult to hire a mistress. A lovely young secretary would set off alarm bells in any reporter investigating presidential misbehavior. Says a former Clinton aide, \"There has been a real tendency to have no good-looking women on the staff in order to protect him.\" \n\n 3) Clinton cannot avoid Secret Service protection. During the Kennedy era, the Secret Service employed fewer than 500 people and had an annual budget of about $4 million. Then came Lee Harvey Oswald, Squeaky Fromme, and John Hinckley. Now the Secret Service payroll tops 4,500 (most of them agents), and the annual budget exceeds $500 million (up 300 percent just since 1980). At any given time, more than 100 agents guard the president in the White House. Top aides from recent administrations are adamant: The Secret Service never lets the president escape its protection.", "The president dials a \"friend\" on his private line. (Most presidents placed all their calls through the White House operators, who kept a record of each one; the Clintons installed a direct-dial line in the private quarters.) The president invites the friend over for a cozy evening at the White House. After he hangs up with the friend, he phones the guard at the East Executive Avenue gate and tells him to admit a visitor. He also notifies the Secret Service agent and the usher on duty downstairs that they should send her up to the residence.", "Let us pause for a moment to demolish two of the splashier rumors about White House fornication. First, the residence is the only place in the White House where the president can have safe (i.e. uninterrupted) sex. He can be intruded upon or observed everywhere else--except, perhaps, the Oval Office bathroom. Unless the president is an exhibitionist or a lunatic, liaisons in the Oval Office, bowling alley, or East Wing are unimaginable. Second, the much-touted tunnel between the White House and the Treasury Department is all-but-useless to the presidential adulterer. It is too well-guarded. The president could smuggle a mistress through it, but it would attract far more attention from White House staff than a straightforward gate entry would.", "Late in the evening, the aide escorts a comely young woman back to the hotel. The Secret Service checks her, then waves her into the aide's room. She emerges three hours later, slightly disheveled. She kisses the aide in the hall as she leaves. Someone got lucky--but who? The Risks : The posted Secret Service agents might see through the charade. More awkwardly, the aide would be forced to play the seamy role of procurer. (He would probably do it. Kennedy's assistants performed this task dutifully.) \n\n In short, presidential adultery is just barely possible in 1996. But it would be extremely inconvenient, extremely risky, and potentially disastrous. It seems, in fact, a lot more trouble than it's worth. A president these days might be wiser to imitate Jimmy Carter, not Jack Kennedy, and only lust in his heart.", "The logistics of presidential adultery. \n\n \n\n The Washington Times could hardly contain its excitement: \"A former FBI agent assigned to the White House describes in a new book how President Clinton slips past his Secret Service detail in the dead of night, hides under a blanket in the back of a dark-colored sedan, and trysts with a woman, possibly a celebrity, at the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Washington.\" For Clinton-haters, Gary Aldrich's tale sounded too good to be true.", "And it was. The not-so-Secret-Service agent's \"source\" turned out to be a thirdhand rumor passed on by Clinton scandalmonger David Brock. Those who know about White House security--Clinton staffers, the Secret Service, former aides to Presidents Reagan and Bush--demolished Aldrich's claims. Clinton couldn't give his Secret Service agents the slip (they shadow him when he walks around the White House), couldn't arrange a private visit without tipping off hotel staff, and couldn't re-enter the White House without getting nabbed. (Guards check all cars at the gate--especially those that arrive at 4 a.m.) \n\n Even so, the image resonates. For some Americans, it is an article of faith: Bill Clinton cheated on his wife when he was governor, and he cheats on her as president. But can he? Is it possible for the president of the United States to commit adultery and get away with it? Maybe, but it's tougher than you think.", "3. The Camp David Assignation. A bucolic, safer version of the White House Sneak. The president invites a group of friends and staffers--including his paramour but not his wife--to spend the weekend at Camp David. The girlfriend is assigned the cabin next to the president's lodge. Late at night, after the Hearts game has ended and everyone has retired to their cabins, she strolls next door. There is a Secret Service command post outside the cabin. The agents on duty (probably three of them) let her enter. A few hours later, she slips back to her own cabin. The Risks : Only a few Secret Service agents know about the liaison. Even though the guest list is not public, all the Navy and Marine personnel at Camp David, as well as the other guests, would know that the presidential entourage included an attractive woman, but not the first lady. That would raise eyebrows if it got back to the White House press room.", "1) The White House Sneak. This is a discreet variation of the old Kennedy/Campbell liaison. It's late at night. The president's personal aides have gone home. The family is away. He is alone in the private quarters. The private quarters, a k a \"the residence,\" occupy the second and third floors of the White House. Secret Service agents guard the residence's entrances on the first floor and ground floors, but the first family has privacy in the quarters themselves. Maids and butlers serve the family there, but the president and first lady ask them to leave when they want to be alone.", "Meanwhile, back in the private quarters, the president and friend get comfortable in one of the 14 bedrooms (or, perhaps, the billiard room). After a pleasant 15 minutes (or two hours?), she says goodbye. Depending on how long she stays, she may pass a different shift of Secret Service agents as she departs. She exits the White House grounds, unescorted and unbothered, at the East gate. The Risks : A gate guard, an usher, and a handful of Secret Service agents see her. All of them have a very good idea of why she was there. The White House maid who changes the sheets sees other suspicious evidence. And the woman's--real--name is entered in a Secret Service computer. None of this endangers the president too much. The computer record of her visit is private, at least for several decades after he leaves office. No personal aides know about the visit. Unless they were staking out the East gate, no journalists do either. The Secret Service agents, the guard, the steward, and the maid owe their jobs to their discretion. Leaks get them fired.", "1) Too many people would know. Kennedy hardly bothered to hide his conquests. According to Kennedy mistress (and mob moll) Judith Campbell's autobiography, those who knew about their affair included: Kennedy's personal aides and secretary (who pandered for him), White House drivers, White House gate guards, White House Secret Service agents, White House domestic staff, most of Campbell's friends, a lot of Kennedy's friends, and several Kennedy family members. Such broad circulation would be disastrous today because: \n\n 2) The press would report it. Kennedy conducted his affairs brazenly because he trusted reporters not to write about them. White House journalists knew about, or at least strongly suspected, Kennedy's infidelity, but never published a story about it. Ask Gary Hart if reporters would exercise the same restraint today. Clinton must worry about this more than most presidents. Not only are newspapers and magazines willing to publish an adultery story about him, but many are pursuing it.", "A taxi drops the woman near the East gate. She identifies herself to the guard, who examines her ID, runs her name through a computer (to check for outstanding warrants), and logs her in a database. A White House usher escorts her into the East Wing of the White House. They walk through the East Wing and pass the Secret Service guard post by the White House movie theater. The agent on duty waves them on. The usher takes her to the private elevator, where another Secret Service agent is posted. She takes the elevator to the second floor. The president opens the door and welcomes her. Under no circumstances could she enter the living quarters without first encountering Secret Service agents.", "4. The Hotel Shuffle. The cleverest strategy, and the only one that cuts out the Secret Service. The president is traveling without his family. The Secret Service secures an entire hotel floor, reserving elevators and guarding the entrance to the president's suite. The president's personal aide (a man in his late 20s) takes the room adjoining the president's. An internal door connects the two rooms, so the aide can enter the president's room without alerting the agents in the hall. This is standard practice.", "That said, the current president has every reason not to trust his Secret Service detail. No one seriously compares Secret Service agents (who are pros) to Arkansas state troopers (who aren't). But Clinton might not trust any security guards after the beating he took from his Arkansas posse. Also, if other Secret Service agents are anything like Aldrich, they may dislike this president. One Secret Service leak--the lamp-throwing story--already damaged Clinton. Agents could tattle again.", "of the house while the president and his friend do their thing. Then the agents chauffeur the president back to the White House, re-entering through the Southwest or Southeast gate, away from the press station. The Risks : Only two", "or passer-by could spy the president--even through tinted windows--as the car enters and exits the White House. The friend's neighbors might spot him, or they might notice the agents lurking outside her house. A neighbor might call the police to", "2) The \"Off-the-Record\" Visit. Late at night, after his personal aides and the press have gone home, the president tells", "Secret Service agents and their immediate supervisor know about the visit. It is recorded in the Secret Service log, which is not made public during the administration's tenure. Gate guards may suspect something fishy when they see the car. A reporter", "his Secret Service detail that he needs to take an \"off-the-record\" trip. He wants to leave the White House without his motorcade and without informing the press. He requests two agents and an unobtrusive sedan. The Secret Service shift leader" ] ]
valid	63916	[ "Of the following options, which best describes Vee Vee before the entertainment?", "Of the following options, which best describes Johnson?", "Of the following options, which technological advancement is NOT a part of this story?", "How would you describe the relationship between Vee Vee and Johnson?", "Why is it a bit dangerous for Vee Vee to be at the club?", "What did Johnson do that ended up proving himself to Vee Vee?", "Of the following options, who might enjoy reading this passage the most?", "Of the following options, which best summarizes this story?", "What is the relationship between Caldwell and Johnson?" ]	[ [ "Confident and deliberate", "Deliberate and kind", "Brave and prepared", "Kind and generous" ], [ "Curious and oblivious", "Stern and bold", "Intelligent and prepared", "Handsome and talented" ], [ "a technique that prevents someone from moving", "dream-based entertainment", "guns that make people pass out for an extended period", "knives containing paralyzing chemicals" ], [ "They have great respect for each other", "They've known each other for a long time", "They care about each other's wellbeing", "They're continuously hostile towards each other" ], [ "She's extremely naive", "She's fairly overconfident", "Women are in danger of being harmed by men at the club", "Vee Vee is special and many men fight over her" ], [ "He knew how to defend himself from her", "He knew what he was getting into with the entertainment", "He knew the ins and outs of the club", "He knew facts about Venus that few humans do" ], [ "A kid who loves reading about the other planets in our solar system", "A sci-fi nerd who loves reading about intergalactic stories of rebellion and uprisings", "A sci-fi nerd who enjoys twists and fast-paced storytelling", "A man who goes to night clubs and enjoys night life" ], [ "A man enters a club on Venus to enjoy himself at a special demonstration.", "A man enters a club on Venus to discuss business with a few colleagues.", "A man enters a club on Venus to research and participate in a strange form of entertainment.", "A man enters a club on Venus to flirt with a beautiful woman." ], [ "They're strangers", "They're coworkers", "They're new acquaintances", "They're old friends" ] ]	[ 1, 3, 4, 4, 3, 1, 3, 3, 2 ]	[ 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "\"Thank you.\"\n\n\n \"I was referring to the bubbles.\"\n\n\n \"You were talking about my eyes,\" she answered, unperturbed.\n\n\n \"How did you know? I mean....\"\n\n\n \"I am very knowing,\" the girl said, smiling.\n\n\n \"Are you sufficiently knowing to be here?\"\n\n\n For an instant, as if doubt crossed her mind, the smile flickered. Then\n it came again, stronger. \"Aren't you here?\"\n\n\n Johnson choked as bubbles from the tarmur seemed to go suddenly up his\n nose. \"My dear child ...\" he sputtered.\n\n\n \"I am not a child,\" she answered with a firm sureness that left no\n doubt in his mind that she knew what she was saying. \"And my name is\n Vee Vee.\"\n\n\n \"Vee Vee? Um. That is....\"", "The music changed, a slow dreamy tempo crept into it. Vee Vee's fingers\n dug at Johnson's arm as if they were trying to dig under his hide for\n protection. She was shivering. He reached for her hand, patted it. She\n drew closer to him.\n\n\n A few minutes earlier, she had been a very certain young woman, able\n to take care of herself, and handle anyone around her. Now she was\n suddenly uncertain, suddenly scared. In the Room of the Dreaming, she\n had suddenly become a frightened child looking for protection.\n\n\n \"Haven't you ever seen this before?\" he whispered.\n\n\n \"N—o.\" She shivered again. \"Oh, Johnny....\"", "The music picked up a beat, perfume seemed to flow even more freely\n through the air, the lights dimmed almost to darkness, a single bright\n spotlight appeared in the ceiling, casting a circle of brilliant\n illumination on the mat and the headrest at the bottom of the room. The\n curtain rose.\nUnger stood in the middle of the spot of light.\n\n\n Johnson felt his chest muscles contract, then relax. Vee Vee's fingers\n sought his arm, not to harm him but running to him for protection. He\n caught the flutter of her breathing. On his left, Caldwell stiffened\n and became a rock.", "\"You ... you startled me,\" Vee Vee whispered. She released the grip on\n his arm.\n\n\n \"But, didn't you see it?\"\n\n\n \"See what?\"\n\n\n \"The space ship!\"\n\n\n \"No. No.\" She seemed startled and a little terrified and half asleep.\n \"I ... I was watching something else. When you moved I broke contact\n with my dream.\"\n\n\n \"Your dream?\"", "\"That's what I'm afraid of!\" he snapped at her. If he had had a\n choice, he might have drawn back. But with circumstances as they\n were—his life, Caldwell's life, possibly Vee Vee's life hung in the\n balance. Didn't she know that this was true? And as for Martin—But\n Caldwell had said that she had been asking about Martin. What\n connection did she have with that frantic human genius he sought here?\n\n\n Johnson felt his skin crawl. He moved toward a nest of cushions on\n a ramp, found a Venusian was beating him to them, deftly changed to\n another nest, found it. Vee Vee flowed to the floor on his right, moved\n cushions to make him more comfortable. She moved in an easy sort of way\n that was all flowing movement. He sat down. Someone bumped him on the\n left.", "The music playing strange harmonies in his ears, the perfume sending\n tingling feelings through his nose, Johnson entered the Room of the\n Dreamer. He suspected that other forces, unknown to him, were catching\n hold of his senses. He had been in dreaming rooms many times before but\n he had not grown accustomed to them. He wondered if any human ever\n did. A touch of chill always came over him as he crossed the threshold.\n In entering these places, it was as if some unknown nerve center\n inside the human organism was touched by something, some force, some\n radiation, some subtlety, that quite escaped radiation. He felt the\n coldness now.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers left off patting his arm.\n\n\n \"Do you feel it, darling?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"What is it?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n \"Please!\" Her voice grew sharp. \"I think Johnny Johnson ought to know.\"", "Johnson had not seen Unger appear. One second the circle of light\n had been empty, the next second the Venusian, smiling with all the\n impassivity of a bland Buddha, was in the light. He weighed three\n hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce, he was clad in a long robe\n that would impede movement. He had appeared in the bright beam of the\n spotlight as if by magic.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers dug deeper into Johnson's arm. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Shhh. Nobody knows.\"\n\n\n No human knew the answer to that trick. Unless perhaps Martin—\n\n\n Unger bowed. A little ripple of something that was not quite sound\n passed through the audience. Unger bowed again. He stretched himself\n flat on the mat, adjusted the rest to support his head, and apparently\n went to sleep. Johnson saw the Dreamer's eyes close, watched the chest\n take on the even, regular rhythm of sleep.", "He asked a question but she did not answer it. \"Sit down, darling,\n and look at your damned space ship.\" Her voice was a taut whisper of\n sound in the darkened room. Johnson settled down. A glance to his left\n told him that Caldwell was still sitting like a chunk of stone.... The\n Venusians were quiet. The music had shifted. A slow languorous beat\n of hidden drums filled the room. There was another sound present, a\n high-speed whirring. It was, somehow, a familiar sound, but Johnson had\n not heard it before in this place.\n\n\n He thought about the space ship he had seen.\n\n\n The vision would not come.\n\n\n He shook his head and tried again.\n\n\n Beside him, Vee Vee was silent, her face ecstatic, like the face of a\n woman in love.\n\n\n He tried again for the space ship.\n\n\n It would not come.", "\"You look as if you were considering some very grave matter,\" Vee Vee\n said.\n\n\n \"Not any longer,\" he laughed.\n\n\n \"You have decided them?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Every last one of them?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, there might be one or two matters undecided somewhere, say out on\n the periphery of the galaxy. But we will solve them when we get to\n them.\" He waved vaguely toward the roof and the sky of space hidden\n behind the clouds that lay over the roof, glanced around as a man eased\n himself into an empty stool on his left. The man was Caldwell.", "\"Shall we go watch the dreaming?\" He took the arm that still hung limp\n at her side and tucked it into his elbow.\n\n\n \"If you try to use the Karmer grip on me again I'll break your arm,\" he\n said. His voice was low but there was a wealth of meaning in it.\n\n\n \"I won't do it again,\" the girl said stoutly. \"I never make the same\n mistake twice.\"\n\n\n \"Good,\" Johnson said.\n\n\n \"The second time we break our victim's neck,\" Vee Vee said.\n\n\n \"What a sweet, charming child you—\"\n\n\n \"I told you before, I'm not a child.\"\n\n\n \"Child vampire,\" Johnson said. \"Let me finish my sentences before you\n interrupt.\"", "\"Zlock!\" Caldwell said, to the bartender. \"Make it snappy. Gotta have\n zlock. Finest damn drink in the solar system.\" Caldwell's voice was\n thick, his tongue heavy. Johnson's eyes went back to the girl but out\n of the corner of them he watched Caldwell's hand lying on the bar. The\n fingers were beating a quick nervous tattoo on the yellow wood.\n\n\n \"I haven't seen him,\" Caldwell's fingers beat out their tattoo. \"But I\n think he is, or was, here.\"\n\n\n \"Um,\" Johnson said, his eyes on Vee Vee. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Because that girl was asking for him,\" Caldwell's fingers answered.\n \"Watch that girl!\" Picking up the zlock, he lurched away from the bar.\n\n\n \"Your friend is not as drunk as he seems,\" Vee Vee said, watching\n Caldwell.", "As Unger had come into the spotlight, so the space ship had come into\n his vision, out of nowhere, out of nothingness. The room, the Dreamer,\n the sound of the music, the sweetness of the perfume, Vee Vee and\n Caldwell were gone. They were no longer in his reality. They were not\n in the range of his vision. It was as if they did not exist. Yet he\n knew they did exist, the memory of them, and of other things, was out\n on the periphery of his universe, perhaps of\nthe\nuniverse.\n\n\n All he saw was the space ship.\n\n\n It was a wonderful thing, perhaps the most beautiful sight he had seen\n in his life. At the sight of it, a deep glow sprang inside of him.", "Back when he had been a kid he had dreamed of flight to the far-off\n stars. He had made models of space ships. In a way, they had shaped his\n destiny, had made him what he was. They had brought him where he was\n this night, to the Dream Room of a Venusian tavern.\n\n\n The vision of the space ship floating in the void entranced and\n thrilled him. Something told him that this was real; that here and now\n he was making contact with a vision that belonged to time.\n\n\n He started to his feet. Fingers gripped his arm.\n\n\n \"Please, darling. You startled me. Don't move.\" Vee Vee's voice. Who\n was Vee Vee?\n\n\n The fingers dug into his arm. Pain came up in him. The space ship\n vanished. He looked with startled eyes at Vee Vee, at the Dream Room,\n at Unger, dreaming on the mat under the spot.", "\"Don't you think it's a nice name?\"\n\n\n \"I certainly do. Probably the rest of it is even nicer.\"\n\n\n \"There is no more of it. Just Vee Vee. Like Topsy, I just grew.\"\n\"What the devil are you doing here on Venus and here in this place?\"\n\n\n \"Growing.\" The blue eyes were unafraid.\n\n\n Sombrely, Johnson regarded her. What was she doing here? Was she in\n the employ of the Venusians? If she was being planted on him, then\n his purpose here was suspected. He shrugged the thought aside. If his\n purpose here was suspected, there would be no point in planting a woman\n on him.\n\n\n There would only be the minor matter of slipping a knife into his back.\n\n\n In this city, as on all of Venus, humans died easily. No one questioned\n the motives of the killer.", "Moving toward the open door that led to the Room of the Dreaming,\n Johnson saw that Caldwell had risen and was following them. Caldwell's\n face was writhing in apprehensive agony and he was making warning\n signs. Johnson ignored them. With Vee Vee's fingers lightly patting his\n arm, they moved into the Room of the Dreaming.\nII\n\n\n It was a huge, semi-illumined room, with tier on tier of circling ramps\n rising up from an open space at the bottom. There ought to have been\n a stage there at the bottom, but there wasn't. Instead there was an\n open space, a mat, and a head rest. Up at the top of the circling ramps\n the room was in darkness, a fit hiding place for ghosts or Venusian\n werewolves. Pillows and a thick rug covered the circling ramps.", "\"My friend? Do you mean that drunk? I never saw him—\"\n\n\n \"Lying is one of the deadly sins.\" Her eyes twinkled at him. Under the\n merriment that danced in them there was ice. Johnson felt cold.\n\n\n \"The reservations for ze dreaming, great one?\" The headwaiter was\n bowing and scraping in front of him. \"The great one has decided, yes?\"\n\n\n \"The dreaming!\" Vee Vee looked suddenly alert. \"Of course. We must see\n the dreaming. Everyone wants to see the dreaming. We will go, won't we\n darling?\" She hooked her hand into Johnson's elbow.\n\n\n \"Certainly,\" Johnson said. The decision was made on the spur of the\n moment. That there was danger in it, he did not doubt. But there might\n be something else. And\nhe\nmight be there.", "Vee Vee, her hand on Johnson's elbow, rose. Johnson stood up with\n her. He got the surprise of his life as her fingers clenched, digging\n into his muscles. Pain shot through his arm, paralyzing it and almost\n paralyzing him. He knew instantly that she was using the Karmer nerve\n block paralysis on him. His left hand moved with lightning speed, the\n tips of his fingers striking savagely against her shoulder.\n\n\n She gasped, her face whitened as pain shot through her in response to\n the thrust of his finger tips. Her hand that had been digging into his\n elbow lost its grip, dropped away and hung limp at her side. Grabbing\n it, she began to massage it.\n\n\n \"You—you—\" Hot anger and shock were in her voice. \"You're the first\n man I ever knew who could break the Karmer nerve paralysis.\"\n\n\n \"And you're the first woman who ever tried it on me.\"\n\n\n \"But—\"", "\"Oh. But very good. Ze great Unger, you will love him!\" The headwaiter\n clutched the gold coins that Johnson extended, bowed himself out of\n sight.\n\n\n \"Say, I want to know more—\" Johnson began. His words were drowned in\n a blast of trumpets. The band that had been playing went into sudden\n silence. Waves of perfume began to flow into the place. The perfumes\n were blended, but one aroma was prominent among them, the sweet,\n cloying, soul-stirring perfume of the Dreamer.\n\n\n In the suddenly hushed place little sounds began to appear as Venusians\n and humans began to shift their feet and their bodies in anticipation\n of what was to happen.\n\n\n The trumpets flared again.\n\n\n On one side of the place, a big door began to swing slowly open. From\n beyond that slowly opening door came music, soft, muted strains that\n sounded like lutes from heaven.", "\"Vee Vee!\" Johnson's voice became a shout.\n\n\n \"To hell with the woman!\" Caldwell grunted. \"Martin's the important\n one.\"\n\n\n Zit, zit, zit, Caldwell moved toward the rear, shooting as he went.\n Johnson followed.", "There was a split second of startled silence in the Dreaming Room. The\n silence went. Voices came.\n\n\n \"Who did that?\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\"\n\n\n \"That human hidden there did it! He broke the Dreaming!\" Anger marked\n the voices. Although the language was Venusian, Johnson got most of the\n meaning. His hand dived under his coat for the gun holstered there. At\n his left, Caldwell was muttering thickly. \"What—what happened? I was\n back in the lab on Earth—\" Caldwell's voice held a plaintive note, as\n if some pleasant dream had been interrupted.\n\n\n On Johnson's right, Vee Vee seemed to flow to life. Her arms came up\n around his neck. He was instantly prepared for anything. Her lips came\n hungrily against his lips, pressed very hard, then gently drew away.\n\n\n \"What—\" he gasped." ], [ "\"My friend? Do you mean that drunk? I never saw him—\"\n\n\n \"Lying is one of the deadly sins.\" Her eyes twinkled at him. Under the\n merriment that danced in them there was ice. Johnson felt cold.\n\n\n \"The reservations for ze dreaming, great one?\" The headwaiter was\n bowing and scraping in front of him. \"The great one has decided, yes?\"\n\n\n \"The dreaming!\" Vee Vee looked suddenly alert. \"Of course. We must see\n the dreaming. Everyone wants to see the dreaming. We will go, won't we\n darling?\" She hooked her hand into Johnson's elbow.\n\n\n \"Certainly,\" Johnson said. The decision was made on the spur of the\n moment. That there was danger in it, he did not doubt. But there might\n be something else. And\nhe\nmight be there.", "The music picked up a beat, perfume seemed to flow even more freely\n through the air, the lights dimmed almost to darkness, a single bright\n spotlight appeared in the ceiling, casting a circle of brilliant\n illumination on the mat and the headrest at the bottom of the room. The\n curtain rose.\nUnger stood in the middle of the spot of light.\n\n\n Johnson felt his chest muscles contract, then relax. Vee Vee's fingers\n sought his arm, not to harm him but running to him for protection. He\n caught the flutter of her breathing. On his left, Caldwell stiffened\n and became a rock.", "The music playing strange harmonies in his ears, the perfume sending\n tingling feelings through his nose, Johnson entered the Room of the\n Dreamer. He suspected that other forces, unknown to him, were catching\n hold of his senses. He had been in dreaming rooms many times before but\n he had not grown accustomed to them. He wondered if any human ever\n did. A touch of chill always came over him as he crossed the threshold.\n In entering these places, it was as if some unknown nerve center\n inside the human organism was touched by something, some force, some\n radiation, some subtlety, that quite escaped radiation. He felt the\n coldness now.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers left off patting his arm.\n\n\n \"Do you feel it, darling?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"What is it?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n \"Please!\" Her voice grew sharp. \"I think Johnny Johnson ought to know.\"", "\"Vee Vee!\" Johnson's voice became a shout.\n\n\n \"To hell with the woman!\" Caldwell grunted. \"Martin's the important\n one.\"\n\n\n Zit, zit, zit, Caldwell moved toward the rear, shooting as he went.\n Johnson followed.", "\"Zlock!\" Caldwell said, to the bartender. \"Make it snappy. Gotta have\n zlock. Finest damn drink in the solar system.\" Caldwell's voice was\n thick, his tongue heavy. Johnson's eyes went back to the girl but out\n of the corner of them he watched Caldwell's hand lying on the bar. The\n fingers were beating a quick nervous tattoo on the yellow wood.\n\n\n \"I haven't seen him,\" Caldwell's fingers beat out their tattoo. \"But I\n think he is, or was, here.\"\n\n\n \"Um,\" Johnson said, his eyes on Vee Vee. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Because that girl was asking for him,\" Caldwell's fingers answered.\n \"Watch that girl!\" Picking up the zlock, he lurched away from the bar.\n\n\n \"Your friend is not as drunk as he seems,\" Vee Vee said, watching\n Caldwell.", "The little voices seemed to blend into a single chorus. \"Action,\n Master! Do something.\"\n\n\n \"Quiet!\" Johnson ordered.\n\n\n \"But hurry. We are excited.\"\n\n\n \"There is a time to be excited and a time to hurry. In this situation,\n if action is taken before the time for it—if that time ever comes—we\n can all die.\"\n\n\n \"Die?\" the chorus quavered.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Johnson said. \"Now be quiet. When the time goes we will all go\n together.\"\n\n\n The chorus went into muted silence. But just under the threshold the\n little voices were a multitude of tiny fretful pressures.\n\n\n \"I hear a whirring sound,\" his ears reported.\n\n\n \"Please!\" Johnson said.\n\n\n In the front of the room Unger floated ten feet above the floor.", "Moving toward the open door that led to the Room of the Dreaming,\n Johnson saw that Caldwell had risen and was following them. Caldwell's\n face was writhing in apprehensive agony and he was making warning\n signs. Johnson ignored them. With Vee Vee's fingers lightly patting his\n arm, they moved into the Room of the Dreaming.\nII\n\n\n It was a huge, semi-illumined room, with tier on tier of circling ramps\n rising up from an open space at the bottom. There ought to have been\n a stage there at the bottom, but there wasn't. Instead there was an\n open space, a mat, and a head rest. Up at the top of the circling ramps\n the room was in darkness, a fit hiding place for ghosts or Venusian\n werewolves. Pillows and a thick rug covered the circling ramps.", "\"Johnny! How do you know my name?\"\n\n\n \"Shouldn't I recognize one of Earth's foremost scientists, even if he\n is incognito on Venus?\" Her voice had a teasing quality in it.\n\n\n \"But—\"\n\n\n \"And who besides Johnny Johnson would recognize the Karmer nerve grip\n and be able to break it instantly?\"\n\n\n \"Hell—\"\n\n\n \"John Michael Johnson, known as Johnny to his friends, Earth's foremost\n expert in the field of electro-magnetic radiations within the human\n body!\" Her words were needles of icy fact, each one jabbing deeper and\n deeper into him.\n\n\n \"And how would I make certain you were Johnny Johnson, except by seeing\n if you could break the Karmer nerve grip? If you could break it, then\n there was no doubt who you were!\" Her words went on and on.", "\"Um,\" Johnson said. \"The great Unger!\" His voice expressed surprise,\n just the right amount of it. \"I'll have a tarmur to start but when does\n the dreaming commence?\"\n\n\n \"In one zonar or maybe less. Shall I make ze reservations for ze mighty\n one?\" As he was speaking, the headwaiter was deftly conducting Johnson\n to the bar.\n\n\n \"Not just yet,\" Johnson said. \"See me a little later.\"\n\n\n \"But certainly.\" The headwaiter was gone into the throng. Johnson was\n at the bar. Behind it, a Venusian was bowing to him. \"Tarmur,\" Johnson\n said. The green drink was set before him. He held it up to the light,\n admiring the slow rise of the tiny golden bubbles in it. To him,\n watching the bubbles rise was perhaps more important than drinking\n itself.", "On Venus, everything came at you from all directions, it seemed to\n Johnson. Opening the door of the joint, it was noise instead of rain\n that came at him, the wild frantic beat of a Venusian rhumba, the\n notes pounding and jumping through the smoke and perfume clouded room.\n Feeling states came at him, intangible, but to his trained senses,\n perceptible emotional nuances of hate, love, fear, and rage. But mostly\n love. Since this place had been designed to excite the senses of both\n humans and Venusians, the love feelings were heavily tinged with\n straight sex. He sniffed at them, feeling them somewhere inside of him,\n aware of them but aware also that here was apprehension, and plain fear.\n\n\n Caldwell, sitting in a booth next to the door, glanced up as Johnson\n entered but neither Caldwell's facial expression or his eyes revealed\n that he had ever seen this human before. Nor did Johnson seem to\n recognize Caldwell.", "Anger came up instead.\n\n\n Somehow he had the impression that the whirring sound which kept\n intruding into his consciousness was stopping the vision.\n\n\n So far as he could tell, he was the only one present who was not\n dreaming, who was not in a state of trance.\n\n\n His gaze went to Unger, the Dreamer....\n\n\n Cold flowed over him.\n\n\n Unger was slowly rising from the mat.\n\n\n The bland face and the body in the robe were slowly floating upward!\nIII\n\n\n An invisible force seemed to twitch at Johnson's skin, nipping it here\n and there with a multitude of tiny pinches, like invisible fleas biting\n him.", "\"That's what I'm afraid of!\" he snapped at her. If he had had a\n choice, he might have drawn back. But with circumstances as they\n were—his life, Caldwell's life, possibly Vee Vee's life hung in the\n balance. Didn't she know that this was true? And as for Martin—But\n Caldwell had said that she had been asking about Martin. What\n connection did she have with that frantic human genius he sought here?\n\n\n Johnson felt his skin crawl. He moved toward a nest of cushions on\n a ramp, found a Venusian was beating him to them, deftly changed to\n another nest, found it. Vee Vee flowed to the floor on his right, moved\n cushions to make him more comfortable. She moved in an easy sort of way\n that was all flowing movement. He sat down. Someone bumped him on the\n left.", "\"Shall we go watch the dreaming?\" He took the arm that still hung limp\n at her side and tucked it into his elbow.\n\n\n \"If you try to use the Karmer grip on me again I'll break your arm,\" he\n said. His voice was low but there was a wealth of meaning in it.\n\n\n \"I won't do it again,\" the girl said stoutly. \"I never make the same\n mistake twice.\"\n\n\n \"Good,\" Johnson said.\n\n\n \"The second time we break our victim's neck,\" Vee Vee said.\n\n\n \"What a sweet, charming child you—\"\n\n\n \"I told you before, I'm not a child.\"\n\n\n \"Child vampire,\" Johnson said. \"Let me finish my sentences before you\n interrupt.\"", "\"Oh. But very good. Ze great Unger, you will love him!\" The headwaiter\n clutched the gold coins that Johnson extended, bowed himself out of\n sight.\n\n\n \"Say, I want to know more—\" Johnson began. His words were drowned in\n a blast of trumpets. The band that had been playing went into sudden\n silence. Waves of perfume began to flow into the place. The perfumes\n were blended, but one aroma was prominent among them, the sweet,\n cloying, soul-stirring perfume of the Dreamer.\n\n\n In the suddenly hushed place little sounds began to appear as Venusians\n and humans began to shift their feet and their bodies in anticipation\n of what was to happen.\n\n\n The trumpets flared again.\n\n\n On one side of the place, a big door began to swing slowly open. From\n beyond that slowly opening door came music, soft, muted strains that\n sounded like lutes from heaven.", "Johnson had not seen Unger appear. One second the circle of light\n had been empty, the next second the Venusian, smiling with all the\n impassivity of a bland Buddha, was in the light. He weighed three\n hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce, he was clad in a long robe\n that would impede movement. He had appeared in the bright beam of the\n spotlight as if by magic.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers dug deeper into Johnson's arm. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Shhh. Nobody knows.\"\n\n\n No human knew the answer to that trick. Unless perhaps Martin—\n\n\n Unger bowed. A little ripple of something that was not quite sound\n passed through the audience. Unger bowed again. He stretched himself\n flat on the mat, adjusted the rest to support his head, and apparently\n went to sleep. Johnson saw the Dreamer's eyes close, watched the chest\n take on the even, regular rhythm of sleep.", "The CONJURER of VENUS\nBy CONAN T. TROY\nA world-famed Earth scientist had disappeared on Venus.\n \nWhen Johnson found him, he found too the secret to that\n \nglobe-shaking mystery—the fabulous Room of The Dreaming.\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories November 1952.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe city dripped with rain. Crossing the street toward the dive,\n Johnson got rain in his eyes, his nose, and his ears. That was the way\n with the rain here. It came at you from all directions. There had been\n occasions when Johnson had thought the rain was falling straight up.\n Otherwise, how had the insides of his pants gotten wet?", "\"Master, we are not lying!\" his eyes repeated.\n\n\n \"I sweat....\" his skin began.\n\n\n \"Watch Unger!\" Johnson said.\n\n\n The Dreamer floated. If wires suspended him, Johnson could not see\n them. If any known force lifted him, Johnson could not detect that\n force. All he could say for certain was that Unger floated.\n\n\n \"Yaaah!\" The silence of a room was broken by the enraged scream of a\n Venusian being jarred out of his dream.\n\n\n \"Damn it!\" A human voice said.\n\n\n A wave as sharp as the tip of a sword swept through the room.\n\n\n Unger fell.\n\n\n He was ten feet high when he started to fall. With a bone-breaking,\n body-jarring thud, the Dreamer fell. Hard.", "He asked a question but she did not answer it. \"Sit down, darling,\n and look at your damned space ship.\" Her voice was a taut whisper of\n sound in the darkened room. Johnson settled down. A glance to his left\n told him that Caldwell was still sitting like a chunk of stone.... The\n Venusians were quiet. The music had shifted. A slow languorous beat\n of hidden drums filled the room. There was another sound present, a\n high-speed whirring. It was, somehow, a familiar sound, but Johnson had\n not heard it before in this place.\n\n\n He thought about the space ship he had seen.\n\n\n The vision would not come.\n\n\n He shook his head and tried again.\n\n\n Beside him, Vee Vee was silent, her face ecstatic, like the face of a\n woman in love.\n\n\n He tried again for the space ship.\n\n\n It would not come.", "The music changed, a slow dreamy tempo crept into it. Vee Vee's fingers\n dug at Johnson's arm as if they were trying to dig under his hide for\n protection. She was shivering. He reached for her hand, patted it. She\n drew closer to him.\n\n\n A few minutes earlier, she had been a very certain young woman, able\n to take care of herself, and handle anyone around her. Now she was\n suddenly uncertain, suddenly scared. In the Room of the Dreaming, she\n had suddenly become a frightened child looking for protection.\n\n\n \"Haven't you ever seen this before?\" he whispered.\n\n\n \"N—o.\" She shivered again. \"Oh, Johnny....\"", "\"Sorry, bud. Didn't mean to bump into you.\" Caldwell's voice was still\n thick and heavy. He sprawled to the floor on Johnson's left. Under\n the man's coat, Johnson caught a glimpse of a slight bulge, the zit\n gun hidden there. His left arm pressed against his own coat, feeling\n his own zit gun. Operating under gas pressure, throwing a charge of\n gas-driven corvel, the zit guns were not only almost noiseless in\n operation but they knocked out a human or a Venusian in a matter of\n seconds.\n\n\n True, the person they knocked unconscious would be all right the next\n day. For this reason, many people did not regard the zit guns as\n effective weapons, but Johnson had a fondness for them. The feel of the\n little weapon inside his coat sent a surge of comfort through him." ], [ "The little voices seemed to blend into a single chorus. \"Action,\n Master! Do something.\"\n\n\n \"Quiet!\" Johnson ordered.\n\n\n \"But hurry. We are excited.\"\n\n\n \"There is a time to be excited and a time to hurry. In this situation,\n if action is taken before the time for it—if that time ever comes—we\n can all die.\"\n\n\n \"Die?\" the chorus quavered.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Johnson said. \"Now be quiet. When the time goes we will all go\n together.\"\n\n\n The chorus went into muted silence. But just under the threshold the\n little voices were a multitude of tiny fretful pressures.\n\n\n \"I hear a whirring sound,\" his ears reported.\n\n\n \"Please!\" Johnson said.\n\n\n In the front of the room Unger floated ten feet above the floor.", "\"Master, we are not lying!\" his eyes repeated.\n\n\n \"I sweat....\" his skin began.\n\n\n \"Watch Unger!\" Johnson said.\n\n\n The Dreamer floated. If wires suspended him, Johnson could not see\n them. If any known force lifted him, Johnson could not detect that\n force. All he could say for certain was that Unger floated.\n\n\n \"Yaaah!\" The silence of a room was broken by the enraged scream of a\n Venusian being jarred out of his dream.\n\n\n \"Damn it!\" A human voice said.\n\n\n A wave as sharp as the tip of a sword swept through the room.\n\n\n Unger fell.\n\n\n He was ten feet high when he started to fall. With a bone-breaking,\n body-jarring thud, the Dreamer fell. Hard.", "\"Sorry, bud. Didn't mean to bump into you.\" Caldwell's voice was still\n thick and heavy. He sprawled to the floor on Johnson's left. Under\n the man's coat, Johnson caught a glimpse of a slight bulge, the zit\n gun hidden there. His left arm pressed against his own coat, feeling\n his own zit gun. Operating under gas pressure, throwing a charge of\n gas-driven corvel, the zit guns were not only almost noiseless in\n operation but they knocked out a human or a Venusian in a matter of\n seconds.\n\n\n True, the person they knocked unconscious would be all right the next\n day. For this reason, many people did not regard the zit guns as\n effective weapons, but Johnson had a fondness for them. The feel of the\n little weapon inside his coat sent a surge of comfort through him.", "Anger came up instead.\n\n\n Somehow he had the impression that the whirring sound which kept\n intruding into his consciousness was stopping the vision.\n\n\n So far as he could tell, he was the only one present who was not\n dreaming, who was not in a state of trance.\n\n\n His gaze went to Unger, the Dreamer....\n\n\n Cold flowed over him.\n\n\n Unger was slowly rising from the mat.\n\n\n The bland face and the body in the robe were slowly floating upward!\nIII\n\n\n An invisible force seemed to twitch at Johnson's skin, nipping it here\n and there with a multitude of tiny pinches, like invisible fleas biting\n him.", "He asked a question but she did not answer it. \"Sit down, darling,\n and look at your damned space ship.\" Her voice was a taut whisper of\n sound in the darkened room. Johnson settled down. A glance to his left\n told him that Caldwell was still sitting like a chunk of stone.... The\n Venusians were quiet. The music had shifted. A slow languorous beat\n of hidden drums filled the room. There was another sound present, a\n high-speed whirring. It was, somehow, a familiar sound, but Johnson had\n not heard it before in this place.\n\n\n He thought about the space ship he had seen.\n\n\n The vision would not come.\n\n\n He shook his head and tried again.\n\n\n Beside him, Vee Vee was silent, her face ecstatic, like the face of a\n woman in love.\n\n\n He tried again for the space ship.\n\n\n It would not come.", "The music picked up a beat, perfume seemed to flow even more freely\n through the air, the lights dimmed almost to darkness, a single bright\n spotlight appeared in the ceiling, casting a circle of brilliant\n illumination on the mat and the headrest at the bottom of the room. The\n curtain rose.\nUnger stood in the middle of the spot of light.\n\n\n Johnson felt his chest muscles contract, then relax. Vee Vee's fingers\n sought his arm, not to harm him but running to him for protection. He\n caught the flutter of her breathing. On his left, Caldwell stiffened\n and became a rock.", "\"We did not lie about the space ship!\" the eyes insisted. \"When our\n master saw that ship we were out of focus, we were not reporting. Some\n other sense, some other organ, may have lied, but we did not.\"\n\n\n \"I—\" Johnson whispered.\n\n\n \"I am your skin,\" another voice whispered. \"I am covered with sweat.\"\n\n\n \"We are your adrenals. We are pouring forth adrenalin.\"\n\n\n \"I am your pancreas. I am gearing you for action.\"\n\n\n \"I am your thyroid. I....\"\n\n\n A multitude of tiny voices seemed to whisper through him. It was as if\n the parts of his body had suddenly found voices and were reporting to\n him what they were doing. These were voices out of his training days\n when he had learned the names of these functions and how to use them.\n\n\n \"Be quiet!\" he said roughly.", "Johnson had not seen Unger appear. One second the circle of light\n had been empty, the next second the Venusian, smiling with all the\n impassivity of a bland Buddha, was in the light. He weighed three\n hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce, he was clad in a long robe\n that would impede movement. He had appeared in the bright beam of the\n spotlight as if by magic.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers dug deeper into Johnson's arm. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Shhh. Nobody knows.\"\n\n\n No human knew the answer to that trick. Unless perhaps Martin—\n\n\n Unger bowed. A little ripple of something that was not quite sound\n passed through the audience. Unger bowed again. He stretched himself\n flat on the mat, adjusted the rest to support his head, and apparently\n went to sleep. Johnson saw the Dreamer's eyes close, watched the chest\n take on the even, regular rhythm of sleep.", "\"Zlock!\" Caldwell said, to the bartender. \"Make it snappy. Gotta have\n zlock. Finest damn drink in the solar system.\" Caldwell's voice was\n thick, his tongue heavy. Johnson's eyes went back to the girl but out\n of the corner of them he watched Caldwell's hand lying on the bar. The\n fingers were beating a quick nervous tattoo on the yellow wood.\n\n\n \"I haven't seen him,\" Caldwell's fingers beat out their tattoo. \"But I\n think he is, or was, here.\"\n\n\n \"Um,\" Johnson said, his eyes on Vee Vee. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Because that girl was asking for him,\" Caldwell's fingers answered.\n \"Watch that girl!\" Picking up the zlock, he lurched away from the bar.\n\n\n \"Your friend is not as drunk as he seems,\" Vee Vee said, watching\n Caldwell.", "The Venusian watchers had relaxed. They looked as if they were asleep,\n perhaps in a hypnotic trance, lulled into this state by the music\n and the perfume, and by something else. It was this something else\n that sent Johnson's thoughts pounding. The Venusians were like opium\n smokers. But he was not smoking opium. He was not in a hypnotic trance.\n He was wide awake and very much alert. He was ...\nwatching a space ship float in an endless void\n.", "\"This is it!\" a voice whispered in his mind. \"This is what you came to\n Venus to see. This ... this....\" The first voice went into silence.\n Another voice took its place.\n\n\n \"This is another damned vision!\" the second voice said. \"This ...\n this is something that is not real, that is not possible! No Venusian\n Dreamer, and no one else, can levitate, can defy the laws of gravity,\n can float upward toward the ceiling. Your damned eyes are tricking you!\"\n\n\n \"We are not tricking you!\" the eyes hotly insisted. \"It is happening.\n We are seeing it. We are reporting accurately to you. That Venusian\n Buddha is levitating. We, your eyes, do not lie to you!\"\n\n\n \"You lied about the space ship!\" the second voice said.", "\"My friend? Do you mean that drunk? I never saw him—\"\n\n\n \"Lying is one of the deadly sins.\" Her eyes twinkled at him. Under the\n merriment that danced in them there was ice. Johnson felt cold.\n\n\n \"The reservations for ze dreaming, great one?\" The headwaiter was\n bowing and scraping in front of him. \"The great one has decided, yes?\"\n\n\n \"The dreaming!\" Vee Vee looked suddenly alert. \"Of course. We must see\n the dreaming. Everyone wants to see the dreaming. We will go, won't we\n darling?\" She hooked her hand into Johnson's elbow.\n\n\n \"Certainly,\" Johnson said. The decision was made on the spur of the\n moment. That there was danger in it, he did not doubt. But there might\n be something else. And\nhe\nmight be there.", "As Unger had come into the spotlight, so the space ship had come into\n his vision, out of nowhere, out of nothingness. The room, the Dreamer,\n the sound of the music, the sweetness of the perfume, Vee Vee and\n Caldwell were gone. They were no longer in his reality. They were not\n in the range of his vision. It was as if they did not exist. Yet he\n knew they did exist, the memory of them, and of other things, was out\n on the periphery of his universe, perhaps of\nthe\nuniverse.\n\n\n All he saw was the space ship.\n\n\n It was a wonderful thing, perhaps the most beautiful sight he had seen\n in his life. At the sight of it, a deep glow sprang inside of him.", "She was silent. A smile, struggling to appear on her face, seemed to\n say she held no malice. Her fingers tightened on Johnson's arm. He\n tensed, expecting the nerve block grip again. Instead with the tips of\n her fingers she gently patted his arm.\n\n\n \"There, there, darling, relax,\" she said. \"I know a better way to get\n you than by using the Karmer grip.\"\n\n\n \"What way?\"\n\n\n Her eyes sparkled. \"Eve's way,\" she answered.\n\n\n \"Um!\" Surprise sounded in his grunt. \"But apples don't grow on Venus.\"\n\n\n \"Eve's daughters don't use apples any more, darling. Come along.\"", "\"Thank you.\"\n\n\n \"I was referring to the bubbles.\"\n\n\n \"You were talking about my eyes,\" she answered, unperturbed.\n\n\n \"How did you know? I mean....\"\n\n\n \"I am very knowing,\" the girl said, smiling.\n\n\n \"Are you sufficiently knowing to be here?\"\n\n\n For an instant, as if doubt crossed her mind, the smile flickered. Then\n it came again, stronger. \"Aren't you here?\"\n\n\n Johnson choked as bubbles from the tarmur seemed to go suddenly up his\n nose. \"My dear child ...\" he sputtered.\n\n\n \"I am not a child,\" she answered with a firm sureness that left no\n doubt in his mind that she knew what she was saying. \"And my name is\n Vee Vee.\"\n\n\n \"Vee Vee? Um. That is....\"", "Back when he had been a kid he had dreamed of flight to the far-off\n stars. He had made models of space ships. In a way, they had shaped his\n destiny, had made him what he was. They had brought him where he was\n this night, to the Dream Room of a Venusian tavern.\n\n\n The vision of the space ship floating in the void entranced and\n thrilled him. Something told him that this was real; that here and now\n he was making contact with a vision that belonged to time.\n\n\n He started to his feet. Fingers gripped his arm.\n\n\n \"Please, darling. You startled me. Don't move.\" Vee Vee's voice. Who\n was Vee Vee?\n\n\n The fingers dug into his arm. Pain came up in him. The space ship\n vanished. He looked with startled eyes at Vee Vee, at the Dream Room,\n at Unger, dreaming on the mat under the spot.", "\"That's what I'm afraid of!\" he snapped at her. If he had had a\n choice, he might have drawn back. But with circumstances as they\n were—his life, Caldwell's life, possibly Vee Vee's life hung in the\n balance. Didn't she know that this was true? And as for Martin—But\n Caldwell had said that she had been asking about Martin. What\n connection did she have with that frantic human genius he sought here?\n\n\n Johnson felt his skin crawl. He moved toward a nest of cushions on\n a ramp, found a Venusian was beating him to them, deftly changed to\n another nest, found it. Vee Vee flowed to the floor on his right, moved\n cushions to make him more comfortable. She moved in an easy sort of way\n that was all flowing movement. He sat down. Someone bumped him on the\n left.", "Under the circle of light pouring down from the ceiling, the Dreamer\n lay motionless. Johnson found himself with the tendency to hold his\n breath. He was waiting, waiting, waiting—for what? The whole situation\n was senseless, silly, but under its apparent lack of coherence, he\n sensed a pattern. Perhaps the path to the far-off stars passed this\n way, through such scented and musical and impossible places as these\n Rooms of the Dreamers. Certainly Martin thought so. And Johnson himself\n was not prepared to disagree.\n\n\n Around him, he saw that the Venusians were already going ... going ...\n going.... Some of them were already gone. This was an old experience\n to them. They went rapidly. Humans went more slowly.", "The music playing strange harmonies in his ears, the perfume sending\n tingling feelings through his nose, Johnson entered the Room of the\n Dreamer. He suspected that other forces, unknown to him, were catching\n hold of his senses. He had been in dreaming rooms many times before but\n he had not grown accustomed to them. He wondered if any human ever\n did. A touch of chill always came over him as he crossed the threshold.\n In entering these places, it was as if some unknown nerve center\n inside the human organism was touched by something, some force, some\n radiation, some subtlety, that quite escaped radiation. He felt the\n coldness now.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers left off patting his arm.\n\n\n \"Do you feel it, darling?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"What is it?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n \"Please!\" Her voice grew sharp. \"I think Johnny Johnson ought to know.\"", "On Venus, everything came at you from all directions, it seemed to\n Johnson. Opening the door of the joint, it was noise instead of rain\n that came at him, the wild frantic beat of a Venusian rhumba, the\n notes pounding and jumping through the smoke and perfume clouded room.\n Feeling states came at him, intangible, but to his trained senses,\n perceptible emotional nuances of hate, love, fear, and rage. But mostly\n love. Since this place had been designed to excite the senses of both\n humans and Venusians, the love feelings were heavily tinged with\n straight sex. He sniffed at them, feeling them somewhere inside of him,\n aware of them but aware also that here was apprehension, and plain fear.\n\n\n Caldwell, sitting in a booth next to the door, glanced up as Johnson\n entered but neither Caldwell's facial expression or his eyes revealed\n that he had ever seen this human before. Nor did Johnson seem to\n recognize Caldwell." ], [ "\"Thank you.\"\n\n\n \"I was referring to the bubbles.\"\n\n\n \"You were talking about my eyes,\" she answered, unperturbed.\n\n\n \"How did you know? I mean....\"\n\n\n \"I am very knowing,\" the girl said, smiling.\n\n\n \"Are you sufficiently knowing to be here?\"\n\n\n For an instant, as if doubt crossed her mind, the smile flickered. Then\n it came again, stronger. \"Aren't you here?\"\n\n\n Johnson choked as bubbles from the tarmur seemed to go suddenly up his\n nose. \"My dear child ...\" he sputtered.\n\n\n \"I am not a child,\" she answered with a firm sureness that left no\n doubt in his mind that she knew what she was saying. \"And my name is\n Vee Vee.\"\n\n\n \"Vee Vee? Um. That is....\"", "\"That's what I'm afraid of!\" he snapped at her. If he had had a\n choice, he might have drawn back. But with circumstances as they\n were—his life, Caldwell's life, possibly Vee Vee's life hung in the\n balance. Didn't she know that this was true? And as for Martin—But\n Caldwell had said that she had been asking about Martin. What\n connection did she have with that frantic human genius he sought here?\n\n\n Johnson felt his skin crawl. He moved toward a nest of cushions on\n a ramp, found a Venusian was beating him to them, deftly changed to\n another nest, found it. Vee Vee flowed to the floor on his right, moved\n cushions to make him more comfortable. She moved in an easy sort of way\n that was all flowing movement. He sat down. Someone bumped him on the\n left.", "\"Vee Vee!\" Johnson's voice became a shout.\n\n\n \"To hell with the woman!\" Caldwell grunted. \"Martin's the important\n one.\"\n\n\n Zit, zit, zit, Caldwell moved toward the rear, shooting as he went.\n Johnson followed.", "The music changed, a slow dreamy tempo crept into it. Vee Vee's fingers\n dug at Johnson's arm as if they were trying to dig under his hide for\n protection. She was shivering. He reached for her hand, patted it. She\n drew closer to him.\n\n\n A few minutes earlier, she had been a very certain young woman, able\n to take care of herself, and handle anyone around her. Now she was\n suddenly uncertain, suddenly scared. In the Room of the Dreaming, she\n had suddenly become a frightened child looking for protection.\n\n\n \"Haven't you ever seen this before?\" he whispered.\n\n\n \"N—o.\" She shivered again. \"Oh, Johnny....\"", "Vee Vee, her hand on Johnson's elbow, rose. Johnson stood up with\n her. He got the surprise of his life as her fingers clenched, digging\n into his muscles. Pain shot through his arm, paralyzing it and almost\n paralyzing him. He knew instantly that she was using the Karmer nerve\n block paralysis on him. His left hand moved with lightning speed, the\n tips of his fingers striking savagely against her shoulder.\n\n\n She gasped, her face whitened as pain shot through her in response to\n the thrust of his finger tips. Her hand that had been digging into his\n elbow lost its grip, dropped away and hung limp at her side. Grabbing\n it, she began to massage it.\n\n\n \"You—you—\" Hot anger and shock were in her voice. \"You're the first\n man I ever knew who could break the Karmer nerve paralysis.\"\n\n\n \"And you're the first woman who ever tried it on me.\"\n\n\n \"But—\"", "The music playing strange harmonies in his ears, the perfume sending\n tingling feelings through his nose, Johnson entered the Room of the\n Dreamer. He suspected that other forces, unknown to him, were catching\n hold of his senses. He had been in dreaming rooms many times before but\n he had not grown accustomed to them. He wondered if any human ever\n did. A touch of chill always came over him as he crossed the threshold.\n In entering these places, it was as if some unknown nerve center\n inside the human organism was touched by something, some force, some\n radiation, some subtlety, that quite escaped radiation. He felt the\n coldness now.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers left off patting his arm.\n\n\n \"Do you feel it, darling?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"What is it?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n \"Please!\" Her voice grew sharp. \"I think Johnny Johnson ought to know.\"", "\"Zlock!\" Caldwell said, to the bartender. \"Make it snappy. Gotta have\n zlock. Finest damn drink in the solar system.\" Caldwell's voice was\n thick, his tongue heavy. Johnson's eyes went back to the girl but out\n of the corner of them he watched Caldwell's hand lying on the bar. The\n fingers were beating a quick nervous tattoo on the yellow wood.\n\n\n \"I haven't seen him,\" Caldwell's fingers beat out their tattoo. \"But I\n think he is, or was, here.\"\n\n\n \"Um,\" Johnson said, his eyes on Vee Vee. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Because that girl was asking for him,\" Caldwell's fingers answered.\n \"Watch that girl!\" Picking up the zlock, he lurched away from the bar.\n\n\n \"Your friend is not as drunk as he seems,\" Vee Vee said, watching\n Caldwell.", "He asked a question but she did not answer it. \"Sit down, darling,\n and look at your damned space ship.\" Her voice was a taut whisper of\n sound in the darkened room. Johnson settled down. A glance to his left\n told him that Caldwell was still sitting like a chunk of stone.... The\n Venusians were quiet. The music had shifted. A slow languorous beat\n of hidden drums filled the room. There was another sound present, a\n high-speed whirring. It was, somehow, a familiar sound, but Johnson had\n not heard it before in this place.\n\n\n He thought about the space ship he had seen.\n\n\n The vision would not come.\n\n\n He shook his head and tried again.\n\n\n Beside him, Vee Vee was silent, her face ecstatic, like the face of a\n woman in love.\n\n\n He tried again for the space ship.\n\n\n It would not come.", "\"Shall we go watch the dreaming?\" He took the arm that still hung limp\n at her side and tucked it into his elbow.\n\n\n \"If you try to use the Karmer grip on me again I'll break your arm,\" he\n said. His voice was low but there was a wealth of meaning in it.\n\n\n \"I won't do it again,\" the girl said stoutly. \"I never make the same\n mistake twice.\"\n\n\n \"Good,\" Johnson said.\n\n\n \"The second time we break our victim's neck,\" Vee Vee said.\n\n\n \"What a sweet, charming child you—\"\n\n\n \"I told you before, I'm not a child.\"\n\n\n \"Child vampire,\" Johnson said. \"Let me finish my sentences before you\n interrupt.\"", "\"Don't you think it's a nice name?\"\n\n\n \"I certainly do. Probably the rest of it is even nicer.\"\n\n\n \"There is no more of it. Just Vee Vee. Like Topsy, I just grew.\"\n\"What the devil are you doing here on Venus and here in this place?\"\n\n\n \"Growing.\" The blue eyes were unafraid.\n\n\n Sombrely, Johnson regarded her. What was she doing here? Was she in\n the employ of the Venusians? If she was being planted on him, then\n his purpose here was suspected. He shrugged the thought aside. If his\n purpose here was suspected, there would be no point in planting a woman\n on him.\n\n\n There would only be the minor matter of slipping a knife into his back.\n\n\n In this city, as on all of Venus, humans died easily. No one questioned\n the motives of the killer.", "The music picked up a beat, perfume seemed to flow even more freely\n through the air, the lights dimmed almost to darkness, a single bright\n spotlight appeared in the ceiling, casting a circle of brilliant\n illumination on the mat and the headrest at the bottom of the room. The\n curtain rose.\nUnger stood in the middle of the spot of light.\n\n\n Johnson felt his chest muscles contract, then relax. Vee Vee's fingers\n sought his arm, not to harm him but running to him for protection. He\n caught the flutter of her breathing. On his left, Caldwell stiffened\n and became a rock.", "There was a split second of startled silence in the Dreaming Room. The\n silence went. Voices came.\n\n\n \"Who did that?\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\"\n\n\n \"That human hidden there did it! He broke the Dreaming!\" Anger marked\n the voices. Although the language was Venusian, Johnson got most of the\n meaning. His hand dived under his coat for the gun holstered there. At\n his left, Caldwell was muttering thickly. \"What—what happened? I was\n back in the lab on Earth—\" Caldwell's voice held a plaintive note, as\n if some pleasant dream had been interrupted.\n\n\n On Johnson's right, Vee Vee seemed to flow to life. Her arms came up\n around his neck. He was instantly prepared for anything. Her lips came\n hungrily against his lips, pressed very hard, then gently drew away.\n\n\n \"What—\" he gasped.", "\"You ... you startled me,\" Vee Vee whispered. She released the grip on\n his arm.\n\n\n \"But, didn't you see it?\"\n\n\n \"See what?\"\n\n\n \"The space ship!\"\n\n\n \"No. No.\" She seemed startled and a little terrified and half asleep.\n \"I ... I was watching something else. When you moved I broke contact\n with my dream.\"\n\n\n \"Your dream?\"", "Moving toward the open door that led to the Room of the Dreaming,\n Johnson saw that Caldwell had risen and was following them. Caldwell's\n face was writhing in apprehensive agony and he was making warning\n signs. Johnson ignored them. With Vee Vee's fingers lightly patting his\n arm, they moved into the Room of the Dreaming.\nII\n\n\n It was a huge, semi-illumined room, with tier on tier of circling ramps\n rising up from an open space at the bottom. There ought to have been\n a stage there at the bottom, but there wasn't. Instead there was an\n open space, a mat, and a head rest. Up at the top of the circling ramps\n the room was in darkness, a fit hiding place for ghosts or Venusian\n werewolves. Pillows and a thick rug covered the circling ramps.", "\"My friend? Do you mean that drunk? I never saw him—\"\n\n\n \"Lying is one of the deadly sins.\" Her eyes twinkled at him. Under the\n merriment that danced in them there was ice. Johnson felt cold.\n\n\n \"The reservations for ze dreaming, great one?\" The headwaiter was\n bowing and scraping in front of him. \"The great one has decided, yes?\"\n\n\n \"The dreaming!\" Vee Vee looked suddenly alert. \"Of course. We must see\n the dreaming. Everyone wants to see the dreaming. We will go, won't we\n darling?\" She hooked her hand into Johnson's elbow.\n\n\n \"Certainly,\" Johnson said. The decision was made on the spur of the\n moment. That there was danger in it, he did not doubt. But there might\n be something else. And\nhe\nmight be there.", "Johnson had not seen Unger appear. One second the circle of light\n had been empty, the next second the Venusian, smiling with all the\n impassivity of a bland Buddha, was in the light. He weighed three\n hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce, he was clad in a long robe\n that would impede movement. He had appeared in the bright beam of the\n spotlight as if by magic.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers dug deeper into Johnson's arm. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Shhh. Nobody knows.\"\n\n\n No human knew the answer to that trick. Unless perhaps Martin—\n\n\n Unger bowed. A little ripple of something that was not quite sound\n passed through the audience. Unger bowed again. He stretched himself\n flat on the mat, adjusted the rest to support his head, and apparently\n went to sleep. Johnson saw the Dreamer's eyes close, watched the chest\n take on the even, regular rhythm of sleep.", "\"You look as if you were considering some very grave matter,\" Vee Vee\n said.\n\n\n \"Not any longer,\" he laughed.\n\n\n \"You have decided them?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Every last one of them?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, there might be one or two matters undecided somewhere, say out on\n the periphery of the galaxy. But we will solve them when we get to\n them.\" He waved vaguely toward the roof and the sky of space hidden\n behind the clouds that lay over the roof, glanced around as a man eased\n himself into an empty stool on his left. The man was Caldwell.", "\"I had to do it now, darling,\" she answered. \"There may not be a later.\"\n\n\n Johnson had no time to ask her what she meant. Somewhere in the back\n of the room a human screamed. He jerked around. Back there a knot of\n Venusians were attacking a man.\n\n\n \"It's Martin!\" Caldwell shouted. \"He\nis\nhere!\"\n\n\n In Johnson's hand as he came to his feet the zit gun throbbed. He fired\n blindly at the mass of Venusians. Caldwell was firing too. The soft\n throb of the guns was not audible above the uproar from the crowd.\n Struck by the gas-driven corvel charges, Venusians were falling. But\n there seemed to be an endless number of them.\n\n\n \"Vee Vee?\" Johnson suddenly realized that she had disappeared. She had\n slid out of his sight.", "On Venus, everything came at you from all directions, it seemed to\n Johnson. Opening the door of the joint, it was noise instead of rain\n that came at him, the wild frantic beat of a Venusian rhumba, the\n notes pounding and jumping through the smoke and perfume clouded room.\n Feeling states came at him, intangible, but to his trained senses,\n perceptible emotional nuances of hate, love, fear, and rage. But mostly\n love. Since this place had been designed to excite the senses of both\n humans and Venusians, the love feelings were heavily tinged with\n straight sex. He sniffed at them, feeling them somewhere inside of him,\n aware of them but aware also that here was apprehension, and plain fear.\n\n\n Caldwell, sitting in a booth next to the door, glanced up as Johnson\n entered but neither Caldwell's facial expression or his eyes revealed\n that he had ever seen this human before. Nor did Johnson seem to\n recognize Caldwell.", "She was silent. A smile, struggling to appear on her face, seemed to\n say she held no malice. Her fingers tightened on Johnson's arm. He\n tensed, expecting the nerve block grip again. Instead with the tips of\n her fingers she gently patted his arm.\n\n\n \"There, there, darling, relax,\" she said. \"I know a better way to get\n you than by using the Karmer grip.\"\n\n\n \"What way?\"\n\n\n Her eyes sparkled. \"Eve's way,\" she answered.\n\n\n \"Um!\" Surprise sounded in his grunt. \"But apples don't grow on Venus.\"\n\n\n \"Eve's daughters don't use apples any more, darling. Come along.\"" ], [ "The music changed, a slow dreamy tempo crept into it. Vee Vee's fingers\n dug at Johnson's arm as if they were trying to dig under his hide for\n protection. She was shivering. He reached for her hand, patted it. She\n drew closer to him.\n\n\n A few minutes earlier, she had been a very certain young woman, able\n to take care of herself, and handle anyone around her. Now she was\n suddenly uncertain, suddenly scared. In the Room of the Dreaming, she\n had suddenly become a frightened child looking for protection.\n\n\n \"Haven't you ever seen this before?\" he whispered.\n\n\n \"N—o.\" She shivered again. \"Oh, Johnny....\"", "\"That's what I'm afraid of!\" he snapped at her. If he had had a\n choice, he might have drawn back. But with circumstances as they\n were—his life, Caldwell's life, possibly Vee Vee's life hung in the\n balance. Didn't she know that this was true? And as for Martin—But\n Caldwell had said that she had been asking about Martin. What\n connection did she have with that frantic human genius he sought here?\n\n\n Johnson felt his skin crawl. He moved toward a nest of cushions on\n a ramp, found a Venusian was beating him to them, deftly changed to\n another nest, found it. Vee Vee flowed to the floor on his right, moved\n cushions to make him more comfortable. She moved in an easy sort of way\n that was all flowing movement. He sat down. Someone bumped him on the\n left.", "The music picked up a beat, perfume seemed to flow even more freely\n through the air, the lights dimmed almost to darkness, a single bright\n spotlight appeared in the ceiling, casting a circle of brilliant\n illumination on the mat and the headrest at the bottom of the room. The\n curtain rose.\nUnger stood in the middle of the spot of light.\n\n\n Johnson felt his chest muscles contract, then relax. Vee Vee's fingers\n sought his arm, not to harm him but running to him for protection. He\n caught the flutter of her breathing. On his left, Caldwell stiffened\n and became a rock.", "\"My friend? Do you mean that drunk? I never saw him—\"\n\n\n \"Lying is one of the deadly sins.\" Her eyes twinkled at him. Under the\n merriment that danced in them there was ice. Johnson felt cold.\n\n\n \"The reservations for ze dreaming, great one?\" The headwaiter was\n bowing and scraping in front of him. \"The great one has decided, yes?\"\n\n\n \"The dreaming!\" Vee Vee looked suddenly alert. \"Of course. We must see\n the dreaming. Everyone wants to see the dreaming. We will go, won't we\n darling?\" She hooked her hand into Johnson's elbow.\n\n\n \"Certainly,\" Johnson said. The decision was made on the spur of the\n moment. That there was danger in it, he did not doubt. But there might\n be something else. And\nhe\nmight be there.", "He asked a question but she did not answer it. \"Sit down, darling,\n and look at your damned space ship.\" Her voice was a taut whisper of\n sound in the darkened room. Johnson settled down. A glance to his left\n told him that Caldwell was still sitting like a chunk of stone.... The\n Venusians were quiet. The music had shifted. A slow languorous beat\n of hidden drums filled the room. There was another sound present, a\n high-speed whirring. It was, somehow, a familiar sound, but Johnson had\n not heard it before in this place.\n\n\n He thought about the space ship he had seen.\n\n\n The vision would not come.\n\n\n He shook his head and tried again.\n\n\n Beside him, Vee Vee was silent, her face ecstatic, like the face of a\n woman in love.\n\n\n He tried again for the space ship.\n\n\n It would not come.", "\"Zlock!\" Caldwell said, to the bartender. \"Make it snappy. Gotta have\n zlock. Finest damn drink in the solar system.\" Caldwell's voice was\n thick, his tongue heavy. Johnson's eyes went back to the girl but out\n of the corner of them he watched Caldwell's hand lying on the bar. The\n fingers were beating a quick nervous tattoo on the yellow wood.\n\n\n \"I haven't seen him,\" Caldwell's fingers beat out their tattoo. \"But I\n think he is, or was, here.\"\n\n\n \"Um,\" Johnson said, his eyes on Vee Vee. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Because that girl was asking for him,\" Caldwell's fingers answered.\n \"Watch that girl!\" Picking up the zlock, he lurched away from the bar.\n\n\n \"Your friend is not as drunk as he seems,\" Vee Vee said, watching\n Caldwell.", "\"Thank you.\"\n\n\n \"I was referring to the bubbles.\"\n\n\n \"You were talking about my eyes,\" she answered, unperturbed.\n\n\n \"How did you know? I mean....\"\n\n\n \"I am very knowing,\" the girl said, smiling.\n\n\n \"Are you sufficiently knowing to be here?\"\n\n\n For an instant, as if doubt crossed her mind, the smile flickered. Then\n it came again, stronger. \"Aren't you here?\"\n\n\n Johnson choked as bubbles from the tarmur seemed to go suddenly up his\n nose. \"My dear child ...\" he sputtered.\n\n\n \"I am not a child,\" she answered with a firm sureness that left no\n doubt in his mind that she knew what she was saying. \"And my name is\n Vee Vee.\"\n\n\n \"Vee Vee? Um. That is....\"", "\"Shall we go watch the dreaming?\" He took the arm that still hung limp\n at her side and tucked it into his elbow.\n\n\n \"If you try to use the Karmer grip on me again I'll break your arm,\" he\n said. His voice was low but there was a wealth of meaning in it.\n\n\n \"I won't do it again,\" the girl said stoutly. \"I never make the same\n mistake twice.\"\n\n\n \"Good,\" Johnson said.\n\n\n \"The second time we break our victim's neck,\" Vee Vee said.\n\n\n \"What a sweet, charming child you—\"\n\n\n \"I told you before, I'm not a child.\"\n\n\n \"Child vampire,\" Johnson said. \"Let me finish my sentences before you\n interrupt.\"", "The music playing strange harmonies in his ears, the perfume sending\n tingling feelings through his nose, Johnson entered the Room of the\n Dreamer. He suspected that other forces, unknown to him, were catching\n hold of his senses. He had been in dreaming rooms many times before but\n he had not grown accustomed to them. He wondered if any human ever\n did. A touch of chill always came over him as he crossed the threshold.\n In entering these places, it was as if some unknown nerve center\n inside the human organism was touched by something, some force, some\n radiation, some subtlety, that quite escaped radiation. He felt the\n coldness now.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers left off patting his arm.\n\n\n \"Do you feel it, darling?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"What is it?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n \"Please!\" Her voice grew sharp. \"I think Johnny Johnson ought to know.\"", "\"You ... you startled me,\" Vee Vee whispered. She released the grip on\n his arm.\n\n\n \"But, didn't you see it?\"\n\n\n \"See what?\"\n\n\n \"The space ship!\"\n\n\n \"No. No.\" She seemed startled and a little terrified and half asleep.\n \"I ... I was watching something else. When you moved I broke contact\n with my dream.\"\n\n\n \"Your dream?\"", "On Venus, everything came at you from all directions, it seemed to\n Johnson. Opening the door of the joint, it was noise instead of rain\n that came at him, the wild frantic beat of a Venusian rhumba, the\n notes pounding and jumping through the smoke and perfume clouded room.\n Feeling states came at him, intangible, but to his trained senses,\n perceptible emotional nuances of hate, love, fear, and rage. But mostly\n love. Since this place had been designed to excite the senses of both\n humans and Venusians, the love feelings were heavily tinged with\n straight sex. He sniffed at them, feeling them somewhere inside of him,\n aware of them but aware also that here was apprehension, and plain fear.\n\n\n Caldwell, sitting in a booth next to the door, glanced up as Johnson\n entered but neither Caldwell's facial expression or his eyes revealed\n that he had ever seen this human before. Nor did Johnson seem to\n recognize Caldwell.", "Vee Vee, her hand on Johnson's elbow, rose. Johnson stood up with\n her. He got the surprise of his life as her fingers clenched, digging\n into his muscles. Pain shot through his arm, paralyzing it and almost\n paralyzing him. He knew instantly that she was using the Karmer nerve\n block paralysis on him. His left hand moved with lightning speed, the\n tips of his fingers striking savagely against her shoulder.\n\n\n She gasped, her face whitened as pain shot through her in response to\n the thrust of his finger tips. Her hand that had been digging into his\n elbow lost its grip, dropped away and hung limp at her side. Grabbing\n it, she began to massage it.\n\n\n \"You—you—\" Hot anger and shock were in her voice. \"You're the first\n man I ever knew who could break the Karmer nerve paralysis.\"\n\n\n \"And you're the first woman who ever tried it on me.\"\n\n\n \"But—\"", "\"You look as if you were considering some very grave matter,\" Vee Vee\n said.\n\n\n \"Not any longer,\" he laughed.\n\n\n \"You have decided them?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Every last one of them?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, there might be one or two matters undecided somewhere, say out on\n the periphery of the galaxy. But we will solve them when we get to\n them.\" He waved vaguely toward the roof and the sky of space hidden\n behind the clouds that lay over the roof, glanced around as a man eased\n himself into an empty stool on his left. The man was Caldwell.", "\"Vee Vee!\" Johnson's voice became a shout.\n\n\n \"To hell with the woman!\" Caldwell grunted. \"Martin's the important\n one.\"\n\n\n Zit, zit, zit, Caldwell moved toward the rear, shooting as he went.\n Johnson followed.", "\"Don't you think it's a nice name?\"\n\n\n \"I certainly do. Probably the rest of it is even nicer.\"\n\n\n \"There is no more of it. Just Vee Vee. Like Topsy, I just grew.\"\n\"What the devil are you doing here on Venus and here in this place?\"\n\n\n \"Growing.\" The blue eyes were unafraid.\n\n\n Sombrely, Johnson regarded her. What was she doing here? Was she in\n the employ of the Venusians? If she was being planted on him, then\n his purpose here was suspected. He shrugged the thought aside. If his\n purpose here was suspected, there would be no point in planting a woman\n on him.\n\n\n There would only be the minor matter of slipping a knife into his back.\n\n\n In this city, as on all of Venus, humans died easily. No one questioned\n the motives of the killer.", "Back when he had been a kid he had dreamed of flight to the far-off\n stars. He had made models of space ships. In a way, they had shaped his\n destiny, had made him what he was. They had brought him where he was\n this night, to the Dream Room of a Venusian tavern.\n\n\n The vision of the space ship floating in the void entranced and\n thrilled him. Something told him that this was real; that here and now\n he was making contact with a vision that belonged to time.\n\n\n He started to his feet. Fingers gripped his arm.\n\n\n \"Please, darling. You startled me. Don't move.\" Vee Vee's voice. Who\n was Vee Vee?\n\n\n The fingers dug into his arm. Pain came up in him. The space ship\n vanished. He looked with startled eyes at Vee Vee, at the Dream Room,\n at Unger, dreaming on the mat under the spot.", "There was a split second of startled silence in the Dreaming Room. The\n silence went. Voices came.\n\n\n \"Who did that?\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\"\n\n\n \"That human hidden there did it! He broke the Dreaming!\" Anger marked\n the voices. Although the language was Venusian, Johnson got most of the\n meaning. His hand dived under his coat for the gun holstered there. At\n his left, Caldwell was muttering thickly. \"What—what happened? I was\n back in the lab on Earth—\" Caldwell's voice held a plaintive note, as\n if some pleasant dream had been interrupted.\n\n\n On Johnson's right, Vee Vee seemed to flow to life. Her arms came up\n around his neck. He was instantly prepared for anything. Her lips came\n hungrily against his lips, pressed very hard, then gently drew away.\n\n\n \"What—\" he gasped.", "Moving toward the open door that led to the Room of the Dreaming,\n Johnson saw that Caldwell had risen and was following them. Caldwell's\n face was writhing in apprehensive agony and he was making warning\n signs. Johnson ignored them. With Vee Vee's fingers lightly patting his\n arm, they moved into the Room of the Dreaming.\nII\n\n\n It was a huge, semi-illumined room, with tier on tier of circling ramps\n rising up from an open space at the bottom. There ought to have been\n a stage there at the bottom, but there wasn't. Instead there was an\n open space, a mat, and a head rest. Up at the top of the circling ramps\n the room was in darkness, a fit hiding place for ghosts or Venusian\n werewolves. Pillows and a thick rug covered the circling ramps.", "\"I had to do it now, darling,\" she answered. \"There may not be a later.\"\n\n\n Johnson had no time to ask her what she meant. Somewhere in the back\n of the room a human screamed. He jerked around. Back there a knot of\n Venusians were attacking a man.\n\n\n \"It's Martin!\" Caldwell shouted. \"He\nis\nhere!\"\n\n\n In Johnson's hand as he came to his feet the zit gun throbbed. He fired\n blindly at the mass of Venusians. Caldwell was firing too. The soft\n throb of the guns was not audible above the uproar from the crowd.\n Struck by the gas-driven corvel charges, Venusians were falling. But\n there seemed to be an endless number of them.\n\n\n \"Vee Vee?\" Johnson suddenly realized that she had disappeared. She had\n slid out of his sight.", "\"Beautiful, aren't they?\" a soft voice said. He glanced to his right.\n A girl had slid into the stool beside him. She wore a green dress cut\n very low at the throat. Her skin had the pleasant tan recently on\n Earth. Her hair was a shade of abundant brown and her eyes were blue,\n the color of the skies of Earth. A necklace circled her throat and\n below the necklace ... Johnson felt his pulse quicken, for two reasons.\n Women such as this one had been quickening the pulse of men since the\n days of Adam. The second reason concerned her presence here in this\n place where no woman in her right mind ever came unescorted. Her eyes\n smiled up at him unafraid. Didn't she know there were men present here\n in this space port city who would snatch her bodily from the bar\n stool and carry her away for sleeping purposes? And Venusians were\n here who would cut her pretty throat for the sake of the necklace that\n circled it?\n\n\n \"They\nare\nbeautiful,\" he said, smiling." ], [ "\"Vee Vee!\" Johnson's voice became a shout.\n\n\n \"To hell with the woman!\" Caldwell grunted. \"Martin's the important\n one.\"\n\n\n Zit, zit, zit, Caldwell moved toward the rear, shooting as he went.\n Johnson followed.", "\"Thank you.\"\n\n\n \"I was referring to the bubbles.\"\n\n\n \"You were talking about my eyes,\" she answered, unperturbed.\n\n\n \"How did you know? I mean....\"\n\n\n \"I am very knowing,\" the girl said, smiling.\n\n\n \"Are you sufficiently knowing to be here?\"\n\n\n For an instant, as if doubt crossed her mind, the smile flickered. Then\n it came again, stronger. \"Aren't you here?\"\n\n\n Johnson choked as bubbles from the tarmur seemed to go suddenly up his\n nose. \"My dear child ...\" he sputtered.\n\n\n \"I am not a child,\" she answered with a firm sureness that left no\n doubt in his mind that she knew what she was saying. \"And my name is\n Vee Vee.\"\n\n\n \"Vee Vee? Um. That is....\"", "\"That's what I'm afraid of!\" he snapped at her. If he had had a\n choice, he might have drawn back. But with circumstances as they\n were—his life, Caldwell's life, possibly Vee Vee's life hung in the\n balance. Didn't she know that this was true? And as for Martin—But\n Caldwell had said that she had been asking about Martin. What\n connection did she have with that frantic human genius he sought here?\n\n\n Johnson felt his skin crawl. He moved toward a nest of cushions on\n a ramp, found a Venusian was beating him to them, deftly changed to\n another nest, found it. Vee Vee flowed to the floor on his right, moved\n cushions to make him more comfortable. She moved in an easy sort of way\n that was all flowing movement. He sat down. Someone bumped him on the\n left.", "The music picked up a beat, perfume seemed to flow even more freely\n through the air, the lights dimmed almost to darkness, a single bright\n spotlight appeared in the ceiling, casting a circle of brilliant\n illumination on the mat and the headrest at the bottom of the room. The\n curtain rose.\nUnger stood in the middle of the spot of light.\n\n\n Johnson felt his chest muscles contract, then relax. Vee Vee's fingers\n sought his arm, not to harm him but running to him for protection. He\n caught the flutter of her breathing. On his left, Caldwell stiffened\n and became a rock.", "The music changed, a slow dreamy tempo crept into it. Vee Vee's fingers\n dug at Johnson's arm as if they were trying to dig under his hide for\n protection. She was shivering. He reached for her hand, patted it. She\n drew closer to him.\n\n\n A few minutes earlier, she had been a very certain young woman, able\n to take care of herself, and handle anyone around her. Now she was\n suddenly uncertain, suddenly scared. In the Room of the Dreaming, she\n had suddenly become a frightened child looking for protection.\n\n\n \"Haven't you ever seen this before?\" he whispered.\n\n\n \"N—o.\" She shivered again. \"Oh, Johnny....\"", "Vee Vee, her hand on Johnson's elbow, rose. Johnson stood up with\n her. He got the surprise of his life as her fingers clenched, digging\n into his muscles. Pain shot through his arm, paralyzing it and almost\n paralyzing him. He knew instantly that she was using the Karmer nerve\n block paralysis on him. His left hand moved with lightning speed, the\n tips of his fingers striking savagely against her shoulder.\n\n\n She gasped, her face whitened as pain shot through her in response to\n the thrust of his finger tips. Her hand that had been digging into his\n elbow lost its grip, dropped away and hung limp at her side. Grabbing\n it, she began to massage it.\n\n\n \"You—you—\" Hot anger and shock were in her voice. \"You're the first\n man I ever knew who could break the Karmer nerve paralysis.\"\n\n\n \"And you're the first woman who ever tried it on me.\"\n\n\n \"But—\"", "\"Zlock!\" Caldwell said, to the bartender. \"Make it snappy. Gotta have\n zlock. Finest damn drink in the solar system.\" Caldwell's voice was\n thick, his tongue heavy. Johnson's eyes went back to the girl but out\n of the corner of them he watched Caldwell's hand lying on the bar. The\n fingers were beating a quick nervous tattoo on the yellow wood.\n\n\n \"I haven't seen him,\" Caldwell's fingers beat out their tattoo. \"But I\n think he is, or was, here.\"\n\n\n \"Um,\" Johnson said, his eyes on Vee Vee. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Because that girl was asking for him,\" Caldwell's fingers answered.\n \"Watch that girl!\" Picking up the zlock, he lurched away from the bar.\n\n\n \"Your friend is not as drunk as he seems,\" Vee Vee said, watching\n Caldwell.", "\"My friend? Do you mean that drunk? I never saw him—\"\n\n\n \"Lying is one of the deadly sins.\" Her eyes twinkled at him. Under the\n merriment that danced in them there was ice. Johnson felt cold.\n\n\n \"The reservations for ze dreaming, great one?\" The headwaiter was\n bowing and scraping in front of him. \"The great one has decided, yes?\"\n\n\n \"The dreaming!\" Vee Vee looked suddenly alert. \"Of course. We must see\n the dreaming. Everyone wants to see the dreaming. We will go, won't we\n darling?\" She hooked her hand into Johnson's elbow.\n\n\n \"Certainly,\" Johnson said. The decision was made on the spur of the\n moment. That there was danger in it, he did not doubt. But there might\n be something else. And\nhe\nmight be there.", "There was a split second of startled silence in the Dreaming Room. The\n silence went. Voices came.\n\n\n \"Who did that?\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\"\n\n\n \"That human hidden there did it! He broke the Dreaming!\" Anger marked\n the voices. Although the language was Venusian, Johnson got most of the\n meaning. His hand dived under his coat for the gun holstered there. At\n his left, Caldwell was muttering thickly. \"What—what happened? I was\n back in the lab on Earth—\" Caldwell's voice held a plaintive note, as\n if some pleasant dream had been interrupted.\n\n\n On Johnson's right, Vee Vee seemed to flow to life. Her arms came up\n around his neck. He was instantly prepared for anything. Her lips came\n hungrily against his lips, pressed very hard, then gently drew away.\n\n\n \"What—\" he gasped.", "The music playing strange harmonies in his ears, the perfume sending\n tingling feelings through his nose, Johnson entered the Room of the\n Dreamer. He suspected that other forces, unknown to him, were catching\n hold of his senses. He had been in dreaming rooms many times before but\n he had not grown accustomed to them. He wondered if any human ever\n did. A touch of chill always came over him as he crossed the threshold.\n In entering these places, it was as if some unknown nerve center\n inside the human organism was touched by something, some force, some\n radiation, some subtlety, that quite escaped radiation. He felt the\n coldness now.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers left off patting his arm.\n\n\n \"Do you feel it, darling?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"What is it?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n \"Please!\" Her voice grew sharp. \"I think Johnny Johnson ought to know.\"", "\"You look as if you were considering some very grave matter,\" Vee Vee\n said.\n\n\n \"Not any longer,\" he laughed.\n\n\n \"You have decided them?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Every last one of them?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, there might be one or two matters undecided somewhere, say out on\n the periphery of the galaxy. But we will solve them when we get to\n them.\" He waved vaguely toward the roof and the sky of space hidden\n behind the clouds that lay over the roof, glanced around as a man eased\n himself into an empty stool on his left. The man was Caldwell.", "\"Shall we go watch the dreaming?\" He took the arm that still hung limp\n at her side and tucked it into his elbow.\n\n\n \"If you try to use the Karmer grip on me again I'll break your arm,\" he\n said. His voice was low but there was a wealth of meaning in it.\n\n\n \"I won't do it again,\" the girl said stoutly. \"I never make the same\n mistake twice.\"\n\n\n \"Good,\" Johnson said.\n\n\n \"The second time we break our victim's neck,\" Vee Vee said.\n\n\n \"What a sweet, charming child you—\"\n\n\n \"I told you before, I'm not a child.\"\n\n\n \"Child vampire,\" Johnson said. \"Let me finish my sentences before you\n interrupt.\"", "Johnson had not seen Unger appear. One second the circle of light\n had been empty, the next second the Venusian, smiling with all the\n impassivity of a bland Buddha, was in the light. He weighed three\n hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce, he was clad in a long robe\n that would impede movement. He had appeared in the bright beam of the\n spotlight as if by magic.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers dug deeper into Johnson's arm. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Shhh. Nobody knows.\"\n\n\n No human knew the answer to that trick. Unless perhaps Martin—\n\n\n Unger bowed. A little ripple of something that was not quite sound\n passed through the audience. Unger bowed again. He stretched himself\n flat on the mat, adjusted the rest to support his head, and apparently\n went to sleep. Johnson saw the Dreamer's eyes close, watched the chest\n take on the even, regular rhythm of sleep.", "\"You ... you startled me,\" Vee Vee whispered. She released the grip on\n his arm.\n\n\n \"But, didn't you see it?\"\n\n\n \"See what?\"\n\n\n \"The space ship!\"\n\n\n \"No. No.\" She seemed startled and a little terrified and half asleep.\n \"I ... I was watching something else. When you moved I broke contact\n with my dream.\"\n\n\n \"Your dream?\"", "\"I had to do it now, darling,\" she answered. \"There may not be a later.\"\n\n\n Johnson had no time to ask her what she meant. Somewhere in the back\n of the room a human screamed. He jerked around. Back there a knot of\n Venusians were attacking a man.\n\n\n \"It's Martin!\" Caldwell shouted. \"He\nis\nhere!\"\n\n\n In Johnson's hand as he came to his feet the zit gun throbbed. He fired\n blindly at the mass of Venusians. Caldwell was firing too. The soft\n throb of the guns was not audible above the uproar from the crowd.\n Struck by the gas-driven corvel charges, Venusians were falling. But\n there seemed to be an endless number of them.\n\n\n \"Vee Vee?\" Johnson suddenly realized that she had disappeared. She had\n slid out of his sight.", "Moving toward the open door that led to the Room of the Dreaming,\n Johnson saw that Caldwell had risen and was following them. Caldwell's\n face was writhing in apprehensive agony and he was making warning\n signs. Johnson ignored them. With Vee Vee's fingers lightly patting his\n arm, they moved into the Room of the Dreaming.\nII\n\n\n It was a huge, semi-illumined room, with tier on tier of circling ramps\n rising up from an open space at the bottom. There ought to have been\n a stage there at the bottom, but there wasn't. Instead there was an\n open space, a mat, and a head rest. Up at the top of the circling ramps\n the room was in darkness, a fit hiding place for ghosts or Venusian\n werewolves. Pillows and a thick rug covered the circling ramps.", "He asked a question but she did not answer it. \"Sit down, darling,\n and look at your damned space ship.\" Her voice was a taut whisper of\n sound in the darkened room. Johnson settled down. A glance to his left\n told him that Caldwell was still sitting like a chunk of stone.... The\n Venusians were quiet. The music had shifted. A slow languorous beat\n of hidden drums filled the room. There was another sound present, a\n high-speed whirring. It was, somehow, a familiar sound, but Johnson had\n not heard it before in this place.\n\n\n He thought about the space ship he had seen.\n\n\n The vision would not come.\n\n\n He shook his head and tried again.\n\n\n Beside him, Vee Vee was silent, her face ecstatic, like the face of a\n woman in love.\n\n\n He tried again for the space ship.\n\n\n It would not come.", "\"Johnny! How do you know my name?\"\n\n\n \"Shouldn't I recognize one of Earth's foremost scientists, even if he\n is incognito on Venus?\" Her voice had a teasing quality in it.\n\n\n \"But—\"\n\n\n \"And who besides Johnny Johnson would recognize the Karmer nerve grip\n and be able to break it instantly?\"\n\n\n \"Hell—\"\n\n\n \"John Michael Johnson, known as Johnny to his friends, Earth's foremost\n expert in the field of electro-magnetic radiations within the human\n body!\" Her words were needles of icy fact, each one jabbing deeper and\n deeper into him.\n\n\n \"And how would I make certain you were Johnny Johnson, except by seeing\n if you could break the Karmer nerve grip? If you could break it, then\n there was no doubt who you were!\" Her words went on and on.", "\"Don't you think it's a nice name?\"\n\n\n \"I certainly do. Probably the rest of it is even nicer.\"\n\n\n \"There is no more of it. Just Vee Vee. Like Topsy, I just grew.\"\n\"What the devil are you doing here on Venus and here in this place?\"\n\n\n \"Growing.\" The blue eyes were unafraid.\n\n\n Sombrely, Johnson regarded her. What was she doing here? Was she in\n the employ of the Venusians? If she was being planted on him, then\n his purpose here was suspected. He shrugged the thought aside. If his\n purpose here was suspected, there would be no point in planting a woman\n on him.\n\n\n There would only be the minor matter of slipping a knife into his back.\n\n\n In this city, as on all of Venus, humans died easily. No one questioned\n the motives of the killer.", "The little voices seemed to blend into a single chorus. \"Action,\n Master! Do something.\"\n\n\n \"Quiet!\" Johnson ordered.\n\n\n \"But hurry. We are excited.\"\n\n\n \"There is a time to be excited and a time to hurry. In this situation,\n if action is taken before the time for it—if that time ever comes—we\n can all die.\"\n\n\n \"Die?\" the chorus quavered.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Johnson said. \"Now be quiet. When the time goes we will all go\n together.\"\n\n\n The chorus went into muted silence. But just under the threshold the\n little voices were a multitude of tiny fretful pressures.\n\n\n \"I hear a whirring sound,\" his ears reported.\n\n\n \"Please!\" Johnson said.\n\n\n In the front of the room Unger floated ten feet above the floor." ], [ "The music picked up a beat, perfume seemed to flow even more freely\n through the air, the lights dimmed almost to darkness, a single bright\n spotlight appeared in the ceiling, casting a circle of brilliant\n illumination on the mat and the headrest at the bottom of the room. The\n curtain rose.\nUnger stood in the middle of the spot of light.\n\n\n Johnson felt his chest muscles contract, then relax. Vee Vee's fingers\n sought his arm, not to harm him but running to him for protection. He\n caught the flutter of her breathing. On his left, Caldwell stiffened\n and became a rock.", "Anger came up instead.\n\n\n Somehow he had the impression that the whirring sound which kept\n intruding into his consciousness was stopping the vision.\n\n\n So far as he could tell, he was the only one present who was not\n dreaming, who was not in a state of trance.\n\n\n His gaze went to Unger, the Dreamer....\n\n\n Cold flowed over him.\n\n\n Unger was slowly rising from the mat.\n\n\n The bland face and the body in the robe were slowly floating upward!\nIII\n\n\n An invisible force seemed to twitch at Johnson's skin, nipping it here\n and there with a multitude of tiny pinches, like invisible fleas biting\n him.", "\"Thank you.\"\n\n\n \"I was referring to the bubbles.\"\n\n\n \"You were talking about my eyes,\" she answered, unperturbed.\n\n\n \"How did you know? I mean....\"\n\n\n \"I am very knowing,\" the girl said, smiling.\n\n\n \"Are you sufficiently knowing to be here?\"\n\n\n For an instant, as if doubt crossed her mind, the smile flickered. Then\n it came again, stronger. \"Aren't you here?\"\n\n\n Johnson choked as bubbles from the tarmur seemed to go suddenly up his\n nose. \"My dear child ...\" he sputtered.\n\n\n \"I am not a child,\" she answered with a firm sureness that left no\n doubt in his mind that she knew what she was saying. \"And my name is\n Vee Vee.\"\n\n\n \"Vee Vee? Um. That is....\"", "\"My friend? Do you mean that drunk? I never saw him—\"\n\n\n \"Lying is one of the deadly sins.\" Her eyes twinkled at him. Under the\n merriment that danced in them there was ice. Johnson felt cold.\n\n\n \"The reservations for ze dreaming, great one?\" The headwaiter was\n bowing and scraping in front of him. \"The great one has decided, yes?\"\n\n\n \"The dreaming!\" Vee Vee looked suddenly alert. \"Of course. We must see\n the dreaming. Everyone wants to see the dreaming. We will go, won't we\n darling?\" She hooked her hand into Johnson's elbow.\n\n\n \"Certainly,\" Johnson said. The decision was made on the spur of the\n moment. That there was danger in it, he did not doubt. But there might\n be something else. And\nhe\nmight be there.", "\"Um,\" Johnson said. \"The great Unger!\" His voice expressed surprise,\n just the right amount of it. \"I'll have a tarmur to start but when does\n the dreaming commence?\"\n\n\n \"In one zonar or maybe less. Shall I make ze reservations for ze mighty\n one?\" As he was speaking, the headwaiter was deftly conducting Johnson\n to the bar.\n\n\n \"Not just yet,\" Johnson said. \"See me a little later.\"\n\n\n \"But certainly.\" The headwaiter was gone into the throng. Johnson was\n at the bar. Behind it, a Venusian was bowing to him. \"Tarmur,\" Johnson\n said. The green drink was set before him. He held it up to the light,\n admiring the slow rise of the tiny golden bubbles in it. To him,\n watching the bubbles rise was perhaps more important than drinking\n itself.", "\"Is the mighty human wanting liquor, a woman or dreams?\" His voice\n was all soft syllables of liquid sound. The Venusian equivalent of a\n headwaiter was bowing to him.\n\n\n \"I'll have a tarmur to start,\" Johnson said. \"How are the dreams\n tonight?\"\n\n\n \"Ze vill be the most wonserful of all sonight. The great Unger hisself\n will be here to do ze dreaming. There is no ozzer one who has quite\n his touch at dreaming, mighty one.\" The headwaiter spread his hands\n in a gesture indicating ecstasy. \"It is my great regret that I must do\n ze work tonight instead of being wiz ze dreamers. Ah, ze great Unger\n hisself!\" The headwaiter kissed the tips of his fingers.", "\"Shall we go watch the dreaming?\" He took the arm that still hung limp\n at her side and tucked it into his elbow.\n\n\n \"If you try to use the Karmer grip on me again I'll break your arm,\" he\n said. His voice was low but there was a wealth of meaning in it.\n\n\n \"I won't do it again,\" the girl said stoutly. \"I never make the same\n mistake twice.\"\n\n\n \"Good,\" Johnson said.\n\n\n \"The second time we break our victim's neck,\" Vee Vee said.\n\n\n \"What a sweet, charming child you—\"\n\n\n \"I told you before, I'm not a child.\"\n\n\n \"Child vampire,\" Johnson said. \"Let me finish my sentences before you\n interrupt.\"", "\"Oh. But very good. Ze great Unger, you will love him!\" The headwaiter\n clutched the gold coins that Johnson extended, bowed himself out of\n sight.\n\n\n \"Say, I want to know more—\" Johnson began. His words were drowned in\n a blast of trumpets. The band that had been playing went into sudden\n silence. Waves of perfume began to flow into the place. The perfumes\n were blended, but one aroma was prominent among them, the sweet,\n cloying, soul-stirring perfume of the Dreamer.\n\n\n In the suddenly hushed place little sounds began to appear as Venusians\n and humans began to shift their feet and their bodies in anticipation\n of what was to happen.\n\n\n The trumpets flared again.\n\n\n On one side of the place, a big door began to swing slowly open. From\n beyond that slowly opening door came music, soft, muted strains that\n sounded like lutes from heaven.", "The soul-quickening Perfume of the Dreamer was stronger here. The\n throbbing of the lutes was louder. It was Venusian music the lutes were\n playing. Human ears found it inharmonious at first, but as they became\n accustomed to it, they began to detect rhythms and melodies that human\n minds had not known existed. The room was pleasantly cool but it had\n the feel of dampness. A world that was rarely without pelting rain\n would have the feel of dampness in its dreaming rooms.", "\"This is it!\" a voice whispered in his mind. \"This is what you came to\n Venus to see. This ... this....\" The first voice went into silence.\n Another voice took its place.\n\n\n \"This is another damned vision!\" the second voice said. \"This ...\n this is something that is not real, that is not possible! No Venusian\n Dreamer, and no one else, can levitate, can defy the laws of gravity,\n can float upward toward the ceiling. Your damned eyes are tricking you!\"\n\n\n \"We are not tricking you!\" the eyes hotly insisted. \"It is happening.\n We are seeing it. We are reporting accurately to you. That Venusian\n Buddha is levitating. We, your eyes, do not lie to you!\"\n\n\n \"You lied about the space ship!\" the second voice said.", "\"Master, we are not lying!\" his eyes repeated.\n\n\n \"I sweat....\" his skin began.\n\n\n \"Watch Unger!\" Johnson said.\n\n\n The Dreamer floated. If wires suspended him, Johnson could not see\n them. If any known force lifted him, Johnson could not detect that\n force. All he could say for certain was that Unger floated.\n\n\n \"Yaaah!\" The silence of a room was broken by the enraged scream of a\n Venusian being jarred out of his dream.\n\n\n \"Damn it!\" A human voice said.\n\n\n A wave as sharp as the tip of a sword swept through the room.\n\n\n Unger fell.\n\n\n He was ten feet high when he started to fall. With a bone-breaking,\n body-jarring thud, the Dreamer fell. Hard.", "The music playing strange harmonies in his ears, the perfume sending\n tingling feelings through his nose, Johnson entered the Room of the\n Dreamer. He suspected that other forces, unknown to him, were catching\n hold of his senses. He had been in dreaming rooms many times before but\n he had not grown accustomed to them. He wondered if any human ever\n did. A touch of chill always came over him as he crossed the threshold.\n In entering these places, it was as if some unknown nerve center\n inside the human organism was touched by something, some force, some\n radiation, some subtlety, that quite escaped radiation. He felt the\n coldness now.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers left off patting his arm.\n\n\n \"Do you feel it, darling?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"What is it?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n \"Please!\" Her voice grew sharp. \"I think Johnny Johnson ought to know.\"", "The little voices seemed to blend into a single chorus. \"Action,\n Master! Do something.\"\n\n\n \"Quiet!\" Johnson ordered.\n\n\n \"But hurry. We are excited.\"\n\n\n \"There is a time to be excited and a time to hurry. In this situation,\n if action is taken before the time for it—if that time ever comes—we\n can all die.\"\n\n\n \"Die?\" the chorus quavered.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Johnson said. \"Now be quiet. When the time goes we will all go\n together.\"\n\n\n The chorus went into muted silence. But just under the threshold the\n little voices were a multitude of tiny fretful pressures.\n\n\n \"I hear a whirring sound,\" his ears reported.\n\n\n \"Please!\" Johnson said.\n\n\n In the front of the room Unger floated ten feet above the floor.", "On Venus, everything came at you from all directions, it seemed to\n Johnson. Opening the door of the joint, it was noise instead of rain\n that came at him, the wild frantic beat of a Venusian rhumba, the\n notes pounding and jumping through the smoke and perfume clouded room.\n Feeling states came at him, intangible, but to his trained senses,\n perceptible emotional nuances of hate, love, fear, and rage. But mostly\n love. Since this place had been designed to excite the senses of both\n humans and Venusians, the love feelings were heavily tinged with\n straight sex. He sniffed at them, feeling them somewhere inside of him,\n aware of them but aware also that here was apprehension, and plain fear.\n\n\n Caldwell, sitting in a booth next to the door, glanced up as Johnson\n entered but neither Caldwell's facial expression or his eyes revealed\n that he had ever seen this human before. Nor did Johnson seem to\n recognize Caldwell.", "\"Beautiful, aren't they?\" a soft voice said. He glanced to his right.\n A girl had slid into the stool beside him. She wore a green dress cut\n very low at the throat. Her skin had the pleasant tan recently on\n Earth. Her hair was a shade of abundant brown and her eyes were blue,\n the color of the skies of Earth. A necklace circled her throat and\n below the necklace ... Johnson felt his pulse quicken, for two reasons.\n Women such as this one had been quickening the pulse of men since the\n days of Adam. The second reason concerned her presence here in this\n place where no woman in her right mind ever came unescorted. Her eyes\n smiled up at him unafraid. Didn't she know there were men present here\n in this space port city who would snatch her bodily from the bar\n stool and carry her away for sleeping purposes? And Venusians were\n here who would cut her pretty throat for the sake of the necklace that\n circled it?\n\n\n \"They\nare\nbeautiful,\" he said, smiling.", "Under the circle of light pouring down from the ceiling, the Dreamer\n lay motionless. Johnson found himself with the tendency to hold his\n breath. He was waiting, waiting, waiting—for what? The whole situation\n was senseless, silly, but under its apparent lack of coherence, he\n sensed a pattern. Perhaps the path to the far-off stars passed this\n way, through such scented and musical and impossible places as these\n Rooms of the Dreamers. Certainly Martin thought so. And Johnson himself\n was not prepared to disagree.\n\n\n Around him, he saw that the Venusians were already going ... going ...\n going.... Some of them were already gone. This was an old experience\n to them. They went rapidly. Humans went more slowly.", "\"You look as if you were considering some very grave matter,\" Vee Vee\n said.\n\n\n \"Not any longer,\" he laughed.\n\n\n \"You have decided them?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Every last one of them?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, there might be one or two matters undecided somewhere, say out on\n the periphery of the galaxy. But we will solve them when we get to\n them.\" He waved vaguely toward the roof and the sky of space hidden\n behind the clouds that lay over the roof, glanced around as a man eased\n himself into an empty stool on his left. The man was Caldwell.", "Johnson had not seen Unger appear. One second the circle of light\n had been empty, the next second the Venusian, smiling with all the\n impassivity of a bland Buddha, was in the light. He weighed three\n hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce, he was clad in a long robe\n that would impede movement. He had appeared in the bright beam of the\n spotlight as if by magic.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers dug deeper into Johnson's arm. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Shhh. Nobody knows.\"\n\n\n No human knew the answer to that trick. Unless perhaps Martin—\n\n\n Unger bowed. A little ripple of something that was not quite sound\n passed through the audience. Unger bowed again. He stretched himself\n flat on the mat, adjusted the rest to support his head, and apparently\n went to sleep. Johnson saw the Dreamer's eyes close, watched the chest\n take on the even, regular rhythm of sleep.", "The Venusian watchers had relaxed. They looked as if they were asleep,\n perhaps in a hypnotic trance, lulled into this state by the music\n and the perfume, and by something else. It was this something else\n that sent Johnson's thoughts pounding. The Venusians were like opium\n smokers. But he was not smoking opium. He was not in a hypnotic trance.\n He was wide awake and very much alert. He was ...\nwatching a space ship float in an endless void\n.", "\"Who are you?\" His words were blasts of sound.\n\n\n \"Please, darling, you are making a scene. I am sure this is the last\n thing you really want to do.\"\n\n\n He looked quickly around them. The Venusians and humans moving into\n this room seemed to be paying no attention to him. His gaze came back\n to her.\n\n\n Again she patted his arm. \"Relax, darling. Your secrets are safe with\n me.\"\n\n\n A gray color came up inside his soul. \"But—but—\" His voice was\n suddenly weak.\n\n\n The fingers on his arm were very gentle. \"No harm will come to you. Am\n I not with you?\"" ], [ "Anger came up instead.\n\n\n Somehow he had the impression that the whirring sound which kept\n intruding into his consciousness was stopping the vision.\n\n\n So far as he could tell, he was the only one present who was not\n dreaming, who was not in a state of trance.\n\n\n His gaze went to Unger, the Dreamer....\n\n\n Cold flowed over him.\n\n\n Unger was slowly rising from the mat.\n\n\n The bland face and the body in the robe were slowly floating upward!\nIII\n\n\n An invisible force seemed to twitch at Johnson's skin, nipping it here\n and there with a multitude of tiny pinches, like invisible fleas biting\n him.", "\"Master, we are not lying!\" his eyes repeated.\n\n\n \"I sweat....\" his skin began.\n\n\n \"Watch Unger!\" Johnson said.\n\n\n The Dreamer floated. If wires suspended him, Johnson could not see\n them. If any known force lifted him, Johnson could not detect that\n force. All he could say for certain was that Unger floated.\n\n\n \"Yaaah!\" The silence of a room was broken by the enraged scream of a\n Venusian being jarred out of his dream.\n\n\n \"Damn it!\" A human voice said.\n\n\n A wave as sharp as the tip of a sword swept through the room.\n\n\n Unger fell.\n\n\n He was ten feet high when he started to fall. With a bone-breaking,\n body-jarring thud, the Dreamer fell. Hard.", "The music picked up a beat, perfume seemed to flow even more freely\n through the air, the lights dimmed almost to darkness, a single bright\n spotlight appeared in the ceiling, casting a circle of brilliant\n illumination on the mat and the headrest at the bottom of the room. The\n curtain rose.\nUnger stood in the middle of the spot of light.\n\n\n Johnson felt his chest muscles contract, then relax. Vee Vee's fingers\n sought his arm, not to harm him but running to him for protection. He\n caught the flutter of her breathing. On his left, Caldwell stiffened\n and became a rock.", "\"My friend? Do you mean that drunk? I never saw him—\"\n\n\n \"Lying is one of the deadly sins.\" Her eyes twinkled at him. Under the\n merriment that danced in them there was ice. Johnson felt cold.\n\n\n \"The reservations for ze dreaming, great one?\" The headwaiter was\n bowing and scraping in front of him. \"The great one has decided, yes?\"\n\n\n \"The dreaming!\" Vee Vee looked suddenly alert. \"Of course. We must see\n the dreaming. Everyone wants to see the dreaming. We will go, won't we\n darling?\" She hooked her hand into Johnson's elbow.\n\n\n \"Certainly,\" Johnson said. The decision was made on the spur of the\n moment. That there was danger in it, he did not doubt. But there might\n be something else. And\nhe\nmight be there.", "The little voices seemed to blend into a single chorus. \"Action,\n Master! Do something.\"\n\n\n \"Quiet!\" Johnson ordered.\n\n\n \"But hurry. We are excited.\"\n\n\n \"There is a time to be excited and a time to hurry. In this situation,\n if action is taken before the time for it—if that time ever comes—we\n can all die.\"\n\n\n \"Die?\" the chorus quavered.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Johnson said. \"Now be quiet. When the time goes we will all go\n together.\"\n\n\n The chorus went into muted silence. But just under the threshold the\n little voices were a multitude of tiny fretful pressures.\n\n\n \"I hear a whirring sound,\" his ears reported.\n\n\n \"Please!\" Johnson said.\n\n\n In the front of the room Unger floated ten feet above the floor.", "\"This is it!\" a voice whispered in his mind. \"This is what you came to\n Venus to see. This ... this....\" The first voice went into silence.\n Another voice took its place.\n\n\n \"This is another damned vision!\" the second voice said. \"This ...\n this is something that is not real, that is not possible! No Venusian\n Dreamer, and no one else, can levitate, can defy the laws of gravity,\n can float upward toward the ceiling. Your damned eyes are tricking you!\"\n\n\n \"We are not tricking you!\" the eyes hotly insisted. \"It is happening.\n We are seeing it. We are reporting accurately to you. That Venusian\n Buddha is levitating. We, your eyes, do not lie to you!\"\n\n\n \"You lied about the space ship!\" the second voice said.", "\"Thank you.\"\n\n\n \"I was referring to the bubbles.\"\n\n\n \"You were talking about my eyes,\" she answered, unperturbed.\n\n\n \"How did you know? I mean....\"\n\n\n \"I am very knowing,\" the girl said, smiling.\n\n\n \"Are you sufficiently knowing to be here?\"\n\n\n For an instant, as if doubt crossed her mind, the smile flickered. Then\n it came again, stronger. \"Aren't you here?\"\n\n\n Johnson choked as bubbles from the tarmur seemed to go suddenly up his\n nose. \"My dear child ...\" he sputtered.\n\n\n \"I am not a child,\" she answered with a firm sureness that left no\n doubt in his mind that she knew what she was saying. \"And my name is\n Vee Vee.\"\n\n\n \"Vee Vee? Um. That is....\"", "\"Shall we go watch the dreaming?\" He took the arm that still hung limp\n at her side and tucked it into his elbow.\n\n\n \"If you try to use the Karmer grip on me again I'll break your arm,\" he\n said. His voice was low but there was a wealth of meaning in it.\n\n\n \"I won't do it again,\" the girl said stoutly. \"I never make the same\n mistake twice.\"\n\n\n \"Good,\" Johnson said.\n\n\n \"The second time we break our victim's neck,\" Vee Vee said.\n\n\n \"What a sweet, charming child you—\"\n\n\n \"I told you before, I'm not a child.\"\n\n\n \"Child vampire,\" Johnson said. \"Let me finish my sentences before you\n interrupt.\"", "\"Zlock!\" Caldwell said, to the bartender. \"Make it snappy. Gotta have\n zlock. Finest damn drink in the solar system.\" Caldwell's voice was\n thick, his tongue heavy. Johnson's eyes went back to the girl but out\n of the corner of them he watched Caldwell's hand lying on the bar. The\n fingers were beating a quick nervous tattoo on the yellow wood.\n\n\n \"I haven't seen him,\" Caldwell's fingers beat out their tattoo. \"But I\n think he is, or was, here.\"\n\n\n \"Um,\" Johnson said, his eyes on Vee Vee. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Because that girl was asking for him,\" Caldwell's fingers answered.\n \"Watch that girl!\" Picking up the zlock, he lurched away from the bar.\n\n\n \"Your friend is not as drunk as he seems,\" Vee Vee said, watching\n Caldwell.", "Back when he had been a kid he had dreamed of flight to the far-off\n stars. He had made models of space ships. In a way, they had shaped his\n destiny, had made him what he was. They had brought him where he was\n this night, to the Dream Room of a Venusian tavern.\n\n\n The vision of the space ship floating in the void entranced and\n thrilled him. Something told him that this was real; that here and now\n he was making contact with a vision that belonged to time.\n\n\n He started to his feet. Fingers gripped his arm.\n\n\n \"Please, darling. You startled me. Don't move.\" Vee Vee's voice. Who\n was Vee Vee?\n\n\n The fingers dug into his arm. Pain came up in him. The space ship\n vanished. He looked with startled eyes at Vee Vee, at the Dream Room,\n at Unger, dreaming on the mat under the spot.", "\"That's what I'm afraid of!\" he snapped at her. If he had had a\n choice, he might have drawn back. But with circumstances as they\n were—his life, Caldwell's life, possibly Vee Vee's life hung in the\n balance. Didn't she know that this was true? And as for Martin—But\n Caldwell had said that she had been asking about Martin. What\n connection did she have with that frantic human genius he sought here?\n\n\n Johnson felt his skin crawl. He moved toward a nest of cushions on\n a ramp, found a Venusian was beating him to them, deftly changed to\n another nest, found it. Vee Vee flowed to the floor on his right, moved\n cushions to make him more comfortable. She moved in an easy sort of way\n that was all flowing movement. He sat down. Someone bumped him on the\n left.", "\"Oh. But very good. Ze great Unger, you will love him!\" The headwaiter\n clutched the gold coins that Johnson extended, bowed himself out of\n sight.\n\n\n \"Say, I want to know more—\" Johnson began. His words were drowned in\n a blast of trumpets. The band that had been playing went into sudden\n silence. Waves of perfume began to flow into the place. The perfumes\n were blended, but one aroma was prominent among them, the sweet,\n cloying, soul-stirring perfume of the Dreamer.\n\n\n In the suddenly hushed place little sounds began to appear as Venusians\n and humans began to shift their feet and their bodies in anticipation\n of what was to happen.\n\n\n The trumpets flared again.\n\n\n On one side of the place, a big door began to swing slowly open. From\n beyond that slowly opening door came music, soft, muted strains that\n sounded like lutes from heaven.", "\"Sorry, bud. Didn't mean to bump into you.\" Caldwell's voice was still\n thick and heavy. He sprawled to the floor on Johnson's left. Under\n the man's coat, Johnson caught a glimpse of a slight bulge, the zit\n gun hidden there. His left arm pressed against his own coat, feeling\n his own zit gun. Operating under gas pressure, throwing a charge of\n gas-driven corvel, the zit guns were not only almost noiseless in\n operation but they knocked out a human or a Venusian in a matter of\n seconds.\n\n\n True, the person they knocked unconscious would be all right the next\n day. For this reason, many people did not regard the zit guns as\n effective weapons, but Johnson had a fondness for them. The feel of the\n little weapon inside his coat sent a surge of comfort through him.", "\"You look as if you were considering some very grave matter,\" Vee Vee\n said.\n\n\n \"Not any longer,\" he laughed.\n\n\n \"You have decided them?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Every last one of them?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, there might be one or two matters undecided somewhere, say out on\n the periphery of the galaxy. But we will solve them when we get to\n them.\" He waved vaguely toward the roof and the sky of space hidden\n behind the clouds that lay over the roof, glanced around as a man eased\n himself into an empty stool on his left. The man was Caldwell.", "He asked a question but she did not answer it. \"Sit down, darling,\n and look at your damned space ship.\" Her voice was a taut whisper of\n sound in the darkened room. Johnson settled down. A glance to his left\n told him that Caldwell was still sitting like a chunk of stone.... The\n Venusians were quiet. The music had shifted. A slow languorous beat\n of hidden drums filled the room. There was another sound present, a\n high-speed whirring. It was, somehow, a familiar sound, but Johnson had\n not heard it before in this place.\n\n\n He thought about the space ship he had seen.\n\n\n The vision would not come.\n\n\n He shook his head and tried again.\n\n\n Beside him, Vee Vee was silent, her face ecstatic, like the face of a\n woman in love.\n\n\n He tried again for the space ship.\n\n\n It would not come.", "Johnson had not seen Unger appear. One second the circle of light\n had been empty, the next second the Venusian, smiling with all the\n impassivity of a bland Buddha, was in the light. He weighed three\n hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce, he was clad in a long robe\n that would impede movement. He had appeared in the bright beam of the\n spotlight as if by magic.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers dug deeper into Johnson's arm. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Shhh. Nobody knows.\"\n\n\n No human knew the answer to that trick. Unless perhaps Martin—\n\n\n Unger bowed. A little ripple of something that was not quite sound\n passed through the audience. Unger bowed again. He stretched himself\n flat on the mat, adjusted the rest to support his head, and apparently\n went to sleep. Johnson saw the Dreamer's eyes close, watched the chest\n take on the even, regular rhythm of sleep.", "\"Is the mighty human wanting liquor, a woman or dreams?\" His voice\n was all soft syllables of liquid sound. The Venusian equivalent of a\n headwaiter was bowing to him.\n\n\n \"I'll have a tarmur to start,\" Johnson said. \"How are the dreams\n tonight?\"\n\n\n \"Ze vill be the most wonserful of all sonight. The great Unger hisself\n will be here to do ze dreaming. There is no ozzer one who has quite\n his touch at dreaming, mighty one.\" The headwaiter spread his hands\n in a gesture indicating ecstasy. \"It is my great regret that I must do\n ze work tonight instead of being wiz ze dreamers. Ah, ze great Unger\n hisself!\" The headwaiter kissed the tips of his fingers.", "\"We did not lie about the space ship!\" the eyes insisted. \"When our\n master saw that ship we were out of focus, we were not reporting. Some\n other sense, some other organ, may have lied, but we did not.\"\n\n\n \"I—\" Johnson whispered.\n\n\n \"I am your skin,\" another voice whispered. \"I am covered with sweat.\"\n\n\n \"We are your adrenals. We are pouring forth adrenalin.\"\n\n\n \"I am your pancreas. I am gearing you for action.\"\n\n\n \"I am your thyroid. I....\"\n\n\n A multitude of tiny voices seemed to whisper through him. It was as if\n the parts of his body had suddenly found voices and were reporting to\n him what they were doing. These were voices out of his training days\n when he had learned the names of these functions and how to use them.\n\n\n \"Be quiet!\" he said roughly.", "Under the circle of light pouring down from the ceiling, the Dreamer\n lay motionless. Johnson found himself with the tendency to hold his\n breath. He was waiting, waiting, waiting—for what? The whole situation\n was senseless, silly, but under its apparent lack of coherence, he\n sensed a pattern. Perhaps the path to the far-off stars passed this\n way, through such scented and musical and impossible places as these\n Rooms of the Dreamers. Certainly Martin thought so. And Johnson himself\n was not prepared to disagree.\n\n\n Around him, he saw that the Venusians were already going ... going ...\n going.... Some of them were already gone. This was an old experience\n to them. They went rapidly. Humans went more slowly.", "Moving toward the open door that led to the Room of the Dreaming,\n Johnson saw that Caldwell had risen and was following them. Caldwell's\n face was writhing in apprehensive agony and he was making warning\n signs. Johnson ignored them. With Vee Vee's fingers lightly patting his\n arm, they moved into the Room of the Dreaming.\nII\n\n\n It was a huge, semi-illumined room, with tier on tier of circling ramps\n rising up from an open space at the bottom. There ought to have been\n a stage there at the bottom, but there wasn't. Instead there was an\n open space, a mat, and a head rest. Up at the top of the circling ramps\n the room was in darkness, a fit hiding place for ghosts or Venusian\n werewolves. Pillows and a thick rug covered the circling ramps." ], [ "\"Vee Vee!\" Johnson's voice became a shout.\n\n\n \"To hell with the woman!\" Caldwell grunted. \"Martin's the important\n one.\"\n\n\n Zit, zit, zit, Caldwell moved toward the rear, shooting as he went.\n Johnson followed.", "\"Zlock!\" Caldwell said, to the bartender. \"Make it snappy. Gotta have\n zlock. Finest damn drink in the solar system.\" Caldwell's voice was\n thick, his tongue heavy. Johnson's eyes went back to the girl but out\n of the corner of them he watched Caldwell's hand lying on the bar. The\n fingers were beating a quick nervous tattoo on the yellow wood.\n\n\n \"I haven't seen him,\" Caldwell's fingers beat out their tattoo. \"But I\n think he is, or was, here.\"\n\n\n \"Um,\" Johnson said, his eyes on Vee Vee. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Because that girl was asking for him,\" Caldwell's fingers answered.\n \"Watch that girl!\" Picking up the zlock, he lurched away from the bar.\n\n\n \"Your friend is not as drunk as he seems,\" Vee Vee said, watching\n Caldwell.", "On Venus, everything came at you from all directions, it seemed to\n Johnson. Opening the door of the joint, it was noise instead of rain\n that came at him, the wild frantic beat of a Venusian rhumba, the\n notes pounding and jumping through the smoke and perfume clouded room.\n Feeling states came at him, intangible, but to his trained senses,\n perceptible emotional nuances of hate, love, fear, and rage. But mostly\n love. Since this place had been designed to excite the senses of both\n humans and Venusians, the love feelings were heavily tinged with\n straight sex. He sniffed at them, feeling them somewhere inside of him,\n aware of them but aware also that here was apprehension, and plain fear.\n\n\n Caldwell, sitting in a booth next to the door, glanced up as Johnson\n entered but neither Caldwell's facial expression or his eyes revealed\n that he had ever seen this human before. Nor did Johnson seem to\n recognize Caldwell.", "\"Sorry, bud. Didn't mean to bump into you.\" Caldwell's voice was still\n thick and heavy. He sprawled to the floor on Johnson's left. Under\n the man's coat, Johnson caught a glimpse of a slight bulge, the zit\n gun hidden there. His left arm pressed against his own coat, feeling\n his own zit gun. Operating under gas pressure, throwing a charge of\n gas-driven corvel, the zit guns were not only almost noiseless in\n operation but they knocked out a human or a Venusian in a matter of\n seconds.\n\n\n True, the person they knocked unconscious would be all right the next\n day. For this reason, many people did not regard the zit guns as\n effective weapons, but Johnson had a fondness for them. The feel of the\n little weapon inside his coat sent a surge of comfort through him.", "\"That's what I'm afraid of!\" he snapped at her. If he had had a\n choice, he might have drawn back. But with circumstances as they\n were—his life, Caldwell's life, possibly Vee Vee's life hung in the\n balance. Didn't she know that this was true? And as for Martin—But\n Caldwell had said that she had been asking about Martin. What\n connection did she have with that frantic human genius he sought here?\n\n\n Johnson felt his skin crawl. He moved toward a nest of cushions on\n a ramp, found a Venusian was beating him to them, deftly changed to\n another nest, found it. Vee Vee flowed to the floor on his right, moved\n cushions to make him more comfortable. She moved in an easy sort of way\n that was all flowing movement. He sat down. Someone bumped him on the\n left.", "Moving toward the open door that led to the Room of the Dreaming,\n Johnson saw that Caldwell had risen and was following them. Caldwell's\n face was writhing in apprehensive agony and he was making warning\n signs. Johnson ignored them. With Vee Vee's fingers lightly patting his\n arm, they moved into the Room of the Dreaming.\nII\n\n\n It was a huge, semi-illumined room, with tier on tier of circling ramps\n rising up from an open space at the bottom. There ought to have been\n a stage there at the bottom, but there wasn't. Instead there was an\n open space, a mat, and a head rest. Up at the top of the circling ramps\n the room was in darkness, a fit hiding place for ghosts or Venusian\n werewolves. Pillows and a thick rug covered the circling ramps.", "\"You look as if you were considering some very grave matter,\" Vee Vee\n said.\n\n\n \"Not any longer,\" he laughed.\n\n\n \"You have decided them?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Every last one of them?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, there might be one or two matters undecided somewhere, say out on\n the periphery of the galaxy. But we will solve them when we get to\n them.\" He waved vaguely toward the roof and the sky of space hidden\n behind the clouds that lay over the roof, glanced around as a man eased\n himself into an empty stool on his left. The man was Caldwell.", "There was a split second of startled silence in the Dreaming Room. The\n silence went. Voices came.\n\n\n \"Who did that?\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\"\n\n\n \"That human hidden there did it! He broke the Dreaming!\" Anger marked\n the voices. Although the language was Venusian, Johnson got most of the\n meaning. His hand dived under his coat for the gun holstered there. At\n his left, Caldwell was muttering thickly. \"What—what happened? I was\n back in the lab on Earth—\" Caldwell's voice held a plaintive note, as\n if some pleasant dream had been interrupted.\n\n\n On Johnson's right, Vee Vee seemed to flow to life. Her arms came up\n around his neck. He was instantly prepared for anything. Her lips came\n hungrily against his lips, pressed very hard, then gently drew away.\n\n\n \"What—\" he gasped.", "The music picked up a beat, perfume seemed to flow even more freely\n through the air, the lights dimmed almost to darkness, a single bright\n spotlight appeared in the ceiling, casting a circle of brilliant\n illumination on the mat and the headrest at the bottom of the room. The\n curtain rose.\nUnger stood in the middle of the spot of light.\n\n\n Johnson felt his chest muscles contract, then relax. Vee Vee's fingers\n sought his arm, not to harm him but running to him for protection. He\n caught the flutter of her breathing. On his left, Caldwell stiffened\n and became a rock.", "He asked a question but she did not answer it. \"Sit down, darling,\n and look at your damned space ship.\" Her voice was a taut whisper of\n sound in the darkened room. Johnson settled down. A glance to his left\n told him that Caldwell was still sitting like a chunk of stone.... The\n Venusians were quiet. The music had shifted. A slow languorous beat\n of hidden drums filled the room. There was another sound present, a\n high-speed whirring. It was, somehow, a familiar sound, but Johnson had\n not heard it before in this place.\n\n\n He thought about the space ship he had seen.\n\n\n The vision would not come.\n\n\n He shook his head and tried again.\n\n\n Beside him, Vee Vee was silent, her face ecstatic, like the face of a\n woman in love.\n\n\n He tried again for the space ship.\n\n\n It would not come.", "\"I had to do it now, darling,\" she answered. \"There may not be a later.\"\n\n\n Johnson had no time to ask her what she meant. Somewhere in the back\n of the room a human screamed. He jerked around. Back there a knot of\n Venusians were attacking a man.\n\n\n \"It's Martin!\" Caldwell shouted. \"He\nis\nhere!\"\n\n\n In Johnson's hand as he came to his feet the zit gun throbbed. He fired\n blindly at the mass of Venusians. Caldwell was firing too. The soft\n throb of the guns was not audible above the uproar from the crowd.\n Struck by the gas-driven corvel charges, Venusians were falling. But\n there seemed to be an endless number of them.\n\n\n \"Vee Vee?\" Johnson suddenly realized that she had disappeared. She had\n slid out of his sight.", "The music playing strange harmonies in his ears, the perfume sending\n tingling feelings through his nose, Johnson entered the Room of the\n Dreamer. He suspected that other forces, unknown to him, were catching\n hold of his senses. He had been in dreaming rooms many times before but\n he had not grown accustomed to them. He wondered if any human ever\n did. A touch of chill always came over him as he crossed the threshold.\n In entering these places, it was as if some unknown nerve center\n inside the human organism was touched by something, some force, some\n radiation, some subtlety, that quite escaped radiation. He felt the\n coldness now.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers left off patting his arm.\n\n\n \"Do you feel it, darling?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"What is it?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n \"Please!\" Her voice grew sharp. \"I think Johnny Johnson ought to know.\"", "\"My friend? Do you mean that drunk? I never saw him—\"\n\n\n \"Lying is one of the deadly sins.\" Her eyes twinkled at him. Under the\n merriment that danced in them there was ice. Johnson felt cold.\n\n\n \"The reservations for ze dreaming, great one?\" The headwaiter was\n bowing and scraping in front of him. \"The great one has decided, yes?\"\n\n\n \"The dreaming!\" Vee Vee looked suddenly alert. \"Of course. We must see\n the dreaming. Everyone wants to see the dreaming. We will go, won't we\n darling?\" She hooked her hand into Johnson's elbow.\n\n\n \"Certainly,\" Johnson said. The decision was made on the spur of the\n moment. That there was danger in it, he did not doubt. But there might\n be something else. And\nhe\nmight be there.", "\"Shall we go watch the dreaming?\" He took the arm that still hung limp\n at her side and tucked it into his elbow.\n\n\n \"If you try to use the Karmer grip on me again I'll break your arm,\" he\n said. His voice was low but there was a wealth of meaning in it.\n\n\n \"I won't do it again,\" the girl said stoutly. \"I never make the same\n mistake twice.\"\n\n\n \"Good,\" Johnson said.\n\n\n \"The second time we break our victim's neck,\" Vee Vee said.\n\n\n \"What a sweet, charming child you—\"\n\n\n \"I told you before, I'm not a child.\"\n\n\n \"Child vampire,\" Johnson said. \"Let me finish my sentences before you\n interrupt.\"", "The little voices seemed to blend into a single chorus. \"Action,\n Master! Do something.\"\n\n\n \"Quiet!\" Johnson ordered.\n\n\n \"But hurry. We are excited.\"\n\n\n \"There is a time to be excited and a time to hurry. In this situation,\n if action is taken before the time for it—if that time ever comes—we\n can all die.\"\n\n\n \"Die?\" the chorus quavered.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Johnson said. \"Now be quiet. When the time goes we will all go\n together.\"\n\n\n The chorus went into muted silence. But just under the threshold the\n little voices were a multitude of tiny fretful pressures.\n\n\n \"I hear a whirring sound,\" his ears reported.\n\n\n \"Please!\" Johnson said.\n\n\n In the front of the room Unger floated ten feet above the floor.", "\"Johnny! How do you know my name?\"\n\n\n \"Shouldn't I recognize one of Earth's foremost scientists, even if he\n is incognito on Venus?\" Her voice had a teasing quality in it.\n\n\n \"But—\"\n\n\n \"And who besides Johnny Johnson would recognize the Karmer nerve grip\n and be able to break it instantly?\"\n\n\n \"Hell—\"\n\n\n \"John Michael Johnson, known as Johnny to his friends, Earth's foremost\n expert in the field of electro-magnetic radiations within the human\n body!\" Her words were needles of icy fact, each one jabbing deeper and\n deeper into him.\n\n\n \"And how would I make certain you were Johnny Johnson, except by seeing\n if you could break the Karmer nerve grip? If you could break it, then\n there was no doubt who you were!\" Her words went on and on.", "The music changed, a slow dreamy tempo crept into it. Vee Vee's fingers\n dug at Johnson's arm as if they were trying to dig under his hide for\n protection. She was shivering. He reached for her hand, patted it. She\n drew closer to him.\n\n\n A few minutes earlier, she had been a very certain young woman, able\n to take care of herself, and handle anyone around her. Now she was\n suddenly uncertain, suddenly scared. In the Room of the Dreaming, she\n had suddenly become a frightened child looking for protection.\n\n\n \"Haven't you ever seen this before?\" he whispered.\n\n\n \"N—o.\" She shivered again. \"Oh, Johnny....\"", "Johnson had not seen Unger appear. One second the circle of light\n had been empty, the next second the Venusian, smiling with all the\n impassivity of a bland Buddha, was in the light. He weighed three\n hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce, he was clad in a long robe\n that would impede movement. He had appeared in the bright beam of the\n spotlight as if by magic.\n\n\n Vee Vee's fingers dug deeper into Johnson's arm. \"How—\"\n\n\n \"Shhh. Nobody knows.\"\n\n\n No human knew the answer to that trick. Unless perhaps Martin—\n\n\n Unger bowed. A little ripple of something that was not quite sound\n passed through the audience. Unger bowed again. He stretched himself\n flat on the mat, adjusted the rest to support his head, and apparently\n went to sleep. Johnson saw the Dreamer's eyes close, watched the chest\n take on the even, regular rhythm of sleep.", "\"Oh. But very good. Ze great Unger, you will love him!\" The headwaiter\n clutched the gold coins that Johnson extended, bowed himself out of\n sight.\n\n\n \"Say, I want to know more—\" Johnson began. His words were drowned in\n a blast of trumpets. The band that had been playing went into sudden\n silence. Waves of perfume began to flow into the place. The perfumes\n were blended, but one aroma was prominent among them, the sweet,\n cloying, soul-stirring perfume of the Dreamer.\n\n\n In the suddenly hushed place little sounds began to appear as Venusians\n and humans began to shift their feet and their bodies in anticipation\n of what was to happen.\n\n\n The trumpets flared again.\n\n\n On one side of the place, a big door began to swing slowly open. From\n beyond that slowly opening door came music, soft, muted strains that\n sounded like lutes from heaven.", "\"Um,\" Johnson said. \"The great Unger!\" His voice expressed surprise,\n just the right amount of it. \"I'll have a tarmur to start but when does\n the dreaming commence?\"\n\n\n \"In one zonar or maybe less. Shall I make ze reservations for ze mighty\n one?\" As he was speaking, the headwaiter was deftly conducting Johnson\n to the bar.\n\n\n \"Not just yet,\" Johnson said. \"See me a little later.\"\n\n\n \"But certainly.\" The headwaiter was gone into the throng. Johnson was\n at the bar. Behind it, a Venusian was bowing to him. \"Tarmur,\" Johnson\n said. The green drink was set before him. He held it up to the light,\n admiring the slow rise of the tiny golden bubbles in it. To him,\n watching the bubbles rise was perhaps more important than drinking\n itself." ] ]
valid	51350	[ "Was the warden in a dream instead of real life?", "Why was the warden worried about answering Coleman's question?", "What happens after people leave Dreamland?", "What power did the warden not have?", "What did the warden enjoy about his life?", "What happens to people who serve as wardens?", "How did the warden handle the 2 men who wanted back into Dreamland?", "Why did Coleman tell the warden he was in a dream?" ]	[ [ "We never find out ", "Yes, and he never figured it out", "Yes, but he figured that out", "No" ], [ "He was afraid of people in positions of authority", "He had not been at his job very long", "He was worried Coleman would disapprove of his answer", "Coleman was an impressive figure" ], [ "Most of them go crazy", "They never leave", "Some of them think reality is fake", "They all go back to their normal lives well-adjusted" ], [ "Put people into dreams", "Make sentences longer", "Keep innocent people out of incarceration", "Make sentences shorter" ], [ "Taking his pills", "Being challenged", "Being responsible to his supervisors", "Putting people to sleep" ], [ "All of them must serve until they are removed from office", "Some of them retire before they go crazy", "Only some of them find it stressful", "All of them go crazy" ], [ "He kept them both in detention indefinitely", "He only let one go back in", "He put them together to keep each other occupied", "He let both of them go back in" ], [ "He wanted to be in a dream forever", "He wanted to never be put in a dream", "He wanted him to know the truth", "He liked being in dreams for short periods of time" ] ]	[ 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4 ]	[ 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "\"Warden Walker, I've been following your career with considerable\n interest,\" Coleman said.\n\n\n \"My career hasn't been very long, sir,\" I said modestly. I didn't\n mention that\nnobody\ncould last that long in my job. At least, none\n had yet.\n\n\n \"I've followed it from the first. I know every step you've made.\"\n\n\n I didn't know whether to be flattered or apprehensive. \"That's fine,\" I\n said. It didn't sound right.\n\n\n \"Tell me,\" Coleman said, crossing his legs, \"what do you think of\n Dreamland in principle?\"\n\n\n \"Why, it's the logical step forward in penal servitude. Man has been\n heading toward this since he first started civilizing himself. After\n all, some criminals\ncan't\nbe helped psychiatrically. We can't execute\n them or turn them free; we have to imprison them.\"", "I couldn't follow his reasoning. Just how making me think my life was\n only a Dream such as I imposed on my own prisoners could help him, I\n couldn't see.\n\n\n \"Warden Walker,\" Coleman intoned in his magnificent voice, \"I'm\n shocked.\nI\nam not personally monitoring your Dream. The Committee as\n a whole will decide whether you are capable of returning to the real\n world. Moreover, please don't get carried away. I'm not concerned with\n what you do to this sensory projection of myself, beyond how it helps\n to establish your moral capabilities.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose,\" I said heavily, \"that I could best establish my high moral\n character by excusing you from this penal sentence?\"\n\n\n \"Not at all,\" Councilman Coleman asserted. \"According to the facts as\n you know them, I am 'guilty' and must be confined.\"", "\"I'm glad you said that, Walker,\" Councilman Coleman told me warmly.\n \"As I said, I've been following your career closely, and if you\n get through the next twenty-four-hour period as you have through\n the foregoing part of your Dream, you will be awakened at this time\n tomorrow. Congratulations!\"\n\n\n I sat there and took it.\n\n\n He was telling\nme\n, the superintendent of Dreamland, that my own\n life here was only a Dream such as I fed to my own prisoners. It was\n unbelievably absurd, a queasy little joke of some kind. But I didn't\n deny it.\nIf it\nwere\ntrue, if I had forgotten that everything that happened was\n only a Dream, and if I admitted it, the councilman would know I was\n mad.\nIt couldn't be true.\nYet—\n\n\n Hadn't I thought about it ever since I had been appointed warden and\n transferred from my personnel job at the plant?", "He could express himself much better in his Dream. He had been Abraham\n Lincoln in his Dream, I saw. He had lived the life right up to the\n night when he was taking in\nAn American Cousin\nat the Ford Theater.\n Horbit couldn't accept history that he had no more life to live. He\n only knew that if in his delirium he could gain Dreamland once more, he\n could get back to the hard realities of dealing with the problems of\n Reconstruction.\n\n\n \"\nPlease\n,\" he begged.\n\n\n I looked up from the file. \"I'm sorry, Eddie.\"\n\n\n His eyes narrowed, both of them, on the next twitch. \"Warden, I can\n always go out and commit another anti-social act.\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid not, Eddie. The file shows you are capable of only one\n crime. And you don't have a wife any more, and she doesn't have a\n lover.\"", "\"I should think so,\" Coleman said emphatically. \"Warden, don't you\n sometimes feel the old system where the prisoners had the diversions\n of riots, solitary confinement, television, and jailbreaks may have\n made time easier to serve? Do these men ever think they are\nactually\nliving these vicarious adventures?\"\n\n\n That was a question that made all of us in the Dreamland service\n uneasy. \"No, Councilman, they don't. They know they aren't really\n Alexander of Macedonia, Tarzan, Casanova, or Buffalo Bill. They are\n conscious of all the time that is being spent out of their real lives;\n they know they have relatives and friends outside the dream. They know,\n unless—\"\n\n\n Coleman lifted a dark eyebrow above a black iris. \"Unless?\"", "Once he fed that document to the archives, I would be obligated to help\n him even without the gun. My word would probably be taken that I had\n been forced to do it at gunpoint, but there would always be doubts,\n enough to wreck my career when it came time for promotion.\n\n\n Nothing like this had ever happened in my years as warden.\nSuddenly, Coleman's words hit me in the back of the neck.\nIf I got\n through the next twenty-four hours.\nThis had to be some kind of test.\n\n\n But a test for what?\n\n\n Had I been deliberately told that I was living only a Dream to see\n if my ethics would hold up even when I thought I wasn't dealing with\n reality?\n\n\n Or if this\nwas\nonly a Dream, was it a test to see if I was morally\n ready to return to the real, the earnest world?", "I didn't really believe this, not then, but I couldn't afford to make\n a mistake, even if it were only some sort of intemperate test—as I\n was confident it was, with a sweet, throbbing fury against the man who\n would employ such a jagged broadsword for prying in his bureaucratic\n majesty.\n\n\n \"I've always thought,\" I said, \"that it would be a good idea to show\n a prisoner what the modern penal system was all about by giving him a\n Dream in which he dreamed about Dreamland itself.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, indeed,\" Coleman concurred. Just that and no more.\n\n\n I leaned intimately across my beautiful oak desk. \"I've thought that\n projecting officials into the Dream and letting them talk with the\n prisoners might be a more effective form of investigation than mere\n observation.\"\n\n\n \"I should say so,\" Coleman remarked, and got up.", "\"Look, Paulson,\" I said, a trifle testily, \"if you have so little\n conscience as to kill a blind old man for a few dollars, where do you\n suddenly get enough guilt feelings to cause you to give yourself up?\"\n\n\n Paulson tried his insufficient best to smile evilly. \"It wasn't\n conscience, Warden. I never lie awake a minute whenever I kill\n anybody. It's just—well, Dreaming isn't so bad. Last time I was Allen\n Pinkerton, the detective. It was exciting. A lot more exciting than the\n kind of life I lead.\"\n\n\n I nodded solemnly. \"Yes, no doubt strangling old men in the streets can\n be pretty dull for a red-blooded man of action.\"", "I threw up my hands. You don't often see somebody do that, but I did.\n I couldn't figure him. Coleman had wealth and power as a councilman\n in the real world, but I had thought somehow he wanted to escape to a\n Dream world. Yet he didn't want to be in for life, the way Paulson and\n Horbit did.\n\n\n There seemed to be no point or profit in what he had told me that\n morning, nothing in it for him.\n\n\n Unless—\n\n\n Unless what he said was literally true.\n\n\n I stood up. My knees wanted to quit halfway up, but I made it. \"This,\"\n I said, \"is a difficult decision for me, sir. Would you make yourself\n comfortable here for a time, Councilman?\"\n\n\n Coleman smiled benignly. \"Certainly, Warden.\"", "Whenever I had come upon two people talking, and it seemed as if I had\n come upon those same two people talking the same talk before, hadn't I\n wondered for an instant if it couldn't be a Dream, not reality at all?\n\n\n Once I had experienced a Dream for five or ten minutes. I was driving\n a ground car down a spidery road made into a dismal tunnel by weeping\n trees, a dank, lavender maze. I had known at the time it was a Dream,\n but still, as the moments passed, I became more intent on the\n difficult road before me, my blocky hands on the steering wheel, thick\n fingers typing out the pattern of motion on the drive buttons.\n\n\n I could remember that. Maybe I couldn't remember being shoved into the\n prison vault for so many years for such and such a crime.", "He nodded. \"Happened before. Back when old man Preston lost his grip.\"\n\n\n Preston had been my predecessor. He had lost his hold on reality like\n all the others before him who had served long as warden of Dreamland.\n A few had quit while they were still ahead and spent the rest of their\n lives recuperating. Our society didn't produce individuals tough enough\n to stand the strain of putting their fellow human beings to sleep for\n long.\n\n\n One of Keller's men had stabbed Horbit's arm with a hypospray to\n blanket the pain from his broken wrist, and the man was quieter.\n\n\n \"I couldn't have done it, Warden,\" Horbit mumbled drowsily. \"I couldn't\n kill anybody. Unless it was like that other time.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, Eddie,\" I said.\n\n\n I had banked on that, hadn't I, when I made my move?", "\"Naw, he ain't violent, Warden. He just thinks he's somebody important.\"\n\n\n \"Sounds like a case for therapy, not Dreamland. Who does he think he\n is?\"\n\n\n \"One of the Committee—Councilman Coleman.\"\n\n\n \"Mm-hmm. And who is he really, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"Councilman Coleman.\"\n\n\n I whistled. \"What did they nail him on?\"\n\n\n \"Misuse of authority.\"\n\n\n \"And he didn't get a suspended for that?\"\n\n\n \"Wasn't his first offense. Still want to see him?\"\n\n\n I gave a lateral wave of my hand. \"Of course.\"", "I cleared my throat. \"Unless they go mad and really believe the dream\n they are living. But as you know, sir, the rate of madness among\n Dreamland inmates is only slightly above the norm for the population as\n a whole.\"\n\n\n \"How do prisoners like that adjust to reality?\"\n\n\n Was he deliberately trying to ask tough questions? \"They don't. They\n think they are having some kind of delusion. Many of them become\n schizoid and pretend to go along with reality while secretly 'knowing'\n it to be a lie.\"\n\n\n Coleman removed a pocket secretary and broke it open. \"About these new\n free-choice models—do you think they genuinely are an improvement over\n the old fixed-image machines?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" I replied. \"By letting the prisoner project his own\n imagination onto the sense tapes and giving him a limited amount of\n alternatives to a situation, we can observe whether he is conforming to\n society to a larger extent.\"", "Coleman stood up and walked out of my office.\n\n\n The clock told me it was after five. I began clearing my desk.\n\n\n Captain Keller stuck his head in, unannounced. \"Hey, Warden, there's an\n active one out here. He claims that Dreamland compromises His plan for\n the Free Will of the Universe.\"\n\n\n \"Well, escort him inside, Captain,\" I said.\n\n\n I put away my pills. Solving simple problems such as the new visitor\n presented always helped me to relax.", "\"You don't sound as if you like our distinguished visitor very well,\" I\n remarked.\n\n\n \"It's not that. I just don't think he deserves any special privileges.\n Besides, it was guys like him that took away our nightsticks. My boys\n didn't like that. Look at me—I'm defenseless!\"\n\n\n I looked at his square figure. \"Not quite, Captain, not quite.\"\n\n\n Now was the time.\n\n\n I stretched out my wet palm toward the door.\n\n\n Was or was not Coleman telling the truth when he said this life of mine\n was itself only a Dream? If it was, did I want to finish my last day\n with the right decision so I could return to some alien reality? Or did\n I deliberately want to make a mistake so I could continue living the\n opiate of my Dream?\n\n\n Then, as I touched the door, I knew the only decision that could have\n any meaning for me.", "\"You wanted to make sure I made a painfully scrupulous decision in\n your case,\" I went on. \"You didn't want me to pardon you completely\n because of your high position, but at the same time you didn't want too\n long a sentence. But I'm doing you no favors. You get no time from me,\n Coleman.\"\n\n\n \"How did you decide to do this?\" he asked. \"Don't tell me you never\n doubted. We've all doubted since we found out about the machines: which\n was real and which was the Dream? How did you decide to risk this?\"\n\n\n \"I acted the only way I could act,\" I said. \"I decided I had to act as\n if my life was real and that you were lying. I decided that because, if\n all this were false, if I could have no more confidence in my own mind\n and my own senses than that, I didn't give a damn if it\nwere\nall a\n Dream.\"", "I waited for Coleman's reaction. He merely nodded.\n\n\n \"Of course, it's barbaric to think of a prison as a place of\n punishment,\" I continued. \"A prison is a place to keep a criminal away\n from society for a specific time so he can't harm that society for that\n time. Punishment, rehabilitation, all of it is secondary to that. The\n purpose of confinement is confinement.\"\nThe councilman edged forward an inch. \"And you really think Dreamland\n is the most humane confinement possible?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" I hedged, \"it's the most humane we've found yet. I suppose\n living through a—uh—movie with full sensory participation for year\n after year can get boring.\"", "I\nhad\nto get more out of him, some proof, some clue beyond the\n preposterous announcement he had made.\n\n\n \"I'll see you tomorrow at this time then, Walker.\" The councilman\n nodded curtly and turned to leave my office.\n\n\n I held onto the sides of my desk to keep from diving over and teaching\n him to change his concept of humor.\n\n\n The day was starting. If I got through it, giving a good show, I would\n be released from my Dream, he had said smugly.\n\n\n But if this was a dream, did I want probation to reality?\nHorbit was a twitchy little man whose business tunic was the same\n rodent color as his hair. He had a pronounced tic in his left cheek. \"I\n have to get back,\" he told me with compelling earnestness.", "It was a pair of fantastic stories that no man in his right mind would\n believe—but that didn't make them invalid to a brace of ex-Sleepers.\n They\nwanted\nto believe them. The stories gave them what they were\n after—without me having to break the law and put them to sleep for\n crimes they hadn't committed.\n\n\n They would find out some day that I had lied to them, but maybe by that\n time they would have realized this world wasn't so bad.\n\n\n Fortunately, I was confident from their psych records that they were\n both incapable of ending their little game by homicide, no matter how\n justified they might think it was.\n\n\n \"Hey, Warden,\" Captain Keller bellowed as I approached my office\n door, \"when are you going to let me throw that stiff Coleman into the\n sleepy-bye vaults? He's still sitting in there on your furniture as\n smug as you please.\"", "Once in a while I granted a parole for a prisoner to see a dying mother\n or if some important project was falling apart without his help, but\n most of the time I just sat with my eyes propped open, letting a sea of\n vindictive screeching and beseeching wailings wash around me.\n\n\n The relatives and legal talent were spaced with hungry-eyed mystics\n who were convinced they could contemplate God and their navels\n both conscientiously as an incarnation of Gautama. To risk sounding\n religiously intolerant, I usually kicked these out pretty swiftly.\n\n\n The onetime inmate who wanted back in after a reprieve was fairly rare.\n Few of them ever got\nthat\ncrazy.\n\n\n But it was my luck to get another the same day,\nthe\nday for me, as\n Horbit." ], [ "\"Warden Walker, I've been following your career with considerable\n interest,\" Coleman said.\n\n\n \"My career hasn't been very long, sir,\" I said modestly. I didn't\n mention that\nnobody\ncould last that long in my job. At least, none\n had yet.\n\n\n \"I've followed it from the first. I know every step you've made.\"\n\n\n I didn't know whether to be flattered or apprehensive. \"That's fine,\" I\n said. It didn't sound right.\n\n\n \"Tell me,\" Coleman said, crossing his legs, \"what do you think of\n Dreamland in principle?\"\n\n\n \"Why, it's the logical step forward in penal servitude. Man has been\n heading toward this since he first started civilizing himself. After\n all, some criminals\ncan't\nbe helped psychiatrically. We can't execute\n them or turn them free; we have to imprison them.\"", "I didn't really believe this, not then, but I couldn't afford to make\n a mistake, even if it were only some sort of intemperate test—as I\n was confident it was, with a sweet, throbbing fury against the man who\n would employ such a jagged broadsword for prying in his bureaucratic\n majesty.\n\n\n \"I've always thought,\" I said, \"that it would be a good idea to show\n a prisoner what the modern penal system was all about by giving him a\n Dream in which he dreamed about Dreamland itself.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, indeed,\" Coleman concurred. Just that and no more.\n\n\n I leaned intimately across my beautiful oak desk. \"I've thought that\n projecting officials into the Dream and letting them talk with the\n prisoners might be a more effective form of investigation than mere\n observation.\"\n\n\n \"I should say so,\" Coleman remarked, and got up.", "I threw up my hands. You don't often see somebody do that, but I did.\n I couldn't figure him. Coleman had wealth and power as a councilman\n in the real world, but I had thought somehow he wanted to escape to a\n Dream world. Yet he didn't want to be in for life, the way Paulson and\n Horbit did.\n\n\n There seemed to be no point or profit in what he had told me that\n morning, nothing in it for him.\n\n\n Unless—\n\n\n Unless what he said was literally true.\n\n\n I stood up. My knees wanted to quit halfway up, but I made it. \"This,\"\n I said, \"is a difficult decision for me, sir. Would you make yourself\n comfortable here for a time, Councilman?\"\n\n\n Coleman smiled benignly. \"Certainly, Warden.\"", "I was stymied for an instant. I had expected him to say that I must\n know that he was incapable of committing such an error and I must\n pardon him despite the misguided rulings of the courts. Then I thought\n of something else.\n\n\n \"You show symptoms of being a habitual criminal, Coleman. I think you\n deserve\nlife\n.\"\n\n\n Coleman cocked his head thoughtfully, concerned. \"That seems rather\n extreme, Warden.\"\n\n\n \"You would suggest a shorter sentence?\"\n\n\n \"If it were my place to choose, yes. A few years, perhaps. But\n life—no, I think not.\"", "\"I should think so,\" Coleman said emphatically. \"Warden, don't you\n sometimes feel the old system where the prisoners had the diversions\n of riots, solitary confinement, television, and jailbreaks may have\n made time easier to serve? Do these men ever think they are\nactually\nliving these vicarious adventures?\"\n\n\n That was a question that made all of us in the Dreamland service\n uneasy. \"No, Councilman, they don't. They know they aren't really\n Alexander of Macedonia, Tarzan, Casanova, or Buffalo Bill. They are\n conscious of all the time that is being spent out of their real lives;\n they know they have relatives and friends outside the dream. They know,\n unless—\"\n\n\n Coleman lifted a dark eyebrow above a black iris. \"Unless?\"", "Councilman Coleman didn't look as if he had moved since I had left him.\n He was unwrinkled, unperspiring, his eyes and mustache crisp as ever.\n He smiled at me briefly in supreme confidence.\n\n\n I changed my decision then, in that moment. And, in the next, changed\n it back to my original choice.\n\n\n \"Coleman,\" I said, \"you can get out of here. As warden, I'm granting\n you a five-year probation.\"\n\n\n The councilman stood up swiftly, his eyes catching little sparks\n of yellow light. \"I don't approve of your decision, Warden. Not at\n all. Unless you alter it, I'll be forced to convince the rest of the\n Committee that your decisions are becoming faulty, that you are losing\n your grip just as all your predecessors did.\"", "Coleman stood up and walked out of my office.\n\n\n The clock told me it was after five. I began clearing my desk.\n\n\n Captain Keller stuck his head in, unannounced. \"Hey, Warden, there's an\n active one out here. He claims that Dreamland compromises His plan for\n the Free Will of the Universe.\"\n\n\n \"Well, escort him inside, Captain,\" I said.\n\n\n I put away my pills. Solving simple problems such as the new visitor\n presented always helped me to relax.", "I studied the files flashed before me. Several times before, Coleman\n had been guilty of slight misuses of his authority: helping his\n friends, harming his enemies. Not enough to make him be impeached\n from the Committee. His job was so hypersensitive that if every\n transgression earned dismissal, no one could hold the position more\n than a day. Even with the best intentions, mistakes can be taken for\n deliberate errors. Not to mention the converse. For his earlier errors,\n Coleman had first received a suspended sentence, then two terminal\n sentences to be fixed by the warden. My predecessors had given him\n first a few weeks, then a few months of sleep in Dreamland.\nColeman's eyes didn't frighten me; I focused right on the pupils. \"That\n was a pretty foul trick, Councilman. Did you hope to somehow frighten\n me out of executing this sentence by what you told me this morning?\"", "I couldn't follow his reasoning. Just how making me think my life was\n only a Dream such as I imposed on my own prisoners could help him, I\n couldn't see.\n\n\n \"Warden Walker,\" Coleman intoned in his magnificent voice, \"I'm\n shocked.\nI\nam not personally monitoring your Dream. The Committee as\n a whole will decide whether you are capable of returning to the real\n world. Moreover, please don't get carried away. I'm not concerned with\n what you do to this sensory projection of myself, beyond how it helps\n to establish your moral capabilities.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose,\" I said heavily, \"that I could best establish my high moral\n character by excusing you from this penal sentence?\"\n\n\n \"Not at all,\" Councilman Coleman asserted. \"According to the facts as\n you know them, I am 'guilty' and must be confined.\"", "I waited for Coleman's reaction. He merely nodded.\n\n\n \"Of course, it's barbaric to think of a prison as a place of\n punishment,\" I continued. \"A prison is a place to keep a criminal away\n from society for a specific time so he can't harm that society for that\n time. Punishment, rehabilitation, all of it is secondary to that. The\n purpose of confinement is confinement.\"\nThe councilman edged forward an inch. \"And you really think Dreamland\n is the most humane confinement possible?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" I hedged, \"it's the most humane we've found yet. I suppose\n living through a—uh—movie with full sensory participation for year\n after year can get boring.\"", "Coleman sat back down suddenly.\n\n\n \"You don't want life as a Sleeper, do you?\" I pursued. \"You did want\n a relatively\nshort\nsentence of a few months or a few years. I can\n think of two reasons why. The answer is probably a combination of\n both. In the first place, you are a joy-popper with Dreams—you don't\n want to live out your life in one, but you like a brief Dream every\n few years like an occasional dose of a narcotic. In the second place,\n you probably have political reasons for wanting to hide out somewhere\n in safety for the next few years. The world isn't as placid as the\n newscasts sometimes make it seem.\"\nHe didn't say anything. I didn't think he had to.", "\"I'm glad you said that, Walker,\" Councilman Coleman told me warmly.\n \"As I said, I've been following your career closely, and if you\n get through the next twenty-four-hour period as you have through\n the foregoing part of your Dream, you will be awakened at this time\n tomorrow. Congratulations!\"\n\n\n I sat there and took it.\n\n\n He was telling\nme\n, the superintendent of Dreamland, that my own\n life here was only a Dream such as I fed to my own prisoners. It was\n unbelievably absurd, a queasy little joke of some kind. But I didn't\n deny it.\nIf it\nwere\ntrue, if I had forgotten that everything that happened was\n only a Dream, and if I admitted it, the councilman would know I was\n mad.\nIt couldn't be true.\nYet—\n\n\n Hadn't I thought about it ever since I had been appointed warden and\n transferred from my personnel job at the plant?", "\"You don't sound as if you like our distinguished visitor very well,\" I\n remarked.\n\n\n \"It's not that. I just don't think he deserves any special privileges.\n Besides, it was guys like him that took away our nightsticks. My boys\n didn't like that. Look at me—I'm defenseless!\"\n\n\n I looked at his square figure. \"Not quite, Captain, not quite.\"\n\n\n Now was the time.\n\n\n I stretched out my wet palm toward the door.\n\n\n Was or was not Coleman telling the truth when he said this life of mine\n was itself only a Dream? If it was, did I want to finish my last day\n with the right decision so I could return to some alien reality? Or did\n I deliberately want to make a mistake so I could continue living the\n opiate of my Dream?\n\n\n Then, as I touched the door, I knew the only decision that could have\n any meaning for me.", "\"Naw, he ain't violent, Warden. He just thinks he's somebody important.\"\n\n\n \"Sounds like a case for therapy, not Dreamland. Who does he think he\n is?\"\n\n\n \"One of the Committee—Councilman Coleman.\"\n\n\n \"Mm-hmm. And who is he really, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"Councilman Coleman.\"\n\n\n I whistled. \"What did they nail him on?\"\n\n\n \"Misuse of authority.\"\n\n\n \"And he didn't get a suspended for that?\"\n\n\n \"Wasn't his first offense. Still want to see him?\"\n\n\n I gave a lateral wave of my hand. \"Of course.\"", "It was a pair of fantastic stories that no man in his right mind would\n believe—but that didn't make them invalid to a brace of ex-Sleepers.\n They\nwanted\nto believe them. The stories gave them what they were\n after—without me having to break the law and put them to sleep for\n crimes they hadn't committed.\n\n\n They would find out some day that I had lied to them, but maybe by that\n time they would have realized this world wasn't so bad.\n\n\n Fortunately, I was confident from their psych records that they were\n both incapable of ending their little game by homicide, no matter how\n justified they might think it was.\n\n\n \"Hey, Warden,\" Captain Keller bellowed as I approached my office\n door, \"when are you going to let me throw that stiff Coleman into the\n sleepy-bye vaults? He's still sitting in there on your furniture as\n smug as you please.\"", "\"Sure,\" I told him, \"but I don't want to share the same noose with you.\n My job is to keep the innocent out and the convicted in. And I do my\n job, Paulson.\"\n\n\n \"But you have to! If you don't, I'll have to go out and establish my\n guilt with another crime. Do you want a crime on your hands, Warden?\"\n\n\n I studied his record. There was a chance, just a chance....\n\n\n \"Do you want to wait voluntarily in the detention quarters?\" I asked\n him.\n\n\n He agreed readily enough.\n\n\n I watched him out of the office and rang for lunch.", "Paulson was a tall, lean man with sad eyes. The clock above his sharp\n shoulder bone said five till noon. I didn't expect him to take much out\n of my lunch hour.\n\n\n \"Warden,\" Paulson said, \"I've decided to give myself up. I murdered a\n blind beggar the other night.\"\n\n\n \"For his pencils?\" I asked.\n\n\n Paulson shifted uneasily. \"No, sir. For his money. I needed some extra\n cash and I was stronger than he was, so why shouldn't I take it?\"\n\n\n I examined the projection of his file. He was an embezzler, not a\n violent man. He had served his time and been released. Conceivably he\n might embezzle again, but the Committee saw to it that temptation was\n never again placed in his path. He would not commit a crime of violence.", "I hardly heard Horbit when he half-shouted at me as my men led him from\n the room. Glancing up sharply, I saw him straining purposefully against\n the bonds of muscle and narcotic that held him.\n\"You have to send me back now, Warden,\" he was shrilling. \"You have to!\n I tried to coerce you with a gun. That's a crime, Warden—you\nknow\nthat's a crime! I have to be put to sleep!\"\n\n\n Keller flicked his mustache with a thick thumbnail. \"How about that?\n You won't let a guy back into the sleepy-bye pads, so he pulls a gun\n on you to make you, and\nthat\nmakes him eligible. He couldn't lose,\n Warden. No, sir, he had it made.\"\n\n\n My answer to Keller was forming, building up in my jaw muscles, but I\n took a pill and it went away.", "Once he fed that document to the archives, I would be obligated to help\n him even without the gun. My word would probably be taken that I had\n been forced to do it at gunpoint, but there would always be doubts,\n enough to wreck my career when it came time for promotion.\n\n\n Nothing like this had ever happened in my years as warden.\nSuddenly, Coleman's words hit me in the back of the neck.\nIf I got\n through the next twenty-four hours.\nThis had to be some kind of test.\n\n\n But a test for what?\n\n\n Had I been deliberately told that I was living only a Dream to see\n if my ethics would hold up even when I thought I wasn't dealing with\n reality?\n\n\n Or if this\nwas\nonly a Dream, was it a test to see if I was morally\n ready to return to the real, the earnest world?", "I cleared my throat. \"Unless they go mad and really believe the dream\n they are living. But as you know, sir, the rate of madness among\n Dreamland inmates is only slightly above the norm for the population as\n a whole.\"\n\n\n \"How do prisoners like that adjust to reality?\"\n\n\n Was he deliberately trying to ask tough questions? \"They don't. They\n think they are having some kind of delusion. Many of them become\n schizoid and pretend to go along with reality while secretly 'knowing'\n it to be a lie.\"\n\n\n Coleman removed a pocket secretary and broke it open. \"About these new\n free-choice models—do you think they genuinely are an improvement over\n the old fixed-image machines?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" I replied. \"By letting the prisoner project his own\n imagination onto the sense tapes and giving him a limited amount of\n alternatives to a situation, we can observe whether he is conforming to\n society to a larger extent.\"" ], [ "Coleman stood up and walked out of my office.\n\n\n The clock told me it was after five. I began clearing my desk.\n\n\n Captain Keller stuck his head in, unannounced. \"Hey, Warden, there's an\n active one out here. He claims that Dreamland compromises His plan for\n the Free Will of the Universe.\"\n\n\n \"Well, escort him inside, Captain,\" I said.\n\n\n I put away my pills. Solving simple problems such as the new visitor\n presented always helped me to relax.", "\"I should think so,\" Coleman said emphatically. \"Warden, don't you\n sometimes feel the old system where the prisoners had the diversions\n of riots, solitary confinement, television, and jailbreaks may have\n made time easier to serve? Do these men ever think they are\nactually\nliving these vicarious adventures?\"\n\n\n That was a question that made all of us in the Dreamland service\n uneasy. \"No, Councilman, they don't. They know they aren't really\n Alexander of Macedonia, Tarzan, Casanova, or Buffalo Bill. They are\n conscious of all the time that is being spent out of their real lives;\n they know they have relatives and friends outside the dream. They know,\n unless—\"\n\n\n Coleman lifted a dark eyebrow above a black iris. \"Unless?\"", "I didn't really believe this, not then, but I couldn't afford to make\n a mistake, even if it were only some sort of intemperate test—as I\n was confident it was, with a sweet, throbbing fury against the man who\n would employ such a jagged broadsword for prying in his bureaucratic\n majesty.\n\n\n \"I've always thought,\" I said, \"that it would be a good idea to show\n a prisoner what the modern penal system was all about by giving him a\n Dream in which he dreamed about Dreamland itself.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, indeed,\" Coleman concurred. Just that and no more.\n\n\n I leaned intimately across my beautiful oak desk. \"I've thought that\n projecting officials into the Dream and letting them talk with the\n prisoners might be a more effective form of investigation than mere\n observation.\"\n\n\n \"I should say so,\" Coleman remarked, and got up.", "\"You don't sound as if you like our distinguished visitor very well,\" I\n remarked.\n\n\n \"It's not that. I just don't think he deserves any special privileges.\n Besides, it was guys like him that took away our nightsticks. My boys\n didn't like that. Look at me—I'm defenseless!\"\n\n\n I looked at his square figure. \"Not quite, Captain, not quite.\"\n\n\n Now was the time.\n\n\n I stretched out my wet palm toward the door.\n\n\n Was or was not Coleman telling the truth when he said this life of mine\n was itself only a Dream? If it was, did I want to finish my last day\n with the right decision so I could return to some alien reality? Or did\n I deliberately want to make a mistake so I could continue living the\n opiate of my Dream?\n\n\n Then, as I touched the door, I knew the only decision that could have\n any meaning for me.", "He could express himself much better in his Dream. He had been Abraham\n Lincoln in his Dream, I saw. He had lived the life right up to the\n night when he was taking in\nAn American Cousin\nat the Ford Theater.\n Horbit couldn't accept history that he had no more life to live. He\n only knew that if in his delirium he could gain Dreamland once more, he\n could get back to the hard realities of dealing with the problems of\n Reconstruction.\n\n\n \"\nPlease\n,\" he begged.\n\n\n I looked up from the file. \"I'm sorry, Eddie.\"\n\n\n His eyes narrowed, both of them, on the next twitch. \"Warden, I can\n always go out and commit another anti-social act.\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid not, Eddie. The file shows you are capable of only one\n crime. And you don't have a wife any more, and she doesn't have a\n lover.\"", "I cleared my throat. \"Unless they go mad and really believe the dream\n they are living. But as you know, sir, the rate of madness among\n Dreamland inmates is only slightly above the norm for the population as\n a whole.\"\n\n\n \"How do prisoners like that adjust to reality?\"\n\n\n Was he deliberately trying to ask tough questions? \"They don't. They\n think they are having some kind of delusion. Many of them become\n schizoid and pretend to go along with reality while secretly 'knowing'\n it to be a lie.\"\n\n\n Coleman removed a pocket secretary and broke it open. \"About these new\n free-choice models—do you think they genuinely are an improvement over\n the old fixed-image machines?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" I replied. \"By letting the prisoner project his own\n imagination onto the sense tapes and giving him a limited amount of\n alternatives to a situation, we can observe whether he is conforming to\n society to a larger extent.\"", "\"I'm glad you said that, Walker,\" Councilman Coleman told me warmly.\n \"As I said, I've been following your career closely, and if you\n get through the next twenty-four-hour period as you have through\n the foregoing part of your Dream, you will be awakened at this time\n tomorrow. Congratulations!\"\n\n\n I sat there and took it.\n\n\n He was telling\nme\n, the superintendent of Dreamland, that my own\n life here was only a Dream such as I fed to my own prisoners. It was\n unbelievably absurd, a queasy little joke of some kind. But I didn't\n deny it.\nIf it\nwere\ntrue, if I had forgotten that everything that happened was\n only a Dream, and if I admitted it, the councilman would know I was\n mad.\nIt couldn't be true.\nYet—\n\n\n Hadn't I thought about it ever since I had been appointed warden and\n transferred from my personnel job at the plant?", "I waited for Coleman's reaction. He merely nodded.\n\n\n \"Of course, it's barbaric to think of a prison as a place of\n punishment,\" I continued. \"A prison is a place to keep a criminal away\n from society for a specific time so he can't harm that society for that\n time. Punishment, rehabilitation, all of it is secondary to that. The\n purpose of confinement is confinement.\"\nThe councilman edged forward an inch. \"And you really think Dreamland\n is the most humane confinement possible?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" I hedged, \"it's the most humane we've found yet. I suppose\n living through a—uh—movie with full sensory participation for year\n after year can get boring.\"", "\"Warden Walker, I've been following your career with considerable\n interest,\" Coleman said.\n\n\n \"My career hasn't been very long, sir,\" I said modestly. I didn't\n mention that\nnobody\ncould last that long in my job. At least, none\n had yet.\n\n\n \"I've followed it from the first. I know every step you've made.\"\n\n\n I didn't know whether to be flattered or apprehensive. \"That's fine,\" I\n said. It didn't sound right.\n\n\n \"Tell me,\" Coleman said, crossing his legs, \"what do you think of\n Dreamland in principle?\"\n\n\n \"Why, it's the logical step forward in penal servitude. Man has been\n heading toward this since he first started civilizing himself. After\n all, some criminals\ncan't\nbe helped psychiatrically. We can't execute\n them or turn them free; we have to imprison them.\"", "He nodded. \"Happened before. Back when old man Preston lost his grip.\"\n\n\n Preston had been my predecessor. He had lost his hold on reality like\n all the others before him who had served long as warden of Dreamland.\n A few had quit while they were still ahead and spent the rest of their\n lives recuperating. Our society didn't produce individuals tough enough\n to stand the strain of putting their fellow human beings to sleep for\n long.\n\n\n One of Keller's men had stabbed Horbit's arm with a hypospray to\n blanket the pain from his broken wrist, and the man was quieter.\n\n\n \"I couldn't have done it, Warden,\" Horbit mumbled drowsily. \"I couldn't\n kill anybody. Unless it was like that other time.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, Eddie,\" I said.\n\n\n I had banked on that, hadn't I, when I made my move?", "I threw up my hands. You don't often see somebody do that, but I did.\n I couldn't figure him. Coleman had wealth and power as a councilman\n in the real world, but I had thought somehow he wanted to escape to a\n Dream world. Yet he didn't want to be in for life, the way Paulson and\n Horbit did.\n\n\n There seemed to be no point or profit in what he had told me that\n morning, nothing in it for him.\n\n\n Unless—\n\n\n Unless what he said was literally true.\n\n\n I stood up. My knees wanted to quit halfway up, but I made it. \"This,\"\n I said, \"is a difficult decision for me, sir. Would you make yourself\n comfortable here for a time, Councilman?\"\n\n\n Coleman smiled benignly. \"Certainly, Warden.\"", "Whenever I had come upon two people talking, and it seemed as if I had\n come upon those same two people talking the same talk before, hadn't I\n wondered for an instant if it couldn't be a Dream, not reality at all?\n\n\n Once I had experienced a Dream for five or ten minutes. I was driving\n a ground car down a spidery road made into a dismal tunnel by weeping\n trees, a dank, lavender maze. I had known at the time it was a Dream,\n but still, as the moments passed, I became more intent on the\n difficult road before me, my blocky hands on the steering wheel, thick\n fingers typing out the pattern of motion on the drive buttons.\n\n\n I could remember that. Maybe I couldn't remember being shoved into the\n prison vault for so many years for such and such a crime.", "My muscles relaxed in a spasm and it took the fresh flow of adrenalin\n to get me to the chair behind my desk. I took a pill. I took two pills.\n\n\n \"Tell me, Councilman, what happened to the offer to release me from\n this phony Dream? Now you are talking as if\nthis\nworld was the\nreal\none.\"\n\n\n Coleman parted his lips, but then the planes of his face shifted into\n another pattern. \"You never believed me.\"\n\n\n \"Almost, but not quite. You knew I was on the narrow edge in this kind\n of job, but I'm not as far out as you seemed to have thought.\"\n\n\n \"I can still wreck your career, you know.\"\n\n\n \"I don't think so. That would constitute a misuse of authority, and\n the next time you turn up before me, I'm going to give you\nlife\nin\n Dreamland.\"", "\"Look, Paulson,\" I said, a trifle testily, \"if you have so little\n conscience as to kill a blind old man for a few dollars, where do you\n suddenly get enough guilt feelings to cause you to give yourself up?\"\n\n\n Paulson tried his insufficient best to smile evilly. \"It wasn't\n conscience, Warden. I never lie awake a minute whenever I kill\n anybody. It's just—well, Dreaming isn't so bad. Last time I was Allen\n Pinkerton, the detective. It was exciting. A lot more exciting than the\n kind of life I lead.\"\n\n\n I nodded solemnly. \"Yes, no doubt strangling old men in the streets can\n be pretty dull for a red-blooded man of action.\"", "I\nhad\nto get more out of him, some proof, some clue beyond the\n preposterous announcement he had made.\n\n\n \"I'll see you tomorrow at this time then, Walker.\" The councilman\n nodded curtly and turned to leave my office.\n\n\n I held onto the sides of my desk to keep from diving over and teaching\n him to change his concept of humor.\n\n\n The day was starting. If I got through it, giving a good show, I would\n be released from my Dream, he had said smugly.\n\n\n But if this was a dream, did I want probation to reality?\nHorbit was a twitchy little man whose business tunic was the same\n rodent color as his hair. He had a pronounced tic in his left cheek. \"I\n have to get back,\" he told me with compelling earnestness.", "Coleman sat back down suddenly.\n\n\n \"You don't want life as a Sleeper, do you?\" I pursued. \"You did want\n a relatively\nshort\nsentence of a few months or a few years. I can\n think of two reasons why. The answer is probably a combination of\n both. In the first place, you are a joy-popper with Dreams—you don't\n want to live out your life in one, but you like a brief Dream every\n few years like an occasional dose of a narcotic. In the second place,\n you probably have political reasons for wanting to hide out somewhere\n in safety for the next few years. The world isn't as placid as the\n newscasts sometimes make it seem.\"\nHe didn't say anything. I didn't think he had to.", "Or did I?\n\n\n Wasn't it perhaps a matter of knowing that all of it wasn't real and\n that the safety cutoffs in even a free-choice model of a Dream Machine\n couldn't let me come to any real harm? I had been suspiciously brave,\n disarming a dedicated maniac. With only an hour to spare for gym a day,\n I could barely press 350 pounds. I was hardly in shape for personal\n combat.\n\n\n On the other hand, maybe I actually wanted something to go wrong so my\n sleep sentence would be extended. Or was it that, in some sane part of\n my mind, I wanted release from unreality badly enough to take any risk\n to prove that I was morally capable of returning to the real world?\n\n\n It was a carrousel and I couldn't catch the brass ring no matter how\n many turns I went spinning through.", "Coleman came in the morning before I was really ready to face the\n day. My nerves were fairly well shot from the kind of work I did as\n superintendent of Dreamland. I chewed up my pill to calm me down,\n the one to pep me up, the capsule to strengthen my qualities as a\n relentless perfectionist. I washed them down with gin and orange\n juice and sat back, building up my fortitude to do business over the\n polished deck of my desk.\n\n\n But instead of the usual morning run of hysterical relatives and\n masochistic mystics, I had to face one of my superiors from the\n Committee itself.\n\n\n Councilman Coleman was an impressive figure in a tailored black tunic.\n His olive features were set off by bristling black eyes and a mobile\n mustache. He probably scared most people, but not me. Authority doesn't\n frighten me any more. I've put to sleep too many megalomaniacs,\n dictators, and civil servants.", "Once he fed that document to the archives, I would be obligated to help\n him even without the gun. My word would probably be taken that I had\n been forced to do it at gunpoint, but there would always be doubts,\n enough to wreck my career when it came time for promotion.\n\n\n Nothing like this had ever happened in my years as warden.\nSuddenly, Coleman's words hit me in the back of the neck.\nIf I got\n through the next twenty-four hours.\nThis had to be some kind of test.\n\n\n But a test for what?\n\n\n Had I been deliberately told that I was living only a Dream to see\n if my ethics would hold up even when I thought I wasn't dealing with\n reality?\n\n\n Or if this\nwas\nonly a Dream, was it a test to see if I was morally\n ready to return to the real, the earnest world?", "I couldn't follow his reasoning. Just how making me think my life was\n only a Dream such as I imposed on my own prisoners could help him, I\n couldn't see.\n\n\n \"Warden Walker,\" Coleman intoned in his magnificent voice, \"I'm\n shocked.\nI\nam not personally monitoring your Dream. The Committee as\n a whole will decide whether you are capable of returning to the real\n world. Moreover, please don't get carried away. I'm not concerned with\n what you do to this sensory projection of myself, beyond how it helps\n to establish your moral capabilities.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose,\" I said heavily, \"that I could best establish my high moral\n character by excusing you from this penal sentence?\"\n\n\n \"Not at all,\" Councilman Coleman asserted. \"According to the facts as\n you know them, I am 'guilty' and must be confined.\"" ], [ "\"Warden Walker, I've been following your career with considerable\n interest,\" Coleman said.\n\n\n \"My career hasn't been very long, sir,\" I said modestly. I didn't\n mention that\nnobody\ncould last that long in my job. At least, none\n had yet.\n\n\n \"I've followed it from the first. I know every step you've made.\"\n\n\n I didn't know whether to be flattered or apprehensive. \"That's fine,\" I\n said. It didn't sound right.\n\n\n \"Tell me,\" Coleman said, crossing his legs, \"what do you think of\n Dreamland in principle?\"\n\n\n \"Why, it's the logical step forward in penal servitude. Man has been\n heading toward this since he first started civilizing himself. After\n all, some criminals\ncan't\nbe helped psychiatrically. We can't execute\n them or turn them free; we have to imprison them.\"", "Councilman Coleman didn't look as if he had moved since I had left him.\n He was unwrinkled, unperspiring, his eyes and mustache crisp as ever.\n He smiled at me briefly in supreme confidence.\n\n\n I changed my decision then, in that moment. And, in the next, changed\n it back to my original choice.\n\n\n \"Coleman,\" I said, \"you can get out of here. As warden, I'm granting\n you a five-year probation.\"\n\n\n The councilman stood up swiftly, his eyes catching little sparks\n of yellow light. \"I don't approve of your decision, Warden. Not at\n all. Unless you alter it, I'll be forced to convince the rest of the\n Committee that your decisions are becoming faulty, that you are losing\n your grip just as all your predecessors did.\"", "I couldn't follow his reasoning. Just how making me think my life was\n only a Dream such as I imposed on my own prisoners could help him, I\n couldn't see.\n\n\n \"Warden Walker,\" Coleman intoned in his magnificent voice, \"I'm\n shocked.\nI\nam not personally monitoring your Dream. The Committee as\n a whole will decide whether you are capable of returning to the real\n world. Moreover, please don't get carried away. I'm not concerned with\n what you do to this sensory projection of myself, beyond how it helps\n to establish your moral capabilities.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose,\" I said heavily, \"that I could best establish my high moral\n character by excusing you from this penal sentence?\"\n\n\n \"Not at all,\" Councilman Coleman asserted. \"According to the facts as\n you know them, I am 'guilty' and must be confined.\"", "I hardly heard Horbit when he half-shouted at me as my men led him from\n the room. Glancing up sharply, I saw him straining purposefully against\n the bonds of muscle and narcotic that held him.\n\"You have to send me back now, Warden,\" he was shrilling. \"You have to!\n I tried to coerce you with a gun. That's a crime, Warden—you\nknow\nthat's a crime! I have to be put to sleep!\"\n\n\n Keller flicked his mustache with a thick thumbnail. \"How about that?\n You won't let a guy back into the sleepy-bye pads, so he pulls a gun\n on you to make you, and\nthat\nmakes him eligible. He couldn't lose,\n Warden. No, sir, he had it made.\"\n\n\n My answer to Keller was forming, building up in my jaw muscles, but I\n took a pill and it went away.", "I didn't really believe this, not then, but I couldn't afford to make\n a mistake, even if it were only some sort of intemperate test—as I\n was confident it was, with a sweet, throbbing fury against the man who\n would employ such a jagged broadsword for prying in his bureaucratic\n majesty.\n\n\n \"I've always thought,\" I said, \"that it would be a good idea to show\n a prisoner what the modern penal system was all about by giving him a\n Dream in which he dreamed about Dreamland itself.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, indeed,\" Coleman concurred. Just that and no more.\n\n\n I leaned intimately across my beautiful oak desk. \"I've thought that\n projecting officials into the Dream and letting them talk with the\n prisoners might be a more effective form of investigation than mere\n observation.\"\n\n\n \"I should say so,\" Coleman remarked, and got up.", "I was stymied for an instant. I had expected him to say that I must\n know that he was incapable of committing such an error and I must\n pardon him despite the misguided rulings of the courts. Then I thought\n of something else.\n\n\n \"You show symptoms of being a habitual criminal, Coleman. I think you\n deserve\nlife\n.\"\n\n\n Coleman cocked his head thoughtfully, concerned. \"That seems rather\n extreme, Warden.\"\n\n\n \"You would suggest a shorter sentence?\"\n\n\n \"If it were my place to choose, yes. A few years, perhaps. But\n life—no, I think not.\"", "Once in a while I granted a parole for a prisoner to see a dying mother\n or if some important project was falling apart without his help, but\n most of the time I just sat with my eyes propped open, letting a sea of\n vindictive screeching and beseeching wailings wash around me.\n\n\n The relatives and legal talent were spaced with hungry-eyed mystics\n who were convinced they could contemplate God and their navels\n both conscientiously as an incarnation of Gautama. To risk sounding\n religiously intolerant, I usually kicked these out pretty swiftly.\n\n\n The onetime inmate who wanted back in after a reprieve was fairly rare.\n Few of them ever got\nthat\ncrazy.\n\n\n But it was my luck to get another the same day,\nthe\nday for me, as\n Horbit.", "\"I should think so,\" Coleman said emphatically. \"Warden, don't you\n sometimes feel the old system where the prisoners had the diversions\n of riots, solitary confinement, television, and jailbreaks may have\n made time easier to serve? Do these men ever think they are\nactually\nliving these vicarious adventures?\"\n\n\n That was a question that made all of us in the Dreamland service\n uneasy. \"No, Councilman, they don't. They know they aren't really\n Alexander of Macedonia, Tarzan, Casanova, or Buffalo Bill. They are\n conscious of all the time that is being spent out of their real lives;\n they know they have relatives and friends outside the dream. They know,\n unless—\"\n\n\n Coleman lifted a dark eyebrow above a black iris. \"Unless?\"", "It was a pair of fantastic stories that no man in his right mind would\n believe—but that didn't make them invalid to a brace of ex-Sleepers.\n They\nwanted\nto believe them. The stories gave them what they were\n after—without me having to break the law and put them to sleep for\n crimes they hadn't committed.\n\n\n They would find out some day that I had lied to them, but maybe by that\n time they would have realized this world wasn't so bad.\n\n\n Fortunately, I was confident from their psych records that they were\n both incapable of ending their little game by homicide, no matter how\n justified they might think it was.\n\n\n \"Hey, Warden,\" Captain Keller bellowed as I approached my office\n door, \"when are you going to let me throw that stiff Coleman into the\n sleepy-bye vaults? He's still sitting in there on your furniture as\n smug as you please.\"", "I threw up my hands. You don't often see somebody do that, but I did.\n I couldn't figure him. Coleman had wealth and power as a councilman\n in the real world, but I had thought somehow he wanted to escape to a\n Dream world. Yet he didn't want to be in for life, the way Paulson and\n Horbit did.\n\n\n There seemed to be no point or profit in what he had told me that\n morning, nothing in it for him.\n\n\n Unless—\n\n\n Unless what he said was literally true.\n\n\n I stood up. My knees wanted to quit halfway up, but I made it. \"This,\"\n I said, \"is a difficult decision for me, sir. Would you make yourself\n comfortable here for a time, Councilman?\"\n\n\n Coleman smiled benignly. \"Certainly, Warden.\"", "He nodded. \"Happened before. Back when old man Preston lost his grip.\"\n\n\n Preston had been my predecessor. He had lost his hold on reality like\n all the others before him who had served long as warden of Dreamland.\n A few had quit while they were still ahead and spent the rest of their\n lives recuperating. Our society didn't produce individuals tough enough\n to stand the strain of putting their fellow human beings to sleep for\n long.\n\n\n One of Keller's men had stabbed Horbit's arm with a hypospray to\n blanket the pain from his broken wrist, and the man was quieter.\n\n\n \"I couldn't have done it, Warden,\" Horbit mumbled drowsily. \"I couldn't\n kill anybody. Unless it was like that other time.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, Eddie,\" I said.\n\n\n I had banked on that, hadn't I, when I made my move?", "Paulson was a tall, lean man with sad eyes. The clock above his sharp\n shoulder bone said five till noon. I didn't expect him to take much out\n of my lunch hour.\n\n\n \"Warden,\" Paulson said, \"I've decided to give myself up. I murdered a\n blind beggar the other night.\"\n\n\n \"For his pencils?\" I asked.\n\n\n Paulson shifted uneasily. \"No, sir. For his money. I needed some extra\n cash and I was stronger than he was, so why shouldn't I take it?\"\n\n\n I examined the projection of his file. He was an embezzler, not a\n violent man. He had served his time and been released. Conceivably he\n might embezzle again, but the Committee saw to it that temptation was\n never again placed in his path. He would not commit a crime of violence.", "\"Sure,\" I told him, \"but I don't want to share the same noose with you.\n My job is to keep the innocent out and the convicted in. And I do my\n job, Paulson.\"\n\n\n \"But you have to! If you don't, I'll have to go out and establish my\n guilt with another crime. Do you want a crime on your hands, Warden?\"\n\n\n I studied his record. There was a chance, just a chance....\n\n\n \"Do you want to wait voluntarily in the detention quarters?\" I asked\n him.\n\n\n He agreed readily enough.\n\n\n I watched him out of the office and rang for lunch.", "Horbit laughed. \"Your files aren't infallible, Warden.\"\n\n\n With one gesture, he ripped open his tunic and tore into his own flesh.\n No, not his own flesh. Pseudo-flesh. He took out the gun that was\n underneath.\n\n\n \"The beamer is made of X-ray-transparent plastic, Warden, but it works\n as well as one made of steel and lead.\"\n\n\n \"Now that you've got it in here,\" I said in time with the pulse in my\n throat, \"what are you going to do with it?\"\n\n\n \"I'm going to make you go down to the vaults and put me back to sleep,\n Warden.\"\n\n\n I nodded. \"I suppose you can do that. But what's to prevent me from\n waking you up as soon as I've taken away your gun?\"\n\n\n \"This!\" He tossed a sheet of paper onto my desk.", "I studied the files flashed before me. Several times before, Coleman\n had been guilty of slight misuses of his authority: helping his\n friends, harming his enemies. Not enough to make him be impeached\n from the Committee. His job was so hypersensitive that if every\n transgression earned dismissal, no one could hold the position more\n than a day. Even with the best intentions, mistakes can be taken for\n deliberate errors. Not to mention the converse. For his earlier errors,\n Coleman had first received a suspended sentence, then two terminal\n sentences to be fixed by the warden. My predecessors had given him\n first a few weeks, then a few months of sleep in Dreamland.\nColeman's eyes didn't frighten me; I focused right on the pupils. \"That\n was a pretty foul trick, Councilman. Did you hope to somehow frighten\n me out of executing this sentence by what you told me this morning?\"", "Coleman stood up and walked out of my office.\n\n\n The clock told me it was after five. I began clearing my desk.\n\n\n Captain Keller stuck his head in, unannounced. \"Hey, Warden, there's an\n active one out here. He claims that Dreamland compromises His plan for\n the Free Will of the Universe.\"\n\n\n \"Well, escort him inside, Captain,\" I said.\n\n\n I put away my pills. Solving simple problems such as the new visitor\n presented always helped me to relax.", "\"I'm glad you said that, Walker,\" Councilman Coleman told me warmly.\n \"As I said, I've been following your career closely, and if you\n get through the next twenty-four-hour period as you have through\n the foregoing part of your Dream, you will be awakened at this time\n tomorrow. Congratulations!\"\n\n\n I sat there and took it.\n\n\n He was telling\nme\n, the superintendent of Dreamland, that my own\n life here was only a Dream such as I fed to my own prisoners. It was\n unbelievably absurd, a queasy little joke of some kind. But I didn't\n deny it.\nIf it\nwere\ntrue, if I had forgotten that everything that happened was\n only a Dream, and if I admitted it, the councilman would know I was\n mad.\nIt couldn't be true.\nYet—\n\n\n Hadn't I thought about it ever since I had been appointed warden and\n transferred from my personnel job at the plant?", "\"Naw, he ain't violent, Warden. He just thinks he's somebody important.\"\n\n\n \"Sounds like a case for therapy, not Dreamland. Who does he think he\n is?\"\n\n\n \"One of the Committee—Councilman Coleman.\"\n\n\n \"Mm-hmm. And who is he really, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"Councilman Coleman.\"\n\n\n I whistled. \"What did they nail him on?\"\n\n\n \"Misuse of authority.\"\n\n\n \"And he didn't get a suspended for that?\"\n\n\n \"Wasn't his first offense. Still want to see him?\"\n\n\n I gave a lateral wave of my hand. \"Of course.\"", "\"Hold him in the detention quarters,\" I said finally. \"I'm going to\n make a study of this.\"\n\n\n Keller winked knowingly and sauntered out of the office, his left hand\n swinging the blackjack the Committee had taken away from him a decade\n before.\n\n\n The problem of what to do with Keller wasn't particularly atypical of\n the ones I had to solve daily and I wasn't going to let that worry me.\n Much.\n\n\n I pressed my button to let Mrs. Engle know I was ready for the next\n interview.\nThey came. There were the hysterical relatives, the wives and mothers\n and brothers who demanded that their kin be Awakened because they were\n special cases, not really guilty, or needed at home, or possessed of\n such awesome talents and qualities as to be exempt from the laws of\n lesser men.", "He could express himself much better in his Dream. He had been Abraham\n Lincoln in his Dream, I saw. He had lived the life right up to the\n night when he was taking in\nAn American Cousin\nat the Ford Theater.\n Horbit couldn't accept history that he had no more life to live. He\n only knew that if in his delirium he could gain Dreamland once more, he\n could get back to the hard realities of dealing with the problems of\n Reconstruction.\n\n\n \"\nPlease\n,\" he begged.\n\n\n I looked up from the file. \"I'm sorry, Eddie.\"\n\n\n His eyes narrowed, both of them, on the next twitch. \"Warden, I can\n always go out and commit another anti-social act.\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid not, Eddie. The file shows you are capable of only one\n crime. And you don't have a wife any more, and she doesn't have a\n lover.\"" ], [ "\"Warden Walker, I've been following your career with considerable\n interest,\" Coleman said.\n\n\n \"My career hasn't been very long, sir,\" I said modestly. I didn't\n mention that\nnobody\ncould last that long in my job. At least, none\n had yet.\n\n\n \"I've followed it from the first. I know every step you've made.\"\n\n\n I didn't know whether to be flattered or apprehensive. \"That's fine,\" I\n said. It didn't sound right.\n\n\n \"Tell me,\" Coleman said, crossing his legs, \"what do you think of\n Dreamland in principle?\"\n\n\n \"Why, it's the logical step forward in penal servitude. Man has been\n heading toward this since he first started civilizing himself. After\n all, some criminals\ncan't\nbe helped psychiatrically. We can't execute\n them or turn them free; we have to imprison them.\"", "I was stymied for an instant. I had expected him to say that I must\n know that he was incapable of committing such an error and I must\n pardon him despite the misguided rulings of the courts. Then I thought\n of something else.\n\n\n \"You show symptoms of being a habitual criminal, Coleman. I think you\n deserve\nlife\n.\"\n\n\n Coleman cocked his head thoughtfully, concerned. \"That seems rather\n extreme, Warden.\"\n\n\n \"You would suggest a shorter sentence?\"\n\n\n \"If it were my place to choose, yes. A few years, perhaps. But\n life—no, I think not.\"", "\"I should think so,\" Coleman said emphatically. \"Warden, don't you\n sometimes feel the old system where the prisoners had the diversions\n of riots, solitary confinement, television, and jailbreaks may have\n made time easier to serve? Do these men ever think they are\nactually\nliving these vicarious adventures?\"\n\n\n That was a question that made all of us in the Dreamland service\n uneasy. \"No, Councilman, they don't. They know they aren't really\n Alexander of Macedonia, Tarzan, Casanova, or Buffalo Bill. They are\n conscious of all the time that is being spent out of their real lives;\n they know they have relatives and friends outside the dream. They know,\n unless—\"\n\n\n Coleman lifted a dark eyebrow above a black iris. \"Unless?\"", "\"I'm glad you said that, Walker,\" Councilman Coleman told me warmly.\n \"As I said, I've been following your career closely, and if you\n get through the next twenty-four-hour period as you have through\n the foregoing part of your Dream, you will be awakened at this time\n tomorrow. Congratulations!\"\n\n\n I sat there and took it.\n\n\n He was telling\nme\n, the superintendent of Dreamland, that my own\n life here was only a Dream such as I fed to my own prisoners. It was\n unbelievably absurd, a queasy little joke of some kind. But I didn't\n deny it.\nIf it\nwere\ntrue, if I had forgotten that everything that happened was\n only a Dream, and if I admitted it, the councilman would know I was\n mad.\nIt couldn't be true.\nYet—\n\n\n Hadn't I thought about it ever since I had been appointed warden and\n transferred from my personnel job at the plant?", "Councilman Coleman didn't look as if he had moved since I had left him.\n He was unwrinkled, unperspiring, his eyes and mustache crisp as ever.\n He smiled at me briefly in supreme confidence.\n\n\n I changed my decision then, in that moment. And, in the next, changed\n it back to my original choice.\n\n\n \"Coleman,\" I said, \"you can get out of here. As warden, I'm granting\n you a five-year probation.\"\n\n\n The councilman stood up swiftly, his eyes catching little sparks\n of yellow light. \"I don't approve of your decision, Warden. Not at\n all. Unless you alter it, I'll be forced to convince the rest of the\n Committee that your decisions are becoming faulty, that you are losing\n your grip just as all your predecessors did.\"", "I threw up my hands. You don't often see somebody do that, but I did.\n I couldn't figure him. Coleman had wealth and power as a councilman\n in the real world, but I had thought somehow he wanted to escape to a\n Dream world. Yet he didn't want to be in for life, the way Paulson and\n Horbit did.\n\n\n There seemed to be no point or profit in what he had told me that\n morning, nothing in it for him.\n\n\n Unless—\n\n\n Unless what he said was literally true.\n\n\n I stood up. My knees wanted to quit halfway up, but I made it. \"This,\"\n I said, \"is a difficult decision for me, sir. Would you make yourself\n comfortable here for a time, Councilman?\"\n\n\n Coleman smiled benignly. \"Certainly, Warden.\"", "Once in a while I granted a parole for a prisoner to see a dying mother\n or if some important project was falling apart without his help, but\n most of the time I just sat with my eyes propped open, letting a sea of\n vindictive screeching and beseeching wailings wash around me.\n\n\n The relatives and legal talent were spaced with hungry-eyed mystics\n who were convinced they could contemplate God and their navels\n both conscientiously as an incarnation of Gautama. To risk sounding\n religiously intolerant, I usually kicked these out pretty swiftly.\n\n\n The onetime inmate who wanted back in after a reprieve was fairly rare.\n Few of them ever got\nthat\ncrazy.\n\n\n But it was my luck to get another the same day,\nthe\nday for me, as\n Horbit.", "I couldn't follow his reasoning. Just how making me think my life was\n only a Dream such as I imposed on my own prisoners could help him, I\n couldn't see.\n\n\n \"Warden Walker,\" Coleman intoned in his magnificent voice, \"I'm\n shocked.\nI\nam not personally monitoring your Dream. The Committee as\n a whole will decide whether you are capable of returning to the real\n world. Moreover, please don't get carried away. I'm not concerned with\n what you do to this sensory projection of myself, beyond how it helps\n to establish your moral capabilities.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose,\" I said heavily, \"that I could best establish my high moral\n character by excusing you from this penal sentence?\"\n\n\n \"Not at all,\" Councilman Coleman asserted. \"According to the facts as\n you know them, I am 'guilty' and must be confined.\"", "It was a pair of fantastic stories that no man in his right mind would\n believe—but that didn't make them invalid to a brace of ex-Sleepers.\n They\nwanted\nto believe them. The stories gave them what they were\n after—without me having to break the law and put them to sleep for\n crimes they hadn't committed.\n\n\n They would find out some day that I had lied to them, but maybe by that\n time they would have realized this world wasn't so bad.\n\n\n Fortunately, I was confident from their psych records that they were\n both incapable of ending their little game by homicide, no matter how\n justified they might think it was.\n\n\n \"Hey, Warden,\" Captain Keller bellowed as I approached my office\n door, \"when are you going to let me throw that stiff Coleman into the\n sleepy-bye vaults? He's still sitting in there on your furniture as\n smug as you please.\"", "I didn't really believe this, not then, but I couldn't afford to make\n a mistake, even if it were only some sort of intemperate test—as I\n was confident it was, with a sweet, throbbing fury against the man who\n would employ such a jagged broadsword for prying in his bureaucratic\n majesty.\n\n\n \"I've always thought,\" I said, \"that it would be a good idea to show\n a prisoner what the modern penal system was all about by giving him a\n Dream in which he dreamed about Dreamland itself.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, indeed,\" Coleman concurred. Just that and no more.\n\n\n I leaned intimately across my beautiful oak desk. \"I've thought that\n projecting officials into the Dream and letting them talk with the\n prisoners might be a more effective form of investigation than mere\n observation.\"\n\n\n \"I should say so,\" Coleman remarked, and got up.", "Coleman stood up and walked out of my office.\n\n\n The clock told me it was after five. I began clearing my desk.\n\n\n Captain Keller stuck his head in, unannounced. \"Hey, Warden, there's an\n active one out here. He claims that Dreamland compromises His plan for\n the Free Will of the Universe.\"\n\n\n \"Well, escort him inside, Captain,\" I said.\n\n\n I put away my pills. Solving simple problems such as the new visitor\n presented always helped me to relax.", "\"Look, Paulson,\" I said, a trifle testily, \"if you have so little\n conscience as to kill a blind old man for a few dollars, where do you\n suddenly get enough guilt feelings to cause you to give yourself up?\"\n\n\n Paulson tried his insufficient best to smile evilly. \"It wasn't\n conscience, Warden. I never lie awake a minute whenever I kill\n anybody. It's just—well, Dreaming isn't so bad. Last time I was Allen\n Pinkerton, the detective. It was exciting. A lot more exciting than the\n kind of life I lead.\"\n\n\n I nodded solemnly. \"Yes, no doubt strangling old men in the streets can\n be pretty dull for a red-blooded man of action.\"", "\"Sure,\" I told him, \"but I don't want to share the same noose with you.\n My job is to keep the innocent out and the convicted in. And I do my\n job, Paulson.\"\n\n\n \"But you have to! If you don't, I'll have to go out and establish my\n guilt with another crime. Do you want a crime on your hands, Warden?\"\n\n\n I studied his record. There was a chance, just a chance....\n\n\n \"Do you want to wait voluntarily in the detention quarters?\" I asked\n him.\n\n\n He agreed readily enough.\n\n\n I watched him out of the office and rang for lunch.", "I hardly heard Horbit when he half-shouted at me as my men led him from\n the room. Glancing up sharply, I saw him straining purposefully against\n the bonds of muscle and narcotic that held him.\n\"You have to send me back now, Warden,\" he was shrilling. \"You have to!\n I tried to coerce you with a gun. That's a crime, Warden—you\nknow\nthat's a crime! I have to be put to sleep!\"\n\n\n Keller flicked his mustache with a thick thumbnail. \"How about that?\n You won't let a guy back into the sleepy-bye pads, so he pulls a gun\n on you to make you, and\nthat\nmakes him eligible. He couldn't lose,\n Warden. No, sir, he had it made.\"\n\n\n My answer to Keller was forming, building up in my jaw muscles, but I\n took a pill and it went away.", "Paulson was a tall, lean man with sad eyes. The clock above his sharp\n shoulder bone said five till noon. I didn't expect him to take much out\n of my lunch hour.\n\n\n \"Warden,\" Paulson said, \"I've decided to give myself up. I murdered a\n blind beggar the other night.\"\n\n\n \"For his pencils?\" I asked.\n\n\n Paulson shifted uneasily. \"No, sir. For his money. I needed some extra\n cash and I was stronger than he was, so why shouldn't I take it?\"\n\n\n I examined the projection of his file. He was an embezzler, not a\n violent man. He had served his time and been released. Conceivably he\n might embezzle again, but the Committee saw to it that temptation was\n never again placed in his path. He would not commit a crime of violence.", "He nodded. \"Happened before. Back when old man Preston lost his grip.\"\n\n\n Preston had been my predecessor. He had lost his hold on reality like\n all the others before him who had served long as warden of Dreamland.\n A few had quit while they were still ahead and spent the rest of their\n lives recuperating. Our society didn't produce individuals tough enough\n to stand the strain of putting their fellow human beings to sleep for\n long.\n\n\n One of Keller's men had stabbed Horbit's arm with a hypospray to\n blanket the pain from his broken wrist, and the man was quieter.\n\n\n \"I couldn't have done it, Warden,\" Horbit mumbled drowsily. \"I couldn't\n kill anybody. Unless it was like that other time.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, Eddie,\" I said.\n\n\n I had banked on that, hadn't I, when I made my move?", "He could express himself much better in his Dream. He had been Abraham\n Lincoln in his Dream, I saw. He had lived the life right up to the\n night when he was taking in\nAn American Cousin\nat the Ford Theater.\n Horbit couldn't accept history that he had no more life to live. He\n only knew that if in his delirium he could gain Dreamland once more, he\n could get back to the hard realities of dealing with the problems of\n Reconstruction.\n\n\n \"\nPlease\n,\" he begged.\n\n\n I looked up from the file. \"I'm sorry, Eddie.\"\n\n\n His eyes narrowed, both of them, on the next twitch. \"Warden, I can\n always go out and commit another anti-social act.\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid not, Eddie. The file shows you are capable of only one\n crime. And you don't have a wife any more, and she doesn't have a\n lover.\"", "I waited for Coleman's reaction. He merely nodded.\n\n\n \"Of course, it's barbaric to think of a prison as a place of\n punishment,\" I continued. \"A prison is a place to keep a criminal away\n from society for a specific time so he can't harm that society for that\n time. Punishment, rehabilitation, all of it is secondary to that. The\n purpose of confinement is confinement.\"\nThe councilman edged forward an inch. \"And you really think Dreamland\n is the most humane confinement possible?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" I hedged, \"it's the most humane we've found yet. I suppose\n living through a—uh—movie with full sensory participation for year\n after year can get boring.\"", "Coleman sat back down suddenly.\n\n\n \"You don't want life as a Sleeper, do you?\" I pursued. \"You did want\n a relatively\nshort\nsentence of a few months or a few years. I can\n think of two reasons why. The answer is probably a combination of\n both. In the first place, you are a joy-popper with Dreams—you don't\n want to live out your life in one, but you like a brief Dream every\n few years like an occasional dose of a narcotic. In the second place,\n you probably have political reasons for wanting to hide out somewhere\n in safety for the next few years. The world isn't as placid as the\n newscasts sometimes make it seem.\"\nHe didn't say anything. I didn't think he had to.", "The news on the wall video was dull as usual. A man got tired of\n hearing peace, safety, prosperity and brotherly love all the time. I\n dug into my strained spinach, raw hamburger, and chewed up my white\n pill, my red pill, my ebony pill, and my second white pill. The gin and\n tomato juice took the taste away.\n\n\n I was ready for the afternoon session.\nMatrons were finishing the messy job of dragging a hysterical woman\n out of the office when Keller came back. He had a stubborn look on his\n flattened, red face.\n\n\n \"New prisoner asking to see you personal,\" Keller reported. \"Told him\n no. Okay?\"\n\n\n \"No,\" I said. \"He can see me. That's the law and you know it. He\n isn't violent, is he?\" I asked in some concern. The room was still in\n disarray." ], [ "\"Warden Walker, I've been following your career with considerable\n interest,\" Coleman said.\n\n\n \"My career hasn't been very long, sir,\" I said modestly. I didn't\n mention that\nnobody\ncould last that long in my job. At least, none\n had yet.\n\n\n \"I've followed it from the first. I know every step you've made.\"\n\n\n I didn't know whether to be flattered or apprehensive. \"That's fine,\" I\n said. It didn't sound right.\n\n\n \"Tell me,\" Coleman said, crossing his legs, \"what do you think of\n Dreamland in principle?\"\n\n\n \"Why, it's the logical step forward in penal servitude. Man has been\n heading toward this since he first started civilizing himself. After\n all, some criminals\ncan't\nbe helped psychiatrically. We can't execute\n them or turn them free; we have to imprison them.\"", "\"I should think so,\" Coleman said emphatically. \"Warden, don't you\n sometimes feel the old system where the prisoners had the diversions\n of riots, solitary confinement, television, and jailbreaks may have\n made time easier to serve? Do these men ever think they are\nactually\nliving these vicarious adventures?\"\n\n\n That was a question that made all of us in the Dreamland service\n uneasy. \"No, Councilman, they don't. They know they aren't really\n Alexander of Macedonia, Tarzan, Casanova, or Buffalo Bill. They are\n conscious of all the time that is being spent out of their real lives;\n they know they have relatives and friends outside the dream. They know,\n unless—\"\n\n\n Coleman lifted a dark eyebrow above a black iris. \"Unless?\"", "Once in a while I granted a parole for a prisoner to see a dying mother\n or if some important project was falling apart without his help, but\n most of the time I just sat with my eyes propped open, letting a sea of\n vindictive screeching and beseeching wailings wash around me.\n\n\n The relatives and legal talent were spaced with hungry-eyed mystics\n who were convinced they could contemplate God and their navels\n both conscientiously as an incarnation of Gautama. To risk sounding\n religiously intolerant, I usually kicked these out pretty swiftly.\n\n\n The onetime inmate who wanted back in after a reprieve was fairly rare.\n Few of them ever got\nthat\ncrazy.\n\n\n But it was my luck to get another the same day,\nthe\nday for me, as\n Horbit.", "Councilman Coleman didn't look as if he had moved since I had left him.\n He was unwrinkled, unperspiring, his eyes and mustache crisp as ever.\n He smiled at me briefly in supreme confidence.\n\n\n I changed my decision then, in that moment. And, in the next, changed\n it back to my original choice.\n\n\n \"Coleman,\" I said, \"you can get out of here. As warden, I'm granting\n you a five-year probation.\"\n\n\n The councilman stood up swiftly, his eyes catching little sparks\n of yellow light. \"I don't approve of your decision, Warden. Not at\n all. Unless you alter it, I'll be forced to convince the rest of the\n Committee that your decisions are becoming faulty, that you are losing\n your grip just as all your predecessors did.\"", "It was a pair of fantastic stories that no man in his right mind would\n believe—but that didn't make them invalid to a brace of ex-Sleepers.\n They\nwanted\nto believe them. The stories gave them what they were\n after—without me having to break the law and put them to sleep for\n crimes they hadn't committed.\n\n\n They would find out some day that I had lied to them, but maybe by that\n time they would have realized this world wasn't so bad.\n\n\n Fortunately, I was confident from their psych records that they were\n both incapable of ending their little game by homicide, no matter how\n justified they might think it was.\n\n\n \"Hey, Warden,\" Captain Keller bellowed as I approached my office\n door, \"when are you going to let me throw that stiff Coleman into the\n sleepy-bye vaults? He's still sitting in there on your furniture as\n smug as you please.\"", "He nodded. \"Happened before. Back when old man Preston lost his grip.\"\n\n\n Preston had been my predecessor. He had lost his hold on reality like\n all the others before him who had served long as warden of Dreamland.\n A few had quit while they were still ahead and spent the rest of their\n lives recuperating. Our society didn't produce individuals tough enough\n to stand the strain of putting their fellow human beings to sleep for\n long.\n\n\n One of Keller's men had stabbed Horbit's arm with a hypospray to\n blanket the pain from his broken wrist, and the man was quieter.\n\n\n \"I couldn't have done it, Warden,\" Horbit mumbled drowsily. \"I couldn't\n kill anybody. Unless it was like that other time.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, Eddie,\" I said.\n\n\n I had banked on that, hadn't I, when I made my move?", "I hardly heard Horbit when he half-shouted at me as my men led him from\n the room. Glancing up sharply, I saw him straining purposefully against\n the bonds of muscle and narcotic that held him.\n\"You have to send me back now, Warden,\" he was shrilling. \"You have to!\n I tried to coerce you with a gun. That's a crime, Warden—you\nknow\nthat's a crime! I have to be put to sleep!\"\n\n\n Keller flicked his mustache with a thick thumbnail. \"How about that?\n You won't let a guy back into the sleepy-bye pads, so he pulls a gun\n on you to make you, and\nthat\nmakes him eligible. He couldn't lose,\n Warden. No, sir, he had it made.\"\n\n\n My answer to Keller was forming, building up in my jaw muscles, but I\n took a pill and it went away.", "\"Sure,\" I told him, \"but I don't want to share the same noose with you.\n My job is to keep the innocent out and the convicted in. And I do my\n job, Paulson.\"\n\n\n \"But you have to! If you don't, I'll have to go out and establish my\n guilt with another crime. Do you want a crime on your hands, Warden?\"\n\n\n I studied his record. There was a chance, just a chance....\n\n\n \"Do you want to wait voluntarily in the detention quarters?\" I asked\n him.\n\n\n He agreed readily enough.\n\n\n I watched him out of the office and rang for lunch.", "\"Look, Paulson,\" I said, a trifle testily, \"if you have so little\n conscience as to kill a blind old man for a few dollars, where do you\n suddenly get enough guilt feelings to cause you to give yourself up?\"\n\n\n Paulson tried his insufficient best to smile evilly. \"It wasn't\n conscience, Warden. I never lie awake a minute whenever I kill\n anybody. It's just—well, Dreaming isn't so bad. Last time I was Allen\n Pinkerton, the detective. It was exciting. A lot more exciting than the\n kind of life I lead.\"\n\n\n I nodded solemnly. \"Yes, no doubt strangling old men in the streets can\n be pretty dull for a red-blooded man of action.\"", "Paulson was a tall, lean man with sad eyes. The clock above his sharp\n shoulder bone said five till noon. I didn't expect him to take much out\n of my lunch hour.\n\n\n \"Warden,\" Paulson said, \"I've decided to give myself up. I murdered a\n blind beggar the other night.\"\n\n\n \"For his pencils?\" I asked.\n\n\n Paulson shifted uneasily. \"No, sir. For his money. I needed some extra\n cash and I was stronger than he was, so why shouldn't I take it?\"\n\n\n I examined the projection of his file. He was an embezzler, not a\n violent man. He had served his time and been released. Conceivably he\n might embezzle again, but the Committee saw to it that temptation was\n never again placed in his path. He would not commit a crime of violence.", "Coleman stood up and walked out of my office.\n\n\n The clock told me it was after five. I began clearing my desk.\n\n\n Captain Keller stuck his head in, unannounced. \"Hey, Warden, there's an\n active one out here. He claims that Dreamland compromises His plan for\n the Free Will of the Universe.\"\n\n\n \"Well, escort him inside, Captain,\" I said.\n\n\n I put away my pills. Solving simple problems such as the new visitor\n presented always helped me to relax.", "I waited for Coleman's reaction. He merely nodded.\n\n\n \"Of course, it's barbaric to think of a prison as a place of\n punishment,\" I continued. \"A prison is a place to keep a criminal away\n from society for a specific time so he can't harm that society for that\n time. Punishment, rehabilitation, all of it is secondary to that. The\n purpose of confinement is confinement.\"\nThe councilman edged forward an inch. \"And you really think Dreamland\n is the most humane confinement possible?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" I hedged, \"it's the most humane we've found yet. I suppose\n living through a—uh—movie with full sensory participation for year\n after year can get boring.\"", "I couldn't follow his reasoning. Just how making me think my life was\n only a Dream such as I imposed on my own prisoners could help him, I\n couldn't see.\n\n\n \"Warden Walker,\" Coleman intoned in his magnificent voice, \"I'm\n shocked.\nI\nam not personally monitoring your Dream. The Committee as\n a whole will decide whether you are capable of returning to the real\n world. Moreover, please don't get carried away. I'm not concerned with\n what you do to this sensory projection of myself, beyond how it helps\n to establish your moral capabilities.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose,\" I said heavily, \"that I could best establish my high moral\n character by excusing you from this penal sentence?\"\n\n\n \"Not at all,\" Councilman Coleman asserted. \"According to the facts as\n you know them, I am 'guilty' and must be confined.\"", "\"I'm glad you said that, Walker,\" Councilman Coleman told me warmly.\n \"As I said, I've been following your career closely, and if you\n get through the next twenty-four-hour period as you have through\n the foregoing part of your Dream, you will be awakened at this time\n tomorrow. Congratulations!\"\n\n\n I sat there and took it.\n\n\n He was telling\nme\n, the superintendent of Dreamland, that my own\n life here was only a Dream such as I fed to my own prisoners. It was\n unbelievably absurd, a queasy little joke of some kind. But I didn't\n deny it.\nIf it\nwere\ntrue, if I had forgotten that everything that happened was\n only a Dream, and if I admitted it, the councilman would know I was\n mad.\nIt couldn't be true.\nYet—\n\n\n Hadn't I thought about it ever since I had been appointed warden and\n transferred from my personnel job at the plant?", "\"Naw, he ain't violent, Warden. He just thinks he's somebody important.\"\n\n\n \"Sounds like a case for therapy, not Dreamland. Who does he think he\n is?\"\n\n\n \"One of the Committee—Councilman Coleman.\"\n\n\n \"Mm-hmm. And who is he really, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"Councilman Coleman.\"\n\n\n I whistled. \"What did they nail him on?\"\n\n\n \"Misuse of authority.\"\n\n\n \"And he didn't get a suspended for that?\"\n\n\n \"Wasn't his first offense. Still want to see him?\"\n\n\n I gave a lateral wave of my hand. \"Of course.\"", "I was stymied for an instant. I had expected him to say that I must\n know that he was incapable of committing such an error and I must\n pardon him despite the misguided rulings of the courts. Then I thought\n of something else.\n\n\n \"You show symptoms of being a habitual criminal, Coleman. I think you\n deserve\nlife\n.\"\n\n\n Coleman cocked his head thoughtfully, concerned. \"That seems rather\n extreme, Warden.\"\n\n\n \"You would suggest a shorter sentence?\"\n\n\n \"If it were my place to choose, yes. A few years, perhaps. But\n life—no, I think not.\"", "I threw up my hands. You don't often see somebody do that, but I did.\n I couldn't figure him. Coleman had wealth and power as a councilman\n in the real world, but I had thought somehow he wanted to escape to a\n Dream world. Yet he didn't want to be in for life, the way Paulson and\n Horbit did.\n\n\n There seemed to be no point or profit in what he had told me that\n morning, nothing in it for him.\n\n\n Unless—\n\n\n Unless what he said was literally true.\n\n\n I stood up. My knees wanted to quit halfway up, but I made it. \"This,\"\n I said, \"is a difficult decision for me, sir. Would you make yourself\n comfortable here for a time, Councilman?\"\n\n\n Coleman smiled benignly. \"Certainly, Warden.\"", "\"Hold him in the detention quarters,\" I said finally. \"I'm going to\n make a study of this.\"\n\n\n Keller winked knowingly and sauntered out of the office, his left hand\n swinging the blackjack the Committee had taken away from him a decade\n before.\n\n\n The problem of what to do with Keller wasn't particularly atypical of\n the ones I had to solve daily and I wasn't going to let that worry me.\n Much.\n\n\n I pressed my button to let Mrs. Engle know I was ready for the next\n interview.\nThey came. There were the hysterical relatives, the wives and mothers\n and brothers who demanded that their kin be Awakened because they were\n special cases, not really guilty, or needed at home, or possessed of\n such awesome talents and qualities as to be exempt from the laws of\n lesser men.", "Horbit laughed. \"Your files aren't infallible, Warden.\"\n\n\n With one gesture, he ripped open his tunic and tore into his own flesh.\n No, not his own flesh. Pseudo-flesh. He took out the gun that was\n underneath.\n\n\n \"The beamer is made of X-ray-transparent plastic, Warden, but it works\n as well as one made of steel and lead.\"\n\n\n \"Now that you've got it in here,\" I said in time with the pulse in my\n throat, \"what are you going to do with it?\"\n\n\n \"I'm going to make you go down to the vaults and put me back to sleep,\n Warden.\"\n\n\n I nodded. \"I suppose you can do that. But what's to prevent me from\n waking you up as soon as I've taken away your gun?\"\n\n\n \"This!\" He tossed a sheet of paper onto my desk.", "I didn't really believe this, not then, but I couldn't afford to make\n a mistake, even if it were only some sort of intemperate test—as I\n was confident it was, with a sweet, throbbing fury against the man who\n would employ such a jagged broadsword for prying in his bureaucratic\n majesty.\n\n\n \"I've always thought,\" I said, \"that it would be a good idea to show\n a prisoner what the modern penal system was all about by giving him a\n Dream in which he dreamed about Dreamland itself.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, indeed,\" Coleman concurred. Just that and no more.\n\n\n I leaned intimately across my beautiful oak desk. \"I've thought that\n projecting officials into the Dream and letting them talk with the\n prisoners might be a more effective form of investigation than mere\n observation.\"\n\n\n \"I should say so,\" Coleman remarked, and got up." ], [ "\"Warden Walker, I've been following your career with considerable\n interest,\" Coleman said.\n\n\n \"My career hasn't been very long, sir,\" I said modestly. I didn't\n mention that\nnobody\ncould last that long in my job. At least, none\n had yet.\n\n\n \"I've followed it from the first. I know every step you've made.\"\n\n\n I didn't know whether to be flattered or apprehensive. \"That's fine,\" I\n said. It didn't sound right.\n\n\n \"Tell me,\" Coleman said, crossing his legs, \"what do you think of\n Dreamland in principle?\"\n\n\n \"Why, it's the logical step forward in penal servitude. Man has been\n heading toward this since he first started civilizing himself. After\n all, some criminals\ncan't\nbe helped psychiatrically. We can't execute\n them or turn them free; we have to imprison them.\"", "I didn't really believe this, not then, but I couldn't afford to make\n a mistake, even if it were only some sort of intemperate test—as I\n was confident it was, with a sweet, throbbing fury against the man who\n would employ such a jagged broadsword for prying in his bureaucratic\n majesty.\n\n\n \"I've always thought,\" I said, \"that it would be a good idea to show\n a prisoner what the modern penal system was all about by giving him a\n Dream in which he dreamed about Dreamland itself.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, indeed,\" Coleman concurred. Just that and no more.\n\n\n I leaned intimately across my beautiful oak desk. \"I've thought that\n projecting officials into the Dream and letting them talk with the\n prisoners might be a more effective form of investigation than mere\n observation.\"\n\n\n \"I should say so,\" Coleman remarked, and got up.", "He nodded. \"Happened before. Back when old man Preston lost his grip.\"\n\n\n Preston had been my predecessor. He had lost his hold on reality like\n all the others before him who had served long as warden of Dreamland.\n A few had quit while they were still ahead and spent the rest of their\n lives recuperating. Our society didn't produce individuals tough enough\n to stand the strain of putting their fellow human beings to sleep for\n long.\n\n\n One of Keller's men had stabbed Horbit's arm with a hypospray to\n blanket the pain from his broken wrist, and the man was quieter.\n\n\n \"I couldn't have done it, Warden,\" Horbit mumbled drowsily. \"I couldn't\n kill anybody. Unless it was like that other time.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, Eddie,\" I said.\n\n\n I had banked on that, hadn't I, when I made my move?", "\"I should think so,\" Coleman said emphatically. \"Warden, don't you\n sometimes feel the old system where the prisoners had the diversions\n of riots, solitary confinement, television, and jailbreaks may have\n made time easier to serve? Do these men ever think they are\nactually\nliving these vicarious adventures?\"\n\n\n That was a question that made all of us in the Dreamland service\n uneasy. \"No, Councilman, they don't. They know they aren't really\n Alexander of Macedonia, Tarzan, Casanova, or Buffalo Bill. They are\n conscious of all the time that is being spent out of their real lives;\n they know they have relatives and friends outside the dream. They know,\n unless—\"\n\n\n Coleman lifted a dark eyebrow above a black iris. \"Unless?\"", "I hardly heard Horbit when he half-shouted at me as my men led him from\n the room. Glancing up sharply, I saw him straining purposefully against\n the bonds of muscle and narcotic that held him.\n\"You have to send me back now, Warden,\" he was shrilling. \"You have to!\n I tried to coerce you with a gun. That's a crime, Warden—you\nknow\nthat's a crime! I have to be put to sleep!\"\n\n\n Keller flicked his mustache with a thick thumbnail. \"How about that?\n You won't let a guy back into the sleepy-bye pads, so he pulls a gun\n on you to make you, and\nthat\nmakes him eligible. He couldn't lose,\n Warden. No, sir, he had it made.\"\n\n\n My answer to Keller was forming, building up in my jaw muscles, but I\n took a pill and it went away.", "I threw up my hands. You don't often see somebody do that, but I did.\n I couldn't figure him. Coleman had wealth and power as a councilman\n in the real world, but I had thought somehow he wanted to escape to a\n Dream world. Yet he didn't want to be in for life, the way Paulson and\n Horbit did.\n\n\n There seemed to be no point or profit in what he had told me that\n morning, nothing in it for him.\n\n\n Unless—\n\n\n Unless what he said was literally true.\n\n\n I stood up. My knees wanted to quit halfway up, but I made it. \"This,\"\n I said, \"is a difficult decision for me, sir. Would you make yourself\n comfortable here for a time, Councilman?\"\n\n\n Coleman smiled benignly. \"Certainly, Warden.\"", "\"I'm glad you said that, Walker,\" Councilman Coleman told me warmly.\n \"As I said, I've been following your career closely, and if you\n get through the next twenty-four-hour period as you have through\n the foregoing part of your Dream, you will be awakened at this time\n tomorrow. Congratulations!\"\n\n\n I sat there and took it.\n\n\n He was telling\nme\n, the superintendent of Dreamland, that my own\n life here was only a Dream such as I fed to my own prisoners. It was\n unbelievably absurd, a queasy little joke of some kind. But I didn't\n deny it.\nIf it\nwere\ntrue, if I had forgotten that everything that happened was\n only a Dream, and if I admitted it, the councilman would know I was\n mad.\nIt couldn't be true.\nYet—\n\n\n Hadn't I thought about it ever since I had been appointed warden and\n transferred from my personnel job at the plant?", "It was a pair of fantastic stories that no man in his right mind would\n believe—but that didn't make them invalid to a brace of ex-Sleepers.\n They\nwanted\nto believe them. The stories gave them what they were\n after—without me having to break the law and put them to sleep for\n crimes they hadn't committed.\n\n\n They would find out some day that I had lied to them, but maybe by that\n time they would have realized this world wasn't so bad.\n\n\n Fortunately, I was confident from their psych records that they were\n both incapable of ending their little game by homicide, no matter how\n justified they might think it was.\n\n\n \"Hey, Warden,\" Captain Keller bellowed as I approached my office\n door, \"when are you going to let me throw that stiff Coleman into the\n sleepy-bye vaults? He's still sitting in there on your furniture as\n smug as you please.\"", "\"Look, Paulson,\" I said, a trifle testily, \"if you have so little\n conscience as to kill a blind old man for a few dollars, where do you\n suddenly get enough guilt feelings to cause you to give yourself up?\"\n\n\n Paulson tried his insufficient best to smile evilly. \"It wasn't\n conscience, Warden. I never lie awake a minute whenever I kill\n anybody. It's just—well, Dreaming isn't so bad. Last time I was Allen\n Pinkerton, the detective. It was exciting. A lot more exciting than the\n kind of life I lead.\"\n\n\n I nodded solemnly. \"Yes, no doubt strangling old men in the streets can\n be pretty dull for a red-blooded man of action.\"", "He could express himself much better in his Dream. He had been Abraham\n Lincoln in his Dream, I saw. He had lived the life right up to the\n night when he was taking in\nAn American Cousin\nat the Ford Theater.\n Horbit couldn't accept history that he had no more life to live. He\n only knew that if in his delirium he could gain Dreamland once more, he\n could get back to the hard realities of dealing with the problems of\n Reconstruction.\n\n\n \"\nPlease\n,\" he begged.\n\n\n I looked up from the file. \"I'm sorry, Eddie.\"\n\n\n His eyes narrowed, both of them, on the next twitch. \"Warden, I can\n always go out and commit another anti-social act.\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid not, Eddie. The file shows you are capable of only one\n crime. And you don't have a wife any more, and she doesn't have a\n lover.\"", "Coleman stood up and walked out of my office.\n\n\n The clock told me it was after five. I began clearing my desk.\n\n\n Captain Keller stuck his head in, unannounced. \"Hey, Warden, there's an\n active one out here. He claims that Dreamland compromises His plan for\n the Free Will of the Universe.\"\n\n\n \"Well, escort him inside, Captain,\" I said.\n\n\n I put away my pills. Solving simple problems such as the new visitor\n presented always helped me to relax.", "Once in a while I granted a parole for a prisoner to see a dying mother\n or if some important project was falling apart without his help, but\n most of the time I just sat with my eyes propped open, letting a sea of\n vindictive screeching and beseeching wailings wash around me.\n\n\n The relatives and legal talent were spaced with hungry-eyed mystics\n who were convinced they could contemplate God and their navels\n both conscientiously as an incarnation of Gautama. To risk sounding\n religiously intolerant, I usually kicked these out pretty swiftly.\n\n\n The onetime inmate who wanted back in after a reprieve was fairly rare.\n Few of them ever got\nthat\ncrazy.\n\n\n But it was my luck to get another the same day,\nthe\nday for me, as\n Horbit.", "\"Naw, he ain't violent, Warden. He just thinks he's somebody important.\"\n\n\n \"Sounds like a case for therapy, not Dreamland. Who does he think he\n is?\"\n\n\n \"One of the Committee—Councilman Coleman.\"\n\n\n \"Mm-hmm. And who is he really, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"Councilman Coleman.\"\n\n\n I whistled. \"What did they nail him on?\"\n\n\n \"Misuse of authority.\"\n\n\n \"And he didn't get a suspended for that?\"\n\n\n \"Wasn't his first offense. Still want to see him?\"\n\n\n I gave a lateral wave of my hand. \"Of course.\"", "I couldn't follow his reasoning. Just how making me think my life was\n only a Dream such as I imposed on my own prisoners could help him, I\n couldn't see.\n\n\n \"Warden Walker,\" Coleman intoned in his magnificent voice, \"I'm\n shocked.\nI\nam not personally monitoring your Dream. The Committee as\n a whole will decide whether you are capable of returning to the real\n world. Moreover, please don't get carried away. I'm not concerned with\n what you do to this sensory projection of myself, beyond how it helps\n to establish your moral capabilities.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose,\" I said heavily, \"that I could best establish my high moral\n character by excusing you from this penal sentence?\"\n\n\n \"Not at all,\" Councilman Coleman asserted. \"According to the facts as\n you know them, I am 'guilty' and must be confined.\"", "\"You don't sound as if you like our distinguished visitor very well,\" I\n remarked.\n\n\n \"It's not that. I just don't think he deserves any special privileges.\n Besides, it was guys like him that took away our nightsticks. My boys\n didn't like that. Look at me—I'm defenseless!\"\n\n\n I looked at his square figure. \"Not quite, Captain, not quite.\"\n\n\n Now was the time.\n\n\n I stretched out my wet palm toward the door.\n\n\n Was or was not Coleman telling the truth when he said this life of mine\n was itself only a Dream? If it was, did I want to finish my last day\n with the right decision so I could return to some alien reality? Or did\n I deliberately want to make a mistake so I could continue living the\n opiate of my Dream?\n\n\n Then, as I touched the door, I knew the only decision that could have\n any meaning for me.", "I waited for Coleman's reaction. He merely nodded.\n\n\n \"Of course, it's barbaric to think of a prison as a place of\n punishment,\" I continued. \"A prison is a place to keep a criminal away\n from society for a specific time so he can't harm that society for that\n time. Punishment, rehabilitation, all of it is secondary to that. The\n purpose of confinement is confinement.\"\nThe councilman edged forward an inch. \"And you really think Dreamland\n is the most humane confinement possible?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" I hedged, \"it's the most humane we've found yet. I suppose\n living through a—uh—movie with full sensory participation for year\n after year can get boring.\"", "Once he fed that document to the archives, I would be obligated to help\n him even without the gun. My word would probably be taken that I had\n been forced to do it at gunpoint, but there would always be doubts,\n enough to wreck my career when it came time for promotion.\n\n\n Nothing like this had ever happened in my years as warden.\nSuddenly, Coleman's words hit me in the back of the neck.\nIf I got\n through the next twenty-four hours.\nThis had to be some kind of test.\n\n\n But a test for what?\n\n\n Had I been deliberately told that I was living only a Dream to see\n if my ethics would hold up even when I thought I wasn't dealing with\n reality?\n\n\n Or if this\nwas\nonly a Dream, was it a test to see if I was morally\n ready to return to the real, the earnest world?", "I cleared my throat. \"Unless they go mad and really believe the dream\n they are living. But as you know, sir, the rate of madness among\n Dreamland inmates is only slightly above the norm for the population as\n a whole.\"\n\n\n \"How do prisoners like that adjust to reality?\"\n\n\n Was he deliberately trying to ask tough questions? \"They don't. They\n think they are having some kind of delusion. Many of them become\n schizoid and pretend to go along with reality while secretly 'knowing'\n it to be a lie.\"\n\n\n Coleman removed a pocket secretary and broke it open. \"About these new\n free-choice models—do you think they genuinely are an improvement over\n the old fixed-image machines?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" I replied. \"By letting the prisoner project his own\n imagination onto the sense tapes and giving him a limited amount of\n alternatives to a situation, we can observe whether he is conforming to\n society to a larger extent.\"", "Whenever I had come upon two people talking, and it seemed as if I had\n come upon those same two people talking the same talk before, hadn't I\n wondered for an instant if it couldn't be a Dream, not reality at all?\n\n\n Once I had experienced a Dream for five or ten minutes. I was driving\n a ground car down a spidery road made into a dismal tunnel by weeping\n trees, a dank, lavender maze. I had known at the time it was a Dream,\n but still, as the moments passed, I became more intent on the\n difficult road before me, my blocky hands on the steering wheel, thick\n fingers typing out the pattern of motion on the drive buttons.\n\n\n I could remember that. Maybe I couldn't remember being shoved into the\n prison vault for so many years for such and such a crime.", "I studied the files flashed before me. Several times before, Coleman\n had been guilty of slight misuses of his authority: helping his\n friends, harming his enemies. Not enough to make him be impeached\n from the Committee. His job was so hypersensitive that if every\n transgression earned dismissal, no one could hold the position more\n than a day. Even with the best intentions, mistakes can be taken for\n deliberate errors. Not to mention the converse. For his earlier errors,\n Coleman had first received a suspended sentence, then two terminal\n sentences to be fixed by the warden. My predecessors had given him\n first a few weeks, then a few months of sleep in Dreamland.\nColeman's eyes didn't frighten me; I focused right on the pupils. \"That\n was a pretty foul trick, Councilman. Did you hope to somehow frighten\n me out of executing this sentence by what you told me this morning?\"" ], [ "I didn't really believe this, not then, but I couldn't afford to make\n a mistake, even if it were only some sort of intemperate test—as I\n was confident it was, with a sweet, throbbing fury against the man who\n would employ such a jagged broadsword for prying in his bureaucratic\n majesty.\n\n\n \"I've always thought,\" I said, \"that it would be a good idea to show\n a prisoner what the modern penal system was all about by giving him a\n Dream in which he dreamed about Dreamland itself.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, indeed,\" Coleman concurred. Just that and no more.\n\n\n I leaned intimately across my beautiful oak desk. \"I've thought that\n projecting officials into the Dream and letting them talk with the\n prisoners might be a more effective form of investigation than mere\n observation.\"\n\n\n \"I should say so,\" Coleman remarked, and got up.", "\"Warden Walker, I've been following your career with considerable\n interest,\" Coleman said.\n\n\n \"My career hasn't been very long, sir,\" I said modestly. I didn't\n mention that\nnobody\ncould last that long in my job. At least, none\n had yet.\n\n\n \"I've followed it from the first. I know every step you've made.\"\n\n\n I didn't know whether to be flattered or apprehensive. \"That's fine,\" I\n said. It didn't sound right.\n\n\n \"Tell me,\" Coleman said, crossing his legs, \"what do you think of\n Dreamland in principle?\"\n\n\n \"Why, it's the logical step forward in penal servitude. Man has been\n heading toward this since he first started civilizing himself. After\n all, some criminals\ncan't\nbe helped psychiatrically. We can't execute\n them or turn them free; we have to imprison them.\"", "I couldn't follow his reasoning. Just how making me think my life was\n only a Dream such as I imposed on my own prisoners could help him, I\n couldn't see.\n\n\n \"Warden Walker,\" Coleman intoned in his magnificent voice, \"I'm\n shocked.\nI\nam not personally monitoring your Dream. The Committee as\n a whole will decide whether you are capable of returning to the real\n world. Moreover, please don't get carried away. I'm not concerned with\n what you do to this sensory projection of myself, beyond how it helps\n to establish your moral capabilities.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose,\" I said heavily, \"that I could best establish my high moral\n character by excusing you from this penal sentence?\"\n\n\n \"Not at all,\" Councilman Coleman asserted. \"According to the facts as\n you know them, I am 'guilty' and must be confined.\"", "I threw up my hands. You don't often see somebody do that, but I did.\n I couldn't figure him. Coleman had wealth and power as a councilman\n in the real world, but I had thought somehow he wanted to escape to a\n Dream world. Yet he didn't want to be in for life, the way Paulson and\n Horbit did.\n\n\n There seemed to be no point or profit in what he had told me that\n morning, nothing in it for him.\n\n\n Unless—\n\n\n Unless what he said was literally true.\n\n\n I stood up. My knees wanted to quit halfway up, but I made it. \"This,\"\n I said, \"is a difficult decision for me, sir. Would you make yourself\n comfortable here for a time, Councilman?\"\n\n\n Coleman smiled benignly. \"Certainly, Warden.\"", "\"Naw, he ain't violent, Warden. He just thinks he's somebody important.\"\n\n\n \"Sounds like a case for therapy, not Dreamland. Who does he think he\n is?\"\n\n\n \"One of the Committee—Councilman Coleman.\"\n\n\n \"Mm-hmm. And who is he really, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"Councilman Coleman.\"\n\n\n I whistled. \"What did they nail him on?\"\n\n\n \"Misuse of authority.\"\n\n\n \"And he didn't get a suspended for that?\"\n\n\n \"Wasn't his first offense. Still want to see him?\"\n\n\n I gave a lateral wave of my hand. \"Of course.\"", "\"I should think so,\" Coleman said emphatically. \"Warden, don't you\n sometimes feel the old system where the prisoners had the diversions\n of riots, solitary confinement, television, and jailbreaks may have\n made time easier to serve? Do these men ever think they are\nactually\nliving these vicarious adventures?\"\n\n\n That was a question that made all of us in the Dreamland service\n uneasy. \"No, Councilman, they don't. They know they aren't really\n Alexander of Macedonia, Tarzan, Casanova, or Buffalo Bill. They are\n conscious of all the time that is being spent out of their real lives;\n they know they have relatives and friends outside the dream. They know,\n unless—\"\n\n\n Coleman lifted a dark eyebrow above a black iris. \"Unless?\"", "\"I'm glad you said that, Walker,\" Councilman Coleman told me warmly.\n \"As I said, I've been following your career closely, and if you\n get through the next twenty-four-hour period as you have through\n the foregoing part of your Dream, you will be awakened at this time\n tomorrow. Congratulations!\"\n\n\n I sat there and took it.\n\n\n He was telling\nme\n, the superintendent of Dreamland, that my own\n life here was only a Dream such as I fed to my own prisoners. It was\n unbelievably absurd, a queasy little joke of some kind. But I didn't\n deny it.\nIf it\nwere\ntrue, if I had forgotten that everything that happened was\n only a Dream, and if I admitted it, the councilman would know I was\n mad.\nIt couldn't be true.\nYet—\n\n\n Hadn't I thought about it ever since I had been appointed warden and\n transferred from my personnel job at the plant?", "Coleman stood up and walked out of my office.\n\n\n The clock told me it was after five. I began clearing my desk.\n\n\n Captain Keller stuck his head in, unannounced. \"Hey, Warden, there's an\n active one out here. He claims that Dreamland compromises His plan for\n the Free Will of the Universe.\"\n\n\n \"Well, escort him inside, Captain,\" I said.\n\n\n I put away my pills. Solving simple problems such as the new visitor\n presented always helped me to relax.", "Coleman sat back down suddenly.\n\n\n \"You don't want life as a Sleeper, do you?\" I pursued. \"You did want\n a relatively\nshort\nsentence of a few months or a few years. I can\n think of two reasons why. The answer is probably a combination of\n both. In the first place, you are a joy-popper with Dreams—you don't\n want to live out your life in one, but you like a brief Dream every\n few years like an occasional dose of a narcotic. In the second place,\n you probably have political reasons for wanting to hide out somewhere\n in safety for the next few years. The world isn't as placid as the\n newscasts sometimes make it seem.\"\nHe didn't say anything. I didn't think he had to.", "I studied the files flashed before me. Several times before, Coleman\n had been guilty of slight misuses of his authority: helping his\n friends, harming his enemies. Not enough to make him be impeached\n from the Committee. His job was so hypersensitive that if every\n transgression earned dismissal, no one could hold the position more\n than a day. Even with the best intentions, mistakes can be taken for\n deliberate errors. Not to mention the converse. For his earlier errors,\n Coleman had first received a suspended sentence, then two terminal\n sentences to be fixed by the warden. My predecessors had given him\n first a few weeks, then a few months of sleep in Dreamland.\nColeman's eyes didn't frighten me; I focused right on the pupils. \"That\n was a pretty foul trick, Councilman. Did you hope to somehow frighten\n me out of executing this sentence by what you told me this morning?\"", "\"You don't sound as if you like our distinguished visitor very well,\" I\n remarked.\n\n\n \"It's not that. I just don't think he deserves any special privileges.\n Besides, it was guys like him that took away our nightsticks. My boys\n didn't like that. Look at me—I'm defenseless!\"\n\n\n I looked at his square figure. \"Not quite, Captain, not quite.\"\n\n\n Now was the time.\n\n\n I stretched out my wet palm toward the door.\n\n\n Was or was not Coleman telling the truth when he said this life of mine\n was itself only a Dream? If it was, did I want to finish my last day\n with the right decision so I could return to some alien reality? Or did\n I deliberately want to make a mistake so I could continue living the\n opiate of my Dream?\n\n\n Then, as I touched the door, I knew the only decision that could have\n any meaning for me.", "I waited for Coleman's reaction. He merely nodded.\n\n\n \"Of course, it's barbaric to think of a prison as a place of\n punishment,\" I continued. \"A prison is a place to keep a criminal away\n from society for a specific time so he can't harm that society for that\n time. Punishment, rehabilitation, all of it is secondary to that. The\n purpose of confinement is confinement.\"\nThe councilman edged forward an inch. \"And you really think Dreamland\n is the most humane confinement possible?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" I hedged, \"it's the most humane we've found yet. I suppose\n living through a—uh—movie with full sensory participation for year\n after year can get boring.\"", "Once he fed that document to the archives, I would be obligated to help\n him even without the gun. My word would probably be taken that I had\n been forced to do it at gunpoint, but there would always be doubts,\n enough to wreck my career when it came time for promotion.\n\n\n Nothing like this had ever happened in my years as warden.\nSuddenly, Coleman's words hit me in the back of the neck.\nIf I got\n through the next twenty-four hours.\nThis had to be some kind of test.\n\n\n But a test for what?\n\n\n Had I been deliberately told that I was living only a Dream to see\n if my ethics would hold up even when I thought I wasn't dealing with\n reality?\n\n\n Or if this\nwas\nonly a Dream, was it a test to see if I was morally\n ready to return to the real, the earnest world?", "I cleared my throat. \"Unless they go mad and really believe the dream\n they are living. But as you know, sir, the rate of madness among\n Dreamland inmates is only slightly above the norm for the population as\n a whole.\"\n\n\n \"How do prisoners like that adjust to reality?\"\n\n\n Was he deliberately trying to ask tough questions? \"They don't. They\n think they are having some kind of delusion. Many of them become\n schizoid and pretend to go along with reality while secretly 'knowing'\n it to be a lie.\"\n\n\n Coleman removed a pocket secretary and broke it open. \"About these new\n free-choice models—do you think they genuinely are an improvement over\n the old fixed-image machines?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" I replied. \"By letting the prisoner project his own\n imagination onto the sense tapes and giving him a limited amount of\n alternatives to a situation, we can observe whether he is conforming to\n society to a larger extent.\"", "Coleman came in the morning before I was really ready to face the\n day. My nerves were fairly well shot from the kind of work I did as\n superintendent of Dreamland. I chewed up my pill to calm me down,\n the one to pep me up, the capsule to strengthen my qualities as a\n relentless perfectionist. I washed them down with gin and orange\n juice and sat back, building up my fortitude to do business over the\n polished deck of my desk.\n\n\n But instead of the usual morning run of hysterical relatives and\n masochistic mystics, I had to face one of my superiors from the\n Committee itself.\n\n\n Councilman Coleman was an impressive figure in a tailored black tunic.\n His olive features were set off by bristling black eyes and a mobile\n mustache. He probably scared most people, but not me. Authority doesn't\n frighten me any more. I've put to sleep too many megalomaniacs,\n dictators, and civil servants.", "It was a pair of fantastic stories that no man in his right mind would\n believe—but that didn't make them invalid to a brace of ex-Sleepers.\n They\nwanted\nto believe them. The stories gave them what they were\n after—without me having to break the law and put them to sleep for\n crimes they hadn't committed.\n\n\n They would find out some day that I had lied to them, but maybe by that\n time they would have realized this world wasn't so bad.\n\n\n Fortunately, I was confident from their psych records that they were\n both incapable of ending their little game by homicide, no matter how\n justified they might think it was.\n\n\n \"Hey, Warden,\" Captain Keller bellowed as I approached my office\n door, \"when are you going to let me throw that stiff Coleman into the\n sleepy-bye vaults? He's still sitting in there on your furniture as\n smug as you please.\"", "\"You wanted to make sure I made a painfully scrupulous decision in\n your case,\" I went on. \"You didn't want me to pardon you completely\n because of your high position, but at the same time you didn't want too\n long a sentence. But I'm doing you no favors. You get no time from me,\n Coleman.\"\n\n\n \"How did you decide to do this?\" he asked. \"Don't tell me you never\n doubted. We've all doubted since we found out about the machines: which\n was real and which was the Dream? How did you decide to risk this?\"\n\n\n \"I acted the only way I could act,\" I said. \"I decided I had to act as\n if my life was real and that you were lying. I decided that because, if\n all this were false, if I could have no more confidence in my own mind\n and my own senses than that, I didn't give a damn if it\nwere\nall a\n Dream.\"", "\"Look, Paulson,\" I said, a trifle testily, \"if you have so little\n conscience as to kill a blind old man for a few dollars, where do you\n suddenly get enough guilt feelings to cause you to give yourself up?\"\n\n\n Paulson tried his insufficient best to smile evilly. \"It wasn't\n conscience, Warden. I never lie awake a minute whenever I kill\n anybody. It's just—well, Dreaming isn't so bad. Last time I was Allen\n Pinkerton, the detective. It was exciting. A lot more exciting than the\n kind of life I lead.\"\n\n\n I nodded solemnly. \"Yes, no doubt strangling old men in the streets can\n be pretty dull for a red-blooded man of action.\"", "He could express himself much better in his Dream. He had been Abraham\n Lincoln in his Dream, I saw. He had lived the life right up to the\n night when he was taking in\nAn American Cousin\nat the Ford Theater.\n Horbit couldn't accept history that he had no more life to live. He\n only knew that if in his delirium he could gain Dreamland once more, he\n could get back to the hard realities of dealing with the problems of\n Reconstruction.\n\n\n \"\nPlease\n,\" he begged.\n\n\n I looked up from the file. \"I'm sorry, Eddie.\"\n\n\n His eyes narrowed, both of them, on the next twitch. \"Warden, I can\n always go out and commit another anti-social act.\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid not, Eddie. The file shows you are capable of only one\n crime. And you don't have a wife any more, and she doesn't have a\n lover.\"", "Councilman Coleman didn't look as if he had moved since I had left him.\n He was unwrinkled, unperspiring, his eyes and mustache crisp as ever.\n He smiled at me briefly in supreme confidence.\n\n\n I changed my decision then, in that moment. And, in the next, changed\n it back to my original choice.\n\n\n \"Coleman,\" I said, \"you can get out of here. As warden, I'm granting\n you a five-year probation.\"\n\n\n The councilman stood up swiftly, his eyes catching little sparks\n of yellow light. \"I don't approve of your decision, Warden. Not at\n all. Unless you alter it, I'll be forced to convince the rest of the\n Committee that your decisions are becoming faulty, that you are losing\n your grip just as all your predecessors did.\"" ] ]
valid	51027	[ "What are the thread(s) that connect Miss Eagen and Marcia?", "Who is allowed to travel to the Moon?", "What is the significance of the piece’s title?", "What was on the Moon that the passengers were travelling to?", "What best describes Miss Eagen and the Captain’s relationship?", "How might the Captain describe his wife?", "What best describes the relationship between Jack and wife?", "Why do the flight attendants check if the passengers are feeling well?", "Who does Miss Eagen mistake Marcia for when she boards the ship?" ]	[ [ "They are both soon-to-be mothers", "They wish to live on the Moon one day", "They both know Mr.McHenry", "They are accomplices in the plan, and know Mr. McHenry" ], [ "Only government officials", "Friends and family of those who live on the Moon", "The general public", "Only those working on the Moon to further humanity’s reach into the solar system" ], [ "It is a similar attitude to that of Miss Eagen", "It is a comparison of disregard for the law like the Captain had to exercise", "It is a comparison of how humanity approaches space travel", "It is a comparison of one of the characters to a similar act they commit" ], [ "A shopping mall", "A space terminal to go to other planets", "An experimental lab", "A colony" ], [ "They are married and expecting a baby", "Close colleagues that are bound by duty", "Secret lovers that had just been discovered", "Antagonistic colleagues that do what they need to do to work together" ], [ "Duty bound, stern", "Ditzy, irresponsible", "Mission-driven, courageous", "Adventurous, whimsical" ], [ "He is bound by duties that mean he is often away and she is usually unable to join him", "Jack won’t abandon his station on the Moon for his wife", "They both travel often for work, and their relationship has suffered", "She is constantly trying to travel with him, but he is evasive about his plans because they are in a disagreement" ], [ "Those with certain maladies are unable to travel in space without dying", "Feeling ill is an indication of not being emotionally prepared to go into space", "They need to be extra cautious not to transfer viruses from Earth to the Moon", "The passengers have duties to ensure the safe travel of everyone on board, so they must be in top condition" ], [ "A high official needed expedited travel to the Moon", "An accomplice to Marcia’s plan", "Miss Eagen is not fooled about Marcia’s identity", "A stranger Marcia has never met" ] ]	[ 3, 3, 4, 4, 2, 3, 1, 1, 2 ]	[ 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "Feeling very much put-upon, Marcia waited silently until he was\n finished, and the bed hung ludicrously to the wall like a walking fly.\n She thanked him timidly, and he ignored it and went out.\n\n\n Miss Eagen returned.\n\n\n \"That man was very rude,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n Miss Eagen looked at her coolly. \"I'm sorry,\" she said, obviously not\n meaning sorry at all.\n\n\n Marcia wet her lips. \"I asked you a question before,\" she said evenly.\n \"About you and the captain.\"\n\n\n \"You did,\" said Sue Eagen. \"Please don't.\"\n\n\n \"And why not?\"", "Marcia lay down gratefully. She closed her eyes tightly and said, \"I'm\n not Mrs. Foster. It doesn't hurt.\"\n\n\n \"You're not—\" Miss Eagen apparently decided to take one thing at a\n time. \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\n \"Scared,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n \"Why, what—is there to be scared of?\"\n\n\n \"I'm pregnant.\"\n\n\n \"Well, that's no—You're\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'm Mrs. McHenry. I'm Jack's wife.\"\n\n\n There was such a long pause that Marcia opened her eyes. Miss Eagen was\n looking at her levelly. She said, \"I'll have to examine you.\"\n\n\n \"I know. Go ahead.\"", "Miss Eagen was standing by the hospital door, watching her. When Marcia\n turned away without speaking to Jack, Miss Eagen smiled and held out\n her hand.\n\n\n Marcia went to her and took the hand. They went into the hospital. Miss\n Eagen didn't speak; she seemed to be waiting.\n\n\n \"Yes, I know who Jack's spinning the ship for,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n Miss Eagen looked an unspoken question.\n\n\n Marcia said, painfully, \"He's like the Captain of the\nElsinore\n. He's\n risking his life for a—a stranger. A jaywalker. Not for me. Not even\n for his baby.\"\n\n\n \"Does it hurt to know that?\"\n\n\n Marcia looked into the smooth, strong face and said with genuine\n astonishment, \"Hurt? Oh, no! It's so—so big!\"", "Sue Eagen was there, too, and the thing she shared with Jack. Of course\n there was something between them—so big a thing that there was\n nothing for her to fear in it.\n\n\n Jack and Sue Eagen had always had it, and always would have; and now\n Marcia had it too. And with understanding replacing fear, Marcia was\n free to recall that Jack had worked with Sue Eagen—but it was Marcia\n that he had loved and married.\nThere was a long time of blackness, and then a time of agony, when\n she was falling, falling, and her lungs wanted to split, explode,\n disintegrate, and someone kept saying, \"Hold tight, Marcia; hold tight\n to me,\" and she found Sue Eagen's cool strong hands in hers.\nMarcia. She called me Marcia.\nMore blackness, more pain—but not so much this time; and then a long,\n deep sleep.", "\"But what?\" Miss Eagen's composure seemed to have been blasted to\n shreds by the powerful currents of her indignation. Her eyes flashed.\n \"You mean, but why doesn't he just work the ship while it's spinning\n the same way he does when it isn't?\"\n\n\n Through a growing fear, Marcia nodded mutely.", "There was a stiff silence. Marcia looked up at Miss Eagen. \"It's true,\n you know,\" she said. \"A man grows to love the things he has to defend,\n no matter how he felt about them before.\"\n\n\n The stewardess looked at her, her face registering a strange mixture of\n detachment and wonder. \"You really believe that, don't you?\"\n\n\n Marcia's patience, snapped. \"You don't have to look so superior. I know\n what's bothering\nyou\n. Well, he's\nmy\nhusband, and don't you forget\n it.\"\nMiss Eagen's breath hissed in. Her eyes grew bright and she shook her\n head slightly. Then she turned on her heel and went to the intercom.\n Marcia thought for a frightened moment that she was going to call Jack\n back again. Instead she dialed and said, \"Hospital to Maintenance.\n Petrucelli?\"\n\n\n \"Petrucelli here.\"", "Miss Eagen did, swiftly and thoroughly. \"You're so right,\" she\n breathed. She went to the small sink, stripping off her rubber gloves.\n With her back to Marcia, she said, \"I'll have to tell the captain, you\n know.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I'd rather ... tell him myself.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" said Miss Eagen flatly. Marcia felt as if she'd been slapped.\n Miss Eagen dried her hands and crossed to an intercom. \"Eagen to\n Captain.\"\n\n\n \"McHenry here.\"\n\n\n \"Captain McHenry, could you come back to the hospital right away?\"\n\n\n \"Not right away, Sue.\"\nSue! No wonder he had found it so easy to walk\n out!\nShe looked at the trim girl with hating eyes. The intercom said,\n \"You know I've got course-correction computations from here to yonder.\n Give me another forty minutes.\"", "\"You\nare\n? You—we—\" He turned to Miss Eagen, who nodded once, her\n face wooden. \"Just find it out?\"\n\n\n This time Miss Eagen didn't react at all, and Marcia knew that she had\n to speak up. \"No, Jack. I knew weeks ago.\"\n\n\n There was no describable change in his face, but the taut skin of his\n space-tanned cheek seemed, somehow, to draw inward. His eyebrow ridges\n seemed to be more prominent, and he looked older, and very tired.\n Softly and slowly he asked, \"What in God's name made you get on the\n ship?\"\n\n\n \"I had to, Jack. I had to.\"\n\n\n \"Had to kill yourself?\" he demanded brutally. \"This tears it. This ties\n it up in a box with a bloody ribbon-bow. I suppose you know what this\n means—what I've got to do now?\"", "\"Because,\" said Miss Eagen, and in that moment she looked almost as\n drawn as Jack had, \"I'm supposed to be of service to the passengers at\n all times no matter what. If I have feelings at all, part of my job is\n to keep them to myself.\"\n\n\n \"Very courteous, I'm sure. However, I want to release you from your\n sense of duty. I'm\nmost\ninterested in what you have to say.\"", "After he'd gone—for good, he said—her anger had sustained her for a\n few weeks. Then, bleakly, she knew she'd go to the ends of Earth for\n Jack. Or even to the Moon....\nSitting rigid in the tense stillness of a rocket ship that was about\n to leap from Earth, Marcia started as an officer ducked his head into\n the passenger compartment from the pilot room's deep glow. But it\n wasn't Jack. The officer's lips moved hurriedly as he counted over the\n seats. He ducked back out of sight. From the bulk-heads, the overhead,\n everywhere, came a deep, quiet rumble. Some of the passengers looked\n anxious, some excited, and some just leafed casually through magazines.\n\n\n Now the brown-clad Miss Eagen was speaking from the head of the aisle.", "Marcia forced herself away from the bulkhead with a small whimper of\n hurt and hatred—hatred of the stars, of this knowledgeable, inspired\n girl, and—even more so—of herself. She darted toward the door.\n\n\n Miss Eagen was beside her in an instant, a hard small hand on her arm.\n \"Where are you going?\"\n\n\n \"I'm going to stop him. He can't take that chance with his ship, with\n these people....\"\n\n\n \"He will and he must. You surely know your husband.\"\n\n\n \"I know him as well as you do.\"\nMiss Eagen's firm lips shut in a thin hard line. \"Do as you like,\" she\n whispered. \"And while you're doing it—think about whom he's spinning\n ship for.\" She took her hand from Marcia's arm.\n\n\n Marcia twisted away and went into the corridor.", "It was snatched away—the buildings, the trees, the roads surrounding\n the field seemed to pour in upon it, shrinking as they ran together.\n Roads dried up like parched rivers, thinning and vanishing into the\n circle of her horrified vision. A great, soft, uniform weight pressed\n her down and back; she fought it, but it was too big and too soft.\n\n\n Now Earth's surface was vague and Sun-splashed. Marcia's sense of loss\n tore at her. She put up her hands, heavily, and pressed the glass as\n if she could push it out, push herself out, go back, back to Earth\n and solidity. Clouds shot by like bullets, fell away until they were\n snowflakes roiling in violet haze. Then, in the purling universe that\n had grown around the ship, Earth was a mystic circle, a shallow dish\n floating darkly and heavily below.\n\n\n \"We are now,\" said Miss Eagen's calm voice, \"thirty-seven miles over\n Los Angeles.\"", "There was a sudden thunder. Over Miss Eagen's shoulder, through the\n port, Marcia saw the stars begin to move. Miss Eagen followed her gaze.\n \"He's started the spin. You'll be all right now.\"\nMarcia could never recall the rest of the details of the trip. There\n was the outboard bulkhead that drew her like a magnet, increasingly,\n until suddenly it wasn't an attracting wall, but normally and naturally\n \"down.\" Then a needle, and another one, and a long period of deep\n drowsiness and unreality.\n\n\n But through and through that drugged, relaxed period, Jack and the\n stars, the Moon and Sue Eagen danced and wove. Words slipped in and out\n of it like shreds of melody:\n\n\n \"A man comes to love the things he has to fight for.\" And Jack\n fighting—for his ship, for the Moon, for the new-building traditions\n of the great ones who would carry humanity out to the stars.", "Miss Eagen's arched nostrils seemed pinched and white. \"You really want\n me to speak my piece?\"\nIn answer Marcia leaned back against the bulkhead and folded her arms.\n Miss Eagen gazed at her for a moment, nodded as if to herself, and\n said, \"I suppose there always will be people who don't pay attention\n to the rules. Jaywalkers. But out here jaywalkers don't have as much\n margin for error as they do crossing against a traffic light on Earth.\"\n She looked Marcia straight in the eye. \"What makes a jaywalker isn't\n ignorance. It's a combination of stupidity and stubbornness. The\n jaywalker does\nknow\nbetter. In your case....\"", "Marcia bounced resentfully off the cot and stood aside. Petrucelli\n looked at her, cocked an eyebrow, looked at Miss Eagen, and asked,\n \"Jaywalker?\"\n\n\n \"Please hurry, Pet.\" She turned to Marcia. \"I've got to explain to the\n passengers that there won't be any free fall. Most of them are looking\n forward to it.\" She went out.\n\n\n Marcia watched the big man work for a moment. \"Why are you putting the\n bed on the wall?\"\n\n\n He looked at her and away, quickly. \"Because, lady, when we start to\n spin, that outside bulkhead is going to be\ndown\n. Centrifugal force,\n see?\" And before she could answer him he added, \"I can't talk and work\n at the same time.\"", "Miss Eagen (which, her neat lapel button attested, was her name) made\n a penciled frown as lovely as her machined smile. \"Some day,\" she told\n Marcia, \"we won't have to ask the passengers if they're well. It's so\n easy to come aboard on someone else's validation, and people don't seem\n to realize how dangerous that is.\"\n\n\n As Miss Eagen moved to the next seat, Marcia shrank into a small\n huddle, fumbling with the card until it was crammed shapeless into her\n purse. Then from the depths of her guilt came rebellion. It was going\n to be all right. She was doing the biggest thing she'd ever done, and\n Jack would rise to the occasion, and it would be all right.\n\n\n It\nhad\nto be all right....", "\"Come up with a crescent wrench, will you, Pet?\"\n\n\n Another stiff silence. A question curled into Marcia's mind and she\n asked it. \"Do you work on all these ships at one time or another?\"\n\n\n Miss Eagen did not beat around the bush. \"I've been with Captain\n McHenry for three years. I hope to work with him always. I think he's\n the finest in the Service.\"\n\n\n \"He—th-thinks as well of you, no doubt.\"\n\n\n Petrucelli lounged in, a big man, easy-going, powerful. \"What's busted,\n muscles?\"\n\n\n \"Bolt the bed to the bulkhead, Pet. Mrs. McHenry—I'm sorry, but you'll\n have to get up.\"", "\"Miss Eagen—\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Mrs. Fos—why, what's the matter?\"\n\n\n Seeing the startled expression on the stewardess' face, Marcia realized\n she must be looking like a ghost. She put a hand to her cheek and found\n it clammy.\n\n\n \"Come along,\" said Miss Eagen cheerfully. She put a firm arm around\n Marcia's shoulder. \"Just a touch of space-sickness. This way.\nThat's\nit. We'll have you fixed up in a jiffy.\"\n\n\n \"It isn't s-space sickness,\" said Marcia in a very small and very\n positive voice. She let herself be led forward, through the door and to\n the left, where there was a small and compact ship's hospital.\n\n\n \"Now, now,\" said Miss Eagen briskly, \"just you lie down there, Mrs.\n Foster. Does it hurt any special place?\"", "\"I think,\" said Sue Eagen into the mike, \"that the computations can\n wait.\"\n\n\n \"The hell you do!\" The red contact light on the intercom went out.\n\n\n \"He'll be right here,\" said Miss Eagen.\nMarcia sat up slowly, clumsily. Miss Eagen did not offer to help.\n Marcia's hands strayed to her hair, patted it futilely.\n\n\n He came in, moving fast and purposefully, as always. \"Sue, what in time\n do you think you—\nMarcia!\n\" His dark face broke into a delighted grin\n and he put his arms out. \"You—you're here—\nhere\n, on my ship!\"\n\n\n \"I'm pregnant, Jack,\" she said. She put out a hand to ward him off. She\n couldn't bear the thought of his realizing what she had done while he\n had his arms around her.", "outside again and the sky was no longer deep blue, but black. She\n pressed herself up out of the soft chair—it was difficult, because of\n the one-and-a-half gravities the ship was holding—and plodded heavily\n up the aisle. Miss Eagen was just rising from the chair in which she\n sat for the take-off." ], [ "He'll come up on the Moon obliquely, pass it, stop the spin, turn over\n once to check the speed of the ship, and once again to put the tail\n down when the Moon's gravity begins to draw us in. There'll be two\n short periods of free-fall there, but they won't be long enough to\n bother you much. And if we can do all that with the fuel we've got, it\n will be a miracle. A miracle from the brain of Captain McHenry.\"", "\"The\nElsinore\n?\" She'd said it viciously, to taunt him, and something\n in her had been pleased at the dull flush that rose to his face.\n Everyone knew about the\nElsinore\n, the 500-foot Moon-ferry that almost\n missed the Moon.\n\n\n \"That,\" he said bitterly, \"was human damnfoolishness botching up the\n equations. Too many lobbyists have holdings on the Moon and don't\n want to risk not being able to go there in a hurry. So they haven't\n passed legislation to keep physically unfit people off spaceships.\n One of the passengers got aboard the\nElsinore\non somebody else's\n validation—which meant that nobody knew he was taking endocrine\n treatments to put hair on his brainless head and restore his—Oh, the\nJaywalker\n!\" Jack spat in disgust. \"Anyway, he was the kind of idiot\n who never realizes that certain glandular conditions are fatal in free\n fall.\"", "After he'd gone—for good, he said—her anger had sustained her for a\n few weeks. Then, bleakly, she knew she'd go to the ends of Earth for\n Jack. Or even to the Moon....\nSitting rigid in the tense stillness of a rocket ship that was about\n to leap from Earth, Marcia started as an officer ducked his head into\n the passenger compartment from the pilot room's deep glow. But it\n wasn't Jack. The officer's lips moved hurriedly as he counted over the\n seats. He ducked back out of sight. From the bulk-heads, the overhead,\n everywhere, came a deep, quiet rumble. Some of the passengers looked\n anxious, some excited, and some just leafed casually through magazines.\n\n\n Now the brown-clad Miss Eagen was speaking from the head of the aisle.", "He hugged her. After a time he reached down and touched her swelling\n waist. It was like a benediction. \"He'll be born on the Moon,\" he\n whispered, \"and he'll have eyes the color of all Earth when it looks\n out to the stars.\"\n\n\n \"\nShe'll\nbe born on the Moon,\" corrected Marcia, \"and her name will be\n Sue, and ... and she'll be almost as good as her father.\"", "There was a sudden thunder. Over Miss Eagen's shoulder, through the\n port, Marcia saw the stars begin to move. Miss Eagen followed her gaze.\n \"He's started the spin. You'll be all right now.\"\nMarcia could never recall the rest of the details of the trip. There\n was the outboard bulkhead that drew her like a magnet, increasingly,\n until suddenly it wasn't an attracting wall, but normally and naturally\n \"down.\" Then a needle, and another one, and a long period of deep\n drowsiness and unreality.\n\n\n But through and through that drugged, relaxed period, Jack and the\n stars, the Moon and Sue Eagen danced and wove. Words slipped in and out\n of it like shreds of melody:\n\n\n \"A man comes to love the things he has to fight for.\" And Jack\n fighting—for his ship, for the Moon, for the new-building traditions\n of the great ones who would carry humanity out to the stars.", "She found herself at the entrance to the pilot room. In one sweeping\n glance she saw a curved, silver board. Before it a man sat tranquilly.\n Nearer to her was Jack, hunched over the keyboard of a complex, compact\n machine, like a harried bookkeeper on the last day of the month.\n\n\n Her lips formed his name, but she was silent. She watched him, his\n square, competent hands, his detached and distant face. Through the\n forward view-plate she saw a harsh, jagged line, the very edge of the\n Moon's disc. Next to it, and below, was the rear viewer, holding the\n shimmering azure shape of Earth.\n\n\n \"\nAll Earth watches me when I work, but with your eyes.\n\"\n\n\n Jack had said that to her once, long ago, when he still loved her.\n\n\n \"... human damnfoolishness botching up the equations....\" He had said\n that once, too.", "A curved ceiling, but a new curve, and soft rose instead of the\n gunmetal-and-chrome of the ship. White sheets, a new feeling of \"down\"\n that was unlike either Earth or the ship, a novel and exhilarating\n buoyancy. And kneeling by the bed—\n\n\n \"Jack!\"\n\n\n \"You're all right, honey.\"\n\n\n She raised herself on her elbow and looked out through the unglazed\n window at the ordered streets of the great Luna Dome. \"The Moon....\n Jack, you did it!\"\n\n\n He snapped his fingers. He looked like a high-school kid. \"Nothin' to\n it.\" She could see he was very proud. Very tired, too. He reached out\n to touch her.\n\n\n She drew back. \"You don't have to be sweet to me,\" she said quietly. \"I\n understand how you must feel.\"", "\"He'll spin the ship on its long axis,\" said the stewardess with\n exaggerated patience. \"That means that the steering jet tubes in the\n nose and tail are spinning, too. You don't just turn with a blast on\n one tube or another. The blasts have to be let off in hundreds of short\n bursts, timed to the hundredth of a second, to be able to make even a\n slight course correction. The sighting instruments are wheeling round\n and round while you're checking your position. Your fuel has to be\n calculated to the last ounce—because enough fuel for a Moon flight,\n with hours of fuelless free-fall, and enough fuel for a power spin\n and course corrections while spinning, are two very different things.\n Captain McHenry won't be able to maneuver to a landing on the Moon.\n He'll do it exactly right the first time, or not at all.\"\n\n\n Marcia was white and still. \"I—I never—\"", "Miss Eagen's arched nostrils seemed pinched and white. \"You really want\n me to speak my piece?\"\nIn answer Marcia leaned back against the bulkhead and folded her arms.\n Miss Eagen gazed at her for a moment, nodded as if to herself, and\n said, \"I suppose there always will be people who don't pay attention\n to the rules. Jaywalkers. But out here jaywalkers don't have as much\n margin for error as they do crossing against a traffic light on Earth.\"\n She looked Marcia straight in the eye. \"What makes a jaywalker isn't\n ignorance. It's a combination of stupidity and stubbornness. The\n jaywalker does\nknow\nbetter. In your case....\"", "It was snatched away—the buildings, the trees, the roads surrounding\n the field seemed to pour in upon it, shrinking as they ran together.\n Roads dried up like parched rivers, thinning and vanishing into the\n circle of her horrified vision. A great, soft, uniform weight pressed\n her down and back; she fought it, but it was too big and too soft.\n\n\n Now Earth's surface was vague and Sun-splashed. Marcia's sense of loss\n tore at her. She put up her hands, heavily, and pressed the glass as\n if she could push it out, push herself out, go back, back to Earth\n and solidity. Clouds shot by like bullets, fell away until they were\n snowflakes roiling in violet haze. Then, in the purling universe that\n had grown around the ship, Earth was a mystic circle, a shallow dish\n floating darkly and heavily below.\n\n\n \"We are now,\" said Miss Eagen's calm voice, \"thirty-seven miles over\n Los Angeles.\"", "pseudo-widowhoods. Space-widowhood, for instance....\nAt last she was on the gangplank, entering the mouth of the\n spaceship—and nothing could ever stop her now. Not unless she broke\n down completely in front of all these hurrying, Moon-bound passengers,\n in plain sight of the scattered crowd which clustered on the other\n side of the space-field barriers. Even that possibility was denied her\n when two gently insistent middle-aged ladies indicated she was blocking\n the way....\nSomehow, dizzily, she was at her seat, led there by a smiling,\n brown-clad stewardess; and her azure-tipped fingers were clutching at\n the pearl-gray plasta-leather of the chair arm. Her eyes, the azure", "Even now she distinctly recalled the beginnings of the interplanetary\n cold that always seeped into the warm house when he talked about space,\n when he was about to leave her for it. And this time it was worse than\n ever before.\n\n\n He went on remorselessly, \"Once the\nElsinore\nreached the free-fall\n flight, where power could be shut off, the skipper had to put the\n ferry into an axial spin under power, creating artificial gravity\n to save the worthless life of that fool. So of course he lost his\n trajectory, and had to warp her in as best he could, without passing\n the Moon or crashing into it. And of course you're not listening.\"\n\n\n \"It's all so dull!\" she had flared, and then, \"How can I be interested\n in what some blundering space-jockey did?\"", "After that, there was scarcely room for thought—even for fear, though\n it lurked nearby, ready to leap. There was the ascent, the quiet,\n sleeplike ascent into space. Marcia very nearly forgot to breathe. She\n had been prepared for almost anything except this quality of peace and\n awe.\nShe didn't know how long she had been sitting there, awestruck,\n spellbound, when she realized that she had to finish the job she'd\n started, and do it right now, this minute. It might already be too\n late ... she wished, suddenly, and for the very first time, that she'd\n paid more attention to Jack's ramblings about orbits and turn-over\n points and correction blasts, and all that gobbledegook. She glanced", "chin in his hand. \"Marcia, Marcia,\" he'd said gently, \"you're so\nsilly\n! It's been nineteen whole years since your father died in the\n explosion of a Moon-rocket. Rocket motors just don't explode any more,\n honey! Ships travel to the Moon and back on iron-clad, mathematical\n orbits that are figured before the ship puffs a jet—\"", "\"But I haven't told you the toughest part of it yet,\" Miss Eagen went\n on inexorably. \"A ship as massive as this, spinning on its long axis,\n is a pretty fair gyroscope. It doesn't want to turn. Any force that\n tries to make it turn is resisted at right angles to the force applied.\n When that force is applied momentarily from jets, as they swing into\n position and away again, the firing formulas get—well, complex. And\n the ship's course and landing approach are completely new. Instead\n of letting the ship fall to the Moon, turning over and approaching\n tail-first with the main jets as brakes, Captain McHenry is going to\n have to start the spin first and go almost the whole way nose-first.", "The flash walls on the field were being raised to keep the blow-by from\n the ship's jets from searing the administration building and the area\n beyond. Marcia realized with crushing suddenness that the ship was\n about to blast off in seconds. She half-rose, then sank back, biting\n her lip. Silly ... Jack had said that—her fear of space was silly.\n He'd said it during the quarrel, and he'd roared at her, \"And that's\n why you want me to come back—ground myself, be an Earth-lubber—so I\n can spare you the anguish of sitting home wondering if I'll come back\n alive!\"\nAnd then he'd been sorry he'd shouted, and he sat by her, taking her", "outside again and the sky was no longer deep blue, but black. She\n pressed herself up out of the soft chair—it was difficult, because of\n the one-and-a-half gravities the ship was holding—and plodded heavily\n up the aisle. Miss Eagen was just rising from the chair in which she\n sat for the take-off.", "Marcia forced herself away from the bulkhead with a small whimper of\n hurt and hatred—hatred of the stars, of this knowledgeable, inspired\n girl, and—even more so—of herself. She darted toward the door.\n\n\n Miss Eagen was beside her in an instant, a hard small hand on her arm.\n \"Where are you going?\"\n\n\n \"I'm going to stop him. He can't take that chance with his ship, with\n these people....\"\n\n\n \"He will and he must. You surely know your husband.\"\n\n\n \"I know him as well as you do.\"\nMiss Eagen's firm lips shut in a thin hard line. \"Do as you like,\" she\n whispered. \"And while you're doing it—think about whom he's spinning\n ship for.\" She took her hand from Marcia's arm.\n\n\n Marcia twisted away and went into the corridor.", "\"There's no need to be sarcastic!\" Marcia blurted. \"Jack can do it. You\n think he can, don't you? Don't you?\"\n\n\n \"He can do anything any space skipper has ever done, and more,\"\n said Sue Eagen, and her face glowed. \"But it isn't easy. Right this\n minute he's working over the computer—a small, simple, ship-board\n computer—working out orbital and positional and blast-intensity data\n that would be a hard nut for the giant calculators on Earth to crack.\n And he's doing it in half the time—or less—than it would take the\n average mathematician, because he has to; because it's a life-and-death\n matter if he makes a mistake or takes too long.\"\n\"But—but—\"", "\"Those of you who haven't been in a rocket before won't find it much\n different from being in an airplane. At the same time—\" She paused,\n quiet brown eyes solemn. \"What you are about to experience is something\n that will make you proud to belong to the human race.\"\nThat\nagain! thought Marcia furiously; and then all emotion left her\n but cold, ravening fear as the rumble heightened. She tried to close\n her eyes, her ears against it, but her mind wouldn't respond. She\n squirmed in her chair and found herself staring down at the field.\n It looked the way she felt—flat and pale and devoid of life, with a\n monstrous structure of terror squatting in it. The scene was abruptly\n splashed with a rushing sheet of flame that darkened the daytime sky.\n Then it was torn from her vision." ], [ "She turned her face away from the aisle, covered her cheek with her\n hand to hide it. Her gaze went out through the ray-proof glass port to\n the field, to the laboring beetle of a red tractor bearing the gangway\n on its busy back, to the low, blast-proof administration building. When\n her gaze came to the tall sign over the entrance, she hurried it past;\n it was too late to think about that now, the square, shouting type that\n read:\nCAUTION\n\n HAVE YOU PASSED YOUR PHYSICAL EXAMINATION?\nAvoiding It May Cost Your Life!\n\"May I see your validation, please?\"", "Even now she distinctly recalled the beginnings of the interplanetary\n cold that always seeped into the warm house when he talked about space,\n when he was about to leave her for it. And this time it was worse than\n ever before.\n\n\n He went on remorselessly, \"Once the\nElsinore\nreached the free-fall\n flight, where power could be shut off, the skipper had to put the\n ferry into an axial spin under power, creating artificial gravity\n to save the worthless life of that fool. So of course he lost his\n trajectory, and had to warp her in as best he could, without passing\n the Moon or crashing into it. And of course you're not listening.\"\n\n\n \"It's all so dull!\" she had flared, and then, \"How can I be interested\n in what some blundering space-jockey did?\"", "chin in his hand. \"Marcia, Marcia,\" he'd said gently, \"you're so\nsilly\n! It's been nineteen whole years since your father died in the\n explosion of a Moon-rocket. Rocket motors just don't explode any more,\n honey! Ships travel to the Moon and back on iron-clad, mathematical\n orbits that are figured before the ship puffs a jet—\"", "There was a sudden thunder. Over Miss Eagen's shoulder, through the\n port, Marcia saw the stars begin to move. Miss Eagen followed her gaze.\n \"He's started the spin. You'll be all right now.\"\nMarcia could never recall the rest of the details of the trip. There\n was the outboard bulkhead that drew her like a magnet, increasingly,\n until suddenly it wasn't an attracting wall, but normally and naturally\n \"down.\" Then a needle, and another one, and a long period of deep\n drowsiness and unreality.\n\n\n But through and through that drugged, relaxed period, Jack and the\n stars, the Moon and Sue Eagen danced and wove. Words slipped in and out\n of it like shreds of melody:\n\n\n \"A man comes to love the things he has to fight for.\" And Jack\n fighting—for his ship, for the Moon, for the new-building traditions\n of the great ones who would carry humanity out to the stars.", "Feeling very much put-upon, Marcia waited silently until he was\n finished, and the bed hung ludicrously to the wall like a walking fly.\n She thanked him timidly, and he ignored it and went out.\n\n\n Miss Eagen returned.\n\n\n \"That man was very rude,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n Miss Eagen looked at her coolly. \"I'm sorry,\" she said, obviously not\n meaning sorry at all.\n\n\n Marcia wet her lips. \"I asked you a question before,\" she said evenly.\n \"About you and the captain.\"\n\n\n \"You did,\" said Sue Eagen. \"Please don't.\"\n\n\n \"And why not?\"", "Sue Eagen was there, too, and the thing she shared with Jack. Of course\n there was something between them—so big a thing that there was\n nothing for her to fear in it.\n\n\n Jack and Sue Eagen had always had it, and always would have; and now\n Marcia had it too. And with understanding replacing fear, Marcia was\n free to recall that Jack had worked with Sue Eagen—but it was Marcia\n that he had loved and married.\nThere was a long time of blackness, and then a time of agony, when\n she was falling, falling, and her lungs wanted to split, explode,\n disintegrate, and someone kept saying, \"Hold tight, Marcia; hold tight\n to me,\" and she found Sue Eagen's cool strong hands in hers.\nMarcia. She called me Marcia.\nMore blackness, more pain—but not so much this time; and then a long,\n deep sleep.", "There was a stiff silence. Marcia looked up at Miss Eagen. \"It's true,\n you know,\" she said. \"A man grows to love the things he has to defend,\n no matter how he felt about them before.\"\n\n\n The stewardess looked at her, her face registering a strange mixture of\n detachment and wonder. \"You really believe that, don't you?\"\n\n\n Marcia's patience, snapped. \"You don't have to look so superior. I know\n what's bothering\nyou\n. Well, he's\nmy\nhusband, and don't you forget\n it.\"\nMiss Eagen's breath hissed in. Her eyes grew bright and she shook her\n head slightly. Then she turned on her heel and went to the intercom.\n Marcia thought for a frightened moment that she was going to call Jack\n back again. Instead she dialed and said, \"Hospital to Maintenance.\n Petrucelli?\"\n\n\n \"Petrucelli here.\"", "A curved ceiling, but a new curve, and soft rose instead of the\n gunmetal-and-chrome of the ship. White sheets, a new feeling of \"down\"\n that was unlike either Earth or the ship, a novel and exhilarating\n buoyancy. And kneeling by the bed—\n\n\n \"Jack!\"\n\n\n \"You're all right, honey.\"\n\n\n She raised herself on her elbow and looked out through the unglazed\n window at the ordered streets of the great Luna Dome. \"The Moon....\n Jack, you did it!\"\n\n\n He snapped his fingers. He looked like a high-school kid. \"Nothin' to\n it.\" She could see he was very proud. Very tired, too. He reached out\n to touch her.\n\n\n She drew back. \"You don't have to be sweet to me,\" she said quietly. \"I\n understand how you must feel.\"", "\"Blun—Marcia, you really don't realize what that skipper did was the\n finest piece of shiphandling since mankind got off the ground.\"\n\n\n \"Was it?\" she'd yawned. \"Could you do it?\"\n\n\n \"I—like to think I could,\" he said. \"I'd hate to have to try.\"\n\n\n She'd shrugged. \"Then it can't be very difficult, darling.\"\n\n\n She hadn't meant to be so cruel. Or so stupid. But when they were\n quarreling, or when he talked that repugnant, dedicated, other-world\n garble, something always went cold and furious and—lonely inside her,\n and made her fight back unfairly.", "It was snatched away—the buildings, the trees, the roads surrounding\n the field seemed to pour in upon it, shrinking as they ran together.\n Roads dried up like parched rivers, thinning and vanishing into the\n circle of her horrified vision. A great, soft, uniform weight pressed\n her down and back; she fought it, but it was too big and too soft.\n\n\n Now Earth's surface was vague and Sun-splashed. Marcia's sense of loss\n tore at her. She put up her hands, heavily, and pressed the glass as\n if she could push it out, push herself out, go back, back to Earth\n and solidity. Clouds shot by like bullets, fell away until they were\n snowflakes roiling in violet haze. Then, in the purling universe that\n had grown around the ship, Earth was a mystic circle, a shallow dish\n floating darkly and heavily below.\n\n\n \"We are now,\" said Miss Eagen's calm voice, \"thirty-seven miles over\n Los Angeles.\"", "Marcia bounced resentfully off the cot and stood aside. Petrucelli\n looked at her, cocked an eyebrow, looked at Miss Eagen, and asked,\n \"Jaywalker?\"\n\n\n \"Please hurry, Pet.\" She turned to Marcia. \"I've got to explain to the\n passengers that there won't be any free fall. Most of them are looking\n forward to it.\" She went out.\n\n\n Marcia watched the big man work for a moment. \"Why are you putting the\n bed on the wall?\"\n\n\n He looked at her and away, quickly. \"Because, lady, when we start to\n spin, that outside bulkhead is going to be\ndown\n. Centrifugal force,\n see?\" And before she could answer him he added, \"I can't talk and work\n at the same time.\"", "Miss Eagen was standing by the hospital door, watching her. When Marcia\n turned away without speaking to Jack, Miss Eagen smiled and held out\n her hand.\n\n\n Marcia went to her and took the hand. They went into the hospital. Miss\n Eagen didn't speak; she seemed to be waiting.\n\n\n \"Yes, I know who Jack's spinning the ship for,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n Miss Eagen looked an unspoken question.\n\n\n Marcia said, painfully, \"He's like the Captain of the\nElsinore\n. He's\n risking his life for a—a stranger. A jaywalker. Not for me. Not even\n for his baby.\"\n\n\n \"Does it hurt to know that?\"\n\n\n Marcia looked into the smooth, strong face and said with genuine\n astonishment, \"Hurt? Oh, no! It's so—so big!\"", "pseudo-widowhoods. Space-widowhood, for instance....\nAt last she was on the gangplank, entering the mouth of the\n spaceship—and nothing could ever stop her now. Not unless she broke\n down completely in front of all these hurrying, Moon-bound passengers,\n in plain sight of the scattered crowd which clustered on the other\n side of the space-field barriers. Even that possibility was denied her\n when two gently insistent middle-aged ladies indicated she was blocking\n the way....\nSomehow, dizzily, she was at her seat, led there by a smiling,\n brown-clad stewardess; and her azure-tipped fingers were clutching at\n the pearl-gray plasta-leather of the chair arm. Her eyes, the azure", "He hugged her. After a time he reached down and touched her swelling\n waist. It was like a benediction. \"He'll be born on the Moon,\" he\n whispered, \"and he'll have eyes the color of all Earth when it looks\n out to the stars.\"\n\n\n \"\nShe'll\nbe born on the Moon,\" corrected Marcia, \"and her name will be\n Sue, and ... and she'll be almost as good as her father.\"", "Miss Eagen's arched nostrils seemed pinched and white. \"You really want\n me to speak my piece?\"\nIn answer Marcia leaned back against the bulkhead and folded her arms.\n Miss Eagen gazed at her for a moment, nodded as if to herself, and\n said, \"I suppose there always will be people who don't pay attention\n to the rules. Jaywalkers. But out here jaywalkers don't have as much\n margin for error as they do crossing against a traffic light on Earth.\"\n She looked Marcia straight in the eye. \"What makes a jaywalker isn't\n ignorance. It's a combination of stupidity and stubbornness. The\n jaywalker does\nknow\nbetter. In your case....\"", "She found herself at the entrance to the pilot room. In one sweeping\n glance she saw a curved, silver board. Before it a man sat tranquilly.\n Nearer to her was Jack, hunched over the keyboard of a complex, compact\n machine, like a harried bookkeeper on the last day of the month.\n\n\n Her lips formed his name, but she was silent. She watched him, his\n square, competent hands, his detached and distant face. Through the\n forward view-plate she saw a harsh, jagged line, the very edge of the\n Moon's disc. Next to it, and below, was the rear viewer, holding the\n shimmering azure shape of Earth.\n\n\n \"\nAll Earth watches me when I work, but with your eyes.\n\"\n\n\n Jack had said that to her once, long ago, when he still loved her.\n\n\n \"... human damnfoolishness botching up the equations....\" He had said\n that once, too.", "outside again and the sky was no longer deep blue, but black. She\n pressed herself up out of the soft chair—it was difficult, because of\n the one-and-a-half gravities the ship was holding—and plodded heavily\n up the aisle. Miss Eagen was just rising from the chair in which she\n sat for the take-off.", "He'll come up on the Moon obliquely, pass it, stop the spin, turn over\n once to check the speed of the ship, and once again to put the tail\n down when the Moon's gravity begins to draw us in. There'll be two\n short periods of free-fall there, but they won't be long enough to\n bother you much. And if we can do all that with the fuel we've got, it\n will be a miracle. A miracle from the brain of Captain McHenry.\"", "\"Spin ship,\" she replied immediately, and looked up at him pertly, like\n a kindergarten child who knows she has the right answer.\n\n\n He groaned.\n\n\n \"You said you could do it.\"\n\n\n \"I can ... try,\" he said hollowly. \"But—why,\nwhy\n?\"\n\n\n \"Because,\" she said bleakly, \"I learned long ago that a man grows to\n love what he has to fight for.\"\n\n\n \"And you were going to make me fight for you and the child—even if the\n lives of a hundred and seventy people were involved?\"\n\n\n \"You said you could handle it. I thought you could.\"\n\n\n \"I'll try,\" he said wearily. \"Oh, I'll try.\" He went out, dragging his\n feet, his shoulders down, without looking at her.", "Marcia lay down gratefully. She closed her eyes tightly and said, \"I'm\n not Mrs. Foster. It doesn't hurt.\"\n\n\n \"You're not—\" Miss Eagen apparently decided to take one thing at a\n time. \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\n \"Scared,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n \"Why, what—is there to be scared of?\"\n\n\n \"I'm pregnant.\"\n\n\n \"Well, that's no—You're\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'm Mrs. McHenry. I'm Jack's wife.\"\n\n\n There was such a long pause that Marcia opened her eyes. Miss Eagen was\n looking at her levelly. She said, \"I'll have to examine you.\"\n\n\n \"I know. Go ahead.\"" ], [ "He'll come up on the Moon obliquely, pass it, stop the spin, turn over\n once to check the speed of the ship, and once again to put the tail\n down when the Moon's gravity begins to draw us in. There'll be two\n short periods of free-fall there, but they won't be long enough to\n bother you much. And if we can do all that with the fuel we've got, it\n will be a miracle. A miracle from the brain of Captain McHenry.\"", "After he'd gone—for good, he said—her anger had sustained her for a\n few weeks. Then, bleakly, she knew she'd go to the ends of Earth for\n Jack. Or even to the Moon....\nSitting rigid in the tense stillness of a rocket ship that was about\n to leap from Earth, Marcia started as an officer ducked his head into\n the passenger compartment from the pilot room's deep glow. But it\n wasn't Jack. The officer's lips moved hurriedly as he counted over the\n seats. He ducked back out of sight. From the bulk-heads, the overhead,\n everywhere, came a deep, quiet rumble. Some of the passengers looked\n anxious, some excited, and some just leafed casually through magazines.\n\n\n Now the brown-clad Miss Eagen was speaking from the head of the aisle.", "There was a sudden thunder. Over Miss Eagen's shoulder, through the\n port, Marcia saw the stars begin to move. Miss Eagen followed her gaze.\n \"He's started the spin. You'll be all right now.\"\nMarcia could never recall the rest of the details of the trip. There\n was the outboard bulkhead that drew her like a magnet, increasingly,\n until suddenly it wasn't an attracting wall, but normally and naturally\n \"down.\" Then a needle, and another one, and a long period of deep\n drowsiness and unreality.\n\n\n But through and through that drugged, relaxed period, Jack and the\n stars, the Moon and Sue Eagen danced and wove. Words slipped in and out\n of it like shreds of melody:\n\n\n \"A man comes to love the things he has to fight for.\" And Jack\n fighting—for his ship, for the Moon, for the new-building traditions\n of the great ones who would carry humanity out to the stars.", "\"The\nElsinore\n?\" She'd said it viciously, to taunt him, and something\n in her had been pleased at the dull flush that rose to his face.\n Everyone knew about the\nElsinore\n, the 500-foot Moon-ferry that almost\n missed the Moon.\n\n\n \"That,\" he said bitterly, \"was human damnfoolishness botching up the\n equations. Too many lobbyists have holdings on the Moon and don't\n want to risk not being able to go there in a hurry. So they haven't\n passed legislation to keep physically unfit people off spaceships.\n One of the passengers got aboard the\nElsinore\non somebody else's\n validation—which meant that nobody knew he was taking endocrine\n treatments to put hair on his brainless head and restore his—Oh, the\nJaywalker\n!\" Jack spat in disgust. \"Anyway, he was the kind of idiot\n who never realizes that certain glandular conditions are fatal in free\n fall.\"", "She found herself at the entrance to the pilot room. In one sweeping\n glance she saw a curved, silver board. Before it a man sat tranquilly.\n Nearer to her was Jack, hunched over the keyboard of a complex, compact\n machine, like a harried bookkeeper on the last day of the month.\n\n\n Her lips formed his name, but she was silent. She watched him, his\n square, competent hands, his detached and distant face. Through the\n forward view-plate she saw a harsh, jagged line, the very edge of the\n Moon's disc. Next to it, and below, was the rear viewer, holding the\n shimmering azure shape of Earth.\n\n\n \"\nAll Earth watches me when I work, but with your eyes.\n\"\n\n\n Jack had said that to her once, long ago, when he still loved her.\n\n\n \"... human damnfoolishness botching up the equations....\" He had said\n that once, too.", "\"He'll spin the ship on its long axis,\" said the stewardess with\n exaggerated patience. \"That means that the steering jet tubes in the\n nose and tail are spinning, too. You don't just turn with a blast on\n one tube or another. The blasts have to be let off in hundreds of short\n bursts, timed to the hundredth of a second, to be able to make even a\n slight course correction. The sighting instruments are wheeling round\n and round while you're checking your position. Your fuel has to be\n calculated to the last ounce—because enough fuel for a Moon flight,\n with hours of fuelless free-fall, and enough fuel for a power spin\n and course corrections while spinning, are two very different things.\n Captain McHenry won't be able to maneuver to a landing on the Moon.\n He'll do it exactly right the first time, or not at all.\"\n\n\n Marcia was white and still. \"I—I never—\"", "It was snatched away—the buildings, the trees, the roads surrounding\n the field seemed to pour in upon it, shrinking as they ran together.\n Roads dried up like parched rivers, thinning and vanishing into the\n circle of her horrified vision. A great, soft, uniform weight pressed\n her down and back; she fought it, but it was too big and too soft.\n\n\n Now Earth's surface was vague and Sun-splashed. Marcia's sense of loss\n tore at her. She put up her hands, heavily, and pressed the glass as\n if she could push it out, push herself out, go back, back to Earth\n and solidity. Clouds shot by like bullets, fell away until they were\n snowflakes roiling in violet haze. Then, in the purling universe that\n had grown around the ship, Earth was a mystic circle, a shallow dish\n floating darkly and heavily below.\n\n\n \"We are now,\" said Miss Eagen's calm voice, \"thirty-seven miles over\n Los Angeles.\"", "He hugged her. After a time he reached down and touched her swelling\n waist. It was like a benediction. \"He'll be born on the Moon,\" he\n whispered, \"and he'll have eyes the color of all Earth when it looks\n out to the stars.\"\n\n\n \"\nShe'll\nbe born on the Moon,\" corrected Marcia, \"and her name will be\n Sue, and ... and she'll be almost as good as her father.\"", "A curved ceiling, but a new curve, and soft rose instead of the\n gunmetal-and-chrome of the ship. White sheets, a new feeling of \"down\"\n that was unlike either Earth or the ship, a novel and exhilarating\n buoyancy. And kneeling by the bed—\n\n\n \"Jack!\"\n\n\n \"You're all right, honey.\"\n\n\n She raised herself on her elbow and looked out through the unglazed\n window at the ordered streets of the great Luna Dome. \"The Moon....\n Jack, you did it!\"\n\n\n He snapped his fingers. He looked like a high-school kid. \"Nothin' to\n it.\" She could see he was very proud. Very tired, too. He reached out\n to touch her.\n\n\n She drew back. \"You don't have to be sweet to me,\" she said quietly. \"I\n understand how you must feel.\"", "After that, there was scarcely room for thought—even for fear, though\n it lurked nearby, ready to leap. There was the ascent, the quiet,\n sleeplike ascent into space. Marcia very nearly forgot to breathe. She\n had been prepared for almost anything except this quality of peace and\n awe.\nShe didn't know how long she had been sitting there, awestruck,\n spellbound, when she realized that she had to finish the job she'd\n started, and do it right now, this minute. It might already be too\n late ... she wished, suddenly, and for the very first time, that she'd\n paid more attention to Jack's ramblings about orbits and turn-over\n points and correction blasts, and all that gobbledegook. She glanced", "outside again and the sky was no longer deep blue, but black. She\n pressed herself up out of the soft chair—it was difficult, because of\n the one-and-a-half gravities the ship was holding—and plodded heavily\n up the aisle. Miss Eagen was just rising from the chair in which she\n sat for the take-off.", "\"But I haven't told you the toughest part of it yet,\" Miss Eagen went\n on inexorably. \"A ship as massive as this, spinning on its long axis,\n is a pretty fair gyroscope. It doesn't want to turn. Any force that\n tries to make it turn is resisted at right angles to the force applied.\n When that force is applied momentarily from jets, as they swing into\n position and away again, the firing formulas get—well, complex. And\n the ship's course and landing approach are completely new. Instead\n of letting the ship fall to the Moon, turning over and approaching\n tail-first with the main jets as brakes, Captain McHenry is going to\n have to start the spin first and go almost the whole way nose-first.", "Even now she distinctly recalled the beginnings of the interplanetary\n cold that always seeped into the warm house when he talked about space,\n when he was about to leave her for it. And this time it was worse than\n ever before.\n\n\n He went on remorselessly, \"Once the\nElsinore\nreached the free-fall\n flight, where power could be shut off, the skipper had to put the\n ferry into an axial spin under power, creating artificial gravity\n to save the worthless life of that fool. So of course he lost his\n trajectory, and had to warp her in as best he could, without passing\n the Moon or crashing into it. And of course you're not listening.\"\n\n\n \"It's all so dull!\" she had flared, and then, \"How can I be interested\n in what some blundering space-jockey did?\"", "pseudo-widowhoods. Space-widowhood, for instance....\nAt last she was on the gangplank, entering the mouth of the\n spaceship—and nothing could ever stop her now. Not unless she broke\n down completely in front of all these hurrying, Moon-bound passengers,\n in plain sight of the scattered crowd which clustered on the other\n side of the space-field barriers. Even that possibility was denied her\n when two gently insistent middle-aged ladies indicated she was blocking\n the way....\nSomehow, dizzily, she was at her seat, led there by a smiling,\n brown-clad stewardess; and her azure-tipped fingers were clutching at\n the pearl-gray plasta-leather of the chair arm. Her eyes, the azure", "Marcia bounced resentfully off the cot and stood aside. Petrucelli\n looked at her, cocked an eyebrow, looked at Miss Eagen, and asked,\n \"Jaywalker?\"\n\n\n \"Please hurry, Pet.\" She turned to Marcia. \"I've got to explain to the\n passengers that there won't be any free fall. Most of them are looking\n forward to it.\" She went out.\n\n\n Marcia watched the big man work for a moment. \"Why are you putting the\n bed on the wall?\"\n\n\n He looked at her and away, quickly. \"Because, lady, when we start to\n spin, that outside bulkhead is going to be\ndown\n. Centrifugal force,\n see?\" And before she could answer him he added, \"I can't talk and work\n at the same time.\"", "The flash walls on the field were being raised to keep the blow-by from\n the ship's jets from searing the administration building and the area\n beyond. Marcia realized with crushing suddenness that the ship was\n about to blast off in seconds. She half-rose, then sank back, biting\n her lip. Silly ... Jack had said that—her fear of space was silly.\n He'd said it during the quarrel, and he'd roared at her, \"And that's\n why you want me to come back—ground myself, be an Earth-lubber—so I\n can spare you the anguish of sitting home wondering if I'll come back\n alive!\"\nAnd then he'd been sorry he'd shouted, and he sat by her, taking her", "chin in his hand. \"Marcia, Marcia,\" he'd said gently, \"you're so\nsilly\n! It's been nineteen whole years since your father died in the\n explosion of a Moon-rocket. Rocket motors just don't explode any more,\n honey! Ships travel to the Moon and back on iron-clad, mathematical\n orbits that are figured before the ship puffs a jet—\"", "Marcia forced herself away from the bulkhead with a small whimper of\n hurt and hatred—hatred of the stars, of this knowledgeable, inspired\n girl, and—even more so—of herself. She darted toward the door.\n\n\n Miss Eagen was beside her in an instant, a hard small hand on her arm.\n \"Where are you going?\"\n\n\n \"I'm going to stop him. He can't take that chance with his ship, with\n these people....\"\n\n\n \"He will and he must. You surely know your husband.\"\n\n\n \"I know him as well as you do.\"\nMiss Eagen's firm lips shut in a thin hard line. \"Do as you like,\" she\n whispered. \"And while you're doing it—think about whom he's spinning\n ship for.\" She took her hand from Marcia's arm.\n\n\n Marcia twisted away and went into the corridor.", "\"Miss Eagen—\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Mrs. Fos—why, what's the matter?\"\n\n\n Seeing the startled expression on the stewardess' face, Marcia realized\n she must be looking like a ghost. She put a hand to her cheek and found\n it clammy.\n\n\n \"Come along,\" said Miss Eagen cheerfully. She put a firm arm around\n Marcia's shoulder. \"Just a touch of space-sickness. This way.\nThat's\nit. We'll have you fixed up in a jiffy.\"\n\n\n \"It isn't s-space sickness,\" said Marcia in a very small and very\n positive voice. She let herself be led forward, through the door and to\n the left, where there was a small and compact ship's hospital.\n\n\n \"Now, now,\" said Miss Eagen briskly, \"just you lie down there, Mrs.\n Foster. Does it hurt any special place?\"", "Miss Eagen's arched nostrils seemed pinched and white. \"You really want\n me to speak my piece?\"\nIn answer Marcia leaned back against the bulkhead and folded her arms.\n Miss Eagen gazed at her for a moment, nodded as if to herself, and\n said, \"I suppose there always will be people who don't pay attention\n to the rules. Jaywalkers. But out here jaywalkers don't have as much\n margin for error as they do crossing against a traffic light on Earth.\"\n She looked Marcia straight in the eye. \"What makes a jaywalker isn't\n ignorance. It's a combination of stupidity and stubbornness. The\n jaywalker does\nknow\nbetter. In your case....\"" ], [ "Feeling very much put-upon, Marcia waited silently until he was\n finished, and the bed hung ludicrously to the wall like a walking fly.\n She thanked him timidly, and he ignored it and went out.\n\n\n Miss Eagen returned.\n\n\n \"That man was very rude,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n Miss Eagen looked at her coolly. \"I'm sorry,\" she said, obviously not\n meaning sorry at all.\n\n\n Marcia wet her lips. \"I asked you a question before,\" she said evenly.\n \"About you and the captain.\"\n\n\n \"You did,\" said Sue Eagen. \"Please don't.\"\n\n\n \"And why not?\"", "Miss Eagen did, swiftly and thoroughly. \"You're so right,\" she\n breathed. She went to the small sink, stripping off her rubber gloves.\n With her back to Marcia, she said, \"I'll have to tell the captain, you\n know.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I'd rather ... tell him myself.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" said Miss Eagen flatly. Marcia felt as if she'd been slapped.\n Miss Eagen dried her hands and crossed to an intercom. \"Eagen to\n Captain.\"\n\n\n \"McHenry here.\"\n\n\n \"Captain McHenry, could you come back to the hospital right away?\"\n\n\n \"Not right away, Sue.\"\nSue! No wonder he had found it so easy to walk\n out!\nShe looked at the trim girl with hating eyes. The intercom said,\n \"You know I've got course-correction computations from here to yonder.\n Give me another forty minutes.\"", "\"Because,\" said Miss Eagen, and in that moment she looked almost as\n drawn as Jack had, \"I'm supposed to be of service to the passengers at\n all times no matter what. If I have feelings at all, part of my job is\n to keep them to myself.\"\n\n\n \"Very courteous, I'm sure. However, I want to release you from your\n sense of duty. I'm\nmost\ninterested in what you have to say.\"", "Miss Eagen was standing by the hospital door, watching her. When Marcia\n turned away without speaking to Jack, Miss Eagen smiled and held out\n her hand.\n\n\n Marcia went to her and took the hand. They went into the hospital. Miss\n Eagen didn't speak; she seemed to be waiting.\n\n\n \"Yes, I know who Jack's spinning the ship for,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n Miss Eagen looked an unspoken question.\n\n\n Marcia said, painfully, \"He's like the Captain of the\nElsinore\n. He's\n risking his life for a—a stranger. A jaywalker. Not for me. Not even\n for his baby.\"\n\n\n \"Does it hurt to know that?\"\n\n\n Marcia looked into the smooth, strong face and said with genuine\n astonishment, \"Hurt? Oh, no! It's so—so big!\"", "There was a stiff silence. Marcia looked up at Miss Eagen. \"It's true,\n you know,\" she said. \"A man grows to love the things he has to defend,\n no matter how he felt about them before.\"\n\n\n The stewardess looked at her, her face registering a strange mixture of\n detachment and wonder. \"You really believe that, don't you?\"\n\n\n Marcia's patience, snapped. \"You don't have to look so superior. I know\n what's bothering\nyou\n. Well, he's\nmy\nhusband, and don't you forget\n it.\"\nMiss Eagen's breath hissed in. Her eyes grew bright and she shook her\n head slightly. Then she turned on her heel and went to the intercom.\n Marcia thought for a frightened moment that she was going to call Jack\n back again. Instead she dialed and said, \"Hospital to Maintenance.\n Petrucelli?\"\n\n\n \"Petrucelli here.\"", "Sue Eagen was there, too, and the thing she shared with Jack. Of course\n there was something between them—so big a thing that there was\n nothing for her to fear in it.\n\n\n Jack and Sue Eagen had always had it, and always would have; and now\n Marcia had it too. And with understanding replacing fear, Marcia was\n free to recall that Jack had worked with Sue Eagen—but it was Marcia\n that he had loved and married.\nThere was a long time of blackness, and then a time of agony, when\n she was falling, falling, and her lungs wanted to split, explode,\n disintegrate, and someone kept saying, \"Hold tight, Marcia; hold tight\n to me,\" and she found Sue Eagen's cool strong hands in hers.\nMarcia. She called me Marcia.\nMore blackness, more pain—but not so much this time; and then a long,\n deep sleep.", "Marcia forced herself away from the bulkhead with a small whimper of\n hurt and hatred—hatred of the stars, of this knowledgeable, inspired\n girl, and—even more so—of herself. She darted toward the door.\n\n\n Miss Eagen was beside her in an instant, a hard small hand on her arm.\n \"Where are you going?\"\n\n\n \"I'm going to stop him. He can't take that chance with his ship, with\n these people....\"\n\n\n \"He will and he must. You surely know your husband.\"\n\n\n \"I know him as well as you do.\"\nMiss Eagen's firm lips shut in a thin hard line. \"Do as you like,\" she\n whispered. \"And while you're doing it—think about whom he's spinning\n ship for.\" She took her hand from Marcia's arm.\n\n\n Marcia twisted away and went into the corridor.", "\"You\nare\n? You—we—\" He turned to Miss Eagen, who nodded once, her\n face wooden. \"Just find it out?\"\n\n\n This time Miss Eagen didn't react at all, and Marcia knew that she had\n to speak up. \"No, Jack. I knew weeks ago.\"\n\n\n There was no describable change in his face, but the taut skin of his\n space-tanned cheek seemed, somehow, to draw inward. His eyebrow ridges\n seemed to be more prominent, and he looked older, and very tired.\n Softly and slowly he asked, \"What in God's name made you get on the\n ship?\"\n\n\n \"I had to, Jack. I had to.\"\n\n\n \"Had to kill yourself?\" he demanded brutally. \"This tears it. This ties\n it up in a box with a bloody ribbon-bow. I suppose you know what this\n means—what I've got to do now?\"", "\"But what?\" Miss Eagen's composure seemed to have been blasted to\n shreds by the powerful currents of her indignation. Her eyes flashed.\n \"You mean, but why doesn't he just work the ship while it's spinning\n the same way he does when it isn't?\"\n\n\n Through a growing fear, Marcia nodded mutely.", "\"Come up with a crescent wrench, will you, Pet?\"\n\n\n Another stiff silence. A question curled into Marcia's mind and she\n asked it. \"Do you work on all these ships at one time or another?\"\n\n\n Miss Eagen did not beat around the bush. \"I've been with Captain\n McHenry for three years. I hope to work with him always. I think he's\n the finest in the Service.\"\n\n\n \"He—th-thinks as well of you, no doubt.\"\n\n\n Petrucelli lounged in, a big man, easy-going, powerful. \"What's busted,\n muscles?\"\n\n\n \"Bolt the bed to the bulkhead, Pet. Mrs. McHenry—I'm sorry, but you'll\n have to get up.\"", "After he'd gone—for good, he said—her anger had sustained her for a\n few weeks. Then, bleakly, she knew she'd go to the ends of Earth for\n Jack. Or even to the Moon....\nSitting rigid in the tense stillness of a rocket ship that was about\n to leap from Earth, Marcia started as an officer ducked his head into\n the passenger compartment from the pilot room's deep glow. But it\n wasn't Jack. The officer's lips moved hurriedly as he counted over the\n seats. He ducked back out of sight. From the bulk-heads, the overhead,\n everywhere, came a deep, quiet rumble. Some of the passengers looked\n anxious, some excited, and some just leafed casually through magazines.\n\n\n Now the brown-clad Miss Eagen was speaking from the head of the aisle.", "\"Blun—Marcia, you really don't realize what that skipper did was the\n finest piece of shiphandling since mankind got off the ground.\"\n\n\n \"Was it?\" she'd yawned. \"Could you do it?\"\n\n\n \"I—like to think I could,\" he said. \"I'd hate to have to try.\"\n\n\n She'd shrugged. \"Then it can't be very difficult, darling.\"\n\n\n She hadn't meant to be so cruel. Or so stupid. But when they were\n quarreling, or when he talked that repugnant, dedicated, other-world\n garble, something always went cold and furious and—lonely inside her,\n and made her fight back unfairly.", "There was a sudden thunder. Over Miss Eagen's shoulder, through the\n port, Marcia saw the stars begin to move. Miss Eagen followed her gaze.\n \"He's started the spin. You'll be all right now.\"\nMarcia could never recall the rest of the details of the trip. There\n was the outboard bulkhead that drew her like a magnet, increasingly,\n until suddenly it wasn't an attracting wall, but normally and naturally\n \"down.\" Then a needle, and another one, and a long period of deep\n drowsiness and unreality.\n\n\n But through and through that drugged, relaxed period, Jack and the\n stars, the Moon and Sue Eagen danced and wove. Words slipped in and out\n of it like shreds of melody:\n\n\n \"A man comes to love the things he has to fight for.\" And Jack\n fighting—for his ship, for the Moon, for the new-building traditions\n of the great ones who would carry humanity out to the stars.", "Marcia lay down gratefully. She closed her eyes tightly and said, \"I'm\n not Mrs. Foster. It doesn't hurt.\"\n\n\n \"You're not—\" Miss Eagen apparently decided to take one thing at a\n time. \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\n \"Scared,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n \"Why, what—is there to be scared of?\"\n\n\n \"I'm pregnant.\"\n\n\n \"Well, that's no—You're\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'm Mrs. McHenry. I'm Jack's wife.\"\n\n\n There was such a long pause that Marcia opened her eyes. Miss Eagen was\n looking at her levelly. She said, \"I'll have to examine you.\"\n\n\n \"I know. Go ahead.\"", "outside again and the sky was no longer deep blue, but black. She\n pressed herself up out of the soft chair—it was difficult, because of\n the one-and-a-half gravities the ship was holding—and plodded heavily\n up the aisle. Miss Eagen was just rising from the chair in which she\n sat for the take-off.", "Miss Eagen's arched nostrils seemed pinched and white. \"You really want\n me to speak my piece?\"\nIn answer Marcia leaned back against the bulkhead and folded her arms.\n Miss Eagen gazed at her for a moment, nodded as if to herself, and\n said, \"I suppose there always will be people who don't pay attention\n to the rules. Jaywalkers. But out here jaywalkers don't have as much\n margin for error as they do crossing against a traffic light on Earth.\"\n She looked Marcia straight in the eye. \"What makes a jaywalker isn't\n ignorance. It's a combination of stupidity and stubbornness. The\n jaywalker does\nknow\nbetter. In your case....\"", "It was snatched away—the buildings, the trees, the roads surrounding\n the field seemed to pour in upon it, shrinking as they ran together.\n Roads dried up like parched rivers, thinning and vanishing into the\n circle of her horrified vision. A great, soft, uniform weight pressed\n her down and back; she fought it, but it was too big and too soft.\n\n\n Now Earth's surface was vague and Sun-splashed. Marcia's sense of loss\n tore at her. She put up her hands, heavily, and pressed the glass as\n if she could push it out, push herself out, go back, back to Earth\n and solidity. Clouds shot by like bullets, fell away until they were\n snowflakes roiling in violet haze. Then, in the purling universe that\n had grown around the ship, Earth was a mystic circle, a shallow dish\n floating darkly and heavily below.\n\n\n \"We are now,\" said Miss Eagen's calm voice, \"thirty-seven miles over\n Los Angeles.\"", "Marcia bounced resentfully off the cot and stood aside. Petrucelli\n looked at her, cocked an eyebrow, looked at Miss Eagen, and asked,\n \"Jaywalker?\"\n\n\n \"Please hurry, Pet.\" She turned to Marcia. \"I've got to explain to the\n passengers that there won't be any free fall. Most of them are looking\n forward to it.\" She went out.\n\n\n Marcia watched the big man work for a moment. \"Why are you putting the\n bed on the wall?\"\n\n\n He looked at her and away, quickly. \"Because, lady, when we start to\n spin, that outside bulkhead is going to be\ndown\n. Centrifugal force,\n see?\" And before she could answer him he added, \"I can't talk and work\n at the same time.\"", "Miss Eagen (which, her neat lapel button attested, was her name) made\n a penciled frown as lovely as her machined smile. \"Some day,\" she told\n Marcia, \"we won't have to ask the passengers if they're well. It's so\n easy to come aboard on someone else's validation, and people don't seem\n to realize how dangerous that is.\"\n\n\n As Miss Eagen moved to the next seat, Marcia shrank into a small\n huddle, fumbling with the card until it was crammed shapeless into her\n purse. Then from the depths of her guilt came rebellion. It was going\n to be all right. She was doing the biggest thing she'd ever done, and\n Jack would rise to the occasion, and it would be all right.\n\n\n It\nhad\nto be all right....", "\"I think,\" said Sue Eagen into the mike, \"that the computations can\n wait.\"\n\n\n \"The hell you do!\" The red contact light on the intercom went out.\n\n\n \"He'll be right here,\" said Miss Eagen.\nMarcia sat up slowly, clumsily. Miss Eagen did not offer to help.\n Marcia's hands strayed to her hair, patted it futilely.\n\n\n He came in, moving fast and purposefully, as always. \"Sue, what in time\n do you think you—\nMarcia!\n\" His dark face broke into a delighted grin\n and he put his arms out. \"You—you're here—\nhere\n, on my ship!\"\n\n\n \"I'm pregnant, Jack,\" she said. She put out a hand to ward him off. She\n couldn't bear the thought of his realizing what she had done while he\n had his arms around her." ], [ "\"Blun—Marcia, you really don't realize what that skipper did was the\n finest piece of shiphandling since mankind got off the ground.\"\n\n\n \"Was it?\" she'd yawned. \"Could you do it?\"\n\n\n \"I—like to think I could,\" he said. \"I'd hate to have to try.\"\n\n\n She'd shrugged. \"Then it can't be very difficult, darling.\"\n\n\n She hadn't meant to be so cruel. Or so stupid. But when they were\n quarreling, or when he talked that repugnant, dedicated, other-world\n garble, something always went cold and furious and—lonely inside her,\n and made her fight back unfairly.", "Feeling very much put-upon, Marcia waited silently until he was\n finished, and the bed hung ludicrously to the wall like a walking fly.\n She thanked him timidly, and he ignored it and went out.\n\n\n Miss Eagen returned.\n\n\n \"That man was very rude,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n Miss Eagen looked at her coolly. \"I'm sorry,\" she said, obviously not\n meaning sorry at all.\n\n\n Marcia wet her lips. \"I asked you a question before,\" she said evenly.\n \"About you and the captain.\"\n\n\n \"You did,\" said Sue Eagen. \"Please don't.\"\n\n\n \"And why not?\"", "Miss Eagen was standing by the hospital door, watching her. When Marcia\n turned away without speaking to Jack, Miss Eagen smiled and held out\n her hand.\n\n\n Marcia went to her and took the hand. They went into the hospital. Miss\n Eagen didn't speak; she seemed to be waiting.\n\n\n \"Yes, I know who Jack's spinning the ship for,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n Miss Eagen looked an unspoken question.\n\n\n Marcia said, painfully, \"He's like the Captain of the\nElsinore\n. He's\n risking his life for a—a stranger. A jaywalker. Not for me. Not even\n for his baby.\"\n\n\n \"Does it hurt to know that?\"\n\n\n Marcia looked into the smooth, strong face and said with genuine\n astonishment, \"Hurt? Oh, no! It's so—so big!\"", "Miss Eagen did, swiftly and thoroughly. \"You're so right,\" she\n breathed. She went to the small sink, stripping off her rubber gloves.\n With her back to Marcia, she said, \"I'll have to tell the captain, you\n know.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I'd rather ... tell him myself.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" said Miss Eagen flatly. Marcia felt as if she'd been slapped.\n Miss Eagen dried her hands and crossed to an intercom. \"Eagen to\n Captain.\"\n\n\n \"McHenry here.\"\n\n\n \"Captain McHenry, could you come back to the hospital right away?\"\n\n\n \"Not right away, Sue.\"\nSue! No wonder he had found it so easy to walk\n out!\nShe looked at the trim girl with hating eyes. The intercom said,\n \"You know I've got course-correction computations from here to yonder.\n Give me another forty minutes.\"", "\"Come up with a crescent wrench, will you, Pet?\"\n\n\n Another stiff silence. A question curled into Marcia's mind and she\n asked it. \"Do you work on all these ships at one time or another?\"\n\n\n Miss Eagen did not beat around the bush. \"I've been with Captain\n McHenry for three years. I hope to work with him always. I think he's\n the finest in the Service.\"\n\n\n \"He—th-thinks as well of you, no doubt.\"\n\n\n Petrucelli lounged in, a big man, easy-going, powerful. \"What's busted,\n muscles?\"\n\n\n \"Bolt the bed to the bulkhead, Pet. Mrs. McHenry—I'm sorry, but you'll\n have to get up.\"", "There was a stiff silence. Marcia looked up at Miss Eagen. \"It's true,\n you know,\" she said. \"A man grows to love the things he has to defend,\n no matter how he felt about them before.\"\n\n\n The stewardess looked at her, her face registering a strange mixture of\n detachment and wonder. \"You really believe that, don't you?\"\n\n\n Marcia's patience, snapped. \"You don't have to look so superior. I know\n what's bothering\nyou\n. Well, he's\nmy\nhusband, and don't you forget\n it.\"\nMiss Eagen's breath hissed in. Her eyes grew bright and she shook her\n head slightly. Then she turned on her heel and went to the intercom.\n Marcia thought for a frightened moment that she was going to call Jack\n back again. Instead she dialed and said, \"Hospital to Maintenance.\n Petrucelli?\"\n\n\n \"Petrucelli here.\"", "Even now she distinctly recalled the beginnings of the interplanetary\n cold that always seeped into the warm house when he talked about space,\n when he was about to leave her for it. And this time it was worse than\n ever before.\n\n\n He went on remorselessly, \"Once the\nElsinore\nreached the free-fall\n flight, where power could be shut off, the skipper had to put the\n ferry into an axial spin under power, creating artificial gravity\n to save the worthless life of that fool. So of course he lost his\n trajectory, and had to warp her in as best he could, without passing\n the Moon or crashing into it. And of course you're not listening.\"\n\n\n \"It's all so dull!\" she had flared, and then, \"How can I be interested\n in what some blundering space-jockey did?\"", "\"Don't\nhave\nto?\" He rose, bent over her, and slid his arms around\n her. He put his face into the shadowed warmth between her hair and her\n neck and said, \"Listen, egghead, there's no absolute scale for courage.\n We had a bad time, both of us. After it was over, and I had a chance\n to think, I used it trying to look at things through your eyes. And\n that way I found out that when you walked up that gangway, you did the\n bravest thing I've ever known anyone to do. And you did it for me. It\n doesn't matter what else happened. Sue told me a lot about you that I\n didn't know, darling. You're ... real huge for your size. As for the\n bad part of what happened—nothing like it can ever happen again, can\n it?\"", "Marcia forced herself away from the bulkhead with a small whimper of\n hurt and hatred—hatred of the stars, of this knowledgeable, inspired\n girl, and—even more so—of herself. She darted toward the door.\n\n\n Miss Eagen was beside her in an instant, a hard small hand on her arm.\n \"Where are you going?\"\n\n\n \"I'm going to stop him. He can't take that chance with his ship, with\n these people....\"\n\n\n \"He will and he must. You surely know your husband.\"\n\n\n \"I know him as well as you do.\"\nMiss Eagen's firm lips shut in a thin hard line. \"Do as you like,\" she\n whispered. \"And while you're doing it—think about whom he's spinning\n ship for.\" She took her hand from Marcia's arm.\n\n\n Marcia twisted away and went into the corridor.", "\"Spin ship,\" she replied immediately, and looked up at him pertly, like\n a kindergarten child who knows she has the right answer.\n\n\n He groaned.\n\n\n \"You said you could do it.\"\n\n\n \"I can ... try,\" he said hollowly. \"But—why,\nwhy\n?\"\n\n\n \"Because,\" she said bleakly, \"I learned long ago that a man grows to\n love what he has to fight for.\"\n\n\n \"And you were going to make me fight for you and the child—even if the\n lives of a hundred and seventy people were involved?\"\n\n\n \"You said you could handle it. I thought you could.\"\n\n\n \"I'll try,\" he said wearily. \"Oh, I'll try.\" He went out, dragging his\n feet, his shoulders down, without looking at her.", "of her nails, the azure (so she had been told) of Earth seen from\n interplanetary space, grew hot. She closed them, and for a moment\n gave herself up to an almost physical yearning for the Toluca Lake\n house—the comfort, the safety, the—the\nsanity\nof it.\nStubbornly she forced herself back to reality. At any moment Jack,\n dark-eyed and scrappy, might come swinging down the long, shining\n aisle. Jack—Captain Jack McHenry, if you please—must not know, yet,\n what she was doing to patch up their marriage.", "\"Because,\" said Miss Eagen, and in that moment she looked almost as\n drawn as Jack had, \"I'm supposed to be of service to the passengers at\n all times no matter what. If I have feelings at all, part of my job is\n to keep them to myself.\"\n\n\n \"Very courteous, I'm sure. However, I want to release you from your\n sense of duty. I'm\nmost\ninterested in what you have to say.\"", "She found herself at the entrance to the pilot room. In one sweeping\n glance she saw a curved, silver board. Before it a man sat tranquilly.\n Nearer to her was Jack, hunched over the keyboard of a complex, compact\n machine, like a harried bookkeeper on the last day of the month.\n\n\n Her lips formed his name, but she was silent. She watched him, his\n square, competent hands, his detached and distant face. Through the\n forward view-plate she saw a harsh, jagged line, the very edge of the\n Moon's disc. Next to it, and below, was the rear viewer, holding the\n shimmering azure shape of Earth.\n\n\n \"\nAll Earth watches me when I work, but with your eyes.\n\"\n\n\n Jack had said that to her once, long ago, when he still loved her.\n\n\n \"... human damnfoolishness botching up the equations....\" He had said\n that once, too.", "After he'd gone—for good, he said—her anger had sustained her for a\n few weeks. Then, bleakly, she knew she'd go to the ends of Earth for\n Jack. Or even to the Moon....\nSitting rigid in the tense stillness of a rocket ship that was about\n to leap from Earth, Marcia started as an officer ducked his head into\n the passenger compartment from the pilot room's deep glow. But it\n wasn't Jack. The officer's lips moved hurriedly as he counted over the\n seats. He ducked back out of sight. From the bulk-heads, the overhead,\n everywhere, came a deep, quiet rumble. Some of the passengers looked\n anxious, some excited, and some just leafed casually through magazines.\n\n\n Now the brown-clad Miss Eagen was speaking from the head of the aisle.", "He'll come up on the Moon obliquely, pass it, stop the spin, turn over\n once to check the speed of the ship, and once again to put the tail\n down when the Moon's gravity begins to draw us in. There'll be two\n short periods of free-fall there, but they won't be long enough to\n bother you much. And if we can do all that with the fuel we've got, it\n will be a miracle. A miracle from the brain of Captain McHenry.\"", "After this—if this didn't work—there just would be nothing else she\n could do. She wasn't a scheming woman. No one would ever know how\n difficult it had been for her to think up the whole plan, to find\n Nellie Foster (someone Jack had never met) and to persuade Nellie to\n register for the trip and take the physical for her. She'd had to lie\n to Nellie, to make Nellie think she was brave and adventurous, and that\n she was just doing it to surprise Jack.\n\n\n Oh, he'd be surprised, all right.", "pseudo-widowhoods. Space-widowhood, for instance....\nAt last she was on the gangplank, entering the mouth of the\n spaceship—and nothing could ever stop her now. Not unless she broke\n down completely in front of all these hurrying, Moon-bound passengers,\n in plain sight of the scattered crowd which clustered on the other\n side of the space-field barriers. Even that possibility was denied her\n when two gently insistent middle-aged ladies indicated she was blocking\n the way....\nSomehow, dizzily, she was at her seat, led there by a smiling,\n brown-clad stewardess; and her azure-tipped fingers were clutching at\n the pearl-gray plasta-leather of the chair arm. Her eyes, the azure", "\"But what?\" Miss Eagen's composure seemed to have been blasted to\n shreds by the powerful currents of her indignation. Her eyes flashed.\n \"You mean, but why doesn't he just work the ship while it's spinning\n the same way he does when it isn't?\"\n\n\n Through a growing fear, Marcia nodded mutely.", "Marcia lay down gratefully. She closed her eyes tightly and said, \"I'm\n not Mrs. Foster. It doesn't hurt.\"\n\n\n \"You're not—\" Miss Eagen apparently decided to take one thing at a\n time. \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\n \"Scared,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n \"Why, what—is there to be scared of?\"\n\n\n \"I'm pregnant.\"\n\n\n \"Well, that's no—You're\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'm Mrs. McHenry. I'm Jack's wife.\"\n\n\n There was such a long pause that Marcia opened her eyes. Miss Eagen was\n looking at her levelly. She said, \"I'll have to examine you.\"\n\n\n \"I know. Go ahead.\"", "Sue Eagen was there, too, and the thing she shared with Jack. Of course\n there was something between them—so big a thing that there was\n nothing for her to fear in it.\n\n\n Jack and Sue Eagen had always had it, and always would have; and now\n Marcia had it too. And with understanding replacing fear, Marcia was\n free to recall that Jack had worked with Sue Eagen—but it was Marcia\n that he had loved and married.\nThere was a long time of blackness, and then a time of agony, when\n she was falling, falling, and her lungs wanted to split, explode,\n disintegrate, and someone kept saying, \"Hold tight, Marcia; hold tight\n to me,\" and she found Sue Eagen's cool strong hands in hers.\nMarcia. She called me Marcia.\nMore blackness, more pain—but not so much this time; and then a long,\n deep sleep." ], [ "Sue Eagen was there, too, and the thing she shared with Jack. Of course\n there was something between them—so big a thing that there was\n nothing for her to fear in it.\n\n\n Jack and Sue Eagen had always had it, and always would have; and now\n Marcia had it too. And with understanding replacing fear, Marcia was\n free to recall that Jack had worked with Sue Eagen—but it was Marcia\n that he had loved and married.\nThere was a long time of blackness, and then a time of agony, when\n she was falling, falling, and her lungs wanted to split, explode,\n disintegrate, and someone kept saying, \"Hold tight, Marcia; hold tight\n to me,\" and she found Sue Eagen's cool strong hands in hers.\nMarcia. She called me Marcia.\nMore blackness, more pain—but not so much this time; and then a long,\n deep sleep.", "There was a stiff silence. Marcia looked up at Miss Eagen. \"It's true,\n you know,\" she said. \"A man grows to love the things he has to defend,\n no matter how he felt about them before.\"\n\n\n The stewardess looked at her, her face registering a strange mixture of\n detachment and wonder. \"You really believe that, don't you?\"\n\n\n Marcia's patience, snapped. \"You don't have to look so superior. I know\n what's bothering\nyou\n. Well, he's\nmy\nhusband, and don't you forget\n it.\"\nMiss Eagen's breath hissed in. Her eyes grew bright and she shook her\n head slightly. Then she turned on her heel and went to the intercom.\n Marcia thought for a frightened moment that she was going to call Jack\n back again. Instead she dialed and said, \"Hospital to Maintenance.\n Petrucelli?\"\n\n\n \"Petrucelli here.\"", "Miss Eagen was standing by the hospital door, watching her. When Marcia\n turned away without speaking to Jack, Miss Eagen smiled and held out\n her hand.\n\n\n Marcia went to her and took the hand. They went into the hospital. Miss\n Eagen didn't speak; she seemed to be waiting.\n\n\n \"Yes, I know who Jack's spinning the ship for,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n Miss Eagen looked an unspoken question.\n\n\n Marcia said, painfully, \"He's like the Captain of the\nElsinore\n. He's\n risking his life for a—a stranger. A jaywalker. Not for me. Not even\n for his baby.\"\n\n\n \"Does it hurt to know that?\"\n\n\n Marcia looked into the smooth, strong face and said with genuine\n astonishment, \"Hurt? Oh, no! It's so—so big!\"", "Marcia lay down gratefully. She closed her eyes tightly and said, \"I'm\n not Mrs. Foster. It doesn't hurt.\"\n\n\n \"You're not—\" Miss Eagen apparently decided to take one thing at a\n time. \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\n \"Scared,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n \"Why, what—is there to be scared of?\"\n\n\n \"I'm pregnant.\"\n\n\n \"Well, that's no—You're\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'm Mrs. McHenry. I'm Jack's wife.\"\n\n\n There was such a long pause that Marcia opened her eyes. Miss Eagen was\n looking at her levelly. She said, \"I'll have to examine you.\"\n\n\n \"I know. Go ahead.\"", "After he'd gone—for good, he said—her anger had sustained her for a\n few weeks. Then, bleakly, she knew she'd go to the ends of Earth for\n Jack. Or even to the Moon....\nSitting rigid in the tense stillness of a rocket ship that was about\n to leap from Earth, Marcia started as an officer ducked his head into\n the passenger compartment from the pilot room's deep glow. But it\n wasn't Jack. The officer's lips moved hurriedly as he counted over the\n seats. He ducked back out of sight. From the bulk-heads, the overhead,\n everywhere, came a deep, quiet rumble. Some of the passengers looked\n anxious, some excited, and some just leafed casually through magazines.\n\n\n Now the brown-clad Miss Eagen was speaking from the head of the aisle.", "of her nails, the azure (so she had been told) of Earth seen from\n interplanetary space, grew hot. She closed them, and for a moment\n gave herself up to an almost physical yearning for the Toluca Lake\n house—the comfort, the safety, the—the\nsanity\nof it.\nStubbornly she forced herself back to reality. At any moment Jack,\n dark-eyed and scrappy, might come swinging down the long, shining\n aisle. Jack—Captain Jack McHenry, if you please—must not know, yet,\n what she was doing to patch up their marriage.", "\"Blun—Marcia, you really don't realize what that skipper did was the\n finest piece of shiphandling since mankind got off the ground.\"\n\n\n \"Was it?\" she'd yawned. \"Could you do it?\"\n\n\n \"I—like to think I could,\" he said. \"I'd hate to have to try.\"\n\n\n She'd shrugged. \"Then it can't be very difficult, darling.\"\n\n\n She hadn't meant to be so cruel. Or so stupid. But when they were\n quarreling, or when he talked that repugnant, dedicated, other-world\n garble, something always went cold and furious and—lonely inside her,\n and made her fight back unfairly.", "Feeling very much put-upon, Marcia waited silently until he was\n finished, and the bed hung ludicrously to the wall like a walking fly.\n She thanked him timidly, and he ignored it and went out.\n\n\n Miss Eagen returned.\n\n\n \"That man was very rude,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n Miss Eagen looked at her coolly. \"I'm sorry,\" she said, obviously not\n meaning sorry at all.\n\n\n Marcia wet her lips. \"I asked you a question before,\" she said evenly.\n \"About you and the captain.\"\n\n\n \"You did,\" said Sue Eagen. \"Please don't.\"\n\n\n \"And why not?\"", "\"Because,\" said Miss Eagen, and in that moment she looked almost as\n drawn as Jack had, \"I'm supposed to be of service to the passengers at\n all times no matter what. If I have feelings at all, part of my job is\n to keep them to myself.\"\n\n\n \"Very courteous, I'm sure. However, I want to release you from your\n sense of duty. I'm\nmost\ninterested in what you have to say.\"", "\"You\nare\n? You—we—\" He turned to Miss Eagen, who nodded once, her\n face wooden. \"Just find it out?\"\n\n\n This time Miss Eagen didn't react at all, and Marcia knew that she had\n to speak up. \"No, Jack. I knew weeks ago.\"\n\n\n There was no describable change in his face, but the taut skin of his\n space-tanned cheek seemed, somehow, to draw inward. His eyebrow ridges\n seemed to be more prominent, and he looked older, and very tired.\n Softly and slowly he asked, \"What in God's name made you get on the\n ship?\"\n\n\n \"I had to, Jack. I had to.\"\n\n\n \"Had to kill yourself?\" he demanded brutally. \"This tears it. This ties\n it up in a box with a bloody ribbon-bow. I suppose you know what this\n means—what I've got to do now?\"", "After this—if this didn't work—there just would be nothing else she\n could do. She wasn't a scheming woman. No one would ever know how\n difficult it had been for her to think up the whole plan, to find\n Nellie Foster (someone Jack had never met) and to persuade Nellie to\n register for the trip and take the physical for her. She'd had to lie\n to Nellie, to make Nellie think she was brave and adventurous, and that\n she was just doing it to surprise Jack.\n\n\n Oh, he'd be surprised, all right.", "She found herself at the entrance to the pilot room. In one sweeping\n glance she saw a curved, silver board. Before it a man sat tranquilly.\n Nearer to her was Jack, hunched over the keyboard of a complex, compact\n machine, like a harried bookkeeper on the last day of the month.\n\n\n Her lips formed his name, but she was silent. She watched him, his\n square, competent hands, his detached and distant face. Through the\n forward view-plate she saw a harsh, jagged line, the very edge of the\n Moon's disc. Next to it, and below, was the rear viewer, holding the\n shimmering azure shape of Earth.\n\n\n \"\nAll Earth watches me when I work, but with your eyes.\n\"\n\n\n Jack had said that to her once, long ago, when he still loved her.\n\n\n \"... human damnfoolishness botching up the equations....\" He had said\n that once, too.", "Even now she distinctly recalled the beginnings of the interplanetary\n cold that always seeped into the warm house when he talked about space,\n when he was about to leave her for it. And this time it was worse than\n ever before.\n\n\n He went on remorselessly, \"Once the\nElsinore\nreached the free-fall\n flight, where power could be shut off, the skipper had to put the\n ferry into an axial spin under power, creating artificial gravity\n to save the worthless life of that fool. So of course he lost his\n trajectory, and had to warp her in as best he could, without passing\n the Moon or crashing into it. And of course you're not listening.\"\n\n\n \"It's all so dull!\" she had flared, and then, \"How can I be interested\n in what some blundering space-jockey did?\"", "A curved ceiling, but a new curve, and soft rose instead of the\n gunmetal-and-chrome of the ship. White sheets, a new feeling of \"down\"\n that was unlike either Earth or the ship, a novel and exhilarating\n buoyancy. And kneeling by the bed—\n\n\n \"Jack!\"\n\n\n \"You're all right, honey.\"\n\n\n She raised herself on her elbow and looked out through the unglazed\n window at the ordered streets of the great Luna Dome. \"The Moon....\n Jack, you did it!\"\n\n\n He snapped his fingers. He looked like a high-school kid. \"Nothin' to\n it.\" She could see he was very proud. Very tired, too. He reached out\n to touch her.\n\n\n She drew back. \"You don't have to be sweet to me,\" she said quietly. \"I\n understand how you must feel.\"", "There was a sudden thunder. Over Miss Eagen's shoulder, through the\n port, Marcia saw the stars begin to move. Miss Eagen followed her gaze.\n \"He's started the spin. You'll be all right now.\"\nMarcia could never recall the rest of the details of the trip. There\n was the outboard bulkhead that drew her like a magnet, increasingly,\n until suddenly it wasn't an attracting wall, but normally and naturally\n \"down.\" Then a needle, and another one, and a long period of deep\n drowsiness and unreality.\n\n\n But through and through that drugged, relaxed period, Jack and the\n stars, the Moon and Sue Eagen danced and wove. Words slipped in and out\n of it like shreds of melody:\n\n\n \"A man comes to love the things he has to fight for.\" And Jack\n fighting—for his ship, for the Moon, for the new-building traditions\n of the great ones who would carry humanity out to the stars.", "The flash walls on the field were being raised to keep the blow-by from\n the ship's jets from searing the administration building and the area\n beyond. Marcia realized with crushing suddenness that the ship was\n about to blast off in seconds. She half-rose, then sank back, biting\n her lip. Silly ... Jack had said that—her fear of space was silly.\n He'd said it during the quarrel, and he'd roared at her, \"And that's\n why you want me to come back—ground myself, be an Earth-lubber—so I\n can spare you the anguish of sitting home wondering if I'll come back\n alive!\"\nAnd then he'd been sorry he'd shouted, and he sat by her, taking her", "\"Come up with a crescent wrench, will you, Pet?\"\n\n\n Another stiff silence. A question curled into Marcia's mind and she\n asked it. \"Do you work on all these ships at one time or another?\"\n\n\n Miss Eagen did not beat around the bush. \"I've been with Captain\n McHenry for three years. I hope to work with him always. I think he's\n the finest in the Service.\"\n\n\n \"He—th-thinks as well of you, no doubt.\"\n\n\n Petrucelli lounged in, a big man, easy-going, powerful. \"What's busted,\n muscles?\"\n\n\n \"Bolt the bed to the bulkhead, Pet. Mrs. McHenry—I'm sorry, but you'll\n have to get up.\"", "\"Don't\nhave\nto?\" He rose, bent over her, and slid his arms around\n her. He put his face into the shadowed warmth between her hair and her\n neck and said, \"Listen, egghead, there's no absolute scale for courage.\n We had a bad time, both of us. After it was over, and I had a chance\n to think, I used it trying to look at things through your eyes. And\n that way I found out that when you walked up that gangway, you did the\n bravest thing I've ever known anyone to do. And you did it for me. It\n doesn't matter what else happened. Sue told me a lot about you that I\n didn't know, darling. You're ... real huge for your size. As for the\n bad part of what happened—nothing like it can ever happen again, can\n it?\"", "Miss Eagen (which, her neat lapel button attested, was her name) made\n a penciled frown as lovely as her machined smile. \"Some day,\" she told\n Marcia, \"we won't have to ask the passengers if they're well. It's so\n easy to come aboard on someone else's validation, and people don't seem\n to realize how dangerous that is.\"\n\n\n As Miss Eagen moved to the next seat, Marcia shrank into a small\n huddle, fumbling with the card until it was crammed shapeless into her\n purse. Then from the depths of her guilt came rebellion. It was going\n to be all right. She was doing the biggest thing she'd ever done, and\n Jack would rise to the occasion, and it would be all right.\n\n\n It\nhad\nto be all right....", "\"Spin ship,\" she replied immediately, and looked up at him pertly, like\n a kindergarten child who knows she has the right answer.\n\n\n He groaned.\n\n\n \"You said you could do it.\"\n\n\n \"I can ... try,\" he said hollowly. \"But—why,\nwhy\n?\"\n\n\n \"Because,\" she said bleakly, \"I learned long ago that a man grows to\n love what he has to fight for.\"\n\n\n \"And you were going to make me fight for you and the child—even if the\n lives of a hundred and seventy people were involved?\"\n\n\n \"You said you could handle it. I thought you could.\"\n\n\n \"I'll try,\" he said wearily. \"Oh, I'll try.\" He went out, dragging his\n feet, his shoulders down, without looking at her." ], [ "Marcia McHenry stiffened. Had she read the sign aloud? She turned\n startled eyes up to the smiling stewardess, who was holding out a\n well-groomed hand. Marcia responded weakly to the smile, overcame a\n sudden urge to blurt out that she had no validation—not her own,\n anyway. But her stiff fingers were already holding out the pink card\n with Nellie Foster's name on it.\n\n\n \"You're feeling well, Mrs. Foster?\"\nFeeling well? Yes, of course. Except for the—usual sickness. But\n that's so very normal\n.... Her numb lips moved. \"I'm fine,\" she said.", "\"Because,\" said Miss Eagen, and in that moment she looked almost as\n drawn as Jack had, \"I'm supposed to be of service to the passengers at\n all times no matter what. If I have feelings at all, part of my job is\n to keep them to myself.\"\n\n\n \"Very courteous, I'm sure. However, I want to release you from your\n sense of duty. I'm\nmost\ninterested in what you have to say.\"", "Miss Eagen (which, her neat lapel button attested, was her name) made\n a penciled frown as lovely as her machined smile. \"Some day,\" she told\n Marcia, \"we won't have to ask the passengers if they're well. It's so\n easy to come aboard on someone else's validation, and people don't seem\n to realize how dangerous that is.\"\n\n\n As Miss Eagen moved to the next seat, Marcia shrank into a small\n huddle, fumbling with the card until it was crammed shapeless into her\n purse. Then from the depths of her guilt came rebellion. It was going\n to be all right. She was doing the biggest thing she'd ever done, and\n Jack would rise to the occasion, and it would be all right.\n\n\n It\nhad\nto be all right....", "She turned her face away from the aisle, covered her cheek with her\n hand to hide it. Her gaze went out through the ray-proof glass port to\n the field, to the laboring beetle of a red tractor bearing the gangway\n on its busy back, to the low, blast-proof administration building. When\n her gaze came to the tall sign over the entrance, she hurried it past;\n it was too late to think about that now, the square, shouting type that\n read:\nCAUTION\n\n HAVE YOU PASSED YOUR PHYSICAL EXAMINATION?\nAvoiding It May Cost Your Life!\n\"May I see your validation, please?\"", "There was a stiff silence. Marcia looked up at Miss Eagen. \"It's true,\n you know,\" she said. \"A man grows to love the things he has to defend,\n no matter how he felt about them before.\"\n\n\n The stewardess looked at her, her face registering a strange mixture of\n detachment and wonder. \"You really believe that, don't you?\"\n\n\n Marcia's patience, snapped. \"You don't have to look so superior. I know\n what's bothering\nyou\n. Well, he's\nmy\nhusband, and don't you forget\n it.\"\nMiss Eagen's breath hissed in. Her eyes grew bright and she shook her\n head slightly. Then she turned on her heel and went to the intercom.\n Marcia thought for a frightened moment that she was going to call Jack\n back again. Instead she dialed and said, \"Hospital to Maintenance.\n Petrucelli?\"\n\n\n \"Petrucelli here.\"", "Marcia bounced resentfully off the cot and stood aside. Petrucelli\n looked at her, cocked an eyebrow, looked at Miss Eagen, and asked,\n \"Jaywalker?\"\n\n\n \"Please hurry, Pet.\" She turned to Marcia. \"I've got to explain to the\n passengers that there won't be any free fall. Most of them are looking\n forward to it.\" She went out.\n\n\n Marcia watched the big man work for a moment. \"Why are you putting the\n bed on the wall?\"\n\n\n He looked at her and away, quickly. \"Because, lady, when we start to\n spin, that outside bulkhead is going to be\ndown\n. Centrifugal force,\n see?\" And before she could answer him he added, \"I can't talk and work\n at the same time.\"", "\"Miss Eagen—\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Mrs. Fos—why, what's the matter?\"\n\n\n Seeing the startled expression on the stewardess' face, Marcia realized\n she must be looking like a ghost. She put a hand to her cheek and found\n it clammy.\n\n\n \"Come along,\" said Miss Eagen cheerfully. She put a firm arm around\n Marcia's shoulder. \"Just a touch of space-sickness. This way.\nThat's\nit. We'll have you fixed up in a jiffy.\"\n\n\n \"It isn't s-space sickness,\" said Marcia in a very small and very\n positive voice. She let herself be led forward, through the door and to\n the left, where there was a small and compact ship's hospital.\n\n\n \"Now, now,\" said Miss Eagen briskly, \"just you lie down there, Mrs.\n Foster. Does it hurt any special place?\"", "Feeling very much put-upon, Marcia waited silently until he was\n finished, and the bed hung ludicrously to the wall like a walking fly.\n She thanked him timidly, and he ignored it and went out.\n\n\n Miss Eagen returned.\n\n\n \"That man was very rude,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n Miss Eagen looked at her coolly. \"I'm sorry,\" she said, obviously not\n meaning sorry at all.\n\n\n Marcia wet her lips. \"I asked you a question before,\" she said evenly.\n \"About you and the captain.\"\n\n\n \"You did,\" said Sue Eagen. \"Please don't.\"\n\n\n \"And why not?\"", "\"That's quite a different situation. 'Down' exists when you're\n swimming. Free-fall means that everything around you is 'up.' The\n body's reactions to free-fall go much deeper than space-nausea and a\n mild feeling of panic. When there's a glandular imbalance of certain\n kinds, the results can be drastic. Apparently some instinctual part\n of the mind reacts as if there were a violent emergency, when no\n emergency is recognized by the reasoning part of the mind. There\n are sudden floods of adrenalin; the 17-kesteroids begin spastic\n secretions; the—well, it varies in individuals. But it's pretty well\n established that the results can be fatal. It kills men with prostate\n trouble—sometimes. It kills women in menopause—often. It kills women\n in the early stages of pregnancy—\nalways\n.\"\n\n\n \"But how?\" asked Marcia, interested in spite of her resentment.", "After he'd gone—for good, he said—her anger had sustained her for a\n few weeks. Then, bleakly, she knew she'd go to the ends of Earth for\n Jack. Or even to the Moon....\nSitting rigid in the tense stillness of a rocket ship that was about\n to leap from Earth, Marcia started as an officer ducked his head into\n the passenger compartment from the pilot room's deep glow. But it\n wasn't Jack. The officer's lips moved hurriedly as he counted over the\n seats. He ducked back out of sight. From the bulk-heads, the overhead,\n everywhere, came a deep, quiet rumble. Some of the passengers looked\n anxious, some excited, and some just leafed casually through magazines.\n\n\n Now the brown-clad Miss Eagen was speaking from the head of the aisle.", "outside again and the sky was no longer deep blue, but black. She\n pressed herself up out of the soft chair—it was difficult, because of\n the one-and-a-half gravities the ship was holding—and plodded heavily\n up the aisle. Miss Eagen was just rising from the chair in which she\n sat for the take-off.", "\"Convulsions. A battle royal between a glandular-level panic and a\n violent and useless effort of the will to control the situation.\n Muscles tear, working against one another. Lungs rupture and air\n is forced into the blood-stream, causing embolism and death. Not\n everything is known about it, but I would guess that pregnant women are\n especially susceptible because their protective reflexes, through and\n through, are much more easily stimulated.\"\n\n\n \"And the only thing that can be done about it is to supply gravity?\"\n\n\n \"Or centrifugal force (or centripetal, depending on where you're\n standing, but why be technical?)—or, better yet, keep those people\n off the ships.\"\n\n\n \"So now Jack will spin the ship until I'm pressed against the walls\n with the same force as gravity, and then everything will be all right.\"\n\n\n \"You make it sound so simple.\"", "She sighed. \"It's well known—even by you—that the free-fall condition\n has a weird effect on certain people. The human body is in an\n unprecedented situation in free fall. Biologically it has experienced\n the condition for very short periods—falling out of trees, or on\n delayed parachute jumps. But it isn't constituted to take hour after\n hour of fall.\"\n\n\n \"What about floating in a pool for hours?\" asked Marcia sullenly.", "\"Those of you who haven't been in a rocket before won't find it much\n different from being in an airplane. At the same time—\" She paused,\n quiet brown eyes solemn. \"What you are about to experience is something\n that will make you proud to belong to the human race.\"\nThat\nagain! thought Marcia furiously; and then all emotion left her\n but cold, ravening fear as the rumble heightened. She tried to close\n her eyes, her ears against it, but her mind wouldn't respond. She\n squirmed in her chair and found herself staring down at the field.\n It looked the way she felt—flat and pale and devoid of life, with a\n monstrous structure of terror squatting in it. The scene was abruptly\n splashed with a rushing sheet of flame that darkened the daytime sky.\n Then it was torn from her vision.", "\"He'll spin the ship on its long axis,\" said the stewardess with\n exaggerated patience. \"That means that the steering jet tubes in the\n nose and tail are spinning, too. You don't just turn with a blast on\n one tube or another. The blasts have to be let off in hundreds of short\n bursts, timed to the hundredth of a second, to be able to make even a\n slight course correction. The sighting instruments are wheeling round\n and round while you're checking your position. Your fuel has to be\n calculated to the last ounce—because enough fuel for a Moon flight,\n with hours of fuelless free-fall, and enough fuel for a power spin\n and course corrections while spinning, are two very different things.\n Captain McHenry won't be able to maneuver to a landing on the Moon.\n He'll do it exactly right the first time, or not at all.\"\n\n\n Marcia was white and still. \"I—I never—\"", "Miss Eagen's arched nostrils seemed pinched and white. \"You really want\n me to speak my piece?\"\nIn answer Marcia leaned back against the bulkhead and folded her arms.\n Miss Eagen gazed at her for a moment, nodded as if to herself, and\n said, \"I suppose there always will be people who don't pay attention\n to the rules. Jaywalkers. But out here jaywalkers don't have as much\n margin for error as they do crossing against a traffic light on Earth.\"\n She looked Marcia straight in the eye. \"What makes a jaywalker isn't\n ignorance. It's a combination of stupidity and stubbornness. The\n jaywalker does\nknow\nbetter. In your case....\"", "\"Come up with a crescent wrench, will you, Pet?\"\n\n\n Another stiff silence. A question curled into Marcia's mind and she\n asked it. \"Do you work on all these ships at one time or another?\"\n\n\n Miss Eagen did not beat around the bush. \"I've been with Captain\n McHenry for three years. I hope to work with him always. I think he's\n the finest in the Service.\"\n\n\n \"He—th-thinks as well of you, no doubt.\"\n\n\n Petrucelli lounged in, a big man, easy-going, powerful. \"What's busted,\n muscles?\"\n\n\n \"Bolt the bed to the bulkhead, Pet. Mrs. McHenry—I'm sorry, but you'll\n have to get up.\"", "The flash walls on the field were being raised to keep the blow-by from\n the ship's jets from searing the administration building and the area\n beyond. Marcia realized with crushing suddenness that the ship was\n about to blast off in seconds. She half-rose, then sank back, biting\n her lip. Silly ... Jack had said that—her fear of space was silly.\n He'd said it during the quarrel, and he'd roared at her, \"And that's\n why you want me to come back—ground myself, be an Earth-lubber—so I\n can spare you the anguish of sitting home wondering if I'll come back\n alive!\"\nAnd then he'd been sorry he'd shouted, and he sat by her, taking her", "Miss Eagen was standing by the hospital door, watching her. When Marcia\n turned away without speaking to Jack, Miss Eagen smiled and held out\n her hand.\n\n\n Marcia went to her and took the hand. They went into the hospital. Miss\n Eagen didn't speak; she seemed to be waiting.\n\n\n \"Yes, I know who Jack's spinning the ship for,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n Miss Eagen looked an unspoken question.\n\n\n Marcia said, painfully, \"He's like the Captain of the\nElsinore\n. He's\n risking his life for a—a stranger. A jaywalker. Not for me. Not even\n for his baby.\"\n\n\n \"Does it hurt to know that?\"\n\n\n Marcia looked into the smooth, strong face and said with genuine\n astonishment, \"Hurt? Oh, no! It's so—so big!\"", "\"The\nElsinore\n?\" She'd said it viciously, to taunt him, and something\n in her had been pleased at the dull flush that rose to his face.\n Everyone knew about the\nElsinore\n, the 500-foot Moon-ferry that almost\n missed the Moon.\n\n\n \"That,\" he said bitterly, \"was human damnfoolishness botching up the\n equations. Too many lobbyists have holdings on the Moon and don't\n want to risk not being able to go there in a hurry. So they haven't\n passed legislation to keep physically unfit people off spaceships.\n One of the passengers got aboard the\nElsinore\non somebody else's\n validation—which meant that nobody knew he was taking endocrine\n treatments to put hair on his brainless head and restore his—Oh, the\nJaywalker\n!\" Jack spat in disgust. \"Anyway, he was the kind of idiot\n who never realizes that certain glandular conditions are fatal in free\n fall.\"" ], [ "Feeling very much put-upon, Marcia waited silently until he was\n finished, and the bed hung ludicrously to the wall like a walking fly.\n She thanked him timidly, and he ignored it and went out.\n\n\n Miss Eagen returned.\n\n\n \"That man was very rude,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n Miss Eagen looked at her coolly. \"I'm sorry,\" she said, obviously not\n meaning sorry at all.\n\n\n Marcia wet her lips. \"I asked you a question before,\" she said evenly.\n \"About you and the captain.\"\n\n\n \"You did,\" said Sue Eagen. \"Please don't.\"\n\n\n \"And why not?\"", "Marcia lay down gratefully. She closed her eyes tightly and said, \"I'm\n not Mrs. Foster. It doesn't hurt.\"\n\n\n \"You're not—\" Miss Eagen apparently decided to take one thing at a\n time. \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\n \"Scared,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n \"Why, what—is there to be scared of?\"\n\n\n \"I'm pregnant.\"\n\n\n \"Well, that's no—You're\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'm Mrs. McHenry. I'm Jack's wife.\"\n\n\n There was such a long pause that Marcia opened her eyes. Miss Eagen was\n looking at her levelly. She said, \"I'll have to examine you.\"\n\n\n \"I know. Go ahead.\"", "Miss Eagen was standing by the hospital door, watching her. When Marcia\n turned away without speaking to Jack, Miss Eagen smiled and held out\n her hand.\n\n\n Marcia went to her and took the hand. They went into the hospital. Miss\n Eagen didn't speak; she seemed to be waiting.\n\n\n \"Yes, I know who Jack's spinning the ship for,\" said Marcia.\n\n\n Miss Eagen looked an unspoken question.\n\n\n Marcia said, painfully, \"He's like the Captain of the\nElsinore\n. He's\n risking his life for a—a stranger. A jaywalker. Not for me. Not even\n for his baby.\"\n\n\n \"Does it hurt to know that?\"\n\n\n Marcia looked into the smooth, strong face and said with genuine\n astonishment, \"Hurt? Oh, no! It's so—so big!\"", "Miss Eagen did, swiftly and thoroughly. \"You're so right,\" she\n breathed. She went to the small sink, stripping off her rubber gloves.\n With her back to Marcia, she said, \"I'll have to tell the captain, you\n know.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I'd rather ... tell him myself.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" said Miss Eagen flatly. Marcia felt as if she'd been slapped.\n Miss Eagen dried her hands and crossed to an intercom. \"Eagen to\n Captain.\"\n\n\n \"McHenry here.\"\n\n\n \"Captain McHenry, could you come back to the hospital right away?\"\n\n\n \"Not right away, Sue.\"\nSue! No wonder he had found it so easy to walk\n out!\nShe looked at the trim girl with hating eyes. The intercom said,\n \"You know I've got course-correction computations from here to yonder.\n Give me another forty minutes.\"", "Marcia forced herself away from the bulkhead with a small whimper of\n hurt and hatred—hatred of the stars, of this knowledgeable, inspired\n girl, and—even more so—of herself. She darted toward the door.\n\n\n Miss Eagen was beside her in an instant, a hard small hand on her arm.\n \"Where are you going?\"\n\n\n \"I'm going to stop him. He can't take that chance with his ship, with\n these people....\"\n\n\n \"He will and he must. You surely know your husband.\"\n\n\n \"I know him as well as you do.\"\nMiss Eagen's firm lips shut in a thin hard line. \"Do as you like,\" she\n whispered. \"And while you're doing it—think about whom he's spinning\n ship for.\" She took her hand from Marcia's arm.\n\n\n Marcia twisted away and went into the corridor.", "\"You\nare\n? You—we—\" He turned to Miss Eagen, who nodded once, her\n face wooden. \"Just find it out?\"\n\n\n This time Miss Eagen didn't react at all, and Marcia knew that she had\n to speak up. \"No, Jack. I knew weeks ago.\"\n\n\n There was no describable change in his face, but the taut skin of his\n space-tanned cheek seemed, somehow, to draw inward. His eyebrow ridges\n seemed to be more prominent, and he looked older, and very tired.\n Softly and slowly he asked, \"What in God's name made you get on the\n ship?\"\n\n\n \"I had to, Jack. I had to.\"\n\n\n \"Had to kill yourself?\" he demanded brutally. \"This tears it. This ties\n it up in a box with a bloody ribbon-bow. I suppose you know what this\n means—what I've got to do now?\"", "After he'd gone—for good, he said—her anger had sustained her for a\n few weeks. Then, bleakly, she knew she'd go to the ends of Earth for\n Jack. Or even to the Moon....\nSitting rigid in the tense stillness of a rocket ship that was about\n to leap from Earth, Marcia started as an officer ducked his head into\n the passenger compartment from the pilot room's deep glow. But it\n wasn't Jack. The officer's lips moved hurriedly as he counted over the\n seats. He ducked back out of sight. From the bulk-heads, the overhead,\n everywhere, came a deep, quiet rumble. Some of the passengers looked\n anxious, some excited, and some just leafed casually through magazines.\n\n\n Now the brown-clad Miss Eagen was speaking from the head of the aisle.", "\"Miss Eagen—\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Mrs. Fos—why, what's the matter?\"\n\n\n Seeing the startled expression on the stewardess' face, Marcia realized\n she must be looking like a ghost. She put a hand to her cheek and found\n it clammy.\n\n\n \"Come along,\" said Miss Eagen cheerfully. She put a firm arm around\n Marcia's shoulder. \"Just a touch of space-sickness. This way.\nThat's\nit. We'll have you fixed up in a jiffy.\"\n\n\n \"It isn't s-space sickness,\" said Marcia in a very small and very\n positive voice. She let herself be led forward, through the door and to\n the left, where there was a small and compact ship's hospital.\n\n\n \"Now, now,\" said Miss Eagen briskly, \"just you lie down there, Mrs.\n Foster. Does it hurt any special place?\"", "\"But what?\" Miss Eagen's composure seemed to have been blasted to\n shreds by the powerful currents of her indignation. Her eyes flashed.\n \"You mean, but why doesn't he just work the ship while it's spinning\n the same way he does when it isn't?\"\n\n\n Through a growing fear, Marcia nodded mutely.", "\"Because,\" said Miss Eagen, and in that moment she looked almost as\n drawn as Jack had, \"I'm supposed to be of service to the passengers at\n all times no matter what. If I have feelings at all, part of my job is\n to keep them to myself.\"\n\n\n \"Very courteous, I'm sure. However, I want to release you from your\n sense of duty. I'm\nmost\ninterested in what you have to say.\"", "Sue Eagen was there, too, and the thing she shared with Jack. Of course\n there was something between them—so big a thing that there was\n nothing for her to fear in it.\n\n\n Jack and Sue Eagen had always had it, and always would have; and now\n Marcia had it too. And with understanding replacing fear, Marcia was\n free to recall that Jack had worked with Sue Eagen—but it was Marcia\n that he had loved and married.\nThere was a long time of blackness, and then a time of agony, when\n she was falling, falling, and her lungs wanted to split, explode,\n disintegrate, and someone kept saying, \"Hold tight, Marcia; hold tight\n to me,\" and she found Sue Eagen's cool strong hands in hers.\nMarcia. She called me Marcia.\nMore blackness, more pain—but not so much this time; and then a long,\n deep sleep.", "It was snatched away—the buildings, the trees, the roads surrounding\n the field seemed to pour in upon it, shrinking as they ran together.\n Roads dried up like parched rivers, thinning and vanishing into the\n circle of her horrified vision. A great, soft, uniform weight pressed\n her down and back; she fought it, but it was too big and too soft.\n\n\n Now Earth's surface was vague and Sun-splashed. Marcia's sense of loss\n tore at her. She put up her hands, heavily, and pressed the glass as\n if she could push it out, push herself out, go back, back to Earth\n and solidity. Clouds shot by like bullets, fell away until they were\n snowflakes roiling in violet haze. Then, in the purling universe that\n had grown around the ship, Earth was a mystic circle, a shallow dish\n floating darkly and heavily below.\n\n\n \"We are now,\" said Miss Eagen's calm voice, \"thirty-seven miles over\n Los Angeles.\"", "Miss Eagen's arched nostrils seemed pinched and white. \"You really want\n me to speak my piece?\"\nIn answer Marcia leaned back against the bulkhead and folded her arms.\n Miss Eagen gazed at her for a moment, nodded as if to herself, and\n said, \"I suppose there always will be people who don't pay attention\n to the rules. Jaywalkers. But out here jaywalkers don't have as much\n margin for error as they do crossing against a traffic light on Earth.\"\n She looked Marcia straight in the eye. \"What makes a jaywalker isn't\n ignorance. It's a combination of stupidity and stubbornness. The\n jaywalker does\nknow\nbetter. In your case....\"", "Miss Eagen (which, her neat lapel button attested, was her name) made\n a penciled frown as lovely as her machined smile. \"Some day,\" she told\n Marcia, \"we won't have to ask the passengers if they're well. It's so\n easy to come aboard on someone else's validation, and people don't seem\n to realize how dangerous that is.\"\n\n\n As Miss Eagen moved to the next seat, Marcia shrank into a small\n huddle, fumbling with the card until it was crammed shapeless into her\n purse. Then from the depths of her guilt came rebellion. It was going\n to be all right. She was doing the biggest thing she'd ever done, and\n Jack would rise to the occasion, and it would be all right.\n\n\n It\nhad\nto be all right....", "There was a stiff silence. Marcia looked up at Miss Eagen. \"It's true,\n you know,\" she said. \"A man grows to love the things he has to defend,\n no matter how he felt about them before.\"\n\n\n The stewardess looked at her, her face registering a strange mixture of\n detachment and wonder. \"You really believe that, don't you?\"\n\n\n Marcia's patience, snapped. \"You don't have to look so superior. I know\n what's bothering\nyou\n. Well, he's\nmy\nhusband, and don't you forget\n it.\"\nMiss Eagen's breath hissed in. Her eyes grew bright and she shook her\n head slightly. Then she turned on her heel and went to the intercom.\n Marcia thought for a frightened moment that she was going to call Jack\n back again. Instead she dialed and said, \"Hospital to Maintenance.\n Petrucelli?\"\n\n\n \"Petrucelli here.\"", "Marcia bounced resentfully off the cot and stood aside. Petrucelli\n looked at her, cocked an eyebrow, looked at Miss Eagen, and asked,\n \"Jaywalker?\"\n\n\n \"Please hurry, Pet.\" She turned to Marcia. \"I've got to explain to the\n passengers that there won't be any free fall. Most of them are looking\n forward to it.\" She went out.\n\n\n Marcia watched the big man work for a moment. \"Why are you putting the\n bed on the wall?\"\n\n\n He looked at her and away, quickly. \"Because, lady, when we start to\n spin, that outside bulkhead is going to be\ndown\n. Centrifugal force,\n see?\" And before she could answer him he added, \"I can't talk and work\n at the same time.\"", "outside again and the sky was no longer deep blue, but black. She\n pressed herself up out of the soft chair—it was difficult, because of\n the one-and-a-half gravities the ship was holding—and plodded heavily\n up the aisle. Miss Eagen was just rising from the chair in which she\n sat for the take-off.", "There was a sudden thunder. Over Miss Eagen's shoulder, through the\n port, Marcia saw the stars begin to move. Miss Eagen followed her gaze.\n \"He's started the spin. You'll be all right now.\"\nMarcia could never recall the rest of the details of the trip. There\n was the outboard bulkhead that drew her like a magnet, increasingly,\n until suddenly it wasn't an attracting wall, but normally and naturally\n \"down.\" Then a needle, and another one, and a long period of deep\n drowsiness and unreality.\n\n\n But through and through that drugged, relaxed period, Jack and the\n stars, the Moon and Sue Eagen danced and wove. Words slipped in and out\n of it like shreds of melody:\n\n\n \"A man comes to love the things he has to fight for.\" And Jack\n fighting—for his ship, for the Moon, for the new-building traditions\n of the great ones who would carry humanity out to the stars.", "\"Come up with a crescent wrench, will you, Pet?\"\n\n\n Another stiff silence. A question curled into Marcia's mind and she\n asked it. \"Do you work on all these ships at one time or another?\"\n\n\n Miss Eagen did not beat around the bush. \"I've been with Captain\n McHenry for three years. I hope to work with him always. I think he's\n the finest in the Service.\"\n\n\n \"He—th-thinks as well of you, no doubt.\"\n\n\n Petrucelli lounged in, a big man, easy-going, powerful. \"What's busted,\n muscles?\"\n\n\n \"Bolt the bed to the bulkhead, Pet. Mrs. McHenry—I'm sorry, but you'll\n have to get up.\"", "Marcia McHenry stiffened. Had she read the sign aloud? She turned\n startled eyes up to the smiling stewardess, who was holding out a\n well-groomed hand. Marcia responded weakly to the smile, overcame a\n sudden urge to blurt out that she had no validation—not her own,\n anyway. But her stiff fingers were already holding out the pink card\n with Nellie Foster's name on it.\n\n\n \"You're feeling well, Mrs. Foster?\"\nFeeling well? Yes, of course. Except for the—usual sickness. But\n that's so very normal\n.... Her numb lips moved. \"I'm fine,\" she said." ] ]
valid	20055	[ "What discipline does Tannen apply to many of the topics discussed?", "What role does technology play in Tannen’s views?", "What does the author think about the state of public political commentary overall?", "What does the author argue is true about Tannen’s latest work?", "Is there a nuance to the criticism of Tannen’s work?", "How does the author feel about Tannen’s work?", "What do we know of the subjects that Tannen researches and writes about?", "What is Tannen’s thesis on courtroom confrontations?", "What context does the author write the article in?", "What is the significance of the author’s title for the piece?" ]	[ [ "Social science", "Philosophy", "Theology", "Psychiatry" ], [ "It allows the facts to surface and be shared", "It allows the public to communicate clearly and carefully with each other", "It can spread misinformation, and enable ready critiquing of each other", "It supports the first amendment of which there is no criticism" ], [ "That it should remain the same", "That there should be larger group panel formats", "That it should be changed to a one person interview format", "That the public should be included in the broadcasts" ], [ "It is partisan", "It does not go far enough", "It doesn’t get the facts straight", "It oversimplifies" ], [ "The author recognizes some nuggets of good advice, but says they do not extend to the state of the nation", "There is no recognition of any positive aspects of the work", "The author agrees with many of the premises, but would choose to apply them differently", "The author acknowledges the background that Tannen approaches the work from and balances the criticisms through that understanding" ], [ "That it’s fair", "That it’s dangerous", "That it’s elementary", "That it’s relevant to the state of the nation" ], [ "Primary interest in how humans argue, and how it might be done differently", "Primary focus on international politics", "Primary focus on journalism", "Primary focus on the social aspects of war" ], [ "That personal credibility (true or untrue) has become more important than facts", "That cross examination is important and should stay in the court system", "That judges should create greater order", "That the current system adequately establishes facts, and does not overly burden victims" ], [ "Adversarial commentary", "Constructive feedback", "Objective review", "Unbiased summary" ], [ "They use it in solidarity with Tannen about people generally understanding truth", "They use it in support of the importance of understanding that Tannen talks about", "They are remarking about Tannen’s ongoing feud with them", "They use it as a jab against Tannen’s prior book title" ] ]	[ 1, 3, 1, 4, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1, 4 ]	[ 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "In her previous books-- That's Not What I Meant! (1986), You Just Don't Understand (1990), and Talking From 9 to 5 (1994)--Tannen carved out a niche as the nation's pre-eminent intergender translator and couples counselor. A professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, she transformed the comparative study of male and female conversational patterns from a linguistic subdiscipline into a self-help movement. Until recently, though, Tannen confined her analysis to conversations among dysfunctional individuals. (For an illustration, click .) But in The Argument Culture , she takes her movement one step further, peddling the elixir of mutual understanding as a remedy for the whole damned dysfunctional country. This is necessary, she argues, because \"contentious public discourse\" not only poisons the political atmosphere, it also risks infecting our most intimate relationships.", "Tannen's main mistake is failing to appreciate the difference between two distinct social spheres: the sphere of snuggle and the sphere of struggle. Some people--say, your spouse or your kids--you should snuggle with. Others--say, Saddam Hussein--you shouldn't. Tannen's antagonism toward antagonism makes sense in the former case but not in the latter. Among her illustrations of belligerence are William Safire's \"kick 'em when they're up\" philosophy of journalism and the media's use of war metaphors to describe Alan Greenspan's policies against inflation. To which one might sensibly reply: Good for Greenspan and Safire--and for us. The Federal Reserve's war on inflation and the press corps' scrutiny of powerful people safeguard the country. Some things are worth fighting for, and some things are worth fighting.", "We Do Understand \n\n \"This is not another book about civility,\" Deborah Tannen promises in the first sentence of The Argument Culture . \"Civility,\" she explains, suggests a \"veneer of politeness spread thin over human relations like a layer of marmalade over toast.\" Instead, Tannen has written something less: a book about other books about civility. Quoting from Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, political scientist Larry Sabato, and others who have studied the rise of belligerence in politics, journalism, and law, Tannen spreads their insights thin over all human relations, painting a general theory of discord. The whole is less perceptive than its parts and more pernicious.", "If you portray everything as a scandal, no one will care when something really is scandalous. \n\n All this is sage advice--for couples, for families, for bosses and employees, maybe even for book reviewers. But when she applies her precepts to our great national conversation, Tannen gets confused. She conflates belligerence, divisiveness, polarization, titillation, jealousy, incivility, aloofness, ruthlessness, cruelty, savagery, contempt, glibness, cynicism, anomie, partisanship, obstructionism, and gridlock. She makes culprits out of answering machines, electronic mail, campaign money, malpractice litigation, HMOs, corporate takeovers, and the demise of house calls by the family doctor.", "Tannen even wants to protect us from the possibility of unpleasant confrontations in the courtroom. \"The purpose of most cross-examinations\" is \"not to establish facts but to discredit the witness,\" she asserts,", "\"When there is a need to make others wrong,\" Tannen argues, \"the temptation is great to oversimplify\" and to \"seize upon the weakest examples, ignore facts that support your opponent's views, and focus only on those that support yours.\" In her need to make the \"argument culture\" wrong, she succumbs to these temptations. She blames the mainstream press, not just the paparazzi , for torturing Princess Diana and driving Adm. Mike Boorda to suicide. She compares to the propaganda of \"totalitarian countries\" (because falsehoods are spread) and to the dehumanization involved in \"ethnically motivated assaults\" (because reporters hound politicians). She blames communications technology for obscene and threatening phone calls made by former university President Richard Berendzen and former Judge Sol Wachtler.", "Given this oddly paternalistic (or maternalistic) diagnosis, it's not surprising that Tannen should wish to cover our ears, filtering out strife, deception, and debate. She assures us that all reasonable people can agree that disseminating birth control and sex education is the best way to reduce the abortion rate; that stiff sentences for small drug offenses don't reduce drug abuse; that global warming is producing \"disastrous consequences.\" Partial-birth abortion is \"surely not\" a \"very important\" issue, and Congress should not have let the Republican \"politics of obstruction\" defeat President Clinton's health care proposal in 1994, given the \"broad bipartisan and public consensus that it was desperately needed.\" The \"view of government as the enemy\" isn't worth debating; it's just \"another troubling aspect of the argument culture.\" Indeed, Tannen embraces a colleague's claim that \"right-wing talk radio\" deploys phrases \"similar to verbal manipulations employed by propagandists in the Nazi era.\"", "If you missed the links within the review, click to read: 1) an illustration of ; 2) Tannen's that American journalism is just like propaganda from totalitarian regimes, plus William Saletan's disclosure that \"several of these propagandists now infest Slate \"; 3) the for her contention that there is no evidence that people can distinguish lies from truth; 4) and an example of how Tannen from a one-guest format on TV and radio talk shows.", "Tannen, like some grandmotherly creature from an Aesop fable, admonishes us to recognize what is good in the work of others, and it is only fair to extend her the same courtesy. Here's what's worth gleaning from her book: \n\n Don't just quarrel; listen and learn. \n\n Don't nit-pick other people's ideas; build your own. \n\n Don't argue for the sake of arguing. \n\n Truth and courage often lie in the middle, not the extremes. \n\n Many issues are multisided. \n\n Focus on the substance of debates, not on strategy, theater, or the opponents' personal flaws. \n\n Don't fight over small issues. \n\n Don't obstruct good ideas just so you can win.", "Tannen doesn't trust in the power of good argumentation to keep society honest, much less correct itself, because she rather shockingly insists \"\" that people can distinguish lies from the truth. Nor does she trust our competence to manage unfettered communication: \"E-mail makes it too easy to forward messages, too easy to reply before your temper cools, too easy to broadcast messages to large numbers of people without thinking about how every sentence will strike every recipient.\" Lexis-Nexis is an equally unwelcome troublemaker: \"Technology also exacerbates the culture of critique by making it much easier for politicians or journalists to ferret out inconsistencies in a public person's statements over time.\"", "Tannen finds it particularly unseemly that reporters and independent counsels treat the nation's ultimate father figure with such irreverence. She complains that Clinton's weekly radio address \"is followed immediately by a Republican", "in the words of Arkansas journalist Gene Lyons, \"the result of the nastiest and most successful political 'dirty tricks' campaign in recent American history.\" Is Tannen a Clinton apologist? She rules that criticism out of bounds. \"The very fact that", "The First Amendment, in Tannen's view, has often become \"a pretext to justify the airing of just those views that make for the most entertaining fights.\" As an alternative, she offers Asian authoritarianism: \"Disputation was rejected in ancient China as 'incompatible with the decorum and harmony cultivated by the true sage.' \" Similarly, \"the minimal human unit in Japan is not the individual but the group.\" Instead of the American practice of having two guests debate policy questions on TV news programs, she suggests a Japanese format, which \"typically features a single guest.\" (Click to learn how she puts this into practice.)", "Likewise, Tannen recalls the trial of a Canadian man who had denied the Holocaust. The defendant's lawyer interrogated concentration camp survivors, asking whether they had seen their parents gassed. The adversarial system permitted such questions to be asked and answered--admittedly a vexatious experience for the survivors but one that does entail an airing of the facts of the Holocaust. Tannen, however, treats it only as a display of the \"cruelty of cross-examination.\" She raises no objection to the Canadian hate-speech ban under which the defendant was prosecuted. Would Tannen argue that the United States should adopt such a law, along with, say, a ban on the cross-examination of accusers? If so, she'd be wrong. But hey, so far, it's still a free country.", "Vigilance and combat are particularly essential to law enforcement and foreign policy, which must deal with thugs and tyrants, not thoughtless husbands. Tannen laments that cops and soldiers have been \"trained to overcome their resistance to kill\" by trying \"not to think of their opponents as human beings.\" She neglects to mention that our safety depends on the ability of these officers to kill their adversaries. Comparing Vietnam to World War II, Tannen focuses strictly on the soldiers' social experience. In World War II, she observes, they trained, served, and went home together. \"Vietnam, in contrast, was a 'lonely war' of individuals assigned to constantly shifting units for year-long tours of duty.\" She ignores the more important difference: In World War II, they were fighting Hitler.", "Instead of the American system, Tannen proposes consideration of the French and German systems. Under French law, after Princess Diana's death: \n\n The photographers were held for two days without charges being filed and without being allowed to confer with lawyers. ... The judges do most of the questioning; though lawyers can also ask questions, they cannot cross-examine witnesses. Guilt ... need not be established 'beyond a reasonable doubt' but simply by ... the judge's intimate belief, or deeply held sense, of what happened.", "rape can appear to be consensual sex,\" she ignores the reverse implication--that it is easy to make consensual sex look like rape. She complains that when Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, \"Framing these hearings as a", "defending our nation's elected leader makes one suspect--an 'apologist'--is in itself evidence of the culture of critique,\" she writes.", "as though the two objectives were unrelated. Thus, \"the adversary system ... is inhumane to the victims of cross-examination.\" She simply assumes the very thing the trial is supposed to prove and what cross-examination might disprove (if this is, in", "fact, the point of the trial): that the witness is a victim. Conversely, she assumes that the defendant cannot be a victim. While objecting to cross-examination of alleged rape victims because \"it is easy to distort events so that a" ], [ "Tannen doesn't trust in the power of good argumentation to keep society honest, much less correct itself, because she rather shockingly insists \"\" that people can distinguish lies from the truth. Nor does she trust our competence to manage unfettered communication: \"E-mail makes it too easy to forward messages, too easy to reply before your temper cools, too easy to broadcast messages to large numbers of people without thinking about how every sentence will strike every recipient.\" Lexis-Nexis is an equally unwelcome troublemaker: \"Technology also exacerbates the culture of critique by making it much easier for politicians or journalists to ferret out inconsistencies in a public person's statements over time.\"", "In her previous books-- That's Not What I Meant! (1986), You Just Don't Understand (1990), and Talking From 9 to 5 (1994)--Tannen carved out a niche as the nation's pre-eminent intergender translator and couples counselor. A professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, she transformed the comparative study of male and female conversational patterns from a linguistic subdiscipline into a self-help movement. Until recently, though, Tannen confined her analysis to conversations among dysfunctional individuals. (For an illustration, click .) But in The Argument Culture , she takes her movement one step further, peddling the elixir of mutual understanding as a remedy for the whole damned dysfunctional country. This is necessary, she argues, because \"contentious public discourse\" not only poisons the political atmosphere, it also risks infecting our most intimate relationships.", "\"When there is a need to make others wrong,\" Tannen argues, \"the temptation is great to oversimplify\" and to \"seize upon the weakest examples, ignore facts that support your opponent's views, and focus only on those that support yours.\" In her need to make the \"argument culture\" wrong, she succumbs to these temptations. She blames the mainstream press, not just the paparazzi , for torturing Princess Diana and driving Adm. Mike Boorda to suicide. She compares to the propaganda of \"totalitarian countries\" (because falsehoods are spread) and to the dehumanization involved in \"ethnically motivated assaults\" (because reporters hound politicians). She blames communications technology for obscene and threatening phone calls made by former university President Richard Berendzen and former Judge Sol Wachtler.", "If you portray everything as a scandal, no one will care when something really is scandalous. \n\n All this is sage advice--for couples, for families, for bosses and employees, maybe even for book reviewers. But when she applies her precepts to our great national conversation, Tannen gets confused. She conflates belligerence, divisiveness, polarization, titillation, jealousy, incivility, aloofness, ruthlessness, cruelty, savagery, contempt, glibness, cynicism, anomie, partisanship, obstructionism, and gridlock. She makes culprits out of answering machines, electronic mail, campaign money, malpractice litigation, HMOs, corporate takeovers, and the demise of house calls by the family doctor.", "Tannen's main mistake is failing to appreciate the difference between two distinct social spheres: the sphere of snuggle and the sphere of struggle. Some people--say, your spouse or your kids--you should snuggle with. Others--say, Saddam Hussein--you shouldn't. Tannen's antagonism toward antagonism makes sense in the former case but not in the latter. Among her illustrations of belligerence are William Safire's \"kick 'em when they're up\" philosophy of journalism and the media's use of war metaphors to describe Alan Greenspan's policies against inflation. To which one might sensibly reply: Good for Greenspan and Safire--and for us. The Federal Reserve's war on inflation and the press corps' scrutiny of powerful people safeguard the country. Some things are worth fighting for, and some things are worth fighting.", "Given this oddly paternalistic (or maternalistic) diagnosis, it's not surprising that Tannen should wish to cover our ears, filtering out strife, deception, and debate. She assures us that all reasonable people can agree that disseminating birth control and sex education is the best way to reduce the abortion rate; that stiff sentences for small drug offenses don't reduce drug abuse; that global warming is producing \"disastrous consequences.\" Partial-birth abortion is \"surely not\" a \"very important\" issue, and Congress should not have let the Republican \"politics of obstruction\" defeat President Clinton's health care proposal in 1994, given the \"broad bipartisan and public consensus that it was desperately needed.\" The \"view of government as the enemy\" isn't worth debating; it's just \"another troubling aspect of the argument culture.\" Indeed, Tannen embraces a colleague's claim that \"right-wing talk radio\" deploys phrases \"similar to verbal manipulations employed by propagandists in the Nazi era.\"", "We Do Understand \n\n \"This is not another book about civility,\" Deborah Tannen promises in the first sentence of The Argument Culture . \"Civility,\" she explains, suggests a \"veneer of politeness spread thin over human relations like a layer of marmalade over toast.\" Instead, Tannen has written something less: a book about other books about civility. Quoting from Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, political scientist Larry Sabato, and others who have studied the rise of belligerence in politics, journalism, and law, Tannen spreads their insights thin over all human relations, painting a general theory of discord. The whole is less perceptive than its parts and more pernicious.", "Tannen even wants to protect us from the possibility of unpleasant confrontations in the courtroom. \"The purpose of most cross-examinations\" is \"not to establish facts but to discredit the witness,\" she asserts,", "If you missed the links within the review, click to read: 1) an illustration of ; 2) Tannen's that American journalism is just like propaganda from totalitarian regimes, plus William Saletan's disclosure that \"several of these propagandists now infest Slate \"; 3) the for her contention that there is no evidence that people can distinguish lies from truth; 4) and an example of how Tannen from a one-guest format on TV and radio talk shows.", "Tannen finds it particularly unseemly that reporters and independent counsels treat the nation's ultimate father figure with such irreverence. She complains that Clinton's weekly radio address \"is followed immediately by a Republican", "Tannen, like some grandmotherly creature from an Aesop fable, admonishes us to recognize what is good in the work of others, and it is only fair to extend her the same courtesy. Here's what's worth gleaning from her book: \n\n Don't just quarrel; listen and learn. \n\n Don't nit-pick other people's ideas; build your own. \n\n Don't argue for the sake of arguing. \n\n Truth and courage often lie in the middle, not the extremes. \n\n Many issues are multisided. \n\n Focus on the substance of debates, not on strategy, theater, or the opponents' personal flaws. \n\n Don't fight over small issues. \n\n Don't obstruct good ideas just so you can win.", "The First Amendment, in Tannen's view, has often become \"a pretext to justify the airing of just those views that make for the most entertaining fights.\" As an alternative, she offers Asian authoritarianism: \"Disputation was rejected in ancient China as 'incompatible with the decorum and harmony cultivated by the true sage.' \" Similarly, \"the minimal human unit in Japan is not the individual but the group.\" Instead of the American practice of having two guests debate policy questions on TV news programs, she suggests a Japanese format, which \"typically features a single guest.\" (Click to learn how she puts this into practice.)", "in the words of Arkansas journalist Gene Lyons, \"the result of the nastiest and most successful political 'dirty tricks' campaign in recent American history.\" Is Tannen a Clinton apologist? She rules that criticism out of bounds. \"The very fact that", "Vigilance and combat are particularly essential to law enforcement and foreign policy, which must deal with thugs and tyrants, not thoughtless husbands. Tannen laments that cops and soldiers have been \"trained to overcome their resistance to kill\" by trying \"not to think of their opponents as human beings.\" She neglects to mention that our safety depends on the ability of these officers to kill their adversaries. Comparing Vietnam to World War II, Tannen focuses strictly on the soldiers' social experience. In World War II, she observes, they trained, served, and went home together. \"Vietnam, in contrast, was a 'lonely war' of individuals assigned to constantly shifting units for year-long tours of duty.\" She ignores the more important difference: In World War II, they were fighting Hitler.", "Likewise, Tannen recalls the trial of a Canadian man who had denied the Holocaust. The defendant's lawyer interrogated concentration camp survivors, asking whether they had seen their parents gassed. The adversarial system permitted such questions to be asked and answered--admittedly a vexatious experience for the survivors but one that does entail an airing of the facts of the Holocaust. Tannen, however, treats it only as a display of the \"cruelty of cross-examination.\" She raises no objection to the Canadian hate-speech ban under which the defendant was prosecuted. Would Tannen argue that the United States should adopt such a law, along with, say, a ban on the cross-examination of accusers? If so, she'd be wrong. But hey, so far, it's still a free country.", "Instead of the American system, Tannen proposes consideration of the French and German systems. Under French law, after Princess Diana's death: \n\n The photographers were held for two days without charges being filed and without being allowed to confer with lawyers. ... The judges do most of the questioning; though lawyers can also ask questions, they cannot cross-examine witnesses. Guilt ... need not be established 'beyond a reasonable doubt' but simply by ... the judge's intimate belief, or deeply held sense, of what happened.", "rape can appear to be consensual sex,\" she ignores the reverse implication--that it is easy to make consensual sex look like rape. She complains that when Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, \"Framing these hearings as a", "as though the two objectives were unrelated. Thus, \"the adversary system ... is inhumane to the victims of cross-examination.\" She simply assumes the very thing the trial is supposed to prove and what cross-examination might disprove (if this is, in", "defending our nation's elected leader makes one suspect--an 'apologist'--is in itself evidence of the culture of critique,\" she writes.", "response,\" which \"weakens the public's ability to see leaders as leaders.\" A reporter's skeptical question to Clinton \"broke the spell\" of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's remarks upon being nominated to the Supreme Court, thereby injuring citizens' \"sense of connection\" to" ], [ "We Do Understand \n\n \"This is not another book about civility,\" Deborah Tannen promises in the first sentence of The Argument Culture . \"Civility,\" she explains, suggests a \"veneer of politeness spread thin over human relations like a layer of marmalade over toast.\" Instead, Tannen has written something less: a book about other books about civility. Quoting from Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, political scientist Larry Sabato, and others who have studied the rise of belligerence in politics, journalism, and law, Tannen spreads their insights thin over all human relations, painting a general theory of discord. The whole is less perceptive than its parts and more pernicious.", "If you portray everything as a scandal, no one will care when something really is scandalous. \n\n All this is sage advice--for couples, for families, for bosses and employees, maybe even for book reviewers. But when she applies her precepts to our great national conversation, Tannen gets confused. She conflates belligerence, divisiveness, polarization, titillation, jealousy, incivility, aloofness, ruthlessness, cruelty, savagery, contempt, glibness, cynicism, anomie, partisanship, obstructionism, and gridlock. She makes culprits out of answering machines, electronic mail, campaign money, malpractice litigation, HMOs, corporate takeovers, and the demise of house calls by the family doctor.", "Tannen doesn't trust in the power of good argumentation to keep society honest, much less correct itself, because she rather shockingly insists \"\" that people can distinguish lies from the truth. Nor does she trust our competence to manage unfettered communication: \"E-mail makes it too easy to forward messages, too easy to reply before your temper cools, too easy to broadcast messages to large numbers of people without thinking about how every sentence will strike every recipient.\" Lexis-Nexis is an equally unwelcome troublemaker: \"Technology also exacerbates the culture of critique by making it much easier for politicians or journalists to ferret out inconsistencies in a public person's statements over time.\"", "\"When there is a need to make others wrong,\" Tannen argues, \"the temptation is great to oversimplify\" and to \"seize upon the weakest examples, ignore facts that support your opponent's views, and focus only on those that support yours.\" In her need to make the \"argument culture\" wrong, she succumbs to these temptations. She blames the mainstream press, not just the paparazzi , for torturing Princess Diana and driving Adm. Mike Boorda to suicide. She compares to the propaganda of \"totalitarian countries\" (because falsehoods are spread) and to the dehumanization involved in \"ethnically motivated assaults\" (because reporters hound politicians). She blames communications technology for obscene and threatening phone calls made by former university President Richard Berendzen and former Judge Sol Wachtler.", "In her previous books-- That's Not What I Meant! (1986), You Just Don't Understand (1990), and Talking From 9 to 5 (1994)--Tannen carved out a niche as the nation's pre-eminent intergender translator and couples counselor. A professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, she transformed the comparative study of male and female conversational patterns from a linguistic subdiscipline into a self-help movement. Until recently, though, Tannen confined her analysis to conversations among dysfunctional individuals. (For an illustration, click .) But in The Argument Culture , she takes her movement one step further, peddling the elixir of mutual understanding as a remedy for the whole damned dysfunctional country. This is necessary, she argues, because \"contentious public discourse\" not only poisons the political atmosphere, it also risks infecting our most intimate relationships.", "Tannen finds it particularly unseemly that reporters and independent counsels treat the nation's ultimate father figure with such irreverence. She complains that Clinton's weekly radio address \"is followed immediately by a Republican", "The First Amendment, in Tannen's view, has often become \"a pretext to justify the airing of just those views that make for the most entertaining fights.\" As an alternative, she offers Asian authoritarianism: \"Disputation was rejected in ancient China as 'incompatible with the decorum and harmony cultivated by the true sage.' \" Similarly, \"the minimal human unit in Japan is not the individual but the group.\" Instead of the American practice of having two guests debate policy questions on TV news programs, she suggests a Japanese format, which \"typically features a single guest.\" (Click to learn how she puts this into practice.)", "Given this oddly paternalistic (or maternalistic) diagnosis, it's not surprising that Tannen should wish to cover our ears, filtering out strife, deception, and debate. She assures us that all reasonable people can agree that disseminating birth control and sex education is the best way to reduce the abortion rate; that stiff sentences for small drug offenses don't reduce drug abuse; that global warming is producing \"disastrous consequences.\" Partial-birth abortion is \"surely not\" a \"very important\" issue, and Congress should not have let the Republican \"politics of obstruction\" defeat President Clinton's health care proposal in 1994, given the \"broad bipartisan and public consensus that it was desperately needed.\" The \"view of government as the enemy\" isn't worth debating; it's just \"another troubling aspect of the argument culture.\" Indeed, Tannen embraces a colleague's claim that \"right-wing talk radio\" deploys phrases \"similar to verbal manipulations employed by propagandists in the Nazi era.\"", "Tannen, like some grandmotherly creature from an Aesop fable, admonishes us to recognize what is good in the work of others, and it is only fair to extend her the same courtesy. Here's what's worth gleaning from her book: \n\n Don't just quarrel; listen and learn. \n\n Don't nit-pick other people's ideas; build your own. \n\n Don't argue for the sake of arguing. \n\n Truth and courage often lie in the middle, not the extremes. \n\n Many issues are multisided. \n\n Focus on the substance of debates, not on strategy, theater, or the opponents' personal flaws. \n\n Don't fight over small issues. \n\n Don't obstruct good ideas just so you can win.", "If you missed the links within the review, click to read: 1) an illustration of ; 2) Tannen's that American journalism is just like propaganda from totalitarian regimes, plus William Saletan's disclosure that \"several of these propagandists now infest Slate \"; 3) the for her contention that there is no evidence that people can distinguish lies from truth; 4) and an example of how Tannen from a one-guest format on TV and radio talk shows.", "defending our nation's elected leader makes one suspect--an 'apologist'--is in itself evidence of the culture of critique,\" she writes.", "response,\" which \"weakens the public's ability to see leaders as leaders.\" A reporter's skeptical question to Clinton \"broke the spell\" of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's remarks upon being nominated to the Supreme Court, thereby injuring citizens' \"sense of connection\" to", "Tannen's main mistake is failing to appreciate the difference between two distinct social spheres: the sphere of snuggle and the sphere of struggle. Some people--say, your spouse or your kids--you should snuggle with. Others--say, Saddam Hussein--you shouldn't. Tannen's antagonism toward antagonism makes sense in the former case but not in the latter. Among her illustrations of belligerence are William Safire's \"kick 'em when they're up\" philosophy of journalism and the media's use of war metaphors to describe Alan Greenspan's policies against inflation. To which one might sensibly reply: Good for Greenspan and Safire--and for us. The Federal Reserve's war on inflation and the press corps' scrutiny of powerful people safeguard the country. Some things are worth fighting for, and some things are worth fighting.", "in the words of Arkansas journalist Gene Lyons, \"the result of the nastiest and most successful political 'dirty tricks' campaign in recent American history.\" Is Tannen a Clinton apologist? She rules that criticism out of bounds. \"The very fact that", "Tannen even wants to protect us from the possibility of unpleasant confrontations in the courtroom. \"The purpose of most cross-examinations\" is \"not to establish facts but to discredit the witness,\" she asserts,", "Vigilance and combat are particularly essential to law enforcement and foreign policy, which must deal with thugs and tyrants, not thoughtless husbands. Tannen laments that cops and soldiers have been \"trained to overcome their resistance to kill\" by trying \"not to think of their opponents as human beings.\" She neglects to mention that our safety depends on the ability of these officers to kill their adversaries. Comparing Vietnam to World War II, Tannen focuses strictly on the soldiers' social experience. In World War II, she observes, they trained, served, and went home together. \"Vietnam, in contrast, was a 'lonely war' of individuals assigned to constantly shifting units for year-long tours of duty.\" She ignores the more important difference: In World War II, they were fighting Hitler.", "Likewise, Tannen recalls the trial of a Canadian man who had denied the Holocaust. The defendant's lawyer interrogated concentration camp survivors, asking whether they had seen their parents gassed. The adversarial system permitted such questions to be asked and answered--admittedly a vexatious experience for the survivors but one that does entail an airing of the facts of the Holocaust. Tannen, however, treats it only as a display of the \"cruelty of cross-examination.\" She raises no objection to the Canadian hate-speech ban under which the defendant was prosecuted. Would Tannen argue that the United States should adopt such a law, along with, say, a ban on the cross-examination of accusers? If so, she'd be wrong. But hey, so far, it's still a free country.", "Instead of the American system, Tannen proposes consideration of the French and German systems. Under French law, after Princess Diana's death: \n\n The photographers were held for two days without charges being filed and without being allowed to confer with lawyers. ... The judges do most of the questioning; though lawyers can also ask questions, they cannot cross-examine witnesses. Guilt ... need not be established 'beyond a reasonable doubt' but simply by ... the judge's intimate belief, or deeply held sense, of what happened.", "\"our judicial system.\" The investigation of former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy was excessive, the campaign against former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders was \"cruelly unfair,\" and the Whitewater investigation--led by \"a prominent Republican known for his animosity toward the president\"--is,", "rape can appear to be consensual sex,\" she ignores the reverse implication--that it is easy to make consensual sex look like rape. She complains that when Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, \"Framing these hearings as a" ], [ "In her previous books-- That's Not What I Meant! (1986), You Just Don't Understand (1990), and Talking From 9 to 5 (1994)--Tannen carved out a niche as the nation's pre-eminent intergender translator and couples counselor. A professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, she transformed the comparative study of male and female conversational patterns from a linguistic subdiscipline into a self-help movement. Until recently, though, Tannen confined her analysis to conversations among dysfunctional individuals. (For an illustration, click .) But in The Argument Culture , she takes her movement one step further, peddling the elixir of mutual understanding as a remedy for the whole damned dysfunctional country. This is necessary, she argues, because \"contentious public discourse\" not only poisons the political atmosphere, it also risks infecting our most intimate relationships.", "We Do Understand \n\n \"This is not another book about civility,\" Deborah Tannen promises in the first sentence of The Argument Culture . \"Civility,\" she explains, suggests a \"veneer of politeness spread thin over human relations like a layer of marmalade over toast.\" Instead, Tannen has written something less: a book about other books about civility. Quoting from Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, political scientist Larry Sabato, and others who have studied the rise of belligerence in politics, journalism, and law, Tannen spreads their insights thin over all human relations, painting a general theory of discord. The whole is less perceptive than its parts and more pernicious.", "If you missed the links within the review, click to read: 1) an illustration of ; 2) Tannen's that American journalism is just like propaganda from totalitarian regimes, plus William Saletan's disclosure that \"several of these propagandists now infest Slate \"; 3) the for her contention that there is no evidence that people can distinguish lies from truth; 4) and an example of how Tannen from a one-guest format on TV and radio talk shows.", "Given this oddly paternalistic (or maternalistic) diagnosis, it's not surprising that Tannen should wish to cover our ears, filtering out strife, deception, and debate. She assures us that all reasonable people can agree that disseminating birth control and sex education is the best way to reduce the abortion rate; that stiff sentences for small drug offenses don't reduce drug abuse; that global warming is producing \"disastrous consequences.\" Partial-birth abortion is \"surely not\" a \"very important\" issue, and Congress should not have let the Republican \"politics of obstruction\" defeat President Clinton's health care proposal in 1994, given the \"broad bipartisan and public consensus that it was desperately needed.\" The \"view of government as the enemy\" isn't worth debating; it's just \"another troubling aspect of the argument culture.\" Indeed, Tannen embraces a colleague's claim that \"right-wing talk radio\" deploys phrases \"similar to verbal manipulations employed by propagandists in the Nazi era.\"", "Tannen, like some grandmotherly creature from an Aesop fable, admonishes us to recognize what is good in the work of others, and it is only fair to extend her the same courtesy. Here's what's worth gleaning from her book: \n\n Don't just quarrel; listen and learn. \n\n Don't nit-pick other people's ideas; build your own. \n\n Don't argue for the sake of arguing. \n\n Truth and courage often lie in the middle, not the extremes. \n\n Many issues are multisided. \n\n Focus on the substance of debates, not on strategy, theater, or the opponents' personal flaws. \n\n Don't fight over small issues. \n\n Don't obstruct good ideas just so you can win.", "If you portray everything as a scandal, no one will care when something really is scandalous. \n\n All this is sage advice--for couples, for families, for bosses and employees, maybe even for book reviewers. But when she applies her precepts to our great national conversation, Tannen gets confused. She conflates belligerence, divisiveness, polarization, titillation, jealousy, incivility, aloofness, ruthlessness, cruelty, savagery, contempt, glibness, cynicism, anomie, partisanship, obstructionism, and gridlock. She makes culprits out of answering machines, electronic mail, campaign money, malpractice litigation, HMOs, corporate takeovers, and the demise of house calls by the family doctor.", "\"When there is a need to make others wrong,\" Tannen argues, \"the temptation is great to oversimplify\" and to \"seize upon the weakest examples, ignore facts that support your opponent's views, and focus only on those that support yours.\" In her need to make the \"argument culture\" wrong, she succumbs to these temptations. She blames the mainstream press, not just the paparazzi , for torturing Princess Diana and driving Adm. Mike Boorda to suicide. She compares to the propaganda of \"totalitarian countries\" (because falsehoods are spread) and to the dehumanization involved in \"ethnically motivated assaults\" (because reporters hound politicians). She blames communications technology for obscene and threatening phone calls made by former university President Richard Berendzen and former Judge Sol Wachtler.", "Tannen even wants to protect us from the possibility of unpleasant confrontations in the courtroom. \"The purpose of most cross-examinations\" is \"not to establish facts but to discredit the witness,\" she asserts,", "Tannen's main mistake is failing to appreciate the difference between two distinct social spheres: the sphere of snuggle and the sphere of struggle. Some people--say, your spouse or your kids--you should snuggle with. Others--say, Saddam Hussein--you shouldn't. Tannen's antagonism toward antagonism makes sense in the former case but not in the latter. Among her illustrations of belligerence are William Safire's \"kick 'em when they're up\" philosophy of journalism and the media's use of war metaphors to describe Alan Greenspan's policies against inflation. To which one might sensibly reply: Good for Greenspan and Safire--and for us. The Federal Reserve's war on inflation and the press corps' scrutiny of powerful people safeguard the country. Some things are worth fighting for, and some things are worth fighting.", "Tannen doesn't trust in the power of good argumentation to keep society honest, much less correct itself, because she rather shockingly insists \"\" that people can distinguish lies from the truth. Nor does she trust our competence to manage unfettered communication: \"E-mail makes it too easy to forward messages, too easy to reply before your temper cools, too easy to broadcast messages to large numbers of people without thinking about how every sentence will strike every recipient.\" Lexis-Nexis is an equally unwelcome troublemaker: \"Technology also exacerbates the culture of critique by making it much easier for politicians or journalists to ferret out inconsistencies in a public person's statements over time.\"", "in the words of Arkansas journalist Gene Lyons, \"the result of the nastiest and most successful political 'dirty tricks' campaign in recent American history.\" Is Tannen a Clinton apologist? She rules that criticism out of bounds. \"The very fact that", "Likewise, Tannen recalls the trial of a Canadian man who had denied the Holocaust. The defendant's lawyer interrogated concentration camp survivors, asking whether they had seen their parents gassed. The adversarial system permitted such questions to be asked and answered--admittedly a vexatious experience for the survivors but one that does entail an airing of the facts of the Holocaust. Tannen, however, treats it only as a display of the \"cruelty of cross-examination.\" She raises no objection to the Canadian hate-speech ban under which the defendant was prosecuted. Would Tannen argue that the United States should adopt such a law, along with, say, a ban on the cross-examination of accusers? If so, she'd be wrong. But hey, so far, it's still a free country.", "The First Amendment, in Tannen's view, has often become \"a pretext to justify the airing of just those views that make for the most entertaining fights.\" As an alternative, she offers Asian authoritarianism: \"Disputation was rejected in ancient China as 'incompatible with the decorum and harmony cultivated by the true sage.' \" Similarly, \"the minimal human unit in Japan is not the individual but the group.\" Instead of the American practice of having two guests debate policy questions on TV news programs, she suggests a Japanese format, which \"typically features a single guest.\" (Click to learn how she puts this into practice.)", "Tannen finds it particularly unseemly that reporters and independent counsels treat the nation's ultimate father figure with such irreverence. She complains that Clinton's weekly radio address \"is followed immediately by a Republican", "Vigilance and combat are particularly essential to law enforcement and foreign policy, which must deal with thugs and tyrants, not thoughtless husbands. Tannen laments that cops and soldiers have been \"trained to overcome their resistance to kill\" by trying \"not to think of their opponents as human beings.\" She neglects to mention that our safety depends on the ability of these officers to kill their adversaries. Comparing Vietnam to World War II, Tannen focuses strictly on the soldiers' social experience. In World War II, she observes, they trained, served, and went home together. \"Vietnam, in contrast, was a 'lonely war' of individuals assigned to constantly shifting units for year-long tours of duty.\" She ignores the more important difference: In World War II, they were fighting Hitler.", "Instead of the American system, Tannen proposes consideration of the French and German systems. Under French law, after Princess Diana's death: \n\n The photographers were held for two days without charges being filed and without being allowed to confer with lawyers. ... The judges do most of the questioning; though lawyers can also ask questions, they cannot cross-examine witnesses. Guilt ... need not be established 'beyond a reasonable doubt' but simply by ... the judge's intimate belief, or deeply held sense, of what happened.", "rape can appear to be consensual sex,\" she ignores the reverse implication--that it is easy to make consensual sex look like rape. She complains that when Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, \"Framing these hearings as a", "as though the two objectives were unrelated. Thus, \"the adversary system ... is inhumane to the victims of cross-examination.\" She simply assumes the very thing the trial is supposed to prove and what cross-examination might disprove (if this is, in", "defending our nation's elected leader makes one suspect--an 'apologist'--is in itself evidence of the culture of critique,\" she writes.", "response,\" which \"weakens the public's ability to see leaders as leaders.\" A reporter's skeptical question to Clinton \"broke the spell\" of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's remarks upon being nominated to the Supreme Court, thereby injuring citizens' \"sense of connection\" to" ], [ "In her previous books-- That's Not What I Meant! (1986), You Just Don't Understand (1990), and Talking From 9 to 5 (1994)--Tannen carved out a niche as the nation's pre-eminent intergender translator and couples counselor. A professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, she transformed the comparative study of male and female conversational patterns from a linguistic subdiscipline into a self-help movement. Until recently, though, Tannen confined her analysis to conversations among dysfunctional individuals. (For an illustration, click .) But in The Argument Culture , she takes her movement one step further, peddling the elixir of mutual understanding as a remedy for the whole damned dysfunctional country. This is necessary, she argues, because \"contentious public discourse\" not only poisons the political atmosphere, it also risks infecting our most intimate relationships.", "Tannen's main mistake is failing to appreciate the difference between two distinct social spheres: the sphere of snuggle and the sphere of struggle. Some people--say, your spouse or your kids--you should snuggle with. Others--say, Saddam Hussein--you shouldn't. Tannen's antagonism toward antagonism makes sense in the former case but not in the latter. Among her illustrations of belligerence are William Safire's \"kick 'em when they're up\" philosophy of journalism and the media's use of war metaphors to describe Alan Greenspan's policies against inflation. To which one might sensibly reply: Good for Greenspan and Safire--and for us. The Federal Reserve's war on inflation and the press corps' scrutiny of powerful people safeguard the country. Some things are worth fighting for, and some things are worth fighting.", "Tannen, like some grandmotherly creature from an Aesop fable, admonishes us to recognize what is good in the work of others, and it is only fair to extend her the same courtesy. Here's what's worth gleaning from her book: \n\n Don't just quarrel; listen and learn. \n\n Don't nit-pick other people's ideas; build your own. \n\n Don't argue for the sake of arguing. \n\n Truth and courage often lie in the middle, not the extremes. \n\n Many issues are multisided. \n\n Focus on the substance of debates, not on strategy, theater, or the opponents' personal flaws. \n\n Don't fight over small issues. \n\n Don't obstruct good ideas just so you can win.", "\"When there is a need to make others wrong,\" Tannen argues, \"the temptation is great to oversimplify\" and to \"seize upon the weakest examples, ignore facts that support your opponent's views, and focus only on those that support yours.\" In her need to make the \"argument culture\" wrong, she succumbs to these temptations. She blames the mainstream press, not just the paparazzi , for torturing Princess Diana and driving Adm. Mike Boorda to suicide. She compares to the propaganda of \"totalitarian countries\" (because falsehoods are spread) and to the dehumanization involved in \"ethnically motivated assaults\" (because reporters hound politicians). She blames communications technology for obscene and threatening phone calls made by former university President Richard Berendzen and former Judge Sol Wachtler.", "We Do Understand \n\n \"This is not another book about civility,\" Deborah Tannen promises in the first sentence of The Argument Culture . \"Civility,\" she explains, suggests a \"veneer of politeness spread thin over human relations like a layer of marmalade over toast.\" Instead, Tannen has written something less: a book about other books about civility. Quoting from Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, political scientist Larry Sabato, and others who have studied the rise of belligerence in politics, journalism, and law, Tannen spreads their insights thin over all human relations, painting a general theory of discord. The whole is less perceptive than its parts and more pernicious.", "If you portray everything as a scandal, no one will care when something really is scandalous. \n\n All this is sage advice--for couples, for families, for bosses and employees, maybe even for book reviewers. But when she applies her precepts to our great national conversation, Tannen gets confused. She conflates belligerence, divisiveness, polarization, titillation, jealousy, incivility, aloofness, ruthlessness, cruelty, savagery, contempt, glibness, cynicism, anomie, partisanship, obstructionism, and gridlock. She makes culprits out of answering machines, electronic mail, campaign money, malpractice litigation, HMOs, corporate takeovers, and the demise of house calls by the family doctor.", "Tannen even wants to protect us from the possibility of unpleasant confrontations in the courtroom. \"The purpose of most cross-examinations\" is \"not to establish facts but to discredit the witness,\" she asserts,", "in the words of Arkansas journalist Gene Lyons, \"the result of the nastiest and most successful political 'dirty tricks' campaign in recent American history.\" Is Tannen a Clinton apologist? She rules that criticism out of bounds. \"The very fact that", "Given this oddly paternalistic (or maternalistic) diagnosis, it's not surprising that Tannen should wish to cover our ears, filtering out strife, deception, and debate. She assures us that all reasonable people can agree that disseminating birth control and sex education is the best way to reduce the abortion rate; that stiff sentences for small drug offenses don't reduce drug abuse; that global warming is producing \"disastrous consequences.\" Partial-birth abortion is \"surely not\" a \"very important\" issue, and Congress should not have let the Republican \"politics of obstruction\" defeat President Clinton's health care proposal in 1994, given the \"broad bipartisan and public consensus that it was desperately needed.\" The \"view of government as the enemy\" isn't worth debating; it's just \"another troubling aspect of the argument culture.\" Indeed, Tannen embraces a colleague's claim that \"right-wing talk radio\" deploys phrases \"similar to verbal manipulations employed by propagandists in the Nazi era.\"", "If you missed the links within the review, click to read: 1) an illustration of ; 2) Tannen's that American journalism is just like propaganda from totalitarian regimes, plus William Saletan's disclosure that \"several of these propagandists now infest Slate \"; 3) the for her contention that there is no evidence that people can distinguish lies from truth; 4) and an example of how Tannen from a one-guest format on TV and radio talk shows.", "Tannen doesn't trust in the power of good argumentation to keep society honest, much less correct itself, because she rather shockingly insists \"\" that people can distinguish lies from the truth. Nor does she trust our competence to manage unfettered communication: \"E-mail makes it too easy to forward messages, too easy to reply before your temper cools, too easy to broadcast messages to large numbers of people without thinking about how every sentence will strike every recipient.\" Lexis-Nexis is an equally unwelcome troublemaker: \"Technology also exacerbates the culture of critique by making it much easier for politicians or journalists to ferret out inconsistencies in a public person's statements over time.\"", "Likewise, Tannen recalls the trial of a Canadian man who had denied the Holocaust. The defendant's lawyer interrogated concentration camp survivors, asking whether they had seen their parents gassed. The adversarial system permitted such questions to be asked and answered--admittedly a vexatious experience for the survivors but one that does entail an airing of the facts of the Holocaust. Tannen, however, treats it only as a display of the \"cruelty of cross-examination.\" She raises no objection to the Canadian hate-speech ban under which the defendant was prosecuted. Would Tannen argue that the United States should adopt such a law, along with, say, a ban on the cross-examination of accusers? If so, she'd be wrong. But hey, so far, it's still a free country.", "Tannen finds it particularly unseemly that reporters and independent counsels treat the nation's ultimate father figure with such irreverence. She complains that Clinton's weekly radio address \"is followed immediately by a Republican", "The First Amendment, in Tannen's view, has often become \"a pretext to justify the airing of just those views that make for the most entertaining fights.\" As an alternative, she offers Asian authoritarianism: \"Disputation was rejected in ancient China as 'incompatible with the decorum and harmony cultivated by the true sage.' \" Similarly, \"the minimal human unit in Japan is not the individual but the group.\" Instead of the American practice of having two guests debate policy questions on TV news programs, she suggests a Japanese format, which \"typically features a single guest.\" (Click to learn how she puts this into practice.)", "Vigilance and combat are particularly essential to law enforcement and foreign policy, which must deal with thugs and tyrants, not thoughtless husbands. Tannen laments that cops and soldiers have been \"trained to overcome their resistance to kill\" by trying \"not to think of their opponents as human beings.\" She neglects to mention that our safety depends on the ability of these officers to kill their adversaries. Comparing Vietnam to World War II, Tannen focuses strictly on the soldiers' social experience. In World War II, she observes, they trained, served, and went home together. \"Vietnam, in contrast, was a 'lonely war' of individuals assigned to constantly shifting units for year-long tours of duty.\" She ignores the more important difference: In World War II, they were fighting Hitler.", "Instead of the American system, Tannen proposes consideration of the French and German systems. Under French law, after Princess Diana's death: \n\n The photographers were held for two days without charges being filed and without being allowed to confer with lawyers. ... The judges do most of the questioning; though lawyers can also ask questions, they cannot cross-examine witnesses. Guilt ... need not be established 'beyond a reasonable doubt' but simply by ... the judge's intimate belief, or deeply held sense, of what happened.", "rape can appear to be consensual sex,\" she ignores the reverse implication--that it is easy to make consensual sex look like rape. She complains that when Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, \"Framing these hearings as a", "as though the two objectives were unrelated. Thus, \"the adversary system ... is inhumane to the victims of cross-examination.\" She simply assumes the very thing the trial is supposed to prove and what cross-examination might disprove (if this is, in", "response,\" which \"weakens the public's ability to see leaders as leaders.\" A reporter's skeptical question to Clinton \"broke the spell\" of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's remarks upon being nominated to the Supreme Court, thereby injuring citizens' \"sense of connection\" to", "defending our nation's elected leader makes one suspect--an 'apologist'--is in itself evidence of the culture of critique,\" she writes." ], [ "In her previous books-- That's Not What I Meant! (1986), You Just Don't Understand (1990), and Talking From 9 to 5 (1994)--Tannen carved out a niche as the nation's pre-eminent intergender translator and couples counselor. A professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, she transformed the comparative study of male and female conversational patterns from a linguistic subdiscipline into a self-help movement. Until recently, though, Tannen confined her analysis to conversations among dysfunctional individuals. (For an illustration, click .) But in The Argument Culture , she takes her movement one step further, peddling the elixir of mutual understanding as a remedy for the whole damned dysfunctional country. This is necessary, she argues, because \"contentious public discourse\" not only poisons the political atmosphere, it also risks infecting our most intimate relationships.", "We Do Understand \n\n \"This is not another book about civility,\" Deborah Tannen promises in the first sentence of The Argument Culture . \"Civility,\" she explains, suggests a \"veneer of politeness spread thin over human relations like a layer of marmalade over toast.\" Instead, Tannen has written something less: a book about other books about civility. Quoting from Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, political scientist Larry Sabato, and others who have studied the rise of belligerence in politics, journalism, and law, Tannen spreads their insights thin over all human relations, painting a general theory of discord. The whole is less perceptive than its parts and more pernicious.", "If you portray everything as a scandal, no one will care when something really is scandalous. \n\n All this is sage advice--for couples, for families, for bosses and employees, maybe even for book reviewers. But when she applies her precepts to our great national conversation, Tannen gets confused. She conflates belligerence, divisiveness, polarization, titillation, jealousy, incivility, aloofness, ruthlessness, cruelty, savagery, contempt, glibness, cynicism, anomie, partisanship, obstructionism, and gridlock. She makes culprits out of answering machines, electronic mail, campaign money, malpractice litigation, HMOs, corporate takeovers, and the demise of house calls by the family doctor.", "If you missed the links within the review, click to read: 1) an illustration of ; 2) Tannen's that American journalism is just like propaganda from totalitarian regimes, plus William Saletan's disclosure that \"several of these propagandists now infest Slate \"; 3) the for her contention that there is no evidence that people can distinguish lies from truth; 4) and an example of how Tannen from a one-guest format on TV and radio talk shows.", "Tannen, like some grandmotherly creature from an Aesop fable, admonishes us to recognize what is good in the work of others, and it is only fair to extend her the same courtesy. Here's what's worth gleaning from her book: \n\n Don't just quarrel; listen and learn. \n\n Don't nit-pick other people's ideas; build your own. \n\n Don't argue for the sake of arguing. \n\n Truth and courage often lie in the middle, not the extremes. \n\n Many issues are multisided. \n\n Focus on the substance of debates, not on strategy, theater, or the opponents' personal flaws. \n\n Don't fight over small issues. \n\n Don't obstruct good ideas just so you can win.", "Tannen even wants to protect us from the possibility of unpleasant confrontations in the courtroom. \"The purpose of most cross-examinations\" is \"not to establish facts but to discredit the witness,\" she asserts,", "Tannen doesn't trust in the power of good argumentation to keep society honest, much less correct itself, because she rather shockingly insists \"\" that people can distinguish lies from the truth. Nor does she trust our competence to manage unfettered communication: \"E-mail makes it too easy to forward messages, too easy to reply before your temper cools, too easy to broadcast messages to large numbers of people without thinking about how every sentence will strike every recipient.\" Lexis-Nexis is an equally unwelcome troublemaker: \"Technology also exacerbates the culture of critique by making it much easier for politicians or journalists to ferret out inconsistencies in a public person's statements over time.\"", "Tannen's main mistake is failing to appreciate the difference between two distinct social spheres: the sphere of snuggle and the sphere of struggle. Some people--say, your spouse or your kids--you should snuggle with. Others--say, Saddam Hussein--you shouldn't. Tannen's antagonism toward antagonism makes sense in the former case but not in the latter. Among her illustrations of belligerence are William Safire's \"kick 'em when they're up\" philosophy of journalism and the media's use of war metaphors to describe Alan Greenspan's policies against inflation. To which one might sensibly reply: Good for Greenspan and Safire--and for us. The Federal Reserve's war on inflation and the press corps' scrutiny of powerful people safeguard the country. Some things are worth fighting for, and some things are worth fighting.", "Given this oddly paternalistic (or maternalistic) diagnosis, it's not surprising that Tannen should wish to cover our ears, filtering out strife, deception, and debate. She assures us that all reasonable people can agree that disseminating birth control and sex education is the best way to reduce the abortion rate; that stiff sentences for small drug offenses don't reduce drug abuse; that global warming is producing \"disastrous consequences.\" Partial-birth abortion is \"surely not\" a \"very important\" issue, and Congress should not have let the Republican \"politics of obstruction\" defeat President Clinton's health care proposal in 1994, given the \"broad bipartisan and public consensus that it was desperately needed.\" The \"view of government as the enemy\" isn't worth debating; it's just \"another troubling aspect of the argument culture.\" Indeed, Tannen embraces a colleague's claim that \"right-wing talk radio\" deploys phrases \"similar to verbal manipulations employed by propagandists in the Nazi era.\"", "\"When there is a need to make others wrong,\" Tannen argues, \"the temptation is great to oversimplify\" and to \"seize upon the weakest examples, ignore facts that support your opponent's views, and focus only on those that support yours.\" In her need to make the \"argument culture\" wrong, she succumbs to these temptations. She blames the mainstream press, not just the paparazzi , for torturing Princess Diana and driving Adm. Mike Boorda to suicide. She compares to the propaganda of \"totalitarian countries\" (because falsehoods are spread) and to the dehumanization involved in \"ethnically motivated assaults\" (because reporters hound politicians). She blames communications technology for obscene and threatening phone calls made by former university President Richard Berendzen and former Judge Sol Wachtler.", "Tannen finds it particularly unseemly that reporters and independent counsels treat the nation's ultimate father figure with such irreverence. She complains that Clinton's weekly radio address \"is followed immediately by a Republican", "in the words of Arkansas journalist Gene Lyons, \"the result of the nastiest and most successful political 'dirty tricks' campaign in recent American history.\" Is Tannen a Clinton apologist? She rules that criticism out of bounds. \"The very fact that", "Likewise, Tannen recalls the trial of a Canadian man who had denied the Holocaust. The defendant's lawyer interrogated concentration camp survivors, asking whether they had seen their parents gassed. The adversarial system permitted such questions to be asked and answered--admittedly a vexatious experience for the survivors but one that does entail an airing of the facts of the Holocaust. Tannen, however, treats it only as a display of the \"cruelty of cross-examination.\" She raises no objection to the Canadian hate-speech ban under which the defendant was prosecuted. Would Tannen argue that the United States should adopt such a law, along with, say, a ban on the cross-examination of accusers? If so, she'd be wrong. But hey, so far, it's still a free country.", "The First Amendment, in Tannen's view, has often become \"a pretext to justify the airing of just those views that make for the most entertaining fights.\" As an alternative, she offers Asian authoritarianism: \"Disputation was rejected in ancient China as 'incompatible with the decorum and harmony cultivated by the true sage.' \" Similarly, \"the minimal human unit in Japan is not the individual but the group.\" Instead of the American practice of having two guests debate policy questions on TV news programs, she suggests a Japanese format, which \"typically features a single guest.\" (Click to learn how she puts this into practice.)", "Vigilance and combat are particularly essential to law enforcement and foreign policy, which must deal with thugs and tyrants, not thoughtless husbands. Tannen laments that cops and soldiers have been \"trained to overcome their resistance to kill\" by trying \"not to think of their opponents as human beings.\" She neglects to mention that our safety depends on the ability of these officers to kill their adversaries. Comparing Vietnam to World War II, Tannen focuses strictly on the soldiers' social experience. In World War II, she observes, they trained, served, and went home together. \"Vietnam, in contrast, was a 'lonely war' of individuals assigned to constantly shifting units for year-long tours of duty.\" She ignores the more important difference: In World War II, they were fighting Hitler.", "Instead of the American system, Tannen proposes consideration of the French and German systems. Under French law, after Princess Diana's death: \n\n The photographers were held for two days without charges being filed and without being allowed to confer with lawyers. ... The judges do most of the questioning; though lawyers can also ask questions, they cannot cross-examine witnesses. Guilt ... need not be established 'beyond a reasonable doubt' but simply by ... the judge's intimate belief, or deeply held sense, of what happened.", "rape can appear to be consensual sex,\" she ignores the reverse implication--that it is easy to make consensual sex look like rape. She complains that when Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, \"Framing these hearings as a", "response,\" which \"weakens the public's ability to see leaders as leaders.\" A reporter's skeptical question to Clinton \"broke the spell\" of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's remarks upon being nominated to the Supreme Court, thereby injuring citizens' \"sense of connection\" to", "as though the two objectives were unrelated. Thus, \"the adversary system ... is inhumane to the victims of cross-examination.\" She simply assumes the very thing the trial is supposed to prove and what cross-examination might disprove (if this is, in", "defending our nation's elected leader makes one suspect--an 'apologist'--is in itself evidence of the culture of critique,\" she writes." ], [ "In her previous books-- That's Not What I Meant! (1986), You Just Don't Understand (1990), and Talking From 9 to 5 (1994)--Tannen carved out a niche as the nation's pre-eminent intergender translator and couples counselor. A professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, she transformed the comparative study of male and female conversational patterns from a linguistic subdiscipline into a self-help movement. Until recently, though, Tannen confined her analysis to conversations among dysfunctional individuals. (For an illustration, click .) But in The Argument Culture , she takes her movement one step further, peddling the elixir of mutual understanding as a remedy for the whole damned dysfunctional country. This is necessary, she argues, because \"contentious public discourse\" not only poisons the political atmosphere, it also risks infecting our most intimate relationships.", "We Do Understand \n\n \"This is not another book about civility,\" Deborah Tannen promises in the first sentence of The Argument Culture . \"Civility,\" she explains, suggests a \"veneer of politeness spread thin over human relations like a layer of marmalade over toast.\" Instead, Tannen has written something less: a book about other books about civility. Quoting from Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, political scientist Larry Sabato, and others who have studied the rise of belligerence in politics, journalism, and law, Tannen spreads their insights thin over all human relations, painting a general theory of discord. The whole is less perceptive than its parts and more pernicious.", "Tannen even wants to protect us from the possibility of unpleasant confrontations in the courtroom. \"The purpose of most cross-examinations\" is \"not to establish facts but to discredit the witness,\" she asserts,", "Tannen's main mistake is failing to appreciate the difference between two distinct social spheres: the sphere of snuggle and the sphere of struggle. Some people--say, your spouse or your kids--you should snuggle with. Others--say, Saddam Hussein--you shouldn't. Tannen's antagonism toward antagonism makes sense in the former case but not in the latter. Among her illustrations of belligerence are William Safire's \"kick 'em when they're up\" philosophy of journalism and the media's use of war metaphors to describe Alan Greenspan's policies against inflation. To which one might sensibly reply: Good for Greenspan and Safire--and for us. The Federal Reserve's war on inflation and the press corps' scrutiny of powerful people safeguard the country. Some things are worth fighting for, and some things are worth fighting.", "If you portray everything as a scandal, no one will care when something really is scandalous. \n\n All this is sage advice--for couples, for families, for bosses and employees, maybe even for book reviewers. But when she applies her precepts to our great national conversation, Tannen gets confused. She conflates belligerence, divisiveness, polarization, titillation, jealousy, incivility, aloofness, ruthlessness, cruelty, savagery, contempt, glibness, cynicism, anomie, partisanship, obstructionism, and gridlock. She makes culprits out of answering machines, electronic mail, campaign money, malpractice litigation, HMOs, corporate takeovers, and the demise of house calls by the family doctor.", "\"When there is a need to make others wrong,\" Tannen argues, \"the temptation is great to oversimplify\" and to \"seize upon the weakest examples, ignore facts that support your opponent's views, and focus only on those that support yours.\" In her need to make the \"argument culture\" wrong, she succumbs to these temptations. She blames the mainstream press, not just the paparazzi , for torturing Princess Diana and driving Adm. Mike Boorda to suicide. She compares to the propaganda of \"totalitarian countries\" (because falsehoods are spread) and to the dehumanization involved in \"ethnically motivated assaults\" (because reporters hound politicians). She blames communications technology for obscene and threatening phone calls made by former university President Richard Berendzen and former Judge Sol Wachtler.", "If you missed the links within the review, click to read: 1) an illustration of ; 2) Tannen's that American journalism is just like propaganda from totalitarian regimes, plus William Saletan's disclosure that \"several of these propagandists now infest Slate \"; 3) the for her contention that there is no evidence that people can distinguish lies from truth; 4) and an example of how Tannen from a one-guest format on TV and radio talk shows.", "Given this oddly paternalistic (or maternalistic) diagnosis, it's not surprising that Tannen should wish to cover our ears, filtering out strife, deception, and debate. She assures us that all reasonable people can agree that disseminating birth control and sex education is the best way to reduce the abortion rate; that stiff sentences for small drug offenses don't reduce drug abuse; that global warming is producing \"disastrous consequences.\" Partial-birth abortion is \"surely not\" a \"very important\" issue, and Congress should not have let the Republican \"politics of obstruction\" defeat President Clinton's health care proposal in 1994, given the \"broad bipartisan and public consensus that it was desperately needed.\" The \"view of government as the enemy\" isn't worth debating; it's just \"another troubling aspect of the argument culture.\" Indeed, Tannen embraces a colleague's claim that \"right-wing talk radio\" deploys phrases \"similar to verbal manipulations employed by propagandists in the Nazi era.\"", "Tannen, like some grandmotherly creature from an Aesop fable, admonishes us to recognize what is good in the work of others, and it is only fair to extend her the same courtesy. Here's what's worth gleaning from her book: \n\n Don't just quarrel; listen and learn. \n\n Don't nit-pick other people's ideas; build your own. \n\n Don't argue for the sake of arguing. \n\n Truth and courage often lie in the middle, not the extremes. \n\n Many issues are multisided. \n\n Focus on the substance of debates, not on strategy, theater, or the opponents' personal flaws. \n\n Don't fight over small issues. \n\n Don't obstruct good ideas just so you can win.", "Tannen finds it particularly unseemly that reporters and independent counsels treat the nation's ultimate father figure with such irreverence. She complains that Clinton's weekly radio address \"is followed immediately by a Republican", "in the words of Arkansas journalist Gene Lyons, \"the result of the nastiest and most successful political 'dirty tricks' campaign in recent American history.\" Is Tannen a Clinton apologist? She rules that criticism out of bounds. \"The very fact that", "Tannen doesn't trust in the power of good argumentation to keep society honest, much less correct itself, because she rather shockingly insists \"\" that people can distinguish lies from the truth. Nor does she trust our competence to manage unfettered communication: \"E-mail makes it too easy to forward messages, too easy to reply before your temper cools, too easy to broadcast messages to large numbers of people without thinking about how every sentence will strike every recipient.\" Lexis-Nexis is an equally unwelcome troublemaker: \"Technology also exacerbates the culture of critique by making it much easier for politicians or journalists to ferret out inconsistencies in a public person's statements over time.\"", "Likewise, Tannen recalls the trial of a Canadian man who had denied the Holocaust. The defendant's lawyer interrogated concentration camp survivors, asking whether they had seen their parents gassed. The adversarial system permitted such questions to be asked and answered--admittedly a vexatious experience for the survivors but one that does entail an airing of the facts of the Holocaust. Tannen, however, treats it only as a display of the \"cruelty of cross-examination.\" She raises no objection to the Canadian hate-speech ban under which the defendant was prosecuted. Would Tannen argue that the United States should adopt such a law, along with, say, a ban on the cross-examination of accusers? If so, she'd be wrong. But hey, so far, it's still a free country.", "The First Amendment, in Tannen's view, has often become \"a pretext to justify the airing of just those views that make for the most entertaining fights.\" As an alternative, she offers Asian authoritarianism: \"Disputation was rejected in ancient China as 'incompatible with the decorum and harmony cultivated by the true sage.' \" Similarly, \"the minimal human unit in Japan is not the individual but the group.\" Instead of the American practice of having two guests debate policy questions on TV news programs, she suggests a Japanese format, which \"typically features a single guest.\" (Click to learn how she puts this into practice.)", "Vigilance and combat are particularly essential to law enforcement and foreign policy, which must deal with thugs and tyrants, not thoughtless husbands. Tannen laments that cops and soldiers have been \"trained to overcome their resistance to kill\" by trying \"not to think of their opponents as human beings.\" She neglects to mention that our safety depends on the ability of these officers to kill their adversaries. Comparing Vietnam to World War II, Tannen focuses strictly on the soldiers' social experience. In World War II, she observes, they trained, served, and went home together. \"Vietnam, in contrast, was a 'lonely war' of individuals assigned to constantly shifting units for year-long tours of duty.\" She ignores the more important difference: In World War II, they were fighting Hitler.", "Instead of the American system, Tannen proposes consideration of the French and German systems. Under French law, after Princess Diana's death: \n\n The photographers were held for two days without charges being filed and without being allowed to confer with lawyers. ... The judges do most of the questioning; though lawyers can also ask questions, they cannot cross-examine witnesses. Guilt ... need not be established 'beyond a reasonable doubt' but simply by ... the judge's intimate belief, or deeply held sense, of what happened.", "rape can appear to be consensual sex,\" she ignores the reverse implication--that it is easy to make consensual sex look like rape. She complains that when Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, \"Framing these hearings as a", "as though the two objectives were unrelated. Thus, \"the adversary system ... is inhumane to the victims of cross-examination.\" She simply assumes the very thing the trial is supposed to prove and what cross-examination might disprove (if this is, in", "response,\" which \"weakens the public's ability to see leaders as leaders.\" A reporter's skeptical question to Clinton \"broke the spell\" of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's remarks upon being nominated to the Supreme Court, thereby injuring citizens' \"sense of connection\" to", "fact, the point of the trial): that the witness is a victim. Conversely, she assumes that the defendant cannot be a victim. While objecting to cross-examination of alleged rape victims because \"it is easy to distort events so that a" ], [ "Tannen even wants to protect us from the possibility of unpleasant confrontations in the courtroom. \"The purpose of most cross-examinations\" is \"not to establish facts but to discredit the witness,\" she asserts,", "In her previous books-- That's Not What I Meant! (1986), You Just Don't Understand (1990), and Talking From 9 to 5 (1994)--Tannen carved out a niche as the nation's pre-eminent intergender translator and couples counselor. A professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, she transformed the comparative study of male and female conversational patterns from a linguistic subdiscipline into a self-help movement. Until recently, though, Tannen confined her analysis to conversations among dysfunctional individuals. (For an illustration, click .) But in The Argument Culture , she takes her movement one step further, peddling the elixir of mutual understanding as a remedy for the whole damned dysfunctional country. This is necessary, she argues, because \"contentious public discourse\" not only poisons the political atmosphere, it also risks infecting our most intimate relationships.", "We Do Understand \n\n \"This is not another book about civility,\" Deborah Tannen promises in the first sentence of The Argument Culture . \"Civility,\" she explains, suggests a \"veneer of politeness spread thin over human relations like a layer of marmalade over toast.\" Instead, Tannen has written something less: a book about other books about civility. Quoting from Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, political scientist Larry Sabato, and others who have studied the rise of belligerence in politics, journalism, and law, Tannen spreads their insights thin over all human relations, painting a general theory of discord. The whole is less perceptive than its parts and more pernicious.", "\"When there is a need to make others wrong,\" Tannen argues, \"the temptation is great to oversimplify\" and to \"seize upon the weakest examples, ignore facts that support your opponent's views, and focus only on those that support yours.\" In her need to make the \"argument culture\" wrong, she succumbs to these temptations. She blames the mainstream press, not just the paparazzi , for torturing Princess Diana and driving Adm. Mike Boorda to suicide. She compares to the propaganda of \"totalitarian countries\" (because falsehoods are spread) and to the dehumanization involved in \"ethnically motivated assaults\" (because reporters hound politicians). She blames communications technology for obscene and threatening phone calls made by former university President Richard Berendzen and former Judge Sol Wachtler.", "Likewise, Tannen recalls the trial of a Canadian man who had denied the Holocaust. The defendant's lawyer interrogated concentration camp survivors, asking whether they had seen their parents gassed. The adversarial system permitted such questions to be asked and answered--admittedly a vexatious experience for the survivors but one that does entail an airing of the facts of the Holocaust. Tannen, however, treats it only as a display of the \"cruelty of cross-examination.\" She raises no objection to the Canadian hate-speech ban under which the defendant was prosecuted. Would Tannen argue that the United States should adopt such a law, along with, say, a ban on the cross-examination of accusers? If so, she'd be wrong. But hey, so far, it's still a free country.", "Tannen's main mistake is failing to appreciate the difference between two distinct social spheres: the sphere of snuggle and the sphere of struggle. Some people--say, your spouse or your kids--you should snuggle with. Others--say, Saddam Hussein--you shouldn't. Tannen's antagonism toward antagonism makes sense in the former case but not in the latter. Among her illustrations of belligerence are William Safire's \"kick 'em when they're up\" philosophy of journalism and the media's use of war metaphors to describe Alan Greenspan's policies against inflation. To which one might sensibly reply: Good for Greenspan and Safire--and for us. The Federal Reserve's war on inflation and the press corps' scrutiny of powerful people safeguard the country. Some things are worth fighting for, and some things are worth fighting.", "If you portray everything as a scandal, no one will care when something really is scandalous. \n\n All this is sage advice--for couples, for families, for bosses and employees, maybe even for book reviewers. But when she applies her precepts to our great national conversation, Tannen gets confused. She conflates belligerence, divisiveness, polarization, titillation, jealousy, incivility, aloofness, ruthlessness, cruelty, savagery, contempt, glibness, cynicism, anomie, partisanship, obstructionism, and gridlock. She makes culprits out of answering machines, electronic mail, campaign money, malpractice litigation, HMOs, corporate takeovers, and the demise of house calls by the family doctor.", "Given this oddly paternalistic (or maternalistic) diagnosis, it's not surprising that Tannen should wish to cover our ears, filtering out strife, deception, and debate. She assures us that all reasonable people can agree that disseminating birth control and sex education is the best way to reduce the abortion rate; that stiff sentences for small drug offenses don't reduce drug abuse; that global warming is producing \"disastrous consequences.\" Partial-birth abortion is \"surely not\" a \"very important\" issue, and Congress should not have let the Republican \"politics of obstruction\" defeat President Clinton's health care proposal in 1994, given the \"broad bipartisan and public consensus that it was desperately needed.\" The \"view of government as the enemy\" isn't worth debating; it's just \"another troubling aspect of the argument culture.\" Indeed, Tannen embraces a colleague's claim that \"right-wing talk radio\" deploys phrases \"similar to verbal manipulations employed by propagandists in the Nazi era.\"", "Tannen, like some grandmotherly creature from an Aesop fable, admonishes us to recognize what is good in the work of others, and it is only fair to extend her the same courtesy. Here's what's worth gleaning from her book: \n\n Don't just quarrel; listen and learn. \n\n Don't nit-pick other people's ideas; build your own. \n\n Don't argue for the sake of arguing. \n\n Truth and courage often lie in the middle, not the extremes. \n\n Many issues are multisided. \n\n Focus on the substance of debates, not on strategy, theater, or the opponents' personal flaws. \n\n Don't fight over small issues. \n\n Don't obstruct good ideas just so you can win.", "Instead of the American system, Tannen proposes consideration of the French and German systems. Under French law, after Princess Diana's death: \n\n The photographers were held for two days without charges being filed and without being allowed to confer with lawyers. ... The judges do most of the questioning; though lawyers can also ask questions, they cannot cross-examine witnesses. Guilt ... need not be established 'beyond a reasonable doubt' but simply by ... the judge's intimate belief, or deeply held sense, of what happened.", "Tannen doesn't trust in the power of good argumentation to keep society honest, much less correct itself, because she rather shockingly insists \"\" that people can distinguish lies from the truth. Nor does she trust our competence to manage unfettered communication: \"E-mail makes it too easy to forward messages, too easy to reply before your temper cools, too easy to broadcast messages to large numbers of people without thinking about how every sentence will strike every recipient.\" Lexis-Nexis is an equally unwelcome troublemaker: \"Technology also exacerbates the culture of critique by making it much easier for politicians or journalists to ferret out inconsistencies in a public person's statements over time.\"", "If you missed the links within the review, click to read: 1) an illustration of ; 2) Tannen's that American journalism is just like propaganda from totalitarian regimes, plus William Saletan's disclosure that \"several of these propagandists now infest Slate \"; 3) the for her contention that there is no evidence that people can distinguish lies from truth; 4) and an example of how Tannen from a one-guest format on TV and radio talk shows.", "Tannen finds it particularly unseemly that reporters and independent counsels treat the nation's ultimate father figure with such irreverence. She complains that Clinton's weekly radio address \"is followed immediately by a Republican", "in the words of Arkansas journalist Gene Lyons, \"the result of the nastiest and most successful political 'dirty tricks' campaign in recent American history.\" Is Tannen a Clinton apologist? She rules that criticism out of bounds. \"The very fact that", "The First Amendment, in Tannen's view, has often become \"a pretext to justify the airing of just those views that make for the most entertaining fights.\" As an alternative, she offers Asian authoritarianism: \"Disputation was rejected in ancient China as 'incompatible with the decorum and harmony cultivated by the true sage.' \" Similarly, \"the minimal human unit in Japan is not the individual but the group.\" Instead of the American practice of having two guests debate policy questions on TV news programs, she suggests a Japanese format, which \"typically features a single guest.\" (Click to learn how she puts this into practice.)", "Vigilance and combat are particularly essential to law enforcement and foreign policy, which must deal with thugs and tyrants, not thoughtless husbands. Tannen laments that cops and soldiers have been \"trained to overcome their resistance to kill\" by trying \"not to think of their opponents as human beings.\" She neglects to mention that our safety depends on the ability of these officers to kill their adversaries. Comparing Vietnam to World War II, Tannen focuses strictly on the soldiers' social experience. In World War II, she observes, they trained, served, and went home together. \"Vietnam, in contrast, was a 'lonely war' of individuals assigned to constantly shifting units for year-long tours of duty.\" She ignores the more important difference: In World War II, they were fighting Hitler.", "as though the two objectives were unrelated. Thus, \"the adversary system ... is inhumane to the victims of cross-examination.\" She simply assumes the very thing the trial is supposed to prove and what cross-examination might disprove (if this is, in", "rape can appear to be consensual sex,\" she ignores the reverse implication--that it is easy to make consensual sex look like rape. She complains that when Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, \"Framing these hearings as a", "fact, the point of the trial): that the witness is a victim. Conversely, she assumes that the defendant cannot be a victim. While objecting to cross-examination of alleged rape victims because \"it is easy to distort events so that a", "response,\" which \"weakens the public's ability to see leaders as leaders.\" A reporter's skeptical question to Clinton \"broke the spell\" of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's remarks upon being nominated to the Supreme Court, thereby injuring citizens' \"sense of connection\" to" ], [ "\"When there is a need to make others wrong,\" Tannen argues, \"the temptation is great to oversimplify\" and to \"seize upon the weakest examples, ignore facts that support your opponent's views, and focus only on those that support yours.\" In her need to make the \"argument culture\" wrong, she succumbs to these temptations. She blames the mainstream press, not just the paparazzi , for torturing Princess Diana and driving Adm. Mike Boorda to suicide. She compares to the propaganda of \"totalitarian countries\" (because falsehoods are spread) and to the dehumanization involved in \"ethnically motivated assaults\" (because reporters hound politicians). She blames communications technology for obscene and threatening phone calls made by former university President Richard Berendzen and former Judge Sol Wachtler.", "We Do Understand \n\n \"This is not another book about civility,\" Deborah Tannen promises in the first sentence of The Argument Culture . \"Civility,\" she explains, suggests a \"veneer of politeness spread thin over human relations like a layer of marmalade over toast.\" Instead, Tannen has written something less: a book about other books about civility. Quoting from Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, political scientist Larry Sabato, and others who have studied the rise of belligerence in politics, journalism, and law, Tannen spreads their insights thin over all human relations, painting a general theory of discord. The whole is less perceptive than its parts and more pernicious.", "In her previous books-- That's Not What I Meant! (1986), You Just Don't Understand (1990), and Talking From 9 to 5 (1994)--Tannen carved out a niche as the nation's pre-eminent intergender translator and couples counselor. A professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, she transformed the comparative study of male and female conversational patterns from a linguistic subdiscipline into a self-help movement. Until recently, though, Tannen confined her analysis to conversations among dysfunctional individuals. (For an illustration, click .) But in The Argument Culture , she takes her movement one step further, peddling the elixir of mutual understanding as a remedy for the whole damned dysfunctional country. This is necessary, she argues, because \"contentious public discourse\" not only poisons the political atmosphere, it also risks infecting our most intimate relationships.", "defending our nation's elected leader makes one suspect--an 'apologist'--is in itself evidence of the culture of critique,\" she writes.", "Tannen doesn't trust in the power of good argumentation to keep society honest, much less correct itself, because she rather shockingly insists \"\" that people can distinguish lies from the truth. Nor does she trust our competence to manage unfettered communication: \"E-mail makes it too easy to forward messages, too easy to reply before your temper cools, too easy to broadcast messages to large numbers of people without thinking about how every sentence will strike every recipient.\" Lexis-Nexis is an equally unwelcome troublemaker: \"Technology also exacerbates the culture of critique by making it much easier for politicians or journalists to ferret out inconsistencies in a public person's statements over time.\"", "If you portray everything as a scandal, no one will care when something really is scandalous. \n\n All this is sage advice--for couples, for families, for bosses and employees, maybe even for book reviewers. But when she applies her precepts to our great national conversation, Tannen gets confused. She conflates belligerence, divisiveness, polarization, titillation, jealousy, incivility, aloofness, ruthlessness, cruelty, savagery, contempt, glibness, cynicism, anomie, partisanship, obstructionism, and gridlock. She makes culprits out of answering machines, electronic mail, campaign money, malpractice litigation, HMOs, corporate takeovers, and the demise of house calls by the family doctor.", "Tannen's main mistake is failing to appreciate the difference between two distinct social spheres: the sphere of snuggle and the sphere of struggle. Some people--say, your spouse or your kids--you should snuggle with. Others--say, Saddam Hussein--you shouldn't. Tannen's antagonism toward antagonism makes sense in the former case but not in the latter. Among her illustrations of belligerence are William Safire's \"kick 'em when they're up\" philosophy of journalism and the media's use of war metaphors to describe Alan Greenspan's policies against inflation. To which one might sensibly reply: Good for Greenspan and Safire--and for us. The Federal Reserve's war on inflation and the press corps' scrutiny of powerful people safeguard the country. Some things are worth fighting for, and some things are worth fighting.", "If you missed the links within the review, click to read: 1) an illustration of ; 2) Tannen's that American journalism is just like propaganda from totalitarian regimes, plus William Saletan's disclosure that \"several of these propagandists now infest Slate \"; 3) the for her contention that there is no evidence that people can distinguish lies from truth; 4) and an example of how Tannen from a one-guest format on TV and radio talk shows.", "Given this oddly paternalistic (or maternalistic) diagnosis, it's not surprising that Tannen should wish to cover our ears, filtering out strife, deception, and debate. She assures us that all reasonable people can agree that disseminating birth control and sex education is the best way to reduce the abortion rate; that stiff sentences for small drug offenses don't reduce drug abuse; that global warming is producing \"disastrous consequences.\" Partial-birth abortion is \"surely not\" a \"very important\" issue, and Congress should not have let the Republican \"politics of obstruction\" defeat President Clinton's health care proposal in 1994, given the \"broad bipartisan and public consensus that it was desperately needed.\" The \"view of government as the enemy\" isn't worth debating; it's just \"another troubling aspect of the argument culture.\" Indeed, Tannen embraces a colleague's claim that \"right-wing talk radio\" deploys phrases \"similar to verbal manipulations employed by propagandists in the Nazi era.\"", "The First Amendment, in Tannen's view, has often become \"a pretext to justify the airing of just those views that make for the most entertaining fights.\" As an alternative, she offers Asian authoritarianism: \"Disputation was rejected in ancient China as 'incompatible with the decorum and harmony cultivated by the true sage.' \" Similarly, \"the minimal human unit in Japan is not the individual but the group.\" Instead of the American practice of having two guests debate policy questions on TV news programs, she suggests a Japanese format, which \"typically features a single guest.\" (Click to learn how she puts this into practice.)", "in the words of Arkansas journalist Gene Lyons, \"the result of the nastiest and most successful political 'dirty tricks' campaign in recent American history.\" Is Tannen a Clinton apologist? She rules that criticism out of bounds. \"The very fact that", "Tannen finds it particularly unseemly that reporters and independent counsels treat the nation's ultimate father figure with such irreverence. She complains that Clinton's weekly radio address \"is followed immediately by a Republican", "Instead of the American system, Tannen proposes consideration of the French and German systems. Under French law, after Princess Diana's death: \n\n The photographers were held for two days without charges being filed and without being allowed to confer with lawyers. ... The judges do most of the questioning; though lawyers can also ask questions, they cannot cross-examine witnesses. Guilt ... need not be established 'beyond a reasonable doubt' but simply by ... the judge's intimate belief, or deeply held sense, of what happened.", "Vigilance and combat are particularly essential to law enforcement and foreign policy, which must deal with thugs and tyrants, not thoughtless husbands. Tannen laments that cops and soldiers have been \"trained to overcome their resistance to kill\" by trying \"not to think of their opponents as human beings.\" She neglects to mention that our safety depends on the ability of these officers to kill their adversaries. Comparing Vietnam to World War II, Tannen focuses strictly on the soldiers' social experience. In World War II, she observes, they trained, served, and went home together. \"Vietnam, in contrast, was a 'lonely war' of individuals assigned to constantly shifting units for year-long tours of duty.\" She ignores the more important difference: In World War II, they were fighting Hitler.", "Likewise, Tannen recalls the trial of a Canadian man who had denied the Holocaust. The defendant's lawyer interrogated concentration camp survivors, asking whether they had seen their parents gassed. The adversarial system permitted such questions to be asked and answered--admittedly a vexatious experience for the survivors but one that does entail an airing of the facts of the Holocaust. Tannen, however, treats it only as a display of the \"cruelty of cross-examination.\" She raises no objection to the Canadian hate-speech ban under which the defendant was prosecuted. Would Tannen argue that the United States should adopt such a law, along with, say, a ban on the cross-examination of accusers? If so, she'd be wrong. But hey, so far, it's still a free country.", "Tannen even wants to protect us from the possibility of unpleasant confrontations in the courtroom. \"The purpose of most cross-examinations\" is \"not to establish facts but to discredit the witness,\" she asserts,", "\"our judicial system.\" The investigation of former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy was excessive, the campaign against former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders was \"cruelly unfair,\" and the Whitewater investigation--led by \"a prominent Republican known for his animosity toward the president\"--is,", "rape can appear to be consensual sex,\" she ignores the reverse implication--that it is easy to make consensual sex look like rape. She complains that when Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, \"Framing these hearings as a", "response,\" which \"weakens the public's ability to see leaders as leaders.\" A reporter's skeptical question to Clinton \"broke the spell\" of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's remarks upon being nominated to the Supreme Court, thereby injuring citizens' \"sense of connection\" to", "as though the two objectives were unrelated. Thus, \"the adversary system ... is inhumane to the victims of cross-examination.\" She simply assumes the very thing the trial is supposed to prove and what cross-examination might disprove (if this is, in" ], [ "If you portray everything as a scandal, no one will care when something really is scandalous. \n\n All this is sage advice--for couples, for families, for bosses and employees, maybe even for book reviewers. But when she applies her precepts to our great national conversation, Tannen gets confused. She conflates belligerence, divisiveness, polarization, titillation, jealousy, incivility, aloofness, ruthlessness, cruelty, savagery, contempt, glibness, cynicism, anomie, partisanship, obstructionism, and gridlock. She makes culprits out of answering machines, electronic mail, campaign money, malpractice litigation, HMOs, corporate takeovers, and the demise of house calls by the family doctor.", "In her previous books-- That's Not What I Meant! (1986), You Just Don't Understand (1990), and Talking From 9 to 5 (1994)--Tannen carved out a niche as the nation's pre-eminent intergender translator and couples counselor. A professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, she transformed the comparative study of male and female conversational patterns from a linguistic subdiscipline into a self-help movement. Until recently, though, Tannen confined her analysis to conversations among dysfunctional individuals. (For an illustration, click .) But in The Argument Culture , she takes her movement one step further, peddling the elixir of mutual understanding as a remedy for the whole damned dysfunctional country. This is necessary, she argues, because \"contentious public discourse\" not only poisons the political atmosphere, it also risks infecting our most intimate relationships.", "We Do Understand \n\n \"This is not another book about civility,\" Deborah Tannen promises in the first sentence of The Argument Culture . \"Civility,\" she explains, suggests a \"veneer of politeness spread thin over human relations like a layer of marmalade over toast.\" Instead, Tannen has written something less: a book about other books about civility. Quoting from Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, political scientist Larry Sabato, and others who have studied the rise of belligerence in politics, journalism, and law, Tannen spreads their insights thin over all human relations, painting a general theory of discord. The whole is less perceptive than its parts and more pernicious.", "\"When there is a need to make others wrong,\" Tannen argues, \"the temptation is great to oversimplify\" and to \"seize upon the weakest examples, ignore facts that support your opponent's views, and focus only on those that support yours.\" In her need to make the \"argument culture\" wrong, she succumbs to these temptations. She blames the mainstream press, not just the paparazzi , for torturing Princess Diana and driving Adm. Mike Boorda to suicide. She compares to the propaganda of \"totalitarian countries\" (because falsehoods are spread) and to the dehumanization involved in \"ethnically motivated assaults\" (because reporters hound politicians). She blames communications technology for obscene and threatening phone calls made by former university President Richard Berendzen and former Judge Sol Wachtler.", "rape can appear to be consensual sex,\" she ignores the reverse implication--that it is easy to make consensual sex look like rape. She complains that when Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, \"Framing these hearings as a", "Tannen's main mistake is failing to appreciate the difference between two distinct social spheres: the sphere of snuggle and the sphere of struggle. Some people--say, your spouse or your kids--you should snuggle with. Others--say, Saddam Hussein--you shouldn't. Tannen's antagonism toward antagonism makes sense in the former case but not in the latter. Among her illustrations of belligerence are William Safire's \"kick 'em when they're up\" philosophy of journalism and the media's use of war metaphors to describe Alan Greenspan's policies against inflation. To which one might sensibly reply: Good for Greenspan and Safire--and for us. The Federal Reserve's war on inflation and the press corps' scrutiny of powerful people safeguard the country. Some things are worth fighting for, and some things are worth fighting.", "defending our nation's elected leader makes one suspect--an 'apologist'--is in itself evidence of the culture of critique,\" she writes.", "If you missed the links within the review, click to read: 1) an illustration of ; 2) Tannen's that American journalism is just like propaganda from totalitarian regimes, plus William Saletan's disclosure that \"several of these propagandists now infest Slate \"; 3) the for her contention that there is no evidence that people can distinguish lies from truth; 4) and an example of how Tannen from a one-guest format on TV and radio talk shows.", "Tannen finds it particularly unseemly that reporters and independent counsels treat the nation's ultimate father figure with such irreverence. She complains that Clinton's weekly radio address \"is followed immediately by a Republican", "Vigilance and combat are particularly essential to law enforcement and foreign policy, which must deal with thugs and tyrants, not thoughtless husbands. Tannen laments that cops and soldiers have been \"trained to overcome their resistance to kill\" by trying \"not to think of their opponents as human beings.\" She neglects to mention that our safety depends on the ability of these officers to kill their adversaries. Comparing Vietnam to World War II, Tannen focuses strictly on the soldiers' social experience. In World War II, she observes, they trained, served, and went home together. \"Vietnam, in contrast, was a 'lonely war' of individuals assigned to constantly shifting units for year-long tours of duty.\" She ignores the more important difference: In World War II, they were fighting Hitler.", "Given this oddly paternalistic (or maternalistic) diagnosis, it's not surprising that Tannen should wish to cover our ears, filtering out strife, deception, and debate. She assures us that all reasonable people can agree that disseminating birth control and sex education is the best way to reduce the abortion rate; that stiff sentences for small drug offenses don't reduce drug abuse; that global warming is producing \"disastrous consequences.\" Partial-birth abortion is \"surely not\" a \"very important\" issue, and Congress should not have let the Republican \"politics of obstruction\" defeat President Clinton's health care proposal in 1994, given the \"broad bipartisan and public consensus that it was desperately needed.\" The \"view of government as the enemy\" isn't worth debating; it's just \"another troubling aspect of the argument culture.\" Indeed, Tannen embraces a colleague's claim that \"right-wing talk radio\" deploys phrases \"similar to verbal manipulations employed by propagandists in the Nazi era.\"", "as though the two objectives were unrelated. Thus, \"the adversary system ... is inhumane to the victims of cross-examination.\" She simply assumes the very thing the trial is supposed to prove and what cross-examination might disprove (if this is, in", "in the words of Arkansas journalist Gene Lyons, \"the result of the nastiest and most successful political 'dirty tricks' campaign in recent American history.\" Is Tannen a Clinton apologist? She rules that criticism out of bounds. \"The very fact that", "Tannen doesn't trust in the power of good argumentation to keep society honest, much less correct itself, because she rather shockingly insists \"\" that people can distinguish lies from the truth. Nor does she trust our competence to manage unfettered communication: \"E-mail makes it too easy to forward messages, too easy to reply before your temper cools, too easy to broadcast messages to large numbers of people without thinking about how every sentence will strike every recipient.\" Lexis-Nexis is an equally unwelcome troublemaker: \"Technology also exacerbates the culture of critique by making it much easier for politicians or journalists to ferret out inconsistencies in a public person's statements over time.\"", "The First Amendment, in Tannen's view, has often become \"a pretext to justify the airing of just those views that make for the most entertaining fights.\" As an alternative, she offers Asian authoritarianism: \"Disputation was rejected in ancient China as 'incompatible with the decorum and harmony cultivated by the true sage.' \" Similarly, \"the minimal human unit in Japan is not the individual but the group.\" Instead of the American practice of having two guests debate policy questions on TV news programs, she suggests a Japanese format, which \"typically features a single guest.\" (Click to learn how she puts this into practice.)", "response,\" which \"weakens the public's ability to see leaders as leaders.\" A reporter's skeptical question to Clinton \"broke the spell\" of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's remarks upon being nominated to the Supreme Court, thereby injuring citizens' \"sense of connection\" to", "Tannen, like some grandmotherly creature from an Aesop fable, admonishes us to recognize what is good in the work of others, and it is only fair to extend her the same courtesy. Here's what's worth gleaning from her book: \n\n Don't just quarrel; listen and learn. \n\n Don't nit-pick other people's ideas; build your own. \n\n Don't argue for the sake of arguing. \n\n Truth and courage often lie in the middle, not the extremes. \n\n Many issues are multisided. \n\n Focus on the substance of debates, not on strategy, theater, or the opponents' personal flaws. \n\n Don't fight over small issues. \n\n Don't obstruct good ideas just so you can win.", "Tannen even wants to protect us from the possibility of unpleasant confrontations in the courtroom. \"The purpose of most cross-examinations\" is \"not to establish facts but to discredit the witness,\" she asserts,", "fact, the point of the trial): that the witness is a victim. Conversely, she assumes that the defendant cannot be a victim. While objecting to cross-examination of alleged rape victims because \"it is easy to distort events so that a", "Likewise, Tannen recalls the trial of a Canadian man who had denied the Holocaust. The defendant's lawyer interrogated concentration camp survivors, asking whether they had seen their parents gassed. The adversarial system permitted such questions to be asked and answered--admittedly a vexatious experience for the survivors but one that does entail an airing of the facts of the Holocaust. Tannen, however, treats it only as a display of the \"cruelty of cross-examination.\" She raises no objection to the Canadian hate-speech ban under which the defendant was prosecuted. Would Tannen argue that the United States should adopt such a law, along with, say, a ban on the cross-examination of accusers? If so, she'd be wrong. But hey, so far, it's still a free country." ] ]
valid	22524	[ "Why was the class of girls at the zoo?", "Where did the two extra girls in Miss Burton's group come from?", "What is the real reason for Curt George's shakiness?", "Why does Carol refuse to be with Curt George?", "What is implied by the whispered conversation between Manto and Palit?", "How do the shapeshifters almost get caught by Miss Burton?", "What was likely Miss Burton's real motivation for \"entertaining\" Curt George? ", "Why was Mr. George upset by the repayment from the children?", "Why did Curt George consider himself to be an excellent actor?", "Why did the lions Mr. George shot dissolve \"as if corroded by some invisible acid?\"" ]	[ [ "To study the lions", "To put on a class play", "To see the polar bears, grizzlies, and penguins", "To meet Curt George" ], [ "They were aliens who could shapeshift", "They were lost from another class", "They were from the boys class wearing disguises", "They were at the zoo with their families" ], [ "PTSD from his time in Africa", "Alcohol withdrawals", "Old Age", "Jungle Fever" ], [ "He doesn't have any money", "She will not risk their professional relationship", "She wants him to be sober", "He has too many other girlfriends " ], [ "They are aliens who are hiding from their own people", "They are planning on abducting one of the students", "They are aliens who are looking to colonize the planet", "They are planning on harming Curt George" ], [ "By mimicking her face", "Speaking in an alien language", "Almost admitting to being 200 years old", "All three other options are correct" ], [ "To make Mr. George unhappy with the high screams", "To thank him for coming", "To show him her own acting skills", "To oust the shapeshifters hiding as girls" ], [ "It took the spotlight off of him", "He had another show to do and was running late", "The performance was very bad", "It was preventing him from getting his drink" ], [ "His previous films were critically acclaimed", "The story about his shakes being from Jungle Fever", "He was able to hold a smile for the crowd of children", "He pretended to be afraid of the fake lions" ], [ "They were alien shapeshifters, not actual lions", "They were props during the shooting of one of Mr. George's movies", "It was a part of the stage show that Mr. George was putting on ", "Mr. George used a gun with special bullets in it" ] ]	[ 4, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 3, 4, 3, 1 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "There was no better way to\n make herself inconspicuous. For\n some time, Miss Burton did not\n notice her.\nThe polar bears, the grizzlies,\n the penguins, the reptiles, all\n were left behind. At times the\n children scattered, but Miss Burton\n knew how to get them together\n again, and not one was\n lost.\n\n\n \"Here, children, is the building\n where the kangaroos live.\n Who knows where kangaroos\n come from?\"\n\n\n \"Australia!\" clanged the shrill\n chorus.\n\n\n \"That's right. And what other\n animals come from Australia?\"\n\n\n \"I know, Miss Burton!\" cried\n Frances, a dark-haired nine-year-old\n with a pair of glittering\n eyes that stared like a pair\n of critics from a small heart-shaped\n face. \"I've been here before.\n Wallabies and wombats!\"", "\"That'll do,\" said Miss Burton\n firmly. \"Now, let's get along\n to the lion house. And please,\n children, do not make faces at\n the lions. How would you like to\n be in a cage and have people\n make faces at you? Always remember\n to be considerate to\n others.\"\n\n\n \"Even lions, Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Even lions.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. George shot lots of\n lions. Was he considerate of them\n too?\"\n\n\n \"There is no time for silly\n questions,\" said Miss Burton,\n with the same firmness. \"Come\n along.\"\n\n\n They all trouped after her,\n Palit and Manto bringing up the\n rear. Manto giggled, and whispered\n with amusement, \"That\n Pig-Latin business was quick\n thinking, Palit. But in fact, quite\n unnecessary. The things that you\n do to avoid being suspected!\"", "\"Very good, Frances.\"\n\n\n Frances smirked at the approbation.\n \"I've been to the zoo\n lots of times,\" she said to the\n girl next to her. \"My father\n takes me.\"\n\n\n \"I wish my father would take\n me too,\" replied the other little\n girl, with an air of wistfulness.\n\n\n \"Why don't you ask him to?\"\n Before the other little girl could\n answer, Frances paused, cocked\n her head slightly, and demanded,\n \"Who are you? You aren't in our\n class.\"\n\n\n \"I'm in Miss Hassel's class.\"\n\n\n \"Miss Hassel? Who is she? Is\n she in our school?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" said the other\n little girl uncertainly. \"I go to\n P. S. 77—\"", "\"Sorry. Come on, let's go.\"\nThe lecture hall resounded\n with giggles. And beneath the\n giggles was a steady undercurrent\n of whispers, of girlish confidences\n exchanged, of girlish\n hopes that would now be fulfilled.\n Miss Burton's class was\n not the only one which had come\n to hear the famous actor-hunter\n describe his brave exploits. There\n were at least five others like it,\n and by some mistake, a class of\n boys, who also whispered to each\n other, in manly superiority, and\n pretended to find amusement in\n the presence of so many of the\n fairer sex.\n\n\n In this atmosphere of giggles\n and whispers, Manto and Palit\n could exchange confidences without\n being noticed. Palit said savagely,\n \"Why did you tell her that\n I could act too?\"", "Manto said tolerantly, \"You're\n getting jittery, Palit. We've\n been away from home too long.\"\n\n\n \"I am not jittery in the least.\n But I believe in taking due care.\"\n\n\n \"What could possibly happen\n to us? If we were to announce\n to the children and the teacher,\n and to every one in this zoo, for\n that matter, exactly who and\n what we were, they wouldn't believe\n us. And even if they did,\n they wouldn't be able to act rapidly\n enough to harm us.\"\n\n\n \"You never can tell about such\n things. Wise—people—simply\n don't take unnecessary chances.\"\n\n\n \"I'll grant that you're my superior\n in such wisdom.\"", "THE HUNTERS\nBY WILLIAM MORRISON\nILLUSTRATED BY VAN DONGEN\nTo all who didn't know him, Curt George was a\n mighty hunter and actor. But this time he was\n up against others who could really act, and\n whose business was the hunting of whole worlds.\n\n\n There were thirty or more of\n the little girls, their ages ranging\n apparently from nine to\n eleven, all of them chirping\n away like a flock of chicks as\n they followed the old mother hen\n past the line of cages. \"Now,\n now, girls,\" called Miss Burton\n cheerily. \"Don't scatter. I can't\n keep my eye on you if you get\n too far away from me. You,\n Hilda, give me that water pistol.\n No, don't fill it up first at that\n fountain. And Frances, stop\n bouncing your ball. You'll lose it\n through the bars, and a polar\n bear may get it and not want to\n give it back.\"", "\"Oh, Miss Burton,\" screamed\n Frances. \"Here's a girl who isn't\n in our class! She got lost from\n her own class!\"\n\"Really?\" Miss Burton seemed\n rather pleased at the idea that\n some other teacher had been so\n careless as to lose one of her\n charges. \"What's your name,\n child?\"\n\n\n \"I'm Carolyn.\"\n\n\n \"Carolyn what?\"\n\n\n \"Carolyn Manto. Please, Miss\n Burton, I had to go to the bathroom,\n and then when I came\n out—\"\n\n\n \"Yes, yes, I know.\"\n\n\n A shrill cry came from another\n section of her class. \"Oh, Miss\n Burton, here's another one who's\n lost!\"\n\n\n The other little girl was\n pushed forward. \"Now, who are\n you\n ?\" Miss Burton asked.", "An assistant curator of some\n collection in the zoo, a flustered\n old woman, was introducing him.\n There were a few laudatory references\n to his great talents as an\n actor, and he managed to look\n properly modest as he listened.\n The remarks about his knowledge\n of wild and ferocious beasts\n were a little harder to take, but\n he took them. Then the old\n woman stepped back, and he was\n facing his fate alone.\n\n\n \"Children,\" he began. A pause,\n a bashful grin. \"Perhaps I\n should rather say, my friends.\n I'm not one to think of you as\n children. Some people think of\n me as a child myself, because I\n like to hunt, and have adventures.\n They think that such\n things are childish. But if they\n are, I'm glad to be a child. I'm\n glad to be one of you. Yes, I\n think I\n will\n call you my friends.", "\"Why, because it's the truth.\n You're a very good animal performer.\n You make a wonderful\n dragon, for instance. Go on,\n Palit, show her what a fine\n dragon you can—\"\n\n\n \"Stop it, you fool, before you\n cause trouble!\"\n\n\n \"Very well, Palit. Did I tempt\n you?\"\n\n\n \"Did you tempt me! You and\n your sense of humor!\"\n\n\n \"You and your lack of it! But\n let's not argue now, Palit. Here,\n I think, comes the lion-hunter.\n Let's scream, and be as properly\n excited as every one else is.\"\nMy God, he thought, how can\n they keep their voices so high\n so long? My eardrums hurt already.\n How do they stand a lifetime\n of it? Even an hour?", "\"Whatever you say, Manto. If\n you wish, we shall join the little\n ladies.\"\n\n\n \"We must have our story prepared\n first.\"\n\n\n Palit nodded, and the two men\n stepped under the shade of a\n tree whose long, drooping, leaf-covered\n branches formed a convenient\n screen. For a moment,\n the tree hid silence. Then there\n came from beneath the branches\n the chatter of girlish voices, and\n two little girls skipped merrily\n away. Miss Burton did not at\n first notice that now she had an\n additional two children in her\n charge.\n\n\n \"Do you think you will be able\n to keep your English straight?\"\n asked one of the new little girls.\n\n\n The other one smiled with\n amusement and at first did not\n answer. Then she began to skip\n around her companion and\n chant, \"I know a secret, I know\n a secret.\"", "Miss Burton had an idea. \"I\n know what to do, children. If\n you can act animals—Mr. George\n has shown you what the hunter\n does; you show him what the\n lions do. Yes, Carolyn and Doris,\n you're going to be lions. You are\n waiting in your lairs, ready to\n pounce on the unwary hunter.\n Crouch now, behind that chair.\n Closer and closer he comes—you\n act it out, Mr. George, please,\n that's the way—ever closer, and\n now your muscles tighten for\n the spring, and you open\n your great, wide, red mouths\n in a great, great big roar—\"\n\n\n A deep and tremendous roar,\n as of thunder, crashed through\n the auditorium. A roar—and\n then, from the audience, an outburst\n of terrified screaming such\n as he had never heard. The\n bristles rose at the back of his\n neck, and his heart froze.", "\"Fine. How about you, Carolyn?\n You and your little friend,\n Doris. Can she act too?\"\n\n\n Carolyn giggled. \"Oh, yes, she\n can act very well. I can act like\n people. She can act like animals.\"\n The laughing, girlish eyes evaded\n a dirty look from the little\n friend. \"She can act like\n any\n kind of animal.\"\n\n\n \"She's certainly a talented\n child. But she seems so shy!\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no,\" said Carolyn. \"She\n likes to be coaxed.\"\n\n\n \"She shouldn't be like that.\n Perhaps, Carolyn, you and Doris\n can do something together. And\n perhaps, too, Mr. George will be\n pleased to see that your teacher\n also has talent.\"\n\n\n \"You, Miss Burton?\"", "\"There should be happiness inside\n you at the thought of your\n doing a good deed. Not a drop,\n George, not a drop.\"\nThe two little girls drew apart\n from the others and began to\n whisper into each other's ears.\n The whispers were punctuated\n by giggles which made the entire\n childish conversation seem quite\n normal. But Palit was in no\n laughing mood. He said, in his\n own language, \"You're getting\n careless, Manto. You had no\n business imitating her expression.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Palit, but it was\n so suggestive. And I'm a very\n suggestible person.\"\n\n\n \"So am I. But I control myself.\"\n\n\n \"Still, if the temptation were\n great enough, I don't think you'd\n be able to resist either.\"\n\n\n \"The issues are important\n enough to make me resist.\"", "\"Well, I'd like to know how\n you were brought up, if you\n don't know that it's wrong to\n mimic people to their faces. A\n big girl like you, too. How old\n are you, Carolyn?\"\n\n\n Carolyn shrank, she hoped imperceptibly,\n by an inch. \"I'm\n two—\"\n\n\n An outburst of shrill laughter.\n \"She's two years old, she's\n two years old!\"\n\n\n \"I was going to say, I'm\n to\n welve\n . Almost, anyway.\"\n\n\n \"Eleven years old,\" said Miss\n Burton. \"Old enough to know\n better.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Miss Burton. And\n honest, Miss Burton, I didn't\n mean anything, but I'm studying\n to be an actress, and I imitate\n people, like the actors you\n see on television—\"", "Miss Burton collected her\n brood. \"Come together, children,\n I have something to say to you.\n Soon it will be time to go in and\n hear Mr. George. Now, if Mr.\n George is so kind as to entertain\n us, don't you think that it's only\n proper for us to entertain him?\"\n\n\n \"We could put on our class\n play!\" yelled Barbara.\n\n\n \"Barbara's a fine one to talk,\"\n said Frances. \"She doesn't even\n remember her lines.\"\n\n\n \"No, children, we mustn't do\n anything we can't do well. That\n wouldn't make a good impression.\n And besides, there is no\n time for a play. Perhaps Barbara\n will sing—\"\n\n\n \"I can sing a 'Thank You'\n song,\" interrupted Frances.\n\n\n \"That would be nice.\"\n\n\n \"I can recite,\" added another\n little girl.", "\"I'm Doris Palit. I went with\n Carolyn to the bathroom—\"\nMiss Burton made a sound of\n annoyance. Imagine losing\n two\n children and not noticing it right\n away. The other teacher must\n be frantic by now, and serve her\n right for being so careless.\n\n\n \"All right, you may stay with\n us until we find a policeman—\"\n She interrupted herself. \"Frances,\n what are you giggling at\n now?\"\n\n\n \"It's Carolyn. She's making\n faces just like you!\"\n\n\n \"Really, Carolyn, that isn't at\n all nice!\"\n\n\n Carolyn's face altered itself in\n a hurry, so as to lose any resemblance\n to Miss Burton's. \"I'm\n sorry, Miss Burton, I didn't\n really mean to do anything\n wrong.\"", "\"Perhaps you regard me, my\n friends, as a very lucky person.\n But when I recall some of the\n narrow escapes I have had, I\n don't agree with you. I remember\n once, when we were on the\n trail of a rogue elephant—\"\n\n\n He told the story of the rogue\n elephant, modestly granting a co-hero's\n role to his guide. Then\n another story illustrating the\n strange ways of lions. The elephant\n gun figured in still another\n tale, this time of a vicious\n rhinoceros. His audience was\n quiet now, breathless with interest,\n and he welcomed the respite\n from shrillness he had won\n for his ears.\n\n\n \"And now, my friends, it is\n time to say farewell.\" He actually\n looked sad and regretful.\n \"But it is my hope that I shall\n be able to see you again—\"", "Frances giggled. \"Oh, Miss\n Burton, do you think the polar\n bear would want to play catch?\"\n\n\n The two men who were looking\n on wore pleased smiles.\n \"Charming,\" said Manto. \"But\n somewhat unpredictable, despite\n all our experiences,\n muy amigo\n .\"\n\n\n \"No attempts at Spanish, Manto,\n not here. It calls attention to\n us. And you are not sure of the\n grammar anyway. You may find\n yourself saying things you do\n not intend.\"\n\n\n \"Sorry, Palit. It wasn't an attempt\n to show my skill, I assure\n you. It's that by now I have a\n tendency to confuse one language\n with another.\"\n\n\n \"I know. You were never a linguist.\n But about these interesting\n creatures—\"\n\n\n \"I suggest that they could\n stand investigation. It would be\n good to know how they think.\"", "Palit said firmly, \"Be careful,\n and I won't be fearful. That's all\n there is to it.\"\n\n\n \"I'll be careful. After all, I\n shouldn't want us to lose these\n children. They're so exactly the\n kind we need. Look how inquiring\n they are, how unafraid, how\n quick to adapt to any circumstances—\"\n\n\n Miss Burton's voice said,\n \"Good gracious, children, what\n language\n are\n you using? Greek?\"\n\n\n They had been speaking too\n loud, they had been overheard.\n Palit and Manto stared at each\n other, and giggled coyly. Then,\n after a second to think, Palit\n said, \"Onay, Issmay Urtonbay!\"\n\n\n \"What?\"", "\"Oh, Miss Burton, please don't\n make her go home with a policeman.\n If she's going to be an\n actress, I'll bet she'd love to see\n Curt George!\"\n\n\n \"Well, after the way she's behaved,\n I don't know whether I\n should let her. I really don't.\"\n\n\n \"Please, Miss Burton, it was\n an accident. I won't do it again.\"\n\n\n \"All right, if you're good, and\n cause no trouble. But we still\n have plenty of time before seeing\n Mr. George. It's only two now,\n and we're not supposed to go to\n the lecture hall until four.\"\n\n\n \"Miss Burton,\" called Barbara\n Willman, \"do you think he'd give\n us his autograph?\"" ], [ "\"Oh, Miss Burton,\" screamed\n Frances. \"Here's a girl who isn't\n in our class! She got lost from\n her own class!\"\n\"Really?\" Miss Burton seemed\n rather pleased at the idea that\n some other teacher had been so\n careless as to lose one of her\n charges. \"What's your name,\n child?\"\n\n\n \"I'm Carolyn.\"\n\n\n \"Carolyn what?\"\n\n\n \"Carolyn Manto. Please, Miss\n Burton, I had to go to the bathroom,\n and then when I came\n out—\"\n\n\n \"Yes, yes, I know.\"\n\n\n A shrill cry came from another\n section of her class. \"Oh, Miss\n Burton, here's another one who's\n lost!\"\n\n\n The other little girl was\n pushed forward. \"Now, who are\n you\n ?\" Miss Burton asked.", "\"Whatever you say, Manto. If\n you wish, we shall join the little\n ladies.\"\n\n\n \"We must have our story prepared\n first.\"\n\n\n Palit nodded, and the two men\n stepped under the shade of a\n tree whose long, drooping, leaf-covered\n branches formed a convenient\n screen. For a moment,\n the tree hid silence. Then there\n came from beneath the branches\n the chatter of girlish voices, and\n two little girls skipped merrily\n away. Miss Burton did not at\n first notice that now she had an\n additional two children in her\n charge.\n\n\n \"Do you think you will be able\n to keep your English straight?\"\n asked one of the new little girls.\n\n\n The other one smiled with\n amusement and at first did not\n answer. Then she began to skip\n around her companion and\n chant, \"I know a secret, I know\n a secret.\"", "\"Oh, Miss Burton, please don't\n make her go home with a policeman.\n If she's going to be an\n actress, I'll bet she'd love to see\n Curt George!\"\n\n\n \"Well, after the way she's behaved,\n I don't know whether I\n should let her. I really don't.\"\n\n\n \"Please, Miss Burton, it was\n an accident. I won't do it again.\"\n\n\n \"All right, if you're good, and\n cause no trouble. But we still\n have plenty of time before seeing\n Mr. George. It's only two now,\n and we're not supposed to go to\n the lecture hall until four.\"\n\n\n \"Miss Burton,\" called Barbara\n Willman, \"do you think he'd give\n us his autograph?\"", "There was no better way to\n make herself inconspicuous. For\n some time, Miss Burton did not\n notice her.\nThe polar bears, the grizzlies,\n the penguins, the reptiles, all\n were left behind. At times the\n children scattered, but Miss Burton\n knew how to get them together\n again, and not one was\n lost.\n\n\n \"Here, children, is the building\n where the kangaroos live.\n Who knows where kangaroos\n come from?\"\n\n\n \"Australia!\" clanged the shrill\n chorus.\n\n\n \"That's right. And what other\n animals come from Australia?\"\n\n\n \"I know, Miss Burton!\" cried\n Frances, a dark-haired nine-year-old\n with a pair of glittering\n eyes that stared like a pair\n of critics from a small heart-shaped\n face. \"I've been here before.\n Wallabies and wombats!\"", "Miss Burton collected her\n brood. \"Come together, children,\n I have something to say to you.\n Soon it will be time to go in and\n hear Mr. George. Now, if Mr.\n George is so kind as to entertain\n us, don't you think that it's only\n proper for us to entertain him?\"\n\n\n \"We could put on our class\n play!\" yelled Barbara.\n\n\n \"Barbara's a fine one to talk,\"\n said Frances. \"She doesn't even\n remember her lines.\"\n\n\n \"No, children, we mustn't do\n anything we can't do well. That\n wouldn't make a good impression.\n And besides, there is no\n time for a play. Perhaps Barbara\n will sing—\"\n\n\n \"I can sing a 'Thank You'\n song,\" interrupted Frances.\n\n\n \"That would be nice.\"\n\n\n \"I can recite,\" added another\n little girl.", "\"I'm Doris Palit. I went with\n Carolyn to the bathroom—\"\nMiss Burton made a sound of\n annoyance. Imagine losing\n two\n children and not noticing it right\n away. The other teacher must\n be frantic by now, and serve her\n right for being so careless.\n\n\n \"All right, you may stay with\n us until we find a policeman—\"\n She interrupted herself. \"Frances,\n what are you giggling at\n now?\"\n\n\n \"It's Carolyn. She's making\n faces just like you!\"\n\n\n \"Really, Carolyn, that isn't at\n all nice!\"\n\n\n Carolyn's face altered itself in\n a hurry, so as to lose any resemblance\n to Miss Burton's. \"I'm\n sorry, Miss Burton, I didn't\n really mean to do anything\n wrong.\"", "\"That'll do,\" said Miss Burton\n firmly. \"Now, let's get along\n to the lion house. And please,\n children, do not make faces at\n the lions. How would you like to\n be in a cage and have people\n make faces at you? Always remember\n to be considerate to\n others.\"\n\n\n \"Even lions, Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Even lions.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. George shot lots of\n lions. Was he considerate of them\n too?\"\n\n\n \"There is no time for silly\n questions,\" said Miss Burton,\n with the same firmness. \"Come\n along.\"\n\n\n They all trouped after her,\n Palit and Manto bringing up the\n rear. Manto giggled, and whispered\n with amusement, \"That\n Pig-Latin business was quick\n thinking, Palit. But in fact, quite\n unnecessary. The things that you\n do to avoid being suspected!\"", "\"Fine. How about you, Carolyn?\n You and your little friend,\n Doris. Can she act too?\"\n\n\n Carolyn giggled. \"Oh, yes, she\n can act very well. I can act like\n people. She can act like animals.\"\n The laughing, girlish eyes evaded\n a dirty look from the little\n friend. \"She can act like\n any\n kind of animal.\"\n\n\n \"She's certainly a talented\n child. But she seems so shy!\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no,\" said Carolyn. \"She\n likes to be coaxed.\"\n\n\n \"She shouldn't be like that.\n Perhaps, Carolyn, you and Doris\n can do something together. And\n perhaps, too, Mr. George will be\n pleased to see that your teacher\n also has talent.\"\n\n\n \"You, Miss Burton?\"", "Miss Burton had an idea. \"I\n know what to do, children. If\n you can act animals—Mr. George\n has shown you what the hunter\n does; you show him what the\n lions do. Yes, Carolyn and Doris,\n you're going to be lions. You are\n waiting in your lairs, ready to\n pounce on the unwary hunter.\n Crouch now, behind that chair.\n Closer and closer he comes—you\n act it out, Mr. George, please,\n that's the way—ever closer, and\n now your muscles tighten for\n the spring, and you open\n your great, wide, red mouths\n in a great, great big roar—\"\n\n\n A deep and tremendous roar,\n as of thunder, crashed through\n the auditorium. A roar—and\n then, from the audience, an outburst\n of terrified screaming such\n as he had never heard. The\n bristles rose at the back of his\n neck, and his heart froze.", "\"Well, I'd like to know how\n you were brought up, if you\n don't know that it's wrong to\n mimic people to their faces. A\n big girl like you, too. How old\n are you, Carolyn?\"\n\n\n Carolyn shrank, she hoped imperceptibly,\n by an inch. \"I'm\n two—\"\n\n\n An outburst of shrill laughter.\n \"She's two years old, she's\n two years old!\"\n\n\n \"I was going to say, I'm\n to\n welve\n . Almost, anyway.\"\n\n\n \"Eleven years old,\" said Miss\n Burton. \"Old enough to know\n better.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Miss Burton. And\n honest, Miss Burton, I didn't\n mean anything, but I'm studying\n to be an actress, and I imitate\n people, like the actors you\n see on television—\"", "\"Sorry. Come on, let's go.\"\nThe lecture hall resounded\n with giggles. And beneath the\n giggles was a steady undercurrent\n of whispers, of girlish confidences\n exchanged, of girlish\n hopes that would now be fulfilled.\n Miss Burton's class was\n not the only one which had come\n to hear the famous actor-hunter\n describe his brave exploits. There\n were at least five others like it,\n and by some mistake, a class of\n boys, who also whispered to each\n other, in manly superiority, and\n pretended to find amusement in\n the presence of so many of the\n fairer sex.\n\n\n In this atmosphere of giggles\n and whispers, Manto and Palit\n could exchange confidences without\n being noticed. Palit said savagely,\n \"Why did you tell her that\n I could act too?\"", "Palit said firmly, \"Be careful,\n and I won't be fearful. That's all\n there is to it.\"\n\n\n \"I'll be careful. After all, I\n shouldn't want us to lose these\n children. They're so exactly the\n kind we need. Look how inquiring\n they are, how unafraid, how\n quick to adapt to any circumstances—\"\n\n\n Miss Burton's voice said,\n \"Good gracious, children, what\n language\n are\n you using? Greek?\"\n\n\n They had been speaking too\n loud, they had been overheard.\n Palit and Manto stared at each\n other, and giggled coyly. Then,\n after a second to think, Palit\n said, \"Onay, Issmay Urtonbay!\"\n\n\n \"What?\"", "THE HUNTERS\nBY WILLIAM MORRISON\nILLUSTRATED BY VAN DONGEN\nTo all who didn't know him, Curt George was a\n mighty hunter and actor. But this time he was\n up against others who could really act, and\n whose business was the hunting of whole worlds.\n\n\n There were thirty or more of\n the little girls, their ages ranging\n apparently from nine to\n eleven, all of them chirping\n away like a flock of chicks as\n they followed the old mother hen\n past the line of cages. \"Now,\n now, girls,\" called Miss Burton\n cheerily. \"Don't scatter. I can't\n keep my eye on you if you get\n too far away from me. You,\n Hilda, give me that water pistol.\n No, don't fill it up first at that\n fountain. And Frances, stop\n bouncing your ball. You'll lose it\n through the bars, and a polar\n bear may get it and not want to\n give it back.\"", "What the devil do you do in a\n case like that? You grin, of\n course—but what do you say,\n without handing over your soul\n to the devil? Agree how nice it\n would be to have those sly little\n brats with faces magnified on\n every screen all over the country?\n Like hell you do.\n\n\n \"Now, what are we going to\n act, children?\"\n\n\n \"Please, Miss Burton,\" said\n Doris. \"I don't know how to act.\n I can't even imitate a puppy.\n Really I can't, Miss Burton—\"", "\"And we feel that it would be\n no more than fair to repay you\n in some small measure for the\n pleasure you have given us.\n First, a 'Thank You' song by\n Frances Heller—\"\n\n\n He hadn't expected this, and\n he repressed a groan. Mercifully,\n the first song was short.\n He grinned the thanks he didn't\n feel. To think that he could take\n this, while sober as a judge!\n What strength of character,\n what will-power!\n\n\n Next, Miss Burton introduced\n another kid, who recited. And\n then, Miss Burton stood upright\n and recited herself.", "Miss Burton coughed modestly.\n \"Yes, children, I never told you,\n but I was once ambitious to be\n an actress too. I studied dramatics,\n and really, I was quite\n good at it. I was told that if I\n persevered I might actually be\n famous. Just think, your teacher\n might actually have been a famous\n actress! However, in my\n day, there were many coarse people\n on the stage, and the life of\n the theater was not attractive—but\n perhaps we'd better not\n speak of that. At any rate, I\n know the principles of the dramatic\n art very well.\"\n\"God knows what I'll have to\n go through,\" said Curt. \"And I\n don't see how I can take it\n sober.\"\n\n\n \"I don't see how they can take\n you drunk,\" replied Carol.\n\n\n \"Why go through with it at\n all? Why not call the whole thing\n quits?\"", "That was the worst of all. He\n winced once, then bore up. You\n can get used even to torture, he\n told himself. An adult making a\n fool of herself is always more\n painful than a kid. And that\n affected elocutionist's voice gave\n him the horrors. But he thanked\n her too. His good deed for the\n day. Maybe Carol would have\n him now, he thought.\n\n\n A voice shrilled, \"Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, dear?\"\n\n\n \"Aren't you going to call on\n Carolyn to act?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes, I was forgetting.\n Come up here, Carolyn, come up,\n Doris. Carolyn and Doris, Mr.\n George, are studying how to act.\n They act people\n and\n animals.\n Who knows? Some day they, too,\n may be in the movies, just as you\n are, Mr. George. Wouldn't that\n be nice, children?\"", "\"Come, come, mustn't be shy.\n Your friend says that you act\n very nicely indeed. Can't want to\n go on the stage and still be shy.\n Now, do you know any movie\n scenes? Shirley Temple used to\n be a good little actress, I remember.\n Can you do any scenes that\n she does?\"\nThe silence was getting to be\n embarrassing. And Carol said he\n didn't amount to anything, he\n never did anything useful. Why,\n if thanks to his being here this\n afternoon, those kids lost the\n ambition to go on the stage, the\n whole human race would have\n cause to be grateful to him. To\n him, and to Miss Burton. She'd\n kill ambition in anybody.", "Screams of exultation, shrill\n as ever, small hands beating\n enthusiastically to indicate joy.\n Thank God that's over with, he\n thought. Now for those drinks—and\n he didn't mean drink,\n singular. Talk of being useful,\n he'd certainly been useful now.\n He'd made those kids happy.\n What more can any reasonable\n person want?\nBut it wasn't over with. Another\n old lady had stepped up on\n the platform.\n\n\n \"Mr. George,\" she said, in a\n strangely affected voice, like that\n of the first dramatic teacher he\n had ever had, the one who had\n almost ruined his acting career.\n \"Mr. George, I can't tell you\n how happy you have made us all,\n young and old. Hasn't Mr.\n George made us happy, children?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Miss Burton!\" came the\n shrill scream.", "\"Very good, Frances.\"\n\n\n Frances smirked at the approbation.\n \"I've been to the zoo\n lots of times,\" she said to the\n girl next to her. \"My father\n takes me.\"\n\n\n \"I wish my father would take\n me too,\" replied the other little\n girl, with an air of wistfulness.\n\n\n \"Why don't you ask him to?\"\n Before the other little girl could\n answer, Frances paused, cocked\n her head slightly, and demanded,\n \"Who are you? You aren't in our\n class.\"\n\n\n \"I'm in Miss Hassel's class.\"\n\n\n \"Miss Hassel? Who is she? Is\n she in our school?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" said the other\n little girl uncertainly. \"I go to\n P. S. 77—\"" ], [ "\"Oh, yes, it would,\" asserted\n one little girl. \"He shakes. When\n he has an attack of fever, his\n hand shakes.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Africa is a dangerous\n continent, and one never knows\n how the dangers will strike one,\"\n said Miss Burton complacently.\n \"So we must all remember how\n bravely Mr. George is fighting\n his misfortune, and do our best\n not to tire him out.\"\nIn the bright light that flooded\n the afternoon breakfast table,\n Curt George's handsome, manly\n face wore an expression of distress.\n He groaned dismally, and\n muttered, \"What a head I've got,\n what a head. How do you expect\n me to face that gang of kids\n without a drink to pick me up?\"", "\"Because people are depending\n on you. You always want to call\n quits whenever you run into\n something you don't like. You\n may as well call quits to your\n contract if that's the way you\n feel.\"\n\n\n \"And to your ten per cent,\n darling.\"\n\n\n \"You think I'd mind that. I\n work for my ten per cent, Curt,\n sweetheart. I work too damn\n hard for that ten per cent.\"\n\n\n \"You can marry me and take\n it easy. Honest, Carol, if you\n treated me better, if you showed\n me I meant something to you,\n I'd give up drinking.\"\n\n\n She made a face. \"Don't talk\n nonsense. Take your outfit, and\n let's get ready to go. Unless you\n want to change here, and walk\n around dressed as a lion hunter.\"\n\n\n \"Why not? I've walked around\n dressed as worse. A drunk.\"", "Screams of exultation, shrill\n as ever, small hands beating\n enthusiastically to indicate joy.\n Thank God that's over with, he\n thought. Now for those drinks—and\n he didn't mean drink,\n singular. Talk of being useful,\n he'd certainly been useful now.\n He'd made those kids happy.\n What more can any reasonable\n person want?\nBut it wasn't over with. Another\n old lady had stepped up on\n the platform.\n\n\n \"Mr. George,\" she said, in a\n strangely affected voice, like that\n of the first dramatic teacher he\n had ever had, the one who had\n almost ruined his acting career.\n \"Mr. George, I can't tell you\n how happy you have made us all,\n young and old. Hasn't Mr.\n George made us happy, children?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Miss Burton!\" came the\n shrill scream.", "\"You've had your drink,\" said\n Carol. She was slim, attractive,\n and efficient. At the moment she\n was being more efficient than attractive,\n and she could sense his\n resentment. \"That's all you get.\n Now, lay off, and try to be\n reasonably sober, for a change.\"\n\n\n \"But those kids! They'll squeal\n and giggle—\"\n\n\n \"They're about the only audience\n in the world that won't\n spot you as a drunk. God knows\n where I could find any one else\n who'd believe that your hand\n shakes because of fever.\"\n\n\n \"I know that you're looking\n out for my best interests, Carol.\n But one more drink wouldn't\n hurt me.\"\n\n\n She said wearily, but firmly, \"I\n don't argue with drunks, Curt. I\n just go ahead and protect them\n from themselves. No drinks.\"\n\n\n \"Afterwards?\"", "\"—with hardly enough energy\n to let them dress you in that\n hunter's outfit and photograph\n you as if you were shooting\n lions.\"\n\n\n \"You're so unforgiving, Carol.\n You don't have much use for me,\n do you—consciously, that is?\"\n\n\n \"Frankly, Curt, no. I don't\n have much use for useless people.\"\n\n\n \"I'm not entirely useless. I\n earn you that ten per cent—\"\n\n\n \"I'd gladly forego that to see\n you sober.\"\n\n\n \"But it's your contempt for me\n that drives me to drink. And\n when I think of having to face\n those dear little kiddies with\n nothing inside me—\"", "\"Oh, Miss Burton, please don't\n make her go home with a policeman.\n If she's going to be an\n actress, I'll bet she'd love to see\n Curt George!\"\n\n\n \"Well, after the way she's behaved,\n I don't know whether I\n should let her. I really don't.\"\n\n\n \"Please, Miss Burton, it was\n an accident. I won't do it again.\"\n\n\n \"All right, if you're good, and\n cause no trouble. But we still\n have plenty of time before seeing\n Mr. George. It's only two now,\n and we're not supposed to go to\n the lecture hall until four.\"\n\n\n \"Miss Burton,\" called Barbara\n Willman, \"do you think he'd give\n us his autograph?\"", "Miss Burton had an idea. \"I\n know what to do, children. If\n you can act animals—Mr. George\n has shown you what the hunter\n does; you show him what the\n lions do. Yes, Carolyn and Doris,\n you're going to be lions. You are\n waiting in your lairs, ready to\n pounce on the unwary hunter.\n Crouch now, behind that chair.\n Closer and closer he comes—you\n act it out, Mr. George, please,\n that's the way—ever closer, and\n now your muscles tighten for\n the spring, and you open\n your great, wide, red mouths\n in a great, great big roar—\"\n\n\n A deep and tremendous roar,\n as of thunder, crashed through\n the auditorium. A roar—and\n then, from the audience, an outburst\n of terrified screaming such\n as he had never heard. The\n bristles rose at the back of his\n neck, and his heart froze.", "THE HUNTERS\nBY WILLIAM MORRISON\nILLUSTRATED BY VAN DONGEN\nTo all who didn't know him, Curt George was a\n mighty hunter and actor. But this time he was\n up against others who could really act, and\n whose business was the hunting of whole worlds.\n\n\n There were thirty or more of\n the little girls, their ages ranging\n apparently from nine to\n eleven, all of them chirping\n away like a flock of chicks as\n they followed the old mother hen\n past the line of cages. \"Now,\n now, girls,\" called Miss Burton\n cheerily. \"Don't scatter. I can't\n keep my eye on you if you get\n too far away from me. You,\n Hilda, give me that water pistol.\n No, don't fill it up first at that\n fountain. And Frances, stop\n bouncing your ball. You'll lose it\n through the bars, and a polar\n bear may get it and not want to\n give it back.\"", "\"That'll do,\" said Miss Burton\n firmly. \"Now, let's get along\n to the lion house. And please,\n children, do not make faces at\n the lions. How would you like to\n be in a cage and have people\n make faces at you? Always remember\n to be considerate to\n others.\"\n\n\n \"Even lions, Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Even lions.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. George shot lots of\n lions. Was he considerate of them\n too?\"\n\n\n \"There is no time for silly\n questions,\" said Miss Burton,\n with the same firmness. \"Come\n along.\"\n\n\n They all trouped after her,\n Palit and Manto bringing up the\n rear. Manto giggled, and whispered\n with amusement, \"That\n Pig-Latin business was quick\n thinking, Palit. But in fact, quite\n unnecessary. The things that you\n do to avoid being suspected!\"", "\"There should be happiness inside\n you at the thought of your\n doing a good deed. Not a drop,\n George, not a drop.\"\nThe two little girls drew apart\n from the others and began to\n whisper into each other's ears.\n The whispers were punctuated\n by giggles which made the entire\n childish conversation seem quite\n normal. But Palit was in no\n laughing mood. He said, in his\n own language, \"You're getting\n careless, Manto. You had no\n business imitating her expression.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Palit, but it was\n so suggestive. And I'm a very\n suggestible person.\"\n\n\n \"So am I. But I control myself.\"\n\n\n \"Still, if the temptation were\n great enough, I don't think you'd\n be able to resist either.\"\n\n\n \"The issues are important\n enough to make me resist.\"", "Miss Burton coughed modestly.\n \"Yes, children, I never told you,\n but I was once ambitious to be\n an actress too. I studied dramatics,\n and really, I was quite\n good at it. I was told that if I\n persevered I might actually be\n famous. Just think, your teacher\n might actually have been a famous\n actress! However, in my\n day, there were many coarse people\n on the stage, and the life of\n the theater was not attractive—but\n perhaps we'd better not\n speak of that. At any rate, I\n know the principles of the dramatic\n art very well.\"\n\"God knows what I'll have to\n go through,\" said Curt. \"And I\n don't see how I can take it\n sober.\"\n\n\n \"I don't see how they can take\n you drunk,\" replied Carol.\n\n\n \"Why go through with it at\n all? Why not call the whole thing\n quits?\"", "\"Come, come, mustn't be shy.\n Your friend says that you act\n very nicely indeed. Can't want to\n go on the stage and still be shy.\n Now, do you know any movie\n scenes? Shirley Temple used to\n be a good little actress, I remember.\n Can you do any scenes that\n she does?\"\nThe silence was getting to be\n embarrassing. And Carol said he\n didn't amount to anything, he\n never did anything useful. Why,\n if thanks to his being here this\n afternoon, those kids lost the\n ambition to go on the stage, the\n whole human race would have\n cause to be grateful to him. To\n him, and to Miss Burton. She'd\n kill ambition in anybody.", "\"Now, children, I've warned\n you about that. You mustn't\n annoy him. Mr. George is a famous\n movie actor, and his time\n is valuable. It's very kind of him\n to offer to speak to us, especially\n when so many grown-up people\n are anxious to hear him, but\n we mustn't take advantage of his\n kindness.\"\n\n\n \"But he likes children, Miss\n Burton! My big sister read in a\n movie magazine where it said\n he's just crazy about them.\"\n\n\n \"I know, but—he's not in good\n health, children. They say he got\n jungle fever in Africa, where he\n was shooting all those lions, and\n rhinoceroses, and elephants for\n his new picture. That's why you\n mustn't bother him too much.\"\n\n\n \"But he looks so big and\n strong, Miss Burton. It wouldn't\n hurt him to sign an autograph!\"", "That was the worst of all. He\n winced once, then bore up. You\n can get used even to torture, he\n told himself. An adult making a\n fool of herself is always more\n painful than a kid. And that\n affected elocutionist's voice gave\n him the horrors. But he thanked\n her too. His good deed for the\n day. Maybe Carol would have\n him now, he thought.\n\n\n A voice shrilled, \"Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, dear?\"\n\n\n \"Aren't you going to call on\n Carolyn to act?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes, I was forgetting.\n Come up here, Carolyn, come up,\n Doris. Carolyn and Doris, Mr.\n George, are studying how to act.\n They act people\n and\n animals.\n Who knows? Some day they, too,\n may be in the movies, just as you\n are, Mr. George. Wouldn't that\n be nice, children?\"", "Facing him across the platform\n were two lions, tensed as\n if to leap. Where they had come\n from he didn't know, but there\n they were, eyes glaring, manes\n ruffled, more terrifying than any\n he had seen in Africa. There\n they were, with the threat of\n death and destruction in their\n fierce eyes, and here he was,\n terror and helplessness on his\n handsome, manly, and bloodless\n face, heart unfrozen now and\n pounding fiercely, knees melting,\n hands—\n\n\n Hands clutching an elephant\n gun. The thought was like a director's\n command. With calm efficiency,\n with all the precision of\n an actor playing a scene rehearsed\n a thousand times, the\n gun leaped to his shoulder, and\n now its own roar thundered out\n a challenge to the roaring of the\n wild beasts, shouted at them in\n its own accents of barking\n thunder.", "\"Go ahead,\" whispered Carol.\n \"You've seen the script—go into\n your act. Tell them what a hero\n you are. You have the odds in\n your favor to start with.\"\n\n\n \"My lovely looks,\" he said,\n with some bitterness.\n\n\n \"Lovely is the word for you.\n But forget that. If you're good—you'll\n get a drink afterwards.\"\n\n\n \"Will it be one of those occasions\n when you love me?\"\n\n\n \"If the moon turns blue.\"\n\n\n He strode to the front of the\n platform, an elephant gun swinging\n easily at his side, an easy\n grin radiating from his confident,\n rugged face. The cheers\n rose to a shrill fortissimo, but\n the grin did not vanish. What a\n great actor he really was, he told\n himself, to be able to pretend he\n liked this.", "Manto said tolerantly, \"You're\n getting jittery, Palit. We've\n been away from home too long.\"\n\n\n \"I am not jittery in the least.\n But I believe in taking due care.\"\n\n\n \"What could possibly happen\n to us? If we were to announce\n to the children and the teacher,\n and to every one in this zoo, for\n that matter, exactly who and\n what we were, they wouldn't believe\n us. And even if they did,\n they wouldn't be able to act rapidly\n enough to harm us.\"\n\n\n \"You never can tell about such\n things. Wise—people—simply\n don't take unnecessary chances.\"\n\n\n \"I'll grant that you're my superior\n in such wisdom.\"", "Palit said firmly, \"Be careful,\n and I won't be fearful. That's all\n there is to it.\"\n\n\n \"I'll be careful. After all, I\n shouldn't want us to lose these\n children. They're so exactly the\n kind we need. Look how inquiring\n they are, how unafraid, how\n quick to adapt to any circumstances—\"\n\n\n Miss Burton's voice said,\n \"Good gracious, children, what\n language\n are\n you using? Greek?\"\n\n\n They had been speaking too\n loud, they had been overheard.\n Palit and Manto stared at each\n other, and giggled coyly. Then,\n after a second to think, Palit\n said, \"Onay, Issmay Urtonbay!\"\n\n\n \"What?\"", "\"Sorry. Come on, let's go.\"\nThe lecture hall resounded\n with giggles. And beneath the\n giggles was a steady undercurrent\n of whispers, of girlish confidences\n exchanged, of girlish\n hopes that would now be fulfilled.\n Miss Burton's class was\n not the only one which had come\n to hear the famous actor-hunter\n describe his brave exploits. There\n were at least five others like it,\n and by some mistake, a class of\n boys, who also whispered to each\n other, in manly superiority, and\n pretended to find amusement in\n the presence of so many of the\n fairer sex.\n\n\n In this atmosphere of giggles\n and whispers, Manto and Palit\n could exchange confidences without\n being noticed. Palit said savagely,\n \"Why did you tell her that\n I could act too?\"", "\"Why, because it's the truth.\n You're a very good animal performer.\n You make a wonderful\n dragon, for instance. Go on,\n Palit, show her what a fine\n dragon you can—\"\n\n\n \"Stop it, you fool, before you\n cause trouble!\"\n\n\n \"Very well, Palit. Did I tempt\n you?\"\n\n\n \"Did you tempt me! You and\n your sense of humor!\"\n\n\n \"You and your lack of it! But\n let's not argue now, Palit. Here,\n I think, comes the lion-hunter.\n Let's scream, and be as properly\n excited as every one else is.\"\nMy God, he thought, how can\n they keep their voices so high\n so long? My eardrums hurt already.\n How do they stand a lifetime\n of it? Even an hour?" ], [ "\"Because people are depending\n on you. You always want to call\n quits whenever you run into\n something you don't like. You\n may as well call quits to your\n contract if that's the way you\n feel.\"\n\n\n \"And to your ten per cent,\n darling.\"\n\n\n \"You think I'd mind that. I\n work for my ten per cent, Curt,\n sweetheart. I work too damn\n hard for that ten per cent.\"\n\n\n \"You can marry me and take\n it easy. Honest, Carol, if you\n treated me better, if you showed\n me I meant something to you,\n I'd give up drinking.\"\n\n\n She made a face. \"Don't talk\n nonsense. Take your outfit, and\n let's get ready to go. Unless you\n want to change here, and walk\n around dressed as a lion hunter.\"\n\n\n \"Why not? I've walked around\n dressed as worse. A drunk.\"", "\"—with hardly enough energy\n to let them dress you in that\n hunter's outfit and photograph\n you as if you were shooting\n lions.\"\n\n\n \"You're so unforgiving, Carol.\n You don't have much use for me,\n do you—consciously, that is?\"\n\n\n \"Frankly, Curt, no. I don't\n have much use for useless people.\"\n\n\n \"I'm not entirely useless. I\n earn you that ten per cent—\"\n\n\n \"I'd gladly forego that to see\n you sober.\"\n\n\n \"But it's your contempt for me\n that drives me to drink. And\n when I think of having to face\n those dear little kiddies with\n nothing inside me—\"", "\"You've had your drink,\" said\n Carol. She was slim, attractive,\n and efficient. At the moment she\n was being more efficient than attractive,\n and she could sense his\n resentment. \"That's all you get.\n Now, lay off, and try to be\n reasonably sober, for a change.\"\n\n\n \"But those kids! They'll squeal\n and giggle—\"\n\n\n \"They're about the only audience\n in the world that won't\n spot you as a drunk. God knows\n where I could find any one else\n who'd believe that your hand\n shakes because of fever.\"\n\n\n \"I know that you're looking\n out for my best interests, Carol.\n But one more drink wouldn't\n hurt me.\"\n\n\n She said wearily, but firmly, \"I\n don't argue with drunks, Curt. I\n just go ahead and protect them\n from themselves. No drinks.\"\n\n\n \"Afterwards?\"", "\"Oh, Miss Burton, please don't\n make her go home with a policeman.\n If she's going to be an\n actress, I'll bet she'd love to see\n Curt George!\"\n\n\n \"Well, after the way she's behaved,\n I don't know whether I\n should let her. I really don't.\"\n\n\n \"Please, Miss Burton, it was\n an accident. I won't do it again.\"\n\n\n \"All right, if you're good, and\n cause no trouble. But we still\n have plenty of time before seeing\n Mr. George. It's only two now,\n and we're not supposed to go to\n the lecture hall until four.\"\n\n\n \"Miss Burton,\" called Barbara\n Willman, \"do you think he'd give\n us his autograph?\"", "Miss Burton coughed modestly.\n \"Yes, children, I never told you,\n but I was once ambitious to be\n an actress too. I studied dramatics,\n and really, I was quite\n good at it. I was told that if I\n persevered I might actually be\n famous. Just think, your teacher\n might actually have been a famous\n actress! However, in my\n day, there were many coarse people\n on the stage, and the life of\n the theater was not attractive—but\n perhaps we'd better not\n speak of that. At any rate, I\n know the principles of the dramatic\n art very well.\"\n\"God knows what I'll have to\n go through,\" said Curt. \"And I\n don't see how I can take it\n sober.\"\n\n\n \"I don't see how they can take\n you drunk,\" replied Carol.\n\n\n \"Why go through with it at\n all? Why not call the whole thing\n quits?\"", "That was the worst of all. He\n winced once, then bore up. You\n can get used even to torture, he\n told himself. An adult making a\n fool of herself is always more\n painful than a kid. And that\n affected elocutionist's voice gave\n him the horrors. But he thanked\n her too. His good deed for the\n day. Maybe Carol would have\n him now, he thought.\n\n\n A voice shrilled, \"Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, dear?\"\n\n\n \"Aren't you going to call on\n Carolyn to act?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes, I was forgetting.\n Come up here, Carolyn, come up,\n Doris. Carolyn and Doris, Mr.\n George, are studying how to act.\n They act people\n and\n animals.\n Who knows? Some day they, too,\n may be in the movies, just as you\n are, Mr. George. Wouldn't that\n be nice, children?\"", "\"Fine. How about you, Carolyn?\n You and your little friend,\n Doris. Can she act too?\"\n\n\n Carolyn giggled. \"Oh, yes, she\n can act very well. I can act like\n people. She can act like animals.\"\n The laughing, girlish eyes evaded\n a dirty look from the little\n friend. \"She can act like\n any\n kind of animal.\"\n\n\n \"She's certainly a talented\n child. But she seems so shy!\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no,\" said Carolyn. \"She\n likes to be coaxed.\"\n\n\n \"She shouldn't be like that.\n Perhaps, Carolyn, you and Doris\n can do something together. And\n perhaps, too, Mr. George will be\n pleased to see that your teacher\n also has talent.\"\n\n\n \"You, Miss Burton?\"", "\"Come, come, mustn't be shy.\n Your friend says that you act\n very nicely indeed. Can't want to\n go on the stage and still be shy.\n Now, do you know any movie\n scenes? Shirley Temple used to\n be a good little actress, I remember.\n Can you do any scenes that\n she does?\"\nThe silence was getting to be\n embarrassing. And Carol said he\n didn't amount to anything, he\n never did anything useful. Why,\n if thanks to his being here this\n afternoon, those kids lost the\n ambition to go on the stage, the\n whole human race would have\n cause to be grateful to him. To\n him, and to Miss Burton. She'd\n kill ambition in anybody.", "\"Well, I'd like to know how\n you were brought up, if you\n don't know that it's wrong to\n mimic people to their faces. A\n big girl like you, too. How old\n are you, Carolyn?\"\n\n\n Carolyn shrank, she hoped imperceptibly,\n by an inch. \"I'm\n two—\"\n\n\n An outburst of shrill laughter.\n \"She's two years old, she's\n two years old!\"\n\n\n \"I was going to say, I'm\n to\n welve\n . Almost, anyway.\"\n\n\n \"Eleven years old,\" said Miss\n Burton. \"Old enough to know\n better.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Miss Burton. And\n honest, Miss Burton, I didn't\n mean anything, but I'm studying\n to be an actress, and I imitate\n people, like the actors you\n see on television—\"", "\"Go ahead,\" whispered Carol.\n \"You've seen the script—go into\n your act. Tell them what a hero\n you are. You have the odds in\n your favor to start with.\"\n\n\n \"My lovely looks,\" he said,\n with some bitterness.\n\n\n \"Lovely is the word for you.\n But forget that. If you're good—you'll\n get a drink afterwards.\"\n\n\n \"Will it be one of those occasions\n when you love me?\"\n\n\n \"If the moon turns blue.\"\n\n\n He strode to the front of the\n platform, an elephant gun swinging\n easily at his side, an easy\n grin radiating from his confident,\n rugged face. The cheers\n rose to a shrill fortissimo, but\n the grin did not vanish. What a\n great actor he really was, he told\n himself, to be able to pretend he\n liked this.", "\"The women who swoon at you\n will swoon at anybody. Besides,\n I don't consider that making nitwits\n swoon is a useful occupation\n for a real man.\"\n\n\n \"How can I be useful, Carol?\n No one ever taught me how.\"\n\n\n \"Some people manage without\n being taught.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose I could think how\n if I had a drink inside me.\"\n\n\n \"Then you'll have to do without\n thinking.\"\n\n\n He came into the room again,\n powerful, manly, determined-looking.\n There was an expression\n in his eye which indicated\n courage without end, a courage\n that would enable him to brave\n the wrath of man, beast, or devil.\n\n\n \"How do I look?\"\n\n\n \"Your noble self, of course. A\n poor woman's edition of Rudolph\n Valentino.\"", "\"I can't watch you the way a\n mother watches a child.\"\n\n\n The contemptuous reply sent\n his mind off on a new tack. \"You\n could if we were married.\"\n\n\n \"I've never believed in marrying\n weak characters to reform\n them.\"\n\n\n \"But if I proved to you that I\n could change—\"\n\n\n \"Prove it first, and I'll consider\n your proposal afterwards.\"\n\n\n \"You certainly are a cold-blooded\n creature, Carol. But I\n suppose that in your profession\n you have to be.\"\n\n\n \"Cold, suspicious, nasty—and\n reliable. It's inevitable when I\n must deal with such warm-hearted,\n trusting, and unreliable\n clients.\"\n\n\n He watched her move about\n the room, clearing away the\n dishes from his meager breakfast.\n \"What are you humming,\n Carol?\"", "\"Oh, yes, it would,\" asserted\n one little girl. \"He shakes. When\n he has an attack of fever, his\n hand shakes.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Africa is a dangerous\n continent, and one never knows\n how the dangers will strike one,\"\n said Miss Burton complacently.\n \"So we must all remember how\n bravely Mr. George is fighting\n his misfortune, and do our best\n not to tire him out.\"\nIn the bright light that flooded\n the afternoon breakfast table,\n Curt George's handsome, manly\n face wore an expression of distress.\n He groaned dismally, and\n muttered, \"What a head I've got,\n what a head. How do you expect\n me to face that gang of kids\n without a drink to pick me up?\"", "\"That'll do,\" said Miss Burton\n firmly. \"Now, let's get along\n to the lion house. And please,\n children, do not make faces at\n the lions. How would you like to\n be in a cage and have people\n make faces at you? Always remember\n to be considerate to\n others.\"\n\n\n \"Even lions, Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Even lions.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. George shot lots of\n lions. Was he considerate of them\n too?\"\n\n\n \"There is no time for silly\n questions,\" said Miss Burton,\n with the same firmness. \"Come\n along.\"\n\n\n They all trouped after her,\n Palit and Manto bringing up the\n rear. Manto giggled, and whispered\n with amusement, \"That\n Pig-Latin business was quick\n thinking, Palit. But in fact, quite\n unnecessary. The things that you\n do to avoid being suspected!\"", "Miss Burton had an idea. \"I\n know what to do, children. If\n you can act animals—Mr. George\n has shown you what the hunter\n does; you show him what the\n lions do. Yes, Carolyn and Doris,\n you're going to be lions. You are\n waiting in your lairs, ready to\n pounce on the unwary hunter.\n Crouch now, behind that chair.\n Closer and closer he comes—you\n act it out, Mr. George, please,\n that's the way—ever closer, and\n now your muscles tighten for\n the spring, and you open\n your great, wide, red mouths\n in a great, great big roar—\"\n\n\n A deep and tremendous roar,\n as of thunder, crashed through\n the auditorium. A roar—and\n then, from the audience, an outburst\n of terrified screaming such\n as he had never heard. The\n bristles rose at the back of his\n neck, and his heart froze.", "\"There should be happiness inside\n you at the thought of your\n doing a good deed. Not a drop,\n George, not a drop.\"\nThe two little girls drew apart\n from the others and began to\n whisper into each other's ears.\n The whispers were punctuated\n by giggles which made the entire\n childish conversation seem quite\n normal. But Palit was in no\n laughing mood. He said, in his\n own language, \"You're getting\n careless, Manto. You had no\n business imitating her expression.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Palit, but it was\n so suggestive. And I'm a very\n suggestible person.\"\n\n\n \"So am I. But I control myself.\"\n\n\n \"Still, if the temptation were\n great enough, I don't think you'd\n be able to resist either.\"\n\n\n \"The issues are important\n enough to make me resist.\"", "Screams of exultation, shrill\n as ever, small hands beating\n enthusiastically to indicate joy.\n Thank God that's over with, he\n thought. Now for those drinks—and\n he didn't mean drink,\n singular. Talk of being useful,\n he'd certainly been useful now.\n He'd made those kids happy.\n What more can any reasonable\n person want?\nBut it wasn't over with. Another\n old lady had stepped up on\n the platform.\n\n\n \"Mr. George,\" she said, in a\n strangely affected voice, like that\n of the first dramatic teacher he\n had ever had, the one who had\n almost ruined his acting career.\n \"Mr. George, I can't tell you\n how happy you have made us all,\n young and old. Hasn't Mr.\n George made us happy, children?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Miss Burton!\" came the\n shrill scream.", "\"Drunks don't attract attention.\n They're too ordinary.\"\n\n\n \"But a drunken lion hunter—that's\n something special.\" He\n went into the next room and began\n to change. \"Carol,\" he\n called. \"Do you like me?\"\n\n\n \"At times.\"\n\n\n \"Would you say that you liked\n me very much?\"\n\n\n \"When you're sober. Rarely.\"\n\n\n \"Love me?\"\n\n\n \"Once in a blue moon.\"\n\n\n \"What would I have to do for\n you to want to marry me?\"\n\n\n \"Amount to something.\"\n\n\n \"I like that. Don't you think I\n amount to something now?\n Women swoon at the sight of my\n face on the screen, and come to\n life again at the sound of my\n voice.\"", "\"Now, children, I've warned\n you about that. You mustn't\n annoy him. Mr. George is a famous\n movie actor, and his time\n is valuable. It's very kind of him\n to offer to speak to us, especially\n when so many grown-up people\n are anxious to hear him, but\n we mustn't take advantage of his\n kindness.\"\n\n\n \"But he likes children, Miss\n Burton! My big sister read in a\n movie magazine where it said\n he's just crazy about them.\"\n\n\n \"I know, but—he's not in good\n health, children. They say he got\n jungle fever in Africa, where he\n was shooting all those lions, and\n rhinoceroses, and elephants for\n his new picture. That's why you\n mustn't bother him too much.\"\n\n\n \"But he looks so big and\n strong, Miss Burton. It wouldn't\n hurt him to sign an autograph!\"", "THE HUNTERS\nBY WILLIAM MORRISON\nILLUSTRATED BY VAN DONGEN\nTo all who didn't know him, Curt George was a\n mighty hunter and actor. But this time he was\n up against others who could really act, and\n whose business was the hunting of whole worlds.\n\n\n There were thirty or more of\n the little girls, their ages ranging\n apparently from nine to\n eleven, all of them chirping\n away like a flock of chicks as\n they followed the old mother hen\n past the line of cages. \"Now,\n now, girls,\" called Miss Burton\n cheerily. \"Don't scatter. I can't\n keep my eye on you if you get\n too far away from me. You,\n Hilda, give me that water pistol.\n No, don't fill it up first at that\n fountain. And Frances, stop\n bouncing your ball. You'll lose it\n through the bars, and a polar\n bear may get it and not want to\n give it back.\"" ], [ "\"Sorry. Come on, let's go.\"\nThe lecture hall resounded\n with giggles. And beneath the\n giggles was a steady undercurrent\n of whispers, of girlish confidences\n exchanged, of girlish\n hopes that would now be fulfilled.\n Miss Burton's class was\n not the only one which had come\n to hear the famous actor-hunter\n describe his brave exploits. There\n were at least five others like it,\n and by some mistake, a class of\n boys, who also whispered to each\n other, in manly superiority, and\n pretended to find amusement in\n the presence of so many of the\n fairer sex.\n\n\n In this atmosphere of giggles\n and whispers, Manto and Palit\n could exchange confidences without\n being noticed. Palit said savagely,\n \"Why did you tell her that\n I could act too?\"", "\"There should be happiness inside\n you at the thought of your\n doing a good deed. Not a drop,\n George, not a drop.\"\nThe two little girls drew apart\n from the others and began to\n whisper into each other's ears.\n The whispers were punctuated\n by giggles which made the entire\n childish conversation seem quite\n normal. But Palit was in no\n laughing mood. He said, in his\n own language, \"You're getting\n careless, Manto. You had no\n business imitating her expression.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Palit, but it was\n so suggestive. And I'm a very\n suggestible person.\"\n\n\n \"So am I. But I control myself.\"\n\n\n \"Still, if the temptation were\n great enough, I don't think you'd\n be able to resist either.\"\n\n\n \"The issues are important\n enough to make me resist.\"", "Manto said tolerantly, \"You're\n getting jittery, Palit. We've\n been away from home too long.\"\n\n\n \"I am not jittery in the least.\n But I believe in taking due care.\"\n\n\n \"What could possibly happen\n to us? If we were to announce\n to the children and the teacher,\n and to every one in this zoo, for\n that matter, exactly who and\n what we were, they wouldn't believe\n us. And even if they did,\n they wouldn't be able to act rapidly\n enough to harm us.\"\n\n\n \"You never can tell about such\n things. Wise—people—simply\n don't take unnecessary chances.\"\n\n\n \"I'll grant that you're my superior\n in such wisdom.\"", "\"Whatever you say, Manto. If\n you wish, we shall join the little\n ladies.\"\n\n\n \"We must have our story prepared\n first.\"\n\n\n Palit nodded, and the two men\n stepped under the shade of a\n tree whose long, drooping, leaf-covered\n branches formed a convenient\n screen. For a moment,\n the tree hid silence. Then there\n came from beneath the branches\n the chatter of girlish voices, and\n two little girls skipped merrily\n away. Miss Burton did not at\n first notice that now she had an\n additional two children in her\n charge.\n\n\n \"Do you think you will be able\n to keep your English straight?\"\n asked one of the new little girls.\n\n\n The other one smiled with\n amusement and at first did not\n answer. Then she began to skip\n around her companion and\n chant, \"I know a secret, I know\n a secret.\"", "\"The chance of being discovered.\n Here we stumble on this\n place quite by accident. No one\n at home knows about it, no one\n so much as suspects that it exists.\n We must get back and report—and\n you do all sorts of silly\n things which may reveal what\n we are, and lead these people to\n suspect their danger.\"\nThis time, Manto's giggle was\n no longer mere camouflage, but\n expressed to a certain degree\n how he felt. \"They cannot possibly\n suspect. We have been all\n over the world, we have taken\n many forms and adapted ourselves\n to many customs, and no\n one has suspected. And even if\n danger really threatened, it\n would be easy to escape. I could\n take the form of the school\n teacher herself, of a policeman,\n of any one in authority. However,\n at present there is not the\n slightest shadow of danger. So,\n Palit, you had better stop being\n fearful.\"", "Palit said firmly, \"Be careful,\n and I won't be fearful. That's all\n there is to it.\"\n\n\n \"I'll be careful. After all, I\n shouldn't want us to lose these\n children. They're so exactly the\n kind we need. Look how inquiring\n they are, how unafraid, how\n quick to adapt to any circumstances—\"\n\n\n Miss Burton's voice said,\n \"Good gracious, children, what\n language\n are\n you using? Greek?\"\n\n\n They had been speaking too\n loud, they had been overheard.\n Palit and Manto stared at each\n other, and giggled coyly. Then,\n after a second to think, Palit\n said, \"Onay, Issmay Urtonbay!\"\n\n\n \"What?\"", "\"That'll do,\" said Miss Burton\n firmly. \"Now, let's get along\n to the lion house. And please,\n children, do not make faces at\n the lions. How would you like to\n be in a cage and have people\n make faces at you? Always remember\n to be considerate to\n others.\"\n\n\n \"Even lions, Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Even lions.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. George shot lots of\n lions. Was he considerate of them\n too?\"\n\n\n \"There is no time for silly\n questions,\" said Miss Burton,\n with the same firmness. \"Come\n along.\"\n\n\n They all trouped after her,\n Palit and Manto bringing up the\n rear. Manto giggled, and whispered\n with amusement, \"That\n Pig-Latin business was quick\n thinking, Palit. But in fact, quite\n unnecessary. The things that you\n do to avoid being suspected!\"", "\"All right,\" conceded Palit,\n grudgingly.\nSo they stayed, and out of\n some twigs and leaves they\n shaped the necessary coins with\n which to buy peanuts, and popcorn,\n and ice cream, and other\n delicacies favored by the young.\n Manto wanted to win easy popularity\n by treating a few of the\n other children, but Palit put his\n girlish foot down. No use arousing\n suspicion. Even as it was—\n\n\n \"Gee, your father gives you an\n awful lot of spending money,\"\n said Frances enviously. \"Is he\n rich?\"\n\n\n \"We get as much as we want,\"\n replied Manto carelessly.\n\n\n \"Gosh, I wish I did.\"", "\"You needn't be sarcastic,\n Manto, I\n know\n I'm superior.\n I\n realize what a godsend this\n planet is—you don't. It has the\n right gravity, a suitable atmosphere,\n the proper chemical composition—everything.\"\n\n\n \"Including a population that\n will be helpless before us.\"\n\n\n \"And you would take chances\n of losing all this.\"\n\n\n \"Don't be silly, Palit. What\n chances am I taking?\"", "\"Why, because it's the truth.\n You're a very good animal performer.\n You make a wonderful\n dragon, for instance. Go on,\n Palit, show her what a fine\n dragon you can—\"\n\n\n \"Stop it, you fool, before you\n cause trouble!\"\n\n\n \"Very well, Palit. Did I tempt\n you?\"\n\n\n \"Did you tempt me! You and\n your sense of humor!\"\n\n\n \"You and your lack of it! But\n let's not argue now, Palit. Here,\n I think, comes the lion-hunter.\n Let's scream, and be as properly\n excited as every one else is.\"\nMy God, he thought, how can\n they keep their voices so high\n so long? My eardrums hurt already.\n How do they stand a lifetime\n of it? Even an hour?", "\"Still, I thought I saw your\n own face taking on a bit of her\n expression too.\"\n\n\n \"You are imagining things,\n Manto. Another thing, that mistake\n in starting to say you were\n two hundred years old—\"\n\n\n \"They would have thought it\n a joke. And I think I got out of\n that rather neatly.\"\n\n\n \"You like to skate on thin ice,\n don't you, Manto? Just as you\n did when you changed your\n height. You had no business\n shrinking right out in public like\n that.\"\n\n\n \"I did it skillfully. Not a\n single person noticed.\"\n\n\n \"\n I\n noticed.\"\n\n\n \"Don't quibble.\"\n\n\n \"I don't intend to. Some of\n these children have very sharp\n eyes. You'd be surprised at what\n they see.\"", "\"Perhaps you regard me, my\n friends, as a very lucky person.\n But when I recall some of the\n narrow escapes I have had, I\n don't agree with you. I remember\n once, when we were on the\n trail of a rogue elephant—\"\n\n\n He told the story of the rogue\n elephant, modestly granting a co-hero's\n role to his guide. Then\n another story illustrating the\n strange ways of lions. The elephant\n gun figured in still another\n tale, this time of a vicious\n rhinoceros. His audience was\n quiet now, breathless with interest,\n and he welcomed the respite\n from shrillness he had won\n for his ears.\n\n\n \"And now, my friends, it is\n time to say farewell.\" He actually\n looked sad and regretful.\n \"But it is my hope that I shall\n be able to see you again—\"", "\"Go ahead,\" whispered Carol.\n \"You've seen the script—go into\n your act. Tell them what a hero\n you are. You have the odds in\n your favor to start with.\"\n\n\n \"My lovely looks,\" he said,\n with some bitterness.\n\n\n \"Lovely is the word for you.\n But forget that. If you're good—you'll\n get a drink afterwards.\"\n\n\n \"Will it be one of those occasions\n when you love me?\"\n\n\n \"If the moon turns blue.\"\n\n\n He strode to the front of the\n platform, an elephant gun swinging\n easily at his side, an easy\n grin radiating from his confident,\n rugged face. The cheers\n rose to a shrill fortissimo, but\n the grin did not vanish. What a\n great actor he really was, he told\n himself, to be able to pretend he\n liked this.", "Frances giggled. \"Oh, Miss\n Burton, do you think the polar\n bear would want to play catch?\"\n\n\n The two men who were looking\n on wore pleased smiles.\n \"Charming,\" said Manto. \"But\n somewhat unpredictable, despite\n all our experiences,\n muy amigo\n .\"\n\n\n \"No attempts at Spanish, Manto,\n not here. It calls attention to\n us. And you are not sure of the\n grammar anyway. You may find\n yourself saying things you do\n not intend.\"\n\n\n \"Sorry, Palit. It wasn't an attempt\n to show my skill, I assure\n you. It's that by now I have a\n tendency to confuse one language\n with another.\"\n\n\n \"I know. You were never a linguist.\n But about these interesting\n creatures—\"\n\n\n \"I suggest that they could\n stand investigation. It would be\n good to know how they think.\"", "\"—with hardly enough energy\n to let them dress you in that\n hunter's outfit and photograph\n you as if you were shooting\n lions.\"\n\n\n \"You're so unforgiving, Carol.\n You don't have much use for me,\n do you—consciously, that is?\"\n\n\n \"Frankly, Curt, no. I don't\n have much use for useless people.\"\n\n\n \"I'm not entirely useless. I\n earn you that ten per cent—\"\n\n\n \"I'd gladly forego that to see\n you sober.\"\n\n\n \"But it's your contempt for me\n that drives me to drink. And\n when I think of having to face\n those dear little kiddies with\n nothing inside me—\"", "\"You've had your drink,\" said\n Carol. She was slim, attractive,\n and efficient. At the moment she\n was being more efficient than attractive,\n and she could sense his\n resentment. \"That's all you get.\n Now, lay off, and try to be\n reasonably sober, for a change.\"\n\n\n \"But those kids! They'll squeal\n and giggle—\"\n\n\n \"They're about the only audience\n in the world that won't\n spot you as a drunk. God knows\n where I could find any one else\n who'd believe that your hand\n shakes because of fever.\"\n\n\n \"I know that you're looking\n out for my best interests, Carol.\n But one more drink wouldn't\n hurt me.\"\n\n\n She said wearily, but firmly, \"I\n don't argue with drunks, Curt. I\n just go ahead and protect them\n from themselves. No drinks.\"\n\n\n \"Afterwards?\"", "\"I'm Doris Palit. I went with\n Carolyn to the bathroom—\"\nMiss Burton made a sound of\n annoyance. Imagine losing\n two\n children and not noticing it right\n away. The other teacher must\n be frantic by now, and serve her\n right for being so careless.\n\n\n \"All right, you may stay with\n us until we find a policeman—\"\n She interrupted herself. \"Frances,\n what are you giggling at\n now?\"\n\n\n \"It's Carolyn. She's making\n faces just like you!\"\n\n\n \"Really, Carolyn, that isn't at\n all nice!\"\n\n\n Carolyn's face altered itself in\n a hurry, so as to lose any resemblance\n to Miss Burton's. \"I'm\n sorry, Miss Burton, I didn't\n really mean to do anything\n wrong.\"", "Screams of exultation, shrill\n as ever, small hands beating\n enthusiastically to indicate joy.\n Thank God that's over with, he\n thought. Now for those drinks—and\n he didn't mean drink,\n singular. Talk of being useful,\n he'd certainly been useful now.\n He'd made those kids happy.\n What more can any reasonable\n person want?\nBut it wasn't over with. Another\n old lady had stepped up on\n the platform.\n\n\n \"Mr. George,\" she said, in a\n strangely affected voice, like that\n of the first dramatic teacher he\n had ever had, the one who had\n almost ruined his acting career.\n \"Mr. George, I can't tell you\n how happy you have made us all,\n young and old. Hasn't Mr.\n George made us happy, children?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Miss Burton!\" came the\n shrill scream.", "\"Very good, Frances.\"\n\n\n Frances smirked at the approbation.\n \"I've been to the zoo\n lots of times,\" she said to the\n girl next to her. \"My father\n takes me.\"\n\n\n \"I wish my father would take\n me too,\" replied the other little\n girl, with an air of wistfulness.\n\n\n \"Why don't you ask him to?\"\n Before the other little girl could\n answer, Frances paused, cocked\n her head slightly, and demanded,\n \"Who are you? You aren't in our\n class.\"\n\n\n \"I'm in Miss Hassel's class.\"\n\n\n \"Miss Hassel? Who is she? Is\n she in our school?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" said the other\n little girl uncertainly. \"I go to\n P. S. 77—\"", "Facing him across the platform\n were two lions, tensed as\n if to leap. Where they had come\n from he didn't know, but there\n they were, eyes glaring, manes\n ruffled, more terrifying than any\n he had seen in Africa. There\n they were, with the threat of\n death and destruction in their\n fierce eyes, and here he was,\n terror and helplessness on his\n handsome, manly, and bloodless\n face, heart unfrozen now and\n pounding fiercely, knees melting,\n hands—\n\n\n Hands clutching an elephant\n gun. The thought was like a director's\n command. With calm efficiency,\n with all the precision of\n an actor playing a scene rehearsed\n a thousand times, the\n gun leaped to his shoulder, and\n now its own roar thundered out\n a challenge to the roaring of the\n wild beasts, shouted at them in\n its own accents of barking\n thunder." ], [ "\"That'll do,\" said Miss Burton\n firmly. \"Now, let's get along\n to the lion house. And please,\n children, do not make faces at\n the lions. How would you like to\n be in a cage and have people\n make faces at you? Always remember\n to be considerate to\n others.\"\n\n\n \"Even lions, Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Even lions.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. George shot lots of\n lions. Was he considerate of them\n too?\"\n\n\n \"There is no time for silly\n questions,\" said Miss Burton,\n with the same firmness. \"Come\n along.\"\n\n\n They all trouped after her,\n Palit and Manto bringing up the\n rear. Manto giggled, and whispered\n with amusement, \"That\n Pig-Latin business was quick\n thinking, Palit. But in fact, quite\n unnecessary. The things that you\n do to avoid being suspected!\"", "Miss Burton had an idea. \"I\n know what to do, children. If\n you can act animals—Mr. George\n has shown you what the hunter\n does; you show him what the\n lions do. Yes, Carolyn and Doris,\n you're going to be lions. You are\n waiting in your lairs, ready to\n pounce on the unwary hunter.\n Crouch now, behind that chair.\n Closer and closer he comes—you\n act it out, Mr. George, please,\n that's the way—ever closer, and\n now your muscles tighten for\n the spring, and you open\n your great, wide, red mouths\n in a great, great big roar—\"\n\n\n A deep and tremendous roar,\n as of thunder, crashed through\n the auditorium. A roar—and\n then, from the audience, an outburst\n of terrified screaming such\n as he had never heard. The\n bristles rose at the back of his\n neck, and his heart froze.", "There was no better way to\n make herself inconspicuous. For\n some time, Miss Burton did not\n notice her.\nThe polar bears, the grizzlies,\n the penguins, the reptiles, all\n were left behind. At times the\n children scattered, but Miss Burton\n knew how to get them together\n again, and not one was\n lost.\n\n\n \"Here, children, is the building\n where the kangaroos live.\n Who knows where kangaroos\n come from?\"\n\n\n \"Australia!\" clanged the shrill\n chorus.\n\n\n \"That's right. And what other\n animals come from Australia?\"\n\n\n \"I know, Miss Burton!\" cried\n Frances, a dark-haired nine-year-old\n with a pair of glittering\n eyes that stared like a pair\n of critics from a small heart-shaped\n face. \"I've been here before.\n Wallabies and wombats!\"", "\"The chance of being discovered.\n Here we stumble on this\n place quite by accident. No one\n at home knows about it, no one\n so much as suspects that it exists.\n We must get back and report—and\n you do all sorts of silly\n things which may reveal what\n we are, and lead these people to\n suspect their danger.\"\nThis time, Manto's giggle was\n no longer mere camouflage, but\n expressed to a certain degree\n how he felt. \"They cannot possibly\n suspect. We have been all\n over the world, we have taken\n many forms and adapted ourselves\n to many customs, and no\n one has suspected. And even if\n danger really threatened, it\n would be easy to escape. I could\n take the form of the school\n teacher herself, of a policeman,\n of any one in authority. However,\n at present there is not the\n slightest shadow of danger. So,\n Palit, you had better stop being\n fearful.\"", "\"Whatever you say, Manto. If\n you wish, we shall join the little\n ladies.\"\n\n\n \"We must have our story prepared\n first.\"\n\n\n Palit nodded, and the two men\n stepped under the shade of a\n tree whose long, drooping, leaf-covered\n branches formed a convenient\n screen. For a moment,\n the tree hid silence. Then there\n came from beneath the branches\n the chatter of girlish voices, and\n two little girls skipped merrily\n away. Miss Burton did not at\n first notice that now she had an\n additional two children in her\n charge.\n\n\n \"Do you think you will be able\n to keep your English straight?\"\n asked one of the new little girls.\n\n\n The other one smiled with\n amusement and at first did not\n answer. Then she began to skip\n around her companion and\n chant, \"I know a secret, I know\n a secret.\"", "Palit said firmly, \"Be careful,\n and I won't be fearful. That's all\n there is to it.\"\n\n\n \"I'll be careful. After all, I\n shouldn't want us to lose these\n children. They're so exactly the\n kind we need. Look how inquiring\n they are, how unafraid, how\n quick to adapt to any circumstances—\"\n\n\n Miss Burton's voice said,\n \"Good gracious, children, what\n language\n are\n you using? Greek?\"\n\n\n They had been speaking too\n loud, they had been overheard.\n Palit and Manto stared at each\n other, and giggled coyly. Then,\n after a second to think, Palit\n said, \"Onay, Issmay Urtonbay!\"\n\n\n \"What?\"", "\"Fine. How about you, Carolyn?\n You and your little friend,\n Doris. Can she act too?\"\n\n\n Carolyn giggled. \"Oh, yes, she\n can act very well. I can act like\n people. She can act like animals.\"\n The laughing, girlish eyes evaded\n a dirty look from the little\n friend. \"She can act like\n any\n kind of animal.\"\n\n\n \"She's certainly a talented\n child. But she seems so shy!\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no,\" said Carolyn. \"She\n likes to be coaxed.\"\n\n\n \"She shouldn't be like that.\n Perhaps, Carolyn, you and Doris\n can do something together. And\n perhaps, too, Mr. George will be\n pleased to see that your teacher\n also has talent.\"\n\n\n \"You, Miss Burton?\"", "\"I'm Doris Palit. I went with\n Carolyn to the bathroom—\"\nMiss Burton made a sound of\n annoyance. Imagine losing\n two\n children and not noticing it right\n away. The other teacher must\n be frantic by now, and serve her\n right for being so careless.\n\n\n \"All right, you may stay with\n us until we find a policeman—\"\n She interrupted herself. \"Frances,\n what are you giggling at\n now?\"\n\n\n \"It's Carolyn. She's making\n faces just like you!\"\n\n\n \"Really, Carolyn, that isn't at\n all nice!\"\n\n\n Carolyn's face altered itself in\n a hurry, so as to lose any resemblance\n to Miss Burton's. \"I'm\n sorry, Miss Burton, I didn't\n really mean to do anything\n wrong.\"", "\"Well, I'd like to know how\n you were brought up, if you\n don't know that it's wrong to\n mimic people to their faces. A\n big girl like you, too. How old\n are you, Carolyn?\"\n\n\n Carolyn shrank, she hoped imperceptibly,\n by an inch. \"I'm\n two—\"\n\n\n An outburst of shrill laughter.\n \"She's two years old, she's\n two years old!\"\n\n\n \"I was going to say, I'm\n to\n welve\n . Almost, anyway.\"\n\n\n \"Eleven years old,\" said Miss\n Burton. \"Old enough to know\n better.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Miss Burton. And\n honest, Miss Burton, I didn't\n mean anything, but I'm studying\n to be an actress, and I imitate\n people, like the actors you\n see on television—\"", "\"Oh, Miss Burton, please don't\n make her go home with a policeman.\n If she's going to be an\n actress, I'll bet she'd love to see\n Curt George!\"\n\n\n \"Well, after the way she's behaved,\n I don't know whether I\n should let her. I really don't.\"\n\n\n \"Please, Miss Burton, it was\n an accident. I won't do it again.\"\n\n\n \"All right, if you're good, and\n cause no trouble. But we still\n have plenty of time before seeing\n Mr. George. It's only two now,\n and we're not supposed to go to\n the lecture hall until four.\"\n\n\n \"Miss Burton,\" called Barbara\n Willman, \"do you think he'd give\n us his autograph?\"", "THE HUNTERS\nBY WILLIAM MORRISON\nILLUSTRATED BY VAN DONGEN\nTo all who didn't know him, Curt George was a\n mighty hunter and actor. But this time he was\n up against others who could really act, and\n whose business was the hunting of whole worlds.\n\n\n There were thirty or more of\n the little girls, their ages ranging\n apparently from nine to\n eleven, all of them chirping\n away like a flock of chicks as\n they followed the old mother hen\n past the line of cages. \"Now,\n now, girls,\" called Miss Burton\n cheerily. \"Don't scatter. I can't\n keep my eye on you if you get\n too far away from me. You,\n Hilda, give me that water pistol.\n No, don't fill it up first at that\n fountain. And Frances, stop\n bouncing your ball. You'll lose it\n through the bars, and a polar\n bear may get it and not want to\n give it back.\"", "\"Oh, Miss Burton,\" screamed\n Frances. \"Here's a girl who isn't\n in our class! She got lost from\n her own class!\"\n\"Really?\" Miss Burton seemed\n rather pleased at the idea that\n some other teacher had been so\n careless as to lose one of her\n charges. \"What's your name,\n child?\"\n\n\n \"I'm Carolyn.\"\n\n\n \"Carolyn what?\"\n\n\n \"Carolyn Manto. Please, Miss\n Burton, I had to go to the bathroom,\n and then when I came\n out—\"\n\n\n \"Yes, yes, I know.\"\n\n\n A shrill cry came from another\n section of her class. \"Oh, Miss\n Burton, here's another one who's\n lost!\"\n\n\n The other little girl was\n pushed forward. \"Now, who are\n you\n ?\" Miss Burton asked.", "\"Sorry. Come on, let's go.\"\nThe lecture hall resounded\n with giggles. And beneath the\n giggles was a steady undercurrent\n of whispers, of girlish confidences\n exchanged, of girlish\n hopes that would now be fulfilled.\n Miss Burton's class was\n not the only one which had come\n to hear the famous actor-hunter\n describe his brave exploits. There\n were at least five others like it,\n and by some mistake, a class of\n boys, who also whispered to each\n other, in manly superiority, and\n pretended to find amusement in\n the presence of so many of the\n fairer sex.\n\n\n In this atmosphere of giggles\n and whispers, Manto and Palit\n could exchange confidences without\n being noticed. Palit said savagely,\n \"Why did you tell her that\n I could act too?\"", "Miss Burton collected her\n brood. \"Come together, children,\n I have something to say to you.\n Soon it will be time to go in and\n hear Mr. George. Now, if Mr.\n George is so kind as to entertain\n us, don't you think that it's only\n proper for us to entertain him?\"\n\n\n \"We could put on our class\n play!\" yelled Barbara.\n\n\n \"Barbara's a fine one to talk,\"\n said Frances. \"She doesn't even\n remember her lines.\"\n\n\n \"No, children, we mustn't do\n anything we can't do well. That\n wouldn't make a good impression.\n And besides, there is no\n time for a play. Perhaps Barbara\n will sing—\"\n\n\n \"I can sing a 'Thank You'\n song,\" interrupted Frances.\n\n\n \"That would be nice.\"\n\n\n \"I can recite,\" added another\n little girl.", "What the devil do you do in a\n case like that? You grin, of\n course—but what do you say,\n without handing over your soul\n to the devil? Agree how nice it\n would be to have those sly little\n brats with faces magnified on\n every screen all over the country?\n Like hell you do.\n\n\n \"Now, what are we going to\n act, children?\"\n\n\n \"Please, Miss Burton,\" said\n Doris. \"I don't know how to act.\n I can't even imitate a puppy.\n Really I can't, Miss Burton—\"", "\"Still, I thought I saw your\n own face taking on a bit of her\n expression too.\"\n\n\n \"You are imagining things,\n Manto. Another thing, that mistake\n in starting to say you were\n two hundred years old—\"\n\n\n \"They would have thought it\n a joke. And I think I got out of\n that rather neatly.\"\n\n\n \"You like to skate on thin ice,\n don't you, Manto? Just as you\n did when you changed your\n height. You had no business\n shrinking right out in public like\n that.\"\n\n\n \"I did it skillfully. Not a\n single person noticed.\"\n\n\n \"\n I\n noticed.\"\n\n\n \"Don't quibble.\"\n\n\n \"I don't intend to. Some of\n these children have very sharp\n eyes. You'd be surprised at what\n they see.\"", "Frances giggled. \"Oh, Miss\n Burton, do you think the polar\n bear would want to play catch?\"\n\n\n The two men who were looking\n on wore pleased smiles.\n \"Charming,\" said Manto. \"But\n somewhat unpredictable, despite\n all our experiences,\n muy amigo\n .\"\n\n\n \"No attempts at Spanish, Manto,\n not here. It calls attention to\n us. And you are not sure of the\n grammar anyway. You may find\n yourself saying things you do\n not intend.\"\n\n\n \"Sorry, Palit. It wasn't an attempt\n to show my skill, I assure\n you. It's that by now I have a\n tendency to confuse one language\n with another.\"\n\n\n \"I know. You were never a linguist.\n But about these interesting\n creatures—\"\n\n\n \"I suggest that they could\n stand investigation. It would be\n good to know how they think.\"", "Miss Burton coughed modestly.\n \"Yes, children, I never told you,\n but I was once ambitious to be\n an actress too. I studied dramatics,\n and really, I was quite\n good at it. I was told that if I\n persevered I might actually be\n famous. Just think, your teacher\n might actually have been a famous\n actress! However, in my\n day, there were many coarse people\n on the stage, and the life of\n the theater was not attractive—but\n perhaps we'd better not\n speak of that. At any rate, I\n know the principles of the dramatic\n art very well.\"\n\"God knows what I'll have to\n go through,\" said Curt. \"And I\n don't see how I can take it\n sober.\"\n\n\n \"I don't see how they can take\n you drunk,\" replied Carol.\n\n\n \"Why go through with it at\n all? Why not call the whole thing\n quits?\"", "That was the worst of all. He\n winced once, then bore up. You\n can get used even to torture, he\n told himself. An adult making a\n fool of herself is always more\n painful than a kid. And that\n affected elocutionist's voice gave\n him the horrors. But he thanked\n her too. His good deed for the\n day. Maybe Carol would have\n him now, he thought.\n\n\n A voice shrilled, \"Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, dear?\"\n\n\n \"Aren't you going to call on\n Carolyn to act?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes, I was forgetting.\n Come up here, Carolyn, come up,\n Doris. Carolyn and Doris, Mr.\n George, are studying how to act.\n They act people\n and\n animals.\n Who knows? Some day they, too,\n may be in the movies, just as you\n are, Mr. George. Wouldn't that\n be nice, children?\"", "Manto said tolerantly, \"You're\n getting jittery, Palit. We've\n been away from home too long.\"\n\n\n \"I am not jittery in the least.\n But I believe in taking due care.\"\n\n\n \"What could possibly happen\n to us? If we were to announce\n to the children and the teacher,\n and to every one in this zoo, for\n that matter, exactly who and\n what we were, they wouldn't believe\n us. And even if they did,\n they wouldn't be able to act rapidly\n enough to harm us.\"\n\n\n \"You never can tell about such\n things. Wise—people—simply\n don't take unnecessary chances.\"\n\n\n \"I'll grant that you're my superior\n in such wisdom.\"" ], [ "\"Oh, Miss Burton, please don't\n make her go home with a policeman.\n If she's going to be an\n actress, I'll bet she'd love to see\n Curt George!\"\n\n\n \"Well, after the way she's behaved,\n I don't know whether I\n should let her. I really don't.\"\n\n\n \"Please, Miss Burton, it was\n an accident. I won't do it again.\"\n\n\n \"All right, if you're good, and\n cause no trouble. But we still\n have plenty of time before seeing\n Mr. George. It's only two now,\n and we're not supposed to go to\n the lecture hall until four.\"\n\n\n \"Miss Burton,\" called Barbara\n Willman, \"do you think he'd give\n us his autograph?\"", "\"That'll do,\" said Miss Burton\n firmly. \"Now, let's get along\n to the lion house. And please,\n children, do not make faces at\n the lions. How would you like to\n be in a cage and have people\n make faces at you? Always remember\n to be considerate to\n others.\"\n\n\n \"Even lions, Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Even lions.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. George shot lots of\n lions. Was he considerate of them\n too?\"\n\n\n \"There is no time for silly\n questions,\" said Miss Burton,\n with the same firmness. \"Come\n along.\"\n\n\n They all trouped after her,\n Palit and Manto bringing up the\n rear. Manto giggled, and whispered\n with amusement, \"That\n Pig-Latin business was quick\n thinking, Palit. But in fact, quite\n unnecessary. The things that you\n do to avoid being suspected!\"", "Miss Burton coughed modestly.\n \"Yes, children, I never told you,\n but I was once ambitious to be\n an actress too. I studied dramatics,\n and really, I was quite\n good at it. I was told that if I\n persevered I might actually be\n famous. Just think, your teacher\n might actually have been a famous\n actress! However, in my\n day, there were many coarse people\n on the stage, and the life of\n the theater was not attractive—but\n perhaps we'd better not\n speak of that. At any rate, I\n know the principles of the dramatic\n art very well.\"\n\"God knows what I'll have to\n go through,\" said Curt. \"And I\n don't see how I can take it\n sober.\"\n\n\n \"I don't see how they can take\n you drunk,\" replied Carol.\n\n\n \"Why go through with it at\n all? Why not call the whole thing\n quits?\"", "Miss Burton collected her\n brood. \"Come together, children,\n I have something to say to you.\n Soon it will be time to go in and\n hear Mr. George. Now, if Mr.\n George is so kind as to entertain\n us, don't you think that it's only\n proper for us to entertain him?\"\n\n\n \"We could put on our class\n play!\" yelled Barbara.\n\n\n \"Barbara's a fine one to talk,\"\n said Frances. \"She doesn't even\n remember her lines.\"\n\n\n \"No, children, we mustn't do\n anything we can't do well. That\n wouldn't make a good impression.\n And besides, there is no\n time for a play. Perhaps Barbara\n will sing—\"\n\n\n \"I can sing a 'Thank You'\n song,\" interrupted Frances.\n\n\n \"That would be nice.\"\n\n\n \"I can recite,\" added another\n little girl.", "\"Fine. How about you, Carolyn?\n You and your little friend,\n Doris. Can she act too?\"\n\n\n Carolyn giggled. \"Oh, yes, she\n can act very well. I can act like\n people. She can act like animals.\"\n The laughing, girlish eyes evaded\n a dirty look from the little\n friend. \"She can act like\n any\n kind of animal.\"\n\n\n \"She's certainly a talented\n child. But she seems so shy!\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no,\" said Carolyn. \"She\n likes to be coaxed.\"\n\n\n \"She shouldn't be like that.\n Perhaps, Carolyn, you and Doris\n can do something together. And\n perhaps, too, Mr. George will be\n pleased to see that your teacher\n also has talent.\"\n\n\n \"You, Miss Burton?\"", "Miss Burton had an idea. \"I\n know what to do, children. If\n you can act animals—Mr. George\n has shown you what the hunter\n does; you show him what the\n lions do. Yes, Carolyn and Doris,\n you're going to be lions. You are\n waiting in your lairs, ready to\n pounce on the unwary hunter.\n Crouch now, behind that chair.\n Closer and closer he comes—you\n act it out, Mr. George, please,\n that's the way—ever closer, and\n now your muscles tighten for\n the spring, and you open\n your great, wide, red mouths\n in a great, great big roar—\"\n\n\n A deep and tremendous roar,\n as of thunder, crashed through\n the auditorium. A roar—and\n then, from the audience, an outburst\n of terrified screaming such\n as he had never heard. The\n bristles rose at the back of his\n neck, and his heart froze.", "THE HUNTERS\nBY WILLIAM MORRISON\nILLUSTRATED BY VAN DONGEN\nTo all who didn't know him, Curt George was a\n mighty hunter and actor. But this time he was\n up against others who could really act, and\n whose business was the hunting of whole worlds.\n\n\n There were thirty or more of\n the little girls, their ages ranging\n apparently from nine to\n eleven, all of them chirping\n away like a flock of chicks as\n they followed the old mother hen\n past the line of cages. \"Now,\n now, girls,\" called Miss Burton\n cheerily. \"Don't scatter. I can't\n keep my eye on you if you get\n too far away from me. You,\n Hilda, give me that water pistol.\n No, don't fill it up first at that\n fountain. And Frances, stop\n bouncing your ball. You'll lose it\n through the bars, and a polar\n bear may get it and not want to\n give it back.\"", "That was the worst of all. He\n winced once, then bore up. You\n can get used even to torture, he\n told himself. An adult making a\n fool of herself is always more\n painful than a kid. And that\n affected elocutionist's voice gave\n him the horrors. But he thanked\n her too. His good deed for the\n day. Maybe Carol would have\n him now, he thought.\n\n\n A voice shrilled, \"Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, dear?\"\n\n\n \"Aren't you going to call on\n Carolyn to act?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes, I was forgetting.\n Come up here, Carolyn, come up,\n Doris. Carolyn and Doris, Mr.\n George, are studying how to act.\n They act people\n and\n animals.\n Who knows? Some day they, too,\n may be in the movies, just as you\n are, Mr. George. Wouldn't that\n be nice, children?\"", "\"Well, I'd like to know how\n you were brought up, if you\n don't know that it's wrong to\n mimic people to their faces. A\n big girl like you, too. How old\n are you, Carolyn?\"\n\n\n Carolyn shrank, she hoped imperceptibly,\n by an inch. \"I'm\n two—\"\n\n\n An outburst of shrill laughter.\n \"She's two years old, she's\n two years old!\"\n\n\n \"I was going to say, I'm\n to\n welve\n . Almost, anyway.\"\n\n\n \"Eleven years old,\" said Miss\n Burton. \"Old enough to know\n better.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Miss Burton. And\n honest, Miss Burton, I didn't\n mean anything, but I'm studying\n to be an actress, and I imitate\n people, like the actors you\n see on television—\"", "\"Oh, yes, it would,\" asserted\n one little girl. \"He shakes. When\n he has an attack of fever, his\n hand shakes.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Africa is a dangerous\n continent, and one never knows\n how the dangers will strike one,\"\n said Miss Burton complacently.\n \"So we must all remember how\n bravely Mr. George is fighting\n his misfortune, and do our best\n not to tire him out.\"\nIn the bright light that flooded\n the afternoon breakfast table,\n Curt George's handsome, manly\n face wore an expression of distress.\n He groaned dismally, and\n muttered, \"What a head I've got,\n what a head. How do you expect\n me to face that gang of kids\n without a drink to pick me up?\"", "\"Whatever you say, Manto. If\n you wish, we shall join the little\n ladies.\"\n\n\n \"We must have our story prepared\n first.\"\n\n\n Palit nodded, and the two men\n stepped under the shade of a\n tree whose long, drooping, leaf-covered\n branches formed a convenient\n screen. For a moment,\n the tree hid silence. Then there\n came from beneath the branches\n the chatter of girlish voices, and\n two little girls skipped merrily\n away. Miss Burton did not at\n first notice that now she had an\n additional two children in her\n charge.\n\n\n \"Do you think you will be able\n to keep your English straight?\"\n asked one of the new little girls.\n\n\n The other one smiled with\n amusement and at first did not\n answer. Then she began to skip\n around her companion and\n chant, \"I know a secret, I know\n a secret.\"", "\"Because people are depending\n on you. You always want to call\n quits whenever you run into\n something you don't like. You\n may as well call quits to your\n contract if that's the way you\n feel.\"\n\n\n \"And to your ten per cent,\n darling.\"\n\n\n \"You think I'd mind that. I\n work for my ten per cent, Curt,\n sweetheart. I work too damn\n hard for that ten per cent.\"\n\n\n \"You can marry me and take\n it easy. Honest, Carol, if you\n treated me better, if you showed\n me I meant something to you,\n I'd give up drinking.\"\n\n\n She made a face. \"Don't talk\n nonsense. Take your outfit, and\n let's get ready to go. Unless you\n want to change here, and walk\n around dressed as a lion hunter.\"\n\n\n \"Why not? I've walked around\n dressed as worse. A drunk.\"", "\"Sorry. Come on, let's go.\"\nThe lecture hall resounded\n with giggles. And beneath the\n giggles was a steady undercurrent\n of whispers, of girlish confidences\n exchanged, of girlish\n hopes that would now be fulfilled.\n Miss Burton's class was\n not the only one which had come\n to hear the famous actor-hunter\n describe his brave exploits. There\n were at least five others like it,\n and by some mistake, a class of\n boys, who also whispered to each\n other, in manly superiority, and\n pretended to find amusement in\n the presence of so many of the\n fairer sex.\n\n\n In this atmosphere of giggles\n and whispers, Manto and Palit\n could exchange confidences without\n being noticed. Palit said savagely,\n \"Why did you tell her that\n I could act too?\"", "\"Come, come, mustn't be shy.\n Your friend says that you act\n very nicely indeed. Can't want to\n go on the stage and still be shy.\n Now, do you know any movie\n scenes? Shirley Temple used to\n be a good little actress, I remember.\n Can you do any scenes that\n she does?\"\nThe silence was getting to be\n embarrassing. And Carol said he\n didn't amount to anything, he\n never did anything useful. Why,\n if thanks to his being here this\n afternoon, those kids lost the\n ambition to go on the stage, the\n whole human race would have\n cause to be grateful to him. To\n him, and to Miss Burton. She'd\n kill ambition in anybody.", "Screams of exultation, shrill\n as ever, small hands beating\n enthusiastically to indicate joy.\n Thank God that's over with, he\n thought. Now for those drinks—and\n he didn't mean drink,\n singular. Talk of being useful,\n he'd certainly been useful now.\n He'd made those kids happy.\n What more can any reasonable\n person want?\nBut it wasn't over with. Another\n old lady had stepped up on\n the platform.\n\n\n \"Mr. George,\" she said, in a\n strangely affected voice, like that\n of the first dramatic teacher he\n had ever had, the one who had\n almost ruined his acting career.\n \"Mr. George, I can't tell you\n how happy you have made us all,\n young and old. Hasn't Mr.\n George made us happy, children?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Miss Burton!\" came the\n shrill scream.", "\"—with hardly enough energy\n to let them dress you in that\n hunter's outfit and photograph\n you as if you were shooting\n lions.\"\n\n\n \"You're so unforgiving, Carol.\n You don't have much use for me,\n do you—consciously, that is?\"\n\n\n \"Frankly, Curt, no. I don't\n have much use for useless people.\"\n\n\n \"I'm not entirely useless. I\n earn you that ten per cent—\"\n\n\n \"I'd gladly forego that to see\n you sober.\"\n\n\n \"But it's your contempt for me\n that drives me to drink. And\n when I think of having to face\n those dear little kiddies with\n nothing inside me—\"", "\"Now, children, I've warned\n you about that. You mustn't\n annoy him. Mr. George is a famous\n movie actor, and his time\n is valuable. It's very kind of him\n to offer to speak to us, especially\n when so many grown-up people\n are anxious to hear him, but\n we mustn't take advantage of his\n kindness.\"\n\n\n \"But he likes children, Miss\n Burton! My big sister read in a\n movie magazine where it said\n he's just crazy about them.\"\n\n\n \"I know, but—he's not in good\n health, children. They say he got\n jungle fever in Africa, where he\n was shooting all those lions, and\n rhinoceroses, and elephants for\n his new picture. That's why you\n mustn't bother him too much.\"\n\n\n \"But he looks so big and\n strong, Miss Burton. It wouldn't\n hurt him to sign an autograph!\"", "Palit said firmly, \"Be careful,\n and I won't be fearful. That's all\n there is to it.\"\n\n\n \"I'll be careful. After all, I\n shouldn't want us to lose these\n children. They're so exactly the\n kind we need. Look how inquiring\n they are, how unafraid, how\n quick to adapt to any circumstances—\"\n\n\n Miss Burton's voice said,\n \"Good gracious, children, what\n language\n are\n you using? Greek?\"\n\n\n They had been speaking too\n loud, they had been overheard.\n Palit and Manto stared at each\n other, and giggled coyly. Then,\n after a second to think, Palit\n said, \"Onay, Issmay Urtonbay!\"\n\n\n \"What?\"", "What the devil do you do in a\n case like that? You grin, of\n course—but what do you say,\n without handing over your soul\n to the devil? Agree how nice it\n would be to have those sly little\n brats with faces magnified on\n every screen all over the country?\n Like hell you do.\n\n\n \"Now, what are we going to\n act, children?\"\n\n\n \"Please, Miss Burton,\" said\n Doris. \"I don't know how to act.\n I can't even imitate a puppy.\n Really I can't, Miss Burton—\"", "\"There should be happiness inside\n you at the thought of your\n doing a good deed. Not a drop,\n George, not a drop.\"\nThe two little girls drew apart\n from the others and began to\n whisper into each other's ears.\n The whispers were punctuated\n by giggles which made the entire\n childish conversation seem quite\n normal. But Palit was in no\n laughing mood. He said, in his\n own language, \"You're getting\n careless, Manto. You had no\n business imitating her expression.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Palit, but it was\n so suggestive. And I'm a very\n suggestible person.\"\n\n\n \"So am I. But I control myself.\"\n\n\n \"Still, if the temptation were\n great enough, I don't think you'd\n be able to resist either.\"\n\n\n \"The issues are important\n enough to make me resist.\"" ], [ "Screams of exultation, shrill\n as ever, small hands beating\n enthusiastically to indicate joy.\n Thank God that's over with, he\n thought. Now for those drinks—and\n he didn't mean drink,\n singular. Talk of being useful,\n he'd certainly been useful now.\n He'd made those kids happy.\n What more can any reasonable\n person want?\nBut it wasn't over with. Another\n old lady had stepped up on\n the platform.\n\n\n \"Mr. George,\" she said, in a\n strangely affected voice, like that\n of the first dramatic teacher he\n had ever had, the one who had\n almost ruined his acting career.\n \"Mr. George, I can't tell you\n how happy you have made us all,\n young and old. Hasn't Mr.\n George made us happy, children?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Miss Burton!\" came the\n shrill scream.", "\"That'll do,\" said Miss Burton\n firmly. \"Now, let's get along\n to the lion house. And please,\n children, do not make faces at\n the lions. How would you like to\n be in a cage and have people\n make faces at you? Always remember\n to be considerate to\n others.\"\n\n\n \"Even lions, Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Even lions.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. George shot lots of\n lions. Was he considerate of them\n too?\"\n\n\n \"There is no time for silly\n questions,\" said Miss Burton,\n with the same firmness. \"Come\n along.\"\n\n\n They all trouped after her,\n Palit and Manto bringing up the\n rear. Manto giggled, and whispered\n with amusement, \"That\n Pig-Latin business was quick\n thinking, Palit. But in fact, quite\n unnecessary. The things that you\n do to avoid being suspected!\"", "Miss Burton collected her\n brood. \"Come together, children,\n I have something to say to you.\n Soon it will be time to go in and\n hear Mr. George. Now, if Mr.\n George is so kind as to entertain\n us, don't you think that it's only\n proper for us to entertain him?\"\n\n\n \"We could put on our class\n play!\" yelled Barbara.\n\n\n \"Barbara's a fine one to talk,\"\n said Frances. \"She doesn't even\n remember her lines.\"\n\n\n \"No, children, we mustn't do\n anything we can't do well. That\n wouldn't make a good impression.\n And besides, there is no\n time for a play. Perhaps Barbara\n will sing—\"\n\n\n \"I can sing a 'Thank You'\n song,\" interrupted Frances.\n\n\n \"That would be nice.\"\n\n\n \"I can recite,\" added another\n little girl.", "\"Now, children, I've warned\n you about that. You mustn't\n annoy him. Mr. George is a famous\n movie actor, and his time\n is valuable. It's very kind of him\n to offer to speak to us, especially\n when so many grown-up people\n are anxious to hear him, but\n we mustn't take advantage of his\n kindness.\"\n\n\n \"But he likes children, Miss\n Burton! My big sister read in a\n movie magazine where it said\n he's just crazy about them.\"\n\n\n \"I know, but—he's not in good\n health, children. They say he got\n jungle fever in Africa, where he\n was shooting all those lions, and\n rhinoceroses, and elephants for\n his new picture. That's why you\n mustn't bother him too much.\"\n\n\n \"But he looks so big and\n strong, Miss Burton. It wouldn't\n hurt him to sign an autograph!\"", "Miss Burton had an idea. \"I\n know what to do, children. If\n you can act animals—Mr. George\n has shown you what the hunter\n does; you show him what the\n lions do. Yes, Carolyn and Doris,\n you're going to be lions. You are\n waiting in your lairs, ready to\n pounce on the unwary hunter.\n Crouch now, behind that chair.\n Closer and closer he comes—you\n act it out, Mr. George, please,\n that's the way—ever closer, and\n now your muscles tighten for\n the spring, and you open\n your great, wide, red mouths\n in a great, great big roar—\"\n\n\n A deep and tremendous roar,\n as of thunder, crashed through\n the auditorium. A roar—and\n then, from the audience, an outburst\n of terrified screaming such\n as he had never heard. The\n bristles rose at the back of his\n neck, and his heart froze.", "\"And we feel that it would be\n no more than fair to repay you\n in some small measure for the\n pleasure you have given us.\n First, a 'Thank You' song by\n Frances Heller—\"\n\n\n He hadn't expected this, and\n he repressed a groan. Mercifully,\n the first song was short.\n He grinned the thanks he didn't\n feel. To think that he could take\n this, while sober as a judge!\n What strength of character,\n what will-power!\n\n\n Next, Miss Burton introduced\n another kid, who recited. And\n then, Miss Burton stood upright\n and recited herself.", "That was the worst of all. He\n winced once, then bore up. You\n can get used even to torture, he\n told himself. An adult making a\n fool of herself is always more\n painful than a kid. And that\n affected elocutionist's voice gave\n him the horrors. But he thanked\n her too. His good deed for the\n day. Maybe Carol would have\n him now, he thought.\n\n\n A voice shrilled, \"Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, dear?\"\n\n\n \"Aren't you going to call on\n Carolyn to act?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes, I was forgetting.\n Come up here, Carolyn, come up,\n Doris. Carolyn and Doris, Mr.\n George, are studying how to act.\n They act people\n and\n animals.\n Who knows? Some day they, too,\n may be in the movies, just as you\n are, Mr. George. Wouldn't that\n be nice, children?\"", "\"Oh, yes, it would,\" asserted\n one little girl. \"He shakes. When\n he has an attack of fever, his\n hand shakes.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Africa is a dangerous\n continent, and one never knows\n how the dangers will strike one,\"\n said Miss Burton complacently.\n \"So we must all remember how\n bravely Mr. George is fighting\n his misfortune, and do our best\n not to tire him out.\"\nIn the bright light that flooded\n the afternoon breakfast table,\n Curt George's handsome, manly\n face wore an expression of distress.\n He groaned dismally, and\n muttered, \"What a head I've got,\n what a head. How do you expect\n me to face that gang of kids\n without a drink to pick me up?\"", "\"Fine. How about you, Carolyn?\n You and your little friend,\n Doris. Can she act too?\"\n\n\n Carolyn giggled. \"Oh, yes, she\n can act very well. I can act like\n people. She can act like animals.\"\n The laughing, girlish eyes evaded\n a dirty look from the little\n friend. \"She can act like\n any\n kind of animal.\"\n\n\n \"She's certainly a talented\n child. But she seems so shy!\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no,\" said Carolyn. \"She\n likes to be coaxed.\"\n\n\n \"She shouldn't be like that.\n Perhaps, Carolyn, you and Doris\n can do something together. And\n perhaps, too, Mr. George will be\n pleased to see that your teacher\n also has talent.\"\n\n\n \"You, Miss Burton?\"", "\"There should be happiness inside\n you at the thought of your\n doing a good deed. Not a drop,\n George, not a drop.\"\nThe two little girls drew apart\n from the others and began to\n whisper into each other's ears.\n The whispers were punctuated\n by giggles which made the entire\n childish conversation seem quite\n normal. But Palit was in no\n laughing mood. He said, in his\n own language, \"You're getting\n careless, Manto. You had no\n business imitating her expression.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Palit, but it was\n so suggestive. And I'm a very\n suggestible person.\"\n\n\n \"So am I. But I control myself.\"\n\n\n \"Still, if the temptation were\n great enough, I don't think you'd\n be able to resist either.\"\n\n\n \"The issues are important\n enough to make me resist.\"", "\"—with hardly enough energy\n to let them dress you in that\n hunter's outfit and photograph\n you as if you were shooting\n lions.\"\n\n\n \"You're so unforgiving, Carol.\n You don't have much use for me,\n do you—consciously, that is?\"\n\n\n \"Frankly, Curt, no. I don't\n have much use for useless people.\"\n\n\n \"I'm not entirely useless. I\n earn you that ten per cent—\"\n\n\n \"I'd gladly forego that to see\n you sober.\"\n\n\n \"But it's your contempt for me\n that drives me to drink. And\n when I think of having to face\n those dear little kiddies with\n nothing inside me—\"", "Palit said firmly, \"Be careful,\n and I won't be fearful. That's all\n there is to it.\"\n\n\n \"I'll be careful. After all, I\n shouldn't want us to lose these\n children. They're so exactly the\n kind we need. Look how inquiring\n they are, how unafraid, how\n quick to adapt to any circumstances—\"\n\n\n Miss Burton's voice said,\n \"Good gracious, children, what\n language\n are\n you using? Greek?\"\n\n\n They had been speaking too\n loud, they had been overheard.\n Palit and Manto stared at each\n other, and giggled coyly. Then,\n after a second to think, Palit\n said, \"Onay, Issmay Urtonbay!\"\n\n\n \"What?\"", "\"Oh, Miss Burton, please don't\n make her go home with a policeman.\n If she's going to be an\n actress, I'll bet she'd love to see\n Curt George!\"\n\n\n \"Well, after the way she's behaved,\n I don't know whether I\n should let her. I really don't.\"\n\n\n \"Please, Miss Burton, it was\n an accident. I won't do it again.\"\n\n\n \"All right, if you're good, and\n cause no trouble. But we still\n have plenty of time before seeing\n Mr. George. It's only two now,\n and we're not supposed to go to\n the lecture hall until four.\"\n\n\n \"Miss Burton,\" called Barbara\n Willman, \"do you think he'd give\n us his autograph?\"", "\"All right,\" conceded Palit,\n grudgingly.\nSo they stayed, and out of\n some twigs and leaves they\n shaped the necessary coins with\n which to buy peanuts, and popcorn,\n and ice cream, and other\n delicacies favored by the young.\n Manto wanted to win easy popularity\n by treating a few of the\n other children, but Palit put his\n girlish foot down. No use arousing\n suspicion. Even as it was—\n\n\n \"Gee, your father gives you an\n awful lot of spending money,\"\n said Frances enviously. \"Is he\n rich?\"\n\n\n \"We get as much as we want,\"\n replied Manto carelessly.\n\n\n \"Gosh, I wish I did.\"", "THE HUNTERS\nBY WILLIAM MORRISON\nILLUSTRATED BY VAN DONGEN\nTo all who didn't know him, Curt George was a\n mighty hunter and actor. But this time he was\n up against others who could really act, and\n whose business was the hunting of whole worlds.\n\n\n There were thirty or more of\n the little girls, their ages ranging\n apparently from nine to\n eleven, all of them chirping\n away like a flock of chicks as\n they followed the old mother hen\n past the line of cages. \"Now,\n now, girls,\" called Miss Burton\n cheerily. \"Don't scatter. I can't\n keep my eye on you if you get\n too far away from me. You,\n Hilda, give me that water pistol.\n No, don't fill it up first at that\n fountain. And Frances, stop\n bouncing your ball. You'll lose it\n through the bars, and a polar\n bear may get it and not want to\n give it back.\"", "\"Whatever you say, Manto. If\n you wish, we shall join the little\n ladies.\"\n\n\n \"We must have our story prepared\n first.\"\n\n\n Palit nodded, and the two men\n stepped under the shade of a\n tree whose long, drooping, leaf-covered\n branches formed a convenient\n screen. For a moment,\n the tree hid silence. Then there\n came from beneath the branches\n the chatter of girlish voices, and\n two little girls skipped merrily\n away. Miss Burton did not at\n first notice that now she had an\n additional two children in her\n charge.\n\n\n \"Do you think you will be able\n to keep your English straight?\"\n asked one of the new little girls.\n\n\n The other one smiled with\n amusement and at first did not\n answer. Then she began to skip\n around her companion and\n chant, \"I know a secret, I know\n a secret.\"", "\"Still, I thought I saw your\n own face taking on a bit of her\n expression too.\"\n\n\n \"You are imagining things,\n Manto. Another thing, that mistake\n in starting to say you were\n two hundred years old—\"\n\n\n \"They would have thought it\n a joke. And I think I got out of\n that rather neatly.\"\n\n\n \"You like to skate on thin ice,\n don't you, Manto? Just as you\n did when you changed your\n height. You had no business\n shrinking right out in public like\n that.\"\n\n\n \"I did it skillfully. Not a\n single person noticed.\"\n\n\n \"\n I\n noticed.\"\n\n\n \"Don't quibble.\"\n\n\n \"I don't intend to. Some of\n these children have very sharp\n eyes. You'd be surprised at what\n they see.\"", "\"Perhaps you regard me, my\n friends, as a very lucky person.\n But when I recall some of the\n narrow escapes I have had, I\n don't agree with you. I remember\n once, when we were on the\n trail of a rogue elephant—\"\n\n\n He told the story of the rogue\n elephant, modestly granting a co-hero's\n role to his guide. Then\n another story illustrating the\n strange ways of lions. The elephant\n gun figured in still another\n tale, this time of a vicious\n rhinoceros. His audience was\n quiet now, breathless with interest,\n and he welcomed the respite\n from shrillness he had won\n for his ears.\n\n\n \"And now, my friends, it is\n time to say farewell.\" He actually\n looked sad and regretful.\n \"But it is my hope that I shall\n be able to see you again—\"", "Manto said tolerantly, \"You're\n getting jittery, Palit. We've\n been away from home too long.\"\n\n\n \"I am not jittery in the least.\n But I believe in taking due care.\"\n\n\n \"What could possibly happen\n to us? If we were to announce\n to the children and the teacher,\n and to every one in this zoo, for\n that matter, exactly who and\n what we were, they wouldn't believe\n us. And even if they did,\n they wouldn't be able to act rapidly\n enough to harm us.\"\n\n\n \"You never can tell about such\n things. Wise—people—simply\n don't take unnecessary chances.\"\n\n\n \"I'll grant that you're my superior\n in such wisdom.\"", "\"You've had your drink,\" said\n Carol. She was slim, attractive,\n and efficient. At the moment she\n was being more efficient than attractive,\n and she could sense his\n resentment. \"That's all you get.\n Now, lay off, and try to be\n reasonably sober, for a change.\"\n\n\n \"But those kids! They'll squeal\n and giggle—\"\n\n\n \"They're about the only audience\n in the world that won't\n spot you as a drunk. God knows\n where I could find any one else\n who'd believe that your hand\n shakes because of fever.\"\n\n\n \"I know that you're looking\n out for my best interests, Carol.\n But one more drink wouldn't\n hurt me.\"\n\n\n She said wearily, but firmly, \"I\n don't argue with drunks, Curt. I\n just go ahead and protect them\n from themselves. No drinks.\"\n\n\n \"Afterwards?\"" ], [ "\"Oh, Miss Burton, please don't\n make her go home with a policeman.\n If she's going to be an\n actress, I'll bet she'd love to see\n Curt George!\"\n\n\n \"Well, after the way she's behaved,\n I don't know whether I\n should let her. I really don't.\"\n\n\n \"Please, Miss Burton, it was\n an accident. I won't do it again.\"\n\n\n \"All right, if you're good, and\n cause no trouble. But we still\n have plenty of time before seeing\n Mr. George. It's only two now,\n and we're not supposed to go to\n the lecture hall until four.\"\n\n\n \"Miss Burton,\" called Barbara\n Willman, \"do you think he'd give\n us his autograph?\"", "That was the worst of all. He\n winced once, then bore up. You\n can get used even to torture, he\n told himself. An adult making a\n fool of herself is always more\n painful than a kid. And that\n affected elocutionist's voice gave\n him the horrors. But he thanked\n her too. His good deed for the\n day. Maybe Carol would have\n him now, he thought.\n\n\n A voice shrilled, \"Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, dear?\"\n\n\n \"Aren't you going to call on\n Carolyn to act?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes, I was forgetting.\n Come up here, Carolyn, come up,\n Doris. Carolyn and Doris, Mr.\n George, are studying how to act.\n They act people\n and\n animals.\n Who knows? Some day they, too,\n may be in the movies, just as you\n are, Mr. George. Wouldn't that\n be nice, children?\"", "THE HUNTERS\nBY WILLIAM MORRISON\nILLUSTRATED BY VAN DONGEN\nTo all who didn't know him, Curt George was a\n mighty hunter and actor. But this time he was\n up against others who could really act, and\n whose business was the hunting of whole worlds.\n\n\n There were thirty or more of\n the little girls, their ages ranging\n apparently from nine to\n eleven, all of them chirping\n away like a flock of chicks as\n they followed the old mother hen\n past the line of cages. \"Now,\n now, girls,\" called Miss Burton\n cheerily. \"Don't scatter. I can't\n keep my eye on you if you get\n too far away from me. You,\n Hilda, give me that water pistol.\n No, don't fill it up first at that\n fountain. And Frances, stop\n bouncing your ball. You'll lose it\n through the bars, and a polar\n bear may get it and not want to\n give it back.\"", "\"Now, children, I've warned\n you about that. You mustn't\n annoy him. Mr. George is a famous\n movie actor, and his time\n is valuable. It's very kind of him\n to offer to speak to us, especially\n when so many grown-up people\n are anxious to hear him, but\n we mustn't take advantage of his\n kindness.\"\n\n\n \"But he likes children, Miss\n Burton! My big sister read in a\n movie magazine where it said\n he's just crazy about them.\"\n\n\n \"I know, but—he's not in good\n health, children. They say he got\n jungle fever in Africa, where he\n was shooting all those lions, and\n rhinoceroses, and elephants for\n his new picture. That's why you\n mustn't bother him too much.\"\n\n\n \"But he looks so big and\n strong, Miss Burton. It wouldn't\n hurt him to sign an autograph!\"", "\"Sorry. Come on, let's go.\"\nThe lecture hall resounded\n with giggles. And beneath the\n giggles was a steady undercurrent\n of whispers, of girlish confidences\n exchanged, of girlish\n hopes that would now be fulfilled.\n Miss Burton's class was\n not the only one which had come\n to hear the famous actor-hunter\n describe his brave exploits. There\n were at least five others like it,\n and by some mistake, a class of\n boys, who also whispered to each\n other, in manly superiority, and\n pretended to find amusement in\n the presence of so many of the\n fairer sex.\n\n\n In this atmosphere of giggles\n and whispers, Manto and Palit\n could exchange confidences without\n being noticed. Palit said savagely,\n \"Why did you tell her that\n I could act too?\"", "\"Fine. How about you, Carolyn?\n You and your little friend,\n Doris. Can she act too?\"\n\n\n Carolyn giggled. \"Oh, yes, she\n can act very well. I can act like\n people. She can act like animals.\"\n The laughing, girlish eyes evaded\n a dirty look from the little\n friend. \"She can act like\n any\n kind of animal.\"\n\n\n \"She's certainly a talented\n child. But she seems so shy!\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no,\" said Carolyn. \"She\n likes to be coaxed.\"\n\n\n \"She shouldn't be like that.\n Perhaps, Carolyn, you and Doris\n can do something together. And\n perhaps, too, Mr. George will be\n pleased to see that your teacher\n also has talent.\"\n\n\n \"You, Miss Burton?\"", "Screams of exultation, shrill\n as ever, small hands beating\n enthusiastically to indicate joy.\n Thank God that's over with, he\n thought. Now for those drinks—and\n he didn't mean drink,\n singular. Talk of being useful,\n he'd certainly been useful now.\n He'd made those kids happy.\n What more can any reasonable\n person want?\nBut it wasn't over with. Another\n old lady had stepped up on\n the platform.\n\n\n \"Mr. George,\" she said, in a\n strangely affected voice, like that\n of the first dramatic teacher he\n had ever had, the one who had\n almost ruined his acting career.\n \"Mr. George, I can't tell you\n how happy you have made us all,\n young and old. Hasn't Mr.\n George made us happy, children?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Miss Burton!\" came the\n shrill scream.", "Miss Burton coughed modestly.\n \"Yes, children, I never told you,\n but I was once ambitious to be\n an actress too. I studied dramatics,\n and really, I was quite\n good at it. I was told that if I\n persevered I might actually be\n famous. Just think, your teacher\n might actually have been a famous\n actress! However, in my\n day, there were many coarse people\n on the stage, and the life of\n the theater was not attractive—but\n perhaps we'd better not\n speak of that. At any rate, I\n know the principles of the dramatic\n art very well.\"\n\"God knows what I'll have to\n go through,\" said Curt. \"And I\n don't see how I can take it\n sober.\"\n\n\n \"I don't see how they can take\n you drunk,\" replied Carol.\n\n\n \"Why go through with it at\n all? Why not call the whole thing\n quits?\"", "\"That'll do,\" said Miss Burton\n firmly. \"Now, let's get along\n to the lion house. And please,\n children, do not make faces at\n the lions. How would you like to\n be in a cage and have people\n make faces at you? Always remember\n to be considerate to\n others.\"\n\n\n \"Even lions, Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Even lions.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. George shot lots of\n lions. Was he considerate of them\n too?\"\n\n\n \"There is no time for silly\n questions,\" said Miss Burton,\n with the same firmness. \"Come\n along.\"\n\n\n They all trouped after her,\n Palit and Manto bringing up the\n rear. Manto giggled, and whispered\n with amusement, \"That\n Pig-Latin business was quick\n thinking, Palit. But in fact, quite\n unnecessary. The things that you\n do to avoid being suspected!\"", "\"Go ahead,\" whispered Carol.\n \"You've seen the script—go into\n your act. Tell them what a hero\n you are. You have the odds in\n your favor to start with.\"\n\n\n \"My lovely looks,\" he said,\n with some bitterness.\n\n\n \"Lovely is the word for you.\n But forget that. If you're good—you'll\n get a drink afterwards.\"\n\n\n \"Will it be one of those occasions\n when you love me?\"\n\n\n \"If the moon turns blue.\"\n\n\n He strode to the front of the\n platform, an elephant gun swinging\n easily at his side, an easy\n grin radiating from his confident,\n rugged face. The cheers\n rose to a shrill fortissimo, but\n the grin did not vanish. What a\n great actor he really was, he told\n himself, to be able to pretend he\n liked this.", "Miss Burton had an idea. \"I\n know what to do, children. If\n you can act animals—Mr. George\n has shown you what the hunter\n does; you show him what the\n lions do. Yes, Carolyn and Doris,\n you're going to be lions. You are\n waiting in your lairs, ready to\n pounce on the unwary hunter.\n Crouch now, behind that chair.\n Closer and closer he comes—you\n act it out, Mr. George, please,\n that's the way—ever closer, and\n now your muscles tighten for\n the spring, and you open\n your great, wide, red mouths\n in a great, great big roar—\"\n\n\n A deep and tremendous roar,\n as of thunder, crashed through\n the auditorium. A roar—and\n then, from the audience, an outburst\n of terrified screaming such\n as he had never heard. The\n bristles rose at the back of his\n neck, and his heart froze.", "\"Come, come, mustn't be shy.\n Your friend says that you act\n very nicely indeed. Can't want to\n go on the stage and still be shy.\n Now, do you know any movie\n scenes? Shirley Temple used to\n be a good little actress, I remember.\n Can you do any scenes that\n she does?\"\nThe silence was getting to be\n embarrassing. And Carol said he\n didn't amount to anything, he\n never did anything useful. Why,\n if thanks to his being here this\n afternoon, those kids lost the\n ambition to go on the stage, the\n whole human race would have\n cause to be grateful to him. To\n him, and to Miss Burton. She'd\n kill ambition in anybody.", "\"Because people are depending\n on you. You always want to call\n quits whenever you run into\n something you don't like. You\n may as well call quits to your\n contract if that's the way you\n feel.\"\n\n\n \"And to your ten per cent,\n darling.\"\n\n\n \"You think I'd mind that. I\n work for my ten per cent, Curt,\n sweetheart. I work too damn\n hard for that ten per cent.\"\n\n\n \"You can marry me and take\n it easy. Honest, Carol, if you\n treated me better, if you showed\n me I meant something to you,\n I'd give up drinking.\"\n\n\n She made a face. \"Don't talk\n nonsense. Take your outfit, and\n let's get ready to go. Unless you\n want to change here, and walk\n around dressed as a lion hunter.\"\n\n\n \"Why not? I've walked around\n dressed as worse. A drunk.\"", "An assistant curator of some\n collection in the zoo, a flustered\n old woman, was introducing him.\n There were a few laudatory references\n to his great talents as an\n actor, and he managed to look\n properly modest as he listened.\n The remarks about his knowledge\n of wild and ferocious beasts\n were a little harder to take, but\n he took them. Then the old\n woman stepped back, and he was\n facing his fate alone.\n\n\n \"Children,\" he began. A pause,\n a bashful grin. \"Perhaps I\n should rather say, my friends.\n I'm not one to think of you as\n children. Some people think of\n me as a child myself, because I\n like to hunt, and have adventures.\n They think that such\n things are childish. But if they\n are, I'm glad to be a child. I'm\n glad to be one of you. Yes, I\n think I\n will\n call you my friends.", "\"Why, because it's the truth.\n You're a very good animal performer.\n You make a wonderful\n dragon, for instance. Go on,\n Palit, show her what a fine\n dragon you can—\"\n\n\n \"Stop it, you fool, before you\n cause trouble!\"\n\n\n \"Very well, Palit. Did I tempt\n you?\"\n\n\n \"Did you tempt me! You and\n your sense of humor!\"\n\n\n \"You and your lack of it! But\n let's not argue now, Palit. Here,\n I think, comes the lion-hunter.\n Let's scream, and be as properly\n excited as every one else is.\"\nMy God, he thought, how can\n they keep their voices so high\n so long? My eardrums hurt already.\n How do they stand a lifetime\n of it? Even an hour?", "\"—with hardly enough energy\n to let them dress you in that\n hunter's outfit and photograph\n you as if you were shooting\n lions.\"\n\n\n \"You're so unforgiving, Carol.\n You don't have much use for me,\n do you—consciously, that is?\"\n\n\n \"Frankly, Curt, no. I don't\n have much use for useless people.\"\n\n\n \"I'm not entirely useless. I\n earn you that ten per cent—\"\n\n\n \"I'd gladly forego that to see\n you sober.\"\n\n\n \"But it's your contempt for me\n that drives me to drink. And\n when I think of having to face\n those dear little kiddies with\n nothing inside me—\"", "\"Oh, yes, it would,\" asserted\n one little girl. \"He shakes. When\n he has an attack of fever, his\n hand shakes.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Africa is a dangerous\n continent, and one never knows\n how the dangers will strike one,\"\n said Miss Burton complacently.\n \"So we must all remember how\n bravely Mr. George is fighting\n his misfortune, and do our best\n not to tire him out.\"\nIn the bright light that flooded\n the afternoon breakfast table,\n Curt George's handsome, manly\n face wore an expression of distress.\n He groaned dismally, and\n muttered, \"What a head I've got,\n what a head. How do you expect\n me to face that gang of kids\n without a drink to pick me up?\"", "\"There should be happiness inside\n you at the thought of your\n doing a good deed. Not a drop,\n George, not a drop.\"\nThe two little girls drew apart\n from the others and began to\n whisper into each other's ears.\n The whispers were punctuated\n by giggles which made the entire\n childish conversation seem quite\n normal. But Palit was in no\n laughing mood. He said, in his\n own language, \"You're getting\n careless, Manto. You had no\n business imitating her expression.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Palit, but it was\n so suggestive. And I'm a very\n suggestible person.\"\n\n\n \"So am I. But I control myself.\"\n\n\n \"Still, if the temptation were\n great enough, I don't think you'd\n be able to resist either.\"\n\n\n \"The issues are important\n enough to make me resist.\"", "Miss Burton collected her\n brood. \"Come together, children,\n I have something to say to you.\n Soon it will be time to go in and\n hear Mr. George. Now, if Mr.\n George is so kind as to entertain\n us, don't you think that it's only\n proper for us to entertain him?\"\n\n\n \"We could put on our class\n play!\" yelled Barbara.\n\n\n \"Barbara's a fine one to talk,\"\n said Frances. \"She doesn't even\n remember her lines.\"\n\n\n \"No, children, we mustn't do\n anything we can't do well. That\n wouldn't make a good impression.\n And besides, there is no\n time for a play. Perhaps Barbara\n will sing—\"\n\n\n \"I can sing a 'Thank You'\n song,\" interrupted Frances.\n\n\n \"That would be nice.\"\n\n\n \"I can recite,\" added another\n little girl.", "\"Perhaps you regard me, my\n friends, as a very lucky person.\n But when I recall some of the\n narrow escapes I have had, I\n don't agree with you. I remember\n once, when we were on the\n trail of a rogue elephant—\"\n\n\n He told the story of the rogue\n elephant, modestly granting a co-hero's\n role to his guide. Then\n another story illustrating the\n strange ways of lions. The elephant\n gun figured in still another\n tale, this time of a vicious\n rhinoceros. His audience was\n quiet now, breathless with interest,\n and he welcomed the respite\n from shrillness he had won\n for his ears.\n\n\n \"And now, my friends, it is\n time to say farewell.\" He actually\n looked sad and regretful.\n \"But it is my hope that I shall\n be able to see you again—\"" ], [ "\"That'll do,\" said Miss Burton\n firmly. \"Now, let's get along\n to the lion house. And please,\n children, do not make faces at\n the lions. How would you like to\n be in a cage and have people\n make faces at you? Always remember\n to be considerate to\n others.\"\n\n\n \"Even lions, Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Even lions.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. George shot lots of\n lions. Was he considerate of them\n too?\"\n\n\n \"There is no time for silly\n questions,\" said Miss Burton,\n with the same firmness. \"Come\n along.\"\n\n\n They all trouped after her,\n Palit and Manto bringing up the\n rear. Manto giggled, and whispered\n with amusement, \"That\n Pig-Latin business was quick\n thinking, Palit. But in fact, quite\n unnecessary. The things that you\n do to avoid being suspected!\"", "Facing him across the platform\n were two lions, tensed as\n if to leap. Where they had come\n from he didn't know, but there\n they were, eyes glaring, manes\n ruffled, more terrifying than any\n he had seen in Africa. There\n they were, with the threat of\n death and destruction in their\n fierce eyes, and here he was,\n terror and helplessness on his\n handsome, manly, and bloodless\n face, heart unfrozen now and\n pounding fiercely, knees melting,\n hands—\n\n\n Hands clutching an elephant\n gun. The thought was like a director's\n command. With calm efficiency,\n with all the precision of\n an actor playing a scene rehearsed\n a thousand times, the\n gun leaped to his shoulder, and\n now its own roar thundered out\n a challenge to the roaring of the\n wild beasts, shouted at them in\n its own accents of barking\n thunder.", "Miss Burton had an idea. \"I\n know what to do, children. If\n you can act animals—Mr. George\n has shown you what the hunter\n does; you show him what the\n lions do. Yes, Carolyn and Doris,\n you're going to be lions. You are\n waiting in your lairs, ready to\n pounce on the unwary hunter.\n Crouch now, behind that chair.\n Closer and closer he comes—you\n act it out, Mr. George, please,\n that's the way—ever closer, and\n now your muscles tighten for\n the spring, and you open\n your great, wide, red mouths\n in a great, great big roar—\"\n\n\n A deep and tremendous roar,\n as of thunder, crashed through\n the auditorium. A roar—and\n then, from the audience, an outburst\n of terrified screaming such\n as he had never heard. The\n bristles rose at the back of his\n neck, and his heart froze.", "The shrill screaming continued\n long after the echoes of the gun's\n speech had died away. Across\n the platform from him were two\n great bodies, the bodies of lions,\n and yet curiously unlike the\n beasts in some ways, now that\n they were dead and dissolving as\n if corroded by some invisible\n acid.\n\n\n Carol's hand was on his arm,\n Carol's thin and breathless voice\n shook as she said, \"A drink—all\n the drinks you want.\"\n\n\n \"One will do. And you.\"\n\n\n \"And me. I guess you're kind\n of—kind of useful after all.\"\nTranscriber's Note:\nThis e-text was produced from\n Space Science Fiction\n February 1953.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright\n on this publication was renewed.", "\"Perhaps you regard me, my\n friends, as a very lucky person.\n But when I recall some of the\n narrow escapes I have had, I\n don't agree with you. I remember\n once, when we were on the\n trail of a rogue elephant—\"\n\n\n He told the story of the rogue\n elephant, modestly granting a co-hero's\n role to his guide. Then\n another story illustrating the\n strange ways of lions. The elephant\n gun figured in still another\n tale, this time of a vicious\n rhinoceros. His audience was\n quiet now, breathless with interest,\n and he welcomed the respite\n from shrillness he had won\n for his ears.\n\n\n \"And now, my friends, it is\n time to say farewell.\" He actually\n looked sad and regretful.\n \"But it is my hope that I shall\n be able to see you again—\"", "THE HUNTERS\nBY WILLIAM MORRISON\nILLUSTRATED BY VAN DONGEN\nTo all who didn't know him, Curt George was a\n mighty hunter and actor. But this time he was\n up against others who could really act, and\n whose business was the hunting of whole worlds.\n\n\n There were thirty or more of\n the little girls, their ages ranging\n apparently from nine to\n eleven, all of them chirping\n away like a flock of chicks as\n they followed the old mother hen\n past the line of cages. \"Now,\n now, girls,\" called Miss Burton\n cheerily. \"Don't scatter. I can't\n keep my eye on you if you get\n too far away from me. You,\n Hilda, give me that water pistol.\n No, don't fill it up first at that\n fountain. And Frances, stop\n bouncing your ball. You'll lose it\n through the bars, and a polar\n bear may get it and not want to\n give it back.\"", "\"—with hardly enough energy\n to let them dress you in that\n hunter's outfit and photograph\n you as if you were shooting\n lions.\"\n\n\n \"You're so unforgiving, Carol.\n You don't have much use for me,\n do you—consciously, that is?\"\n\n\n \"Frankly, Curt, no. I don't\n have much use for useless people.\"\n\n\n \"I'm not entirely useless. I\n earn you that ten per cent—\"\n\n\n \"I'd gladly forego that to see\n you sober.\"\n\n\n \"But it's your contempt for me\n that drives me to drink. And\n when I think of having to face\n those dear little kiddies with\n nothing inside me—\"", "\"Why, because it's the truth.\n You're a very good animal performer.\n You make a wonderful\n dragon, for instance. Go on,\n Palit, show her what a fine\n dragon you can—\"\n\n\n \"Stop it, you fool, before you\n cause trouble!\"\n\n\n \"Very well, Palit. Did I tempt\n you?\"\n\n\n \"Did you tempt me! You and\n your sense of humor!\"\n\n\n \"You and your lack of it! But\n let's not argue now, Palit. Here,\n I think, comes the lion-hunter.\n Let's scream, and be as properly\n excited as every one else is.\"\nMy God, he thought, how can\n they keep their voices so high\n so long? My eardrums hurt already.\n How do they stand a lifetime\n of it? Even an hour?", "\"Now, children, I've warned\n you about that. You mustn't\n annoy him. Mr. George is a famous\n movie actor, and his time\n is valuable. It's very kind of him\n to offer to speak to us, especially\n when so many grown-up people\n are anxious to hear him, but\n we mustn't take advantage of his\n kindness.\"\n\n\n \"But he likes children, Miss\n Burton! My big sister read in a\n movie magazine where it said\n he's just crazy about them.\"\n\n\n \"I know, but—he's not in good\n health, children. They say he got\n jungle fever in Africa, where he\n was shooting all those lions, and\n rhinoceroses, and elephants for\n his new picture. That's why you\n mustn't bother him too much.\"\n\n\n \"But he looks so big and\n strong, Miss Burton. It wouldn't\n hurt him to sign an autograph!\"", "\"Drunks don't attract attention.\n They're too ordinary.\"\n\n\n \"But a drunken lion hunter—that's\n something special.\" He\n went into the next room and began\n to change. \"Carol,\" he\n called. \"Do you like me?\"\n\n\n \"At times.\"\n\n\n \"Would you say that you liked\n me very much?\"\n\n\n \"When you're sober. Rarely.\"\n\n\n \"Love me?\"\n\n\n \"Once in a blue moon.\"\n\n\n \"What would I have to do for\n you to want to marry me?\"\n\n\n \"Amount to something.\"\n\n\n \"I like that. Don't you think I\n amount to something now?\n Women swoon at the sight of my\n face on the screen, and come to\n life again at the sound of my\n voice.\"", "\"Go ahead,\" whispered Carol.\n \"You've seen the script—go into\n your act. Tell them what a hero\n you are. You have the odds in\n your favor to start with.\"\n\n\n \"My lovely looks,\" he said,\n with some bitterness.\n\n\n \"Lovely is the word for you.\n But forget that. If you're good—you'll\n get a drink afterwards.\"\n\n\n \"Will it be one of those occasions\n when you love me?\"\n\n\n \"If the moon turns blue.\"\n\n\n He strode to the front of the\n platform, an elephant gun swinging\n easily at his side, an easy\n grin radiating from his confident,\n rugged face. The cheers\n rose to a shrill fortissimo, but\n the grin did not vanish. What a\n great actor he really was, he told\n himself, to be able to pretend he\n liked this.", "\"There should be happiness inside\n you at the thought of your\n doing a good deed. Not a drop,\n George, not a drop.\"\nThe two little girls drew apart\n from the others and began to\n whisper into each other's ears.\n The whispers were punctuated\n by giggles which made the entire\n childish conversation seem quite\n normal. But Palit was in no\n laughing mood. He said, in his\n own language, \"You're getting\n careless, Manto. You had no\n business imitating her expression.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Palit, but it was\n so suggestive. And I'm a very\n suggestible person.\"\n\n\n \"So am I. But I control myself.\"\n\n\n \"Still, if the temptation were\n great enough, I don't think you'd\n be able to resist either.\"\n\n\n \"The issues are important\n enough to make me resist.\"", "Manto said tolerantly, \"You're\n getting jittery, Palit. We've\n been away from home too long.\"\n\n\n \"I am not jittery in the least.\n But I believe in taking due care.\"\n\n\n \"What could possibly happen\n to us? If we were to announce\n to the children and the teacher,\n and to every one in this zoo, for\n that matter, exactly who and\n what we were, they wouldn't believe\n us. And even if they did,\n they wouldn't be able to act rapidly\n enough to harm us.\"\n\n\n \"You never can tell about such\n things. Wise—people—simply\n don't take unnecessary chances.\"\n\n\n \"I'll grant that you're my superior\n in such wisdom.\"", "\"Oh, yes, it would,\" asserted\n one little girl. \"He shakes. When\n he has an attack of fever, his\n hand shakes.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Africa is a dangerous\n continent, and one never knows\n how the dangers will strike one,\"\n said Miss Burton complacently.\n \"So we must all remember how\n bravely Mr. George is fighting\n his misfortune, and do our best\n not to tire him out.\"\nIn the bright light that flooded\n the afternoon breakfast table,\n Curt George's handsome, manly\n face wore an expression of distress.\n He groaned dismally, and\n muttered, \"What a head I've got,\n what a head. How do you expect\n me to face that gang of kids\n without a drink to pick me up?\"", "\"Fine. How about you, Carolyn?\n You and your little friend,\n Doris. Can she act too?\"\n\n\n Carolyn giggled. \"Oh, yes, she\n can act very well. I can act like\n people. She can act like animals.\"\n The laughing, girlish eyes evaded\n a dirty look from the little\n friend. \"She can act like\n any\n kind of animal.\"\n\n\n \"She's certainly a talented\n child. But she seems so shy!\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no,\" said Carolyn. \"She\n likes to be coaxed.\"\n\n\n \"She shouldn't be like that.\n Perhaps, Carolyn, you and Doris\n can do something together. And\n perhaps, too, Mr. George will be\n pleased to see that your teacher\n also has talent.\"\n\n\n \"You, Miss Burton?\"", "An assistant curator of some\n collection in the zoo, a flustered\n old woman, was introducing him.\n There were a few laudatory references\n to his great talents as an\n actor, and he managed to look\n properly modest as he listened.\n The remarks about his knowledge\n of wild and ferocious beasts\n were a little harder to take, but\n he took them. Then the old\n woman stepped back, and he was\n facing his fate alone.\n\n\n \"Children,\" he began. A pause,\n a bashful grin. \"Perhaps I\n should rather say, my friends.\n I'm not one to think of you as\n children. Some people think of\n me as a child myself, because I\n like to hunt, and have adventures.\n They think that such\n things are childish. But if they\n are, I'm glad to be a child. I'm\n glad to be one of you. Yes, I\n think I\n will\n call you my friends.", "There was no better way to\n make herself inconspicuous. For\n some time, Miss Burton did not\n notice her.\nThe polar bears, the grizzlies,\n the penguins, the reptiles, all\n were left behind. At times the\n children scattered, but Miss Burton\n knew how to get them together\n again, and not one was\n lost.\n\n\n \"Here, children, is the building\n where the kangaroos live.\n Who knows where kangaroos\n come from?\"\n\n\n \"Australia!\" clanged the shrill\n chorus.\n\n\n \"That's right. And what other\n animals come from Australia?\"\n\n\n \"I know, Miss Burton!\" cried\n Frances, a dark-haired nine-year-old\n with a pair of glittering\n eyes that stared like a pair\n of critics from a small heart-shaped\n face. \"I've been here before.\n Wallabies and wombats!\"", "Screams of exultation, shrill\n as ever, small hands beating\n enthusiastically to indicate joy.\n Thank God that's over with, he\n thought. Now for those drinks—and\n he didn't mean drink,\n singular. Talk of being useful,\n he'd certainly been useful now.\n He'd made those kids happy.\n What more can any reasonable\n person want?\nBut it wasn't over with. Another\n old lady had stepped up on\n the platform.\n\n\n \"Mr. George,\" she said, in a\n strangely affected voice, like that\n of the first dramatic teacher he\n had ever had, the one who had\n almost ruined his acting career.\n \"Mr. George, I can't tell you\n how happy you have made us all,\n young and old. Hasn't Mr.\n George made us happy, children?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Miss Burton!\" came the\n shrill scream.", "That was the worst of all. He\n winced once, then bore up. You\n can get used even to torture, he\n told himself. An adult making a\n fool of herself is always more\n painful than a kid. And that\n affected elocutionist's voice gave\n him the horrors. But he thanked\n her too. His good deed for the\n day. Maybe Carol would have\n him now, he thought.\n\n\n A voice shrilled, \"Miss Burton?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, dear?\"\n\n\n \"Aren't you going to call on\n Carolyn to act?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes, I was forgetting.\n Come up here, Carolyn, come up,\n Doris. Carolyn and Doris, Mr.\n George, are studying how to act.\n They act people\n and\n animals.\n Who knows? Some day they, too,\n may be in the movies, just as you\n are, Mr. George. Wouldn't that\n be nice, children?\"", "\"Because people are depending\n on you. You always want to call\n quits whenever you run into\n something you don't like. You\n may as well call quits to your\n contract if that's the way you\n feel.\"\n\n\n \"And to your ten per cent,\n darling.\"\n\n\n \"You think I'd mind that. I\n work for my ten per cent, Curt,\n sweetheart. I work too damn\n hard for that ten per cent.\"\n\n\n \"You can marry me and take\n it easy. Honest, Carol, if you\n treated me better, if you showed\n me I meant something to you,\n I'd give up drinking.\"\n\n\n She made a face. \"Don't talk\n nonsense. Take your outfit, and\n let's get ready to go. Unless you\n want to change here, and walk\n around dressed as a lion hunter.\"\n\n\n \"Why not? I've walked around\n dressed as worse. A drunk.\"" ] ]
valid	22966	[ "Why did all the kids leave the Atomic Wonder Space Wave Trapper?", "What loophole will get other people to do the work and research of the creators of the Atomic Wonder for them?", "Why did Biff buy the toy?", "What will likely happen with the Atomic Wonder?", "What will cause the buyers to research the toy?", "Why wasn't anyone interested in the coils before the toy?", "Which of the following jobs helped someone recognize the trick of the toy?", "What was ironic about the colonel saying that all good illusions are simple?", "Which of the following most accurately represents how much money they lost selling the toy to the colonel?" ]	[ [ "Trains were more interesting", "It was boring", "It was too expensive", "It was held up by string" ], [ "Strings", "Magnetic-wave theory", "Wave Generators", "Patents" ], [ "He wanted to mess with his friends", "He wanted to see how it worked", "He saw the string", "It was only $17.95" ], [ "It will be experimented on over and over", "It will be forgotten", "No kids will buy it", "There is no way to know" ], [ "The promise of profit", "Scientific curiousity", "To find out how they were scammed", "They won't" ], [ "They didn't know about it", "They were too busy", "It was too small-scale", "They were interested" ], [ "Engineer", "Scientist", "Salesman", "Magician" ], [ "It wasn't ironic", "He did not see the thread until it was pointed out to him", "The illusion would be spotted by one of his friends", "The illusion was more complicated than he realized" ], [ "About 80 dollars", "About 15 dollars", "At least 97 dollars", "At least 18 dollars" ] ]	[ 3, 4, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3 ]	[ 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "A concerted\nahhhh\nswept through\n the crowd as the Space Wave Tapper\n shivered a bit, then rose slowly into\n the air. The demonstrator stepped\n back and the toy rose higher and\n higher, bobbing gently on the invisible\n waves of magnetic force that\n supported it. Ever so slowly the power\n was reduced and it settled back to\n the table.\n\n\n \"Only $17.95,\" the young man\n said, putting a large price sign on the\n table. \"For the complete set of the\n Atomic Wonder, the Space Tapper\n control box, battery and instruction\n book ...\"\n\n\n At the appearance of the price\n card the crowd broke up noisily and\n the children rushed away towards the\n operating model trains. The demonstrator's\n words were lost in their\n noisy passage, and after a moment he\n sank into a gloomy silence. He put\n the control box down, yawned and\n sat on the edge of the table. Colonel\n Hawton was the only one left after\n the crowd had moved on.", "\"It's all explained right here in\n your instruction book,\" the demonstrator\n said, holding up a garishly\n printed booklet opened to a four-color\n diagram. \"You all know how\n magnets pick up things and I bet\n you even know that the earth itself is\n one great big magnet—that's why\n compasses always point north. Well\n ... the Atomic Wonder Space\n Wave Tapper hangs onto those space\n waves. Invisibly all about us, and\n even going right through us, are the\n magnetic waves of the earth. The\n Atomic Wonder rides these waves\n just the way a ship rides the waves\n in the ocean. Now watch....\"", "Only Teddy Kaner caught wise as\n the flight began. He was an amateur\n magician and spotted the gimmick at\n once. He kept silent with professional\n courtesy, and smiled ironically as\n the rest of the bunch grew silent one\n by one. The colonel was a good showman\n and he had set the scene well.\n He almost had them believing in the\n Space Wave Tapper before he was\n through. When the model had landed\n and he had switched it off he couldn't\n stop them from crowding around\n the table.\n\n\n \"A thread!\" one of the engineers\n shouted, almost with relief, and they\n all laughed along with him.\n\n\n \"Too bad,\" the head project physicist\n said, \"I was hoping that a little\n Space Wave Tapping could help us\n out. Let me try a flight with it.\"\n\n\n \"Teddy Kaner first,\" Biff announced.\n \"He spotted it while you\n were all watching the flashing lights,\n only he didn't say anything.\"", "\"Could you tell me how this thing\n works?\" the colonel asked, coming\n forward. The demonstrator brightened\n up and picked up one of the\n toys.\n\n\n \"Well, if you will look here,\n sir....\" He opened the hinged top.\n \"You will see the Space Wave coils\n at each end of the ship.\" With a pencil\n he pointed out the odd shaped\n plastic forms about an inch in diameter\n that had been wound—apparently\n at random—with a few turns of\n copper wire. Except for these coils\n the interior of the model was empty.\n The coils were wired together and\n other wires ran out through the hole\n in the bottom of the control box.\n Biff Hawton turned a very quizzical\n eye on the gadget and upon the demonstrator\n who completely ignored this\n sign of disbelief.", "Every eye was on him as he put the\n gaudy model rocketship on top of the\n table and stepped back. It was made\n of stamped metal and seemed as incapable\n of flying as a can of ham—which\n it very much resembled. Neither\n wings, propellors, nor jets broke\n through the painted surface. It rested\n on three rubber wheels and coming\n out through the bottom was a double\n strand of thin insulated wire. This\n white wire ran across the top of the\n black table and terminated in a control\n box in the demonstrator's hand.\n An indicator light, a switch and a\n knob appeared to be the only controls.\n\n\n \"I turn on the Power Switch, sending\n a surge of current to the Wave\n Receptors,\" he said. The switch\n clicked and the light blinked on and\n off with a steady pulse. Then the\n man began to slowly turn the knob.\n \"A careful touch on the Wave Generator\n is necessary as we are dealing\n with the powers of the whole world\n here....\"", "The demonstrator flushed. \"I'm\n sorry, sir,\" he stammered. \"I wasn't\n trying to hide anything. Like any\n magic trick this one can't be really\n demonstrated until it has been purchased.\"\n He leaned forward and whispered\n confidentially. \"I'll tell you\n what I'll do though. This thing is way\n overpriced and hasn't been moving at\n all. The manager said I could let them\n go at three dollars if I could find any\n takers. If you want to buy it for that\n price....\"\n\n\n \"Sold, my boy!\" the colonel said,\n slamming three bills down on the\n table. \"I'll give that much for it no\n matter\nhow\nit works. The boys in the\n shop will get a kick out of it,\" he\n tapped the winged rocket on his\n chest. \"Now\nreally\n—what holds it\n up?\"", "The gadget was strictly,\n\n beyond any question, a toy.\n\n Not a real, workable device.\n\n Except for the way it could work\n\n under a man's mental skin....\nBY HARRY HARRISON\nBecause there were few adults in\n the crowd, and Colonel \"Biff\" Hawton\n stood over six feet tall, he could\n see every detail of the demonstration.\n The children—and most of the\n parents—gaped in wide-eyed wonder.\n Biff Hawton was too sophisticated\n to be awed. He stayed on because\n he wanted to find out what the\n trick was that made the gadget work.", "\"Inside the control box is the battery,\"\n the young man said, snapping\n it open and pointing to an ordinary\n flashlight battery. \"The current goes\n through the Power Switch and Power\n Light to the Wave Generator ...\"\n\n\n \"What you mean to say,\" Biff\n broke in, \"is that the juice from this\n fifteen cent battery goes through this\n cheap rheostat to those meaningless\n coils in the model and absolutely\n nothing happens. Now tell me what\n really flies the thing. If I'm going to\n drop eighteen bucks for six-bits\n worth of tin, I want to know what\n I'm getting.\"", "\"Wrap it up, my boy, I wasn't born\n yesterday. I'm an old hand at this\n kind of thing.\"\nBiff Hawton sprang it at the next\n Thursday-night poker party. The\n gang were all missile men and they\n cheered and jeered as he hammed\n up the introduction.\n\n\n \"Let me copy the diagram, Biff, I\n could use some of those magnetic\n waves in the new bird!\"\n\n\n \"Those flashlight batteries are\n cheaper than lox, this is the thing of\n the future!\"", "\"I think so, I caught a few Air\n Force officers and a colonel in missiles\n one day. Then there was one official\n I remembered from the Bureau\n of Standards. Luckily he didn't recognize\n me. Then those two professors\n you spotted from the university.\"\n\n\n \"Then the problem is out of our\n hands and into theirs. All we have to\n do now is sit back and wait for results.\"\n\n\n \"\nWhat\nresults?! These people\n weren't interested when we were\n hammering on their doors with the\n proof. We've patented the coils and\n can prove to anyone that there is a\n reduction in weight around them\n when they are operating....\"", "The thread broke again when Biff\n tried it, which got a good laugh that\n made his collar a little warm. Someone\n mentioned the poker game.\n\n\n This was the only time that poker\n was mentioned or even remembered\n that night. Because very soon after\n this they found that the thread would\n lift the model only when the switch\n was on and two and a half volts\n flowing through the joke coils. With\n the current turned off the model was\n too heavy to lift. The thread broke\n every time.\n\"I still think it's a screwy idea,\"\n the young man said. \"One week getting\n fallen arches, demonstrating\n those toy ships for every brat within\n a thousand miles. Then selling the\n things for three bucks when they\n must have cost at least a hundred dollars\n apiece to make.\"\n\n\n \"But you\ndid\nsell the ten of them\n to people who would be interested?\"\n the older man asked.", "\"I\nknow\nthey will. The tensile\n strength of that thread is correctly adjusted\n to the weight of the model.\n The thread will break if you try to\n lift the model with it. Yet you can\n lift the model—after a small increment\n of its weight has been removed\n by the coils. This is going to bug\n these men. Nobody is going to ask\n them to solve the problem or concern\n themselves with it. But it will\n nag at them because they know this\n effect can't possibly exist. They'll see\n at once that the magnetic-wave theory\n is nonsense. Or perhaps true? We\n don't know. But they will all be\n thinking about it and worrying about\n it. Someone is going to experiment\n in his basement—just as a hobby of\n course—to find the cause of the error.\n And he or someone else is going\n to find out what makes those coils\n work, or maybe a way to improve\n them!\"\n\n\n \"And we have the patents....\"", "\"But a small reduction. And we\n don't know what is causing it. No\n one can be interested in a thing like\n that—a fractional weight decrease in\n a clumsy model, certainly not enough\n to lift the weight of the generator.\n No one wrapped up in massive fuel\n consumption, tons of lift and such is\n going to have time to worry about a\n crackpot who thinks he has found a\n minor slip in Newton's laws.\"\n\n\n \"You think they will now?\" the\n young man asked, cracking his knuckles\n impatiently.", "\"Correct. They will be doing the\n research that will take them out of\n the massive-lift-propulsion business\n and into the field of pure space\n flight.\"\n\n\n \"And in doing so they will be making\n us rich—whenever the time\n comes to manufacture,\" the young\n man said cynically.\n\n\n \"We'll all be rich, son,\" the older\n man said, patting him on the shoulder.\n \"Believe me, you're not going to\n recognize this old world ten years\n from now.\"\nTranscriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from\nAnalog\nApril 1962.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.\n copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and\n typographical errors have been corrected without note.", "Kaner slipped the ring with the\n black thread over his finger and started\n to step back.\n\n\n \"You have to turn the switch on\n first,\" Biff said.\n\n\n \"I know,\" Kaner smiled. \"But\n that's part of illusion—the spiel and\n the misdirection. I'm going to try\n this cold first, so I can get it moving\n up and down smoothly, then go\n through it with the whole works.\"\n\nILLUSTRATED BY BREY\n\n He moved his hand back smoothly,\n in a professional manner that drew\n no attention to it. The model lifted\n from the table—then crashed back\n down.\n\n\n \"The thread broke,\" Kaner said.\n\n\n \"You jerked it, instead of pulling\n smoothly,\" Biff said and knotted the\n broken thread. \"Here let me show\n you how to do it.\"", "The demonstrator looked around\n carefully, then pointed. \"Strings!\" he\n said. \"Or rather a black thread. It\n runs from the top of the model,\n through a tiny loop in the ceiling,\n and back down to my hand—tied to\n this ring on my finger. When I back\n up—the model rises. It's as simple as\n that.\"\n\n\n \"All good illusions are simple,\"\n the colonel grunted, tracing the black\n thread with his eye. \"As long as\n there is plenty of flimflam to distract\n the viewer.\"\n\n\n \"If you don't have a black table, a\n black cloth will do,\" the young man\n said. \"And the arch of a doorway is a\n good site, just see that the room in\n back is dark.\"" ], [ "\"I\nknow\nthey will. The tensile\n strength of that thread is correctly adjusted\n to the weight of the model.\n The thread will break if you try to\n lift the model with it. Yet you can\n lift the model—after a small increment\n of its weight has been removed\n by the coils. This is going to bug\n these men. Nobody is going to ask\n them to solve the problem or concern\n themselves with it. But it will\n nag at them because they know this\n effect can't possibly exist. They'll see\n at once that the magnetic-wave theory\n is nonsense. Or perhaps true? We\n don't know. But they will all be\n thinking about it and worrying about\n it. Someone is going to experiment\n in his basement—just as a hobby of\n course—to find the cause of the error.\n And he or someone else is going\n to find out what makes those coils\n work, or maybe a way to improve\n them!\"\n\n\n \"And we have the patents....\"", "\"It's all explained right here in\n your instruction book,\" the demonstrator\n said, holding up a garishly\n printed booklet opened to a four-color\n diagram. \"You all know how\n magnets pick up things and I bet\n you even know that the earth itself is\n one great big magnet—that's why\n compasses always point north. Well\n ... the Atomic Wonder Space\n Wave Tapper hangs onto those space\n waves. Invisibly all about us, and\n even going right through us, are the\n magnetic waves of the earth. The\n Atomic Wonder rides these waves\n just the way a ship rides the waves\n in the ocean. Now watch....\"", "A concerted\nahhhh\nswept through\n the crowd as the Space Wave Tapper\n shivered a bit, then rose slowly into\n the air. The demonstrator stepped\n back and the toy rose higher and\n higher, bobbing gently on the invisible\n waves of magnetic force that\n supported it. Ever so slowly the power\n was reduced and it settled back to\n the table.\n\n\n \"Only $17.95,\" the young man\n said, putting a large price sign on the\n table. \"For the complete set of the\n Atomic Wonder, the Space Tapper\n control box, battery and instruction\n book ...\"\n\n\n At the appearance of the price\n card the crowd broke up noisily and\n the children rushed away towards the\n operating model trains. The demonstrator's\n words were lost in their\n noisy passage, and after a moment he\n sank into a gloomy silence. He put\n the control box down, yawned and\n sat on the edge of the table. Colonel\n Hawton was the only one left after\n the crowd had moved on.", "\"I think so, I caught a few Air\n Force officers and a colonel in missiles\n one day. Then there was one official\n I remembered from the Bureau\n of Standards. Luckily he didn't recognize\n me. Then those two professors\n you spotted from the university.\"\n\n\n \"Then the problem is out of our\n hands and into theirs. All we have to\n do now is sit back and wait for results.\"\n\n\n \"\nWhat\nresults?! These people\n weren't interested when we were\n hammering on their doors with the\n proof. We've patented the coils and\n can prove to anyone that there is a\n reduction in weight around them\n when they are operating....\"", "The demonstrator flushed. \"I'm\n sorry, sir,\" he stammered. \"I wasn't\n trying to hide anything. Like any\n magic trick this one can't be really\n demonstrated until it has been purchased.\"\n He leaned forward and whispered\n confidentially. \"I'll tell you\n what I'll do though. This thing is way\n overpriced and hasn't been moving at\n all. The manager said I could let them\n go at three dollars if I could find any\n takers. If you want to buy it for that\n price....\"\n\n\n \"Sold, my boy!\" the colonel said,\n slamming three bills down on the\n table. \"I'll give that much for it no\n matter\nhow\nit works. The boys in the\n shop will get a kick out of it,\" he\n tapped the winged rocket on his\n chest. \"Now\nreally\n—what holds it\n up?\"", "\"Wrap it up, my boy, I wasn't born\n yesterday. I'm an old hand at this\n kind of thing.\"\nBiff Hawton sprang it at the next\n Thursday-night poker party. The\n gang were all missile men and they\n cheered and jeered as he hammed\n up the introduction.\n\n\n \"Let me copy the diagram, Biff, I\n could use some of those magnetic\n waves in the new bird!\"\n\n\n \"Those flashlight batteries are\n cheaper than lox, this is the thing of\n the future!\"", "The thread broke again when Biff\n tried it, which got a good laugh that\n made his collar a little warm. Someone\n mentioned the poker game.\n\n\n This was the only time that poker\n was mentioned or even remembered\n that night. Because very soon after\n this they found that the thread would\n lift the model only when the switch\n was on and two and a half volts\n flowing through the joke coils. With\n the current turned off the model was\n too heavy to lift. The thread broke\n every time.\n\"I still think it's a screwy idea,\"\n the young man said. \"One week getting\n fallen arches, demonstrating\n those toy ships for every brat within\n a thousand miles. Then selling the\n things for three bucks when they\n must have cost at least a hundred dollars\n apiece to make.\"\n\n\n \"But you\ndid\nsell the ten of them\n to people who would be interested?\"\n the older man asked.", "\"Could you tell me how this thing\n works?\" the colonel asked, coming\n forward. The demonstrator brightened\n up and picked up one of the\n toys.\n\n\n \"Well, if you will look here,\n sir....\" He opened the hinged top.\n \"You will see the Space Wave coils\n at each end of the ship.\" With a pencil\n he pointed out the odd shaped\n plastic forms about an inch in diameter\n that had been wound—apparently\n at random—with a few turns of\n copper wire. Except for these coils\n the interior of the model was empty.\n The coils were wired together and\n other wires ran out through the hole\n in the bottom of the control box.\n Biff Hawton turned a very quizzical\n eye on the gadget and upon the demonstrator\n who completely ignored this\n sign of disbelief.", "Every eye was on him as he put the\n gaudy model rocketship on top of the\n table and stepped back. It was made\n of stamped metal and seemed as incapable\n of flying as a can of ham—which\n it very much resembled. Neither\n wings, propellors, nor jets broke\n through the painted surface. It rested\n on three rubber wheels and coming\n out through the bottom was a double\n strand of thin insulated wire. This\n white wire ran across the top of the\n black table and terminated in a control\n box in the demonstrator's hand.\n An indicator light, a switch and a\n knob appeared to be the only controls.\n\n\n \"I turn on the Power Switch, sending\n a surge of current to the Wave\n Receptors,\" he said. The switch\n clicked and the light blinked on and\n off with a steady pulse. Then the\n man began to slowly turn the knob.\n \"A careful touch on the Wave Generator\n is necessary as we are dealing\n with the powers of the whole world\n here....\"", "Only Teddy Kaner caught wise as\n the flight began. He was an amateur\n magician and spotted the gimmick at\n once. He kept silent with professional\n courtesy, and smiled ironically as\n the rest of the bunch grew silent one\n by one. The colonel was a good showman\n and he had set the scene well.\n He almost had them believing in the\n Space Wave Tapper before he was\n through. When the model had landed\n and he had switched it off he couldn't\n stop them from crowding around\n the table.\n\n\n \"A thread!\" one of the engineers\n shouted, almost with relief, and they\n all laughed along with him.\n\n\n \"Too bad,\" the head project physicist\n said, \"I was hoping that a little\n Space Wave Tapping could help us\n out. Let me try a flight with it.\"\n\n\n \"Teddy Kaner first,\" Biff announced.\n \"He spotted it while you\n were all watching the flashing lights,\n only he didn't say anything.\"", "\"But a small reduction. And we\n don't know what is causing it. No\n one can be interested in a thing like\n that—a fractional weight decrease in\n a clumsy model, certainly not enough\n to lift the weight of the generator.\n No one wrapped up in massive fuel\n consumption, tons of lift and such is\n going to have time to worry about a\n crackpot who thinks he has found a\n minor slip in Newton's laws.\"\n\n\n \"You think they will now?\" the\n young man asked, cracking his knuckles\n impatiently.", "\"Inside the control box is the battery,\"\n the young man said, snapping\n it open and pointing to an ordinary\n flashlight battery. \"The current goes\n through the Power Switch and Power\n Light to the Wave Generator ...\"\n\n\n \"What you mean to say,\" Biff\n broke in, \"is that the juice from this\n fifteen cent battery goes through this\n cheap rheostat to those meaningless\n coils in the model and absolutely\n nothing happens. Now tell me what\n really flies the thing. If I'm going to\n drop eighteen bucks for six-bits\n worth of tin, I want to know what\n I'm getting.\"", "The gadget was strictly,\n\n beyond any question, a toy.\n\n Not a real, workable device.\n\n Except for the way it could work\n\n under a man's mental skin....\nBY HARRY HARRISON\nBecause there were few adults in\n the crowd, and Colonel \"Biff\" Hawton\n stood over six feet tall, he could\n see every detail of the demonstration.\n The children—and most of the\n parents—gaped in wide-eyed wonder.\n Biff Hawton was too sophisticated\n to be awed. He stayed on because\n he wanted to find out what the\n trick was that made the gadget work.", "\"Correct. They will be doing the\n research that will take them out of\n the massive-lift-propulsion business\n and into the field of pure space\n flight.\"\n\n\n \"And in doing so they will be making\n us rich—whenever the time\n comes to manufacture,\" the young\n man said cynically.\n\n\n \"We'll all be rich, son,\" the older\n man said, patting him on the shoulder.\n \"Believe me, you're not going to\n recognize this old world ten years\n from now.\"\nTranscriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from\nAnalog\nApril 1962.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.\n copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and\n typographical errors have been corrected without note.", "The demonstrator looked around\n carefully, then pointed. \"Strings!\" he\n said. \"Or rather a black thread. It\n runs from the top of the model,\n through a tiny loop in the ceiling,\n and back down to my hand—tied to\n this ring on my finger. When I back\n up—the model rises. It's as simple as\n that.\"\n\n\n \"All good illusions are simple,\"\n the colonel grunted, tracing the black\n thread with his eye. \"As long as\n there is plenty of flimflam to distract\n the viewer.\"\n\n\n \"If you don't have a black table, a\n black cloth will do,\" the young man\n said. \"And the arch of a doorway is a\n good site, just see that the room in\n back is dark.\"", "Kaner slipped the ring with the\n black thread over his finger and started\n to step back.\n\n\n \"You have to turn the switch on\n first,\" Biff said.\n\n\n \"I know,\" Kaner smiled. \"But\n that's part of illusion—the spiel and\n the misdirection. I'm going to try\n this cold first, so I can get it moving\n up and down smoothly, then go\n through it with the whole works.\"\n\nILLUSTRATED BY BREY\n\n He moved his hand back smoothly,\n in a professional manner that drew\n no attention to it. The model lifted\n from the table—then crashed back\n down.\n\n\n \"The thread broke,\" Kaner said.\n\n\n \"You jerked it, instead of pulling\n smoothly,\" Biff said and knotted the\n broken thread. \"Here let me show\n you how to do it.\"" ], [ "The thread broke again when Biff\n tried it, which got a good laugh that\n made his collar a little warm. Someone\n mentioned the poker game.\n\n\n This was the only time that poker\n was mentioned or even remembered\n that night. Because very soon after\n this they found that the thread would\n lift the model only when the switch\n was on and two and a half volts\n flowing through the joke coils. With\n the current turned off the model was\n too heavy to lift. The thread broke\n every time.\n\"I still think it's a screwy idea,\"\n the young man said. \"One week getting\n fallen arches, demonstrating\n those toy ships for every brat within\n a thousand miles. Then selling the\n things for three bucks when they\n must have cost at least a hundred dollars\n apiece to make.\"\n\n\n \"But you\ndid\nsell the ten of them\n to people who would be interested?\"\n the older man asked.", "The gadget was strictly,\n\n beyond any question, a toy.\n\n Not a real, workable device.\n\n Except for the way it could work\n\n under a man's mental skin....\nBY HARRY HARRISON\nBecause there were few adults in\n the crowd, and Colonel \"Biff\" Hawton\n stood over six feet tall, he could\n see every detail of the demonstration.\n The children—and most of the\n parents—gaped in wide-eyed wonder.\n Biff Hawton was too sophisticated\n to be awed. He stayed on because\n he wanted to find out what the\n trick was that made the gadget work.", "The demonstrator flushed. \"I'm\n sorry, sir,\" he stammered. \"I wasn't\n trying to hide anything. Like any\n magic trick this one can't be really\n demonstrated until it has been purchased.\"\n He leaned forward and whispered\n confidentially. \"I'll tell you\n what I'll do though. This thing is way\n overpriced and hasn't been moving at\n all. The manager said I could let them\n go at three dollars if I could find any\n takers. If you want to buy it for that\n price....\"\n\n\n \"Sold, my boy!\" the colonel said,\n slamming three bills down on the\n table. \"I'll give that much for it no\n matter\nhow\nit works. The boys in the\n shop will get a kick out of it,\" he\n tapped the winged rocket on his\n chest. \"Now\nreally\n—what holds it\n up?\"", "\"Inside the control box is the battery,\"\n the young man said, snapping\n it open and pointing to an ordinary\n flashlight battery. \"The current goes\n through the Power Switch and Power\n Light to the Wave Generator ...\"\n\n\n \"What you mean to say,\" Biff\n broke in, \"is that the juice from this\n fifteen cent battery goes through this\n cheap rheostat to those meaningless\n coils in the model and absolutely\n nothing happens. Now tell me what\n really flies the thing. If I'm going to\n drop eighteen bucks for six-bits\n worth of tin, I want to know what\n I'm getting.\"", "\"Could you tell me how this thing\n works?\" the colonel asked, coming\n forward. The demonstrator brightened\n up and picked up one of the\n toys.\n\n\n \"Well, if you will look here,\n sir....\" He opened the hinged top.\n \"You will see the Space Wave coils\n at each end of the ship.\" With a pencil\n he pointed out the odd shaped\n plastic forms about an inch in diameter\n that had been wound—apparently\n at random—with a few turns of\n copper wire. Except for these coils\n the interior of the model was empty.\n The coils were wired together and\n other wires ran out through the hole\n in the bottom of the control box.\n Biff Hawton turned a very quizzical\n eye on the gadget and upon the demonstrator\n who completely ignored this\n sign of disbelief.", "Kaner slipped the ring with the\n black thread over his finger and started\n to step back.\n\n\n \"You have to turn the switch on\n first,\" Biff said.\n\n\n \"I know,\" Kaner smiled. \"But\n that's part of illusion—the spiel and\n the misdirection. I'm going to try\n this cold first, so I can get it moving\n up and down smoothly, then go\n through it with the whole works.\"\n\nILLUSTRATED BY BREY\n\n He moved his hand back smoothly,\n in a professional manner that drew\n no attention to it. The model lifted\n from the table—then crashed back\n down.\n\n\n \"The thread broke,\" Kaner said.\n\n\n \"You jerked it, instead of pulling\n smoothly,\" Biff said and knotted the\n broken thread. \"Here let me show\n you how to do it.\"", "A concerted\nahhhh\nswept through\n the crowd as the Space Wave Tapper\n shivered a bit, then rose slowly into\n the air. The demonstrator stepped\n back and the toy rose higher and\n higher, bobbing gently on the invisible\n waves of magnetic force that\n supported it. Ever so slowly the power\n was reduced and it settled back to\n the table.\n\n\n \"Only $17.95,\" the young man\n said, putting a large price sign on the\n table. \"For the complete set of the\n Atomic Wonder, the Space Tapper\n control box, battery and instruction\n book ...\"\n\n\n At the appearance of the price\n card the crowd broke up noisily and\n the children rushed away towards the\n operating model trains. The demonstrator's\n words were lost in their\n noisy passage, and after a moment he\n sank into a gloomy silence. He put\n the control box down, yawned and\n sat on the edge of the table. Colonel\n Hawton was the only one left after\n the crowd had moved on.", "\"Wrap it up, my boy, I wasn't born\n yesterday. I'm an old hand at this\n kind of thing.\"\nBiff Hawton sprang it at the next\n Thursday-night poker party. The\n gang were all missile men and they\n cheered and jeered as he hammed\n up the introduction.\n\n\n \"Let me copy the diagram, Biff, I\n could use some of those magnetic\n waves in the new bird!\"\n\n\n \"Those flashlight batteries are\n cheaper than lox, this is the thing of\n the future!\"", "Only Teddy Kaner caught wise as\n the flight began. He was an amateur\n magician and spotted the gimmick at\n once. He kept silent with professional\n courtesy, and smiled ironically as\n the rest of the bunch grew silent one\n by one. The colonel was a good showman\n and he had set the scene well.\n He almost had them believing in the\n Space Wave Tapper before he was\n through. When the model had landed\n and he had switched it off he couldn't\n stop them from crowding around\n the table.\n\n\n \"A thread!\" one of the engineers\n shouted, almost with relief, and they\n all laughed along with him.\n\n\n \"Too bad,\" the head project physicist\n said, \"I was hoping that a little\n Space Wave Tapping could help us\n out. Let me try a flight with it.\"\n\n\n \"Teddy Kaner first,\" Biff announced.\n \"He spotted it while you\n were all watching the flashing lights,\n only he didn't say anything.\"", "\"I\nknow\nthey will. The tensile\n strength of that thread is correctly adjusted\n to the weight of the model.\n The thread will break if you try to\n lift the model with it. Yet you can\n lift the model—after a small increment\n of its weight has been removed\n by the coils. This is going to bug\n these men. Nobody is going to ask\n them to solve the problem or concern\n themselves with it. But it will\n nag at them because they know this\n effect can't possibly exist. They'll see\n at once that the magnetic-wave theory\n is nonsense. Or perhaps true? We\n don't know. But they will all be\n thinking about it and worrying about\n it. Someone is going to experiment\n in his basement—just as a hobby of\n course—to find the cause of the error.\n And he or someone else is going\n to find out what makes those coils\n work, or maybe a way to improve\n them!\"\n\n\n \"And we have the patents....\"", "\"It's all explained right here in\n your instruction book,\" the demonstrator\n said, holding up a garishly\n printed booklet opened to a four-color\n diagram. \"You all know how\n magnets pick up things and I bet\n you even know that the earth itself is\n one great big magnet—that's why\n compasses always point north. Well\n ... the Atomic Wonder Space\n Wave Tapper hangs onto those space\n waves. Invisibly all about us, and\n even going right through us, are the\n magnetic waves of the earth. The\n Atomic Wonder rides these waves\n just the way a ship rides the waves\n in the ocean. Now watch....\"", "Every eye was on him as he put the\n gaudy model rocketship on top of the\n table and stepped back. It was made\n of stamped metal and seemed as incapable\n of flying as a can of ham—which\n it very much resembled. Neither\n wings, propellors, nor jets broke\n through the painted surface. It rested\n on three rubber wheels and coming\n out through the bottom was a double\n strand of thin insulated wire. This\n white wire ran across the top of the\n black table and terminated in a control\n box in the demonstrator's hand.\n An indicator light, a switch and a\n knob appeared to be the only controls.\n\n\n \"I turn on the Power Switch, sending\n a surge of current to the Wave\n Receptors,\" he said. The switch\n clicked and the light blinked on and\n off with a steady pulse. Then the\n man began to slowly turn the knob.\n \"A careful touch on the Wave Generator\n is necessary as we are dealing\n with the powers of the whole world\n here....\"", "\"But a small reduction. And we\n don't know what is causing it. No\n one can be interested in a thing like\n that—a fractional weight decrease in\n a clumsy model, certainly not enough\n to lift the weight of the generator.\n No one wrapped up in massive fuel\n consumption, tons of lift and such is\n going to have time to worry about a\n crackpot who thinks he has found a\n minor slip in Newton's laws.\"\n\n\n \"You think they will now?\" the\n young man asked, cracking his knuckles\n impatiently.", "The demonstrator looked around\n carefully, then pointed. \"Strings!\" he\n said. \"Or rather a black thread. It\n runs from the top of the model,\n through a tiny loop in the ceiling,\n and back down to my hand—tied to\n this ring on my finger. When I back\n up—the model rises. It's as simple as\n that.\"\n\n\n \"All good illusions are simple,\"\n the colonel grunted, tracing the black\n thread with his eye. \"As long as\n there is plenty of flimflam to distract\n the viewer.\"\n\n\n \"If you don't have a black table, a\n black cloth will do,\" the young man\n said. \"And the arch of a doorway is a\n good site, just see that the room in\n back is dark.\"", "\"I think so, I caught a few Air\n Force officers and a colonel in missiles\n one day. Then there was one official\n I remembered from the Bureau\n of Standards. Luckily he didn't recognize\n me. Then those two professors\n you spotted from the university.\"\n\n\n \"Then the problem is out of our\n hands and into theirs. All we have to\n do now is sit back and wait for results.\"\n\n\n \"\nWhat\nresults?! These people\n weren't interested when we were\n hammering on their doors with the\n proof. We've patented the coils and\n can prove to anyone that there is a\n reduction in weight around them\n when they are operating....\"", "\"Correct. They will be doing the\n research that will take them out of\n the massive-lift-propulsion business\n and into the field of pure space\n flight.\"\n\n\n \"And in doing so they will be making\n us rich—whenever the time\n comes to manufacture,\" the young\n man said cynically.\n\n\n \"We'll all be rich, son,\" the older\n man said, patting him on the shoulder.\n \"Believe me, you're not going to\n recognize this old world ten years\n from now.\"\nTranscriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from\nAnalog\nApril 1962.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.\n copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and\n typographical errors have been corrected without note." ], [ "A concerted\nahhhh\nswept through\n the crowd as the Space Wave Tapper\n shivered a bit, then rose slowly into\n the air. The demonstrator stepped\n back and the toy rose higher and\n higher, bobbing gently on the invisible\n waves of magnetic force that\n supported it. Ever so slowly the power\n was reduced and it settled back to\n the table.\n\n\n \"Only $17.95,\" the young man\n said, putting a large price sign on the\n table. \"For the complete set of the\n Atomic Wonder, the Space Tapper\n control box, battery and instruction\n book ...\"\n\n\n At the appearance of the price\n card the crowd broke up noisily and\n the children rushed away towards the\n operating model trains. The demonstrator's\n words were lost in their\n noisy passage, and after a moment he\n sank into a gloomy silence. He put\n the control box down, yawned and\n sat on the edge of the table. Colonel\n Hawton was the only one left after\n the crowd had moved on.", "\"It's all explained right here in\n your instruction book,\" the demonstrator\n said, holding up a garishly\n printed booklet opened to a four-color\n diagram. \"You all know how\n magnets pick up things and I bet\n you even know that the earth itself is\n one great big magnet—that's why\n compasses always point north. Well\n ... the Atomic Wonder Space\n Wave Tapper hangs onto those space\n waves. Invisibly all about us, and\n even going right through us, are the\n magnetic waves of the earth. The\n Atomic Wonder rides these waves\n just the way a ship rides the waves\n in the ocean. Now watch....\"", "\"I\nknow\nthey will. The tensile\n strength of that thread is correctly adjusted\n to the weight of the model.\n The thread will break if you try to\n lift the model with it. Yet you can\n lift the model—after a small increment\n of its weight has been removed\n by the coils. This is going to bug\n these men. Nobody is going to ask\n them to solve the problem or concern\n themselves with it. But it will\n nag at them because they know this\n effect can't possibly exist. They'll see\n at once that the magnetic-wave theory\n is nonsense. Or perhaps true? We\n don't know. But they will all be\n thinking about it and worrying about\n it. Someone is going to experiment\n in his basement—just as a hobby of\n course—to find the cause of the error.\n And he or someone else is going\n to find out what makes those coils\n work, or maybe a way to improve\n them!\"\n\n\n \"And we have the patents....\"", "The demonstrator flushed. \"I'm\n sorry, sir,\" he stammered. \"I wasn't\n trying to hide anything. Like any\n magic trick this one can't be really\n demonstrated until it has been purchased.\"\n He leaned forward and whispered\n confidentially. \"I'll tell you\n what I'll do though. This thing is way\n overpriced and hasn't been moving at\n all. The manager said I could let them\n go at three dollars if I could find any\n takers. If you want to buy it for that\n price....\"\n\n\n \"Sold, my boy!\" the colonel said,\n slamming three bills down on the\n table. \"I'll give that much for it no\n matter\nhow\nit works. The boys in the\n shop will get a kick out of it,\" he\n tapped the winged rocket on his\n chest. \"Now\nreally\n—what holds it\n up?\"", "Every eye was on him as he put the\n gaudy model rocketship on top of the\n table and stepped back. It was made\n of stamped metal and seemed as incapable\n of flying as a can of ham—which\n it very much resembled. Neither\n wings, propellors, nor jets broke\n through the painted surface. It rested\n on three rubber wheels and coming\n out through the bottom was a double\n strand of thin insulated wire. This\n white wire ran across the top of the\n black table and terminated in a control\n box in the demonstrator's hand.\n An indicator light, a switch and a\n knob appeared to be the only controls.\n\n\n \"I turn on the Power Switch, sending\n a surge of current to the Wave\n Receptors,\" he said. The switch\n clicked and the light blinked on and\n off with a steady pulse. Then the\n man began to slowly turn the knob.\n \"A careful touch on the Wave Generator\n is necessary as we are dealing\n with the powers of the whole world\n here....\"", "\"I think so, I caught a few Air\n Force officers and a colonel in missiles\n one day. Then there was one official\n I remembered from the Bureau\n of Standards. Luckily he didn't recognize\n me. Then those two professors\n you spotted from the university.\"\n\n\n \"Then the problem is out of our\n hands and into theirs. All we have to\n do now is sit back and wait for results.\"\n\n\n \"\nWhat\nresults?! These people\n weren't interested when we were\n hammering on their doors with the\n proof. We've patented the coils and\n can prove to anyone that there is a\n reduction in weight around them\n when they are operating....\"", "\"Could you tell me how this thing\n works?\" the colonel asked, coming\n forward. The demonstrator brightened\n up and picked up one of the\n toys.\n\n\n \"Well, if you will look here,\n sir....\" He opened the hinged top.\n \"You will see the Space Wave coils\n at each end of the ship.\" With a pencil\n he pointed out the odd shaped\n plastic forms about an inch in diameter\n that had been wound—apparently\n at random—with a few turns of\n copper wire. Except for these coils\n the interior of the model was empty.\n The coils were wired together and\n other wires ran out through the hole\n in the bottom of the control box.\n Biff Hawton turned a very quizzical\n eye on the gadget and upon the demonstrator\n who completely ignored this\n sign of disbelief.", "Only Teddy Kaner caught wise as\n the flight began. He was an amateur\n magician and spotted the gimmick at\n once. He kept silent with professional\n courtesy, and smiled ironically as\n the rest of the bunch grew silent one\n by one. The colonel was a good showman\n and he had set the scene well.\n He almost had them believing in the\n Space Wave Tapper before he was\n through. When the model had landed\n and he had switched it off he couldn't\n stop them from crowding around\n the table.\n\n\n \"A thread!\" one of the engineers\n shouted, almost with relief, and they\n all laughed along with him.\n\n\n \"Too bad,\" the head project physicist\n said, \"I was hoping that a little\n Space Wave Tapping could help us\n out. Let me try a flight with it.\"\n\n\n \"Teddy Kaner first,\" Biff announced.\n \"He spotted it while you\n were all watching the flashing lights,\n only he didn't say anything.\"", "The gadget was strictly,\n\n beyond any question, a toy.\n\n Not a real, workable device.\n\n Except for the way it could work\n\n under a man's mental skin....\nBY HARRY HARRISON\nBecause there were few adults in\n the crowd, and Colonel \"Biff\" Hawton\n stood over six feet tall, he could\n see every detail of the demonstration.\n The children—and most of the\n parents—gaped in wide-eyed wonder.\n Biff Hawton was too sophisticated\n to be awed. He stayed on because\n he wanted to find out what the\n trick was that made the gadget work.", "\"Inside the control box is the battery,\"\n the young man said, snapping\n it open and pointing to an ordinary\n flashlight battery. \"The current goes\n through the Power Switch and Power\n Light to the Wave Generator ...\"\n\n\n \"What you mean to say,\" Biff\n broke in, \"is that the juice from this\n fifteen cent battery goes through this\n cheap rheostat to those meaningless\n coils in the model and absolutely\n nothing happens. Now tell me what\n really flies the thing. If I'm going to\n drop eighteen bucks for six-bits\n worth of tin, I want to know what\n I'm getting.\"", "The thread broke again when Biff\n tried it, which got a good laugh that\n made his collar a little warm. Someone\n mentioned the poker game.\n\n\n This was the only time that poker\n was mentioned or even remembered\n that night. Because very soon after\n this they found that the thread would\n lift the model only when the switch\n was on and two and a half volts\n flowing through the joke coils. With\n the current turned off the model was\n too heavy to lift. The thread broke\n every time.\n\"I still think it's a screwy idea,\"\n the young man said. \"One week getting\n fallen arches, demonstrating\n those toy ships for every brat within\n a thousand miles. Then selling the\n things for three bucks when they\n must have cost at least a hundred dollars\n apiece to make.\"\n\n\n \"But you\ndid\nsell the ten of them\n to people who would be interested?\"\n the older man asked.", "\"But a small reduction. And we\n don't know what is causing it. No\n one can be interested in a thing like\n that—a fractional weight decrease in\n a clumsy model, certainly not enough\n to lift the weight of the generator.\n No one wrapped up in massive fuel\n consumption, tons of lift and such is\n going to have time to worry about a\n crackpot who thinks he has found a\n minor slip in Newton's laws.\"\n\n\n \"You think they will now?\" the\n young man asked, cracking his knuckles\n impatiently.", "\"Wrap it up, my boy, I wasn't born\n yesterday. I'm an old hand at this\n kind of thing.\"\nBiff Hawton sprang it at the next\n Thursday-night poker party. The\n gang were all missile men and they\n cheered and jeered as he hammed\n up the introduction.\n\n\n \"Let me copy the diagram, Biff, I\n could use some of those magnetic\n waves in the new bird!\"\n\n\n \"Those flashlight batteries are\n cheaper than lox, this is the thing of\n the future!\"", "Kaner slipped the ring with the\n black thread over his finger and started\n to step back.\n\n\n \"You have to turn the switch on\n first,\" Biff said.\n\n\n \"I know,\" Kaner smiled. \"But\n that's part of illusion—the spiel and\n the misdirection. I'm going to try\n this cold first, so I can get it moving\n up and down smoothly, then go\n through it with the whole works.\"\n\nILLUSTRATED BY BREY\n\n He moved his hand back smoothly,\n in a professional manner that drew\n no attention to it. The model lifted\n from the table—then crashed back\n down.\n\n\n \"The thread broke,\" Kaner said.\n\n\n \"You jerked it, instead of pulling\n smoothly,\" Biff said and knotted the\n broken thread. \"Here let me show\n you how to do it.\"", "\"Correct. They will be doing the\n research that will take them out of\n the massive-lift-propulsion business\n and into the field of pure space\n flight.\"\n\n\n \"And in doing so they will be making\n us rich—whenever the time\n comes to manufacture,\" the young\n man said cynically.\n\n\n \"We'll all be rich, son,\" the older\n man said, patting him on the shoulder.\n \"Believe me, you're not going to\n recognize this old world ten years\n from now.\"\nTranscriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from\nAnalog\nApril 1962.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.\n copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and\n typographical errors have been corrected without note.", "The demonstrator looked around\n carefully, then pointed. \"Strings!\" he\n said. \"Or rather a black thread. It\n runs from the top of the model,\n through a tiny loop in the ceiling,\n and back down to my hand—tied to\n this ring on my finger. When I back\n up—the model rises. It's as simple as\n that.\"\n\n\n \"All good illusions are simple,\"\n the colonel grunted, tracing the black\n thread with his eye. \"As long as\n there is plenty of flimflam to distract\n the viewer.\"\n\n\n \"If you don't have a black table, a\n black cloth will do,\" the young man\n said. \"And the arch of a doorway is a\n good site, just see that the room in\n back is dark.\"" ], [ "The demonstrator flushed. \"I'm\n sorry, sir,\" he stammered. \"I wasn't\n trying to hide anything. Like any\n magic trick this one can't be really\n demonstrated until it has been purchased.\"\n He leaned forward and whispered\n confidentially. \"I'll tell you\n what I'll do though. This thing is way\n overpriced and hasn't been moving at\n all. The manager said I could let them\n go at three dollars if I could find any\n takers. If you want to buy it for that\n price....\"\n\n\n \"Sold, my boy!\" the colonel said,\n slamming three bills down on the\n table. \"I'll give that much for it no\n matter\nhow\nit works. The boys in the\n shop will get a kick out of it,\" he\n tapped the winged rocket on his\n chest. \"Now\nreally\n—what holds it\n up?\"", "The thread broke again when Biff\n tried it, which got a good laugh that\n made his collar a little warm. Someone\n mentioned the poker game.\n\n\n This was the only time that poker\n was mentioned or even remembered\n that night. Because very soon after\n this they found that the thread would\n lift the model only when the switch\n was on and two and a half volts\n flowing through the joke coils. With\n the current turned off the model was\n too heavy to lift. The thread broke\n every time.\n\"I still think it's a screwy idea,\"\n the young man said. \"One week getting\n fallen arches, demonstrating\n those toy ships for every brat within\n a thousand miles. Then selling the\n things for three bucks when they\n must have cost at least a hundred dollars\n apiece to make.\"\n\n\n \"But you\ndid\nsell the ten of them\n to people who would be interested?\"\n the older man asked.", "The gadget was strictly,\n\n beyond any question, a toy.\n\n Not a real, workable device.\n\n Except for the way it could work\n\n under a man's mental skin....\nBY HARRY HARRISON\nBecause there were few adults in\n the crowd, and Colonel \"Biff\" Hawton\n stood over six feet tall, he could\n see every detail of the demonstration.\n The children—and most of the\n parents—gaped in wide-eyed wonder.\n Biff Hawton was too sophisticated\n to be awed. He stayed on because\n he wanted to find out what the\n trick was that made the gadget work.", "A concerted\nahhhh\nswept through\n the crowd as the Space Wave Tapper\n shivered a bit, then rose slowly into\n the air. The demonstrator stepped\n back and the toy rose higher and\n higher, bobbing gently on the invisible\n waves of magnetic force that\n supported it. Ever so slowly the power\n was reduced and it settled back to\n the table.\n\n\n \"Only $17.95,\" the young man\n said, putting a large price sign on the\n table. \"For the complete set of the\n Atomic Wonder, the Space Tapper\n control box, battery and instruction\n book ...\"\n\n\n At the appearance of the price\n card the crowd broke up noisily and\n the children rushed away towards the\n operating model trains. The demonstrator's\n words were lost in their\n noisy passage, and after a moment he\n sank into a gloomy silence. He put\n the control box down, yawned and\n sat on the edge of the table. Colonel\n Hawton was the only one left after\n the crowd had moved on.", "\"Inside the control box is the battery,\"\n the young man said, snapping\n it open and pointing to an ordinary\n flashlight battery. \"The current goes\n through the Power Switch and Power\n Light to the Wave Generator ...\"\n\n\n \"What you mean to say,\" Biff\n broke in, \"is that the juice from this\n fifteen cent battery goes through this\n cheap rheostat to those meaningless\n coils in the model and absolutely\n nothing happens. Now tell me what\n really flies the thing. If I'm going to\n drop eighteen bucks for six-bits\n worth of tin, I want to know what\n I'm getting.\"", "\"Could you tell me how this thing\n works?\" the colonel asked, coming\n forward. The demonstrator brightened\n up and picked up one of the\n toys.\n\n\n \"Well, if you will look here,\n sir....\" He opened the hinged top.\n \"You will see the Space Wave coils\n at each end of the ship.\" With a pencil\n he pointed out the odd shaped\n plastic forms about an inch in diameter\n that had been wound—apparently\n at random—with a few turns of\n copper wire. Except for these coils\n the interior of the model was empty.\n The coils were wired together and\n other wires ran out through the hole\n in the bottom of the control box.\n Biff Hawton turned a very quizzical\n eye on the gadget and upon the demonstrator\n who completely ignored this\n sign of disbelief.", "\"I\nknow\nthey will. The tensile\n strength of that thread is correctly adjusted\n to the weight of the model.\n The thread will break if you try to\n lift the model with it. Yet you can\n lift the model—after a small increment\n of its weight has been removed\n by the coils. This is going to bug\n these men. Nobody is going to ask\n them to solve the problem or concern\n themselves with it. But it will\n nag at them because they know this\n effect can't possibly exist. They'll see\n at once that the magnetic-wave theory\n is nonsense. Or perhaps true? We\n don't know. But they will all be\n thinking about it and worrying about\n it. Someone is going to experiment\n in his basement—just as a hobby of\n course—to find the cause of the error.\n And he or someone else is going\n to find out what makes those coils\n work, or maybe a way to improve\n them!\"\n\n\n \"And we have the patents....\"", "\"It's all explained right here in\n your instruction book,\" the demonstrator\n said, holding up a garishly\n printed booklet opened to a four-color\n diagram. \"You all know how\n magnets pick up things and I bet\n you even know that the earth itself is\n one great big magnet—that's why\n compasses always point north. Well\n ... the Atomic Wonder Space\n Wave Tapper hangs onto those space\n waves. Invisibly all about us, and\n even going right through us, are the\n magnetic waves of the earth. The\n Atomic Wonder rides these waves\n just the way a ship rides the waves\n in the ocean. Now watch....\"", "Every eye was on him as he put the\n gaudy model rocketship on top of the\n table and stepped back. It was made\n of stamped metal and seemed as incapable\n of flying as a can of ham—which\n it very much resembled. Neither\n wings, propellors, nor jets broke\n through the painted surface. It rested\n on three rubber wheels and coming\n out through the bottom was a double\n strand of thin insulated wire. This\n white wire ran across the top of the\n black table and terminated in a control\n box in the demonstrator's hand.\n An indicator light, a switch and a\n knob appeared to be the only controls.\n\n\n \"I turn on the Power Switch, sending\n a surge of current to the Wave\n Receptors,\" he said. The switch\n clicked and the light blinked on and\n off with a steady pulse. Then the\n man began to slowly turn the knob.\n \"A careful touch on the Wave Generator\n is necessary as we are dealing\n with the powers of the whole world\n here....\"", "\"Wrap it up, my boy, I wasn't born\n yesterday. I'm an old hand at this\n kind of thing.\"\nBiff Hawton sprang it at the next\n Thursday-night poker party. The\n gang were all missile men and they\n cheered and jeered as he hammed\n up the introduction.\n\n\n \"Let me copy the diagram, Biff, I\n could use some of those magnetic\n waves in the new bird!\"\n\n\n \"Those flashlight batteries are\n cheaper than lox, this is the thing of\n the future!\"", "Only Teddy Kaner caught wise as\n the flight began. He was an amateur\n magician and spotted the gimmick at\n once. He kept silent with professional\n courtesy, and smiled ironically as\n the rest of the bunch grew silent one\n by one. The colonel was a good showman\n and he had set the scene well.\n He almost had them believing in the\n Space Wave Tapper before he was\n through. When the model had landed\n and he had switched it off he couldn't\n stop them from crowding around\n the table.\n\n\n \"A thread!\" one of the engineers\n shouted, almost with relief, and they\n all laughed along with him.\n\n\n \"Too bad,\" the head project physicist\n said, \"I was hoping that a little\n Space Wave Tapping could help us\n out. Let me try a flight with it.\"\n\n\n \"Teddy Kaner first,\" Biff announced.\n \"He spotted it while you\n were all watching the flashing lights,\n only he didn't say anything.\"", "\"I think so, I caught a few Air\n Force officers and a colonel in missiles\n one day. Then there was one official\n I remembered from the Bureau\n of Standards. Luckily he didn't recognize\n me. Then those two professors\n you spotted from the university.\"\n\n\n \"Then the problem is out of our\n hands and into theirs. All we have to\n do now is sit back and wait for results.\"\n\n\n \"\nWhat\nresults?! These people\n weren't interested when we were\n hammering on their doors with the\n proof. We've patented the coils and\n can prove to anyone that there is a\n reduction in weight around them\n when they are operating....\"", "Kaner slipped the ring with the\n black thread over his finger and started\n to step back.\n\n\n \"You have to turn the switch on\n first,\" Biff said.\n\n\n \"I know,\" Kaner smiled. \"But\n that's part of illusion—the spiel and\n the misdirection. I'm going to try\n this cold first, so I can get it moving\n up and down smoothly, then go\n through it with the whole works.\"\n\nILLUSTRATED BY BREY\n\n He moved his hand back smoothly,\n in a professional manner that drew\n no attention to it. The model lifted\n from the table—then crashed back\n down.\n\n\n \"The thread broke,\" Kaner said.\n\n\n \"You jerked it, instead of pulling\n smoothly,\" Biff said and knotted the\n broken thread. \"Here let me show\n you how to do it.\"", "\"Correct. They will be doing the\n research that will take them out of\n the massive-lift-propulsion business\n and into the field of pure space\n flight.\"\n\n\n \"And in doing so they will be making\n us rich—whenever the time\n comes to manufacture,\" the young\n man said cynically.\n\n\n \"We'll all be rich, son,\" the older\n man said, patting him on the shoulder.\n \"Believe me, you're not going to\n recognize this old world ten years\n from now.\"\nTranscriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from\nAnalog\nApril 1962.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.\n copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and\n typographical errors have been corrected without note.", "The demonstrator looked around\n carefully, then pointed. \"Strings!\" he\n said. \"Or rather a black thread. It\n runs from the top of the model,\n through a tiny loop in the ceiling,\n and back down to my hand—tied to\n this ring on my finger. When I back\n up—the model rises. It's as simple as\n that.\"\n\n\n \"All good illusions are simple,\"\n the colonel grunted, tracing the black\n thread with his eye. \"As long as\n there is plenty of flimflam to distract\n the viewer.\"\n\n\n \"If you don't have a black table, a\n black cloth will do,\" the young man\n said. \"And the arch of a doorway is a\n good site, just see that the room in\n back is dark.\"", "\"But a small reduction. And we\n don't know what is causing it. No\n one can be interested in a thing like\n that—a fractional weight decrease in\n a clumsy model, certainly not enough\n to lift the weight of the generator.\n No one wrapped up in massive fuel\n consumption, tons of lift and such is\n going to have time to worry about a\n crackpot who thinks he has found a\n minor slip in Newton's laws.\"\n\n\n \"You think they will now?\" the\n young man asked, cracking his knuckles\n impatiently." ], [ "\"Could you tell me how this thing\n works?\" the colonel asked, coming\n forward. The demonstrator brightened\n up and picked up one of the\n toys.\n\n\n \"Well, if you will look here,\n sir....\" He opened the hinged top.\n \"You will see the Space Wave coils\n at each end of the ship.\" With a pencil\n he pointed out the odd shaped\n plastic forms about an inch in diameter\n that had been wound—apparently\n at random—with a few turns of\n copper wire. Except for these coils\n the interior of the model was empty.\n The coils were wired together and\n other wires ran out through the hole\n in the bottom of the control box.\n Biff Hawton turned a very quizzical\n eye on the gadget and upon the demonstrator\n who completely ignored this\n sign of disbelief.", "The thread broke again when Biff\n tried it, which got a good laugh that\n made his collar a little warm. Someone\n mentioned the poker game.\n\n\n This was the only time that poker\n was mentioned or even remembered\n that night. Because very soon after\n this they found that the thread would\n lift the model only when the switch\n was on and two and a half volts\n flowing through the joke coils. With\n the current turned off the model was\n too heavy to lift. The thread broke\n every time.\n\"I still think it's a screwy idea,\"\n the young man said. \"One week getting\n fallen arches, demonstrating\n those toy ships for every brat within\n a thousand miles. Then selling the\n things for three bucks when they\n must have cost at least a hundred dollars\n apiece to make.\"\n\n\n \"But you\ndid\nsell the ten of them\n to people who would be interested?\"\n the older man asked.", "A concerted\nahhhh\nswept through\n the crowd as the Space Wave Tapper\n shivered a bit, then rose slowly into\n the air. The demonstrator stepped\n back and the toy rose higher and\n higher, bobbing gently on the invisible\n waves of magnetic force that\n supported it. Ever so slowly the power\n was reduced and it settled back to\n the table.\n\n\n \"Only $17.95,\" the young man\n said, putting a large price sign on the\n table. \"For the complete set of the\n Atomic Wonder, the Space Tapper\n control box, battery and instruction\n book ...\"\n\n\n At the appearance of the price\n card the crowd broke up noisily and\n the children rushed away towards the\n operating model trains. The demonstrator's\n words were lost in their\n noisy passage, and after a moment he\n sank into a gloomy silence. He put\n the control box down, yawned and\n sat on the edge of the table. Colonel\n Hawton was the only one left after\n the crowd had moved on.", "\"I\nknow\nthey will. The tensile\n strength of that thread is correctly adjusted\n to the weight of the model.\n The thread will break if you try to\n lift the model with it. Yet you can\n lift the model—after a small increment\n of its weight has been removed\n by the coils. This is going to bug\n these men. Nobody is going to ask\n them to solve the problem or concern\n themselves with it. But it will\n nag at them because they know this\n effect can't possibly exist. They'll see\n at once that the magnetic-wave theory\n is nonsense. Or perhaps true? We\n don't know. But they will all be\n thinking about it and worrying about\n it. Someone is going to experiment\n in his basement—just as a hobby of\n course—to find the cause of the error.\n And he or someone else is going\n to find out what makes those coils\n work, or maybe a way to improve\n them!\"\n\n\n \"And we have the patents....\"", "The demonstrator flushed. \"I'm\n sorry, sir,\" he stammered. \"I wasn't\n trying to hide anything. Like any\n magic trick this one can't be really\n demonstrated until it has been purchased.\"\n He leaned forward and whispered\n confidentially. \"I'll tell you\n what I'll do though. This thing is way\n overpriced and hasn't been moving at\n all. The manager said I could let them\n go at three dollars if I could find any\n takers. If you want to buy it for that\n price....\"\n\n\n \"Sold, my boy!\" the colonel said,\n slamming three bills down on the\n table. \"I'll give that much for it no\n matter\nhow\nit works. The boys in the\n shop will get a kick out of it,\" he\n tapped the winged rocket on his\n chest. \"Now\nreally\n—what holds it\n up?\"", "\"I think so, I caught a few Air\n Force officers and a colonel in missiles\n one day. Then there was one official\n I remembered from the Bureau\n of Standards. Luckily he didn't recognize\n me. Then those two professors\n you spotted from the university.\"\n\n\n \"Then the problem is out of our\n hands and into theirs. All we have to\n do now is sit back and wait for results.\"\n\n\n \"\nWhat\nresults?! These people\n weren't interested when we were\n hammering on their doors with the\n proof. We've patented the coils and\n can prove to anyone that there is a\n reduction in weight around them\n when they are operating....\"", "\"Inside the control box is the battery,\"\n the young man said, snapping\n it open and pointing to an ordinary\n flashlight battery. \"The current goes\n through the Power Switch and Power\n Light to the Wave Generator ...\"\n\n\n \"What you mean to say,\" Biff\n broke in, \"is that the juice from this\n fifteen cent battery goes through this\n cheap rheostat to those meaningless\n coils in the model and absolutely\n nothing happens. Now tell me what\n really flies the thing. If I'm going to\n drop eighteen bucks for six-bits\n worth of tin, I want to know what\n I'm getting.\"", "The gadget was strictly,\n\n beyond any question, a toy.\n\n Not a real, workable device.\n\n Except for the way it could work\n\n under a man's mental skin....\nBY HARRY HARRISON\nBecause there were few adults in\n the crowd, and Colonel \"Biff\" Hawton\n stood over six feet tall, he could\n see every detail of the demonstration.\n The children—and most of the\n parents—gaped in wide-eyed wonder.\n Biff Hawton was too sophisticated\n to be awed. He stayed on because\n he wanted to find out what the\n trick was that made the gadget work.", "Every eye was on him as he put the\n gaudy model rocketship on top of the\n table and stepped back. It was made\n of stamped metal and seemed as incapable\n of flying as a can of ham—which\n it very much resembled. Neither\n wings, propellors, nor jets broke\n through the painted surface. It rested\n on three rubber wheels and coming\n out through the bottom was a double\n strand of thin insulated wire. This\n white wire ran across the top of the\n black table and terminated in a control\n box in the demonstrator's hand.\n An indicator light, a switch and a\n knob appeared to be the only controls.\n\n\n \"I turn on the Power Switch, sending\n a surge of current to the Wave\n Receptors,\" he said. The switch\n clicked and the light blinked on and\n off with a steady pulse. Then the\n man began to slowly turn the knob.\n \"A careful touch on the Wave Generator\n is necessary as we are dealing\n with the powers of the whole world\n here....\"", "Only Teddy Kaner caught wise as\n the flight began. He was an amateur\n magician and spotted the gimmick at\n once. He kept silent with professional\n courtesy, and smiled ironically as\n the rest of the bunch grew silent one\n by one. The colonel was a good showman\n and he had set the scene well.\n He almost had them believing in the\n Space Wave Tapper before he was\n through. When the model had landed\n and he had switched it off he couldn't\n stop them from crowding around\n the table.\n\n\n \"A thread!\" one of the engineers\n shouted, almost with relief, and they\n all laughed along with him.\n\n\n \"Too bad,\" the head project physicist\n said, \"I was hoping that a little\n Space Wave Tapping could help us\n out. Let me try a flight with it.\"\n\n\n \"Teddy Kaner first,\" Biff announced.\n \"He spotted it while you\n were all watching the flashing lights,\n only he didn't say anything.\"", "\"It's all explained right here in\n your instruction book,\" the demonstrator\n said, holding up a garishly\n printed booklet opened to a four-color\n diagram. \"You all know how\n magnets pick up things and I bet\n you even know that the earth itself is\n one great big magnet—that's why\n compasses always point north. Well\n ... the Atomic Wonder Space\n Wave Tapper hangs onto those space\n waves. Invisibly all about us, and\n even going right through us, are the\n magnetic waves of the earth. The\n Atomic Wonder rides these waves\n just the way a ship rides the waves\n in the ocean. Now watch....\"", "\"Wrap it up, my boy, I wasn't born\n yesterday. I'm an old hand at this\n kind of thing.\"\nBiff Hawton sprang it at the next\n Thursday-night poker party. The\n gang were all missile men and they\n cheered and jeered as he hammed\n up the introduction.\n\n\n \"Let me copy the diagram, Biff, I\n could use some of those magnetic\n waves in the new bird!\"\n\n\n \"Those flashlight batteries are\n cheaper than lox, this is the thing of\n the future!\"", "\"But a small reduction. And we\n don't know what is causing it. No\n one can be interested in a thing like\n that—a fractional weight decrease in\n a clumsy model, certainly not enough\n to lift the weight of the generator.\n No one wrapped up in massive fuel\n consumption, tons of lift and such is\n going to have time to worry about a\n crackpot who thinks he has found a\n minor slip in Newton's laws.\"\n\n\n \"You think they will now?\" the\n young man asked, cracking his knuckles\n impatiently.", "Kaner slipped the ring with the\n black thread over his finger and started\n to step back.\n\n\n \"You have to turn the switch on\n first,\" Biff said.\n\n\n \"I know,\" Kaner smiled. \"But\n that's part of illusion—the spiel and\n the misdirection. I'm going to try\n this cold first, so I can get it moving\n up and down smoothly, then go\n through it with the whole works.\"\n\nILLUSTRATED BY BREY\n\n He moved his hand back smoothly,\n in a professional manner that drew\n no attention to it. The model lifted\n from the table—then crashed back\n down.\n\n\n \"The thread broke,\" Kaner said.\n\n\n \"You jerked it, instead of pulling\n smoothly,\" Biff said and knotted the\n broken thread. \"Here let me show\n you how to do it.\"", "The demonstrator looked around\n carefully, then pointed. \"Strings!\" he\n said. \"Or rather a black thread. It\n runs from the top of the model,\n through a tiny loop in the ceiling,\n and back down to my hand—tied to\n this ring on my finger. When I back\n up—the model rises. It's as simple as\n that.\"\n\n\n \"All good illusions are simple,\"\n the colonel grunted, tracing the black\n thread with his eye. \"As long as\n there is plenty of flimflam to distract\n the viewer.\"\n\n\n \"If you don't have a black table, a\n black cloth will do,\" the young man\n said. \"And the arch of a doorway is a\n good site, just see that the room in\n back is dark.\"", "\"Correct. They will be doing the\n research that will take them out of\n the massive-lift-propulsion business\n and into the field of pure space\n flight.\"\n\n\n \"And in doing so they will be making\n us rich—whenever the time\n comes to manufacture,\" the young\n man said cynically.\n\n\n \"We'll all be rich, son,\" the older\n man said, patting him on the shoulder.\n \"Believe me, you're not going to\n recognize this old world ten years\n from now.\"\nTranscriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from\nAnalog\nApril 1962.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.\n copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and\n typographical errors have been corrected without note." ], [ "The demonstrator flushed. \"I'm\n sorry, sir,\" he stammered. \"I wasn't\n trying to hide anything. Like any\n magic trick this one can't be really\n demonstrated until it has been purchased.\"\n He leaned forward and whispered\n confidentially. \"I'll tell you\n what I'll do though. This thing is way\n overpriced and hasn't been moving at\n all. The manager said I could let them\n go at three dollars if I could find any\n takers. If you want to buy it for that\n price....\"\n\n\n \"Sold, my boy!\" the colonel said,\n slamming three bills down on the\n table. \"I'll give that much for it no\n matter\nhow\nit works. The boys in the\n shop will get a kick out of it,\" he\n tapped the winged rocket on his\n chest. \"Now\nreally\n—what holds it\n up?\"", "The gadget was strictly,\n\n beyond any question, a toy.\n\n Not a real, workable device.\n\n Except for the way it could work\n\n under a man's mental skin....\nBY HARRY HARRISON\nBecause there were few adults in\n the crowd, and Colonel \"Biff\" Hawton\n stood over six feet tall, he could\n see every detail of the demonstration.\n The children—and most of the\n parents—gaped in wide-eyed wonder.\n Biff Hawton was too sophisticated\n to be awed. He stayed on because\n he wanted to find out what the\n trick was that made the gadget work.", "Only Teddy Kaner caught wise as\n the flight began. He was an amateur\n magician and spotted the gimmick at\n once. He kept silent with professional\n courtesy, and smiled ironically as\n the rest of the bunch grew silent one\n by one. The colonel was a good showman\n and he had set the scene well.\n He almost had them believing in the\n Space Wave Tapper before he was\n through. When the model had landed\n and he had switched it off he couldn't\n stop them from crowding around\n the table.\n\n\n \"A thread!\" one of the engineers\n shouted, almost with relief, and they\n all laughed along with him.\n\n\n \"Too bad,\" the head project physicist\n said, \"I was hoping that a little\n Space Wave Tapping could help us\n out. Let me try a flight with it.\"\n\n\n \"Teddy Kaner first,\" Biff announced.\n \"He spotted it while you\n were all watching the flashing lights,\n only he didn't say anything.\"", "The thread broke again when Biff\n tried it, which got a good laugh that\n made his collar a little warm. Someone\n mentioned the poker game.\n\n\n This was the only time that poker\n was mentioned or even remembered\n that night. Because very soon after\n this they found that the thread would\n lift the model only when the switch\n was on and two and a half volts\n flowing through the joke coils. With\n the current turned off the model was\n too heavy to lift. The thread broke\n every time.\n\"I still think it's a screwy idea,\"\n the young man said. \"One week getting\n fallen arches, demonstrating\n those toy ships for every brat within\n a thousand miles. Then selling the\n things for three bucks when they\n must have cost at least a hundred dollars\n apiece to make.\"\n\n\n \"But you\ndid\nsell the ten of them\n to people who would be interested?\"\n the older man asked.", "\"Could you tell me how this thing\n works?\" the colonel asked, coming\n forward. The demonstrator brightened\n up and picked up one of the\n toys.\n\n\n \"Well, if you will look here,\n sir....\" He opened the hinged top.\n \"You will see the Space Wave coils\n at each end of the ship.\" With a pencil\n he pointed out the odd shaped\n plastic forms about an inch in diameter\n that had been wound—apparently\n at random—with a few turns of\n copper wire. Except for these coils\n the interior of the model was empty.\n The coils were wired together and\n other wires ran out through the hole\n in the bottom of the control box.\n Biff Hawton turned a very quizzical\n eye on the gadget and upon the demonstrator\n who completely ignored this\n sign of disbelief.", "The demonstrator looked around\n carefully, then pointed. \"Strings!\" he\n said. \"Or rather a black thread. It\n runs from the top of the model,\n through a tiny loop in the ceiling,\n and back down to my hand—tied to\n this ring on my finger. When I back\n up—the model rises. It's as simple as\n that.\"\n\n\n \"All good illusions are simple,\"\n the colonel grunted, tracing the black\n thread with his eye. \"As long as\n there is plenty of flimflam to distract\n the viewer.\"\n\n\n \"If you don't have a black table, a\n black cloth will do,\" the young man\n said. \"And the arch of a doorway is a\n good site, just see that the room in\n back is dark.\"", "Kaner slipped the ring with the\n black thread over his finger and started\n to step back.\n\n\n \"You have to turn the switch on\n first,\" Biff said.\n\n\n \"I know,\" Kaner smiled. \"But\n that's part of illusion—the spiel and\n the misdirection. I'm going to try\n this cold first, so I can get it moving\n up and down smoothly, then go\n through it with the whole works.\"\n\nILLUSTRATED BY BREY\n\n He moved his hand back smoothly,\n in a professional manner that drew\n no attention to it. The model lifted\n from the table—then crashed back\n down.\n\n\n \"The thread broke,\" Kaner said.\n\n\n \"You jerked it, instead of pulling\n smoothly,\" Biff said and knotted the\n broken thread. \"Here let me show\n you how to do it.\"", "A concerted\nahhhh\nswept through\n the crowd as the Space Wave Tapper\n shivered a bit, then rose slowly into\n the air. The demonstrator stepped\n back and the toy rose higher and\n higher, bobbing gently on the invisible\n waves of magnetic force that\n supported it. Ever so slowly the power\n was reduced and it settled back to\n the table.\n\n\n \"Only $17.95,\" the young man\n said, putting a large price sign on the\n table. \"For the complete set of the\n Atomic Wonder, the Space Tapper\n control box, battery and instruction\n book ...\"\n\n\n At the appearance of the price\n card the crowd broke up noisily and\n the children rushed away towards the\n operating model trains. The demonstrator's\n words were lost in their\n noisy passage, and after a moment he\n sank into a gloomy silence. He put\n the control box down, yawned and\n sat on the edge of the table. Colonel\n Hawton was the only one left after\n the crowd had moved on.", "\"Inside the control box is the battery,\"\n the young man said, snapping\n it open and pointing to an ordinary\n flashlight battery. \"The current goes\n through the Power Switch and Power\n Light to the Wave Generator ...\"\n\n\n \"What you mean to say,\" Biff\n broke in, \"is that the juice from this\n fifteen cent battery goes through this\n cheap rheostat to those meaningless\n coils in the model and absolutely\n nothing happens. Now tell me what\n really flies the thing. If I'm going to\n drop eighteen bucks for six-bits\n worth of tin, I want to know what\n I'm getting.\"", "\"I\nknow\nthey will. The tensile\n strength of that thread is correctly adjusted\n to the weight of the model.\n The thread will break if you try to\n lift the model with it. Yet you can\n lift the model—after a small increment\n of its weight has been removed\n by the coils. This is going to bug\n these men. Nobody is going to ask\n them to solve the problem or concern\n themselves with it. But it will\n nag at them because they know this\n effect can't possibly exist. They'll see\n at once that the magnetic-wave theory\n is nonsense. Or perhaps true? We\n don't know. But they will all be\n thinking about it and worrying about\n it. Someone is going to experiment\n in his basement—just as a hobby of\n course—to find the cause of the error.\n And he or someone else is going\n to find out what makes those coils\n work, or maybe a way to improve\n them!\"\n\n\n \"And we have the patents....\"", "\"It's all explained right here in\n your instruction book,\" the demonstrator\n said, holding up a garishly\n printed booklet opened to a four-color\n diagram. \"You all know how\n magnets pick up things and I bet\n you even know that the earth itself is\n one great big magnet—that's why\n compasses always point north. Well\n ... the Atomic Wonder Space\n Wave Tapper hangs onto those space\n waves. Invisibly all about us, and\n even going right through us, are the\n magnetic waves of the earth. The\n Atomic Wonder rides these waves\n just the way a ship rides the waves\n in the ocean. Now watch....\"", "Every eye was on him as he put the\n gaudy model rocketship on top of the\n table and stepped back. It was made\n of stamped metal and seemed as incapable\n of flying as a can of ham—which\n it very much resembled. Neither\n wings, propellors, nor jets broke\n through the painted surface. It rested\n on three rubber wheels and coming\n out through the bottom was a double\n strand of thin insulated wire. This\n white wire ran across the top of the\n black table and terminated in a control\n box in the demonstrator's hand.\n An indicator light, a switch and a\n knob appeared to be the only controls.\n\n\n \"I turn on the Power Switch, sending\n a surge of current to the Wave\n Receptors,\" he said. The switch\n clicked and the light blinked on and\n off with a steady pulse. Then the\n man began to slowly turn the knob.\n \"A careful touch on the Wave Generator\n is necessary as we are dealing\n with the powers of the whole world\n here....\"", "\"I think so, I caught a few Air\n Force officers and a colonel in missiles\n one day. Then there was one official\n I remembered from the Bureau\n of Standards. Luckily he didn't recognize\n me. Then those two professors\n you spotted from the university.\"\n\n\n \"Then the problem is out of our\n hands and into theirs. All we have to\n do now is sit back and wait for results.\"\n\n\n \"\nWhat\nresults?! These people\n weren't interested when we were\n hammering on their doors with the\n proof. We've patented the coils and\n can prove to anyone that there is a\n reduction in weight around them\n when they are operating....\"", "\"Wrap it up, my boy, I wasn't born\n yesterday. I'm an old hand at this\n kind of thing.\"\nBiff Hawton sprang it at the next\n Thursday-night poker party. The\n gang were all missile men and they\n cheered and jeered as he hammed\n up the introduction.\n\n\n \"Let me copy the diagram, Biff, I\n could use some of those magnetic\n waves in the new bird!\"\n\n\n \"Those flashlight batteries are\n cheaper than lox, this is the thing of\n the future!\"", "\"But a small reduction. And we\n don't know what is causing it. No\n one can be interested in a thing like\n that—a fractional weight decrease in\n a clumsy model, certainly not enough\n to lift the weight of the generator.\n No one wrapped up in massive fuel\n consumption, tons of lift and such is\n going to have time to worry about a\n crackpot who thinks he has found a\n minor slip in Newton's laws.\"\n\n\n \"You think they will now?\" the\n young man asked, cracking his knuckles\n impatiently.", "\"Correct. They will be doing the\n research that will take them out of\n the massive-lift-propulsion business\n and into the field of pure space\n flight.\"\n\n\n \"And in doing so they will be making\n us rich—whenever the time\n comes to manufacture,\" the young\n man said cynically.\n\n\n \"We'll all be rich, son,\" the older\n man said, patting him on the shoulder.\n \"Believe me, you're not going to\n recognize this old world ten years\n from now.\"\nTranscriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from\nAnalog\nApril 1962.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.\n copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and\n typographical errors have been corrected without note." ], [ "The demonstrator looked around\n carefully, then pointed. \"Strings!\" he\n said. \"Or rather a black thread. It\n runs from the top of the model,\n through a tiny loop in the ceiling,\n and back down to my hand—tied to\n this ring on my finger. When I back\n up—the model rises. It's as simple as\n that.\"\n\n\n \"All good illusions are simple,\"\n the colonel grunted, tracing the black\n thread with his eye. \"As long as\n there is plenty of flimflam to distract\n the viewer.\"\n\n\n \"If you don't have a black table, a\n black cloth will do,\" the young man\n said. \"And the arch of a doorway is a\n good site, just see that the room in\n back is dark.\"", "Only Teddy Kaner caught wise as\n the flight began. He was an amateur\n magician and spotted the gimmick at\n once. He kept silent with professional\n courtesy, and smiled ironically as\n the rest of the bunch grew silent one\n by one. The colonel was a good showman\n and he had set the scene well.\n He almost had them believing in the\n Space Wave Tapper before he was\n through. When the model had landed\n and he had switched it off he couldn't\n stop them from crowding around\n the table.\n\n\n \"A thread!\" one of the engineers\n shouted, almost with relief, and they\n all laughed along with him.\n\n\n \"Too bad,\" the head project physicist\n said, \"I was hoping that a little\n Space Wave Tapping could help us\n out. Let me try a flight with it.\"\n\n\n \"Teddy Kaner first,\" Biff announced.\n \"He spotted it while you\n were all watching the flashing lights,\n only he didn't say anything.\"", "The demonstrator flushed. \"I'm\n sorry, sir,\" he stammered. \"I wasn't\n trying to hide anything. Like any\n magic trick this one can't be really\n demonstrated until it has been purchased.\"\n He leaned forward and whispered\n confidentially. \"I'll tell you\n what I'll do though. This thing is way\n overpriced and hasn't been moving at\n all. The manager said I could let them\n go at three dollars if I could find any\n takers. If you want to buy it for that\n price....\"\n\n\n \"Sold, my boy!\" the colonel said,\n slamming three bills down on the\n table. \"I'll give that much for it no\n matter\nhow\nit works. The boys in the\n shop will get a kick out of it,\" he\n tapped the winged rocket on his\n chest. \"Now\nreally\n—what holds it\n up?\"", "\"Could you tell me how this thing\n works?\" the colonel asked, coming\n forward. The demonstrator brightened\n up and picked up one of the\n toys.\n\n\n \"Well, if you will look here,\n sir....\" He opened the hinged top.\n \"You will see the Space Wave coils\n at each end of the ship.\" With a pencil\n he pointed out the odd shaped\n plastic forms about an inch in diameter\n that had been wound—apparently\n at random—with a few turns of\n copper wire. Except for these coils\n the interior of the model was empty.\n The coils were wired together and\n other wires ran out through the hole\n in the bottom of the control box.\n Biff Hawton turned a very quizzical\n eye on the gadget and upon the demonstrator\n who completely ignored this\n sign of disbelief.", "A concerted\nahhhh\nswept through\n the crowd as the Space Wave Tapper\n shivered a bit, then rose slowly into\n the air. The demonstrator stepped\n back and the toy rose higher and\n higher, bobbing gently on the invisible\n waves of magnetic force that\n supported it. Ever so slowly the power\n was reduced and it settled back to\n the table.\n\n\n \"Only $17.95,\" the young man\n said, putting a large price sign on the\n table. \"For the complete set of the\n Atomic Wonder, the Space Tapper\n control box, battery and instruction\n book ...\"\n\n\n At the appearance of the price\n card the crowd broke up noisily and\n the children rushed away towards the\n operating model trains. The demonstrator's\n words were lost in their\n noisy passage, and after a moment he\n sank into a gloomy silence. He put\n the control box down, yawned and\n sat on the edge of the table. Colonel\n Hawton was the only one left after\n the crowd had moved on.", "The gadget was strictly,\n\n beyond any question, a toy.\n\n Not a real, workable device.\n\n Except for the way it could work\n\n under a man's mental skin....\nBY HARRY HARRISON\nBecause there were few adults in\n the crowd, and Colonel \"Biff\" Hawton\n stood over six feet tall, he could\n see every detail of the demonstration.\n The children—and most of the\n parents—gaped in wide-eyed wonder.\n Biff Hawton was too sophisticated\n to be awed. He stayed on because\n he wanted to find out what the\n trick was that made the gadget work.", "Kaner slipped the ring with the\n black thread over his finger and started\n to step back.\n\n\n \"You have to turn the switch on\n first,\" Biff said.\n\n\n \"I know,\" Kaner smiled. \"But\n that's part of illusion—the spiel and\n the misdirection. I'm going to try\n this cold first, so I can get it moving\n up and down smoothly, then go\n through it with the whole works.\"\n\nILLUSTRATED BY BREY\n\n He moved his hand back smoothly,\n in a professional manner that drew\n no attention to it. The model lifted\n from the table—then crashed back\n down.\n\n\n \"The thread broke,\" Kaner said.\n\n\n \"You jerked it, instead of pulling\n smoothly,\" Biff said and knotted the\n broken thread. \"Here let me show\n you how to do it.\"", "The thread broke again when Biff\n tried it, which got a good laugh that\n made his collar a little warm. Someone\n mentioned the poker game.\n\n\n This was the only time that poker\n was mentioned or even remembered\n that night. Because very soon after\n this they found that the thread would\n lift the model only when the switch\n was on and two and a half volts\n flowing through the joke coils. With\n the current turned off the model was\n too heavy to lift. The thread broke\n every time.\n\"I still think it's a screwy idea,\"\n the young man said. \"One week getting\n fallen arches, demonstrating\n those toy ships for every brat within\n a thousand miles. Then selling the\n things for three bucks when they\n must have cost at least a hundred dollars\n apiece to make.\"\n\n\n \"But you\ndid\nsell the ten of them\n to people who would be interested?\"\n the older man asked.", "\"I\nknow\nthey will. The tensile\n strength of that thread is correctly adjusted\n to the weight of the model.\n The thread will break if you try to\n lift the model with it. Yet you can\n lift the model—after a small increment\n of its weight has been removed\n by the coils. This is going to bug\n these men. Nobody is going to ask\n them to solve the problem or concern\n themselves with it. But it will\n nag at them because they know this\n effect can't possibly exist. They'll see\n at once that the magnetic-wave theory\n is nonsense. Or perhaps true? We\n don't know. But they will all be\n thinking about it and worrying about\n it. Someone is going to experiment\n in his basement—just as a hobby of\n course—to find the cause of the error.\n And he or someone else is going\n to find out what makes those coils\n work, or maybe a way to improve\n them!\"\n\n\n \"And we have the patents....\"", "\"Inside the control box is the battery,\"\n the young man said, snapping\n it open and pointing to an ordinary\n flashlight battery. \"The current goes\n through the Power Switch and Power\n Light to the Wave Generator ...\"\n\n\n \"What you mean to say,\" Biff\n broke in, \"is that the juice from this\n fifteen cent battery goes through this\n cheap rheostat to those meaningless\n coils in the model and absolutely\n nothing happens. Now tell me what\n really flies the thing. If I'm going to\n drop eighteen bucks for six-bits\n worth of tin, I want to know what\n I'm getting.\"", "\"It's all explained right here in\n your instruction book,\" the demonstrator\n said, holding up a garishly\n printed booklet opened to a four-color\n diagram. \"You all know how\n magnets pick up things and I bet\n you even know that the earth itself is\n one great big magnet—that's why\n compasses always point north. Well\n ... the Atomic Wonder Space\n Wave Tapper hangs onto those space\n waves. Invisibly all about us, and\n even going right through us, are the\n magnetic waves of the earth. The\n Atomic Wonder rides these waves\n just the way a ship rides the waves\n in the ocean. Now watch....\"", "\"I think so, I caught a few Air\n Force officers and a colonel in missiles\n one day. Then there was one official\n I remembered from the Bureau\n of Standards. Luckily he didn't recognize\n me. Then those two professors\n you spotted from the university.\"\n\n\n \"Then the problem is out of our\n hands and into theirs. All we have to\n do now is sit back and wait for results.\"\n\n\n \"\nWhat\nresults?! These people\n weren't interested when we were\n hammering on their doors with the\n proof. We've patented the coils and\n can prove to anyone that there is a\n reduction in weight around them\n when they are operating....\"", "Every eye was on him as he put the\n gaudy model rocketship on top of the\n table and stepped back. It was made\n of stamped metal and seemed as incapable\n of flying as a can of ham—which\n it very much resembled. Neither\n wings, propellors, nor jets broke\n through the painted surface. It rested\n on three rubber wheels and coming\n out through the bottom was a double\n strand of thin insulated wire. This\n white wire ran across the top of the\n black table and terminated in a control\n box in the demonstrator's hand.\n An indicator light, a switch and a\n knob appeared to be the only controls.\n\n\n \"I turn on the Power Switch, sending\n a surge of current to the Wave\n Receptors,\" he said. The switch\n clicked and the light blinked on and\n off with a steady pulse. Then the\n man began to slowly turn the knob.\n \"A careful touch on the Wave Generator\n is necessary as we are dealing\n with the powers of the whole world\n here....\"", "\"But a small reduction. And we\n don't know what is causing it. No\n one can be interested in a thing like\n that—a fractional weight decrease in\n a clumsy model, certainly not enough\n to lift the weight of the generator.\n No one wrapped up in massive fuel\n consumption, tons of lift and such is\n going to have time to worry about a\n crackpot who thinks he has found a\n minor slip in Newton's laws.\"\n\n\n \"You think they will now?\" the\n young man asked, cracking his knuckles\n impatiently.", "\"Wrap it up, my boy, I wasn't born\n yesterday. I'm an old hand at this\n kind of thing.\"\nBiff Hawton sprang it at the next\n Thursday-night poker party. The\n gang were all missile men and they\n cheered and jeered as he hammed\n up the introduction.\n\n\n \"Let me copy the diagram, Biff, I\n could use some of those magnetic\n waves in the new bird!\"\n\n\n \"Those flashlight batteries are\n cheaper than lox, this is the thing of\n the future!\"", "\"Correct. They will be doing the\n research that will take them out of\n the massive-lift-propulsion business\n and into the field of pure space\n flight.\"\n\n\n \"And in doing so they will be making\n us rich—whenever the time\n comes to manufacture,\" the young\n man said cynically.\n\n\n \"We'll all be rich, son,\" the older\n man said, patting him on the shoulder.\n \"Believe me, you're not going to\n recognize this old world ten years\n from now.\"\nTranscriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from\nAnalog\nApril 1962.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.\n copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and\n typographical errors have been corrected without note." ], [ "The demonstrator flushed. \"I'm\n sorry, sir,\" he stammered. \"I wasn't\n trying to hide anything. Like any\n magic trick this one can't be really\n demonstrated until it has been purchased.\"\n He leaned forward and whispered\n confidentially. \"I'll tell you\n what I'll do though. This thing is way\n overpriced and hasn't been moving at\n all. The manager said I could let them\n go at three dollars if I could find any\n takers. If you want to buy it for that\n price....\"\n\n\n \"Sold, my boy!\" the colonel said,\n slamming three bills down on the\n table. \"I'll give that much for it no\n matter\nhow\nit works. The boys in the\n shop will get a kick out of it,\" he\n tapped the winged rocket on his\n chest. \"Now\nreally\n—what holds it\n up?\"", "A concerted\nahhhh\nswept through\n the crowd as the Space Wave Tapper\n shivered a bit, then rose slowly into\n the air. The demonstrator stepped\n back and the toy rose higher and\n higher, bobbing gently on the invisible\n waves of magnetic force that\n supported it. Ever so slowly the power\n was reduced and it settled back to\n the table.\n\n\n \"Only $17.95,\" the young man\n said, putting a large price sign on the\n table. \"For the complete set of the\n Atomic Wonder, the Space Tapper\n control box, battery and instruction\n book ...\"\n\n\n At the appearance of the price\n card the crowd broke up noisily and\n the children rushed away towards the\n operating model trains. The demonstrator's\n words were lost in their\n noisy passage, and after a moment he\n sank into a gloomy silence. He put\n the control box down, yawned and\n sat on the edge of the table. Colonel\n Hawton was the only one left after\n the crowd had moved on.", "The thread broke again when Biff\n tried it, which got a good laugh that\n made his collar a little warm. Someone\n mentioned the poker game.\n\n\n This was the only time that poker\n was mentioned or even remembered\n that night. Because very soon after\n this they found that the thread would\n lift the model only when the switch\n was on and two and a half volts\n flowing through the joke coils. With\n the current turned off the model was\n too heavy to lift. The thread broke\n every time.\n\"I still think it's a screwy idea,\"\n the young man said. \"One week getting\n fallen arches, demonstrating\n those toy ships for every brat within\n a thousand miles. Then selling the\n things for three bucks when they\n must have cost at least a hundred dollars\n apiece to make.\"\n\n\n \"But you\ndid\nsell the ten of them\n to people who would be interested?\"\n the older man asked.", "\"Could you tell me how this thing\n works?\" the colonel asked, coming\n forward. The demonstrator brightened\n up and picked up one of the\n toys.\n\n\n \"Well, if you will look here,\n sir....\" He opened the hinged top.\n \"You will see the Space Wave coils\n at each end of the ship.\" With a pencil\n he pointed out the odd shaped\n plastic forms about an inch in diameter\n that had been wound—apparently\n at random—with a few turns of\n copper wire. Except for these coils\n the interior of the model was empty.\n The coils were wired together and\n other wires ran out through the hole\n in the bottom of the control box.\n Biff Hawton turned a very quizzical\n eye on the gadget and upon the demonstrator\n who completely ignored this\n sign of disbelief.", "The gadget was strictly,\n\n beyond any question, a toy.\n\n Not a real, workable device.\n\n Except for the way it could work\n\n under a man's mental skin....\nBY HARRY HARRISON\nBecause there were few adults in\n the crowd, and Colonel \"Biff\" Hawton\n stood over six feet tall, he could\n see every detail of the demonstration.\n The children—and most of the\n parents—gaped in wide-eyed wonder.\n Biff Hawton was too sophisticated\n to be awed. He stayed on because\n he wanted to find out what the\n trick was that made the gadget work.", "Only Teddy Kaner caught wise as\n the flight began. He was an amateur\n magician and spotted the gimmick at\n once. He kept silent with professional\n courtesy, and smiled ironically as\n the rest of the bunch grew silent one\n by one. The colonel was a good showman\n and he had set the scene well.\n He almost had them believing in the\n Space Wave Tapper before he was\n through. When the model had landed\n and he had switched it off he couldn't\n stop them from crowding around\n the table.\n\n\n \"A thread!\" one of the engineers\n shouted, almost with relief, and they\n all laughed along with him.\n\n\n \"Too bad,\" the head project physicist\n said, \"I was hoping that a little\n Space Wave Tapping could help us\n out. Let me try a flight with it.\"\n\n\n \"Teddy Kaner first,\" Biff announced.\n \"He spotted it while you\n were all watching the flashing lights,\n only he didn't say anything.\"", "\"Inside the control box is the battery,\"\n the young man said, snapping\n it open and pointing to an ordinary\n flashlight battery. \"The current goes\n through the Power Switch and Power\n Light to the Wave Generator ...\"\n\n\n \"What you mean to say,\" Biff\n broke in, \"is that the juice from this\n fifteen cent battery goes through this\n cheap rheostat to those meaningless\n coils in the model and absolutely\n nothing happens. Now tell me what\n really flies the thing. If I'm going to\n drop eighteen bucks for six-bits\n worth of tin, I want to know what\n I'm getting.\"", "\"I think so, I caught a few Air\n Force officers and a colonel in missiles\n one day. Then there was one official\n I remembered from the Bureau\n of Standards. Luckily he didn't recognize\n me. Then those two professors\n you spotted from the university.\"\n\n\n \"Then the problem is out of our\n hands and into theirs. All we have to\n do now is sit back and wait for results.\"\n\n\n \"\nWhat\nresults?! These people\n weren't interested when we were\n hammering on their doors with the\n proof. We've patented the coils and\n can prove to anyone that there is a\n reduction in weight around them\n when they are operating....\"", "Kaner slipped the ring with the\n black thread over his finger and started\n to step back.\n\n\n \"You have to turn the switch on\n first,\" Biff said.\n\n\n \"I know,\" Kaner smiled. \"But\n that's part of illusion—the spiel and\n the misdirection. I'm going to try\n this cold first, so I can get it moving\n up and down smoothly, then go\n through it with the whole works.\"\n\nILLUSTRATED BY BREY\n\n He moved his hand back smoothly,\n in a professional manner that drew\n no attention to it. The model lifted\n from the table—then crashed back\n down.\n\n\n \"The thread broke,\" Kaner said.\n\n\n \"You jerked it, instead of pulling\n smoothly,\" Biff said and knotted the\n broken thread. \"Here let me show\n you how to do it.\"", "The demonstrator looked around\n carefully, then pointed. \"Strings!\" he\n said. \"Or rather a black thread. It\n runs from the top of the model,\n through a tiny loop in the ceiling,\n and back down to my hand—tied to\n this ring on my finger. When I back\n up—the model rises. It's as simple as\n that.\"\n\n\n \"All good illusions are simple,\"\n the colonel grunted, tracing the black\n thread with his eye. \"As long as\n there is plenty of flimflam to distract\n the viewer.\"\n\n\n \"If you don't have a black table, a\n black cloth will do,\" the young man\n said. \"And the arch of a doorway is a\n good site, just see that the room in\n back is dark.\"", "\"I\nknow\nthey will. The tensile\n strength of that thread is correctly adjusted\n to the weight of the model.\n The thread will break if you try to\n lift the model with it. Yet you can\n lift the model—after a small increment\n of its weight has been removed\n by the coils. This is going to bug\n these men. Nobody is going to ask\n them to solve the problem or concern\n themselves with it. But it will\n nag at them because they know this\n effect can't possibly exist. They'll see\n at once that the magnetic-wave theory\n is nonsense. Or perhaps true? We\n don't know. But they will all be\n thinking about it and worrying about\n it. Someone is going to experiment\n in his basement—just as a hobby of\n course—to find the cause of the error.\n And he or someone else is going\n to find out what makes those coils\n work, or maybe a way to improve\n them!\"\n\n\n \"And we have the patents....\"", "\"Wrap it up, my boy, I wasn't born\n yesterday. I'm an old hand at this\n kind of thing.\"\nBiff Hawton sprang it at the next\n Thursday-night poker party. The\n gang were all missile men and they\n cheered and jeered as he hammed\n up the introduction.\n\n\n \"Let me copy the diagram, Biff, I\n could use some of those magnetic\n waves in the new bird!\"\n\n\n \"Those flashlight batteries are\n cheaper than lox, this is the thing of\n the future!\"", "Every eye was on him as he put the\n gaudy model rocketship on top of the\n table and stepped back. It was made\n of stamped metal and seemed as incapable\n of flying as a can of ham—which\n it very much resembled. Neither\n wings, propellors, nor jets broke\n through the painted surface. It rested\n on three rubber wheels and coming\n out through the bottom was a double\n strand of thin insulated wire. This\n white wire ran across the top of the\n black table and terminated in a control\n box in the demonstrator's hand.\n An indicator light, a switch and a\n knob appeared to be the only controls.\n\n\n \"I turn on the Power Switch, sending\n a surge of current to the Wave\n Receptors,\" he said. The switch\n clicked and the light blinked on and\n off with a steady pulse. Then the\n man began to slowly turn the knob.\n \"A careful touch on the Wave Generator\n is necessary as we are dealing\n with the powers of the whole world\n here....\"", "\"But a small reduction. And we\n don't know what is causing it. No\n one can be interested in a thing like\n that—a fractional weight decrease in\n a clumsy model, certainly not enough\n to lift the weight of the generator.\n No one wrapped up in massive fuel\n consumption, tons of lift and such is\n going to have time to worry about a\n crackpot who thinks he has found a\n minor slip in Newton's laws.\"\n\n\n \"You think they will now?\" the\n young man asked, cracking his knuckles\n impatiently.", "\"It's all explained right here in\n your instruction book,\" the demonstrator\n said, holding up a garishly\n printed booklet opened to a four-color\n diagram. \"You all know how\n magnets pick up things and I bet\n you even know that the earth itself is\n one great big magnet—that's why\n compasses always point north. Well\n ... the Atomic Wonder Space\n Wave Tapper hangs onto those space\n waves. Invisibly all about us, and\n even going right through us, are the\n magnetic waves of the earth. The\n Atomic Wonder rides these waves\n just the way a ship rides the waves\n in the ocean. Now watch....\"", "\"Correct. They will be doing the\n research that will take them out of\n the massive-lift-propulsion business\n and into the field of pure space\n flight.\"\n\n\n \"And in doing so they will be making\n us rich—whenever the time\n comes to manufacture,\" the young\n man said cynically.\n\n\n \"We'll all be rich, son,\" the older\n man said, patting him on the shoulder.\n \"Believe me, you're not going to\n recognize this old world ten years\n from now.\"\nTranscriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from\nAnalog\nApril 1962.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.\n copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and\n typographical errors have been corrected without note." ] ]
valid	31736	[ "What is the white tube?", "What could Martians symbolize?", "What happens when Ethical Conditioning wears off?", "Which of the following technologies is the dreamcast most like?", "How do Martians tell their stories?", "What is Gavir's motivation?", "Why can't Gavir throw his knife?", "Why is Blue Boy an offensive nickname?", "What saved Gavir's life?", "Which of the following is an appropriate theme for this story?" ]	[ [ "A cigarette", "We don't know", "A narvoon", "A shotgun" ], [ "Emigrants", "Europeans", "They do not symbolize anything", "Indigenous peoples" ], [ "People die", "People become evil", "People feel the need to explore every experience", "People lose their sanity" ], [ "Telephone", "Internet", "Radio", "Television" ], [ "Song", "Dreamcasting", "Oral tradition", "Written word" ], [ "Fear", "Money", "Revenge", "Fame" ], [ "He is worried about losing it", "He can", "The gravity is different", "It would be illegal" ], [ "It isn't offensive", "Gavir is sad", "Gavir's whole race is blue", "Because Sylvie came up with it" ], [ "His knife", "Sylvie", "Money", "Fame" ], [ "Everyone is equal", "Revenge is bad", "Entertainment is influential", "Revenge is good" ] ]	[ 1, 4, 3, 4, 1, 3, 3, 3, 4, 3 ]	[ 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "She set fire to a white tube. \"This, for instance. They used to do it\n before they found out it caused cancer. Now there's no more cancer,\n but even if there were, I'd still smoke. That's the attitude I have.\n You try things. You live in the past, if you're inclined, adopt the\n costumes and manners of some more colorful time. You try ridiculous\n things, disgusting things, vicious things. You know they're all\n nothing, but you have to do something, so you go on doing nothing,\n elaborately and violently.\"\n\n\n A tray of drinks rose through the floor. Sylvie frowned as she noticed\n a folded paper tucked between the glasses. She picked it up and read\n it, chuckled, and read it again, aloud.", "\"Mr. Spurling!\" said Malcomb. \"Your tone is hostile!\"\n\n\n \"Damn right. That Ethical Conditioning slop doesn't work on me. I've\n lived too long on the frontier. And I know Bluies.\"\nIwill sign the contract,\" said Gavir.\n\n\n As he drew his signature pictograph on the contract, Sylvie Davery\n sauntered in. She held a white tube between her painted lips. The end\n of the tube was glowing and giving off clouds of smoke. Hoppy Davery\n coughed and Sylvie winked at Gavir. Gavir straightened up, and she\n took a long look at his seven feet.\n\n\n \"All finished, Blue Boy? Come on, let's go have a drink at Lucifer\n Grotto.\"", "Gavir took out the narvoon, grasped the blade, and drew his arm back.\n\n\n \"Gavir!\"\n\n\n It was the Hat Rat. He stood between pillars of flame in the doorway\n of the Pandemonium Room of Lucifer Grotto, and there was a peculiar\n contrivance of dark brown wood and black metal tubing cradled in his\n arm. \"This ancient shotgun I dedicate to your blood feud. I shall hunt\n down your enemy, Gavir!\"\n\n\n Spurling turned. The Hat Rat saw him.\n\n\n \"The enemy!\" the Hat Rat shouted.\n\n\n The shotgun exploded.", "They went to Lucifer Grotto, where Gavir's wealthiest admirers among\n the Senile Delinquents were giving a party for him in the Pandemonium\n Room. The only prominent person missing, as Sylvie remarked after\n surveying the crowd, was the Hat Rat. They wondered about it, but no\n one knew where he was.\n\n\n Sheets of flame illuminated the wild features and strange garments of\n over a hundred Century-Plus ladies and gentlemen. Gouts of flame\n leaped from the walls to light antique-style cigarettes. Drinks were\n refilled from nozzles of molded fire.\n\n\n An hour passed from the time of Gavir's arrival.\n\n\n Then Jarvis Spurling joined the party. There was a heavy frontier\n sonic pistol strapped at his waist. A protesting Malcomb was behind\n him.", "Mars was where Gavir's father had been pinned, bayonets through his\n hands and feet, to the wall of a shack just the other side of the\n Barrier, to die slowly, out of Gavir's reach. Father James told Gavir\n that the head of MDC himself had ordered the killing, because Gavir's\n father had tried to organize resistance to the Corporation. Mars was\n where the magic powers of the Earthmen and the helplessness of the\n Martian tribes would always protect the head of MDC from Gavir's\n vengeance.\n\n\n Back to that world of hopeless fear and hatred?\nI never want to go\n back to Mars! I want to stay here!\nBut that wasn't what he was supposed to think. Quickly he said, \"I\n will be happy to return to my people.\"\n\n\n A movement caught his eye. The producer, reclining on a divan in a far\n corner of the small studio, was making some kind of signal by beating\n his fist against his forehead.", "The Desert Man ran over the red sand, and he found the drock. He did\n not throw his knife. That would not have satisfied his hatred. He fell\n upon the drock and stabbed and stabbed.\n\n\n The Desert Man howled his hunting-cry over the body of his enemy, and\n spat into its face.\n\n\n And the fanged face of the drock turned into the square, battered face\n of Jarvis Spurling. Gavir held the image in his mind for a long\n moment.\n\n\n When the dreamcast was over, a studio page ran up to Gavir. \"Mr.\n Spurling wants to see you at once, at his office.\"\n\n\n \"Let him come and find me,\" said Gavir. \"Let us go, Sylvie.\"", "They went with the producer to the upper reaches of the Global\n Dreamcasting building. There they were ushered into a huge office.\n\n\n They found Mr. Hoppy Davery lounging on a divan the size of a\n space-port. He was youthful in appearance, as were all Earthmen, but a\n soft plumpness and a receding hairline made him look slightly older\n than average.\n\n\n He pointed a rigid finger at Malcomb and Gavir. \"I want you two to\n hear a condensed recording of statements taken from calls we received\n last night.\"\n\n\n Gavir stiffened. They\nhad\ngotten into trouble because of his\n thoughts about MDC.\n\n\n A voice boomed out of the ceiling.\n\n\n \"That Martian boy has power. That song was a fist in the jaw. More!\"\n\n\n A woman's voice followed:", "\"Well, enough of that!\" the moderator said briskly. \"How about singing\n one of your tribal songs for us?\"\n\n\n Gavir said, \"I will sing the\nSong of Going to Hunt\n.\" He heaved\n himself up from the divan, and, feet planted wide apart, threw back\n his head and began to howl.\n\n\n He was considered a poor singer in his tribe, and he was not surprised\n that Malcomb and the moderator winced. But Malcomb had told him that\n it wouldn't matter. The dreamees receiving the dreamcast would hear\n the song as it\nshould\nsound, as Gavir heard it in his mind.\n Everything that Gavir saw and heard and felt in his mind, the dreamees\n could see and hear and feel....", "An arrangement of force-planes and 3V projections made the front of\n Lucifer Grotto appear to be a curtain of flames. Gavir hung back, but\n Sylvie inserted a tiny gold pitchfork into a small aperture in the\n glowing, rippling surface. The flames swept aside, revealing a\n doorway. A bearded man in black tights escorted them through a\n luridly-lit bar to a private room. When they were alone, Sylvie\n dropped her cape to the floor, sat on the edge of a huge, pink divan,\n and smiled at Gavir.\n\n\n Gavir contemplated her. That she was over a hundred years old was a\n little frightening. But the skin of her face and her bare upper body\n was a warm color, and tautly filled. She had lashed out at Spurling,\n and he liked her for that. But in one way she was like Spurling. She\n didn't fit into the bland, non-violent world of Malcomb and Hoppy.", "The drock fell, gave a last convulsion, and lay still. The hunter\n plunged the blade into the red sand to clean it. He threw back his\n head and bellowed his hunting cry. There was great glory in killing\n the drock, for it showed that the Desert Man and not the drock, was\n lord of the red waste....\nGavir sat down on the divan, exhausted, his song finished. He didn't\n hear the moderator winding up the dreamcast. Then the producer of the\n program was upon him.\n\n\n He began shouting even before Gavir removed his headset. \"What kind\n of a fool are you? Before you started that song, you dreamed things\n about the Martian Development Corporation that were libelous! I got\n the whole thing—the Barrier, the guards, the labor pools and mines,\n the father crucified. It was awful! MDC is one of our biggest\n sponsors.\"", "Jarvis Spurling's square face was dark with anger. \"You deliberately\n put my face on that animal! You want to make the public hate me. I pay\n your salary and keep you here on Earth, and this is what I get for it.\n All right. A Bluie is a Bluie, and I'll treat you like a Bluie should\n be treated.\" He unsnapped his holster and drew the square, heavy\n pistol out and pointed it at Gavir.\n\n\n Gavir stood up. His right hand plucked at his doublet.\n\n\n \"You're itching to go for that throwing knife,\" said Spurling. \"Go on!\n Take it out and get ready to throw it. I'll give you that much\n chance. Let's make a game out of this. We'll make like we're back on\n Mars, Bluie, and you're out hunting a drock. And you find one, only\n this drock has a gun. How about that, Bluie?\"", "Now, before it could gather itself for another spring, there was time\n for one cast of the blade. It had to be done at once. It had to be\n perfect. If it failed, the knife would be lost and the drock would\n have its kill. The hunter grasped the weapon by the blade, drew his\n arm back, and snapped it forward.\n\n\n The blade struck deep into the throat of the drock.\n\n\n The drock screamed eerily and jumped clumsily. The hunter threw\n himself at the great, dark body and retrieved the knife. He struck\n with it again and again into the gray twitching belly. Colorless blood\n ran out over the hard, tightly-stretched skin.", "Spurling's body was thrown back against Gavir. Gavir saw a huge ragged\n red caved-in place in Spurling's chest. Spurling's body sagged to the\n floor and lay there face up, eyes open. The Senile Delinquents of\n Lucifer Grotto leaned forward to grin at the tattered body.\n\n\n Still holding the narvoon, Gavir stood over his dead enemy. He threw\n back his head and howled out the hunting cry of the Desert Men. Then\n he looked down and spat in Jarvis Spurling's dead face.\nEND", "The Earthmen wore black garments and furs and metal ornaments. The\n biggest of them wore a black suit, a long black cape, and a\n broad-brimmed black hat. He carried a coiled whip in one hand. The\n Earthmen turned to one another.\n\n\n \"A Martian.\"\n\n\n \"Let's give pain and death to the Martian! It will be a new\n experience—one to savor.\"\n\n\n \"Take pain, Martian!\"\n\n\n The Earthman with the black hat raised his arm, and the long heavy\n lash fell on Gavir. He felt a savage sting in the arm he had thrown up\n to protect his eyes.\n\n\n Gavir leaped at the Earthmen. He clubbed the man with the whip across\n the face. As the others rushed in, Gavir flailed about him with long\n arms and heavy fists.", "It was an ancient song, a Desert Man's outcry against injustice,\n enemies, false friends and callous leaders. It was a protest against\n sufferings that could neither be borne nor prevented. At the climax of\n the song Gavir pictured a tribal chief who refused to make fair\n division of the spoils of a hunt with his warriors. Gradually he\n allowed this image to turn into a picture of Hoppy Davery withholding\n bundles of money from a starving Gavir. Then he ended the song.\n\n\n Hoppy sent for him next morning.\n\n\n \"Why did you do that?\" he said. \"Listen to this.\"\n\n\n A recorded voice boomed: \"This is Hat Rat. Pay the Blue Boy what he\n deserves, or I will give you death. It will be a personal thing\n between you and me. I will besprinkle you with corrosive acids; I will\n burn out your eyes; I will—\"", "\"Great! Give the Senile Delinquents another workout. It's not quite\n ethical, but its good for us. But for heaven's sake, Blue Boy, keep\n your mind off MDC!\"\nThe following week, Gavir sang the\nSong of Creation\non the Farfel\n Flisket show, and transmitted the images which it brought up in his\n mind to his audience. A jubilant Hoppy Davery called him at his hotel\n next morning.\n\n\n \"Best response I've ever seen! The Century-Plussers have been rioting\n and throwing mass orgies ever since you sang. But they take time out\n to call us up and beg for more. I've got a sponsor and a two-year\n contract lined up for you.\"\n\n\n The sponsor was pacing back and forth in Hoppy Davery's office when\n Malcomb and Gavir arrived. Hoppy introduced him proudly. \"Mr. Jarvis\n Spurling, president of the Martian Development Corporation.\"", "He began to enjoy it. It was rare that a Martian had an opportunity to\n knock Earthmen down. The mood of the\nSong of Going to Hunt\ncame over\n him. He sprang free of his attackers and drew his glittering narvoon.\n\n\n The man with the whip yelled. They looked at his knife, and then all\n at once turned and ran. Gavir drew back his arm and threw the knife\n with a practiced catapult-snap of shoulder, elbow, and wrist. To his\n surprise, the blade clattered to the street far short of his\n retreating enemies. Then he remembered: you couldn't throw far in the\n gravity of Earth.", "\"We'll take care of his visa.\"\n\n\n Gavir trembled with joy. Hoppy Davery pressed another button and a\n secretary entered with papers. She was followed by another woman.\n\n\n The second woman was dark-haired and slender. She wore leather boots\n and tight brown breeches. She was bare from the waist up and her\n breasts were young and full. A jewelled clip fastened a scarlet cape\n at her neck. Her lips were a disconcertingly vivid red, apparently an\n artificial color. She kissed Hoppy Davery on the forehead, leaving red\n blotches on his pink dome. He wiped his forehead and looked at his\n hand.\n\n\n \"Do you have to wear that barbaric face-paint?\" Hoppy turned sad eyes\n on Gavir and Malcomb. \"Gentlemen, my mother, Sylvie Davery.\"", "Hoppy cut the voice off. Gavir saw that he was sweating. \"There were\ndozens\nlike that. If you want more money, I'll\ngive\nyou more\n money. Say something nice about me on your next dreamcast, for\n heaven's sake!\"\n\n\n Gavir spread his big blue hands. \"I am sorry. I don't want more money.\n I cannot always control the pictures I make. These images come into\n my mind even though they have nothing to do with me.\"\n\n\n Hoppy shook his head. \"That's because you haven't had Ethical\n Conditioning. We don't have this trouble with our other performers.\n You just must remember that dreamvision is the most potent\n communications medium ever devised. Be\ncareful\n.\"\n\n\n \"I will,\" said Gavir.\nOn his next dreamcast Gavir sang the\nSong of the Blood Feud\n. He\n pictured a Desert Man whose father had been killed by a drock.", "I\n t was cold, bitter cold, on the plain. The hunter stood at the edge\n of the camp as the shriveled Martian sun struck the tops of the Shakam\n hills. The hunter hefted the long, balanced narvoon, the throwing\n knife, in his hand. He had faith in the knife, and in his skill with\n it.\n\n\n The hunter filled his lungs, the cold air reaching deep into his\n chest. He shouted out his throat-bursting hunting cry. He began to run\n across the plain.\n\n\n Crouching behind crumbling red rocks, racing over flat expanses of\n orange sand, the hunter sought traces of the seegee, the great slow\n desert beast whose body provided his tribe with all the essentials of\n existence. At last he saw tracks. He mounted a dune. Out on the plain\n before him a great brown seegee lumbered patiently, unaware of its\n danger." ], [ "Then the moderator questioned Malcomb, while Gavir nervously\n awaited the moment when his thoughts would be transmitted to millions\n of Earthmen. Malcomb told how he had been struck by Gavir's\n intelligence and missionary-taught ability to speak Earth's language,\n and had decided to bring Gavir to Earth.\n\n\n The moderator turned to Gavir. \"Are you anxious to get back to Mars?\"\nNo!\nGavir thought. Back behind the Preserve Barrier that killed you\n instantly if you stepped too close to it? Back to the constant fear of\n being seized by MDC guards for a labor pool, to wind up in the MDC\n mines?", "Mars was where Gavir's father had been pinned, bayonets through his\n hands and feet, to the wall of a shack just the other side of the\n Barrier, to die slowly, out of Gavir's reach. Father James told Gavir\n that the head of MDC himself had ordered the killing, because Gavir's\n father had tried to organize resistance to the Corporation. Mars was\n where the magic powers of the Earthmen and the helplessness of the\n Martian tribes would always protect the head of MDC from Gavir's\n vengeance.\n\n\n Back to that world of hopeless fear and hatred?\nI never want to go\n back to Mars! I want to stay here!\nBut that wasn't what he was supposed to think. Quickly he said, \"I\n will be happy to return to my people.\"\n\n\n A movement caught his eye. The producer, reclining on a divan in a far\n corner of the small studio, was making some kind of signal by beating\n his fist against his forehead.", "The Earthmen wore black garments and furs and metal ornaments. The\n biggest of them wore a black suit, a long black cape, and a\n broad-brimmed black hat. He carried a coiled whip in one hand. The\n Earthmen turned to one another.\n\n\n \"A Martian.\"\n\n\n \"Let's give pain and death to the Martian! It will be a new\n experience—one to savor.\"\n\n\n \"Take pain, Martian!\"\n\n\n The Earthman with the black hat raised his arm, and the long heavy\n lash fell on Gavir. He felt a savage sting in the arm he had thrown up\n to protect his eyes.\n\n\n Gavir leaped at the Earthmen. He clubbed the man with the whip across\n the face. As the others rushed in, Gavir flailed about him with long\n arms and heavy fists.", "Malcomb said, \"You can't expect an untrained young Martian to control\n his very thoughts. And may I point out that your tone is hostile?\"\n\n\n At this a sudden change came over the producer. The standard Earth\n expression—invincible benignity—took control of his face. \"I\n apologize for having spoken sharply, but dreamcasting is a\n nerve-wracking business. If it weren't for Ethical Conditioning, I\n don't know how I'd control my aggressive impulses. The Suppression of\n Aggression is the Foundation of Civilization, eh?\"\n\n\n Malcomb smiled. \"Ethical Conditioning Keeps Society from Fissioning.\"\n He shook hands with the producer.\n\n\n \"Come around tomorrow at 1300 and collect your fee,\" said the\n producer. \"Good night, gentlemen.\"\n\n\n As they left the Global Dreamcasting System building, Gavir said to\n Malcomb, \"Can we go to a bookstore tonight?\"", "I\n t was cold, bitter cold, on the plain. The hunter stood at the edge\n of the camp as the shriveled Martian sun struck the tops of the Shakam\n hills. The hunter hefted the long, balanced narvoon, the throwing\n knife, in his hand. He had faith in the knife, and in his skill with\n it.\n\n\n The hunter filled his lungs, the cold air reaching deep into his\n chest. He shouted out his throat-bursting hunting cry. He began to run\n across the plain.\n\n\n Crouching behind crumbling red rocks, racing over flat expanses of\n orange sand, the hunter sought traces of the seegee, the great slow\n desert beast whose body provided his tribe with all the essentials of\n existence. At last he saw tracks. He mounted a dune. Out on the plain\n before him a great brown seegee lumbered patiently, unaware of its\n danger.", "He began to enjoy it. It was rare that a Martian had an opportunity to\n knock Earthmen down. The mood of the\nSong of Going to Hunt\ncame over\n him. He sprang free of his attackers and drew his glittering narvoon.\n\n\n The man with the whip yelled. They looked at his knife, and then all\n at once turned and ran. Gavir drew back his arm and threw the knife\n with a practiced catapult-snap of shoulder, elbow, and wrist. To his\n surprise, the blade clattered to the street far short of his\n retreating enemies. Then he remembered: you couldn't throw far in the\n gravity of Earth.", "The drock fell, gave a last convulsion, and lay still. The hunter\n plunged the blade into the red sand to clean it. He threw back his\n head and bellowed his hunting cry. There was great glory in killing\n the drock, for it showed that the Desert Man and not the drock, was\n lord of the red waste....\nGavir sat down on the divan, exhausted, his song finished. He didn't\n hear the moderator winding up the dreamcast. Then the producer of the\n program was upon him.\n\n\n He began shouting even before Gavir removed his headset. \"What kind\n of a fool are you? Before you started that song, you dreamed things\n about the Martian Development Corporation that were libelous! I got\n the whole thing—the Barrier, the guards, the labor pools and mines,\n the father crucified. It was awful! MDC is one of our biggest\n sponsors.\"", "\"If you let that boy go back to Mars I'll never dream a Global program\n again.\"\n\n\n More voices:\n\n\n \"Enormous!\"\n\n\n \"Potent!\"\n\n\n \"That hunting song drove me mad. I\nlike\nbeing mad!\"\n\n\n \"Keep him on Earth.\"\n\n\n Hoppy Davery pressed a button in the control panel on his divan, and\n the voices fell silent.\n\n\n \"Those callers that admitted their age were all Century-Plus. The boy\n appeals to the Century-Plus mentality. I want to try him again. This\n time on a really big dream-show, not just an educational 'cast. Got a\n spot on next week's Farfel Flisket Show. If he gets the right\n response, we talk about a contract. Okay?\"\n\n\n Malcomb said, \"His visa expires—\"", "They went with the producer to the upper reaches of the Global\n Dreamcasting building. There they were ushered into a huge office.\n\n\n They found Mr. Hoppy Davery lounging on a divan the size of a\n space-port. He was youthful in appearance, as were all Earthmen, but a\n soft plumpness and a receding hairline made him look slightly older\n than average.\n\n\n He pointed a rigid finger at Malcomb and Gavir. \"I want you two to\n hear a condensed recording of statements taken from calls we received\n last night.\"\n\n\n Gavir stiffened. They\nhad\ngotten into trouble because of his\n thoughts about MDC.\n\n\n A voice boomed out of the ceiling.\n\n\n \"That Martian boy has power. That song was a fist in the jaw. More!\"\n\n\n A woman's voice followed:", "The hunter was about to strike out after it, when a dark form leaped\n at him.\n\n\n The hunter saw it out of the corner of his eye at the last moment. His\n startled sidestep saved him from the neck-breaking snap of the great\n jaws.\n\n\n The drock's long body was armored with black scales. Curving fangs\n protruded from its upper jaw. Its hand-like forepaws ended in hooked\n claws, to grasp and tear its prey. It was larger, stronger, faster\n than the hunter. The thin Martian air carried weirdly high-pitched\n cries which proclaimed its craving to sink its fangs into the hunter's\n body. The drock's huge hind legs coiled back on their triple joints,\n and it sprang.\n\n\n The hunter thrust the gleaming knife out before him, so that the dark\n body would land on its gleaming blade. The drock twisted in mid-air\n and landed to one side of the hunter.", "Jarvis Spurling's square face was dark with anger. \"You deliberately\n put my face on that animal! You want to make the public hate me. I pay\n your salary and keep you here on Earth, and this is what I get for it.\n All right. A Bluie is a Bluie, and I'll treat you like a Bluie should\n be treated.\" He unsnapped his holster and drew the square, heavy\n pistol out and pointed it at Gavir.\n\n\n Gavir stood up. His right hand plucked at his doublet.\n\n\n \"You're itching to go for that throwing knife,\" said Spurling. \"Go on!\n Take it out and get ready to throw it. I'll give you that much\n chance. Let's make a game out of this. We'll make like we're back on\n Mars, Bluie, and you're out hunting a drock. And you find one, only\n this drock has a gun. How about that, Bluie?\"", "\"Great! Give the Senile Delinquents another workout. It's not quite\n ethical, but its good for us. But for heaven's sake, Blue Boy, keep\n your mind off MDC!\"\nThe following week, Gavir sang the\nSong of Creation\non the Farfel\n Flisket show, and transmitted the images which it brought up in his\n mind to his audience. A jubilant Hoppy Davery called him at his hotel\n next morning.\n\n\n \"Best response I've ever seen! The Century-Plussers have been rioting\n and throwing mass orgies ever since you sang. But they take time out\n to call us up and beg for more. I've got a sponsor and a two-year\n contract lined up for you.\"\n\n\n The sponsor was pacing back and forth in Hoppy Davery's office when\n Malcomb and Gavir arrived. Hoppy introduced him proudly. \"Mr. Jarvis\n Spurling, president of the Martian Development Corporation.\"", "Caution told Gavir to refuse. But before he could speak Spurling\n snapped, \"Disgusting! An Earth woman and a Bluie! If you were on Mars,\n lady, we'd deport you so fast your tail would burn. And God help the\n Bluie!\"\n\n\n Sylvie blew a cloud of smoke at Spurling. \"You're not on Mars, Jack.\n You're back in civilization where we do what we damned well please.\"\n\n\n Spurling laughed. \"I've heard about you Century-Plussers. You're all\n sick.\"\n\n\n \"You can't claim any monopoly on mental health. Not with that\n concentration camp you run on Mars. Coming, Gavir?\"\n\n\n Gavir grinned at Spurling. \"The contract, I believe, does not cover my\n private life.\"\n\n\n Hoppy Davery said, \"Sylvie, I don't think this is wise.\"", "\"Sir: I beg you to forgive the presumption of my recent attack on\n you. Since then you have captured my imagination. I now hold you to be\n the noblest savage of them all. Henceforward please consider me, Your\n obedient servant, Hat Rat.\"\n\n\n \"You've impressed him,\" said Sylvie. \"But you impress me even more.\n Come here.\"\n\n\n She held out slim arms to him. He had no wish to refuse her. She was\n not like a Martian woman, but he found the differences exciting and\n attractive. He went to her, and he forgot entirely that she was over a\n hundred years old.\nIn the months that followed, Gavir's fame spread over Earth. By\n spring, the rating computers credited him with an audience of eight\n hundred million—ninety-five percent of whom were Century-Plussers.\n Davery doubled Gavir's salary.", "During a reading class at the mission school, Father James had said,\n \"In books there is power. All that you call magic in our Earth\n civilization is explained in books.\" Gavir wanted to learn. It was his\n only hope to find an alternative to the short, fear-ridden,\n impoverished life he foresaw for himself.\n\n\n A river of force carried him, along with thousands of\n Earthmen—godlike beings in their perfect health and their impregnable\n benignity—through the streets of the city. Platforms of force raised\n and lowered him through the city's multiple levels....\n\n\n And, as has always happened to outlanders in cities, he became lost.\nHe was in a quarter where furtive red and violet lights danced in the\n shadows of hunched buildings. A half-dozen Earthmen approached him,\n stopped and stared. Gavir stared back.", "The Desert Man ran over the red sand, and he found the drock. He did\n not throw his knife. That would not have satisfied his hatred. He fell\n upon the drock and stabbed and stabbed.\n\n\n The Desert Man howled his hunting-cry over the body of his enemy, and\n spat into its face.\n\n\n And the fanged face of the drock turned into the square, battered face\n of Jarvis Spurling. Gavir held the image in his mind for a long\n moment.\n\n\n When the dreamcast was over, a studio page ran up to Gavir. \"Mr.\n Spurling wants to see you at once, at his office.\"\n\n\n \"Let him come and find me,\" said Gavir. \"Let us go, Sylvie.\"", "\"Well, enough of that!\" the moderator said briskly. \"How about singing\n one of your tribal songs for us?\"\n\n\n Gavir said, \"I will sing the\nSong of Going to Hunt\n.\" He heaved\n himself up from the divan, and, feet planted wide apart, threw back\n his head and began to howl.\n\n\n He was considered a poor singer in his tribe, and he was not surprised\n that Malcomb and the moderator winced. But Malcomb had told him that\n it wouldn't matter. The dreamees receiving the dreamcast would hear\n the song as it\nshould\nsound, as Gavir heard it in his mind.\n Everything that Gavir saw and heard and felt in his mind, the dreamees\n could see and hear and feel....", "\"Mr. Spurling!\" said Malcomb. \"Your tone is hostile!\"\n\n\n \"Damn right. That Ethical Conditioning slop doesn't work on me. I've\n lived too long on the frontier. And I know Bluies.\"\nIwill sign the contract,\" said Gavir.\n\n\n As he drew his signature pictograph on the contract, Sylvie Davery\n sauntered in. She held a white tube between her painted lips. The end\n of the tube was glowing and giving off clouds of smoke. Hoppy Davery\n coughed and Sylvie winked at Gavir. Gavir straightened up, and she\n took a long look at his seven feet.\n\n\n \"All finished, Blue Boy? Come on, let's go have a drink at Lucifer\n Grotto.\"", "The Earthmen disappeared into a lift-force field. Gavir decided not to\n pursue them. He walked forward and picked up his narvoon, and saw that\n the street on which it lay was solid black pavement, not a\n force-field. He must be in the lowest level of the city. He didn't\n know his way around; he might meet more enemies. He forgot about the\n books he'd wanted, and began to search for his hotel.\nWhen he got back to his room, he went immediately to bed. He slept\n late.\n\n\n Malcomb woke him at 1100. Gavir told Malcomb about the\n strangely-dressed men who had tried to kill him.\n\n\n \"I told you not to wander around alone.\"", "It was an ancient song, a Desert Man's outcry against injustice,\n enemies, false friends and callous leaders. It was a protest against\n sufferings that could neither be borne nor prevented. At the climax of\n the song Gavir pictured a tribal chief who refused to make fair\n division of the spoils of a hunt with his warriors. Gradually he\n allowed this image to turn into a picture of Hoppy Davery withholding\n bundles of money from a starving Gavir. Then he ended the song.\n\n\n Hoppy sent for him next morning.\n\n\n \"Why did you do that?\" he said. \"Listen to this.\"\n\n\n A recorded voice boomed: \"This is Hat Rat. Pay the Blue Boy what he\n deserves, or I will give you death. It will be a personal thing\n between you and me. I will besprinkle you with corrosive acids; I will\n burn out your eyes; I will—\"" ], [ "He shook his head. He said, \"Sylvie, why—well, why are you the way\n you are? Why—and how—have you broken away from Ethical\n Conditioning?\"\n\n\n Sylvie frowned. She spoke a few words into the air, ordering drinks.\n She said, \"I didn't do it deliberately. When I reached the age of\n about a hundred it stopped working for me. I suddenly wanted to do\n what\nI\nwanted to do. And then I found out that I didn't\nknow\nwhat\n I wanted to do. It was Ethical Conditioning or nothing, so I picked\n nothing. And here I am, chasing nothing.\"\n\n\n \"How do you chase nothing?\"", "\"They seem to have outgrown their Ethical Conditioning. They live\n wildly. Violently. It's a problem without precedent, and we don't know\n what to do with them. The fact is, Senile Delinquency is our number\n one problem.\"\n\n\n \"Why not punish them?\" said Gavir.\n\n\n \"They're too powerful. They are often people who've pursued successful\n careers and acquired a good deal of property and position. And there\n are getting to be more of them all the time. But come on. You and I\n have to go over to Global Dreamcasting and collect our fee.\"\nThe impeccably affable producer of\nDreaming Through the Universe\ngave Malcomb a check and then asked them to follow him.\n\n\n \"Mr. Davery wants to see you. Mr.\nHoppy\nDavery, executive\n vice-president in charge of production. Scion of one of Earth's oldest\n communications media families!\"", "Hoppy cut the voice off. Gavir saw that he was sweating. \"There were\ndozens\nlike that. If you want more money, I'll\ngive\nyou more\n money. Say something nice about me on your next dreamcast, for\n heaven's sake!\"\n\n\n Gavir spread his big blue hands. \"I am sorry. I don't want more money.\n I cannot always control the pictures I make. These images come into\n my mind even though they have nothing to do with me.\"\n\n\n Hoppy shook his head. \"That's because you haven't had Ethical\n Conditioning. We don't have this trouble with our other performers.\n You just must remember that dreamvision is the most potent\n communications medium ever devised. Be\ncareful\n.\"\n\n\n \"I will,\" said Gavir.\nOn his next dreamcast Gavir sang the\nSong of the Blood Feud\n. He\n pictured a Desert Man whose father had been killed by a drock.", "Malcomb said, \"You can't expect an untrained young Martian to control\n his very thoughts. And may I point out that your tone is hostile?\"\n\n\n At this a sudden change came over the producer. The standard Earth\n expression—invincible benignity—took control of his face. \"I\n apologize for having spoken sharply, but dreamcasting is a\n nerve-wracking business. If it weren't for Ethical Conditioning, I\n don't know how I'd control my aggressive impulses. The Suppression of\n Aggression is the Foundation of Civilization, eh?\"\n\n\n Malcomb smiled. \"Ethical Conditioning Keeps Society from Fissioning.\"\n He shook hands with the producer.\n\n\n \"Come around tomorrow at 1300 and collect your fee,\" said the\n producer. \"Good night, gentlemen.\"\n\n\n As they left the Global Dreamcasting System building, Gavir said to\n Malcomb, \"Can we go to a bookstore tonight?\"", "\"Mr. Spurling!\" said Malcomb. \"Your tone is hostile!\"\n\n\n \"Damn right. That Ethical Conditioning slop doesn't work on me. I've\n lived too long on the frontier. And I know Bluies.\"\nIwill sign the contract,\" said Gavir.\n\n\n As he drew his signature pictograph on the contract, Sylvie Davery\n sauntered in. She held a white tube between her painted lips. The end\n of the tube was glowing and giving off clouds of smoke. Hoppy Davery\n coughed and Sylvie winked at Gavir. Gavir straightened up, and she\n took a long look at his seven feet.\n\n\n \"All finished, Blue Boy? Come on, let's go have a drink at Lucifer\n Grotto.\"", "\"Great! Give the Senile Delinquents another workout. It's not quite\n ethical, but its good for us. But for heaven's sake, Blue Boy, keep\n your mind off MDC!\"\nThe following week, Gavir sang the\nSong of Creation\non the Farfel\n Flisket show, and transmitted the images which it brought up in his\n mind to his audience. A jubilant Hoppy Davery called him at his hotel\n next morning.\n\n\n \"Best response I've ever seen! The Century-Plussers have been rioting\n and throwing mass orgies ever since you sang. But they take time out\n to call us up and beg for more. I've got a sponsor and a two-year\n contract lined up for you.\"\n\n\n The sponsor was pacing back and forth in Hoppy Davery's office when\n Malcomb and Gavir arrived. Hoppy introduced him proudly. \"Mr. Jarvis\n Spurling, president of the Martian Development Corporation.\"", "They went with the producer to the upper reaches of the Global\n Dreamcasting building. There they were ushered into a huge office.\n\n\n They found Mr. Hoppy Davery lounging on a divan the size of a\n space-port. He was youthful in appearance, as were all Earthmen, but a\n soft plumpness and a receding hairline made him look slightly older\n than average.\n\n\n He pointed a rigid finger at Malcomb and Gavir. \"I want you two to\n hear a condensed recording of statements taken from calls we received\n last night.\"\n\n\n Gavir stiffened. They\nhad\ngotten into trouble because of his\n thoughts about MDC.\n\n\n A voice boomed out of the ceiling.\n\n\n \"That Martian boy has power. That song was a fist in the jaw. More!\"\n\n\n A woman's voice followed:", "Mars was where Gavir's father had been pinned, bayonets through his\n hands and feet, to the wall of a shack just the other side of the\n Barrier, to die slowly, out of Gavir's reach. Father James told Gavir\n that the head of MDC himself had ordered the killing, because Gavir's\n father had tried to organize resistance to the Corporation. Mars was\n where the magic powers of the Earthmen and the helplessness of the\n Martian tribes would always protect the head of MDC from Gavir's\n vengeance.\n\n\n Back to that world of hopeless fear and hatred?\nI never want to go\n back to Mars! I want to stay here!\nBut that wasn't what he was supposed to think. Quickly he said, \"I\n will be happy to return to my people.\"\n\n\n A movement caught his eye. The producer, reclining on a divan in a far\n corner of the small studio, was making some kind of signal by beating\n his fist against his forehead.", "She set fire to a white tube. \"This, for instance. They used to do it\n before they found out it caused cancer. Now there's no more cancer,\n but even if there were, I'd still smoke. That's the attitude I have.\n You try things. You live in the past, if you're inclined, adopt the\n costumes and manners of some more colorful time. You try ridiculous\n things, disgusting things, vicious things. You know they're all\n nothing, but you have to do something, so you go on doing nothing,\n elaborately and violently.\"\n\n\n A tray of drinks rose through the floor. Sylvie frowned as she noticed\n a folded paper tucked between the glasses. She picked it up and read\n it, chuckled, and read it again, aloud.", "During a reading class at the mission school, Father James had said,\n \"In books there is power. All that you call magic in our Earth\n civilization is explained in books.\" Gavir wanted to learn. It was his\n only hope to find an alternative to the short, fear-ridden,\n impoverished life he foresaw for himself.\n\n\n A river of force carried him, along with thousands of\n Earthmen—godlike beings in their perfect health and their impregnable\n benignity—through the streets of the city. Platforms of force raised\n and lowered him through the city's multiple levels....\n\n\n And, as has always happened to outlanders in cities, he became lost.\nHe was in a quarter where furtive red and violet lights danced in the\n shadows of hunched buildings. A half-dozen Earthmen approached him,\n stopped and stared. Gavir stared back.", "The drock fell, gave a last convulsion, and lay still. The hunter\n plunged the blade into the red sand to clean it. He threw back his\n head and bellowed his hunting cry. There was great glory in killing\n the drock, for it showed that the Desert Man and not the drock, was\n lord of the red waste....\nGavir sat down on the divan, exhausted, his song finished. He didn't\n hear the moderator winding up the dreamcast. Then the producer of the\n program was upon him.\n\n\n He began shouting even before Gavir removed his headset. \"What kind\n of a fool are you? Before you started that song, you dreamed things\n about the Martian Development Corporation that were libelous! I got\n the whole thing—the Barrier, the guards, the labor pools and mines,\n the father crucified. It was awful! MDC is one of our biggest\n sponsors.\"", "\"If you let that boy go back to Mars I'll never dream a Global program\n again.\"\n\n\n More voices:\n\n\n \"Enormous!\"\n\n\n \"Potent!\"\n\n\n \"That hunting song drove me mad. I\nlike\nbeing mad!\"\n\n\n \"Keep him on Earth.\"\n\n\n Hoppy Davery pressed a button in the control panel on his divan, and\n the voices fell silent.\n\n\n \"Those callers that admitted their age were all Century-Plus. The boy\n appeals to the Century-Plus mentality. I want to try him again. This\n time on a really big dream-show, not just an educational 'cast. Got a\n spot on next week's Farfel Flisket Show. If he gets the right\n response, we talk about a contract. Okay?\"\n\n\n Malcomb said, \"His visa expires—\"", "Jarvis Spurling's square face was dark with anger. \"You deliberately\n put my face on that animal! You want to make the public hate me. I pay\n your salary and keep you here on Earth, and this is what I get for it.\n All right. A Bluie is a Bluie, and I'll treat you like a Bluie should\n be treated.\" He unsnapped his holster and drew the square, heavy\n pistol out and pointed it at Gavir.\n\n\n Gavir stood up. His right hand plucked at his doublet.\n\n\n \"You're itching to go for that throwing knife,\" said Spurling. \"Go on!\n Take it out and get ready to throw it. I'll give you that much\n chance. Let's make a game out of this. We'll make like we're back on\n Mars, Bluie, and you're out hunting a drock. And you find one, only\n this drock has a gun. How about that, Bluie?\"", "The Earthmen disappeared into a lift-force field. Gavir decided not to\n pursue them. He walked forward and picked up his narvoon, and saw that\n the street on which it lay was solid black pavement, not a\n force-field. He must be in the lowest level of the city. He didn't\n know his way around; he might meet more enemies. He forgot about the\n books he'd wanted, and began to search for his hotel.\nWhen he got back to his room, he went immediately to bed. He slept\n late.\n\n\n Malcomb woke him at 1100. Gavir told Malcomb about the\n strangely-dressed men who had tried to kill him.\n\n\n \"I told you not to wander around alone.\"", "\"But you did not tell me that Earthmen might try to kill me. You have\n told me that Earthmen are good and peace-loving, that there have been\n no acts of violence on Earth for many decades. You have told me that\n only the MDC men are exceptions, because they are living off Earth,\n and this somehow makes them different.\"\n\n\n \"Well, those people you ran into are another exception.\"\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"You know about the Regeneration and Rejuvenation treatment we have\n here on Earth. A variation of it was given you to acclimate you to\n Earth's gravity and atmosphere. Well, since the R&R treatment was\n developed, we Earthmen have a life-expectancy of about one hundred\n fifty years. Those people who attacked you were Century-Plus. They are\n over a hundred years old, but as healthy, physically, as ever.\"\n\n\n \"What is wrong with them?\"", "Then the moderator questioned Malcomb, while Gavir nervously\n awaited the moment when his thoughts would be transmitted to millions\n of Earthmen. Malcomb told how he had been struck by Gavir's\n intelligence and missionary-taught ability to speak Earth's language,\n and had decided to bring Gavir to Earth.\n\n\n The moderator turned to Gavir. \"Are you anxious to get back to Mars?\"\nNo!\nGavir thought. Back behind the Preserve Barrier that killed you\n instantly if you stepped too close to it? Back to the constant fear of\n being seized by MDC guards for a labor pool, to wind up in the MDC\n mines?", "Caution told Gavir to refuse. But before he could speak Spurling\n snapped, \"Disgusting! An Earth woman and a Bluie! If you were on Mars,\n lady, we'd deport you so fast your tail would burn. And God help the\n Bluie!\"\n\n\n Sylvie blew a cloud of smoke at Spurling. \"You're not on Mars, Jack.\n You're back in civilization where we do what we damned well please.\"\n\n\n Spurling laughed. \"I've heard about you Century-Plussers. You're all\n sick.\"\n\n\n \"You can't claim any monopoly on mental health. Not with that\n concentration camp you run on Mars. Coming, Gavir?\"\n\n\n Gavir grinned at Spurling. \"The contract, I believe, does not cover my\n private life.\"\n\n\n Hoppy Davery said, \"Sylvie, I don't think this is wise.\"", "\"Well, enough of that!\" the moderator said briskly. \"How about singing\n one of your tribal songs for us?\"\n\n\n Gavir said, \"I will sing the\nSong of Going to Hunt\n.\" He heaved\n himself up from the divan, and, feet planted wide apart, threw back\n his head and began to howl.\n\n\n He was considered a poor singer in his tribe, and he was not surprised\n that Malcomb and the moderator winced. But Malcomb had told him that\n it wouldn't matter. The dreamees receiving the dreamcast would hear\n the song as it\nshould\nsound, as Gavir heard it in his mind.\n Everything that Gavir saw and heard and felt in his mind, the dreamees\n could see and hear and feel....", "The Desert Man ran over the red sand, and he found the drock. He did\n not throw his knife. That would not have satisfied his hatred. He fell\n upon the drock and stabbed and stabbed.\n\n\n The Desert Man howled his hunting-cry over the body of his enemy, and\n spat into its face.\n\n\n And the fanged face of the drock turned into the square, battered face\n of Jarvis Spurling. Gavir held the image in his mind for a long\n moment.\n\n\n When the dreamcast was over, a studio page ran up to Gavir. \"Mr.\n Spurling wants to see you at once, at his office.\"\n\n\n \"Let him come and find me,\" said Gavir. \"Let us go, Sylvie.\"", "The Earthmen wore black garments and furs and metal ornaments. The\n biggest of them wore a black suit, a long black cape, and a\n broad-brimmed black hat. He carried a coiled whip in one hand. The\n Earthmen turned to one another.\n\n\n \"A Martian.\"\n\n\n \"Let's give pain and death to the Martian! It will be a new\n experience—one to savor.\"\n\n\n \"Take pain, Martian!\"\n\n\n The Earthman with the black hat raised his arm, and the long heavy\n lash fell on Gavir. He felt a savage sting in the arm he had thrown up\n to protect his eyes.\n\n\n Gavir leaped at the Earthmen. He clubbed the man with the whip across\n the face. As the others rushed in, Gavir flailed about him with long\n arms and heavy fists." ], [ "\"Well, enough of that!\" the moderator said briskly. \"How about singing\n one of your tribal songs for us?\"\n\n\n Gavir said, \"I will sing the\nSong of Going to Hunt\n.\" He heaved\n himself up from the divan, and, feet planted wide apart, threw back\n his head and began to howl.\n\n\n He was considered a poor singer in his tribe, and he was not surprised\n that Malcomb and the moderator winced. But Malcomb had told him that\n it wouldn't matter. The dreamees receiving the dreamcast would hear\n the song as it\nshould\nsound, as Gavir heard it in his mind.\n Everything that Gavir saw and heard and felt in his mind, the dreamees\n could see and hear and feel....", "They went with the producer to the upper reaches of the Global\n Dreamcasting building. There they were ushered into a huge office.\n\n\n They found Mr. Hoppy Davery lounging on a divan the size of a\n space-port. He was youthful in appearance, as were all Earthmen, but a\n soft plumpness and a receding hairline made him look slightly older\n than average.\n\n\n He pointed a rigid finger at Malcomb and Gavir. \"I want you two to\n hear a condensed recording of statements taken from calls we received\n last night.\"\n\n\n Gavir stiffened. They\nhad\ngotten into trouble because of his\n thoughts about MDC.\n\n\n A voice boomed out of the ceiling.\n\n\n \"That Martian boy has power. That song was a fist in the jaw. More!\"\n\n\n A woman's voice followed:", "Hoppy cut the voice off. Gavir saw that he was sweating. \"There were\ndozens\nlike that. If you want more money, I'll\ngive\nyou more\n money. Say something nice about me on your next dreamcast, for\n heaven's sake!\"\n\n\n Gavir spread his big blue hands. \"I am sorry. I don't want more money.\n I cannot always control the pictures I make. These images come into\n my mind even though they have nothing to do with me.\"\n\n\n Hoppy shook his head. \"That's because you haven't had Ethical\n Conditioning. We don't have this trouble with our other performers.\n You just must remember that dreamvision is the most potent\n communications medium ever devised. Be\ncareful\n.\"\n\n\n \"I will,\" said Gavir.\nOn his next dreamcast Gavir sang the\nSong of the Blood Feud\n. He\n pictured a Desert Man whose father had been killed by a drock.", "The drock fell, gave a last convulsion, and lay still. The hunter\n plunged the blade into the red sand to clean it. He threw back his\n head and bellowed his hunting cry. There was great glory in killing\n the drock, for it showed that the Desert Man and not the drock, was\n lord of the red waste....\nGavir sat down on the divan, exhausted, his song finished. He didn't\n hear the moderator winding up the dreamcast. Then the producer of the\n program was upon him.\n\n\n He began shouting even before Gavir removed his headset. \"What kind\n of a fool are you? Before you started that song, you dreamed things\n about the Martian Development Corporation that were libelous! I got\n the whole thing—the Barrier, the guards, the labor pools and mines,\n the father crucified. It was awful! MDC is one of our biggest\n sponsors.\"", "The Desert Man ran over the red sand, and he found the drock. He did\n not throw his knife. That would not have satisfied his hatred. He fell\n upon the drock and stabbed and stabbed.\n\n\n The Desert Man howled his hunting-cry over the body of his enemy, and\n spat into its face.\n\n\n And the fanged face of the drock turned into the square, battered face\n of Jarvis Spurling. Gavir held the image in his mind for a long\n moment.\n\n\n When the dreamcast was over, a studio page ran up to Gavir. \"Mr.\n Spurling wants to see you at once, at his office.\"\n\n\n \"Let him come and find me,\" said Gavir. \"Let us go, Sylvie.\"", "\"If you let that boy go back to Mars I'll never dream a Global program\n again.\"\n\n\n More voices:\n\n\n \"Enormous!\"\n\n\n \"Potent!\"\n\n\n \"That hunting song drove me mad. I\nlike\nbeing mad!\"\n\n\n \"Keep him on Earth.\"\n\n\n Hoppy Davery pressed a button in the control panel on his divan, and\n the voices fell silent.\n\n\n \"Those callers that admitted their age were all Century-Plus. The boy\n appeals to the Century-Plus mentality. I want to try him again. This\n time on a really big dream-show, not just an educational 'cast. Got a\n spot on next week's Farfel Flisket Show. If he gets the right\n response, we talk about a contract. Okay?\"\n\n\n Malcomb said, \"His visa expires—\"", "Malcomb said, \"You can't expect an untrained young Martian to control\n his very thoughts. And may I point out that your tone is hostile?\"\n\n\n At this a sudden change came over the producer. The standard Earth\n expression—invincible benignity—took control of his face. \"I\n apologize for having spoken sharply, but dreamcasting is a\n nerve-wracking business. If it weren't for Ethical Conditioning, I\n don't know how I'd control my aggressive impulses. The Suppression of\n Aggression is the Foundation of Civilization, eh?\"\n\n\n Malcomb smiled. \"Ethical Conditioning Keeps Society from Fissioning.\"\n He shook hands with the producer.\n\n\n \"Come around tomorrow at 1300 and collect your fee,\" said the\n producer. \"Good night, gentlemen.\"\n\n\n As they left the Global Dreamcasting System building, Gavir said to\n Malcomb, \"Can we go to a bookstore tonight?\"", "Gavir's hand leaped at the narvoon under his doublet.\n\n\n Then he stopped himself. He turned the gesture into the proffer of a\n handshake. \"How do you do?\" he said quietly. In his mind he\n congratulated himself. He had learned emotional control from the\n Earthmen. Here was the man who had ordered his father crucified! Yet\n he had managed to hide his instant desire to strike, to kill, to carry\n out the oath of the blood feud then and there.\n\n\n Jarvis Spurling ignored Gavir's hand and stared coldly at him. There\n was not a trace of the usual Earthman's kindliness in his square,\n battered face. \"I'm told you got talent. Okay, but a Bluie is a Bluie.\n I'll pay you because a Bluie on Dreamvision is good publicity for MDC\n products. But one slip like on your first 'cast and you go back to the\n Preserve.\"", "\"They seem to have outgrown their Ethical Conditioning. They live\n wildly. Violently. It's a problem without precedent, and we don't know\n what to do with them. The fact is, Senile Delinquency is our number\n one problem.\"\n\n\n \"Why not punish them?\" said Gavir.\n\n\n \"They're too powerful. They are often people who've pursued successful\n careers and acquired a good deal of property and position. And there\n are getting to be more of them all the time. But come on. You and I\n have to go over to Global Dreamcasting and collect our fee.\"\nThe impeccably affable producer of\nDreaming Through the Universe\ngave Malcomb a check and then asked them to follow him.\n\n\n \"Mr. Davery wants to see you. Mr.\nHoppy\nDavery, executive\n vice-president in charge of production. Scion of one of Earth's oldest\n communications media families!\"", "Gavir toured the world with Sylvie, mobbed everywhere by worshipful\n Century-Plussers. Male Century-Plussers by the millions adopted blue\n doublets and blue kilts in honor of their hero.\n\n\n Blue-dyed hair was now\nde rigueur\namong the ladies of Lucifer\n Grotto. The Hat Rat himself, who often appeared at a respectful\n distance in crowds around Gavir, now wore a wide-brimmed hat of\n brightest blue.\n\n\n Then there came the dreamcast on which Gavir sang the\nSong of\n Complaint\n.", "Mars was where Gavir's father had been pinned, bayonets through his\n hands and feet, to the wall of a shack just the other side of the\n Barrier, to die slowly, out of Gavir's reach. Father James told Gavir\n that the head of MDC himself had ordered the killing, because Gavir's\n father had tried to organize resistance to the Corporation. Mars was\n where the magic powers of the Earthmen and the helplessness of the\n Martian tribes would always protect the head of MDC from Gavir's\n vengeance.\n\n\n Back to that world of hopeless fear and hatred?\nI never want to go\n back to Mars! I want to stay here!\nBut that wasn't what he was supposed to think. Quickly he said, \"I\n will be happy to return to my people.\"\n\n\n A movement caught his eye. The producer, reclining on a divan in a far\n corner of the small studio, was making some kind of signal by beating\n his fist against his forehead.", "During a reading class at the mission school, Father James had said,\n \"In books there is power. All that you call magic in our Earth\n civilization is explained in books.\" Gavir wanted to learn. It was his\n only hope to find an alternative to the short, fear-ridden,\n impoverished life he foresaw for himself.\n\n\n A river of force carried him, along with thousands of\n Earthmen—godlike beings in their perfect health and their impregnable\n benignity—through the streets of the city. Platforms of force raised\n and lowered him through the city's multiple levels....\n\n\n And, as has always happened to outlanders in cities, he became lost.\nHe was in a quarter where furtive red and violet lights danced in the\n shadows of hunched buildings. A half-dozen Earthmen approached him,\n stopped and stared. Gavir stared back.", "\"Great! Give the Senile Delinquents another workout. It's not quite\n ethical, but its good for us. But for heaven's sake, Blue Boy, keep\n your mind off MDC!\"\nThe following week, Gavir sang the\nSong of Creation\non the Farfel\n Flisket show, and transmitted the images which it brought up in his\n mind to his audience. A jubilant Hoppy Davery called him at his hotel\n next morning.\n\n\n \"Best response I've ever seen! The Century-Plussers have been rioting\n and throwing mass orgies ever since you sang. But they take time out\n to call us up and beg for more. I've got a sponsor and a two-year\n contract lined up for you.\"\n\n\n The sponsor was pacing back and forth in Hoppy Davery's office when\n Malcomb and Gavir arrived. Hoppy introduced him proudly. \"Mr. Jarvis\n Spurling, president of the Martian Development Corporation.\"", "Now, before it could gather itself for another spring, there was time\n for one cast of the blade. It had to be done at once. It had to be\n perfect. If it failed, the knife would be lost and the drock would\n have its kill. The hunter grasped the weapon by the blade, drew his\n arm back, and snapped it forward.\n\n\n The blade struck deep into the throat of the drock.\n\n\n The drock screamed eerily and jumped clumsily. The hunter threw\n himself at the great, dark body and retrieved the knife. He struck\n with it again and again into the gray twitching belly. Colorless blood\n ran out over the hard, tightly-stretched skin.", "A Senile Delinquent! thought Gavir. She looked like Davery's younger\n sister. Malcomb stared at her apprehensively, and Gavir wondered if\n she were somehow going to attack them.\n\n\n She looked at Gavir. \"Mmm. What a body, what gorgeous blue skin. How\n tall are you, Blue Boy?\"\n\n\n \"He's approximately seven feet tall, Sylvie,\" said Hoppy, \"and what do\n you want here, anyway?\"\n\n\n \"Just came up to see Blue Boy. One of the crowd dreamed him last\n night. Positively manic about him. I found out he'd be with you.\"\n\n\n \"See?\" said Hoppy to Gavir. \"The Century-Plus mentality. You've got\n something they go for. Undoubtedly because you're—forgive me—such a\n complete barbarian. That's what they're all trying to be.\"", "Gavir took out the narvoon, grasped the blade, and drew his arm back.\n\n\n \"Gavir!\"\n\n\n It was the Hat Rat. He stood between pillars of flame in the doorway\n of the Pandemonium Room of Lucifer Grotto, and there was a peculiar\n contrivance of dark brown wood and black metal tubing cradled in his\n arm. \"This ancient shotgun I dedicate to your blood feud. I shall hunt\n down your enemy, Gavir!\"\n\n\n Spurling turned. The Hat Rat saw him.\n\n\n \"The enemy!\" the Hat Rat shouted.\n\n\n The shotgun exploded.", "Transcriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from the September 1960 issue of If. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.\nStar Performer\nBy ROBERT J. SHEA\nIllustrated by DICK FRANCIS\nBlue Boy's rating was high and his fans were loyal to the\n death—anyone's death!\nGavir gingerly fitted the round opening in the bottom of the silvery\n globe over the top of his hairless blue skull. He pulled the globe\n down until he felt tiny filaments touching his scalp. The tips of the\n wires were cold.\n\n\n The moderator then said, \"\nDreaming Through the Universe\ntonight\n brings you the first native Martian to appear on the dreamwaves—Gavir\n of the Desert Men. With him is his guardian, Dr. Malcomb Rice, the\n noted anthropologist.\"", "An arrangement of force-planes and 3V projections made the front of\n Lucifer Grotto appear to be a curtain of flames. Gavir hung back, but\n Sylvie inserted a tiny gold pitchfork into a small aperture in the\n glowing, rippling surface. The flames swept aside, revealing a\n doorway. A bearded man in black tights escorted them through a\n luridly-lit bar to a private room. When they were alone, Sylvie\n dropped her cape to the floor, sat on the edge of a huge, pink divan,\n and smiled at Gavir.\n\n\n Gavir contemplated her. That she was over a hundred years old was a\n little frightening. But the skin of her face and her bare upper body\n was a warm color, and tautly filled. She had lashed out at Spurling,\n and he liked her for that. But in one way she was like Spurling. She\n didn't fit into the bland, non-violent world of Malcomb and Hoppy.", "Jarvis Spurling's square face was dark with anger. \"You deliberately\n put my face on that animal! You want to make the public hate me. I pay\n your salary and keep you here on Earth, and this is what I get for it.\n All right. A Bluie is a Bluie, and I'll treat you like a Bluie should\n be treated.\" He unsnapped his holster and drew the square, heavy\n pistol out and pointed it at Gavir.\n\n\n Gavir stood up. His right hand plucked at his doublet.\n\n\n \"You're itching to go for that throwing knife,\" said Spurling. \"Go on!\n Take it out and get ready to throw it. I'll give you that much\n chance. Let's make a game out of this. We'll make like we're back on\n Mars, Bluie, and you're out hunting a drock. And you find one, only\n this drock has a gun. How about that, Bluie?\"", "I\n t was cold, bitter cold, on the plain. The hunter stood at the edge\n of the camp as the shriveled Martian sun struck the tops of the Shakam\n hills. The hunter hefted the long, balanced narvoon, the throwing\n knife, in his hand. He had faith in the knife, and in his skill with\n it.\n\n\n The hunter filled his lungs, the cold air reaching deep into his\n chest. He shouted out his throat-bursting hunting cry. He began to run\n across the plain.\n\n\n Crouching behind crumbling red rocks, racing over flat expanses of\n orange sand, the hunter sought traces of the seegee, the great slow\n desert beast whose body provided his tribe with all the essentials of\n existence. At last he saw tracks. He mounted a dune. Out on the plain\n before him a great brown seegee lumbered patiently, unaware of its\n danger." ], [ "I\n t was cold, bitter cold, on the plain. The hunter stood at the edge\n of the camp as the shriveled Martian sun struck the tops of the Shakam\n hills. The hunter hefted the long, balanced narvoon, the throwing\n knife, in his hand. He had faith in the knife, and in his skill with\n it.\n\n\n The hunter filled his lungs, the cold air reaching deep into his\n chest. He shouted out his throat-bursting hunting cry. He began to run\n across the plain.\n\n\n Crouching behind crumbling red rocks, racing over flat expanses of\n orange sand, the hunter sought traces of the seegee, the great slow\n desert beast whose body provided his tribe with all the essentials of\n existence. At last he saw tracks. He mounted a dune. Out on the plain\n before him a great brown seegee lumbered patiently, unaware of its\n danger.", "The Earthmen wore black garments and furs and metal ornaments. The\n biggest of them wore a black suit, a long black cape, and a\n broad-brimmed black hat. He carried a coiled whip in one hand. The\n Earthmen turned to one another.\n\n\n \"A Martian.\"\n\n\n \"Let's give pain and death to the Martian! It will be a new\n experience—one to savor.\"\n\n\n \"Take pain, Martian!\"\n\n\n The Earthman with the black hat raised his arm, and the long heavy\n lash fell on Gavir. He felt a savage sting in the arm he had thrown up\n to protect his eyes.\n\n\n Gavir leaped at the Earthmen. He clubbed the man with the whip across\n the face. As the others rushed in, Gavir flailed about him with long\n arms and heavy fists.", "He began to enjoy it. It was rare that a Martian had an opportunity to\n knock Earthmen down. The mood of the\nSong of Going to Hunt\ncame over\n him. He sprang free of his attackers and drew his glittering narvoon.\n\n\n The man with the whip yelled. They looked at his knife, and then all\n at once turned and ran. Gavir drew back his arm and threw the knife\n with a practiced catapult-snap of shoulder, elbow, and wrist. To his\n surprise, the blade clattered to the street far short of his\n retreating enemies. Then he remembered: you couldn't throw far in the\n gravity of Earth.", "Malcomb said, \"You can't expect an untrained young Martian to control\n his very thoughts. And may I point out that your tone is hostile?\"\n\n\n At this a sudden change came over the producer. The standard Earth\n expression—invincible benignity—took control of his face. \"I\n apologize for having spoken sharply, but dreamcasting is a\n nerve-wracking business. If it weren't for Ethical Conditioning, I\n don't know how I'd control my aggressive impulses. The Suppression of\n Aggression is the Foundation of Civilization, eh?\"\n\n\n Malcomb smiled. \"Ethical Conditioning Keeps Society from Fissioning.\"\n He shook hands with the producer.\n\n\n \"Come around tomorrow at 1300 and collect your fee,\" said the\n producer. \"Good night, gentlemen.\"\n\n\n As they left the Global Dreamcasting System building, Gavir said to\n Malcomb, \"Can we go to a bookstore tonight?\"", "Then the moderator questioned Malcomb, while Gavir nervously\n awaited the moment when his thoughts would be transmitted to millions\n of Earthmen. Malcomb told how he had been struck by Gavir's\n intelligence and missionary-taught ability to speak Earth's language,\n and had decided to bring Gavir to Earth.\n\n\n The moderator turned to Gavir. \"Are you anxious to get back to Mars?\"\nNo!\nGavir thought. Back behind the Preserve Barrier that killed you\n instantly if you stepped too close to it? Back to the constant fear of\n being seized by MDC guards for a labor pool, to wind up in the MDC\n mines?", "Mars was where Gavir's father had been pinned, bayonets through his\n hands and feet, to the wall of a shack just the other side of the\n Barrier, to die slowly, out of Gavir's reach. Father James told Gavir\n that the head of MDC himself had ordered the killing, because Gavir's\n father had tried to organize resistance to the Corporation. Mars was\n where the magic powers of the Earthmen and the helplessness of the\n Martian tribes would always protect the head of MDC from Gavir's\n vengeance.\n\n\n Back to that world of hopeless fear and hatred?\nI never want to go\n back to Mars! I want to stay here!\nBut that wasn't what he was supposed to think. Quickly he said, \"I\n will be happy to return to my people.\"\n\n\n A movement caught his eye. The producer, reclining on a divan in a far\n corner of the small studio, was making some kind of signal by beating\n his fist against his forehead.", "They went with the producer to the upper reaches of the Global\n Dreamcasting building. There they were ushered into a huge office.\n\n\n They found Mr. Hoppy Davery lounging on a divan the size of a\n space-port. He was youthful in appearance, as were all Earthmen, but a\n soft plumpness and a receding hairline made him look slightly older\n than average.\n\n\n He pointed a rigid finger at Malcomb and Gavir. \"I want you two to\n hear a condensed recording of statements taken from calls we received\n last night.\"\n\n\n Gavir stiffened. They\nhad\ngotten into trouble because of his\n thoughts about MDC.\n\n\n A voice boomed out of the ceiling.\n\n\n \"That Martian boy has power. That song was a fist in the jaw. More!\"\n\n\n A woman's voice followed:", "The drock fell, gave a last convulsion, and lay still. The hunter\n plunged the blade into the red sand to clean it. He threw back his\n head and bellowed his hunting cry. There was great glory in killing\n the drock, for it showed that the Desert Man and not the drock, was\n lord of the red waste....\nGavir sat down on the divan, exhausted, his song finished. He didn't\n hear the moderator winding up the dreamcast. Then the producer of the\n program was upon him.\n\n\n He began shouting even before Gavir removed his headset. \"What kind\n of a fool are you? Before you started that song, you dreamed things\n about the Martian Development Corporation that were libelous! I got\n the whole thing—the Barrier, the guards, the labor pools and mines,\n the father crucified. It was awful! MDC is one of our biggest\n sponsors.\"", "\"If you let that boy go back to Mars I'll never dream a Global program\n again.\"\n\n\n More voices:\n\n\n \"Enormous!\"\n\n\n \"Potent!\"\n\n\n \"That hunting song drove me mad. I\nlike\nbeing mad!\"\n\n\n \"Keep him on Earth.\"\n\n\n Hoppy Davery pressed a button in the control panel on his divan, and\n the voices fell silent.\n\n\n \"Those callers that admitted their age were all Century-Plus. The boy\n appeals to the Century-Plus mentality. I want to try him again. This\n time on a really big dream-show, not just an educational 'cast. Got a\n spot on next week's Farfel Flisket Show. If he gets the right\n response, we talk about a contract. Okay?\"\n\n\n Malcomb said, \"His visa expires—\"", "\"Great! Give the Senile Delinquents another workout. It's not quite\n ethical, but its good for us. But for heaven's sake, Blue Boy, keep\n your mind off MDC!\"\nThe following week, Gavir sang the\nSong of Creation\non the Farfel\n Flisket show, and transmitted the images which it brought up in his\n mind to his audience. A jubilant Hoppy Davery called him at his hotel\n next morning.\n\n\n \"Best response I've ever seen! The Century-Plussers have been rioting\n and throwing mass orgies ever since you sang. But they take time out\n to call us up and beg for more. I've got a sponsor and a two-year\n contract lined up for you.\"\n\n\n The sponsor was pacing back and forth in Hoppy Davery's office when\n Malcomb and Gavir arrived. Hoppy introduced him proudly. \"Mr. Jarvis\n Spurling, president of the Martian Development Corporation.\"", "The hunter was about to strike out after it, when a dark form leaped\n at him.\n\n\n The hunter saw it out of the corner of his eye at the last moment. His\n startled sidestep saved him from the neck-breaking snap of the great\n jaws.\n\n\n The drock's long body was armored with black scales. Curving fangs\n protruded from its upper jaw. Its hand-like forepaws ended in hooked\n claws, to grasp and tear its prey. It was larger, stronger, faster\n than the hunter. The thin Martian air carried weirdly high-pitched\n cries which proclaimed its craving to sink its fangs into the hunter's\n body. The drock's huge hind legs coiled back on their triple joints,\n and it sprang.\n\n\n The hunter thrust the gleaming knife out before him, so that the dark\n body would land on its gleaming blade. The drock twisted in mid-air\n and landed to one side of the hunter.", "During a reading class at the mission school, Father James had said,\n \"In books there is power. All that you call magic in our Earth\n civilization is explained in books.\" Gavir wanted to learn. It was his\n only hope to find an alternative to the short, fear-ridden,\n impoverished life he foresaw for himself.\n\n\n A river of force carried him, along with thousands of\n Earthmen—godlike beings in their perfect health and their impregnable\n benignity—through the streets of the city. Platforms of force raised\n and lowered him through the city's multiple levels....\n\n\n And, as has always happened to outlanders in cities, he became lost.\nHe was in a quarter where furtive red and violet lights danced in the\n shadows of hunched buildings. A half-dozen Earthmen approached him,\n stopped and stared. Gavir stared back.", "Jarvis Spurling's square face was dark with anger. \"You deliberately\n put my face on that animal! You want to make the public hate me. I pay\n your salary and keep you here on Earth, and this is what I get for it.\n All right. A Bluie is a Bluie, and I'll treat you like a Bluie should\n be treated.\" He unsnapped his holster and drew the square, heavy\n pistol out and pointed it at Gavir.\n\n\n Gavir stood up. His right hand plucked at his doublet.\n\n\n \"You're itching to go for that throwing knife,\" said Spurling. \"Go on!\n Take it out and get ready to throw it. I'll give you that much\n chance. Let's make a game out of this. We'll make like we're back on\n Mars, Bluie, and you're out hunting a drock. And you find one, only\n this drock has a gun. How about that, Bluie?\"", "Caution told Gavir to refuse. But before he could speak Spurling\n snapped, \"Disgusting! An Earth woman and a Bluie! If you were on Mars,\n lady, we'd deport you so fast your tail would burn. And God help the\n Bluie!\"\n\n\n Sylvie blew a cloud of smoke at Spurling. \"You're not on Mars, Jack.\n You're back in civilization where we do what we damned well please.\"\n\n\n Spurling laughed. \"I've heard about you Century-Plussers. You're all\n sick.\"\n\n\n \"You can't claim any monopoly on mental health. Not with that\n concentration camp you run on Mars. Coming, Gavir?\"\n\n\n Gavir grinned at Spurling. \"The contract, I believe, does not cover my\n private life.\"\n\n\n Hoppy Davery said, \"Sylvie, I don't think this is wise.\"", "\"Sir: I beg you to forgive the presumption of my recent attack on\n you. Since then you have captured my imagination. I now hold you to be\n the noblest savage of them all. Henceforward please consider me, Your\n obedient servant, Hat Rat.\"\n\n\n \"You've impressed him,\" said Sylvie. \"But you impress me even more.\n Come here.\"\n\n\n She held out slim arms to him. He had no wish to refuse her. She was\n not like a Martian woman, but he found the differences exciting and\n attractive. He went to her, and he forgot entirely that she was over a\n hundred years old.\nIn the months that followed, Gavir's fame spread over Earth. By\n spring, the rating computers credited him with an audience of eight\n hundred million—ninety-five percent of whom were Century-Plussers.\n Davery doubled Gavir's salary.", "\"Well, enough of that!\" the moderator said briskly. \"How about singing\n one of your tribal songs for us?\"\n\n\n Gavir said, \"I will sing the\nSong of Going to Hunt\n.\" He heaved\n himself up from the divan, and, feet planted wide apart, threw back\n his head and began to howl.\n\n\n He was considered a poor singer in his tribe, and he was not surprised\n that Malcomb and the moderator winced. But Malcomb had told him that\n it wouldn't matter. The dreamees receiving the dreamcast would hear\n the song as it\nshould\nsound, as Gavir heard it in his mind.\n Everything that Gavir saw and heard and felt in his mind, the dreamees\n could see and hear and feel....", "The Earthmen disappeared into a lift-force field. Gavir decided not to\n pursue them. He walked forward and picked up his narvoon, and saw that\n the street on which it lay was solid black pavement, not a\n force-field. He must be in the lowest level of the city. He didn't\n know his way around; he might meet more enemies. He forgot about the\n books he'd wanted, and began to search for his hotel.\nWhen he got back to his room, he went immediately to bed. He slept\n late.\n\n\n Malcomb woke him at 1100. Gavir told Malcomb about the\n strangely-dressed men who had tried to kill him.\n\n\n \"I told you not to wander around alone.\"", "Hoppy cut the voice off. Gavir saw that he was sweating. \"There were\ndozens\nlike that. If you want more money, I'll\ngive\nyou more\n money. Say something nice about me on your next dreamcast, for\n heaven's sake!\"\n\n\n Gavir spread his big blue hands. \"I am sorry. I don't want more money.\n I cannot always control the pictures I make. These images come into\n my mind even though they have nothing to do with me.\"\n\n\n Hoppy shook his head. \"That's because you haven't had Ethical\n Conditioning. We don't have this trouble with our other performers.\n You just must remember that dreamvision is the most potent\n communications medium ever devised. Be\ncareful\n.\"\n\n\n \"I will,\" said Gavir.\nOn his next dreamcast Gavir sang the\nSong of the Blood Feud\n. He\n pictured a Desert Man whose father had been killed by a drock.", "The Desert Man ran over the red sand, and he found the drock. He did\n not throw his knife. That would not have satisfied his hatred. He fell\n upon the drock and stabbed and stabbed.\n\n\n The Desert Man howled his hunting-cry over the body of his enemy, and\n spat into its face.\n\n\n And the fanged face of the drock turned into the square, battered face\n of Jarvis Spurling. Gavir held the image in his mind for a long\n moment.\n\n\n When the dreamcast was over, a studio page ran up to Gavir. \"Mr.\n Spurling wants to see you at once, at his office.\"\n\n\n \"Let him come and find me,\" said Gavir. \"Let us go, Sylvie.\"", "Transcriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from the September 1960 issue of If. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.\nStar Performer\nBy ROBERT J. SHEA\nIllustrated by DICK FRANCIS\nBlue Boy's rating was high and his fans were loyal to the\n death—anyone's death!\nGavir gingerly fitted the round opening in the bottom of the silvery\n globe over the top of his hairless blue skull. He pulled the globe\n down until he felt tiny filaments touching his scalp. The tips of the\n wires were cold.\n\n\n The moderator then said, \"\nDreaming Through the Universe\ntonight\n brings you the first native Martian to appear on the dreamwaves—Gavir\n of the Desert Men. With him is his guardian, Dr. Malcomb Rice, the\n noted anthropologist.\"" ], [ "Gavir took out the narvoon, grasped the blade, and drew his arm back.\n\n\n \"Gavir!\"\n\n\n It was the Hat Rat. He stood between pillars of flame in the doorway\n of the Pandemonium Room of Lucifer Grotto, and there was a peculiar\n contrivance of dark brown wood and black metal tubing cradled in his\n arm. \"This ancient shotgun I dedicate to your blood feud. I shall hunt\n down your enemy, Gavir!\"\n\n\n Spurling turned. The Hat Rat saw him.\n\n\n \"The enemy!\" the Hat Rat shouted.\n\n\n The shotgun exploded.", "The Desert Man ran over the red sand, and he found the drock. He did\n not throw his knife. That would not have satisfied his hatred. He fell\n upon the drock and stabbed and stabbed.\n\n\n The Desert Man howled his hunting-cry over the body of his enemy, and\n spat into its face.\n\n\n And the fanged face of the drock turned into the square, battered face\n of Jarvis Spurling. Gavir held the image in his mind for a long\n moment.\n\n\n When the dreamcast was over, a studio page ran up to Gavir. \"Mr.\n Spurling wants to see you at once, at his office.\"\n\n\n \"Let him come and find me,\" said Gavir. \"Let us go, Sylvie.\"", "Mars was where Gavir's father had been pinned, bayonets through his\n hands and feet, to the wall of a shack just the other side of the\n Barrier, to die slowly, out of Gavir's reach. Father James told Gavir\n that the head of MDC himself had ordered the killing, because Gavir's\n father had tried to organize resistance to the Corporation. Mars was\n where the magic powers of the Earthmen and the helplessness of the\n Martian tribes would always protect the head of MDC from Gavir's\n vengeance.\n\n\n Back to that world of hopeless fear and hatred?\nI never want to go\n back to Mars! I want to stay here!\nBut that wasn't what he was supposed to think. Quickly he said, \"I\n will be happy to return to my people.\"\n\n\n A movement caught his eye. The producer, reclining on a divan in a far\n corner of the small studio, was making some kind of signal by beating\n his fist against his forehead.", "An arrangement of force-planes and 3V projections made the front of\n Lucifer Grotto appear to be a curtain of flames. Gavir hung back, but\n Sylvie inserted a tiny gold pitchfork into a small aperture in the\n glowing, rippling surface. The flames swept aside, revealing a\n doorway. A bearded man in black tights escorted them through a\n luridly-lit bar to a private room. When they were alone, Sylvie\n dropped her cape to the floor, sat on the edge of a huge, pink divan,\n and smiled at Gavir.\n\n\n Gavir contemplated her. That she was over a hundred years old was a\n little frightening. But the skin of her face and her bare upper body\n was a warm color, and tautly filled. She had lashed out at Spurling,\n and he liked her for that. But in one way she was like Spurling. She\n didn't fit into the bland, non-violent world of Malcomb and Hoppy.", "They went to Lucifer Grotto, where Gavir's wealthiest admirers among\n the Senile Delinquents were giving a party for him in the Pandemonium\n Room. The only prominent person missing, as Sylvie remarked after\n surveying the crowd, was the Hat Rat. They wondered about it, but no\n one knew where he was.\n\n\n Sheets of flame illuminated the wild features and strange garments of\n over a hundred Century-Plus ladies and gentlemen. Gouts of flame\n leaped from the walls to light antique-style cigarettes. Drinks were\n refilled from nozzles of molded fire.\n\n\n An hour passed from the time of Gavir's arrival.\n\n\n Then Jarvis Spurling joined the party. There was a heavy frontier\n sonic pistol strapped at his waist. A protesting Malcomb was behind\n him.", "During a reading class at the mission school, Father James had said,\n \"In books there is power. All that you call magic in our Earth\n civilization is explained in books.\" Gavir wanted to learn. It was his\n only hope to find an alternative to the short, fear-ridden,\n impoverished life he foresaw for himself.\n\n\n A river of force carried him, along with thousands of\n Earthmen—godlike beings in their perfect health and their impregnable\n benignity—through the streets of the city. Platforms of force raised\n and lowered him through the city's multiple levels....\n\n\n And, as has always happened to outlanders in cities, he became lost.\nHe was in a quarter where furtive red and violet lights danced in the\n shadows of hunched buildings. A half-dozen Earthmen approached him,\n stopped and stared. Gavir stared back.", "Gavir's hand leaped at the narvoon under his doublet.\n\n\n Then he stopped himself. He turned the gesture into the proffer of a\n handshake. \"How do you do?\" he said quietly. In his mind he\n congratulated himself. He had learned emotional control from the\n Earthmen. Here was the man who had ordered his father crucified! Yet\n he had managed to hide his instant desire to strike, to kill, to carry\n out the oath of the blood feud then and there.\n\n\n Jarvis Spurling ignored Gavir's hand and stared coldly at him. There\n was not a trace of the usual Earthman's kindliness in his square,\n battered face. \"I'm told you got talent. Okay, but a Bluie is a Bluie.\n I'll pay you because a Bluie on Dreamvision is good publicity for MDC\n products. But one slip like on your first 'cast and you go back to the\n Preserve.\"", "The Earthmen disappeared into a lift-force field. Gavir decided not to\n pursue them. He walked forward and picked up his narvoon, and saw that\n the street on which it lay was solid black pavement, not a\n force-field. He must be in the lowest level of the city. He didn't\n know his way around; he might meet more enemies. He forgot about the\n books he'd wanted, and began to search for his hotel.\nWhen he got back to his room, he went immediately to bed. He slept\n late.\n\n\n Malcomb woke him at 1100. Gavir told Malcomb about the\n strangely-dressed men who had tried to kill him.\n\n\n \"I told you not to wander around alone.\"", "It was an ancient song, a Desert Man's outcry against injustice,\n enemies, false friends and callous leaders. It was a protest against\n sufferings that could neither be borne nor prevented. At the climax of\n the song Gavir pictured a tribal chief who refused to make fair\n division of the spoils of a hunt with his warriors. Gradually he\n allowed this image to turn into a picture of Hoppy Davery withholding\n bundles of money from a starving Gavir. Then he ended the song.\n\n\n Hoppy sent for him next morning.\n\n\n \"Why did you do that?\" he said. \"Listen to this.\"\n\n\n A recorded voice boomed: \"This is Hat Rat. Pay the Blue Boy what he\n deserves, or I will give you death. It will be a personal thing\n between you and me. I will besprinkle you with corrosive acids; I will\n burn out your eyes; I will—\"", "\"We'll take care of his visa.\"\n\n\n Gavir trembled with joy. Hoppy Davery pressed another button and a\n secretary entered with papers. She was followed by another woman.\n\n\n The second woman was dark-haired and slender. She wore leather boots\n and tight brown breeches. She was bare from the waist up and her\n breasts were young and full. A jewelled clip fastened a scarlet cape\n at her neck. Her lips were a disconcertingly vivid red, apparently an\n artificial color. She kissed Hoppy Davery on the forehead, leaving red\n blotches on his pink dome. He wiped his forehead and looked at his\n hand.\n\n\n \"Do you have to wear that barbaric face-paint?\" Hoppy turned sad eyes\n on Gavir and Malcomb. \"Gentlemen, my mother, Sylvie Davery.\"", "Spurling's body was thrown back against Gavir. Gavir saw a huge ragged\n red caved-in place in Spurling's chest. Spurling's body sagged to the\n floor and lay there face up, eyes open. The Senile Delinquents of\n Lucifer Grotto leaned forward to grin at the tattered body.\n\n\n Still holding the narvoon, Gavir stood over his dead enemy. He threw\n back his head and howled out the hunting cry of the Desert Men. Then\n he looked down and spat in Jarvis Spurling's dead face.\nEND", "Gavir toured the world with Sylvie, mobbed everywhere by worshipful\n Century-Plussers. Male Century-Plussers by the millions adopted blue\n doublets and blue kilts in honor of their hero.\n\n\n Blue-dyed hair was now\nde rigueur\namong the ladies of Lucifer\n Grotto. The Hat Rat himself, who often appeared at a respectful\n distance in crowds around Gavir, now wore a wide-brimmed hat of\n brightest blue.\n\n\n Then there came the dreamcast on which Gavir sang the\nSong of\n Complaint\n.", "\"Spare me another lecture on Senile Delinquency, Our Number One\n Problem.\" She walked to the door and Gavir watched her all the way.\n She turned with a swirl of scarlet and a dramatic display of healthy\n young flesh. \"See you again, Blue Boy.\"\n\n\n After Sylvie left, Hoppy Davery said, \"That might be a good\n professional name—Blue Boy. Gavir doesn't\nmean\nanything. Now what\n kind of a song could you do for the Farfel Flisket show?\"\n\n\n Gavir thought. \"Perhaps you would like the\nSong of Creation\n.\"\n\n\n \"It's part of a fertility rite,\" Malcomb explained.", "Hoppy cut the voice off. Gavir saw that he was sweating. \"There were\ndozens\nlike that. If you want more money, I'll\ngive\nyou more\n money. Say something nice about me on your next dreamcast, for\n heaven's sake!\"\n\n\n Gavir spread his big blue hands. \"I am sorry. I don't want more money.\n I cannot always control the pictures I make. These images come into\n my mind even though they have nothing to do with me.\"\n\n\n Hoppy shook his head. \"That's because you haven't had Ethical\n Conditioning. We don't have this trouble with our other performers.\n You just must remember that dreamvision is the most potent\n communications medium ever devised. Be\ncareful\n.\"\n\n\n \"I will,\" said Gavir.\nOn his next dreamcast Gavir sang the\nSong of the Blood Feud\n. He\n pictured a Desert Man whose father had been killed by a drock.", "Sylvie uttered a short, sharp obscenity, linked arms with Gavir, and\n strolled out.\n\n\n \"You screwball Senile Delinquent,\" Spurling yelled after Sylvie, \"you\n oughtta be locked up!\"\nLucifer Grotto was in that same quarter in which Gavir had been\n attacked. Sylvie told him it was\nthe\nhangout for wealthier New York\n Century-Plussers. Gavir told her about the attack, and she laughed.\n \"It won't happen again. You're a hero to the Senile Delinquents now.\n By the way, the big fellow with the broad-brimmed hat, he's one of the\n most prominent Senile Delinquents of our day. He's president of the\n biggest privately-owned space line, but he likes to call himself the\n Hat Rat. You must be one of the few people who ever got away from him\n alive.\"\n\n\n \"He seemed happy to get away from me,\" said Gavir.", "A Senile Delinquent! thought Gavir. She looked like Davery's younger\n sister. Malcomb stared at her apprehensively, and Gavir wondered if\n she were somehow going to attack them.\n\n\n She looked at Gavir. \"Mmm. What a body, what gorgeous blue skin. How\n tall are you, Blue Boy?\"\n\n\n \"He's approximately seven feet tall, Sylvie,\" said Hoppy, \"and what do\n you want here, anyway?\"\n\n\n \"Just came up to see Blue Boy. One of the crowd dreamed him last\n night. Positively manic about him. I found out he'd be with you.\"\n\n\n \"See?\" said Hoppy to Gavir. \"The Century-Plus mentality. You've got\n something they go for. Undoubtedly because you're—forgive me—such a\n complete barbarian. That's what they're all trying to be.\"", "Then the moderator questioned Malcomb, while Gavir nervously\n awaited the moment when his thoughts would be transmitted to millions\n of Earthmen. Malcomb told how he had been struck by Gavir's\n intelligence and missionary-taught ability to speak Earth's language,\n and had decided to bring Gavir to Earth.\n\n\n The moderator turned to Gavir. \"Are you anxious to get back to Mars?\"\nNo!\nGavir thought. Back behind the Preserve Barrier that killed you\n instantly if you stepped too close to it? Back to the constant fear of\n being seized by MDC guards for a labor pool, to wind up in the MDC\n mines?", "\"Mr. Spurling!\" said Malcomb. \"Your tone is hostile!\"\n\n\n \"Damn right. That Ethical Conditioning slop doesn't work on me. I've\n lived too long on the frontier. And I know Bluies.\"\nIwill sign the contract,\" said Gavir.\n\n\n As he drew his signature pictograph on the contract, Sylvie Davery\n sauntered in. She held a white tube between her painted lips. The end\n of the tube was glowing and giving off clouds of smoke. Hoppy Davery\n coughed and Sylvie winked at Gavir. Gavir straightened up, and she\n took a long look at his seven feet.\n\n\n \"All finished, Blue Boy? Come on, let's go have a drink at Lucifer\n Grotto.\"", "\"Well, enough of that!\" the moderator said briskly. \"How about singing\n one of your tribal songs for us?\"\n\n\n Gavir said, \"I will sing the\nSong of Going to Hunt\n.\" He heaved\n himself up from the divan, and, feet planted wide apart, threw back\n his head and began to howl.\n\n\n He was considered a poor singer in his tribe, and he was not surprised\n that Malcomb and the moderator winced. But Malcomb had told him that\n it wouldn't matter. The dreamees receiving the dreamcast would hear\n the song as it\nshould\nsound, as Gavir heard it in his mind.\n Everything that Gavir saw and heard and felt in his mind, the dreamees\n could see and hear and feel....", "\"Sir: I beg you to forgive the presumption of my recent attack on\n you. Since then you have captured my imagination. I now hold you to be\n the noblest savage of them all. Henceforward please consider me, Your\n obedient servant, Hat Rat.\"\n\n\n \"You've impressed him,\" said Sylvie. \"But you impress me even more.\n Come here.\"\n\n\n She held out slim arms to him. He had no wish to refuse her. She was\n not like a Martian woman, but he found the differences exciting and\n attractive. He went to her, and he forgot entirely that she was over a\n hundred years old.\nIn the months that followed, Gavir's fame spread over Earth. By\n spring, the rating computers credited him with an audience of eight\n hundred million—ninety-five percent of whom were Century-Plussers.\n Davery doubled Gavir's salary." ], [ "He began to enjoy it. It was rare that a Martian had an opportunity to\n knock Earthmen down. The mood of the\nSong of Going to Hunt\ncame over\n him. He sprang free of his attackers and drew his glittering narvoon.\n\n\n The man with the whip yelled. They looked at his knife, and then all\n at once turned and ran. Gavir drew back his arm and threw the knife\n with a practiced catapult-snap of shoulder, elbow, and wrist. To his\n surprise, the blade clattered to the street far short of his\n retreating enemies. Then he remembered: you couldn't throw far in the\n gravity of Earth.", "Gavir took out the narvoon, grasped the blade, and drew his arm back.\n\n\n \"Gavir!\"\n\n\n It was the Hat Rat. He stood between pillars of flame in the doorway\n of the Pandemonium Room of Lucifer Grotto, and there was a peculiar\n contrivance of dark brown wood and black metal tubing cradled in his\n arm. \"This ancient shotgun I dedicate to your blood feud. I shall hunt\n down your enemy, Gavir!\"\n\n\n Spurling turned. The Hat Rat saw him.\n\n\n \"The enemy!\" the Hat Rat shouted.\n\n\n The shotgun exploded.", "The Desert Man ran over the red sand, and he found the drock. He did\n not throw his knife. That would not have satisfied his hatred. He fell\n upon the drock and stabbed and stabbed.\n\n\n The Desert Man howled his hunting-cry over the body of his enemy, and\n spat into its face.\n\n\n And the fanged face of the drock turned into the square, battered face\n of Jarvis Spurling. Gavir held the image in his mind for a long\n moment.\n\n\n When the dreamcast was over, a studio page ran up to Gavir. \"Mr.\n Spurling wants to see you at once, at his office.\"\n\n\n \"Let him come and find me,\" said Gavir. \"Let us go, Sylvie.\"", "Now, before it could gather itself for another spring, there was time\n for one cast of the blade. It had to be done at once. It had to be\n perfect. If it failed, the knife would be lost and the drock would\n have its kill. The hunter grasped the weapon by the blade, drew his\n arm back, and snapped it forward.\n\n\n The blade struck deep into the throat of the drock.\n\n\n The drock screamed eerily and jumped clumsily. The hunter threw\n himself at the great, dark body and retrieved the knife. He struck\n with it again and again into the gray twitching belly. Colorless blood\n ran out over the hard, tightly-stretched skin.", "Jarvis Spurling's square face was dark with anger. \"You deliberately\n put my face on that animal! You want to make the public hate me. I pay\n your salary and keep you here on Earth, and this is what I get for it.\n All right. A Bluie is a Bluie, and I'll treat you like a Bluie should\n be treated.\" He unsnapped his holster and drew the square, heavy\n pistol out and pointed it at Gavir.\n\n\n Gavir stood up. His right hand plucked at his doublet.\n\n\n \"You're itching to go for that throwing knife,\" said Spurling. \"Go on!\n Take it out and get ready to throw it. I'll give you that much\n chance. Let's make a game out of this. We'll make like we're back on\n Mars, Bluie, and you're out hunting a drock. And you find one, only\n this drock has a gun. How about that, Bluie?\"", "Spurling's body was thrown back against Gavir. Gavir saw a huge ragged\n red caved-in place in Spurling's chest. Spurling's body sagged to the\n floor and lay there face up, eyes open. The Senile Delinquents of\n Lucifer Grotto leaned forward to grin at the tattered body.\n\n\n Still holding the narvoon, Gavir stood over his dead enemy. He threw\n back his head and howled out the hunting cry of the Desert Men. Then\n he looked down and spat in Jarvis Spurling's dead face.\nEND", "Gavir's hand leaped at the narvoon under his doublet.\n\n\n Then he stopped himself. He turned the gesture into the proffer of a\n handshake. \"How do you do?\" he said quietly. In his mind he\n congratulated himself. He had learned emotional control from the\n Earthmen. Here was the man who had ordered his father crucified! Yet\n he had managed to hide his instant desire to strike, to kill, to carry\n out the oath of the blood feud then and there.\n\n\n Jarvis Spurling ignored Gavir's hand and stared coldly at him. There\n was not a trace of the usual Earthman's kindliness in his square,\n battered face. \"I'm told you got talent. Okay, but a Bluie is a Bluie.\n I'll pay you because a Bluie on Dreamvision is good publicity for MDC\n products. But one slip like on your first 'cast and you go back to the\n Preserve.\"", "Mars was where Gavir's father had been pinned, bayonets through his\n hands and feet, to the wall of a shack just the other side of the\n Barrier, to die slowly, out of Gavir's reach. Father James told Gavir\n that the head of MDC himself had ordered the killing, because Gavir's\n father had tried to organize resistance to the Corporation. Mars was\n where the magic powers of the Earthmen and the helplessness of the\n Martian tribes would always protect the head of MDC from Gavir's\n vengeance.\n\n\n Back to that world of hopeless fear and hatred?\nI never want to go\n back to Mars! I want to stay here!\nBut that wasn't what he was supposed to think. Quickly he said, \"I\n will be happy to return to my people.\"\n\n\n A movement caught his eye. The producer, reclining on a divan in a far\n corner of the small studio, was making some kind of signal by beating\n his fist against his forehead.", "I\n t was cold, bitter cold, on the plain. The hunter stood at the edge\n of the camp as the shriveled Martian sun struck the tops of the Shakam\n hills. The hunter hefted the long, balanced narvoon, the throwing\n knife, in his hand. He had faith in the knife, and in his skill with\n it.\n\n\n The hunter filled his lungs, the cold air reaching deep into his\n chest. He shouted out his throat-bursting hunting cry. He began to run\n across the plain.\n\n\n Crouching behind crumbling red rocks, racing over flat expanses of\n orange sand, the hunter sought traces of the seegee, the great slow\n desert beast whose body provided his tribe with all the essentials of\n existence. At last he saw tracks. He mounted a dune. Out on the plain\n before him a great brown seegee lumbered patiently, unaware of its\n danger.", "They went to Lucifer Grotto, where Gavir's wealthiest admirers among\n the Senile Delinquents were giving a party for him in the Pandemonium\n Room. The only prominent person missing, as Sylvie remarked after\n surveying the crowd, was the Hat Rat. They wondered about it, but no\n one knew where he was.\n\n\n Sheets of flame illuminated the wild features and strange garments of\n over a hundred Century-Plus ladies and gentlemen. Gouts of flame\n leaped from the walls to light antique-style cigarettes. Drinks were\n refilled from nozzles of molded fire.\n\n\n An hour passed from the time of Gavir's arrival.\n\n\n Then Jarvis Spurling joined the party. There was a heavy frontier\n sonic pistol strapped at his waist. A protesting Malcomb was behind\n him.", "It was an ancient song, a Desert Man's outcry against injustice,\n enemies, false friends and callous leaders. It was a protest against\n sufferings that could neither be borne nor prevented. At the climax of\n the song Gavir pictured a tribal chief who refused to make fair\n division of the spoils of a hunt with his warriors. Gradually he\n allowed this image to turn into a picture of Hoppy Davery withholding\n bundles of money from a starving Gavir. Then he ended the song.\n\n\n Hoppy sent for him next morning.\n\n\n \"Why did you do that?\" he said. \"Listen to this.\"\n\n\n A recorded voice boomed: \"This is Hat Rat. Pay the Blue Boy what he\n deserves, or I will give you death. It will be a personal thing\n between you and me. I will besprinkle you with corrosive acids; I will\n burn out your eyes; I will—\"", "An arrangement of force-planes and 3V projections made the front of\n Lucifer Grotto appear to be a curtain of flames. Gavir hung back, but\n Sylvie inserted a tiny gold pitchfork into a small aperture in the\n glowing, rippling surface. The flames swept aside, revealing a\n doorway. A bearded man in black tights escorted them through a\n luridly-lit bar to a private room. When they were alone, Sylvie\n dropped her cape to the floor, sat on the edge of a huge, pink divan,\n and smiled at Gavir.\n\n\n Gavir contemplated her. That she was over a hundred years old was a\n little frightening. But the skin of her face and her bare upper body\n was a warm color, and tautly filled. She had lashed out at Spurling,\n and he liked her for that. But in one way she was like Spurling. She\n didn't fit into the bland, non-violent world of Malcomb and Hoppy.", "Hoppy cut the voice off. Gavir saw that he was sweating. \"There were\ndozens\nlike that. If you want more money, I'll\ngive\nyou more\n money. Say something nice about me on your next dreamcast, for\n heaven's sake!\"\n\n\n Gavir spread his big blue hands. \"I am sorry. I don't want more money.\n I cannot always control the pictures I make. These images come into\n my mind even though they have nothing to do with me.\"\n\n\n Hoppy shook his head. \"That's because you haven't had Ethical\n Conditioning. We don't have this trouble with our other performers.\n You just must remember that dreamvision is the most potent\n communications medium ever devised. Be\ncareful\n.\"\n\n\n \"I will,\" said Gavir.\nOn his next dreamcast Gavir sang the\nSong of the Blood Feud\n. He\n pictured a Desert Man whose father had been killed by a drock.", "The Earthmen disappeared into a lift-force field. Gavir decided not to\n pursue them. He walked forward and picked up his narvoon, and saw that\n the street on which it lay was solid black pavement, not a\n force-field. He must be in the lowest level of the city. He didn't\n know his way around; he might meet more enemies. He forgot about the\n books he'd wanted, and began to search for his hotel.\nWhen he got back to his room, he went immediately to bed. He slept\n late.\n\n\n Malcomb woke him at 1100. Gavir told Malcomb about the\n strangely-dressed men who had tried to kill him.\n\n\n \"I told you not to wander around alone.\"", "\"Spare me another lecture on Senile Delinquency, Our Number One\n Problem.\" She walked to the door and Gavir watched her all the way.\n She turned with a swirl of scarlet and a dramatic display of healthy\n young flesh. \"See you again, Blue Boy.\"\n\n\n After Sylvie left, Hoppy Davery said, \"That might be a good\n professional name—Blue Boy. Gavir doesn't\nmean\nanything. Now what\n kind of a song could you do for the Farfel Flisket show?\"\n\n\n Gavir thought. \"Perhaps you would like the\nSong of Creation\n.\"\n\n\n \"It's part of a fertility rite,\" Malcomb explained.", "During a reading class at the mission school, Father James had said,\n \"In books there is power. All that you call magic in our Earth\n civilization is explained in books.\" Gavir wanted to learn. It was his\n only hope to find an alternative to the short, fear-ridden,\n impoverished life he foresaw for himself.\n\n\n A river of force carried him, along with thousands of\n Earthmen—godlike beings in their perfect health and their impregnable\n benignity—through the streets of the city. Platforms of force raised\n and lowered him through the city's multiple levels....\n\n\n And, as has always happened to outlanders in cities, he became lost.\nHe was in a quarter where furtive red and violet lights danced in the\n shadows of hunched buildings. A half-dozen Earthmen approached him,\n stopped and stared. Gavir stared back.", "\"Well, enough of that!\" the moderator said briskly. \"How about singing\n one of your tribal songs for us?\"\n\n\n Gavir said, \"I will sing the\nSong of Going to Hunt\n.\" He heaved\n himself up from the divan, and, feet planted wide apart, threw back\n his head and began to howl.\n\n\n He was considered a poor singer in his tribe, and he was not surprised\n that Malcomb and the moderator winced. But Malcomb had told him that\n it wouldn't matter. The dreamees receiving the dreamcast would hear\n the song as it\nshould\nsound, as Gavir heard it in his mind.\n Everything that Gavir saw and heard and felt in his mind, the dreamees\n could see and hear and feel....", "Gavir toured the world with Sylvie, mobbed everywhere by worshipful\n Century-Plussers. Male Century-Plussers by the millions adopted blue\n doublets and blue kilts in honor of their hero.\n\n\n Blue-dyed hair was now\nde rigueur\namong the ladies of Lucifer\n Grotto. The Hat Rat himself, who often appeared at a respectful\n distance in crowds around Gavir, now wore a wide-brimmed hat of\n brightest blue.\n\n\n Then there came the dreamcast on which Gavir sang the\nSong of\n Complaint\n.", "The Earthmen wore black garments and furs and metal ornaments. The\n biggest of them wore a black suit, a long black cape, and a\n broad-brimmed black hat. He carried a coiled whip in one hand. The\n Earthmen turned to one another.\n\n\n \"A Martian.\"\n\n\n \"Let's give pain and death to the Martian! It will be a new\n experience—one to savor.\"\n\n\n \"Take pain, Martian!\"\n\n\n The Earthman with the black hat raised his arm, and the long heavy\n lash fell on Gavir. He felt a savage sting in the arm he had thrown up\n to protect his eyes.\n\n\n Gavir leaped at the Earthmen. He clubbed the man with the whip across\n the face. As the others rushed in, Gavir flailed about him with long\n arms and heavy fists.", "The hunter was about to strike out after it, when a dark form leaped\n at him.\n\n\n The hunter saw it out of the corner of his eye at the last moment. His\n startled sidestep saved him from the neck-breaking snap of the great\n jaws.\n\n\n The drock's long body was armored with black scales. Curving fangs\n protruded from its upper jaw. Its hand-like forepaws ended in hooked\n claws, to grasp and tear its prey. It was larger, stronger, faster\n than the hunter. The thin Martian air carried weirdly high-pitched\n cries which proclaimed its craving to sink its fangs into the hunter's\n body. The drock's huge hind legs coiled back on their triple joints,\n and it sprang.\n\n\n The hunter thrust the gleaming knife out before him, so that the dark\n body would land on its gleaming blade. The drock twisted in mid-air\n and landed to one side of the hunter." ], [ "\"Spare me another lecture on Senile Delinquency, Our Number One\n Problem.\" She walked to the door and Gavir watched her all the way.\n She turned with a swirl of scarlet and a dramatic display of healthy\n young flesh. \"See you again, Blue Boy.\"\n\n\n After Sylvie left, Hoppy Davery said, \"That might be a good\n professional name—Blue Boy. Gavir doesn't\nmean\nanything. Now what\n kind of a song could you do for the Farfel Flisket show?\"\n\n\n Gavir thought. \"Perhaps you would like the\nSong of Creation\n.\"\n\n\n \"It's part of a fertility rite,\" Malcomb explained.", "\"Mr. Spurling!\" said Malcomb. \"Your tone is hostile!\"\n\n\n \"Damn right. That Ethical Conditioning slop doesn't work on me. I've\n lived too long on the frontier. And I know Bluies.\"\nIwill sign the contract,\" said Gavir.\n\n\n As he drew his signature pictograph on the contract, Sylvie Davery\n sauntered in. She held a white tube between her painted lips. The end\n of the tube was glowing and giving off clouds of smoke. Hoppy Davery\n coughed and Sylvie winked at Gavir. Gavir straightened up, and she\n took a long look at his seven feet.\n\n\n \"All finished, Blue Boy? Come on, let's go have a drink at Lucifer\n Grotto.\"", "Jarvis Spurling's square face was dark with anger. \"You deliberately\n put my face on that animal! You want to make the public hate me. I pay\n your salary and keep you here on Earth, and this is what I get for it.\n All right. A Bluie is a Bluie, and I'll treat you like a Bluie should\n be treated.\" He unsnapped his holster and drew the square, heavy\n pistol out and pointed it at Gavir.\n\n\n Gavir stood up. His right hand plucked at his doublet.\n\n\n \"You're itching to go for that throwing knife,\" said Spurling. \"Go on!\n Take it out and get ready to throw it. I'll give you that much\n chance. Let's make a game out of this. We'll make like we're back on\n Mars, Bluie, and you're out hunting a drock. And you find one, only\n this drock has a gun. How about that, Bluie?\"", "It was an ancient song, a Desert Man's outcry against injustice,\n enemies, false friends and callous leaders. It was a protest against\n sufferings that could neither be borne nor prevented. At the climax of\n the song Gavir pictured a tribal chief who refused to make fair\n division of the spoils of a hunt with his warriors. Gradually he\n allowed this image to turn into a picture of Hoppy Davery withholding\n bundles of money from a starving Gavir. Then he ended the song.\n\n\n Hoppy sent for him next morning.\n\n\n \"Why did you do that?\" he said. \"Listen to this.\"\n\n\n A recorded voice boomed: \"This is Hat Rat. Pay the Blue Boy what he\n deserves, or I will give you death. It will be a personal thing\n between you and me. I will besprinkle you with corrosive acids; I will\n burn out your eyes; I will—\"", "A Senile Delinquent! thought Gavir. She looked like Davery's younger\n sister. Malcomb stared at her apprehensively, and Gavir wondered if\n she were somehow going to attack them.\n\n\n She looked at Gavir. \"Mmm. What a body, what gorgeous blue skin. How\n tall are you, Blue Boy?\"\n\n\n \"He's approximately seven feet tall, Sylvie,\" said Hoppy, \"and what do\n you want here, anyway?\"\n\n\n \"Just came up to see Blue Boy. One of the crowd dreamed him last\n night. Positively manic about him. I found out he'd be with you.\"\n\n\n \"See?\" said Hoppy to Gavir. \"The Century-Plus mentality. You've got\n something they go for. Undoubtedly because you're—forgive me—such a\n complete barbarian. That's what they're all trying to be.\"", "Gavir toured the world with Sylvie, mobbed everywhere by worshipful\n Century-Plussers. Male Century-Plussers by the millions adopted blue\n doublets and blue kilts in honor of their hero.\n\n\n Blue-dyed hair was now\nde rigueur\namong the ladies of Lucifer\n Grotto. The Hat Rat himself, who often appeared at a respectful\n distance in crowds around Gavir, now wore a wide-brimmed hat of\n brightest blue.\n\n\n Then there came the dreamcast on which Gavir sang the\nSong of\n Complaint\n.", "\"Great! Give the Senile Delinquents another workout. It's not quite\n ethical, but its good for us. But for heaven's sake, Blue Boy, keep\n your mind off MDC!\"\nThe following week, Gavir sang the\nSong of Creation\non the Farfel\n Flisket show, and transmitted the images which it brought up in his\n mind to his audience. A jubilant Hoppy Davery called him at his hotel\n next morning.\n\n\n \"Best response I've ever seen! The Century-Plussers have been rioting\n and throwing mass orgies ever since you sang. But they take time out\n to call us up and beg for more. I've got a sponsor and a two-year\n contract lined up for you.\"\n\n\n The sponsor was pacing back and forth in Hoppy Davery's office when\n Malcomb and Gavir arrived. Hoppy introduced him proudly. \"Mr. Jarvis\n Spurling, president of the Martian Development Corporation.\"", "They went with the producer to the upper reaches of the Global\n Dreamcasting building. There they were ushered into a huge office.\n\n\n They found Mr. Hoppy Davery lounging on a divan the size of a\n space-port. He was youthful in appearance, as were all Earthmen, but a\n soft plumpness and a receding hairline made him look slightly older\n than average.\n\n\n He pointed a rigid finger at Malcomb and Gavir. \"I want you two to\n hear a condensed recording of statements taken from calls we received\n last night.\"\n\n\n Gavir stiffened. They\nhad\ngotten into trouble because of his\n thoughts about MDC.\n\n\n A voice boomed out of the ceiling.\n\n\n \"That Martian boy has power. That song was a fist in the jaw. More!\"\n\n\n A woman's voice followed:", "Gavir's hand leaped at the narvoon under his doublet.\n\n\n Then he stopped himself. He turned the gesture into the proffer of a\n handshake. \"How do you do?\" he said quietly. In his mind he\n congratulated himself. He had learned emotional control from the\n Earthmen. Here was the man who had ordered his father crucified! Yet\n he had managed to hide his instant desire to strike, to kill, to carry\n out the oath of the blood feud then and there.\n\n\n Jarvis Spurling ignored Gavir's hand and stared coldly at him. There\n was not a trace of the usual Earthman's kindliness in his square,\n battered face. \"I'm told you got talent. Okay, but a Bluie is a Bluie.\n I'll pay you because a Bluie on Dreamvision is good publicity for MDC\n products. But one slip like on your first 'cast and you go back to the\n Preserve.\"", "\"We'll take care of his visa.\"\n\n\n Gavir trembled with joy. Hoppy Davery pressed another button and a\n secretary entered with papers. She was followed by another woman.\n\n\n The second woman was dark-haired and slender. She wore leather boots\n and tight brown breeches. She was bare from the waist up and her\n breasts were young and full. A jewelled clip fastened a scarlet cape\n at her neck. Her lips were a disconcertingly vivid red, apparently an\n artificial color. She kissed Hoppy Davery on the forehead, leaving red\n blotches on his pink dome. He wiped his forehead and looked at his\n hand.\n\n\n \"Do you have to wear that barbaric face-paint?\" Hoppy turned sad eyes\n on Gavir and Malcomb. \"Gentlemen, my mother, Sylvie Davery.\"", "Gavir took out the narvoon, grasped the blade, and drew his arm back.\n\n\n \"Gavir!\"\n\n\n It was the Hat Rat. He stood between pillars of flame in the doorway\n of the Pandemonium Room of Lucifer Grotto, and there was a peculiar\n contrivance of dark brown wood and black metal tubing cradled in his\n arm. \"This ancient shotgun I dedicate to your blood feud. I shall hunt\n down your enemy, Gavir!\"\n\n\n Spurling turned. The Hat Rat saw him.\n\n\n \"The enemy!\" the Hat Rat shouted.\n\n\n The shotgun exploded.", "They went to Lucifer Grotto, where Gavir's wealthiest admirers among\n the Senile Delinquents were giving a party for him in the Pandemonium\n Room. The only prominent person missing, as Sylvie remarked after\n surveying the crowd, was the Hat Rat. They wondered about it, but no\n one knew where he was.\n\n\n Sheets of flame illuminated the wild features and strange garments of\n over a hundred Century-Plus ladies and gentlemen. Gouts of flame\n leaped from the walls to light antique-style cigarettes. Drinks were\n refilled from nozzles of molded fire.\n\n\n An hour passed from the time of Gavir's arrival.\n\n\n Then Jarvis Spurling joined the party. There was a heavy frontier\n sonic pistol strapped at his waist. A protesting Malcomb was behind\n him.", "Caution told Gavir to refuse. But before he could speak Spurling\n snapped, \"Disgusting! An Earth woman and a Bluie! If you were on Mars,\n lady, we'd deport you so fast your tail would burn. And God help the\n Bluie!\"\n\n\n Sylvie blew a cloud of smoke at Spurling. \"You're not on Mars, Jack.\n You're back in civilization where we do what we damned well please.\"\n\n\n Spurling laughed. \"I've heard about you Century-Plussers. You're all\n sick.\"\n\n\n \"You can't claim any monopoly on mental health. Not with that\n concentration camp you run on Mars. Coming, Gavir?\"\n\n\n Gavir grinned at Spurling. \"The contract, I believe, does not cover my\n private life.\"\n\n\n Hoppy Davery said, \"Sylvie, I don't think this is wise.\"", "\"If you let that boy go back to Mars I'll never dream a Global program\n again.\"\n\n\n More voices:\n\n\n \"Enormous!\"\n\n\n \"Potent!\"\n\n\n \"That hunting song drove me mad. I\nlike\nbeing mad!\"\n\n\n \"Keep him on Earth.\"\n\n\n Hoppy Davery pressed a button in the control panel on his divan, and\n the voices fell silent.\n\n\n \"Those callers that admitted their age were all Century-Plus. The boy\n appeals to the Century-Plus mentality. I want to try him again. This\n time on a really big dream-show, not just an educational 'cast. Got a\n spot on next week's Farfel Flisket Show. If he gets the right\n response, we talk about a contract. Okay?\"\n\n\n Malcomb said, \"His visa expires—\"", "Hoppy cut the voice off. Gavir saw that he was sweating. \"There were\ndozens\nlike that. If you want more money, I'll\ngive\nyou more\n money. Say something nice about me on your next dreamcast, for\n heaven's sake!\"\n\n\n Gavir spread his big blue hands. \"I am sorry. I don't want more money.\n I cannot always control the pictures I make. These images come into\n my mind even though they have nothing to do with me.\"\n\n\n Hoppy shook his head. \"That's because you haven't had Ethical\n Conditioning. We don't have this trouble with our other performers.\n You just must remember that dreamvision is the most potent\n communications medium ever devised. Be\ncareful\n.\"\n\n\n \"I will,\" said Gavir.\nOn his next dreamcast Gavir sang the\nSong of the Blood Feud\n. He\n pictured a Desert Man whose father had been killed by a drock.", "She set fire to a white tube. \"This, for instance. They used to do it\n before they found out it caused cancer. Now there's no more cancer,\n but even if there were, I'd still smoke. That's the attitude I have.\n You try things. You live in the past, if you're inclined, adopt the\n costumes and manners of some more colorful time. You try ridiculous\n things, disgusting things, vicious things. You know they're all\n nothing, but you have to do something, so you go on doing nothing,\n elaborately and violently.\"\n\n\n A tray of drinks rose through the floor. Sylvie frowned as she noticed\n a folded paper tucked between the glasses. She picked it up and read\n it, chuckled, and read it again, aloud.", "Transcriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from the September 1960 issue of If. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.\nStar Performer\nBy ROBERT J. SHEA\nIllustrated by DICK FRANCIS\nBlue Boy's rating was high and his fans were loyal to the\n death—anyone's death!\nGavir gingerly fitted the round opening in the bottom of the silvery\n globe over the top of his hairless blue skull. He pulled the globe\n down until he felt tiny filaments touching his scalp. The tips of the\n wires were cold.\n\n\n The moderator then said, \"\nDreaming Through the Universe\ntonight\n brings you the first native Martian to appear on the dreamwaves—Gavir\n of the Desert Men. With him is his guardian, Dr. Malcomb Rice, the\n noted anthropologist.\"", "Sylvie uttered a short, sharp obscenity, linked arms with Gavir, and\n strolled out.\n\n\n \"You screwball Senile Delinquent,\" Spurling yelled after Sylvie, \"you\n oughtta be locked up!\"\nLucifer Grotto was in that same quarter in which Gavir had been\n attacked. Sylvie told him it was\nthe\nhangout for wealthier New York\n Century-Plussers. Gavir told her about the attack, and she laughed.\n \"It won't happen again. You're a hero to the Senile Delinquents now.\n By the way, the big fellow with the broad-brimmed hat, he's one of the\n most prominent Senile Delinquents of our day. He's president of the\n biggest privately-owned space line, but he likes to call himself the\n Hat Rat. You must be one of the few people who ever got away from him\n alive.\"\n\n\n \"He seemed happy to get away from me,\" said Gavir.", "Spurling's body was thrown back against Gavir. Gavir saw a huge ragged\n red caved-in place in Spurling's chest. Spurling's body sagged to the\n floor and lay there face up, eyes open. The Senile Delinquents of\n Lucifer Grotto leaned forward to grin at the tattered body.\n\n\n Still holding the narvoon, Gavir stood over his dead enemy. He threw\n back his head and howled out the hunting cry of the Desert Men. Then\n he looked down and spat in Jarvis Spurling's dead face.\nEND", "The Desert Man ran over the red sand, and he found the drock. He did\n not throw his knife. That would not have satisfied his hatred. He fell\n upon the drock and stabbed and stabbed.\n\n\n The Desert Man howled his hunting-cry over the body of his enemy, and\n spat into its face.\n\n\n And the fanged face of the drock turned into the square, battered face\n of Jarvis Spurling. Gavir held the image in his mind for a long\n moment.\n\n\n When the dreamcast was over, a studio page ran up to Gavir. \"Mr.\n Spurling wants to see you at once, at his office.\"\n\n\n \"Let him come and find me,\" said Gavir. \"Let us go, Sylvie.\"" ], [ "Gavir took out the narvoon, grasped the blade, and drew his arm back.\n\n\n \"Gavir!\"\n\n\n It was the Hat Rat. He stood between pillars of flame in the doorway\n of the Pandemonium Room of Lucifer Grotto, and there was a peculiar\n contrivance of dark brown wood and black metal tubing cradled in his\n arm. \"This ancient shotgun I dedicate to your blood feud. I shall hunt\n down your enemy, Gavir!\"\n\n\n Spurling turned. The Hat Rat saw him.\n\n\n \"The enemy!\" the Hat Rat shouted.\n\n\n The shotgun exploded.", "The Earthmen disappeared into a lift-force field. Gavir decided not to\n pursue them. He walked forward and picked up his narvoon, and saw that\n the street on which it lay was solid black pavement, not a\n force-field. He must be in the lowest level of the city. He didn't\n know his way around; he might meet more enemies. He forgot about the\n books he'd wanted, and began to search for his hotel.\nWhen he got back to his room, he went immediately to bed. He slept\n late.\n\n\n Malcomb woke him at 1100. Gavir told Malcomb about the\n strangely-dressed men who had tried to kill him.\n\n\n \"I told you not to wander around alone.\"", "The Desert Man ran over the red sand, and he found the drock. He did\n not throw his knife. That would not have satisfied his hatred. He fell\n upon the drock and stabbed and stabbed.\n\n\n The Desert Man howled his hunting-cry over the body of his enemy, and\n spat into its face.\n\n\n And the fanged face of the drock turned into the square, battered face\n of Jarvis Spurling. Gavir held the image in his mind for a long\n moment.\n\n\n When the dreamcast was over, a studio page ran up to Gavir. \"Mr.\n Spurling wants to see you at once, at his office.\"\n\n\n \"Let him come and find me,\" said Gavir. \"Let us go, Sylvie.\"", "Spurling's body was thrown back against Gavir. Gavir saw a huge ragged\n red caved-in place in Spurling's chest. Spurling's body sagged to the\n floor and lay there face up, eyes open. The Senile Delinquents of\n Lucifer Grotto leaned forward to grin at the tattered body.\n\n\n Still holding the narvoon, Gavir stood over his dead enemy. He threw\n back his head and howled out the hunting cry of the Desert Men. Then\n he looked down and spat in Jarvis Spurling's dead face.\nEND", "During a reading class at the mission school, Father James had said,\n \"In books there is power. All that you call magic in our Earth\n civilization is explained in books.\" Gavir wanted to learn. It was his\n only hope to find an alternative to the short, fear-ridden,\n impoverished life he foresaw for himself.\n\n\n A river of force carried him, along with thousands of\n Earthmen—godlike beings in their perfect health and their impregnable\n benignity—through the streets of the city. Platforms of force raised\n and lowered him through the city's multiple levels....\n\n\n And, as has always happened to outlanders in cities, he became lost.\nHe was in a quarter where furtive red and violet lights danced in the\n shadows of hunched buildings. A half-dozen Earthmen approached him,\n stopped and stared. Gavir stared back.", "They went to Lucifer Grotto, where Gavir's wealthiest admirers among\n the Senile Delinquents were giving a party for him in the Pandemonium\n Room. The only prominent person missing, as Sylvie remarked after\n surveying the crowd, was the Hat Rat. They wondered about it, but no\n one knew where he was.\n\n\n Sheets of flame illuminated the wild features and strange garments of\n over a hundred Century-Plus ladies and gentlemen. Gouts of flame\n leaped from the walls to light antique-style cigarettes. Drinks were\n refilled from nozzles of molded fire.\n\n\n An hour passed from the time of Gavir's arrival.\n\n\n Then Jarvis Spurling joined the party. There was a heavy frontier\n sonic pistol strapped at his waist. A protesting Malcomb was behind\n him.", "Gavir's hand leaped at the narvoon under his doublet.\n\n\n Then he stopped himself. He turned the gesture into the proffer of a\n handshake. \"How do you do?\" he said quietly. In his mind he\n congratulated himself. He had learned emotional control from the\n Earthmen. Here was the man who had ordered his father crucified! Yet\n he had managed to hide his instant desire to strike, to kill, to carry\n out the oath of the blood feud then and there.\n\n\n Jarvis Spurling ignored Gavir's hand and stared coldly at him. There\n was not a trace of the usual Earthman's kindliness in his square,\n battered face. \"I'm told you got talent. Okay, but a Bluie is a Bluie.\n I'll pay you because a Bluie on Dreamvision is good publicity for MDC\n products. But one slip like on your first 'cast and you go back to the\n Preserve.\"", "The Earthmen wore black garments and furs and metal ornaments. The\n biggest of them wore a black suit, a long black cape, and a\n broad-brimmed black hat. He carried a coiled whip in one hand. The\n Earthmen turned to one another.\n\n\n \"A Martian.\"\n\n\n \"Let's give pain and death to the Martian! It will be a new\n experience—one to savor.\"\n\n\n \"Take pain, Martian!\"\n\n\n The Earthman with the black hat raised his arm, and the long heavy\n lash fell on Gavir. He felt a savage sting in the arm he had thrown up\n to protect his eyes.\n\n\n Gavir leaped at the Earthmen. He clubbed the man with the whip across\n the face. As the others rushed in, Gavir flailed about him with long\n arms and heavy fists.", "Gavir toured the world with Sylvie, mobbed everywhere by worshipful\n Century-Plussers. Male Century-Plussers by the millions adopted blue\n doublets and blue kilts in honor of their hero.\n\n\n Blue-dyed hair was now\nde rigueur\namong the ladies of Lucifer\n Grotto. The Hat Rat himself, who often appeared at a respectful\n distance in crowds around Gavir, now wore a wide-brimmed hat of\n brightest blue.\n\n\n Then there came the dreamcast on which Gavir sang the\nSong of\n Complaint\n.", "Mars was where Gavir's father had been pinned, bayonets through his\n hands and feet, to the wall of a shack just the other side of the\n Barrier, to die slowly, out of Gavir's reach. Father James told Gavir\n that the head of MDC himself had ordered the killing, because Gavir's\n father had tried to organize resistance to the Corporation. Mars was\n where the magic powers of the Earthmen and the helplessness of the\n Martian tribes would always protect the head of MDC from Gavir's\n vengeance.\n\n\n Back to that world of hopeless fear and hatred?\nI never want to go\n back to Mars! I want to stay here!\nBut that wasn't what he was supposed to think. Quickly he said, \"I\n will be happy to return to my people.\"\n\n\n A movement caught his eye. The producer, reclining on a divan in a far\n corner of the small studio, was making some kind of signal by beating\n his fist against his forehead.", "\"Sir: I beg you to forgive the presumption of my recent attack on\n you. Since then you have captured my imagination. I now hold you to be\n the noblest savage of them all. Henceforward please consider me, Your\n obedient servant, Hat Rat.\"\n\n\n \"You've impressed him,\" said Sylvie. \"But you impress me even more.\n Come here.\"\n\n\n She held out slim arms to him. He had no wish to refuse her. She was\n not like a Martian woman, but he found the differences exciting and\n attractive. He went to her, and he forgot entirely that she was over a\n hundred years old.\nIn the months that followed, Gavir's fame spread over Earth. By\n spring, the rating computers credited him with an audience of eight\n hundred million—ninety-five percent of whom were Century-Plussers.\n Davery doubled Gavir's salary.", "Sylvie uttered a short, sharp obscenity, linked arms with Gavir, and\n strolled out.\n\n\n \"You screwball Senile Delinquent,\" Spurling yelled after Sylvie, \"you\n oughtta be locked up!\"\nLucifer Grotto was in that same quarter in which Gavir had been\n attacked. Sylvie told him it was\nthe\nhangout for wealthier New York\n Century-Plussers. Gavir told her about the attack, and she laughed.\n \"It won't happen again. You're a hero to the Senile Delinquents now.\n By the way, the big fellow with the broad-brimmed hat, he's one of the\n most prominent Senile Delinquents of our day. He's president of the\n biggest privately-owned space line, but he likes to call himself the\n Hat Rat. You must be one of the few people who ever got away from him\n alive.\"\n\n\n \"He seemed happy to get away from me,\" said Gavir.", "It was an ancient song, a Desert Man's outcry against injustice,\n enemies, false friends and callous leaders. It was a protest against\n sufferings that could neither be borne nor prevented. At the climax of\n the song Gavir pictured a tribal chief who refused to make fair\n division of the spoils of a hunt with his warriors. Gradually he\n allowed this image to turn into a picture of Hoppy Davery withholding\n bundles of money from a starving Gavir. Then he ended the song.\n\n\n Hoppy sent for him next morning.\n\n\n \"Why did you do that?\" he said. \"Listen to this.\"\n\n\n A recorded voice boomed: \"This is Hat Rat. Pay the Blue Boy what he\n deserves, or I will give you death. It will be a personal thing\n between you and me. I will besprinkle you with corrosive acids; I will\n burn out your eyes; I will—\"", "He began to enjoy it. It was rare that a Martian had an opportunity to\n knock Earthmen down. The mood of the\nSong of Going to Hunt\ncame over\n him. He sprang free of his attackers and drew his glittering narvoon.\n\n\n The man with the whip yelled. They looked at his knife, and then all\n at once turned and ran. Gavir drew back his arm and threw the knife\n with a practiced catapult-snap of shoulder, elbow, and wrist. To his\n surprise, the blade clattered to the street far short of his\n retreating enemies. Then he remembered: you couldn't throw far in the\n gravity of Earth.", "An arrangement of force-planes and 3V projections made the front of\n Lucifer Grotto appear to be a curtain of flames. Gavir hung back, but\n Sylvie inserted a tiny gold pitchfork into a small aperture in the\n glowing, rippling surface. The flames swept aside, revealing a\n doorway. A bearded man in black tights escorted them through a\n luridly-lit bar to a private room. When they were alone, Sylvie\n dropped her cape to the floor, sat on the edge of a huge, pink divan,\n and smiled at Gavir.\n\n\n Gavir contemplated her. That she was over a hundred years old was a\n little frightening. But the skin of her face and her bare upper body\n was a warm color, and tautly filled. She had lashed out at Spurling,\n and he liked her for that. But in one way she was like Spurling. She\n didn't fit into the bland, non-violent world of Malcomb and Hoppy.", "Now, before it could gather itself for another spring, there was time\n for one cast of the blade. It had to be done at once. It had to be\n perfect. If it failed, the knife would be lost and the drock would\n have its kill. The hunter grasped the weapon by the blade, drew his\n arm back, and snapped it forward.\n\n\n The blade struck deep into the throat of the drock.\n\n\n The drock screamed eerily and jumped clumsily. The hunter threw\n himself at the great, dark body and retrieved the knife. He struck\n with it again and again into the gray twitching belly. Colorless blood\n ran out over the hard, tightly-stretched skin.", "\"Spare me another lecture on Senile Delinquency, Our Number One\n Problem.\" She walked to the door and Gavir watched her all the way.\n She turned with a swirl of scarlet and a dramatic display of healthy\n young flesh. \"See you again, Blue Boy.\"\n\n\n After Sylvie left, Hoppy Davery said, \"That might be a good\n professional name—Blue Boy. Gavir doesn't\nmean\nanything. Now what\n kind of a song could you do for the Farfel Flisket show?\"\n\n\n Gavir thought. \"Perhaps you would like the\nSong of Creation\n.\"\n\n\n \"It's part of a fertility rite,\" Malcomb explained.", "Then the moderator questioned Malcomb, while Gavir nervously\n awaited the moment when his thoughts would be transmitted to millions\n of Earthmen. Malcomb told how he had been struck by Gavir's\n intelligence and missionary-taught ability to speak Earth's language,\n and had decided to bring Gavir to Earth.\n\n\n The moderator turned to Gavir. \"Are you anxious to get back to Mars?\"\nNo!\nGavir thought. Back behind the Preserve Barrier that killed you\n instantly if you stepped too close to it? Back to the constant fear of\n being seized by MDC guards for a labor pool, to wind up in the MDC\n mines?", "\"We'll take care of his visa.\"\n\n\n Gavir trembled with joy. Hoppy Davery pressed another button and a\n secretary entered with papers. She was followed by another woman.\n\n\n The second woman was dark-haired and slender. She wore leather boots\n and tight brown breeches. She was bare from the waist up and her\n breasts were young and full. A jewelled clip fastened a scarlet cape\n at her neck. Her lips were a disconcertingly vivid red, apparently an\n artificial color. She kissed Hoppy Davery on the forehead, leaving red\n blotches on his pink dome. He wiped his forehead and looked at his\n hand.\n\n\n \"Do you have to wear that barbaric face-paint?\" Hoppy turned sad eyes\n on Gavir and Malcomb. \"Gentlemen, my mother, Sylvie Davery.\"", "\"Well, enough of that!\" the moderator said briskly. \"How about singing\n one of your tribal songs for us?\"\n\n\n Gavir said, \"I will sing the\nSong of Going to Hunt\n.\" He heaved\n himself up from the divan, and, feet planted wide apart, threw back\n his head and began to howl.\n\n\n He was considered a poor singer in his tribe, and he was not surprised\n that Malcomb and the moderator winced. But Malcomb had told him that\n it wouldn't matter. The dreamees receiving the dreamcast would hear\n the song as it\nshould\nsound, as Gavir heard it in his mind.\n Everything that Gavir saw and heard and felt in his mind, the dreamees\n could see and hear and feel...." ], [ "She set fire to a white tube. \"This, for instance. They used to do it\n before they found out it caused cancer. Now there's no more cancer,\n but even if there were, I'd still smoke. That's the attitude I have.\n You try things. You live in the past, if you're inclined, adopt the\n costumes and manners of some more colorful time. You try ridiculous\n things, disgusting things, vicious things. You know they're all\n nothing, but you have to do something, so you go on doing nothing,\n elaborately and violently.\"\n\n\n A tray of drinks rose through the floor. Sylvie frowned as she noticed\n a folded paper tucked between the glasses. She picked it up and read\n it, chuckled, and read it again, aloud.", "It was an ancient song, a Desert Man's outcry against injustice,\n enemies, false friends and callous leaders. It was a protest against\n sufferings that could neither be borne nor prevented. At the climax of\n the song Gavir pictured a tribal chief who refused to make fair\n division of the spoils of a hunt with his warriors. Gradually he\n allowed this image to turn into a picture of Hoppy Davery withholding\n bundles of money from a starving Gavir. Then he ended the song.\n\n\n Hoppy sent for him next morning.\n\n\n \"Why did you do that?\" he said. \"Listen to this.\"\n\n\n A recorded voice boomed: \"This is Hat Rat. Pay the Blue Boy what he\n deserves, or I will give you death. It will be a personal thing\n between you and me. I will besprinkle you with corrosive acids; I will\n burn out your eyes; I will—\"", "The Desert Man ran over the red sand, and he found the drock. He did\n not throw his knife. That would not have satisfied his hatred. He fell\n upon the drock and stabbed and stabbed.\n\n\n The Desert Man howled his hunting-cry over the body of his enemy, and\n spat into its face.\n\n\n And the fanged face of the drock turned into the square, battered face\n of Jarvis Spurling. Gavir held the image in his mind for a long\n moment.\n\n\n When the dreamcast was over, a studio page ran up to Gavir. \"Mr.\n Spurling wants to see you at once, at his office.\"\n\n\n \"Let him come and find me,\" said Gavir. \"Let us go, Sylvie.\"", "The drock fell, gave a last convulsion, and lay still. The hunter\n plunged the blade into the red sand to clean it. He threw back his\n head and bellowed his hunting cry. There was great glory in killing\n the drock, for it showed that the Desert Man and not the drock, was\n lord of the red waste....\nGavir sat down on the divan, exhausted, his song finished. He didn't\n hear the moderator winding up the dreamcast. Then the producer of the\n program was upon him.\n\n\n He began shouting even before Gavir removed his headset. \"What kind\n of a fool are you? Before you started that song, you dreamed things\n about the Martian Development Corporation that were libelous! I got\n the whole thing—the Barrier, the guards, the labor pools and mines,\n the father crucified. It was awful! MDC is one of our biggest\n sponsors.\"", "Mars was where Gavir's father had been pinned, bayonets through his\n hands and feet, to the wall of a shack just the other side of the\n Barrier, to die slowly, out of Gavir's reach. Father James told Gavir\n that the head of MDC himself had ordered the killing, because Gavir's\n father had tried to organize resistance to the Corporation. Mars was\n where the magic powers of the Earthmen and the helplessness of the\n Martian tribes would always protect the head of MDC from Gavir's\n vengeance.\n\n\n Back to that world of hopeless fear and hatred?\nI never want to go\n back to Mars! I want to stay here!\nBut that wasn't what he was supposed to think. Quickly he said, \"I\n will be happy to return to my people.\"\n\n\n A movement caught his eye. The producer, reclining on a divan in a far\n corner of the small studio, was making some kind of signal by beating\n his fist against his forehead.", "Hoppy cut the voice off. Gavir saw that he was sweating. \"There were\ndozens\nlike that. If you want more money, I'll\ngive\nyou more\n money. Say something nice about me on your next dreamcast, for\n heaven's sake!\"\n\n\n Gavir spread his big blue hands. \"I am sorry. I don't want more money.\n I cannot always control the pictures I make. These images come into\n my mind even though they have nothing to do with me.\"\n\n\n Hoppy shook his head. \"That's because you haven't had Ethical\n Conditioning. We don't have this trouble with our other performers.\n You just must remember that dreamvision is the most potent\n communications medium ever devised. Be\ncareful\n.\"\n\n\n \"I will,\" said Gavir.\nOn his next dreamcast Gavir sang the\nSong of the Blood Feud\n. He\n pictured a Desert Man whose father had been killed by a drock.", "Now, before it could gather itself for another spring, there was time\n for one cast of the blade. It had to be done at once. It had to be\n perfect. If it failed, the knife would be lost and the drock would\n have its kill. The hunter grasped the weapon by the blade, drew his\n arm back, and snapped it forward.\n\n\n The blade struck deep into the throat of the drock.\n\n\n The drock screamed eerily and jumped clumsily. The hunter threw\n himself at the great, dark body and retrieved the knife. He struck\n with it again and again into the gray twitching belly. Colorless blood\n ran out over the hard, tightly-stretched skin.", "\"Spare me another lecture on Senile Delinquency, Our Number One\n Problem.\" She walked to the door and Gavir watched her all the way.\n She turned with a swirl of scarlet and a dramatic display of healthy\n young flesh. \"See you again, Blue Boy.\"\n\n\n After Sylvie left, Hoppy Davery said, \"That might be a good\n professional name—Blue Boy. Gavir doesn't\nmean\nanything. Now what\n kind of a song could you do for the Farfel Flisket show?\"\n\n\n Gavir thought. \"Perhaps you would like the\nSong of Creation\n.\"\n\n\n \"It's part of a fertility rite,\" Malcomb explained.", "During a reading class at the mission school, Father James had said,\n \"In books there is power. All that you call magic in our Earth\n civilization is explained in books.\" Gavir wanted to learn. It was his\n only hope to find an alternative to the short, fear-ridden,\n impoverished life he foresaw for himself.\n\n\n A river of force carried him, along with thousands of\n Earthmen—godlike beings in their perfect health and their impregnable\n benignity—through the streets of the city. Platforms of force raised\n and lowered him through the city's multiple levels....\n\n\n And, as has always happened to outlanders in cities, he became lost.\nHe was in a quarter where furtive red and violet lights danced in the\n shadows of hunched buildings. A half-dozen Earthmen approached him,\n stopped and stared. Gavir stared back.", "\"Well, enough of that!\" the moderator said briskly. \"How about singing\n one of your tribal songs for us?\"\n\n\n Gavir said, \"I will sing the\nSong of Going to Hunt\n.\" He heaved\n himself up from the divan, and, feet planted wide apart, threw back\n his head and began to howl.\n\n\n He was considered a poor singer in his tribe, and he was not surprised\n that Malcomb and the moderator winced. But Malcomb had told him that\n it wouldn't matter. The dreamees receiving the dreamcast would hear\n the song as it\nshould\nsound, as Gavir heard it in his mind.\n Everything that Gavir saw and heard and felt in his mind, the dreamees\n could see and hear and feel....", "They went with the producer to the upper reaches of the Global\n Dreamcasting building. There they were ushered into a huge office.\n\n\n They found Mr. Hoppy Davery lounging on a divan the size of a\n space-port. He was youthful in appearance, as were all Earthmen, but a\n soft plumpness and a receding hairline made him look slightly older\n than average.\n\n\n He pointed a rigid finger at Malcomb and Gavir. \"I want you two to\n hear a condensed recording of statements taken from calls we received\n last night.\"\n\n\n Gavir stiffened. They\nhad\ngotten into trouble because of his\n thoughts about MDC.\n\n\n A voice boomed out of the ceiling.\n\n\n \"That Martian boy has power. That song was a fist in the jaw. More!\"\n\n\n A woman's voice followed:", "An arrangement of force-planes and 3V projections made the front of\n Lucifer Grotto appear to be a curtain of flames. Gavir hung back, but\n Sylvie inserted a tiny gold pitchfork into a small aperture in the\n glowing, rippling surface. The flames swept aside, revealing a\n doorway. A bearded man in black tights escorted them through a\n luridly-lit bar to a private room. When they were alone, Sylvie\n dropped her cape to the floor, sat on the edge of a huge, pink divan,\n and smiled at Gavir.\n\n\n Gavir contemplated her. That she was over a hundred years old was a\n little frightening. But the skin of her face and her bare upper body\n was a warm color, and tautly filled. She had lashed out at Spurling,\n and he liked her for that. But in one way she was like Spurling. She\n didn't fit into the bland, non-violent world of Malcomb and Hoppy.", "Jarvis Spurling's square face was dark with anger. \"You deliberately\n put my face on that animal! You want to make the public hate me. I pay\n your salary and keep you here on Earth, and this is what I get for it.\n All right. A Bluie is a Bluie, and I'll treat you like a Bluie should\n be treated.\" He unsnapped his holster and drew the square, heavy\n pistol out and pointed it at Gavir.\n\n\n Gavir stood up. His right hand plucked at his doublet.\n\n\n \"You're itching to go for that throwing knife,\" said Spurling. \"Go on!\n Take it out and get ready to throw it. I'll give you that much\n chance. Let's make a game out of this. We'll make like we're back on\n Mars, Bluie, and you're out hunting a drock. And you find one, only\n this drock has a gun. How about that, Bluie?\"", "He shook his head. He said, \"Sylvie, why—well, why are you the way\n you are? Why—and how—have you broken away from Ethical\n Conditioning?\"\n\n\n Sylvie frowned. She spoke a few words into the air, ordering drinks.\n She said, \"I didn't do it deliberately. When I reached the age of\n about a hundred it stopped working for me. I suddenly wanted to do\n what\nI\nwanted to do. And then I found out that I didn't\nknow\nwhat\n I wanted to do. It was Ethical Conditioning or nothing, so I picked\n nothing. And here I am, chasing nothing.\"\n\n\n \"How do you chase nothing?\"", "Malcomb said, \"You can't expect an untrained young Martian to control\n his very thoughts. And may I point out that your tone is hostile?\"\n\n\n At this a sudden change came over the producer. The standard Earth\n expression—invincible benignity—took control of his face. \"I\n apologize for having spoken sharply, but dreamcasting is a\n nerve-wracking business. If it weren't for Ethical Conditioning, I\n don't know how I'd control my aggressive impulses. The Suppression of\n Aggression is the Foundation of Civilization, eh?\"\n\n\n Malcomb smiled. \"Ethical Conditioning Keeps Society from Fissioning.\"\n He shook hands with the producer.\n\n\n \"Come around tomorrow at 1300 and collect your fee,\" said the\n producer. \"Good night, gentlemen.\"\n\n\n As they left the Global Dreamcasting System building, Gavir said to\n Malcomb, \"Can we go to a bookstore tonight?\"", "Spurling's body was thrown back against Gavir. Gavir saw a huge ragged\n red caved-in place in Spurling's chest. Spurling's body sagged to the\n floor and lay there face up, eyes open. The Senile Delinquents of\n Lucifer Grotto leaned forward to grin at the tattered body.\n\n\n Still holding the narvoon, Gavir stood over his dead enemy. He threw\n back his head and howled out the hunting cry of the Desert Men. Then\n he looked down and spat in Jarvis Spurling's dead face.\nEND", "\"If you let that boy go back to Mars I'll never dream a Global program\n again.\"\n\n\n More voices:\n\n\n \"Enormous!\"\n\n\n \"Potent!\"\n\n\n \"That hunting song drove me mad. I\nlike\nbeing mad!\"\n\n\n \"Keep him on Earth.\"\n\n\n Hoppy Davery pressed a button in the control panel on his divan, and\n the voices fell silent.\n\n\n \"Those callers that admitted their age were all Century-Plus. The boy\n appeals to the Century-Plus mentality. I want to try him again. This\n time on a really big dream-show, not just an educational 'cast. Got a\n spot on next week's Farfel Flisket Show. If he gets the right\n response, we talk about a contract. Okay?\"\n\n\n Malcomb said, \"His visa expires—\"", "\"We'll take care of his visa.\"\n\n\n Gavir trembled with joy. Hoppy Davery pressed another button and a\n secretary entered with papers. She was followed by another woman.\n\n\n The second woman was dark-haired and slender. She wore leather boots\n and tight brown breeches. She was bare from the waist up and her\n breasts were young and full. A jewelled clip fastened a scarlet cape\n at her neck. Her lips were a disconcertingly vivid red, apparently an\n artificial color. She kissed Hoppy Davery on the forehead, leaving red\n blotches on his pink dome. He wiped his forehead and looked at his\n hand.\n\n\n \"Do you have to wear that barbaric face-paint?\" Hoppy turned sad eyes\n on Gavir and Malcomb. \"Gentlemen, my mother, Sylvie Davery.\"", "\"Great! Give the Senile Delinquents another workout. It's not quite\n ethical, but its good for us. But for heaven's sake, Blue Boy, keep\n your mind off MDC!\"\nThe following week, Gavir sang the\nSong of Creation\non the Farfel\n Flisket show, and transmitted the images which it brought up in his\n mind to his audience. A jubilant Hoppy Davery called him at his hotel\n next morning.\n\n\n \"Best response I've ever seen! The Century-Plussers have been rioting\n and throwing mass orgies ever since you sang. But they take time out\n to call us up and beg for more. I've got a sponsor and a two-year\n contract lined up for you.\"\n\n\n The sponsor was pacing back and forth in Hoppy Davery's office when\n Malcomb and Gavir arrived. Hoppy introduced him proudly. \"Mr. Jarvis\n Spurling, president of the Martian Development Corporation.\"", "I\n t was cold, bitter cold, on the plain. The hunter stood at the edge\n of the camp as the shriveled Martian sun struck the tops of the Shakam\n hills. The hunter hefted the long, balanced narvoon, the throwing\n knife, in his hand. He had faith in the knife, and in his skill with\n it.\n\n\n The hunter filled his lungs, the cold air reaching deep into his\n chest. He shouted out his throat-bursting hunting cry. He began to run\n across the plain.\n\n\n Crouching behind crumbling red rocks, racing over flat expanses of\n orange sand, the hunter sought traces of the seegee, the great slow\n desert beast whose body provided his tribe with all the essentials of\n existence. At last he saw tracks. He mounted a dune. Out on the plain\n before him a great brown seegee lumbered patiently, unaware of its\n danger." ] ]
test	62997	[ "At the time of the story's setting, what has happened to life on Earth?", "Ryd Randl", "Burshis is incredibly optimistic because", "What are Ryd's thoughts about working and having a job?", "For a moment, why does Ryd open up to Mury?", "How do the pair plan to infiltrate the ship?", "The irony considering Ryd's position in the plan is" ]	[ [ "Mars is now the epicenter of the universe.", "The climate has changed.", "Earth is no longer in power.", "All of the above." ], [ "Is a very respected citizen due to powerful occupation.", "Has been plotting the events of the current evening for a significant amount of time.", "Knows that his fate is to die fighting for his beliefs.", "Lives on the fringe of society, and is incredibly apathetic and bitter." ], [ "He knows that Mury is going to save the planet.", "He believes that the power is about to be restored to the planet.", "He knows that Ryd is going to save the planet.", "He knows that the war is about to begin and he will once again be at peace." ], [ "He knows that everyone must work to earn their keep.", "He had one in the past, it was ripped from him, and he is done with the working life.", "He believes that hard work is the only way to restore balance to the world.", "He can take it or leave it, but he does enjoy having money to drink." ], [ "Ryd and Mury are friends from the past, and Ryd wants to tell Mury about things he has missed out on in Ryd's life.", "Ryd is completely drunk and cannot stop talking.", "He believes that Mury is a true ally in the war that they are to face together.", "Ryd believes Mury understands Ryd's disdain for losing his job." ], [ "Ryd is going to bring Mury on as a prisoner.", "Mury is going to bring Ryd on as a prisoner.", "Mury is going to kill the crew and take the ship over.", "Ryd is going to kill the crew and take the ship over." ], [ "He agrees to do it for money, but he is already wealthy.", "He agrees to do it for money, but he will never be able to spend it.", "There is no irony in it at all.", "He saves a planet he will never see again." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "And that was it. The almost airless Martian sky, with its burning\n actinic rays, is so favorable for the use of the helio-dynamic engine.\n And after the middle of the eighth century, robot labor gave Mars its\n full economic independence—and domination. For power is—power; and\n there is the Restriction Act to keep men on Earth even if more than two\n in ten could live healthily on the outer world.\n\n\n \"Ten years ago,\" Mury nodded as if satisfied. \"That must have been the\n Power Company of North America—the main plant by Dynamopolis itself,\n that shut down in December, 809. They were the last to close down\n outside the military bases in the Kun Lun.\"", "\"Relax,\" said Mury in a low voice. \"Nothing's gone wrong. We'll be\n aboard the\nShahrazad\nwhen she lifts.\" For a moment his black eyes\n shifted, hardening, toward Runway Four. The Martian warship lay there\n beyond the solenoid, a spiteful hundred-foot swordfish of steel, with\n blind gunvalves, row on row, along its sleek sides and turret-blisters.\n It had not yet been tugged onto the turntable; it could not be leaving\n again very soon, though Earth weight was undoubtedly incommoding\n its crew. About it a few figures stood that were stiffly erect and\n immobile, as tall as tall men. From head to toe they were scarlet.\n\n\n \"Robots!\" gasped Ryd, clutching his companion's arm convulsively.\n \"Martian soldier robots!\"", "Now he made out the flicker of the braking drive a mile or so\n overhead, and presently soft motor thunder came down to blanket the\n almost lightless city with sound. A beam swayed through the throbbing\n darkness, caught the descending ship and held it, a small gleaming\n minnow slipping through the dark heavens. A faint glow rose from Pi\n Mesa, where the spaceport lay above the city, as a runway lighted\n up—draining the last reserves of the city's stored power, but draining\n them gladly now that, in those autumn days of the historic year 819,\n relief was in sight.\n\n\n Ryd shrugged limply; the play was meaningless to him. He turned to\n shuffle down the inviting ramp into the glowing interior of Burshis'\n dive.", "Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, \"Didn't you hear that ship\n that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars—the\n escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming\n in again.\" He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his\n shoulder: \"You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again.\n Jobs for all the bums in this town—even for you.\"\n\n\n He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear\n his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again,\n huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio\n man—no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit\n of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and\n then took it away. He drank still more deeply.", "Ryd had blacked out, darkness washing into his eyes and consciousness\n draining from his head, as the space ship had pitched out into\n emptiness over the end of the runway on Pi Mesa and Mury had cut in the\n maindrive. Pressure greater than anything he had ever felt had crushed\n him; his voice had been snatched from his lips by those terrible forces\n and lost beneath the opening thunder of the three-inch tubes. Up and\n up, while the acceleration climbed to seven gravities—and Ryd had lost\n every sensation, not to regain them until Earth was dropping away under\n the towship's keel.\n\n\n A single gravity held them back and down in the tilted seats, and the\n control panels seemed to curve half above them, their banks of lights\n confused with the stars coldly through the great nose window. In the\n control room all sounds impinged on a background made up of the insect\n hum of air-purifiers, the almost supersonic whine of the fast-spinning\n gyroscopes somewhere behind them, the deep continuous growl of the\n engines.", "\"Don't misunderstand me, Ryd—you mean nothing at all to me as an\n individual. But you're one of a vast mass of men for whom I am\n working—the billions caught in the net of a corrupt government and\n sold as an economic prey to the ruthless masters of Mars. This, after\n they've borne all the hardships of a year of embargo, have offered\n their hands willingly to the rebuilding of decadent Earth, only to\n be refused by the weak leaders who can neither defy the enemy nor\n capitulate frankly to him.\"\n\n\n Ryd was dazed. His mind had never been constructed to cope with such\n ideas and the past few years had not improved its capabilities. \"Are\n you talking about the power cylinder?\" he demanded blurrily.\n\n\n Mury cast a glance toward the Milky Way as if to descry the Martian\n cargo projectile somewhere up among its countless lights. He said\n simply, \"Yes.\"", "Not far off, a half-dozen dignitaries, huddled close together in the\n midst of these Cyclopean man-made things that dwarfed their policies,\n their principles and ambitions, stood talking rather nervously with two\n officers, aristocratically gaudy in the scarlet of the Martian Fleet.\n Blue-clad guardsmen of Earth watched from a distance—watched boredly\n enough.\n\n\n And out on the steel-stripped tarmac, under the solenoid of Number\n Two Runway, lay a towship, backed like a stegosaur with its massive\n magnets—the\nShahrazad\n, panting like a dragon amid rolling clouds of\n steam. She was plainly ready to go into space. The bottom dropped out\n of Ryd's stomach before he realized that a warning at least must be\n sounded before the ship could lift. But that might come any moment now.", "\"What goes on here?\" snapped the guard, frowning at the tall figure\n silhouetted against the glow in the airlock. \"The crew's signaled all\n aboard and the ship lifts in two minutes. You ought to be—\"\n\n\n \"I am Semul Mury, Poligerent for the City of Dynamopolis,\" interrupted\n the tall man with asperity. \"The City is naturally interested in the\n delivery of the power which will revivify our industries.\" He paused,\n sighed, shifting his weight to the next lower step of the gangway. \"I\n suppose you'll want to re-check my credentials?\"\n\n\n The guard was somewhat confused; a Poligerent, in ninth-century\n bureaucracy, was a force to be reckoned with. But he contrived to nod\n with an appearance of brusqueness.", "The lock gave way and the door slipped aside. A light went on inside,\n and Ryd's heart stopped, backfired, and started again, raggedly. The\n same automatic mechanism that had turned the lights on had started the\n air-fresher, which picked up speed with a soft whine, sweeping out the\n long-stale atmosphere. Mury motioned to Ryd to follow him in.\nIt was still musty in the narrow passage, between the closely-pressing\n walls, beneath the great tubes and cable sheathings that fluted the\n ceiling overhead. A stairway spiraled up on the right to the control\n cupola somewhere overhead; even in the airtight gallery a thin film\n of dust lay on every step. Up there were the meters and switches of\n the disused terminal facilities of the spaceport; beyond the metal\n door marked CAUTION, just beyond the stairwell, lay the long runway\n down which the ships of space had glided to be serviced, refueled, and\n launched into the sky once more by now dormant machines.", "Mury smiled slightly. \"Only our astrogator,\" he indicated Arliess,\n still masked and fettered, \"can tell you that with precision. I\n understand only enough of astrogational practice to make sure that he\n is holding to the course outlined on the log. For that matter ... he\n is an intelligent young man and if he were not blinded by notions of\n duty to an outworn system.... We are now somewhere near the orbit of\n the Moon. Isn't that right, Arliess?\"\n\n\n The other did not seem to hear; he sat staring blindly before him\n through his goggles at the slowly-changing chart, where cryptic lights\n burned, some moving like glowing paramecia along fine-traced luminous\n tracks.\n\n\n Mury too sat silent and immobile for a minute or more. Then, abruptly,\n he inclined his universal chair far to the right, and his long frame\n seemed to tense oddly. His finger stabbed out one of the sparks of\n light.", "\"The power shell is aid, yes—but with what a price! It's the thirty\n pieces of silver for which the venal fools who rule our nations have\n sold the whole planet to Mars. Because they lack the courage and\n vision to retool Earth's plants and factories for the inescapable\n conflict, they're selling us out—making Earth, the first home of man,\n a colony of the Red Planet. Do you know what Earth is to the great\n Martian land-owners?\nDo you?\n\" He paused out of breath; then finished\n venomously, \"Earth is a great pool of labor ready to be tapped, cheaper\n than robots—cheap as\nslaves\n!\"\n\n\n \"What about it?\" gulped Ryd, drawing away from the fanatic. \"What you\n want\nme\nto do about it?\"", "\"Wait,\" said Mury succinctly; he vanished up the spiral stair, his\n long legs taking two steps at a time. After an aching minute's silence,\n he was back. All was clear as seen from the turret-windows overhead.\n\n\n They emerged in shadow, hugging the wall. Almost a quarter of a mile to\n the right the megalith of the Communications Tower, crowned with many\n lights where the signal-men sat godlike in its summit. Its floodlights\n shed a vast oval of light out over the mesa, where the mile-long\n runways—no longer polished mirror-like as in the days of Dynamopolis'\n glory—stretched away into the darkness of the table land. A handful\n of odd ships—mere remnant of the hundreds that Pi Mesa port had\n berthed—huddled under the solenoid wickets, as if driven together by\n the chill of the thin, knife-like wind that blew across the mesa.", "Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the\n tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with\n his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his\n eyes.\n\n\n \"How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?\"\n\n\n \"Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?\"\n\n\n \"And why, Ryd?\"\n\n\n \"Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator.\" He hunched his narrow\n shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. \"Damn\n good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the\n physique for Mars—I might just have made it\nthen\n, but I thought the\n plant was going to open again and—\"", "\"I don't get it,\" mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had\n heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: \"The\n power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in\n the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis.\n It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—\"\n\n\n \"To hell with that!\" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up\n slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. \"Don't\n you know you're repeating damnable lies?\"\n\n\n Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a\n passion shocking after his smooth calm:", "The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were\n asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis'\n which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen,\n these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For\n Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had\n been built to be the power center of North America.\n\n\n The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged\n himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone\n recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something\n else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with\n surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face.\n\n\n Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer\n and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was\n heartened.", "The young astrogator stared at him and at the gun through masking\n goggles; then he sank into his seat with a slow shudder. \"Why, yes,\" he\n said as if in wonder, \"I do.\"\nIII\nShahrazad\ndrove steadily forward into deep space, vibrating slightly\n to the tremendous thrust of her powerful engines. The small, cramped\n cabin was stiflingly hot to the three armored men who sat before its\n banked dials, watching their steady needles.", "\"No use now for firearms,\" said Mury. \"All the guns we could carry\n wouldn't help us if we were caught out there. That gun is just a\n stage property for the little play we're going to give in about three\n minutes—when you'll act a guardsman escorting me, a Poligerent of\n Dynamopolis, aboard the towship\nShahrazad\n.\"\n\n\n For a moment Ryd felt relief—he had hazily imagined that Mury's hatred\n of Mars and all things Martian might have led him to try to sabotage\n the Martian warship which lay somewhere on the runways beyond the long,\n low buildings, and which would be closely guarded. But the towship\n would also be guarded ... he shivered in the cold, dry night air.", "He had to repeat the command, in tones that snapped with menace, before\n they started with fumbling, rebellious hands to strip their armor from\n themselves. The burly engineer was muttering phrases of obscene fervor;\n the weedy young pilot was wild-eyed. The blond astrogator, sitting\n still masked and apparently unmoved, demanded:\n\n\n \"What do you think you're trying to do?\"\n\n\n \"What do\nyou\nthink?\" demanded Mury in return. \"I'm taking the ship\n into space. On schedule and on course—to meet the power shell.\" The\n flame gun moved with a jerk. \"And as for you—what's your name?\"\n\n\n \"Yet Arliess.\"\n\n\n \"You want to make the trip alive, don't you, Yet Arliess?\"", "\"They're unarmed, harmless. They aren't your police with built-in\n weapons. Only the humans are dangerous. But we've got to move. For\n God's sake, take it easy.\"\n\n\n Ryd licked dry lips. \"Are we going—out into space?\"\n\n\n \"Where else?\" said Mury.\nThe official-looking individual in the expensive topcoat and sport hat\n had reached the starboard airlock of the towship before anyone thought\n to question his authorization, escorted as he was by a blue-uniformed\n guardsman. When another sentry, pacing between runways a hundred yards\n from the squat space vessel, paused to wonder, it was—as it came\n about—just a little too late.", "Mury's voice broke through that steady murmur, coming from Ryd's right.\n \"You can unfasten your anticlamps, Ryd,\" he said dryly. \"That doesn't\n mean you,\" to the young navigator, on his other hand as he sat in\n the pilot's seat with his pressure-clamps thrown back and his gloved\n hands free to caress the multiplex controls before him. Clipped to the\n sloping dash at his left elbow was a loaded flame gun.\n\n\n Ryd emerged, with much bungling, from his padded clamps, and shook his\n head groggily as he ran a hand through his slightly thinning hair. He\n ventured shakily, \"Where are we?\"" ], [ "The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on\n his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: \"So you're Ryd Randl.\"\nRyd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any\n plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody\n he had ever known—an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a\n beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for\n the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the\n face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and\n almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray\n cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'.\n\n\n \"Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you.\"", "Outside, between lightless buildings, the still cold closed in on\n them. They kept walking—so fast that Ryd began to lose his breath,\n long-accustomed though his lungs were to the high, thin air.\n\n\n \"So you're Ryd Randl,\" repeated the stranger after a moment's silence.\n \"I might have known you. But I'd almost given up finding you tonight.\"\n\n\n Ryd tried feebly to wrench free, stumbled. \"Look,\" he gasped. \"If\n you're a cop, say so!\"\n\n\n The other laughed shortly. \"No. I'm just a man about to offer you a\n chance. For a come-back, Ryd—a chance to live again.... My name—you\n can call me Mury.\"", "Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his\n volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to\n placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever\n happened....\n\n\n After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and\n whined, \"Where ... where we going now?\"\n\n\n Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the\n gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he\n pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn\n seemed breaking over Pi Mesa.\nII\n\n\n \"One blow for freedom!\" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell\n upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had\n killed the guard.", "Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing\n certainly—if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by\n this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as\nWe\nnever took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing,\n desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and\n panclasm—that was\nWe\n.\n\n\n The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with\n an effort, said, \"Sure.\" A moment later it struck him that the\n monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, \"I got nothing to\n lose, see?\" It was, he realized, the cold truth.\n\n\n \"You won't lose,\" said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with\n which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they\n had come.", "\"All right, Ryd,\" he said coolly. \"Trade clothes with this fellow. I've\n brought you this far—you're taking me the rest of the way.\"\n\n\n The rest of the way.\n\n\n Ryd was still panting, and his side was paining from the strenuous\n exertion of the long climb up the side of the mountain, far from the\n guarded highway. His fingers, numbed by the cold of the high, thin air,\n shook as he knelt and fumbled with the zippers of the dead guard's\n uniform. The belted gun, however, was heavy and oddly comforting as\n he clumsily buckled it about his hips. He knew enough of weapons\n to recognize this as, not the usual paralyzer, but a flame pistol,\n powerful and deadly. He let his hand linger on its butt; then strong\n fingers tightened on his bony wrist, and he looked up with a start into\n the sardonic black eyes of the Panclast.", "Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in\n this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few\n men who talked his language. He burst out: \"They wouldn't take me, damn\n them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't\n have a drag with any of the Poligerents.\"\n\n\n \"I know all about your record,\" said Mury softly.\n\n\n Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old\n kicked-dog manner. \"How do you know? And what's it to you?\"\nAll at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him\n squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far\n from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet\n Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile\n twisted Mury's thin lips.", "Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, \"Didn't you hear that ship\n that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars—the\n escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming\n in again.\" He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his\n shoulder: \"You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again.\n Jobs for all the bums in this town—even for you.\"\n\n\n He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear\n his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again,\n huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio\n man—no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit\n of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and\n then took it away. He drank still more deeply.", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nRyd Randl stood, slouching a little, in the darkened footway, and\n watched the sky over Dynamopolis come alive with searchlights. The\n shuttered glow of Burshis' Stumble Inn was only a few yards off to his\n right, but even that lodestone failed before the novel interest of a\n ship about to ground in the one-time Port of Ten Thousand Ships.", "Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the\n tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with\n his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his\n eyes.\n\n\n \"How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?\"\n\n\n \"Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?\"\n\n\n \"And why, Ryd?\"\n\n\n \"Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator.\" He hunched his narrow\n shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. \"Damn\n good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the\n physique for Mars—I might just have made it\nthen\n, but I thought the\n plant was going to open again and—\"", "The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were\n asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis'\n which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen,\n these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For\n Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had\n been built to be the power center of North America.\n\n\n The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged\n himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone\n recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something\n else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with\n surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face.\n\n\n Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer\n and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was\n heartened.", "Above, Ryd Randl waited in the lock, flattened against the curved\n wall, white and jittering. The inner door was shut, an impenetrable\n countersunk mirror of metal.\n\n\n \"Cover him, Ryd,\" ordered Mury flatly. In obedience Ryd lugged out\n the heavy flame pistol and pointed it; his finger was dangerously\n tremulous on the firing lever. He moistened his lips to voice his\n fears; but Mury, pocketing the other gun, threw the three-way switch on\n the side panel, the switch that should have controlled the inner lock.\n\n\n Nothing happened.", "\"What's the idea?\" demanded Ryd, his small store of natural courage\n floated to the top by alcohol.\n\n\n The other seemed to realize that he was getting ahead of himself.\n He leaned back slightly, drew a deep breath, and said slowly and\n distinctly. \"Would you care to make some money, my friend?\"\n\n\n \"\nHuh?\nWhy, yeh—I guess so—\"\n\n\n \"Then come with me.\" The hand still on his arm was insistent. In his\n daze, Ryd let himself be drawn away from the bar into the sluggish\n crowd; then he suddenly remembered his unfinished drink, and made\n frantic gestures. Deliberately misunderstanding, the tall stranger\n fumbled briefly, tossed a coin on the counter-top, and hustled Ryd out,\n past the blue-and-gold-lit\nmeloderge\nthat was softly pouring out its\n endlessly changing music, through the swinging doors into the dark.", "Ryd had blacked out, darkness washing into his eyes and consciousness\n draining from his head, as the space ship had pitched out into\n emptiness over the end of the runway on Pi Mesa and Mury had cut in the\n maindrive. Pressure greater than anything he had ever felt had crushed\n him; his voice had been snatched from his lips by those terrible forces\n and lost beneath the opening thunder of the three-inch tubes. Up and\n up, while the acceleration climbed to seven gravities—and Ryd had lost\n every sensation, not to regain them until Earth was dropping away under\n the towship's keel.\n\n\n A single gravity held them back and down in the tilted seats, and the\n control panels seemed to curve half above them, their banks of lights\n confused with the stars coldly through the great nose window. In the\n control room all sounds impinged on a background made up of the insect\n hum of air-purifiers, the almost supersonic whine of the fast-spinning\n gyroscopes somewhere behind them, the deep continuous growl of the\n engines.", "The body lay between them, face down on the graveled way in the inky\n moon-shadow. On one side Pi Mesa stretched away two hundred yards to\n drop sharply into the night; on the other was the unlighted mass of the\n long, continuous, low buildings that housed now unused fuel pumps and\n servicing equipment. Looking down at the dead huddle at his feet, a\n little stunned by the reality of this, Ryd knew that he was in it now.\n He was caught in the machinery.\n\n\n Mury hefted the length of steel in his hand once more, as if testing\n the weight that had crushed a man's skull so easily. Then, with a short\n wrist-flip, he sent it flying into the dried weeds which had over-grown\n the aero field on the mesa's rim during the summer months after State\n order had grounded all fliers in America.", "Now he made out the flicker of the braking drive a mile or so\n overhead, and presently soft motor thunder came down to blanket the\n almost lightless city with sound. A beam swayed through the throbbing\n darkness, caught the descending ship and held it, a small gleaming\n minnow slipping through the dark heavens. A faint glow rose from Pi\n Mesa, where the spaceport lay above the city, as a runway lighted\n up—draining the last reserves of the city's stored power, but draining\n them gladly now that, in those autumn days of the historic year 819,\n relief was in sight.\n\n\n Ryd shrugged limply; the play was meaningless to him. He turned to\n shuffle down the inviting ramp into the glowing interior of Burshis'\n dive.", "Ryd backed—the white, tense face of the prisoner holding his own\n nervous gaze—and, almost out of the lock, stumbled over the metal\n pressure rings. And the gun was out of his unsure grip, clattering\n somewhere near his slithering feet, as he started to fall.\n\n\n He saw the guardsman hurl himself forward; then he was flung spinning,\n back against the engine-room door. In a flash, even as he struggled\n to keep on his feet, he saw the man in the airlock coming up from a\n crouch, shifting the pistol in his right hand to reach its firing\n lever; he saw Mury sidestep swiftly and throw the master control switch\n outside.\n\n\n The inner lock whooshed shut, barely missing Ryd. At the same instant,\n the flame gun lighted locks and passage with one terrific flash, and a\n scorched, discolored spot appeared on the beveled metal of the opposite\n lock a foot from Mury's right shoulder.", "\"Say, Burshis,\" he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his\n back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so\n that his jowls quivered.\n\n\n \"No loans,\" he said flatly. \"But just one on the house, Ryd.\"\n\n\n The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it\n convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, \"What you\n setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since—\"", "Mury had melted into the shadow a few yards away. There was a light\n scraping, then a green flame sputtered, briefly lighting up his hands\n and face, and narrowing at once to a thin, singing needle of light.\n He had turned a pocket electron torch against the lock-mechanism of a\n small, disused metal door.\nRyd watched in painful suspense. There was no sound in his ears save\n for the hard, dry shrilling of the ray as it bit into the steel. It\n seemed to be crying:\nrun, run\n—but he remembered the power that knew\n how to punish better than the law, and stood still, shivering.", "\"I don't get it,\" mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had\n heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: \"The\n power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in\n the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis.\n It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—\"\n\n\n \"To hell with that!\" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up\n slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. \"Don't\n you know you're repeating damnable lies?\"\n\n\n Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a\n passion shocking after his smooth calm:", "Mury's voice broke through that steady murmur, coming from Ryd's right.\n \"You can unfasten your anticlamps, Ryd,\" he said dryly. \"That doesn't\n mean you,\" to the young navigator, on his other hand as he sat in\n the pilot's seat with his pressure-clamps thrown back and his gloved\n hands free to caress the multiplex controls before him. Clipped to the\n sloping dash at his left elbow was a loaded flame gun.\n\n\n Ryd emerged, with much bungling, from his padded clamps, and shook his\n head groggily as he ran a hand through his slightly thinning hair. He\n ventured shakily, \"Where are we?\"" ], [ "\"Say, Burshis,\" he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his\n back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so\n that his jowls quivered.\n\n\n \"No loans,\" he said flatly. \"But just one on the house, Ryd.\"\n\n\n The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it\n convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, \"What you\n setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since—\"", "The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were\n asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis'\n which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen,\n these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For\n Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had\n been built to be the power center of North America.\n\n\n The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged\n himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone\n recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something\n else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with\n surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face.\n\n\n Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer\n and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was\n heartened.", "Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, \"Didn't you hear that ship\n that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars—the\n escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming\n in again.\" He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his\n shoulder: \"You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again.\n Jobs for all the bums in this town—even for you.\"\n\n\n He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear\n his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again,\n huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio\n man—no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit\n of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and\n then took it away. He drank still more deeply.", "Now he made out the flicker of the braking drive a mile or so\n overhead, and presently soft motor thunder came down to blanket the\n almost lightless city with sound. A beam swayed through the throbbing\n darkness, caught the descending ship and held it, a small gleaming\n minnow slipping through the dark heavens. A faint glow rose from Pi\n Mesa, where the spaceport lay above the city, as a runway lighted\n up—draining the last reserves of the city's stored power, but draining\n them gladly now that, in those autumn days of the historic year 819,\n relief was in sight.\n\n\n Ryd shrugged limply; the play was meaningless to him. He turned to\n shuffle down the inviting ramp into the glowing interior of Burshis'\n dive.", "Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his\n volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to\n placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever\n happened....\n\n\n After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and\n whined, \"Where ... where we going now?\"\n\n\n Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the\n gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he\n pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn\n seemed breaking over Pi Mesa.\nII\n\n\n \"One blow for freedom!\" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell\n upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had\n killed the guard.", "Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the\n tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with\n his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his\n eyes.\n\n\n \"How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?\"\n\n\n \"Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?\"\n\n\n \"And why, Ryd?\"\n\n\n \"Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator.\" He hunched his narrow\n shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. \"Damn\n good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the\n physique for Mars—I might just have made it\nthen\n, but I thought the\n plant was going to open again and—\"", "The guard turned and swung briskly off to intercept the oddly-behaving\n pair, hand crowding the butt of his pistol, for he was growing\n uneasy. His alarm mounted rapidly, till he nearly sprained an ankle\n in sprinting across the last of the two intervening runways, between\n the solenoid wickets. Those metal arches, crowding one on the other\n in perspective, formed a tunnel that effectively shielded the\nShahrazad's\nairlocks from more distant view; the gang of notables\n attracted by the occasion was already being shepherded back to safety\n by the Communications guards, whose attention was thus well taken up.\n\n\n The slight man in guardsman's blue glanced over his shoulder and\n vanished abruptly into the circular lock. His companion wheeled on the\n topmost step, looking down with some irritation on his unhandsome face,\n but with no apparent doubt of his command of the situation.\n\n\n \"Yes?\" he inquired frostily.", "Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in\n this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few\n men who talked his language. He burst out: \"They wouldn't take me, damn\n them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't\n have a drag with any of the Poligerents.\"\n\n\n \"I know all about your record,\" said Mury softly.\n\n\n Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old\n kicked-dog manner. \"How do you know? And what's it to you?\"\nAll at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him\n squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far\n from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet\n Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile\n twisted Mury's thin lips.", "The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on\n his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: \"So you're Ryd Randl.\"\nRyd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any\n plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody\n he had ever known—an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a\n beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for\n the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the\n face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and\n almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray\n cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'.\n\n\n \"Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you.\"", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nRyd Randl stood, slouching a little, in the darkened footway, and\n watched the sky over Dynamopolis come alive with searchlights. The\n shuttered glow of Burshis' Stumble Inn was only a few yards off to his\n right, but even that lodestone failed before the novel interest of a\n ship about to ground in the one-time Port of Ten Thousand Ships.", "\"No use now for firearms,\" said Mury. \"All the guns we could carry\n wouldn't help us if we were caught out there. That gun is just a\n stage property for the little play we're going to give in about three\n minutes—when you'll act a guardsman escorting me, a Poligerent of\n Dynamopolis, aboard the towship\nShahrazad\n.\"\n\n\n For a moment Ryd felt relief—he had hazily imagined that Mury's hatred\n of Mars and all things Martian might have led him to try to sabotage\n the Martian warship which lay somewhere on the runways beyond the long,\n low buildings, and which would be closely guarded. But the towship\n would also be guarded ... he shivered in the cold, dry night air.", "Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing\n certainly—if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by\n this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as\nWe\nnever took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing,\n desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and\n panclasm—that was\nWe\n.\n\n\n The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with\n an effort, said, \"Sure.\" A moment later it struck him that the\n monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, \"I got nothing to\n lose, see?\" It was, he realized, the cold truth.\n\n\n \"You won't lose,\" said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with\n which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they\n had come.", "\"Relax,\" said Mury in a low voice. \"Nothing's gone wrong. We'll be\n aboard the\nShahrazad\nwhen she lifts.\" For a moment his black eyes\n shifted, hardening, toward Runway Four. The Martian warship lay there\n beyond the solenoid, a spiteful hundred-foot swordfish of steel, with\n blind gunvalves, row on row, along its sleek sides and turret-blisters.\n It had not yet been tugged onto the turntable; it could not be leaving\n again very soon, though Earth weight was undoubtedly incommoding\n its crew. About it a few figures stood that were stiffly erect and\n immobile, as tall as tall men. From head to toe they were scarlet.\n\n\n \"Robots!\" gasped Ryd, clutching his companion's arm convulsively.\n \"Martian soldier robots!\"", "\"I don't get it,\" mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had\n heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: \"The\n power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in\n the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis.\n It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—\"\n\n\n \"To hell with that!\" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up\n slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. \"Don't\n you know you're repeating damnable lies?\"\n\n\n Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a\n passion shocking after his smooth calm:", "The young astrogator stared at him and at the gun through masking\n goggles; then he sank into his seat with a slow shudder. \"Why, yes,\" he\n said as if in wonder, \"I do.\"\nIII\nShahrazad\ndrove steadily forward into deep space, vibrating slightly\n to the tremendous thrust of her powerful engines. The small, cramped\n cabin was stiflingly hot to the three armored men who sat before its\n banked dials, watching their steady needles.", "\"Wait,\" said Mury succinctly; he vanished up the spiral stair, his\n long legs taking two steps at a time. After an aching minute's silence,\n he was back. All was clear as seen from the turret-windows overhead.\n\n\n They emerged in shadow, hugging the wall. Almost a quarter of a mile to\n the right the megalith of the Communications Tower, crowned with many\n lights where the signal-men sat godlike in its summit. Its floodlights\n shed a vast oval of light out over the mesa, where the mile-long\n runways—no longer polished mirror-like as in the days of Dynamopolis'\n glory—stretched away into the darkness of the table land. A handful\n of odd ships—mere remnant of the hundreds that Pi Mesa port had\n berthed—huddled under the solenoid wickets, as if driven together by\n the chill of the thin, knife-like wind that blew across the mesa.", "Fully expecting official papers, signed and garnished with all the\n pompous seals of a chartered metropolis, the guard was dazed to receive\n instead a terrific left-handed foul to the pit of the stomach, and as\n he reeled dizzily, retching and clawing for his gun, to find that gun\n no longer holstered but in the hand of the self-styled Poligerent,\n pointing at its licensed owner.\n\n\n \"I think,\" Mury said quietly, flexing his left wrist with care the\n while his right held the gun steady, \"that you'd better come aboard\n with us.\"\n\n\n The guard was not more cowardly than the run of politically-appointed\n civic guardsmen. But a flame gun kills more frightfully than the\n ancient electric chair. He complied, grasping the railing with both\n hands as he stumbled before Mury up the gangway—for he was still very\n sick indeed, wholly apart from his bewilderment, which was enormous.", "Not far off, a half-dozen dignitaries, huddled close together in the\n midst of these Cyclopean man-made things that dwarfed their policies,\n their principles and ambitions, stood talking rather nervously with two\n officers, aristocratically gaudy in the scarlet of the Martian Fleet.\n Blue-clad guardsmen of Earth watched from a distance—watched boredly\n enough.\n\n\n And out on the steel-stripped tarmac, under the solenoid of Number\n Two Runway, lay a towship, backed like a stegosaur with its massive\n magnets—the\nShahrazad\n, panting like a dragon amid rolling clouds of\n steam. She was plainly ready to go into space. The bottom dropped out\n of Ryd's stomach before he realized that a warning at least must be\n sounded before the ship could lift. But that might come any moment now.", "Mury had melted into the shadow a few yards away. There was a light\n scraping, then a green flame sputtered, briefly lighting up his hands\n and face, and narrowing at once to a thin, singing needle of light.\n He had turned a pocket electron torch against the lock-mechanism of a\n small, disused metal door.\nRyd watched in painful suspense. There was no sound in his ears save\n for the hard, dry shrilling of the ray as it bit into the steel. It\n seemed to be crying:\nrun, run\n—but he remembered the power that knew\n how to punish better than the law, and stood still, shivering.", "The body lay between them, face down on the graveled way in the inky\n moon-shadow. On one side Pi Mesa stretched away two hundred yards to\n drop sharply into the night; on the other was the unlighted mass of the\n long, continuous, low buildings that housed now unused fuel pumps and\n servicing equipment. Looking down at the dead huddle at his feet, a\n little stunned by the reality of this, Ryd knew that he was in it now.\n He was caught in the machinery.\n\n\n Mury hefted the length of steel in his hand once more, as if testing\n the weight that had crushed a man's skull so easily. Then, with a short\n wrist-flip, he sent it flying into the dried weeds which had over-grown\n the aero field on the mesa's rim during the summer months after State\n order had grounded all fliers in America." ], [ "Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the\n tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with\n his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his\n eyes.\n\n\n \"How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?\"\n\n\n \"Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?\"\n\n\n \"And why, Ryd?\"\n\n\n \"Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator.\" He hunched his narrow\n shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. \"Damn\n good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the\n physique for Mars—I might just have made it\nthen\n, but I thought the\n plant was going to open again and—\"", "Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in\n this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few\n men who talked his language. He burst out: \"They wouldn't take me, damn\n them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't\n have a drag with any of the Poligerents.\"\n\n\n \"I know all about your record,\" said Mury softly.\n\n\n Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old\n kicked-dog manner. \"How do you know? And what's it to you?\"\nAll at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him\n squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far\n from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet\n Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile\n twisted Mury's thin lips.", "Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his\n volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to\n placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever\n happened....\n\n\n After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and\n whined, \"Where ... where we going now?\"\n\n\n Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the\n gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he\n pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn\n seemed breaking over Pi Mesa.\nII\n\n\n \"One blow for freedom!\" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell\n upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had\n killed the guard.", "Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing\n certainly—if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by\n this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as\nWe\nnever took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing,\n desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and\n panclasm—that was\nWe\n.\n\n\n The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with\n an effort, said, \"Sure.\" A moment later it struck him that the\n monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, \"I got nothing to\n lose, see?\" It was, he realized, the cold truth.\n\n\n \"You won't lose,\" said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with\n which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they\n had come.", "Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, \"Didn't you hear that ship\n that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars—the\n escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming\n in again.\" He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his\n shoulder: \"You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again.\n Jobs for all the bums in this town—even for you.\"\n\n\n He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear\n his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again,\n huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio\n man—no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit\n of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and\n then took it away. He drank still more deeply.", "\"I don't get it,\" mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had\n heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: \"The\n power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in\n the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis.\n It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—\"\n\n\n \"To hell with that!\" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up\n slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. \"Don't\n you know you're repeating damnable lies?\"\n\n\n Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a\n passion shocking after his smooth calm:", "The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on\n his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: \"So you're Ryd Randl.\"\nRyd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any\n plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody\n he had ever known—an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a\n beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for\n the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the\n face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and\n almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray\n cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'.\n\n\n \"Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you.\"", "\"What's the idea?\" demanded Ryd, his small store of natural courage\n floated to the top by alcohol.\n\n\n The other seemed to realize that he was getting ahead of himself.\n He leaned back slightly, drew a deep breath, and said slowly and\n distinctly. \"Would you care to make some money, my friend?\"\n\n\n \"\nHuh?\nWhy, yeh—I guess so—\"\n\n\n \"Then come with me.\" The hand still on his arm was insistent. In his\n daze, Ryd let himself be drawn away from the bar into the sluggish\n crowd; then he suddenly remembered his unfinished drink, and made\n frantic gestures. Deliberately misunderstanding, the tall stranger\n fumbled briefly, tossed a coin on the counter-top, and hustled Ryd out,\n past the blue-and-gold-lit\nmeloderge\nthat was softly pouring out its\n endlessly changing music, through the swinging doors into the dark.", "\"Don't misunderstand me, Ryd—you mean nothing at all to me as an\n individual. But you're one of a vast mass of men for whom I am\n working—the billions caught in the net of a corrupt government and\n sold as an economic prey to the ruthless masters of Mars. This, after\n they've borne all the hardships of a year of embargo, have offered\n their hands willingly to the rebuilding of decadent Earth, only to\n be refused by the weak leaders who can neither defy the enemy nor\n capitulate frankly to him.\"\n\n\n Ryd was dazed. His mind had never been constructed to cope with such\n ideas and the past few years had not improved its capabilities. \"Are\n you talking about the power cylinder?\" he demanded blurrily.\n\n\n Mury cast a glance toward the Milky Way as if to descry the Martian\n cargo projectile somewhere up among its countless lights. He said\n simply, \"Yes.\"", "Ryd had blacked out, darkness washing into his eyes and consciousness\n draining from his head, as the space ship had pitched out into\n emptiness over the end of the runway on Pi Mesa and Mury had cut in the\n maindrive. Pressure greater than anything he had ever felt had crushed\n him; his voice had been snatched from his lips by those terrible forces\n and lost beneath the opening thunder of the three-inch tubes. Up and\n up, while the acceleration climbed to seven gravities—and Ryd had lost\n every sensation, not to regain them until Earth was dropping away under\n the towship's keel.\n\n\n A single gravity held them back and down in the tilted seats, and the\n control panels seemed to curve half above them, their banks of lights\n confused with the stars coldly through the great nose window. In the\n control room all sounds impinged on a background made up of the insect\n hum of air-purifiers, the almost supersonic whine of the fast-spinning\n gyroscopes somewhere behind them, the deep continuous growl of the\n engines.", "Outside, between lightless buildings, the still cold closed in on\n them. They kept walking—so fast that Ryd began to lose his breath,\n long-accustomed though his lungs were to the high, thin air.\n\n\n \"So you're Ryd Randl,\" repeated the stranger after a moment's silence.\n \"I might have known you. But I'd almost given up finding you tonight.\"\n\n\n Ryd tried feebly to wrench free, stumbled. \"Look,\" he gasped. \"If\n you're a cop, say so!\"\n\n\n The other laughed shortly. \"No. I'm just a man about to offer you a\n chance. For a come-back, Ryd—a chance to live again.... My name—you\n can call me Mury.\"", "\"All right, Ryd,\" he said coolly. \"Trade clothes with this fellow. I've\n brought you this far—you're taking me the rest of the way.\"\n\n\n The rest of the way.\n\n\n Ryd was still panting, and his side was paining from the strenuous\n exertion of the long climb up the side of the mountain, far from the\n guarded highway. His fingers, numbed by the cold of the high, thin air,\n shook as he knelt and fumbled with the zippers of the dead guard's\n uniform. The belted gun, however, was heavy and oddly comforting as\n he clumsily buckled it about his hips. He knew enough of weapons\n to recognize this as, not the usual paralyzer, but a flame pistol,\n powerful and deadly. He let his hand linger on its butt; then strong\n fingers tightened on his bony wrist, and he looked up with a start into\n the sardonic black eyes of the Panclast.", "Mury's voice broke through that steady murmur, coming from Ryd's right.\n \"You can unfasten your anticlamps, Ryd,\" he said dryly. \"That doesn't\n mean you,\" to the young navigator, on his other hand as he sat in\n the pilot's seat with his pressure-clamps thrown back and his gloved\n hands free to caress the multiplex controls before him. Clipped to the\n sloping dash at his left elbow was a loaded flame gun.\n\n\n Ryd emerged, with much bungling, from his padded clamps, and shook his\n head groggily as he ran a hand through his slightly thinning hair. He\n ventured shakily, \"Where are we?\"", "\"Say, Burshis,\" he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his\n back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so\n that his jowls quivered.\n\n\n \"No loans,\" he said flatly. \"But just one on the house, Ryd.\"\n\n\n The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it\n convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, \"What you\n setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since—\"", "The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were\n asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis'\n which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen,\n these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For\n Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had\n been built to be the power center of North America.\n\n\n The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged\n himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone\n recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something\n else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with\n surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face.\n\n\n Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer\n and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was\n heartened.", "Mury took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His face was\n once more bleakly impassive; only the mouth was an ugly line. \"We're\n going to do something about it, you and I. Tonight. Now.\"\n\n\n Ryd was nearly sober. And wholly terrified. He got out chokingly,\n \"What's that mean?\"\n\n\n \"The power shell—isn't coming in as planned.\"\n\n\n \"You can't do that.\"\n\n\n \"\nWe\ncan,\" said Mury with a heavy accent on the first word. \"And there\n are fifty thousand credits in it for you, Ryd. Are you with us?\"", "The body lay between them, face down on the graveled way in the inky\n moon-shadow. On one side Pi Mesa stretched away two hundred yards to\n drop sharply into the night; on the other was the unlighted mass of the\n long, continuous, low buildings that housed now unused fuel pumps and\n servicing equipment. Looking down at the dead huddle at his feet, a\n little stunned by the reality of this, Ryd knew that he was in it now.\n He was caught in the machinery.\n\n\n Mury hefted the length of steel in his hand once more, as if testing\n the weight that had crushed a man's skull so easily. Then, with a short\n wrist-flip, he sent it flying into the dried weeds which had over-grown\n the aero field on the mesa's rim during the summer months after State\n order had grounded all fliers in America.", "The lock gave way and the door slipped aside. A light went on inside,\n and Ryd's heart stopped, backfired, and started again, raggedly. The\n same automatic mechanism that had turned the lights on had started the\n air-fresher, which picked up speed with a soft whine, sweeping out the\n long-stale atmosphere. Mury motioned to Ryd to follow him in.\nIt was still musty in the narrow passage, between the closely-pressing\n walls, beneath the great tubes and cable sheathings that fluted the\n ceiling overhead. A stairway spiraled up on the right to the control\n cupola somewhere overhead; even in the airtight gallery a thin film\n of dust lay on every step. Up there were the meters and switches of\n the disused terminal facilities of the spaceport; beyond the metal\n door marked CAUTION, just beyond the stairwell, lay the long runway\n down which the ships of space had glided to be serviced, refueled, and\n launched into the sky once more by now dormant machines.", "Now he made out the flicker of the braking drive a mile or so\n overhead, and presently soft motor thunder came down to blanket the\n almost lightless city with sound. A beam swayed through the throbbing\n darkness, caught the descending ship and held it, a small gleaming\n minnow slipping through the dark heavens. A faint glow rose from Pi\n Mesa, where the spaceport lay above the city, as a runway lighted\n up—draining the last reserves of the city's stored power, but draining\n them gladly now that, in those autumn days of the historic year 819,\n relief was in sight.\n\n\n Ryd shrugged limply; the play was meaningless to him. He turned to\n shuffle down the inviting ramp into the glowing interior of Burshis'\n dive.", "Ryd backed—the white, tense face of the prisoner holding his own\n nervous gaze—and, almost out of the lock, stumbled over the metal\n pressure rings. And the gun was out of his unsure grip, clattering\n somewhere near his slithering feet, as he started to fall.\n\n\n He saw the guardsman hurl himself forward; then he was flung spinning,\n back against the engine-room door. In a flash, even as he struggled\n to keep on his feet, he saw the man in the airlock coming up from a\n crouch, shifting the pistol in his right hand to reach its firing\n lever; he saw Mury sidestep swiftly and throw the master control switch\n outside.\n\n\n The inner lock whooshed shut, barely missing Ryd. At the same instant,\n the flame gun lighted locks and passage with one terrific flash, and a\n scorched, discolored spot appeared on the beveled metal of the opposite\n lock a foot from Mury's right shoulder." ], [ "Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in\n this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few\n men who talked his language. He burst out: \"They wouldn't take me, damn\n them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't\n have a drag with any of the Poligerents.\"\n\n\n \"I know all about your record,\" said Mury softly.\n\n\n Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old\n kicked-dog manner. \"How do you know? And what's it to you?\"\nAll at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him\n squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far\n from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet\n Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile\n twisted Mury's thin lips.", "Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing\n certainly—if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by\n this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as\nWe\nnever took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing,\n desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and\n panclasm—that was\nWe\n.\n\n\n The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with\n an effort, said, \"Sure.\" A moment later it struck him that the\n monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, \"I got nothing to\n lose, see?\" It was, he realized, the cold truth.\n\n\n \"You won't lose,\" said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with\n which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they\n had come.", "Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his\n volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to\n placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever\n happened....\n\n\n After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and\n whined, \"Where ... where we going now?\"\n\n\n Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the\n gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he\n pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn\n seemed breaking over Pi Mesa.\nII\n\n\n \"One blow for freedom!\" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell\n upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had\n killed the guard.", "Outside, between lightless buildings, the still cold closed in on\n them. They kept walking—so fast that Ryd began to lose his breath,\n long-accustomed though his lungs were to the high, thin air.\n\n\n \"So you're Ryd Randl,\" repeated the stranger after a moment's silence.\n \"I might have known you. But I'd almost given up finding you tonight.\"\n\n\n Ryd tried feebly to wrench free, stumbled. \"Look,\" he gasped. \"If\n you're a cop, say so!\"\n\n\n The other laughed shortly. \"No. I'm just a man about to offer you a\n chance. For a come-back, Ryd—a chance to live again.... My name—you\n can call me Mury.\"", "Mury had melted into the shadow a few yards away. There was a light\n scraping, then a green flame sputtered, briefly lighting up his hands\n and face, and narrowing at once to a thin, singing needle of light.\n He had turned a pocket electron torch against the lock-mechanism of a\n small, disused metal door.\nRyd watched in painful suspense. There was no sound in his ears save\n for the hard, dry shrilling of the ray as it bit into the steel. It\n seemed to be crying:\nrun, run\n—but he remembered the power that knew\n how to punish better than the law, and stood still, shivering.", "Mury took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His face was\n once more bleakly impassive; only the mouth was an ugly line. \"We're\n going to do something about it, you and I. Tonight. Now.\"\n\n\n Ryd was nearly sober. And wholly terrified. He got out chokingly,\n \"What's that mean?\"\n\n\n \"The power shell—isn't coming in as planned.\"\n\n\n \"You can't do that.\"\n\n\n \"\nWe\ncan,\" said Mury with a heavy accent on the first word. \"And there\n are fifty thousand credits in it for you, Ryd. Are you with us?\"", "Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the\n tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with\n his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his\n eyes.\n\n\n \"How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?\"\n\n\n \"Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?\"\n\n\n \"And why, Ryd?\"\n\n\n \"Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator.\" He hunched his narrow\n shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. \"Damn\n good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the\n physique for Mars—I might just have made it\nthen\n, but I thought the\n plant was going to open again and—\"", "The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on\n his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: \"So you're Ryd Randl.\"\nRyd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any\n plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody\n he had ever known—an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a\n beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for\n the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the\n face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and\n almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray\n cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'.\n\n\n \"Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you.\"", "\"I don't get it,\" mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had\n heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: \"The\n power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in\n the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis.\n It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—\"\n\n\n \"To hell with that!\" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up\n slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. \"Don't\n you know you're repeating damnable lies?\"\n\n\n Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a\n passion shocking after his smooth calm:", "\"No use now for firearms,\" said Mury. \"All the guns we could carry\n wouldn't help us if we were caught out there. That gun is just a\n stage property for the little play we're going to give in about three\n minutes—when you'll act a guardsman escorting me, a Poligerent of\n Dynamopolis, aboard the towship\nShahrazad\n.\"\n\n\n For a moment Ryd felt relief—he had hazily imagined that Mury's hatred\n of Mars and all things Martian might have led him to try to sabotage\n the Martian warship which lay somewhere on the runways beyond the long,\n low buildings, and which would be closely guarded. But the towship\n would also be guarded ... he shivered in the cold, dry night air.", "The lock gave way and the door slipped aside. A light went on inside,\n and Ryd's heart stopped, backfired, and started again, raggedly. The\n same automatic mechanism that had turned the lights on had started the\n air-fresher, which picked up speed with a soft whine, sweeping out the\n long-stale atmosphere. Mury motioned to Ryd to follow him in.\nIt was still musty in the narrow passage, between the closely-pressing\n walls, beneath the great tubes and cable sheathings that fluted the\n ceiling overhead. A stairway spiraled up on the right to the control\n cupola somewhere overhead; even in the airtight gallery a thin film\n of dust lay on every step. Up there were the meters and switches of\n the disused terminal facilities of the spaceport; beyond the metal\n door marked CAUTION, just beyond the stairwell, lay the long runway\n down which the ships of space had glided to be serviced, refueled, and\n launched into the sky once more by now dormant machines.", "\"What's the idea?\" demanded Ryd, his small store of natural courage\n floated to the top by alcohol.\n\n\n The other seemed to realize that he was getting ahead of himself.\n He leaned back slightly, drew a deep breath, and said slowly and\n distinctly. \"Would you care to make some money, my friend?\"\n\n\n \"\nHuh?\nWhy, yeh—I guess so—\"\n\n\n \"Then come with me.\" The hand still on his arm was insistent. In his\n daze, Ryd let himself be drawn away from the bar into the sluggish\n crowd; then he suddenly remembered his unfinished drink, and made\n frantic gestures. Deliberately misunderstanding, the tall stranger\n fumbled briefly, tossed a coin on the counter-top, and hustled Ryd out,\n past the blue-and-gold-lit\nmeloderge\nthat was softly pouring out its\n endlessly changing music, through the swinging doors into the dark.", "Mury's voice broke through that steady murmur, coming from Ryd's right.\n \"You can unfasten your anticlamps, Ryd,\" he said dryly. \"That doesn't\n mean you,\" to the young navigator, on his other hand as he sat in\n the pilot's seat with his pressure-clamps thrown back and his gloved\n hands free to caress the multiplex controls before him. Clipped to the\n sloping dash at his left elbow was a loaded flame gun.\n\n\n Ryd emerged, with much bungling, from his padded clamps, and shook his\n head groggily as he ran a hand through his slightly thinning hair. He\n ventured shakily, \"Where are we?\"", "The body lay between them, face down on the graveled way in the inky\n moon-shadow. On one side Pi Mesa stretched away two hundred yards to\n drop sharply into the night; on the other was the unlighted mass of the\n long, continuous, low buildings that housed now unused fuel pumps and\n servicing equipment. Looking down at the dead huddle at his feet, a\n little stunned by the reality of this, Ryd knew that he was in it now.\n He was caught in the machinery.\n\n\n Mury hefted the length of steel in his hand once more, as if testing\n the weight that had crushed a man's skull so easily. Then, with a short\n wrist-flip, he sent it flying into the dried weeds which had over-grown\n the aero field on the mesa's rim during the summer months after State\n order had grounded all fliers in America.", "\"Don't misunderstand me, Ryd—you mean nothing at all to me as an\n individual. But you're one of a vast mass of men for whom I am\n working—the billions caught in the net of a corrupt government and\n sold as an economic prey to the ruthless masters of Mars. This, after\n they've borne all the hardships of a year of embargo, have offered\n their hands willingly to the rebuilding of decadent Earth, only to\n be refused by the weak leaders who can neither defy the enemy nor\n capitulate frankly to him.\"\n\n\n Ryd was dazed. His mind had never been constructed to cope with such\n ideas and the past few years had not improved its capabilities. \"Are\n you talking about the power cylinder?\" he demanded blurrily.\n\n\n Mury cast a glance toward the Milky Way as if to descry the Martian\n cargo projectile somewhere up among its countless lights. He said\n simply, \"Yes.\"", "Ryd backed—the white, tense face of the prisoner holding his own\n nervous gaze—and, almost out of the lock, stumbled over the metal\n pressure rings. And the gun was out of his unsure grip, clattering\n somewhere near his slithering feet, as he started to fall.\n\n\n He saw the guardsman hurl himself forward; then he was flung spinning,\n back against the engine-room door. In a flash, even as he struggled\n to keep on his feet, he saw the man in the airlock coming up from a\n crouch, shifting the pistol in his right hand to reach its firing\n lever; he saw Mury sidestep swiftly and throw the master control switch\n outside.\n\n\n The inner lock whooshed shut, barely missing Ryd. At the same instant,\n the flame gun lighted locks and passage with one terrific flash, and a\n scorched, discolored spot appeared on the beveled metal of the opposite\n lock a foot from Mury's right shoulder.", "\"Say, Burshis,\" he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his\n back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so\n that his jowls quivered.\n\n\n \"No loans,\" he said flatly. \"But just one on the house, Ryd.\"\n\n\n The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it\n convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, \"What you\n setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since—\"", "\"All right, Ryd,\" he said coolly. \"Trade clothes with this fellow. I've\n brought you this far—you're taking me the rest of the way.\"\n\n\n The rest of the way.\n\n\n Ryd was still panting, and his side was paining from the strenuous\n exertion of the long climb up the side of the mountain, far from the\n guarded highway. His fingers, numbed by the cold of the high, thin air,\n shook as he knelt and fumbled with the zippers of the dead guard's\n uniform. The belted gun, however, was heavy and oddly comforting as\n he clumsily buckled it about his hips. He knew enough of weapons\n to recognize this as, not the usual paralyzer, but a flame pistol,\n powerful and deadly. He let his hand linger on its butt; then strong\n fingers tightened on his bony wrist, and he looked up with a start into\n the sardonic black eyes of the Panclast.", "The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were\n asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis'\n which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen,\n these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For\n Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had\n been built to be the power center of North America.\n\n\n The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged\n himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone\n recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something\n else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with\n surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face.\n\n\n Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer\n and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was\n heartened.", "Ryd had blacked out, darkness washing into his eyes and consciousness\n draining from his head, as the space ship had pitched out into\n emptiness over the end of the runway on Pi Mesa and Mury had cut in the\n maindrive. Pressure greater than anything he had ever felt had crushed\n him; his voice had been snatched from his lips by those terrible forces\n and lost beneath the opening thunder of the three-inch tubes. Up and\n up, while the acceleration climbed to seven gravities—and Ryd had lost\n every sensation, not to regain them until Earth was dropping away under\n the towship's keel.\n\n\n A single gravity held them back and down in the tilted seats, and the\n control panels seemed to curve half above them, their banks of lights\n confused with the stars coldly through the great nose window. In the\n control room all sounds impinged on a background made up of the insect\n hum of air-purifiers, the almost supersonic whine of the fast-spinning\n gyroscopes somewhere behind them, the deep continuous growl of the\n engines." ], [ "\"It's been tried before,\" said one of the masked men. He had a blond,\n youthful thatch and a smooth healthy face below the mask, together with\n an astrogator's triangled stars which made him\nex officio\nthe brains\n of the vessel. \"Stealing a ship—it can't be done any more.\"\n\n\n \"It's been done again,\" said Mury grimly. \"And you don't know the half\n of it. But—you will. I'll need you. As for your friends—\" The gun\n muzzle shifted slightly to indicate the pilot and the engineer. \"Out of\n those clamps. You're going to ride this out in the portside airlock.\"", "The guard turned and swung briskly off to intercept the oddly-behaving\n pair, hand crowding the butt of his pistol, for he was growing\n uneasy. His alarm mounted rapidly, till he nearly sprained an ankle\n in sprinting across the last of the two intervening runways, between\n the solenoid wickets. Those metal arches, crowding one on the other\n in perspective, formed a tunnel that effectively shielded the\nShahrazad's\nairlocks from more distant view; the gang of notables\n attracted by the occasion was already being shepherded back to safety\n by the Communications guards, whose attention was thus well taken up.\n\n\n The slight man in guardsman's blue glanced over his shoulder and\n vanished abruptly into the circular lock. His companion wheeled on the\n topmost step, looking down with some irritation on his unhandsome face,\n but with no apparent doubt of his command of the situation.\n\n\n \"Yes?\" he inquired frostily.", "As the two paced slowly across the runways, Ryd had a sense of\n protective isolation in the vast impersonality of the spaceport.\n Surely, in this Titanic desolation of metal slabs and flat-roofed\n buildings, dominated by the one great tower, total insignificance must\n mean safety for them.\n\n\n And indeed no guard challenged them. There were armed men watching\n for all intruders out on the desert beyond the runways, but once\n inside, Ryd's borrowed blue seemed to serve as passport enough.\n Nonetheless, the passport's knees were shaking when they stood at last,\n inconspicuous still, at the shadowed base of the Communications Tower.", "Not far off, a half-dozen dignitaries, huddled close together in the\n midst of these Cyclopean man-made things that dwarfed their policies,\n their principles and ambitions, stood talking rather nervously with two\n officers, aristocratically gaudy in the scarlet of the Martian Fleet.\n Blue-clad guardsmen of Earth watched from a distance—watched boredly\n enough.\n\n\n And out on the steel-stripped tarmac, under the solenoid of Number\n Two Runway, lay a towship, backed like a stegosaur with its massive\n magnets—the\nShahrazad\n, panting like a dragon amid rolling clouds of\n steam. She was plainly ready to go into space. The bottom dropped out\n of Ryd's stomach before he realized that a warning at least must be\n sounded before the ship could lift. But that might come any moment now.", "Fully expecting official papers, signed and garnished with all the\n pompous seals of a chartered metropolis, the guard was dazed to receive\n instead a terrific left-handed foul to the pit of the stomach, and as\n he reeled dizzily, retching and clawing for his gun, to find that gun\n no longer holstered but in the hand of the self-styled Poligerent,\n pointing at its licensed owner.\n\n\n \"I think,\" Mury said quietly, flexing his left wrist with care the\n while his right held the gun steady, \"that you'd better come aboard\n with us.\"\n\n\n The guard was not more cowardly than the run of politically-appointed\n civic guardsmen. But a flame gun kills more frightfully than the\n ancient electric chair. He complied, grasping the railing with both\n hands as he stumbled before Mury up the gangway—for he was still very\n sick indeed, wholly apart from his bewilderment, which was enormous.", "\"Oh, God. We're caught. We're trapped!\" The outer gangway had slid up,\n the lock wheezed shut, forming an impenetrable crypt of niosteel.\nMury smiled with supernal calm. \"We won't be here long,\" he said.\n Then, to quiet Ryd's fears, he went on: \"The central control panel and\n the three local switches inside, between, and outside the locks are\n on the circuit in that order. Unless the locks were closed from the\n switch just beyond the inner lock, that lock will open when the central\n control panel is cut out in preparation for lifting.\"\n\n\n Almost as he paused and drew breath, a light sprang out over the switch\n he had closed and the inner lock swung silently free of its gaskets.\n Ryd felt a trembling relief; but Mury's voice lashed out like a whip as\n he slipped cat-like into the passage.\n\n\n \"Keep him covered. Back out of the lock.\"", "\"No use now for firearms,\" said Mury. \"All the guns we could carry\n wouldn't help us if we were caught out there. That gun is just a\n stage property for the little play we're going to give in about three\n minutes—when you'll act a guardsman escorting me, a Poligerent of\n Dynamopolis, aboard the towship\nShahrazad\n.\"\n\n\n For a moment Ryd felt relief—he had hazily imagined that Mury's hatred\n of Mars and all things Martian might have led him to try to sabotage\n the Martian warship which lay somewhere on the runways beyond the long,\n low buildings, and which would be closely guarded. But the towship\n would also be guarded ... he shivered in the cold, dry night air.", "\"They're unarmed, harmless. They aren't your police with built-in\n weapons. Only the humans are dangerous. But we've got to move. For\n God's sake, take it easy.\"\n\n\n Ryd licked dry lips. \"Are we going—out into space?\"\n\n\n \"Where else?\" said Mury.\nThe official-looking individual in the expensive topcoat and sport hat\n had reached the starboard airlock of the towship before anyone thought\n to question his authorization, escorted as he was by a blue-uniformed\n guardsman. When another sentry, pacing between runways a hundred yards\n from the squat space vessel, paused to wonder, it was—as it came\n about—just a little too late.", "He had to repeat the command, in tones that snapped with menace, before\n they started with fumbling, rebellious hands to strip their armor from\n themselves. The burly engineer was muttering phrases of obscene fervor;\n the weedy young pilot was wild-eyed. The blond astrogator, sitting\n still masked and apparently unmoved, demanded:\n\n\n \"What do you think you're trying to do?\"\n\n\n \"What do\nyou\nthink?\" demanded Mury in return. \"I'm taking the ship\n into space. On schedule and on course—to meet the power shell.\" The\n flame gun moved with a jerk. \"And as for you—what's your name?\"\n\n\n \"Yet Arliess.\"\n\n\n \"You want to make the trip alive, don't you, Yet Arliess?\"", "Mury smiled slightly. \"Only our astrogator,\" he indicated Arliess,\n still masked and fettered, \"can tell you that with precision. I\n understand only enough of astrogational practice to make sure that he\n is holding to the course outlined on the log. For that matter ... he\n is an intelligent young man and if he were not blinded by notions of\n duty to an outworn system.... We are now somewhere near the orbit of\n the Moon. Isn't that right, Arliess?\"\n\n\n The other did not seem to hear; he sat staring blindly before him\n through his goggles at the slowly-changing chart, where cryptic lights\n burned, some moving like glowing paramecia along fine-traced luminous\n tracks.\n\n\n Mury too sat silent and immobile for a minute or more. Then, abruptly,\n he inclined his universal chair far to the right, and his long frame\n seemed to tense oddly. His finger stabbed out one of the sparks of\n light.", "Mury took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His face was\n once more bleakly impassive; only the mouth was an ugly line. \"We're\n going to do something about it, you and I. Tonight. Now.\"\n\n\n Ryd was nearly sober. And wholly terrified. He got out chokingly,\n \"What's that mean?\"\n\n\n \"The power shell—isn't coming in as planned.\"\n\n\n \"You can't do that.\"\n\n\n \"\nWe\ncan,\" said Mury with a heavy accent on the first word. \"And there\n are fifty thousand credits in it for you, Ryd. Are you with us?\"", "\"You damned clumsy little fool—\" said Mury with soft intensity. Then,\n while the air around the metal walls still buzzed and snapped with\n blue sparks, he whirled and went up the control-room gangway in two\n quick bounds. Even as he went the flame gun thundered again in the\n starboard airlock.\n\n\n Mury was just in time, for the pilot had been about to flash \"Ready\" to\n the Communications Tower when the explosions had given him pause. But\n the latter and his two companions were neither ready nor armed; clamped\n in their seats at the controls, already marked, they were helpless in\n an instant before the leveled menace of the gun. And the imprisoned\n guardsman, having wasted most of his charges, was helpless, too, in his\n little cell of steel.", "\"What goes on here?\" snapped the guard, frowning at the tall figure\n silhouetted against the glow in the airlock. \"The crew's signaled all\n aboard and the ship lifts in two minutes. You ought to be—\"\n\n\n \"I am Semul Mury, Poligerent for the City of Dynamopolis,\" interrupted\n the tall man with asperity. \"The City is naturally interested in the\n delivery of the power which will revivify our industries.\" He paused,\n sighed, shifting his weight to the next lower step of the gangway. \"I\n suppose you'll want to re-check my credentials?\"\n\n\n The guard was somewhat confused; a Poligerent, in ninth-century\n bureaucracy, was a force to be reckoned with. But he contrived to nod\n with an appearance of brusqueness.", "Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his\n volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to\n placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever\n happened....\n\n\n After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and\n whined, \"Where ... where we going now?\"\n\n\n Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the\n gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he\n pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn\n seemed breaking over Pi Mesa.\nII\n\n\n \"One blow for freedom!\" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell\n upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had\n killed the guard.", "\"Relax,\" said Mury in a low voice. \"Nothing's gone wrong. We'll be\n aboard the\nShahrazad\nwhen she lifts.\" For a moment his black eyes\n shifted, hardening, toward Runway Four. The Martian warship lay there\n beyond the solenoid, a spiteful hundred-foot swordfish of steel, with\n blind gunvalves, row on row, along its sleek sides and turret-blisters.\n It had not yet been tugged onto the turntable; it could not be leaving\n again very soon, though Earth weight was undoubtedly incommoding\n its crew. About it a few figures stood that were stiffly erect and\n immobile, as tall as tall men. From head to toe they were scarlet.\n\n\n \"Robots!\" gasped Ryd, clutching his companion's arm convulsively.\n \"Martian soldier robots!\"", "The lock gave way and the door slipped aside. A light went on inside,\n and Ryd's heart stopped, backfired, and started again, raggedly. The\n same automatic mechanism that had turned the lights on had started the\n air-fresher, which picked up speed with a soft whine, sweeping out the\n long-stale atmosphere. Mury motioned to Ryd to follow him in.\nIt was still musty in the narrow passage, between the closely-pressing\n walls, beneath the great tubes and cable sheathings that fluted the\n ceiling overhead. A stairway spiraled up on the right to the control\n cupola somewhere overhead; even in the airtight gallery a thin film\n of dust lay on every step. Up there were the meters and switches of\n the disused terminal facilities of the spaceport; beyond the metal\n door marked CAUTION, just beyond the stairwell, lay the long runway\n down which the ships of space had glided to be serviced, refueled, and\n launched into the sky once more by now dormant machines.", "\"Wait,\" said Mury succinctly; he vanished up the spiral stair, his\n long legs taking two steps at a time. After an aching minute's silence,\n he was back. All was clear as seen from the turret-windows overhead.\n\n\n They emerged in shadow, hugging the wall. Almost a quarter of a mile to\n the right the megalith of the Communications Tower, crowned with many\n lights where the signal-men sat godlike in its summit. Its floodlights\n shed a vast oval of light out over the mesa, where the mile-long\n runways—no longer polished mirror-like as in the days of Dynamopolis'\n glory—stretched away into the darkness of the table land. A handful\n of odd ships—mere remnant of the hundreds that Pi Mesa port had\n berthed—huddled under the solenoid wickets, as if driven together by\n the chill of the thin, knife-like wind that blew across the mesa.", "Mury's voice broke through that steady murmur, coming from Ryd's right.\n \"You can unfasten your anticlamps, Ryd,\" he said dryly. \"That doesn't\n mean you,\" to the young navigator, on his other hand as he sat in\n the pilot's seat with his pressure-clamps thrown back and his gloved\n hands free to caress the multiplex controls before him. Clipped to the\n sloping dash at his left elbow was a loaded flame gun.\n\n\n Ryd emerged, with much bungling, from his padded clamps, and shook his\n head groggily as he ran a hand through his slightly thinning hair. He\n ventured shakily, \"Where are we?\"", "Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in\n this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few\n men who talked his language. He burst out: \"They wouldn't take me, damn\n them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't\n have a drag with any of the Poligerents.\"\n\n\n \"I know all about your record,\" said Mury softly.\n\n\n Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old\n kicked-dog manner. \"How do you know? And what's it to you?\"\nAll at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him\n squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far\n from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet\n Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile\n twisted Mury's thin lips.", "\"All right, Ryd,\" he said coolly. \"Trade clothes with this fellow. I've\n brought you this far—you're taking me the rest of the way.\"\n\n\n The rest of the way.\n\n\n Ryd was still panting, and his side was paining from the strenuous\n exertion of the long climb up the side of the mountain, far from the\n guarded highway. His fingers, numbed by the cold of the high, thin air,\n shook as he knelt and fumbled with the zippers of the dead guard's\n uniform. The belted gun, however, was heavy and oddly comforting as\n he clumsily buckled it about his hips. He knew enough of weapons\n to recognize this as, not the usual paralyzer, but a flame pistol,\n powerful and deadly. He let his hand linger on its butt; then strong\n fingers tightened on his bony wrist, and he looked up with a start into\n the sardonic black eyes of the Panclast." ], [ "Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing\n certainly—if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by\n this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as\nWe\nnever took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing,\n desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and\n panclasm—that was\nWe\n.\n\n\n The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with\n an effort, said, \"Sure.\" A moment later it struck him that the\n monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, \"I got nothing to\n lose, see?\" It was, he realized, the cold truth.\n\n\n \"You won't lose,\" said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with\n which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they\n had come.", "Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in\n this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few\n men who talked his language. He burst out: \"They wouldn't take me, damn\n them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't\n have a drag with any of the Poligerents.\"\n\n\n \"I know all about your record,\" said Mury softly.\n\n\n Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old\n kicked-dog manner. \"How do you know? And what's it to you?\"\nAll at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him\n squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far\n from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet\n Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile\n twisted Mury's thin lips.", "Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his\n volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to\n placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever\n happened....\n\n\n After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and\n whined, \"Where ... where we going now?\"\n\n\n Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the\n gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he\n pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn\n seemed breaking over Pi Mesa.\nII\n\n\n \"One blow for freedom!\" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell\n upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had\n killed the guard.", "Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the\n tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with\n his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his\n eyes.\n\n\n \"How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?\"\n\n\n \"Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?\"\n\n\n \"And why, Ryd?\"\n\n\n \"Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator.\" He hunched his narrow\n shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. \"Damn\n good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the\n physique for Mars—I might just have made it\nthen\n, but I thought the\n plant was going to open again and—\"", "\"All right, Ryd,\" he said coolly. \"Trade clothes with this fellow. I've\n brought you this far—you're taking me the rest of the way.\"\n\n\n The rest of the way.\n\n\n Ryd was still panting, and his side was paining from the strenuous\n exertion of the long climb up the side of the mountain, far from the\n guarded highway. His fingers, numbed by the cold of the high, thin air,\n shook as he knelt and fumbled with the zippers of the dead guard's\n uniform. The belted gun, however, was heavy and oddly comforting as\n he clumsily buckled it about his hips. He knew enough of weapons\n to recognize this as, not the usual paralyzer, but a flame pistol,\n powerful and deadly. He let his hand linger on its butt; then strong\n fingers tightened on his bony wrist, and he looked up with a start into\n the sardonic black eyes of the Panclast.", "The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on\n his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: \"So you're Ryd Randl.\"\nRyd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any\n plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody\n he had ever known—an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a\n beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for\n the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the\n face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and\n almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray\n cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'.\n\n\n \"Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you.\"", "\"Don't misunderstand me, Ryd—you mean nothing at all to me as an\n individual. But you're one of a vast mass of men for whom I am\n working—the billions caught in the net of a corrupt government and\n sold as an economic prey to the ruthless masters of Mars. This, after\n they've borne all the hardships of a year of embargo, have offered\n their hands willingly to the rebuilding of decadent Earth, only to\n be refused by the weak leaders who can neither defy the enemy nor\n capitulate frankly to him.\"\n\n\n Ryd was dazed. His mind had never been constructed to cope with such\n ideas and the past few years had not improved its capabilities. \"Are\n you talking about the power cylinder?\" he demanded blurrily.\n\n\n Mury cast a glance toward the Milky Way as if to descry the Martian\n cargo projectile somewhere up among its countless lights. He said\n simply, \"Yes.\"", "Mury took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His face was\n once more bleakly impassive; only the mouth was an ugly line. \"We're\n going to do something about it, you and I. Tonight. Now.\"\n\n\n Ryd was nearly sober. And wholly terrified. He got out chokingly,\n \"What's that mean?\"\n\n\n \"The power shell—isn't coming in as planned.\"\n\n\n \"You can't do that.\"\n\n\n \"\nWe\ncan,\" said Mury with a heavy accent on the first word. \"And there\n are fifty thousand credits in it for you, Ryd. Are you with us?\"", "The body lay between them, face down on the graveled way in the inky\n moon-shadow. On one side Pi Mesa stretched away two hundred yards to\n drop sharply into the night; on the other was the unlighted mass of the\n long, continuous, low buildings that housed now unused fuel pumps and\n servicing equipment. Looking down at the dead huddle at his feet, a\n little stunned by the reality of this, Ryd knew that he was in it now.\n He was caught in the machinery.\n\n\n Mury hefted the length of steel in his hand once more, as if testing\n the weight that had crushed a man's skull so easily. Then, with a short\n wrist-flip, he sent it flying into the dried weeds which had over-grown\n the aero field on the mesa's rim during the summer months after State\n order had grounded all fliers in America.", "Ryd backed—the white, tense face of the prisoner holding his own\n nervous gaze—and, almost out of the lock, stumbled over the metal\n pressure rings. And the gun was out of his unsure grip, clattering\n somewhere near his slithering feet, as he started to fall.\n\n\n He saw the guardsman hurl himself forward; then he was flung spinning,\n back against the engine-room door. In a flash, even as he struggled\n to keep on his feet, he saw the man in the airlock coming up from a\n crouch, shifting the pistol in his right hand to reach its firing\n lever; he saw Mury sidestep swiftly and throw the master control switch\n outside.\n\n\n The inner lock whooshed shut, barely missing Ryd. At the same instant,\n the flame gun lighted locks and passage with one terrific flash, and a\n scorched, discolored spot appeared on the beveled metal of the opposite\n lock a foot from Mury's right shoulder.", "Outside, between lightless buildings, the still cold closed in on\n them. They kept walking—so fast that Ryd began to lose his breath,\n long-accustomed though his lungs were to the high, thin air.\n\n\n \"So you're Ryd Randl,\" repeated the stranger after a moment's silence.\n \"I might have known you. But I'd almost given up finding you tonight.\"\n\n\n Ryd tried feebly to wrench free, stumbled. \"Look,\" he gasped. \"If\n you're a cop, say so!\"\n\n\n The other laughed shortly. \"No. I'm just a man about to offer you a\n chance. For a come-back, Ryd—a chance to live again.... My name—you\n can call me Mury.\"", "\"What's the idea?\" demanded Ryd, his small store of natural courage\n floated to the top by alcohol.\n\n\n The other seemed to realize that he was getting ahead of himself.\n He leaned back slightly, drew a deep breath, and said slowly and\n distinctly. \"Would you care to make some money, my friend?\"\n\n\n \"\nHuh?\nWhy, yeh—I guess so—\"\n\n\n \"Then come with me.\" The hand still on his arm was insistent. In his\n daze, Ryd let himself be drawn away from the bar into the sluggish\n crowd; then he suddenly remembered his unfinished drink, and made\n frantic gestures. Deliberately misunderstanding, the tall stranger\n fumbled briefly, tossed a coin on the counter-top, and hustled Ryd out,\n past the blue-and-gold-lit\nmeloderge\nthat was softly pouring out its\n endlessly changing music, through the swinging doors into the dark.", "\"No use now for firearms,\" said Mury. \"All the guns we could carry\n wouldn't help us if we were caught out there. That gun is just a\n stage property for the little play we're going to give in about three\n minutes—when you'll act a guardsman escorting me, a Poligerent of\n Dynamopolis, aboard the towship\nShahrazad\n.\"\n\n\n For a moment Ryd felt relief—he had hazily imagined that Mury's hatred\n of Mars and all things Martian might have led him to try to sabotage\n the Martian warship which lay somewhere on the runways beyond the long,\n low buildings, and which would be closely guarded. But the towship\n would also be guarded ... he shivered in the cold, dry night air.", "Ryd had blacked out, darkness washing into his eyes and consciousness\n draining from his head, as the space ship had pitched out into\n emptiness over the end of the runway on Pi Mesa and Mury had cut in the\n maindrive. Pressure greater than anything he had ever felt had crushed\n him; his voice had been snatched from his lips by those terrible forces\n and lost beneath the opening thunder of the three-inch tubes. Up and\n up, while the acceleration climbed to seven gravities—and Ryd had lost\n every sensation, not to regain them until Earth was dropping away under\n the towship's keel.\n\n\n A single gravity held them back and down in the tilted seats, and the\n control panels seemed to curve half above them, their banks of lights\n confused with the stars coldly through the great nose window. In the\n control room all sounds impinged on a background made up of the insect\n hum of air-purifiers, the almost supersonic whine of the fast-spinning\n gyroscopes somewhere behind them, the deep continuous growl of the\n engines.", "The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were\n asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis'\n which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen,\n these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For\n Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had\n been built to be the power center of North America.\n\n\n The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged\n himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone\n recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something\n else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with\n surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face.\n\n\n Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer\n and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was\n heartened.", "Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, \"Didn't you hear that ship\n that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars—the\n escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming\n in again.\" He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his\n shoulder: \"You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again.\n Jobs for all the bums in this town—even for you.\"\n\n\n He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear\n his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again,\n huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio\n man—no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit\n of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and\n then took it away. He drank still more deeply.", "As the two paced slowly across the runways, Ryd had a sense of\n protective isolation in the vast impersonality of the spaceport.\n Surely, in this Titanic desolation of metal slabs and flat-roofed\n buildings, dominated by the one great tower, total insignificance must\n mean safety for them.\n\n\n And indeed no guard challenged them. There were armed men watching\n for all intruders out on the desert beyond the runways, but once\n inside, Ryd's borrowed blue seemed to serve as passport enough.\n Nonetheless, the passport's knees were shaking when they stood at last,\n inconspicuous still, at the shadowed base of the Communications Tower.", "\"Oh, God. We're caught. We're trapped!\" The outer gangway had slid up,\n the lock wheezed shut, forming an impenetrable crypt of niosteel.\nMury smiled with supernal calm. \"We won't be here long,\" he said.\n Then, to quiet Ryd's fears, he went on: \"The central control panel and\n the three local switches inside, between, and outside the locks are\n on the circuit in that order. Unless the locks were closed from the\n switch just beyond the inner lock, that lock will open when the central\n control panel is cut out in preparation for lifting.\"\n\n\n Almost as he paused and drew breath, a light sprang out over the switch\n he had closed and the inner lock swung silently free of its gaskets.\n Ryd felt a trembling relief; but Mury's voice lashed out like a whip as\n he slipped cat-like into the passage.\n\n\n \"Keep him covered. Back out of the lock.\"", "\"Say, Burshis,\" he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his\n back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so\n that his jowls quivered.\n\n\n \"No loans,\" he said flatly. \"But just one on the house, Ryd.\"\n\n\n The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it\n convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, \"What you\n setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since—\"", "\"I don't get it,\" mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had\n heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: \"The\n power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in\n the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis.\n It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—\"\n\n\n \"To hell with that!\" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up\n slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. \"Don't\n you know you're repeating damnable lies?\"\n\n\n Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a\n passion shocking after his smooth calm:" ] ]
test	63521	[ "What was the girl's top garment made of?", "Why did Noork grin when he found the ripe fruit in the tree that he climbed to escape his pursuers?", "What relationship between Gurn and Sarna is Noork trying to convey by referring to her as “Gurn’s father’s woman woman”?", "How did Noork get to Sekk?", "Which of the men conversing about the girl, while Noork listens, is content to be a slave?", "By when does Noork need to rescue Sarna to prevent her death?", "What is the significance of the carvings on the altar in the temple?", "How did the second of the two men blocking Noork’s entrance to the pit die?", "What was wrong with the prone guard making weird noises who was in the room Noork first entered after reaching the lower level of the Skull? " ]	[ [ "Woven cotton grown in the lush, well-watered valleys of Sekk.", "The girl's people customarily knitted briefs and halters from the local sheep-like creatures.", "A piece of skin from an animal.", "A piece of skin stripped from an enemy tribesman before he died." ], [ "Noork wanted to give some of the fruit to Sarna the next time they met.", "The soft pulp would adhere to invisibility cloaks and give him an advantage.", "He was very hungry, and the fruit was a good source of energy.", "Noork knew that the Misty Ones were fond of the fruit, and giving them some would be a good way to avoid a fight." ], [ "He is trying to say that she is Gurn's sister.", "He means that she is Gurn's father's mistress, but Gurn is in love with her.", "He is trying to say that she is the second wife of Gurn's father.", "He means that she is Gurn's father's sister's daughter, i.e. they are cousins." ], [ "He was on a scientific mission to Sekk, and a large, predatory bird that lives in the jungle valleys snatched him to take him back as food for its young, but it dropped him.", "He was on a short-run tourist ship for a day trip from Luna to Sekk, but the ship crashed and stranded him there.", "He was dropped off to start a new life by the giant bird called the Phoenix by most indigenous cultures, after he died in a fire.", "He came in the second of two rockets made by a war criminal that Noork had been pursuing on Earth, but the ship crashed and stranded him there." ], [ "The slave who we later learn is named Rold.", "The elderly slave.", "The Vasad weeding the field.", "Tholon Sarna." ], [ "Noork has plenty of time to make a good plan, because the offering will be selected at high noon of the first day after the full moon, and the moon is only a crescent right now.", "Before noon of that same day, when a girl will be selected as an offering.", "Noork has no more than an hour to rescue her because conditions in the pit are so horrible.", "Before the sun rises on the day after the perfect girl is selected as an offering - assuming that Sarna is that perfect girl." ], [ "The two statues represent the gods worshipped by the locals.", "As in Rome, where the she-wolf that raised the mythological twins Romulus and Remus was revered, here, a lion and a wolf were revered.", "The lion represents Luna, and the wolf represents the changing phases of Luna.", "The lion and wolf together represent the religious concept of peace through power." ], [ "He didn't die, but Noork knocked him out and he was out of the fight.", "He bled to death after Noork swung his sword and made a deep cut at the base of his neck.", "His neck was broken by the tumble down the staircase, entangled with Noork.", "His cervical spine was broken by Noork." ], [ "We can infer that he was snoring.", "We can infer that he was a member of a different race, and he spoke a language of burbles and snorts.", "We can infer that he was bleeding out from having his throat cut.", "We can infer that he was raping one of the slave girls in a noisy fashion." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Slowly he angled back and forth across the floor until his foot touched\n the soft material of the priest's discarded robe near the stairway\n entrance. He slipped the thongs of the transparent mask, called by the\n priest \"Uzdon's window\" over his hood, and then proceeded to don the\n new robe.\n\n\n \"My own robe is slit in a dozen places,\" he explained to the girl's\n curious violet eyes—-all that was visible through the narrow vision\n slot of her hood. He finished adjusting the outer robe and took the\n girl's hand.\n\n\n \"Come,\" he said, \"let us escape over the wall before the alarm is\n given.\"", "Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the\n tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,\n and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles\n that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made\n clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.\n\"Continue to work,\" he said to the young man. \"Do not be too surprised\n at what I am about to tell you, Rold.\" He paused and watched the golden\n man's rather stupid face intently.\n\n\n \"I am not a Misty One,\" Noork said. \"I killed the owner of this strange\n garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the\n girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke.\"", "The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going\n back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow\n and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle\n giant. Noork grinned.\n\n\n \"Tako, woman,\" he greeted her.\n\n\n \"Tako,\" she replied fearfully. \"Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you\n hunter or escaped slave?\"\n\n\n \"A friend,\" said Noork simply. \"It was I who killed the spotted\nnarl\nlast night when it attacked you.\"\n\n\n Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never\n far from the hilt of her hunting dagger.\n\n\n Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder\n of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin.", "Sword in hand he pushed inward from the shore and ended with a\n smothered exclamation against an unseen wall. Trees grew close up to\n the wall and a moment later he had climbed out along a horizontal\n branch beyond the wall's top, and was lowering his body with the aid of\n a braided leather rope to the ground beyond.\n\n\n He was in a cultivated field his feet and hands told him. And perhaps\n half a mile away, faintly illumined by torches and red clots of\n bonfires, towered a huge weathered white skull!\n\n\n Secure in the knowledge that he wore the invisible robes of a Misty\n One he found a solitary tree growing within the wall and climbed to a\n comfortable crotch. In less than a minute he was asleep.\n\n\n \"The new slave,\" a rough voice cut across his slumber abruptly, \"is the\n daughter of Tholon Dist the merchant.\"", "There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland\n by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the\n rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple\n skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the\n mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's\n valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and\n confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope\n hide.\n\n\n One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the\n metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined\n the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive\n timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a\n prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall.", "Sight of the girl's flowing brown hair and the graceful feminine\n contours of her smooth-limbed body beneath its skin-halter and the\n insignificant breech-clout, made his brow wrinkle with concentration.\n Not forever had he lived in this jungle world of valleys and ragged\n cliffs. Since he had learned the tongue of the hairy Vasads of forest,\n and the tongue of their gold-skinned leader, Gurn, the renegade, he had\n confirmed that belief.\n\n\n For a huge gleaming bird had carried him in its talons to the top of\n the cliff above their valley and from the rock fire had risen to devour\n the great bird. Somehow he had been flung clear and escaped the death\n of the mysterious bird-thing. And in his delirium he had babbled the\n words that caused the apish Vasads to name him Noork. Now he repeated\n them aloud.\n\n\n \"New York,\" he said, \"good ol' New York.\"", "The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies\n from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the\n chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the\n stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl,\n was held prisoner.\nThe steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water\n dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two\n sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was\n walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and\n toward this Noork made his way.\n\n\n He stood beside the door. \"Sarna,\" he called softly, \"Tholon Sarna.\"", "Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the\n sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork\n leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a\n moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.\n\n\n Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.\n Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and\n slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.\n\n\n \"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?\" Noork asked tensely.\n\n\n \"No,\" came the girl's low voice, \"I do not think so. I did not know\n that this priest was here until he appeared behind you.\" A slow smile\n crossed Noork's hidden features. \"His robe must be close by,\" he told\n the girl. \"He must have been stationed here because the priests feared\n the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners.\"", "\"It is Noork,\" he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go\n wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.\n\n\n \"The priest,\" hissed the girl.\n\n\n Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the\n spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he\n faced the burly priest of the Skull.\n\n\n Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield\n of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as\n he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.\n\n\n \"So,\" he said, \"to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do\n not trust your guards, then.\"", "\"Your hair is the color of the sun!\" she said. \"Your garb is Vasad, yet\n you speak the language of the true men.\" Her violet oddly slanting eyes\n opened yet wider. \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am Noork,\" the man told her. \"For many days have I dwelt among the\n wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for\n my friend.\"\n\n\n The girl impulsively took a step nearer. \"Gurn!\" she cried. \"Is he tall\n and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with\n human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?\"\n\n\n \"That is Gurn,\" admitted Noork shortly. \"He is also an exile from the\n walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told\n me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?\"", "The priest laughed. \"We also have robes of invisibility,\" he said, \"and\n the sacred window of Uzdon before our eyes.\" He snarled suddenly at the\n silent figure of the white man. \"Down on your knees, guard, and show me\n your face before I kill you!\"\n\n\n Noork raised his sword. \"Take my hood off if you dare, priest,\" he\n offered.\n\n\n The burly priest's answer was a bellow of rage and a lunge forward of\n his sword arm. Their swords clicked together and slid apart with the\n velvety smoothness of bronze on bronze. Noork's blade bit a chunk from\n the priest's conical shield, and in return received a slashing cut that\n drew blood from left shoulder to elbow.", "The girl was still talking much later, as they walked together along\n the game-trail. \"When my captors were but one day's march from their\n foul city of Bis the warriors of the city of Konto, through whose\n fertile valley we had journeyed by night, fell upon the slavers.\n\n\n \"And in the confusion of the attack five of us escaped. We returned\n toward the valley of Grath, but to avoid the intervening valley where\n our enemies, the men of Konto, lived, we swung close to the Lake of\n Uzdon. And the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull trailed us. I\n alone escaped.\"\n\n\n Noork lifted the short, broad-bladed sword that swung in its sheath\n at his belt and let it drop back into place with a satisfying whisper\n of flexible leather on steel. He looked toward the east where lay the\n mysterious long lake of the Misty Ones.", "\"Some day,\" he said reflectively, \"I am going to visit the island of\n the unseen evil beings who stole away your friends. Perhaps after I\n have taken you to your brother's hidden village, and from there to\n your city of Grath....\" He smiled.\n\n\n The girl did not answer. His keen ears, now that he was no longer\n speaking, caught the scuffing of feet into the jungle behind him. He\n turned quickly to find the girl had vanished, and with an instinctive\n reflex of motion he flung himself to one side into the dense wall of\n the jungle. As it was the unseen club thudded down along his right arm,\n numbing it so he felt nothing for some time.", "The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He\n was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white\n man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so\n his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed\n body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the\n slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon.\n\n\n The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple,\n and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch\n so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his\n mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful\n whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the\n main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his\n enemy.", "The slave's fingers flew. \"All the young female slaves are caged\n together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly\n overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to\n mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the\n next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great\n Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast.\" The slave's\n mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work.\n\n\n \"Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female\n slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple\n pits.\"\n\n\n \"It is enough,\" said Noork. \"I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared\n to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well.\"\n\n\n \"If you are captured,\" cried Rold nervously, \"you will not tell them I\n talked with you?\"", "These Misty Ones were living breathing creatures like himself! They\n were not gods, or demons, or even the ghostly servants of demons. He\n strung his bow quickly, the short powerful bow that Gurn had given him,\n and rained arrows down upon the cowering robed creatures.\n\n\n And the monsters fled. They fled down the trail or faded away into the\n jungle. All but one of them. The arrow had pierced a vital portion of\n this Misty One's body. He fell and moved no more.\n\n\n A moment later Noork was ripping the stained cloak and hood from the\n fallen creature, curious to learn what ghastly brute-thing hid beneath\n them. His lip curled at what he saw.", "\"It's Noork,\" he grunted. \"Why do I not see you?\"\n\n\n \"I have stolen the skin of a demon,\" answered the invisible man. \"Go to\n Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones\n can be trapped and skinned.\"\n\n\n \"Why you want their skins?\" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.\n\n\n \"Go to save Gurn's ...\" and here Noork was stumped for words. \"To save\n his father's woman woman,\" he managed at last. \"Father's woman woman\n called Sarna.\"\n\n\n And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the\n marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the\n jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake\n of Uzdon.", "In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging\n out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle\n on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion\n of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.\n\n\n So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that\n had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to\n battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.\n\n\n He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two\n warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous\n gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.\n Noork grinned.", "He moved swiftly to cross the wide stone-slabbed entry within the\n jaws, and a moment later was looking down into a sunken bowl whose\n rocky floor was a score of feet below where he stood. Now he saw the\n central raised altar where the gleam of precious stones and cunningly\n worked metal—gold, silver and brass—vied with the faded garish\n colors of the draperies beneath it. And on the same dais there loomed\n two beast-headed stone images, the lion-headed god a male and the\n wolf-headed shape a female.\n\n\n These then were the two blood hungry deities that the men of Zura\n worshipped—mighty Uzdon and his mate, Lornu!", "From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not\n snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed\n to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would\n not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the\n room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged\n into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer\n here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.\n\n\n Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the\n others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two\n others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering." ], [ "Noork squinted. So the Misty Ones were not entirely invisible. Pain\n was growing in his numbed arm now, but as it came so came strength. He\n climbed further out on the great branch to where sticky and overripe\n fruit hung heavy. With a grin he locked his legs upon the forking of\n the great limb and filled his arms with fruit.\n\n\n A barrage of the juicy fruit blanketed the misty shapes. Stains spread\n and grew. Patchy outlines took on a new color and sharpness. Noork\n found that he was pelting a half-dozen hooded and robed creatures whose\n arms and legs numbered the same as his own, and the last remnant of\n superstitious fear instilled in his bruised brain by the shaggy Vasads\n vanished.", "The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going\n back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow\n and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle\n giant. Noork grinned.\n\n\n \"Tako, woman,\" he greeted her.\n\n\n \"Tako,\" she replied fearfully. \"Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you\n hunter or escaped slave?\"\n\n\n \"A friend,\" said Noork simply. \"It was I who killed the spotted\nnarl\nlast night when it attacked you.\"\n\n\n Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never\n far from the hilt of her hunting dagger.\n\n\n Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder\n of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin.", "One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with,\n Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once\n there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down\n at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath.\nNoork\nAt first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no\n stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse\n of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all\n too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the\n Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied\n with the mud of the trail.", "Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the\n tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,\n and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles\n that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made\n clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.\n\"Continue to work,\" he said to the young man. \"Do not be too surprised\n at what I am about to tell you, Rold.\" He paused and watched the golden\n man's rather stupid face intently.\n\n\n \"I am not a Misty One,\" Noork said. \"I killed the owner of this strange\n garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the\n girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke.\"", "In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging\n out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle\n on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion\n of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.\n\n\n So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that\n had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to\n battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.\n\n\n He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two\n warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous\n gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.\n Noork grinned.", "\"It's Noork,\" he grunted. \"Why do I not see you?\"\n\n\n \"I have stolen the skin of a demon,\" answered the invisible man. \"Go to\n Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones\n can be trapped and skinned.\"\n\n\n \"Why you want their skins?\" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.\n\n\n \"Go to save Gurn's ...\" and here Noork was stumped for words. \"To save\n his father's woman woman,\" he managed at last. \"Father's woman woman\n called Sarna.\"\n\n\n And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the\n marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the\n jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake\n of Uzdon.", "The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the\n drying fabric of the mantle and donned it.\nUd tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from\n shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy.\n For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and\n the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal\n war.\n\n\n A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no\n enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath.\n\n\n \"You hunt too near the lake,\" called a voice. \"The demons of the water\n will trap you.\"\n\n\n Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled\n with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted.", "Sight of the girl's flowing brown hair and the graceful feminine\n contours of her smooth-limbed body beneath its skin-halter and the\n insignificant breech-clout, made his brow wrinkle with concentration.\n Not forever had he lived in this jungle world of valleys and ragged\n cliffs. Since he had learned the tongue of the hairy Vasads of forest,\n and the tongue of their gold-skinned leader, Gurn, the renegade, he had\n confirmed that belief.\n\n\n For a huge gleaming bird had carried him in its talons to the top of\n the cliff above their valley and from the rock fire had risen to devour\n the great bird. Somehow he had been flung clear and escaped the death\n of the mysterious bird-thing. And in his delirium he had babbled the\n words that caused the apish Vasads to name him Noork. Now he repeated\n them aloud.\n\n\n \"New York,\" he said, \"good ol' New York.\"", "Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew\n his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside.\n\n\n In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor\n sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and\n shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward\n impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his\n left.\n\n\n His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony\n structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his\n hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning\n gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon\n it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back.", "Noork laughed. \"You never saw me,\" he told the slave.\nThe skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the\n eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of\n rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for\n windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at\n three distinct levels.", "Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps\n that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and\n purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and\n feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the\n squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs\n fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing\n golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the\n brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast\n men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple.\n\n\n Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were\n stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the\n Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another\n of their number.", "The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He\n was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white\n man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so\n his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed\n body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the\n slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon.\n\n\n The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple,\n and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch\n so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his\n mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful\n whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the\n main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his\n enemy.", "Two words linked Noork with the past, the two words that the Vasads\n had slurred into his name: New York. And the battered wrist watch, its\n crystal and hands gone, were all that remained of his Earthly garb.\nNoork paddled the long flat dugout strongly away from the twilight\n shore toward the shadowy loom of the central island. Though he could\n not remember ever having held a paddle before he handled the ungainly\n blade well.\n\n\n After a time the clumsy prow of the craft rammed into a yielding\n cushion of mud, and Noork pulled the dugout out of the water into the\n roofing shelter of a clump of drooping trees growing at the water's\n edge.", "Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the\n sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork\n leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a\n moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.\n\n\n Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.\n Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and\n slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.\n\n\n \"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?\" Noork asked tensely.\n\n\n \"No,\" came the girl's low voice, \"I do not think so. I did not know\n that this priest was here until he appeared behind you.\" A slow smile\n crossed Noork's hidden features. \"His robe must be close by,\" he told\n the girl. \"He must have been stationed here because the priests feared\n the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners.\"", "From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not\n snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed\n to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would\n not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the\n room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged\n into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer\n here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.\n\n\n Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the\n others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two\n others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering.", "\"Your hair is the color of the sun!\" she said. \"Your garb is Vasad, yet\n you speak the language of the true men.\" Her violet oddly slanting eyes\n opened yet wider. \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am Noork,\" the man told her. \"For many days have I dwelt among the\n wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for\n my friend.\"\n\n\n The girl impulsively took a step nearer. \"Gurn!\" she cried. \"Is he tall\n and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with\n human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?\"\n\n\n \"That is Gurn,\" admitted Noork shortly. \"He is also an exile from the\n walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told\n me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?\"", "The priest laughed. \"We also have robes of invisibility,\" he said, \"and\n the sacred window of Uzdon before our eyes.\" He snarled suddenly at the\n silent figure of the white man. \"Down on your knees, guard, and show me\n your face before I kill you!\"\n\n\n Noork raised his sword. \"Take my hood off if you dare, priest,\" he\n offered.\n\n\n The burly priest's answer was a bellow of rage and a lunge forward of\n his sword arm. Their swords clicked together and slid apart with the\n velvety smoothness of bronze on bronze. Noork's blade bit a chunk from\n the priest's conical shield, and in return received a slashing cut that\n drew blood from left shoulder to elbow.", "To Noork it seemed that all the world must be like these savage jungle\n fastnesses of the twelve valleys and their central lake. He knew that\n the giant bird had carried him from some other place that his battered\n brain could not remember, but to him it seemed incredible that men\n could live elsewhere than in a jungle valley.\n\n\n But Noork was wrong. The giant bird that he had ridden into the depths\n of Sekk's fertile valleys had come from a far different world. And the\n other bird, for which Noork had been searching when he came upon the\n golden-skinned girl, was from another world also.\n\n\n The other bird had come from space several days before that of Noork,\n the Vasads had told him, and it had landed somewhere within the land\n of sunken valleys. Perhaps, thought Noork, the bird had come from the\n same valley that had once been his home. He would find the bird and\n perhaps then he could remember better who he had been.", "\"Indeed I do,\" cried Sarna. \"My brother said that we should no longer\n make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys.\"\n\n\n Noork smiled. \"I am glad he is your brother,\" he said simply.\nThe girl's eyes fell before his admiring gaze and warm blood flooded\n into her rounded neck and lovely cheeks.\n\n\n \"Brown-skinned one!\" she cried with a stamp of her shapely little\n sandalled foot. \"I am displeased with the noises of your tongue. I will\n listen to it no more.\"\n\n\n But her eyes gave the provocative lie to her words. This brown-skinned\n giant with the sunlit hair was very attractive....", "Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's\n name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty\n Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together\n beneath his tree.\n\n\n \"That matters not to the priests of Uzdon,\" the slighter of the\n two slaves, his hair almost white, said. \"If she be chosen for the\n sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than\n another's.\"\n\n\n \"But it is always the youngest and most beautiful,\" complained the\n younger slave, \"that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful\n woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one.\"\n\n\n The old man chuckled dryly. \"If your wife be plain,\" he said, \"neither\n master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a\n good woman—and ugly, my son.\"" ], [ "\"It's Noork,\" he grunted. \"Why do I not see you?\"\n\n\n \"I have stolen the skin of a demon,\" answered the invisible man. \"Go to\n Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones\n can be trapped and skinned.\"\n\n\n \"Why you want their skins?\" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.\n\n\n \"Go to save Gurn's ...\" and here Noork was stumped for words. \"To save\n his father's woman woman,\" he managed at last. \"Father's woman woman\n called Sarna.\"\n\n\n And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the\n marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the\n jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake\n of Uzdon.", "Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's\n name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty\n Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together\n beneath his tree.\n\n\n \"That matters not to the priests of Uzdon,\" the slighter of the\n two slaves, his hair almost white, said. \"If she be chosen for the\n sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than\n another's.\"\n\n\n \"But it is always the youngest and most beautiful,\" complained the\n younger slave, \"that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful\n woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one.\"\n\n\n The old man chuckled dryly. \"If your wife be plain,\" he said, \"neither\n master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a\n good woman—and ugly, my son.\"", "Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the\n tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,\n and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles\n that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made\n clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.\n\"Continue to work,\" he said to the young man. \"Do not be too surprised\n at what I am about to tell you, Rold.\" He paused and watched the golden\n man's rather stupid face intently.\n\n\n \"I am not a Misty One,\" Noork said. \"I killed the owner of this strange\n garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the\n girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke.\"", "\"Indeed I do,\" cried Sarna. \"My brother said that we should no longer\n make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys.\"\n\n\n Noork smiled. \"I am glad he is your brother,\" he said simply.\nThe girl's eyes fell before his admiring gaze and warm blood flooded\n into her rounded neck and lovely cheeks.\n\n\n \"Brown-skinned one!\" she cried with a stamp of her shapely little\n sandalled foot. \"I am displeased with the noises of your tongue. I will\n listen to it no more.\"\n\n\n But her eyes gave the provocative lie to her words. This brown-skinned\n giant with the sunlit hair was very attractive....", "The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going\n back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow\n and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle\n giant. Noork grinned.\n\n\n \"Tako, woman,\" he greeted her.\n\n\n \"Tako,\" she replied fearfully. \"Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you\n hunter or escaped slave?\"\n\n\n \"A friend,\" said Noork simply. \"It was I who killed the spotted\nnarl\nlast night when it attacked you.\"\n\n\n Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never\n far from the hilt of her hunting dagger.\n\n\n Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder\n of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin.", "There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland\n by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the\n rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple\n skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the\n mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's\n valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and\n confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope\n hide.\n\n\n One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the\n metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined\n the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive\n timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a\n prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall.", "Sight of the girl's flowing brown hair and the graceful feminine\n contours of her smooth-limbed body beneath its skin-halter and the\n insignificant breech-clout, made his brow wrinkle with concentration.\n Not forever had he lived in this jungle world of valleys and ragged\n cliffs. Since he had learned the tongue of the hairy Vasads of forest,\n and the tongue of their gold-skinned leader, Gurn, the renegade, he had\n confirmed that belief.\n\n\n For a huge gleaming bird had carried him in its talons to the top of\n the cliff above their valley and from the rock fire had risen to devour\n the great bird. Somehow he had been flung clear and escaped the death\n of the mysterious bird-thing. And in his delirium he had babbled the\n words that caused the apish Vasads to name him Noork. Now he repeated\n them aloud.\n\n\n \"New York,\" he said, \"good ol' New York.\"", "\"Your hair is the color of the sun!\" she said. \"Your garb is Vasad, yet\n you speak the language of the true men.\" Her violet oddly slanting eyes\n opened yet wider. \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am Noork,\" the man told her. \"For many days have I dwelt among the\n wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for\n my friend.\"\n\n\n The girl impulsively took a step nearer. \"Gurn!\" she cried. \"Is he tall\n and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with\n human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?\"\n\n\n \"That is Gurn,\" admitted Noork shortly. \"He is also an exile from the\n walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told\n me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?\"", "Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the\n sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork\n leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a\n moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.\n\n\n Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.\n Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and\n slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.\n\n\n \"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?\" Noork asked tensely.\n\n\n \"No,\" came the girl's low voice, \"I do not think so. I did not know\n that this priest was here until he appeared behind you.\" A slow smile\n crossed Noork's hidden features. \"His robe must be close by,\" he told\n the girl. \"He must have been stationed here because the priests feared\n the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners.\"", "The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies\n from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the\n chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the\n stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl,\n was held prisoner.\nThe steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water\n dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two\n sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was\n walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and\n toward this Noork made his way.\n\n\n He stood beside the door. \"Sarna,\" he called softly, \"Tholon Sarna.\"", "\"It is Noork,\" he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go\n wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.\n\n\n \"The priest,\" hissed the girl.\n\n\n Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the\n spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he\n faced the burly priest of the Skull.\n\n\n Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield\n of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as\n he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.\n\n\n \"So,\" he said, \"to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do\n not trust your guards, then.\"", "The slave's fingers flew. \"All the young female slaves are caged\n together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly\n overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to\n mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the\n next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great\n Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast.\" The slave's\n mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work.\n\n\n \"Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female\n slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple\n pits.\"\n\n\n \"It is enough,\" said Noork. \"I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared\n to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well.\"\n\n\n \"If you are captured,\" cried Rold nervously, \"you will not tell them I\n talked with you?\"", "In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging\n out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle\n on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion\n of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.\n\n\n So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that\n had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to\n battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.\n\n\n He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two\n warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous\n gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.\n Noork grinned.", "Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew\n his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside.\n\n\n In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor\n sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and\n shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward\n impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his\n left.\n\n\n His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony\n structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his\n hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning\n gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon\n it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back.", "To Noork it seemed that all the world must be like these savage jungle\n fastnesses of the twelve valleys and their central lake. He knew that\n the giant bird had carried him from some other place that his battered\n brain could not remember, but to him it seemed incredible that men\n could live elsewhere than in a jungle valley.\n\n\n But Noork was wrong. The giant bird that he had ridden into the depths\n of Sekk's fertile valleys had come from a far different world. And the\n other bird, for which Noork had been searching when he came upon the\n golden-skinned girl, was from another world also.\n\n\n The other bird had come from space several days before that of Noork,\n the Vasads had told him, and it had landed somewhere within the land\n of sunken valleys. Perhaps, thought Noork, the bird had come from the\n same valley that had once been his home. He would find the bird and\n perhaps then he could remember better who he had been.", "Small is Sekk, that second moon, less than five hundred miles in\n diameter, but the period of its revolution is thirty two hours, and its\n meaner mass retains a breathable atmosphere. There is life on Sekk,\n life that centers around the sunken star-shaped cavity where an oval\n lake gleams softly in the depths. And the eleven radiating tips of the\n starry abyss are valleys green with jungle growth.\n\n\n In one of those green valleys the white savage that the Vasads called\n Noork squatted in the ample crotch of a jungle giant and watched the\n trail forty feet below. For down there moved alertly a golden skinned\n girl, her only weapons a puny polished bow of yellow wood and a\n sheathed dagger.", "These Misty Ones were living breathing creatures like himself! They\n were not gods, or demons, or even the ghostly servants of demons. He\n strung his bow quickly, the short powerful bow that Gurn had given him,\n and rained arrows down upon the cowering robed creatures.\n\n\n And the monsters fled. They fled down the trail or faded away into the\n jungle. All but one of them. The arrow had pierced a vital portion of\n this Misty One's body. He fell and moved no more.\n\n\n A moment later Noork was ripping the stained cloak and hood from the\n fallen creature, curious to learn what ghastly brute-thing hid beneath\n them. His lip curled at what he saw.", "The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the\n drying fabric of the mantle and donned it.\nUd tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from\n shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy.\n For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and\n the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal\n war.\n\n\n A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no\n enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath.\n\n\n \"You hunt too near the lake,\" called a voice. \"The demons of the water\n will trap you.\"\n\n\n Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled\n with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted.", "Two words linked Noork with the past, the two words that the Vasads\n had slurred into his name: New York. And the battered wrist watch, its\n crystal and hands gone, were all that remained of his Earthly garb.\nNoork paddled the long flat dugout strongly away from the twilight\n shore toward the shadowy loom of the central island. Though he could\n not remember ever having held a paddle before he handled the ungainly\n blade well.\n\n\n After a time the clumsy prow of the craft rammed into a yielding\n cushion of mud, and Noork pulled the dugout out of the water into the\n roofing shelter of a clump of drooping trees growing at the water's\n edge.", "Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central\n ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower\n pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two\n upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty\n Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to\n the slaves and common citizens of the island.\n\n\n As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his\n sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it\n there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight\n of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two\n short swords rose to bar his way.\n\n\n \"None are to pass save the priests,\" spoke a voice from nowhere\n gruffly. \"The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the\n most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the\n sacrifice is chosen.\"" ], [ "To Noork it seemed that all the world must be like these savage jungle\n fastnesses of the twelve valleys and their central lake. He knew that\n the giant bird had carried him from some other place that his battered\n brain could not remember, but to him it seemed incredible that men\n could live elsewhere than in a jungle valley.\n\n\n But Noork was wrong. The giant bird that he had ridden into the depths\n of Sekk's fertile valleys had come from a far different world. And the\n other bird, for which Noork had been searching when he came upon the\n golden-skinned girl, was from another world also.\n\n\n The other bird had come from space several days before that of Noork,\n the Vasads had told him, and it had landed somewhere within the land\n of sunken valleys. Perhaps, thought Noork, the bird had come from the\n same valley that had once been his home. He would find the bird and\n perhaps then he could remember better who he had been.", "Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the\n tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,\n and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles\n that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made\n clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.\n\"Continue to work,\" he said to the young man. \"Do not be too surprised\n at what I am about to tell you, Rold.\" He paused and watched the golden\n man's rather stupid face intently.\n\n\n \"I am not a Misty One,\" Noork said. \"I killed the owner of this strange\n garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the\n girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke.\"", "\"It's Noork,\" he grunted. \"Why do I not see you?\"\n\n\n \"I have stolen the skin of a demon,\" answered the invisible man. \"Go to\n Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones\n can be trapped and skinned.\"\n\n\n \"Why you want their skins?\" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.\n\n\n \"Go to save Gurn's ...\" and here Noork was stumped for words. \"To save\n his father's woman woman,\" he managed at last. \"Father's woman woman\n called Sarna.\"\n\n\n And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the\n marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the\n jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake\n of Uzdon.", "Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps\n that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and\n purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and\n feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the\n squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs\n fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing\n golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the\n brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast\n men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple.\n\n\n Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were\n stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the\n Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another\n of their number.", "The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going\n back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow\n and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle\n giant. Noork grinned.\n\n\n \"Tako, woman,\" he greeted her.\n\n\n \"Tako,\" she replied fearfully. \"Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you\n hunter or escaped slave?\"\n\n\n \"A friend,\" said Noork simply. \"It was I who killed the spotted\nnarl\nlast night when it attacked you.\"\n\n\n Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never\n far from the hilt of her hunting dagger.\n\n\n Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder\n of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin.", "Small is Sekk, that second moon, less than five hundred miles in\n diameter, but the period of its revolution is thirty two hours, and its\n meaner mass retains a breathable atmosphere. There is life on Sekk,\n life that centers around the sunken star-shaped cavity where an oval\n lake gleams softly in the depths. And the eleven radiating tips of the\n starry abyss are valleys green with jungle growth.\n\n\n In one of those green valleys the white savage that the Vasads called\n Noork squatted in the ample crotch of a jungle giant and watched the\n trail forty feet below. For down there moved alertly a golden skinned\n girl, her only weapons a puny polished bow of yellow wood and a\n sheathed dagger.", "One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with,\n Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once\n there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down\n at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath.\nNoork\nAt first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no\n stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse\n of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all\n too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the\n Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied\n with the mud of the trail.", "The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the\n drying fabric of the mantle and donned it.\nUd tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from\n shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy.\n For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and\n the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal\n war.\n\n\n A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no\n enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath.\n\n\n \"You hunt too near the lake,\" called a voice. \"The demons of the water\n will trap you.\"\n\n\n Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled\n with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted.", "Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew\n his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside.\n\n\n In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor\n sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and\n shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward\n impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his\n left.\n\n\n His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony\n structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his\n hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning\n gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon\n it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back.", "Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's\n name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty\n Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together\n beneath his tree.\n\n\n \"That matters not to the priests of Uzdon,\" the slighter of the\n two slaves, his hair almost white, said. \"If she be chosen for the\n sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than\n another's.\"\n\n\n \"But it is always the youngest and most beautiful,\" complained the\n younger slave, \"that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful\n woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one.\"\n\n\n The old man chuckled dryly. \"If your wife be plain,\" he said, \"neither\n master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a\n good woman—and ugly, my son.\"", "The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies\n from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the\n chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the\n stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl,\n was held prisoner.\nThe steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water\n dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two\n sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was\n walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and\n toward this Noork made his way.\n\n\n He stood beside the door. \"Sarna,\" he called softly, \"Tholon Sarna.\"", "\"It is Noork,\" he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go\n wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.\n\n\n \"The priest,\" hissed the girl.\n\n\n Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the\n spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he\n faced the burly priest of the Skull.\n\n\n Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield\n of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as\n he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.\n\n\n \"So,\" he said, \"to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do\n not trust your guards, then.\"", "Noork laughed. \"You never saw me,\" he told the slave.\nThe skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the\n eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of\n rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for\n windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at\n three distinct levels.", "Two words linked Noork with the past, the two words that the Vasads\n had slurred into his name: New York. And the battered wrist watch, its\n crystal and hands gone, were all that remained of his Earthly garb.\nNoork paddled the long flat dugout strongly away from the twilight\n shore toward the shadowy loom of the central island. Though he could\n not remember ever having held a paddle before he handled the ungainly\n blade well.\n\n\n After a time the clumsy prow of the craft rammed into a yielding\n cushion of mud, and Noork pulled the dugout out of the water into the\n roofing shelter of a clump of drooping trees growing at the water's\n edge.", "Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the\n sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork\n leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a\n moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.\n\n\n Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.\n Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and\n slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.\n\n\n \"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?\" Noork asked tensely.\n\n\n \"No,\" came the girl's low voice, \"I do not think so. I did not know\n that this priest was here until he appeared behind you.\" A slow smile\n crossed Noork's hidden features. \"His robe must be close by,\" he told\n the girl. \"He must have been stationed here because the priests feared\n the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners.\"", "There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland\n by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the\n rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple\n skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the\n mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's\n valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and\n confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope\n hide.\n\n\n One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the\n metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined\n the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive\n timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a\n prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall.", "From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not\n snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed\n to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would\n not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the\n room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged\n into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer\n here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.\n\n\n Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the\n others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two\n others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering.", "Noork squinted. So the Misty Ones were not entirely invisible. Pain\n was growing in his numbed arm now, but as it came so came strength. He\n climbed further out on the great branch to where sticky and overripe\n fruit hung heavy. With a grin he locked his legs upon the forking of\n the great limb and filled his arms with fruit.\n\n\n A barrage of the juicy fruit blanketed the misty shapes. Stains spread\n and grew. Patchy outlines took on a new color and sharpness. Noork\n found that he was pelting a half-dozen hooded and robed creatures whose\n arms and legs numbered the same as his own, and the last remnant of\n superstitious fear instilled in his bruised brain by the shaggy Vasads\n vanished.", "In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging\n out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle\n on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion\n of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.\n\n\n So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that\n had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to\n battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.\n\n\n He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two\n warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous\n gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.\n Noork grinned.", "The girl was still talking much later, as they walked together along\n the game-trail. \"When my captors were but one day's march from their\n foul city of Bis the warriors of the city of Konto, through whose\n fertile valley we had journeyed by night, fell upon the slavers.\n\n\n \"And in the confusion of the attack five of us escaped. We returned\n toward the valley of Grath, but to avoid the intervening valley where\n our enemies, the men of Konto, lived, we swung close to the Lake of\n Uzdon. And the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull trailed us. I\n alone escaped.\"\n\n\n Noork lifted the short, broad-bladed sword that swung in its sheath\n at his belt and let it drop back into place with a satisfying whisper\n of flexible leather on steel. He looked toward the east where lay the\n mysterious long lake of the Misty Ones." ], [ "Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the\n tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,\n and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles\n that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made\n clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.\n\"Continue to work,\" he said to the young man. \"Do not be too surprised\n at what I am about to tell you, Rold.\" He paused and watched the golden\n man's rather stupid face intently.\n\n\n \"I am not a Misty One,\" Noork said. \"I killed the owner of this strange\n garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the\n girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke.\"", "\"Indeed I do,\" cried Sarna. \"My brother said that we should no longer\n make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys.\"\n\n\n Noork smiled. \"I am glad he is your brother,\" he said simply.\nThe girl's eyes fell before his admiring gaze and warm blood flooded\n into her rounded neck and lovely cheeks.\n\n\n \"Brown-skinned one!\" she cried with a stamp of her shapely little\n sandalled foot. \"I am displeased with the noises of your tongue. I will\n listen to it no more.\"\n\n\n But her eyes gave the provocative lie to her words. This brown-skinned\n giant with the sunlit hair was very attractive....", "The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going\n back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow\n and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle\n giant. Noork grinned.\n\n\n \"Tako, woman,\" he greeted her.\n\n\n \"Tako,\" she replied fearfully. \"Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you\n hunter or escaped slave?\"\n\n\n \"A friend,\" said Noork simply. \"It was I who killed the spotted\nnarl\nlast night when it attacked you.\"\n\n\n Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never\n far from the hilt of her hunting dagger.\n\n\n Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder\n of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin.", "Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's\n name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty\n Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together\n beneath his tree.\n\n\n \"That matters not to the priests of Uzdon,\" the slighter of the\n two slaves, his hair almost white, said. \"If she be chosen for the\n sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than\n another's.\"\n\n\n \"But it is always the youngest and most beautiful,\" complained the\n younger slave, \"that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful\n woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one.\"\n\n\n The old man chuckled dryly. \"If your wife be plain,\" he said, \"neither\n master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a\n good woman—and ugly, my son.\"", "The slave's fingers flew. \"All the young female slaves are caged\n together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly\n overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to\n mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the\n next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great\n Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast.\" The slave's\n mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work.\n\n\n \"Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female\n slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple\n pits.\"\n\n\n \"It is enough,\" said Noork. \"I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared\n to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well.\"\n\n\n \"If you are captured,\" cried Rold nervously, \"you will not tell them I\n talked with you?\"", "\"Your hair is the color of the sun!\" she said. \"Your garb is Vasad, yet\n you speak the language of the true men.\" Her violet oddly slanting eyes\n opened yet wider. \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am Noork,\" the man told her. \"For many days have I dwelt among the\n wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for\n my friend.\"\n\n\n The girl impulsively took a step nearer. \"Gurn!\" she cried. \"Is he tall\n and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with\n human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?\"\n\n\n \"That is Gurn,\" admitted Noork shortly. \"He is also an exile from the\n walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told\n me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?\"", "The girl was still talking much later, as they walked together along\n the game-trail. \"When my captors were but one day's march from their\n foul city of Bis the warriors of the city of Konto, through whose\n fertile valley we had journeyed by night, fell upon the slavers.\n\n\n \"And in the confusion of the attack five of us escaped. We returned\n toward the valley of Grath, but to avoid the intervening valley where\n our enemies, the men of Konto, lived, we swung close to the Lake of\n Uzdon. And the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull trailed us. I\n alone escaped.\"\n\n\n Noork lifted the short, broad-bladed sword that swung in its sheath\n at his belt and let it drop back into place with a satisfying whisper\n of flexible leather on steel. He looked toward the east where lay the\n mysterious long lake of the Misty Ones.", "Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps\n that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and\n purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and\n feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the\n squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs\n fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing\n golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the\n brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast\n men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple.\n\n\n Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were\n stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the\n Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another\n of their number.", "The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies\n from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the\n chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the\n stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl,\n was held prisoner.\nThe steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water\n dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two\n sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was\n walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and\n toward this Noork made his way.\n\n\n He stood beside the door. \"Sarna,\" he called softly, \"Tholon Sarna.\"", "\"It's Noork,\" he grunted. \"Why do I not see you?\"\n\n\n \"I have stolen the skin of a demon,\" answered the invisible man. \"Go to\n Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones\n can be trapped and skinned.\"\n\n\n \"Why you want their skins?\" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.\n\n\n \"Go to save Gurn's ...\" and here Noork was stumped for words. \"To save\n his father's woman woman,\" he managed at last. \"Father's woman woman\n called Sarna.\"\n\n\n And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the\n marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the\n jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake\n of Uzdon.", "Noork laughed. \"You never saw me,\" he told the slave.\nThe skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the\n eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of\n rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for\n windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at\n three distinct levels.", "\"It is Noork,\" he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go\n wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.\n\n\n \"The priest,\" hissed the girl.\n\n\n Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the\n spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he\n faced the burly priest of the Skull.\n\n\n Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield\n of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as\n he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.\n\n\n \"So,\" he said, \"to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do\n not trust your guards, then.\"", "In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging\n out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle\n on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion\n of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.\n\n\n So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that\n had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to\n battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.\n\n\n He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two\n warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous\n gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.\n Noork grinned.", "Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the\n sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork\n leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a\n moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.\n\n\n Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.\n Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and\n slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.\n\n\n \"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?\" Noork asked tensely.\n\n\n \"No,\" came the girl's low voice, \"I do not think so. I did not know\n that this priest was here until he appeared behind you.\" A slow smile\n crossed Noork's hidden features. \"His robe must be close by,\" he told\n the girl. \"He must have been stationed here because the priests feared\n the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners.\"", "Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central\n ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower\n pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two\n upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty\n Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to\n the slaves and common citizens of the island.\n\n\n As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his\n sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it\n there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight\n of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two\n short swords rose to bar his way.\n\n\n \"None are to pass save the priests,\" spoke a voice from nowhere\n gruffly. \"The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the\n most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the\n sacrifice is chosen.\"", "Sight of the girl's flowing brown hair and the graceful feminine\n contours of her smooth-limbed body beneath its skin-halter and the\n insignificant breech-clout, made his brow wrinkle with concentration.\n Not forever had he lived in this jungle world of valleys and ragged\n cliffs. Since he had learned the tongue of the hairy Vasads of forest,\n and the tongue of their gold-skinned leader, Gurn, the renegade, he had\n confirmed that belief.\n\n\n For a huge gleaming bird had carried him in its talons to the top of\n the cliff above their valley and from the rock fire had risen to devour\n the great bird. Somehow he had been flung clear and escaped the death\n of the mysterious bird-thing. And in his delirium he had babbled the\n words that caused the apish Vasads to name him Noork. Now he repeated\n them aloud.\n\n\n \"New York,\" he said, \"good ol' New York.\"", "The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the\n drying fabric of the mantle and donned it.\nUd tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from\n shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy.\n For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and\n the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal\n war.\n\n\n A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no\n enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath.\n\n\n \"You hunt too near the lake,\" called a voice. \"The demons of the water\n will trap you.\"\n\n\n Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled\n with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted.", "Rold's mouth hung open but his hard blunt fingers continued to work.\n \"The Misty Ones, then,\" he said slowly, \"are not immortal demons!\" He\n nodded his long-haired head. \"They are but men. They too can die.\"\n\n\n \"If you will help me, Rold,\" said Noork, \"to rescue the girl and escape\n from the island I will take you along.\"\n\n\n Rold was slow in answering. He had been born on the island and yet his\n people were from the valley city of Konto. He knew that they would\n welcome the news that the Misty Ones were not demons. And the girl from\n the enemy city of Grath was beautiful. Perhaps she would love him for\n helping to rescue her and come willingly with him to Konto.\n\n\n \"I will help you, stranger,\" he agreed.\n\n\n \"Then tell me of the Skull, and of the priests, and of the prison where\n Tholon Sarna is held.\"", "From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not\n snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed\n to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would\n not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the\n room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged\n into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer\n here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.\n\n\n Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the\n others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two\n others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering.", "The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He\n was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white\n man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so\n his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed\n body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the\n slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon.\n\n\n The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple,\n and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch\n so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his\n mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful\n whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the\n main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his\n enemy." ], [ "Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the\n tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,\n and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles\n that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made\n clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.\n\"Continue to work,\" he said to the young man. \"Do not be too surprised\n at what I am about to tell you, Rold.\" He paused and watched the golden\n man's rather stupid face intently.\n\n\n \"I am not a Misty One,\" Noork said. \"I killed the owner of this strange\n garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the\n girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke.\"", "There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland\n by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the\n rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple\n skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the\n mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's\n valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and\n confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope\n hide.\n\n\n One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the\n metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined\n the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive\n timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a\n prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall.", "The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies\n from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the\n chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the\n stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl,\n was held prisoner.\nThe steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water\n dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two\n sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was\n walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and\n toward this Noork made his way.\n\n\n He stood beside the door. \"Sarna,\" he called softly, \"Tholon Sarna.\"", "Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's\n name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty\n Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together\n beneath his tree.\n\n\n \"That matters not to the priests of Uzdon,\" the slighter of the\n two slaves, his hair almost white, said. \"If she be chosen for the\n sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than\n another's.\"\n\n\n \"But it is always the youngest and most beautiful,\" complained the\n younger slave, \"that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful\n woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one.\"\n\n\n The old man chuckled dryly. \"If your wife be plain,\" he said, \"neither\n master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a\n good woman—and ugly, my son.\"", "\"It's Noork,\" he grunted. \"Why do I not see you?\"\n\n\n \"I have stolen the skin of a demon,\" answered the invisible man. \"Go to\n Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones\n can be trapped and skinned.\"\n\n\n \"Why you want their skins?\" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.\n\n\n \"Go to save Gurn's ...\" and here Noork was stumped for words. \"To save\n his father's woman woman,\" he managed at last. \"Father's woman woman\n called Sarna.\"\n\n\n And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the\n marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the\n jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake\n of Uzdon.", "Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the\n sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork\n leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a\n moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.\n\n\n Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.\n Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and\n slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.\n\n\n \"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?\" Noork asked tensely.\n\n\n \"No,\" came the girl's low voice, \"I do not think so. I did not know\n that this priest was here until he appeared behind you.\" A slow smile\n crossed Noork's hidden features. \"His robe must be close by,\" he told\n the girl. \"He must have been stationed here because the priests feared\n the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners.\"", "The slave's fingers flew. \"All the young female slaves are caged\n together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly\n overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to\n mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the\n next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great\n Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast.\" The slave's\n mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work.\n\n\n \"Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female\n slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple\n pits.\"\n\n\n \"It is enough,\" said Noork. \"I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared\n to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well.\"\n\n\n \"If you are captured,\" cried Rold nervously, \"you will not tell them I\n talked with you?\"", "Rold's mouth hung open but his hard blunt fingers continued to work.\n \"The Misty Ones, then,\" he said slowly, \"are not immortal demons!\" He\n nodded his long-haired head. \"They are but men. They too can die.\"\n\n\n \"If you will help me, Rold,\" said Noork, \"to rescue the girl and escape\n from the island I will take you along.\"\n\n\n Rold was slow in answering. He had been born on the island and yet his\n people were from the valley city of Konto. He knew that they would\n welcome the news that the Misty Ones were not demons. And the girl from\n the enemy city of Grath was beautiful. Perhaps she would love him for\n helping to rescue her and come willingly with him to Konto.\n\n\n \"I will help you, stranger,\" he agreed.\n\n\n \"Then tell me of the Skull, and of the priests, and of the prison where\n Tholon Sarna is held.\"", "The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going\n back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow\n and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle\n giant. Noork grinned.\n\n\n \"Tako, woman,\" he greeted her.\n\n\n \"Tako,\" she replied fearfully. \"Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you\n hunter or escaped slave?\"\n\n\n \"A friend,\" said Noork simply. \"It was I who killed the spotted\nnarl\nlast night when it attacked you.\"\n\n\n Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never\n far from the hilt of her hunting dagger.\n\n\n Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder\n of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin.", "\"Indeed I do,\" cried Sarna. \"My brother said that we should no longer\n make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys.\"\n\n\n Noork smiled. \"I am glad he is your brother,\" he said simply.\nThe girl's eyes fell before his admiring gaze and warm blood flooded\n into her rounded neck and lovely cheeks.\n\n\n \"Brown-skinned one!\" she cried with a stamp of her shapely little\n sandalled foot. \"I am displeased with the noises of your tongue. I will\n listen to it no more.\"\n\n\n But her eyes gave the provocative lie to her words. This brown-skinned\n giant with the sunlit hair was very attractive....", "Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew\n his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside.\n\n\n In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor\n sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and\n shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward\n impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his\n left.\n\n\n His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony\n structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his\n hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning\n gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon\n it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back.", "In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging\n out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle\n on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion\n of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.\n\n\n So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that\n had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to\n battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.\n\n\n He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two\n warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous\n gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.\n Noork grinned.", "From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not\n snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed\n to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would\n not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the\n room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged\n into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer\n here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.\n\n\n Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the\n others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two\n others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering.", "Small is Sekk, that second moon, less than five hundred miles in\n diameter, but the period of its revolution is thirty two hours, and its\n meaner mass retains a breathable atmosphere. There is life on Sekk,\n life that centers around the sunken star-shaped cavity where an oval\n lake gleams softly in the depths. And the eleven radiating tips of the\n starry abyss are valleys green with jungle growth.\n\n\n In one of those green valleys the white savage that the Vasads called\n Noork squatted in the ample crotch of a jungle giant and watched the\n trail forty feet below. For down there moved alertly a golden skinned\n girl, her only weapons a puny polished bow of yellow wood and a\n sheathed dagger.", "To Noork it seemed that all the world must be like these savage jungle\n fastnesses of the twelve valleys and their central lake. He knew that\n the giant bird had carried him from some other place that his battered\n brain could not remember, but to him it seemed incredible that men\n could live elsewhere than in a jungle valley.\n\n\n But Noork was wrong. The giant bird that he had ridden into the depths\n of Sekk's fertile valleys had come from a far different world. And the\n other bird, for which Noork had been searching when he came upon the\n golden-skinned girl, was from another world also.\n\n\n The other bird had come from space several days before that of Noork,\n the Vasads had told him, and it had landed somewhere within the land\n of sunken valleys. Perhaps, thought Noork, the bird had come from the\n same valley that had once been his home. He would find the bird and\n perhaps then he could remember better who he had been.", "\"It is Noork,\" he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go\n wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.\n\n\n \"The priest,\" hissed the girl.\n\n\n Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the\n spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he\n faced the burly priest of the Skull.\n\n\n Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield\n of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as\n he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.\n\n\n \"So,\" he said, \"to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do\n not trust your guards, then.\"", "The girl was still talking much later, as they walked together along\n the game-trail. \"When my captors were but one day's march from their\n foul city of Bis the warriors of the city of Konto, through whose\n fertile valley we had journeyed by night, fell upon the slavers.\n\n\n \"And in the confusion of the attack five of us escaped. We returned\n toward the valley of Grath, but to avoid the intervening valley where\n our enemies, the men of Konto, lived, we swung close to the Lake of\n Uzdon. And the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull trailed us. I\n alone escaped.\"\n\n\n Noork lifted the short, broad-bladed sword that swung in its sheath\n at his belt and let it drop back into place with a satisfying whisper\n of flexible leather on steel. He looked toward the east where lay the\n mysterious long lake of the Misty Ones.", "Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central\n ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower\n pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two\n upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty\n Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to\n the slaves and common citizens of the island.\n\n\n As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his\n sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it\n there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight\n of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two\n short swords rose to bar his way.\n\n\n \"None are to pass save the priests,\" spoke a voice from nowhere\n gruffly. \"The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the\n most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the\n sacrifice is chosen.\"", "One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with,\n Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once\n there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down\n at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath.\nNoork\nAt first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no\n stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse\n of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all\n too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the\n Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied\n with the mud of the trail.", "Noork squinted. So the Misty Ones were not entirely invisible. Pain\n was growing in his numbed arm now, but as it came so came strength. He\n climbed further out on the great branch to where sticky and overripe\n fruit hung heavy. With a grin he locked his legs upon the forking of\n the great limb and filled his arms with fruit.\n\n\n A barrage of the juicy fruit blanketed the misty shapes. Stains spread\n and grew. Patchy outlines took on a new color and sharpness. Noork\n found that he was pelting a half-dozen hooded and robed creatures whose\n arms and legs numbered the same as his own, and the last remnant of\n superstitious fear instilled in his bruised brain by the shaggy Vasads\n vanished." ], [ "He moved swiftly to cross the wide stone-slabbed entry within the\n jaws, and a moment later was looking down into a sunken bowl whose\n rocky floor was a score of feet below where he stood. Now he saw the\n central raised altar where the gleam of precious stones and cunningly\n worked metal—gold, silver and brass—vied with the faded garish\n colors of the draperies beneath it. And on the same dais there loomed\n two beast-headed stone images, the lion-headed god a male and the\n wolf-headed shape a female.\n\n\n These then were the two blood hungry deities that the men of Zura\n worshipped—mighty Uzdon and his mate, Lornu!", "Noork laughed. \"You never saw me,\" he told the slave.\nThe skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the\n eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of\n rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for\n windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at\n three distinct levels.", "Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central\n ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower\n pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two\n upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty\n Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to\n the slaves and common citizens of the island.\n\n\n As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his\n sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it\n there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight\n of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two\n short swords rose to bar his way.\n\n\n \"None are to pass save the priests,\" spoke a voice from nowhere\n gruffly. \"The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the\n most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the\n sacrifice is chosen.\"", "Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps\n that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and\n purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and\n feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the\n squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs\n fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing\n golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the\n brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast\n men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple.\n\n\n Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were\n stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the\n Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another\n of their number.", "In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging\n out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle\n on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion\n of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.\n\n\n So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that\n had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to\n battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.\n\n\n He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two\n warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous\n gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.\n Noork grinned.", "The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He\n was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white\n man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so\n his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed\n body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the\n slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon.\n\n\n The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple,\n and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch\n so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his\n mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful\n whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the\n main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his\n enemy.", "The slave's fingers flew. \"All the young female slaves are caged\n together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly\n overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to\n mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the\n next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great\n Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast.\" The slave's\n mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work.\n\n\n \"Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female\n slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple\n pits.\"\n\n\n \"It is enough,\" said Noork. \"I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared\n to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well.\"\n\n\n \"If you are captured,\" cried Rold nervously, \"you will not tell them I\n talked with you?\"", "Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the\n sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork\n leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a\n moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.\n\n\n Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.\n Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and\n slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.\n\n\n \"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?\" Noork asked tensely.\n\n\n \"No,\" came the girl's low voice, \"I do not think so. I did not know\n that this priest was here until he appeared behind you.\" A slow smile\n crossed Noork's hidden features. \"His robe must be close by,\" he told\n the girl. \"He must have been stationed here because the priests feared\n the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners.\"", "The priest laughed. \"We also have robes of invisibility,\" he said, \"and\n the sacred window of Uzdon before our eyes.\" He snarled suddenly at the\n silent figure of the white man. \"Down on your knees, guard, and show me\n your face before I kill you!\"\n\n\n Noork raised his sword. \"Take my hood off if you dare, priest,\" he\n offered.\n\n\n The burly priest's answer was a bellow of rage and a lunge forward of\n his sword arm. Their swords clicked together and slid apart with the\n velvety smoothness of bronze on bronze. Noork's blade bit a chunk from\n the priest's conical shield, and in return received a slashing cut that\n drew blood from left shoulder to elbow.", "The Misty One was almost like himself. His skin was not so golden as\n that of the other men of Zuran, and his forehead was low and retreating\n in a bestial fashion. Upon his body there was more hair, and his face\n was made hideous with swollen colored scars that formed an irregular\n design. He wore a sleeveless tunic of light green and his only weapons\n were two long knives and a club.\n\n\n \"So,\" said Noork, \"the men of the island prey upon their own kind. And\n the Temple of Uzdon in the lake is guarded by cowardly warriors like\n this.\"\n\n\n Noork shrugged his shoulders and set off at a mile-devouring pace down\n the game trail toward the lake where the Temple of the Skull and its\n unseen guardians lay. Once he stopped at a leaf-choked pool to wash the\n stains from the dead man's foggy robe.", "Slowly he angled back and forth across the floor until his foot touched\n the soft material of the priest's discarded robe near the stairway\n entrance. He slipped the thongs of the transparent mask, called by the\n priest \"Uzdon's window\" over his hood, and then proceeded to don the\n new robe.\n\n\n \"My own robe is slit in a dozen places,\" he explained to the girl's\n curious violet eyes—-all that was visible through the narrow vision\n slot of her hood. He finished adjusting the outer robe and took the\n girl's hand.\n\n\n \"Come,\" he said, \"let us escape over the wall before the alarm is\n given.\"", "Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's\n name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty\n Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together\n beneath his tree.\n\n\n \"That matters not to the priests of Uzdon,\" the slighter of the\n two slaves, his hair almost white, said. \"If she be chosen for the\n sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than\n another's.\"\n\n\n \"But it is always the youngest and most beautiful,\" complained the\n younger slave, \"that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful\n woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one.\"\n\n\n The old man chuckled dryly. \"If your wife be plain,\" he said, \"neither\n master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a\n good woman—and ugly, my son.\"", "\"It is Noork,\" he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go\n wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.\n\n\n \"The priest,\" hissed the girl.\n\n\n Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the\n spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he\n faced the burly priest of the Skull.\n\n\n Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield\n of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as\n he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.\n\n\n \"So,\" he said, \"to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do\n not trust your guards, then.\"", "One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with,\n Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once\n there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down\n at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath.\nNoork\nAt first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no\n stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse\n of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all\n too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the\n Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied\n with the mud of the trail.", "From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not\n snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed\n to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would\n not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the\n room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged\n into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer\n here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.\n\n\n Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the\n others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two\n others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering.", "Sword in hand he pushed inward from the shore and ended with a\n smothered exclamation against an unseen wall. Trees grew close up to\n the wall and a moment later he had climbed out along a horizontal\n branch beyond the wall's top, and was lowering his body with the aid of\n a braided leather rope to the ground beyond.\n\n\n He was in a cultivated field his feet and hands told him. And perhaps\n half a mile away, faintly illumined by torches and red clots of\n bonfires, towered a huge weathered white skull!\n\n\n Secure in the knowledge that he wore the invisible robes of a Misty\n One he found a solitary tree growing within the wall and climbed to a\n comfortable crotch. In less than a minute he was asleep.\n\n\n \"The new slave,\" a rough voice cut across his slumber abruptly, \"is the\n daughter of Tholon Dist the merchant.\"", "The struggle overbalanced them. They rolled over and over down the\n shadowy stair, the stone smashing at their softer flesh unmercifully.\n For a moment the battling men brought up with a jolt as the obstruction\n of the first guard's corpse arrested their downward course, and then\n they jolted and jarred onward again from blood-slippery step to\n blood-slippery step.\n\n\n The sword clattered from the guardian Misty One's clutch and in the\n same instant Noork's steel fingers snapped the neck of the other man\n with a pistol-like report. The limp body beneath him struggled no more.\n He sprang to his feet and became aware of a torch-lighted doorway but a\n half-dozen paces further down along the descending shaft of steps.", "\"Some day,\" he said reflectively, \"I am going to visit the island of\n the unseen evil beings who stole away your friends. Perhaps after I\n have taken you to your brother's hidden village, and from there to\n your city of Grath....\" He smiled.\n\n\n The girl did not answer. His keen ears, now that he was no longer\n speaking, caught the scuffing of feet into the jungle behind him. He\n turned quickly to find the girl had vanished, and with an instinctive\n reflex of motion he flung himself to one side into the dense wall of\n the jungle. As it was the unseen club thudded down along his right arm,\n numbing it so he felt nothing for some time.", "\"Some night,\" snarled the slave, \"I'm going over the wall. Even the\n Misty Ones will not catch me once I have crossed the lake.\"\n\n\n \"Silence,\" hissed the white-haired man. \"Such talk is madness. We are\n safe here from wild animals. There are no spotted narls on the island\n of Manak. The priests of most holy Uzdon, and their invisible minions,\n are not unkind.\n\n\n \"Get at your weeding of the field, Rold,\" he finished, \"and I will\n complete my checking of the gardens.\"", "There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland\n by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the\n rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple\n skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the\n mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's\n valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and\n confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope\n hide.\n\n\n One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the\n metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined\n the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive\n timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a\n prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall." ], [ "Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew\n his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside.\n\n\n In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor\n sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and\n shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward\n impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his\n left.\n\n\n His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony\n structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his\n hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning\n gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon\n it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back.", "In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging\n out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle\n on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion\n of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.\n\n\n So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that\n had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to\n battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.\n\n\n He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two\n warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous\n gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.\n Noork grinned.", "The struggle overbalanced them. They rolled over and over down the\n shadowy stair, the stone smashing at their softer flesh unmercifully.\n For a moment the battling men brought up with a jolt as the obstruction\n of the first guard's corpse arrested their downward course, and then\n they jolted and jarred onward again from blood-slippery step to\n blood-slippery step.\n\n\n The sword clattered from the guardian Misty One's clutch and in the\n same instant Noork's steel fingers snapped the neck of the other man\n with a pistol-like report. The limp body beneath him struggled no more.\n He sprang to his feet and became aware of a torch-lighted doorway but a\n half-dozen paces further down along the descending shaft of steps.", "The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He\n was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white\n man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so\n his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed\n body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the\n slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon.\n\n\n The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple,\n and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch\n so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his\n mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful\n whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the\n main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his\n enemy.", "From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not\n snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed\n to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would\n not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the\n room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged\n into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer\n here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.\n\n\n Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the\n others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two\n others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering.", "Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the\n sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork\n leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a\n moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.\n\n\n Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.\n Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and\n slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.\n\n\n \"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?\" Noork asked tensely.\n\n\n \"No,\" came the girl's low voice, \"I do not think so. I did not know\n that this priest was here until he appeared behind you.\" A slow smile\n crossed Noork's hidden features. \"His robe must be close by,\" he told\n the girl. \"He must have been stationed here because the priests feared\n the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners.\"", "One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with,\n Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once\n there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down\n at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath.\nNoork\nAt first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no\n stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse\n of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all\n too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the\n Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied\n with the mud of the trail.", "The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies\n from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the\n chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the\n stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl,\n was held prisoner.\nThe steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water\n dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two\n sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was\n walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and\n toward this Noork made his way.\n\n\n He stood beside the door. \"Sarna,\" he called softly, \"Tholon Sarna.\"", "Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the\n tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,\n and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles\n that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made\n clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.\n\"Continue to work,\" he said to the young man. \"Do not be too surprised\n at what I am about to tell you, Rold.\" He paused and watched the golden\n man's rather stupid face intently.\n\n\n \"I am not a Misty One,\" Noork said. \"I killed the owner of this strange\n garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the\n girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke.\"", "\"It is Noork,\" he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go\n wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.\n\n\n \"The priest,\" hissed the girl.\n\n\n Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the\n spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he\n faced the burly priest of the Skull.\n\n\n Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield\n of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as\n he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.\n\n\n \"So,\" he said, \"to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do\n not trust your guards, then.\"", "Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps\n that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and\n purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and\n feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the\n squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs\n fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing\n golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the\n brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast\n men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple.\n\n\n Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were\n stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the\n Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another\n of their number.", "Noork laughed. \"You never saw me,\" he told the slave.\nThe skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the\n eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of\n rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for\n windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at\n three distinct levels.", "\"It's Noork,\" he grunted. \"Why do I not see you?\"\n\n\n \"I have stolen the skin of a demon,\" answered the invisible man. \"Go to\n Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones\n can be trapped and skinned.\"\n\n\n \"Why you want their skins?\" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.\n\n\n \"Go to save Gurn's ...\" and here Noork was stumped for words. \"To save\n his father's woman woman,\" he managed at last. \"Father's woman woman\n called Sarna.\"\n\n\n And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the\n marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the\n jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake\n of Uzdon.", "Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central\n ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower\n pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two\n upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty\n Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to\n the slaves and common citizens of the island.\n\n\n As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his\n sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it\n there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight\n of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two\n short swords rose to bar his way.\n\n\n \"None are to pass save the priests,\" spoke a voice from nowhere\n gruffly. \"The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the\n most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the\n sacrifice is chosen.\"", "Noork squinted. So the Misty Ones were not entirely invisible. Pain\n was growing in his numbed arm now, but as it came so came strength. He\n climbed further out on the great branch to where sticky and overripe\n fruit hung heavy. With a grin he locked his legs upon the forking of\n the great limb and filled his arms with fruit.\n\n\n A barrage of the juicy fruit blanketed the misty shapes. Stains spread\n and grew. Patchy outlines took on a new color and sharpness. Noork\n found that he was pelting a half-dozen hooded and robed creatures whose\n arms and legs numbered the same as his own, and the last remnant of\n superstitious fear instilled in his bruised brain by the shaggy Vasads\n vanished.", "The priest laughed. \"We also have robes of invisibility,\" he said, \"and\n the sacred window of Uzdon before our eyes.\" He snarled suddenly at the\n silent figure of the white man. \"Down on your knees, guard, and show me\n your face before I kill you!\"\n\n\n Noork raised his sword. \"Take my hood off if you dare, priest,\" he\n offered.\n\n\n The burly priest's answer was a bellow of rage and a lunge forward of\n his sword arm. Their swords clicked together and slid apart with the\n velvety smoothness of bronze on bronze. Noork's blade bit a chunk from\n the priest's conical shield, and in return received a slashing cut that\n drew blood from left shoulder to elbow.", "The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the\n drying fabric of the mantle and donned it.\nUd tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from\n shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy.\n For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and\n the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal\n war.\n\n\n A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no\n enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath.\n\n\n \"You hunt too near the lake,\" called a voice. \"The demons of the water\n will trap you.\"\n\n\n Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled\n with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted.", "The Misty One was almost like himself. His skin was not so golden as\n that of the other men of Zuran, and his forehead was low and retreating\n in a bestial fashion. Upon his body there was more hair, and his face\n was made hideous with swollen colored scars that formed an irregular\n design. He wore a sleeveless tunic of light green and his only weapons\n were two long knives and a club.\n\n\n \"So,\" said Noork, \"the men of the island prey upon their own kind. And\n the Temple of Uzdon in the lake is guarded by cowardly warriors like\n this.\"\n\n\n Noork shrugged his shoulders and set off at a mile-devouring pace down\n the game trail toward the lake where the Temple of the Skull and its\n unseen guardians lay. Once he stopped at a leaf-choked pool to wash the\n stains from the dead man's foggy robe.", "These Misty Ones were living breathing creatures like himself! They\n were not gods, or demons, or even the ghostly servants of demons. He\n strung his bow quickly, the short powerful bow that Gurn had given him,\n and rained arrows down upon the cowering robed creatures.\n\n\n And the monsters fled. They fled down the trail or faded away into the\n jungle. All but one of them. The arrow had pierced a vital portion of\n this Misty One's body. He fell and moved no more.\n\n\n A moment later Noork was ripping the stained cloak and hood from the\n fallen creature, curious to learn what ghastly brute-thing hid beneath\n them. His lip curled at what he saw.", "The slave's fingers flew. \"All the young female slaves are caged\n together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly\n overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to\n mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the\n next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great\n Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast.\" The slave's\n mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work.\n\n\n \"Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female\n slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple\n pits.\"\n\n\n \"It is enough,\" said Noork. \"I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared\n to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well.\"\n\n\n \"If you are captured,\" cried Rold nervously, \"you will not tell them I\n talked with you?\"" ], [ "In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging\n out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle\n on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion\n of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.\n\n\n So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that\n had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to\n battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.\n\n\n He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two\n warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous\n gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.\n Noork grinned.", "From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not\n snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed\n to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would\n not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the\n room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged\n into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer\n here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.\n\n\n Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the\n others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two\n others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering.", "The struggle overbalanced them. They rolled over and over down the\n shadowy stair, the stone smashing at their softer flesh unmercifully.\n For a moment the battling men brought up with a jolt as the obstruction\n of the first guard's corpse arrested their downward course, and then\n they jolted and jarred onward again from blood-slippery step to\n blood-slippery step.\n\n\n The sword clattered from the guardian Misty One's clutch and in the\n same instant Noork's steel fingers snapped the neck of the other man\n with a pistol-like report. The limp body beneath him struggled no more.\n He sprang to his feet and became aware of a torch-lighted doorway but a\n half-dozen paces further down along the descending shaft of steps.", "The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies\n from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the\n chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the\n stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl,\n was held prisoner.\nThe steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water\n dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two\n sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was\n walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and\n toward this Noork made his way.\n\n\n He stood beside the door. \"Sarna,\" he called softly, \"Tholon Sarna.\"", "Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew\n his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside.\n\n\n In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor\n sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and\n shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward\n impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his\n left.\n\n\n His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony\n structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his\n hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning\n gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon\n it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back.", "Noork laughed. \"You never saw me,\" he told the slave.\nThe skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the\n eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of\n rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for\n windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at\n three distinct levels.", "Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps\n that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and\n purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and\n feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the\n squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs\n fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing\n golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the\n brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast\n men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple.\n\n\n Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were\n stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the\n Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another\n of their number.", "\"It is Noork,\" he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go\n wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.\n\n\n \"The priest,\" hissed the girl.\n\n\n Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the\n spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he\n faced the burly priest of the Skull.\n\n\n Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield\n of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as\n he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.\n\n\n \"So,\" he said, \"to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do\n not trust your guards, then.\"", "\"It's Noork,\" he grunted. \"Why do I not see you?\"\n\n\n \"I have stolen the skin of a demon,\" answered the invisible man. \"Go to\n Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones\n can be trapped and skinned.\"\n\n\n \"Why you want their skins?\" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.\n\n\n \"Go to save Gurn's ...\" and here Noork was stumped for words. \"To save\n his father's woman woman,\" he managed at last. \"Father's woman woman\n called Sarna.\"\n\n\n And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the\n marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the\n jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake\n of Uzdon.", "Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the\n sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork\n leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a\n moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.\n\n\n Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.\n Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and\n slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.\n\n\n \"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?\" Noork asked tensely.\n\n\n \"No,\" came the girl's low voice, \"I do not think so. I did not know\n that this priest was here until he appeared behind you.\" A slow smile\n crossed Noork's hidden features. \"His robe must be close by,\" he told\n the girl. \"He must have been stationed here because the priests feared\n the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners.\"", "The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He\n was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white\n man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so\n his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed\n body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the\n slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon.\n\n\n The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple,\n and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch\n so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his\n mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful\n whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the\n main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his\n enemy.", "One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with,\n Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once\n there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down\n at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath.\nNoork\nAt first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no\n stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse\n of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all\n too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the\n Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied\n with the mud of the trail.", "Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central\n ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower\n pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two\n upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty\n Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to\n the slaves and common citizens of the island.\n\n\n As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his\n sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it\n there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight\n of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two\n short swords rose to bar his way.\n\n\n \"None are to pass save the priests,\" spoke a voice from nowhere\n gruffly. \"The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the\n most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the\n sacrifice is chosen.\"", "The Misty One was almost like himself. His skin was not so golden as\n that of the other men of Zuran, and his forehead was low and retreating\n in a bestial fashion. Upon his body there was more hair, and his face\n was made hideous with swollen colored scars that formed an irregular\n design. He wore a sleeveless tunic of light green and his only weapons\n were two long knives and a club.\n\n\n \"So,\" said Noork, \"the men of the island prey upon their own kind. And\n the Temple of Uzdon in the lake is guarded by cowardly warriors like\n this.\"\n\n\n Noork shrugged his shoulders and set off at a mile-devouring pace down\n the game trail toward the lake where the Temple of the Skull and its\n unseen guardians lay. Once he stopped at a leaf-choked pool to wash the\n stains from the dead man's foggy robe.", "The priest laughed. \"We also have robes of invisibility,\" he said, \"and\n the sacred window of Uzdon before our eyes.\" He snarled suddenly at the\n silent figure of the white man. \"Down on your knees, guard, and show me\n your face before I kill you!\"\n\n\n Noork raised his sword. \"Take my hood off if you dare, priest,\" he\n offered.\n\n\n The burly priest's answer was a bellow of rage and a lunge forward of\n his sword arm. Their swords clicked together and slid apart with the\n velvety smoothness of bronze on bronze. Noork's blade bit a chunk from\n the priest's conical shield, and in return received a slashing cut that\n drew blood from left shoulder to elbow.", "Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the\n tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,\n and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles\n that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made\n clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.\n\"Continue to work,\" he said to the young man. \"Do not be too surprised\n at what I am about to tell you, Rold.\" He paused and watched the golden\n man's rather stupid face intently.\n\n\n \"I am not a Misty One,\" Noork said. \"I killed the owner of this strange\n garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the\n girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke.\"", "There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland\n by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the\n rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple\n skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the\n mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's\n valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and\n confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope\n hide.\n\n\n One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the\n metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined\n the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive\n timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a\n prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall.", "Rold's mouth hung open but his hard blunt fingers continued to work.\n \"The Misty Ones, then,\" he said slowly, \"are not immortal demons!\" He\n nodded his long-haired head. \"They are but men. They too can die.\"\n\n\n \"If you will help me, Rold,\" said Noork, \"to rescue the girl and escape\n from the island I will take you along.\"\n\n\n Rold was slow in answering. He had been born on the island and yet his\n people were from the valley city of Konto. He knew that they would\n welcome the news that the Misty Ones were not demons. And the girl from\n the enemy city of Grath was beautiful. Perhaps she would love him for\n helping to rescue her and come willingly with him to Konto.\n\n\n \"I will help you, stranger,\" he agreed.\n\n\n \"Then tell me of the Skull, and of the priests, and of the prison where\n Tholon Sarna is held.\"", "Noork squinted. So the Misty Ones were not entirely invisible. Pain\n was growing in his numbed arm now, but as it came so came strength. He\n climbed further out on the great branch to where sticky and overripe\n fruit hung heavy. With a grin he locked his legs upon the forking of\n the great limb and filled his arms with fruit.\n\n\n A barrage of the juicy fruit blanketed the misty shapes. Stains spread\n and grew. Patchy outlines took on a new color and sharpness. Noork\n found that he was pelting a half-dozen hooded and robed creatures whose\n arms and legs numbered the same as his own, and the last remnant of\n superstitious fear instilled in his bruised brain by the shaggy Vasads\n vanished.", "The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the\n drying fabric of the mantle and donned it.\nUd tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from\n shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy.\n For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and\n the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal\n war.\n\n\n A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no\n enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath.\n\n\n \"You hunt too near the lake,\" called a voice. \"The demons of the water\n will trap you.\"\n\n\n Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled\n with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted." ] ]
test	61171	[ "What is suggest by Carmen's response if he said it \"hotly?\"", "What is the \"Black Hand?\"", "What makes the professor think the \"folk tales I had heard about the Mafia were getting more distant?\"", "What does the amount of machines Carmen need suggest about the mafia?", "Why does Carmen reference Sam Colt and Henry Ford?", "What was referenced in the \"storied ride?\"", "What transformation did Carmen and Squint do to the machine?", "What is ironic about the devices creating heat?", "What law in physics does this story focus on?" ]	[ [ "Carmen is afraid of the consequences", "Unknown", "He was angry", "Carmen was confused by the statement" ], [ "The corpses", "N/A", "The government", "The mafia" ], [ "The mafia would not follow through on their threats", "He knew that he would get hurt soon", "The professor was turning his attention to the government project", "Carmen's questioning around physics" ], [ "They have money to spend", "No suggestion", "The organization is large", "They are committing lots of murders" ], [ "Support his business acumen", "They also created deadly inventions", "They were also part of the mafia", "To display his educational pedigree" ], [ "The special ride that is experienced in a sedan", "The ride the mafia takes someone to assasinate", "A ride where someone tells a story the entire time", "No reference" ], [ "They were able to make it easy reproducible", "They made it transportable", "They made it into a shooting ray", "No transformation " ], [ "The government wanted the same machine", "No irony", "The machine creates heat when it was designed to dispose", "The machine was extremely cold in test runs" ], [ "Law of Conversation of Energy", "Law of Heat Radiation", "Law of Atomic Energy", "Passage not based on physics" ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "\"I was in the Marines,\" Carmen said hotly. \"Listen, Professor, these\n aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these\n days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club\n haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums\n with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets\n going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just\n stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my\n liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury.\"\n\n\n \"I don't suppose you could just go to the police—\" I saw the answer in\n his eyes. \"No. I don't suppose you could.\"", "My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of\n science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was\n upheld.\n\n\n I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.\n\n\n \"What was this a test for?\" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had\n made. \"What are you planning to do now?\"\n\n\n \"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno\n and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat.\"\n\n\n \"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why,\n that's\nmurder\n.\"\n\n\n \"Not,\" Carmen said, \"without no\ncorpus delecti\n.\"\n\n\n \"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim,\" I\n remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.", "Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was\n shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was\n this the storied \"ride,\" I wondered?\n\n\n Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He\n did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down\n the deserted street.\n\n\n \"The boys will have it set up in a minute,\" Tony the racketeer informed\n me.\n\n\n \"What?\" The firing squad?\n\n\n \"The Expendable, of course.\"\n\n\n \"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my\n invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign\n pasted on it.\"\n\n\n He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.", "I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had\n heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. \"See here, Carmen, I\n could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you\n would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know\n where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into\n the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so\n many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will\n have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure.\n Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck\n a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched\n materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will\n just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do.\"", "\"You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this,\" Carmen said\n ingratiatingly. \"Ever hear of the Mafia?\"\n\n\n \"Not much,\" the young man admitted earnestly, \"since the FBI finished\n with its deportations a few years back.\"\n\n\n I cleared my throat. \"I must admit that the destruction of a\n multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why\n you took this step?\"\n\n\n The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. \"Have you\n noticed how unseasonably warm it is?\"\n\n\n \"I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you\n keep that suit coat on five minutes more.\"", "This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated\n water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was\n no breakthrough on the central problem.\n\n\n Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of\n some damned bodies for Carmen.\n\n\n Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so\n precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States\n government, I began experimenting.\n\n\n I cut corners.\n\n\n I bypassed complete safety circuits.\n\n\n I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the\n wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be\n happy.\n\n\n I turned the machine on.\n\n\n The lights popped out.", "Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see\n that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.\n\n\n \"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the\n old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff.\"\n There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.\n \"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you\n increase the size of the working area.\"\n\n\n \"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know\n mechanics.\"\n\n\n \"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works.\"\n\n\n \"You call that working?\" I demanded. \"Do you realize what you have\n there, Carmen?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of\nStartling Stories\n.\"", "\"I figured you could handle it,\" Carmen said, leaning back comfortably\n in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. \"I heard you were\n working on something to get rid of trash for the government.\"\n\n\n \"That,\" I told him, \"is restricted information. I subcontracted that\n work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?\"\n\n\n \"Ways, Professor, ways.\"\n\n\n The government did want me to find a way to dispose of\n wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any\n country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a\n small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him\n dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the\n shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off.\n\n\n \"Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you,\" I\n said. \"I'll call you.\"", "\"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that\n just for now.\nWhere are these bodies going?\nI don't want them winding\n up in the D.A.'s bathtub.\"\n\n\n \"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?\"\n\n\n \"You're the scientist,\" Tony said hotly. \"I got great respect for those\n crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc\n on it, I don't know.\"\n\n\n \"Listen here, Carmen,\" I said, \"what makes you think these bodies are\n going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator.\"\n\n\n \"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it\n burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up\n or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing\n cabinets before.\"", "I knew what to tell them.\nI peeled off my wet shirt and threw it across the corner of my desk,\n casting a reproving eye at the pastel air-conditioner in the window. It\n wasn't really the machine's fault—The water department reported the\n reservoir too low to run water-cooled systems. It would be a day or two\n before I could get the gas type into my office.\n\n\n Miss Brown, my secretary, was getting a good look at my pale, bony\n chest. Well, for the salary she got, she could stand to look. Of\n course, she herself was wearing a modest one-strap sun dress, not\n shorts and halters like some of the girls.\n\n\n \"My,\" she observed \"it certainly is humid for March, isn't it,\n Professor Venetti?\"\n\n\n I agreed that it was.\n\n\n She got her pad and pencil ready.", "The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of\n his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap\n of sport shirt Carmen wore. \"We have to dress inconspicuously in the\n service,\" he panted weakly.\n\n\n I nodded understandingly. \"What does the heat have to do with the\n outlawing of the Expendables?\"\n\n\n \"At first we thought there might be some truth in the folk nonsense\n that nuclear tests had something to do with raising the mean\n temperature of the world,\" the AEC man said. \"But our scientists\n quickly found they weren't to blame.\"\n\n\n \"Clever of them.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, they saw that the widespread use of your machines was responsible\n for the higher temperature. Your device violates the law of\n conservation of energy,\nseemingly\n. It\nseemingly\ndestroys matter\n without creating energy. Actually—\"\n\n\n He paused dramatically.", "You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the\n Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too\n long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false,\n built up an unendurable threat.\n\n\n \"All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't\n kill any of these people?\"\n\n\n He snorted. \"I haven't killed anybody since early 1943.\"\n\n\n \"Please,\" I said weakly. \"You needn't incriminate yourself with me.\"", "\"They can't help me. I need an operator in your line.\"\n\n\n \"I work for the United States government. I can't become involved in\n anything illegal.\"\n\n\n Carmen smoothed down the front of his too-tight midnight blue suit and\n touched the diamond sticking in his silver tie. \"You can't, Professor\n Venetti? Ever hear of the Mafia?\"\n\n\n \"I've heard of it,\" I said uneasily. \"An old fraternal organization\n something like the Moose or Rosicrucians, founded in Sicily. It\n allegedly controls organized crime in the U.S. But that is a\n responsibility-eluding myth that honest Italian-Americans are stamping\n out. We don't even like to see the word in print.\"\n\n\n \"I can understand\nhonest\nItalian-Americans feeling that way. But guys\n like me know the Mafia is still with it. We can put the squeeze on\n marks like you pretty easy.\"", "Carmen inhaled deeply. \"Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against\n any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out,\n Professor?\"\n\n\n \"I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the\n unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you\n with the regularity of the morning milk run.\"\n\n\n The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. \"I'm talking about a big\n operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators,\n garbage disposals, waste baskets....\"\n\n\n \"Impractical,\" I snorted. \"You don't realize the tremendous amount of\n electrical power these devices require....\"", "\"Indignant form letter to Arcivox. We do not feel we are properly a\n co-respondent in your damage suits. Small children and appliances have\n always been a problem, viz ice boxes and refrigerators. Suggest you put\n a more complicated latch on the handles of the dangerously inferior\n doors you have covering our efficient, patented field.\"\n\n\n I leaned back and took a breather. There was no getting around it—I\n just wasn't happy as a business man. I had been counting on being only\n a figurehead in the Expendable Patent Holding Corporation, but Tony\n Carmen didn't like office work. And he hadn't anyone he trusted any\n more than me. Even.", "\"Here?\" I spluttered once more. \"I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing\n more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit....\"\n\n\n \"You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place.\" The thug's\n teeth flashed in the night. \"Throw your contraption into gear, buddy.\"\n\n\n That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone\n out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What\n remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium\n light position. I flipped.\n\n\n Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply\n disturbed by what next occurred.\n\n\n One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished.\n\n\n \"What have you done?\" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine.", "\"Don't take too long, Professor,\" Carmen said cordially.\nThe big drum topped with a metallic coolie's hat had started out as a\n neutralizer for radioactivity. Now I didn't know what to call it.\n\n\n The AEC had found burying canisters of hot rubbish in the desert or\n in the Gulf had eventually proved unsatisfactory. Earth tremors or\n changes of temperature split the tanks in the ground, causing leaks.\n The undersea containers rusted and corroded through the time, poisoning\n fish and fishermen.\n\n\n Through the SBA I had been awarded a subcontract to work on the\n problem. The ideal solution would be to find a way to neutralize\n radioactive emanations, alpha, beta, X et cetera. (No, my dear, et\n cetera rays aren't any more dangerous than the rest.) But this is\n easier written than done.", "\"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes\n a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own\n generators.\"\n\"There's something to what you say,\" I admitted in the face of his\n unexpected information. \"But I can hardly turn my invention over to\n your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the\n results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have\n to decide what to do with the machine.\"\n\n\n \"Listen, Professor,\" Carmen began, \"the Mafia—\"\n\n\n \"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the\n F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this\n much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor\n security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as\n being dead biologically.\"", "\"Actually, your device added the energy it created in destroying matter\n to the energy potential of the planet in the form of\nheat\n. You see\n what that means? If your devices continue in operation, the mean\n temperature of Earth will rise to the point where we burst into flame.\n They must be outlawed!\"\n\n\n \"I agree,\" I said reluctantly.\n\n\n Tony Carmen spoke up. \"No, you don't, Professor. We don't agree to\n that.\"\n\n\n I waved his protests aside.\n\n\n \"I\nwould\nagree,\" I said, \"except that it wouldn't work. Explain the\n danger to the public, let them feel the heat rise themselves, and they\n will hoard Expendables against seizure and continue to use them, until\n we do burst into flame, as you put it so religiously.\"\n\n\n \"Why?\" the young man demanded.", "Tony Carmen laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. I finally deduced he\n intended to be cordial.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" he said smoothly \"you have to give this to Washington but\n there are\nways\n, Professor. I know. I'm a business man—\"\n\n\n \"You\nare\n?\" I said.\n\n\n He named some of the businesses in which he held large shares of stock.\n\n\n \"You\nare\n.\"\n\n\n \"I've had experience in this sort of thing. We simply\nleak\nthe\n information to a few hundred well selected persons about all that your\n machine can do. We'll call 'em Expendables, because they can expend\n anything.\"\n\n\n \"I,\" I interjected, \"planned to call it the Venetti Machine.\"\n\n\n \"Professor, who calls the radio the Marconi these days?\"" ], [ "\"I figured you could handle it,\" Carmen said, leaning back comfortably\n in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. \"I heard you were\n working on something to get rid of trash for the government.\"\n\n\n \"That,\" I told him, \"is restricted information. I subcontracted that\n work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?\"\n\n\n \"Ways, Professor, ways.\"\n\n\n The government did want me to find a way to dispose of\n wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any\n country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a\n small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him\n dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the\n shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off.\n\n\n \"Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you,\" I\n said. \"I'll call you.\"", "\"They can't help me. I need an operator in your line.\"\n\n\n \"I work for the United States government. I can't become involved in\n anything illegal.\"\n\n\n Carmen smoothed down the front of his too-tight midnight blue suit and\n touched the diamond sticking in his silver tie. \"You can't, Professor\n Venetti? Ever hear of the Mafia?\"\n\n\n \"I've heard of it,\" I said uneasily. \"An old fraternal organization\n something like the Moose or Rosicrucians, founded in Sicily. It\n allegedly controls organized crime in the U.S. But that is a\n responsibility-eluding myth that honest Italian-Americans are stamping\n out. We don't even like to see the word in print.\"\n\n\n \"I can understand\nhonest\nItalian-Americans feeling that way. But guys\n like me know the Mafia is still with it. We can put the squeeze on\n marks like you pretty easy.\"", "You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the\n Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too\n long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false,\n built up an unendurable threat.\n\n\n \"All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't\n kill any of these people?\"\n\n\n He snorted. \"I haven't killed anybody since early 1943.\"\n\n\n \"Please,\" I said weakly. \"You needn't incriminate yourself with me.\"", "I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully\n inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ...\n by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side\n effects.\n\n\n I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain\n how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever\n convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.\n\n\n But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing\n \"how\" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.\n\"Yeah, but how does it work?\" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his\n mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.\n\n\n \"Why do you care?\" I asked irritably. \"It will dispose of your bodies\n for you.\"", "Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was\n shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was\n this the storied \"ride,\" I wondered?\n\n\n Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He\n did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down\n the deserted street.\n\n\n \"The boys will have it set up in a minute,\" Tony the racketeer informed\n me.\n\n\n \"What?\" The firing squad?\n\n\n \"The Expendable, of course.\"\n\n\n \"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my\n invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign\n pasted on it.\"\n\n\n He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.", "\"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes\n a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own\n generators.\"\n\"There's something to what you say,\" I admitted in the face of his\n unexpected information. \"But I can hardly turn my invention over to\n your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the\n results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have\n to decide what to do with the machine.\"\n\n\n \"Listen, Professor,\" Carmen began, \"the Mafia—\"\n\n\n \"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the\n F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this\n much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor\n security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as\n being dead biologically.\"", "\"You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this,\" Carmen said\n ingratiatingly. \"Ever hear of the Mafia?\"\n\n\n \"Not much,\" the young man admitted earnestly, \"since the FBI finished\n with its deportations a few years back.\"\n\n\n I cleared my throat. \"I must admit that the destruction of a\n multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why\n you took this step?\"\n\n\n The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. \"Have you\n noticed how unseasonably warm it is?\"\n\n\n \"I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you\n keep that suit coat on five minutes more.\"", "Tony Carmen laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. I finally deduced he\n intended to be cordial.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" he said smoothly \"you have to give this to Washington but\n there are\nways\n, Professor. I know. I'm a business man—\"\n\n\n \"You\nare\n?\" I said.\n\n\n He named some of the businesses in which he held large shares of stock.\n\n\n \"You\nare\n.\"\n\n\n \"I've had experience in this sort of thing. We simply\nleak\nthe\n information to a few hundred well selected persons about all that your\n machine can do. We'll call 'em Expendables, because they can expend\n anything.\"\n\n\n \"I,\" I interjected, \"planned to call it the Venetti Machine.\"\n\n\n \"Professor, who calls the radio the Marconi these days?\"", "\"I was in the Marines,\" Carmen said hotly. \"Listen, Professor, these\n aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these\n days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club\n haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums\n with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets\n going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just\n stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my\n liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury.\"\n\n\n \"I don't suppose you could just go to the police—\" I saw the answer in\n his eyes. \"No. I don't suppose you could.\"", "I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I\n had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I\n smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the\n tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field.\n I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one.\n But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him.\n\n\n I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser,\n reflecting her fierce alertness.\n\n\n Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth.\n\n\n \"G-men on the way here,\" he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite\n Miss Brown.\n\n\n \"Don't revert to type,\" I warned him. \"What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC?\n CIA? FDA? USTD?\"", "The swarthy racketeer pursed his lips and apparently did some rapid\n calculation.\n\n\n \"I don't mind the first two, but I don't like them going into the\n future. If they do that, they may show up again in six months.\"\n\n\n \"Or six million years.\"\n\n\n \"You'll have to cut that future part out, Professor.\"", "THE EXPENDABLES\nBY JIM HARMON\nIt was just a little black box,\n\n useful for getting rid of things.\n\n Trouble was, it worked too well!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1962.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n\"You see my problem, Professor?\" Tony Carmen held his pinkly manicured,\n flashily ringed hands wide.\n\n\n I saw his problem and it was warmly embarrassing.\n\n\n \"Really, Mr. Carmen,\" I said, \"this isn't the sort of thing you discuss\n with a total stranger. I'm not a doctor—not of medicine, anyway—or a\n lawyer.\"", "My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of\n science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was\n upheld.\n\n\n I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.\n\n\n \"What was this a test for?\" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had\n made. \"What are you planning to do now?\"\n\n\n \"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno\n and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat.\"\n\n\n \"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why,\n that's\nmurder\n.\"\n\n\n \"Not,\" Carmen said, \"without no\ncorpus delecti\n.\"\n\n\n \"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim,\" I\n remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.", "I shook my head. \"The government will take over the invention, no\n matter what the public wants.\"\n\n\n \"The public? Who cares about the public? The Arcivox corporation wants\n this machine of yours. They have their agents tracing the plant now.\n They will go from the columnist to his legman to my man and finally to\n you. Won't be long before they get here. An hour maybe.\"\n\n\n \"Arcivox makes radios and TV sets. What do they want with the\n Expendables?\"\n\n\n \"Opening up a new appliance line with real innovations. I hear they got\n a new refrigerator. All open. Just shelves—no doors or sides. They\n want a revolutionary garbage disposal too.\"\n\n\n \"Do you own stock in the company? Is that how you know?\"", "\"Here?\" I spluttered once more. \"I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing\n more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit....\"\n\n\n \"You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place.\" The thug's\n teeth flashed in the night. \"Throw your contraption into gear, buddy.\"\n\n\n That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone\n out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What\n remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium\n light position. I flipped.\n\n\n Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply\n disturbed by what next occurred.\n\n\n One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished.\n\n\n \"What have you done?\" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine.", "This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated\n water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was\n no breakthrough on the central problem.\n\n\n Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of\n some damned bodies for Carmen.\n\n\n Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so\n precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States\n government, I began experimenting.\n\n\n I cut corners.\n\n\n I bypassed complete safety circuits.\n\n\n I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the\n wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be\n happy.\n\n\n I turned the machine on.\n\n\n The lights popped out.", "This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks.\n\n\n If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I\n doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a\n new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of\n spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with\n refrigerators and hypodermic needles.\n\n\n I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee\n I made when the doorbell rang.\n\n\n I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the\n front door.\n\n\n He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. \"Action,\n Professor.\"\n\n\n \"The district attorney has indicted you?\" I asked hopefully.\n\n\n \"He's not even indicted\nyou\n, Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this\n plant in the\nTimes\n.\"", "There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines\n patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest\n sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity,\n they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the\n meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there,\n moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them.\n\n\n I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with\n some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they\n didn't believe actually could work.\n\n\n Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his\n hands on it.\n\n\n Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of.\nThe closed sedan was warm, even in early December.", "Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see\n that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.\n\n\n \"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the\n old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff.\"\n There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.\n \"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you\n increase the size of the working area.\"\n\n\n \"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know\n mechanics.\"\n\n\n \"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works.\"\n\n\n \"You call that working?\" I demanded. \"Do you realize what you have\n there, Carmen?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of\nStartling Stories\n.\"", "A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight.\n\n\n \"Okay. Let's go,\" Tony said, slapping my shoulder.\n\n\n I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my\n teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I\n frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears.\n\n\n The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy\n white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via\n a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take\n care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as\n necessity dictated.\n\n\n Tony guided my elbow. \"Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit\n now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it\n waves to the national anthem.\"" ], [ "You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the\n Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too\n long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false,\n built up an unendurable threat.\n\n\n \"All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't\n kill any of these people?\"\n\n\n He snorted. \"I haven't killed anybody since early 1943.\"\n\n\n \"Please,\" I said weakly. \"You needn't incriminate yourself with me.\"", "I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had\n heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. \"See here, Carmen, I\n could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you\n would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know\n where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into\n the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so\n many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will\n have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure.\n Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck\n a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched\n materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will\n just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do.\"", "\"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes\n a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own\n generators.\"\n\"There's something to what you say,\" I admitted in the face of his\n unexpected information. \"But I can hardly turn my invention over to\n your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the\n results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have\n to decide what to do with the machine.\"\n\n\n \"Listen, Professor,\" Carmen began, \"the Mafia—\"\n\n\n \"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the\n F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this\n much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor\n security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as\n being dead biologically.\"", "Mafia or not, I saw red. \"Are you daring to suggest that I am working\n some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?\"\n\n\n \"Easy, Professor,\" Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one\n palm. \"I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that\n you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well,\n everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things\n through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?\"\n\n\n Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive\n feel for the mechanics of physics.\n\n\n \"I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen,\" I finally admitted. \"It\n might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the\n writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or\n our future.\"", "\"I was in the Marines,\" Carmen said hotly. \"Listen, Professor, these\n aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these\n days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club\n haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums\n with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets\n going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just\n stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my\n liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury.\"\n\n\n \"I don't suppose you could just go to the police—\" I saw the answer in\n his eyes. \"No. I don't suppose you could.\"", "\"They can't help me. I need an operator in your line.\"\n\n\n \"I work for the United States government. I can't become involved in\n anything illegal.\"\n\n\n Carmen smoothed down the front of his too-tight midnight blue suit and\n touched the diamond sticking in his silver tie. \"You can't, Professor\n Venetti? Ever hear of the Mafia?\"\n\n\n \"I've heard of it,\" I said uneasily. \"An old fraternal organization\n something like the Moose or Rosicrucians, founded in Sicily. It\n allegedly controls organized crime in the U.S. But that is a\n responsibility-eluding myth that honest Italian-Americans are stamping\n out. We don't even like to see the word in print.\"\n\n\n \"I can understand\nhonest\nItalian-Americans feeling that way. But guys\n like me know the Mafia is still with it. We can put the squeeze on\n marks like you pretty easy.\"", "\"You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this,\" Carmen said\n ingratiatingly. \"Ever hear of the Mafia?\"\n\n\n \"Not much,\" the young man admitted earnestly, \"since the FBI finished\n with its deportations a few years back.\"\n\n\n I cleared my throat. \"I must admit that the destruction of a\n multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why\n you took this step?\"\n\n\n The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. \"Have you\n noticed how unseasonably warm it is?\"\n\n\n \"I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you\n keep that suit coat on five minutes more.\"", "\"I figured you could handle it,\" Carmen said, leaning back comfortably\n in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. \"I heard you were\n working on something to get rid of trash for the government.\"\n\n\n \"That,\" I told him, \"is restricted information. I subcontracted that\n work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?\"\n\n\n \"Ways, Professor, ways.\"\n\n\n The government did want me to find a way to dispose of\n wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any\n country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a\n small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him\n dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the\n shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off.\n\n\n \"Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you,\" I\n said. \"I'll call you.\"", "\"You're talking too much, Professor,\" Tony suggested. \"Remember,\nyou\ndid it with\nyour\nmachine.\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" I said at length. \"And why are we standing here letting those\n machines sit there?\"\nThere were two small items of interest to me in the Times the following\n morning.\n\n\n One two-inch story—barely making page one because of a hole to fill at\n the bottom of an account of the number of victims of Indian summer heat\n prostration—told of the incineration of a warehouse on Fleet Street by\n an ingenious new arson bomb that left \"virtually\" no trace. (Maybe the\n fire inspector had planted a few traces to make his explanation more\n creditable.)\n\n\n The second item was further over in a science column just off the\n editorial page. It told of the government—!—developing a new process\n of waste disposal rivaling the old Buck Rogers disintegrator ray.", "\"I told you once, Professor, but I'll tell you again. I have to get rid\n of these bodies they keep leaving in my kitchen. I can take 'em and\n throw them in the river, sure. But what if me or my boys are stopped en\n route by some tipped badge?\"\n\n\n \"Quicklime?\" I suggested automatically.\n\n\n \"What are you talking about? Are you sure you're some kind of\n scientist? Lime doesn't do much to a stiff at all. Kind of putrifies\n them like....\"\n\n\n \"I forgot,\" I admitted. \"I'd read it in so many stories I'd forgotten\n it wouldn't work. And I suppose the furnace leaves ashes and there's\n always traces of hair and teeth in the garbage disposal... An\n interesting problem, at that.\"", "The swarthy racketeer pursed his lips and apparently did some rapid\n calculation.\n\n\n \"I don't mind the first two, but I don't like them going into the\n future. If they do that, they may show up again in six months.\"\n\n\n \"Or six million years.\"\n\n\n \"You'll have to cut that future part out, Professor.\"", "I knew what to tell them.\nI peeled off my wet shirt and threw it across the corner of my desk,\n casting a reproving eye at the pastel air-conditioner in the window. It\n wasn't really the machine's fault—The water department reported the\n reservoir too low to run water-cooled systems. It would be a day or two\n before I could get the gas type into my office.\n\n\n Miss Brown, my secretary, was getting a good look at my pale, bony\n chest. Well, for the salary she got, she could stand to look. Of\n course, she herself was wearing a modest one-strap sun dress, not\n shorts and halters like some of the girls.\n\n\n \"My,\" she observed \"it certainly is humid for March, isn't it,\n Professor Venetti?\"\n\n\n I agreed that it was.\n\n\n She got her pad and pencil ready.", "\"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that\n just for now.\nWhere are these bodies going?\nI don't want them winding\n up in the D.A.'s bathtub.\"\n\n\n \"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?\"\n\n\n \"You're the scientist,\" Tony said hotly. \"I got great respect for those\n crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc\n on it, I don't know.\"\n\n\n \"Listen here, Carmen,\" I said, \"what makes you think these bodies are\n going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator.\"\n\n\n \"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it\n burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up\n or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing\n cabinets before.\"", "Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was\n shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was\n this the storied \"ride,\" I wondered?\n\n\n Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He\n did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down\n the deserted street.\n\n\n \"The boys will have it set up in a minute,\" Tony the racketeer informed\n me.\n\n\n \"What?\" The firing squad?\n\n\n \"The Expendable, of course.\"\n\n\n \"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my\n invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign\n pasted on it.\"\n\n\n He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.", "A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight.\n\n\n \"Okay. Let's go,\" Tony said, slapping my shoulder.\n\n\n I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my\n teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I\n frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears.\n\n\n The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy\n white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via\n a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take\n care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as\n necessity dictated.\n\n\n Tony guided my elbow. \"Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit\n now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it\n waves to the national anthem.\"", "My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of\n science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was\n upheld.\n\n\n I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.\n\n\n \"What was this a test for?\" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had\n made. \"What are you planning to do now?\"\n\n\n \"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno\n and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat.\"\n\n\n \"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why,\n that's\nmurder\n.\"\n\n\n \"Not,\" Carmen said, \"without no\ncorpus delecti\n.\"\n\n\n \"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim,\" I\n remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.", "This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks.\n\n\n If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I\n doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a\n new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of\n spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with\n refrigerators and hypodermic needles.\n\n\n I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee\n I made when the doorbell rang.\n\n\n I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the\n front door.\n\n\n He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. \"Action,\n Professor.\"\n\n\n \"The district attorney has indicted you?\" I asked hopefully.\n\n\n \"He's not even indicted\nyou\n, Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this\n plant in the\nTimes\n.\"", "I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully\n inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ...\n by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side\n effects.\n\n\n I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain\n how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever\n convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.\n\n\n But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing\n \"how\" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.\n\"Yeah, but how does it work?\" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his\n mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.\n\n\n \"Why do you care?\" I asked irritably. \"It will dispose of your bodies\n for you.\"", "\"Here?\" I spluttered once more. \"I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing\n more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit....\"\n\n\n \"You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place.\" The thug's\n teeth flashed in the night. \"Throw your contraption into gear, buddy.\"\n\n\n That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone\n out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What\n remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium\n light position. I flipped.\n\n\n Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply\n disturbed by what next occurred.\n\n\n One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished.\n\n\n \"What have you done?\" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine.", "Carmen inhaled deeply. \"Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against\n any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out,\n Professor?\"\n\n\n \"I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the\n unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you\n with the regularity of the morning milk run.\"\n\n\n The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. \"I'm talking about a big\n operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators,\n garbage disposals, waste baskets....\"\n\n\n \"Impractical,\" I snorted. \"You don't realize the tremendous amount of\n electrical power these devices require....\"" ], [ "\"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes\n a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own\n generators.\"\n\"There's something to what you say,\" I admitted in the face of his\n unexpected information. \"But I can hardly turn my invention over to\n your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the\n results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have\n to decide what to do with the machine.\"\n\n\n \"Listen, Professor,\" Carmen began, \"the Mafia—\"\n\n\n \"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the\n F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this\n much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor\n security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as\n being dead biologically.\"", "Carmen inhaled deeply. \"Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against\n any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out,\n Professor?\"\n\n\n \"I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the\n unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you\n with the regularity of the morning milk run.\"\n\n\n The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. \"I'm talking about a big\n operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators,\n garbage disposals, waste baskets....\"\n\n\n \"Impractical,\" I snorted. \"You don't realize the tremendous amount of\n electrical power these devices require....\"", "You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the\n Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too\n long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false,\n built up an unendurable threat.\n\n\n \"All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't\n kill any of these people?\"\n\n\n He snorted. \"I haven't killed anybody since early 1943.\"\n\n\n \"Please,\" I said weakly. \"You needn't incriminate yourself with me.\"", "\"They can't help me. I need an operator in your line.\"\n\n\n \"I work for the United States government. I can't become involved in\n anything illegal.\"\n\n\n Carmen smoothed down the front of his too-tight midnight blue suit and\n touched the diamond sticking in his silver tie. \"You can't, Professor\n Venetti? Ever hear of the Mafia?\"\n\n\n \"I've heard of it,\" I said uneasily. \"An old fraternal organization\n something like the Moose or Rosicrucians, founded in Sicily. It\n allegedly controls organized crime in the U.S. But that is a\n responsibility-eluding myth that honest Italian-Americans are stamping\n out. We don't even like to see the word in print.\"\n\n\n \"I can understand\nhonest\nItalian-Americans feeling that way. But guys\n like me know the Mafia is still with it. We can put the squeeze on\n marks like you pretty easy.\"", "\"I was in the Marines,\" Carmen said hotly. \"Listen, Professor, these\n aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these\n days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club\n haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums\n with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets\n going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just\n stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my\n liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury.\"\n\n\n \"I don't suppose you could just go to the police—\" I saw the answer in\n his eyes. \"No. I don't suppose you could.\"", "\"I figured you could handle it,\" Carmen said, leaning back comfortably\n in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. \"I heard you were\n working on something to get rid of trash for the government.\"\n\n\n \"That,\" I told him, \"is restricted information. I subcontracted that\n work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?\"\n\n\n \"Ways, Professor, ways.\"\n\n\n The government did want me to find a way to dispose of\n wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any\n country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a\n small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him\n dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the\n shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off.\n\n\n \"Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you,\" I\n said. \"I'll call you.\"", "Mafia or not, I saw red. \"Are you daring to suggest that I am working\n some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?\"\n\n\n \"Easy, Professor,\" Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one\n palm. \"I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that\n you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well,\n everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things\n through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?\"\n\n\n Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive\n feel for the mechanics of physics.\n\n\n \"I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen,\" I finally admitted. \"It\n might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the\n writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or\n our future.\"", "\"You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this,\" Carmen said\n ingratiatingly. \"Ever hear of the Mafia?\"\n\n\n \"Not much,\" the young man admitted earnestly, \"since the FBI finished\n with its deportations a few years back.\"\n\n\n I cleared my throat. \"I must admit that the destruction of a\n multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why\n you took this step?\"\n\n\n The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. \"Have you\n noticed how unseasonably warm it is?\"\n\n\n \"I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you\n keep that suit coat on five minutes more.\"", "Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see\n that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.\n\n\n \"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the\n old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff.\"\n There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.\n \"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you\n increase the size of the working area.\"\n\n\n \"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know\n mechanics.\"\n\n\n \"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works.\"\n\n\n \"You call that working?\" I demanded. \"Do you realize what you have\n there, Carmen?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of\nStartling Stories\n.\"", "Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was\n shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was\n this the storied \"ride,\" I wondered?\n\n\n Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He\n did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down\n the deserted street.\n\n\n \"The boys will have it set up in a minute,\" Tony the racketeer informed\n me.\n\n\n \"What?\" The firing squad?\n\n\n \"The Expendable, of course.\"\n\n\n \"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my\n invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign\n pasted on it.\"\n\n\n He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.", "\"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that\n just for now.\nWhere are these bodies going?\nI don't want them winding\n up in the D.A.'s bathtub.\"\n\n\n \"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?\"\n\n\n \"You're the scientist,\" Tony said hotly. \"I got great respect for those\n crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc\n on it, I don't know.\"\n\n\n \"Listen here, Carmen,\" I said, \"what makes you think these bodies are\n going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator.\"\n\n\n \"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it\n burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up\n or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing\n cabinets before.\"", "My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of\n science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was\n upheld.\n\n\n I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.\n\n\n \"What was this a test for?\" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had\n made. \"What are you planning to do now?\"\n\n\n \"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno\n and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat.\"\n\n\n \"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why,\n that's\nmurder\n.\"\n\n\n \"Not,\" Carmen said, \"without no\ncorpus delecti\n.\"\n\n\n \"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim,\" I\n remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.", "I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I\n had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I\n smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the\n tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field.\n I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one.\n But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him.\n\n\n I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser,\n reflecting her fierce alertness.\n\n\n Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth.\n\n\n \"G-men on the way here,\" he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite\n Miss Brown.\n\n\n \"Don't revert to type,\" I warned him. \"What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC?\n CIA? FDA? USTD?\"", "I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had\n heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. \"See here, Carmen, I\n could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you\n would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know\n where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into\n the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so\n many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will\n have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure.\n Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck\n a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched\n materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will\n just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do.\"", "Tony Carmen laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. I finally deduced he\n intended to be cordial.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" he said smoothly \"you have to give this to Washington but\n there are\nways\n, Professor. I know. I'm a business man—\"\n\n\n \"You\nare\n?\" I said.\n\n\n He named some of the businesses in which he held large shares of stock.\n\n\n \"You\nare\n.\"\n\n\n \"I've had experience in this sort of thing. We simply\nleak\nthe\n information to a few hundred well selected persons about all that your\n machine can do. We'll call 'em Expendables, because they can expend\n anything.\"\n\n\n \"I,\" I interjected, \"planned to call it the Venetti Machine.\"\n\n\n \"Professor, who calls the radio the Marconi these days?\"", "\"I own stock in a competitor. That's how I know,\" Carmen informed me.\n \"Listen, Professor, you can sell to Arcivox and still keep control of\n the patents through a separate corporation. And I'll give you 49% of\n its stock.\"\n\n\n This was Carmen's idea of a magnanimous offer for my invention. It\nwas\na pretty good offer—49% and my good health.\n\n\n \"But will the government let Arcivox have the machine for commercial\n use?\"\n\n\n \"The government would let Arcivox have the hydrogen bomb if they found\n a commercial use for it.\"\n\n\n There was a sturdy knock on the door, not a shrill ring of the bell.\n\n\n \"That must be Arcivox now,\" Carmen growled. \"They have the best\n detectives in the business. You know what to tell them?\"", "A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight.\n\n\n \"Okay. Let's go,\" Tony said, slapping my shoulder.\n\n\n I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my\n teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I\n frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears.\n\n\n The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy\n white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via\n a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take\n care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as\n necessity dictated.\n\n\n Tony guided my elbow. \"Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit\n now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it\n waves to the national anthem.\"", "I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully\n inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ...\n by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side\n effects.\n\n\n I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain\n how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever\n convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.\n\n\n But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing\n \"how\" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.\n\"Yeah, but how does it work?\" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his\n mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.\n\n\n \"Why do you care?\" I asked irritably. \"It will dispose of your bodies\n for you.\"", "There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines\n patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest\n sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity,\n they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the\n meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there,\n moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them.\n\n\n I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with\n some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they\n didn't believe actually could work.\n\n\n Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his\n hands on it.\n\n\n Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of.\nThe closed sedan was warm, even in early December.", "This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated\n water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was\n no breakthrough on the central problem.\n\n\n Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of\n some damned bodies for Carmen.\n\n\n Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so\n precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States\n government, I began experimenting.\n\n\n I cut corners.\n\n\n I bypassed complete safety circuits.\n\n\n I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the\n wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be\n happy.\n\n\n I turned the machine on.\n\n\n The lights popped out." ], [ "\"I was in the Marines,\" Carmen said hotly. \"Listen, Professor, these\n aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these\n days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club\n haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums\n with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets\n going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just\n stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my\n liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury.\"\n\n\n \"I don't suppose you could just go to the police—\" I saw the answer in\n his eyes. \"No. I don't suppose you could.\"", "My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of\n science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was\n upheld.\n\n\n I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.\n\n\n \"What was this a test for?\" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had\n made. \"What are you planning to do now?\"\n\n\n \"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno\n and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat.\"\n\n\n \"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why,\n that's\nmurder\n.\"\n\n\n \"Not,\" Carmen said, \"without no\ncorpus delecti\n.\"\n\n\n \"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim,\" I\n remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.", "Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was\n shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was\n this the storied \"ride,\" I wondered?\n\n\n Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He\n did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down\n the deserted street.\n\n\n \"The boys will have it set up in a minute,\" Tony the racketeer informed\n me.\n\n\n \"What?\" The firing squad?\n\n\n \"The Expendable, of course.\"\n\n\n \"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my\n invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign\n pasted on it.\"\n\n\n He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.", "Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see\n that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.\n\n\n \"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the\n old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff.\"\n There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.\n \"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you\n increase the size of the working area.\"\n\n\n \"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know\n mechanics.\"\n\n\n \"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works.\"\n\n\n \"You call that working?\" I demanded. \"Do you realize what you have\n there, Carmen?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of\nStartling Stories\n.\"", "\"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes\n a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own\n generators.\"\n\"There's something to what you say,\" I admitted in the face of his\n unexpected information. \"But I can hardly turn my invention over to\n your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the\n results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have\n to decide what to do with the machine.\"\n\n\n \"Listen, Professor,\" Carmen began, \"the Mafia—\"\n\n\n \"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the\n F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this\n much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor\n security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as\n being dead biologically.\"", "\"You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this,\" Carmen said\n ingratiatingly. \"Ever hear of the Mafia?\"\n\n\n \"Not much,\" the young man admitted earnestly, \"since the FBI finished\n with its deportations a few years back.\"\n\n\n I cleared my throat. \"I must admit that the destruction of a\n multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why\n you took this step?\"\n\n\n The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. \"Have you\n noticed how unseasonably warm it is?\"\n\n\n \"I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you\n keep that suit coat on five minutes more.\"", "Tony Carmen laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. I finally deduced he\n intended to be cordial.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" he said smoothly \"you have to give this to Washington but\n there are\nways\n, Professor. I know. I'm a business man—\"\n\n\n \"You\nare\n?\" I said.\n\n\n He named some of the businesses in which he held large shares of stock.\n\n\n \"You\nare\n.\"\n\n\n \"I've had experience in this sort of thing. We simply\nleak\nthe\n information to a few hundred well selected persons about all that your\n machine can do. We'll call 'em Expendables, because they can expend\n anything.\"\n\n\n \"I,\" I interjected, \"planned to call it the Venetti Machine.\"\n\n\n \"Professor, who calls the radio the Marconi these days?\"", "You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the\n Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too\n long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false,\n built up an unendurable threat.\n\n\n \"All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't\n kill any of these people?\"\n\n\n He snorted. \"I haven't killed anybody since early 1943.\"\n\n\n \"Please,\" I said weakly. \"You needn't incriminate yourself with me.\"", "I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I\n had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I\n smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the\n tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field.\n I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one.\n But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him.\n\n\n I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser,\n reflecting her fierce alertness.\n\n\n Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth.\n\n\n \"G-men on the way here,\" he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite\n Miss Brown.\n\n\n \"Don't revert to type,\" I warned him. \"What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC?\n CIA? FDA? USTD?\"", "\"I own stock in a competitor. That's how I know,\" Carmen informed me.\n \"Listen, Professor, you can sell to Arcivox and still keep control of\n the patents through a separate corporation. And I'll give you 49% of\n its stock.\"\n\n\n This was Carmen's idea of a magnanimous offer for my invention. It\nwas\na pretty good offer—49% and my good health.\n\n\n \"But will the government let Arcivox have the machine for commercial\n use?\"\n\n\n \"The government would let Arcivox have the hydrogen bomb if they found\n a commercial use for it.\"\n\n\n There was a sturdy knock on the door, not a shrill ring of the bell.\n\n\n \"That must be Arcivox now,\" Carmen growled. \"They have the best\n detectives in the business. You know what to tell them?\"", "\"They can't help me. I need an operator in your line.\"\n\n\n \"I work for the United States government. I can't become involved in\n anything illegal.\"\n\n\n Carmen smoothed down the front of his too-tight midnight blue suit and\n touched the diamond sticking in his silver tie. \"You can't, Professor\n Venetti? Ever hear of the Mafia?\"\n\n\n \"I've heard of it,\" I said uneasily. \"An old fraternal organization\n something like the Moose or Rosicrucians, founded in Sicily. It\n allegedly controls organized crime in the U.S. But that is a\n responsibility-eluding myth that honest Italian-Americans are stamping\n out. We don't even like to see the word in print.\"\n\n\n \"I can understand\nhonest\nItalian-Americans feeling that way. But guys\n like me know the Mafia is still with it. We can put the squeeze on\n marks like you pretty easy.\"", "\"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that\n just for now.\nWhere are these bodies going?\nI don't want them winding\n up in the D.A.'s bathtub.\"\n\n\n \"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?\"\n\n\n \"You're the scientist,\" Tony said hotly. \"I got great respect for those\n crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc\n on it, I don't know.\"\n\n\n \"Listen here, Carmen,\" I said, \"what makes you think these bodies are\n going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator.\"\n\n\n \"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it\n burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up\n or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing\n cabinets before.\"", "\"I figured you could handle it,\" Carmen said, leaning back comfortably\n in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. \"I heard you were\n working on something to get rid of trash for the government.\"\n\n\n \"That,\" I told him, \"is restricted information. I subcontracted that\n work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?\"\n\n\n \"Ways, Professor, ways.\"\n\n\n The government did want me to find a way to dispose of\n wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any\n country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a\n small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him\n dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the\n shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off.\n\n\n \"Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you,\" I\n said. \"I'll call you.\"", "This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks.\n\n\n If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I\n doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a\n new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of\n spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with\n refrigerators and hypodermic needles.\n\n\n I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee\n I made when the doorbell rang.\n\n\n I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the\n front door.\n\n\n He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. \"Action,\n Professor.\"\n\n\n \"The district attorney has indicted you?\" I asked hopefully.\n\n\n \"He's not even indicted\nyou\n, Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this\n plant in the\nTimes\n.\"", "\"Indignant form letter to Arcivox. We do not feel we are properly a\n co-respondent in your damage suits. Small children and appliances have\n always been a problem, viz ice boxes and refrigerators. Suggest you put\n a more complicated latch on the handles of the dangerously inferior\n doors you have covering our efficient, patented field.\"\n\n\n I leaned back and took a breather. There was no getting around it—I\n just wasn't happy as a business man. I had been counting on being only\n a figurehead in the Expendable Patent Holding Corporation, but Tony\n Carmen didn't like office work. And he hadn't anyone he trusted any\n more than me. Even.", "I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully\n inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ...\n by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side\n effects.\n\n\n I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain\n how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever\n convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.\n\n\n But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing\n \"how\" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.\n\"Yeah, but how does it work?\" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his\n mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.\n\n\n \"Why do you care?\" I asked irritably. \"It will dispose of your bodies\n for you.\"", "\"There are Geiger-Muller Counters, though,\" I said.\n\n\n \"You don't have to give a Geiger counter the sex appeal of a TV set or\n a hardtop convertible. We'll call them Expendables. No home will be\n complete without one.\"\n\n\n \"Perfect for disposing of unwanted bodies,\" I mused. \"The murder rate\n will go alarmingly with those devices within easy reach.\"\n\n\n \"Did that stop Sam Colt or Henry Ford?\" Tony Carmen asked reasonably....\n\n\n Naturally, I was aware that the government would\nnot\nbe interested in\n my machine. I am not a Fortean, a psychic, a psionicist or a screwball.\n But the government frequently gets things it doesn't know what to do\n with—like airplanes in the 'twenties. When it doesn't know what to do,\n it doesn't do it.", "Mafia or not, I saw red. \"Are you daring to suggest that I am working\n some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?\"\n\n\n \"Easy, Professor,\" Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one\n palm. \"I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that\n you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well,\n everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things\n through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?\"\n\n\n Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive\n feel for the mechanics of physics.\n\n\n \"I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen,\" I finally admitted. \"It\n might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the\n writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or\n our future.\"", "The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of\n his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap\n of sport shirt Carmen wore. \"We have to dress inconspicuously in the\n service,\" he panted weakly.\n\n\n I nodded understandingly. \"What does the heat have to do with the\n outlawing of the Expendables?\"\n\n\n \"At first we thought there might be some truth in the folk nonsense\n that nuclear tests had something to do with raising the mean\n temperature of the world,\" the AEC man said. \"But our scientists\n quickly found they weren't to blame.\"\n\n\n \"Clever of them.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, they saw that the widespread use of your machines was responsible\n for the higher temperature. Your device violates the law of\n conservation of energy,\nseemingly\n. It\nseemingly\ndestroys matter\n without creating energy. Actually—\"\n\n\n He paused dramatically.", "Carmen inhaled deeply. \"Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against\n any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out,\n Professor?\"\n\n\n \"I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the\n unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you\n with the regularity of the morning milk run.\"\n\n\n The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. \"I'm talking about a big\n operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators,\n garbage disposals, waste baskets....\"\n\n\n \"Impractical,\" I snorted. \"You don't realize the tremendous amount of\n electrical power these devices require....\"" ], [ "Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was\n shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was\n this the storied \"ride,\" I wondered?\n\n\n Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He\n did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down\n the deserted street.\n\n\n \"The boys will have it set up in a minute,\" Tony the racketeer informed\n me.\n\n\n \"What?\" The firing squad?\n\n\n \"The Expendable, of course.\"\n\n\n \"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my\n invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign\n pasted on it.\"\n\n\n He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.", "Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see\n that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.\n\n\n \"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the\n old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff.\"\n There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.\n \"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you\n increase the size of the working area.\"\n\n\n \"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know\n mechanics.\"\n\n\n \"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works.\"\n\n\n \"You call that working?\" I demanded. \"Do you realize what you have\n there, Carmen?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of\nStartling Stories\n.\"", "I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had\n heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. \"See here, Carmen, I\n could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you\n would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know\n where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into\n the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so\n many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will\n have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure.\n Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck\n a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched\n materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will\n just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do.\"", "The swarthy racketeer pursed his lips and apparently did some rapid\n calculation.\n\n\n \"I don't mind the first two, but I don't like them going into the\n future. If they do that, they may show up again in six months.\"\n\n\n \"Or six million years.\"\n\n\n \"You'll have to cut that future part out, Professor.\"", "\"I was in the Marines,\" Carmen said hotly. \"Listen, Professor, these\n aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these\n days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club\n haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums\n with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets\n going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just\n stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my\n liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury.\"\n\n\n \"I don't suppose you could just go to the police—\" I saw the answer in\n his eyes. \"No. I don't suppose you could.\"", "There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines\n patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest\n sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity,\n they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the\n meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there,\n moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them.\n\n\n I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with\n some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they\n didn't believe actually could work.\n\n\n Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his\n hands on it.\n\n\n Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of.\nThe closed sedan was warm, even in early December.", "\"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that\n just for now.\nWhere are these bodies going?\nI don't want them winding\n up in the D.A.'s bathtub.\"\n\n\n \"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?\"\n\n\n \"You're the scientist,\" Tony said hotly. \"I got great respect for those\n crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc\n on it, I don't know.\"\n\n\n \"Listen here, Carmen,\" I said, \"what makes you think these bodies are\n going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator.\"\n\n\n \"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it\n burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up\n or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing\n cabinets before.\"", "A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight.\n\n\n \"Okay. Let's go,\" Tony said, slapping my shoulder.\n\n\n I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my\n teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I\n frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears.\n\n\n The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy\n white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via\n a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take\n care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as\n necessity dictated.\n\n\n Tony guided my elbow. \"Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit\n now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it\n waves to the national anthem.\"", "This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated\n water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was\n no breakthrough on the central problem.\n\n\n Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of\n some damned bodies for Carmen.\n\n\n Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so\n precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States\n government, I began experimenting.\n\n\n I cut corners.\n\n\n I bypassed complete safety circuits.\n\n\n I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the\n wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be\n happy.\n\n\n I turned the machine on.\n\n\n The lights popped out.", "You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the\n Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too\n long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false,\n built up an unendurable threat.\n\n\n \"All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't\n kill any of these people?\"\n\n\n He snorted. \"I haven't killed anybody since early 1943.\"\n\n\n \"Please,\" I said weakly. \"You needn't incriminate yourself with me.\"", "Mafia or not, I saw red. \"Are you daring to suggest that I am working\n some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?\"\n\n\n \"Easy, Professor,\" Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one\n palm. \"I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that\n you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well,\n everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things\n through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?\"\n\n\n Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive\n feel for the mechanics of physics.\n\n\n \"I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen,\" I finally admitted. \"It\n might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the\n writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or\n our future.\"", "\"Here?\" I spluttered once more. \"I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing\n more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit....\"\n\n\n \"You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place.\" The thug's\n teeth flashed in the night. \"Throw your contraption into gear, buddy.\"\n\n\n That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone\n out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What\n remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium\n light position. I flipped.\n\n\n Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply\n disturbed by what next occurred.\n\n\n One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished.\n\n\n \"What have you done?\" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine.", "\"I told you once, Professor, but I'll tell you again. I have to get rid\n of these bodies they keep leaving in my kitchen. I can take 'em and\n throw them in the river, sure. But what if me or my boys are stopped en\n route by some tipped badge?\"\n\n\n \"Quicklime?\" I suggested automatically.\n\n\n \"What are you talking about? Are you sure you're some kind of\n scientist? Lime doesn't do much to a stiff at all. Kind of putrifies\n them like....\"\n\n\n \"I forgot,\" I admitted. \"I'd read it in so many stories I'd forgotten\n it wouldn't work. And I suppose the furnace leaves ashes and there's\n always traces of hair and teeth in the garbage disposal... An\n interesting problem, at that.\"", "\"Indignant form letter to Arcivox. We do not feel we are properly a\n co-respondent in your damage suits. Small children and appliances have\n always been a problem, viz ice boxes and refrigerators. Suggest you put\n a more complicated latch on the handles of the dangerously inferior\n doors you have covering our efficient, patented field.\"\n\n\n I leaned back and took a breather. There was no getting around it—I\n just wasn't happy as a business man. I had been counting on being only\n a figurehead in the Expendable Patent Holding Corporation, but Tony\n Carmen didn't like office work. And he hadn't anyone he trusted any\n more than me. Even.", "I knew what to tell them.\nI peeled off my wet shirt and threw it across the corner of my desk,\n casting a reproving eye at the pastel air-conditioner in the window. It\n wasn't really the machine's fault—The water department reported the\n reservoir too low to run water-cooled systems. It would be a day or two\n before I could get the gas type into my office.\n\n\n Miss Brown, my secretary, was getting a good look at my pale, bony\n chest. Well, for the salary she got, she could stand to look. Of\n course, she herself was wearing a modest one-strap sun dress, not\n shorts and halters like some of the girls.\n\n\n \"My,\" she observed \"it certainly is humid for March, isn't it,\n Professor Venetti?\"\n\n\n I agreed that it was.\n\n\n She got her pad and pencil ready.", "\"You're talking too much, Professor,\" Tony suggested. \"Remember,\nyou\ndid it with\nyour\nmachine.\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" I said at length. \"And why are we standing here letting those\n machines sit there?\"\nThere were two small items of interest to me in the Times the following\n morning.\n\n\n One two-inch story—barely making page one because of a hole to fill at\n the bottom of an account of the number of victims of Indian summer heat\n prostration—told of the incineration of a warehouse on Fleet Street by\n an ingenious new arson bomb that left \"virtually\" no trace. (Maybe the\n fire inspector had planted a few traces to make his explanation more\n creditable.)\n\n\n The second item was further over in a science column just off the\n editorial page. It told of the government—!—developing a new process\n of waste disposal rivaling the old Buck Rogers disintegrator ray.", "My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of\n science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was\n upheld.\n\n\n I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.\n\n\n \"What was this a test for?\" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had\n made. \"What are you planning to do now?\"\n\n\n \"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno\n and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat.\"\n\n\n \"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why,\n that's\nmurder\n.\"\n\n\n \"Not,\" Carmen said, \"without no\ncorpus delecti\n.\"\n\n\n \"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim,\" I\n remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.", "I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I\n had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I\n smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the\n tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field.\n I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one.\n But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him.\n\n\n I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser,\n reflecting her fierce alertness.\n\n\n Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth.\n\n\n \"G-men on the way here,\" he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite\n Miss Brown.\n\n\n \"Don't revert to type,\" I warned him. \"What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC?\n CIA? FDA? USTD?\"", "This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks.\n\n\n If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I\n doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a\n new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of\n spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with\n refrigerators and hypodermic needles.\n\n\n I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee\n I made when the doorbell rang.\n\n\n I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the\n front door.\n\n\n He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. \"Action,\n Professor.\"\n\n\n \"The district attorney has indicted you?\" I asked hopefully.\n\n\n \"He's not even indicted\nyou\n, Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this\n plant in the\nTimes\n.\"", "I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully\n inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ...\n by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side\n effects.\n\n\n I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain\n how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever\n convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.\n\n\n But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing\n \"how\" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.\n\"Yeah, but how does it work?\" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his\n mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.\n\n\n \"Why do you care?\" I asked irritably. \"It will dispose of your bodies\n for you.\"" ], [ "Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see\n that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.\n\n\n \"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the\n old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff.\"\n There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.\n \"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you\n increase the size of the working area.\"\n\n\n \"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know\n mechanics.\"\n\n\n \"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works.\"\n\n\n \"You call that working?\" I demanded. \"Do you realize what you have\n there, Carmen?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of\nStartling Stories\n.\"", "This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated\n water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was\n no breakthrough on the central problem.\n\n\n Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of\n some damned bodies for Carmen.\n\n\n Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so\n precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States\n government, I began experimenting.\n\n\n I cut corners.\n\n\n I bypassed complete safety circuits.\n\n\n I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the\n wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be\n happy.\n\n\n I turned the machine on.\n\n\n The lights popped out.", "\"Here?\" I spluttered once more. \"I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing\n more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit....\"\n\n\n \"You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place.\" The thug's\n teeth flashed in the night. \"Throw your contraption into gear, buddy.\"\n\n\n That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone\n out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What\n remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium\n light position. I flipped.\n\n\n Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply\n disturbed by what next occurred.\n\n\n One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished.\n\n\n \"What have you done?\" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine.", "Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was\n shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was\n this the storied \"ride,\" I wondered?\n\n\n Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He\n did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down\n the deserted street.\n\n\n \"The boys will have it set up in a minute,\" Tony the racketeer informed\n me.\n\n\n \"What?\" The firing squad?\n\n\n \"The Expendable, of course.\"\n\n\n \"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my\n invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign\n pasted on it.\"\n\n\n He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.", "Carmen inhaled deeply. \"Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against\n any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out,\n Professor?\"\n\n\n \"I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the\n unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you\n with the regularity of the morning milk run.\"\n\n\n The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. \"I'm talking about a big\n operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators,\n garbage disposals, waste baskets....\"\n\n\n \"Impractical,\" I snorted. \"You don't realize the tremendous amount of\n electrical power these devices require....\"", "My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of\n science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was\n upheld.\n\n\n I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.\n\n\n \"What was this a test for?\" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had\n made. \"What are you planning to do now?\"\n\n\n \"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno\n and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat.\"\n\n\n \"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why,\n that's\nmurder\n.\"\n\n\n \"Not,\" Carmen said, \"without no\ncorpus delecti\n.\"\n\n\n \"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim,\" I\n remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.", "There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines\n patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest\n sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity,\n they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the\n meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there,\n moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them.\n\n\n I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with\n some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they\n didn't believe actually could work.\n\n\n Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his\n hands on it.\n\n\n Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of.\nThe closed sedan was warm, even in early December.", "\"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes\n a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own\n generators.\"\n\"There's something to what you say,\" I admitted in the face of his\n unexpected information. \"But I can hardly turn my invention over to\n your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the\n results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have\n to decide what to do with the machine.\"\n\n\n \"Listen, Professor,\" Carmen began, \"the Mafia—\"\n\n\n \"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the\n F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this\n much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor\n security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as\n being dead biologically.\"", "A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight.\n\n\n \"Okay. Let's go,\" Tony said, slapping my shoulder.\n\n\n I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my\n teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I\n frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears.\n\n\n The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy\n white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via\n a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take\n care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as\n necessity dictated.\n\n\n Tony guided my elbow. \"Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit\n now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it\n waves to the national anthem.\"", "I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had\n heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. \"See here, Carmen, I\n could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you\n would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know\n where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into\n the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so\n many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will\n have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure.\n Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck\n a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched\n materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will\n just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do.\"", "I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully\n inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ...\n by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side\n effects.\n\n\n I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain\n how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever\n convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.\n\n\n But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing\n \"how\" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.\n\"Yeah, but how does it work?\" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his\n mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.\n\n\n \"Why do you care?\" I asked irritably. \"It will dispose of your bodies\n for you.\"", "Mafia or not, I saw red. \"Are you daring to suggest that I am working\n some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?\"\n\n\n \"Easy, Professor,\" Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one\n palm. \"I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that\n you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well,\n everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things\n through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?\"\n\n\n Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive\n feel for the mechanics of physics.\n\n\n \"I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen,\" I finally admitted. \"It\n might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the\n writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or\n our future.\"", "\"I figured you could handle it,\" Carmen said, leaning back comfortably\n in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. \"I heard you were\n working on something to get rid of trash for the government.\"\n\n\n \"That,\" I told him, \"is restricted information. I subcontracted that\n work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?\"\n\n\n \"Ways, Professor, ways.\"\n\n\n The government did want me to find a way to dispose of\n wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any\n country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a\n small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him\n dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the\n shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off.\n\n\n \"Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you,\" I\n said. \"I'll call you.\"", "\"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that\n just for now.\nWhere are these bodies going?\nI don't want them winding\n up in the D.A.'s bathtub.\"\n\n\n \"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?\"\n\n\n \"You're the scientist,\" Tony said hotly. \"I got great respect for those\n crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc\n on it, I don't know.\"\n\n\n \"Listen here, Carmen,\" I said, \"what makes you think these bodies are\n going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator.\"\n\n\n \"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it\n burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up\n or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing\n cabinets before.\"", "Tony Carmen laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. I finally deduced he\n intended to be cordial.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" he said smoothly \"you have to give this to Washington but\n there are\nways\n, Professor. I know. I'm a business man—\"\n\n\n \"You\nare\n?\" I said.\n\n\n He named some of the businesses in which he held large shares of stock.\n\n\n \"You\nare\n.\"\n\n\n \"I've had experience in this sort of thing. We simply\nleak\nthe\n information to a few hundred well selected persons about all that your\n machine can do. We'll call 'em Expendables, because they can expend\n anything.\"\n\n\n \"I,\" I interjected, \"planned to call it the Venetti Machine.\"\n\n\n \"Professor, who calls the radio the Marconi these days?\"", "This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks.\n\n\n If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I\n doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a\n new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of\n spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with\n refrigerators and hypodermic needles.\n\n\n I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee\n I made when the doorbell rang.\n\n\n I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the\n front door.\n\n\n He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. \"Action,\n Professor.\"\n\n\n \"The district attorney has indicted you?\" I asked hopefully.\n\n\n \"He's not even indicted\nyou\n, Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this\n plant in the\nTimes\n.\"", "\"I own stock in a competitor. That's how I know,\" Carmen informed me.\n \"Listen, Professor, you can sell to Arcivox and still keep control of\n the patents through a separate corporation. And I'll give you 49% of\n its stock.\"\n\n\n This was Carmen's idea of a magnanimous offer for my invention. It\nwas\na pretty good offer—49% and my good health.\n\n\n \"But will the government let Arcivox have the machine for commercial\n use?\"\n\n\n \"The government would let Arcivox have the hydrogen bomb if they found\n a commercial use for it.\"\n\n\n There was a sturdy knock on the door, not a shrill ring of the bell.\n\n\n \"That must be Arcivox now,\" Carmen growled. \"They have the best\n detectives in the business. You know what to tell them?\"", "\"I was in the Marines,\" Carmen said hotly. \"Listen, Professor, these\n aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these\n days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club\n haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums\n with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets\n going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just\n stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my\n liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury.\"\n\n\n \"I don't suppose you could just go to the police—\" I saw the answer in\n his eyes. \"No. I don't suppose you could.\"", "The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of\n his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap\n of sport shirt Carmen wore. \"We have to dress inconspicuously in the\n service,\" he panted weakly.\n\n\n I nodded understandingly. \"What does the heat have to do with the\n outlawing of the Expendables?\"\n\n\n \"At first we thought there might be some truth in the folk nonsense\n that nuclear tests had something to do with raising the mean\n temperature of the world,\" the AEC man said. \"But our scientists\n quickly found they weren't to blame.\"\n\n\n \"Clever of them.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, they saw that the widespread use of your machines was responsible\n for the higher temperature. Your device violates the law of\n conservation of energy,\nseemingly\n. It\nseemingly\ndestroys matter\n without creating energy. Actually—\"\n\n\n He paused dramatically.", "I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I\n had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I\n smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the\n tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field.\n I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one.\n But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him.\n\n\n I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser,\n reflecting her fierce alertness.\n\n\n Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth.\n\n\n \"G-men on the way here,\" he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite\n Miss Brown.\n\n\n \"Don't revert to type,\" I warned him. \"What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC?\n CIA? FDA? USTD?\"" ], [ "\"Actually, your device added the energy it created in destroying matter\n to the energy potential of the planet in the form of\nheat\n. You see\n what that means? If your devices continue in operation, the mean\n temperature of Earth will rise to the point where we burst into flame.\n They must be outlawed!\"\n\n\n \"I agree,\" I said reluctantly.\n\n\n Tony Carmen spoke up. \"No, you don't, Professor. We don't agree to\n that.\"\n\n\n I waved his protests aside.\n\n\n \"I\nwould\nagree,\" I said, \"except that it wouldn't work. Explain the\n danger to the public, let them feel the heat rise themselves, and they\n will hoard Expendables against seizure and continue to use them, until\n we do burst into flame, as you put it so religiously.\"\n\n\n \"Why?\" the young man demanded.", "The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of\n his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap\n of sport shirt Carmen wore. \"We have to dress inconspicuously in the\n service,\" he panted weakly.\n\n\n I nodded understandingly. \"What does the heat have to do with the\n outlawing of the Expendables?\"\n\n\n \"At first we thought there might be some truth in the folk nonsense\n that nuclear tests had something to do with raising the mean\n temperature of the world,\" the AEC man said. \"But our scientists\n quickly found they weren't to blame.\"\n\n\n \"Clever of them.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, they saw that the widespread use of your machines was responsible\n for the higher temperature. Your device violates the law of\n conservation of energy,\nseemingly\n. It\nseemingly\ndestroys matter\n without creating energy. Actually—\"\n\n\n He paused dramatically.", "There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines\n patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest\n sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity,\n they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the\n meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there,\n moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them.\n\n\n I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with\n some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they\n didn't believe actually could work.\n\n\n Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his\n hands on it.\n\n\n Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of.\nThe closed sedan was warm, even in early December.", "This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated\n water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was\n no breakthrough on the central problem.\n\n\n Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of\n some damned bodies for Carmen.\n\n\n Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so\n precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States\n government, I began experimenting.\n\n\n I cut corners.\n\n\n I bypassed complete safety circuits.\n\n\n I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the\n wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be\n happy.\n\n\n I turned the machine on.\n\n\n The lights popped out.", "\"Because Expendables are convenient. There is a ban on frivolous use\n of water due to the dire need. But the police still have to go stop\n people from watering lawns, and I suspect not a few swimming pools are\n being filled on the sly. Water is somebody else's worry. So will be\n generating enough heat to turn Eden into Hell.\"\n\n\n \"Mass psychology isn't my strongest point,\" the young man said\n worriedly. \"But I suspect you may be right. Then—we'll be damned?\"\n\n\n \"No, not necessarily,\" I told him comfortingly. \"All we have to do is\nuse up\nthe excess energy with engines of a specific design.\"\n\n\n \"But can we design those engines in time?\" the young man wondered with\n uncharacteristic gloom.", "I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully\n inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ...\n by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side\n effects.\n\n\n I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain\n how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever\n convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.\n\n\n But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing\n \"how\" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.\n\"Yeah, but how does it work?\" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his\n mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.\n\n\n \"Why do you care?\" I asked irritably. \"It will dispose of your bodies\n for you.\"", "\"You're talking too much, Professor,\" Tony suggested. \"Remember,\nyou\ndid it with\nyour\nmachine.\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" I said at length. \"And why are we standing here letting those\n machines sit there?\"\nThere were two small items of interest to me in the Times the following\n morning.\n\n\n One two-inch story—barely making page one because of a hole to fill at\n the bottom of an account of the number of victims of Indian summer heat\n prostration—told of the incineration of a warehouse on Fleet Street by\n an ingenious new arson bomb that left \"virtually\" no trace. (Maybe the\n fire inspector had planted a few traces to make his explanation more\n creditable.)\n\n\n The second item was further over in a science column just off the\n editorial page. It told of the government—!—developing a new process\n of waste disposal rivaling the old Buck Rogers disintegrator ray.", "Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see\n that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.\n\n\n \"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the\n old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff.\"\n There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.\n \"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you\n increase the size of the working area.\"\n\n\n \"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know\n mechanics.\"\n\n\n \"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works.\"\n\n\n \"You call that working?\" I demanded. \"Do you realize what you have\n there, Carmen?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of\nStartling Stories\n.\"", "Carmen inhaled deeply. \"Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against\n any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out,\n Professor?\"\n\n\n \"I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the\n unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you\n with the regularity of the morning milk run.\"\n\n\n The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. \"I'm talking about a big\n operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators,\n garbage disposals, waste baskets....\"\n\n\n \"Impractical,\" I snorted. \"You don't realize the tremendous amount of\n electrical power these devices require....\"", "\"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that\n just for now.\nWhere are these bodies going?\nI don't want them winding\n up in the D.A.'s bathtub.\"\n\n\n \"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?\"\n\n\n \"You're the scientist,\" Tony said hotly. \"I got great respect for those\n crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc\n on it, I don't know.\"\n\n\n \"Listen here, Carmen,\" I said, \"what makes you think these bodies are\n going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator.\"\n\n\n \"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it\n burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up\n or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing\n cabinets before.\"", "Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was\n shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was\n this the storied \"ride,\" I wondered?\n\n\n Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He\n did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down\n the deserted street.\n\n\n \"The boys will have it set up in a minute,\" Tony the racketeer informed\n me.\n\n\n \"What?\" The firing squad?\n\n\n \"The Expendable, of course.\"\n\n\n \"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my\n invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign\n pasted on it.\"\n\n\n He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.", "\"Certainly,\" I said, practising the power of positive thinking. \"Now\n that your world-wide testing laboratories have confirmed a vague fear\n of mine, I can easily reverse the field of the Expendable device and\n create a rather low-efficiency engine that consumes the excess energy\n in our planetary potential.\"", "A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight.\n\n\n \"Okay. Let's go,\" Tony said, slapping my shoulder.\n\n\n I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my\n teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I\n frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears.\n\n\n The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy\n white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via\n a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take\n care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as\n necessity dictated.\n\n\n Tony guided my elbow. \"Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit\n now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it\n waves to the national anthem.\"", "\"Investigators for the Atomic Energy Commission.\"\n\n\n The solemn, conservatively dressed young man in the door touched the\n edge of his snap-brim hat as he said it.\n\n\n \"Miss Brown, would you mind letting our visitor use your chair?\" I\n asked.\n\n\n \"Not at all, sir,\" she said dreamily.\n\n\n \"May I suggest,\" I said, \"that we might get more business done if you\n then removed yourself from the chair first.\"\n\n\n Miss Brown leaped to her feet with a healthy galvanic response and quit\n the vicinity with her usual efficiency.\nOnce seated, the AEC man said \"I'll get right to the point. You may\n find this troublesome, gentlemen, but your government intends to\n confiscate all of the devices using your so-called Expendable field,\n and forever bar their manufacture in this country or their importation.\"", "I knew what to tell them.\nI peeled off my wet shirt and threw it across the corner of my desk,\n casting a reproving eye at the pastel air-conditioner in the window. It\n wasn't really the machine's fault—The water department reported the\n reservoir too low to run water-cooled systems. It would be a day or two\n before I could get the gas type into my office.\n\n\n Miss Brown, my secretary, was getting a good look at my pale, bony\n chest. Well, for the salary she got, she could stand to look. Of\n course, she herself was wearing a modest one-strap sun dress, not\n shorts and halters like some of the girls.\n\n\n \"My,\" she observed \"it certainly is humid for March, isn't it,\n Professor Venetti?\"\n\n\n I agreed that it was.\n\n\n She got her pad and pencil ready.", "\"Indignant form letter to Arcivox. We do not feel we are properly a\n co-respondent in your damage suits. Small children and appliances have\n always been a problem, viz ice boxes and refrigerators. Suggest you put\n a more complicated latch on the handles of the dangerously inferior\n doors you have covering our efficient, patented field.\"\n\n\n I leaned back and took a breather. There was no getting around it—I\n just wasn't happy as a business man. I had been counting on being only\n a figurehead in the Expendable Patent Holding Corporation, but Tony\n Carmen didn't like office work. And he hadn't anyone he trusted any\n more than me. Even.", "\"You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this,\" Carmen said\n ingratiatingly. \"Ever hear of the Mafia?\"\n\n\n \"Not much,\" the young man admitted earnestly, \"since the FBI finished\n with its deportations a few years back.\"\n\n\n I cleared my throat. \"I must admit that the destruction of a\n multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why\n you took this step?\"\n\n\n The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. \"Have you\n noticed how unseasonably warm it is?\"\n\n\n \"I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you\n keep that suit coat on five minutes more.\"", "\"There are Geiger-Muller Counters, though,\" I said.\n\n\n \"You don't have to give a Geiger counter the sex appeal of a TV set or\n a hardtop convertible. We'll call them Expendables. No home will be\n complete without one.\"\n\n\n \"Perfect for disposing of unwanted bodies,\" I mused. \"The murder rate\n will go alarmingly with those devices within easy reach.\"\n\n\n \"Did that stop Sam Colt or Henry Ford?\" Tony Carmen asked reasonably....\n\n\n Naturally, I was aware that the government would\nnot\nbe interested in\n my machine. I am not a Fortean, a psychic, a psionicist or a screwball.\n But the government frequently gets things it doesn't know what to do\n with—like airplanes in the 'twenties. When it doesn't know what to do,\n it doesn't do it.", "\"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes\n a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own\n generators.\"\n\"There's something to what you say,\" I admitted in the face of his\n unexpected information. \"But I can hardly turn my invention over to\n your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the\n results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have\n to decide what to do with the machine.\"\n\n\n \"Listen, Professor,\" Carmen began, \"the Mafia—\"\n\n\n \"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the\n F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this\n much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor\n security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as\n being dead biologically.\"", "There were changes that should be made before I tried that again, but\n instead I only found a larger fuse for a heavier load and jammed that\n in the switchbox.\n\n\n I flipped my machine into service once again. The lights flickered and\n held.\n\n\n The dials on my control board told me the story. It was hard to take.\n\n\n But there it was.\n\n\n The internal Scale showed zero.\n\n\n I had had a slightly hot bar of silver alloy inside. It was completely\n gone. Mass zero. The temperature gauge showed that there had been\n no change in centigrade reading that couldn't be explained by the\n mechanical operation of the machine itself. There had been no sudden\n discharge of electricity or radioactivity. I checked for a standard\n anti-gravity effect but there was none. Gravity inside the cylinder had\n gone to zero but never to minus." ], [ "I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully\n inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ...\n by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side\n effects.\n\n\n I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain\n how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever\n convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.\n\n\n But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing\n \"how\" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.\n\"Yeah, but how does it work?\" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his\n mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.\n\n\n \"Why do you care?\" I asked irritably. \"It will dispose of your bodies\n for you.\"", "The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of\n his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap\n of sport shirt Carmen wore. \"We have to dress inconspicuously in the\n service,\" he panted weakly.\n\n\n I nodded understandingly. \"What does the heat have to do with the\n outlawing of the Expendables?\"\n\n\n \"At first we thought there might be some truth in the folk nonsense\n that nuclear tests had something to do with raising the mean\n temperature of the world,\" the AEC man said. \"But our scientists\n quickly found they weren't to blame.\"\n\n\n \"Clever of them.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, they saw that the widespread use of your machines was responsible\n for the higher temperature. Your device violates the law of\n conservation of energy,\nseemingly\n. It\nseemingly\ndestroys matter\n without creating energy. Actually—\"\n\n\n He paused dramatically.", "\"Actually, your device added the energy it created in destroying matter\n to the energy potential of the planet in the form of\nheat\n. You see\n what that means? If your devices continue in operation, the mean\n temperature of Earth will rise to the point where we burst into flame.\n They must be outlawed!\"\n\n\n \"I agree,\" I said reluctantly.\n\n\n Tony Carmen spoke up. \"No, you don't, Professor. We don't agree to\n that.\"\n\n\n I waved his protests aside.\n\n\n \"I\nwould\nagree,\" I said, \"except that it wouldn't work. Explain the\n danger to the public, let them feel the heat rise themselves, and they\n will hoard Expendables against seizure and continue to use them, until\n we do burst into flame, as you put it so religiously.\"\n\n\n \"Why?\" the young man demanded.", "Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see\n that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.\n\n\n \"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the\n old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff.\"\n There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.\n \"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you\n increase the size of the working area.\"\n\n\n \"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know\n mechanics.\"\n\n\n \"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works.\"\n\n\n \"You call that working?\" I demanded. \"Do you realize what you have\n there, Carmen?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of\nStartling Stories\n.\"", "There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines\n patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest\n sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity,\n they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the\n meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there,\n moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them.\n\n\n I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with\n some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they\n didn't believe actually could work.\n\n\n Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his\n hands on it.\n\n\n Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of.\nThe closed sedan was warm, even in early December.", "\"Investigators for the Atomic Energy Commission.\"\n\n\n The solemn, conservatively dressed young man in the door touched the\n edge of his snap-brim hat as he said it.\n\n\n \"Miss Brown, would you mind letting our visitor use your chair?\" I\n asked.\n\n\n \"Not at all, sir,\" she said dreamily.\n\n\n \"May I suggest,\" I said, \"that we might get more business done if you\n then removed yourself from the chair first.\"\n\n\n Miss Brown leaped to her feet with a healthy galvanic response and quit\n the vicinity with her usual efficiency.\nOnce seated, the AEC man said \"I'll get right to the point. You may\n find this troublesome, gentlemen, but your government intends to\n confiscate all of the devices using your so-called Expendable field,\n and forever bar their manufacture in this country or their importation.\"", "There were changes that should be made before I tried that again, but\n instead I only found a larger fuse for a heavier load and jammed that\n in the switchbox.\n\n\n I flipped my machine into service once again. The lights flickered and\n held.\n\n\n The dials on my control board told me the story. It was hard to take.\n\n\n But there it was.\n\n\n The internal Scale showed zero.\n\n\n I had had a slightly hot bar of silver alloy inside. It was completely\n gone. Mass zero. The temperature gauge showed that there had been\n no change in centigrade reading that couldn't be explained by the\n mechanical operation of the machine itself. There had been no sudden\n discharge of electricity or radioactivity. I checked for a standard\n anti-gravity effect but there was none. Gravity inside the cylinder had\n gone to zero but never to minus.", "Mafia or not, I saw red. \"Are you daring to suggest that I am working\n some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?\"\n\n\n \"Easy, Professor,\" Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one\n palm. \"I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that\n you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well,\n everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things\n through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?\"\n\n\n Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive\n feel for the mechanics of physics.\n\n\n \"I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen,\" I finally admitted. \"It\n might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the\n writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or\n our future.\"", "\"Because Expendables are convenient. There is a ban on frivolous use\n of water due to the dire need. But the police still have to go stop\n people from watering lawns, and I suspect not a few swimming pools are\n being filled on the sly. Water is somebody else's worry. So will be\n generating enough heat to turn Eden into Hell.\"\n\n\n \"Mass psychology isn't my strongest point,\" the young man said\n worriedly. \"But I suspect you may be right. Then—we'll be damned?\"\n\n\n \"No, not necessarily,\" I told him comfortingly. \"All we have to do is\nuse up\nthe excess energy with engines of a specific design.\"\n\n\n \"But can we design those engines in time?\" the young man wondered with\n uncharacteristic gloom.", "Of course, getting energy to destroy energy without producing energy or\n matter is a violation of the maxim of the conservation of energy. But\n I didn't let that stop me—any more than I would have let the velocity\n of light put any limitations on a spacecraft engine had I been engaged\n to work on one. You can't allow other people's ideas to tie you hand\n and foot. There are some who tell me, however, that my refusal to honor\n such time-tested cliches is why I only have a small private laboratory\n owned by myself, my late wife's father and the bank, instead of\n working in the vast facilities of Bell, Du Pont, or General Motors. To\n this, I can only smile and nod.\n\n\n But even refusing to be balked by conservative ideas, I failed.\n\n\n I could not neutralize radioactivity. All I had been able to do (by a\n basic disturbance in the electromagnetogravitational co-ordinant system\n for Earth-Sun) was to reduce the mass of the radioactive matter.", "\"Here?\" I spluttered once more. \"I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing\n more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit....\"\n\n\n \"You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place.\" The thug's\n teeth flashed in the night. \"Throw your contraption into gear, buddy.\"\n\n\n That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone\n out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What\n remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium\n light position. I flipped.\n\n\n Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply\n disturbed by what next occurred.\n\n\n One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished.\n\n\n \"What have you done?\" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine.", "This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated\n water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was\n no breakthrough on the central problem.\n\n\n Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of\n some damned bodies for Carmen.\n\n\n Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so\n precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States\n government, I began experimenting.\n\n\n I cut corners.\n\n\n I bypassed complete safety circuits.\n\n\n I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the\n wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be\n happy.\n\n\n I turned the machine on.\n\n\n The lights popped out.", "The swarthy racketeer pursed his lips and apparently did some rapid\n calculation.\n\n\n \"I don't mind the first two, but I don't like them going into the\n future. If they do that, they may show up again in six months.\"\n\n\n \"Or six million years.\"\n\n\n \"You'll have to cut that future part out, Professor.\"", "A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight.\n\n\n \"Okay. Let's go,\" Tony said, slapping my shoulder.\n\n\n I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my\n teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I\n frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears.\n\n\n The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy\n white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via\n a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take\n care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as\n necessity dictated.\n\n\n Tony guided my elbow. \"Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit\n now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it\n waves to the national anthem.\"", "Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was\n shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was\n this the storied \"ride,\" I wondered?\n\n\n Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He\n did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down\n the deserted street.\n\n\n \"The boys will have it set up in a minute,\" Tony the racketeer informed\n me.\n\n\n \"What?\" The firing squad?\n\n\n \"The Expendable, of course.\"\n\n\n \"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my\n invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign\n pasted on it.\"\n\n\n He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.", "\"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that\n just for now.\nWhere are these bodies going?\nI don't want them winding\n up in the D.A.'s bathtub.\"\n\n\n \"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?\"\n\n\n \"You're the scientist,\" Tony said hotly. \"I got great respect for those\n crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc\n on it, I don't know.\"\n\n\n \"Listen here, Carmen,\" I said, \"what makes you think these bodies are\n going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator.\"\n\n\n \"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it\n burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up\n or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing\n cabinets before.\"", "I knew what to tell them.\nI peeled off my wet shirt and threw it across the corner of my desk,\n casting a reproving eye at the pastel air-conditioner in the window. It\n wasn't really the machine's fault—The water department reported the\n reservoir too low to run water-cooled systems. It would be a day or two\n before I could get the gas type into my office.\n\n\n Miss Brown, my secretary, was getting a good look at my pale, bony\n chest. Well, for the salary she got, she could stand to look. Of\n course, she herself was wearing a modest one-strap sun dress, not\n shorts and halters like some of the girls.\n\n\n \"My,\" she observed \"it certainly is humid for March, isn't it,\n Professor Venetti?\"\n\n\n I agreed that it was.\n\n\n She got her pad and pencil ready.", "\"You're talking too much, Professor,\" Tony suggested. \"Remember,\nyou\ndid it with\nyour\nmachine.\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" I said at length. \"And why are we standing here letting those\n machines sit there?\"\nThere were two small items of interest to me in the Times the following\n morning.\n\n\n One two-inch story—barely making page one because of a hole to fill at\n the bottom of an account of the number of victims of Indian summer heat\n prostration—told of the incineration of a warehouse on Fleet Street by\n an ingenious new arson bomb that left \"virtually\" no trace. (Maybe the\n fire inspector had planted a few traces to make his explanation more\n creditable.)\n\n\n The second item was further over in a science column just off the\n editorial page. It told of the government—!—developing a new process\n of waste disposal rivaling the old Buck Rogers disintegrator ray.", "My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of\n science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was\n upheld.\n\n\n I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.\n\n\n \"What was this a test for?\" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had\n made. \"What are you planning to do now?\"\n\n\n \"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno\n and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat.\"\n\n\n \"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why,\n that's\nmurder\n.\"\n\n\n \"Not,\" Carmen said, \"without no\ncorpus delecti\n.\"\n\n\n \"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim,\" I\n remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.", "This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks.\n\n\n If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I\n doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a\n new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of\n spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with\n refrigerators and hypodermic needles.\n\n\n I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee\n I made when the doorbell rang.\n\n\n I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the\n front door.\n\n\n He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. \"Action,\n Professor.\"\n\n\n \"The district attorney has indicted you?\" I asked hopefully.\n\n\n \"He's not even indicted\nyou\n, Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this\n plant in the\nTimes\n.\"" ] ]
test	47989	[ "What is Irene like?", "What is Pauline like?", "What is Judy like?", "What would have happened if the girls didn't look at the telegram?", "What is the tone of this passage?", "Of all the girls, who seems to be most interested in the man on the bus?", "How does Pauline feel about school?", "If the story were to continue, what would most likely happen?", "Which of the following is not a similarity shared between Judy and Irene?" ]	[ [ "Quiet", "Gorgeous", "Immature", "Secure" ], [ "Generous", "Confident", "Humble", "Brilliant" ], [ "Plain", "Persistent", "High maintenance", "Reserved" ], [ "They would've looked for retail jobs in NYC", "They would've looked for schools in NYC", "They wouldn't have looked for the office building", "They wouldn't have looked for a library" ], [ "Serious", "Joyful", "Fast-paced", "Romantic" ], [ "Pauline", "Irene", "All of them were interested in him", "Judy" ], [ "She's ambivalent about learning, she does like hanging out with the boys in her class", "She likes having something to do", "She loves learning", "She doesn't like it" ], [ "Judy would have eventually been hired to be the man's assistant", "Pauline would have eventually been hired to be the man's assistant", "Pauline would have eventually met with the man", "Irene would have eventually met with the man" ], [ "Neither of them wanted to go to school", "Both of them wanted to work for Emily", "Both of them couldn't be in school", "Both of them wanted to learn more about the telegram" ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Irene put in with a vigor quite rare for her.\n “Couldn’t you just see in his eyes that he was\n real?”\n“I didn’t look in his eyes,” Judy returned\n with a laugh, “but you can be sure I’ll never\n be satisfied until we find out what that mysterious\n telegram meant.”\nIn the days that followed Judy learned that\n the mere mention of the stranger’s name, Dale\n Meredith, would cause either girl to cease\n worrying about a home or about a career, as\n the case might be.\n“It’s almost magical,” she said to herself\n and had to admit that the spell was also upon\n her. Perhaps a dozen times a day she would\n puzzle over the torn papers in her pocketbook.", "This stranger seemed to like serious-minded\n people and presently changed the conversation\n to books and music, always favorite topics with\n Irene. Then Judy spoke about the work that he\n was doing but learned nothing except that\n “finished” in his case meant that he had succeeded\n in putting his papers back in their\n original sequence.\n“And if you girls were all of the same type,”\n he added, “I doubt if I would have forgiven\n you your prank.”\n“I guess he doesn’t care for my type,” Judy\n whispered to the other two girls a little later.\n“Mine either,” Pauline returned with a\n laugh. “At least he wouldn’t if he knew I\n dared you.”", "“Do you suppose,” Irene asked naïvely,\n “that he cares for my type?”\nShe looked very pathetic as she said that, and\n Judy, remembering Irene’s misfortunes, slid\n into the seat beside her and put a loving arm\n about her shoulder.\n“I care for your type,” she said. “So why\n worry about what a stranger thinks?”\n“I’m not,” Irene said, belying her answer\n with a wistful look in the stranger’s direction.\n He was still absorbed in the mountain of typewritten\n pages that he held on his knee. It\n seemed that his work, whatever it was, engrossed\n him completely. He was again making\n corrections and additions with his pen. Judy", "she became curious enough to ask.\n“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Pauline said in surprise.\n “Father is away. A medical conference\n in Europe. He’s always going somewhere like\n that, but he’ll be home in two or three weeks.”\n“Then we’ll be alone for three weeks?” Irene\n asked, dismayed.\n“Why not?” Pauline returned indifferently.\n “There’s nothing to be afraid of with servants\n in the house.”\nBut Irene was not used to servants. Ever\n since her father became disabled she had waited\n on herself and kept their shabby little house in\n apple-pie order. The house was closed now and\n their few good pieces of furniture put in storage.\n All summer long there would not be any", "The man looked up. But, to Judy’s surprise,\n he looked up with a smile. Irene, all contrition,\n hastened to apologize.\n“No harm done,” he returned good-naturedly\n and began collecting his scattered papers.\n Soon he had them rearranged and resumed his\n reading. There were a great many typewritten\n sheets of paper, and he seemed to be reading\n critically, scratching out something here and\n adding something there.\n“You were wrong,” Irene said, turning to\n Judy. “See how nice he was.”\n“I should have known better than to dare a\n girl like you,” Pauline put in.\n“It was horrid of me,” Judy admitted, now\n almost as interested as Irene in the strange", "be taken away at every whim of the landlord,\n just enough money so that she could afford to\n look her best and the security of some strong\n person to depend upon.\n“Will your school last long?” Irene was asking\n the dark-haired girl.\n“Not long enough,” Pauline sighed, revealing\n the fact that she too had troubles.\n“Then you’ll be free?” Irene went on, unmindful\n of the sigh. “We can go places together?\n You’ll have time to show us around.”\nPauline shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t\n talk about time to me. Time will be my middle\n name after I graduate. There isn’t a single\n thing I really want to do, least of all stay at", "very minute if she applied,” Irene declared.\nPauline nodded, easily convinced. This practical,\n black-haired, blue-eyed girl had helped\n Judy solve two mysteries and knew that she had\n talent. But Pauline didn’t want to meet crooks.\n She didn’t want to be bothered with sick or\n feeble-minded people and often felt thankful\n that her father, a brain specialist, had his offices\n elsewhere. Pauline wanted to meet cultured\n people who were also interesting.\n“People, like that man we met on the bus,”\n she said, “who read and can discuss books intelligently.\n I’d hate to think of his being mixed\n up in anything crooked.”\n“You can’t\nmake\nme believe that he was,”", "natures, had always felt the security of dependence\n upon their parents while Irene’s crippled\n father depended solely upon her. This responsibility\n made her seem older than her years—older\n and younger, too. She never could\n acquire Pauline’s poise or Judy’s fearlessness.\nIn appearance, too, they were different. Her\n first vacation had done wonders for Irene\n Lang. Now her usually pale cheeks glowed\n with healthy color, and her eyes were a deeper,\n happier blue. Two weeks of sunshine had\n tanned her skin and brought out all the gold in\n her hair.\nPauline, too, had acquired a becoming tan\n which made her hair look darker than ever and\n contrasted strangely with her keen, light blue", "and winding stairways were as impressive as\n ever.\nDrinking in the fascination of it, Judy and\n Irene followed the man, Oliver, who carried\n their bags right up to the third floor where\n Pauline had a sitting room and a smaller bedroom\n all to herself. The former was furnished\n with a desk, sofa, easy chairs, numerous shaded\n lamps, a piano and a radio.\nHere the man left them with a curt, “’Ere\n you are.”\n“And it’s good to have you, my dears,” the\n more sociable housekeeper welcomed them.\n Soon she was bustling around the room setting\n their bags in order. She offered to help unpack.\n“Never mind that now, Mary,” Pauline told", "home all day. College is a bore unless you’re\n planning a career. What do you intend to do\n when you’re through school?”\n“I hadn’t planned,” Irene said, “except that\n I want time to read and go ahead with my\n music. Of course I’ll keep house somewhere\n for Dad. It will be so nice to have him well\n again, and I love keeping house.”\n“What about your work for my father?”\n Judy asked.\nIrene’s eyes became troubled. “He doesn’t\n really need me any more. I know now, Judy,\n that you just made that position for me. It was\n lovely of you, but I—I’d just as soon not go\n back where I’m not needed. Your father trusts", "“I never dreamed New York was like this,”\n she breathed.\n“It grows on a person,” Pauline declared.\n “I would never want to live in any other city.\n No matter how bored or how annoyed I may be\n during the day, at night I can always come up\n here and feel the thrill of having all this for a\n home.”\n“I wish I had a home I could feel that way\n about,” Irene sighed.\nThe garden was too alluring for the girls to\n want to leave it. Even Blackberry had settled\n himself in a bed of geraniums. These and other\n plants in enormous boxes bordered the complete\n inclosure. Inside were wicker chairs, a table\n and a hammock hung between two posts.", "came back at her. It was hard to be patient\n with this irritable old lady. Certainly she\n would never have chosen such an employer if\n it had not been for the possibility of meeting\n Dale Meredith again. Irene had taken such a\n fancy to him.\n“Lucky she doesn’t know that,” thought\n Judy as she watched her fumbling through a\n stack of papers on her desk. Finally she produced\n a closely written page of note paper and\n handed it to the puzzled girl.\n“If you know so much about manuscripts,”\n she charged. “What would you do with a page\n like that?”\nHalf hoping that the handwriting was Dale\n Meredith’s, Judy reached out an eager hand.", "ahead of her and confided a desire to do something—anything\n to make him look up.\n“Why, Judy,” Irene replied, shocked. “I’ve\n been watching that man myself and he’s—he’s——”\n“Well, what?”\n“Almost my ideal.”\n“Silly!” Judy laughed. “I’d like to bet he\n wouldn’t be so ideal if I did something to disturb\n those precious papers that he’s reading.”\n“I dare you!” Pauline said.\nSixteen or not, the dare tempted Judy. It\n was an easy matter to let Blackberry out of the\n hatbox in her arms and down into the aisle.\n The cat’s plumelike tail did the rest.", "But then, it was Judy’s nature to puzzle over\n things. It was for that reason that she usually\n chose detective stories whenever she sat down\n with a book. That hammock up there on the\n roof garden was an invitation to read, and soon\n Judy and Irene had finished all the suitable\n stories in Dr. Faulkner’s library. They had\n seen a few shows, gazed at a great many tall\n buildings, and found New York, generally, less\n thrilling from the street than it had been from\n the roof garden.\nPauline sensed this and worried about entertaining\n her guests. “How would you like to\n go and see Grant’s Tomb today?” she suggested.\n“For Heaven’s sake, think of something a", "know our cellar floor is covered with gravel,\n and he sleeps down there.”\n“Is this gravel in the cellar?” Irene asked,\n beginning to get an attack of shivers.\nPauline laughed. “Goodness, no! It’s on\n the roof garden.” She walked across the room\n and flung open a door. “Nothing shivery about\n that, is there?”\n“Nothing except the thought of standing on\n the top of one of those tall buildings,” Irene\n said, gazing upward as she followed Pauline.\nThe view fascinated Judy. Looking out\n across lower New York, she found a new world\n of gray buildings and flickering lights. In the\n other direction the Empire State Building\n loomed like a sentinel.", "had not been a simple coincidence. It would be\n such fun—this scheming. It would give them\n something to do and if Judy’s plan worked it\n might even solve the problem of Pauline’s\n career.\n“Of course Emily Grimshaw may not hire\n us,” Judy said after she had outlined the\n scheme and won Irene’s approval. “But, at\n any rate, it’s worth trying. We won’t need to\n tell her it’s only for a few weeks when Pauline\n will be there to step right into the position.\n I wonder how you get to Madison Square.”\nShe stopped a policeman to ask him and\n found it to be within easy walking distance.\n“We might as well go now,” Irene agreed.", "“This is where I do all my studying,” Pauline\n said, “and you two girls may come up here\n and read if you like while I’m at school.”\n“At school?” Judy repeated, dazed until she\n thought of something that she should have considered\n before accepting Pauline’s invitation.\n Of course Pauline would be in school. She\n hadn’t been given a holiday as the girls in Farringdon\n had when their school burned down.\n Judy and Irene would be left to entertain themselves\n all day unless Dr. Faulkner had some\n plans for them. Judy wondered where he was.\nAfter they had gone inside again, that is, all\n of them except Blackberry who seemed to have\n adopted the roof garden as a permanent home,", "him. Judy’s brother, a reporter and student\n of journalism, had gone to live in the college\n dormitory.\nThus it was that both girls knew they could\n not return to Farringdon no matter how homesick\n they might be. They had the cat for comfort\n and they had each other. Ever since Irene\n had come to work in Dr. Bolton’s office these\n two had been like sisters. Lois, Lorraine,\n Betty, Marge, Pauline—all of them were\n friends. But Irene and Honey, the other girl\n who had shared Judy’s home, were closer than\n that. Judy felt with them. She felt with Irene\n the longing of the other girl for something to\n hold fast to—a substantial home that could not", "the left. Fourth floor.”\n“Only one—” Judy began.\n“She always sees one client at a time. The\n other girl can wait.”\n“That’s right. I—I’ll wait,” Irene stammered.\n“But you wanted the position——”\n“I don’t now. Suppose she asked about experience.”\n“You’ve had a little. You stand a better\n chance than I do.”\n“Not with your nerve, Judy,” Irene said.\n “This place gives me the shivers. You’re welcome\n to go exploring dark halls if you like. I’d\n rather sit here in the lobby and read Dale Meredith’s\n book.”\n“Oh, so that’s it? Make yourself comfortable,”", "didn’t seem to be paying much attention to it.”\n“I’ve been over this road a great many\n times,” he explained, “and one does tire of\n scenery, like anything else. Passengers in the\n bus are different.”\n“You mean different from scenery?”\n“Yes, and from each other. For instance,\n you with your ridiculous cat and your golden-haired\n friend who apologized for you and that\n small, dark girl are three distinct types.”\nJudy regarded him curiously. She had never\n thought of herself or either of the other girls as\n “types.” Now she tried to analyze his\n meaning.\nTheir lives had certainly been different.\n Judy and Pauline, although of independent" ], [ "and winding stairways were as impressive as\n ever.\nDrinking in the fascination of it, Judy and\n Irene followed the man, Oliver, who carried\n their bags right up to the third floor where\n Pauline had a sitting room and a smaller bedroom\n all to herself. The former was furnished\n with a desk, sofa, easy chairs, numerous shaded\n lamps, a piano and a radio.\nHere the man left them with a curt, “’Ere\n you are.”\n“And it’s good to have you, my dears,” the\n more sociable housekeeper welcomed them.\n Soon she was bustling around the room setting\n their bags in order. She offered to help unpack.\n“Never mind that now, Mary,” Pauline told", "she became curious enough to ask.\n“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Pauline said in surprise.\n “Father is away. A medical conference\n in Europe. He’s always going somewhere like\n that, but he’ll be home in two or three weeks.”\n“Then we’ll be alone for three weeks?” Irene\n asked, dismayed.\n“Why not?” Pauline returned indifferently.\n “There’s nothing to be afraid of with servants\n in the house.”\nBut Irene was not used to servants. Ever\n since her father became disabled she had waited\n on herself and kept their shabby little house in\n apple-pie order. The house was closed now and\n their few good pieces of furniture put in storage.\n All summer long there would not be any", "very minute if she applied,” Irene declared.\nPauline nodded, easily convinced. This practical,\n black-haired, blue-eyed girl had helped\n Judy solve two mysteries and knew that she had\n talent. But Pauline didn’t want to meet crooks.\n She didn’t want to be bothered with sick or\n feeble-minded people and often felt thankful\n that her father, a brain specialist, had his offices\n elsewhere. Pauline wanted to meet cultured\n people who were also interesting.\n“People, like that man we met on the bus,”\n she said, “who read and can discuss books intelligently.\n I’d hate to think of his being mixed\n up in anything crooked.”\n“You can’t\nmake\nme believe that he was,”", "“This is where I do all my studying,” Pauline\n said, “and you two girls may come up here\n and read if you like while I’m at school.”\n“At school?” Judy repeated, dazed until she\n thought of something that she should have considered\n before accepting Pauline’s invitation.\n Of course Pauline would be in school. She\n hadn’t been given a holiday as the girls in Farringdon\n had when their school burned down.\n Judy and Irene would be left to entertain themselves\n all day unless Dr. Faulkner had some\n plans for them. Judy wondered where he was.\nAfter they had gone inside again, that is, all\n of them except Blackberry who seemed to have\n adopted the roof garden as a permanent home,", "be taken away at every whim of the landlord,\n just enough money so that she could afford to\n look her best and the security of some strong\n person to depend upon.\n“Will your school last long?” Irene was asking\n the dark-haired girl.\n“Not long enough,” Pauline sighed, revealing\n the fact that she too had troubles.\n“Then you’ll be free?” Irene went on, unmindful\n of the sigh. “We can go places together?\n You’ll have time to show us around.”\nPauline shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t\n talk about time to me. Time will be my middle\n name after I graduate. There isn’t a single\n thing I really want to do, least of all stay at", "The man looked up. But, to Judy’s surprise,\n he looked up with a smile. Irene, all contrition,\n hastened to apologize.\n“No harm done,” he returned good-naturedly\n and began collecting his scattered papers.\n Soon he had them rearranged and resumed his\n reading. There were a great many typewritten\n sheets of paper, and he seemed to be reading\n critically, scratching out something here and\n adding something there.\n“You were wrong,” Irene said, turning to\n Judy. “See how nice he was.”\n“I should have known better than to dare a\n girl like you,” Pauline put in.\n“It was horrid of me,” Judy admitted, now\n almost as interested as Irene in the strange", "“I never dreamed New York was like this,”\n she breathed.\n“It grows on a person,” Pauline declared.\n “I would never want to live in any other city.\n No matter how bored or how annoyed I may be\n during the day, at night I can always come up\n here and feel the thrill of having all this for a\n home.”\n“I wish I had a home I could feel that way\n about,” Irene sighed.\nThe garden was too alluring for the girls to\n want to leave it. Even Blackberry had settled\n himself in a bed of geraniums. These and other\n plants in enormous boxes bordered the complete\n inclosure. Inside were wicker chairs, a table\n and a hammock hung between two posts.", "natures, had always felt the security of dependence\n upon their parents while Irene’s crippled\n father depended solely upon her. This responsibility\n made her seem older than her years—older\n and younger, too. She never could\n acquire Pauline’s poise or Judy’s fearlessness.\nIn appearance, too, they were different. Her\n first vacation had done wonders for Irene\n Lang. Now her usually pale cheeks glowed\n with healthy color, and her eyes were a deeper,\n happier blue. Two weeks of sunshine had\n tanned her skin and brought out all the gold in\n her hair.\nPauline, too, had acquired a becoming tan\n which made her hair look darker than ever and\n contrasted strangely with her keen, light blue", "her. “We’re dead tired and I can lend them\n some of my things for tonight.”\n“Then I’ll fix up the double bed in the next\n room for your guests and leave you to yourselves,”\n the kind old lady said.\nAs soon as she had closed the door Judy\n lifted her cat out of the hatbox. With a grateful\n noise, halfway between a purr and a yowl,\n Blackberry leaped to the floor and began, at\n once, to explore the rooms.\n“His padded feet were made for soft carpets,”\n Judy said fondly.\n“How do you suppose he’d like gravel?”\n Pauline asked.\n“Oh, he’d love it!” Judy exclaimed. “You", "But then, it was Judy’s nature to puzzle over\n things. It was for that reason that she usually\n chose detective stories whenever she sat down\n with a book. That hammock up there on the\n roof garden was an invitation to read, and soon\n Judy and Irene had finished all the suitable\n stories in Dr. Faulkner’s library. They had\n seen a few shows, gazed at a great many tall\n buildings, and found New York, generally, less\n thrilling from the street than it had been from\n the roof garden.\nPauline sensed this and worried about entertaining\n her guests. “How would you like to\n go and see Grant’s Tomb today?” she suggested.\n“For Heaven’s sake, think of something a", "This stranger seemed to like serious-minded\n people and presently changed the conversation\n to books and music, always favorite topics with\n Irene. Then Judy spoke about the work that he\n was doing but learned nothing except that\n “finished” in his case meant that he had succeeded\n in putting his papers back in their\n original sequence.\n“And if you girls were all of the same type,”\n he added, “I doubt if I would have forgiven\n you your prank.”\n“I guess he doesn’t care for my type,” Judy\n whispered to the other two girls a little later.\n“Mine either,” Pauline returned with a\n laugh. “At least he wouldn’t if he knew I\n dared you.”", "little more exciting than that,” Judy exclaimed\n thoughtlessly. “I’d rather find a library somewhere\n and then lie and read something in the\n hammock.”\n“So would I,” agreed Irene, relieved that\n Judy hadn’t wanted to see the tomb.\n“Well, if a library’s all you want,” Pauline\n said, “why not walk along with me and I’ll\n show you one on my way to school.”\n“A big one?” Judy asked.\n“No, just a small one. In fact, it’s only a\n bookshop with a circulating library for its customers.”\nJudy sighed. It would seem nice to see something\n small for a change. She never recognized\n this library at all until they were almost inside", "didn’t seem to be paying much attention to it.”\n“I’ve been over this road a great many\n times,” he explained, “and one does tire of\n scenery, like anything else. Passengers in the\n bus are different.”\n“You mean different from scenery?”\n“Yes, and from each other. For instance,\n you with your ridiculous cat and your golden-haired\n friend who apologized for you and that\n small, dark girl are three distinct types.”\nJudy regarded him curiously. She had never\n thought of herself or either of the other girls as\n “types.” Now she tried to analyze his\n meaning.\nTheir lives had certainly been different.\n Judy and Pauline, although of independent", "the door. Then her eyes shone.\nWhat an interesting place it was! On the\n counters were quaint gifts and novelties as well\n as books. The salesladies all wore smocks, like\n artists, and had the courtesy to leave the girls\n alone. Pauline had to hurry on to school but\n left Judy and Irene to browse. Before long\n they had discovered a sign reading MYSTERY\n AND ADVENTURE. That was what Judy\n liked. Rows and rows of new books, like soldiers,\n marched along the shelves.\n“What a lot of flying stories,” Irene said,\n absently removing one of them from its place.\n“And murder mysteries,” Judy added. “It’s\n always a temptation to read them.", "know our cellar floor is covered with gravel,\n and he sleeps down there.”\n“Is this gravel in the cellar?” Irene asked,\n beginning to get an attack of shivers.\nPauline laughed. “Goodness, no! It’s on\n the roof garden.” She walked across the room\n and flung open a door. “Nothing shivery about\n that, is there?”\n“Nothing except the thought of standing on\n the top of one of those tall buildings,” Irene\n said, gazing upward as she followed Pauline.\nThe view fascinated Judy. Looking out\n across lower New York, she found a new world\n of gray buildings and flickering lights. In the\n other direction the Empire State Building\n loomed like a sentinel.", "and bundled under one arm.\nThe driver had to give in. He even grinned\n a bit sheepishly as the girls took their seats,\n Pauline and Irene together, “Because,” Judy\n insisted as she took the seat just behind them,\n “I have Blackberry.”\nThe other passengers on the bus were regarding\n the newcomers with amused interest.\n A ten-year-old boy brought forth a ball of twine\n and rolled it playfully in Blackberry’s direction.\n An old lady made purring noises through\n her lips. Everyone seemed to be nodding and\n smiling. Everyone except the serious young\n man across the aisle. He never turned his\n head.\nJudy nudged the two friends in the seat", "had not been a simple coincidence. It would be\n such fun—this scheming. It would give them\n something to do and if Judy’s plan worked it\n might even solve the problem of Pauline’s\n career.\n“Of course Emily Grimshaw may not hire\n us,” Judy said after she had outlined the\n scheme and won Irene’s approval. “But, at\n any rate, it’s worth trying. We won’t need to\n tell her it’s only for a few weeks when Pauline\n will be there to step right into the position.\n I wonder how you get to Madison Square.”\nShe stopped a policeman to ask him and\n found it to be within easy walking distance.\n“We might as well go now,” Irene agreed.", "ahead of her and confided a desire to do something—anything\n to make him look up.\n“Why, Judy,” Irene replied, shocked. “I’ve\n been watching that man myself and he’s—he’s——”\n“Well, what?”\n“Almost my ideal.”\n“Silly!” Judy laughed. “I’d like to bet he\n wouldn’t be so ideal if I did something to disturb\n those precious papers that he’s reading.”\n“I dare you!” Pauline said.\nSixteen or not, the dare tempted Judy. It\n was an easy matter to let Blackberry out of the\n hatbox in her arms and down into the aisle.\n The cat’s plumelike tail did the rest.", "and scrutinized Judy. She was a large woman\n dressed in a severely plain brown cloth dress\n with sensible brown shoes to match. Her iron-gray\n hair was knotted at the back of her head.\n In fact, the only mark of distinction about her\n whole person was the pair of glasses perched\n on the high bridge of her nose and the wide,\n black ribbon suspended from them. Although\n an old woman, her face was not wrinkled.\n What few lines she had were deep furrows that\n looked as if they belonged there. Judy could\n imagine Emily Grimshaw as a middle-aged\n woman but never as a girl.\nThe room was, by no means, a typical office.\n If it had not been for the massive desk littered", "“Do you suppose,” Irene asked naïvely,\n “that he cares for my type?”\nShe looked very pathetic as she said that, and\n Judy, remembering Irene’s misfortunes, slid\n into the seat beside her and put a loving arm\n about her shoulder.\n“I care for your type,” she said. “So why\n worry about what a stranger thinks?”\n“I’m not,” Irene said, belying her answer\n with a wistful look in the stranger’s direction.\n He was still absorbed in the mountain of typewritten\n pages that he held on his knee. It\n seemed that his work, whatever it was, engrossed\n him completely. He was again making\n corrections and additions with his pen. Judy" ], [ "and scrutinized Judy. She was a large woman\n dressed in a severely plain brown cloth dress\n with sensible brown shoes to match. Her iron-gray\n hair was knotted at the back of her head.\n In fact, the only mark of distinction about her\n whole person was the pair of glasses perched\n on the high bridge of her nose and the wide,\n black ribbon suspended from them. Although\n an old woman, her face was not wrinkled.\n What few lines she had were deep furrows that\n looked as if they belonged there. Judy could\n imagine Emily Grimshaw as a middle-aged\n woman but never as a girl.\nThe room was, by no means, a typical office.\n If it had not been for the massive desk littered", "The agent was watching her like a cat and, as\n she read, a hush settled over the room. Emily\n Grimshaw was putting Judy to a test.", "him. Judy’s brother, a reporter and student\n of journalism, had gone to live in the college\n dormitory.\nThus it was that both girls knew they could\n not return to Farringdon no matter how homesick\n they might be. They had the cat for comfort\n and they had each other. Ever since Irene\n had come to work in Dr. Bolton’s office these\n two had been like sisters. Lois, Lorraine,\n Betty, Marge, Pauline—all of them were\n friends. But Irene and Honey, the other girl\n who had shared Judy’s home, were closer than\n that. Judy felt with them. She felt with Irene\n the longing of the other girl for something to\n hold fast to—a substantial home that could not", "eyes.\nThe sun had not been quite so kind to Judy.\n It had discovered a few faint freckles on her\n nose and given her hair a decided reddish cast.\n But Judy didn’t mind. Camp life had been exciting—boating,\n swimming and, as a climax, a\n thrilling ride in Arthur Farringdon-Pett’s new\n airplane.\nThe young man beside Judy was a little like\n Arthur in appearance—tall, good-looking but\n altogether too grown-up and serious. Judy\n liked boys to make jokes now and then, even\n tease the way her brother, Horace, did. Peter\n teased her, too.\n“Queer,” she thought, “to miss being\n teased.”", "But then, it was Judy’s nature to puzzle over\n things. It was for that reason that she usually\n chose detective stories whenever she sat down\n with a book. That hammock up there on the\n roof garden was an invitation to read, and soon\n Judy and Irene had finished all the suitable\n stories in Dr. Faulkner’s library. They had\n seen a few shows, gazed at a great many tall\n buildings, and found New York, generally, less\n thrilling from the street than it had been from\n the roof garden.\nPauline sensed this and worried about entertaining\n her guests. “How would you like to\n go and see Grant’s Tomb today?” she suggested.\n“For Heaven’s sake, think of something a", "with papers and the swivel chair it would not\n have looked like an office at all. Three of the\n four walls were lined with bookshelves.\n“Is this where you do all your work?” Judy\n asked.\n“And why not? It’s a good enough place.”\n“Of course,” Judy explained herself quickly.\n “But I supposed you would have girls working\n for you. It must keep you busy doing all this\n yourself.”\n“Hmm! It does. I like to be busy.”\nJudy took a deep breath. How, she wondered,\n was she to put her proposition before\n this queer old woman without seeming impudent.\n It was the first time in her life she had\n ever offered her services to anyone except her\n father.", "The man looked up. But, to Judy’s surprise,\n he looked up with a smile. Irene, all contrition,\n hastened to apologize.\n“No harm done,” he returned good-naturedly\n and began collecting his scattered papers.\n Soon he had them rearranged and resumed his\n reading. There were a great many typewritten\n sheets of paper, and he seemed to be reading\n critically, scratching out something here and\n adding something there.\n“You were wrong,” Irene said, turning to\n Judy. “See how nice he was.”\n“I should have known better than to dare a\n girl like you,” Pauline put in.\n“It was horrid of me,” Judy admitted, now\n almost as interested as Irene in the strange", "young man. Not because he was Judy’s ideal—a\n man who wouldn’t notice a cat until its tail\n bumped into him—but because the papers on\n his lap might be important. And she had disturbed\n them.\nThe man, apparently unaware that the accident\n had been anybody’s fault, continued reading\n and correcting. Judy watched her cat carefully\n until the stack of papers was safely inside\n his portfolio again.\n“That’s finished,” he announced as though\n speaking to himself. He screwed the top on his\n fountain pen, placed it in his pocket and then\n turned to the girls. “Nice scenery, wasn’t it?”\n“It was,” Judy replied, laughing, “but you", "This stranger seemed to like serious-minded\n people and presently changed the conversation\n to books and music, always favorite topics with\n Irene. Then Judy spoke about the work that he\n was doing but learned nothing except that\n “finished” in his case meant that he had succeeded\n in putting his papers back in their\n original sequence.\n“And if you girls were all of the same type,”\n he added, “I doubt if I would have forgiven\n you your prank.”\n“I guess he doesn’t care for my type,” Judy\n whispered to the other two girls a little later.\n“Mine either,” Pauline returned with a\n laugh. “At least he wouldn’t if he knew I\n dared you.”", "see no stairway and no elevator.\nTaking a chance, she opened one of several\n doors. It opened into a closet where cleaning\n supplies were kept. Judy glanced at the dusty\n floor and wondered if anybody ever used them.\nThis was fun! She tried another door and\n found it locked. But the third door opened into\n a long hall at the end of which was the\n stairway.\n“A regular labyrinth, this place,” she\n thought as she climbed. “I wonder if Emily\n Grimshaw will be as queer as her hotel.”\nThere were old-fashioned knockers on all the\n doors, and Judy noticed that no two of them\n were alike. Emily Grimshaw had her name on\n the glass door of her suite, and the knocker", "“You use a typewriter,” she began.\n“Look here, young woman,” Emily Grimshaw\n turned on her suddenly, “if you’re a\n writer, say so. And if you’ve come here looking\n for a position——”\n“That’s it exactly,” Judy interrupted. “I’m\n sure I could be of some service to you.”\n“What?”\n“I might typewrite letters for you.”\n“I do that myself. Haven’t the patience to\n dictate them.”\n“Perhaps I could help you read and correct\n manuscripts,” Judy suggested hopefully.\nThe agent seemed insulted. “Humph!” she\n grunted. “Much you know about manuscripts!”\n“I may know more than you think,” Judy", "didn’t seem to be paying much attention to it.”\n“I’ve been over this road a great many\n times,” he explained, “and one does tire of\n scenery, like anything else. Passengers in the\n bus are different.”\n“You mean different from scenery?”\n“Yes, and from each other. For instance,\n you with your ridiculous cat and your golden-haired\n friend who apologized for you and that\n small, dark girl are three distinct types.”\nJudy regarded him curiously. She had never\n thought of herself or either of the other girls as\n “types.” Now she tried to analyze his\n meaning.\nTheir lives had certainly been different.\n Judy and Pauline, although of independent", "and winding stairways were as impressive as\n ever.\nDrinking in the fascination of it, Judy and\n Irene followed the man, Oliver, who carried\n their bags right up to the third floor where\n Pauline had a sitting room and a smaller bedroom\n all to herself. The former was furnished\n with a desk, sofa, easy chairs, numerous shaded\n lamps, a piano and a radio.\nHere the man left them with a curt, “’Ere\n you are.”\n“And it’s good to have you, my dears,” the\n more sociable housekeeper welcomed them.\n Soon she was bustling around the room setting\n their bags in order. She offered to help unpack.\n“Never mind that now, Mary,” Pauline told", "very minute if she applied,” Irene declared.\nPauline nodded, easily convinced. This practical,\n black-haired, blue-eyed girl had helped\n Judy solve two mysteries and knew that she had\n talent. But Pauline didn’t want to meet crooks.\n She didn’t want to be bothered with sick or\n feeble-minded people and often felt thankful\n that her father, a brain specialist, had his offices\n elsewhere. Pauline wanted to meet cultured\n people who were also interesting.\n“People, like that man we met on the bus,”\n she said, “who read and can discuss books intelligently.\n I’d hate to think of his being mixed\n up in anything crooked.”\n“You can’t\nmake\nme believe that he was,”", "Judy advised with a laugh. “I may be\n gone a long, long time.”\n“Not if she finds out how old you are.”\n“Hush!” Judy reproved. “Don’t I look\n dignified?”\nShe tilted her hat a little more to the left\n and dabbed a powder puff on her nose. The\n puff happened not to have any powder on it but\n it gave her a grown-up, courageous feeling.\n And she was to have a great need of courage\n in the hour that followed.\nCHAPTER IV\nHOW THE SCHEME WORKED\nThe adventure lost some of its thrill with no\n one to share it. Judy hadn’t an idea in the\n world how to find the fourth floor as she could", "had not been a simple coincidence. It would be\n such fun—this scheming. It would give them\n something to do and if Judy’s plan worked it\n might even solve the problem of Pauline’s\n career.\n“Of course Emily Grimshaw may not hire\n us,” Judy said after she had outlined the\n scheme and won Irene’s approval. “But, at\n any rate, it’s worth trying. We won’t need to\n tell her it’s only for a few weeks when Pauline\n will be there to step right into the position.\n I wonder how you get to Madison Square.”\nShe stopped a policeman to ask him and\n found it to be within easy walking distance.\n“We might as well go now,” Irene agreed.", "her. “We’re dead tired and I can lend them\n some of my things for tonight.”\n“Then I’ll fix up the double bed in the next\n room for your guests and leave you to yourselves,”\n the kind old lady said.\nAs soon as she had closed the door Judy\n lifted her cat out of the hatbox. With a grateful\n noise, halfway between a purr and a yowl,\n Blackberry leaped to the floor and began, at\n once, to explore the rooms.\n“His padded feet were made for soft carpets,”\n Judy said fondly.\n“How do you suppose he’d like gravel?”\n Pauline asked.\n“Oh, he’d love it!” Judy exclaimed. “You", "Irene put in with a vigor quite rare for her.\n “Couldn’t you just see in his eyes that he was\n real?”\n“I didn’t look in his eyes,” Judy returned\n with a laugh, “but you can be sure I’ll never\n be satisfied until we find out what that mysterious\n telegram meant.”\nIn the days that followed Judy learned that\n the mere mention of the stranger’s name, Dale\n Meredith, would cause either girl to cease\n worrying about a home or about a career, as\n the case might be.\n“It’s almost magical,” she said to herself\n and had to admit that the spell was also upon\n her. Perhaps a dozen times a day she would\n puzzle over the torn papers in her pocketbook.", "“Do you suppose,” Irene asked naïvely,\n “that he cares for my type?”\nShe looked very pathetic as she said that, and\n Judy, remembering Irene’s misfortunes, slid\n into the seat beside her and put a loving arm\n about her shoulder.\n“I care for your type,” she said. “So why\n worry about what a stranger thinks?”\n“I’m not,” Irene said, belying her answer\n with a wistful look in the stranger’s direction.\n He was still absorbed in the mountain of typewritten\n pages that he held on his knee. It\n seemed that his work, whatever it was, engrossed\n him completely. He was again making\n corrections and additions with his pen. Judy", "was in the shape of a witch hunched over a\n steaming caldron. Judy lifted it and waited.\n“Who’s there?” called a mannish voice from\n within.\n“Judy Bolton. They told me at the desk\n that you would see me.”\n“Come on in, then. Don’t stand there banging\n the knocker.”\n“I beg your pardon,” Judy said meekly as\n she entered. “I didn’t quite understand.”\n“It’s all right. Who sent you?”\n“Nobody. I came myself. I found your\n name in the classified directory.”\n“Oh, I see. Another beginner.”\nEmily Grimshaw sat back in her swivel chair" ], [ "noticed a yellow slip of paper on the seat beside\n him and called the other girls’ attention\n to it.\n“It looks like a telegram,” she whispered,\n “and he keeps referring to it.”\n“Telegrams are usually bad news,” Irene replied.\nThe young man sat a little distance away\n from them and, to all appearances, had forgotten\n their existence. Girl-like, they discussed\n him, imagining him as everything from a politician\n to a cub reporter, finally deciding that,\n since he lived in Greenwich Village, he must be\n an artist. Irene said she liked to think of him\n as talented. A dreamer, she would have called\n him, if it had not been for his practical interest\n in the business at hand—those papers and that", "Irene put in with a vigor quite rare for her.\n “Couldn’t you just see in his eyes that he was\n real?”\n“I didn’t look in his eyes,” Judy returned\n with a laugh, “but you can be sure I’ll never\n be satisfied until we find out what that mysterious\n telegram meant.”\nIn the days that followed Judy learned that\n the mere mention of the stranger’s name, Dale\n Meredith, would cause either girl to cease\n worrying about a home or about a career, as\n the case might be.\n“It’s almost magical,” she said to herself\n and had to admit that the spell was also upon\n her. Perhaps a dozen times a day she would\n puzzle over the torn papers in her pocketbook.", "telegram.\nIt was dark by the time they reached New\n York. The passengers were restless and eager\n to be out of the bus. The young man hastily\n crammed his typewritten work into his portfolio\n and Judy noticed, just as the bus stopped,\n that he had forgotten the telegram. She and\n Irene both made a dive for it with the unfortunate\n result that when they stood up again\n each of them held a torn half of the yellow slip.\n“Just our luck!” exclaimed Irene. “Now\n we can’t return it to him. Anyway, he’s gone.”\n“We could piece it together,” Pauline suggested,\n promptly suiting her actions to her\n words. When the two jagged edges were fitted\n against each other, this is what the astonished", "half of another, but no Randall could she find.\n With a sigh of disappointment she turned to\n look again at the telegram:", "“This is where I do all my studying,” Pauline\n said, “and you two girls may come up here\n and read if you like while I’m at school.”\n“At school?” Judy repeated, dazed until she\n thought of something that she should have considered\n before accepting Pauline’s invitation.\n Of course Pauline would be in school. She\n hadn’t been given a holiday as the girls in Farringdon\n had when their school burned down.\n Judy and Irene would be left to entertain themselves\n all day unless Dr. Faulkner had some\n plans for them. Judy wondered where he was.\nAfter they had gone inside again, that is, all\n of them except Blackberry who seemed to have\n adopted the roof garden as a permanent home,", "“That might be it!”\nShe turned to the place and, beginning at the\n top of the page, both girls searched eagerly\n through the G’s.\n“Greenspan, Grier, Grimshaw....”\nThe name was Emily and the address was\n a number on Madison Square. Irene was so\n excited that she declared she could feel her\n heart thumping under her slip-on sweater.\n“I’d give anything to meet him again, Judy!\n Anything!”\nAnd suddenly Judy wanted to meet him too,\n not for her own sake but for Irene’s. A bold\n plan began to take shape in her mind. If she\n and Irene found positions in Emily Grimshaw’s\n office Dale Meredith would never know that it", "him. Judy’s brother, a reporter and student\n of journalism, had gone to live in the college\n dormitory.\nThus it was that both girls knew they could\n not return to Farringdon no matter how homesick\n they might be. They had the cat for comfort\n and they had each other. Ever since Irene\n had come to work in Dr. Bolton’s office these\n two had been like sisters. Lois, Lorraine,\n Betty, Marge, Pauline—all of them were\n friends. But Irene and Honey, the other girl\n who had shared Judy’s home, were closer than\n that. Judy felt with them. She felt with Irene\n the longing of the other girl for something to\n hold fast to—a substantial home that could not", "Perhaps if they thought about it too long\n they might lose heart and not attempt it.\nThe literary agent’s office was located in an\n old hotel on the northeast side of the square.\n The building looked as if it had been unchanged\n for a century. In the lobby Judy and Irene\n paused, surveying the quaint furniture and\n mural decorations before they mustered enough\n courage to inquire at the desk for Emily Grimshaw.\n“Who’s calling?” the clerk asked tartly.\n“Tell her—” Judy hesitated. “Tell her it’s\n two girls to see her on business.”\nThe message was relayed over the switchboard\n and presently the clerk turned and said,\n “She will see one of you. First stairway to", "code,” Pauline mused as she handed the torn\n pieces to Judy. “I like his name—Dale Meredith.”\n“So do I. But Emily Grimshaw——”\n“All out! Last stop!” the bus driver was\n calling. “Take care of that cat,” he said with\n a chuckle as he helped the girls with their suitcases.\nThey were still wondering about the strange\n telegram as they made their way through the\n crowd on Thirty-fourth Street.\nCHAPTER II\nIRENE’S DISCOVERY\nA taxi soon brought the girls to the door of\n Dr. Faulkner’s nineteenth century stone house.\n The stoop had been torn down and replaced by\n a modern entrance hall, but the high ceilings", "had not been a simple coincidence. It would be\n such fun—this scheming. It would give them\n something to do and if Judy’s plan worked it\n might even solve the problem of Pauline’s\n career.\n“Of course Emily Grimshaw may not hire\n us,” Judy said after she had outlined the\n scheme and won Irene’s approval. “But, at\n any rate, it’s worth trying. We won’t need to\n tell her it’s only for a few weeks when Pauline\n will be there to step right into the position.\n I wonder how you get to Madison Square.”\nShe stopped a policeman to ask him and\n found it to be within easy walking distance.\n“We might as well go now,” Irene agreed.", "DALE MEREDITH\nPLEASANT VALLEY PA\nCUT ART SHOP ROBBERY STOP FIFTY THOUSAND\nIS PLENTY STOP ONE MAN MURDERED INTERESTS\nRANDALL STOP DISCUSS TERMS MONDAY\nEMILY GRIMSHAW\nIrene was the first to finish reading.\n“Good heavens! What would\nhe\nknow about\n robbery and murder?” she exclaimed, staring\n first at the telegram in Pauline’s hand and\n then at the empty seat across the aisle.\n“Why, nothing that I can think of. He didn’t\n seem like a crook. The telegram may be in", "The man looked up. But, to Judy’s surprise,\n he looked up with a smile. Irene, all contrition,\n hastened to apologize.\n“No harm done,” he returned good-naturedly\n and began collecting his scattered papers.\n Soon he had them rearranged and resumed his\n reading. There were a great many typewritten\n sheets of paper, and he seemed to be reading\n critically, scratching out something here and\n adding something there.\n“You were wrong,” Irene said, turning to\n Judy. “See how nice he was.”\n“I should have known better than to dare a\n girl like you,” Pauline put in.\n“It was horrid of me,” Judy admitted, now\n almost as interested as Irene in the strange", "This stranger seemed to like serious-minded\n people and presently changed the conversation\n to books and music, always favorite topics with\n Irene. Then Judy spoke about the work that he\n was doing but learned nothing except that\n “finished” in his case meant that he had succeeded\n in putting his papers back in their\n original sequence.\n“And if you girls were all of the same type,”\n he added, “I doubt if I would have forgiven\n you your prank.”\n“I guess he doesn’t care for my type,” Judy\n whispered to the other two girls a little later.\n“Mine either,” Pauline returned with a\n laugh. “At least he wouldn’t if he knew I\n dared you.”", "the door. Then her eyes shone.\nWhat an interesting place it was! On the\n counters were quaint gifts and novelties as well\n as books. The salesladies all wore smocks, like\n artists, and had the courtesy to leave the girls\n alone. Pauline had to hurry on to school but\n left Judy and Irene to browse. Before long\n they had discovered a sign reading MYSTERY\n AND ADVENTURE. That was what Judy\n liked. Rows and rows of new books, like soldiers,\n marched along the shelves.\n“What a lot of flying stories,” Irene said,\n absently removing one of them from its place.\n“And murder mysteries,” Judy added. “It’s\n always a temptation to read them.", "and scrutinized Judy. She was a large woman\n dressed in a severely plain brown cloth dress\n with sensible brown shoes to match. Her iron-gray\n hair was knotted at the back of her head.\n In fact, the only mark of distinction about her\n whole person was the pair of glasses perched\n on the high bridge of her nose and the wide,\n black ribbon suspended from them. Although\n an old woman, her face was not wrinkled.\n What few lines she had were deep furrows that\n looked as if they belonged there. Judy could\n imagine Emily Grimshaw as a middle-aged\n woman but never as a girl.\nThe room was, by no means, a typical office.\n If it had not been for the massive desk littered", "and bundled under one arm.\nThe driver had to give in. He even grinned\n a bit sheepishly as the girls took their seats,\n Pauline and Irene together, “Because,” Judy\n insisted as she took the seat just behind them,\n “I have Blackberry.”\nThe other passengers on the bus were regarding\n the newcomers with amused interest.\n A ten-year-old boy brought forth a ball of twine\n and rolled it playfully in Blackberry’s direction.\n An old lady made purring noises through\n her lips. Everyone seemed to be nodding and\n smiling. Everyone except the serious young\n man across the aisle. He never turned his\n head.\nJudy nudged the two friends in the seat", "she became curious enough to ask.\n“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Pauline said in surprise.\n “Father is away. A medical conference\n in Europe. He’s always going somewhere like\n that, but he’ll be home in two or three weeks.”\n“Then we’ll be alone for three weeks?” Irene\n asked, dismayed.\n“Why not?” Pauline returned indifferently.\n “There’s nothing to be afraid of with servants\n in the house.”\nBut Irene was not used to servants. Ever\n since her father became disabled she had waited\n on herself and kept their shabby little house in\n apple-pie order. The house was closed now and\n their few good pieces of furniture put in storage.\n All summer long there would not be any", "The agent was watching her like a cat and, as\n she read, a hush settled over the room. Emily\n Grimshaw was putting Judy to a test.", "and winding stairways were as impressive as\n ever.\nDrinking in the fascination of it, Judy and\n Irene followed the man, Oliver, who carried\n their bags right up to the third floor where\n Pauline had a sitting room and a smaller bedroom\n all to herself. The former was furnished\n with a desk, sofa, easy chairs, numerous shaded\n lamps, a piano and a radio.\nHere the man left them with a curt, “’Ere\n you are.”\n“And it’s good to have you, my dears,” the\n more sociable housekeeper welcomed them.\n Soon she was bustling around the room setting\n their bags in order. She offered to help unpack.\n“Never mind that now, Mary,” Pauline told", "Judy advised with a laugh. “I may be\n gone a long, long time.”\n“Not if she finds out how old you are.”\n“Hush!” Judy reproved. “Don’t I look\n dignified?”\nShe tilted her hat a little more to the left\n and dabbed a powder puff on her nose. The\n puff happened not to have any powder on it but\n it gave her a grown-up, courageous feeling.\n And she was to have a great need of courage\n in the hour that followed.\nCHAPTER IV\nHOW THE SCHEME WORKED\nThe adventure lost some of its thrill with no\n one to share it. Judy hadn’t an idea in the\n world how to find the fourth floor as she could" ], [ "The man looked up. But, to Judy’s surprise,\n he looked up with a smile. Irene, all contrition,\n hastened to apologize.\n“No harm done,” he returned good-naturedly\n and began collecting his scattered papers.\n Soon he had them rearranged and resumed his\n reading. There were a great many typewritten\n sheets of paper, and he seemed to be reading\n critically, scratching out something here and\n adding something there.\n“You were wrong,” Irene said, turning to\n Judy. “See how nice he was.”\n“I should have known better than to dare a\n girl like you,” Pauline put in.\n“It was horrid of me,” Judy admitted, now\n almost as interested as Irene in the strange", "“Do you suppose,” Irene asked naïvely,\n “that he cares for my type?”\nShe looked very pathetic as she said that, and\n Judy, remembering Irene’s misfortunes, slid\n into the seat beside her and put a loving arm\n about her shoulder.\n“I care for your type,” she said. “So why\n worry about what a stranger thinks?”\n“I’m not,” Irene said, belying her answer\n with a wistful look in the stranger’s direction.\n He was still absorbed in the mountain of typewritten\n pages that he held on his knee. It\n seemed that his work, whatever it was, engrossed\n him completely. He was again making\n corrections and additions with his pen. Judy", "and scrutinized Judy. She was a large woman\n dressed in a severely plain brown cloth dress\n with sensible brown shoes to match. Her iron-gray\n hair was knotted at the back of her head.\n In fact, the only mark of distinction about her\n whole person was the pair of glasses perched\n on the high bridge of her nose and the wide,\n black ribbon suspended from them. Although\n an old woman, her face was not wrinkled.\n What few lines she had were deep furrows that\n looked as if they belonged there. Judy could\n imagine Emily Grimshaw as a middle-aged\n woman but never as a girl.\nThe room was, by no means, a typical office.\n If it had not been for the massive desk littered", "and bundled under one arm.\nThe driver had to give in. He even grinned\n a bit sheepishly as the girls took their seats,\n Pauline and Irene together, “Because,” Judy\n insisted as she took the seat just behind them,\n “I have Blackberry.”\nThe other passengers on the bus were regarding\n the newcomers with amused interest.\n A ten-year-old boy brought forth a ball of twine\n and rolled it playfully in Blackberry’s direction.\n An old lady made purring noises through\n her lips. Everyone seemed to be nodding and\n smiling. Everyone except the serious young\n man across the aisle. He never turned his\n head.\nJudy nudged the two friends in the seat", "her. “We’re dead tired and I can lend them\n some of my things for tonight.”\n“Then I’ll fix up the double bed in the next\n room for your guests and leave you to yourselves,”\n the kind old lady said.\nAs soon as she had closed the door Judy\n lifted her cat out of the hatbox. With a grateful\n noise, halfway between a purr and a yowl,\n Blackberry leaped to the floor and began, at\n once, to explore the rooms.\n“His padded feet were made for soft carpets,”\n Judy said fondly.\n“How do you suppose he’d like gravel?”\n Pauline asked.\n“Oh, he’d love it!” Judy exclaimed. “You", "The agent was watching her like a cat and, as\n she read, a hush settled over the room. Emily\n Grimshaw was putting Judy to a test.", "This stranger seemed to like serious-minded\n people and presently changed the conversation\n to books and music, always favorite topics with\n Irene. Then Judy spoke about the work that he\n was doing but learned nothing except that\n “finished” in his case meant that he had succeeded\n in putting his papers back in their\n original sequence.\n“And if you girls were all of the same type,”\n he added, “I doubt if I would have forgiven\n you your prank.”\n“I guess he doesn’t care for my type,” Judy\n whispered to the other two girls a little later.\n“Mine either,” Pauline returned with a\n laugh. “At least he wouldn’t if he knew I\n dared you.”", "ahead of her and confided a desire to do something—anything\n to make him look up.\n“Why, Judy,” Irene replied, shocked. “I’ve\n been watching that man myself and he’s—he’s——”\n“Well, what?”\n“Almost my ideal.”\n“Silly!” Judy laughed. “I’d like to bet he\n wouldn’t be so ideal if I did something to disturb\n those precious papers that he’s reading.”\n“I dare you!” Pauline said.\nSixteen or not, the dare tempted Judy. It\n was an easy matter to let Blackberry out of the\n hatbox in her arms and down into the aisle.\n The cat’s plumelike tail did the rest.", "“I never dreamed New York was like this,”\n she breathed.\n“It grows on a person,” Pauline declared.\n “I would never want to live in any other city.\n No matter how bored or how annoyed I may be\n during the day, at night I can always come up\n here and feel the thrill of having all this for a\n home.”\n“I wish I had a home I could feel that way\n about,” Irene sighed.\nThe garden was too alluring for the girls to\n want to leave it. Even Blackberry had settled\n himself in a bed of geraniums. These and other\n plants in enormous boxes bordered the complete\n inclosure. Inside were wicker chairs, a table\n and a hammock hung between two posts.", "didn’t seem to be paying much attention to it.”\n“I’ve been over this road a great many\n times,” he explained, “and one does tire of\n scenery, like anything else. Passengers in the\n bus are different.”\n“You mean different from scenery?”\n“Yes, and from each other. For instance,\n you with your ridiculous cat and your golden-haired\n friend who apologized for you and that\n small, dark girl are three distinct types.”\nJudy regarded him curiously. She had never\n thought of herself or either of the other girls as\n “types.” Now she tried to analyze his\n meaning.\nTheir lives had certainly been different.\n Judy and Pauline, although of independent", "But then, it was Judy’s nature to puzzle over\n things. It was for that reason that she usually\n chose detective stories whenever she sat down\n with a book. That hammock up there on the\n roof garden was an invitation to read, and soon\n Judy and Irene had finished all the suitable\n stories in Dr. Faulkner’s library. They had\n seen a few shows, gazed at a great many tall\n buildings, and found New York, generally, less\n thrilling from the street than it had been from\n the roof garden.\nPauline sensed this and worried about entertaining\n her guests. “How would you like to\n go and see Grant’s Tomb today?” she suggested.\n“For Heaven’s sake, think of something a", "girls hailed it, at first expectantly, then frantically\n when they saw it was not stopping. It\n slowed down a few feet ahead of them, but\n when they attempted to board it the driver\n eyed Blackberry with disapproval.\n“Can’t take the cat unless he’s in a crate.”\n“He’s good,” Judy began. “He won’t be\n any trouble——”\n“Can’t help it. Company’s rules.” And he\n was about to close the door when Judy’s quick\n idea saved the situation.\n“All right, he’s\nin a crate\n,” she declared\n with vigor as she thrust the cat inside her own\n pretty hatbox. The hats she hastily removed", "noticed a yellow slip of paper on the seat beside\n him and called the other girls’ attention\n to it.\n“It looks like a telegram,” she whispered,\n “and he keeps referring to it.”\n“Telegrams are usually bad news,” Irene replied.\nThe young man sat a little distance away\n from them and, to all appearances, had forgotten\n their existence. Girl-like, they discussed\n him, imagining him as everything from a politician\n to a cub reporter, finally deciding that,\n since he lived in Greenwich Village, he must be\n an artist. Irene said she liked to think of him\n as talented. A dreamer, she would have called\n him, if it had not been for his practical interest\n in the business at hand—those papers and that", "natures, had always felt the security of dependence\n upon their parents while Irene’s crippled\n father depended solely upon her. This responsibility\n made her seem older than her years—older\n and younger, too. She never could\n acquire Pauline’s poise or Judy’s fearlessness.\nIn appearance, too, they were different. Her\n first vacation had done wonders for Irene\n Lang. Now her usually pale cheeks glowed\n with healthy color, and her eyes were a deeper,\n happier blue. Two weeks of sunshine had\n tanned her skin and brought out all the gold in\n her hair.\nPauline, too, had acquired a becoming tan\n which made her hair look darker than ever and\n contrasted strangely with her keen, light blue", "be taken away at every whim of the landlord,\n just enough money so that she could afford to\n look her best and the security of some strong\n person to depend upon.\n“Will your school last long?” Irene was asking\n the dark-haired girl.\n“Not long enough,” Pauline sighed, revealing\n the fact that she too had troubles.\n“Then you’ll be free?” Irene went on, unmindful\n of the sigh. “We can go places together?\n You’ll have time to show us around.”\nPauline shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t\n talk about time to me. Time will be my middle\n name after I graduate. There isn’t a single\n thing I really want to do, least of all stay at", "eyes.\nThe sun had not been quite so kind to Judy.\n It had discovered a few faint freckles on her\n nose and given her hair a decided reddish cast.\n But Judy didn’t mind. Camp life had been exciting—boating,\n swimming and, as a climax, a\n thrilling ride in Arthur Farringdon-Pett’s new\n airplane.\nThe young man beside Judy was a little like\n Arthur in appearance—tall, good-looking but\n altogether too grown-up and serious. Judy\n liked boys to make jokes now and then, even\n tease the way her brother, Horace, did. Peter\n teased her, too.\n“Queer,” she thought, “to miss being\n teased.”", "know our cellar floor is covered with gravel,\n and he sleeps down there.”\n“Is this gravel in the cellar?” Irene asked,\n beginning to get an attack of shivers.\nPauline laughed. “Goodness, no! It’s on\n the roof garden.” She walked across the room\n and flung open a door. “Nothing shivery about\n that, is there?”\n“Nothing except the thought of standing on\n the top of one of those tall buildings,” Irene\n said, gazing upward as she followed Pauline.\nThe view fascinated Judy. Looking out\n across lower New York, she found a new world\n of gray buildings and flickering lights. In the\n other direction the Empire State Building\n loomed like a sentinel.", "she became curious enough to ask.\n“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Pauline said in surprise.\n “Father is away. A medical conference\n in Europe. He’s always going somewhere like\n that, but he’ll be home in two or three weeks.”\n“Then we’ll be alone for three weeks?” Irene\n asked, dismayed.\n“Why not?” Pauline returned indifferently.\n “There’s nothing to be afraid of with servants\n in the house.”\nBut Irene was not used to servants. Ever\n since her father became disabled she had waited\n on herself and kept their shabby little house in\n apple-pie order. The house was closed now and\n their few good pieces of furniture put in storage.\n All summer long there would not be any", "little more exciting than that,” Judy exclaimed\n thoughtlessly. “I’d rather find a library somewhere\n and then lie and read something in the\n hammock.”\n“So would I,” agreed Irene, relieved that\n Judy hadn’t wanted to see the tomb.\n“Well, if a library’s all you want,” Pauline\n said, “why not walk along with me and I’ll\n show you one on my way to school.”\n“A big one?” Judy asked.\n“No, just a small one. In fact, it’s only a\n bookshop with a circulating library for its customers.”\nJudy sighed. It would seem nice to see something\n small for a change. She never recognized\n this library at all until they were almost inside", "Perhaps if they thought about it too long\n they might lose heart and not attempt it.\nThe literary agent’s office was located in an\n old hotel on the northeast side of the square.\n The building looked as if it had been unchanged\n for a century. In the lobby Judy and Irene\n paused, surveying the quaint furniture and\n mural decorations before they mustered enough\n courage to inquire at the desk for Emily Grimshaw.\n“Who’s calling?” the clerk asked tartly.\n“Tell her—” Judy hesitated. “Tell her it’s\n two girls to see her on business.”\nThe message was relayed over the switchboard\n and presently the clerk turned and said,\n “She will see one of you. First stairway to" ], [ "didn’t seem to be paying much attention to it.”\n“I’ve been over this road a great many\n times,” he explained, “and one does tire of\n scenery, like anything else. Passengers in the\n bus are different.”\n“You mean different from scenery?”\n“Yes, and from each other. For instance,\n you with your ridiculous cat and your golden-haired\n friend who apologized for you and that\n small, dark girl are three distinct types.”\nJudy regarded him curiously. She had never\n thought of herself or either of the other girls as\n “types.” Now she tried to analyze his\n meaning.\nTheir lives had certainly been different.\n Judy and Pauline, although of independent", "and bundled under one arm.\nThe driver had to give in. He even grinned\n a bit sheepishly as the girls took their seats,\n Pauline and Irene together, “Because,” Judy\n insisted as she took the seat just behind them,\n “I have Blackberry.”\nThe other passengers on the bus were regarding\n the newcomers with amused interest.\n A ten-year-old boy brought forth a ball of twine\n and rolled it playfully in Blackberry’s direction.\n An old lady made purring noises through\n her lips. Everyone seemed to be nodding and\n smiling. Everyone except the serious young\n man across the aisle. He never turned his\n head.\nJudy nudged the two friends in the seat", "noticed a yellow slip of paper on the seat beside\n him and called the other girls’ attention\n to it.\n“It looks like a telegram,” she whispered,\n “and he keeps referring to it.”\n“Telegrams are usually bad news,” Irene replied.\nThe young man sat a little distance away\n from them and, to all appearances, had forgotten\n their existence. Girl-like, they discussed\n him, imagining him as everything from a politician\n to a cub reporter, finally deciding that,\n since he lived in Greenwich Village, he must be\n an artist. Irene said she liked to think of him\n as talented. A dreamer, she would have called\n him, if it had not been for his practical interest\n in the business at hand—those papers and that", "girls hailed it, at first expectantly, then frantically\n when they saw it was not stopping. It\n slowed down a few feet ahead of them, but\n when they attempted to board it the driver\n eyed Blackberry with disapproval.\n“Can’t take the cat unless he’s in a crate.”\n“He’s good,” Judy began. “He won’t be\n any trouble——”\n“Can’t help it. Company’s rules.” And he\n was about to close the door when Judy’s quick\n idea saved the situation.\n“All right, he’s\nin a crate\n,” she declared\n with vigor as she thrust the cat inside her own\n pretty hatbox. The hats she hastily removed", "very minute if she applied,” Irene declared.\nPauline nodded, easily convinced. This practical,\n black-haired, blue-eyed girl had helped\n Judy solve two mysteries and knew that she had\n talent. But Pauline didn’t want to meet crooks.\n She didn’t want to be bothered with sick or\n feeble-minded people and often felt thankful\n that her father, a brain specialist, had his offices\n elsewhere. Pauline wanted to meet cultured\n people who were also interesting.\n“People, like that man we met on the bus,”\n she said, “who read and can discuss books intelligently.\n I’d hate to think of his being mixed\n up in anything crooked.”\n“You can’t\nmake\nme believe that he was,”", "“Do you suppose,” Irene asked naïvely,\n “that he cares for my type?”\nShe looked very pathetic as she said that, and\n Judy, remembering Irene’s misfortunes, slid\n into the seat beside her and put a loving arm\n about her shoulder.\n“I care for your type,” she said. “So why\n worry about what a stranger thinks?”\n“I’m not,” Irene said, belying her answer\n with a wistful look in the stranger’s direction.\n He was still absorbed in the mountain of typewritten\n pages that he held on his knee. It\n seemed that his work, whatever it was, engrossed\n him completely. He was again making\n corrections and additions with his pen. Judy", "The man looked up. But, to Judy’s surprise,\n he looked up with a smile. Irene, all contrition,\n hastened to apologize.\n“No harm done,” he returned good-naturedly\n and began collecting his scattered papers.\n Soon he had them rearranged and resumed his\n reading. There were a great many typewritten\n sheets of paper, and he seemed to be reading\n critically, scratching out something here and\n adding something there.\n“You were wrong,” Irene said, turning to\n Judy. “See how nice he was.”\n“I should have known better than to dare a\n girl like you,” Pauline put in.\n“It was horrid of me,” Judy admitted, now\n almost as interested as Irene in the strange", "This stranger seemed to like serious-minded\n people and presently changed the conversation\n to books and music, always favorite topics with\n Irene. Then Judy spoke about the work that he\n was doing but learned nothing except that\n “finished” in his case meant that he had succeeded\n in putting his papers back in their\n original sequence.\n“And if you girls were all of the same type,”\n he added, “I doubt if I would have forgiven\n you your prank.”\n“I guess he doesn’t care for my type,” Judy\n whispered to the other two girls a little later.\n“Mine either,” Pauline returned with a\n laugh. “At least he wouldn’t if he knew I\n dared you.”", "the door. Then her eyes shone.\nWhat an interesting place it was! On the\n counters were quaint gifts and novelties as well\n as books. The salesladies all wore smocks, like\n artists, and had the courtesy to leave the girls\n alone. Pauline had to hurry on to school but\n left Judy and Irene to browse. Before long\n they had discovered a sign reading MYSTERY\n AND ADVENTURE. That was what Judy\n liked. Rows and rows of new books, like soldiers,\n marched along the shelves.\n“What a lot of flying stories,” Irene said,\n absently removing one of them from its place.\n“And murder mysteries,” Judy added. “It’s\n always a temptation to read them.", "young man. Not because he was Judy’s ideal—a\n man who wouldn’t notice a cat until its tail\n bumped into him—but because the papers on\n his lap might be important. And she had disturbed\n them.\nThe man, apparently unaware that the accident\n had been anybody’s fault, continued reading\n and correcting. Judy watched her cat carefully\n until the stack of papers was safely inside\n his portfolio again.\n“That’s finished,” he announced as though\n speaking to himself. He screwed the top on his\n fountain pen, placed it in his pocket and then\n turned to the girls. “Nice scenery, wasn’t it?”\n“It was,” Judy replied, laughing, “but you", "with papers and the swivel chair it would not\n have looked like an office at all. Three of the\n four walls were lined with bookshelves.\n“Is this where you do all your work?” Judy\n asked.\n“And why not? It’s a good enough place.”\n“Of course,” Judy explained herself quickly.\n “But I supposed you would have girls working\n for you. It must keep you busy doing all this\n yourself.”\n“Hmm! It does. I like to be busy.”\nJudy took a deep breath. How, she wondered,\n was she to put her proposition before\n this queer old woman without seeming impudent.\n It was the first time in her life she had\n ever offered her services to anyone except her\n father.", "“That might be it!”\nShe turned to the place and, beginning at the\n top of the page, both girls searched eagerly\n through the G’s.\n“Greenspan, Grier, Grimshaw....”\nThe name was Emily and the address was\n a number on Madison Square. Irene was so\n excited that she declared she could feel her\n heart thumping under her slip-on sweater.\n“I’d give anything to meet him again, Judy!\n Anything!”\nAnd suddenly Judy wanted to meet him too,\n not for her own sake but for Irene’s. A bold\n plan began to take shape in her mind. If she\n and Irene found positions in Emily Grimshaw’s\n office Dale Meredith would never know that it", "ahead of her and confided a desire to do something—anything\n to make him look up.\n“Why, Judy,” Irene replied, shocked. “I’ve\n been watching that man myself and he’s—he’s——”\n“Well, what?”\n“Almost my ideal.”\n“Silly!” Judy laughed. “I’d like to bet he\n wouldn’t be so ideal if I did something to disturb\n those precious papers that he’s reading.”\n“I dare you!” Pauline said.\nSixteen or not, the dare tempted Judy. It\n was an easy matter to let Blackberry out of the\n hatbox in her arms and down into the aisle.\n The cat’s plumelike tail did the rest.", "Irene put in with a vigor quite rare for her.\n “Couldn’t you just see in his eyes that he was\n real?”\n“I didn’t look in his eyes,” Judy returned\n with a laugh, “but you can be sure I’ll never\n be satisfied until we find out what that mysterious\n telegram meant.”\nIn the days that followed Judy learned that\n the mere mention of the stranger’s name, Dale\n Meredith, would cause either girl to cease\n worrying about a home or about a career, as\n the case might be.\n“It’s almost magical,” she said to herself\n and had to admit that the spell was also upon\n her. Perhaps a dozen times a day she would\n puzzle over the torn papers in her pocketbook.", "him. Judy’s brother, a reporter and student\n of journalism, had gone to live in the college\n dormitory.\nThus it was that both girls knew they could\n not return to Farringdon no matter how homesick\n they might be. They had the cat for comfort\n and they had each other. Ever since Irene\n had come to work in Dr. Bolton’s office these\n two had been like sisters. Lois, Lorraine,\n Betty, Marge, Pauline—all of them were\n friends. But Irene and Honey, the other girl\n who had shared Judy’s home, were closer than\n that. Judy felt with them. She felt with Irene\n the longing of the other girl for something to\n hold fast to—a substantial home that could not", "Perhaps if they thought about it too long\n they might lose heart and not attempt it.\nThe literary agent’s office was located in an\n old hotel on the northeast side of the square.\n The building looked as if it had been unchanged\n for a century. In the lobby Judy and Irene\n paused, surveying the quaint furniture and\n mural decorations before they mustered enough\n courage to inquire at the desk for Emily Grimshaw.\n“Who’s calling?” the clerk asked tartly.\n“Tell her—” Judy hesitated. “Tell her it’s\n two girls to see her on business.”\nThe message was relayed over the switchboard\n and presently the clerk turned and said,\n “She will see one of you. First stairway to", "she became curious enough to ask.\n“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Pauline said in surprise.\n “Father is away. A medical conference\n in Europe. He’s always going somewhere like\n that, but he’ll be home in two or three weeks.”\n“Then we’ll be alone for three weeks?” Irene\n asked, dismayed.\n“Why not?” Pauline returned indifferently.\n “There’s nothing to be afraid of with servants\n in the house.”\nBut Irene was not used to servants. Ever\n since her father became disabled she had waited\n on herself and kept their shabby little house in\n apple-pie order. The house was closed now and\n their few good pieces of furniture put in storage.\n All summer long there would not be any", "be taken away at every whim of the landlord,\n just enough money so that she could afford to\n look her best and the security of some strong\n person to depend upon.\n“Will your school last long?” Irene was asking\n the dark-haired girl.\n“Not long enough,” Pauline sighed, revealing\n the fact that she too had troubles.\n“Then you’ll be free?” Irene went on, unmindful\n of the sigh. “We can go places together?\n You’ll have time to show us around.”\nPauline shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t\n talk about time to me. Time will be my middle\n name after I graduate. There isn’t a single\n thing I really want to do, least of all stay at", "“This is where I do all my studying,” Pauline\n said, “and you two girls may come up here\n and read if you like while I’m at school.”\n“At school?” Judy repeated, dazed until she\n thought of something that she should have considered\n before accepting Pauline’s invitation.\n Of course Pauline would be in school. She\n hadn’t been given a holiday as the girls in Farringdon\n had when their school burned down.\n Judy and Irene would be left to entertain themselves\n all day unless Dr. Faulkner had some\n plans for them. Judy wondered where he was.\nAfter they had gone inside again, that is, all\n of them except Blackberry who seemed to have\n adopted the roof garden as a permanent home,", "The agent was watching her like a cat and, as\n she read, a hush settled over the room. Emily\n Grimshaw was putting Judy to a test." ], [ "“This is where I do all my studying,” Pauline\n said, “and you two girls may come up here\n and read if you like while I’m at school.”\n“At school?” Judy repeated, dazed until she\n thought of something that she should have considered\n before accepting Pauline’s invitation.\n Of course Pauline would be in school. She\n hadn’t been given a holiday as the girls in Farringdon\n had when their school burned down.\n Judy and Irene would be left to entertain themselves\n all day unless Dr. Faulkner had some\n plans for them. Judy wondered where he was.\nAfter they had gone inside again, that is, all\n of them except Blackberry who seemed to have\n adopted the roof garden as a permanent home,", "be taken away at every whim of the landlord,\n just enough money so that she could afford to\n look her best and the security of some strong\n person to depend upon.\n“Will your school last long?” Irene was asking\n the dark-haired girl.\n“Not long enough,” Pauline sighed, revealing\n the fact that she too had troubles.\n“Then you’ll be free?” Irene went on, unmindful\n of the sigh. “We can go places together?\n You’ll have time to show us around.”\nPauline shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t\n talk about time to me. Time will be my middle\n name after I graduate. There isn’t a single\n thing I really want to do, least of all stay at", "little more exciting than that,” Judy exclaimed\n thoughtlessly. “I’d rather find a library somewhere\n and then lie and read something in the\n hammock.”\n“So would I,” agreed Irene, relieved that\n Judy hadn’t wanted to see the tomb.\n“Well, if a library’s all you want,” Pauline\n said, “why not walk along with me and I’ll\n show you one on my way to school.”\n“A big one?” Judy asked.\n“No, just a small one. In fact, it’s only a\n bookshop with a circulating library for its customers.”\nJudy sighed. It would seem nice to see something\n small for a change. She never recognized\n this library at all until they were almost inside", "and winding stairways were as impressive as\n ever.\nDrinking in the fascination of it, Judy and\n Irene followed the man, Oliver, who carried\n their bags right up to the third floor where\n Pauline had a sitting room and a smaller bedroom\n all to herself. The former was furnished\n with a desk, sofa, easy chairs, numerous shaded\n lamps, a piano and a radio.\nHere the man left them with a curt, “’Ere\n you are.”\n“And it’s good to have you, my dears,” the\n more sociable housekeeper welcomed them.\n Soon she was bustling around the room setting\n their bags in order. She offered to help unpack.\n“Never mind that now, Mary,” Pauline told", "the door. Then her eyes shone.\nWhat an interesting place it was! On the\n counters were quaint gifts and novelties as well\n as books. The salesladies all wore smocks, like\n artists, and had the courtesy to leave the girls\n alone. Pauline had to hurry on to school but\n left Judy and Irene to browse. Before long\n they had discovered a sign reading MYSTERY\n AND ADVENTURE. That was what Judy\n liked. Rows and rows of new books, like soldiers,\n marched along the shelves.\n“What a lot of flying stories,” Irene said,\n absently removing one of them from its place.\n“And murder mysteries,” Judy added. “It’s\n always a temptation to read them.", "she became curious enough to ask.\n“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Pauline said in surprise.\n “Father is away. A medical conference\n in Europe. He’s always going somewhere like\n that, but he’ll be home in two or three weeks.”\n“Then we’ll be alone for three weeks?” Irene\n asked, dismayed.\n“Why not?” Pauline returned indifferently.\n “There’s nothing to be afraid of with servants\n in the house.”\nBut Irene was not used to servants. Ever\n since her father became disabled she had waited\n on herself and kept their shabby little house in\n apple-pie order. The house was closed now and\n their few good pieces of furniture put in storage.\n All summer long there would not be any", "“I never dreamed New York was like this,”\n she breathed.\n“It grows on a person,” Pauline declared.\n “I would never want to live in any other city.\n No matter how bored or how annoyed I may be\n during the day, at night I can always come up\n here and feel the thrill of having all this for a\n home.”\n“I wish I had a home I could feel that way\n about,” Irene sighed.\nThe garden was too alluring for the girls to\n want to leave it. Even Blackberry had settled\n himself in a bed of geraniums. These and other\n plants in enormous boxes bordered the complete\n inclosure. Inside were wicker chairs, a table\n and a hammock hung between two posts.", "very minute if she applied,” Irene declared.\nPauline nodded, easily convinced. This practical,\n black-haired, blue-eyed girl had helped\n Judy solve two mysteries and knew that she had\n talent. But Pauline didn’t want to meet crooks.\n She didn’t want to be bothered with sick or\n feeble-minded people and often felt thankful\n that her father, a brain specialist, had his offices\n elsewhere. Pauline wanted to meet cultured\n people who were also interesting.\n“People, like that man we met on the bus,”\n she said, “who read and can discuss books intelligently.\n I’d hate to think of his being mixed\n up in anything crooked.”\n“You can’t\nmake\nme believe that he was,”", "her. “We’re dead tired and I can lend them\n some of my things for tonight.”\n“Then I’ll fix up the double bed in the next\n room for your guests and leave you to yourselves,”\n the kind old lady said.\nAs soon as she had closed the door Judy\n lifted her cat out of the hatbox. With a grateful\n noise, halfway between a purr and a yowl,\n Blackberry leaped to the floor and began, at\n once, to explore the rooms.\n“His padded feet were made for soft carpets,”\n Judy said fondly.\n“How do you suppose he’d like gravel?”\n Pauline asked.\n“Oh, he’d love it!” Judy exclaimed. “You", "him. Judy’s brother, a reporter and student\n of journalism, had gone to live in the college\n dormitory.\nThus it was that both girls knew they could\n not return to Farringdon no matter how homesick\n they might be. They had the cat for comfort\n and they had each other. Ever since Irene\n had come to work in Dr. Bolton’s office these\n two had been like sisters. Lois, Lorraine,\n Betty, Marge, Pauline—all of them were\n friends. But Irene and Honey, the other girl\n who had shared Judy’s home, were closer than\n that. Judy felt with them. She felt with Irene\n the longing of the other girl for something to\n hold fast to—a substantial home that could not", "natures, had always felt the security of dependence\n upon their parents while Irene’s crippled\n father depended solely upon her. This responsibility\n made her seem older than her years—older\n and younger, too. She never could\n acquire Pauline’s poise or Judy’s fearlessness.\nIn appearance, too, they were different. Her\n first vacation had done wonders for Irene\n Lang. Now her usually pale cheeks glowed\n with healthy color, and her eyes were a deeper,\n happier blue. Two weeks of sunshine had\n tanned her skin and brought out all the gold in\n her hair.\nPauline, too, had acquired a becoming tan\n which made her hair look darker than ever and\n contrasted strangely with her keen, light blue", "The man looked up. But, to Judy’s surprise,\n he looked up with a smile. Irene, all contrition,\n hastened to apologize.\n“No harm done,” he returned good-naturedly\n and began collecting his scattered papers.\n Soon he had them rearranged and resumed his\n reading. There were a great many typewritten\n sheets of paper, and he seemed to be reading\n critically, scratching out something here and\n adding something there.\n“You were wrong,” Irene said, turning to\n Judy. “See how nice he was.”\n“I should have known better than to dare a\n girl like you,” Pauline put in.\n“It was horrid of me,” Judy admitted, now\n almost as interested as Irene in the strange", "But then, it was Judy’s nature to puzzle over\n things. It was for that reason that she usually\n chose detective stories whenever she sat down\n with a book. That hammock up there on the\n roof garden was an invitation to read, and soon\n Judy and Irene had finished all the suitable\n stories in Dr. Faulkner’s library. They had\n seen a few shows, gazed at a great many tall\n buildings, and found New York, generally, less\n thrilling from the street than it had been from\n the roof garden.\nPauline sensed this and worried about entertaining\n her guests. “How would you like to\n go and see Grant’s Tomb today?” she suggested.\n“For Heaven’s sake, think of something a", "didn’t seem to be paying much attention to it.”\n“I’ve been over this road a great many\n times,” he explained, “and one does tire of\n scenery, like anything else. Passengers in the\n bus are different.”\n“You mean different from scenery?”\n“Yes, and from each other. For instance,\n you with your ridiculous cat and your golden-haired\n friend who apologized for you and that\n small, dark girl are three distinct types.”\nJudy regarded him curiously. She had never\n thought of herself or either of the other girls as\n “types.” Now she tried to analyze his\n meaning.\nTheir lives had certainly been different.\n Judy and Pauline, although of independent", "know our cellar floor is covered with gravel,\n and he sleeps down there.”\n“Is this gravel in the cellar?” Irene asked,\n beginning to get an attack of shivers.\nPauline laughed. “Goodness, no! It’s on\n the roof garden.” She walked across the room\n and flung open a door. “Nothing shivery about\n that, is there?”\n“Nothing except the thought of standing on\n the top of one of those tall buildings,” Irene\n said, gazing upward as she followed Pauline.\nThe view fascinated Judy. Looking out\n across lower New York, she found a new world\n of gray buildings and flickering lights. In the\n other direction the Empire State Building\n loomed like a sentinel.", "home all day. College is a bore unless you’re\n planning a career. What do you intend to do\n when you’re through school?”\n“I hadn’t planned,” Irene said, “except that\n I want time to read and go ahead with my\n music. Of course I’ll keep house somewhere\n for Dad. It will be so nice to have him well\n again, and I love keeping house.”\n“What about your work for my father?”\n Judy asked.\nIrene’s eyes became troubled. “He doesn’t\n really need me any more. I know now, Judy,\n that you just made that position for me. It was\n lovely of you, but I—I’d just as soon not go\n back where I’m not needed. Your father trusts", "and bundled under one arm.\nThe driver had to give in. He even grinned\n a bit sheepishly as the girls took their seats,\n Pauline and Irene together, “Because,” Judy\n insisted as she took the seat just behind them,\n “I have Blackberry.”\nThe other passengers on the bus were regarding\n the newcomers with amused interest.\n A ten-year-old boy brought forth a ball of twine\n and rolled it playfully in Blackberry’s direction.\n An old lady made purring noises through\n her lips. Everyone seemed to be nodding and\n smiling. Everyone except the serious young\n man across the aisle. He never turned his\n head.\nJudy nudged the two friends in the seat", "ahead of her and confided a desire to do something—anything\n to make him look up.\n“Why, Judy,” Irene replied, shocked. “I’ve\n been watching that man myself and he’s—he’s——”\n“Well, what?”\n“Almost my ideal.”\n“Silly!” Judy laughed. “I’d like to bet he\n wouldn’t be so ideal if I did something to disturb\n those precious papers that he’s reading.”\n“I dare you!” Pauline said.\nSixteen or not, the dare tempted Judy. It\n was an easy matter to let Blackberry out of the\n hatbox in her arms and down into the aisle.\n The cat’s plumelike tail did the rest.", "and scrutinized Judy. She was a large woman\n dressed in a severely plain brown cloth dress\n with sensible brown shoes to match. Her iron-gray\n hair was knotted at the back of her head.\n In fact, the only mark of distinction about her\n whole person was the pair of glasses perched\n on the high bridge of her nose and the wide,\n black ribbon suspended from them. Although\n an old woman, her face was not wrinkled.\n What few lines she had were deep furrows that\n looked as if they belonged there. Judy could\n imagine Emily Grimshaw as a middle-aged\n woman but never as a girl.\nThe room was, by no means, a typical office.\n If it had not been for the massive desk littered", "had not been a simple coincidence. It would be\n such fun—this scheming. It would give them\n something to do and if Judy’s plan worked it\n might even solve the problem of Pauline’s\n career.\n“Of course Emily Grimshaw may not hire\n us,” Judy said after she had outlined the\n scheme and won Irene’s approval. “But, at\n any rate, it’s worth trying. We won’t need to\n tell her it’s only for a few weeks when Pauline\n will be there to step right into the position.\n I wonder how you get to Madison Square.”\nShe stopped a policeman to ask him and\n found it to be within easy walking distance.\n“We might as well go now,” Irene agreed." ], [ "be taken away at every whim of the landlord,\n just enough money so that she could afford to\n look her best and the security of some strong\n person to depend upon.\n“Will your school last long?” Irene was asking\n the dark-haired girl.\n“Not long enough,” Pauline sighed, revealing\n the fact that she too had troubles.\n“Then you’ll be free?” Irene went on, unmindful\n of the sigh. “We can go places together?\n You’ll have time to show us around.”\nPauline shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t\n talk about time to me. Time will be my middle\n name after I graduate. There isn’t a single\n thing I really want to do, least of all stay at", "she became curious enough to ask.\n“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Pauline said in surprise.\n “Father is away. A medical conference\n in Europe. He’s always going somewhere like\n that, but he’ll be home in two or three weeks.”\n“Then we’ll be alone for three weeks?” Irene\n asked, dismayed.\n“Why not?” Pauline returned indifferently.\n “There’s nothing to be afraid of with servants\n in the house.”\nBut Irene was not used to servants. Ever\n since her father became disabled she had waited\n on herself and kept their shabby little house in\n apple-pie order. The house was closed now and\n their few good pieces of furniture put in storage.\n All summer long there would not be any", "her. “We’re dead tired and I can lend them\n some of my things for tonight.”\n“Then I’ll fix up the double bed in the next\n room for your guests and leave you to yourselves,”\n the kind old lady said.\nAs soon as she had closed the door Judy\n lifted her cat out of the hatbox. With a grateful\n noise, halfway between a purr and a yowl,\n Blackberry leaped to the floor and began, at\n once, to explore the rooms.\n“His padded feet were made for soft carpets,”\n Judy said fondly.\n“How do you suppose he’d like gravel?”\n Pauline asked.\n“Oh, he’d love it!” Judy exclaimed. “You", "This stranger seemed to like serious-minded\n people and presently changed the conversation\n to books and music, always favorite topics with\n Irene. Then Judy spoke about the work that he\n was doing but learned nothing except that\n “finished” in his case meant that he had succeeded\n in putting his papers back in their\n original sequence.\n“And if you girls were all of the same type,”\n he added, “I doubt if I would have forgiven\n you your prank.”\n“I guess he doesn’t care for my type,” Judy\n whispered to the other two girls a little later.\n“Mine either,” Pauline returned with a\n laugh. “At least he wouldn’t if he knew I\n dared you.”", "The man looked up. But, to Judy’s surprise,\n he looked up with a smile. Irene, all contrition,\n hastened to apologize.\n“No harm done,” he returned good-naturedly\n and began collecting his scattered papers.\n Soon he had them rearranged and resumed his\n reading. There were a great many typewritten\n sheets of paper, and he seemed to be reading\n critically, scratching out something here and\n adding something there.\n“You were wrong,” Irene said, turning to\n Judy. “See how nice he was.”\n“I should have known better than to dare a\n girl like you,” Pauline put in.\n“It was horrid of me,” Judy admitted, now\n almost as interested as Irene in the strange", "“Do you suppose,” Irene asked naïvely,\n “that he cares for my type?”\nShe looked very pathetic as she said that, and\n Judy, remembering Irene’s misfortunes, slid\n into the seat beside her and put a loving arm\n about her shoulder.\n“I care for your type,” she said. “So why\n worry about what a stranger thinks?”\n“I’m not,” Irene said, belying her answer\n with a wistful look in the stranger’s direction.\n He was still absorbed in the mountain of typewritten\n pages that he held on his knee. It\n seemed that his work, whatever it was, engrossed\n him completely. He was again making\n corrections and additions with his pen. Judy", "girls hailed it, at first expectantly, then frantically\n when they saw it was not stopping. It\n slowed down a few feet ahead of them, but\n when they attempted to board it the driver\n eyed Blackberry with disapproval.\n“Can’t take the cat unless he’s in a crate.”\n“He’s good,” Judy began. “He won’t be\n any trouble——”\n“Can’t help it. Company’s rules.” And he\n was about to close the door when Judy’s quick\n idea saved the situation.\n“All right, he’s\nin a crate\n,” she declared\n with vigor as she thrust the cat inside her own\n pretty hatbox. The hats she hastily removed", "But then, it was Judy’s nature to puzzle over\n things. It was for that reason that she usually\n chose detective stories whenever she sat down\n with a book. That hammock up there on the\n roof garden was an invitation to read, and soon\n Judy and Irene had finished all the suitable\n stories in Dr. Faulkner’s library. They had\n seen a few shows, gazed at a great many tall\n buildings, and found New York, generally, less\n thrilling from the street than it had been from\n the roof garden.\nPauline sensed this and worried about entertaining\n her guests. “How would you like to\n go and see Grant’s Tomb today?” she suggested.\n“For Heaven’s sake, think of something a", "him. Judy’s brother, a reporter and student\n of journalism, had gone to live in the college\n dormitory.\nThus it was that both girls knew they could\n not return to Farringdon no matter how homesick\n they might be. They had the cat for comfort\n and they had each other. Ever since Irene\n had come to work in Dr. Bolton’s office these\n two had been like sisters. Lois, Lorraine,\n Betty, Marge, Pauline—all of them were\n friends. But Irene and Honey, the other girl\n who had shared Judy’s home, were closer than\n that. Judy felt with them. She felt with Irene\n the longing of the other girl for something to\n hold fast to—a substantial home that could not", "had not been a simple coincidence. It would be\n such fun—this scheming. It would give them\n something to do and if Judy’s plan worked it\n might even solve the problem of Pauline’s\n career.\n“Of course Emily Grimshaw may not hire\n us,” Judy said after she had outlined the\n scheme and won Irene’s approval. “But, at\n any rate, it’s worth trying. We won’t need to\n tell her it’s only for a few weeks when Pauline\n will be there to step right into the position.\n I wonder how you get to Madison Square.”\nShe stopped a policeman to ask him and\n found it to be within easy walking distance.\n“We might as well go now,” Irene agreed.", "“That might be it!”\nShe turned to the place and, beginning at the\n top of the page, both girls searched eagerly\n through the G’s.\n“Greenspan, Grier, Grimshaw....”\nThe name was Emily and the address was\n a number on Madison Square. Irene was so\n excited that she declared she could feel her\n heart thumping under her slip-on sweater.\n“I’d give anything to meet him again, Judy!\n Anything!”\nAnd suddenly Judy wanted to meet him too,\n not for her own sake but for Irene’s. A bold\n plan began to take shape in her mind. If she\n and Irene found positions in Emily Grimshaw’s\n office Dale Meredith would never know that it", "“This is where I do all my studying,” Pauline\n said, “and you two girls may come up here\n and read if you like while I’m at school.”\n“At school?” Judy repeated, dazed until she\n thought of something that she should have considered\n before accepting Pauline’s invitation.\n Of course Pauline would be in school. She\n hadn’t been given a holiday as the girls in Farringdon\n had when their school burned down.\n Judy and Irene would be left to entertain themselves\n all day unless Dr. Faulkner had some\n plans for them. Judy wondered where he was.\nAfter they had gone inside again, that is, all\n of them except Blackberry who seemed to have\n adopted the roof garden as a permanent home,", "Irene put in with a vigor quite rare for her.\n “Couldn’t you just see in his eyes that he was\n real?”\n“I didn’t look in his eyes,” Judy returned\n with a laugh, “but you can be sure I’ll never\n be satisfied until we find out what that mysterious\n telegram meant.”\nIn the days that followed Judy learned that\n the mere mention of the stranger’s name, Dale\n Meredith, would cause either girl to cease\n worrying about a home or about a career, as\n the case might be.\n“It’s almost magical,” she said to herself\n and had to admit that the spell was also upon\n her. Perhaps a dozen times a day she would\n puzzle over the torn papers in her pocketbook.", "ahead of her and confided a desire to do something—anything\n to make him look up.\n“Why, Judy,” Irene replied, shocked. “I’ve\n been watching that man myself and he’s—he’s——”\n“Well, what?”\n“Almost my ideal.”\n“Silly!” Judy laughed. “I’d like to bet he\n wouldn’t be so ideal if I did something to disturb\n those precious papers that he’s reading.”\n“I dare you!” Pauline said.\nSixteen or not, the dare tempted Judy. It\n was an easy matter to let Blackberry out of the\n hatbox in her arms and down into the aisle.\n The cat’s plumelike tail did the rest.", "Judy advised with a laugh. “I may be\n gone a long, long time.”\n“Not if she finds out how old you are.”\n“Hush!” Judy reproved. “Don’t I look\n dignified?”\nShe tilted her hat a little more to the left\n and dabbed a powder puff on her nose. The\n puff happened not to have any powder on it but\n it gave her a grown-up, courageous feeling.\n And she was to have a great need of courage\n in the hour that followed.\nCHAPTER IV\nHOW THE SCHEME WORKED\nThe adventure lost some of its thrill with no\n one to share it. Judy hadn’t an idea in the\n world how to find the fourth floor as she could", "very minute if she applied,” Irene declared.\nPauline nodded, easily convinced. This practical,\n black-haired, blue-eyed girl had helped\n Judy solve two mysteries and knew that she had\n talent. But Pauline didn’t want to meet crooks.\n She didn’t want to be bothered with sick or\n feeble-minded people and often felt thankful\n that her father, a brain specialist, had his offices\n elsewhere. Pauline wanted to meet cultured\n people who were also interesting.\n“People, like that man we met on the bus,”\n she said, “who read and can discuss books intelligently.\n I’d hate to think of his being mixed\n up in anything crooked.”\n“You can’t\nmake\nme believe that he was,”", "didn’t seem to be paying much attention to it.”\n“I’ve been over this road a great many\n times,” he explained, “and one does tire of\n scenery, like anything else. Passengers in the\n bus are different.”\n“You mean different from scenery?”\n“Yes, and from each other. For instance,\n you with your ridiculous cat and your golden-haired\n friend who apologized for you and that\n small, dark girl are three distinct types.”\nJudy regarded him curiously. She had never\n thought of herself or either of the other girls as\n “types.” Now she tried to analyze his\n meaning.\nTheir lives had certainly been different.\n Judy and Pauline, although of independent", "young man. Not because he was Judy’s ideal—a\n man who wouldn’t notice a cat until its tail\n bumped into him—but because the papers on\n his lap might be important. And she had disturbed\n them.\nThe man, apparently unaware that the accident\n had been anybody’s fault, continued reading\n and correcting. Judy watched her cat carefully\n until the stack of papers was safely inside\n his portfolio again.\n“That’s finished,” he announced as though\n speaking to himself. He screwed the top on his\n fountain pen, placed it in his pocket and then\n turned to the girls. “Nice scenery, wasn’t it?”\n“It was,” Judy replied, laughing, “but you", "came back at her. It was hard to be patient\n with this irritable old lady. Certainly she\n would never have chosen such an employer if\n it had not been for the possibility of meeting\n Dale Meredith again. Irene had taken such a\n fancy to him.\n“Lucky she doesn’t know that,” thought\n Judy as she watched her fumbling through a\n stack of papers on her desk. Finally she produced\n a closely written page of note paper and\n handed it to the puzzled girl.\n“If you know so much about manuscripts,”\n she charged. “What would you do with a page\n like that?”\nHalf hoping that the handwriting was Dale\n Meredith’s, Judy reached out an eager hand.", "home all day. College is a bore unless you’re\n planning a career. What do you intend to do\n when you’re through school?”\n“I hadn’t planned,” Irene said, “except that\n I want time to read and go ahead with my\n music. Of course I’ll keep house somewhere\n for Dad. It will be so nice to have him well\n again, and I love keeping house.”\n“What about your work for my father?”\n Judy asked.\nIrene’s eyes became troubled. “He doesn’t\n really need me any more. I know now, Judy,\n that you just made that position for me. It was\n lovely of you, but I—I’d just as soon not go\n back where I’m not needed. Your father trusts" ], [ "Irene put in with a vigor quite rare for her.\n “Couldn’t you just see in his eyes that he was\n real?”\n“I didn’t look in his eyes,” Judy returned\n with a laugh, “but you can be sure I’ll never\n be satisfied until we find out what that mysterious\n telegram meant.”\nIn the days that followed Judy learned that\n the mere mention of the stranger’s name, Dale\n Meredith, would cause either girl to cease\n worrying about a home or about a career, as\n the case might be.\n“It’s almost magical,” she said to herself\n and had to admit that the spell was also upon\n her. Perhaps a dozen times a day she would\n puzzle over the torn papers in her pocketbook.", "This stranger seemed to like serious-minded\n people and presently changed the conversation\n to books and music, always favorite topics with\n Irene. Then Judy spoke about the work that he\n was doing but learned nothing except that\n “finished” in his case meant that he had succeeded\n in putting his papers back in their\n original sequence.\n“And if you girls were all of the same type,”\n he added, “I doubt if I would have forgiven\n you your prank.”\n“I guess he doesn’t care for my type,” Judy\n whispered to the other two girls a little later.\n“Mine either,” Pauline returned with a\n laugh. “At least he wouldn’t if he knew I\n dared you.”", "him. Judy’s brother, a reporter and student\n of journalism, had gone to live in the college\n dormitory.\nThus it was that both girls knew they could\n not return to Farringdon no matter how homesick\n they might be. They had the cat for comfort\n and they had each other. Ever since Irene\n had come to work in Dr. Bolton’s office these\n two had been like sisters. Lois, Lorraine,\n Betty, Marge, Pauline—all of them were\n friends. But Irene and Honey, the other girl\n who had shared Judy’s home, were closer than\n that. Judy felt with them. She felt with Irene\n the longing of the other girl for something to\n hold fast to—a substantial home that could not", "had not been a simple coincidence. It would be\n such fun—this scheming. It would give them\n something to do and if Judy’s plan worked it\n might even solve the problem of Pauline’s\n career.\n“Of course Emily Grimshaw may not hire\n us,” Judy said after she had outlined the\n scheme and won Irene’s approval. “But, at\n any rate, it’s worth trying. We won’t need to\n tell her it’s only for a few weeks when Pauline\n will be there to step right into the position.\n I wonder how you get to Madison Square.”\nShe stopped a policeman to ask him and\n found it to be within easy walking distance.\n“We might as well go now,” Irene agreed.", "But then, it was Judy’s nature to puzzle over\n things. It was for that reason that she usually\n chose detective stories whenever she sat down\n with a book. That hammock up there on the\n roof garden was an invitation to read, and soon\n Judy and Irene had finished all the suitable\n stories in Dr. Faulkner’s library. They had\n seen a few shows, gazed at a great many tall\n buildings, and found New York, generally, less\n thrilling from the street than it had been from\n the roof garden.\nPauline sensed this and worried about entertaining\n her guests. “How would you like to\n go and see Grant’s Tomb today?” she suggested.\n“For Heaven’s sake, think of something a", "very minute if she applied,” Irene declared.\nPauline nodded, easily convinced. This practical,\n black-haired, blue-eyed girl had helped\n Judy solve two mysteries and knew that she had\n talent. But Pauline didn’t want to meet crooks.\n She didn’t want to be bothered with sick or\n feeble-minded people and often felt thankful\n that her father, a brain specialist, had his offices\n elsewhere. Pauline wanted to meet cultured\n people who were also interesting.\n“People, like that man we met on the bus,”\n she said, “who read and can discuss books intelligently.\n I’d hate to think of his being mixed\n up in anything crooked.”\n“You can’t\nmake\nme believe that he was,”", "“Do you suppose,” Irene asked naïvely,\n “that he cares for my type?”\nShe looked very pathetic as she said that, and\n Judy, remembering Irene’s misfortunes, slid\n into the seat beside her and put a loving arm\n about her shoulder.\n“I care for your type,” she said. “So why\n worry about what a stranger thinks?”\n“I’m not,” Irene said, belying her answer\n with a wistful look in the stranger’s direction.\n He was still absorbed in the mountain of typewritten\n pages that he held on his knee. It\n seemed that his work, whatever it was, engrossed\n him completely. He was again making\n corrections and additions with his pen. Judy", "home all day. College is a bore unless you’re\n planning a career. What do you intend to do\n when you’re through school?”\n“I hadn’t planned,” Irene said, “except that\n I want time to read and go ahead with my\n music. Of course I’ll keep house somewhere\n for Dad. It will be so nice to have him well\n again, and I love keeping house.”\n“What about your work for my father?”\n Judy asked.\nIrene’s eyes became troubled. “He doesn’t\n really need me any more. I know now, Judy,\n that you just made that position for me. It was\n lovely of you, but I—I’d just as soon not go\n back where I’m not needed. Your father trusts", "The man looked up. But, to Judy’s surprise,\n he looked up with a smile. Irene, all contrition,\n hastened to apologize.\n“No harm done,” he returned good-naturedly\n and began collecting his scattered papers.\n Soon he had them rearranged and resumed his\n reading. There were a great many typewritten\n sheets of paper, and he seemed to be reading\n critically, scratching out something here and\n adding something there.\n“You were wrong,” Irene said, turning to\n Judy. “See how nice he was.”\n“I should have known better than to dare a\n girl like you,” Pauline put in.\n“It was horrid of me,” Judy admitted, now\n almost as interested as Irene in the strange", "and scrutinized Judy. She was a large woman\n dressed in a severely plain brown cloth dress\n with sensible brown shoes to match. Her iron-gray\n hair was knotted at the back of her head.\n In fact, the only mark of distinction about her\n whole person was the pair of glasses perched\n on the high bridge of her nose and the wide,\n black ribbon suspended from them. Although\n an old woman, her face was not wrinkled.\n What few lines she had were deep furrows that\n looked as if they belonged there. Judy could\n imagine Emily Grimshaw as a middle-aged\n woman but never as a girl.\nThe room was, by no means, a typical office.\n If it had not been for the massive desk littered", "natures, had always felt the security of dependence\n upon their parents while Irene’s crippled\n father depended solely upon her. This responsibility\n made her seem older than her years—older\n and younger, too. She never could\n acquire Pauline’s poise or Judy’s fearlessness.\nIn appearance, too, they were different. Her\n first vacation had done wonders for Irene\n Lang. Now her usually pale cheeks glowed\n with healthy color, and her eyes were a deeper,\n happier blue. Two weeks of sunshine had\n tanned her skin and brought out all the gold in\n her hair.\nPauline, too, had acquired a becoming tan\n which made her hair look darker than ever and\n contrasted strangely with her keen, light blue", "and winding stairways were as impressive as\n ever.\nDrinking in the fascination of it, Judy and\n Irene followed the man, Oliver, who carried\n their bags right up to the third floor where\n Pauline had a sitting room and a smaller bedroom\n all to herself. The former was furnished\n with a desk, sofa, easy chairs, numerous shaded\n lamps, a piano and a radio.\nHere the man left them with a curt, “’Ere\n you are.”\n“And it’s good to have you, my dears,” the\n more sociable housekeeper welcomed them.\n Soon she was bustling around the room setting\n their bags in order. She offered to help unpack.\n“Never mind that now, Mary,” Pauline told", "too many people ever to get rich and he could\n use that money he’s been paying me.”\n“Don’t feel that way about it,” Judy begged.\nIrene’s feelings, however, could not easily be\n changed, and with both girls having such grave\n worries the problem bid fair to be too great a\n one for even Judy to solve. Solving problems,\n she hoped, would eventually be her career for\n she planned to become a regular detective with\n a star under her coat. Now she confided this\n ambition to the other two girls.\n“A detective!” Pauline gasped. “Why,\n Judy, only men are detectives. Can you imagine\n anyone taking a mere girl on the police\n force?”\n“Chief Kelly, back home, would take her this", "came back at her. It was hard to be patient\n with this irritable old lady. Certainly she\n would never have chosen such an employer if\n it had not been for the possibility of meeting\n Dale Meredith again. Irene had taken such a\n fancy to him.\n“Lucky she doesn’t know that,” thought\n Judy as she watched her fumbling through a\n stack of papers on her desk. Finally she produced\n a closely written page of note paper and\n handed it to the puzzled girl.\n“If you know so much about manuscripts,”\n she charged. “What would you do with a page\n like that?”\nHalf hoping that the handwriting was Dale\n Meredith’s, Judy reached out an eager hand.", "be taken away at every whim of the landlord,\n just enough money so that she could afford to\n look her best and the security of some strong\n person to depend upon.\n“Will your school last long?” Irene was asking\n the dark-haired girl.\n“Not long enough,” Pauline sighed, revealing\n the fact that she too had troubles.\n“Then you’ll be free?” Irene went on, unmindful\n of the sigh. “We can go places together?\n You’ll have time to show us around.”\nPauline shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t\n talk about time to me. Time will be my middle\n name after I graduate. There isn’t a single\n thing I really want to do, least of all stay at", "didn’t seem to be paying much attention to it.”\n“I’ve been over this road a great many\n times,” he explained, “and one does tire of\n scenery, like anything else. Passengers in the\n bus are different.”\n“You mean different from scenery?”\n“Yes, and from each other. For instance,\n you with your ridiculous cat and your golden-haired\n friend who apologized for you and that\n small, dark girl are three distinct types.”\nJudy regarded him curiously. She had never\n thought of herself or either of the other girls as\n “types.” Now she tried to analyze his\n meaning.\nTheir lives had certainly been different.\n Judy and Pauline, although of independent", "know our cellar floor is covered with gravel,\n and he sleeps down there.”\n“Is this gravel in the cellar?” Irene asked,\n beginning to get an attack of shivers.\nPauline laughed. “Goodness, no! It’s on\n the roof garden.” She walked across the room\n and flung open a door. “Nothing shivery about\n that, is there?”\n“Nothing except the thought of standing on\n the top of one of those tall buildings,” Irene\n said, gazing upward as she followed Pauline.\nThe view fascinated Judy. Looking out\n across lower New York, she found a new world\n of gray buildings and flickering lights. In the\n other direction the Empire State Building\n loomed like a sentinel.", "“That might be it!”\nShe turned to the place and, beginning at the\n top of the page, both girls searched eagerly\n through the G’s.\n“Greenspan, Grier, Grimshaw....”\nThe name was Emily and the address was\n a number on Madison Square. Irene was so\n excited that she declared she could feel her\n heart thumping under her slip-on sweater.\n“I’d give anything to meet him again, Judy!\n Anything!”\nAnd suddenly Judy wanted to meet him too,\n not for her own sake but for Irene’s. A bold\n plan began to take shape in her mind. If she\n and Irene found positions in Emily Grimshaw’s\n office Dale Meredith would never know that it", "ahead of her and confided a desire to do something—anything\n to make him look up.\n“Why, Judy,” Irene replied, shocked. “I’ve\n been watching that man myself and he’s—he’s——”\n“Well, what?”\n“Almost my ideal.”\n“Silly!” Judy laughed. “I’d like to bet he\n wouldn’t be so ideal if I did something to disturb\n those precious papers that he’s reading.”\n“I dare you!” Pauline said.\nSixteen or not, the dare tempted Judy. It\n was an easy matter to let Blackberry out of the\n hatbox in her arms and down into the aisle.\n The cat’s plumelike tail did the rest.", "Perhaps if they thought about it too long\n they might lose heart and not attempt it.\nThe literary agent’s office was located in an\n old hotel on the northeast side of the square.\n The building looked as if it had been unchanged\n for a century. In the lobby Judy and Irene\n paused, surveying the quaint furniture and\n mural decorations before they mustered enough\n courage to inquire at the desk for Emily Grimshaw.\n“Who’s calling?” the clerk asked tartly.\n“Tell her—” Judy hesitated. “Tell her it’s\n two girls to see her on business.”\nThe message was relayed over the switchboard\n and presently the clerk turned and said,\n “She will see one of you. First stairway to" ] ]
test	50905	[ "How did Mrs. Kesserich meet Martin?", "Why does Mary ask Jack, \"Are you he?\"", "Why is Jack surprised when he reaches his island destination?", "Why does Mr. Kesserich bring up the question of individuality with Jack when he returns home?", "Why does Mary claim to not be lonely in spite of her isolation?", "Why will Martin not have time to discuss Jack's project the day after their discussion about individuality?", "Why was Jack grateful to run into the man with the lumpy sweater?", "Why does Jack visit Mary again after speaking with Mrs. Kesserich?", "Why did Mary learn how to ride a horse?", "How did Mary Alice Pope die?" ]	[ [ "She drove the station wagon for the family.", "She was one of his students at the university.", "She had been his lab assistant.", "She was his research assistant at the university." ], [ "She thinks Jack is Mr. Kesserich. ", "She thinks he is the man sending her notes signed \"Your Lover.\"", "She believes Jack is the poet sending her his work in little boxes.", "She believes Jack is a ghost her aunt had warned her about." ], [ "He discovered an odd squirrel zigzagging around in the grass.", "He discovers another island hidden away behind it.", "He appeared to be the first person to ever land there.", "It is extraordinarily and unusually quiet." ], [ "He has been researching identical twins.", "He wants to talk about what he learned about hereditary and environment at the conferences.", "He has become obsessed with the idea of essentially cloning a person.", "He had become interested in learning more about individualization in marine worms." ], [ "She is frequently visited by ghosts.", "The time spent with her two aunts sustains her.", "The notes and poems Martin sends to her bring excitement to her life.", "She loves spending her days reading the newspapers, listening to the radio, and reading poetry." ], [ "He is going to the island to introduce himself to Mary.", "He is going out of the country to continue his research.", "He has to go back to his laboratory to conduct experiments.", "He is leaving town again to continue participation in the conferences." ], [ "He likely saved Jack from being shot at because of his arrival.", "He was lost on his way back from the island, and he followed the man's boat home.", "The man was fishing, and Jack was looking for good waters in which to fish.", "He was glad to see another person after his unnerving encounter with Mary." ], [ "He wants to bring her newspapers to help her pass the time before Martin's arrival.", "He wants to talk Mary into running away with him.", "He is curious to see a ghost again.", "He wants to convince her of her true identity, rather than the one imposed on her by her aunts and Martin." ], [ "She wanted to go horseback riding with Martin.", "She wanted to greet Martin on horseback when he returned from a research trip.", "She was trying to get Hani and Hilda to like her.", "She thought it would bring her closer to Martin." ], [ "She was hit by a train after losing control of her horse.", "She was bucked off her horse and broke her neck.", "She was trampled by Hilda's horse.", "Hani and Hilda killed her out of jealousy." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering\n darkness. \"But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early\n evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to\n the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary\n rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering\n to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the\n saddle to welcome him home.\n\n\n \"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station\n wagon had to be sent down for that.\" She looked defiantly at Jack. \"I\n drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant.\"", "\"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred\n British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point\n very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did\n everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was\n afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani\n and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her\n fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and\n here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not\n pacify them: it only increased their hatred.\n\n\n \"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love.\n It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as\n narrow and intense as his sisters hatred.\"\nWith a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him\n all this.", "The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some\n bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall\n cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel,\n opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and\n handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked\n in his breath with surprise.\n\n\n It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same\n flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads.\n Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.\n\n\n \"That is Mary Alice Pope,\" Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat\n voice. \"She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident\n in 1933.\"", "In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming\n furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless\n black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack\n think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered\n again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.\n\n\n Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the\n uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were\n still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been\n watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.\nHe asked abruptly, \"Do you know anything of a girl around here named\n Mary Alice Pope?\"", "The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to\n reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the\n gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with\n what seemed a malicious eagerness.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she said, \"and I'll tell you about it.\"\n\n\n Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he\n was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her\n position on the edge of the sofa.\n\n\n \"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love\n of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as\n you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he\n first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda,\n there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of\n them.", "A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened\n and was silent. Jack turned.\n\n\n The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall—a seemingly young,\n sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was\n a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray\n hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive\n mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the\n youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy.\n\n\n \"Hello, Barr,\" Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife.\n\n\n The great biologist had come home.\nIII\n\n\n \"Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called\n individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much\n about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?\"\n\n\n Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far.", "She went on, \"Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a\n home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful\n future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by\n year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos\n Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would\n teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where\n he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so\n on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been\n away. His research was keeping him very busy—\"\n\n\n Jack broke in with, \"Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive\n work on growth and fertilization?\"", "She shook her head.\n\n\n \"Probably the greatest living biologist,\" he was proud to inform\n her. \"Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class\n with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there\n at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him.\" He\n grinned. \"Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for\n Mrs. Kesserich.\"\n\n\n The girl looked puzzled.\n\n\n Jack explained, \"The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences,\n won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow.\n When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of\n person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of\n course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name.\"", "\"Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I\n don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a\n servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They\n showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't\n realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with\n Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without\n marrying, he was safe.", "But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves\n drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for\n a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail.\n\n\n Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross\n his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail,\n watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned\n and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed\n sails.\nII\n\n\n The exterior of Martin Kesserich's home—a weathered white cube with\n narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola—was nothing like its\n lavish interior.", "\"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms,\"\n the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the\n one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.\n \"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I\n won't have any time for it tomorrow.\"\n\n\n Jack looked at him blankly.\n\n\n \"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter,\" the biologist\n explained.\nIV\n\n\n Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass\n on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old\n hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked\n the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering\n about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but\n found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as\n if to a farthest island in a world of people.", "She paused. \"It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold\n line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were\n waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the\n station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the\n gravel of the crossing.\n\n\n \"Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and\n Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage\n that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as\n her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare.\n\n\n \"Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he\n was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In\n fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been\n Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms.\"", "He looked at her hard for a moment. \"I suppose you read a lot?\"\n\n\n She nodded. \"Fitzgerald's my favorite author.\" She started around the\n table, hesitated, suddenly grew shy. \"Would you like some lemonade?\"\nHe'd noticed the dewed silver pitcher, but only now realized his\n thirst. Yet when she handed him a glass, he held it untasted and said\n awkwardly, \"I haven't introduced myself. I'm Jack Barry.\"\n\n\n She stared at his outstretched right hand, slowly extended her own\n toward it, shook it up and down exactly once, then quickly dropped it.\n\n\n He chuckled and gulped some lemonade. \"I'm a biology student. Been\n working at Wood's Hole the first part of the summer. But now I'm here\n to do research in marine ecology—that's sort of sea-life patterns—of\n the in-shore islands. Under the direction of Professor Kesserich. You\n know about him, of course?\"", "\"Not especially, sir,\" he mumbled.\n\n\n The house was still. A few minutes after the professor's arrival,\n Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew\n why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their\n conversation to the professor.\n\n\n Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more\n important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if\n it were a teacher's trick to show up a pupil's inattention, he had\n suddenly posed this question about individuality.\n\n\n \"You know what I mean, of course,\" Kesserich pressed. \"The factors that\n make you you, and me me.\"\n\n\n \"Heredity and environment,\" Jack parroted like a freshman.\n\n\n Kesserich nodded. \"Suppose—this is just speculation—that we could\n control heredity and environment. Then we could re-create the same\n individual at will.\"", "\"But why are they doing it to you?\" he demanded, leaning forward. \"Why\n are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?\"\nShe seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. \"I don't know\n why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell\n you a secret?\" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest\n trembling. \"Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're\n right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a\n little box.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\" he said sharply.\n\n\n \"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures,\n or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the\n poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,", "She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table\n between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across\n the lawn.\nThe man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, \"hello!\" and\n walked toward her.\n\n\n She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had\n stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him\n there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not\n so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an\n ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet.\n\n\n Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath\n was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician\n face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy\n that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than\n eighteen.", "\"You mean you stay out here all winter?\" he asked incredulously, his\n mind filled with a vision of snow and frozen spray and great gray waves.\n\n\n \"Oh, yes. We get all our supplies on hand before winter. My aunts are\n very capable. They don't always wear long lace dresses. And now I help\n them.\"\n\n\n \"But that's impossible!\" he said with sudden sympathetic anger. \"You\n can't be shut off this way from people your own age!\"\n\n\n \"You're the first one I ever met.\" She hesitated. \"I never saw a boy or\n a man before, except in movies.\"\n\n\n \"You're joking!\"\n\n\n \"No, it's true.\"", "Then, with the air of a clock-work toy coming to life, the white door\n opened and an elderly woman came out, dressed in a long, lace-edged\n dress and wide, lacy hat. She climbed into the driver's seat of the\n Essex, sitting there very stiff and tall. The motor began to chug\n bravely, gravel skittered, and the car rolled off between the trees.\n\n\n The door of the house opened again and a slim girl emerged. She wore a\n white silk dress that fell straight from square neck-line to hip-height\n waistline, making the skirt seem very short. Her dark hair was bound\n with a white bandeau so that it curved close to her cheeks. A dark\n necklace dangled against the white of the dress. A newspaper was tucked\n under her arm.", "'Ah, love, let us be true\nTo one another! for the world, which seems\nTo lie before us like a land of dreams,\nSo various, so beautiful, so new,\nHath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,\nNor certitude—'\"\n\n \"Wait a minute,\" he interrupted. \"Who sends you these boxes?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\"\n\n\n \"But how are the notes signed?\"\n\n\n \"They're wonderful notes,\" she said. \"So wise, so gay, so tender, you'd\n imagine them being written by John Barrymore or Lindbergh.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, but how are they signed?\"\n\n\n She hesitated. \"Never anything but 'Your Lover.'\"\n\n\n \"And so when you first saw me, you thought—\" He began, then stopped\n because she was blushing.\n\n\n \"How long have you been getting them?\"", "She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to\n pound.\n\n\n At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack\n thought he could hear the faint\nchug\nof a motorboat. She pushed open\n the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark\n after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a\n fireplace with brass andirons.\n\n\n \"Flash!\" croaked a gritty voice. \"After their disastrous break day\n before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues....\"\n\n\n Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm\n around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice\n was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio\n loudspeaker.\n\n\n The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her\n gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere." ], [ "In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming\n furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless\n black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack\n think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered\n again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.\n\n\n Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the\n uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were\n still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been\n watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.\nHe asked abruptly, \"Do you know anything of a girl around here named\n Mary Alice Pope?\"", "She went on, \"Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a\n home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful\n future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by\n year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos\n Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would\n teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where\n he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so\n on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been\n away. His research was keeping him very busy—\"\n\n\n Jack broke in with, \"Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive\n work on growth and fertilization?\"", "\"Mary Alice Pope,\" she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as\n if she were saying it for the first time.\n\n\n \"You're pretty shy, aren't you?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this\n strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a \"flapper.\"\n\n\n \"Will you sit down?\" she asked him gravely.\n\n\n The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to\n talk. \"I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over.\"\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland.\"\n\n\n \"But I never go to the mainland.\"", "\"\nThese\npapers might be faked,\" she said, pointing to where she'd let\n them drop on the ground.\n\n\n \"They're new,\" he said. \"Only old papers get yellow.\"\n\n\n \"But why would they do it to me?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n \"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker\n than anything.\"\n\n\n \"I couldn't,\" she said, drawing back. \"He's coming tonight.\"\n\n\n \"He?\"\n\n\n \"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life.\"\n\n\n Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. \"A life\n that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with\n me, Mary.\"", "\"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred\n British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point\n very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did\n everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was\n afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani\n and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her\n fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and\n here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not\n pacify them: it only increased their hatred.\n\n\n \"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love.\n It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as\n narrow and intense as his sisters hatred.\"\nWith a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him\n all this.", "\"But why are they doing it to you?\" he demanded, leaning forward. \"Why\n are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?\"\nShe seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. \"I don't know\n why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell\n you a secret?\" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest\n trembling. \"Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're\n right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a\n little box.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\" he said sharply.\n\n\n \"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures,\n or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the\n poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,", "The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to\n reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the\n gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with\n what seemed a malicious eagerness.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she said, \"and I'll tell you about it.\"\n\n\n Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he\n was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her\n position on the edge of the sofa.\n\n\n \"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love\n of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as\n you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he\n first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda,\n there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of\n them.", "\"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms,\"\n the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the\n one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.\n \"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I\n won't have any time for it tomorrow.\"\n\n\n Jack looked at him blankly.\n\n\n \"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter,\" the biologist\n explained.\nIV\n\n\n Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass\n on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old\n hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked\n the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering\n about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but\n found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as\n if to a farthest island in a world of people.", "Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering\n darkness. \"But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early\n evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to\n the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary\n rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering\n to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the\n saddle to welcome him home.\n\n\n \"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station\n wagon had to be sent down for that.\" She looked defiantly at Jack. \"I\n drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant.\"", "This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the\n innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd\n brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence\n when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.\n\n\n He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the\n same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.\n\n\n The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to\n speak in a hushed, hurried voice. \"You must go away at once and never\n come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've\n been watching for you all morning.\"\n\n\n He tossed the newspapers over the fence. \"You don't have to read\n them now,\" he told her. \"Just look at the datelines and a few of the\n headlines.\"", "The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some\n bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall\n cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel,\n opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and\n handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked\n in his breath with surprise.\n\n\n It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same\n flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads.\n Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.\n\n\n \"That is Mary Alice Pope,\" Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat\n voice. \"She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident\n in 1933.\"", "\"Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I\n don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a\n servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They\n showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't\n realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with\n Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without\n marrying, he was safe.", "He stopped short of the table. Before he could speak, she stammered\n out, \"Are you he?\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\" he asked, smiling puzzledly.\n\n\n \"The one who sends me the little boxes.\"\n\n\n \"I was out sailing and I happened to land in the far cove. I didn't\n dream that anyone lived on this island, or even came here.\"\n\n\n \"No one ever does come here,\" she replied. Her manner had changed,\n becoming at once more wary and less agitated, though still eerily\n curious.\n\n\n \"It startled me tremendously to find this place,\" he blundered on.\n \"Especially the road and the car. Why, this island can't be more than a\n quarter of a mile wide.\"\n\n\n \"The road goes down to the wharf,\" she explained, \"and up to the top of\n the island, where my aunts have a tree-house.\"", "She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to\n pound.\n\n\n At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack\n thought he could hear the faint\nchug\nof a motorboat. She pushed open\n the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark\n after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a\n fireplace with brass andirons.\n\n\n \"Flash!\" croaked a gritty voice. \"After their disastrous break day\n before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues....\"\n\n\n Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm\n around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice\n was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio\n loudspeaker.\n\n\n The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her\n gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere.", "\"Not especially, sir,\" he mumbled.\n\n\n The house was still. A few minutes after the professor's arrival,\n Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew\n why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their\n conversation to the professor.\n\n\n Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more\n important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if\n it were a teacher's trick to show up a pupil's inattention, he had\n suddenly posed this question about individuality.\n\n\n \"You know what I mean, of course,\" Kesserich pressed. \"The factors that\n make you you, and me me.\"\n\n\n \"Heredity and environment,\" Jack parroted like a freshman.\n\n\n Kesserich nodded. \"Suppose—this is just speculation—that we could\n control heredity and environment. Then we could re-create the same\n individual at will.\"", "\"I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that\n you're here.\"\n\n\n \"All right they won't like it.\"\n\n\n Her agitation grew. \"No, you must go.\"\n\n\n \"I'll come back tomorrow,\" he heard himself saying.\n\n\n \"Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn,\n mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle\n Shylock.\"\n\n\n Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the\n girl growing stranger still.\n\n\n \"You must go before they see you.\"", "\"But environment would change things,\" Jack objected. \"The duplicate\n would be bound to develop differently.\"\n\n\n \"Is environment so important? Newman tells about a pair of identical\n twins separated from birth, unaware of each other's existence. They met\n by accident when they were twenty-one. Each was a telephone repairman.\n Each had a wife the same age. Each had a baby son. And each had a fox\n terrier called 'Trixie.' That's without trying to make environments\n similar. But suppose you did try. Suppose you saw to it that each of\n them had exactly the same experiences at the same times....\"\n\n\n For a moment it seemed to Jack that the room was dimming and wavering,\n becoming a dark pool in which the only motionless thing was Kesserich's\n sphinx-like face.", "For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind\n and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his\n attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't\n have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion,\n and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.\n\n\n When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how\n tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.\n\n\n Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly\n overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in\n the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair\n that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that\n it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches\n over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to\n the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.", "She shook her head.\n\n\n \"Probably the greatest living biologist,\" he was proud to inform\n her. \"Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class\n with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there\n at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him.\" He\n grinned. \"Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for\n Mrs. Kesserich.\"\n\n\n The girl looked puzzled.\n\n\n Jack explained, \"The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences,\n won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow.\n When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of\n person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of\n course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name.\"", "He looked at her hard for a moment. \"I suppose you read a lot?\"\n\n\n She nodded. \"Fitzgerald's my favorite author.\" She started around the\n table, hesitated, suddenly grew shy. \"Would you like some lemonade?\"\nHe'd noticed the dewed silver pitcher, but only now realized his\n thirst. Yet when she handed him a glass, he held it untasted and said\n awkwardly, \"I haven't introduced myself. I'm Jack Barry.\"\n\n\n She stared at his outstretched right hand, slowly extended her own\n toward it, shook it up and down exactly once, then quickly dropped it.\n\n\n He chuckled and gulped some lemonade. \"I'm a biology student. Been\n working at Wood's Hole the first part of the summer. But now I'm here\n to do research in marine ecology—that's sort of sea-life patterns—of\n the in-shore islands. Under the direction of Professor Kesserich. You\n know about him, of course?\"" ], [ "For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind\n and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his\n attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't\n have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion,\n and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.\n\n\n When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how\n tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.\n\n\n Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly\n overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in\n the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair\n that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that\n it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches\n over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to\n the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.", "Jack plunged down the slope to the rocky spine and ran across it, spray\n from the rising waves spattering him to the waist. Panting now, he\n stumbled up into the oaks and undergrowth of the first island, fought\n his way through it, finally reached the silent cove. He loosed the line\n of the\nAnnie O.\n, dragged it as near to the cove's mouth as he could,\n plunged knee-deep in freezing water to give it a final shove, scrambled\n aboard, snatched up the boathook and punched at the rocks.\n\n\n As soon as the\nAnnie O.\nwas nosing out of the cove into the cross\n waves, he yanked up the sail. The freshening wind filled it and sent\n the sloop heeling over, with inches of white water over the lee rail,\n and plunging ahead.", "The man's lean, melancholy face crinkled into a grin at the banal\n fancy. He turned his back on his new friend, the little green sloop,\n without one thought for his nets and specimen bottles, and set out to\n explore. The ground rose steeply at first and the oaks were close, but\n after a little way things went downhill and the leaves thinned and he\n came out on more rocks—and realized that he hadn't quite gone to the\n farthest one out.\nJoined to this island by a rocky spine, which at the present low tide\n would have been dry but for the spray, was another green, high island\n that the first had masked from him all the while he had been sailing.\n He felt a thrill of discovery, just as he'd wondered back in the woods\n whether his might not be the first human feet to kick through the\n underbrush. After all, there were thousands of these islands.\n\n\n Then he was dropping down the rocks, his lanky limbs now moving\n smoothly enough.", "He scrambled ashore, dipping a sneaker in the icy water, and threw the\n line around a boulder. Unkinking himself, he looked back through the\n cove's high and rocky mouth at the gray-green scattering of islands\n and the faint dark line that was the coast of Maine. He almost laughed\n in satisfaction at having disregarded vague warnings and done the thing\n every man yearns to do once in his lifetime—gone to the farthest\n island out.\n\n\n He must have looked longer than he realized, because by the time he\n dropped his gaze the cove was again as glassy as if the\nAnnie O.\nhad\n always been there. And the splotches made by his sneaker on the rock\n had faded in the hot sun. There was something very unusual about the\n quietness of this place. As if time, elsewhere hurrying frantically,\n paused here to rest. As if all changes were erased on this one bit of\n Earth.", "Without pausing for surprise—in fact, in his holiday mood, using\n surprise as a goad—he jumped for the branch of an oak whose trunk\n touched the fence, scorning the easier lower branch on the other side\n of the tree. Then he drew himself up, worked his way to some higher\n branches that crossed the fence, and dropped down inside.\n\n\n Suddenly cautious, he gently parted the shrubbery and, before the first\n surprise could really sink in, had another.\nA closely mown lawn dotted with more shrubbery ran up to a snug white\n Cape Cod cottage. The single strand of a radio aerial stretched the\n length of the roof. Parked on a neat gravel driveway that crossed just\n in front of the cottage was a short, square-lined touring car that he\n recognized from remembered pictures as an ancient Essex. The whole\n scene had about it the same odd quietness as the cove.", "He stopped short of the table. Before he could speak, she stammered\n out, \"Are you he?\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\" he asked, smiling puzzledly.\n\n\n \"The one who sends me the little boxes.\"\n\n\n \"I was out sailing and I happened to land in the far cove. I didn't\n dream that anyone lived on this island, or even came here.\"\n\n\n \"No one ever does come here,\" she replied. Her manner had changed,\n becoming at once more wary and less agitated, though still eerily\n curious.\n\n\n \"It startled me tremendously to find this place,\" he blundered on.\n \"Especially the road and the car. Why, this island can't be more than a\n quarter of a mile wide.\"\n\n\n \"The road goes down to the wharf,\" she explained, \"and up to the top of\n the island, where my aunts have a tree-house.\"", "This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the\n innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd\n brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence\n when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.\n\n\n He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the\n same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.\n\n\n The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to\n speak in a hushed, hurried voice. \"You must go away at once and never\n come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've\n been watching for you all morning.\"\n\n\n He tossed the newspapers over the fence. \"You don't have to read\n them now,\" he told her. \"Just look at the datelines and a few of the\n headlines.\"", "She shook her head.\n\n\n \"Probably the greatest living biologist,\" he was proud to inform\n her. \"Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class\n with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there\n at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him.\" He\n grinned. \"Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for\n Mrs. Kesserich.\"\n\n\n The girl looked puzzled.\n\n\n Jack explained, \"The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences,\n won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow.\n When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of\n person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of\n course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name.\"", "\"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms,\"\n the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the\n one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.\n \"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I\n won't have any time for it tomorrow.\"\n\n\n Jack looked at him blankly.\n\n\n \"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter,\" the biologist\n explained.\nIV\n\n\n Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass\n on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old\n hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked\n the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering\n about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but\n found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as\n if to a farthest island in a world of people.", "\"\nThese\npapers might be faked,\" she said, pointing to where she'd let\n them drop on the ground.\n\n\n \"They're new,\" he said. \"Only old papers get yellow.\"\n\n\n \"But why would they do it to me?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n \"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker\n than anything.\"\n\n\n \"I couldn't,\" she said, drawing back. \"He's coming tonight.\"\n\n\n \"He?\"\n\n\n \"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life.\"\n\n\n Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. \"A life\n that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with\n me, Mary.\"", "\"Mary Alice Pope,\" she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as\n if she were saying it for the first time.\n\n\n \"You're pretty shy, aren't you?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this\n strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a \"flapper.\"\n\n\n \"Will you sit down?\" she asked him gravely.\n\n\n The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to\n talk. \"I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over.\"\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland.\"\n\n\n \"But I never go to the mainland.\"", "The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so\n near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the\nAnnie\n O.\nits full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt let the\n sail come crumpling down and hurried past its white folds at a gait\n made comically awkward by his cramped muscles. Slowly the rocky ledge\n came nearer. Slowly the blue V inscribed on the cove's surface by the\n sloop's prow died. Sloop and ledge kissed so gently that he hardly had\n to reach out his hand.", "To the landward side of the spine, the water was fairly still. It even\n began with another deep cove, in which he glimpsed the spiny spheres\n of sea urchins. But from seaward the waves chopped in, sprinkling his\n trousers to the knees and making him wince pleasurably at the thought\n of what vast wings of spray and towers of solid water must crash up\n from here in a storm.\n\n\n He crossed the rocks at a trot, ran up a short grassy slope, raced\n through a fringe of trees—and came straight up against an eight-foot\n fence of heavy mesh topped with barbed wire and backed at a short\n distance with high, heavy shrubbery.", "\"You mean you stay out here all winter?\" he asked incredulously, his\n mind filled with a vision of snow and frozen spray and great gray waves.\n\n\n \"Oh, yes. We get all our supplies on hand before winter. My aunts are\n very capable. They don't always wear long lace dresses. And now I help\n them.\"\n\n\n \"But that's impossible!\" he said with sudden sympathetic anger. \"You\n can't be shut off this way from people your own age!\"\n\n\n \"You're the first one I ever met.\" She hesitated. \"I never saw a boy or\n a man before, except in movies.\"\n\n\n \"You're joking!\"\n\n\n \"No, it's true.\"", "But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves\n drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for\n a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail.\n\n\n Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross\n his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail,\n watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned\n and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed\n sails.\nII\n\n\n The exterior of Martin Kesserich's home—a weathered white cube with\n narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola—was nothing like its\n lavish interior.", "\"Ever since I can remember. I have two closets of the boxes. The new\n ones are either by my bed when I wake or at my place at breakfast.\"\n\n\n \"But how does this—person get these boxes to you out here? Does he\n give them to your aunts and do they put them there?\"\n\n\n \"I'm not sure.\"\n\n\n \"But how can they get them in winter?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\"\n\n\n \"Look here,\" he said, pouring himself more lemonade, \"how long is it\n since you've been to the mainland?\"\n\n\n \"Almost eighteen years. My aunts tell me I was born there in the middle\n of the war.\"\n\n\n \"What war?\" he asked startledly, spilling some lemonade.\n\n\n \"The World War, of course. What's the matter?\"", "Downstairs, the house was empty. After a long look at the cabinet—he\n felt behind it, but the key was gone—he hurried down to the\n waterfront. He stopped only for a bowl of chowder and, as an\n afterthought, to buy half a dozen newspapers.\n\n\n The sea was bright, the brisk wind just right for the\nAnnie O.\nThere\n was eagerness in the way it smacked the sail and in the creak of the\n mast. And when he reached the cove, it was no longer still, but nervous\n with faint ripples, as if time had finally begun to stir.\n\n\n After the same struggle with the underbrush, he came out on the rocky\n spine and passed the cove of the sea urchins. The spiny creatures\n struck an uncomfortable chord in his memory.", "She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to\n pound.\n\n\n At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack\n thought he could hear the faint\nchug\nof a motorboat. She pushed open\n the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark\n after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a\n fireplace with brass andirons.\n\n\n \"Flash!\" croaked a gritty voice. \"After their disastrous break day\n before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues....\"\n\n\n Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm\n around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice\n was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio\n loudspeaker.\n\n\n The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her\n gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere.", "He looked at her hard for a moment. \"I suppose you read a lot?\"\n\n\n She nodded. \"Fitzgerald's my favorite author.\" She started around the\n table, hesitated, suddenly grew shy. \"Would you like some lemonade?\"\nHe'd noticed the dewed silver pitcher, but only now realized his\n thirst. Yet when she handed him a glass, he held it untasted and said\n awkwardly, \"I haven't introduced myself. I'm Jack Barry.\"\n\n\n She stared at his outstretched right hand, slowly extended her own\n toward it, shook it up and down exactly once, then quickly dropped it.\n\n\n He chuckled and gulped some lemonade. \"I'm a biology student. Been\n working at Wood's Hole the first part of the summer. But now I'm here\n to do research in marine ecology—that's sort of sea-life patterns—of\n the in-shore islands. Under the direction of Professor Kesserich. You\n know about him, of course?\"", "She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table\n between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across\n the lawn.\nThe man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, \"hello!\" and\n walked toward her.\n\n\n She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had\n stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him\n there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not\n so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an\n ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet.\n\n\n Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath\n was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician\n face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy\n that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than\n eighteen." ], [ "\"Not especially, sir,\" he mumbled.\n\n\n The house was still. A few minutes after the professor's arrival,\n Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew\n why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their\n conversation to the professor.\n\n\n Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more\n important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if\n it were a teacher's trick to show up a pupil's inattention, he had\n suddenly posed this question about individuality.\n\n\n \"You know what I mean, of course,\" Kesserich pressed. \"The factors that\n make you you, and me me.\"\n\n\n \"Heredity and environment,\" Jack parroted like a freshman.\n\n\n Kesserich nodded. \"Suppose—this is just speculation—that we could\n control heredity and environment. Then we could re-create the same\n individual at will.\"", "A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened\n and was silent. Jack turned.\n\n\n The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall—a seemingly young,\n sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was\n a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray\n hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive\n mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the\n youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy.\n\n\n \"Hello, Barr,\" Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife.\n\n\n The great biologist had come home.\nIII\n\n\n \"Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called\n individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much\n about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?\"\n\n\n Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far.", "\"But environment would change things,\" Jack objected. \"The duplicate\n would be bound to develop differently.\"\n\n\n \"Is environment so important? Newman tells about a pair of identical\n twins separated from birth, unaware of each other's existence. They met\n by accident when they were twenty-one. Each was a telephone repairman.\n Each had a wife the same age. Each had a baby son. And each had a fox\n terrier called 'Trixie.' That's without trying to make environments\n similar. But suppose you did try. Suppose you saw to it that each of\n them had exactly the same experiences at the same times....\"\n\n\n For a moment it seemed to Jack that the room was dimming and wavering,\n becoming a dark pool in which the only motionless thing was Kesserich's\n sphinx-like face.", "Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering\n darkness. \"But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early\n evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to\n the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary\n rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering\n to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the\n saddle to welcome him home.\n\n\n \"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station\n wagon had to be sent down for that.\" She looked defiantly at Jack. \"I\n drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant.\"", "In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming\n furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless\n black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack\n think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered\n again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.\n\n\n Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the\n uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were\n still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been\n watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.\nHe asked abruptly, \"Do you know anything of a girl around here named\n Mary Alice Pope?\"", "\"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred\n British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point\n very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did\n everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was\n afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani\n and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her\n fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and\n here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not\n pacify them: it only increased their hatred.\n\n\n \"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love.\n It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as\n narrow and intense as his sisters hatred.\"\nWith a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him\n all this.", "The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to\n reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the\n gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with\n what seemed a malicious eagerness.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she said, \"and I'll tell you about it.\"\n\n\n Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he\n was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her\n position on the edge of the sofa.\n\n\n \"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love\n of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as\n you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he\n first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda,\n there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of\n them.", "\"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms,\"\n the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the\n one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.\n \"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I\n won't have any time for it tomorrow.\"\n\n\n Jack looked at him blankly.\n\n\n \"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter,\" the biologist\n explained.\nIV\n\n\n Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass\n on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old\n hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked\n the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering\n about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but\n found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as\n if to a farthest island in a world of people.", "Jack felt a shiver go through him. \"To get exactly the same pattern of\n hereditary traits. That'd be far beyond us.\"\n\n\n \"What about identical twins?\" Kesserich pointed out. \"And then there's\n parthenogenesis to be considered. One might produce a duplicate of the\n mother without the intervention of the male.\" Although his voice had\n grown more idly speculative, Kesserich seemed to Jack to be smiling\n secretly. \"There are many examples in the lower animal forms, to say\n nothing of the technique by which Loeb caused a sea urchin to reproduce\n with no more stimulus than a salt solution.\"\n\n\n Jack felt the hair rising on his neck. \"Even then you wouldn't get\n exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits.\"\n\n\n \"Not if the parent were of very pure stock? Not if there were some\n special technique for selecting ova that would reproduce all the\n mother's traits?\"", "But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves\n drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for\n a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail.\n\n\n Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross\n his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail,\n watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned\n and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed\n sails.\nII\n\n\n The exterior of Martin Kesserich's home—a weathered white cube with\n narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola—was nothing like its\n lavish interior.", "She shook her head.\n\n\n \"Probably the greatest living biologist,\" he was proud to inform\n her. \"Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class\n with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there\n at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him.\" He\n grinned. \"Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for\n Mrs. Kesserich.\"\n\n\n The girl looked puzzled.\n\n\n Jack explained, \"The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences,\n won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow.\n When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of\n person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of\n course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name.\"", "The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some\n bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall\n cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel,\n opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and\n handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked\n in his breath with surprise.\n\n\n It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same\n flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads.\n Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.\n\n\n \"That is Mary Alice Pope,\" Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat\n voice. \"She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident\n in 1933.\"", "She went on, \"Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a\n home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful\n future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by\n year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos\n Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would\n teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where\n he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so\n on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been\n away. His research was keeping him very busy—\"\n\n\n Jack broke in with, \"Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive\n work on growth and fertilization?\"", "\"I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that\n you're here.\"\n\n\n \"All right they won't like it.\"\n\n\n Her agitation grew. \"No, you must go.\"\n\n\n \"I'll come back tomorrow,\" he heard himself saying.\n\n\n \"Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn,\n mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle\n Shylock.\"\n\n\n Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the\n girl growing stranger still.\n\n\n \"You must go before they see you.\"", "\"But why are they doing it to you?\" he demanded, leaning forward. \"Why\n are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?\"\nShe seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. \"I don't know\n why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell\n you a secret?\" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest\n trembling. \"Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're\n right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a\n little box.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\" he said sharply.\n\n\n \"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures,\n or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the\n poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,", "\"\nThese\npapers might be faked,\" she said, pointing to where she'd let\n them drop on the ground.\n\n\n \"They're new,\" he said. \"Only old papers get yellow.\"\n\n\n \"But why would they do it to me?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n \"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker\n than anything.\"\n\n\n \"I couldn't,\" she said, drawing back. \"He's coming tonight.\"\n\n\n \"He?\"\n\n\n \"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life.\"\n\n\n Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. \"A life\n that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with\n me, Mary.\"", "\"Mary Alice Pope,\" she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as\n if she were saying it for the first time.\n\n\n \"You're pretty shy, aren't you?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this\n strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a \"flapper.\"\n\n\n \"Will you sit down?\" she asked him gravely.\n\n\n The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to\n talk. \"I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over.\"\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland.\"\n\n\n \"But I never go to the mainland.\"", "He looked at her hard for a moment. \"I suppose you read a lot?\"\n\n\n She nodded. \"Fitzgerald's my favorite author.\" She started around the\n table, hesitated, suddenly grew shy. \"Would you like some lemonade?\"\nHe'd noticed the dewed silver pitcher, but only now realized his\n thirst. Yet when she handed him a glass, he held it untasted and said\n awkwardly, \"I haven't introduced myself. I'm Jack Barry.\"\n\n\n She stared at his outstretched right hand, slowly extended her own\n toward it, shook it up and down exactly once, then quickly dropped it.\n\n\n He chuckled and gulped some lemonade. \"I'm a biology student. Been\n working at Wood's Hole the first part of the summer. But now I'm here\n to do research in marine ecology—that's sort of sea-life patterns—of\n the in-shore islands. Under the direction of Professor Kesserich. You\n know about him, of course?\"", "For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind\n and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his\n attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't\n have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion,\n and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.\n\n\n When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how\n tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.\n\n\n Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly\n overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in\n the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair\n that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that\n it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches\n over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to\n the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.", "Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind\n of terror he'd never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him\n had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders,\n the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his\n nostrils. He could still hear the faint\nchop-chop\nof the waves.\n\n\n And yet everything had changed, gone dark and dizzy as a landscape\n glimpsed just before a faint. All the little false notes had come to\n a sudden focus. For the lemonade had spilled on the headline of the\n newspaper the girl had tossed down, and the headline read:\n\n\n HITLER IN NEW DEFIANCE\n\n\n Under the big black banner of that head swam smaller ones:\n\n\n Foes of Machado Riot in Havana\n\n\n Big NRA Parade Planned" ], [ "\"But why are they doing it to you?\" he demanded, leaning forward. \"Why\n are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?\"\nShe seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. \"I don't know\n why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell\n you a secret?\" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest\n trembling. \"Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're\n right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a\n little box.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\" he said sharply.\n\n\n \"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures,\n or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the\n poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,", "\"Mary Alice Pope,\" she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as\n if she were saying it for the first time.\n\n\n \"You're pretty shy, aren't you?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this\n strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a \"flapper.\"\n\n\n \"Will you sit down?\" she asked him gravely.\n\n\n The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to\n talk. \"I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over.\"\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland.\"\n\n\n \"But I never go to the mainland.\"", "\"You mean you stay out here all winter?\" he asked incredulously, his\n mind filled with a vision of snow and frozen spray and great gray waves.\n\n\n \"Oh, yes. We get all our supplies on hand before winter. My aunts are\n very capable. They don't always wear long lace dresses. And now I help\n them.\"\n\n\n \"But that's impossible!\" he said with sudden sympathetic anger. \"You\n can't be shut off this way from people your own age!\"\n\n\n \"You're the first one I ever met.\" She hesitated. \"I never saw a boy or\n a man before, except in movies.\"\n\n\n \"You're joking!\"\n\n\n \"No, it's true.\"", "\"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred\n British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point\n very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did\n everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was\n afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani\n and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her\n fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and\n here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not\n pacify them: it only increased their hatred.\n\n\n \"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love.\n It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as\n narrow and intense as his sisters hatred.\"\nWith a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him\n all this.", "\"\nThese\npapers might be faked,\" she said, pointing to where she'd let\n them drop on the ground.\n\n\n \"They're new,\" he said. \"Only old papers get yellow.\"\n\n\n \"But why would they do it to me?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n \"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker\n than anything.\"\n\n\n \"I couldn't,\" she said, drawing back. \"He's coming tonight.\"\n\n\n \"He?\"\n\n\n \"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life.\"\n\n\n Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. \"A life\n that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with\n me, Mary.\"", "\"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms,\"\n the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the\n one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.\n \"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I\n won't have any time for it tomorrow.\"\n\n\n Jack looked at him blankly.\n\n\n \"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter,\" the biologist\n explained.\nIV\n\n\n Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass\n on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old\n hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked\n the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering\n about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but\n found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as\n if to a farthest island in a world of people.", "This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the\n innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd\n brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence\n when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.\n\n\n He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the\n same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.\n\n\n The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to\n speak in a hushed, hurried voice. \"You must go away at once and never\n come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've\n been watching for you all morning.\"\n\n\n He tossed the newspapers over the fence. \"You don't have to read\n them now,\" he told her. \"Just look at the datelines and a few of the\n headlines.\"", "\"Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I\n don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a\n servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They\n showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't\n realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with\n Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without\n marrying, he was safe.", "Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering\n darkness. \"But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early\n evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to\n the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary\n rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering\n to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the\n saddle to welcome him home.\n\n\n \"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station\n wagon had to be sent down for that.\" She looked defiantly at Jack. \"I\n drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant.\"", "He tore his mind away from the picture of a woman dressed like Queen\n Mary clambering up a tree. \"Was that your aunt I saw driving off?\"\n\n\n \"One of them. The other's taken the motorboat in for supplies.\" She\n looked at him doubtfully. \"I'm not sure they'll like it if they find\n someone here.\"\n\n\n \"There are just the three of you?\" he cut in quickly, looking down the\n empty road that vanished among the oaks.\n\n\n She nodded.\n\n\n \"I suppose you go in to the mainland with your aunts quite often?\"\n\n\n She shook her head.\n\n\n \"It must get pretty dull for you.\"\n\n\n \"Not very,\" she said, smiling. \"My aunts bring me the papers and other\n things. Even movies. We've got a projector. My favorite stars are\n Antonio Morino and Alice Terry. I like her better even than Clara Bow.\"", "In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming\n furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless\n black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack\n think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered\n again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.\n\n\n Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the\n uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were\n still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been\n watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.\nHe asked abruptly, \"Do you know anything of a girl around here named\n Mary Alice Pope?\"", "She paused. \"It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold\n line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were\n waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the\n station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the\n gravel of the crossing.\n\n\n \"Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and\n Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage\n that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as\n her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare.\n\n\n \"Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he\n was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In\n fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been\n Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms.\"", "The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to\n reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the\n gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with\n what seemed a malicious eagerness.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she said, \"and I'll tell you about it.\"\n\n\n Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he\n was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her\n position on the edge of the sofa.\n\n\n \"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love\n of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as\n you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he\n first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda,\n there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of\n them.", "The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some\n bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall\n cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel,\n opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and\n handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked\n in his breath with surprise.\n\n\n It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same\n flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads.\n Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.\n\n\n \"That is Mary Alice Pope,\" Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat\n voice. \"She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident\n in 1933.\"", "She went on, \"Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a\n home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful\n future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by\n year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos\n Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would\n teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where\n he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so\n on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been\n away. His research was keeping him very busy—\"\n\n\n Jack broke in with, \"Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive\n work on growth and fertilization?\"", "He stopped short of the table. Before he could speak, she stammered\n out, \"Are you he?\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\" he asked, smiling puzzledly.\n\n\n \"The one who sends me the little boxes.\"\n\n\n \"I was out sailing and I happened to land in the far cove. I didn't\n dream that anyone lived on this island, or even came here.\"\n\n\n \"No one ever does come here,\" she replied. Her manner had changed,\n becoming at once more wary and less agitated, though still eerily\n curious.\n\n\n \"It startled me tremendously to find this place,\" he blundered on.\n \"Especially the road and the car. Why, this island can't be more than a\n quarter of a mile wide.\"\n\n\n \"The road goes down to the wharf,\" she explained, \"and up to the top of\n the island, where my aunts have a tree-house.\"", "He laughed uneasily. \"Well, if you actually think it's 1933, perhaps\n you're to be envied,\" he said, with a sardonic humor he didn't quite\n feel. \"Then you can't know anything about the Second World War, or\n television, or the V-2s, or Bikini bathing suits, or the atomic bomb,\n or—\"\n\n\n \"Stop!\" She had sprung up and retreated around her chair, white-faced.\n \"I don't like what you're saying.\"\n\n\n \"But—\"\n\n\n \"No, please! Jokes that may be quite harmless on the mainland sound\n different here.\"\n\n\n \"I'm really not joking,\" he said after a moment.\n\n\n She grew quite frantic at that. \"I can show you all last week's papers!\n I can show you magazines and other things. I can prove it!\"", "For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind\n and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his\n attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't\n have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion,\n and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.\n\n\n When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how\n tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.\n\n\n Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly\n overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in\n the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair\n that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that\n it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches\n over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to\n the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.", "\"Ever since I can remember. I have two closets of the boxes. The new\n ones are either by my bed when I wake or at my place at breakfast.\"\n\n\n \"But how does this—person get these boxes to you out here? Does he\n give them to your aunts and do they put them there?\"\n\n\n \"I'm not sure.\"\n\n\n \"But how can they get them in winter?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\"\n\n\n \"Look here,\" he said, pouring himself more lemonade, \"how long is it\n since you've been to the mainland?\"\n\n\n \"Almost eighteen years. My aunts tell me I was born there in the middle\n of the war.\"\n\n\n \"What war?\" he asked startledly, spilling some lemonade.\n\n\n \"The World War, of course. What's the matter?\"", "He scrambled ashore, dipping a sneaker in the icy water, and threw the\n line around a boulder. Unkinking himself, he looked back through the\n cove's high and rocky mouth at the gray-green scattering of islands\n and the faint dark line that was the coast of Maine. He almost laughed\n in satisfaction at having disregarded vague warnings and done the thing\n every man yearns to do once in his lifetime—gone to the farthest\n island out.\n\n\n He must have looked longer than he realized, because by the time he\n dropped his gaze the cove was again as glassy as if the\nAnnie O.\nhad\n always been there. And the splotches made by his sneaker on the rock\n had faded in the hot sun. There was something very unusual about the\n quietness of this place. As if time, elsewhere hurrying frantically,\n paused here to rest. As if all changes were erased on this one bit of\n Earth." ], [ "She went on, \"Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a\n home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful\n future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by\n year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos\n Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would\n teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where\n he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so\n on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been\n away. His research was keeping him very busy—\"\n\n\n Jack broke in with, \"Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive\n work on growth and fertilization?\"", "A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened\n and was silent. Jack turned.\n\n\n The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall—a seemingly young,\n sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was\n a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray\n hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive\n mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the\n youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy.\n\n\n \"Hello, Barr,\" Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife.\n\n\n The great biologist had come home.\nIII\n\n\n \"Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called\n individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much\n about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?\"\n\n\n Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far.", "\"Not especially, sir,\" he mumbled.\n\n\n The house was still. A few minutes after the professor's arrival,\n Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew\n why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their\n conversation to the professor.\n\n\n Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more\n important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if\n it were a teacher's trick to show up a pupil's inattention, he had\n suddenly posed this question about individuality.\n\n\n \"You know what I mean, of course,\" Kesserich pressed. \"The factors that\n make you you, and me me.\"\n\n\n \"Heredity and environment,\" Jack parroted like a freshman.\n\n\n Kesserich nodded. \"Suppose—this is just speculation—that we could\n control heredity and environment. Then we could re-create the same\n individual at will.\"", "\"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms,\"\n the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the\n one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.\n \"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I\n won't have any time for it tomorrow.\"\n\n\n Jack looked at him blankly.\n\n\n \"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter,\" the biologist\n explained.\nIV\n\n\n Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass\n on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old\n hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked\n the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering\n about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but\n found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as\n if to a farthest island in a world of people.", "Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering\n darkness. \"But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early\n evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to\n the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary\n rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering\n to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the\n saddle to welcome him home.\n\n\n \"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station\n wagon had to be sent down for that.\" She looked defiantly at Jack. \"I\n drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant.\"", "\"Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I\n don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a\n servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They\n showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't\n realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with\n Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without\n marrying, he was safe.", "\"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred\n British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point\n very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did\n everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was\n afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani\n and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her\n fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and\n here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not\n pacify them: it only increased their hatred.\n\n\n \"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love.\n It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as\n narrow and intense as his sisters hatred.\"\nWith a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him\n all this.", "\"But environment would change things,\" Jack objected. \"The duplicate\n would be bound to develop differently.\"\n\n\n \"Is environment so important? Newman tells about a pair of identical\n twins separated from birth, unaware of each other's existence. They met\n by accident when they were twenty-one. Each was a telephone repairman.\n Each had a wife the same age. Each had a baby son. And each had a fox\n terrier called 'Trixie.' That's without trying to make environments\n similar. But suppose you did try. Suppose you saw to it that each of\n them had exactly the same experiences at the same times....\"\n\n\n For a moment it seemed to Jack that the room was dimming and wavering,\n becoming a dark pool in which the only motionless thing was Kesserich's\n sphinx-like face.", "She shook her head.\n\n\n \"Probably the greatest living biologist,\" he was proud to inform\n her. \"Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class\n with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there\n at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him.\" He\n grinned. \"Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for\n Mrs. Kesserich.\"\n\n\n The girl looked puzzled.\n\n\n Jack explained, \"The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences,\n won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow.\n When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of\n person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of\n course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name.\"", "\"But why are they doing it to you?\" he demanded, leaning forward. \"Why\n are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?\"\nShe seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. \"I don't know\n why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell\n you a secret?\" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest\n trembling. \"Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're\n right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a\n little box.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\" he said sharply.\n\n\n \"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures,\n or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the\n poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,", "The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to\n reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the\n gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with\n what seemed a malicious eagerness.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she said, \"and I'll tell you about it.\"\n\n\n Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he\n was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her\n position on the edge of the sofa.\n\n\n \"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love\n of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as\n you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he\n first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda,\n there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of\n them.", "\"I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that\n you're here.\"\n\n\n \"All right they won't like it.\"\n\n\n Her agitation grew. \"No, you must go.\"\n\n\n \"I'll come back tomorrow,\" he heard himself saying.\n\n\n \"Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn,\n mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle\n Shylock.\"\n\n\n Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the\n girl growing stranger still.\n\n\n \"You must go before they see you.\"", "\"\nThese\npapers might be faked,\" she said, pointing to where she'd let\n them drop on the ground.\n\n\n \"They're new,\" he said. \"Only old papers get yellow.\"\n\n\n \"But why would they do it to me?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n \"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker\n than anything.\"\n\n\n \"I couldn't,\" she said, drawing back. \"He's coming tonight.\"\n\n\n \"He?\"\n\n\n \"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life.\"\n\n\n Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. \"A life\n that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with\n me, Mary.\"", "Balbo Speaks in New York\nSuddenly he felt a surge of relief. He had noticed that the paper was\n yellow and brittle-edged.\n\n\n \"Why are you so interested in old newspapers?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"I wouldn't call day-before-yesterday's paper old,\" the girl objected,\n pointing at the dateline: July 20, 1933.\n\n\n \"You're trying to joke,\" Jack told her.\n\n\n \"No, I'm not.\"\n\n\n \"But it's 1953.\"\n\n\n \"Now it's you who are joking.\"\n\n\n \"But the paper's yellow.\"\n\n\n \"The paper's always yellow.\"", "Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind\n of terror he'd never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him\n had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders,\n the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his\n nostrils. He could still hear the faint\nchop-chop\nof the waves.\n\n\n And yet everything had changed, gone dark and dizzy as a landscape\n glimpsed just before a faint. All the little false notes had come to\n a sudden focus. For the lemonade had spilled on the headline of the\n newspaper the girl had tossed down, and the headline read:\n\n\n HITLER IN NEW DEFIANCE\n\n\n Under the big black banner of that head swam smaller ones:\n\n\n Foes of Machado Riot in Havana\n\n\n Big NRA Parade Planned", "\"Mary Alice Pope,\" she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as\n if she were saying it for the first time.\n\n\n \"You're pretty shy, aren't you?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this\n strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a \"flapper.\"\n\n\n \"Will you sit down?\" she asked him gravely.\n\n\n The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to\n talk. \"I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over.\"\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland.\"\n\n\n \"But I never go to the mainland.\"", "She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to\n pound.\n\n\n At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack\n thought he could hear the faint\nchug\nof a motorboat. She pushed open\n the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark\n after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a\n fireplace with brass andirons.\n\n\n \"Flash!\" croaked a gritty voice. \"After their disastrous break day\n before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues....\"\n\n\n Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm\n around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice\n was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio\n loudspeaker.\n\n\n The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her\n gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere.", "He laughed uneasily. \"Well, if you actually think it's 1933, perhaps\n you're to be envied,\" he said, with a sardonic humor he didn't quite\n feel. \"Then you can't know anything about the Second World War, or\n television, or the V-2s, or Bikini bathing suits, or the atomic bomb,\n or—\"\n\n\n \"Stop!\" She had sprung up and retreated around her chair, white-faced.\n \"I don't like what you're saying.\"\n\n\n \"But—\"\n\n\n \"No, please! Jokes that may be quite harmless on the mainland sound\n different here.\"\n\n\n \"I'm really not joking,\" he said after a moment.\n\n\n She grew quite frantic at that. \"I can show you all last week's papers!\n I can show you magazines and other things. I can prove it!\"", "She paused. \"It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold\n line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were\n waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the\n station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the\n gravel of the crossing.\n\n\n \"Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and\n Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage\n that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as\n her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare.\n\n\n \"Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he\n was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In\n fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been\n Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms.\"", "For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind\n and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his\n attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't\n have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion,\n and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.\n\n\n When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how\n tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.\n\n\n Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly\n overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in\n the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair\n that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that\n it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches\n over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to\n the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle." ], [ "Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering\n darkness. \"But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early\n evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to\n the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary\n rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering\n to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the\n saddle to welcome him home.\n\n\n \"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station\n wagon had to be sent down for that.\" She looked defiantly at Jack. \"I\n drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant.\"", "Jack plunged down the slope to the rocky spine and ran across it, spray\n from the rising waves spattering him to the waist. Panting now, he\n stumbled up into the oaks and undergrowth of the first island, fought\n his way through it, finally reached the silent cove. He loosed the line\n of the\nAnnie O.\n, dragged it as near to the cove's mouth as he could,\n plunged knee-deep in freezing water to give it a final shove, scrambled\n aboard, snatched up the boathook and punched at the rocks.\n\n\n As soon as the\nAnnie O.\nwas nosing out of the cove into the cross\n waves, he yanked up the sail. The freshening wind filled it and sent\n the sloop heeling over, with inches of white water over the lee rail,\n and plunging ahead.", "The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so\n near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the\nAnnie\n O.\nits full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt let the\n sail come crumpling down and hurried past its white folds at a gait\n made comically awkward by his cramped muscles. Slowly the rocky ledge\n came nearer. Slowly the blue V inscribed on the cove's surface by the\n sloop's prow died. Sloop and ledge kissed so gently that he hardly had\n to reach out his hand.", "She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to\n pound.\n\n\n At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack\n thought he could hear the faint\nchug\nof a motorboat. She pushed open\n the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark\n after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a\n fireplace with brass andirons.\n\n\n \"Flash!\" croaked a gritty voice. \"After their disastrous break day\n before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues....\"\n\n\n Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm\n around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice\n was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio\n loudspeaker.\n\n\n The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her\n gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere.", "For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind\n and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his\n attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't\n have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion,\n and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.\n\n\n When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how\n tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.\n\n\n Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly\n overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in\n the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair\n that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that\n it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches\n over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to\n the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.", "The man's lean, melancholy face crinkled into a grin at the banal\n fancy. He turned his back on his new friend, the little green sloop,\n without one thought for his nets and specimen bottles, and set out to\n explore. The ground rose steeply at first and the oaks were close, but\n after a little way things went downhill and the leaves thinned and he\n came out on more rocks—and realized that he hadn't quite gone to the\n farthest one out.\nJoined to this island by a rocky spine, which at the present low tide\n would have been dry but for the spray, was another green, high island\n that the first had masked from him all the while he had been sailing.\n He felt a thrill of discovery, just as he'd wondered back in the woods\n whether his might not be the first human feet to kick through the\n underbrush. After all, there were thousands of these islands.\n\n\n Then he was dropping down the rocks, his lanky limbs now moving\n smoothly enough.", "Without pausing for surprise—in fact, in his holiday mood, using\n surprise as a goad—he jumped for the branch of an oak whose trunk\n touched the fence, scorning the easier lower branch on the other side\n of the tree. Then he drew himself up, worked his way to some higher\n branches that crossed the fence, and dropped down inside.\n\n\n Suddenly cautious, he gently parted the shrubbery and, before the first\n surprise could really sink in, had another.\nA closely mown lawn dotted with more shrubbery ran up to a snug white\n Cape Cod cottage. The single strand of a radio aerial stretched the\n length of the roof. Parked on a neat gravel driveway that crossed just\n in front of the cottage was a short, square-lined touring car that he\n recognized from remembered pictures as an ancient Essex. The whole\n scene had about it the same odd quietness as the cove.", "\"Flash! Wiley Post has just completed his solo circuit of the Globe,\n after a record-breaking flight of 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes.\n Asked how he felt after the energy-draining feat, Post quipped....\"\nHe was halfway across the lawn before he realized the terror into which\n the grating radio voice had thrown him.\n\n\n He leaped for the branch over-hanging the fence, vaulted up with the\n risky help of a foot on the barbed top. A surprised squirrel, lacking\n time to make its escape up the trunk, sprang to the ground ahead of\n him. With terrible suddenness, two steel-jawed semicircles clanked\n together just over the squirrel's head. Jack landed with one foot to\n either side of the sprung trap, while the squirrel darted off with a\n squeak.", "She went on, \"Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a\n home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful\n future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by\n year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos\n Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would\n teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where\n he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so\n on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been\n away. His research was keeping him very busy—\"\n\n\n Jack broke in with, \"Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive\n work on growth and fertilization?\"", "\"I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that\n you're here.\"\n\n\n \"All right they won't like it.\"\n\n\n Her agitation grew. \"No, you must go.\"\n\n\n \"I'll come back tomorrow,\" he heard himself saying.\n\n\n \"Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn,\n mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle\n Shylock.\"\n\n\n Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the\n girl growing stranger still.\n\n\n \"You must go before they see you.\"", "In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming\n furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless\n black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack\n think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered\n again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.\n\n\n Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the\n uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were\n still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been\n watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.\nHe asked abruptly, \"Do you know anything of a girl around here named\n Mary Alice Pope?\"", "She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table\n between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across\n the lawn.\nThe man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, \"hello!\" and\n walked toward her.\n\n\n She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had\n stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him\n there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not\n so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an\n ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet.\n\n\n Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath\n was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician\n face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy\n that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than\n eighteen.", "A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened\n and was silent. Jack turned.\n\n\n The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall—a seemingly young,\n sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was\n a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray\n hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive\n mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the\n youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy.\n\n\n \"Hello, Barr,\" Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife.\n\n\n The great biologist had come home.\nIII\n\n\n \"Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called\n individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much\n about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?\"\n\n\n Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far.", "But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves\n drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for\n a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail.\n\n\n Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross\n his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail,\n watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned\n and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed\n sails.\nII\n\n\n The exterior of Martin Kesserich's home—a weathered white cube with\n narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola—was nothing like its\n lavish interior.", "\"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms,\"\n the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the\n one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.\n \"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I\n won't have any time for it tomorrow.\"\n\n\n Jack looked at him blankly.\n\n\n \"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter,\" the biologist\n explained.\nIV\n\n\n Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass\n on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old\n hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked\n the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering\n about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but\n found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as\n if to a farthest island in a world of people.", "This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the\n innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd\n brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence\n when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.\n\n\n He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the\n same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.\n\n\n The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to\n speak in a hushed, hurried voice. \"You must go away at once and never\n come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've\n been watching for you all morning.\"\n\n\n He tossed the newspapers over the fence. \"You don't have to read\n them now,\" he told her. \"Just look at the datelines and a few of the\n headlines.\"", "He scrambled ashore, dipping a sneaker in the icy water, and threw the\n line around a boulder. Unkinking himself, he looked back through the\n cove's high and rocky mouth at the gray-green scattering of islands\n and the faint dark line that was the coast of Maine. He almost laughed\n in satisfaction at having disregarded vague warnings and done the thing\n every man yearns to do once in his lifetime—gone to the farthest\n island out.\n\n\n He must have looked longer than he realized, because by the time he\n dropped his gaze the cove was again as glassy as if the\nAnnie O.\nhad\n always been there. And the splotches made by his sneaker on the rock\n had faded in the hot sun. There was something very unusual about the\n quietness of this place. As if time, elsewhere hurrying frantically,\n paused here to rest. As if all changes were erased on this one bit of\n Earth.", "Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind\n of terror he'd never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him\n had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders,\n the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his\n nostrils. He could still hear the faint\nchop-chop\nof the waves.\n\n\n And yet everything had changed, gone dark and dizzy as a landscape\n glimpsed just before a faint. All the little false notes had come to\n a sudden focus. For the lemonade had spilled on the headline of the\n newspaper the girl had tossed down, and the headline read:\n\n\n HITLER IN NEW DEFIANCE\n\n\n Under the big black banner of that head swam smaller ones:\n\n\n Foes of Machado Riot in Havana\n\n\n Big NRA Parade Planned", "She shook her head.\n\n\n \"Probably the greatest living biologist,\" he was proud to inform\n her. \"Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class\n with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there\n at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him.\" He\n grinned. \"Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for\n Mrs. Kesserich.\"\n\n\n The girl looked puzzled.\n\n\n Jack explained, \"The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences,\n won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow.\n When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of\n person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of\n course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name.\"", "\"Mary Alice Pope,\" she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as\n if she were saying it for the first time.\n\n\n \"You're pretty shy, aren't you?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this\n strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a \"flapper.\"\n\n\n \"Will you sit down?\" she asked him gravely.\n\n\n The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to\n talk. \"I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over.\"\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland.\"\n\n\n \"But I never go to the mainland.\"" ], [ "Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering\n darkness. \"But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early\n evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to\n the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary\n rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering\n to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the\n saddle to welcome him home.\n\n\n \"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station\n wagon had to be sent down for that.\" She looked defiantly at Jack. \"I\n drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant.\"", "\"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred\n British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point\n very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did\n everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was\n afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani\n and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her\n fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and\n here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not\n pacify them: it only increased their hatred.\n\n\n \"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love.\n It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as\n narrow and intense as his sisters hatred.\"\nWith a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him\n all this.", "In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming\n furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless\n black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack\n think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered\n again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.\n\n\n Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the\n uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were\n still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been\n watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.\nHe asked abruptly, \"Do you know anything of a girl around here named\n Mary Alice Pope?\"", "The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to\n reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the\n gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with\n what seemed a malicious eagerness.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she said, \"and I'll tell you about it.\"\n\n\n Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he\n was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her\n position on the edge of the sofa.\n\n\n \"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love\n of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as\n you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he\n first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda,\n there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of\n them.", "The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some\n bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall\n cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel,\n opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and\n handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked\n in his breath with surprise.\n\n\n It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same\n flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads.\n Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.\n\n\n \"That is Mary Alice Pope,\" Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat\n voice. \"She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident\n in 1933.\"", "\"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms,\"\n the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the\n one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.\n \"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I\n won't have any time for it tomorrow.\"\n\n\n Jack looked at him blankly.\n\n\n \"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter,\" the biologist\n explained.\nIV\n\n\n Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass\n on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old\n hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked\n the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering\n about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but\n found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as\n if to a farthest island in a world of people.", "She went on, \"Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a\n home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful\n future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by\n year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos\n Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would\n teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where\n he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so\n on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been\n away. His research was keeping him very busy—\"\n\n\n Jack broke in with, \"Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive\n work on growth and fertilization?\"", "A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened\n and was silent. Jack turned.\n\n\n The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall—a seemingly young,\n sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was\n a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray\n hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive\n mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the\n youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy.\n\n\n \"Hello, Barr,\" Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife.\n\n\n The great biologist had come home.\nIII\n\n\n \"Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called\n individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much\n about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?\"\n\n\n Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far.", "\"But why are they doing it to you?\" he demanded, leaning forward. \"Why\n are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?\"\nShe seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. \"I don't know\n why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell\n you a secret?\" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest\n trembling. \"Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're\n right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a\n little box.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\" he said sharply.\n\n\n \"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures,\n or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the\n poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,", "\"Mary Alice Pope,\" she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as\n if she were saying it for the first time.\n\n\n \"You're pretty shy, aren't you?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this\n strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a \"flapper.\"\n\n\n \"Will you sit down?\" she asked him gravely.\n\n\n The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to\n talk. \"I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over.\"\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland.\"\n\n\n \"But I never go to the mainland.\"", "\"I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that\n you're here.\"\n\n\n \"All right they won't like it.\"\n\n\n Her agitation grew. \"No, you must go.\"\n\n\n \"I'll come back tomorrow,\" he heard himself saying.\n\n\n \"Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn,\n mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle\n Shylock.\"\n\n\n Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the\n girl growing stranger still.\n\n\n \"You must go before they see you.\"", "This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the\n innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd\n brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence\n when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.\n\n\n He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the\n same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.\n\n\n The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to\n speak in a hushed, hurried voice. \"You must go away at once and never\n come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've\n been watching for you all morning.\"\n\n\n He tossed the newspapers over the fence. \"You don't have to read\n them now,\" he told her. \"Just look at the datelines and a few of the\n headlines.\"", "She shook her head.\n\n\n \"Probably the greatest living biologist,\" he was proud to inform\n her. \"Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class\n with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there\n at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him.\" He\n grinned. \"Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for\n Mrs. Kesserich.\"\n\n\n The girl looked puzzled.\n\n\n Jack explained, \"The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences,\n won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow.\n When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of\n person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of\n course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name.\"", "\"Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I\n don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a\n servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They\n showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't\n realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with\n Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without\n marrying, he was safe.", "\"\nThese\npapers might be faked,\" she said, pointing to where she'd let\n them drop on the ground.\n\n\n \"They're new,\" he said. \"Only old papers get yellow.\"\n\n\n \"But why would they do it to me?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n \"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker\n than anything.\"\n\n\n \"I couldn't,\" she said, drawing back. \"He's coming tonight.\"\n\n\n \"He?\"\n\n\n \"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life.\"\n\n\n Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. \"A life\n that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with\n me, Mary.\"", "She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to\n pound.\n\n\n At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack\n thought he could hear the faint\nchug\nof a motorboat. She pushed open\n the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark\n after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a\n fireplace with brass andirons.\n\n\n \"Flash!\" croaked a gritty voice. \"After their disastrous break day\n before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues....\"\n\n\n Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm\n around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice\n was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio\n loudspeaker.\n\n\n The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her\n gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere.", "\"Not especially, sir,\" he mumbled.\n\n\n The house was still. A few minutes after the professor's arrival,\n Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew\n why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their\n conversation to the professor.\n\n\n Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more\n important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if\n it were a teacher's trick to show up a pupil's inattention, he had\n suddenly posed this question about individuality.\n\n\n \"You know what I mean, of course,\" Kesserich pressed. \"The factors that\n make you you, and me me.\"\n\n\n \"Heredity and environment,\" Jack parroted like a freshman.\n\n\n Kesserich nodded. \"Suppose—this is just speculation—that we could\n control heredity and environment. Then we could re-create the same\n individual at will.\"", "For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind\n and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his\n attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't\n have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion,\n and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.\n\n\n When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how\n tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.\n\n\n Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly\n overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in\n the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair\n that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that\n it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches\n over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to\n the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.", "But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves\n drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for\n a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail.\n\n\n Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross\n his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail,\n watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned\n and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed\n sails.\nII\n\n\n The exterior of Martin Kesserich's home—a weathered white cube with\n narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola—was nothing like its\n lavish interior.", "She paused. \"It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold\n line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were\n waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the\n station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the\n gravel of the crossing.\n\n\n \"Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and\n Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage\n that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as\n her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare.\n\n\n \"Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he\n was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In\n fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been\n Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms.\"" ], [ "She paused. \"It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold\n line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were\n waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the\n station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the\n gravel of the crossing.\n\n\n \"Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and\n Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage\n that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as\n her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare.\n\n\n \"Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he\n was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In\n fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been\n Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms.\"", "Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering\n darkness. \"But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early\n evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to\n the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary\n rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering\n to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the\n saddle to welcome him home.\n\n\n \"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station\n wagon had to be sent down for that.\" She looked defiantly at Jack. \"I\n drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant.\"", "\"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred\n British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point\n very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did\n everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was\n afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani\n and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her\n fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and\n here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not\n pacify them: it only increased their hatred.\n\n\n \"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love.\n It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as\n narrow and intense as his sisters hatred.\"\nWith a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him\n all this.", "\"But why are they doing it to you?\" he demanded, leaning forward. \"Why\n are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?\"\nShe seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. \"I don't know\n why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell\n you a secret?\" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest\n trembling. \"Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're\n right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a\n little box.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\" he said sharply.\n\n\n \"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures,\n or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the\n poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,", "In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming\n furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless\n black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack\n think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered\n again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.\n\n\n Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the\n uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were\n still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been\n watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.\nHe asked abruptly, \"Do you know anything of a girl around here named\n Mary Alice Pope?\"", "\"Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I\n don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a\n servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They\n showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't\n realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with\n Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without\n marrying, he was safe.", "This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the\n innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd\n brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence\n when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.\n\n\n He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the\n same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.\n\n\n The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to\n speak in a hushed, hurried voice. \"You must go away at once and never\n come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've\n been watching for you all morning.\"\n\n\n He tossed the newspapers over the fence. \"You don't have to read\n them now,\" he told her. \"Just look at the datelines and a few of the\n headlines.\"", "She went on, \"Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a\n home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful\n future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by\n year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos\n Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would\n teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where\n he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so\n on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been\n away. His research was keeping him very busy—\"\n\n\n Jack broke in with, \"Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive\n work on growth and fertilization?\"", "\"Mary Alice Pope,\" she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as\n if she were saying it for the first time.\n\n\n \"You're pretty shy, aren't you?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this\n strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a \"flapper.\"\n\n\n \"Will you sit down?\" she asked him gravely.\n\n\n The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to\n talk. \"I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over.\"\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland.\"\n\n\n \"But I never go to the mainland.\"", "Then, with the air of a clock-work toy coming to life, the white door\n opened and an elderly woman came out, dressed in a long, lace-edged\n dress and wide, lacy hat. She climbed into the driver's seat of the\n Essex, sitting there very stiff and tall. The motor began to chug\n bravely, gravel skittered, and the car rolled off between the trees.\n\n\n The door of the house opened again and a slim girl emerged. She wore a\n white silk dress that fell straight from square neck-line to hip-height\n waistline, making the skirt seem very short. Her dark hair was bound\n with a white bandeau so that it curved close to her cheeks. A dark\n necklace dangled against the white of the dress. A newspaper was tucked\n under her arm.", "\"You mean you stay out here all winter?\" he asked incredulously, his\n mind filled with a vision of snow and frozen spray and great gray waves.\n\n\n \"Oh, yes. We get all our supplies on hand before winter. My aunts are\n very capable. They don't always wear long lace dresses. And now I help\n them.\"\n\n\n \"But that's impossible!\" he said with sudden sympathetic anger. \"You\n can't be shut off this way from people your own age!\"\n\n\n \"You're the first one I ever met.\" She hesitated. \"I never saw a boy or\n a man before, except in movies.\"\n\n\n \"You're joking!\"\n\n\n \"No, it's true.\"", "The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some\n bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall\n cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel,\n opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and\n handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked\n in his breath with surprise.\n\n\n It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same\n flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads.\n Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.\n\n\n \"That is Mary Alice Pope,\" Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat\n voice. \"She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident\n in 1933.\"", "For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind\n and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his\n attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't\n have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion,\n and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.\n\n\n When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how\n tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.\n\n\n Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly\n overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in\n the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair\n that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that\n it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches\n over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to\n the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.", "\"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms,\"\n the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the\n one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.\n \"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I\n won't have any time for it tomorrow.\"\n\n\n Jack looked at him blankly.\n\n\n \"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter,\" the biologist\n explained.\nIV\n\n\n Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass\n on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old\n hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked\n the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering\n about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but\n found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as\n if to a farthest island in a world of people.", "He tore his mind away from the picture of a woman dressed like Queen\n Mary clambering up a tree. \"Was that your aunt I saw driving off?\"\n\n\n \"One of them. The other's taken the motorboat in for supplies.\" She\n looked at him doubtfully. \"I'm not sure they'll like it if they find\n someone here.\"\n\n\n \"There are just the three of you?\" he cut in quickly, looking down the\n empty road that vanished among the oaks.\n\n\n She nodded.\n\n\n \"I suppose you go in to the mainland with your aunts quite often?\"\n\n\n She shook her head.\n\n\n \"It must get pretty dull for you.\"\n\n\n \"Not very,\" she said, smiling. \"My aunts bring me the papers and other\n things. Even movies. We've got a projector. My favorite stars are\n Antonio Morino and Alice Terry. I like her better even than Clara Bow.\"", "She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table\n between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across\n the lawn.\nThe man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, \"hello!\" and\n walked toward her.\n\n\n She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had\n stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him\n there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not\n so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an\n ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet.\n\n\n Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath\n was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician\n face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy\n that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than\n eighteen.", "\"\nThese\npapers might be faked,\" she said, pointing to where she'd let\n them drop on the ground.\n\n\n \"They're new,\" he said. \"Only old papers get yellow.\"\n\n\n \"But why would they do it to me?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n \"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker\n than anything.\"\n\n\n \"I couldn't,\" she said, drawing back. \"He's coming tonight.\"\n\n\n \"He?\"\n\n\n \"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life.\"\n\n\n Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. \"A life\n that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with\n me, Mary.\"", "The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to\n reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the\n gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with\n what seemed a malicious eagerness.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she said, \"and I'll tell you about it.\"\n\n\n Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he\n was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her\n position on the edge of the sofa.\n\n\n \"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love\n of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as\n you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he\n first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda,\n there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of\n them.", "Without pausing for surprise—in fact, in his holiday mood, using\n surprise as a goad—he jumped for the branch of an oak whose trunk\n touched the fence, scorning the easier lower branch on the other side\n of the tree. Then he drew himself up, worked his way to some higher\n branches that crossed the fence, and dropped down inside.\n\n\n Suddenly cautious, he gently parted the shrubbery and, before the first\n surprise could really sink in, had another.\nA closely mown lawn dotted with more shrubbery ran up to a snug white\n Cape Cod cottage. The single strand of a radio aerial stretched the\n length of the roof. Parked on a neat gravel driveway that crossed just\n in front of the cottage was a short, square-lined touring car that he\n recognized from remembered pictures as an ancient Essex. The whole\n scene had about it the same odd quietness as the cove.", "She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to\n pound.\n\n\n At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack\n thought he could hear the faint\nchug\nof a motorboat. She pushed open\n the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark\n after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a\n fireplace with brass andirons.\n\n\n \"Flash!\" croaked a gritty voice. \"After their disastrous break day\n before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues....\"\n\n\n Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm\n around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice\n was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio\n loudspeaker.\n\n\n The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her\n gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere." ], [ "\"Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I\n don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a\n servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They\n showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't\n realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with\n Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without\n marrying, he was safe.", "The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some\n bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall\n cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel,\n opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and\n handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked\n in his breath with surprise.\n\n\n It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same\n flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads.\n Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.\n\n\n \"That is Mary Alice Pope,\" Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat\n voice. \"She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident\n in 1933.\"", "In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming\n furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless\n black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack\n think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered\n again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.\n\n\n Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the\n uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were\n still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been\n watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.\nHe asked abruptly, \"Do you know anything of a girl around here named\n Mary Alice Pope?\"", "This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the\n innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd\n brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence\n when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.\n\n\n He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the\n same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.\n\n\n The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to\n speak in a hushed, hurried voice. \"You must go away at once and never\n come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've\n been watching for you all morning.\"\n\n\n He tossed the newspapers over the fence. \"You don't have to read\n them now,\" he told her. \"Just look at the datelines and a few of the\n headlines.\"", "\"Mary Alice Pope,\" she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as\n if she were saying it for the first time.\n\n\n \"You're pretty shy, aren't you?\"\n\n\n \"How would I know?\"\n\n\n The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this\n strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a \"flapper.\"\n\n\n \"Will you sit down?\" she asked him gravely.\n\n\n The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to\n talk. \"I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over.\"\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland.\"\n\n\n \"But I never go to the mainland.\"", "The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to\n reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the\n gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with\n what seemed a malicious eagerness.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she said, \"and I'll tell you about it.\"\n\n\n Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he\n was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her\n position on the edge of the sofa.\n\n\n \"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love\n of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as\n you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he\n first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda,\n there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of\n them.", "\"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred\n British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point\n very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did\n everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was\n afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani\n and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her\n fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and\n here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not\n pacify them: it only increased their hatred.\n\n\n \"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love.\n It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as\n narrow and intense as his sisters hatred.\"\nWith a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him\n all this.", "She paused. \"It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold\n line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were\n waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the\n station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the\n gravel of the crossing.\n\n\n \"Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and\n Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage\n that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as\n her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare.\n\n\n \"Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he\n was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In\n fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been\n Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms.\"", "\"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms,\"\n the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the\n one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.\n \"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I\n won't have any time for it tomorrow.\"\n\n\n Jack looked at him blankly.\n\n\n \"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter,\" the biologist\n explained.\nIV\n\n\n Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass\n on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old\n hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked\n the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering\n about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but\n found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as\n if to a farthest island in a world of people.", "\"But why are they doing it to you?\" he demanded, leaning forward. \"Why\n are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?\"\nShe seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. \"I don't know\n why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell\n you a secret?\" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest\n trembling. \"Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're\n right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a\n little box.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\" he said sharply.\n\n\n \"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures,\n or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the\n poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,", "Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering\n darkness. \"But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early\n evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to\n the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary\n rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering\n to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the\n saddle to welcome him home.\n\n\n \"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station\n wagon had to be sent down for that.\" She looked defiantly at Jack. \"I\n drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant.\"", "She went on, \"Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a\n home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful\n future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by\n year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos\n Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would\n teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where\n he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so\n on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been\n away. His research was keeping him very busy—\"\n\n\n Jack broke in with, \"Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive\n work on growth and fertilization?\"", "\"\nThese\npapers might be faked,\" she said, pointing to where she'd let\n them drop on the ground.\n\n\n \"They're new,\" he said. \"Only old papers get yellow.\"\n\n\n \"But why would they do it to me?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n \"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker\n than anything.\"\n\n\n \"I couldn't,\" she said, drawing back. \"He's coming tonight.\"\n\n\n \"He?\"\n\n\n \"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life.\"\n\n\n Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. \"A life\n that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with\n me, Mary.\"", "Then, with the air of a clock-work toy coming to life, the white door\n opened and an elderly woman came out, dressed in a long, lace-edged\n dress and wide, lacy hat. She climbed into the driver's seat of the\n Essex, sitting there very stiff and tall. The motor began to chug\n bravely, gravel skittered, and the car rolled off between the trees.\n\n\n The door of the house opened again and a slim girl emerged. She wore a\n white silk dress that fell straight from square neck-line to hip-height\n waistline, making the skirt seem very short. Her dark hair was bound\n with a white bandeau so that it curved close to her cheeks. A dark\n necklace dangled against the white of the dress. A newspaper was tucked\n under her arm.", "She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table\n between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across\n the lawn.\nThe man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, \"hello!\" and\n walked toward her.\n\n\n She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had\n stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him\n there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not\n so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an\n ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet.\n\n\n Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath\n was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician\n face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy\n that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than\n eighteen.", "Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind\n of terror he'd never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him\n had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders,\n the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his\n nostrils. He could still hear the faint\nchop-chop\nof the waves.\n\n\n And yet everything had changed, gone dark and dizzy as a landscape\n glimpsed just before a faint. All the little false notes had come to\n a sudden focus. For the lemonade had spilled on the headline of the\n newspaper the girl had tossed down, and the headline read:\n\n\n HITLER IN NEW DEFIANCE\n\n\n Under the big black banner of that head swam smaller ones:\n\n\n Foes of Machado Riot in Havana\n\n\n Big NRA Parade Planned", "He tore his mind away from the picture of a woman dressed like Queen\n Mary clambering up a tree. \"Was that your aunt I saw driving off?\"\n\n\n \"One of them. The other's taken the motorboat in for supplies.\" She\n looked at him doubtfully. \"I'm not sure they'll like it if they find\n someone here.\"\n\n\n \"There are just the three of you?\" he cut in quickly, looking down the\n empty road that vanished among the oaks.\n\n\n She nodded.\n\n\n \"I suppose you go in to the mainland with your aunts quite often?\"\n\n\n She shook her head.\n\n\n \"It must get pretty dull for you.\"\n\n\n \"Not very,\" she said, smiling. \"My aunts bring me the papers and other\n things. Even movies. We've got a projector. My favorite stars are\n Antonio Morino and Alice Terry. I like her better even than Clara Bow.\"", "\"I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that\n you're here.\"\n\n\n \"All right they won't like it.\"\n\n\n Her agitation grew. \"No, you must go.\"\n\n\n \"I'll come back tomorrow,\" he heard himself saying.\n\n\n \"Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn,\n mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle\n Shylock.\"\n\n\n Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the\n girl growing stranger still.\n\n\n \"You must go before they see you.\"", "Downstairs, the house was empty. After a long look at the cabinet—he\n felt behind it, but the key was gone—he hurried down to the\n waterfront. He stopped only for a bowl of chowder and, as an\n afterthought, to buy half a dozen newspapers.\n\n\n The sea was bright, the brisk wind just right for the\nAnnie O.\nThere\n was eagerness in the way it smacked the sail and in the creak of the\n mast. And when he reached the cove, it was no longer still, but nervous\n with faint ripples, as if time had finally begun to stir.\n\n\n After the same struggle with the underbrush, he came out on the rocky\n spine and passed the cove of the sea urchins. The spiny creatures\n struck an uncomfortable chord in his memory.", "She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to\n pound.\n\n\n At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack\n thought he could hear the faint\nchug\nof a motorboat. She pushed open\n the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark\n after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a\n fireplace with brass andirons.\n\n\n \"Flash!\" croaked a gritty voice. \"After their disastrous break day\n before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues....\"\n\n\n Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm\n around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice\n was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio\n loudspeaker.\n\n\n The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her\n gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere." ] ]
test	51194	[ "Why does Joe want a new wife?", "Why would Joe's pursuit of a perfect wife end in failure, no matter what?", "What does Joe's view of Dan Harvey and his wife say about his own life? ", "Why does Vera react the way she does to Joes decision? ", "Why is Alice \"too perfect?\"", "What is Joe's major character flaw?", "What could the moral of the story be?", "How might Joe's views have changed by the end of the story?" ]	[ [ "Working with machinery for so long as made him distant with Vera ", "Vera doesn't behave like a \"good wife\", he's tired of her.", "Vera behaves too much like a \"good wife\"", "He has unrealistic expectations of what a wife should be like" ], [ "He himself doesn't understand perfection, and doesn't know what to look for. ", "His perfect wife is always doomed to have the same traits he already dislikes. ", "They don't have the means to make him a perfect wife. ", "Perfection doesn't exist, and he will always find fault in his partners. " ], [ "Joe is right in his assumptions. People settle for mediocrity without realizing it. ", "Joe is \"unscientific\" himself, and his assumptions about Dan Harvey reflect that. ", "Joe is right. People are generally unscientific, and don't understand the world around them.", "Joe is projecting his insecurities. \"Unscientific\" people are happier than him because they embrace imperfections. " ], [ "She realizes that she can't fulfill his fantasy of perfection, and needs to find a man who views her as perfect. ", "She knows that Joe will accomplish his goal of building a \"perfect\" wife, and doesn't want to be a witness to it. ", "She realizes that she can't fulfill his fantasy of perfection, and is better of finding someone who lover her for who she is. ", "She leaves because she can't deal with loving Joe when he doesn't feel the same. " ], [ "She is so perfect that Joe and the others can't keep up with her, and have too program imperfections to compensate. ", "Her \"perfection\" is inhuman, and causes her to offend people and be too emotionally detached. ", "Her perfection alienates her from people, as they don't know what to do with it. ", "Her \"perfection\" is so on the nose that people don't read her as human. " ], [ "He's too involved in his experiment with Alice. It's blinding him to his real issues with Vera.", "He approaches life too much like a romantic. He has an ideal for perfection of love he can never attain. ", "Joe simply doesn't understand women. This misunderstanding causes him to create Alice. ", "He approaches life too much like a scientist. He doesn't respect the emotional nuances of people or their imperfections. " ], [ "Imperfection is something we can overcome, though the means for it may be something we're not ready for. ", "Humans will forever be imperfect, and accepting that imperfection is key to loving people. ", "Technology, though incredible, can give way to people losing sight of what really matters in relationships. ", "Human will forever be imperfect, and as such we will always struggle to love one another. " ], [ "He might realize how much he misses Vera, and the errors in his thinking. ", "He might realize what a great job Alice is doing of emulating Vera, and keep her. ", "They won't change. He's too fixated on Alice and his goal.", "He understands people, and women in particular, even less than at the start of the story. " ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "\"That's what I mean.\"\nJoe was silent. The coupe went past a row of solar homes and turned on\n Fulsom. Three houses from the corner, he turned into their driveway.\n\n\n \"You're awfully quiet,\" Vera said.\n\n\n \"I'm thinking.\"\n\n\n \"About what?\" Her voice was suddenly strained. \"Sam didn't try to sell\n you—\"\n\n\n \"A new wife?\" He looked at her. \"What makes you think that?\"\n\n\n \"You're thinking about me, about trading me in. Joe, haven't\n I—darling, is there—?\" She broke off, looking even more miserable\n than Sam had.\n\n\n \"I don't intend to trade you in,\" he said quietly.\n\n\n She took a deep breath.\n\n\n He didn't look at her. \"But you're going back to the Center.\"", "This afternoon, Burke's long nose was twitching and his thin face was\n gravely bleak. He had a clipped, efficient way of speaking.\n\n\n \"Tired, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\n \"Not hitting the ball, not on the beam, no zipperoo.\"\n\n\n \"I'm—yes, I guess you're right. I've been working at home on a private\n project.\"\n\n\n \"Scientific?\"\n\n\n \"Naturally.\"\n\n\n \"Anything in particular?\"\n\n\n Joe took a breath, looked away, and back at Burke. \"Well, a wife.\"\n\n\n A frown, a doubtful look from the cold, blue eyes. \"Robot? Dishwasher\n and cook and phone answerer and like that?\"\n\n\n \"More than that.\"", "\"They are lovely.\"\n\n\n While she dressed, he phoned the Harveys. He explained about Vera\n first, because Vera was what the Harveys considered a good neighbor.\n\n\n Dan Harvey said sympathetically, \"It happens to the best of us.\n Thinking of getting a new one, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"I've got one right here. Thought I'd drop over, sort of break the ice.\"\n\n\n \"Great,\" Dan said. \"Fine. Dandy.\"\n\n\n The event was of minor importance, except for the revelation involved.\n\n\n The Harveys had a gift for putting guests at ease, the gift being a\n cellar full of thirty-year-old bourbon the elder Harvey had bequeathed\n them at the end of their adjustment period.\n\n\n The talk moved here and there, over the bourbon, Alice sharing in it\n rarely, though nodding when Joe was talking.", "Sam, who was riding with him, looked over wonderingly. \"Who isn't?\"\n\n\n \"Vera. My wife. She's not right.\"\n\n\n Sam frowned. \"Are you serious, Joe? You mean she's—?\" He tapped his\n temple.\n\n\n \"Oh, no. I mean she's not what I want.\"\n\n\n \"That's why we have the Center,\" Sam answered, as if quoting, which he\n was. \"With the current and growing preponderance of women over men,\n something had to be done. I think we've done it.\"\n\n\n Sam was the Director of the Domestic Center and a man sold on his job.", "She stared at him, a film of moisture in her eyes. She didn't cry or\n ask questions or protest. Joe wished she would. This was worse.\n\n\n \"It's not your fault,\" he said, after a moment. \"I'm not going to get\n another. You're as ideal, almost, as a human wife can ever be.\"\n\n\n \"I've tried so hard,\" she said. \"Maybe I tried too hard.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" he said, \"it isn't your fault. Any reasonable man would be\n delighted with you, Vera. You won't be at the Center long.\"\n\n\n \"I don't want a reasonable man,\" she said quietly. \"I want you, Joe.\n I—I loved you.\"\n\n\n He had started to get out of the car. He paused to look back. \"Loved?\n Did you use the past tense?\"", "\"Here?\" Alice asked.\n\n\n \"No, of course not. Home. Let's go, dear. Have to rush.\"\n\n\n Alice's smile had nothing sentimental about it.\nHe didn't berate her until morning. He wanted time to cool off, to look\n at the whole thing objectively. It just wouldn't get objective, though.\n\n\n At breakfast, he said, \"That was tactless last night. Very, very\n tactless.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Joe. Tact requires deception. Tact is essentially deception.\"\n\n\n When had he said that? Oh, yes, at the Hydra Club lecture. And it was\n true and he hated deception and he'd created a wife without one.\n\n\n He said, \"I'll have to devise a character distiller that won't require\n putting you back in the mold.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, dear. Why?\"", "\"No offense,\" Joe said. \"It's just that you have to deal with human\n beings.\"\n\n\n \"Oh,\" Sam said. \"Now it comes. You know, for a minute I forgot who you\n were. I forgot you were the greatest living authority on robots. I was\n thinking of you as my boyhood chum, good old Joe. You're beyond that\n now, aren't you?\"\n\n\n \"Beyond my adolescence? I hope so, though very few people are.\" Joe\n looked at Sam squarely. \"Every man wants a perfect wife, doesn't he?\"\n\n\n Sam shrugged. \"I suppose.\"\n\n\n \"And no human is perfect, so no man gets a perfect wife. Am I right, so\n far?\"\n\n\n \"Sounds like it.\"", "Joe's glance went from his hurrying friend to the parking lot, and his\n coupe was there with Vera behind the wheel. It was only a three block\n walk, but she had to be there to meet him, every evening. That was her\n major fault, her romantic sentimentality.\n\n\n \"Darling,\" she said, as he approached the coupe. \"Sweetheart. Have a\n good day?\"\nHe kissed her casually. \"Ordinary.\" She slid over and he climbed in\n behind the wheel. \"Sat with Sam Tullgren on the train.\"\n\n\n \"Sam's nice.\"\n\n\n He turned on the ignition and said, \"Start.\" The motor obediently\n started and he swung out of the lot, onto Chestnut. \"Sam's all right.\n Kind of sentimental.\"", "\"I used the past tense.\" She started to get out on her side of the car.\n \"I don't want to talk about it.\"\n\n\n \"But I do,\" he told her. \"Is this love something you can turn on and\n off like a faucet?\"\n\n\n \"I don't care to explain it to you,\" she said. \"I've got to pack.\" She\n left the car, slammed the door, and moved hurriedly toward the house.\n\n\n Joe watched her. Something was troubling him, something he couldn't\n analyze, but he felt certain that if he could, it would prove to be\n absurd.", "Then, at mention of someone or other, Mrs. Harvey said tolerantly,\n \"Well, none of us are perfect, I guess.\"\n\n\n Alice smiled and answered, \"Some of us are satisfied with mediocrities\n in marriage.\"\n\n\n Mrs. Harvey frowned doubtfully. \"I don't quite understand, dear. In\n any marriage, there has to be adjustment. Dan and I, for example, have\n adjusted very well.\"\n\n\n \"You haven't adjusted,\" Alice said smilingly. \"You've surrendered.\"\n\n\n Joe coughed up half a glass of bourbon, Dan turned a sort of red-green\n and Mrs. Harvey stared with her mouth open. Alice smiled.\n\n\n Finally, Mrs. Harvey said, \"Well, I never—\"\n\n\n \"Of all the—\" Dan Harvey said.\n\n\n Joe rose and said, \"Must get to bed, got to get to bed.\"", "But he did say, \"I certainly thought a lot of Vera. You wouldn't have\n to warm her in any incubating mold.\"\n\n\n \"Wait'll you see this one,\" Joe said.\n\n\n And when she walked into the living room at home, when she acknowledged\n the introduction to the Chief, Joe knew the old boy was sold. The Chief\n could only stare.\n\n\n Joe took him down to the basement then to show him the molecule\n agitator, the memory feeder, the instillers.\n\n\n The old boy looked it over and said, quite simply, \"I'll be damned!\"\n\n\n They went up to a perfect dinner—and incident number two.\n\n\n The Chief was a sentimentalist and he'd just lost a fine friend. This\n friend was his terrier, Murph, who'd been hit by a speeding car.", "\"A sentimentalist, too romantic, kind of—well, maybe not dumb,\n exactly, but—\"\n\n\n \"But not perfect. Who is, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"My new wife is going to be.\"\n\n\n Pete shrugged and began putting together the ingredients for the kind\n of skin Joe had specified.\n\n\n They're all the same, Joe thought, Sam and Pete and the rest. They\n seemed to think his idea childish. He built the instillers and\n incubator that night. The mold would be done by one of the Department's\n engravers. Joe had the sketches and dimensions ready.\n\n\n Wednesday afternoon, Burke called him in. Burke was the Senior\n assistant, a job Joe had expected and been miffed about. Burke was a\n jerk, in Joe's book.", "\"You've done as well as you could,\" Joe agreed in an argumentative way.\n \"You've given some reason and order to the marital competition among\n women. You've almost eliminated illicit relations. You've established\n a basic security for the kids. But the big job? You've missed it\n completely.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" Sam said. \"That's a very small knife you've inserted between\n my shoulder blades, but I'm thin-skinned.\" He took a deep breath.\n \"What, in the opinion of the Junior Assistant to the Adjutant Science\n Director, was the\nbig\njob?\"\n\n\n Joe looked for some scorn in Sam's words, found it, and said, \"The big\n job is too big for a sociologist.\"\n\n\n Sam seemed to flinch. \"I didn't think that axe would fit alongside the\n knife. I underestimated you.\"", "The smile faded after about ten minutes. For Alice was telling her\nall\nabout the comptin-reduco-determina. For an hour and nineteen\n minutes, Alice talked to this woman who had been humiliated twice,\n telling her all the things about the famous thinking machine that Mrs.\n Tullgren didn't want to know.\n\n\n It wasn't until Alice was through talking animatedly that the entranced\n Joe began to suspect that perhaps the Tullgrens weren't as interested\n in the dingus as a scientific mind would assume.\n\n\n They weren't. There was a strain after that, a decided heaviness to the\n rest of the evening. Sam seemed to sigh with relief when they said good\n night.\n\n\n In the car, Joe was thoughtful. Halfway home, he said, \"Darling, I\n think you know too much—for a female, that is. I think you'll have to\n have a go with the knowledge-instiller. In reverse, of course.\"", "The story of Murph from birth to death was a fairly long one, but never\n dull. The Chief had a way with words. Even Joe, one of the world's\n top-ranking non-sentimentalists, was touched by the tale. When they\n came to the end, where Murph had lain in his master's arms, whimpering,\n as though to comfort him, trying to lick his face, Joe's eyes were wet\n and the drink wobbled in his hand.\n\n\n The Chief finished in a whisper, and looked up from the carpet he'd\n been staring at through the account.\n\n\n And there was Alice, sitting erect, a smile of perfect joy on her face.\n \"How touching,\" she said, and grinned.\n\n\n For one horror-stricken second, the Chief glared at her, and then his\n questioning eyes went to Joe.", "The pumps had stopped, the agitator, the instiller. He felt the mold;\n it was cool to the touch. He lifted the lid, his mind on Vera for some\n reason.\nA beauty. The lid was fully back and his mate sat up, smiled and said,\n \"Hello, Joe.\"\n\n\n \"Hello, Alice. Everything all right?\"\n\n\n \"Fine.\"\n\n\n Her hair was a silver blonde, her features a blend of the patrician and\n the classical. Her figure was neither too slim nor too stout, too flat\n nor too rounded. Nowhere was there any sag.\n\n\n \"Thought we'd drop over to the Harveys' for a drink,\" Joe said. \"Sort\n of show you off, you know.\"\n\n\n \"Ego gratification, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"Of course. I've some clothes upstairs for you.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure they're lovely.\"", "\"Okay.\" Joe tapped Sam's chest with a hard finger. \"I'm going to make a\n perfect wife.\" He tapped his own chest. \"For me, just for me, the way I\n want her. No human frailties. Ideal.\"\n\n\n \"A perfect robot,\" Sam objected.\n\n\n \"A wife,\" Joe corrected. \"A person. A human being.\"\n\n\n \"But without a brain.\"\n\n\n \"With a brain. Do you know anything about cybernetics, Sam?\"\n\n\n \"I know just as much about cybernetics as you know about people.\n Nothing.\"\n\"That's not quite fair. I'm not sentimental about people, but it's\n inaccurate to say I don't know anything about them.\nI'm\na person. I\n think I'm—discerning and sensitive.\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" Sam said. \"Let's drop the subject.\"", "\"She can't frown,\" Joe explained. \"The muscles are there, but they need\n massage to bring them to life.\" He paused. \"I wanted a smiling wife.\"\n\n\n The Chief inhaled heavily. \"There are times when a smile is out of\n order, don't you think, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"It seems that way.\"\n\n\n It didn't take long. Massage, orientation, practice, concentration. It\n didn't take long, and she was so willing to cooperate. Golly, she was\n agreeable. She was more than that; she voiced his thoughts before he\n did. Because of the mental affinity, you see. He'd made sure of that.\nShe could frown now and she had enough deception to get by in almost\n any company. These flaws were necessary, but they were still flaws and\n brought her closer to being—human.\nAt the office on Saturday morning, Sam Tullgren dropped in. Sam said,\n \"I've been hearing things, Joseph.\"", "Joe had the ace, king, queen and jack of hearts and a three to lead to\n Alice's hand. Alice finished up the hearts for a total of seven tricks,\n and this time it was Mrs. Tullgren who opened her mouth to speak.\n\n\n But she remembered Sam's kindness in the former hand, and she said,\n \"It was all my fault, darling. To think I couldn't recognize a\n psychic, just because it came from you. I think we're overmatched,\n sweet.\" She paused to smile at Joe. \"Up against the man who invented\n the comptin-reduco-determina.\" She added, as an afterthought, \"And his\n charming, brilliant new wife.\"\n\n\n Which brought about incident number three.\n\n\n Alice turned to Mrs. Tullgren sweetly and asked, \"Don't you really\n understand the comptin-reduco-determina?\"\n\n\n \"Not even faintly,\" Mrs. Tullgren answered. She smiled at Alice.", "Driving over to Westchester that night, Joe told Alice, \"Sam's a\n timid bidder. His wife's inclined to overbid. Plays a sacrificing\n game when she knows it will gain points. Our job will be to make her\n oversacrifice.\"\n\n\n Sam's eyes opened at sight of her; his wife's narrowed. Joe took pride\n in their reaction, but it was a strange, impersonal pride.\n\n\n They had a drink and some small talk, and settled around the table. It\n was more like a seance than a game.\n\n\n They bid and made four clubs, a heart. Sam's wife got that determined\n look. With the opposition holding down one leg of the rubber, she\n figured to make the next bid a costly one.\n\n\n She won it with six diamonds, and went down nine tricks, doubled. Sam\n started to say something, after the debacle, but one look at his wife's\n anguished countenance stopped him short of audibility." ], [ "\"No offense,\" Joe said. \"It's just that you have to deal with human\n beings.\"\n\n\n \"Oh,\" Sam said. \"Now it comes. You know, for a minute I forgot who you\n were. I forgot you were the greatest living authority on robots. I was\n thinking of you as my boyhood chum, good old Joe. You're beyond that\n now, aren't you?\"\n\n\n \"Beyond my adolescence? I hope so, though very few people are.\" Joe\n looked at Sam squarely. \"Every man wants a perfect wife, doesn't he?\"\n\n\n Sam shrugged. \"I suppose.\"\n\n\n \"And no human is perfect, so no man gets a perfect wife. Am I right, so\n far?\"\n\n\n \"Sounds like it.\"", "This afternoon, Burke's long nose was twitching and his thin face was\n gravely bleak. He had a clipped, efficient way of speaking.\n\n\n \"Tired, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\n \"Not hitting the ball, not on the beam, no zipperoo.\"\n\n\n \"I'm—yes, I guess you're right. I've been working at home on a private\n project.\"\n\n\n \"Scientific?\"\n\n\n \"Naturally.\"\n\n\n \"Anything in particular?\"\n\n\n Joe took a breath, looked away, and back at Burke. \"Well, a wife.\"\n\n\n A frown, a doubtful look from the cold, blue eyes. \"Robot? Dishwasher\n and cook and phone answerer and like that?\"\n\n\n \"More than that.\"", "She stared at him, a film of moisture in her eyes. She didn't cry or\n ask questions or protest. Joe wished she would. This was worse.\n\n\n \"It's not your fault,\" he said, after a moment. \"I'm not going to get\n another. You're as ideal, almost, as a human wife can ever be.\"\n\n\n \"I've tried so hard,\" she said. \"Maybe I tried too hard.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" he said, \"it isn't your fault. Any reasonable man would be\n delighted with you, Vera. You won't be at the Center long.\"\n\n\n \"I don't want a reasonable man,\" she said quietly. \"I want you, Joe.\n I—I loved you.\"\n\n\n He had started to get out of the car. He paused to look back. \"Loved?\n Did you use the past tense?\"", "\"Okay.\" Joe tapped Sam's chest with a hard finger. \"I'm going to make a\n perfect wife.\" He tapped his own chest. \"For me, just for me, the way I\n want her. No human frailties. Ideal.\"\n\n\n \"A perfect robot,\" Sam objected.\n\n\n \"A wife,\" Joe corrected. \"A person. A human being.\"\n\n\n \"But without a brain.\"\n\n\n \"With a brain. Do you know anything about cybernetics, Sam?\"\n\n\n \"I know just as much about cybernetics as you know about people.\n Nothing.\"\n\"That's not quite fair. I'm not sentimental about people, but it's\n inaccurate to say I don't know anything about them.\nI'm\na person. I\n think I'm—discerning and sensitive.\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" Sam said. \"Let's drop the subject.\"", "Then, at mention of someone or other, Mrs. Harvey said tolerantly,\n \"Well, none of us are perfect, I guess.\"\n\n\n Alice smiled and answered, \"Some of us are satisfied with mediocrities\n in marriage.\"\n\n\n Mrs. Harvey frowned doubtfully. \"I don't quite understand, dear. In\n any marriage, there has to be adjustment. Dan and I, for example, have\n adjusted very well.\"\n\n\n \"You haven't adjusted,\" Alice said smilingly. \"You've surrendered.\"\n\n\n Joe coughed up half a glass of bourbon, Dan turned a sort of red-green\n and Mrs. Harvey stared with her mouth open. Alice smiled.\n\n\n Finally, Mrs. Harvey said, \"Well, I never—\"\n\n\n \"Of all the—\" Dan Harvey said.\n\n\n Joe rose and said, \"Must get to bed, got to get to bed.\"", "Joe's glance went from his hurrying friend to the parking lot, and his\n coupe was there with Vera behind the wheel. It was only a three block\n walk, but she had to be there to meet him, every evening. That was her\n major fault, her romantic sentimentality.\n\n\n \"Darling,\" she said, as he approached the coupe. \"Sweetheart. Have a\n good day?\"\nHe kissed her casually. \"Ordinary.\" She slid over and he climbed in\n behind the wheel. \"Sat with Sam Tullgren on the train.\"\n\n\n \"Sam's nice.\"\n\n\n He turned on the ignition and said, \"Start.\" The motor obediently\n started and he swung out of the lot, onto Chestnut. \"Sam's all right.\n Kind of sentimental.\"", "\"Here?\" Alice asked.\n\n\n \"No, of course not. Home. Let's go, dear. Have to rush.\"\n\n\n Alice's smile had nothing sentimental about it.\nHe didn't berate her until morning. He wanted time to cool off, to look\n at the whole thing objectively. It just wouldn't get objective, though.\n\n\n At breakfast, he said, \"That was tactless last night. Very, very\n tactless.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Joe. Tact requires deception. Tact is essentially deception.\"\n\n\n When had he said that? Oh, yes, at the Hydra Club lecture. And it was\n true and he hated deception and he'd created a wife without one.\n\n\n He said, \"I'll have to devise a character distiller that won't require\n putting you back in the mold.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, dear. Why?\"", "\"Why?\"\n\n\n \"Because you're talking nonsense. A person without faults is not a\n person. And if—it or he—she were, I don't think I'd care to know him\n or her or it.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally. You're a sentimentalist. You've seen so much misery, so\n much human error, so much stupidity that you've built up your natural\n tolerance into a sloppy and unscientific sentimentality. It happens to\n sociologists all the time.\"\n\n\n \"Joe, I'm not going to argue with you. Only one thing I ask. When\n you—break the news to Vera, break it gently. And get her back to the\n Center as quickly as you can. She's a choice, rare number.\"", "So far, of course, he had described nothing more than a robot of flesh\n and blood. The spark, now—what distinguished the better-grade robots\n from people? Prenatal heat, that was it. Incubation. A mold, a heated\n mold. Warmth, the spark, the sun, life.\nFor the skin, he went to Pete Celano, the top syntho-dermatologist in\n the Department.\n\n\n \"Something special?\" Pete asked. \"Not just a local skin graft? What\n then?\"\n\n\n \"A wife. A perfect wife.\"\n\n\n Pete's grin sagged baffledly. \"I don't get it, Joe. Perfect how?\"\n\n\n \"In all ways.\" Joe's face was grave. \"Someone ideal to live with.\"\n\n\n \"How about Vera? What was wrong with her?\"", "\"That's what I mean.\"\nJoe was silent. The coupe went past a row of solar homes and turned on\n Fulsom. Three houses from the corner, he turned into their driveway.\n\n\n \"You're awfully quiet,\" Vera said.\n\n\n \"I'm thinking.\"\n\n\n \"About what?\" Her voice was suddenly strained. \"Sam didn't try to sell\n you—\"\n\n\n \"A new wife?\" He looked at her. \"What makes you think that?\"\n\n\n \"You're thinking about me, about trading me in. Joe, haven't\n I—darling, is there—?\" She broke off, looking even more miserable\n than Sam had.\n\n\n \"I don't intend to trade you in,\" he said quietly.\n\n\n She took a deep breath.\n\n\n He didn't look at her. \"But you're going back to the Center.\"", "Sam, who was riding with him, looked over wonderingly. \"Who isn't?\"\n\n\n \"Vera. My wife. She's not right.\"\n\n\n Sam frowned. \"Are you serious, Joe? You mean she's—?\" He tapped his\n temple.\n\n\n \"Oh, no. I mean she's not what I want.\"\n\n\n \"That's why we have the Center,\" Sam answered, as if quoting, which he\n was. \"With the current and growing preponderance of women over men,\n something had to be done. I think we've done it.\"\n\n\n Sam was the Director of the Domestic Center and a man sold on his job.", "The pumps had stopped, the agitator, the instiller. He felt the mold;\n it was cool to the touch. He lifted the lid, his mind on Vera for some\n reason.\nA beauty. The lid was fully back and his mate sat up, smiled and said,\n \"Hello, Joe.\"\n\n\n \"Hello, Alice. Everything all right?\"\n\n\n \"Fine.\"\n\n\n Her hair was a silver blonde, her features a blend of the patrician and\n the classical. Her figure was neither too slim nor too stout, too flat\n nor too rounded. Nowhere was there any sag.\n\n\n \"Thought we'd drop over to the Harveys' for a drink,\" Joe said. \"Sort\n of show you off, you know.\"\n\n\n \"Ego gratification, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"Of course. I've some clothes upstairs for you.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure they're lovely.\"", "\"I used the past tense.\" She started to get out on her side of the car.\n \"I don't want to talk about it.\"\n\n\n \"But I do,\" he told her. \"Is this love something you can turn on and\n off like a faucet?\"\n\n\n \"I don't care to explain it to you,\" she said. \"I've got to pack.\" She\n left the car, slammed the door, and moved hurriedly toward the house.\n\n\n Joe watched her. Something was troubling him, something he couldn't\n analyze, but he felt certain that if he could, it would prove to be\n absurd.", "The stirring in him he didn't want to analyze and he thought of\n the days he'd courted Vera, going to dances at the Center, playing\n bridge at the Center, studying Greek at the Center. A fine but too\n well-lighted place. You could do everything but smooch there; the\n smooching came after the declaration of intentions and a man was bound\n after the declaration to go through with the wedding, to live with his\n chosen mate for the minimum three months of the adjustment period.\nAdjustment period ... another necessity for humans, for imperfect\n people. Across the street, the perfectly adjusted Harveys smiled at\n each other and sipped their drinks. Hell, that wasn't adjustment, that\n was surrender.", "\"They are lovely.\"\n\n\n While she dressed, he phoned the Harveys. He explained about Vera\n first, because Vera was what the Harveys considered a good neighbor.\n\n\n Dan Harvey said sympathetically, \"It happens to the best of us.\n Thinking of getting a new one, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"I've got one right here. Thought I'd drop over, sort of break the ice.\"\n\n\n \"Great,\" Dan said. \"Fine. Dandy.\"\n\n\n The event was of minor importance, except for the revelation involved.\n\n\n The Harveys had a gift for putting guests at ease, the gift being a\n cellar full of thirty-year-old bourbon the elder Harvey had bequeathed\n them at the end of their adjustment period.\n\n\n The talk moved here and there, over the bourbon, Alice sharing in it\n rarely, though nodding when Joe was talking.", "\"A sentimentalist, too romantic, kind of—well, maybe not dumb,\n exactly, but—\"\n\n\n \"But not perfect. Who is, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"My new wife is going to be.\"\n\n\n Pete shrugged and began putting together the ingredients for the kind\n of skin Joe had specified.\n\n\n They're all the same, Joe thought, Sam and Pete and the rest. They\n seemed to think his idea childish. He built the instillers and\n incubator that night. The mold would be done by one of the Department's\n engravers. Joe had the sketches and dimensions ready.\n\n\n Wednesday afternoon, Burke called him in. Burke was the Senior\n assistant, a job Joe had expected and been miffed about. Burke was a\n jerk, in Joe's book.", "\"She can't frown,\" Joe explained. \"The muscles are there, but they need\n massage to bring them to life.\" He paused. \"I wanted a smiling wife.\"\n\n\n The Chief inhaled heavily. \"There are times when a smile is out of\n order, don't you think, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"It seems that way.\"\n\n\n It didn't take long. Massage, orientation, practice, concentration. It\n didn't take long, and she was so willing to cooperate. Golly, she was\n agreeable. She was more than that; she voiced his thoughts before he\n did. Because of the mental affinity, you see. He'd made sure of that.\nShe could frown now and she had enough deception to get by in almost\n any company. These flaws were necessary, but they were still flaws and\n brought her closer to being—human.\nAt the office on Saturday morning, Sam Tullgren dropped in. Sam said,\n \"I've been hearing things, Joseph.\"", "Driving over to Westchester that night, Joe told Alice, \"Sam's a\n timid bidder. His wife's inclined to overbid. Plays a sacrificing\n game when she knows it will gain points. Our job will be to make her\n oversacrifice.\"\n\n\n Sam's eyes opened at sight of her; his wife's narrowed. Joe took pride\n in their reaction, but it was a strange, impersonal pride.\n\n\n They had a drink and some small talk, and settled around the table. It\n was more like a seance than a game.\n\n\n They bid and made four clubs, a heart. Sam's wife got that determined\n look. With the opposition holding down one leg of the rubber, she\n figured to make the next bid a costly one.\n\n\n She won it with six diamonds, and went down nine tricks, doubled. Sam\n started to say something, after the debacle, but one look at his wife's\n anguished countenance stopped him short of audibility.", "\"Of course,\" she agreed.\n\n\n \"I don't object to females knowing a lot. The world does.\"\n\n\n \"Of course,\" she said.\n\n\n She was a first model and, therefore, experimental. These bugs were\n bound to show up. She was now less knowing, more deceptive, and she\n could frown.\n\n\n She began to remind him of Vera, which didn't make sense.\n\n\n Alice was sad when he was sad, gay when he was gay, and romantic to the\n same split-degree in the same split-second. She even told him his old\n jokes with the same inflection he always used.\n\n\n Their mood affinity was geared as closely as the\n comptin-reduco-determina. What more could a man want? And, damn it, why\n should Vera's perfume linger in that back bedroom?", "Joe had the ace, king, queen and jack of hearts and a three to lead to\n Alice's hand. Alice finished up the hearts for a total of seven tricks,\n and this time it was Mrs. Tullgren who opened her mouth to speak.\n\n\n But she remembered Sam's kindness in the former hand, and she said,\n \"It was all my fault, darling. To think I couldn't recognize a\n psychic, just because it came from you. I think we're overmatched,\n sweet.\" She paused to smile at Joe. \"Up against the man who invented\n the comptin-reduco-determina.\" She added, as an afterthought, \"And his\n charming, brilliant new wife.\"\n\n\n Which brought about incident number three.\n\n\n Alice turned to Mrs. Tullgren sweetly and asked, \"Don't you really\n understand the comptin-reduco-determina?\"\n\n\n \"Not even faintly,\" Mrs. Tullgren answered. She smiled at Alice." ], [ "\"They are lovely.\"\n\n\n While she dressed, he phoned the Harveys. He explained about Vera\n first, because Vera was what the Harveys considered a good neighbor.\n\n\n Dan Harvey said sympathetically, \"It happens to the best of us.\n Thinking of getting a new one, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"I've got one right here. Thought I'd drop over, sort of break the ice.\"\n\n\n \"Great,\" Dan said. \"Fine. Dandy.\"\n\n\n The event was of minor importance, except for the revelation involved.\n\n\n The Harveys had a gift for putting guests at ease, the gift being a\n cellar full of thirty-year-old bourbon the elder Harvey had bequeathed\n them at the end of their adjustment period.\n\n\n The talk moved here and there, over the bourbon, Alice sharing in it\n rarely, though nodding when Joe was talking.", "Then, at mention of someone or other, Mrs. Harvey said tolerantly,\n \"Well, none of us are perfect, I guess.\"\n\n\n Alice smiled and answered, \"Some of us are satisfied with mediocrities\n in marriage.\"\n\n\n Mrs. Harvey frowned doubtfully. \"I don't quite understand, dear. In\n any marriage, there has to be adjustment. Dan and I, for example, have\n adjusted very well.\"\n\n\n \"You haven't adjusted,\" Alice said smilingly. \"You've surrendered.\"\n\n\n Joe coughed up half a glass of bourbon, Dan turned a sort of red-green\n and Mrs. Harvey stared with her mouth open. Alice smiled.\n\n\n Finally, Mrs. Harvey said, \"Well, I never—\"\n\n\n \"Of all the—\" Dan Harvey said.\n\n\n Joe rose and said, \"Must get to bed, got to get to bed.\"", "The grass was dry and gray; he'd forgotten to set the sprinkler\n clock, Vera's old job. Across the street, Dan Harvey sat with his\n wife, each with a drink. Sat with his human wife, the poor fish. They\n looked happy, though. Some people were satisfied with mediocrities.\n Unscientific people.\n\n\n Why was he restless? Why was he bored? Was he worried about his job?\n Only slightly; the Chief thought a lot of him, a hell of a lot. The\n Chief was a great guy for seniority and Burke had it, or Joe would\n certainly have been Senior Assistant.", "Joe's glance went from his hurrying friend to the parking lot, and his\n coupe was there with Vera behind the wheel. It was only a three block\n walk, but she had to be there to meet him, every evening. That was her\n major fault, her romantic sentimentality.\n\n\n \"Darling,\" she said, as he approached the coupe. \"Sweetheart. Have a\n good day?\"\nHe kissed her casually. \"Ordinary.\" She slid over and he climbed in\n behind the wheel. \"Sat with Sam Tullgren on the train.\"\n\n\n \"Sam's nice.\"\n\n\n He turned on the ignition and said, \"Start.\" The motor obediently\n started and he swung out of the lot, onto Chestnut. \"Sam's all right.\n Kind of sentimental.\"", "The stirring in him he didn't want to analyze and he thought of\n the days he'd courted Vera, going to dances at the Center, playing\n bridge at the Center, studying Greek at the Center. A fine but too\n well-lighted place. You could do everything but smooch there; the\n smooching came after the declaration of intentions and a man was bound\n after the declaration to go through with the wedding, to live with his\n chosen mate for the minimum three months of the adjustment period.\nAdjustment period ... another necessity for humans, for imperfect\n people. Across the street, the perfectly adjusted Harveys smiled at\n each other and sipped their drinks. Hell, that wasn't adjustment, that\n was surrender.", "\"That's what I mean.\"\nJoe was silent. The coupe went past a row of solar homes and turned on\n Fulsom. Three houses from the corner, he turned into their driveway.\n\n\n \"You're awfully quiet,\" Vera said.\n\n\n \"I'm thinking.\"\n\n\n \"About what?\" Her voice was suddenly strained. \"Sam didn't try to sell\n you—\"\n\n\n \"A new wife?\" He looked at her. \"What makes you think that?\"\n\n\n \"You're thinking about me, about trading me in. Joe, haven't\n I—darling, is there—?\" She broke off, looking even more miserable\n than Sam had.\n\n\n \"I don't intend to trade you in,\" he said quietly.\n\n\n She took a deep breath.\n\n\n He didn't look at her. \"But you're going back to the Center.\"", "Joe said nothing to that. Sam looked miserable. They sat there,\n listening to the swishing, burring clicks of the airlocks, two\n friends—one who dealt with people and had grown soft, the other who\n dealt with machines and might not have grown at all.\n\n\n As the car rose for the Inglewood station, Sam looked over, but Joe's\n eyes were straight ahead. Sam got up and out of the seat.\n\n\n There was a whispering sigh of escaping air and the sunlight glare of\n the Inglewood station, synthetic redwood and chrome and marble.\n\n\n Sam was out of the cylindrical, stainless steel car and hurrying for\n the Westchester local when Joe came out onto the platform. Sam was\n annoyed, it was plain.", "This afternoon, Burke's long nose was twitching and his thin face was\n gravely bleak. He had a clipped, efficient way of speaking.\n\n\n \"Tired, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\n \"Not hitting the ball, not on the beam, no zipperoo.\"\n\n\n \"I'm—yes, I guess you're right. I've been working at home on a private\n project.\"\n\n\n \"Scientific?\"\n\n\n \"Naturally.\"\n\n\n \"Anything in particular?\"\n\n\n Joe took a breath, looked away, and back at Burke. \"Well, a wife.\"\n\n\n A frown, a doubtful look from the cold, blue eyes. \"Robot? Dishwasher\n and cook and phone answerer and like that?\"\n\n\n \"More than that.\"", "The pumps had stopped, the agitator, the instiller. He felt the mold;\n it was cool to the touch. He lifted the lid, his mind on Vera for some\n reason.\nA beauty. The lid was fully back and his mate sat up, smiled and said,\n \"Hello, Joe.\"\n\n\n \"Hello, Alice. Everything all right?\"\n\n\n \"Fine.\"\n\n\n Her hair was a silver blonde, her features a blend of the patrician and\n the classical. Her figure was neither too slim nor too stout, too flat\n nor too rounded. Nowhere was there any sag.\n\n\n \"Thought we'd drop over to the Harveys' for a drink,\" Joe said. \"Sort\n of show you off, you know.\"\n\n\n \"Ego gratification, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"Of course. I've some clothes upstairs for you.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure they're lovely.\"", "\"I used the past tense.\" She started to get out on her side of the car.\n \"I don't want to talk about it.\"\n\n\n \"But I do,\" he told her. \"Is this love something you can turn on and\n off like a faucet?\"\n\n\n \"I don't care to explain it to you,\" she said. \"I've got to pack.\" She\n left the car, slammed the door, and moved hurriedly toward the house.\n\n\n Joe watched her. Something was troubling him, something he couldn't\n analyze, but he felt certain that if he could, it would prove to be\n absurd.", "Sam, who was riding with him, looked over wonderingly. \"Who isn't?\"\n\n\n \"Vera. My wife. She's not right.\"\n\n\n Sam frowned. \"Are you serious, Joe? You mean she's—?\" He tapped his\n temple.\n\n\n \"Oh, no. I mean she's not what I want.\"\n\n\n \"That's why we have the Center,\" Sam answered, as if quoting, which he\n was. \"With the current and growing preponderance of women over men,\n something had to be done. I think we've done it.\"\n\n\n Sam was the Director of the Domestic Center and a man sold on his job.", "\"Here?\" Alice asked.\n\n\n \"No, of course not. Home. Let's go, dear. Have to rush.\"\n\n\n Alice's smile had nothing sentimental about it.\nHe didn't berate her until morning. He wanted time to cool off, to look\n at the whole thing objectively. It just wouldn't get objective, though.\n\n\n At breakfast, he said, \"That was tactless last night. Very, very\n tactless.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Joe. Tact requires deception. Tact is essentially deception.\"\n\n\n When had he said that? Oh, yes, at the Hydra Club lecture. And it was\n true and he hated deception and he'd created a wife without one.\n\n\n He said, \"I'll have to devise a character distiller that won't require\n putting you back in the mold.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, dear. Why?\"", "She stared at him, a film of moisture in her eyes. She didn't cry or\n ask questions or protest. Joe wished she would. This was worse.\n\n\n \"It's not your fault,\" he said, after a moment. \"I'm not going to get\n another. You're as ideal, almost, as a human wife can ever be.\"\n\n\n \"I've tried so hard,\" she said. \"Maybe I tried too hard.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" he said, \"it isn't your fault. Any reasonable man would be\n delighted with you, Vera. You won't be at the Center long.\"\n\n\n \"I don't want a reasonable man,\" she said quietly. \"I want you, Joe.\n I—I loved you.\"\n\n\n He had started to get out of the car. He paused to look back. \"Loved?\n Did you use the past tense?\"", "The story of Murph from birth to death was a fairly long one, but never\n dull. The Chief had a way with words. Even Joe, one of the world's\n top-ranking non-sentimentalists, was touched by the tale. When they\n came to the end, where Murph had lain in his master's arms, whimpering,\n as though to comfort him, trying to lick his face, Joe's eyes were wet\n and the drink wobbled in his hand.\n\n\n The Chief finished in a whisper, and looked up from the carpet he'd\n been staring at through the account.\n\n\n And there was Alice, sitting erect, a smile of perfect joy on her face.\n \"How touching,\" she said, and grinned.\n\n\n For one horror-stricken second, the Chief glared at her, and then his\n questioning eyes went to Joe.", "Something flashed toward his face. It was her slim, white hand, but it\n didn't feel slim and white. She said, \"I can see now why you weren't\n made\nSenior\nAssistant to the Adjutant Science Director. You're a\n stupid, emotionless mechanic. A machine.\"\n\n\n He was still staring after her when the door slammed. He thought of the\n huge Domestic Center with its classes in Allure, Boudoir Manners, Diet,\n Poise, Budgeting. That vast, efficient, beautifully decorated Center\n which was the brain child of Sam Tullgren, but which still had to deal\n with imperfect humans.\n\n\n People, people, people ... and particularly women. He rose, after a\n while, and went into the dinette. He sat down and stared moodily at his\n food.", "Driving over to Westchester that night, Joe told Alice, \"Sam's a\n timid bidder. His wife's inclined to overbid. Plays a sacrificing\n game when she knows it will gain points. Our job will be to make her\n oversacrifice.\"\n\n\n Sam's eyes opened at sight of her; his wife's narrowed. Joe took pride\n in their reaction, but it was a strange, impersonal pride.\n\n\n They had a drink and some small talk, and settled around the table. It\n was more like a seance than a game.\n\n\n They bid and made four clubs, a heart. Sam's wife got that determined\n look. With the opposition holding down one leg of the rubber, she\n figured to make the next bid a costly one.\n\n\n She won it with six diamonds, and went down nine tricks, doubled. Sam\n started to say something, after the debacle, but one look at his wife's\n anguished countenance stopped him short of audibility.", "He went thoughtfully into the living room and snapped on the telenews.\n He saw troops moving by on foot, a file of them dispersed along a\n Brazilian road. He turned the knob to another station and saw the\n huge stock market board, a rebroadcast. Another twist and he saw a\n disheveled, shrieking woman being transported down some tenement steps\n by a pair of policemen. The small crowd on the sidewalk mugged into the\n camera.\n\n\n He snapped it off impatiently and went into the kitchen. The dinette\n was a glass-walled alcove off this, and the table was set. There was\n food on his plate, none on Vera's.\nHe went to the living room and then, with a mutter of impatience, to\n the door of the back bedroom. She had her grips open on the low bed.\n\n\n \"You don't have to leave tonight, you know.\"\n\n\n \"I know.\"", "He got up and went into the living room; fighting the stirring in him,\n the stirring he didn't want to analyze and find absurd. He went into\n the bathroom and studied his lean, now haggard face. He looked like\n hell. He went into the back bedroom and smelled her perfume and went\n quickly from the house and into the backyard.\n\n\n He sat there until seven, listening to the throb from the basement.\n The molecule agitator should have the flesh firm and finished now,\n nourished by the select blood, massaged by the pulsating plastic.\n\n\n At seven, she should be ready.\n\n\n At seven, he went down to the basement. His heart should have been\n hammering and his mind expectant, but he was just another guy going\n down to the basement.", "\"You've done as well as you could,\" Joe agreed in an argumentative way.\n \"You've given some reason and order to the marital competition among\n women. You've almost eliminated illicit relations. You've established\n a basic security for the kids. But the big job? You've missed it\n completely.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" Sam said. \"That's a very small knife you've inserted between\n my shoulder blades, but I'm thin-skinned.\" He took a deep breath.\n \"What, in the opinion of the Junior Assistant to the Adjutant Science\n Director, was the\nbig\njob?\"\n\n\n Joe looked for some scorn in Sam's words, found it, and said, \"The big\n job is too big for a sociologist.\"\n\n\n Sam seemed to flinch. \"I didn't think that axe would fit alongside the\n knife. I underestimated you.\"", "Joe had the ace, king, queen and jack of hearts and a three to lead to\n Alice's hand. Alice finished up the hearts for a total of seven tricks,\n and this time it was Mrs. Tullgren who opened her mouth to speak.\n\n\n But she remembered Sam's kindness in the former hand, and she said,\n \"It was all my fault, darling. To think I couldn't recognize a\n psychic, just because it came from you. I think we're overmatched,\n sweet.\" She paused to smile at Joe. \"Up against the man who invented\n the comptin-reduco-determina.\" She added, as an afterthought, \"And his\n charming, brilliant new wife.\"\n\n\n Which brought about incident number three.\n\n\n Alice turned to Mrs. Tullgren sweetly and asked, \"Don't you really\n understand the comptin-reduco-determina?\"\n\n\n \"Not even faintly,\" Mrs. Tullgren answered. She smiled at Alice." ], [ "\"That's what I mean.\"\nJoe was silent. The coupe went past a row of solar homes and turned on\n Fulsom. Three houses from the corner, he turned into their driveway.\n\n\n \"You're awfully quiet,\" Vera said.\n\n\n \"I'm thinking.\"\n\n\n \"About what?\" Her voice was suddenly strained. \"Sam didn't try to sell\n you—\"\n\n\n \"A new wife?\" He looked at her. \"What makes you think that?\"\n\n\n \"You're thinking about me, about trading me in. Joe, haven't\n I—darling, is there—?\" She broke off, looking even more miserable\n than Sam had.\n\n\n \"I don't intend to trade you in,\" he said quietly.\n\n\n She took a deep breath.\n\n\n He didn't look at her. \"But you're going back to the Center.\"", "She stared at him, a film of moisture in her eyes. She didn't cry or\n ask questions or protest. Joe wished she would. This was worse.\n\n\n \"It's not your fault,\" he said, after a moment. \"I'm not going to get\n another. You're as ideal, almost, as a human wife can ever be.\"\n\n\n \"I've tried so hard,\" she said. \"Maybe I tried too hard.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" he said, \"it isn't your fault. Any reasonable man would be\n delighted with you, Vera. You won't be at the Center long.\"\n\n\n \"I don't want a reasonable man,\" she said quietly. \"I want you, Joe.\n I—I loved you.\"\n\n\n He had started to get out of the car. He paused to look back. \"Loved?\n Did you use the past tense?\"", "\"They are lovely.\"\n\n\n While she dressed, he phoned the Harveys. He explained about Vera\n first, because Vera was what the Harveys considered a good neighbor.\n\n\n Dan Harvey said sympathetically, \"It happens to the best of us.\n Thinking of getting a new one, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"I've got one right here. Thought I'd drop over, sort of break the ice.\"\n\n\n \"Great,\" Dan said. \"Fine. Dandy.\"\n\n\n The event was of minor importance, except for the revelation involved.\n\n\n The Harveys had a gift for putting guests at ease, the gift being a\n cellar full of thirty-year-old bourbon the elder Harvey had bequeathed\n them at the end of their adjustment period.\n\n\n The talk moved here and there, over the bourbon, Alice sharing in it\n rarely, though nodding when Joe was talking.", "Joe's glance went from his hurrying friend to the parking lot, and his\n coupe was there with Vera behind the wheel. It was only a three block\n walk, but she had to be there to meet him, every evening. That was her\n major fault, her romantic sentimentality.\n\n\n \"Darling,\" she said, as he approached the coupe. \"Sweetheart. Have a\n good day?\"\nHe kissed her casually. \"Ordinary.\" She slid over and he climbed in\n behind the wheel. \"Sat with Sam Tullgren on the train.\"\n\n\n \"Sam's nice.\"\n\n\n He turned on the ignition and said, \"Start.\" The motor obediently\n started and he swung out of the lot, onto Chestnut. \"Sam's all right.\n Kind of sentimental.\"", "He went thoughtfully into the living room and snapped on the telenews.\n He saw troops moving by on foot, a file of them dispersed along a\n Brazilian road. He turned the knob to another station and saw the\n huge stock market board, a rebroadcast. Another twist and he saw a\n disheveled, shrieking woman being transported down some tenement steps\n by a pair of policemen. The small crowd on the sidewalk mugged into the\n camera.\n\n\n He snapped it off impatiently and went into the kitchen. The dinette\n was a glass-walled alcove off this, and the table was set. There was\n food on his plate, none on Vera's.\nHe went to the living room and then, with a mutter of impatience, to\n the door of the back bedroom. She had her grips open on the low bed.\n\n\n \"You don't have to leave tonight, you know.\"\n\n\n \"I know.\"", "\"From Vera? At the Center?\"\n\n\n Sam shook his head. \"Vera's been too busy to have much time for the\n director. She's our most popular number.\" Sam paused. \"About the new\n one. Hear she's something to see.\"\n\n\n \"You heard right. She's practically flawless, Sam. She's just what a\n man needs at home.\" His voice, for some reason, didn't indicate the\n enthusiasm he should have felt.\n\n\n Sam chewed one corner of his mouth. \"Why not bring her over, say,\n tonight? We'll play some bridge.\"\n\n\n That would be something. Two minds, perfectly in harmony, synchronized,\n working in partnership. Joe's smile was smug. \"We'll be there. At\n eight-thirty.\"", "\"Why?\"\n\n\n \"Because you're talking nonsense. A person without faults is not a\n person. And if—it or he—she were, I don't think I'd care to know him\n or her or it.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally. You're a sentimentalist. You've seen so much misery, so\n much human error, so much stupidity that you've built up your natural\n tolerance into a sloppy and unscientific sentimentality. It happens to\n sociologists all the time.\"\n\n\n \"Joe, I'm not going to argue with you. Only one thing I ask. When\n you—break the news to Vera, break it gently. And get her back to the\n Center as quickly as you can. She's a choice, rare number.\"", "Sam, who was riding with him, looked over wonderingly. \"Who isn't?\"\n\n\n \"Vera. My wife. She's not right.\"\n\n\n Sam frowned. \"Are you serious, Joe? You mean she's—?\" He tapped his\n temple.\n\n\n \"Oh, no. I mean she's not what I want.\"\n\n\n \"That's why we have the Center,\" Sam answered, as if quoting, which he\n was. \"With the current and growing preponderance of women over men,\n something had to be done. I think we've done it.\"\n\n\n Sam was the Director of the Domestic Center and a man sold on his job.", "The stirring in him he didn't want to analyze and he thought of\n the days he'd courted Vera, going to dances at the Center, playing\n bridge at the Center, studying Greek at the Center. A fine but too\n well-lighted place. You could do everything but smooch there; the\n smooching came after the declaration of intentions and a man was bound\n after the declaration to go through with the wedding, to live with his\n chosen mate for the minimum three months of the adjustment period.\nAdjustment period ... another necessity for humans, for imperfect\n people. Across the street, the perfectly adjusted Harveys smiled at\n each other and sipped their drinks. Hell, that wasn't adjustment, that\n was surrender.", "\"I used the past tense.\" She started to get out on her side of the car.\n \"I don't want to talk about it.\"\n\n\n \"But I do,\" he told her. \"Is this love something you can turn on and\n off like a faucet?\"\n\n\n \"I don't care to explain it to you,\" she said. \"I've got to pack.\" She\n left the car, slammed the door, and moved hurriedly toward the house.\n\n\n Joe watched her. Something was troubling him, something he couldn't\n analyze, but he felt certain that if he could, it would prove to be\n absurd.", "But he did say, \"I certainly thought a lot of Vera. You wouldn't have\n to warm her in any incubating mold.\"\n\n\n \"Wait'll you see this one,\" Joe said.\n\n\n And when she walked into the living room at home, when she acknowledged\n the introduction to the Chief, Joe knew the old boy was sold. The Chief\n could only stare.\n\n\n Joe took him down to the basement then to show him the molecule\n agitator, the memory feeder, the instillers.\n\n\n The old boy looked it over and said, quite simply, \"I'll be damned!\"\n\n\n They went up to a perfect dinner—and incident number two.\n\n\n The Chief was a sentimentalist and he'd just lost a fine friend. This\n friend was his terrier, Murph, who'd been hit by a speeding car.", "\"You're being very unreasonable.\"\n\n\n \"Am I?\"\n\n\n \"I wasn't trying to be intentionally cruel.\"\n\n\n \"Weren't you?\"\n\n\n His voice rose. \"Will you stop talking like some damned robot? Are you\n a human being, or aren't you?\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid I am,\" she said, \"and that's why I'm going back to the\n Center. I've changed my mind. I want to get registered. I want to find\n a\nman\n.\"\n\n\n She started to go past him, her grip in her hand. He put a hand on her\n shoulder. \"Vera, you—\"", "The story of Murph from birth to death was a fairly long one, but never\n dull. The Chief had a way with words. Even Joe, one of the world's\n top-ranking non-sentimentalists, was touched by the tale. When they\n came to the end, where Murph had lain in his master's arms, whimpering,\n as though to comfort him, trying to lick his face, Joe's eyes were wet\n and the drink wobbled in his hand.\n\n\n The Chief finished in a whisper, and looked up from the carpet he'd\n been staring at through the account.\n\n\n And there was Alice, sitting erect, a smile of perfect joy on her face.\n \"How touching,\" she said, and grinned.\n\n\n For one horror-stricken second, the Chief glared at her, and then his\n questioning eyes went to Joe.", "The pumps had stopped, the agitator, the instiller. He felt the mold;\n it was cool to the touch. He lifted the lid, his mind on Vera for some\n reason.\nA beauty. The lid was fully back and his mate sat up, smiled and said,\n \"Hello, Joe.\"\n\n\n \"Hello, Alice. Everything all right?\"\n\n\n \"Fine.\"\n\n\n Her hair was a silver blonde, her features a blend of the patrician and\n the classical. Her figure was neither too slim nor too stout, too flat\n nor too rounded. Nowhere was there any sag.\n\n\n \"Thought we'd drop over to the Harveys' for a drink,\" Joe said. \"Sort\n of show you off, you know.\"\n\n\n \"Ego gratification, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"Of course. I've some clothes upstairs for you.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure they're lovely.\"", "Joe said nothing to that. Sam looked miserable. They sat there,\n listening to the swishing, burring clicks of the airlocks, two\n friends—one who dealt with people and had grown soft, the other who\n dealt with machines and might not have grown at all.\n\n\n As the car rose for the Inglewood station, Sam looked over, but Joe's\n eyes were straight ahead. Sam got up and out of the seat.\n\n\n There was a whispering sigh of escaping air and the sunlight glare of\n the Inglewood station, synthetic redwood and chrome and marble.\n\n\n Sam was out of the cylindrical, stainless steel car and hurrying for\n the Westchester local when Joe came out onto the platform. Sam was\n annoyed, it was plain.", "This afternoon, Burke's long nose was twitching and his thin face was\n gravely bleak. He had a clipped, efficient way of speaking.\n\n\n \"Tired, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\n \"Not hitting the ball, not on the beam, no zipperoo.\"\n\n\n \"I'm—yes, I guess you're right. I've been working at home on a private\n project.\"\n\n\n \"Scientific?\"\n\n\n \"Naturally.\"\n\n\n \"Anything in particular?\"\n\n\n Joe took a breath, looked away, and back at Burke. \"Well, a wife.\"\n\n\n A frown, a doubtful look from the cold, blue eyes. \"Robot? Dishwasher\n and cook and phone answerer and like that?\"\n\n\n \"More than that.\"", "\"Here?\" Alice asked.\n\n\n \"No, of course not. Home. Let's go, dear. Have to rush.\"\n\n\n Alice's smile had nothing sentimental about it.\nHe didn't berate her until morning. He wanted time to cool off, to look\n at the whole thing objectively. It just wouldn't get objective, though.\n\n\n At breakfast, he said, \"That was tactless last night. Very, very\n tactless.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Joe. Tact requires deception. Tact is essentially deception.\"\n\n\n When had he said that? Oh, yes, at the Hydra Club lecture. And it was\n true and he hated deception and he'd created a wife without one.\n\n\n He said, \"I'll have to devise a character distiller that won't require\n putting you back in the mold.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, dear. Why?\"", "\"Of course,\" she agreed.\n\n\n \"I don't object to females knowing a lot. The world does.\"\n\n\n \"Of course,\" she said.\n\n\n She was a first model and, therefore, experimental. These bugs were\n bound to show up. She was now less knowing, more deceptive, and she\n could frown.\n\n\n She began to remind him of Vera, which didn't make sense.\n\n\n Alice was sad when he was sad, gay when he was gay, and romantic to the\n same split-degree in the same split-second. She even told him his old\n jokes with the same inflection he always used.\n\n\n Their mood affinity was geared as closely as the\n comptin-reduco-determina. What more could a man want? And, damn it, why\n should Vera's perfume linger in that back bedroom?", "The smile faded after about ten minutes. For Alice was telling her\nall\nabout the comptin-reduco-determina. For an hour and nineteen\n minutes, Alice talked to this woman who had been humiliated twice,\n telling her all the things about the famous thinking machine that Mrs.\n Tullgren didn't want to know.\n\n\n It wasn't until Alice was through talking animatedly that the entranced\n Joe began to suspect that perhaps the Tullgrens weren't as interested\n in the dingus as a scientific mind would assume.\n\n\n They weren't. There was a strain after that, a decided heaviness to the\n rest of the evening. Sam seemed to sigh with relief when they said good\n night.\n\n\n In the car, Joe was thoughtful. Halfway home, he said, \"Darling, I\n think you know too much—for a female, that is. I think you'll have to\n have a go with the knowledge-instiller. In reverse, of course.\"", "Driving over to Westchester that night, Joe told Alice, \"Sam's a\n timid bidder. His wife's inclined to overbid. Plays a sacrificing\n game when she knows it will gain points. Our job will be to make her\n oversacrifice.\"\n\n\n Sam's eyes opened at sight of her; his wife's narrowed. Joe took pride\n in their reaction, but it was a strange, impersonal pride.\n\n\n They had a drink and some small talk, and settled around the table. It\n was more like a seance than a game.\n\n\n They bid and made four clubs, a heart. Sam's wife got that determined\n look. With the opposition holding down one leg of the rubber, she\n figured to make the next bid a costly one.\n\n\n She won it with six diamonds, and went down nine tricks, doubled. Sam\n started to say something, after the debacle, but one look at his wife's\n anguished countenance stopped him short of audibility." ], [ "\"Of course,\" she agreed.\n\n\n \"I don't object to females knowing a lot. The world does.\"\n\n\n \"Of course,\" she said.\n\n\n She was a first model and, therefore, experimental. These bugs were\n bound to show up. She was now less knowing, more deceptive, and she\n could frown.\n\n\n She began to remind him of Vera, which didn't make sense.\n\n\n Alice was sad when he was sad, gay when he was gay, and romantic to the\n same split-degree in the same split-second. She even told him his old\n jokes with the same inflection he always used.\n\n\n Their mood affinity was geared as closely as the\n comptin-reduco-determina. What more could a man want? And, damn it, why\n should Vera's perfume linger in that back bedroom?", "\"Here?\" Alice asked.\n\n\n \"No, of course not. Home. Let's go, dear. Have to rush.\"\n\n\n Alice's smile had nothing sentimental about it.\nHe didn't berate her until morning. He wanted time to cool off, to look\n at the whole thing objectively. It just wouldn't get objective, though.\n\n\n At breakfast, he said, \"That was tactless last night. Very, very\n tactless.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Joe. Tact requires deception. Tact is essentially deception.\"\n\n\n When had he said that? Oh, yes, at the Hydra Club lecture. And it was\n true and he hated deception and he'd created a wife without one.\n\n\n He said, \"I'll have to devise a character distiller that won't require\n putting you back in the mold.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, dear. Why?\"", "The pumps had stopped, the agitator, the instiller. He felt the mold;\n it was cool to the touch. He lifted the lid, his mind on Vera for some\n reason.\nA beauty. The lid was fully back and his mate sat up, smiled and said,\n \"Hello, Joe.\"\n\n\n \"Hello, Alice. Everything all right?\"\n\n\n \"Fine.\"\n\n\n Her hair was a silver blonde, her features a blend of the patrician and\n the classical. Her figure was neither too slim nor too stout, too flat\n nor too rounded. Nowhere was there any sag.\n\n\n \"Thought we'd drop over to the Harveys' for a drink,\" Joe said. \"Sort\n of show you off, you know.\"\n\n\n \"Ego gratification, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"Of course. I've some clothes upstairs for you.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure they're lovely.\"", "Then, at mention of someone or other, Mrs. Harvey said tolerantly,\n \"Well, none of us are perfect, I guess.\"\n\n\n Alice smiled and answered, \"Some of us are satisfied with mediocrities\n in marriage.\"\n\n\n Mrs. Harvey frowned doubtfully. \"I don't quite understand, dear. In\n any marriage, there has to be adjustment. Dan and I, for example, have\n adjusted very well.\"\n\n\n \"You haven't adjusted,\" Alice said smilingly. \"You've surrendered.\"\n\n\n Joe coughed up half a glass of bourbon, Dan turned a sort of red-green\n and Mrs. Harvey stared with her mouth open. Alice smiled.\n\n\n Finally, Mrs. Harvey said, \"Well, I never—\"\n\n\n \"Of all the—\" Dan Harvey said.\n\n\n Joe rose and said, \"Must get to bed, got to get to bed.\"", "\"They are lovely.\"\n\n\n While she dressed, he phoned the Harveys. He explained about Vera\n first, because Vera was what the Harveys considered a good neighbor.\n\n\n Dan Harvey said sympathetically, \"It happens to the best of us.\n Thinking of getting a new one, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"I've got one right here. Thought I'd drop over, sort of break the ice.\"\n\n\n \"Great,\" Dan said. \"Fine. Dandy.\"\n\n\n The event was of minor importance, except for the revelation involved.\n\n\n The Harveys had a gift for putting guests at ease, the gift being a\n cellar full of thirty-year-old bourbon the elder Harvey had bequeathed\n them at the end of their adjustment period.\n\n\n The talk moved here and there, over the bourbon, Alice sharing in it\n rarely, though nodding when Joe was talking.", "The smile faded after about ten minutes. For Alice was telling her\nall\nabout the comptin-reduco-determina. For an hour and nineteen\n minutes, Alice talked to this woman who had been humiliated twice,\n telling her all the things about the famous thinking machine that Mrs.\n Tullgren didn't want to know.\n\n\n It wasn't until Alice was through talking animatedly that the entranced\n Joe began to suspect that perhaps the Tullgrens weren't as interested\n in the dingus as a scientific mind would assume.\n\n\n They weren't. There was a strain after that, a decided heaviness to the\n rest of the evening. Sam seemed to sigh with relief when they said good\n night.\n\n\n In the car, Joe was thoughtful. Halfway home, he said, \"Darling, I\n think you know too much—for a female, that is. I think you'll have to\n have a go with the knowledge-instiller. In reverse, of course.\"", "Joe had the ace, king, queen and jack of hearts and a three to lead to\n Alice's hand. Alice finished up the hearts for a total of seven tricks,\n and this time it was Mrs. Tullgren who opened her mouth to speak.\n\n\n But she remembered Sam's kindness in the former hand, and she said,\n \"It was all my fault, darling. To think I couldn't recognize a\n psychic, just because it came from you. I think we're overmatched,\n sweet.\" She paused to smile at Joe. \"Up against the man who invented\n the comptin-reduco-determina.\" She added, as an afterthought, \"And his\n charming, brilliant new wife.\"\n\n\n Which brought about incident number three.\n\n\n Alice turned to Mrs. Tullgren sweetly and asked, \"Don't you really\n understand the comptin-reduco-determina?\"\n\n\n \"Not even faintly,\" Mrs. Tullgren answered. She smiled at Alice.", "\"Why?\"\n\n\n \"Because you're talking nonsense. A person without faults is not a\n person. And if—it or he—she were, I don't think I'd care to know him\n or her or it.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally. You're a sentimentalist. You've seen so much misery, so\n much human error, so much stupidity that you've built up your natural\n tolerance into a sloppy and unscientific sentimentality. It happens to\n sociologists all the time.\"\n\n\n \"Joe, I'm not going to argue with you. Only one thing I ask. When\n you—break the news to Vera, break it gently. And get her back to the\n Center as quickly as you can. She's a choice, rare number.\"", "\"No offense,\" Joe said. \"It's just that you have to deal with human\n beings.\"\n\n\n \"Oh,\" Sam said. \"Now it comes. You know, for a minute I forgot who you\n were. I forgot you were the greatest living authority on robots. I was\n thinking of you as my boyhood chum, good old Joe. You're beyond that\n now, aren't you?\"\n\n\n \"Beyond my adolescence? I hope so, though very few people are.\" Joe\n looked at Sam squarely. \"Every man wants a perfect wife, doesn't he?\"\n\n\n Sam shrugged. \"I suppose.\"\n\n\n \"And no human is perfect, so no man gets a perfect wife. Am I right, so\n far?\"\n\n\n \"Sounds like it.\"", "The story of Murph from birth to death was a fairly long one, but never\n dull. The Chief had a way with words. Even Joe, one of the world's\n top-ranking non-sentimentalists, was touched by the tale. When they\n came to the end, where Murph had lain in his master's arms, whimpering,\n as though to comfort him, trying to lick his face, Joe's eyes were wet\n and the drink wobbled in his hand.\n\n\n The Chief finished in a whisper, and looked up from the carpet he'd\n been staring at through the account.\n\n\n And there was Alice, sitting erect, a smile of perfect joy on her face.\n \"How touching,\" she said, and grinned.\n\n\n For one horror-stricken second, the Chief glared at her, and then his\n questioning eyes went to Joe.", "The stirring in him he didn't want to analyze and he thought of\n the days he'd courted Vera, going to dances at the Center, playing\n bridge at the Center, studying Greek at the Center. A fine but too\n well-lighted place. You could do everything but smooch there; the\n smooching came after the declaration of intentions and a man was bound\n after the declaration to go through with the wedding, to live with his\n chosen mate for the minimum three months of the adjustment period.\nAdjustment period ... another necessity for humans, for imperfect\n people. Across the street, the perfectly adjusted Harveys smiled at\n each other and sipped their drinks. Hell, that wasn't adjustment, that\n was surrender.", "\"From Vera? At the Center?\"\n\n\n Sam shook his head. \"Vera's been too busy to have much time for the\n director. She's our most popular number.\" Sam paused. \"About the new\n one. Hear she's something to see.\"\n\n\n \"You heard right. She's practically flawless, Sam. She's just what a\n man needs at home.\" His voice, for some reason, didn't indicate the\n enthusiasm he should have felt.\n\n\n Sam chewed one corner of his mouth. \"Why not bring her over, say,\n tonight? We'll play some bridge.\"\n\n\n That would be something. Two minds, perfectly in harmony, synchronized,\n working in partnership. Joe's smile was smug. \"We'll be there. At\n eight-thirty.\"", "\"Okay.\" Joe tapped Sam's chest with a hard finger. \"I'm going to make a\n perfect wife.\" He tapped his own chest. \"For me, just for me, the way I\n want her. No human frailties. Ideal.\"\n\n\n \"A perfect robot,\" Sam objected.\n\n\n \"A wife,\" Joe corrected. \"A person. A human being.\"\n\n\n \"But without a brain.\"\n\n\n \"With a brain. Do you know anything about cybernetics, Sam?\"\n\n\n \"I know just as much about cybernetics as you know about people.\n Nothing.\"\n\"That's not quite fair. I'm not sentimental about people, but it's\n inaccurate to say I don't know anything about them.\nI'm\na person. I\n think I'm—discerning and sensitive.\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" Sam said. \"Let's drop the subject.\"", "So far, of course, he had described nothing more than a robot of flesh\n and blood. The spark, now—what distinguished the better-grade robots\n from people? Prenatal heat, that was it. Incubation. A mold, a heated\n mold. Warmth, the spark, the sun, life.\nFor the skin, he went to Pete Celano, the top syntho-dermatologist in\n the Department.\n\n\n \"Something special?\" Pete asked. \"Not just a local skin graft? What\n then?\"\n\n\n \"A wife. A perfect wife.\"\n\n\n Pete's grin sagged baffledly. \"I don't get it, Joe. Perfect how?\"\n\n\n \"In all ways.\" Joe's face was grave. \"Someone ideal to live with.\"\n\n\n \"How about Vera? What was wrong with her?\"", "\"She can't frown,\" Joe explained. \"The muscles are there, but they need\n massage to bring them to life.\" He paused. \"I wanted a smiling wife.\"\n\n\n The Chief inhaled heavily. \"There are times when a smile is out of\n order, don't you think, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"It seems that way.\"\n\n\n It didn't take long. Massage, orientation, practice, concentration. It\n didn't take long, and she was so willing to cooperate. Golly, she was\n agreeable. She was more than that; she voiced his thoughts before he\n did. Because of the mental affinity, you see. He'd made sure of that.\nShe could frown now and she had enough deception to get by in almost\n any company. These flaws were necessary, but they were still flaws and\n brought her closer to being—human.\nAt the office on Saturday morning, Sam Tullgren dropped in. Sam said,\n \"I've been hearing things, Joseph.\"", "Well, naturally it would be tuned to his. She'd know everything he\n knew. What room was there for disagreement if the minds were the same?\n Smiling, as she agreed, because she couldn't frown. Her tenderness, her\n romanticism would have an intensity variable, of course. He didn't want\n one of these grinning simperers.\n\n\n He remembered his own words: \"Is this love something you can turn\n on and off like a faucet?\" Were his own words biting him, or only\n scratching him? Something itched. An intensity variable was not a\n faucet, though unscientific minds might find a crude, allegorical\n resemblance.\n\n\n To hell with unscientific minds.", "Driving over to Westchester that night, Joe told Alice, \"Sam's a\n timid bidder. His wife's inclined to overbid. Plays a sacrificing\n game when she knows it will gain points. Our job will be to make her\n oversacrifice.\"\n\n\n Sam's eyes opened at sight of her; his wife's narrowed. Joe took pride\n in their reaction, but it was a strange, impersonal pride.\n\n\n They had a drink and some small talk, and settled around the table. It\n was more like a seance than a game.\n\n\n They bid and made four clubs, a heart. Sam's wife got that determined\n look. With the opposition holding down one leg of the rubber, she\n figured to make the next bid a costly one.\n\n\n She won it with six diamonds, and went down nine tricks, doubled. Sam\n started to say something, after the debacle, but one look at his wife's\n anguished countenance stopped him short of audibility.", "Something flashed toward his face. It was her slim, white hand, but it\n didn't feel slim and white. She said, \"I can see now why you weren't\n made\nSenior\nAssistant to the Adjutant Science Director. You're a\n stupid, emotionless mechanic. A machine.\"\n\n\n He was still staring after her when the door slammed. He thought of the\n huge Domestic Center with its classes in Allure, Boudoir Manners, Diet,\n Poise, Budgeting. That vast, efficient, beautifully decorated Center\n which was the brain child of Sam Tullgren, but which still had to deal\n with imperfect humans.\n\n\n People, people, people ... and particularly women. He rose, after a\n while, and went into the dinette. He sat down and stared moodily at his\n food.", "She stared at him, a film of moisture in her eyes. She didn't cry or\n ask questions or protest. Joe wished she would. This was worse.\n\n\n \"It's not your fault,\" he said, after a moment. \"I'm not going to get\n another. You're as ideal, almost, as a human wife can ever be.\"\n\n\n \"I've tried so hard,\" she said. \"Maybe I tried too hard.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" he said, \"it isn't your fault. Any reasonable man would be\n delighted with you, Vera. You won't be at the Center long.\"\n\n\n \"I don't want a reasonable man,\" she said quietly. \"I want you, Joe.\n I—I loved you.\"\n\n\n He had started to get out of the car. He paused to look back. \"Loved?\n Did you use the past tense?\"", "\"A sentimentalist, too romantic, kind of—well, maybe not dumb,\n exactly, but—\"\n\n\n \"But not perfect. Who is, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"My new wife is going to be.\"\n\n\n Pete shrugged and began putting together the ingredients for the kind\n of skin Joe had specified.\n\n\n They're all the same, Joe thought, Sam and Pete and the rest. They\n seemed to think his idea childish. He built the instillers and\n incubator that night. The mold would be done by one of the Department's\n engravers. Joe had the sketches and dimensions ready.\n\n\n Wednesday afternoon, Burke called him in. Burke was the Senior\n assistant, a job Joe had expected and been miffed about. Burke was a\n jerk, in Joe's book." ], [ "Joe's glance went from his hurrying friend to the parking lot, and his\n coupe was there with Vera behind the wheel. It was only a three block\n walk, but she had to be there to meet him, every evening. That was her\n major fault, her romantic sentimentality.\n\n\n \"Darling,\" she said, as he approached the coupe. \"Sweetheart. Have a\n good day?\"\nHe kissed her casually. \"Ordinary.\" She slid over and he climbed in\n behind the wheel. \"Sat with Sam Tullgren on the train.\"\n\n\n \"Sam's nice.\"\n\n\n He turned on the ignition and said, \"Start.\" The motor obediently\n started and he swung out of the lot, onto Chestnut. \"Sam's all right.\n Kind of sentimental.\"", "\"Why?\"\n\n\n \"Because you're talking nonsense. A person without faults is not a\n person. And if—it or he—she were, I don't think I'd care to know him\n or her or it.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally. You're a sentimentalist. You've seen so much misery, so\n much human error, so much stupidity that you've built up your natural\n tolerance into a sloppy and unscientific sentimentality. It happens to\n sociologists all the time.\"\n\n\n \"Joe, I'm not going to argue with you. Only one thing I ask. When\n you—break the news to Vera, break it gently. And get her back to the\n Center as quickly as you can. She's a choice, rare number.\"", "Joe said nothing to that. Sam looked miserable. They sat there,\n listening to the swishing, burring clicks of the airlocks, two\n friends—one who dealt with people and had grown soft, the other who\n dealt with machines and might not have grown at all.\n\n\n As the car rose for the Inglewood station, Sam looked over, but Joe's\n eyes were straight ahead. Sam got up and out of the seat.\n\n\n There was a whispering sigh of escaping air and the sunlight glare of\n the Inglewood station, synthetic redwood and chrome and marble.\n\n\n Sam was out of the cylindrical, stainless steel car and hurrying for\n the Westchester local when Joe came out onto the platform. Sam was\n annoyed, it was plain.", "\"A sentimentalist, too romantic, kind of—well, maybe not dumb,\n exactly, but—\"\n\n\n \"But not perfect. Who is, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"My new wife is going to be.\"\n\n\n Pete shrugged and began putting together the ingredients for the kind\n of skin Joe had specified.\n\n\n They're all the same, Joe thought, Sam and Pete and the rest. They\n seemed to think his idea childish. He built the instillers and\n incubator that night. The mold would be done by one of the Department's\n engravers. Joe had the sketches and dimensions ready.\n\n\n Wednesday afternoon, Burke called him in. Burke was the Senior\n assistant, a job Joe had expected and been miffed about. Burke was a\n jerk, in Joe's book.", "This afternoon, Burke's long nose was twitching and his thin face was\n gravely bleak. He had a clipped, efficient way of speaking.\n\n\n \"Tired, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\n \"Not hitting the ball, not on the beam, no zipperoo.\"\n\n\n \"I'm—yes, I guess you're right. I've been working at home on a private\n project.\"\n\n\n \"Scientific?\"\n\n\n \"Naturally.\"\n\n\n \"Anything in particular?\"\n\n\n Joe took a breath, looked away, and back at Burke. \"Well, a wife.\"\n\n\n A frown, a doubtful look from the cold, blue eyes. \"Robot? Dishwasher\n and cook and phone answerer and like that?\"\n\n\n \"More than that.\"", "\"You need just a touch of deception, just a wee shade of it.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, Joe.\"\n\n\n So she had tact.\n\n\n He went to the office with very little of the absurdity mood stirring\n in him. He'd had a full breakfast, naturally.\n\n\n At the office, there was a note on his desk:\nMr. Behrens wants to see\n you immediately.\nIt bore his secretary's initials. Mr. Behrens was the\n Chief.\n\n\n He was a fairly short man with immense shoulders and what he'd been\n told was a classical head. So he let his hair grow, and had a habit\n of thrusting his chin forward when he listened. He listened to Joe's\n account of the interview with Burke.\n\n\n When Joe had finished, the Chief's smile was tolerant. \"Ribbing him,\n were you? Old Burke hasn't much sense of humor, Joe.\"", "The story of Murph from birth to death was a fairly long one, but never\n dull. The Chief had a way with words. Even Joe, one of the world's\n top-ranking non-sentimentalists, was touched by the tale. When they\n came to the end, where Murph had lain in his master's arms, whimpering,\n as though to comfort him, trying to lick his face, Joe's eyes were wet\n and the drink wobbled in his hand.\n\n\n The Chief finished in a whisper, and looked up from the carpet he'd\n been staring at through the account.\n\n\n And there was Alice, sitting erect, a smile of perfect joy on her face.\n \"How touching,\" she said, and grinned.\n\n\n For one horror-stricken second, the Chief glared at her, and then his\n questioning eyes went to Joe.", "Then he realized he was talking to himself. Damn it. On the telenews\n screen, Dorffberger looked right into the camera and nodded. He was\n winding up, and the director put the ball into slow motion. Even in\n slow motion, it winged.\n\n\n \"Ho-ho!\" Joe said. \"You can't hit what you can't see.\"\n\n\n Pelter must have seen it. He caught it on the fat part of the bat,\n twisting into it with all his hundred and ninety pounds. The impact\n rattled the telenews screen and the telescopic cameras took over.\n They followed the ball's flight about halfway to Jersey and then the\n short-range eyes came back to show Pelter crossing the plate, and\n Martin waiting there to shake his hand.\n\n\n Joe snapped off the machine impatiently. Very unscientific game,\n baseball. No rhyme or reason to it. He went out onto the porch.", "He went upstairs and fried some eggs. Twice a day, for a week, he had\n fried eggs. Their flavor was overrated.\n\n\n Then he went into the living room and snapped on the ball game.\n\n\n Martin was on third and Pelter was at bat. On the mound, the lank form\n of Dorffberger cast a long, grotesque shadow in the afternoon sun.\n Dorffberger chewed and spat and wiped his nose with the back of his\n glove. He looked over at third and yawned.\n\n\n At the plate, Pelter was digging in. Pelter looked nervous.\n\n\n Joe said, \"Bet that Dorffberger fans him. He's got the Indian sign on\n Pelter.\"", "\"Here?\" Alice asked.\n\n\n \"No, of course not. Home. Let's go, dear. Have to rush.\"\n\n\n Alice's smile had nothing sentimental about it.\nHe didn't berate her until morning. He wanted time to cool off, to look\n at the whole thing objectively. It just wouldn't get objective, though.\n\n\n At breakfast, he said, \"That was tactless last night. Very, very\n tactless.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Joe. Tact requires deception. Tact is essentially deception.\"\n\n\n When had he said that? Oh, yes, at the Hydra Club lecture. And it was\n true and he hated deception and he'd created a wife without one.\n\n\n He said, \"I'll have to devise a character distiller that won't require\n putting you back in the mold.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, dear. Why?\"", "\"You've done as well as you could,\" Joe agreed in an argumentative way.\n \"You've given some reason and order to the marital competition among\n women. You've almost eliminated illicit relations. You've established\n a basic security for the kids. But the big job? You've missed it\n completely.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" Sam said. \"That's a very small knife you've inserted between\n my shoulder blades, but I'm thin-skinned.\" He took a deep breath.\n \"What, in the opinion of the Junior Assistant to the Adjutant Science\n Director, was the\nbig\njob?\"\n\n\n Joe looked for some scorn in Sam's words, found it, and said, \"The big\n job is too big for a sociologist.\"\n\n\n Sam seemed to flinch. \"I didn't think that axe would fit alongside the\n knife. I underestimated you.\"", "Slightly raised eyebrows.\n\n\n \"More?\"\n\n\n \"Completely human, except she will have no human faults.\"\n\n\n Cool smile. \"Wouldn't be human, then, of course.\"\n\n\n \"\nHuman, but without human faults, I said!\n\"\n\n\n \"You raised your voice, Joe.\"\n\n\n \"I did.\"\n\n\n \"I'm the Senior Assistant. Junior Assistants do not raise their voices\n to Senior Assistants.\"\n\n\n \"I thought you might be deaf, as well as dumb,\" Joe said.\n\n\n A silence. The granite face of Burke was marble, then steel and finally\n chromium. His voice matched it. \"I'll have to talk to the Chief before\n I fire you, of course. Department rule. Good afternoon.\"", "\"No offense,\" Joe said. \"It's just that you have to deal with human\n beings.\"\n\n\n \"Oh,\" Sam said. \"Now it comes. You know, for a minute I forgot who you\n were. I forgot you were the greatest living authority on robots. I was\n thinking of you as my boyhood chum, good old Joe. You're beyond that\n now, aren't you?\"\n\n\n \"Beyond my adolescence? I hope so, though very few people are.\" Joe\n looked at Sam squarely. \"Every man wants a perfect wife, doesn't he?\"\n\n\n Sam shrugged. \"I suppose.\"\n\n\n \"And no human is perfect, so no man gets a perfect wife. Am I right, so\n far?\"\n\n\n \"Sounds like it.\"", "The grass was dry and gray; he'd forgotten to set the sprinkler\n clock, Vera's old job. Across the street, Dan Harvey sat with his\n wife, each with a drink. Sat with his human wife, the poor fish. They\n looked happy, though. Some people were satisfied with mediocrities.\n Unscientific people.\n\n\n Why was he restless? Why was he bored? Was he worried about his job?\n Only slightly; the Chief thought a lot of him, a hell of a lot. The\n Chief was a great guy for seniority and Burke had it, or Joe would\n certainly have been Senior Assistant.", "\"They are lovely.\"\n\n\n While she dressed, he phoned the Harveys. He explained about Vera\n first, because Vera was what the Harveys considered a good neighbor.\n\n\n Dan Harvey said sympathetically, \"It happens to the best of us.\n Thinking of getting a new one, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"I've got one right here. Thought I'd drop over, sort of break the ice.\"\n\n\n \"Great,\" Dan said. \"Fine. Dandy.\"\n\n\n The event was of minor importance, except for the revelation involved.\n\n\n The Harveys had a gift for putting guests at ease, the gift being a\n cellar full of thirty-year-old bourbon the elder Harvey had bequeathed\n them at the end of their adjustment period.\n\n\n The talk moved here and there, over the bourbon, Alice sharing in it\n rarely, though nodding when Joe was talking.", "Something flashed toward his face. It was her slim, white hand, but it\n didn't feel slim and white. She said, \"I can see now why you weren't\n made\nSenior\nAssistant to the Adjutant Science Director. You're a\n stupid, emotionless mechanic. A machine.\"\n\n\n He was still staring after her when the door slammed. He thought of the\n huge Domestic Center with its classes in Allure, Boudoir Manners, Diet,\n Poise, Budgeting. That vast, efficient, beautifully decorated Center\n which was the brain child of Sam Tullgren, but which still had to deal\n with imperfect humans.\n\n\n People, people, people ... and particularly women. He rose, after a\n while, and went into the dinette. He sat down and stared moodily at his\n food.", "\"I used the past tense.\" She started to get out on her side of the car.\n \"I don't want to talk about it.\"\n\n\n \"But I do,\" he told her. \"Is this love something you can turn on and\n off like a faucet?\"\n\n\n \"I don't care to explain it to you,\" she said. \"I've got to pack.\" She\n left the car, slammed the door, and moved hurriedly toward the house.\n\n\n Joe watched her. Something was troubling him, something he couldn't\n analyze, but he felt certain that if he could, it would prove to be\n absurd.", "He got up and went into the living room; fighting the stirring in him,\n the stirring he didn't want to analyze and find absurd. He went into\n the bathroom and studied his lean, now haggard face. He looked like\n hell. He went into the back bedroom and smelled her perfume and went\n quickly from the house and into the backyard.\n\n\n He sat there until seven, listening to the throb from the basement.\n The molecule agitator should have the flesh firm and finished now,\n nourished by the select blood, massaged by the pulsating plastic.\n\n\n At seven, she should be ready.\n\n\n At seven, he went down to the basement. His heart should have been\n hammering and his mind expectant, but he was just another guy going\n down to the basement.", "But he did say, \"I certainly thought a lot of Vera. You wouldn't have\n to warm her in any incubating mold.\"\n\n\n \"Wait'll you see this one,\" Joe said.\n\n\n And when she walked into the living room at home, when she acknowledged\n the introduction to the Chief, Joe knew the old boy was sold. The Chief\n could only stare.\n\n\n Joe took him down to the basement then to show him the molecule\n agitator, the memory feeder, the instillers.\n\n\n The old boy looked it over and said, quite simply, \"I'll be damned!\"\n\n\n They went up to a perfect dinner—and incident number two.\n\n\n The Chief was a sentimentalist and he'd just lost a fine friend. This\n friend was his terrier, Murph, who'd been hit by a speeding car.", "Then, at mention of someone or other, Mrs. Harvey said tolerantly,\n \"Well, none of us are perfect, I guess.\"\n\n\n Alice smiled and answered, \"Some of us are satisfied with mediocrities\n in marriage.\"\n\n\n Mrs. Harvey frowned doubtfully. \"I don't quite understand, dear. In\n any marriage, there has to be adjustment. Dan and I, for example, have\n adjusted very well.\"\n\n\n \"You haven't adjusted,\" Alice said smilingly. \"You've surrendered.\"\n\n\n Joe coughed up half a glass of bourbon, Dan turned a sort of red-green\n and Mrs. Harvey stared with her mouth open. Alice smiled.\n\n\n Finally, Mrs. Harvey said, \"Well, I never—\"\n\n\n \"Of all the—\" Dan Harvey said.\n\n\n Joe rose and said, \"Must get to bed, got to get to bed.\"" ], [ "The story of Murph from birth to death was a fairly long one, but never\n dull. The Chief had a way with words. Even Joe, one of the world's\n top-ranking non-sentimentalists, was touched by the tale. When they\n came to the end, where Murph had lain in his master's arms, whimpering,\n as though to comfort him, trying to lick his face, Joe's eyes were wet\n and the drink wobbled in his hand.\n\n\n The Chief finished in a whisper, and looked up from the carpet he'd\n been staring at through the account.\n\n\n And there was Alice, sitting erect, a smile of perfect joy on her face.\n \"How touching,\" she said, and grinned.\n\n\n For one horror-stricken second, the Chief glared at her, and then his\n questioning eyes went to Joe.", "\"Here?\" Alice asked.\n\n\n \"No, of course not. Home. Let's go, dear. Have to rush.\"\n\n\n Alice's smile had nothing sentimental about it.\nHe didn't berate her until morning. He wanted time to cool off, to look\n at the whole thing objectively. It just wouldn't get objective, though.\n\n\n At breakfast, he said, \"That was tactless last night. Very, very\n tactless.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Joe. Tact requires deception. Tact is essentially deception.\"\n\n\n When had he said that? Oh, yes, at the Hydra Club lecture. And it was\n true and he hated deception and he'd created a wife without one.\n\n\n He said, \"I'll have to devise a character distiller that won't require\n putting you back in the mold.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, dear. Why?\"", "\"You need just a touch of deception, just a wee shade of it.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, Joe.\"\n\n\n So she had tact.\n\n\n He went to the office with very little of the absurdity mood stirring\n in him. He'd had a full breakfast, naturally.\n\n\n At the office, there was a note on his desk:\nMr. Behrens wants to see\n you immediately.\nIt bore his secretary's initials. Mr. Behrens was the\n Chief.\n\n\n He was a fairly short man with immense shoulders and what he'd been\n told was a classical head. So he let his hair grow, and had a habit\n of thrusting his chin forward when he listened. He listened to Joe's\n account of the interview with Burke.\n\n\n When Joe had finished, the Chief's smile was tolerant. \"Ribbing him,\n were you? Old Burke hasn't much sense of humor, Joe.\"", "He got up and went into the living room; fighting the stirring in him,\n the stirring he didn't want to analyze and find absurd. He went into\n the bathroom and studied his lean, now haggard face. He looked like\n hell. He went into the back bedroom and smelled her perfume and went\n quickly from the house and into the backyard.\n\n\n He sat there until seven, listening to the throb from the basement.\n The molecule agitator should have the flesh firm and finished now,\n nourished by the select blood, massaged by the pulsating plastic.\n\n\n At seven, she should be ready.\n\n\n At seven, he went down to the basement. His heart should have been\n hammering and his mind expectant, but he was just another guy going\n down to the basement.", "But he did say, \"I certainly thought a lot of Vera. You wouldn't have\n to warm her in any incubating mold.\"\n\n\n \"Wait'll you see this one,\" Joe said.\n\n\n And when she walked into the living room at home, when she acknowledged\n the introduction to the Chief, Joe knew the old boy was sold. The Chief\n could only stare.\n\n\n Joe took him down to the basement then to show him the molecule\n agitator, the memory feeder, the instillers.\n\n\n The old boy looked it over and said, quite simply, \"I'll be damned!\"\n\n\n They went up to a perfect dinner—and incident number two.\n\n\n The Chief was a sentimentalist and he'd just lost a fine friend. This\n friend was his terrier, Murph, who'd been hit by a speeding car.", "\"Why?\"\n\n\n \"Because you're talking nonsense. A person without faults is not a\n person. And if—it or he—she were, I don't think I'd care to know him\n or her or it.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally. You're a sentimentalist. You've seen so much misery, so\n much human error, so much stupidity that you've built up your natural\n tolerance into a sloppy and unscientific sentimentality. It happens to\n sociologists all the time.\"\n\n\n \"Joe, I'm not going to argue with you. Only one thing I ask. When\n you—break the news to Vera, break it gently. And get her back to the\n Center as quickly as you can. She's a choice, rare number.\"", "Then, at mention of someone or other, Mrs. Harvey said tolerantly,\n \"Well, none of us are perfect, I guess.\"\n\n\n Alice smiled and answered, \"Some of us are satisfied with mediocrities\n in marriage.\"\n\n\n Mrs. Harvey frowned doubtfully. \"I don't quite understand, dear. In\n any marriage, there has to be adjustment. Dan and I, for example, have\n adjusted very well.\"\n\n\n \"You haven't adjusted,\" Alice said smilingly. \"You've surrendered.\"\n\n\n Joe coughed up half a glass of bourbon, Dan turned a sort of red-green\n and Mrs. Harvey stared with her mouth open. Alice smiled.\n\n\n Finally, Mrs. Harvey said, \"Well, I never—\"\n\n\n \"Of all the—\" Dan Harvey said.\n\n\n Joe rose and said, \"Must get to bed, got to get to bed.\"", "Joe said nothing to that. Sam looked miserable. They sat there,\n listening to the swishing, burring clicks of the airlocks, two\n friends—one who dealt with people and had grown soft, the other who\n dealt with machines and might not have grown at all.\n\n\n As the car rose for the Inglewood station, Sam looked over, but Joe's\n eyes were straight ahead. Sam got up and out of the seat.\n\n\n There was a whispering sigh of escaping air and the sunlight glare of\n the Inglewood station, synthetic redwood and chrome and marble.\n\n\n Sam was out of the cylindrical, stainless steel car and hurrying for\n the Westchester local when Joe came out onto the platform. Sam was\n annoyed, it was plain.", "The pumps had stopped, the agitator, the instiller. He felt the mold;\n it was cool to the touch. He lifted the lid, his mind on Vera for some\n reason.\nA beauty. The lid was fully back and his mate sat up, smiled and said,\n \"Hello, Joe.\"\n\n\n \"Hello, Alice. Everything all right?\"\n\n\n \"Fine.\"\n\n\n Her hair was a silver blonde, her features a blend of the patrician and\n the classical. Her figure was neither too slim nor too stout, too flat\n nor too rounded. Nowhere was there any sag.\n\n\n \"Thought we'd drop over to the Harveys' for a drink,\" Joe said. \"Sort\n of show you off, you know.\"\n\n\n \"Ego gratification, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"Of course. I've some clothes upstairs for you.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure they're lovely.\"", "\"They are lovely.\"\n\n\n While she dressed, he phoned the Harveys. He explained about Vera\n first, because Vera was what the Harveys considered a good neighbor.\n\n\n Dan Harvey said sympathetically, \"It happens to the best of us.\n Thinking of getting a new one, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"I've got one right here. Thought I'd drop over, sort of break the ice.\"\n\n\n \"Great,\" Dan said. \"Fine. Dandy.\"\n\n\n The event was of minor importance, except for the revelation involved.\n\n\n The Harveys had a gift for putting guests at ease, the gift being a\n cellar full of thirty-year-old bourbon the elder Harvey had bequeathed\n them at the end of their adjustment period.\n\n\n The talk moved here and there, over the bourbon, Alice sharing in it\n rarely, though nodding when Joe was talking.", "Joe had the ace, king, queen and jack of hearts and a three to lead to\n Alice's hand. Alice finished up the hearts for a total of seven tricks,\n and this time it was Mrs. Tullgren who opened her mouth to speak.\n\n\n But she remembered Sam's kindness in the former hand, and she said,\n \"It was all my fault, darling. To think I couldn't recognize a\n psychic, just because it came from you. I think we're overmatched,\n sweet.\" She paused to smile at Joe. \"Up against the man who invented\n the comptin-reduco-determina.\" She added, as an afterthought, \"And his\n charming, brilliant new wife.\"\n\n\n Which brought about incident number three.\n\n\n Alice turned to Mrs. Tullgren sweetly and asked, \"Don't you really\n understand the comptin-reduco-determina?\"\n\n\n \"Not even faintly,\" Mrs. Tullgren answered. She smiled at Alice.", "The smile faded after about ten minutes. For Alice was telling her\nall\nabout the comptin-reduco-determina. For an hour and nineteen\n minutes, Alice talked to this woman who had been humiliated twice,\n telling her all the things about the famous thinking machine that Mrs.\n Tullgren didn't want to know.\n\n\n It wasn't until Alice was through talking animatedly that the entranced\n Joe began to suspect that perhaps the Tullgrens weren't as interested\n in the dingus as a scientific mind would assume.\n\n\n They weren't. There was a strain after that, a decided heaviness to the\n rest of the evening. Sam seemed to sigh with relief when they said good\n night.\n\n\n In the car, Joe was thoughtful. Halfway home, he said, \"Darling, I\n think you know too much—for a female, that is. I think you'll have to\n have a go with the knowledge-instiller. In reverse, of course.\"", "\"A sentimentalist, too romantic, kind of—well, maybe not dumb,\n exactly, but—\"\n\n\n \"But not perfect. Who is, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"My new wife is going to be.\"\n\n\n Pete shrugged and began putting together the ingredients for the kind\n of skin Joe had specified.\n\n\n They're all the same, Joe thought, Sam and Pete and the rest. They\n seemed to think his idea childish. He built the instillers and\n incubator that night. The mold would be done by one of the Department's\n engravers. Joe had the sketches and dimensions ready.\n\n\n Wednesday afternoon, Burke called him in. Burke was the Senior\n assistant, a job Joe had expected and been miffed about. Burke was a\n jerk, in Joe's book.", "He went upstairs and fried some eggs. Twice a day, for a week, he had\n fried eggs. Their flavor was overrated.\n\n\n Then he went into the living room and snapped on the ball game.\n\n\n Martin was on third and Pelter was at bat. On the mound, the lank form\n of Dorffberger cast a long, grotesque shadow in the afternoon sun.\n Dorffberger chewed and spat and wiped his nose with the back of his\n glove. He looked over at third and yawned.\n\n\n At the plate, Pelter was digging in. Pelter looked nervous.\n\n\n Joe said, \"Bet that Dorffberger fans him. He's got the Indian sign on\n Pelter.\"", "\"She can't frown,\" Joe explained. \"The muscles are there, but they need\n massage to bring them to life.\" He paused. \"I wanted a smiling wife.\"\n\n\n The Chief inhaled heavily. \"There are times when a smile is out of\n order, don't you think, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"It seems that way.\"\n\n\n It didn't take long. Massage, orientation, practice, concentration. It\n didn't take long, and she was so willing to cooperate. Golly, she was\n agreeable. She was more than that; she voiced his thoughts before he\n did. Because of the mental affinity, you see. He'd made sure of that.\nShe could frown now and she had enough deception to get by in almost\n any company. These flaws were necessary, but they were still flaws and\n brought her closer to being—human.\nAt the office on Saturday morning, Sam Tullgren dropped in. Sam said,\n \"I've been hearing things, Joseph.\"", "\"I used the past tense.\" She started to get out on her side of the car.\n \"I don't want to talk about it.\"\n\n\n \"But I do,\" he told her. \"Is this love something you can turn on and\n off like a faucet?\"\n\n\n \"I don't care to explain it to you,\" she said. \"I've got to pack.\" She\n left the car, slammed the door, and moved hurriedly toward the house.\n\n\n Joe watched her. Something was troubling him, something he couldn't\n analyze, but he felt certain that if he could, it would prove to be\n absurd.", "Driving over to Westchester that night, Joe told Alice, \"Sam's a\n timid bidder. His wife's inclined to overbid. Plays a sacrificing\n game when she knows it will gain points. Our job will be to make her\n oversacrifice.\"\n\n\n Sam's eyes opened at sight of her; his wife's narrowed. Joe took pride\n in their reaction, but it was a strange, impersonal pride.\n\n\n They had a drink and some small talk, and settled around the table. It\n was more like a seance than a game.\n\n\n They bid and made four clubs, a heart. Sam's wife got that determined\n look. With the opposition holding down one leg of the rubber, she\n figured to make the next bid a costly one.\n\n\n She won it with six diamonds, and went down nine tricks, doubled. Sam\n started to say something, after the debacle, but one look at his wife's\n anguished countenance stopped him short of audibility.", "She stared at him, a film of moisture in her eyes. She didn't cry or\n ask questions or protest. Joe wished she would. This was worse.\n\n\n \"It's not your fault,\" he said, after a moment. \"I'm not going to get\n another. You're as ideal, almost, as a human wife can ever be.\"\n\n\n \"I've tried so hard,\" she said. \"Maybe I tried too hard.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" he said, \"it isn't your fault. Any reasonable man would be\n delighted with you, Vera. You won't be at the Center long.\"\n\n\n \"I don't want a reasonable man,\" she said quietly. \"I want you, Joe.\n I—I loved you.\"\n\n\n He had started to get out of the car. He paused to look back. \"Loved?\n Did you use the past tense?\"", "\"That's what I mean.\"\nJoe was silent. The coupe went past a row of solar homes and turned on\n Fulsom. Three houses from the corner, he turned into their driveway.\n\n\n \"You're awfully quiet,\" Vera said.\n\n\n \"I'm thinking.\"\n\n\n \"About what?\" Her voice was suddenly strained. \"Sam didn't try to sell\n you—\"\n\n\n \"A new wife?\" He looked at her. \"What makes you think that?\"\n\n\n \"You're thinking about me, about trading me in. Joe, haven't\n I—darling, is there—?\" She broke off, looking even more miserable\n than Sam had.\n\n\n \"I don't intend to trade you in,\" he said quietly.\n\n\n She took a deep breath.\n\n\n He didn't look at her. \"But you're going back to the Center.\"", "Joe's glance went from his hurrying friend to the parking lot, and his\n coupe was there with Vera behind the wheel. It was only a three block\n walk, but she had to be there to meet him, every evening. That was her\n major fault, her romantic sentimentality.\n\n\n \"Darling,\" she said, as he approached the coupe. \"Sweetheart. Have a\n good day?\"\nHe kissed her casually. \"Ordinary.\" She slid over and he climbed in\n behind the wheel. \"Sat with Sam Tullgren on the train.\"\n\n\n \"Sam's nice.\"\n\n\n He turned on the ignition and said, \"Start.\" The motor obediently\n started and he swung out of the lot, onto Chestnut. \"Sam's all right.\n Kind of sentimental.\"" ], [ "The story of Murph from birth to death was a fairly long one, but never\n dull. The Chief had a way with words. Even Joe, one of the world's\n top-ranking non-sentimentalists, was touched by the tale. When they\n came to the end, where Murph had lain in his master's arms, whimpering,\n as though to comfort him, trying to lick his face, Joe's eyes were wet\n and the drink wobbled in his hand.\n\n\n The Chief finished in a whisper, and looked up from the carpet he'd\n been staring at through the account.\n\n\n And there was Alice, sitting erect, a smile of perfect joy on her face.\n \"How touching,\" she said, and grinned.\n\n\n For one horror-stricken second, the Chief glared at her, and then his\n questioning eyes went to Joe.", "Joe said nothing to that. Sam looked miserable. They sat there,\n listening to the swishing, burring clicks of the airlocks, two\n friends—one who dealt with people and had grown soft, the other who\n dealt with machines and might not have grown at all.\n\n\n As the car rose for the Inglewood station, Sam looked over, but Joe's\n eyes were straight ahead. Sam got up and out of the seat.\n\n\n There was a whispering sigh of escaping air and the sunlight glare of\n the Inglewood station, synthetic redwood and chrome and marble.\n\n\n Sam was out of the cylindrical, stainless steel car and hurrying for\n the Westchester local when Joe came out onto the platform. Sam was\n annoyed, it was plain.", "\"That's what I mean.\"\nJoe was silent. The coupe went past a row of solar homes and turned on\n Fulsom. Three houses from the corner, he turned into their driveway.\n\n\n \"You're awfully quiet,\" Vera said.\n\n\n \"I'm thinking.\"\n\n\n \"About what?\" Her voice was suddenly strained. \"Sam didn't try to sell\n you—\"\n\n\n \"A new wife?\" He looked at her. \"What makes you think that?\"\n\n\n \"You're thinking about me, about trading me in. Joe, haven't\n I—darling, is there—?\" She broke off, looking even more miserable\n than Sam had.\n\n\n \"I don't intend to trade you in,\" he said quietly.\n\n\n She took a deep breath.\n\n\n He didn't look at her. \"But you're going back to the Center.\"", "Joe's glance went from his hurrying friend to the parking lot, and his\n coupe was there with Vera behind the wheel. It was only a three block\n walk, but she had to be there to meet him, every evening. That was her\n major fault, her romantic sentimentality.\n\n\n \"Darling,\" she said, as he approached the coupe. \"Sweetheart. Have a\n good day?\"\nHe kissed her casually. \"Ordinary.\" She slid over and he climbed in\n behind the wheel. \"Sat with Sam Tullgren on the train.\"\n\n\n \"Sam's nice.\"\n\n\n He turned on the ignition and said, \"Start.\" The motor obediently\n started and he swung out of the lot, onto Chestnut. \"Sam's all right.\n Kind of sentimental.\"", "This afternoon, Burke's long nose was twitching and his thin face was\n gravely bleak. He had a clipped, efficient way of speaking.\n\n\n \"Tired, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\n \"Not hitting the ball, not on the beam, no zipperoo.\"\n\n\n \"I'm—yes, I guess you're right. I've been working at home on a private\n project.\"\n\n\n \"Scientific?\"\n\n\n \"Naturally.\"\n\n\n \"Anything in particular?\"\n\n\n Joe took a breath, looked away, and back at Burke. \"Well, a wife.\"\n\n\n A frown, a doubtful look from the cold, blue eyes. \"Robot? Dishwasher\n and cook and phone answerer and like that?\"\n\n\n \"More than that.\"", "She stared at him, a film of moisture in her eyes. She didn't cry or\n ask questions or protest. Joe wished she would. This was worse.\n\n\n \"It's not your fault,\" he said, after a moment. \"I'm not going to get\n another. You're as ideal, almost, as a human wife can ever be.\"\n\n\n \"I've tried so hard,\" she said. \"Maybe I tried too hard.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" he said, \"it isn't your fault. Any reasonable man would be\n delighted with you, Vera. You won't be at the Center long.\"\n\n\n \"I don't want a reasonable man,\" she said quietly. \"I want you, Joe.\n I—I loved you.\"\n\n\n He had started to get out of the car. He paused to look back. \"Loved?\n Did you use the past tense?\"", "\"They are lovely.\"\n\n\n While she dressed, he phoned the Harveys. He explained about Vera\n first, because Vera was what the Harveys considered a good neighbor.\n\n\n Dan Harvey said sympathetically, \"It happens to the best of us.\n Thinking of getting a new one, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"I've got one right here. Thought I'd drop over, sort of break the ice.\"\n\n\n \"Great,\" Dan said. \"Fine. Dandy.\"\n\n\n The event was of minor importance, except for the revelation involved.\n\n\n The Harveys had a gift for putting guests at ease, the gift being a\n cellar full of thirty-year-old bourbon the elder Harvey had bequeathed\n them at the end of their adjustment period.\n\n\n The talk moved here and there, over the bourbon, Alice sharing in it\n rarely, though nodding when Joe was talking.", "\"You need just a touch of deception, just a wee shade of it.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, Joe.\"\n\n\n So she had tact.\n\n\n He went to the office with very little of the absurdity mood stirring\n in him. He'd had a full breakfast, naturally.\n\n\n At the office, there was a note on his desk:\nMr. Behrens wants to see\n you immediately.\nIt bore his secretary's initials. Mr. Behrens was the\n Chief.\n\n\n He was a fairly short man with immense shoulders and what he'd been\n told was a classical head. So he let his hair grow, and had a habit\n of thrusting his chin forward when he listened. He listened to Joe's\n account of the interview with Burke.\n\n\n When Joe had finished, the Chief's smile was tolerant. \"Ribbing him,\n were you? Old Burke hasn't much sense of humor, Joe.\"", "But he did say, \"I certainly thought a lot of Vera. You wouldn't have\n to warm her in any incubating mold.\"\n\n\n \"Wait'll you see this one,\" Joe said.\n\n\n And when she walked into the living room at home, when she acknowledged\n the introduction to the Chief, Joe knew the old boy was sold. The Chief\n could only stare.\n\n\n Joe took him down to the basement then to show him the molecule\n agitator, the memory feeder, the instillers.\n\n\n The old boy looked it over and said, quite simply, \"I'll be damned!\"\n\n\n They went up to a perfect dinner—and incident number two.\n\n\n The Chief was a sentimentalist and he'd just lost a fine friend. This\n friend was his terrier, Murph, who'd been hit by a speeding car.", "\"Here?\" Alice asked.\n\n\n \"No, of course not. Home. Let's go, dear. Have to rush.\"\n\n\n Alice's smile had nothing sentimental about it.\nHe didn't berate her until morning. He wanted time to cool off, to look\n at the whole thing objectively. It just wouldn't get objective, though.\n\n\n At breakfast, he said, \"That was tactless last night. Very, very\n tactless.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Joe. Tact requires deception. Tact is essentially deception.\"\n\n\n When had he said that? Oh, yes, at the Hydra Club lecture. And it was\n true and he hated deception and he'd created a wife without one.\n\n\n He said, \"I'll have to devise a character distiller that won't require\n putting you back in the mold.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, dear. Why?\"", "\"I used the past tense.\" She started to get out on her side of the car.\n \"I don't want to talk about it.\"\n\n\n \"But I do,\" he told her. \"Is this love something you can turn on and\n off like a faucet?\"\n\n\n \"I don't care to explain it to you,\" she said. \"I've got to pack.\" She\n left the car, slammed the door, and moved hurriedly toward the house.\n\n\n Joe watched her. Something was troubling him, something he couldn't\n analyze, but he felt certain that if he could, it would prove to be\n absurd.", "\"A sentimentalist, too romantic, kind of—well, maybe not dumb,\n exactly, but—\"\n\n\n \"But not perfect. Who is, Joe?\"\n\n\n \"My new wife is going to be.\"\n\n\n Pete shrugged and began putting together the ingredients for the kind\n of skin Joe had specified.\n\n\n They're all the same, Joe thought, Sam and Pete and the rest. They\n seemed to think his idea childish. He built the instillers and\n incubator that night. The mold would be done by one of the Department's\n engravers. Joe had the sketches and dimensions ready.\n\n\n Wednesday afternoon, Burke called him in. Burke was the Senior\n assistant, a job Joe had expected and been miffed about. Burke was a\n jerk, in Joe's book.", "The smile faded after about ten minutes. For Alice was telling her\nall\nabout the comptin-reduco-determina. For an hour and nineteen\n minutes, Alice talked to this woman who had been humiliated twice,\n telling her all the things about the famous thinking machine that Mrs.\n Tullgren didn't want to know.\n\n\n It wasn't until Alice was through talking animatedly that the entranced\n Joe began to suspect that perhaps the Tullgrens weren't as interested\n in the dingus as a scientific mind would assume.\n\n\n They weren't. There was a strain after that, a decided heaviness to the\n rest of the evening. Sam seemed to sigh with relief when they said good\n night.\n\n\n In the car, Joe was thoughtful. Halfway home, he said, \"Darling, I\n think you know too much—for a female, that is. I think you'll have to\n have a go with the knowledge-instiller. In reverse, of course.\"", "Joe said patiently, \"I wasn't ribbing him. I took her out of the mold\n last night. I ate breakfast with her this morning. She's—beautiful,\n Chief. She's ideal.\"\n\n\n The Chief looked at him for seconds, his head tilted.\n\n\n Joe said, \"Heat, that's what does it. If you'd like to come for dinner\n with us tonight, Chief, and see for yourself—\"\n\n\n The Chief nodded. \"I'd like that.\"\nThey left a little early to avoid the crowd in the tube. Burke saw them\n leaving, and his long face grew even longer.\n\n\n On the trip, Joe told his boss about the cybernetic brain, about his\n background and his beliefs stored in the memory circuits, and the boss\n listened quietly, not committing himself with any comments.", "Then he realized he was talking to himself. Damn it. On the telenews\n screen, Dorffberger looked right into the camera and nodded. He was\n winding up, and the director put the ball into slow motion. Even in\n slow motion, it winged.\n\n\n \"Ho-ho!\" Joe said. \"You can't hit what you can't see.\"\n\n\n Pelter must have seen it. He caught it on the fat part of the bat,\n twisting into it with all his hundred and ninety pounds. The impact\n rattled the telenews screen and the telescopic cameras took over.\n They followed the ball's flight about halfway to Jersey and then the\n short-range eyes came back to show Pelter crossing the plate, and\n Martin waiting there to shake his hand.\n\n\n Joe snapped off the machine impatiently. Very unscientific game,\n baseball. No rhyme or reason to it. He went out onto the porch.", "He went upstairs and fried some eggs. Twice a day, for a week, he had\n fried eggs. Their flavor was overrated.\n\n\n Then he went into the living room and snapped on the ball game.\n\n\n Martin was on third and Pelter was at bat. On the mound, the lank form\n of Dorffberger cast a long, grotesque shadow in the afternoon sun.\n Dorffberger chewed and spat and wiped his nose with the back of his\n glove. He looked over at third and yawned.\n\n\n At the plate, Pelter was digging in. Pelter looked nervous.\n\n\n Joe said, \"Bet that Dorffberger fans him. He's got the Indian sign on\n Pelter.\"", "He got up and went into the living room; fighting the stirring in him,\n the stirring he didn't want to analyze and find absurd. He went into\n the bathroom and studied his lean, now haggard face. He looked like\n hell. He went into the back bedroom and smelled her perfume and went\n quickly from the house and into the backyard.\n\n\n He sat there until seven, listening to the throb from the basement.\n The molecule agitator should have the flesh firm and finished now,\n nourished by the select blood, massaged by the pulsating plastic.\n\n\n At seven, she should be ready.\n\n\n At seven, he went down to the basement. His heart should have been\n hammering and his mind expectant, but he was just another guy going\n down to the basement.", "Then, at mention of someone or other, Mrs. Harvey said tolerantly,\n \"Well, none of us are perfect, I guess.\"\n\n\n Alice smiled and answered, \"Some of us are satisfied with mediocrities\n in marriage.\"\n\n\n Mrs. Harvey frowned doubtfully. \"I don't quite understand, dear. In\n any marriage, there has to be adjustment. Dan and I, for example, have\n adjusted very well.\"\n\n\n \"You haven't adjusted,\" Alice said smilingly. \"You've surrendered.\"\n\n\n Joe coughed up half a glass of bourbon, Dan turned a sort of red-green\n and Mrs. Harvey stared with her mouth open. Alice smiled.\n\n\n Finally, Mrs. Harvey said, \"Well, I never—\"\n\n\n \"Of all the—\" Dan Harvey said.\n\n\n Joe rose and said, \"Must get to bed, got to get to bed.\"", "\"You've done as well as you could,\" Joe agreed in an argumentative way.\n \"You've given some reason and order to the marital competition among\n women. You've almost eliminated illicit relations. You've established\n a basic security for the kids. But the big job? You've missed it\n completely.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" Sam said. \"That's a very small knife you've inserted between\n my shoulder blades, but I'm thin-skinned.\" He took a deep breath.\n \"What, in the opinion of the Junior Assistant to the Adjutant Science\n Director, was the\nbig\njob?\"\n\n\n Joe looked for some scorn in Sam's words, found it, and said, \"The big\n job is too big for a sociologist.\"\n\n\n Sam seemed to flinch. \"I didn't think that axe would fit alongside the\n knife. I underestimated you.\"", "\"No offense,\" Joe said. \"It's just that you have to deal with human\n beings.\"\n\n\n \"Oh,\" Sam said. \"Now it comes. You know, for a minute I forgot who you\n were. I forgot you were the greatest living authority on robots. I was\n thinking of you as my boyhood chum, good old Joe. You're beyond that\n now, aren't you?\"\n\n\n \"Beyond my adolescence? I hope so, though very few people are.\" Joe\n looked at Sam squarely. \"Every man wants a perfect wife, doesn't he?\"\n\n\n Sam shrugged. \"I suppose.\"\n\n\n \"And no human is perfect, so no man gets a perfect wife. Am I right, so\n far?\"\n\n\n \"Sounds like it.\"" ] ]
test	20049	[ "What is the Republic of Texas?", "Why did McLaren give himself up to police?", "How did the author feel about arriving in Texas after McLaren had surrendered?", "Who led the three factions of the ROT?", "What does the author think of the rhetoric he heard at the meeting in Kilgore?", "Where did the main action that the quthor missed out on take place?", "How does the author assess the one man who escaped from the Fort Davis standoff?", "What Texas towns did the author visit during his whirlwind tour?", "What did the author particularly notice about the speeches of the ROT members in Kilgore?", "How many helicopters were dispatched to Fort Davis?" ]	[ [ "The Republic of Texas is the far eastern part of the state that used to belong to France and was acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase.", "The Republic of Texas is a popular restaurant in Kilgore that serves only food produced in Texas.", "A group of activists who believe that Texas was illegally added as one of the United States.", "\"The Republic of Texas\" is the sarcastic name given to a run-down trailer park where a bunch of right wing Texas gun nuts lived." ], [ "They told him that all the other members of ROT had been captured, including his son. He traded his own freedom for that of his son.", "The police were secretly on McLaren's side, so they \"accidentally\" let him escape.", "They told him he could sue the federal government over his ROT claims and then go to prison, or be shot then and there. He chose Plan A.", "McLaren was feeling extremely ill and needed medical attention - in fact, he died shortly thereafter." ], [ "He was relieved that the leader of the secessionists had been captured.", "He was determined to be an eyewitness to insurrection, and having missed all his other opportunities, he was disappointed to miss another.", "He was really mad about wasting so much effort getting to a place that wasn't going to yield a story.", "He was worried that missing this scoop would cost him his job, so he decided to go sniffing for some back stories." ], [ "McLaren, Lowe and Johnson.", "Warmke, McLaren and Keyes.", "McLaren, Lowe and Warmke.", "McLaren, Keyes and Johnson." ], [ "He thinks they are all nutcases, some scarier than others, but some of them are nice enough as beer-drinking companions.", "He thinks they are sincere in their beliefs, and after talking to them, he comes to agree with their opinions.", "He thinks they are pathological bullies who believe that if they scare enough people they will get exactly what they want, and once they take over Texas, they will go after New Mexico.", "He thinks they are all low life grifters, failures in every other walk of life who have nothing better to do than cause trouble." ], [ "Valentine.", "El Paso.", "Fort Davis.", "Waco." ], [ "He thinks that having given law enforcement the slip, the escapee will go over the border into Mexico, get false papers, return to the US and stay quiet and out of trouble.", "He is surprised that this guy escaped, because he didn't seem that heroic - he was just another ROT \"soldier.\"", "He is a good example of someone who is never going to survive in the mesquite-covered peaks in the area surrounding Fort Davis. If the wild cougars don't get him, he'll starve to death.", "He is the worst possible one to escape, as he triggered the violence and is the most likely to survive the wilderness and come back more violent and crazier than ever." ], [ "El Paso, Waco, Pecos, and Valentine.", "El Paso, Kilgore, Valentine and Newark.", "Pecos, El Paso, Fort Davis and Kilgore.", "Valentine, Fort Davis, Kilgore, and El Paso." ], [ "Their arguments were a lot more sensible than he had thought. He learned a lot about local history from listening to them.", "They were largely deeply held conspiracy theories, and their fervent convictions convinced him that these cultists would be around for awhile.", "He noticed that all of them carried concealed weapons and an insignia that marked them as ROTers: a miniature silver star like a sheriff's badge tie tack.", "He noticed that if Texas provided better mental health care, most of these folks would not be free to walk around in society." ], [ "None.", "Dozens of helicopters surrounded Fort Davis, since they were the best tool for controlling the situation with minimal loss of life.", "There was one U.N. helicopter and one helicopter that was put at the disposal of the author so that he could get the best view of what was going on.", "Just one, loaned by the U.N." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "There was, however, one notable event left: Sunday, members of the other factions of the Republic of Texas were holding a big rally in Kilgore, to make clear that the movement would live on. (The republic, as you probably know, contains three competing clans.) I unfolded my map. Hmmm. Kilgore was way over by Louisiana. Even at 75 miles per hour, I could count on driving at least 12 hours, making it just in time for the opening gavel at 1 p.m. \n\n Was it worth it? \n\n No, but what else could I do--go see the Carlsbad Caverns? I buckled up and hit the road. \n\n My Countries, Right or Wrong \n\n The trip was worth it, at least in terms of understanding what motivates Republic of Texas believers. What motivates them is: They're nuts. All of them.", "While I groaned, he described the final hours. McLaren had swallowed the old negotiator's bait of surrender \"with honor.\" The lawmen treated him like the head of a brave conquered nation. He would be allowed to press in court his claim that the Republic of Texas had been illegally annexed by the United States in 1845. Then he would go to jail for many years. Not the best of deals, but he obviously preferred it to Plan B: getting shot.", "As for the meeting, it was simply funny-nutty, but it became all too clear that the republic's separatist fantasies will live on. A few hundred boisterous Texans--mostly men, middle-aged or above, with a fair number of angry young rednecks and dotty old women--filled the cramped banquet room of a run-down motor lodge in \"downtown\" Kilgore. Crowding one side of a long dais were frowning representatives of the two non-McLarian Republics of Texas. One is headed by David Johnson of Odessa, Texas. He didn't show up, but some of his \"council\" members did--they were gray, natty, and grumpy, like Baptist deacons. The other faction is under the sway of Archie Lowe, a long-haired guy who looks like an amiable Harley rider and whose followers are a tiny bit more young and with-it. The Archies' current agenda includes a quest for \"international recognition\" and the convening of a \"Constitutional Convention\" this July.", "If At First You Don't Secede \n\n Forget the Alamo! \n\n This sounds crass, but I can't deny it: I desperately wanted the standoff at the Republic of Texas trailer-trash compound to last longer than it did--for selfish reasons.", "A stocky guy in a red shirt and a Republic of Texas cap stood and dramatically announced that he was the driver of one of the two vehicles detained by authorities in Pecos. It was all a gross injustice, of course. Yes, he and four ROT colleagues were traveling with full packs, semiautomatic weapons, pistols, radios, and plenty of ammo, but he said they were merely going to Kermit, Texas, to \"hunt wild hogs.\" But Pecos is not on the way if you're going to Kermit from Garland. I asked him later: Why was he there? \"I was curious about what was going on,\" he said. \"On a personal level.\" \n\n A gap-toothed old woman yelped that the federal government is \"getting boxcars prepared with some kind of leg irons in 'em to fasten you into place to ship you to concentration camps.\"", "The meeting itself was extremely hard to follow. After generic introblab, the floor was opened to \"the people,\" a platoon of Brave New World Epsilons who lined up behind a floor microphone and took turns huffing and ranting. Among the highlights: \n\n A very pale young man stood up and said that Judgment Day was coming unless the Republic of Texas succeeded. Then he started crying.", "Not weeks longer, mind you. Just a few hours. Just long enough for me to get there . Having missed all the famous government vs. fringe standoffs--Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Montana Freemen--I was determined to go and bear witness this time. I would find out at last if mysterious U.N.-dispatched \"black helicopters\" really buzz around at these things like giant hell-spawned bumblebees. I would document the local movements of guts-and-glory militia reinforcements. (A militia offensive of some sort was widely rumored on the Net, where one rabid militia man wrote: \"WE HAVE HAD A BELLY FULL OF THE FBI, BATF, DEA, ETC. ETC. ... Lock and Load, prepare to Rock and Roll.\") It sounds silly now, but militia trouble did seem plausible at Fort Davis. Wednesday, April 30, three days after the siege began, several heavily armed Republic of Texas members were apprehended at a truck stop near Pecos, Texas, about 90 miles from the action.", "That word is somewhat loaded, so I should be more precise. ROT members are nuts like the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels were nuts. They don't drool or wear their shirts backward, but they do expend insane amounts of energy on ridiculous \"politics,\" dissipating most of it through meaningless infighting and petty posturing. Are they evil, hateful nuts? No. I kind of liked most of them. They would be fun people to go fishing with. \n\n Unfortunately, they have this other hobby: seceding from the union. And, being Texans, they have enough guns and ammo to potentially make matters not so cute. Most non-McLarian ROT members publicly disavow violence, but the possibility always lurks. Groups like the Republic of Texas exist in a murky gray zone where relatively harmless right-wing bigmouths meet the frightening shriekers of renegade militias, raising the question: At what point does nutty end and scary begin?", "You can never tell, but Richard Keyes III is a good example of how quickly A can become Z. Keyes is the 21-year-old McLaren follower who actually carried out the kidnapping and shooting that started the whole Fort Davis mess. He's originally from Kansas--so, to find out more about him, I called a county police detective there who tracks the far right. He'd heard of him only once, in a nutty-but-funny context. Keyes filed papers earlier this year demanding that Kansas return portions of the state to the rightful ownership of the Republic of Texas. Tee-hee. Next thing you know, however, he emerged as a serious shoot-'em-up guy.", "OK, perhaps quoting the old woman is a cheap shot. Then again, I heard similar effusions from a high official--Jim Warmke, a wiry, sun-burnished old guy in a mustard-colored Western suit who serves as \"secretary of commerce and trade\" for the Branch McLarian remnant. I liked Jim, and I just hope his nuttiness stays \"funny,\" but I have to wonder. When we met he extended a huge sandpapery hand and said: \"Howdy! Jim Warmke. W-A-R-M-K-E. Hot lock, warm key.\" We talked about McLaren--\"The man is a genius; he has a 160 IQ\"--and I raised the question of violence. Given that the federal government and the state are always and forever going to kick ass in U.S. vs. Republic confrontations, when would a patriot like Jim feel justified in picking up a gun and charging? \n\n And with such overwhelming odds, why would he do that?", "Irented a car and putted around morosely, listening to the radio and mulling over my options. Texas lawmen were boasting, justifiably, about the happy outcome. Yes, there was one tiny glitch--two ROT activists had somehow slipped away--but that was no problem. A drawling official said these fugitives were not experienced in the back country, so they would be easy pickings. For my part, I knew there would be little left to see. The militia would \"stand down.\" Even the trailer compound--which had been tricked out with Swiss Family Robinson-style self-defense gizmos--was still off-limits to the media.", "Monday, I finally visited Fort Davis on the way back to El Paso, just to get a feel for the place. Things sounded quite sparky on the radio. Early that morning, reports said that someone fired at the bloodhounds, and that lawmen were closing in. I arrived about 2 p.m. and roosted for a while by the police roadblock at the entrance to the Davis Mountain Resort subdivision. In the distance rose the stark, rocky, mesquite-covered peaks that define this area. A couple of dozen sunburned, siege-weary reporters were hanging around in cars, and one explained that the resort itself was miles and miles away. Whatever was happening, we wouldn't be able to see it or hear it. \n\n I took off and stopped for gas in the nearby town of Valentine. Inside I met an old codger named Clifford Beare, who had recently retired from the Jeff Davis County sheriff's department. I asked him if it would be hard for runaways to hide in treeless mountains.", "Alas, none of it was to be. I took off from Newark, N.J., at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3. After landing in El Paso, I called a militia contact who had agreed to ask around about possible right-wing bivouacs. (I even brought camping gear!) Things looked \"hot\" when I left--from inside his \"embassy,\" ROT leader Richard McLaren was busily faxing out apocalyptic maydays--but his hot blood turned to pink Jell-O. \n\n \"Hey!\" said my contact. \"Guess you heard. It's over.\" \n\n \"What? No! McLaren was talking so tough.\" \n\n \"Well, he came out.\"", "\"You'll not know how close some came,\" he said eerily. \"I can tell you that the militias have but one methodology in mind. They do not intend to assemble 10-, 20-, 50,000 armed men in one spot and allow napalm to destroy them! There is a tactic called 'targets of availability.' What that means is ... Your interpretation would be terrorism. There is no one that can control that. There is no government could control that.\" \n\n Bomb talk! Did he hear about specific targeted sites? \n\n \"I have suspicions, but I'll not answer that based on suspicions.\" \n\n After Jim left, two Archie-faction ROT men scurried over and nervously assured me that Jim was a kook. Great. Why didn't I feel reassured? \n\n The Joke Stops Here", "What? Of all these people, Keyes is the only survivor who demands to be taken seriously. He started the violence; he never gave up; and he went out ready to blast away and die. They better hope something gets him, because if he does stagger out of those mountains alive, he's going to be biblically, nuttily, and unfunnily pissed.", "\"Well, I guess, but you could hide. There's a lot of caves and stuff.\" \n\n Did he think these guys would get caught? \n\n \"I think they will,\" he said. \"Yes I do.\" \n\n He was half right. About that time one fugitive, believed to be Mike Matson, was getting shot to death in a gun battle. The other, Keyes, appears to have got away, and Tuesday, the authorities scaled back the search for him, making vague noises about the terrain and wild animals finishing him off. \"He can ... only have a finite amount of food and water,\" said Mike Cox, who has been the state's spokesman throughout the siege." ], [ "While I groaned, he described the final hours. McLaren had swallowed the old negotiator's bait of surrender \"with honor.\" The lawmen treated him like the head of a brave conquered nation. He would be allowed to press in court his claim that the Republic of Texas had been illegally annexed by the United States in 1845. Then he would go to jail for many years. Not the best of deals, but he obviously preferred it to Plan B: getting shot.", "Alas, none of it was to be. I took off from Newark, N.J., at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3. After landing in El Paso, I called a militia contact who had agreed to ask around about possible right-wing bivouacs. (I even brought camping gear!) Things looked \"hot\" when I left--from inside his \"embassy,\" ROT leader Richard McLaren was busily faxing out apocalyptic maydays--but his hot blood turned to pink Jell-O. \n\n \"Hey!\" said my contact. \"Guess you heard. It's over.\" \n\n \"What? No! McLaren was talking so tough.\" \n\n \"Well, he came out.\"", "Irented a car and putted around morosely, listening to the radio and mulling over my options. Texas lawmen were boasting, justifiably, about the happy outcome. Yes, there was one tiny glitch--two ROT activists had somehow slipped away--but that was no problem. A drawling official said these fugitives were not experienced in the back country, so they would be easy pickings. For my part, I knew there would be little left to see. The militia would \"stand down.\" Even the trailer compound--which had been tricked out with Swiss Family Robinson-style self-defense gizmos--was still off-limits to the media.", "Monday, I finally visited Fort Davis on the way back to El Paso, just to get a feel for the place. Things sounded quite sparky on the radio. Early that morning, reports said that someone fired at the bloodhounds, and that lawmen were closing in. I arrived about 2 p.m. and roosted for a while by the police roadblock at the entrance to the Davis Mountain Resort subdivision. In the distance rose the stark, rocky, mesquite-covered peaks that define this area. A couple of dozen sunburned, siege-weary reporters were hanging around in cars, and one explained that the resort itself was miles and miles away. Whatever was happening, we wouldn't be able to see it or hear it. \n\n I took off and stopped for gas in the nearby town of Valentine. Inside I met an old codger named Clifford Beare, who had recently retired from the Jeff Davis County sheriff's department. I asked him if it would be hard for runaways to hide in treeless mountains.", "You can never tell, but Richard Keyes III is a good example of how quickly A can become Z. Keyes is the 21-year-old McLaren follower who actually carried out the kidnapping and shooting that started the whole Fort Davis mess. He's originally from Kansas--so, to find out more about him, I called a county police detective there who tracks the far right. He'd heard of him only once, in a nutty-but-funny context. Keyes filed papers earlier this year demanding that Kansas return portions of the state to the rightful ownership of the Republic of Texas. Tee-hee. Next thing you know, however, he emerged as a serious shoot-'em-up guy.", "OK, perhaps quoting the old woman is a cheap shot. Then again, I heard similar effusions from a high official--Jim Warmke, a wiry, sun-burnished old guy in a mustard-colored Western suit who serves as \"secretary of commerce and trade\" for the Branch McLarian remnant. I liked Jim, and I just hope his nuttiness stays \"funny,\" but I have to wonder. When we met he extended a huge sandpapery hand and said: \"Howdy! Jim Warmke. W-A-R-M-K-E. Hot lock, warm key.\" We talked about McLaren--\"The man is a genius; he has a 160 IQ\"--and I raised the question of violence. Given that the federal government and the state are always and forever going to kick ass in U.S. vs. Republic confrontations, when would a patriot like Jim feel justified in picking up a gun and charging? \n\n And with such overwhelming odds, why would he do that?", "\"Well, I guess, but you could hide. There's a lot of caves and stuff.\" \n\n Did he think these guys would get caught? \n\n \"I think they will,\" he said. \"Yes I do.\" \n\n He was half right. About that time one fugitive, believed to be Mike Matson, was getting shot to death in a gun battle. The other, Keyes, appears to have got away, and Tuesday, the authorities scaled back the search for him, making vague noises about the terrain and wild animals finishing him off. \"He can ... only have a finite amount of food and water,\" said Mike Cox, who has been the state's spokesman throughout the siege.", "What? Of all these people, Keyes is the only survivor who demands to be taken seriously. He started the violence; he never gave up; and he went out ready to blast away and die. They better hope something gets him, because if he does stagger out of those mountains alive, he's going to be biblically, nuttily, and unfunnily pissed.", "\"You'll not know how close some came,\" he said eerily. \"I can tell you that the militias have but one methodology in mind. They do not intend to assemble 10-, 20-, 50,000 armed men in one spot and allow napalm to destroy them! There is a tactic called 'targets of availability.' What that means is ... Your interpretation would be terrorism. There is no one that can control that. There is no government could control that.\" \n\n Bomb talk! Did he hear about specific targeted sites? \n\n \"I have suspicions, but I'll not answer that based on suspicions.\" \n\n After Jim left, two Archie-faction ROT men scurried over and nervously assured me that Jim was a kook. Great. Why didn't I feel reassured? \n\n The Joke Stops Here", "The meeting itself was extremely hard to follow. After generic introblab, the floor was opened to \"the people,\" a platoon of Brave New World Epsilons who lined up behind a floor microphone and took turns huffing and ranting. Among the highlights: \n\n A very pale young man stood up and said that Judgment Day was coming unless the Republic of Texas succeeded. Then he started crying.", "Not weeks longer, mind you. Just a few hours. Just long enough for me to get there . Having missed all the famous government vs. fringe standoffs--Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Montana Freemen--I was determined to go and bear witness this time. I would find out at last if mysterious U.N.-dispatched \"black helicopters\" really buzz around at these things like giant hell-spawned bumblebees. I would document the local movements of guts-and-glory militia reinforcements. (A militia offensive of some sort was widely rumored on the Net, where one rabid militia man wrote: \"WE HAVE HAD A BELLY FULL OF THE FBI, BATF, DEA, ETC. ETC. ... Lock and Load, prepare to Rock and Roll.\") It sounds silly now, but militia trouble did seem plausible at Fort Davis. Wednesday, April 30, three days after the siege began, several heavily armed Republic of Texas members were apprehended at a truck stop near Pecos, Texas, about 90 miles from the action.", "A stocky guy in a red shirt and a Republic of Texas cap stood and dramatically announced that he was the driver of one of the two vehicles detained by authorities in Pecos. It was all a gross injustice, of course. Yes, he and four ROT colleagues were traveling with full packs, semiautomatic weapons, pistols, radios, and plenty of ammo, but he said they were merely going to Kermit, Texas, to \"hunt wild hogs.\" But Pecos is not on the way if you're going to Kermit from Garland. I asked him later: Why was he there? \"I was curious about what was going on,\" he said. \"On a personal level.\" \n\n A gap-toothed old woman yelped that the federal government is \"getting boxcars prepared with some kind of leg irons in 'em to fasten you into place to ship you to concentration camps.\"", "As for the meeting, it was simply funny-nutty, but it became all too clear that the republic's separatist fantasies will live on. A few hundred boisterous Texans--mostly men, middle-aged or above, with a fair number of angry young rednecks and dotty old women--filled the cramped banquet room of a run-down motor lodge in \"downtown\" Kilgore. Crowding one side of a long dais were frowning representatives of the two non-McLarian Republics of Texas. One is headed by David Johnson of Odessa, Texas. He didn't show up, but some of his \"council\" members did--they were gray, natty, and grumpy, like Baptist deacons. The other faction is under the sway of Archie Lowe, a long-haired guy who looks like an amiable Harley rider and whose followers are a tiny bit more young and with-it. The Archies' current agenda includes a quest for \"international recognition\" and the convening of a \"Constitutional Convention\" this July.", "If At First You Don't Secede \n\n Forget the Alamo! \n\n This sounds crass, but I can't deny it: I desperately wanted the standoff at the Republic of Texas trailer-trash compound to last longer than it did--for selfish reasons.", "There was, however, one notable event left: Sunday, members of the other factions of the Republic of Texas were holding a big rally in Kilgore, to make clear that the movement would live on. (The republic, as you probably know, contains three competing clans.) I unfolded my map. Hmmm. Kilgore was way over by Louisiana. Even at 75 miles per hour, I could count on driving at least 12 hours, making it just in time for the opening gavel at 1 p.m. \n\n Was it worth it? \n\n No, but what else could I do--go see the Carlsbad Caverns? I buckled up and hit the road. \n\n My Countries, Right or Wrong \n\n The trip was worth it, at least in terms of understanding what motivates Republic of Texas believers. What motivates them is: They're nuts. All of them.", "That word is somewhat loaded, so I should be more precise. ROT members are nuts like the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels were nuts. They don't drool or wear their shirts backward, but they do expend insane amounts of energy on ridiculous \"politics,\" dissipating most of it through meaningless infighting and petty posturing. Are they evil, hateful nuts? No. I kind of liked most of them. They would be fun people to go fishing with. \n\n Unfortunately, they have this other hobby: seceding from the union. And, being Texans, they have enough guns and ammo to potentially make matters not so cute. Most non-McLarian ROT members publicly disavow violence, but the possibility always lurks. Groups like the Republic of Texas exist in a murky gray zone where relatively harmless right-wing bigmouths meet the frightening shriekers of renegade militias, raising the question: At what point does nutty end and scary begin?" ], [ "While I groaned, he described the final hours. McLaren had swallowed the old negotiator's bait of surrender \"with honor.\" The lawmen treated him like the head of a brave conquered nation. He would be allowed to press in court his claim that the Republic of Texas had been illegally annexed by the United States in 1845. Then he would go to jail for many years. Not the best of deals, but he obviously preferred it to Plan B: getting shot.", "Alas, none of it was to be. I took off from Newark, N.J., at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3. After landing in El Paso, I called a militia contact who had agreed to ask around about possible right-wing bivouacs. (I even brought camping gear!) Things looked \"hot\" when I left--from inside his \"embassy,\" ROT leader Richard McLaren was busily faxing out apocalyptic maydays--but his hot blood turned to pink Jell-O. \n\n \"Hey!\" said my contact. \"Guess you heard. It's over.\" \n\n \"What? No! McLaren was talking so tough.\" \n\n \"Well, he came out.\"", "Irented a car and putted around morosely, listening to the radio and mulling over my options. Texas lawmen were boasting, justifiably, about the happy outcome. Yes, there was one tiny glitch--two ROT activists had somehow slipped away--but that was no problem. A drawling official said these fugitives were not experienced in the back country, so they would be easy pickings. For my part, I knew there would be little left to see. The militia would \"stand down.\" Even the trailer compound--which had been tricked out with Swiss Family Robinson-style self-defense gizmos--was still off-limits to the media.", "Monday, I finally visited Fort Davis on the way back to El Paso, just to get a feel for the place. Things sounded quite sparky on the radio. Early that morning, reports said that someone fired at the bloodhounds, and that lawmen were closing in. I arrived about 2 p.m. and roosted for a while by the police roadblock at the entrance to the Davis Mountain Resort subdivision. In the distance rose the stark, rocky, mesquite-covered peaks that define this area. A couple of dozen sunburned, siege-weary reporters were hanging around in cars, and one explained that the resort itself was miles and miles away. Whatever was happening, we wouldn't be able to see it or hear it. \n\n I took off and stopped for gas in the nearby town of Valentine. Inside I met an old codger named Clifford Beare, who had recently retired from the Jeff Davis County sheriff's department. I asked him if it would be hard for runaways to hide in treeless mountains.", "A stocky guy in a red shirt and a Republic of Texas cap stood and dramatically announced that he was the driver of one of the two vehicles detained by authorities in Pecos. It was all a gross injustice, of course. Yes, he and four ROT colleagues were traveling with full packs, semiautomatic weapons, pistols, radios, and plenty of ammo, but he said they were merely going to Kermit, Texas, to \"hunt wild hogs.\" But Pecos is not on the way if you're going to Kermit from Garland. I asked him later: Why was he there? \"I was curious about what was going on,\" he said. \"On a personal level.\" \n\n A gap-toothed old woman yelped that the federal government is \"getting boxcars prepared with some kind of leg irons in 'em to fasten you into place to ship you to concentration camps.\"", "As for the meeting, it was simply funny-nutty, but it became all too clear that the republic's separatist fantasies will live on. A few hundred boisterous Texans--mostly men, middle-aged or above, with a fair number of angry young rednecks and dotty old women--filled the cramped banquet room of a run-down motor lodge in \"downtown\" Kilgore. Crowding one side of a long dais were frowning representatives of the two non-McLarian Republics of Texas. One is headed by David Johnson of Odessa, Texas. He didn't show up, but some of his \"council\" members did--they were gray, natty, and grumpy, like Baptist deacons. The other faction is under the sway of Archie Lowe, a long-haired guy who looks like an amiable Harley rider and whose followers are a tiny bit more young and with-it. The Archies' current agenda includes a quest for \"international recognition\" and the convening of a \"Constitutional Convention\" this July.", "Not weeks longer, mind you. Just a few hours. Just long enough for me to get there . Having missed all the famous government vs. fringe standoffs--Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Montana Freemen--I was determined to go and bear witness this time. I would find out at last if mysterious U.N.-dispatched \"black helicopters\" really buzz around at these things like giant hell-spawned bumblebees. I would document the local movements of guts-and-glory militia reinforcements. (A militia offensive of some sort was widely rumored on the Net, where one rabid militia man wrote: \"WE HAVE HAD A BELLY FULL OF THE FBI, BATF, DEA, ETC. ETC. ... Lock and Load, prepare to Rock and Roll.\") It sounds silly now, but militia trouble did seem plausible at Fort Davis. Wednesday, April 30, three days after the siege began, several heavily armed Republic of Texas members were apprehended at a truck stop near Pecos, Texas, about 90 miles from the action.", "OK, perhaps quoting the old woman is a cheap shot. Then again, I heard similar effusions from a high official--Jim Warmke, a wiry, sun-burnished old guy in a mustard-colored Western suit who serves as \"secretary of commerce and trade\" for the Branch McLarian remnant. I liked Jim, and I just hope his nuttiness stays \"funny,\" but I have to wonder. When we met he extended a huge sandpapery hand and said: \"Howdy! Jim Warmke. W-A-R-M-K-E. Hot lock, warm key.\" We talked about McLaren--\"The man is a genius; he has a 160 IQ\"--and I raised the question of violence. Given that the federal government and the state are always and forever going to kick ass in U.S. vs. Republic confrontations, when would a patriot like Jim feel justified in picking up a gun and charging? \n\n And with such overwhelming odds, why would he do that?", "You can never tell, but Richard Keyes III is a good example of how quickly A can become Z. Keyes is the 21-year-old McLaren follower who actually carried out the kidnapping and shooting that started the whole Fort Davis mess. He's originally from Kansas--so, to find out more about him, I called a county police detective there who tracks the far right. He'd heard of him only once, in a nutty-but-funny context. Keyes filed papers earlier this year demanding that Kansas return portions of the state to the rightful ownership of the Republic of Texas. Tee-hee. Next thing you know, however, he emerged as a serious shoot-'em-up guy.", "The meeting itself was extremely hard to follow. After generic introblab, the floor was opened to \"the people,\" a platoon of Brave New World Epsilons who lined up behind a floor microphone and took turns huffing and ranting. Among the highlights: \n\n A very pale young man stood up and said that Judgment Day was coming unless the Republic of Texas succeeded. Then he started crying.", "There was, however, one notable event left: Sunday, members of the other factions of the Republic of Texas were holding a big rally in Kilgore, to make clear that the movement would live on. (The republic, as you probably know, contains three competing clans.) I unfolded my map. Hmmm. Kilgore was way over by Louisiana. Even at 75 miles per hour, I could count on driving at least 12 hours, making it just in time for the opening gavel at 1 p.m. \n\n Was it worth it? \n\n No, but what else could I do--go see the Carlsbad Caverns? I buckled up and hit the road. \n\n My Countries, Right or Wrong \n\n The trip was worth it, at least in terms of understanding what motivates Republic of Texas believers. What motivates them is: They're nuts. All of them.", "If At First You Don't Secede \n\n Forget the Alamo! \n\n This sounds crass, but I can't deny it: I desperately wanted the standoff at the Republic of Texas trailer-trash compound to last longer than it did--for selfish reasons.", "\"You'll not know how close some came,\" he said eerily. \"I can tell you that the militias have but one methodology in mind. They do not intend to assemble 10-, 20-, 50,000 armed men in one spot and allow napalm to destroy them! There is a tactic called 'targets of availability.' What that means is ... Your interpretation would be terrorism. There is no one that can control that. There is no government could control that.\" \n\n Bomb talk! Did he hear about specific targeted sites? \n\n \"I have suspicions, but I'll not answer that based on suspicions.\" \n\n After Jim left, two Archie-faction ROT men scurried over and nervously assured me that Jim was a kook. Great. Why didn't I feel reassured? \n\n The Joke Stops Here", "\"Well, I guess, but you could hide. There's a lot of caves and stuff.\" \n\n Did he think these guys would get caught? \n\n \"I think they will,\" he said. \"Yes I do.\" \n\n He was half right. About that time one fugitive, believed to be Mike Matson, was getting shot to death in a gun battle. The other, Keyes, appears to have got away, and Tuesday, the authorities scaled back the search for him, making vague noises about the terrain and wild animals finishing him off. \"He can ... only have a finite amount of food and water,\" said Mike Cox, who has been the state's spokesman throughout the siege.", "What? Of all these people, Keyes is the only survivor who demands to be taken seriously. He started the violence; he never gave up; and he went out ready to blast away and die. They better hope something gets him, because if he does stagger out of those mountains alive, he's going to be biblically, nuttily, and unfunnily pissed.", "That word is somewhat loaded, so I should be more precise. ROT members are nuts like the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels were nuts. They don't drool or wear their shirts backward, but they do expend insane amounts of energy on ridiculous \"politics,\" dissipating most of it through meaningless infighting and petty posturing. Are they evil, hateful nuts? No. I kind of liked most of them. They would be fun people to go fishing with. \n\n Unfortunately, they have this other hobby: seceding from the union. And, being Texans, they have enough guns and ammo to potentially make matters not so cute. Most non-McLarian ROT members publicly disavow violence, but the possibility always lurks. Groups like the Republic of Texas exist in a murky gray zone where relatively harmless right-wing bigmouths meet the frightening shriekers of renegade militias, raising the question: At what point does nutty end and scary begin?" ], [ "\"You'll not know how close some came,\" he said eerily. \"I can tell you that the militias have but one methodology in mind. They do not intend to assemble 10-, 20-, 50,000 armed men in one spot and allow napalm to destroy them! There is a tactic called 'targets of availability.' What that means is ... Your interpretation would be terrorism. There is no one that can control that. There is no government could control that.\" \n\n Bomb talk! Did he hear about specific targeted sites? \n\n \"I have suspicions, but I'll not answer that based on suspicions.\" \n\n After Jim left, two Archie-faction ROT men scurried over and nervously assured me that Jim was a kook. Great. Why didn't I feel reassured? \n\n The Joke Stops Here", "Alas, none of it was to be. I took off from Newark, N.J., at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3. After landing in El Paso, I called a militia contact who had agreed to ask around about possible right-wing bivouacs. (I even brought camping gear!) Things looked \"hot\" when I left--from inside his \"embassy,\" ROT leader Richard McLaren was busily faxing out apocalyptic maydays--but his hot blood turned to pink Jell-O. \n\n \"Hey!\" said my contact. \"Guess you heard. It's over.\" \n\n \"What? No! McLaren was talking so tough.\" \n\n \"Well, he came out.\"", "That word is somewhat loaded, so I should be more precise. ROT members are nuts like the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels were nuts. They don't drool or wear their shirts backward, but they do expend insane amounts of energy on ridiculous \"politics,\" dissipating most of it through meaningless infighting and petty posturing. Are they evil, hateful nuts? No. I kind of liked most of them. They would be fun people to go fishing with. \n\n Unfortunately, they have this other hobby: seceding from the union. And, being Texans, they have enough guns and ammo to potentially make matters not so cute. Most non-McLarian ROT members publicly disavow violence, but the possibility always lurks. Groups like the Republic of Texas exist in a murky gray zone where relatively harmless right-wing bigmouths meet the frightening shriekers of renegade militias, raising the question: At what point does nutty end and scary begin?", "The meeting itself was extremely hard to follow. After generic introblab, the floor was opened to \"the people,\" a platoon of Brave New World Epsilons who lined up behind a floor microphone and took turns huffing and ranting. Among the highlights: \n\n A very pale young man stood up and said that Judgment Day was coming unless the Republic of Texas succeeded. Then he started crying.", "What? Of all these people, Keyes is the only survivor who demands to be taken seriously. He started the violence; he never gave up; and he went out ready to blast away and die. They better hope something gets him, because if he does stagger out of those mountains alive, he's going to be biblically, nuttily, and unfunnily pissed.", "Irented a car and putted around morosely, listening to the radio and mulling over my options. Texas lawmen were boasting, justifiably, about the happy outcome. Yes, there was one tiny glitch--two ROT activists had somehow slipped away--but that was no problem. A drawling official said these fugitives were not experienced in the back country, so they would be easy pickings. For my part, I knew there would be little left to see. The militia would \"stand down.\" Even the trailer compound--which had been tricked out with Swiss Family Robinson-style self-defense gizmos--was still off-limits to the media.", "A stocky guy in a red shirt and a Republic of Texas cap stood and dramatically announced that he was the driver of one of the two vehicles detained by authorities in Pecos. It was all a gross injustice, of course. Yes, he and four ROT colleagues were traveling with full packs, semiautomatic weapons, pistols, radios, and plenty of ammo, but he said they were merely going to Kermit, Texas, to \"hunt wild hogs.\" But Pecos is not on the way if you're going to Kermit from Garland. I asked him later: Why was he there? \"I was curious about what was going on,\" he said. \"On a personal level.\" \n\n A gap-toothed old woman yelped that the federal government is \"getting boxcars prepared with some kind of leg irons in 'em to fasten you into place to ship you to concentration camps.\"", "You can never tell, but Richard Keyes III is a good example of how quickly A can become Z. Keyes is the 21-year-old McLaren follower who actually carried out the kidnapping and shooting that started the whole Fort Davis mess. He's originally from Kansas--so, to find out more about him, I called a county police detective there who tracks the far right. He'd heard of him only once, in a nutty-but-funny context. Keyes filed papers earlier this year demanding that Kansas return portions of the state to the rightful ownership of the Republic of Texas. Tee-hee. Next thing you know, however, he emerged as a serious shoot-'em-up guy.", "As for the meeting, it was simply funny-nutty, but it became all too clear that the republic's separatist fantasies will live on. A few hundred boisterous Texans--mostly men, middle-aged or above, with a fair number of angry young rednecks and dotty old women--filled the cramped banquet room of a run-down motor lodge in \"downtown\" Kilgore. Crowding one side of a long dais were frowning representatives of the two non-McLarian Republics of Texas. One is headed by David Johnson of Odessa, Texas. He didn't show up, but some of his \"council\" members did--they were gray, natty, and grumpy, like Baptist deacons. The other faction is under the sway of Archie Lowe, a long-haired guy who looks like an amiable Harley rider and whose followers are a tiny bit more young and with-it. The Archies' current agenda includes a quest for \"international recognition\" and the convening of a \"Constitutional Convention\" this July.", "There was, however, one notable event left: Sunday, members of the other factions of the Republic of Texas were holding a big rally in Kilgore, to make clear that the movement would live on. (The republic, as you probably know, contains three competing clans.) I unfolded my map. Hmmm. Kilgore was way over by Louisiana. Even at 75 miles per hour, I could count on driving at least 12 hours, making it just in time for the opening gavel at 1 p.m. \n\n Was it worth it? \n\n No, but what else could I do--go see the Carlsbad Caverns? I buckled up and hit the road. \n\n My Countries, Right or Wrong \n\n The trip was worth it, at least in terms of understanding what motivates Republic of Texas believers. What motivates them is: They're nuts. All of them.", "While I groaned, he described the final hours. McLaren had swallowed the old negotiator's bait of surrender \"with honor.\" The lawmen treated him like the head of a brave conquered nation. He would be allowed to press in court his claim that the Republic of Texas had been illegally annexed by the United States in 1845. Then he would go to jail for many years. Not the best of deals, but he obviously preferred it to Plan B: getting shot.", "Monday, I finally visited Fort Davis on the way back to El Paso, just to get a feel for the place. Things sounded quite sparky on the radio. Early that morning, reports said that someone fired at the bloodhounds, and that lawmen were closing in. I arrived about 2 p.m. and roosted for a while by the police roadblock at the entrance to the Davis Mountain Resort subdivision. In the distance rose the stark, rocky, mesquite-covered peaks that define this area. A couple of dozen sunburned, siege-weary reporters were hanging around in cars, and one explained that the resort itself was miles and miles away. Whatever was happening, we wouldn't be able to see it or hear it. \n\n I took off and stopped for gas in the nearby town of Valentine. Inside I met an old codger named Clifford Beare, who had recently retired from the Jeff Davis County sheriff's department. I asked him if it would be hard for runaways to hide in treeless mountains.", "\"Well, I guess, but you could hide. There's a lot of caves and stuff.\" \n\n Did he think these guys would get caught? \n\n \"I think they will,\" he said. \"Yes I do.\" \n\n He was half right. About that time one fugitive, believed to be Mike Matson, was getting shot to death in a gun battle. The other, Keyes, appears to have got away, and Tuesday, the authorities scaled back the search for him, making vague noises about the terrain and wild animals finishing him off. \"He can ... only have a finite amount of food and water,\" said Mike Cox, who has been the state's spokesman throughout the siege.", "OK, perhaps quoting the old woman is a cheap shot. Then again, I heard similar effusions from a high official--Jim Warmke, a wiry, sun-burnished old guy in a mustard-colored Western suit who serves as \"secretary of commerce and trade\" for the Branch McLarian remnant. I liked Jim, and I just hope his nuttiness stays \"funny,\" but I have to wonder. When we met he extended a huge sandpapery hand and said: \"Howdy! Jim Warmke. W-A-R-M-K-E. Hot lock, warm key.\" We talked about McLaren--\"The man is a genius; he has a 160 IQ\"--and I raised the question of violence. Given that the federal government and the state are always and forever going to kick ass in U.S. vs. Republic confrontations, when would a patriot like Jim feel justified in picking up a gun and charging? \n\n And with such overwhelming odds, why would he do that?", "Not weeks longer, mind you. Just a few hours. Just long enough for me to get there . Having missed all the famous government vs. fringe standoffs--Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Montana Freemen--I was determined to go and bear witness this time. I would find out at last if mysterious U.N.-dispatched \"black helicopters\" really buzz around at these things like giant hell-spawned bumblebees. I would document the local movements of guts-and-glory militia reinforcements. (A militia offensive of some sort was widely rumored on the Net, where one rabid militia man wrote: \"WE HAVE HAD A BELLY FULL OF THE FBI, BATF, DEA, ETC. ETC. ... Lock and Load, prepare to Rock and Roll.\") It sounds silly now, but militia trouble did seem plausible at Fort Davis. Wednesday, April 30, three days after the siege began, several heavily armed Republic of Texas members were apprehended at a truck stop near Pecos, Texas, about 90 miles from the action.", "If At First You Don't Secede \n\n Forget the Alamo! \n\n This sounds crass, but I can't deny it: I desperately wanted the standoff at the Republic of Texas trailer-trash compound to last longer than it did--for selfish reasons." ], [ "The meeting itself was extremely hard to follow. After generic introblab, the floor was opened to \"the people,\" a platoon of Brave New World Epsilons who lined up behind a floor microphone and took turns huffing and ranting. Among the highlights: \n\n A very pale young man stood up and said that Judgment Day was coming unless the Republic of Texas succeeded. Then he started crying.", "There was, however, one notable event left: Sunday, members of the other factions of the Republic of Texas were holding a big rally in Kilgore, to make clear that the movement would live on. (The republic, as you probably know, contains three competing clans.) I unfolded my map. Hmmm. Kilgore was way over by Louisiana. Even at 75 miles per hour, I could count on driving at least 12 hours, making it just in time for the opening gavel at 1 p.m. \n\n Was it worth it? \n\n No, but what else could I do--go see the Carlsbad Caverns? I buckled up and hit the road. \n\n My Countries, Right or Wrong \n\n The trip was worth it, at least in terms of understanding what motivates Republic of Texas believers. What motivates them is: They're nuts. All of them.", "As for the meeting, it was simply funny-nutty, but it became all too clear that the republic's separatist fantasies will live on. A few hundred boisterous Texans--mostly men, middle-aged or above, with a fair number of angry young rednecks and dotty old women--filled the cramped banquet room of a run-down motor lodge in \"downtown\" Kilgore. Crowding one side of a long dais were frowning representatives of the two non-McLarian Republics of Texas. One is headed by David Johnson of Odessa, Texas. He didn't show up, but some of his \"council\" members did--they were gray, natty, and grumpy, like Baptist deacons. The other faction is under the sway of Archie Lowe, a long-haired guy who looks like an amiable Harley rider and whose followers are a tiny bit more young and with-it. The Archies' current agenda includes a quest for \"international recognition\" and the convening of a \"Constitutional Convention\" this July.", "A stocky guy in a red shirt and a Republic of Texas cap stood and dramatically announced that he was the driver of one of the two vehicles detained by authorities in Pecos. It was all a gross injustice, of course. Yes, he and four ROT colleagues were traveling with full packs, semiautomatic weapons, pistols, radios, and plenty of ammo, but he said they were merely going to Kermit, Texas, to \"hunt wild hogs.\" But Pecos is not on the way if you're going to Kermit from Garland. I asked him later: Why was he there? \"I was curious about what was going on,\" he said. \"On a personal level.\" \n\n A gap-toothed old woman yelped that the federal government is \"getting boxcars prepared with some kind of leg irons in 'em to fasten you into place to ship you to concentration camps.\"", "OK, perhaps quoting the old woman is a cheap shot. Then again, I heard similar effusions from a high official--Jim Warmke, a wiry, sun-burnished old guy in a mustard-colored Western suit who serves as \"secretary of commerce and trade\" for the Branch McLarian remnant. I liked Jim, and I just hope his nuttiness stays \"funny,\" but I have to wonder. When we met he extended a huge sandpapery hand and said: \"Howdy! Jim Warmke. W-A-R-M-K-E. Hot lock, warm key.\" We talked about McLaren--\"The man is a genius; he has a 160 IQ\"--and I raised the question of violence. Given that the federal government and the state are always and forever going to kick ass in U.S. vs. Republic confrontations, when would a patriot like Jim feel justified in picking up a gun and charging? \n\n And with such overwhelming odds, why would he do that?", "\"You'll not know how close some came,\" he said eerily. \"I can tell you that the militias have but one methodology in mind. They do not intend to assemble 10-, 20-, 50,000 armed men in one spot and allow napalm to destroy them! There is a tactic called 'targets of availability.' What that means is ... Your interpretation would be terrorism. There is no one that can control that. There is no government could control that.\" \n\n Bomb talk! Did he hear about specific targeted sites? \n\n \"I have suspicions, but I'll not answer that based on suspicions.\" \n\n After Jim left, two Archie-faction ROT men scurried over and nervously assured me that Jim was a kook. Great. Why didn't I feel reassured? \n\n The Joke Stops Here", "Monday, I finally visited Fort Davis on the way back to El Paso, just to get a feel for the place. Things sounded quite sparky on the radio. Early that morning, reports said that someone fired at the bloodhounds, and that lawmen were closing in. I arrived about 2 p.m. and roosted for a while by the police roadblock at the entrance to the Davis Mountain Resort subdivision. In the distance rose the stark, rocky, mesquite-covered peaks that define this area. A couple of dozen sunburned, siege-weary reporters were hanging around in cars, and one explained that the resort itself was miles and miles away. Whatever was happening, we wouldn't be able to see it or hear it. \n\n I took off and stopped for gas in the nearby town of Valentine. Inside I met an old codger named Clifford Beare, who had recently retired from the Jeff Davis County sheriff's department. I asked him if it would be hard for runaways to hide in treeless mountains.", "While I groaned, he described the final hours. McLaren had swallowed the old negotiator's bait of surrender \"with honor.\" The lawmen treated him like the head of a brave conquered nation. He would be allowed to press in court his claim that the Republic of Texas had been illegally annexed by the United States in 1845. Then he would go to jail for many years. Not the best of deals, but he obviously preferred it to Plan B: getting shot.", "Irented a car and putted around morosely, listening to the radio and mulling over my options. Texas lawmen were boasting, justifiably, about the happy outcome. Yes, there was one tiny glitch--two ROT activists had somehow slipped away--but that was no problem. A drawling official said these fugitives were not experienced in the back country, so they would be easy pickings. For my part, I knew there would be little left to see. The militia would \"stand down.\" Even the trailer compound--which had been tricked out with Swiss Family Robinson-style self-defense gizmos--was still off-limits to the media.", "What? Of all these people, Keyes is the only survivor who demands to be taken seriously. He started the violence; he never gave up; and he went out ready to blast away and die. They better hope something gets him, because if he does stagger out of those mountains alive, he's going to be biblically, nuttily, and unfunnily pissed.", "Alas, none of it was to be. I took off from Newark, N.J., at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3. After landing in El Paso, I called a militia contact who had agreed to ask around about possible right-wing bivouacs. (I even brought camping gear!) Things looked \"hot\" when I left--from inside his \"embassy,\" ROT leader Richard McLaren was busily faxing out apocalyptic maydays--but his hot blood turned to pink Jell-O. \n\n \"Hey!\" said my contact. \"Guess you heard. It's over.\" \n\n \"What? No! McLaren was talking so tough.\" \n\n \"Well, he came out.\"", "You can never tell, but Richard Keyes III is a good example of how quickly A can become Z. Keyes is the 21-year-old McLaren follower who actually carried out the kidnapping and shooting that started the whole Fort Davis mess. He's originally from Kansas--so, to find out more about him, I called a county police detective there who tracks the far right. He'd heard of him only once, in a nutty-but-funny context. Keyes filed papers earlier this year demanding that Kansas return portions of the state to the rightful ownership of the Republic of Texas. Tee-hee. Next thing you know, however, he emerged as a serious shoot-'em-up guy.", "Not weeks longer, mind you. Just a few hours. Just long enough for me to get there . Having missed all the famous government vs. fringe standoffs--Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Montana Freemen--I was determined to go and bear witness this time. I would find out at last if mysterious U.N.-dispatched \"black helicopters\" really buzz around at these things like giant hell-spawned bumblebees. I would document the local movements of guts-and-glory militia reinforcements. (A militia offensive of some sort was widely rumored on the Net, where one rabid militia man wrote: \"WE HAVE HAD A BELLY FULL OF THE FBI, BATF, DEA, ETC. ETC. ... Lock and Load, prepare to Rock and Roll.\") It sounds silly now, but militia trouble did seem plausible at Fort Davis. Wednesday, April 30, three days after the siege began, several heavily armed Republic of Texas members were apprehended at a truck stop near Pecos, Texas, about 90 miles from the action.", "That word is somewhat loaded, so I should be more precise. ROT members are nuts like the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels were nuts. They don't drool or wear their shirts backward, but they do expend insane amounts of energy on ridiculous \"politics,\" dissipating most of it through meaningless infighting and petty posturing. Are they evil, hateful nuts? No. I kind of liked most of them. They would be fun people to go fishing with. \n\n Unfortunately, they have this other hobby: seceding from the union. And, being Texans, they have enough guns and ammo to potentially make matters not so cute. Most non-McLarian ROT members publicly disavow violence, but the possibility always lurks. Groups like the Republic of Texas exist in a murky gray zone where relatively harmless right-wing bigmouths meet the frightening shriekers of renegade militias, raising the question: At what point does nutty end and scary begin?", "If At First You Don't Secede \n\n Forget the Alamo! \n\n This sounds crass, but I can't deny it: I desperately wanted the standoff at the Republic of Texas trailer-trash compound to last longer than it did--for selfish reasons.", "\"Well, I guess, but you could hide. There's a lot of caves and stuff.\" \n\n Did he think these guys would get caught? \n\n \"I think they will,\" he said. \"Yes I do.\" \n\n He was half right. About that time one fugitive, believed to be Mike Matson, was getting shot to death in a gun battle. The other, Keyes, appears to have got away, and Tuesday, the authorities scaled back the search for him, making vague noises about the terrain and wild animals finishing him off. \"He can ... only have a finite amount of food and water,\" said Mike Cox, who has been the state's spokesman throughout the siege." ], [ "The meeting itself was extremely hard to follow. After generic introblab, the floor was opened to \"the people,\" a platoon of Brave New World Epsilons who lined up behind a floor microphone and took turns huffing and ranting. Among the highlights: \n\n A very pale young man stood up and said that Judgment Day was coming unless the Republic of Texas succeeded. Then he started crying.", "Alas, none of it was to be. I took off from Newark, N.J., at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3. After landing in El Paso, I called a militia contact who had agreed to ask around about possible right-wing bivouacs. (I even brought camping gear!) Things looked \"hot\" when I left--from inside his \"embassy,\" ROT leader Richard McLaren was busily faxing out apocalyptic maydays--but his hot blood turned to pink Jell-O. \n\n \"Hey!\" said my contact. \"Guess you heard. It's over.\" \n\n \"What? No! McLaren was talking so tough.\" \n\n \"Well, he came out.\"", "Monday, I finally visited Fort Davis on the way back to El Paso, just to get a feel for the place. Things sounded quite sparky on the radio. Early that morning, reports said that someone fired at the bloodhounds, and that lawmen were closing in. I arrived about 2 p.m. and roosted for a while by the police roadblock at the entrance to the Davis Mountain Resort subdivision. In the distance rose the stark, rocky, mesquite-covered peaks that define this area. A couple of dozen sunburned, siege-weary reporters were hanging around in cars, and one explained that the resort itself was miles and miles away. Whatever was happening, we wouldn't be able to see it or hear it. \n\n I took off and stopped for gas in the nearby town of Valentine. Inside I met an old codger named Clifford Beare, who had recently retired from the Jeff Davis County sheriff's department. I asked him if it would be hard for runaways to hide in treeless mountains.", "Irented a car and putted around morosely, listening to the radio and mulling over my options. Texas lawmen were boasting, justifiably, about the happy outcome. Yes, there was one tiny glitch--two ROT activists had somehow slipped away--but that was no problem. A drawling official said these fugitives were not experienced in the back country, so they would be easy pickings. For my part, I knew there would be little left to see. The militia would \"stand down.\" Even the trailer compound--which had been tricked out with Swiss Family Robinson-style self-defense gizmos--was still off-limits to the media.", "While I groaned, he described the final hours. McLaren had swallowed the old negotiator's bait of surrender \"with honor.\" The lawmen treated him like the head of a brave conquered nation. He would be allowed to press in court his claim that the Republic of Texas had been illegally annexed by the United States in 1845. Then he would go to jail for many years. Not the best of deals, but he obviously preferred it to Plan B: getting shot.", "Not weeks longer, mind you. Just a few hours. Just long enough for me to get there . Having missed all the famous government vs. fringe standoffs--Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Montana Freemen--I was determined to go and bear witness this time. I would find out at last if mysterious U.N.-dispatched \"black helicopters\" really buzz around at these things like giant hell-spawned bumblebees. I would document the local movements of guts-and-glory militia reinforcements. (A militia offensive of some sort was widely rumored on the Net, where one rabid militia man wrote: \"WE HAVE HAD A BELLY FULL OF THE FBI, BATF, DEA, ETC. ETC. ... Lock and Load, prepare to Rock and Roll.\") It sounds silly now, but militia trouble did seem plausible at Fort Davis. Wednesday, April 30, three days after the siege began, several heavily armed Republic of Texas members were apprehended at a truck stop near Pecos, Texas, about 90 miles from the action.", "What? Of all these people, Keyes is the only survivor who demands to be taken seriously. He started the violence; he never gave up; and he went out ready to blast away and die. They better hope something gets him, because if he does stagger out of those mountains alive, he's going to be biblically, nuttily, and unfunnily pissed.", "\"Well, I guess, but you could hide. There's a lot of caves and stuff.\" \n\n Did he think these guys would get caught? \n\n \"I think they will,\" he said. \"Yes I do.\" \n\n He was half right. About that time one fugitive, believed to be Mike Matson, was getting shot to death in a gun battle. The other, Keyes, appears to have got away, and Tuesday, the authorities scaled back the search for him, making vague noises about the terrain and wild animals finishing him off. \"He can ... only have a finite amount of food and water,\" said Mike Cox, who has been the state's spokesman throughout the siege.", "\"You'll not know how close some came,\" he said eerily. \"I can tell you that the militias have but one methodology in mind. They do not intend to assemble 10-, 20-, 50,000 armed men in one spot and allow napalm to destroy them! There is a tactic called 'targets of availability.' What that means is ... Your interpretation would be terrorism. There is no one that can control that. There is no government could control that.\" \n\n Bomb talk! Did he hear about specific targeted sites? \n\n \"I have suspicions, but I'll not answer that based on suspicions.\" \n\n After Jim left, two Archie-faction ROT men scurried over and nervously assured me that Jim was a kook. Great. Why didn't I feel reassured? \n\n The Joke Stops Here", "A stocky guy in a red shirt and a Republic of Texas cap stood and dramatically announced that he was the driver of one of the two vehicles detained by authorities in Pecos. It was all a gross injustice, of course. Yes, he and four ROT colleagues were traveling with full packs, semiautomatic weapons, pistols, radios, and plenty of ammo, but he said they were merely going to Kermit, Texas, to \"hunt wild hogs.\" But Pecos is not on the way if you're going to Kermit from Garland. I asked him later: Why was he there? \"I was curious about what was going on,\" he said. \"On a personal level.\" \n\n A gap-toothed old woman yelped that the federal government is \"getting boxcars prepared with some kind of leg irons in 'em to fasten you into place to ship you to concentration camps.\"", "As for the meeting, it was simply funny-nutty, but it became all too clear that the republic's separatist fantasies will live on. A few hundred boisterous Texans--mostly men, middle-aged or above, with a fair number of angry young rednecks and dotty old women--filled the cramped banquet room of a run-down motor lodge in \"downtown\" Kilgore. Crowding one side of a long dais were frowning representatives of the two non-McLarian Republics of Texas. One is headed by David Johnson of Odessa, Texas. He didn't show up, but some of his \"council\" members did--they were gray, natty, and grumpy, like Baptist deacons. The other faction is under the sway of Archie Lowe, a long-haired guy who looks like an amiable Harley rider and whose followers are a tiny bit more young and with-it. The Archies' current agenda includes a quest for \"international recognition\" and the convening of a \"Constitutional Convention\" this July.", "There was, however, one notable event left: Sunday, members of the other factions of the Republic of Texas were holding a big rally in Kilgore, to make clear that the movement would live on. (The republic, as you probably know, contains three competing clans.) I unfolded my map. Hmmm. Kilgore was way over by Louisiana. Even at 75 miles per hour, I could count on driving at least 12 hours, making it just in time for the opening gavel at 1 p.m. \n\n Was it worth it? \n\n No, but what else could I do--go see the Carlsbad Caverns? I buckled up and hit the road. \n\n My Countries, Right or Wrong \n\n The trip was worth it, at least in terms of understanding what motivates Republic of Texas believers. What motivates them is: They're nuts. All of them.", "If At First You Don't Secede \n\n Forget the Alamo! \n\n This sounds crass, but I can't deny it: I desperately wanted the standoff at the Republic of Texas trailer-trash compound to last longer than it did--for selfish reasons.", "OK, perhaps quoting the old woman is a cheap shot. Then again, I heard similar effusions from a high official--Jim Warmke, a wiry, sun-burnished old guy in a mustard-colored Western suit who serves as \"secretary of commerce and trade\" for the Branch McLarian remnant. I liked Jim, and I just hope his nuttiness stays \"funny,\" but I have to wonder. When we met he extended a huge sandpapery hand and said: \"Howdy! Jim Warmke. W-A-R-M-K-E. Hot lock, warm key.\" We talked about McLaren--\"The man is a genius; he has a 160 IQ\"--and I raised the question of violence. Given that the federal government and the state are always and forever going to kick ass in U.S. vs. Republic confrontations, when would a patriot like Jim feel justified in picking up a gun and charging? \n\n And with such overwhelming odds, why would he do that?", "You can never tell, but Richard Keyes III is a good example of how quickly A can become Z. Keyes is the 21-year-old McLaren follower who actually carried out the kidnapping and shooting that started the whole Fort Davis mess. He's originally from Kansas--so, to find out more about him, I called a county police detective there who tracks the far right. He'd heard of him only once, in a nutty-but-funny context. Keyes filed papers earlier this year demanding that Kansas return portions of the state to the rightful ownership of the Republic of Texas. Tee-hee. Next thing you know, however, he emerged as a serious shoot-'em-up guy.", "That word is somewhat loaded, so I should be more precise. ROT members are nuts like the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels were nuts. They don't drool or wear their shirts backward, but they do expend insane amounts of energy on ridiculous \"politics,\" dissipating most of it through meaningless infighting and petty posturing. Are they evil, hateful nuts? No. I kind of liked most of them. They would be fun people to go fishing with. \n\n Unfortunately, they have this other hobby: seceding from the union. And, being Texans, they have enough guns and ammo to potentially make matters not so cute. Most non-McLarian ROT members publicly disavow violence, but the possibility always lurks. Groups like the Republic of Texas exist in a murky gray zone where relatively harmless right-wing bigmouths meet the frightening shriekers of renegade militias, raising the question: At what point does nutty end and scary begin?" ], [ "Monday, I finally visited Fort Davis on the way back to El Paso, just to get a feel for the place. Things sounded quite sparky on the radio. Early that morning, reports said that someone fired at the bloodhounds, and that lawmen were closing in. I arrived about 2 p.m. and roosted for a while by the police roadblock at the entrance to the Davis Mountain Resort subdivision. In the distance rose the stark, rocky, mesquite-covered peaks that define this area. A couple of dozen sunburned, siege-weary reporters were hanging around in cars, and one explained that the resort itself was miles and miles away. Whatever was happening, we wouldn't be able to see it or hear it. \n\n I took off and stopped for gas in the nearby town of Valentine. Inside I met an old codger named Clifford Beare, who had recently retired from the Jeff Davis County sheriff's department. I asked him if it would be hard for runaways to hide in treeless mountains.", "Not weeks longer, mind you. Just a few hours. Just long enough for me to get there . Having missed all the famous government vs. fringe standoffs--Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Montana Freemen--I was determined to go and bear witness this time. I would find out at last if mysterious U.N.-dispatched \"black helicopters\" really buzz around at these things like giant hell-spawned bumblebees. I would document the local movements of guts-and-glory militia reinforcements. (A militia offensive of some sort was widely rumored on the Net, where one rabid militia man wrote: \"WE HAVE HAD A BELLY FULL OF THE FBI, BATF, DEA, ETC. ETC. ... Lock and Load, prepare to Rock and Roll.\") It sounds silly now, but militia trouble did seem plausible at Fort Davis. Wednesday, April 30, three days after the siege began, several heavily armed Republic of Texas members were apprehended at a truck stop near Pecos, Texas, about 90 miles from the action.", "Irented a car and putted around morosely, listening to the radio and mulling over my options. Texas lawmen were boasting, justifiably, about the happy outcome. Yes, there was one tiny glitch--two ROT activists had somehow slipped away--but that was no problem. A drawling official said these fugitives were not experienced in the back country, so they would be easy pickings. For my part, I knew there would be little left to see. The militia would \"stand down.\" Even the trailer compound--which had been tricked out with Swiss Family Robinson-style self-defense gizmos--was still off-limits to the media.", "What? Of all these people, Keyes is the only survivor who demands to be taken seriously. He started the violence; he never gave up; and he went out ready to blast away and die. They better hope something gets him, because if he does stagger out of those mountains alive, he's going to be biblically, nuttily, and unfunnily pissed.", "While I groaned, he described the final hours. McLaren had swallowed the old negotiator's bait of surrender \"with honor.\" The lawmen treated him like the head of a brave conquered nation. He would be allowed to press in court his claim that the Republic of Texas had been illegally annexed by the United States in 1845. Then he would go to jail for many years. Not the best of deals, but he obviously preferred it to Plan B: getting shot.", "You can never tell, but Richard Keyes III is a good example of how quickly A can become Z. Keyes is the 21-year-old McLaren follower who actually carried out the kidnapping and shooting that started the whole Fort Davis mess. He's originally from Kansas--so, to find out more about him, I called a county police detective there who tracks the far right. He'd heard of him only once, in a nutty-but-funny context. Keyes filed papers earlier this year demanding that Kansas return portions of the state to the rightful ownership of the Republic of Texas. Tee-hee. Next thing you know, however, he emerged as a serious shoot-'em-up guy.", "\"Well, I guess, but you could hide. There's a lot of caves and stuff.\" \n\n Did he think these guys would get caught? \n\n \"I think they will,\" he said. \"Yes I do.\" \n\n He was half right. About that time one fugitive, believed to be Mike Matson, was getting shot to death in a gun battle. The other, Keyes, appears to have got away, and Tuesday, the authorities scaled back the search for him, making vague noises about the terrain and wild animals finishing him off. \"He can ... only have a finite amount of food and water,\" said Mike Cox, who has been the state's spokesman throughout the siege.", "Alas, none of it was to be. I took off from Newark, N.J., at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3. After landing in El Paso, I called a militia contact who had agreed to ask around about possible right-wing bivouacs. (I even brought camping gear!) Things looked \"hot\" when I left--from inside his \"embassy,\" ROT leader Richard McLaren was busily faxing out apocalyptic maydays--but his hot blood turned to pink Jell-O. \n\n \"Hey!\" said my contact. \"Guess you heard. It's over.\" \n\n \"What? No! McLaren was talking so tough.\" \n\n \"Well, he came out.\"", "A stocky guy in a red shirt and a Republic of Texas cap stood and dramatically announced that he was the driver of one of the two vehicles detained by authorities in Pecos. It was all a gross injustice, of course. Yes, he and four ROT colleagues were traveling with full packs, semiautomatic weapons, pistols, radios, and plenty of ammo, but he said they were merely going to Kermit, Texas, to \"hunt wild hogs.\" But Pecos is not on the way if you're going to Kermit from Garland. I asked him later: Why was he there? \"I was curious about what was going on,\" he said. \"On a personal level.\" \n\n A gap-toothed old woman yelped that the federal government is \"getting boxcars prepared with some kind of leg irons in 'em to fasten you into place to ship you to concentration camps.\"", "If At First You Don't Secede \n\n Forget the Alamo! \n\n This sounds crass, but I can't deny it: I desperately wanted the standoff at the Republic of Texas trailer-trash compound to last longer than it did--for selfish reasons.", "OK, perhaps quoting the old woman is a cheap shot. Then again, I heard similar effusions from a high official--Jim Warmke, a wiry, sun-burnished old guy in a mustard-colored Western suit who serves as \"secretary of commerce and trade\" for the Branch McLarian remnant. I liked Jim, and I just hope his nuttiness stays \"funny,\" but I have to wonder. When we met he extended a huge sandpapery hand and said: \"Howdy! Jim Warmke. W-A-R-M-K-E. Hot lock, warm key.\" We talked about McLaren--\"The man is a genius; he has a 160 IQ\"--and I raised the question of violence. Given that the federal government and the state are always and forever going to kick ass in U.S. vs. Republic confrontations, when would a patriot like Jim feel justified in picking up a gun and charging? \n\n And with such overwhelming odds, why would he do that?", "The meeting itself was extremely hard to follow. After generic introblab, the floor was opened to \"the people,\" a platoon of Brave New World Epsilons who lined up behind a floor microphone and took turns huffing and ranting. Among the highlights: \n\n A very pale young man stood up and said that Judgment Day was coming unless the Republic of Texas succeeded. Then he started crying.", "There was, however, one notable event left: Sunday, members of the other factions of the Republic of Texas were holding a big rally in Kilgore, to make clear that the movement would live on. (The republic, as you probably know, contains three competing clans.) I unfolded my map. Hmmm. Kilgore was way over by Louisiana. Even at 75 miles per hour, I could count on driving at least 12 hours, making it just in time for the opening gavel at 1 p.m. \n\n Was it worth it? \n\n No, but what else could I do--go see the Carlsbad Caverns? I buckled up and hit the road. \n\n My Countries, Right or Wrong \n\n The trip was worth it, at least in terms of understanding what motivates Republic of Texas believers. What motivates them is: They're nuts. All of them.", "As for the meeting, it was simply funny-nutty, but it became all too clear that the republic's separatist fantasies will live on. A few hundred boisterous Texans--mostly men, middle-aged or above, with a fair number of angry young rednecks and dotty old women--filled the cramped banquet room of a run-down motor lodge in \"downtown\" Kilgore. Crowding one side of a long dais were frowning representatives of the two non-McLarian Republics of Texas. One is headed by David Johnson of Odessa, Texas. He didn't show up, but some of his \"council\" members did--they were gray, natty, and grumpy, like Baptist deacons. The other faction is under the sway of Archie Lowe, a long-haired guy who looks like an amiable Harley rider and whose followers are a tiny bit more young and with-it. The Archies' current agenda includes a quest for \"international recognition\" and the convening of a \"Constitutional Convention\" this July.", "\"You'll not know how close some came,\" he said eerily. \"I can tell you that the militias have but one methodology in mind. They do not intend to assemble 10-, 20-, 50,000 armed men in one spot and allow napalm to destroy them! There is a tactic called 'targets of availability.' What that means is ... Your interpretation would be terrorism. There is no one that can control that. There is no government could control that.\" \n\n Bomb talk! Did he hear about specific targeted sites? \n\n \"I have suspicions, but I'll not answer that based on suspicions.\" \n\n After Jim left, two Archie-faction ROT men scurried over and nervously assured me that Jim was a kook. Great. Why didn't I feel reassured? \n\n The Joke Stops Here", "That word is somewhat loaded, so I should be more precise. ROT members are nuts like the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels were nuts. They don't drool or wear their shirts backward, but they do expend insane amounts of energy on ridiculous \"politics,\" dissipating most of it through meaningless infighting and petty posturing. Are they evil, hateful nuts? No. I kind of liked most of them. They would be fun people to go fishing with. \n\n Unfortunately, they have this other hobby: seceding from the union. And, being Texans, they have enough guns and ammo to potentially make matters not so cute. Most non-McLarian ROT members publicly disavow violence, but the possibility always lurks. Groups like the Republic of Texas exist in a murky gray zone where relatively harmless right-wing bigmouths meet the frightening shriekers of renegade militias, raising the question: At what point does nutty end and scary begin?" ], [ "Monday, I finally visited Fort Davis on the way back to El Paso, just to get a feel for the place. Things sounded quite sparky on the radio. Early that morning, reports said that someone fired at the bloodhounds, and that lawmen were closing in. I arrived about 2 p.m. and roosted for a while by the police roadblock at the entrance to the Davis Mountain Resort subdivision. In the distance rose the stark, rocky, mesquite-covered peaks that define this area. A couple of dozen sunburned, siege-weary reporters were hanging around in cars, and one explained that the resort itself was miles and miles away. Whatever was happening, we wouldn't be able to see it or hear it. \n\n I took off and stopped for gas in the nearby town of Valentine. Inside I met an old codger named Clifford Beare, who had recently retired from the Jeff Davis County sheriff's department. I asked him if it would be hard for runaways to hide in treeless mountains.", "A stocky guy in a red shirt and a Republic of Texas cap stood and dramatically announced that he was the driver of one of the two vehicles detained by authorities in Pecos. It was all a gross injustice, of course. Yes, he and four ROT colleagues were traveling with full packs, semiautomatic weapons, pistols, radios, and plenty of ammo, but he said they were merely going to Kermit, Texas, to \"hunt wild hogs.\" But Pecos is not on the way if you're going to Kermit from Garland. I asked him later: Why was he there? \"I was curious about what was going on,\" he said. \"On a personal level.\" \n\n A gap-toothed old woman yelped that the federal government is \"getting boxcars prepared with some kind of leg irons in 'em to fasten you into place to ship you to concentration camps.\"", "There was, however, one notable event left: Sunday, members of the other factions of the Republic of Texas were holding a big rally in Kilgore, to make clear that the movement would live on. (The republic, as you probably know, contains three competing clans.) I unfolded my map. Hmmm. Kilgore was way over by Louisiana. Even at 75 miles per hour, I could count on driving at least 12 hours, making it just in time for the opening gavel at 1 p.m. \n\n Was it worth it? \n\n No, but what else could I do--go see the Carlsbad Caverns? I buckled up and hit the road. \n\n My Countries, Right or Wrong \n\n The trip was worth it, at least in terms of understanding what motivates Republic of Texas believers. What motivates them is: They're nuts. All of them.", "Irented a car and putted around morosely, listening to the radio and mulling over my options. Texas lawmen were boasting, justifiably, about the happy outcome. Yes, there was one tiny glitch--two ROT activists had somehow slipped away--but that was no problem. A drawling official said these fugitives were not experienced in the back country, so they would be easy pickings. For my part, I knew there would be little left to see. The militia would \"stand down.\" Even the trailer compound--which had been tricked out with Swiss Family Robinson-style self-defense gizmos--was still off-limits to the media.", "As for the meeting, it was simply funny-nutty, but it became all too clear that the republic's separatist fantasies will live on. A few hundred boisterous Texans--mostly men, middle-aged or above, with a fair number of angry young rednecks and dotty old women--filled the cramped banquet room of a run-down motor lodge in \"downtown\" Kilgore. Crowding one side of a long dais were frowning representatives of the two non-McLarian Republics of Texas. One is headed by David Johnson of Odessa, Texas. He didn't show up, but some of his \"council\" members did--they were gray, natty, and grumpy, like Baptist deacons. The other faction is under the sway of Archie Lowe, a long-haired guy who looks like an amiable Harley rider and whose followers are a tiny bit more young and with-it. The Archies' current agenda includes a quest for \"international recognition\" and the convening of a \"Constitutional Convention\" this July.", "Not weeks longer, mind you. Just a few hours. Just long enough for me to get there . Having missed all the famous government vs. fringe standoffs--Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Montana Freemen--I was determined to go and bear witness this time. I would find out at last if mysterious U.N.-dispatched \"black helicopters\" really buzz around at these things like giant hell-spawned bumblebees. I would document the local movements of guts-and-glory militia reinforcements. (A militia offensive of some sort was widely rumored on the Net, where one rabid militia man wrote: \"WE HAVE HAD A BELLY FULL OF THE FBI, BATF, DEA, ETC. ETC. ... Lock and Load, prepare to Rock and Roll.\") It sounds silly now, but militia trouble did seem plausible at Fort Davis. Wednesday, April 30, three days after the siege began, several heavily armed Republic of Texas members were apprehended at a truck stop near Pecos, Texas, about 90 miles from the action.", "While I groaned, he described the final hours. McLaren had swallowed the old negotiator's bait of surrender \"with honor.\" The lawmen treated him like the head of a brave conquered nation. He would be allowed to press in court his claim that the Republic of Texas had been illegally annexed by the United States in 1845. Then he would go to jail for many years. Not the best of deals, but he obviously preferred it to Plan B: getting shot.", "The meeting itself was extremely hard to follow. After generic introblab, the floor was opened to \"the people,\" a platoon of Brave New World Epsilons who lined up behind a floor microphone and took turns huffing and ranting. Among the highlights: \n\n A very pale young man stood up and said that Judgment Day was coming unless the Republic of Texas succeeded. Then he started crying.", "Alas, none of it was to be. I took off from Newark, N.J., at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3. After landing in El Paso, I called a militia contact who had agreed to ask around about possible right-wing bivouacs. (I even brought camping gear!) Things looked \"hot\" when I left--from inside his \"embassy,\" ROT leader Richard McLaren was busily faxing out apocalyptic maydays--but his hot blood turned to pink Jell-O. \n\n \"Hey!\" said my contact. \"Guess you heard. It's over.\" \n\n \"What? No! McLaren was talking so tough.\" \n\n \"Well, he came out.\"", "You can never tell, but Richard Keyes III is a good example of how quickly A can become Z. Keyes is the 21-year-old McLaren follower who actually carried out the kidnapping and shooting that started the whole Fort Davis mess. He's originally from Kansas--so, to find out more about him, I called a county police detective there who tracks the far right. He'd heard of him only once, in a nutty-but-funny context. Keyes filed papers earlier this year demanding that Kansas return portions of the state to the rightful ownership of the Republic of Texas. Tee-hee. Next thing you know, however, he emerged as a serious shoot-'em-up guy.", "If At First You Don't Secede \n\n Forget the Alamo! \n\n This sounds crass, but I can't deny it: I desperately wanted the standoff at the Republic of Texas trailer-trash compound to last longer than it did--for selfish reasons.", "OK, perhaps quoting the old woman is a cheap shot. Then again, I heard similar effusions from a high official--Jim Warmke, a wiry, sun-burnished old guy in a mustard-colored Western suit who serves as \"secretary of commerce and trade\" for the Branch McLarian remnant. I liked Jim, and I just hope his nuttiness stays \"funny,\" but I have to wonder. When we met he extended a huge sandpapery hand and said: \"Howdy! Jim Warmke. W-A-R-M-K-E. Hot lock, warm key.\" We talked about McLaren--\"The man is a genius; he has a 160 IQ\"--and I raised the question of violence. Given that the federal government and the state are always and forever going to kick ass in U.S. vs. Republic confrontations, when would a patriot like Jim feel justified in picking up a gun and charging? \n\n And with such overwhelming odds, why would he do that?", "\"You'll not know how close some came,\" he said eerily. \"I can tell you that the militias have but one methodology in mind. They do not intend to assemble 10-, 20-, 50,000 armed men in one spot and allow napalm to destroy them! There is a tactic called 'targets of availability.' What that means is ... Your interpretation would be terrorism. There is no one that can control that. There is no government could control that.\" \n\n Bomb talk! Did he hear about specific targeted sites? \n\n \"I have suspicions, but I'll not answer that based on suspicions.\" \n\n After Jim left, two Archie-faction ROT men scurried over and nervously assured me that Jim was a kook. Great. Why didn't I feel reassured? \n\n The Joke Stops Here", "\"Well, I guess, but you could hide. There's a lot of caves and stuff.\" \n\n Did he think these guys would get caught? \n\n \"I think they will,\" he said. \"Yes I do.\" \n\n He was half right. About that time one fugitive, believed to be Mike Matson, was getting shot to death in a gun battle. The other, Keyes, appears to have got away, and Tuesday, the authorities scaled back the search for him, making vague noises about the terrain and wild animals finishing him off. \"He can ... only have a finite amount of food and water,\" said Mike Cox, who has been the state's spokesman throughout the siege.", "That word is somewhat loaded, so I should be more precise. ROT members are nuts like the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels were nuts. They don't drool or wear their shirts backward, but they do expend insane amounts of energy on ridiculous \"politics,\" dissipating most of it through meaningless infighting and petty posturing. Are they evil, hateful nuts? No. I kind of liked most of them. They would be fun people to go fishing with. \n\n Unfortunately, they have this other hobby: seceding from the union. And, being Texans, they have enough guns and ammo to potentially make matters not so cute. Most non-McLarian ROT members publicly disavow violence, but the possibility always lurks. Groups like the Republic of Texas exist in a murky gray zone where relatively harmless right-wing bigmouths meet the frightening shriekers of renegade militias, raising the question: At what point does nutty end and scary begin?", "What? Of all these people, Keyes is the only survivor who demands to be taken seriously. He started the violence; he never gave up; and he went out ready to blast away and die. They better hope something gets him, because if he does stagger out of those mountains alive, he's going to be biblically, nuttily, and unfunnily pissed." ], [ "A stocky guy in a red shirt and a Republic of Texas cap stood and dramatically announced that he was the driver of one of the two vehicles detained by authorities in Pecos. It was all a gross injustice, of course. Yes, he and four ROT colleagues were traveling with full packs, semiautomatic weapons, pistols, radios, and plenty of ammo, but he said they were merely going to Kermit, Texas, to \"hunt wild hogs.\" But Pecos is not on the way if you're going to Kermit from Garland. I asked him later: Why was he there? \"I was curious about what was going on,\" he said. \"On a personal level.\" \n\n A gap-toothed old woman yelped that the federal government is \"getting boxcars prepared with some kind of leg irons in 'em to fasten you into place to ship you to concentration camps.\"", "The meeting itself was extremely hard to follow. After generic introblab, the floor was opened to \"the people,\" a platoon of Brave New World Epsilons who lined up behind a floor microphone and took turns huffing and ranting. Among the highlights: \n\n A very pale young man stood up and said that Judgment Day was coming unless the Republic of Texas succeeded. Then he started crying.", "There was, however, one notable event left: Sunday, members of the other factions of the Republic of Texas were holding a big rally in Kilgore, to make clear that the movement would live on. (The republic, as you probably know, contains three competing clans.) I unfolded my map. Hmmm. Kilgore was way over by Louisiana. Even at 75 miles per hour, I could count on driving at least 12 hours, making it just in time for the opening gavel at 1 p.m. \n\n Was it worth it? \n\n No, but what else could I do--go see the Carlsbad Caverns? I buckled up and hit the road. \n\n My Countries, Right or Wrong \n\n The trip was worth it, at least in terms of understanding what motivates Republic of Texas believers. What motivates them is: They're nuts. All of them.", "\"You'll not know how close some came,\" he said eerily. \"I can tell you that the militias have but one methodology in mind. They do not intend to assemble 10-, 20-, 50,000 armed men in one spot and allow napalm to destroy them! There is a tactic called 'targets of availability.' What that means is ... Your interpretation would be terrorism. There is no one that can control that. There is no government could control that.\" \n\n Bomb talk! Did he hear about specific targeted sites? \n\n \"I have suspicions, but I'll not answer that based on suspicions.\" \n\n After Jim left, two Archie-faction ROT men scurried over and nervously assured me that Jim was a kook. Great. Why didn't I feel reassured? \n\n The Joke Stops Here", "That word is somewhat loaded, so I should be more precise. ROT members are nuts like the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels were nuts. They don't drool or wear their shirts backward, but they do expend insane amounts of energy on ridiculous \"politics,\" dissipating most of it through meaningless infighting and petty posturing. Are they evil, hateful nuts? No. I kind of liked most of them. They would be fun people to go fishing with. \n\n Unfortunately, they have this other hobby: seceding from the union. And, being Texans, they have enough guns and ammo to potentially make matters not so cute. Most non-McLarian ROT members publicly disavow violence, but the possibility always lurks. Groups like the Republic of Texas exist in a murky gray zone where relatively harmless right-wing bigmouths meet the frightening shriekers of renegade militias, raising the question: At what point does nutty end and scary begin?", "Irented a car and putted around morosely, listening to the radio and mulling over my options. Texas lawmen were boasting, justifiably, about the happy outcome. Yes, there was one tiny glitch--two ROT activists had somehow slipped away--but that was no problem. A drawling official said these fugitives were not experienced in the back country, so they would be easy pickings. For my part, I knew there would be little left to see. The militia would \"stand down.\" Even the trailer compound--which had been tricked out with Swiss Family Robinson-style self-defense gizmos--was still off-limits to the media.", "As for the meeting, it was simply funny-nutty, but it became all too clear that the republic's separatist fantasies will live on. A few hundred boisterous Texans--mostly men, middle-aged or above, with a fair number of angry young rednecks and dotty old women--filled the cramped banquet room of a run-down motor lodge in \"downtown\" Kilgore. Crowding one side of a long dais were frowning representatives of the two non-McLarian Republics of Texas. One is headed by David Johnson of Odessa, Texas. He didn't show up, but some of his \"council\" members did--they were gray, natty, and grumpy, like Baptist deacons. The other faction is under the sway of Archie Lowe, a long-haired guy who looks like an amiable Harley rider and whose followers are a tiny bit more young and with-it. The Archies' current agenda includes a quest for \"international recognition\" and the convening of a \"Constitutional Convention\" this July.", "Monday, I finally visited Fort Davis on the way back to El Paso, just to get a feel for the place. Things sounded quite sparky on the radio. Early that morning, reports said that someone fired at the bloodhounds, and that lawmen were closing in. I arrived about 2 p.m. and roosted for a while by the police roadblock at the entrance to the Davis Mountain Resort subdivision. In the distance rose the stark, rocky, mesquite-covered peaks that define this area. A couple of dozen sunburned, siege-weary reporters were hanging around in cars, and one explained that the resort itself was miles and miles away. Whatever was happening, we wouldn't be able to see it or hear it. \n\n I took off and stopped for gas in the nearby town of Valentine. Inside I met an old codger named Clifford Beare, who had recently retired from the Jeff Davis County sheriff's department. I asked him if it would be hard for runaways to hide in treeless mountains.", "Alas, none of it was to be. I took off from Newark, N.J., at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3. After landing in El Paso, I called a militia contact who had agreed to ask around about possible right-wing bivouacs. (I even brought camping gear!) Things looked \"hot\" when I left--from inside his \"embassy,\" ROT leader Richard McLaren was busily faxing out apocalyptic maydays--but his hot blood turned to pink Jell-O. \n\n \"Hey!\" said my contact. \"Guess you heard. It's over.\" \n\n \"What? No! McLaren was talking so tough.\" \n\n \"Well, he came out.\"", "What? Of all these people, Keyes is the only survivor who demands to be taken seriously. He started the violence; he never gave up; and he went out ready to blast away and die. They better hope something gets him, because if he does stagger out of those mountains alive, he's going to be biblically, nuttily, and unfunnily pissed.", "You can never tell, but Richard Keyes III is a good example of how quickly A can become Z. Keyes is the 21-year-old McLaren follower who actually carried out the kidnapping and shooting that started the whole Fort Davis mess. He's originally from Kansas--so, to find out more about him, I called a county police detective there who tracks the far right. He'd heard of him only once, in a nutty-but-funny context. Keyes filed papers earlier this year demanding that Kansas return portions of the state to the rightful ownership of the Republic of Texas. Tee-hee. Next thing you know, however, he emerged as a serious shoot-'em-up guy.", "While I groaned, he described the final hours. McLaren had swallowed the old negotiator's bait of surrender \"with honor.\" The lawmen treated him like the head of a brave conquered nation. He would be allowed to press in court his claim that the Republic of Texas had been illegally annexed by the United States in 1845. Then he would go to jail for many years. Not the best of deals, but he obviously preferred it to Plan B: getting shot.", "Not weeks longer, mind you. Just a few hours. Just long enough for me to get there . Having missed all the famous government vs. fringe standoffs--Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Montana Freemen--I was determined to go and bear witness this time. I would find out at last if mysterious U.N.-dispatched \"black helicopters\" really buzz around at these things like giant hell-spawned bumblebees. I would document the local movements of guts-and-glory militia reinforcements. (A militia offensive of some sort was widely rumored on the Net, where one rabid militia man wrote: \"WE HAVE HAD A BELLY FULL OF THE FBI, BATF, DEA, ETC. ETC. ... Lock and Load, prepare to Rock and Roll.\") It sounds silly now, but militia trouble did seem plausible at Fort Davis. Wednesday, April 30, three days after the siege began, several heavily armed Republic of Texas members were apprehended at a truck stop near Pecos, Texas, about 90 miles from the action.", "OK, perhaps quoting the old woman is a cheap shot. Then again, I heard similar effusions from a high official--Jim Warmke, a wiry, sun-burnished old guy in a mustard-colored Western suit who serves as \"secretary of commerce and trade\" for the Branch McLarian remnant. I liked Jim, and I just hope his nuttiness stays \"funny,\" but I have to wonder. When we met he extended a huge sandpapery hand and said: \"Howdy! Jim Warmke. W-A-R-M-K-E. Hot lock, warm key.\" We talked about McLaren--\"The man is a genius; he has a 160 IQ\"--and I raised the question of violence. Given that the federal government and the state are always and forever going to kick ass in U.S. vs. Republic confrontations, when would a patriot like Jim feel justified in picking up a gun and charging? \n\n And with such overwhelming odds, why would he do that?", "\"Well, I guess, but you could hide. There's a lot of caves and stuff.\" \n\n Did he think these guys would get caught? \n\n \"I think they will,\" he said. \"Yes I do.\" \n\n He was half right. About that time one fugitive, believed to be Mike Matson, was getting shot to death in a gun battle. The other, Keyes, appears to have got away, and Tuesday, the authorities scaled back the search for him, making vague noises about the terrain and wild animals finishing him off. \"He can ... only have a finite amount of food and water,\" said Mike Cox, who has been the state's spokesman throughout the siege.", "If At First You Don't Secede \n\n Forget the Alamo! \n\n This sounds crass, but I can't deny it: I desperately wanted the standoff at the Republic of Texas trailer-trash compound to last longer than it did--for selfish reasons." ], [ "Monday, I finally visited Fort Davis on the way back to El Paso, just to get a feel for the place. Things sounded quite sparky on the radio. Early that morning, reports said that someone fired at the bloodhounds, and that lawmen were closing in. I arrived about 2 p.m. and roosted for a while by the police roadblock at the entrance to the Davis Mountain Resort subdivision. In the distance rose the stark, rocky, mesquite-covered peaks that define this area. A couple of dozen sunburned, siege-weary reporters were hanging around in cars, and one explained that the resort itself was miles and miles away. Whatever was happening, we wouldn't be able to see it or hear it. \n\n I took off and stopped for gas in the nearby town of Valentine. Inside I met an old codger named Clifford Beare, who had recently retired from the Jeff Davis County sheriff's department. I asked him if it would be hard for runaways to hide in treeless mountains.", "Not weeks longer, mind you. Just a few hours. Just long enough for me to get there . Having missed all the famous government vs. fringe standoffs--Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Montana Freemen--I was determined to go and bear witness this time. I would find out at last if mysterious U.N.-dispatched \"black helicopters\" really buzz around at these things like giant hell-spawned bumblebees. I would document the local movements of guts-and-glory militia reinforcements. (A militia offensive of some sort was widely rumored on the Net, where one rabid militia man wrote: \"WE HAVE HAD A BELLY FULL OF THE FBI, BATF, DEA, ETC. ETC. ... Lock and Load, prepare to Rock and Roll.\") It sounds silly now, but militia trouble did seem plausible at Fort Davis. Wednesday, April 30, three days after the siege began, several heavily armed Republic of Texas members were apprehended at a truck stop near Pecos, Texas, about 90 miles from the action.", "A stocky guy in a red shirt and a Republic of Texas cap stood and dramatically announced that he was the driver of one of the two vehicles detained by authorities in Pecos. It was all a gross injustice, of course. Yes, he and four ROT colleagues were traveling with full packs, semiautomatic weapons, pistols, radios, and plenty of ammo, but he said they were merely going to Kermit, Texas, to \"hunt wild hogs.\" But Pecos is not on the way if you're going to Kermit from Garland. I asked him later: Why was he there? \"I was curious about what was going on,\" he said. \"On a personal level.\" \n\n A gap-toothed old woman yelped that the federal government is \"getting boxcars prepared with some kind of leg irons in 'em to fasten you into place to ship you to concentration camps.\"", "Irented a car and putted around morosely, listening to the radio and mulling over my options. Texas lawmen were boasting, justifiably, about the happy outcome. Yes, there was one tiny glitch--two ROT activists had somehow slipped away--but that was no problem. A drawling official said these fugitives were not experienced in the back country, so they would be easy pickings. For my part, I knew there would be little left to see. The militia would \"stand down.\" Even the trailer compound--which had been tricked out with Swiss Family Robinson-style self-defense gizmos--was still off-limits to the media.", "Alas, none of it was to be. I took off from Newark, N.J., at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3. After landing in El Paso, I called a militia contact who had agreed to ask around about possible right-wing bivouacs. (I even brought camping gear!) Things looked \"hot\" when I left--from inside his \"embassy,\" ROT leader Richard McLaren was busily faxing out apocalyptic maydays--but his hot blood turned to pink Jell-O. \n\n \"Hey!\" said my contact. \"Guess you heard. It's over.\" \n\n \"What? No! McLaren was talking so tough.\" \n\n \"Well, he came out.\"", "You can never tell, but Richard Keyes III is a good example of how quickly A can become Z. Keyes is the 21-year-old McLaren follower who actually carried out the kidnapping and shooting that started the whole Fort Davis mess. He's originally from Kansas--so, to find out more about him, I called a county police detective there who tracks the far right. He'd heard of him only once, in a nutty-but-funny context. Keyes filed papers earlier this year demanding that Kansas return portions of the state to the rightful ownership of the Republic of Texas. Tee-hee. Next thing you know, however, he emerged as a serious shoot-'em-up guy.", "\"You'll not know how close some came,\" he said eerily. \"I can tell you that the militias have but one methodology in mind. They do not intend to assemble 10-, 20-, 50,000 armed men in one spot and allow napalm to destroy them! There is a tactic called 'targets of availability.' What that means is ... Your interpretation would be terrorism. There is no one that can control that. There is no government could control that.\" \n\n Bomb talk! Did he hear about specific targeted sites? \n\n \"I have suspicions, but I'll not answer that based on suspicions.\" \n\n After Jim left, two Archie-faction ROT men scurried over and nervously assured me that Jim was a kook. Great. Why didn't I feel reassured? \n\n The Joke Stops Here", "While I groaned, he described the final hours. McLaren had swallowed the old negotiator's bait of surrender \"with honor.\" The lawmen treated him like the head of a brave conquered nation. He would be allowed to press in court his claim that the Republic of Texas had been illegally annexed by the United States in 1845. Then he would go to jail for many years. Not the best of deals, but he obviously preferred it to Plan B: getting shot.", "The meeting itself was extremely hard to follow. After generic introblab, the floor was opened to \"the people,\" a platoon of Brave New World Epsilons who lined up behind a floor microphone and took turns huffing and ranting. Among the highlights: \n\n A very pale young man stood up and said that Judgment Day was coming unless the Republic of Texas succeeded. Then he started crying.", "\"Well, I guess, but you could hide. There's a lot of caves and stuff.\" \n\n Did he think these guys would get caught? \n\n \"I think they will,\" he said. \"Yes I do.\" \n\n He was half right. About that time one fugitive, believed to be Mike Matson, was getting shot to death in a gun battle. The other, Keyes, appears to have got away, and Tuesday, the authorities scaled back the search for him, making vague noises about the terrain and wild animals finishing him off. \"He can ... only have a finite amount of food and water,\" said Mike Cox, who has been the state's spokesman throughout the siege.", "OK, perhaps quoting the old woman is a cheap shot. Then again, I heard similar effusions from a high official--Jim Warmke, a wiry, sun-burnished old guy in a mustard-colored Western suit who serves as \"secretary of commerce and trade\" for the Branch McLarian remnant. I liked Jim, and I just hope his nuttiness stays \"funny,\" but I have to wonder. When we met he extended a huge sandpapery hand and said: \"Howdy! Jim Warmke. W-A-R-M-K-E. Hot lock, warm key.\" We talked about McLaren--\"The man is a genius; he has a 160 IQ\"--and I raised the question of violence. Given that the federal government and the state are always and forever going to kick ass in U.S. vs. Republic confrontations, when would a patriot like Jim feel justified in picking up a gun and charging? \n\n And with such overwhelming odds, why would he do that?", "What? Of all these people, Keyes is the only survivor who demands to be taken seriously. He started the violence; he never gave up; and he went out ready to blast away and die. They better hope something gets him, because if he does stagger out of those mountains alive, he's going to be biblically, nuttily, and unfunnily pissed.", "If At First You Don't Secede \n\n Forget the Alamo! \n\n This sounds crass, but I can't deny it: I desperately wanted the standoff at the Republic of Texas trailer-trash compound to last longer than it did--for selfish reasons.", "As for the meeting, it was simply funny-nutty, but it became all too clear that the republic's separatist fantasies will live on. A few hundred boisterous Texans--mostly men, middle-aged or above, with a fair number of angry young rednecks and dotty old women--filled the cramped banquet room of a run-down motor lodge in \"downtown\" Kilgore. Crowding one side of a long dais were frowning representatives of the two non-McLarian Republics of Texas. One is headed by David Johnson of Odessa, Texas. He didn't show up, but some of his \"council\" members did--they were gray, natty, and grumpy, like Baptist deacons. The other faction is under the sway of Archie Lowe, a long-haired guy who looks like an amiable Harley rider and whose followers are a tiny bit more young and with-it. The Archies' current agenda includes a quest for \"international recognition\" and the convening of a \"Constitutional Convention\" this July.", "There was, however, one notable event left: Sunday, members of the other factions of the Republic of Texas were holding a big rally in Kilgore, to make clear that the movement would live on. (The republic, as you probably know, contains three competing clans.) I unfolded my map. Hmmm. Kilgore was way over by Louisiana. Even at 75 miles per hour, I could count on driving at least 12 hours, making it just in time for the opening gavel at 1 p.m. \n\n Was it worth it? \n\n No, but what else could I do--go see the Carlsbad Caverns? I buckled up and hit the road. \n\n My Countries, Right or Wrong \n\n The trip was worth it, at least in terms of understanding what motivates Republic of Texas believers. What motivates them is: They're nuts. All of them.", "That word is somewhat loaded, so I should be more precise. ROT members are nuts like the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels were nuts. They don't drool or wear their shirts backward, but they do expend insane amounts of energy on ridiculous \"politics,\" dissipating most of it through meaningless infighting and petty posturing. Are they evil, hateful nuts? No. I kind of liked most of them. They would be fun people to go fishing with. \n\n Unfortunately, they have this other hobby: seceding from the union. And, being Texans, they have enough guns and ammo to potentially make matters not so cute. Most non-McLarian ROT members publicly disavow violence, but the possibility always lurks. Groups like the Republic of Texas exist in a murky gray zone where relatively harmless right-wing bigmouths meet the frightening shriekers of renegade militias, raising the question: At what point does nutty end and scary begin?" ] ]
test	50998	[ "How does Cassal know the intentions of the man who is following him?", "What seems to be the stalker's issue with Cassal? ", "What does the stalker feel in regards to killing Cassal?", "What is Cassal's weapon against his stalker?", "How does Dimanche help Cassal fight the stalker?", "What critical mistake does Dimanche make in regards to the stalker?", "What does Cassal hope to achieve by going to the Travelers Aid Bureau?", "How is the First Counselor close to right about why Cassal is trying to get to Tunney 21?", "What happened to Cassal's transport to Tunney 21?", "What does the First Counselor mention to Cassal about the instantaneous radio?" ]	[ [ "He knows the man's intention because Cassal has spies all over the planet looking out for him.", "He is aware of the man's intentions because Dimanche, a device he developed, can get signals from others and interpret their emotions in various ways.", "Dimanche, his companion, is a mind reader.", "The man has been stalking him for months, and he has finally caught up to him. He has left Cassal letters and messages saying that he plans to kill him as soon as he finds him alone." ], [ "He just wants to get Cassal's ID in order to have Cassal's security clearance.", "He is upset that Cassal is stuck on his planet.", "He wants to kill him to keep Cassal from mass-producing a device like Dimanche.", "He wants the secrets behind his creations." ], [ "He feels guilty about it, but he realizes that it's either Cassal or him.", "He is filled with rage and ready to attack.", "He is excited by the prospect of murdering someone.", "He is indifferent to killing him." ], [ "A lighter that has been converted into a stiletto.", "He has no weapon. He just wants the stalker to believe he has one.", "A lighter.", "A knife." ], [ "He shoots the stalker while Cassal grapples with him.", "He stabs the stalker while Cassal grapples with him.", "He helps Cassal attack the stalker.", "He tells Cassal exactly when and how to move against the stalker." ], [ "He tells Cassal to kill the wrong man.", "He tells Cassal that he is not dead, but he actually is, and Cassal does not hide the body, resulting in his arrest.", "He tells Cassal that he is dead, but he is not, and he escapes.", "He tells Cassal the wrong location of the stalker, and the stalker escapes unharmed." ], [ "He hopes to seek immunity.", "He hopes that he is able to acquire safe passage to his destination.", "He hopes that he is able to procure employment until he is able to leave the planet.", "He hopes to get his ID back." ], [ "She thinks he is going there to study under the best scientists in the universe, but, in fact, as he is the best scientist in the universe, he is going there to instruct the others.", "She thinks he is going there to study under the best scientists in the universe, but that is just a cover, as he is trying to escape before they find out he murdered the man who was stalking him.", "She thinks he is going there to study under the best scientists in the universe, but he is going there to deliver Dimanche to them.", "She thinks he is going there to study under the best scientists in the universe. In reality, he believes that he is pretty much one of the best there is, but there is one particular scientist that he needs to bring back with him." ], [ "It left for the planet the day before and it will be years, if he is lucky, before another ship returns going to that planet.", "He is banned from going to Tunney 21, and no one will take him there.", "It has been waiting for him, but he only has a short time to get to it before it leaves him.", "His stalker got on the transport to Tunney 21 using his ID and murdered everyone on board, so he is now wanted." ], [ "Cassal knows things in regards to the radio that he is not telling her, and he cannot leave until he does.", "She feels that the technology needed for the radio should never come to fruition because it will set the world back thousands of years if it falls into the wrong hands.", "She knows Cassal is in charge of the technology involved in creating the radio.", "The radio would be a wonderful solution to many of the communication issues across the universe, thus causing travel around the universe to be simplified." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal\n stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.\n\n\n \"Excellent thinking,\" commended Dimanche. \"He won't attempt anything\n on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted\n intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette.\"\n\n\n The lighter flared in his hand. \"That's one way of finding out,\" said\n Cassal. \"But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on\n getting back to the hotel?\"\n\n\n \"I'm curious. Turn here.\"\n\n\n \"Go to hell,\" said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that\n intersection, he turned there.\n\n\n It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily\n slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on\n the other.", "\"That's no lie,\" agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand.\n He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness\n assumed an even more sinister quality.\n\n\n \"Quiet,\" said Dimanche. \"He's verbalizing about you.\"\n\n\n \"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask\n me for a light.\"\n\n\n \"I don't think so,\" answered Dimanche. \"He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I\n hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'.\"\n\n\n \"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't\n there any clue?\"", "\"Follow her,\" instructed Dimanche. \"We've got to investigate our man at\n closer range.\"\nObediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive\n in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful\n out of her element, though.\n\n\n The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal\n retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow,\n physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with\n it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A\n scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.\n\n\n \"Nothing,\" said Dimanche disgustedly. \"His mind froze when we got\n close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed.\n Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans.\n That makes the knife definite.\"", "He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all\n very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was\n also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an\n electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.\n\n\n \"Easy,\" warned Dimanche. \"He's at the entrance to the alley, walking\n fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route.\"\n\n\n \"I'm surprised, too,\" remarked Cassal. \"But I wouldn't say I'm pleased.\n Not just now.\"\n\n\n \"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting.\" The mechanism\n concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:\n \"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like\n this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is\n critical.\"", "Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few\n seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected\n stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical\n instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its\n function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.\n\n\n \"Twenty feet away,\" advised Dimanche. \"He knows you can't see him, but\n he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare.\n What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep\n you posted below the level of his hearing.\"\n\n\n \"Stay on him,\" growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against\n the wall.\n\n\n \"To the right,\" whispered Dimanche. \"Lunge forward. About five feet.\n Low.\"", "Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude\n him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the\n streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would\n consider it dim.\n\n\n \"Why did he choose me?\" asked Cassal plaintively. \"There must be\n something he hopes to gain.\"\n\n\n \"I'm working on it,\" said Dimanche. \"But remember, I have limitations.\n At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret\n physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report\n what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in\n finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem\n over to the godawful police.\"\n\n\n \"Godolph, not godawful,\" corrected Cassal absently.", "\"None at all,\" admitted Dimanche. \"He's very close. You'd better turn\n around.\"\nCassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him\n feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.\n\n\n A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the\n alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant\n shot by.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling\n that no one was going to come to his assistance.\n\n\n \"He wasn't expecting that reaction,\" explained Dimanche. \"That's why he\n missed. He's turned around and is coming back.\"\n\n\n \"I'm armed!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n \"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you.\"", "Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with\n that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was\n self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?\nDenton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself.\n He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched\n to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the\n basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long\n journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go\n to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the\n company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.\n\n\n The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his\n mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money\n wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What\ndid\nthe\n thug want?", "\"Not interested,\" said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible\n to anyone but Dimanche. \"I'm not the victim type. He was standing on\n the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the\n habitat hotel and sit tight.\"\n\n\n \"First you have to get there,\" Dimanche pointed out. \"I mean, is it\n safe for a stranger to walk through the city?\"\n\n\n \"Now that you mention it, no,\" answered Cassal. He looked around\n apprehensively. \"Where is he?\"\n\"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise\n display.\"\n\n\n A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was\n accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple\n bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all\n travelers were crazy.", "That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give\n the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various\n reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called\n Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own,\n say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the\n proper approach, either.\n\n\n \"Weapons?\"\n\n\n \"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long\n knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person.\"\n\n\n Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in\n semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could\n die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of\n protection himself.\n\n\n \"Report,\" said Dimanche. \"Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on\n tenuous evidence.\"\n\n\n \"Let's have it anyway.\"", "Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of\n a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately,\n his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance,\n the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His\n opponent gasped and broke away.\n\n\n \"Attack!\" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. \"You've got\n him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's\n afraid.\"\n\n\n Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some\n didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent\n fell to the ground, gasped and was silent.\n\n\n Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near\n the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't\n move.", "Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job,\n afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He\n shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but\n he didn't intend to depend on that alone.", "Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was\n too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for\n anyone this far away to have learned about it.\n\n\n And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as\n dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't\n involve too much risk.\n\n\n \"Better start moving.\" That was Dimanche. \"He's getting suspicious.\"\n\n\n Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of\n that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually\n was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives\n like rain.", "Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the\n boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence.\n\n\n He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him.\n Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly\n trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he\n was forced to the ground.\n\n\n He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps\n rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping\n by way of water.\n\n\n Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in\n sight.\n\n\n \"Interpret body data, do you?\" muttered Cassal. \"Liveliest dead man\n I've ever been strangled by.\"", "Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk.\n It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he\ncould\nwalk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?\n\n\n A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was\n peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was\n at a definite disadvantage.\n\n\n \"Correction,\" said Dimanche. \"Not simple assault. He has murder in\n mind.\"\n\n\n \"It still doesn't appeal to me,\" said Cassal. Striving to look\n unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and\n stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside,\n he might find safety for a time.", "Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of\n this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Dimanche irritably. \"I can interpret body\n data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat.\"\n\n\n Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles\n of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount\n of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A\n picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which\n resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.\n\n\n Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed\n to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of\n getting to Tunney 21.", "\"It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the\n basic functions of their body,\" said Dimanche defensively. \"When I\n checked him, he had no heartbeat.\"\n\n\n \"Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely,\" grunted\n Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't\nwanted\nto kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the\n police.\n\n\n He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second\n time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was\n successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He\n squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away.\n\n\n Something, however, was missing—his wallet.\n\n\n The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle.\n Persistent fellow. Damned persistent.", "\"Heartbeat slow,\" said Dimanche solemnly. \"Breathing barely\n perceptible.\"\n\n\n \"Then he's not dead,\" said Cassal in relief.\n\n\n Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed\n from cuts on the face.\n\n\n \"Respiration none, heartbeat absent,\" stated Dimanche.\nHorrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but\n would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to\n investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would\n question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what\n could he do about it?\n\n\n Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney\n 21?", "\"I see.\" The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless,\n it sounded depressing.\n\n\n \"What I want to know is,\" said Dimanche, \"why such precautions as\n electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?\"\n\n\n Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly\n inquisitive at times.\n\n\n Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on\n the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man\n was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed\n every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was\n removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him.\n He turned and peered.\n\n\n \"You stuck here, too?\" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.", "\"Stuck?\" repeated Cassal. \"I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting\n for my ship.\" He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.\n \"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency.\n Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency\n were new.\"\n\n\n The old man chuckled. \"Re-organization. The previous first counselor\n resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one\n didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed.\"\n\n\n She would do just that, thought Cassal. \"What about this Murra Foray?\"\n\n\n The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed\n overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away." ], [ "\"That's no lie,\" agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand.\n He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness\n assumed an even more sinister quality.\n\n\n \"Quiet,\" said Dimanche. \"He's verbalizing about you.\"\n\n\n \"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask\n me for a light.\"\n\n\n \"I don't think so,\" answered Dimanche. \"He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I\n hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'.\"\n\n\n \"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't\n there any clue?\"", "\"None at all,\" admitted Dimanche. \"He's very close. You'd better turn\n around.\"\nCassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him\n feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.\n\n\n A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the\n alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant\n shot by.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling\n that no one was going to come to his assistance.\n\n\n \"He wasn't expecting that reaction,\" explained Dimanche. \"That's why he\n missed. He's turned around and is coming back.\"\n\n\n \"I'm armed!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n \"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you.\"", "Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few\n seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected\n stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical\n instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its\n function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.\n\n\n \"Twenty feet away,\" advised Dimanche. \"He knows you can't see him, but\n he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare.\n What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep\n you posted below the level of his hearing.\"\n\n\n \"Stay on him,\" growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against\n the wall.\n\n\n \"To the right,\" whispered Dimanche. \"Lunge forward. About five feet.\n Low.\"", "\"Follow her,\" instructed Dimanche. \"We've got to investigate our man at\n closer range.\"\nObediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive\n in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful\n out of her element, though.\n\n\n The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal\n retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow,\n physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with\n it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A\n scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.\n\n\n \"Nothing,\" said Dimanche disgustedly. \"His mind froze when we got\n close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed.\n Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans.\n That makes the knife definite.\"", "Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal\n stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.\n\n\n \"Excellent thinking,\" commended Dimanche. \"He won't attempt anything\n on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted\n intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette.\"\n\n\n The lighter flared in his hand. \"That's one way of finding out,\" said\n Cassal. \"But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on\n getting back to the hotel?\"\n\n\n \"I'm curious. Turn here.\"\n\n\n \"Go to hell,\" said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that\n intersection, he turned there.\n\n\n It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily\n slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on\n the other.", "Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job,\n afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He\n shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but\n he didn't intend to depend on that alone.", "He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all\n very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was\n also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an\n electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.\n\n\n \"Easy,\" warned Dimanche. \"He's at the entrance to the alley, walking\n fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route.\"\n\n\n \"I'm surprised, too,\" remarked Cassal. \"But I wouldn't say I'm pleased.\n Not just now.\"\n\n\n \"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting.\" The mechanism\n concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:\n \"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like\n this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is\n critical.\"", "That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give\n the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various\n reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called\n Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own,\n say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the\n proper approach, either.\n\n\n \"Weapons?\"\n\n\n \"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long\n knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person.\"\n\n\n Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in\n semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could\n die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of\n protection himself.\n\n\n \"Report,\" said Dimanche. \"Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on\n tenuous evidence.\"\n\n\n \"Let's have it anyway.\"", "\"Not interested,\" said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible\n to anyone but Dimanche. \"I'm not the victim type. He was standing on\n the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the\n habitat hotel and sit tight.\"\n\n\n \"First you have to get there,\" Dimanche pointed out. \"I mean, is it\n safe for a stranger to walk through the city?\"\n\n\n \"Now that you mention it, no,\" answered Cassal. He looked around\n apprehensively. \"Where is he?\"\n\"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise\n display.\"\n\n\n A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was\n accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple\n bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all\n travelers were crazy.", "Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with\n that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was\n self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?\nDenton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself.\n He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched\n to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the\n basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long\n journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go\n to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the\n company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.\n\n\n The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his\n mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money\n wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What\ndid\nthe\n thug want?", "\"Stuck?\" repeated Cassal. \"I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting\n for my ship.\" He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.\n \"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency.\n Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency\n were new.\"\n\n\n The old man chuckled. \"Re-organization. The previous first counselor\n resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one\n didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed.\"\n\n\n She would do just that, thought Cassal. \"What about this Murra Foray?\"\n\n\n The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed\n overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away.", "Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude\n him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the\n streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would\n consider it dim.\n\n\n \"Why did he choose me?\" asked Cassal plaintively. \"There must be\n something he hopes to gain.\"\n\n\n \"I'm working on it,\" said Dimanche. \"But remember, I have limitations.\n At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret\n physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report\n what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in\n finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem\n over to the godawful police.\"\n\n\n \"Godolph, not godawful,\" corrected Cassal absently.", "Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was\n too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for\n anyone this far away to have learned about it.\n\n\n And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as\n dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't\n involve too much risk.\n\n\n \"Better start moving.\" That was Dimanche. \"He's getting suspicious.\"\n\n\n Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of\n that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually\n was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives\n like rain.", "\"I see.\" The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless,\n it sounded depressing.\n\n\n \"What I want to know is,\" said Dimanche, \"why such precautions as\n electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?\"\n\n\n Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly\n inquisitive at times.\n\n\n Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on\n the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man\n was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed\n every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was\n removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him.\n He turned and peered.\n\n\n \"You stuck here, too?\" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.", "Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk.\n It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he\ncould\nwalk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?\n\n\n A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was\n peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was\n at a definite disadvantage.\n\n\n \"Correction,\" said Dimanche. \"Not simple assault. He has murder in\n mind.\"\n\n\n \"It still doesn't appeal to me,\" said Cassal. Striving to look\n unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and\n stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside,\n he might find safety for a time.", "Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of\n a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately,\n his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance,\n the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His\n opponent gasped and broke away.\n\n\n \"Attack!\" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. \"You've got\n him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's\n afraid.\"\n\n\n Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some\n didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent\n fell to the ground, gasped and was silent.\n\n\n Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near\n the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't\n move.", "Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the\n boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence.\n\n\n He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him.\n Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly\n trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he\n was forced to the ground.\n\n\n He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps\n rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping\n by way of water.\n\n\n Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in\n sight.\n\n\n \"Interpret body data, do you?\" muttered Cassal. \"Liveliest dead man\n I've ever been strangled by.\"", "\"It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the\n basic functions of their body,\" said Dimanche defensively. \"When I\n checked him, he had no heartbeat.\"\n\n\n \"Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely,\" grunted\n Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't\nwanted\nto kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the\n police.\n\n\n He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second\n time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was\n successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He\n squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away.\n\n\n Something, however, was missing—his wallet.\n\n\n The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle.\n Persistent fellow. Damned persistent.", "Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of\n this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Dimanche irritably. \"I can interpret body\n data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat.\"\n\n\n Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles\n of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount\n of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A\n picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which\n resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.\n\n\n Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed\n to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of\n getting to Tunney 21.", "\"You are speaking to her,\" she said. Her face disappeared from the\n screen.\n\n\n Cassal sighed. So far he hadn't made a good impression.\n\n\n Travelers Aid Bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly\n supplied with official curiosity. When the machine finished with him,\n Cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of\n him. His individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and\n answers. One thing he drew the line at—why he wanted to go to Tunney\n 21 was his own business." ], [ "\"That's no lie,\" agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand.\n He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness\n assumed an even more sinister quality.\n\n\n \"Quiet,\" said Dimanche. \"He's verbalizing about you.\"\n\n\n \"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask\n me for a light.\"\n\n\n \"I don't think so,\" answered Dimanche. \"He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I\n hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'.\"\n\n\n \"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't\n there any clue?\"", "\"Follow her,\" instructed Dimanche. \"We've got to investigate our man at\n closer range.\"\nObediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive\n in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful\n out of her element, though.\n\n\n The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal\n retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow,\n physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with\n it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A\n scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.\n\n\n \"Nothing,\" said Dimanche disgustedly. \"His mind froze when we got\n close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed.\n Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans.\n That makes the knife definite.\"", "Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few\n seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected\n stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical\n instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its\n function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.\n\n\n \"Twenty feet away,\" advised Dimanche. \"He knows you can't see him, but\n he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare.\n What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep\n you posted below the level of his hearing.\"\n\n\n \"Stay on him,\" growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against\n the wall.\n\n\n \"To the right,\" whispered Dimanche. \"Lunge forward. About five feet.\n Low.\"", "\"None at all,\" admitted Dimanche. \"He's very close. You'd better turn\n around.\"\nCassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him\n feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.\n\n\n A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the\n alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant\n shot by.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling\n that no one was going to come to his assistance.\n\n\n \"He wasn't expecting that reaction,\" explained Dimanche. \"That's why he\n missed. He's turned around and is coming back.\"\n\n\n \"I'm armed!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n \"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you.\"", "Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of\n a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately,\n his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance,\n the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His\n opponent gasped and broke away.\n\n\n \"Attack!\" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. \"You've got\n him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's\n afraid.\"\n\n\n Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some\n didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent\n fell to the ground, gasped and was silent.\n\n\n Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near\n the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't\n move.", "He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all\n very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was\n also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an\n electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.\n\n\n \"Easy,\" warned Dimanche. \"He's at the entrance to the alley, walking\n fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route.\"\n\n\n \"I'm surprised, too,\" remarked Cassal. \"But I wouldn't say I'm pleased.\n Not just now.\"\n\n\n \"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting.\" The mechanism\n concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:\n \"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like\n this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is\n critical.\"", "Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal\n stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.\n\n\n \"Excellent thinking,\" commended Dimanche. \"He won't attempt anything\n on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted\n intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette.\"\n\n\n The lighter flared in his hand. \"That's one way of finding out,\" said\n Cassal. \"But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on\n getting back to the hotel?\"\n\n\n \"I'm curious. Turn here.\"\n\n\n \"Go to hell,\" said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that\n intersection, he turned there.\n\n\n It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily\n slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on\n the other.", "That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give\n the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various\n reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called\n Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own,\n say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the\n proper approach, either.\n\n\n \"Weapons?\"\n\n\n \"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long\n knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person.\"\n\n\n Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in\n semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could\n die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of\n protection himself.\n\n\n \"Report,\" said Dimanche. \"Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on\n tenuous evidence.\"\n\n\n \"Let's have it anyway.\"", "Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the\n boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence.\n\n\n He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him.\n Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly\n trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he\n was forced to the ground.\n\n\n He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps\n rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping\n by way of water.\n\n\n Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in\n sight.\n\n\n \"Interpret body data, do you?\" muttered Cassal. \"Liveliest dead man\n I've ever been strangled by.\"", "\"Heartbeat slow,\" said Dimanche solemnly. \"Breathing barely\n perceptible.\"\n\n\n \"Then he's not dead,\" said Cassal in relief.\n\n\n Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed\n from cuts on the face.\n\n\n \"Respiration none, heartbeat absent,\" stated Dimanche.\nHorrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but\n would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to\n investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would\n question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what\n could he do about it?\n\n\n Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney\n 21?", "\"It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the\n basic functions of their body,\" said Dimanche defensively. \"When I\n checked him, he had no heartbeat.\"\n\n\n \"Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely,\" grunted\n Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't\nwanted\nto kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the\n police.\n\n\n He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second\n time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was\n successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He\n squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away.\n\n\n Something, however, was missing—his wallet.\n\n\n The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle.\n Persistent fellow. Damned persistent.", "Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude\n him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the\n streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would\n consider it dim.\n\n\n \"Why did he choose me?\" asked Cassal plaintively. \"There must be\n something he hopes to gain.\"\n\n\n \"I'm working on it,\" said Dimanche. \"But remember, I have limitations.\n At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret\n physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report\n what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in\n finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem\n over to the godawful police.\"\n\n\n \"Godolph, not godawful,\" corrected Cassal absently.", "Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk.\n It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he\ncould\nwalk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?\n\n\n A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was\n peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was\n at a definite disadvantage.\n\n\n \"Correction,\" said Dimanche. \"Not simple assault. He has murder in\n mind.\"\n\n\n \"It still doesn't appeal to me,\" said Cassal. Striving to look\n unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and\n stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside,\n he might find safety for a time.", "\"Not interested,\" said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible\n to anyone but Dimanche. \"I'm not the victim type. He was standing on\n the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the\n habitat hotel and sit tight.\"\n\n\n \"First you have to get there,\" Dimanche pointed out. \"I mean, is it\n safe for a stranger to walk through the city?\"\n\n\n \"Now that you mention it, no,\" answered Cassal. He looked around\n apprehensively. \"Where is he?\"\n\"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise\n display.\"\n\n\n A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was\n accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple\n bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all\n travelers were crazy.", "Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of\n this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Dimanche irritably. \"I can interpret body\n data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat.\"\n\n\n Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles\n of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount\n of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A\n picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which\n resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.\n\n\n Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed\n to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of\n getting to Tunney 21.", "Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was\n too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for\n anyone this far away to have learned about it.\n\n\n And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as\n dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't\n involve too much risk.\n\n\n \"Better start moving.\" That was Dimanche. \"He's getting suspicious.\"\n\n\n Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of\n that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually\n was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives\n like rain.", "Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job,\n afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He\n shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but\n he didn't intend to depend on that alone.", "\"Stuck?\" repeated Cassal. \"I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting\n for my ship.\" He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.\n \"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency.\n Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency\n were new.\"\n\n\n The old man chuckled. \"Re-organization. The previous first counselor\n resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one\n didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed.\"\n\n\n She would do just that, thought Cassal. \"What about this Murra Foray?\"\n\n\n The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed\n overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away.", "Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with\n that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was\n self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?\nDenton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself.\n He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched\n to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the\n basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long\n journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go\n to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the\n company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.\n\n\n The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his\n mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money\n wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What\ndid\nthe\n thug want?", "\"I see.\" The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless,\n it sounded depressing.\n\n\n \"What I want to know is,\" said Dimanche, \"why such precautions as\n electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?\"\n\n\n Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly\n inquisitive at times.\n\n\n Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on\n the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man\n was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed\n every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was\n removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him.\n He turned and peered.\n\n\n \"You stuck here, too?\" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged." ], [ "Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few\n seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected\n stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical\n instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its\n function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.\n\n\n \"Twenty feet away,\" advised Dimanche. \"He knows you can't see him, but\n he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare.\n What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep\n you posted below the level of his hearing.\"\n\n\n \"Stay on him,\" growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against\n the wall.\n\n\n \"To the right,\" whispered Dimanche. \"Lunge forward. About five feet.\n Low.\"", "\"None at all,\" admitted Dimanche. \"He's very close. You'd better turn\n around.\"\nCassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him\n feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.\n\n\n A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the\n alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant\n shot by.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling\n that no one was going to come to his assistance.\n\n\n \"He wasn't expecting that reaction,\" explained Dimanche. \"That's why he\n missed. He's turned around and is coming back.\"\n\n\n \"I'm armed!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n \"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you.\"", "\"That's no lie,\" agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand.\n He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness\n assumed an even more sinister quality.\n\n\n \"Quiet,\" said Dimanche. \"He's verbalizing about you.\"\n\n\n \"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask\n me for a light.\"\n\n\n \"I don't think so,\" answered Dimanche. \"He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I\n hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'.\"\n\n\n \"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't\n there any clue?\"", "Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal\n stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.\n\n\n \"Excellent thinking,\" commended Dimanche. \"He won't attempt anything\n on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted\n intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette.\"\n\n\n The lighter flared in his hand. \"That's one way of finding out,\" said\n Cassal. \"But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on\n getting back to the hotel?\"\n\n\n \"I'm curious. Turn here.\"\n\n\n \"Go to hell,\" said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that\n intersection, he turned there.\n\n\n It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily\n slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on\n the other.", "That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give\n the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various\n reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called\n Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own,\n say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the\n proper approach, either.\n\n\n \"Weapons?\"\n\n\n \"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long\n knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person.\"\n\n\n Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in\n semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could\n die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of\n protection himself.\n\n\n \"Report,\" said Dimanche. \"Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on\n tenuous evidence.\"\n\n\n \"Let's have it anyway.\"", "\"Follow her,\" instructed Dimanche. \"We've got to investigate our man at\n closer range.\"\nObediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive\n in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful\n out of her element, though.\n\n\n The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal\n retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow,\n physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with\n it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A\n scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.\n\n\n \"Nothing,\" said Dimanche disgustedly. \"His mind froze when we got\n close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed.\n Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans.\n That makes the knife definite.\"", "He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all\n very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was\n also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an\n electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.\n\n\n \"Easy,\" warned Dimanche. \"He's at the entrance to the alley, walking\n fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route.\"\n\n\n \"I'm surprised, too,\" remarked Cassal. \"But I wouldn't say I'm pleased.\n Not just now.\"\n\n\n \"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting.\" The mechanism\n concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:\n \"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like\n this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is\n critical.\"", "Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of\n a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately,\n his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance,\n the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His\n opponent gasped and broke away.\n\n\n \"Attack!\" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. \"You've got\n him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's\n afraid.\"\n\n\n Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some\n didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent\n fell to the ground, gasped and was silent.\n\n\n Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near\n the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't\n move.", "Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was\n too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for\n anyone this far away to have learned about it.\n\n\n And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as\n dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't\n involve too much risk.\n\n\n \"Better start moving.\" That was Dimanche. \"He's getting suspicious.\"\n\n\n Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of\n that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually\n was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives\n like rain.", "Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude\n him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the\n streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would\n consider it dim.\n\n\n \"Why did he choose me?\" asked Cassal plaintively. \"There must be\n something he hopes to gain.\"\n\n\n \"I'm working on it,\" said Dimanche. \"But remember, I have limitations.\n At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret\n physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report\n what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in\n finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem\n over to the godawful police.\"\n\n\n \"Godolph, not godawful,\" corrected Cassal absently.", "\"It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the\n basic functions of their body,\" said Dimanche defensively. \"When I\n checked him, he had no heartbeat.\"\n\n\n \"Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely,\" grunted\n Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't\nwanted\nto kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the\n police.\n\n\n He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second\n time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was\n successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He\n squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away.\n\n\n Something, however, was missing—his wallet.\n\n\n The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle.\n Persistent fellow. Damned persistent.", "Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the\n boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence.\n\n\n He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him.\n Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly\n trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he\n was forced to the ground.\n\n\n He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps\n rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping\n by way of water.\n\n\n Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in\n sight.\n\n\n \"Interpret body data, do you?\" muttered Cassal. \"Liveliest dead man\n I've ever been strangled by.\"", "\"Not interested,\" said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible\n to anyone but Dimanche. \"I'm not the victim type. He was standing on\n the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the\n habitat hotel and sit tight.\"\n\n\n \"First you have to get there,\" Dimanche pointed out. \"I mean, is it\n safe for a stranger to walk through the city?\"\n\n\n \"Now that you mention it, no,\" answered Cassal. He looked around\n apprehensively. \"Where is he?\"\n\"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise\n display.\"\n\n\n A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was\n accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple\n bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all\n travelers were crazy.", "\"Heartbeat slow,\" said Dimanche solemnly. \"Breathing barely\n perceptible.\"\n\n\n \"Then he's not dead,\" said Cassal in relief.\n\n\n Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed\n from cuts on the face.\n\n\n \"Respiration none, heartbeat absent,\" stated Dimanche.\nHorrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but\n would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to\n investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would\n question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what\n could he do about it?\n\n\n Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney\n 21?", "Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk.\n It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he\ncould\nwalk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?\n\n\n A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was\n peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was\n at a definite disadvantage.\n\n\n \"Correction,\" said Dimanche. \"Not simple assault. He has murder in\n mind.\"\n\n\n \"It still doesn't appeal to me,\" said Cassal. Striving to look\n unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and\n stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside,\n he might find safety for a time.", "Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job,\n afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He\n shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but\n he didn't intend to depend on that alone.", "Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of\n this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Dimanche irritably. \"I can interpret body\n data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat.\"\n\n\n Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles\n of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount\n of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A\n picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which\n resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.\n\n\n Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed\n to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of\n getting to Tunney 21.", "Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with\n that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was\n self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?\nDenton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself.\n He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched\n to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the\n basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long\n journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go\n to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the\n company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.\n\n\n The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his\n mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money\n wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What\ndid\nthe\n thug want?", "\"I see.\" The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless,\n it sounded depressing.\n\n\n \"What I want to know is,\" said Dimanche, \"why such precautions as\n electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?\"\n\n\n Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly\n inquisitive at times.\n\n\n Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on\n the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man\n was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed\n every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was\n removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him.\n He turned and peered.\n\n\n \"You stuck here, too?\" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.", "\"Cassal,\" he said firmly. \"Denton Cassal, sales engineer, Earth. If you\n don't believe it, send back to—\" He stopped. It had taken him four\n months to get to Godolph, non-stop, plus a six-month wait on Earth for\n a ship to show up that was bound in the right direction. Over distances\n such as these, it just wasn't practical to send back to Earth for\n anything.\n\n\n \"I see you understand.\" She glanced at the card in her hand. \"The\n spaceport records indicate that when\nRickrock C\ntook off this\n morning, there was a Denton Cassal on board, bound for Tunney 21.\"\n\n\n \"It wasn't I,\" he said dazedly. He knew who it was, though. The man who\n had tried to kill him last night. The reason for the attack now became\n clear. The thug had wanted his identification tab. Worse, he had gotten\n it." ], [ "Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few\n seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected\n stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical\n instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its\n function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.\n\n\n \"Twenty feet away,\" advised Dimanche. \"He knows you can't see him, but\n he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare.\n What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep\n you posted below the level of his hearing.\"\n\n\n \"Stay on him,\" growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against\n the wall.\n\n\n \"To the right,\" whispered Dimanche. \"Lunge forward. About five feet.\n Low.\"", "\"None at all,\" admitted Dimanche. \"He's very close. You'd better turn\n around.\"\nCassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him\n feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.\n\n\n A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the\n alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant\n shot by.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling\n that no one was going to come to his assistance.\n\n\n \"He wasn't expecting that reaction,\" explained Dimanche. \"That's why he\n missed. He's turned around and is coming back.\"\n\n\n \"I'm armed!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n \"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you.\"", "\"That's no lie,\" agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand.\n He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness\n assumed an even more sinister quality.\n\n\n \"Quiet,\" said Dimanche. \"He's verbalizing about you.\"\n\n\n \"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask\n me for a light.\"\n\n\n \"I don't think so,\" answered Dimanche. \"He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I\n hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'.\"\n\n\n \"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't\n there any clue?\"", "That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give\n the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various\n reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called\n Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own,\n say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the\n proper approach, either.\n\n\n \"Weapons?\"\n\n\n \"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long\n knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person.\"\n\n\n Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in\n semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could\n die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of\n protection himself.\n\n\n \"Report,\" said Dimanche. \"Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on\n tenuous evidence.\"\n\n\n \"Let's have it anyway.\"", "Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal\n stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.\n\n\n \"Excellent thinking,\" commended Dimanche. \"He won't attempt anything\n on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted\n intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette.\"\n\n\n The lighter flared in his hand. \"That's one way of finding out,\" said\n Cassal. \"But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on\n getting back to the hotel?\"\n\n\n \"I'm curious. Turn here.\"\n\n\n \"Go to hell,\" said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that\n intersection, he turned there.\n\n\n It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily\n slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on\n the other.", "Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of\n a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately,\n his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance,\n the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His\n opponent gasped and broke away.\n\n\n \"Attack!\" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. \"You've got\n him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's\n afraid.\"\n\n\n Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some\n didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent\n fell to the ground, gasped and was silent.\n\n\n Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near\n the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't\n move.", "\"Follow her,\" instructed Dimanche. \"We've got to investigate our man at\n closer range.\"\nObediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive\n in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful\n out of her element, though.\n\n\n The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal\n retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow,\n physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with\n it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A\n scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.\n\n\n \"Nothing,\" said Dimanche disgustedly. \"His mind froze when we got\n close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed.\n Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans.\n That makes the knife definite.\"", "He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all\n very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was\n also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an\n electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.\n\n\n \"Easy,\" warned Dimanche. \"He's at the entrance to the alley, walking\n fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route.\"\n\n\n \"I'm surprised, too,\" remarked Cassal. \"But I wouldn't say I'm pleased.\n Not just now.\"\n\n\n \"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting.\" The mechanism\n concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:\n \"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like\n this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is\n critical.\"", "Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the\n boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence.\n\n\n He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him.\n Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly\n trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he\n was forced to the ground.\n\n\n He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps\n rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping\n by way of water.\n\n\n Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in\n sight.\n\n\n \"Interpret body data, do you?\" muttered Cassal. \"Liveliest dead man\n I've ever been strangled by.\"", "Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was\n too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for\n anyone this far away to have learned about it.\n\n\n And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as\n dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't\n involve too much risk.\n\n\n \"Better start moving.\" That was Dimanche. \"He's getting suspicious.\"\n\n\n Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of\n that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually\n was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives\n like rain.", "\"Heartbeat slow,\" said Dimanche solemnly. \"Breathing barely\n perceptible.\"\n\n\n \"Then he's not dead,\" said Cassal in relief.\n\n\n Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed\n from cuts on the face.\n\n\n \"Respiration none, heartbeat absent,\" stated Dimanche.\nHorrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but\n would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to\n investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would\n question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what\n could he do about it?\n\n\n Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney\n 21?", "Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude\n him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the\n streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would\n consider it dim.\n\n\n \"Why did he choose me?\" asked Cassal plaintively. \"There must be\n something he hopes to gain.\"\n\n\n \"I'm working on it,\" said Dimanche. \"But remember, I have limitations.\n At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret\n physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report\n what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in\n finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem\n over to the godawful police.\"\n\n\n \"Godolph, not godawful,\" corrected Cassal absently.", "\"Not interested,\" said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible\n to anyone but Dimanche. \"I'm not the victim type. He was standing on\n the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the\n habitat hotel and sit tight.\"\n\n\n \"First you have to get there,\" Dimanche pointed out. \"I mean, is it\n safe for a stranger to walk through the city?\"\n\n\n \"Now that you mention it, no,\" answered Cassal. He looked around\n apprehensively. \"Where is he?\"\n\"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise\n display.\"\n\n\n A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was\n accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple\n bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all\n travelers were crazy.", "\"It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the\n basic functions of their body,\" said Dimanche defensively. \"When I\n checked him, he had no heartbeat.\"\n\n\n \"Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely,\" grunted\n Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't\nwanted\nto kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the\n police.\n\n\n He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second\n time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was\n successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He\n squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away.\n\n\n Something, however, was missing—his wallet.\n\n\n The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle.\n Persistent fellow. Damned persistent.", "Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of\n this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Dimanche irritably. \"I can interpret body\n data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat.\"\n\n\n Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles\n of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount\n of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A\n picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which\n resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.\n\n\n Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed\n to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of\n getting to Tunney 21.", "Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with\n that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was\n self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?\nDenton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself.\n He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched\n to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the\n basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long\n journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go\n to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the\n company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.\n\n\n The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his\n mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money\n wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What\ndid\nthe\n thug want?", "\"I see.\" The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless,\n it sounded depressing.\n\n\n \"What I want to know is,\" said Dimanche, \"why such precautions as\n electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?\"\n\n\n Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly\n inquisitive at times.\n\n\n Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on\n the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man\n was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed\n every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was\n removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him.\n He turned and peered.\n\n\n \"You stuck here, too?\" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.", "Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk.\n It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he\ncould\nwalk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?\n\n\n A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was\n peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was\n at a definite disadvantage.\n\n\n \"Correction,\" said Dimanche. \"Not simple assault. He has murder in\n mind.\"\n\n\n \"It still doesn't appeal to me,\" said Cassal. Striving to look\n unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and\n stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside,\n he might find safety for a time.", "\"I don't need that kind of luck.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose not.\" She hesitated. \"You're determined to go on?\" At the\n emphatic nod, she sighed. \"If that's your decision, we'll try to help\n you. To start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification\n tab.\"\n\n\n \"There's something funny about her,\" Dimanche decided. It was the usual\n speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood\n made in coursing through arteries and veins. Cassal could hear it\n plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear.\n\n\n Cassal ignored his private voice. \"Identification tab? I don't have it\n with me. In fact, I may have lost it.\"", "His part was simple, on the surface. He was to persuade that researcher\n to come to Earth,\nif he could\n. Literally, he had to guess the\n Tunnesian's price before the Tunnesian himself knew it. In addition,\n the reputation of Tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their\n arrogance, Cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working\n for ignorant Earth savages. The existence of such an instrument as\n Dimanche was a key factor.\n\n\n Her voice broke through his thoughts. \"Now, then, what's your problem?\"\n\n\n \"I was told on Earth I might have to wait a few days on Godolph. I've\n been here three weeks. I want information on the ship bound for Tunney\n 21.\"\n\n\n \"Just a moment.\" She glanced at something below the angle of the\n screen. She looked up and her eyes were grave. \"\nRickrock C\narrived\n yesterday. Departed for Tunney early this morning.\"" ], [ "\"None at all,\" admitted Dimanche. \"He's very close. You'd better turn\n around.\"\nCassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him\n feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.\n\n\n A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the\n alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant\n shot by.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling\n that no one was going to come to his assistance.\n\n\n \"He wasn't expecting that reaction,\" explained Dimanche. \"That's why he\n missed. He's turned around and is coming back.\"\n\n\n \"I'm armed!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n \"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you.\"", "\"That's no lie,\" agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand.\n He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness\n assumed an even more sinister quality.\n\n\n \"Quiet,\" said Dimanche. \"He's verbalizing about you.\"\n\n\n \"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask\n me for a light.\"\n\n\n \"I don't think so,\" answered Dimanche. \"He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I\n hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'.\"\n\n\n \"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't\n there any clue?\"", "That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give\n the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various\n reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called\n Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own,\n say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the\n proper approach, either.\n\n\n \"Weapons?\"\n\n\n \"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long\n knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person.\"\n\n\n Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in\n semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could\n die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of\n protection himself.\n\n\n \"Report,\" said Dimanche. \"Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on\n tenuous evidence.\"\n\n\n \"Let's have it anyway.\"", "\"Follow her,\" instructed Dimanche. \"We've got to investigate our man at\n closer range.\"\nObediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive\n in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful\n out of her element, though.\n\n\n The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal\n retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow,\n physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with\n it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A\n scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.\n\n\n \"Nothing,\" said Dimanche disgustedly. \"His mind froze when we got\n close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed.\n Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans.\n That makes the knife definite.\"", "He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all\n very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was\n also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an\n electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.\n\n\n \"Easy,\" warned Dimanche. \"He's at the entrance to the alley, walking\n fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route.\"\n\n\n \"I'm surprised, too,\" remarked Cassal. \"But I wouldn't say I'm pleased.\n Not just now.\"\n\n\n \"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting.\" The mechanism\n concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:\n \"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like\n this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is\n critical.\"", "Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal\n stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.\n\n\n \"Excellent thinking,\" commended Dimanche. \"He won't attempt anything\n on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted\n intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette.\"\n\n\n The lighter flared in his hand. \"That's one way of finding out,\" said\n Cassal. \"But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on\n getting back to the hotel?\"\n\n\n \"I'm curious. Turn here.\"\n\n\n \"Go to hell,\" said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that\n intersection, he turned there.\n\n\n It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily\n slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on\n the other.", "Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few\n seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected\n stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical\n instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its\n function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.\n\n\n \"Twenty feet away,\" advised Dimanche. \"He knows you can't see him, but\n he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare.\n What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep\n you posted below the level of his hearing.\"\n\n\n \"Stay on him,\" growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against\n the wall.\n\n\n \"To the right,\" whispered Dimanche. \"Lunge forward. About five feet.\n Low.\"", "Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of\n a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately,\n his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance,\n the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His\n opponent gasped and broke away.\n\n\n \"Attack!\" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. \"You've got\n him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's\n afraid.\"\n\n\n Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some\n didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent\n fell to the ground, gasped and was silent.\n\n\n Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near\n the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't\n move.", "Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with\n that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was\n self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?\nDenton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself.\n He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched\n to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the\n basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long\n journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go\n to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the\n company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.\n\n\n The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his\n mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money\n wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What\ndid\nthe\n thug want?", "Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the\n boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence.\n\n\n He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him.\n Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly\n trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he\n was forced to the ground.\n\n\n He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps\n rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping\n by way of water.\n\n\n Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in\n sight.\n\n\n \"Interpret body data, do you?\" muttered Cassal. \"Liveliest dead man\n I've ever been strangled by.\"", "\"Heartbeat slow,\" said Dimanche solemnly. \"Breathing barely\n perceptible.\"\n\n\n \"Then he's not dead,\" said Cassal in relief.\n\n\n Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed\n from cuts on the face.\n\n\n \"Respiration none, heartbeat absent,\" stated Dimanche.\nHorrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but\n would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to\n investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would\n question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what\n could he do about it?\n\n\n Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney\n 21?", "Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was\n too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for\n anyone this far away to have learned about it.\n\n\n And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as\n dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't\n involve too much risk.\n\n\n \"Better start moving.\" That was Dimanche. \"He's getting suspicious.\"\n\n\n Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of\n that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually\n was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives\n like rain.", "Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude\n him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the\n streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would\n consider it dim.\n\n\n \"Why did he choose me?\" asked Cassal plaintively. \"There must be\n something he hopes to gain.\"\n\n\n \"I'm working on it,\" said Dimanche. \"But remember, I have limitations.\n At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret\n physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report\n what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in\n finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem\n over to the godawful police.\"\n\n\n \"Godolph, not godawful,\" corrected Cassal absently.", "Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of\n this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Dimanche irritably. \"I can interpret body\n data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat.\"\n\n\n Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles\n of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount\n of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A\n picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which\n resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.\n\n\n Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed\n to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of\n getting to Tunney 21.", "\"It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the\n basic functions of their body,\" said Dimanche defensively. \"When I\n checked him, he had no heartbeat.\"\n\n\n \"Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely,\" grunted\n Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't\nwanted\nto kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the\n police.\n\n\n He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second\n time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was\n successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He\n squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away.\n\n\n Something, however, was missing—his wallet.\n\n\n The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle.\n Persistent fellow. Damned persistent.", "\"Not interested,\" said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible\n to anyone but Dimanche. \"I'm not the victim type. He was standing on\n the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the\n habitat hotel and sit tight.\"\n\n\n \"First you have to get there,\" Dimanche pointed out. \"I mean, is it\n safe for a stranger to walk through the city?\"\n\n\n \"Now that you mention it, no,\" answered Cassal. He looked around\n apprehensively. \"Where is he?\"\n\"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise\n display.\"\n\n\n A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was\n accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple\n bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all\n travelers were crazy.", "\"I see.\" The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless,\n it sounded depressing.\n\n\n \"What I want to know is,\" said Dimanche, \"why such precautions as\n electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?\"\n\n\n Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly\n inquisitive at times.\n\n\n Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on\n the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man\n was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed\n every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was\n removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him.\n He turned and peered.\n\n\n \"You stuck here, too?\" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.", "His part was simple, on the surface. He was to persuade that researcher\n to come to Earth,\nif he could\n. Literally, he had to guess the\n Tunnesian's price before the Tunnesian himself knew it. In addition,\n the reputation of Tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their\n arrogance, Cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working\n for ignorant Earth savages. The existence of such an instrument as\n Dimanche was a key factor.\n\n\n Her voice broke through his thoughts. \"Now, then, what's your problem?\"\n\n\n \"I was told on Earth I might have to wait a few days on Godolph. I've\n been here three weeks. I want information on the ship bound for Tunney\n 21.\"\n\n\n \"Just a moment.\" She glanced at something below the angle of the\n screen. She looked up and her eyes were grave. \"\nRickrock C\narrived\n yesterday. Departed for Tunney early this morning.\"", "\"I don't need that kind of luck.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose not.\" She hesitated. \"You're determined to go on?\" At the\n emphatic nod, she sighed. \"If that's your decision, we'll try to help\n you. To start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification\n tab.\"\n\n\n \"There's something funny about her,\" Dimanche decided. It was the usual\n speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood\n made in coursing through arteries and veins. Cassal could hear it\n plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear.\n\n\n Cassal ignored his private voice. \"Identification tab? I don't have it\n with me. In fact, I may have lost it.\"", "\"As a salesman?\" she asked. \"I'm afraid you'll find it difficult to do\n business with Godolphians.\"\n\n\n Irony wasn't called for at a time like this, he thought reproachfully.\n\n\n \"Not just another salesman,\" he answered definitely. \"I have special\n knowledge of customer reactions. I can tell exactly—\"\n\n\n He stopped abruptly. Was she baiting him? For what reason? The\n instrument he called Dimanche was not known to the Galaxy at large.\n From the business angle, it would be poor policy to hand out that\n information at random. Aside from that, he needed every advantage he\n could get. Dimanche was his special advantage.\n\n\n \"Anyway,\" he finished lamely, \"I'm a first class engineer. I can\n always find something in that line.\"" ], [ "\"You are speaking to her,\" she said. Her face disappeared from the\n screen.\n\n\n Cassal sighed. So far he hadn't made a good impression.\n\n\n Travelers Aid Bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly\n supplied with official curiosity. When the machine finished with him,\n Cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of\n him. His individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and\n answers. One thing he drew the line at—why he wanted to go to Tunney\n 21 was his own business.", "\"I see.\" The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless,\n it sounded depressing.\n\n\n \"What I want to know is,\" said Dimanche, \"why such precautions as\n electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?\"\n\n\n Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly\n inquisitive at times.\n\n\n Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on\n the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man\n was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed\n every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was\n removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him.\n He turned and peered.\n\n\n \"You stuck here, too?\" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.", "\"Stuck?\" repeated Cassal. \"I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting\n for my ship.\" He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.\n \"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency.\n Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency\n were new.\"\n\n\n The old man chuckled. \"Re-organization. The previous first counselor\n resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one\n didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed.\"\n\n\n She would do just that, thought Cassal. \"What about this Murra Foray?\"\n\n\n The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed\n overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away.", "Inside, though, it wasn't dingy and it wasn't a rathole. More like a\n maze, an approved scientific one. Efficient, though not comfortable.\n Travelers Aid was busier than he thought it would be. Eventually he\n managed to squeeze into one of the many small counseling rooms.\n\n\n A woman appeared on the screen, crisp and cool. \"Please answer\n everything the machine asks. When the tape is complete, I'll be\n available for consultation.\"\n\n\n Cassal wasn't sure he was going to like her. \"Is this necessary?\" he\n asked. \"It's merely a matter of information.\"\n\n\n \"We have certain regulations we abide by.\" The woman smiled frostily.\n \"I can't give you any information until you comply with them.\"\n\n\n \"Sometimes regulations are silly,\" said Cassal firmly. \"Let me speak to\n the first counselor.\"", "Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job,\n afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He\n shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but\n he didn't intend to depend on that alone.", "\"That's no lie,\" agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand.\n He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness\n assumed an even more sinister quality.\n\n\n \"Quiet,\" said Dimanche. \"He's verbalizing about you.\"\n\n\n \"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask\n me for a light.\"\n\n\n \"I don't think so,\" answered Dimanche. \"He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I\n hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'.\"\n\n\n \"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't\n there any clue?\"", "\"Not interested,\" said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible\n to anyone but Dimanche. \"I'm not the victim type. He was standing on\n the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the\n habitat hotel and sit tight.\"\n\n\n \"First you have to get there,\" Dimanche pointed out. \"I mean, is it\n safe for a stranger to walk through the city?\"\n\n\n \"Now that you mention it, no,\" answered Cassal. He looked around\n apprehensively. \"Where is he?\"\n\"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise\n display.\"\n\n\n A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was\n accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple\n bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all\n travelers were crazy.", "Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal\n stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.\n\n\n \"Excellent thinking,\" commended Dimanche. \"He won't attempt anything\n on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted\n intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette.\"\n\n\n The lighter flared in his hand. \"That's one way of finding out,\" said\n Cassal. \"But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on\n getting back to the hotel?\"\n\n\n \"I'm curious. Turn here.\"\n\n\n \"Go to hell,\" said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that\n intersection, he turned there.\n\n\n It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily\n slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on\n the other.", "A white card fluttered from the clip. He caught it as it fell.\n Curiously he examined it. Blank except for one crudely printed word,\n STAB. His unknown assailant certainly had tried.\nThe old man stared at the door, an obsolete visual projector wobbling\n precariously on his head. He closed his eyes and the lettering on the\n door disappeared. Cassal was too far away to see what it had been. The\n technician opened his eyes and concentrated. Slowly a new sign formed\n on the door.\nTRAVELERS AID BUREAU\n\n Murra Foray, First Counselor\n\n\n It was a drab sign, but, then, it was a dismal, backward planet. The\n old technician passed on to the next door and closed his eyes again.\n\n\n With a sinking feeling, Cassal walked toward the entrance. He needed\n help and he had to find it in this dingy rathole.", "Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk.\n It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he\ncould\nwalk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?\n\n\n A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was\n peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was\n at a definite disadvantage.\n\n\n \"Correction,\" said Dimanche. \"Not simple assault. He has murder in\n mind.\"\n\n\n \"It still doesn't appeal to me,\" said Cassal. Striving to look\n unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and\n stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside,\n he might find safety for a time.", "The exit path guided him firmly to an inconspicuous and yet inescapable\n contribution station. He began to doubt the philanthropic aspect of the\n bureau.\n\"I've got it,\" said Dimanche as Cassal gloomily counted out the sum the\n first counselor had named.\n\n\n \"Got what?\" asked Cassal. He rolled the currency into a neat bundle,\n attached his name, and dropped it into the chute.\n\n\n \"The woman, Murra Foray, the first counselor. She's a Huntner.\"\n\n\n \"What's a Huntner?\"\n\n\n \"A sub-race of men on the other side of the Galaxy. She was vocalizing\n about her home planet when I managed to locate her.\"\n\n\n \"Any other information?\"\n\n\n \"None. Electronic guards were sliding into place as soon as I reached\n her. I got out as fast as I could.\"", "Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with\n that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was\n self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?\nDenton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself.\n He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched\n to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the\n basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long\n journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go\n to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the\n company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.\n\n\n The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his\n mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money\n wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What\ndid\nthe\n thug want?", "\"I don't need that kind of luck.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose not.\" She hesitated. \"You're determined to go on?\" At the\n emphatic nod, she sighed. \"If that's your decision, we'll try to help\n you. To start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification\n tab.\"\n\n\n \"There's something funny about her,\" Dimanche decided. It was the usual\n speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood\n made in coursing through arteries and veins. Cassal could hear it\n plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear.\n\n\n Cassal ignored his private voice. \"Identification tab? I don't have it\n with me. In fact, I may have lost it.\"", "Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few\n seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected\n stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical\n instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its\n function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.\n\n\n \"Twenty feet away,\" advised Dimanche. \"He knows you can't see him, but\n he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare.\n What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep\n you posted below the level of his hearing.\"\n\n\n \"Stay on him,\" growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against\n the wall.\n\n\n \"To the right,\" whispered Dimanche. \"Lunge forward. About five feet.\n Low.\"", "Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was\n too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for\n anyone this far away to have learned about it.\n\n\n And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as\n dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't\n involve too much risk.\n\n\n \"Better start moving.\" That was Dimanche. \"He's getting suspicious.\"\n\n\n Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of\n that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually\n was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives\n like rain.", "\"Cassal,\" he said firmly. \"Denton Cassal, sales engineer, Earth. If you\n don't believe it, send back to—\" He stopped. It had taken him four\n months to get to Godolph, non-stop, plus a six-month wait on Earth for\n a ship to show up that was bound in the right direction. Over distances\n such as these, it just wasn't practical to send back to Earth for\n anything.\n\n\n \"I see you understand.\" She glanced at the card in her hand. \"The\n spaceport records indicate that when\nRickrock C\ntook off this\n morning, there was a Denton Cassal on board, bound for Tunney 21.\"\n\n\n \"It wasn't I,\" he said dazedly. He knew who it was, though. The man who\n had tried to kill him last night. The reason for the attack now became\n clear. The thug had wanted his identification tab. Worse, he had gotten\n it.", "\"None at all,\" admitted Dimanche. \"He's very close. You'd better turn\n around.\"\nCassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him\n feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.\n\n\n A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the\n alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant\n shot by.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling\n that no one was going to come to his assistance.\n\n\n \"He wasn't expecting that reaction,\" explained Dimanche. \"That's why he\n missed. He's turned around and is coming back.\"\n\n\n \"I'm armed!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n \"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you.\"", "He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all\n very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was\n also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an\n electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.\n\n\n \"Easy,\" warned Dimanche. \"He's at the entrance to the alley, walking\n fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route.\"\n\n\n \"I'm surprised, too,\" remarked Cassal. \"But I wouldn't say I'm pleased.\n Not just now.\"\n\n\n \"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting.\" The mechanism\n concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:\n \"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like\n this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is\n critical.\"", "Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude\n him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the\n streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would\n consider it dim.\n\n\n \"Why did he choose me?\" asked Cassal plaintively. \"There must be\n something he hopes to gain.\"\n\n\n \"I'm working on it,\" said Dimanche. \"But remember, I have limitations.\n At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret\n physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report\n what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in\n finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem\n over to the godawful police.\"\n\n\n \"Godolph, not godawful,\" corrected Cassal absently.", "He could believe that or not as he wished. He didn't.\n\n\n \"You refused to answer why you were going to Tunney 21. Perhaps I can\n guess. They're the best scientists in the Galaxy. You wish to study\n under them.\"\n\n\n Close—but wrong on two counts. They were good scientists, though not\n necessarily the best. For instance, it was doubtful that they could\n build Dimanche, even if they had ever thought of it, which was even\n less likely.\n\n\n There was, however, one relatively obscure research worker on Tunney 21\n that Neuronics wanted on their staff. If the fragments of his studies\n that had reached Earth across the vast distance meant anything, he\n could help Neuronics perfect instantaneous radio. The company that\n could build a radio to span the reaches of the Galaxy with no time lag\n could set its own price, which could be control of all communications,\n transport, trade—a galactic monopoly. Cassal's share would be a cut of\n all that." ], [ "\"You are speaking to her,\" she said. Her face disappeared from the\n screen.\n\n\n Cassal sighed. So far he hadn't made a good impression.\n\n\n Travelers Aid Bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly\n supplied with official curiosity. When the machine finished with him,\n Cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of\n him. His individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and\n answers. One thing he drew the line at—why he wanted to go to Tunney\n 21 was his own business.", "Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job,\n afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He\n shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but\n he didn't intend to depend on that alone.", "The first counselor reappeared. Age, indeterminate. Not, he supposed,\n that anyone would be curious about it. Slightly taller than average,\n rather on the slender side. Face was broad at the brow, narrow at the\n chin and her eyes were enigmatic. A dangerous woman.\nShe glanced down at the data. \"Denton Cassal, native of Earth.\n Destination, Tunney 21.\" She looked up at him. \"Occupation, sales\n engineer. Isn't that an odd combination?\" Her smile was quite superior.\n\n\n \"Not at all. Scientific training as an engineer. Special knowledge of\n customer relations.\"\n\n\n \"Special knowledge of a thousand races? How convenient.\" Her eyebrows\n arched.\n\n\n \"I think so,\" he agreed blandly. \"Anything else you'd like to know?\"\n\n\n \"Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you.\"", "Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with\n that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was\n self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?\nDenton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself.\n He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched\n to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the\n basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long\n journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go\n to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the\n company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.\n\n\n The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his\n mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money\n wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What\ndid\nthe\n thug want?", "He could believe that or not as he wished. He didn't.\n\n\n \"You refused to answer why you were going to Tunney 21. Perhaps I can\n guess. They're the best scientists in the Galaxy. You wish to study\n under them.\"\n\n\n Close—but wrong on two counts. They were good scientists, though not\n necessarily the best. For instance, it was doubtful that they could\n build Dimanche, even if they had ever thought of it, which was even\n less likely.\n\n\n There was, however, one relatively obscure research worker on Tunney 21\n that Neuronics wanted on their staff. If the fragments of his studies\n that had reached Earth across the vast distance meant anything, he\n could help Neuronics perfect instantaneous radio. The company that\n could build a radio to span the reaches of the Galaxy with no time lag\n could set its own price, which could be control of all communications,\n transport, trade—a galactic monopoly. Cassal's share would be a cut of\n all that.", "\"That's no lie,\" agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand.\n He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness\n assumed an even more sinister quality.\n\n\n \"Quiet,\" said Dimanche. \"He's verbalizing about you.\"\n\n\n \"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask\n me for a light.\"\n\n\n \"I don't think so,\" answered Dimanche. \"He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I\n hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'.\"\n\n\n \"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't\n there any clue?\"", "\"I won't,\" he promised grimly.\nThe woman looked directly at him. Her eyes were bright. He revised his\n estimate of her age drastically downward. She couldn't be as old as he.\n Nothing outward had happened, but she no longer seemed dowdy. Not that\n he was interested. Still, it might pay him to be friendly to the first\n counselor.\n\n\n \"We're a philanthropic agency,\" said Murra Foray. \"Your case is\n special, though—\"\n\n\n \"I understand,\" he said gruffly. \"You accept contributions.\"\n\n\n She nodded. \"If the donor is able to give. We don't ask so much that\n you'll have to compromise your standard of living.\" But she named a sum\n that would force him to do just that if getting to Tunney 21 took any\n appreciable time.\n\n\n He stared at her unhappily. \"I suppose it's worth it. I can always\n work, if I have to.\"", "\"Stuck?\" repeated Cassal. \"I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting\n for my ship.\" He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.\n \"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency.\n Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency\n were new.\"\n\n\n The old man chuckled. \"Re-organization. The previous first counselor\n resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one\n didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed.\"\n\n\n She would do just that, thought Cassal. \"What about this Murra Foray?\"\n\n\n The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed\n overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away.", "The exit path guided him firmly to an inconspicuous and yet inescapable\n contribution station. He began to doubt the philanthropic aspect of the\n bureau.\n\"I've got it,\" said Dimanche as Cassal gloomily counted out the sum the\n first counselor had named.\n\n\n \"Got what?\" asked Cassal. He rolled the currency into a neat bundle,\n attached his name, and dropped it into the chute.\n\n\n \"The woman, Murra Foray, the first counselor. She's a Huntner.\"\n\n\n \"What's a Huntner?\"\n\n\n \"A sub-race of men on the other side of the Galaxy. She was vocalizing\n about her home planet when I managed to locate her.\"\n\n\n \"Any other information?\"\n\n\n \"None. Electronic guards were sliding into place as soon as I reached\n her. I got out as fast as I could.\"", "His part was simple, on the surface. He was to persuade that researcher\n to come to Earth,\nif he could\n. Literally, he had to guess the\n Tunnesian's price before the Tunnesian himself knew it. In addition,\n the reputation of Tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their\n arrogance, Cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working\n for ignorant Earth savages. The existence of such an instrument as\n Dimanche was a key factor.\n\n\n Her voice broke through his thoughts. \"Now, then, what's your problem?\"\n\n\n \"I was told on Earth I might have to wait a few days on Godolph. I've\n been here three weeks. I want information on the ship bound for Tunney\n 21.\"\n\n\n \"Just a moment.\" She glanced at something below the angle of the\n screen. She looked up and her eyes were grave. \"\nRickrock C\narrived\n yesterday. Departed for Tunney early this morning.\"", "Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of\n this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Dimanche irritably. \"I can interpret body\n data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat.\"\n\n\n Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles\n of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount\n of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A\n picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which\n resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.\n\n\n Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed\n to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of\n getting to Tunney 21.", "Inside, though, it wasn't dingy and it wasn't a rathole. More like a\n maze, an approved scientific one. Efficient, though not comfortable.\n Travelers Aid was busier than he thought it would be. Eventually he\n managed to squeeze into one of the many small counseling rooms.\n\n\n A woman appeared on the screen, crisp and cool. \"Please answer\n everything the machine asks. When the tape is complete, I'll be\n available for consultation.\"\n\n\n Cassal wasn't sure he was going to like her. \"Is this necessary?\" he\n asked. \"It's merely a matter of information.\"\n\n\n \"We have certain regulations we abide by.\" The woman smiled frostily.\n \"I can't give you any information until you comply with them.\"\n\n\n \"Sometimes regulations are silly,\" said Cassal firmly. \"Let me speak to\n the first counselor.\"", "Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few\n seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected\n stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical\n instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its\n function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.\n\n\n \"Twenty feet away,\" advised Dimanche. \"He knows you can't see him, but\n he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare.\n What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep\n you posted below the level of his hearing.\"\n\n\n \"Stay on him,\" growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against\n the wall.\n\n\n \"To the right,\" whispered Dimanche. \"Lunge forward. About five feet.\n Low.\"", "\"Heartbeat slow,\" said Dimanche solemnly. \"Breathing barely\n perceptible.\"\n\n\n \"Then he's not dead,\" said Cassal in relief.\n\n\n Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed\n from cuts on the face.\n\n\n \"Respiration none, heartbeat absent,\" stated Dimanche.\nHorrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but\n would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to\n investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would\n question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what\n could he do about it?\n\n\n Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney\n 21?", "He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all\n very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was\n also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an\n electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.\n\n\n \"Easy,\" warned Dimanche. \"He's at the entrance to the alley, walking\n fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route.\"\n\n\n \"I'm surprised, too,\" remarked Cassal. \"But I wouldn't say I'm pleased.\n Not just now.\"\n\n\n \"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting.\" The mechanism\n concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:\n \"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like\n this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is\n critical.\"", "That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give\n the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various\n reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called\n Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own,\n say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the\n proper approach, either.\n\n\n \"Weapons?\"\n\n\n \"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long\n knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person.\"\n\n\n Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in\n semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could\n die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of\n protection himself.\n\n\n \"Report,\" said Dimanche. \"Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on\n tenuous evidence.\"\n\n\n \"Let's have it anyway.\"", "\"None at all,\" admitted Dimanche. \"He's very close. You'd better turn\n around.\"\nCassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him\n feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.\n\n\n A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the\n alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant\n shot by.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling\n that no one was going to come to his assistance.\n\n\n \"He wasn't expecting that reaction,\" explained Dimanche. \"That's why he\n missed. He's turned around and is coming back.\"\n\n\n \"I'm armed!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n \"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you.\"", "\"Follow her,\" instructed Dimanche. \"We've got to investigate our man at\n closer range.\"\nObediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive\n in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful\n out of her element, though.\n\n\n The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal\n retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow,\n physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with\n it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A\n scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.\n\n\n \"Nothing,\" said Dimanche disgustedly. \"His mind froze when we got\n close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed.\n Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans.\n That makes the knife definite.\"", "Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was\n too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for\n anyone this far away to have learned about it.\n\n\n And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as\n dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't\n involve too much risk.\n\n\n \"Better start moving.\" That was Dimanche. \"He's getting suspicious.\"\n\n\n Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of\n that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually\n was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives\n like rain.", "Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal\n stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.\n\n\n \"Excellent thinking,\" commended Dimanche. \"He won't attempt anything\n on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted\n intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette.\"\n\n\n The lighter flared in his hand. \"That's one way of finding out,\" said\n Cassal. \"But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on\n getting back to the hotel?\"\n\n\n \"I'm curious. Turn here.\"\n\n\n \"Go to hell,\" said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that\n intersection, he turned there.\n\n\n It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily\n slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on\n the other." ], [ "His part was simple, on the surface. He was to persuade that researcher\n to come to Earth,\nif he could\n. Literally, he had to guess the\n Tunnesian's price before the Tunnesian himself knew it. In addition,\n the reputation of Tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their\n arrogance, Cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working\n for ignorant Earth savages. The existence of such an instrument as\n Dimanche was a key factor.\n\n\n Her voice broke through his thoughts. \"Now, then, what's your problem?\"\n\n\n \"I was told on Earth I might have to wait a few days on Godolph. I've\n been here three weeks. I want information on the ship bound for Tunney\n 21.\"\n\n\n \"Just a moment.\" She glanced at something below the angle of the\n screen. She looked up and her eyes were grave. \"\nRickrock C\narrived\n yesterday. Departed for Tunney early this morning.\"", "\"You are speaking to her,\" she said. Her face disappeared from the\n screen.\n\n\n Cassal sighed. So far he hadn't made a good impression.\n\n\n Travelers Aid Bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly\n supplied with official curiosity. When the machine finished with him,\n Cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of\n him. His individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and\n answers. One thing he drew the line at—why he wanted to go to Tunney\n 21 was his own business.", "\"Heartbeat slow,\" said Dimanche solemnly. \"Breathing barely\n perceptible.\"\n\n\n \"Then he's not dead,\" said Cassal in relief.\n\n\n Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed\n from cuts on the face.\n\n\n \"Respiration none, heartbeat absent,\" stated Dimanche.\nHorrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but\n would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to\n investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would\n question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what\n could he do about it?\n\n\n Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney\n 21?", "Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of\n this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Dimanche irritably. \"I can interpret body\n data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat.\"\n\n\n Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles\n of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount\n of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A\n picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which\n resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.\n\n\n Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed\n to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of\n getting to Tunney 21.", "Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was\n too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for\n anyone this far away to have learned about it.\n\n\n And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as\n dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't\n involve too much risk.\n\n\n \"Better start moving.\" That was Dimanche. \"He's getting suspicious.\"\n\n\n Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of\n that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually\n was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives\n like rain.", "He could believe that or not as he wished. He didn't.\n\n\n \"You refused to answer why you were going to Tunney 21. Perhaps I can\n guess. They're the best scientists in the Galaxy. You wish to study\n under them.\"\n\n\n Close—but wrong on two counts. They were good scientists, though not\n necessarily the best. For instance, it was doubtful that they could\n build Dimanche, even if they had ever thought of it, which was even\n less likely.\n\n\n There was, however, one relatively obscure research worker on Tunney 21\n that Neuronics wanted on their staff. If the fragments of his studies\n that had reached Earth across the vast distance meant anything, he\n could help Neuronics perfect instantaneous radio. The company that\n could build a radio to span the reaches of the Galaxy with no time lag\n could set its own price, which could be control of all communications,\n transport, trade—a galactic monopoly. Cassal's share would be a cut of\n all that.", "\"Departed?\" He got up and sat down again, swallowing hard. \"When will\n the next ship arrive?\"\n\n\n \"Do you know how many stars there are in the Galaxy?\" she asked.\n\n\n He didn't answer.\n\"That's right,\" she said. \"Billions. Tunney, according to the notation,\n is near the center of the Galaxy, inside the third ring. You've\n covered about a third of the distance to it. Local traffic, anything\n within a thousand light-years, is relatively easy to manage. At longer\n distances, you take a chance. You've had yours and missed it. Frankly,\n Cassal, I don't know when another ship bound for Tunney will show up on\n or near Godolph. Within the next five years—maybe.\"\nHe blanched. \"How long would it take to get there using local\n transportation, star-hopping?\"\n\n\n \"Take my advice: don't try it. Five years, if you're lucky.\"", "\"You've traveled outside, where there are still free planets waiting to\n be settled. Where a man is welcome, if he's able to work.\" She paused.\n \"The center is different. Populations are excessive. Inside the third\n ring, no man is allowed off a ship without an identification tab. They\n don't encourage immigration.\"\n\n\n In effect, that meant no ship bound for the center would take a\n passenger without identification. No ship owner would run the risk of\n having a permanent guest on board, someone who couldn't be rid of when\n his money was gone.\n\n\n Cassal held his head in his hands. Tunney 21 was inside the third ring.\n\n\n \"Next time,\" she said, \"don't let anyone take your identification.\"", "Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with\n that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was\n self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?\nDenton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself.\n He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched\n to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the\n basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long\n journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go\n to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the\n company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.\n\n\n The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his\n mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money\n wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What\ndid\nthe\n thug want?", "\"Cassal,\" he said firmly. \"Denton Cassal, sales engineer, Earth. If you\n don't believe it, send back to—\" He stopped. It had taken him four\n months to get to Godolph, non-stop, plus a six-month wait on Earth for\n a ship to show up that was bound in the right direction. Over distances\n such as these, it just wasn't practical to send back to Earth for\n anything.\n\n\n \"I see you understand.\" She glanced at the card in her hand. \"The\n spaceport records indicate that when\nRickrock C\ntook off this\n morning, there was a Denton Cassal on board, bound for Tunney 21.\"\n\n\n \"It wasn't I,\" he said dazedly. He knew who it was, though. The man who\n had tried to kill him last night. The reason for the attack now became\n clear. The thug had wanted his identification tab. Worse, he had gotten\n it.", "\"Stuck?\" repeated Cassal. \"I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting\n for my ship.\" He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.\n \"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency.\n Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency\n were new.\"\n\n\n The old man chuckled. \"Re-organization. The previous first counselor\n resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one\n didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed.\"\n\n\n She would do just that, thought Cassal. \"What about this Murra Foray?\"\n\n\n The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed\n overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away.", "Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few\n seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected\n stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical\n instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its\n function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.\n\n\n \"Twenty feet away,\" advised Dimanche. \"He knows you can't see him, but\n he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare.\n What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep\n you posted below the level of his hearing.\"\n\n\n \"Stay on him,\" growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against\n the wall.\n\n\n \"To the right,\" whispered Dimanche. \"Lunge forward. About five feet.\n Low.\"", "The first counselor reappeared. Age, indeterminate. Not, he supposed,\n that anyone would be curious about it. Slightly taller than average,\n rather on the slender side. Face was broad at the brow, narrow at the\n chin and her eyes were enigmatic. A dangerous woman.\nShe glanced down at the data. \"Denton Cassal, native of Earth.\n Destination, Tunney 21.\" She looked up at him. \"Occupation, sales\n engineer. Isn't that an odd combination?\" Her smile was quite superior.\n\n\n \"Not at all. Scientific training as an engineer. Special knowledge of\n customer relations.\"\n\n\n \"Special knowledge of a thousand races? How convenient.\" Her eyebrows\n arched.\n\n\n \"I think so,\" he agreed blandly. \"Anything else you'd like to know?\"\n\n\n \"Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you.\"", "Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk.\n It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he\ncould\nwalk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?\n\n\n A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was\n peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was\n at a definite disadvantage.\n\n\n \"Correction,\" said Dimanche. \"Not simple assault. He has murder in\n mind.\"\n\n\n \"It still doesn't appeal to me,\" said Cassal. Striving to look\n unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and\n stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside,\n he might find safety for a time.", "\"I don't need that kind of luck.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose not.\" She hesitated. \"You're determined to go on?\" At the\n emphatic nod, she sighed. \"If that's your decision, we'll try to help\n you. To start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification\n tab.\"\n\n\n \"There's something funny about her,\" Dimanche decided. It was the usual\n speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood\n made in coursing through arteries and veins. Cassal could hear it\n plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear.\n\n\n Cassal ignored his private voice. \"Identification tab? I don't have it\n with me. In fact, I may have lost it.\"", "\"I see.\" The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless,\n it sounded depressing.\n\n\n \"What I want to know is,\" said Dimanche, \"why such precautions as\n electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?\"\n\n\n Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly\n inquisitive at times.\n\n\n Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on\n the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man\n was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed\n every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was\n removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him.\n He turned and peered.\n\n\n \"You stuck here, too?\" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.", "Inside, though, it wasn't dingy and it wasn't a rathole. More like a\n maze, an approved scientific one. Efficient, though not comfortable.\n Travelers Aid was busier than he thought it would be. Eventually he\n managed to squeeze into one of the many small counseling rooms.\n\n\n A woman appeared on the screen, crisp and cool. \"Please answer\n everything the machine asks. When the tape is complete, I'll be\n available for consultation.\"\n\n\n Cassal wasn't sure he was going to like her. \"Is this necessary?\" he\n asked. \"It's merely a matter of information.\"\n\n\n \"We have certain regulations we abide by.\" The woman smiled frostily.\n \"I can't give you any information until you comply with them.\"\n\n\n \"Sometimes regulations are silly,\" said Cassal firmly. \"Let me speak to\n the first counselor.\"", "Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal\n stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.\n\n\n \"Excellent thinking,\" commended Dimanche. \"He won't attempt anything\n on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted\n intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette.\"\n\n\n The lighter flared in his hand. \"That's one way of finding out,\" said\n Cassal. \"But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on\n getting back to the hotel?\"\n\n\n \"I'm curious. Turn here.\"\n\n\n \"Go to hell,\" said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that\n intersection, he turned there.\n\n\n It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily\n slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on\n the other.", "\"Not interested,\" said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible\n to anyone but Dimanche. \"I'm not the victim type. He was standing on\n the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the\n habitat hotel and sit tight.\"\n\n\n \"First you have to get there,\" Dimanche pointed out. \"I mean, is it\n safe for a stranger to walk through the city?\"\n\n\n \"Now that you mention it, no,\" answered Cassal. He looked around\n apprehensively. \"Where is he?\"\n\"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise\n display.\"\n\n\n A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was\n accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple\n bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all\n travelers were crazy.", "That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give\n the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various\n reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called\n Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own,\n say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the\n proper approach, either.\n\n\n \"Weapons?\"\n\n\n \"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long\n knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person.\"\n\n\n Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in\n semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could\n die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of\n protection himself.\n\n\n \"Report,\" said Dimanche. \"Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on\n tenuous evidence.\"\n\n\n \"Let's have it anyway.\"" ], [ "He could believe that or not as he wished. He didn't.\n\n\n \"You refused to answer why you were going to Tunney 21. Perhaps I can\n guess. They're the best scientists in the Galaxy. You wish to study\n under them.\"\n\n\n Close—but wrong on two counts. They were good scientists, though not\n necessarily the best. For instance, it was doubtful that they could\n build Dimanche, even if they had ever thought of it, which was even\n less likely.\n\n\n There was, however, one relatively obscure research worker on Tunney 21\n that Neuronics wanted on their staff. If the fragments of his studies\n that had reached Earth across the vast distance meant anything, he\n could help Neuronics perfect instantaneous radio. The company that\n could build a radio to span the reaches of the Galaxy with no time lag\n could set its own price, which could be control of all communications,\n transport, trade—a galactic monopoly. Cassal's share would be a cut of\n all that.", "Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job,\n afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He\n shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but\n he didn't intend to depend on that alone.", "The first counselor reappeared. Age, indeterminate. Not, he supposed,\n that anyone would be curious about it. Slightly taller than average,\n rather on the slender side. Face was broad at the brow, narrow at the\n chin and her eyes were enigmatic. A dangerous woman.\nShe glanced down at the data. \"Denton Cassal, native of Earth.\n Destination, Tunney 21.\" She looked up at him. \"Occupation, sales\n engineer. Isn't that an odd combination?\" Her smile was quite superior.\n\n\n \"Not at all. Scientific training as an engineer. Special knowledge of\n customer relations.\"\n\n\n \"Special knowledge of a thousand races? How convenient.\" Her eyebrows\n arched.\n\n\n \"I think so,\" he agreed blandly. \"Anything else you'd like to know?\"\n\n\n \"Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you.\"", "He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all\n very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was\n also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an\n electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.\n\n\n \"Easy,\" warned Dimanche. \"He's at the entrance to the alley, walking\n fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route.\"\n\n\n \"I'm surprised, too,\" remarked Cassal. \"But I wouldn't say I'm pleased.\n Not just now.\"\n\n\n \"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting.\" The mechanism\n concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:\n \"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like\n this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is\n critical.\"", "Inside, though, it wasn't dingy and it wasn't a rathole. More like a\n maze, an approved scientific one. Efficient, though not comfortable.\n Travelers Aid was busier than he thought it would be. Eventually he\n managed to squeeze into one of the many small counseling rooms.\n\n\n A woman appeared on the screen, crisp and cool. \"Please answer\n everything the machine asks. When the tape is complete, I'll be\n available for consultation.\"\n\n\n Cassal wasn't sure he was going to like her. \"Is this necessary?\" he\n asked. \"It's merely a matter of information.\"\n\n\n \"We have certain regulations we abide by.\" The woman smiled frostily.\n \"I can't give you any information until you comply with them.\"\n\n\n \"Sometimes regulations are silly,\" said Cassal firmly. \"Let me speak to\n the first counselor.\"", "\"Stuck?\" repeated Cassal. \"I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting\n for my ship.\" He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.\n \"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency.\n Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency\n were new.\"\n\n\n The old man chuckled. \"Re-organization. The previous first counselor\n resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one\n didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed.\"\n\n\n She would do just that, thought Cassal. \"What about this Murra Foray?\"\n\n\n The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed\n overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away.", "The exit path guided him firmly to an inconspicuous and yet inescapable\n contribution station. He began to doubt the philanthropic aspect of the\n bureau.\n\"I've got it,\" said Dimanche as Cassal gloomily counted out the sum the\n first counselor had named.\n\n\n \"Got what?\" asked Cassal. He rolled the currency into a neat bundle,\n attached his name, and dropped it into the chute.\n\n\n \"The woman, Murra Foray, the first counselor. She's a Huntner.\"\n\n\n \"What's a Huntner?\"\n\n\n \"A sub-race of men on the other side of the Galaxy. She was vocalizing\n about her home planet when I managed to locate her.\"\n\n\n \"Any other information?\"\n\n\n \"None. Electronic guards were sliding into place as soon as I reached\n her. I got out as fast as I could.\"", "\"You are speaking to her,\" she said. Her face disappeared from the\n screen.\n\n\n Cassal sighed. So far he hadn't made a good impression.\n\n\n Travelers Aid Bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly\n supplied with official curiosity. When the machine finished with him,\n Cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of\n him. His individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and\n answers. One thing he drew the line at—why he wanted to go to Tunney\n 21 was his own business.", "\"No doubt it wasn't,\" she said wearily. \"Outsiders don't seem to\n understand what galactic travel entails.\"\n\n\n Outsiders? Evidently what she called those who lived beyond the second\n transfer ring. Were those who lived at the edge of the Galaxy, beyond\n the first ring, called Rimmers? Probably.\nShe was still speaking: \"Ten years to cross the Galaxy, without\n stopping. At present, no ship is capable of that. Real scheduling is\n impossible. Populations shift and have to be supplied. A ship is taken\n off a run for repairs and is never put back on. It's more urgently\n needed elsewhere. The man who depended on it is left waiting; years\n pass before he learns it's never coming.\n\n\n \"If we had instantaneous radio, that would help. Confusion wouldn't\n vanish overnight, but it would diminish. We wouldn't have to depend\n on ships for all the news. Reservations could be made ahead of time,\n credit established, lost identification replaced—\"", "Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was\n too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for\n anyone this far away to have learned about it.\n\n\n And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as\n dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't\n involve too much risk.\n\n\n \"Better start moving.\" That was Dimanche. \"He's getting suspicious.\"\n\n\n Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of\n that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually\n was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives\n like rain.", "Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few\n seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected\n stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical\n instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its\n function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.\n\n\n \"Twenty feet away,\" advised Dimanche. \"He knows you can't see him, but\n he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare.\n What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep\n you posted below the level of his hearing.\"\n\n\n \"Stay on him,\" growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against\n the wall.\n\n\n \"To the right,\" whispered Dimanche. \"Lunge forward. About five feet.\n Low.\"", "His part was simple, on the surface. He was to persuade that researcher\n to come to Earth,\nif he could\n. Literally, he had to guess the\n Tunnesian's price before the Tunnesian himself knew it. In addition,\n the reputation of Tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their\n arrogance, Cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working\n for ignorant Earth savages. The existence of such an instrument as\n Dimanche was a key factor.\n\n\n Her voice broke through his thoughts. \"Now, then, what's your problem?\"\n\n\n \"I was told on Earth I might have to wait a few days on Godolph. I've\n been here three weeks. I want information on the ship bound for Tunney\n 21.\"\n\n\n \"Just a moment.\" She glanced at something below the angle of the\n screen. She looked up and her eyes were grave. \"\nRickrock C\narrived\n yesterday. Departed for Tunney early this morning.\"", "Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude\n him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the\n streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would\n consider it dim.\n\n\n \"Why did he choose me?\" asked Cassal plaintively. \"There must be\n something he hopes to gain.\"\n\n\n \"I'm working on it,\" said Dimanche. \"But remember, I have limitations.\n At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret\n physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report\n what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in\n finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem\n over to the godawful police.\"\n\n\n \"Godolph, not godawful,\" corrected Cassal absently.", "\"I see.\" The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless,\n it sounded depressing.\n\n\n \"What I want to know is,\" said Dimanche, \"why such precautions as\n electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?\"\n\n\n Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly\n inquisitive at times.\n\n\n Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on\n the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man\n was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed\n every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was\n removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him.\n He turned and peered.\n\n\n \"You stuck here, too?\" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.", "\"I don't need that kind of luck.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose not.\" She hesitated. \"You're determined to go on?\" At the\n emphatic nod, she sighed. \"If that's your decision, we'll try to help\n you. To start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification\n tab.\"\n\n\n \"There's something funny about her,\" Dimanche decided. It was the usual\n speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood\n made in coursing through arteries and veins. Cassal could hear it\n plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear.\n\n\n Cassal ignored his private voice. \"Identification tab? I don't have it\n with me. In fact, I may have lost it.\"", "A white card fluttered from the clip. He caught it as it fell.\n Curiously he examined it. Blank except for one crudely printed word,\n STAB. His unknown assailant certainly had tried.\nThe old man stared at the door, an obsolete visual projector wobbling\n precariously on his head. He closed his eyes and the lettering on the\n door disappeared. Cassal was too far away to see what it had been. The\n technician opened his eyes and concentrated. Slowly a new sign formed\n on the door.\nTRAVELERS AID BUREAU\n\n Murra Foray, First Counselor\n\n\n It was a drab sign, but, then, it was a dismal, backward planet. The\n old technician passed on to the next door and closed his eyes again.\n\n\n With a sinking feeling, Cassal walked toward the entrance. He needed\n help and he had to find it in this dingy rathole.", "That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give\n the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various\n reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called\n Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own,\n say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the\n proper approach, either.\n\n\n \"Weapons?\"\n\n\n \"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long\n knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person.\"\n\n\n Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in\n semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could\n die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of\n protection himself.\n\n\n \"Report,\" said Dimanche. \"Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on\n tenuous evidence.\"\n\n\n \"Let's have it anyway.\"", "\"That's no lie,\" agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand.\n He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness\n assumed an even more sinister quality.\n\n\n \"Quiet,\" said Dimanche. \"He's verbalizing about you.\"\n\n\n \"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask\n me for a light.\"\n\n\n \"I don't think so,\" answered Dimanche. \"He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I\n hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'.\"\n\n\n \"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't\n there any clue?\"", "\"Not interested,\" said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible\n to anyone but Dimanche. \"I'm not the victim type. He was standing on\n the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the\n habitat hotel and sit tight.\"\n\n\n \"First you have to get there,\" Dimanche pointed out. \"I mean, is it\n safe for a stranger to walk through the city?\"\n\n\n \"Now that you mention it, no,\" answered Cassal. He looked around\n apprehensively. \"Where is he?\"\n\"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise\n display.\"\n\n\n A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was\n accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple\n bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all\n travelers were crazy.", "\"None at all,\" admitted Dimanche. \"He's very close. You'd better turn\n around.\"\nCassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him\n feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.\n\n\n A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the\n alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant\n shot by.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling\n that no one was going to come to his assistance.\n\n\n \"He wasn't expecting that reaction,\" explained Dimanche. \"That's why he\n missed. He's turned around and is coming back.\"\n\n\n \"I'm armed!\" shouted Cassal.\n\n\n \"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you.\"" ] ]
test	29159	[ "What was the liquid that the steel-blues thought would kill Karyl?", "Why were the steel-blues able to sneak up on Karyl?", "How was Karyl able to out run the steel blues?", "How was Karyl able to return to the service station?", "Why did the steel blues believe that Karyl was becoming weak in their captivity? ", "Why was Karyl not concerned with the steel-blues presence outside of the service station?", "Why were conventional human defenses and weapons useless against the steel-blues", "How were the steel-blues able to communicate with Karyl? ", "Why were the steel-blues traveling into the solar-system? ", "How was Karyl able to survive the torture by the steel-blues? " ]	[ [ "Water", "Hemlock", "Citric Acid", "R-dust " ], [ "His alarm did not sound", "All of the other answers are correct ", "He was not paying attention ", "He was busy repairing his ship" ], [ "His space suit gave him a boots of oxygen ", "His alarm sounded and gave him a large head start", "He was on guard and saw the steel-blues arrive ", "He was much faster than the steel-blues naturally " ], [ "He outran the steel-blues and reached the service station before they did ", "He returned after the steel-blues had been destroyed ", "He used a secret entrance to a tunnel", "He snuck past the steel-blues" ], [ "Their torture was effective ", "The increased oxygen in the atmosphere", "The lack of food he was provided with ", "The steel-blues did not understand why he was becoming weak" ], [ "He knew that the service station was well hidden enough to not be found ", "There was an SP ship en route to the asteroid that would be arriving soon ", "He had an incredibly powerful atomic weapon that he was sure would destroy the steel-blues ", "The metal shielding the station was the strongest in the solar system " ], [ "They had strong force fields surrounding them ", "They were made of metals much harder than humans had encountered ", "They were made of a jelly like substance that", "They were able to telepathically control humans " ], [ "They had technology that translated any spoken language for them ", "They had learned human language in preparation for their journey ", "They were not able to directly communicate with Karyl", "They were able to communicate telepathically " ], [ "To colonize new habitable planets for their species ", "To study the native life that existed there ", "To harvest a liquid found in the solar system that could\nbe used as a weapom", "To destroy the native life that existed there " ], [ "The excess oxygen in the atmosphere was keeping him alive ", "The knowledge that the SP ship would come save him gave him the strength to continue ", "By fasting from food he was able to gain immunity to the toxins ", "Neither of the liquids being provided to him were toxic to humans " ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "\"What is this torture?\" Jon Karyl asked.\n\n\n The answer was almost caressing: \"It is\n a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes\n joints to harden if even so much as a drop\n remains on it long. It eats away the metal,\n leaving a scaly residue which crumbles\n eventually into dust.\n\n\n \"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid\n for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die\n instantly.\n\n\n \"Enter your\"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—\"mausoleum.\n You die in your own atmosphere.\n However, we took the liberty of purifying\n it. There were dangerous elements in\n it.\"\n\n\n Jon walked into the little igloo. The\n Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials\n and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit\n deflated. Pressure was building up in the\n igloo.", "The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't\n known until then how tense he'd been. Now\n with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He\n laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.\n\n\n There was one lone Steel-Blue watching\n him when he rubbed the sleep out of his\n eyes and sat up.\n\n\n He vanished almost instantly. He, or another\n like him, returned immediately accompanied\n by a half-dozen others, including\n the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.\n\n\n One said,\n\n\n \"You are alive.\" The thought registered\n amazement. \"When you lost consciousness,\n we thought you had\"—there was a hesitation—\"as\n you say, died.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Jon Karyl said. \"I didn't die. I\n was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep.\"\n The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.", "\"They were metal monsters. No wonder\n they feared that liquid. It would rust their\n joints, short their wiring, and kill them.\n No wonder they stared when I kept alive\n after drinking enough to completely annihilate\n a half-dozen of them.\n\n\n \"But what happened when you met the\n ship?\"\n\n\n The space captain grinned.\n\n\n \"Not much. Our crew was busy creating\n a hollow shell filled with\nwater\nto be shot\n out of a rocket tube converted into a projectile\n thrower.\n\n\n \"These Steel-Blues, as you call them, put\n traction beams on us and started tugging us\n toward the asteroid. We tried a couple of\n atomic shots but when they just glanced off,\n we gave up.\n\n\n \"They weren't expecting the shell of\n water. When it hit that blue ship, you could\n almost see it oxidize before your eyes.", "Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed\n from the waist down. But it couldn't\n happen that suddenly.\n\n\n He turned his head.\n\n\n A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked\n tentacle held a square black box.\n\n\n Jon could read nothing in that metallic\n face. He said, voice muffled by the confines\n of the plastic helmet, \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am\"—there was a rising inflection in\n the answer—\"a Steel-Blue.\"\n\n\n There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's\n face to move. \"That is what I have named\n you,\" Jon Karyl said. \"But what are you?\"", "The Steel-Blue chuckled. \"You get—absent-minded,\n is it?—every once in a\n while.\"\n\n\n Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared\n lugging great sheets of plastic and various\n other equipment.\n\n\n They dumped their loads and began unbundling\n them.\n\n\n Working swiftly, they built a plastic\n igloo, smaller than the living room in the\n larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments\n inside—one of them Jon Karyl\n recognized as an air pump from within the\n station—and they laid out a pallet.\n\n\n When they were done Jon saw a miniature\n reproduction of the service station, lacking\n only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear\n plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the\n other.\n\n\n His Steel-Blue said: \"We have reproduced\n the atmosphere of your station so that you\n be watched while you undergo the torture\n under the normal conditions of your life.\"", "\"This is the examination room,\" his\n Steel-Blue said, almost contemptuously.\n\n\n A green effulgence surrounded him.\nThere\n was a hiss. Simultaneously, as the\n tiny microphone on the outside of his\n suit picked up the hiss, he felt a chill go\n through his body. Then it seemed as if a\n half dozen hands were inside him, examining\n his internal organs. His stomach contracted.\n He felt a squeeze on his heart. His\n lungs tickled.\n\n\n There were several more queer motions\n inside his body.\n\n\n Then another Steel-Blue voice said:\n\n\n \"He is a soft-metal creature, made up of\n metals that melt at a very low temperature.\n He also contains a liquid whose makeup I\n cannot ascertain by ray-probe. Bring him\n back when the torture is done.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl grinned a trifle wryly. What\n kind of torture could this be?", "ACID BATH\nBy VASELEOS GARSON\nThe starways' Lone Watcher had expected some odd developments\n in his singular, nerve-fraught job on the asteroid. But nothing like the\n weird twenty-one-day liquid test devised by the invading Steel-Blues.\nJon Karyl\n was bolting in a new baffle\n plate on the stationary rocket engine.\n It was a tedious job and took all his\n concentration. So he wasn't paying too much\n attention to what was going on in other\n parts of the little asteroid.\n\n\n He didn't see the peculiar blue space\n ship, its rockets throttled down, as it drifted\n to land only a few hundred yards away from\n his plastic igloo.\n\n\n Nor did he see the half-dozen steel-blue\n creatures slide out of the peculiar vessel's\n airlock.\n\n\n It was only as he crawled out of the\n depths of the rocket power plant that he\n realized something was wrong.", "He tuned the televisor to its widest range\n and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.\n He was looking into the stationary rocket\n engine.\n\n\n As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue\n came crawling out of the ship.\n\n\n The two Steel-Blues moved toward the\n center of the televisor range. They're coming\n toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.\n\n\n Karyl examined the two creatures. They\n were of the steel-blue color from the crown\n of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of\n their walking appendages.\n\n\n They were about the height of Karyl—six\n feet. But where he tapered from broad\n shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up\n and down. They had no legs, just appendages,\n many-jointed that stretched and\n shrank independent of the other, but keeping\n the cylindrical body with its four pairs\n of tentacles on a level balance.", "And he was interested in staying alive as\n long as possible. There was a remote chance\n he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,\n he glanced toward his belt to see the little\n power pack which, if under ideal conditions,\n could finger out fifty thousand miles into\n space.\n\n\n If he could somehow stay alive the 21\n days he might be able to warn the patrol.\n He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for\n his life would be snuffed out immediately.\n\n\n The Steel-Blue said quietly:\n\n\n \"It might be ironical to let you warn\n that SP ship you keep thinking about. But\n we know your weapon now. Already our\n ship is equipped with a force field designed\n especially to deflect your atomic guns.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts\n quickly. They can delve deeper than the\n surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a\n leash on my thoughts?", "The cylinder apparently understood him,\n for it handed him the tumbler. It even reholstered\n his stubray pistol.\n\n\n Jon brought the glass of liquid under his\n nose. The fumes of the liquid were pungent.\n It brought tears to his eyes.\n\n\n He looked at the cylinder, then at the\n Steel-Blues crowding around the plastic\n igloo. He waved the glass at the audience.\n\n\n \"To Earth, ever triumphant,\" he toasted.\n Then he drained the glass at a gulp.\n\n\n Its taste was bitter, and he felt hot\n prickles jab at his scalp. It was like eating\n very hot peppers. His eyes filled with tears.\n He coughed as the stuff went down.\n\n\n But he was still alive, he thought in\n amazement. He'd drunk the hemlock and\n was still alive.", "\"That is the hemlock,\" Steel-Blue said.\n\n\n It was when he quaffed the new and\n stronger draught that Jon knew that his\n hope that it was citric acid was squelched.\n\n\n The acid taste was weaker which meant\n that the citric acid was the diluting liquid.\n It was the liquid he couldn't taste beneath\n the tang of the citric acid that was the corrosive\n acid.\n\n\n On the fourteenth day, Jon was so weak\n he didn't feel much like moving around. He\n let the cylinder feed him the hemlock.\n\n\n No. 1 came again to see him, and went\n away chuckling, \"Decrease the dilution.\n This Earthman at last is beginning to\n suffer.\"\nStaying\n alive had now become a fetish\n with Jon.\n\n\n On the sixteenth day, the Earthman realized\n that the Steel-Blues also were waiting\n for the SP ship.", "Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,\n shrugged non-committally and leaped the\n trench. He walked slowly back and reentered\n the torture chamber.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage\n he'd done.\n\n\n As he watched them, Jon was still curious,\n but he was getting mad underneath at\n the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.\n\n\n By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by\n her green fields, and dark forests, he'd\n stay alive to warn the SP ship.\n\n\n Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send\n the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid\n to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could\n equip themselves with spray guns and squirt\n citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade\n away.", "A Steel-Blue, more massive than his\n guide and with four more pair of tentacles,\n including two short ones that grew from the\n top of its head, spoke out.\n\n\n \"This is the violator?\" Jon's Steel-Blue\n nodded.\n\n\n \"You know the penalty? Carry it out.\"\n\n\n \"He also is an inhabitant of this system,\"\n Jon's guide added.\n\n\n \"Examine him first, then give him the\n death.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from\n the lighted room through more corridors.\n If it got too bad he still had the stubray\n pistol.\n\n\n Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on\n the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service\n station attendant just to see what it offered.\n\n\n Here was a part of it, and it was certainly\n something new.", "Up and up it rose, then flames flickered\n in a circle about its curious shape. The ship\n disappeared, suddenly accelerating.\n\n\n Jon Karyl strained his eyes.\n\n\n Finally he looked away from the heavens\n to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently\n outside the goldfish bowl.\n\n\n Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.\n He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran\n toward the service station.\n\n\n He didn't know how weak he was until\n he stumbled and fell only a few feet from\n his prison.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues just watched him.\n\n\n He crawled on, around the circular pit in\n the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue\n had shown him the power of his\n weapon.\n\n\n He'd been crawling through a nightmare\n for years when the quiet voice penetrated\n his dulled mind.", "\"Eat?\" The Steel-Blue sounded puzzled.\n\n\n \"I want to refuel. I've got to have food\n to keep my engine going.\"\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled. \"So the hemlock, as\n you call it, is beginning to affect you at\n last? Back to the torture room.\"\n\n\n \"Like R-dust,\" Jon growled. He pressed\n the firing stud on the stubray gun. One of\n Steel-Blue's tentacles broke off and fell to\n the rocky sward.\n\n\n Steel-Blue jerked out the box he'd used\n once before. A tentacle danced over it.\n\n\n Abruptly Jon found himself standing on\n a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a\n swath around him 15 feet deep and five feet\n wide.\n\n\n \"Back to the room,\" Steel-Blue commanded.", "He had little fear now, only curiosity.\n These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.\n They could have snuffed out my life very\n simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be\n friends.\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled.\nJon\n followed him through the sundered\n lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a\n moment to examine the wreckage of the\n lock. It had been punched full of holes as\n if it had been some soft cheese instead of a\n metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a\n century perfecting.\n\n\n \"We appreciate your compliment,\" Steel-Blue\n said. \"But that metal also is found on\n our world. It's probably the softest and most\n malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,\n is it?—use it as protective\n metal.\"\n\n\n \"Why are you in this system?\" Jon asked,\n hardly expecting an answer.", "\"A robot,\" came the immediate answer.\n Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue\n was telepathic. \"Yes,\" the Steel-Blue answered.\n \"We talk in the language of the\n mind. Come!\" he said peremptorily, motioning\n with the square black box.\n\n\n The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed\n the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens\n he'd seen on the creature's face had a\n counterpart on the back of the egg-head.\n\n\n Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.\n That's quite an innovation. \"Thank you,\"\n Steel-Blue said.\n\n\n There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's\n mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he\n had applied for this high-paying but man-killing\n job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar\n System's starways.", "It sounded almost silly to Jon Karyl. The\n fruit acid of Earth to repel these invaders—it\n doesn't sound possible. That couldn't be\n the answer.\n\n\n Citric acid wasn't the answer, Jon Karyl\n discovered a week later.\n\n\n The Steel-Blue who had captured him in\n the power room of the service station came\n in to examine him.\n\n\n \"You're still holding out, I see,\" he observed\n after poking Jon in every sensitive\n part of his body.\n\n\n \"I'll suggest to No. 1 that we increase\n the power of the—ah—hemlock. How do\n you feel?\"\n\n\n Between the rich oxygen and the dizziness\n of hunger, Jon was a bit delirious. But he\n answered honestly enough: \"My guts feel as\n if they're chewing each other up. My bones\n ache. My joints creak. I can't coordinate I'm\n so hungry.\"", "Instead of following around the sharp\n bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead\n through the overhanging bushes until he\n came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his\n hands and knees he worked his way under\n the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out\n space in the center.\nThere\n , just ahead of him, was the lock\n leading into the service station. Slipping\n a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,\n he jabbed it into the center of the lock,\n opening the lever housing.\n\n\n He pulled strongly on the lever. With a\n hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.\n Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing\n softly behind.\n\n\n At the end of the long tunnel he stepped\n to the televisor which was fixed on the area\n surrounding the station.\n\n\n Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.\n But he saw their ship. It squatted\n like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut\n tight.", "\"Take it easy, Karyl. You're among\n friends.\"\n\n\n He pried open his eyes with his will. He\n saw the blue and gold of a space guard's\n uniform. He sighed and drifted into unconsciousness.\nHe was\n still weak days later when\n Capt. Ron Small of SP-101 said,\n\n\n \"Yes, Karyl, it's ironical. They fed you\n what they thought was sure death, and it's\n the only thing that kept you going long\n enough to warn us.\"\n\n\n \"I was dumb for a long time,\" Karyl said.\n \"I thought that it was the acid, almost to\n the very last. But when I drank that last\n glass, I knew they didn't have a chance." ], [ "He tuned the televisor to its widest range\n and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.\n He was looking into the stationary rocket\n engine.\n\n\n As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue\n came crawling out of the ship.\n\n\n The two Steel-Blues moved toward the\n center of the televisor range. They're coming\n toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.\n\n\n Karyl examined the two creatures. They\n were of the steel-blue color from the crown\n of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of\n their walking appendages.\n\n\n They were about the height of Karyl—six\n feet. But where he tapered from broad\n shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up\n and down. They had no legs, just appendages,\n many-jointed that stretched and\n shrank independent of the other, but keeping\n the cylindrical body with its four pairs\n of tentacles on a level balance.", "The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't\n known until then how tense he'd been. Now\n with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He\n laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.\n\n\n There was one lone Steel-Blue watching\n him when he rubbed the sleep out of his\n eyes and sat up.\n\n\n He vanished almost instantly. He, or another\n like him, returned immediately accompanied\n by a half-dozen others, including\n the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.\n\n\n One said,\n\n\n \"You are alive.\" The thought registered\n amazement. \"When you lost consciousness,\n we thought you had\"—there was a hesitation—\"as\n you say, died.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Jon Karyl said. \"I didn't die. I\n was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep.\"\n The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.", "Instead of following around the sharp\n bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead\n through the overhanging bushes until he\n came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his\n hands and knees he worked his way under\n the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out\n space in the center.\nThere\n , just ahead of him, was the lock\n leading into the service station. Slipping\n a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,\n he jabbed it into the center of the lock,\n opening the lever housing.\n\n\n He pulled strongly on the lever. With a\n hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.\n Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing\n softly behind.\n\n\n At the end of the long tunnel he stepped\n to the televisor which was fixed on the area\n surrounding the station.\n\n\n Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.\n But he saw their ship. It squatted\n like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut\n tight.", "Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed\n from the waist down. But it couldn't\n happen that suddenly.\n\n\n He turned his head.\n\n\n A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked\n tentacle held a square black box.\n\n\n Jon could read nothing in that metallic\n face. He said, voice muffled by the confines\n of the plastic helmet, \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am\"—there was a rising inflection in\n the answer—\"a Steel-Blue.\"\n\n\n There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's\n face to move. \"That is what I have named\n you,\" Jon Karyl said. \"But what are you?\"", "The power ray from behind ripped out\n great gobs of the sheltering bushes. But\n running naturally, bent close to the bottom\n of the ravine, Jon Karyl dodged the bare\n spots. The oxygen made the tremendous\n exertion easy for his lungs as he sped down\n the dim trail, hidden from the two steel-blue\n stalkers.\n\n\n He'd eluded them, temporarily at least,\n Jon Karyl decided when he finally edged off\n the dim trail and watched for movement\n along the route behind him.\n\n\n He stood up, finally, pushed aside the\n leafy overhang of a bush and looked for\n landmarks along the edge of the ravine.\n\n\n He found one, a stubby bush, shaped like\n a Maltese cross, clinging to the lip of the\n ravine. The hidden entrance to the service\n station wasn't far off.\n\n\n His pistol held ready, he moved quietly\n on down the ravine until the old water\n course made an abrupt hairpin turn.", "And he was interested in staying alive as\n long as possible. There was a remote chance\n he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,\n he glanced toward his belt to see the little\n power pack which, if under ideal conditions,\n could finger out fifty thousand miles into\n space.\n\n\n If he could somehow stay alive the 21\n days he might be able to warn the patrol.\n He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for\n his life would be snuffed out immediately.\n\n\n The Steel-Blue said quietly:\n\n\n \"It might be ironical to let you warn\n that SP ship you keep thinking about. But\n we know your weapon now. Already our\n ship is equipped with a force field designed\n especially to deflect your atomic guns.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts\n quickly. They can delve deeper than the\n surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a\n leash on my thoughts?", "Up and up it rose, then flames flickered\n in a circle about its curious shape. The ship\n disappeared, suddenly accelerating.\n\n\n Jon Karyl strained his eyes.\n\n\n Finally he looked away from the heavens\n to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently\n outside the goldfish bowl.\n\n\n Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.\n He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran\n toward the service station.\n\n\n He didn't know how weak he was until\n he stumbled and fell only a few feet from\n his prison.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues just watched him.\n\n\n He crawled on, around the circular pit in\n the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue\n had shown him the power of his\n weapon.\n\n\n He'd been crawling through a nightmare\n for years when the quiet voice penetrated\n his dulled mind.", "The Steel-Blue chuckled. \"You get—absent-minded,\n is it?—every once in a\n while.\"\n\n\n Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared\n lugging great sheets of plastic and various\n other equipment.\n\n\n They dumped their loads and began unbundling\n them.\n\n\n Working swiftly, they built a plastic\n igloo, smaller than the living room in the\n larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments\n inside—one of them Jon Karyl\n recognized as an air pump from within the\n station—and they laid out a pallet.\n\n\n When they were done Jon saw a miniature\n reproduction of the service station, lacking\n only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear\n plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the\n other.\n\n\n His Steel-Blue said: \"We have reproduced\n the atmosphere of your station so that you\n be watched while you undergo the torture\n under the normal conditions of your life.\"", "He had little fear now, only curiosity.\n These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.\n They could have snuffed out my life very\n simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be\n friends.\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled.\nJon\n followed him through the sundered\n lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a\n moment to examine the wreckage of the\n lock. It had been punched full of holes as\n if it had been some soft cheese instead of a\n metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a\n century perfecting.\n\n\n \"We appreciate your compliment,\" Steel-Blue\n said. \"But that metal also is found on\n our world. It's probably the softest and most\n malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,\n is it?—use it as protective\n metal.\"\n\n\n \"Why are you in this system?\" Jon asked,\n hardly expecting an answer.", "Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut\n back and head for the underground entrance\n to the service station.\n\n\n He glanced back finally.\n\n\n Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting\n after him, and rapidly closing the\n distance.\n\n\n Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol\n at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for\n greater exertion, increased the gravity pull\n in his space-suit boots as he neared the\n ravine he'd been racing for.\n\n\n The oxygen was just taking hold when\n he hit the lip of the ravine and began\n sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn\n course.", "A Steel-Blue, more massive than his\n guide and with four more pair of tentacles,\n including two short ones that grew from the\n top of its head, spoke out.\n\n\n \"This is the violator?\" Jon's Steel-Blue\n nodded.\n\n\n \"You know the penalty? Carry it out.\"\n\n\n \"He also is an inhabitant of this system,\"\n Jon's guide added.\n\n\n \"Examine him first, then give him the\n death.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from\n the lighted room through more corridors.\n If it got too bad he still had the stubray\n pistol.\n\n\n Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on\n the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service\n station attendant just to see what it offered.\n\n\n Here was a part of it, and it was certainly\n something new.", "Where their eyes would have been was\n an elliptical-shaped lens, covering half the\n egg-head, with its converging ends curving\n around the sides of the head.\n\n\n Robots! Jon gauged immediately. But\n where were their masters?\n\n\n The Steel-Blues moved out of the range\n of the televisor. A minute later Jon heard\n a pounding from the station upstairs.\n\n\n He chuckled. They were like the wolf of\n pre-atomic days who huffed and puffed to\n blow the house down.\n\n\n The outer shell of the station was formed\n from stelrylite, the toughest metal in the\n solar system. With the self-sealing lock of\n the same resistant material, a mere pounding\n was nothing.\n\n\n Jon thought he'd have a look-see anyway.\n He went up the steel ladder leading to the\n station's power plant and the televisor that\n could look into every room within the\n station.", "By then it was almost too late. The six\n blue figures were only fifty feet away, approaching\n him at a lope.\n\n\n Jon Karyl took one look and went bounding\n over the asteroid's rocky slopes in fifty-foot\n bounds.\n\n\n When you're a Lone Watcher, and\n strangers catch you unawares, you don't\n stand still. You move fast. It's the Watcher's\n first rule. Stay alive. An Earthship may depend\n upon your life.\n\n\n As he fled, Jon Karyl cursed softly under\n his breath. The automatic alarm should have\n shrilled out a warning.\n\n\n Then he saved as much of his breath as\n he could as some sort of power wave tore\n up the rocky sward to his left. He twisted\n and zig-zagged in his flight, trying to get\n out of sight of the strangers.", "\"Just thinking to myself,\" Jon answered.\n It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his\n thoughts had to be directed outward, rather\n than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to\n read it.\n\n\n He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping\n lock of the invaders' space ship wondering\n how he could warn Earth. The Space\n Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at\n his service station in 21 days. But by that\n time he probably would be mouldering in\n the rocky dust of the asteroid.\n\n\n It was pitch dark within the ship but the\n Steel-Blue seemed to have no trouble at all\n maneuvering through the maze of corridors.\n Jon followed him, attached to one tentacle.\n\n\n Finally Jon and his guide entered a circular\n room, bright with light streaming from\n a glass-like, bulging skylight. They apparently\n were near topside of the vessel.", "Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the\n chronometer on his wrist.\n\n\n Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien\n ship and halted expectantly just outside the\n ship's lock.\n\n\n Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the\n stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my\n way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he\n toted up the disadvantages.\n\n\n He either would have to find a hiding\n place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues\n wanted him bad enough they could tear the\n whole place to pieces, or somehow get\n aboard the little life ship hidden in the\n service station.\n\n\n In that he would be just a sitting duck.\n\n\n He shrugged off the slight temptation to\n use the pistol. He was still curious.", "\"A robot,\" came the immediate answer.\n Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue\n was telepathic. \"Yes,\" the Steel-Blue answered.\n \"We talk in the language of the\n mind. Come!\" he said peremptorily, motioning\n with the square black box.\n\n\n The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed\n the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens\n he'd seen on the creature's face had a\n counterpart on the back of the egg-head.\n\n\n Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.\n That's quite an innovation. \"Thank you,\"\n Steel-Blue said.\n\n\n There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's\n mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he\n had applied for this high-paying but man-killing\n job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar\n System's starways.", "\"This is the examination room,\" his\n Steel-Blue said, almost contemptuously.\n\n\n A green effulgence surrounded him.\nThere\n was a hiss. Simultaneously, as the\n tiny microphone on the outside of his\n suit picked up the hiss, he felt a chill go\n through his body. Then it seemed as if a\n half dozen hands were inside him, examining\n his internal organs. His stomach contracted.\n He felt a squeeze on his heart. His\n lungs tickled.\n\n\n There were several more queer motions\n inside his body.\n\n\n Then another Steel-Blue voice said:\n\n\n \"He is a soft-metal creature, made up of\n metals that melt at a very low temperature.\n He also contains a liquid whose makeup I\n cannot ascertain by ray-probe. Bring him\n back when the torture is done.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl grinned a trifle wryly. What\n kind of torture could this be?", "\"What is this torture?\" Jon Karyl asked.\n\n\n The answer was almost caressing: \"It is\n a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes\n joints to harden if even so much as a drop\n remains on it long. It eats away the metal,\n leaving a scaly residue which crumbles\n eventually into dust.\n\n\n \"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid\n for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die\n instantly.\n\n\n \"Enter your\"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—\"mausoleum.\n You die in your own atmosphere.\n However, we took the liberty of purifying\n it. There were dangerous elements in\n it.\"\n\n\n Jon walked into the little igloo. The\n Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials\n and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit\n deflated. Pressure was building up in the\n igloo.", "Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,\n shrugged non-committally and leaped the\n trench. He walked slowly back and reentered\n the torture chamber.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage\n he'd done.\n\n\n As he watched them, Jon was still curious,\n but he was getting mad underneath at\n the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.\n\n\n By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by\n her green fields, and dark forests, he'd\n stay alive to warn the SP ship.\n\n\n Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send\n the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid\n to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could\n equip themselves with spray guns and squirt\n citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade\n away.", "ACID BATH\nBy VASELEOS GARSON\nThe starways' Lone Watcher had expected some odd developments\n in his singular, nerve-fraught job on the asteroid. But nothing like the\n weird twenty-one-day liquid test devised by the invading Steel-Blues.\nJon Karyl\n was bolting in a new baffle\n plate on the stationary rocket engine.\n It was a tedious job and took all his\n concentration. So he wasn't paying too much\n attention to what was going on in other\n parts of the little asteroid.\n\n\n He didn't see the peculiar blue space\n ship, its rockets throttled down, as it drifted\n to land only a few hundred yards away from\n his plastic igloo.\n\n\n Nor did he see the half-dozen steel-blue\n creatures slide out of the peculiar vessel's\n airlock.\n\n\n It was only as he crawled out of the\n depths of the rocket power plant that he\n realized something was wrong." ], [ "The power ray from behind ripped out\n great gobs of the sheltering bushes. But\n running naturally, bent close to the bottom\n of the ravine, Jon Karyl dodged the bare\n spots. The oxygen made the tremendous\n exertion easy for his lungs as he sped down\n the dim trail, hidden from the two steel-blue\n stalkers.\n\n\n He'd eluded them, temporarily at least,\n Jon Karyl decided when he finally edged off\n the dim trail and watched for movement\n along the route behind him.\n\n\n He stood up, finally, pushed aside the\n leafy overhang of a bush and looked for\n landmarks along the edge of the ravine.\n\n\n He found one, a stubby bush, shaped like\n a Maltese cross, clinging to the lip of the\n ravine. The hidden entrance to the service\n station wasn't far off.\n\n\n His pistol held ready, he moved quietly\n on down the ravine until the old water\n course made an abrupt hairpin turn.", "Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut\n back and head for the underground entrance\n to the service station.\n\n\n He glanced back finally.\n\n\n Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting\n after him, and rapidly closing the\n distance.\n\n\n Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol\n at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for\n greater exertion, increased the gravity pull\n in his space-suit boots as he neared the\n ravine he'd been racing for.\n\n\n The oxygen was just taking hold when\n he hit the lip of the ravine and began\n sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn\n course.", "The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't\n known until then how tense he'd been. Now\n with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He\n laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.\n\n\n There was one lone Steel-Blue watching\n him when he rubbed the sleep out of his\n eyes and sat up.\n\n\n He vanished almost instantly. He, or another\n like him, returned immediately accompanied\n by a half-dozen others, including\n the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.\n\n\n One said,\n\n\n \"You are alive.\" The thought registered\n amazement. \"When you lost consciousness,\n we thought you had\"—there was a hesitation—\"as\n you say, died.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Jon Karyl said. \"I didn't die. I\n was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep.\"\n The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.", "He tuned the televisor to its widest range\n and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.\n He was looking into the stationary rocket\n engine.\n\n\n As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue\n came crawling out of the ship.\n\n\n The two Steel-Blues moved toward the\n center of the televisor range. They're coming\n toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.\n\n\n Karyl examined the two creatures. They\n were of the steel-blue color from the crown\n of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of\n their walking appendages.\n\n\n They were about the height of Karyl—six\n feet. But where he tapered from broad\n shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up\n and down. They had no legs, just appendages,\n many-jointed that stretched and\n shrank independent of the other, but keeping\n the cylindrical body with its four pairs\n of tentacles on a level balance.", "Instead of following around the sharp\n bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead\n through the overhanging bushes until he\n came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his\n hands and knees he worked his way under\n the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out\n space in the center.\nThere\n , just ahead of him, was the lock\n leading into the service station. Slipping\n a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,\n he jabbed it into the center of the lock,\n opening the lever housing.\n\n\n He pulled strongly on the lever. With a\n hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.\n Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing\n softly behind.\n\n\n At the end of the long tunnel he stepped\n to the televisor which was fixed on the area\n surrounding the station.\n\n\n Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.\n But he saw their ship. It squatted\n like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut\n tight.", "Up and up it rose, then flames flickered\n in a circle about its curious shape. The ship\n disappeared, suddenly accelerating.\n\n\n Jon Karyl strained his eyes.\n\n\n Finally he looked away from the heavens\n to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently\n outside the goldfish bowl.\n\n\n Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.\n He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran\n toward the service station.\n\n\n He didn't know how weak he was until\n he stumbled and fell only a few feet from\n his prison.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues just watched him.\n\n\n He crawled on, around the circular pit in\n the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue\n had shown him the power of his\n weapon.\n\n\n He'd been crawling through a nightmare\n for years when the quiet voice penetrated\n his dulled mind.", "And he was interested in staying alive as\n long as possible. There was a remote chance\n he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,\n he glanced toward his belt to see the little\n power pack which, if under ideal conditions,\n could finger out fifty thousand miles into\n space.\n\n\n If he could somehow stay alive the 21\n days he might be able to warn the patrol.\n He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for\n his life would be snuffed out immediately.\n\n\n The Steel-Blue said quietly:\n\n\n \"It might be ironical to let you warn\n that SP ship you keep thinking about. But\n we know your weapon now. Already our\n ship is equipped with a force field designed\n especially to deflect your atomic guns.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts\n quickly. They can delve deeper than the\n surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a\n leash on my thoughts?", "Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed\n from the waist down. But it couldn't\n happen that suddenly.\n\n\n He turned his head.\n\n\n A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked\n tentacle held a square black box.\n\n\n Jon could read nothing in that metallic\n face. He said, voice muffled by the confines\n of the plastic helmet, \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am\"—there was a rising inflection in\n the answer—\"a Steel-Blue.\"\n\n\n There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's\n face to move. \"That is what I have named\n you,\" Jon Karyl said. \"But what are you?\"", "Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the\n chronometer on his wrist.\n\n\n Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien\n ship and halted expectantly just outside the\n ship's lock.\n\n\n Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the\n stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my\n way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he\n toted up the disadvantages.\n\n\n He either would have to find a hiding\n place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues\n wanted him bad enough they could tear the\n whole place to pieces, or somehow get\n aboard the little life ship hidden in the\n service station.\n\n\n In that he would be just a sitting duck.\n\n\n He shrugged off the slight temptation to\n use the pistol. He was still curious.", "The Steel-Blue chuckled. \"You get—absent-minded,\n is it?—every once in a\n while.\"\n\n\n Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared\n lugging great sheets of plastic and various\n other equipment.\n\n\n They dumped their loads and began unbundling\n them.\n\n\n Working swiftly, they built a plastic\n igloo, smaller than the living room in the\n larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments\n inside—one of them Jon Karyl\n recognized as an air pump from within the\n station—and they laid out a pallet.\n\n\n When they were done Jon saw a miniature\n reproduction of the service station, lacking\n only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear\n plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the\n other.\n\n\n His Steel-Blue said: \"We have reproduced\n the atmosphere of your station so that you\n be watched while you undergo the torture\n under the normal conditions of your life.\"", "Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,\n shrugged non-committally and leaped the\n trench. He walked slowly back and reentered\n the torture chamber.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage\n he'd done.\n\n\n As he watched them, Jon was still curious,\n but he was getting mad underneath at\n the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.\n\n\n By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by\n her green fields, and dark forests, he'd\n stay alive to warn the SP ship.\n\n\n Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send\n the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid\n to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could\n equip themselves with spray guns and squirt\n citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade\n away.", "By then it was almost too late. The six\n blue figures were only fifty feet away, approaching\n him at a lope.\n\n\n Jon Karyl took one look and went bounding\n over the asteroid's rocky slopes in fifty-foot\n bounds.\n\n\n When you're a Lone Watcher, and\n strangers catch you unawares, you don't\n stand still. You move fast. It's the Watcher's\n first rule. Stay alive. An Earthship may depend\n upon your life.\n\n\n As he fled, Jon Karyl cursed softly under\n his breath. The automatic alarm should have\n shrilled out a warning.\n\n\n Then he saved as much of his breath as\n he could as some sort of power wave tore\n up the rocky sward to his left. He twisted\n and zig-zagged in his flight, trying to get\n out of sight of the strangers.", "He had little fear now, only curiosity.\n These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.\n They could have snuffed out my life very\n simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be\n friends.\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled.\nJon\n followed him through the sundered\n lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a\n moment to examine the wreckage of the\n lock. It had been punched full of holes as\n if it had been some soft cheese instead of a\n metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a\n century perfecting.\n\n\n \"We appreciate your compliment,\" Steel-Blue\n said. \"But that metal also is found on\n our world. It's probably the softest and most\n malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,\n is it?—use it as protective\n metal.\"\n\n\n \"Why are you in this system?\" Jon asked,\n hardly expecting an answer.", "Where their eyes would have been was\n an elliptical-shaped lens, covering half the\n egg-head, with its converging ends curving\n around the sides of the head.\n\n\n Robots! Jon gauged immediately. But\n where were their masters?\n\n\n The Steel-Blues moved out of the range\n of the televisor. A minute later Jon heard\n a pounding from the station upstairs.\n\n\n He chuckled. They were like the wolf of\n pre-atomic days who huffed and puffed to\n blow the house down.\n\n\n The outer shell of the station was formed\n from stelrylite, the toughest metal in the\n solar system. With the self-sealing lock of\n the same resistant material, a mere pounding\n was nothing.\n\n\n Jon thought he'd have a look-see anyway.\n He went up the steel ladder leading to the\n station's power plant and the televisor that\n could look into every room within the\n station.", "\"What is this torture?\" Jon Karyl asked.\n\n\n The answer was almost caressing: \"It is\n a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes\n joints to harden if even so much as a drop\n remains on it long. It eats away the metal,\n leaving a scaly residue which crumbles\n eventually into dust.\n\n\n \"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid\n for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die\n instantly.\n\n\n \"Enter your\"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—\"mausoleum.\n You die in your own atmosphere.\n However, we took the liberty of purifying\n it. There were dangerous elements in\n it.\"\n\n\n Jon walked into the little igloo. The\n Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials\n and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit\n deflated. Pressure was building up in the\n igloo.", "\"A robot,\" came the immediate answer.\n Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue\n was telepathic. \"Yes,\" the Steel-Blue answered.\n \"We talk in the language of the\n mind. Come!\" he said peremptorily, motioning\n with the square black box.\n\n\n The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed\n the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens\n he'd seen on the creature's face had a\n counterpart on the back of the egg-head.\n\n\n Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.\n That's quite an innovation. \"Thank you,\"\n Steel-Blue said.\n\n\n There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's\n mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he\n had applied for this high-paying but man-killing\n job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar\n System's starways.", "A Steel-Blue, more massive than his\n guide and with four more pair of tentacles,\n including two short ones that grew from the\n top of its head, spoke out.\n\n\n \"This is the violator?\" Jon's Steel-Blue\n nodded.\n\n\n \"You know the penalty? Carry it out.\"\n\n\n \"He also is an inhabitant of this system,\"\n Jon's guide added.\n\n\n \"Examine him first, then give him the\n death.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from\n the lighted room through more corridors.\n If it got too bad he still had the stubray\n pistol.\n\n\n Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on\n the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service\n station attendant just to see what it offered.\n\n\n Here was a part of it, and it was certainly\n something new.", "\"Just thinking to myself,\" Jon answered.\n It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his\n thoughts had to be directed outward, rather\n than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to\n read it.\n\n\n He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping\n lock of the invaders' space ship wondering\n how he could warn Earth. The Space\n Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at\n his service station in 21 days. But by that\n time he probably would be mouldering in\n the rocky dust of the asteroid.\n\n\n It was pitch dark within the ship but the\n Steel-Blue seemed to have no trouble at all\n maneuvering through the maze of corridors.\n Jon followed him, attached to one tentacle.\n\n\n Finally Jon and his guide entered a circular\n room, bright with light streaming from\n a glass-like, bulging skylight. They apparently\n were near topside of the vessel.", "\"Eat?\" The Steel-Blue sounded puzzled.\n\n\n \"I want to refuel. I've got to have food\n to keep my engine going.\"\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled. \"So the hemlock, as\n you call it, is beginning to affect you at\n last? Back to the torture room.\"\n\n\n \"Like R-dust,\" Jon growled. He pressed\n the firing stud on the stubray gun. One of\n Steel-Blue's tentacles broke off and fell to\n the rocky sward.\n\n\n Steel-Blue jerked out the box he'd used\n once before. A tentacle danced over it.\n\n\n Abruptly Jon found himself standing on\n a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a\n swath around him 15 feet deep and five feet\n wide.\n\n\n \"Back to the room,\" Steel-Blue commanded.", "\"They were metal monsters. No wonder\n they feared that liquid. It would rust their\n joints, short their wiring, and kill them.\n No wonder they stared when I kept alive\n after drinking enough to completely annihilate\n a half-dozen of them.\n\n\n \"But what happened when you met the\n ship?\"\n\n\n The space captain grinned.\n\n\n \"Not much. Our crew was busy creating\n a hollow shell filled with\nwater\nto be shot\n out of a rocket tube converted into a projectile\n thrower.\n\n\n \"These Steel-Blues, as you call them, put\n traction beams on us and started tugging us\n toward the asteroid. We tried a couple of\n atomic shots but when they just glanced off,\n we gave up.\n\n\n \"They weren't expecting the shell of\n water. When it hit that blue ship, you could\n almost see it oxidize before your eyes." ], [ "The power ray from behind ripped out\n great gobs of the sheltering bushes. But\n running naturally, bent close to the bottom\n of the ravine, Jon Karyl dodged the bare\n spots. The oxygen made the tremendous\n exertion easy for his lungs as he sped down\n the dim trail, hidden from the two steel-blue\n stalkers.\n\n\n He'd eluded them, temporarily at least,\n Jon Karyl decided when he finally edged off\n the dim trail and watched for movement\n along the route behind him.\n\n\n He stood up, finally, pushed aside the\n leafy overhang of a bush and looked for\n landmarks along the edge of the ravine.\n\n\n He found one, a stubby bush, shaped like\n a Maltese cross, clinging to the lip of the\n ravine. The hidden entrance to the service\n station wasn't far off.\n\n\n His pistol held ready, he moved quietly\n on down the ravine until the old water\n course made an abrupt hairpin turn.", "Instead of following around the sharp\n bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead\n through the overhanging bushes until he\n came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his\n hands and knees he worked his way under\n the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out\n space in the center.\nThere\n , just ahead of him, was the lock\n leading into the service station. Slipping\n a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,\n he jabbed it into the center of the lock,\n opening the lever housing.\n\n\n He pulled strongly on the lever. With a\n hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.\n Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing\n softly behind.\n\n\n At the end of the long tunnel he stepped\n to the televisor which was fixed on the area\n surrounding the station.\n\n\n Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.\n But he saw their ship. It squatted\n like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut\n tight.", "Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut\n back and head for the underground entrance\n to the service station.\n\n\n He glanced back finally.\n\n\n Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting\n after him, and rapidly closing the\n distance.\n\n\n Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol\n at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for\n greater exertion, increased the gravity pull\n in his space-suit boots as he neared the\n ravine he'd been racing for.\n\n\n The oxygen was just taking hold when\n he hit the lip of the ravine and began\n sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn\n course.", "The Steel-Blue chuckled. \"You get—absent-minded,\n is it?—every once in a\n while.\"\n\n\n Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared\n lugging great sheets of plastic and various\n other equipment.\n\n\n They dumped their loads and began unbundling\n them.\n\n\n Working swiftly, they built a plastic\n igloo, smaller than the living room in the\n larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments\n inside—one of them Jon Karyl\n recognized as an air pump from within the\n station—and they laid out a pallet.\n\n\n When they were done Jon saw a miniature\n reproduction of the service station, lacking\n only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear\n plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the\n other.\n\n\n His Steel-Blue said: \"We have reproduced\n the atmosphere of your station so that you\n be watched while you undergo the torture\n under the normal conditions of your life.\"", "Up and up it rose, then flames flickered\n in a circle about its curious shape. The ship\n disappeared, suddenly accelerating.\n\n\n Jon Karyl strained his eyes.\n\n\n Finally he looked away from the heavens\n to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently\n outside the goldfish bowl.\n\n\n Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.\n He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran\n toward the service station.\n\n\n He didn't know how weak he was until\n he stumbled and fell only a few feet from\n his prison.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues just watched him.\n\n\n He crawled on, around the circular pit in\n the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue\n had shown him the power of his\n weapon.\n\n\n He'd been crawling through a nightmare\n for years when the quiet voice penetrated\n his dulled mind.", "The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't\n known until then how tense he'd been. Now\n with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He\n laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.\n\n\n There was one lone Steel-Blue watching\n him when he rubbed the sleep out of his\n eyes and sat up.\n\n\n He vanished almost instantly. He, or another\n like him, returned immediately accompanied\n by a half-dozen others, including\n the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.\n\n\n One said,\n\n\n \"You are alive.\" The thought registered\n amazement. \"When you lost consciousness,\n we thought you had\"—there was a hesitation—\"as\n you say, died.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Jon Karyl said. \"I didn't die. I\n was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep.\"\n The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.", "And he was interested in staying alive as\n long as possible. There was a remote chance\n he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,\n he glanced toward his belt to see the little\n power pack which, if under ideal conditions,\n could finger out fifty thousand miles into\n space.\n\n\n If he could somehow stay alive the 21\n days he might be able to warn the patrol.\n He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for\n his life would be snuffed out immediately.\n\n\n The Steel-Blue said quietly:\n\n\n \"It might be ironical to let you warn\n that SP ship you keep thinking about. But\n we know your weapon now. Already our\n ship is equipped with a force field designed\n especially to deflect your atomic guns.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts\n quickly. They can delve deeper than the\n surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a\n leash on my thoughts?", "Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the\n chronometer on his wrist.\n\n\n Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien\n ship and halted expectantly just outside the\n ship's lock.\n\n\n Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the\n stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my\n way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he\n toted up the disadvantages.\n\n\n He either would have to find a hiding\n place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues\n wanted him bad enough they could tear the\n whole place to pieces, or somehow get\n aboard the little life ship hidden in the\n service station.\n\n\n In that he would be just a sitting duck.\n\n\n He shrugged off the slight temptation to\n use the pistol. He was still curious.", "\"Take it easy, Karyl. You're among\n friends.\"\n\n\n He pried open his eyes with his will. He\n saw the blue and gold of a space guard's\n uniform. He sighed and drifted into unconsciousness.\nHe was\n still weak days later when\n Capt. Ron Small of SP-101 said,\n\n\n \"Yes, Karyl, it's ironical. They fed you\n what they thought was sure death, and it's\n the only thing that kept you going long\n enough to warn us.\"\n\n\n \"I was dumb for a long time,\" Karyl said.\n \"I thought that it was the acid, almost to\n the very last. But when I drank that last\n glass, I knew they didn't have a chance.", "\"Good it is that you live. The torture\n will continue,\" spoke No. 1 before loping\n away.\n\n\n The cylinder business began again. This\n time, Jon drank the bitter liquid slowly, trying\n to figure out what it was. It had a\n familiar, tantalizing taste but he couldn't\n quite put a taste-finger on it.\n\n\n His belly said he was hungry. He glanced\n at his chronometer. Only 20 days left before\n the SP ship arrived.\n\n\n Would this torture—he chuckled—last\n until then? But he was growing more and\n more conscious that his belly was screaming\n for hunger. The liquid had taken the edge\n off his thirst.\n\n\n It was on the fifth day of his torture that\n Jon Karyl decided that he was going to get\n something to eat or perish in the attempt.", "\"What is this torture?\" Jon Karyl asked.\n\n\n The answer was almost caressing: \"It is\n a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes\n joints to harden if even so much as a drop\n remains on it long. It eats away the metal,\n leaving a scaly residue which crumbles\n eventually into dust.\n\n\n \"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid\n for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die\n instantly.\n\n\n \"Enter your\"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—\"mausoleum.\n You die in your own atmosphere.\n However, we took the liberty of purifying\n it. There were dangerous elements in\n it.\"\n\n\n Jon walked into the little igloo. The\n Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials\n and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit\n deflated. Pressure was building up in the\n igloo.", "Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,\n shrugged non-committally and leaped the\n trench. He walked slowly back and reentered\n the torture chamber.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage\n he'd done.\n\n\n As he watched them, Jon was still curious,\n but he was getting mad underneath at\n the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.\n\n\n By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by\n her green fields, and dark forests, he'd\n stay alive to warn the SP ship.\n\n\n Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send\n the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid\n to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could\n equip themselves with spray guns and squirt\n citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade\n away.", "By then it was almost too late. The six\n blue figures were only fifty feet away, approaching\n him at a lope.\n\n\n Jon Karyl took one look and went bounding\n over the asteroid's rocky slopes in fifty-foot\n bounds.\n\n\n When you're a Lone Watcher, and\n strangers catch you unawares, you don't\n stand still. You move fast. It's the Watcher's\n first rule. Stay alive. An Earthship may depend\n upon your life.\n\n\n As he fled, Jon Karyl cursed softly under\n his breath. The automatic alarm should have\n shrilled out a warning.\n\n\n Then he saved as much of his breath as\n he could as some sort of power wave tore\n up the rocky sward to his left. He twisted\n and zig-zagged in his flight, trying to get\n out of sight of the strangers.", "\"I guess they knew what was wrong right\n away. They let go the traction beams and\n tried to get away. They forgot about the\n force field, so we just poured atomic fire\n into the weakening ship. It just melted\n away.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl got up from the divan where\n he'd been lying. \"They thought I was a\n metal creature, too. But where do you suppose\n they came from?\"\n\n\n The captain shrugged. \"Who knows?\"\n\n\n Jon set two glasses on the table.\n\n\n \"Have a drink of the best damn water in\n the solar system?\" He asked Capt. Small.\n\n\n \"Don't mind if I do.\"", "\"A robot,\" came the immediate answer.\n Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue\n was telepathic. \"Yes,\" the Steel-Blue answered.\n \"We talk in the language of the\n mind. Come!\" he said peremptorily, motioning\n with the square black box.\n\n\n The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed\n the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens\n he'd seen on the creature's face had a\n counterpart on the back of the egg-head.\n\n\n Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.\n That's quite an innovation. \"Thank you,\"\n Steel-Blue said.\n\n\n There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's\n mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he\n had applied for this high-paying but man-killing\n job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar\n System's starways.", "A Steel-Blue, more massive than his\n guide and with four more pair of tentacles,\n including two short ones that grew from the\n top of its head, spoke out.\n\n\n \"This is the violator?\" Jon's Steel-Blue\n nodded.\n\n\n \"You know the penalty? Carry it out.\"\n\n\n \"He also is an inhabitant of this system,\"\n Jon's guide added.\n\n\n \"Examine him first, then give him the\n death.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from\n the lighted room through more corridors.\n If it got too bad he still had the stubray\n pistol.\n\n\n Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on\n the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service\n station attendant just to see what it offered.\n\n\n Here was a part of it, and it was certainly\n something new.", "He tuned the televisor to its widest range\n and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.\n He was looking into the stationary rocket\n engine.\n\n\n As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue\n came crawling out of the ship.\n\n\n The two Steel-Blues moved toward the\n center of the televisor range. They're coming\n toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.\n\n\n Karyl examined the two creatures. They\n were of the steel-blue color from the crown\n of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of\n their walking appendages.\n\n\n They were about the height of Karyl—six\n feet. But where he tapered from broad\n shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up\n and down. They had no legs, just appendages,\n many-jointed that stretched and\n shrank independent of the other, but keeping\n the cylindrical body with its four pairs\n of tentacles on a level balance.", "Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed\n from the waist down. But it couldn't\n happen that suddenly.\n\n\n He turned his head.\n\n\n A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked\n tentacle held a square black box.\n\n\n Jon could read nothing in that metallic\n face. He said, voice muffled by the confines\n of the plastic helmet, \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am\"—there was a rising inflection in\n the answer—\"a Steel-Blue.\"\n\n\n There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's\n face to move. \"That is what I have named\n you,\" Jon Karyl said. \"But what are you?\"", "The extra-terrestrials had repaired the\n blue ship where the service station atomic\n ray had struck. And they were doing a little\n target practice with plastic bubbles only a\n few miles above the asteroid.\n\n\n When his chronometer clocked off the\n beginning of the twenty-first day, Jon received\n a tumbler of the hemlock from the\n hands of No. 1 himself.\n\n\n \"It is the hemlock,\" he chuckled, \"undiluted.\n Drink it and your torture is over.\n You will die before your SP ship is destroyed.\n\n\n \"We have played with you long enough.\n Today we begin to toy with your SP ship.\n Drink up, Earthman, drink to enslavement.\"\n\n\n Weak though he was Jon lunged to his\n feet, spilling the tumbler of liquid. It ran\n cool along the plastic arm of his space suit.\n He changed his mind about throwing the\n contents on No. 1.", "\"Eat?\" The Steel-Blue sounded puzzled.\n\n\n \"I want to refuel. I've got to have food\n to keep my engine going.\"\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled. \"So the hemlock, as\n you call it, is beginning to affect you at\n last? Back to the torture room.\"\n\n\n \"Like R-dust,\" Jon growled. He pressed\n the firing stud on the stubray gun. One of\n Steel-Blue's tentacles broke off and fell to\n the rocky sward.\n\n\n Steel-Blue jerked out the box he'd used\n once before. A tentacle danced over it.\n\n\n Abruptly Jon found himself standing on\n a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a\n swath around him 15 feet deep and five feet\n wide.\n\n\n \"Back to the room,\" Steel-Blue commanded." ], [ "The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't\n known until then how tense he'd been. Now\n with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He\n laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.\n\n\n There was one lone Steel-Blue watching\n him when he rubbed the sleep out of his\n eyes and sat up.\n\n\n He vanished almost instantly. He, or another\n like him, returned immediately accompanied\n by a half-dozen others, including\n the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.\n\n\n One said,\n\n\n \"You are alive.\" The thought registered\n amazement. \"When you lost consciousness,\n we thought you had\"—there was a hesitation—\"as\n you say, died.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Jon Karyl said. \"I didn't die. I\n was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep.\"\n The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.", "The Steel-Blue chuckled. \"You get—absent-minded,\n is it?—every once in a\n while.\"\n\n\n Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared\n lugging great sheets of plastic and various\n other equipment.\n\n\n They dumped their loads and began unbundling\n them.\n\n\n Working swiftly, they built a plastic\n igloo, smaller than the living room in the\n larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments\n inside—one of them Jon Karyl\n recognized as an air pump from within the\n station—and they laid out a pallet.\n\n\n When they were done Jon saw a miniature\n reproduction of the service station, lacking\n only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear\n plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the\n other.\n\n\n His Steel-Blue said: \"We have reproduced\n the atmosphere of your station so that you\n be watched while you undergo the torture\n under the normal conditions of your life.\"", "And he was interested in staying alive as\n long as possible. There was a remote chance\n he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,\n he glanced toward his belt to see the little\n power pack which, if under ideal conditions,\n could finger out fifty thousand miles into\n space.\n\n\n If he could somehow stay alive the 21\n days he might be able to warn the patrol.\n He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for\n his life would be snuffed out immediately.\n\n\n The Steel-Blue said quietly:\n\n\n \"It might be ironical to let you warn\n that SP ship you keep thinking about. But\n we know your weapon now. Already our\n ship is equipped with a force field designed\n especially to deflect your atomic guns.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts\n quickly. They can delve deeper than the\n surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a\n leash on my thoughts?", "Up and up it rose, then flames flickered\n in a circle about its curious shape. The ship\n disappeared, suddenly accelerating.\n\n\n Jon Karyl strained his eyes.\n\n\n Finally he looked away from the heavens\n to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently\n outside the goldfish bowl.\n\n\n Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.\n He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran\n toward the service station.\n\n\n He didn't know how weak he was until\n he stumbled and fell only a few feet from\n his prison.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues just watched him.\n\n\n He crawled on, around the circular pit in\n the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue\n had shown him the power of his\n weapon.\n\n\n He'd been crawling through a nightmare\n for years when the quiet voice penetrated\n his dulled mind.", "Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed\n from the waist down. But it couldn't\n happen that suddenly.\n\n\n He turned his head.\n\n\n A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked\n tentacle held a square black box.\n\n\n Jon could read nothing in that metallic\n face. He said, voice muffled by the confines\n of the plastic helmet, \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am\"—there was a rising inflection in\n the answer—\"a Steel-Blue.\"\n\n\n There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's\n face to move. \"That is what I have named\n you,\" Jon Karyl said. \"But what are you?\"", "\"What is this torture?\" Jon Karyl asked.\n\n\n The answer was almost caressing: \"It is\n a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes\n joints to harden if even so much as a drop\n remains on it long. It eats away the metal,\n leaving a scaly residue which crumbles\n eventually into dust.\n\n\n \"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid\n for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die\n instantly.\n\n\n \"Enter your\"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—\"mausoleum.\n You die in your own atmosphere.\n However, we took the liberty of purifying\n it. There were dangerous elements in\n it.\"\n\n\n Jon walked into the little igloo. The\n Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials\n and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit\n deflated. Pressure was building up in the\n igloo.", "He tuned the televisor to its widest range\n and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.\n He was looking into the stationary rocket\n engine.\n\n\n As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue\n came crawling out of the ship.\n\n\n The two Steel-Blues moved toward the\n center of the televisor range. They're coming\n toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.\n\n\n Karyl examined the two creatures. They\n were of the steel-blue color from the crown\n of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of\n their walking appendages.\n\n\n They were about the height of Karyl—six\n feet. But where he tapered from broad\n shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up\n and down. They had no legs, just appendages,\n many-jointed that stretched and\n shrank independent of the other, but keeping\n the cylindrical body with its four pairs\n of tentacles on a level balance.", "\"This is the examination room,\" his\n Steel-Blue said, almost contemptuously.\n\n\n A green effulgence surrounded him.\nThere\n was a hiss. Simultaneously, as the\n tiny microphone on the outside of his\n suit picked up the hiss, he felt a chill go\n through his body. Then it seemed as if a\n half dozen hands were inside him, examining\n his internal organs. His stomach contracted.\n He felt a squeeze on his heart. His\n lungs tickled.\n\n\n There were several more queer motions\n inside his body.\n\n\n Then another Steel-Blue voice said:\n\n\n \"He is a soft-metal creature, made up of\n metals that melt at a very low temperature.\n He also contains a liquid whose makeup I\n cannot ascertain by ray-probe. Bring him\n back when the torture is done.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl grinned a trifle wryly. What\n kind of torture could this be?", "\"Eat?\" The Steel-Blue sounded puzzled.\n\n\n \"I want to refuel. I've got to have food\n to keep my engine going.\"\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled. \"So the hemlock, as\n you call it, is beginning to affect you at\n last? Back to the torture room.\"\n\n\n \"Like R-dust,\" Jon growled. He pressed\n the firing stud on the stubray gun. One of\n Steel-Blue's tentacles broke off and fell to\n the rocky sward.\n\n\n Steel-Blue jerked out the box he'd used\n once before. A tentacle danced over it.\n\n\n Abruptly Jon found himself standing on\n a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a\n swath around him 15 feet deep and five feet\n wide.\n\n\n \"Back to the room,\" Steel-Blue commanded.", "He had little fear now, only curiosity.\n These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.\n They could have snuffed out my life very\n simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be\n friends.\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled.\nJon\n followed him through the sundered\n lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a\n moment to examine the wreckage of the\n lock. It had been punched full of holes as\n if it had been some soft cheese instead of a\n metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a\n century perfecting.\n\n\n \"We appreciate your compliment,\" Steel-Blue\n said. \"But that metal also is found on\n our world. It's probably the softest and most\n malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,\n is it?—use it as protective\n metal.\"\n\n\n \"Why are you in this system?\" Jon asked,\n hardly expecting an answer.", "A Steel-Blue, more massive than his\n guide and with four more pair of tentacles,\n including two short ones that grew from the\n top of its head, spoke out.\n\n\n \"This is the violator?\" Jon's Steel-Blue\n nodded.\n\n\n \"You know the penalty? Carry it out.\"\n\n\n \"He also is an inhabitant of this system,\"\n Jon's guide added.\n\n\n \"Examine him first, then give him the\n death.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from\n the lighted room through more corridors.\n If it got too bad he still had the stubray\n pistol.\n\n\n Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on\n the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service\n station attendant just to see what it offered.\n\n\n Here was a part of it, and it was certainly\n something new.", "It sounded almost silly to Jon Karyl. The\n fruit acid of Earth to repel these invaders—it\n doesn't sound possible. That couldn't be\n the answer.\n\n\n Citric acid wasn't the answer, Jon Karyl\n discovered a week later.\n\n\n The Steel-Blue who had captured him in\n the power room of the service station came\n in to examine him.\n\n\n \"You're still holding out, I see,\" he observed\n after poking Jon in every sensitive\n part of his body.\n\n\n \"I'll suggest to No. 1 that we increase\n the power of the—ah—hemlock. How do\n you feel?\"\n\n\n Between the rich oxygen and the dizziness\n of hunger, Jon was a bit delirious. But he\n answered honestly enough: \"My guts feel as\n if they're chewing each other up. My bones\n ache. My joints creak. I can't coordinate I'm\n so hungry.\"", "Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the\n chronometer on his wrist.\n\n\n Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien\n ship and halted expectantly just outside the\n ship's lock.\n\n\n Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the\n stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my\n way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he\n toted up the disadvantages.\n\n\n He either would have to find a hiding\n place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues\n wanted him bad enough they could tear the\n whole place to pieces, or somehow get\n aboard the little life ship hidden in the\n service station.\n\n\n In that he would be just a sitting duck.\n\n\n He shrugged off the slight temptation to\n use the pistol. He was still curious.", "Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,\n shrugged non-committally and leaped the\n trench. He walked slowly back and reentered\n the torture chamber.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage\n he'd done.\n\n\n As he watched them, Jon was still curious,\n but he was getting mad underneath at\n the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.\n\n\n By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by\n her green fields, and dark forests, he'd\n stay alive to warn the SP ship.\n\n\n Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send\n the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid\n to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could\n equip themselves with spray guns and squirt\n citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade\n away.", "Instead of following around the sharp\n bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead\n through the overhanging bushes until he\n came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his\n hands and knees he worked his way under\n the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out\n space in the center.\nThere\n , just ahead of him, was the lock\n leading into the service station. Slipping\n a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,\n he jabbed it into the center of the lock,\n opening the lever housing.\n\n\n He pulled strongly on the lever. With a\n hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.\n Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing\n softly behind.\n\n\n At the end of the long tunnel he stepped\n to the televisor which was fixed on the area\n surrounding the station.\n\n\n Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.\n But he saw their ship. It squatted\n like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut\n tight.", "\"That is the hemlock,\" Steel-Blue said.\n\n\n It was when he quaffed the new and\n stronger draught that Jon knew that his\n hope that it was citric acid was squelched.\n\n\n The acid taste was weaker which meant\n that the citric acid was the diluting liquid.\n It was the liquid he couldn't taste beneath\n the tang of the citric acid that was the corrosive\n acid.\n\n\n On the fourteenth day, Jon was so weak\n he didn't feel much like moving around. He\n let the cylinder feed him the hemlock.\n\n\n No. 1 came again to see him, and went\n away chuckling, \"Decrease the dilution.\n This Earthman at last is beginning to\n suffer.\"\nStaying\n alive had now become a fetish\n with Jon.\n\n\n On the sixteenth day, the Earthman realized\n that the Steel-Blues also were waiting\n for the SP ship.", "\"Take it easy, Karyl. You're among\n friends.\"\n\n\n He pried open his eyes with his will. He\n saw the blue and gold of a space guard's\n uniform. He sighed and drifted into unconsciousness.\nHe was\n still weak days later when\n Capt. Ron Small of SP-101 said,\n\n\n \"Yes, Karyl, it's ironical. They fed you\n what they thought was sure death, and it's\n the only thing that kept you going long\n enough to warn us.\"\n\n\n \"I was dumb for a long time,\" Karyl said.\n \"I thought that it was the acid, almost to\n the very last. But when I drank that last\n glass, I knew they didn't have a chance.", "\"A robot,\" came the immediate answer.\n Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue\n was telepathic. \"Yes,\" the Steel-Blue answered.\n \"We talk in the language of the\n mind. Come!\" he said peremptorily, motioning\n with the square black box.\n\n\n The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed\n the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens\n he'd seen on the creature's face had a\n counterpart on the back of the egg-head.\n\n\n Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.\n That's quite an innovation. \"Thank you,\"\n Steel-Blue said.\n\n\n There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's\n mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he\n had applied for this high-paying but man-killing\n job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar\n System's starways.", "\"Just thinking to myself,\" Jon answered.\n It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his\n thoughts had to be directed outward, rather\n than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to\n read it.\n\n\n He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping\n lock of the invaders' space ship wondering\n how he could warn Earth. The Space\n Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at\n his service station in 21 days. But by that\n time he probably would be mouldering in\n the rocky dust of the asteroid.\n\n\n It was pitch dark within the ship but the\n Steel-Blue seemed to have no trouble at all\n maneuvering through the maze of corridors.\n Jon followed him, attached to one tentacle.\n\n\n Finally Jon and his guide entered a circular\n room, bright with light streaming from\n a glass-like, bulging skylight. They apparently\n were near topside of the vessel.", "\"Good it is that you live. The torture\n will continue,\" spoke No. 1 before loping\n away.\n\n\n The cylinder business began again. This\n time, Jon drank the bitter liquid slowly, trying\n to figure out what it was. It had a\n familiar, tantalizing taste but he couldn't\n quite put a taste-finger on it.\n\n\n His belly said he was hungry. He glanced\n at his chronometer. Only 20 days left before\n the SP ship arrived.\n\n\n Would this torture—he chuckled—last\n until then? But he was growing more and\n more conscious that his belly was screaming\n for hunger. The liquid had taken the edge\n off his thirst.\n\n\n It was on the fifth day of his torture that\n Jon Karyl decided that he was going to get\n something to eat or perish in the attempt." ], [ "Instead of following around the sharp\n bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead\n through the overhanging bushes until he\n came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his\n hands and knees he worked his way under\n the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out\n space in the center.\nThere\n , just ahead of him, was the lock\n leading into the service station. Slipping\n a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,\n he jabbed it into the center of the lock,\n opening the lever housing.\n\n\n He pulled strongly on the lever. With a\n hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.\n Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing\n softly behind.\n\n\n At the end of the long tunnel he stepped\n to the televisor which was fixed on the area\n surrounding the station.\n\n\n Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.\n But he saw their ship. It squatted\n like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut\n tight.", "The Steel-Blue chuckled. \"You get—absent-minded,\n is it?—every once in a\n while.\"\n\n\n Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared\n lugging great sheets of plastic and various\n other equipment.\n\n\n They dumped their loads and began unbundling\n them.\n\n\n Working swiftly, they built a plastic\n igloo, smaller than the living room in the\n larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments\n inside—one of them Jon Karyl\n recognized as an air pump from within the\n station—and they laid out a pallet.\n\n\n When they were done Jon saw a miniature\n reproduction of the service station, lacking\n only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear\n plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the\n other.\n\n\n His Steel-Blue said: \"We have reproduced\n the atmosphere of your station so that you\n be watched while you undergo the torture\n under the normal conditions of your life.\"", "The power ray from behind ripped out\n great gobs of the sheltering bushes. But\n running naturally, bent close to the bottom\n of the ravine, Jon Karyl dodged the bare\n spots. The oxygen made the tremendous\n exertion easy for his lungs as he sped down\n the dim trail, hidden from the two steel-blue\n stalkers.\n\n\n He'd eluded them, temporarily at least,\n Jon Karyl decided when he finally edged off\n the dim trail and watched for movement\n along the route behind him.\n\n\n He stood up, finally, pushed aside the\n leafy overhang of a bush and looked for\n landmarks along the edge of the ravine.\n\n\n He found one, a stubby bush, shaped like\n a Maltese cross, clinging to the lip of the\n ravine. The hidden entrance to the service\n station wasn't far off.\n\n\n His pistol held ready, he moved quietly\n on down the ravine until the old water\n course made an abrupt hairpin turn.", "Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut\n back and head for the underground entrance\n to the service station.\n\n\n He glanced back finally.\n\n\n Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting\n after him, and rapidly closing the\n distance.\n\n\n Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol\n at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for\n greater exertion, increased the gravity pull\n in his space-suit boots as he neared the\n ravine he'd been racing for.\n\n\n The oxygen was just taking hold when\n he hit the lip of the ravine and began\n sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn\n course.", "The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't\n known until then how tense he'd been. Now\n with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He\n laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.\n\n\n There was one lone Steel-Blue watching\n him when he rubbed the sleep out of his\n eyes and sat up.\n\n\n He vanished almost instantly. He, or another\n like him, returned immediately accompanied\n by a half-dozen others, including\n the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.\n\n\n One said,\n\n\n \"You are alive.\" The thought registered\n amazement. \"When you lost consciousness,\n we thought you had\"—there was a hesitation—\"as\n you say, died.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Jon Karyl said. \"I didn't die. I\n was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep.\"\n The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.", "He tuned the televisor to its widest range\n and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.\n He was looking into the stationary rocket\n engine.\n\n\n As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue\n came crawling out of the ship.\n\n\n The two Steel-Blues moved toward the\n center of the televisor range. They're coming\n toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.\n\n\n Karyl examined the two creatures. They\n were of the steel-blue color from the crown\n of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of\n their walking appendages.\n\n\n They were about the height of Karyl—six\n feet. But where he tapered from broad\n shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up\n and down. They had no legs, just appendages,\n many-jointed that stretched and\n shrank independent of the other, but keeping\n the cylindrical body with its four pairs\n of tentacles on a level balance.", "And he was interested in staying alive as\n long as possible. There was a remote chance\n he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,\n he glanced toward his belt to see the little\n power pack which, if under ideal conditions,\n could finger out fifty thousand miles into\n space.\n\n\n If he could somehow stay alive the 21\n days he might be able to warn the patrol.\n He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for\n his life would be snuffed out immediately.\n\n\n The Steel-Blue said quietly:\n\n\n \"It might be ironical to let you warn\n that SP ship you keep thinking about. But\n we know your weapon now. Already our\n ship is equipped with a force field designed\n especially to deflect your atomic guns.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts\n quickly. They can delve deeper than the\n surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a\n leash on my thoughts?", "Up and up it rose, then flames flickered\n in a circle about its curious shape. The ship\n disappeared, suddenly accelerating.\n\n\n Jon Karyl strained his eyes.\n\n\n Finally he looked away from the heavens\n to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently\n outside the goldfish bowl.\n\n\n Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.\n He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran\n toward the service station.\n\n\n He didn't know how weak he was until\n he stumbled and fell only a few feet from\n his prison.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues just watched him.\n\n\n He crawled on, around the circular pit in\n the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue\n had shown him the power of his\n weapon.\n\n\n He'd been crawling through a nightmare\n for years when the quiet voice penetrated\n his dulled mind.", "He had little fear now, only curiosity.\n These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.\n They could have snuffed out my life very\n simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be\n friends.\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled.\nJon\n followed him through the sundered\n lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a\n moment to examine the wreckage of the\n lock. It had been punched full of holes as\n if it had been some soft cheese instead of a\n metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a\n century perfecting.\n\n\n \"We appreciate your compliment,\" Steel-Blue\n said. \"But that metal also is found on\n our world. It's probably the softest and most\n malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,\n is it?—use it as protective\n metal.\"\n\n\n \"Why are you in this system?\" Jon asked,\n hardly expecting an answer.", "Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the\n chronometer on his wrist.\n\n\n Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien\n ship and halted expectantly just outside the\n ship's lock.\n\n\n Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the\n stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my\n way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he\n toted up the disadvantages.\n\n\n He either would have to find a hiding\n place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues\n wanted him bad enough they could tear the\n whole place to pieces, or somehow get\n aboard the little life ship hidden in the\n service station.\n\n\n In that he would be just a sitting duck.\n\n\n He shrugged off the slight temptation to\n use the pistol. He was still curious.", "Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed\n from the waist down. But it couldn't\n happen that suddenly.\n\n\n He turned his head.\n\n\n A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked\n tentacle held a square black box.\n\n\n Jon could read nothing in that metallic\n face. He said, voice muffled by the confines\n of the plastic helmet, \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am\"—there was a rising inflection in\n the answer—\"a Steel-Blue.\"\n\n\n There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's\n face to move. \"That is what I have named\n you,\" Jon Karyl said. \"But what are you?\"", "\"A robot,\" came the immediate answer.\n Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue\n was telepathic. \"Yes,\" the Steel-Blue answered.\n \"We talk in the language of the\n mind. Come!\" he said peremptorily, motioning\n with the square black box.\n\n\n The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed\n the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens\n he'd seen on the creature's face had a\n counterpart on the back of the egg-head.\n\n\n Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.\n That's quite an innovation. \"Thank you,\"\n Steel-Blue said.\n\n\n There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's\n mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he\n had applied for this high-paying but man-killing\n job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar\n System's starways.", "Where their eyes would have been was\n an elliptical-shaped lens, covering half the\n egg-head, with its converging ends curving\n around the sides of the head.\n\n\n Robots! Jon gauged immediately. But\n where were their masters?\n\n\n The Steel-Blues moved out of the range\n of the televisor. A minute later Jon heard\n a pounding from the station upstairs.\n\n\n He chuckled. They were like the wolf of\n pre-atomic days who huffed and puffed to\n blow the house down.\n\n\n The outer shell of the station was formed\n from stelrylite, the toughest metal in the\n solar system. With the self-sealing lock of\n the same resistant material, a mere pounding\n was nothing.\n\n\n Jon thought he'd have a look-see anyway.\n He went up the steel ladder leading to the\n station's power plant and the televisor that\n could look into every room within the\n station.", "A Steel-Blue, more massive than his\n guide and with four more pair of tentacles,\n including two short ones that grew from the\n top of its head, spoke out.\n\n\n \"This is the violator?\" Jon's Steel-Blue\n nodded.\n\n\n \"You know the penalty? Carry it out.\"\n\n\n \"He also is an inhabitant of this system,\"\n Jon's guide added.\n\n\n \"Examine him first, then give him the\n death.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from\n the lighted room through more corridors.\n If it got too bad he still had the stubray\n pistol.\n\n\n Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on\n the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service\n station attendant just to see what it offered.\n\n\n Here was a part of it, and it was certainly\n something new.", "\"Just thinking to myself,\" Jon answered.\n It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his\n thoughts had to be directed outward, rather\n than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to\n read it.\n\n\n He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping\n lock of the invaders' space ship wondering\n how he could warn Earth. The Space\n Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at\n his service station in 21 days. But by that\n time he probably would be mouldering in\n the rocky dust of the asteroid.\n\n\n It was pitch dark within the ship but the\n Steel-Blue seemed to have no trouble at all\n maneuvering through the maze of corridors.\n Jon followed him, attached to one tentacle.\n\n\n Finally Jon and his guide entered a circular\n room, bright with light streaming from\n a glass-like, bulging skylight. They apparently\n were near topside of the vessel.", "ACID BATH\nBy VASELEOS GARSON\nThe starways' Lone Watcher had expected some odd developments\n in his singular, nerve-fraught job on the asteroid. But nothing like the\n weird twenty-one-day liquid test devised by the invading Steel-Blues.\nJon Karyl\n was bolting in a new baffle\n plate on the stationary rocket engine.\n It was a tedious job and took all his\n concentration. So he wasn't paying too much\n attention to what was going on in other\n parts of the little asteroid.\n\n\n He didn't see the peculiar blue space\n ship, its rockets throttled down, as it drifted\n to land only a few hundred yards away from\n his plastic igloo.\n\n\n Nor did he see the half-dozen steel-blue\n creatures slide out of the peculiar vessel's\n airlock.\n\n\n It was only as he crawled out of the\n depths of the rocket power plant that he\n realized something was wrong.", "He took a sample of the air, found that\n it was good, although quite rich in oxygen\n compared with what he'd been using in the\n service station and in his suit.\n\n\n With a sigh of relief he took off his helmet\n and gulped huge draughts of the air.\n\n\n He sat down on the pallet and waited\n for the torture to begin.\n\n\n The Steel Blues crowded about the igloo,\n staring at him through elliptical eyes.\n\n\n Apparently, they too, were waiting for the\n torture to begin.\n\n\n Jon thought the excess of oxygen was\n making him light-headed.\n\n\n He stared at a cylinder which was beginning\n to sprout tentacles from the circle.\n He rubbed his eyes and looked again. An\n opening, like the adjustable eye-piece of a\n spacescope, was appearing in the center of\n the cylinder.", "The cylinder sat passively in its niche in\n the circle. A dozen Steel-Blues were watching\n as Jon put on his helmet and unsheathed\n his stubray.\n\n\n They merely watched as he pressed the\n stubray's firing stud. Invisible rays licked\n out of the bulbous muzzle of the pistol.\n The plastic splintered.\n\n\n Jon was out of his goldfish bowl and\n striding toward his own igloo adjacent to\n the service station when a Steel-Blue\n accosted him.\n\n\n \"Out of my way,\" grunted Jon, waving\n the stubray. \"I'm hungry.\"\n\n\n \"I'm the first Steel-Blue you met,\" said\n the creature who barred his way. \"Go back\n to your torture.\"\n\n\n \"But I'm so hungry I'll chew off one of\n your tentacles and eat it without seasoning.\"", "\"What is this torture?\" Jon Karyl asked.\n\n\n The answer was almost caressing: \"It is\n a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes\n joints to harden if even so much as a drop\n remains on it long. It eats away the metal,\n leaving a scaly residue which crumbles\n eventually into dust.\n\n\n \"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid\n for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die\n instantly.\n\n\n \"Enter your\"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—\"mausoleum.\n You die in your own atmosphere.\n However, we took the liberty of purifying\n it. There were dangerous elements in\n it.\"\n\n\n Jon walked into the little igloo. The\n Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials\n and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit\n deflated. Pressure was building up in the\n igloo.", "\"This is the examination room,\" his\n Steel-Blue said, almost contemptuously.\n\n\n A green effulgence surrounded him.\nThere\n was a hiss. Simultaneously, as the\n tiny microphone on the outside of his\n suit picked up the hiss, he felt a chill go\n through his body. Then it seemed as if a\n half dozen hands were inside him, examining\n his internal organs. His stomach contracted.\n He felt a squeeze on his heart. His\n lungs tickled.\n\n\n There were several more queer motions\n inside his body.\n\n\n Then another Steel-Blue voice said:\n\n\n \"He is a soft-metal creature, made up of\n metals that melt at a very low temperature.\n He also contains a liquid whose makeup I\n cannot ascertain by ray-probe. Bring him\n back when the torture is done.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl grinned a trifle wryly. What\n kind of torture could this be?" ], [ "He tuned the televisor to its widest range\n and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.\n He was looking into the stationary rocket\n engine.\n\n\n As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue\n came crawling out of the ship.\n\n\n The two Steel-Blues moved toward the\n center of the televisor range. They're coming\n toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.\n\n\n Karyl examined the two creatures. They\n were of the steel-blue color from the crown\n of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of\n their walking appendages.\n\n\n They were about the height of Karyl—six\n feet. But where he tapered from broad\n shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up\n and down. They had no legs, just appendages,\n many-jointed that stretched and\n shrank independent of the other, but keeping\n the cylindrical body with its four pairs\n of tentacles on a level balance.", "Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed\n from the waist down. But it couldn't\n happen that suddenly.\n\n\n He turned his head.\n\n\n A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked\n tentacle held a square black box.\n\n\n Jon could read nothing in that metallic\n face. He said, voice muffled by the confines\n of the plastic helmet, \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am\"—there was a rising inflection in\n the answer—\"a Steel-Blue.\"\n\n\n There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's\n face to move. \"That is what I have named\n you,\" Jon Karyl said. \"But what are you?\"", "Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,\n shrugged non-committally and leaped the\n trench. He walked slowly back and reentered\n the torture chamber.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage\n he'd done.\n\n\n As he watched them, Jon was still curious,\n but he was getting mad underneath at\n the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.\n\n\n By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by\n her green fields, and dark forests, he'd\n stay alive to warn the SP ship.\n\n\n Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send\n the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid\n to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could\n equip themselves with spray guns and squirt\n citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade\n away.", "\"They were metal monsters. No wonder\n they feared that liquid. It would rust their\n joints, short their wiring, and kill them.\n No wonder they stared when I kept alive\n after drinking enough to completely annihilate\n a half-dozen of them.\n\n\n \"But what happened when you met the\n ship?\"\n\n\n The space captain grinned.\n\n\n \"Not much. Our crew was busy creating\n a hollow shell filled with\nwater\nto be shot\n out of a rocket tube converted into a projectile\n thrower.\n\n\n \"These Steel-Blues, as you call them, put\n traction beams on us and started tugging us\n toward the asteroid. We tried a couple of\n atomic shots but when they just glanced off,\n we gave up.\n\n\n \"They weren't expecting the shell of\n water. When it hit that blue ship, you could\n almost see it oxidize before your eyes.", "He heaved a slight sigh when he reached\n the power room, for right at his hand were\n weapons to blast the ship from the asteroid.\n\n\n Jon adjusted one televisor to take in the\n lock to the station. His teeth suddenly\n clamped down on his lower lip.\n\n\n Those Steel-Blues were pounding holes\n into the stelrylite with round-headed metal\n clubs. But it was impossible. Stelrylite didn't\n break up that easily.\n\n\n Jon leaped to a row of studs, lining up\n the revolving turret which capped the station\n so that its thin fin pointed at the\n squat ship of the invaders.\n\n\n Then he went to the atomic cannon's\n firing buttons.\n\n\n He pressed first the yellow, then the blue\n button. Finally the red one.", "Where their eyes would have been was\n an elliptical-shaped lens, covering half the\n egg-head, with its converging ends curving\n around the sides of the head.\n\n\n Robots! Jon gauged immediately. But\n where were their masters?\n\n\n The Steel-Blues moved out of the range\n of the televisor. A minute later Jon heard\n a pounding from the station upstairs.\n\n\n He chuckled. They were like the wolf of\n pre-atomic days who huffed and puffed to\n blow the house down.\n\n\n The outer shell of the station was formed\n from stelrylite, the toughest metal in the\n solar system. With the self-sealing lock of\n the same resistant material, a mere pounding\n was nothing.\n\n\n Jon thought he'd have a look-see anyway.\n He went up the steel ladder leading to the\n station's power plant and the televisor that\n could look into every room within the\n station.", "And he was interested in staying alive as\n long as possible. There was a remote chance\n he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,\n he glanced toward his belt to see the little\n power pack which, if under ideal conditions,\n could finger out fifty thousand miles into\n space.\n\n\n If he could somehow stay alive the 21\n days he might be able to warn the patrol.\n He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for\n his life would be snuffed out immediately.\n\n\n The Steel-Blue said quietly:\n\n\n \"It might be ironical to let you warn\n that SP ship you keep thinking about. But\n we know your weapon now. Already our\n ship is equipped with a force field designed\n especially to deflect your atomic guns.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts\n quickly. They can delve deeper than the\n surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a\n leash on my thoughts?", "The cylinder sat passively in its niche in\n the circle. A dozen Steel-Blues were watching\n as Jon put on his helmet and unsheathed\n his stubray.\n\n\n They merely watched as he pressed the\n stubray's firing stud. Invisible rays licked\n out of the bulbous muzzle of the pistol.\n The plastic splintered.\n\n\n Jon was out of his goldfish bowl and\n striding toward his own igloo adjacent to\n the service station when a Steel-Blue\n accosted him.\n\n\n \"Out of my way,\" grunted Jon, waving\n the stubray. \"I'm hungry.\"\n\n\n \"I'm the first Steel-Blue you met,\" said\n the creature who barred his way. \"Go back\n to your torture.\"\n\n\n \"But I'm so hungry I'll chew off one of\n your tentacles and eat it without seasoning.\"", "The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't\n known until then how tense he'd been. Now\n with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He\n laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.\n\n\n There was one lone Steel-Blue watching\n him when he rubbed the sleep out of his\n eyes and sat up.\n\n\n He vanished almost instantly. He, or another\n like him, returned immediately accompanied\n by a half-dozen others, including\n the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.\n\n\n One said,\n\n\n \"You are alive.\" The thought registered\n amazement. \"When you lost consciousness,\n we thought you had\"—there was a hesitation—\"as\n you say, died.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Jon Karyl said. \"I didn't die. I\n was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep.\"\n The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.", "\"Just thinking to myself,\" Jon answered.\n It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his\n thoughts had to be directed outward, rather\n than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to\n read it.\n\n\n He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping\n lock of the invaders' space ship wondering\n how he could warn Earth. The Space\n Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at\n his service station in 21 days. But by that\n time he probably would be mouldering in\n the rocky dust of the asteroid.\n\n\n It was pitch dark within the ship but the\n Steel-Blue seemed to have no trouble at all\n maneuvering through the maze of corridors.\n Jon followed him, attached to one tentacle.\n\n\n Finally Jon and his guide entered a circular\n room, bright with light streaming from\n a glass-like, bulging skylight. They apparently\n were near topside of the vessel.", "\"Eat?\" The Steel-Blue sounded puzzled.\n\n\n \"I want to refuel. I've got to have food\n to keep my engine going.\"\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled. \"So the hemlock, as\n you call it, is beginning to affect you at\n last? Back to the torture room.\"\n\n\n \"Like R-dust,\" Jon growled. He pressed\n the firing stud on the stubray gun. One of\n Steel-Blue's tentacles broke off and fell to\n the rocky sward.\n\n\n Steel-Blue jerked out the box he'd used\n once before. A tentacle danced over it.\n\n\n Abruptly Jon found himself standing on\n a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a\n swath around him 15 feet deep and five feet\n wide.\n\n\n \"Back to the room,\" Steel-Blue commanded.", "The Steel-Blue chuckled. \"You get—absent-minded,\n is it?—every once in a\n while.\"\n\n\n Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared\n lugging great sheets of plastic and various\n other equipment.\n\n\n They dumped their loads and began unbundling\n them.\n\n\n Working swiftly, they built a plastic\n igloo, smaller than the living room in the\n larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments\n inside—one of them Jon Karyl\n recognized as an air pump from within the\n station—and they laid out a pallet.\n\n\n When they were done Jon saw a miniature\n reproduction of the service station, lacking\n only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear\n plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the\n other.\n\n\n His Steel-Blue said: \"We have reproduced\n the atmosphere of your station so that you\n be watched while you undergo the torture\n under the normal conditions of your life.\"", "\"A robot,\" came the immediate answer.\n Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue\n was telepathic. \"Yes,\" the Steel-Blue answered.\n \"We talk in the language of the\n mind. Come!\" he said peremptorily, motioning\n with the square black box.\n\n\n The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed\n the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens\n he'd seen on the creature's face had a\n counterpart on the back of the egg-head.\n\n\n Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.\n That's quite an innovation. \"Thank you,\"\n Steel-Blue said.\n\n\n There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's\n mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he\n had applied for this high-paying but man-killing\n job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar\n System's starways.", "He had little fear now, only curiosity.\n These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.\n They could have snuffed out my life very\n simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be\n friends.\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled.\nJon\n followed him through the sundered\n lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a\n moment to examine the wreckage of the\n lock. It had been punched full of holes as\n if it had been some soft cheese instead of a\n metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a\n century perfecting.\n\n\n \"We appreciate your compliment,\" Steel-Blue\n said. \"But that metal also is found on\n our world. It's probably the softest and most\n malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,\n is it?—use it as protective\n metal.\"\n\n\n \"Why are you in this system?\" Jon asked,\n hardly expecting an answer.", "Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut\n back and head for the underground entrance\n to the service station.\n\n\n He glanced back finally.\n\n\n Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting\n after him, and rapidly closing the\n distance.\n\n\n Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol\n at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for\n greater exertion, increased the gravity pull\n in his space-suit boots as he neared the\n ravine he'd been racing for.\n\n\n The oxygen was just taking hold when\n he hit the lip of the ravine and began\n sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn\n course.", "Up and up it rose, then flames flickered\n in a circle about its curious shape. The ship\n disappeared, suddenly accelerating.\n\n\n Jon Karyl strained his eyes.\n\n\n Finally he looked away from the heavens\n to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently\n outside the goldfish bowl.\n\n\n Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.\n He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran\n toward the service station.\n\n\n He didn't know how weak he was until\n he stumbled and fell only a few feet from\n his prison.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues just watched him.\n\n\n He crawled on, around the circular pit in\n the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue\n had shown him the power of his\n weapon.\n\n\n He'd been crawling through a nightmare\n for years when the quiet voice penetrated\n his dulled mind.", "\"This is the examination room,\" his\n Steel-Blue said, almost contemptuously.\n\n\n A green effulgence surrounded him.\nThere\n was a hiss. Simultaneously, as the\n tiny microphone on the outside of his\n suit picked up the hiss, he felt a chill go\n through his body. Then it seemed as if a\n half dozen hands were inside him, examining\n his internal organs. His stomach contracted.\n He felt a squeeze on his heart. His\n lungs tickled.\n\n\n There were several more queer motions\n inside his body.\n\n\n Then another Steel-Blue voice said:\n\n\n \"He is a soft-metal creature, made up of\n metals that melt at a very low temperature.\n He also contains a liquid whose makeup I\n cannot ascertain by ray-probe. Bring him\n back when the torture is done.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl grinned a trifle wryly. What\n kind of torture could this be?", "It sounded almost silly to Jon Karyl. The\n fruit acid of Earth to repel these invaders—it\n doesn't sound possible. That couldn't be\n the answer.\n\n\n Citric acid wasn't the answer, Jon Karyl\n discovered a week later.\n\n\n The Steel-Blue who had captured him in\n the power room of the service station came\n in to examine him.\n\n\n \"You're still holding out, I see,\" he observed\n after poking Jon in every sensitive\n part of his body.\n\n\n \"I'll suggest to No. 1 that we increase\n the power of the—ah—hemlock. How do\n you feel?\"\n\n\n Between the rich oxygen and the dizziness\n of hunger, Jon was a bit delirious. But he\n answered honestly enough: \"My guts feel as\n if they're chewing each other up. My bones\n ache. My joints creak. I can't coordinate I'm\n so hungry.\"", "He took a sample of the air, found that\n it was good, although quite rich in oxygen\n compared with what he'd been using in the\n service station and in his suit.\n\n\n With a sigh of relief he took off his helmet\n and gulped huge draughts of the air.\n\n\n He sat down on the pallet and waited\n for the torture to begin.\n\n\n The Steel Blues crowded about the igloo,\n staring at him through elliptical eyes.\n\n\n Apparently, they too, were waiting for the\n torture to begin.\n\n\n Jon thought the excess of oxygen was\n making him light-headed.\n\n\n He stared at a cylinder which was beginning\n to sprout tentacles from the circle.\n He rubbed his eyes and looked again. An\n opening, like the adjustable eye-piece of a\n spacescope, was appearing in the center of\n the cylinder.", "\"What is this torture?\" Jon Karyl asked.\n\n\n The answer was almost caressing: \"It is\n a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes\n joints to harden if even so much as a drop\n remains on it long. It eats away the metal,\n leaving a scaly residue which crumbles\n eventually into dust.\n\n\n \"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid\n for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die\n instantly.\n\n\n \"Enter your\"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—\"mausoleum.\n You die in your own atmosphere.\n However, we took the liberty of purifying\n it. There were dangerous elements in\n it.\"\n\n\n Jon walked into the little igloo. The\n Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials\n and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit\n deflated. Pressure was building up in the\n igloo." ], [ "The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't\n known until then how tense he'd been. Now\n with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He\n laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.\n\n\n There was one lone Steel-Blue watching\n him when he rubbed the sleep out of his\n eyes and sat up.\n\n\n He vanished almost instantly. He, or another\n like him, returned immediately accompanied\n by a half-dozen others, including\n the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.\n\n\n One said,\n\n\n \"You are alive.\" The thought registered\n amazement. \"When you lost consciousness,\n we thought you had\"—there was a hesitation—\"as\n you say, died.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Jon Karyl said. \"I didn't die. I\n was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep.\"\n The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.", "Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed\n from the waist down. But it couldn't\n happen that suddenly.\n\n\n He turned his head.\n\n\n A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked\n tentacle held a square black box.\n\n\n Jon could read nothing in that metallic\n face. He said, voice muffled by the confines\n of the plastic helmet, \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am\"—there was a rising inflection in\n the answer—\"a Steel-Blue.\"\n\n\n There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's\n face to move. \"That is what I have named\n you,\" Jon Karyl said. \"But what are you?\"", "He tuned the televisor to its widest range\n and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.\n He was looking into the stationary rocket\n engine.\n\n\n As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue\n came crawling out of the ship.\n\n\n The two Steel-Blues moved toward the\n center of the televisor range. They're coming\n toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.\n\n\n Karyl examined the two creatures. They\n were of the steel-blue color from the crown\n of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of\n their walking appendages.\n\n\n They were about the height of Karyl—six\n feet. But where he tapered from broad\n shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up\n and down. They had no legs, just appendages,\n many-jointed that stretched and\n shrank independent of the other, but keeping\n the cylindrical body with its four pairs\n of tentacles on a level balance.", "And he was interested in staying alive as\n long as possible. There was a remote chance\n he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,\n he glanced toward his belt to see the little\n power pack which, if under ideal conditions,\n could finger out fifty thousand miles into\n space.\n\n\n If he could somehow stay alive the 21\n days he might be able to warn the patrol.\n He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for\n his life would be snuffed out immediately.\n\n\n The Steel-Blue said quietly:\n\n\n \"It might be ironical to let you warn\n that SP ship you keep thinking about. But\n we know your weapon now. Already our\n ship is equipped with a force field designed\n especially to deflect your atomic guns.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts\n quickly. They can delve deeper than the\n surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a\n leash on my thoughts?", "\"A robot,\" came the immediate answer.\n Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue\n was telepathic. \"Yes,\" the Steel-Blue answered.\n \"We talk in the language of the\n mind. Come!\" he said peremptorily, motioning\n with the square black box.\n\n\n The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed\n the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens\n he'd seen on the creature's face had a\n counterpart on the back of the egg-head.\n\n\n Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.\n That's quite an innovation. \"Thank you,\"\n Steel-Blue said.\n\n\n There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's\n mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he\n had applied for this high-paying but man-killing\n job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar\n System's starways.", "He had little fear now, only curiosity.\n These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.\n They could have snuffed out my life very\n simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be\n friends.\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled.\nJon\n followed him through the sundered\n lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a\n moment to examine the wreckage of the\n lock. It had been punched full of holes as\n if it had been some soft cheese instead of a\n metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a\n century perfecting.\n\n\n \"We appreciate your compliment,\" Steel-Blue\n said. \"But that metal also is found on\n our world. It's probably the softest and most\n malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,\n is it?—use it as protective\n metal.\"\n\n\n \"Why are you in this system?\" Jon asked,\n hardly expecting an answer.", "The Steel-Blue chuckled. \"You get—absent-minded,\n is it?—every once in a\n while.\"\n\n\n Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared\n lugging great sheets of plastic and various\n other equipment.\n\n\n They dumped their loads and began unbundling\n them.\n\n\n Working swiftly, they built a plastic\n igloo, smaller than the living room in the\n larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments\n inside—one of them Jon Karyl\n recognized as an air pump from within the\n station—and they laid out a pallet.\n\n\n When they were done Jon saw a miniature\n reproduction of the service station, lacking\n only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear\n plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the\n other.\n\n\n His Steel-Blue said: \"We have reproduced\n the atmosphere of your station so that you\n be watched while you undergo the torture\n under the normal conditions of your life.\"", "Instead of following around the sharp\n bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead\n through the overhanging bushes until he\n came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his\n hands and knees he worked his way under\n the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out\n space in the center.\nThere\n , just ahead of him, was the lock\n leading into the service station. Slipping\n a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,\n he jabbed it into the center of the lock,\n opening the lever housing.\n\n\n He pulled strongly on the lever. With a\n hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.\n Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing\n softly behind.\n\n\n At the end of the long tunnel he stepped\n to the televisor which was fixed on the area\n surrounding the station.\n\n\n Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.\n But he saw their ship. It squatted\n like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut\n tight.", "Up and up it rose, then flames flickered\n in a circle about its curious shape. The ship\n disappeared, suddenly accelerating.\n\n\n Jon Karyl strained his eyes.\n\n\n Finally he looked away from the heavens\n to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently\n outside the goldfish bowl.\n\n\n Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.\n He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran\n toward the service station.\n\n\n He didn't know how weak he was until\n he stumbled and fell only a few feet from\n his prison.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues just watched him.\n\n\n He crawled on, around the circular pit in\n the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue\n had shown him the power of his\n weapon.\n\n\n He'd been crawling through a nightmare\n for years when the quiet voice penetrated\n his dulled mind.", "\"Just thinking to myself,\" Jon answered.\n It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his\n thoughts had to be directed outward, rather\n than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to\n read it.\n\n\n He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping\n lock of the invaders' space ship wondering\n how he could warn Earth. The Space\n Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at\n his service station in 21 days. But by that\n time he probably would be mouldering in\n the rocky dust of the asteroid.\n\n\n It was pitch dark within the ship but the\n Steel-Blue seemed to have no trouble at all\n maneuvering through the maze of corridors.\n Jon followed him, attached to one tentacle.\n\n\n Finally Jon and his guide entered a circular\n room, bright with light streaming from\n a glass-like, bulging skylight. They apparently\n were near topside of the vessel.", "A Steel-Blue, more massive than his\n guide and with four more pair of tentacles,\n including two short ones that grew from the\n top of its head, spoke out.\n\n\n \"This is the violator?\" Jon's Steel-Blue\n nodded.\n\n\n \"You know the penalty? Carry it out.\"\n\n\n \"He also is an inhabitant of this system,\"\n Jon's guide added.\n\n\n \"Examine him first, then give him the\n death.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from\n the lighted room through more corridors.\n If it got too bad he still had the stubray\n pistol.\n\n\n Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on\n the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service\n station attendant just to see what it offered.\n\n\n Here was a part of it, and it was certainly\n something new.", "\"This is the examination room,\" his\n Steel-Blue said, almost contemptuously.\n\n\n A green effulgence surrounded him.\nThere\n was a hiss. Simultaneously, as the\n tiny microphone on the outside of his\n suit picked up the hiss, he felt a chill go\n through his body. Then it seemed as if a\n half dozen hands were inside him, examining\n his internal organs. His stomach contracted.\n He felt a squeeze on his heart. His\n lungs tickled.\n\n\n There were several more queer motions\n inside his body.\n\n\n Then another Steel-Blue voice said:\n\n\n \"He is a soft-metal creature, made up of\n metals that melt at a very low temperature.\n He also contains a liquid whose makeup I\n cannot ascertain by ray-probe. Bring him\n back when the torture is done.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl grinned a trifle wryly. What\n kind of torture could this be?", "\"AX to SP-101 ... AX to SP-101 ... AX\n to SP-101 ...\"\n\n\n Three times he sent the call, then began\n sending his message, hoping that his signal\n was reaching the ship. He couldn't know if\n they answered. Though the power pack\n could get out a message over a vast distance,\n it could not pick up messages even\n when backed by an SP ship's power unless\n the ship was only a few hundred miles\n away.\n\n\n The power pack was strictly a distress\n signal.\n\n\n He didn't know how long he'd been\n sending, nor how many times his weary\n voice had repeated the short but desperate\n message.\n\n\n He kept watching the heavens and hoping.\n\n\n Abruptly he knew the SP ship was coming,\n for the blue ship of the Steel-Blues was\n rising silently from the asteroid.", "Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the\n chronometer on his wrist.\n\n\n Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien\n ship and halted expectantly just outside the\n ship's lock.\n\n\n Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the\n stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my\n way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he\n toted up the disadvantages.\n\n\n He either would have to find a hiding\n place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues\n wanted him bad enough they could tear the\n whole place to pieces, or somehow get\n aboard the little life ship hidden in the\n service station.\n\n\n In that he would be just a sitting duck.\n\n\n He shrugged off the slight temptation to\n use the pistol. He was still curious.", "Where their eyes would have been was\n an elliptical-shaped lens, covering half the\n egg-head, with its converging ends curving\n around the sides of the head.\n\n\n Robots! Jon gauged immediately. But\n where were their masters?\n\n\n The Steel-Blues moved out of the range\n of the televisor. A minute later Jon heard\n a pounding from the station upstairs.\n\n\n He chuckled. They were like the wolf of\n pre-atomic days who huffed and puffed to\n blow the house down.\n\n\n The outer shell of the station was formed\n from stelrylite, the toughest metal in the\n solar system. With the self-sealing lock of\n the same resistant material, a mere pounding\n was nothing.\n\n\n Jon thought he'd have a look-see anyway.\n He went up the steel ladder leading to the\n station's power plant and the televisor that\n could look into every room within the\n station.", "\"What is this torture?\" Jon Karyl asked.\n\n\n The answer was almost caressing: \"It is\n a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes\n joints to harden if even so much as a drop\n remains on it long. It eats away the metal,\n leaving a scaly residue which crumbles\n eventually into dust.\n\n\n \"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid\n for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die\n instantly.\n\n\n \"Enter your\"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—\"mausoleum.\n You die in your own atmosphere.\n However, we took the liberty of purifying\n it. There were dangerous elements in\n it.\"\n\n\n Jon walked into the little igloo. The\n Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials\n and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit\n deflated. Pressure was building up in the\n igloo.", "Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,\n shrugged non-committally and leaped the\n trench. He walked slowly back and reentered\n the torture chamber.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage\n he'd done.\n\n\n As he watched them, Jon was still curious,\n but he was getting mad underneath at\n the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.\n\n\n By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by\n her green fields, and dark forests, he'd\n stay alive to warn the SP ship.\n\n\n Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send\n the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid\n to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could\n equip themselves with spray guns and squirt\n citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade\n away.", "Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut\n back and head for the underground entrance\n to the service station.\n\n\n He glanced back finally.\n\n\n Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting\n after him, and rapidly closing the\n distance.\n\n\n Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol\n at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for\n greater exertion, increased the gravity pull\n in his space-suit boots as he neared the\n ravine he'd been racing for.\n\n\n The oxygen was just taking hold when\n he hit the lip of the ravine and began\n sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn\n course.", "\"Eat?\" The Steel-Blue sounded puzzled.\n\n\n \"I want to refuel. I've got to have food\n to keep my engine going.\"\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled. \"So the hemlock, as\n you call it, is beginning to affect you at\n last? Back to the torture room.\"\n\n\n \"Like R-dust,\" Jon growled. He pressed\n the firing stud on the stubray gun. One of\n Steel-Blue's tentacles broke off and fell to\n the rocky sward.\n\n\n Steel-Blue jerked out the box he'd used\n once before. A tentacle danced over it.\n\n\n Abruptly Jon found himself standing on\n a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a\n swath around him 15 feet deep and five feet\n wide.\n\n\n \"Back to the room,\" Steel-Blue commanded.", "He heaved a slight sigh when he reached\n the power room, for right at his hand were\n weapons to blast the ship from the asteroid.\n\n\n Jon adjusted one televisor to take in the\n lock to the station. His teeth suddenly\n clamped down on his lower lip.\n\n\n Those Steel-Blues were pounding holes\n into the stelrylite with round-headed metal\n clubs. But it was impossible. Stelrylite didn't\n break up that easily.\n\n\n Jon leaped to a row of studs, lining up\n the revolving turret which capped the station\n so that its thin fin pointed at the\n squat ship of the invaders.\n\n\n Then he went to the atomic cannon's\n firing buttons.\n\n\n He pressed first the yellow, then the blue\n button. Finally the red one." ], [ "He had little fear now, only curiosity.\n These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.\n They could have snuffed out my life very\n simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be\n friends.\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled.\nJon\n followed him through the sundered\n lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a\n moment to examine the wreckage of the\n lock. It had been punched full of holes as\n if it had been some soft cheese instead of a\n metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a\n century perfecting.\n\n\n \"We appreciate your compliment,\" Steel-Blue\n said. \"But that metal also is found on\n our world. It's probably the softest and most\n malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,\n is it?—use it as protective\n metal.\"\n\n\n \"Why are you in this system?\" Jon asked,\n hardly expecting an answer.", "He tuned the televisor to its widest range\n and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.\n He was looking into the stationary rocket\n engine.\n\n\n As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue\n came crawling out of the ship.\n\n\n The two Steel-Blues moved toward the\n center of the televisor range. They're coming\n toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.\n\n\n Karyl examined the two creatures. They\n were of the steel-blue color from the crown\n of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of\n their walking appendages.\n\n\n They were about the height of Karyl—six\n feet. But where he tapered from broad\n shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up\n and down. They had no legs, just appendages,\n many-jointed that stretched and\n shrank independent of the other, but keeping\n the cylindrical body with its four pairs\n of tentacles on a level balance.", "\"A robot,\" came the immediate answer.\n Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue\n was telepathic. \"Yes,\" the Steel-Blue answered.\n \"We talk in the language of the\n mind. Come!\" he said peremptorily, motioning\n with the square black box.\n\n\n The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed\n the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens\n he'd seen on the creature's face had a\n counterpart on the back of the egg-head.\n\n\n Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.\n That's quite an innovation. \"Thank you,\"\n Steel-Blue said.\n\n\n There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's\n mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he\n had applied for this high-paying but man-killing\n job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar\n System's starways.", "\"Just thinking to myself,\" Jon answered.\n It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his\n thoughts had to be directed outward, rather\n than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to\n read it.\n\n\n He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping\n lock of the invaders' space ship wondering\n how he could warn Earth. The Space\n Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at\n his service station in 21 days. But by that\n time he probably would be mouldering in\n the rocky dust of the asteroid.\n\n\n It was pitch dark within the ship but the\n Steel-Blue seemed to have no trouble at all\n maneuvering through the maze of corridors.\n Jon followed him, attached to one tentacle.\n\n\n Finally Jon and his guide entered a circular\n room, bright with light streaming from\n a glass-like, bulging skylight. They apparently\n were near topside of the vessel.", "A Steel-Blue, more massive than his\n guide and with four more pair of tentacles,\n including two short ones that grew from the\n top of its head, spoke out.\n\n\n \"This is the violator?\" Jon's Steel-Blue\n nodded.\n\n\n \"You know the penalty? Carry it out.\"\n\n\n \"He also is an inhabitant of this system,\"\n Jon's guide added.\n\n\n \"Examine him first, then give him the\n death.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from\n the lighted room through more corridors.\n If it got too bad he still had the stubray\n pistol.\n\n\n Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on\n the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service\n station attendant just to see what it offered.\n\n\n Here was a part of it, and it was certainly\n something new.", "Up and up it rose, then flames flickered\n in a circle about its curious shape. The ship\n disappeared, suddenly accelerating.\n\n\n Jon Karyl strained his eyes.\n\n\n Finally he looked away from the heavens\n to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently\n outside the goldfish bowl.\n\n\n Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.\n He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran\n toward the service station.\n\n\n He didn't know how weak he was until\n he stumbled and fell only a few feet from\n his prison.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues just watched him.\n\n\n He crawled on, around the circular pit in\n the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue\n had shown him the power of his\n weapon.\n\n\n He'd been crawling through a nightmare\n for years when the quiet voice penetrated\n his dulled mind.", "Where their eyes would have been was\n an elliptical-shaped lens, covering half the\n egg-head, with its converging ends curving\n around the sides of the head.\n\n\n Robots! Jon gauged immediately. But\n where were their masters?\n\n\n The Steel-Blues moved out of the range\n of the televisor. A minute later Jon heard\n a pounding from the station upstairs.\n\n\n He chuckled. They were like the wolf of\n pre-atomic days who huffed and puffed to\n blow the house down.\n\n\n The outer shell of the station was formed\n from stelrylite, the toughest metal in the\n solar system. With the self-sealing lock of\n the same resistant material, a mere pounding\n was nothing.\n\n\n Jon thought he'd have a look-see anyway.\n He went up the steel ladder leading to the\n station's power plant and the televisor that\n could look into every room within the\n station.", "It came anyway. \"For the same reason you\n Earthmen are reaching out farther into your\n system. We need living room. You have\n strategically placed planets for our use. We\n will use them.\"\n\n\n Jon sighed. For 400 years scientists had\n been preaching preparedness as Earth flung\n her ships into the reaches of the solar system,\n taking the first long step toward the\n conquest of space.\n\n\n There are other races somewhere, they\n argued. As strong and smart as man, many\n of them so transcending man in mental and\n inventive power that we must be prepared to\n strike the minute danger shows.\n\n\n Now here was the answer to the scientists'\n warning. Invasion by extra-terrestrials.\n\n\n \"What did you say?\" asked Steel-Blue.\n \"I couldn't understand.\"", "Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,\n shrugged non-committally and leaped the\n trench. He walked slowly back and reentered\n the torture chamber.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage\n he'd done.\n\n\n As he watched them, Jon was still curious,\n but he was getting mad underneath at\n the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.\n\n\n By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by\n her green fields, and dark forests, he'd\n stay alive to warn the SP ship.\n\n\n Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send\n the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid\n to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could\n equip themselves with spray guns and squirt\n citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade\n away.", "\"They were metal monsters. No wonder\n they feared that liquid. It would rust their\n joints, short their wiring, and kill them.\n No wonder they stared when I kept alive\n after drinking enough to completely annihilate\n a half-dozen of them.\n\n\n \"But what happened when you met the\n ship?\"\n\n\n The space captain grinned.\n\n\n \"Not much. Our crew was busy creating\n a hollow shell filled with\nwater\nto be shot\n out of a rocket tube converted into a projectile\n thrower.\n\n\n \"These Steel-Blues, as you call them, put\n traction beams on us and started tugging us\n toward the asteroid. We tried a couple of\n atomic shots but when they just glanced off,\n we gave up.\n\n\n \"They weren't expecting the shell of\n water. When it hit that blue ship, you could\n almost see it oxidize before your eyes.", "And he was interested in staying alive as\n long as possible. There was a remote chance\n he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,\n he glanced toward his belt to see the little\n power pack which, if under ideal conditions,\n could finger out fifty thousand miles into\n space.\n\n\n If he could somehow stay alive the 21\n days he might be able to warn the patrol.\n He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for\n his life would be snuffed out immediately.\n\n\n The Steel-Blue said quietly:\n\n\n \"It might be ironical to let you warn\n that SP ship you keep thinking about. But\n we know your weapon now. Already our\n ship is equipped with a force field designed\n especially to deflect your atomic guns.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts\n quickly. They can delve deeper than the\n surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a\n leash on my thoughts?", "\"AX to SP-101 ... AX to SP-101 ... AX\n to SP-101 ...\"\n\n\n Three times he sent the call, then began\n sending his message, hoping that his signal\n was reaching the ship. He couldn't know if\n they answered. Though the power pack\n could get out a message over a vast distance,\n it could not pick up messages even\n when backed by an SP ship's power unless\n the ship was only a few hundred miles\n away.\n\n\n The power pack was strictly a distress\n signal.\n\n\n He didn't know how long he'd been\n sending, nor how many times his weary\n voice had repeated the short but desperate\n message.\n\n\n He kept watching the heavens and hoping.\n\n\n Abruptly he knew the SP ship was coming,\n for the blue ship of the Steel-Blues was\n rising silently from the asteroid.", "Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the\n chronometer on his wrist.\n\n\n Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien\n ship and halted expectantly just outside the\n ship's lock.\n\n\n Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the\n stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my\n way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he\n toted up the disadvantages.\n\n\n He either would have to find a hiding\n place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues\n wanted him bad enough they could tear the\n whole place to pieces, or somehow get\n aboard the little life ship hidden in the\n service station.\n\n\n In that he would be just a sitting duck.\n\n\n He shrugged off the slight temptation to\n use the pistol. He was still curious.", "Instead of following around the sharp\n bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead\n through the overhanging bushes until he\n came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his\n hands and knees he worked his way under\n the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out\n space in the center.\nThere\n , just ahead of him, was the lock\n leading into the service station. Slipping\n a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,\n he jabbed it into the center of the lock,\n opening the lever housing.\n\n\n He pulled strongly on the lever. With a\n hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.\n Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing\n softly behind.\n\n\n At the end of the long tunnel he stepped\n to the televisor which was fixed on the area\n surrounding the station.\n\n\n Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.\n But he saw their ship. It squatted\n like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut\n tight.", "Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed\n from the waist down. But it couldn't\n happen that suddenly.\n\n\n He turned his head.\n\n\n A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked\n tentacle held a square black box.\n\n\n Jon could read nothing in that metallic\n face. He said, voice muffled by the confines\n of the plastic helmet, \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am\"—there was a rising inflection in\n the answer—\"a Steel-Blue.\"\n\n\n There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's\n face to move. \"That is what I have named\n you,\" Jon Karyl said. \"But what are you?\"", "The cylinder sat passively in its niche in\n the circle. A dozen Steel-Blues were watching\n as Jon put on his helmet and unsheathed\n his stubray.\n\n\n They merely watched as he pressed the\n stubray's firing stud. Invisible rays licked\n out of the bulbous muzzle of the pistol.\n The plastic splintered.\n\n\n Jon was out of his goldfish bowl and\n striding toward his own igloo adjacent to\n the service station when a Steel-Blue\n accosted him.\n\n\n \"Out of my way,\" grunted Jon, waving\n the stubray. \"I'm hungry.\"\n\n\n \"I'm the first Steel-Blue you met,\" said\n the creature who barred his way. \"Go back\n to your torture.\"\n\n\n \"But I'm so hungry I'll chew off one of\n your tentacles and eat it without seasoning.\"", "The Steel-Blue chuckled. \"You get—absent-minded,\n is it?—every once in a\n while.\"\n\n\n Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared\n lugging great sheets of plastic and various\n other equipment.\n\n\n They dumped their loads and began unbundling\n them.\n\n\n Working swiftly, they built a plastic\n igloo, smaller than the living room in the\n larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments\n inside—one of them Jon Karyl\n recognized as an air pump from within the\n station—and they laid out a pallet.\n\n\n When they were done Jon saw a miniature\n reproduction of the service station, lacking\n only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear\n plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the\n other.\n\n\n His Steel-Blue said: \"We have reproduced\n the atmosphere of your station so that you\n be watched while you undergo the torture\n under the normal conditions of your life.\"", "He heaved a slight sigh when he reached\n the power room, for right at his hand were\n weapons to blast the ship from the asteroid.\n\n\n Jon adjusted one televisor to take in the\n lock to the station. His teeth suddenly\n clamped down on his lower lip.\n\n\n Those Steel-Blues were pounding holes\n into the stelrylite with round-headed metal\n clubs. But it was impossible. Stelrylite didn't\n break up that easily.\n\n\n Jon leaped to a row of studs, lining up\n the revolving turret which capped the station\n so that its thin fin pointed at the\n squat ship of the invaders.\n\n\n Then he went to the atomic cannon's\n firing buttons.\n\n\n He pressed first the yellow, then the blue\n button. Finally the red one.", "The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't\n known until then how tense he'd been. Now\n with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He\n laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.\n\n\n There was one lone Steel-Blue watching\n him when he rubbed the sleep out of his\n eyes and sat up.\n\n\n He vanished almost instantly. He, or another\n like him, returned immediately accompanied\n by a half-dozen others, including\n the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.\n\n\n One said,\n\n\n \"You are alive.\" The thought registered\n amazement. \"When you lost consciousness,\n we thought you had\"—there was a hesitation—\"as\n you say, died.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Jon Karyl said. \"I didn't die. I\n was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep.\"\n The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.", "Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut\n back and head for the underground entrance\n to the service station.\n\n\n He glanced back finally.\n\n\n Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting\n after him, and rapidly closing the\n distance.\n\n\n Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol\n at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for\n greater exertion, increased the gravity pull\n in his space-suit boots as he neared the\n ravine he'd been racing for.\n\n\n The oxygen was just taking hold when\n he hit the lip of the ravine and began\n sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn\n course." ], [ "The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't\n known until then how tense he'd been. Now\n with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He\n laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.\n\n\n There was one lone Steel-Blue watching\n him when he rubbed the sleep out of his\n eyes and sat up.\n\n\n He vanished almost instantly. He, or another\n like him, returned immediately accompanied\n by a half-dozen others, including\n the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.\n\n\n One said,\n\n\n \"You are alive.\" The thought registered\n amazement. \"When you lost consciousness,\n we thought you had\"—there was a hesitation—\"as\n you say, died.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Jon Karyl said. \"I didn't die. I\n was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep.\"\n The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.", "The Steel-Blue chuckled. \"You get—absent-minded,\n is it?—every once in a\n while.\"\n\n\n Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared\n lugging great sheets of plastic and various\n other equipment.\n\n\n They dumped their loads and began unbundling\n them.\n\n\n Working swiftly, they built a plastic\n igloo, smaller than the living room in the\n larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments\n inside—one of them Jon Karyl\n recognized as an air pump from within the\n station—and they laid out a pallet.\n\n\n When they were done Jon saw a miniature\n reproduction of the service station, lacking\n only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear\n plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the\n other.\n\n\n His Steel-Blue said: \"We have reproduced\n the atmosphere of your station so that you\n be watched while you undergo the torture\n under the normal conditions of your life.\"", "\"What is this torture?\" Jon Karyl asked.\n\n\n The answer was almost caressing: \"It is\n a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes\n joints to harden if even so much as a drop\n remains on it long. It eats away the metal,\n leaving a scaly residue which crumbles\n eventually into dust.\n\n\n \"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid\n for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die\n instantly.\n\n\n \"Enter your\"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—\"mausoleum.\n You die in your own atmosphere.\n However, we took the liberty of purifying\n it. There were dangerous elements in\n it.\"\n\n\n Jon walked into the little igloo. The\n Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials\n and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit\n deflated. Pressure was building up in the\n igloo.", "\"This is the examination room,\" his\n Steel-Blue said, almost contemptuously.\n\n\n A green effulgence surrounded him.\nThere\n was a hiss. Simultaneously, as the\n tiny microphone on the outside of his\n suit picked up the hiss, he felt a chill go\n through his body. Then it seemed as if a\n half dozen hands were inside him, examining\n his internal organs. His stomach contracted.\n He felt a squeeze on his heart. His\n lungs tickled.\n\n\n There were several more queer motions\n inside his body.\n\n\n Then another Steel-Blue voice said:\n\n\n \"He is a soft-metal creature, made up of\n metals that melt at a very low temperature.\n He also contains a liquid whose makeup I\n cannot ascertain by ray-probe. Bring him\n back when the torture is done.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl grinned a trifle wryly. What\n kind of torture could this be?", "Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed\n from the waist down. But it couldn't\n happen that suddenly.\n\n\n He turned his head.\n\n\n A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked\n tentacle held a square black box.\n\n\n Jon could read nothing in that metallic\n face. He said, voice muffled by the confines\n of the plastic helmet, \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am\"—there was a rising inflection in\n the answer—\"a Steel-Blue.\"\n\n\n There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's\n face to move. \"That is what I have named\n you,\" Jon Karyl said. \"But what are you?\"", "And he was interested in staying alive as\n long as possible. There was a remote chance\n he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,\n he glanced toward his belt to see the little\n power pack which, if under ideal conditions,\n could finger out fifty thousand miles into\n space.\n\n\n If he could somehow stay alive the 21\n days he might be able to warn the patrol.\n He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for\n his life would be snuffed out immediately.\n\n\n The Steel-Blue said quietly:\n\n\n \"It might be ironical to let you warn\n that SP ship you keep thinking about. But\n we know your weapon now. Already our\n ship is equipped with a force field designed\n especially to deflect your atomic guns.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts\n quickly. They can delve deeper than the\n surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a\n leash on my thoughts?", "Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,\n shrugged non-committally and leaped the\n trench. He walked slowly back and reentered\n the torture chamber.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage\n he'd done.\n\n\n As he watched them, Jon was still curious,\n but he was getting mad underneath at\n the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.\n\n\n By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by\n her green fields, and dark forests, he'd\n stay alive to warn the SP ship.\n\n\n Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send\n the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid\n to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could\n equip themselves with spray guns and squirt\n citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade\n away.", "He tuned the televisor to its widest range\n and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.\n He was looking into the stationary rocket\n engine.\n\n\n As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue\n came crawling out of the ship.\n\n\n The two Steel-Blues moved toward the\n center of the televisor range. They're coming\n toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.\n\n\n Karyl examined the two creatures. They\n were of the steel-blue color from the crown\n of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of\n their walking appendages.\n\n\n They were about the height of Karyl—six\n feet. But where he tapered from broad\n shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up\n and down. They had no legs, just appendages,\n many-jointed that stretched and\n shrank independent of the other, but keeping\n the cylindrical body with its four pairs\n of tentacles on a level balance.", "Up and up it rose, then flames flickered\n in a circle about its curious shape. The ship\n disappeared, suddenly accelerating.\n\n\n Jon Karyl strained his eyes.\n\n\n Finally he looked away from the heavens\n to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently\n outside the goldfish bowl.\n\n\n Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.\n He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran\n toward the service station.\n\n\n He didn't know how weak he was until\n he stumbled and fell only a few feet from\n his prison.\n\n\n The Steel-Blues just watched him.\n\n\n He crawled on, around the circular pit in\n the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue\n had shown him the power of his\n weapon.\n\n\n He'd been crawling through a nightmare\n for years when the quiet voice penetrated\n his dulled mind.", "A Steel-Blue, more massive than his\n guide and with four more pair of tentacles,\n including two short ones that grew from the\n top of its head, spoke out.\n\n\n \"This is the violator?\" Jon's Steel-Blue\n nodded.\n\n\n \"You know the penalty? Carry it out.\"\n\n\n \"He also is an inhabitant of this system,\"\n Jon's guide added.\n\n\n \"Examine him first, then give him the\n death.\"\n\n\n Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from\n the lighted room through more corridors.\n If it got too bad he still had the stubray\n pistol.\n\n\n Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on\n the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service\n station attendant just to see what it offered.\n\n\n Here was a part of it, and it was certainly\n something new.", "\"Eat?\" The Steel-Blue sounded puzzled.\n\n\n \"I want to refuel. I've got to have food\n to keep my engine going.\"\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled. \"So the hemlock, as\n you call it, is beginning to affect you at\n last? Back to the torture room.\"\n\n\n \"Like R-dust,\" Jon growled. He pressed\n the firing stud on the stubray gun. One of\n Steel-Blue's tentacles broke off and fell to\n the rocky sward.\n\n\n Steel-Blue jerked out the box he'd used\n once before. A tentacle danced over it.\n\n\n Abruptly Jon found himself standing on\n a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a\n swath around him 15 feet deep and five feet\n wide.\n\n\n \"Back to the room,\" Steel-Blue commanded.", "\"Good it is that you live. The torture\n will continue,\" spoke No. 1 before loping\n away.\n\n\n The cylinder business began again. This\n time, Jon drank the bitter liquid slowly, trying\n to figure out what it was. It had a\n familiar, tantalizing taste but he couldn't\n quite put a taste-finger on it.\n\n\n His belly said he was hungry. He glanced\n at his chronometer. Only 20 days left before\n the SP ship arrived.\n\n\n Would this torture—he chuckled—last\n until then? But he was growing more and\n more conscious that his belly was screaming\n for hunger. The liquid had taken the edge\n off his thirst.\n\n\n It was on the fifth day of his torture that\n Jon Karyl decided that he was going to get\n something to eat or perish in the attempt.", "Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the\n chronometer on his wrist.\n\n\n Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien\n ship and halted expectantly just outside the\n ship's lock.\n\n\n Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the\n stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my\n way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he\n toted up the disadvantages.\n\n\n He either would have to find a hiding\n place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues\n wanted him bad enough they could tear the\n whole place to pieces, or somehow get\n aboard the little life ship hidden in the\n service station.\n\n\n In that he would be just a sitting duck.\n\n\n He shrugged off the slight temptation to\n use the pistol. He was still curious.", "Instead of following around the sharp\n bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead\n through the overhanging bushes until he\n came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his\n hands and knees he worked his way under\n the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out\n space in the center.\nThere\n , just ahead of him, was the lock\n leading into the service station. Slipping\n a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,\n he jabbed it into the center of the lock,\n opening the lever housing.\n\n\n He pulled strongly on the lever. With a\n hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.\n Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing\n softly behind.\n\n\n At the end of the long tunnel he stepped\n to the televisor which was fixed on the area\n surrounding the station.\n\n\n Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.\n But he saw their ship. It squatted\n like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut\n tight.", "\"Take it easy, Karyl. You're among\n friends.\"\n\n\n He pried open his eyes with his will. He\n saw the blue and gold of a space guard's\n uniform. He sighed and drifted into unconsciousness.\nHe was\n still weak days later when\n Capt. Ron Small of SP-101 said,\n\n\n \"Yes, Karyl, it's ironical. They fed you\n what they thought was sure death, and it's\n the only thing that kept you going long\n enough to warn us.\"\n\n\n \"I was dumb for a long time,\" Karyl said.\n \"I thought that it was the acid, almost to\n the very last. But when I drank that last\n glass, I knew they didn't have a chance.", "He had little fear now, only curiosity.\n These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.\n They could have snuffed out my life very\n simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be\n friends.\n\n\n Steel-Blue chuckled.\nJon\n followed him through the sundered\n lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a\n moment to examine the wreckage of the\n lock. It had been punched full of holes as\n if it had been some soft cheese instead of a\n metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a\n century perfecting.\n\n\n \"We appreciate your compliment,\" Steel-Blue\n said. \"But that metal also is found on\n our world. It's probably the softest and most\n malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,\n is it?—use it as protective\n metal.\"\n\n\n \"Why are you in this system?\" Jon asked,\n hardly expecting an answer.", "The cylinder sat passively in its niche in\n the circle. A dozen Steel-Blues were watching\n as Jon put on his helmet and unsheathed\n his stubray.\n\n\n They merely watched as he pressed the\n stubray's firing stud. Invisible rays licked\n out of the bulbous muzzle of the pistol.\n The plastic splintered.\n\n\n Jon was out of his goldfish bowl and\n striding toward his own igloo adjacent to\n the service station when a Steel-Blue\n accosted him.\n\n\n \"Out of my way,\" grunted Jon, waving\n the stubray. \"I'm hungry.\"\n\n\n \"I'm the first Steel-Blue you met,\" said\n the creature who barred his way. \"Go back\n to your torture.\"\n\n\n \"But I'm so hungry I'll chew off one of\n your tentacles and eat it without seasoning.\"", "He took a sample of the air, found that\n it was good, although quite rich in oxygen\n compared with what he'd been using in the\n service station and in his suit.\n\n\n With a sigh of relief he took off his helmet\n and gulped huge draughts of the air.\n\n\n He sat down on the pallet and waited\n for the torture to begin.\n\n\n The Steel Blues crowded about the igloo,\n staring at him through elliptical eyes.\n\n\n Apparently, they too, were waiting for the\n torture to begin.\n\n\n Jon thought the excess of oxygen was\n making him light-headed.\n\n\n He stared at a cylinder which was beginning\n to sprout tentacles from the circle.\n He rubbed his eyes and looked again. An\n opening, like the adjustable eye-piece of a\n spacescope, was appearing in the center of\n the cylinder.", "It sounded almost silly to Jon Karyl. The\n fruit acid of Earth to repel these invaders—it\n doesn't sound possible. That couldn't be\n the answer.\n\n\n Citric acid wasn't the answer, Jon Karyl\n discovered a week later.\n\n\n The Steel-Blue who had captured him in\n the power room of the service station came\n in to examine him.\n\n\n \"You're still holding out, I see,\" he observed\n after poking Jon in every sensitive\n part of his body.\n\n\n \"I'll suggest to No. 1 that we increase\n the power of the—ah—hemlock. How do\n you feel?\"\n\n\n Between the rich oxygen and the dizziness\n of hunger, Jon was a bit delirious. But he\n answered honestly enough: \"My guts feel as\n if they're chewing each other up. My bones\n ache. My joints creak. I can't coordinate I'm\n so hungry.\"", "The power ray from behind ripped out\n great gobs of the sheltering bushes. But\n running naturally, bent close to the bottom\n of the ravine, Jon Karyl dodged the bare\n spots. The oxygen made the tremendous\n exertion easy for his lungs as he sped down\n the dim trail, hidden from the two steel-blue\n stalkers.\n\n\n He'd eluded them, temporarily at least,\n Jon Karyl decided when he finally edged off\n the dim trail and watched for movement\n along the route behind him.\n\n\n He stood up, finally, pushed aside the\n leafy overhang of a bush and looked for\n landmarks along the edge of the ravine.\n\n\n He found one, a stubby bush, shaped like\n a Maltese cross, clinging to the lip of the\n ravine. The hidden entrance to the service\n station wasn't far off.\n\n\n His pistol held ready, he moved quietly\n on down the ravine until the old water\n course made an abrupt hairpin turn." ] ]
test	99928	[ "What is the purpose of OA?", "What is the author’s message about OA?", "According to the author, does open access mean articles won’t be peer reviewed?", "What is the “low hanging fruit”?", "What is the “high hanging fruit”?", "What is one reason that the OA movement focuses mainly on academic articles?", "According to the author, who will benefit the most from OA?", "According to the author, why should preprint be made OA?", "Why would a book author want to have their work be OA?", "Which is NOT an argument for OA?" ]	[ [ "Open access would remove access barriers to content, such as fees or membership requirements, so that the content is available to everyone. ", "Open access would give anyone who works at a university unlimited access to content.", "Open access would allow anyone to publish what they want online, even if the information is untrue.", "Open access would give educators unlimited access to databases. " ], [ "The author believes that there should be open access to all content that could be useful to scholars.", "The author believes that lay people should not have open access to academic articles. ", "The author believes that printed books are superior to digital content.", "The author believes that open access will diminish the peer-review process. " ], [ "No, because many journals will still require peer review before publishing content.", "No, because lay people will not want to read articles that are not peer reviewed. ", "Yes, because there will not be an incentive to do the peer review process. ", "Yes, because journals won’t pay authors for their articles. " ], [ "Print books", "Conference presentations ", "Academic journal articles", "Textbooks" ], [ "Print books", "Theses and dissertations", "Postprint articles", "Academic journal articles" ], [ "Other types of content is already free to the public. ", "Lay people are not interested in reading academic journals. ", "People are not reading books anymore.", "Journals don’t pay authors for their work, so open access won’t impact an author’s compensation. " ], [ "Researchers ", "Journalists ", "Lay people", "Graduate students " ], [ "Lay people should have the same access as professional researchers. ", "The peer review process is outdated. ", "Lay people do not care if an article is peer reviewed. ", "Researchers will have quicker access to new work instead of having to wait for the long process of peer review. " ], [ "Book authors care more about people reading their work than getting financially compensated.", "Book authors would get paid more from online advertising than selling their books in a store. ", "People are not buying print books anymore.", "Open access will encourage some people to buy the print version. " ], [ "People should create content for free because financial compensation can create bias. ", "Software can organize the information to make research faster and easier.", "Lay people will receive better medical care if their medical team has open access to current research.", "Knowledge needs to be seen as a public good rather than a commodity." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "Answer: human beings and machines.\n5.5.1 OA for Lay Readers\nSome have opposed OA on the ground that not everyone needs it, which is a little like opposing the development of a safe and effective new medicine on the ground that not every one needs it. It’s easy to agree that not everyone needs it. But in the case of OA, there’s no easy way to identify those who do and those who don’t. In addition, there’s no easy way, and no reason, to deliver it only to those who need it and deny it to everyone else.", "OA allows us to provide access to everyone who cares to have access, without patronizing guesswork about who really wants it, who really deserves it, and who would really benefit from it. Access for everyone with an internet connection helps authors, by enlarging their audience and impact, and helps readers who want access and who might have been excluded by central planners trying to decide in advance whom to enfranchise. The idea is to stop thinking of knowledge as a commodity to meter out to deserving customers, and to start thinking of it as a public good, especially when it is given away by its authors, funded with public money, or both.\nSome lobbyists for toll-access publishers argue, in good faith or bad, that the goal of OA is to bring access to lay readers. This sets up their counter-argument that lay readers don’t care to read cutting-edge research and wouldn’t understand it if they tried. Some publishers go a step further and argue that access to research would harm lay readers.", "Throughout most of its history, newcomers to OA assumed that the whole idea was to bypass peer review. That assumption was false and harmful, and we’ve made good progress in correcting it. The purpose of OA is to remove access barriers, not quality filters. Today many peer-reviewed OA journals are recognized for their excellence, many excellent peer-reviewed toll-access journal publishers are experimenting with OA, and green OA for peer-reviewed articles is growing rapidly. Unfortunately many newcomers unaware of these developments still assume that the purpose of OA is to bypass peer review. Some of them deplore the prospect, some rejoice in it, and their passion spreads the misinformation even farther.", "OA is itself a spectacular inducement for software developers to create useful tools to filter what we can find. As soon as the tools are finished, they apply to a free, useful, and fast-growing body of online literature. Conversely, useful tools optimized for OA literature create powerful incentives for authors and publishers to open up their work. As soon as their work is OA, a vast array of powerful tools make it more visible and useful. In the early days of OA, shortages on each side created a vicious circle: the small quantity of OA literature provided little incentive to develop new tools optimized for making it more visible and useful, and the dearth of powerful tools provided little extra incentive to make new work OA. But today a critical mass of OA literature invites the development of useful tools, and a critical mass of useful tools gives authors and publishers another set of reasons to make their work OA.", "OA is not limited to the sciences, where it is known best and moving fastest, but extends to the arts and humanities. It’s not limited to research created in developed countries, where it is most voluminous, but includes research from developing countries. (Nor, conversely, is it limited to research from developing countries, where the need is most pressing.) It’s not limited to publicly funded research, where the argument is almost universally accepted, but includes privately funded and unfunded research. It’s not limited to present and future publications, where most policies focus, but includes past publications. It’s not limited to born-digital work, where the technical barriers are lowest, but includes work digitized from print, microfiche, film, and other media. It’s not limited to text, but includes data, audio, video, multimedia, and executable code.\nThere are serious, practical, successful campaigns to provide OA to the many kinds of content useful to scholars, including:\n• peer-reviewed research articles", "All digital literature, OA or toll access, is machine-readable and supports new and useful kinds of processing. But toll-access literature minimizes that opportunity by shrinking the set of inputs with access fees, password barriers, copyright restrictions, and software locks. By removing price and permission barriers, OA maximizes this opportunity and spawns an ecosystem of tools for searching, indexing, mining, summarizing, translating, querying, linking, recommending, alerting, mashing-up, and other kinds of processing, not to mention myriad forms of crunching and connecting that we can’t even imagine today. One bedrock purpose of OA is to give these research-enhancing, utility-amplifying tools the widest possible scope of operation.\nIn this sense, the ultimate promise of OA is not to provide free online texts for human reading, even if that is the highest-value end use. The ultimate promise of OA is to provide free online data for software acting as the antennae, prosthetic eyeballs, research assistants, and personal librarians of all serious researchers.", "This is a two-step argument, that OA is primarily for lay readers and that lay readers don’t need it. Each step is false. The first step overlooks the unmet demand for access by professional researchers, as if all professionals who wanted access already had it, and the second overlooks the unmet demand for access by lay readers, as if lay readers had no use for access.\nOne reason to think the first step is put forward in bad faith is that it overlooks the very conspicuous fact that the OA movement is driven by researchers who are emphatic about wanting the benefits of OA for themselves. It also overlooks the evidence of wide and widespread access gaps even for professional researchers. (See section 2.1 on problems.)", "The OA movement focuses on journal articles because journals don’t pay authors for their articles. This frees article authors to consent to OA without losing money. By contrast, book authors either earn royalties or hope to earn royalties.\nBecause the line between royalty-free and royalty-producing literature is bright (and life is short), many OA activists focus exclusively on journal articles and leave books aside. I recommend a different tactic: treat journal articles as low-hanging fruit, but treat books as higher-hanging fruit rather than forbidden fruit. There are even reasons to think that OA for some kinds of books is easier to attain than OA for journal articles.", "research. But the larger OA movement wants OA to knowledge and original research themselves, as well as the full discussion about what we know and what we don’t. It wants OA to the primary and secondary sources where knowledge is taking", "OA is compatible with every kind of peer review, from the most traditional and conservative to the most networked and innovative. Some OA journals deliberately adopt traditional models of peer review, in order to tweak just the access variable of scholarly journals. Some deliberately use very new models, in order to push the evolution of peer review. OA is a kind of access, not a kind of editorial policy. It’s not intrinsically tied to any particular model of peer review any more than it’s intrinsically tied to any particular business model or method of digital preservation.\nWith one exception, achieving OA and reforming peer review are independent projects. That is, we can achieve OA without reforming peer review, and we can reform peer review without achieving OA. The exception is that some new forms of peer review presuppose OA.\nFor example,\nopen review", "All the public statements in support of OA stress the importance of peer review. Most of the enthusiasm for OA is enthusiasm for OA to peer-reviewed literature. At the same time, we can acknowledge that many of the people working hard for this goal are simultaneously exploring new forms of scholarly communication that exist outside the peer-review system, such as preprint exchanges, blogs, wikis, databases, discussion forums, and social media.\nIn OA lingo, a “preprint” is any version of an article prior to peer review, such as a draft circulating among colleagues or the version submitted to a journal. A “postprint” is any version approved by peer review. The scope of green OA deliberately extends to both preprints and postprints, just as the function of gold OA deliberately includes peer review.", "Many of us medical nonprofessionals—who may be professionals in another field—want access to medical research in order to read about our own conditions or the conditions of family members. But even if few fall into that category, most of us still want access for our doctors, nurses, and hospitals. We still want access for the nonprofit advocacy organizations working on our behalf, such as the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, the Cystinosis Research Network, or the Spina Bifida Association of America. And in turn, doctors, nurses, hospitals, and advocacy organizations want access for laboratory researchers. As I argued earlier (section 1.2), OA benefits researchers directly and benefits everyone else indirectly by benefiting researchers.", "Opening research literature for human users also opens it for software to crunch the literature for the benefit of human users. We can even hope that OA itself will soon be old hat, taken for granted by a new generation of tools and services that depend on it. As those tools and services come along, they will be the hot story and they will deserve to be. Technologists will note that they all depend on OA, and historians will note that OA itself was not easily won.", "We could say that OA preprint initiatives focus on bypassing peer review. But it would be more accurate to say that they focus on OA for works destined for peer review but not yet peer reviewed. Preprint exchanges didn’t arise because they bypass peer review but because they bypass delay. They make new work known more quickly to people in the field, creating new and earlier opportunities for citation, discussion, verification, and collaboration. How quickly? They make new work public the minute that authors are ready to make it public.\nOA preprints offer obvious reader-side benefits to those tracking new developments. But this may be a case where the author-side benefits swamp the reader-side benefits. Preprint exchanges give authors the earliest possible time stamp to mark their priority over others working on the same problem. (Historical aside: It’s likely that in the seventeenth century, journals superseded books as the primary literature of science precisely because they were faster than books in giving authors an authoritative public time stamp.)", "To benefit from someone’s research, we need access to it, and for this purpose it doesn’t matter whether the research is in the sciences or humanities. We need access to medical or physical research before we can use it to tackle a cure for malaria or devise a more efficient solar panel. We need access to an earthquake prediction before we can use it to plan emergency responses.\n \n And we need access to literary and philosophical research in order to understand a difficult passage in Homer or the strength of a response to epistemological skepticism.\nFor this kind of utility, the relevant comparison is not between pure and applied research or between the sciences and humanities. The relevant comparison is between any kind of research when OA and the same kind of research when locked behind price and permission barriers. Whether a given line of research serves wellness or wisdom, energy or enlightenment, protein synthesis or public safety, OA helps it serve those purposes faster, better, and more universally.\n5.5 Access for Whom?", "For some of these categories, such as data and source code, we need OA to facilitate the testing and replication of scientific experiments. For others, such as data, images, and digitized work from other media, we need OA in order to give readers the same chance to analyze the primary materials that the authors had. For others, such as articles, monographs, dissertations, and conference presentations, we need OA simply to share results and analysis with everyone who might benefit from them.\nA larger book could devote sections to each category. Here I focus on just a few.\n5.1 Preprints, Postprints, and Peer Review", "As soon as scholars had digital networks to connect peers together, they began using them to tinker with peer review. Can we use networks to find good referees, or to gather, share, and weigh their comments? Can we use networks to implement traditional models of peer review more quickly or effectively? Can we use networks to do better than the traditional models? Many scholars answer “yes” to some or all of these questions, and many of those saying “yes” also support OA. One effect is a creative and long-overdue efflorescence of experiments with new forms of peer review. Another effect, however, is the false perception that OA entails peer-review reform. For example, many people believe that OA requires a certain kind of peer review, favors some kinds of peer review and disfavors others, can’t proceed until we agree on the best form of peer review, or benefits only those who support certain kinds of peer-review reforms. All untrue.", "The question isn’t whether some people will read the OA edition without buying the toll-access edition. Some will. The question isn’t even whether more readers of the OA edition will buy the toll-access edition than not buy it. The question is whether more readers of the OA edition will buy the toll-access edition\nthan would have bought\nthe toll-access edition without the OA edition to alert them to its existence and help them evaluate its relevance and quality. If there are enough OA-inspired buyers, then it doesn’t matter that there are also plenty of OA-satisfied nonbuyers.\nBook authors and publishers who are still nervous could consent to delayed OA and release the OA edition only after six months or a year. During the time when the monograph is toll-access only, they could still provide OA excerpts and metadata to help readers and potential buyers find the book and start to assess it.", "Open Access: Scope\nAs we saw in chapter 1, any kind of content can in principle be OA. Any kind of content can be digitized, and any kind of digital content can be put online without price or permission barriers. In that sense, the potential scope of OA is universal. Hence, instead of saying that OA applies to some categories or genres and not to others, it’s better to say that some categories are easier and some harder.", "We don’t have a good name for this category larger than knowledge, but here I’ll just call it research. Among other things, research includes knowledge and knowledge claims or proposals, hypotheses and conjectures, arguments and analysis, evidence and data, algorithms and methods, evaluation and interpretation, debate and discussion, criticism and dissent, summary and review. OA to research should be OA to the whole shebang. Inquiry and research suffer when we have access to anything less." ], [ "Answer: human beings and machines.\n5.5.1 OA for Lay Readers\nSome have opposed OA on the ground that not everyone needs it, which is a little like opposing the development of a safe and effective new medicine on the ground that not every one needs it. It’s easy to agree that not everyone needs it. But in the case of OA, there’s no easy way to identify those who do and those who don’t. In addition, there’s no easy way, and no reason, to deliver it only to those who need it and deny it to everyone else.", "OA allows us to provide access to everyone who cares to have access, without patronizing guesswork about who really wants it, who really deserves it, and who would really benefit from it. Access for everyone with an internet connection helps authors, by enlarging their audience and impact, and helps readers who want access and who might have been excluded by central planners trying to decide in advance whom to enfranchise. The idea is to stop thinking of knowledge as a commodity to meter out to deserving customers, and to start thinking of it as a public good, especially when it is given away by its authors, funded with public money, or both.\nSome lobbyists for toll-access publishers argue, in good faith or bad, that the goal of OA is to bring access to lay readers. This sets up their counter-argument that lay readers don’t care to read cutting-edge research and wouldn’t understand it if they tried. Some publishers go a step further and argue that access to research would harm lay readers.", "The OA movement focuses on journal articles because journals don’t pay authors for their articles. This frees article authors to consent to OA without losing money. By contrast, book authors either earn royalties or hope to earn royalties.\nBecause the line between royalty-free and royalty-producing literature is bright (and life is short), many OA activists focus exclusively on journal articles and leave books aside. I recommend a different tactic: treat journal articles as low-hanging fruit, but treat books as higher-hanging fruit rather than forbidden fruit. There are even reasons to think that OA for some kinds of books is easier to attain than OA for journal articles.", "Throughout most of its history, newcomers to OA assumed that the whole idea was to bypass peer review. That assumption was false and harmful, and we’ve made good progress in correcting it. The purpose of OA is to remove access barriers, not quality filters. Today many peer-reviewed OA journals are recognized for their excellence, many excellent peer-reviewed toll-access journal publishers are experimenting with OA, and green OA for peer-reviewed articles is growing rapidly. Unfortunately many newcomers unaware of these developments still assume that the purpose of OA is to bypass peer review. Some of them deplore the prospect, some rejoice in it, and their passion spreads the misinformation even farther.", "This is a two-step argument, that OA is primarily for lay readers and that lay readers don’t need it. Each step is false. The first step overlooks the unmet demand for access by professional researchers, as if all professionals who wanted access already had it, and the second overlooks the unmet demand for access by lay readers, as if lay readers had no use for access.\nOne reason to think the first step is put forward in bad faith is that it overlooks the very conspicuous fact that the OA movement is driven by researchers who are emphatic about wanting the benefits of OA for themselves. It also overlooks the evidence of wide and widespread access gaps even for professional researchers. (See section 2.1 on problems.)", "OA is itself a spectacular inducement for software developers to create useful tools to filter what we can find. As soon as the tools are finished, they apply to a free, useful, and fast-growing body of online literature. Conversely, useful tools optimized for OA literature create powerful incentives for authors and publishers to open up their work. As soon as their work is OA, a vast array of powerful tools make it more visible and useful. In the early days of OA, shortages on each side created a vicious circle: the small quantity of OA literature provided little incentive to develop new tools optimized for making it more visible and useful, and the dearth of powerful tools provided little extra incentive to make new work OA. But today a critical mass of OA literature invites the development of useful tools, and a critical mass of useful tools gives authors and publishers another set of reasons to make their work OA.", "The scope of OA should be determined by author consent, not genre. Imagine an author of a journal article who withholds consent to OA. The economic door is open but the author is not walking through it. This helps us see that relinquishing revenue is only relevant when it leads to consent, and consent suffices whether or not it’s based on relinquishing revenue. It follows that if authors of royalty-producing genres, like books, consent to OA, then we’ll have the same basis for OA to books that we have for OA to articles.\nEven if books are higher-hanging fruit, they’re not out of reach. Two arguments are increasingly successful in persuading book authors to consent to OA.", "OA is not limited to the sciences, where it is known best and moving fastest, but extends to the arts and humanities. It’s not limited to research created in developed countries, where it is most voluminous, but includes research from developing countries. (Nor, conversely, is it limited to research from developing countries, where the need is most pressing.) It’s not limited to publicly funded research, where the argument is almost universally accepted, but includes privately funded and unfunded research. It’s not limited to present and future publications, where most policies focus, but includes past publications. It’s not limited to born-digital work, where the technical barriers are lowest, but includes work digitized from print, microfiche, film, and other media. It’s not limited to text, but includes data, audio, video, multimedia, and executable code.\nThere are serious, practical, successful campaigns to provide OA to the many kinds of content useful to scholars, including:\n• peer-reviewed research articles", "All digital literature, OA or toll access, is machine-readable and supports new and useful kinds of processing. But toll-access literature minimizes that opportunity by shrinking the set of inputs with access fees, password barriers, copyright restrictions, and software locks. By removing price and permission barriers, OA maximizes this opportunity and spawns an ecosystem of tools for searching, indexing, mining, summarizing, translating, querying, linking, recommending, alerting, mashing-up, and other kinds of processing, not to mention myriad forms of crunching and connecting that we can’t even imagine today. One bedrock purpose of OA is to give these research-enhancing, utility-amplifying tools the widest possible scope of operation.\nIn this sense, the ultimate promise of OA is not to provide free online texts for human reading, even if that is the highest-value end use. The ultimate promise of OA is to provide free online data for software acting as the antennae, prosthetic eyeballs, research assistants, and personal librarians of all serious researchers.", "research. But the larger OA movement wants OA to knowledge and original research themselves, as well as the full discussion about what we know and what we don’t. It wants OA to the primary and secondary sources where knowledge is taking", "The first argument says that even if OA puts royalties at risk, the benefits might outweigh the risks. The second argument says that OA might not reduce royalties at all, and that conventional publication without an OA edition might be the greater risk. Both say, in effect, that authors should be empirical and realistic about this. Don’t presume that your royalties will be high when there’s evidence they will be low, and don’t presume that OA will kill sales when there’s evidence it could boost them.\nBoth arguments apply to authors, but the second applies to publishers as well. When authors have already transferred rights—and the OA decision—to a publisher, then the case rests on the second argument. A growing number of academic book publishers are either persuaded or so intrigued that they’re experimenting.\nMany book authors want a print edition, badly. But the second argument is not only compatible with print but depends on print. The model is to give away the OA edition and sell a print edition, usually via print-on-demand (POD).", "Royalties on most scholarly monographs range between zero and meager. If your royalties are better than that, congratulations. (I’ve earned book royalties; I’m grateful for them, and I wish all royalty-earning authors success.) The case for OA doesn’t ask authors to make a new sacrifice or leave money on the table. It merely asks them to weigh the risk to their royalties against the benefit of OA, primarily the benefit of a larger audience and greater impact. For many book authors, the benefit will outweigh the risk. The benefit is large and the realistic prospect of royalties is low.\nThere is growing evidence that for some kinds of books, full-text OA editions boost the net sales of the priced, printed editions. OA may increase royalties rather than decrease them.", "The question isn’t whether some people will read the OA edition without buying the toll-access edition. Some will. The question isn’t even whether more readers of the OA edition will buy the toll-access edition than not buy it. The question is whether more readers of the OA edition will buy the toll-access edition\nthan would have bought\nthe toll-access edition without the OA edition to alert them to its existence and help them evaluate its relevance and quality. If there are enough OA-inspired buyers, then it doesn’t matter that there are also plenty of OA-satisfied nonbuyers.\nBook authors and publishers who are still nervous could consent to delayed OA and release the OA edition only after six months or a year. During the time when the monograph is toll-access only, they could still provide OA excerpts and metadata to help readers and potential buyers find the book and start to assess it.", "Opening research literature for human users also opens it for software to crunch the literature for the benefit of human users. We can even hope that OA itself will soon be old hat, taken for granted by a new generation of tools and services that depend on it. As those tools and services come along, they will be the hot story and they will deserve to be. Technologists will note that they all depend on OA, and historians will note that OA itself was not easily won.", "We could say that OA preprint initiatives focus on bypassing peer review. But it would be more accurate to say that they focus on OA for works destined for peer review but not yet peer reviewed. Preprint exchanges didn’t arise because they bypass peer review but because they bypass delay. They make new work known more quickly to people in the field, creating new and earlier opportunities for citation, discussion, verification, and collaboration. How quickly? They make new work public the minute that authors are ready to make it public.\nOA preprints offer obvious reader-side benefits to those tracking new developments. But this may be a case where the author-side benefits swamp the reader-side benefits. Preprint exchanges give authors the earliest possible time stamp to mark their priority over others working on the same problem. (Historical aside: It’s likely that in the seventeenth century, journals superseded books as the primary literature of science precisely because they were faster than books in giving authors an authoritative public time stamp.)", "OA is compatible with every kind of peer review, from the most traditional and conservative to the most networked and innovative. Some OA journals deliberately adopt traditional models of peer review, in order to tweak just the access variable of scholarly journals. Some deliberately use very new models, in order to push the evolution of peer review. OA is a kind of access, not a kind of editorial policy. It’s not intrinsically tied to any particular model of peer review any more than it’s intrinsically tied to any particular business model or method of digital preservation.\nWith one exception, achieving OA and reforming peer review are independent projects. That is, we can achieve OA without reforming peer review, and we can reform peer review without achieving OA. The exception is that some new forms of peer review presuppose OA.\nFor example,\nopen review", "A May 2006 Harris poll showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans wanted OA for publicly funded research. 83 percent wanted it for their doctors and 82 percent wanted it for everyone. 81 percent said it would help medical patients and their families cope with chronic illness and disability. 62 percent said it would speed up the discovery of new cures. For each poll question, a fairly large percentage of respondents checked “neither agree nor disagree” (between 13 and 30 percent), which meant that only tiny minorities disagreed with the OA propositions. Only 3 percent didn’t want OA for their doctors, 4 percent didn’t want it for themselves, and 5 percent didn’t think it would help patients or their families.", "The U.S. National Academies Press began publishing full-text OA editions of its monographs alongside priced, printed editions in March 1994, which is ancient history in internet time. Over the years Michael Jensen, its director of web communications and director of publishing technologies, has published a series of articles showing that the OA editions increased the sales of the toll-access editions.\nIn February 2007, the American Association of University Presses issued a Statement on Open Access in which it called for experiments with OA monographs and mixed OA/toll-access business models. By May 2011, the AAUP reported that 17 member presses, or 24 percent of its survey respondents, were already publishing full-text OA books.", "All the public statements in support of OA stress the importance of peer review. Most of the enthusiasm for OA is enthusiasm for OA to peer-reviewed literature. At the same time, we can acknowledge that many of the people working hard for this goal are simultaneously exploring new forms of scholarly communication that exist outside the peer-review system, such as preprint exchanges, blogs, wikis, databases, discussion forums, and social media.\nIn OA lingo, a “preprint” is any version of an article prior to peer review, such as a draft circulating among colleagues or the version submitted to a journal. A “postprint” is any version approved by peer review. The scope of green OA deliberately extends to both preprints and postprints, just as the function of gold OA deliberately includes peer review.", "A few years ago, those of us who focus on OA to journal literature were sure that journal articles were lower-hanging fruit than any kind of print books, including public-domain books. But we were wrong. There are still good reasons to make journal literature the strategic focus of the OA movement, and we’re still making good progress on that front. But the lesson of the fast-moving book-scanning projects is that misunderstanding, inertia, and permission are more serious problems than digitization. The permission problem is solved for public-domain books. Digitizing them by the millions is a titanic technical undertaking, but it turns out to be a smaller problem than getting millions of copyrighted articles into OA journals or OA repositories, even when they’re written by authors who can consent to OA without losing revenue. OA for new journal articles faces publisher resistance, print-era incentives, and misunderstandings in every category of stakeholders, including authors and publishers. As the late Jim Gray used to say, “May all your problems be technical.”\n5.4 Access to What?" ], [ "All the public statements in support of OA stress the importance of peer review. Most of the enthusiasm for OA is enthusiasm for OA to peer-reviewed literature. At the same time, we can acknowledge that many of the people working hard for this goal are simultaneously exploring new forms of scholarly communication that exist outside the peer-review system, such as preprint exchanges, blogs, wikis, databases, discussion forums, and social media.\nIn OA lingo, a “preprint” is any version of an article prior to peer review, such as a draft circulating among colleagues or the version submitted to a journal. A “postprint” is any version approved by peer review. The scope of green OA deliberately extends to both preprints and postprints, just as the function of gold OA deliberately includes peer review.", "Throughout most of its history, newcomers to OA assumed that the whole idea was to bypass peer review. That assumption was false and harmful, and we’ve made good progress in correcting it. The purpose of OA is to remove access barriers, not quality filters. Today many peer-reviewed OA journals are recognized for their excellence, many excellent peer-reviewed toll-access journal publishers are experimenting with OA, and green OA for peer-reviewed articles is growing rapidly. Unfortunately many newcomers unaware of these developments still assume that the purpose of OA is to bypass peer review. Some of them deplore the prospect, some rejoice in it, and their passion spreads the misinformation even farther.", "OA is compatible with every kind of peer review, from the most traditional and conservative to the most networked and innovative. Some OA journals deliberately adopt traditional models of peer review, in order to tweak just the access variable of scholarly journals. Some deliberately use very new models, in order to push the evolution of peer review. OA is a kind of access, not a kind of editorial policy. It’s not intrinsically tied to any particular model of peer review any more than it’s intrinsically tied to any particular business model or method of digital preservation.\nWith one exception, achieving OA and reforming peer review are independent projects. That is, we can achieve OA without reforming peer review, and we can reform peer review without achieving OA. The exception is that some new forms of peer review presuppose OA.\nFor example,\nopen review", "As soon as scholars had digital networks to connect peers together, they began using them to tinker with peer review. Can we use networks to find good referees, or to gather, share, and weigh their comments? Can we use networks to implement traditional models of peer review more quickly or effectively? Can we use networks to do better than the traditional models? Many scholars answer “yes” to some or all of these questions, and many of those saying “yes” also support OA. One effect is a creative and long-overdue efflorescence of experiments with new forms of peer review. Another effect, however, is the false perception that OA entails peer-review reform. For example, many people believe that OA requires a certain kind of peer review, favors some kinds of peer review and disfavors others, can’t proceed until we agree on the best form of peer review, or benefits only those who support certain kinds of peer-review reforms. All untrue.", "makes submissions OA, before or after some prepublication review, and invites community comments. Some open-review journals will use those comments to decide whether to accept the article for formal publication, and others will already have accepted the article and use the community comments to complement or carry forward the quality evaluation started by the journal. Open review requires OA, but OA does not require open review.\nPeer review does not depend on the price or medium of a journal. Nor does the value, rigor, or integrity of peer review. We know that peer review at OA journals can be as rigorous and honest as peer review at the best toll-access journals because it can use the same procedures, the same standards, and even the same people (editors and referees) as the best toll-access journals. We see this whenever toll-access journals convert to OA without changing their methods or personnel.\n5.2 Theses and Dissertations", "OA allows us to provide access to everyone who cares to have access, without patronizing guesswork about who really wants it, who really deserves it, and who would really benefit from it. Access for everyone with an internet connection helps authors, by enlarging their audience and impact, and helps readers who want access and who might have been excluded by central planners trying to decide in advance whom to enfranchise. The idea is to stop thinking of knowledge as a commodity to meter out to deserving customers, and to start thinking of it as a public good, especially when it is given away by its authors, funded with public money, or both.\nSome lobbyists for toll-access publishers argue, in good faith or bad, that the goal of OA is to bring access to lay readers. This sets up their counter-argument that lay readers don’t care to read cutting-edge research and wouldn’t understand it if they tried. Some publishers go a step further and argue that access to research would harm lay readers.", "The ratio of professional to lay readers of peer-reviewed research undoubtedly varies from field to field. But for the purpose of OA policy, it doesn’t matter what the ratio is in any field. What matters is that neither group has sufficient access today, when most research journals are toll-access. Professional researchers don’t have sufficient access through their institutional libraries because subscription prices are rising faster than library budgets, even at the wealthiest libraries in the world. Motivated lay readers don’t have sufficient access because few public libraries subscribe to any peer-reviewed research journals, and none to the full range.", "The OA movement focuses on journal articles because journals don’t pay authors for their articles. This frees article authors to consent to OA without losing money. By contrast, book authors either earn royalties or hope to earn royalties.\nBecause the line between royalty-free and royalty-producing literature is bright (and life is short), many OA activists focus exclusively on journal articles and leave books aside. I recommend a different tactic: treat journal articles as low-hanging fruit, but treat books as higher-hanging fruit rather than forbidden fruit. There are even reasons to think that OA for some kinds of books is easier to attain than OA for journal articles.", "OA is not limited to the sciences, where it is known best and moving fastest, but extends to the arts and humanities. It’s not limited to research created in developed countries, where it is most voluminous, but includes research from developing countries. (Nor, conversely, is it limited to research from developing countries, where the need is most pressing.) It’s not limited to publicly funded research, where the argument is almost universally accepted, but includes privately funded and unfunded research. It’s not limited to present and future publications, where most policies focus, but includes past publications. It’s not limited to born-digital work, where the technical barriers are lowest, but includes work digitized from print, microfiche, film, and other media. It’s not limited to text, but includes data, audio, video, multimedia, and executable code.\nThere are serious, practical, successful campaigns to provide OA to the many kinds of content useful to scholars, including:\n• peer-reviewed research articles", "The question isn’t whether some people will read the OA edition without buying the toll-access edition. Some will. The question isn’t even whether more readers of the OA edition will buy the toll-access edition than not buy it. The question is whether more readers of the OA edition will buy the toll-access edition\nthan would have bought\nthe toll-access edition without the OA edition to alert them to its existence and help them evaluate its relevance and quality. If there are enough OA-inspired buyers, then it doesn’t matter that there are also plenty of OA-satisfied nonbuyers.\nBook authors and publishers who are still nervous could consent to delayed OA and release the OA edition only after six months or a year. During the time when the monograph is toll-access only, they could still provide OA excerpts and metadata to help readers and potential buyers find the book and start to assess it.", "Preprint exchanges existed before the internet, but OA makes them faster, larger, more useful, and more widely read. Despite these advantages, however, preprint exchanges don’t represent the whole OA movement or even the whole green OA movement. On the contrary, most green OA and most OA overall focuses on peer-reviewed articles.", "We could say that OA preprint initiatives focus on bypassing peer review. But it would be more accurate to say that they focus on OA for works destined for peer review but not yet peer reviewed. Preprint exchanges didn’t arise because they bypass peer review but because they bypass delay. They make new work known more quickly to people in the field, creating new and earlier opportunities for citation, discussion, verification, and collaboration. How quickly? They make new work public the minute that authors are ready to make it public.\nOA preprints offer obvious reader-side benefits to those tracking new developments. But this may be a case where the author-side benefits swamp the reader-side benefits. Preprint exchanges give authors the earliest possible time stamp to mark their priority over others working on the same problem. (Historical aside: It’s likely that in the seventeenth century, journals superseded books as the primary literature of science precisely because they were faster than books in giving authors an authoritative public time stamp.)", "Open Access: Scope\nAs we saw in chapter 1, any kind of content can in principle be OA. Any kind of content can be digitized, and any kind of digital content can be put online without price or permission barriers. In that sense, the potential scope of OA is universal. Hence, instead of saying that OA applies to some categories or genres and not to others, it’s better to say that some categories are easier and some harder.", "For some of these categories, such as data and source code, we need OA to facilitate the testing and replication of scientific experiments. For others, such as data, images, and digitized work from other media, we need OA in order to give readers the same chance to analyze the primary materials that the authors had. For others, such as articles, monographs, dissertations, and conference presentations, we need OA simply to share results and analysis with everyone who might benefit from them.\nA larger book could devote sections to each category. Here I focus on just a few.\n5.1 Preprints, Postprints, and Peer Review", "The problem with the second step is presumption. How does anyone know in advance the level of demand for peer-reviewed research among lay readers? When peer-reviewed literature is toll-access and expensive, then lack of access by lay readers and consumers doesn’t show lack of demand, any more than lack of access to Fort Knox shows lack of demand for gold. We have to remove access barriers before we can distinguish lack of access from lack of interest. The experiment has been done, more than once. When the U.S. National Library of Medicine converted to OA in 2004, for example, visitors to its web site increased more than a hundredfold.\nA common related argument is that lay readers surfing the internet are easily misled by unsupported claims, refuted theories, anecdotal evidence, and quack remedies. Even if true, however, it’s an argument for rather than against expanding online access to peer-reviewed research. If we’re really worried about online dreck, we should dilute it with high-quality research rather than leave the dreck unchallenged and uncorrected.", "This is a two-step argument, that OA is primarily for lay readers and that lay readers don’t need it. Each step is false. The first step overlooks the unmet demand for access by professional researchers, as if all professionals who wanted access already had it, and the second overlooks the unmet demand for access by lay readers, as if lay readers had no use for access.\nOne reason to think the first step is put forward in bad faith is that it overlooks the very conspicuous fact that the OA movement is driven by researchers who are emphatic about wanting the benefits of OA for themselves. It also overlooks the evidence of wide and widespread access gaps even for professional researchers. (See section 2.1 on problems.)", "Many of us medical nonprofessionals—who may be professionals in another field—want access to medical research in order to read about our own conditions or the conditions of family members. But even if few fall into that category, most of us still want access for our doctors, nurses, and hospitals. We still want access for the nonprofit advocacy organizations working on our behalf, such as the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, the Cystinosis Research Network, or the Spina Bifida Association of America. And in turn, doctors, nurses, hospitals, and advocacy organizations want access for laboratory researchers. As I argued earlier (section 1.2), OA benefits researchers directly and benefits everyone else indirectly by benefiting researchers.", "The scope of OA should be determined by author consent, not genre. Imagine an author of a journal article who withholds consent to OA. The economic door is open but the author is not walking through it. This helps us see that relinquishing revenue is only relevant when it leads to consent, and consent suffices whether or not it’s based on relinquishing revenue. It follows that if authors of royalty-producing genres, like books, consent to OA, then we’ll have the same basis for OA to books that we have for OA to articles.\nEven if books are higher-hanging fruit, they’re not out of reach. Two arguments are increasingly successful in persuading book authors to consent to OA.", "We don’t have a good name for this category larger than knowledge, but here I’ll just call it research. Among other things, research includes knowledge and knowledge claims or proposals, hypotheses and conjectures, arguments and analysis, evidence and data, algorithms and methods, evaluation and interpretation, debate and discussion, criticism and dissent, summary and review. OA to research should be OA to the whole shebang. Inquiry and research suffer when we have access to anything less.", "The U.S. National Academies Press began publishing full-text OA editions of its monographs alongside priced, printed editions in March 1994, which is ancient history in internet time. Over the years Michael Jensen, its director of web communications and director of publishing technologies, has published a series of articles showing that the OA editions increased the sales of the toll-access editions.\nIn February 2007, the American Association of University Presses issued a Statement on Open Access in which it called for experiments with OA monographs and mixed OA/toll-access business models. By May 2011, the AAUP reported that 17 member presses, or 24 percent of its survey respondents, were already publishing full-text OA books." ], [ "A few years ago, those of us who focus on OA to journal literature were sure that journal articles were lower-hanging fruit than any kind of print books, including public-domain books. But we were wrong. There are still good reasons to make journal literature the strategic focus of the OA movement, and we’re still making good progress on that front. But the lesson of the fast-moving book-scanning projects is that misunderstanding, inertia, and permission are more serious problems than digitization. The permission problem is solved for public-domain books. Digitizing them by the millions is a titanic technical undertaking, but it turns out to be a smaller problem than getting millions of copyrighted articles into OA journals or OA repositories, even when they’re written by authors who can consent to OA without losing revenue. OA for new journal articles faces publisher resistance, print-era incentives, and misunderstandings in every category of stakeholders, including authors and publishers. As the late Jim Gray used to say, “May all your problems be technical.”\n5.4 Access to What?", "The OA movement focuses on journal articles because journals don’t pay authors for their articles. This frees article authors to consent to OA without losing money. By contrast, book authors either earn royalties or hope to earn royalties.\nBecause the line between royalty-free and royalty-producing literature is bright (and life is short), many OA activists focus exclusively on journal articles and leave books aside. I recommend a different tactic: treat journal articles as low-hanging fruit, but treat books as higher-hanging fruit rather than forbidden fruit. There are even reasons to think that OA for some kinds of books is easier to attain than OA for journal articles.", "The scope of OA should be determined by author consent, not genre. Imagine an author of a journal article who withholds consent to OA. The economic door is open but the author is not walking through it. This helps us see that relinquishing revenue is only relevant when it leads to consent, and consent suffices whether or not it’s based on relinquishing revenue. It follows that if authors of royalty-producing genres, like books, consent to OA, then we’ll have the same basis for OA to books that we have for OA to articles.\nEven if books are higher-hanging fruit, they’re not out of reach. Two arguments are increasingly successful in persuading book authors to consent to OA.", "We could say that OA preprint initiatives focus on bypassing peer review. But it would be more accurate to say that they focus on OA for works destined for peer review but not yet peer reviewed. Preprint exchanges didn’t arise because they bypass peer review but because they bypass delay. They make new work known more quickly to people in the field, creating new and earlier opportunities for citation, discussion, verification, and collaboration. How quickly? They make new work public the minute that authors are ready to make it public.\nOA preprints offer obvious reader-side benefits to those tracking new developments. But this may be a case where the author-side benefits swamp the reader-side benefits. Preprint exchanges give authors the earliest possible time stamp to mark their priority over others working on the same problem. (Historical aside: It’s likely that in the seventeenth century, journals superseded books as the primary literature of science precisely because they were faster than books in giving authors an authoritative public time stamp.)", "OA allows us to provide access to everyone who cares to have access, without patronizing guesswork about who really wants it, who really deserves it, and who would really benefit from it. Access for everyone with an internet connection helps authors, by enlarging their audience and impact, and helps readers who want access and who might have been excluded by central planners trying to decide in advance whom to enfranchise. The idea is to stop thinking of knowledge as a commodity to meter out to deserving customers, and to start thinking of it as a public good, especially when it is given away by its authors, funded with public money, or both.\nSome lobbyists for toll-access publishers argue, in good faith or bad, that the goal of OA is to bring access to lay readers. This sets up their counter-argument that lay readers don’t care to read cutting-edge research and wouldn’t understand it if they tried. Some publishers go a step further and argue that access to research would harm lay readers.", "Some people call the journal literature the “minutes” of science, as if it were just a summary. But it’s more than that. If the minutes of a meeting summarize a discussion, the journal literature is a large part of the discussion", "Answer: human beings and machines.\n5.5.1 OA for Lay Readers\nSome have opposed OA on the ground that not everyone needs it, which is a little like opposing the development of a safe and effective new medicine on the ground that not every one needs it. It’s easy to agree that not everyone needs it. But in the case of OA, there’s no easy way to identify those who do and those who don’t. In addition, there’s no easy way, and no reason, to deliver it only to those who need it and deny it to everyone else.", "Opening research literature for human users also opens it for software to crunch the literature for the benefit of human users. We can even hope that OA itself will soon be old hat, taken for granted by a new generation of tools and services that depend on it. As those tools and services come along, they will be the hot story and they will deserve to be. Technologists will note that they all depend on OA, and historians will note that OA itself was not easily won.", "All digital literature, OA or toll access, is machine-readable and supports new and useful kinds of processing. But toll-access literature minimizes that opportunity by shrinking the set of inputs with access fees, password barriers, copyright restrictions, and software locks. By removing price and permission barriers, OA maximizes this opportunity and spawns an ecosystem of tools for searching, indexing, mining, summarizing, translating, querying, linking, recommending, alerting, mashing-up, and other kinds of processing, not to mention myriad forms of crunching and connecting that we can’t even imagine today. One bedrock purpose of OA is to give these research-enhancing, utility-amplifying tools the widest possible scope of operation.\nIn this sense, the ultimate promise of OA is not to provide free online texts for human reading, even if that is the highest-value end use. The ultimate promise of OA is to provide free online data for software acting as the antennae, prosthetic eyeballs, research assistants, and personal librarians of all serious researchers.", "All the public statements in support of OA stress the importance of peer review. Most of the enthusiasm for OA is enthusiasm for OA to peer-reviewed literature. At the same time, we can acknowledge that many of the people working hard for this goal are simultaneously exploring new forms of scholarly communication that exist outside the peer-review system, such as preprint exchanges, blogs, wikis, databases, discussion forums, and social media.\nIn OA lingo, a “preprint” is any version of an article prior to peer review, such as a draft circulating among colleagues or the version submitted to a journal. A “postprint” is any version approved by peer review. The scope of green OA deliberately extends to both preprints and postprints, just as the function of gold OA deliberately includes peer review.", "itself. Moreover, in an age of conferences, preprint servers, blogs, wikis, databases, listservs, and email, the journal literature is not the whole discussion. Wikipedia aspires to provide OA to a summary of knowledge, and (wisely) refuses to accept original", "Throughout most of its history, newcomers to OA assumed that the whole idea was to bypass peer review. That assumption was false and harmful, and we’ve made good progress in correcting it. The purpose of OA is to remove access barriers, not quality filters. Today many peer-reviewed OA journals are recognized for their excellence, many excellent peer-reviewed toll-access journal publishers are experimenting with OA, and green OA for peer-reviewed articles is growing rapidly. Unfortunately many newcomers unaware of these developments still assume that the purpose of OA is to bypass peer review. Some of them deplore the prospect, some rejoice in it, and their passion spreads the misinformation even farther.", "Information overload didn’t start with the internet. The internet does vastly increase the volume of work to which we have access, but at the same time it vastly increases our ability to find what we need. We zero in on the pieces that deserve our limited time with the aid of powerful software, or more precisely, powerful software with access. Software helps us learn what exists, what’s new, what’s relevant, what others find relevant, and what others are saying about it. Without these tools, we couldn’t cope with information overload. Or we’d have to redefine “coping” as artificially reducing the range of work we are allowed to consider, investigate, read, or retrieve.", "Some publishers have seriously argued that high toll-access journal prices and limited library budgets help us cope with information overload, as if the literature we can’t afford always coincides with the literature we don’t need. But of course much that is relevant to our projects is unaffordable to our libraries. If any problems are intrinsic to a very large and fast-growing, accessible corpus of literature, they don’t arise from size itself, or size alone, but from limitations on our discovery tools. With OA and sufficiently powerful tools, we could always find and retrieve what we needed. Without sufficiently powerful tools, we could not. Replacing OA with high-priced toll access would only add new obstacles to research, even if it simultaneously made the accessible corpus small enough for weaker discovery tools to master. In Clay Shirky’s concise formulation, the real problem is not information overload but filter failure.", "The problem with the second step is presumption. How does anyone know in advance the level of demand for peer-reviewed research among lay readers? When peer-reviewed literature is toll-access and expensive, then lack of access by lay readers and consumers doesn’t show lack of demand, any more than lack of access to Fort Knox shows lack of demand for gold. We have to remove access barriers before we can distinguish lack of access from lack of interest. The experiment has been done, more than once. When the U.S. National Library of Medicine converted to OA in 2004, for example, visitors to its web site increased more than a hundredfold.\nA common related argument is that lay readers surfing the internet are easily misled by unsupported claims, refuted theories, anecdotal evidence, and quack remedies. Even if true, however, it’s an argument for rather than against expanding online access to peer-reviewed research. If we’re really worried about online dreck, we should dilute it with high-quality research rather than leave the dreck unchallenged and uncorrected.", "Not all the literature that researchers want to find, retrieve, and read should be called knowledge. We want access to serious proposals for knowledge even if they turn out to be false or incomplete. We want access to serious hypotheses even if we’re still testing them and debating their merits. We want access to the data and analysis offered in support of the claims we’re evaluating. We want access to all the arguments, evidence, and discussion. We want access to everything that could help us decide what to call knowledge, not just to the results that we agree to call knowledge. If access depended on the outcome of debate and inquiry, then access could not contribute to debate and inquiry.", "OA is itself a spectacular inducement for software developers to create useful tools to filter what we can find. As soon as the tools are finished, they apply to a free, useful, and fast-growing body of online literature. Conversely, useful tools optimized for OA literature create powerful incentives for authors and publishers to open up their work. As soon as their work is OA, a vast array of powerful tools make it more visible and useful. In the early days of OA, shortages on each side created a vicious circle: the small quantity of OA literature provided little incentive to develop new tools optimized for making it more visible and useful, and the dearth of powerful tools provided little extra incentive to make new work OA. But today a critical mass of OA literature invites the development of useful tools, and a critical mass of useful tools gives authors and publishers another set of reasons to make their work OA.", "shape through a messy process that is neither consistent (as it works through the clash of conflicting hypotheses) nor stable (as it discards weak claims and considers new ones that appear stronger). The messiness and instability are properties of a discussion,", "This is a two-step argument, that OA is primarily for lay readers and that lay readers don’t need it. Each step is false. The first step overlooks the unmet demand for access by professional researchers, as if all professionals who wanted access already had it, and the second overlooks the unmet demand for access by lay readers, as if lay readers had no use for access.\nOne reason to think the first step is put forward in bad faith is that it overlooks the very conspicuous fact that the OA movement is driven by researchers who are emphatic about wanting the benefits of OA for themselves. It also overlooks the evidence of wide and widespread access gaps even for professional researchers. (See section 2.1 on problems.)", "One problem is running a controlled experiment, since we can’t publish the same book with and without an OA edition to compare the sales. (If we publish a book initially without an OA edition and later add an OA edition, the time lag itself could affect sales.) Another variable is that ebook readers are becoming more and more consumer friendly. If the “net boost to sales” phenomenon is real, and if it depends on the ergonomic discomforts of reading digital books, then better gadgets may make the phenomenon disappear. If the net-boost phenomenon didn’t depend on ergonomic hurdles to digital reading, or didn’t depend entirely on them, then it might survive any sort of technological advances. There’s a lot of experimenting still to do, and fortunately or unfortunately it must be done in a fast-changing environment." ], [ "A few years ago, those of us who focus on OA to journal literature were sure that journal articles were lower-hanging fruit than any kind of print books, including public-domain books. But we were wrong. There are still good reasons to make journal literature the strategic focus of the OA movement, and we’re still making good progress on that front. But the lesson of the fast-moving book-scanning projects is that misunderstanding, inertia, and permission are more serious problems than digitization. The permission problem is solved for public-domain books. Digitizing them by the millions is a titanic technical undertaking, but it turns out to be a smaller problem than getting millions of copyrighted articles into OA journals or OA repositories, even when they’re written by authors who can consent to OA without losing revenue. OA for new journal articles faces publisher resistance, print-era incentives, and misunderstandings in every category of stakeholders, including authors and publishers. As the late Jim Gray used to say, “May all your problems be technical.”\n5.4 Access to What?", "The scope of OA should be determined by author consent, not genre. Imagine an author of a journal article who withholds consent to OA. The economic door is open but the author is not walking through it. This helps us see that relinquishing revenue is only relevant when it leads to consent, and consent suffices whether or not it’s based on relinquishing revenue. It follows that if authors of royalty-producing genres, like books, consent to OA, then we’ll have the same basis for OA to books that we have for OA to articles.\nEven if books are higher-hanging fruit, they’re not out of reach. Two arguments are increasingly successful in persuading book authors to consent to OA.", "The OA movement focuses on journal articles because journals don’t pay authors for their articles. This frees article authors to consent to OA without losing money. By contrast, book authors either earn royalties or hope to earn royalties.\nBecause the line between royalty-free and royalty-producing literature is bright (and life is short), many OA activists focus exclusively on journal articles and leave books aside. I recommend a different tactic: treat journal articles as low-hanging fruit, but treat books as higher-hanging fruit rather than forbidden fruit. There are even reasons to think that OA for some kinds of books is easier to attain than OA for journal articles.", "Some publishers have seriously argued that high toll-access journal prices and limited library budgets help us cope with information overload, as if the literature we can’t afford always coincides with the literature we don’t need. But of course much that is relevant to our projects is unaffordable to our libraries. If any problems are intrinsic to a very large and fast-growing, accessible corpus of literature, they don’t arise from size itself, or size alone, but from limitations on our discovery tools. With OA and sufficiently powerful tools, we could always find and retrieve what we needed. Without sufficiently powerful tools, we could not. Replacing OA with high-priced toll access would only add new obstacles to research, even if it simultaneously made the accessible corpus small enough for weaker discovery tools to master. In Clay Shirky’s concise formulation, the real problem is not information overload but filter failure.", "Some people call the journal literature the “minutes” of science, as if it were just a summary. But it’s more than that. If the minutes of a meeting summarize a discussion, the journal literature is a large part of the discussion", "OA allows us to provide access to everyone who cares to have access, without patronizing guesswork about who really wants it, who really deserves it, and who would really benefit from it. Access for everyone with an internet connection helps authors, by enlarging their audience and impact, and helps readers who want access and who might have been excluded by central planners trying to decide in advance whom to enfranchise. The idea is to stop thinking of knowledge as a commodity to meter out to deserving customers, and to start thinking of it as a public good, especially when it is given away by its authors, funded with public money, or both.\nSome lobbyists for toll-access publishers argue, in good faith or bad, that the goal of OA is to bring access to lay readers. This sets up their counter-argument that lay readers don’t care to read cutting-edge research and wouldn’t understand it if they tried. Some publishers go a step further and argue that access to research would harm lay readers.", "All digital literature, OA or toll access, is machine-readable and supports new and useful kinds of processing. But toll-access literature minimizes that opportunity by shrinking the set of inputs with access fees, password barriers, copyright restrictions, and software locks. By removing price and permission barriers, OA maximizes this opportunity and spawns an ecosystem of tools for searching, indexing, mining, summarizing, translating, querying, linking, recommending, alerting, mashing-up, and other kinds of processing, not to mention myriad forms of crunching and connecting that we can’t even imagine today. One bedrock purpose of OA is to give these research-enhancing, utility-amplifying tools the widest possible scope of operation.\nIn this sense, the ultimate promise of OA is not to provide free online texts for human reading, even if that is the highest-value end use. The ultimate promise of OA is to provide free online data for software acting as the antennae, prosthetic eyeballs, research assistants, and personal librarians of all serious researchers.", "Opening research literature for human users also opens it for software to crunch the literature for the benefit of human users. We can even hope that OA itself will soon be old hat, taken for granted by a new generation of tools and services that depend on it. As those tools and services come along, they will be the hot story and they will deserve to be. Technologists will note that they all depend on OA, and historians will note that OA itself was not easily won.", "shape through a messy process that is neither consistent (as it works through the clash of conflicting hypotheses) nor stable (as it discards weak claims and considers new ones that appear stronger). The messiness and instability are properties of a discussion,", "Answer: human beings and machines.\n5.5.1 OA for Lay Readers\nSome have opposed OA on the ground that not everyone needs it, which is a little like opposing the development of a safe and effective new medicine on the ground that not every one needs it. It’s easy to agree that not everyone needs it. But in the case of OA, there’s no easy way to identify those who do and those who don’t. In addition, there’s no easy way, and no reason, to deliver it only to those who need it and deny it to everyone else.", "itself. Moreover, in an age of conferences, preprint servers, blogs, wikis, databases, listservs, and email, the journal literature is not the whole discussion. Wikipedia aspires to provide OA to a summary of knowledge, and (wisely) refuses to accept original", "Not all the literature that researchers want to find, retrieve, and read should be called knowledge. We want access to serious proposals for knowledge even if they turn out to be false or incomplete. We want access to serious hypotheses even if we’re still testing them and debating their merits. We want access to the data and analysis offered in support of the claims we’re evaluating. We want access to all the arguments, evidence, and discussion. We want access to everything that could help us decide what to call knowledge, not just to the results that we agree to call knowledge. If access depended on the outcome of debate and inquiry, then access could not contribute to debate and inquiry.", "We could say that OA preprint initiatives focus on bypassing peer review. But it would be more accurate to say that they focus on OA for works destined for peer review but not yet peer reviewed. Preprint exchanges didn’t arise because they bypass peer review but because they bypass delay. They make new work known more quickly to people in the field, creating new and earlier opportunities for citation, discussion, verification, and collaboration. How quickly? They make new work public the minute that authors are ready to make it public.\nOA preprints offer obvious reader-side benefits to those tracking new developments. But this may be a case where the author-side benefits swamp the reader-side benefits. Preprint exchanges give authors the earliest possible time stamp to mark their priority over others working on the same problem. (Historical aside: It’s likely that in the seventeenth century, journals superseded books as the primary literature of science precisely because they were faster than books in giving authors an authoritative public time stamp.)", "Throughout most of its history, newcomers to OA assumed that the whole idea was to bypass peer review. That assumption was false and harmful, and we’ve made good progress in correcting it. The purpose of OA is to remove access barriers, not quality filters. Today many peer-reviewed OA journals are recognized for their excellence, many excellent peer-reviewed toll-access journal publishers are experimenting with OA, and green OA for peer-reviewed articles is growing rapidly. Unfortunately many newcomers unaware of these developments still assume that the purpose of OA is to bypass peer review. Some of them deplore the prospect, some rejoice in it, and their passion spreads the misinformation even farther.", "Information overload didn’t start with the internet. The internet does vastly increase the volume of work to which we have access, but at the same time it vastly increases our ability to find what we need. We zero in on the pieces that deserve our limited time with the aid of powerful software, or more precisely, powerful software with access. Software helps us learn what exists, what’s new, what’s relevant, what others find relevant, and what others are saying about it. Without these tools, we couldn’t cope with information overload. Or we’d have to redefine “coping” as artificially reducing the range of work we are allowed to consider, investigate, read, or retrieve.", "OA is itself a spectacular inducement for software developers to create useful tools to filter what we can find. As soon as the tools are finished, they apply to a free, useful, and fast-growing body of online literature. Conversely, useful tools optimized for OA literature create powerful incentives for authors and publishers to open up their work. As soon as their work is OA, a vast array of powerful tools make it more visible and useful. In the early days of OA, shortages on each side created a vicious circle: the small quantity of OA literature provided little incentive to develop new tools optimized for making it more visible and useful, and the dearth of powerful tools provided little extra incentive to make new work OA. But today a critical mass of OA literature invites the development of useful tools, and a critical mass of useful tools gives authors and publishers another set of reasons to make their work OA.", "This is a two-step argument, that OA is primarily for lay readers and that lay readers don’t need it. Each step is false. The first step overlooks the unmet demand for access by professional researchers, as if all professionals who wanted access already had it, and the second overlooks the unmet demand for access by lay readers, as if lay readers had no use for access.\nOne reason to think the first step is put forward in bad faith is that it overlooks the very conspicuous fact that the OA movement is driven by researchers who are emphatic about wanting the benefits of OA for themselves. It also overlooks the evidence of wide and widespread access gaps even for professional researchers. (See section 2.1 on problems.)", "All the public statements in support of OA stress the importance of peer review. Most of the enthusiasm for OA is enthusiasm for OA to peer-reviewed literature. At the same time, we can acknowledge that many of the people working hard for this goal are simultaneously exploring new forms of scholarly communication that exist outside the peer-review system, such as preprint exchanges, blogs, wikis, databases, discussion forums, and social media.\nIn OA lingo, a “preprint” is any version of an article prior to peer review, such as a draft circulating among colleagues or the version submitted to a journal. A “postprint” is any version approved by peer review. The scope of green OA deliberately extends to both preprints and postprints, just as the function of gold OA deliberately includes peer review.", "One problem is running a controlled experiment, since we can’t publish the same book with and without an OA edition to compare the sales. (If we publish a book initially without an OA edition and later add an OA edition, the time lag itself could affect sales.) Another variable is that ebook readers are becoming more and more consumer friendly. If the “net boost to sales” phenomenon is real, and if it depends on the ergonomic discomforts of reading digital books, then better gadgets may make the phenomenon disappear. If the net-boost phenomenon didn’t depend on ergonomic hurdles to digital reading, or didn’t depend entirely on them, then it might survive any sort of technological advances. There’s a lot of experimenting still to do, and fortunately or unfortunately it must be done in a fast-changing environment.", "The problem with the second step is presumption. How does anyone know in advance the level of demand for peer-reviewed research among lay readers? When peer-reviewed literature is toll-access and expensive, then lack of access by lay readers and consumers doesn’t show lack of demand, any more than lack of access to Fort Knox shows lack of demand for gold. We have to remove access barriers before we can distinguish lack of access from lack of interest. The experiment has been done, more than once. When the U.S. National Library of Medicine converted to OA in 2004, for example, visitors to its web site increased more than a hundredfold.\nA common related argument is that lay readers surfing the internet are easily misled by unsupported claims, refuted theories, anecdotal evidence, and quack remedies. Even if true, however, it’s an argument for rather than against expanding online access to peer-reviewed research. If we’re really worried about online dreck, we should dilute it with high-quality research rather than leave the dreck unchallenged and uncorrected." ], [ "The OA movement focuses on journal articles because journals don’t pay authors for their articles. This frees article authors to consent to OA without losing money. By contrast, book authors either earn royalties or hope to earn royalties.\nBecause the line between royalty-free and royalty-producing literature is bright (and life is short), many OA activists focus exclusively on journal articles and leave books aside. I recommend a different tactic: treat journal articles as low-hanging fruit, but treat books as higher-hanging fruit rather than forbidden fruit. There are even reasons to think that OA for some kinds of books is easier to attain than OA for journal articles.", "OA is not limited to the sciences, where it is known best and moving fastest, but extends to the arts and humanities. It’s not limited to research created in developed countries, where it is most voluminous, but includes research from developing countries. (Nor, conversely, is it limited to research from developing countries, where the need is most pressing.) It’s not limited to publicly funded research, where the argument is almost universally accepted, but includes privately funded and unfunded research. It’s not limited to present and future publications, where most policies focus, but includes past publications. It’s not limited to born-digital work, where the technical barriers are lowest, but includes work digitized from print, microfiche, film, and other media. It’s not limited to text, but includes data, audio, video, multimedia, and executable code.\nThere are serious, practical, successful campaigns to provide OA to the many kinds of content useful to scholars, including:\n• peer-reviewed research articles", "A few years ago, those of us who focus on OA to journal literature were sure that journal articles were lower-hanging fruit than any kind of print books, including public-domain books. But we were wrong. There are still good reasons to make journal literature the strategic focus of the OA movement, and we’re still making good progress on that front. But the lesson of the fast-moving book-scanning projects is that misunderstanding, inertia, and permission are more serious problems than digitization. The permission problem is solved for public-domain books. Digitizing them by the millions is a titanic technical undertaking, but it turns out to be a smaller problem than getting millions of copyrighted articles into OA journals or OA repositories, even when they’re written by authors who can consent to OA without losing revenue. OA for new journal articles faces publisher resistance, print-era incentives, and misunderstandings in every category of stakeholders, including authors and publishers. As the late Jim Gray used to say, “May all your problems be technical.”\n5.4 Access to What?", "This is a two-step argument, that OA is primarily for lay readers and that lay readers don’t need it. Each step is false. The first step overlooks the unmet demand for access by professional researchers, as if all professionals who wanted access already had it, and the second overlooks the unmet demand for access by lay readers, as if lay readers had no use for access.\nOne reason to think the first step is put forward in bad faith is that it overlooks the very conspicuous fact that the OA movement is driven by researchers who are emphatic about wanting the benefits of OA for themselves. It also overlooks the evidence of wide and widespread access gaps even for professional researchers. (See section 2.1 on problems.)", "OA allows us to provide access to everyone who cares to have access, without patronizing guesswork about who really wants it, who really deserves it, and who would really benefit from it. Access for everyone with an internet connection helps authors, by enlarging their audience and impact, and helps readers who want access and who might have been excluded by central planners trying to decide in advance whom to enfranchise. The idea is to stop thinking of knowledge as a commodity to meter out to deserving customers, and to start thinking of it as a public good, especially when it is given away by its authors, funded with public money, or both.\nSome lobbyists for toll-access publishers argue, in good faith or bad, that the goal of OA is to bring access to lay readers. This sets up their counter-argument that lay readers don’t care to read cutting-edge research and wouldn’t understand it if they tried. Some publishers go a step further and argue that access to research would harm lay readers.", "The scope of OA should be determined by author consent, not genre. Imagine an author of a journal article who withholds consent to OA. The economic door is open but the author is not walking through it. This helps us see that relinquishing revenue is only relevant when it leads to consent, and consent suffices whether or not it’s based on relinquishing revenue. It follows that if authors of royalty-producing genres, like books, consent to OA, then we’ll have the same basis for OA to books that we have for OA to articles.\nEven if books are higher-hanging fruit, they’re not out of reach. Two arguments are increasingly successful in persuading book authors to consent to OA.", "Open Access: Scope\nAs we saw in chapter 1, any kind of content can in principle be OA. Any kind of content can be digitized, and any kind of digital content can be put online without price or permission barriers. In that sense, the potential scope of OA is universal. Hence, instead of saying that OA applies to some categories or genres and not to others, it’s better to say that some categories are easier and some harder.", "research. But the larger OA movement wants OA to knowledge and original research themselves, as well as the full discussion about what we know and what we don’t. It wants OA to the primary and secondary sources where knowledge is taking", "Many of us medical nonprofessionals—who may be professionals in another field—want access to medical research in order to read about our own conditions or the conditions of family members. But even if few fall into that category, most of us still want access for our doctors, nurses, and hospitals. We still want access for the nonprofit advocacy organizations working on our behalf, such as the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, the Cystinosis Research Network, or the Spina Bifida Association of America. And in turn, doctors, nurses, hospitals, and advocacy organizations want access for laboratory researchers. As I argued earlier (section 1.2), OA benefits researchers directly and benefits everyone else indirectly by benefiting researchers.", "The ratio of professional to lay readers of peer-reviewed research undoubtedly varies from field to field. But for the purpose of OA policy, it doesn’t matter what the ratio is in any field. What matters is that neither group has sufficient access today, when most research journals are toll-access. Professional researchers don’t have sufficient access through their institutional libraries because subscription prices are rising faster than library budgets, even at the wealthiest libraries in the world. Motivated lay readers don’t have sufficient access because few public libraries subscribe to any peer-reviewed research journals, and none to the full range.", "Royalties on most scholarly monographs range between zero and meager. If your royalties are better than that, congratulations. (I’ve earned book royalties; I’m grateful for them, and I wish all royalty-earning authors success.) The case for OA doesn’t ask authors to make a new sacrifice or leave money on the table. It merely asks them to weigh the risk to their royalties against the benefit of OA, primarily the benefit of a larger audience and greater impact. For many book authors, the benefit will outweigh the risk. The benefit is large and the realistic prospect of royalties is low.\nThere is growing evidence that for some kinds of books, full-text OA editions boost the net sales of the priced, printed editions. OA may increase royalties rather than decrease them.", "OA is itself a spectacular inducement for software developers to create useful tools to filter what we can find. As soon as the tools are finished, they apply to a free, useful, and fast-growing body of online literature. Conversely, useful tools optimized for OA literature create powerful incentives for authors and publishers to open up their work. As soon as their work is OA, a vast array of powerful tools make it more visible and useful. In the early days of OA, shortages on each side created a vicious circle: the small quantity of OA literature provided little incentive to develop new tools optimized for making it more visible and useful, and the dearth of powerful tools provided little extra incentive to make new work OA. But today a critical mass of OA literature invites the development of useful tools, and a critical mass of useful tools gives authors and publishers another set of reasons to make their work OA.", "The U.S. National Academies Press began publishing full-text OA editions of its monographs alongside priced, printed editions in March 1994, which is ancient history in internet time. Over the years Michael Jensen, its director of web communications and director of publishing technologies, has published a series of articles showing that the OA editions increased the sales of the toll-access editions.\nIn February 2007, the American Association of University Presses issued a Statement on Open Access in which it called for experiments with OA monographs and mixed OA/toll-access business models. By May 2011, the AAUP reported that 17 member presses, or 24 percent of its survey respondents, were already publishing full-text OA books.", "Preprint exchanges existed before the internet, but OA makes them faster, larger, more useful, and more widely read. Despite these advantages, however, preprint exchanges don’t represent the whole OA movement or even the whole green OA movement. On the contrary, most green OA and most OA overall focuses on peer-reviewed articles.", "Answer: human beings and machines.\n5.5.1 OA for Lay Readers\nSome have opposed OA on the ground that not everyone needs it, which is a little like opposing the development of a safe and effective new medicine on the ground that not every one needs it. It’s easy to agree that not everyone needs it. But in the case of OA, there’s no easy way to identify those who do and those who don’t. In addition, there’s no easy way, and no reason, to deliver it only to those who need it and deny it to everyone else.", "Even the youngest scholars today grew up in a world in which there were more print books in the average university library than gratis OA books online. But that ratio reversed around 2006, give or take. Today there are many more gratis OA books online than print books in the average academic library, and we’re steaming toward the next crossover point when there will be many more gratis OA books online than print books in the world’s largest libraries, academic or not.", "Throughout most of its history, newcomers to OA assumed that the whole idea was to bypass peer review. That assumption was false and harmful, and we’ve made good progress in correcting it. The purpose of OA is to remove access barriers, not quality filters. Today many peer-reviewed OA journals are recognized for their excellence, many excellent peer-reviewed toll-access journal publishers are experimenting with OA, and green OA for peer-reviewed articles is growing rapidly. Unfortunately many newcomers unaware of these developments still assume that the purpose of OA is to bypass peer review. Some of them deplore the prospect, some rejoice in it, and their passion spreads the misinformation even farther.", "All the public statements in support of OA stress the importance of peer review. Most of the enthusiasm for OA is enthusiasm for OA to peer-reviewed literature. At the same time, we can acknowledge that many of the people working hard for this goal are simultaneously exploring new forms of scholarly communication that exist outside the peer-review system, such as preprint exchanges, blogs, wikis, databases, discussion forums, and social media.\nIn OA lingo, a “preprint” is any version of an article prior to peer review, such as a draft circulating among colleagues or the version submitted to a journal. A “postprint” is any version approved by peer review. The scope of green OA deliberately extends to both preprints and postprints, just as the function of gold OA deliberately includes peer review.", "We could say that OA preprint initiatives focus on bypassing peer review. But it would be more accurate to say that they focus on OA for works destined for peer review but not yet peer reviewed. Preprint exchanges didn’t arise because they bypass peer review but because they bypass delay. They make new work known more quickly to people in the field, creating new and earlier opportunities for citation, discussion, verification, and collaboration. How quickly? They make new work public the minute that authors are ready to make it public.\nOA preprints offer obvious reader-side benefits to those tracking new developments. But this may be a case where the author-side benefits swamp the reader-side benefits. Preprint exchanges give authors the earliest possible time stamp to mark their priority over others working on the same problem. (Historical aside: It’s likely that in the seventeenth century, journals superseded books as the primary literature of science precisely because they were faster than books in giving authors an authoritative public time stamp.)", "• unrefereed preprints destined to be peer-reviewed research articles\n• theses and dissertations\n• research data\n• government data\n• source code\n• conference presentations (texts, slides, audio, video)\n• scholarly monographs\n• textbooks\n• novels, stories, plays, and poetry\n• newspapers\n• archival records and manuscripts\n• images (artworks, photographs, diagrams, maps)\n• teaching and learning materials (“open education resources” and “open courseware”)\n• digitized print works (some in the public domain, some still under copyright)" ], [ "OA allows us to provide access to everyone who cares to have access, without patronizing guesswork about who really wants it, who really deserves it, and who would really benefit from it. Access for everyone with an internet connection helps authors, by enlarging their audience and impact, and helps readers who want access and who might have been excluded by central planners trying to decide in advance whom to enfranchise. The idea is to stop thinking of knowledge as a commodity to meter out to deserving customers, and to start thinking of it as a public good, especially when it is given away by its authors, funded with public money, or both.\nSome lobbyists for toll-access publishers argue, in good faith or bad, that the goal of OA is to bring access to lay readers. This sets up their counter-argument that lay readers don’t care to read cutting-edge research and wouldn’t understand it if they tried. Some publishers go a step further and argue that access to research would harm lay readers.", "Answer: human beings and machines.\n5.5.1 OA for Lay Readers\nSome have opposed OA on the ground that not everyone needs it, which is a little like opposing the development of a safe and effective new medicine on the ground that not every one needs it. It’s easy to agree that not everyone needs it. But in the case of OA, there’s no easy way to identify those who do and those who don’t. In addition, there’s no easy way, and no reason, to deliver it only to those who need it and deny it to everyone else.", "Many of us medical nonprofessionals—who may be professionals in another field—want access to medical research in order to read about our own conditions or the conditions of family members. But even if few fall into that category, most of us still want access for our doctors, nurses, and hospitals. We still want access for the nonprofit advocacy organizations working on our behalf, such as the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, the Cystinosis Research Network, or the Spina Bifida Association of America. And in turn, doctors, nurses, hospitals, and advocacy organizations want access for laboratory researchers. As I argued earlier (section 1.2), OA benefits researchers directly and benefits everyone else indirectly by benefiting researchers.", "The OA movement focuses on journal articles because journals don’t pay authors for their articles. This frees article authors to consent to OA without losing money. By contrast, book authors either earn royalties or hope to earn royalties.\nBecause the line between royalty-free and royalty-producing literature is bright (and life is short), many OA activists focus exclusively on journal articles and leave books aside. I recommend a different tactic: treat journal articles as low-hanging fruit, but treat books as higher-hanging fruit rather than forbidden fruit. There are even reasons to think that OA for some kinds of books is easier to attain than OA for journal articles.", "OA is itself a spectacular inducement for software developers to create useful tools to filter what we can find. As soon as the tools are finished, they apply to a free, useful, and fast-growing body of online literature. Conversely, useful tools optimized for OA literature create powerful incentives for authors and publishers to open up their work. As soon as their work is OA, a vast array of powerful tools make it more visible and useful. In the early days of OA, shortages on each side created a vicious circle: the small quantity of OA literature provided little incentive to develop new tools optimized for making it more visible and useful, and the dearth of powerful tools provided little extra incentive to make new work OA. But today a critical mass of OA literature invites the development of useful tools, and a critical mass of useful tools gives authors and publishers another set of reasons to make their work OA.", "The question isn’t whether some people will read the OA edition without buying the toll-access edition. Some will. The question isn’t even whether more readers of the OA edition will buy the toll-access edition than not buy it. The question is whether more readers of the OA edition will buy the toll-access edition\nthan would have bought\nthe toll-access edition without the OA edition to alert them to its existence and help them evaluate its relevance and quality. If there are enough OA-inspired buyers, then it doesn’t matter that there are also plenty of OA-satisfied nonbuyers.\nBook authors and publishers who are still nervous could consent to delayed OA and release the OA edition only after six months or a year. During the time when the monograph is toll-access only, they could still provide OA excerpts and metadata to help readers and potential buyers find the book and start to assess it.", "Royalties on most scholarly monographs range between zero and meager. If your royalties are better than that, congratulations. (I’ve earned book royalties; I’m grateful for them, and I wish all royalty-earning authors success.) The case for OA doesn’t ask authors to make a new sacrifice or leave money on the table. It merely asks them to weigh the risk to their royalties against the benefit of OA, primarily the benefit of a larger audience and greater impact. For many book authors, the benefit will outweigh the risk. The benefit is large and the realistic prospect of royalties is low.\nThere is growing evidence that for some kinds of books, full-text OA editions boost the net sales of the priced, printed editions. OA may increase royalties rather than decrease them.", "This is a two-step argument, that OA is primarily for lay readers and that lay readers don’t need it. Each step is false. The first step overlooks the unmet demand for access by professional researchers, as if all professionals who wanted access already had it, and the second overlooks the unmet demand for access by lay readers, as if lay readers had no use for access.\nOne reason to think the first step is put forward in bad faith is that it overlooks the very conspicuous fact that the OA movement is driven by researchers who are emphatic about wanting the benefits of OA for themselves. It also overlooks the evidence of wide and widespread access gaps even for professional researchers. (See section 2.1 on problems.)", "A May 2006 Harris poll showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans wanted OA for publicly funded research. 83 percent wanted it for their doctors and 82 percent wanted it for everyone. 81 percent said it would help medical patients and their families cope with chronic illness and disability. 62 percent said it would speed up the discovery of new cures. For each poll question, a fairly large percentage of respondents checked “neither agree nor disagree” (between 13 and 30 percent), which meant that only tiny minorities disagreed with the OA propositions. Only 3 percent didn’t want OA for their doctors, 4 percent didn’t want it for themselves, and 5 percent didn’t think it would help patients or their families.", "The scope of OA should be determined by author consent, not genre. Imagine an author of a journal article who withholds consent to OA. The economic door is open but the author is not walking through it. This helps us see that relinquishing revenue is only relevant when it leads to consent, and consent suffices whether or not it’s based on relinquishing revenue. It follows that if authors of royalty-producing genres, like books, consent to OA, then we’ll have the same basis for OA to books that we have for OA to articles.\nEven if books are higher-hanging fruit, they’re not out of reach. Two arguments are increasingly successful in persuading book authors to consent to OA.", "To benefit from someone’s research, we need access to it, and for this purpose it doesn’t matter whether the research is in the sciences or humanities. We need access to medical or physical research before we can use it to tackle a cure for malaria or devise a more efficient solar panel. We need access to an earthquake prediction before we can use it to plan emergency responses.\n \n And we need access to literary and philosophical research in order to understand a difficult passage in Homer or the strength of a response to epistemological skepticism.\nFor this kind of utility, the relevant comparison is not between pure and applied research or between the sciences and humanities. The relevant comparison is between any kind of research when OA and the same kind of research when locked behind price and permission barriers. Whether a given line of research serves wellness or wisdom, energy or enlightenment, protein synthesis or public safety, OA helps it serve those purposes faster, better, and more universally.\n5.5 Access for Whom?", "Opening research literature for human users also opens it for software to crunch the literature for the benefit of human users. We can even hope that OA itself will soon be old hat, taken for granted by a new generation of tools and services that depend on it. As those tools and services come along, they will be the hot story and they will deserve to be. Technologists will note that they all depend on OA, and historians will note that OA itself was not easily won.", "The ratio of professional to lay readers of peer-reviewed research undoubtedly varies from field to field. But for the purpose of OA policy, it doesn’t matter what the ratio is in any field. What matters is that neither group has sufficient access today, when most research journals are toll-access. Professional researchers don’t have sufficient access through their institutional libraries because subscription prices are rising faster than library budgets, even at the wealthiest libraries in the world. Motivated lay readers don’t have sufficient access because few public libraries subscribe to any peer-reviewed research journals, and none to the full range.", "OA is not limited to the sciences, where it is known best and moving fastest, but extends to the arts and humanities. It’s not limited to research created in developed countries, where it is most voluminous, but includes research from developing countries. (Nor, conversely, is it limited to research from developing countries, where the need is most pressing.) It’s not limited to publicly funded research, where the argument is almost universally accepted, but includes privately funded and unfunded research. It’s not limited to present and future publications, where most policies focus, but includes past publications. It’s not limited to born-digital work, where the technical barriers are lowest, but includes work digitized from print, microfiche, film, and other media. It’s not limited to text, but includes data, audio, video, multimedia, and executable code.\nThere are serious, practical, successful campaigns to provide OA to the many kinds of content useful to scholars, including:\n• peer-reviewed research articles", "The first argument says that even if OA puts royalties at risk, the benefits might outweigh the risks. The second argument says that OA might not reduce royalties at all, and that conventional publication without an OA edition might be the greater risk. Both say, in effect, that authors should be empirical and realistic about this. Don’t presume that your royalties will be high when there’s evidence they will be low, and don’t presume that OA will kill sales when there’s evidence it could boost them.\nBoth arguments apply to authors, but the second applies to publishers as well. When authors have already transferred rights—and the OA decision—to a publisher, then the case rests on the second argument. A growing number of academic book publishers are either persuaded or so intrigued that they’re experimenting.\nMany book authors want a print edition, badly. But the second argument is not only compatible with print but depends on print. The model is to give away the OA edition and sell a print edition, usually via print-on-demand (POD).", "All digital literature, OA or toll access, is machine-readable and supports new and useful kinds of processing. But toll-access literature minimizes that opportunity by shrinking the set of inputs with access fees, password barriers, copyright restrictions, and software locks. By removing price and permission barriers, OA maximizes this opportunity and spawns an ecosystem of tools for searching, indexing, mining, summarizing, translating, querying, linking, recommending, alerting, mashing-up, and other kinds of processing, not to mention myriad forms of crunching and connecting that we can’t even imagine today. One bedrock purpose of OA is to give these research-enhancing, utility-amplifying tools the widest possible scope of operation.\nIn this sense, the ultimate promise of OA is not to provide free online texts for human reading, even if that is the highest-value end use. The ultimate promise of OA is to provide free online data for software acting as the antennae, prosthetic eyeballs, research assistants, and personal librarians of all serious researchers.", "We could say that OA preprint initiatives focus on bypassing peer review. But it would be more accurate to say that they focus on OA for works destined for peer review but not yet peer reviewed. Preprint exchanges didn’t arise because they bypass peer review but because they bypass delay. They make new work known more quickly to people in the field, creating new and earlier opportunities for citation, discussion, verification, and collaboration. How quickly? They make new work public the minute that authors are ready to make it public.\nOA preprints offer obvious reader-side benefits to those tracking new developments. But this may be a case where the author-side benefits swamp the reader-side benefits. Preprint exchanges give authors the earliest possible time stamp to mark their priority over others working on the same problem. (Historical aside: It’s likely that in the seventeenth century, journals superseded books as the primary literature of science precisely because they were faster than books in giving authors an authoritative public time stamp.)", "Throughout most of its history, newcomers to OA assumed that the whole idea was to bypass peer review. That assumption was false and harmful, and we’ve made good progress in correcting it. The purpose of OA is to remove access barriers, not quality filters. Today many peer-reviewed OA journals are recognized for their excellence, many excellent peer-reviewed toll-access journal publishers are experimenting with OA, and green OA for peer-reviewed articles is growing rapidly. Unfortunately many newcomers unaware of these developments still assume that the purpose of OA is to bypass peer review. Some of them deplore the prospect, some rejoice in it, and their passion spreads the misinformation even farther.", "research. But the larger OA movement wants OA to knowledge and original research themselves, as well as the full discussion about what we know and what we don’t. It wants OA to the primary and secondary sources where knowledge is taking", "Open Access: Scope\nAs we saw in chapter 1, any kind of content can in principle be OA. Any kind of content can be digitized, and any kind of digital content can be put online without price or permission barriers. In that sense, the potential scope of OA is universal. Hence, instead of saying that OA applies to some categories or genres and not to others, it’s better to say that some categories are easier and some harder." ], [ "We could say that OA preprint initiatives focus on bypassing peer review. But it would be more accurate to say that they focus on OA for works destined for peer review but not yet peer reviewed. Preprint exchanges didn’t arise because they bypass peer review but because they bypass delay. They make new work known more quickly to people in the field, creating new and earlier opportunities for citation, discussion, verification, and collaboration. How quickly? They make new work public the minute that authors are ready to make it public.\nOA preprints offer obvious reader-side benefits to those tracking new developments. But this may be a case where the author-side benefits swamp the reader-side benefits. Preprint exchanges give authors the earliest possible time stamp to mark their priority over others working on the same problem. (Historical aside: It’s likely that in the seventeenth century, journals superseded books as the primary literature of science precisely because they were faster than books in giving authors an authoritative public time stamp.)", "For some of these categories, such as data and source code, we need OA to facilitate the testing and replication of scientific experiments. For others, such as data, images, and digitized work from other media, we need OA in order to give readers the same chance to analyze the primary materials that the authors had. For others, such as articles, monographs, dissertations, and conference presentations, we need OA simply to share results and analysis with everyone who might benefit from them.\nA larger book could devote sections to each category. Here I focus on just a few.\n5.1 Preprints, Postprints, and Peer Review", "All the public statements in support of OA stress the importance of peer review. Most of the enthusiasm for OA is enthusiasm for OA to peer-reviewed literature. At the same time, we can acknowledge that many of the people working hard for this goal are simultaneously exploring new forms of scholarly communication that exist outside the peer-review system, such as preprint exchanges, blogs, wikis, databases, discussion forums, and social media.\nIn OA lingo, a “preprint” is any version of an article prior to peer review, such as a draft circulating among colleagues or the version submitted to a journal. A “postprint” is any version approved by peer review. The scope of green OA deliberately extends to both preprints and postprints, just as the function of gold OA deliberately includes peer review.", "Preprint exchanges existed before the internet, but OA makes them faster, larger, more useful, and more widely read. Despite these advantages, however, preprint exchanges don’t represent the whole OA movement or even the whole green OA movement. On the contrary, most green OA and most OA overall focuses on peer-reviewed articles.", "OA allows us to provide access to everyone who cares to have access, without patronizing guesswork about who really wants it, who really deserves it, and who would really benefit from it. Access for everyone with an internet connection helps authors, by enlarging their audience and impact, and helps readers who want access and who might have been excluded by central planners trying to decide in advance whom to enfranchise. The idea is to stop thinking of knowledge as a commodity to meter out to deserving customers, and to start thinking of it as a public good, especially when it is given away by its authors, funded with public money, or both.\nSome lobbyists for toll-access publishers argue, in good faith or bad, that the goal of OA is to bring access to lay readers. This sets up their counter-argument that lay readers don’t care to read cutting-edge research and wouldn’t understand it if they tried. Some publishers go a step further and argue that access to research would harm lay readers.", "The OA movement focuses on journal articles because journals don’t pay authors for their articles. This frees article authors to consent to OA without losing money. By contrast, book authors either earn royalties or hope to earn royalties.\nBecause the line between royalty-free and royalty-producing literature is bright (and life is short), many OA activists focus exclusively on journal articles and leave books aside. I recommend a different tactic: treat journal articles as low-hanging fruit, but treat books as higher-hanging fruit rather than forbidden fruit. There are even reasons to think that OA for some kinds of books is easier to attain than OA for journal articles.", "makes submissions OA, before or after some prepublication review, and invites community comments. Some open-review journals will use those comments to decide whether to accept the article for formal publication, and others will already have accepted the article and use the community comments to complement or carry forward the quality evaluation started by the journal. Open review requires OA, but OA does not require open review.\nPeer review does not depend on the price or medium of a journal. Nor does the value, rigor, or integrity of peer review. We know that peer review at OA journals can be as rigorous and honest as peer review at the best toll-access journals because it can use the same procedures, the same standards, and even the same people (editors and referees) as the best toll-access journals. We see this whenever toll-access journals convert to OA without changing their methods or personnel.\n5.2 Theses and Dissertations", "The question isn’t whether some people will read the OA edition without buying the toll-access edition. Some will. The question isn’t even whether more readers of the OA edition will buy the toll-access edition than not buy it. The question is whether more readers of the OA edition will buy the toll-access edition\nthan would have bought\nthe toll-access edition without the OA edition to alert them to its existence and help them evaluate its relevance and quality. If there are enough OA-inspired buyers, then it doesn’t matter that there are also plenty of OA-satisfied nonbuyers.\nBook authors and publishers who are still nervous could consent to delayed OA and release the OA edition only after six months or a year. During the time when the monograph is toll-access only, they could still provide OA excerpts and metadata to help readers and potential buyers find the book and start to assess it.", "OA is not limited to the sciences, where it is known best and moving fastest, but extends to the arts and humanities. It’s not limited to research created in developed countries, where it is most voluminous, but includes research from developing countries. (Nor, conversely, is it limited to research from developing countries, where the need is most pressing.) It’s not limited to publicly funded research, where the argument is almost universally accepted, but includes privately funded and unfunded research. It’s not limited to present and future publications, where most policies focus, but includes past publications. It’s not limited to born-digital work, where the technical barriers are lowest, but includes work digitized from print, microfiche, film, and other media. It’s not limited to text, but includes data, audio, video, multimedia, and executable code.\nThere are serious, practical, successful campaigns to provide OA to the many kinds of content useful to scholars, including:\n• peer-reviewed research articles", "The first argument says that even if OA puts royalties at risk, the benefits might outweigh the risks. The second argument says that OA might not reduce royalties at all, and that conventional publication without an OA edition might be the greater risk. Both say, in effect, that authors should be empirical and realistic about this. Don’t presume that your royalties will be high when there’s evidence they will be low, and don’t presume that OA will kill sales when there’s evidence it could boost them.\nBoth arguments apply to authors, but the second applies to publishers as well. When authors have already transferred rights—and the OA decision—to a publisher, then the case rests on the second argument. A growing number of academic book publishers are either persuaded or so intrigued that they’re experimenting.\nMany book authors want a print edition, badly. But the second argument is not only compatible with print but depends on print. The model is to give away the OA edition and sell a print edition, usually via print-on-demand (POD).", "Many of us medical nonprofessionals—who may be professionals in another field—want access to medical research in order to read about our own conditions or the conditions of family members. But even if few fall into that category, most of us still want access for our doctors, nurses, and hospitals. We still want access for the nonprofit advocacy organizations working on our behalf, such as the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, the Cystinosis Research Network, or the Spina Bifida Association of America. And in turn, doctors, nurses, hospitals, and advocacy organizations want access for laboratory researchers. As I argued earlier (section 1.2), OA benefits researchers directly and benefits everyone else indirectly by benefiting researchers.", "This is a two-step argument, that OA is primarily for lay readers and that lay readers don’t need it. Each step is false. The first step overlooks the unmet demand for access by professional researchers, as if all professionals who wanted access already had it, and the second overlooks the unmet demand for access by lay readers, as if lay readers had no use for access.\nOne reason to think the first step is put forward in bad faith is that it overlooks the very conspicuous fact that the OA movement is driven by researchers who are emphatic about wanting the benefits of OA for themselves. It also overlooks the evidence of wide and widespread access gaps even for professional researchers. (See section 2.1 on problems.)", "research. But the larger OA movement wants OA to knowledge and original research themselves, as well as the full discussion about what we know and what we don’t. It wants OA to the primary and secondary sources where knowledge is taking", "Royalties on most scholarly monographs range between zero and meager. If your royalties are better than that, congratulations. (I’ve earned book royalties; I’m grateful for them, and I wish all royalty-earning authors success.) The case for OA doesn’t ask authors to make a new sacrifice or leave money on the table. It merely asks them to weigh the risk to their royalties against the benefit of OA, primarily the benefit of a larger audience and greater impact. For many book authors, the benefit will outweigh the risk. The benefit is large and the realistic prospect of royalties is low.\nThere is growing evidence that for some kinds of books, full-text OA editions boost the net sales of the priced, printed editions. OA may increase royalties rather than decrease them.", "Throughout most of its history, newcomers to OA assumed that the whole idea was to bypass peer review. That assumption was false and harmful, and we’ve made good progress in correcting it. The purpose of OA is to remove access barriers, not quality filters. Today many peer-reviewed OA journals are recognized for their excellence, many excellent peer-reviewed toll-access journal publishers are experimenting with OA, and green OA for peer-reviewed articles is growing rapidly. Unfortunately many newcomers unaware of these developments still assume that the purpose of OA is to bypass peer review. Some of them deplore the prospect, some rejoice in it, and their passion spreads the misinformation even farther.", "The scope of OA should be determined by author consent, not genre. Imagine an author of a journal article who withholds consent to OA. The economic door is open but the author is not walking through it. This helps us see that relinquishing revenue is only relevant when it leads to consent, and consent suffices whether or not it’s based on relinquishing revenue. It follows that if authors of royalty-producing genres, like books, consent to OA, then we’ll have the same basis for OA to books that we have for OA to articles.\nEven if books are higher-hanging fruit, they’re not out of reach. Two arguments are increasingly successful in persuading book authors to consent to OA.", "Answer: human beings and machines.\n5.5.1 OA for Lay Readers\nSome have opposed OA on the ground that not everyone needs it, which is a little like opposing the development of a safe and effective new medicine on the ground that not every one needs it. It’s easy to agree that not everyone needs it. But in the case of OA, there’s no easy way to identify those who do and those who don’t. In addition, there’s no easy way, and no reason, to deliver it only to those who need it and deny it to everyone else.", "OA is itself a spectacular inducement for software developers to create useful tools to filter what we can find. As soon as the tools are finished, they apply to a free, useful, and fast-growing body of online literature. Conversely, useful tools optimized for OA literature create powerful incentives for authors and publishers to open up their work. As soon as their work is OA, a vast array of powerful tools make it more visible and useful. In the early days of OA, shortages on each side created a vicious circle: the small quantity of OA literature provided little incentive to develop new tools optimized for making it more visible and useful, and the dearth of powerful tools provided little extra incentive to make new work OA. But today a critical mass of OA literature invites the development of useful tools, and a critical mass of useful tools gives authors and publishers another set of reasons to make their work OA.", "The ratio of professional to lay readers of peer-reviewed research undoubtedly varies from field to field. But for the purpose of OA policy, it doesn’t matter what the ratio is in any field. What matters is that neither group has sufficient access today, when most research journals are toll-access. Professional researchers don’t have sufficient access through their institutional libraries because subscription prices are rising faster than library budgets, even at the wealthiest libraries in the world. Motivated lay readers don’t have sufficient access because few public libraries subscribe to any peer-reviewed research journals, and none to the full range.", "Why would anyone buy a print book when the full text is OA? The answer is that many people don’t want to read a whole book on a screen or gadget, and don’t want to print out a whole book on their printer. They use OA editions for searching and sampling. When they discover a book that piques their curiosity or meets their personal standards of relevance and quality, they’ll buy a copy. Or, many of them will buy a copy.\nEvidence has been growing for about a decade that this phenomenon works for some books, or some kinds of books, even if it doesn’t work for others. For example, it seems to work for books like novels and monographs, which readers want to read from beginning to end, or which they want to have on their shelves. It doesn’t seem to work for books like encyclopedias, from which readers usually want just an occasional snippet." ], [ "The OA movement focuses on journal articles because journals don’t pay authors for their articles. This frees article authors to consent to OA without losing money. By contrast, book authors either earn royalties or hope to earn royalties.\nBecause the line between royalty-free and royalty-producing literature is bright (and life is short), many OA activists focus exclusively on journal articles and leave books aside. I recommend a different tactic: treat journal articles as low-hanging fruit, but treat books as higher-hanging fruit rather than forbidden fruit. There are even reasons to think that OA for some kinds of books is easier to attain than OA for journal articles.", "The scope of OA should be determined by author consent, not genre. Imagine an author of a journal article who withholds consent to OA. The economic door is open but the author is not walking through it. This helps us see that relinquishing revenue is only relevant when it leads to consent, and consent suffices whether or not it’s based on relinquishing revenue. It follows that if authors of royalty-producing genres, like books, consent to OA, then we’ll have the same basis for OA to books that we have for OA to articles.\nEven if books are higher-hanging fruit, they’re not out of reach. Two arguments are increasingly successful in persuading book authors to consent to OA.", "Royalties on most scholarly monographs range between zero and meager. If your royalties are better than that, congratulations. (I’ve earned book royalties; I’m grateful for them, and I wish all royalty-earning authors success.) The case for OA doesn’t ask authors to make a new sacrifice or leave money on the table. It merely asks them to weigh the risk to their royalties against the benefit of OA, primarily the benefit of a larger audience and greater impact. For many book authors, the benefit will outweigh the risk. The benefit is large and the realistic prospect of royalties is low.\nThere is growing evidence that for some kinds of books, full-text OA editions boost the net sales of the priced, printed editions. OA may increase royalties rather than decrease them.", "The question isn’t whether some people will read the OA edition without buying the toll-access edition. Some will. The question isn’t even whether more readers of the OA edition will buy the toll-access edition than not buy it. The question is whether more readers of the OA edition will buy the toll-access edition\nthan would have bought\nthe toll-access edition without the OA edition to alert them to its existence and help them evaluate its relevance and quality. If there are enough OA-inspired buyers, then it doesn’t matter that there are also plenty of OA-satisfied nonbuyers.\nBook authors and publishers who are still nervous could consent to delayed OA and release the OA edition only after six months or a year. During the time when the monograph is toll-access only, they could still provide OA excerpts and metadata to help readers and potential buyers find the book and start to assess it.", "OA allows us to provide access to everyone who cares to have access, without patronizing guesswork about who really wants it, who really deserves it, and who would really benefit from it. Access for everyone with an internet connection helps authors, by enlarging their audience and impact, and helps readers who want access and who might have been excluded by central planners trying to decide in advance whom to enfranchise. The idea is to stop thinking of knowledge as a commodity to meter out to deserving customers, and to start thinking of it as a public good, especially when it is given away by its authors, funded with public money, or both.\nSome lobbyists for toll-access publishers argue, in good faith or bad, that the goal of OA is to bring access to lay readers. This sets up their counter-argument that lay readers don’t care to read cutting-edge research and wouldn’t understand it if they tried. Some publishers go a step further and argue that access to research would harm lay readers.", "The first argument says that even if OA puts royalties at risk, the benefits might outweigh the risks. The second argument says that OA might not reduce royalties at all, and that conventional publication without an OA edition might be the greater risk. Both say, in effect, that authors should be empirical and realistic about this. Don’t presume that your royalties will be high when there’s evidence they will be low, and don’t presume that OA will kill sales when there’s evidence it could boost them.\nBoth arguments apply to authors, but the second applies to publishers as well. When authors have already transferred rights—and the OA decision—to a publisher, then the case rests on the second argument. A growing number of academic book publishers are either persuaded or so intrigued that they’re experimenting.\nMany book authors want a print edition, badly. But the second argument is not only compatible with print but depends on print. The model is to give away the OA edition and sell a print edition, usually via print-on-demand (POD).", "Why would anyone buy a print book when the full text is OA? The answer is that many people don’t want to read a whole book on a screen or gadget, and don’t want to print out a whole book on their printer. They use OA editions for searching and sampling. When they discover a book that piques their curiosity or meets their personal standards of relevance and quality, they’ll buy a copy. Or, many of them will buy a copy.\nEvidence has been growing for about a decade that this phenomenon works for some books, or some kinds of books, even if it doesn’t work for others. For example, it seems to work for books like novels and monographs, which readers want to read from beginning to end, or which they want to have on their shelves. It doesn’t seem to work for books like encyclopedias, from which readers usually want just an occasional snippet.", "The U.S. National Academies Press began publishing full-text OA editions of its monographs alongside priced, printed editions in March 1994, which is ancient history in internet time. Over the years Michael Jensen, its director of web communications and director of publishing technologies, has published a series of articles showing that the OA editions increased the sales of the toll-access editions.\nIn February 2007, the American Association of University Presses issued a Statement on Open Access in which it called for experiments with OA monographs and mixed OA/toll-access business models. By May 2011, the AAUP reported that 17 member presses, or 24 percent of its survey respondents, were already publishing full-text OA books.", "For some of these categories, such as data and source code, we need OA to facilitate the testing and replication of scientific experiments. For others, such as data, images, and digitized work from other media, we need OA in order to give readers the same chance to analyze the primary materials that the authors had. For others, such as articles, monographs, dissertations, and conference presentations, we need OA simply to share results and analysis with everyone who might benefit from them.\nA larger book could devote sections to each category. Here I focus on just a few.\n5.1 Preprints, Postprints, and Peer Review", "Universities expecting OA for ETDs teach the next generation of scholars how easy OA is to provide, how beneficial it is, and how routine it can be. They help cultivate lifelong habits of self-archiving. And they elicit better work. By giving authors a foreseeable, real audience beyond the dissertation committee, an OA policy strengthens existing incentives to do rigorous, original work.\nIf a university requires theses and dissertations to be new and significant works of scholarship, then it ought to expect them to be made public, just as it expects new and significant scholarship by faculty to be made public. Sharing theses and dissertations that meet the school’s high standard reflects well on the institution and benefits other researchers in the field. The university mission to advance research by young scholars has two steps, not one. First, help students produce good work, and then help others find, use, and build on that good work.\n5.3 Books", "research. But the larger OA movement wants OA to knowledge and original research themselves, as well as the full discussion about what we know and what we don’t. It wants OA to the primary and secondary sources where knowledge is taking", "Open Access: Scope\nAs we saw in chapter 1, any kind of content can in principle be OA. Any kind of content can be digitized, and any kind of digital content can be put online without price or permission barriers. In that sense, the potential scope of OA is universal. Hence, instead of saying that OA applies to some categories or genres and not to others, it’s better to say that some categories are easier and some harder.", "OA is itself a spectacular inducement for software developers to create useful tools to filter what we can find. As soon as the tools are finished, they apply to a free, useful, and fast-growing body of online literature. Conversely, useful tools optimized for OA literature create powerful incentives for authors and publishers to open up their work. As soon as their work is OA, a vast array of powerful tools make it more visible and useful. In the early days of OA, shortages on each side created a vicious circle: the small quantity of OA literature provided little incentive to develop new tools optimized for making it more visible and useful, and the dearth of powerful tools provided little extra incentive to make new work OA. But today a critical mass of OA literature invites the development of useful tools, and a critical mass of useful tools gives authors and publishers another set of reasons to make their work OA.", "Many of us medical nonprofessionals—who may be professionals in another field—want access to medical research in order to read about our own conditions or the conditions of family members. But even if few fall into that category, most of us still want access for our doctors, nurses, and hospitals. We still want access for the nonprofit advocacy organizations working on our behalf, such as the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, the Cystinosis Research Network, or the Spina Bifida Association of America. And in turn, doctors, nurses, hospitals, and advocacy organizations want access for laboratory researchers. As I argued earlier (section 1.2), OA benefits researchers directly and benefits everyone else indirectly by benefiting researchers.", "OA is not limited to the sciences, where it is known best and moving fastest, but extends to the arts and humanities. It’s not limited to research created in developed countries, where it is most voluminous, but includes research from developing countries. (Nor, conversely, is it limited to research from developing countries, where the need is most pressing.) It’s not limited to publicly funded research, where the argument is almost universally accepted, but includes privately funded and unfunded research. It’s not limited to present and future publications, where most policies focus, but includes past publications. It’s not limited to born-digital work, where the technical barriers are lowest, but includes work digitized from print, microfiche, film, and other media. It’s not limited to text, but includes data, audio, video, multimedia, and executable code.\nThere are serious, practical, successful campaigns to provide OA to the many kinds of content useful to scholars, including:\n• peer-reviewed research articles", "A few years ago, those of us who focus on OA to journal literature were sure that journal articles were lower-hanging fruit than any kind of print books, including public-domain books. But we were wrong. There are still good reasons to make journal literature the strategic focus of the OA movement, and we’re still making good progress on that front. But the lesson of the fast-moving book-scanning projects is that misunderstanding, inertia, and permission are more serious problems than digitization. The permission problem is solved for public-domain books. Digitizing them by the millions is a titanic technical undertaking, but it turns out to be a smaller problem than getting millions of copyrighted articles into OA journals or OA repositories, even when they’re written by authors who can consent to OA without losing revenue. OA for new journal articles faces publisher resistance, print-era incentives, and misunderstandings in every category of stakeholders, including authors and publishers. As the late Jim Gray used to say, “May all your problems be technical.”\n5.4 Access to What?", "All digital literature, OA or toll access, is machine-readable and supports new and useful kinds of processing. But toll-access literature minimizes that opportunity by shrinking the set of inputs with access fees, password barriers, copyright restrictions, and software locks. By removing price and permission barriers, OA maximizes this opportunity and spawns an ecosystem of tools for searching, indexing, mining, summarizing, translating, querying, linking, recommending, alerting, mashing-up, and other kinds of processing, not to mention myriad forms of crunching and connecting that we can’t even imagine today. One bedrock purpose of OA is to give these research-enhancing, utility-amplifying tools the widest possible scope of operation.\nIn this sense, the ultimate promise of OA is not to provide free online texts for human reading, even if that is the highest-value end use. The ultimate promise of OA is to provide free online data for software acting as the antennae, prosthetic eyeballs, research assistants, and personal librarians of all serious researchers.", "Answer: human beings and machines.\n5.5.1 OA for Lay Readers\nSome have opposed OA on the ground that not everyone needs it, which is a little like opposing the development of a safe and effective new medicine on the ground that not every one needs it. It’s easy to agree that not everyone needs it. But in the case of OA, there’s no easy way to identify those who do and those who don’t. In addition, there’s no easy way, and no reason, to deliver it only to those who need it and deny it to everyone else.", "Even the youngest scholars today grew up in a world in which there were more print books in the average university library than gratis OA books online. But that ratio reversed around 2006, give or take. Today there are many more gratis OA books online than print books in the average academic library, and we’re steaming toward the next crossover point when there will be many more gratis OA books online than print books in the world’s largest libraries, academic or not.", "All the public statements in support of OA stress the importance of peer review. Most of the enthusiasm for OA is enthusiasm for OA to peer-reviewed literature. At the same time, we can acknowledge that many of the people working hard for this goal are simultaneously exploring new forms of scholarly communication that exist outside the peer-review system, such as preprint exchanges, blogs, wikis, databases, discussion forums, and social media.\nIn OA lingo, a “preprint” is any version of an article prior to peer review, such as a draft circulating among colleagues or the version submitted to a journal. A “postprint” is any version approved by peer review. The scope of green OA deliberately extends to both preprints and postprints, just as the function of gold OA deliberately includes peer review." ], [ "OA allows us to provide access to everyone who cares to have access, without patronizing guesswork about who really wants it, who really deserves it, and who would really benefit from it. Access for everyone with an internet connection helps authors, by enlarging their audience and impact, and helps readers who want access and who might have been excluded by central planners trying to decide in advance whom to enfranchise. The idea is to stop thinking of knowledge as a commodity to meter out to deserving customers, and to start thinking of it as a public good, especially when it is given away by its authors, funded with public money, or both.\nSome lobbyists for toll-access publishers argue, in good faith or bad, that the goal of OA is to bring access to lay readers. This sets up their counter-argument that lay readers don’t care to read cutting-edge research and wouldn’t understand it if they tried. Some publishers go a step further and argue that access to research would harm lay readers.", "Answer: human beings and machines.\n5.5.1 OA for Lay Readers\nSome have opposed OA on the ground that not everyone needs it, which is a little like opposing the development of a safe and effective new medicine on the ground that not every one needs it. It’s easy to agree that not everyone needs it. But in the case of OA, there’s no easy way to identify those who do and those who don’t. In addition, there’s no easy way, and no reason, to deliver it only to those who need it and deny it to everyone else.", "This is a two-step argument, that OA is primarily for lay readers and that lay readers don’t need it. Each step is false. The first step overlooks the unmet demand for access by professional researchers, as if all professionals who wanted access already had it, and the second overlooks the unmet demand for access by lay readers, as if lay readers had no use for access.\nOne reason to think the first step is put forward in bad faith is that it overlooks the very conspicuous fact that the OA movement is driven by researchers who are emphatic about wanting the benefits of OA for themselves. It also overlooks the evidence of wide and widespread access gaps even for professional researchers. (See section 2.1 on problems.)", "OA is not limited to the sciences, where it is known best and moving fastest, but extends to the arts and humanities. It’s not limited to research created in developed countries, where it is most voluminous, but includes research from developing countries. (Nor, conversely, is it limited to research from developing countries, where the need is most pressing.) It’s not limited to publicly funded research, where the argument is almost universally accepted, but includes privately funded and unfunded research. It’s not limited to present and future publications, where most policies focus, but includes past publications. It’s not limited to born-digital work, where the technical barriers are lowest, but includes work digitized from print, microfiche, film, and other media. It’s not limited to text, but includes data, audio, video, multimedia, and executable code.\nThere are serious, practical, successful campaigns to provide OA to the many kinds of content useful to scholars, including:\n• peer-reviewed research articles", "Many of us medical nonprofessionals—who may be professionals in another field—want access to medical research in order to read about our own conditions or the conditions of family members. But even if few fall into that category, most of us still want access for our doctors, nurses, and hospitals. We still want access for the nonprofit advocacy organizations working on our behalf, such as the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, the Cystinosis Research Network, or the Spina Bifida Association of America. And in turn, doctors, nurses, hospitals, and advocacy organizations want access for laboratory researchers. As I argued earlier (section 1.2), OA benefits researchers directly and benefits everyone else indirectly by benefiting researchers.", "The OA movement focuses on journal articles because journals don’t pay authors for their articles. This frees article authors to consent to OA without losing money. By contrast, book authors either earn royalties or hope to earn royalties.\nBecause the line between royalty-free and royalty-producing literature is bright (and life is short), many OA activists focus exclusively on journal articles and leave books aside. I recommend a different tactic: treat journal articles as low-hanging fruit, but treat books as higher-hanging fruit rather than forbidden fruit. There are even reasons to think that OA for some kinds of books is easier to attain than OA for journal articles.", "The first argument says that even if OA puts royalties at risk, the benefits might outweigh the risks. The second argument says that OA might not reduce royalties at all, and that conventional publication without an OA edition might be the greater risk. Both say, in effect, that authors should be empirical and realistic about this. Don’t presume that your royalties will be high when there’s evidence they will be low, and don’t presume that OA will kill sales when there’s evidence it could boost them.\nBoth arguments apply to authors, but the second applies to publishers as well. When authors have already transferred rights—and the OA decision—to a publisher, then the case rests on the second argument. A growing number of academic book publishers are either persuaded or so intrigued that they’re experimenting.\nMany book authors want a print edition, badly. But the second argument is not only compatible with print but depends on print. The model is to give away the OA edition and sell a print edition, usually via print-on-demand (POD).", "The scope of OA should be determined by author consent, not genre. Imagine an author of a journal article who withholds consent to OA. The economic door is open but the author is not walking through it. This helps us see that relinquishing revenue is only relevant when it leads to consent, and consent suffices whether or not it’s based on relinquishing revenue. It follows that if authors of royalty-producing genres, like books, consent to OA, then we’ll have the same basis for OA to books that we have for OA to articles.\nEven if books are higher-hanging fruit, they’re not out of reach. Two arguments are increasingly successful in persuading book authors to consent to OA.", "We don’t have a good name for this category larger than knowledge, but here I’ll just call it research. Among other things, research includes knowledge and knowledge claims or proposals, hypotheses and conjectures, arguments and analysis, evidence and data, algorithms and methods, evaluation and interpretation, debate and discussion, criticism and dissent, summary and review. OA to research should be OA to the whole shebang. Inquiry and research suffer when we have access to anything less.", "Throughout most of its history, newcomers to OA assumed that the whole idea was to bypass peer review. That assumption was false and harmful, and we’ve made good progress in correcting it. The purpose of OA is to remove access barriers, not quality filters. Today many peer-reviewed OA journals are recognized for their excellence, many excellent peer-reviewed toll-access journal publishers are experimenting with OA, and green OA for peer-reviewed articles is growing rapidly. Unfortunately many newcomers unaware of these developments still assume that the purpose of OA is to bypass peer review. Some of them deplore the prospect, some rejoice in it, and their passion spreads the misinformation even farther.", "To benefit from someone’s research, we need access to it, and for this purpose it doesn’t matter whether the research is in the sciences or humanities. We need access to medical or physical research before we can use it to tackle a cure for malaria or devise a more efficient solar panel. We need access to an earthquake prediction before we can use it to plan emergency responses.\n \n And we need access to literary and philosophical research in order to understand a difficult passage in Homer or the strength of a response to epistemological skepticism.\nFor this kind of utility, the relevant comparison is not between pure and applied research or between the sciences and humanities. The relevant comparison is between any kind of research when OA and the same kind of research when locked behind price and permission barriers. Whether a given line of research serves wellness or wisdom, energy or enlightenment, protein synthesis or public safety, OA helps it serve those purposes faster, better, and more universally.\n5.5 Access for Whom?", "The question isn’t whether some people will read the OA edition without buying the toll-access edition. Some will. The question isn’t even whether more readers of the OA edition will buy the toll-access edition than not buy it. The question is whether more readers of the OA edition will buy the toll-access edition\nthan would have bought\nthe toll-access edition without the OA edition to alert them to its existence and help them evaluate its relevance and quality. If there are enough OA-inspired buyers, then it doesn’t matter that there are also plenty of OA-satisfied nonbuyers.\nBook authors and publishers who are still nervous could consent to delayed OA and release the OA edition only after six months or a year. During the time when the monograph is toll-access only, they could still provide OA excerpts and metadata to help readers and potential buyers find the book and start to assess it.", "The argument against access for lay readers suffers from more than false assumptions about unmet demand. Either it concedes or doesn’t concede that OA is desirable for professional researchers. If it doesn’t, then it should argue first against the strongest opponent and try to make the case against OA for professionals. But if it does concede that OA for professionals is a good idea, then it wants to build a selection system for deciding who deserves access, and an authentication system for sorting the sheep from the goats. Part of the beauty of OA is that providing access to everyone is cheaper and easier than providing access to some and blocking access to others. We should only raise costs and pay for the apparatus of exclusion when there’s a very good reason to do so.\n5.5.2 OA for Machines", "OA is itself a spectacular inducement for software developers to create useful tools to filter what we can find. As soon as the tools are finished, they apply to a free, useful, and fast-growing body of online literature. Conversely, useful tools optimized for OA literature create powerful incentives for authors and publishers to open up their work. As soon as their work is OA, a vast array of powerful tools make it more visible and useful. In the early days of OA, shortages on each side created a vicious circle: the small quantity of OA literature provided little incentive to develop new tools optimized for making it more visible and useful, and the dearth of powerful tools provided little extra incentive to make new work OA. But today a critical mass of OA literature invites the development of useful tools, and a critical mass of useful tools gives authors and publishers another set of reasons to make their work OA.", "research. But the larger OA movement wants OA to knowledge and original research themselves, as well as the full discussion about what we know and what we don’t. It wants OA to the primary and secondary sources where knowledge is taking", "A May 2006 Harris poll showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans wanted OA for publicly funded research. 83 percent wanted it for their doctors and 82 percent wanted it for everyone. 81 percent said it would help medical patients and their families cope with chronic illness and disability. 62 percent said it would speed up the discovery of new cures. For each poll question, a fairly large percentage of respondents checked “neither agree nor disagree” (between 13 and 30 percent), which meant that only tiny minorities disagreed with the OA propositions. Only 3 percent didn’t want OA for their doctors, 4 percent didn’t want it for themselves, and 5 percent didn’t think it would help patients or their families.", "Royalties on most scholarly monographs range between zero and meager. If your royalties are better than that, congratulations. (I’ve earned book royalties; I’m grateful for them, and I wish all royalty-earning authors success.) The case for OA doesn’t ask authors to make a new sacrifice or leave money on the table. It merely asks them to weigh the risk to their royalties against the benefit of OA, primarily the benefit of a larger audience and greater impact. For many book authors, the benefit will outweigh the risk. The benefit is large and the realistic prospect of royalties is low.\nThere is growing evidence that for some kinds of books, full-text OA editions boost the net sales of the priced, printed editions. OA may increase royalties rather than decrease them.", "The ratio of professional to lay readers of peer-reviewed research undoubtedly varies from field to field. But for the purpose of OA policy, it doesn’t matter what the ratio is in any field. What matters is that neither group has sufficient access today, when most research journals are toll-access. Professional researchers don’t have sufficient access through their institutional libraries because subscription prices are rising faster than library budgets, even at the wealthiest libraries in the world. Motivated lay readers don’t have sufficient access because few public libraries subscribe to any peer-reviewed research journals, and none to the full range.", "All digital literature, OA or toll access, is machine-readable and supports new and useful kinds of processing. But toll-access literature minimizes that opportunity by shrinking the set of inputs with access fees, password barriers, copyright restrictions, and software locks. By removing price and permission barriers, OA maximizes this opportunity and spawns an ecosystem of tools for searching, indexing, mining, summarizing, translating, querying, linking, recommending, alerting, mashing-up, and other kinds of processing, not to mention myriad forms of crunching and connecting that we can’t even imagine today. One bedrock purpose of OA is to give these research-enhancing, utility-amplifying tools the widest possible scope of operation.\nIn this sense, the ultimate promise of OA is not to provide free online texts for human reading, even if that is the highest-value end use. The ultimate promise of OA is to provide free online data for software acting as the antennae, prosthetic eyeballs, research assistants, and personal librarians of all serious researchers.", "Open Access: Scope\nAs we saw in chapter 1, any kind of content can in principle be OA. Any kind of content can be digitized, and any kind of digital content can be put online without price or permission barriers. In that sense, the potential scope of OA is universal. Hence, instead of saying that OA applies to some categories or genres and not to others, it’s better to say that some categories are easier and some harder." ] ]
train	63109	[ "Why did Billy-boy take Grannie Annie to the grille?", "What brought Billy-boy to the realization of why Grannie Annie had brought him to the Satellite Theater?", "What was supposedly destroyed after the crash of the Vennox regime?", "How is one able to escape the Varsoom?", "By what were Grannie Annie and Billy-boy being watched?", "Why was Billy-boy stopped as he was walking into the main lounge?", "Who was performing at the Satellite Theater when Billy-boy and Grannie Annie arrived?", "How long did Billy-boy and Grannie Annie travel after heat ray attack?", "Why were there no guards present in the ship?", "Why was the Green Flame so sought after?" ]	[ [ "He felt he needed to be polite and take her to dinner. ", "No females were allowed in the club", "He wanted to go somewhere where no one would over hear their conversation", "He wanted to inspect the book she had been writing. " ], [ "The publication of her newest book", "The appearance of Charles Zanner", "The attraction of the performance of the Nine Geniuses ", "The spell placed by Doctor Universe" ], [ "The Varsoom district", "Green Flames", "Ezra Karn, an old prospector", "Gamma rays" ], [ "By laughing", "By using protection of a Venusian", "Use of heat rays", "By throwing Green Flames" ], [ "Ezra Karn, an old prospector", "Hunter-bird", "a drone", "By Venusians" ], [ "He was not welcome in the club, per recent events. ", "He was no longer a pilot and had to return to the gate. ", "The pilots and crew-men were requested to all meet before entering", "He was informed that he had a visitor" ], [ "The Swamp City community members", "Charles Zanner", "Doctor Universe", "Annabellla C. Flowers" ], [ "Until January, when Death In The Atom hit stands", "six weeks", "Until dark when the arrived at the camp fire", "six days" ], [ "They had all been eliminated by the Green Flames", "the metal envelope was the only guard", "The ship was well hidden to not need guards", "The ship was self-operating to defend" ], [ "It was capable of shooting rays that would destroy every existance. ", "It was used in warfare and needed to be protected", "It was too dangerous to be left unattended", "It was more powerful than any known drug" ] ]	[ 2, 4, 2, 1, 2, 4, 3, 4, 4, 4 ]	[ 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "\"Okay, okay,\" I grinned. \"Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no\n one there at this hour.\"\n\n\n In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey\n and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed\n the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:\n\n\n \"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't\n allowed in the\nSpacemen's\n? What happened to the book you were\n writing?\"\n\n\n \"Hold it, Billy-boy.\" Laughingly she threw up both hands. \"Sure, I knew\n this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what\n they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places.\"", "Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men\n rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to\n shout derisive epithets.\n\n\n Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm\n and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read\n THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place\n was all but deserted.\n\n\n In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?\"\n\n\n I nodded. \"As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men\n ought to clamp down.\"\n\n\n \"The I.P. men aren't strong enough.\"", "\"Beg pardon, thir,\" he said with his racial lisp, \"thereth thome one to\n thee you in the main lounge.\" His eyes rolled as he added, \"A lady!\"\n\n\n A woman here...! The\nSpacemen's\nwas a sanctuary, a rest club where\n in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another\n voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly\n enforced.\n\n\n I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main\n lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.\n\n\n Grannie Annie!", "There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning\n on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a\n voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,\n tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were\n planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in\n calm defiance.\n\n\n I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. \"Grannie Annie! I\n haven't seen you in two years.\"\n\n\n \"Hi, Billy-boy,\" she greeted calmly. \"Will you please tell this\n fish-face to shut up.\"\n\n\n The desk clerk went white. \"Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a\n friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely\n againth the ruleth....\"", "\"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean\n if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets\n after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in\n existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.\n\n\n \"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made\n corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after\n it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on\n Earth.\"\n\n\n \"I see,\" I said as she lapsed into silence. \"And now you've come to the\n conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is\n attempting to put your plot into action.\"\n\n\n Grannie nodded. \"Yes,\" she said. \"That's exactly what I think.\"", "\"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a\n single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in\n my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand\n times more potent and is transmiting it\nen masse\n.\"\n\n\n If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would\n have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of\n approaching danger.\n\n\n \"Let's get out of here,\" I said, getting up.\nZinnng-whack!\n\"All right!\"\n\n\n On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks\n appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the\n fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.\n\n\n A heat ray!", "\"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the\nSatellite\nTheater in ten\n minutes. Come on, you're going with me.\"\n\n\n Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to\n the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we\n drew up before the big doors of the\nSatellite\n.\n\n\n They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled\n colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the\n muck,\nzilcon\nwood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was\n packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity\n that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.\n\n\n In front was a big sign. It read:\nONE NIGHT ONLY\n\n DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS", "Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. \"Billy-boy, take three\n Venusians and head across the knoll,\" she ordered. \"Ezra and I will\n circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble.\"\n\n\n But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.\n Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.\n\n\n A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.\n Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.\n\n\n \"Up we go, Billy-boy.\" Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to\n climb slowly.\n\n\n The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.\n There was no sign of life.\n\n\n \"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here,\" Ezra Karn observed.", "Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the\n door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old\n woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and\n threw over the starting stud.\n\n\n An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.\nSix days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last\n outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as\n the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick\n water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray\n sky like puffs of cotton.", "Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He\n flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a\n chair, listening with avid interest.", "\"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the\n cafe in Swamp City. Exactly.\" Grannie Annie halted at the door of her\n tent and faced me with earnest eyes. \"Billy-boy, our every move is\n being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest.\"\nThe following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here\n resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding\n ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the\n surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of\n the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive\n multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.\n The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his\n hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in\n a matter of seconds.", "Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the\n object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.\n\n\n \"Green Flames, eh?\" he repeated slowly. \"Well yes, I suppose I could\n find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a\n cigarette. \"You know where it is, don't you?\"\n\n\n \"Ye-s,\" Karn nodded. \"But like I told you before, that ship lies in\n Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot.\"\n\n\n \"What are the Varsoom?\" I asked. \"A native tribe?\"\n\n\n Karn shook his head. \"They're a form of life that's never been seen by\n Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy.\"\n\n\n \"Dangerous?\"", "The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us\n again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of\n purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the\n air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the\n ground and shot aloft.\nGrannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.\nI stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.\n\n\n \"In heaven's name, what was it?\"\n\n\n \"Hunter-bird,\" Grannie said calmly. \"A form of avian life found here\n in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be\n trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain\n and follows with a relentless purpose.\"\n\n\n \"Then that would mean...?\"", "At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one\n of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude\n jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.\n\n\n He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and\n unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was\n dressed in\nvarpa\ncloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his\n head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.\n\n\n \"Glad to meet you,\" he said, shaking my hand. \"Any friend of Miss\n Flowers is a friend of mine.\" He ushered us down the catwalk into his\n hut.\n\n\n The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest\n type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from\n civilization entirely.", "She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be\n Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.\n But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's\n hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel\n in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.\n\n\n But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for\n more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers\n sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.\n\n\n One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime\n novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a\n novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag\n and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two\n expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.", "\"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary\n to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are\n nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting\n sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.\n These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every\n question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand\nplanetoles\n.\n\n\n \"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match\n her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of\n science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers.\"\n\n\n From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place\n on the dais.", "\"You'll never do it that way,\" Grannie said. \"Nothing short of an\n atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no\n guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the\n Green Flames are more accessible.\"\n\n\n In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in\n the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the\n vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.\n Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal\n plate.\n\n\n But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.\n\n\n Grannie stamped her foot. \"It's maddening,\" she said. \"Here we are at\n the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single\n move.\"", "Doctor Universe\nBy CARL JACOBI\nGrannie Annie, who wrote science fiction\n\n under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,\n\n had stumbled onto a murderous plot more\n\n hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.\n\n And the danger from the villain of the piece\n\n didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Fall 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI was killing an hour in the billiard room of the\nSpacemen's Club\nin Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the\n shoulder.", "NINE GENIUSES\n\n THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF\n\n THE SYSTEM\n\n\n As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a\n tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the\n front row.\n\n\n \"Sit here,\" she said. \"I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of\n the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go\n somewhere and talk.\" She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the\n stage steps and disappeared in the wings.\n\n\n \"That damned fossilized dynamo,\" I muttered. \"She'll be the death of me\n yet.\"", "She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.\n\n\n \"What happened to\nGuns for Ganymede\n?\" I asked. \"That was the title of\n your last, wasn't it?\"\nGrannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly\n rolled herself a cigarette.\n\n\n \"It wasn't\nGuns\n, it was\nPistols\n; and it wasn't\nGanymede\n, it was\nPluto\n.\"\n\n\n I grinned. \"All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe\n and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair.\"\n\n\n \"What else is there in science fiction?\" she demanded. \"You can't have\n your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster.\"\n\n\n Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her\n feet." ], [ "\"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the\nSatellite\nTheater in ten\n minutes. Come on, you're going with me.\"\n\n\n Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to\n the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we\n drew up before the big doors of the\nSatellite\n.\n\n\n They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled\n colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the\n muck,\nzilcon\nwood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was\n packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity\n that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.\n\n\n In front was a big sign. It read:\nONE NIGHT ONLY\n\n DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS", "Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men\n rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to\n shout derisive epithets.\n\n\n Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm\n and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read\n THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place\n was all but deserted.\n\n\n In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?\"\n\n\n I nodded. \"As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men\n ought to clamp down.\"\n\n\n \"The I.P. men aren't strong enough.\"", "\"Beg pardon, thir,\" he said with his racial lisp, \"thereth thome one to\n thee you in the main lounge.\" His eyes rolled as he added, \"A lady!\"\n\n\n A woman here...! The\nSpacemen's\nwas a sanctuary, a rest club where\n in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another\n voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly\n enforced.\n\n\n I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main\n lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.\n\n\n Grannie Annie!", "\"Okay, okay,\" I grinned. \"Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no\n one there at this hour.\"\n\n\n In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey\n and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed\n the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:\n\n\n \"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't\n allowed in the\nSpacemen's\n? What happened to the book you were\n writing?\"\n\n\n \"Hold it, Billy-boy.\" Laughingly she threw up both hands. \"Sure, I knew\n this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what\n they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places.\"", "\"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean\n if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets\n after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in\n existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.\n\n\n \"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made\n corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after\n it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on\n Earth.\"\n\n\n \"I see,\" I said as she lapsed into silence. \"And now you've come to the\n conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is\n attempting to put your plot into action.\"\n\n\n Grannie nodded. \"Yes,\" she said. \"That's exactly what I think.\"", "And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in\n the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian\n cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering\n bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,\n or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of\n the winner.\n\n\n It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had\n brought me here. And then I began to notice things.\n\n\n The audience in the\nSatellite\nseemed to have lost much of its\n original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the\n signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.\n\n\n Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a\n general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips\n were turned in a smile of satisfaction.", "Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. \"Billy-boy, take three\n Venusians and head across the knoll,\" she ordered. \"Ezra and I will\n circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble.\"\n\n\n But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.\n Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.\n\n\n A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.\n Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.\n\n\n \"Up we go, Billy-boy.\" Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to\n climb slowly.\n\n\n The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.\n There was no sign of life.\n\n\n \"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here,\" Ezra Karn observed.", "\"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a\n single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in\n my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand\n times more potent and is transmiting it\nen masse\n.\"\n\n\n If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would\n have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of\n approaching danger.\n\n\n \"Let's get out of here,\" I said, getting up.\nZinnng-whack!\n\"All right!\"\n\n\n On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks\n appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the\n fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.\n\n\n A heat ray!", "Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the\n door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old\n woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and\n threw over the starting stud.\n\n\n An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.\nSix days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last\n outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as\n the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick\n water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray\n sky like puffs of cotton.", "NINE GENIUSES\n\n THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF\n\n THE SYSTEM\n\n\n As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a\n tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the\n front row.\n\n\n \"Sit here,\" she said. \"I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of\n the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go\n somewhere and talk.\" She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the\n stage steps and disappeared in the wings.\n\n\n \"That damned fossilized dynamo,\" I muttered. \"She'll be the death of me\n yet.\"", "Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He\n flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a\n chair, listening with avid interest.", "\"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary\n to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are\n nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting\n sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.\n These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every\n question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand\nplanetoles\n.\n\n\n \"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match\n her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of\n science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers.\"\n\n\n From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place\n on the dais.", "\"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the\n cafe in Swamp City. Exactly.\" Grannie Annie halted at the door of her\n tent and faced me with earnest eyes. \"Billy-boy, our every move is\n being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest.\"\nThe following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here\n resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding\n ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the\n surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of\n the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive\n multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.\n The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his\n hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in\n a matter of seconds.", "There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning\n on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a\n voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,\n tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were\n planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in\n calm defiance.\n\n\n I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. \"Grannie Annie! I\n haven't seen you in two years.\"\n\n\n \"Hi, Billy-boy,\" she greeted calmly. \"Will you please tell this\n fish-face to shut up.\"\n\n\n The desk clerk went white. \"Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a\n friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely\n againth the ruleth....\"", "Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the\n object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.\n\n\n \"Green Flames, eh?\" he repeated slowly. \"Well yes, I suppose I could\n find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a\n cigarette. \"You know where it is, don't you?\"\n\n\n \"Ye-s,\" Karn nodded. \"But like I told you before, that ship lies in\n Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot.\"\n\n\n \"What are the Varsoom?\" I asked. \"A native tribe?\"\n\n\n Karn shook his head. \"They're a form of life that's never been seen by\n Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy.\"\n\n\n \"Dangerous?\"", "At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one\n of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude\n jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.\n\n\n He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and\n unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was\n dressed in\nvarpa\ncloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his\n head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.\n\n\n \"Glad to meet you,\" he said, shaking my hand. \"Any friend of Miss\n Flowers is a friend of mine.\" He ushered us down the catwalk into his\n hut.\n\n\n The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest\n type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from\n civilization entirely.", "She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be\n Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.\n But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's\n hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel\n in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.\n\n\n But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for\n more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers\n sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.\n\n\n One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime\n novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a\n novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag\n and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two\n expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.", "Doctor Universe\nBy CARL JACOBI\nGrannie Annie, who wrote science fiction\n\n under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,\n\n had stumbled onto a murderous plot more\n\n hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.\n\n And the danger from the villain of the piece\n\n didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Fall 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI was killing an hour in the billiard room of the\nSpacemen's Club\nin Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the\n shoulder.", "The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his\n dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to\n coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his\n voice echoed through the theater:\n\n\n \"\nWho was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?\n\"\n\n\n Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her\n hand. She said quietly:\n\n\n \"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed\n tracto-car.\"", "The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us\n again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of\n purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the\n air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the\n ground and shot aloft.\nGrannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.\nI stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.\n\n\n \"In heaven's name, what was it?\"\n\n\n \"Hunter-bird,\" Grannie said calmly. \"A form of avian life found here\n in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be\n trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain\n and follows with a relentless purpose.\"\n\n\n \"Then that would mean...?\"" ], [ "\"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing\n government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had\n ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was\n immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom\n followed.\"\n\n\n Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.\n\n\n \"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an\n old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his\n travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of\n an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green\n Flames!\"\n\n\n If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.\n I said, \"So what?\"", "We had traveled this far by\nganet\n, the tough little two headed pack\n animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have\n had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force\n belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to\n boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy\njagua\ncanoes.\n\n\n It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her\n confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.\n\n\n \"We're heading directly for Varsoom country,\" she said. \"If we find\n Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to\n the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You\n see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the\n ship.\"", "\"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean\n if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets\n after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in\n existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.\n\n\n \"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made\n corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after\n it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on\n Earth.\"\n\n\n \"I see,\" I said as she lapsed into silence. \"And now you've come to the\n conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is\n attempting to put your plot into action.\"\n\n\n Grannie nodded. \"Yes,\" she said. \"That's exactly what I think.\"", "After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of\n steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our\n advance on foot.\n\n\n It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he\n suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.\n There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened\narelium\nsteel,\n half buried in the swamp soil.\n\n\n \"What's that thing on top?\" Karn demanded, puzzled.\n\n\n A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern\n quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And\n suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white\n insulators.", "\"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a\n single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in\n my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand\n times more potent and is transmiting it\nen masse\n.\"\n\n\n If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would\n have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of\n approaching danger.\n\n\n \"Let's get out of here,\" I said, getting up.\nZinnng-whack!\n\"All right!\"\n\n\n On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks\n appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the\n fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.\n\n\n A heat ray!", "Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the\n left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was\n bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking\n clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we\n looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles\n swing slowly to and fro.\n\n\n Grannie nodded. \"Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in\n the lower hold are probably exposed to a\ntholpane\nplate and their\n radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process.\"\n\n\n Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the\n glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.", "\"When any form of life is exposed to these\nGamma\nrays from the Green\n Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude\n and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition\n develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or\n guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of\n intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,\n a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug.\"\n\n\n I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.\n\n\n \"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three\n planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The\n cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long\n enough to endanger all civilized life.", "Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men\n rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to\n shout derisive epithets.\n\n\n Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm\n and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read\n THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place\n was all but deserted.\n\n\n In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?\"\n\n\n I nodded. \"As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men\n ought to clamp down.\"\n\n\n \"The I.P. men aren't strong enough.\"", "\"You'll never do it that way,\" Grannie said. \"Nothing short of an\n atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no\n guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the\n Green Flames are more accessible.\"\n\n\n In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in\n the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the\n vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.\n Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal\n plate.\n\n\n But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.\n\n\n Grannie stamped her foot. \"It's maddening,\" she said. \"Here we are at\n the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single\n move.\"", "\"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside\n of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away\n because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped\n because he made 'em laugh.\"\n\n\n \"Laugh?\" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.\n\n\n \"That's right,\" Karn said. \"The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction\n that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them\n laugh, I don't know.\"\n\n\n Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.\n Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the\n Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.\n\n\n \"The Doctor Universe program,\" he said. \"I ain't missed one in months.\n You gotta wait 'til I hear it.\"", "\"Okay, okay,\" I grinned. \"Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no\n one there at this hour.\"\n\n\n In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey\n and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed\n the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:\n\n\n \"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't\n allowed in the\nSpacemen's\n? What happened to the book you were\n writing?\"\n\n\n \"Hold it, Billy-boy.\" Laughingly she threw up both hands. \"Sure, I knew\n this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what\n they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places.\"", "Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours\n tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned\n steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi\n just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer\n that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an\n isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had\n given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly\n coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that\n representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held\n to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.\n\n\n Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my\n tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe\n Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots\n which she had skilfully blended into a novel?", "She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh\n line about her usually smiling lips.\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\"\nFor a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,\n closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.\n\n\n \"My last book,\nDeath In The Atom\n, hit the stands last January,\"\n she began. \"When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'\n vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.\n Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so\n for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six\n weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra\n Karn....\"\n\n\n \"Who?\" I interrupted.", "At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one\n of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude\n jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.\n\n\n He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and\n unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was\n dressed in\nvarpa\ncloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his\n head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.\n\n\n \"Glad to meet you,\" he said, shaking my hand. \"Any friend of Miss\n Flowers is a friend of mine.\" He ushered us down the catwalk into his\n hut.\n\n\n The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest\n type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from\n civilization entirely.", "It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I\n heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once\n again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back\n and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi\n screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead\n my thoughts far away.\nHalf an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen\n were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We\n camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed\n about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and\n despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the\n futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me\n from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,\n that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.", "When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving\n crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident\n occurred.\n\n\n A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,\n dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an\n unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of\n the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to\n an earlier era.\n\n\n Someone shouted, \"Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!\" As one\n man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor\n was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,\n snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned\n into his mouth.", "\"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the\n cafe in Swamp City. Exactly.\" Grannie Annie halted at the door of her\n tent and faced me with earnest eyes. \"Billy-boy, our every move is\n being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest.\"\nThe following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here\n resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding\n ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the\n surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of\n the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive\n multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.\n The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his\n hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in\n a matter of seconds.", "And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in\n the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian\n cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering\n bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,\n or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of\n the winner.\n\n\n It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had\n brought me here. And then I began to notice things.\n\n\n The audience in the\nSatellite\nseemed to have lost much of its\n original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the\n signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.\n\n\n Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a\n general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips\n were turned in a smile of satisfaction.", "Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. \"Billy-boy, take three\n Venusians and head across the knoll,\" she ordered. \"Ezra and I will\n circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble.\"\n\n\n But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.\n Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.\n\n\n A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.\n Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.\n\n\n \"Up we go, Billy-boy.\" Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to\n climb slowly.\n\n\n The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.\n There was no sign of life.\n\n\n \"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here,\" Ezra Karn observed.", "Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the\n door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old\n woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and\n threw over the starting stud.\n\n\n An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.\nSix days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last\n outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as\n the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick\n water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray\n sky like puffs of cotton." ], [ "\"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside\n of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away\n because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped\n because he made 'em laugh.\"\n\n\n \"Laugh?\" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.\n\n\n \"That's right,\" Karn said. \"The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction\n that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them\n laugh, I don't know.\"\n\n\n Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.\n Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the\n Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.\n\n\n \"The Doctor Universe program,\" he said. \"I ain't missed one in months.\n You gotta wait 'til I hear it.\"", "We had traveled this far by\nganet\n, the tough little two headed pack\n animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have\n had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force\n belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to\n boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy\njagua\ncanoes.\n\n\n It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her\n confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.\n\n\n \"We're heading directly for Varsoom country,\" she said. \"If we find\n Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to\n the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You\n see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the\n ship.\"", "Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the\n object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.\n\n\n \"Green Flames, eh?\" he repeated slowly. \"Well yes, I suppose I could\n find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a\n cigarette. \"You know where it is, don't you?\"\n\n\n \"Ye-s,\" Karn nodded. \"But like I told you before, that ship lies in\n Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot.\"\n\n\n \"What are the Varsoom?\" I asked. \"A native tribe?\"\n\n\n Karn shook his head. \"They're a form of life that's never been seen by\n Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy.\"\n\n\n \"Dangerous?\"", "\"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing\n government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had\n ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was\n immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom\n followed.\"\n\n\n Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.\n\n\n \"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an\n old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his\n travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of\n an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green\n Flames!\"\n\n\n If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.\n I said, \"So what?\"", "\"You'll never do it that way,\" Grannie said. \"Nothing short of an\n atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no\n guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the\n Green Flames are more accessible.\"\n\n\n In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in\n the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the\n vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.\n Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal\n plate.\n\n\n But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.\n\n\n Grannie stamped her foot. \"It's maddening,\" she said. \"Here we are at\n the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single\n move.\"", "Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the\n left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was\n bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking\n clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we\n looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles\n swing slowly to and fro.\n\n\n Grannie nodded. \"Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in\n the lower hold are probably exposed to a\ntholpane\nplate and their\n radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process.\"\n\n\n Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the\n glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.", "At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one\n of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude\n jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.\n\n\n He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and\n unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was\n dressed in\nvarpa\ncloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his\n head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.\n\n\n \"Glad to meet you,\" he said, shaking my hand. \"Any friend of Miss\n Flowers is a friend of mine.\" He ushered us down the catwalk into his\n hut.\n\n\n The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest\n type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from\n civilization entirely.", "When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving\n crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident\n occurred.\n\n\n A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,\n dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an\n unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of\n the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to\n an earlier era.\n\n\n Someone shouted, \"Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!\" As one\n man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor\n was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,\n snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned\n into his mouth.", "Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the\n door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old\n woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and\n threw over the starting stud.\n\n\n An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.\nSix days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last\n outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as\n the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick\n water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray\n sky like puffs of cotton.", "\"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a\n single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in\n my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand\n times more potent and is transmiting it\nen masse\n.\"\n\n\n If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would\n have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of\n approaching danger.\n\n\n \"Let's get out of here,\" I said, getting up.\nZinnng-whack!\n\"All right!\"\n\n\n On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks\n appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the\n fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.\n\n\n A heat ray!", "Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours\n tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned\n steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi\n just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer\n that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an\n isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had\n given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly\n coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that\n representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held\n to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.\n\n\n Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my\n tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe\n Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots\n which she had skilfully blended into a novel?", "And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in\n the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian\n cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering\n bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,\n or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of\n the winner.\n\n\n It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had\n brought me here. And then I began to notice things.\n\n\n The audience in the\nSatellite\nseemed to have lost much of its\n original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the\n signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.\n\n\n Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a\n general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips\n were turned in a smile of satisfaction.", "\"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of\n Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about\n his adventures, and he told me plenty.\"\n\n\n The old woman paused. \"Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?\" she\n asked abruptly.\n\n\n I shook my head. \"Some new kind of ...\"\n\n\n \"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active\n rock once found on Mercury. The\nAlpha\nrays of this rock are similar\n to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles\n projected at high speed. But the character of the\nGamma\nrays has\n never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are\n electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of\nBeta\nor cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.", "It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I\n heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once\n again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back\n and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi\n screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead\n my thoughts far away.\nHalf an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen\n were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We\n camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed\n about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and\n despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the\n futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me\n from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,\n that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.", "Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men\n rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to\n shout derisive epithets.\n\n\n Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm\n and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read\n THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place\n was all but deserted.\n\n\n In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?\"\n\n\n I nodded. \"As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men\n ought to clamp down.\"\n\n\n \"The I.P. men aren't strong enough.\"", "Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. \"Billy-boy, take three\n Venusians and head across the knoll,\" she ordered. \"Ezra and I will\n circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble.\"\n\n\n But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.\n Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.\n\n\n A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.\n Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.\n\n\n \"Up we go, Billy-boy.\" Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to\n climb slowly.\n\n\n The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.\n There was no sign of life.\n\n\n \"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here,\" Ezra Karn observed.", "\"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the\n cafe in Swamp City. Exactly.\" Grannie Annie halted at the door of her\n tent and faced me with earnest eyes. \"Billy-boy, our every move is\n being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest.\"\nThe following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here\n resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding\n ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the\n surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of\n the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive\n multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.\n The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his\n hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in\n a matter of seconds.", "She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh\n line about her usually smiling lips.\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\"\nFor a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,\n closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.\n\n\n \"My last book,\nDeath In The Atom\n, hit the stands last January,\"\n she began. \"When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'\n vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.\n Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so\n for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six\n weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra\n Karn....\"\n\n\n \"Who?\" I interrupted.", "\"Okay, okay,\" I grinned. \"Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no\n one there at this hour.\"\n\n\n In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey\n and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed\n the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:\n\n\n \"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't\n allowed in the\nSpacemen's\n? What happened to the book you were\n writing?\"\n\n\n \"Hold it, Billy-boy.\" Laughingly she threw up both hands. \"Sure, I knew\n this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what\n they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places.\"", "The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the\n stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian\n sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The\n Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably\n uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new\n improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an\n Earthman operator.\nA tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and\n advanced to the footlights.\n\n\n \"People of Swamp City,\" he said, bowing, \"permit me to introduce\n myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts.\"\n\n\n There was a roar of applause from the\nSatellite\naudience. When it had\n subsided, the man continued:" ], [ "Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men\n rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to\n shout derisive epithets.\n\n\n Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm\n and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read\n THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place\n was all but deserted.\n\n\n In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?\"\n\n\n I nodded. \"As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men\n ought to clamp down.\"\n\n\n \"The I.P. men aren't strong enough.\"", "\"Beg pardon, thir,\" he said with his racial lisp, \"thereth thome one to\n thee you in the main lounge.\" His eyes rolled as he added, \"A lady!\"\n\n\n A woman here...! The\nSpacemen's\nwas a sanctuary, a rest club where\n in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another\n voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly\n enforced.\n\n\n I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main\n lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.\n\n\n Grannie Annie!", "There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning\n on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a\n voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,\n tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were\n planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in\n calm defiance.\n\n\n I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. \"Grannie Annie! I\n haven't seen you in two years.\"\n\n\n \"Hi, Billy-boy,\" she greeted calmly. \"Will you please tell this\n fish-face to shut up.\"\n\n\n The desk clerk went white. \"Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a\n friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely\n againth the ruleth....\"", "\"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the\n cafe in Swamp City. Exactly.\" Grannie Annie halted at the door of her\n tent and faced me with earnest eyes. \"Billy-boy, our every move is\n being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest.\"\nThe following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here\n resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding\n ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the\n surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of\n the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive\n multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.\n The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his\n hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in\n a matter of seconds.", "Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. \"Billy-boy, take three\n Venusians and head across the knoll,\" she ordered. \"Ezra and I will\n circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble.\"\n\n\n But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.\n Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.\n\n\n A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.\n Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.\n\n\n \"Up we go, Billy-boy.\" Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to\n climb slowly.\n\n\n The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.\n There was no sign of life.\n\n\n \"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here,\" Ezra Karn observed.", "\"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean\n if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets\n after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in\n existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.\n\n\n \"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made\n corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after\n it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on\n Earth.\"\n\n\n \"I see,\" I said as she lapsed into silence. \"And now you've come to the\n conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is\n attempting to put your plot into action.\"\n\n\n Grannie nodded. \"Yes,\" she said. \"That's exactly what I think.\"", "\"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a\n single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in\n my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand\n times more potent and is transmiting it\nen masse\n.\"\n\n\n If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would\n have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of\n approaching danger.\n\n\n \"Let's get out of here,\" I said, getting up.\nZinnng-whack!\n\"All right!\"\n\n\n On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks\n appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the\n fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.\n\n\n A heat ray!", "\"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the\nSatellite\nTheater in ten\n minutes. Come on, you're going with me.\"\n\n\n Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to\n the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we\n drew up before the big doors of the\nSatellite\n.\n\n\n They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled\n colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the\n muck,\nzilcon\nwood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was\n packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity\n that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.\n\n\n In front was a big sign. It read:\nONE NIGHT ONLY\n\n DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS", "Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He\n flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a\n chair, listening with avid interest.", "The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us\n again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of\n purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the\n air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the\n ground and shot aloft.\nGrannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.\nI stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.\n\n\n \"In heaven's name, what was it?\"\n\n\n \"Hunter-bird,\" Grannie said calmly. \"A form of avian life found here\n in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be\n trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain\n and follows with a relentless purpose.\"\n\n\n \"Then that would mean...?\"", "\"Okay, okay,\" I grinned. \"Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no\n one there at this hour.\"\n\n\n In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey\n and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed\n the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:\n\n\n \"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't\n allowed in the\nSpacemen's\n? What happened to the book you were\n writing?\"\n\n\n \"Hold it, Billy-boy.\" Laughingly she threw up both hands. \"Sure, I knew\n this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what\n they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places.\"", "Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the\n object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.\n\n\n \"Green Flames, eh?\" he repeated slowly. \"Well yes, I suppose I could\n find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a\n cigarette. \"You know where it is, don't you?\"\n\n\n \"Ye-s,\" Karn nodded. \"But like I told you before, that ship lies in\n Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot.\"\n\n\n \"What are the Varsoom?\" I asked. \"A native tribe?\"\n\n\n Karn shook his head. \"They're a form of life that's never been seen by\n Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy.\"\n\n\n \"Dangerous?\"", "At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one\n of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude\n jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.\n\n\n He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and\n unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was\n dressed in\nvarpa\ncloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his\n head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.\n\n\n \"Glad to meet you,\" he said, shaking my hand. \"Any friend of Miss\n Flowers is a friend of mine.\" He ushered us down the catwalk into his\n hut.\n\n\n The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest\n type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from\n civilization entirely.", "Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the\n door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old\n woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and\n threw over the starting stud.\n\n\n An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.\nSix days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last\n outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as\n the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick\n water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray\n sky like puffs of cotton.", "\"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary\n to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are\n nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting\n sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.\n These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every\n question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand\nplanetoles\n.\n\n\n \"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match\n her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of\n science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers.\"\n\n\n From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place\n on the dais.", "Doctor Universe\nBy CARL JACOBI\nGrannie Annie, who wrote science fiction\n\n under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,\n\n had stumbled onto a murderous plot more\n\n hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.\n\n And the danger from the villain of the piece\n\n didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Fall 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI was killing an hour in the billiard room of the\nSpacemen's Club\nin Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the\n shoulder.", "Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its\n place a ringing silence blanketed everything.\n\n\n And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in\n undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched\n it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.\n It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.\n There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp\n talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,\n missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.\n\n\n From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress\n appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:\n\n\n \"Stand still!\"", "And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in\n the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian\n cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering\n bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,\n or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of\n the winner.\n\n\n It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had\n brought me here. And then I began to notice things.\n\n\n The audience in the\nSatellite\nseemed to have lost much of its\n original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the\n signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.\n\n\n Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a\n general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips\n were turned in a smile of satisfaction.", "She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be\n Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.\n But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's\n hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel\n in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.\n\n\n But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for\n more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers\n sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.\n\n\n One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime\n novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a\n novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag\n and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two\n expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.", "Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the\n left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was\n bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking\n clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we\n looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles\n swing slowly to and fro.\n\n\n Grannie nodded. \"Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in\n the lower hold are probably exposed to a\ntholpane\nplate and their\n radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process.\"\n\n\n Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the\n glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact." ], [ "\"Beg pardon, thir,\" he said with his racial lisp, \"thereth thome one to\n thee you in the main lounge.\" His eyes rolled as he added, \"A lady!\"\n\n\n A woman here...! The\nSpacemen's\nwas a sanctuary, a rest club where\n in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another\n voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly\n enforced.\n\n\n I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main\n lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.\n\n\n Grannie Annie!", "There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning\n on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a\n voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,\n tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were\n planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in\n calm defiance.\n\n\n I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. \"Grannie Annie! I\n haven't seen you in two years.\"\n\n\n \"Hi, Billy-boy,\" she greeted calmly. \"Will you please tell this\n fish-face to shut up.\"\n\n\n The desk clerk went white. \"Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a\n friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely\n againth the ruleth....\"", "Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men\n rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to\n shout derisive epithets.\n\n\n Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm\n and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read\n THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place\n was all but deserted.\n\n\n In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?\"\n\n\n I nodded. \"As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men\n ought to clamp down.\"\n\n\n \"The I.P. men aren't strong enough.\"", "\"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the\nSatellite\nTheater in ten\n minutes. Come on, you're going with me.\"\n\n\n Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to\n the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we\n drew up before the big doors of the\nSatellite\n.\n\n\n They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled\n colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the\n muck,\nzilcon\nwood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was\n packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity\n that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.\n\n\n In front was a big sign. It read:\nONE NIGHT ONLY\n\n DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS", "\"Okay, okay,\" I grinned. \"Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no\n one there at this hour.\"\n\n\n In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey\n and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed\n the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:\n\n\n \"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't\n allowed in the\nSpacemen's\n? What happened to the book you were\n writing?\"\n\n\n \"Hold it, Billy-boy.\" Laughingly she threw up both hands. \"Sure, I knew\n this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what\n they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places.\"", "Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the\n left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was\n bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking\n clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we\n looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles\n swing slowly to and fro.\n\n\n Grannie nodded. \"Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in\n the lower hold are probably exposed to a\ntholpane\nplate and their\n radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process.\"\n\n\n Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the\n glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.", "\"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean\n if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets\n after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in\n existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.\n\n\n \"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made\n corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after\n it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on\n Earth.\"\n\n\n \"I see,\" I said as she lapsed into silence. \"And now you've come to the\n conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is\n attempting to put your plot into action.\"\n\n\n Grannie nodded. \"Yes,\" she said. \"That's exactly what I think.\"", "Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. \"Billy-boy, take three\n Venusians and head across the knoll,\" she ordered. \"Ezra and I will\n circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble.\"\n\n\n But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.\n Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.\n\n\n A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.\n Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.\n\n\n \"Up we go, Billy-boy.\" Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to\n climb slowly.\n\n\n The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.\n There was no sign of life.\n\n\n \"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here,\" Ezra Karn observed.", "And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in\n the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian\n cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering\n bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,\n or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of\n the winner.\n\n\n It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had\n brought me here. And then I began to notice things.\n\n\n The audience in the\nSatellite\nseemed to have lost much of its\n original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the\n signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.\n\n\n Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a\n general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips\n were turned in a smile of satisfaction.", "\"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the\n cafe in Swamp City. Exactly.\" Grannie Annie halted at the door of her\n tent and faced me with earnest eyes. \"Billy-boy, our every move is\n being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest.\"\nThe following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here\n resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding\n ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the\n surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of\n the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive\n multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.\n The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his\n hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in\n a matter of seconds.", "Doctor Universe\nBy CARL JACOBI\nGrannie Annie, who wrote science fiction\n\n under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,\n\n had stumbled onto a murderous plot more\n\n hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.\n\n And the danger from the villain of the piece\n\n didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Fall 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI was killing an hour in the billiard room of the\nSpacemen's Club\nin Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the\n shoulder.", "\"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a\n single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in\n my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand\n times more potent and is transmiting it\nen masse\n.\"\n\n\n If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would\n have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of\n approaching danger.\n\n\n \"Let's get out of here,\" I said, getting up.\nZinnng-whack!\n\"All right!\"\n\n\n On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks\n appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the\n fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.\n\n\n A heat ray!", "Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He\n flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a\n chair, listening with avid interest.", "When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving\n crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident\n occurred.\n\n\n A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,\n dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an\n unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of\n the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to\n an earlier era.\n\n\n Someone shouted, \"Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!\" As one\n man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor\n was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,\n snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned\n into his mouth.", "NINE GENIUSES\n\n THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF\n\n THE SYSTEM\n\n\n As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a\n tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the\n front row.\n\n\n \"Sit here,\" she said. \"I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of\n the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go\n somewhere and talk.\" She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the\n stage steps and disappeared in the wings.\n\n\n \"That damned fossilized dynamo,\" I muttered. \"She'll be the death of me\n yet.\"", "\"You'll never do it that way,\" Grannie said. \"Nothing short of an\n atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no\n guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the\n Green Flames are more accessible.\"\n\n\n In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in\n the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the\n vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.\n Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal\n plate.\n\n\n But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.\n\n\n Grannie stamped her foot. \"It's maddening,\" she said. \"Here we are at\n the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single\n move.\"", "It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I\n heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once\n again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back\n and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi\n screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead\n my thoughts far away.\nHalf an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen\n were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We\n camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed\n about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and\n despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the\n futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me\n from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,\n that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.", "The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the\n stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian\n sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The\n Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably\n uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new\n improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an\n Earthman operator.\nA tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and\n advanced to the footlights.\n\n\n \"People of Swamp City,\" he said, bowing, \"permit me to introduce\n myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts.\"\n\n\n There was a roar of applause from the\nSatellite\naudience. When it had\n subsided, the man continued:", "At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one\n of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude\n jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.\n\n\n He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and\n unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was\n dressed in\nvarpa\ncloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his\n head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.\n\n\n \"Glad to meet you,\" he said, shaking my hand. \"Any friend of Miss\n Flowers is a friend of mine.\" He ushered us down the catwalk into his\n hut.\n\n\n The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest\n type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from\n civilization entirely.", "Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its\n place a ringing silence blanketed everything.\n\n\n And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in\n undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched\n it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.\n It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.\n There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp\n talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,\n missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.\n\n\n From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress\n appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:\n\n\n \"Stand still!\"" ], [ "\"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the\nSatellite\nTheater in ten\n minutes. Come on, you're going with me.\"\n\n\n Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to\n the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we\n drew up before the big doors of the\nSatellite\n.\n\n\n They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled\n colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the\n muck,\nzilcon\nwood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was\n packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity\n that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.\n\n\n In front was a big sign. It read:\nONE NIGHT ONLY\n\n DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS", "\"Beg pardon, thir,\" he said with his racial lisp, \"thereth thome one to\n thee you in the main lounge.\" His eyes rolled as he added, \"A lady!\"\n\n\n A woman here...! The\nSpacemen's\nwas a sanctuary, a rest club where\n in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another\n voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly\n enforced.\n\n\n I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main\n lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.\n\n\n Grannie Annie!", "Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men\n rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to\n shout derisive epithets.\n\n\n Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm\n and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read\n THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place\n was all but deserted.\n\n\n In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?\"\n\n\n I nodded. \"As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men\n ought to clamp down.\"\n\n\n \"The I.P. men aren't strong enough.\"", "\"Okay, okay,\" I grinned. \"Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no\n one there at this hour.\"\n\n\n In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey\n and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed\n the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:\n\n\n \"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't\n allowed in the\nSpacemen's\n? What happened to the book you were\n writing?\"\n\n\n \"Hold it, Billy-boy.\" Laughingly she threw up both hands. \"Sure, I knew\n this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what\n they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places.\"", "\"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary\n to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are\n nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting\n sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.\n These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every\n question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand\nplanetoles\n.\n\n\n \"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match\n her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of\n science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers.\"\n\n\n From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place\n on the dais.", "NINE GENIUSES\n\n THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF\n\n THE SYSTEM\n\n\n As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a\n tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the\n front row.\n\n\n \"Sit here,\" she said. \"I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of\n the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go\n somewhere and talk.\" She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the\n stage steps and disappeared in the wings.\n\n\n \"That damned fossilized dynamo,\" I muttered. \"She'll be the death of me\n yet.\"", "There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning\n on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a\n voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,\n tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were\n planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in\n calm defiance.\n\n\n I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. \"Grannie Annie! I\n haven't seen you in two years.\"\n\n\n \"Hi, Billy-boy,\" she greeted calmly. \"Will you please tell this\n fish-face to shut up.\"\n\n\n The desk clerk went white. \"Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a\n friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely\n againth the ruleth....\"", "Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He\n flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a\n chair, listening with avid interest.", "The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the\n stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian\n sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The\n Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably\n uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new\n improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an\n Earthman operator.\nA tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and\n advanced to the footlights.\n\n\n \"People of Swamp City,\" he said, bowing, \"permit me to introduce\n myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts.\"\n\n\n There was a roar of applause from the\nSatellite\naudience. When it had\n subsided, the man continued:", "Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. \"Billy-boy, take three\n Venusians and head across the knoll,\" she ordered. \"Ezra and I will\n circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble.\"\n\n\n But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.\n Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.\n\n\n A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.\n Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.\n\n\n \"Up we go, Billy-boy.\" Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to\n climb slowly.\n\n\n The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.\n There was no sign of life.\n\n\n \"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here,\" Ezra Karn observed.", "Doctor Universe\nBy CARL JACOBI\nGrannie Annie, who wrote science fiction\n\n under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,\n\n had stumbled onto a murderous plot more\n\n hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.\n\n And the danger from the villain of the piece\n\n didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Fall 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI was killing an hour in the billiard room of the\nSpacemen's Club\nin Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the\n shoulder.", "And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in\n the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian\n cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering\n bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,\n or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of\n the winner.\n\n\n It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had\n brought me here. And then I began to notice things.\n\n\n The audience in the\nSatellite\nseemed to have lost much of its\n original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the\n signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.\n\n\n Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a\n general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips\n were turned in a smile of satisfaction.", "\"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean\n if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets\n after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in\n existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.\n\n\n \"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made\n corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after\n it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on\n Earth.\"\n\n\n \"I see,\" I said as she lapsed into silence. \"And now you've come to the\n conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is\n attempting to put your plot into action.\"\n\n\n Grannie nodded. \"Yes,\" she said. \"That's exactly what I think.\"", "At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one\n of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude\n jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.\n\n\n He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and\n unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was\n dressed in\nvarpa\ncloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his\n head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.\n\n\n \"Glad to meet you,\" he said, shaking my hand. \"Any friend of Miss\n Flowers is a friend of mine.\" He ushered us down the catwalk into his\n hut.\n\n\n The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest\n type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from\n civilization entirely.", "\"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a\n single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in\n my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand\n times more potent and is transmiting it\nen masse\n.\"\n\n\n If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would\n have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of\n approaching danger.\n\n\n \"Let's get out of here,\" I said, getting up.\nZinnng-whack!\n\"All right!\"\n\n\n On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks\n appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the\n fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.\n\n\n A heat ray!", "She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be\n Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.\n But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's\n hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel\n in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.\n\n\n But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for\n more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers\n sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.\n\n\n One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime\n novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a\n novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag\n and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two\n expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.", "The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his\n dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to\n coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his\n voice echoed through the theater:\n\n\n \"\nWho was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?\n\"\n\n\n Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her\n hand. She said quietly:\n\n\n \"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed\n tracto-car.\"", "\"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the\n cafe in Swamp City. Exactly.\" Grannie Annie halted at the door of her\n tent and faced me with earnest eyes. \"Billy-boy, our every move is\n being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest.\"\nThe following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here\n resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding\n ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the\n surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of\n the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive\n multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.\n The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his\n hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in\n a matter of seconds.", "Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the\n door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old\n woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and\n threw over the starting stud.\n\n\n An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.\nSix days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last\n outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as\n the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick\n water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray\n sky like puffs of cotton.", "She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.\n\n\n \"What happened to\nGuns for Ganymede\n?\" I asked. \"That was the title of\n your last, wasn't it?\"\nGrannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly\n rolled herself a cigarette.\n\n\n \"It wasn't\nGuns\n, it was\nPistols\n; and it wasn't\nGanymede\n, it was\nPluto\n.\"\n\n\n I grinned. \"All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe\n and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair.\"\n\n\n \"What else is there in science fiction?\" she demanded. \"You can't have\n your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster.\"\n\n\n Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her\n feet." ], [ "\"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a\n single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in\n my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand\n times more potent and is transmiting it\nen masse\n.\"\n\n\n If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would\n have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of\n approaching danger.\n\n\n \"Let's get out of here,\" I said, getting up.\nZinnng-whack!\n\"All right!\"\n\n\n On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks\n appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the\n fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.\n\n\n A heat ray!", "Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the\n door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old\n woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and\n threw over the starting stud.\n\n\n An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.\nSix days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last\n outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as\n the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick\n water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray\n sky like puffs of cotton.", "Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. \"Billy-boy, take three\n Venusians and head across the knoll,\" she ordered. \"Ezra and I will\n circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble.\"\n\n\n But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.\n Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.\n\n\n A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.\n Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.\n\n\n \"Up we go, Billy-boy.\" Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to\n climb slowly.\n\n\n The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.\n There was no sign of life.\n\n\n \"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here,\" Ezra Karn observed.", "Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men\n rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to\n shout derisive epithets.\n\n\n Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm\n and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read\n THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place\n was all but deserted.\n\n\n In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?\"\n\n\n I nodded. \"As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men\n ought to clamp down.\"\n\n\n \"The I.P. men aren't strong enough.\"", "\"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the\n cafe in Swamp City. Exactly.\" Grannie Annie halted at the door of her\n tent and faced me with earnest eyes. \"Billy-boy, our every move is\n being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest.\"\nThe following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here\n resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding\n ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the\n surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of\n the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive\n multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.\n The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his\n hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in\n a matter of seconds.", "\"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean\n if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets\n after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in\n existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.\n\n\n \"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made\n corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after\n it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on\n Earth.\"\n\n\n \"I see,\" I said as she lapsed into silence. \"And now you've come to the\n conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is\n attempting to put your plot into action.\"\n\n\n Grannie nodded. \"Yes,\" she said. \"That's exactly what I think.\"", "\"Beg pardon, thir,\" he said with his racial lisp, \"thereth thome one to\n thee you in the main lounge.\" His eyes rolled as he added, \"A lady!\"\n\n\n A woman here...! The\nSpacemen's\nwas a sanctuary, a rest club where\n in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another\n voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly\n enforced.\n\n\n I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main\n lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.\n\n\n Grannie Annie!", "Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the\n object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.\n\n\n \"Green Flames, eh?\" he repeated slowly. \"Well yes, I suppose I could\n find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a\n cigarette. \"You know where it is, don't you?\"\n\n\n \"Ye-s,\" Karn nodded. \"But like I told you before, that ship lies in\n Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot.\"\n\n\n \"What are the Varsoom?\" I asked. \"A native tribe?\"\n\n\n Karn shook his head. \"They're a form of life that's never been seen by\n Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy.\"\n\n\n \"Dangerous?\"", "\"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the\nSatellite\nTheater in ten\n minutes. Come on, you're going with me.\"\n\n\n Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to\n the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we\n drew up before the big doors of the\nSatellite\n.\n\n\n They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled\n colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the\n muck,\nzilcon\nwood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was\n packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity\n that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.\n\n\n In front was a big sign. It read:\nONE NIGHT ONLY\n\n DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS", "There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning\n on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a\n voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,\n tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were\n planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in\n calm defiance.\n\n\n I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. \"Grannie Annie! I\n haven't seen you in two years.\"\n\n\n \"Hi, Billy-boy,\" she greeted calmly. \"Will you please tell this\n fish-face to shut up.\"\n\n\n The desk clerk went white. \"Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a\n friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely\n againth the ruleth....\"", "The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us\n again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of\n purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the\n air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the\n ground and shot aloft.\nGrannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.\nI stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.\n\n\n \"In heaven's name, what was it?\"\n\n\n \"Hunter-bird,\" Grannie said calmly. \"A form of avian life found here\n in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be\n trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain\n and follows with a relentless purpose.\"\n\n\n \"Then that would mean...?\"", "\"Okay, okay,\" I grinned. \"Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no\n one there at this hour.\"\n\n\n In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey\n and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed\n the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:\n\n\n \"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't\n allowed in the\nSpacemen's\n? What happened to the book you were\n writing?\"\n\n\n \"Hold it, Billy-boy.\" Laughingly she threw up both hands. \"Sure, I knew\n this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what\n they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places.\"", "At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one\n of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude\n jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.\n\n\n He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and\n unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was\n dressed in\nvarpa\ncloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his\n head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.\n\n\n \"Glad to meet you,\" he said, shaking my hand. \"Any friend of Miss\n Flowers is a friend of mine.\" He ushered us down the catwalk into his\n hut.\n\n\n The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest\n type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from\n civilization entirely.", "We had traveled this far by\nganet\n, the tough little two headed pack\n animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have\n had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force\n belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to\n boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy\njagua\ncanoes.\n\n\n It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her\n confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.\n\n\n \"We're heading directly for Varsoom country,\" she said. \"If we find\n Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to\n the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You\n see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the\n ship.\"", "She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be\n Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.\n But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's\n hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel\n in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.\n\n\n But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for\n more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers\n sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.\n\n\n One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime\n novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a\n novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag\n and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two\n expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.", "\"You'll never do it that way,\" Grannie said. \"Nothing short of an\n atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no\n guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the\n Green Flames are more accessible.\"\n\n\n In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in\n the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the\n vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.\n Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal\n plate.\n\n\n But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.\n\n\n Grannie stamped her foot. \"It's maddening,\" she said. \"Here we are at\n the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single\n move.\"", "Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He\n flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a\n chair, listening with avid interest.", "Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its\n place a ringing silence blanketed everything.\n\n\n And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in\n undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched\n it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.\n It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.\n There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp\n talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,\n missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.\n\n\n From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress\n appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:\n\n\n \"Stand still!\"", "Doctor Universe\nBy CARL JACOBI\nGrannie Annie, who wrote science fiction\n\n under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,\n\n had stumbled onto a murderous plot more\n\n hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.\n\n And the danger from the villain of the piece\n\n didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Fall 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI was killing an hour in the billiard room of the\nSpacemen's Club\nin Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the\n shoulder.", "She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.\n\n\n \"What happened to\nGuns for Ganymede\n?\" I asked. \"That was the title of\n your last, wasn't it?\"\nGrannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly\n rolled herself a cigarette.\n\n\n \"It wasn't\nGuns\n, it was\nPistols\n; and it wasn't\nGanymede\n, it was\nPluto\n.\"\n\n\n I grinned. \"All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe\n and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair.\"\n\n\n \"What else is there in science fiction?\" she demanded. \"You can't have\n your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster.\"\n\n\n Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her\n feet." ], [ "\"You'll never do it that way,\" Grannie said. \"Nothing short of an\n atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no\n guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the\n Green Flames are more accessible.\"\n\n\n In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in\n the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the\n vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.\n Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal\n plate.\n\n\n But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.\n\n\n Grannie stamped her foot. \"It's maddening,\" she said. \"Here we are at\n the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single\n move.\"", "Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the\n left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was\n bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking\n clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we\n looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles\n swing slowly to and fro.\n\n\n Grannie nodded. \"Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in\n the lower hold are probably exposed to a\ntholpane\nplate and their\n radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process.\"\n\n\n Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the\n glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.", "Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. \"Billy-boy, take three\n Venusians and head across the knoll,\" she ordered. \"Ezra and I will\n circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble.\"\n\n\n But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.\n Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.\n\n\n A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.\n Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.\n\n\n \"Up we go, Billy-boy.\" Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to\n climb slowly.\n\n\n The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.\n There was no sign of life.\n\n\n \"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here,\" Ezra Karn observed.", "We had traveled this far by\nganet\n, the tough little two headed pack\n animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have\n had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force\n belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to\n boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy\njagua\ncanoes.\n\n\n It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her\n confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.\n\n\n \"We're heading directly for Varsoom country,\" she said. \"If we find\n Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to\n the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You\n see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the\n ship.\"", "After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of\n steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our\n advance on foot.\n\n\n It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he\n suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.\n There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened\narelium\nsteel,\n half buried in the swamp soil.\n\n\n \"What's that thing on top?\" Karn demanded, puzzled.\n\n\n A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern\n quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And\n suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white\n insulators.", "Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men\n rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to\n shout derisive epithets.\n\n\n Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm\n and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read\n THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place\n was all but deserted.\n\n\n In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?\"\n\n\n I nodded. \"As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men\n ought to clamp down.\"\n\n\n \"The I.P. men aren't strong enough.\"", "\"Beg pardon, thir,\" he said with his racial lisp, \"thereth thome one to\n thee you in the main lounge.\" His eyes rolled as he added, \"A lady!\"\n\n\n A woman here...! The\nSpacemen's\nwas a sanctuary, a rest club where\n in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another\n voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly\n enforced.\n\n\n I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main\n lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.\n\n\n Grannie Annie!", "\"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside\n of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away\n because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped\n because he made 'em laugh.\"\n\n\n \"Laugh?\" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.\n\n\n \"That's right,\" Karn said. \"The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction\n that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them\n laugh, I don't know.\"\n\n\n Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.\n Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the\n Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.\n\n\n \"The Doctor Universe program,\" he said. \"I ain't missed one in months.\n You gotta wait 'til I hear it.\"", "It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I\n heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once\n again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back\n and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi\n screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead\n my thoughts far away.\nHalf an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen\n were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We\n camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed\n about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and\n despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the\n futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me\n from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,\n that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.", "\"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a\n single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in\n my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand\n times more potent and is transmiting it\nen masse\n.\"\n\n\n If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would\n have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of\n approaching danger.\n\n\n \"Let's get out of here,\" I said, getting up.\nZinnng-whack!\n\"All right!\"\n\n\n On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks\n appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the\n fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.\n\n\n A heat ray!", "Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the\n object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.\n\n\n \"Green Flames, eh?\" he repeated slowly. \"Well yes, I suppose I could\n find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a\n cigarette. \"You know where it is, don't you?\"\n\n\n \"Ye-s,\" Karn nodded. \"But like I told you before, that ship lies in\n Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot.\"\n\n\n \"What are the Varsoom?\" I asked. \"A native tribe?\"\n\n\n Karn shook his head. \"They're a form of life that's never been seen by\n Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy.\"\n\n\n \"Dangerous?\"", "And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in\n the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian\n cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering\n bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,\n or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of\n the winner.\n\n\n It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had\n brought me here. And then I began to notice things.\n\n\n The audience in the\nSatellite\nseemed to have lost much of its\n original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the\n signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.\n\n\n Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a\n general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips\n were turned in a smile of satisfaction.", "\"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the\nSatellite\nTheater in ten\n minutes. Come on, you're going with me.\"\n\n\n Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to\n the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we\n drew up before the big doors of the\nSatellite\n.\n\n\n They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled\n colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the\n muck,\nzilcon\nwood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was\n packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity\n that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.\n\n\n In front was a big sign. It read:\nONE NIGHT ONLY\n\n DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS", "At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one\n of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude\n jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.\n\n\n He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and\n unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was\n dressed in\nvarpa\ncloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his\n head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.\n\n\n \"Glad to meet you,\" he said, shaking my hand. \"Any friend of Miss\n Flowers is a friend of mine.\" He ushered us down the catwalk into his\n hut.\n\n\n The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest\n type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from\n civilization entirely.", "Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours\n tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned\n steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi\n just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer\n that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an\n isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had\n given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly\n coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that\n representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held\n to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.\n\n\n Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my\n tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe\n Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots\n which she had skilfully blended into a novel?", "\"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing\n government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had\n ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was\n immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom\n followed.\"\n\n\n Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.\n\n\n \"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an\n old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his\n travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of\n an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green\n Flames!\"\n\n\n If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.\n I said, \"So what?\"", "\"Okay, okay,\" I grinned. \"Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no\n one there at this hour.\"\n\n\n In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey\n and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed\n the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:\n\n\n \"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't\n allowed in the\nSpacemen's\n? What happened to the book you were\n writing?\"\n\n\n \"Hold it, Billy-boy.\" Laughingly she threw up both hands. \"Sure, I knew\n this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what\n they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places.\"", "\"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean\n if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets\n after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in\n existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.\n\n\n \"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made\n corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after\n it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on\n Earth.\"\n\n\n \"I see,\" I said as she lapsed into silence. \"And now you've come to the\n conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is\n attempting to put your plot into action.\"\n\n\n Grannie nodded. \"Yes,\" she said. \"That's exactly what I think.\"", "\"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary\n to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are\n nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting\n sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.\n These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every\n question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand\nplanetoles\n.\n\n\n \"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match\n her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of\n science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers.\"\n\n\n From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place\n on the dais.", "When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving\n crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident\n occurred.\n\n\n A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,\n dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an\n unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of\n the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to\n an earlier era.\n\n\n Someone shouted, \"Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!\" As one\n man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor\n was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,\n snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned\n into his mouth." ], [ "\"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a\n single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in\n my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand\n times more potent and is transmiting it\nen masse\n.\"\n\n\n If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would\n have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of\n approaching danger.\n\n\n \"Let's get out of here,\" I said, getting up.\nZinnng-whack!\n\"All right!\"\n\n\n On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks\n appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the\n fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.\n\n\n A heat ray!", "\"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean\n if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets\n after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in\n existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.\n\n\n \"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made\n corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after\n it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on\n Earth.\"\n\n\n \"I see,\" I said as she lapsed into silence. \"And now you've come to the\n conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is\n attempting to put your plot into action.\"\n\n\n Grannie nodded. \"Yes,\" she said. \"That's exactly what I think.\"", "\"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing\n government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had\n ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was\n immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom\n followed.\"\n\n\n Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.\n\n\n \"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an\n old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his\n travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of\n an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green\n Flames!\"\n\n\n If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.\n I said, \"So what?\"", "\"When any form of life is exposed to these\nGamma\nrays from the Green\n Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude\n and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition\n develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or\n guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of\n intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,\n a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug.\"\n\n\n I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.\n\n\n \"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three\n planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The\n cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long\n enough to endanger all civilized life.", "\"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of\n Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about\n his adventures, and he told me plenty.\"\n\n\n The old woman paused. \"Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?\" she\n asked abruptly.\n\n\n I shook my head. \"Some new kind of ...\"\n\n\n \"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active\n rock once found on Mercury. The\nAlpha\nrays of this rock are similar\n to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles\n projected at high speed. But the character of the\nGamma\nrays has\n never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are\n electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of\nBeta\nor cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.", "\"You'll never do it that way,\" Grannie said. \"Nothing short of an\n atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no\n guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the\n Green Flames are more accessible.\"\n\n\n In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in\n the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the\n vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.\n Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal\n plate.\n\n\n But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.\n\n\n Grannie stamped her foot. \"It's maddening,\" she said. \"Here we are at\n the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single\n move.\"", "We had traveled this far by\nganet\n, the tough little two headed pack\n animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have\n had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force\n belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to\n boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy\njagua\ncanoes.\n\n\n It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her\n confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.\n\n\n \"We're heading directly for Varsoom country,\" she said. \"If we find\n Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to\n the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You\n see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the\n ship.\"", "Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the\n left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was\n bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking\n clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we\n looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles\n swing slowly to and fro.\n\n\n Grannie nodded. \"Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in\n the lower hold are probably exposed to a\ntholpane\nplate and their\n radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process.\"\n\n\n Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the\n glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.", "Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the\n object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.\n\n\n \"Green Flames, eh?\" he repeated slowly. \"Well yes, I suppose I could\n find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a\n cigarette. \"You know where it is, don't you?\"\n\n\n \"Ye-s,\" Karn nodded. \"But like I told you before, that ship lies in\n Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot.\"\n\n\n \"What are the Varsoom?\" I asked. \"A native tribe?\"\n\n\n Karn shook his head. \"They're a form of life that's never been seen by\n Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy.\"\n\n\n \"Dangerous?\"", "And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in\n the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian\n cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering\n bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,\n or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of\n the winner.\n\n\n It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had\n brought me here. And then I began to notice things.\n\n\n The audience in the\nSatellite\nseemed to have lost much of its\n original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the\n signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.\n\n\n Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a\n general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips\n were turned in a smile of satisfaction.", "The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us\n again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of\n purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the\n air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the\n ground and shot aloft.\nGrannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.\nI stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.\n\n\n \"In heaven's name, what was it?\"\n\n\n \"Hunter-bird,\" Grannie said calmly. \"A form of avian life found here\n in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be\n trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain\n and follows with a relentless purpose.\"\n\n\n \"Then that would mean...?\"", "Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men\n rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to\n shout derisive epithets.\n\n\n Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm\n and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read\n THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place\n was all but deserted.\n\n\n In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?\"\n\n\n I nodded. \"As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men\n ought to clamp down.\"\n\n\n \"The I.P. men aren't strong enough.\"", "She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.\n\n\n \"What happened to\nGuns for Ganymede\n?\" I asked. \"That was the title of\n your last, wasn't it?\"\nGrannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly\n rolled herself a cigarette.\n\n\n \"It wasn't\nGuns\n, it was\nPistols\n; and it wasn't\nGanymede\n, it was\nPluto\n.\"\n\n\n I grinned. \"All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe\n and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair.\"\n\n\n \"What else is there in science fiction?\" she demanded. \"You can't have\n your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster.\"\n\n\n Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her\n feet.", "There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning\n on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a\n voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,\n tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were\n planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in\n calm defiance.\n\n\n I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. \"Grannie Annie! I\n haven't seen you in two years.\"\n\n\n \"Hi, Billy-boy,\" she greeted calmly. \"Will you please tell this\n fish-face to shut up.\"\n\n\n The desk clerk went white. \"Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a\n friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely\n againth the ruleth....\"", "Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its\n place a ringing silence blanketed everything.\n\n\n And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in\n undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched\n it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.\n It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.\n There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp\n talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,\n missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.\n\n\n From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress\n appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:\n\n\n \"Stand still!\"", "\"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the\n cafe in Swamp City. Exactly.\" Grannie Annie halted at the door of her\n tent and faced me with earnest eyes. \"Billy-boy, our every move is\n being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest.\"\nThe following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here\n resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding\n ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the\n surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of\n the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive\n multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.\n The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his\n hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in\n a matter of seconds.", "\"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary\n to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are\n nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting\n sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.\n These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every\n question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand\nplanetoles\n.\n\n\n \"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match\n her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of\n science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers.\"\n\n\n From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place\n on the dais.", "Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He\n flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a\n chair, listening with avid interest.", "After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of\n steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our\n advance on foot.\n\n\n It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he\n suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.\n There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened\narelium\nsteel,\n half buried in the swamp soil.\n\n\n \"What's that thing on top?\" Karn demanded, puzzled.\n\n\n A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern\n quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And\n suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white\n insulators.", "\"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside\n of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away\n because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped\n because he made 'em laugh.\"\n\n\n \"Laugh?\" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.\n\n\n \"That's right,\" Karn said. \"The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction\n that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them\n laugh, I don't know.\"\n\n\n Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.\n Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the\n Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.\n\n\n \"The Doctor Universe program,\" he said. \"I ain't missed one in months.\n You gotta wait 'til I hear it.\"" ] ]
train	52326	[ "What planet are the mysterious signals coming from? \n\n", "What did Myles Cabot do to establish his relationship with the peoples of Venus? ", "What best describes a Formian body?", "What is Myles Cabot’s relationship to the narrator, Mr. Farley? Evidence of this?", "After their defeat by Cupia, what do the remaining Formians travel through during their escape? What is on the other side and what do the Formians do to it?\n", "How do Formians communicate with each other?", "Who does Myles Cabot help upon returning to Poros? What does he do for them?\n\n", "Given that Formians are naturally governed by an ant queen, how does King Yuri manage to hold his position as their leader?\n", "What is the relationship between the Formians and Cupians? \n\n" ]	[ [ "Formia ", "Mars", "Venus", "Jupiter " ], [ "Myles built radios for both the Formian and Cupian people, for which each are eternally grateful. \n\n", "Myles helped resolve a violent dispute between the Cupians and the Formians, helping the Formians to victory over the Cupians. \n", "Myles helped resolve a violent dispute between the Cupians and the Formians, helping the Cupians to victory over the Formians. \n\n", "Myles usurped the Formian throne and took a Cupian for his wife in order to solidify his power over both peoples. \n\n" ], [ "Scorpion-like human ants. \n\n", "Ant-brained with a Human demeanor. \n\n", "Human-brained ants.\n\n", "Lizard-brained ants \n\n" ], [ "They are both radio engineers, and presumably bothers. Cabot built a radio set and natter-transmitting device on Farley’s rooftop. \n\n", "They met on Venus and became fast friends. Cabot helped Farley to plan a coup to usurp the arch-fiend Yuri, King of both Formia and Cupia. \n\n", "They are both radio engineers, and presumably friends. Farley allowed Cabot to built a radio set and natter-transmitting device on his farm. \n\n", "They met on Venus and became fast friends. Farley allowed Cabot to built a radio set and natter-transmitting device on his farm. \n" ], [ "Steam clouds over bloody seas. On the other side they find a new continent, which they use as fodder for military and industrial growth. \n", "Poison clouds over magma seas. On the other side they find Myles Cabot, ship wrecked on an island. They use Cabot’s knowledge to get revenge on the Cupians. \n\n", "Steam clouds over boiling seas. On the other side they find a new continent, which they dub New Formia. \n\n", "Steam clouds over bloody seas. On the other side they find a new continent inhabited by a forgotten race of Cupians, whom the Formians enslave in order to take the land as theirs. \n\n" ], [ "Via pencil and paper", "Via radio", "Via Morse code", "Via antenna" ], [ "Myles helps the Human race establish a new ant queen as their leader, replacing the Formian King Yuri who came to rule them after the war. \n", "Myles helps the humans establish a radio line between Earth and Venus, so that he can bring his Cupian wife and child to Earth. \n", "Myles helps the Cupian race establish a new ant queen as their leader, replacing the Formian King Yuri who came to rule them after the war. \n", "Myles helps the Formian race establish a new ant queen as their leader, replacing King Yuri who came to rule them after the war. \n\n" ], [ "The ant queen was both killed by and usurped by King Yuri. He perpetually inhabits the power vacuum left by her absence. \n\n", "The ant queen was killed in hand to hand combat by the Cupian uprising, leaving a power vacuum that King Yuri took advantage of. \n", "The ant queen died during the Formian escape over the boiling sea, and so King Yuri occupies the power vacuum left by he queen’s absence. \n", "The ant queen died of old age, and all other younger Formians have yet to give birth to a new queen. King Yuri will occupy the leadership position until such a birth occurs. " ], [ "Cupians and Formians were caught in a constant struggle for power over the sea, until Myles Cabot facilitated a successful Formian coup. \n", "Cupians oppressed Formians until the uprising led in part by the human, Myles Cabot. \n\n", "Formians oppressed Cupians, until the uprising led in part by the human Myles Cabot. \n", "Cupians and Formians were caught in a constant struggle for power over New Formia, until Myles Cabot facilitated married the Cupian princes and brought peace between peoples. \n" ] ]	[ 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 3, 3 ]	[ 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Interplanetary communication was an established fact at\n last! And not with Mars after all these years of scientific\n speculations. But what meant more to me was that I was\n again in touch with my classmate Myles Standish Cabot,\n the radio man.\n\n\n The next day a party of prominent scientists, accompanied\n by a telegrapher and two stenographers, arrived at my\n farm.\n\n\n During the weeks that followed there was recorded\n Myles’s own account of the amazing adventures on the planet\n Venus (or Poros, as its own inhabitants call it,)\n which befell him upon his return there after his brief visit\n to the earth. I have edited those notes into the following\n coherent story.\nII", "“Mr. Farley?”\n\n\n “Speaking.”\n\n\n “This is Professor Kellogg, O. D. Kellogg,” the voice\n replied.\n\n7\n\n It was my friend of the Harvard math faculty, the man\n who had analyzed the measurements of the streamline projectile\n in which Myles Cabot had shot to earth the account\n of the first part of his adventures on Venus. Some further\n adventures Myles had told me in person during his stay\n on my farm.\n\n\n “Professor Hammond thinks that he is getting Mars on the\n air,” the voice continued.\n\n\n “Yes,” I replied. “I judged as much from what I read in\n this morning’s paper. But what do\nyou\nthink?”\n\n\n Kellogg’s reply gave my sluggish mind the second jolt\n which it had received that day.", "THE\n\n RADIO\n\n PLANET\nRalph Milne Farley\nI\n“It’s too bad that Myles Cabot can’t see this!”\n I exclaimed, as my eye fell on the following item:\nSIGNALS FROM MARS FAIL TO REACH HARVARD\nCambridge, Massachusetts, Wednesday. The Harvard\n College Radio Station has for several weeks been in receipt\n of fragmentary signals of extraordinarily long wave-length,\n Professor Hammond announced yesterday. So far as it has\n been possible to test the direction of the source of these\n waves, it appears that the direction has a twenty-four hour\n cycle, thus indicating that the origin of these waves is some\n point outside the earth.\nThe university authorities will express no opinion as to\n whether or not these messages come from Mars.\nMyles, alone of all the radio engineers of my acquaintance,\n was competent to surmount these difficulties, and\n thus enable the Cambridge savants to receive with clearness\n the message from another planet.\n\n6", "Suddenly, however, his ears were jarred by a familiar\n sound. At once his senses cleared, and he listened intently\n to the distant purring of a motor. Yes, there could be no\n mistake; an airplane was approaching. Now he could see\n it, a speck in the sky, far down the beach.\n\n\n Nearer and nearer it came.\n\n\n Myles sprang to his feet. To his intense surprise, he found\n that the effort threw him quite a distance into the air. Instantly\n the idea flashed through his mind: “I must be on\n Mars! Or some other strange planet.” This idea was vaguely\n reminiscent of something.", "And then events began to differ from those of the past;\n for the three other Formians halted, and Doggo advanced\n alone. By the agitation of the beast’s antennae the earth\n man could see that it was talking to him. But Myles no\n longer possessed the wonderful electrical headset which he\n had contrived and built during his previous visit to that\n planet, so as to talk with Cupians and Formians, both of\n which races are earless and converse by means of radiations\n from their antennae.\n\n\n So he picked up two sticks from the beach, and held\n them projecting from his forehead; then threw them to the\n ground with a grimace of disgust and pointed to his ears.\n\n\n Doggo understood, and scratched with his paw in Cupian\n shorthand on the silver sands the message: “Myles Cabot,\n you are our prisoner.”\n\n\n “What, again?” scratched Myles, then made a sign of\n submission.\n\n11", "During his stay on my farm, Cabot had built the matter-transmitting\n apparatus, with which he had shot himself off\n into space on that October night on which he had received\n the message from the skies: “S O S, Lilla.” A thunderstorm\n had been brewing all that evening, and just as Myles\n had placed himself between the coordinate axes of his machine\n and had gathered up the strings which ran from his\n control levers to within the apparatus, there had come a\n blinding flash. Lightning had struck his aerial.\n\n\n How long his unconsciousness lasted he knew not. He\n was some time in regaining his senses. But when he had\n finally and fully recovered, he found himself lying on a\n sandy beach beside a calm and placid lake beneath a silver\n sky.\n\n\n He fell to wondering, vaguely and pleasantly, where he\n was and how he had got here.", "Said she: “Doesn’t the very fact that Mr. Cabot isn’t\n here suggest to you that this may be a message, not from\n Mars, but from him? Or perhaps from the Princess Lilla,\n inquiring about him in case he has failed in his attempted\n return?”\n\n\n That had never occurred to me! How stupid!\n\n\n “What had I better do about it, if anything?” I asked.\n “Drop Professor Hammond a line?”\n\n\n But Mrs. Farley was afraid that I would be taken for a\n crank.\n\n\n That evening, when I was over in town, the clerk in the\n drug store waylaid me to say that there had been a long-distance\n phone call for me, and would I please call a certain\n Cambridge number.\n\n\n So, after waiting an interminable time in the stuffy booth\n with my hands full of dimes, nickels, and quarters, I finally\n got my party.", "And he snatched them from my head. Adjusting them on\n his own head, he spelled out to us, “C-Q C-Q C-Q D-E\n C-A-B-O-T C-A-B-O-T C-A-B-O-T—”\n\n\n Seizing the big leaf-switch, he threw it over. The motor-generator\n began to hum. Grasping the key, the Harvard\n engineer ticked off into space: “Cabot Cabot Cabot D-E—”\n\n\n “Has this station a call letter?” he hurriedly asked me.\n\n\n “Yes,” I answered quickly, “One-X-X-B.”\n\n\n “One-X-X-B,” he continued the ticking “K.”", "“Well,” he said, “in view of the fact that I am one of\n the few people among your readers who take your radio\n stories seriously, I think that Hammond is getting Venus.\n Can you run up here and help me try and convince him?”\n\n\n And so it was that I took the early boat next morning\n for Boston, and had lunch with the two professors.\nAs a result of our conference, a small committee of engineers\n returned with me to Edgartown that evening for\n the purpose of trying to repair the wrecked radio set which\n Myles Cabot had left on my farm.\n\n\n They utterly failed to comprehend the matter-transmitting\n apparatus, and so—after the fallen tower had been reerected\n and the rubbish cleared away—they had devoted their attention\n to the restoration of the conversational part of the set.", "Barth: “It is the radio. Know then, O Queen, and ye,\n members of the council, that when we fled across the boiling\n seas under the gallant leadership of Prince Yuri, the man\n with the heart of a Formian, he brought with him one of\n those powerful radio sets invented by the beast who is our\n prisoner here to-day.\n\n\n “Supporters of Yuri still remained among the Cupians,\n and he has been in constant communication with these ever\n since shortly after our arrival here. From them he learned\n of the return of Myles Cabot to the planet Minos.\n\n20\n\n “Then Yuri disappeared. Those of us who were closest\n to him suspected that he had gone back across the boiling\n seas to claim as his own the throne of Cupia. But we hesitated\n to announce this until we were sure, for we feared that\n some of our own people would regard his departure as\n desertion. Yet who can blame him for returning to his father-land\n and to the throne which is his by rights?”", "“Here we are, and here are you, in Yuriana, capitol of\n New Formia. But how is it that you, Myles Cabot, have\n arrived here on this continent in exactly the same manner\n and condition in which I discovered you in\nold\nFormia\n eight years ago?”\n\n\n When Myles reached the end of reading this narrative, he\n in turn took the pad and stylus and related how he had\n gone to the planet Minos (which we call the Earth) to learn\n the latest discoveries and inventions there, and how his\n calculations for his return to Poros had been upset by some\n static conditions just as he had been about to transmit\n himself back. Oh, if only he had landed by chance upon\n the same beach as on his first journey through the skies!\n\n\n Wisely he refrained from mentioning the “S O S” message\n from Lilla. But his recollection of her predicament\n spurred him to be anxious about her rescue.", "It hardly seemed possible! Night before last he had slept\n peacefully on a conventional feather-bed in a little New\n England farmhouse. Then had come the S O S message\n from the skies; and here he was now, millions of miles\n away through space retiring on matted silver felting on the\n concrete floor of a Porovian ant-house. Such are the mutations\n of fortune!\n\n\n With these thoughts the returned wanderer lapsed into\n a deep and dreamless sleep.\n\n\n When he awakened in the morning there was a guard\n posted at the door.\n\n18\n\n Doggo did not show up until nearly noon, when he\n rattled in, bristling with excitement.\n\n\n Seizing the pad he wrote: “A stormy session of the Council\n of Twelve! We are all agreed that you must be indicted\n for high crimes and misdemeanors. But the great question\n is as to just what we can charge you with.”", "“We know not,” the Formian wrote in reply. “Six days\n ago he left us in his airship and flew westward. When he\n failed to return, we sent out scout planes to search for\n him, and we have been hunting ever since. When we\n sighted you on the beach this morning we thought that\n you might be our lost leader, and that is why we landed and\n approached you.”\n\n\n At about this point the conversation was interrupted by\n a worker ant who brought food: roast alta and green aphid\n milk. With what relish did the earth-man plunge into the\n feast, his first taste of Porovian delicacies in many months.\n\n\n During the meal conversation lagged, owing to the difficulty\n of writing and eating at the same time. But now\n Myles Cabot seized his pad and stylus and wrote:\n\n\n “Have you ever known me to fail in any undertaking\n on the planet Poros?”", "Narrow slitlike window openings gave onto courtyards,\n where fountains played and masses of blue and yellow flowers\n bloomed, amid gray-branched lichens with red and purple\n twig-knobs. It was in just such a garden, through just\n such a window, that he had first looked upon the lovely\n blue-eyed, golden-haired Lilla, Crown Princess of Cupia.\n\n\n The earth-man sighed. Where was his beloved wife now?\n That she needed his help was certain. He must therefore\n get busy. So once again he made motions of writing on the\n palm of his left hand with the thumb and forefinger of his\n right; and this time the sign language produced results,\n for Doggo halted the procession and led Cabot into a room.\n\n13\n\n It was a plain bare room, devoid of any furniture except\n a small table, for ant-men have no use for chairs and\n couches. The sky outside was already beginning to pinken\n with the unseen sun.", "Poor girl! How eager he was to reach her side, and save\n her from that peril, whatever it was, which had caused her\n to flash that “S O S” a hundred million miles across the\n solar system from Poros to the earth.\n\n\n He wondered what could have happened in Cupia since\n his departure, only a few sangths ago. How was it that\n the ant-men had survived their airplane journey across the\n boiling seas? What had led them to return? Or perhaps\n these ants were a group who had hidden somewhere and\n thus had escaped the general extermination of their race.\n In either event, how had they been able to reconquer\n Cupia? And where was their former leader, Yuri, the renegade\n Cupian prince?\n\n\n These and a hundred other similar questions flooded in\n upon the earth-man, as the Formian airship carried him, a\n captive, through the skies.", "Twelve months ago he would have been available, for\n he was then quietly visiting at my farm, after five earth-years\n spent on the planet Venus, where, by the aid of radio,\n he had led the Cupians to victory over their oppressors,\n a human-brained race of gigantic black ants. He had driven\n the last ant from the face of continental Poros, and had\n won and wed the Princess Lilla, who had borne him a son\n to occupy the throne of Cupia.\n\n\n While at my farm Cabot had rigged up a huge radio\n set and a matter-transmitting apparatus, with which he had\n (presumably) shot himself back to Poros on the night of the\n big October storm which had wrecked his installation.\n\n\n I showed the newspaper item to Mrs. Farley, and lamented\n on Cabot’s absence. Her response opened up an\n entirely new line of thought.", "He gazed again at the scene below, and now noted one\n difference from the accustomed Porovian landscape, for nowhere\n ran the smooth concrete roads which bear the swift\n two-wheeled kerkools of the Cupians to all parts of their\n continent. What uninhabited portion of Cupia could this be,\n over which they were now passing?\n\n12\n\n Turning to Doggo, Myles extended his left palm, and\n made a motion as though writing on it with the thumb\n and forefinger of his right hand. But the ant-man waved\n a negative with one of his forepaws. It was evident that\n there were no writing materials aboard the ship. Myles\n would have to wait until they reached their landing place;\n for doubtless they would soon hover down in some city\n or town, though just which one he could not guess, as the\n country below was wholly unfamiliar.", "“It was his brain that conceived our daring plan of\n escape. If there were other lands beyond the boiling seas,\n the lands which tradition taught were the origin of the\n Cupian race, then there we might prosper and raise up a\n new empire. At the worst we should merely meet death in\n another form, rather than at your hands. So we essayed.\n\n14\n\n “Your planes followed us, but turned back as we neared\n the area of terrific heat. Soon the vapor closed over us,\n blotting our enemies and our native land from view.”\n\n\n For page after page Doggo, the ant-man, related the\n harrowing details of that perilous flight across the boiling\n seas, ending with the words:", "With a sweep of his paw, Doggo indicated that this was\n to be Cabot’s quarters. Then, with another wave, he\n pointed to the table, where lay a pad of paper and stylus,\n not a pencil-like stylus as employed by the Cupians, but\n rather one equipped with straps for attaching it to the claw\n of a Formian.\n\n\n Even so, it was better than nothing. The earth-man seized\n it eagerly, but before he could begin writing an ant entered\n bearing a Cupian toga, short-sleeved and bordered with\n Grecian wave designs in blue. Myles put on this garment,\n and then quickly filled a sheet with questions:\n\n\n “How is my princess and my son, the baby king? Whence\n come all you Formians, whose race I thought had been\n exterminated? What part of Cupia is this? What is this city?\n Where is Prince Yuri? And what do you intend to do with\n me\nthis\ntime?”", "To make a long story short, we finally restored it, with the\n aid of some old blue prints of Cabot’s which Mrs. Farley,\n like Swiss Family Robinson’s wife, produced from somewhere.\n I was the first to try the earphones, and was rewarded by\n a faint “bzt-bzt” like the song of a north woods blackfly.\n\n\n In conventional radioese, I repeated the sounds to the\n Harvard group:" ], [ "Interplanetary communication was an established fact at\n last! And not with Mars after all these years of scientific\n speculations. But what meant more to me was that I was\n again in touch with my classmate Myles Standish Cabot,\n the radio man.\n\n\n The next day a party of prominent scientists, accompanied\n by a telegrapher and two stenographers, arrived at my\n farm.\n\n\n During the weeks that followed there was recorded\n Myles’s own account of the amazing adventures on the planet\n Venus (or Poros, as its own inhabitants call it,)\n which befell him upon his return there after his brief visit\n to the earth. I have edited those notes into the following\n coherent story.\nII", "“Here we are, and here are you, in Yuriana, capitol of\n New Formia. But how is it that you, Myles Cabot, have\n arrived here on this continent in exactly the same manner\n and condition in which I discovered you in\nold\nFormia\n eight years ago?”\n\n\n When Myles reached the end of reading this narrative, he\n in turn took the pad and stylus and related how he had\n gone to the planet Minos (which we call the Earth) to learn\n the latest discoveries and inventions there, and how his\n calculations for his return to Poros had been upset by some\n static conditions just as he had been about to transmit\n himself back. Oh, if only he had landed by chance upon\n the same beach as on his first journey through the skies!\n\n\n Wisely he refrained from mentioning the “S O S” message\n from Lilla. But his recollection of her predicament\n spurred him to be anxious about her rescue.", "“We know not,” the Formian wrote in reply. “Six days\n ago he left us in his airship and flew westward. When he\n failed to return, we sent out scout planes to search for\n him, and we have been hunting ever since. When we\n sighted you on the beach this morning we thought that\n you might be our lost leader, and that is why we landed and\n approached you.”\n\n\n At about this point the conversation was interrupted by\n a worker ant who brought food: roast alta and green aphid\n milk. With what relish did the earth-man plunge into the\n feast, his first taste of Porovian delicacies in many months.\n\n\n During the meal conversation lagged, owing to the difficulty\n of writing and eating at the same time. But now\n Myles Cabot seized his pad and stylus and wrote:\n\n\n “Have you ever known me to fail in any undertaking\n on the planet Poros?”", "During his stay on my farm, Cabot had built the matter-transmitting\n apparatus, with which he had shot himself off\n into space on that October night on which he had received\n the message from the skies: “S O S, Lilla.” A thunderstorm\n had been brewing all that evening, and just as Myles\n had placed himself between the coordinate axes of his machine\n and had gathered up the strings which ran from his\n control levers to within the apparatus, there had come a\n blinding flash. Lightning had struck his aerial.\n\n\n How long his unconsciousness lasted he knew not. He\n was some time in regaining his senses. But when he had\n finally and fully recovered, he found himself lying on a\n sandy beach beside a calm and placid lake beneath a silver\n sky.\n\n\n He fell to wondering, vaguely and pleasantly, where he\n was and how he had got here.", "And then events began to differ from those of the past;\n for the three other Formians halted, and Doggo advanced\n alone. By the agitation of the beast’s antennae the earth\n man could see that it was talking to him. But Myles no\n longer possessed the wonderful electrical headset which he\n had contrived and built during his previous visit to that\n planet, so as to talk with Cupians and Formians, both of\n which races are earless and converse by means of radiations\n from their antennae.\n\n\n So he picked up two sticks from the beach, and held\n them projecting from his forehead; then threw them to the\n ground with a grimace of disgust and pointed to his ears.\n\n\n Doggo understood, and scratched with his paw in Cupian\n shorthand on the silver sands the message: “Myles Cabot,\n you are our prisoner.”\n\n\n “What, again?” scratched Myles, then made a sign of\n submission.\n\n11", "“Well,” he said, “in view of the fact that I am one of\n the few people among your readers who take your radio\n stories seriously, I think that Hammond is getting Venus.\n Can you run up here and help me try and convince him?”\n\n\n And so it was that I took the early boat next morning\n for Boston, and had lunch with the two professors.\nAs a result of our conference, a small committee of engineers\n returned with me to Edgartown that evening for\n the purpose of trying to repair the wrecked radio set which\n Myles Cabot had left on my farm.\n\n\n They utterly failed to comprehend the matter-transmitting\n apparatus, and so—after the fallen tower had been reerected\n and the rubbish cleared away—they had devoted their attention\n to the restoration of the conversational part of the set.", "With a sweep of his paw, Doggo indicated that this was\n to be Cabot’s quarters. Then, with another wave, he\n pointed to the table, where lay a pad of paper and stylus,\n not a pencil-like stylus as employed by the Cupians, but\n rather one equipped with straps for attaching it to the claw\n of a Formian.\n\n\n Even so, it was better than nothing. The earth-man seized\n it eagerly, but before he could begin writing an ant entered\n bearing a Cupian toga, short-sleeved and bordered with\n Grecian wave designs in blue. Myles put on this garment,\n and then quickly filled a sheet with questions:\n\n\n “How is my princess and my son, the baby king? Whence\n come all you Formians, whose race I thought had been\n exterminated? What part of Cupia is this? What is this city?\n Where is Prince Yuri? And what do you intend to do with\n me\nthis\ntime?”", "“Mr. Farley?”\n\n\n “Speaking.”\n\n\n “This is Professor Kellogg, O. D. Kellogg,” the voice\n replied.\n\n7\n\n It was my friend of the Harvard math faculty, the man\n who had analyzed the measurements of the streamline projectile\n in which Myles Cabot had shot to earth the account\n of the first part of his adventures on Venus. Some further\n adventures Myles had told me in person during his stay\n on my farm.\n\n\n “Professor Hammond thinks that he is getting Mars on the\n air,” the voice continued.\n\n\n “Yes,” I replied. “I judged as much from what I read in\n this morning’s paper. But what do\nyou\nthink?”\n\n\n Kellogg’s reply gave my sluggish mind the second jolt\n which it had received that day.", "When Myles had somewhat recovered from his astonishment,\n he warmly congratulated his friend by patting him\n on the side of the head, as is the Porovian custom.\n\n\n “Doggo,” he wrote, “this ought to constitute you a person\n of some importance among the Formians.”\n\n\n “It\nought\nto,” the ant-man replied, “but as a matter of\n fact, it merely intensifies Yuri’s mistrust and hatred of me.\n Now that I am mother of the queen, he fears that I may\n turn against him and establish Formis in his place as the\n head of an empire of the Formians, by the Formians, and\n for the Formians exclusively.”\n\n\n “Why don’t you?” Myles wrote. It seemed to him to be\n a bully good idea, and incidentally a solution of his own\n difficulties.", "Barth: “It is the radio. Know then, O Queen, and ye,\n members of the council, that when we fled across the boiling\n seas under the gallant leadership of Prince Yuri, the man\n with the heart of a Formian, he brought with him one of\n those powerful radio sets invented by the beast who is our\n prisoner here to-day.\n\n\n “Supporters of Yuri still remained among the Cupians,\n and he has been in constant communication with these ever\n since shortly after our arrival here. From them he learned\n of the return of Myles Cabot to the planet Minos.\n\n20\n\n “Then Yuri disappeared. Those of us who were closest\n to him suspected that he had gone back across the boiling\n seas to claim as his own the throne of Cupia. But we hesitated\n to announce this until we were sure, for we feared that\n some of our own people would regard his departure as\n desertion. Yet who can blame him for returning to his father-land\n and to the throne which is his by rights?”", "Twelve months ago he would have been available, for\n he was then quietly visiting at my farm, after five earth-years\n spent on the planet Venus, where, by the aid of radio,\n he had led the Cupians to victory over their oppressors,\n a human-brained race of gigantic black ants. He had driven\n the last ant from the face of continental Poros, and had\n won and wed the Princess Lilla, who had borne him a son\n to occupy the throne of Cupia.\n\n\n While at my farm Cabot had rigged up a huge radio\n set and a matter-transmitting apparatus, with which he had\n (presumably) shot himself back to Poros on the night of the\n big October storm which had wrecked his installation.\n\n\n I showed the newspaper item to Mrs. Farley, and lamented\n on Cabot’s absence. Her response opened up an\n entirely new line of thought.", "On a raised platform stood the ant queen, surmounted by\n a scarlet canopy, which set off the perfect proportions of\n her jet-black body. On each side of her stood six refined\n and intelligent ant-men, her councillors. One of the twelve\n was Doggo.\n\n\n Messenger ants hurried hither and thither.\n\n\n First the accusation was read, Myles being furnished\n with a written copy.\n\n\n The witnesses were then called. They were veterans who\n had served in the wars in which Cabot had twice freed\n Cupia from the domination of its Formian oppressors.\n They spoke with bitterness of the downfall of their beloved\n Formia. Their testimony was brief.\n\n\n Then the accused was asked if he wished to say anything\n in his own behalf. Myles rose, then shrugged his shoulders,\n sat down again, and wrote: “I fully realize the futility of\n making an argument through the antennae of another.”", "Suddenly, however, his ears were jarred by a familiar\n sound. At once his senses cleared, and he listened intently\n to the distant purring of a motor. Yes, there could be no\n mistake; an airplane was approaching. Now he could see\n it, a speck in the sky, far down the beach.\n\n\n Nearer and nearer it came.\n\n\n Myles sprang to his feet. To his intense surprise, he found\n that the effort threw him quite a distance into the air. Instantly\n the idea flashed through his mind: “I must be on\n Mars! Or some other strange planet.” This idea was vaguely\n reminiscent of something.", "This time, as he tore up the correspondence, Doggo\n signified an affirmative. And thus there resulted further\n correspondence.\n\n17\n\n “Doggo,” Myles wrote, “can you get to the antenna of\n the queen?”\n\n\n The ant-man indicated that he could.\n\n\n “If she has inherited any of your character,” Myles continued,\n “she will assert herself, if given half a chance.”\nSo the Pitmanesque conversation continued. Long since had\n the pink light of Porovian evening faded from the western\n sky. The ceiling vapor-lamps were lit. The night showed velvet-black\n through the slit-like windows. And still the two old\n friends wrote on, Myles Standish Cabot, the Bostonian, and\n Doggo, No. 334-2-18, the only really humanlike ant-man\n whom Myles had ever known among the once dominant\n race of Poros.", "“I will waive anything,” Myles replied, “counsel, immunity,\n extradition, anything in order to speed up my return\n to Cupia, where Lilla awaits in some dire extremity.”\n\n\n “All right,” Doggo wrote, and the conference was at an\n end. The morrow would decide the ascendancy of Myles\n Cabot or the Prince Yuri over the new continent.\nIV\n\n THE COUP D’ETAT\nThe next morning Myles Cabot was led under guard to the\n council chamber of the dread thirteen: Formis and her\n twelve advisers. The accused was placed in a wicker cage,\n from which he surveyed his surroundings as the proceedings\n opened.\n\n19", "But Doggo wrote in horror, “It would be treason!” Then\n tore up all the correspondence. It is difficult to inculcate the\n thought of independence in the mind of one reared in an\n autocracy.\n\n\n The earth-man, however, persisted.\n\n\n “How many of the council can you count on, if the interests\n of Yuri should clash with those of Formis?”\n\n16\n\n “Only one—myself.”\n\n\n And again Doggo tore up the correspondence.\n\n\n Myles tactfully changed the subject.\n\n\n “Where is the arch-fiend now?” he asked.", "Said she: “Doesn’t the very fact that Mr. Cabot isn’t\n here suggest to you that this may be a message, not from\n Mars, but from him? Or perhaps from the Princess Lilla,\n inquiring about him in case he has failed in his attempted\n return?”\n\n\n That had never occurred to me! How stupid!\n\n\n “What had I better do about it, if anything?” I asked.\n “Drop Professor Hammond a line?”\n\n\n But Mrs. Farley was afraid that I would be taken for a\n crank.\n\n\n That evening, when I was over in town, the clerk in the\n drug store waylaid me to say that there had been a long-distance\n phone call for me, and would I please call a certain\n Cambridge number.\n\n\n So, after waiting an interminable time in the stuffy booth\n with my hands full of dimes, nickels, and quarters, I finally\n got my party.", "Narrow slitlike window openings gave onto courtyards,\n where fountains played and masses of blue and yellow flowers\n bloomed, amid gray-branched lichens with red and purple\n twig-knobs. It was in just such a garden, through just\n such a window, that he had first looked upon the lovely\n blue-eyed, golden-haired Lilla, Crown Princess of Cupia.\n\n\n The earth-man sighed. Where was his beloved wife now?\n That she needed his help was certain. He must therefore\n get busy. So once again he made motions of writing on the\n palm of his left hand with the thumb and forefinger of his\n right; and this time the sign language produced results,\n for Doggo halted the procession and led Cabot into a room.\n\n13\n\n It was a plain bare room, devoid of any furniture except\n a small table, for ant-men have no use for chairs and\n couches. The sky outside was already beginning to pinken\n with the unseen sun.", "THE\n\n RADIO\n\n PLANET\nRalph Milne Farley\nI\n“It’s too bad that Myles Cabot can’t see this!”\n I exclaimed, as my eye fell on the following item:\nSIGNALS FROM MARS FAIL TO REACH HARVARD\nCambridge, Massachusetts, Wednesday. The Harvard\n College Radio Station has for several weeks been in receipt\n of fragmentary signals of extraordinarily long wave-length,\n Professor Hammond announced yesterday. So far as it has\n been possible to test the direction of the source of these\n waves, it appears that the direction has a twenty-four hour\n cycle, thus indicating that the origin of these waves is some\n point outside the earth.\nThe university authorities will express no opinion as to\n whether or not these messages come from Mars.\nMyles, alone of all the radio engineers of my acquaintance,\n was competent to surmount these difficulties, and\n thus enable the Cambridge savants to receive with clearness\n the message from another planet.\n\n6", "He gazed again at the scene below, and now noted one\n difference from the accustomed Porovian landscape, for nowhere\n ran the smooth concrete roads which bear the swift\n two-wheeled kerkools of the Cupians to all parts of their\n continent. What uninhabited portion of Cupia could this be,\n over which they were now passing?\n\n12\n\n Turning to Doggo, Myles extended his left palm, and\n made a motion as though writing on it with the thumb\n and forefinger of his right hand. But the ant-man waved\n a negative with one of his forepaws. It was evident that\n there were no writing materials aboard the ship. Myles\n would have to wait until they reached their landing place;\n for doubtless they would soon hover down in some city\n or town, though just which one he could not guess, as the\n country below was wholly unfamiliar." ], [ "On a raised platform stood the ant queen, surmounted by\n a scarlet canopy, which set off the perfect proportions of\n her jet-black body. On each side of her stood six refined\n and intelligent ant-men, her councillors. One of the twelve\n was Doggo.\n\n\n Messenger ants hurried hither and thither.\n\n\n First the accusation was read, Myles being furnished\n with a written copy.\n\n\n The witnesses were then called. They were veterans who\n had served in the wars in which Cabot had twice freed\n Cupia from the domination of its Formian oppressors.\n They spoke with bitterness of the downfall of their beloved\n Formia. Their testimony was brief.\n\n\n Then the accused was asked if he wished to say anything\n in his own behalf. Myles rose, then shrugged his shoulders,\n sat down again, and wrote: “I fully realize the futility of\n making an argument through the antennae of another.”", "Finally a small settlement loomed ahead. It was of the\n familiar style of toy-building-block architecture affected by\n the ant-men, and, from its appearance, was very new. On its\n outskirts further building operations were actively in progress.\n Apparently a few survivors of the accursed race of Formians\n were consolidating their position and attempting to build\n up a new empire in some out-of-the-way portion of the continent.\n\n\n As the earth-man was turning these thoughts over in his\n mind the plane softly settled down upon one of the flat\n roofs, and its occupants disembarked. Three of the ants\n advanced menacingly toward Myles, but Doggo held them\n off. Then all of the party descended down one of the ramps\n to the lower levels of the building.", "“Then what of your empire?” Myles inquired. “No queen.\n No eggs. How can your race continue? For you Formians are\n like the ants on my own planet Minos.”\n\n\n Doggo’s reply astounded him.\n\n\n “Do you remember back at Wautoosa, I told you that\n some of us lesser Formians had occasionally laid eggs? So\n now behold before you Doggo, Admiral of the Formian\n Air Navy, and mother of a new Queen Formis.”\n\n\n This was truly a surprise! All along Cabot had always\n regarded the Formians as mannish. And rightly so, for they\n performed in their own country the duties assigned to men\n among the Cupians. Furthermore, all Formians, save only\n the reigning Formis herself, were called by the Porovian\n pronoun, which corresponds to “he” in English.", "He dreaded the paralyzing bite which Formians usually\n administer to their victims, and which he had twice experienced\n in the past; but, fortunately, it was not now\n forthcoming.\n\n\n The other three ants kept away from him as Doggo led\n him to the beached airplane, and soon they were scudding\n along beneath silver skies, northward as it later turned out.\n\n\n Far below them were silver-green fields and tangled\n tropical woods, interspersed with rivulets and little ponds.\nThis was Cupia, his Cupia. He was home once more,\n back again upon the planet which held all that was dear\n to him in two worlds.\n\n\n His heart glowed with the warmth of homecoming.\n What mattered it that he was now a prisoner, in the hands\n (or, rather, claws) of his old enemies, the Formians? He\n had been their prisoner before, and had escaped. Once more\n he could escape, and rescue the Princess Lilla.", "With one bound he gained the throne, where fighting\n was already in progress between the two factions. Barth\n and Doggo were rolling over and over on the floor in a\n death grapple, while the ant-queen had backed to the rear\n of the stage, closely guarded by Emu and Fum.\n\n\n Seizing one of the pikes which supported the scarlet\n canopy, Myles wrenched it loose and drove it into the thorax\n of Barth. In another instant the earth-man and Doggo stood\n beside the queen.\n\n\n Ant-men now came pouring into the chamber through all\n the entrances, taking sides as they entered and sized up the\n situation. If it had still been in vogue among the Formians\n to be known by numbers rather than names, and to have\n these identifying numbers painted on the backs of their\n abdomens followed by the numbers of those whom they\n had defeated in the duels so common among them, then\n many a Formian would have “got the number” of many\n another, that day.", "With a sweep of his paw, Doggo indicated that this was\n to be Cabot’s quarters. Then, with another wave, he\n pointed to the table, where lay a pad of paper and stylus,\n not a pencil-like stylus as employed by the Cupians, but\n rather one equipped with straps for attaching it to the claw\n of a Formian.\n\n\n Even so, it was better than nothing. The earth-man seized\n it eagerly, but before he could begin writing an ant entered\n bearing a Cupian toga, short-sleeved and bordered with\n Grecian wave designs in blue. Myles put on this garment,\n and then quickly filled a sheet with questions:\n\n\n “How is my princess and my son, the baby king? Whence\n come all you Formians, whose race I thought had been\n exterminated? What part of Cupia is this? What is this city?\n Where is Prince Yuri? And what do you intend to do with\n me\nthis\ntime?”", "His immediate problem was to learn what the ant-men\n planned for him; so the concluding words which he wrote\n upon the pad were: “And, now that you have me in your\n power, what shall you do with me?”\n\n\n “Old friend,” Doggo wrote in reply, “that depends entirely\n upon Yuri, our king, whose toga you now have on.”\nIII\n\n YURI OR FORMIS?\nThe earth-man grimaced, but then smiled. Perhaps, his\n succeeding to the toga of King Yuri might prove to be an\n omen.\n\n15\n\n “So Yuri is king of the ants?” he asked.\n\n\n “Yes,” his captor replied, “for Queen Formis did not survive\n the trip across the boiling seas.”", "And then events began to differ from those of the past;\n for the three other Formians halted, and Doggo advanced\n alone. By the agitation of the beast’s antennae the earth\n man could see that it was talking to him. But Myles no\n longer possessed the wonderful electrical headset which he\n had contrived and built during his previous visit to that\n planet, so as to talk with Cupians and Formians, both of\n which races are earless and converse by means of radiations\n from their antennae.\n\n\n So he picked up two sticks from the beach, and held\n them projecting from his forehead; then threw them to the\n ground with a grimace of disgust and pointed to his ears.\n\n\n Doggo understood, and scratched with his paw in Cupian\n shorthand on the silver sands the message: “Myles Cabot,\n you are our prisoner.”\n\n\n “What, again?” scratched Myles, then made a sign of\n submission.\n\n11", "When Myles had somewhat recovered from his astonishment,\n he warmly congratulated his friend by patting him\n on the side of the head, as is the Porovian custom.\n\n\n “Doggo,” he wrote, “this ought to constitute you a person\n of some importance among the Formians.”\n\n\n “It\nought\nto,” the ant-man replied, “but as a matter of\n fact, it merely intensifies Yuri’s mistrust and hatred of me.\n Now that I am mother of the queen, he fears that I may\n turn against him and establish Formis in his place as the\n head of an empire of the Formians, by the Formians, and\n for the Formians exclusively.”\n\n\n “Why don’t you?” Myles wrote. It seemed to him to be\n a bully good idea, and incidentally a solution of his own\n difficulties.", "“We know not,” the Formian wrote in reply. “Six days\n ago he left us in his airship and flew westward. When he\n failed to return, we sent out scout planes to search for\n him, and we have been hunting ever since. When we\n sighted you on the beach this morning we thought that\n you might be our lost leader, and that is why we landed and\n approached you.”\n\n\n At about this point the conversation was interrupted by\n a worker ant who brought food: roast alta and green aphid\n milk. With what relish did the earth-man plunge into the\n feast, his first taste of Porovian delicacies in many months.\n\n\n During the meal conversation lagged, owing to the difficulty\n of writing and eating at the same time. But now\n Myles Cabot seized his pad and stylus and wrote:\n\n\n “Have you ever known me to fail in any undertaking\n on the planet Poros?”", "“No,” the ant-man wrote in reply.\n\n\n “Have you ever known me to be untrue to a principle,\n a cause, or a friend?”\n\n\n “No,” Doggo replied.\n\n\n “Then,” Myles wrote, “let us make your daughter queen\n in fact as well as in name.”\n\n\n “It is treason,” Doggo wrote in reply, but this time he\n did not tear up the correspondence.\n\n\n “Treason?” Myles asked. If he had spoken the word, he\n would have spoken it with scorn and derision. “Treason?\n Is it treason to support your own queen? What has become\n of the national pride of the once great Formians? Look!\n I pledge myself to the cause of Formis, rightful Queen of\n Formia. Formis, daughter of Doggo! What say you?”", "Poor girl! How eager he was to reach her side, and save\n her from that peril, whatever it was, which had caused her\n to flash that “S O S” a hundred million miles across the\n solar system from Poros to the earth.\n\n\n He wondered what could have happened in Cupia since\n his departure, only a few sangths ago. How was it that\n the ant-men had survived their airplane journey across the\n boiling seas? What had led them to return? Or perhaps\n these ants were a group who had hidden somewhere and\n thus had escaped the general extermination of their race.\n In either event, how had they been able to reconquer\n Cupia? And where was their former leader, Yuri, the renegade\n Cupian prince?\n\n\n These and a hundred other similar questions flooded in\n upon the earth-man, as the Formian airship carried him, a\n captive, through the skies.", "“Sorry I can’t assist you,” the earth-man wrote. “How\n would it be if I were to slap your daughter’s face, or\n something? Or why not try me for general cussedness?”\n\n\n “That is just what we finally decided to do,” the ant-man\n wrote in reply. “We shall try you on general principles,\n and let the proper accusation develop from the evidence.\n\n\n “At some stage of the proceedings it will inevitably occur\n to some member of the council to suggest that you be\n charged with treason to Yuri, whereupon two members of\n the council, whom I have won over to the cause of my\n daughter, will raise the objection that Yuri is not our king.\n This will be the signal for the proclaiming of Queen Formis.\n If you will waive counsel the trial can take place to-morrow.”", "Narrow slitlike window openings gave onto courtyards,\n where fountains played and masses of blue and yellow flowers\n bloomed, amid gray-branched lichens with red and purple\n twig-knobs. It was in just such a garden, through just\n such a window, that he had first looked upon the lovely\n blue-eyed, golden-haired Lilla, Crown Princess of Cupia.\n\n\n The earth-man sighed. Where was his beloved wife now?\n That she needed his help was certain. He must therefore\n get busy. So once again he made motions of writing on the\n palm of his left hand with the thumb and forefinger of his\n right; and this time the sign language produced results,\n for Doggo halted the procession and led Cabot into a room.\n\n13\n\n It was a plain bare room, devoid of any furniture except\n a small table, for ant-men have no use for chairs and\n couches. The sky outside was already beginning to pinken\n with the unseen sun.", "But while he was trying to catch this vaguely elusive\n train of thought, his attention was diverted by the fact that,\n for some unaccountable reason, his belt buckle and most of\n the buttons which had held his clothes together were missing,\n so that his clothing came to pieces as he rose, and that\n he had to shed it rapidly in order to avoid impeding his\n movements. He wondered at the cause of this.\n\n10\n\n But his speculations were cut short by the alighting of the\n plane a hundred yards down the beach.\n\n\n What was his horror when out of it clambered, not men\n but ants! Ants, six-footed, and six feet high. Huge ants, four\n of them, running toward him over the glistening sands.\n\n\n Gone was all his languor, as he seized a piece of driftwood\n and prepared to defend himself.", "“It was his brain that conceived our daring plan of\n escape. If there were other lands beyond the boiling seas,\n the lands which tradition taught were the origin of the\n Cupian race, then there we might prosper and raise up a\n new empire. At the worst we should merely meet death in\n another form, rather than at your hands. So we essayed.\n\n14\n\n “Your planes followed us, but turned back as we neared\n the area of terrific heat. Soon the vapor closed over us,\n blotting our enemies and our native land from view.”\n\n\n For page after page Doggo, the ant-man, related the\n harrowing details of that perilous flight across the boiling\n seas, ending with the words:", "Finally, as the dials indicated midnight, the two conspirators\n ceased their labors. All was arranged for the\ncoup d’ etat\n.\n\n\n They tore into shreds every scrap of used paper, leaving\n extant merely the ant-man’s concluding words: “Meanwhile\n you are my prisoner.”\n\n\n Doggo then rang a soundless bell, which was answered\n by a worker ant, whom he inaudibly directed to bring\n sufficient draperies to form a bed for the earth-man. These\n brought, the two friends patted each other a fond good\n night, and the tired earth-man lay down for the first sleep\n which he had had in over forty earth hours.", "Barth: “It is the radio. Know then, O Queen, and ye,\n members of the council, that when we fled across the boiling\n seas under the gallant leadership of Prince Yuri, the man\n with the heart of a Formian, he brought with him one of\n those powerful radio sets invented by the beast who is our\n prisoner here to-day.\n\n\n “Supporters of Yuri still remained among the Cupians,\n and he has been in constant communication with these ever\n since shortly after our arrival here. From them he learned\n of the return of Myles Cabot to the planet Minos.\n\n20\n\n “Then Yuri disappeared. Those of us who were closest\n to him suspected that he had gone back across the boiling\n seas to claim as his own the throne of Cupia. But we hesitated\n to announce this until we were sure, for we feared that\n some of our own people would regard his departure as\n desertion. Yet who can blame him for returning to his father-land\n and to the throne which is his by rights?”", "This time, as he tore up the correspondence, Doggo\n signified an affirmative. And thus there resulted further\n correspondence.\n\n17\n\n “Doggo,” Myles wrote, “can you get to the antenna of\n the queen?”\n\n\n The ant-man indicated that he could.\n\n\n “If she has inherited any of your character,” Myles continued,\n “she will assert herself, if given half a chance.”\nSo the Pitmanesque conversation continued. Long since had\n the pink light of Porovian evening faded from the western\n sky. The ceiling vapor-lamps were lit. The night showed velvet-black\n through the slit-like windows. And still the two old\n friends wrote on, Myles Standish Cabot, the Bostonian, and\n Doggo, No. 334-2-18, the only really humanlike ant-man\n whom Myles had ever known among the once dominant\n race of Poros.", "But Doggo wrote in horror, “It would be treason!” Then\n tore up all the correspondence. It is difficult to inculcate the\n thought of independence in the mind of one reared in an\n autocracy.\n\n\n The earth-man, however, persisted.\n\n\n “How many of the council can you count on, if the interests\n of Yuri should clash with those of Formis?”\n\n16\n\n “Only one—myself.”\n\n\n And again Doggo tore up the correspondence.\n\n\n Myles tactfully changed the subject.\n\n\n “Where is the arch-fiend now?” he asked." ], [ "During his stay on my farm, Cabot had built the matter-transmitting\n apparatus, with which he had shot himself off\n into space on that October night on which he had received\n the message from the skies: “S O S, Lilla.” A thunderstorm\n had been brewing all that evening, and just as Myles\n had placed himself between the coordinate axes of his machine\n and had gathered up the strings which ran from his\n control levers to within the apparatus, there had come a\n blinding flash. Lightning had struck his aerial.\n\n\n How long his unconsciousness lasted he knew not. He\n was some time in regaining his senses. But when he had\n finally and fully recovered, he found himself lying on a\n sandy beach beside a calm and placid lake beneath a silver\n sky.\n\n\n He fell to wondering, vaguely and pleasantly, where he\n was and how he had got here.", "Said she: “Doesn’t the very fact that Mr. Cabot isn’t\n here suggest to you that this may be a message, not from\n Mars, but from him? Or perhaps from the Princess Lilla,\n inquiring about him in case he has failed in his attempted\n return?”\n\n\n That had never occurred to me! How stupid!\n\n\n “What had I better do about it, if anything?” I asked.\n “Drop Professor Hammond a line?”\n\n\n But Mrs. Farley was afraid that I would be taken for a\n crank.\n\n\n That evening, when I was over in town, the clerk in the\n drug store waylaid me to say that there had been a long-distance\n phone call for me, and would I please call a certain\n Cambridge number.\n\n\n So, after waiting an interminable time in the stuffy booth\n with my hands full of dimes, nickels, and quarters, I finally\n got my party.", "“Here we are, and here are you, in Yuriana, capitol of\n New Formia. But how is it that you, Myles Cabot, have\n arrived here on this continent in exactly the same manner\n and condition in which I discovered you in\nold\nFormia\n eight years ago?”\n\n\n When Myles reached the end of reading this narrative, he\n in turn took the pad and stylus and related how he had\n gone to the planet Minos (which we call the Earth) to learn\n the latest discoveries and inventions there, and how his\n calculations for his return to Poros had been upset by some\n static conditions just as he had been about to transmit\n himself back. Oh, if only he had landed by chance upon\n the same beach as on his first journey through the skies!\n\n\n Wisely he refrained from mentioning the “S O S” message\n from Lilla. But his recollection of her predicament\n spurred him to be anxious about her rescue.", "“I will waive anything,” Myles replied, “counsel, immunity,\n extradition, anything in order to speed up my return\n to Cupia, where Lilla awaits in some dire extremity.”\n\n\n “All right,” Doggo wrote, and the conference was at an\n end. The morrow would decide the ascendancy of Myles\n Cabot or the Prince Yuri over the new continent.\nIV\n\n THE COUP D’ETAT\nThe next morning Myles Cabot was led under guard to the\n council chamber of the dread thirteen: Formis and her\n twelve advisers. The accused was placed in a wicker cage,\n from which he surveyed his surroundings as the proceedings\n opened.\n\n19", "“Mr. Farley?”\n\n\n “Speaking.”\n\n\n “This is Professor Kellogg, O. D. Kellogg,” the voice\n replied.\n\n7\n\n It was my friend of the Harvard math faculty, the man\n who had analyzed the measurements of the streamline projectile\n in which Myles Cabot had shot to earth the account\n of the first part of his adventures on Venus. Some further\n adventures Myles had told me in person during his stay\n on my farm.\n\n\n “Professor Hammond thinks that he is getting Mars on the\n air,” the voice continued.\n\n\n “Yes,” I replied. “I judged as much from what I read in\n this morning’s paper. But what do\nyou\nthink?”\n\n\n Kellogg’s reply gave my sluggish mind the second jolt\n which it had received that day.", "This time, as he tore up the correspondence, Doggo\n signified an affirmative. And thus there resulted further\n correspondence.\n\n17\n\n “Doggo,” Myles wrote, “can you get to the antenna of\n the queen?”\n\n\n The ant-man indicated that he could.\n\n\n “If she has inherited any of your character,” Myles continued,\n “she will assert herself, if given half a chance.”\nSo the Pitmanesque conversation continued. Long since had\n the pink light of Porovian evening faded from the western\n sky. The ceiling vapor-lamps were lit. The night showed velvet-black\n through the slit-like windows. And still the two old\n friends wrote on, Myles Standish Cabot, the Bostonian, and\n Doggo, No. 334-2-18, the only really humanlike ant-man\n whom Myles had ever known among the once dominant\n race of Poros.", "“Well,” he said, “in view of the fact that I am one of\n the few people among your readers who take your radio\n stories seriously, I think that Hammond is getting Venus.\n Can you run up here and help me try and convince him?”\n\n\n And so it was that I took the early boat next morning\n for Boston, and had lunch with the two professors.\nAs a result of our conference, a small committee of engineers\n returned with me to Edgartown that evening for\n the purpose of trying to repair the wrecked radio set which\n Myles Cabot had left on my farm.\n\n\n They utterly failed to comprehend the matter-transmitting\n apparatus, and so—after the fallen tower had been reerected\n and the rubbish cleared away—they had devoted their attention\n to the restoration of the conversational part of the set.", "“We know not,” the Formian wrote in reply. “Six days\n ago he left us in his airship and flew westward. When he\n failed to return, we sent out scout planes to search for\n him, and we have been hunting ever since. When we\n sighted you on the beach this morning we thought that\n you might be our lost leader, and that is why we landed and\n approached you.”\n\n\n At about this point the conversation was interrupted by\n a worker ant who brought food: roast alta and green aphid\n milk. With what relish did the earth-man plunge into the\n feast, his first taste of Porovian delicacies in many months.\n\n\n During the meal conversation lagged, owing to the difficulty\n of writing and eating at the same time. But now\n Myles Cabot seized his pad and stylus and wrote:\n\n\n “Have you ever known me to fail in any undertaking\n on the planet Poros?”", "And then events began to differ from those of the past;\n for the three other Formians halted, and Doggo advanced\n alone. By the agitation of the beast’s antennae the earth\n man could see that it was talking to him. But Myles no\n longer possessed the wonderful electrical headset which he\n had contrived and built during his previous visit to that\n planet, so as to talk with Cupians and Formians, both of\n which races are earless and converse by means of radiations\n from their antennae.\n\n\n So he picked up two sticks from the beach, and held\n them projecting from his forehead; then threw them to the\n ground with a grimace of disgust and pointed to his ears.\n\n\n Doggo understood, and scratched with his paw in Cupian\n shorthand on the silver sands the message: “Myles Cabot,\n you are our prisoner.”\n\n\n “What, again?” scratched Myles, then made a sign of\n submission.\n\n11", "On a raised platform stood the ant queen, surmounted by\n a scarlet canopy, which set off the perfect proportions of\n her jet-black body. On each side of her stood six refined\n and intelligent ant-men, her councillors. One of the twelve\n was Doggo.\n\n\n Messenger ants hurried hither and thither.\n\n\n First the accusation was read, Myles being furnished\n with a written copy.\n\n\n The witnesses were then called. They were veterans who\n had served in the wars in which Cabot had twice freed\n Cupia from the domination of its Formian oppressors.\n They spoke with bitterness of the downfall of their beloved\n Formia. Their testimony was brief.\n\n\n Then the accused was asked if he wished to say anything\n in his own behalf. Myles rose, then shrugged his shoulders,\n sat down again, and wrote: “I fully realize the futility of\n making an argument through the antennae of another.”", "Suddenly, however, his ears were jarred by a familiar\n sound. At once his senses cleared, and he listened intently\n to the distant purring of a motor. Yes, there could be no\n mistake; an airplane was approaching. Now he could see\n it, a speck in the sky, far down the beach.\n\n\n Nearer and nearer it came.\n\n\n Myles sprang to his feet. To his intense surprise, he found\n that the effort threw him quite a distance into the air. Instantly\n the idea flashed through his mind: “I must be on\n Mars! Or some other strange planet.” This idea was vaguely\n reminiscent of something.", "Twelve months ago he would have been available, for\n he was then quietly visiting at my farm, after five earth-years\n spent on the planet Venus, where, by the aid of radio,\n he had led the Cupians to victory over their oppressors,\n a human-brained race of gigantic black ants. He had driven\n the last ant from the face of continental Poros, and had\n won and wed the Princess Lilla, who had borne him a son\n to occupy the throne of Cupia.\n\n\n While at my farm Cabot had rigged up a huge radio\n set and a matter-transmitting apparatus, with which he had\n (presumably) shot himself back to Poros on the night of the\n big October storm which had wrecked his installation.\n\n\n I showed the newspaper item to Mrs. Farley, and lamented\n on Cabot’s absence. Her response opened up an\n entirely new line of thought.", "THE\n\n RADIO\n\n PLANET\nRalph Milne Farley\nI\n“It’s too bad that Myles Cabot can’t see this!”\n I exclaimed, as my eye fell on the following item:\nSIGNALS FROM MARS FAIL TO REACH HARVARD\nCambridge, Massachusetts, Wednesday. The Harvard\n College Radio Station has for several weeks been in receipt\n of fragmentary signals of extraordinarily long wave-length,\n Professor Hammond announced yesterday. So far as it has\n been possible to test the direction of the source of these\n waves, it appears that the direction has a twenty-four hour\n cycle, thus indicating that the origin of these waves is some\n point outside the earth.\nThe university authorities will express no opinion as to\n whether or not these messages come from Mars.\nMyles, alone of all the radio engineers of my acquaintance,\n was competent to surmount these difficulties, and\n thus enable the Cambridge savants to receive with clearness\n the message from another planet.\n\n6", "Interplanetary communication was an established fact at\n last! And not with Mars after all these years of scientific\n speculations. But what meant more to me was that I was\n again in touch with my classmate Myles Standish Cabot,\n the radio man.\n\n\n The next day a party of prominent scientists, accompanied\n by a telegrapher and two stenographers, arrived at my\n farm.\n\n\n During the weeks that followed there was recorded\n Myles’s own account of the amazing adventures on the planet\n Venus (or Poros, as its own inhabitants call it,)\n which befell him upon his return there after his brief visit\n to the earth. I have edited those notes into the following\n coherent story.\nII", "Barth: “It is the radio. Know then, O Queen, and ye,\n members of the council, that when we fled across the boiling\n seas under the gallant leadership of Prince Yuri, the man\n with the heart of a Formian, he brought with him one of\n those powerful radio sets invented by the beast who is our\n prisoner here to-day.\n\n\n “Supporters of Yuri still remained among the Cupians,\n and he has been in constant communication with these ever\n since shortly after our arrival here. From them he learned\n of the return of Myles Cabot to the planet Minos.\n\n20\n\n “Then Yuri disappeared. Those of us who were closest\n to him suspected that he had gone back across the boiling\n seas to claim as his own the throne of Cupia. But we hesitated\n to announce this until we were sure, for we feared that\n some of our own people would regard his departure as\n desertion. Yet who can blame him for returning to his father-land\n and to the throne which is his by rights?”", "As he stood thus expectant, Myles realized that his present\n position and condition, the surrounding scenery, and the advance\n of the ant-men were exactly, item for item, like the\n opening events of his first arrival on the planet Poros. He\n even recognized one of the ant-men as old Doggo, who had\n befriended him on his previous visit.\n\n\n Could it be that all his adventures in Cupia had been\n naught but a dream; a recurring dream, in fact? Were his\n dear wife Lilla and his little son Kew merely figments of\n his imagination? Horrible thought!", "When Myles had somewhat recovered from his astonishment,\n he warmly congratulated his friend by patting him\n on the side of the head, as is the Porovian custom.\n\n\n “Doggo,” he wrote, “this ought to constitute you a person\n of some importance among the Formians.”\n\n\n “It\nought\nto,” the ant-man replied, “but as a matter of\n fact, it merely intensifies Yuri’s mistrust and hatred of me.\n Now that I am mother of the queen, he fears that I may\n turn against him and establish Formis in his place as the\n head of an empire of the Formians, by the Formians, and\n for the Formians exclusively.”\n\n\n “Why don’t you?” Myles wrote. It seemed to him to be\n a bully good idea, and incidentally a solution of his own\n difficulties.", "With a sweep of his paw, Doggo indicated that this was\n to be Cabot’s quarters. Then, with another wave, he\n pointed to the table, where lay a pad of paper and stylus,\n not a pencil-like stylus as employed by the Cupians, but\n rather one equipped with straps for attaching it to the claw\n of a Formian.\n\n\n Even so, it was better than nothing. The earth-man seized\n it eagerly, but before he could begin writing an ant entered\n bearing a Cupian toga, short-sleeved and bordered with\n Grecian wave designs in blue. Myles put on this garment,\n and then quickly filled a sheet with questions:\n\n\n “How is my princess and my son, the baby king? Whence\n come all you Formians, whose race I thought had been\n exterminated? What part of Cupia is this? What is this city?\n Where is Prince Yuri? And what do you intend to do with\n me\nthis\ntime?”", "And he snatched them from my head. Adjusting them on\n his own head, he spelled out to us, “C-Q C-Q C-Q D-E\n C-A-B-O-T C-A-B-O-T C-A-B-O-T—”\n\n\n Seizing the big leaf-switch, he threw it over. The motor-generator\n began to hum. Grasping the key, the Harvard\n engineer ticked off into space: “Cabot Cabot Cabot D-E—”\n\n\n “Has this station a call letter?” he hurriedly asked me.\n\n\n “Yes,” I answered quickly, “One-X-X-B.”\n\n\n “One-X-X-B,” he continued the ticking “K.”", "To make a long story short, we finally restored it, with the\n aid of some old blue prints of Cabot’s which Mrs. Farley,\n like Swiss Family Robinson’s wife, produced from somewhere.\n I was the first to try the earphones, and was rewarded by\n a faint “bzt-bzt” like the song of a north woods blackfly.\n\n\n In conventional radioese, I repeated the sounds to the\n Harvard group:" ], [ "He dreaded the paralyzing bite which Formians usually\n administer to their victims, and which he had twice experienced\n in the past; but, fortunately, it was not now\n forthcoming.\n\n\n The other three ants kept away from him as Doggo led\n him to the beached airplane, and soon they were scudding\n along beneath silver skies, northward as it later turned out.\n\n\n Far below them were silver-green fields and tangled\n tropical woods, interspersed with rivulets and little ponds.\nThis was Cupia, his Cupia. He was home once more,\n back again upon the planet which held all that was dear\n to him in two worlds.\n\n\n His heart glowed with the warmth of homecoming.\n What mattered it that he was now a prisoner, in the hands\n (or, rather, claws) of his old enemies, the Formians? He\n had been their prisoner before, and had escaped. Once more\n he could escape, and rescue the Princess Lilla.", "On a raised platform stood the ant queen, surmounted by\n a scarlet canopy, which set off the perfect proportions of\n her jet-black body. On each side of her stood six refined\n and intelligent ant-men, her councillors. One of the twelve\n was Doggo.\n\n\n Messenger ants hurried hither and thither.\n\n\n First the accusation was read, Myles being furnished\n with a written copy.\n\n\n The witnesses were then called. They were veterans who\n had served in the wars in which Cabot had twice freed\n Cupia from the domination of its Formian oppressors.\n They spoke with bitterness of the downfall of their beloved\n Formia. Their testimony was brief.\n\n\n Then the accused was asked if he wished to say anything\n in his own behalf. Myles rose, then shrugged his shoulders,\n sat down again, and wrote: “I fully realize the futility of\n making an argument through the antennae of another.”", "“It was his brain that conceived our daring plan of\n escape. If there were other lands beyond the boiling seas,\n the lands which tradition taught were the origin of the\n Cupian race, then there we might prosper and raise up a\n new empire. At the worst we should merely meet death in\n another form, rather than at your hands. So we essayed.\n\n14\n\n “Your planes followed us, but turned back as we neared\n the area of terrific heat. Soon the vapor closed over us,\n blotting our enemies and our native land from view.”\n\n\n For page after page Doggo, the ant-man, related the\n harrowing details of that perilous flight across the boiling\n seas, ending with the words:", "Poor girl! How eager he was to reach her side, and save\n her from that peril, whatever it was, which had caused her\n to flash that “S O S” a hundred million miles across the\n solar system from Poros to the earth.\n\n\n He wondered what could have happened in Cupia since\n his departure, only a few sangths ago. How was it that\n the ant-men had survived their airplane journey across the\n boiling seas? What had led them to return? Or perhaps\n these ants were a group who had hidden somewhere and\n thus had escaped the general extermination of their race.\n In either event, how had they been able to reconquer\n Cupia? And where was their former leader, Yuri, the renegade\n Cupian prince?\n\n\n These and a hundred other similar questions flooded in\n upon the earth-man, as the Formian airship carried him, a\n captive, through the skies.", "With a sweep of his paw, Doggo indicated that this was\n to be Cabot’s quarters. Then, with another wave, he\n pointed to the table, where lay a pad of paper and stylus,\n not a pencil-like stylus as employed by the Cupians, but\n rather one equipped with straps for attaching it to the claw\n of a Formian.\n\n\n Even so, it was better than nothing. The earth-man seized\n it eagerly, but before he could begin writing an ant entered\n bearing a Cupian toga, short-sleeved and bordered with\n Grecian wave designs in blue. Myles put on this garment,\n and then quickly filled a sheet with questions:\n\n\n “How is my princess and my son, the baby king? Whence\n come all you Formians, whose race I thought had been\n exterminated? What part of Cupia is this? What is this city?\n Where is Prince Yuri? And what do you intend to do with\n me\nthis\ntime?”", "Finally a small settlement loomed ahead. It was of the\n familiar style of toy-building-block architecture affected by\n the ant-men, and, from its appearance, was very new. On its\n outskirts further building operations were actively in progress.\n Apparently a few survivors of the accursed race of Formians\n were consolidating their position and attempting to build\n up a new empire in some out-of-the-way portion of the continent.\n\n\n As the earth-man was turning these thoughts over in his\n mind the plane softly settled down upon one of the flat\n roofs, and its occupants disembarked. Three of the ants\n advanced menacingly toward Myles, but Doggo held them\n off. Then all of the party descended down one of the ramps\n to the lower levels of the building.", "Then he passed the paper and stylus over to his old\n friend Doggo. They were alone together at last.\nThe ant-man’s reply consumed sheet after sheet of paper;\n but, owning to the rapidity of Porovian shorthand, did not\n take so very much more time than speaking would have\n required. As he completed each sheet he passed it over to\n Myles, who read as follows:\n\n\n “As to your princess and your son, I know not, for this\n is not Cupia. Do you remember how, when your victorious\n army and air navy swept to the southern extremity of what\n had been Formia, a few of our survivors rose in planes from\n the ruins of our last stronghold and braved the dangers\n of the steam clouds which overhang the boiling seas? Our\n leader was Prince Yuri, erstwhile contender for the throne\n of Cupia, splendid even in defeat.", "And then events began to differ from those of the past;\n for the three other Formians halted, and Doggo advanced\n alone. By the agitation of the beast’s antennae the earth\n man could see that it was talking to him. But Myles no\n longer possessed the wonderful electrical headset which he\n had contrived and built during his previous visit to that\n planet, so as to talk with Cupians and Formians, both of\n which races are earless and converse by means of radiations\n from their antennae.\n\n\n So he picked up two sticks from the beach, and held\n them projecting from his forehead; then threw them to the\n ground with a grimace of disgust and pointed to his ears.\n\n\n Doggo understood, and scratched with his paw in Cupian\n shorthand on the silver sands the message: “Myles Cabot,\n you are our prisoner.”\n\n\n “What, again?” scratched Myles, then made a sign of\n submission.\n\n11", "“Then what of your empire?” Myles inquired. “No queen.\n No eggs. How can your race continue? For you Formians are\n like the ants on my own planet Minos.”\n\n\n Doggo’s reply astounded him.\n\n\n “Do you remember back at Wautoosa, I told you that\n some of us lesser Formians had occasionally laid eggs? So\n now behold before you Doggo, Admiral of the Formian\n Air Navy, and mother of a new Queen Formis.”\n\n\n This was truly a surprise! All along Cabot had always\n regarded the Formians as mannish. And rightly so, for they\n performed in their own country the duties assigned to men\n among the Cupians. Furthermore, all Formians, save only\n the reigning Formis herself, were called by the Porovian\n pronoun, which corresponds to “he” in English.", "With one bound he gained the throne, where fighting\n was already in progress between the two factions. Barth\n and Doggo were rolling over and over on the floor in a\n death grapple, while the ant-queen had backed to the rear\n of the stage, closely guarded by Emu and Fum.\n\n\n Seizing one of the pikes which supported the scarlet\n canopy, Myles wrenched it loose and drove it into the thorax\n of Barth. In another instant the earth-man and Doggo stood\n beside the queen.\n\n\n Ant-men now came pouring into the chamber through all\n the entrances, taking sides as they entered and sized up the\n situation. If it had still been in vogue among the Formians\n to be known by numbers rather than names, and to have\n these identifying numbers painted on the backs of their\n abdomens followed by the numbers of those whom they\n had defeated in the duels so common among them, then\n many a Formian would have “got the number” of many\n another, that day.", "Narrow slitlike window openings gave onto courtyards,\n where fountains played and masses of blue and yellow flowers\n bloomed, amid gray-branched lichens with red and purple\n twig-knobs. It was in just such a garden, through just\n such a window, that he had first looked upon the lovely\n blue-eyed, golden-haired Lilla, Crown Princess of Cupia.\n\n\n The earth-man sighed. Where was his beloved wife now?\n That she needed his help was certain. He must therefore\n get busy. So once again he made motions of writing on the\n palm of his left hand with the thumb and forefinger of his\n right; and this time the sign language produced results,\n for Doggo halted the procession and led Cabot into a room.\n\n13\n\n It was a plain bare room, devoid of any furniture except\n a small table, for ant-men have no use for chairs and\n couches. The sky outside was already beginning to pinken\n with the unseen sun.", "Barth: “It is the radio. Know then, O Queen, and ye,\n members of the council, that when we fled across the boiling\n seas under the gallant leadership of Prince Yuri, the man\n with the heart of a Formian, he brought with him one of\n those powerful radio sets invented by the beast who is our\n prisoner here to-day.\n\n\n “Supporters of Yuri still remained among the Cupians,\n and he has been in constant communication with these ever\n since shortly after our arrival here. From them he learned\n of the return of Myles Cabot to the planet Minos.\n\n20\n\n “Then Yuri disappeared. Those of us who were closest\n to him suspected that he had gone back across the boiling\n seas to claim as his own the throne of Cupia. But we hesitated\n to announce this until we were sure, for we feared that\n some of our own people would regard his departure as\n desertion. Yet who can blame him for returning to his father-land\n and to the throne which is his by rights?”", "“We know not,” the Formian wrote in reply. “Six days\n ago he left us in his airship and flew westward. When he\n failed to return, we sent out scout planes to search for\n him, and we have been hunting ever since. When we\n sighted you on the beach this morning we thought that\n you might be our lost leader, and that is why we landed and\n approached you.”\n\n\n At about this point the conversation was interrupted by\n a worker ant who brought food: roast alta and green aphid\n milk. With what relish did the earth-man plunge into the\n feast, his first taste of Porovian delicacies in many months.\n\n\n During the meal conversation lagged, owing to the difficulty\n of writing and eating at the same time. But now\n Myles Cabot seized his pad and stylus and wrote:\n\n\n “Have you ever known me to fail in any undertaking\n on the planet Poros?”", "He gazed again at the scene below, and now noted one\n difference from the accustomed Porovian landscape, for nowhere\n ran the smooth concrete roads which bear the swift\n two-wheeled kerkools of the Cupians to all parts of their\n continent. What uninhabited portion of Cupia could this be,\n over which they were now passing?\n\n12\n\n Turning to Doggo, Myles extended his left palm, and\n made a motion as though writing on it with the thumb\n and forefinger of his right hand. But the ant-man waved\n a negative with one of his forepaws. It was evident that\n there were no writing materials aboard the ship. Myles\n would have to wait until they reached their landing place;\n for doubtless they would soon hover down in some city\n or town, though just which one he could not guess, as the\n country below was wholly unfamiliar.", "TOO MUCH STATIC\nMyles Cabot had returned to the earth to study the\n latest developments of modern terrestrial science for the\n benefit of the Cupian nation. He was the regent of Cupia\n during the minority of his baby son, King Kew the\n Thirteenth. The loyal Prince Toron occupied the throne in his\n absence. The last of the ant-men and their ally, the renegade\n Cupian Prince Yuri, had presumably perished in an attempt\n to escape by flying through the steam-clouds which completely\n hem in continental Poros. What lay beyond the\n boiling seas no man knew.\n\n9", "His immediate problem was to learn what the ant-men\n planned for him; so the concluding words which he wrote\n upon the pad were: “And, now that you have me in your\n power, what shall you do with me?”\n\n\n “Old friend,” Doggo wrote in reply, “that depends entirely\n upon Yuri, our king, whose toga you now have on.”\nIII\n\n YURI OR FORMIS?\nThe earth-man grimaced, but then smiled. Perhaps, his\n succeeding to the toga of King Yuri might prove to be an\n omen.\n\n15\n\n “So Yuri is king of the ants?” he asked.\n\n\n “Yes,” his captor replied, “for Queen Formis did not survive\n the trip across the boiling seas.”", "Finally, as the dials indicated midnight, the two conspirators\n ceased their labors. All was arranged for the\ncoup d’ etat\n.\n\n\n They tore into shreds every scrap of used paper, leaving\n extant merely the ant-man’s concluding words: “Meanwhile\n you are my prisoner.”\n\n\n Doggo then rang a soundless bell, which was answered\n by a worker ant, whom he inaudibly directed to bring\n sufficient draperies to form a bed for the earth-man. These\n brought, the two friends patted each other a fond good\n night, and the tired earth-man lay down for the first sleep\n which he had had in over forty earth hours.", "When Myles had somewhat recovered from his astonishment,\n he warmly congratulated his friend by patting him\n on the side of the head, as is the Porovian custom.\n\n\n “Doggo,” he wrote, “this ought to constitute you a person\n of some importance among the Formians.”\n\n\n “It\nought\nto,” the ant-man replied, “but as a matter of\n fact, it merely intensifies Yuri’s mistrust and hatred of me.\n Now that I am mother of the queen, he fears that I may\n turn against him and establish Formis in his place as the\n head of an empire of the Formians, by the Formians, and\n for the Formians exclusively.”\n\n\n “Why don’t you?” Myles wrote. It seemed to him to be\n a bully good idea, and incidentally a solution of his own\n difficulties.", "“No,” the ant-man wrote in reply.\n\n\n “Have you ever known me to be untrue to a principle,\n a cause, or a friend?”\n\n\n “No,” Doggo replied.\n\n\n “Then,” Myles wrote, “let us make your daughter queen\n in fact as well as in name.”\n\n\n “It is treason,” Doggo wrote in reply, but this time he\n did not tear up the correspondence.\n\n\n “Treason?” Myles asked. If he had spoken the word, he\n would have spoken it with scorn and derision. “Treason?\n Is it treason to support your own queen? What has become\n of the national pride of the once great Formians? Look!\n I pledge myself to the cause of Formis, rightful Queen of\n Formia. Formis, daughter of Doggo! What say you?”", "“Sorry I can’t assist you,” the earth-man wrote. “How\n would it be if I were to slap your daughter’s face, or\n something? Or why not try me for general cussedness?”\n\n\n “That is just what we finally decided to do,” the ant-man\n wrote in reply. “We shall try you on general principles,\n and let the proper accusation develop from the evidence.\n\n\n “At some stage of the proceedings it will inevitably occur\n to some member of the council to suggest that you be\n charged with treason to Yuri, whereupon two members of\n the council, whom I have won over to the cause of my\n daughter, will raise the objection that Yuri is not our king.\n This will be the signal for the proclaiming of Queen Formis.\n If you will waive counsel the trial can take place to-morrow.”" ], [ "And then events began to differ from those of the past;\n for the three other Formians halted, and Doggo advanced\n alone. By the agitation of the beast’s antennae the earth\n man could see that it was talking to him. But Myles no\n longer possessed the wonderful electrical headset which he\n had contrived and built during his previous visit to that\n planet, so as to talk with Cupians and Formians, both of\n which races are earless and converse by means of radiations\n from their antennae.\n\n\n So he picked up two sticks from the beach, and held\n them projecting from his forehead; then threw them to the\n ground with a grimace of disgust and pointed to his ears.\n\n\n Doggo understood, and scratched with his paw in Cupian\n shorthand on the silver sands the message: “Myles Cabot,\n you are our prisoner.”\n\n\n “What, again?” scratched Myles, then made a sign of\n submission.\n\n11", "On a raised platform stood the ant queen, surmounted by\n a scarlet canopy, which set off the perfect proportions of\n her jet-black body. On each side of her stood six refined\n and intelligent ant-men, her councillors. One of the twelve\n was Doggo.\n\n\n Messenger ants hurried hither and thither.\n\n\n First the accusation was read, Myles being furnished\n with a written copy.\n\n\n The witnesses were then called. They were veterans who\n had served in the wars in which Cabot had twice freed\n Cupia from the domination of its Formian oppressors.\n They spoke with bitterness of the downfall of their beloved\n Formia. Their testimony was brief.\n\n\n Then the accused was asked if he wished to say anything\n in his own behalf. Myles rose, then shrugged his shoulders,\n sat down again, and wrote: “I fully realize the futility of\n making an argument through the antennae of another.”", "“Then what of your empire?” Myles inquired. “No queen.\n No eggs. How can your race continue? For you Formians are\n like the ants on my own planet Minos.”\n\n\n Doggo’s reply astounded him.\n\n\n “Do you remember back at Wautoosa, I told you that\n some of us lesser Formians had occasionally laid eggs? So\n now behold before you Doggo, Admiral of the Formian\n Air Navy, and mother of a new Queen Formis.”\n\n\n This was truly a surprise! All along Cabot had always\n regarded the Formians as mannish. And rightly so, for they\n performed in their own country the duties assigned to men\n among the Cupians. Furthermore, all Formians, save only\n the reigning Formis herself, were called by the Porovian\n pronoun, which corresponds to “he” in English.", "When Myles had somewhat recovered from his astonishment,\n he warmly congratulated his friend by patting him\n on the side of the head, as is the Porovian custom.\n\n\n “Doggo,” he wrote, “this ought to constitute you a person\n of some importance among the Formians.”\n\n\n “It\nought\nto,” the ant-man replied, “but as a matter of\n fact, it merely intensifies Yuri’s mistrust and hatred of me.\n Now that I am mother of the queen, he fears that I may\n turn against him and establish Formis in his place as the\n head of an empire of the Formians, by the Formians, and\n for the Formians exclusively.”\n\n\n “Why don’t you?” Myles wrote. It seemed to him to be\n a bully good idea, and incidentally a solution of his own\n difficulties.", "With a sweep of his paw, Doggo indicated that this was\n to be Cabot’s quarters. Then, with another wave, he\n pointed to the table, where lay a pad of paper and stylus,\n not a pencil-like stylus as employed by the Cupians, but\n rather one equipped with straps for attaching it to the claw\n of a Formian.\n\n\n Even so, it was better than nothing. The earth-man seized\n it eagerly, but before he could begin writing an ant entered\n bearing a Cupian toga, short-sleeved and bordered with\n Grecian wave designs in blue. Myles put on this garment,\n and then quickly filled a sheet with questions:\n\n\n “How is my princess and my son, the baby king? Whence\n come all you Formians, whose race I thought had been\n exterminated? What part of Cupia is this? What is this city?\n Where is Prince Yuri? And what do you intend to do with\n me\nthis\ntime?”", "“No,” the ant-man wrote in reply.\n\n\n “Have you ever known me to be untrue to a principle,\n a cause, or a friend?”\n\n\n “No,” Doggo replied.\n\n\n “Then,” Myles wrote, “let us make your daughter queen\n in fact as well as in name.”\n\n\n “It is treason,” Doggo wrote in reply, but this time he\n did not tear up the correspondence.\n\n\n “Treason?” Myles asked. If he had spoken the word, he\n would have spoken it with scorn and derision. “Treason?\n Is it treason to support your own queen? What has become\n of the national pride of the once great Formians? Look!\n I pledge myself to the cause of Formis, rightful Queen of\n Formia. Formis, daughter of Doggo! What say you?”", "Finally a small settlement loomed ahead. It was of the\n familiar style of toy-building-block architecture affected by\n the ant-men, and, from its appearance, was very new. On its\n outskirts further building operations were actively in progress.\n Apparently a few survivors of the accursed race of Formians\n were consolidating their position and attempting to build\n up a new empire in some out-of-the-way portion of the continent.\n\n\n As the earth-man was turning these thoughts over in his\n mind the plane softly settled down upon one of the flat\n roofs, and its occupants disembarked. Three of the ants\n advanced menacingly toward Myles, but Doggo held them\n off. Then all of the party descended down one of the ramps\n to the lower levels of the building.", "His immediate problem was to learn what the ant-men\n planned for him; so the concluding words which he wrote\n upon the pad were: “And, now that you have me in your\n power, what shall you do with me?”\n\n\n “Old friend,” Doggo wrote in reply, “that depends entirely\n upon Yuri, our king, whose toga you now have on.”\nIII\n\n YURI OR FORMIS?\nThe earth-man grimaced, but then smiled. Perhaps, his\n succeeding to the toga of King Yuri might prove to be an\n omen.\n\n15\n\n “So Yuri is king of the ants?” he asked.\n\n\n “Yes,” his captor replied, “for Queen Formis did not survive\n the trip across the boiling seas.”", "“We know not,” the Formian wrote in reply. “Six days\n ago he left us in his airship and flew westward. When he\n failed to return, we sent out scout planes to search for\n him, and we have been hunting ever since. When we\n sighted you on the beach this morning we thought that\n you might be our lost leader, and that is why we landed and\n approached you.”\n\n\n At about this point the conversation was interrupted by\n a worker ant who brought food: roast alta and green aphid\n milk. With what relish did the earth-man plunge into the\n feast, his first taste of Porovian delicacies in many months.\n\n\n During the meal conversation lagged, owing to the difficulty\n of writing and eating at the same time. But now\n Myles Cabot seized his pad and stylus and wrote:\n\n\n “Have you ever known me to fail in any undertaking\n on the planet Poros?”", "He dreaded the paralyzing bite which Formians usually\n administer to their victims, and which he had twice experienced\n in the past; but, fortunately, it was not now\n forthcoming.\n\n\n The other three ants kept away from him as Doggo led\n him to the beached airplane, and soon they were scudding\n along beneath silver skies, northward as it later turned out.\n\n\n Far below them were silver-green fields and tangled\n tropical woods, interspersed with rivulets and little ponds.\nThis was Cupia, his Cupia. He was home once more,\n back again upon the planet which held all that was dear\n to him in two worlds.\n\n\n His heart glowed with the warmth of homecoming.\n What mattered it that he was now a prisoner, in the hands\n (or, rather, claws) of his old enemies, the Formians? He\n had been their prisoner before, and had escaped. Once more\n he could escape, and rescue the Princess Lilla.", "With one bound he gained the throne, where fighting\n was already in progress between the two factions. Barth\n and Doggo were rolling over and over on the floor in a\n death grapple, while the ant-queen had backed to the rear\n of the stage, closely guarded by Emu and Fum.\n\n\n Seizing one of the pikes which supported the scarlet\n canopy, Myles wrenched it loose and drove it into the thorax\n of Barth. In another instant the earth-man and Doggo stood\n beside the queen.\n\n\n Ant-men now came pouring into the chamber through all\n the entrances, taking sides as they entered and sized up the\n situation. If it had still been in vogue among the Formians\n to be known by numbers rather than names, and to have\n these identifying numbers painted on the backs of their\n abdomens followed by the numbers of those whom they\n had defeated in the duels so common among them, then\n many a Formian would have “got the number” of many\n another, that day.", "“Sorry I can’t assist you,” the earth-man wrote. “How\n would it be if I were to slap your daughter’s face, or\n something? Or why not try me for general cussedness?”\n\n\n “That is just what we finally decided to do,” the ant-man\n wrote in reply. “We shall try you on general principles,\n and let the proper accusation develop from the evidence.\n\n\n “At some stage of the proceedings it will inevitably occur\n to some member of the council to suggest that you be\n charged with treason to Yuri, whereupon two members of\n the council, whom I have won over to the cause of my\n daughter, will raise the objection that Yuri is not our king.\n This will be the signal for the proclaiming of Queen Formis.\n If you will waive counsel the trial can take place to-morrow.”", "This time, as he tore up the correspondence, Doggo\n signified an affirmative. And thus there resulted further\n correspondence.\n\n17\n\n “Doggo,” Myles wrote, “can you get to the antenna of\n the queen?”\n\n\n The ant-man indicated that he could.\n\n\n “If she has inherited any of your character,” Myles continued,\n “she will assert herself, if given half a chance.”\nSo the Pitmanesque conversation continued. Long since had\n the pink light of Porovian evening faded from the western\n sky. The ceiling vapor-lamps were lit. The night showed velvet-black\n through the slit-like windows. And still the two old\n friends wrote on, Myles Standish Cabot, the Bostonian, and\n Doggo, No. 334-2-18, the only really humanlike ant-man\n whom Myles had ever known among the once dominant\n race of Poros.", "Narrow slitlike window openings gave onto courtyards,\n where fountains played and masses of blue and yellow flowers\n bloomed, amid gray-branched lichens with red and purple\n twig-knobs. It was in just such a garden, through just\n such a window, that he had first looked upon the lovely\n blue-eyed, golden-haired Lilla, Crown Princess of Cupia.\n\n\n The earth-man sighed. Where was his beloved wife now?\n That she needed his help was certain. He must therefore\n get busy. So once again he made motions of writing on the\n palm of his left hand with the thumb and forefinger of his\n right; and this time the sign language produced results,\n for Doggo halted the procession and led Cabot into a room.\n\n13\n\n It was a plain bare room, devoid of any furniture except\n a small table, for ant-men have no use for chairs and\n couches. The sky outside was already beginning to pinken\n with the unseen sun.", "Poor girl! How eager he was to reach her side, and save\n her from that peril, whatever it was, which had caused her\n to flash that “S O S” a hundred million miles across the\n solar system from Poros to the earth.\n\n\n He wondered what could have happened in Cupia since\n his departure, only a few sangths ago. How was it that\n the ant-men had survived their airplane journey across the\n boiling seas? What had led them to return? Or perhaps\n these ants were a group who had hidden somewhere and\n thus had escaped the general extermination of their race.\n In either event, how had they been able to reconquer\n Cupia? And where was their former leader, Yuri, the renegade\n Cupian prince?\n\n\n These and a hundred other similar questions flooded in\n upon the earth-man, as the Formian airship carried him, a\n captive, through the skies.", "Barth: “It is the radio. Know then, O Queen, and ye,\n members of the council, that when we fled across the boiling\n seas under the gallant leadership of Prince Yuri, the man\n with the heart of a Formian, he brought with him one of\n those powerful radio sets invented by the beast who is our\n prisoner here to-day.\n\n\n “Supporters of Yuri still remained among the Cupians,\n and he has been in constant communication with these ever\n since shortly after our arrival here. From them he learned\n of the return of Myles Cabot to the planet Minos.\n\n20\n\n “Then Yuri disappeared. Those of us who were closest\n to him suspected that he had gone back across the boiling\n seas to claim as his own the throne of Cupia. But we hesitated\n to announce this until we were sure, for we feared that\n some of our own people would regard his departure as\n desertion. Yet who can blame him for returning to his father-land\n and to the throne which is his by rights?”", "Finally, as the dials indicated midnight, the two conspirators\n ceased their labors. All was arranged for the\ncoup d’ etat\n.\n\n\n They tore into shreds every scrap of used paper, leaving\n extant merely the ant-man’s concluding words: “Meanwhile\n you are my prisoner.”\n\n\n Doggo then rang a soundless bell, which was answered\n by a worker ant, whom he inaudibly directed to bring\n sufficient draperies to form a bed for the earth-man. These\n brought, the two friends patted each other a fond good\n night, and the tired earth-man lay down for the first sleep\n which he had had in over forty earth hours.", "But Doggo wrote in horror, “It would be treason!” Then\n tore up all the correspondence. It is difficult to inculcate the\n thought of independence in the mind of one reared in an\n autocracy.\n\n\n The earth-man, however, persisted.\n\n\n “How many of the council can you count on, if the interests\n of Yuri should clash with those of Formis?”\n\n16\n\n “Only one—myself.”\n\n\n And again Doggo tore up the correspondence.\n\n\n Myles tactfully changed the subject.\n\n\n “Where is the arch-fiend now?” he asked.", "Then he passed the paper and stylus over to his old\n friend Doggo. They were alone together at last.\nThe ant-man’s reply consumed sheet after sheet of paper;\n but, owning to the rapidity of Porovian shorthand, did not\n take so very much more time than speaking would have\n required. As he completed each sheet he passed it over to\n Myles, who read as follows:\n\n\n “As to your princess and your son, I know not, for this\n is not Cupia. Do you remember how, when your victorious\n army and air navy swept to the southern extremity of what\n had been Formia, a few of our survivors rose in planes from\n the ruins of our last stronghold and braved the dangers\n of the steam clouds which overhang the boiling seas? Our\n leader was Prince Yuri, erstwhile contender for the throne\n of Cupia, splendid even in defeat.", "“It was his brain that conceived our daring plan of\n escape. If there were other lands beyond the boiling seas,\n the lands which tradition taught were the origin of the\n Cupian race, then there we might prosper and raise up a\n new empire. At the worst we should merely meet death in\n another form, rather than at your hands. So we essayed.\n\n14\n\n “Your planes followed us, but turned back as we neared\n the area of terrific heat. Soon the vapor closed over us,\n blotting our enemies and our native land from view.”\n\n\n For page after page Doggo, the ant-man, related the\n harrowing details of that perilous flight across the boiling\n seas, ending with the words:" ], [ "“Here we are, and here are you, in Yuriana, capitol of\n New Formia. But how is it that you, Myles Cabot, have\n arrived here on this continent in exactly the same manner\n and condition in which I discovered you in\nold\nFormia\n eight years ago?”\n\n\n When Myles reached the end of reading this narrative, he\n in turn took the pad and stylus and related how he had\n gone to the planet Minos (which we call the Earth) to learn\n the latest discoveries and inventions there, and how his\n calculations for his return to Poros had been upset by some\n static conditions just as he had been about to transmit\n himself back. Oh, if only he had landed by chance upon\n the same beach as on his first journey through the skies!\n\n\n Wisely he refrained from mentioning the “S O S” message\n from Lilla. But his recollection of her predicament\n spurred him to be anxious about her rescue.", "“We know not,” the Formian wrote in reply. “Six days\n ago he left us in his airship and flew westward. When he\n failed to return, we sent out scout planes to search for\n him, and we have been hunting ever since. When we\n sighted you on the beach this morning we thought that\n you might be our lost leader, and that is why we landed and\n approached you.”\n\n\n At about this point the conversation was interrupted by\n a worker ant who brought food: roast alta and green aphid\n milk. With what relish did the earth-man plunge into the\n feast, his first taste of Porovian delicacies in many months.\n\n\n During the meal conversation lagged, owing to the difficulty\n of writing and eating at the same time. But now\n Myles Cabot seized his pad and stylus and wrote:\n\n\n “Have you ever known me to fail in any undertaking\n on the planet Poros?”", "As he stood thus expectant, Myles realized that his present\n position and condition, the surrounding scenery, and the advance\n of the ant-men were exactly, item for item, like the\n opening events of his first arrival on the planet Poros. He\n even recognized one of the ant-men as old Doggo, who had\n befriended him on his previous visit.\n\n\n Could it be that all his adventures in Cupia had been\n naught but a dream; a recurring dream, in fact? Were his\n dear wife Lilla and his little son Kew merely figments of\n his imagination? Horrible thought!", "This time, as he tore up the correspondence, Doggo\n signified an affirmative. And thus there resulted further\n correspondence.\n\n17\n\n “Doggo,” Myles wrote, “can you get to the antenna of\n the queen?”\n\n\n The ant-man indicated that he could.\n\n\n “If she has inherited any of your character,” Myles continued,\n “she will assert herself, if given half a chance.”\nSo the Pitmanesque conversation continued. Long since had\n the pink light of Porovian evening faded from the western\n sky. The ceiling vapor-lamps were lit. The night showed velvet-black\n through the slit-like windows. And still the two old\n friends wrote on, Myles Standish Cabot, the Bostonian, and\n Doggo, No. 334-2-18, the only really humanlike ant-man\n whom Myles had ever known among the once dominant\n race of Poros.", "When Myles had somewhat recovered from his astonishment,\n he warmly congratulated his friend by patting him\n on the side of the head, as is the Porovian custom.\n\n\n “Doggo,” he wrote, “this ought to constitute you a person\n of some importance among the Formians.”\n\n\n “It\nought\nto,” the ant-man replied, “but as a matter of\n fact, it merely intensifies Yuri’s mistrust and hatred of me.\n Now that I am mother of the queen, he fears that I may\n turn against him and establish Formis in his place as the\n head of an empire of the Formians, by the Formians, and\n for the Formians exclusively.”\n\n\n “Why don’t you?” Myles wrote. It seemed to him to be\n a bully good idea, and incidentally a solution of his own\n difficulties.", "During his stay on my farm, Cabot had built the matter-transmitting\n apparatus, with which he had shot himself off\n into space on that October night on which he had received\n the message from the skies: “S O S, Lilla.” A thunderstorm\n had been brewing all that evening, and just as Myles\n had placed himself between the coordinate axes of his machine\n and had gathered up the strings which ran from his\n control levers to within the apparatus, there had come a\n blinding flash. Lightning had struck his aerial.\n\n\n How long his unconsciousness lasted he knew not. He\n was some time in regaining his senses. But when he had\n finally and fully recovered, he found himself lying on a\n sandy beach beside a calm and placid lake beneath a silver\n sky.\n\n\n He fell to wondering, vaguely and pleasantly, where he\n was and how he had got here.", "Interplanetary communication was an established fact at\n last! And not with Mars after all these years of scientific\n speculations. But what meant more to me was that I was\n again in touch with my classmate Myles Standish Cabot,\n the radio man.\n\n\n The next day a party of prominent scientists, accompanied\n by a telegrapher and two stenographers, arrived at my\n farm.\n\n\n During the weeks that followed there was recorded\n Myles’s own account of the amazing adventures on the planet\n Venus (or Poros, as its own inhabitants call it,)\n which befell him upon his return there after his brief visit\n to the earth. I have edited those notes into the following\n coherent story.\nII", "Then he passed the paper and stylus over to his old\n friend Doggo. They were alone together at last.\nThe ant-man’s reply consumed sheet after sheet of paper;\n but, owning to the rapidity of Porovian shorthand, did not\n take so very much more time than speaking would have\n required. As he completed each sheet he passed it over to\n Myles, who read as follows:\n\n\n “As to your princess and your son, I know not, for this\n is not Cupia. Do you remember how, when your victorious\n army and air navy swept to the southern extremity of what\n had been Formia, a few of our survivors rose in planes from\n the ruins of our last stronghold and braved the dangers\n of the steam clouds which overhang the boiling seas? Our\n leader was Prince Yuri, erstwhile contender for the throne\n of Cupia, splendid even in defeat.", "TOO MUCH STATIC\nMyles Cabot had returned to the earth to study the\n latest developments of modern terrestrial science for the\n benefit of the Cupian nation. He was the regent of Cupia\n during the minority of his baby son, King Kew the\n Thirteenth. The loyal Prince Toron occupied the throne in his\n absence. The last of the ant-men and their ally, the renegade\n Cupian Prince Yuri, had presumably perished in an attempt\n to escape by flying through the steam-clouds which completely\n hem in continental Poros. What lay beyond the\n boiling seas no man knew.\n\n9", "He gazed again at the scene below, and now noted one\n difference from the accustomed Porovian landscape, for nowhere\n ran the smooth concrete roads which bear the swift\n two-wheeled kerkools of the Cupians to all parts of their\n continent. What uninhabited portion of Cupia could this be,\n over which they were now passing?\n\n12\n\n Turning to Doggo, Myles extended his left palm, and\n made a motion as though writing on it with the thumb\n and forefinger of his right hand. But the ant-man waved\n a negative with one of his forepaws. It was evident that\n there were no writing materials aboard the ship. Myles\n would have to wait until they reached their landing place;\n for doubtless they would soon hover down in some city\n or town, though just which one he could not guess, as the\n country below was wholly unfamiliar.", "“I will waive anything,” Myles replied, “counsel, immunity,\n extradition, anything in order to speed up my return\n to Cupia, where Lilla awaits in some dire extremity.”\n\n\n “All right,” Doggo wrote, and the conference was at an\n end. The morrow would decide the ascendancy of Myles\n Cabot or the Prince Yuri over the new continent.\nIV\n\n THE COUP D’ETAT\nThe next morning Myles Cabot was led under guard to the\n council chamber of the dread thirteen: Formis and her\n twelve advisers. The accused was placed in a wicker cage,\n from which he surveyed his surroundings as the proceedings\n opened.\n\n19", "“Well,” he said, “in view of the fact that I am one of\n the few people among your readers who take your radio\n stories seriously, I think that Hammond is getting Venus.\n Can you run up here and help me try and convince him?”\n\n\n And so it was that I took the early boat next morning\n for Boston, and had lunch with the two professors.\nAs a result of our conference, a small committee of engineers\n returned with me to Edgartown that evening for\n the purpose of trying to repair the wrecked radio set which\n Myles Cabot had left on my farm.\n\n\n They utterly failed to comprehend the matter-transmitting\n apparatus, and so—after the fallen tower had been reerected\n and the rubbish cleared away—they had devoted their attention\n to the restoration of the conversational part of the set.", "And then events began to differ from those of the past;\n for the three other Formians halted, and Doggo advanced\n alone. By the agitation of the beast’s antennae the earth\n man could see that it was talking to him. But Myles no\n longer possessed the wonderful electrical headset which he\n had contrived and built during his previous visit to that\n planet, so as to talk with Cupians and Formians, both of\n which races are earless and converse by means of radiations\n from their antennae.\n\n\n So he picked up two sticks from the beach, and held\n them projecting from his forehead; then threw them to the\n ground with a grimace of disgust and pointed to his ears.\n\n\n Doggo understood, and scratched with his paw in Cupian\n shorthand on the silver sands the message: “Myles Cabot,\n you are our prisoner.”\n\n\n “What, again?” scratched Myles, then made a sign of\n submission.\n\n11", "To which the messenger added: “And he offers to give us\n back our own old country, if we too will return across the\n boiling seas again.”\n\n\n “It is a lie!” Doggo shouted.\n\n\n “Yuri, usurper of the thrones of two continents. Bah!”\n shouted Emu.\n\n\n “Yuri, our rightful leader,” shouted Barth.\n\n\n “Give us a queen of our own race,” shouted Fum.\n\n\n “Release the prisoner,” shouted the Queen.\n\n\n And that is all that Myles learned of the conversation,\n for his interpreter at this juncture stopped writing and\n obeyed the queen. The earth-man was free!", "With a sweep of his paw, Doggo indicated that this was\n to be Cabot’s quarters. Then, with another wave, he\n pointed to the table, where lay a pad of paper and stylus,\n not a pencil-like stylus as employed by the Cupians, but\n rather one equipped with straps for attaching it to the claw\n of a Formian.\n\n\n Even so, it was better than nothing. The earth-man seized\n it eagerly, but before he could begin writing an ant entered\n bearing a Cupian toga, short-sleeved and bordered with\n Grecian wave designs in blue. Myles put on this garment,\n and then quickly filled a sheet with questions:\n\n\n “How is my princess and my son, the baby king? Whence\n come all you Formians, whose race I thought had been\n exterminated? What part of Cupia is this? What is this city?\n Where is Prince Yuri? And what do you intend to do with\n me\nthis\ntime?”", "Barth: “It is the radio. Know then, O Queen, and ye,\n members of the council, that when we fled across the boiling\n seas under the gallant leadership of Prince Yuri, the man\n with the heart of a Formian, he brought with him one of\n those powerful radio sets invented by the beast who is our\n prisoner here to-day.\n\n\n “Supporters of Yuri still remained among the Cupians,\n and he has been in constant communication with these ever\n since shortly after our arrival here. From them he learned\n of the return of Myles Cabot to the planet Minos.\n\n20\n\n “Then Yuri disappeared. Those of us who were closest\n to him suspected that he had gone back across the boiling\n seas to claim as his own the throne of Cupia. But we hesitated\n to announce this until we were sure, for we feared that\n some of our own people would regard his departure as\n desertion. Yet who can blame him for returning to his father-land\n and to the throne which is his by rights?”", "Suddenly, however, his ears were jarred by a familiar\n sound. At once his senses cleared, and he listened intently\n to the distant purring of a motor. Yes, there could be no\n mistake; an airplane was approaching. Now he could see\n it, a speck in the sky, far down the beach.\n\n\n Nearer and nearer it came.\n\n\n Myles sprang to his feet. To his intense surprise, he found\n that the effort threw him quite a distance into the air. Instantly\n the idea flashed through his mind: “I must be on\n Mars! Or some other strange planet.” This idea was vaguely\n reminiscent of something.", "On a raised platform stood the ant queen, surmounted by\n a scarlet canopy, which set off the perfect proportions of\n her jet-black body. On each side of her stood six refined\n and intelligent ant-men, her councillors. One of the twelve\n was Doggo.\n\n\n Messenger ants hurried hither and thither.\n\n\n First the accusation was read, Myles being furnished\n with a written copy.\n\n\n The witnesses were then called. They were veterans who\n had served in the wars in which Cabot had twice freed\n Cupia from the domination of its Formian oppressors.\n They spoke with bitterness of the downfall of their beloved\n Formia. Their testimony was brief.\n\n\n Then the accused was asked if he wished to say anything\n in his own behalf. Myles rose, then shrugged his shoulders,\n sat down again, and wrote: “I fully realize the futility of\n making an argument through the antennae of another.”", "Poor girl! How eager he was to reach her side, and save\n her from that peril, whatever it was, which had caused her\n to flash that “S O S” a hundred million miles across the\n solar system from Poros to the earth.\n\n\n He wondered what could have happened in Cupia since\n his departure, only a few sangths ago. How was it that\n the ant-men had survived their airplane journey across the\n boiling seas? What had led them to return? Or perhaps\n these ants were a group who had hidden somewhere and\n thus had escaped the general extermination of their race.\n In either event, how had they been able to reconquer\n Cupia? And where was their former leader, Yuri, the renegade\n Cupian prince?\n\n\n These and a hundred other similar questions flooded in\n upon the earth-man, as the Formian airship carried him, a\n captive, through the skies.", "Twelve months ago he would have been available, for\n he was then quietly visiting at my farm, after five earth-years\n spent on the planet Venus, where, by the aid of radio,\n he had led the Cupians to victory over their oppressors,\n a human-brained race of gigantic black ants. He had driven\n the last ant from the face of continental Poros, and had\n won and wed the Princess Lilla, who had borne him a son\n to occupy the throne of Cupia.\n\n\n While at my farm Cabot had rigged up a huge radio\n set and a matter-transmitting apparatus, with which he had\n (presumably) shot himself back to Poros on the night of the\n big October storm which had wrecked his installation.\n\n\n I showed the newspaper item to Mrs. Farley, and lamented\n on Cabot’s absence. Her response opened up an\n entirely new line of thought." ], [ "His immediate problem was to learn what the ant-men\n planned for him; so the concluding words which he wrote\n upon the pad were: “And, now that you have me in your\n power, what shall you do with me?”\n\n\n “Old friend,” Doggo wrote in reply, “that depends entirely\n upon Yuri, our king, whose toga you now have on.”\nIII\n\n YURI OR FORMIS?\nThe earth-man grimaced, but then smiled. Perhaps, his\n succeeding to the toga of King Yuri might prove to be an\n omen.\n\n15\n\n “So Yuri is king of the ants?” he asked.\n\n\n “Yes,” his captor replied, “for Queen Formis did not survive\n the trip across the boiling seas.”", "When Myles had somewhat recovered from his astonishment,\n he warmly congratulated his friend by patting him\n on the side of the head, as is the Porovian custom.\n\n\n “Doggo,” he wrote, “this ought to constitute you a person\n of some importance among the Formians.”\n\n\n “It\nought\nto,” the ant-man replied, “but as a matter of\n fact, it merely intensifies Yuri’s mistrust and hatred of me.\n Now that I am mother of the queen, he fears that I may\n turn against him and establish Formis in his place as the\n head of an empire of the Formians, by the Formians, and\n for the Formians exclusively.”\n\n\n “Why don’t you?” Myles wrote. It seemed to him to be\n a bully good idea, and incidentally a solution of his own\n difficulties.", "“No,” the ant-man wrote in reply.\n\n\n “Have you ever known me to be untrue to a principle,\n a cause, or a friend?”\n\n\n “No,” Doggo replied.\n\n\n “Then,” Myles wrote, “let us make your daughter queen\n in fact as well as in name.”\n\n\n “It is treason,” Doggo wrote in reply, but this time he\n did not tear up the correspondence.\n\n\n “Treason?” Myles asked. If he had spoken the word, he\n would have spoken it with scorn and derision. “Treason?\n Is it treason to support your own queen? What has become\n of the national pride of the once great Formians? Look!\n I pledge myself to the cause of Formis, rightful Queen of\n Formia. Formis, daughter of Doggo! What say you?”", "“Sorry I can’t assist you,” the earth-man wrote. “How\n would it be if I were to slap your daughter’s face, or\n something? Or why not try me for general cussedness?”\n\n\n “That is just what we finally decided to do,” the ant-man\n wrote in reply. “We shall try you on general principles,\n and let the proper accusation develop from the evidence.\n\n\n “At some stage of the proceedings it will inevitably occur\n to some member of the council to suggest that you be\n charged with treason to Yuri, whereupon two members of\n the council, whom I have won over to the cause of my\n daughter, will raise the objection that Yuri is not our king.\n This will be the signal for the proclaiming of Queen Formis.\n If you will waive counsel the trial can take place to-morrow.”", "On a raised platform stood the ant queen, surmounted by\n a scarlet canopy, which set off the perfect proportions of\n her jet-black body. On each side of her stood six refined\n and intelligent ant-men, her councillors. One of the twelve\n was Doggo.\n\n\n Messenger ants hurried hither and thither.\n\n\n First the accusation was read, Myles being furnished\n with a written copy.\n\n\n The witnesses were then called. They were veterans who\n had served in the wars in which Cabot had twice freed\n Cupia from the domination of its Formian oppressors.\n They spoke with bitterness of the downfall of their beloved\n Formia. Their testimony was brief.\n\n\n Then the accused was asked if he wished to say anything\n in his own behalf. Myles rose, then shrugged his shoulders,\n sat down again, and wrote: “I fully realize the futility of\n making an argument through the antennae of another.”", "With one bound he gained the throne, where fighting\n was already in progress between the two factions. Barth\n and Doggo were rolling over and over on the floor in a\n death grapple, while the ant-queen had backed to the rear\n of the stage, closely guarded by Emu and Fum.\n\n\n Seizing one of the pikes which supported the scarlet\n canopy, Myles wrenched it loose and drove it into the thorax\n of Barth. In another instant the earth-man and Doggo stood\n beside the queen.\n\n\n Ant-men now came pouring into the chamber through all\n the entrances, taking sides as they entered and sized up the\n situation. If it had still been in vogue among the Formians\n to be known by numbers rather than names, and to have\n these identifying numbers painted on the backs of their\n abdomens followed by the numbers of those whom they\n had defeated in the duels so common among them, then\n many a Formian would have “got the number” of many\n another, that day.", "“Then what of your empire?” Myles inquired. “No queen.\n No eggs. How can your race continue? For you Formians are\n like the ants on my own planet Minos.”\n\n\n Doggo’s reply astounded him.\n\n\n “Do you remember back at Wautoosa, I told you that\n some of us lesser Formians had occasionally laid eggs? So\n now behold before you Doggo, Admiral of the Formian\n Air Navy, and mother of a new Queen Formis.”\n\n\n This was truly a surprise! All along Cabot had always\n regarded the Formians as mannish. And rightly so, for they\n performed in their own country the duties assigned to men\n among the Cupians. Furthermore, all Formians, save only\n the reigning Formis herself, were called by the Porovian\n pronoun, which corresponds to “he” in English.", "Whereupon the queen and the council went into executive\n session. Their remarks were not intended for the eyes\n of the prisoner, but he soon observed that some kind of a\n dispute was on between Doggo, supported by two councillors\n named Emu and Fum on one side, and a councillor named\n Barth on the other.\n\n\n As this dispute reached its height, a messenger ant rushed\n in and held up one paw. Cabot’s interpreter, not deeming\n this a part of the executive session, obligingly translated the\n following into writing:\n\n\n The messenger: “Yuri lives and reigns over Cupia. It is his\n command that Cabot die.”", "With a sweep of his paw, Doggo indicated that this was\n to be Cabot’s quarters. Then, with another wave, he\n pointed to the table, where lay a pad of paper and stylus,\n not a pencil-like stylus as employed by the Cupians, but\n rather one equipped with straps for attaching it to the claw\n of a Formian.\n\n\n Even so, it was better than nothing. The earth-man seized\n it eagerly, but before he could begin writing an ant entered\n bearing a Cupian toga, short-sleeved and bordered with\n Grecian wave designs in blue. Myles put on this garment,\n and then quickly filled a sheet with questions:\n\n\n “How is my princess and my son, the baby king? Whence\n come all you Formians, whose race I thought had been\n exterminated? What part of Cupia is this? What is this city?\n Where is Prince Yuri? And what do you intend to do with\n me\nthis\ntime?”", "Then he passed the paper and stylus over to his old\n friend Doggo. They were alone together at last.\nThe ant-man’s reply consumed sheet after sheet of paper;\n but, owning to the rapidity of Porovian shorthand, did not\n take so very much more time than speaking would have\n required. As he completed each sheet he passed it over to\n Myles, who read as follows:\n\n\n “As to your princess and your son, I know not, for this\n is not Cupia. Do you remember how, when your victorious\n army and air navy swept to the southern extremity of what\n had been Formia, a few of our survivors rose in planes from\n the ruins of our last stronghold and braved the dangers\n of the steam clouds which overhang the boiling seas? Our\n leader was Prince Yuri, erstwhile contender for the throne\n of Cupia, splendid even in defeat.", "But Doggo wrote in horror, “It would be treason!” Then\n tore up all the correspondence. It is difficult to inculcate the\n thought of independence in the mind of one reared in an\n autocracy.\n\n\n The earth-man, however, persisted.\n\n\n “How many of the council can you count on, if the interests\n of Yuri should clash with those of Formis?”\n\n16\n\n “Only one—myself.”\n\n\n And again Doggo tore up the correspondence.\n\n\n Myles tactfully changed the subject.\n\n\n “Where is the arch-fiend now?” he asked.", "Barth: “It is the radio. Know then, O Queen, and ye,\n members of the council, that when we fled across the boiling\n seas under the gallant leadership of Prince Yuri, the man\n with the heart of a Formian, he brought with him one of\n those powerful radio sets invented by the beast who is our\n prisoner here to-day.\n\n\n “Supporters of Yuri still remained among the Cupians,\n and he has been in constant communication with these ever\n since shortly after our arrival here. From them he learned\n of the return of Myles Cabot to the planet Minos.\n\n20\n\n “Then Yuri disappeared. Those of us who were closest\n to him suspected that he had gone back across the boiling\n seas to claim as his own the throne of Cupia. But we hesitated\n to announce this until we were sure, for we feared that\n some of our own people would regard his departure as\n desertion. Yet who can blame him for returning to his father-land\n and to the throne which is his by rights?”", "He dreaded the paralyzing bite which Formians usually\n administer to their victims, and which he had twice experienced\n in the past; but, fortunately, it was not now\n forthcoming.\n\n\n The other three ants kept away from him as Doggo led\n him to the beached airplane, and soon they were scudding\n along beneath silver skies, northward as it later turned out.\n\n\n Far below them were silver-green fields and tangled\n tropical woods, interspersed with rivulets and little ponds.\nThis was Cupia, his Cupia. He was home once more,\n back again upon the planet which held all that was dear\n to him in two worlds.\n\n\n His heart glowed with the warmth of homecoming.\n What mattered it that he was now a prisoner, in the hands\n (or, rather, claws) of his old enemies, the Formians? He\n had been their prisoner before, and had escaped. Once more\n he could escape, and rescue the Princess Lilla.", "Poor girl! How eager he was to reach her side, and save\n her from that peril, whatever it was, which had caused her\n to flash that “S O S” a hundred million miles across the\n solar system from Poros to the earth.\n\n\n He wondered what could have happened in Cupia since\n his departure, only a few sangths ago. How was it that\n the ant-men had survived their airplane journey across the\n boiling seas? What had led them to return? Or perhaps\n these ants were a group who had hidden somewhere and\n thus had escaped the general extermination of their race.\n In either event, how had they been able to reconquer\n Cupia? And where was their former leader, Yuri, the renegade\n Cupian prince?\n\n\n These and a hundred other similar questions flooded in\n upon the earth-man, as the Formian airship carried him, a\n captive, through the skies.", "Finally a small settlement loomed ahead. It was of the\n familiar style of toy-building-block architecture affected by\n the ant-men, and, from its appearance, was very new. On its\n outskirts further building operations were actively in progress.\n Apparently a few survivors of the accursed race of Formians\n were consolidating their position and attempting to build\n up a new empire in some out-of-the-way portion of the continent.\n\n\n As the earth-man was turning these thoughts over in his\n mind the plane softly settled down upon one of the flat\n roofs, and its occupants disembarked. Three of the ants\n advanced menacingly toward Myles, but Doggo held them\n off. Then all of the party descended down one of the ramps\n to the lower levels of the building.", "“We know not,” the Formian wrote in reply. “Six days\n ago he left us in his airship and flew westward. When he\n failed to return, we sent out scout planes to search for\n him, and we have been hunting ever since. When we\n sighted you on the beach this morning we thought that\n you might be our lost leader, and that is why we landed and\n approached you.”\n\n\n At about this point the conversation was interrupted by\n a worker ant who brought food: roast alta and green aphid\n milk. With what relish did the earth-man plunge into the\n feast, his first taste of Porovian delicacies in many months.\n\n\n During the meal conversation lagged, owing to the difficulty\n of writing and eating at the same time. But now\n Myles Cabot seized his pad and stylus and wrote:\n\n\n “Have you ever known me to fail in any undertaking\n on the planet Poros?”", "This time, as he tore up the correspondence, Doggo\n signified an affirmative. And thus there resulted further\n correspondence.\n\n17\n\n “Doggo,” Myles wrote, “can you get to the antenna of\n the queen?”\n\n\n The ant-man indicated that he could.\n\n\n “If she has inherited any of your character,” Myles continued,\n “she will assert herself, if given half a chance.”\nSo the Pitmanesque conversation continued. Long since had\n the pink light of Porovian evening faded from the western\n sky. The ceiling vapor-lamps were lit. The night showed velvet-black\n through the slit-like windows. And still the two old\n friends wrote on, Myles Standish Cabot, the Bostonian, and\n Doggo, No. 334-2-18, the only really humanlike ant-man\n whom Myles had ever known among the once dominant\n race of Poros.", "And then events began to differ from those of the past;\n for the three other Formians halted, and Doggo advanced\n alone. By the agitation of the beast’s antennae the earth\n man could see that it was talking to him. But Myles no\n longer possessed the wonderful electrical headset which he\n had contrived and built during his previous visit to that\n planet, so as to talk with Cupians and Formians, both of\n which races are earless and converse by means of radiations\n from their antennae.\n\n\n So he picked up two sticks from the beach, and held\n them projecting from his forehead; then threw them to the\n ground with a grimace of disgust and pointed to his ears.\n\n\n Doggo understood, and scratched with his paw in Cupian\n shorthand on the silver sands the message: “Myles Cabot,\n you are our prisoner.”\n\n\n “What, again?” scratched Myles, then made a sign of\n submission.\n\n11", "Narrow slitlike window openings gave onto courtyards,\n where fountains played and masses of blue and yellow flowers\n bloomed, amid gray-branched lichens with red and purple\n twig-knobs. It was in just such a garden, through just\n such a window, that he had first looked upon the lovely\n blue-eyed, golden-haired Lilla, Crown Princess of Cupia.\n\n\n The earth-man sighed. Where was his beloved wife now?\n That she needed his help was certain. He must therefore\n get busy. So once again he made motions of writing on the\n palm of his left hand with the thumb and forefinger of his\n right; and this time the sign language produced results,\n for Doggo halted the procession and led Cabot into a room.\n\n13\n\n It was a plain bare room, devoid of any furniture except\n a small table, for ant-men have no use for chairs and\n couches. The sky outside was already beginning to pinken\n with the unseen sun.", "Finally, as the dials indicated midnight, the two conspirators\n ceased their labors. All was arranged for the\ncoup d’ etat\n.\n\n\n They tore into shreds every scrap of used paper, leaving\n extant merely the ant-man’s concluding words: “Meanwhile\n you are my prisoner.”\n\n\n Doggo then rang a soundless bell, which was answered\n by a worker ant, whom he inaudibly directed to bring\n sufficient draperies to form a bed for the earth-man. These\n brought, the two friends patted each other a fond good\n night, and the tired earth-man lay down for the first sleep\n which he had had in over forty earth hours." ], [ "With a sweep of his paw, Doggo indicated that this was\n to be Cabot’s quarters. Then, with another wave, he\n pointed to the table, where lay a pad of paper and stylus,\n not a pencil-like stylus as employed by the Cupians, but\n rather one equipped with straps for attaching it to the claw\n of a Formian.\n\n\n Even so, it was better than nothing. The earth-man seized\n it eagerly, but before he could begin writing an ant entered\n bearing a Cupian toga, short-sleeved and bordered with\n Grecian wave designs in blue. Myles put on this garment,\n and then quickly filled a sheet with questions:\n\n\n “How is my princess and my son, the baby king? Whence\n come all you Formians, whose race I thought had been\n exterminated? What part of Cupia is this? What is this city?\n Where is Prince Yuri? And what do you intend to do with\n me\nthis\ntime?”", "And then events began to differ from those of the past;\n for the three other Formians halted, and Doggo advanced\n alone. By the agitation of the beast’s antennae the earth\n man could see that it was talking to him. But Myles no\n longer possessed the wonderful electrical headset which he\n had contrived and built during his previous visit to that\n planet, so as to talk with Cupians and Formians, both of\n which races are earless and converse by means of radiations\n from their antennae.\n\n\n So he picked up two sticks from the beach, and held\n them projecting from his forehead; then threw them to the\n ground with a grimace of disgust and pointed to his ears.\n\n\n Doggo understood, and scratched with his paw in Cupian\n shorthand on the silver sands the message: “Myles Cabot,\n you are our prisoner.”\n\n\n “What, again?” scratched Myles, then made a sign of\n submission.\n\n11", "“Then what of your empire?” Myles inquired. “No queen.\n No eggs. How can your race continue? For you Formians are\n like the ants on my own planet Minos.”\n\n\n Doggo’s reply astounded him.\n\n\n “Do you remember back at Wautoosa, I told you that\n some of us lesser Formians had occasionally laid eggs? So\n now behold before you Doggo, Admiral of the Formian\n Air Navy, and mother of a new Queen Formis.”\n\n\n This was truly a surprise! All along Cabot had always\n regarded the Formians as mannish. And rightly so, for they\n performed in their own country the duties assigned to men\n among the Cupians. Furthermore, all Formians, save only\n the reigning Formis herself, were called by the Porovian\n pronoun, which corresponds to “he” in English.", "On a raised platform stood the ant queen, surmounted by\n a scarlet canopy, which set off the perfect proportions of\n her jet-black body. On each side of her stood six refined\n and intelligent ant-men, her councillors. One of the twelve\n was Doggo.\n\n\n Messenger ants hurried hither and thither.\n\n\n First the accusation was read, Myles being furnished\n with a written copy.\n\n\n The witnesses were then called. They were veterans who\n had served in the wars in which Cabot had twice freed\n Cupia from the domination of its Formian oppressors.\n They spoke with bitterness of the downfall of their beloved\n Formia. Their testimony was brief.\n\n\n Then the accused was asked if he wished to say anything\n in his own behalf. Myles rose, then shrugged his shoulders,\n sat down again, and wrote: “I fully realize the futility of\n making an argument through the antennae of another.”", "He dreaded the paralyzing bite which Formians usually\n administer to their victims, and which he had twice experienced\n in the past; but, fortunately, it was not now\n forthcoming.\n\n\n The other three ants kept away from him as Doggo led\n him to the beached airplane, and soon they were scudding\n along beneath silver skies, northward as it later turned out.\n\n\n Far below them were silver-green fields and tangled\n tropical woods, interspersed with rivulets and little ponds.\nThis was Cupia, his Cupia. He was home once more,\n back again upon the planet which held all that was dear\n to him in two worlds.\n\n\n His heart glowed with the warmth of homecoming.\n What mattered it that he was now a prisoner, in the hands\n (or, rather, claws) of his old enemies, the Formians? He\n had been their prisoner before, and had escaped. Once more\n he could escape, and rescue the Princess Lilla.", "Poor girl! How eager he was to reach her side, and save\n her from that peril, whatever it was, which had caused her\n to flash that “S O S” a hundred million miles across the\n solar system from Poros to the earth.\n\n\n He wondered what could have happened in Cupia since\n his departure, only a few sangths ago. How was it that\n the ant-men had survived their airplane journey across the\n boiling seas? What had led them to return? Or perhaps\n these ants were a group who had hidden somewhere and\n thus had escaped the general extermination of their race.\n In either event, how had they been able to reconquer\n Cupia? And where was their former leader, Yuri, the renegade\n Cupian prince?\n\n\n These and a hundred other similar questions flooded in\n upon the earth-man, as the Formian airship carried him, a\n captive, through the skies.", "Then he passed the paper and stylus over to his old\n friend Doggo. They were alone together at last.\nThe ant-man’s reply consumed sheet after sheet of paper;\n but, owning to the rapidity of Porovian shorthand, did not\n take so very much more time than speaking would have\n required. As he completed each sheet he passed it over to\n Myles, who read as follows:\n\n\n “As to your princess and your son, I know not, for this\n is not Cupia. Do you remember how, when your victorious\n army and air navy swept to the southern extremity of what\n had been Formia, a few of our survivors rose in planes from\n the ruins of our last stronghold and braved the dangers\n of the steam clouds which overhang the boiling seas? Our\n leader was Prince Yuri, erstwhile contender for the throne\n of Cupia, splendid even in defeat.", "Barth: “It is the radio. Know then, O Queen, and ye,\n members of the council, that when we fled across the boiling\n seas under the gallant leadership of Prince Yuri, the man\n with the heart of a Formian, he brought with him one of\n those powerful radio sets invented by the beast who is our\n prisoner here to-day.\n\n\n “Supporters of Yuri still remained among the Cupians,\n and he has been in constant communication with these ever\n since shortly after our arrival here. From them he learned\n of the return of Myles Cabot to the planet Minos.\n\n20\n\n “Then Yuri disappeared. Those of us who were closest\n to him suspected that he had gone back across the boiling\n seas to claim as his own the throne of Cupia. But we hesitated\n to announce this until we were sure, for we feared that\n some of our own people would regard his departure as\n desertion. Yet who can blame him for returning to his father-land\n and to the throne which is his by rights?”", "“It was his brain that conceived our daring plan of\n escape. If there were other lands beyond the boiling seas,\n the lands which tradition taught were the origin of the\n Cupian race, then there we might prosper and raise up a\n new empire. At the worst we should merely meet death in\n another form, rather than at your hands. So we essayed.\n\n14\n\n “Your planes followed us, but turned back as we neared\n the area of terrific heat. Soon the vapor closed over us,\n blotting our enemies and our native land from view.”\n\n\n For page after page Doggo, the ant-man, related the\n harrowing details of that perilous flight across the boiling\n seas, ending with the words:", "He gazed again at the scene below, and now noted one\n difference from the accustomed Porovian landscape, for nowhere\n ran the smooth concrete roads which bear the swift\n two-wheeled kerkools of the Cupians to all parts of their\n continent. What uninhabited portion of Cupia could this be,\n over which they were now passing?\n\n12\n\n Turning to Doggo, Myles extended his left palm, and\n made a motion as though writing on it with the thumb\n and forefinger of his right hand. But the ant-man waved\n a negative with one of his forepaws. It was evident that\n there were no writing materials aboard the ship. Myles\n would have to wait until they reached their landing place;\n for doubtless they would soon hover down in some city\n or town, though just which one he could not guess, as the\n country below was wholly unfamiliar.", "“Sorry I can’t assist you,” the earth-man wrote. “How\n would it be if I were to slap your daughter’s face, or\n something? Or why not try me for general cussedness?”\n\n\n “That is just what we finally decided to do,” the ant-man\n wrote in reply. “We shall try you on general principles,\n and let the proper accusation develop from the evidence.\n\n\n “At some stage of the proceedings it will inevitably occur\n to some member of the council to suggest that you be\n charged with treason to Yuri, whereupon two members of\n the council, whom I have won over to the cause of my\n daughter, will raise the objection that Yuri is not our king.\n This will be the signal for the proclaiming of Queen Formis.\n If you will waive counsel the trial can take place to-morrow.”", "When Myles had somewhat recovered from his astonishment,\n he warmly congratulated his friend by patting him\n on the side of the head, as is the Porovian custom.\n\n\n “Doggo,” he wrote, “this ought to constitute you a person\n of some importance among the Formians.”\n\n\n “It\nought\nto,” the ant-man replied, “but as a matter of\n fact, it merely intensifies Yuri’s mistrust and hatred of me.\n Now that I am mother of the queen, he fears that I may\n turn against him and establish Formis in his place as the\n head of an empire of the Formians, by the Formians, and\n for the Formians exclusively.”\n\n\n “Why don’t you?” Myles wrote. It seemed to him to be\n a bully good idea, and incidentally a solution of his own\n difficulties.", "Narrow slitlike window openings gave onto courtyards,\n where fountains played and masses of blue and yellow flowers\n bloomed, amid gray-branched lichens with red and purple\n twig-knobs. It was in just such a garden, through just\n such a window, that he had first looked upon the lovely\n blue-eyed, golden-haired Lilla, Crown Princess of Cupia.\n\n\n The earth-man sighed. Where was his beloved wife now?\n That she needed his help was certain. He must therefore\n get busy. So once again he made motions of writing on the\n palm of his left hand with the thumb and forefinger of his\n right; and this time the sign language produced results,\n for Doggo halted the procession and led Cabot into a room.\n\n13\n\n It was a plain bare room, devoid of any furniture except\n a small table, for ant-men have no use for chairs and\n couches. The sky outside was already beginning to pinken\n with the unseen sun.", "“We know not,” the Formian wrote in reply. “Six days\n ago he left us in his airship and flew westward. When he\n failed to return, we sent out scout planes to search for\n him, and we have been hunting ever since. When we\n sighted you on the beach this morning we thought that\n you might be our lost leader, and that is why we landed and\n approached you.”\n\n\n At about this point the conversation was interrupted by\n a worker ant who brought food: roast alta and green aphid\n milk. With what relish did the earth-man plunge into the\n feast, his first taste of Porovian delicacies in many months.\n\n\n During the meal conversation lagged, owing to the difficulty\n of writing and eating at the same time. But now\n Myles Cabot seized his pad and stylus and wrote:\n\n\n “Have you ever known me to fail in any undertaking\n on the planet Poros?”", "Finally a small settlement loomed ahead. It was of the\n familiar style of toy-building-block architecture affected by\n the ant-men, and, from its appearance, was very new. On its\n outskirts further building operations were actively in progress.\n Apparently a few survivors of the accursed race of Formians\n were consolidating their position and attempting to build\n up a new empire in some out-of-the-way portion of the continent.\n\n\n As the earth-man was turning these thoughts over in his\n mind the plane softly settled down upon one of the flat\n roofs, and its occupants disembarked. Three of the ants\n advanced menacingly toward Myles, but Doggo held them\n off. Then all of the party descended down one of the ramps\n to the lower levels of the building.", "“No,” the ant-man wrote in reply.\n\n\n “Have you ever known me to be untrue to a principle,\n a cause, or a friend?”\n\n\n “No,” Doggo replied.\n\n\n “Then,” Myles wrote, “let us make your daughter queen\n in fact as well as in name.”\n\n\n “It is treason,” Doggo wrote in reply, but this time he\n did not tear up the correspondence.\n\n\n “Treason?” Myles asked. If he had spoken the word, he\n would have spoken it with scorn and derision. “Treason?\n Is it treason to support your own queen? What has become\n of the national pride of the once great Formians? Look!\n I pledge myself to the cause of Formis, rightful Queen of\n Formia. Formis, daughter of Doggo! What say you?”", "But Doggo wrote in horror, “It would be treason!” Then\n tore up all the correspondence. It is difficult to inculcate the\n thought of independence in the mind of one reared in an\n autocracy.\n\n\n The earth-man, however, persisted.\n\n\n “How many of the council can you count on, if the interests\n of Yuri should clash with those of Formis?”\n\n16\n\n “Only one—myself.”\n\n\n And again Doggo tore up the correspondence.\n\n\n Myles tactfully changed the subject.\n\n\n “Where is the arch-fiend now?” he asked.", "With one bound he gained the throne, where fighting\n was already in progress between the two factions. Barth\n and Doggo were rolling over and over on the floor in a\n death grapple, while the ant-queen had backed to the rear\n of the stage, closely guarded by Emu and Fum.\n\n\n Seizing one of the pikes which supported the scarlet\n canopy, Myles wrenched it loose and drove it into the thorax\n of Barth. In another instant the earth-man and Doggo stood\n beside the queen.\n\n\n Ant-men now came pouring into the chamber through all\n the entrances, taking sides as they entered and sized up the\n situation. If it had still been in vogue among the Formians\n to be known by numbers rather than names, and to have\n these identifying numbers painted on the backs of their\n abdomens followed by the numbers of those whom they\n had defeated in the duels so common among them, then\n many a Formian would have “got the number” of many\n another, that day.", "As he stood thus expectant, Myles realized that his present\n position and condition, the surrounding scenery, and the advance\n of the ant-men were exactly, item for item, like the\n opening events of his first arrival on the planet Poros. He\n even recognized one of the ant-men as old Doggo, who had\n befriended him on his previous visit.\n\n\n Could it be that all his adventures in Cupia had been\n naught but a dream; a recurring dream, in fact? Were his\n dear wife Lilla and his little son Kew merely figments of\n his imagination? Horrible thought!", "His immediate problem was to learn what the ant-men\n planned for him; so the concluding words which he wrote\n upon the pad were: “And, now that you have me in your\n power, what shall you do with me?”\n\n\n “Old friend,” Doggo wrote in reply, “that depends entirely\n upon Yuri, our king, whose toga you now have on.”\nIII\n\n YURI OR FORMIS?\nThe earth-man grimaced, but then smiled. Perhaps, his\n succeeding to the toga of King Yuri might prove to be an\n omen.\n\n15\n\n “So Yuri is king of the ants?” he asked.\n\n\n “Yes,” his captor replied, “for Queen Formis did not survive\n the trip across the boiling seas.”" ] ]
train	20015	[ "Presumably why did Shawn seem to blush at the comment made by Green in regards to his creation of exquisite work?", "What was said to be concernig about the relationship between Shawn and Ross?", "Who received the worste abuse of all who are mentioned?", "What is the coorelation to the reference of Shawn to Prince Myshkin in The Idiot?", "Who was said to have been blinded by meningitis as a child in the passage?", "Who was said to have inadvertently committed plagerism?", "What was said about Mehta's book in the passage?", "Who was the editor for The New Yorker when Shawn died?", "What was the new editor trying to convince Ross into doing?", "Who had the opinion that Shawn had stopped reading the magazine after Tina Brown became editor?" ]	[ [ "He took business very seriously. ", "He was a prude.", "He lacked the sense of humor that Green had.", "The comment hit too close to home for him." ], [ "They began their relationship as an affair.", "Their work suffered from their lack of concentration.", "They seemed to proritize their romance rather than their work.", "They argued often, publicly." ], [ "Ross", "Gill ", "Mehta", "Shawn" ], [ "He was someone who did not value his work", "He was someone who must be protected ", "He was someone who didn't care to hurt someone's feelings. ", "He was someone who lacked intelligence " ], [ "Mehta", "Kahn", "Myshkin", "Brown" ], [ "Poota", "Perkupp", "Shawn", "Mehta" ], [ "It was full of neglect", "It was very enjoyable", "It lacked depth and intelligence", "It was a bit too extreme" ], [ "Brown", "Ross", "Mehta", "Breenan" ], [ "Re-joining the magazine", "Leaving Shawn for good", "Retiring from the magazine", "Booting out Mehta" ], [ "Newhouse ", "Brown", "Mehta", "Ross" ] ]	[ 4, 1, 3, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1, 1, 3 ]	[ 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Was Shawn blushing out of prudishness, as we are meant to infer? This was, after all, a man renowned for his retiring propriety, a man who sedulously barred anything smacking of the salacious--from lingerie ads to four-letter words--from the magazine he stewarded from 1952 until 1987, five years before his death. But after reading these two new memoirs about Shawn, I wonder. \"He longed for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,\" Lillian Ross discloses in hers, adding that he lusted after Hannah Arendt, Evonne Goolagong, and Madonna. As for Ved Mehta, he reports that Shawn's favorite thing to watch on television was \"people dancing uninhibitedly\" ( Soul Train , one guesses). I suspect Shawn did not blush at the \"cunty fingers\" remark out of prudery. He blushed because it had hit too close to home.", "Elsewhere, Ross refers to her lover's \"very powerful masculinity,\" only to note on the very next page that \"if he suffered a paper cut on a finger and saw blood, he would come into my office, looking pale.\" She declares that \"Bill was incapable of engendering a cliché, in deed as well as in word.\" But then she puts the most toe-curling clichés into his mouth: \"Why am I more ghost than man?\" Or: \"We must arrest our love in midflight. And we fix it forever as of today, a point of pure light that will reach into eternity.\" (File that under Romantic Effusions We Doubt Ever Got Uttered.) Nor is Ross incapable of a melodramatic cliché herself. \"Why can't we just live, just live ?\" she cries in anguish when she and Shawn, walking hand in hand out of Central Park, chance to see Shawn's wife slowly making her way down the block with a burden of packages.", "Like Ross, Mehta struggles to express William Shawn's ineffable virtues. \"It is as if, Mehta, he were beyond our human conception,\" Janet Flanner tells him once to calm him down. At times I wondered whether the author, in his ecstasies of devotion, had not inadvertently committed plagiarism. His words on Mr. Shawn sound suspiciously like those of Mr. Pooter on his boss Mr. Perkupp in The Diary of a Nobody . Compare. Mehta on Shawn: \"His words were so generous that I could scarcely find my tongue, even to thank him.\" Pooter on Perkupp: \"My heart was too full to thank him.\" Mehta: \"I started saying to myself compulsively, 'I wish Mr. Shawn would ring,' at the oddest times of the day or night. ... How I longed for the parade of proofs, the excitement of rewriting and perfecting!\" Pooter: \"Mr. Perkupp, I will work night and day to serve you!\"", "Goings On About Town \n\n One of the funniest moments in Brendan Gill's 1975 memoir, Here at \"The New Yorker ,\" comes during a luncheon at the now vanished Ritz in Manhattan. At the table are Gill; William Shawn, then editor of The New Yorker ; and the reclusive English writer Henry Green. Green's new novel, Loving , has just received a very favorable review in The New Yorker . Shawn--\"with his usual hushed delicacy of speech and manner\"--inquires of the novelist whether he could possibly reveal what prompted the creation of such an exquisite work. Green obliges. \"I once asked an old butler in Ireland what had been the happiest times of his life,\" he says. \"The butler replied, 'Lying in bed on Sunday morning, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.' \" \n\n This was not the explanation Shawn was expecting, Gill tells us. \"Discs of bright red begin to burn in his cheeks.\"", "And what does she think of Mrs. Shawn? \"I found her to be sensitive and likeable.\" Plus, she could \"do a mean Charleston.\" There is nothing more poignant than the image of an openly cheated-upon and humiliated wife doing \"a mean Charleston.\" \n\n William Shawn's indispensability as an editor is amply manifest in Ross' memoir. Word repetition? \"Whatever reporting Bill asked me to do turned out to be both challenging and fun. ... For me, reporting and writing for the magazine was fun, pure fun. ... It was never 'work' for me. It was fun.\" Even in praising his skill as an editor, she betrays the presence of its absence. \"All writers, of course, have needed the one called the 'editor,' who singularly, almost mystically, embodies the many-faceted, unique life force infusing the entire enchilada.\" Nice touch, that enchilada.", "Shawn was managing editor of The New Yorker when he hired Ross in 1945 as the magazine's second woman reporter (the first was Andy Logan). He was short and balding but had pale blue eyes to die for. As for Ross, \"I was aware of the fact that I was not unappealing.\" During a late-night editorial session, she says, Shawn blurted out his love. A few weeks later at the office, their eyes met. Without a word--even, it seems, to the cab driver--they hied uptown to the Plaza, where matters were consummated. Thereafter, the couple set up housekeeping together in an apartment 20 blocks downtown from the Shawn residence on upper Fifth Avenue and stoically endured the sufferings of Shawn's wife, who did not want a divorce.", "Happily, Ross has sprinkled her memoir with clues that it is not to be taken as entirely factual. To say that Shawn was \"a man who grieved over all living creatures\" is forgivable hyperbole; but later to add that he \"mourned\" for Si Newhouse when Newhouse unceremoniously fired him in 1987 (a couple of years after buying the magazine)--well, that's a bit much. Even Jesus had his limits.", "Now, Ross seems like a nice lady, and I certainly have nothing against adultery, which I hear is being carried on in the best circles these days. But the public flaunting of adultery--especially when spouses and children are around--well, it brings out the bourgeois in me. It also made me feel funny about William Shawn, whom I have always regarded as a great man. I loved his New Yorker . The prose it contained--the gray stuff around the cartoons--was balm for the soul: unfailingly clear, precise, logical, and quietly stylish. So what if the articles were occasionally boring? It was a sweet sort of boredom, serene and restorative, not at all like the kind induced by magazines today, which is more akin to nervous exhaustion. Besides, the moral tone of the magazine was almost wholly admirable--it was ahead of the pack on Hiroshima, civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the environment--and this was very much Shawn's doing. I do not like to think of him in an illicit love nest, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.", "Lillian Ross, by contrast, takes a rather cheerful view of the Brown dispensation. Indeed, the new editor even coaxed Ross into re-joining the magazine, just as she was booting Mehta out. \"I found that she possessed--under the usual disguises--her own share of Bill's kind of naivete, insight, and sensitivity,\" Ross says of Brown. \"She, too, 'got it.' \" A few months after Brown was appointed editor, Shawn died at the age of 85. He had long since stopped reading his beloved magazine, in sorrow and relief. That's if you believe Mehta. Ross assures us that Mr. Shawn was reading Tina Brown's New Yorker \"with new interest\" in the weeks prior to his death.", "Mehta's writerly persona, a disarming mixture of the feline and the naive, is perfect for relating the little scandals that worried The New Yorker in the late '70s (plagiarism, frozen turbot), the drama of finding a worthy candidate to succeed the aging Shawn as editor, the purchase of the magazine by the evil Si Newhouse (\"We all took fright\") and the resultant plague of Gottliebs and Florios visited upon it, and what he sees as the final debacle: Tinaji.", "Mehta's multivolume autobiography, titled Continents of Exile , has loss as its overarching theme: loss of sight, of childhood, of home and country, and now--with this volume--loss of Mr. Shawn's New Yorker . The memoir takes us from the time the author was hired as a staff writer in the early '60s up to 1994, when he was \"terminated\" by the loathed Tina Brown in her vandalization of his cherished magazine. Mehta evidently loved William Shawn at least as much as Lillian Ross did, although his love was not requited in the same way. He likens the revered editor to the character Prince Myshkin in The Idiot : innocent and vulnerable, someone who must be protected. And long-suffering, one might infer: \"He was so careful of not hurting anyone's feelings that he often listened to utterly fatuous arguments for hours on end.\"", "When cocktail party malcontents mocked Shawn's New Yorker in the late '70s and early '80s, they would make fun of such things as E.J. Kahn's five-part series on \"Grains of the World\" or Elizabeth Drew's supposedly soporific reporting from Washington. But Ved Mehta was always the butt of the worst abuse. Shawn was allowing him to publish an autobiography in the pages of the magazine that was mounting up to millions of words over the years, and the very idea of it seemed to bore people silly. After the publication of two early installments, \"Daddyji\" and \"Mamaji,\" each the length of a book, one critic cried: \"Enoughji!\"", "Both these memoirs must be read by everyone--everyone, that is, who takes seriously the important business of sorting out precisely how he or she feels about The New Yorker , then and now. Of the two, Mehta's is far and away the more entertaining. This may seem odd, for Mehta is reputed to be a very dull writer whereas Ross is a famously zippy one. Moreover, Mehta writes as Shawn's adoring acolyte, whereas Ross writes as his longtime adulterous lover. Just knowing that Mrs. Shawn is still alive adds a certain tension to reading much of what this Other Woman chooses to divulge. Evidently, \"Bill\" and Lillian loved each other with a fine, pure love, a love that was more than love, a love coveted by the winged seraphs of heaven. \"We had indeed become one,\" she tells us, freely venting the inflations of her heart.", "But it kept coming. And I, for one, was grateful. Here was a boy growing up in Punjab during the fall of the Raj and the Partition, a boy who had been blinded by meningitis at the age of 3, roller-skating through the back streets of Lahore as Sikhs slaughtered Hindus and Hindus slaughtered Muslims and civilization was collapsing and then, decades later, having made his way from India to an Arkansas school for the blind to Balliol College, Oxford, to The New Yorker , re-creating the whole thing in Proustian detail and better-than-Proustian prose ... !", "Has Tina Brown betrayed the legacy of William Shawn, as Mehta fiercely believes, or has she continued and built upon it, as Ross is evidently convinced? Have the changes she has wrought enlivened a stodgy magazine or vulgarized a dignified one--or both? These are weighty questions, and one is of course loath to compromise one's life chances by hazarding unripe opinions in a public forum such as this.", "I am not sure I have made it sound this way so far, but Mehta's book is completely engrossing--the most enjoyable book, I think, I have ever reviewed. It oozes affection and conviction, crackles with anger, and is stuffed with thumping good stories. Many are about Mehta's daft colleagues at The New Yorker , such as the guy in the next office: \n\n His door was always shut, but I could hear him through the wall that separated his cubicle from mine typing without pause. ... Even the changing of the paper in the typewriter seemed somehow to be incorporated into the rhythmic rat-tat-tat ... year after year went by to the sound of his typing but without a word from his typewriter appearing in the magazine.", "Or the great and eccentric Irish writer Maeve Breenan, who fetched up as a bag lady. Or the legendary St. Clair McKelway, whose decisive breakdown came when he hailed a cab and prevailed upon the driver to take him to the New Yorker office at 24 West 43 rd St. \"O.K., Mac, if that's what you want.\" He was in Boston at the time. (McKelway later told Mehta that if the cabby had not called him \"Mac,\" his nickname, an alarm might have gone off in his head.)" ], [ "Happily, Ross has sprinkled her memoir with clues that it is not to be taken as entirely factual. To say that Shawn was \"a man who grieved over all living creatures\" is forgivable hyperbole; but later to add that he \"mourned\" for Si Newhouse when Newhouse unceremoniously fired him in 1987 (a couple of years after buying the magazine)--well, that's a bit much. Even Jesus had his limits.", "Elsewhere, Ross refers to her lover's \"very powerful masculinity,\" only to note on the very next page that \"if he suffered a paper cut on a finger and saw blood, he would come into my office, looking pale.\" She declares that \"Bill was incapable of engendering a cliché, in deed as well as in word.\" But then she puts the most toe-curling clichés into his mouth: \"Why am I more ghost than man?\" Or: \"We must arrest our love in midflight. And we fix it forever as of today, a point of pure light that will reach into eternity.\" (File that under Romantic Effusions We Doubt Ever Got Uttered.) Nor is Ross incapable of a melodramatic cliché herself. \"Why can't we just live, just live ?\" she cries in anguish when she and Shawn, walking hand in hand out of Central Park, chance to see Shawn's wife slowly making her way down the block with a burden of packages.", "Was Shawn blushing out of prudishness, as we are meant to infer? This was, after all, a man renowned for his retiring propriety, a man who sedulously barred anything smacking of the salacious--from lingerie ads to four-letter words--from the magazine he stewarded from 1952 until 1987, five years before his death. But after reading these two new memoirs about Shawn, I wonder. \"He longed for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,\" Lillian Ross discloses in hers, adding that he lusted after Hannah Arendt, Evonne Goolagong, and Madonna. As for Ved Mehta, he reports that Shawn's favorite thing to watch on television was \"people dancing uninhibitedly\" ( Soul Train , one guesses). I suspect Shawn did not blush at the \"cunty fingers\" remark out of prudery. He blushed because it had hit too close to home.", "Shawn was managing editor of The New Yorker when he hired Ross in 1945 as the magazine's second woman reporter (the first was Andy Logan). He was short and balding but had pale blue eyes to die for. As for Ross, \"I was aware of the fact that I was not unappealing.\" During a late-night editorial session, she says, Shawn blurted out his love. A few weeks later at the office, their eyes met. Without a word--even, it seems, to the cab driver--they hied uptown to the Plaza, where matters were consummated. Thereafter, the couple set up housekeeping together in an apartment 20 blocks downtown from the Shawn residence on upper Fifth Avenue and stoically endured the sufferings of Shawn's wife, who did not want a divorce.", "And what does she think of Mrs. Shawn? \"I found her to be sensitive and likeable.\" Plus, she could \"do a mean Charleston.\" There is nothing more poignant than the image of an openly cheated-upon and humiliated wife doing \"a mean Charleston.\" \n\n William Shawn's indispensability as an editor is amply manifest in Ross' memoir. Word repetition? \"Whatever reporting Bill asked me to do turned out to be both challenging and fun. ... For me, reporting and writing for the magazine was fun, pure fun. ... It was never 'work' for me. It was fun.\" Even in praising his skill as an editor, she betrays the presence of its absence. \"All writers, of course, have needed the one called the 'editor,' who singularly, almost mystically, embodies the many-faceted, unique life force infusing the entire enchilada.\" Nice touch, that enchilada.", "Like Ross, Mehta struggles to express William Shawn's ineffable virtues. \"It is as if, Mehta, he were beyond our human conception,\" Janet Flanner tells him once to calm him down. At times I wondered whether the author, in his ecstasies of devotion, had not inadvertently committed plagiarism. His words on Mr. Shawn sound suspiciously like those of Mr. Pooter on his boss Mr. Perkupp in The Diary of a Nobody . Compare. Mehta on Shawn: \"His words were so generous that I could scarcely find my tongue, even to thank him.\" Pooter on Perkupp: \"My heart was too full to thank him.\" Mehta: \"I started saying to myself compulsively, 'I wish Mr. Shawn would ring,' at the oddest times of the day or night. ... How I longed for the parade of proofs, the excitement of rewriting and perfecting!\" Pooter: \"Mr. Perkupp, I will work night and day to serve you!\"", "Now, Ross seems like a nice lady, and I certainly have nothing against adultery, which I hear is being carried on in the best circles these days. But the public flaunting of adultery--especially when spouses and children are around--well, it brings out the bourgeois in me. It also made me feel funny about William Shawn, whom I have always regarded as a great man. I loved his New Yorker . The prose it contained--the gray stuff around the cartoons--was balm for the soul: unfailingly clear, precise, logical, and quietly stylish. So what if the articles were occasionally boring? It was a sweet sort of boredom, serene and restorative, not at all like the kind induced by magazines today, which is more akin to nervous exhaustion. Besides, the moral tone of the magazine was almost wholly admirable--it was ahead of the pack on Hiroshima, civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the environment--and this was very much Shawn's doing. I do not like to think of him in an illicit love nest, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.", "Lillian Ross, by contrast, takes a rather cheerful view of the Brown dispensation. Indeed, the new editor even coaxed Ross into re-joining the magazine, just as she was booting Mehta out. \"I found that she possessed--under the usual disguises--her own share of Bill's kind of naivete, insight, and sensitivity,\" Ross says of Brown. \"She, too, 'got it.' \" A few months after Brown was appointed editor, Shawn died at the age of 85. He had long since stopped reading his beloved magazine, in sorrow and relief. That's if you believe Mehta. Ross assures us that Mr. Shawn was reading Tina Brown's New Yorker \"with new interest\" in the weeks prior to his death.", "Both these memoirs must be read by everyone--everyone, that is, who takes seriously the important business of sorting out precisely how he or she feels about The New Yorker , then and now. Of the two, Mehta's is far and away the more entertaining. This may seem odd, for Mehta is reputed to be a very dull writer whereas Ross is a famously zippy one. Moreover, Mehta writes as Shawn's adoring acolyte, whereas Ross writes as his longtime adulterous lover. Just knowing that Mrs. Shawn is still alive adds a certain tension to reading much of what this Other Woman chooses to divulge. Evidently, \"Bill\" and Lillian loved each other with a fine, pure love, a love that was more than love, a love coveted by the winged seraphs of heaven. \"We had indeed become one,\" she tells us, freely venting the inflations of her heart.", "Has Tina Brown betrayed the legacy of William Shawn, as Mehta fiercely believes, or has she continued and built upon it, as Ross is evidently convinced? Have the changes she has wrought enlivened a stodgy magazine or vulgarized a dignified one--or both? These are weighty questions, and one is of course loath to compromise one's life chances by hazarding unripe opinions in a public forum such as this.", "When cocktail party malcontents mocked Shawn's New Yorker in the late '70s and early '80s, they would make fun of such things as E.J. Kahn's five-part series on \"Grains of the World\" or Elizabeth Drew's supposedly soporific reporting from Washington. But Ved Mehta was always the butt of the worst abuse. Shawn was allowing him to publish an autobiography in the pages of the magazine that was mounting up to millions of words over the years, and the very idea of it seemed to bore people silly. After the publication of two early installments, \"Daddyji\" and \"Mamaji,\" each the length of a book, one critic cried: \"Enoughji!\"", "Mehta's multivolume autobiography, titled Continents of Exile , has loss as its overarching theme: loss of sight, of childhood, of home and country, and now--with this volume--loss of Mr. Shawn's New Yorker . The memoir takes us from the time the author was hired as a staff writer in the early '60s up to 1994, when he was \"terminated\" by the loathed Tina Brown in her vandalization of his cherished magazine. Mehta evidently loved William Shawn at least as much as Lillian Ross did, although his love was not requited in the same way. He likens the revered editor to the character Prince Myshkin in The Idiot : innocent and vulnerable, someone who must be protected. And long-suffering, one might infer: \"He was so careful of not hurting anyone's feelings that he often listened to utterly fatuous arguments for hours on end.\"", "Goings On About Town \n\n One of the funniest moments in Brendan Gill's 1975 memoir, Here at \"The New Yorker ,\" comes during a luncheon at the now vanished Ritz in Manhattan. At the table are Gill; William Shawn, then editor of The New Yorker ; and the reclusive English writer Henry Green. Green's new novel, Loving , has just received a very favorable review in The New Yorker . Shawn--\"with his usual hushed delicacy of speech and manner\"--inquires of the novelist whether he could possibly reveal what prompted the creation of such an exquisite work. Green obliges. \"I once asked an old butler in Ireland what had been the happiest times of his life,\" he says. \"The butler replied, 'Lying in bed on Sunday morning, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.' \" \n\n This was not the explanation Shawn was expecting, Gill tells us. \"Discs of bright red begin to burn in his cheeks.\"", "Mehta's writerly persona, a disarming mixture of the feline and the naive, is perfect for relating the little scandals that worried The New Yorker in the late '70s (plagiarism, frozen turbot), the drama of finding a worthy candidate to succeed the aging Shawn as editor, the purchase of the magazine by the evil Si Newhouse (\"We all took fright\") and the resultant plague of Gottliebs and Florios visited upon it, and what he sees as the final debacle: Tinaji.", "I am not sure I have made it sound this way so far, but Mehta's book is completely engrossing--the most enjoyable book, I think, I have ever reviewed. It oozes affection and conviction, crackles with anger, and is stuffed with thumping good stories. Many are about Mehta's daft colleagues at The New Yorker , such as the guy in the next office: \n\n His door was always shut, but I could hear him through the wall that separated his cubicle from mine typing without pause. ... Even the changing of the paper in the typewriter seemed somehow to be incorporated into the rhythmic rat-tat-tat ... year after year went by to the sound of his typing but without a word from his typewriter appearing in the magazine.", "But it kept coming. And I, for one, was grateful. Here was a boy growing up in Punjab during the fall of the Raj and the Partition, a boy who had been blinded by meningitis at the age of 3, roller-skating through the back streets of Lahore as Sikhs slaughtered Hindus and Hindus slaughtered Muslims and civilization was collapsing and then, decades later, having made his way from India to an Arkansas school for the blind to Balliol College, Oxford, to The New Yorker , re-creating the whole thing in Proustian detail and better-than-Proustian prose ... !", "Or the great and eccentric Irish writer Maeve Breenan, who fetched up as a bag lady. Or the legendary St. Clair McKelway, whose decisive breakdown came when he hailed a cab and prevailed upon the driver to take him to the New Yorker office at 24 West 43 rd St. \"O.K., Mac, if that's what you want.\" He was in Boston at the time. (McKelway later told Mehta that if the cabby had not called him \"Mac,\" his nickname, an alarm might have gone off in his head.)" ], [ "When cocktail party malcontents mocked Shawn's New Yorker in the late '70s and early '80s, they would make fun of such things as E.J. Kahn's five-part series on \"Grains of the World\" or Elizabeth Drew's supposedly soporific reporting from Washington. But Ved Mehta was always the butt of the worst abuse. Shawn was allowing him to publish an autobiography in the pages of the magazine that was mounting up to millions of words over the years, and the very idea of it seemed to bore people silly. After the publication of two early installments, \"Daddyji\" and \"Mamaji,\" each the length of a book, one critic cried: \"Enoughji!\"", "But it kept coming. And I, for one, was grateful. Here was a boy growing up in Punjab during the fall of the Raj and the Partition, a boy who had been blinded by meningitis at the age of 3, roller-skating through the back streets of Lahore as Sikhs slaughtered Hindus and Hindus slaughtered Muslims and civilization was collapsing and then, decades later, having made his way from India to an Arkansas school for the blind to Balliol College, Oxford, to The New Yorker , re-creating the whole thing in Proustian detail and better-than-Proustian prose ... !", "Was Shawn blushing out of prudishness, as we are meant to infer? This was, after all, a man renowned for his retiring propriety, a man who sedulously barred anything smacking of the salacious--from lingerie ads to four-letter words--from the magazine he stewarded from 1952 until 1987, five years before his death. But after reading these two new memoirs about Shawn, I wonder. \"He longed for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,\" Lillian Ross discloses in hers, adding that he lusted after Hannah Arendt, Evonne Goolagong, and Madonna. As for Ved Mehta, he reports that Shawn's favorite thing to watch on television was \"people dancing uninhibitedly\" ( Soul Train , one guesses). I suspect Shawn did not blush at the \"cunty fingers\" remark out of prudery. He blushed because it had hit too close to home.", "Like Ross, Mehta struggles to express William Shawn's ineffable virtues. \"It is as if, Mehta, he were beyond our human conception,\" Janet Flanner tells him once to calm him down. At times I wondered whether the author, in his ecstasies of devotion, had not inadvertently committed plagiarism. His words on Mr. Shawn sound suspiciously like those of Mr. Pooter on his boss Mr. Perkupp in The Diary of a Nobody . Compare. Mehta on Shawn: \"His words were so generous that I could scarcely find my tongue, even to thank him.\" Pooter on Perkupp: \"My heart was too full to thank him.\" Mehta: \"I started saying to myself compulsively, 'I wish Mr. Shawn would ring,' at the oddest times of the day or night. ... How I longed for the parade of proofs, the excitement of rewriting and perfecting!\" Pooter: \"Mr. Perkupp, I will work night and day to serve you!\"", "Happily, Ross has sprinkled her memoir with clues that it is not to be taken as entirely factual. To say that Shawn was \"a man who grieved over all living creatures\" is forgivable hyperbole; but later to add that he \"mourned\" for Si Newhouse when Newhouse unceremoniously fired him in 1987 (a couple of years after buying the magazine)--well, that's a bit much. Even Jesus had his limits.", "Elsewhere, Ross refers to her lover's \"very powerful masculinity,\" only to note on the very next page that \"if he suffered a paper cut on a finger and saw blood, he would come into my office, looking pale.\" She declares that \"Bill was incapable of engendering a cliché, in deed as well as in word.\" But then she puts the most toe-curling clichés into his mouth: \"Why am I more ghost than man?\" Or: \"We must arrest our love in midflight. And we fix it forever as of today, a point of pure light that will reach into eternity.\" (File that under Romantic Effusions We Doubt Ever Got Uttered.) Nor is Ross incapable of a melodramatic cliché herself. \"Why can't we just live, just live ?\" she cries in anguish when she and Shawn, walking hand in hand out of Central Park, chance to see Shawn's wife slowly making her way down the block with a burden of packages.", "Mehta's writerly persona, a disarming mixture of the feline and the naive, is perfect for relating the little scandals that worried The New Yorker in the late '70s (plagiarism, frozen turbot), the drama of finding a worthy candidate to succeed the aging Shawn as editor, the purchase of the magazine by the evil Si Newhouse (\"We all took fright\") and the resultant plague of Gottliebs and Florios visited upon it, and what he sees as the final debacle: Tinaji.", "And what does she think of Mrs. Shawn? \"I found her to be sensitive and likeable.\" Plus, she could \"do a mean Charleston.\" There is nothing more poignant than the image of an openly cheated-upon and humiliated wife doing \"a mean Charleston.\" \n\n William Shawn's indispensability as an editor is amply manifest in Ross' memoir. Word repetition? \"Whatever reporting Bill asked me to do turned out to be both challenging and fun. ... For me, reporting and writing for the magazine was fun, pure fun. ... It was never 'work' for me. It was fun.\" Even in praising his skill as an editor, she betrays the presence of its absence. \"All writers, of course, have needed the one called the 'editor,' who singularly, almost mystically, embodies the many-faceted, unique life force infusing the entire enchilada.\" Nice touch, that enchilada.", "Mehta's multivolume autobiography, titled Continents of Exile , has loss as its overarching theme: loss of sight, of childhood, of home and country, and now--with this volume--loss of Mr. Shawn's New Yorker . The memoir takes us from the time the author was hired as a staff writer in the early '60s up to 1994, when he was \"terminated\" by the loathed Tina Brown in her vandalization of his cherished magazine. Mehta evidently loved William Shawn at least as much as Lillian Ross did, although his love was not requited in the same way. He likens the revered editor to the character Prince Myshkin in The Idiot : innocent and vulnerable, someone who must be protected. And long-suffering, one might infer: \"He was so careful of not hurting anyone's feelings that he often listened to utterly fatuous arguments for hours on end.\"", "Now, Ross seems like a nice lady, and I certainly have nothing against adultery, which I hear is being carried on in the best circles these days. But the public flaunting of adultery--especially when spouses and children are around--well, it brings out the bourgeois in me. It also made me feel funny about William Shawn, whom I have always regarded as a great man. I loved his New Yorker . The prose it contained--the gray stuff around the cartoons--was balm for the soul: unfailingly clear, precise, logical, and quietly stylish. So what if the articles were occasionally boring? It was a sweet sort of boredom, serene and restorative, not at all like the kind induced by magazines today, which is more akin to nervous exhaustion. Besides, the moral tone of the magazine was almost wholly admirable--it was ahead of the pack on Hiroshima, civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the environment--and this was very much Shawn's doing. I do not like to think of him in an illicit love nest, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.", "I am not sure I have made it sound this way so far, but Mehta's book is completely engrossing--the most enjoyable book, I think, I have ever reviewed. It oozes affection and conviction, crackles with anger, and is stuffed with thumping good stories. Many are about Mehta's daft colleagues at The New Yorker , such as the guy in the next office: \n\n His door was always shut, but I could hear him through the wall that separated his cubicle from mine typing without pause. ... Even the changing of the paper in the typewriter seemed somehow to be incorporated into the rhythmic rat-tat-tat ... year after year went by to the sound of his typing but without a word from his typewriter appearing in the magazine.", "Both these memoirs must be read by everyone--everyone, that is, who takes seriously the important business of sorting out precisely how he or she feels about The New Yorker , then and now. Of the two, Mehta's is far and away the more entertaining. This may seem odd, for Mehta is reputed to be a very dull writer whereas Ross is a famously zippy one. Moreover, Mehta writes as Shawn's adoring acolyte, whereas Ross writes as his longtime adulterous lover. Just knowing that Mrs. Shawn is still alive adds a certain tension to reading much of what this Other Woman chooses to divulge. Evidently, \"Bill\" and Lillian loved each other with a fine, pure love, a love that was more than love, a love coveted by the winged seraphs of heaven. \"We had indeed become one,\" she tells us, freely venting the inflations of her heart.", "Goings On About Town \n\n One of the funniest moments in Brendan Gill's 1975 memoir, Here at \"The New Yorker ,\" comes during a luncheon at the now vanished Ritz in Manhattan. At the table are Gill; William Shawn, then editor of The New Yorker ; and the reclusive English writer Henry Green. Green's new novel, Loving , has just received a very favorable review in The New Yorker . Shawn--\"with his usual hushed delicacy of speech and manner\"--inquires of the novelist whether he could possibly reveal what prompted the creation of such an exquisite work. Green obliges. \"I once asked an old butler in Ireland what had been the happiest times of his life,\" he says. \"The butler replied, 'Lying in bed on Sunday morning, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.' \" \n\n This was not the explanation Shawn was expecting, Gill tells us. \"Discs of bright red begin to burn in his cheeks.\"", "Or the great and eccentric Irish writer Maeve Breenan, who fetched up as a bag lady. Or the legendary St. Clair McKelway, whose decisive breakdown came when he hailed a cab and prevailed upon the driver to take him to the New Yorker office at 24 West 43 rd St. \"O.K., Mac, if that's what you want.\" He was in Boston at the time. (McKelway later told Mehta that if the cabby had not called him \"Mac,\" his nickname, an alarm might have gone off in his head.)", "Lillian Ross, by contrast, takes a rather cheerful view of the Brown dispensation. Indeed, the new editor even coaxed Ross into re-joining the magazine, just as she was booting Mehta out. \"I found that she possessed--under the usual disguises--her own share of Bill's kind of naivete, insight, and sensitivity,\" Ross says of Brown. \"She, too, 'got it.' \" A few months after Brown was appointed editor, Shawn died at the age of 85. He had long since stopped reading his beloved magazine, in sorrow and relief. That's if you believe Mehta. Ross assures us that Mr. Shawn was reading Tina Brown's New Yorker \"with new interest\" in the weeks prior to his death.", "Has Tina Brown betrayed the legacy of William Shawn, as Mehta fiercely believes, or has she continued and built upon it, as Ross is evidently convinced? Have the changes she has wrought enlivened a stodgy magazine or vulgarized a dignified one--or both? These are weighty questions, and one is of course loath to compromise one's life chances by hazarding unripe opinions in a public forum such as this.", "Shawn was managing editor of The New Yorker when he hired Ross in 1945 as the magazine's second woman reporter (the first was Andy Logan). He was short and balding but had pale blue eyes to die for. As for Ross, \"I was aware of the fact that I was not unappealing.\" During a late-night editorial session, she says, Shawn blurted out his love. A few weeks later at the office, their eyes met. Without a word--even, it seems, to the cab driver--they hied uptown to the Plaza, where matters were consummated. Thereafter, the couple set up housekeeping together in an apartment 20 blocks downtown from the Shawn residence on upper Fifth Avenue and stoically endured the sufferings of Shawn's wife, who did not want a divorce." ], [ "Mehta's multivolume autobiography, titled Continents of Exile , has loss as its overarching theme: loss of sight, of childhood, of home and country, and now--with this volume--loss of Mr. Shawn's New Yorker . The memoir takes us from the time the author was hired as a staff writer in the early '60s up to 1994, when he was \"terminated\" by the loathed Tina Brown in her vandalization of his cherished magazine. Mehta evidently loved William Shawn at least as much as Lillian Ross did, although his love was not requited in the same way. He likens the revered editor to the character Prince Myshkin in The Idiot : innocent and vulnerable, someone who must be protected. And long-suffering, one might infer: \"He was so careful of not hurting anyone's feelings that he often listened to utterly fatuous arguments for hours on end.\"", "Like Ross, Mehta struggles to express William Shawn's ineffable virtues. \"It is as if, Mehta, he were beyond our human conception,\" Janet Flanner tells him once to calm him down. At times I wondered whether the author, in his ecstasies of devotion, had not inadvertently committed plagiarism. His words on Mr. Shawn sound suspiciously like those of Mr. Pooter on his boss Mr. Perkupp in The Diary of a Nobody . Compare. Mehta on Shawn: \"His words were so generous that I could scarcely find my tongue, even to thank him.\" Pooter on Perkupp: \"My heart was too full to thank him.\" Mehta: \"I started saying to myself compulsively, 'I wish Mr. Shawn would ring,' at the oddest times of the day or night. ... How I longed for the parade of proofs, the excitement of rewriting and perfecting!\" Pooter: \"Mr. Perkupp, I will work night and day to serve you!\"", "Was Shawn blushing out of prudishness, as we are meant to infer? This was, after all, a man renowned for his retiring propriety, a man who sedulously barred anything smacking of the salacious--from lingerie ads to four-letter words--from the magazine he stewarded from 1952 until 1987, five years before his death. But after reading these two new memoirs about Shawn, I wonder. \"He longed for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,\" Lillian Ross discloses in hers, adding that he lusted after Hannah Arendt, Evonne Goolagong, and Madonna. As for Ved Mehta, he reports that Shawn's favorite thing to watch on television was \"people dancing uninhibitedly\" ( Soul Train , one guesses). I suspect Shawn did not blush at the \"cunty fingers\" remark out of prudery. He blushed because it had hit too close to home.", "And what does she think of Mrs. Shawn? \"I found her to be sensitive and likeable.\" Plus, she could \"do a mean Charleston.\" There is nothing more poignant than the image of an openly cheated-upon and humiliated wife doing \"a mean Charleston.\" \n\n William Shawn's indispensability as an editor is amply manifest in Ross' memoir. Word repetition? \"Whatever reporting Bill asked me to do turned out to be both challenging and fun. ... For me, reporting and writing for the magazine was fun, pure fun. ... It was never 'work' for me. It was fun.\" Even in praising his skill as an editor, she betrays the presence of its absence. \"All writers, of course, have needed the one called the 'editor,' who singularly, almost mystically, embodies the many-faceted, unique life force infusing the entire enchilada.\" Nice touch, that enchilada.", "Elsewhere, Ross refers to her lover's \"very powerful masculinity,\" only to note on the very next page that \"if he suffered a paper cut on a finger and saw blood, he would come into my office, looking pale.\" She declares that \"Bill was incapable of engendering a cliché, in deed as well as in word.\" But then she puts the most toe-curling clichés into his mouth: \"Why am I more ghost than man?\" Or: \"We must arrest our love in midflight. And we fix it forever as of today, a point of pure light that will reach into eternity.\" (File that under Romantic Effusions We Doubt Ever Got Uttered.) Nor is Ross incapable of a melodramatic cliché herself. \"Why can't we just live, just live ?\" she cries in anguish when she and Shawn, walking hand in hand out of Central Park, chance to see Shawn's wife slowly making her way down the block with a burden of packages.", "Happily, Ross has sprinkled her memoir with clues that it is not to be taken as entirely factual. To say that Shawn was \"a man who grieved over all living creatures\" is forgivable hyperbole; but later to add that he \"mourned\" for Si Newhouse when Newhouse unceremoniously fired him in 1987 (a couple of years after buying the magazine)--well, that's a bit much. Even Jesus had his limits.", "When cocktail party malcontents mocked Shawn's New Yorker in the late '70s and early '80s, they would make fun of such things as E.J. Kahn's five-part series on \"Grains of the World\" or Elizabeth Drew's supposedly soporific reporting from Washington. But Ved Mehta was always the butt of the worst abuse. Shawn was allowing him to publish an autobiography in the pages of the magazine that was mounting up to millions of words over the years, and the very idea of it seemed to bore people silly. After the publication of two early installments, \"Daddyji\" and \"Mamaji,\" each the length of a book, one critic cried: \"Enoughji!\"", "Now, Ross seems like a nice lady, and I certainly have nothing against adultery, which I hear is being carried on in the best circles these days. But the public flaunting of adultery--especially when spouses and children are around--well, it brings out the bourgeois in me. It also made me feel funny about William Shawn, whom I have always regarded as a great man. I loved his New Yorker . The prose it contained--the gray stuff around the cartoons--was balm for the soul: unfailingly clear, precise, logical, and quietly stylish. So what if the articles were occasionally boring? It was a sweet sort of boredom, serene and restorative, not at all like the kind induced by magazines today, which is more akin to nervous exhaustion. Besides, the moral tone of the magazine was almost wholly admirable--it was ahead of the pack on Hiroshima, civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the environment--and this was very much Shawn's doing. I do not like to think of him in an illicit love nest, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.", "Mehta's writerly persona, a disarming mixture of the feline and the naive, is perfect for relating the little scandals that worried The New Yorker in the late '70s (plagiarism, frozen turbot), the drama of finding a worthy candidate to succeed the aging Shawn as editor, the purchase of the magazine by the evil Si Newhouse (\"We all took fright\") and the resultant plague of Gottliebs and Florios visited upon it, and what he sees as the final debacle: Tinaji.", "Lillian Ross, by contrast, takes a rather cheerful view of the Brown dispensation. Indeed, the new editor even coaxed Ross into re-joining the magazine, just as she was booting Mehta out. \"I found that she possessed--under the usual disguises--her own share of Bill's kind of naivete, insight, and sensitivity,\" Ross says of Brown. \"She, too, 'got it.' \" A few months after Brown was appointed editor, Shawn died at the age of 85. He had long since stopped reading his beloved magazine, in sorrow and relief. That's if you believe Mehta. Ross assures us that Mr. Shawn was reading Tina Brown's New Yorker \"with new interest\" in the weeks prior to his death.", "Both these memoirs must be read by everyone--everyone, that is, who takes seriously the important business of sorting out precisely how he or she feels about The New Yorker , then and now. Of the two, Mehta's is far and away the more entertaining. This may seem odd, for Mehta is reputed to be a very dull writer whereas Ross is a famously zippy one. Moreover, Mehta writes as Shawn's adoring acolyte, whereas Ross writes as his longtime adulterous lover. Just knowing that Mrs. Shawn is still alive adds a certain tension to reading much of what this Other Woman chooses to divulge. Evidently, \"Bill\" and Lillian loved each other with a fine, pure love, a love that was more than love, a love coveted by the winged seraphs of heaven. \"We had indeed become one,\" she tells us, freely venting the inflations of her heart.", "Goings On About Town \n\n One of the funniest moments in Brendan Gill's 1975 memoir, Here at \"The New Yorker ,\" comes during a luncheon at the now vanished Ritz in Manhattan. At the table are Gill; William Shawn, then editor of The New Yorker ; and the reclusive English writer Henry Green. Green's new novel, Loving , has just received a very favorable review in The New Yorker . Shawn--\"with his usual hushed delicacy of speech and manner\"--inquires of the novelist whether he could possibly reveal what prompted the creation of such an exquisite work. Green obliges. \"I once asked an old butler in Ireland what had been the happiest times of his life,\" he says. \"The butler replied, 'Lying in bed on Sunday morning, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.' \" \n\n This was not the explanation Shawn was expecting, Gill tells us. \"Discs of bright red begin to burn in his cheeks.\"", "Shawn was managing editor of The New Yorker when he hired Ross in 1945 as the magazine's second woman reporter (the first was Andy Logan). He was short and balding but had pale blue eyes to die for. As for Ross, \"I was aware of the fact that I was not unappealing.\" During a late-night editorial session, she says, Shawn blurted out his love. A few weeks later at the office, their eyes met. Without a word--even, it seems, to the cab driver--they hied uptown to the Plaza, where matters were consummated. Thereafter, the couple set up housekeeping together in an apartment 20 blocks downtown from the Shawn residence on upper Fifth Avenue and stoically endured the sufferings of Shawn's wife, who did not want a divorce.", "Or the great and eccentric Irish writer Maeve Breenan, who fetched up as a bag lady. Or the legendary St. Clair McKelway, whose decisive breakdown came when he hailed a cab and prevailed upon the driver to take him to the New Yorker office at 24 West 43 rd St. \"O.K., Mac, if that's what you want.\" He was in Boston at the time. (McKelway later told Mehta that if the cabby had not called him \"Mac,\" his nickname, an alarm might have gone off in his head.)", "Has Tina Brown betrayed the legacy of William Shawn, as Mehta fiercely believes, or has she continued and built upon it, as Ross is evidently convinced? Have the changes she has wrought enlivened a stodgy magazine or vulgarized a dignified one--or both? These are weighty questions, and one is of course loath to compromise one's life chances by hazarding unripe opinions in a public forum such as this.", "I am not sure I have made it sound this way so far, but Mehta's book is completely engrossing--the most enjoyable book, I think, I have ever reviewed. It oozes affection and conviction, crackles with anger, and is stuffed with thumping good stories. Many are about Mehta's daft colleagues at The New Yorker , such as the guy in the next office: \n\n His door was always shut, but I could hear him through the wall that separated his cubicle from mine typing without pause. ... Even the changing of the paper in the typewriter seemed somehow to be incorporated into the rhythmic rat-tat-tat ... year after year went by to the sound of his typing but without a word from his typewriter appearing in the magazine.", "But it kept coming. And I, for one, was grateful. Here was a boy growing up in Punjab during the fall of the Raj and the Partition, a boy who had been blinded by meningitis at the age of 3, roller-skating through the back streets of Lahore as Sikhs slaughtered Hindus and Hindus slaughtered Muslims and civilization was collapsing and then, decades later, having made his way from India to an Arkansas school for the blind to Balliol College, Oxford, to The New Yorker , re-creating the whole thing in Proustian detail and better-than-Proustian prose ... !" ], [ "But it kept coming. And I, for one, was grateful. Here was a boy growing up in Punjab during the fall of the Raj and the Partition, a boy who had been blinded by meningitis at the age of 3, roller-skating through the back streets of Lahore as Sikhs slaughtered Hindus and Hindus slaughtered Muslims and civilization was collapsing and then, decades later, having made his way from India to an Arkansas school for the blind to Balliol College, Oxford, to The New Yorker , re-creating the whole thing in Proustian detail and better-than-Proustian prose ... !", "Was Shawn blushing out of prudishness, as we are meant to infer? This was, after all, a man renowned for his retiring propriety, a man who sedulously barred anything smacking of the salacious--from lingerie ads to four-letter words--from the magazine he stewarded from 1952 until 1987, five years before his death. But after reading these two new memoirs about Shawn, I wonder. \"He longed for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,\" Lillian Ross discloses in hers, adding that he lusted after Hannah Arendt, Evonne Goolagong, and Madonna. As for Ved Mehta, he reports that Shawn's favorite thing to watch on television was \"people dancing uninhibitedly\" ( Soul Train , one guesses). I suspect Shawn did not blush at the \"cunty fingers\" remark out of prudery. He blushed because it had hit too close to home.", "Mehta's multivolume autobiography, titled Continents of Exile , has loss as its overarching theme: loss of sight, of childhood, of home and country, and now--with this volume--loss of Mr. Shawn's New Yorker . The memoir takes us from the time the author was hired as a staff writer in the early '60s up to 1994, when he was \"terminated\" by the loathed Tina Brown in her vandalization of his cherished magazine. Mehta evidently loved William Shawn at least as much as Lillian Ross did, although his love was not requited in the same way. He likens the revered editor to the character Prince Myshkin in The Idiot : innocent and vulnerable, someone who must be protected. And long-suffering, one might infer: \"He was so careful of not hurting anyone's feelings that he often listened to utterly fatuous arguments for hours on end.\"", "Elsewhere, Ross refers to her lover's \"very powerful masculinity,\" only to note on the very next page that \"if he suffered a paper cut on a finger and saw blood, he would come into my office, looking pale.\" She declares that \"Bill was incapable of engendering a cliché, in deed as well as in word.\" But then she puts the most toe-curling clichés into his mouth: \"Why am I more ghost than man?\" Or: \"We must arrest our love in midflight. And we fix it forever as of today, a point of pure light that will reach into eternity.\" (File that under Romantic Effusions We Doubt Ever Got Uttered.) Nor is Ross incapable of a melodramatic cliché herself. \"Why can't we just live, just live ?\" she cries in anguish when she and Shawn, walking hand in hand out of Central Park, chance to see Shawn's wife slowly making her way down the block with a burden of packages.", "Like Ross, Mehta struggles to express William Shawn's ineffable virtues. \"It is as if, Mehta, he were beyond our human conception,\" Janet Flanner tells him once to calm him down. At times I wondered whether the author, in his ecstasies of devotion, had not inadvertently committed plagiarism. His words on Mr. Shawn sound suspiciously like those of Mr. Pooter on his boss Mr. Perkupp in The Diary of a Nobody . Compare. Mehta on Shawn: \"His words were so generous that I could scarcely find my tongue, even to thank him.\" Pooter on Perkupp: \"My heart was too full to thank him.\" Mehta: \"I started saying to myself compulsively, 'I wish Mr. Shawn would ring,' at the oddest times of the day or night. ... How I longed for the parade of proofs, the excitement of rewriting and perfecting!\" Pooter: \"Mr. Perkupp, I will work night and day to serve you!\"", "Happily, Ross has sprinkled her memoir with clues that it is not to be taken as entirely factual. To say that Shawn was \"a man who grieved over all living creatures\" is forgivable hyperbole; but later to add that he \"mourned\" for Si Newhouse when Newhouse unceremoniously fired him in 1987 (a couple of years after buying the magazine)--well, that's a bit much. Even Jesus had his limits.", "When cocktail party malcontents mocked Shawn's New Yorker in the late '70s and early '80s, they would make fun of such things as E.J. Kahn's five-part series on \"Grains of the World\" or Elizabeth Drew's supposedly soporific reporting from Washington. But Ved Mehta was always the butt of the worst abuse. Shawn was allowing him to publish an autobiography in the pages of the magazine that was mounting up to millions of words over the years, and the very idea of it seemed to bore people silly. After the publication of two early installments, \"Daddyji\" and \"Mamaji,\" each the length of a book, one critic cried: \"Enoughji!\"", "And what does she think of Mrs. Shawn? \"I found her to be sensitive and likeable.\" Plus, she could \"do a mean Charleston.\" There is nothing more poignant than the image of an openly cheated-upon and humiliated wife doing \"a mean Charleston.\" \n\n William Shawn's indispensability as an editor is amply manifest in Ross' memoir. Word repetition? \"Whatever reporting Bill asked me to do turned out to be both challenging and fun. ... For me, reporting and writing for the magazine was fun, pure fun. ... It was never 'work' for me. It was fun.\" Even in praising his skill as an editor, she betrays the presence of its absence. \"All writers, of course, have needed the one called the 'editor,' who singularly, almost mystically, embodies the many-faceted, unique life force infusing the entire enchilada.\" Nice touch, that enchilada.", "Goings On About Town \n\n One of the funniest moments in Brendan Gill's 1975 memoir, Here at \"The New Yorker ,\" comes during a luncheon at the now vanished Ritz in Manhattan. At the table are Gill; William Shawn, then editor of The New Yorker ; and the reclusive English writer Henry Green. Green's new novel, Loving , has just received a very favorable review in The New Yorker . Shawn--\"with his usual hushed delicacy of speech and manner\"--inquires of the novelist whether he could possibly reveal what prompted the creation of such an exquisite work. Green obliges. \"I once asked an old butler in Ireland what had been the happiest times of his life,\" he says. \"The butler replied, 'Lying in bed on Sunday morning, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.' \" \n\n This was not the explanation Shawn was expecting, Gill tells us. \"Discs of bright red begin to burn in his cheeks.\"", "Mehta's writerly persona, a disarming mixture of the feline and the naive, is perfect for relating the little scandals that worried The New Yorker in the late '70s (plagiarism, frozen turbot), the drama of finding a worthy candidate to succeed the aging Shawn as editor, the purchase of the magazine by the evil Si Newhouse (\"We all took fright\") and the resultant plague of Gottliebs and Florios visited upon it, and what he sees as the final debacle: Tinaji.", "Shawn was managing editor of The New Yorker when he hired Ross in 1945 as the magazine's second woman reporter (the first was Andy Logan). He was short and balding but had pale blue eyes to die for. As for Ross, \"I was aware of the fact that I was not unappealing.\" During a late-night editorial session, she says, Shawn blurted out his love. A few weeks later at the office, their eyes met. Without a word--even, it seems, to the cab driver--they hied uptown to the Plaza, where matters were consummated. Thereafter, the couple set up housekeeping together in an apartment 20 blocks downtown from the Shawn residence on upper Fifth Avenue and stoically endured the sufferings of Shawn's wife, who did not want a divorce.", "Now, Ross seems like a nice lady, and I certainly have nothing against adultery, which I hear is being carried on in the best circles these days. But the public flaunting of adultery--especially when spouses and children are around--well, it brings out the bourgeois in me. It also made me feel funny about William Shawn, whom I have always regarded as a great man. I loved his New Yorker . The prose it contained--the gray stuff around the cartoons--was balm for the soul: unfailingly clear, precise, logical, and quietly stylish. So what if the articles were occasionally boring? It was a sweet sort of boredom, serene and restorative, not at all like the kind induced by magazines today, which is more akin to nervous exhaustion. Besides, the moral tone of the magazine was almost wholly admirable--it was ahead of the pack on Hiroshima, civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the environment--and this was very much Shawn's doing. I do not like to think of him in an illicit love nest, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.", "Or the great and eccentric Irish writer Maeve Breenan, who fetched up as a bag lady. Or the legendary St. Clair McKelway, whose decisive breakdown came when he hailed a cab and prevailed upon the driver to take him to the New Yorker office at 24 West 43 rd St. \"O.K., Mac, if that's what you want.\" He was in Boston at the time. (McKelway later told Mehta that if the cabby had not called him \"Mac,\" his nickname, an alarm might have gone off in his head.)", "I am not sure I have made it sound this way so far, but Mehta's book is completely engrossing--the most enjoyable book, I think, I have ever reviewed. It oozes affection and conviction, crackles with anger, and is stuffed with thumping good stories. Many are about Mehta's daft colleagues at The New Yorker , such as the guy in the next office: \n\n His door was always shut, but I could hear him through the wall that separated his cubicle from mine typing without pause. ... Even the changing of the paper in the typewriter seemed somehow to be incorporated into the rhythmic rat-tat-tat ... year after year went by to the sound of his typing but without a word from his typewriter appearing in the magazine.", "Both these memoirs must be read by everyone--everyone, that is, who takes seriously the important business of sorting out precisely how he or she feels about The New Yorker , then and now. Of the two, Mehta's is far and away the more entertaining. This may seem odd, for Mehta is reputed to be a very dull writer whereas Ross is a famously zippy one. Moreover, Mehta writes as Shawn's adoring acolyte, whereas Ross writes as his longtime adulterous lover. Just knowing that Mrs. Shawn is still alive adds a certain tension to reading much of what this Other Woman chooses to divulge. Evidently, \"Bill\" and Lillian loved each other with a fine, pure love, a love that was more than love, a love coveted by the winged seraphs of heaven. \"We had indeed become one,\" she tells us, freely venting the inflations of her heart.", "Lillian Ross, by contrast, takes a rather cheerful view of the Brown dispensation. Indeed, the new editor even coaxed Ross into re-joining the magazine, just as she was booting Mehta out. \"I found that she possessed--under the usual disguises--her own share of Bill's kind of naivete, insight, and sensitivity,\" Ross says of Brown. \"She, too, 'got it.' \" A few months after Brown was appointed editor, Shawn died at the age of 85. He had long since stopped reading his beloved magazine, in sorrow and relief. That's if you believe Mehta. Ross assures us that Mr. Shawn was reading Tina Brown's New Yorker \"with new interest\" in the weeks prior to his death.", "Has Tina Brown betrayed the legacy of William Shawn, as Mehta fiercely believes, or has she continued and built upon it, as Ross is evidently convinced? Have the changes she has wrought enlivened a stodgy magazine or vulgarized a dignified one--or both? These are weighty questions, and one is of course loath to compromise one's life chances by hazarding unripe opinions in a public forum such as this." ], [ "Like Ross, Mehta struggles to express William Shawn's ineffable virtues. \"It is as if, Mehta, he were beyond our human conception,\" Janet Flanner tells him once to calm him down. At times I wondered whether the author, in his ecstasies of devotion, had not inadvertently committed plagiarism. His words on Mr. Shawn sound suspiciously like those of Mr. Pooter on his boss Mr. Perkupp in The Diary of a Nobody . Compare. Mehta on Shawn: \"His words were so generous that I could scarcely find my tongue, even to thank him.\" Pooter on Perkupp: \"My heart was too full to thank him.\" Mehta: \"I started saying to myself compulsively, 'I wish Mr. Shawn would ring,' at the oddest times of the day or night. ... How I longed for the parade of proofs, the excitement of rewriting and perfecting!\" Pooter: \"Mr. Perkupp, I will work night and day to serve you!\"", "Mehta's writerly persona, a disarming mixture of the feline and the naive, is perfect for relating the little scandals that worried The New Yorker in the late '70s (plagiarism, frozen turbot), the drama of finding a worthy candidate to succeed the aging Shawn as editor, the purchase of the magazine by the evil Si Newhouse (\"We all took fright\") and the resultant plague of Gottliebs and Florios visited upon it, and what he sees as the final debacle: Tinaji.", "Was Shawn blushing out of prudishness, as we are meant to infer? This was, after all, a man renowned for his retiring propriety, a man who sedulously barred anything smacking of the salacious--from lingerie ads to four-letter words--from the magazine he stewarded from 1952 until 1987, five years before his death. But after reading these two new memoirs about Shawn, I wonder. \"He longed for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,\" Lillian Ross discloses in hers, adding that he lusted after Hannah Arendt, Evonne Goolagong, and Madonna. As for Ved Mehta, he reports that Shawn's favorite thing to watch on television was \"people dancing uninhibitedly\" ( Soul Train , one guesses). I suspect Shawn did not blush at the \"cunty fingers\" remark out of prudery. He blushed because it had hit too close to home.", "And what does she think of Mrs. Shawn? \"I found her to be sensitive and likeable.\" Plus, she could \"do a mean Charleston.\" There is nothing more poignant than the image of an openly cheated-upon and humiliated wife doing \"a mean Charleston.\" \n\n William Shawn's indispensability as an editor is amply manifest in Ross' memoir. Word repetition? \"Whatever reporting Bill asked me to do turned out to be both challenging and fun. ... For me, reporting and writing for the magazine was fun, pure fun. ... It was never 'work' for me. It was fun.\" Even in praising his skill as an editor, she betrays the presence of its absence. \"All writers, of course, have needed the one called the 'editor,' who singularly, almost mystically, embodies the many-faceted, unique life force infusing the entire enchilada.\" Nice touch, that enchilada.", "Elsewhere, Ross refers to her lover's \"very powerful masculinity,\" only to note on the very next page that \"if he suffered a paper cut on a finger and saw blood, he would come into my office, looking pale.\" She declares that \"Bill was incapable of engendering a cliché, in deed as well as in word.\" But then she puts the most toe-curling clichés into his mouth: \"Why am I more ghost than man?\" Or: \"We must arrest our love in midflight. And we fix it forever as of today, a point of pure light that will reach into eternity.\" (File that under Romantic Effusions We Doubt Ever Got Uttered.) Nor is Ross incapable of a melodramatic cliché herself. \"Why can't we just live, just live ?\" she cries in anguish when she and Shawn, walking hand in hand out of Central Park, chance to see Shawn's wife slowly making her way down the block with a burden of packages.", "Now, Ross seems like a nice lady, and I certainly have nothing against adultery, which I hear is being carried on in the best circles these days. But the public flaunting of adultery--especially when spouses and children are around--well, it brings out the bourgeois in me. It also made me feel funny about William Shawn, whom I have always regarded as a great man. I loved his New Yorker . The prose it contained--the gray stuff around the cartoons--was balm for the soul: unfailingly clear, precise, logical, and quietly stylish. So what if the articles were occasionally boring? It was a sweet sort of boredom, serene and restorative, not at all like the kind induced by magazines today, which is more akin to nervous exhaustion. Besides, the moral tone of the magazine was almost wholly admirable--it was ahead of the pack on Hiroshima, civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the environment--and this was very much Shawn's doing. I do not like to think of him in an illicit love nest, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.", "Happily, Ross has sprinkled her memoir with clues that it is not to be taken as entirely factual. To say that Shawn was \"a man who grieved over all living creatures\" is forgivable hyperbole; but later to add that he \"mourned\" for Si Newhouse when Newhouse unceremoniously fired him in 1987 (a couple of years after buying the magazine)--well, that's a bit much. Even Jesus had his limits.", "Mehta's multivolume autobiography, titled Continents of Exile , has loss as its overarching theme: loss of sight, of childhood, of home and country, and now--with this volume--loss of Mr. Shawn's New Yorker . The memoir takes us from the time the author was hired as a staff writer in the early '60s up to 1994, when he was \"terminated\" by the loathed Tina Brown in her vandalization of his cherished magazine. Mehta evidently loved William Shawn at least as much as Lillian Ross did, although his love was not requited in the same way. He likens the revered editor to the character Prince Myshkin in The Idiot : innocent and vulnerable, someone who must be protected. And long-suffering, one might infer: \"He was so careful of not hurting anyone's feelings that he often listened to utterly fatuous arguments for hours on end.\"", "When cocktail party malcontents mocked Shawn's New Yorker in the late '70s and early '80s, they would make fun of such things as E.J. Kahn's five-part series on \"Grains of the World\" or Elizabeth Drew's supposedly soporific reporting from Washington. But Ved Mehta was always the butt of the worst abuse. Shawn was allowing him to publish an autobiography in the pages of the magazine that was mounting up to millions of words over the years, and the very idea of it seemed to bore people silly. After the publication of two early installments, \"Daddyji\" and \"Mamaji,\" each the length of a book, one critic cried: \"Enoughji!\"", "Shawn was managing editor of The New Yorker when he hired Ross in 1945 as the magazine's second woman reporter (the first was Andy Logan). He was short and balding but had pale blue eyes to die for. As for Ross, \"I was aware of the fact that I was not unappealing.\" During a late-night editorial session, she says, Shawn blurted out his love. A few weeks later at the office, their eyes met. Without a word--even, it seems, to the cab driver--they hied uptown to the Plaza, where matters were consummated. Thereafter, the couple set up housekeeping together in an apartment 20 blocks downtown from the Shawn residence on upper Fifth Avenue and stoically endured the sufferings of Shawn's wife, who did not want a divorce.", "Goings On About Town \n\n One of the funniest moments in Brendan Gill's 1975 memoir, Here at \"The New Yorker ,\" comes during a luncheon at the now vanished Ritz in Manhattan. At the table are Gill; William Shawn, then editor of The New Yorker ; and the reclusive English writer Henry Green. Green's new novel, Loving , has just received a very favorable review in The New Yorker . Shawn--\"with his usual hushed delicacy of speech and manner\"--inquires of the novelist whether he could possibly reveal what prompted the creation of such an exquisite work. Green obliges. \"I once asked an old butler in Ireland what had been the happiest times of his life,\" he says. \"The butler replied, 'Lying in bed on Sunday morning, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.' \" \n\n This was not the explanation Shawn was expecting, Gill tells us. \"Discs of bright red begin to burn in his cheeks.\"", "But it kept coming. And I, for one, was grateful. Here was a boy growing up in Punjab during the fall of the Raj and the Partition, a boy who had been blinded by meningitis at the age of 3, roller-skating through the back streets of Lahore as Sikhs slaughtered Hindus and Hindus slaughtered Muslims and civilization was collapsing and then, decades later, having made his way from India to an Arkansas school for the blind to Balliol College, Oxford, to The New Yorker , re-creating the whole thing in Proustian detail and better-than-Proustian prose ... !", "I am not sure I have made it sound this way so far, but Mehta's book is completely engrossing--the most enjoyable book, I think, I have ever reviewed. It oozes affection and conviction, crackles with anger, and is stuffed with thumping good stories. Many are about Mehta's daft colleagues at The New Yorker , such as the guy in the next office: \n\n His door was always shut, but I could hear him through the wall that separated his cubicle from mine typing without pause. ... Even the changing of the paper in the typewriter seemed somehow to be incorporated into the rhythmic rat-tat-tat ... year after year went by to the sound of his typing but without a word from his typewriter appearing in the magazine.", "Or the great and eccentric Irish writer Maeve Breenan, who fetched up as a bag lady. Or the legendary St. Clair McKelway, whose decisive breakdown came when he hailed a cab and prevailed upon the driver to take him to the New Yorker office at 24 West 43 rd St. \"O.K., Mac, if that's what you want.\" He was in Boston at the time. (McKelway later told Mehta that if the cabby had not called him \"Mac,\" his nickname, an alarm might have gone off in his head.)", "Both these memoirs must be read by everyone--everyone, that is, who takes seriously the important business of sorting out precisely how he or she feels about The New Yorker , then and now. Of the two, Mehta's is far and away the more entertaining. This may seem odd, for Mehta is reputed to be a very dull writer whereas Ross is a famously zippy one. Moreover, Mehta writes as Shawn's adoring acolyte, whereas Ross writes as his longtime adulterous lover. Just knowing that Mrs. Shawn is still alive adds a certain tension to reading much of what this Other Woman chooses to divulge. Evidently, \"Bill\" and Lillian loved each other with a fine, pure love, a love that was more than love, a love coveted by the winged seraphs of heaven. \"We had indeed become one,\" she tells us, freely venting the inflations of her heart.", "Lillian Ross, by contrast, takes a rather cheerful view of the Brown dispensation. Indeed, the new editor even coaxed Ross into re-joining the magazine, just as she was booting Mehta out. \"I found that she possessed--under the usual disguises--her own share of Bill's kind of naivete, insight, and sensitivity,\" Ross says of Brown. \"She, too, 'got it.' \" A few months after Brown was appointed editor, Shawn died at the age of 85. He had long since stopped reading his beloved magazine, in sorrow and relief. That's if you believe Mehta. Ross assures us that Mr. Shawn was reading Tina Brown's New Yorker \"with new interest\" in the weeks prior to his death.", "Has Tina Brown betrayed the legacy of William Shawn, as Mehta fiercely believes, or has she continued and built upon it, as Ross is evidently convinced? Have the changes she has wrought enlivened a stodgy magazine or vulgarized a dignified one--or both? These are weighty questions, and one is of course loath to compromise one's life chances by hazarding unripe opinions in a public forum such as this." ], [ "I am not sure I have made it sound this way so far, but Mehta's book is completely engrossing--the most enjoyable book, I think, I have ever reviewed. It oozes affection and conviction, crackles with anger, and is stuffed with thumping good stories. Many are about Mehta's daft colleagues at The New Yorker , such as the guy in the next office: \n\n His door was always shut, but I could hear him through the wall that separated his cubicle from mine typing without pause. ... Even the changing of the paper in the typewriter seemed somehow to be incorporated into the rhythmic rat-tat-tat ... year after year went by to the sound of his typing but without a word from his typewriter appearing in the magazine.", "Mehta's multivolume autobiography, titled Continents of Exile , has loss as its overarching theme: loss of sight, of childhood, of home and country, and now--with this volume--loss of Mr. Shawn's New Yorker . The memoir takes us from the time the author was hired as a staff writer in the early '60s up to 1994, when he was \"terminated\" by the loathed Tina Brown in her vandalization of his cherished magazine. Mehta evidently loved William Shawn at least as much as Lillian Ross did, although his love was not requited in the same way. He likens the revered editor to the character Prince Myshkin in The Idiot : innocent and vulnerable, someone who must be protected. And long-suffering, one might infer: \"He was so careful of not hurting anyone's feelings that he often listened to utterly fatuous arguments for hours on end.\"", "Like Ross, Mehta struggles to express William Shawn's ineffable virtues. \"It is as if, Mehta, he were beyond our human conception,\" Janet Flanner tells him once to calm him down. At times I wondered whether the author, in his ecstasies of devotion, had not inadvertently committed plagiarism. His words on Mr. Shawn sound suspiciously like those of Mr. Pooter on his boss Mr. Perkupp in The Diary of a Nobody . Compare. Mehta on Shawn: \"His words were so generous that I could scarcely find my tongue, even to thank him.\" Pooter on Perkupp: \"My heart was too full to thank him.\" Mehta: \"I started saying to myself compulsively, 'I wish Mr. Shawn would ring,' at the oddest times of the day or night. ... How I longed for the parade of proofs, the excitement of rewriting and perfecting!\" Pooter: \"Mr. Perkupp, I will work night and day to serve you!\"", "Mehta's writerly persona, a disarming mixture of the feline and the naive, is perfect for relating the little scandals that worried The New Yorker in the late '70s (plagiarism, frozen turbot), the drama of finding a worthy candidate to succeed the aging Shawn as editor, the purchase of the magazine by the evil Si Newhouse (\"We all took fright\") and the resultant plague of Gottliebs and Florios visited upon it, and what he sees as the final debacle: Tinaji.", "When cocktail party malcontents mocked Shawn's New Yorker in the late '70s and early '80s, they would make fun of such things as E.J. Kahn's five-part series on \"Grains of the World\" or Elizabeth Drew's supposedly soporific reporting from Washington. But Ved Mehta was always the butt of the worst abuse. Shawn was allowing him to publish an autobiography in the pages of the magazine that was mounting up to millions of words over the years, and the very idea of it seemed to bore people silly. After the publication of two early installments, \"Daddyji\" and \"Mamaji,\" each the length of a book, one critic cried: \"Enoughji!\"", "But it kept coming. And I, for one, was grateful. Here was a boy growing up in Punjab during the fall of the Raj and the Partition, a boy who had been blinded by meningitis at the age of 3, roller-skating through the back streets of Lahore as Sikhs slaughtered Hindus and Hindus slaughtered Muslims and civilization was collapsing and then, decades later, having made his way from India to an Arkansas school for the blind to Balliol College, Oxford, to The New Yorker , re-creating the whole thing in Proustian detail and better-than-Proustian prose ... !", "Both these memoirs must be read by everyone--everyone, that is, who takes seriously the important business of sorting out precisely how he or she feels about The New Yorker , then and now. Of the two, Mehta's is far and away the more entertaining. This may seem odd, for Mehta is reputed to be a very dull writer whereas Ross is a famously zippy one. Moreover, Mehta writes as Shawn's adoring acolyte, whereas Ross writes as his longtime adulterous lover. Just knowing that Mrs. Shawn is still alive adds a certain tension to reading much of what this Other Woman chooses to divulge. Evidently, \"Bill\" and Lillian loved each other with a fine, pure love, a love that was more than love, a love coveted by the winged seraphs of heaven. \"We had indeed become one,\" she tells us, freely venting the inflations of her heart.", "Was Shawn blushing out of prudishness, as we are meant to infer? This was, after all, a man renowned for his retiring propriety, a man who sedulously barred anything smacking of the salacious--from lingerie ads to four-letter words--from the magazine he stewarded from 1952 until 1987, five years before his death. But after reading these two new memoirs about Shawn, I wonder. \"He longed for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,\" Lillian Ross discloses in hers, adding that he lusted after Hannah Arendt, Evonne Goolagong, and Madonna. As for Ved Mehta, he reports that Shawn's favorite thing to watch on television was \"people dancing uninhibitedly\" ( Soul Train , one guesses). I suspect Shawn did not blush at the \"cunty fingers\" remark out of prudery. He blushed because it had hit too close to home.", "Lillian Ross, by contrast, takes a rather cheerful view of the Brown dispensation. Indeed, the new editor even coaxed Ross into re-joining the magazine, just as she was booting Mehta out. \"I found that she possessed--under the usual disguises--her own share of Bill's kind of naivete, insight, and sensitivity,\" Ross says of Brown. \"She, too, 'got it.' \" A few months after Brown was appointed editor, Shawn died at the age of 85. He had long since stopped reading his beloved magazine, in sorrow and relief. That's if you believe Mehta. Ross assures us that Mr. Shawn was reading Tina Brown's New Yorker \"with new interest\" in the weeks prior to his death.", "Has Tina Brown betrayed the legacy of William Shawn, as Mehta fiercely believes, or has she continued and built upon it, as Ross is evidently convinced? Have the changes she has wrought enlivened a stodgy magazine or vulgarized a dignified one--or both? These are weighty questions, and one is of course loath to compromise one's life chances by hazarding unripe opinions in a public forum such as this.", "And what does she think of Mrs. Shawn? \"I found her to be sensitive and likeable.\" Plus, she could \"do a mean Charleston.\" There is nothing more poignant than the image of an openly cheated-upon and humiliated wife doing \"a mean Charleston.\" \n\n William Shawn's indispensability as an editor is amply manifest in Ross' memoir. Word repetition? \"Whatever reporting Bill asked me to do turned out to be both challenging and fun. ... For me, reporting and writing for the magazine was fun, pure fun. ... It was never 'work' for me. It was fun.\" Even in praising his skill as an editor, she betrays the presence of its absence. \"All writers, of course, have needed the one called the 'editor,' who singularly, almost mystically, embodies the many-faceted, unique life force infusing the entire enchilada.\" Nice touch, that enchilada.", "Happily, Ross has sprinkled her memoir with clues that it is not to be taken as entirely factual. To say that Shawn was \"a man who grieved over all living creatures\" is forgivable hyperbole; but later to add that he \"mourned\" for Si Newhouse when Newhouse unceremoniously fired him in 1987 (a couple of years after buying the magazine)--well, that's a bit much. Even Jesus had his limits.", "Elsewhere, Ross refers to her lover's \"very powerful masculinity,\" only to note on the very next page that \"if he suffered a paper cut on a finger and saw blood, he would come into my office, looking pale.\" She declares that \"Bill was incapable of engendering a cliché, in deed as well as in word.\" But then she puts the most toe-curling clichés into his mouth: \"Why am I more ghost than man?\" Or: \"We must arrest our love in midflight. And we fix it forever as of today, a point of pure light that will reach into eternity.\" (File that under Romantic Effusions We Doubt Ever Got Uttered.) Nor is Ross incapable of a melodramatic cliché herself. \"Why can't we just live, just live ?\" she cries in anguish when she and Shawn, walking hand in hand out of Central Park, chance to see Shawn's wife slowly making her way down the block with a burden of packages.", "Goings On About Town \n\n One of the funniest moments in Brendan Gill's 1975 memoir, Here at \"The New Yorker ,\" comes during a luncheon at the now vanished Ritz in Manhattan. At the table are Gill; William Shawn, then editor of The New Yorker ; and the reclusive English writer Henry Green. Green's new novel, Loving , has just received a very favorable review in The New Yorker . Shawn--\"with his usual hushed delicacy of speech and manner\"--inquires of the novelist whether he could possibly reveal what prompted the creation of such an exquisite work. Green obliges. \"I once asked an old butler in Ireland what had been the happiest times of his life,\" he says. \"The butler replied, 'Lying in bed on Sunday morning, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.' \" \n\n This was not the explanation Shawn was expecting, Gill tells us. \"Discs of bright red begin to burn in his cheeks.\"", "Now, Ross seems like a nice lady, and I certainly have nothing against adultery, which I hear is being carried on in the best circles these days. But the public flaunting of adultery--especially when spouses and children are around--well, it brings out the bourgeois in me. It also made me feel funny about William Shawn, whom I have always regarded as a great man. I loved his New Yorker . The prose it contained--the gray stuff around the cartoons--was balm for the soul: unfailingly clear, precise, logical, and quietly stylish. So what if the articles were occasionally boring? It was a sweet sort of boredom, serene and restorative, not at all like the kind induced by magazines today, which is more akin to nervous exhaustion. Besides, the moral tone of the magazine was almost wholly admirable--it was ahead of the pack on Hiroshima, civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the environment--and this was very much Shawn's doing. I do not like to think of him in an illicit love nest, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.", "Or the great and eccentric Irish writer Maeve Breenan, who fetched up as a bag lady. Or the legendary St. Clair McKelway, whose decisive breakdown came when he hailed a cab and prevailed upon the driver to take him to the New Yorker office at 24 West 43 rd St. \"O.K., Mac, if that's what you want.\" He was in Boston at the time. (McKelway later told Mehta that if the cabby had not called him \"Mac,\" his nickname, an alarm might have gone off in his head.)", "Shawn was managing editor of The New Yorker when he hired Ross in 1945 as the magazine's second woman reporter (the first was Andy Logan). He was short and balding but had pale blue eyes to die for. As for Ross, \"I was aware of the fact that I was not unappealing.\" During a late-night editorial session, she says, Shawn blurted out his love. A few weeks later at the office, their eyes met. Without a word--even, it seems, to the cab driver--they hied uptown to the Plaza, where matters were consummated. Thereafter, the couple set up housekeeping together in an apartment 20 blocks downtown from the Shawn residence on upper Fifth Avenue and stoically endured the sufferings of Shawn's wife, who did not want a divorce." ], [ "Lillian Ross, by contrast, takes a rather cheerful view of the Brown dispensation. Indeed, the new editor even coaxed Ross into re-joining the magazine, just as she was booting Mehta out. \"I found that she possessed--under the usual disguises--her own share of Bill's kind of naivete, insight, and sensitivity,\" Ross says of Brown. \"She, too, 'got it.' \" A few months after Brown was appointed editor, Shawn died at the age of 85. He had long since stopped reading his beloved magazine, in sorrow and relief. That's if you believe Mehta. Ross assures us that Mr. Shawn was reading Tina Brown's New Yorker \"with new interest\" in the weeks prior to his death.", "Shawn was managing editor of The New Yorker when he hired Ross in 1945 as the magazine's second woman reporter (the first was Andy Logan). He was short and balding but had pale blue eyes to die for. As for Ross, \"I was aware of the fact that I was not unappealing.\" During a late-night editorial session, she says, Shawn blurted out his love. A few weeks later at the office, their eyes met. Without a word--even, it seems, to the cab driver--they hied uptown to the Plaza, where matters were consummated. Thereafter, the couple set up housekeeping together in an apartment 20 blocks downtown from the Shawn residence on upper Fifth Avenue and stoically endured the sufferings of Shawn's wife, who did not want a divorce.", "Mehta's writerly persona, a disarming mixture of the feline and the naive, is perfect for relating the little scandals that worried The New Yorker in the late '70s (plagiarism, frozen turbot), the drama of finding a worthy candidate to succeed the aging Shawn as editor, the purchase of the magazine by the evil Si Newhouse (\"We all took fright\") and the resultant plague of Gottliebs and Florios visited upon it, and what he sees as the final debacle: Tinaji.", "Happily, Ross has sprinkled her memoir with clues that it is not to be taken as entirely factual. To say that Shawn was \"a man who grieved over all living creatures\" is forgivable hyperbole; but later to add that he \"mourned\" for Si Newhouse when Newhouse unceremoniously fired him in 1987 (a couple of years after buying the magazine)--well, that's a bit much. Even Jesus had his limits.", "And what does she think of Mrs. Shawn? \"I found her to be sensitive and likeable.\" Plus, she could \"do a mean Charleston.\" There is nothing more poignant than the image of an openly cheated-upon and humiliated wife doing \"a mean Charleston.\" \n\n William Shawn's indispensability as an editor is amply manifest in Ross' memoir. Word repetition? \"Whatever reporting Bill asked me to do turned out to be both challenging and fun. ... For me, reporting and writing for the magazine was fun, pure fun. ... It was never 'work' for me. It was fun.\" Even in praising his skill as an editor, she betrays the presence of its absence. \"All writers, of course, have needed the one called the 'editor,' who singularly, almost mystically, embodies the many-faceted, unique life force infusing the entire enchilada.\" Nice touch, that enchilada.", "Both these memoirs must be read by everyone--everyone, that is, who takes seriously the important business of sorting out precisely how he or she feels about The New Yorker , then and now. Of the two, Mehta's is far and away the more entertaining. This may seem odd, for Mehta is reputed to be a very dull writer whereas Ross is a famously zippy one. Moreover, Mehta writes as Shawn's adoring acolyte, whereas Ross writes as his longtime adulterous lover. Just knowing that Mrs. Shawn is still alive adds a certain tension to reading much of what this Other Woman chooses to divulge. Evidently, \"Bill\" and Lillian loved each other with a fine, pure love, a love that was more than love, a love coveted by the winged seraphs of heaven. \"We had indeed become one,\" she tells us, freely venting the inflations of her heart.", "Was Shawn blushing out of prudishness, as we are meant to infer? This was, after all, a man renowned for his retiring propriety, a man who sedulously barred anything smacking of the salacious--from lingerie ads to four-letter words--from the magazine he stewarded from 1952 until 1987, five years before his death. But after reading these two new memoirs about Shawn, I wonder. \"He longed for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,\" Lillian Ross discloses in hers, adding that he lusted after Hannah Arendt, Evonne Goolagong, and Madonna. As for Ved Mehta, he reports that Shawn's favorite thing to watch on television was \"people dancing uninhibitedly\" ( Soul Train , one guesses). I suspect Shawn did not blush at the \"cunty fingers\" remark out of prudery. He blushed because it had hit too close to home.", "Mehta's multivolume autobiography, titled Continents of Exile , has loss as its overarching theme: loss of sight, of childhood, of home and country, and now--with this volume--loss of Mr. Shawn's New Yorker . The memoir takes us from the time the author was hired as a staff writer in the early '60s up to 1994, when he was \"terminated\" by the loathed Tina Brown in her vandalization of his cherished magazine. Mehta evidently loved William Shawn at least as much as Lillian Ross did, although his love was not requited in the same way. He likens the revered editor to the character Prince Myshkin in The Idiot : innocent and vulnerable, someone who must be protected. And long-suffering, one might infer: \"He was so careful of not hurting anyone's feelings that he often listened to utterly fatuous arguments for hours on end.\"", "Now, Ross seems like a nice lady, and I certainly have nothing against adultery, which I hear is being carried on in the best circles these days. But the public flaunting of adultery--especially when spouses and children are around--well, it brings out the bourgeois in me. It also made me feel funny about William Shawn, whom I have always regarded as a great man. I loved his New Yorker . The prose it contained--the gray stuff around the cartoons--was balm for the soul: unfailingly clear, precise, logical, and quietly stylish. So what if the articles were occasionally boring? It was a sweet sort of boredom, serene and restorative, not at all like the kind induced by magazines today, which is more akin to nervous exhaustion. Besides, the moral tone of the magazine was almost wholly admirable--it was ahead of the pack on Hiroshima, civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the environment--and this was very much Shawn's doing. I do not like to think of him in an illicit love nest, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.", "Like Ross, Mehta struggles to express William Shawn's ineffable virtues. \"It is as if, Mehta, he were beyond our human conception,\" Janet Flanner tells him once to calm him down. At times I wondered whether the author, in his ecstasies of devotion, had not inadvertently committed plagiarism. His words on Mr. Shawn sound suspiciously like those of Mr. Pooter on his boss Mr. Perkupp in The Diary of a Nobody . Compare. Mehta on Shawn: \"His words were so generous that I could scarcely find my tongue, even to thank him.\" Pooter on Perkupp: \"My heart was too full to thank him.\" Mehta: \"I started saying to myself compulsively, 'I wish Mr. Shawn would ring,' at the oddest times of the day or night. ... How I longed for the parade of proofs, the excitement of rewriting and perfecting!\" Pooter: \"Mr. Perkupp, I will work night and day to serve you!\"", "Has Tina Brown betrayed the legacy of William Shawn, as Mehta fiercely believes, or has she continued and built upon it, as Ross is evidently convinced? Have the changes she has wrought enlivened a stodgy magazine or vulgarized a dignified one--or both? These are weighty questions, and one is of course loath to compromise one's life chances by hazarding unripe opinions in a public forum such as this.", "Goings On About Town \n\n One of the funniest moments in Brendan Gill's 1975 memoir, Here at \"The New Yorker ,\" comes during a luncheon at the now vanished Ritz in Manhattan. At the table are Gill; William Shawn, then editor of The New Yorker ; and the reclusive English writer Henry Green. Green's new novel, Loving , has just received a very favorable review in The New Yorker . Shawn--\"with his usual hushed delicacy of speech and manner\"--inquires of the novelist whether he could possibly reveal what prompted the creation of such an exquisite work. Green obliges. \"I once asked an old butler in Ireland what had been the happiest times of his life,\" he says. \"The butler replied, 'Lying in bed on Sunday morning, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.' \" \n\n This was not the explanation Shawn was expecting, Gill tells us. \"Discs of bright red begin to burn in his cheeks.\"", "When cocktail party malcontents mocked Shawn's New Yorker in the late '70s and early '80s, they would make fun of such things as E.J. Kahn's five-part series on \"Grains of the World\" or Elizabeth Drew's supposedly soporific reporting from Washington. But Ved Mehta was always the butt of the worst abuse. Shawn was allowing him to publish an autobiography in the pages of the magazine that was mounting up to millions of words over the years, and the very idea of it seemed to bore people silly. After the publication of two early installments, \"Daddyji\" and \"Mamaji,\" each the length of a book, one critic cried: \"Enoughji!\"", "Or the great and eccentric Irish writer Maeve Breenan, who fetched up as a bag lady. Or the legendary St. Clair McKelway, whose decisive breakdown came when he hailed a cab and prevailed upon the driver to take him to the New Yorker office at 24 West 43 rd St. \"O.K., Mac, if that's what you want.\" He was in Boston at the time. (McKelway later told Mehta that if the cabby had not called him \"Mac,\" his nickname, an alarm might have gone off in his head.)", "Elsewhere, Ross refers to her lover's \"very powerful masculinity,\" only to note on the very next page that \"if he suffered a paper cut on a finger and saw blood, he would come into my office, looking pale.\" She declares that \"Bill was incapable of engendering a cliché, in deed as well as in word.\" But then she puts the most toe-curling clichés into his mouth: \"Why am I more ghost than man?\" Or: \"We must arrest our love in midflight. And we fix it forever as of today, a point of pure light that will reach into eternity.\" (File that under Romantic Effusions We Doubt Ever Got Uttered.) Nor is Ross incapable of a melodramatic cliché herself. \"Why can't we just live, just live ?\" she cries in anguish when she and Shawn, walking hand in hand out of Central Park, chance to see Shawn's wife slowly making her way down the block with a burden of packages.", "I am not sure I have made it sound this way so far, but Mehta's book is completely engrossing--the most enjoyable book, I think, I have ever reviewed. It oozes affection and conviction, crackles with anger, and is stuffed with thumping good stories. Many are about Mehta's daft colleagues at The New Yorker , such as the guy in the next office: \n\n His door was always shut, but I could hear him through the wall that separated his cubicle from mine typing without pause. ... Even the changing of the paper in the typewriter seemed somehow to be incorporated into the rhythmic rat-tat-tat ... year after year went by to the sound of his typing but without a word from his typewriter appearing in the magazine.", "But it kept coming. And I, for one, was grateful. Here was a boy growing up in Punjab during the fall of the Raj and the Partition, a boy who had been blinded by meningitis at the age of 3, roller-skating through the back streets of Lahore as Sikhs slaughtered Hindus and Hindus slaughtered Muslims and civilization was collapsing and then, decades later, having made his way from India to an Arkansas school for the blind to Balliol College, Oxford, to The New Yorker , re-creating the whole thing in Proustian detail and better-than-Proustian prose ... !" ], [ "Lillian Ross, by contrast, takes a rather cheerful view of the Brown dispensation. Indeed, the new editor even coaxed Ross into re-joining the magazine, just as she was booting Mehta out. \"I found that she possessed--under the usual disguises--her own share of Bill's kind of naivete, insight, and sensitivity,\" Ross says of Brown. \"She, too, 'got it.' \" A few months after Brown was appointed editor, Shawn died at the age of 85. He had long since stopped reading his beloved magazine, in sorrow and relief. That's if you believe Mehta. Ross assures us that Mr. Shawn was reading Tina Brown's New Yorker \"with new interest\" in the weeks prior to his death.", "Happily, Ross has sprinkled her memoir with clues that it is not to be taken as entirely factual. To say that Shawn was \"a man who grieved over all living creatures\" is forgivable hyperbole; but later to add that he \"mourned\" for Si Newhouse when Newhouse unceremoniously fired him in 1987 (a couple of years after buying the magazine)--well, that's a bit much. Even Jesus had his limits.", "And what does she think of Mrs. Shawn? \"I found her to be sensitive and likeable.\" Plus, she could \"do a mean Charleston.\" There is nothing more poignant than the image of an openly cheated-upon and humiliated wife doing \"a mean Charleston.\" \n\n William Shawn's indispensability as an editor is amply manifest in Ross' memoir. Word repetition? \"Whatever reporting Bill asked me to do turned out to be both challenging and fun. ... For me, reporting and writing for the magazine was fun, pure fun. ... It was never 'work' for me. It was fun.\" Even in praising his skill as an editor, she betrays the presence of its absence. \"All writers, of course, have needed the one called the 'editor,' who singularly, almost mystically, embodies the many-faceted, unique life force infusing the entire enchilada.\" Nice touch, that enchilada.", "Like Ross, Mehta struggles to express William Shawn's ineffable virtues. \"It is as if, Mehta, he were beyond our human conception,\" Janet Flanner tells him once to calm him down. At times I wondered whether the author, in his ecstasies of devotion, had not inadvertently committed plagiarism. His words on Mr. Shawn sound suspiciously like those of Mr. Pooter on his boss Mr. Perkupp in The Diary of a Nobody . Compare. Mehta on Shawn: \"His words were so generous that I could scarcely find my tongue, even to thank him.\" Pooter on Perkupp: \"My heart was too full to thank him.\" Mehta: \"I started saying to myself compulsively, 'I wish Mr. Shawn would ring,' at the oddest times of the day or night. ... How I longed for the parade of proofs, the excitement of rewriting and perfecting!\" Pooter: \"Mr. Perkupp, I will work night and day to serve you!\"", "Shawn was managing editor of The New Yorker when he hired Ross in 1945 as the magazine's second woman reporter (the first was Andy Logan). He was short and balding but had pale blue eyes to die for. As for Ross, \"I was aware of the fact that I was not unappealing.\" During a late-night editorial session, she says, Shawn blurted out his love. A few weeks later at the office, their eyes met. Without a word--even, it seems, to the cab driver--they hied uptown to the Plaza, where matters were consummated. Thereafter, the couple set up housekeeping together in an apartment 20 blocks downtown from the Shawn residence on upper Fifth Avenue and stoically endured the sufferings of Shawn's wife, who did not want a divorce.", "Now, Ross seems like a nice lady, and I certainly have nothing against adultery, which I hear is being carried on in the best circles these days. But the public flaunting of adultery--especially when spouses and children are around--well, it brings out the bourgeois in me. It also made me feel funny about William Shawn, whom I have always regarded as a great man. I loved his New Yorker . The prose it contained--the gray stuff around the cartoons--was balm for the soul: unfailingly clear, precise, logical, and quietly stylish. So what if the articles were occasionally boring? It was a sweet sort of boredom, serene and restorative, not at all like the kind induced by magazines today, which is more akin to nervous exhaustion. Besides, the moral tone of the magazine was almost wholly admirable--it was ahead of the pack on Hiroshima, civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the environment--and this was very much Shawn's doing. I do not like to think of him in an illicit love nest, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.", "Has Tina Brown betrayed the legacy of William Shawn, as Mehta fiercely believes, or has she continued and built upon it, as Ross is evidently convinced? Have the changes she has wrought enlivened a stodgy magazine or vulgarized a dignified one--or both? These are weighty questions, and one is of course loath to compromise one's life chances by hazarding unripe opinions in a public forum such as this.", "Both these memoirs must be read by everyone--everyone, that is, who takes seriously the important business of sorting out precisely how he or she feels about The New Yorker , then and now. Of the two, Mehta's is far and away the more entertaining. This may seem odd, for Mehta is reputed to be a very dull writer whereas Ross is a famously zippy one. Moreover, Mehta writes as Shawn's adoring acolyte, whereas Ross writes as his longtime adulterous lover. Just knowing that Mrs. Shawn is still alive adds a certain tension to reading much of what this Other Woman chooses to divulge. Evidently, \"Bill\" and Lillian loved each other with a fine, pure love, a love that was more than love, a love coveted by the winged seraphs of heaven. \"We had indeed become one,\" she tells us, freely venting the inflations of her heart.", "Mehta's multivolume autobiography, titled Continents of Exile , has loss as its overarching theme: loss of sight, of childhood, of home and country, and now--with this volume--loss of Mr. Shawn's New Yorker . The memoir takes us from the time the author was hired as a staff writer in the early '60s up to 1994, when he was \"terminated\" by the loathed Tina Brown in her vandalization of his cherished magazine. Mehta evidently loved William Shawn at least as much as Lillian Ross did, although his love was not requited in the same way. He likens the revered editor to the character Prince Myshkin in The Idiot : innocent and vulnerable, someone who must be protected. And long-suffering, one might infer: \"He was so careful of not hurting anyone's feelings that he often listened to utterly fatuous arguments for hours on end.\"", "Mehta's writerly persona, a disarming mixture of the feline and the naive, is perfect for relating the little scandals that worried The New Yorker in the late '70s (plagiarism, frozen turbot), the drama of finding a worthy candidate to succeed the aging Shawn as editor, the purchase of the magazine by the evil Si Newhouse (\"We all took fright\") and the resultant plague of Gottliebs and Florios visited upon it, and what he sees as the final debacle: Tinaji.", "Was Shawn blushing out of prudishness, as we are meant to infer? This was, after all, a man renowned for his retiring propriety, a man who sedulously barred anything smacking of the salacious--from lingerie ads to four-letter words--from the magazine he stewarded from 1952 until 1987, five years before his death. But after reading these two new memoirs about Shawn, I wonder. \"He longed for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,\" Lillian Ross discloses in hers, adding that he lusted after Hannah Arendt, Evonne Goolagong, and Madonna. As for Ved Mehta, he reports that Shawn's favorite thing to watch on television was \"people dancing uninhibitedly\" ( Soul Train , one guesses). I suspect Shawn did not blush at the \"cunty fingers\" remark out of prudery. He blushed because it had hit too close to home.", "Elsewhere, Ross refers to her lover's \"very powerful masculinity,\" only to note on the very next page that \"if he suffered a paper cut on a finger and saw blood, he would come into my office, looking pale.\" She declares that \"Bill was incapable of engendering a cliché, in deed as well as in word.\" But then she puts the most toe-curling clichés into his mouth: \"Why am I more ghost than man?\" Or: \"We must arrest our love in midflight. And we fix it forever as of today, a point of pure light that will reach into eternity.\" (File that under Romantic Effusions We Doubt Ever Got Uttered.) Nor is Ross incapable of a melodramatic cliché herself. \"Why can't we just live, just live ?\" she cries in anguish when she and Shawn, walking hand in hand out of Central Park, chance to see Shawn's wife slowly making her way down the block with a burden of packages.", "Goings On About Town \n\n One of the funniest moments in Brendan Gill's 1975 memoir, Here at \"The New Yorker ,\" comes during a luncheon at the now vanished Ritz in Manhattan. At the table are Gill; William Shawn, then editor of The New Yorker ; and the reclusive English writer Henry Green. Green's new novel, Loving , has just received a very favorable review in The New Yorker . Shawn--\"with his usual hushed delicacy of speech and manner\"--inquires of the novelist whether he could possibly reveal what prompted the creation of such an exquisite work. Green obliges. \"I once asked an old butler in Ireland what had been the happiest times of his life,\" he says. \"The butler replied, 'Lying in bed on Sunday morning, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.' \" \n\n This was not the explanation Shawn was expecting, Gill tells us. \"Discs of bright red begin to burn in his cheeks.\"", "I am not sure I have made it sound this way so far, but Mehta's book is completely engrossing--the most enjoyable book, I think, I have ever reviewed. It oozes affection and conviction, crackles with anger, and is stuffed with thumping good stories. Many are about Mehta's daft colleagues at The New Yorker , such as the guy in the next office: \n\n His door was always shut, but I could hear him through the wall that separated his cubicle from mine typing without pause. ... Even the changing of the paper in the typewriter seemed somehow to be incorporated into the rhythmic rat-tat-tat ... year after year went by to the sound of his typing but without a word from his typewriter appearing in the magazine.", "But it kept coming. And I, for one, was grateful. Here was a boy growing up in Punjab during the fall of the Raj and the Partition, a boy who had been blinded by meningitis at the age of 3, roller-skating through the back streets of Lahore as Sikhs slaughtered Hindus and Hindus slaughtered Muslims and civilization was collapsing and then, decades later, having made his way from India to an Arkansas school for the blind to Balliol College, Oxford, to The New Yorker , re-creating the whole thing in Proustian detail and better-than-Proustian prose ... !", "When cocktail party malcontents mocked Shawn's New Yorker in the late '70s and early '80s, they would make fun of such things as E.J. Kahn's five-part series on \"Grains of the World\" or Elizabeth Drew's supposedly soporific reporting from Washington. But Ved Mehta was always the butt of the worst abuse. Shawn was allowing him to publish an autobiography in the pages of the magazine that was mounting up to millions of words over the years, and the very idea of it seemed to bore people silly. After the publication of two early installments, \"Daddyji\" and \"Mamaji,\" each the length of a book, one critic cried: \"Enoughji!\"", "Or the great and eccentric Irish writer Maeve Breenan, who fetched up as a bag lady. Or the legendary St. Clair McKelway, whose decisive breakdown came when he hailed a cab and prevailed upon the driver to take him to the New Yorker office at 24 West 43 rd St. \"O.K., Mac, if that's what you want.\" He was in Boston at the time. (McKelway later told Mehta that if the cabby had not called him \"Mac,\" his nickname, an alarm might have gone off in his head.)" ], [ "Lillian Ross, by contrast, takes a rather cheerful view of the Brown dispensation. Indeed, the new editor even coaxed Ross into re-joining the magazine, just as she was booting Mehta out. \"I found that she possessed--under the usual disguises--her own share of Bill's kind of naivete, insight, and sensitivity,\" Ross says of Brown. \"She, too, 'got it.' \" A few months after Brown was appointed editor, Shawn died at the age of 85. He had long since stopped reading his beloved magazine, in sorrow and relief. That's if you believe Mehta. Ross assures us that Mr. Shawn was reading Tina Brown's New Yorker \"with new interest\" in the weeks prior to his death.", "Has Tina Brown betrayed the legacy of William Shawn, as Mehta fiercely believes, or has she continued and built upon it, as Ross is evidently convinced? Have the changes she has wrought enlivened a stodgy magazine or vulgarized a dignified one--or both? These are weighty questions, and one is of course loath to compromise one's life chances by hazarding unripe opinions in a public forum such as this.", "Happily, Ross has sprinkled her memoir with clues that it is not to be taken as entirely factual. To say that Shawn was \"a man who grieved over all living creatures\" is forgivable hyperbole; but later to add that he \"mourned\" for Si Newhouse when Newhouse unceremoniously fired him in 1987 (a couple of years after buying the magazine)--well, that's a bit much. Even Jesus had his limits.", "Was Shawn blushing out of prudishness, as we are meant to infer? This was, after all, a man renowned for his retiring propriety, a man who sedulously barred anything smacking of the salacious--from lingerie ads to four-letter words--from the magazine he stewarded from 1952 until 1987, five years before his death. But after reading these two new memoirs about Shawn, I wonder. \"He longed for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,\" Lillian Ross discloses in hers, adding that he lusted after Hannah Arendt, Evonne Goolagong, and Madonna. As for Ved Mehta, he reports that Shawn's favorite thing to watch on television was \"people dancing uninhibitedly\" ( Soul Train , one guesses). I suspect Shawn did not blush at the \"cunty fingers\" remark out of prudery. He blushed because it had hit too close to home.", "Mehta's multivolume autobiography, titled Continents of Exile , has loss as its overarching theme: loss of sight, of childhood, of home and country, and now--with this volume--loss of Mr. Shawn's New Yorker . The memoir takes us from the time the author was hired as a staff writer in the early '60s up to 1994, when he was \"terminated\" by the loathed Tina Brown in her vandalization of his cherished magazine. Mehta evidently loved William Shawn at least as much as Lillian Ross did, although his love was not requited in the same way. He likens the revered editor to the character Prince Myshkin in The Idiot : innocent and vulnerable, someone who must be protected. And long-suffering, one might infer: \"He was so careful of not hurting anyone's feelings that he often listened to utterly fatuous arguments for hours on end.\"", "And what does she think of Mrs. Shawn? \"I found her to be sensitive and likeable.\" Plus, she could \"do a mean Charleston.\" There is nothing more poignant than the image of an openly cheated-upon and humiliated wife doing \"a mean Charleston.\" \n\n William Shawn's indispensability as an editor is amply manifest in Ross' memoir. Word repetition? \"Whatever reporting Bill asked me to do turned out to be both challenging and fun. ... For me, reporting and writing for the magazine was fun, pure fun. ... It was never 'work' for me. It was fun.\" Even in praising his skill as an editor, she betrays the presence of its absence. \"All writers, of course, have needed the one called the 'editor,' who singularly, almost mystically, embodies the many-faceted, unique life force infusing the entire enchilada.\" Nice touch, that enchilada.", "Mehta's writerly persona, a disarming mixture of the feline and the naive, is perfect for relating the little scandals that worried The New Yorker in the late '70s (plagiarism, frozen turbot), the drama of finding a worthy candidate to succeed the aging Shawn as editor, the purchase of the magazine by the evil Si Newhouse (\"We all took fright\") and the resultant plague of Gottliebs and Florios visited upon it, and what he sees as the final debacle: Tinaji.", "Shawn was managing editor of The New Yorker when he hired Ross in 1945 as the magazine's second woman reporter (the first was Andy Logan). He was short and balding but had pale blue eyes to die for. As for Ross, \"I was aware of the fact that I was not unappealing.\" During a late-night editorial session, she says, Shawn blurted out his love. A few weeks later at the office, their eyes met. Without a word--even, it seems, to the cab driver--they hied uptown to the Plaza, where matters were consummated. Thereafter, the couple set up housekeeping together in an apartment 20 blocks downtown from the Shawn residence on upper Fifth Avenue and stoically endured the sufferings of Shawn's wife, who did not want a divorce.", "Now, Ross seems like a nice lady, and I certainly have nothing against adultery, which I hear is being carried on in the best circles these days. But the public flaunting of adultery--especially when spouses and children are around--well, it brings out the bourgeois in me. It also made me feel funny about William Shawn, whom I have always regarded as a great man. I loved his New Yorker . The prose it contained--the gray stuff around the cartoons--was balm for the soul: unfailingly clear, precise, logical, and quietly stylish. So what if the articles were occasionally boring? It was a sweet sort of boredom, serene and restorative, not at all like the kind induced by magazines today, which is more akin to nervous exhaustion. Besides, the moral tone of the magazine was almost wholly admirable--it was ahead of the pack on Hiroshima, civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the environment--and this was very much Shawn's doing. I do not like to think of him in an illicit love nest, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.", "Both these memoirs must be read by everyone--everyone, that is, who takes seriously the important business of sorting out precisely how he or she feels about The New Yorker , then and now. Of the two, Mehta's is far and away the more entertaining. This may seem odd, for Mehta is reputed to be a very dull writer whereas Ross is a famously zippy one. Moreover, Mehta writes as Shawn's adoring acolyte, whereas Ross writes as his longtime adulterous lover. Just knowing that Mrs. Shawn is still alive adds a certain tension to reading much of what this Other Woman chooses to divulge. Evidently, \"Bill\" and Lillian loved each other with a fine, pure love, a love that was more than love, a love coveted by the winged seraphs of heaven. \"We had indeed become one,\" she tells us, freely venting the inflations of her heart.", "When cocktail party malcontents mocked Shawn's New Yorker in the late '70s and early '80s, they would make fun of such things as E.J. Kahn's five-part series on \"Grains of the World\" or Elizabeth Drew's supposedly soporific reporting from Washington. But Ved Mehta was always the butt of the worst abuse. Shawn was allowing him to publish an autobiography in the pages of the magazine that was mounting up to millions of words over the years, and the very idea of it seemed to bore people silly. After the publication of two early installments, \"Daddyji\" and \"Mamaji,\" each the length of a book, one critic cried: \"Enoughji!\"", "Like Ross, Mehta struggles to express William Shawn's ineffable virtues. \"It is as if, Mehta, he were beyond our human conception,\" Janet Flanner tells him once to calm him down. At times I wondered whether the author, in his ecstasies of devotion, had not inadvertently committed plagiarism. His words on Mr. Shawn sound suspiciously like those of Mr. Pooter on his boss Mr. Perkupp in The Diary of a Nobody . Compare. Mehta on Shawn: \"His words were so generous that I could scarcely find my tongue, even to thank him.\" Pooter on Perkupp: \"My heart was too full to thank him.\" Mehta: \"I started saying to myself compulsively, 'I wish Mr. Shawn would ring,' at the oddest times of the day or night. ... How I longed for the parade of proofs, the excitement of rewriting and perfecting!\" Pooter: \"Mr. Perkupp, I will work night and day to serve you!\"", "Goings On About Town \n\n One of the funniest moments in Brendan Gill's 1975 memoir, Here at \"The New Yorker ,\" comes during a luncheon at the now vanished Ritz in Manhattan. At the table are Gill; William Shawn, then editor of The New Yorker ; and the reclusive English writer Henry Green. Green's new novel, Loving , has just received a very favorable review in The New Yorker . Shawn--\"with his usual hushed delicacy of speech and manner\"--inquires of the novelist whether he could possibly reveal what prompted the creation of such an exquisite work. Green obliges. \"I once asked an old butler in Ireland what had been the happiest times of his life,\" he says. \"The butler replied, 'Lying in bed on Sunday morning, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.' \" \n\n This was not the explanation Shawn was expecting, Gill tells us. \"Discs of bright red begin to burn in his cheeks.\"", "Elsewhere, Ross refers to her lover's \"very powerful masculinity,\" only to note on the very next page that \"if he suffered a paper cut on a finger and saw blood, he would come into my office, looking pale.\" She declares that \"Bill was incapable of engendering a cliché, in deed as well as in word.\" But then she puts the most toe-curling clichés into his mouth: \"Why am I more ghost than man?\" Or: \"We must arrest our love in midflight. And we fix it forever as of today, a point of pure light that will reach into eternity.\" (File that under Romantic Effusions We Doubt Ever Got Uttered.) Nor is Ross incapable of a melodramatic cliché herself. \"Why can't we just live, just live ?\" she cries in anguish when she and Shawn, walking hand in hand out of Central Park, chance to see Shawn's wife slowly making her way down the block with a burden of packages.", "I am not sure I have made it sound this way so far, but Mehta's book is completely engrossing--the most enjoyable book, I think, I have ever reviewed. It oozes affection and conviction, crackles with anger, and is stuffed with thumping good stories. Many are about Mehta's daft colleagues at The New Yorker , such as the guy in the next office: \n\n His door was always shut, but I could hear him through the wall that separated his cubicle from mine typing without pause. ... Even the changing of the paper in the typewriter seemed somehow to be incorporated into the rhythmic rat-tat-tat ... year after year went by to the sound of his typing but without a word from his typewriter appearing in the magazine.", "But it kept coming. And I, for one, was grateful. Here was a boy growing up in Punjab during the fall of the Raj and the Partition, a boy who had been blinded by meningitis at the age of 3, roller-skating through the back streets of Lahore as Sikhs slaughtered Hindus and Hindus slaughtered Muslims and civilization was collapsing and then, decades later, having made his way from India to an Arkansas school for the blind to Balliol College, Oxford, to The New Yorker , re-creating the whole thing in Proustian detail and better-than-Proustian prose ... !", "Or the great and eccentric Irish writer Maeve Breenan, who fetched up as a bag lady. Or the legendary St. Clair McKelway, whose decisive breakdown came when he hailed a cab and prevailed upon the driver to take him to the New Yorker office at 24 West 43 rd St. \"O.K., Mac, if that's what you want.\" He was in Boston at the time. (McKelway later told Mehta that if the cabby had not called him \"Mac,\" his nickname, an alarm might have gone off in his head.)" ] ]
train	61380	[ "What is the purpose of the strange objects in Herrell’s cell? \n", "Why is the supervising council worried about the Old Ones?\n", "Is Herrell as intelligent as Hatcher? Why or why not?\n", "What effect does Stage Two have on Herrell? \n", "What is the meaning of the lag between Herell’s radio and the Jodrell Bank? \n", "What does hatcher mean when he says, “to vibrate the atmosphere by means of resonating organs in his breathing passage.” \n", "What does it mean to be a navigator? \n", "What is the image Hatcher’s team sees on the viewing consul? \n" ]	[ [ "To make him use his senses. \n", "To make him feel at home. \n", "To make him use his space suit.\n", "To make him feel confused. \n" ], [ "The Old Ones have captured one of their probers.\n", "The Old Ones are not happy with the kind of science Hatcher is conducting.\n", "The Old Ones need Hatcher’s data on the human specimen. \n", "The Old Ones must be given a human tribute soon. \n" ], [ "No, Humans lack the organs that make Hatcher’s race smarter.\n", "No, Hatcher’s race is far more intelligent. \n", "Yes, but their intelligences operate differently. \n", "Yes, but humans absorb intelligence through concepts while Hatcher’s race absorbs intelligence through light. \n" ], [ "It distresses him to the point of leaving the cell in order to find the woman.\n", "It distresses him to the point of risking what wearing the space suit will do to him. \n", "It distresses him to the point of breaking out of the cell. \n", "The woman’s distress inspires him to break out of the cell. \n" ], [ "Because the radio transmits faster than the speed of light, the lag indicates Herrell is nearly 400 lightyears away from his ship. \n", "Because the radio transmits faster than the speed of light, the lag indicates Herrell is too far from his ship to ever be rescued.\n", "Because the radio transmits faster than the speed of light, the lag indicates Herrell is nearly 500 light years away from his ship. \n", "Because the radio transmits only a bit slower than the speed of light, the lag indicates Herrell is only 500 light years away from his ship.\n" ], [ "To speak \n", "To sigh\n", "To panic \n", "To breathe \n" ], [ "To trust mathematics and instrument readings for the greater good of exploring the cosmos. \n", "To have a quick wit sharp enough to parse the problem of becoming a captive. \n", "To trust mathematics and instrument readings more than common sense. \n", "To have a quick wit fast enough to escape the deadly trials of Hatcher’s Stage Two. \n" ], [ "A human female \n", "Hatcher’s specimen \n", "The Jordell Bank\n", "A human male\n" ] ]	[ 2, 1, 3, 3, 3, 1, 3, 1 ]	[ 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "Not everything he saw was familiar. The walls of the room itself were\n strange. They were not metal or plaster or knotty pine; they were\n not papered, painted or overlaid with stucco. They seemed to be made\n of some sort of hard organic compound, perhaps a sort of plastic or\n processed cellulose. It was hard to tell colors in the pinkish light.\n But they seemed to have none. They were \"neutral\"—the color of aged\n driftwood or unbleached cloth.\n\n\n Three of the walls were that way, and the floor and ceiling. The fourth\n wall was something else. Areas in it had the appearance of gratings;\n from them issued the pungent, distasteful halogen odor. They might be\n ventilators, he thought; but if so the air they brought in was worse\n than what he already had.\n\n\n McCray was beginning to feel more confident. It was astonishing how a\n little light made an impossible situation bearable, how quickly his\n courage flowed back when he could see again.", "In fact, they were. He could recognize barrel, chamber, trigger, even\n a couple of cartridges, neatly opened and the grains of powder stacked\n beside them. It was an older, clumsier model than the kind he had seen\n in survival locker, on the\nJodrell Bank\n—and abruptly wished he were\n carrying now—but it was a pistol. Another trophy, like the strange\n assortment in the other room? He could not guess. But the others had\n been more familiar; they all have come from his own ship. He was\n prepared to swear that nothing like this antique had been aboard.\n\n\n The drone began again in his ear, as it had at five-minute intervals\n all along:\n\n\n \"Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is\nJodrell Bank\ncalling Herrell McCray....\"", "Hatcher studied him frostily; his patience was not, after all, endless.\n \"No matter,\" he said at last. \"Bring the other one in.\"\n\n\n And then, in a completely different mood, \"We may need him badly. We\n may be in the process of killing our first one now.\"\n\n\n \"Killing him, Hatcher?\"\n\n\n Hatcher rose and shook himself, his mindless members floating away like\n puppies dislodged from suck. \"Council's orders,\" he said. \"We've got to\n go into Stage Two of the project at once.\"\nIII\n\n\n Before Stage Two began, or before Herrell McCray realized it had begun,\n he had an inspiration.\n\n\n The dark was absolute, but he remembered where the spacesuit had been\n and groped his way to it and, yes, it had what all spacesuits had to\n have. It had a light. He found the toggle that turned it on and pressed\n it.", "But the room itself was hard fact. McCray swore violently and out loud.\n\n\n It was crazy and impossible. There simply was no way for him to get\n from a warm, bright navigator's cubicle on\nStarship Jodrell Bank\nto\n this damned, dark, dismal hole of a place where everything was out to\n hurt him and nothing explained what was going on. He cried aloud in\n exasperation: \"If I could only\nsee\n!\"\n\n\n He tripped and fell against something that was soft, slimy and, like\n baker's dough, not at all resilient.\n\n\n A flickering halo of pinkish light appeared. He sat up, startled. He\n was looking at something that resembled a suit of medieval armor.\nIt was, he saw in a moment, not armor but a spacesuit. But what was the\n light? And what were these other things in the room?", "He tapped half-heartedly at one of the closed cupboards, and was not\n surprised when it proved as refractory as the door. Undoubtedly he\n could batter it open, but it was not likely that much would be left of\n its contents when he was through; and there was the question of time.\n\n\n But his attention was diverted by a gleam from one of the benches.\n Metallic parts lay heaped in a pile. He poked at them with a\n stiff-fingered gauntlet; they were oddly familiar. They were, he\n thought, very much like the parts of a bullet-gun.", "The room was again unlighted—at least to McCray's eyes. There was not\n even that pink pseudo-light that had baffled him; here was nothing\n but the beam of his suit lamp. What it showed was cryptic. There were\n evidences of use: shelves, boxy contraptions that might have been\n cupboards, crude level surfaces attached to the walls that might have\n been workbenches. Yet they were queerly contrived, for it was not\n possible to guess from them much about the creatures who used them.\n Some were near the floor, some at waist height, some even suspended\n from the ceiling itself. A man would need a ladder to work at these\n benches and McCray, staring, thought briefly of many-armed blind giants\n or shapeless huge intelligent amoebae, and felt the skin prickle at the\n back of his neck.", "The room was totally dark, and it seemed to be furnished with a\n collection of hard, sharp, sticky and knobby objects of various shapes\n and a number of inconvenient sizes. McCray tripped over something\n that rocked under his feet and fell against something that clattered\n hollowly. He picked himself up, braced against something that smelled\n dangerously of halogen compounds, and scratched his shoulder, right\n through his space-tunic, against something that vibrated as he touched\n it.\n\n\n McCray had no idea where he was, and no way to find out.\n\n\n Not only was he in darkness, but in utter silence as well. No. Not\n quite utter silence.\n\n\n Somewhere, just at the threshold of his senses, there was something\n like a voice. He could not quite hear it, but it was there. He sat as\n still as he could, listening; it remained elusive.\n\n\n Probably it was only an illusion.", "\"The subject recovered consciousness a short time ago and began to\n inspect his enclosure. His method of doing so was to put his own\n members in physical contact with the various objects in the enclosure.\n After observing him do this for a time we concluded he might be unable\n to see and so we illuminated his field of vision for him.\n\n\n \"This appeared to work well for a time. He seemed relatively\n undisturbed. However, he then reverted to physical-contact,\n manipulating certain appurtenances of an artificial skin we had\n provided for him.\n\n\n \"He then began to vibrate the atmosphere by means of resonating organs\n in his breathing passage.\n\n\n \"Simultaneously, the object he was holding, attached to the artificial\n skin, was discovered to be generating paranormal forces.\"\n\n\n The supervising council rocked with excitement. \"You're sure?\" demanded\n one of the councilmen.", "McCray caught it up and headed for the door. It felt good in his\n gauntlets, a rewarding weight; any weapon straightens the back of the\n man who holds it, and McCray was grateful for this one. With something\n concrete to do he could postpone questioning. Never mind why he had\n been brought here; never mind how. Never mind what he would, or could,\n do next; all those questions could recede into the background of his\n mind while he swung the ax and battered his way out of this poisoned\n oven.\nCrash-clang!\nThe double jolt ran up the shaft of the ax, through his\n gauntlets and into his arm; but he was making progress, he could see\n the plastic—or whatever it was—of the door. It was chipping out. Not\n easily, very reluctantly; but flaking out in chips that left a white\n powdery residue.\n\n\n At this rate, he thought grimly, he would be an hour getting through\n it. Did he have an hour?", "The pinkish lights went out. He was in the dark again, worse dark than\n before.\n\n\n For before the light had gone, McCray had seen what had escaped\n his eyes before. The suit and the microphone were clear enough in\n the pinkish glimmer; but the hand—his own hand, cupped to hold the\n microphone—he had not seen at all. Nor his arm. Nor, in one fleeting\n moment of study, his chest.\n\n\n McCray could not see any part of his own body at all.\nII\n\n\n Someone else could.\n\n\n Someone was watching Herrell McCray, with the clinical fascination\n of a biochemist observing the wigglings of paramecia in a new\n antibiotic—and with the prayerful emotions of a starving, shipwrecked,\n sailor, watching the inward bobbing drift of a wave-born cask that\nmay\ncontain food.", "He pressed the unsealing tabs, slipped his hand into the vacant chest\n of the suit and pulled out the hand mike. \"This is Herrell McCray,\" he\n said, \"calling the\nJodrell Bank\n.\"\n\n\n No response. He frowned. \"This is Herrell McCray, calling\nJodrell\n Bank\n.\n\n\n \"Herrell McCray, calling anybody, come in, please.\"\n\n\n But there was no answer.\n\n\n Thoughtfully he replaced the microphone. This was ultrawave radio,\n something more than a million times faster than light, with a range\n measured, at least, in hundreds of light-years. If there was no answer,\n he was a good long way from anywhere.\n\n\n Of course, the thing might not be operating.\n\n\n He reached for the microphone again—\n\n\n He cried aloud.", "Wherever he looked, the light danced along with his eyes. It was like\n having tunnel vision or wearing blinders. He could see what he was\n looking at, but he could see nothing else. And the things he could\n see made no sense. A spacesuit, yes; he knew that he could construct\n a logical explanation for that with no trouble—maybe a subspace\n meteorite striking the\nJodrell Bank\n, an explosion, himself knocked\n out, brought here in a suit ... well, it was an explanation with more\n holes than fabric, like a fisherman's net, but at least it was rational.", "Light. White, flaring, Earthly light, that showed everything—even\n himself.\n\n\n \"God bless,\" he said, almost beside himself with joy. Whatever that\n pinkish, dancing halo had been, it had thrown him into a panic; now\n that he could see his own hand again, he could blame the weird effects\n on some strange property of the light.\n\n\n At the moment he heard the click that was the beginning of Stage Two.\n\n\n He switched off the light and stood for a moment, listening.\n\n\n For a second he thought he heard the far-off voice, quiet, calm and\n almost hopeless, that he had sensed hours before; but then that was\n gone. Something else was gone. Some faint mechanical sound that had\n hardly registered at the time, but was not missing. And there was,\n perhaps, a nice new sound that had not been there before; a very\n faint, an almost inaudible elfin hiss.", "Still, it led in the proper direction. McCray added one more\n inexplicable fact to his file and walked through. He was in another\n hall—or tunnel—rising quite steeply to the right. By his reckoning it\n was the proper direction. He labored up it, sweating under the weight\n of the suit, and found another open door, this one round, and behind\n it—\n\n\n Yes, there was the woman whose voice he had heard.\n\n\n It was a woman, all right. The voice had been so strained that he\n hadn't been positive. Even now, short black hair might not have proved\n it, and she was lying face down but the waist and hips were a woman's,\n even though she wore a bulky, quilted suit of coveralls.\n\n\n He knelt beside her and gently turned her face.\n\n\n She was unconscious. Broad, dark face, with no make-up; she was\n apparently in her late thirties. She appeared to be Chinese.", "Physically they were nothing alike. Hatcher was a three-foot,\n hard-shelled sphere of jelly. He had \"arms\" and \"legs,\" but they were\n not organically attached to \"himself.\" They were snakelike things which\n obeyed the orders of his brain as well as your mind can make your toes\n curl; but they did not touch him directly. Indeed, they worked as well\n a yard or a quarter-mile away as they did when, rarely, they rested\n in the crevices they had been formed from in his \"skin.\" At greater\n distances they worked less well, for reasons irrelevant to the Law of\n Inverse Squares.\n\n\n Hatcher's principal task at this moment was to run the \"probe team\"\n which had McCray under observation, and he was more than a little\n excited. His members, disposed about the room where he had sent them on\n various errands, quivered and shook a little; yet they were the calmest\n limbs in the room; the members of the other team workers were in a\n state of violent commotion.", "But it did not take an hour. One blow was luckier than the rest; it\n must have snapped the lock mechanism. The door shook and slid ajar.\n McCray got the thin of the blade into the crack and pried it wide.\n\n\n He was in another room, maybe a hall, large and bare.\n\n\n McCray put the broad of his back against the broken door and pressed it\n as nearly closed as he could; it might not keep the gas and heat out,\n but it would retard them.", "He hesitated, hefting the ax, glancing back at the way he had come.\n There had to be a way out, even if it meant chopping through a wall.\n\n\n When he turned around again there was a door. It was oddly shaped and\n unlike the door he had hewn through, but clearly a door all the same,\n and it was open.\n\n\n McCray regarded it grimly. He went back in his memory with meticulous\n care. Had he not looked at, this very spot a matter of moments before?\n He had. And had there been an open door then? There had not. There\n hadn't been even a shadowy outline of the three-sided, uneven opening\n that stood there now.", "How to explain a set of Gibbon's\nDecline and Fall of the Roman\n Empire?\nA space-ax? Or the old-fashioned child's rocking-chair, the\n chemistry set—or, most of all, the scrap of gaily printed fabric\n that, when he picked it up, turned out to be a girl's scanty bathing\n suit? It was slightly reassuring, McCray thought, to find that most of\n the objects were more or less familiar. Even the child's chair—why,\n he'd had one more or less like that himself, long before he was old\n enough to go to school. But what were they doing here?", "The probe team had had a shock.\n\n\n \"Paranormal powers,\" muttered Hatcher's second in command, and the\n others mumbled agreement. Hatcher ordered silence, studying the\n specimen from Earth.\n\n\n After a long moment he turned his senses from the Earthman.\n \"Incredible—but it's true enough,\" he said. \"I'd better report. Watch\n him,\" he added, but that was surely unnecessary. Their job was to\n watch McCray, and they would do their job; and even more, not one of\n them could have looked away to save his life from the spectacle of\n a creature as odd and, from their point of view, hideously alien as\n Herrell McCray.\nHatcher hurried through the halls of the great buried structure in\n which he worked, toward the place where the supervising council of all\n probes would be in permanent session. They admitted him at once.\n\n\n Hatcher identified himself and gave a quick, concise report:", "As best he could tell, he was in a sort of room no bigger than a prison\n cell. Perhaps it was a prison cell. Whatever it was, he had no business\n in it; for five minutes before he had been spaceborne, on the Long Jump\n from Earth to the thriving colonies circling Betelgeuse Nine. McCray\n was ship's navigator, plotting course corrections—not that there were\n any, ever; but the reason there were none was that the check-sightings\n were made every hour of the long flight. He had read off the azimuth\n angles from the computer sights, automatically locked on their beacon\n stars, and found them correct; then out of long habit confirmed the\n locking mechanism visually. It was only a personal quaintness; he had\n done it a thousand times. And while he was looking at Betelgeuse, Rigel\n and Saiph ... it happened." ], [ "Finally the councillor said, \"I speak for all of us, I think. If the\n Old Ones have seized one of our probers our time margin is considerably\n narrowed. Indeed, we may not have any time at all. You must do\n everything you can to establish communication with your subject.\"\n\n\n \"But the danger to the specimen—\" Hatcher protested automatically.\n\n\n \"—is no greater,\" said the councillor, \"than the danger to every one\n of us if we do not find allies\nnow\n.\"\nHatcher returned to his laboratory gloomily.\n\n\n It was just like the council to put the screws on; they had a\n reputation for demanding results at any cost—even at the cost of\n destroying the only thing you had that would make results possible.", "He returned quickly to the room.\n\n\n His second in command was busy, but one of the other team workers\n reported—nothing new—and asked about Hatcher's appearance before the\n council. Hatcher passed the question off. He considered telling his\n staff about the disappearance of the Central Masses team member, but\n decided against it. He had not been told it was secret. On the other\n hand, he had not been told it was not. Something of this importance was\n not lightly to be gossiped about. For endless generations the threat\n of the Old Ones had hung over his race, those queer, almost mythical\n beings from the Central Masses of the galaxy. One brush with them, in\n ages past, had almost destroyed Hatcher's people. Only by running and\n hiding, bearing one of their planets with them and abandoning it—with\n its population—as a decoy, had they arrived at all.", "\"The subject recovered consciousness a short time ago and began to\n inspect his enclosure. His method of doing so was to put his own\n members in physical contact with the various objects in the enclosure.\n After observing him do this for a time we concluded he might be unable\n to see and so we illuminated his field of vision for him.\n\n\n \"This appeared to work well for a time. He seemed relatively\n undisturbed. However, he then reverted to physical-contact,\n manipulating certain appurtenances of an artificial skin we had\n provided for him.\n\n\n \"He then began to vibrate the atmosphere by means of resonating organs\n in his breathing passage.\n\n\n \"Simultaneously, the object he was holding, attached to the artificial\n skin, was discovered to be generating paranormal forces.\"\n\n\n The supervising council rocked with excitement. \"You're sure?\" demanded\n one of the councilmen.", "\"But in\na\nway, and you must learn that way. I know.\" One lobster-claw\n shaped member drifted close to the councillor's body and raised itself\n in an admonitory gesture. \"You want time. But we don't have time,\n Hatcher. Yours is not the only probe team working. The Central Masses\n team has just turned in a most alarming report.\"\n\n\n \"Have they secured a subject?\" Hatcher demanded jealously.\n\n\n The councillor paused. \"Worse than that, Hatcher. I am afraid their\n subjects have secured one of them. One of them is missing.\"\n\n\n There was a moment's silence. Frozen, Hatcher could only wait. The\n council room was like a tableau in a museum until the councillor spoke\n again, each council member poised over his locus-point, his members\n drifting about him.", "The probe team had had a shock.\n\n\n \"Paranormal powers,\" muttered Hatcher's second in command, and the\n others mumbled agreement. Hatcher ordered silence, studying the\n specimen from Earth.\n\n\n After a long moment he turned his senses from the Earthman.\n \"Incredible—but it's true enough,\" he said. \"I'd better report. Watch\n him,\" he added, but that was surely unnecessary. Their job was to\n watch McCray, and they would do their job; and even more, not one of\n them could have looked away to save his life from the spectacle of\n a creature as odd and, from their point of view, hideously alien as\n Herrell McCray.\nHatcher hurried through the halls of the great buried structure in\n which he worked, toward the place where the supervising council of all\n probes would be in permanent session. They admitted him at once.\n\n\n Hatcher identified himself and gave a quick, concise report:", "Now they had detected mapping parties of the Old Ones dangerously near\n the spiral arm of the galaxy in which their planet was located, they\n had begun the Probe Teams to find some way of combating them, or of\n fleeing again.\n\n\n But it seemed that the Probe Teams themselves might be betraying their\n existence to their enemies—\n\n\n \"Hatcher!\"\n\n\n The call was urgent; he hurried to see what it was about. It was his\n second in command, very excited. \"What is it?\" Hatcher demanded.\n\n\n \"Wait....\"", "The council conferred among itself for a moment, Hatcher waiting. It\n was not really a waste of time for him; with the organs he had left in\n the probe-team room, he was in fairly close touch with what was going\n on—knew that McCray was once again fumbling among the objects in the\n dark, knew that the team-members had tried illuminating the room for\n him briefly and again produced the rising panic.\n\n\n Still, Hatcher fretted. He wanted to get back.\n\n\n \"Stop fidgeting,\" commanded the council leader abruptly. \"Hatcher, you\n are to establish communication at once.\"", "\"Yes, sir. The staff is preparing a technical description of the forces\n now, but I can say that they are electromagnetic vibrations modulating\n a carrier wave of very high speed, and in turn modulated by the\n vibrations of the atmosphere caused by the subject's own breathing.\"\n\n\n \"Fantastic,\" breathed the councillor, in a tone of dawning hope. \"How\n about communicating with him, Hatcher? Any progress?\"\n\n\n \"Well ... not much, sir. He suddenly panicked. We don't know why; but\n we thought we'd better pull back and let him recover for a while.\"", "\"But, sir....\" Hatcher swung closer, his thick skin quivering slightly;\n he would have gestured if he had brought members with him to gesture\n with. \"We've done everything we dare. We've made the place homey\n for him—\" actually, what he said was more like,\nwe've warmed the\n biophysical nuances of his enclosure\n—\"and tried to guess his needs;\n and we're frightening him half to death. We\ncan't\ngo faster. This\n creature is in no way similar to us, you know. He relies on paranormal\n forces—heat, light, kinetic energy—for his life. His chemistry is not\n ours, his processes of thought are not ours, his entire organism is\n closer to the inanimate rocks of a sea-bottom than to ourselves.\"\n\n\n \"Understood, Hatcher. In your first report you stated these creatures\n were intelligent.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. But not in our way.\"", "Hatcher studied him frostily; his patience was not, after all, endless.\n \"No matter,\" he said at last. \"Bring the other one in.\"\n\n\n And then, in a completely different mood, \"We may need him badly. We\n may be in the process of killing our first one now.\"\n\n\n \"Killing him, Hatcher?\"\n\n\n Hatcher rose and shook himself, his mindless members floating away like\n puppies dislodged from suck. \"Council's orders,\" he said. \"We've got to\n go into Stage Two of the project at once.\"\nIII\n\n\n Before Stage Two began, or before Herrell McCray realized it had begun,\n he had an inspiration.\n\n\n The dark was absolute, but he remembered where the spacesuit had been\n and groped his way to it and, yes, it had what all spacesuits had to\n have. It had a light. He found the toggle that turned it on and pressed\n it.", "Hatcher, who was not human, did not possess truly human emotions; but\n he did feel amazement when he was amazed, and fear when there was\n cause to be afraid. These specimens, obtained with so much difficulty,\n needed so badly, were his responsibility. He knew the issues involved\n much better than any of his helpers. They could only be surprised at\n the queer antics of the aliens with attached limbs and strange powers.\n Hatcher knew that this was not a freak show, but a matter of life and\n death. He said, musing:\n\n\n \"This new one, I cannot communicate with her, but I get—almost—a\n whisper, now and then. The first one, the male, nothing. But this\n female is perhaps not quite mute.\"\n\n\n \"Then shall we abandon him and work with her, forgetting the first one?\"", "Physically they were nothing alike. Hatcher was a three-foot,\n hard-shelled sphere of jelly. He had \"arms\" and \"legs,\" but they were\n not organically attached to \"himself.\" They were snakelike things which\n obeyed the orders of his brain as well as your mind can make your toes\n curl; but they did not touch him directly. Indeed, they worked as well\n a yard or a quarter-mile away as they did when, rarely, they rested\n in the crevices they had been formed from in his \"skin.\" At greater\n distances they worked less well, for reasons irrelevant to the Law of\n Inverse Squares.\n\n\n Hatcher's principal task at this moment was to run the \"probe team\"\n which had McCray under observation, and he was more than a little\n excited. His members, disposed about the room where he had sent them on\n various errands, quivered and shook a little; yet they were the calmest\n limbs in the room; the members of the other team workers were in a\n state of violent commotion.", "Hatcher did not like the idea of endangering the Earthman. It cannot\n be said that he was emotionally involved; it was not pity or sympathy\n that caused him to regret the dangers in moving too fast toward\n communication. Not even Hatcher had quite got over the revolting\n physical differences between the Earthman and his own people. But\n Hatcher did not want him destroyed. It had been difficult enough\n getting him here.\n\n\n Hatcher checked through the members that he had left with the rest of\n his team and discovered that there were no immediate emergencies, so he\n took time to eat. In Hatcher's race this was accomplished in ways not\n entirely pleasant to Earthmen. A slit in the lower hemisphere of his\n body opened, like a purse, emitting a thin, pussy, fetid fluid which\n Hatcher caught and poured into a disposal trough at the side of the\n eating room. He then stuffed the slit with pulpy vegetation the texture\n of kelp; it closed, and his body was supplied with nourishment for\n another day.", "And louder, blaring, then fading to normal volume as the AVC circuits\n toned the signal down, another voice. A woman's voice, crying out in\n panic and fear: \"\nJodrell Bank!\nWhere are you? Help!\"\nIV\n\n\n Hatcher's second in command said: \"He has got through the first\n survival test. In fact, he broke his way out! What next?\"\n\n\n \"Wait!\" Hatcher ordered sharply. He was watching the new specimen and\n a troublesome thought had occurred to him. The new one was female and\n seemed to be in pain; but it was not the pain that disturbed Hatcher,\n it was something far more immediate to his interests.\n\n\n \"I think,\" he said slowly, \"that they are in contact.\"\n\n\n His assistant vibrated startlement.\n\n\n \"I know,\" Hatcher said, \"but watch. Do you see? He is going straight\n toward her.\"", "The room was again unlighted—at least to McCray's eyes. There was not\n even that pink pseudo-light that had baffled him; here was nothing\n but the beam of his suit lamp. What it showed was cryptic. There were\n evidences of use: shelves, boxy contraptions that might have been\n cupboards, crude level surfaces attached to the walls that might have\n been workbenches. Yet they were queerly contrived, for it was not\n possible to guess from them much about the creatures who used them.\n Some were near the floor, some at waist height, some even suspended\n from the ceiling itself. A man would need a ladder to work at these\n benches and McCray, staring, thought briefly of many-armed blind giants\n or shapeless huge intelligent amoebae, and felt the skin prickle at the\n back of his neck.", "Hatcher hesitated. \"No,\" he said at last. \"The male is responding well.\n Remember that when last this experiment was done every subject died; he\n is alive at least. But I am wondering. We can't quite communicate with\n the female—\"\n\n\n \"But?\"\n\n\n \"But I'm not sure that others can't.\"\nThe woman's voice was at such close range that McCray's suit radio made\n a useful RDF set. He located her direction easily enough, shielding the\n tiny built-in antenna with the tungsten-steel blade of the ax, while\n she begged him to hurry. Her voice was heavily accented, with some\n words in a language he did not recognize. She seemed to be in shock.\n\n\n McCray was hardly surprised at that; he had been close enough to shock\n himself. He tried to reassure her as he searched for a way out of the\n hall, but in the middle of a word her voice stopped.", "Hatcher was patient; he knew his assistant well. Obviously something\n was about to happen. He took the moment to call his members back to\n him for feeding; they dodged back to their niches on his skin, fitted\n themselves into their vestigial slots, poured back their wastes into\n his own circulation and ingested what they needed from the meal he had\n just taken.... \"Now!\" cried the assistant. \"Look!\"\n\n\n At what passed among Hatcher's people for a viewing console an image\n was forming. Actually it was the assistant himself who formed it, not a\n cathode trace or projected shadow; but it showed what it was meant to\n show.\n\n\n Hatcher was startled. \"Another one! And—is it a different species? Or\n merely a different sex?\"\n\n\n \"Study the probe for yourself,\" the assistant invited.", "Light. White, flaring, Earthly light, that showed everything—even\n himself.\n\n\n \"God bless,\" he said, almost beside himself with joy. Whatever that\n pinkish, dancing halo had been, it had thrown him into a panic; now\n that he could see his own hand again, he could blame the weird effects\n on some strange property of the light.\n\n\n At the moment he heard the click that was the beginning of Stage Two.\n\n\n He switched off the light and stood for a moment, listening.\n\n\n For a second he thought he heard the far-off voice, quiet, calm and\n almost hopeless, that he had sensed hours before; but then that was\n gone. Something else was gone. Some faint mechanical sound that had\n hardly registered at the time, but was not missing. And there was,\n perhaps, a nice new sound that had not been there before; a very\n faint, an almost inaudible elfin hiss.", "In fact, they were. He could recognize barrel, chamber, trigger, even\n a couple of cartridges, neatly opened and the grains of powder stacked\n beside them. It was an older, clumsier model than the kind he had seen\n in survival locker, on the\nJodrell Bank\n—and abruptly wished he were\n carrying now—but it was a pistol. Another trophy, like the strange\n assortment in the other room? He could not guess. But the others had\n been more familiar; they all have come from his own ship. He was\n prepared to swear that nothing like this antique had been aboard.\n\n\n The drone began again in his ear, as it had at five-minute intervals\n all along:\n\n\n \"Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is\nJodrell Bank\ncalling Herrell McCray....\"", "He pressed the unsealing tabs, slipped his hand into the vacant chest\n of the suit and pulled out the hand mike. \"This is Herrell McCray,\" he\n said, \"calling the\nJodrell Bank\n.\"\n\n\n No response. He frowned. \"This is Herrell McCray, calling\nJodrell\n Bank\n.\n\n\n \"Herrell McCray, calling anybody, come in, please.\"\n\n\n But there was no answer.\n\n\n Thoughtfully he replaced the microphone. This was ultrawave radio,\n something more than a million times faster than light, with a range\n measured, at least, in hundreds of light-years. If there was no answer,\n he was a good long way from anywhere.\n\n\n Of course, the thing might not be operating.\n\n\n He reached for the microphone again—\n\n\n He cried aloud." ], [ "Suppose you call him \"Hatcher\" (and suppose you call it a \"him.\")\n Hatcher was not exactly male, because his race had no true males; but\n it did have females and he was certainly not that. Hatcher did not in\n any way look like a human being, but they had features in common.\n\n\n If Hatcher and McCray had somehow managed to strike up an acquaintance,\n they might have got along very well. Hatcher, like McCray, was an\n adventurous soul, young, able, well-learned in the technical sciences\n of his culture. Both enjoyed games—McCray baseball, poker and\n three-dimensional chess; Hatcher a number of sports which defy human\n description. Both held positions of some importance—considering their\n ages—in the affairs of their respective worlds.", "Physically they were nothing alike. Hatcher was a three-foot,\n hard-shelled sphere of jelly. He had \"arms\" and \"legs,\" but they were\n not organically attached to \"himself.\" They were snakelike things which\n obeyed the orders of his brain as well as your mind can make your toes\n curl; but they did not touch him directly. Indeed, they worked as well\n a yard or a quarter-mile away as they did when, rarely, they rested\n in the crevices they had been formed from in his \"skin.\" At greater\n distances they worked less well, for reasons irrelevant to the Law of\n Inverse Squares.\n\n\n Hatcher's principal task at this moment was to run the \"probe team\"\n which had McCray under observation, and he was more than a little\n excited. His members, disposed about the room where he had sent them on\n various errands, quivered and shook a little; yet they were the calmest\n limbs in the room; the members of the other team workers were in a\n state of violent commotion.", "\"But, sir....\" Hatcher swung closer, his thick skin quivering slightly;\n he would have gestured if he had brought members with him to gesture\n with. \"We've done everything we dare. We've made the place homey\n for him—\" actually, what he said was more like,\nwe've warmed the\n biophysical nuances of his enclosure\n—\"and tried to guess his needs;\n and we're frightening him half to death. We\ncan't\ngo faster. This\n creature is in no way similar to us, you know. He relies on paranormal\n forces—heat, light, kinetic energy—for his life. His chemistry is not\n ours, his processes of thought are not ours, his entire organism is\n closer to the inanimate rocks of a sea-bottom than to ourselves.\"\n\n\n \"Understood, Hatcher. In your first report you stated these creatures\n were intelligent.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. But not in our way.\"", "Hatcher studied him frostily; his patience was not, after all, endless.\n \"No matter,\" he said at last. \"Bring the other one in.\"\n\n\n And then, in a completely different mood, \"We may need him badly. We\n may be in the process of killing our first one now.\"\n\n\n \"Killing him, Hatcher?\"\n\n\n Hatcher rose and shook himself, his mindless members floating away like\n puppies dislodged from suck. \"Council's orders,\" he said. \"We've got to\n go into Stage Two of the project at once.\"\nIII\n\n\n Before Stage Two began, or before Herrell McCray realized it had begun,\n he had an inspiration.\n\n\n The dark was absolute, but he remembered where the spacesuit had been\n and groped his way to it and, yes, it had what all spacesuits had to\n have. It had a light. He found the toggle that turned it on and pressed\n it.", "Hatcher, who was not human, did not possess truly human emotions; but\n he did feel amazement when he was amazed, and fear when there was\n cause to be afraid. These specimens, obtained with so much difficulty,\n needed so badly, were his responsibility. He knew the issues involved\n much better than any of his helpers. They could only be surprised at\n the queer antics of the aliens with attached limbs and strange powers.\n Hatcher knew that this was not a freak show, but a matter of life and\n death. He said, musing:\n\n\n \"This new one, I cannot communicate with her, but I get—almost—a\n whisper, now and then. The first one, the male, nothing. But this\n female is perhaps not quite mute.\"\n\n\n \"Then shall we abandon him and work with her, forgetting the first one?\"", "The probe team had had a shock.\n\n\n \"Paranormal powers,\" muttered Hatcher's second in command, and the\n others mumbled agreement. Hatcher ordered silence, studying the\n specimen from Earth.\n\n\n After a long moment he turned his senses from the Earthman.\n \"Incredible—but it's true enough,\" he said. \"I'd better report. Watch\n him,\" he added, but that was surely unnecessary. Their job was to\n watch McCray, and they would do their job; and even more, not one of\n them could have looked away to save his life from the spectacle of\n a creature as odd and, from their point of view, hideously alien as\n Herrell McCray.\nHatcher hurried through the halls of the great buried structure in\n which he worked, toward the place where the supervising council of all\n probes would be in permanent session. They admitted him at once.\n\n\n Hatcher identified himself and gave a quick, concise report:", "Hatcher did not like the idea of endangering the Earthman. It cannot\n be said that he was emotionally involved; it was not pity or sympathy\n that caused him to regret the dangers in moving too fast toward\n communication. Not even Hatcher had quite got over the revolting\n physical differences between the Earthman and his own people. But\n Hatcher did not want him destroyed. It had been difficult enough\n getting him here.\n\n\n Hatcher checked through the members that he had left with the rest of\n his team and discovered that there were no immediate emergencies, so he\n took time to eat. In Hatcher's race this was accomplished in ways not\n entirely pleasant to Earthmen. A slit in the lower hemisphere of his\n body opened, like a purse, emitting a thin, pussy, fetid fluid which\n Hatcher caught and poured into a disposal trough at the side of the\n eating room. He then stuffed the slit with pulpy vegetation the texture\n of kelp; it closed, and his body was supplied with nourishment for\n another day.", "In fact, they were. He could recognize barrel, chamber, trigger, even\n a couple of cartridges, neatly opened and the grains of powder stacked\n beside them. It was an older, clumsier model than the kind he had seen\n in survival locker, on the\nJodrell Bank\n—and abruptly wished he were\n carrying now—but it was a pistol. Another trophy, like the strange\n assortment in the other room? He could not guess. But the others had\n been more familiar; they all have come from his own ship. He was\n prepared to swear that nothing like this antique had been aboard.\n\n\n The drone began again in his ear, as it had at five-minute intervals\n all along:\n\n\n \"Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is\nJodrell Bank\ncalling Herrell McCray....\"", "Hatcher hesitated. \"No,\" he said at last. \"The male is responding well.\n Remember that when last this experiment was done every subject died; he\n is alive at least. But I am wondering. We can't quite communicate with\n the female—\"\n\n\n \"But?\"\n\n\n \"But I'm not sure that others can't.\"\nThe woman's voice was at such close range that McCray's suit radio made\n a useful RDF set. He located her direction easily enough, shielding the\n tiny built-in antenna with the tungsten-steel blade of the ax, while\n she begged him to hurry. Her voice was heavily accented, with some\n words in a language he did not recognize. She seemed to be in shock.\n\n\n McCray was hardly surprised at that; he had been close enough to shock\n himself. He tried to reassure her as he searched for a way out of the\n hall, but in the middle of a word her voice stopped.", "Hatcher was patient; he knew his assistant well. Obviously something\n was about to happen. He took the moment to call his members back to\n him for feeding; they dodged back to their niches on his skin, fitted\n themselves into their vestigial slots, poured back their wastes into\n his own circulation and ingested what they needed from the meal he had\n just taken.... \"Now!\" cried the assistant. \"Look!\"\n\n\n At what passed among Hatcher's people for a viewing console an image\n was forming. Actually it was the assistant himself who formed it, not a\n cathode trace or projected shadow; but it showed what it was meant to\n show.\n\n\n Hatcher was startled. \"Another one! And—is it a different species? Or\n merely a different sex?\"\n\n\n \"Study the probe for yourself,\" the assistant invited.", "The council conferred among itself for a moment, Hatcher waiting. It\n was not really a waste of time for him; with the organs he had left in\n the probe-team room, he was in fairly close touch with what was going\n on—knew that McCray was once again fumbling among the objects in the\n dark, knew that the team-members had tried illuminating the room for\n him briefly and again produced the rising panic.\n\n\n Still, Hatcher fretted. He wanted to get back.\n\n\n \"Stop fidgeting,\" commanded the council leader abruptly. \"Hatcher, you\n are to establish communication at once.\"", "He returned quickly to the room.\n\n\n His second in command was busy, but one of the other team workers\n reported—nothing new—and asked about Hatcher's appearance before the\n council. Hatcher passed the question off. He considered telling his\n staff about the disappearance of the Central Masses team member, but\n decided against it. He had not been told it was secret. On the other\n hand, he had not been told it was not. Something of this importance was\n not lightly to be gossiped about. For endless generations the threat\n of the Old Ones had hung over his race, those queer, almost mythical\n beings from the Central Masses of the galaxy. One brush with them, in\n ages past, had almost destroyed Hatcher's people. Only by running and\n hiding, bearing one of their planets with them and abandoning it—with\n its population—as a decoy, had they arrived at all.", "McCray caught it up and headed for the door. It felt good in his\n gauntlets, a rewarding weight; any weapon straightens the back of the\n man who holds it, and McCray was grateful for this one. With something\n concrete to do he could postpone questioning. Never mind why he had\n been brought here; never mind how. Never mind what he would, or could,\n do next; all those questions could recede into the background of his\n mind while he swung the ax and battered his way out of this poisoned\n oven.\nCrash-clang!\nThe double jolt ran up the shaft of the ax, through his\n gauntlets and into his arm; but he was making progress, he could see\n the plastic—or whatever it was—of the door. It was chipping out. Not\n easily, very reluctantly; but flaking out in chips that left a white\n powdery residue.\n\n\n At this rate, he thought grimly, he would be an hour getting through\n it. Did he have an hour?", "\"But in\na\nway, and you must learn that way. I know.\" One lobster-claw\n shaped member drifted close to the councillor's body and raised itself\n in an admonitory gesture. \"You want time. But we don't have time,\n Hatcher. Yours is not the only probe team working. The Central Masses\n team has just turned in a most alarming report.\"\n\n\n \"Have they secured a subject?\" Hatcher demanded jealously.\n\n\n The councillor paused. \"Worse than that, Hatcher. I am afraid their\n subjects have secured one of them. One of them is missing.\"\n\n\n There was a moment's silence. Frozen, Hatcher could only wait. The\n council room was like a tableau in a museum until the councillor spoke\n again, each council member poised over his locus-point, his members\n drifting about him.", "\"Yes, sir. The staff is preparing a technical description of the forces\n now, but I can say that they are electromagnetic vibrations modulating\n a carrier wave of very high speed, and in turn modulated by the\n vibrations of the atmosphere caused by the subject's own breathing.\"\n\n\n \"Fantastic,\" breathed the councillor, in a tone of dawning hope. \"How\n about communicating with him, Hatcher? Any progress?\"\n\n\n \"Well ... not much, sir. He suddenly panicked. We don't know why; but\n we thought we'd better pull back and let him recover for a while.\"", "Did that mean—did it\npossibly\nmean—that there was a lag of an hour\n or two each way? Did it, for example, mean that at the speed of his\n suit's pararadio, millions of times faster than light, it took\nhours\nto get a message to the ship and back?\n\n\n And if so ... where in the name of heaven was he?\nHerrell McCray was a navigator, which is to say, a man who has learned\n to trust the evidence of mathematics and instrument readings beyond the\n guesses of his \"common sense.\" When\nJodrell Bank\n, hurtling faster\n than light in its voyage between stars, made its regular position\n check, common sense was a liar. Light bore false witness. The line of\n sight was trustworthy directly forward and directly after—sometimes\n not even then—and it took computers, sensing their data through\n instruments, to comprehend a star bearing and convert three fixes into\n a position.", "He pressed the unsealing tabs, slipped his hand into the vacant chest\n of the suit and pulled out the hand mike. \"This is Herrell McCray,\" he\n said, \"calling the\nJodrell Bank\n.\"\n\n\n No response. He frowned. \"This is Herrell McCray, calling\nJodrell\n Bank\n.\n\n\n \"Herrell McCray, calling anybody, come in, please.\"\n\n\n But there was no answer.\n\n\n Thoughtfully he replaced the microphone. This was ultrawave radio,\n something more than a million times faster than light, with a range\n measured, at least, in hundreds of light-years. If there was no answer,\n he was a good long way from anywhere.\n\n\n Of course, the thing might not be operating.\n\n\n He reached for the microphone again—\n\n\n He cried aloud.", "And louder, blaring, then fading to normal volume as the AVC circuits\n toned the signal down, another voice. A woman's voice, crying out in\n panic and fear: \"\nJodrell Bank!\nWhere are you? Help!\"\nIV\n\n\n Hatcher's second in command said: \"He has got through the first\n survival test. In fact, he broke his way out! What next?\"\n\n\n \"Wait!\" Hatcher ordered sharply. He was watching the new specimen and\n a troublesome thought had occurred to him. The new one was female and\n seemed to be in pain; but it was not the pain that disturbed Hatcher,\n it was something far more immediate to his interests.\n\n\n \"I think,\" he said slowly, \"that they are in contact.\"\n\n\n His assistant vibrated startlement.\n\n\n \"I know,\" Hatcher said, \"but watch. Do you see? He is going straight\n toward her.\"", "Finally the councillor said, \"I speak for all of us, I think. If the\n Old Ones have seized one of our probers our time margin is considerably\n narrowed. Indeed, we may not have any time at all. You must do\n everything you can to establish communication with your subject.\"\n\n\n \"But the danger to the specimen—\" Hatcher protested automatically.\n\n\n \"—is no greater,\" said the councillor, \"than the danger to every one\n of us if we do not find allies\nnow\n.\"\nHatcher returned to his laboratory gloomily.\n\n\n It was just like the council to put the screws on; they had a\n reputation for demanding results at any cost—even at the cost of\n destroying the only thing you had that would make results possible.", "Still, it led in the proper direction. McCray added one more\n inexplicable fact to his file and walked through. He was in another\n hall—or tunnel—rising quite steeply to the right. By his reckoning it\n was the proper direction. He labored up it, sweating under the weight\n of the suit, and found another open door, this one round, and behind\n it—\n\n\n Yes, there was the woman whose voice he had heard.\n\n\n It was a woman, all right. The voice had been so strained that he\n hadn't been positive. Even now, short black hair might not have proved\n it, and she was lying face down but the waist and hips were a woman's,\n even though she wore a bulky, quilted suit of coveralls.\n\n\n He knelt beside her and gently turned her face.\n\n\n She was unconscious. Broad, dark face, with no make-up; she was\n apparently in her late thirties. She appeared to be Chinese." ], [ "Hatcher studied him frostily; his patience was not, after all, endless.\n \"No matter,\" he said at last. \"Bring the other one in.\"\n\n\n And then, in a completely different mood, \"We may need him badly. We\n may be in the process of killing our first one now.\"\n\n\n \"Killing him, Hatcher?\"\n\n\n Hatcher rose and shook himself, his mindless members floating away like\n puppies dislodged from suck. \"Council's orders,\" he said. \"We've got to\n go into Stage Two of the project at once.\"\nIII\n\n\n Before Stage Two began, or before Herrell McCray realized it had begun,\n he had an inspiration.\n\n\n The dark was absolute, but he remembered where the spacesuit had been\n and groped his way to it and, yes, it had what all spacesuits had to\n have. It had a light. He found the toggle that turned it on and pressed\n it.", "Light. White, flaring, Earthly light, that showed everything—even\n himself.\n\n\n \"God bless,\" he said, almost beside himself with joy. Whatever that\n pinkish, dancing halo had been, it had thrown him into a panic; now\n that he could see his own hand again, he could blame the weird effects\n on some strange property of the light.\n\n\n At the moment he heard the click that was the beginning of Stage Two.\n\n\n He switched off the light and stood for a moment, listening.\n\n\n For a second he thought he heard the far-off voice, quiet, calm and\n almost hopeless, that he had sensed hours before; but then that was\n gone. Something else was gone. Some faint mechanical sound that had\n hardly registered at the time, but was not missing. And there was,\n perhaps, a nice new sound that had not been there before; a very\n faint, an almost inaudible elfin hiss.", "In fact, they were. He could recognize barrel, chamber, trigger, even\n a couple of cartridges, neatly opened and the grains of powder stacked\n beside them. It was an older, clumsier model than the kind he had seen\n in survival locker, on the\nJodrell Bank\n—and abruptly wished he were\n carrying now—but it was a pistol. Another trophy, like the strange\n assortment in the other room? He could not guess. But the others had\n been more familiar; they all have come from his own ship. He was\n prepared to swear that nothing like this antique had been aboard.\n\n\n The drone began again in his ear, as it had at five-minute intervals\n all along:\n\n\n \"Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is\nJodrell Bank\ncalling Herrell McCray....\"", "The probe team had had a shock.\n\n\n \"Paranormal powers,\" muttered Hatcher's second in command, and the\n others mumbled agreement. Hatcher ordered silence, studying the\n specimen from Earth.\n\n\n After a long moment he turned his senses from the Earthman.\n \"Incredible—but it's true enough,\" he said. \"I'd better report. Watch\n him,\" he added, but that was surely unnecessary. Their job was to\n watch McCray, and they would do their job; and even more, not one of\n them could have looked away to save his life from the spectacle of\n a creature as odd and, from their point of view, hideously alien as\n Herrell McCray.\nHatcher hurried through the halls of the great buried structure in\n which he worked, toward the place where the supervising council of all\n probes would be in permanent session. They admitted him at once.\n\n\n Hatcher identified himself and gave a quick, concise report:", "The pinkish lights went out. He was in the dark again, worse dark than\n before.\n\n\n For before the light had gone, McCray had seen what had escaped\n his eyes before. The suit and the microphone were clear enough in\n the pinkish glimmer; but the hand—his own hand, cupped to hold the\n microphone—he had not seen at all. Nor his arm. Nor, in one fleeting\n moment of study, his chest.\n\n\n McCray could not see any part of his own body at all.\nII\n\n\n Someone else could.\n\n\n Someone was watching Herrell McCray, with the clinical fascination\n of a biochemist observing the wigglings of paramecia in a new\n antibiotic—and with the prayerful emotions of a starving, shipwrecked,\n sailor, watching the inward bobbing drift of a wave-born cask that\nmay\ncontain food.", "Hatcher, who was not human, did not possess truly human emotions; but\n he did feel amazement when he was amazed, and fear when there was\n cause to be afraid. These specimens, obtained with so much difficulty,\n needed so badly, were his responsibility. He knew the issues involved\n much better than any of his helpers. They could only be surprised at\n the queer antics of the aliens with attached limbs and strange powers.\n Hatcher knew that this was not a freak show, but a matter of life and\n death. He said, musing:\n\n\n \"This new one, I cannot communicate with her, but I get—almost—a\n whisper, now and then. The first one, the male, nothing. But this\n female is perhaps not quite mute.\"\n\n\n \"Then shall we abandon him and work with her, forgetting the first one?\"", "He pressed the unsealing tabs, slipped his hand into the vacant chest\n of the suit and pulled out the hand mike. \"This is Herrell McCray,\" he\n said, \"calling the\nJodrell Bank\n.\"\n\n\n No response. He frowned. \"This is Herrell McCray, calling\nJodrell\n Bank\n.\n\n\n \"Herrell McCray, calling anybody, come in, please.\"\n\n\n But there was no answer.\n\n\n Thoughtfully he replaced the microphone. This was ultrawave radio,\n something more than a million times faster than light, with a range\n measured, at least, in hundreds of light-years. If there was no answer,\n he was a good long way from anywhere.\n\n\n Of course, the thing might not be operating.\n\n\n He reached for the microphone again—\n\n\n He cried aloud.", "Not everything he saw was familiar. The walls of the room itself were\n strange. They were not metal or plaster or knotty pine; they were\n not papered, painted or overlaid with stucco. They seemed to be made\n of some sort of hard organic compound, perhaps a sort of plastic or\n processed cellulose. It was hard to tell colors in the pinkish light.\n But they seemed to have none. They were \"neutral\"—the color of aged\n driftwood or unbleached cloth.\n\n\n Three of the walls were that way, and the floor and ceiling. The fourth\n wall was something else. Areas in it had the appearance of gratings;\n from them issued the pungent, distasteful halogen odor. They might be\n ventilators, he thought; but if so the air they brought in was worse\n than what he already had.\n\n\n McCray was beginning to feel more confident. It was astonishing how a\n little light made an impossible situation bearable, how quickly his\n courage flowed back when he could see again.", "Physically they were nothing alike. Hatcher was a three-foot,\n hard-shelled sphere of jelly. He had \"arms\" and \"legs,\" but they were\n not organically attached to \"himself.\" They were snakelike things which\n obeyed the orders of his brain as well as your mind can make your toes\n curl; but they did not touch him directly. Indeed, they worked as well\n a yard or a quarter-mile away as they did when, rarely, they rested\n in the crevices they had been formed from in his \"skin.\" At greater\n distances they worked less well, for reasons irrelevant to the Law of\n Inverse Squares.\n\n\n Hatcher's principal task at this moment was to run the \"probe team\"\n which had McCray under observation, and he was more than a little\n excited. His members, disposed about the room where he had sent them on\n various errands, quivered and shook a little; yet they were the calmest\n limbs in the room; the members of the other team workers were in a\n state of violent commotion.", "\"The subject recovered consciousness a short time ago and began to\n inspect his enclosure. His method of doing so was to put his own\n members in physical contact with the various objects in the enclosure.\n After observing him do this for a time we concluded he might be unable\n to see and so we illuminated his field of vision for him.\n\n\n \"This appeared to work well for a time. He seemed relatively\n undisturbed. However, he then reverted to physical-contact,\n manipulating certain appurtenances of an artificial skin we had\n provided for him.\n\n\n \"He then began to vibrate the atmosphere by means of resonating organs\n in his breathing passage.\n\n\n \"Simultaneously, the object he was holding, attached to the artificial\n skin, was discovered to be generating paranormal forces.\"\n\n\n The supervising council rocked with excitement. \"You're sure?\" demanded\n one of the councilmen.", "Hatcher hesitated. \"No,\" he said at last. \"The male is responding well.\n Remember that when last this experiment was done every subject died; he\n is alive at least. But I am wondering. We can't quite communicate with\n the female—\"\n\n\n \"But?\"\n\n\n \"But I'm not sure that others can't.\"\nThe woman's voice was at such close range that McCray's suit radio made\n a useful RDF set. He located her direction easily enough, shielding the\n tiny built-in antenna with the tungsten-steel blade of the ax, while\n she begged him to hurry. Her voice was heavily accented, with some\n words in a language he did not recognize. She seemed to be in shock.\n\n\n McCray was hardly surprised at that; he had been close enough to shock\n himself. He tried to reassure her as he searched for a way out of the\n hall, but in the middle of a word her voice stopped.", "But it did not take an hour. One blow was luckier than the rest; it\n must have snapped the lock mechanism. The door shook and slid ajar.\n McCray got the thin of the blade into the crack and pried it wide.\n\n\n He was in another room, maybe a hall, large and bare.\n\n\n McCray put the broad of his back against the broken door and pressed it\n as nearly closed as he could; it might not keep the gas and heat out,\n but it would retard them.", "\"But, sir....\" Hatcher swung closer, his thick skin quivering slightly;\n he would have gestured if he had brought members with him to gesture\n with. \"We've done everything we dare. We've made the place homey\n for him—\" actually, what he said was more like,\nwe've warmed the\n biophysical nuances of his enclosure\n—\"and tried to guess his needs;\n and we're frightening him half to death. We\ncan't\ngo faster. This\n creature is in no way similar to us, you know. He relies on paranormal\n forces—heat, light, kinetic energy—for his life. His chemistry is not\n ours, his processes of thought are not ours, his entire organism is\n closer to the inanimate rocks of a sea-bottom than to ourselves.\"\n\n\n \"Understood, Hatcher. In your first report you stated these creatures\n were intelligent.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. But not in our way.\"", "She breathed, a little raggedly but without visible discomfort; her\n face was relaxed as though she were sleeping. She did not rouse as he\n moved her.\n\n\n He realized she was breathing the air of the room they were in.\n\n\n His instant first thought was that she was in danger of asphyxiation;", "McCray caught it up and headed for the door. It felt good in his\n gauntlets, a rewarding weight; any weapon straightens the back of the\n man who holds it, and McCray was grateful for this one. With something\n concrete to do he could postpone questioning. Never mind why he had\n been brought here; never mind how. Never mind what he would, or could,\n do next; all those questions could recede into the background of his\n mind while he swung the ax and battered his way out of this poisoned\n oven.\nCrash-clang!\nThe double jolt ran up the shaft of the ax, through his\n gauntlets and into his arm; but he was making progress, he could see\n the plastic—or whatever it was—of the door. It was chipping out. Not\n easily, very reluctantly; but flaking out in chips that left a white\n powdery residue.\n\n\n At this rate, he thought grimly, he would be an hour getting through\n it. Did he have an hour?", "But the room itself was hard fact. McCray swore violently and out loud.\n\n\n It was crazy and impossible. There simply was no way for him to get\n from a warm, bright navigator's cubicle on\nStarship Jodrell Bank\nto\n this damned, dark, dismal hole of a place where everything was out to\n hurt him and nothing explained what was going on. He cried aloud in\n exasperation: \"If I could only\nsee\n!\"\n\n\n He tripped and fell against something that was soft, slimy and, like\n baker's dough, not at all resilient.\n\n\n A flickering halo of pinkish light appeared. He sat up, startled. He\n was looking at something that resembled a suit of medieval armor.\nIt was, he saw in a moment, not armor but a spacesuit. But what was the\n light? And what were these other things in the room?", "\"Yes, sir. The staff is preparing a technical description of the forces\n now, but I can say that they are electromagnetic vibrations modulating\n a carrier wave of very high speed, and in turn modulated by the\n vibrations of the atmosphere caused by the subject's own breathing.\"\n\n\n \"Fantastic,\" breathed the councillor, in a tone of dawning hope. \"How\n about communicating with him, Hatcher? Any progress?\"\n\n\n \"Well ... not much, sir. He suddenly panicked. We don't know why; but\n we thought we'd better pull back and let him recover for a while.\"", "And louder, blaring, then fading to normal volume as the AVC circuits\n toned the signal down, another voice. A woman's voice, crying out in\n panic and fear: \"\nJodrell Bank!\nWhere are you? Help!\"\nIV\n\n\n Hatcher's second in command said: \"He has got through the first\n survival test. In fact, he broke his way out! What next?\"\n\n\n \"Wait!\" Hatcher ordered sharply. He was watching the new specimen and\n a troublesome thought had occurred to him. The new one was female and\n seemed to be in pain; but it was not the pain that disturbed Hatcher,\n it was something far more immediate to his interests.\n\n\n \"I think,\" he said slowly, \"that they are in contact.\"\n\n\n His assistant vibrated startlement.\n\n\n \"I know,\" Hatcher said, \"but watch. Do you see? He is going straight\n toward her.\"", "McCray switched the light on and looked around. There seemed to be no\n change.\n\n\n And yet, surely, it was warmer in here.\n\n\n He could see no difference; but perhaps, he thought, he could smell\n one. The unpleasant halogen odor from the grating was surely stronger\n now. He stood there, perplexed.\n\n\n A tinny little voice from the helmet of the space suit said sharply,\n amazement in its tone, \"McCray, is that you? Where the devil are you\n calling from?\"\n\n\n He forgot smell, sound and temperature and leaped for the suit. \"This\n is Herrell McCray,\" he cried. \"I'm in a room of some sort, apparently\n on a planet of approximate Earth mass. I don't know—\"\n\n\n \"McCray!\" cried the tiny voice in his ear. \"Where are you? This is\nJodrell Bank\ncalling. Answer, please!\"", "Still, it led in the proper direction. McCray added one more\n inexplicable fact to his file and walked through. He was in another\n hall—or tunnel—rising quite steeply to the right. By his reckoning it\n was the proper direction. He labored up it, sweating under the weight\n of the suit, and found another open door, this one round, and behind\n it—\n\n\n Yes, there was the woman whose voice he had heard.\n\n\n It was a woman, all right. The voice had been so strained that he\n hadn't been positive. Even now, short black hair might not have proved\n it, and she was lying face down but the waist and hips were a woman's,\n even though she wore a bulky, quilted suit of coveralls.\n\n\n He knelt beside her and gently turned her face.\n\n\n She was unconscious. Broad, dark face, with no make-up; she was\n apparently in her late thirties. She appeared to be Chinese." ], [ "Did that mean—did it\npossibly\nmean—that there was a lag of an hour\n or two each way? Did it, for example, mean that at the speed of his\n suit's pararadio, millions of times faster than light, it took\nhours\nto get a message to the ship and back?\n\n\n And if so ... where in the name of heaven was he?\nHerrell McCray was a navigator, which is to say, a man who has learned\n to trust the evidence of mathematics and instrument readings beyond the\n guesses of his \"common sense.\" When\nJodrell Bank\n, hurtling faster\n than light in its voyage between stars, made its regular position\n check, common sense was a liar. Light bore false witness. The line of\n sight was trustworthy directly forward and directly after—sometimes\n not even then—and it took computers, sensing their data through\n instruments, to comprehend a star bearing and convert three fixes into\n a position.", "\"I\nam\nanswering, damn it,\" he roared. \"What took you so long?\"\n\n\n \"Herrell McCray,\" droned the tiny voice in his ear, \"Herrell McCray,\n Herrell McCray, this is\nJodrell Bank\nresponding to your message,\n acknowledge please. Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray....\"\n\n\n It kept on, and on.\n\n\n McCray took a deep breath and thought. Something was wrong. Either they\n didn't hear him, which meant the radio wasn't transmitting, or—no.\n That was not it; they\nhad\nheard him, because they were responding.\n But it seemed to take them so long....\n\n\n Abruptly his face went white. Took them so long! He cast back in his\n mind, questing for a fact, unable to face its implications. When was\n it he called them? Two hours ago? Three?", "He pressed the unsealing tabs, slipped his hand into the vacant chest\n of the suit and pulled out the hand mike. \"This is Herrell McCray,\" he\n said, \"calling the\nJodrell Bank\n.\"\n\n\n No response. He frowned. \"This is Herrell McCray, calling\nJodrell\n Bank\n.\n\n\n \"Herrell McCray, calling anybody, come in, please.\"\n\n\n But there was no answer.\n\n\n Thoughtfully he replaced the microphone. This was ultrawave radio,\n something more than a million times faster than light, with a range\n measured, at least, in hundreds of light-years. If there was no answer,\n he was a good long way from anywhere.\n\n\n Of course, the thing might not be operating.\n\n\n He reached for the microphone again—\n\n\n He cried aloud.", "In fact, they were. He could recognize barrel, chamber, trigger, even\n a couple of cartridges, neatly opened and the grains of powder stacked\n beside them. It was an older, clumsier model than the kind he had seen\n in survival locker, on the\nJodrell Bank\n—and abruptly wished he were\n carrying now—but it was a pistol. Another trophy, like the strange\n assortment in the other room? He could not guess. But the others had\n been more familiar; they all have come from his own ship. He was\n prepared to swear that nothing like this antique had been aboard.\n\n\n The drone began again in his ear, as it had at five-minute intervals\n all along:\n\n\n \"Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is\nJodrell Bank\ncalling Herrell McCray....\"", "He stood still, thinking. Item, a short time ago—subjectively it\n seemed to be minutes—he had been aboard the\nJodrell Bank\nwith\n nothing more on his mind than completing his check-sighting and meeting\n one of the female passengers for coffee. Item, apart from being\n shaken up and—he admitted it—scared damn near witless, he did not\n seem to be hurt. Item, wherever he was now, it became, not so much what\n had happened to him, but what had happened to the ship?\n\n\n He allowed that thought to seep into his mind. Suppose there had been\n an accident to the\nJodrell Bank\n.\n\n\n He could, of course, be dead. All this could be the fantasies of a\n cooling brain.\n\n\n McCray grinned into the pink-lit darkness. The thought had somehow\n refreshed him, like icewater between rounds, and with a clearing head\n he remembered what a spacesuit was good for.\n\n\n It held a radio.", "If the evidence of his radio contradicted common sense, common sense\n was wrong. Perhaps it was impossible to believe what the radio's\n message implied; but it was not necessary to \"believe,\" only to act.\n\n\n McCray thumbed down the transmitter button and gave a concise report\n of his situation and his guesses. \"I don't know how I got here. I\n don't know how long I've been gone, since I was unconscious for a\n time. However, if the transmission lag is a reliable indication—\" he\n swallowed and went on—\"I'd estimate I am something more than five\n hundred light-years away from you at this moment. That's all I have to\n say, except for one more word: Help.\"\n\n\n He grinned sourly and released the button. The message was on its way,\n and it would be hours before he could have a reply. Therefore he had to\n consider what to do next.", "And louder, blaring, then fading to normal volume as the AVC circuits\n toned the signal down, another voice. A woman's voice, crying out in\n panic and fear: \"\nJodrell Bank!\nWhere are you? Help!\"\nIV\n\n\n Hatcher's second in command said: \"He has got through the first\n survival test. In fact, he broke his way out! What next?\"\n\n\n \"Wait!\" Hatcher ordered sharply. He was watching the new specimen and\n a troublesome thought had occurred to him. The new one was female and\n seemed to be in pain; but it was not the pain that disturbed Hatcher,\n it was something far more immediate to his interests.\n\n\n \"I think,\" he said slowly, \"that they are in contact.\"\n\n\n His assistant vibrated startlement.\n\n\n \"I know,\" Hatcher said, \"but watch. Do you see? He is going straight\n toward her.\"", "McCray switched the light on and looked around. There seemed to be no\n change.\n\n\n And yet, surely, it was warmer in here.\n\n\n He could see no difference; but perhaps, he thought, he could smell\n one. The unpleasant halogen odor from the grating was surely stronger\n now. He stood there, perplexed.\n\n\n A tinny little voice from the helmet of the space suit said sharply,\n amazement in its tone, \"McCray, is that you? Where the devil are you\n calling from?\"\n\n\n He forgot smell, sound and temperature and leaped for the suit. \"This\n is Herrell McCray,\" he cried. \"I'm in a room of some sort, apparently\n on a planet of approximate Earth mass. I don't know—\"\n\n\n \"McCray!\" cried the tiny voice in his ear. \"Where are you? This is\nJodrell Bank\ncalling. Answer, please!\"", "\"Yes, sir. The staff is preparing a technical description of the forces\n now, but I can say that they are electromagnetic vibrations modulating\n a carrier wave of very high speed, and in turn modulated by the\n vibrations of the atmosphere caused by the subject's own breathing.\"\n\n\n \"Fantastic,\" breathed the councillor, in a tone of dawning hope. \"How\n about communicating with him, Hatcher? Any progress?\"\n\n\n \"Well ... not much, sir. He suddenly panicked. We don't know why; but\n we thought we'd better pull back and let him recover for a while.\"", "Hatcher hesitated. \"No,\" he said at last. \"The male is responding well.\n Remember that when last this experiment was done every subject died; he\n is alive at least. But I am wondering. We can't quite communicate with\n the female—\"\n\n\n \"But?\"\n\n\n \"But I'm not sure that others can't.\"\nThe woman's voice was at such close range that McCray's suit radio made\n a useful RDF set. He located her direction easily enough, shielding the\n tiny built-in antenna with the tungsten-steel blade of the ax, while\n she begged him to hurry. Her voice was heavily accented, with some\n words in a language he did not recognize. She seemed to be in shock.\n\n\n McCray was hardly surprised at that; he had been close enough to shock\n himself. He tried to reassure her as he searched for a way out of the\n hall, but in the middle of a word her voice stopped.", "The council conferred among itself for a moment, Hatcher waiting. It\n was not really a waste of time for him; with the organs he had left in\n the probe-team room, he was in fairly close touch with what was going\n on—knew that McCray was once again fumbling among the objects in the\n dark, knew that the team-members had tried illuminating the room for\n him briefly and again produced the rising panic.\n\n\n Still, Hatcher fretted. He wanted to get back.\n\n\n \"Stop fidgeting,\" commanded the council leader abruptly. \"Hatcher, you\n are to establish communication at once.\"", "Wherever he looked, the light danced along with his eyes. It was like\n having tunnel vision or wearing blinders. He could see what he was\n looking at, but he could see nothing else. And the things he could\n see made no sense. A spacesuit, yes; he knew that he could construct\n a logical explanation for that with no trouble—maybe a subspace\n meteorite striking the\nJodrell Bank\n, an explosion, himself knocked\n out, brought here in a suit ... well, it was an explanation with more\n holes than fabric, like a fisherman's net, but at least it was rational.", "\"But in\na\nway, and you must learn that way. I know.\" One lobster-claw\n shaped member drifted close to the councillor's body and raised itself\n in an admonitory gesture. \"You want time. But we don't have time,\n Hatcher. Yours is not the only probe team working. The Central Masses\n team has just turned in a most alarming report.\"\n\n\n \"Have they secured a subject?\" Hatcher demanded jealously.\n\n\n The councillor paused. \"Worse than that, Hatcher. I am afraid their\n subjects have secured one of them. One of them is missing.\"\n\n\n There was a moment's silence. Frozen, Hatcher could only wait. The\n council room was like a tableau in a museum until the councillor spoke\n again, each council member poised over his locus-point, his members\n drifting about him.", "Physically they were nothing alike. Hatcher was a three-foot,\n hard-shelled sphere of jelly. He had \"arms\" and \"legs,\" but they were\n not organically attached to \"himself.\" They were snakelike things which\n obeyed the orders of his brain as well as your mind can make your toes\n curl; but they did not touch him directly. Indeed, they worked as well\n a yard or a quarter-mile away as they did when, rarely, they rested\n in the crevices they had been formed from in his \"skin.\" At greater\n distances they worked less well, for reasons irrelevant to the Law of\n Inverse Squares.\n\n\n Hatcher's principal task at this moment was to run the \"probe team\"\n which had McCray under observation, and he was more than a little\n excited. His members, disposed about the room where he had sent them on\n various errands, quivered and shook a little; yet they were the calmest\n limbs in the room; the members of the other team workers were in a\n state of violent commotion.", "Hatcher did not like the idea of endangering the Earthman. It cannot\n be said that he was emotionally involved; it was not pity or sympathy\n that caused him to regret the dangers in moving too fast toward\n communication. Not even Hatcher had quite got over the revolting\n physical differences between the Earthman and his own people. But\n Hatcher did not want him destroyed. It had been difficult enough\n getting him here.\n\n\n Hatcher checked through the members that he had left with the rest of\n his team and discovered that there were no immediate emergencies, so he\n took time to eat. In Hatcher's race this was accomplished in ways not\n entirely pleasant to Earthmen. A slit in the lower hemisphere of his\n body opened, like a purse, emitting a thin, pussy, fetid fluid which\n Hatcher caught and poured into a disposal trough at the side of the\n eating room. He then stuffed the slit with pulpy vegetation the texture\n of kelp; it closed, and his body was supplied with nourishment for\n another day.", "\"But, sir....\" Hatcher swung closer, his thick skin quivering slightly;\n he would have gestured if he had brought members with him to gesture\n with. \"We've done everything we dare. We've made the place homey\n for him—\" actually, what he said was more like,\nwe've warmed the\n biophysical nuances of his enclosure\n—\"and tried to guess his needs;\n and we're frightening him half to death. We\ncan't\ngo faster. This\n creature is in no way similar to us, you know. He relies on paranormal\n forces—heat, light, kinetic energy—for his life. His chemistry is not\n ours, his processes of thought are not ours, his entire organism is\n closer to the inanimate rocks of a sea-bottom than to ourselves.\"\n\n\n \"Understood, Hatcher. In your first report you stated these creatures\n were intelligent.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. But not in our way.\"", "But the room itself was hard fact. McCray swore violently and out loud.\n\n\n It was crazy and impossible. There simply was no way for him to get\n from a warm, bright navigator's cubicle on\nStarship Jodrell Bank\nto\n this damned, dark, dismal hole of a place where everything was out to\n hurt him and nothing explained what was going on. He cried aloud in\n exasperation: \"If I could only\nsee\n!\"\n\n\n He tripped and fell against something that was soft, slimy and, like\n baker's dough, not at all resilient.\n\n\n A flickering halo of pinkish light appeared. He sat up, startled. He\n was looking at something that resembled a suit of medieval armor.\nIt was, he saw in a moment, not armor but a spacesuit. But what was the\n light? And what were these other things in the room?", "The probe team had had a shock.\n\n\n \"Paranormal powers,\" muttered Hatcher's second in command, and the\n others mumbled agreement. Hatcher ordered silence, studying the\n specimen from Earth.\n\n\n After a long moment he turned his senses from the Earthman.\n \"Incredible—but it's true enough,\" he said. \"I'd better report. Watch\n him,\" he added, but that was surely unnecessary. Their job was to\n watch McCray, and they would do their job; and even more, not one of\n them could have looked away to save his life from the spectacle of\n a creature as odd and, from their point of view, hideously alien as\n Herrell McCray.\nHatcher hurried through the halls of the great buried structure in\n which he worked, toward the place where the supervising council of all\n probes would be in permanent session. They admitted him at once.\n\n\n Hatcher identified himself and gave a quick, concise report:", "Now they had detected mapping parties of the Old Ones dangerously near\n the spiral arm of the galaxy in which their planet was located, they\n had begun the Probe Teams to find some way of combating them, or of\n fleeing again.\n\n\n But it seemed that the Probe Teams themselves might be betraying their\n existence to their enemies—\n\n\n \"Hatcher!\"\n\n\n The call was urgent; he hurried to see what it was about. It was his\n second in command, very excited. \"What is it?\" Hatcher demanded.\n\n\n \"Wait....\"", "Hatcher studied him frostily; his patience was not, after all, endless.\n \"No matter,\" he said at last. \"Bring the other one in.\"\n\n\n And then, in a completely different mood, \"We may need him badly. We\n may be in the process of killing our first one now.\"\n\n\n \"Killing him, Hatcher?\"\n\n\n Hatcher rose and shook himself, his mindless members floating away like\n puppies dislodged from suck. \"Council's orders,\" he said. \"We've got to\n go into Stage Two of the project at once.\"\nIII\n\n\n Before Stage Two began, or before Herrell McCray realized it had begun,\n he had an inspiration.\n\n\n The dark was absolute, but he remembered where the spacesuit had been\n and groped his way to it and, yes, it had what all spacesuits had to\n have. It had a light. He found the toggle that turned it on and pressed\n it." ], [ "\"Yes, sir. The staff is preparing a technical description of the forces\n now, but I can say that they are electromagnetic vibrations modulating\n a carrier wave of very high speed, and in turn modulated by the\n vibrations of the atmosphere caused by the subject's own breathing.\"\n\n\n \"Fantastic,\" breathed the councillor, in a tone of dawning hope. \"How\n about communicating with him, Hatcher? Any progress?\"\n\n\n \"Well ... not much, sir. He suddenly panicked. We don't know why; but\n we thought we'd better pull back and let him recover for a while.\"", "\"The subject recovered consciousness a short time ago and began to\n inspect his enclosure. His method of doing so was to put his own\n members in physical contact with the various objects in the enclosure.\n After observing him do this for a time we concluded he might be unable\n to see and so we illuminated his field of vision for him.\n\n\n \"This appeared to work well for a time. He seemed relatively\n undisturbed. However, he then reverted to physical-contact,\n manipulating certain appurtenances of an artificial skin we had\n provided for him.\n\n\n \"He then began to vibrate the atmosphere by means of resonating organs\n in his breathing passage.\n\n\n \"Simultaneously, the object he was holding, attached to the artificial\n skin, was discovered to be generating paranormal forces.\"\n\n\n The supervising council rocked with excitement. \"You're sure?\" demanded\n one of the councilmen.", "\"But, sir....\" Hatcher swung closer, his thick skin quivering slightly;\n he would have gestured if he had brought members with him to gesture\n with. \"We've done everything we dare. We've made the place homey\n for him—\" actually, what he said was more like,\nwe've warmed the\n biophysical nuances of his enclosure\n—\"and tried to guess his needs;\n and we're frightening him half to death. We\ncan't\ngo faster. This\n creature is in no way similar to us, you know. He relies on paranormal\n forces—heat, light, kinetic energy—for his life. His chemistry is not\n ours, his processes of thought are not ours, his entire organism is\n closer to the inanimate rocks of a sea-bottom than to ourselves.\"\n\n\n \"Understood, Hatcher. In your first report you stated these creatures\n were intelligent.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. But not in our way.\"", "Physically they were nothing alike. Hatcher was a three-foot,\n hard-shelled sphere of jelly. He had \"arms\" and \"legs,\" but they were\n not organically attached to \"himself.\" They were snakelike things which\n obeyed the orders of his brain as well as your mind can make your toes\n curl; but they did not touch him directly. Indeed, they worked as well\n a yard or a quarter-mile away as they did when, rarely, they rested\n in the crevices they had been formed from in his \"skin.\" At greater\n distances they worked less well, for reasons irrelevant to the Law of\n Inverse Squares.\n\n\n Hatcher's principal task at this moment was to run the \"probe team\"\n which had McCray under observation, and he was more than a little\n excited. His members, disposed about the room where he had sent them on\n various errands, quivered and shook a little; yet they were the calmest\n limbs in the room; the members of the other team workers were in a\n state of violent commotion.", "Hatcher, who was not human, did not possess truly human emotions; but\n he did feel amazement when he was amazed, and fear when there was\n cause to be afraid. These specimens, obtained with so much difficulty,\n needed so badly, were his responsibility. He knew the issues involved\n much better than any of his helpers. They could only be surprised at\n the queer antics of the aliens with attached limbs and strange powers.\n Hatcher knew that this was not a freak show, but a matter of life and\n death. He said, musing:\n\n\n \"This new one, I cannot communicate with her, but I get—almost—a\n whisper, now and then. The first one, the male, nothing. But this\n female is perhaps not quite mute.\"\n\n\n \"Then shall we abandon him and work with her, forgetting the first one?\"", "Hatcher hesitated. \"No,\" he said at last. \"The male is responding well.\n Remember that when last this experiment was done every subject died; he\n is alive at least. But I am wondering. We can't quite communicate with\n the female—\"\n\n\n \"But?\"\n\n\n \"But I'm not sure that others can't.\"\nThe woman's voice was at such close range that McCray's suit radio made\n a useful RDF set. He located her direction easily enough, shielding the\n tiny built-in antenna with the tungsten-steel blade of the ax, while\n she begged him to hurry. Her voice was heavily accented, with some\n words in a language he did not recognize. She seemed to be in shock.\n\n\n McCray was hardly surprised at that; he had been close enough to shock\n himself. He tried to reassure her as he searched for a way out of the\n hall, but in the middle of a word her voice stopped.", "The council conferred among itself for a moment, Hatcher waiting. It\n was not really a waste of time for him; with the organs he had left in\n the probe-team room, he was in fairly close touch with what was going\n on—knew that McCray was once again fumbling among the objects in the\n dark, knew that the team-members had tried illuminating the room for\n him briefly and again produced the rising panic.\n\n\n Still, Hatcher fretted. He wanted to get back.\n\n\n \"Stop fidgeting,\" commanded the council leader abruptly. \"Hatcher, you\n are to establish communication at once.\"", "Hatcher did not like the idea of endangering the Earthman. It cannot\n be said that he was emotionally involved; it was not pity or sympathy\n that caused him to regret the dangers in moving too fast toward\n communication. Not even Hatcher had quite got over the revolting\n physical differences between the Earthman and his own people. But\n Hatcher did not want him destroyed. It had been difficult enough\n getting him here.\n\n\n Hatcher checked through the members that he had left with the rest of\n his team and discovered that there were no immediate emergencies, so he\n took time to eat. In Hatcher's race this was accomplished in ways not\n entirely pleasant to Earthmen. A slit in the lower hemisphere of his\n body opened, like a purse, emitting a thin, pussy, fetid fluid which\n Hatcher caught and poured into a disposal trough at the side of the\n eating room. He then stuffed the slit with pulpy vegetation the texture\n of kelp; it closed, and his body was supplied with nourishment for\n another day.", "Suppose you call him \"Hatcher\" (and suppose you call it a \"him.\")\n Hatcher was not exactly male, because his race had no true males; but\n it did have females and he was certainly not that. Hatcher did not in\n any way look like a human being, but they had features in common.\n\n\n If Hatcher and McCray had somehow managed to strike up an acquaintance,\n they might have got along very well. Hatcher, like McCray, was an\n adventurous soul, young, able, well-learned in the technical sciences\n of his culture. Both enjoyed games—McCray baseball, poker and\n three-dimensional chess; Hatcher a number of sports which defy human\n description. Both held positions of some importance—considering their\n ages—in the affairs of their respective worlds.", "Hatcher was patient; he knew his assistant well. Obviously something\n was about to happen. He took the moment to call his members back to\n him for feeding; they dodged back to their niches on his skin, fitted\n themselves into their vestigial slots, poured back their wastes into\n his own circulation and ingested what they needed from the meal he had\n just taken.... \"Now!\" cried the assistant. \"Look!\"\n\n\n At what passed among Hatcher's people for a viewing console an image\n was forming. Actually it was the assistant himself who formed it, not a\n cathode trace or projected shadow; but it showed what it was meant to\n show.\n\n\n Hatcher was startled. \"Another one! And—is it a different species? Or\n merely a different sex?\"\n\n\n \"Study the probe for yourself,\" the assistant invited.", "Hatcher studied him frostily; his patience was not, after all, endless.\n \"No matter,\" he said at last. \"Bring the other one in.\"\n\n\n And then, in a completely different mood, \"We may need him badly. We\n may be in the process of killing our first one now.\"\n\n\n \"Killing him, Hatcher?\"\n\n\n Hatcher rose and shook himself, his mindless members floating away like\n puppies dislodged from suck. \"Council's orders,\" he said. \"We've got to\n go into Stage Two of the project at once.\"\nIII\n\n\n Before Stage Two began, or before Herrell McCray realized it had begun,\n he had an inspiration.\n\n\n The dark was absolute, but he remembered where the spacesuit had been\n and groped his way to it and, yes, it had what all spacesuits had to\n have. It had a light. He found the toggle that turned it on and pressed\n it.", "She breathed, a little raggedly but without visible discomfort; her\n face was relaxed as though she were sleeping. She did not rouse as he\n moved her.\n\n\n He realized she was breathing the air of the room they were in.\n\n\n His instant first thought was that she was in danger of asphyxiation;", "Light. White, flaring, Earthly light, that showed everything—even\n himself.\n\n\n \"God bless,\" he said, almost beside himself with joy. Whatever that\n pinkish, dancing halo had been, it had thrown him into a panic; now\n that he could see his own hand again, he could blame the weird effects\n on some strange property of the light.\n\n\n At the moment he heard the click that was the beginning of Stage Two.\n\n\n He switched off the light and stood for a moment, listening.\n\n\n For a second he thought he heard the far-off voice, quiet, calm and\n almost hopeless, that he had sensed hours before; but then that was\n gone. Something else was gone. Some faint mechanical sound that had\n hardly registered at the time, but was not missing. And there was,\n perhaps, a nice new sound that had not been there before; a very\n faint, an almost inaudible elfin hiss.", "And louder, blaring, then fading to normal volume as the AVC circuits\n toned the signal down, another voice. A woman's voice, crying out in\n panic and fear: \"\nJodrell Bank!\nWhere are you? Help!\"\nIV\n\n\n Hatcher's second in command said: \"He has got through the first\n survival test. In fact, he broke his way out! What next?\"\n\n\n \"Wait!\" Hatcher ordered sharply. He was watching the new specimen and\n a troublesome thought had occurred to him. The new one was female and\n seemed to be in pain; but it was not the pain that disturbed Hatcher,\n it was something far more immediate to his interests.\n\n\n \"I think,\" he said slowly, \"that they are in contact.\"\n\n\n His assistant vibrated startlement.\n\n\n \"I know,\" Hatcher said, \"but watch. Do you see? He is going straight\n toward her.\"", "Not everything he saw was familiar. The walls of the room itself were\n strange. They were not metal or plaster or knotty pine; they were\n not papered, painted or overlaid with stucco. They seemed to be made\n of some sort of hard organic compound, perhaps a sort of plastic or\n processed cellulose. It was hard to tell colors in the pinkish light.\n But they seemed to have none. They were \"neutral\"—the color of aged\n driftwood or unbleached cloth.\n\n\n Three of the walls were that way, and the floor and ceiling. The fourth\n wall was something else. Areas in it had the appearance of gratings;\n from them issued the pungent, distasteful halogen odor. They might be\n ventilators, he thought; but if so the air they brought in was worse\n than what he already had.\n\n\n McCray was beginning to feel more confident. It was astonishing how a\n little light made an impossible situation bearable, how quickly his\n courage flowed back when he could see again.", "The probe team had had a shock.\n\n\n \"Paranormal powers,\" muttered Hatcher's second in command, and the\n others mumbled agreement. Hatcher ordered silence, studying the\n specimen from Earth.\n\n\n After a long moment he turned his senses from the Earthman.\n \"Incredible—but it's true enough,\" he said. \"I'd better report. Watch\n him,\" he added, but that was surely unnecessary. Their job was to\n watch McCray, and they would do their job; and even more, not one of\n them could have looked away to save his life from the spectacle of\n a creature as odd and, from their point of view, hideously alien as\n Herrell McCray.\nHatcher hurried through the halls of the great buried structure in\n which he worked, toward the place where the supervising council of all\n probes would be in permanent session. They admitted him at once.\n\n\n Hatcher identified himself and gave a quick, concise report:", "The room was totally dark, and it seemed to be furnished with a\n collection of hard, sharp, sticky and knobby objects of various shapes\n and a number of inconvenient sizes. McCray tripped over something\n that rocked under his feet and fell against something that clattered\n hollowly. He picked himself up, braced against something that smelled\n dangerously of halogen compounds, and scratched his shoulder, right\n through his space-tunic, against something that vibrated as he touched\n it.\n\n\n McCray had no idea where he was, and no way to find out.\n\n\n Not only was he in darkness, but in utter silence as well. No. Not\n quite utter silence.\n\n\n Somewhere, just at the threshold of his senses, there was something\n like a voice. He could not quite hear it, but it was there. He sat as\n still as he could, listening; it remained elusive.\n\n\n Probably it was only an illusion.", "He mopped his brow. With the droning, repetitious call from the ship\n finally quiet, the room was quiet again. And warm.\n\n\n Very warm, he thought tardily; and more than that. The halogen stench\n was strong in his nostrils again.\n\n\n Hurriedly McCray scrambled into the suit. By the time he was sealed\n down he was coughing from the bottom of his lungs, deep, tearing rasps\n that pained him, uncontrollable. Chlorine or fluorine, one of them was\n in the air he had been breathing. He could not guess where it had come\n from; but it was ripping his lungs out.\n\n\n He flushed the interior of the suit out with a reckless disregard for\n the wastage of his air reserve, holding his breath as much as he could,\n daring only shallow gasps that made him retch and gag. After a long\n time he could breathe, though his eyes were spilling tears.", "McCray caught it up and headed for the door. It felt good in his\n gauntlets, a rewarding weight; any weapon straightens the back of the\n man who holds it, and McCray was grateful for this one. With something\n concrete to do he could postpone questioning. Never mind why he had\n been brought here; never mind how. Never mind what he would, or could,\n do next; all those questions could recede into the background of his\n mind while he swung the ax and battered his way out of this poisoned\n oven.\nCrash-clang!\nThe double jolt ran up the shaft of the ax, through his\n gauntlets and into his arm; but he was making progress, he could see\n the plastic—or whatever it was—of the door. It was chipping out. Not\n easily, very reluctantly; but flaking out in chips that left a white\n powdery residue.\n\n\n At this rate, he thought grimly, he would be an hour getting through\n it. Did he have an hour?", "\"But in\na\nway, and you must learn that way. I know.\" One lobster-claw\n shaped member drifted close to the councillor's body and raised itself\n in an admonitory gesture. \"You want time. But we don't have time,\n Hatcher. Yours is not the only probe team working. The Central Masses\n team has just turned in a most alarming report.\"\n\n\n \"Have they secured a subject?\" Hatcher demanded jealously.\n\n\n The councillor paused. \"Worse than that, Hatcher. I am afraid their\n subjects have secured one of them. One of them is missing.\"\n\n\n There was a moment's silence. Frozen, Hatcher could only wait. The\n council room was like a tableau in a museum until the councillor spoke\n again, each council member poised over his locus-point, his members\n drifting about him." ], [ "Did that mean—did it\npossibly\nmean—that there was a lag of an hour\n or two each way? Did it, for example, mean that at the speed of his\n suit's pararadio, millions of times faster than light, it took\nhours\nto get a message to the ship and back?\n\n\n And if so ... where in the name of heaven was he?\nHerrell McCray was a navigator, which is to say, a man who has learned\n to trust the evidence of mathematics and instrument readings beyond the\n guesses of his \"common sense.\" When\nJodrell Bank\n, hurtling faster\n than light in its voyage between stars, made its regular position\n check, common sense was a liar. Light bore false witness. The line of\n sight was trustworthy directly forward and directly after—sometimes\n not even then—and it took computers, sensing their data through\n instruments, to comprehend a star bearing and convert three fixes into\n a position.", "But the room itself was hard fact. McCray swore violently and out loud.\n\n\n It was crazy and impossible. There simply was no way for him to get\n from a warm, bright navigator's cubicle on\nStarship Jodrell Bank\nto\n this damned, dark, dismal hole of a place where everything was out to\n hurt him and nothing explained what was going on. He cried aloud in\n exasperation: \"If I could only\nsee\n!\"\n\n\n He tripped and fell against something that was soft, slimy and, like\n baker's dough, not at all resilient.\n\n\n A flickering halo of pinkish light appeared. He sat up, startled. He\n was looking at something that resembled a suit of medieval armor.\nIt was, he saw in a moment, not armor but a spacesuit. But what was the\n light? And what were these other things in the room?", "As best he could tell, he was in a sort of room no bigger than a prison\n cell. Perhaps it was a prison cell. Whatever it was, he had no business\n in it; for five minutes before he had been spaceborne, on the Long Jump\n from Earth to the thriving colonies circling Betelgeuse Nine. McCray\n was ship's navigator, plotting course corrections—not that there were\n any, ever; but the reason there were none was that the check-sightings\n were made every hour of the long flight. He had read off the azimuth\n angles from the computer sights, automatically locked on their beacon\n stars, and found them correct; then out of long habit confirmed the\n locking mechanism visually. It was only a personal quaintness; he had\n done it a thousand times. And while he was looking at Betelgeuse, Rigel\n and Saiph ... it happened.", "\"But, sir....\" Hatcher swung closer, his thick skin quivering slightly;\n he would have gestured if he had brought members with him to gesture\n with. \"We've done everything we dare. We've made the place homey\n for him—\" actually, what he said was more like,\nwe've warmed the\n biophysical nuances of his enclosure\n—\"and tried to guess his needs;\n and we're frightening him half to death. We\ncan't\ngo faster. This\n creature is in no way similar to us, you know. He relies on paranormal\n forces—heat, light, kinetic energy—for his life. His chemistry is not\n ours, his processes of thought are not ours, his entire organism is\n closer to the inanimate rocks of a sea-bottom than to ourselves.\"\n\n\n \"Understood, Hatcher. In your first report you stated these creatures\n were intelligent.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. But not in our way.\"", "\"But in\na\nway, and you must learn that way. I know.\" One lobster-claw\n shaped member drifted close to the councillor's body and raised itself\n in an admonitory gesture. \"You want time. But we don't have time,\n Hatcher. Yours is not the only probe team working. The Central Masses\n team has just turned in a most alarming report.\"\n\n\n \"Have they secured a subject?\" Hatcher demanded jealously.\n\n\n The councillor paused. \"Worse than that, Hatcher. I am afraid their\n subjects have secured one of them. One of them is missing.\"\n\n\n There was a moment's silence. Frozen, Hatcher could only wait. The\n council room was like a tableau in a museum until the councillor spoke\n again, each council member poised over his locus-point, his members\n drifting about him.", "Suppose you call him \"Hatcher\" (and suppose you call it a \"him.\")\n Hatcher was not exactly male, because his race had no true males; but\n it did have females and he was certainly not that. Hatcher did not in\n any way look like a human being, but they had features in common.\n\n\n If Hatcher and McCray had somehow managed to strike up an acquaintance,\n they might have got along very well. Hatcher, like McCray, was an\n adventurous soul, young, able, well-learned in the technical sciences\n of his culture. Both enjoyed games—McCray baseball, poker and\n three-dimensional chess; Hatcher a number of sports which defy human\n description. Both held positions of some importance—considering their\n ages—in the affairs of their respective worlds.", "Now they had detected mapping parties of the Old Ones dangerously near\n the spiral arm of the galaxy in which their planet was located, they\n had begun the Probe Teams to find some way of combating them, or of\n fleeing again.\n\n\n But it seemed that the Probe Teams themselves might be betraying their\n existence to their enemies—\n\n\n \"Hatcher!\"\n\n\n The call was urgent; he hurried to see what it was about. It was his\n second in command, very excited. \"What is it?\" Hatcher demanded.\n\n\n \"Wait....\"", "Physically they were nothing alike. Hatcher was a three-foot,\n hard-shelled sphere of jelly. He had \"arms\" and \"legs,\" but they were\n not organically attached to \"himself.\" They were snakelike things which\n obeyed the orders of his brain as well as your mind can make your toes\n curl; but they did not touch him directly. Indeed, they worked as well\n a yard or a quarter-mile away as they did when, rarely, they rested\n in the crevices they had been formed from in his \"skin.\" At greater\n distances they worked less well, for reasons irrelevant to the Law of\n Inverse Squares.\n\n\n Hatcher's principal task at this moment was to run the \"probe team\"\n which had McCray under observation, and he was more than a little\n excited. His members, disposed about the room where he had sent them on\n various errands, quivered and shook a little; yet they were the calmest\n limbs in the room; the members of the other team workers were in a\n state of violent commotion.", "He stood still, thinking. Item, a short time ago—subjectively it\n seemed to be minutes—he had been aboard the\nJodrell Bank\nwith\n nothing more on his mind than completing his check-sighting and meeting\n one of the female passengers for coffee. Item, apart from being\n shaken up and—he admitted it—scared damn near witless, he did not\n seem to be hurt. Item, wherever he was now, it became, not so much what\n had happened to him, but what had happened to the ship?\n\n\n He allowed that thought to seep into his mind. Suppose there had been\n an accident to the\nJodrell Bank\n.\n\n\n He could, of course, be dead. All this could be the fantasies of a\n cooling brain.\n\n\n McCray grinned into the pink-lit darkness. The thought had somehow\n refreshed him, like icewater between rounds, and with a clearing head\n he remembered what a spacesuit was good for.\n\n\n It held a radio.", "Wherever he looked, the light danced along with his eyes. It was like\n having tunnel vision or wearing blinders. He could see what he was\n looking at, but he could see nothing else. And the things he could\n see made no sense. A spacesuit, yes; he knew that he could construct\n a logical explanation for that with no trouble—maybe a subspace\n meteorite striking the\nJodrell Bank\n, an explosion, himself knocked\n out, brought here in a suit ... well, it was an explanation with more\n holes than fabric, like a fisherman's net, but at least it was rational.", "The room was totally dark, and it seemed to be furnished with a\n collection of hard, sharp, sticky and knobby objects of various shapes\n and a number of inconvenient sizes. McCray tripped over something\n that rocked under his feet and fell against something that clattered\n hollowly. He picked himself up, braced against something that smelled\n dangerously of halogen compounds, and scratched his shoulder, right\n through his space-tunic, against something that vibrated as he touched\n it.\n\n\n McCray had no idea where he was, and no way to find out.\n\n\n Not only was he in darkness, but in utter silence as well. No. Not\n quite utter silence.\n\n\n Somewhere, just at the threshold of his senses, there was something\n like a voice. He could not quite hear it, but it was there. He sat as\n still as he could, listening; it remained elusive.\n\n\n Probably it was only an illusion.", "Hatcher was patient; he knew his assistant well. Obviously something\n was about to happen. He took the moment to call his members back to\n him for feeding; they dodged back to their niches on his skin, fitted\n themselves into their vestigial slots, poured back their wastes into\n his own circulation and ingested what they needed from the meal he had\n just taken.... \"Now!\" cried the assistant. \"Look!\"\n\n\n At what passed among Hatcher's people for a viewing console an image\n was forming. Actually it was the assistant himself who formed it, not a\n cathode trace or projected shadow; but it showed what it was meant to\n show.\n\n\n Hatcher was startled. \"Another one! And—is it a different species? Or\n merely a different sex?\"\n\n\n \"Study the probe for yourself,\" the assistant invited.", "In fact, they were. He could recognize barrel, chamber, trigger, even\n a couple of cartridges, neatly opened and the grains of powder stacked\n beside them. It was an older, clumsier model than the kind he had seen\n in survival locker, on the\nJodrell Bank\n—and abruptly wished he were\n carrying now—but it was a pistol. Another trophy, like the strange\n assortment in the other room? He could not guess. But the others had\n been more familiar; they all have come from his own ship. He was\n prepared to swear that nothing like this antique had been aboard.\n\n\n The drone began again in his ear, as it had at five-minute intervals\n all along:\n\n\n \"Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is\nJodrell Bank\ncalling Herrell McCray....\"", "Hatcher studied him frostily; his patience was not, after all, endless.\n \"No matter,\" he said at last. \"Bring the other one in.\"\n\n\n And then, in a completely different mood, \"We may need him badly. We\n may be in the process of killing our first one now.\"\n\n\n \"Killing him, Hatcher?\"\n\n\n Hatcher rose and shook himself, his mindless members floating away like\n puppies dislodged from suck. \"Council's orders,\" he said. \"We've got to\n go into Stage Two of the project at once.\"\nIII\n\n\n Before Stage Two began, or before Herrell McCray realized it had begun,\n he had an inspiration.\n\n\n The dark was absolute, but he remembered where the spacesuit had been\n and groped his way to it and, yes, it had what all spacesuits had to\n have. It had a light. He found the toggle that turned it on and pressed\n it.", "The council conferred among itself for a moment, Hatcher waiting. It\n was not really a waste of time for him; with the organs he had left in\n the probe-team room, he was in fairly close touch with what was going\n on—knew that McCray was once again fumbling among the objects in the\n dark, knew that the team-members had tried illuminating the room for\n him briefly and again produced the rising panic.\n\n\n Still, Hatcher fretted. He wanted to get back.\n\n\n \"Stop fidgeting,\" commanded the council leader abruptly. \"Hatcher, you\n are to establish communication at once.\"", "Still, it led in the proper direction. McCray added one more\n inexplicable fact to his file and walked through. He was in another\n hall—or tunnel—rising quite steeply to the right. By his reckoning it\n was the proper direction. He labored up it, sweating under the weight\n of the suit, and found another open door, this one round, and behind\n it—\n\n\n Yes, there was the woman whose voice he had heard.\n\n\n It was a woman, all right. The voice had been so strained that he\n hadn't been positive. Even now, short black hair might not have proved\n it, and she was lying face down but the waist and hips were a woman's,\n even though she wore a bulky, quilted suit of coveralls.\n\n\n He knelt beside her and gently turned her face.\n\n\n She was unconscious. Broad, dark face, with no make-up; she was\n apparently in her late thirties. She appeared to be Chinese.", "Not everything he saw was familiar. The walls of the room itself were\n strange. They were not metal or plaster or knotty pine; they were\n not papered, painted or overlaid with stucco. They seemed to be made\n of some sort of hard organic compound, perhaps a sort of plastic or\n processed cellulose. It was hard to tell colors in the pinkish light.\n But they seemed to have none. They were \"neutral\"—the color of aged\n driftwood or unbleached cloth.\n\n\n Three of the walls were that way, and the floor and ceiling. The fourth\n wall was something else. Areas in it had the appearance of gratings;\n from them issued the pungent, distasteful halogen odor. They might be\n ventilators, he thought; but if so the air they brought in was worse\n than what he already had.\n\n\n McCray was beginning to feel more confident. It was astonishing how a\n little light made an impossible situation bearable, how quickly his\n courage flowed back when he could see again.", "If the evidence of his radio contradicted common sense, common sense\n was wrong. Perhaps it was impossible to believe what the radio's\n message implied; but it was not necessary to \"believe,\" only to act.\n\n\n McCray thumbed down the transmitter button and gave a concise report\n of his situation and his guesses. \"I don't know how I got here. I\n don't know how long I've been gone, since I was unconscious for a\n time. However, if the transmission lag is a reliable indication—\" he\n swallowed and went on—\"I'd estimate I am something more than five\n hundred light-years away from you at this moment. That's all I have to\n say, except for one more word: Help.\"\n\n\n He grinned sourly and released the button. The message was on its way,\n and it would be hours before he could have a reply. Therefore he had to\n consider what to do next.", "Hatcher, who was not human, did not possess truly human emotions; but\n he did feel amazement when he was amazed, and fear when there was\n cause to be afraid. These specimens, obtained with so much difficulty,\n needed so badly, were his responsibility. He knew the issues involved\n much better than any of his helpers. They could only be surprised at\n the queer antics of the aliens with attached limbs and strange powers.\n Hatcher knew that this was not a freak show, but a matter of life and\n death. He said, musing:\n\n\n \"This new one, I cannot communicate with her, but I get—almost—a\n whisper, now and then. The first one, the male, nothing. But this\n female is perhaps not quite mute.\"\n\n\n \"Then shall we abandon him and work with her, forgetting the first one?\"", "He returned quickly to the room.\n\n\n His second in command was busy, but one of the other team workers\n reported—nothing new—and asked about Hatcher's appearance before the\n council. Hatcher passed the question off. He considered telling his\n staff about the disappearance of the Central Masses team member, but\n decided against it. He had not been told it was secret. On the other\n hand, he had not been told it was not. Something of this importance was\n not lightly to be gossiped about. For endless generations the threat\n of the Old Ones had hung over his race, those queer, almost mythical\n beings from the Central Masses of the galaxy. One brush with them, in\n ages past, had almost destroyed Hatcher's people. Only by running and\n hiding, bearing one of their planets with them and abandoning it—with\n its population—as a decoy, had they arrived at all." ], [ "Hatcher was patient; he knew his assistant well. Obviously something\n was about to happen. He took the moment to call his members back to\n him for feeding; they dodged back to their niches on his skin, fitted\n themselves into their vestigial slots, poured back their wastes into\n his own circulation and ingested what they needed from the meal he had\n just taken.... \"Now!\" cried the assistant. \"Look!\"\n\n\n At what passed among Hatcher's people for a viewing console an image\n was forming. Actually it was the assistant himself who formed it, not a\n cathode trace or projected shadow; but it showed what it was meant to\n show.\n\n\n Hatcher was startled. \"Another one! And—is it a different species? Or\n merely a different sex?\"\n\n\n \"Study the probe for yourself,\" the assistant invited.", "Physically they were nothing alike. Hatcher was a three-foot,\n hard-shelled sphere of jelly. He had \"arms\" and \"legs,\" but they were\n not organically attached to \"himself.\" They were snakelike things which\n obeyed the orders of his brain as well as your mind can make your toes\n curl; but they did not touch him directly. Indeed, they worked as well\n a yard or a quarter-mile away as they did when, rarely, they rested\n in the crevices they had been formed from in his \"skin.\" At greater\n distances they worked less well, for reasons irrelevant to the Law of\n Inverse Squares.\n\n\n Hatcher's principal task at this moment was to run the \"probe team\"\n which had McCray under observation, and he was more than a little\n excited. His members, disposed about the room where he had sent them on\n various errands, quivered and shook a little; yet they were the calmest\n limbs in the room; the members of the other team workers were in a\n state of violent commotion.", "The council conferred among itself for a moment, Hatcher waiting. It\n was not really a waste of time for him; with the organs he had left in\n the probe-team room, he was in fairly close touch with what was going\n on—knew that McCray was once again fumbling among the objects in the\n dark, knew that the team-members had tried illuminating the room for\n him briefly and again produced the rising panic.\n\n\n Still, Hatcher fretted. He wanted to get back.\n\n\n \"Stop fidgeting,\" commanded the council leader abruptly. \"Hatcher, you\n are to establish communication at once.\"", "The probe team had had a shock.\n\n\n \"Paranormal powers,\" muttered Hatcher's second in command, and the\n others mumbled agreement. Hatcher ordered silence, studying the\n specimen from Earth.\n\n\n After a long moment he turned his senses from the Earthman.\n \"Incredible—but it's true enough,\" he said. \"I'd better report. Watch\n him,\" he added, but that was surely unnecessary. Their job was to\n watch McCray, and they would do their job; and even more, not one of\n them could have looked away to save his life from the spectacle of\n a creature as odd and, from their point of view, hideously alien as\n Herrell McCray.\nHatcher hurried through the halls of the great buried structure in\n which he worked, toward the place where the supervising council of all\n probes would be in permanent session. They admitted him at once.\n\n\n Hatcher identified himself and gave a quick, concise report:", "Hatcher did not like the idea of endangering the Earthman. It cannot\n be said that he was emotionally involved; it was not pity or sympathy\n that caused him to regret the dangers in moving too fast toward\n communication. Not even Hatcher had quite got over the revolting\n physical differences between the Earthman and his own people. But\n Hatcher did not want him destroyed. It had been difficult enough\n getting him here.\n\n\n Hatcher checked through the members that he had left with the rest of\n his team and discovered that there were no immediate emergencies, so he\n took time to eat. In Hatcher's race this was accomplished in ways not\n entirely pleasant to Earthmen. A slit in the lower hemisphere of his\n body opened, like a purse, emitting a thin, pussy, fetid fluid which\n Hatcher caught and poured into a disposal trough at the side of the\n eating room. He then stuffed the slit with pulpy vegetation the texture\n of kelp; it closed, and his body was supplied with nourishment for\n another day.", "Hatcher studied him frostily; his patience was not, after all, endless.\n \"No matter,\" he said at last. \"Bring the other one in.\"\n\n\n And then, in a completely different mood, \"We may need him badly. We\n may be in the process of killing our first one now.\"\n\n\n \"Killing him, Hatcher?\"\n\n\n Hatcher rose and shook himself, his mindless members floating away like\n puppies dislodged from suck. \"Council's orders,\" he said. \"We've got to\n go into Stage Two of the project at once.\"\nIII\n\n\n Before Stage Two began, or before Herrell McCray realized it had begun,\n he had an inspiration.\n\n\n The dark was absolute, but he remembered where the spacesuit had been\n and groped his way to it and, yes, it had what all spacesuits had to\n have. It had a light. He found the toggle that turned it on and pressed\n it.", "Hatcher hesitated. \"No,\" he said at last. \"The male is responding well.\n Remember that when last this experiment was done every subject died; he\n is alive at least. But I am wondering. We can't quite communicate with\n the female—\"\n\n\n \"But?\"\n\n\n \"But I'm not sure that others can't.\"\nThe woman's voice was at such close range that McCray's suit radio made\n a useful RDF set. He located her direction easily enough, shielding the\n tiny built-in antenna with the tungsten-steel blade of the ax, while\n she begged him to hurry. Her voice was heavily accented, with some\n words in a language he did not recognize. She seemed to be in shock.\n\n\n McCray was hardly surprised at that; he had been close enough to shock\n himself. He tried to reassure her as he searched for a way out of the\n hall, but in the middle of a word her voice stopped.", "Hatcher, who was not human, did not possess truly human emotions; but\n he did feel amazement when he was amazed, and fear when there was\n cause to be afraid. These specimens, obtained with so much difficulty,\n needed so badly, were his responsibility. He knew the issues involved\n much better than any of his helpers. They could only be surprised at\n the queer antics of the aliens with attached limbs and strange powers.\n Hatcher knew that this was not a freak show, but a matter of life and\n death. He said, musing:\n\n\n \"This new one, I cannot communicate with her, but I get—almost—a\n whisper, now and then. The first one, the male, nothing. But this\n female is perhaps not quite mute.\"\n\n\n \"Then shall we abandon him and work with her, forgetting the first one?\"", "\"But in\na\nway, and you must learn that way. I know.\" One lobster-claw\n shaped member drifted close to the councillor's body and raised itself\n in an admonitory gesture. \"You want time. But we don't have time,\n Hatcher. Yours is not the only probe team working. The Central Masses\n team has just turned in a most alarming report.\"\n\n\n \"Have they secured a subject?\" Hatcher demanded jealously.\n\n\n The councillor paused. \"Worse than that, Hatcher. I am afraid their\n subjects have secured one of them. One of them is missing.\"\n\n\n There was a moment's silence. Frozen, Hatcher could only wait. The\n council room was like a tableau in a museum until the councillor spoke\n again, each council member poised over his locus-point, his members\n drifting about him.", "He returned quickly to the room.\n\n\n His second in command was busy, but one of the other team workers\n reported—nothing new—and asked about Hatcher's appearance before the\n council. Hatcher passed the question off. He considered telling his\n staff about the disappearance of the Central Masses team member, but\n decided against it. He had not been told it was secret. On the other\n hand, he had not been told it was not. Something of this importance was\n not lightly to be gossiped about. For endless generations the threat\n of the Old Ones had hung over his race, those queer, almost mythical\n beings from the Central Masses of the galaxy. One brush with them, in\n ages past, had almost destroyed Hatcher's people. Only by running and\n hiding, bearing one of their planets with them and abandoning it—with\n its population—as a decoy, had they arrived at all.", "\"But, sir....\" Hatcher swung closer, his thick skin quivering slightly;\n he would have gestured if he had brought members with him to gesture\n with. \"We've done everything we dare. We've made the place homey\n for him—\" actually, what he said was more like,\nwe've warmed the\n biophysical nuances of his enclosure\n—\"and tried to guess his needs;\n and we're frightening him half to death. We\ncan't\ngo faster. This\n creature is in no way similar to us, you know. He relies on paranormal\n forces—heat, light, kinetic energy—for his life. His chemistry is not\n ours, his processes of thought are not ours, his entire organism is\n closer to the inanimate rocks of a sea-bottom than to ourselves.\"\n\n\n \"Understood, Hatcher. In your first report you stated these creatures\n were intelligent.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. But not in our way.\"", "Now they had detected mapping parties of the Old Ones dangerously near\n the spiral arm of the galaxy in which their planet was located, they\n had begun the Probe Teams to find some way of combating them, or of\n fleeing again.\n\n\n But it seemed that the Probe Teams themselves might be betraying their\n existence to their enemies—\n\n\n \"Hatcher!\"\n\n\n The call was urgent; he hurried to see what it was about. It was his\n second in command, very excited. \"What is it?\" Hatcher demanded.\n\n\n \"Wait....\"", "\"Yes, sir. The staff is preparing a technical description of the forces\n now, but I can say that they are electromagnetic vibrations modulating\n a carrier wave of very high speed, and in turn modulated by the\n vibrations of the atmosphere caused by the subject's own breathing.\"\n\n\n \"Fantastic,\" breathed the councillor, in a tone of dawning hope. \"How\n about communicating with him, Hatcher? Any progress?\"\n\n\n \"Well ... not much, sir. He suddenly panicked. We don't know why; but\n we thought we'd better pull back and let him recover for a while.\"", "Suppose you call him \"Hatcher\" (and suppose you call it a \"him.\")\n Hatcher was not exactly male, because his race had no true males; but\n it did have females and he was certainly not that. Hatcher did not in\n any way look like a human being, but they had features in common.\n\n\n If Hatcher and McCray had somehow managed to strike up an acquaintance,\n they might have got along very well. Hatcher, like McCray, was an\n adventurous soul, young, able, well-learned in the technical sciences\n of his culture. Both enjoyed games—McCray baseball, poker and\n three-dimensional chess; Hatcher a number of sports which defy human\n description. Both held positions of some importance—considering their\n ages—in the affairs of their respective worlds.", "The room was again unlighted—at least to McCray's eyes. There was not\n even that pink pseudo-light that had baffled him; here was nothing\n but the beam of his suit lamp. What it showed was cryptic. There were\n evidences of use: shelves, boxy contraptions that might have been\n cupboards, crude level surfaces attached to the walls that might have\n been workbenches. Yet they were queerly contrived, for it was not\n possible to guess from them much about the creatures who used them.\n Some were near the floor, some at waist height, some even suspended\n from the ceiling itself. A man would need a ladder to work at these\n benches and McCray, staring, thought briefly of many-armed blind giants\n or shapeless huge intelligent amoebae, and felt the skin prickle at the\n back of his neck.", "And louder, blaring, then fading to normal volume as the AVC circuits\n toned the signal down, another voice. A woman's voice, crying out in\n panic and fear: \"\nJodrell Bank!\nWhere are you? Help!\"\nIV\n\n\n Hatcher's second in command said: \"He has got through the first\n survival test. In fact, he broke his way out! What next?\"\n\n\n \"Wait!\" Hatcher ordered sharply. He was watching the new specimen and\n a troublesome thought had occurred to him. The new one was female and\n seemed to be in pain; but it was not the pain that disturbed Hatcher,\n it was something far more immediate to his interests.\n\n\n \"I think,\" he said slowly, \"that they are in contact.\"\n\n\n His assistant vibrated startlement.\n\n\n \"I know,\" Hatcher said, \"but watch. Do you see? He is going straight\n toward her.\"", "The pinkish lights went out. He was in the dark again, worse dark than\n before.\n\n\n For before the light had gone, McCray had seen what had escaped\n his eyes before. The suit and the microphone were clear enough in\n the pinkish glimmer; but the hand—his own hand, cupped to hold the\n microphone—he had not seen at all. Nor his arm. Nor, in one fleeting\n moment of study, his chest.\n\n\n McCray could not see any part of his own body at all.\nII\n\n\n Someone else could.\n\n\n Someone was watching Herrell McCray, with the clinical fascination\n of a biochemist observing the wigglings of paramecia in a new\n antibiotic—and with the prayerful emotions of a starving, shipwrecked,\n sailor, watching the inward bobbing drift of a wave-born cask that\nmay\ncontain food.", "Not everything he saw was familiar. The walls of the room itself were\n strange. They were not metal or plaster or knotty pine; they were\n not papered, painted or overlaid with stucco. They seemed to be made\n of some sort of hard organic compound, perhaps a sort of plastic or\n processed cellulose. It was hard to tell colors in the pinkish light.\n But they seemed to have none. They were \"neutral\"—the color of aged\n driftwood or unbleached cloth.\n\n\n Three of the walls were that way, and the floor and ceiling. The fourth\n wall was something else. Areas in it had the appearance of gratings;\n from them issued the pungent, distasteful halogen odor. They might be\n ventilators, he thought; but if so the air they brought in was worse\n than what he already had.\n\n\n McCray was beginning to feel more confident. It was astonishing how a\n little light made an impossible situation bearable, how quickly his\n courage flowed back when he could see again.", "\"The subject recovered consciousness a short time ago and began to\n inspect his enclosure. His method of doing so was to put his own\n members in physical contact with the various objects in the enclosure.\n After observing him do this for a time we concluded he might be unable\n to see and so we illuminated his field of vision for him.\n\n\n \"This appeared to work well for a time. He seemed relatively\n undisturbed. However, he then reverted to physical-contact,\n manipulating certain appurtenances of an artificial skin we had\n provided for him.\n\n\n \"He then began to vibrate the atmosphere by means of resonating organs\n in his breathing passage.\n\n\n \"Simultaneously, the object he was holding, attached to the artificial\n skin, was discovered to be generating paranormal forces.\"\n\n\n The supervising council rocked with excitement. \"You're sure?\" demanded\n one of the councilmen.", "Wherever he looked, the light danced along with his eyes. It was like\n having tunnel vision or wearing blinders. He could see what he was\n looking at, but he could see nothing else. And the things he could\n see made no sense. A spacesuit, yes; he knew that he could construct\n a logical explanation for that with no trouble—maybe a subspace\n meteorite striking the\nJodrell Bank\n, an explosion, himself knocked\n out, brought here in a suit ... well, it was an explanation with more\n holes than fabric, like a fisherman's net, but at least it was rational." ] ]
train	51657	[ "What affliction is the narrator most likely suffering from?", "Who is getting William in trouble with his parents?", "How does the narrator respond to Brother Partridge's gift offering on Thanksgiving?", "What does Brother Partridge think after William shares his life story?", "What new discovery does William make at the end of the story?", "What does the theme of the story reveal about how society treats the mentally ill?" ]	[ [ "multiple personality disorder", "bipolar disorder", "antisocial personality disorder", "paranoid schizophrenia" ], [ "Brother Partridge", "William's twin", "William", "William's parents" ], [ "He believes the homeless people are stupid for falling for Brother Partridge's trick", "He believes Brother Partridge wants something from him in return for the Thanksgiving offering", "He believes Brother Partridge is attempting to poison him and the other homeless men", "He believes the homeless people are ridiculous for charging so desperately after the offering" ], [ "He believes William is being punished for his former sins", "He believes William is a criminal", "He believes William is going to murder him", "He believes William is the second coming" ], [ "He is experiencing auditory hallucinations", "He is reliving the same traumatic experience each day", "The man he murdered was actually his father", "The man he thought he murdered never died" ], [ "There is insufficient social infrastructure to identify and care for those living with severe mental illnesses", "The Christian church has too much unqualified involvement in treatment of those living with severe mental illnesses", "Those living with severe mental illnesses are more likely to be abused by social institutions like schools, hospitals, and law enforcement", "More studies need to be conducted to learn how to best care for people living with severe mental illnesses" ] ]	[ 4, 3, 4, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "Why couldn't what he said have been \"The best things in life are free,\n buddy\" or \"Every dog has his day, fellow\" or \"If at first you don't\n succeed, man\"? No, he had to use that one line. You wouldn't blame me.\n Not if you believe me.\n\n\n The first thing I can remember, the start of all this, was when I was\n four or five somebody was soiling my bed for me. I absolutely was not\n doing it. I took long naps morning and evening so I could lie awake all\n night to see that it wouldn't happen. It couldn't happen. But in the\n morning the bed would sit there dispassionately soiled and convict me\n on circumstantial evidence. My punishment was as sure as the tide.", "The sunlight through the window was yellow and hot. After a time, I\n began to dose.\n\n\n The shrieks woke me up.\n\n\n For the first time, I could hear the shrieks of the monster's victim\n and listen to their obscene droolings. For the very first time in my\n life. Always before it had been all pantomime, like Charlie Chaplin.\n Now I heard the sounds of it all.\n\n\n They say it's a bad sign when you start hearing voices.\n\n\n I nearly panicked, but I held myself in the seat and forced myself\n to be rational about it. My own voice was always saying things\neverybody\ncould hear but which I didn't say. It wasn't any worse to\n be the\nonly\none who could hear other things I never said. I was as\n sane as I ever was. There was no doubt about that.\n\n\n But a new thought suddenly impressed itself on me.", "The men filed out of the kitchen, wiping their chins, and I went right\n on talking.\n\n\n After some time Sister Partridge bustled in and snapped on the overhead\n lights and I kept talking. The brother still hadn't used the phone to\n call the cops.\n\n\n \"Remarkable,\" Partridge finally said when I got so hoarse I had to take\n a break. \"One is almost—\nalmost\n—reminded of Job. William, you are\n being punished for some great sin. Of that, I'm sure.\"\n\n\n \"Punished for a sin? But, Brother, I've always had it like this, as\n long as I can remember. What kind of a sin could I have committed when\n I was fresh out of my crib?\"\n\n\n \"William, all I can tell you is that time means nothing in Heaven. Do\n you deny the transmigration of souls?\"", "I stayed in the dark longer for lying about the light.\n\n\n Alone in the dark, I wouldn't have had it so bad if it wasn't for the\n things that came to me.\n\n\n They were real to me. They never touched me, but they had a little boy.\n He looked the way I did in the mirror. They did unpleasant things to\n him.\n\n\n Because they were real, I talked about them as if they were real, and\n I almost earned a bunk in the home for retarded children until I got\n smart enough to keep the beasts to myself.\n\n\n My mother hated me. I loved her, of course. I remember her smell mixed\n up with flowers and cookies and winter fires. I remember she hugged me\n on my ninth birthday. The trouble came from the notes written in my\n awkward hand that she found, calling her names I didn't understand.\n Sometimes there were drawings. I didn't write those notes or make those\n drawings.", "I suppose I was to blame anyway. If I hadn't been alive, if I hadn't\n been there to get beaten up, it wouldn't have happened. I could see\n the point in making me suffer for it. There was a lot to be said for\n looking at it like that. But there was nothing to be said for telling\n Brother Partridge about the accident, or murder, or whatever had\n happened that day.\nSearching myself after I left Brother Partridge, I finally found a\n strip of gray adhesive tape on my side, out of the fuzzy area. Making\n the twenty the size of a thick postage stamp, I peeled back the tape\n and put the folded bill on the white skin and smoothed the tape back.\n\n\n There was only one place for me to go now. I headed for the public\n library. It was only about twenty blocks, but not having had anything\n to eat since the day before, it enervated me.", "\"I\nstill\nthink you're yellow,\" my voice said.\n\n\n It was my voice, but it didn't come from me. There were no words, no\n feeling of words in my throat. It just came out of the air the way it\n always did.\n\n\n I ran.\nHarold R. Thompkins, 49, vice-president of Baysinger's, was found\n dead behind the store last night. His skull had been crushed by a\n vicious beating with a heavy implement, Coroner McClain announced in\n preliminary verdict. Tompkins, who resided at 1467 Claremont, Edgeway,\n had been active in seeking labor-management peace in the recent\n difficulties....", "\"Well,\" I said, \"I've had no personal experience—\"\n\n\n \"Of course you have, William! Say you don't remember. Say you don't\n want to remember. But don't say you have no personal experience!\"\n\n\n \"And you think I'm being punished for something I did in a previous\n life?\"\n\n\n He looked at me in disbelief. \"What else could it be?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" I confessed. \"I certainly haven't done anything that\n bad in\nthis\nlife.\"\n\n\n \"William, if you atone for this sin, perhaps the horde of locusts will\n lift from you.\"\n\n\n It wasn't much of a chance, but I was unused to having any at all. I\n shook off the dizziness of it. \"By the Lord Harry, Brother, I'm going\n to give it a try!\" I cried.", "Fats hit me high. Long-legs hit me low. I blew cracker crumbs into\n their faces. After that, I just let them go. I know how to take a\n beating. That's one thing I knew.\n\n\n Then lying there, bleeding to myself, I heard them talking. I heard\n noises like\nmake an example of him\nand\ndo something permanent\nand I\n squirmed away across the rubbish like a polite mouse.\n\n\n I made it around a corner of brick and stood up, hurting my knee on a\n piece of brown-splotched pipe. There were noises on the other angle of\n the corner and so I tested if the pipe was loose and it was. I closed\n my eyes and brought the pipe up and then down.\n\n\n It felt as if I connected, but I was so numb, I wasn't sure until I\n unscrewed my eyes.", "I didn't say it, but I was used to my voice independently saying\n things. Her neck got to flaming, but she walked stiffly ahead. She\n didn't say anything. She must be awful mad, I decided. But then I got\n the idea she was flushed with pleasure. I'm pretty ugly and I looked\n like a bum, but I was young. You had to grant me that.\n\n\n She waved a hand at the rows of bound\nNews\nand left me alone with\n them. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to hunt up a table to lay the\n books on or not, so I took the volume for last year and laid it on the\n floor. That was the cleanest floor I ever saw.\n\n\n It didn't take me long to find the story. The victim was a big man,\n because the story was on the second page of the Nov. 4 edition.", "While keeping a lookout for Partridge and somebody stepping out of the\n kitchen for a pull on a bottle, I spotted the clock for the first\n time, a Western Union clock high up at the back of the hall. Just as\n I seen it for the first time, the electricity wound the spring motor\n inside like a chicken having its neck wrung.\n\n\n The next time I glanced at the clock, it said ten minutes had gone by.\n My hand still wasn't free and I hadn't budged the box.\n\n\n \"This,\" Brother Partridge said, \"is one of the most profound\n experiences of my life.\"\n\n\n My head hinged until it lined my eyes up with Brother Partridge. The\n pipe hung heavy in my pocket, but he was too far from me.\n\n\n \"A vision of you at the box projected itself on the crest of my soup,\"\n the preacher explained in wonderment.\n\n\n I nodded. \"Swimming right in there with the dead duck.\"", "The things abruptly started their business, trying to act casually as\n if they hadn't been waiting for me to look at them at all. They had a\n little human being of some sort.\n\n\n It was the size of a small boy, like the small boy who looked like me\n that they used to destroy when I was locked up with them in the dark.\n Except this was a man, scaled down to child's size. He had sort of an\n ugly, worried, tired, stupid look and he wore a shiny suit with a piece\n of a welcome mat or something for a necktie. Yeah, it was me. I really\n knew it all the time.\n\n\n They began doing things to the midget me. I didn't even lift an\n eyebrow. They couldn't do anything worse to the small man than they\n had done to the young boy. It was sort of nostalgic watching them, but\n I really got bored with all that violence and killing and killing the\n same kill over and over. Like watching the Saturday night string of\n westerns in a bar.", "My mother and father must have been glad when I was sent away to reform\n school after my thirteenth birthday party, the one no one came to.\n\n\n The reform school was nicer. There were others there who'd had it about\n like me. We got along. I didn't watch their shifty eyes too much, or\n ask them what they shifted to see. They didn't talk about my screams\n at night.\n\n\n It was home.\n\n\n My trouble there was that I was always being framed for stealing. I\n didn't take any of those things they located in my bunk. Stealing\n wasn't in my line. If you believe any of this at all, you'll see why it\n couldn't be me who did the stealing.", "He stopped polishing the counter in front of his friend. \"Milwaukee,\n Wisconsin, or Milwaukee, Oregon?\"\n\n\n \"Wisconsin.\"\n\n\n He didn't argue.\n\n\n It was cold and bitter. All beer is bitter, no matter what they say on\n TV. I like beer. I like the bitterness of it.\n\n\n It felt like another, but I checked myself. I needed a clear head.\n I thought about going back to the hotel for some sleep; I still had\n the key in my pocket (I wasn't trusting it to any clerk). No, I had\n had sleep on Thanksgiving, bracing up for trying the lift at Brother\n Partridge's. Let's see, it was daylight outside again, so this was the\n day after Thanksgiving. But it had only been sixteen or twenty hours\n since I had slept. That was enough.", "I had to laugh at all those bums clattering the chairs in front of me,\n scampering after water soup and stale bread. As soon as I got cleaned\n up, I was going to have dinner in a good restaurant, and I was going to\n order such expensive food and leave such a large tip for the waiter and\n send one to the chef that they were going to think I was rich, and some\n executive with some brokerage firm would see me and say to himself,\n \"Hmm, executive material. Just the type we need. I beg your pardon,\n sir—\" just like the razor-blade comic-strip ads in the old magazines\n that Frankie the Pig sells three for a quarter.\n\n\n I was marching. Man, was I ever marching, but the secret of it was I\n was only marking time the way we did in fire drills at the school.", "\"Cold turkey,\" he corrected. \"Are you scoffing at a miracle?\"\n\n\n \"People are always watching me, Brother,\" I said. \"So now they do it\n even when they aren't around. I should have known it would come to\n that.\"\n\n\n The pipe was suddenly a weight I wanted off me. I would try robbing\n a collection box, knowing positively that I would get caught, but I\n wasn't dumb enough to murder. Somebody, somewhere, would be a witness\n to it. I had never got away with anything in my life. I was too smart\n to even try anything but the little things.\n\n\n \"I may be able to help you,\" Brother Partridge said, \"if you have faith\n and a conscience.\"", "Some skin-and-bones character I didn't know struggled out of his seat,\n amening. I could see he had a lot to be thankful for—somewhere he had\n received a fix.\n\n\n \"Brothers,\" Partridge went on after enjoying the interruption with a\n beaming smile, \"you shall all be entitled to a bowl of turkey soup\n prepared by Sister Partridge, a generous supply of sweet rolls and\n dinner rolls contributed by the Early Morning Bakery of this city,\n and all the coffee you can drink. Let us march out to\nThe Stars and\n Stripes Forever\n, John Philip Sousa's grand old patriotic song.\"", "\"I believe you,\" Partridge said, surprised at himself.\n\n\n He ambled over to the money box on the wall. He tapped the bottom\n lightly and a box with no top slid out of the slightly larger box. He\n reached in, fished out the bill and presented it to me.\n\n\n \"Perhaps this will help in your atonement,\" he said.\n\n\n I crumpled it into my pocket fast. Not meaning to sound ungrateful, I'm\n pretty sure he hadn't noticed it was a twenty.\n\n\n And then the bill seemed to lie there, heavy, a lead weight. It would\n have been different if I had managed to get it out of the box myself.\n You know how it is.", "I opened up my fingers and let the coins ring inside the box and I drew\n out my hand. The bill stuck to the sweat on my fingers and slid out\n along with the digits. A one, I decided. I had got into trouble for a\n grubby single. It wasn't any century. I had been kidding myself.\n\n\n I unfolded the note. Sure enough, it wasn't a hundred-dollar bill, but\n it was a twenty, and that was almost the same thing to me. I creased it\n and put it back into the slot.\n\n\n As long as it stalled off the cops, I'd talk to Partridge.\n\n\n We took a couple of camp chairs and I told him the story of my life, or\n most of it. It was hard work on an empty stomach; I wished I'd had some\n of that turkey soup. Then again I was glad I hadn't. Something always\n happened to me when I thought back over my life. The same thing.", "Charity Case\nBy JIM HARMON\n\n\n Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction December 1959.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nCertainly I see things that aren't there\n \nand don't say what my voice says—but how\n \ncan I prove that I don't have my health?\nWhen he began his talk with \"You got your health, don't you?\" it\n touched those spots inside me. That was when I did it.", "The downstairs washroom was where I went first. There was nobody\n there but an old guy talking urgently to a kid with thick glasses,\n and somebody building a fix in one of the booths. I could see charred\n matches dropping down on the floor next to his tennis shoes, and even a\n few grains of white stuff. But he managed to hold still enough to keep\n from spilling more from the spoon.\n\n\n I washed my hands and face, smoothed my hair down, combing it with my\n fingers. Going over my suit with damp toweling got off a lot of the\n dirt. I put my collar on the outside of my jacket and creased the\n wings with my thumbnail so it would look more like a sports shirt.\n It didn't really. I still looked like a bum, but sort of a neat,\n non-objectionable bum.\n\n\n The librarian at the main desk looked sympathetically hostile, or\n hostilely sympathetic." ], [ "The men filed out of the kitchen, wiping their chins, and I went right\n on talking.\n\n\n After some time Sister Partridge bustled in and snapped on the overhead\n lights and I kept talking. The brother still hadn't used the phone to\n call the cops.\n\n\n \"Remarkable,\" Partridge finally said when I got so hoarse I had to take\n a break. \"One is almost—\nalmost\n—reminded of Job. William, you are\n being punished for some great sin. Of that, I'm sure.\"\n\n\n \"Punished for a sin? But, Brother, I've always had it like this, as\n long as I can remember. What kind of a sin could I have committed when\n I was fresh out of my crib?\"\n\n\n \"William, all I can tell you is that time means nothing in Heaven. Do\n you deny the transmigration of souls?\"", "\"I've got something better than a conscience,\" I told him.\nBrother Partridge regarded me solemnly. \"There must be something\n special about you, for your apprehension to come through miraculous\n intervention. But I can't imagine what.\"\n\n\n \"I\nalways\nget apprehended somehow, Brother,\" I said. \"I'm pretty\n special.\"\n\n\n \"Your name?\"\n\n\n \"William Hagle.\" No sense lying. I had been booked and printed before.\n\n\n Partridge prodded me with his bony fingers as if making sure I was\n substantial. \"Come. Let's sit down, if you can remove your fist from\n the money box.\"", "\"Well,\" I said, \"I've had no personal experience—\"\n\n\n \"Of course you have, William! Say you don't remember. Say you don't\n want to remember. But don't say you have no personal experience!\"\n\n\n \"And you think I'm being punished for something I did in a previous\n life?\"\n\n\n He looked at me in disbelief. \"What else could it be?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" I confessed. \"I certainly haven't done anything that\n bad in\nthis\nlife.\"\n\n\n \"William, if you atone for this sin, perhaps the horde of locusts will\n lift from you.\"\n\n\n It wasn't much of a chance, but I was unused to having any at all. I\n shook off the dizziness of it. \"By the Lord Harry, Brother, I'm going\n to give it a try!\" I cried.", "Why couldn't what he said have been \"The best things in life are free,\n buddy\" or \"Every dog has his day, fellow\" or \"If at first you don't\n succeed, man\"? No, he had to use that one line. You wouldn't blame me.\n Not if you believe me.\n\n\n The first thing I can remember, the start of all this, was when I was\n four or five somebody was soiling my bed for me. I absolutely was not\n doing it. I took long naps morning and evening so I could lie awake all\n night to see that it wouldn't happen. It couldn't happen. But in the\n morning the bed would sit there dispassionately soiled and convict me\n on circumstantial evidence. My punishment was as sure as the tide.", "\"I believe you,\" Partridge said, surprised at himself.\n\n\n He ambled over to the money box on the wall. He tapped the bottom\n lightly and a box with no top slid out of the slightly larger box. He\n reached in, fished out the bill and presented it to me.\n\n\n \"Perhaps this will help in your atonement,\" he said.\n\n\n I crumpled it into my pocket fast. Not meaning to sound ungrateful, I'm\n pretty sure he hadn't noticed it was a twenty.\n\n\n And then the bill seemed to lie there, heavy, a lead weight. It would\n have been different if I had managed to get it out of the box myself.\n You know how it is.", "My mother and father must have been glad when I was sent away to reform\n school after my thirteenth birthday party, the one no one came to.\n\n\n The reform school was nicer. There were others there who'd had it about\n like me. We got along. I didn't watch their shifty eyes too much, or\n ask them what they shifted to see. They didn't talk about my screams\n at night.\n\n\n It was home.\n\n\n My trouble there was that I was always being framed for stealing. I\n didn't take any of those things they located in my bunk. Stealing\n wasn't in my line. If you believe any of this at all, you'll see why it\n couldn't be me who did the stealing.", "I suppose I was to blame anyway. If I hadn't been alive, if I hadn't\n been there to get beaten up, it wouldn't have happened. I could see\n the point in making me suffer for it. There was a lot to be said for\n looking at it like that. But there was nothing to be said for telling\n Brother Partridge about the accident, or murder, or whatever had\n happened that day.\nSearching myself after I left Brother Partridge, I finally found a\n strip of gray adhesive tape on my side, out of the fuzzy area. Making\n the twenty the size of a thick postage stamp, I peeled back the tape\n and put the folded bill on the white skin and smoothed the tape back.\n\n\n There was only one place for me to go now. I headed for the public\n library. It was only about twenty blocks, but not having had anything\n to eat since the day before, it enervated me.", "I stayed in the dark longer for lying about the light.\n\n\n Alone in the dark, I wouldn't have had it so bad if it wasn't for the\n things that came to me.\n\n\n They were real to me. They never touched me, but they had a little boy.\n He looked the way I did in the mirror. They did unpleasant things to\n him.\n\n\n Because they were real, I talked about them as if they were real, and\n I almost earned a bunk in the home for retarded children until I got\n smart enough to keep the beasts to myself.\n\n\n My mother hated me. I loved her, of course. I remember her smell mixed\n up with flowers and cookies and winter fires. I remember she hugged me\n on my ninth birthday. The trouble came from the notes written in my\n awkward hand that she found, calling her names I didn't understand.\n Sometimes there were drawings. I didn't write those notes or make those\n drawings.", "Fats hit me high. Long-legs hit me low. I blew cracker crumbs into\n their faces. After that, I just let them go. I know how to take a\n beating. That's one thing I knew.\n\n\n Then lying there, bleeding to myself, I heard them talking. I heard\n noises like\nmake an example of him\nand\ndo something permanent\nand I\n squirmed away across the rubbish like a polite mouse.\n\n\n I made it around a corner of brick and stood up, hurting my knee on a\n piece of brown-splotched pipe. There were noises on the other angle of\n the corner and so I tested if the pipe was loose and it was. I closed\n my eyes and brought the pipe up and then down.\n\n\n It felt as if I connected, but I was so numb, I wasn't sure until I\n unscrewed my eyes.", "She sniffed and told me to follow her. I didn't rate a cart to my\n table, I guess, or else the bound papers weren't supposed to come out\n of the stacks.\n\n\n The cases of books, row after row, smelled good. Like old leather and\n good pipe tobacco. I had been here before. In this world, it's the man\n with education who makes the money. I had been reading the Funk &\n Wagnalls Encyclopedia. So far I knew a lot about Mark Antony, Atomic\n Energy, Boron, Brussels, Catapults, Demons, and Divans.\n\n\n I guess I had stopped to look around at some of the titles, because the\n busy librarian said sharply, \"Follow me.\"\n\n\n I heard my voice say, \"A pleasure. What about after work?\"", "While keeping a lookout for Partridge and somebody stepping out of the\n kitchen for a pull on a bottle, I spotted the clock for the first\n time, a Western Union clock high up at the back of the hall. Just as\n I seen it for the first time, the electricity wound the spring motor\n inside like a chicken having its neck wrung.\n\n\n The next time I glanced at the clock, it said ten minutes had gone by.\n My hand still wasn't free and I hadn't budged the box.\n\n\n \"This,\" Brother Partridge said, \"is one of the most profound\n experiences of my life.\"\n\n\n My head hinged until it lined my eyes up with Brother Partridge. The\n pipe hung heavy in my pocket, but he was too far from me.\n\n\n \"A vision of you at the box projected itself on the crest of my soup,\"\n the preacher explained in wonderment.\n\n\n I nodded. \"Swimming right in there with the dead duck.\"", "Dad was a compact man, small eyes, small mouth, tight clothes. He was\n narrow but not mean. For punishment, he locked me in a windowless\n room and told me to sit still until he came back. It wasn't so bad a\n punishment, except that when Dad closed the door, the light turned off\n and I was left there in the dark.\n\n\n Being four or five, I didn't know any better, so I thought Dad made it\n dark to add to my punishment. But I learned he didn't know the light\n went out. It came back on when he unlocked the door. Every time I told\n him about the light as soon as I could talk again, but he said I was\n lying.\nOne day, to prove me a liar, he opened and closed the door a few times\n from outside. The light winked off and on, off and on, always shining\n when Dad stuck his head inside. He tried using the door from the\n inside, and the light stayed on, no matter how hard he slammed the\n door.", "I didn't say it, but I was used to my voice independently saying\n things. Her neck got to flaming, but she walked stiffly ahead. She\n didn't say anything. She must be awful mad, I decided. But then I got\n the idea she was flushed with pleasure. I'm pretty ugly and I looked\n like a bum, but I was young. You had to grant me that.\n\n\n She waved a hand at the rows of bound\nNews\nand left me alone with\n them. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to hunt up a table to lay the\n books on or not, so I took the volume for last year and laid it on the\n floor. That was the cleanest floor I ever saw.\n\n\n It didn't take me long to find the story. The victim was a big man,\n because the story was on the second page of the Nov. 4 edition.", "Some skin-and-bones character I didn't know struggled out of his seat,\n amening. I could see he had a lot to be thankful for—somewhere he had\n received a fix.\n\n\n \"Brothers,\" Partridge went on after enjoying the interruption with a\n beaming smile, \"you shall all be entitled to a bowl of turkey soup\n prepared by Sister Partridge, a generous supply of sweet rolls and\n dinner rolls contributed by the Early Morning Bakery of this city,\n and all the coffee you can drink. Let us march out to\nThe Stars and\n Stripes Forever\n, John Philip Sousa's grand old patriotic song.\"", "Partridge didn't seem to notice me, but I knew that was an act. I knew\n people were always watching every move I made. He braced his red-furred\n hands on the sides of his auctioneer's stand and leaned his splotched\n eagle beak toward us. \"Brothers, this being Thanksgiving, I pray the\n good Lord that we all are truly thankful for all that we have received.\n Amen.\"", "I had to laugh at all those bums clattering the chairs in front of me,\n scampering after water soup and stale bread. As soon as I got cleaned\n up, I was going to have dinner in a good restaurant, and I was going to\n order such expensive food and leave such a large tip for the waiter and\n send one to the chef that they were going to think I was rich, and some\n executive with some brokerage firm would see me and say to himself,\n \"Hmm, executive material. Just the type we need. I beg your pardon,\n sir—\" just like the razor-blade comic-strip ads in the old magazines\n that Frankie the Pig sells three for a quarter.\n\n\n I was marching. Man, was I ever marching, but the secret of it was I\n was only marking time the way we did in fire drills at the school.", "\"Cold turkey,\" he corrected. \"Are you scoffing at a miracle?\"\n\n\n \"People are always watching me, Brother,\" I said. \"So now they do it\n even when they aren't around. I should have known it would come to\n that.\"\n\n\n The pipe was suddenly a weight I wanted off me. I would try robbing\n a collection box, knowing positively that I would get caught, but I\n wasn't dumb enough to murder. Somebody, somewhere, would be a witness\n to it. I had never got away with anything in my life. I was too smart\n to even try anything but the little things.\n\n\n \"I may be able to help you,\" Brother Partridge said, \"if you have faith\n and a conscience.\"", "\"I\nstill\nthink you're yellow,\" my voice said.\n\n\n It was my voice, but it didn't come from me. There were no words, no\n feeling of words in my throat. It just came out of the air the way it\n always did.\n\n\n I ran.\nHarold R. Thompkins, 49, vice-president of Baysinger's, was found\n dead behind the store last night. His skull had been crushed by a\n vicious beating with a heavy implement, Coroner McClain announced in\n preliminary verdict. Tompkins, who resided at 1467 Claremont, Edgeway,\n had been active in seeking labor-management peace in the recent\n difficulties....", "They passed me, every one of them, and marched out of the meeting\n room into the kitchen. Even Partridge made his way down from the\n auctioneer's stand like a vulture with a busted wing and darted through\n his private door.\n\n\n I was alone, marking time behind the closed half of double doors. One\n good breath and I raced past the open door and flattened myself to the\n wall. Crockery was ringing and men were slurping inside. No one had\n paid any attention to me. That was pretty odd. People usually watch my\n every move, but a man's luck has to change sometime, doesn't it?\n\n\n Following the wallboard, I went down the side of the room and behind\n the last row of chairs, closer, closer, and halfway up the room again\n to the entrance—the entrance and the little wooden box fastened to the\n wall beside it.", "The things abruptly started their business, trying to act casually as\n if they hadn't been waiting for me to look at them at all. They had a\n little human being of some sort.\n\n\n It was the size of a small boy, like the small boy who looked like me\n that they used to destroy when I was locked up with them in the dark.\n Except this was a man, scaled down to child's size. He had sort of an\n ugly, worried, tired, stupid look and he wore a shiny suit with a piece\n of a welcome mat or something for a necktie. Yeah, it was me. I really\n knew it all the time.\n\n\n They began doing things to the midget me. I didn't even lift an\n eyebrow. They couldn't do anything worse to the small man than they\n had done to the young boy. It was sort of nostalgic watching them, but\n I really got bored with all that violence and killing and killing the\n same kill over and over. Like watching the Saturday night string of\n westerns in a bar." ], [ "Partridge didn't seem to notice me, but I knew that was an act. I knew\n people were always watching every move I made. He braced his red-furred\n hands on the sides of his auctioneer's stand and leaned his splotched\n eagle beak toward us. \"Brothers, this being Thanksgiving, I pray the\n good Lord that we all are truly thankful for all that we have received.\n Amen.\"", "Some skin-and-bones character I didn't know struggled out of his seat,\n amening. I could see he had a lot to be thankful for—somewhere he had\n received a fix.\n\n\n \"Brothers,\" Partridge went on after enjoying the interruption with a\n beaming smile, \"you shall all be entitled to a bowl of turkey soup\n prepared by Sister Partridge, a generous supply of sweet rolls and\n dinner rolls contributed by the Early Morning Bakery of this city,\n and all the coffee you can drink. Let us march out to\nThe Stars and\n Stripes Forever\n, John Philip Sousa's grand old patriotic song.\"", "While keeping a lookout for Partridge and somebody stepping out of the\n kitchen for a pull on a bottle, I spotted the clock for the first\n time, a Western Union clock high up at the back of the hall. Just as\n I seen it for the first time, the electricity wound the spring motor\n inside like a chicken having its neck wrung.\n\n\n The next time I glanced at the clock, it said ten minutes had gone by.\n My hand still wasn't free and I hadn't budged the box.\n\n\n \"This,\" Brother Partridge said, \"is one of the most profound\n experiences of my life.\"\n\n\n My head hinged until it lined my eyes up with Brother Partridge. The\n pipe hung heavy in my pocket, but he was too far from me.\n\n\n \"A vision of you at the box projected itself on the crest of my soup,\"\n the preacher explained in wonderment.\n\n\n I nodded. \"Swimming right in there with the dead duck.\"", "\"I believe you,\" Partridge said, surprised at himself.\n\n\n He ambled over to the money box on the wall. He tapped the bottom\n lightly and a box with no top slid out of the slightly larger box. He\n reached in, fished out the bill and presented it to me.\n\n\n \"Perhaps this will help in your atonement,\" he said.\n\n\n I crumpled it into my pocket fast. Not meaning to sound ungrateful, I'm\n pretty sure he hadn't noticed it was a twenty.\n\n\n And then the bill seemed to lie there, heavy, a lead weight. It would\n have been different if I had managed to get it out of the box myself.\n You know how it is.", "\"Cold turkey,\" he corrected. \"Are you scoffing at a miracle?\"\n\n\n \"People are always watching me, Brother,\" I said. \"So now they do it\n even when they aren't around. I should have known it would come to\n that.\"\n\n\n The pipe was suddenly a weight I wanted off me. I would try robbing\n a collection box, knowing positively that I would get caught, but I\n wasn't dumb enough to murder. Somebody, somewhere, would be a witness\n to it. I had never got away with anything in my life. I was too smart\n to even try anything but the little things.\n\n\n \"I may be able to help you,\" Brother Partridge said, \"if you have faith\n and a conscience.\"", "\"I've got something better than a conscience,\" I told him.\nBrother Partridge regarded me solemnly. \"There must be something\n special about you, for your apprehension to come through miraculous\n intervention. But I can't imagine what.\"\n\n\n \"I\nalways\nget apprehended somehow, Brother,\" I said. \"I'm pretty\n special.\"\n\n\n \"Your name?\"\n\n\n \"William Hagle.\" No sense lying. I had been booked and printed before.\n\n\n Partridge prodded me with his bony fingers as if making sure I was\n substantial. \"Come. Let's sit down, if you can remove your fist from\n the money box.\"", "The men filed out of the kitchen, wiping their chins, and I went right\n on talking.\n\n\n After some time Sister Partridge bustled in and snapped on the overhead\n lights and I kept talking. The brother still hadn't used the phone to\n call the cops.\n\n\n \"Remarkable,\" Partridge finally said when I got so hoarse I had to take\n a break. \"One is almost—\nalmost\n—reminded of Job. William, you are\n being punished for some great sin. Of that, I'm sure.\"\n\n\n \"Punished for a sin? But, Brother, I've always had it like this, as\n long as I can remember. What kind of a sin could I have committed when\n I was fresh out of my crib?\"\n\n\n \"William, all I can tell you is that time means nothing in Heaven. Do\n you deny the transmigration of souls?\"", "There was reason for me to steal, if I could have got away with it. The\n others got money from home to buy the things they needed—razor blades,\n candy, sticks of tea. I got a letter from Mom or Dad every now and then\n before they were killed, saying they had sent money or that it was\n enclosed, but somehow I never got a dime of it.\n\n\n When I was expelled from reform school, I left with just one idea in\n mind—to get all the money I could ever use for the things I needed and\n the things I wanted.\nIt was two or three years later that I skulked into Brother Partridge's\n mission on Durbin Street.", "I suppose I was to blame anyway. If I hadn't been alive, if I hadn't\n been there to get beaten up, it wouldn't have happened. I could see\n the point in making me suffer for it. There was a lot to be said for\n looking at it like that. But there was nothing to be said for telling\n Brother Partridge about the accident, or murder, or whatever had\n happened that day.\nSearching myself after I left Brother Partridge, I finally found a\n strip of gray adhesive tape on my side, out of the fuzzy area. Making\n the twenty the size of a thick postage stamp, I peeled back the tape\n and put the folded bill on the white skin and smoothed the tape back.\n\n\n There was only one place for me to go now. I headed for the public\n library. It was only about twenty blocks, but not having had anything\n to eat since the day before, it enervated me.", "Money you haven't earned doesn't seem real to you.\nThere was something I forgot to mention so far. During the year between\n when I got out of the reformatory and the one when I tried to steal\n Brother Partridge's money, I killed a man.\n\n\n It was all an accident, but killing somebody is reason enough to get\n punished. It didn't have to be a sin in some previous life, you see.\n\n\n I had gotten my first job in too long, stacking boxes at the freight\n door of Baysinger's. The drivers unloaded the stuff, but they just\n dumped it off the truck. An empty rear end was all they wanted. The\n freight boss told me to stack the boxes inside, neat and not too close\n together.\n\n\n I stacked boxes the first day. I stacked more the second. The third day\n I went outside with my baloney and crackers. It was warm enough even\n for November.", "He stopped polishing the counter in front of his friend. \"Milwaukee,\n Wisconsin, or Milwaukee, Oregon?\"\n\n\n \"Wisconsin.\"\n\n\n He didn't argue.\n\n\n It was cold and bitter. All beer is bitter, no matter what they say on\n TV. I like beer. I like the bitterness of it.\n\n\n It felt like another, but I checked myself. I needed a clear head.\n I thought about going back to the hotel for some sleep; I still had\n the key in my pocket (I wasn't trusting it to any clerk). No, I had\n had sleep on Thanksgiving, bracing up for trying the lift at Brother\n Partridge's. Let's see, it was daylight outside again, so this was the\n day after Thanksgiving. But it had only been sixteen or twenty hours\n since I had slept. That was enough.", "The preacher and half a dozen men were singing\nOnward Christian\n Soldiers\nin the meeting room. It was a drafty hall with varnished\n camp chairs. I shuffled in at the back with my suitcoat collar turned\n up around my stubbled jaw. I made my hand shaky as I ran it through my\n knotted hair. Partridge was supposed to think I was just a bum. As\n an inspiration, I hugged my chest to make him think I was some wino\n nursing a flask full of Sneaky Pete. All I had there was a piece of\n copper alloy tubing inside a slice of plastic hose for taking care of\n myself, rolling sailors and the like. Who had the price of a bottle?", "I opened up my fingers and let the coins ring inside the box and I drew\n out my hand. The bill stuck to the sweat on my fingers and slid out\n along with the digits. A one, I decided. I had got into trouble for a\n grubby single. It wasn't any century. I had been kidding myself.\n\n\n I unfolded the note. Sure enough, it wasn't a hundred-dollar bill, but\n it was a twenty, and that was almost the same thing to me. I creased it\n and put it back into the slot.\n\n\n As long as it stalled off the cops, I'd talk to Partridge.\n\n\n We took a couple of camp chairs and I told him the story of my life, or\n most of it. It was hard work on an empty stomach; I wished I'd had some\n of that turkey soup. Then again I was glad I hadn't. Something always\n happened to me when I thought back over my life. The same thing.", "I had to laugh at all those bums clattering the chairs in front of me,\n scampering after water soup and stale bread. As soon as I got cleaned\n up, I was going to have dinner in a good restaurant, and I was going to\n order such expensive food and leave such a large tip for the waiter and\n send one to the chef that they were going to think I was rich, and some\n executive with some brokerage firm would see me and say to himself,\n \"Hmm, executive material. Just the type we need. I beg your pardon,\n sir—\" just like the razor-blade comic-strip ads in the old magazines\n that Frankie the Pig sells three for a quarter.\n\n\n I was marching. Man, was I ever marching, but the secret of it was I\n was only marking time the way we did in fire drills at the school.", "I didn't say it, but I was used to my voice independently saying\n things. Her neck got to flaming, but she walked stiffly ahead. She\n didn't say anything. She must be awful mad, I decided. But then I got\n the idea she was flushed with pleasure. I'm pretty ugly and I looked\n like a bum, but I was young. You had to grant me that.\n\n\n She waved a hand at the rows of bound\nNews\nand left me alone with\n them. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to hunt up a table to lay the\n books on or not, so I took the volume for last year and laid it on the\n floor. That was the cleanest floor I ever saw.\n\n\n It didn't take me long to find the story. The victim was a big man,\n because the story was on the second page of the Nov. 4 edition.", "They passed me, every one of them, and marched out of the meeting\n room into the kitchen. Even Partridge made his way down from the\n auctioneer's stand like a vulture with a busted wing and darted through\n his private door.\n\n\n I was alone, marking time behind the closed half of double doors. One\n good breath and I raced past the open door and flattened myself to the\n wall. Crockery was ringing and men were slurping inside. No one had\n paid any attention to me. That was pretty odd. People usually watch my\n every move, but a man's luck has to change sometime, doesn't it?\n\n\n Following the wallboard, I went down the side of the room and behind\n the last row of chairs, closer, closer, and halfway up the room again\n to the entrance—the entrance and the little wooden box fastened to the\n wall beside it.", "\"Well,\" I said, \"I've had no personal experience—\"\n\n\n \"Of course you have, William! Say you don't remember. Say you don't\n want to remember. But don't say you have no personal experience!\"\n\n\n \"And you think I'm being punished for something I did in a previous\n life?\"\n\n\n He looked at me in disbelief. \"What else could it be?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" I confessed. \"I certainly haven't done anything that\n bad in\nthis\nlife.\"\n\n\n \"William, if you atone for this sin, perhaps the horde of locusts will\n lift from you.\"\n\n\n It wasn't much of a chance, but I was unused to having any at all. I\n shook off the dizziness of it. \"By the Lord Harry, Brother, I'm going\n to give it a try!\" I cried.", "Why couldn't what he said have been \"The best things in life are free,\n buddy\" or \"Every dog has his day, fellow\" or \"If at first you don't\n succeed, man\"? No, he had to use that one line. You wouldn't blame me.\n Not if you believe me.\n\n\n The first thing I can remember, the start of all this, was when I was\n four or five somebody was soiling my bed for me. I absolutely was not\n doing it. I took long naps morning and evening so I could lie awake all\n night to see that it wouldn't happen. It couldn't happen. But in the\n morning the bed would sit there dispassionately soiled and convict me\n on circumstantial evidence. My punishment was as sure as the tide.", "Fats hit me high. Long-legs hit me low. I blew cracker crumbs into\n their faces. After that, I just let them go. I know how to take a\n beating. That's one thing I knew.\n\n\n Then lying there, bleeding to myself, I heard them talking. I heard\n noises like\nmake an example of him\nand\ndo something permanent\nand I\n squirmed away across the rubbish like a polite mouse.\n\n\n I made it around a corner of brick and stood up, hurting my knee on a\n piece of brown-splotched pipe. There were noises on the other angle of\n the corner and so I tested if the pipe was loose and it was. I closed\n my eyes and brought the pipe up and then down.\n\n\n It felt as if I connected, but I was so numb, I wasn't sure until I\n unscrewed my eyes.", "The downstairs washroom was where I went first. There was nobody\n there but an old guy talking urgently to a kid with thick glasses,\n and somebody building a fix in one of the booths. I could see charred\n matches dropping down on the floor next to his tennis shoes, and even a\n few grains of white stuff. But he managed to hold still enough to keep\n from spilling more from the spoon.\n\n\n I washed my hands and face, smoothed my hair down, combing it with my\n fingers. Going over my suit with damp toweling got off a lot of the\n dirt. I put my collar on the outside of my jacket and creased the\n wings with my thumbnail so it would look more like a sports shirt.\n It didn't really. I still looked like a bum, but sort of a neat,\n non-objectionable bum.\n\n\n The librarian at the main desk looked sympathetically hostile, or\n hostilely sympathetic." ], [ "\"I believe you,\" Partridge said, surprised at himself.\n\n\n He ambled over to the money box on the wall. He tapped the bottom\n lightly and a box with no top slid out of the slightly larger box. He\n reached in, fished out the bill and presented it to me.\n\n\n \"Perhaps this will help in your atonement,\" he said.\n\n\n I crumpled it into my pocket fast. Not meaning to sound ungrateful, I'm\n pretty sure he hadn't noticed it was a twenty.\n\n\n And then the bill seemed to lie there, heavy, a lead weight. It would\n have been different if I had managed to get it out of the box myself.\n You know how it is.", "The men filed out of the kitchen, wiping their chins, and I went right\n on talking.\n\n\n After some time Sister Partridge bustled in and snapped on the overhead\n lights and I kept talking. The brother still hadn't used the phone to\n call the cops.\n\n\n \"Remarkable,\" Partridge finally said when I got so hoarse I had to take\n a break. \"One is almost—\nalmost\n—reminded of Job. William, you are\n being punished for some great sin. Of that, I'm sure.\"\n\n\n \"Punished for a sin? But, Brother, I've always had it like this, as\n long as I can remember. What kind of a sin could I have committed when\n I was fresh out of my crib?\"\n\n\n \"William, all I can tell you is that time means nothing in Heaven. Do\n you deny the transmigration of souls?\"", "\"I've got something better than a conscience,\" I told him.\nBrother Partridge regarded me solemnly. \"There must be something\n special about you, for your apprehension to come through miraculous\n intervention. But I can't imagine what.\"\n\n\n \"I\nalways\nget apprehended somehow, Brother,\" I said. \"I'm pretty\n special.\"\n\n\n \"Your name?\"\n\n\n \"William Hagle.\" No sense lying. I had been booked and printed before.\n\n\n Partridge prodded me with his bony fingers as if making sure I was\n substantial. \"Come. Let's sit down, if you can remove your fist from\n the money box.\"", "Partridge didn't seem to notice me, but I knew that was an act. I knew\n people were always watching every move I made. He braced his red-furred\n hands on the sides of his auctioneer's stand and leaned his splotched\n eagle beak toward us. \"Brothers, this being Thanksgiving, I pray the\n good Lord that we all are truly thankful for all that we have received.\n Amen.\"", "While keeping a lookout for Partridge and somebody stepping out of the\n kitchen for a pull on a bottle, I spotted the clock for the first\n time, a Western Union clock high up at the back of the hall. Just as\n I seen it for the first time, the electricity wound the spring motor\n inside like a chicken having its neck wrung.\n\n\n The next time I glanced at the clock, it said ten minutes had gone by.\n My hand still wasn't free and I hadn't budged the box.\n\n\n \"This,\" Brother Partridge said, \"is one of the most profound\n experiences of my life.\"\n\n\n My head hinged until it lined my eyes up with Brother Partridge. The\n pipe hung heavy in my pocket, but he was too far from me.\n\n\n \"A vision of you at the box projected itself on the crest of my soup,\"\n the preacher explained in wonderment.\n\n\n I nodded. \"Swimming right in there with the dead duck.\"", "There was reason for me to steal, if I could have got away with it. The\n others got money from home to buy the things they needed—razor blades,\n candy, sticks of tea. I got a letter from Mom or Dad every now and then\n before they were killed, saying they had sent money or that it was\n enclosed, but somehow I never got a dime of it.\n\n\n When I was expelled from reform school, I left with just one idea in\n mind—to get all the money I could ever use for the things I needed and\n the things I wanted.\nIt was two or three years later that I skulked into Brother Partridge's\n mission on Durbin Street.", "\"Cold turkey,\" he corrected. \"Are you scoffing at a miracle?\"\n\n\n \"People are always watching me, Brother,\" I said. \"So now they do it\n even when they aren't around. I should have known it would come to\n that.\"\n\n\n The pipe was suddenly a weight I wanted off me. I would try robbing\n a collection box, knowing positively that I would get caught, but I\n wasn't dumb enough to murder. Somebody, somewhere, would be a witness\n to it. I had never got away with anything in my life. I was too smart\n to even try anything but the little things.\n\n\n \"I may be able to help you,\" Brother Partridge said, \"if you have faith\n and a conscience.\"", "Some skin-and-bones character I didn't know struggled out of his seat,\n amening. I could see he had a lot to be thankful for—somewhere he had\n received a fix.\n\n\n \"Brothers,\" Partridge went on after enjoying the interruption with a\n beaming smile, \"you shall all be entitled to a bowl of turkey soup\n prepared by Sister Partridge, a generous supply of sweet rolls and\n dinner rolls contributed by the Early Morning Bakery of this city,\n and all the coffee you can drink. Let us march out to\nThe Stars and\n Stripes Forever\n, John Philip Sousa's grand old patriotic song.\"", "Money you haven't earned doesn't seem real to you.\nThere was something I forgot to mention so far. During the year between\n when I got out of the reformatory and the one when I tried to steal\n Brother Partridge's money, I killed a man.\n\n\n It was all an accident, but killing somebody is reason enough to get\n punished. It didn't have to be a sin in some previous life, you see.\n\n\n I had gotten my first job in too long, stacking boxes at the freight\n door of Baysinger's. The drivers unloaded the stuff, but they just\n dumped it off the truck. An empty rear end was all they wanted. The\n freight boss told me to stack the boxes inside, neat and not too close\n together.\n\n\n I stacked boxes the first day. I stacked more the second. The third day\n I went outside with my baloney and crackers. It was warm enough even\n for November.", "I suppose I was to blame anyway. If I hadn't been alive, if I hadn't\n been there to get beaten up, it wouldn't have happened. I could see\n the point in making me suffer for it. There was a lot to be said for\n looking at it like that. But there was nothing to be said for telling\n Brother Partridge about the accident, or murder, or whatever had\n happened that day.\nSearching myself after I left Brother Partridge, I finally found a\n strip of gray adhesive tape on my side, out of the fuzzy area. Making\n the twenty the size of a thick postage stamp, I peeled back the tape\n and put the folded bill on the white skin and smoothed the tape back.\n\n\n There was only one place for me to go now. I headed for the public\n library. It was only about twenty blocks, but not having had anything\n to eat since the day before, it enervated me.", "\"Well,\" I said, \"I've had no personal experience—\"\n\n\n \"Of course you have, William! Say you don't remember. Say you don't\n want to remember. But don't say you have no personal experience!\"\n\n\n \"And you think I'm being punished for something I did in a previous\n life?\"\n\n\n He looked at me in disbelief. \"What else could it be?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" I confessed. \"I certainly haven't done anything that\n bad in\nthis\nlife.\"\n\n\n \"William, if you atone for this sin, perhaps the horde of locusts will\n lift from you.\"\n\n\n It wasn't much of a chance, but I was unused to having any at all. I\n shook off the dizziness of it. \"By the Lord Harry, Brother, I'm going\n to give it a try!\" I cried.", "I opened up my fingers and let the coins ring inside the box and I drew\n out my hand. The bill stuck to the sweat on my fingers and slid out\n along with the digits. A one, I decided. I had got into trouble for a\n grubby single. It wasn't any century. I had been kidding myself.\n\n\n I unfolded the note. Sure enough, it wasn't a hundred-dollar bill, but\n it was a twenty, and that was almost the same thing to me. I creased it\n and put it back into the slot.\n\n\n As long as it stalled off the cops, I'd talk to Partridge.\n\n\n We took a couple of camp chairs and I told him the story of my life, or\n most of it. It was hard work on an empty stomach; I wished I'd had some\n of that turkey soup. Then again I was glad I hadn't. Something always\n happened to me when I thought back over my life. The same thing.", "The preacher and half a dozen men were singing\nOnward Christian\n Soldiers\nin the meeting room. It was a drafty hall with varnished\n camp chairs. I shuffled in at the back with my suitcoat collar turned\n up around my stubbled jaw. I made my hand shaky as I ran it through my\n knotted hair. Partridge was supposed to think I was just a bum. As\n an inspiration, I hugged my chest to make him think I was some wino\n nursing a flask full of Sneaky Pete. All I had there was a piece of\n copper alloy tubing inside a slice of plastic hose for taking care of\n myself, rolling sailors and the like. Who had the price of a bottle?", "Why couldn't what he said have been \"The best things in life are free,\n buddy\" or \"Every dog has his day, fellow\" or \"If at first you don't\n succeed, man\"? No, he had to use that one line. You wouldn't blame me.\n Not if you believe me.\n\n\n The first thing I can remember, the start of all this, was when I was\n four or five somebody was soiling my bed for me. I absolutely was not\n doing it. I took long naps morning and evening so I could lie awake all\n night to see that it wouldn't happen. It couldn't happen. But in the\n morning the bed would sit there dispassionately soiled and convict me\n on circumstantial evidence. My punishment was as sure as the tide.", "He stopped polishing the counter in front of his friend. \"Milwaukee,\n Wisconsin, or Milwaukee, Oregon?\"\n\n\n \"Wisconsin.\"\n\n\n He didn't argue.\n\n\n It was cold and bitter. All beer is bitter, no matter what they say on\n TV. I like beer. I like the bitterness of it.\n\n\n It felt like another, but I checked myself. I needed a clear head.\n I thought about going back to the hotel for some sleep; I still had\n the key in my pocket (I wasn't trusting it to any clerk). No, I had\n had sleep on Thanksgiving, bracing up for trying the lift at Brother\n Partridge's. Let's see, it was daylight outside again, so this was the\n day after Thanksgiving. But it had only been sixteen or twenty hours\n since I had slept. That was enough.", "Fats hit me high. Long-legs hit me low. I blew cracker crumbs into\n their faces. After that, I just let them go. I know how to take a\n beating. That's one thing I knew.\n\n\n Then lying there, bleeding to myself, I heard them talking. I heard\n noises like\nmake an example of him\nand\ndo something permanent\nand I\n squirmed away across the rubbish like a polite mouse.\n\n\n I made it around a corner of brick and stood up, hurting my knee on a\n piece of brown-splotched pipe. There were noises on the other angle of\n the corner and so I tested if the pipe was loose and it was. I closed\n my eyes and brought the pipe up and then down.\n\n\n It felt as if I connected, but I was so numb, I wasn't sure until I\n unscrewed my eyes.", "I didn't say it, but I was used to my voice independently saying\n things. Her neck got to flaming, but she walked stiffly ahead. She\n didn't say anything. She must be awful mad, I decided. But then I got\n the idea she was flushed with pleasure. I'm pretty ugly and I looked\n like a bum, but I was young. You had to grant me that.\n\n\n She waved a hand at the rows of bound\nNews\nand left me alone with\n them. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to hunt up a table to lay the\n books on or not, so I took the volume for last year and laid it on the\n floor. That was the cleanest floor I ever saw.\n\n\n It didn't take me long to find the story. The victim was a big man,\n because the story was on the second page of the Nov. 4 edition.", "They passed me, every one of them, and marched out of the meeting\n room into the kitchen. Even Partridge made his way down from the\n auctioneer's stand like a vulture with a busted wing and darted through\n his private door.\n\n\n I was alone, marking time behind the closed half of double doors. One\n good breath and I raced past the open door and flattened myself to the\n wall. Crockery was ringing and men were slurping inside. No one had\n paid any attention to me. That was pretty odd. People usually watch my\n every move, but a man's luck has to change sometime, doesn't it?\n\n\n Following the wallboard, I went down the side of the room and behind\n the last row of chairs, closer, closer, and halfway up the room again\n to the entrance—the entrance and the little wooden box fastened to the\n wall beside it.", "I had to laugh at all those bums clattering the chairs in front of me,\n scampering after water soup and stale bread. As soon as I got cleaned\n up, I was going to have dinner in a good restaurant, and I was going to\n order such expensive food and leave such a large tip for the waiter and\n send one to the chef that they were going to think I was rich, and some\n executive with some brokerage firm would see me and say to himself,\n \"Hmm, executive material. Just the type we need. I beg your pardon,\n sir—\" just like the razor-blade comic-strip ads in the old magazines\n that Frankie the Pig sells three for a quarter.\n\n\n I was marching. Man, was I ever marching, but the secret of it was I\n was only marking time the way we did in fire drills at the school.", "The things abruptly started their business, trying to act casually as\n if they hadn't been waiting for me to look at them at all. They had a\n little human being of some sort.\n\n\n It was the size of a small boy, like the small boy who looked like me\n that they used to destroy when I was locked up with them in the dark.\n Except this was a man, scaled down to child's size. He had sort of an\n ugly, worried, tired, stupid look and he wore a shiny suit with a piece\n of a welcome mat or something for a necktie. Yeah, it was me. I really\n knew it all the time.\n\n\n They began doing things to the midget me. I didn't even lift an\n eyebrow. They couldn't do anything worse to the small man than they\n had done to the young boy. It was sort of nostalgic watching them, but\n I really got bored with all that violence and killing and killing the\n same kill over and over. Like watching the Saturday night string of\n westerns in a bar." ], [ "\"I believe you,\" Partridge said, surprised at himself.\n\n\n He ambled over to the money box on the wall. He tapped the bottom\n lightly and a box with no top slid out of the slightly larger box. He\n reached in, fished out the bill and presented it to me.\n\n\n \"Perhaps this will help in your atonement,\" he said.\n\n\n I crumpled it into my pocket fast. Not meaning to sound ungrateful, I'm\n pretty sure he hadn't noticed it was a twenty.\n\n\n And then the bill seemed to lie there, heavy, a lead weight. It would\n have been different if I had managed to get it out of the box myself.\n You know how it is.", "The men filed out of the kitchen, wiping their chins, and I went right\n on talking.\n\n\n After some time Sister Partridge bustled in and snapped on the overhead\n lights and I kept talking. The brother still hadn't used the phone to\n call the cops.\n\n\n \"Remarkable,\" Partridge finally said when I got so hoarse I had to take\n a break. \"One is almost—\nalmost\n—reminded of Job. William, you are\n being punished for some great sin. Of that, I'm sure.\"\n\n\n \"Punished for a sin? But, Brother, I've always had it like this, as\n long as I can remember. What kind of a sin could I have committed when\n I was fresh out of my crib?\"\n\n\n \"William, all I can tell you is that time means nothing in Heaven. Do\n you deny the transmigration of souls?\"", "\"Well,\" I said, \"I've had no personal experience—\"\n\n\n \"Of course you have, William! Say you don't remember. Say you don't\n want to remember. But don't say you have no personal experience!\"\n\n\n \"And you think I'm being punished for something I did in a previous\n life?\"\n\n\n He looked at me in disbelief. \"What else could it be?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" I confessed. \"I certainly haven't done anything that\n bad in\nthis\nlife.\"\n\n\n \"William, if you atone for this sin, perhaps the horde of locusts will\n lift from you.\"\n\n\n It wasn't much of a chance, but I was unused to having any at all. I\n shook off the dizziness of it. \"By the Lord Harry, Brother, I'm going\n to give it a try!\" I cried.", "While keeping a lookout for Partridge and somebody stepping out of the\n kitchen for a pull on a bottle, I spotted the clock for the first\n time, a Western Union clock high up at the back of the hall. Just as\n I seen it for the first time, the electricity wound the spring motor\n inside like a chicken having its neck wrung.\n\n\n The next time I glanced at the clock, it said ten minutes had gone by.\n My hand still wasn't free and I hadn't budged the box.\n\n\n \"This,\" Brother Partridge said, \"is one of the most profound\n experiences of my life.\"\n\n\n My head hinged until it lined my eyes up with Brother Partridge. The\n pipe hung heavy in my pocket, but he was too far from me.\n\n\n \"A vision of you at the box projected itself on the crest of my soup,\"\n the preacher explained in wonderment.\n\n\n I nodded. \"Swimming right in there with the dead duck.\"", "I had to laugh at all those bums clattering the chairs in front of me,\n scampering after water soup and stale bread. As soon as I got cleaned\n up, I was going to have dinner in a good restaurant, and I was going to\n order such expensive food and leave such a large tip for the waiter and\n send one to the chef that they were going to think I was rich, and some\n executive with some brokerage firm would see me and say to himself,\n \"Hmm, executive material. Just the type we need. I beg your pardon,\n sir—\" just like the razor-blade comic-strip ads in the old magazines\n that Frankie the Pig sells three for a quarter.\n\n\n I was marching. Man, was I ever marching, but the secret of it was I\n was only marking time the way we did in fire drills at the school.", "Then I found the bill. A neatly folded bill in the box. Somehow I knew\n all along it would be there.\nI tried to read the numbers on the bill with my fingertips, but I\n couldn't. It had to be a one. Who drops anything but a one into a Skid\n Row collection box? But still there were tourists, slummers. They might\n leave a fifty or even a hundred. A hundred!\n\n\n Yes, it felt new, crisp. It had to be a hundred. A single would be\n creased or worn.\n\n\n I pulled my hand out of the box. I\ntried\nto pull my hand out of the\n box.\n\n\n I knew what the trouble was, of course. I was in a monkey trap. The\n monkey reaches through the hole for the bait, and when he gets it in\n his hot little fist, he can't get his hand out. He's too greedy to let\n go, so he stays there, caught as securely as if he were caged.", "Fats hit me high. Long-legs hit me low. I blew cracker crumbs into\n their faces. After that, I just let them go. I know how to take a\n beating. That's one thing I knew.\n\n\n Then lying there, bleeding to myself, I heard them talking. I heard\n noises like\nmake an example of him\nand\ndo something permanent\nand I\n squirmed away across the rubbish like a polite mouse.\n\n\n I made it around a corner of brick and stood up, hurting my knee on a\n piece of brown-splotched pipe. There were noises on the other angle of\n the corner and so I tested if the pipe was loose and it was. I closed\n my eyes and brought the pipe up and then down.\n\n\n It felt as if I connected, but I was so numb, I wasn't sure until I\n unscrewed my eyes.", "I suppose I was to blame anyway. If I hadn't been alive, if I hadn't\n been there to get beaten up, it wouldn't have happened. I could see\n the point in making me suffer for it. There was a lot to be said for\n looking at it like that. But there was nothing to be said for telling\n Brother Partridge about the accident, or murder, or whatever had\n happened that day.\nSearching myself after I left Brother Partridge, I finally found a\n strip of gray adhesive tape on my side, out of the fuzzy area. Making\n the twenty the size of a thick postage stamp, I peeled back the tape\n and put the folded bill on the white skin and smoothed the tape back.\n\n\n There was only one place for me to go now. I headed for the public\n library. It was only about twenty blocks, but not having had anything\n to eat since the day before, it enervated me.", "I didn't say it, but I was used to my voice independently saying\n things. Her neck got to flaming, but she walked stiffly ahead. She\n didn't say anything. She must be awful mad, I decided. But then I got\n the idea she was flushed with pleasure. I'm pretty ugly and I looked\n like a bum, but I was young. You had to grant me that.\n\n\n She waved a hand at the rows of bound\nNews\nand left me alone with\n them. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to hunt up a table to lay the\n books on or not, so I took the volume for last year and laid it on the\n floor. That was the cleanest floor I ever saw.\n\n\n It didn't take me long to find the story. The victim was a big man,\n because the story was on the second page of the Nov. 4 edition.", "Why couldn't what he said have been \"The best things in life are free,\n buddy\" or \"Every dog has his day, fellow\" or \"If at first you don't\n succeed, man\"? No, he had to use that one line. You wouldn't blame me.\n Not if you believe me.\n\n\n The first thing I can remember, the start of all this, was when I was\n four or five somebody was soiling my bed for me. I absolutely was not\n doing it. I took long naps morning and evening so I could lie awake all\n night to see that it wouldn't happen. It couldn't happen. But in the\n morning the bed would sit there dispassionately soiled and convict me\n on circumstantial evidence. My punishment was as sure as the tide.", "\"I\nstill\nthink you're yellow,\" my voice said.\n\n\n It was my voice, but it didn't come from me. There were no words, no\n feeling of words in my throat. It just came out of the air the way it\n always did.\n\n\n I ran.\nHarold R. Thompkins, 49, vice-president of Baysinger's, was found\n dead behind the store last night. His skull had been crushed by a\n vicious beating with a heavy implement, Coroner McClain announced in\n preliminary verdict. Tompkins, who resided at 1467 Claremont, Edgeway,\n had been active in seeking labor-management peace in the recent\n difficulties....", "The things abruptly started their business, trying to act casually as\n if they hadn't been waiting for me to look at them at all. They had a\n little human being of some sort.\n\n\n It was the size of a small boy, like the small boy who looked like me\n that they used to destroy when I was locked up with them in the dark.\n Except this was a man, scaled down to child's size. He had sort of an\n ugly, worried, tired, stupid look and he wore a shiny suit with a piece\n of a welcome mat or something for a necktie. Yeah, it was me. I really\n knew it all the time.\n\n\n They began doing things to the midget me. I didn't even lift an\n eyebrow. They couldn't do anything worse to the small man than they\n had done to the young boy. It was sort of nostalgic watching them, but\n I really got bored with all that violence and killing and killing the\n same kill over and over. Like watching the Saturday night string of\n westerns in a bar.", "I opened up my fingers and let the coins ring inside the box and I drew\n out my hand. The bill stuck to the sweat on my fingers and slid out\n along with the digits. A one, I decided. I had got into trouble for a\n grubby single. It wasn't any century. I had been kidding myself.\n\n\n I unfolded the note. Sure enough, it wasn't a hundred-dollar bill, but\n it was a twenty, and that was almost the same thing to me. I creased it\n and put it back into the slot.\n\n\n As long as it stalled off the cops, I'd talk to Partridge.\n\n\n We took a couple of camp chairs and I told him the story of my life, or\n most of it. It was hard work on an empty stomach; I wished I'd had some\n of that turkey soup. Then again I was glad I hadn't. Something always\n happened to me when I thought back over my life. The same thing.", "They passed me, every one of them, and marched out of the meeting\n room into the kitchen. Even Partridge made his way down from the\n auctioneer's stand like a vulture with a busted wing and darted through\n his private door.\n\n\n I was alone, marking time behind the closed half of double doors. One\n good breath and I raced past the open door and flattened myself to the\n wall. Crockery was ringing and men were slurping inside. No one had\n paid any attention to me. That was pretty odd. People usually watch my\n every move, but a man's luck has to change sometime, doesn't it?\n\n\n Following the wallboard, I went down the side of the room and behind\n the last row of chairs, closer, closer, and halfway up the room again\n to the entrance—the entrance and the little wooden box fastened to the\n wall beside it.", "The sunlight through the window was yellow and hot. After a time, I\n began to dose.\n\n\n The shrieks woke me up.\n\n\n For the first time, I could hear the shrieks of the monster's victim\n and listen to their obscene droolings. For the very first time in my\n life. Always before it had been all pantomime, like Charlie Chaplin.\n Now I heard the sounds of it all.\n\n\n They say it's a bad sign when you start hearing voices.\n\n\n I nearly panicked, but I held myself in the seat and forced myself\n to be rational about it. My own voice was always saying things\neverybody\ncould hear but which I didn't say. It wasn't any worse to\n be the\nonly\none who could hear other things I never said. I was as\n sane as I ever was. There was no doubt about that.\n\n\n But a new thought suddenly impressed itself on me.", "\"I've got something better than a conscience,\" I told him.\nBrother Partridge regarded me solemnly. \"There must be something\n special about you, for your apprehension to come through miraculous\n intervention. But I can't imagine what.\"\n\n\n \"I\nalways\nget apprehended somehow, Brother,\" I said. \"I'm pretty\n special.\"\n\n\n \"Your name?\"\n\n\n \"William Hagle.\" No sense lying. I had been booked and printed before.\n\n\n Partridge prodded me with his bony fingers as if making sure I was\n substantial. \"Come. Let's sit down, if you can remove your fist from\n the money box.\"", "I was a man, not a monkey. I knew why I couldn't get my hand out. But I\n couldn't lose that money, especially that century bill. Calm, I ordered\n myself.\nCalm.\nThe box was fastened to the vertical tongue-and-groove laths of the\n woodwork, not the wall. It was old lumber, stiffened by a hundred\n layers of paint since 1908. The paint was as thick and strong as the\n boards. The box was fastened fast. Six-inch spike nails, I guessed.\n\n\n Calmly, I flung my whole weight away from the wall. My wrist almost\n cracked, but there wasn't even a bend in the box. Carefully, I tried to\n jerk my fist straight up, to pry off the top of the box. It was as if\n the box had been carved out of one solid piece of timber. It wouldn't\n go up, down, left or right.\n\n\n But I kept trying.", "The razor blade sliced through the pink bath towel evenly. I cut out a\n nice modern-style tie, narrow, with some horizontal stripes down at the\n bottom. I made a tight, thin knot. It looked pretty good.\n\n\n I was ready to leave, so I started for the door. I went back. I had\n almost forgotten my luggage. The box still had three unwrapped blades\n in it. I pocketed it. I hefted the used blade, dulled by all the work\n it had done. You can run being economical into stinginess. I tossed it\n into the wastebasket.\n\n\n I had five hamburgers and five cups of coffee. I couldn't finish all of\n the French fries.\n\n\n \"Mac,\" I said to the fat counterman, who looked like all fat\n countermen, \"give me a Milwaukee beer.\"", "Dad was a compact man, small eyes, small mouth, tight clothes. He was\n narrow but not mean. For punishment, he locked me in a windowless\n room and told me to sit still until he came back. It wasn't so bad a\n punishment, except that when Dad closed the door, the light turned off\n and I was left there in the dark.\n\n\n Being four or five, I didn't know any better, so I thought Dad made it\n dark to add to my punishment. But I learned he didn't know the light\n went out. It came back on when he unlocked the door. Every time I told\n him about the light as soon as I could talk again, but he said I was\n lying.\nOne day, to prove me a liar, he opened and closed the door a few times\n from outside. The light winked off and on, off and on, always shining\n when Dad stuck his head inside. He tried using the door from the\n inside, and the light stayed on, no matter how hard he slammed the\n door.", "I stayed in the dark longer for lying about the light.\n\n\n Alone in the dark, I wouldn't have had it so bad if it wasn't for the\n things that came to me.\n\n\n They were real to me. They never touched me, but they had a little boy.\n He looked the way I did in the mirror. They did unpleasant things to\n him.\n\n\n Because they were real, I talked about them as if they were real, and\n I almost earned a bunk in the home for retarded children until I got\n smart enough to keep the beasts to myself.\n\n\n My mother hated me. I loved her, of course. I remember her smell mixed\n up with flowers and cookies and winter fires. I remember she hugged me\n on my ninth birthday. The trouble came from the notes written in my\n awkward hand that she found, calling her names I didn't understand.\n Sometimes there were drawings. I didn't write those notes or make those\n drawings." ], [ "I stayed in the dark longer for lying about the light.\n\n\n Alone in the dark, I wouldn't have had it so bad if it wasn't for the\n things that came to me.\n\n\n They were real to me. They never touched me, but they had a little boy.\n He looked the way I did in the mirror. They did unpleasant things to\n him.\n\n\n Because they were real, I talked about them as if they were real, and\n I almost earned a bunk in the home for retarded children until I got\n smart enough to keep the beasts to myself.\n\n\n My mother hated me. I loved her, of course. I remember her smell mixed\n up with flowers and cookies and winter fires. I remember she hugged me\n on my ninth birthday. The trouble came from the notes written in my\n awkward hand that she found, calling her names I didn't understand.\n Sometimes there were drawings. I didn't write those notes or make those\n drawings.", "The sunlight through the window was yellow and hot. After a time, I\n began to dose.\n\n\n The shrieks woke me up.\n\n\n For the first time, I could hear the shrieks of the monster's victim\n and listen to their obscene droolings. For the very first time in my\n life. Always before it had been all pantomime, like Charlie Chaplin.\n Now I heard the sounds of it all.\n\n\n They say it's a bad sign when you start hearing voices.\n\n\n I nearly panicked, but I held myself in the seat and forced myself\n to be rational about it. My own voice was always saying things\neverybody\ncould hear but which I didn't say. It wasn't any worse to\n be the\nonly\none who could hear other things I never said. I was as\n sane as I ever was. There was no doubt about that.\n\n\n But a new thought suddenly impressed itself on me.", "Why couldn't what he said have been \"The best things in life are free,\n buddy\" or \"Every dog has his day, fellow\" or \"If at first you don't\n succeed, man\"? No, he had to use that one line. You wouldn't blame me.\n Not if you believe me.\n\n\n The first thing I can remember, the start of all this, was when I was\n four or five somebody was soiling my bed for me. I absolutely was not\n doing it. I took long naps morning and evening so I could lie awake all\n night to see that it wouldn't happen. It couldn't happen. But in the\n morning the bed would sit there dispassionately soiled and convict me\n on circumstantial evidence. My punishment was as sure as the tide.", "My mother and father must have been glad when I was sent away to reform\n school after my thirteenth birthday party, the one no one came to.\n\n\n The reform school was nicer. There were others there who'd had it about\n like me. We got along. I didn't watch their shifty eyes too much, or\n ask them what they shifted to see. They didn't talk about my screams\n at night.\n\n\n It was home.\n\n\n My trouble there was that I was always being framed for stealing. I\n didn't take any of those things they located in my bunk. Stealing\n wasn't in my line. If you believe any of this at all, you'll see why it\n couldn't be me who did the stealing.", "The men filed out of the kitchen, wiping their chins, and I went right\n on talking.\n\n\n After some time Sister Partridge bustled in and snapped on the overhead\n lights and I kept talking. The brother still hadn't used the phone to\n call the cops.\n\n\n \"Remarkable,\" Partridge finally said when I got so hoarse I had to take\n a break. \"One is almost—\nalmost\n—reminded of Job. William, you are\n being punished for some great sin. Of that, I'm sure.\"\n\n\n \"Punished for a sin? But, Brother, I've always had it like this, as\n long as I can remember. What kind of a sin could I have committed when\n I was fresh out of my crib?\"\n\n\n \"William, all I can tell you is that time means nothing in Heaven. Do\n you deny the transmigration of souls?\"", "Fats hit me high. Long-legs hit me low. I blew cracker crumbs into\n their faces. After that, I just let them go. I know how to take a\n beating. That's one thing I knew.\n\n\n Then lying there, bleeding to myself, I heard them talking. I heard\n noises like\nmake an example of him\nand\ndo something permanent\nand I\n squirmed away across the rubbish like a polite mouse.\n\n\n I made it around a corner of brick and stood up, hurting my knee on a\n piece of brown-splotched pipe. There were noises on the other angle of\n the corner and so I tested if the pipe was loose and it was. I closed\n my eyes and brought the pipe up and then down.\n\n\n It felt as if I connected, but I was so numb, I wasn't sure until I\n unscrewed my eyes.", "I had to laugh at all those bums clattering the chairs in front of me,\n scampering after water soup and stale bread. As soon as I got cleaned\n up, I was going to have dinner in a good restaurant, and I was going to\n order such expensive food and leave such a large tip for the waiter and\n send one to the chef that they were going to think I was rich, and some\n executive with some brokerage firm would see me and say to himself,\n \"Hmm, executive material. Just the type we need. I beg your pardon,\n sir—\" just like the razor-blade comic-strip ads in the old magazines\n that Frankie the Pig sells three for a quarter.\n\n\n I was marching. Man, was I ever marching, but the secret of it was I\n was only marking time the way we did in fire drills at the school.", "I didn't say it, but I was used to my voice independently saying\n things. Her neck got to flaming, but she walked stiffly ahead. She\n didn't say anything. She must be awful mad, I decided. But then I got\n the idea she was flushed with pleasure. I'm pretty ugly and I looked\n like a bum, but I was young. You had to grant me that.\n\n\n She waved a hand at the rows of bound\nNews\nand left me alone with\n them. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to hunt up a table to lay the\n books on or not, so I took the volume for last year and laid it on the\n floor. That was the cleanest floor I ever saw.\n\n\n It didn't take me long to find the story. The victim was a big man,\n because the story was on the second page of the Nov. 4 edition.", "The things abruptly started their business, trying to act casually as\n if they hadn't been waiting for me to look at them at all. They had a\n little human being of some sort.\n\n\n It was the size of a small boy, like the small boy who looked like me\n that they used to destroy when I was locked up with them in the dark.\n Except this was a man, scaled down to child's size. He had sort of an\n ugly, worried, tired, stupid look and he wore a shiny suit with a piece\n of a welcome mat or something for a necktie. Yeah, it was me. I really\n knew it all the time.\n\n\n They began doing things to the midget me. I didn't even lift an\n eyebrow. They couldn't do anything worse to the small man than they\n had done to the young boy. It was sort of nostalgic watching them, but\n I really got bored with all that violence and killing and killing the\n same kill over and over. Like watching the Saturday night string of\n westerns in a bar.", "\"I\nstill\nthink you're yellow,\" my voice said.\n\n\n It was my voice, but it didn't come from me. There were no words, no\n feeling of words in my throat. It just came out of the air the way it\n always did.\n\n\n I ran.\nHarold R. Thompkins, 49, vice-president of Baysinger's, was found\n dead behind the store last night. His skull had been crushed by a\n vicious beating with a heavy implement, Coroner McClain announced in\n preliminary verdict. Tompkins, who resided at 1467 Claremont, Edgeway,\n had been active in seeking labor-management peace in the recent\n difficulties....", "\"I believe you,\" Partridge said, surprised at himself.\n\n\n He ambled over to the money box on the wall. He tapped the bottom\n lightly and a box with no top slid out of the slightly larger box. He\n reached in, fished out the bill and presented it to me.\n\n\n \"Perhaps this will help in your atonement,\" he said.\n\n\n I crumpled it into my pocket fast. Not meaning to sound ungrateful, I'm\n pretty sure he hadn't noticed it was a twenty.\n\n\n And then the bill seemed to lie there, heavy, a lead weight. It would\n have been different if I had managed to get it out of the box myself.\n You know how it is.", "Money you haven't earned doesn't seem real to you.\nThere was something I forgot to mention so far. During the year between\n when I got out of the reformatory and the one when I tried to steal\n Brother Partridge's money, I killed a man.\n\n\n It was all an accident, but killing somebody is reason enough to get\n punished. It didn't have to be a sin in some previous life, you see.\n\n\n I had gotten my first job in too long, stacking boxes at the freight\n door of Baysinger's. The drivers unloaded the stuff, but they just\n dumped it off the truck. An empty rear end was all they wanted. The\n freight boss told me to stack the boxes inside, neat and not too close\n together.\n\n\n I stacked boxes the first day. I stacked more the second. The third day\n I went outside with my baloney and crackers. It was warm enough even\n for November.", "While keeping a lookout for Partridge and somebody stepping out of the\n kitchen for a pull on a bottle, I spotted the clock for the first\n time, a Western Union clock high up at the back of the hall. Just as\n I seen it for the first time, the electricity wound the spring motor\n inside like a chicken having its neck wrung.\n\n\n The next time I glanced at the clock, it said ten minutes had gone by.\n My hand still wasn't free and I hadn't budged the box.\n\n\n \"This,\" Brother Partridge said, \"is one of the most profound\n experiences of my life.\"\n\n\n My head hinged until it lined my eyes up with Brother Partridge. The\n pipe hung heavy in my pocket, but he was too far from me.\n\n\n \"A vision of you at the box projected itself on the crest of my soup,\"\n the preacher explained in wonderment.\n\n\n I nodded. \"Swimming right in there with the dead duck.\"", "Charity Case\nBy JIM HARMON\n\n\n Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction December 1959.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nCertainly I see things that aren't there\n \nand don't say what my voice says—but how\n \ncan I prove that I don't have my health?\nWhen he began his talk with \"You got your health, don't you?\" it\n touched those spots inside me. That was when I did it.", "I suppose I was to blame anyway. If I hadn't been alive, if I hadn't\n been there to get beaten up, it wouldn't have happened. I could see\n the point in making me suffer for it. There was a lot to be said for\n looking at it like that. But there was nothing to be said for telling\n Brother Partridge about the accident, or murder, or whatever had\n happened that day.\nSearching myself after I left Brother Partridge, I finally found a\n strip of gray adhesive tape on my side, out of the fuzzy area. Making\n the twenty the size of a thick postage stamp, I peeled back the tape\n and put the folded bill on the white skin and smoothed the tape back.\n\n\n There was only one place for me to go now. I headed for the public\n library. It was only about twenty blocks, but not having had anything\n to eat since the day before, it enervated me.", "I opened up my fingers and let the coins ring inside the box and I drew\n out my hand. The bill stuck to the sweat on my fingers and slid out\n along with the digits. A one, I decided. I had got into trouble for a\n grubby single. It wasn't any century. I had been kidding myself.\n\n\n I unfolded the note. Sure enough, it wasn't a hundred-dollar bill, but\n it was a twenty, and that was almost the same thing to me. I creased it\n and put it back into the slot.\n\n\n As long as it stalled off the cops, I'd talk to Partridge.\n\n\n We took a couple of camp chairs and I told him the story of my life, or\n most of it. It was hard work on an empty stomach; I wished I'd had some\n of that turkey soup. Then again I was glad I hadn't. Something always\n happened to me when I thought back over my life. The same thing.", "The razor blade sliced through the pink bath towel evenly. I cut out a\n nice modern-style tie, narrow, with some horizontal stripes down at the\n bottom. I made a tight, thin knot. It looked pretty good.\n\n\n I was ready to leave, so I started for the door. I went back. I had\n almost forgotten my luggage. The box still had three unwrapped blades\n in it. I pocketed it. I hefted the used blade, dulled by all the work\n it had done. You can run being economical into stinginess. I tossed it\n into the wastebasket.\n\n\n I had five hamburgers and five cups of coffee. I couldn't finish all of\n the French fries.\n\n\n \"Mac,\" I said to the fat counterman, who looked like all fat\n countermen, \"give me a Milwaukee beer.\"", "\"Cold turkey,\" he corrected. \"Are you scoffing at a miracle?\"\n\n\n \"People are always watching me, Brother,\" I said. \"So now they do it\n even when they aren't around. I should have known it would come to\n that.\"\n\n\n The pipe was suddenly a weight I wanted off me. I would try robbing\n a collection box, knowing positively that I would get caught, but I\n wasn't dumb enough to murder. Somebody, somewhere, would be a witness\n to it. I had never got away with anything in my life. I was too smart\n to even try anything but the little things.\n\n\n \"I may be able to help you,\" Brother Partridge said, \"if you have faith\n and a conscience.\"", "The downstairs washroom was where I went first. There was nobody\n there but an old guy talking urgently to a kid with thick glasses,\n and somebody building a fix in one of the booths. I could see charred\n matches dropping down on the floor next to his tennis shoes, and even a\n few grains of white stuff. But he managed to hold still enough to keep\n from spilling more from the spoon.\n\n\n I washed my hands and face, smoothed my hair down, combing it with my\n fingers. Going over my suit with damp toweling got off a lot of the\n dirt. I put my collar on the outside of my jacket and creased the\n wings with my thumbnail so it would look more like a sports shirt.\n It didn't really. I still looked like a bum, but sort of a neat,\n non-objectionable bum.\n\n\n The librarian at the main desk looked sympathetically hostile, or\n hostilely sympathetic.", "Then I found the bill. A neatly folded bill in the box. Somehow I knew\n all along it would be there.\nI tried to read the numbers on the bill with my fingertips, but I\n couldn't. It had to be a one. Who drops anything but a one into a Skid\n Row collection box? But still there were tourists, slummers. They might\n leave a fifty or even a hundred. A hundred!\n\n\n Yes, it felt new, crisp. It had to be a hundred. A single would be\n creased or worn.\n\n\n I pulled my hand out of the box. I\ntried\nto pull my hand out of the\n box.\n\n\n I knew what the trouble was, of course. I was in a monkey trap. The\n monkey reaches through the hole for the bait, and when he gets it in\n his hot little fist, he can't get his hand out. He's too greedy to let\n go, so he stays there, caught as securely as if he were caged." ] ]
train	51249	[ "What is Ben's relationship with Charlie?", "Why doesn't Laura want to marry Ben?", "How does Ben feel about Mickey?", "Why doesn't Charlie want to go with Laura and Mickey?", "Why does Mickey decide not to go into space?", "How does Ben feel about Laura?", "Why does Ben leave Laura?", "Why does Ben tell Laura his has her wedding ring?", "What is lung-rot?" ]	[ [ "Chalie is Ben's uncle.", "Charlie is Ben's favorite teacher at the Academy.", "Charlie is Ben's grandfather.", "Charlie is the only family Ben has." ], [ "She does want to marry Ben. However, spacemen are gone all the time. She needs a partner who is going to be there for her.", "She does want to marry Ben, but spacemen can't have children.", "She doesn't want to marry Ben because they've only known each other for six weeks.", "She doesn't want to marry Ben because of the possibility of birth defects caused by space travel." ], [ "Ben thinks Mickey is a great guy, just not a great co-worker.", "Ben likes Mickey, they work well together.", "Ben does not like Mickey. He is relieved Mickey is not headed to space with him.", "Ben thinks of Mickey as his own brother." ], [ "Charlie is not really a people person. He likes Ben, but that's about it.", "Charlie is very self-conscious about his scars. He is uncomfortable around other people.", "Charlie is uncomfortable with Laura and Mickey's wealth. He feels a bit shabby because his coat is missing a button.", "Charlie is dying and Ben is the only family he has. He wants to spend his last moments with Ben." ], [ "Mickey was offered a job as Chief Jetman on the Lunar Lady.", "Mickey was offered a job at the Academy teaching astrogation. ", "Mickey thinks that if he goes into space he'll only live another five to ten years. Space travel is dangerous.", "Mickey was offered a job as Chief Jetman on the White Sands." ], [ "Ben loves Laura, but not enough to give up space travel.", "Ben thinks Laura is the one.", "Ben likes Laura but they only met 40 days ago. It's not that serious.", "Ben thinks Laura got too serious, too fast. It's only been 40 days.\n" ], [ "Ben leaves Laura because he feels guilty that he dragged Charlie to Mickey and Laura's parents.", "Ben leaves Laura because she wants kids, and he doesn't.", "Ben leaves Laura because the call to explore the universe is irresistible.", "Ben leaves Laura because he knows he'll grow to resent her if he stays." ], [ "Ben is telling her he can't marry her, so he's taking back the ring.", "Ben is telling her that even though he can't stay, she is the only woman he'll ever love.", "Ben is telling her that the marriage is over, so he's taking the ring back.", "Ben is telling her he was going to marry her but, she can't compete with the universe." ], [ "Lung-rot is a disease caused by chemicals in the Martian atmosphere.", "Lung-rot is tuberculosis.", "A disease that presents like whooping cough.", "Lung-rot is Martian slang for pneumonia. " ] ]	[ 4, 1, 2, 4, 3, 1, 3, 2, 1 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "\"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor\n of White Sands Port.\" He raised his hand to stop me. \"I know. It's not\n so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben.\"\n\n\n I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my\n knees with the blast of a jet.\n\n\n \"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have\n a good weekend.\"\n\n\n Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to\n reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the\n 'copter.", "But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and\n old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that\n it was hard to believe he'd once been young.\n\n\n He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.\n\n\n \"You made it, boy,\" he chortled, \"and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate\n tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as\n good spacemen should!\"\n\n\n Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,\n walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm\n with some silent melody.\n\n\n And you, Laura, were with him.\n\n\n \"Meet the Brat,\" he said. \"My sister Laura.\"", "Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie.\n\n\n My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie!\n The audiogram had lied!\n\n\n I pressed the stud again. \"... regret to inform you of death of\n Charles ...\"\n\n\n I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken\n voice droned on.\n\n\n You ran to it, shut it off. \"I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—\"\n\n\n Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I\n remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze.\n The metallic words had told the truth.\n\n\n I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at\n Charlie's faded tin box.", "I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity\n of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a\n golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes\n of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a\n gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.\n\n\n \"I'm happy to meet you, Ben,\" you said. \"I've heard of no one else for\n the past year.\"\n\n\n A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an\n introduction of Charlie.\n\n\n You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old\n Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie\n scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a\n shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.\n His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.", "And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the\n result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so\n accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I\n knew, would find them ugly.\n\n\n You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: \"It's a privilege to\n meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first\n to reach the Moon!\"\n\n\n Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: \"Still going to spend the\n weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?\"\n\n\n I shook my head. \"Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're\n planning to see the town tonight.\"", "In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.\n Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same\n decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to\n travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be\n no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.\n\n\n Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he\n could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never\n live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He\n left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a\n man's dream.\n\n\n He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven\n knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was\n kind—but that doesn't matter now.", "Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders\n and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth\n and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,\n for I was thinking:\nHe's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the\n others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the\n first!\nMickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. \"I don't\n see 'em, Ben,\" he whispered. \"Where do you suppose they are?\"\n\n\n I blinked. \"Who?\"\n\n\n \"My folks.\"\n\n\n That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in\n a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those\n \"You are cordially invited\" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie\n Taggart.", "I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of\n them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it\n had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and\n routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,\n I hadn't realized I was different.\nMy folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd\n have lived the kind of life a kid should live.\nMickey noticed my frown.\n\n\n \"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just\n not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—\"\n\n\n \"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really.\"\n\n\n \"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?\"", "We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said:\n \"Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's\n sort of funny.\"\n\n\n \"He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those\n days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a\n spaceman then.\"\n\n\n \"But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?\"\n\n\n I smiled and shook my head. \"If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie\n doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as\n I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson.\"\n\n\n You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew\n suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster.", "And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we\n were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw\n the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each\n like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by\n the sons of Earth.\nThey expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of\n civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and\n a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do.\nI felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared.\nAt last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge,\n babbling wave.\n\n\n Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie.\n\n\n His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining\n like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear\n rows.", "\"Why don't you both come with us?\" you asked. \"Our folks have their\n own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room.\n Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the\n Moon?\"\n\n\n Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew\n that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian\n fizzes and Plutonian zombies.\n\n\n But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.\n\n\n \"We'd really like to come,\" I said.\nOn our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was\n a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor\n should look.\n\n\n \"Ben,\" he called, \"don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two\n months to decide.\"", "Then Mickey stiffened. \"I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!\"\n\n\n Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a\n garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a\n tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that\n he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at\n the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was\n mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only\n half as big.", "I accepted that job teaching.\nAnd now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,\n and the house is silent.\n\n\n It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am\n writing this.\n\n\n I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading\n the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that\n Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they\n could tell me what he could not express in words.\n\n\n And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.\n\n\n A wedding ring.", "I tried to laugh. \"You're good for another twenty-five years, Charlie.\"\n\n\n He shook his head stiffly, staring at nothing. \"Maybe. Anyway, I'm\n gonna get off the Shuttle this time, make one more trip to Mars. Tell\n you what. There's a little stone cafe on Mars, the\nSpace Rat\n, just\n off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal. When you get to Mars, take a\n look inside. I'll probably be there.\"\n\n\n He coughed again, a deep, rasping cough that filled his eyes with tears.\n\n\n \"Not used to this Earth air,\" he muttered. \"What I need's some Martian\n climate.\"\n\n\n Suddenly that cough frightened me. It didn't seem normal. I wondered,\n too, about his stiff movements and glassy stare. It was as if he were\n drugged.", "Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that\n I'd never noticed before.\nYou can go into space\n, I thought,\nand try to do as much living in\n ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died\n in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie\n buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like\n Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally\n alone, never finding a home.\nOr there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth\n in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with\n a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow\n old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who\n fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous\n dust.\n\"I'm sorry,\" you said. \"I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben.\"", "\"It's all right,\" I said, clenching my fists. \"You made sense—a lot of\n sense.\"\nThe next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his\n scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin,\n tight coughs.\n\n\n Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. \"I'm\n leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought\n maybe you'd like to have 'em.\"\n\n\n I scowled, not understanding. \"Why, Charlie? What for?\"\n\n\n He shrugged as if afraid he might be accused of sentimentality. \"Oh,\n it's just that I've been dodgin' meteors now for twenty-five years.\n That's a long time, boy. Ain't one spaceman in a thousand that lucky.\n Some of these days, I won't be so lucky.\"", "Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us\n to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his\n last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration\n to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.\n\n\n Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain\n the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.\n\n\n Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe\n on Mars, the\nSpace Rat\n, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.\n\n\n Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever\n part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.\n\n\n I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.", "\"Sure,\" I said to Mickey, \"we can still have a good weekend.\"\nI liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course.\n They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things,\n deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was\n cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional\n video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or\n housework.\n\n\n Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a\n shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.", "Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was a\n veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years\n ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the\nLunar\n Lady\n, a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White\n Sands.\n\n\n I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island\n Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like\n me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I\n remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet.\n\n\n My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It\n wasn't surprising. The\nLunar Lady\nwas in White Sands now, but\n liberties, as Charlie said, were as scarce as water on Mars.\nIt doesn't matter\n, I told myself.", "I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about\n going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.\n\n\n We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.\n\n\n \"When will you be back?\" you asked.\n\n\n Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. \"Maybe a\n couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen.\"\n\n\n Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.\n\n\n I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill\n the doubt worming through my brain." ], [ "And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, \"Sure,\n I'll stay, Mickey. Sure.\"\nForty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the\n little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying\n down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to\n teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon\n and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and\n promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.\n\n\n One morning I thought,\nWhy must I make a choice? Why can't I have both\n you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?\nAll day the thought lay in my mind like fire.\n\n\n That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: \"Laura, I\n want you to be my wife.\"", "I accepted that job teaching.\nAnd now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,\n and the house is silent.\n\n\n It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am\n writing this.\n\n\n I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading\n the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that\n Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they\n could tell me what he could not express in words.\n\n\n And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.\n\n\n A wedding ring.", "You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face\n flushed.\n\n\n Then you murmured, \"I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me\n to marry a spaceman or a teacher?\"\n\n\n \"Can't a spaceman marry, too?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see,\n Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for\nmaybe\ntwo months,\nmaybe\ntwo\n years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty—and I'd have what?\"\n\n\n Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. \"I wouldn't\n have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years,\n then teach.\"", "\"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't\n you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?\"\n\n\n Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears\n glittering in your eyes.\n\n\n \"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened\n on the\nCyclops\n. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was\n flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The\n men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it\n was—\"\n\n\n \"I know, Laura. Don't say it.\"\n\n\n You had to finish. \"It was a monster.\"", "\"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor\n of White Sands Port.\" He raised his hand to stop me. \"I know. It's not\n so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben.\"\n\n\n I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my\n knees with the blast of a jet.\n\n\n \"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have\n a good weekend.\"\n\n\n Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to\n reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the\n 'copter.", "There was silence.\n\n\n You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were\n flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the\n feeling that I shouldn't have come here.\n\n\n You kept looking at me until I had to ask: \"What are you thinking,\n Laura?\"\n\n\n You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. \"No, I shouldn't be\n thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that.\"\n\n\n \"I could never hate you.\"\n\n\n \"It—it's about the stars,\" you said very softly. \"I understand why you\n want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were\n kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I\n dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I\n lived for months, just thinking about it.", "Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us\n to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his\n last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration\n to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.\n\n\n Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain\n the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.\n\n\n Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe\n on Mars, the\nSpace Rat\n, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.\n\n\n Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever\n part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.\n\n\n I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.", "\"\nUsed\nto want?\" I asked. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\n You bit your lip, not answering.\n\n\n \"What did she mean, Mickey?\"\n\n\n Mickey looked down at his feet. \"I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.\n We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—\"\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty\n uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If\n you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or\n another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know.\"\n\n\n My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. \"What are you trying to\n say, Mickey?\"", "\"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the\nOdyssey\n, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me,\n too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than\n teaching. I want to be in deep space.\"\n\n\n \"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy\n Earth life while you can. Okay?\"\n\n\n I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted\n someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of\n courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.\n\n\n But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the\n flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever\n so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as\n much as I loved the stars.", "In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.\n Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same\n decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to\n travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be\n no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.\n\n\n Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he\n could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never\n live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He\n left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a\n man's dream.\n\n\n He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven\n knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was\n kind—but that doesn't matter now.", "I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity\n of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a\n golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes\n of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a\n gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.\n\n\n \"I'm happy to meet you, Ben,\" you said. \"I've heard of no one else for\n the past year.\"\n\n\n A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an\n introduction of Charlie.\n\n\n You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old\n Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie\n scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a\n shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.\n His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.", "I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of\n them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it\n had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and\n routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,\n I hadn't realized I was different.\nMy folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd\n have lived the kind of life a kid should live.\nMickey noticed my frown.\n\n\n \"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just\n not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—\"\n\n\n \"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really.\"\n\n\n \"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?\"", "That's what he'd say.\n\n\n And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.\n\n\n \"Oh God,\" I moaned, \"what shall I do?\"\nNext morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and\n brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who\n could be sending me a message.\n\n\n I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping,\n automatic voice droned: \"Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to\n inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman....\"\n\n\n Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word\n \"lung-rot\" and the metallic phrase, \"This message brought to you by\n courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps.\"\n\n\n I stood staring at the cylinder.\n\n\n Charles Taggart was dead.", "Do you know\nwhy\nhe wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't\n want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?\n\n\n It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the\n Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,\n brothers, the planets his children.\n\n\n You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes\n after you reach it. But how can one ever be\nsure\nuntil the journey is\n made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a\n star and think,\nI might have gone there; I could have been the first\n?\n\n\n We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one\n be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?", "\"Why don't you both come with us?\" you asked. \"Our folks have their\n own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room.\n Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the\n Moon?\"\n\n\n Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew\n that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian\n fizzes and Plutonian zombies.\n\n\n But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.\n\n\n \"We'd really like to come,\" I said.\nOn our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was\n a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor\n should look.\n\n\n \"Ben,\" he called, \"don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two\n months to decide.\"", "Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders\n and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth\n and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,\n for I was thinking:\nHe's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the\n others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the\n first!\nMickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. \"I don't\n see 'em, Ben,\" he whispered. \"Where do you suppose they are?\"\n\n\n I blinked. \"Who?\"\n\n\n \"My folks.\"\n\n\n That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in\n a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those\n \"You are cordially invited\" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie\n Taggart.", "That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me\n sleep.\nYou've got to decide now\n, I told myself.\nYou can't stay here. You've\n got to make a choice.\nThe teaching job was still open. The spot on the\nOdyssey\nwas still\n open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the\n way to Pluto.\nYou can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a\n home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now.\nOr you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a\n line in a history book.\nI cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, \"Get the hell out\n of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get\n out there on the\nOdyssey\nwhere you belong. We got a date on Mars,\n remember? At the\nSpace Rat\n, just off Chandler Field on the Grand\n Canal.\"", "But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and\n old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that\n it was hard to believe he'd once been young.\n\n\n He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.\n\n\n \"You made it, boy,\" he chortled, \"and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate\n tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as\n good spacemen should!\"\n\n\n Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,\n walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm\n with some silent melody.\n\n\n And you, Laura, were with him.\n\n\n \"Meet the Brat,\" he said. \"My sister Laura.\"", "Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that\n I'd never noticed before.\nYou can go into space\n, I thought,\nand try to do as much living in\n ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died\n in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie\n buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like\n Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally\n alone, never finding a home.\nOr there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth\n in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with\n a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow\n old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who\n fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous\n dust.\n\"I'm sorry,\" you said. \"I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben.\"", "\"No, thanks,\" I answered. \"Better not count on me.\"\n\n\n A moment later Mickey said, frowning, \"What was he talking about, Ben?\n Did he make you an offer?\"\n\n\n I laughed. \"He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching\n astrogation. What a life\nthat\nwould be! Imagine standing in a\n classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—\"\n\n\n I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: \"When you've got the\n chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you\n want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want.\"\n\n\n I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to\n understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.\n\n\n Then your last words came back and jabbed me: \"That's what Mickey used\n to want.\"" ], [ "Then Mickey stiffened. \"I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!\"\n\n\n Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a\n garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a\n tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that\n he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at\n the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was\n mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only\n half as big.", "I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of\n them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it\n had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and\n routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,\n I hadn't realized I was different.\nMy folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd\n have lived the kind of life a kid should live.\nMickey noticed my frown.\n\n\n \"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just\n not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—\"\n\n\n \"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really.\"\n\n\n \"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?\"", "I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity\n of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a\n golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes\n of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a\n gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.\n\n\n \"I'm happy to meet you, Ben,\" you said. \"I've heard of no one else for\n the past year.\"\n\n\n A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an\n introduction of Charlie.\n\n\n You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old\n Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie\n scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a\n shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.\n His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.", "But he rounded a corner, still grinning and waving, and then he was\n gone.\nThat afternoon Mickey showed me his room. It was more like a boy's\n room than a spaceman's. In it were all the little things that kids\n treasure—pennants, models of Everson's two ships, a tennis trophy,\n books, a home-made video.\n\n\n I began to realize how important a room like this could be to a boy.\n I could imagine, too, the happiness that parents felt as they watched\n their children grow to adulthood.", "\"\nUsed\nto want?\" I asked. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\n You bit your lip, not answering.\n\n\n \"What did she mean, Mickey?\"\n\n\n Mickey looked down at his feet. \"I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.\n We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—\"\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty\n uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If\n you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or\n another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know.\"\n\n\n My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. \"What are you trying to\n say, Mickey?\"", "Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders\n and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth\n and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,\n for I was thinking:\nHe's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the\n others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the\n first!\nMickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. \"I don't\n see 'em, Ben,\" he whispered. \"Where do you suppose they are?\"\n\n\n I blinked. \"Who?\"\n\n\n \"My folks.\"\n\n\n That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in\n a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those\n \"You are cordially invited\" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie\n Taggart.", "\"No, thanks,\" I answered. \"Better not count on me.\"\n\n\n A moment later Mickey said, frowning, \"What was he talking about, Ben?\n Did he make you an offer?\"\n\n\n I laughed. \"He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching\n astrogation. What a life\nthat\nwould be! Imagine standing in a\n classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—\"\n\n\n I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: \"When you've got the\n chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you\n want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want.\"\n\n\n I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to\n understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.\n\n\n Then your last words came back and jabbed me: \"That's what Mickey used\n to want.\"", "But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and\n old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that\n it was hard to believe he'd once been young.\n\n\n He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.\n\n\n \"You made it, boy,\" he chortled, \"and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate\n tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as\n good spacemen should!\"\n\n\n Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,\n walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm\n with some silent melody.\n\n\n And you, Laura, were with him.\n\n\n \"Meet the Brat,\" he said. \"My sister Laura.\"", "And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the\n result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so\n accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I\n knew, would find them ugly.\n\n\n You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: \"It's a privilege to\n meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first\n to reach the Moon!\"\n\n\n Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: \"Still going to spend the\n weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?\"\n\n\n I shook my head. \"Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're\n planning to see the town tonight.\"", "\"Sure,\" I said to Mickey, \"we can still have a good weekend.\"\nI liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course.\n They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things,\n deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was\n cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional\n video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or\n housework.\n\n\n Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a\n shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.", "And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, \"Sure,\n I'll stay, Mickey. Sure.\"\nForty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the\n little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying\n down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to\n teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon\n and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and\n promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.\n\n\n One morning I thought,\nWhy must I make a choice? Why can't I have both\n you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?\nAll day the thought lay in my mind like fire.\n\n\n That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: \"Laura, I\n want you to be my wife.\"", "\"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor\n of White Sands Port.\" He raised his hand to stop me. \"I know. It's not\n so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben.\"\n\n\n I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my\n knees with the blast of a jet.\n\n\n \"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have\n a good weekend.\"\n\n\n Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to\n reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the\n 'copter.", "There was silence.\n\n\n You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were\n flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the\n feeling that I shouldn't have come here.\n\n\n You kept looking at me until I had to ask: \"What are you thinking,\n Laura?\"\n\n\n You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. \"No, I shouldn't be\n thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that.\"\n\n\n \"I could never hate you.\"\n\n\n \"It—it's about the stars,\" you said very softly. \"I understand why you\n want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were\n kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I\n dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I\n lived for months, just thinking about it.", "Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that\n I'd never noticed before.\nYou can go into space\n, I thought,\nand try to do as much living in\n ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died\n in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie\n buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like\n Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally\n alone, never finding a home.\nOr there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth\n in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with\n a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow\n old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who\n fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous\n dust.\n\"I'm sorry,\" you said. \"I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben.\"", "I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about\n going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.\n\n\n We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.\n\n\n \"When will you be back?\" you asked.\n\n\n Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. \"Maybe a\n couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen.\"\n\n\n Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.\n\n\n I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill\n the doubt worming through my brain.", "Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie.\n\n\n My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie!\n The audiogram had lied!\n\n\n I pressed the stud again. \"... regret to inform you of death of\n Charles ...\"\n\n\n I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken\n voice droned on.\n\n\n You ran to it, shut it off. \"I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—\"\n\n\n Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I\n remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze.\n The metallic words had told the truth.\n\n\n I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at\n Charlie's faded tin box.", "\"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't\n you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?\"\n\n\n Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears\n glittering in your eyes.\n\n\n \"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened\n on the\nCyclops\n. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was\n flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The\n men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it\n was—\"\n\n\n \"I know, Laura. Don't say it.\"\n\n\n You had to finish. \"It was a monster.\"", "And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we\n were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw\n the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each\n like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by\n the sons of Earth.\nThey expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of\n civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and\n a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do.\nI felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared.\nAt last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge,\n babbling wave.\n\n\n Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie.\n\n\n His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining\n like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear\n rows.", "We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said:\n \"Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's\n sort of funny.\"\n\n\n \"He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those\n days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a\n spaceman then.\"\n\n\n \"But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?\"\n\n\n I smiled and shook my head. \"If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie\n doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as\n I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson.\"\n\n\n You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew\n suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster.", "Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us\n to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his\n last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration\n to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.\n\n\n Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain\n the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.\n\n\n Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe\n on Mars, the\nSpace Rat\n, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.\n\n\n Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever\n part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.\n\n\n I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours." ], [ "But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and\n old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that\n it was hard to believe he'd once been young.\n\n\n He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.\n\n\n \"You made it, boy,\" he chortled, \"and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate\n tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as\n good spacemen should!\"\n\n\n Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,\n walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm\n with some silent melody.\n\n\n And you, Laura, were with him.\n\n\n \"Meet the Brat,\" he said. \"My sister Laura.\"", "\"Sure,\" I said to Mickey, \"we can still have a good weekend.\"\nI liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course.\n They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things,\n deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was\n cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional\n video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or\n housework.\n\n\n Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a\n shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.", "Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us\n to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his\n last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration\n to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.\n\n\n Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain\n the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.\n\n\n Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe\n on Mars, the\nSpace Rat\n, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.\n\n\n Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever\n part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.\n\n\n I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.", "\"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor\n of White Sands Port.\" He raised his hand to stop me. \"I know. It's not\n so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben.\"\n\n\n I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my\n knees with the blast of a jet.\n\n\n \"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have\n a good weekend.\"\n\n\n Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to\n reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the\n 'copter.", "And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, \"Sure,\n I'll stay, Mickey. Sure.\"\nForty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the\n little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying\n down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to\n teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon\n and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and\n promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.\n\n\n One morning I thought,\nWhy must I make a choice? Why can't I have both\n you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?\nAll day the thought lay in my mind like fire.\n\n\n That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: \"Laura, I\n want you to be my wife.\"", "I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of\n them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it\n had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and\n routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,\n I hadn't realized I was different.\nMy folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd\n have lived the kind of life a kid should live.\nMickey noticed my frown.\n\n\n \"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just\n not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—\"\n\n\n \"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really.\"\n\n\n \"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?\"", "I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about\n going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.\n\n\n We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.\n\n\n \"When will you be back?\" you asked.\n\n\n Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. \"Maybe a\n couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen.\"\n\n\n Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.\n\n\n I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill\n the doubt worming through my brain.", "In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.\n Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same\n decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to\n travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be\n no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.\n\n\n Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he\n could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never\n live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He\n left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a\n man's dream.\n\n\n He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven\n knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was\n kind—but that doesn't matter now.", "There was silence.\n\n\n You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were\n flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the\n feeling that I shouldn't have come here.\n\n\n You kept looking at me until I had to ask: \"What are you thinking,\n Laura?\"\n\n\n You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. \"No, I shouldn't be\n thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that.\"\n\n\n \"I could never hate you.\"\n\n\n \"It—it's about the stars,\" you said very softly. \"I understand why you\n want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were\n kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I\n dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I\n lived for months, just thinking about it.", "And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the\n result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so\n accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I\n knew, would find them ugly.\n\n\n You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: \"It's a privilege to\n meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first\n to reach the Moon!\"\n\n\n Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: \"Still going to spend the\n weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?\"\n\n\n I shook my head. \"Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're\n planning to see the town tonight.\"", "Do you know\nwhy\nhe wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't\n want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?\n\n\n It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the\n Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,\n brothers, the planets his children.\n\n\n You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes\n after you reach it. But how can one ever be\nsure\nuntil the journey is\n made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a\n star and think,\nI might have gone there; I could have been the first\n?\n\n\n We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one\n be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?", "\"\nUsed\nto want?\" I asked. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\n You bit your lip, not answering.\n\n\n \"What did she mean, Mickey?\"\n\n\n Mickey looked down at his feet. \"I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.\n We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—\"\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty\n uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If\n you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or\n another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know.\"\n\n\n My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. \"What are you trying to\n say, Mickey?\"", "Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders\n and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth\n and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,\n for I was thinking:\nHe's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the\n others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the\n first!\nMickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. \"I don't\n see 'em, Ben,\" he whispered. \"Where do you suppose they are?\"\n\n\n I blinked. \"Who?\"\n\n\n \"My folks.\"\n\n\n That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in\n a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those\n \"You are cordially invited\" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie\n Taggart.", "I accepted that job teaching.\nAnd now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,\n and the house is silent.\n\n\n It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am\n writing this.\n\n\n I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading\n the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that\n Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they\n could tell me what he could not express in words.\n\n\n And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.\n\n\n A wedding ring.", "That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me\n sleep.\nYou've got to decide now\n, I told myself.\nYou can't stay here. You've\n got to make a choice.\nThe teaching job was still open. The spot on the\nOdyssey\nwas still\n open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the\n way to Pluto.\nYou can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a\n home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now.\nOr you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a\n line in a history book.\nI cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, \"Get the hell out\n of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get\n out there on the\nOdyssey\nwhere you belong. We got a date on Mars,\n remember? At the\nSpace Rat\n, just off Chandler Field on the Grand\n Canal.\"", "That's what he'd say.\n\n\n And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.\n\n\n \"Oh God,\" I moaned, \"what shall I do?\"\nNext morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and\n brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who\n could be sending me a message.\n\n\n I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping,\n automatic voice droned: \"Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to\n inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman....\"\n\n\n Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word\n \"lung-rot\" and the metallic phrase, \"This message brought to you by\n courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps.\"\n\n\n I stood staring at the cylinder.\n\n\n Charles Taggart was dead.", "Then Mickey stiffened. \"I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!\"\n\n\n Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a\n garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a\n tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that\n he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at\n the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was\n mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only\n half as big.", "But he rounded a corner, still grinning and waving, and then he was\n gone.\nThat afternoon Mickey showed me his room. It was more like a boy's\n room than a spaceman's. In it were all the little things that kids\n treasure—pennants, models of Everson's two ships, a tennis trophy,\n books, a home-made video.\n\n\n I began to realize how important a room like this could be to a boy.\n I could imagine, too, the happiness that parents felt as they watched\n their children grow to adulthood.", "\"No, thanks,\" I answered. \"Better not count on me.\"\n\n\n A moment later Mickey said, frowning, \"What was he talking about, Ben?\n Did he make you an offer?\"\n\n\n I laughed. \"He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching\n astrogation. What a life\nthat\nwould be! Imagine standing in a\n classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—\"\n\n\n I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: \"When you've got the\n chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you\n want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want.\"\n\n\n I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to\n understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.\n\n\n Then your last words came back and jabbed me: \"That's what Mickey used\n to want.\"", "I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity\n of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a\n golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes\n of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a\n gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.\n\n\n \"I'm happy to meet you, Ben,\" you said. \"I've heard of no one else for\n the past year.\"\n\n\n A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an\n introduction of Charlie.\n\n\n You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old\n Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie\n scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a\n shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.\n His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing." ], [ "\"\nUsed\nto want?\" I asked. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\n You bit your lip, not answering.\n\n\n \"What did she mean, Mickey?\"\n\n\n Mickey looked down at his feet. \"I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.\n We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—\"\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty\n uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If\n you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or\n another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know.\"\n\n\n My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. \"What are you trying to\n say, Mickey?\"", "\"No, thanks,\" I answered. \"Better not count on me.\"\n\n\n A moment later Mickey said, frowning, \"What was he talking about, Ben?\n Did he make you an offer?\"\n\n\n I laughed. \"He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching\n astrogation. What a life\nthat\nwould be! Imagine standing in a\n classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—\"\n\n\n I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: \"When you've got the\n chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you\n want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want.\"\n\n\n I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to\n understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.\n\n\n Then your last words came back and jabbed me: \"That's what Mickey used\n to want.\"", "I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of\n them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it\n had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and\n routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,\n I hadn't realized I was different.\nMy folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd\n have lived the kind of life a kid should live.\nMickey noticed my frown.\n\n\n \"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just\n not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—\"\n\n\n \"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really.\"\n\n\n \"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?\"", "But he rounded a corner, still grinning and waving, and then he was\n gone.\nThat afternoon Mickey showed me his room. It was more like a boy's\n room than a spaceman's. In it were all the little things that kids\n treasure—pennants, models of Everson's two ships, a tennis trophy,\n books, a home-made video.\n\n\n I began to realize how important a room like this could be to a boy.\n I could imagine, too, the happiness that parents felt as they watched\n their children grow to adulthood.", "Then Mickey stiffened. \"I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!\"\n\n\n Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a\n garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a\n tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that\n he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at\n the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was\n mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only\n half as big.", "That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me\n sleep.\nYou've got to decide now\n, I told myself.\nYou can't stay here. You've\n got to make a choice.\nThe teaching job was still open. The spot on the\nOdyssey\nwas still\n open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the\n way to Pluto.\nYou can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a\n home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now.\nOr you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a\n line in a history book.\nI cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, \"Get the hell out\n of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get\n out there on the\nOdyssey\nwhere you belong. We got a date on Mars,\n remember? At the\nSpace Rat\n, just off Chandler Field on the Grand\n Canal.\"", "Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders\n and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth\n and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,\n for I was thinking:\nHe's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the\n others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the\n first!\nMickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. \"I don't\n see 'em, Ben,\" he whispered. \"Where do you suppose they are?\"\n\n\n I blinked. \"Who?\"\n\n\n \"My folks.\"\n\n\n That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in\n a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those\n \"You are cordially invited\" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie\n Taggart.", "Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us\n to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his\n last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration\n to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.\n\n\n Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain\n the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.\n\n\n Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe\n on Mars, the\nSpace Rat\n, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.\n\n\n Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever\n part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.\n\n\n I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.", "And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, \"Sure,\n I'll stay, Mickey. Sure.\"\nForty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the\n little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying\n down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to\n teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon\n and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and\n promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.\n\n\n One morning I thought,\nWhy must I make a choice? Why can't I have both\n you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?\nAll day the thought lay in my mind like fire.\n\n\n That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: \"Laura, I\n want you to be my wife.\"", "Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that\n I'd never noticed before.\nYou can go into space\n, I thought,\nand try to do as much living in\n ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died\n in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie\n buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like\n Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally\n alone, never finding a home.\nOr there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth\n in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with\n a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow\n old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who\n fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous\n dust.\n\"I'm sorry,\" you said. \"I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben.\"", "\"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't\n you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?\"\n\n\n Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears\n glittering in your eyes.\n\n\n \"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened\n on the\nCyclops\n. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was\n flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The\n men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it\n was—\"\n\n\n \"I know, Laura. Don't say it.\"\n\n\n You had to finish. \"It was a monster.\"", "I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about\n going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.\n\n\n We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.\n\n\n \"When will you be back?\" you asked.\n\n\n Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. \"Maybe a\n couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen.\"\n\n\n Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.\n\n\n I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill\n the doubt worming through my brain.", "Do you know\nwhy\nhe wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't\n want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?\n\n\n It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the\n Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,\n brothers, the planets his children.\n\n\n You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes\n after you reach it. But how can one ever be\nsure\nuntil the journey is\n made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a\n star and think,\nI might have gone there; I could have been the first\n?\n\n\n We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one\n be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?", "But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and\n old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that\n it was hard to believe he'd once been young.\n\n\n He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.\n\n\n \"You made it, boy,\" he chortled, \"and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate\n tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as\n good spacemen should!\"\n\n\n Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,\n walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm\n with some silent melody.\n\n\n And you, Laura, were with him.\n\n\n \"Meet the Brat,\" he said. \"My sister Laura.\"", "There was silence.\n\n\n You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were\n flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the\n feeling that I shouldn't have come here.\n\n\n You kept looking at me until I had to ask: \"What are you thinking,\n Laura?\"\n\n\n You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. \"No, I shouldn't be\n thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that.\"\n\n\n \"I could never hate you.\"\n\n\n \"It—it's about the stars,\" you said very softly. \"I understand why you\n want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were\n kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I\n dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I\n lived for months, just thinking about it.", "\"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the\nOdyssey\n, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me,\n too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than\n teaching. I want to be in deep space.\"\n\n\n \"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy\n Earth life while you can. Okay?\"\n\n\n I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted\n someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of\n courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.\n\n\n But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the\n flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever\n so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as\n much as I loved the stars.", "\"One summer we went. I had fun. I saw the old buildings and castles,\n and the spaceports and the Channel Tube. But after it was over, I\n realized England wasn't so different from America. Places seem exciting\n before you get to them, and afterward they're not really.\"\n\n\n I frowned. \"And you mean it might be the same with the stars? You think\n maybe I haven't grown up yet?\"\n\n\n Anxiety darkened your features. \"No, it'd be good to be a spaceman,\n to see the strange places and make history. But is it worth it? Is it\n worth the things you'd have to give up?\"\n\n\n I didn't understand at first, and I wanted to ask, \"Give up\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n Then I looked at you and the promise in your eyes, and I knew.\n\n\n All through the years I'd been walking down a single, narrow path.", "\"Sure,\" I said to Mickey, \"we can still have a good weekend.\"\nI liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course.\n They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things,\n deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was\n cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional\n video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or\n housework.\n\n\n Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a\n shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.", "In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.\n Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same\n decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to\n travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be\n no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.\n\n\n Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he\n could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never\n live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He\n left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a\n man's dream.\n\n\n He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven\n knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was\n kind—but that doesn't matter now.", "\"Why don't you both come with us?\" you asked. \"Our folks have their\n own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room.\n Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the\n Moon?\"\n\n\n Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew\n that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian\n fizzes and Plutonian zombies.\n\n\n But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.\n\n\n \"We'd really like to come,\" I said.\nOn our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was\n a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor\n should look.\n\n\n \"Ben,\" he called, \"don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two\n months to decide.\"" ], [ "I accepted that job teaching.\nAnd now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,\n and the house is silent.\n\n\n It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am\n writing this.\n\n\n I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading\n the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that\n Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they\n could tell me what he could not express in words.\n\n\n And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.\n\n\n A wedding ring.", "There was silence.\n\n\n You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were\n flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the\n feeling that I shouldn't have come here.\n\n\n You kept looking at me until I had to ask: \"What are you thinking,\n Laura?\"\n\n\n You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. \"No, I shouldn't be\n thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that.\"\n\n\n \"I could never hate you.\"\n\n\n \"It—it's about the stars,\" you said very softly. \"I understand why you\n want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were\n kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I\n dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I\n lived for months, just thinking about it.", "And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, \"Sure,\n I'll stay, Mickey. Sure.\"\nForty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the\n little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying\n down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to\n teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon\n and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and\n promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.\n\n\n One morning I thought,\nWhy must I make a choice? Why can't I have both\n you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?\nAll day the thought lay in my mind like fire.\n\n\n That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: \"Laura, I\n want you to be my wife.\"", "But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and\n old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that\n it was hard to believe he'd once been young.\n\n\n He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.\n\n\n \"You made it, boy,\" he chortled, \"and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate\n tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as\n good spacemen should!\"\n\n\n Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,\n walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm\n with some silent melody.\n\n\n And you, Laura, were with him.\n\n\n \"Meet the Brat,\" he said. \"My sister Laura.\"", "I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity\n of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a\n golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes\n of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a\n gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.\n\n\n \"I'm happy to meet you, Ben,\" you said. \"I've heard of no one else for\n the past year.\"\n\n\n A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an\n introduction of Charlie.\n\n\n You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old\n Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie\n scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a\n shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.\n His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.", "\"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor\n of White Sands Port.\" He raised his hand to stop me. \"I know. It's not\n so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben.\"\n\n\n I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my\n knees with the blast of a jet.\n\n\n \"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have\n a good weekend.\"\n\n\n Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to\n reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the\n 'copter.", "In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.\n Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same\n decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to\n travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be\n no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.\n\n\n Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he\n could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never\n live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He\n left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a\n man's dream.\n\n\n He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven\n knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was\n kind—but that doesn't matter now.", "\"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't\n you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?\"\n\n\n Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears\n glittering in your eyes.\n\n\n \"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened\n on the\nCyclops\n. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was\n flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The\n men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it\n was—\"\n\n\n \"I know, Laura. Don't say it.\"\n\n\n You had to finish. \"It was a monster.\"", "Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders\n and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth\n and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,\n for I was thinking:\nHe's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the\n others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the\n first!\nMickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. \"I don't\n see 'em, Ben,\" he whispered. \"Where do you suppose they are?\"\n\n\n I blinked. \"Who?\"\n\n\n \"My folks.\"\n\n\n That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in\n a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those\n \"You are cordially invited\" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie\n Taggart.", "Then Mickey stiffened. \"I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!\"\n\n\n Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a\n garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a\n tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that\n he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at\n the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was\n mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only\n half as big.", "That's what he'd say.\n\n\n And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.\n\n\n \"Oh God,\" I moaned, \"what shall I do?\"\nNext morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and\n brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who\n could be sending me a message.\n\n\n I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping,\n automatic voice droned: \"Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to\n inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman....\"\n\n\n Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word\n \"lung-rot\" and the metallic phrase, \"This message brought to you by\n courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps.\"\n\n\n I stood staring at the cylinder.\n\n\n Charles Taggart was dead.", "\"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the\nOdyssey\n, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me,\n too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than\n teaching. I want to be in deep space.\"\n\n\n \"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy\n Earth life while you can. Okay?\"\n\n\n I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted\n someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of\n courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.\n\n\n But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the\n flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever\n so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as\n much as I loved the stars.", "You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face\n flushed.\n\n\n Then you murmured, \"I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me\n to marry a spaceman or a teacher?\"\n\n\n \"Can't a spaceman marry, too?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see,\n Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for\nmaybe\ntwo months,\nmaybe\ntwo\n years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty—and I'd have what?\"\n\n\n Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. \"I wouldn't\n have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years,\n then teach.\"", "Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us\n to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his\n last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration\n to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.\n\n\n Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain\n the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.\n\n\n Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe\n on Mars, the\nSpace Rat\n, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.\n\n\n Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever\n part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.\n\n\n I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.", "I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of\n them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it\n had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and\n routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,\n I hadn't realized I was different.\nMy folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd\n have lived the kind of life a kid should live.\nMickey noticed my frown.\n\n\n \"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just\n not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—\"\n\n\n \"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really.\"\n\n\n \"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?\"", "Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that\n I'd never noticed before.\nYou can go into space\n, I thought,\nand try to do as much living in\n ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died\n in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie\n buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like\n Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally\n alone, never finding a home.\nOr there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth\n in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with\n a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow\n old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who\n fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous\n dust.\n\"I'm sorry,\" you said. \"I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben.\"", "\"Sure,\" I said to Mickey, \"we can still have a good weekend.\"\nI liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course.\n They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things,\n deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was\n cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional\n video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or\n housework.\n\n\n Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a\n shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.", "\"\nUsed\nto want?\" I asked. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\n You bit your lip, not answering.\n\n\n \"What did she mean, Mickey?\"\n\n\n Mickey looked down at his feet. \"I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.\n We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—\"\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty\n uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If\n you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or\n another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know.\"\n\n\n My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. \"What are you trying to\n say, Mickey?\"", "We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said:\n \"Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's\n sort of funny.\"\n\n\n \"He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those\n days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a\n spaceman then.\"\n\n\n \"But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?\"\n\n\n I smiled and shook my head. \"If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie\n doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as\n I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson.\"\n\n\n You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew\n suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster.", "Do you know\nwhy\nhe wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't\n want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?\n\n\n It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the\n Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,\n brothers, the planets his children.\n\n\n You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes\n after you reach it. But how can one ever be\nsure\nuntil the journey is\n made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a\n star and think,\nI might have gone there; I could have been the first\n?\n\n\n We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one\n be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?" ], [ "In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.\n Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same\n decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to\n travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be\n no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.\n\n\n Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he\n could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never\n live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He\n left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a\n man's dream.\n\n\n He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven\n knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was\n kind—but that doesn't matter now.", "\"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor\n of White Sands Port.\" He raised his hand to stop me. \"I know. It's not\n so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben.\"\n\n\n I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my\n knees with the blast of a jet.\n\n\n \"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have\n a good weekend.\"\n\n\n Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to\n reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the\n 'copter.", "Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us\n to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his\n last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration\n to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.\n\n\n Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain\n the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.\n\n\n Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe\n on Mars, the\nSpace Rat\n, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.\n\n\n Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever\n part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.\n\n\n I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.", "I accepted that job teaching.\nAnd now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,\n and the house is silent.\n\n\n It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am\n writing this.\n\n\n I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading\n the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that\n Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they\n could tell me what he could not express in words.\n\n\n And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.\n\n\n A wedding ring.", "\"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't\n you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?\"\n\n\n Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears\n glittering in your eyes.\n\n\n \"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened\n on the\nCyclops\n. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was\n flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The\n men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it\n was—\"\n\n\n \"I know, Laura. Don't say it.\"\n\n\n You had to finish. \"It was a monster.\"", "There was silence.\n\n\n You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were\n flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the\n feeling that I shouldn't have come here.\n\n\n You kept looking at me until I had to ask: \"What are you thinking,\n Laura?\"\n\n\n You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. \"No, I shouldn't be\n thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that.\"\n\n\n \"I could never hate you.\"\n\n\n \"It—it's about the stars,\" you said very softly. \"I understand why you\n want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were\n kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I\n dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I\n lived for months, just thinking about it.", "And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, \"Sure,\n I'll stay, Mickey. Sure.\"\nForty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the\n little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying\n down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to\n teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon\n and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and\n promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.\n\n\n One morning I thought,\nWhy must I make a choice? Why can't I have both\n you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?\nAll day the thought lay in my mind like fire.\n\n\n That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: \"Laura, I\n want you to be my wife.\"", "Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that\n I'd never noticed before.\nYou can go into space\n, I thought,\nand try to do as much living in\n ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died\n in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie\n buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like\n Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally\n alone, never finding a home.\nOr there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth\n in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with\n a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow\n old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who\n fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous\n dust.\n\"I'm sorry,\" you said. \"I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben.\"", "Do you know\nwhy\nhe wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't\n want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?\n\n\n It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the\n Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,\n brothers, the planets his children.\n\n\n You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes\n after you reach it. But how can one ever be\nsure\nuntil the journey is\n made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a\n star and think,\nI might have gone there; I could have been the first\n?\n\n\n We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one\n be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?", "That's what he'd say.\n\n\n And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.\n\n\n \"Oh God,\" I moaned, \"what shall I do?\"\nNext morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and\n brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who\n could be sending me a message.\n\n\n I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping,\n automatic voice droned: \"Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to\n inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman....\"\n\n\n Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word\n \"lung-rot\" and the metallic phrase, \"This message brought to you by\n courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps.\"\n\n\n I stood staring at the cylinder.\n\n\n Charles Taggart was dead.", "That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me\n sleep.\nYou've got to decide now\n, I told myself.\nYou can't stay here. You've\n got to make a choice.\nThe teaching job was still open. The spot on the\nOdyssey\nwas still\n open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the\n way to Pluto.\nYou can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a\n home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now.\nOr you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a\n line in a history book.\nI cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, \"Get the hell out\n of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get\n out there on the\nOdyssey\nwhere you belong. We got a date on Mars,\n remember? At the\nSpace Rat\n, just off Chandler Field on the Grand\n Canal.\"", "But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and\n old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that\n it was hard to believe he'd once been young.\n\n\n He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.\n\n\n \"You made it, boy,\" he chortled, \"and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate\n tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as\n good spacemen should!\"\n\n\n Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,\n walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm\n with some silent melody.\n\n\n And you, Laura, were with him.\n\n\n \"Meet the Brat,\" he said. \"My sister Laura.\"", "You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face\n flushed.\n\n\n Then you murmured, \"I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me\n to marry a spaceman or a teacher?\"\n\n\n \"Can't a spaceman marry, too?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see,\n Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for\nmaybe\ntwo months,\nmaybe\ntwo\n years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty—and I'd have what?\"\n\n\n Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. \"I wouldn't\n have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years,\n then teach.\"", "I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of\n them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it\n had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and\n routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,\n I hadn't realized I was different.\nMy folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd\n have lived the kind of life a kid should live.\nMickey noticed my frown.\n\n\n \"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just\n not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—\"\n\n\n \"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really.\"\n\n\n \"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?\"", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nOne man's retreat is another's prison ... and\n \nit takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!\nForty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's\n been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you\n what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the\n stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing\n fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an\n evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.\n\n\n Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....\n\n\n It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos,\n were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and\n laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after\n spawning its first-born.", "\"\nUsed\nto want?\" I asked. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\n You bit your lip, not answering.\n\n\n \"What did she mean, Mickey?\"\n\n\n Mickey looked down at his feet. \"I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.\n We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—\"\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty\n uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If\n you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or\n another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know.\"\n\n\n My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. \"What are you trying to\n say, Mickey?\"", "And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the\n result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so\n accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I\n knew, would find them ugly.\n\n\n You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: \"It's a privilege to\n meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first\n to reach the Moon!\"\n\n\n Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: \"Still going to spend the\n weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?\"\n\n\n I shook my head. \"Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're\n planning to see the town tonight.\"", "Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders\n and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth\n and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,\n for I was thinking:\nHe's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the\n others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the\n first!\nMickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. \"I don't\n see 'em, Ben,\" he whispered. \"Where do you suppose they are?\"\n\n\n I blinked. \"Who?\"\n\n\n \"My folks.\"\n\n\n That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in\n a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those\n \"You are cordially invited\" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie\n Taggart.", "\"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the\nOdyssey\n, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me,\n too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than\n teaching. I want to be in deep space.\"\n\n\n \"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy\n Earth life while you can. Okay?\"\n\n\n I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted\n someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of\n courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.\n\n\n But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the\n flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever\n so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as\n much as I loved the stars.", "\"No, thanks,\" I answered. \"Better not count on me.\"\n\n\n A moment later Mickey said, frowning, \"What was he talking about, Ben?\n Did he make you an offer?\"\n\n\n I laughed. \"He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching\n astrogation. What a life\nthat\nwould be! Imagine standing in a\n classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—\"\n\n\n I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: \"When you've got the\n chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you\n want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want.\"\n\n\n I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to\n understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.\n\n\n Then your last words came back and jabbed me: \"That's what Mickey used\n to want.\"" ], [ "I accepted that job teaching.\nAnd now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,\n and the house is silent.\n\n\n It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am\n writing this.\n\n\n I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading\n the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that\n Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they\n could tell me what he could not express in words.\n\n\n And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.\n\n\n A wedding ring.", "Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us\n to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his\n last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration\n to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.\n\n\n Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain\n the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.\n\n\n Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe\n on Mars, the\nSpace Rat\n, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.\n\n\n Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever\n part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.\n\n\n I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.", "And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, \"Sure,\n I'll stay, Mickey. Sure.\"\nForty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the\n little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying\n down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to\n teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon\n and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and\n promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.\n\n\n One morning I thought,\nWhy must I make a choice? Why can't I have both\n you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?\nAll day the thought lay in my mind like fire.\n\n\n That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: \"Laura, I\n want you to be my wife.\"", "In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.\n Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same\n decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to\n travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be\n no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.\n\n\n Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he\n could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never\n live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He\n left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a\n man's dream.\n\n\n He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven\n knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was\n kind—but that doesn't matter now.", "\"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor\n of White Sands Port.\" He raised his hand to stop me. \"I know. It's not\n so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben.\"\n\n\n I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my\n knees with the blast of a jet.\n\n\n \"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have\n a good weekend.\"\n\n\n Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to\n reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the\n 'copter.", "That's what he'd say.\n\n\n And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.\n\n\n \"Oh God,\" I moaned, \"what shall I do?\"\nNext morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and\n brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who\n could be sending me a message.\n\n\n I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping,\n automatic voice droned: \"Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to\n inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman....\"\n\n\n Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word\n \"lung-rot\" and the metallic phrase, \"This message brought to you by\n courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps.\"\n\n\n I stood staring at the cylinder.\n\n\n Charles Taggart was dead.", "There was silence.\n\n\n You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were\n flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the\n feeling that I shouldn't have come here.\n\n\n You kept looking at me until I had to ask: \"What are you thinking,\n Laura?\"\n\n\n You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. \"No, I shouldn't be\n thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that.\"\n\n\n \"I could never hate you.\"\n\n\n \"It—it's about the stars,\" you said very softly. \"I understand why you\n want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were\n kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I\n dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I\n lived for months, just thinking about it.", "\"\nUsed\nto want?\" I asked. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\n You bit your lip, not answering.\n\n\n \"What did she mean, Mickey?\"\n\n\n Mickey looked down at his feet. \"I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.\n We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—\"\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty\n uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If\n you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or\n another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know.\"\n\n\n My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. \"What are you trying to\n say, Mickey?\"", "You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face\n flushed.\n\n\n Then you murmured, \"I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me\n to marry a spaceman or a teacher?\"\n\n\n \"Can't a spaceman marry, too?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see,\n Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for\nmaybe\ntwo months,\nmaybe\ntwo\n years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty—and I'd have what?\"\n\n\n Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. \"I wouldn't\n have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years,\n then teach.\"", "Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders\n and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth\n and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,\n for I was thinking:\nHe's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the\n others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the\n first!\nMickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. \"I don't\n see 'em, Ben,\" he whispered. \"Where do you suppose they are?\"\n\n\n I blinked. \"Who?\"\n\n\n \"My folks.\"\n\n\n That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in\n a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those\n \"You are cordially invited\" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie\n Taggart.", "\"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't\n you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?\"\n\n\n Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears\n glittering in your eyes.\n\n\n \"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened\n on the\nCyclops\n. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was\n flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The\n men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it\n was—\"\n\n\n \"I know, Laura. Don't say it.\"\n\n\n You had to finish. \"It was a monster.\"", "But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and\n old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that\n it was hard to believe he'd once been young.\n\n\n He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.\n\n\n \"You made it, boy,\" he chortled, \"and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate\n tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as\n good spacemen should!\"\n\n\n Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,\n walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm\n with some silent melody.\n\n\n And you, Laura, were with him.\n\n\n \"Meet the Brat,\" he said. \"My sister Laura.\"", "Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie.\n\n\n My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie!\n The audiogram had lied!\n\n\n I pressed the stud again. \"... regret to inform you of death of\n Charles ...\"\n\n\n I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken\n voice droned on.\n\n\n You ran to it, shut it off. \"I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—\"\n\n\n Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I\n remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze.\n The metallic words had told the truth.\n\n\n I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at\n Charlie's faded tin box.", "\"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the\nOdyssey\n, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me,\n too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than\n teaching. I want to be in deep space.\"\n\n\n \"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy\n Earth life while you can. Okay?\"\n\n\n I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted\n someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of\n courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.\n\n\n But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the\n flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever\n so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as\n much as I loved the stars.", "Then Mickey stiffened. \"I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!\"\n\n\n Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a\n garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a\n tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that\n he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at\n the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was\n mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only\n half as big.", "I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity\n of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a\n golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes\n of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a\n gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.\n\n\n \"I'm happy to meet you, Ben,\" you said. \"I've heard of no one else for\n the past year.\"\n\n\n A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an\n introduction of Charlie.\n\n\n You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old\n Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie\n scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a\n shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.\n His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.", "\"It's all right,\" I said, clenching my fists. \"You made sense—a lot of\n sense.\"\nThe next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his\n scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin,\n tight coughs.\n\n\n Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. \"I'm\n leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought\n maybe you'd like to have 'em.\"\n\n\n I scowled, not understanding. \"Why, Charlie? What for?\"\n\n\n He shrugged as if afraid he might be accused of sentimentality. \"Oh,\n it's just that I've been dodgin' meteors now for twenty-five years.\n That's a long time, boy. Ain't one spaceman in a thousand that lucky.\n Some of these days, I won't be so lucky.\"", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nOne man's retreat is another's prison ... and\n \nit takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!\nForty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's\n been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you\n what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the\n stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing\n fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an\n evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.\n\n\n Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....\n\n\n It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos,\n were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and\n laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after\n spawning its first-born.", "Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that\n I'd never noticed before.\nYou can go into space\n, I thought,\nand try to do as much living in\n ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died\n in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie\n buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like\n Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally\n alone, never finding a home.\nOr there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth\n in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with\n a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow\n old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who\n fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous\n dust.\n\"I'm sorry,\" you said. \"I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben.\"", "\"Why don't you both come with us?\" you asked. \"Our folks have their\n own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room.\n Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the\n Moon?\"\n\n\n Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew\n that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian\n fizzes and Plutonian zombies.\n\n\n But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.\n\n\n \"We'd really like to come,\" I said.\nOn our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was\n a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor\n should look.\n\n\n \"Ben,\" he called, \"don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two\n months to decide.\"" ], [ "At the dinner table he stared glassily at nothing and grated, \"Only hit\n Mars once, but I'll never forget the kid who called himself a medic.\n Skipper started coughing, kept it up for three days. Whoopin' cough,\n the medic says, not knowin' the air had chemicals that turned to acid\n in your lungs. I'd never been to Mars before, but I knew better'n that.\n Hell, I says, that ain't whoopin' cough, that's lung-rot.\"\n\n\n That was when your father said he wasn't so hungry after all.\n\n\n Afterward, you and I walked onto the terrace, into the moonlit night,\n to watch for crimson-tailed continental rockets that occasionally\n streaked up from White Sands.", "That's what he'd say.\n\n\n And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.\n\n\n \"Oh God,\" I moaned, \"what shall I do?\"\nNext morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and\n brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who\n could be sending me a message.\n\n\n I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping,\n automatic voice droned: \"Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to\n inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman....\"\n\n\n Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word\n \"lung-rot\" and the metallic phrase, \"This message brought to you by\n courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps.\"\n\n\n I stood staring at the cylinder.\n\n\n Charles Taggart was dead.", "I tried to laugh. \"You're good for another twenty-five years, Charlie.\"\n\n\n He shook his head stiffly, staring at nothing. \"Maybe. Anyway, I'm\n gonna get off the Shuttle this time, make one more trip to Mars. Tell\n you what. There's a little stone cafe on Mars, the\nSpace Rat\n, just\n off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal. When you get to Mars, take a\n look inside. I'll probably be there.\"\n\n\n He coughed again, a deep, rasping cough that filled his eyes with tears.\n\n\n \"Not used to this Earth air,\" he muttered. \"What I need's some Martian\n climate.\"\n\n\n Suddenly that cough frightened me. It didn't seem normal. I wondered,\n too, about his stiff movements and glassy stare. It was as if he were\n drugged.", "I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about\n going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.\n\n\n We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.\n\n\n \"When will you be back?\" you asked.\n\n\n Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. \"Maybe a\n couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen.\"\n\n\n Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.\n\n\n I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill\n the doubt worming through my brain.", "Then, finally, I fingered his meager possessions—a few wrinkled\n photos, some letters, a small black statue of a forgotten Martian god,\n a gold service medal from the Moon Patrol.\nThis was what remained of Charlie after twenty-five years in space.\n It was a bitter bargain. A statue instead of a wife, yellowed letters\n instead of children, a medal instead of a home.\nIt'd be a great future\n, I thought.\nYou'd dream of sitting in a dingy\n stone dive on the Grand Canal with sand-wasps buzzing around smoky,\n stinking candles. A bottle of luchu juice and a couple of Martian girls\n with dirty feet for company. And a sudden cough that would be the first\n sign of lung-rot.\nTo hell with it!\n\n\n I walked into your living room and called Dean Dawson on the visiphone.", "\"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor\n of White Sands Port.\" He raised his hand to stop me. \"I know. It's not\n so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben.\"\n\n\n I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my\n knees with the blast of a jet.\n\n\n \"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have\n a good weekend.\"\n\n\n Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to\n reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the\n 'copter.", "In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.\n Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same\n decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to\n travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be\n no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.\n\n\n Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he\n could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never\n live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He\n left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a\n man's dream.\n\n\n He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven\n knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was\n kind—but that doesn't matter now.", "Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie.\n\n\n My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie!\n The audiogram had lied!\n\n\n I pressed the stud again. \"... regret to inform you of death of\n Charles ...\"\n\n\n I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken\n voice droned on.\n\n\n You ran to it, shut it off. \"I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—\"\n\n\n Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I\n remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze.\n The metallic words had told the truth.\n\n\n I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at\n Charlie's faded tin box.", "But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and\n old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that\n it was hard to believe he'd once been young.\n\n\n He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.\n\n\n \"You made it, boy,\" he chortled, \"and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate\n tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as\n good spacemen should!\"\n\n\n Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,\n walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm\n with some silent melody.\n\n\n And you, Laura, were with him.\n\n\n \"Meet the Brat,\" he said. \"My sister Laura.\"", "And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the\n result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so\n accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I\n knew, would find them ugly.\n\n\n You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: \"It's a privilege to\n meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first\n to reach the Moon!\"\n\n\n Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: \"Still going to spend the\n weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?\"\n\n\n I shook my head. \"Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're\n planning to see the town tonight.\"", "And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we\n were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw\n the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each\n like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by\n the sons of Earth.\nThey expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of\n civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and\n a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do.\nI felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared.\nAt last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge,\n babbling wave.\n\n\n Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie.\n\n\n His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining\n like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear\n rows.", "\"It's all right,\" I said, clenching my fists. \"You made sense—a lot of\n sense.\"\nThe next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his\n scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin,\n tight coughs.\n\n\n Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. \"I'm\n leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought\n maybe you'd like to have 'em.\"\n\n\n I scowled, not understanding. \"Why, Charlie? What for?\"\n\n\n He shrugged as if afraid he might be accused of sentimentality. \"Oh,\n it's just that I've been dodgin' meteors now for twenty-five years.\n That's a long time, boy. Ain't one spaceman in a thousand that lucky.\n Some of these days, I won't be so lucky.\"", "\"\nUsed\nto want?\" I asked. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\n You bit your lip, not answering.\n\n\n \"What did she mean, Mickey?\"\n\n\n Mickey looked down at his feet. \"I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.\n We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—\"\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty\n uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If\n you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or\n another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know.\"\n\n\n My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. \"What are you trying to\n say, Mickey?\"", "Do you know\nwhy\nhe wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't\n want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?\n\n\n It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the\n Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,\n brothers, the planets his children.\n\n\n You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes\n after you reach it. But how can one ever be\nsure\nuntil the journey is\n made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a\n star and think,\nI might have gone there; I could have been the first\n?\n\n\n We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one\n be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?", "Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that\n I'd never noticed before.\nYou can go into space\n, I thought,\nand try to do as much living in\n ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died\n in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie\n buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like\n Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally\n alone, never finding a home.\nOr there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth\n in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with\n a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow\n old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who\n fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous\n dust.\n\"I'm sorry,\" you said. \"I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben.\"", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nOne man's retreat is another's prison ... and\n \nit takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!\nForty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's\n been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you\n what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the\n stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing\n fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an\n evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.\n\n\n Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....\n\n\n It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos,\n were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and\n laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after\n spawning its first-born.", "Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was a\n veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years\n ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the\nLunar\n Lady\n, a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White\n Sands.\n\n\n I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island\n Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like\n me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I\n remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet.\n\n\n My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It\n wasn't surprising. The\nLunar Lady\nwas in White Sands now, but\n liberties, as Charlie said, were as scarce as water on Mars.\nIt doesn't matter\n, I told myself.", "Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders\n and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth\n and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,\n for I was thinking:\nHe's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the\n others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the\n first!\nMickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. \"I don't\n see 'em, Ben,\" he whispered. \"Where do you suppose they are?\"\n\n\n I blinked. \"Who?\"\n\n\n \"My folks.\"\n\n\n That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in\n a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those\n \"You are cordially invited\" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie\n Taggart.", "There was silence.\n\n\n You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were\n flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the\n feeling that I shouldn't have come here.\n\n\n You kept looking at me until I had to ask: \"What are you thinking,\n Laura?\"\n\n\n You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. \"No, I shouldn't be\n thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that.\"\n\n\n \"I could never hate you.\"\n\n\n \"It—it's about the stars,\" you said very softly. \"I understand why you\n want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were\n kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I\n dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I\n lived for months, just thinking about it.", "We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said:\n \"Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's\n sort of funny.\"\n\n\n \"He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those\n days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a\n spaceman then.\"\n\n\n \"But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?\"\n\n\n I smiled and shook my head. \"If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie\n doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as\n I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson.\"\n\n\n You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew\n suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster." ] ]
train	20046	[ "Who was stigmatized the most over swearing publicly?", "What is not increasing as time goes on?", "What would Graves and Montagu agree about?", "Why does swearing lose its power?", "What would the author say about the impact of swearing on our current society?", "Who would the author most agree with about swearing?", "What wouldn't the author agree with?" ]	[ [ "Kenneth Tynan", "Robert Graves", "Michael Irvin ", "Greg Lloyd" ], [ "the amount of people allowed to swear without punishment", "the amount of words considered taboo", "the amount of profanity heard", "societal tolerance" ], [ "swear words are overused", "swearing is the adult form of whining", "swearing prevents aggressive behaviors", "swearing makes people feel better" ], [ "kids are less scared of swearing than they used to be", "as people get older, the words are easier to say", "the ideas they represent are less taboo than they used to be", "our culture has matured, making swearing unimportant" ], [ "it is important for our culture to continue to grow accustomed to using swear words", "our feeling about swearing now shows a more educated society", "we have more rebels than we used to", "it is unhealthy for our society to have powerless swear words" ], [ "Mussolini", "Ashley Montagu", "Robert Graves", "Michael Irvin" ], [ "new swear words will exist in the future", "it's important for a culture to have profane words", "swear words have changed over the centuries", "all people should become more comfortable with swearing" ] ]	[ 1, 2, 4, 3, 4, 3, 4 ]	[ 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "It turned out there were a few more than Tynan thought. Within 24 hours, resolutions had been introduced in the House of Commons calling for his prosecution on charges of obscenity, for his removal as a theater official, and for censure of the network for allowing an obscene word to go out on the airwaves. Tynan escaped punishment, but he acquired a public reputation for tastelessness that he carried for the rest his life. To much of ordinary Britain, he became the man who had said \"[expletive]\" on the BBC. \n\n Neither Greg Lloyd nor Michael Irvin was so stigmatized. \"It's live television,\" NBC Vice President Ed Markey said, rationalizing the outbursts. \"It's an emotional moment. These things happen.\" Irvin wasn't about to let that stand. \"I knew exactly what I was saying,\" he insisted later. \"Those of you who can't believe I said it--believe it.\"", "Iwatched those episodes, and, incongruous as it may sound, I thought of Kenneth Tynan. Britain's great postwar drama critic was no fan of American football, but he was a fan of swearing. Thirty years earlier, almost to the week, Tynan was interviewed on BBC television in his capacity as literary director of Britain's National Theater and asked if he would allow the theater to present a play in which sex took place on stage. \"Certainly,\" he replied. \"I think there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word '[expletive]' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.\"", "That most of the forbidden words of the 1950s are no longer forbidden will come as news to nobody: The steady debasement of the common language is only one of many social strictures that have loosened from the previous generation to the current. What is important is that profanity served a variety of purposes for a long time in Western culture. It does not serve those purposes any more. \n\n What purposes? There are a couple of plausible answers. One of them is emotional release. Robert Graves, who wrote a book in the 1920s called The Future of Swearing , thought that profanity was the adult replacement for childhood tears. There comes a point in life, he wrote, when \"wailing is rightly discouraged, and groans are also considered a signal of extreme weakness. Silence under suffering is usually impossible.\" So one reaches back for a word one does not normally use, and utters it without undue embarrassment or guilt. And one feels better--even stimulated.", "Swearing isn't the only public act that Western civilization condones today but didn't 30 years ago. But it is one of the most interesting. It is everywhere, impossible to avoid or tune out. \n\n \n\n \n\n I am sitting in a meeting at the office, talking with a colleague about a business circumstance that may possibly go against us. \"In that case, we're [expletive] ,\" he says. Five years ago, he would have said \"screwed.\" Twenty years ago, he would have said, \"We're in big trouble.\" Societal tolerance of profanity requires us to increase our dosage as time goes on.", "The anthropologist Ashley Montagu, whose Anatomy of Swearing , published in 1967, is the definitive modern take on the subject, saw profanity as a safety valve rather than a stimulant, a verbal substitute for physical aggression. When someone swears, Montagu wrote, \"potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous.\" \n\n One could point out, in arguing against the safety-valve theory, that as America has grown more profane in the past 30 years, it has also grown more violent, not less. But this is too simple. It isn't just the supply of dirty words that matters, it's their emotive power. If they have lost that power through overuse, it's perfectly plausible to say that their capacity to deter aggressive behavior has weakened as well. \n\n But there is something else important to say about swearing--that it represents the invocation of those ideas a society considers powerful, awesome, and a little scary.", "Nor do we believe in sex any more the way most American children and millions of adults believed in it a generation ago: as an act of profound mystery and importance that one did not engage in, or discuss, or even invoke, without a certain amount of excitement and risk. We have trivialized and routinized sex to the point where it just doesn't carry the emotional freight it carried in the schoolyards and bedrooms of the 1950s. \n\n Many enlightened people consider this to be a great improvement over a society in which sex generated not only emotion and power, but fear. For the moment, I wish to insist only on this one point: When sexuality loses its power to awe, it loses its power to create genuine swearing. When we convert it into a casual form of recreation, we shouldn't be surprised to hear linebackers using the word \"[expletive]\" on national television.", "In that culture, the word \"[expletive]\" was not only obscene, it was profane, in the original sense: It took an important idea in vain. Profanity can be an act of religious defiance, but it doesn't have to be. The Greeks tempted fate by invoking the names of their superiors on Mount Olympus; they also swore upon everyday objects whose properties they respected but did not fully understand. \"By the Cabbage!\" Socrates is supposed to have said in moments of stress, and that was for good reason. He believed that cabbage cured hangovers, and as such, carried sufficient power and mystery to invest any moment with the requisite emotional charge. \n\n These days, none of us believes in cabbage in the way Socrates did, or in the gods in the way most Athenians did. Most Americans tell poll-takers that they believe in God, but few of them in a way that would make it impossible to take His name in vain: That requires an Old Testament piety that disappeared from American middle-class life a long time ago.", "What word is taboo in middle-class America in 1996? There are a couple of credible candidates: The four-letter word for \"vagina\" remains off-limits in polite conversation (although that has more to do with feminism than with profanity), and the slang expression for those who engage in oral sex with males is not yet acceptable by the standards of office-meeting etiquette. \n\n But aside from a few exceptions, the supply of genuinely offensive language has dwindled almost to nothing as the 20th century comes to an end; the currency of swearing has been inflated to the brink of worthlessness. When almost anything can be said in public, profanity ceases to exist in any meaningful way at all.", "Maledict\noratory\nThe high costs of low language. \n\n Sunday, Jan. 14, 1996: A day that will live in--well, not infamy, exactly. Blasphemy would be closer to it. \n\n Early that afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win the American Football Conference championship. Linebacker Greg Lloyd, accepting the trophy in front of a national television audience, responded with enthusiasm. \"Let's see if we can bring this damn thing back here next year,\" he said, \"along with the [expletive] Super Bowl.\" \n\n A few hours later, Michael Irvin of the Dallas Cowboys offered this spirited defense of his coach on TV after his team won the National Football Conference title: \"Nobody deserves it more than Barry Switzer. He took all of this [expletive] .\"", "What do we do about it? Well, we could pass a law against swearing. Mussolini actually did that. He decreed that trains and buses, in addition to running on time, had to carry signs that read \"Non bestemmiare per l'onore d'Italia.\" (\"Do not swear for the honor of Italy.\") The commuters of Rome reacted to those signs exactly as you would expect: They cursed them. \n\n What Mussolini could not do, I am reasonably sure that American governments of the 1990s cannot do, nor would I wish it. I merely predict that sometime in the coming generation, profanity will return in a meaningful way. It served too many purposes for too many years of American life to disappear on a permanent basis. We need it.", "I'm not sure there is an easy way to convey to anybody under 30, for example, the sheer emotive force that the word \"[expletive]\" possessed in the urban childhood culture of 40 years ago. It was the verbal link to a secret act none of us understood but that was known to carry enormous consequences in the adult world. It was the embodiment of both pleasure and danger. It was not a word or an idea to mess with. When it was used, it was used, as Ashley Montagu said, \"sotto voce , like a smuggler cautiously making his way across a forbidden frontier.\"", "I am walking along a suburban street, trailing a class of pre-schoolers who are linked to each other by a rope. A pair of teen-agers passes us in the other direction. By the time they have reached the end of the line of children, they have tossed off a whole catalog of obscenities I did not even hear until I was well into adolescence, let alone use in casual conversation on a public street. \n\n \n\n I am talking to a distinguished professor of public policy about a foundation grant. I tell her something she wasn't aware of before. In 1965, the appropriate response was \"no kidding.\" In 1996, you do not say \"no kidding.\" It is limp and ineffectual. If you are surprised at all, you say what she says: \"No shit.\"", "And so I am reasonably sure that when my children have children, there will once again be words so awesome that they cannot be uttered without important consequences. This will not only represent a new stage of linguistic evolution, it will be a token of moral revival. What the dirty words will be, God only knows.", "To profane something, in other words, one must believe in it. The cheapening of profanity in modern America represents, more than anything else, the crumbling of belief. There are very few ideas left at this point that are awesome or frightening enough for us to enforce a taboo against them. \n\n The instinctive response of most educated people to the disappearance of any taboo is to applaud it, but this is wrong. Healthy societies need a decent supply of verbal taboos and prohibitions, if only as yardsticks by which ordinary people can measure and define themselves. By violating these taboos over and over, some succeed in defining themselves as rebels. Others violate them on special occasions to derive an emotional release. Forbidden language is one of the ways we remind children that there are rules to everyday life, and consequences for breaking them. When we forget this principle, or cease to accept it, it is not just our language that begins to fray at the edges." ], [ "Swearing isn't the only public act that Western civilization condones today but didn't 30 years ago. But it is one of the most interesting. It is everywhere, impossible to avoid or tune out. \n\n \n\n \n\n I am sitting in a meeting at the office, talking with a colleague about a business circumstance that may possibly go against us. \"In that case, we're [expletive] ,\" he says. Five years ago, he would have said \"screwed.\" Twenty years ago, he would have said, \"We're in big trouble.\" Societal tolerance of profanity requires us to increase our dosage as time goes on.", "Nor do we believe in sex any more the way most American children and millions of adults believed in it a generation ago: as an act of profound mystery and importance that one did not engage in, or discuss, or even invoke, without a certain amount of excitement and risk. We have trivialized and routinized sex to the point where it just doesn't carry the emotional freight it carried in the schoolyards and bedrooms of the 1950s. \n\n Many enlightened people consider this to be a great improvement over a society in which sex generated not only emotion and power, but fear. For the moment, I wish to insist only on this one point: When sexuality loses its power to awe, it loses its power to create genuine swearing. When we convert it into a casual form of recreation, we shouldn't be surprised to hear linebackers using the word \"[expletive]\" on national television.", "What do we do about it? Well, we could pass a law against swearing. Mussolini actually did that. He decreed that trains and buses, in addition to running on time, had to carry signs that read \"Non bestemmiare per l'onore d'Italia.\" (\"Do not swear for the honor of Italy.\") The commuters of Rome reacted to those signs exactly as you would expect: They cursed them. \n\n What Mussolini could not do, I am reasonably sure that American governments of the 1990s cannot do, nor would I wish it. I merely predict that sometime in the coming generation, profanity will return in a meaningful way. It served too many purposes for too many years of American life to disappear on a permanent basis. We need it.", "What word is taboo in middle-class America in 1996? There are a couple of credible candidates: The four-letter word for \"vagina\" remains off-limits in polite conversation (although that has more to do with feminism than with profanity), and the slang expression for those who engage in oral sex with males is not yet acceptable by the standards of office-meeting etiquette. \n\n But aside from a few exceptions, the supply of genuinely offensive language has dwindled almost to nothing as the 20th century comes to an end; the currency of swearing has been inflated to the brink of worthlessness. When almost anything can be said in public, profanity ceases to exist in any meaningful way at all.", "I am walking along a suburban street, trailing a class of pre-schoolers who are linked to each other by a rope. A pair of teen-agers passes us in the other direction. By the time they have reached the end of the line of children, they have tossed off a whole catalog of obscenities I did not even hear until I was well into adolescence, let alone use in casual conversation on a public street. \n\n \n\n I am talking to a distinguished professor of public policy about a foundation grant. I tell her something she wasn't aware of before. In 1965, the appropriate response was \"no kidding.\" In 1996, you do not say \"no kidding.\" It is limp and ineffectual. If you are surprised at all, you say what she says: \"No shit.\"", "And so I am reasonably sure that when my children have children, there will once again be words so awesome that they cannot be uttered without important consequences. This will not only represent a new stage of linguistic evolution, it will be a token of moral revival. What the dirty words will be, God only knows.", "The anthropologist Ashley Montagu, whose Anatomy of Swearing , published in 1967, is the definitive modern take on the subject, saw profanity as a safety valve rather than a stimulant, a verbal substitute for physical aggression. When someone swears, Montagu wrote, \"potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous.\" \n\n One could point out, in arguing against the safety-valve theory, that as America has grown more profane in the past 30 years, it has also grown more violent, not less. But this is too simple. It isn't just the supply of dirty words that matters, it's their emotive power. If they have lost that power through overuse, it's perfectly plausible to say that their capacity to deter aggressive behavior has weakened as well. \n\n But there is something else important to say about swearing--that it represents the invocation of those ideas a society considers powerful, awesome, and a little scary.", "To profane something, in other words, one must believe in it. The cheapening of profanity in modern America represents, more than anything else, the crumbling of belief. There are very few ideas left at this point that are awesome or frightening enough for us to enforce a taboo against them. \n\n The instinctive response of most educated people to the disappearance of any taboo is to applaud it, but this is wrong. Healthy societies need a decent supply of verbal taboos and prohibitions, if only as yardsticks by which ordinary people can measure and define themselves. By violating these taboos over and over, some succeed in defining themselves as rebels. Others violate them on special occasions to derive an emotional release. Forbidden language is one of the ways we remind children that there are rules to everyday life, and consequences for breaking them. When we forget this principle, or cease to accept it, it is not just our language that begins to fray at the edges.", "That most of the forbidden words of the 1950s are no longer forbidden will come as news to nobody: The steady debasement of the common language is only one of many social strictures that have loosened from the previous generation to the current. What is important is that profanity served a variety of purposes for a long time in Western culture. It does not serve those purposes any more. \n\n What purposes? There are a couple of plausible answers. One of them is emotional release. Robert Graves, who wrote a book in the 1920s called The Future of Swearing , thought that profanity was the adult replacement for childhood tears. There comes a point in life, he wrote, when \"wailing is rightly discouraged, and groans are also considered a signal of extreme weakness. Silence under suffering is usually impossible.\" So one reaches back for a word one does not normally use, and utters it without undue embarrassment or guilt. And one feels better--even stimulated.", "I'm not sure there is an easy way to convey to anybody under 30, for example, the sheer emotive force that the word \"[expletive]\" possessed in the urban childhood culture of 40 years ago. It was the verbal link to a secret act none of us understood but that was known to carry enormous consequences in the adult world. It was the embodiment of both pleasure and danger. It was not a word or an idea to mess with. When it was used, it was used, as Ashley Montagu said, \"sotto voce , like a smuggler cautiously making his way across a forbidden frontier.\"", "In that culture, the word \"[expletive]\" was not only obscene, it was profane, in the original sense: It took an important idea in vain. Profanity can be an act of religious defiance, but it doesn't have to be. The Greeks tempted fate by invoking the names of their superiors on Mount Olympus; they also swore upon everyday objects whose properties they respected but did not fully understand. \"By the Cabbage!\" Socrates is supposed to have said in moments of stress, and that was for good reason. He believed that cabbage cured hangovers, and as such, carried sufficient power and mystery to invest any moment with the requisite emotional charge. \n\n These days, none of us believes in cabbage in the way Socrates did, or in the gods in the way most Athenians did. Most Americans tell poll-takers that they believe in God, but few of them in a way that would make it impossible to take His name in vain: That requires an Old Testament piety that disappeared from American middle-class life a long time ago.", "Iwatched those episodes, and, incongruous as it may sound, I thought of Kenneth Tynan. Britain's great postwar drama critic was no fan of American football, but he was a fan of swearing. Thirty years earlier, almost to the week, Tynan was interviewed on BBC television in his capacity as literary director of Britain's National Theater and asked if he would allow the theater to present a play in which sex took place on stage. \"Certainly,\" he replied. \"I think there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word '[expletive]' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.\"", "It turned out there were a few more than Tynan thought. Within 24 hours, resolutions had been introduced in the House of Commons calling for his prosecution on charges of obscenity, for his removal as a theater official, and for censure of the network for allowing an obscene word to go out on the airwaves. Tynan escaped punishment, but he acquired a public reputation for tastelessness that he carried for the rest his life. To much of ordinary Britain, he became the man who had said \"[expletive]\" on the BBC. \n\n Neither Greg Lloyd nor Michael Irvin was so stigmatized. \"It's live television,\" NBC Vice President Ed Markey said, rationalizing the outbursts. \"It's an emotional moment. These things happen.\" Irvin wasn't about to let that stand. \"I knew exactly what I was saying,\" he insisted later. \"Those of you who can't believe I said it--believe it.\"", "Maledict\noratory\nThe high costs of low language. \n\n Sunday, Jan. 14, 1996: A day that will live in--well, not infamy, exactly. Blasphemy would be closer to it. \n\n Early that afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win the American Football Conference championship. Linebacker Greg Lloyd, accepting the trophy in front of a national television audience, responded with enthusiasm. \"Let's see if we can bring this damn thing back here next year,\" he said, \"along with the [expletive] Super Bowl.\" \n\n A few hours later, Michael Irvin of the Dallas Cowboys offered this spirited defense of his coach on TV after his team won the National Football Conference title: \"Nobody deserves it more than Barry Switzer. He took all of this [expletive] .\"" ], [ "Iwatched those episodes, and, incongruous as it may sound, I thought of Kenneth Tynan. Britain's great postwar drama critic was no fan of American football, but he was a fan of swearing. Thirty years earlier, almost to the week, Tynan was interviewed on BBC television in his capacity as literary director of Britain's National Theater and asked if he would allow the theater to present a play in which sex took place on stage. \"Certainly,\" he replied. \"I think there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word '[expletive]' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.\"", "The anthropologist Ashley Montagu, whose Anatomy of Swearing , published in 1967, is the definitive modern take on the subject, saw profanity as a safety valve rather than a stimulant, a verbal substitute for physical aggression. When someone swears, Montagu wrote, \"potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous.\" \n\n One could point out, in arguing against the safety-valve theory, that as America has grown more profane in the past 30 years, it has also grown more violent, not less. But this is too simple. It isn't just the supply of dirty words that matters, it's their emotive power. If they have lost that power through overuse, it's perfectly plausible to say that their capacity to deter aggressive behavior has weakened as well. \n\n But there is something else important to say about swearing--that it represents the invocation of those ideas a society considers powerful, awesome, and a little scary.", "It turned out there were a few more than Tynan thought. Within 24 hours, resolutions had been introduced in the House of Commons calling for his prosecution on charges of obscenity, for his removal as a theater official, and for censure of the network for allowing an obscene word to go out on the airwaves. Tynan escaped punishment, but he acquired a public reputation for tastelessness that he carried for the rest his life. To much of ordinary Britain, he became the man who had said \"[expletive]\" on the BBC. \n\n Neither Greg Lloyd nor Michael Irvin was so stigmatized. \"It's live television,\" NBC Vice President Ed Markey said, rationalizing the outbursts. \"It's an emotional moment. These things happen.\" Irvin wasn't about to let that stand. \"I knew exactly what I was saying,\" he insisted later. \"Those of you who can't believe I said it--believe it.\"", "I'm not sure there is an easy way to convey to anybody under 30, for example, the sheer emotive force that the word \"[expletive]\" possessed in the urban childhood culture of 40 years ago. It was the verbal link to a secret act none of us understood but that was known to carry enormous consequences in the adult world. It was the embodiment of both pleasure and danger. It was not a word or an idea to mess with. When it was used, it was used, as Ashley Montagu said, \"sotto voce , like a smuggler cautiously making his way across a forbidden frontier.\"", "Nor do we believe in sex any more the way most American children and millions of adults believed in it a generation ago: as an act of profound mystery and importance that one did not engage in, or discuss, or even invoke, without a certain amount of excitement and risk. We have trivialized and routinized sex to the point where it just doesn't carry the emotional freight it carried in the schoolyards and bedrooms of the 1950s. \n\n Many enlightened people consider this to be a great improvement over a society in which sex generated not only emotion and power, but fear. For the moment, I wish to insist only on this one point: When sexuality loses its power to awe, it loses its power to create genuine swearing. When we convert it into a casual form of recreation, we shouldn't be surprised to hear linebackers using the word \"[expletive]\" on national television.", "To profane something, in other words, one must believe in it. The cheapening of profanity in modern America represents, more than anything else, the crumbling of belief. There are very few ideas left at this point that are awesome or frightening enough for us to enforce a taboo against them. \n\n The instinctive response of most educated people to the disappearance of any taboo is to applaud it, but this is wrong. Healthy societies need a decent supply of verbal taboos and prohibitions, if only as yardsticks by which ordinary people can measure and define themselves. By violating these taboos over and over, some succeed in defining themselves as rebels. Others violate them on special occasions to derive an emotional release. Forbidden language is one of the ways we remind children that there are rules to everyday life, and consequences for breaking them. When we forget this principle, or cease to accept it, it is not just our language that begins to fray at the edges.", "In that culture, the word \"[expletive]\" was not only obscene, it was profane, in the original sense: It took an important idea in vain. Profanity can be an act of religious defiance, but it doesn't have to be. The Greeks tempted fate by invoking the names of their superiors on Mount Olympus; they also swore upon everyday objects whose properties they respected but did not fully understand. \"By the Cabbage!\" Socrates is supposed to have said in moments of stress, and that was for good reason. He believed that cabbage cured hangovers, and as such, carried sufficient power and mystery to invest any moment with the requisite emotional charge. \n\n These days, none of us believes in cabbage in the way Socrates did, or in the gods in the way most Athenians did. Most Americans tell poll-takers that they believe in God, but few of them in a way that would make it impossible to take His name in vain: That requires an Old Testament piety that disappeared from American middle-class life a long time ago.", "That most of the forbidden words of the 1950s are no longer forbidden will come as news to nobody: The steady debasement of the common language is only one of many social strictures that have loosened from the previous generation to the current. What is important is that profanity served a variety of purposes for a long time in Western culture. It does not serve those purposes any more. \n\n What purposes? There are a couple of plausible answers. One of them is emotional release. Robert Graves, who wrote a book in the 1920s called The Future of Swearing , thought that profanity was the adult replacement for childhood tears. There comes a point in life, he wrote, when \"wailing is rightly discouraged, and groans are also considered a signal of extreme weakness. Silence under suffering is usually impossible.\" So one reaches back for a word one does not normally use, and utters it without undue embarrassment or guilt. And one feels better--even stimulated.", "And so I am reasonably sure that when my children have children, there will once again be words so awesome that they cannot be uttered without important consequences. This will not only represent a new stage of linguistic evolution, it will be a token of moral revival. What the dirty words will be, God only knows.", "What word is taboo in middle-class America in 1996? There are a couple of credible candidates: The four-letter word for \"vagina\" remains off-limits in polite conversation (although that has more to do with feminism than with profanity), and the slang expression for those who engage in oral sex with males is not yet acceptable by the standards of office-meeting etiquette. \n\n But aside from a few exceptions, the supply of genuinely offensive language has dwindled almost to nothing as the 20th century comes to an end; the currency of swearing has been inflated to the brink of worthlessness. When almost anything can be said in public, profanity ceases to exist in any meaningful way at all.", "What do we do about it? Well, we could pass a law against swearing. Mussolini actually did that. He decreed that trains and buses, in addition to running on time, had to carry signs that read \"Non bestemmiare per l'onore d'Italia.\" (\"Do not swear for the honor of Italy.\") The commuters of Rome reacted to those signs exactly as you would expect: They cursed them. \n\n What Mussolini could not do, I am reasonably sure that American governments of the 1990s cannot do, nor would I wish it. I merely predict that sometime in the coming generation, profanity will return in a meaningful way. It served too many purposes for too many years of American life to disappear on a permanent basis. We need it.", "Maledict\noratory\nThe high costs of low language. \n\n Sunday, Jan. 14, 1996: A day that will live in--well, not infamy, exactly. Blasphemy would be closer to it. \n\n Early that afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win the American Football Conference championship. Linebacker Greg Lloyd, accepting the trophy in front of a national television audience, responded with enthusiasm. \"Let's see if we can bring this damn thing back here next year,\" he said, \"along with the [expletive] Super Bowl.\" \n\n A few hours later, Michael Irvin of the Dallas Cowboys offered this spirited defense of his coach on TV after his team won the National Football Conference title: \"Nobody deserves it more than Barry Switzer. He took all of this [expletive] .\"", "I am walking along a suburban street, trailing a class of pre-schoolers who are linked to each other by a rope. A pair of teen-agers passes us in the other direction. By the time they have reached the end of the line of children, they have tossed off a whole catalog of obscenities I did not even hear until I was well into adolescence, let alone use in casual conversation on a public street. \n\n \n\n I am talking to a distinguished professor of public policy about a foundation grant. I tell her something she wasn't aware of before. In 1965, the appropriate response was \"no kidding.\" In 1996, you do not say \"no kidding.\" It is limp and ineffectual. If you are surprised at all, you say what she says: \"No shit.\"", "Swearing isn't the only public act that Western civilization condones today but didn't 30 years ago. But it is one of the most interesting. It is everywhere, impossible to avoid or tune out. \n\n \n\n \n\n I am sitting in a meeting at the office, talking with a colleague about a business circumstance that may possibly go against us. \"In that case, we're [expletive] ,\" he says. Five years ago, he would have said \"screwed.\" Twenty years ago, he would have said, \"We're in big trouble.\" Societal tolerance of profanity requires us to increase our dosage as time goes on." ], [ "Nor do we believe in sex any more the way most American children and millions of adults believed in it a generation ago: as an act of profound mystery and importance that one did not engage in, or discuss, or even invoke, without a certain amount of excitement and risk. We have trivialized and routinized sex to the point where it just doesn't carry the emotional freight it carried in the schoolyards and bedrooms of the 1950s. \n\n Many enlightened people consider this to be a great improvement over a society in which sex generated not only emotion and power, but fear. For the moment, I wish to insist only on this one point: When sexuality loses its power to awe, it loses its power to create genuine swearing. When we convert it into a casual form of recreation, we shouldn't be surprised to hear linebackers using the word \"[expletive]\" on national television.", "The anthropologist Ashley Montagu, whose Anatomy of Swearing , published in 1967, is the definitive modern take on the subject, saw profanity as a safety valve rather than a stimulant, a verbal substitute for physical aggression. When someone swears, Montagu wrote, \"potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous.\" \n\n One could point out, in arguing against the safety-valve theory, that as America has grown more profane in the past 30 years, it has also grown more violent, not less. But this is too simple. It isn't just the supply of dirty words that matters, it's their emotive power. If they have lost that power through overuse, it's perfectly plausible to say that their capacity to deter aggressive behavior has weakened as well. \n\n But there is something else important to say about swearing--that it represents the invocation of those ideas a society considers powerful, awesome, and a little scary.", "To profane something, in other words, one must believe in it. The cheapening of profanity in modern America represents, more than anything else, the crumbling of belief. There are very few ideas left at this point that are awesome or frightening enough for us to enforce a taboo against them. \n\n The instinctive response of most educated people to the disappearance of any taboo is to applaud it, but this is wrong. Healthy societies need a decent supply of verbal taboos and prohibitions, if only as yardsticks by which ordinary people can measure and define themselves. By violating these taboos over and over, some succeed in defining themselves as rebels. Others violate them on special occasions to derive an emotional release. Forbidden language is one of the ways we remind children that there are rules to everyday life, and consequences for breaking them. When we forget this principle, or cease to accept it, it is not just our language that begins to fray at the edges.", "That most of the forbidden words of the 1950s are no longer forbidden will come as news to nobody: The steady debasement of the common language is only one of many social strictures that have loosened from the previous generation to the current. What is important is that profanity served a variety of purposes for a long time in Western culture. It does not serve those purposes any more. \n\n What purposes? There are a couple of plausible answers. One of them is emotional release. Robert Graves, who wrote a book in the 1920s called The Future of Swearing , thought that profanity was the adult replacement for childhood tears. There comes a point in life, he wrote, when \"wailing is rightly discouraged, and groans are also considered a signal of extreme weakness. Silence under suffering is usually impossible.\" So one reaches back for a word one does not normally use, and utters it without undue embarrassment or guilt. And one feels better--even stimulated.", "In that culture, the word \"[expletive]\" was not only obscene, it was profane, in the original sense: It took an important idea in vain. Profanity can be an act of religious defiance, but it doesn't have to be. The Greeks tempted fate by invoking the names of their superiors on Mount Olympus; they also swore upon everyday objects whose properties they respected but did not fully understand. \"By the Cabbage!\" Socrates is supposed to have said in moments of stress, and that was for good reason. He believed that cabbage cured hangovers, and as such, carried sufficient power and mystery to invest any moment with the requisite emotional charge. \n\n These days, none of us believes in cabbage in the way Socrates did, or in the gods in the way most Athenians did. Most Americans tell poll-takers that they believe in God, but few of them in a way that would make it impossible to take His name in vain: That requires an Old Testament piety that disappeared from American middle-class life a long time ago.", "What do we do about it? Well, we could pass a law against swearing. Mussolini actually did that. He decreed that trains and buses, in addition to running on time, had to carry signs that read \"Non bestemmiare per l'onore d'Italia.\" (\"Do not swear for the honor of Italy.\") The commuters of Rome reacted to those signs exactly as you would expect: They cursed them. \n\n What Mussolini could not do, I am reasonably sure that American governments of the 1990s cannot do, nor would I wish it. I merely predict that sometime in the coming generation, profanity will return in a meaningful way. It served too many purposes for too many years of American life to disappear on a permanent basis. We need it.", "And so I am reasonably sure that when my children have children, there will once again be words so awesome that they cannot be uttered without important consequences. This will not only represent a new stage of linguistic evolution, it will be a token of moral revival. What the dirty words will be, God only knows.", "Swearing isn't the only public act that Western civilization condones today but didn't 30 years ago. But it is one of the most interesting. It is everywhere, impossible to avoid or tune out. \n\n \n\n \n\n I am sitting in a meeting at the office, talking with a colleague about a business circumstance that may possibly go against us. \"In that case, we're [expletive] ,\" he says. Five years ago, he would have said \"screwed.\" Twenty years ago, he would have said, \"We're in big trouble.\" Societal tolerance of profanity requires us to increase our dosage as time goes on.", "I'm not sure there is an easy way to convey to anybody under 30, for example, the sheer emotive force that the word \"[expletive]\" possessed in the urban childhood culture of 40 years ago. It was the verbal link to a secret act none of us understood but that was known to carry enormous consequences in the adult world. It was the embodiment of both pleasure and danger. It was not a word or an idea to mess with. When it was used, it was used, as Ashley Montagu said, \"sotto voce , like a smuggler cautiously making his way across a forbidden frontier.\"", "What word is taboo in middle-class America in 1996? There are a couple of credible candidates: The four-letter word for \"vagina\" remains off-limits in polite conversation (although that has more to do with feminism than with profanity), and the slang expression for those who engage in oral sex with males is not yet acceptable by the standards of office-meeting etiquette. \n\n But aside from a few exceptions, the supply of genuinely offensive language has dwindled almost to nothing as the 20th century comes to an end; the currency of swearing has been inflated to the brink of worthlessness. When almost anything can be said in public, profanity ceases to exist in any meaningful way at all.", "I am walking along a suburban street, trailing a class of pre-schoolers who are linked to each other by a rope. A pair of teen-agers passes us in the other direction. By the time they have reached the end of the line of children, they have tossed off a whole catalog of obscenities I did not even hear until I was well into adolescence, let alone use in casual conversation on a public street. \n\n \n\n I am talking to a distinguished professor of public policy about a foundation grant. I tell her something she wasn't aware of before. In 1965, the appropriate response was \"no kidding.\" In 1996, you do not say \"no kidding.\" It is limp and ineffectual. If you are surprised at all, you say what she says: \"No shit.\"", "Iwatched those episodes, and, incongruous as it may sound, I thought of Kenneth Tynan. Britain's great postwar drama critic was no fan of American football, but he was a fan of swearing. Thirty years earlier, almost to the week, Tynan was interviewed on BBC television in his capacity as literary director of Britain's National Theater and asked if he would allow the theater to present a play in which sex took place on stage. \"Certainly,\" he replied. \"I think there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word '[expletive]' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.\"", "Maledict\noratory\nThe high costs of low language. \n\n Sunday, Jan. 14, 1996: A day that will live in--well, not infamy, exactly. Blasphemy would be closer to it. \n\n Early that afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win the American Football Conference championship. Linebacker Greg Lloyd, accepting the trophy in front of a national television audience, responded with enthusiasm. \"Let's see if we can bring this damn thing back here next year,\" he said, \"along with the [expletive] Super Bowl.\" \n\n A few hours later, Michael Irvin of the Dallas Cowboys offered this spirited defense of his coach on TV after his team won the National Football Conference title: \"Nobody deserves it more than Barry Switzer. He took all of this [expletive] .\"", "It turned out there were a few more than Tynan thought. Within 24 hours, resolutions had been introduced in the House of Commons calling for his prosecution on charges of obscenity, for his removal as a theater official, and for censure of the network for allowing an obscene word to go out on the airwaves. Tynan escaped punishment, but he acquired a public reputation for tastelessness that he carried for the rest his life. To much of ordinary Britain, he became the man who had said \"[expletive]\" on the BBC. \n\n Neither Greg Lloyd nor Michael Irvin was so stigmatized. \"It's live television,\" NBC Vice President Ed Markey said, rationalizing the outbursts. \"It's an emotional moment. These things happen.\" Irvin wasn't about to let that stand. \"I knew exactly what I was saying,\" he insisted later. \"Those of you who can't believe I said it--believe it.\"" ], [ "The anthropologist Ashley Montagu, whose Anatomy of Swearing , published in 1967, is the definitive modern take on the subject, saw profanity as a safety valve rather than a stimulant, a verbal substitute for physical aggression. When someone swears, Montagu wrote, \"potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous.\" \n\n One could point out, in arguing against the safety-valve theory, that as America has grown more profane in the past 30 years, it has also grown more violent, not less. But this is too simple. It isn't just the supply of dirty words that matters, it's their emotive power. If they have lost that power through overuse, it's perfectly plausible to say that their capacity to deter aggressive behavior has weakened as well. \n\n But there is something else important to say about swearing--that it represents the invocation of those ideas a society considers powerful, awesome, and a little scary.", "That most of the forbidden words of the 1950s are no longer forbidden will come as news to nobody: The steady debasement of the common language is only one of many social strictures that have loosened from the previous generation to the current. What is important is that profanity served a variety of purposes for a long time in Western culture. It does not serve those purposes any more. \n\n What purposes? There are a couple of plausible answers. One of them is emotional release. Robert Graves, who wrote a book in the 1920s called The Future of Swearing , thought that profanity was the adult replacement for childhood tears. There comes a point in life, he wrote, when \"wailing is rightly discouraged, and groans are also considered a signal of extreme weakness. Silence under suffering is usually impossible.\" So one reaches back for a word one does not normally use, and utters it without undue embarrassment or guilt. And one feels better--even stimulated.", "What do we do about it? Well, we could pass a law against swearing. Mussolini actually did that. He decreed that trains and buses, in addition to running on time, had to carry signs that read \"Non bestemmiare per l'onore d'Italia.\" (\"Do not swear for the honor of Italy.\") The commuters of Rome reacted to those signs exactly as you would expect: They cursed them. \n\n What Mussolini could not do, I am reasonably sure that American governments of the 1990s cannot do, nor would I wish it. I merely predict that sometime in the coming generation, profanity will return in a meaningful way. It served too many purposes for too many years of American life to disappear on a permanent basis. We need it.", "Nor do we believe in sex any more the way most American children and millions of adults believed in it a generation ago: as an act of profound mystery and importance that one did not engage in, or discuss, or even invoke, without a certain amount of excitement and risk. We have trivialized and routinized sex to the point where it just doesn't carry the emotional freight it carried in the schoolyards and bedrooms of the 1950s. \n\n Many enlightened people consider this to be a great improvement over a society in which sex generated not only emotion and power, but fear. For the moment, I wish to insist only on this one point: When sexuality loses its power to awe, it loses its power to create genuine swearing. When we convert it into a casual form of recreation, we shouldn't be surprised to hear linebackers using the word \"[expletive]\" on national television.", "To profane something, in other words, one must believe in it. The cheapening of profanity in modern America represents, more than anything else, the crumbling of belief. There are very few ideas left at this point that are awesome or frightening enough for us to enforce a taboo against them. \n\n The instinctive response of most educated people to the disappearance of any taboo is to applaud it, but this is wrong. Healthy societies need a decent supply of verbal taboos and prohibitions, if only as yardsticks by which ordinary people can measure and define themselves. By violating these taboos over and over, some succeed in defining themselves as rebels. Others violate them on special occasions to derive an emotional release. Forbidden language is one of the ways we remind children that there are rules to everyday life, and consequences for breaking them. When we forget this principle, or cease to accept it, it is not just our language that begins to fray at the edges.", "Swearing isn't the only public act that Western civilization condones today but didn't 30 years ago. But it is one of the most interesting. It is everywhere, impossible to avoid or tune out. \n\n \n\n \n\n I am sitting in a meeting at the office, talking with a colleague about a business circumstance that may possibly go against us. \"In that case, we're [expletive] ,\" he says. Five years ago, he would have said \"screwed.\" Twenty years ago, he would have said, \"We're in big trouble.\" Societal tolerance of profanity requires us to increase our dosage as time goes on.", "And so I am reasonably sure that when my children have children, there will once again be words so awesome that they cannot be uttered without important consequences. This will not only represent a new stage of linguistic evolution, it will be a token of moral revival. What the dirty words will be, God only knows.", "I am walking along a suburban street, trailing a class of pre-schoolers who are linked to each other by a rope. A pair of teen-agers passes us in the other direction. By the time they have reached the end of the line of children, they have tossed off a whole catalog of obscenities I did not even hear until I was well into adolescence, let alone use in casual conversation on a public street. \n\n \n\n I am talking to a distinguished professor of public policy about a foundation grant. I tell her something she wasn't aware of before. In 1965, the appropriate response was \"no kidding.\" In 1996, you do not say \"no kidding.\" It is limp and ineffectual. If you are surprised at all, you say what she says: \"No shit.\"", "In that culture, the word \"[expletive]\" was not only obscene, it was profane, in the original sense: It took an important idea in vain. Profanity can be an act of religious defiance, but it doesn't have to be. The Greeks tempted fate by invoking the names of their superiors on Mount Olympus; they also swore upon everyday objects whose properties they respected but did not fully understand. \"By the Cabbage!\" Socrates is supposed to have said in moments of stress, and that was for good reason. He believed that cabbage cured hangovers, and as such, carried sufficient power and mystery to invest any moment with the requisite emotional charge. \n\n These days, none of us believes in cabbage in the way Socrates did, or in the gods in the way most Athenians did. Most Americans tell poll-takers that they believe in God, but few of them in a way that would make it impossible to take His name in vain: That requires an Old Testament piety that disappeared from American middle-class life a long time ago.", "I'm not sure there is an easy way to convey to anybody under 30, for example, the sheer emotive force that the word \"[expletive]\" possessed in the urban childhood culture of 40 years ago. It was the verbal link to a secret act none of us understood but that was known to carry enormous consequences in the adult world. It was the embodiment of both pleasure and danger. It was not a word or an idea to mess with. When it was used, it was used, as Ashley Montagu said, \"sotto voce , like a smuggler cautiously making his way across a forbidden frontier.\"", "What word is taboo in middle-class America in 1996? There are a couple of credible candidates: The four-letter word for \"vagina\" remains off-limits in polite conversation (although that has more to do with feminism than with profanity), and the slang expression for those who engage in oral sex with males is not yet acceptable by the standards of office-meeting etiquette. \n\n But aside from a few exceptions, the supply of genuinely offensive language has dwindled almost to nothing as the 20th century comes to an end; the currency of swearing has been inflated to the brink of worthlessness. When almost anything can be said in public, profanity ceases to exist in any meaningful way at all.", "Maledict\noratory\nThe high costs of low language. \n\n Sunday, Jan. 14, 1996: A day that will live in--well, not infamy, exactly. Blasphemy would be closer to it. \n\n Early that afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win the American Football Conference championship. Linebacker Greg Lloyd, accepting the trophy in front of a national television audience, responded with enthusiasm. \"Let's see if we can bring this damn thing back here next year,\" he said, \"along with the [expletive] Super Bowl.\" \n\n A few hours later, Michael Irvin of the Dallas Cowboys offered this spirited defense of his coach on TV after his team won the National Football Conference title: \"Nobody deserves it more than Barry Switzer. He took all of this [expletive] .\"", "Iwatched those episodes, and, incongruous as it may sound, I thought of Kenneth Tynan. Britain's great postwar drama critic was no fan of American football, but he was a fan of swearing. Thirty years earlier, almost to the week, Tynan was interviewed on BBC television in his capacity as literary director of Britain's National Theater and asked if he would allow the theater to present a play in which sex took place on stage. \"Certainly,\" he replied. \"I think there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word '[expletive]' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.\"", "It turned out there were a few more than Tynan thought. Within 24 hours, resolutions had been introduced in the House of Commons calling for his prosecution on charges of obscenity, for his removal as a theater official, and for censure of the network for allowing an obscene word to go out on the airwaves. Tynan escaped punishment, but he acquired a public reputation for tastelessness that he carried for the rest his life. To much of ordinary Britain, he became the man who had said \"[expletive]\" on the BBC. \n\n Neither Greg Lloyd nor Michael Irvin was so stigmatized. \"It's live television,\" NBC Vice President Ed Markey said, rationalizing the outbursts. \"It's an emotional moment. These things happen.\" Irvin wasn't about to let that stand. \"I knew exactly what I was saying,\" he insisted later. \"Those of you who can't believe I said it--believe it.\"" ], [ "The anthropologist Ashley Montagu, whose Anatomy of Swearing , published in 1967, is the definitive modern take on the subject, saw profanity as a safety valve rather than a stimulant, a verbal substitute for physical aggression. When someone swears, Montagu wrote, \"potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous.\" \n\n One could point out, in arguing against the safety-valve theory, that as America has grown more profane in the past 30 years, it has also grown more violent, not less. But this is too simple. It isn't just the supply of dirty words that matters, it's their emotive power. If they have lost that power through overuse, it's perfectly plausible to say that their capacity to deter aggressive behavior has weakened as well. \n\n But there is something else important to say about swearing--that it represents the invocation of those ideas a society considers powerful, awesome, and a little scary.", "What do we do about it? Well, we could pass a law against swearing. Mussolini actually did that. He decreed that trains and buses, in addition to running on time, had to carry signs that read \"Non bestemmiare per l'onore d'Italia.\" (\"Do not swear for the honor of Italy.\") The commuters of Rome reacted to those signs exactly as you would expect: They cursed them. \n\n What Mussolini could not do, I am reasonably sure that American governments of the 1990s cannot do, nor would I wish it. I merely predict that sometime in the coming generation, profanity will return in a meaningful way. It served too many purposes for too many years of American life to disappear on a permanent basis. We need it.", "That most of the forbidden words of the 1950s are no longer forbidden will come as news to nobody: The steady debasement of the common language is only one of many social strictures that have loosened from the previous generation to the current. What is important is that profanity served a variety of purposes for a long time in Western culture. It does not serve those purposes any more. \n\n What purposes? There are a couple of plausible answers. One of them is emotional release. Robert Graves, who wrote a book in the 1920s called The Future of Swearing , thought that profanity was the adult replacement for childhood tears. There comes a point in life, he wrote, when \"wailing is rightly discouraged, and groans are also considered a signal of extreme weakness. Silence under suffering is usually impossible.\" So one reaches back for a word one does not normally use, and utters it without undue embarrassment or guilt. And one feels better--even stimulated.", "In that culture, the word \"[expletive]\" was not only obscene, it was profane, in the original sense: It took an important idea in vain. Profanity can be an act of religious defiance, but it doesn't have to be. The Greeks tempted fate by invoking the names of their superiors on Mount Olympus; they also swore upon everyday objects whose properties they respected but did not fully understand. \"By the Cabbage!\" Socrates is supposed to have said in moments of stress, and that was for good reason. He believed that cabbage cured hangovers, and as such, carried sufficient power and mystery to invest any moment with the requisite emotional charge. \n\n These days, none of us believes in cabbage in the way Socrates did, or in the gods in the way most Athenians did. Most Americans tell poll-takers that they believe in God, but few of them in a way that would make it impossible to take His name in vain: That requires an Old Testament piety that disappeared from American middle-class life a long time ago.", "Nor do we believe in sex any more the way most American children and millions of adults believed in it a generation ago: as an act of profound mystery and importance that one did not engage in, or discuss, or even invoke, without a certain amount of excitement and risk. We have trivialized and routinized sex to the point where it just doesn't carry the emotional freight it carried in the schoolyards and bedrooms of the 1950s. \n\n Many enlightened people consider this to be a great improvement over a society in which sex generated not only emotion and power, but fear. For the moment, I wish to insist only on this one point: When sexuality loses its power to awe, it loses its power to create genuine swearing. When we convert it into a casual form of recreation, we shouldn't be surprised to hear linebackers using the word \"[expletive]\" on national television.", "Iwatched those episodes, and, incongruous as it may sound, I thought of Kenneth Tynan. Britain's great postwar drama critic was no fan of American football, but he was a fan of swearing. Thirty years earlier, almost to the week, Tynan was interviewed on BBC television in his capacity as literary director of Britain's National Theater and asked if he would allow the theater to present a play in which sex took place on stage. \"Certainly,\" he replied. \"I think there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word '[expletive]' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.\"", "To profane something, in other words, one must believe in it. The cheapening of profanity in modern America represents, more than anything else, the crumbling of belief. There are very few ideas left at this point that are awesome or frightening enough for us to enforce a taboo against them. \n\n The instinctive response of most educated people to the disappearance of any taboo is to applaud it, but this is wrong. Healthy societies need a decent supply of verbal taboos and prohibitions, if only as yardsticks by which ordinary people can measure and define themselves. By violating these taboos over and over, some succeed in defining themselves as rebels. Others violate them on special occasions to derive an emotional release. Forbidden language is one of the ways we remind children that there are rules to everyday life, and consequences for breaking them. When we forget this principle, or cease to accept it, it is not just our language that begins to fray at the edges.", "Swearing isn't the only public act that Western civilization condones today but didn't 30 years ago. But it is one of the most interesting. It is everywhere, impossible to avoid or tune out. \n\n \n\n \n\n I am sitting in a meeting at the office, talking with a colleague about a business circumstance that may possibly go against us. \"In that case, we're [expletive] ,\" he says. Five years ago, he would have said \"screwed.\" Twenty years ago, he would have said, \"We're in big trouble.\" Societal tolerance of profanity requires us to increase our dosage as time goes on.", "And so I am reasonably sure that when my children have children, there will once again be words so awesome that they cannot be uttered without important consequences. This will not only represent a new stage of linguistic evolution, it will be a token of moral revival. What the dirty words will be, God only knows.", "Maledict\noratory\nThe high costs of low language. \n\n Sunday, Jan. 14, 1996: A day that will live in--well, not infamy, exactly. Blasphemy would be closer to it. \n\n Early that afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win the American Football Conference championship. Linebacker Greg Lloyd, accepting the trophy in front of a national television audience, responded with enthusiasm. \"Let's see if we can bring this damn thing back here next year,\" he said, \"along with the [expletive] Super Bowl.\" \n\n A few hours later, Michael Irvin of the Dallas Cowboys offered this spirited defense of his coach on TV after his team won the National Football Conference title: \"Nobody deserves it more than Barry Switzer. He took all of this [expletive] .\"", "What word is taboo in middle-class America in 1996? There are a couple of credible candidates: The four-letter word for \"vagina\" remains off-limits in polite conversation (although that has more to do with feminism than with profanity), and the slang expression for those who engage in oral sex with males is not yet acceptable by the standards of office-meeting etiquette. \n\n But aside from a few exceptions, the supply of genuinely offensive language has dwindled almost to nothing as the 20th century comes to an end; the currency of swearing has been inflated to the brink of worthlessness. When almost anything can be said in public, profanity ceases to exist in any meaningful way at all.", "I am walking along a suburban street, trailing a class of pre-schoolers who are linked to each other by a rope. A pair of teen-agers passes us in the other direction. By the time they have reached the end of the line of children, they have tossed off a whole catalog of obscenities I did not even hear until I was well into adolescence, let alone use in casual conversation on a public street. \n\n \n\n I am talking to a distinguished professor of public policy about a foundation grant. I tell her something she wasn't aware of before. In 1965, the appropriate response was \"no kidding.\" In 1996, you do not say \"no kidding.\" It is limp and ineffectual. If you are surprised at all, you say what she says: \"No shit.\"", "I'm not sure there is an easy way to convey to anybody under 30, for example, the sheer emotive force that the word \"[expletive]\" possessed in the urban childhood culture of 40 years ago. It was the verbal link to a secret act none of us understood but that was known to carry enormous consequences in the adult world. It was the embodiment of both pleasure and danger. It was not a word or an idea to mess with. When it was used, it was used, as Ashley Montagu said, \"sotto voce , like a smuggler cautiously making his way across a forbidden frontier.\"", "It turned out there were a few more than Tynan thought. Within 24 hours, resolutions had been introduced in the House of Commons calling for his prosecution on charges of obscenity, for his removal as a theater official, and for censure of the network for allowing an obscene word to go out on the airwaves. Tynan escaped punishment, but he acquired a public reputation for tastelessness that he carried for the rest his life. To much of ordinary Britain, he became the man who had said \"[expletive]\" on the BBC. \n\n Neither Greg Lloyd nor Michael Irvin was so stigmatized. \"It's live television,\" NBC Vice President Ed Markey said, rationalizing the outbursts. \"It's an emotional moment. These things happen.\" Irvin wasn't about to let that stand. \"I knew exactly what I was saying,\" he insisted later. \"Those of you who can't believe I said it--believe it.\"" ], [ "Iwatched those episodes, and, incongruous as it may sound, I thought of Kenneth Tynan. Britain's great postwar drama critic was no fan of American football, but he was a fan of swearing. Thirty years earlier, almost to the week, Tynan was interviewed on BBC television in his capacity as literary director of Britain's National Theater and asked if he would allow the theater to present a play in which sex took place on stage. \"Certainly,\" he replied. \"I think there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word '[expletive]' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.\"", "Nor do we believe in sex any more the way most American children and millions of adults believed in it a generation ago: as an act of profound mystery and importance that one did not engage in, or discuss, or even invoke, without a certain amount of excitement and risk. We have trivialized and routinized sex to the point where it just doesn't carry the emotional freight it carried in the schoolyards and bedrooms of the 1950s. \n\n Many enlightened people consider this to be a great improvement over a society in which sex generated not only emotion and power, but fear. For the moment, I wish to insist only on this one point: When sexuality loses its power to awe, it loses its power to create genuine swearing. When we convert it into a casual form of recreation, we shouldn't be surprised to hear linebackers using the word \"[expletive]\" on national television.", "Swearing isn't the only public act that Western civilization condones today but didn't 30 years ago. But it is one of the most interesting. It is everywhere, impossible to avoid or tune out. \n\n \n\n \n\n I am sitting in a meeting at the office, talking with a colleague about a business circumstance that may possibly go against us. \"In that case, we're [expletive] ,\" he says. Five years ago, he would have said \"screwed.\" Twenty years ago, he would have said, \"We're in big trouble.\" Societal tolerance of profanity requires us to increase our dosage as time goes on.", "In that culture, the word \"[expletive]\" was not only obscene, it was profane, in the original sense: It took an important idea in vain. Profanity can be an act of religious defiance, but it doesn't have to be. The Greeks tempted fate by invoking the names of their superiors on Mount Olympus; they also swore upon everyday objects whose properties they respected but did not fully understand. \"By the Cabbage!\" Socrates is supposed to have said in moments of stress, and that was for good reason. He believed that cabbage cured hangovers, and as such, carried sufficient power and mystery to invest any moment with the requisite emotional charge. \n\n These days, none of us believes in cabbage in the way Socrates did, or in the gods in the way most Athenians did. Most Americans tell poll-takers that they believe in God, but few of them in a way that would make it impossible to take His name in vain: That requires an Old Testament piety that disappeared from American middle-class life a long time ago.", "It turned out there were a few more than Tynan thought. Within 24 hours, resolutions had been introduced in the House of Commons calling for his prosecution on charges of obscenity, for his removal as a theater official, and for censure of the network for allowing an obscene word to go out on the airwaves. Tynan escaped punishment, but he acquired a public reputation for tastelessness that he carried for the rest his life. To much of ordinary Britain, he became the man who had said \"[expletive]\" on the BBC. \n\n Neither Greg Lloyd nor Michael Irvin was so stigmatized. \"It's live television,\" NBC Vice President Ed Markey said, rationalizing the outbursts. \"It's an emotional moment. These things happen.\" Irvin wasn't about to let that stand. \"I knew exactly what I was saying,\" he insisted later. \"Those of you who can't believe I said it--believe it.\"", "I'm not sure there is an easy way to convey to anybody under 30, for example, the sheer emotive force that the word \"[expletive]\" possessed in the urban childhood culture of 40 years ago. It was the verbal link to a secret act none of us understood but that was known to carry enormous consequences in the adult world. It was the embodiment of both pleasure and danger. It was not a word or an idea to mess with. When it was used, it was used, as Ashley Montagu said, \"sotto voce , like a smuggler cautiously making his way across a forbidden frontier.\"", "I am walking along a suburban street, trailing a class of pre-schoolers who are linked to each other by a rope. A pair of teen-agers passes us in the other direction. By the time they have reached the end of the line of children, they have tossed off a whole catalog of obscenities I did not even hear until I was well into adolescence, let alone use in casual conversation on a public street. \n\n \n\n I am talking to a distinguished professor of public policy about a foundation grant. I tell her something she wasn't aware of before. In 1965, the appropriate response was \"no kidding.\" In 1996, you do not say \"no kidding.\" It is limp and ineffectual. If you are surprised at all, you say what she says: \"No shit.\"", "To profane something, in other words, one must believe in it. The cheapening of profanity in modern America represents, more than anything else, the crumbling of belief. There are very few ideas left at this point that are awesome or frightening enough for us to enforce a taboo against them. \n\n The instinctive response of most educated people to the disappearance of any taboo is to applaud it, but this is wrong. Healthy societies need a decent supply of verbal taboos and prohibitions, if only as yardsticks by which ordinary people can measure and define themselves. By violating these taboos over and over, some succeed in defining themselves as rebels. Others violate them on special occasions to derive an emotional release. Forbidden language is one of the ways we remind children that there are rules to everyday life, and consequences for breaking them. When we forget this principle, or cease to accept it, it is not just our language that begins to fray at the edges.", "The anthropologist Ashley Montagu, whose Anatomy of Swearing , published in 1967, is the definitive modern take on the subject, saw profanity as a safety valve rather than a stimulant, a verbal substitute for physical aggression. When someone swears, Montagu wrote, \"potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous.\" \n\n One could point out, in arguing against the safety-valve theory, that as America has grown more profane in the past 30 years, it has also grown more violent, not less. But this is too simple. It isn't just the supply of dirty words that matters, it's their emotive power. If they have lost that power through overuse, it's perfectly plausible to say that their capacity to deter aggressive behavior has weakened as well. \n\n But there is something else important to say about swearing--that it represents the invocation of those ideas a society considers powerful, awesome, and a little scary.", "What do we do about it? Well, we could pass a law against swearing. Mussolini actually did that. He decreed that trains and buses, in addition to running on time, had to carry signs that read \"Non bestemmiare per l'onore d'Italia.\" (\"Do not swear for the honor of Italy.\") The commuters of Rome reacted to those signs exactly as you would expect: They cursed them. \n\n What Mussolini could not do, I am reasonably sure that American governments of the 1990s cannot do, nor would I wish it. I merely predict that sometime in the coming generation, profanity will return in a meaningful way. It served too many purposes for too many years of American life to disappear on a permanent basis. We need it.", "What word is taboo in middle-class America in 1996? There are a couple of credible candidates: The four-letter word for \"vagina\" remains off-limits in polite conversation (although that has more to do with feminism than with profanity), and the slang expression for those who engage in oral sex with males is not yet acceptable by the standards of office-meeting etiquette. \n\n But aside from a few exceptions, the supply of genuinely offensive language has dwindled almost to nothing as the 20th century comes to an end; the currency of swearing has been inflated to the brink of worthlessness. When almost anything can be said in public, profanity ceases to exist in any meaningful way at all.", "That most of the forbidden words of the 1950s are no longer forbidden will come as news to nobody: The steady debasement of the common language is only one of many social strictures that have loosened from the previous generation to the current. What is important is that profanity served a variety of purposes for a long time in Western culture. It does not serve those purposes any more. \n\n What purposes? There are a couple of plausible answers. One of them is emotional release. Robert Graves, who wrote a book in the 1920s called The Future of Swearing , thought that profanity was the adult replacement for childhood tears. There comes a point in life, he wrote, when \"wailing is rightly discouraged, and groans are also considered a signal of extreme weakness. Silence under suffering is usually impossible.\" So one reaches back for a word one does not normally use, and utters it without undue embarrassment or guilt. And one feels better--even stimulated.", "And so I am reasonably sure that when my children have children, there will once again be words so awesome that they cannot be uttered without important consequences. This will not only represent a new stage of linguistic evolution, it will be a token of moral revival. What the dirty words will be, God only knows.", "Maledict\noratory\nThe high costs of low language. \n\n Sunday, Jan. 14, 1996: A day that will live in--well, not infamy, exactly. Blasphemy would be closer to it. \n\n Early that afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win the American Football Conference championship. Linebacker Greg Lloyd, accepting the trophy in front of a national television audience, responded with enthusiasm. \"Let's see if we can bring this damn thing back here next year,\" he said, \"along with the [expletive] Super Bowl.\" \n\n A few hours later, Michael Irvin of the Dallas Cowboys offered this spirited defense of his coach on TV after his team won the National Football Conference title: \"Nobody deserves it more than Barry Switzer. He took all of this [expletive] .\"" ] ]
train	20066	[ "How does the point about Bill Clinton tie into the rest of the article?", "What statement best describes how the author feels about the magazine articles he discusses?", "How does the author see the role of food in romance?", "What was the role of the dice in the broader discussion?", "How does the author see the role of self-help?", "What is the best description of the author's view on a nightcap?", "Why does the author think less communication is better?", "Why is it suggested that you should not tell your partner when you take Viagra?" ]	[ [ "It was clear that Clinton talked too explicitly about his sex life with the people he was involved with, to his detriment", "If a president cannot be faithful to their partner, we are all succeptible to similar situations and have to keep things exciting", "Being able to discuss sex and public figures makes it easier for people to discuss a usually taboo topic", "It was a warning to make sure we keep our sexual drama very private, because trust is key" ], [ "A lot of the advice is too specific to remember in the moment, even if it's well-intentioned", "The articles vary in quality and usefulness by where they are published, but can have nuggets of wisdom", "All of the advice suggested things that would kill the mood, which is counterproductive", "The articles are only full of advice that no layperson can use, and aren't worth reading" ], [ "He thinks heightening the sensory experience is effective, though not in the way he expected", "He thinks that the menu has to be centered around aphrodisiacs to work well", "It's not worth blocking out so much time to cook something special together", "It's only effective if alcohols like rum and Kahlua are involved" ], [ "The dice highlighted the fun of sex games that are easy to partake in", "The combinations set by the dice did not seem natural and weren't as fun as expected", "There weren't enough options on the dice for them to be fun to use", "It was a relief to leave decision making out of the couple's hands for a while" ], [ "Self-help is bogus and isn't worth spending energy on", "It should be everyone's priority to pursue self-help to improve their sex lives", "Self-help is useful when it comes from videos, but not from books", "Self-help can come in a variety of ways but should be low-key in this area" ], [ "Alcohol is just another drug, and intimacy should be limited to natural influences only", "A drink here and there is fine as long as you don't go overboard", "Drinking will make it harder to remember the details of your plans for a romantic evening and should be avoided", "A drink will make you seem more attractive to your partner, and can help you out" ], [ "He is bad at communicating clearly and it makes things more complicated", "Being too explicit about things takes away some of the emotional aspect", "He thinks communication works better by doing, instead of by talking, especially in the bedroom", "His wife doesn't like discussing sex openly, so it's what he is used to" ], [ "Viagra is expensive and you don't want the conversation about money to distract from intimacy", "You don't want to be embarassed when they find out you need help getting aroused", "Viagra isn't something you need to be honest about with your partner", "Telling them takes some of the mystery out of the situation and is less fun" ] ]	[ 3, 1, 1, 2, 4, 2, 2, 4 ]	[ 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "More Bang for the Buck \n\n A friend of mine offers a theory about why Bill Clinton's poll numbers stayed so high throughout the Lewinsky scandal: The news made it possible for serious-minded people to spend lots of time--at the office and over lunch--talking about semen stains, vaginal insertions, and blow jobs. And the people were grateful. \n\n That's probably because they're not getting all that much themselves. A recent University of Chicago survey of 10,000 adults found that Americans are having considerably less sex than was generally thought. Only one American in 20 has sex three times a week. One in five didn't score at all last year.", "St. Augustine held lust to be a fitting punishment for man's disobedience to God: the body's disobeying of the mind, the will, the spirit, and even of itself. (The paradigm of this for him is the unbidden hard-on.) Jean-Paul Sartre discovered something similar, although celebrating it rather than deploring it: Essential to the erotic is the body's defiance of design and control. (The paradigm of this for him is the jiggle.) Sartre's view yields a sort of sexual Heisenberg principle: There is an inherent tension between physically abandoning yourself to another on the one hand and sexual planning on the other. The more of the one, the less of the other. And this, I discovered, is the chief obstacle to sexual self-help. Getting an erection is sexy. Making one is not. As my wife said about Viagra, \"You start to have a new feeling and then you realize where it came from and then you don't have it so much. ... Anything that makes you think about it like that is just creepy.\"", "Next we tried those \"Better Sex\" instructional videos advertised in the New York Times Book Review. I ordered Better Sexual Techniques , Advanced Sexual Techniques , Making Sex Fun , and Advanced Oral Sex Techniques (priced about $11.95 each, not including shipping and handling). My wife couldn't bear to watch them; I persevered but must admit it was a chore. The oral-sex tape starts with \"well-known sex therapist\" Diana Wiley, in her poofy hair and broad-shouldered blue power suit, looking like she was about to explain how the sales force could increase its third-quarter productivity. Instead she runs through all the euphemisms for oral sex and then the video cuts to XXX action with gratuitous commentary.", "If that's true, many of us could use a little sexual self-improvement. Not me, of course. I have been happily married for 26 years, since the age of 21. Deb and I have what seems to us to be a perfectly fine amorous life, yet everywhere I turn the culture tells me--almost mocks me-- you can do better! What would happen to our sex life then, if Deb (who participated in this story because she loves me and because she has tenure) and I tried for the first time to make something happen to it? \n\n And so it was that we found ourselves for the first time ever in a sex-toy store, A Touch of Romance, located near our home in Los Angeles, across the street from a Macy's. The idea behind shops like these is to make obtaining the materials of sexual experimentation as ordinary as purchasing plumbing supplies or housewares.", "This is not to say there isn't a way out of this conflict between desire and design. With homage to our potent POTUS, there is, I think, a Third Way that's neither sexual complacency nor standard self-help. If the intrusion of consciousness is the problem, then maybe the answer is to block it out. Sure, you could do this the old-fashioned way: with alcohol and drugs. But then you have all the traditional drawbacks, including diminished physical attractiveness and degraded sexual performance.", "Which sort of works--the only sexual thrill I got from the visit was knowing that Microsoft just bought a cock ring. Choosing it wasn't easy. Most of them came in presized sets of three. I couldn't figure out which would fit right and intuited that try-ons weren't an option. So I opted instead for an adjustable circumference version, a little strip of vinyl with snaps for $11.95. Man, what a rip-off! Unless it works. \n\n It doesn't. Back home, I derived a certain depraved buzz in cinching the device on, but that was soon eclipsed. The thing works on the Roach Motel principle--your blood gets in but it can't get out. But then I got to thinking: Under battlefield conditions it doesn't get out anyway. And while I should have been paying more attention to other things, this led to thinking about the old joke with the punch line \"... and right ball go POW.\" My wife hadn't noticed any difference at all.", "Overall rating, on a scale of 1 to 10: 2 toes curled. \n\n A woman I know says women's magazines are the best places in America to find sex tips. She's right--go ahead, just try to find a sewing pattern in Redbook . You're much more likely to land on \"Try phone sex, dirty notes, porn videos, fantasy games and sex in new places. ... Try lingerie and no underwear. ... Try talking dirty and silk scarves. Try anything at all,\" or articles such as \"Eight New Games for the Foreplay Challenged.\"", "and then dining on it, just the two of you, could be erotic. Especially if (like me) your schedule frequently forces you to eat alone and you often find yourself standing in front of the microwave, screaming, \"Come on, goddammit!\"", "So then I got out the other purchase I'd made at A Touch of Romance--\"Dirty Dice\" ($4.95). One of the two pink cubes is marked with these words instead of dots: \"lips,\" \"above waist,\" \"ear,\" \"breast,\" \"below waist,\" and \"?\". The other cube is labeled \"kiss,\" \"squeeze,\" \"lick,\" \"blow,\" \"suck,\" and \"eat.\" We took turns throwing the dice, but the activities generated seemed forced and arbitrary. Finally, as they say at NASA, there was word from the pad that the launch sequence was initiating. It was pretty much like all other sex, except for a slight lightheadedness. Deb said she noticed a remote tingling sensation. On the plus side, there was no priapism and neither of us experienced disruption of our color vision nor a fatal heart attack, which was nice. \n\n Overall rating: 5 toes curled.", "So how about this instead? Go for all the sexual self-help you can, but do it covertly . Watch a sex video (or porn flick) if you want--but by yourself, and then try to share what you learned without sharing how you learned it. Don't tell your partner you took Viagra. Or give each other standing permission to slip it into the odd after-dinner drink, saying nothing. (Of course, when you do it you'll still know, but having an unselfconsciously turned-on partner is a real compensation for that, and next time, your partner can surprise you. And yes, this requires trust. But why would you be having sex with someone you don't trust?) My main conclusion is that contrary to our blabby culture, the key to a better sex life is less communication.", "Intercourses , by Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge ($24.95, Terrace Publishing, 1997), preaches that for every time of day and every phase of a relationship there is a type of eating experience that will heighten sexual response. (There's also", "An article in the April Cosmopolitan , \"The Six Best Sex Positions,\" seemed more promising than the Redbook playbook. Each position was accompanied by a succinct write-up and a stick-figure diagram. The position we settled on was \"The Butterfly,\" which we had to read three times to comprehend. The man stands, the woman remains supine on a bed or counter-top with her feet up on his shoulders. The whole idea is to produce a pelvic tilt for better access to the G spot. Instead, we experienced an uncomfortable pretzel feeling that stick figures must be immune to. And in general, Cosmopolitan 's exotic sex positions require the sort of body placement you can't remember in the moment of passion and even if you could, for proper alignment, you still might need mood-killing accessories such as a plumb line and a laser pen. \n\n Rating: 3 toes curled.", "We shopped for the food together and cooked together, drinking wine and beer along the way. At one point while I was working on the dessert, I asked my wife how long to beat the heavy cream mixture. \"Till it's stiff--it's an aphrodisiac,\" she said. Preparation took less than an hour, and everything came out perfectly. Eating at our dining room table for the first time ever without guests, we were having fun by candlelight. But the mood was romantic, not erotic. \n\n Overall rating: 4 toes curled. \n\n That's when we went for the Viagra ($212.50 for 10 doses, which includes a \"consultation\" fee). The drug was prescribed by a doctor, whom I've never met, and ordered from a pharmacy in Miami Beach, Fla., where I've never been. I completed the transaction via the Internet after filling out a cover-their-ass questionnaire in three minutes.", "Wiley's overexplanation of everything two people can do to each other with their mouths raises this question: Do you really need a five-minute video segment on whether or not to swallow? In the great tradition of hotel and travel ads, the guys tend to be markedly less attractive than the women. No way he'd be with her if this wasn't an instructional sex video! The inanity of the experts and the dubious casting make these films about as erotic as ... well, as the New York Times . You could learn more from any randomly selected porn video. \n\n Rating: 0 toes curled.", "a chart showing which foods are good for eating off which body parts.) Deb and I blocked off a whole Saturday afternoon and evening for the Intercourses experiment, settling on rosemary-scented lamb over pasta (Page 87) followed by frozen coffee", "almond dessert (Page 31). According to the book, rosemary is sexy because of its fragrance (used in many perfumes) and because of its texture, which, so the text assured, tickles nerve endings. The dessert was mostly coffee, rum, and", "We each decided to take one pill, clinked our glasses, and gulped. And then what? It felt awkward sitting in our bedroom, knowing that it could take up to an hour for Viagra to \"work.\" I suggested that we play strip poker, something I'd never done. Deb had never even played poker, so I had to explain the rules. I won in about six hands, auspiciously I thought, with three aces. But we still weren't really in the mood yet.", "Another approach is food. The notion that certain foods, such as oysters or rhino horn, are aphrodisiacs has been pretty much discounted. But it's plausible to think that cooking a meal together", "Kahlua, which has worked before." ], [ "Overall rating, on a scale of 1 to 10: 2 toes curled. \n\n A woman I know says women's magazines are the best places in America to find sex tips. She's right--go ahead, just try to find a sewing pattern in Redbook . You're much more likely to land on \"Try phone sex, dirty notes, porn videos, fantasy games and sex in new places. ... Try lingerie and no underwear. ... Try talking dirty and silk scarves. Try anything at all,\" or articles such as \"Eight New Games for the Foreplay Challenged.\"", "St. Augustine held lust to be a fitting punishment for man's disobedience to God: the body's disobeying of the mind, the will, the spirit, and even of itself. (The paradigm of this for him is the unbidden hard-on.) Jean-Paul Sartre discovered something similar, although celebrating it rather than deploring it: Essential to the erotic is the body's defiance of design and control. (The paradigm of this for him is the jiggle.) Sartre's view yields a sort of sexual Heisenberg principle: There is an inherent tension between physically abandoning yourself to another on the one hand and sexual planning on the other. The more of the one, the less of the other. And this, I discovered, is the chief obstacle to sexual self-help. Getting an erection is sexy. Making one is not. As my wife said about Viagra, \"You start to have a new feeling and then you realize where it came from and then you don't have it so much. ... Anything that makes you think about it like that is just creepy.\"", "An article in the April Cosmopolitan , \"The Six Best Sex Positions,\" seemed more promising than the Redbook playbook. Each position was accompanied by a succinct write-up and a stick-figure diagram. The position we settled on was \"The Butterfly,\" which we had to read three times to comprehend. The man stands, the woman remains supine on a bed or counter-top with her feet up on his shoulders. The whole idea is to produce a pelvic tilt for better access to the G spot. Instead, we experienced an uncomfortable pretzel feeling that stick figures must be immune to. And in general, Cosmopolitan 's exotic sex positions require the sort of body placement you can't remember in the moment of passion and even if you could, for proper alignment, you still might need mood-killing accessories such as a plumb line and a laser pen. \n\n Rating: 3 toes curled.", "If that's true, many of us could use a little sexual self-improvement. Not me, of course. I have been happily married for 26 years, since the age of 21. Deb and I have what seems to us to be a perfectly fine amorous life, yet everywhere I turn the culture tells me--almost mocks me-- you can do better! What would happen to our sex life then, if Deb (who participated in this story because she loves me and because she has tenure) and I tried for the first time to make something happen to it? \n\n And so it was that we found ourselves for the first time ever in a sex-toy store, A Touch of Romance, located near our home in Los Angeles, across the street from a Macy's. The idea behind shops like these is to make obtaining the materials of sexual experimentation as ordinary as purchasing plumbing supplies or housewares.", "Next we tried those \"Better Sex\" instructional videos advertised in the New York Times Book Review. I ordered Better Sexual Techniques , Advanced Sexual Techniques , Making Sex Fun , and Advanced Oral Sex Techniques (priced about $11.95 each, not including shipping and handling). My wife couldn't bear to watch them; I persevered but must admit it was a chore. The oral-sex tape starts with \"well-known sex therapist\" Diana Wiley, in her poofy hair and broad-shouldered blue power suit, looking like she was about to explain how the sales force could increase its third-quarter productivity. Instead she runs through all the euphemisms for oral sex and then the video cuts to XXX action with gratuitous commentary.", "So then I got out the other purchase I'd made at A Touch of Romance--\"Dirty Dice\" ($4.95). One of the two pink cubes is marked with these words instead of dots: \"lips,\" \"above waist,\" \"ear,\" \"breast,\" \"below waist,\" and \"?\". The other cube is labeled \"kiss,\" \"squeeze,\" \"lick,\" \"blow,\" \"suck,\" and \"eat.\" We took turns throwing the dice, but the activities generated seemed forced and arbitrary. Finally, as they say at NASA, there was word from the pad that the launch sequence was initiating. It was pretty much like all other sex, except for a slight lightheadedness. Deb said she noticed a remote tingling sensation. On the plus side, there was no priapism and neither of us experienced disruption of our color vision nor a fatal heart attack, which was nice. \n\n Overall rating: 5 toes curled.", "and then dining on it, just the two of you, could be erotic. Especially if (like me) your schedule frequently forces you to eat alone and you often find yourself standing in front of the microwave, screaming, \"Come on, goddammit!\"", "More Bang for the Buck \n\n A friend of mine offers a theory about why Bill Clinton's poll numbers stayed so high throughout the Lewinsky scandal: The news made it possible for serious-minded people to spend lots of time--at the office and over lunch--talking about semen stains, vaginal insertions, and blow jobs. And the people were grateful. \n\n That's probably because they're not getting all that much themselves. A recent University of Chicago survey of 10,000 adults found that Americans are having considerably less sex than was generally thought. Only one American in 20 has sex three times a week. One in five didn't score at all last year.", "This is not to say there isn't a way out of this conflict between desire and design. With homage to our potent POTUS, there is, I think, a Third Way that's neither sexual complacency nor standard self-help. If the intrusion of consciousness is the problem, then maybe the answer is to block it out. Sure, you could do this the old-fashioned way: with alcohol and drugs. But then you have all the traditional drawbacks, including diminished physical attractiveness and degraded sexual performance.", "Which sort of works--the only sexual thrill I got from the visit was knowing that Microsoft just bought a cock ring. Choosing it wasn't easy. Most of them came in presized sets of three. I couldn't figure out which would fit right and intuited that try-ons weren't an option. So I opted instead for an adjustable circumference version, a little strip of vinyl with snaps for $11.95. Man, what a rip-off! Unless it works. \n\n It doesn't. Back home, I derived a certain depraved buzz in cinching the device on, but that was soon eclipsed. The thing works on the Roach Motel principle--your blood gets in but it can't get out. But then I got to thinking: Under battlefield conditions it doesn't get out anyway. And while I should have been paying more attention to other things, this led to thinking about the old joke with the punch line \"... and right ball go POW.\" My wife hadn't noticed any difference at all.", "Wiley's overexplanation of everything two people can do to each other with their mouths raises this question: Do you really need a five-minute video segment on whether or not to swallow? In the great tradition of hotel and travel ads, the guys tend to be markedly less attractive than the women. No way he'd be with her if this wasn't an instructional sex video! The inanity of the experts and the dubious casting make these films about as erotic as ... well, as the New York Times . You could learn more from any randomly selected porn video. \n\n Rating: 0 toes curled.", "a chart showing which foods are good for eating off which body parts.) Deb and I blocked off a whole Saturday afternoon and evening for the Intercourses experiment, settling on rosemary-scented lamb over pasta (Page 87) followed by frozen coffee", "So how about this instead? Go for all the sexual self-help you can, but do it covertly . Watch a sex video (or porn flick) if you want--but by yourself, and then try to share what you learned without sharing how you learned it. Don't tell your partner you took Viagra. Or give each other standing permission to slip it into the odd after-dinner drink, saying nothing. (Of course, when you do it you'll still know, but having an unselfconsciously turned-on partner is a real compensation for that, and next time, your partner can surprise you. And yes, this requires trust. But why would you be having sex with someone you don't trust?) My main conclusion is that contrary to our blabby culture, the key to a better sex life is less communication.", "Intercourses , by Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge ($24.95, Terrace Publishing, 1997), preaches that for every time of day and every phase of a relationship there is a type of eating experience that will heighten sexual response. (There's also", "We shopped for the food together and cooked together, drinking wine and beer along the way. At one point while I was working on the dessert, I asked my wife how long to beat the heavy cream mixture. \"Till it's stiff--it's an aphrodisiac,\" she said. Preparation took less than an hour, and everything came out perfectly. Eating at our dining room table for the first time ever without guests, we were having fun by candlelight. But the mood was romantic, not erotic. \n\n Overall rating: 4 toes curled. \n\n That's when we went for the Viagra ($212.50 for 10 doses, which includes a \"consultation\" fee). The drug was prescribed by a doctor, whom I've never met, and ordered from a pharmacy in Miami Beach, Fla., where I've never been. I completed the transaction via the Internet after filling out a cover-their-ass questionnaire in three minutes.", "almond dessert (Page 31). According to the book, rosemary is sexy because of its fragrance (used in many perfumes) and because of its texture, which, so the text assured, tickles nerve endings. The dessert was mostly coffee, rum, and", "We each decided to take one pill, clinked our glasses, and gulped. And then what? It felt awkward sitting in our bedroom, knowing that it could take up to an hour for Viagra to \"work.\" I suggested that we play strip poker, something I'd never done. Deb had never even played poker, so I had to explain the rules. I won in about six hands, auspiciously I thought, with three aces. But we still weren't really in the mood yet.", "Another approach is food. The notion that certain foods, such as oysters or rhino horn, are aphrodisiacs has been pretty much discounted. But it's plausible to think that cooking a meal together", "Kahlua, which has worked before." ], [ "and then dining on it, just the two of you, could be erotic. Especially if (like me) your schedule frequently forces you to eat alone and you often find yourself standing in front of the microwave, screaming, \"Come on, goddammit!\"", "Intercourses , by Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge ($24.95, Terrace Publishing, 1997), preaches that for every time of day and every phase of a relationship there is a type of eating experience that will heighten sexual response. (There's also", "a chart showing which foods are good for eating off which body parts.) Deb and I blocked off a whole Saturday afternoon and evening for the Intercourses experiment, settling on rosemary-scented lamb over pasta (Page 87) followed by frozen coffee", "Another approach is food. The notion that certain foods, such as oysters or rhino horn, are aphrodisiacs has been pretty much discounted. But it's plausible to think that cooking a meal together", "almond dessert (Page 31). According to the book, rosemary is sexy because of its fragrance (used in many perfumes) and because of its texture, which, so the text assured, tickles nerve endings. The dessert was mostly coffee, rum, and", "We shopped for the food together and cooked together, drinking wine and beer along the way. At one point while I was working on the dessert, I asked my wife how long to beat the heavy cream mixture. \"Till it's stiff--it's an aphrodisiac,\" she said. Preparation took less than an hour, and everything came out perfectly. Eating at our dining room table for the first time ever without guests, we were having fun by candlelight. But the mood was romantic, not erotic. \n\n Overall rating: 4 toes curled. \n\n That's when we went for the Viagra ($212.50 for 10 doses, which includes a \"consultation\" fee). The drug was prescribed by a doctor, whom I've never met, and ordered from a pharmacy in Miami Beach, Fla., where I've never been. I completed the transaction via the Internet after filling out a cover-their-ass questionnaire in three minutes.", "So then I got out the other purchase I'd made at A Touch of Romance--\"Dirty Dice\" ($4.95). One of the two pink cubes is marked with these words instead of dots: \"lips,\" \"above waist,\" \"ear,\" \"breast,\" \"below waist,\" and \"?\". The other cube is labeled \"kiss,\" \"squeeze,\" \"lick,\" \"blow,\" \"suck,\" and \"eat.\" We took turns throwing the dice, but the activities generated seemed forced and arbitrary. Finally, as they say at NASA, there was word from the pad that the launch sequence was initiating. It was pretty much like all other sex, except for a slight lightheadedness. Deb said she noticed a remote tingling sensation. On the plus side, there was no priapism and neither of us experienced disruption of our color vision nor a fatal heart attack, which was nice. \n\n Overall rating: 5 toes curled.", "St. Augustine held lust to be a fitting punishment for man's disobedience to God: the body's disobeying of the mind, the will, the spirit, and even of itself. (The paradigm of this for him is the unbidden hard-on.) Jean-Paul Sartre discovered something similar, although celebrating it rather than deploring it: Essential to the erotic is the body's defiance of design and control. (The paradigm of this for him is the jiggle.) Sartre's view yields a sort of sexual Heisenberg principle: There is an inherent tension between physically abandoning yourself to another on the one hand and sexual planning on the other. The more of the one, the less of the other. And this, I discovered, is the chief obstacle to sexual self-help. Getting an erection is sexy. Making one is not. As my wife said about Viagra, \"You start to have a new feeling and then you realize where it came from and then you don't have it so much. ... Anything that makes you think about it like that is just creepy.\"", "If that's true, many of us could use a little sexual self-improvement. Not me, of course. I have been happily married for 26 years, since the age of 21. Deb and I have what seems to us to be a perfectly fine amorous life, yet everywhere I turn the culture tells me--almost mocks me-- you can do better! What would happen to our sex life then, if Deb (who participated in this story because she loves me and because she has tenure) and I tried for the first time to make something happen to it? \n\n And so it was that we found ourselves for the first time ever in a sex-toy store, A Touch of Romance, located near our home in Los Angeles, across the street from a Macy's. The idea behind shops like these is to make obtaining the materials of sexual experimentation as ordinary as purchasing plumbing supplies or housewares.", "This is not to say there isn't a way out of this conflict between desire and design. With homage to our potent POTUS, there is, I think, a Third Way that's neither sexual complacency nor standard self-help. If the intrusion of consciousness is the problem, then maybe the answer is to block it out. Sure, you could do this the old-fashioned way: with alcohol and drugs. But then you have all the traditional drawbacks, including diminished physical attractiveness and degraded sexual performance.", "Overall rating, on a scale of 1 to 10: 2 toes curled. \n\n A woman I know says women's magazines are the best places in America to find sex tips. She's right--go ahead, just try to find a sewing pattern in Redbook . You're much more likely to land on \"Try phone sex, dirty notes, porn videos, fantasy games and sex in new places. ... Try lingerie and no underwear. ... Try talking dirty and silk scarves. Try anything at all,\" or articles such as \"Eight New Games for the Foreplay Challenged.\"", "We each decided to take one pill, clinked our glasses, and gulped. And then what? It felt awkward sitting in our bedroom, knowing that it could take up to an hour for Viagra to \"work.\" I suggested that we play strip poker, something I'd never done. Deb had never even played poker, so I had to explain the rules. I won in about six hands, auspiciously I thought, with three aces. But we still weren't really in the mood yet.", "An article in the April Cosmopolitan , \"The Six Best Sex Positions,\" seemed more promising than the Redbook playbook. Each position was accompanied by a succinct write-up and a stick-figure diagram. The position we settled on was \"The Butterfly,\" which we had to read three times to comprehend. The man stands, the woman remains supine on a bed or counter-top with her feet up on his shoulders. The whole idea is to produce a pelvic tilt for better access to the G spot. Instead, we experienced an uncomfortable pretzel feeling that stick figures must be immune to. And in general, Cosmopolitan 's exotic sex positions require the sort of body placement you can't remember in the moment of passion and even if you could, for proper alignment, you still might need mood-killing accessories such as a plumb line and a laser pen. \n\n Rating: 3 toes curled.", "Next we tried those \"Better Sex\" instructional videos advertised in the New York Times Book Review. I ordered Better Sexual Techniques , Advanced Sexual Techniques , Making Sex Fun , and Advanced Oral Sex Techniques (priced about $11.95 each, not including shipping and handling). My wife couldn't bear to watch them; I persevered but must admit it was a chore. The oral-sex tape starts with \"well-known sex therapist\" Diana Wiley, in her poofy hair and broad-shouldered blue power suit, looking like she was about to explain how the sales force could increase its third-quarter productivity. Instead she runs through all the euphemisms for oral sex and then the video cuts to XXX action with gratuitous commentary.", "So how about this instead? Go for all the sexual self-help you can, but do it covertly . Watch a sex video (or porn flick) if you want--but by yourself, and then try to share what you learned without sharing how you learned it. Don't tell your partner you took Viagra. Or give each other standing permission to slip it into the odd after-dinner drink, saying nothing. (Of course, when you do it you'll still know, but having an unselfconsciously turned-on partner is a real compensation for that, and next time, your partner can surprise you. And yes, this requires trust. But why would you be having sex with someone you don't trust?) My main conclusion is that contrary to our blabby culture, the key to a better sex life is less communication.", "More Bang for the Buck \n\n A friend of mine offers a theory about why Bill Clinton's poll numbers stayed so high throughout the Lewinsky scandal: The news made it possible for serious-minded people to spend lots of time--at the office and over lunch--talking about semen stains, vaginal insertions, and blow jobs. And the people were grateful. \n\n That's probably because they're not getting all that much themselves. A recent University of Chicago survey of 10,000 adults found that Americans are having considerably less sex than was generally thought. Only one American in 20 has sex three times a week. One in five didn't score at all last year.", "Which sort of works--the only sexual thrill I got from the visit was knowing that Microsoft just bought a cock ring. Choosing it wasn't easy. Most of them came in presized sets of three. I couldn't figure out which would fit right and intuited that try-ons weren't an option. So I opted instead for an adjustable circumference version, a little strip of vinyl with snaps for $11.95. Man, what a rip-off! Unless it works. \n\n It doesn't. Back home, I derived a certain depraved buzz in cinching the device on, but that was soon eclipsed. The thing works on the Roach Motel principle--your blood gets in but it can't get out. But then I got to thinking: Under battlefield conditions it doesn't get out anyway. And while I should have been paying more attention to other things, this led to thinking about the old joke with the punch line \"... and right ball go POW.\" My wife hadn't noticed any difference at all.", "Wiley's overexplanation of everything two people can do to each other with their mouths raises this question: Do you really need a five-minute video segment on whether or not to swallow? In the great tradition of hotel and travel ads, the guys tend to be markedly less attractive than the women. No way he'd be with her if this wasn't an instructional sex video! The inanity of the experts and the dubious casting make these films about as erotic as ... well, as the New York Times . You could learn more from any randomly selected porn video. \n\n Rating: 0 toes curled.", "Kahlua, which has worked before." ], [ "So then I got out the other purchase I'd made at A Touch of Romance--\"Dirty Dice\" ($4.95). One of the two pink cubes is marked with these words instead of dots: \"lips,\" \"above waist,\" \"ear,\" \"breast,\" \"below waist,\" and \"?\". The other cube is labeled \"kiss,\" \"squeeze,\" \"lick,\" \"blow,\" \"suck,\" and \"eat.\" We took turns throwing the dice, but the activities generated seemed forced and arbitrary. Finally, as they say at NASA, there was word from the pad that the launch sequence was initiating. It was pretty much like all other sex, except for a slight lightheadedness. Deb said she noticed a remote tingling sensation. On the plus side, there was no priapism and neither of us experienced disruption of our color vision nor a fatal heart attack, which was nice. \n\n Overall rating: 5 toes curled.", "St. Augustine held lust to be a fitting punishment for man's disobedience to God: the body's disobeying of the mind, the will, the spirit, and even of itself. (The paradigm of this for him is the unbidden hard-on.) Jean-Paul Sartre discovered something similar, although celebrating it rather than deploring it: Essential to the erotic is the body's defiance of design and control. (The paradigm of this for him is the jiggle.) Sartre's view yields a sort of sexual Heisenberg principle: There is an inherent tension between physically abandoning yourself to another on the one hand and sexual planning on the other. The more of the one, the less of the other. And this, I discovered, is the chief obstacle to sexual self-help. Getting an erection is sexy. Making one is not. As my wife said about Viagra, \"You start to have a new feeling and then you realize where it came from and then you don't have it so much. ... Anything that makes you think about it like that is just creepy.\"", "If that's true, many of us could use a little sexual self-improvement. Not me, of course. I have been happily married for 26 years, since the age of 21. Deb and I have what seems to us to be a perfectly fine amorous life, yet everywhere I turn the culture tells me--almost mocks me-- you can do better! What would happen to our sex life then, if Deb (who participated in this story because she loves me and because she has tenure) and I tried for the first time to make something happen to it? \n\n And so it was that we found ourselves for the first time ever in a sex-toy store, A Touch of Romance, located near our home in Los Angeles, across the street from a Macy's. The idea behind shops like these is to make obtaining the materials of sexual experimentation as ordinary as purchasing plumbing supplies or housewares.", "More Bang for the Buck \n\n A friend of mine offers a theory about why Bill Clinton's poll numbers stayed so high throughout the Lewinsky scandal: The news made it possible for serious-minded people to spend lots of time--at the office and over lunch--talking about semen stains, vaginal insertions, and blow jobs. And the people were grateful. \n\n That's probably because they're not getting all that much themselves. A recent University of Chicago survey of 10,000 adults found that Americans are having considerably less sex than was generally thought. Only one American in 20 has sex three times a week. One in five didn't score at all last year.", "and then dining on it, just the two of you, could be erotic. Especially if (like me) your schedule frequently forces you to eat alone and you often find yourself standing in front of the microwave, screaming, \"Come on, goddammit!\"", "Next we tried those \"Better Sex\" instructional videos advertised in the New York Times Book Review. I ordered Better Sexual Techniques , Advanced Sexual Techniques , Making Sex Fun , and Advanced Oral Sex Techniques (priced about $11.95 each, not including shipping and handling). My wife couldn't bear to watch them; I persevered but must admit it was a chore. The oral-sex tape starts with \"well-known sex therapist\" Diana Wiley, in her poofy hair and broad-shouldered blue power suit, looking like she was about to explain how the sales force could increase its third-quarter productivity. Instead she runs through all the euphemisms for oral sex and then the video cuts to XXX action with gratuitous commentary.", "a chart showing which foods are good for eating off which body parts.) Deb and I blocked off a whole Saturday afternoon and evening for the Intercourses experiment, settling on rosemary-scented lamb over pasta (Page 87) followed by frozen coffee", "This is not to say there isn't a way out of this conflict between desire and design. With homage to our potent POTUS, there is, I think, a Third Way that's neither sexual complacency nor standard self-help. If the intrusion of consciousness is the problem, then maybe the answer is to block it out. Sure, you could do this the old-fashioned way: with alcohol and drugs. But then you have all the traditional drawbacks, including diminished physical attractiveness and degraded sexual performance.", "Overall rating, on a scale of 1 to 10: 2 toes curled. \n\n A woman I know says women's magazines are the best places in America to find sex tips. She's right--go ahead, just try to find a sewing pattern in Redbook . You're much more likely to land on \"Try phone sex, dirty notes, porn videos, fantasy games and sex in new places. ... Try lingerie and no underwear. ... Try talking dirty and silk scarves. Try anything at all,\" or articles such as \"Eight New Games for the Foreplay Challenged.\"", "We each decided to take one pill, clinked our glasses, and gulped. And then what? It felt awkward sitting in our bedroom, knowing that it could take up to an hour for Viagra to \"work.\" I suggested that we play strip poker, something I'd never done. Deb had never even played poker, so I had to explain the rules. I won in about six hands, auspiciously I thought, with three aces. But we still weren't really in the mood yet.", "Which sort of works--the only sexual thrill I got from the visit was knowing that Microsoft just bought a cock ring. Choosing it wasn't easy. Most of them came in presized sets of three. I couldn't figure out which would fit right and intuited that try-ons weren't an option. So I opted instead for an adjustable circumference version, a little strip of vinyl with snaps for $11.95. Man, what a rip-off! Unless it works. \n\n It doesn't. Back home, I derived a certain depraved buzz in cinching the device on, but that was soon eclipsed. The thing works on the Roach Motel principle--your blood gets in but it can't get out. But then I got to thinking: Under battlefield conditions it doesn't get out anyway. And while I should have been paying more attention to other things, this led to thinking about the old joke with the punch line \"... and right ball go POW.\" My wife hadn't noticed any difference at all.", "So how about this instead? Go for all the sexual self-help you can, but do it covertly . Watch a sex video (or porn flick) if you want--but by yourself, and then try to share what you learned without sharing how you learned it. Don't tell your partner you took Viagra. Or give each other standing permission to slip it into the odd after-dinner drink, saying nothing. (Of course, when you do it you'll still know, but having an unselfconsciously turned-on partner is a real compensation for that, and next time, your partner can surprise you. And yes, this requires trust. But why would you be having sex with someone you don't trust?) My main conclusion is that contrary to our blabby culture, the key to a better sex life is less communication.", "almond dessert (Page 31). According to the book, rosemary is sexy because of its fragrance (used in many perfumes) and because of its texture, which, so the text assured, tickles nerve endings. The dessert was mostly coffee, rum, and", "An article in the April Cosmopolitan , \"The Six Best Sex Positions,\" seemed more promising than the Redbook playbook. Each position was accompanied by a succinct write-up and a stick-figure diagram. The position we settled on was \"The Butterfly,\" which we had to read three times to comprehend. The man stands, the woman remains supine on a bed or counter-top with her feet up on his shoulders. The whole idea is to produce a pelvic tilt for better access to the G spot. Instead, we experienced an uncomfortable pretzel feeling that stick figures must be immune to. And in general, Cosmopolitan 's exotic sex positions require the sort of body placement you can't remember in the moment of passion and even if you could, for proper alignment, you still might need mood-killing accessories such as a plumb line and a laser pen. \n\n Rating: 3 toes curled.", "We shopped for the food together and cooked together, drinking wine and beer along the way. At one point while I was working on the dessert, I asked my wife how long to beat the heavy cream mixture. \"Till it's stiff--it's an aphrodisiac,\" she said. Preparation took less than an hour, and everything came out perfectly. Eating at our dining room table for the first time ever without guests, we were having fun by candlelight. But the mood was romantic, not erotic. \n\n Overall rating: 4 toes curled. \n\n That's when we went for the Viagra ($212.50 for 10 doses, which includes a \"consultation\" fee). The drug was prescribed by a doctor, whom I've never met, and ordered from a pharmacy in Miami Beach, Fla., where I've never been. I completed the transaction via the Internet after filling out a cover-their-ass questionnaire in three minutes.", "Intercourses , by Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge ($24.95, Terrace Publishing, 1997), preaches that for every time of day and every phase of a relationship there is a type of eating experience that will heighten sexual response. (There's also", "Another approach is food. The notion that certain foods, such as oysters or rhino horn, are aphrodisiacs has been pretty much discounted. But it's plausible to think that cooking a meal together", "Wiley's overexplanation of everything two people can do to each other with their mouths raises this question: Do you really need a five-minute video segment on whether or not to swallow? In the great tradition of hotel and travel ads, the guys tend to be markedly less attractive than the women. No way he'd be with her if this wasn't an instructional sex video! The inanity of the experts and the dubious casting make these films about as erotic as ... well, as the New York Times . You could learn more from any randomly selected porn video. \n\n Rating: 0 toes curled.", "Kahlua, which has worked before." ], [ "St. Augustine held lust to be a fitting punishment for man's disobedience to God: the body's disobeying of the mind, the will, the spirit, and even of itself. (The paradigm of this for him is the unbidden hard-on.) Jean-Paul Sartre discovered something similar, although celebrating it rather than deploring it: Essential to the erotic is the body's defiance of design and control. (The paradigm of this for him is the jiggle.) Sartre's view yields a sort of sexual Heisenberg principle: There is an inherent tension between physically abandoning yourself to another on the one hand and sexual planning on the other. The more of the one, the less of the other. And this, I discovered, is the chief obstacle to sexual self-help. Getting an erection is sexy. Making one is not. As my wife said about Viagra, \"You start to have a new feeling and then you realize where it came from and then you don't have it so much. ... Anything that makes you think about it like that is just creepy.\"", "This is not to say there isn't a way out of this conflict between desire and design. With homage to our potent POTUS, there is, I think, a Third Way that's neither sexual complacency nor standard self-help. If the intrusion of consciousness is the problem, then maybe the answer is to block it out. Sure, you could do this the old-fashioned way: with alcohol and drugs. But then you have all the traditional drawbacks, including diminished physical attractiveness and degraded sexual performance.", "If that's true, many of us could use a little sexual self-improvement. Not me, of course. I have been happily married for 26 years, since the age of 21. Deb and I have what seems to us to be a perfectly fine amorous life, yet everywhere I turn the culture tells me--almost mocks me-- you can do better! What would happen to our sex life then, if Deb (who participated in this story because she loves me and because she has tenure) and I tried for the first time to make something happen to it? \n\n And so it was that we found ourselves for the first time ever in a sex-toy store, A Touch of Romance, located near our home in Los Angeles, across the street from a Macy's. The idea behind shops like these is to make obtaining the materials of sexual experimentation as ordinary as purchasing plumbing supplies or housewares.", "So how about this instead? Go for all the sexual self-help you can, but do it covertly . Watch a sex video (or porn flick) if you want--but by yourself, and then try to share what you learned without sharing how you learned it. Don't tell your partner you took Viagra. Or give each other standing permission to slip it into the odd after-dinner drink, saying nothing. (Of course, when you do it you'll still know, but having an unselfconsciously turned-on partner is a real compensation for that, and next time, your partner can surprise you. And yes, this requires trust. But why would you be having sex with someone you don't trust?) My main conclusion is that contrary to our blabby culture, the key to a better sex life is less communication.", "Next we tried those \"Better Sex\" instructional videos advertised in the New York Times Book Review. I ordered Better Sexual Techniques , Advanced Sexual Techniques , Making Sex Fun , and Advanced Oral Sex Techniques (priced about $11.95 each, not including shipping and handling). My wife couldn't bear to watch them; I persevered but must admit it was a chore. The oral-sex tape starts with \"well-known sex therapist\" Diana Wiley, in her poofy hair and broad-shouldered blue power suit, looking like she was about to explain how the sales force could increase its third-quarter productivity. Instead she runs through all the euphemisms for oral sex and then the video cuts to XXX action with gratuitous commentary.", "Overall rating, on a scale of 1 to 10: 2 toes curled. \n\n A woman I know says women's magazines are the best places in America to find sex tips. She's right--go ahead, just try to find a sewing pattern in Redbook . You're much more likely to land on \"Try phone sex, dirty notes, porn videos, fantasy games and sex in new places. ... Try lingerie and no underwear. ... Try talking dirty and silk scarves. Try anything at all,\" or articles such as \"Eight New Games for the Foreplay Challenged.\"", "and then dining on it, just the two of you, could be erotic. Especially if (like me) your schedule frequently forces you to eat alone and you often find yourself standing in front of the microwave, screaming, \"Come on, goddammit!\"", "Intercourses , by Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge ($24.95, Terrace Publishing, 1997), preaches that for every time of day and every phase of a relationship there is a type of eating experience that will heighten sexual response. (There's also", "More Bang for the Buck \n\n A friend of mine offers a theory about why Bill Clinton's poll numbers stayed so high throughout the Lewinsky scandal: The news made it possible for serious-minded people to spend lots of time--at the office and over lunch--talking about semen stains, vaginal insertions, and blow jobs. And the people were grateful. \n\n That's probably because they're not getting all that much themselves. A recent University of Chicago survey of 10,000 adults found that Americans are having considerably less sex than was generally thought. Only one American in 20 has sex three times a week. One in five didn't score at all last year.", "An article in the April Cosmopolitan , \"The Six Best Sex Positions,\" seemed more promising than the Redbook playbook. Each position was accompanied by a succinct write-up and a stick-figure diagram. The position we settled on was \"The Butterfly,\" which we had to read three times to comprehend. The man stands, the woman remains supine on a bed or counter-top with her feet up on his shoulders. The whole idea is to produce a pelvic tilt for better access to the G spot. Instead, we experienced an uncomfortable pretzel feeling that stick figures must be immune to. And in general, Cosmopolitan 's exotic sex positions require the sort of body placement you can't remember in the moment of passion and even if you could, for proper alignment, you still might need mood-killing accessories such as a plumb line and a laser pen. \n\n Rating: 3 toes curled.", "a chart showing which foods are good for eating off which body parts.) Deb and I blocked off a whole Saturday afternoon and evening for the Intercourses experiment, settling on rosemary-scented lamb over pasta (Page 87) followed by frozen coffee", "So then I got out the other purchase I'd made at A Touch of Romance--\"Dirty Dice\" ($4.95). One of the two pink cubes is marked with these words instead of dots: \"lips,\" \"above waist,\" \"ear,\" \"breast,\" \"below waist,\" and \"?\". The other cube is labeled \"kiss,\" \"squeeze,\" \"lick,\" \"blow,\" \"suck,\" and \"eat.\" We took turns throwing the dice, but the activities generated seemed forced and arbitrary. Finally, as they say at NASA, there was word from the pad that the launch sequence was initiating. It was pretty much like all other sex, except for a slight lightheadedness. Deb said she noticed a remote tingling sensation. On the plus side, there was no priapism and neither of us experienced disruption of our color vision nor a fatal heart attack, which was nice. \n\n Overall rating: 5 toes curled.", "Which sort of works--the only sexual thrill I got from the visit was knowing that Microsoft just bought a cock ring. Choosing it wasn't easy. Most of them came in presized sets of three. I couldn't figure out which would fit right and intuited that try-ons weren't an option. So I opted instead for an adjustable circumference version, a little strip of vinyl with snaps for $11.95. Man, what a rip-off! Unless it works. \n\n It doesn't. Back home, I derived a certain depraved buzz in cinching the device on, but that was soon eclipsed. The thing works on the Roach Motel principle--your blood gets in but it can't get out. But then I got to thinking: Under battlefield conditions it doesn't get out anyway. And while I should have been paying more attention to other things, this led to thinking about the old joke with the punch line \"... and right ball go POW.\" My wife hadn't noticed any difference at all.", "Another approach is food. The notion that certain foods, such as oysters or rhino horn, are aphrodisiacs has been pretty much discounted. But it's plausible to think that cooking a meal together", "We shopped for the food together and cooked together, drinking wine and beer along the way. At one point while I was working on the dessert, I asked my wife how long to beat the heavy cream mixture. \"Till it's stiff--it's an aphrodisiac,\" she said. Preparation took less than an hour, and everything came out perfectly. Eating at our dining room table for the first time ever without guests, we were having fun by candlelight. But the mood was romantic, not erotic. \n\n Overall rating: 4 toes curled. \n\n That's when we went for the Viagra ($212.50 for 10 doses, which includes a \"consultation\" fee). The drug was prescribed by a doctor, whom I've never met, and ordered from a pharmacy in Miami Beach, Fla., where I've never been. I completed the transaction via the Internet after filling out a cover-their-ass questionnaire in three minutes.", "Wiley's overexplanation of everything two people can do to each other with their mouths raises this question: Do you really need a five-minute video segment on whether or not to swallow? In the great tradition of hotel and travel ads, the guys tend to be markedly less attractive than the women. No way he'd be with her if this wasn't an instructional sex video! The inanity of the experts and the dubious casting make these films about as erotic as ... well, as the New York Times . You could learn more from any randomly selected porn video. \n\n Rating: 0 toes curled.", "almond dessert (Page 31). According to the book, rosemary is sexy because of its fragrance (used in many perfumes) and because of its texture, which, so the text assured, tickles nerve endings. The dessert was mostly coffee, rum, and", "We each decided to take one pill, clinked our glasses, and gulped. And then what? It felt awkward sitting in our bedroom, knowing that it could take up to an hour for Viagra to \"work.\" I suggested that we play strip poker, something I'd never done. Deb had never even played poker, so I had to explain the rules. I won in about six hands, auspiciously I thought, with three aces. But we still weren't really in the mood yet.", "Kahlua, which has worked before." ], [ "almond dessert (Page 31). According to the book, rosemary is sexy because of its fragrance (used in many perfumes) and because of its texture, which, so the text assured, tickles nerve endings. The dessert was mostly coffee, rum, and", "St. Augustine held lust to be a fitting punishment for man's disobedience to God: the body's disobeying of the mind, the will, the spirit, and even of itself. (The paradigm of this for him is the unbidden hard-on.) Jean-Paul Sartre discovered something similar, although celebrating it rather than deploring it: Essential to the erotic is the body's defiance of design and control. (The paradigm of this for him is the jiggle.) Sartre's view yields a sort of sexual Heisenberg principle: There is an inherent tension between physically abandoning yourself to another on the one hand and sexual planning on the other. The more of the one, the less of the other. And this, I discovered, is the chief obstacle to sexual self-help. Getting an erection is sexy. Making one is not. As my wife said about Viagra, \"You start to have a new feeling and then you realize where it came from and then you don't have it so much. ... Anything that makes you think about it like that is just creepy.\"", "and then dining on it, just the two of you, could be erotic. Especially if (like me) your schedule frequently forces you to eat alone and you often find yourself standing in front of the microwave, screaming, \"Come on, goddammit!\"", "So then I got out the other purchase I'd made at A Touch of Romance--\"Dirty Dice\" ($4.95). One of the two pink cubes is marked with these words instead of dots: \"lips,\" \"above waist,\" \"ear,\" \"breast,\" \"below waist,\" and \"?\". The other cube is labeled \"kiss,\" \"squeeze,\" \"lick,\" \"blow,\" \"suck,\" and \"eat.\" We took turns throwing the dice, but the activities generated seemed forced and arbitrary. Finally, as they say at NASA, there was word from the pad that the launch sequence was initiating. It was pretty much like all other sex, except for a slight lightheadedness. Deb said she noticed a remote tingling sensation. On the plus side, there was no priapism and neither of us experienced disruption of our color vision nor a fatal heart attack, which was nice. \n\n Overall rating: 5 toes curled.", "This is not to say there isn't a way out of this conflict between desire and design. With homage to our potent POTUS, there is, I think, a Third Way that's neither sexual complacency nor standard self-help. If the intrusion of consciousness is the problem, then maybe the answer is to block it out. Sure, you could do this the old-fashioned way: with alcohol and drugs. But then you have all the traditional drawbacks, including diminished physical attractiveness and degraded sexual performance.", "a chart showing which foods are good for eating off which body parts.) Deb and I blocked off a whole Saturday afternoon and evening for the Intercourses experiment, settling on rosemary-scented lamb over pasta (Page 87) followed by frozen coffee", "If that's true, many of us could use a little sexual self-improvement. Not me, of course. I have been happily married for 26 years, since the age of 21. Deb and I have what seems to us to be a perfectly fine amorous life, yet everywhere I turn the culture tells me--almost mocks me-- you can do better! What would happen to our sex life then, if Deb (who participated in this story because she loves me and because she has tenure) and I tried for the first time to make something happen to it? \n\n And so it was that we found ourselves for the first time ever in a sex-toy store, A Touch of Romance, located near our home in Los Angeles, across the street from a Macy's. The idea behind shops like these is to make obtaining the materials of sexual experimentation as ordinary as purchasing plumbing supplies or housewares.", "Intercourses , by Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge ($24.95, Terrace Publishing, 1997), preaches that for every time of day and every phase of a relationship there is a type of eating experience that will heighten sexual response. (There's also", "We shopped for the food together and cooked together, drinking wine and beer along the way. At one point while I was working on the dessert, I asked my wife how long to beat the heavy cream mixture. \"Till it's stiff--it's an aphrodisiac,\" she said. Preparation took less than an hour, and everything came out perfectly. Eating at our dining room table for the first time ever without guests, we were having fun by candlelight. But the mood was romantic, not erotic. \n\n Overall rating: 4 toes curled. \n\n That's when we went for the Viagra ($212.50 for 10 doses, which includes a \"consultation\" fee). The drug was prescribed by a doctor, whom I've never met, and ordered from a pharmacy in Miami Beach, Fla., where I've never been. I completed the transaction via the Internet after filling out a cover-their-ass questionnaire in three minutes.", "Kahlua, which has worked before.", "Next we tried those \"Better Sex\" instructional videos advertised in the New York Times Book Review. I ordered Better Sexual Techniques , Advanced Sexual Techniques , Making Sex Fun , and Advanced Oral Sex Techniques (priced about $11.95 each, not including shipping and handling). My wife couldn't bear to watch them; I persevered but must admit it was a chore. The oral-sex tape starts with \"well-known sex therapist\" Diana Wiley, in her poofy hair and broad-shouldered blue power suit, looking like she was about to explain how the sales force could increase its third-quarter productivity. Instead she runs through all the euphemisms for oral sex and then the video cuts to XXX action with gratuitous commentary.", "Overall rating, on a scale of 1 to 10: 2 toes curled. \n\n A woman I know says women's magazines are the best places in America to find sex tips. She's right--go ahead, just try to find a sewing pattern in Redbook . You're much more likely to land on \"Try phone sex, dirty notes, porn videos, fantasy games and sex in new places. ... Try lingerie and no underwear. ... Try talking dirty and silk scarves. Try anything at all,\" or articles such as \"Eight New Games for the Foreplay Challenged.\"", "An article in the April Cosmopolitan , \"The Six Best Sex Positions,\" seemed more promising than the Redbook playbook. Each position was accompanied by a succinct write-up and a stick-figure diagram. The position we settled on was \"The Butterfly,\" which we had to read three times to comprehend. The man stands, the woman remains supine on a bed or counter-top with her feet up on his shoulders. The whole idea is to produce a pelvic tilt for better access to the G spot. Instead, we experienced an uncomfortable pretzel feeling that stick figures must be immune to. And in general, Cosmopolitan 's exotic sex positions require the sort of body placement you can't remember in the moment of passion and even if you could, for proper alignment, you still might need mood-killing accessories such as a plumb line and a laser pen. \n\n Rating: 3 toes curled.", "We each decided to take one pill, clinked our glasses, and gulped. And then what? It felt awkward sitting in our bedroom, knowing that it could take up to an hour for Viagra to \"work.\" I suggested that we play strip poker, something I'd never done. Deb had never even played poker, so I had to explain the rules. I won in about six hands, auspiciously I thought, with three aces. But we still weren't really in the mood yet.", "So how about this instead? Go for all the sexual self-help you can, but do it covertly . Watch a sex video (or porn flick) if you want--but by yourself, and then try to share what you learned without sharing how you learned it. Don't tell your partner you took Viagra. Or give each other standing permission to slip it into the odd after-dinner drink, saying nothing. (Of course, when you do it you'll still know, but having an unselfconsciously turned-on partner is a real compensation for that, and next time, your partner can surprise you. And yes, this requires trust. But why would you be having sex with someone you don't trust?) My main conclusion is that contrary to our blabby culture, the key to a better sex life is less communication.", "Which sort of works--the only sexual thrill I got from the visit was knowing that Microsoft just bought a cock ring. Choosing it wasn't easy. Most of them came in presized sets of three. I couldn't figure out which would fit right and intuited that try-ons weren't an option. So I opted instead for an adjustable circumference version, a little strip of vinyl with snaps for $11.95. Man, what a rip-off! Unless it works. \n\n It doesn't. Back home, I derived a certain depraved buzz in cinching the device on, but that was soon eclipsed. The thing works on the Roach Motel principle--your blood gets in but it can't get out. But then I got to thinking: Under battlefield conditions it doesn't get out anyway. And while I should have been paying more attention to other things, this led to thinking about the old joke with the punch line \"... and right ball go POW.\" My wife hadn't noticed any difference at all.", "More Bang for the Buck \n\n A friend of mine offers a theory about why Bill Clinton's poll numbers stayed so high throughout the Lewinsky scandal: The news made it possible for serious-minded people to spend lots of time--at the office and over lunch--talking about semen stains, vaginal insertions, and blow jobs. And the people were grateful. \n\n That's probably because they're not getting all that much themselves. A recent University of Chicago survey of 10,000 adults found that Americans are having considerably less sex than was generally thought. Only one American in 20 has sex three times a week. One in five didn't score at all last year.", "Wiley's overexplanation of everything two people can do to each other with their mouths raises this question: Do you really need a five-minute video segment on whether or not to swallow? In the great tradition of hotel and travel ads, the guys tend to be markedly less attractive than the women. No way he'd be with her if this wasn't an instructional sex video! The inanity of the experts and the dubious casting make these films about as erotic as ... well, as the New York Times . You could learn more from any randomly selected porn video. \n\n Rating: 0 toes curled.", "Another approach is food. The notion that certain foods, such as oysters or rhino horn, are aphrodisiacs has been pretty much discounted. But it's plausible to think that cooking a meal together" ], [ "So how about this instead? Go for all the sexual self-help you can, but do it covertly . Watch a sex video (or porn flick) if you want--but by yourself, and then try to share what you learned without sharing how you learned it. Don't tell your partner you took Viagra. Or give each other standing permission to slip it into the odd after-dinner drink, saying nothing. (Of course, when you do it you'll still know, but having an unselfconsciously turned-on partner is a real compensation for that, and next time, your partner can surprise you. And yes, this requires trust. But why would you be having sex with someone you don't trust?) My main conclusion is that contrary to our blabby culture, the key to a better sex life is less communication.", "More Bang for the Buck \n\n A friend of mine offers a theory about why Bill Clinton's poll numbers stayed so high throughout the Lewinsky scandal: The news made it possible for serious-minded people to spend lots of time--at the office and over lunch--talking about semen stains, vaginal insertions, and blow jobs. And the people were grateful. \n\n That's probably because they're not getting all that much themselves. A recent University of Chicago survey of 10,000 adults found that Americans are having considerably less sex than was generally thought. Only one American in 20 has sex three times a week. One in five didn't score at all last year.", "St. Augustine held lust to be a fitting punishment for man's disobedience to God: the body's disobeying of the mind, the will, the spirit, and even of itself. (The paradigm of this for him is the unbidden hard-on.) Jean-Paul Sartre discovered something similar, although celebrating it rather than deploring it: Essential to the erotic is the body's defiance of design and control. (The paradigm of this for him is the jiggle.) Sartre's view yields a sort of sexual Heisenberg principle: There is an inherent tension between physically abandoning yourself to another on the one hand and sexual planning on the other. The more of the one, the less of the other. And this, I discovered, is the chief obstacle to sexual self-help. Getting an erection is sexy. Making one is not. As my wife said about Viagra, \"You start to have a new feeling and then you realize where it came from and then you don't have it so much. ... Anything that makes you think about it like that is just creepy.\"", "This is not to say there isn't a way out of this conflict between desire and design. With homage to our potent POTUS, there is, I think, a Third Way that's neither sexual complacency nor standard self-help. If the intrusion of consciousness is the problem, then maybe the answer is to block it out. Sure, you could do this the old-fashioned way: with alcohol and drugs. But then you have all the traditional drawbacks, including diminished physical attractiveness and degraded sexual performance.", "and then dining on it, just the two of you, could be erotic. Especially if (like me) your schedule frequently forces you to eat alone and you often find yourself standing in front of the microwave, screaming, \"Come on, goddammit!\"", "If that's true, many of us could use a little sexual self-improvement. Not me, of course. I have been happily married for 26 years, since the age of 21. Deb and I have what seems to us to be a perfectly fine amorous life, yet everywhere I turn the culture tells me--almost mocks me-- you can do better! What would happen to our sex life then, if Deb (who participated in this story because she loves me and because she has tenure) and I tried for the first time to make something happen to it? \n\n And so it was that we found ourselves for the first time ever in a sex-toy store, A Touch of Romance, located near our home in Los Angeles, across the street from a Macy's. The idea behind shops like these is to make obtaining the materials of sexual experimentation as ordinary as purchasing plumbing supplies or housewares.", "Overall rating, on a scale of 1 to 10: 2 toes curled. \n\n A woman I know says women's magazines are the best places in America to find sex tips. She's right--go ahead, just try to find a sewing pattern in Redbook . You're much more likely to land on \"Try phone sex, dirty notes, porn videos, fantasy games and sex in new places. ... Try lingerie and no underwear. ... Try talking dirty and silk scarves. Try anything at all,\" or articles such as \"Eight New Games for the Foreplay Challenged.\"", "Next we tried those \"Better Sex\" instructional videos advertised in the New York Times Book Review. I ordered Better Sexual Techniques , Advanced Sexual Techniques , Making Sex Fun , and Advanced Oral Sex Techniques (priced about $11.95 each, not including shipping and handling). My wife couldn't bear to watch them; I persevered but must admit it was a chore. The oral-sex tape starts with \"well-known sex therapist\" Diana Wiley, in her poofy hair and broad-shouldered blue power suit, looking like she was about to explain how the sales force could increase its third-quarter productivity. Instead she runs through all the euphemisms for oral sex and then the video cuts to XXX action with gratuitous commentary.", "So then I got out the other purchase I'd made at A Touch of Romance--\"Dirty Dice\" ($4.95). One of the two pink cubes is marked with these words instead of dots: \"lips,\" \"above waist,\" \"ear,\" \"breast,\" \"below waist,\" and \"?\". The other cube is labeled \"kiss,\" \"squeeze,\" \"lick,\" \"blow,\" \"suck,\" and \"eat.\" We took turns throwing the dice, but the activities generated seemed forced and arbitrary. Finally, as they say at NASA, there was word from the pad that the launch sequence was initiating. It was pretty much like all other sex, except for a slight lightheadedness. Deb said she noticed a remote tingling sensation. On the plus side, there was no priapism and neither of us experienced disruption of our color vision nor a fatal heart attack, which was nice. \n\n Overall rating: 5 toes curled.", "Another approach is food. The notion that certain foods, such as oysters or rhino horn, are aphrodisiacs has been pretty much discounted. But it's plausible to think that cooking a meal together", "Which sort of works--the only sexual thrill I got from the visit was knowing that Microsoft just bought a cock ring. Choosing it wasn't easy. Most of them came in presized sets of three. I couldn't figure out which would fit right and intuited that try-ons weren't an option. So I opted instead for an adjustable circumference version, a little strip of vinyl with snaps for $11.95. Man, what a rip-off! Unless it works. \n\n It doesn't. Back home, I derived a certain depraved buzz in cinching the device on, but that was soon eclipsed. The thing works on the Roach Motel principle--your blood gets in but it can't get out. But then I got to thinking: Under battlefield conditions it doesn't get out anyway. And while I should have been paying more attention to other things, this led to thinking about the old joke with the punch line \"... and right ball go POW.\" My wife hadn't noticed any difference at all.", "Intercourses , by Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge ($24.95, Terrace Publishing, 1997), preaches that for every time of day and every phase of a relationship there is a type of eating experience that will heighten sexual response. (There's also", "An article in the April Cosmopolitan , \"The Six Best Sex Positions,\" seemed more promising than the Redbook playbook. Each position was accompanied by a succinct write-up and a stick-figure diagram. The position we settled on was \"The Butterfly,\" which we had to read three times to comprehend. The man stands, the woman remains supine on a bed or counter-top with her feet up on his shoulders. The whole idea is to produce a pelvic tilt for better access to the G spot. Instead, we experienced an uncomfortable pretzel feeling that stick figures must be immune to. And in general, Cosmopolitan 's exotic sex positions require the sort of body placement you can't remember in the moment of passion and even if you could, for proper alignment, you still might need mood-killing accessories such as a plumb line and a laser pen. \n\n Rating: 3 toes curled.", "We shopped for the food together and cooked together, drinking wine and beer along the way. At one point while I was working on the dessert, I asked my wife how long to beat the heavy cream mixture. \"Till it's stiff--it's an aphrodisiac,\" she said. Preparation took less than an hour, and everything came out perfectly. Eating at our dining room table for the first time ever without guests, we were having fun by candlelight. But the mood was romantic, not erotic. \n\n Overall rating: 4 toes curled. \n\n That's when we went for the Viagra ($212.50 for 10 doses, which includes a \"consultation\" fee). The drug was prescribed by a doctor, whom I've never met, and ordered from a pharmacy in Miami Beach, Fla., where I've never been. I completed the transaction via the Internet after filling out a cover-their-ass questionnaire in three minutes.", "a chart showing which foods are good for eating off which body parts.) Deb and I blocked off a whole Saturday afternoon and evening for the Intercourses experiment, settling on rosemary-scented lamb over pasta (Page 87) followed by frozen coffee", "Wiley's overexplanation of everything two people can do to each other with their mouths raises this question: Do you really need a five-minute video segment on whether or not to swallow? In the great tradition of hotel and travel ads, the guys tend to be markedly less attractive than the women. No way he'd be with her if this wasn't an instructional sex video! The inanity of the experts and the dubious casting make these films about as erotic as ... well, as the New York Times . You could learn more from any randomly selected porn video. \n\n Rating: 0 toes curled.", "We each decided to take one pill, clinked our glasses, and gulped. And then what? It felt awkward sitting in our bedroom, knowing that it could take up to an hour for Viagra to \"work.\" I suggested that we play strip poker, something I'd never done. Deb had never even played poker, so I had to explain the rules. I won in about six hands, auspiciously I thought, with three aces. But we still weren't really in the mood yet.", "almond dessert (Page 31). According to the book, rosemary is sexy because of its fragrance (used in many perfumes) and because of its texture, which, so the text assured, tickles nerve endings. The dessert was mostly coffee, rum, and", "Kahlua, which has worked before." ], [ "So how about this instead? Go for all the sexual self-help you can, but do it covertly . Watch a sex video (or porn flick) if you want--but by yourself, and then try to share what you learned without sharing how you learned it. Don't tell your partner you took Viagra. Or give each other standing permission to slip it into the odd after-dinner drink, saying nothing. (Of course, when you do it you'll still know, but having an unselfconsciously turned-on partner is a real compensation for that, and next time, your partner can surprise you. And yes, this requires trust. But why would you be having sex with someone you don't trust?) My main conclusion is that contrary to our blabby culture, the key to a better sex life is less communication.", "We each decided to take one pill, clinked our glasses, and gulped. And then what? It felt awkward sitting in our bedroom, knowing that it could take up to an hour for Viagra to \"work.\" I suggested that we play strip poker, something I'd never done. Deb had never even played poker, so I had to explain the rules. I won in about six hands, auspiciously I thought, with three aces. But we still weren't really in the mood yet.", "We shopped for the food together and cooked together, drinking wine and beer along the way. At one point while I was working on the dessert, I asked my wife how long to beat the heavy cream mixture. \"Till it's stiff--it's an aphrodisiac,\" she said. Preparation took less than an hour, and everything came out perfectly. Eating at our dining room table for the first time ever without guests, we were having fun by candlelight. But the mood was romantic, not erotic. \n\n Overall rating: 4 toes curled. \n\n That's when we went for the Viagra ($212.50 for 10 doses, which includes a \"consultation\" fee). The drug was prescribed by a doctor, whom I've never met, and ordered from a pharmacy in Miami Beach, Fla., where I've never been. I completed the transaction via the Internet after filling out a cover-their-ass questionnaire in three minutes.", "St. Augustine held lust to be a fitting punishment for man's disobedience to God: the body's disobeying of the mind, the will, the spirit, and even of itself. (The paradigm of this for him is the unbidden hard-on.) Jean-Paul Sartre discovered something similar, although celebrating it rather than deploring it: Essential to the erotic is the body's defiance of design and control. (The paradigm of this for him is the jiggle.) Sartre's view yields a sort of sexual Heisenberg principle: There is an inherent tension between physically abandoning yourself to another on the one hand and sexual planning on the other. The more of the one, the less of the other. And this, I discovered, is the chief obstacle to sexual self-help. Getting an erection is sexy. Making one is not. As my wife said about Viagra, \"You start to have a new feeling and then you realize where it came from and then you don't have it so much. ... Anything that makes you think about it like that is just creepy.\"", "This is not to say there isn't a way out of this conflict between desire and design. With homage to our potent POTUS, there is, I think, a Third Way that's neither sexual complacency nor standard self-help. If the intrusion of consciousness is the problem, then maybe the answer is to block it out. Sure, you could do this the old-fashioned way: with alcohol and drugs. But then you have all the traditional drawbacks, including diminished physical attractiveness and degraded sexual performance.", "If that's true, many of us could use a little sexual self-improvement. Not me, of course. I have been happily married for 26 years, since the age of 21. Deb and I have what seems to us to be a perfectly fine amorous life, yet everywhere I turn the culture tells me--almost mocks me-- you can do better! What would happen to our sex life then, if Deb (who participated in this story because she loves me and because she has tenure) and I tried for the first time to make something happen to it? \n\n And so it was that we found ourselves for the first time ever in a sex-toy store, A Touch of Romance, located near our home in Los Angeles, across the street from a Macy's. The idea behind shops like these is to make obtaining the materials of sexual experimentation as ordinary as purchasing plumbing supplies or housewares.", "Another approach is food. The notion that certain foods, such as oysters or rhino horn, are aphrodisiacs has been pretty much discounted. But it's plausible to think that cooking a meal together", "and then dining on it, just the two of you, could be erotic. Especially if (like me) your schedule frequently forces you to eat alone and you often find yourself standing in front of the microwave, screaming, \"Come on, goddammit!\"", "Next we tried those \"Better Sex\" instructional videos advertised in the New York Times Book Review. I ordered Better Sexual Techniques , Advanced Sexual Techniques , Making Sex Fun , and Advanced Oral Sex Techniques (priced about $11.95 each, not including shipping and handling). My wife couldn't bear to watch them; I persevered but must admit it was a chore. The oral-sex tape starts with \"well-known sex therapist\" Diana Wiley, in her poofy hair and broad-shouldered blue power suit, looking like she was about to explain how the sales force could increase its third-quarter productivity. Instead she runs through all the euphemisms for oral sex and then the video cuts to XXX action with gratuitous commentary.", "So then I got out the other purchase I'd made at A Touch of Romance--\"Dirty Dice\" ($4.95). One of the two pink cubes is marked with these words instead of dots: \"lips,\" \"above waist,\" \"ear,\" \"breast,\" \"below waist,\" and \"?\". The other cube is labeled \"kiss,\" \"squeeze,\" \"lick,\" \"blow,\" \"suck,\" and \"eat.\" We took turns throwing the dice, but the activities generated seemed forced and arbitrary. Finally, as they say at NASA, there was word from the pad that the launch sequence was initiating. It was pretty much like all other sex, except for a slight lightheadedness. Deb said she noticed a remote tingling sensation. On the plus side, there was no priapism and neither of us experienced disruption of our color vision nor a fatal heart attack, which was nice. \n\n Overall rating: 5 toes curled.", "a chart showing which foods are good for eating off which body parts.) Deb and I blocked off a whole Saturday afternoon and evening for the Intercourses experiment, settling on rosemary-scented lamb over pasta (Page 87) followed by frozen coffee", "Which sort of works--the only sexual thrill I got from the visit was knowing that Microsoft just bought a cock ring. Choosing it wasn't easy. Most of them came in presized sets of three. I couldn't figure out which would fit right and intuited that try-ons weren't an option. So I opted instead for an adjustable circumference version, a little strip of vinyl with snaps for $11.95. Man, what a rip-off! Unless it works. \n\n It doesn't. Back home, I derived a certain depraved buzz in cinching the device on, but that was soon eclipsed. The thing works on the Roach Motel principle--your blood gets in but it can't get out. But then I got to thinking: Under battlefield conditions it doesn't get out anyway. And while I should have been paying more attention to other things, this led to thinking about the old joke with the punch line \"... and right ball go POW.\" My wife hadn't noticed any difference at all.", "Overall rating, on a scale of 1 to 10: 2 toes curled. \n\n A woman I know says women's magazines are the best places in America to find sex tips. She's right--go ahead, just try to find a sewing pattern in Redbook . You're much more likely to land on \"Try phone sex, dirty notes, porn videos, fantasy games and sex in new places. ... Try lingerie and no underwear. ... Try talking dirty and silk scarves. Try anything at all,\" or articles such as \"Eight New Games for the Foreplay Challenged.\"", "Intercourses , by Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge ($24.95, Terrace Publishing, 1997), preaches that for every time of day and every phase of a relationship there is a type of eating experience that will heighten sexual response. (There's also", "More Bang for the Buck \n\n A friend of mine offers a theory about why Bill Clinton's poll numbers stayed so high throughout the Lewinsky scandal: The news made it possible for serious-minded people to spend lots of time--at the office and over lunch--talking about semen stains, vaginal insertions, and blow jobs. And the people were grateful. \n\n That's probably because they're not getting all that much themselves. A recent University of Chicago survey of 10,000 adults found that Americans are having considerably less sex than was generally thought. Only one American in 20 has sex three times a week. One in five didn't score at all last year.", "An article in the April Cosmopolitan , \"The Six Best Sex Positions,\" seemed more promising than the Redbook playbook. Each position was accompanied by a succinct write-up and a stick-figure diagram. The position we settled on was \"The Butterfly,\" which we had to read three times to comprehend. The man stands, the woman remains supine on a bed or counter-top with her feet up on his shoulders. The whole idea is to produce a pelvic tilt for better access to the G spot. Instead, we experienced an uncomfortable pretzel feeling that stick figures must be immune to. And in general, Cosmopolitan 's exotic sex positions require the sort of body placement you can't remember in the moment of passion and even if you could, for proper alignment, you still might need mood-killing accessories such as a plumb line and a laser pen. \n\n Rating: 3 toes curled.", "Wiley's overexplanation of everything two people can do to each other with their mouths raises this question: Do you really need a five-minute video segment on whether or not to swallow? In the great tradition of hotel and travel ads, the guys tend to be markedly less attractive than the women. No way he'd be with her if this wasn't an instructional sex video! The inanity of the experts and the dubious casting make these films about as erotic as ... well, as the New York Times . You could learn more from any randomly selected porn video. \n\n Rating: 0 toes curled.", "almond dessert (Page 31). According to the book, rosemary is sexy because of its fragrance (used in many perfumes) and because of its texture, which, so the text assured, tickles nerve endings. The dessert was mostly coffee, rum, and", "Kahlua, which has worked before." ] ]
train	23960	[ "What is the significance of the story's title?", "Which of these statements about the cigarettes has an irony that is represented elsewhere in the story?", "Which is definitely true about why Sir Robert could not finish smoking the cigarette?", "Why did Sir Robert decide to disobey the king's orders?", "What is Robert's relationship with loyalty?", "Gascon ___ Sir Robert", "What would have happend if Sir Robert had not disobeyed orders?", "What does Sir Gaeton think about the relationship between Sir Robert and the king?", "What is Robert's role in the story?" ]	[ [ "It points to the high ratio of battle over diplomacy in the story", "It shows that the king is a man of few words", "We shows that this is part of a newscast recording", "It hints at sponsorship being relevant" ], [ "The fact that the producers know different media would have been a better platform", "The fact that Sir Robert only held one for a short time before dropping it, after saying how good it was", "The fact that the cigarettes themselves are anachronistic", "The fact that the producer actually works for a rival cigarette company" ], [ "The company only paid for a short amount of airtime", "He had to return to battle", "It tasted disgusting and he did not want to finish it", "They were prop cigarettes that hurt to use" ], [ "It is the only way to get back at France", "He is going to get chased out", "He is trying to protect his fellow knights", "He realizes following orders will mean his death" ], [ "He is loyal to his crown but makes his own decisions", "He is loyal to a small group but not to his country", "He tries to hide his disloyalty to the crown", "He is staunchly loyal and always obeys orders" ], [ "monitors", "envies", "ignores", "respects" ], [ "The king would not have been pinned down so quickly", "He would not have had time for a smoke break", "A group of soldiers would have been left exposed", "He would've been captured by the enemy" ], [ "He admires their camaraderie and aims to replicate it", "He thinks Sir Robert needs to convince others of his loyalty", "He is trying to replace Sir Robert in the king's eyes", "He thinks there is too much tension to be effective in combat" ], [ "He is the representative from Old Kings", "He is one of the producers of the show", "He is there to test the virtual reality helmet", "He is asked offer feedback on an episode" ] ]	[ 4, 3, 2, 3, 1, 4, 3, 2, 4 ]	[ 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "And then, quite suddenly, there seemed to be no foeman to swing at.\n Breathing heavily, Sir Robert sheathed his broadsword.\n\n\n Beside him, Sir Gaeton did the same, saying: \"It will be a few minutes\n before they can regroup, sir knight. We may have routed them\n completely.\"\n\n\n \"Aye. But King Richard will not approve of my breaking ranks and\n disobeying orders. I may win the battle and lose my head in the end.\"\n\n\n \"This is no time to worry about the future,\" said the Gascon. \"Rest for\n a moment and relax, that you may be the stronger later. Here—have an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He had a pack of cigarettes in his gauntleted hand, which he profferred\n to Sir Robert. There were three cigarettes protruding from it, one\n slightly farther than the others. Sir Robert's hand reached out and took\n that one.", "\"Thanks. When the going gets rough, I really enjoy an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He put one end of the cigarette in his mouth and lit the other from the\n lighter in Sir Gaeton's hand.\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said Sir Gaeton, after lighting his own cigarette, \"\nOld\n Kings\nare the greatest. They give a man real, deep-down smoking\n pleasure.\"\n\n\n \"There's no doubt about it,\nOld Kings\nare a\nman's\ncigarette.\" Sir\n Robert could feel the soothing smoke in his lungs as he inhaled deeply.\n \"That's great. When I want a cigarette, I don't want just\nany\ncigarette.\"\n\n\n \"Nor I,\" agreed the Gascon. \"\nOld Kings\nis the only real cigarette when\n you're doing a real\nman's\nwork.\"\n\n\n \"That's for sure.\" Sir Robert watched a smoke ring expand in the air.", "... After a Few Words ...\nby Seaton McKettrig\nIllustrated by Summer\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Analog October 1962.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright\n on this publication was renewed.]\nThis is a science-fiction story. History is a science; the other\n part is, as all Americans know, the most fictional field we have\n today.\nHe settled himself comfortably in his seat, and carefully put the helmet\n on, pulling it down firmly until it was properly seated. For a moment,\n he could see nothing.", "There was a sudden clash of arms off to their left. Sir Robert dropped\n his cigarette to the ground. \"The trouble is that doing a real he-man's\n work doesn't always allow you to enjoy the fine, rich tobaccos of\nOld\n Kings\nright down to the very end.\"\n\n\n \"No, but you can always light another later,\" said the Gascon knight.\nKing Richard, on seeing his army moving suddenly toward the harassed\n rear, had realized the danger and had charged through the Hospitallers\n to get into the thick of the fray. Now the Turks were charging down from\n the hills, hitting—not the flank as he had expected, but the rear!\n Saladin had expected him to hold fast!\n\n\n Sir Robert and Sir Gaeton spurred their chargers toward the flapping\n banner of England.", "The fierce warrior-king of England, his mighty sword in hand, was\n cutting down Turks as though they were grain-stalks, but still the\n Saracen horde pressed on. More and more of the terrible Turks came\n boiling down out of the hills, their glittering scimitars swinging.\n\n\n Sir Robert lost all track of time. There was nothing to do but keep his\n own great broadsword moving, swinging like some gigantic metronome as he\n hacked down the Moslem foes.\n\n\n And then, suddenly, he found himself surrounded by the Saracens! He was\n isolated and alone, cut off from the rest of the Christian forces! He\n glanced quickly around as he slashed another Saracen from pate to\n breastbone. Where was Sir Gaeton? Where were the others? Where was the\n red-and-gold banner of Richard?\n\n\n He caught a glimpse of the fluttering banner far to the rear and started\n to fall back.", "And then he saw another knight nearby, a huge man who swung his\n sparkling blade with power and force. On his steel helm gleamed a golden\n coronet! Richard!\n\n\n And the great king, in spite of his prowess was outnumbered heavily and\n would, within seconds, be cut down by the Saracen horde!\n\n\n Without hesitation, Sir Robert plunged his horse toward the surrounded\n monarch, his great blade cutting a path before him.\n\n\n He saw Richard go down, falling from the saddle of his charger, but by\n that time his own sword was cutting into the screaming Saracens and\n they had no time to attempt any further mischief to the King. They had\n their hands full with Sir Robert de Bouain.", "He himself, Sir Robert de Bouain, was riding with the Norman and English\n troops, just behind the men of Poitou. Sir Robert turned slightly in his\n saddle. To his right, he could see the brilliant red-and-gold banner of\n the lion-hearted Richard of England—\ngules, in pale three lions passant\n guardant or\n. Behind the standard-bearer, his great war horse moving\n with a steady, measured pace, his coronet of gold on his steel helm\n gleaming in the glaring desert sun, the lions of England on his\n firm-held shield, was the King himself.\n\n\n Further behind, the Knights Hospitallers protected the rear, guarding\n the column of the hosts of Christendom from harassment by the Bedouins.\n\n\n \"By our Lady!\" came a voice from his left. \"Three days out from Acre,\n and the accursed Saracens still elude us.\"", "He did not know how long he fought there, holding his charger motionless\n over the inert body of the fallen king, hewing down the screaming enemy,\n but presently he heard the familiar cry of \"For St. George and for\n England\" behind him. The Norman and English troops were charging in,\n bringing with them the banner of England!\n\n\n And then Richard was on his feet, cleaving the air about him with his\n own broadsword. Its bright edge, besmeared with Saracen blood, was\n biting viciously into the foe.\n\n\n The Turks began to fall back. Within seconds, the Christian knights were\n boiling around the embattled pair, forcing the Turks into retreat. And\n for the second time, Sir Robert found himself with no one to fight.\n\n\n And then a voice was saying: \"You have done well this day, sir knight.\n Richard Plantagenet will not forget.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert turned in his saddle to face the smiling king.", "Sir Robert de Bouain twisted again in his saddle to look at the knight\n riding alongside him. Sir Gaeton de l'Arc-Tombé sat tall and straight in\n his saddle, his visor up, his blue eyes narrowed against the glare of\n the sun.\n\n\n Sir Robert's lips formed a smile. \"They are not far off, Sir Gaeton.\n They have been following us. As we march parallel to the seacoast, so\n they have been marching with us in those hills to the east.\"\n\n\n \"Like the jackals they are,\" said Sir Gaeton. \"They assail us from the\n rear, and they set up traps in our path ahead. Our spies tell us that\n the Turks lie ahead of us in countless numbers. And yet, they fear to\n face us in open battle.\"\n\n\n \"Is it fear, or are they merely gathering their forces?\"", "\"My lord king, be assured that I would never forget my loyalty to my\n sovereign and liege lord. My sword and my life are yours whenever you\n call.\"\n\n\n King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. \"If it please God, I\n shall never ask your life. An earldom awaits you when we return to\n England, sir knight.\"\n\n\n And then the king mounted his horse and was running full gallop after\n the retreating Saracens.\nRobert took off his helmet.\n\n\n He blinked for a second to adjust his eyes to the relative dimness of\n the studio. After the brightness of the desert that the televicarion\n helmet had projected into his eyes, the studio seemed strangely\n cavelike.\n\n\n \"How'd you like it, Bob?\" asked one of the two producers of the show.", "The Master of the Hospitallers was speaking in a low, urgent voice to\n the King: \"My lord, we are pressed on by the enemy and in danger of\n eternal infamy. We are losing our horses, one after the other!\"\n\n\n \"Good Master,\" said Richard, \"it is you who must sustain their attack.\n No one can be everywhere at once.\"\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers nodded curtly and charged back into the\n fray.\n\n\n The King turned to Sir Baldwin de Carreo, who sat ahorse nearby, and\n pointed toward the eastern hills. \"They will come from there, hitting us\n in the flank; we cannot afford to amass a rearward charge. To do so\n would be to fall directly into the hands of the Saracen.\"", "\"It was my duty.\" Sir Robert's voice was stubborn. \"Could we have\n permitted a quarrel to develop between the two finest knights and\n warleaders in Christendom at this crucial point? The desertion of Philip\n of France has cost us dearly. Could we permit the desertion of Burgundy,\n too?\"\n\n\n \"You did what must be done in honor,\" the Gascon conceded, \"but you have\n not gained the love of Richard by doing so.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert felt his jaw set firmly. \"My king knows I am loyal.\"\n\n\n Sir Gaeton said nothing more, but there was a look in his eyes that\n showed that he felt that Richard of England might even doubt the loyalty\n of Sir Robert de Bouain.\nSir Robert rode on in silence, feeling the movement of the horse beneath\n him.", "Robert Bowen nodded briskly and patted the televike helmet. \"It was\n O.K.,\" he said. \"Good show. A little talky at the beginning, and it\n needs a better fade-out, but the action scenes were fine. The sponsor\n ought to like it—for a while, at least.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, 'for a while'?\"\n\n\n Robert Bowen sighed. \"If this thing goes on the air the way it is, he'll\n lose sales.\"\n\n\n \"Why? Commercial not good enough?\"\n\n\n \"\nToo\ngood! Man, I've smoked\nOld Kings\n, and, believe me, the real\n thing never tasted as good as that cigarette did in the commercial!\"", "There was a sudden sound to the rear. Like a wash of the tide from the\n sea came the sound of Saracen war cries and the clash of steel on steel\n mingled with the sounds of horses in agony and anger.\n\n\n Sir Robert turned his horse to look.\n\n\n The Negro troops of Saladin's Egyptian contingent were thundering down\n upon the rear! They clashed with the Hospitallers, slamming in like a\n rain of heavy stones, too close in for the use of bows. There was only\n the sword against armor, like the sound of a thousand hammers against a\n thousand anvils.\n\n\n \"Stand fast! Stand fast! Hold them off!\" It was the voice of King\n Richard, sounding like a clarion over the din of battle.", "Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. \"My\n lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip\n of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned\n to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the\n Holy Land leaving only the contingent of his vassal the Duke of Burgundy\n to remain with us.\"\n\n\n \"Richard of England has never been on the best of terms with Philip\n Augustus,\" said Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"No, and with good cause. But he allowed his anger against Philip to\n color his judgment when he spoke harshly against the Duke of Burgundy.\n The Duke is no coward, and Richard Plantagenet well knows it. As I said,\n he spoke in haste.\"\n\n\n \"And you intervened,\" said Sir Gaeton.", "Sir Robert heard his own laugh echo hollowly within his helmet. \"Perhaps\n 'twere better to be mad when the assault comes. Madmen fight better than\n men of cooler blood.\" He knew that the others were baking inside their\n heavy armor, although he himself was not too uncomfortable.\n\n\n Sir Gaeton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect.\n \"In truth, sir knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor\n heat. Nor is your own blood too cool. True, I ride with your Normans and\n your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a\n Gascon, and have sworn no fealty to him. But to side with the Duke of\n Burgundy against King Richard—\" He gave a short, barking laugh. \"I\n fear no man,\" he went on, \"but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard\n of England.\"", "A voice very close to Sir Robert said: \"Richard is right. If we go to\n the aid of the Hospitallers, we will expose the column to a flank\n attack.\" It was Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"My lord the King,\" Sir Robert heard his voice say, \"is right in all but\n one thing. If we allow the Egyptians to take us from the rear, there\n will be no need for Saladin and his Turks to come down on our flank. And\n the Hospitallers cannot hold for long at this rate. A charge at full\n gallop would break the Egyptian line and give the Hospitallers breathing\n time. Are you with me?\"\n\n\n \"Against the orders of the King?\"\n\n\n \"The King cannot see everything! There are times when a man must use his\n own judgment! You said you were afraid of no man. Are you with me?\"", "Sir Robert felt the shock against himself and his horse as the steel tip\n of the long ash lance struck the Saracen horseman in the chest. Out of\n the corner of his eye, he saw that Sir Gaeton, too, had scored.\n\n\n The Saracen, impaled on Sir Robert's lance, shot from the saddle as he\n died. His lighter armor had hardly impeded the incoming spear-point, and\n now his body dragged it down as he dropped toward the desert sand.\n Another Moslem cavalryman was charging in now, swinging his curved\n saber, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance.\n\n\n There was nothing else to do but drop the lance and draw his heavy\n broadsword. His hand grasped it, and it came singing from its scabbard.", "\"Both,\" said Sir Gaeton flatly. \"They fear us, else they would not dally\n to amass so fearsome a force. If, as our informers tell us, there are\n uncounted Turks to the fore, and if, as we are aware, our rear is being\n dogged by the Bedouin and the black horsemen of Egypt, it would seem\n that Saladin has at hand more than enough to overcome us, were they all\n truly Christian knights.\"\n\n\n \"Give them time. We must wait for their attack, sir knight. It were\n foolhardy to attempt to seek them in their own hills, and yet they must\n stop us. They will attack before we reach Jerusalem, fear not.\"\n\n\n \"We of Gascony fear no heathen Musselman,\" Sir Gaeton growled. \"It's\n this Hellish heat that is driving me mad.\" He pointed toward the eastern\n hills. \"The sun is yet low, and already the heat is unbearable.\"", "Sir Robert felt his horse move, as though it were urging him on toward\n the battle, but his hand held to the reins, keeping the great charger in\n check. The King had said \"Stand fast!\" and this was no time to disobey\n the orders of Richard.\n\n\n The Saracen troops were coming in from the rear, and the Hospitallers\n were taking the brunt of the charge. They fought like madmen, but they\n were slowly being forced back.\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers rode to the rear, to the King's standard,\n which hardly moved in the still desert air, now that the column had\n stopped moving.\n\n\n The voice of the Duke of Burgundy came to Sir Robert's ears.\n\n\n \"Stand fast. The King bids you all to stand fast,\" said the duke, his\n voice fading as he rode on up the column toward the knights of Poitou\n and the Knights Templars." ], [ "\"Thanks. When the going gets rough, I really enjoy an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He put one end of the cigarette in his mouth and lit the other from the\n lighter in Sir Gaeton's hand.\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said Sir Gaeton, after lighting his own cigarette, \"\nOld\n Kings\nare the greatest. They give a man real, deep-down smoking\n pleasure.\"\n\n\n \"There's no doubt about it,\nOld Kings\nare a\nman's\ncigarette.\" Sir\n Robert could feel the soothing smoke in his lungs as he inhaled deeply.\n \"That's great. When I want a cigarette, I don't want just\nany\ncigarette.\"\n\n\n \"Nor I,\" agreed the Gascon. \"\nOld Kings\nis the only real cigarette when\n you're doing a real\nman's\nwork.\"\n\n\n \"That's for sure.\" Sir Robert watched a smoke ring expand in the air.", "And then, quite suddenly, there seemed to be no foeman to swing at.\n Breathing heavily, Sir Robert sheathed his broadsword.\n\n\n Beside him, Sir Gaeton did the same, saying: \"It will be a few minutes\n before they can regroup, sir knight. We may have routed them\n completely.\"\n\n\n \"Aye. But King Richard will not approve of my breaking ranks and\n disobeying orders. I may win the battle and lose my head in the end.\"\n\n\n \"This is no time to worry about the future,\" said the Gascon. \"Rest for\n a moment and relax, that you may be the stronger later. Here—have an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He had a pack of cigarettes in his gauntleted hand, which he profferred\n to Sir Robert. There were three cigarettes protruding from it, one\n slightly farther than the others. Sir Robert's hand reached out and took\n that one.", "Robert Bowen nodded briskly and patted the televike helmet. \"It was\n O.K.,\" he said. \"Good show. A little talky at the beginning, and it\n needs a better fade-out, but the action scenes were fine. The sponsor\n ought to like it—for a while, at least.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, 'for a while'?\"\n\n\n Robert Bowen sighed. \"If this thing goes on the air the way it is, he'll\n lose sales.\"\n\n\n \"Why? Commercial not good enough?\"\n\n\n \"\nToo\ngood! Man, I've smoked\nOld Kings\n, and, believe me, the real\n thing never tasted as good as that cigarette did in the commercial!\"", "There was a sudden clash of arms off to their left. Sir Robert dropped\n his cigarette to the ground. \"The trouble is that doing a real he-man's\n work doesn't always allow you to enjoy the fine, rich tobaccos of\nOld\n Kings\nright down to the very end.\"\n\n\n \"No, but you can always light another later,\" said the Gascon knight.\nKing Richard, on seeing his army moving suddenly toward the harassed\n rear, had realized the danger and had charged through the Hospitallers\n to get into the thick of the fray. Now the Turks were charging down from\n the hills, hitting—not the flank as he had expected, but the rear!\n Saladin had expected him to hold fast!\n\n\n Sir Robert and Sir Gaeton spurred their chargers toward the flapping\n banner of England.", "Sir Robert heard his own laugh echo hollowly within his helmet. \"Perhaps\n 'twere better to be mad when the assault comes. Madmen fight better than\n men of cooler blood.\" He knew that the others were baking inside their\n heavy armor, although he himself was not too uncomfortable.\n\n\n Sir Gaeton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect.\n \"In truth, sir knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor\n heat. Nor is your own blood too cool. True, I ride with your Normans and\n your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a\n Gascon, and have sworn no fealty to him. But to side with the Duke of\n Burgundy against King Richard—\" He gave a short, barking laugh. \"I\n fear no man,\" he went on, \"but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard\n of England.\"", "The Master of the Hospitallers was speaking in a low, urgent voice to\n the King: \"My lord, we are pressed on by the enemy and in danger of\n eternal infamy. We are losing our horses, one after the other!\"\n\n\n \"Good Master,\" said Richard, \"it is you who must sustain their attack.\n No one can be everywhere at once.\"\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers nodded curtly and charged back into the\n fray.\n\n\n The King turned to Sir Baldwin de Carreo, who sat ahorse nearby, and\n pointed toward the eastern hills. \"They will come from there, hitting us\n in the flank; we cannot afford to amass a rearward charge. To do so\n would be to fall directly into the hands of the Saracen.\"", "Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. \"My\n lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip\n of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned\n to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the\n Holy Land leaving only the contingent of his vassal the Duke of Burgundy\n to remain with us.\"\n\n\n \"Richard of England has never been on the best of terms with Philip\n Augustus,\" said Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"No, and with good cause. But he allowed his anger against Philip to\n color his judgment when he spoke harshly against the Duke of Burgundy.\n The Duke is no coward, and Richard Plantagenet well knows it. As I said,\n he spoke in haste.\"\n\n\n \"And you intervened,\" said Sir Gaeton.", "\"It was my duty.\" Sir Robert's voice was stubborn. \"Could we have\n permitted a quarrel to develop between the two finest knights and\n warleaders in Christendom at this crucial point? The desertion of Philip\n of France has cost us dearly. Could we permit the desertion of Burgundy,\n too?\"\n\n\n \"You did what must be done in honor,\" the Gascon conceded, \"but you have\n not gained the love of Richard by doing so.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert felt his jaw set firmly. \"My king knows I am loyal.\"\n\n\n Sir Gaeton said nothing more, but there was a look in his eyes that\n showed that he felt that Richard of England might even doubt the loyalty\n of Sir Robert de Bouain.\nSir Robert rode on in silence, feeling the movement of the horse beneath\n him.", "... After a Few Words ...\nby Seaton McKettrig\nIllustrated by Summer\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Analog October 1962.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright\n on this publication was renewed.]\nThis is a science-fiction story. History is a science; the other\n part is, as all Americans know, the most fictional field we have\n today.\nHe settled himself comfortably in his seat, and carefully put the helmet\n on, pulling it down firmly until it was properly seated. For a moment,\n he could see nothing.", "\"My lord king, be assured that I would never forget my loyalty to my\n sovereign and liege lord. My sword and my life are yours whenever you\n call.\"\n\n\n King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. \"If it please God, I\n shall never ask your life. An earldom awaits you when we return to\n England, sir knight.\"\n\n\n And then the king mounted his horse and was running full gallop after\n the retreating Saracens.\nRobert took off his helmet.\n\n\n He blinked for a second to adjust his eyes to the relative dimness of\n the studio. After the brightness of the desert that the televicarion\n helmet had projected into his eyes, the studio seemed strangely\n cavelike.\n\n\n \"How'd you like it, Bob?\" asked one of the two producers of the show.", "Sir Robert de Bouain twisted again in his saddle to look at the knight\n riding alongside him. Sir Gaeton de l'Arc-Tombé sat tall and straight in\n his saddle, his visor up, his blue eyes narrowed against the glare of\n the sun.\n\n\n Sir Robert's lips formed a smile. \"They are not far off, Sir Gaeton.\n They have been following us. As we march parallel to the seacoast, so\n they have been marching with us in those hills to the east.\"\n\n\n \"Like the jackals they are,\" said Sir Gaeton. \"They assail us from the\n rear, and they set up traps in our path ahead. Our spies tell us that\n the Turks lie ahead of us in countless numbers. And yet, they fear to\n face us in open battle.\"\n\n\n \"Is it fear, or are they merely gathering their forces?\"", "The fierce warrior-king of England, his mighty sword in hand, was\n cutting down Turks as though they were grain-stalks, but still the\n Saracen horde pressed on. More and more of the terrible Turks came\n boiling down out of the hills, their glittering scimitars swinging.\n\n\n Sir Robert lost all track of time. There was nothing to do but keep his\n own great broadsword moving, swinging like some gigantic metronome as he\n hacked down the Moslem foes.\n\n\n And then, suddenly, he found himself surrounded by the Saracens! He was\n isolated and alone, cut off from the rest of the Christian forces! He\n glanced quickly around as he slashed another Saracen from pate to\n breastbone. Where was Sir Gaeton? Where were the others? Where was the\n red-and-gold banner of Richard?\n\n\n He caught a glimpse of the fluttering banner far to the rear and started\n to fall back.", "He himself, Sir Robert de Bouain, was riding with the Norman and English\n troops, just behind the men of Poitou. Sir Robert turned slightly in his\n saddle. To his right, he could see the brilliant red-and-gold banner of\n the lion-hearted Richard of England—\ngules, in pale three lions passant\n guardant or\n. Behind the standard-bearer, his great war horse moving\n with a steady, measured pace, his coronet of gold on his steel helm\n gleaming in the glaring desert sun, the lions of England on his\n firm-held shield, was the King himself.\n\n\n Further behind, the Knights Hospitallers protected the rear, guarding\n the column of the hosts of Christendom from harassment by the Bedouins.\n\n\n \"By our Lady!\" came a voice from his left. \"Three days out from Acre,\n and the accursed Saracens still elude us.\"", "He did not know how long he fought there, holding his charger motionless\n over the inert body of the fallen king, hewing down the screaming enemy,\n but presently he heard the familiar cry of \"For St. George and for\n England\" behind him. The Norman and English troops were charging in,\n bringing with them the banner of England!\n\n\n And then Richard was on his feet, cleaving the air about him with his\n own broadsword. Its bright edge, besmeared with Saracen blood, was\n biting viciously into the foe.\n\n\n The Turks began to fall back. Within seconds, the Christian knights were\n boiling around the embattled pair, forcing the Turks into retreat. And\n for the second time, Sir Robert found himself with no one to fight.\n\n\n And then a voice was saying: \"You have done well this day, sir knight.\n Richard Plantagenet will not forget.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert turned in his saddle to face the smiling king.", "Sir Robert felt the shock against himself and his horse as the steel tip\n of the long ash lance struck the Saracen horseman in the chest. Out of\n the corner of his eye, he saw that Sir Gaeton, too, had scored.\n\n\n The Saracen, impaled on Sir Robert's lance, shot from the saddle as he\n died. His lighter armor had hardly impeded the incoming spear-point, and\n now his body dragged it down as he dropped toward the desert sand.\n Another Moslem cavalryman was charging in now, swinging his curved\n saber, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance.\n\n\n There was nothing else to do but drop the lance and draw his heavy\n broadsword. His hand grasped it, and it came singing from its scabbard.", "\"Both,\" said Sir Gaeton flatly. \"They fear us, else they would not dally\n to amass so fearsome a force. If, as our informers tell us, there are\n uncounted Turks to the fore, and if, as we are aware, our rear is being\n dogged by the Bedouin and the black horsemen of Egypt, it would seem\n that Saladin has at hand more than enough to overcome us, were they all\n truly Christian knights.\"\n\n\n \"Give them time. We must wait for their attack, sir knight. It were\n foolhardy to attempt to seek them in their own hills, and yet they must\n stop us. They will attack before we reach Jerusalem, fear not.\"\n\n\n \"We of Gascony fear no heathen Musselman,\" Sir Gaeton growled. \"It's\n this Hellish heat that is driving me mad.\" He pointed toward the eastern\n hills. \"The sun is yet low, and already the heat is unbearable.\"", "Then his hand moved up and, with a flick of the wrist, lifted the visor.\n Ahead of him, in serried array, with lances erect and pennons flying,\n was the forward part of the column. Far ahead, he knew, were the Knights\n Templars, who had taken the advance. Behind the Templars rode the mailed\n knights of Brittany and Anjou. These were followed by King Guy of\n Jerusalem and the host of Poitou.", "A voice very close to Sir Robert said: \"Richard is right. If we go to\n the aid of the Hospitallers, we will expose the column to a flank\n attack.\" It was Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"My lord the King,\" Sir Robert heard his voice say, \"is right in all but\n one thing. If we allow the Egyptians to take us from the rear, there\n will be no need for Saladin and his Turks to come down on our flank. And\n the Hospitallers cannot hold for long at this rate. A charge at full\n gallop would break the Egyptian line and give the Hospitallers breathing\n time. Are you with me?\"\n\n\n \"Against the orders of the King?\"\n\n\n \"The King cannot see everything! There are times when a man must use his\n own judgment! You said you were afraid of no man. Are you with me?\"", "There was a sudden sound to the rear. Like a wash of the tide from the\n sea came the sound of Saracen war cries and the clash of steel on steel\n mingled with the sounds of horses in agony and anger.\n\n\n Sir Robert turned his horse to look.\n\n\n The Negro troops of Saladin's Egyptian contingent were thundering down\n upon the rear! They clashed with the Hospitallers, slamming in like a\n rain of heavy stones, too close in for the use of bows. There was only\n the sword against armor, like the sound of a thousand hammers against a\n thousand anvils.\n\n\n \"Stand fast! Stand fast! Hold them off!\" It was the voice of King\n Richard, sounding like a clarion over the din of battle.", "And then he saw another knight nearby, a huge man who swung his\n sparkling blade with power and force. On his steel helm gleamed a golden\n coronet! Richard!\n\n\n And the great king, in spite of his prowess was outnumbered heavily and\n would, within seconds, be cut down by the Saracen horde!\n\n\n Without hesitation, Sir Robert plunged his horse toward the surrounded\n monarch, his great blade cutting a path before him.\n\n\n He saw Richard go down, falling from the saddle of his charger, but by\n that time his own sword was cutting into the screaming Saracens and\n they had no time to attempt any further mischief to the King. They had\n their hands full with Sir Robert de Bouain." ], [ "And then, quite suddenly, there seemed to be no foeman to swing at.\n Breathing heavily, Sir Robert sheathed his broadsword.\n\n\n Beside him, Sir Gaeton did the same, saying: \"It will be a few minutes\n before they can regroup, sir knight. We may have routed them\n completely.\"\n\n\n \"Aye. But King Richard will not approve of my breaking ranks and\n disobeying orders. I may win the battle and lose my head in the end.\"\n\n\n \"This is no time to worry about the future,\" said the Gascon. \"Rest for\n a moment and relax, that you may be the stronger later. Here—have an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He had a pack of cigarettes in his gauntleted hand, which he profferred\n to Sir Robert. There were three cigarettes protruding from it, one\n slightly farther than the others. Sir Robert's hand reached out and took\n that one.", "\"Thanks. When the going gets rough, I really enjoy an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He put one end of the cigarette in his mouth and lit the other from the\n lighter in Sir Gaeton's hand.\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said Sir Gaeton, after lighting his own cigarette, \"\nOld\n Kings\nare the greatest. They give a man real, deep-down smoking\n pleasure.\"\n\n\n \"There's no doubt about it,\nOld Kings\nare a\nman's\ncigarette.\" Sir\n Robert could feel the soothing smoke in his lungs as he inhaled deeply.\n \"That's great. When I want a cigarette, I don't want just\nany\ncigarette.\"\n\n\n \"Nor I,\" agreed the Gascon. \"\nOld Kings\nis the only real cigarette when\n you're doing a real\nman's\nwork.\"\n\n\n \"That's for sure.\" Sir Robert watched a smoke ring expand in the air.", "There was a sudden clash of arms off to their left. Sir Robert dropped\n his cigarette to the ground. \"The trouble is that doing a real he-man's\n work doesn't always allow you to enjoy the fine, rich tobaccos of\nOld\n Kings\nright down to the very end.\"\n\n\n \"No, but you can always light another later,\" said the Gascon knight.\nKing Richard, on seeing his army moving suddenly toward the harassed\n rear, had realized the danger and had charged through the Hospitallers\n to get into the thick of the fray. Now the Turks were charging down from\n the hills, hitting—not the flank as he had expected, but the rear!\n Saladin had expected him to hold fast!\n\n\n Sir Robert and Sir Gaeton spurred their chargers toward the flapping\n banner of England.", "\"It was my duty.\" Sir Robert's voice was stubborn. \"Could we have\n permitted a quarrel to develop between the two finest knights and\n warleaders in Christendom at this crucial point? The desertion of Philip\n of France has cost us dearly. Could we permit the desertion of Burgundy,\n too?\"\n\n\n \"You did what must be done in honor,\" the Gascon conceded, \"but you have\n not gained the love of Richard by doing so.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert felt his jaw set firmly. \"My king knows I am loyal.\"\n\n\n Sir Gaeton said nothing more, but there was a look in his eyes that\n showed that he felt that Richard of England might even doubt the loyalty\n of Sir Robert de Bouain.\nSir Robert rode on in silence, feeling the movement of the horse beneath\n him.", "Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. \"My\n lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip\n of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned\n to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the\n Holy Land leaving only the contingent of his vassal the Duke of Burgundy\n to remain with us.\"\n\n\n \"Richard of England has never been on the best of terms with Philip\n Augustus,\" said Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"No, and with good cause. But he allowed his anger against Philip to\n color his judgment when he spoke harshly against the Duke of Burgundy.\n The Duke is no coward, and Richard Plantagenet well knows it. As I said,\n he spoke in haste.\"\n\n\n \"And you intervened,\" said Sir Gaeton.", "A voice very close to Sir Robert said: \"Richard is right. If we go to\n the aid of the Hospitallers, we will expose the column to a flank\n attack.\" It was Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"My lord the King,\" Sir Robert heard his voice say, \"is right in all but\n one thing. If we allow the Egyptians to take us from the rear, there\n will be no need for Saladin and his Turks to come down on our flank. And\n the Hospitallers cannot hold for long at this rate. A charge at full\n gallop would break the Egyptian line and give the Hospitallers breathing\n time. Are you with me?\"\n\n\n \"Against the orders of the King?\"\n\n\n \"The King cannot see everything! There are times when a man must use his\n own judgment! You said you were afraid of no man. Are you with me?\"", "He did not know how long he fought there, holding his charger motionless\n over the inert body of the fallen king, hewing down the screaming enemy,\n but presently he heard the familiar cry of \"For St. George and for\n England\" behind him. The Norman and English troops were charging in,\n bringing with them the banner of England!\n\n\n And then Richard was on his feet, cleaving the air about him with his\n own broadsword. Its bright edge, besmeared with Saracen blood, was\n biting viciously into the foe.\n\n\n The Turks began to fall back. Within seconds, the Christian knights were\n boiling around the embattled pair, forcing the Turks into retreat. And\n for the second time, Sir Robert found himself with no one to fight.\n\n\n And then a voice was saying: \"You have done well this day, sir knight.\n Richard Plantagenet will not forget.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert turned in his saddle to face the smiling king.", "Sir Robert heard his own laugh echo hollowly within his helmet. \"Perhaps\n 'twere better to be mad when the assault comes. Madmen fight better than\n men of cooler blood.\" He knew that the others were baking inside their\n heavy armor, although he himself was not too uncomfortable.\n\n\n Sir Gaeton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect.\n \"In truth, sir knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor\n heat. Nor is your own blood too cool. True, I ride with your Normans and\n your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a\n Gascon, and have sworn no fealty to him. But to side with the Duke of\n Burgundy against King Richard—\" He gave a short, barking laugh. \"I\n fear no man,\" he went on, \"but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard\n of England.\"", "Robert Bowen nodded briskly and patted the televike helmet. \"It was\n O.K.,\" he said. \"Good show. A little talky at the beginning, and it\n needs a better fade-out, but the action scenes were fine. The sponsor\n ought to like it—for a while, at least.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, 'for a while'?\"\n\n\n Robert Bowen sighed. \"If this thing goes on the air the way it is, he'll\n lose sales.\"\n\n\n \"Why? Commercial not good enough?\"\n\n\n \"\nToo\ngood! Man, I've smoked\nOld Kings\n, and, believe me, the real\n thing never tasted as good as that cigarette did in the commercial!\"", "Sir Robert felt his horse move, as though it were urging him on toward\n the battle, but his hand held to the reins, keeping the great charger in\n check. The King had said \"Stand fast!\" and this was no time to disobey\n the orders of Richard.\n\n\n The Saracen troops were coming in from the rear, and the Hospitallers\n were taking the brunt of the charge. They fought like madmen, but they\n were slowly being forced back.\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers rode to the rear, to the King's standard,\n which hardly moved in the still desert air, now that the column had\n stopped moving.\n\n\n The voice of the Duke of Burgundy came to Sir Robert's ears.\n\n\n \"Stand fast. The King bids you all to stand fast,\" said the duke, his\n voice fading as he rode on up the column toward the knights of Poitou\n and the Knights Templars.", "The fierce warrior-king of England, his mighty sword in hand, was\n cutting down Turks as though they were grain-stalks, but still the\n Saracen horde pressed on. More and more of the terrible Turks came\n boiling down out of the hills, their glittering scimitars swinging.\n\n\n Sir Robert lost all track of time. There was nothing to do but keep his\n own great broadsword moving, swinging like some gigantic metronome as he\n hacked down the Moslem foes.\n\n\n And then, suddenly, he found himself surrounded by the Saracens! He was\n isolated and alone, cut off from the rest of the Christian forces! He\n glanced quickly around as he slashed another Saracen from pate to\n breastbone. Where was Sir Gaeton? Where were the others? Where was the\n red-and-gold banner of Richard?\n\n\n He caught a glimpse of the fluttering banner far to the rear and started\n to fall back.", "\"My lord king, be assured that I would never forget my loyalty to my\n sovereign and liege lord. My sword and my life are yours whenever you\n call.\"\n\n\n King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. \"If it please God, I\n shall never ask your life. An earldom awaits you when we return to\n England, sir knight.\"\n\n\n And then the king mounted his horse and was running full gallop after\n the retreating Saracens.\nRobert took off his helmet.\n\n\n He blinked for a second to adjust his eyes to the relative dimness of\n the studio. After the brightness of the desert that the televicarion\n helmet had projected into his eyes, the studio seemed strangely\n cavelike.\n\n\n \"How'd you like it, Bob?\" asked one of the two producers of the show.", "And then he saw another knight nearby, a huge man who swung his\n sparkling blade with power and force. On his steel helm gleamed a golden\n coronet! Richard!\n\n\n And the great king, in spite of his prowess was outnumbered heavily and\n would, within seconds, be cut down by the Saracen horde!\n\n\n Without hesitation, Sir Robert plunged his horse toward the surrounded\n monarch, his great blade cutting a path before him.\n\n\n He saw Richard go down, falling from the saddle of his charger, but by\n that time his own sword was cutting into the screaming Saracens and\n they had no time to attempt any further mischief to the King. They had\n their hands full with Sir Robert de Bouain.", "Sir Robert felt the shock against himself and his horse as the steel tip\n of the long ash lance struck the Saracen horseman in the chest. Out of\n the corner of his eye, he saw that Sir Gaeton, too, had scored.\n\n\n The Saracen, impaled on Sir Robert's lance, shot from the saddle as he\n died. His lighter armor had hardly impeded the incoming spear-point, and\n now his body dragged it down as he dropped toward the desert sand.\n Another Moslem cavalryman was charging in now, swinging his curved\n saber, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance.\n\n\n There was nothing else to do but drop the lance and draw his heavy\n broadsword. His hand grasped it, and it came singing from its scabbard.", "Sir Robert de Bouain twisted again in his saddle to look at the knight\n riding alongside him. Sir Gaeton de l'Arc-Tombé sat tall and straight in\n his saddle, his visor up, his blue eyes narrowed against the glare of\n the sun.\n\n\n Sir Robert's lips formed a smile. \"They are not far off, Sir Gaeton.\n They have been following us. As we march parallel to the seacoast, so\n they have been marching with us in those hills to the east.\"\n\n\n \"Like the jackals they are,\" said Sir Gaeton. \"They assail us from the\n rear, and they set up traps in our path ahead. Our spies tell us that\n the Turks lie ahead of us in countless numbers. And yet, they fear to\n face us in open battle.\"\n\n\n \"Is it fear, or are they merely gathering their forces?\"", "After a moment's hesitation, Sir Gaeton couched his lance. \"I'm with\n you, sir knight! Live or die, I follow! Strike and strike hard!\"\n\n\n \"Forward then!\" Sir Robert heard himself shouting. \"Forward for St.\n George and for England!\"\n\n\n \"St. George and England!\" the Gascon echoed.\nTwo great war horses began to move ponderously forward toward the battle\n lines, gaining momentum as they went. Moving in unison, the two knights,\n their horses now at a fast trot, lowered their lances, picking their\n Saracen targets with care. Larger and larger loomed the Egyptian\n cavalrymen as the horses changed pace to a thundering gallop.\n\n\n The Egyptians tried to dodge, as they saw, too late, the approach of the\n Christian knights.", "He himself, Sir Robert de Bouain, was riding with the Norman and English\n troops, just behind the men of Poitou. Sir Robert turned slightly in his\n saddle. To his right, he could see the brilliant red-and-gold banner of\n the lion-hearted Richard of England—\ngules, in pale three lions passant\n guardant or\n. Behind the standard-bearer, his great war horse moving\n with a steady, measured pace, his coronet of gold on his steel helm\n gleaming in the glaring desert sun, the lions of England on his\n firm-held shield, was the King himself.\n\n\n Further behind, the Knights Hospitallers protected the rear, guarding\n the column of the hosts of Christendom from harassment by the Bedouins.\n\n\n \"By our Lady!\" came a voice from his left. \"Three days out from Acre,\n and the accursed Saracens still elude us.\"", "There was a sudden sound to the rear. Like a wash of the tide from the\n sea came the sound of Saracen war cries and the clash of steel on steel\n mingled with the sounds of horses in agony and anger.\n\n\n Sir Robert turned his horse to look.\n\n\n The Negro troops of Saladin's Egyptian contingent were thundering down\n upon the rear! They clashed with the Hospitallers, slamming in like a\n rain of heavy stones, too close in for the use of bows. There was only\n the sword against armor, like the sound of a thousand hammers against a\n thousand anvils.\n\n\n \"Stand fast! Stand fast! Hold them off!\" It was the voice of King\n Richard, sounding like a clarion over the din of battle.", "\"Both,\" said Sir Gaeton flatly. \"They fear us, else they would not dally\n to amass so fearsome a force. If, as our informers tell us, there are\n uncounted Turks to the fore, and if, as we are aware, our rear is being\n dogged by the Bedouin and the black horsemen of Egypt, it would seem\n that Saladin has at hand more than enough to overcome us, were they all\n truly Christian knights.\"\n\n\n \"Give them time. We must wait for their attack, sir knight. It were\n foolhardy to attempt to seek them in their own hills, and yet they must\n stop us. They will attack before we reach Jerusalem, fear not.\"\n\n\n \"We of Gascony fear no heathen Musselman,\" Sir Gaeton growled. \"It's\n this Hellish heat that is driving me mad.\" He pointed toward the eastern\n hills. \"The sun is yet low, and already the heat is unbearable.\"", "The Master of the Hospitallers was speaking in a low, urgent voice to\n the King: \"My lord, we are pressed on by the enemy and in danger of\n eternal infamy. We are losing our horses, one after the other!\"\n\n\n \"Good Master,\" said Richard, \"it is you who must sustain their attack.\n No one can be everywhere at once.\"\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers nodded curtly and charged back into the\n fray.\n\n\n The King turned to Sir Baldwin de Carreo, who sat ahorse nearby, and\n pointed toward the eastern hills. \"They will come from there, hitting us\n in the flank; we cannot afford to amass a rearward charge. To do so\n would be to fall directly into the hands of the Saracen.\"" ], [ "\"It was my duty.\" Sir Robert's voice was stubborn. \"Could we have\n permitted a quarrel to develop between the two finest knights and\n warleaders in Christendom at this crucial point? The desertion of Philip\n of France has cost us dearly. Could we permit the desertion of Burgundy,\n too?\"\n\n\n \"You did what must be done in honor,\" the Gascon conceded, \"but you have\n not gained the love of Richard by doing so.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert felt his jaw set firmly. \"My king knows I am loyal.\"\n\n\n Sir Gaeton said nothing more, but there was a look in his eyes that\n showed that he felt that Richard of England might even doubt the loyalty\n of Sir Robert de Bouain.\nSir Robert rode on in silence, feeling the movement of the horse beneath\n him.", "A voice very close to Sir Robert said: \"Richard is right. If we go to\n the aid of the Hospitallers, we will expose the column to a flank\n attack.\" It was Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"My lord the King,\" Sir Robert heard his voice say, \"is right in all but\n one thing. If we allow the Egyptians to take us from the rear, there\n will be no need for Saladin and his Turks to come down on our flank. And\n the Hospitallers cannot hold for long at this rate. A charge at full\n gallop would break the Egyptian line and give the Hospitallers breathing\n time. Are you with me?\"\n\n\n \"Against the orders of the King?\"\n\n\n \"The King cannot see everything! There are times when a man must use his\n own judgment! You said you were afraid of no man. Are you with me?\"", "Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. \"My\n lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip\n of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned\n to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the\n Holy Land leaving only the contingent of his vassal the Duke of Burgundy\n to remain with us.\"\n\n\n \"Richard of England has never been on the best of terms with Philip\n Augustus,\" said Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"No, and with good cause. But he allowed his anger against Philip to\n color his judgment when he spoke harshly against the Duke of Burgundy.\n The Duke is no coward, and Richard Plantagenet well knows it. As I said,\n he spoke in haste.\"\n\n\n \"And you intervened,\" said Sir Gaeton.", "Sir Robert felt his horse move, as though it were urging him on toward\n the battle, but his hand held to the reins, keeping the great charger in\n check. The King had said \"Stand fast!\" and this was no time to disobey\n the orders of Richard.\n\n\n The Saracen troops were coming in from the rear, and the Hospitallers\n were taking the brunt of the charge. They fought like madmen, but they\n were slowly being forced back.\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers rode to the rear, to the King's standard,\n which hardly moved in the still desert air, now that the column had\n stopped moving.\n\n\n The voice of the Duke of Burgundy came to Sir Robert's ears.\n\n\n \"Stand fast. The King bids you all to stand fast,\" said the duke, his\n voice fading as he rode on up the column toward the knights of Poitou\n and the Knights Templars.", "And then, quite suddenly, there seemed to be no foeman to swing at.\n Breathing heavily, Sir Robert sheathed his broadsword.\n\n\n Beside him, Sir Gaeton did the same, saying: \"It will be a few minutes\n before they can regroup, sir knight. We may have routed them\n completely.\"\n\n\n \"Aye. But King Richard will not approve of my breaking ranks and\n disobeying orders. I may win the battle and lose my head in the end.\"\n\n\n \"This is no time to worry about the future,\" said the Gascon. \"Rest for\n a moment and relax, that you may be the stronger later. Here—have an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He had a pack of cigarettes in his gauntleted hand, which he profferred\n to Sir Robert. There were three cigarettes protruding from it, one\n slightly farther than the others. Sir Robert's hand reached out and took\n that one.", "There was a sudden clash of arms off to their left. Sir Robert dropped\n his cigarette to the ground. \"The trouble is that doing a real he-man's\n work doesn't always allow you to enjoy the fine, rich tobaccos of\nOld\n Kings\nright down to the very end.\"\n\n\n \"No, but you can always light another later,\" said the Gascon knight.\nKing Richard, on seeing his army moving suddenly toward the harassed\n rear, had realized the danger and had charged through the Hospitallers\n to get into the thick of the fray. Now the Turks were charging down from\n the hills, hitting—not the flank as he had expected, but the rear!\n Saladin had expected him to hold fast!\n\n\n Sir Robert and Sir Gaeton spurred their chargers toward the flapping\n banner of England.", "Sir Robert heard his own laugh echo hollowly within his helmet. \"Perhaps\n 'twere better to be mad when the assault comes. Madmen fight better than\n men of cooler blood.\" He knew that the others were baking inside their\n heavy armor, although he himself was not too uncomfortable.\n\n\n Sir Gaeton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect.\n \"In truth, sir knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor\n heat. Nor is your own blood too cool. True, I ride with your Normans and\n your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a\n Gascon, and have sworn no fealty to him. But to side with the Duke of\n Burgundy against King Richard—\" He gave a short, barking laugh. \"I\n fear no man,\" he went on, \"but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard\n of England.\"", "And then he saw another knight nearby, a huge man who swung his\n sparkling blade with power and force. On his steel helm gleamed a golden\n coronet! Richard!\n\n\n And the great king, in spite of his prowess was outnumbered heavily and\n would, within seconds, be cut down by the Saracen horde!\n\n\n Without hesitation, Sir Robert plunged his horse toward the surrounded\n monarch, his great blade cutting a path before him.\n\n\n He saw Richard go down, falling from the saddle of his charger, but by\n that time his own sword was cutting into the screaming Saracens and\n they had no time to attempt any further mischief to the King. They had\n their hands full with Sir Robert de Bouain.", "He did not know how long he fought there, holding his charger motionless\n over the inert body of the fallen king, hewing down the screaming enemy,\n but presently he heard the familiar cry of \"For St. George and for\n England\" behind him. The Norman and English troops were charging in,\n bringing with them the banner of England!\n\n\n And then Richard was on his feet, cleaving the air about him with his\n own broadsword. Its bright edge, besmeared with Saracen blood, was\n biting viciously into the foe.\n\n\n The Turks began to fall back. Within seconds, the Christian knights were\n boiling around the embattled pair, forcing the Turks into retreat. And\n for the second time, Sir Robert found himself with no one to fight.\n\n\n And then a voice was saying: \"You have done well this day, sir knight.\n Richard Plantagenet will not forget.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert turned in his saddle to face the smiling king.", "\"My lord king, be assured that I would never forget my loyalty to my\n sovereign and liege lord. My sword and my life are yours whenever you\n call.\"\n\n\n King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. \"If it please God, I\n shall never ask your life. An earldom awaits you when we return to\n England, sir knight.\"\n\n\n And then the king mounted his horse and was running full gallop after\n the retreating Saracens.\nRobert took off his helmet.\n\n\n He blinked for a second to adjust his eyes to the relative dimness of\n the studio. After the brightness of the desert that the televicarion\n helmet had projected into his eyes, the studio seemed strangely\n cavelike.\n\n\n \"How'd you like it, Bob?\" asked one of the two producers of the show.", "He himself, Sir Robert de Bouain, was riding with the Norman and English\n troops, just behind the men of Poitou. Sir Robert turned slightly in his\n saddle. To his right, he could see the brilliant red-and-gold banner of\n the lion-hearted Richard of England—\ngules, in pale three lions passant\n guardant or\n. Behind the standard-bearer, his great war horse moving\n with a steady, measured pace, his coronet of gold on his steel helm\n gleaming in the glaring desert sun, the lions of England on his\n firm-held shield, was the King himself.\n\n\n Further behind, the Knights Hospitallers protected the rear, guarding\n the column of the hosts of Christendom from harassment by the Bedouins.\n\n\n \"By our Lady!\" came a voice from his left. \"Three days out from Acre,\n and the accursed Saracens still elude us.\"", "Sir Robert de Bouain twisted again in his saddle to look at the knight\n riding alongside him. Sir Gaeton de l'Arc-Tombé sat tall and straight in\n his saddle, his visor up, his blue eyes narrowed against the glare of\n the sun.\n\n\n Sir Robert's lips formed a smile. \"They are not far off, Sir Gaeton.\n They have been following us. As we march parallel to the seacoast, so\n they have been marching with us in those hills to the east.\"\n\n\n \"Like the jackals they are,\" said Sir Gaeton. \"They assail us from the\n rear, and they set up traps in our path ahead. Our spies tell us that\n the Turks lie ahead of us in countless numbers. And yet, they fear to\n face us in open battle.\"\n\n\n \"Is it fear, or are they merely gathering their forces?\"", "After a moment's hesitation, Sir Gaeton couched his lance. \"I'm with\n you, sir knight! Live or die, I follow! Strike and strike hard!\"\n\n\n \"Forward then!\" Sir Robert heard himself shouting. \"Forward for St.\n George and for England!\"\n\n\n \"St. George and England!\" the Gascon echoed.\nTwo great war horses began to move ponderously forward toward the battle\n lines, gaining momentum as they went. Moving in unison, the two knights,\n their horses now at a fast trot, lowered their lances, picking their\n Saracen targets with care. Larger and larger loomed the Egyptian\n cavalrymen as the horses changed pace to a thundering gallop.\n\n\n The Egyptians tried to dodge, as they saw, too late, the approach of the\n Christian knights.", "The fierce warrior-king of England, his mighty sword in hand, was\n cutting down Turks as though they were grain-stalks, but still the\n Saracen horde pressed on. More and more of the terrible Turks came\n boiling down out of the hills, their glittering scimitars swinging.\n\n\n Sir Robert lost all track of time. There was nothing to do but keep his\n own great broadsword moving, swinging like some gigantic metronome as he\n hacked down the Moslem foes.\n\n\n And then, suddenly, he found himself surrounded by the Saracens! He was\n isolated and alone, cut off from the rest of the Christian forces! He\n glanced quickly around as he slashed another Saracen from pate to\n breastbone. Where was Sir Gaeton? Where were the others? Where was the\n red-and-gold banner of Richard?\n\n\n He caught a glimpse of the fluttering banner far to the rear and started\n to fall back.", "The Master of the Hospitallers was speaking in a low, urgent voice to\n the King: \"My lord, we are pressed on by the enemy and in danger of\n eternal infamy. We are losing our horses, one after the other!\"\n\n\n \"Good Master,\" said Richard, \"it is you who must sustain their attack.\n No one can be everywhere at once.\"\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers nodded curtly and charged back into the\n fray.\n\n\n The King turned to Sir Baldwin de Carreo, who sat ahorse nearby, and\n pointed toward the eastern hills. \"They will come from there, hitting us\n in the flank; we cannot afford to amass a rearward charge. To do so\n would be to fall directly into the hands of the Saracen.\"", "There was a sudden sound to the rear. Like a wash of the tide from the\n sea came the sound of Saracen war cries and the clash of steel on steel\n mingled with the sounds of horses in agony and anger.\n\n\n Sir Robert turned his horse to look.\n\n\n The Negro troops of Saladin's Egyptian contingent were thundering down\n upon the rear! They clashed with the Hospitallers, slamming in like a\n rain of heavy stones, too close in for the use of bows. There was only\n the sword against armor, like the sound of a thousand hammers against a\n thousand anvils.\n\n\n \"Stand fast! Stand fast! Hold them off!\" It was the voice of King\n Richard, sounding like a clarion over the din of battle.", "\"Thanks. When the going gets rough, I really enjoy an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He put one end of the cigarette in his mouth and lit the other from the\n lighter in Sir Gaeton's hand.\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said Sir Gaeton, after lighting his own cigarette, \"\nOld\n Kings\nare the greatest. They give a man real, deep-down smoking\n pleasure.\"\n\n\n \"There's no doubt about it,\nOld Kings\nare a\nman's\ncigarette.\" Sir\n Robert could feel the soothing smoke in his lungs as he inhaled deeply.\n \"That's great. When I want a cigarette, I don't want just\nany\ncigarette.\"\n\n\n \"Nor I,\" agreed the Gascon. \"\nOld Kings\nis the only real cigarette when\n you're doing a real\nman's\nwork.\"\n\n\n \"That's for sure.\" Sir Robert watched a smoke ring expand in the air.", "Sir Robert felt the shock against himself and his horse as the steel tip\n of the long ash lance struck the Saracen horseman in the chest. Out of\n the corner of his eye, he saw that Sir Gaeton, too, had scored.\n\n\n The Saracen, impaled on Sir Robert's lance, shot from the saddle as he\n died. His lighter armor had hardly impeded the incoming spear-point, and\n now his body dragged it down as he dropped toward the desert sand.\n Another Moslem cavalryman was charging in now, swinging his curved\n saber, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance.\n\n\n There was nothing else to do but drop the lance and draw his heavy\n broadsword. His hand grasped it, and it came singing from its scabbard.", "\"Both,\" said Sir Gaeton flatly. \"They fear us, else they would not dally\n to amass so fearsome a force. If, as our informers tell us, there are\n uncounted Turks to the fore, and if, as we are aware, our rear is being\n dogged by the Bedouin and the black horsemen of Egypt, it would seem\n that Saladin has at hand more than enough to overcome us, were they all\n truly Christian knights.\"\n\n\n \"Give them time. We must wait for their attack, sir knight. It were\n foolhardy to attempt to seek them in their own hills, and yet they must\n stop us. They will attack before we reach Jerusalem, fear not.\"\n\n\n \"We of Gascony fear no heathen Musselman,\" Sir Gaeton growled. \"It's\n this Hellish heat that is driving me mad.\" He pointed toward the eastern\n hills. \"The sun is yet low, and already the heat is unbearable.\"", "The Egyptian's curved sword clanged against Sir Robert's helm, setting\n his head ringing. In return, the knight's broadsword came about in a\n sweeping arc, and the Egyptian's horse rode on with the rider's headless\n body.\n\n\n Behind him, Sir Robert heard further cries of \"St. George and England!\"\n\n\n The Hospitallers, taking heart at the charge, were going in! Behind them\n came the Count of Champagne, the Earl of Leister, and the Bishop of\n Beauvais, who carried a great warhammer in order that he might not break\n Church Law by shedding blood.\n\n\n Sir Robert's own sword rose and fell, cutting and hacking at the enemy.\n He himself felt a dreamlike detachment, as though he were watching the\n battle rather than participating in it.\n\n\n But he could see that the Moslems were falling back before the Christian\n onslaught." ], [ "\"It was my duty.\" Sir Robert's voice was stubborn. \"Could we have\n permitted a quarrel to develop between the two finest knights and\n warleaders in Christendom at this crucial point? The desertion of Philip\n of France has cost us dearly. Could we permit the desertion of Burgundy,\n too?\"\n\n\n \"You did what must be done in honor,\" the Gascon conceded, \"but you have\n not gained the love of Richard by doing so.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert felt his jaw set firmly. \"My king knows I am loyal.\"\n\n\n Sir Gaeton said nothing more, but there was a look in his eyes that\n showed that he felt that Richard of England might even doubt the loyalty\n of Sir Robert de Bouain.\nSir Robert rode on in silence, feeling the movement of the horse beneath\n him.", "\"My lord king, be assured that I would never forget my loyalty to my\n sovereign and liege lord. My sword and my life are yours whenever you\n call.\"\n\n\n King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. \"If it please God, I\n shall never ask your life. An earldom awaits you when we return to\n England, sir knight.\"\n\n\n And then the king mounted his horse and was running full gallop after\n the retreating Saracens.\nRobert took off his helmet.\n\n\n He blinked for a second to adjust his eyes to the relative dimness of\n the studio. After the brightness of the desert that the televicarion\n helmet had projected into his eyes, the studio seemed strangely\n cavelike.\n\n\n \"How'd you like it, Bob?\" asked one of the two producers of the show.", "A voice very close to Sir Robert said: \"Richard is right. If we go to\n the aid of the Hospitallers, we will expose the column to a flank\n attack.\" It was Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"My lord the King,\" Sir Robert heard his voice say, \"is right in all but\n one thing. If we allow the Egyptians to take us from the rear, there\n will be no need for Saladin and his Turks to come down on our flank. And\n the Hospitallers cannot hold for long at this rate. A charge at full\n gallop would break the Egyptian line and give the Hospitallers breathing\n time. Are you with me?\"\n\n\n \"Against the orders of the King?\"\n\n\n \"The King cannot see everything! There are times when a man must use his\n own judgment! You said you were afraid of no man. Are you with me?\"", "Sir Robert heard his own laugh echo hollowly within his helmet. \"Perhaps\n 'twere better to be mad when the assault comes. Madmen fight better than\n men of cooler blood.\" He knew that the others were baking inside their\n heavy armor, although he himself was not too uncomfortable.\n\n\n Sir Gaeton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect.\n \"In truth, sir knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor\n heat. Nor is your own blood too cool. True, I ride with your Normans and\n your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a\n Gascon, and have sworn no fealty to him. But to side with the Duke of\n Burgundy against King Richard—\" He gave a short, barking laugh. \"I\n fear no man,\" he went on, \"but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard\n of England.\"", "Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. \"My\n lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip\n of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned\n to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the\n Holy Land leaving only the contingent of his vassal the Duke of Burgundy\n to remain with us.\"\n\n\n \"Richard of England has never been on the best of terms with Philip\n Augustus,\" said Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"No, and with good cause. But he allowed his anger against Philip to\n color his judgment when he spoke harshly against the Duke of Burgundy.\n The Duke is no coward, and Richard Plantagenet well knows it. As I said,\n he spoke in haste.\"\n\n\n \"And you intervened,\" said Sir Gaeton.", "And then he saw another knight nearby, a huge man who swung his\n sparkling blade with power and force. On his steel helm gleamed a golden\n coronet! Richard!\n\n\n And the great king, in spite of his prowess was outnumbered heavily and\n would, within seconds, be cut down by the Saracen horde!\n\n\n Without hesitation, Sir Robert plunged his horse toward the surrounded\n monarch, his great blade cutting a path before him.\n\n\n He saw Richard go down, falling from the saddle of his charger, but by\n that time his own sword was cutting into the screaming Saracens and\n they had no time to attempt any further mischief to the King. They had\n their hands full with Sir Robert de Bouain.", "And then, quite suddenly, there seemed to be no foeman to swing at.\n Breathing heavily, Sir Robert sheathed his broadsword.\n\n\n Beside him, Sir Gaeton did the same, saying: \"It will be a few minutes\n before they can regroup, sir knight. We may have routed them\n completely.\"\n\n\n \"Aye. But King Richard will not approve of my breaking ranks and\n disobeying orders. I may win the battle and lose my head in the end.\"\n\n\n \"This is no time to worry about the future,\" said the Gascon. \"Rest for\n a moment and relax, that you may be the stronger later. Here—have an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He had a pack of cigarettes in his gauntleted hand, which he profferred\n to Sir Robert. There were three cigarettes protruding from it, one\n slightly farther than the others. Sir Robert's hand reached out and took\n that one.", "He himself, Sir Robert de Bouain, was riding with the Norman and English\n troops, just behind the men of Poitou. Sir Robert turned slightly in his\n saddle. To his right, he could see the brilliant red-and-gold banner of\n the lion-hearted Richard of England—\ngules, in pale three lions passant\n guardant or\n. Behind the standard-bearer, his great war horse moving\n with a steady, measured pace, his coronet of gold on his steel helm\n gleaming in the glaring desert sun, the lions of England on his\n firm-held shield, was the King himself.\n\n\n Further behind, the Knights Hospitallers protected the rear, guarding\n the column of the hosts of Christendom from harassment by the Bedouins.\n\n\n \"By our Lady!\" came a voice from his left. \"Three days out from Acre,\n and the accursed Saracens still elude us.\"", "He did not know how long he fought there, holding his charger motionless\n over the inert body of the fallen king, hewing down the screaming enemy,\n but presently he heard the familiar cry of \"For St. George and for\n England\" behind him. The Norman and English troops were charging in,\n bringing with them the banner of England!\n\n\n And then Richard was on his feet, cleaving the air about him with his\n own broadsword. Its bright edge, besmeared with Saracen blood, was\n biting viciously into the foe.\n\n\n The Turks began to fall back. Within seconds, the Christian knights were\n boiling around the embattled pair, forcing the Turks into retreat. And\n for the second time, Sir Robert found himself with no one to fight.\n\n\n And then a voice was saying: \"You have done well this day, sir knight.\n Richard Plantagenet will not forget.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert turned in his saddle to face the smiling king.", "There was a sudden clash of arms off to their left. Sir Robert dropped\n his cigarette to the ground. \"The trouble is that doing a real he-man's\n work doesn't always allow you to enjoy the fine, rich tobaccos of\nOld\n Kings\nright down to the very end.\"\n\n\n \"No, but you can always light another later,\" said the Gascon knight.\nKing Richard, on seeing his army moving suddenly toward the harassed\n rear, had realized the danger and had charged through the Hospitallers\n to get into the thick of the fray. Now the Turks were charging down from\n the hills, hitting—not the flank as he had expected, but the rear!\n Saladin had expected him to hold fast!\n\n\n Sir Robert and Sir Gaeton spurred their chargers toward the flapping\n banner of England.", "Sir Robert de Bouain twisted again in his saddle to look at the knight\n riding alongside him. Sir Gaeton de l'Arc-Tombé sat tall and straight in\n his saddle, his visor up, his blue eyes narrowed against the glare of\n the sun.\n\n\n Sir Robert's lips formed a smile. \"They are not far off, Sir Gaeton.\n They have been following us. As we march parallel to the seacoast, so\n they have been marching with us in those hills to the east.\"\n\n\n \"Like the jackals they are,\" said Sir Gaeton. \"They assail us from the\n rear, and they set up traps in our path ahead. Our spies tell us that\n the Turks lie ahead of us in countless numbers. And yet, they fear to\n face us in open battle.\"\n\n\n \"Is it fear, or are they merely gathering their forces?\"", "\"Thanks. When the going gets rough, I really enjoy an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He put one end of the cigarette in his mouth and lit the other from the\n lighter in Sir Gaeton's hand.\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said Sir Gaeton, after lighting his own cigarette, \"\nOld\n Kings\nare the greatest. They give a man real, deep-down smoking\n pleasure.\"\n\n\n \"There's no doubt about it,\nOld Kings\nare a\nman's\ncigarette.\" Sir\n Robert could feel the soothing smoke in his lungs as he inhaled deeply.\n \"That's great. When I want a cigarette, I don't want just\nany\ncigarette.\"\n\n\n \"Nor I,\" agreed the Gascon. \"\nOld Kings\nis the only real cigarette when\n you're doing a real\nman's\nwork.\"\n\n\n \"That's for sure.\" Sir Robert watched a smoke ring expand in the air.", "After a moment's hesitation, Sir Gaeton couched his lance. \"I'm with\n you, sir knight! Live or die, I follow! Strike and strike hard!\"\n\n\n \"Forward then!\" Sir Robert heard himself shouting. \"Forward for St.\n George and for England!\"\n\n\n \"St. George and England!\" the Gascon echoed.\nTwo great war horses began to move ponderously forward toward the battle\n lines, gaining momentum as they went. Moving in unison, the two knights,\n their horses now at a fast trot, lowered their lances, picking their\n Saracen targets with care. Larger and larger loomed the Egyptian\n cavalrymen as the horses changed pace to a thundering gallop.\n\n\n The Egyptians tried to dodge, as they saw, too late, the approach of the\n Christian knights.", "Sir Robert felt his horse move, as though it were urging him on toward\n the battle, but his hand held to the reins, keeping the great charger in\n check. The King had said \"Stand fast!\" and this was no time to disobey\n the orders of Richard.\n\n\n The Saracen troops were coming in from the rear, and the Hospitallers\n were taking the brunt of the charge. They fought like madmen, but they\n were slowly being forced back.\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers rode to the rear, to the King's standard,\n which hardly moved in the still desert air, now that the column had\n stopped moving.\n\n\n The voice of the Duke of Burgundy came to Sir Robert's ears.\n\n\n \"Stand fast. The King bids you all to stand fast,\" said the duke, his\n voice fading as he rode on up the column toward the knights of Poitou\n and the Knights Templars.", "The fierce warrior-king of England, his mighty sword in hand, was\n cutting down Turks as though they were grain-stalks, but still the\n Saracen horde pressed on. More and more of the terrible Turks came\n boiling down out of the hills, their glittering scimitars swinging.\n\n\n Sir Robert lost all track of time. There was nothing to do but keep his\n own great broadsword moving, swinging like some gigantic metronome as he\n hacked down the Moslem foes.\n\n\n And then, suddenly, he found himself surrounded by the Saracens! He was\n isolated and alone, cut off from the rest of the Christian forces! He\n glanced quickly around as he slashed another Saracen from pate to\n breastbone. Where was Sir Gaeton? Where were the others? Where was the\n red-and-gold banner of Richard?\n\n\n He caught a glimpse of the fluttering banner far to the rear and started\n to fall back.", "The Master of the Hospitallers was speaking in a low, urgent voice to\n the King: \"My lord, we are pressed on by the enemy and in danger of\n eternal infamy. We are losing our horses, one after the other!\"\n\n\n \"Good Master,\" said Richard, \"it is you who must sustain their attack.\n No one can be everywhere at once.\"\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers nodded curtly and charged back into the\n fray.\n\n\n The King turned to Sir Baldwin de Carreo, who sat ahorse nearby, and\n pointed toward the eastern hills. \"They will come from there, hitting us\n in the flank; we cannot afford to amass a rearward charge. To do so\n would be to fall directly into the hands of the Saracen.\"", "Sir Robert felt the shock against himself and his horse as the steel tip\n of the long ash lance struck the Saracen horseman in the chest. Out of\n the corner of his eye, he saw that Sir Gaeton, too, had scored.\n\n\n The Saracen, impaled on Sir Robert's lance, shot from the saddle as he\n died. His lighter armor had hardly impeded the incoming spear-point, and\n now his body dragged it down as he dropped toward the desert sand.\n Another Moslem cavalryman was charging in now, swinging his curved\n saber, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance.\n\n\n There was nothing else to do but drop the lance and draw his heavy\n broadsword. His hand grasped it, and it came singing from its scabbard.", "There was a sudden sound to the rear. Like a wash of the tide from the\n sea came the sound of Saracen war cries and the clash of steel on steel\n mingled with the sounds of horses in agony and anger.\n\n\n Sir Robert turned his horse to look.\n\n\n The Negro troops of Saladin's Egyptian contingent were thundering down\n upon the rear! They clashed with the Hospitallers, slamming in like a\n rain of heavy stones, too close in for the use of bows. There was only\n the sword against armor, like the sound of a thousand hammers against a\n thousand anvils.\n\n\n \"Stand fast! Stand fast! Hold them off!\" It was the voice of King\n Richard, sounding like a clarion over the din of battle.", "Then his hand moved up and, with a flick of the wrist, lifted the visor.\n Ahead of him, in serried array, with lances erect and pennons flying,\n was the forward part of the column. Far ahead, he knew, were the Knights\n Templars, who had taken the advance. Behind the Templars rode the mailed\n knights of Brittany and Anjou. These were followed by King Guy of\n Jerusalem and the host of Poitou.", "Robert Bowen nodded briskly and patted the televike helmet. \"It was\n O.K.,\" he said. \"Good show. A little talky at the beginning, and it\n needs a better fade-out, but the action scenes were fine. The sponsor\n ought to like it—for a while, at least.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, 'for a while'?\"\n\n\n Robert Bowen sighed. \"If this thing goes on the air the way it is, he'll\n lose sales.\"\n\n\n \"Why? Commercial not good enough?\"\n\n\n \"\nToo\ngood! Man, I've smoked\nOld Kings\n, and, believe me, the real\n thing never tasted as good as that cigarette did in the commercial!\"" ], [ "\"It was my duty.\" Sir Robert's voice was stubborn. \"Could we have\n permitted a quarrel to develop between the two finest knights and\n warleaders in Christendom at this crucial point? The desertion of Philip\n of France has cost us dearly. Could we permit the desertion of Burgundy,\n too?\"\n\n\n \"You did what must be done in honor,\" the Gascon conceded, \"but you have\n not gained the love of Richard by doing so.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert felt his jaw set firmly. \"My king knows I am loyal.\"\n\n\n Sir Gaeton said nothing more, but there was a look in his eyes that\n showed that he felt that Richard of England might even doubt the loyalty\n of Sir Robert de Bouain.\nSir Robert rode on in silence, feeling the movement of the horse beneath\n him.", "Sir Robert heard his own laugh echo hollowly within his helmet. \"Perhaps\n 'twere better to be mad when the assault comes. Madmen fight better than\n men of cooler blood.\" He knew that the others were baking inside their\n heavy armor, although he himself was not too uncomfortable.\n\n\n Sir Gaeton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect.\n \"In truth, sir knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor\n heat. Nor is your own blood too cool. True, I ride with your Normans and\n your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a\n Gascon, and have sworn no fealty to him. But to side with the Duke of\n Burgundy against King Richard—\" He gave a short, barking laugh. \"I\n fear no man,\" he went on, \"but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard\n of England.\"", "Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. \"My\n lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip\n of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned\n to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the\n Holy Land leaving only the contingent of his vassal the Duke of Burgundy\n to remain with us.\"\n\n\n \"Richard of England has never been on the best of terms with Philip\n Augustus,\" said Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"No, and with good cause. But he allowed his anger against Philip to\n color his judgment when he spoke harshly against the Duke of Burgundy.\n The Duke is no coward, and Richard Plantagenet well knows it. As I said,\n he spoke in haste.\"\n\n\n \"And you intervened,\" said Sir Gaeton.", "There was a sudden clash of arms off to their left. Sir Robert dropped\n his cigarette to the ground. \"The trouble is that doing a real he-man's\n work doesn't always allow you to enjoy the fine, rich tobaccos of\nOld\n Kings\nright down to the very end.\"\n\n\n \"No, but you can always light another later,\" said the Gascon knight.\nKing Richard, on seeing his army moving suddenly toward the harassed\n rear, had realized the danger and had charged through the Hospitallers\n to get into the thick of the fray. Now the Turks were charging down from\n the hills, hitting—not the flank as he had expected, but the rear!\n Saladin had expected him to hold fast!\n\n\n Sir Robert and Sir Gaeton spurred their chargers toward the flapping\n banner of England.", "After a moment's hesitation, Sir Gaeton couched his lance. \"I'm with\n you, sir knight! Live or die, I follow! Strike and strike hard!\"\n\n\n \"Forward then!\" Sir Robert heard himself shouting. \"Forward for St.\n George and for England!\"\n\n\n \"St. George and England!\" the Gascon echoed.\nTwo great war horses began to move ponderously forward toward the battle\n lines, gaining momentum as they went. Moving in unison, the two knights,\n their horses now at a fast trot, lowered their lances, picking their\n Saracen targets with care. Larger and larger loomed the Egyptian\n cavalrymen as the horses changed pace to a thundering gallop.\n\n\n The Egyptians tried to dodge, as they saw, too late, the approach of the\n Christian knights.", "Sir Robert de Bouain twisted again in his saddle to look at the knight\n riding alongside him. Sir Gaeton de l'Arc-Tombé sat tall and straight in\n his saddle, his visor up, his blue eyes narrowed against the glare of\n the sun.\n\n\n Sir Robert's lips formed a smile. \"They are not far off, Sir Gaeton.\n They have been following us. As we march parallel to the seacoast, so\n they have been marching with us in those hills to the east.\"\n\n\n \"Like the jackals they are,\" said Sir Gaeton. \"They assail us from the\n rear, and they set up traps in our path ahead. Our spies tell us that\n the Turks lie ahead of us in countless numbers. And yet, they fear to\n face us in open battle.\"\n\n\n \"Is it fear, or are they merely gathering their forces?\"", "And then, quite suddenly, there seemed to be no foeman to swing at.\n Breathing heavily, Sir Robert sheathed his broadsword.\n\n\n Beside him, Sir Gaeton did the same, saying: \"It will be a few minutes\n before they can regroup, sir knight. We may have routed them\n completely.\"\n\n\n \"Aye. But King Richard will not approve of my breaking ranks and\n disobeying orders. I may win the battle and lose my head in the end.\"\n\n\n \"This is no time to worry about the future,\" said the Gascon. \"Rest for\n a moment and relax, that you may be the stronger later. Here—have an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He had a pack of cigarettes in his gauntleted hand, which he profferred\n to Sir Robert. There were three cigarettes protruding from it, one\n slightly farther than the others. Sir Robert's hand reached out and took\n that one.", "A voice very close to Sir Robert said: \"Richard is right. If we go to\n the aid of the Hospitallers, we will expose the column to a flank\n attack.\" It was Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"My lord the King,\" Sir Robert heard his voice say, \"is right in all but\n one thing. If we allow the Egyptians to take us from the rear, there\n will be no need for Saladin and his Turks to come down on our flank. And\n the Hospitallers cannot hold for long at this rate. A charge at full\n gallop would break the Egyptian line and give the Hospitallers breathing\n time. Are you with me?\"\n\n\n \"Against the orders of the King?\"\n\n\n \"The King cannot see everything! There are times when a man must use his\n own judgment! You said you were afraid of no man. Are you with me?\"", "He himself, Sir Robert de Bouain, was riding with the Norman and English\n troops, just behind the men of Poitou. Sir Robert turned slightly in his\n saddle. To his right, he could see the brilliant red-and-gold banner of\n the lion-hearted Richard of England—\ngules, in pale three lions passant\n guardant or\n. Behind the standard-bearer, his great war horse moving\n with a steady, measured pace, his coronet of gold on his steel helm\n gleaming in the glaring desert sun, the lions of England on his\n firm-held shield, was the King himself.\n\n\n Further behind, the Knights Hospitallers protected the rear, guarding\n the column of the hosts of Christendom from harassment by the Bedouins.\n\n\n \"By our Lady!\" came a voice from his left. \"Three days out from Acre,\n and the accursed Saracens still elude us.\"", "And then he saw another knight nearby, a huge man who swung his\n sparkling blade with power and force. On his steel helm gleamed a golden\n coronet! Richard!\n\n\n And the great king, in spite of his prowess was outnumbered heavily and\n would, within seconds, be cut down by the Saracen horde!\n\n\n Without hesitation, Sir Robert plunged his horse toward the surrounded\n monarch, his great blade cutting a path before him.\n\n\n He saw Richard go down, falling from the saddle of his charger, but by\n that time his own sword was cutting into the screaming Saracens and\n they had no time to attempt any further mischief to the King. They had\n their hands full with Sir Robert de Bouain.", "Sir Robert felt his horse move, as though it were urging him on toward\n the battle, but his hand held to the reins, keeping the great charger in\n check. The King had said \"Stand fast!\" and this was no time to disobey\n the orders of Richard.\n\n\n The Saracen troops were coming in from the rear, and the Hospitallers\n were taking the brunt of the charge. They fought like madmen, but they\n were slowly being forced back.\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers rode to the rear, to the King's standard,\n which hardly moved in the still desert air, now that the column had\n stopped moving.\n\n\n The voice of the Duke of Burgundy came to Sir Robert's ears.\n\n\n \"Stand fast. The King bids you all to stand fast,\" said the duke, his\n voice fading as he rode on up the column toward the knights of Poitou\n and the Knights Templars.", "He did not know how long he fought there, holding his charger motionless\n over the inert body of the fallen king, hewing down the screaming enemy,\n but presently he heard the familiar cry of \"For St. George and for\n England\" behind him. The Norman and English troops were charging in,\n bringing with them the banner of England!\n\n\n And then Richard was on his feet, cleaving the air about him with his\n own broadsword. Its bright edge, besmeared with Saracen blood, was\n biting viciously into the foe.\n\n\n The Turks began to fall back. Within seconds, the Christian knights were\n boiling around the embattled pair, forcing the Turks into retreat. And\n for the second time, Sir Robert found himself with no one to fight.\n\n\n And then a voice was saying: \"You have done well this day, sir knight.\n Richard Plantagenet will not forget.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert turned in his saddle to face the smiling king.", "\"My lord king, be assured that I would never forget my loyalty to my\n sovereign and liege lord. My sword and my life are yours whenever you\n call.\"\n\n\n King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. \"If it please God, I\n shall never ask your life. An earldom awaits you when we return to\n England, sir knight.\"\n\n\n And then the king mounted his horse and was running full gallop after\n the retreating Saracens.\nRobert took off his helmet.\n\n\n He blinked for a second to adjust his eyes to the relative dimness of\n the studio. After the brightness of the desert that the televicarion\n helmet had projected into his eyes, the studio seemed strangely\n cavelike.\n\n\n \"How'd you like it, Bob?\" asked one of the two producers of the show.", "Sir Robert felt the shock against himself and his horse as the steel tip\n of the long ash lance struck the Saracen horseman in the chest. Out of\n the corner of his eye, he saw that Sir Gaeton, too, had scored.\n\n\n The Saracen, impaled on Sir Robert's lance, shot from the saddle as he\n died. His lighter armor had hardly impeded the incoming spear-point, and\n now his body dragged it down as he dropped toward the desert sand.\n Another Moslem cavalryman was charging in now, swinging his curved\n saber, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance.\n\n\n There was nothing else to do but drop the lance and draw his heavy\n broadsword. His hand grasped it, and it came singing from its scabbard.", "\"Thanks. When the going gets rough, I really enjoy an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He put one end of the cigarette in his mouth and lit the other from the\n lighter in Sir Gaeton's hand.\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said Sir Gaeton, after lighting his own cigarette, \"\nOld\n Kings\nare the greatest. They give a man real, deep-down smoking\n pleasure.\"\n\n\n \"There's no doubt about it,\nOld Kings\nare a\nman's\ncigarette.\" Sir\n Robert could feel the soothing smoke in his lungs as he inhaled deeply.\n \"That's great. When I want a cigarette, I don't want just\nany\ncigarette.\"\n\n\n \"Nor I,\" agreed the Gascon. \"\nOld Kings\nis the only real cigarette when\n you're doing a real\nman's\nwork.\"\n\n\n \"That's for sure.\" Sir Robert watched a smoke ring expand in the air.", "The fierce warrior-king of England, his mighty sword in hand, was\n cutting down Turks as though they were grain-stalks, but still the\n Saracen horde pressed on. More and more of the terrible Turks came\n boiling down out of the hills, their glittering scimitars swinging.\n\n\n Sir Robert lost all track of time. There was nothing to do but keep his\n own great broadsword moving, swinging like some gigantic metronome as he\n hacked down the Moslem foes.\n\n\n And then, suddenly, he found himself surrounded by the Saracens! He was\n isolated and alone, cut off from the rest of the Christian forces! He\n glanced quickly around as he slashed another Saracen from pate to\n breastbone. Where was Sir Gaeton? Where were the others? Where was the\n red-and-gold banner of Richard?\n\n\n He caught a glimpse of the fluttering banner far to the rear and started\n to fall back.", "\"Both,\" said Sir Gaeton flatly. \"They fear us, else they would not dally\n to amass so fearsome a force. If, as our informers tell us, there are\n uncounted Turks to the fore, and if, as we are aware, our rear is being\n dogged by the Bedouin and the black horsemen of Egypt, it would seem\n that Saladin has at hand more than enough to overcome us, were they all\n truly Christian knights.\"\n\n\n \"Give them time. We must wait for their attack, sir knight. It were\n foolhardy to attempt to seek them in their own hills, and yet they must\n stop us. They will attack before we reach Jerusalem, fear not.\"\n\n\n \"We of Gascony fear no heathen Musselman,\" Sir Gaeton growled. \"It's\n this Hellish heat that is driving me mad.\" He pointed toward the eastern\n hills. \"The sun is yet low, and already the heat is unbearable.\"", "The Egyptian's curved sword clanged against Sir Robert's helm, setting\n his head ringing. In return, the knight's broadsword came about in a\n sweeping arc, and the Egyptian's horse rode on with the rider's headless\n body.\n\n\n Behind him, Sir Robert heard further cries of \"St. George and England!\"\n\n\n The Hospitallers, taking heart at the charge, were going in! Behind them\n came the Count of Champagne, the Earl of Leister, and the Bishop of\n Beauvais, who carried a great warhammer in order that he might not break\n Church Law by shedding blood.\n\n\n Sir Robert's own sword rose and fell, cutting and hacking at the enemy.\n He himself felt a dreamlike detachment, as though he were watching the\n battle rather than participating in it.\n\n\n But he could see that the Moslems were falling back before the Christian\n onslaught.", "There was a sudden sound to the rear. Like a wash of the tide from the\n sea came the sound of Saracen war cries and the clash of steel on steel\n mingled with the sounds of horses in agony and anger.\n\n\n Sir Robert turned his horse to look.\n\n\n The Negro troops of Saladin's Egyptian contingent were thundering down\n upon the rear! They clashed with the Hospitallers, slamming in like a\n rain of heavy stones, too close in for the use of bows. There was only\n the sword against armor, like the sound of a thousand hammers against a\n thousand anvils.\n\n\n \"Stand fast! Stand fast! Hold them off!\" It was the voice of King\n Richard, sounding like a clarion over the din of battle.", "The Master of the Hospitallers was speaking in a low, urgent voice to\n the King: \"My lord, we are pressed on by the enemy and in danger of\n eternal infamy. We are losing our horses, one after the other!\"\n\n\n \"Good Master,\" said Richard, \"it is you who must sustain their attack.\n No one can be everywhere at once.\"\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers nodded curtly and charged back into the\n fray.\n\n\n The King turned to Sir Baldwin de Carreo, who sat ahorse nearby, and\n pointed toward the eastern hills. \"They will come from there, hitting us\n in the flank; we cannot afford to amass a rearward charge. To do so\n would be to fall directly into the hands of the Saracen.\"" ], [ "\"It was my duty.\" Sir Robert's voice was stubborn. \"Could we have\n permitted a quarrel to develop between the two finest knights and\n warleaders in Christendom at this crucial point? The desertion of Philip\n of France has cost us dearly. Could we permit the desertion of Burgundy,\n too?\"\n\n\n \"You did what must be done in honor,\" the Gascon conceded, \"but you have\n not gained the love of Richard by doing so.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert felt his jaw set firmly. \"My king knows I am loyal.\"\n\n\n Sir Gaeton said nothing more, but there was a look in his eyes that\n showed that he felt that Richard of England might even doubt the loyalty\n of Sir Robert de Bouain.\nSir Robert rode on in silence, feeling the movement of the horse beneath\n him.", "A voice very close to Sir Robert said: \"Richard is right. If we go to\n the aid of the Hospitallers, we will expose the column to a flank\n attack.\" It was Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"My lord the King,\" Sir Robert heard his voice say, \"is right in all but\n one thing. If we allow the Egyptians to take us from the rear, there\n will be no need for Saladin and his Turks to come down on our flank. And\n the Hospitallers cannot hold for long at this rate. A charge at full\n gallop would break the Egyptian line and give the Hospitallers breathing\n time. Are you with me?\"\n\n\n \"Against the orders of the King?\"\n\n\n \"The King cannot see everything! There are times when a man must use his\n own judgment! You said you were afraid of no man. Are you with me?\"", "Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. \"My\n lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip\n of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned\n to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the\n Holy Land leaving only the contingent of his vassal the Duke of Burgundy\n to remain with us.\"\n\n\n \"Richard of England has never been on the best of terms with Philip\n Augustus,\" said Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"No, and with good cause. But he allowed his anger against Philip to\n color his judgment when he spoke harshly against the Duke of Burgundy.\n The Duke is no coward, and Richard Plantagenet well knows it. As I said,\n he spoke in haste.\"\n\n\n \"And you intervened,\" said Sir Gaeton.", "Sir Robert felt his horse move, as though it were urging him on toward\n the battle, but his hand held to the reins, keeping the great charger in\n check. The King had said \"Stand fast!\" and this was no time to disobey\n the orders of Richard.\n\n\n The Saracen troops were coming in from the rear, and the Hospitallers\n were taking the brunt of the charge. They fought like madmen, but they\n were slowly being forced back.\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers rode to the rear, to the King's standard,\n which hardly moved in the still desert air, now that the column had\n stopped moving.\n\n\n The voice of the Duke of Burgundy came to Sir Robert's ears.\n\n\n \"Stand fast. The King bids you all to stand fast,\" said the duke, his\n voice fading as he rode on up the column toward the knights of Poitou\n and the Knights Templars.", "There was a sudden clash of arms off to their left. Sir Robert dropped\n his cigarette to the ground. \"The trouble is that doing a real he-man's\n work doesn't always allow you to enjoy the fine, rich tobaccos of\nOld\n Kings\nright down to the very end.\"\n\n\n \"No, but you can always light another later,\" said the Gascon knight.\nKing Richard, on seeing his army moving suddenly toward the harassed\n rear, had realized the danger and had charged through the Hospitallers\n to get into the thick of the fray. Now the Turks were charging down from\n the hills, hitting—not the flank as he had expected, but the rear!\n Saladin had expected him to hold fast!\n\n\n Sir Robert and Sir Gaeton spurred their chargers toward the flapping\n banner of England.", "And then, quite suddenly, there seemed to be no foeman to swing at.\n Breathing heavily, Sir Robert sheathed his broadsword.\n\n\n Beside him, Sir Gaeton did the same, saying: \"It will be a few minutes\n before they can regroup, sir knight. We may have routed them\n completely.\"\n\n\n \"Aye. But King Richard will not approve of my breaking ranks and\n disobeying orders. I may win the battle and lose my head in the end.\"\n\n\n \"This is no time to worry about the future,\" said the Gascon. \"Rest for\n a moment and relax, that you may be the stronger later. Here—have an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He had a pack of cigarettes in his gauntleted hand, which he profferred\n to Sir Robert. There were three cigarettes protruding from it, one\n slightly farther than the others. Sir Robert's hand reached out and took\n that one.", "He did not know how long he fought there, holding his charger motionless\n over the inert body of the fallen king, hewing down the screaming enemy,\n but presently he heard the familiar cry of \"For St. George and for\n England\" behind him. The Norman and English troops were charging in,\n bringing with them the banner of England!\n\n\n And then Richard was on his feet, cleaving the air about him with his\n own broadsword. Its bright edge, besmeared with Saracen blood, was\n biting viciously into the foe.\n\n\n The Turks began to fall back. Within seconds, the Christian knights were\n boiling around the embattled pair, forcing the Turks into retreat. And\n for the second time, Sir Robert found himself with no one to fight.\n\n\n And then a voice was saying: \"You have done well this day, sir knight.\n Richard Plantagenet will not forget.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert turned in his saddle to face the smiling king.", "And then he saw another knight nearby, a huge man who swung his\n sparkling blade with power and force. On his steel helm gleamed a golden\n coronet! Richard!\n\n\n And the great king, in spite of his prowess was outnumbered heavily and\n would, within seconds, be cut down by the Saracen horde!\n\n\n Without hesitation, Sir Robert plunged his horse toward the surrounded\n monarch, his great blade cutting a path before him.\n\n\n He saw Richard go down, falling from the saddle of his charger, but by\n that time his own sword was cutting into the screaming Saracens and\n they had no time to attempt any further mischief to the King. They had\n their hands full with Sir Robert de Bouain.", "Sir Robert de Bouain twisted again in his saddle to look at the knight\n riding alongside him. Sir Gaeton de l'Arc-Tombé sat tall and straight in\n his saddle, his visor up, his blue eyes narrowed against the glare of\n the sun.\n\n\n Sir Robert's lips formed a smile. \"They are not far off, Sir Gaeton.\n They have been following us. As we march parallel to the seacoast, so\n they have been marching with us in those hills to the east.\"\n\n\n \"Like the jackals they are,\" said Sir Gaeton. \"They assail us from the\n rear, and they set up traps in our path ahead. Our spies tell us that\n the Turks lie ahead of us in countless numbers. And yet, they fear to\n face us in open battle.\"\n\n\n \"Is it fear, or are they merely gathering their forces?\"", "He himself, Sir Robert de Bouain, was riding with the Norman and English\n troops, just behind the men of Poitou. Sir Robert turned slightly in his\n saddle. To his right, he could see the brilliant red-and-gold banner of\n the lion-hearted Richard of England—\ngules, in pale three lions passant\n guardant or\n. Behind the standard-bearer, his great war horse moving\n with a steady, measured pace, his coronet of gold on his steel helm\n gleaming in the glaring desert sun, the lions of England on his\n firm-held shield, was the King himself.\n\n\n Further behind, the Knights Hospitallers protected the rear, guarding\n the column of the hosts of Christendom from harassment by the Bedouins.\n\n\n \"By our Lady!\" came a voice from his left. \"Three days out from Acre,\n and the accursed Saracens still elude us.\"", "Sir Robert heard his own laugh echo hollowly within his helmet. \"Perhaps\n 'twere better to be mad when the assault comes. Madmen fight better than\n men of cooler blood.\" He knew that the others were baking inside their\n heavy armor, although he himself was not too uncomfortable.\n\n\n Sir Gaeton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect.\n \"In truth, sir knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor\n heat. Nor is your own blood too cool. True, I ride with your Normans and\n your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a\n Gascon, and have sworn no fealty to him. But to side with the Duke of\n Burgundy against King Richard—\" He gave a short, barking laugh. \"I\n fear no man,\" he went on, \"but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard\n of England.\"", "After a moment's hesitation, Sir Gaeton couched his lance. \"I'm with\n you, sir knight! Live or die, I follow! Strike and strike hard!\"\n\n\n \"Forward then!\" Sir Robert heard himself shouting. \"Forward for St.\n George and for England!\"\n\n\n \"St. George and England!\" the Gascon echoed.\nTwo great war horses began to move ponderously forward toward the battle\n lines, gaining momentum as they went. Moving in unison, the two knights,\n their horses now at a fast trot, lowered their lances, picking their\n Saracen targets with care. Larger and larger loomed the Egyptian\n cavalrymen as the horses changed pace to a thundering gallop.\n\n\n The Egyptians tried to dodge, as they saw, too late, the approach of the\n Christian knights.", "\"My lord king, be assured that I would never forget my loyalty to my\n sovereign and liege lord. My sword and my life are yours whenever you\n call.\"\n\n\n King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. \"If it please God, I\n shall never ask your life. An earldom awaits you when we return to\n England, sir knight.\"\n\n\n And then the king mounted his horse and was running full gallop after\n the retreating Saracens.\nRobert took off his helmet.\n\n\n He blinked for a second to adjust his eyes to the relative dimness of\n the studio. After the brightness of the desert that the televicarion\n helmet had projected into his eyes, the studio seemed strangely\n cavelike.\n\n\n \"How'd you like it, Bob?\" asked one of the two producers of the show.", "The fierce warrior-king of England, his mighty sword in hand, was\n cutting down Turks as though they were grain-stalks, but still the\n Saracen horde pressed on. More and more of the terrible Turks came\n boiling down out of the hills, their glittering scimitars swinging.\n\n\n Sir Robert lost all track of time. There was nothing to do but keep his\n own great broadsword moving, swinging like some gigantic metronome as he\n hacked down the Moslem foes.\n\n\n And then, suddenly, he found himself surrounded by the Saracens! He was\n isolated and alone, cut off from the rest of the Christian forces! He\n glanced quickly around as he slashed another Saracen from pate to\n breastbone. Where was Sir Gaeton? Where were the others? Where was the\n red-and-gold banner of Richard?\n\n\n He caught a glimpse of the fluttering banner far to the rear and started\n to fall back.", "The Master of the Hospitallers was speaking in a low, urgent voice to\n the King: \"My lord, we are pressed on by the enemy and in danger of\n eternal infamy. We are losing our horses, one after the other!\"\n\n\n \"Good Master,\" said Richard, \"it is you who must sustain their attack.\n No one can be everywhere at once.\"\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers nodded curtly and charged back into the\n fray.\n\n\n The King turned to Sir Baldwin de Carreo, who sat ahorse nearby, and\n pointed toward the eastern hills. \"They will come from there, hitting us\n in the flank; we cannot afford to amass a rearward charge. To do so\n would be to fall directly into the hands of the Saracen.\"", "There was a sudden sound to the rear. Like a wash of the tide from the\n sea came the sound of Saracen war cries and the clash of steel on steel\n mingled with the sounds of horses in agony and anger.\n\n\n Sir Robert turned his horse to look.\n\n\n The Negro troops of Saladin's Egyptian contingent were thundering down\n upon the rear! They clashed with the Hospitallers, slamming in like a\n rain of heavy stones, too close in for the use of bows. There was only\n the sword against armor, like the sound of a thousand hammers against a\n thousand anvils.\n\n\n \"Stand fast! Stand fast! Hold them off!\" It was the voice of King\n Richard, sounding like a clarion over the din of battle.", "The Egyptian's curved sword clanged against Sir Robert's helm, setting\n his head ringing. In return, the knight's broadsword came about in a\n sweeping arc, and the Egyptian's horse rode on with the rider's headless\n body.\n\n\n Behind him, Sir Robert heard further cries of \"St. George and England!\"\n\n\n The Hospitallers, taking heart at the charge, were going in! Behind them\n came the Count of Champagne, the Earl of Leister, and the Bishop of\n Beauvais, who carried a great warhammer in order that he might not break\n Church Law by shedding blood.\n\n\n Sir Robert's own sword rose and fell, cutting and hacking at the enemy.\n He himself felt a dreamlike detachment, as though he were watching the\n battle rather than participating in it.\n\n\n But he could see that the Moslems were falling back before the Christian\n onslaught.", "Sir Robert felt the shock against himself and his horse as the steel tip\n of the long ash lance struck the Saracen horseman in the chest. Out of\n the corner of his eye, he saw that Sir Gaeton, too, had scored.\n\n\n The Saracen, impaled on Sir Robert's lance, shot from the saddle as he\n died. His lighter armor had hardly impeded the incoming spear-point, and\n now his body dragged it down as he dropped toward the desert sand.\n Another Moslem cavalryman was charging in now, swinging his curved\n saber, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance.\n\n\n There was nothing else to do but drop the lance and draw his heavy\n broadsword. His hand grasped it, and it came singing from its scabbard.", "\"Both,\" said Sir Gaeton flatly. \"They fear us, else they would not dally\n to amass so fearsome a force. If, as our informers tell us, there are\n uncounted Turks to the fore, and if, as we are aware, our rear is being\n dogged by the Bedouin and the black horsemen of Egypt, it would seem\n that Saladin has at hand more than enough to overcome us, were they all\n truly Christian knights.\"\n\n\n \"Give them time. We must wait for their attack, sir knight. It were\n foolhardy to attempt to seek them in their own hills, and yet they must\n stop us. They will attack before we reach Jerusalem, fear not.\"\n\n\n \"We of Gascony fear no heathen Musselman,\" Sir Gaeton growled. \"It's\n this Hellish heat that is driving me mad.\" He pointed toward the eastern\n hills. \"The sun is yet low, and already the heat is unbearable.\"", "\"Thanks. When the going gets rough, I really enjoy an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He put one end of the cigarette in his mouth and lit the other from the\n lighter in Sir Gaeton's hand.\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said Sir Gaeton, after lighting his own cigarette, \"\nOld\n Kings\nare the greatest. They give a man real, deep-down smoking\n pleasure.\"\n\n\n \"There's no doubt about it,\nOld Kings\nare a\nman's\ncigarette.\" Sir\n Robert could feel the soothing smoke in his lungs as he inhaled deeply.\n \"That's great. When I want a cigarette, I don't want just\nany\ncigarette.\"\n\n\n \"Nor I,\" agreed the Gascon. \"\nOld Kings\nis the only real cigarette when\n you're doing a real\nman's\nwork.\"\n\n\n \"That's for sure.\" Sir Robert watched a smoke ring expand in the air." ], [ "\"It was my duty.\" Sir Robert's voice was stubborn. \"Could we have\n permitted a quarrel to develop between the two finest knights and\n warleaders in Christendom at this crucial point? The desertion of Philip\n of France has cost us dearly. Could we permit the desertion of Burgundy,\n too?\"\n\n\n \"You did what must be done in honor,\" the Gascon conceded, \"but you have\n not gained the love of Richard by doing so.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert felt his jaw set firmly. \"My king knows I am loyal.\"\n\n\n Sir Gaeton said nothing more, but there was a look in his eyes that\n showed that he felt that Richard of England might even doubt the loyalty\n of Sir Robert de Bouain.\nSir Robert rode on in silence, feeling the movement of the horse beneath\n him.", "Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. \"My\n lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip\n of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned\n to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the\n Holy Land leaving only the contingent of his vassal the Duke of Burgundy\n to remain with us.\"\n\n\n \"Richard of England has never been on the best of terms with Philip\n Augustus,\" said Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"No, and with good cause. But he allowed his anger against Philip to\n color his judgment when he spoke harshly against the Duke of Burgundy.\n The Duke is no coward, and Richard Plantagenet well knows it. As I said,\n he spoke in haste.\"\n\n\n \"And you intervened,\" said Sir Gaeton.", "A voice very close to Sir Robert said: \"Richard is right. If we go to\n the aid of the Hospitallers, we will expose the column to a flank\n attack.\" It was Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"My lord the King,\" Sir Robert heard his voice say, \"is right in all but\n one thing. If we allow the Egyptians to take us from the rear, there\n will be no need for Saladin and his Turks to come down on our flank. And\n the Hospitallers cannot hold for long at this rate. A charge at full\n gallop would break the Egyptian line and give the Hospitallers breathing\n time. Are you with me?\"\n\n\n \"Against the orders of the King?\"\n\n\n \"The King cannot see everything! There are times when a man must use his\n own judgment! You said you were afraid of no man. Are you with me?\"", "Sir Robert heard his own laugh echo hollowly within his helmet. \"Perhaps\n 'twere better to be mad when the assault comes. Madmen fight better than\n men of cooler blood.\" He knew that the others were baking inside their\n heavy armor, although he himself was not too uncomfortable.\n\n\n Sir Gaeton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect.\n \"In truth, sir knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor\n heat. Nor is your own blood too cool. True, I ride with your Normans and\n your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a\n Gascon, and have sworn no fealty to him. But to side with the Duke of\n Burgundy against King Richard—\" He gave a short, barking laugh. \"I\n fear no man,\" he went on, \"but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard\n of England.\"", "After a moment's hesitation, Sir Gaeton couched his lance. \"I'm with\n you, sir knight! Live or die, I follow! Strike and strike hard!\"\n\n\n \"Forward then!\" Sir Robert heard himself shouting. \"Forward for St.\n George and for England!\"\n\n\n \"St. George and England!\" the Gascon echoed.\nTwo great war horses began to move ponderously forward toward the battle\n lines, gaining momentum as they went. Moving in unison, the two knights,\n their horses now at a fast trot, lowered their lances, picking their\n Saracen targets with care. Larger and larger loomed the Egyptian\n cavalrymen as the horses changed pace to a thundering gallop.\n\n\n The Egyptians tried to dodge, as they saw, too late, the approach of the\n Christian knights.", "Sir Robert de Bouain twisted again in his saddle to look at the knight\n riding alongside him. Sir Gaeton de l'Arc-Tombé sat tall and straight in\n his saddle, his visor up, his blue eyes narrowed against the glare of\n the sun.\n\n\n Sir Robert's lips formed a smile. \"They are not far off, Sir Gaeton.\n They have been following us. As we march parallel to the seacoast, so\n they have been marching with us in those hills to the east.\"\n\n\n \"Like the jackals they are,\" said Sir Gaeton. \"They assail us from the\n rear, and they set up traps in our path ahead. Our spies tell us that\n the Turks lie ahead of us in countless numbers. And yet, they fear to\n face us in open battle.\"\n\n\n \"Is it fear, or are they merely gathering their forces?\"", "And then, quite suddenly, there seemed to be no foeman to swing at.\n Breathing heavily, Sir Robert sheathed his broadsword.\n\n\n Beside him, Sir Gaeton did the same, saying: \"It will be a few minutes\n before they can regroup, sir knight. We may have routed them\n completely.\"\n\n\n \"Aye. But King Richard will not approve of my breaking ranks and\n disobeying orders. I may win the battle and lose my head in the end.\"\n\n\n \"This is no time to worry about the future,\" said the Gascon. \"Rest for\n a moment and relax, that you may be the stronger later. Here—have an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He had a pack of cigarettes in his gauntleted hand, which he profferred\n to Sir Robert. There were three cigarettes protruding from it, one\n slightly farther than the others. Sir Robert's hand reached out and took\n that one.", "There was a sudden clash of arms off to their left. Sir Robert dropped\n his cigarette to the ground. \"The trouble is that doing a real he-man's\n work doesn't always allow you to enjoy the fine, rich tobaccos of\nOld\n Kings\nright down to the very end.\"\n\n\n \"No, but you can always light another later,\" said the Gascon knight.\nKing Richard, on seeing his army moving suddenly toward the harassed\n rear, had realized the danger and had charged through the Hospitallers\n to get into the thick of the fray. Now the Turks were charging down from\n the hills, hitting—not the flank as he had expected, but the rear!\n Saladin had expected him to hold fast!\n\n\n Sir Robert and Sir Gaeton spurred their chargers toward the flapping\n banner of England.", "\"My lord king, be assured that I would never forget my loyalty to my\n sovereign and liege lord. My sword and my life are yours whenever you\n call.\"\n\n\n King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. \"If it please God, I\n shall never ask your life. An earldom awaits you when we return to\n England, sir knight.\"\n\n\n And then the king mounted his horse and was running full gallop after\n the retreating Saracens.\nRobert took off his helmet.\n\n\n He blinked for a second to adjust his eyes to the relative dimness of\n the studio. After the brightness of the desert that the televicarion\n helmet had projected into his eyes, the studio seemed strangely\n cavelike.\n\n\n \"How'd you like it, Bob?\" asked one of the two producers of the show.", "He did not know how long he fought there, holding his charger motionless\n over the inert body of the fallen king, hewing down the screaming enemy,\n but presently he heard the familiar cry of \"For St. George and for\n England\" behind him. The Norman and English troops were charging in,\n bringing with them the banner of England!\n\n\n And then Richard was on his feet, cleaving the air about him with his\n own broadsword. Its bright edge, besmeared with Saracen blood, was\n biting viciously into the foe.\n\n\n The Turks began to fall back. Within seconds, the Christian knights were\n boiling around the embattled pair, forcing the Turks into retreat. And\n for the second time, Sir Robert found himself with no one to fight.\n\n\n And then a voice was saying: \"You have done well this day, sir knight.\n Richard Plantagenet will not forget.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert turned in his saddle to face the smiling king.", "Sir Robert felt his horse move, as though it were urging him on toward\n the battle, but his hand held to the reins, keeping the great charger in\n check. The King had said \"Stand fast!\" and this was no time to disobey\n the orders of Richard.\n\n\n The Saracen troops were coming in from the rear, and the Hospitallers\n were taking the brunt of the charge. They fought like madmen, but they\n were slowly being forced back.\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers rode to the rear, to the King's standard,\n which hardly moved in the still desert air, now that the column had\n stopped moving.\n\n\n The voice of the Duke of Burgundy came to Sir Robert's ears.\n\n\n \"Stand fast. The King bids you all to stand fast,\" said the duke, his\n voice fading as he rode on up the column toward the knights of Poitou\n and the Knights Templars.", "He himself, Sir Robert de Bouain, was riding with the Norman and English\n troops, just behind the men of Poitou. Sir Robert turned slightly in his\n saddle. To his right, he could see the brilliant red-and-gold banner of\n the lion-hearted Richard of England—\ngules, in pale three lions passant\n guardant or\n. Behind the standard-bearer, his great war horse moving\n with a steady, measured pace, his coronet of gold on his steel helm\n gleaming in the glaring desert sun, the lions of England on his\n firm-held shield, was the King himself.\n\n\n Further behind, the Knights Hospitallers protected the rear, guarding\n the column of the hosts of Christendom from harassment by the Bedouins.\n\n\n \"By our Lady!\" came a voice from his left. \"Three days out from Acre,\n and the accursed Saracens still elude us.\"", "And then he saw another knight nearby, a huge man who swung his\n sparkling blade with power and force. On his steel helm gleamed a golden\n coronet! Richard!\n\n\n And the great king, in spite of his prowess was outnumbered heavily and\n would, within seconds, be cut down by the Saracen horde!\n\n\n Without hesitation, Sir Robert plunged his horse toward the surrounded\n monarch, his great blade cutting a path before him.\n\n\n He saw Richard go down, falling from the saddle of his charger, but by\n that time his own sword was cutting into the screaming Saracens and\n they had no time to attempt any further mischief to the King. They had\n their hands full with Sir Robert de Bouain.", "\"Both,\" said Sir Gaeton flatly. \"They fear us, else they would not dally\n to amass so fearsome a force. If, as our informers tell us, there are\n uncounted Turks to the fore, and if, as we are aware, our rear is being\n dogged by the Bedouin and the black horsemen of Egypt, it would seem\n that Saladin has at hand more than enough to overcome us, were they all\n truly Christian knights.\"\n\n\n \"Give them time. We must wait for their attack, sir knight. It were\n foolhardy to attempt to seek them in their own hills, and yet they must\n stop us. They will attack before we reach Jerusalem, fear not.\"\n\n\n \"We of Gascony fear no heathen Musselman,\" Sir Gaeton growled. \"It's\n this Hellish heat that is driving me mad.\" He pointed toward the eastern\n hills. \"The sun is yet low, and already the heat is unbearable.\"", "\"Thanks. When the going gets rough, I really enjoy an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He put one end of the cigarette in his mouth and lit the other from the\n lighter in Sir Gaeton's hand.\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said Sir Gaeton, after lighting his own cigarette, \"\nOld\n Kings\nare the greatest. They give a man real, deep-down smoking\n pleasure.\"\n\n\n \"There's no doubt about it,\nOld Kings\nare a\nman's\ncigarette.\" Sir\n Robert could feel the soothing smoke in his lungs as he inhaled deeply.\n \"That's great. When I want a cigarette, I don't want just\nany\ncigarette.\"\n\n\n \"Nor I,\" agreed the Gascon. \"\nOld Kings\nis the only real cigarette when\n you're doing a real\nman's\nwork.\"\n\n\n \"That's for sure.\" Sir Robert watched a smoke ring expand in the air.", "The fierce warrior-king of England, his mighty sword in hand, was\n cutting down Turks as though they were grain-stalks, but still the\n Saracen horde pressed on. More and more of the terrible Turks came\n boiling down out of the hills, their glittering scimitars swinging.\n\n\n Sir Robert lost all track of time. There was nothing to do but keep his\n own great broadsword moving, swinging like some gigantic metronome as he\n hacked down the Moslem foes.\n\n\n And then, suddenly, he found himself surrounded by the Saracens! He was\n isolated and alone, cut off from the rest of the Christian forces! He\n glanced quickly around as he slashed another Saracen from pate to\n breastbone. Where was Sir Gaeton? Where were the others? Where was the\n red-and-gold banner of Richard?\n\n\n He caught a glimpse of the fluttering banner far to the rear and started\n to fall back.", "The Master of the Hospitallers was speaking in a low, urgent voice to\n the King: \"My lord, we are pressed on by the enemy and in danger of\n eternal infamy. We are losing our horses, one after the other!\"\n\n\n \"Good Master,\" said Richard, \"it is you who must sustain their attack.\n No one can be everywhere at once.\"\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers nodded curtly and charged back into the\n fray.\n\n\n The King turned to Sir Baldwin de Carreo, who sat ahorse nearby, and\n pointed toward the eastern hills. \"They will come from there, hitting us\n in the flank; we cannot afford to amass a rearward charge. To do so\n would be to fall directly into the hands of the Saracen.\"", "Sir Robert felt the shock against himself and his horse as the steel tip\n of the long ash lance struck the Saracen horseman in the chest. Out of\n the corner of his eye, he saw that Sir Gaeton, too, had scored.\n\n\n The Saracen, impaled on Sir Robert's lance, shot from the saddle as he\n died. His lighter armor had hardly impeded the incoming spear-point, and\n now his body dragged it down as he dropped toward the desert sand.\n Another Moslem cavalryman was charging in now, swinging his curved\n saber, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance.\n\n\n There was nothing else to do but drop the lance and draw his heavy\n broadsword. His hand grasped it, and it came singing from its scabbard.", "There was a sudden sound to the rear. Like a wash of the tide from the\n sea came the sound of Saracen war cries and the clash of steel on steel\n mingled with the sounds of horses in agony and anger.\n\n\n Sir Robert turned his horse to look.\n\n\n The Negro troops of Saladin's Egyptian contingent were thundering down\n upon the rear! They clashed with the Hospitallers, slamming in like a\n rain of heavy stones, too close in for the use of bows. There was only\n the sword against armor, like the sound of a thousand hammers against a\n thousand anvils.\n\n\n \"Stand fast! Stand fast! Hold them off!\" It was the voice of King\n Richard, sounding like a clarion over the din of battle.", "Then his hand moved up and, with a flick of the wrist, lifted the visor.\n Ahead of him, in serried array, with lances erect and pennons flying,\n was the forward part of the column. Far ahead, he knew, were the Knights\n Templars, who had taken the advance. Behind the Templars rode the mailed\n knights of Brittany and Anjou. These were followed by King Guy of\n Jerusalem and the host of Poitou." ], [ "And then he saw another knight nearby, a huge man who swung his\n sparkling blade with power and force. On his steel helm gleamed a golden\n coronet! Richard!\n\n\n And the great king, in spite of his prowess was outnumbered heavily and\n would, within seconds, be cut down by the Saracen horde!\n\n\n Without hesitation, Sir Robert plunged his horse toward the surrounded\n monarch, his great blade cutting a path before him.\n\n\n He saw Richard go down, falling from the saddle of his charger, but by\n that time his own sword was cutting into the screaming Saracens and\n they had no time to attempt any further mischief to the King. They had\n their hands full with Sir Robert de Bouain.", "\"My lord king, be assured that I would never forget my loyalty to my\n sovereign and liege lord. My sword and my life are yours whenever you\n call.\"\n\n\n King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. \"If it please God, I\n shall never ask your life. An earldom awaits you when we return to\n England, sir knight.\"\n\n\n And then the king mounted his horse and was running full gallop after\n the retreating Saracens.\nRobert took off his helmet.\n\n\n He blinked for a second to adjust his eyes to the relative dimness of\n the studio. After the brightness of the desert that the televicarion\n helmet had projected into his eyes, the studio seemed strangely\n cavelike.\n\n\n \"How'd you like it, Bob?\" asked one of the two producers of the show.", "\"It was my duty.\" Sir Robert's voice was stubborn. \"Could we have\n permitted a quarrel to develop between the two finest knights and\n warleaders in Christendom at this crucial point? The desertion of Philip\n of France has cost us dearly. Could we permit the desertion of Burgundy,\n too?\"\n\n\n \"You did what must be done in honor,\" the Gascon conceded, \"but you have\n not gained the love of Richard by doing so.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert felt his jaw set firmly. \"My king knows I am loyal.\"\n\n\n Sir Gaeton said nothing more, but there was a look in his eyes that\n showed that he felt that Richard of England might even doubt the loyalty\n of Sir Robert de Bouain.\nSir Robert rode on in silence, feeling the movement of the horse beneath\n him.", "He did not know how long he fought there, holding his charger motionless\n over the inert body of the fallen king, hewing down the screaming enemy,\n but presently he heard the familiar cry of \"For St. George and for\n England\" behind him. The Norman and English troops were charging in,\n bringing with them the banner of England!\n\n\n And then Richard was on his feet, cleaving the air about him with his\n own broadsword. Its bright edge, besmeared with Saracen blood, was\n biting viciously into the foe.\n\n\n The Turks began to fall back. Within seconds, the Christian knights were\n boiling around the embattled pair, forcing the Turks into retreat. And\n for the second time, Sir Robert found himself with no one to fight.\n\n\n And then a voice was saying: \"You have done well this day, sir knight.\n Richard Plantagenet will not forget.\"\n\n\n Sir Robert turned in his saddle to face the smiling king.", "Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. \"My\n lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip\n of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned\n to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the\n Holy Land leaving only the contingent of his vassal the Duke of Burgundy\n to remain with us.\"\n\n\n \"Richard of England has never been on the best of terms with Philip\n Augustus,\" said Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"No, and with good cause. But he allowed his anger against Philip to\n color his judgment when he spoke harshly against the Duke of Burgundy.\n The Duke is no coward, and Richard Plantagenet well knows it. As I said,\n he spoke in haste.\"\n\n\n \"And you intervened,\" said Sir Gaeton.", "A voice very close to Sir Robert said: \"Richard is right. If we go to\n the aid of the Hospitallers, we will expose the column to a flank\n attack.\" It was Sir Gaeton.\n\n\n \"My lord the King,\" Sir Robert heard his voice say, \"is right in all but\n one thing. If we allow the Egyptians to take us from the rear, there\n will be no need for Saladin and his Turks to come down on our flank. And\n the Hospitallers cannot hold for long at this rate. A charge at full\n gallop would break the Egyptian line and give the Hospitallers breathing\n time. Are you with me?\"\n\n\n \"Against the orders of the King?\"\n\n\n \"The King cannot see everything! There are times when a man must use his\n own judgment! You said you were afraid of no man. Are you with me?\"", "And then, quite suddenly, there seemed to be no foeman to swing at.\n Breathing heavily, Sir Robert sheathed his broadsword.\n\n\n Beside him, Sir Gaeton did the same, saying: \"It will be a few minutes\n before they can regroup, sir knight. We may have routed them\n completely.\"\n\n\n \"Aye. But King Richard will not approve of my breaking ranks and\n disobeying orders. I may win the battle and lose my head in the end.\"\n\n\n \"This is no time to worry about the future,\" said the Gascon. \"Rest for\n a moment and relax, that you may be the stronger later. Here—have an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He had a pack of cigarettes in his gauntleted hand, which he profferred\n to Sir Robert. There were three cigarettes protruding from it, one\n slightly farther than the others. Sir Robert's hand reached out and took\n that one.", "There was a sudden clash of arms off to their left. Sir Robert dropped\n his cigarette to the ground. \"The trouble is that doing a real he-man's\n work doesn't always allow you to enjoy the fine, rich tobaccos of\nOld\n Kings\nright down to the very end.\"\n\n\n \"No, but you can always light another later,\" said the Gascon knight.\nKing Richard, on seeing his army moving suddenly toward the harassed\n rear, had realized the danger and had charged through the Hospitallers\n to get into the thick of the fray. Now the Turks were charging down from\n the hills, hitting—not the flank as he had expected, but the rear!\n Saladin had expected him to hold fast!\n\n\n Sir Robert and Sir Gaeton spurred their chargers toward the flapping\n banner of England.", "Sir Robert de Bouain twisted again in his saddle to look at the knight\n riding alongside him. Sir Gaeton de l'Arc-Tombé sat tall and straight in\n his saddle, his visor up, his blue eyes narrowed against the glare of\n the sun.\n\n\n Sir Robert's lips formed a smile. \"They are not far off, Sir Gaeton.\n They have been following us. As we march parallel to the seacoast, so\n they have been marching with us in those hills to the east.\"\n\n\n \"Like the jackals they are,\" said Sir Gaeton. \"They assail us from the\n rear, and they set up traps in our path ahead. Our spies tell us that\n the Turks lie ahead of us in countless numbers. And yet, they fear to\n face us in open battle.\"\n\n\n \"Is it fear, or are they merely gathering their forces?\"", "\"Thanks. When the going gets rough, I really enjoy an\nOld Kings\n.\"\n\n\n He put one end of the cigarette in his mouth and lit the other from the\n lighter in Sir Gaeton's hand.\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said Sir Gaeton, after lighting his own cigarette, \"\nOld\n Kings\nare the greatest. They give a man real, deep-down smoking\n pleasure.\"\n\n\n \"There's no doubt about it,\nOld Kings\nare a\nman's\ncigarette.\" Sir\n Robert could feel the soothing smoke in his lungs as he inhaled deeply.\n \"That's great. When I want a cigarette, I don't want just\nany\ncigarette.\"\n\n\n \"Nor I,\" agreed the Gascon. \"\nOld Kings\nis the only real cigarette when\n you're doing a real\nman's\nwork.\"\n\n\n \"That's for sure.\" Sir Robert watched a smoke ring expand in the air.", "Sir Robert heard his own laugh echo hollowly within his helmet. \"Perhaps\n 'twere better to be mad when the assault comes. Madmen fight better than\n men of cooler blood.\" He knew that the others were baking inside their\n heavy armor, although he himself was not too uncomfortable.\n\n\n Sir Gaeton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect.\n \"In truth, sir knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor\n heat. Nor is your own blood too cool. True, I ride with your Normans and\n your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a\n Gascon, and have sworn no fealty to him. But to side with the Duke of\n Burgundy against King Richard—\" He gave a short, barking laugh. \"I\n fear no man,\" he went on, \"but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard\n of England.\"", "He himself, Sir Robert de Bouain, was riding with the Norman and English\n troops, just behind the men of Poitou. Sir Robert turned slightly in his\n saddle. To his right, he could see the brilliant red-and-gold banner of\n the lion-hearted Richard of England—\ngules, in pale three lions passant\n guardant or\n. Behind the standard-bearer, his great war horse moving\n with a steady, measured pace, his coronet of gold on his steel helm\n gleaming in the glaring desert sun, the lions of England on his\n firm-held shield, was the King himself.\n\n\n Further behind, the Knights Hospitallers protected the rear, guarding\n the column of the hosts of Christendom from harassment by the Bedouins.\n\n\n \"By our Lady!\" came a voice from his left. \"Three days out from Acre,\n and the accursed Saracens still elude us.\"", "The fierce warrior-king of England, his mighty sword in hand, was\n cutting down Turks as though they were grain-stalks, but still the\n Saracen horde pressed on. More and more of the terrible Turks came\n boiling down out of the hills, their glittering scimitars swinging.\n\n\n Sir Robert lost all track of time. There was nothing to do but keep his\n own great broadsword moving, swinging like some gigantic metronome as he\n hacked down the Moslem foes.\n\n\n And then, suddenly, he found himself surrounded by the Saracens! He was\n isolated and alone, cut off from the rest of the Christian forces! He\n glanced quickly around as he slashed another Saracen from pate to\n breastbone. Where was Sir Gaeton? Where were the others? Where was the\n red-and-gold banner of Richard?\n\n\n He caught a glimpse of the fluttering banner far to the rear and started\n to fall back.", "Sir Robert felt his horse move, as though it were urging him on toward\n the battle, but his hand held to the reins, keeping the great charger in\n check. The King had said \"Stand fast!\" and this was no time to disobey\n the orders of Richard.\n\n\n The Saracen troops were coming in from the rear, and the Hospitallers\n were taking the brunt of the charge. They fought like madmen, but they\n were slowly being forced back.\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers rode to the rear, to the King's standard,\n which hardly moved in the still desert air, now that the column had\n stopped moving.\n\n\n The voice of the Duke of Burgundy came to Sir Robert's ears.\n\n\n \"Stand fast. The King bids you all to stand fast,\" said the duke, his\n voice fading as he rode on up the column toward the knights of Poitou\n and the Knights Templars.", "Robert Bowen nodded briskly and patted the televike helmet. \"It was\n O.K.,\" he said. \"Good show. A little talky at the beginning, and it\n needs a better fade-out, but the action scenes were fine. The sponsor\n ought to like it—for a while, at least.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, 'for a while'?\"\n\n\n Robert Bowen sighed. \"If this thing goes on the air the way it is, he'll\n lose sales.\"\n\n\n \"Why? Commercial not good enough?\"\n\n\n \"\nToo\ngood! Man, I've smoked\nOld Kings\n, and, believe me, the real\n thing never tasted as good as that cigarette did in the commercial!\"", "After a moment's hesitation, Sir Gaeton couched his lance. \"I'm with\n you, sir knight! Live or die, I follow! Strike and strike hard!\"\n\n\n \"Forward then!\" Sir Robert heard himself shouting. \"Forward for St.\n George and for England!\"\n\n\n \"St. George and England!\" the Gascon echoed.\nTwo great war horses began to move ponderously forward toward the battle\n lines, gaining momentum as they went. Moving in unison, the two knights,\n their horses now at a fast trot, lowered their lances, picking their\n Saracen targets with care. Larger and larger loomed the Egyptian\n cavalrymen as the horses changed pace to a thundering gallop.\n\n\n The Egyptians tried to dodge, as they saw, too late, the approach of the\n Christian knights.", "The Egyptian's curved sword clanged against Sir Robert's helm, setting\n his head ringing. In return, the knight's broadsword came about in a\n sweeping arc, and the Egyptian's horse rode on with the rider's headless\n body.\n\n\n Behind him, Sir Robert heard further cries of \"St. George and England!\"\n\n\n The Hospitallers, taking heart at the charge, were going in! Behind them\n came the Count of Champagne, the Earl of Leister, and the Bishop of\n Beauvais, who carried a great warhammer in order that he might not break\n Church Law by shedding blood.\n\n\n Sir Robert's own sword rose and fell, cutting and hacking at the enemy.\n He himself felt a dreamlike detachment, as though he were watching the\n battle rather than participating in it.\n\n\n But he could see that the Moslems were falling back before the Christian\n onslaught.", "There was a sudden sound to the rear. Like a wash of the tide from the\n sea came the sound of Saracen war cries and the clash of steel on steel\n mingled with the sounds of horses in agony and anger.\n\n\n Sir Robert turned his horse to look.\n\n\n The Negro troops of Saladin's Egyptian contingent were thundering down\n upon the rear! They clashed with the Hospitallers, slamming in like a\n rain of heavy stones, too close in for the use of bows. There was only\n the sword against armor, like the sound of a thousand hammers against a\n thousand anvils.\n\n\n \"Stand fast! Stand fast! Hold them off!\" It was the voice of King\n Richard, sounding like a clarion over the din of battle.", "The Master of the Hospitallers was speaking in a low, urgent voice to\n the King: \"My lord, we are pressed on by the enemy and in danger of\n eternal infamy. We are losing our horses, one after the other!\"\n\n\n \"Good Master,\" said Richard, \"it is you who must sustain their attack.\n No one can be everywhere at once.\"\n\n\n The Master of the Hospitallers nodded curtly and charged back into the\n fray.\n\n\n The King turned to Sir Baldwin de Carreo, who sat ahorse nearby, and\n pointed toward the eastern hills. \"They will come from there, hitting us\n in the flank; we cannot afford to amass a rearward charge. To do so\n would be to fall directly into the hands of the Saracen.\"", "Sir Robert felt the shock against himself and his horse as the steel tip\n of the long ash lance struck the Saracen horseman in the chest. Out of\n the corner of his eye, he saw that Sir Gaeton, too, had scored.\n\n\n The Saracen, impaled on Sir Robert's lance, shot from the saddle as he\n died. His lighter armor had hardly impeded the incoming spear-point, and\n now his body dragged it down as he dropped toward the desert sand.\n Another Moslem cavalryman was charging in now, swinging his curved\n saber, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance.\n\n\n There was nothing else to do but drop the lance and draw his heavy\n broadsword. His hand grasped it, and it came singing from its scabbard." ] ]
train	23588	[ "Which group of people shares the most similarities with the group of patients in the mental institution, as they are described by the author?", "Why does Thaddeus Funston smile at the sight of the demolished arts and crafts building?", "What is Thurgood's primary fear regarding the explosion at the arts and crafts building?", "What is the main theme of this story?", "What is the significance of the lifting-off of the Washington Monument at the story's conclusion?" ]	[ [ "A circus troupe", "A disorderly mob", "An artists' collective", "A Kindergarten class" ], [ "His prophecy of an alien invasion was fulfilled", "He is gleeful at the idea of part of the mental hospital being destroyed", "His self-constructed clay atom bomb was effectively detonated", "He knows the explosion will distract the hospital staff and give him an opportunity to escape" ], [ "Job demotion", "Additional detonations", "Radiation poisoning", "Reputational damage" ], [ "Fear and exploitation of the mentally ill", "The perilous impact of government secrets", "The damaging impact of mental illness on perception", "Society's rejection of divergent thought" ], [ "Mental 'illness' could and should, in many cases, be viewed as an asset, rather than a deficit", "Society is too quick to dismiss the thoughts and behaviors of people living with mental illness as irrational or absurd", "People living with mental illness pose risks and/or threats to society and should be entrusted to government care", "People living with mental illness(es) may possess abilities not understood by humans living without mental illness" ] ]	[ 4, 3, 4, 4, 2 ]	[ 1, 0, 1, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "\"Did,\" Funston murmured.\n\n\n Safely behind the patient's back, Miss Abercrombie smiled ever so\n slightly. \"Why that's very good, Mr. Funston. That shows real creative\n thought. I'm very pleased.\"\n\n\n She patted him on the shoulder and moved down the line of patients.\n\n\n A few minutes later, one of the attendants glanced at his watch, stood\n up and stretched.\n\n\n \"All right, fellows,\" he called out, \"time to go back. Put up your\n things.\"\n\n\n There was a rustle of paint boxes and papers being shuffled and chairs\n being moved back. A tall, blond patient with a flowing mustache, put one\n more dab of paint on his canvas and stood back to survey the meaningless\n smears. He sighed happily and laid down his palette.", "Miss Abercrombie smoothed her smock down over trim hips and surveyed the\n other patients working at the long tables in the hospital's arts and\n crafts shop. Two muscular and bored attendants in spotless whites,\n lounged beside the locked door and chatted idly about the Dodgers'\n prospects for the pennant.\n\n\n Through the barred windows of the workshop, rolling green hills were\n seen, their tree-studded flanks making a pleasant setting for the mental\n institution. The crafts building was a good mile away from the main\n buildings of the hospital and the hills blocked the view of the austere\n complex of buildings that housed the main wards.\n\n\n The therapist strolled down the line of tables, pausing to give a word\n of advice here, and a suggestion there.\n\n\n She stopped behind a frowning, intense patient, rapidly shaping blobs of\n clay into odd-sized strips and forms. As he finished each piece, he\n carefully placed it into a hollow shell hemisphere of clay.", "At the clay table, Funston feverishly fabricated the last odd-shaped bit\n of clay and slapped it into place. With a furtive glance around him, he\n clapped the other half of the clay sphere over the filled hemisphere and\n then stood up. The patients lined up at the door, waiting for the walk\n back across the green hills to the main hospital. The attendants made a\n quick count and then unlocked the door. The group shuffled out into the\n warm, afternoon sunlight and the door closed behind them.\n\n\n Miss Abercrombie gazed around the cluttered room and picked up her chart\n book of patient progress. Moving slowly down the line of benches, she\n made short, precise notes on the day's work accomplished by each\n patient.\n\n\n At the clay table, she carefully lifted the top half of the clay ball\n and stared thoughtfully at the jumbled maze of clay strips laced through\n the lower hemisphere. She placed the lid back in place and jotted\n lengthily in her chart book.", "When she had completed her rounds, she slipped out of the smock, tucked\n the chart book under her arm and left the crafts building for the day.\n\n\n The late afternoon sun felt warm and comfortable as she walked the mile\n to the main administration building where her car was parked.\n\n\n As she drove out of the hospital grounds, Thaddeus Funston stood at the\n barred window of his locked ward and stared vacantly over the hills\n towards the craft shop. He stood there unmoving until a ward attendant\n came and took his arm an hour later to lead him off to the patients'\n mess hall.\nThe sun set, darkness fell over the stilled hospital grounds and the\n ward lights winked out at nine o'clock, leaving just a single light\n burning in each ward office. A quiet wind sighed over the still-warm\n hills.", "At 3:01 a.m., Thaddeus Funston stirred in his sleep and awakened. He sat\n up in bed and looked around the dark ward. The quiet breathing and\n occasional snores of thirty other sleeping patients filled the room.\n Funston turned to the window and stared out across the black hills that\n sheltered the deserted crafts building.\n\n\n He gave a quick cry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face.\n\n\n The brilliance of a hundred suns glared in the night and threw stark\n shadows on the walls of the suddenly-illuminated ward.\n\n\n An instant later, the shattering roar and blast of the explosion struck\n the hospital buildings in a wave of force and the bursting crash of a\n thousand windows was lost in the fury of the explosion and the wild\n screams of the frightened and demented patients.\n\n\n It was over in an instant, and a stunned moment later, recessed ceiling\n lights began flashing on throughout the big institution.", "\"And what are we making today, Mr. Funston?\" Miss Abercrombie asked.\n\n\n The flying fingers continued to whip out the bits of shaped clay as the\n patient ignored the question. He hunched closer to his table as if to\n draw away from the woman.\n\n\n \"We mustn't be antisocial, Mr. Funston,\" Miss Abercrombie said lightly,\n but firmly. \"You've been coming along famously and you must remember to\n answer when someone talks to you. Now what are you making? It looks very\n complicated.\" She stared professionally at the maze of clay parts.\n\n\n Thaddeus Funston continued to mold the clay bits and put them in place.\n\n\n Without looking up from his bench he muttered a reply.\n\n\n \"Atom bomb.\"\n\n\n A puzzled look crossed the therapist's face. \"Pardon me, Mr. Funston. I\n thought you said an 'atom bomb.'\"", "Colonel Thurgood, looking more like a patient every minute, sat on the\n edge of his chair at the head of a long table and pounded with his fist\n on the wooden surface, making Miss Abercrombie's chart book bounce with\n every beat.\n\n\n \"It's ridiculous,\" Thurgood roared. \"We'll all be the laughingstocks of\n the world if this ever gets out. An atomic bomb made out of clay. You\n are all nuts. You're in the right place, but count me out.\"\n\n\n At his left, Miss Abercrombie cringed deeper into her chair at the\n broadside. Down both sides of the long table, psychiatrists, physicists,\n strategists and radiologists sat in various stages of nerve-shattered\n weariness.\n\n\n \"Miss Abercrombie,\" one of the physicists spoke up gently, \"you say that\n after the patients had departed the building, you looked again at\n Funston's work?\"", "\"Are you crazy?\" he screamed. \"You want to get us all thrown into this\n filbert factory? Do you know what the newspapers would do to us if they\n ever got wind of the fact, that for one, tiny fraction of a second,\n anyone of us here entertained the notion that a paranoidal idiot with\n the IQ of an ape could make an atomic bomb out of kid's modeling clay?\n\n\n \"They'd crucify us, that's what they'd do!\"\n\n\n At 8:30 that night, Thaddeus Funston, swathed in an Army officer's\n greatcoat that concealed the strait jacket binding him and with an\n officer's cap jammed far down over his face, was hustled out of a small\n side door of the hospital and into a waiting staff car. A few minutes\n later, the car pulled into the flying field at the nearby community and\n drove directly to the military transport plane that stood at the end of\n the runway with propellers turning.", "Within fifteen minutes, the disaster-trained crews had detected heavy\n radiation emanating from the crater and there was a scurry of men and\n equipment back to a safe distance, a few hundred yards away.\n\n\n At 5:30 a.m., a plane landed at a nearby airfield and a platoon of\n Atomic Energy Commission experts, military intelligence men, four FBI\n agents and an Army full colonel disembarked.\n\n\n At 5:45 a.m. a cordon was thrown around both the hospital and the blast\n crater.\n\n\n In Ward 4-C, Thaddeus Funston slept peacefully and happily.\n\n\n \"It's impossible and unbelievable,\" Colonel Thomas Thurgood said for the\n fifteenth time, later that morning, as he looked around the group of\n experts gathered in the tent erected on the hill overlooking the crater.\n \"How can an atom bomb go off in a nut house?\"", "His busy fingers flew through the clay, shaping odd, flat bits and clay\n parts that were dropped almost aimlessly into the open hemisphere in\n front of him.\n\n\n Miss Abercrombie stood at his shoulder as Thaddeus hunched over the\n table just as he had done the previous day. From time to time she\n glanced at her watch. The maze of clay strips grew and as Funston\n finished shaping the other half hemisphere of clay, she broke the tense\n silence.\n\n\n \"Time to go back now, Mr. Funston. You can work some more tomorrow.\" She\n looked at the men and nodded her head.\n\n\n The two psychiatrists went to Thaddeus' side as he put the upper lid of\n clay carefully in place. Funston stood up and the doctors escorted him\n from the shack.\n\n\n There was a moment of hushed silence and then pandemonium burst. The\n experts converged on the clay ball, instruments blossoming from nowhere\n and cameras clicking.", "Two military policemen and a brace of staff psychiatrists sworn to\n secrecy under the National Atomic Secrets Act, bundled Thaddeus aboard\n the plane. They plopped him into a seat directly in front of Miss\n Abercrombie and with a roar, the plane raced down the runway and into\n the night skies.\n\n\n The plane landed the next morning at the AEC's atomic testing grounds in\n the Nevada desert and two hours later, in a small hot, wooden shack\n miles up the barren desert wastelands, a cluster of scientists and\n military men huddled around a small wooden table.\n\n\n There was nothing on the table but a bowl of water and a great lump of\n modeling clay. While the psychiatrists were taking the strait jacket off\n Thaddeus in the staff car outside, Colonel Thurgood spoke to the weary\n Miss Abercrombie.\n\n\n \"Now you're positive this is just about the same amount and the same\n kind of clay he used before?\"", "For two hours they studied and gently probed the mass of child's clay\n and photographed it from every angle.\n\n\n Then they left for the concrete observatory bunker, several miles down\n range where Thaddeus and the psychiatrists waited inside a ring of\n stony-faced military policemen.\n\n\n \"I told you this whole thing was asinine,\" Thurgood snarled as the\n scientific teams trooped into the bunker.\n\n\n Thaddeus Funston stared out over the heads of the MPs through the open\n door, looking uprange over the heat-shimmering desert. He gave a sudden\n cry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face.", "A brilliance a hundred times brighter than the glaring Nevada sun lit\n the dim interior of the bunker and the pneumatically-operated door\n slammed shut just before the wave of the blast hit the structure.\nSix hours and a jet plane trip later, Thaddeus, once again in his strait\n jacket, sat between his armed escorts in a small room in the Pentagon.\n Through the window he could see the hurried bustle of traffic over the\n Potomac and beyond, the domed roof of the Capitol.\n\n\n In the conference room next door, the joint chiefs of staff were\n closeted with a gray-faced and bone-weary Colonel Thurgood and his\n baker's dozen of AEC brains. Scraps of the hot and scornful talk drifted\n across a half-opened transom into the room where Thaddeus Funston sat in\n a neatly-tied bundle.", "In the conference room, a red-faced, four-star general cast a chilling\n glance at the rumpled figure of Colonel Thurgood.\n\n\n \"I've listened to some silly stories in my life, colonel,\" the general\n said coldly, \"but this takes the cake. You come in here with an insane\n asylum inmate in a strait jacket and you have the colossal gall to sit\n there and tell me that this poor soul has made not one, but two atomic\n devices out of modeling clay and then has detonated them.\"\n\n\n The general paused.\n\n\n \"Why don't you just tell me, colonel, that he can also make spaceships\n out of sponge rubber?\" the general added bitingly.\n\n\n In the next room, Thaddeus Funston stared out over the sweeping panorama\n of the Washington landscape. He stared hard.", "Beyond the again-silent hills, a great pillar of smoke, topped by a\n small mushroom-shaped cloud, rose above the gaping hole that had been\n the arts and crafts building.\n\n\n Thaddeus Funston took his hands from his face and lay back in his bed\n with a small, secret smile on his lips. Attendants and nurses scurried\n through the hospital, seeing how many had been injured in the\n explosion.\n\n\n None had. The hills had absorbed most of the shock and apart from a\n welter of broken glass, the damage had been surprisingly slight.\n\n\n The roar and flash of the explosion had lighted and rocked the\n surrounding countryside. Soon firemen and civil defense disaster units\n from a half-dozen neighboring communities had gathered at the\n still-smoking hole that marked the site of the vanished crafts building.", "\"Colonel, I've told you a dozen times,\" the hospital administrator said\n with exasperation, \"this was our manual therapy room. We gave our\n patients art work. It was a means of getting out of their systems,\n through the use of their hands, some of the frustrations and problems\n that led them to this hospital. They worked with oil and water paints\n and clay. If you can make an atomic bomb from vermillion pigments, then\n Madame Curie was a misguided scrubwoman.\"\n\n\n \"All I know is that you say this was a crafts building. O.K. So it was,\"\n Thurgood sighed. \"I also know that an atomic explosion at 3:02 this\n morning blew it to hell and gone.\n\n\n \"And I've got to find out how it happened.\"\n\n\n Thurgood slumped into a field chair and gazed tiredly up at the little\n doctor.\n\n\n \"Where's that girl you said was in charge of this place?\"", "\"I brought it along from the same batch we had in the store room at the\n hospital,\" she replied, \"and it's the same amount.\"\n\n\n Thurgood signaled to the doctors and they entered the shack with\n Thaddeus Funston between them. The colonel nudged Miss Abercrombie.\n\n\n She smiled at Funston.\n\n\n \"Now isn't this nice, Mr. Funston,\" she said. \"These nice men have\n brought us way out here just to see you make another atom bomb like the\n one you made for me yesterday.\"\n\n\n A flicker of interest lightened Thaddeus' face. He looked around the\n shack and then spotted the clay on the table. Without hesitation, he\n walked to the table and sat down. His fingers began working the damp\n clay, making first the hollow, half-round shell while the nation's top\n atomic scientists watched in fascination.", "Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction November 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.\nA FILBERT IS A NUT\nBY RICK RAPHAEL\nThat the gentleman in question was a nut was beyond question. He was an institutionalized\n psychotic. He was nutty enough to think he could make an atom bomb out of modeling clay!\nIllustrated by Freas\nMiss Abercrombie, the manual therapist patted the old man on the\n shoulder. \"You're doing just fine, Mr. Lieberman. Show it to me when you\n have finished.\"\n\n\n The oldster in the stained convalescent suit gave her a quick, shy smile\n and went back to his aimless smearing in the finger paints.", "The therapist nodded unhappily.\n\n\n \"And you say that, to the best of your knowledge,\" the physicist\n continued, \"there was nothing inside the ball but other pieces of clay.\"\n\n\n \"I'm positive that's all there was in it,\" Miss Abercrombie cried.\n\n\n There was a renewed buzz of conversation at the table and the senior AEC\n man present got heads together with the senior intelligence man. They\n conferred briefly and then the intelligence officer spoke.\n\n\n \"That seems to settle it, colonel. We've got to give this Funston\n another chance to repeat his bomb. But this time under our supervision.\"\n\n\n Thurgood leaped to his feet, his face purpling.", "\"We've already called for Miss Abercrombie and she's on her way here\n now,\" the doctor snapped.\nOutside the tent, a small army of military men and AEC technicians moved\n around the perimeter of the crater, scintillators in hand, examining\n every tiny scrap that might have been a part of the building at one\n time.\n\n\n A jeep raced down the road from the hospital and drew up in front of the\n tent. An armed MP helped Miss Abercrombie from the vehicle.\n\n\n She walked to the edge of the hill and looked down with a stunned\n expression.\n\n\n \"He did make an atom bomb,\" she cried.\n\n\n Colonel Thurgood, who had snapped from his chair at her words, leaped\n forward to catch her as she collapsed in a faint.\n\n\n At 4:00 p.m., the argument was still raging in the long, narrow staff\n room of the hospital administration building." ], [ "Beyond the again-silent hills, a great pillar of smoke, topped by a\n small mushroom-shaped cloud, rose above the gaping hole that had been\n the arts and crafts building.\n\n\n Thaddeus Funston took his hands from his face and lay back in his bed\n with a small, secret smile on his lips. Attendants and nurses scurried\n through the hospital, seeing how many had been injured in the\n explosion.\n\n\n None had. The hills had absorbed most of the shock and apart from a\n welter of broken glass, the damage had been surprisingly slight.\n\n\n The roar and flash of the explosion had lighted and rocked the\n surrounding countryside. Soon firemen and civil defense disaster units\n from a half-dozen neighboring communities had gathered at the\n still-smoking hole that marked the site of the vanished crafts building.", "At 3:01 a.m., Thaddeus Funston stirred in his sleep and awakened. He sat\n up in bed and looked around the dark ward. The quiet breathing and\n occasional snores of thirty other sleeping patients filled the room.\n Funston turned to the window and stared out across the black hills that\n sheltered the deserted crafts building.\n\n\n He gave a quick cry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face.\n\n\n The brilliance of a hundred suns glared in the night and threw stark\n shadows on the walls of the suddenly-illuminated ward.\n\n\n An instant later, the shattering roar and blast of the explosion struck\n the hospital buildings in a wave of force and the bursting crash of a\n thousand windows was lost in the fury of the explosion and the wild\n screams of the frightened and demented patients.\n\n\n It was over in an instant, and a stunned moment later, recessed ceiling\n lights began flashing on throughout the big institution.", "\"And what are we making today, Mr. Funston?\" Miss Abercrombie asked.\n\n\n The flying fingers continued to whip out the bits of shaped clay as the\n patient ignored the question. He hunched closer to his table as if to\n draw away from the woman.\n\n\n \"We mustn't be antisocial, Mr. Funston,\" Miss Abercrombie said lightly,\n but firmly. \"You've been coming along famously and you must remember to\n answer when someone talks to you. Now what are you making? It looks very\n complicated.\" She stared professionally at the maze of clay parts.\n\n\n Thaddeus Funston continued to mold the clay bits and put them in place.\n\n\n Without looking up from his bench he muttered a reply.\n\n\n \"Atom bomb.\"\n\n\n A puzzled look crossed the therapist's face. \"Pardon me, Mr. Funston. I\n thought you said an 'atom bomb.'\"", "In the conference room, a red-faced, four-star general cast a chilling\n glance at the rumpled figure of Colonel Thurgood.\n\n\n \"I've listened to some silly stories in my life, colonel,\" the general\n said coldly, \"but this takes the cake. You come in here with an insane\n asylum inmate in a strait jacket and you have the colossal gall to sit\n there and tell me that this poor soul has made not one, but two atomic\n devices out of modeling clay and then has detonated them.\"\n\n\n The general paused.\n\n\n \"Why don't you just tell me, colonel, that he can also make spaceships\n out of sponge rubber?\" the general added bitingly.\n\n\n In the next room, Thaddeus Funston stared out over the sweeping panorama\n of the Washington landscape. He stared hard.", "\"I brought it along from the same batch we had in the store room at the\n hospital,\" she replied, \"and it's the same amount.\"\n\n\n Thurgood signaled to the doctors and they entered the shack with\n Thaddeus Funston between them. The colonel nudged Miss Abercrombie.\n\n\n She smiled at Funston.\n\n\n \"Now isn't this nice, Mr. Funston,\" she said. \"These nice men have\n brought us way out here just to see you make another atom bomb like the\n one you made for me yesterday.\"\n\n\n A flicker of interest lightened Thaddeus' face. He looked around the\n shack and then spotted the clay on the table. Without hesitation, he\n walked to the table and sat down. His fingers began working the damp\n clay, making first the hollow, half-round shell while the nation's top\n atomic scientists watched in fascination.", "For two hours they studied and gently probed the mass of child's clay\n and photographed it from every angle.\n\n\n Then they left for the concrete observatory bunker, several miles down\n range where Thaddeus and the psychiatrists waited inside a ring of\n stony-faced military policemen.\n\n\n \"I told you this whole thing was asinine,\" Thurgood snarled as the\n scientific teams trooped into the bunker.\n\n\n Thaddeus Funston stared out over the heads of the MPs through the open\n door, looking uprange over the heat-shimmering desert. He gave a sudden\n cry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face.", "\"Did,\" Funston murmured.\n\n\n Safely behind the patient's back, Miss Abercrombie smiled ever so\n slightly. \"Why that's very good, Mr. Funston. That shows real creative\n thought. I'm very pleased.\"\n\n\n She patted him on the shoulder and moved down the line of patients.\n\n\n A few minutes later, one of the attendants glanced at his watch, stood\n up and stretched.\n\n\n \"All right, fellows,\" he called out, \"time to go back. Put up your\n things.\"\n\n\n There was a rustle of paint boxes and papers being shuffled and chairs\n being moved back. A tall, blond patient with a flowing mustache, put one\n more dab of paint on his canvas and stood back to survey the meaningless\n smears. He sighed happily and laid down his palette.", "Within fifteen minutes, the disaster-trained crews had detected heavy\n radiation emanating from the crater and there was a scurry of men and\n equipment back to a safe distance, a few hundred yards away.\n\n\n At 5:30 a.m., a plane landed at a nearby airfield and a platoon of\n Atomic Energy Commission experts, military intelligence men, four FBI\n agents and an Army full colonel disembarked.\n\n\n At 5:45 a.m. a cordon was thrown around both the hospital and the blast\n crater.\n\n\n In Ward 4-C, Thaddeus Funston slept peacefully and happily.\n\n\n \"It's impossible and unbelievable,\" Colonel Thomas Thurgood said for the\n fifteenth time, later that morning, as he looked around the group of\n experts gathered in the tent erected on the hill overlooking the crater.\n \"How can an atom bomb go off in a nut house?\"", "Colonel Thurgood, looking more like a patient every minute, sat on the\n edge of his chair at the head of a long table and pounded with his fist\n on the wooden surface, making Miss Abercrombie's chart book bounce with\n every beat.\n\n\n \"It's ridiculous,\" Thurgood roared. \"We'll all be the laughingstocks of\n the world if this ever gets out. An atomic bomb made out of clay. You\n are all nuts. You're in the right place, but count me out.\"\n\n\n At his left, Miss Abercrombie cringed deeper into her chair at the\n broadside. Down both sides of the long table, psychiatrists, physicists,\n strategists and radiologists sat in various stages of nerve-shattered\n weariness.\n\n\n \"Miss Abercrombie,\" one of the physicists spoke up gently, \"you say that\n after the patients had departed the building, you looked again at\n Funston's work?\"", "A brilliance a hundred times brighter than the glaring Nevada sun lit\n the dim interior of the bunker and the pneumatically-operated door\n slammed shut just before the wave of the blast hit the structure.\nSix hours and a jet plane trip later, Thaddeus, once again in his strait\n jacket, sat between his armed escorts in a small room in the Pentagon.\n Through the window he could see the hurried bustle of traffic over the\n Potomac and beyond, the domed roof of the Capitol.\n\n\n In the conference room next door, the joint chiefs of staff were\n closeted with a gray-faced and bone-weary Colonel Thurgood and his\n baker's dozen of AEC brains. Scraps of the hot and scornful talk drifted\n across a half-opened transom into the room where Thaddeus Funston sat in\n a neatly-tied bundle.", "His busy fingers flew through the clay, shaping odd, flat bits and clay\n parts that were dropped almost aimlessly into the open hemisphere in\n front of him.\n\n\n Miss Abercrombie stood at his shoulder as Thaddeus hunched over the\n table just as he had done the previous day. From time to time she\n glanced at her watch. The maze of clay strips grew and as Funston\n finished shaping the other half hemisphere of clay, she broke the tense\n silence.\n\n\n \"Time to go back now, Mr. Funston. You can work some more tomorrow.\" She\n looked at the men and nodded her head.\n\n\n The two psychiatrists went to Thaddeus' side as he put the upper lid of\n clay carefully in place. Funston stood up and the doctors escorted him\n from the shack.\n\n\n There was a moment of hushed silence and then pandemonium burst. The\n experts converged on the clay ball, instruments blossoming from nowhere\n and cameras clicking.", "At the clay table, Funston feverishly fabricated the last odd-shaped bit\n of clay and slapped it into place. With a furtive glance around him, he\n clapped the other half of the clay sphere over the filled hemisphere and\n then stood up. The patients lined up at the door, waiting for the walk\n back across the green hills to the main hospital. The attendants made a\n quick count and then unlocked the door. The group shuffled out into the\n warm, afternoon sunlight and the door closed behind them.\n\n\n Miss Abercrombie gazed around the cluttered room and picked up her chart\n book of patient progress. Moving slowly down the line of benches, she\n made short, precise notes on the day's work accomplished by each\n patient.\n\n\n At the clay table, she carefully lifted the top half of the clay ball\n and stared thoughtfully at the jumbled maze of clay strips laced through\n the lower hemisphere. She placed the lid back in place and jotted\n lengthily in her chart book.", "\"Are you crazy?\" he screamed. \"You want to get us all thrown into this\n filbert factory? Do you know what the newspapers would do to us if they\n ever got wind of the fact, that for one, tiny fraction of a second,\n anyone of us here entertained the notion that a paranoidal idiot with\n the IQ of an ape could make an atomic bomb out of kid's modeling clay?\n\n\n \"They'd crucify us, that's what they'd do!\"\n\n\n At 8:30 that night, Thaddeus Funston, swathed in an Army officer's\n greatcoat that concealed the strait jacket binding him and with an\n officer's cap jammed far down over his face, was hustled out of a small\n side door of the hospital and into a waiting staff car. A few minutes\n later, the car pulled into the flying field at the nearby community and\n drove directly to the military transport plane that stood at the end of\n the runway with propellers turning.", "The therapist nodded unhappily.\n\n\n \"And you say that, to the best of your knowledge,\" the physicist\n continued, \"there was nothing inside the ball but other pieces of clay.\"\n\n\n \"I'm positive that's all there was in it,\" Miss Abercrombie cried.\n\n\n There was a renewed buzz of conversation at the table and the senior AEC\n man present got heads together with the senior intelligence man. They\n conferred briefly and then the intelligence officer spoke.\n\n\n \"That seems to settle it, colonel. We've got to give this Funston\n another chance to repeat his bomb. But this time under our supervision.\"\n\n\n Thurgood leaped to his feet, his face purpling.", "\"Colonel, I've told you a dozen times,\" the hospital administrator said\n with exasperation, \"this was our manual therapy room. We gave our\n patients art work. It was a means of getting out of their systems,\n through the use of their hands, some of the frustrations and problems\n that led them to this hospital. They worked with oil and water paints\n and clay. If you can make an atomic bomb from vermillion pigments, then\n Madame Curie was a misguided scrubwoman.\"\n\n\n \"All I know is that you say this was a crafts building. O.K. So it was,\"\n Thurgood sighed. \"I also know that an atomic explosion at 3:02 this\n morning blew it to hell and gone.\n\n\n \"And I've got to find out how it happened.\"\n\n\n Thurgood slumped into a field chair and gazed tiredly up at the little\n doctor.\n\n\n \"Where's that girl you said was in charge of this place?\"", "When she had completed her rounds, she slipped out of the smock, tucked\n the chart book under her arm and left the crafts building for the day.\n\n\n The late afternoon sun felt warm and comfortable as she walked the mile\n to the main administration building where her car was parked.\n\n\n As she drove out of the hospital grounds, Thaddeus Funston stood at the\n barred window of his locked ward and stared vacantly over the hills\n towards the craft shop. He stood there unmoving until a ward attendant\n came and took his arm an hour later to lead him off to the patients'\n mess hall.\nThe sun set, darkness fell over the stilled hospital grounds and the\n ward lights winked out at nine o'clock, leaving just a single light\n burning in each ward office. A quiet wind sighed over the still-warm\n hills.", "Two military policemen and a brace of staff psychiatrists sworn to\n secrecy under the National Atomic Secrets Act, bundled Thaddeus aboard\n the plane. They plopped him into a seat directly in front of Miss\n Abercrombie and with a roar, the plane raced down the runway and into\n the night skies.\n\n\n The plane landed the next morning at the AEC's atomic testing grounds in\n the Nevada desert and two hours later, in a small hot, wooden shack\n miles up the barren desert wastelands, a cluster of scientists and\n military men huddled around a small wooden table.\n\n\n There was nothing on the table but a bowl of water and a great lump of\n modeling clay. While the psychiatrists were taking the strait jacket off\n Thaddeus in the staff car outside, Colonel Thurgood spoke to the weary\n Miss Abercrombie.\n\n\n \"Now you're positive this is just about the same amount and the same\n kind of clay he used before?\"", "\"It apparently was a very small bomb, colonel,\" one of the haggard AEC\n men offered timidly. \"Not over three kilotons.\"\n\n\n \"I don't care if it was the size of a peanut,\" Thurgood screamed. \"How\n did it get here?\"\n\n\n A military intelligence agent spoke up. \"If we knew, sir, we wouldn't be\n standing around here. We don't know, but the fact remains that it WAS an\n atomic explosion.\"\n\n\n Thurgood turned wearily to the small, white-haired man at his side.\n\n\n \"Let's go over it once more, Dr. Crane. Are you sure you knew everything\n that was in that building?\" Thurgood swept his hand in the general\n direction of the blast crater.", "In the distance, a white cloud began billowing up from the base of the\n Washington Monument, and with an ear-shattering, glass-splintering roar,\n the great shaft rose majestically from its base and vanished into space\n on a tail of flame.\nTHE END", "\"We've already called for Miss Abercrombie and she's on her way here\n now,\" the doctor snapped.\nOutside the tent, a small army of military men and AEC technicians moved\n around the perimeter of the crater, scintillators in hand, examining\n every tiny scrap that might have been a part of the building at one\n time.\n\n\n A jeep raced down the road from the hospital and drew up in front of the\n tent. An armed MP helped Miss Abercrombie from the vehicle.\n\n\n She walked to the edge of the hill and looked down with a stunned\n expression.\n\n\n \"He did make an atom bomb,\" she cried.\n\n\n Colonel Thurgood, who had snapped from his chair at her words, leaped\n forward to catch her as she collapsed in a faint.\n\n\n At 4:00 p.m., the argument was still raging in the long, narrow staff\n room of the hospital administration building." ], [ "\"Colonel, I've told you a dozen times,\" the hospital administrator said\n with exasperation, \"this was our manual therapy room. We gave our\n patients art work. It was a means of getting out of their systems,\n through the use of their hands, some of the frustrations and problems\n that led them to this hospital. They worked with oil and water paints\n and clay. If you can make an atomic bomb from vermillion pigments, then\n Madame Curie was a misguided scrubwoman.\"\n\n\n \"All I know is that you say this was a crafts building. O.K. So it was,\"\n Thurgood sighed. \"I also know that an atomic explosion at 3:02 this\n morning blew it to hell and gone.\n\n\n \"And I've got to find out how it happened.\"\n\n\n Thurgood slumped into a field chair and gazed tiredly up at the little\n doctor.\n\n\n \"Where's that girl you said was in charge of this place?\"", "Beyond the again-silent hills, a great pillar of smoke, topped by a\n small mushroom-shaped cloud, rose above the gaping hole that had been\n the arts and crafts building.\n\n\n Thaddeus Funston took his hands from his face and lay back in his bed\n with a small, secret smile on his lips. Attendants and nurses scurried\n through the hospital, seeing how many had been injured in the\n explosion.\n\n\n None had. The hills had absorbed most of the shock and apart from a\n welter of broken glass, the damage had been surprisingly slight.\n\n\n The roar and flash of the explosion had lighted and rocked the\n surrounding countryside. Soon firemen and civil defense disaster units\n from a half-dozen neighboring communities had gathered at the\n still-smoking hole that marked the site of the vanished crafts building.", "\"And what are we making today, Mr. Funston?\" Miss Abercrombie asked.\n\n\n The flying fingers continued to whip out the bits of shaped clay as the\n patient ignored the question. He hunched closer to his table as if to\n draw away from the woman.\n\n\n \"We mustn't be antisocial, Mr. Funston,\" Miss Abercrombie said lightly,\n but firmly. \"You've been coming along famously and you must remember to\n answer when someone talks to you. Now what are you making? It looks very\n complicated.\" She stared professionally at the maze of clay parts.\n\n\n Thaddeus Funston continued to mold the clay bits and put them in place.\n\n\n Without looking up from his bench he muttered a reply.\n\n\n \"Atom bomb.\"\n\n\n A puzzled look crossed the therapist's face. \"Pardon me, Mr. Funston. I\n thought you said an 'atom bomb.'\"", "Colonel Thurgood, looking more like a patient every minute, sat on the\n edge of his chair at the head of a long table and pounded with his fist\n on the wooden surface, making Miss Abercrombie's chart book bounce with\n every beat.\n\n\n \"It's ridiculous,\" Thurgood roared. \"We'll all be the laughingstocks of\n the world if this ever gets out. An atomic bomb made out of clay. You\n are all nuts. You're in the right place, but count me out.\"\n\n\n At his left, Miss Abercrombie cringed deeper into her chair at the\n broadside. Down both sides of the long table, psychiatrists, physicists,\n strategists and radiologists sat in various stages of nerve-shattered\n weariness.\n\n\n \"Miss Abercrombie,\" one of the physicists spoke up gently, \"you say that\n after the patients had departed the building, you looked again at\n Funston's work?\"", "At 3:01 a.m., Thaddeus Funston stirred in his sleep and awakened. He sat\n up in bed and looked around the dark ward. The quiet breathing and\n occasional snores of thirty other sleeping patients filled the room.\n Funston turned to the window and stared out across the black hills that\n sheltered the deserted crafts building.\n\n\n He gave a quick cry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face.\n\n\n The brilliance of a hundred suns glared in the night and threw stark\n shadows on the walls of the suddenly-illuminated ward.\n\n\n An instant later, the shattering roar and blast of the explosion struck\n the hospital buildings in a wave of force and the bursting crash of a\n thousand windows was lost in the fury of the explosion and the wild\n screams of the frightened and demented patients.\n\n\n It was over in an instant, and a stunned moment later, recessed ceiling\n lights began flashing on throughout the big institution.", "Within fifteen minutes, the disaster-trained crews had detected heavy\n radiation emanating from the crater and there was a scurry of men and\n equipment back to a safe distance, a few hundred yards away.\n\n\n At 5:30 a.m., a plane landed at a nearby airfield and a platoon of\n Atomic Energy Commission experts, military intelligence men, four FBI\n agents and an Army full colonel disembarked.\n\n\n At 5:45 a.m. a cordon was thrown around both the hospital and the blast\n crater.\n\n\n In Ward 4-C, Thaddeus Funston slept peacefully and happily.\n\n\n \"It's impossible and unbelievable,\" Colonel Thomas Thurgood said for the\n fifteenth time, later that morning, as he looked around the group of\n experts gathered in the tent erected on the hill overlooking the crater.\n \"How can an atom bomb go off in a nut house?\"", "Two military policemen and a brace of staff psychiatrists sworn to\n secrecy under the National Atomic Secrets Act, bundled Thaddeus aboard\n the plane. They plopped him into a seat directly in front of Miss\n Abercrombie and with a roar, the plane raced down the runway and into\n the night skies.\n\n\n The plane landed the next morning at the AEC's atomic testing grounds in\n the Nevada desert and two hours later, in a small hot, wooden shack\n miles up the barren desert wastelands, a cluster of scientists and\n military men huddled around a small wooden table.\n\n\n There was nothing on the table but a bowl of water and a great lump of\n modeling clay. While the psychiatrists were taking the strait jacket off\n Thaddeus in the staff car outside, Colonel Thurgood spoke to the weary\n Miss Abercrombie.\n\n\n \"Now you're positive this is just about the same amount and the same\n kind of clay he used before?\"", "\"It apparently was a very small bomb, colonel,\" one of the haggard AEC\n men offered timidly. \"Not over three kilotons.\"\n\n\n \"I don't care if it was the size of a peanut,\" Thurgood screamed. \"How\n did it get here?\"\n\n\n A military intelligence agent spoke up. \"If we knew, sir, we wouldn't be\n standing around here. We don't know, but the fact remains that it WAS an\n atomic explosion.\"\n\n\n Thurgood turned wearily to the small, white-haired man at his side.\n\n\n \"Let's go over it once more, Dr. Crane. Are you sure you knew everything\n that was in that building?\" Thurgood swept his hand in the general\n direction of the blast crater.", "In the conference room, a red-faced, four-star general cast a chilling\n glance at the rumpled figure of Colonel Thurgood.\n\n\n \"I've listened to some silly stories in my life, colonel,\" the general\n said coldly, \"but this takes the cake. You come in here with an insane\n asylum inmate in a strait jacket and you have the colossal gall to sit\n there and tell me that this poor soul has made not one, but two atomic\n devices out of modeling clay and then has detonated them.\"\n\n\n The general paused.\n\n\n \"Why don't you just tell me, colonel, that he can also make spaceships\n out of sponge rubber?\" the general added bitingly.\n\n\n In the next room, Thaddeus Funston stared out over the sweeping panorama\n of the Washington landscape. He stared hard.", "The therapist nodded unhappily.\n\n\n \"And you say that, to the best of your knowledge,\" the physicist\n continued, \"there was nothing inside the ball but other pieces of clay.\"\n\n\n \"I'm positive that's all there was in it,\" Miss Abercrombie cried.\n\n\n There was a renewed buzz of conversation at the table and the senior AEC\n man present got heads together with the senior intelligence man. They\n conferred briefly and then the intelligence officer spoke.\n\n\n \"That seems to settle it, colonel. We've got to give this Funston\n another chance to repeat his bomb. But this time under our supervision.\"\n\n\n Thurgood leaped to his feet, his face purpling.", "For two hours they studied and gently probed the mass of child's clay\n and photographed it from every angle.\n\n\n Then they left for the concrete observatory bunker, several miles down\n range where Thaddeus and the psychiatrists waited inside a ring of\n stony-faced military policemen.\n\n\n \"I told you this whole thing was asinine,\" Thurgood snarled as the\n scientific teams trooped into the bunker.\n\n\n Thaddeus Funston stared out over the heads of the MPs through the open\n door, looking uprange over the heat-shimmering desert. He gave a sudden\n cry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face.", "A brilliance a hundred times brighter than the glaring Nevada sun lit\n the dim interior of the bunker and the pneumatically-operated door\n slammed shut just before the wave of the blast hit the structure.\nSix hours and a jet plane trip later, Thaddeus, once again in his strait\n jacket, sat between his armed escorts in a small room in the Pentagon.\n Through the window he could see the hurried bustle of traffic over the\n Potomac and beyond, the domed roof of the Capitol.\n\n\n In the conference room next door, the joint chiefs of staff were\n closeted with a gray-faced and bone-weary Colonel Thurgood and his\n baker's dozen of AEC brains. Scraps of the hot and scornful talk drifted\n across a half-opened transom into the room where Thaddeus Funston sat in\n a neatly-tied bundle.", "\"Are you crazy?\" he screamed. \"You want to get us all thrown into this\n filbert factory? Do you know what the newspapers would do to us if they\n ever got wind of the fact, that for one, tiny fraction of a second,\n anyone of us here entertained the notion that a paranoidal idiot with\n the IQ of an ape could make an atomic bomb out of kid's modeling clay?\n\n\n \"They'd crucify us, that's what they'd do!\"\n\n\n At 8:30 that night, Thaddeus Funston, swathed in an Army officer's\n greatcoat that concealed the strait jacket binding him and with an\n officer's cap jammed far down over his face, was hustled out of a small\n side door of the hospital and into a waiting staff car. A few minutes\n later, the car pulled into the flying field at the nearby community and\n drove directly to the military transport plane that stood at the end of\n the runway with propellers turning.", "His busy fingers flew through the clay, shaping odd, flat bits and clay\n parts that were dropped almost aimlessly into the open hemisphere in\n front of him.\n\n\n Miss Abercrombie stood at his shoulder as Thaddeus hunched over the\n table just as he had done the previous day. From time to time she\n glanced at her watch. The maze of clay strips grew and as Funston\n finished shaping the other half hemisphere of clay, she broke the tense\n silence.\n\n\n \"Time to go back now, Mr. Funston. You can work some more tomorrow.\" She\n looked at the men and nodded her head.\n\n\n The two psychiatrists went to Thaddeus' side as he put the upper lid of\n clay carefully in place. Funston stood up and the doctors escorted him\n from the shack.\n\n\n There was a moment of hushed silence and then pandemonium burst. The\n experts converged on the clay ball, instruments blossoming from nowhere\n and cameras clicking.", "\"I brought it along from the same batch we had in the store room at the\n hospital,\" she replied, \"and it's the same amount.\"\n\n\n Thurgood signaled to the doctors and they entered the shack with\n Thaddeus Funston between them. The colonel nudged Miss Abercrombie.\n\n\n She smiled at Funston.\n\n\n \"Now isn't this nice, Mr. Funston,\" she said. \"These nice men have\n brought us way out here just to see you make another atom bomb like the\n one you made for me yesterday.\"\n\n\n A flicker of interest lightened Thaddeus' face. He looked around the\n shack and then spotted the clay on the table. Without hesitation, he\n walked to the table and sat down. His fingers began working the damp\n clay, making first the hollow, half-round shell while the nation's top\n atomic scientists watched in fascination.", "\"We've already called for Miss Abercrombie and she's on her way here\n now,\" the doctor snapped.\nOutside the tent, a small army of military men and AEC technicians moved\n around the perimeter of the crater, scintillators in hand, examining\n every tiny scrap that might have been a part of the building at one\n time.\n\n\n A jeep raced down the road from the hospital and drew up in front of the\n tent. An armed MP helped Miss Abercrombie from the vehicle.\n\n\n She walked to the edge of the hill and looked down with a stunned\n expression.\n\n\n \"He did make an atom bomb,\" she cried.\n\n\n Colonel Thurgood, who had snapped from his chair at her words, leaped\n forward to catch her as she collapsed in a faint.\n\n\n At 4:00 p.m., the argument was still raging in the long, narrow staff\n room of the hospital administration building.", "Miss Abercrombie smoothed her smock down over trim hips and surveyed the\n other patients working at the long tables in the hospital's arts and\n crafts shop. Two muscular and bored attendants in spotless whites,\n lounged beside the locked door and chatted idly about the Dodgers'\n prospects for the pennant.\n\n\n Through the barred windows of the workshop, rolling green hills were\n seen, their tree-studded flanks making a pleasant setting for the mental\n institution. The crafts building was a good mile away from the main\n buildings of the hospital and the hills blocked the view of the austere\n complex of buildings that housed the main wards.\n\n\n The therapist strolled down the line of tables, pausing to give a word\n of advice here, and a suggestion there.\n\n\n She stopped behind a frowning, intense patient, rapidly shaping blobs of\n clay into odd-sized strips and forms. As he finished each piece, he\n carefully placed it into a hollow shell hemisphere of clay.", "At the clay table, Funston feverishly fabricated the last odd-shaped bit\n of clay and slapped it into place. With a furtive glance around him, he\n clapped the other half of the clay sphere over the filled hemisphere and\n then stood up. The patients lined up at the door, waiting for the walk\n back across the green hills to the main hospital. The attendants made a\n quick count and then unlocked the door. The group shuffled out into the\n warm, afternoon sunlight and the door closed behind them.\n\n\n Miss Abercrombie gazed around the cluttered room and picked up her chart\n book of patient progress. Moving slowly down the line of benches, she\n made short, precise notes on the day's work accomplished by each\n patient.\n\n\n At the clay table, she carefully lifted the top half of the clay ball\n and stared thoughtfully at the jumbled maze of clay strips laced through\n the lower hemisphere. She placed the lid back in place and jotted\n lengthily in her chart book.", "When she had completed her rounds, she slipped out of the smock, tucked\n the chart book under her arm and left the crafts building for the day.\n\n\n The late afternoon sun felt warm and comfortable as she walked the mile\n to the main administration building where her car was parked.\n\n\n As she drove out of the hospital grounds, Thaddeus Funston stood at the\n barred window of his locked ward and stared vacantly over the hills\n towards the craft shop. He stood there unmoving until a ward attendant\n came and took his arm an hour later to lead him off to the patients'\n mess hall.\nThe sun set, darkness fell over the stilled hospital grounds and the\n ward lights winked out at nine o'clock, leaving just a single light\n burning in each ward office. A quiet wind sighed over the still-warm\n hills.", "\"Did,\" Funston murmured.\n\n\n Safely behind the patient's back, Miss Abercrombie smiled ever so\n slightly. \"Why that's very good, Mr. Funston. That shows real creative\n thought. I'm very pleased.\"\n\n\n She patted him on the shoulder and moved down the line of patients.\n\n\n A few minutes later, one of the attendants glanced at his watch, stood\n up and stretched.\n\n\n \"All right, fellows,\" he called out, \"time to go back. Put up your\n things.\"\n\n\n There was a rustle of paint boxes and papers being shuffled and chairs\n being moved back. A tall, blond patient with a flowing mustache, put one\n more dab of paint on his canvas and stood back to survey the meaningless\n smears. He sighed happily and laid down his palette." ], [ "When she had completed her rounds, she slipped out of the smock, tucked\n the chart book under her arm and left the crafts building for the day.\n\n\n The late afternoon sun felt warm and comfortable as she walked the mile\n to the main administration building where her car was parked.\n\n\n As she drove out of the hospital grounds, Thaddeus Funston stood at the\n barred window of his locked ward and stared vacantly over the hills\n towards the craft shop. He stood there unmoving until a ward attendant\n came and took his arm an hour later to lead him off to the patients'\n mess hall.\nThe sun set, darkness fell over the stilled hospital grounds and the\n ward lights winked out at nine o'clock, leaving just a single light\n burning in each ward office. A quiet wind sighed over the still-warm\n hills.", "\"And what are we making today, Mr. Funston?\" Miss Abercrombie asked.\n\n\n The flying fingers continued to whip out the bits of shaped clay as the\n patient ignored the question. He hunched closer to his table as if to\n draw away from the woman.\n\n\n \"We mustn't be antisocial, Mr. Funston,\" Miss Abercrombie said lightly,\n but firmly. \"You've been coming along famously and you must remember to\n answer when someone talks to you. Now what are you making? It looks very\n complicated.\" She stared professionally at the maze of clay parts.\n\n\n Thaddeus Funston continued to mold the clay bits and put them in place.\n\n\n Without looking up from his bench he muttered a reply.\n\n\n \"Atom bomb.\"\n\n\n A puzzled look crossed the therapist's face. \"Pardon me, Mr. Funston. I\n thought you said an 'atom bomb.'\"", "\"Did,\" Funston murmured.\n\n\n Safely behind the patient's back, Miss Abercrombie smiled ever so\n slightly. \"Why that's very good, Mr. Funston. That shows real creative\n thought. I'm very pleased.\"\n\n\n She patted him on the shoulder and moved down the line of patients.\n\n\n A few minutes later, one of the attendants glanced at his watch, stood\n up and stretched.\n\n\n \"All right, fellows,\" he called out, \"time to go back. Put up your\n things.\"\n\n\n There was a rustle of paint boxes and papers being shuffled and chairs\n being moved back. A tall, blond patient with a flowing mustache, put one\n more dab of paint on his canvas and stood back to survey the meaningless\n smears. He sighed happily and laid down his palette.", "For two hours they studied and gently probed the mass of child's clay\n and photographed it from every angle.\n\n\n Then they left for the concrete observatory bunker, several miles down\n range where Thaddeus and the psychiatrists waited inside a ring of\n stony-faced military policemen.\n\n\n \"I told you this whole thing was asinine,\" Thurgood snarled as the\n scientific teams trooped into the bunker.\n\n\n Thaddeus Funston stared out over the heads of the MPs through the open\n door, looking uprange over the heat-shimmering desert. He gave a sudden\n cry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face.", "At the clay table, Funston feverishly fabricated the last odd-shaped bit\n of clay and slapped it into place. With a furtive glance around him, he\n clapped the other half of the clay sphere over the filled hemisphere and\n then stood up. The patients lined up at the door, waiting for the walk\n back across the green hills to the main hospital. The attendants made a\n quick count and then unlocked the door. The group shuffled out into the\n warm, afternoon sunlight and the door closed behind them.\n\n\n Miss Abercrombie gazed around the cluttered room and picked up her chart\n book of patient progress. Moving slowly down the line of benches, she\n made short, precise notes on the day's work accomplished by each\n patient.\n\n\n At the clay table, she carefully lifted the top half of the clay ball\n and stared thoughtfully at the jumbled maze of clay strips laced through\n the lower hemisphere. She placed the lid back in place and jotted\n lengthily in her chart book.", "Miss Abercrombie smoothed her smock down over trim hips and surveyed the\n other patients working at the long tables in the hospital's arts and\n crafts shop. Two muscular and bored attendants in spotless whites,\n lounged beside the locked door and chatted idly about the Dodgers'\n prospects for the pennant.\n\n\n Through the barred windows of the workshop, rolling green hills were\n seen, their tree-studded flanks making a pleasant setting for the mental\n institution. The crafts building was a good mile away from the main\n buildings of the hospital and the hills blocked the view of the austere\n complex of buildings that housed the main wards.\n\n\n The therapist strolled down the line of tables, pausing to give a word\n of advice here, and a suggestion there.\n\n\n She stopped behind a frowning, intense patient, rapidly shaping blobs of\n clay into odd-sized strips and forms. As he finished each piece, he\n carefully placed it into a hollow shell hemisphere of clay.", "The therapist nodded unhappily.\n\n\n \"And you say that, to the best of your knowledge,\" the physicist\n continued, \"there was nothing inside the ball but other pieces of clay.\"\n\n\n \"I'm positive that's all there was in it,\" Miss Abercrombie cried.\n\n\n There was a renewed buzz of conversation at the table and the senior AEC\n man present got heads together with the senior intelligence man. They\n conferred briefly and then the intelligence officer spoke.\n\n\n \"That seems to settle it, colonel. We've got to give this Funston\n another chance to repeat his bomb. But this time under our supervision.\"\n\n\n Thurgood leaped to his feet, his face purpling.", "Beyond the again-silent hills, a great pillar of smoke, topped by a\n small mushroom-shaped cloud, rose above the gaping hole that had been\n the arts and crafts building.\n\n\n Thaddeus Funston took his hands from his face and lay back in his bed\n with a small, secret smile on his lips. Attendants and nurses scurried\n through the hospital, seeing how many had been injured in the\n explosion.\n\n\n None had. The hills had absorbed most of the shock and apart from a\n welter of broken glass, the damage had been surprisingly slight.\n\n\n The roar and flash of the explosion had lighted and rocked the\n surrounding countryside. Soon firemen and civil defense disaster units\n from a half-dozen neighboring communities had gathered at the\n still-smoking hole that marked the site of the vanished crafts building.", "Two military policemen and a brace of staff psychiatrists sworn to\n secrecy under the National Atomic Secrets Act, bundled Thaddeus aboard\n the plane. They plopped him into a seat directly in front of Miss\n Abercrombie and with a roar, the plane raced down the runway and into\n the night skies.\n\n\n The plane landed the next morning at the AEC's atomic testing grounds in\n the Nevada desert and two hours later, in a small hot, wooden shack\n miles up the barren desert wastelands, a cluster of scientists and\n military men huddled around a small wooden table.\n\n\n There was nothing on the table but a bowl of water and a great lump of\n modeling clay. While the psychiatrists were taking the strait jacket off\n Thaddeus in the staff car outside, Colonel Thurgood spoke to the weary\n Miss Abercrombie.\n\n\n \"Now you're positive this is just about the same amount and the same\n kind of clay he used before?\"", "At 3:01 a.m., Thaddeus Funston stirred in his sleep and awakened. He sat\n up in bed and looked around the dark ward. The quiet breathing and\n occasional snores of thirty other sleeping patients filled the room.\n Funston turned to the window and stared out across the black hills that\n sheltered the deserted crafts building.\n\n\n He gave a quick cry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face.\n\n\n The brilliance of a hundred suns glared in the night and threw stark\n shadows on the walls of the suddenly-illuminated ward.\n\n\n An instant later, the shattering roar and blast of the explosion struck\n the hospital buildings in a wave of force and the bursting crash of a\n thousand windows was lost in the fury of the explosion and the wild\n screams of the frightened and demented patients.\n\n\n It was over in an instant, and a stunned moment later, recessed ceiling\n lights began flashing on throughout the big institution.", "\"Colonel, I've told you a dozen times,\" the hospital administrator said\n with exasperation, \"this was our manual therapy room. We gave our\n patients art work. It was a means of getting out of their systems,\n through the use of their hands, some of the frustrations and problems\n that led them to this hospital. They worked with oil and water paints\n and clay. If you can make an atomic bomb from vermillion pigments, then\n Madame Curie was a misguided scrubwoman.\"\n\n\n \"All I know is that you say this was a crafts building. O.K. So it was,\"\n Thurgood sighed. \"I also know that an atomic explosion at 3:02 this\n morning blew it to hell and gone.\n\n\n \"And I've got to find out how it happened.\"\n\n\n Thurgood slumped into a field chair and gazed tiredly up at the little\n doctor.\n\n\n \"Where's that girl you said was in charge of this place?\"", "In the conference room, a red-faced, four-star general cast a chilling\n glance at the rumpled figure of Colonel Thurgood.\n\n\n \"I've listened to some silly stories in my life, colonel,\" the general\n said coldly, \"but this takes the cake. You come in here with an insane\n asylum inmate in a strait jacket and you have the colossal gall to sit\n there and tell me that this poor soul has made not one, but two atomic\n devices out of modeling clay and then has detonated them.\"\n\n\n The general paused.\n\n\n \"Why don't you just tell me, colonel, that he can also make spaceships\n out of sponge rubber?\" the general added bitingly.\n\n\n In the next room, Thaddeus Funston stared out over the sweeping panorama\n of the Washington landscape. He stared hard.", "\"Are you crazy?\" he screamed. \"You want to get us all thrown into this\n filbert factory? Do you know what the newspapers would do to us if they\n ever got wind of the fact, that for one, tiny fraction of a second,\n anyone of us here entertained the notion that a paranoidal idiot with\n the IQ of an ape could make an atomic bomb out of kid's modeling clay?\n\n\n \"They'd crucify us, that's what they'd do!\"\n\n\n At 8:30 that night, Thaddeus Funston, swathed in an Army officer's\n greatcoat that concealed the strait jacket binding him and with an\n officer's cap jammed far down over his face, was hustled out of a small\n side door of the hospital and into a waiting staff car. A few minutes\n later, the car pulled into the flying field at the nearby community and\n drove directly to the military transport plane that stood at the end of\n the runway with propellers turning.", "Within fifteen minutes, the disaster-trained crews had detected heavy\n radiation emanating from the crater and there was a scurry of men and\n equipment back to a safe distance, a few hundred yards away.\n\n\n At 5:30 a.m., a plane landed at a nearby airfield and a platoon of\n Atomic Energy Commission experts, military intelligence men, four FBI\n agents and an Army full colonel disembarked.\n\n\n At 5:45 a.m. a cordon was thrown around both the hospital and the blast\n crater.\n\n\n In Ward 4-C, Thaddeus Funston slept peacefully and happily.\n\n\n \"It's impossible and unbelievable,\" Colonel Thomas Thurgood said for the\n fifteenth time, later that morning, as he looked around the group of\n experts gathered in the tent erected on the hill overlooking the crater.\n \"How can an atom bomb go off in a nut house?\"", "A brilliance a hundred times brighter than the glaring Nevada sun lit\n the dim interior of the bunker and the pneumatically-operated door\n slammed shut just before the wave of the blast hit the structure.\nSix hours and a jet plane trip later, Thaddeus, once again in his strait\n jacket, sat between his armed escorts in a small room in the Pentagon.\n Through the window he could see the hurried bustle of traffic over the\n Potomac and beyond, the domed roof of the Capitol.\n\n\n In the conference room next door, the joint chiefs of staff were\n closeted with a gray-faced and bone-weary Colonel Thurgood and his\n baker's dozen of AEC brains. Scraps of the hot and scornful talk drifted\n across a half-opened transom into the room where Thaddeus Funston sat in\n a neatly-tied bundle.", "In the distance, a white cloud began billowing up from the base of the\n Washington Monument, and with an ear-shattering, glass-splintering roar,\n the great shaft rose majestically from its base and vanished into space\n on a tail of flame.\nTHE END", "His busy fingers flew through the clay, shaping odd, flat bits and clay\n parts that were dropped almost aimlessly into the open hemisphere in\n front of him.\n\n\n Miss Abercrombie stood at his shoulder as Thaddeus hunched over the\n table just as he had done the previous day. From time to time she\n glanced at her watch. The maze of clay strips grew and as Funston\n finished shaping the other half hemisphere of clay, she broke the tense\n silence.\n\n\n \"Time to go back now, Mr. Funston. You can work some more tomorrow.\" She\n looked at the men and nodded her head.\n\n\n The two psychiatrists went to Thaddeus' side as he put the upper lid of\n clay carefully in place. Funston stood up and the doctors escorted him\n from the shack.\n\n\n There was a moment of hushed silence and then pandemonium burst. The\n experts converged on the clay ball, instruments blossoming from nowhere\n and cameras clicking.", "Colonel Thurgood, looking more like a patient every minute, sat on the\n edge of his chair at the head of a long table and pounded with his fist\n on the wooden surface, making Miss Abercrombie's chart book bounce with\n every beat.\n\n\n \"It's ridiculous,\" Thurgood roared. \"We'll all be the laughingstocks of\n the world if this ever gets out. An atomic bomb made out of clay. You\n are all nuts. You're in the right place, but count me out.\"\n\n\n At his left, Miss Abercrombie cringed deeper into her chair at the\n broadside. Down both sides of the long table, psychiatrists, physicists,\n strategists and radiologists sat in various stages of nerve-shattered\n weariness.\n\n\n \"Miss Abercrombie,\" one of the physicists spoke up gently, \"you say that\n after the patients had departed the building, you looked again at\n Funston's work?\"", "\"I brought it along from the same batch we had in the store room at the\n hospital,\" she replied, \"and it's the same amount.\"\n\n\n Thurgood signaled to the doctors and they entered the shack with\n Thaddeus Funston between them. The colonel nudged Miss Abercrombie.\n\n\n She smiled at Funston.\n\n\n \"Now isn't this nice, Mr. Funston,\" she said. \"These nice men have\n brought us way out here just to see you make another atom bomb like the\n one you made for me yesterday.\"\n\n\n A flicker of interest lightened Thaddeus' face. He looked around the\n shack and then spotted the clay on the table. Without hesitation, he\n walked to the table and sat down. His fingers began working the damp\n clay, making first the hollow, half-round shell while the nation's top\n atomic scientists watched in fascination.", "\"It apparently was a very small bomb, colonel,\" one of the haggard AEC\n men offered timidly. \"Not over three kilotons.\"\n\n\n \"I don't care if it was the size of a peanut,\" Thurgood screamed. \"How\n did it get here?\"\n\n\n A military intelligence agent spoke up. \"If we knew, sir, we wouldn't be\n standing around here. We don't know, but the fact remains that it WAS an\n atomic explosion.\"\n\n\n Thurgood turned wearily to the small, white-haired man at his side.\n\n\n \"Let's go over it once more, Dr. Crane. Are you sure you knew everything\n that was in that building?\" Thurgood swept his hand in the general\n direction of the blast crater." ], [ "In the distance, a white cloud began billowing up from the base of the\n Washington Monument, and with an ear-shattering, glass-splintering roar,\n the great shaft rose majestically from its base and vanished into space\n on a tail of flame.\nTHE END", "Beyond the again-silent hills, a great pillar of smoke, topped by a\n small mushroom-shaped cloud, rose above the gaping hole that had been\n the arts and crafts building.\n\n\n Thaddeus Funston took his hands from his face and lay back in his bed\n with a small, secret smile on his lips. Attendants and nurses scurried\n through the hospital, seeing how many had been injured in the\n explosion.\n\n\n None had. The hills had absorbed most of the shock and apart from a\n welter of broken glass, the damage had been surprisingly slight.\n\n\n The roar and flash of the explosion had lighted and rocked the\n surrounding countryside. Soon firemen and civil defense disaster units\n from a half-dozen neighboring communities had gathered at the\n still-smoking hole that marked the site of the vanished crafts building.", "In the conference room, a red-faced, four-star general cast a chilling\n glance at the rumpled figure of Colonel Thurgood.\n\n\n \"I've listened to some silly stories in my life, colonel,\" the general\n said coldly, \"but this takes the cake. You come in here with an insane\n asylum inmate in a strait jacket and you have the colossal gall to sit\n there and tell me that this poor soul has made not one, but two atomic\n devices out of modeling clay and then has detonated them.\"\n\n\n The general paused.\n\n\n \"Why don't you just tell me, colonel, that he can also make spaceships\n out of sponge rubber?\" the general added bitingly.\n\n\n In the next room, Thaddeus Funston stared out over the sweeping panorama\n of the Washington landscape. He stared hard.", "A brilliance a hundred times brighter than the glaring Nevada sun lit\n the dim interior of the bunker and the pneumatically-operated door\n slammed shut just before the wave of the blast hit the structure.\nSix hours and a jet plane trip later, Thaddeus, once again in his strait\n jacket, sat between his armed escorts in a small room in the Pentagon.\n Through the window he could see the hurried bustle of traffic over the\n Potomac and beyond, the domed roof of the Capitol.\n\n\n In the conference room next door, the joint chiefs of staff were\n closeted with a gray-faced and bone-weary Colonel Thurgood and his\n baker's dozen of AEC brains. Scraps of the hot and scornful talk drifted\n across a half-opened transom into the room where Thaddeus Funston sat in\n a neatly-tied bundle.", "For two hours they studied and gently probed the mass of child's clay\n and photographed it from every angle.\n\n\n Then they left for the concrete observatory bunker, several miles down\n range where Thaddeus and the psychiatrists waited inside a ring of\n stony-faced military policemen.\n\n\n \"I told you this whole thing was asinine,\" Thurgood snarled as the\n scientific teams trooped into the bunker.\n\n\n Thaddeus Funston stared out over the heads of the MPs through the open\n door, looking uprange over the heat-shimmering desert. He gave a sudden\n cry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face.", "Within fifteen minutes, the disaster-trained crews had detected heavy\n radiation emanating from the crater and there was a scurry of men and\n equipment back to a safe distance, a few hundred yards away.\n\n\n At 5:30 a.m., a plane landed at a nearby airfield and a platoon of\n Atomic Energy Commission experts, military intelligence men, four FBI\n agents and an Army full colonel disembarked.\n\n\n At 5:45 a.m. a cordon was thrown around both the hospital and the blast\n crater.\n\n\n In Ward 4-C, Thaddeus Funston slept peacefully and happily.\n\n\n \"It's impossible and unbelievable,\" Colonel Thomas Thurgood said for the\n fifteenth time, later that morning, as he looked around the group of\n experts gathered in the tent erected on the hill overlooking the crater.\n \"How can an atom bomb go off in a nut house?\"", "Two military policemen and a brace of staff psychiatrists sworn to\n secrecy under the National Atomic Secrets Act, bundled Thaddeus aboard\n the plane. They plopped him into a seat directly in front of Miss\n Abercrombie and with a roar, the plane raced down the runway and into\n the night skies.\n\n\n The plane landed the next morning at the AEC's atomic testing grounds in\n the Nevada desert and two hours later, in a small hot, wooden shack\n miles up the barren desert wastelands, a cluster of scientists and\n military men huddled around a small wooden table.\n\n\n There was nothing on the table but a bowl of water and a great lump of\n modeling clay. While the psychiatrists were taking the strait jacket off\n Thaddeus in the staff car outside, Colonel Thurgood spoke to the weary\n Miss Abercrombie.\n\n\n \"Now you're positive this is just about the same amount and the same\n kind of clay he used before?\"", "At 3:01 a.m., Thaddeus Funston stirred in his sleep and awakened. He sat\n up in bed and looked around the dark ward. The quiet breathing and\n occasional snores of thirty other sleeping patients filled the room.\n Funston turned to the window and stared out across the black hills that\n sheltered the deserted crafts building.\n\n\n He gave a quick cry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face.\n\n\n The brilliance of a hundred suns glared in the night and threw stark\n shadows on the walls of the suddenly-illuminated ward.\n\n\n An instant later, the shattering roar and blast of the explosion struck\n the hospital buildings in a wave of force and the bursting crash of a\n thousand windows was lost in the fury of the explosion and the wild\n screams of the frightened and demented patients.\n\n\n It was over in an instant, and a stunned moment later, recessed ceiling\n lights began flashing on throughout the big institution.", "When she had completed her rounds, she slipped out of the smock, tucked\n the chart book under her arm and left the crafts building for the day.\n\n\n The late afternoon sun felt warm and comfortable as she walked the mile\n to the main administration building where her car was parked.\n\n\n As she drove out of the hospital grounds, Thaddeus Funston stood at the\n barred window of his locked ward and stared vacantly over the hills\n towards the craft shop. He stood there unmoving until a ward attendant\n came and took his arm an hour later to lead him off to the patients'\n mess hall.\nThe sun set, darkness fell over the stilled hospital grounds and the\n ward lights winked out at nine o'clock, leaving just a single light\n burning in each ward office. A quiet wind sighed over the still-warm\n hills.", "\"Are you crazy?\" he screamed. \"You want to get us all thrown into this\n filbert factory? Do you know what the newspapers would do to us if they\n ever got wind of the fact, that for one, tiny fraction of a second,\n anyone of us here entertained the notion that a paranoidal idiot with\n the IQ of an ape could make an atomic bomb out of kid's modeling clay?\n\n\n \"They'd crucify us, that's what they'd do!\"\n\n\n At 8:30 that night, Thaddeus Funston, swathed in an Army officer's\n greatcoat that concealed the strait jacket binding him and with an\n officer's cap jammed far down over his face, was hustled out of a small\n side door of the hospital and into a waiting staff car. A few minutes\n later, the car pulled into the flying field at the nearby community and\n drove directly to the military transport plane that stood at the end of\n the runway with propellers turning.", "Colonel Thurgood, looking more like a patient every minute, sat on the\n edge of his chair at the head of a long table and pounded with his fist\n on the wooden surface, making Miss Abercrombie's chart book bounce with\n every beat.\n\n\n \"It's ridiculous,\" Thurgood roared. \"We'll all be the laughingstocks of\n the world if this ever gets out. An atomic bomb made out of clay. You\n are all nuts. You're in the right place, but count me out.\"\n\n\n At his left, Miss Abercrombie cringed deeper into her chair at the\n broadside. Down both sides of the long table, psychiatrists, physicists,\n strategists and radiologists sat in various stages of nerve-shattered\n weariness.\n\n\n \"Miss Abercrombie,\" one of the physicists spoke up gently, \"you say that\n after the patients had departed the building, you looked again at\n Funston's work?\"", "At the clay table, Funston feverishly fabricated the last odd-shaped bit\n of clay and slapped it into place. With a furtive glance around him, he\n clapped the other half of the clay sphere over the filled hemisphere and\n then stood up. The patients lined up at the door, waiting for the walk\n back across the green hills to the main hospital. The attendants made a\n quick count and then unlocked the door. The group shuffled out into the\n warm, afternoon sunlight and the door closed behind them.\n\n\n Miss Abercrombie gazed around the cluttered room and picked up her chart\n book of patient progress. Moving slowly down the line of benches, she\n made short, precise notes on the day's work accomplished by each\n patient.\n\n\n At the clay table, she carefully lifted the top half of the clay ball\n and stared thoughtfully at the jumbled maze of clay strips laced through\n the lower hemisphere. She placed the lid back in place and jotted\n lengthily in her chart book.", "\"And what are we making today, Mr. Funston?\" Miss Abercrombie asked.\n\n\n The flying fingers continued to whip out the bits of shaped clay as the\n patient ignored the question. He hunched closer to his table as if to\n draw away from the woman.\n\n\n \"We mustn't be antisocial, Mr. Funston,\" Miss Abercrombie said lightly,\n but firmly. \"You've been coming along famously and you must remember to\n answer when someone talks to you. Now what are you making? It looks very\n complicated.\" She stared professionally at the maze of clay parts.\n\n\n Thaddeus Funston continued to mold the clay bits and put them in place.\n\n\n Without looking up from his bench he muttered a reply.\n\n\n \"Atom bomb.\"\n\n\n A puzzled look crossed the therapist's face. \"Pardon me, Mr. Funston. I\n thought you said an 'atom bomb.'\"", "\"Did,\" Funston murmured.\n\n\n Safely behind the patient's back, Miss Abercrombie smiled ever so\n slightly. \"Why that's very good, Mr. Funston. That shows real creative\n thought. I'm very pleased.\"\n\n\n She patted him on the shoulder and moved down the line of patients.\n\n\n A few minutes later, one of the attendants glanced at his watch, stood\n up and stretched.\n\n\n \"All right, fellows,\" he called out, \"time to go back. Put up your\n things.\"\n\n\n There was a rustle of paint boxes and papers being shuffled and chairs\n being moved back. A tall, blond patient with a flowing mustache, put one\n more dab of paint on his canvas and stood back to survey the meaningless\n smears. He sighed happily and laid down his palette.", "His busy fingers flew through the clay, shaping odd, flat bits and clay\n parts that were dropped almost aimlessly into the open hemisphere in\n front of him.\n\n\n Miss Abercrombie stood at his shoulder as Thaddeus hunched over the\n table just as he had done the previous day. From time to time she\n glanced at her watch. The maze of clay strips grew and as Funston\n finished shaping the other half hemisphere of clay, she broke the tense\n silence.\n\n\n \"Time to go back now, Mr. Funston. You can work some more tomorrow.\" She\n looked at the men and nodded her head.\n\n\n The two psychiatrists went to Thaddeus' side as he put the upper lid of\n clay carefully in place. Funston stood up and the doctors escorted him\n from the shack.\n\n\n There was a moment of hushed silence and then pandemonium burst. The\n experts converged on the clay ball, instruments blossoming from nowhere\n and cameras clicking.", "The therapist nodded unhappily.\n\n\n \"And you say that, to the best of your knowledge,\" the physicist\n continued, \"there was nothing inside the ball but other pieces of clay.\"\n\n\n \"I'm positive that's all there was in it,\" Miss Abercrombie cried.\n\n\n There was a renewed buzz of conversation at the table and the senior AEC\n man present got heads together with the senior intelligence man. They\n conferred briefly and then the intelligence officer spoke.\n\n\n \"That seems to settle it, colonel. We've got to give this Funston\n another chance to repeat his bomb. But this time under our supervision.\"\n\n\n Thurgood leaped to his feet, his face purpling.", "\"I brought it along from the same batch we had in the store room at the\n hospital,\" she replied, \"and it's the same amount.\"\n\n\n Thurgood signaled to the doctors and they entered the shack with\n Thaddeus Funston between them. The colonel nudged Miss Abercrombie.\n\n\n She smiled at Funston.\n\n\n \"Now isn't this nice, Mr. Funston,\" she said. \"These nice men have\n brought us way out here just to see you make another atom bomb like the\n one you made for me yesterday.\"\n\n\n A flicker of interest lightened Thaddeus' face. He looked around the\n shack and then spotted the clay on the table. Without hesitation, he\n walked to the table and sat down. His fingers began working the damp\n clay, making first the hollow, half-round shell while the nation's top\n atomic scientists watched in fascination.", "\"We've already called for Miss Abercrombie and she's on her way here\n now,\" the doctor snapped.\nOutside the tent, a small army of military men and AEC technicians moved\n around the perimeter of the crater, scintillators in hand, examining\n every tiny scrap that might have been a part of the building at one\n time.\n\n\n A jeep raced down the road from the hospital and drew up in front of the\n tent. An armed MP helped Miss Abercrombie from the vehicle.\n\n\n She walked to the edge of the hill and looked down with a stunned\n expression.\n\n\n \"He did make an atom bomb,\" she cried.\n\n\n Colonel Thurgood, who had snapped from his chair at her words, leaped\n forward to catch her as she collapsed in a faint.\n\n\n At 4:00 p.m., the argument was still raging in the long, narrow staff\n room of the hospital administration building.", "\"It apparently was a very small bomb, colonel,\" one of the haggard AEC\n men offered timidly. \"Not over three kilotons.\"\n\n\n \"I don't care if it was the size of a peanut,\" Thurgood screamed. \"How\n did it get here?\"\n\n\n A military intelligence agent spoke up. \"If we knew, sir, we wouldn't be\n standing around here. We don't know, but the fact remains that it WAS an\n atomic explosion.\"\n\n\n Thurgood turned wearily to the small, white-haired man at his side.\n\n\n \"Let's go over it once more, Dr. Crane. Are you sure you knew everything\n that was in that building?\" Thurgood swept his hand in the general\n direction of the blast crater.", "\"Colonel, I've told you a dozen times,\" the hospital administrator said\n with exasperation, \"this was our manual therapy room. We gave our\n patients art work. It was a means of getting out of their systems,\n through the use of their hands, some of the frustrations and problems\n that led them to this hospital. They worked with oil and water paints\n and clay. If you can make an atomic bomb from vermillion pigments, then\n Madame Curie was a misguided scrubwoman.\"\n\n\n \"All I know is that you say this was a crafts building. O.K. So it was,\"\n Thurgood sighed. \"I also know that an atomic explosion at 3:02 this\n morning blew it to hell and gone.\n\n\n \"And I've got to find out how it happened.\"\n\n\n Thurgood slumped into a field chair and gazed tiredly up at the little\n doctor.\n\n\n \"Where's that girl you said was in charge of this place?\"" ] ]
train	60713	[ "What is significant about the captain's initial reaction to Mr. Janssens attache case being stolen?", "Which is not a reason the captain does not want to create a police force?", "What is the significance of the story's title?", "Which of these is true about the Red Mask?", "Why does Captain Branson warn Ellason that he won't be able to publish his observations?", "Which is true about the role of Interstellar in this story?", "Which of these is not true about Harrel Critten?", "Which of these was not an effect of giving the police force half-powered staters?", "What is the relationship between Captain Branson and Harrel Critten?" ]	[ [ "It reveals his negligence as a leader", "It proves that the captain does not think anything could be wrong", "It shows that the captain wants to give people the impression that he thinks the passengers are all okay", "It shows the passengers that the captain cannot be trusted" ], [ "He doesn't want to violate the trust of the crew", "He does not have people to spare", "He doesn't think it's part of his job", "He figures passengers will eventually be blamed" ], [ "There is a reporter on board to act as a set of eyes to keep passengers from acting up", "It hints at the importance of the balance of weight on the ship for successful mission", "There is a man on board hired specifically to act as the weight to keep the others balanced", "It refers to the fact that a lot of belongings are thrown overboard" ], [ "He is entirely harmless and it just looks like he's trouble", "He is a passenger looking for some entertainment", "He throws the passengers' belongings overboard", "He does not hesitate to use physical violence" ], [ "He knows there are secrets too gruesome for public consumption", "He is going to ask Ellason to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement", "He does not think they will make it back to Earth alive", "He will be observing an inside job meant to protect the crew " ], [ "They hire Ellason so that memories of the journey can be documented for the families who are traveling", "They hire the Red Mask so that they can make back some of the costs of running the mission", "They hire the Red Mask as well as a reporter to make it look like they have nothing to hide", "They are the company who hired Ellason in order to get to the bottom of why the missions are going awry" ], [ "He was in cahoots with the captain all along", "He is a member of the crew", "He was hired by the same people as the reporter was", "He is killed in order to protect the secret of the Red Mask" ], [ "It caused some issues while the police force got trigger-happy, adding to the paranoia", "It made the ship's environment safer now that the police were armed", "The passenger police force felt they had some power", "It was what allowed the Red Mask to finally acquire a weapon" ], [ "They both just wanted to get the expedition done so they could settle on a new planet", "They let their tension grew between them with their opposite goals", "They were old friends working together for the good of the ship", "They were colleagues in multiple capacities" ] ]	[ 3, 4, 3, 1, 4, 3, 4, 2, 4 ]	[ 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Janssen's case contained vegetable and flower seeds—thousands of\n them, according to the Captain's Bulletin, the ship's daily newsletter\n which went to all hands and passengers. In the Bulletin the captain\n appealed to the thief to return the case to Mr. Janssen. He said it\n was significant that all en route had passed stability tests, and that\n it was to the ship's discredit that someone with criminal tendencies\n should have been permitted aboard.", "Attendant to taking notes on this incident, Ellason noted a strange\n thing. Janssen lived in that part of the ship known as the First\n Quadrant, and those who lived in that quadrant—more than seven hundred\n men, women and children—felt that the thief must surely live in\n Quadrant Two or Four. Elias Cromley, who had the compartment next to\n Janssen's, sounded the consensus when he said, \"Surely a man wouldn't\n steal from his own quadrant, now would he, Mr. Ellason?\"", "\"What does he want that stuff for?\" Casey Stromberg, a passenger\n doctor, asked. \"I can see him taking my narcotics, my doctor's kit—but\n my dead wife's picture? That I don't understand.\"\n\n\n It was the same with others. \"The man's insane, Mr. Ellason. Positively\n insane.\" Many people said it.\n\n\n The council issued orders that all passengers from now on would be\n required to lock their compartments at all times. More guns were\n obtained from the captain. More policemen were appointed.\n\n\n Ellason was busy noting it all in his book. It became filled with\n jottings about innocent people being accidentally stunned when\n trigger-happy policemen thought their movements suspicious, about one\n man's suspicion of another and the ensuing search of compartments,\n people who saw Red Mask here, saw him there. Hardly a day went by\n without some new development.", "Ellason sought out Carver Janssen. He was a middle-aged man with a\n tired face and sad eyes. He said, \"Now what am I going to Antheon\n for? I could only take along so much baggage and I threw out some\n comfort items to make room for the seeds. I'm a horticulturist, and\n Interstellar asked me to go along. But what use am I now? Where am\n I going to get seeds like those? Do you know how long it took me to\n collect them? They're not ordinary seeds, Mr. Ellason.\"\n\n\n There was an appeal from Janssen in the next day's newsletter\n describing the seeds, telling of their value, and requesting their\n return in the interests of the Antheon colony and of humanity.\n\n\n On the thirty-fourth day a witness turned up who said he had seen a\n man emerging from Janssen's compartment with the black case. \"I didn't\n think anything of it at the time,\" Jamieson Dievers said.", "Captain Branson did not wait for the newsletter. Through the ship's\n speaker system, he reported that Palugger had a fortune in credits\n in the belt and had died of a severe beating. He said that since the\n incident occurred in the staff section of the ship, his crew would be\n forced to submit to a thorough inspection in an effort to find the\n mask, the seed case, the money and the man.\n\n\n \"I will not countenance such an act by a crewman,\" Branson said. \"If\n and when he is found, he will be severely dealt with. But he might not\n be a member of the crew. I am ordering an assembly of all passengers at\n nine tomorrow morning in the auditorium. I will speak to you all then.\"\nFaces were angry, tongues were sharp at the meeting, eyes suspicious\n and tempers short. Above it all was the overpowering presence of\n Captain Branson speaking to them.", "He looked at his watch, picked up his notebook and made an entry. The\n ship right now would be slipping ever so slowly away from Earth. He got\n up. He'd have to go forward to the observation dome to see that. Last\n view of Earth for two years.\nThe penetration of space by large groups is the coming out from under\n the traditions of thousands of years, and as these planet-orginated\n rules fall away, the floundering group seeks a new control, for they\n are humanity adrift, rudderless, for whom the stars are no longer\n bearings but nonexistent things, and values are altered if they are not\n shown the way.\nThe theft of Carver Janssen's attache case occurred on the thirty-first\n day out. In Ellason's mind the incident, though insignificant from the\n standpoint of the ship as a whole, could very well be the cause of\n dissension later on. His notes covering it were therefore very thorough.", "The captain's briefing room was crowded, the air was heavy with the\n breathing of so many men, and the ventilators could not quite clear the\n air of tobacco smoke that drifted aimlessly here and there before it\n was caught and whisked away.\n\n\n In the tradition of newspaperman and observer, Keith Ellason tried\n to be as inconspicuous as possible, pressing against a bulkhead, but\n Captain Branson's eyes sought his several times as Branson listened\n to final reports from his engineers, record keepers, fuel men,\n computermen, and all the rest. He grunted his approval or disapproval,\n made a suggestion here, a restriction there. There was no doubt that\n Branson was in charge, yet there was a human quality about him that\n Ellason liked. The captain's was a lean face, well tanned, and his eyes\n were chunks of blue.", "Branson asked him to describe the man.\n\n\n \"Oh, he was about six feet tall, stocky build, and he wore a red rubber\n mask that covered his head completely.\"\n\n\n \"Didn't you think that was important?\" Branson asked in an outraged\n voice. \"A man wearing a red mask?\"\n\n\n Dievers shrugged. \"This is a spaceship. How would I know whether a red\n mask—or a blue or green one—does or doesn't belong on a spaceship?\"\n\n\n Although Dievers' account appeared in the newsletter, it was largely\n discounted.\n\n\n \"If it is true,\" Branson told Ellason, \"the theft must be the work of\n a psychotic. But I don't believe Jamieson Dievers. It may well be he's\n the psychotic.\" He snorted. \"Red rubber mask! I think I'll have Dievers\n put through psychiatry.\"", "The Quadrant Council congratulated itself. The passengers were proud\n of themselves. A special congratulatory message from Captain Branson\n appeared one day in the Bulletin newsletter.\n\n\n The colonists settled down to living out the rest of the voyage until\n the landing on Antheon.\n\n\n But on the 170th day calamity struck. Red Mask appropriated one of the\n stunners, made his way down one whole corridor section in Quadrant Two,\n put occupants to sleep as he went, taking many articles of value and\n leaving disorder behind.\n\n\n Ellason interviewed as many victims as he could, noted it all in\n his book. The things taken were keepsakes, photographs and items of\n personal value. It seemed to be the work of a madman. If Red Mask\n wanted to make everyone furious, he certainly succeeded.", "\"It is not my desire to interfere in passenger affairs,\" he said.\n \"Insofar as the ship is concerned, it is my duty to make certain no\n crewman is guilty. This I am doing. But my crew is not and cannot be\n a police force for you. It is up to you people to police and protect\n yourselves.\"\n\n\n \"How can we protect ourselves without stunners?\" one colonist called\n out.\n\n\n \"Has Red Mask a gun?\" Branson retorted. \"It seems to me you have a\n better weapon than any gun.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\"\n\n\n \"This ship is only so wide, so long and so deep. If every inch is\n searched, you'll find your man. He has to be somewhere aboard.\"", "The captain reported that his search had been equally fruitless.\n At another assembly the following day it was decided to make the\n inspection teams permanent, to await further moves on the part of Red\n Mask. The Quadrant Council held periodic meetings to set up a method of\n trial for him when he was caught. It was all recorded in the newsletter\n and by Keith Ellason.\nWe Nillys know about hate and about violence. We know too that where\n there is hate there is violence, and where there is violence there is\n death.\nDuring sleep time on the seventy-ninth day Barbara Stoneman, awakened\n by a strange sound, sat up in the bed of her compartment to find a\n man in a red mask in her room. Her cries brought neighbors into the\n corridor. The flight of the man was witnessed by many, and several men\n tried to stop him. But the intruder was light on his feet and fast. He\n escaped.\n\n\n The Quadrant Council confronted the captain, demanding weapons.", "\"Go to hell,\" Critten said quietly. As if it were an afterthought, he\n spat at the captain.\n\n\n Branson looked as if he were going to kill the man himself right there\n and then.\n\n\n It was a long trial—from the 220th to the 241st day—and there didn't\n seem to be much doubt about the outcome, for Critten didn't help his\n own cause during any of it.\n\n\n Lemuel Tarper, who was appointed prosecutor, asked him, \"What did you\n do with the loot, Critten?\"\n\n\n Critten looked him square in the eye and said, \"I threw it out one of\n the escape chutes. Does that answer your question?\"\n\n\n \"Threw it away?\" Tarper and the crowd were incredulous.", "\"Are you out of your minds?\" Branson exclaimed.\n\n\n Tom Tilbury, Fourth Quadrant leader, said, \"We want to set up a police\n force, Captain. We want stunners.\"\n\n\n \"There's no law against it,\" Branson said, \"but it's a rule of mine\n that no weapons are to be issued en route.\"\n\n\n \"If we had had a gun, we'd have got Red Mask,\" Tilbury said.\n\n\n \"And I might have a murder on my conscience.\"\n\n\n Tilbury said, \"We've also thought of that. Suppose you supply us with\n half-power stunners? That way we can stun but not kill.\"\n\n\n They got their guns. Now there were twenty-four policemen on duty in\n the corridors—eight on at a time. Ellason observed that for the first\n time the passengers seemed relaxed.", "And so, Ellason observed in his notebook, are wars created.\nSeen in space, stars are unmoving, silent, sterile bright eyes ever\n watchful and accusing. To men unused to it, such a sight numbs,\n compresses, stultifies. He introduces a countermeasure, proof he\n exists, which is any overt act, sometimes violent.\nOn the forty-fifth day June Failright, the young wife of one of the\n passenger meteorologists, ran screaming down one of the long corridors\n of the Third Quadrant. She told the captain she had been attacked in\n her compartment while her husband was in the ship's library. She was\n taken to one of the ship's doctors, who confirmed it.\n\n\n She said the culprit was a husky man wearing a red rubber mask, and\n though her description of what he had done did not appear in the story\n in the newsletter, it lost no time in penetrating every compartment of\n the ship.", "Ellason left, feeling uneasy. If he were Branson, he'd initiate an\n investigation, if nothing else than to prove the crew guiltless. Why\n couldn't Branson see the wisdom of setting an example for the colonists?\nAs a Nilly, I knew that space breeds hate. There is a seed of\n malevolence in every man. It sometimes blossoms out among the stars. On\n the\nWeblor II\nit was ready for ripening.\nRaymond Palugger was killed in the ship's hospital on the sixty-first\n day. Palugger, a Fourth Quadrant passenger, had complained of feeling\n ill, had been hospitalized with a diagnosis of ileus. He had put his\n money belt in the drawer of the small stand beside his bed. A man\n in a red mask was seen hurrying from the hospital area, and a staff\n investigation revealed that Palugger had died trying to prevent the\n theft of the belt.", "\"We removed the charges before the guns were used.\"\n\n\n \"And Carver Janssen's case?\"\n\n\n \"He'll get it back when he's shuttled to Antheon. And all the other\n items will be returned. They're all tagged with their owner's names.\n Captain Branson will say they were found somewhere on the ship. You\n see, I was a liar.\"\n\n\n \"How about that assault on June Failright?\"\n\n\n Critten grinned again. \"She played right into our hands. She ran out\n into the hall claiming I'd attacked her, which I did not. She was\n certainly amazed when the ship's physicians agreed with her. Of course\n Captain Branson told them to do that.\"\n\n\n \"And the murder?\"\n\n\n \"Raymond Palugger died in the hospital all right, but he died from\n his illness on the operating table. We turned it into an advantage by\n making it look suspicious.\"", "\"Yes,\" Ellason said, \"but what if the intruder is a crewman?\"\n\n\n \"I know my men,\" Branson said flatly.\n\n\n \"You could have a shake-down for the mask and the seed case.\"\n\n\n \"Do you think it is a member of the crew?\" Branson's eyes were bright.\n \"No, I trust my men. I won't violate that trust.\"", "\"Oh, there'll be a trial, Mr. Ellason, but you don't think any jury'd\n let him live after all the things he's done, do you?\"\nRed Mask was stunned in Quadrant Four in a corridor by a policeman\n named Terryl Placer on the 201st day. The criminal was carried to the\n assembly room surrounded by guards, for he surely would have been\n mauled, if not killed, by angry colonists who crowded around. In the\n assembly hall his mask was whipped off. The crowd gasped. Nobody knew\n him.\n\n\n Ellason's first thought was that he must be a stowaway, but then he\n remembered the face, and Captain Branson, who came to have a look at\n him, unhappily admitted the man was a member of the crew. His name was\n Harrel Critten and he was a record keeper third class.\n\n\n \"Well, Critten,\" Branson roared at him, \"what have you got to say for\n yourself?\"", "Ellason had to smile at that. What did Captain Branson think of those\n colonists who killed each other on the\nWeblor I\n? They had passed\n stability tests too. This, then, was what happened when you took three\n thousand strangers and stuck them in a can for a year.\nWhen Ellason saw Branson about it, the captain said, \"Of course I\n realize it takes only a little thing like this to set things off. I\n know people get tired of seeing each other, playing the same tapes,\n looking at the stars from the observation dome, walking down the same\n corridors, reading the same books, eating the same meals, though God\n knows we try to vary it as much as we can. Space creates rough edges.\n But the point is, we know all this, and knowing it, we shouldn't let it\n happen. We've got to find that thief.\"\n\n\n \"What would he want seeds for? Have you thought of that?\"\n\n\n \"Of course. They'd have real value on Antheon.\"", "Critten nodded. \"When great numbers are being transported, they are apt\n to magnify each little event because so little happens. It was my job\n to see that they directed none of their venom against each other or the\n crew, only toward me.\"\n\n\n Branson smiled. \"It made the time pass quickly and interestingly for\n the passengers.\"\n\n\n \"To say nothing of me,\" Critten said.\n\n\n \"And you, Mr. Ellason, were along to observe it all,\" Captain Branson\n put in. \"Interstellar wanted an accurate picture of this. If it worked,\n they told me they'd use it on other trips to Antheon.\"\n\n\n Ellason nodded. \"No time for brooding, for differences of opinion on\n small matters. Just time to hate Mr. Critten. Unanimously.\"\n\n\n \"Probably,\" Critten said, \"you are wondering about the execution.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally.\"" ], [ "Ellason was present when a delegation from the Third Quadrant called on\n Captain Branson, demanding action.\n\n\n Branson remained seated behind his desk, unperturbed, saying, \"I have\n no crewmen to spare for police duty.\"\n\n\n The delegation commenced speaking vehemently, to be quieted by\n Branson's raised hand.\n\n\n \"I sympathize,\" Branson said, \"but it is up to each quadrant to deal\n with its problems, whatever they may be. My job is to get us to\n Antheon.\"\n\n\n The group left in a surly mood.\n\n\n \"You wonder at my reluctance, Mr. Ellason,\" Captain Branson said. \"But\n suppose I assign the crew to patrol duties, the culprit isn't caught,\n and further incidents occur. What then? It soon becomes the crew's\n fault. And soon the colonists will begin thinking these things might be\n the crew's doing in the first place.\"", "\"Are you out of your minds?\" Branson exclaimed.\n\n\n Tom Tilbury, Fourth Quadrant leader, said, \"We want to set up a police\n force, Captain. We want stunners.\"\n\n\n \"There's no law against it,\" Branson said, \"but it's a rule of mine\n that no weapons are to be issued en route.\"\n\n\n \"If we had had a gun, we'd have got Red Mask,\" Tilbury said.\n\n\n \"And I might have a murder on my conscience.\"\n\n\n Tilbury said, \"We've also thought of that. Suppose you supply us with\n half-power stunners? That way we can stun but not kill.\"\n\n\n They got their guns. Now there were twenty-four policemen on duty in\n the corridors—eight on at a time. Ellason observed that for the first\n time the passengers seemed relaxed.", "\"It is not my desire to interfere in passenger affairs,\" he said.\n \"Insofar as the ship is concerned, it is my duty to make certain no\n crewman is guilty. This I am doing. But my crew is not and cannot be\n a police force for you. It is up to you people to police and protect\n yourselves.\"\n\n\n \"How can we protect ourselves without stunners?\" one colonist called\n out.\n\n\n \"Has Red Mask a gun?\" Branson retorted. \"It seems to me you have a\n better weapon than any gun.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\"\n\n\n \"This ship is only so wide, so long and so deep. If every inch is\n searched, you'll find your man. He has to be somewhere aboard.\"", "Let Red Mask move against armed men, they said.\n\n\n Yeah, let him see what happens now.\n\n\n Red Mask did.\nOn the 101st day he was seen in a corridor in Quadrant Four. Emil\n Pierce, policeman on duty, managed to squeeze off several shots at his\n retreating figure.\n\n\n Red Mask was seen again on the 120th day, on the 135th day, and the\n 157th day. He was seen, shot at, but not hit. He was also unable to\n commit any crime.\n\n\n We've got him on the run, the colonists said.\n\n\n He's afraid to do anything, now that we've got police protection, they\n said smugly.", "The captain reported that his search had been equally fruitless.\n At another assembly the following day it was decided to make the\n inspection teams permanent, to await further moves on the part of Red\n Mask. The Quadrant Council held periodic meetings to set up a method of\n trial for him when he was caught. It was all recorded in the newsletter\n and by Keith Ellason.\nWe Nillys know about hate and about violence. We know too that where\n there is hate there is violence, and where there is violence there is\n death.\nDuring sleep time on the seventy-ninth day Barbara Stoneman, awakened\n by a strange sound, sat up in the bed of her compartment to find a\n man in a red mask in her room. Her cries brought neighbors into the\n corridor. The flight of the man was witnessed by many, and several men\n tried to stop him. But the intruder was light on his feet and fast. He\n escaped.\n\n\n The Quadrant Council confronted the captain, demanding weapons.", "\"What does he want that stuff for?\" Casey Stromberg, a passenger\n doctor, asked. \"I can see him taking my narcotics, my doctor's kit—but\n my dead wife's picture? That I don't understand.\"\n\n\n It was the same with others. \"The man's insane, Mr. Ellason. Positively\n insane.\" Many people said it.\n\n\n The council issued orders that all passengers from now on would be\n required to lock their compartments at all times. More guns were\n obtained from the captain. More policemen were appointed.\n\n\n Ellason was busy noting it all in his book. It became filled with\n jottings about innocent people being accidentally stunned when\n trigger-happy policemen thought their movements suspicious, about one\n man's suspicion of another and the ensuing search of compartments,\n people who saw Red Mask here, saw him there. Hardly a day went by\n without some new development.", "Captain Branson did not wait for the newsletter. Through the ship's\n speaker system, he reported that Palugger had a fortune in credits\n in the belt and had died of a severe beating. He said that since the\n incident occurred in the staff section of the ship, his crew would be\n forced to submit to a thorough inspection in an effort to find the\n mask, the seed case, the money and the man.\n\n\n \"I will not countenance such an act by a crewman,\" Branson said. \"If\n and when he is found, he will be severely dealt with. But he might not\n be a member of the crew. I am ordering an assembly of all passengers at\n nine tomorrow morning in the auditorium. I will speak to you all then.\"\nFaces were angry, tongues were sharp at the meeting, eyes suspicious\n and tempers short. Above it all was the overpowering presence of\n Captain Branson speaking to them.", "\"Oh, yes, Mr. Ellason, we're going to get him,\" said Tilbury, now chief\n of police, cracking his knuckles, his eyes glowing at the thought.\n \"We're bound to get him. We've got things worked out to the finest\n detail. He won't be able to get through our fingers now. Just let him\n make so much as a move.\"\n\n\n \"And what will you do when you get him?\"\n\n\n \"Kill him,\" Tilbury said, licking his lips, his eyes glowing more\n fiercely than ever.\n\n\n \"Without a trial?\"", "And so, Ellason observed in his notebook, are wars created.\nSeen in space, stars are unmoving, silent, sterile bright eyes ever\n watchful and accusing. To men unused to it, such a sight numbs,\n compresses, stultifies. He introduces a countermeasure, proof he\n exists, which is any overt act, sometimes violent.\nOn the forty-fifth day June Failright, the young wife of one of the\n passenger meteorologists, ran screaming down one of the long corridors\n of the Third Quadrant. She told the captain she had been attacked in\n her compartment while her husband was in the ship's library. She was\n taken to one of the ship's doctors, who confirmed it.\n\n\n She said the culprit was a husky man wearing a red rubber mask, and\n though her description of what he had done did not appear in the story\n in the newsletter, it lost no time in penetrating every compartment of\n the ship.", "Ellason had to smile at that. What did Captain Branson think of those\n colonists who killed each other on the\nWeblor I\n? They had passed\n stability tests too. This, then, was what happened when you took three\n thousand strangers and stuck them in a can for a year.\nWhen Ellason saw Branson about it, the captain said, \"Of course I\n realize it takes only a little thing like this to set things off. I\n know people get tired of seeing each other, playing the same tapes,\n looking at the stars from the observation dome, walking down the same\n corridors, reading the same books, eating the same meals, though God\n knows we try to vary it as much as we can. Space creates rough edges.\n But the point is, we know all this, and knowing it, we shouldn't let it\n happen. We've got to find that thief.\"\n\n\n \"What would he want seeds for? Have you thought of that?\"\n\n\n \"Of course. They'd have real value on Antheon.\"", "Attendant to taking notes on this incident, Ellason noted a strange\n thing. Janssen lived in that part of the ship known as the First\n Quadrant, and those who lived in that quadrant—more than seven hundred\n men, women and children—felt that the thief must surely live in\n Quadrant Two or Four. Elias Cromley, who had the compartment next to\n Janssen's, sounded the consensus when he said, \"Surely a man wouldn't\n steal from his own quadrant, now would he, Mr. Ellason?\"", "Rexroad said very gravely, \"We've got the finest captain in\n Interplanetary. Harvey Branson. No doubt you've heard of him. He's\n spent his life in our own system, and he's handpicking his own crew. We\n have also raised prerequisites for applicants. We don't think anything\n is going to happen, but if it does, we want to get an impersonal,\n unprejudiced view. That's where you come in. You do the observing, the\n reporting. We'll evaluate it on your return.\"\n\n\n \"If I return,\" said Ellason.", "Ellason left, feeling uneasy. If he were Branson, he'd initiate an\n investigation, if nothing else than to prove the crew guiltless. Why\n couldn't Branson see the wisdom of setting an example for the colonists?\nAs a Nilly, I knew that space breeds hate. There is a seed of\n malevolence in every man. It sometimes blossoms out among the stars. On\n the\nWeblor II\nit was ready for ripening.\nRaymond Palugger was killed in the ship's hospital on the sixty-first\n day. Palugger, a Fourth Quadrant passenger, had complained of feeling\n ill, had been hospitalized with a diagnosis of ileus. He had put his\n money belt in the drawer of the small stand beside his bed. A man\n in a red mask was seen hurrying from the hospital area, and a staff\n investigation revealed that Palugger had died trying to prevent the\n theft of the belt.", "\"Oh, there'll be a trial, Mr. Ellason, but you don't think any jury'd\n let him live after all the things he's done, do you?\"\nRed Mask was stunned in Quadrant Four in a corridor by a policeman\n named Terryl Placer on the 201st day. The criminal was carried to the\n assembly room surrounded by guards, for he surely would have been\n mauled, if not killed, by angry colonists who crowded around. In the\n assembly hall his mask was whipped off. The crowd gasped. Nobody knew\n him.\n\n\n Ellason's first thought was that he must be a stowaway, but then he\n remembered the face, and Captain Branson, who came to have a look at\n him, unhappily admitted the man was a member of the crew. His name was\n Harrel Critten and he was a record keeper third class.\n\n\n \"Well, Critten,\" Branson roared at him, \"what have you got to say for\n yourself?\"", "\"Let me put it differently. Let me say that you will not understand why\n I say that until the journey ends.\" He smiled. \"Perhaps I shouldn't\n have mentioned it.\"\nEllason left the captain's quarters with an odd taste in his mouth. Now\n why had Branson said that? Why hadn't Rexroad or Phipps said something,\n if it was important?\n\n\n He made himself comfortable in his seven-foot-by-seven-foot cubicle,\n which is to say he dropped on his bed, found it more comfortable than\n he thought it would be, put his arms behind his head, stared at the\n ceiling. Metal walls, no windows, one floor vent, one ceiling vent,\n and a solitary ceiling molding tube-light. This would be his home for\n a year, just as there were homes like it for three thousand others,\n except that the family rooms would be larger. His quarters were near\n the front of the spike near the officers' quarters.", "The Quadrant Council congratulated itself. The passengers were proud\n of themselves. A special congratulatory message from Captain Branson\n appeared one day in the Bulletin newsletter.\n\n\n The colonists settled down to living out the rest of the voyage until\n the landing on Antheon.\n\n\n But on the 170th day calamity struck. Red Mask appropriated one of the\n stunners, made his way down one whole corridor section in Quadrant Two,\n put occupants to sleep as he went, taking many articles of value and\n leaving disorder behind.\n\n\n Ellason interviewed as many victims as he could, noted it all in\n his book. The things taken were keepsakes, photographs and items of\n personal value. It seemed to be the work of a madman. If Red Mask\n wanted to make everyone furious, he certainly succeeded.", "\"Yes,\" Ellason said, \"but what if the intruder is a crewman?\"\n\n\n \"I know my men,\" Branson said flatly.\n\n\n \"You could have a shake-down for the mask and the seed case.\"\n\n\n \"Do you think it is a member of the crew?\" Branson's eyes were bright.\n \"No, I trust my men. I won't violate that trust.\"", "The captain's briefing room was crowded, the air was heavy with the\n breathing of so many men, and the ventilators could not quite clear the\n air of tobacco smoke that drifted aimlessly here and there before it\n was caught and whisked away.\n\n\n In the tradition of newspaperman and observer, Keith Ellason tried\n to be as inconspicuous as possible, pressing against a bulkhead, but\n Captain Branson's eyes sought his several times as Branson listened\n to final reports from his engineers, record keepers, fuel men,\n computermen, and all the rest. He grunted his approval or disapproval,\n made a suggestion here, a restriction there. There was no doubt that\n Branson was in charge, yet there was a human quality about him that\n Ellason liked. The captain's was a lean face, well tanned, and his eyes\n were chunks of blue.", "Ellason brightened. \"And by that time everybody was seeing Red Mask\n everywhere and the colonists organized against him.\"\n\n\n \"Gave them something to do,\" Branson said.\n\n\n \"Every time things got dull, I livened them up. I got a stunner and\n robbed along the corridor. That really stirred them. Lucky nobody got\n hurt during any of it, including that Stoneman woman. I was trying to\n rob her when she woke up.\"\nBranson cleared his throat. \"Ah, Ellason about that story. You\n understand you can't write it, don't you?\"\n\n\n Ellason said regretfully that he did understand.\n\n\n \"The colonists will never know the truth,\" Branson went on. \"There will\n be other ships outward bound.\"", "Critten nodded. \"When great numbers are being transported, they are apt\n to magnify each little event because so little happens. It was my job\n to see that they directed none of their venom against each other or the\n crew, only toward me.\"\n\n\n Branson smiled. \"It made the time pass quickly and interestingly for\n the passengers.\"\n\n\n \"To say nothing of me,\" Critten said.\n\n\n \"And you, Mr. Ellason, were along to observe it all,\" Captain Branson\n put in. \"Interstellar wanted an accurate picture of this. If it worked,\n they told me they'd use it on other trips to Antheon.\"\n\n\n Ellason nodded. \"No time for brooding, for differences of opinion on\n small matters. Just time to hate Mr. Critten. Unanimously.\"\n\n\n \"Probably,\" Critten said, \"you are wondering about the execution.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally.\"" ], [ "And so, Ellason observed in his notebook, are wars created.\nSeen in space, stars are unmoving, silent, sterile bright eyes ever\n watchful and accusing. To men unused to it, such a sight numbs,\n compresses, stultifies. He introduces a countermeasure, proof he\n exists, which is any overt act, sometimes violent.\nOn the forty-fifth day June Failright, the young wife of one of the\n passenger meteorologists, ran screaming down one of the long corridors\n of the Third Quadrant. She told the captain she had been attacked in\n her compartment while her husband was in the ship's library. She was\n taken to one of the ship's doctors, who confirmed it.\n\n\n She said the culprit was a husky man wearing a red rubber mask, and\n though her description of what he had done did not appear in the story\n in the newsletter, it lost no time in penetrating every compartment of\n the ship.", "Critten sighed. \"And I'll have to be caught again.\"\nYes, we're anonymous, nameless, we Nillys, for that's what we call\n each other, and are a theme, with variations, in the endless stretches\n of deep space, objects of hatred and contempt, professional heels,\n dying once a trip when the time is ripe, antidote to boredom, and we'll\n ply our trade, our little tragedies, on a thousand ships bringing\n humanity to new worlds.", "\"What does he want that stuff for?\" Casey Stromberg, a passenger\n doctor, asked. \"I can see him taking my narcotics, my doctor's kit—but\n my dead wife's picture? That I don't understand.\"\n\n\n It was the same with others. \"The man's insane, Mr. Ellason. Positively\n insane.\" Many people said it.\n\n\n The council issued orders that all passengers from now on would be\n required to lock their compartments at all times. More guns were\n obtained from the captain. More policemen were appointed.\n\n\n Ellason was busy noting it all in his book. It became filled with\n jottings about innocent people being accidentally stunned when\n trigger-happy policemen thought their movements suspicious, about one\n man's suspicion of another and the ensuing search of compartments,\n people who saw Red Mask here, saw him there. Hardly a day went by\n without some new development.", "Ellason sought out Carver Janssen. He was a middle-aged man with a\n tired face and sad eyes. He said, \"Now what am I going to Antheon\n for? I could only take along so much baggage and I threw out some\n comfort items to make room for the seeds. I'm a horticulturist, and\n Interstellar asked me to go along. But what use am I now? Where am\n I going to get seeds like those? Do you know how long it took me to\n collect them? They're not ordinary seeds, Mr. Ellason.\"\n\n\n There was an appeal from Janssen in the next day's newsletter\n describing the seeds, telling of their value, and requesting their\n return in the interests of the Antheon colony and of humanity.\n\n\n On the thirty-fourth day a witness turned up who said he had seen a\n man emerging from Janssen's compartment with the black case. \"I didn't\n think anything of it at the time,\" Jamieson Dievers said.", "Janssen's case contained vegetable and flower seeds—thousands of\n them, according to the Captain's Bulletin, the ship's daily newsletter\n which went to all hands and passengers. In the Bulletin the captain\n appealed to the thief to return the case to Mr. Janssen. He said it\n was significant that all en route had passed stability tests, and that\n it was to the ship's discredit that someone with criminal tendencies\n should have been permitted aboard.", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nSure I'm a Nilly, and I've died seven times, always in the blackness\n of the outer reaches, and I'm not alone, although there aren't very\n many of us, never were.\nIt made sense. Interstellar was new and they wanted him on the ship\n because he was a trained observer. They wanted facts, not gibberish.\n But to ask a man to give up two years of his life—well, that was\n asking a lot. Two years in a sardine can. Still, it had an appeal Keith\n Ellason knew he couldn't deny, a newsman's joy of the clean beat, a\n planetary system far afield, a closeup view of the universe, history in\n the making.\n\n\n Interstellar Chief Rexroad knocked the dottle from his pipe in a tray,\n saying, \"Transworld Press is willing to let you have a leave of\n abscence, if you're interested.\"", "\"Oh, there'll be a trial, Mr. Ellason, but you don't think any jury'd\n let him live after all the things he's done, do you?\"\nRed Mask was stunned in Quadrant Four in a corridor by a policeman\n named Terryl Placer on the 201st day. The criminal was carried to the\n assembly room surrounded by guards, for he surely would have been\n mauled, if not killed, by angry colonists who crowded around. In the\n assembly hall his mask was whipped off. The crowd gasped. Nobody knew\n him.\n\n\n Ellason's first thought was that he must be a stowaway, but then he\n remembered the face, and Captain Branson, who came to have a look at\n him, unhappily admitted the man was a member of the crew. His name was\n Harrel Critten and he was a record keeper third class.\n\n\n \"Well, Critten,\" Branson roared at him, \"what have you got to say for\n yourself?\"", "\"Let me put it differently. Let me say that you will not understand why\n I say that until the journey ends.\" He smiled. \"Perhaps I shouldn't\n have mentioned it.\"\nEllason left the captain's quarters with an odd taste in his mouth. Now\n why had Branson said that? Why hadn't Rexroad or Phipps said something,\n if it was important?\n\n\n He made himself comfortable in his seven-foot-by-seven-foot cubicle,\n which is to say he dropped on his bed, found it more comfortable than\n he thought it would be, put his arms behind his head, stared at the\n ceiling. Metal walls, no windows, one floor vent, one ceiling vent,\n and a solitary ceiling molding tube-light. This would be his home for\n a year, just as there were homes like it for three thousand others,\n except that the family rooms would be larger. His quarters were near\n the front of the spike near the officers' quarters.", "Attendant to taking notes on this incident, Ellason noted a strange\n thing. Janssen lived in that part of the ship known as the First\n Quadrant, and those who lived in that quadrant—more than seven hundred\n men, women and children—felt that the thief must surely live in\n Quadrant Two or Four. Elias Cromley, who had the compartment next to\n Janssen's, sounded the consensus when he said, \"Surely a man wouldn't\n steal from his own quadrant, now would he, Mr. Ellason?\"", "\"Oh, yes, Mr. Ellason, we're going to get him,\" said Tilbury, now chief\n of police, cracking his knuckles, his eyes glowing at the thought.\n \"We're bound to get him. We've got things worked out to the finest\n detail. He won't be able to get through our fingers now. Just let him\n make so much as a move.\"\n\n\n \"And what will you do when you get him?\"\n\n\n \"Kill him,\" Tilbury said, licking his lips, his eyes glowing more\n fiercely than ever.\n\n\n \"Without a trial?\"", "\"Sure,\" Critten said. \"You colonists got the easy life as passengers,\n just sitting around. I had to work my head off keeping records for you\n lazy bastards.\"\n\n\n The verdict was, of course, death.\n\n\n They executed Harrel Critten on the morning of the 270th day with\n blasts from six stunners supplied with full power. It was witnessed\n by a great crowd in the assembly hall. A detail from the ship's crew\n disposed of his body through a chute.\n\n\n It was all duly recorded in Keith Ellason's notebooks.\nDying is easy for a Nilly. Especially if it's arranged for beforehand,\n which it always is.\nThe\nWeblor II\nwas only one day out of orbit when Captain Branson sent\n for Ellason and introduced him to the executed man.\n\n\n \"Hello,\" Critten said, grinning from ear to ear.", "Ellason brightened. \"And by that time everybody was seeing Red Mask\n everywhere and the colonists organized against him.\"\n\n\n \"Gave them something to do,\" Branson said.\n\n\n \"Every time things got dull, I livened them up. I got a stunner and\n robbed along the corridor. That really stirred them. Lucky nobody got\n hurt during any of it, including that Stoneman woman. I was trying to\n rob her when she woke up.\"\nBranson cleared his throat. \"Ah, Ellason about that story. You\n understand you can't write it, don't you?\"\n\n\n Ellason said regretfully that he did understand.\n\n\n \"The colonists will never know the truth,\" Branson went on. \"There will\n be other ships outward bound.\"", "He looked at his watch, picked up his notebook and made an entry. The\n ship right now would be slipping ever so slowly away from Earth. He got\n up. He'd have to go forward to the observation dome to see that. Last\n view of Earth for two years.\nThe penetration of space by large groups is the coming out from under\n the traditions of thousands of years, and as these planet-orginated\n rules fall away, the floundering group seeks a new control, for they\n are humanity adrift, rudderless, for whom the stars are no longer\n bearings but nonexistent things, and values are altered if they are not\n shown the way.\nThe theft of Carver Janssen's attache case occurred on the thirty-first\n day out. In Ellason's mind the incident, though insignificant from the\n standpoint of the ship as a whole, could very well be the cause of\n dissension later on. His notes covering it were therefore very thorough.", "Let Red Mask move against armed men, they said.\n\n\n Yeah, let him see what happens now.\n\n\n Red Mask did.\nOn the 101st day he was seen in a corridor in Quadrant Four. Emil\n Pierce, policeman on duty, managed to squeeze off several shots at his\n retreating figure.\n\n\n Red Mask was seen again on the 120th day, on the 135th day, and the\n 157th day. He was seen, shot at, but not hit. He was also unable to\n commit any crime.\n\n\n We've got him on the run, the colonists said.\n\n\n He's afraid to do anything, now that we've got police protection, they\n said smugly.", "The Quadrant Council congratulated itself. The passengers were proud\n of themselves. A special congratulatory message from Captain Branson\n appeared one day in the Bulletin newsletter.\n\n\n The colonists settled down to living out the rest of the voyage until\n the landing on Antheon.\n\n\n But on the 170th day calamity struck. Red Mask appropriated one of the\n stunners, made his way down one whole corridor section in Quadrant Two,\n put occupants to sleep as he went, taking many articles of value and\n leaving disorder behind.\n\n\n Ellason interviewed as many victims as he could, noted it all in\n his book. The things taken were keepsakes, photographs and items of\n personal value. It seemed to be the work of a madman. If Red Mask\n wanted to make everyone furious, he certainly succeeded.", "Branson asked him to describe the man.\n\n\n \"Oh, he was about six feet tall, stocky build, and he wore a red rubber\n mask that covered his head completely.\"\n\n\n \"Didn't you think that was important?\" Branson asked in an outraged\n voice. \"A man wearing a red mask?\"\n\n\n Dievers shrugged. \"This is a spaceship. How would I know whether a red\n mask—or a blue or green one—does or doesn't belong on a spaceship?\"\n\n\n Although Dievers' account appeared in the newsletter, it was largely\n discounted.\n\n\n \"If it is true,\" Branson told Ellason, \"the theft must be the work of\n a psychotic. But I don't believe Jamieson Dievers. It may well be he's\n the psychotic.\" He snorted. \"Red rubber mask! I think I'll have Dievers\n put through psychiatry.\"", "Captain Branson did not wait for the newsletter. Through the ship's\n speaker system, he reported that Palugger had a fortune in credits\n in the belt and had died of a severe beating. He said that since the\n incident occurred in the staff section of the ship, his crew would be\n forced to submit to a thorough inspection in an effort to find the\n mask, the seed case, the money and the man.\n\n\n \"I will not countenance such an act by a crewman,\" Branson said. \"If\n and when he is found, he will be severely dealt with. But he might not\n be a member of the crew. I am ordering an assembly of all passengers at\n nine tomorrow morning in the auditorium. I will speak to you all then.\"\nFaces were angry, tongues were sharp at the meeting, eyes suspicious\n and tempers short. Above it all was the overpowering presence of\n Captain Branson speaking to them.", "Ellason left, feeling uneasy. If he were Branson, he'd initiate an\n investigation, if nothing else than to prove the crew guiltless. Why\n couldn't Branson see the wisdom of setting an example for the colonists?\nAs a Nilly, I knew that space breeds hate. There is a seed of\n malevolence in every man. It sometimes blossoms out among the stars. On\n the\nWeblor II\nit was ready for ripening.\nRaymond Palugger was killed in the ship's hospital on the sixty-first\n day. Palugger, a Fourth Quadrant passenger, had complained of feeling\n ill, had been hospitalized with a diagnosis of ileus. He had put his\n money belt in the drawer of the small stand beside his bed. A man\n in a red mask was seen hurrying from the hospital area, and a staff\n investigation revealed that Palugger had died trying to prevent the\n theft of the belt.", "The captain's briefing room was crowded, the air was heavy with the\n breathing of so many men, and the ventilators could not quite clear the\n air of tobacco smoke that drifted aimlessly here and there before it\n was caught and whisked away.\n\n\n In the tradition of newspaperman and observer, Keith Ellason tried\n to be as inconspicuous as possible, pressing against a bulkhead, but\n Captain Branson's eyes sought his several times as Branson listened\n to final reports from his engineers, record keepers, fuel men,\n computermen, and all the rest. He grunted his approval or disapproval,\n made a suggestion here, a restriction there. There was no doubt that\n Branson was in charge, yet there was a human quality about him that\n Ellason liked. The captain's was a lean face, well tanned, and his eyes\n were chunks of blue.", "The captain reported that his search had been equally fruitless.\n At another assembly the following day it was decided to make the\n inspection teams permanent, to await further moves on the part of Red\n Mask. The Quadrant Council held periodic meetings to set up a method of\n trial for him when he was caught. It was all recorded in the newsletter\n and by Keith Ellason.\nWe Nillys know about hate and about violence. We know too that where\n there is hate there is violence, and where there is violence there is\n death.\nDuring sleep time on the seventy-ninth day Barbara Stoneman, awakened\n by a strange sound, sat up in the bed of her compartment to find a\n man in a red mask in her room. Her cries brought neighbors into the\n corridor. The flight of the man was witnessed by many, and several men\n tried to stop him. But the intruder was light on his feet and fast. He\n escaped.\n\n\n The Quadrant Council confronted the captain, demanding weapons." ], [ "Let Red Mask move against armed men, they said.\n\n\n Yeah, let him see what happens now.\n\n\n Red Mask did.\nOn the 101st day he was seen in a corridor in Quadrant Four. Emil\n Pierce, policeman on duty, managed to squeeze off several shots at his\n retreating figure.\n\n\n Red Mask was seen again on the 120th day, on the 135th day, and the\n 157th day. He was seen, shot at, but not hit. He was also unable to\n commit any crime.\n\n\n We've got him on the run, the colonists said.\n\n\n He's afraid to do anything, now that we've got police protection, they\n said smugly.", "\"Oh, there'll be a trial, Mr. Ellason, but you don't think any jury'd\n let him live after all the things he's done, do you?\"\nRed Mask was stunned in Quadrant Four in a corridor by a policeman\n named Terryl Placer on the 201st day. The criminal was carried to the\n assembly room surrounded by guards, for he surely would have been\n mauled, if not killed, by angry colonists who crowded around. In the\n assembly hall his mask was whipped off. The crowd gasped. Nobody knew\n him.\n\n\n Ellason's first thought was that he must be a stowaway, but then he\n remembered the face, and Captain Branson, who came to have a look at\n him, unhappily admitted the man was a member of the crew. His name was\n Harrel Critten and he was a record keeper third class.\n\n\n \"Well, Critten,\" Branson roared at him, \"what have you got to say for\n yourself?\"", "Branson asked him to describe the man.\n\n\n \"Oh, he was about six feet tall, stocky build, and he wore a red rubber\n mask that covered his head completely.\"\n\n\n \"Didn't you think that was important?\" Branson asked in an outraged\n voice. \"A man wearing a red mask?\"\n\n\n Dievers shrugged. \"This is a spaceship. How would I know whether a red\n mask—or a blue or green one—does or doesn't belong on a spaceship?\"\n\n\n Although Dievers' account appeared in the newsletter, it was largely\n discounted.\n\n\n \"If it is true,\" Branson told Ellason, \"the theft must be the work of\n a psychotic. But I don't believe Jamieson Dievers. It may well be he's\n the psychotic.\" He snorted. \"Red rubber mask! I think I'll have Dievers\n put through psychiatry.\"", "Ellason brightened. \"And by that time everybody was seeing Red Mask\n everywhere and the colonists organized against him.\"\n\n\n \"Gave them something to do,\" Branson said.\n\n\n \"Every time things got dull, I livened them up. I got a stunner and\n robbed along the corridor. That really stirred them. Lucky nobody got\n hurt during any of it, including that Stoneman woman. I was trying to\n rob her when she woke up.\"\nBranson cleared his throat. \"Ah, Ellason about that story. You\n understand you can't write it, don't you?\"\n\n\n Ellason said regretfully that he did understand.\n\n\n \"The colonists will never know the truth,\" Branson went on. \"There will\n be other ships outward bound.\"", "\"What does he want that stuff for?\" Casey Stromberg, a passenger\n doctor, asked. \"I can see him taking my narcotics, my doctor's kit—but\n my dead wife's picture? That I don't understand.\"\n\n\n It was the same with others. \"The man's insane, Mr. Ellason. Positively\n insane.\" Many people said it.\n\n\n The council issued orders that all passengers from now on would be\n required to lock their compartments at all times. More guns were\n obtained from the captain. More policemen were appointed.\n\n\n Ellason was busy noting it all in his book. It became filled with\n jottings about innocent people being accidentally stunned when\n trigger-happy policemen thought their movements suspicious, about one\n man's suspicion of another and the ensuing search of compartments,\n people who saw Red Mask here, saw him there. Hardly a day went by\n without some new development.", "The captain reported that his search had been equally fruitless.\n At another assembly the following day it was decided to make the\n inspection teams permanent, to await further moves on the part of Red\n Mask. The Quadrant Council held periodic meetings to set up a method of\n trial for him when he was caught. It was all recorded in the newsletter\n and by Keith Ellason.\nWe Nillys know about hate and about violence. We know too that where\n there is hate there is violence, and where there is violence there is\n death.\nDuring sleep time on the seventy-ninth day Barbara Stoneman, awakened\n by a strange sound, sat up in the bed of her compartment to find a\n man in a red mask in her room. Her cries brought neighbors into the\n corridor. The flight of the man was witnessed by many, and several men\n tried to stop him. But the intruder was light on his feet and fast. He\n escaped.\n\n\n The Quadrant Council confronted the captain, demanding weapons.", "\"It is not my desire to interfere in passenger affairs,\" he said.\n \"Insofar as the ship is concerned, it is my duty to make certain no\n crewman is guilty. This I am doing. But my crew is not and cannot be\n a police force for you. It is up to you people to police and protect\n yourselves.\"\n\n\n \"How can we protect ourselves without stunners?\" one colonist called\n out.\n\n\n \"Has Red Mask a gun?\" Branson retorted. \"It seems to me you have a\n better weapon than any gun.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\"\n\n\n \"This ship is only so wide, so long and so deep. If every inch is\n searched, you'll find your man. He has to be somewhere aboard.\"", "The Quadrant Council congratulated itself. The passengers were proud\n of themselves. A special congratulatory message from Captain Branson\n appeared one day in the Bulletin newsletter.\n\n\n The colonists settled down to living out the rest of the voyage until\n the landing on Antheon.\n\n\n But on the 170th day calamity struck. Red Mask appropriated one of the\n stunners, made his way down one whole corridor section in Quadrant Two,\n put occupants to sleep as he went, taking many articles of value and\n leaving disorder behind.\n\n\n Ellason interviewed as many victims as he could, noted it all in\n his book. The things taken were keepsakes, photographs and items of\n personal value. It seemed to be the work of a madman. If Red Mask\n wanted to make everyone furious, he certainly succeeded.", "And so, Ellason observed in his notebook, are wars created.\nSeen in space, stars are unmoving, silent, sterile bright eyes ever\n watchful and accusing. To men unused to it, such a sight numbs,\n compresses, stultifies. He introduces a countermeasure, proof he\n exists, which is any overt act, sometimes violent.\nOn the forty-fifth day June Failright, the young wife of one of the\n passenger meteorologists, ran screaming down one of the long corridors\n of the Third Quadrant. She told the captain she had been attacked in\n her compartment while her husband was in the ship's library. She was\n taken to one of the ship's doctors, who confirmed it.\n\n\n She said the culprit was a husky man wearing a red rubber mask, and\n though her description of what he had done did not appear in the story\n in the newsletter, it lost no time in penetrating every compartment of\n the ship.", "Ellason left, feeling uneasy. If he were Branson, he'd initiate an\n investigation, if nothing else than to prove the crew guiltless. Why\n couldn't Branson see the wisdom of setting an example for the colonists?\nAs a Nilly, I knew that space breeds hate. There is a seed of\n malevolence in every man. It sometimes blossoms out among the stars. On\n the\nWeblor II\nit was ready for ripening.\nRaymond Palugger was killed in the ship's hospital on the sixty-first\n day. Palugger, a Fourth Quadrant passenger, had complained of feeling\n ill, had been hospitalized with a diagnosis of ileus. He had put his\n money belt in the drawer of the small stand beside his bed. A man\n in a red mask was seen hurrying from the hospital area, and a staff\n investigation revealed that Palugger had died trying to prevent the\n theft of the belt.", "The colonists quieted. Benjamin Simpson, one of the older men, was\n elected president of the newly formed Quadrant Council. One man from\n each of the quadrants was named to serve under him. Each of these men\n in turn selected five others from his own group.\n\n\n Those assembled waited in the hall while each team of six inspected\n the compartments of the others. These compartments were then locked,\n everyone returned to his compartment, and the larger search was\n conducted. It took twenty hours.\n\n\n No mask was found. No mask, no case, no money, no man.", "\"Are you out of your minds?\" Branson exclaimed.\n\n\n Tom Tilbury, Fourth Quadrant leader, said, \"We want to set up a police\n force, Captain. We want stunners.\"\n\n\n \"There's no law against it,\" Branson said, \"but it's a rule of mine\n that no weapons are to be issued en route.\"\n\n\n \"If we had had a gun, we'd have got Red Mask,\" Tilbury said.\n\n\n \"And I might have a murder on my conscience.\"\n\n\n Tilbury said, \"We've also thought of that. Suppose you supply us with\n half-power stunners? That way we can stun but not kill.\"\n\n\n They got their guns. Now there were twenty-four policemen on duty in\n the corridors—eight on at a time. Ellason observed that for the first\n time the passengers seemed relaxed.", "Captain Branson did not wait for the newsletter. Through the ship's\n speaker system, he reported that Palugger had a fortune in credits\n in the belt and had died of a severe beating. He said that since the\n incident occurred in the staff section of the ship, his crew would be\n forced to submit to a thorough inspection in an effort to find the\n mask, the seed case, the money and the man.\n\n\n \"I will not countenance such an act by a crewman,\" Branson said. \"If\n and when he is found, he will be severely dealt with. But he might not\n be a member of the crew. I am ordering an assembly of all passengers at\n nine tomorrow morning in the auditorium. I will speak to you all then.\"\nFaces were angry, tongues were sharp at the meeting, eyes suspicious\n and tempers short. Above it all was the overpowering presence of\n Captain Branson speaking to them.", "\"Yes,\" Ellason said, \"but what if the intruder is a crewman?\"\n\n\n \"I know my men,\" Branson said flatly.\n\n\n \"You could have a shake-down for the mask and the seed case.\"\n\n\n \"Do you think it is a member of the crew?\" Branson's eyes were bright.\n \"No, I trust my men. I won't violate that trust.\"", "\"Oh, yes, Mr. Ellason, we're going to get him,\" said Tilbury, now chief\n of police, cracking his knuckles, his eyes glowing at the thought.\n \"We're bound to get him. We've got things worked out to the finest\n detail. He won't be able to get through our fingers now. Just let him\n make so much as a move.\"\n\n\n \"And what will you do when you get him?\"\n\n\n \"Kill him,\" Tilbury said, licking his lips, his eyes glowing more\n fiercely than ever.\n\n\n \"Without a trial?\"", "\"I figured as much,\" Ellason said. \"I've been doing a lot of thinking.\"\n\n\n \"You're perhaps a little too good as an observer,\" Branson said. \"Or\n maybe it was because you really weren't one of the colonists. But no\n matter, Critten did a good job. He was trained by an old friend of mine\n for this job, Gelthorpe Nill. Nill used to be in counter-espionage when\n there were wars.\"\n\n\n \"You were excellent,\" Ellason said.\n\n\n \"Can't say I enjoyed the role,\" said Critten, \"but I think it saved\n lives.\"\n\n\n \"Let me get this straight. Interstellar thought that it was idleness\n and boredom that caused the killings on the\nWeblor I\n, so they had you\n trained to be a scapegoat. Is that right?\"", "Attendant to taking notes on this incident, Ellason noted a strange\n thing. Janssen lived in that part of the ship known as the First\n Quadrant, and those who lived in that quadrant—more than seven hundred\n men, women and children—felt that the thief must surely live in\n Quadrant Two or Four. Elias Cromley, who had the compartment next to\n Janssen's, sounded the consensus when he said, \"Surely a man wouldn't\n steal from his own quadrant, now would he, Mr. Ellason?\"", "\"We removed the charges before the guns were used.\"\n\n\n \"And Carver Janssen's case?\"\n\n\n \"He'll get it back when he's shuttled to Antheon. And all the other\n items will be returned. They're all tagged with their owner's names.\n Captain Branson will say they were found somewhere on the ship. You\n see, I was a liar.\"\n\n\n \"How about that assault on June Failright?\"\n\n\n Critten grinned again. \"She played right into our hands. She ran out\n into the hall claiming I'd attacked her, which I did not. She was\n certainly amazed when the ship's physicians agreed with her. Of course\n Captain Branson told them to do that.\"\n\n\n \"And the murder?\"\n\n\n \"Raymond Palugger died in the hospital all right, but he died from\n his illness on the operating table. We turned it into an advantage by\n making it look suspicious.\"", "Critten sighed. \"And I'll have to be caught again.\"\nYes, we're anonymous, nameless, we Nillys, for that's what we call\n each other, and are a theme, with variations, in the endless stretches\n of deep space, objects of hatred and contempt, professional heels,\n dying once a trip when the time is ripe, antidote to boredom, and we'll\n ply our trade, our little tragedies, on a thousand ships bringing\n humanity to new worlds.", "Janssen's case contained vegetable and flower seeds—thousands of\n them, according to the Captain's Bulletin, the ship's daily newsletter\n which went to all hands and passengers. In the Bulletin the captain\n appealed to the thief to return the case to Mr. Janssen. He said it\n was significant that all en route had passed stability tests, and that\n it was to the ship's discredit that someone with criminal tendencies\n should have been permitted aboard." ], [ "The captain's briefing room was crowded, the air was heavy with the\n breathing of so many men, and the ventilators could not quite clear the\n air of tobacco smoke that drifted aimlessly here and there before it\n was caught and whisked away.\n\n\n In the tradition of newspaperman and observer, Keith Ellason tried\n to be as inconspicuous as possible, pressing against a bulkhead, but\n Captain Branson's eyes sought his several times as Branson listened\n to final reports from his engineers, record keepers, fuel men,\n computermen, and all the rest. He grunted his approval or disapproval,\n made a suggestion here, a restriction there. There was no doubt that\n Branson was in charge, yet there was a human quality about him that\n Ellason liked. The captain's was a lean face, well tanned, and his eyes\n were chunks of blue.", "\"Gentlemen,\" Branson said at last, as Ellason knew he would, \"I want\n to introduce Keith Ellason, whose presence Interstellar has impressed\n upon us. On loan from Transworld, he will have an observer status.\" He\n introduced him to the others. All of them seemed friendly; Ellason\n thought it was a good staff.\n\n\n Branson detained him after the others had gone. \"One thing, Mr.\n Ellason. To make it easier for you, I suggest you think of this journey\n strictly from the observer viewpoint. There will be no story for\n Transworld at the end.\"\n\n\n Ellason was startled. While he had considered the possibility, he had\n not dwelt on it. Now it loomed large in his mind. \"I don't understand,\n Captain Branson. It seems to me—\"", "Rexroad said very gravely, \"We've got the finest captain in\n Interplanetary. Harvey Branson. No doubt you've heard of him. He's\n spent his life in our own system, and he's handpicking his own crew. We\n have also raised prerequisites for applicants. We don't think anything\n is going to happen, but if it does, we want to get an impersonal,\n unprejudiced view. That's where you come in. You do the observing, the\n reporting. We'll evaluate it on your return.\"\n\n\n \"If I return,\" said Ellason.", "Ellason was present when a delegation from the Third Quadrant called on\n Captain Branson, demanding action.\n\n\n Branson remained seated behind his desk, unperturbed, saying, \"I have\n no crewmen to spare for police duty.\"\n\n\n The delegation commenced speaking vehemently, to be quieted by\n Branson's raised hand.\n\n\n \"I sympathize,\" Branson said, \"but it is up to each quadrant to deal\n with its problems, whatever they may be. My job is to get us to\n Antheon.\"\n\n\n The group left in a surly mood.\n\n\n \"You wonder at my reluctance, Mr. Ellason,\" Captain Branson said. \"But\n suppose I assign the crew to patrol duties, the culprit isn't caught,\n and further incidents occur. What then? It soon becomes the crew's\n fault. And soon the colonists will begin thinking these things might be\n the crew's doing in the first place.\"", "\"Yes,\" Ellason said, \"but what if the intruder is a crewman?\"\n\n\n \"I know my men,\" Branson said flatly.\n\n\n \"You could have a shake-down for the mask and the seed case.\"\n\n\n \"Do you think it is a member of the crew?\" Branson's eyes were bright.\n \"No, I trust my men. I won't violate that trust.\"", "Ellason brightened. \"And by that time everybody was seeing Red Mask\n everywhere and the colonists organized against him.\"\n\n\n \"Gave them something to do,\" Branson said.\n\n\n \"Every time things got dull, I livened them up. I got a stunner and\n robbed along the corridor. That really stirred them. Lucky nobody got\n hurt during any of it, including that Stoneman woman. I was trying to\n rob her when she woke up.\"\nBranson cleared his throat. \"Ah, Ellason about that story. You\n understand you can't write it, don't you?\"\n\n\n Ellason said regretfully that he did understand.\n\n\n \"The colonists will never know the truth,\" Branson went on. \"There will\n be other ships outward bound.\"", "Captain Branson did not wait for the newsletter. Through the ship's\n speaker system, he reported that Palugger had a fortune in credits\n in the belt and had died of a severe beating. He said that since the\n incident occurred in the staff section of the ship, his crew would be\n forced to submit to a thorough inspection in an effort to find the\n mask, the seed case, the money and the man.\n\n\n \"I will not countenance such an act by a crewman,\" Branson said. \"If\n and when he is found, he will be severely dealt with. But he might not\n be a member of the crew. I am ordering an assembly of all passengers at\n nine tomorrow morning in the auditorium. I will speak to you all then.\"\nFaces were angry, tongues were sharp at the meeting, eyes suspicious\n and tempers short. Above it all was the overpowering presence of\n Captain Branson speaking to them.", "\"Let me put it differently. Let me say that you will not understand why\n I say that until the journey ends.\" He smiled. \"Perhaps I shouldn't\n have mentioned it.\"\nEllason left the captain's quarters with an odd taste in his mouth. Now\n why had Branson said that? Why hadn't Rexroad or Phipps said something,\n if it was important?\n\n\n He made himself comfortable in his seven-foot-by-seven-foot cubicle,\n which is to say he dropped on his bed, found it more comfortable than\n he thought it would be, put his arms behind his head, stared at the\n ceiling. Metal walls, no windows, one floor vent, one ceiling vent,\n and a solitary ceiling molding tube-light. This would be his home for\n a year, just as there were homes like it for three thousand others,\n except that the family rooms would be larger. His quarters were near\n the front of the spike near the officers' quarters.", "\"I figured as much,\" Ellason said. \"I've been doing a lot of thinking.\"\n\n\n \"You're perhaps a little too good as an observer,\" Branson said. \"Or\n maybe it was because you really weren't one of the colonists. But no\n matter, Critten did a good job. He was trained by an old friend of mine\n for this job, Gelthorpe Nill. Nill used to be in counter-espionage when\n there were wars.\"\n\n\n \"You were excellent,\" Ellason said.\n\n\n \"Can't say I enjoyed the role,\" said Critten, \"but I think it saved\n lives.\"\n\n\n \"Let me get this straight. Interstellar thought that it was idleness\n and boredom that caused the killings on the\nWeblor I\n, so they had you\n trained to be a scapegoat. Is that right?\"", "And so, Ellason observed in his notebook, are wars created.\nSeen in space, stars are unmoving, silent, sterile bright eyes ever\n watchful and accusing. To men unused to it, such a sight numbs,\n compresses, stultifies. He introduces a countermeasure, proof he\n exists, which is any overt act, sometimes violent.\nOn the forty-fifth day June Failright, the young wife of one of the\n passenger meteorologists, ran screaming down one of the long corridors\n of the Third Quadrant. She told the captain she had been attacked in\n her compartment while her husband was in the ship's library. She was\n taken to one of the ship's doctors, who confirmed it.\n\n\n She said the culprit was a husky man wearing a red rubber mask, and\n though her description of what he had done did not appear in the story\n in the newsletter, it lost no time in penetrating every compartment of\n the ship.", "Ellason had to smile at that. What did Captain Branson think of those\n colonists who killed each other on the\nWeblor I\n? They had passed\n stability tests too. This, then, was what happened when you took three\n thousand strangers and stuck them in a can for a year.\nWhen Ellason saw Branson about it, the captain said, \"Of course I\n realize it takes only a little thing like this to set things off. I\n know people get tired of seeing each other, playing the same tapes,\n looking at the stars from the observation dome, walking down the same\n corridors, reading the same books, eating the same meals, though God\n knows we try to vary it as much as we can. Space creates rough edges.\n But the point is, we know all this, and knowing it, we shouldn't let it\n happen. We've got to find that thief.\"\n\n\n \"What would he want seeds for? Have you thought of that?\"\n\n\n \"Of course. They'd have real value on Antheon.\"", "Branson asked him to describe the man.\n\n\n \"Oh, he was about six feet tall, stocky build, and he wore a red rubber\n mask that covered his head completely.\"\n\n\n \"Didn't you think that was important?\" Branson asked in an outraged\n voice. \"A man wearing a red mask?\"\n\n\n Dievers shrugged. \"This is a spaceship. How would I know whether a red\n mask—or a blue or green one—does or doesn't belong on a spaceship?\"\n\n\n Although Dievers' account appeared in the newsletter, it was largely\n discounted.\n\n\n \"If it is true,\" Branson told Ellason, \"the theft must be the work of\n a psychotic. But I don't believe Jamieson Dievers. It may well be he's\n the psychotic.\" He snorted. \"Red rubber mask! I think I'll have Dievers\n put through psychiatry.\"", "Critten nodded. \"When great numbers are being transported, they are apt\n to magnify each little event because so little happens. It was my job\n to see that they directed none of their venom against each other or the\n crew, only toward me.\"\n\n\n Branson smiled. \"It made the time pass quickly and interestingly for\n the passengers.\"\n\n\n \"To say nothing of me,\" Critten said.\n\n\n \"And you, Mr. Ellason, were along to observe it all,\" Captain Branson\n put in. \"Interstellar wanted an accurate picture of this. If it worked,\n they told me they'd use it on other trips to Antheon.\"\n\n\n Ellason nodded. \"No time for brooding, for differences of opinion on\n small matters. Just time to hate Mr. Critten. Unanimously.\"\n\n\n \"Probably,\" Critten said, \"you are wondering about the execution.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally.\"", "He knew Secretary Phipps from years of contacting, and now Phipps said,\n \"Personally, I don't want to see anybody else on the job. You've got a\n fine record in this sort of thing.\"\n\n\n Keith Ellason smiled, but just barely. \"You should have called me for\n the first trip.\"\n\n\n Phipps nodded. \"I wish we had had you on the\nWeblor I\n.\"\n\n\n \"Crewmen,\" Rexroad said, \"make poor reporters.\"", "\"It is not my desire to interfere in passenger affairs,\" he said.\n \"Insofar as the ship is concerned, it is my duty to make certain no\n crewman is guilty. This I am doing. But my crew is not and cannot be\n a police force for you. It is up to you people to police and protect\n yourselves.\"\n\n\n \"How can we protect ourselves without stunners?\" one colonist called\n out.\n\n\n \"Has Red Mask a gun?\" Branson retorted. \"It seems to me you have a\n better weapon than any gun.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\"\n\n\n \"This ship is only so wide, so long and so deep. If every inch is\n searched, you'll find your man. He has to be somewhere aboard.\"", "The Quadrant Council congratulated itself. The passengers were proud\n of themselves. A special congratulatory message from Captain Branson\n appeared one day in the Bulletin newsletter.\n\n\n The colonists settled down to living out the rest of the voyage until\n the landing on Antheon.\n\n\n But on the 170th day calamity struck. Red Mask appropriated one of the\n stunners, made his way down one whole corridor section in Quadrant Two,\n put occupants to sleep as he went, taking many articles of value and\n leaving disorder behind.\n\n\n Ellason interviewed as many victims as he could, noted it all in\n his book. The things taken were keepsakes, photographs and items of\n personal value. It seemed to be the work of a madman. If Red Mask\n wanted to make everyone furious, he certainly succeeded.", "\"Oh, yes, Mr. Ellason, we're going to get him,\" said Tilbury, now chief\n of police, cracking his knuckles, his eyes glowing at the thought.\n \"We're bound to get him. We've got things worked out to the finest\n detail. He won't be able to get through our fingers now. Just let him\n make so much as a move.\"\n\n\n \"And what will you do when you get him?\"\n\n\n \"Kill him,\" Tilbury said, licking his lips, his eyes glowing more\n fiercely than ever.\n\n\n \"Without a trial?\"", "\"Oh, there'll be a trial, Mr. Ellason, but you don't think any jury'd\n let him live after all the things he's done, do you?\"\nRed Mask was stunned in Quadrant Four in a corridor by a policeman\n named Terryl Placer on the 201st day. The criminal was carried to the\n assembly room surrounded by guards, for he surely would have been\n mauled, if not killed, by angry colonists who crowded around. In the\n assembly hall his mask was whipped off. The crowd gasped. Nobody knew\n him.\n\n\n Ellason's first thought was that he must be a stowaway, but then he\n remembered the face, and Captain Branson, who came to have a look at\n him, unhappily admitted the man was a member of the crew. His name was\n Harrel Critten and he was a record keeper third class.\n\n\n \"Well, Critten,\" Branson roared at him, \"what have you got to say for\n yourself?\"", "Ellason left, feeling uneasy. If he were Branson, he'd initiate an\n investigation, if nothing else than to prove the crew guiltless. Why\n couldn't Branson see the wisdom of setting an example for the colonists?\nAs a Nilly, I knew that space breeds hate. There is a seed of\n malevolence in every man. It sometimes blossoms out among the stars. On\n the\nWeblor II\nit was ready for ripening.\nRaymond Palugger was killed in the ship's hospital on the sixty-first\n day. Palugger, a Fourth Quadrant passenger, had complained of feeling\n ill, had been hospitalized with a diagnosis of ileus. He had put his\n money belt in the drawer of the small stand beside his bed. A man\n in a red mask was seen hurrying from the hospital area, and a staff\n investigation revealed that Palugger had died trying to prevent the\n theft of the belt.", "\"Are you out of your minds?\" Branson exclaimed.\n\n\n Tom Tilbury, Fourth Quadrant leader, said, \"We want to set up a police\n force, Captain. We want stunners.\"\n\n\n \"There's no law against it,\" Branson said, \"but it's a rule of mine\n that no weapons are to be issued en route.\"\n\n\n \"If we had had a gun, we'd have got Red Mask,\" Tilbury said.\n\n\n \"And I might have a murder on my conscience.\"\n\n\n Tilbury said, \"We've also thought of that. Suppose you supply us with\n half-power stunners? That way we can stun but not kill.\"\n\n\n They got their guns. Now there were twenty-four policemen on duty in\n the corridors—eight on at a time. Ellason observed that for the first\n time the passengers seemed relaxed." ], [ "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nSure I'm a Nilly, and I've died seven times, always in the blackness\n of the outer reaches, and I'm not alone, although there aren't very\n many of us, never were.\nIt made sense. Interstellar was new and they wanted him on the ship\n because he was a trained observer. They wanted facts, not gibberish.\n But to ask a man to give up two years of his life—well, that was\n asking a lot. Two years in a sardine can. Still, it had an appeal Keith\n Ellason knew he couldn't deny, a newsman's joy of the clean beat, a\n planetary system far afield, a closeup view of the universe, history in\n the making.\n\n\n Interstellar Chief Rexroad knocked the dottle from his pipe in a tray,\n saying, \"Transworld Press is willing to let you have a leave of\n abscence, if you're interested.\"", "\"Gentlemen,\" Branson said at last, as Ellason knew he would, \"I want\n to introduce Keith Ellason, whose presence Interstellar has impressed\n upon us. On loan from Transworld, he will have an observer status.\" He\n introduced him to the others. All of them seemed friendly; Ellason\n thought it was a good staff.\n\n\n Branson detained him after the others had gone. \"One thing, Mr.\n Ellason. To make it easier for you, I suggest you think of this journey\n strictly from the observer viewpoint. There will be no story for\n Transworld at the end.\"\n\n\n Ellason was startled. While he had considered the possibility, he had\n not dwelt on it. Now it loomed large in his mind. \"I don't understand,\n Captain Branson. It seems to me—\"", "And so, Ellason observed in his notebook, are wars created.\nSeen in space, stars are unmoving, silent, sterile bright eyes ever\n watchful and accusing. To men unused to it, such a sight numbs,\n compresses, stultifies. He introduces a countermeasure, proof he\n exists, which is any overt act, sometimes violent.\nOn the forty-fifth day June Failright, the young wife of one of the\n passenger meteorologists, ran screaming down one of the long corridors\n of the Third Quadrant. She told the captain she had been attacked in\n her compartment while her husband was in the ship's library. She was\n taken to one of the ship's doctors, who confirmed it.\n\n\n She said the culprit was a husky man wearing a red rubber mask, and\n though her description of what he had done did not appear in the story\n in the newsletter, it lost no time in penetrating every compartment of\n the ship.", "\"I figured as much,\" Ellason said. \"I've been doing a lot of thinking.\"\n\n\n \"You're perhaps a little too good as an observer,\" Branson said. \"Or\n maybe it was because you really weren't one of the colonists. But no\n matter, Critten did a good job. He was trained by an old friend of mine\n for this job, Gelthorpe Nill. Nill used to be in counter-espionage when\n there were wars.\"\n\n\n \"You were excellent,\" Ellason said.\n\n\n \"Can't say I enjoyed the role,\" said Critten, \"but I think it saved\n lives.\"\n\n\n \"Let me get this straight. Interstellar thought that it was idleness\n and boredom that caused the killings on the\nWeblor I\n, so they had you\n trained to be a scapegoat. Is that right?\"", "Rexroad said very gravely, \"We've got the finest captain in\n Interplanetary. Harvey Branson. No doubt you've heard of him. He's\n spent his life in our own system, and he's handpicking his own crew. We\n have also raised prerequisites for applicants. We don't think anything\n is going to happen, but if it does, we want to get an impersonal,\n unprejudiced view. That's where you come in. You do the observing, the\n reporting. We'll evaluate it on your return.\"\n\n\n \"If I return,\" said Ellason.", "Ellason brightened. \"And by that time everybody was seeing Red Mask\n everywhere and the colonists organized against him.\"\n\n\n \"Gave them something to do,\" Branson said.\n\n\n \"Every time things got dull, I livened them up. I got a stunner and\n robbed along the corridor. That really stirred them. Lucky nobody got\n hurt during any of it, including that Stoneman woman. I was trying to\n rob her when she woke up.\"\nBranson cleared his throat. \"Ah, Ellason about that story. You\n understand you can't write it, don't you?\"\n\n\n Ellason said regretfully that he did understand.\n\n\n \"The colonists will never know the truth,\" Branson went on. \"There will\n be other ships outward bound.\"", "\"It is not my desire to interfere in passenger affairs,\" he said.\n \"Insofar as the ship is concerned, it is my duty to make certain no\n crewman is guilty. This I am doing. But my crew is not and cannot be\n a police force for you. It is up to you people to police and protect\n yourselves.\"\n\n\n \"How can we protect ourselves without stunners?\" one colonist called\n out.\n\n\n \"Has Red Mask a gun?\" Branson retorted. \"It seems to me you have a\n better weapon than any gun.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\"\n\n\n \"This ship is only so wide, so long and so deep. If every inch is\n searched, you'll find your man. He has to be somewhere aboard.\"", "Critten sighed. \"And I'll have to be caught again.\"\nYes, we're anonymous, nameless, we Nillys, for that's what we call\n each other, and are a theme, with variations, in the endless stretches\n of deep space, objects of hatred and contempt, professional heels,\n dying once a trip when the time is ripe, antidote to boredom, and we'll\n ply our trade, our little tragedies, on a thousand ships bringing\n humanity to new worlds.", "The\nWeblor I\nhad taken off on the first trip to Antheon five years\n before with a thousand families, reached the planet with less than five\n hundred surviving colonists. Upon the return to Earth a year later, the\n crew's report of suffering and chaos during the year's outgoing voyage\n was twisted, distorted and fragmentary. Ellason remembered it well. The\n decision of Interstellar was that the colonists started a revolution\n far out in space, that it was fanned by the ignorance of Captain\n Sessions in dealing with such matters.\n\n\n \"Space affects men in a peculiar way,\" Phipps said. \"We have conquered\n the problem of small groups in space—witness the discovery of\n Antheon, for example—but when there are large groups, control is more\n difficult.\"\n\n\n \"Sessions,\" Rexroad said, \"was a bully. The trouble started at about\n the halfway point. It ended with passengers engaging in open warfare\n with each other and the crew. Sessions was lucky to escape with his\n life.\"", "\"I suppose that's problematical,\" Phipps said, \"but I think you will.\n Captain Branson and his fifty crewmen want to return as badly as you\n do.\" He grinned. \"You can write that novel you're always talking about\n on your return trip on the\nWeblor II\n.\"\nBeing a Nilly is important, probably as important as running the ship,\n and I think it is this thought that keeps us satisfied, willing to be\n what we are.\nThe\nWeblor II\nhad been built in space, as had its predecessor, the\nWeblor I\n, at a tremendous cost. Basically, it was an instrument\n which would open distant vistas to colonization, reducing the", "\"Let me put it differently. Let me say that you will not understand why\n I say that until the journey ends.\" He smiled. \"Perhaps I shouldn't\n have mentioned it.\"\nEllason left the captain's quarters with an odd taste in his mouth. Now\n why had Branson said that? Why hadn't Rexroad or Phipps said something,\n if it was important?\n\n\n He made himself comfortable in his seven-foot-by-seven-foot cubicle,\n which is to say he dropped on his bed, found it more comfortable than\n he thought it would be, put his arms behind his head, stared at the\n ceiling. Metal walls, no windows, one floor vent, one ceiling vent,\n and a solitary ceiling molding tube-light. This would be his home for\n a year, just as there were homes like it for three thousand others,\n except that the family rooms would be larger. His quarters were near\n the front of the spike near the officers' quarters.", "The Quadrant Council congratulated itself. The passengers were proud\n of themselves. A special congratulatory message from Captain Branson\n appeared one day in the Bulletin newsletter.\n\n\n The colonists settled down to living out the rest of the voyage until\n the landing on Antheon.\n\n\n But on the 170th day calamity struck. Red Mask appropriated one of the\n stunners, made his way down one whole corridor section in Quadrant Two,\n put occupants to sleep as he went, taking many articles of value and\n leaving disorder behind.\n\n\n Ellason interviewed as many victims as he could, noted it all in\n his book. The things taken were keepsakes, photographs and items of\n personal value. It seemed to be the work of a madman. If Red Mask\n wanted to make everyone furious, he certainly succeeded.", "He looked at his watch, picked up his notebook and made an entry. The\n ship right now would be slipping ever so slowly away from Earth. He got\n up. He'd have to go forward to the observation dome to see that. Last\n view of Earth for two years.\nThe penetration of space by large groups is the coming out from under\n the traditions of thousands of years, and as these planet-orginated\n rules fall away, the floundering group seeks a new control, for they\n are humanity adrift, rudderless, for whom the stars are no longer\n bearings but nonexistent things, and values are altered if they are not\n shown the way.\nThe theft of Carver Janssen's attache case occurred on the thirty-first\n day out. In Ellason's mind the incident, though insignificant from the\n standpoint of the ship as a whole, could very well be the cause of\n dissension later on. His notes covering it were therefore very thorough.", "Ellason was present when a delegation from the Third Quadrant called on\n Captain Branson, demanding action.\n\n\n Branson remained seated behind his desk, unperturbed, saying, \"I have\n no crewmen to spare for police duty.\"\n\n\n The delegation commenced speaking vehemently, to be quieted by\n Branson's raised hand.\n\n\n \"I sympathize,\" Branson said, \"but it is up to each quadrant to deal\n with its problems, whatever they may be. My job is to get us to\n Antheon.\"\n\n\n The group left in a surly mood.\n\n\n \"You wonder at my reluctance, Mr. Ellason,\" Captain Branson said. \"But\n suppose I assign the crew to patrol duties, the culprit isn't caught,\n and further incidents occur. What then? It soon becomes the crew's\n fault. And soon the colonists will begin thinking these things might be\n the crew's doing in the first place.\"", "\"Sure,\" Critten said. \"You colonists got the easy life as passengers,\n just sitting around. I had to work my head off keeping records for you\n lazy bastards.\"\n\n\n The verdict was, of course, death.\n\n\n They executed Harrel Critten on the morning of the 270th day with\n blasts from six stunners supplied with full power. It was witnessed\n by a great crowd in the assembly hall. A detail from the ship's crew\n disposed of his body through a chute.\n\n\n It was all duly recorded in Keith Ellason's notebooks.\nDying is easy for a Nilly. Especially if it's arranged for beforehand,\n which it always is.\nThe\nWeblor II\nwas only one day out of orbit when Captain Branson sent\n for Ellason and introduced him to the executed man.\n\n\n \"Hello,\" Critten said, grinning from ear to ear.", "Ellason left, feeling uneasy. If he were Branson, he'd initiate an\n investigation, if nothing else than to prove the crew guiltless. Why\n couldn't Branson see the wisdom of setting an example for the colonists?\nAs a Nilly, I knew that space breeds hate. There is a seed of\n malevolence in every man. It sometimes blossoms out among the stars. On\n the\nWeblor II\nit was ready for ripening.\nRaymond Palugger was killed in the ship's hospital on the sixty-first\n day. Palugger, a Fourth Quadrant passenger, had complained of feeling\n ill, had been hospitalized with a diagnosis of ileus. He had put his\n money belt in the drawer of the small stand beside his bed. A man\n in a red mask was seen hurrying from the hospital area, and a staff\n investigation revealed that Palugger had died trying to prevent the\n theft of the belt.", "Ellason sought out Carver Janssen. He was a middle-aged man with a\n tired face and sad eyes. He said, \"Now what am I going to Antheon\n for? I could only take along so much baggage and I threw out some\n comfort items to make room for the seeds. I'm a horticulturist, and\n Interstellar asked me to go along. But what use am I now? Where am\n I going to get seeds like those? Do you know how long it took me to\n collect them? They're not ordinary seeds, Mr. Ellason.\"\n\n\n There was an appeal from Janssen in the next day's newsletter\n describing the seeds, telling of their value, and requesting their\n return in the interests of the Antheon colony and of humanity.\n\n\n On the thirty-fourth day a witness turned up who said he had seen a\n man emerging from Janssen's compartment with the black case. \"I didn't\n think anything of it at the time,\" Jamieson Dievers said.", "Branson asked him to describe the man.\n\n\n \"Oh, he was about six feet tall, stocky build, and he wore a red rubber\n mask that covered his head completely.\"\n\n\n \"Didn't you think that was important?\" Branson asked in an outraged\n voice. \"A man wearing a red mask?\"\n\n\n Dievers shrugged. \"This is a spaceship. How would I know whether a red\n mask—or a blue or green one—does or doesn't belong on a spaceship?\"\n\n\n Although Dievers' account appeared in the newsletter, it was largely\n discounted.\n\n\n \"If it is true,\" Branson told Ellason, \"the theft must be the work of\n a psychotic. But I don't believe Jamieson Dievers. It may well be he's\n the psychotic.\" He snorted. \"Red rubber mask! I think I'll have Dievers\n put through psychiatry.\"", "\"Are you out of your minds?\" Branson exclaimed.\n\n\n Tom Tilbury, Fourth Quadrant leader, said, \"We want to set up a police\n force, Captain. We want stunners.\"\n\n\n \"There's no law against it,\" Branson said, \"but it's a rule of mine\n that no weapons are to be issued en route.\"\n\n\n \"If we had had a gun, we'd have got Red Mask,\" Tilbury said.\n\n\n \"And I might have a murder on my conscience.\"\n\n\n Tilbury said, \"We've also thought of that. Suppose you supply us with\n half-power stunners? That way we can stun but not kill.\"\n\n\n They got their guns. Now there were twenty-four policemen on duty in\n the corridors—eight on at a time. Ellason observed that for the first\n time the passengers seemed relaxed.", "Ellason had to smile at that. What did Captain Branson think of those\n colonists who killed each other on the\nWeblor I\n? They had passed\n stability tests too. This, then, was what happened when you took three\n thousand strangers and stuck them in a can for a year.\nWhen Ellason saw Branson about it, the captain said, \"Of course I\n realize it takes only a little thing like this to set things off. I\n know people get tired of seeing each other, playing the same tapes,\n looking at the stars from the observation dome, walking down the same\n corridors, reading the same books, eating the same meals, though God\n knows we try to vary it as much as we can. Space creates rough edges.\n But the point is, we know all this, and knowing it, we shouldn't let it\n happen. We've got to find that thief.\"\n\n\n \"What would he want seeds for? Have you thought of that?\"\n\n\n \"Of course. They'd have real value on Antheon.\"" ], [ "\"Oh, there'll be a trial, Mr. Ellason, but you don't think any jury'd\n let him live after all the things he's done, do you?\"\nRed Mask was stunned in Quadrant Four in a corridor by a policeman\n named Terryl Placer on the 201st day. The criminal was carried to the\n assembly room surrounded by guards, for he surely would have been\n mauled, if not killed, by angry colonists who crowded around. In the\n assembly hall his mask was whipped off. The crowd gasped. Nobody knew\n him.\n\n\n Ellason's first thought was that he must be a stowaway, but then he\n remembered the face, and Captain Branson, who came to have a look at\n him, unhappily admitted the man was a member of the crew. His name was\n Harrel Critten and he was a record keeper third class.\n\n\n \"Well, Critten,\" Branson roared at him, \"what have you got to say for\n yourself?\"", "\"Sure,\" Critten said. \"You colonists got the easy life as passengers,\n just sitting around. I had to work my head off keeping records for you\n lazy bastards.\"\n\n\n The verdict was, of course, death.\n\n\n They executed Harrel Critten on the morning of the 270th day with\n blasts from six stunners supplied with full power. It was witnessed\n by a great crowd in the assembly hall. A detail from the ship's crew\n disposed of his body through a chute.\n\n\n It was all duly recorded in Keith Ellason's notebooks.\nDying is easy for a Nilly. Especially if it's arranged for beforehand,\n which it always is.\nThe\nWeblor II\nwas only one day out of orbit when Captain Branson sent\n for Ellason and introduced him to the executed man.\n\n\n \"Hello,\" Critten said, grinning from ear to ear.", "Attendant to taking notes on this incident, Ellason noted a strange\n thing. Janssen lived in that part of the ship known as the First\n Quadrant, and those who lived in that quadrant—more than seven hundred\n men, women and children—felt that the thief must surely live in\n Quadrant Two or Four. Elias Cromley, who had the compartment next to\n Janssen's, sounded the consensus when he said, \"Surely a man wouldn't\n steal from his own quadrant, now would he, Mr. Ellason?\"", "Critten nodded. \"When great numbers are being transported, they are apt\n to magnify each little event because so little happens. It was my job\n to see that they directed none of their venom against each other or the\n crew, only toward me.\"\n\n\n Branson smiled. \"It made the time pass quickly and interestingly for\n the passengers.\"\n\n\n \"To say nothing of me,\" Critten said.\n\n\n \"And you, Mr. Ellason, were along to observe it all,\" Captain Branson\n put in. \"Interstellar wanted an accurate picture of this. If it worked,\n they told me they'd use it on other trips to Antheon.\"\n\n\n Ellason nodded. \"No time for brooding, for differences of opinion on\n small matters. Just time to hate Mr. Critten. Unanimously.\"\n\n\n \"Probably,\" Critten said, \"you are wondering about the execution.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally.\"", "Critten sighed. \"And I'll have to be caught again.\"\nYes, we're anonymous, nameless, we Nillys, for that's what we call\n each other, and are a theme, with variations, in the endless stretches\n of deep space, objects of hatred and contempt, professional heels,\n dying once a trip when the time is ripe, antidote to boredom, and we'll\n ply our trade, our little tragedies, on a thousand ships bringing\n humanity to new worlds.", "\"Go to hell,\" Critten said quietly. As if it were an afterthought, he\n spat at the captain.\n\n\n Branson looked as if he were going to kill the man himself right there\n and then.\n\n\n It was a long trial—from the 220th to the 241st day—and there didn't\n seem to be much doubt about the outcome, for Critten didn't help his\n own cause during any of it.\n\n\n Lemuel Tarper, who was appointed prosecutor, asked him, \"What did you\n do with the loot, Critten?\"\n\n\n Critten looked him square in the eye and said, \"I threw it out one of\n the escape chutes. Does that answer your question?\"\n\n\n \"Threw it away?\" Tarper and the crowd were incredulous.", "\"I figured as much,\" Ellason said. \"I've been doing a lot of thinking.\"\n\n\n \"You're perhaps a little too good as an observer,\" Branson said. \"Or\n maybe it was because you really weren't one of the colonists. But no\n matter, Critten did a good job. He was trained by an old friend of mine\n for this job, Gelthorpe Nill. Nill used to be in counter-espionage when\n there were wars.\"\n\n\n \"You were excellent,\" Ellason said.\n\n\n \"Can't say I enjoyed the role,\" said Critten, \"but I think it saved\n lives.\"\n\n\n \"Let me get this straight. Interstellar thought that it was idleness\n and boredom that caused the killings on the\nWeblor I\n, so they had you\n trained to be a scapegoat. Is that right?\"", "\"Oh, yes, Mr. Ellason, we're going to get him,\" said Tilbury, now chief\n of police, cracking his knuckles, his eyes glowing at the thought.\n \"We're bound to get him. We've got things worked out to the finest\n detail. He won't be able to get through our fingers now. Just let him\n make so much as a move.\"\n\n\n \"And what will you do when you get him?\"\n\n\n \"Kill him,\" Tilbury said, licking his lips, his eyes glowing more\n fiercely than ever.\n\n\n \"Without a trial?\"", "Branson asked him to describe the man.\n\n\n \"Oh, he was about six feet tall, stocky build, and he wore a red rubber\n mask that covered his head completely.\"\n\n\n \"Didn't you think that was important?\" Branson asked in an outraged\n voice. \"A man wearing a red mask?\"\n\n\n Dievers shrugged. \"This is a spaceship. How would I know whether a red\n mask—or a blue or green one—does or doesn't belong on a spaceship?\"\n\n\n Although Dievers' account appeared in the newsletter, it was largely\n discounted.\n\n\n \"If it is true,\" Branson told Ellason, \"the theft must be the work of\n a psychotic. But I don't believe Jamieson Dievers. It may well be he's\n the psychotic.\" He snorted. \"Red rubber mask! I think I'll have Dievers\n put through psychiatry.\"", "\"What does he want that stuff for?\" Casey Stromberg, a passenger\n doctor, asked. \"I can see him taking my narcotics, my doctor's kit—but\n my dead wife's picture? That I don't understand.\"\n\n\n It was the same with others. \"The man's insane, Mr. Ellason. Positively\n insane.\" Many people said it.\n\n\n The council issued orders that all passengers from now on would be\n required to lock their compartments at all times. More guns were\n obtained from the captain. More policemen were appointed.\n\n\n Ellason was busy noting it all in his book. It became filled with\n jottings about innocent people being accidentally stunned when\n trigger-happy policemen thought their movements suspicious, about one\n man's suspicion of another and the ensuing search of compartments,\n people who saw Red Mask here, saw him there. Hardly a day went by\n without some new development.", "And so, Ellason observed in his notebook, are wars created.\nSeen in space, stars are unmoving, silent, sterile bright eyes ever\n watchful and accusing. To men unused to it, such a sight numbs,\n compresses, stultifies. He introduces a countermeasure, proof he\n exists, which is any overt act, sometimes violent.\nOn the forty-fifth day June Failright, the young wife of one of the\n passenger meteorologists, ran screaming down one of the long corridors\n of the Third Quadrant. She told the captain she had been attacked in\n her compartment while her husband was in the ship's library. She was\n taken to one of the ship's doctors, who confirmed it.\n\n\n She said the culprit was a husky man wearing a red rubber mask, and\n though her description of what he had done did not appear in the story\n in the newsletter, it lost no time in penetrating every compartment of\n the ship.", "Captain Branson did not wait for the newsletter. Through the ship's\n speaker system, he reported that Palugger had a fortune in credits\n in the belt and had died of a severe beating. He said that since the\n incident occurred in the staff section of the ship, his crew would be\n forced to submit to a thorough inspection in an effort to find the\n mask, the seed case, the money and the man.\n\n\n \"I will not countenance such an act by a crewman,\" Branson said. \"If\n and when he is found, he will be severely dealt with. But he might not\n be a member of the crew. I am ordering an assembly of all passengers at\n nine tomorrow morning in the auditorium. I will speak to you all then.\"\nFaces were angry, tongues were sharp at the meeting, eyes suspicious\n and tempers short. Above it all was the overpowering presence of\n Captain Branson speaking to them.", "The captain's briefing room was crowded, the air was heavy with the\n breathing of so many men, and the ventilators could not quite clear the\n air of tobacco smoke that drifted aimlessly here and there before it\n was caught and whisked away.\n\n\n In the tradition of newspaperman and observer, Keith Ellason tried\n to be as inconspicuous as possible, pressing against a bulkhead, but\n Captain Branson's eyes sought his several times as Branson listened\n to final reports from his engineers, record keepers, fuel men,\n computermen, and all the rest. He grunted his approval or disapproval,\n made a suggestion here, a restriction there. There was no doubt that\n Branson was in charge, yet there was a human quality about him that\n Ellason liked. The captain's was a lean face, well tanned, and his eyes\n were chunks of blue.", "Ellason brightened. \"And by that time everybody was seeing Red Mask\n everywhere and the colonists organized against him.\"\n\n\n \"Gave them something to do,\" Branson said.\n\n\n \"Every time things got dull, I livened them up. I got a stunner and\n robbed along the corridor. That really stirred them. Lucky nobody got\n hurt during any of it, including that Stoneman woman. I was trying to\n rob her when she woke up.\"\nBranson cleared his throat. \"Ah, Ellason about that story. You\n understand you can't write it, don't you?\"\n\n\n Ellason said regretfully that he did understand.\n\n\n \"The colonists will never know the truth,\" Branson went on. \"There will\n be other ships outward bound.\"", "\"We removed the charges before the guns were used.\"\n\n\n \"And Carver Janssen's case?\"\n\n\n \"He'll get it back when he's shuttled to Antheon. And all the other\n items will be returned. They're all tagged with their owner's names.\n Captain Branson will say they were found somewhere on the ship. You\n see, I was a liar.\"\n\n\n \"How about that assault on June Failright?\"\n\n\n Critten grinned again. \"She played right into our hands. She ran out\n into the hall claiming I'd attacked her, which I did not. She was\n certainly amazed when the ship's physicians agreed with her. Of course\n Captain Branson told them to do that.\"\n\n\n \"And the murder?\"\n\n\n \"Raymond Palugger died in the hospital all right, but he died from\n his illness on the operating table. We turned it into an advantage by\n making it look suspicious.\"", "The Quadrant Council congratulated itself. The passengers were proud\n of themselves. A special congratulatory message from Captain Branson\n appeared one day in the Bulletin newsletter.\n\n\n The colonists settled down to living out the rest of the voyage until\n the landing on Antheon.\n\n\n But on the 170th day calamity struck. Red Mask appropriated one of the\n stunners, made his way down one whole corridor section in Quadrant Two,\n put occupants to sleep as he went, taking many articles of value and\n leaving disorder behind.\n\n\n Ellason interviewed as many victims as he could, noted it all in\n his book. The things taken were keepsakes, photographs and items of\n personal value. It seemed to be the work of a madman. If Red Mask\n wanted to make everyone furious, he certainly succeeded.", "Let Red Mask move against armed men, they said.\n\n\n Yeah, let him see what happens now.\n\n\n Red Mask did.\nOn the 101st day he was seen in a corridor in Quadrant Four. Emil\n Pierce, policeman on duty, managed to squeeze off several shots at his\n retreating figure.\n\n\n Red Mask was seen again on the 120th day, on the 135th day, and the\n 157th day. He was seen, shot at, but not hit. He was also unable to\n commit any crime.\n\n\n We've got him on the run, the colonists said.\n\n\n He's afraid to do anything, now that we've got police protection, they\n said smugly.", "He knew Secretary Phipps from years of contacting, and now Phipps said,\n \"Personally, I don't want to see anybody else on the job. You've got a\n fine record in this sort of thing.\"\n\n\n Keith Ellason smiled, but just barely. \"You should have called me for\n the first trip.\"\n\n\n Phipps nodded. \"I wish we had had you on the\nWeblor I\n.\"\n\n\n \"Crewmen,\" Rexroad said, \"make poor reporters.\"", "Ellason was present when a delegation from the Third Quadrant called on\n Captain Branson, demanding action.\n\n\n Branson remained seated behind his desk, unperturbed, saying, \"I have\n no crewmen to spare for police duty.\"\n\n\n The delegation commenced speaking vehemently, to be quieted by\n Branson's raised hand.\n\n\n \"I sympathize,\" Branson said, \"but it is up to each quadrant to deal\n with its problems, whatever they may be. My job is to get us to\n Antheon.\"\n\n\n The group left in a surly mood.\n\n\n \"You wonder at my reluctance, Mr. Ellason,\" Captain Branson said. \"But\n suppose I assign the crew to patrol duties, the culprit isn't caught,\n and further incidents occur. What then? It soon becomes the crew's\n fault. And soon the colonists will begin thinking these things might be\n the crew's doing in the first place.\"", "\"Yes,\" Ellason said, \"but what if the intruder is a crewman?\"\n\n\n \"I know my men,\" Branson said flatly.\n\n\n \"You could have a shake-down for the mask and the seed case.\"\n\n\n \"Do you think it is a member of the crew?\" Branson's eyes were bright.\n \"No, I trust my men. I won't violate that trust.\"" ], [ "\"Are you out of your minds?\" Branson exclaimed.\n\n\n Tom Tilbury, Fourth Quadrant leader, said, \"We want to set up a police\n force, Captain. We want stunners.\"\n\n\n \"There's no law against it,\" Branson said, \"but it's a rule of mine\n that no weapons are to be issued en route.\"\n\n\n \"If we had had a gun, we'd have got Red Mask,\" Tilbury said.\n\n\n \"And I might have a murder on my conscience.\"\n\n\n Tilbury said, \"We've also thought of that. Suppose you supply us with\n half-power stunners? That way we can stun but not kill.\"\n\n\n They got their guns. Now there were twenty-four policemen on duty in\n the corridors—eight on at a time. Ellason observed that for the first\n time the passengers seemed relaxed.", "Let Red Mask move against armed men, they said.\n\n\n Yeah, let him see what happens now.\n\n\n Red Mask did.\nOn the 101st day he was seen in a corridor in Quadrant Four. Emil\n Pierce, policeman on duty, managed to squeeze off several shots at his\n retreating figure.\n\n\n Red Mask was seen again on the 120th day, on the 135th day, and the\n 157th day. He was seen, shot at, but not hit. He was also unable to\n commit any crime.\n\n\n We've got him on the run, the colonists said.\n\n\n He's afraid to do anything, now that we've got police protection, they\n said smugly.", "Ellason was present when a delegation from the Third Quadrant called on\n Captain Branson, demanding action.\n\n\n Branson remained seated behind his desk, unperturbed, saying, \"I have\n no crewmen to spare for police duty.\"\n\n\n The delegation commenced speaking vehemently, to be quieted by\n Branson's raised hand.\n\n\n \"I sympathize,\" Branson said, \"but it is up to each quadrant to deal\n with its problems, whatever they may be. My job is to get us to\n Antheon.\"\n\n\n The group left in a surly mood.\n\n\n \"You wonder at my reluctance, Mr. Ellason,\" Captain Branson said. \"But\n suppose I assign the crew to patrol duties, the culprit isn't caught,\n and further incidents occur. What then? It soon becomes the crew's\n fault. And soon the colonists will begin thinking these things might be\n the crew's doing in the first place.\"", "\"It is not my desire to interfere in passenger affairs,\" he said.\n \"Insofar as the ship is concerned, it is my duty to make certain no\n crewman is guilty. This I am doing. But my crew is not and cannot be\n a police force for you. It is up to you people to police and protect\n yourselves.\"\n\n\n \"How can we protect ourselves without stunners?\" one colonist called\n out.\n\n\n \"Has Red Mask a gun?\" Branson retorted. \"It seems to me you have a\n better weapon than any gun.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\"\n\n\n \"This ship is only so wide, so long and so deep. If every inch is\n searched, you'll find your man. He has to be somewhere aboard.\"", "The colonists quieted. Benjamin Simpson, one of the older men, was\n elected president of the newly formed Quadrant Council. One man from\n each of the quadrants was named to serve under him. Each of these men\n in turn selected five others from his own group.\n\n\n Those assembled waited in the hall while each team of six inspected\n the compartments of the others. These compartments were then locked,\n everyone returned to his compartment, and the larger search was\n conducted. It took twenty hours.\n\n\n No mask was found. No mask, no case, no money, no man.", "Attendant to taking notes on this incident, Ellason noted a strange\n thing. Janssen lived in that part of the ship known as the First\n Quadrant, and those who lived in that quadrant—more than seven hundred\n men, women and children—felt that the thief must surely live in\n Quadrant Two or Four. Elias Cromley, who had the compartment next to\n Janssen's, sounded the consensus when he said, \"Surely a man wouldn't\n steal from his own quadrant, now would he, Mr. Ellason?\"", "\"Oh, there'll be a trial, Mr. Ellason, but you don't think any jury'd\n let him live after all the things he's done, do you?\"\nRed Mask was stunned in Quadrant Four in a corridor by a policeman\n named Terryl Placer on the 201st day. The criminal was carried to the\n assembly room surrounded by guards, for he surely would have been\n mauled, if not killed, by angry colonists who crowded around. In the\n assembly hall his mask was whipped off. The crowd gasped. Nobody knew\n him.\n\n\n Ellason's first thought was that he must be a stowaway, but then he\n remembered the face, and Captain Branson, who came to have a look at\n him, unhappily admitted the man was a member of the crew. His name was\n Harrel Critten and he was a record keeper third class.\n\n\n \"Well, Critten,\" Branson roared at him, \"what have you got to say for\n yourself?\"", "\"What does he want that stuff for?\" Casey Stromberg, a passenger\n doctor, asked. \"I can see him taking my narcotics, my doctor's kit—but\n my dead wife's picture? That I don't understand.\"\n\n\n It was the same with others. \"The man's insane, Mr. Ellason. Positively\n insane.\" Many people said it.\n\n\n The council issued orders that all passengers from now on would be\n required to lock their compartments at all times. More guns were\n obtained from the captain. More policemen were appointed.\n\n\n Ellason was busy noting it all in his book. It became filled with\n jottings about innocent people being accidentally stunned when\n trigger-happy policemen thought their movements suspicious, about one\n man's suspicion of another and the ensuing search of compartments,\n people who saw Red Mask here, saw him there. Hardly a day went by\n without some new development.", "The Quadrant Council congratulated itself. The passengers were proud\n of themselves. A special congratulatory message from Captain Branson\n appeared one day in the Bulletin newsletter.\n\n\n The colonists settled down to living out the rest of the voyage until\n the landing on Antheon.\n\n\n But on the 170th day calamity struck. Red Mask appropriated one of the\n stunners, made his way down one whole corridor section in Quadrant Two,\n put occupants to sleep as he went, taking many articles of value and\n leaving disorder behind.\n\n\n Ellason interviewed as many victims as he could, noted it all in\n his book. The things taken were keepsakes, photographs and items of\n personal value. It seemed to be the work of a madman. If Red Mask\n wanted to make everyone furious, he certainly succeeded.", "\"We removed the charges before the guns were used.\"\n\n\n \"And Carver Janssen's case?\"\n\n\n \"He'll get it back when he's shuttled to Antheon. And all the other\n items will be returned. They're all tagged with their owner's names.\n Captain Branson will say they were found somewhere on the ship. You\n see, I was a liar.\"\n\n\n \"How about that assault on June Failright?\"\n\n\n Critten grinned again. \"She played right into our hands. She ran out\n into the hall claiming I'd attacked her, which I did not. She was\n certainly amazed when the ship's physicians agreed with her. Of course\n Captain Branson told them to do that.\"\n\n\n \"And the murder?\"\n\n\n \"Raymond Palugger died in the hospital all right, but he died from\n his illness on the operating table. We turned it into an advantage by\n making it look suspicious.\"", "Captain Branson did not wait for the newsletter. Through the ship's\n speaker system, he reported that Palugger had a fortune in credits\n in the belt and had died of a severe beating. He said that since the\n incident occurred in the staff section of the ship, his crew would be\n forced to submit to a thorough inspection in an effort to find the\n mask, the seed case, the money and the man.\n\n\n \"I will not countenance such an act by a crewman,\" Branson said. \"If\n and when he is found, he will be severely dealt with. But he might not\n be a member of the crew. I am ordering an assembly of all passengers at\n nine tomorrow morning in the auditorium. I will speak to you all then.\"\nFaces were angry, tongues were sharp at the meeting, eyes suspicious\n and tempers short. Above it all was the overpowering presence of\n Captain Branson speaking to them.", "Ellason brightened. \"And by that time everybody was seeing Red Mask\n everywhere and the colonists organized against him.\"\n\n\n \"Gave them something to do,\" Branson said.\n\n\n \"Every time things got dull, I livened them up. I got a stunner and\n robbed along the corridor. That really stirred them. Lucky nobody got\n hurt during any of it, including that Stoneman woman. I was trying to\n rob her when she woke up.\"\nBranson cleared his throat. \"Ah, Ellason about that story. You\n understand you can't write it, don't you?\"\n\n\n Ellason said regretfully that he did understand.\n\n\n \"The colonists will never know the truth,\" Branson went on. \"There will\n be other ships outward bound.\"", "The captain reported that his search had been equally fruitless.\n At another assembly the following day it was decided to make the\n inspection teams permanent, to await further moves on the part of Red\n Mask. The Quadrant Council held periodic meetings to set up a method of\n trial for him when he was caught. It was all recorded in the newsletter\n and by Keith Ellason.\nWe Nillys know about hate and about violence. We know too that where\n there is hate there is violence, and where there is violence there is\n death.\nDuring sleep time on the seventy-ninth day Barbara Stoneman, awakened\n by a strange sound, sat up in the bed of her compartment to find a\n man in a red mask in her room. Her cries brought neighbors into the\n corridor. The flight of the man was witnessed by many, and several men\n tried to stop him. But the intruder was light on his feet and fast. He\n escaped.\n\n\n The Quadrant Council confronted the captain, demanding weapons.", "\"Oh, yes, Mr. Ellason, we're going to get him,\" said Tilbury, now chief\n of police, cracking his knuckles, his eyes glowing at the thought.\n \"We're bound to get him. We've got things worked out to the finest\n detail. He won't be able to get through our fingers now. Just let him\n make so much as a move.\"\n\n\n \"And what will you do when you get him?\"\n\n\n \"Kill him,\" Tilbury said, licking his lips, his eyes glowing more\n fiercely than ever.\n\n\n \"Without a trial?\"", "And so, Ellason observed in his notebook, are wars created.\nSeen in space, stars are unmoving, silent, sterile bright eyes ever\n watchful and accusing. To men unused to it, such a sight numbs,\n compresses, stultifies. He introduces a countermeasure, proof he\n exists, which is any overt act, sometimes violent.\nOn the forty-fifth day June Failright, the young wife of one of the\n passenger meteorologists, ran screaming down one of the long corridors\n of the Third Quadrant. She told the captain she had been attacked in\n her compartment while her husband was in the ship's library. She was\n taken to one of the ship's doctors, who confirmed it.\n\n\n She said the culprit was a husky man wearing a red rubber mask, and\n though her description of what he had done did not appear in the story\n in the newsletter, it lost no time in penetrating every compartment of\n the ship.", "Ellason left, feeling uneasy. If he were Branson, he'd initiate an\n investigation, if nothing else than to prove the crew guiltless. Why\n couldn't Branson see the wisdom of setting an example for the colonists?\nAs a Nilly, I knew that space breeds hate. There is a seed of\n malevolence in every man. It sometimes blossoms out among the stars. On\n the\nWeblor II\nit was ready for ripening.\nRaymond Palugger was killed in the ship's hospital on the sixty-first\n day. Palugger, a Fourth Quadrant passenger, had complained of feeling\n ill, had been hospitalized with a diagnosis of ileus. He had put his\n money belt in the drawer of the small stand beside his bed. A man\n in a red mask was seen hurrying from the hospital area, and a staff\n investigation revealed that Palugger had died trying to prevent the\n theft of the belt.", "COUNTERWEIGHT\nBy JERRY SOHL\nEvery town has crime—but\n \nespecially a town that is\n \ntraveling from star to star!\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, November 1959.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that", "Ellason had to smile at that. What did Captain Branson think of those\n colonists who killed each other on the\nWeblor I\n? They had passed\n stability tests too. This, then, was what happened when you took three\n thousand strangers and stuck them in a can for a year.\nWhen Ellason saw Branson about it, the captain said, \"Of course I\n realize it takes only a little thing like this to set things off. I\n know people get tired of seeing each other, playing the same tapes,\n looking at the stars from the observation dome, walking down the same\n corridors, reading the same books, eating the same meals, though God\n knows we try to vary it as much as we can. Space creates rough edges.\n But the point is, we know all this, and knowing it, we shouldn't let it\n happen. We've got to find that thief.\"\n\n\n \"What would he want seeds for? Have you thought of that?\"\n\n\n \"Of course. They'd have real value on Antheon.\"", "\"I figured as much,\" Ellason said. \"I've been doing a lot of thinking.\"\n\n\n \"You're perhaps a little too good as an observer,\" Branson said. \"Or\n maybe it was because you really weren't one of the colonists. But no\n matter, Critten did a good job. He was trained by an old friend of mine\n for this job, Gelthorpe Nill. Nill used to be in counter-espionage when\n there were wars.\"\n\n\n \"You were excellent,\" Ellason said.\n\n\n \"Can't say I enjoyed the role,\" said Critten, \"but I think it saved\n lives.\"\n\n\n \"Let me get this straight. Interstellar thought that it was idleness\n and boredom that caused the killings on the\nWeblor I\n, so they had you\n trained to be a scapegoat. Is that right?\"", "Janssen's case contained vegetable and flower seeds—thousands of\n them, according to the Captain's Bulletin, the ship's daily newsletter\n which went to all hands and passengers. In the Bulletin the captain\n appealed to the thief to return the case to Mr. Janssen. He said it\n was significant that all en route had passed stability tests, and that\n it was to the ship's discredit that someone with criminal tendencies\n should have been permitted aboard." ], [ "The captain's briefing room was crowded, the air was heavy with the\n breathing of so many men, and the ventilators could not quite clear the\n air of tobacco smoke that drifted aimlessly here and there before it\n was caught and whisked away.\n\n\n In the tradition of newspaperman and observer, Keith Ellason tried\n to be as inconspicuous as possible, pressing against a bulkhead, but\n Captain Branson's eyes sought his several times as Branson listened\n to final reports from his engineers, record keepers, fuel men,\n computermen, and all the rest. He grunted his approval or disapproval,\n made a suggestion here, a restriction there. There was no doubt that\n Branson was in charge, yet there was a human quality about him that\n Ellason liked. The captain's was a lean face, well tanned, and his eyes\n were chunks of blue.", "Critten nodded. \"When great numbers are being transported, they are apt\n to magnify each little event because so little happens. It was my job\n to see that they directed none of their venom against each other or the\n crew, only toward me.\"\n\n\n Branson smiled. \"It made the time pass quickly and interestingly for\n the passengers.\"\n\n\n \"To say nothing of me,\" Critten said.\n\n\n \"And you, Mr. Ellason, were along to observe it all,\" Captain Branson\n put in. \"Interstellar wanted an accurate picture of this. If it worked,\n they told me they'd use it on other trips to Antheon.\"\n\n\n Ellason nodded. \"No time for brooding, for differences of opinion on\n small matters. Just time to hate Mr. Critten. Unanimously.\"\n\n\n \"Probably,\" Critten said, \"you are wondering about the execution.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally.\"", "\"Go to hell,\" Critten said quietly. As if it were an afterthought, he\n spat at the captain.\n\n\n Branson looked as if he were going to kill the man himself right there\n and then.\n\n\n It was a long trial—from the 220th to the 241st day—and there didn't\n seem to be much doubt about the outcome, for Critten didn't help his\n own cause during any of it.\n\n\n Lemuel Tarper, who was appointed prosecutor, asked him, \"What did you\n do with the loot, Critten?\"\n\n\n Critten looked him square in the eye and said, \"I threw it out one of\n the escape chutes. Does that answer your question?\"\n\n\n \"Threw it away?\" Tarper and the crowd were incredulous.", "Captain Branson did not wait for the newsletter. Through the ship's\n speaker system, he reported that Palugger had a fortune in credits\n in the belt and had died of a severe beating. He said that since the\n incident occurred in the staff section of the ship, his crew would be\n forced to submit to a thorough inspection in an effort to find the\n mask, the seed case, the money and the man.\n\n\n \"I will not countenance such an act by a crewman,\" Branson said. \"If\n and when he is found, he will be severely dealt with. But he might not\n be a member of the crew. I am ordering an assembly of all passengers at\n nine tomorrow morning in the auditorium. I will speak to you all then.\"\nFaces were angry, tongues were sharp at the meeting, eyes suspicious\n and tempers short. Above it all was the overpowering presence of\n Captain Branson speaking to them.", "\"Oh, there'll be a trial, Mr. Ellason, but you don't think any jury'd\n let him live after all the things he's done, do you?\"\nRed Mask was stunned in Quadrant Four in a corridor by a policeman\n named Terryl Placer on the 201st day. The criminal was carried to the\n assembly room surrounded by guards, for he surely would have been\n mauled, if not killed, by angry colonists who crowded around. In the\n assembly hall his mask was whipped off. The crowd gasped. Nobody knew\n him.\n\n\n Ellason's first thought was that he must be a stowaway, but then he\n remembered the face, and Captain Branson, who came to have a look at\n him, unhappily admitted the man was a member of the crew. His name was\n Harrel Critten and he was a record keeper third class.\n\n\n \"Well, Critten,\" Branson roared at him, \"what have you got to say for\n yourself?\"", "Rexroad said very gravely, \"We've got the finest captain in\n Interplanetary. Harvey Branson. No doubt you've heard of him. He's\n spent his life in our own system, and he's handpicking his own crew. We\n have also raised prerequisites for applicants. We don't think anything\n is going to happen, but if it does, we want to get an impersonal,\n unprejudiced view. That's where you come in. You do the observing, the\n reporting. We'll evaluate it on your return.\"\n\n\n \"If I return,\" said Ellason.", "\"Sure,\" Critten said. \"You colonists got the easy life as passengers,\n just sitting around. I had to work my head off keeping records for you\n lazy bastards.\"\n\n\n The verdict was, of course, death.\n\n\n They executed Harrel Critten on the morning of the 270th day with\n blasts from six stunners supplied with full power. It was witnessed\n by a great crowd in the assembly hall. A detail from the ship's crew\n disposed of his body through a chute.\n\n\n It was all duly recorded in Keith Ellason's notebooks.\nDying is easy for a Nilly. Especially if it's arranged for beforehand,\n which it always is.\nThe\nWeblor II\nwas only one day out of orbit when Captain Branson sent\n for Ellason and introduced him to the executed man.\n\n\n \"Hello,\" Critten said, grinning from ear to ear.", "Ellason was present when a delegation from the Third Quadrant called on\n Captain Branson, demanding action.\n\n\n Branson remained seated behind his desk, unperturbed, saying, \"I have\n no crewmen to spare for police duty.\"\n\n\n The delegation commenced speaking vehemently, to be quieted by\n Branson's raised hand.\n\n\n \"I sympathize,\" Branson said, \"but it is up to each quadrant to deal\n with its problems, whatever they may be. My job is to get us to\n Antheon.\"\n\n\n The group left in a surly mood.\n\n\n \"You wonder at my reluctance, Mr. Ellason,\" Captain Branson said. \"But\n suppose I assign the crew to patrol duties, the culprit isn't caught,\n and further incidents occur. What then? It soon becomes the crew's\n fault. And soon the colonists will begin thinking these things might be\n the crew's doing in the first place.\"", "\"It is not my desire to interfere in passenger affairs,\" he said.\n \"Insofar as the ship is concerned, it is my duty to make certain no\n crewman is guilty. This I am doing. But my crew is not and cannot be\n a police force for you. It is up to you people to police and protect\n yourselves.\"\n\n\n \"How can we protect ourselves without stunners?\" one colonist called\n out.\n\n\n \"Has Red Mask a gun?\" Branson retorted. \"It seems to me you have a\n better weapon than any gun.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\"\n\n\n \"This ship is only so wide, so long and so deep. If every inch is\n searched, you'll find your man. He has to be somewhere aboard.\"", "\"I figured as much,\" Ellason said. \"I've been doing a lot of thinking.\"\n\n\n \"You're perhaps a little too good as an observer,\" Branson said. \"Or\n maybe it was because you really weren't one of the colonists. But no\n matter, Critten did a good job. He was trained by an old friend of mine\n for this job, Gelthorpe Nill. Nill used to be in counter-espionage when\n there were wars.\"\n\n\n \"You were excellent,\" Ellason said.\n\n\n \"Can't say I enjoyed the role,\" said Critten, \"but I think it saved\n lives.\"\n\n\n \"Let me get this straight. Interstellar thought that it was idleness\n and boredom that caused the killings on the\nWeblor I\n, so they had you\n trained to be a scapegoat. Is that right?\"", "\"Are you out of your minds?\" Branson exclaimed.\n\n\n Tom Tilbury, Fourth Quadrant leader, said, \"We want to set up a police\n force, Captain. We want stunners.\"\n\n\n \"There's no law against it,\" Branson said, \"but it's a rule of mine\n that no weapons are to be issued en route.\"\n\n\n \"If we had had a gun, we'd have got Red Mask,\" Tilbury said.\n\n\n \"And I might have a murder on my conscience.\"\n\n\n Tilbury said, \"We've also thought of that. Suppose you supply us with\n half-power stunners? That way we can stun but not kill.\"\n\n\n They got their guns. Now there were twenty-four policemen on duty in\n the corridors—eight on at a time. Ellason observed that for the first\n time the passengers seemed relaxed.", "\"Yes,\" Ellason said, \"but what if the intruder is a crewman?\"\n\n\n \"I know my men,\" Branson said flatly.\n\n\n \"You could have a shake-down for the mask and the seed case.\"\n\n\n \"Do you think it is a member of the crew?\" Branson's eyes were bright.\n \"No, I trust my men. I won't violate that trust.\"", "Branson asked him to describe the man.\n\n\n \"Oh, he was about six feet tall, stocky build, and he wore a red rubber\n mask that covered his head completely.\"\n\n\n \"Didn't you think that was important?\" Branson asked in an outraged\n voice. \"A man wearing a red mask?\"\n\n\n Dievers shrugged. \"This is a spaceship. How would I know whether a red\n mask—or a blue or green one—does or doesn't belong on a spaceship?\"\n\n\n Although Dievers' account appeared in the newsletter, it was largely\n discounted.\n\n\n \"If it is true,\" Branson told Ellason, \"the theft must be the work of\n a psychotic. But I don't believe Jamieson Dievers. It may well be he's\n the psychotic.\" He snorted. \"Red rubber mask! I think I'll have Dievers\n put through psychiatry.\"", "The Quadrant Council congratulated itself. The passengers were proud\n of themselves. A special congratulatory message from Captain Branson\n appeared one day in the Bulletin newsletter.\n\n\n The colonists settled down to living out the rest of the voyage until\n the landing on Antheon.\n\n\n But on the 170th day calamity struck. Red Mask appropriated one of the\n stunners, made his way down one whole corridor section in Quadrant Two,\n put occupants to sleep as he went, taking many articles of value and\n leaving disorder behind.\n\n\n Ellason interviewed as many victims as he could, noted it all in\n his book. The things taken were keepsakes, photographs and items of\n personal value. It seemed to be the work of a madman. If Red Mask\n wanted to make everyone furious, he certainly succeeded.", "\"Gentlemen,\" Branson said at last, as Ellason knew he would, \"I want\n to introduce Keith Ellason, whose presence Interstellar has impressed\n upon us. On loan from Transworld, he will have an observer status.\" He\n introduced him to the others. All of them seemed friendly; Ellason\n thought it was a good staff.\n\n\n Branson detained him after the others had gone. \"One thing, Mr.\n Ellason. To make it easier for you, I suggest you think of this journey\n strictly from the observer viewpoint. There will be no story for\n Transworld at the end.\"\n\n\n Ellason was startled. While he had considered the possibility, he had\n not dwelt on it. Now it loomed large in his mind. \"I don't understand,\n Captain Branson. It seems to me—\"", "\"Let me put it differently. Let me say that you will not understand why\n I say that until the journey ends.\" He smiled. \"Perhaps I shouldn't\n have mentioned it.\"\nEllason left the captain's quarters with an odd taste in his mouth. Now\n why had Branson said that? Why hadn't Rexroad or Phipps said something,\n if it was important?\n\n\n He made himself comfortable in his seven-foot-by-seven-foot cubicle,\n which is to say he dropped on his bed, found it more comfortable than\n he thought it would be, put his arms behind his head, stared at the\n ceiling. Metal walls, no windows, one floor vent, one ceiling vent,\n and a solitary ceiling molding tube-light. This would be his home for\n a year, just as there were homes like it for three thousand others,\n except that the family rooms would be larger. His quarters were near\n the front of the spike near the officers' quarters.", "Ellason had to smile at that. What did Captain Branson think of those\n colonists who killed each other on the\nWeblor I\n? They had passed\n stability tests too. This, then, was what happened when you took three\n thousand strangers and stuck them in a can for a year.\nWhen Ellason saw Branson about it, the captain said, \"Of course I\n realize it takes only a little thing like this to set things off. I\n know people get tired of seeing each other, playing the same tapes,\n looking at the stars from the observation dome, walking down the same\n corridors, reading the same books, eating the same meals, though God\n knows we try to vary it as much as we can. Space creates rough edges.\n But the point is, we know all this, and knowing it, we shouldn't let it\n happen. We've got to find that thief.\"\n\n\n \"What would he want seeds for? Have you thought of that?\"\n\n\n \"Of course. They'd have real value on Antheon.\"", "Ellason left, feeling uneasy. If he were Branson, he'd initiate an\n investigation, if nothing else than to prove the crew guiltless. Why\n couldn't Branson see the wisdom of setting an example for the colonists?\nAs a Nilly, I knew that space breeds hate. There is a seed of\n malevolence in every man. It sometimes blossoms out among the stars. On\n the\nWeblor II\nit was ready for ripening.\nRaymond Palugger was killed in the ship's hospital on the sixty-first\n day. Palugger, a Fourth Quadrant passenger, had complained of feeling\n ill, had been hospitalized with a diagnosis of ileus. He had put his\n money belt in the drawer of the small stand beside his bed. A man\n in a red mask was seen hurrying from the hospital area, and a staff\n investigation revealed that Palugger had died trying to prevent the\n theft of the belt.", "\"I suppose that's problematical,\" Phipps said, \"but I think you will.\n Captain Branson and his fifty crewmen want to return as badly as you\n do.\" He grinned. \"You can write that novel you're always talking about\n on your return trip on the\nWeblor II\n.\"\nBeing a Nilly is important, probably as important as running the ship,\n and I think it is this thought that keeps us satisfied, willing to be\n what we are.\nThe\nWeblor II\nhad been built in space, as had its predecessor, the\nWeblor I\n, at a tremendous cost. Basically, it was an instrument\n which would open distant vistas to colonization, reducing the", "Ellason brightened. \"And by that time everybody was seeing Red Mask\n everywhere and the colonists organized against him.\"\n\n\n \"Gave them something to do,\" Branson said.\n\n\n \"Every time things got dull, I livened them up. I got a stunner and\n robbed along the corridor. That really stirred them. Lucky nobody got\n hurt during any of it, including that Stoneman woman. I was trying to\n rob her when she woke up.\"\nBranson cleared his throat. \"Ah, Ellason about that story. You\n understand you can't write it, don't you?\"\n\n\n Ellason said regretfully that he did understand.\n\n\n \"The colonists will never know the truth,\" Branson went on. \"There will\n be other ships outward bound.\"" ] ]
train	58733	[ "Why didn't the Lieutenant know she was pregnant?", "Why can't Lieutenant Britton go back to Earth?", "Why did the Lieutenant go into labor early?", "Why do they need an incubator?", "Why can't they build an incubator?", "What is White Sands?", "Why is Alice so relaxed when she finds out there is no incubator aboard the space station?", "How does Alice feel about delivering the baby on the space station?" ]	[ [ "She has an irregular cycle.", "She had her tubes tied before going into space.", "She wasn't keeping track of her cycle.", "Women don't have periods in space." ], [ "There are no ships available to go to Earth at this time.", "There is no one else trained to replace her as Chief Radar Technician on the space station.", "The replacement Radar Technician was killed in a car wreck on his way to White Sands. A new technician will have to be trained.", "The G-forces the body is subjected to during space travel would affect the fetus." ], [ "A slight depressurization in the space station shocked her body into labor.", "Major Banes induced labor early because the baby was unusually large.", "The stress of living in outer space caused her body to go into pre-term labor.", "An asteroid crashed into the space station causing it to jerk unexpectedly. The Lieutenant fell and her water broke." ], [ "The baby is one month early.", "The baby is three months early.", "The baby is two months early.", "The baby is four months early." ], [ "They don't have the right kind of lights aboard the space station.", "It does not occur to them to build an incubator.", "None of them no how to build an incubator and the asteroid knocked out communications.", "There are no spare parts aboard the space station." ], [ "A city in New Mexico.", "A rocket base in New Mexico.", "An obstetrics facility in New Mexico.", "A mission control base in New Mexico." ], [ "Alice knows any room in the space station can be made into a giant incubator with minor adjustments.", "Alice is feeling delirious due to the pains of natural childbirth and is only concerned with getting the baby out, and getting the pain to stop at the moment.", "Alice is feeling the effects of the morphine they gave her for the contractions and is not concerned with much of anything right now.", "Alice is feeling the effects of the Demerol they gave her for the contractions and is not concerned with much of anything right now." ], [ "She is confident in Major Barnes. She feels he's perfectly competent, though obstetrics is not his field.", "She is excited. She's going to be famous. No one has ever had a baby in space before.", "She is terrified. No one has ever had a baby in space before.", "She is scared because the baby is so early and there is no incubator onboard the space station." ] ]	[ 1, 4, 1, 3, 4, 2, 1, 1 ]	[ 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "\"I'll say it won't! How about the incubator?\"\n\n\n There was a long pause. Finally, he said softly: \"There isn't any\n incubator. I didn't take the possibility of a premature delivery into\n account. It's my fault. I've done what I could, though; the ship is\n bringing one up. I—I think we'll be able to keep the child alive\n until—\"\n\n\n He stopped. Alice was bubbling up with laughter.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant! Lieutenant Britton! Alice! This is no time to get\n hysterical! Stop it!\"\n\n\n Her laughter slowed to a chuckle. \"\nMe\nget hysterical! That's a good\n one! What about you? You're so nervous you couldn't sip water out of a\n bathtub without spilling it!\"\n\n\n He blinked. \"What do you mean?\"", "And he had looked up at her scathingly. \"Lieutenant Britton, it is\n my personal opinion that you need your head examined, and not by a\n general practitioner, either! Why, I wouldn't let you get into an\n airplane, much less land on Earth in a rocket! If you think I'd permit\n you to subject yourself to eight gravities of acceleration in a rocket\n landing, you're daffy!\"\n\n\n She hadn't thought of it before, but the major was right. The terrible\n pressure of a rocket landing would increase her effective body weight\n to nearly half a ton; an adult human being couldn't take that sort of\n punishment for long, much less the tiny life that was growing within\n her.", "The major's grin broadened. \"You don't think I'd miss a historical\n event like this, do you? You take it easy. We're over Eastern Europe\n now, but as soon as we get within radio range of New Mexico, I'll beam\n a call in.\" He paused, then repeated, \"You just take it easy. Call the\n nurse if anything happens.\" Then he turned and walked out of the room.\n\n\n Alice Britton closed her eyes. Major Banes was all smiles and cheer\n now, but he hadn't been that way five months ago. She chuckled softly\n to herself as she thought of his blistering speech.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant Britton, you're either careless or brainless; I don't\n know which! Your husband may be the finest rocket jockey in the Space\n Service, but that doesn't give him the right to come blasting up here\n on a supply rocket just to get you pregnant!\"", "So she had stayed on in the Space Station, doing her job as always.\n As Chief Radar Technician, she was important in the operation of the\n station. Her pregnancy had never made her uncomfortable; the slow\n rotation of the wheel-shaped station about its axis gave an effective\n gravity at the rim only half that of Earth's surface, and the closer to\n the hub she went, the less her weight became.\n\n\n According to the major, the baby was due sometime around the first of\n September. \"Two hundred and eighty days,\" he had said. \"Luckily, we can\n pinpoint it almost exactly. And at a maximum of half of Earth gravity,\n you shouldn't weigh more than seventy pounds then. You're to report to\n me at least once a week, Lieutenant.\"\n\n\n As the words went through her mind, another spasm of pain hit her, and\n she clenched her fists tightly on the sheets again. It went away, and\n she took a deep breath.", "Alice had said: \"I'm sure the thought never entered his mind, doctor. I\n know it never entered mine.\"\n\n\n \"But that was two and a half months ago! Why didn't you come to\n me before this? Of all the tom-fool—\" His voice had died off in\n suppressed anger.\n\n\n \"I didn't know,\" she had said stolidly. \"You know my medical record.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I know.\" A puzzled frown had come over his face then, a frown\n which almost hid the green eyes that contrasted so startlingly with the\n flaming red of his hair. \"The question is: what do we do next? We're\n not equipped for obstetrics up here.\"\n\n\n \"Send me back down to Earth, of course.\"", "She frowned. \"That really puts you on the spot. If the baby dies,\n they'll blame you.\"\n\n\n Banes slammed his fist to the desk. \"Do you think I give a tinker's dam\n about that? I'm interested in saving a life, not in worrying about what\n people may think!\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I just thought—\"\n\n\n \"Well, think about something useful! Think about how we're going to\n save that baby!\" He paused as he saw her eyes. \"I'm sorry, Lieutenant.\n My nerves are all raw, I guess. But, dammit, my field is space\n medicine. I can handle depressurization, space sickness, and things\n like that, but I don't know anything about babies! I know what I read\n in medical school, and I watched a delivery once, but that's all I\n know. I don't even have any references up here; people aren't supposed\n to go around having babies on a space station!\"", "Banes had to fight hard to keep his face smiling when she said that,\n but he managed an easy nod. \"We'll see. Don't hurry it, though. Let\n nature take its course. I'm not such a glory hog that I'd not let Gates\n have part of it—or all of it, for that matter. Relax and take it easy.\"\n\n\n He went on talking, trying to keep the conversation light, but his eyes\n kept wandering to his wristwatch, timing Alice's pain intervals. They\n were coming too close together to suit him.\n\n\n There was a faint rap, and the heavy airtight door swung open to admit\n the Chief Nurse. \"There's a message for you in your office, doctor.\n I'll send a nurse in to be with her.\"\n\n\n He nodded, then turned back to Alice. \"Stiff uppah lip, and all that\n sort of rot,\" he said in a phony British accent.", "He turned and left through the heavy door. Each room of the space\n station was protected by airtight doors and individual heating units;\n if some accident, such as a really large meteor hit, should release the\n air from one room, nearby rooms would be safe.\n\n\n Banes' next stop was the hospital ward.\n\n\n Alice Britton was resting quietly, but there were lines of strain\n around her eyes which hadn't been there an hour before.\n\n\n \"How's it coming, Lieutenant?\"\n\n\n She smiled, but another spasm hit her before she could answer. After a\n time, she said: \"I'm doing fine, but you look as if you'd been through\n the mill. What's eating you?\"", "Again he tried to force a smile, but it didn't come off too well.\n \"Nothing serious. I just want to make sure everything comes out all\n right.\"\n\n\n She smiled. \"It will. You're all set. You ordered the instruments\n months ago. Or did you forget something?\"\n\n\n That hit home, but he just grinned feebly. \"I forgot to get somebody to\n boil water.\"\n\n\n \"Whatever for?\"\n\n\n \"Coffee, of course. Didn't you know that? Papa always heats up the\n water; that keeps him out of the way, and the doctor has coffee\n afterwards.\"\n\n\n Alice's hands grasped the sheet again, and Banes glanced at his watch.\n Ninety seconds! It was long and hard.\n\n\n When the pain had ebbed away, he said: \"We've got the delivery room all\n ready. It won't be much longer now.\"", "\"It's all right, doctor. Shall I prepare the delivery room?\"\n\n\n His laugh was hard and short. \"Delivery room! I wish to Heaven we had\n one! Prepare the ward room next to the one she's in now, I guess. It's\n the best we have.\n\n\n \"So help me Hannah, I'm going to see some changes made in regulations!\n A situation like this won't happen again!\"\n\n\n The nurse left quietly. She knew Banes wasn't really angry at the\n Brittons; it was simply his way of letting off steam to ease the\n tension within him.", "He forced a nervous smile. \"Nothing but the responsibility. You're\n going to be a very famous woman, you know. You'll be the mother of the\n first child born in space. And it's my job to see to it that you're\n both all right.\"\n\n\n She grinned. \"Another Dr. Dafoe?\"\n\n\n \"Something on that order, I suppose. But it won't be all my glory.\n Colonel Gates, the O.B. man, was supposed to come up for the delivery\n in September, so when White Sands contacted us, they said he was coming\n immediately.\" He paused, and a genuine smile crossed his face. \"Your\n husband is bringing him up.\"\n\n\n \"Jim! Coming up here? Wonderful! But I'm afraid the colonel will be too\n late. This isn't going to last that long.\"", "Everything had been fine until today. And then, only half an hour ago,\n a meteor had hit the radar room. It had been only a tiny bit of rock,\n no bigger than a twenty-two bullet, and it hadn't been traveling more\n than ten miles per second, but it had managed to punch its way through\n the shielding of the station.\n\n\n The self-sealing walls had closed the tiny hole quickly, but even in\n that short time, a lot of air had gone whistling out into the vacuum of\n space.\n\n\n The depressurization hadn't hurt her too much, but the shock had been\n enough to start labor. The baby was going to come two months early.\n\n\n She relaxed a little more, waiting for the next pain. There was nothing\n to worry about; she had absolute faith in the red-haired major.\n\n\n The major himself was not so sure. He sat in his office, massaging his\n fingertips and looking worriedly at the clock on the wall.", "Another pain came, and he had to wait until it was over before he got\n her answer. \"Doctor,\" she said, \"I thought you would have figured it\n out. Ask yourself just one question. Ask yourself, 'Why is a space\n station like an incubator?'\"\nSpace Ship Twelve docked at Space Station One at exactly eleven\n thirty-four, and two men in spacesuits pushed a large, bulky package\n through the airlock.\n\n\n Major Peter Banes, haggard but smiling, met Captain Britton in the\n corridor as he and the colonel entered the hospital ward.\n\n\n Banes nodded to Colonel Gates, then turned to Britton. \"I don't know\n whether to congratulate you or take a poke at you, Captain, but I\n suppose congratulations come first. Your son, James Edward Britton II,\n is doing fine, thank you.\"\n\n\n \"You mean—\nalready\n?\"\n\n\n The colonel said nothing, but he raised an eyebrow.", "\"Over an hour ago,\" said Banes.\n\n\n \"But—but—the incubator—\"\n\n\n Banes' grin widened. \"We'll put the baby in it, now that we've got it,\n but it really isn't necessary. Your wife figured that one out. A space\n station is a kind of incubator itself, you see. It protects us poor,\n weak humans from the terrible conditions of space. So all we had to do\n was close up one of the airtight rooms, sterilize it, warm it up, and\n put in extra oxygen from the emergency tanks. Young James is perfectly\n comfortable.\"\n\n\n \"Excellent, Major!\" said the colonel.\n\n\n \"Don't thank me. It was Captain Britton's wife who—\"\n\n\n But Captain Britton wasn't listening any more. He was headed toward his\n wife's room at top speed.", "The Chief Nurse at a nearby desk took off her glasses and looked at him\n speculatively. \"Something wrong, doctor?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator,\" he said, without taking his eyes off the clock.\n\n\n \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator. We can't deliver a seven-month preemie without an\n incubator.\"\n\n\n The nurse's eyes widened. \"Good Lord! I never thought of that! What are\n you going to do?\"\n\n\n \"Right now, I can't do anything. I can't beam a radio message through\n to the Earth. But as soon as we get within radio range of White Sands,\n I'll ask them to send up an emergency rocket with an incubator. But—\"\n\n\n \"But what?\"", "There, high in the emptiness of space, Space Station One swung in its\n orbit. Once every two hours, the artificial satellite looped completely\n around the planet, watching what went on below. Outside its bright\n steel hull was the silence of the interplanetary vacuum; inside, in the\n hospital ward, Lieutenant Alice Britton clutched at the sheets of her\n bed in pain, then relaxed as it faded away.\n\n\n Major Banes looked at her and smiled a little. \"How do you feel,\n Lieutenant?\"\n\n\n She smiled back; she knew the pain wouldn't return for a few minutes\n yet. \"Fine, doctor. It's no worse than I was expecting. How long will\n it before we can contact White Sands?\"\n\n\n The major looked nervously at his wristwatch. \"Nearly an hour. You'll\n be all right.\"\n\n\n \"Certainly,\" she agreed, running a hand through her brown hair, \"I'll\n be okay. Just you be on tap when I call.\"", "\"Will we have time? The pains are coming pretty fast now. It will be at\n least three hours before they can get a ship up here. If they miss us\n on the next time around, it'll be five hours. She can't hold out that\n long.\"\n\n\n The Chief Nurse turned her eyes to the slowly moving second hand of the\n wall clock. She could feel a lump in her throat.\n\n\n Major Banes was in the Communications Center a full five minutes\n before the coastline of California appeared on the curved horizon of\n the globe beneath them. He had spent the hour typing out a complete\n report of what had happened to Alice Britton and a list of what he\n needed. He handed it to the teletype operator and paced the floor\n impatiently as he waited for the answer.\n\n\n When the receiver teletype began clacking softly, he leaned over the\n page, waiting anxiously for every word.", "WHITE SANDS ROCKET BASE 4 JULY 1984 0928 HRS URGENT TO: MAJ PETER\n BANES (MC) 0-266118 SS-1 MEDICAL OFFICER FROM: GEN DAVID BARRETT\n 0-199515 COMMANDING WSRB ROCKET. ORBIT COMPUTED FOR RENDEZVOUS AT 1134\n HRS MST. CAPT BRITTON SENDS PERSONAL TO LT BRITTON AS FOLLOWS: HOLD\n THE FORT, BABY, THE WHOLE WORLD IS PRAYING FOR YOU. OUT.\nBanes sat on the edge of his desk, pounding a fist into the palm of\n his left hand. \"Two hours. It isn't soon enough. She'll never hold out\n that long. And we don't have an incubator.\" His voice was a clipped\n monotone, timed with the rhythmic slamming of his fist.", "SPATIAL DELIVERY\nBY RANDALL GARRETT\nWomen on space station assignments\n \nshouldn't get pregnant. But there's a first\n \ntime for everything. Here's the story of\n \nsuch a time——and an historic situation.\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1954.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nOne thousand seventy-five miles above the wrinkled surface of Earth, a\n woman was in pain.", "The slow, monotonous rotation of the second hand on the wall clock\n seemed to drag time grudgingly along with it. Banes wished he could\n smoke to calm his raw nerves, but it was strictly against regulations.\n Air was too precious to be used up by smoking. Every bit of air on\n board had had to be carried up in rockets when the station was built\n in space. The air purifiers in the hydroponics section could keep the\n air fresh enough for breathing, but fire of any kind would overtax the\n system, leaving too little oxygen in the atmosphere.\n\n\n It was a few minutes of ten when he decided he'd better get back to\n Alice Britton. She was trying to read a book between spasms, but she\n wasn't getting much read. She dropped it to the floor when he came in.\n\n\n \"Am I glad to see you! It won't be long now.\" She looked at him\n analytically. \"Say! Just what\nis\neating you? You look more haggard\n than I do!\"" ], [ "And he had looked up at her scathingly. \"Lieutenant Britton, it is\n my personal opinion that you need your head examined, and not by a\n general practitioner, either! Why, I wouldn't let you get into an\n airplane, much less land on Earth in a rocket! If you think I'd permit\n you to subject yourself to eight gravities of acceleration in a rocket\n landing, you're daffy!\"\n\n\n She hadn't thought of it before, but the major was right. The terrible\n pressure of a rocket landing would increase her effective body weight\n to nearly half a ton; an adult human being couldn't take that sort of\n punishment for long, much less the tiny life that was growing within\n her.", "He turned and left through the heavy door. Each room of the space\n station was protected by airtight doors and individual heating units;\n if some accident, such as a really large meteor hit, should release the\n air from one room, nearby rooms would be safe.\n\n\n Banes' next stop was the hospital ward.\n\n\n Alice Britton was resting quietly, but there were lines of strain\n around her eyes which hadn't been there an hour before.\n\n\n \"How's it coming, Lieutenant?\"\n\n\n She smiled, but another spasm hit her before she could answer. After a\n time, she said: \"I'm doing fine, but you look as if you'd been through\n the mill. What's eating you?\"", "The major's grin broadened. \"You don't think I'd miss a historical\n event like this, do you? You take it easy. We're over Eastern Europe\n now, but as soon as we get within radio range of New Mexico, I'll beam\n a call in.\" He paused, then repeated, \"You just take it easy. Call the\n nurse if anything happens.\" Then he turned and walked out of the room.\n\n\n Alice Britton closed her eyes. Major Banes was all smiles and cheer\n now, but he hadn't been that way five months ago. She chuckled softly\n to herself as she thought of his blistering speech.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant Britton, you're either careless or brainless; I don't\n know which! Your husband may be the finest rocket jockey in the Space\n Service, but that doesn't give him the right to come blasting up here\n on a supply rocket just to get you pregnant!\"", "There, high in the emptiness of space, Space Station One swung in its\n orbit. Once every two hours, the artificial satellite looped completely\n around the planet, watching what went on below. Outside its bright\n steel hull was the silence of the interplanetary vacuum; inside, in the\n hospital ward, Lieutenant Alice Britton clutched at the sheets of her\n bed in pain, then relaxed as it faded away.\n\n\n Major Banes looked at her and smiled a little. \"How do you feel,\n Lieutenant?\"\n\n\n She smiled back; she knew the pain wouldn't return for a few minutes\n yet. \"Fine, doctor. It's no worse than I was expecting. How long will\n it before we can contact White Sands?\"\n\n\n The major looked nervously at his wristwatch. \"Nearly an hour. You'll\n be all right.\"\n\n\n \"Certainly,\" she agreed, running a hand through her brown hair, \"I'll\n be okay. Just you be on tap when I call.\"", "\"I'll say it won't! How about the incubator?\"\n\n\n There was a long pause. Finally, he said softly: \"There isn't any\n incubator. I didn't take the possibility of a premature delivery into\n account. It's my fault. I've done what I could, though; the ship is\n bringing one up. I—I think we'll be able to keep the child alive\n until—\"\n\n\n He stopped. Alice was bubbling up with laughter.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant! Lieutenant Britton! Alice! This is no time to get\n hysterical! Stop it!\"\n\n\n Her laughter slowed to a chuckle. \"\nMe\nget hysterical! That's a good\n one! What about you? You're so nervous you couldn't sip water out of a\n bathtub without spilling it!\"\n\n\n He blinked. \"What do you mean?\"", "The Chief Nurse said: \"Can't we build something that will do until the\n rocket gets here?\"\n\n\n Banes looked at her, his face expressionless. \"What would we build it\n out of? There's not a spare piece of equipment in the station. It costs\n money to ship material up here, you know. Anything not essential is\n left on the ground.\"\n\n\n The phone rang. Banes picked it up and identified himself.\n\n\n The voice at the other end said: \"This is Communications, Major. I tape\n recorded all the monitor pickups from the Earth radio stations, and it\n looks as though the Space Service has released the information to the\n public. Lieutenant Britton's husband was right when he said the whole\n world's praying for her. Do you want to hear the tapes?\"\n\n\n \"Not now, but thanks for the information.\" He hung up and looked into\n the Chief Nurse's eyes. \"They've released the news to the public.\"", "The slow, monotonous rotation of the second hand on the wall clock\n seemed to drag time grudgingly along with it. Banes wished he could\n smoke to calm his raw nerves, but it was strictly against regulations.\n Air was too precious to be used up by smoking. Every bit of air on\n board had had to be carried up in rockets when the station was built\n in space. The air purifiers in the hydroponics section could keep the\n air fresh enough for breathing, but fire of any kind would overtax the\n system, leaving too little oxygen in the atmosphere.\n\n\n It was a few minutes of ten when he decided he'd better get back to\n Alice Britton. She was trying to read a book between spasms, but she\n wasn't getting much read. She dropped it to the floor when he came in.\n\n\n \"Am I glad to see you! It won't be long now.\" She looked at him\n analytically. \"Say! Just what\nis\neating you? You look more haggard\n than I do!\"", "He forced a nervous smile. \"Nothing but the responsibility. You're\n going to be a very famous woman, you know. You'll be the mother of the\n first child born in space. And it's my job to see to it that you're\n both all right.\"\n\n\n She grinned. \"Another Dr. Dafoe?\"\n\n\n \"Something on that order, I suppose. But it won't be all my glory.\n Colonel Gates, the O.B. man, was supposed to come up for the delivery\n in September, so when White Sands contacted us, they said he was coming\n immediately.\" He paused, and a genuine smile crossed his face. \"Your\n husband is bringing him up.\"\n\n\n \"Jim! Coming up here? Wonderful! But I'm afraid the colonel will be too\n late. This isn't going to last that long.\"", "Alice had said: \"I'm sure the thought never entered his mind, doctor. I\n know it never entered mine.\"\n\n\n \"But that was two and a half months ago! Why didn't you come to\n me before this? Of all the tom-fool—\" His voice had died off in\n suppressed anger.\n\n\n \"I didn't know,\" she had said stolidly. \"You know my medical record.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I know.\" A puzzled frown had come over his face then, a frown\n which almost hid the green eyes that contrasted so startlingly with the\n flaming red of his hair. \"The question is: what do we do next? We're\n not equipped for obstetrics up here.\"\n\n\n \"Send me back down to Earth, of course.\"", "WHITE SANDS ROCKET BASE 4 JULY 1984 0928 HRS URGENT TO: MAJ PETER\n BANES (MC) 0-266118 SS-1 MEDICAL OFFICER FROM: GEN DAVID BARRETT\n 0-199515 COMMANDING WSRB ROCKET. ORBIT COMPUTED FOR RENDEZVOUS AT 1134\n HRS MST. CAPT BRITTON SENDS PERSONAL TO LT BRITTON AS FOLLOWS: HOLD\n THE FORT, BABY, THE WHOLE WORLD IS PRAYING FOR YOU. OUT.\nBanes sat on the edge of his desk, pounding a fist into the palm of\n his left hand. \"Two hours. It isn't soon enough. She'll never hold out\n that long. And we don't have an incubator.\" His voice was a clipped\n monotone, timed with the rhythmic slamming of his fist.", "So she had stayed on in the Space Station, doing her job as always.\n As Chief Radar Technician, she was important in the operation of the\n station. Her pregnancy had never made her uncomfortable; the slow\n rotation of the wheel-shaped station about its axis gave an effective\n gravity at the rim only half that of Earth's surface, and the closer to\n the hub she went, the less her weight became.\n\n\n According to the major, the baby was due sometime around the first of\n September. \"Two hundred and eighty days,\" he had said. \"Luckily, we can\n pinpoint it almost exactly. And at a maximum of half of Earth gravity,\n you shouldn't weigh more than seventy pounds then. You're to report to\n me at least once a week, Lieutenant.\"\n\n\n As the words went through her mind, another spasm of pain hit her, and\n she clenched her fists tightly on the sheets again. It went away, and\n she took a deep breath.", "The Chief Nurse at a nearby desk took off her glasses and looked at him\n speculatively. \"Something wrong, doctor?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator,\" he said, without taking his eyes off the clock.\n\n\n \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator. We can't deliver a seven-month preemie without an\n incubator.\"\n\n\n The nurse's eyes widened. \"Good Lord! I never thought of that! What are\n you going to do?\"\n\n\n \"Right now, I can't do anything. I can't beam a radio message through\n to the Earth. But as soon as we get within radio range of White Sands,\n I'll ask them to send up an emergency rocket with an incubator. But—\"\n\n\n \"But what?\"", "\"Over an hour ago,\" said Banes.\n\n\n \"But—but—the incubator—\"\n\n\n Banes' grin widened. \"We'll put the baby in it, now that we've got it,\n but it really isn't necessary. Your wife figured that one out. A space\n station is a kind of incubator itself, you see. It protects us poor,\n weak humans from the terrible conditions of space. So all we had to do\n was close up one of the airtight rooms, sterilize it, warm it up, and\n put in extra oxygen from the emergency tanks. Young James is perfectly\n comfortable.\"\n\n\n \"Excellent, Major!\" said the colonel.\n\n\n \"Don't thank me. It was Captain Britton's wife who—\"\n\n\n But Captain Britton wasn't listening any more. He was headed toward his\n wife's room at top speed.", "\"Will we have time? The pains are coming pretty fast now. It will be at\n least three hours before they can get a ship up here. If they miss us\n on the next time around, it'll be five hours. She can't hold out that\n long.\"\n\n\n The Chief Nurse turned her eyes to the slowly moving second hand of the\n wall clock. She could feel a lump in her throat.\n\n\n Major Banes was in the Communications Center a full five minutes\n before the coastline of California appeared on the curved horizon of\n the globe beneath them. He had spent the hour typing out a complete\n report of what had happened to Alice Britton and a list of what he\n needed. He handed it to the teletype operator and paced the floor\n impatiently as he waited for the answer.\n\n\n When the receiver teletype began clacking softly, he leaned over the\n page, waiting anxiously for every word.", "She frowned. \"That really puts you on the spot. If the baby dies,\n they'll blame you.\"\n\n\n Banes slammed his fist to the desk. \"Do you think I give a tinker's dam\n about that? I'm interested in saving a life, not in worrying about what\n people may think!\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I just thought—\"\n\n\n \"Well, think about something useful! Think about how we're going to\n save that baby!\" He paused as he saw her eyes. \"I'm sorry, Lieutenant.\n My nerves are all raw, I guess. But, dammit, my field is space\n medicine. I can handle depressurization, space sickness, and things\n like that, but I don't know anything about babies! I know what I read\n in medical school, and I watched a delivery once, but that's all I\n know. I don't even have any references up here; people aren't supposed\n to go around having babies on a space station!\"", "WHITE SANDS ROCKET BASE 4 JULY 1984 0913 HRS URGENT TO: MAJ PETER\n BANES (MC) 0-266118 SS-1 MEDICAL OFFICER FROM: GEN DAVID BARRETT\n 0-199515 COMMANDING WSRB ROCKET. ORBIT NOW BEING COMPUTED FOR\n RENDEZVOUS WITH SS-1 AS OF NEXT PASSAGE ABOVE USA. CAPT. JAMES\n BRITTON PILOTING. MEDICS LOADING SHIP TWELVE WITH INCUBATOR AND OTHER\n SUPPLIES. BASE OBSTETRICIAN LT COL GATES ALSO COMING TO ASSIST IN\n DELIVERY. HANG ON. OVER.\n\n\n Banes nodded and turned to the operator. \"I want a direct open\n telephone line to my office in case I have to get another message to\n the base before we get out of range again.\"", "Everything had been fine until today. And then, only half an hour ago,\n a meteor had hit the radar room. It had been only a tiny bit of rock,\n no bigger than a twenty-two bullet, and it hadn't been traveling more\n than ten miles per second, but it had managed to punch its way through\n the shielding of the station.\n\n\n The self-sealing walls had closed the tiny hole quickly, but even in\n that short time, a lot of air had gone whistling out into the vacuum of\n space.\n\n\n The depressurization hadn't hurt her too much, but the shock had been\n enough to start labor. The baby was going to come two months early.\n\n\n She relaxed a little more, waiting for the next pain. There was nothing\n to worry about; she had absolute faith in the red-haired major.\n\n\n The major himself was not so sure. He sat in his office, massaging his\n fingertips and looking worriedly at the clock on the wall.", "Another pain came, and he had to wait until it was over before he got\n her answer. \"Doctor,\" she said, \"I thought you would have figured it\n out. Ask yourself just one question. Ask yourself, 'Why is a space\n station like an incubator?'\"\nSpace Ship Twelve docked at Space Station One at exactly eleven\n thirty-four, and two men in spacesuits pushed a large, bulky package\n through the airlock.\n\n\n Major Peter Banes, haggard but smiling, met Captain Britton in the\n corridor as he and the colonel entered the hospital ward.\n\n\n Banes nodded to Colonel Gates, then turned to Britton. \"I don't know\n whether to congratulate you or take a poke at you, Captain, but I\n suppose congratulations come first. Your son, James Edward Britton II,\n is doing fine, thank you.\"\n\n\n \"You mean—\nalready\n?\"\n\n\n The colonel said nothing, but he raised an eyebrow.", "Banes had to fight hard to keep his face smiling when she said that,\n but he managed an easy nod. \"We'll see. Don't hurry it, though. Let\n nature take its course. I'm not such a glory hog that I'd not let Gates\n have part of it—or all of it, for that matter. Relax and take it easy.\"\n\n\n He went on talking, trying to keep the conversation light, but his eyes\n kept wandering to his wristwatch, timing Alice's pain intervals. They\n were coming too close together to suit him.\n\n\n There was a faint rap, and the heavy airtight door swung open to admit\n the Chief Nurse. \"There's a message for you in your office, doctor.\n I'll send a nurse in to be with her.\"\n\n\n He nodded, then turned back to Alice. \"Stiff uppah lip, and all that\n sort of rot,\" he said in a phony British accent.", "\"It's all right, doctor. Shall I prepare the delivery room?\"\n\n\n His laugh was hard and short. \"Delivery room! I wish to Heaven we had\n one! Prepare the ward room next to the one she's in now, I guess. It's\n the best we have.\n\n\n \"So help me Hannah, I'm going to see some changes made in regulations!\n A situation like this won't happen again!\"\n\n\n The nurse left quietly. She knew Banes wasn't really angry at the\n Brittons; it was simply his way of letting off steam to ease the\n tension within him." ], [ "So she had stayed on in the Space Station, doing her job as always.\n As Chief Radar Technician, she was important in the operation of the\n station. Her pregnancy had never made her uncomfortable; the slow\n rotation of the wheel-shaped station about its axis gave an effective\n gravity at the rim only half that of Earth's surface, and the closer to\n the hub she went, the less her weight became.\n\n\n According to the major, the baby was due sometime around the first of\n September. \"Two hundred and eighty days,\" he had said. \"Luckily, we can\n pinpoint it almost exactly. And at a maximum of half of Earth gravity,\n you shouldn't weigh more than seventy pounds then. You're to report to\n me at least once a week, Lieutenant.\"\n\n\n As the words went through her mind, another spasm of pain hit her, and\n she clenched her fists tightly on the sheets again. It went away, and\n she took a deep breath.", "\"I'll say it won't! How about the incubator?\"\n\n\n There was a long pause. Finally, he said softly: \"There isn't any\n incubator. I didn't take the possibility of a premature delivery into\n account. It's my fault. I've done what I could, though; the ship is\n bringing one up. I—I think we'll be able to keep the child alive\n until—\"\n\n\n He stopped. Alice was bubbling up with laughter.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant! Lieutenant Britton! Alice! This is no time to get\n hysterical! Stop it!\"\n\n\n Her laughter slowed to a chuckle. \"\nMe\nget hysterical! That's a good\n one! What about you? You're so nervous you couldn't sip water out of a\n bathtub without spilling it!\"\n\n\n He blinked. \"What do you mean?\"", "And he had looked up at her scathingly. \"Lieutenant Britton, it is\n my personal opinion that you need your head examined, and not by a\n general practitioner, either! Why, I wouldn't let you get into an\n airplane, much less land on Earth in a rocket! If you think I'd permit\n you to subject yourself to eight gravities of acceleration in a rocket\n landing, you're daffy!\"\n\n\n She hadn't thought of it before, but the major was right. The terrible\n pressure of a rocket landing would increase her effective body weight\n to nearly half a ton; an adult human being couldn't take that sort of\n punishment for long, much less the tiny life that was growing within\n her.", "Everything had been fine until today. And then, only half an hour ago,\n a meteor had hit the radar room. It had been only a tiny bit of rock,\n no bigger than a twenty-two bullet, and it hadn't been traveling more\n than ten miles per second, but it had managed to punch its way through\n the shielding of the station.\n\n\n The self-sealing walls had closed the tiny hole quickly, but even in\n that short time, a lot of air had gone whistling out into the vacuum of\n space.\n\n\n The depressurization hadn't hurt her too much, but the shock had been\n enough to start labor. The baby was going to come two months early.\n\n\n She relaxed a little more, waiting for the next pain. There was nothing\n to worry about; she had absolute faith in the red-haired major.\n\n\n The major himself was not so sure. He sat in his office, massaging his\n fingertips and looking worriedly at the clock on the wall.", "She frowned. \"That really puts you on the spot. If the baby dies,\n they'll blame you.\"\n\n\n Banes slammed his fist to the desk. \"Do you think I give a tinker's dam\n about that? I'm interested in saving a life, not in worrying about what\n people may think!\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I just thought—\"\n\n\n \"Well, think about something useful! Think about how we're going to\n save that baby!\" He paused as he saw her eyes. \"I'm sorry, Lieutenant.\n My nerves are all raw, I guess. But, dammit, my field is space\n medicine. I can handle depressurization, space sickness, and things\n like that, but I don't know anything about babies! I know what I read\n in medical school, and I watched a delivery once, but that's all I\n know. I don't even have any references up here; people aren't supposed\n to go around having babies on a space station!\"", "The major's grin broadened. \"You don't think I'd miss a historical\n event like this, do you? You take it easy. We're over Eastern Europe\n now, but as soon as we get within radio range of New Mexico, I'll beam\n a call in.\" He paused, then repeated, \"You just take it easy. Call the\n nurse if anything happens.\" Then he turned and walked out of the room.\n\n\n Alice Britton closed her eyes. Major Banes was all smiles and cheer\n now, but he hadn't been that way five months ago. She chuckled softly\n to herself as she thought of his blistering speech.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant Britton, you're either careless or brainless; I don't\n know which! Your husband may be the finest rocket jockey in the Space\n Service, but that doesn't give him the right to come blasting up here\n on a supply rocket just to get you pregnant!\"", "\"It's all right, doctor. Shall I prepare the delivery room?\"\n\n\n His laugh was hard and short. \"Delivery room! I wish to Heaven we had\n one! Prepare the ward room next to the one she's in now, I guess. It's\n the best we have.\n\n\n \"So help me Hannah, I'm going to see some changes made in regulations!\n A situation like this won't happen again!\"\n\n\n The nurse left quietly. She knew Banes wasn't really angry at the\n Brittons; it was simply his way of letting off steam to ease the\n tension within him.", "Alice had said: \"I'm sure the thought never entered his mind, doctor. I\n know it never entered mine.\"\n\n\n \"But that was two and a half months ago! Why didn't you come to\n me before this? Of all the tom-fool—\" His voice had died off in\n suppressed anger.\n\n\n \"I didn't know,\" she had said stolidly. \"You know my medical record.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I know.\" A puzzled frown had come over his face then, a frown\n which almost hid the green eyes that contrasted so startlingly with the\n flaming red of his hair. \"The question is: what do we do next? We're\n not equipped for obstetrics up here.\"\n\n\n \"Send me back down to Earth, of course.\"", "Banes had to fight hard to keep his face smiling when she said that,\n but he managed an easy nod. \"We'll see. Don't hurry it, though. Let\n nature take its course. I'm not such a glory hog that I'd not let Gates\n have part of it—or all of it, for that matter. Relax and take it easy.\"\n\n\n He went on talking, trying to keep the conversation light, but his eyes\n kept wandering to his wristwatch, timing Alice's pain intervals. They\n were coming too close together to suit him.\n\n\n There was a faint rap, and the heavy airtight door swung open to admit\n the Chief Nurse. \"There's a message for you in your office, doctor.\n I'll send a nurse in to be with her.\"\n\n\n He nodded, then turned back to Alice. \"Stiff uppah lip, and all that\n sort of rot,\" he said in a phony British accent.", "Again he tried to force a smile, but it didn't come off too well.\n \"Nothing serious. I just want to make sure everything comes out all\n right.\"\n\n\n She smiled. \"It will. You're all set. You ordered the instruments\n months ago. Or did you forget something?\"\n\n\n That hit home, but he just grinned feebly. \"I forgot to get somebody to\n boil water.\"\n\n\n \"Whatever for?\"\n\n\n \"Coffee, of course. Didn't you know that? Papa always heats up the\n water; that keeps him out of the way, and the doctor has coffee\n afterwards.\"\n\n\n Alice's hands grasped the sheet again, and Banes glanced at his watch.\n Ninety seconds! It was long and hard.\n\n\n When the pain had ebbed away, he said: \"We've got the delivery room all\n ready. It won't be much longer now.\"", "He forced a nervous smile. \"Nothing but the responsibility. You're\n going to be a very famous woman, you know. You'll be the mother of the\n first child born in space. And it's my job to see to it that you're\n both all right.\"\n\n\n She grinned. \"Another Dr. Dafoe?\"\n\n\n \"Something on that order, I suppose. But it won't be all my glory.\n Colonel Gates, the O.B. man, was supposed to come up for the delivery\n in September, so when White Sands contacted us, they said he was coming\n immediately.\" He paused, and a genuine smile crossed his face. \"Your\n husband is bringing him up.\"\n\n\n \"Jim! Coming up here? Wonderful! But I'm afraid the colonel will be too\n late. This isn't going to last that long.\"", "\"Over an hour ago,\" said Banes.\n\n\n \"But—but—the incubator—\"\n\n\n Banes' grin widened. \"We'll put the baby in it, now that we've got it,\n but it really isn't necessary. Your wife figured that one out. A space\n station is a kind of incubator itself, you see. It protects us poor,\n weak humans from the terrible conditions of space. So all we had to do\n was close up one of the airtight rooms, sterilize it, warm it up, and\n put in extra oxygen from the emergency tanks. Young James is perfectly\n comfortable.\"\n\n\n \"Excellent, Major!\" said the colonel.\n\n\n \"Don't thank me. It was Captain Britton's wife who—\"\n\n\n But Captain Britton wasn't listening any more. He was headed toward his\n wife's room at top speed.", "He turned and left through the heavy door. Each room of the space\n station was protected by airtight doors and individual heating units;\n if some accident, such as a really large meteor hit, should release the\n air from one room, nearby rooms would be safe.\n\n\n Banes' next stop was the hospital ward.\n\n\n Alice Britton was resting quietly, but there were lines of strain\n around her eyes which hadn't been there an hour before.\n\n\n \"How's it coming, Lieutenant?\"\n\n\n She smiled, but another spasm hit her before she could answer. After a\n time, she said: \"I'm doing fine, but you look as if you'd been through\n the mill. What's eating you?\"", "The Chief Nurse at a nearby desk took off her glasses and looked at him\n speculatively. \"Something wrong, doctor?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator,\" he said, without taking his eyes off the clock.\n\n\n \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator. We can't deliver a seven-month preemie without an\n incubator.\"\n\n\n The nurse's eyes widened. \"Good Lord! I never thought of that! What are\n you going to do?\"\n\n\n \"Right now, I can't do anything. I can't beam a radio message through\n to the Earth. But as soon as we get within radio range of White Sands,\n I'll ask them to send up an emergency rocket with an incubator. But—\"\n\n\n \"But what?\"", "WHITE SANDS ROCKET BASE 4 JULY 1984 0928 HRS URGENT TO: MAJ PETER\n BANES (MC) 0-266118 SS-1 MEDICAL OFFICER FROM: GEN DAVID BARRETT\n 0-199515 COMMANDING WSRB ROCKET. ORBIT COMPUTED FOR RENDEZVOUS AT 1134\n HRS MST. CAPT BRITTON SENDS PERSONAL TO LT BRITTON AS FOLLOWS: HOLD\n THE FORT, BABY, THE WHOLE WORLD IS PRAYING FOR YOU. OUT.\nBanes sat on the edge of his desk, pounding a fist into the palm of\n his left hand. \"Two hours. It isn't soon enough. She'll never hold out\n that long. And we don't have an incubator.\" His voice was a clipped\n monotone, timed with the rhythmic slamming of his fist.", "\"Will we have time? The pains are coming pretty fast now. It will be at\n least three hours before they can get a ship up here. If they miss us\n on the next time around, it'll be five hours. She can't hold out that\n long.\"\n\n\n The Chief Nurse turned her eyes to the slowly moving second hand of the\n wall clock. She could feel a lump in her throat.\n\n\n Major Banes was in the Communications Center a full five minutes\n before the coastline of California appeared on the curved horizon of\n the globe beneath them. He had spent the hour typing out a complete\n report of what had happened to Alice Britton and a list of what he\n needed. He handed it to the teletype operator and paced the floor\n impatiently as he waited for the answer.\n\n\n When the receiver teletype began clacking softly, he leaned over the\n page, waiting anxiously for every word.", "Another pain came, and he had to wait until it was over before he got\n her answer. \"Doctor,\" she said, \"I thought you would have figured it\n out. Ask yourself just one question. Ask yourself, 'Why is a space\n station like an incubator?'\"\nSpace Ship Twelve docked at Space Station One at exactly eleven\n thirty-four, and two men in spacesuits pushed a large, bulky package\n through the airlock.\n\n\n Major Peter Banes, haggard but smiling, met Captain Britton in the\n corridor as he and the colonel entered the hospital ward.\n\n\n Banes nodded to Colonel Gates, then turned to Britton. \"I don't know\n whether to congratulate you or take a poke at you, Captain, but I\n suppose congratulations come first. Your son, James Edward Britton II,\n is doing fine, thank you.\"\n\n\n \"You mean—\nalready\n?\"\n\n\n The colonel said nothing, but he raised an eyebrow.", "WHITE SANDS ROCKET BASE 4 JULY 1984 0913 HRS URGENT TO: MAJ PETER\n BANES (MC) 0-266118 SS-1 MEDICAL OFFICER FROM: GEN DAVID BARRETT\n 0-199515 COMMANDING WSRB ROCKET. ORBIT NOW BEING COMPUTED FOR\n RENDEZVOUS WITH SS-1 AS OF NEXT PASSAGE ABOVE USA. CAPT. JAMES\n BRITTON PILOTING. MEDICS LOADING SHIP TWELVE WITH INCUBATOR AND OTHER\n SUPPLIES. BASE OBSTETRICIAN LT COL GATES ALSO COMING TO ASSIST IN\n DELIVERY. HANG ON. OVER.\n\n\n Banes nodded and turned to the operator. \"I want a direct open\n telephone line to my office in case I have to get another message to\n the base before we get out of range again.\"", "The slow, monotonous rotation of the second hand on the wall clock\n seemed to drag time grudgingly along with it. Banes wished he could\n smoke to calm his raw nerves, but it was strictly against regulations.\n Air was too precious to be used up by smoking. Every bit of air on\n board had had to be carried up in rockets when the station was built\n in space. The air purifiers in the hydroponics section could keep the\n air fresh enough for breathing, but fire of any kind would overtax the\n system, leaving too little oxygen in the atmosphere.\n\n\n It was a few minutes of ten when he decided he'd better get back to\n Alice Britton. She was trying to read a book between spasms, but she\n wasn't getting much read. She dropped it to the floor when he came in.\n\n\n \"Am I glad to see you! It won't be long now.\" She looked at him\n analytically. \"Say! Just what\nis\neating you? You look more haggard\n than I do!\"", "There, high in the emptiness of space, Space Station One swung in its\n orbit. Once every two hours, the artificial satellite looped completely\n around the planet, watching what went on below. Outside its bright\n steel hull was the silence of the interplanetary vacuum; inside, in the\n hospital ward, Lieutenant Alice Britton clutched at the sheets of her\n bed in pain, then relaxed as it faded away.\n\n\n Major Banes looked at her and smiled a little. \"How do you feel,\n Lieutenant?\"\n\n\n She smiled back; she knew the pain wouldn't return for a few minutes\n yet. \"Fine, doctor. It's no worse than I was expecting. How long will\n it before we can contact White Sands?\"\n\n\n The major looked nervously at his wristwatch. \"Nearly an hour. You'll\n be all right.\"\n\n\n \"Certainly,\" she agreed, running a hand through her brown hair, \"I'll\n be okay. Just you be on tap when I call.\"" ], [ "The Chief Nurse at a nearby desk took off her glasses and looked at him\n speculatively. \"Something wrong, doctor?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator,\" he said, without taking his eyes off the clock.\n\n\n \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator. We can't deliver a seven-month preemie without an\n incubator.\"\n\n\n The nurse's eyes widened. \"Good Lord! I never thought of that! What are\n you going to do?\"\n\n\n \"Right now, I can't do anything. I can't beam a radio message through\n to the Earth. But as soon as we get within radio range of White Sands,\n I'll ask them to send up an emergency rocket with an incubator. But—\"\n\n\n \"But what?\"", "\"Over an hour ago,\" said Banes.\n\n\n \"But—but—the incubator—\"\n\n\n Banes' grin widened. \"We'll put the baby in it, now that we've got it,\n but it really isn't necessary. Your wife figured that one out. A space\n station is a kind of incubator itself, you see. It protects us poor,\n weak humans from the terrible conditions of space. So all we had to do\n was close up one of the airtight rooms, sterilize it, warm it up, and\n put in extra oxygen from the emergency tanks. Young James is perfectly\n comfortable.\"\n\n\n \"Excellent, Major!\" said the colonel.\n\n\n \"Don't thank me. It was Captain Britton's wife who—\"\n\n\n But Captain Britton wasn't listening any more. He was headed toward his\n wife's room at top speed.", "\"I'll say it won't! How about the incubator?\"\n\n\n There was a long pause. Finally, he said softly: \"There isn't any\n incubator. I didn't take the possibility of a premature delivery into\n account. It's my fault. I've done what I could, though; the ship is\n bringing one up. I—I think we'll be able to keep the child alive\n until—\"\n\n\n He stopped. Alice was bubbling up with laughter.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant! Lieutenant Britton! Alice! This is no time to get\n hysterical! Stop it!\"\n\n\n Her laughter slowed to a chuckle. \"\nMe\nget hysterical! That's a good\n one! What about you? You're so nervous you couldn't sip water out of a\n bathtub without spilling it!\"\n\n\n He blinked. \"What do you mean?\"", "Another pain came, and he had to wait until it was over before he got\n her answer. \"Doctor,\" she said, \"I thought you would have figured it\n out. Ask yourself just one question. Ask yourself, 'Why is a space\n station like an incubator?'\"\nSpace Ship Twelve docked at Space Station One at exactly eleven\n thirty-four, and two men in spacesuits pushed a large, bulky package\n through the airlock.\n\n\n Major Peter Banes, haggard but smiling, met Captain Britton in the\n corridor as he and the colonel entered the hospital ward.\n\n\n Banes nodded to Colonel Gates, then turned to Britton. \"I don't know\n whether to congratulate you or take a poke at you, Captain, but I\n suppose congratulations come first. Your son, James Edward Britton II,\n is doing fine, thank you.\"\n\n\n \"You mean—\nalready\n?\"\n\n\n The colonel said nothing, but he raised an eyebrow.", "WHITE SANDS ROCKET BASE 4 JULY 1984 0928 HRS URGENT TO: MAJ PETER\n BANES (MC) 0-266118 SS-1 MEDICAL OFFICER FROM: GEN DAVID BARRETT\n 0-199515 COMMANDING WSRB ROCKET. ORBIT COMPUTED FOR RENDEZVOUS AT 1134\n HRS MST. CAPT BRITTON SENDS PERSONAL TO LT BRITTON AS FOLLOWS: HOLD\n THE FORT, BABY, THE WHOLE WORLD IS PRAYING FOR YOU. OUT.\nBanes sat on the edge of his desk, pounding a fist into the palm of\n his left hand. \"Two hours. It isn't soon enough. She'll never hold out\n that long. And we don't have an incubator.\" His voice was a clipped\n monotone, timed with the rhythmic slamming of his fist.", "She frowned. \"That really puts you on the spot. If the baby dies,\n they'll blame you.\"\n\n\n Banes slammed his fist to the desk. \"Do you think I give a tinker's dam\n about that? I'm interested in saving a life, not in worrying about what\n people may think!\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I just thought—\"\n\n\n \"Well, think about something useful! Think about how we're going to\n save that baby!\" He paused as he saw her eyes. \"I'm sorry, Lieutenant.\n My nerves are all raw, I guess. But, dammit, my field is space\n medicine. I can handle depressurization, space sickness, and things\n like that, but I don't know anything about babies! I know what I read\n in medical school, and I watched a delivery once, but that's all I\n know. I don't even have any references up here; people aren't supposed\n to go around having babies on a space station!\"", "Again he tried to force a smile, but it didn't come off too well.\n \"Nothing serious. I just want to make sure everything comes out all\n right.\"\n\n\n She smiled. \"It will. You're all set. You ordered the instruments\n months ago. Or did you forget something?\"\n\n\n That hit home, but he just grinned feebly. \"I forgot to get somebody to\n boil water.\"\n\n\n \"Whatever for?\"\n\n\n \"Coffee, of course. Didn't you know that? Papa always heats up the\n water; that keeps him out of the way, and the doctor has coffee\n afterwards.\"\n\n\n Alice's hands grasped the sheet again, and Banes glanced at his watch.\n Ninety seconds! It was long and hard.\n\n\n When the pain had ebbed away, he said: \"We've got the delivery room all\n ready. It won't be much longer now.\"", "\"It's all right, doctor. Shall I prepare the delivery room?\"\n\n\n His laugh was hard and short. \"Delivery room! I wish to Heaven we had\n one! Prepare the ward room next to the one she's in now, I guess. It's\n the best we have.\n\n\n \"So help me Hannah, I'm going to see some changes made in regulations!\n A situation like this won't happen again!\"\n\n\n The nurse left quietly. She knew Banes wasn't really angry at the\n Brittons; it was simply his way of letting off steam to ease the\n tension within him.", "Alice had said: \"I'm sure the thought never entered his mind, doctor. I\n know it never entered mine.\"\n\n\n \"But that was two and a half months ago! Why didn't you come to\n me before this? Of all the tom-fool—\" His voice had died off in\n suppressed anger.\n\n\n \"I didn't know,\" she had said stolidly. \"You know my medical record.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I know.\" A puzzled frown had come over his face then, a frown\n which almost hid the green eyes that contrasted so startlingly with the\n flaming red of his hair. \"The question is: what do we do next? We're\n not equipped for obstetrics up here.\"\n\n\n \"Send me back down to Earth, of course.\"", "Banes had to fight hard to keep his face smiling when she said that,\n but he managed an easy nod. \"We'll see. Don't hurry it, though. Let\n nature take its course. I'm not such a glory hog that I'd not let Gates\n have part of it—or all of it, for that matter. Relax and take it easy.\"\n\n\n He went on talking, trying to keep the conversation light, but his eyes\n kept wandering to his wristwatch, timing Alice's pain intervals. They\n were coming too close together to suit him.\n\n\n There was a faint rap, and the heavy airtight door swung open to admit\n the Chief Nurse. \"There's a message for you in your office, doctor.\n I'll send a nurse in to be with her.\"\n\n\n He nodded, then turned back to Alice. \"Stiff uppah lip, and all that\n sort of rot,\" he said in a phony British accent.", "WHITE SANDS ROCKET BASE 4 JULY 1984 0913 HRS URGENT TO: MAJ PETER\n BANES (MC) 0-266118 SS-1 MEDICAL OFFICER FROM: GEN DAVID BARRETT\n 0-199515 COMMANDING WSRB ROCKET. ORBIT NOW BEING COMPUTED FOR\n RENDEZVOUS WITH SS-1 AS OF NEXT PASSAGE ABOVE USA. CAPT. JAMES\n BRITTON PILOTING. MEDICS LOADING SHIP TWELVE WITH INCUBATOR AND OTHER\n SUPPLIES. BASE OBSTETRICIAN LT COL GATES ALSO COMING TO ASSIST IN\n DELIVERY. HANG ON. OVER.\n\n\n Banes nodded and turned to the operator. \"I want a direct open\n telephone line to my office in case I have to get another message to\n the base before we get out of range again.\"", "He turned and left through the heavy door. Each room of the space\n station was protected by airtight doors and individual heating units;\n if some accident, such as a really large meteor hit, should release the\n air from one room, nearby rooms would be safe.\n\n\n Banes' next stop was the hospital ward.\n\n\n Alice Britton was resting quietly, but there were lines of strain\n around her eyes which hadn't been there an hour before.\n\n\n \"How's it coming, Lieutenant?\"\n\n\n She smiled, but another spasm hit her before she could answer. After a\n time, she said: \"I'm doing fine, but you look as if you'd been through\n the mill. What's eating you?\"", "The Chief Nurse said: \"Can't we build something that will do until the\n rocket gets here?\"\n\n\n Banes looked at her, his face expressionless. \"What would we build it\n out of? There's not a spare piece of equipment in the station. It costs\n money to ship material up here, you know. Anything not essential is\n left on the ground.\"\n\n\n The phone rang. Banes picked it up and identified himself.\n\n\n The voice at the other end said: \"This is Communications, Major. I tape\n recorded all the monitor pickups from the Earth radio stations, and it\n looks as though the Space Service has released the information to the\n public. Lieutenant Britton's husband was right when he said the whole\n world's praying for her. Do you want to hear the tapes?\"\n\n\n \"Not now, but thanks for the information.\" He hung up and looked into\n the Chief Nurse's eyes. \"They've released the news to the public.\"", "The major's grin broadened. \"You don't think I'd miss a historical\n event like this, do you? You take it easy. We're over Eastern Europe\n now, but as soon as we get within radio range of New Mexico, I'll beam\n a call in.\" He paused, then repeated, \"You just take it easy. Call the\n nurse if anything happens.\" Then he turned and walked out of the room.\n\n\n Alice Britton closed her eyes. Major Banes was all smiles and cheer\n now, but he hadn't been that way five months ago. She chuckled softly\n to herself as she thought of his blistering speech.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant Britton, you're either careless or brainless; I don't\n know which! Your husband may be the finest rocket jockey in the Space\n Service, but that doesn't give him the right to come blasting up here\n on a supply rocket just to get you pregnant!\"", "And he had looked up at her scathingly. \"Lieutenant Britton, it is\n my personal opinion that you need your head examined, and not by a\n general practitioner, either! Why, I wouldn't let you get into an\n airplane, much less land on Earth in a rocket! If you think I'd permit\n you to subject yourself to eight gravities of acceleration in a rocket\n landing, you're daffy!\"\n\n\n She hadn't thought of it before, but the major was right. The terrible\n pressure of a rocket landing would increase her effective body weight\n to nearly half a ton; an adult human being couldn't take that sort of\n punishment for long, much less the tiny life that was growing within\n her.", "Everything had been fine until today. And then, only half an hour ago,\n a meteor had hit the radar room. It had been only a tiny bit of rock,\n no bigger than a twenty-two bullet, and it hadn't been traveling more\n than ten miles per second, but it had managed to punch its way through\n the shielding of the station.\n\n\n The self-sealing walls had closed the tiny hole quickly, but even in\n that short time, a lot of air had gone whistling out into the vacuum of\n space.\n\n\n The depressurization hadn't hurt her too much, but the shock had been\n enough to start labor. The baby was going to come two months early.\n\n\n She relaxed a little more, waiting for the next pain. There was nothing\n to worry about; she had absolute faith in the red-haired major.\n\n\n The major himself was not so sure. He sat in his office, massaging his\n fingertips and looking worriedly at the clock on the wall.", "\"Will we have time? The pains are coming pretty fast now. It will be at\n least three hours before they can get a ship up here. If they miss us\n on the next time around, it'll be five hours. She can't hold out that\n long.\"\n\n\n The Chief Nurse turned her eyes to the slowly moving second hand of the\n wall clock. She could feel a lump in her throat.\n\n\n Major Banes was in the Communications Center a full five minutes\n before the coastline of California appeared on the curved horizon of\n the globe beneath them. He had spent the hour typing out a complete\n report of what had happened to Alice Britton and a list of what he\n needed. He handed it to the teletype operator and paced the floor\n impatiently as he waited for the answer.\n\n\n When the receiver teletype began clacking softly, he leaned over the\n page, waiting anxiously for every word.", "So she had stayed on in the Space Station, doing her job as always.\n As Chief Radar Technician, she was important in the operation of the\n station. Her pregnancy had never made her uncomfortable; the slow\n rotation of the wheel-shaped station about its axis gave an effective\n gravity at the rim only half that of Earth's surface, and the closer to\n the hub she went, the less her weight became.\n\n\n According to the major, the baby was due sometime around the first of\n September. \"Two hundred and eighty days,\" he had said. \"Luckily, we can\n pinpoint it almost exactly. And at a maximum of half of Earth gravity,\n you shouldn't weigh more than seventy pounds then. You're to report to\n me at least once a week, Lieutenant.\"\n\n\n As the words went through her mind, another spasm of pain hit her, and\n she clenched her fists tightly on the sheets again. It went away, and\n she took a deep breath.", "He forced a nervous smile. \"Nothing but the responsibility. You're\n going to be a very famous woman, you know. You'll be the mother of the\n first child born in space. And it's my job to see to it that you're\n both all right.\"\n\n\n She grinned. \"Another Dr. Dafoe?\"\n\n\n \"Something on that order, I suppose. But it won't be all my glory.\n Colonel Gates, the O.B. man, was supposed to come up for the delivery\n in September, so when White Sands contacted us, they said he was coming\n immediately.\" He paused, and a genuine smile crossed his face. \"Your\n husband is bringing him up.\"\n\n\n \"Jim! Coming up here? Wonderful! But I'm afraid the colonel will be too\n late. This isn't going to last that long.\"", "The slow, monotonous rotation of the second hand on the wall clock\n seemed to drag time grudgingly along with it. Banes wished he could\n smoke to calm his raw nerves, but it was strictly against regulations.\n Air was too precious to be used up by smoking. Every bit of air on\n board had had to be carried up in rockets when the station was built\n in space. The air purifiers in the hydroponics section could keep the\n air fresh enough for breathing, but fire of any kind would overtax the\n system, leaving too little oxygen in the atmosphere.\n\n\n It was a few minutes of ten when he decided he'd better get back to\n Alice Britton. She was trying to read a book between spasms, but she\n wasn't getting much read. She dropped it to the floor when he came in.\n\n\n \"Am I glad to see you! It won't be long now.\" She looked at him\n analytically. \"Say! Just what\nis\neating you? You look more haggard\n than I do!\"" ], [ "The Chief Nurse at a nearby desk took off her glasses and looked at him\n speculatively. \"Something wrong, doctor?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator,\" he said, without taking his eyes off the clock.\n\n\n \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator. We can't deliver a seven-month preemie without an\n incubator.\"\n\n\n The nurse's eyes widened. \"Good Lord! I never thought of that! What are\n you going to do?\"\n\n\n \"Right now, I can't do anything. I can't beam a radio message through\n to the Earth. But as soon as we get within radio range of White Sands,\n I'll ask them to send up an emergency rocket with an incubator. But—\"\n\n\n \"But what?\"", "\"I'll say it won't! How about the incubator?\"\n\n\n There was a long pause. Finally, he said softly: \"There isn't any\n incubator. I didn't take the possibility of a premature delivery into\n account. It's my fault. I've done what I could, though; the ship is\n bringing one up. I—I think we'll be able to keep the child alive\n until—\"\n\n\n He stopped. Alice was bubbling up with laughter.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant! Lieutenant Britton! Alice! This is no time to get\n hysterical! Stop it!\"\n\n\n Her laughter slowed to a chuckle. \"\nMe\nget hysterical! That's a good\n one! What about you? You're so nervous you couldn't sip water out of a\n bathtub without spilling it!\"\n\n\n He blinked. \"What do you mean?\"", "\"Over an hour ago,\" said Banes.\n\n\n \"But—but—the incubator—\"\n\n\n Banes' grin widened. \"We'll put the baby in it, now that we've got it,\n but it really isn't necessary. Your wife figured that one out. A space\n station is a kind of incubator itself, you see. It protects us poor,\n weak humans from the terrible conditions of space. So all we had to do\n was close up one of the airtight rooms, sterilize it, warm it up, and\n put in extra oxygen from the emergency tanks. Young James is perfectly\n comfortable.\"\n\n\n \"Excellent, Major!\" said the colonel.\n\n\n \"Don't thank me. It was Captain Britton's wife who—\"\n\n\n But Captain Britton wasn't listening any more. He was headed toward his\n wife's room at top speed.", "She frowned. \"That really puts you on the spot. If the baby dies,\n they'll blame you.\"\n\n\n Banes slammed his fist to the desk. \"Do you think I give a tinker's dam\n about that? I'm interested in saving a life, not in worrying about what\n people may think!\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I just thought—\"\n\n\n \"Well, think about something useful! Think about how we're going to\n save that baby!\" He paused as he saw her eyes. \"I'm sorry, Lieutenant.\n My nerves are all raw, I guess. But, dammit, my field is space\n medicine. I can handle depressurization, space sickness, and things\n like that, but I don't know anything about babies! I know what I read\n in medical school, and I watched a delivery once, but that's all I\n know. I don't even have any references up here; people aren't supposed\n to go around having babies on a space station!\"", "Another pain came, and he had to wait until it was over before he got\n her answer. \"Doctor,\" she said, \"I thought you would have figured it\n out. Ask yourself just one question. Ask yourself, 'Why is a space\n station like an incubator?'\"\nSpace Ship Twelve docked at Space Station One at exactly eleven\n thirty-four, and two men in spacesuits pushed a large, bulky package\n through the airlock.\n\n\n Major Peter Banes, haggard but smiling, met Captain Britton in the\n corridor as he and the colonel entered the hospital ward.\n\n\n Banes nodded to Colonel Gates, then turned to Britton. \"I don't know\n whether to congratulate you or take a poke at you, Captain, but I\n suppose congratulations come first. Your son, James Edward Britton II,\n is doing fine, thank you.\"\n\n\n \"You mean—\nalready\n?\"\n\n\n The colonel said nothing, but he raised an eyebrow.", "The Chief Nurse said: \"Can't we build something that will do until the\n rocket gets here?\"\n\n\n Banes looked at her, his face expressionless. \"What would we build it\n out of? There's not a spare piece of equipment in the station. It costs\n money to ship material up here, you know. Anything not essential is\n left on the ground.\"\n\n\n The phone rang. Banes picked it up and identified himself.\n\n\n The voice at the other end said: \"This is Communications, Major. I tape\n recorded all the monitor pickups from the Earth radio stations, and it\n looks as though the Space Service has released the information to the\n public. Lieutenant Britton's husband was right when he said the whole\n world's praying for her. Do you want to hear the tapes?\"\n\n\n \"Not now, but thanks for the information.\" He hung up and looked into\n the Chief Nurse's eyes. \"They've released the news to the public.\"", "\"It's all right, doctor. Shall I prepare the delivery room?\"\n\n\n His laugh was hard and short. \"Delivery room! I wish to Heaven we had\n one! Prepare the ward room next to the one she's in now, I guess. It's\n the best we have.\n\n\n \"So help me Hannah, I'm going to see some changes made in regulations!\n A situation like this won't happen again!\"\n\n\n The nurse left quietly. She knew Banes wasn't really angry at the\n Brittons; it was simply his way of letting off steam to ease the\n tension within him.", "WHITE SANDS ROCKET BASE 4 JULY 1984 0928 HRS URGENT TO: MAJ PETER\n BANES (MC) 0-266118 SS-1 MEDICAL OFFICER FROM: GEN DAVID BARRETT\n 0-199515 COMMANDING WSRB ROCKET. ORBIT COMPUTED FOR RENDEZVOUS AT 1134\n HRS MST. CAPT BRITTON SENDS PERSONAL TO LT BRITTON AS FOLLOWS: HOLD\n THE FORT, BABY, THE WHOLE WORLD IS PRAYING FOR YOU. OUT.\nBanes sat on the edge of his desk, pounding a fist into the palm of\n his left hand. \"Two hours. It isn't soon enough. She'll never hold out\n that long. And we don't have an incubator.\" His voice was a clipped\n monotone, timed with the rhythmic slamming of his fist.", "Again he tried to force a smile, but it didn't come off too well.\n \"Nothing serious. I just want to make sure everything comes out all\n right.\"\n\n\n She smiled. \"It will. You're all set. You ordered the instruments\n months ago. Or did you forget something?\"\n\n\n That hit home, but he just grinned feebly. \"I forgot to get somebody to\n boil water.\"\n\n\n \"Whatever for?\"\n\n\n \"Coffee, of course. Didn't you know that? Papa always heats up the\n water; that keeps him out of the way, and the doctor has coffee\n afterwards.\"\n\n\n Alice's hands grasped the sheet again, and Banes glanced at his watch.\n Ninety seconds! It was long and hard.\n\n\n When the pain had ebbed away, he said: \"We've got the delivery room all\n ready. It won't be much longer now.\"", "Alice had said: \"I'm sure the thought never entered his mind, doctor. I\n know it never entered mine.\"\n\n\n \"But that was two and a half months ago! Why didn't you come to\n me before this? Of all the tom-fool—\" His voice had died off in\n suppressed anger.\n\n\n \"I didn't know,\" she had said stolidly. \"You know my medical record.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I know.\" A puzzled frown had come over his face then, a frown\n which almost hid the green eyes that contrasted so startlingly with the\n flaming red of his hair. \"The question is: what do we do next? We're\n not equipped for obstetrics up here.\"\n\n\n \"Send me back down to Earth, of course.\"", "Banes had to fight hard to keep his face smiling when she said that,\n but he managed an easy nod. \"We'll see. Don't hurry it, though. Let\n nature take its course. I'm not such a glory hog that I'd not let Gates\n have part of it—or all of it, for that matter. Relax and take it easy.\"\n\n\n He went on talking, trying to keep the conversation light, but his eyes\n kept wandering to his wristwatch, timing Alice's pain intervals. They\n were coming too close together to suit him.\n\n\n There was a faint rap, and the heavy airtight door swung open to admit\n the Chief Nurse. \"There's a message for you in your office, doctor.\n I'll send a nurse in to be with her.\"\n\n\n He nodded, then turned back to Alice. \"Stiff uppah lip, and all that\n sort of rot,\" he said in a phony British accent.", "And he had looked up at her scathingly. \"Lieutenant Britton, it is\n my personal opinion that you need your head examined, and not by a\n general practitioner, either! Why, I wouldn't let you get into an\n airplane, much less land on Earth in a rocket! If you think I'd permit\n you to subject yourself to eight gravities of acceleration in a rocket\n landing, you're daffy!\"\n\n\n She hadn't thought of it before, but the major was right. The terrible\n pressure of a rocket landing would increase her effective body weight\n to nearly half a ton; an adult human being couldn't take that sort of\n punishment for long, much less the tiny life that was growing within\n her.", "He turned and left through the heavy door. Each room of the space\n station was protected by airtight doors and individual heating units;\n if some accident, such as a really large meteor hit, should release the\n air from one room, nearby rooms would be safe.\n\n\n Banes' next stop was the hospital ward.\n\n\n Alice Britton was resting quietly, but there were lines of strain\n around her eyes which hadn't been there an hour before.\n\n\n \"How's it coming, Lieutenant?\"\n\n\n She smiled, but another spasm hit her before she could answer. After a\n time, she said: \"I'm doing fine, but you look as if you'd been through\n the mill. What's eating you?\"", "Everything had been fine until today. And then, only half an hour ago,\n a meteor had hit the radar room. It had been only a tiny bit of rock,\n no bigger than a twenty-two bullet, and it hadn't been traveling more\n than ten miles per second, but it had managed to punch its way through\n the shielding of the station.\n\n\n The self-sealing walls had closed the tiny hole quickly, but even in\n that short time, a lot of air had gone whistling out into the vacuum of\n space.\n\n\n The depressurization hadn't hurt her too much, but the shock had been\n enough to start labor. The baby was going to come two months early.\n\n\n She relaxed a little more, waiting for the next pain. There was nothing\n to worry about; she had absolute faith in the red-haired major.\n\n\n The major himself was not so sure. He sat in his office, massaging his\n fingertips and looking worriedly at the clock on the wall.", "\"Will we have time? The pains are coming pretty fast now. It will be at\n least three hours before they can get a ship up here. If they miss us\n on the next time around, it'll be five hours. She can't hold out that\n long.\"\n\n\n The Chief Nurse turned her eyes to the slowly moving second hand of the\n wall clock. She could feel a lump in her throat.\n\n\n Major Banes was in the Communications Center a full five minutes\n before the coastline of California appeared on the curved horizon of\n the globe beneath them. He had spent the hour typing out a complete\n report of what had happened to Alice Britton and a list of what he\n needed. He handed it to the teletype operator and paced the floor\n impatiently as he waited for the answer.\n\n\n When the receiver teletype began clacking softly, he leaned over the\n page, waiting anxiously for every word.", "The slow, monotonous rotation of the second hand on the wall clock\n seemed to drag time grudgingly along with it. Banes wished he could\n smoke to calm his raw nerves, but it was strictly against regulations.\n Air was too precious to be used up by smoking. Every bit of air on\n board had had to be carried up in rockets when the station was built\n in space. The air purifiers in the hydroponics section could keep the\n air fresh enough for breathing, but fire of any kind would overtax the\n system, leaving too little oxygen in the atmosphere.\n\n\n It was a few minutes of ten when he decided he'd better get back to\n Alice Britton. She was trying to read a book between spasms, but she\n wasn't getting much read. She dropped it to the floor when he came in.\n\n\n \"Am I glad to see you! It won't be long now.\" She looked at him\n analytically. \"Say! Just what\nis\neating you? You look more haggard\n than I do!\"", "So she had stayed on in the Space Station, doing her job as always.\n As Chief Radar Technician, she was important in the operation of the\n station. Her pregnancy had never made her uncomfortable; the slow\n rotation of the wheel-shaped station about its axis gave an effective\n gravity at the rim only half that of Earth's surface, and the closer to\n the hub she went, the less her weight became.\n\n\n According to the major, the baby was due sometime around the first of\n September. \"Two hundred and eighty days,\" he had said. \"Luckily, we can\n pinpoint it almost exactly. And at a maximum of half of Earth gravity,\n you shouldn't weigh more than seventy pounds then. You're to report to\n me at least once a week, Lieutenant.\"\n\n\n As the words went through her mind, another spasm of pain hit her, and\n she clenched her fists tightly on the sheets again. It went away, and\n she took a deep breath.", "WHITE SANDS ROCKET BASE 4 JULY 1984 0913 HRS URGENT TO: MAJ PETER\n BANES (MC) 0-266118 SS-1 MEDICAL OFFICER FROM: GEN DAVID BARRETT\n 0-199515 COMMANDING WSRB ROCKET. ORBIT NOW BEING COMPUTED FOR\n RENDEZVOUS WITH SS-1 AS OF NEXT PASSAGE ABOVE USA. CAPT. JAMES\n BRITTON PILOTING. MEDICS LOADING SHIP TWELVE WITH INCUBATOR AND OTHER\n SUPPLIES. BASE OBSTETRICIAN LT COL GATES ALSO COMING TO ASSIST IN\n DELIVERY. HANG ON. OVER.\n\n\n Banes nodded and turned to the operator. \"I want a direct open\n telephone line to my office in case I have to get another message to\n the base before we get out of range again.\"", "The major's grin broadened. \"You don't think I'd miss a historical\n event like this, do you? You take it easy. We're over Eastern Europe\n now, but as soon as we get within radio range of New Mexico, I'll beam\n a call in.\" He paused, then repeated, \"You just take it easy. Call the\n nurse if anything happens.\" Then he turned and walked out of the room.\n\n\n Alice Britton closed her eyes. Major Banes was all smiles and cheer\n now, but he hadn't been that way five months ago. She chuckled softly\n to herself as she thought of his blistering speech.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant Britton, you're either careless or brainless; I don't\n know which! Your husband may be the finest rocket jockey in the Space\n Service, but that doesn't give him the right to come blasting up here\n on a supply rocket just to get you pregnant!\"", "He forced a nervous smile. \"Nothing but the responsibility. You're\n going to be a very famous woman, you know. You'll be the mother of the\n first child born in space. And it's my job to see to it that you're\n both all right.\"\n\n\n She grinned. \"Another Dr. Dafoe?\"\n\n\n \"Something on that order, I suppose. But it won't be all my glory.\n Colonel Gates, the O.B. man, was supposed to come up for the delivery\n in September, so when White Sands contacted us, they said he was coming\n immediately.\" He paused, and a genuine smile crossed his face. \"Your\n husband is bringing him up.\"\n\n\n \"Jim! Coming up here? Wonderful! But I'm afraid the colonel will be too\n late. This isn't going to last that long.\"" ], [ "WHITE SANDS ROCKET BASE 4 JULY 1984 0928 HRS URGENT TO: MAJ PETER\n BANES (MC) 0-266118 SS-1 MEDICAL OFFICER FROM: GEN DAVID BARRETT\n 0-199515 COMMANDING WSRB ROCKET. ORBIT COMPUTED FOR RENDEZVOUS AT 1134\n HRS MST. CAPT BRITTON SENDS PERSONAL TO LT BRITTON AS FOLLOWS: HOLD\n THE FORT, BABY, THE WHOLE WORLD IS PRAYING FOR YOU. OUT.\nBanes sat on the edge of his desk, pounding a fist into the palm of\n his left hand. \"Two hours. It isn't soon enough. She'll never hold out\n that long. And we don't have an incubator.\" His voice was a clipped\n monotone, timed with the rhythmic slamming of his fist.", "WHITE SANDS ROCKET BASE 4 JULY 1984 0913 HRS URGENT TO: MAJ PETER\n BANES (MC) 0-266118 SS-1 MEDICAL OFFICER FROM: GEN DAVID BARRETT\n 0-199515 COMMANDING WSRB ROCKET. ORBIT NOW BEING COMPUTED FOR\n RENDEZVOUS WITH SS-1 AS OF NEXT PASSAGE ABOVE USA. CAPT. JAMES\n BRITTON PILOTING. MEDICS LOADING SHIP TWELVE WITH INCUBATOR AND OTHER\n SUPPLIES. BASE OBSTETRICIAN LT COL GATES ALSO COMING TO ASSIST IN\n DELIVERY. HANG ON. OVER.\n\n\n Banes nodded and turned to the operator. \"I want a direct open\n telephone line to my office in case I have to get another message to\n the base before we get out of range again.\"", "There, high in the emptiness of space, Space Station One swung in its\n orbit. Once every two hours, the artificial satellite looped completely\n around the planet, watching what went on below. Outside its bright\n steel hull was the silence of the interplanetary vacuum; inside, in the\n hospital ward, Lieutenant Alice Britton clutched at the sheets of her\n bed in pain, then relaxed as it faded away.\n\n\n Major Banes looked at her and smiled a little. \"How do you feel,\n Lieutenant?\"\n\n\n She smiled back; she knew the pain wouldn't return for a few minutes\n yet. \"Fine, doctor. It's no worse than I was expecting. How long will\n it before we can contact White Sands?\"\n\n\n The major looked nervously at his wristwatch. \"Nearly an hour. You'll\n be all right.\"\n\n\n \"Certainly,\" she agreed, running a hand through her brown hair, \"I'll\n be okay. Just you be on tap when I call.\"", "He forced a nervous smile. \"Nothing but the responsibility. You're\n going to be a very famous woman, you know. You'll be the mother of the\n first child born in space. And it's my job to see to it that you're\n both all right.\"\n\n\n She grinned. \"Another Dr. Dafoe?\"\n\n\n \"Something on that order, I suppose. But it won't be all my glory.\n Colonel Gates, the O.B. man, was supposed to come up for the delivery\n in September, so when White Sands contacted us, they said he was coming\n immediately.\" He paused, and a genuine smile crossed his face. \"Your\n husband is bringing him up.\"\n\n\n \"Jim! Coming up here? Wonderful! But I'm afraid the colonel will be too\n late. This isn't going to last that long.\"", "The major's grin broadened. \"You don't think I'd miss a historical\n event like this, do you? You take it easy. We're over Eastern Europe\n now, but as soon as we get within radio range of New Mexico, I'll beam\n a call in.\" He paused, then repeated, \"You just take it easy. Call the\n nurse if anything happens.\" Then he turned and walked out of the room.\n\n\n Alice Britton closed her eyes. Major Banes was all smiles and cheer\n now, but he hadn't been that way five months ago. She chuckled softly\n to herself as she thought of his blistering speech.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant Britton, you're either careless or brainless; I don't\n know which! Your husband may be the finest rocket jockey in the Space\n Service, but that doesn't give him the right to come blasting up here\n on a supply rocket just to get you pregnant!\"", "The Chief Nurse at a nearby desk took off her glasses and looked at him\n speculatively. \"Something wrong, doctor?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator,\" he said, without taking his eyes off the clock.\n\n\n \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator. We can't deliver a seven-month preemie without an\n incubator.\"\n\n\n The nurse's eyes widened. \"Good Lord! I never thought of that! What are\n you going to do?\"\n\n\n \"Right now, I can't do anything. I can't beam a radio message through\n to the Earth. But as soon as we get within radio range of White Sands,\n I'll ask them to send up an emergency rocket with an incubator. But—\"\n\n\n \"But what?\"", "He turned and left through the heavy door. Each room of the space\n station was protected by airtight doors and individual heating units;\n if some accident, such as a really large meteor hit, should release the\n air from one room, nearby rooms would be safe.\n\n\n Banes' next stop was the hospital ward.\n\n\n Alice Britton was resting quietly, but there were lines of strain\n around her eyes which hadn't been there an hour before.\n\n\n \"How's it coming, Lieutenant?\"\n\n\n She smiled, but another spasm hit her before she could answer. After a\n time, she said: \"I'm doing fine, but you look as if you'd been through\n the mill. What's eating you?\"", "The slow, monotonous rotation of the second hand on the wall clock\n seemed to drag time grudgingly along with it. Banes wished he could\n smoke to calm his raw nerves, but it was strictly against regulations.\n Air was too precious to be used up by smoking. Every bit of air on\n board had had to be carried up in rockets when the station was built\n in space. The air purifiers in the hydroponics section could keep the\n air fresh enough for breathing, but fire of any kind would overtax the\n system, leaving too little oxygen in the atmosphere.\n\n\n It was a few minutes of ten when he decided he'd better get back to\n Alice Britton. She was trying to read a book between spasms, but she\n wasn't getting much read. She dropped it to the floor when he came in.\n\n\n \"Am I glad to see you! It won't be long now.\" She looked at him\n analytically. \"Say! Just what\nis\neating you? You look more haggard\n than I do!\"", "Banes had to fight hard to keep his face smiling when she said that,\n but he managed an easy nod. \"We'll see. Don't hurry it, though. Let\n nature take its course. I'm not such a glory hog that I'd not let Gates\n have part of it—or all of it, for that matter. Relax and take it easy.\"\n\n\n He went on talking, trying to keep the conversation light, but his eyes\n kept wandering to his wristwatch, timing Alice's pain intervals. They\n were coming too close together to suit him.\n\n\n There was a faint rap, and the heavy airtight door swung open to admit\n the Chief Nurse. \"There's a message for you in your office, doctor.\n I'll send a nurse in to be with her.\"\n\n\n He nodded, then turned back to Alice. \"Stiff uppah lip, and all that\n sort of rot,\" he said in a phony British accent.", "Everything had been fine until today. And then, only half an hour ago,\n a meteor had hit the radar room. It had been only a tiny bit of rock,\n no bigger than a twenty-two bullet, and it hadn't been traveling more\n than ten miles per second, but it had managed to punch its way through\n the shielding of the station.\n\n\n The self-sealing walls had closed the tiny hole quickly, but even in\n that short time, a lot of air had gone whistling out into the vacuum of\n space.\n\n\n The depressurization hadn't hurt her too much, but the shock had been\n enough to start labor. The baby was going to come two months early.\n\n\n She relaxed a little more, waiting for the next pain. There was nothing\n to worry about; she had absolute faith in the red-haired major.\n\n\n The major himself was not so sure. He sat in his office, massaging his\n fingertips and looking worriedly at the clock on the wall.", "Alice had said: \"I'm sure the thought never entered his mind, doctor. I\n know it never entered mine.\"\n\n\n \"But that was two and a half months ago! Why didn't you come to\n me before this? Of all the tom-fool—\" His voice had died off in\n suppressed anger.\n\n\n \"I didn't know,\" she had said stolidly. \"You know my medical record.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I know.\" A puzzled frown had come over his face then, a frown\n which almost hid the green eyes that contrasted so startlingly with the\n flaming red of his hair. \"The question is: what do we do next? We're\n not equipped for obstetrics up here.\"\n\n\n \"Send me back down to Earth, of course.\"", "The Chief Nurse said: \"Can't we build something that will do until the\n rocket gets here?\"\n\n\n Banes looked at her, his face expressionless. \"What would we build it\n out of? There's not a spare piece of equipment in the station. It costs\n money to ship material up here, you know. Anything not essential is\n left on the ground.\"\n\n\n The phone rang. Banes picked it up and identified himself.\n\n\n The voice at the other end said: \"This is Communications, Major. I tape\n recorded all the monitor pickups from the Earth radio stations, and it\n looks as though the Space Service has released the information to the\n public. Lieutenant Britton's husband was right when he said the whole\n world's praying for her. Do you want to hear the tapes?\"\n\n\n \"Not now, but thanks for the information.\" He hung up and looked into\n the Chief Nurse's eyes. \"They've released the news to the public.\"", "\"Will we have time? The pains are coming pretty fast now. It will be at\n least three hours before they can get a ship up here. If they miss us\n on the next time around, it'll be five hours. She can't hold out that\n long.\"\n\n\n The Chief Nurse turned her eyes to the slowly moving second hand of the\n wall clock. She could feel a lump in her throat.\n\n\n Major Banes was in the Communications Center a full five minutes\n before the coastline of California appeared on the curved horizon of\n the globe beneath them. He had spent the hour typing out a complete\n report of what had happened to Alice Britton and a list of what he\n needed. He handed it to the teletype operator and paced the floor\n impatiently as he waited for the answer.\n\n\n When the receiver teletype began clacking softly, he leaned over the\n page, waiting anxiously for every word.", "And he had looked up at her scathingly. \"Lieutenant Britton, it is\n my personal opinion that you need your head examined, and not by a\n general practitioner, either! Why, I wouldn't let you get into an\n airplane, much less land on Earth in a rocket! If you think I'd permit\n you to subject yourself to eight gravities of acceleration in a rocket\n landing, you're daffy!\"\n\n\n She hadn't thought of it before, but the major was right. The terrible\n pressure of a rocket landing would increase her effective body weight\n to nearly half a ton; an adult human being couldn't take that sort of\n punishment for long, much less the tiny life that was growing within\n her.", "\"I'll say it won't! How about the incubator?\"\n\n\n There was a long pause. Finally, he said softly: \"There isn't any\n incubator. I didn't take the possibility of a premature delivery into\n account. It's my fault. I've done what I could, though; the ship is\n bringing one up. I—I think we'll be able to keep the child alive\n until—\"\n\n\n He stopped. Alice was bubbling up with laughter.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant! Lieutenant Britton! Alice! This is no time to get\n hysterical! Stop it!\"\n\n\n Her laughter slowed to a chuckle. \"\nMe\nget hysterical! That's a good\n one! What about you? You're so nervous you couldn't sip water out of a\n bathtub without spilling it!\"\n\n\n He blinked. \"What do you mean?\"", "\"Over an hour ago,\" said Banes.\n\n\n \"But—but—the incubator—\"\n\n\n Banes' grin widened. \"We'll put the baby in it, now that we've got it,\n but it really isn't necessary. Your wife figured that one out. A space\n station is a kind of incubator itself, you see. It protects us poor,\n weak humans from the terrible conditions of space. So all we had to do\n was close up one of the airtight rooms, sterilize it, warm it up, and\n put in extra oxygen from the emergency tanks. Young James is perfectly\n comfortable.\"\n\n\n \"Excellent, Major!\" said the colonel.\n\n\n \"Don't thank me. It was Captain Britton's wife who—\"\n\n\n But Captain Britton wasn't listening any more. He was headed toward his\n wife's room at top speed.", "Another pain came, and he had to wait until it was over before he got\n her answer. \"Doctor,\" she said, \"I thought you would have figured it\n out. Ask yourself just one question. Ask yourself, 'Why is a space\n station like an incubator?'\"\nSpace Ship Twelve docked at Space Station One at exactly eleven\n thirty-four, and two men in spacesuits pushed a large, bulky package\n through the airlock.\n\n\n Major Peter Banes, haggard but smiling, met Captain Britton in the\n corridor as he and the colonel entered the hospital ward.\n\n\n Banes nodded to Colonel Gates, then turned to Britton. \"I don't know\n whether to congratulate you or take a poke at you, Captain, but I\n suppose congratulations come first. Your son, James Edward Britton II,\n is doing fine, thank you.\"\n\n\n \"You mean—\nalready\n?\"\n\n\n The colonel said nothing, but he raised an eyebrow.", "She frowned. \"That really puts you on the spot. If the baby dies,\n they'll blame you.\"\n\n\n Banes slammed his fist to the desk. \"Do you think I give a tinker's dam\n about that? I'm interested in saving a life, not in worrying about what\n people may think!\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I just thought—\"\n\n\n \"Well, think about something useful! Think about how we're going to\n save that baby!\" He paused as he saw her eyes. \"I'm sorry, Lieutenant.\n My nerves are all raw, I guess. But, dammit, my field is space\n medicine. I can handle depressurization, space sickness, and things\n like that, but I don't know anything about babies! I know what I read\n in medical school, and I watched a delivery once, but that's all I\n know. I don't even have any references up here; people aren't supposed\n to go around having babies on a space station!\"", "So she had stayed on in the Space Station, doing her job as always.\n As Chief Radar Technician, she was important in the operation of the\n station. Her pregnancy had never made her uncomfortable; the slow\n rotation of the wheel-shaped station about its axis gave an effective\n gravity at the rim only half that of Earth's surface, and the closer to\n the hub she went, the less her weight became.\n\n\n According to the major, the baby was due sometime around the first of\n September. \"Two hundred and eighty days,\" he had said. \"Luckily, we can\n pinpoint it almost exactly. And at a maximum of half of Earth gravity,\n you shouldn't weigh more than seventy pounds then. You're to report to\n me at least once a week, Lieutenant.\"\n\n\n As the words went through her mind, another spasm of pain hit her, and\n she clenched her fists tightly on the sheets again. It went away, and\n she took a deep breath.", "\"Oh, raw\nther\n, old chap,\" she grinned.\n\n\n Back in his office, Banes picked up the teletype flimsy." ], [ "\"I'll say it won't! How about the incubator?\"\n\n\n There was a long pause. Finally, he said softly: \"There isn't any\n incubator. I didn't take the possibility of a premature delivery into\n account. It's my fault. I've done what I could, though; the ship is\n bringing one up. I—I think we'll be able to keep the child alive\n until—\"\n\n\n He stopped. Alice was bubbling up with laughter.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant! Lieutenant Britton! Alice! This is no time to get\n hysterical! Stop it!\"\n\n\n Her laughter slowed to a chuckle. \"\nMe\nget hysterical! That's a good\n one! What about you? You're so nervous you couldn't sip water out of a\n bathtub without spilling it!\"\n\n\n He blinked. \"What do you mean?\"", "\"Over an hour ago,\" said Banes.\n\n\n \"But—but—the incubator—\"\n\n\n Banes' grin widened. \"We'll put the baby in it, now that we've got it,\n but it really isn't necessary. Your wife figured that one out. A space\n station is a kind of incubator itself, you see. It protects us poor,\n weak humans from the terrible conditions of space. So all we had to do\n was close up one of the airtight rooms, sterilize it, warm it up, and\n put in extra oxygen from the emergency tanks. Young James is perfectly\n comfortable.\"\n\n\n \"Excellent, Major!\" said the colonel.\n\n\n \"Don't thank me. It was Captain Britton's wife who—\"\n\n\n But Captain Britton wasn't listening any more. He was headed toward his\n wife's room at top speed.", "He turned and left through the heavy door. Each room of the space\n station was protected by airtight doors and individual heating units;\n if some accident, such as a really large meteor hit, should release the\n air from one room, nearby rooms would be safe.\n\n\n Banes' next stop was the hospital ward.\n\n\n Alice Britton was resting quietly, but there were lines of strain\n around her eyes which hadn't been there an hour before.\n\n\n \"How's it coming, Lieutenant?\"\n\n\n She smiled, but another spasm hit her before she could answer. After a\n time, she said: \"I'm doing fine, but you look as if you'd been through\n the mill. What's eating you?\"", "The Chief Nurse at a nearby desk took off her glasses and looked at him\n speculatively. \"Something wrong, doctor?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator,\" he said, without taking his eyes off the clock.\n\n\n \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator. We can't deliver a seven-month preemie without an\n incubator.\"\n\n\n The nurse's eyes widened. \"Good Lord! I never thought of that! What are\n you going to do?\"\n\n\n \"Right now, I can't do anything. I can't beam a radio message through\n to the Earth. But as soon as we get within radio range of White Sands,\n I'll ask them to send up an emergency rocket with an incubator. But—\"\n\n\n \"But what?\"", "So she had stayed on in the Space Station, doing her job as always.\n As Chief Radar Technician, she was important in the operation of the\n station. Her pregnancy had never made her uncomfortable; the slow\n rotation of the wheel-shaped station about its axis gave an effective\n gravity at the rim only half that of Earth's surface, and the closer to\n the hub she went, the less her weight became.\n\n\n According to the major, the baby was due sometime around the first of\n September. \"Two hundred and eighty days,\" he had said. \"Luckily, we can\n pinpoint it almost exactly. And at a maximum of half of Earth gravity,\n you shouldn't weigh more than seventy pounds then. You're to report to\n me at least once a week, Lieutenant.\"\n\n\n As the words went through her mind, another spasm of pain hit her, and\n she clenched her fists tightly on the sheets again. It went away, and\n she took a deep breath.", "The major's grin broadened. \"You don't think I'd miss a historical\n event like this, do you? You take it easy. We're over Eastern Europe\n now, but as soon as we get within radio range of New Mexico, I'll beam\n a call in.\" He paused, then repeated, \"You just take it easy. Call the\n nurse if anything happens.\" Then he turned and walked out of the room.\n\n\n Alice Britton closed her eyes. Major Banes was all smiles and cheer\n now, but he hadn't been that way five months ago. She chuckled softly\n to herself as she thought of his blistering speech.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant Britton, you're either careless or brainless; I don't\n know which! Your husband may be the finest rocket jockey in the Space\n Service, but that doesn't give him the right to come blasting up here\n on a supply rocket just to get you pregnant!\"", "Another pain came, and he had to wait until it was over before he got\n her answer. \"Doctor,\" she said, \"I thought you would have figured it\n out. Ask yourself just one question. Ask yourself, 'Why is a space\n station like an incubator?'\"\nSpace Ship Twelve docked at Space Station One at exactly eleven\n thirty-four, and two men in spacesuits pushed a large, bulky package\n through the airlock.\n\n\n Major Peter Banes, haggard but smiling, met Captain Britton in the\n corridor as he and the colonel entered the hospital ward.\n\n\n Banes nodded to Colonel Gates, then turned to Britton. \"I don't know\n whether to congratulate you or take a poke at you, Captain, but I\n suppose congratulations come first. Your son, James Edward Britton II,\n is doing fine, thank you.\"\n\n\n \"You mean—\nalready\n?\"\n\n\n The colonel said nothing, but he raised an eyebrow.", "She frowned. \"That really puts you on the spot. If the baby dies,\n they'll blame you.\"\n\n\n Banes slammed his fist to the desk. \"Do you think I give a tinker's dam\n about that? I'm interested in saving a life, not in worrying about what\n people may think!\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I just thought—\"\n\n\n \"Well, think about something useful! Think about how we're going to\n save that baby!\" He paused as he saw her eyes. \"I'm sorry, Lieutenant.\n My nerves are all raw, I guess. But, dammit, my field is space\n medicine. I can handle depressurization, space sickness, and things\n like that, but I don't know anything about babies! I know what I read\n in medical school, and I watched a delivery once, but that's all I\n know. I don't even have any references up here; people aren't supposed\n to go around having babies on a space station!\"", "Alice had said: \"I'm sure the thought never entered his mind, doctor. I\n know it never entered mine.\"\n\n\n \"But that was two and a half months ago! Why didn't you come to\n me before this? Of all the tom-fool—\" His voice had died off in\n suppressed anger.\n\n\n \"I didn't know,\" she had said stolidly. \"You know my medical record.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I know.\" A puzzled frown had come over his face then, a frown\n which almost hid the green eyes that contrasted so startlingly with the\n flaming red of his hair. \"The question is: what do we do next? We're\n not equipped for obstetrics up here.\"\n\n\n \"Send me back down to Earth, of course.\"", "The slow, monotonous rotation of the second hand on the wall clock\n seemed to drag time grudgingly along with it. Banes wished he could\n smoke to calm his raw nerves, but it was strictly against regulations.\n Air was too precious to be used up by smoking. Every bit of air on\n board had had to be carried up in rockets when the station was built\n in space. The air purifiers in the hydroponics section could keep the\n air fresh enough for breathing, but fire of any kind would overtax the\n system, leaving too little oxygen in the atmosphere.\n\n\n It was a few minutes of ten when he decided he'd better get back to\n Alice Britton. She was trying to read a book between spasms, but she\n wasn't getting much read. She dropped it to the floor when he came in.\n\n\n \"Am I glad to see you! It won't be long now.\" She looked at him\n analytically. \"Say! Just what\nis\neating you? You look more haggard\n than I do!\"", "There, high in the emptiness of space, Space Station One swung in its\n orbit. Once every two hours, the artificial satellite looped completely\n around the planet, watching what went on below. Outside its bright\n steel hull was the silence of the interplanetary vacuum; inside, in the\n hospital ward, Lieutenant Alice Britton clutched at the sheets of her\n bed in pain, then relaxed as it faded away.\n\n\n Major Banes looked at her and smiled a little. \"How do you feel,\n Lieutenant?\"\n\n\n She smiled back; she knew the pain wouldn't return for a few minutes\n yet. \"Fine, doctor. It's no worse than I was expecting. How long will\n it before we can contact White Sands?\"\n\n\n The major looked nervously at his wristwatch. \"Nearly an hour. You'll\n be all right.\"\n\n\n \"Certainly,\" she agreed, running a hand through her brown hair, \"I'll\n be okay. Just you be on tap when I call.\"", "The Chief Nurse said: \"Can't we build something that will do until the\n rocket gets here?\"\n\n\n Banes looked at her, his face expressionless. \"What would we build it\n out of? There's not a spare piece of equipment in the station. It costs\n money to ship material up here, you know. Anything not essential is\n left on the ground.\"\n\n\n The phone rang. Banes picked it up and identified himself.\n\n\n The voice at the other end said: \"This is Communications, Major. I tape\n recorded all the monitor pickups from the Earth radio stations, and it\n looks as though the Space Service has released the information to the\n public. Lieutenant Britton's husband was right when he said the whole\n world's praying for her. Do you want to hear the tapes?\"\n\n\n \"Not now, but thanks for the information.\" He hung up and looked into\n the Chief Nurse's eyes. \"They've released the news to the public.\"", "He forced a nervous smile. \"Nothing but the responsibility. You're\n going to be a very famous woman, you know. You'll be the mother of the\n first child born in space. And it's my job to see to it that you're\n both all right.\"\n\n\n She grinned. \"Another Dr. Dafoe?\"\n\n\n \"Something on that order, I suppose. But it won't be all my glory.\n Colonel Gates, the O.B. man, was supposed to come up for the delivery\n in September, so when White Sands contacted us, they said he was coming\n immediately.\" He paused, and a genuine smile crossed his face. \"Your\n husband is bringing him up.\"\n\n\n \"Jim! Coming up here? Wonderful! But I'm afraid the colonel will be too\n late. This isn't going to last that long.\"", "Banes had to fight hard to keep his face smiling when she said that,\n but he managed an easy nod. \"We'll see. Don't hurry it, though. Let\n nature take its course. I'm not such a glory hog that I'd not let Gates\n have part of it—or all of it, for that matter. Relax and take it easy.\"\n\n\n He went on talking, trying to keep the conversation light, but his eyes\n kept wandering to his wristwatch, timing Alice's pain intervals. They\n were coming too close together to suit him.\n\n\n There was a faint rap, and the heavy airtight door swung open to admit\n the Chief Nurse. \"There's a message for you in your office, doctor.\n I'll send a nurse in to be with her.\"\n\n\n He nodded, then turned back to Alice. \"Stiff uppah lip, and all that\n sort of rot,\" he said in a phony British accent.", "Everything had been fine until today. And then, only half an hour ago,\n a meteor had hit the radar room. It had been only a tiny bit of rock,\n no bigger than a twenty-two bullet, and it hadn't been traveling more\n than ten miles per second, but it had managed to punch its way through\n the shielding of the station.\n\n\n The self-sealing walls had closed the tiny hole quickly, but even in\n that short time, a lot of air had gone whistling out into the vacuum of\n space.\n\n\n The depressurization hadn't hurt her too much, but the shock had been\n enough to start labor. The baby was going to come two months early.\n\n\n She relaxed a little more, waiting for the next pain. There was nothing\n to worry about; she had absolute faith in the red-haired major.\n\n\n The major himself was not so sure. He sat in his office, massaging his\n fingertips and looking worriedly at the clock on the wall.", "Again he tried to force a smile, but it didn't come off too well.\n \"Nothing serious. I just want to make sure everything comes out all\n right.\"\n\n\n She smiled. \"It will. You're all set. You ordered the instruments\n months ago. Or did you forget something?\"\n\n\n That hit home, but he just grinned feebly. \"I forgot to get somebody to\n boil water.\"\n\n\n \"Whatever for?\"\n\n\n \"Coffee, of course. Didn't you know that? Papa always heats up the\n water; that keeps him out of the way, and the doctor has coffee\n afterwards.\"\n\n\n Alice's hands grasped the sheet again, and Banes glanced at his watch.\n Ninety seconds! It was long and hard.\n\n\n When the pain had ebbed away, he said: \"We've got the delivery room all\n ready. It won't be much longer now.\"", "And he had looked up at her scathingly. \"Lieutenant Britton, it is\n my personal opinion that you need your head examined, and not by a\n general practitioner, either! Why, I wouldn't let you get into an\n airplane, much less land on Earth in a rocket! If you think I'd permit\n you to subject yourself to eight gravities of acceleration in a rocket\n landing, you're daffy!\"\n\n\n She hadn't thought of it before, but the major was right. The terrible\n pressure of a rocket landing would increase her effective body weight\n to nearly half a ton; an adult human being couldn't take that sort of\n punishment for long, much less the tiny life that was growing within\n her.", "WHITE SANDS ROCKET BASE 4 JULY 1984 0928 HRS URGENT TO: MAJ PETER\n BANES (MC) 0-266118 SS-1 MEDICAL OFFICER FROM: GEN DAVID BARRETT\n 0-199515 COMMANDING WSRB ROCKET. ORBIT COMPUTED FOR RENDEZVOUS AT 1134\n HRS MST. CAPT BRITTON SENDS PERSONAL TO LT BRITTON AS FOLLOWS: HOLD\n THE FORT, BABY, THE WHOLE WORLD IS PRAYING FOR YOU. OUT.\nBanes sat on the edge of his desk, pounding a fist into the palm of\n his left hand. \"Two hours. It isn't soon enough. She'll never hold out\n that long. And we don't have an incubator.\" His voice was a clipped\n monotone, timed with the rhythmic slamming of his fist.", "\"Will we have time? The pains are coming pretty fast now. It will be at\n least three hours before they can get a ship up here. If they miss us\n on the next time around, it'll be five hours. She can't hold out that\n long.\"\n\n\n The Chief Nurse turned her eyes to the slowly moving second hand of the\n wall clock. She could feel a lump in her throat.\n\n\n Major Banes was in the Communications Center a full five minutes\n before the coastline of California appeared on the curved horizon of\n the globe beneath them. He had spent the hour typing out a complete\n report of what had happened to Alice Britton and a list of what he\n needed. He handed it to the teletype operator and paced the floor\n impatiently as he waited for the answer.\n\n\n When the receiver teletype began clacking softly, he leaned over the\n page, waiting anxiously for every word.", "SPATIAL DELIVERY\nBY RANDALL GARRETT\nWomen on space station assignments\n \nshouldn't get pregnant. But there's a first\n \ntime for everything. Here's the story of\n \nsuch a time——and an historic situation.\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1954.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nOne thousand seventy-five miles above the wrinkled surface of Earth, a\n woman was in pain." ], [ "So she had stayed on in the Space Station, doing her job as always.\n As Chief Radar Technician, she was important in the operation of the\n station. Her pregnancy had never made her uncomfortable; the slow\n rotation of the wheel-shaped station about its axis gave an effective\n gravity at the rim only half that of Earth's surface, and the closer to\n the hub she went, the less her weight became.\n\n\n According to the major, the baby was due sometime around the first of\n September. \"Two hundred and eighty days,\" he had said. \"Luckily, we can\n pinpoint it almost exactly. And at a maximum of half of Earth gravity,\n you shouldn't weigh more than seventy pounds then. You're to report to\n me at least once a week, Lieutenant.\"\n\n\n As the words went through her mind, another spasm of pain hit her, and\n she clenched her fists tightly on the sheets again. It went away, and\n she took a deep breath.", "She frowned. \"That really puts you on the spot. If the baby dies,\n they'll blame you.\"\n\n\n Banes slammed his fist to the desk. \"Do you think I give a tinker's dam\n about that? I'm interested in saving a life, not in worrying about what\n people may think!\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I just thought—\"\n\n\n \"Well, think about something useful! Think about how we're going to\n save that baby!\" He paused as he saw her eyes. \"I'm sorry, Lieutenant.\n My nerves are all raw, I guess. But, dammit, my field is space\n medicine. I can handle depressurization, space sickness, and things\n like that, but I don't know anything about babies! I know what I read\n in medical school, and I watched a delivery once, but that's all I\n know. I don't even have any references up here; people aren't supposed\n to go around having babies on a space station!\"", "Alice had said: \"I'm sure the thought never entered his mind, doctor. I\n know it never entered mine.\"\n\n\n \"But that was two and a half months ago! Why didn't you come to\n me before this? Of all the tom-fool—\" His voice had died off in\n suppressed anger.\n\n\n \"I didn't know,\" she had said stolidly. \"You know my medical record.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I know.\" A puzzled frown had come over his face then, a frown\n which almost hid the green eyes that contrasted so startlingly with the\n flaming red of his hair. \"The question is: what do we do next? We're\n not equipped for obstetrics up here.\"\n\n\n \"Send me back down to Earth, of course.\"", "\"Over an hour ago,\" said Banes.\n\n\n \"But—but—the incubator—\"\n\n\n Banes' grin widened. \"We'll put the baby in it, now that we've got it,\n but it really isn't necessary. Your wife figured that one out. A space\n station is a kind of incubator itself, you see. It protects us poor,\n weak humans from the terrible conditions of space. So all we had to do\n was close up one of the airtight rooms, sterilize it, warm it up, and\n put in extra oxygen from the emergency tanks. Young James is perfectly\n comfortable.\"\n\n\n \"Excellent, Major!\" said the colonel.\n\n\n \"Don't thank me. It was Captain Britton's wife who—\"\n\n\n But Captain Britton wasn't listening any more. He was headed toward his\n wife's room at top speed.", "\"I'll say it won't! How about the incubator?\"\n\n\n There was a long pause. Finally, he said softly: \"There isn't any\n incubator. I didn't take the possibility of a premature delivery into\n account. It's my fault. I've done what I could, though; the ship is\n bringing one up. I—I think we'll be able to keep the child alive\n until—\"\n\n\n He stopped. Alice was bubbling up with laughter.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant! Lieutenant Britton! Alice! This is no time to get\n hysterical! Stop it!\"\n\n\n Her laughter slowed to a chuckle. \"\nMe\nget hysterical! That's a good\n one! What about you? You're so nervous you couldn't sip water out of a\n bathtub without spilling it!\"\n\n\n He blinked. \"What do you mean?\"", "Everything had been fine until today. And then, only half an hour ago,\n a meteor had hit the radar room. It had been only a tiny bit of rock,\n no bigger than a twenty-two bullet, and it hadn't been traveling more\n than ten miles per second, but it had managed to punch its way through\n the shielding of the station.\n\n\n The self-sealing walls had closed the tiny hole quickly, but even in\n that short time, a lot of air had gone whistling out into the vacuum of\n space.\n\n\n The depressurization hadn't hurt her too much, but the shock had been\n enough to start labor. The baby was going to come two months early.\n\n\n She relaxed a little more, waiting for the next pain. There was nothing\n to worry about; she had absolute faith in the red-haired major.\n\n\n The major himself was not so sure. He sat in his office, massaging his\n fingertips and looking worriedly at the clock on the wall.", "He forced a nervous smile. \"Nothing but the responsibility. You're\n going to be a very famous woman, you know. You'll be the mother of the\n first child born in space. And it's my job to see to it that you're\n both all right.\"\n\n\n She grinned. \"Another Dr. Dafoe?\"\n\n\n \"Something on that order, I suppose. But it won't be all my glory.\n Colonel Gates, the O.B. man, was supposed to come up for the delivery\n in September, so when White Sands contacted us, they said he was coming\n immediately.\" He paused, and a genuine smile crossed his face. \"Your\n husband is bringing him up.\"\n\n\n \"Jim! Coming up here? Wonderful! But I'm afraid the colonel will be too\n late. This isn't going to last that long.\"", "He turned and left through the heavy door. Each room of the space\n station was protected by airtight doors and individual heating units;\n if some accident, such as a really large meteor hit, should release the\n air from one room, nearby rooms would be safe.\n\n\n Banes' next stop was the hospital ward.\n\n\n Alice Britton was resting quietly, but there were lines of strain\n around her eyes which hadn't been there an hour before.\n\n\n \"How's it coming, Lieutenant?\"\n\n\n She smiled, but another spasm hit her before she could answer. After a\n time, she said: \"I'm doing fine, but you look as if you'd been through\n the mill. What's eating you?\"", "Another pain came, and he had to wait until it was over before he got\n her answer. \"Doctor,\" she said, \"I thought you would have figured it\n out. Ask yourself just one question. Ask yourself, 'Why is a space\n station like an incubator?'\"\nSpace Ship Twelve docked at Space Station One at exactly eleven\n thirty-four, and two men in spacesuits pushed a large, bulky package\n through the airlock.\n\n\n Major Peter Banes, haggard but smiling, met Captain Britton in the\n corridor as he and the colonel entered the hospital ward.\n\n\n Banes nodded to Colonel Gates, then turned to Britton. \"I don't know\n whether to congratulate you or take a poke at you, Captain, but I\n suppose congratulations come first. Your son, James Edward Britton II,\n is doing fine, thank you.\"\n\n\n \"You mean—\nalready\n?\"\n\n\n The colonel said nothing, but he raised an eyebrow.", "The major's grin broadened. \"You don't think I'd miss a historical\n event like this, do you? You take it easy. We're over Eastern Europe\n now, but as soon as we get within radio range of New Mexico, I'll beam\n a call in.\" He paused, then repeated, \"You just take it easy. Call the\n nurse if anything happens.\" Then he turned and walked out of the room.\n\n\n Alice Britton closed her eyes. Major Banes was all smiles and cheer\n now, but he hadn't been that way five months ago. She chuckled softly\n to herself as she thought of his blistering speech.\n\n\n \"Lieutenant Britton, you're either careless or brainless; I don't\n know which! Your husband may be the finest rocket jockey in the Space\n Service, but that doesn't give him the right to come blasting up here\n on a supply rocket just to get you pregnant!\"", "The Chief Nurse at a nearby desk took off her glasses and looked at him\n speculatively. \"Something wrong, doctor?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator,\" he said, without taking his eyes off the clock.\n\n\n \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\n \"Incubator. We can't deliver a seven-month preemie without an\n incubator.\"\n\n\n The nurse's eyes widened. \"Good Lord! I never thought of that! What are\n you going to do?\"\n\n\n \"Right now, I can't do anything. I can't beam a radio message through\n to the Earth. But as soon as we get within radio range of White Sands,\n I'll ask them to send up an emergency rocket with an incubator. But—\"\n\n\n \"But what?\"", "SPATIAL DELIVERY\nBY RANDALL GARRETT\nWomen on space station assignments\n \nshouldn't get pregnant. But there's a first\n \ntime for everything. Here's the story of\n \nsuch a time——and an historic situation.\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1954.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nOne thousand seventy-five miles above the wrinkled surface of Earth, a\n woman was in pain.", "There, high in the emptiness of space, Space Station One swung in its\n orbit. Once every two hours, the artificial satellite looped completely\n around the planet, watching what went on below. Outside its bright\n steel hull was the silence of the interplanetary vacuum; inside, in the\n hospital ward, Lieutenant Alice Britton clutched at the sheets of her\n bed in pain, then relaxed as it faded away.\n\n\n Major Banes looked at her and smiled a little. \"How do you feel,\n Lieutenant?\"\n\n\n She smiled back; she knew the pain wouldn't return for a few minutes\n yet. \"Fine, doctor. It's no worse than I was expecting. How long will\n it before we can contact White Sands?\"\n\n\n The major looked nervously at his wristwatch. \"Nearly an hour. You'll\n be all right.\"\n\n\n \"Certainly,\" she agreed, running a hand through her brown hair, \"I'll\n be okay. Just you be on tap when I call.\"", "The slow, monotonous rotation of the second hand on the wall clock\n seemed to drag time grudgingly along with it. Banes wished he could\n smoke to calm his raw nerves, but it was strictly against regulations.\n Air was too precious to be used up by smoking. Every bit of air on\n board had had to be carried up in rockets when the station was built\n in space. The air purifiers in the hydroponics section could keep the\n air fresh enough for breathing, but fire of any kind would overtax the\n system, leaving too little oxygen in the atmosphere.\n\n\n It was a few minutes of ten when he decided he'd better get back to\n Alice Britton. She was trying to read a book between spasms, but she\n wasn't getting much read. She dropped it to the floor when he came in.\n\n\n \"Am I glad to see you! It won't be long now.\" She looked at him\n analytically. \"Say! Just what\nis\neating you? You look more haggard\n than I do!\"", "Banes had to fight hard to keep his face smiling when she said that,\n but he managed an easy nod. \"We'll see. Don't hurry it, though. Let\n nature take its course. I'm not such a glory hog that I'd not let Gates\n have part of it—or all of it, for that matter. Relax and take it easy.\"\n\n\n He went on talking, trying to keep the conversation light, but his eyes\n kept wandering to his wristwatch, timing Alice's pain intervals. They\n were coming too close together to suit him.\n\n\n There was a faint rap, and the heavy airtight door swung open to admit\n the Chief Nurse. \"There's a message for you in your office, doctor.\n I'll send a nurse in to be with her.\"\n\n\n He nodded, then turned back to Alice. \"Stiff uppah lip, and all that\n sort of rot,\" he said in a phony British accent.", "Again he tried to force a smile, but it didn't come off too well.\n \"Nothing serious. I just want to make sure everything comes out all\n right.\"\n\n\n She smiled. \"It will. You're all set. You ordered the instruments\n months ago. Or did you forget something?\"\n\n\n That hit home, but he just grinned feebly. \"I forgot to get somebody to\n boil water.\"\n\n\n \"Whatever for?\"\n\n\n \"Coffee, of course. Didn't you know that? Papa always heats up the\n water; that keeps him out of the way, and the doctor has coffee\n afterwards.\"\n\n\n Alice's hands grasped the sheet again, and Banes glanced at his watch.\n Ninety seconds! It was long and hard.\n\n\n When the pain had ebbed away, he said: \"We've got the delivery room all\n ready. It won't be much longer now.\"", "The Chief Nurse said: \"Can't we build something that will do until the\n rocket gets here?\"\n\n\n Banes looked at her, his face expressionless. \"What would we build it\n out of? There's not a spare piece of equipment in the station. It costs\n money to ship material up here, you know. Anything not essential is\n left on the ground.\"\n\n\n The phone rang. Banes picked it up and identified himself.\n\n\n The voice at the other end said: \"This is Communications, Major. I tape\n recorded all the monitor pickups from the Earth radio stations, and it\n looks as though the Space Service has released the information to the\n public. Lieutenant Britton's husband was right when he said the whole\n world's praying for her. Do you want to hear the tapes?\"\n\n\n \"Not now, but thanks for the information.\" He hung up and looked into\n the Chief Nurse's eyes. \"They've released the news to the public.\"", "And he had looked up at her scathingly. \"Lieutenant Britton, it is\n my personal opinion that you need your head examined, and not by a\n general practitioner, either! Why, I wouldn't let you get into an\n airplane, much less land on Earth in a rocket! If you think I'd permit\n you to subject yourself to eight gravities of acceleration in a rocket\n landing, you're daffy!\"\n\n\n She hadn't thought of it before, but the major was right. The terrible\n pressure of a rocket landing would increase her effective body weight\n to nearly half a ton; an adult human being couldn't take that sort of\n punishment for long, much less the tiny life that was growing within\n her.", "\"It's all right, doctor. Shall I prepare the delivery room?\"\n\n\n His laugh was hard and short. \"Delivery room! I wish to Heaven we had\n one! Prepare the ward room next to the one she's in now, I guess. It's\n the best we have.\n\n\n \"So help me Hannah, I'm going to see some changes made in regulations!\n A situation like this won't happen again!\"\n\n\n The nurse left quietly. She knew Banes wasn't really angry at the\n Brittons; it was simply his way of letting off steam to ease the\n tension within him.", "\"Will we have time? The pains are coming pretty fast now. It will be at\n least three hours before they can get a ship up here. If they miss us\n on the next time around, it'll be five hours. She can't hold out that\n long.\"\n\n\n The Chief Nurse turned her eyes to the slowly moving second hand of the\n wall clock. She could feel a lump in her throat.\n\n\n Major Banes was in the Communications Center a full five minutes\n before the coastline of California appeared on the curved horizon of\n the globe beneath them. He had spent the hour typing out a complete\n report of what had happened to Alice Britton and a list of what he\n needed. He handed it to the teletype operator and paced the floor\n impatiently as he waited for the answer.\n\n\n When the receiver teletype began clacking softly, he leaned over the\n page, waiting anxiously for every word." ] ]
train	99921	[ "What is the author's grievance against photographers?", "What does the author mean to communicate by comparing the photographer's task to the sculptor's mission?", "According to the author, what makes it difficult for the author to capture a subject's soul?", "How does the author try to disarm their subjects? ", "Which statement would the author most likely support?", "What potential drawback does the author acknowledge regarding the popularity of Creative Commons licenses?", "What is the central purpose of the article? ", "What impact does the author believe they have made on society?" ]	[ [ "Photographers are too concerned with bending an image to fit their incomplete or inaccurate perspective of a subject", "Too many photographers are flocking over to digital art, signaling the death knell of darkroom photography", "Photographers are more interested in personal financial gain than supporting the vitality of their industry", "There are too many photographers competing for the same creative opportunities" ], [ "Photographers should strive to capture the essence of a person, vs. how the photographer wishes to portray them", "Photographers should follow the path of sculptors in using more unconventional means to capture their subjects", "Photographers should present more neutral, ambiguous renderings of a person in order to give the viewer a chance to participate in the art", "Photographers should get to know their subjects on an intimate level, so the subjects feel more free to display their authentic selves during a session" ], [ "People's tendency to overemphasize the qualities they want others to associate with them", "People's tendency to behave uncharacteristically in front of a camera", "People's tendency to refuse a photographer access to the most painful moments of their lives", "People's tendency to forget that the photographer is even in the room" ], [ "Engaging them in conversation", "Telling them a personal story", "Highlighting their best angles", "Making silly faces or gestures" ], [ "Humans want people to be viewed the way they view themselves", "Humans are too trusting in anything aligned with 'freedom' and 'creativity'", "Humans are easily manipulated by powerful corporations", "Humans have a proclivity toward a negativity bias" ], [ "If everything becomes free, then no one can make any kind of profit", "Too many people will not pay attention to when Creative Commons licenses expire", "Corporations can potentially take advantage of people who use Creative Commons licenses", "The Creative Commons license will eventually be replaced with something more equitable" ], [ "To advocate support for expansion of Creative Commons licenses", "To inform the readership of current problems in the photography industry", "To illustrate how photographers go about their creative processes", "To praise a fellow photographer and writer for his recent contributions" ], [ "Introducing legislature to protect individuals from exploitation", "Introducing the first wave of CC popularity", "Preserving the art of darkroom photography", "Using leadership to balance and focus of CC growth" ] ]	[ 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 3, 1, 4 ]	[ 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Just another free soul\nIn his foreword to the book, Lessig writes that you understand your subjects “by learning to see them in a certain way.” What is that certain way?\nI think I’m trying to get a mental image of a person, certain\n expressions, or what I think that person is about. I’m trying to capture\n what I think they look like, which is many times a minority of their\n typical expressions, or their typical stance. So, if I’m taking pictures\n of Larry [Lessig], I want to have his signature hand gestures, and not\n just random ones.\nI think I’m trying to capture pictures of people that help others see\n what they’re about. Some photographers will make someone look the way\n the photographer wants them to look, and not the way they appear, so\n they’ll pick the one picture out of 100 where the guy looks more", "someone’s soul from his or her image. There are a lot of things that\n make this hard. A lot of people are uncomfortable in front of a camera,\n or might make expressions that aren’t very natural for them. And if the\n person is nervous, it’s very difficult to try to see what it is that\n you’re trying to capture.\nA lot of what I’m doing is, I just start shooting photos. After half an\n hour of having their picture taken, people start to ignore you. Or I’ll\n take pictures when I’m talking to people about what they’re doing, so\n after a while they get distracted by the conversation and forget about\n the camera. That’s something that I’m not perfect at, but I’m getting\n better.\nI think good photographers are also able to disarm people through", "another thing, though, about this book: the number of\n professional-quality amateurs has increased significantly due to the\n importance of digital in both professional and high-end amateur\n photography I hate to say it, a lot of people love the darkroom, but it\n really feels like the death of the darkroom with this year.\nWith new 22 megapixel cameras coming in under $10,000, and Lightroom\n and some of this software at a couple hundred dollars, it doesn’t really\n make sense, except for particularly fussy artists, to do wet-work\n anymore. If you’re a commercial photographer or a high-end amateur, you\n can do anything you used to do in the darkroom. I think it has really\n lowered the bar. I don’t know how that affects the industry directly,\n but for me, it bridged a huge gap.", "egotistical than he really is. Some photographers are almost medical,\n and are going after a perfect portrait. I’m somewhere in between.\nIt’s amazing how many people will upload snapshots of people where the\n pictures don’t look like them at all. To me, uploading a picture that is\n not an easily recognizable picture of that person defeats the point,\n which I’m working toward, to try to express who they are. On the other\n hand, professional photographers usually have a subject whom they don’t\n know personally, so they end up having to try to capture an image that\n they’ve created based on who they think the person is or how they want\n that person to appear. You know how sculptors often say that they’re\n just freeing an image from a block? What I’m trying to do is free", "photography books and photographs and are probably providing an\n increasing revenue stream for professional photographers. I think most\n amateurs, including myself, are paying homage to the professionals and\n not trying to “compete” with them.\nDespite the existence of social software, what is still important about meeting people face-to-face?\nFor me, the right way to use a lot of the new social software is by\n making it easier to spend more physical time with the people you like\n best. Dopplr is a great example. When\n I visit a city, I will see all of the people who are in the city at the\n same time. When I went to London awhile ago, there were 47 people I knew\n in London, and a huge percentage of those people don’t live there. I\n would bet that more than half of the photos in this book are pictures of", "conversation, but still, it’s difficult to have a disarming conversation\n with somebody you don’t know, or to make them laugh. Many times people\n make a face for me that they wouldn’t make for a professional\n photographer.\nFor instance, a board meeting picture, like the one with Eric Saltzman:\n that was during a very tense discussion. I’ve found that people are at\n their most animated at these kinds of meetings, and look the most alive\n when they are under a lot of pressure, and super- focused. But usually\n if an outsider is in the room, they won’t get into that. I mean, it\n would be difficult for a cameraman to be in a room where a board is\n having a heated debate.\nBut those are the things that I’m trying to capture, because most people", "kicking myself because it was terrible. But then the Leica M8 came out,\n and I bought one at the beginning of 2007. The M8 really got me to where\n I could use my old gear, and it had enough megapixels to be as good as\n some film.\nAnother way of saying it was that there was a gear breakthrough at the\n beginning of last year. Okay, that’s pretty materialistic! So there was\n a technology breakthrough, let’s call it that, that allowed me to switch\n completely away from film, and I think this happened to a lot of\n photographers. It caused an explosion of content and an increase in the\n quality of content on sites like Flickr. It has\n allowed amateurs to create a business model with professionals.\n Interestingly, I think these new high-end amateurs are buying more", "of these people don’t have any free photos of themselves on the web, so\n while they are “notable” on Wikipedia, their images aren’t free of the\n copyright of the photographer, or the institution who hired the\n photographer to take the picture. Often, even the subject of the article\n can’t make an image available to the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community.\nThis means that a lot of people who have a Net presence have a legally\n encumbered Net presence. People who are invited to conferences get asked\n all the time, “By the way, do you have a photo that we can use?” But\n they don’t. By making these pictures available under a Creative Commons\n license, now they do. This is solving the issue of legal freedom.\nThe third part of the pun is that, since I’m asking for a model release", "from the subjects, I’m asking everyone to be much more open and giving\n about their image than most people typically are. I’m giving, you’re\n giving, we’re all giving to participate and to try to create this\n wonderful work, and allow others to create derivative works.\nOf course people can abuse that, just like they can abuse anything. But\n I want people to see the value in sharing over the fear in sharing. The\n fact is, it’s much more likely that somebody is going to use these\n pictures for something positive, rather than for something negative. The\n benefits greatly outweigh the risks. I think we spend way too much of\n our lives worrying about the risks, at the cost of a lot of the\n benefits.\nThis is a celebration of all of the people who are willing to give. In a", "way, giving up your image and allowing anyone to use it: it’s the\n ultimate gift. In one way it’s kind of vain. [laughs] But in another\n way it’s wonderful. A Wikipedia article on some person but with no\n picture is sad.\nBesides Wikipedia, how do you imagine these photos being used?\nThey can be used in textbooks and in mainstream media articles about the\n person. Now they can get a picture that represents the person, at least\n from my perspective. That said, I shouldn’t be the only person doing\n this. More people should do the same, and make the photographs available\n freely. For one, I feel that “free” CC licensed photos have a much\n higher chance of not disappearing. But I don’t know exactly how these\n photos are going to be used, so in a sense I’m curious. For example,", "and remember exactly what we were doing, what we were eating, what we\n were drinking, what we were talking about, and to me that’s a much more\n rich experience.\nIt’s the combination of social software and photography. For me, reality\n is “the present” plus what you remember from the past. I think this\n project is really sharing memories with people. Blog posts contribute as\n well, but to me photography is a really good way of doing that. When I\n look at the expressions, I remember the moment and get a sense of\n presence.\nI think the main problem for me is the environmental impact of flying\n around. Just as I never believed that we would have a paperless office,\n being able to connect with people through social software mostly\n increases your travel, it doesn’t decrease it. It is great because you", "friends, and they’re not in their hometown.\nThat’s the really interesting thing that is happening right now: it’s\n really increasing your ability to spend quality time with, actually, a\n smaller number of people. It allows you to actively filter. Your\n meetings don’t have to be random. If I look at the list of people in\n this book, although there are some obvious people missing whom I didn’t\n see last year, probably met more of my friends last year, my real\n friends, than I’ve met in any other year. I know my travels were crazy,\n but I think that the online world has allowed me to do that.\nWhat’s great about photography is that it captures the moment that I was\n sharing with that person. It’s not just a connection on a social network\n online, which is really pretty binary. I can look at all these photos", "don’t get to see that. At the Creative Commons board meeting, Larry\n asked me to put the camera away after awhile [laughs] because it was\n distracting. We were having a very heated discussion and I was taking\n all of these pictures. But he credited me later because afterward those\n pictures turned out the best.\nIn your mind, what is a ‘Freesoul’ ?\nA freesoul is somewhat of a pun. On the one hand it means you are free,\n liberated. You, as a human spirit, are open. And then, it also has the\n meaning that you are unencumbered legally, that you are free, as in\n ‘free software.’\nThere’s a paradox: with many people’s Wikipedia\n articles to which I’ve contributed, when it comes to the picture, many", "balance between business and the non-business elements of the movement\n is essential. My job is to keep that focus and maintain that balance.\n Also, CC needs to run smoothly as an organization and there is a lot of\n operational work that we all need to do. My photography is a way for me\n to participate in a small measure on the creative side of the Free\n Culture movement, and helps me see things from that perspective as well.\nHowever, I believe in emergent democracy and the importance of trying to\n celebrate the community more than the heroes. Of course, I’m a huge fan\n of Larry’s and I have great respect for the leaders of our movement. But\n more than anything, I’m thankful for and respectful of all of the\n participants who aren’t so well known and who are essential to moving\n everything forward.", "I used to be darkroom geek. I loved my darkroom, and even when I didn’t\n have my darkroom anymore, I still was shooting 6x6 Hasselblad 120 film\n and processing it in a special lab, and then digitizing it. For me, that\n film was it. You could never get as good as medium-format film or\n large-format film\nAt the time, the digital Hasselblad backs were too expensive, and were\n still not as good as 8x10 film. So there was this whole period where the\n darkroom was not all that exciting, but the digital wasn’t perfect. I\n went through a limbo period. I had invested so much in my Hasselblad\n system, and my Leica M6 set. I had bought the Leica R8, but I was", "recently I received the Harvard Berkman Center pamphlet. It was a report\n of what they’re doing, and they also had a bunch of my pictures in\n there. They all had attribution, and it made me feel really good. There\n were pictures of different Berkman Center members that I had taken in\n various places all over the world. I think that the subject is probably\n happy with this, and I’m happy, and the Berkman Center’s happy because\n they’re not all pictures of people sitting at desks in the Berkman\n Center. There’s one more important thing: Creative Commons is great for\n original creative works or derivative creative works, but when it\n involves human images, it gets very complicated. We all know the Virgin\n Mobile case, where Virgin used CC licensed images in an advertisement\n without getting permission from the models, and got in trouble. What", "science and technology to promote sharing in research. And as of now, we\n have the license ported to at least 44 jurisdictions, and the number of\n countries with projects continues to grow. In many ways, the movement\n outside of the United States has become much bigger than the movement in\n the United States. Although the United States is still slightly farther\n ahead in terms of commercialization, the size of the whole free culture\n movement outside of the United States is huge now. The CC China Photo\n exhibit was just amazing. There were some great\n images, and a lot of the photographers were professionals. This is\n beyond what anybody has done in the US. A lot of the progress that we’re\n making is international.\nWhat are your personal realizations or experiences?\nWell, we’re all getting old, if you look at these pictures. But there’s", "get to meet all these people. But it is bad for the environment, and bad\n for our jet lag.\nHow would you characterize your contributions to free culture?\nI think it’s mostly incremental. I think there is very little we\n actually do all by ourselves, and I hate saying, “I did this” or “I did\n that.” I think that in most cases, focusing on individual contributions\n or achievements undervalues the importance of everyone else involved.\nHaving said that, I think my main contribution is probably in supporting\n Creative Commons as a fan, board member, chairman of the board and now\n CEO. I think CC has a significant role, and helping to keep it on track\n and growing is probably the single most important role that I have in\n Free Culture.\nSpecifically, I think that trying to keep an international focus and a", "Personally, I don’t think it’s ultimately meaningful to talk about one\n individual’s personal contribution to any movement. The real meaning is\n in the whole movement. I’m just one participant. Just another free soul.", "released their album, Ghost, under a Creative Commons license. The list\n goes on. Many people are asking: can you make money and share? The\n answer is, yes. CC is becoming an important part of the business\n discussion.\nBut one thing that happens when a movement like CC becomes a business\n thing, is that a lot of the pioneers fade into the background, and it\n becomes a part of industry. This happened to the Internet. And so while\n you still have the core people who still remember and hold the torch for\n the philosophical side, the Internet has become much more of a business.\n Now, when you go to many Internet conferences, it’s mostly salesmen in\n attendance.\nI believe that the success of the Internet has two parts. The first part\n is the market- driven business side, which has made the Internet" ], [ "Just another free soul\nIn his foreword to the book, Lessig writes that you understand your subjects “by learning to see them in a certain way.” What is that certain way?\nI think I’m trying to get a mental image of a person, certain\n expressions, or what I think that person is about. I’m trying to capture\n what I think they look like, which is many times a minority of their\n typical expressions, or their typical stance. So, if I’m taking pictures\n of Larry [Lessig], I want to have his signature hand gestures, and not\n just random ones.\nI think I’m trying to capture pictures of people that help others see\n what they’re about. Some photographers will make someone look the way\n the photographer wants them to look, and not the way they appear, so\n they’ll pick the one picture out of 100 where the guy looks more", "someone’s soul from his or her image. There are a lot of things that\n make this hard. A lot of people are uncomfortable in front of a camera,\n or might make expressions that aren’t very natural for them. And if the\n person is nervous, it’s very difficult to try to see what it is that\n you’re trying to capture.\nA lot of what I’m doing is, I just start shooting photos. After half an\n hour of having their picture taken, people start to ignore you. Or I’ll\n take pictures when I’m talking to people about what they’re doing, so\n after a while they get distracted by the conversation and forget about\n the camera. That’s something that I’m not perfect at, but I’m getting\n better.\nI think good photographers are also able to disarm people through", "egotistical than he really is. Some photographers are almost medical,\n and are going after a perfect portrait. I’m somewhere in between.\nIt’s amazing how many people will upload snapshots of people where the\n pictures don’t look like them at all. To me, uploading a picture that is\n not an easily recognizable picture of that person defeats the point,\n which I’m working toward, to try to express who they are. On the other\n hand, professional photographers usually have a subject whom they don’t\n know personally, so they end up having to try to capture an image that\n they’ve created based on who they think the person is or how they want\n that person to appear. You know how sculptors often say that they’re\n just freeing an image from a block? What I’m trying to do is free", "conversation, but still, it’s difficult to have a disarming conversation\n with somebody you don’t know, or to make them laugh. Many times people\n make a face for me that they wouldn’t make for a professional\n photographer.\nFor instance, a board meeting picture, like the one with Eric Saltzman:\n that was during a very tense discussion. I’ve found that people are at\n their most animated at these kinds of meetings, and look the most alive\n when they are under a lot of pressure, and super- focused. But usually\n if an outsider is in the room, they won’t get into that. I mean, it\n would be difficult for a cameraman to be in a room where a board is\n having a heated debate.\nBut those are the things that I’m trying to capture, because most people", "photography books and photographs and are probably providing an\n increasing revenue stream for professional photographers. I think most\n amateurs, including myself, are paying homage to the professionals and\n not trying to “compete” with them.\nDespite the existence of social software, what is still important about meeting people face-to-face?\nFor me, the right way to use a lot of the new social software is by\n making it easier to spend more physical time with the people you like\n best. Dopplr is a great example. When\n I visit a city, I will see all of the people who are in the city at the\n same time. When I went to London awhile ago, there were 47 people I knew\n in London, and a huge percentage of those people don’t live there. I\n would bet that more than half of the photos in this book are pictures of", "don’t get to see that. At the Creative Commons board meeting, Larry\n asked me to put the camera away after awhile [laughs] because it was\n distracting. We were having a very heated discussion and I was taking\n all of these pictures. But he credited me later because afterward those\n pictures turned out the best.\nIn your mind, what is a ‘Freesoul’ ?\nA freesoul is somewhat of a pun. On the one hand it means you are free,\n liberated. You, as a human spirit, are open. And then, it also has the\n meaning that you are unencumbered legally, that you are free, as in\n ‘free software.’\nThere’s a paradox: with many people’s Wikipedia\n articles to which I’ve contributed, when it comes to the picture, many", "of these people don’t have any free photos of themselves on the web, so\n while they are “notable” on Wikipedia, their images aren’t free of the\n copyright of the photographer, or the institution who hired the\n photographer to take the picture. Often, even the subject of the article\n can’t make an image available to the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community.\nThis means that a lot of people who have a Net presence have a legally\n encumbered Net presence. People who are invited to conferences get asked\n all the time, “By the way, do you have a photo that we can use?” But\n they don’t. By making these pictures available under a Creative Commons\n license, now they do. This is solving the issue of legal freedom.\nThe third part of the pun is that, since I’m asking for a model release", "friends, and they’re not in their hometown.\nThat’s the really interesting thing that is happening right now: it’s\n really increasing your ability to spend quality time with, actually, a\n smaller number of people. It allows you to actively filter. Your\n meetings don’t have to be random. If I look at the list of people in\n this book, although there are some obvious people missing whom I didn’t\n see last year, probably met more of my friends last year, my real\n friends, than I’ve met in any other year. I know my travels were crazy,\n but I think that the online world has allowed me to do that.\nWhat’s great about photography is that it captures the moment that I was\n sharing with that person. It’s not just a connection on a social network\n online, which is really pretty binary. I can look at all these photos", "another thing, though, about this book: the number of\n professional-quality amateurs has increased significantly due to the\n importance of digital in both professional and high-end amateur\n photography I hate to say it, a lot of people love the darkroom, but it\n really feels like the death of the darkroom with this year.\nWith new 22 megapixel cameras coming in under $10,000, and Lightroom\n and some of this software at a couple hundred dollars, it doesn’t really\n make sense, except for particularly fussy artists, to do wet-work\n anymore. If you’re a commercial photographer or a high-end amateur, you\n can do anything you used to do in the darkroom. I think it has really\n lowered the bar. I don’t know how that affects the industry directly,\n but for me, it bridged a huge gap.", "and remember exactly what we were doing, what we were eating, what we\n were drinking, what we were talking about, and to me that’s a much more\n rich experience.\nIt’s the combination of social software and photography. For me, reality\n is “the present” plus what you remember from the past. I think this\n project is really sharing memories with people. Blog posts contribute as\n well, but to me photography is a really good way of doing that. When I\n look at the expressions, I remember the moment and get a sense of\n presence.\nI think the main problem for me is the environmental impact of flying\n around. Just as I never believed that we would have a paperless office,\n being able to connect with people through social software mostly\n increases your travel, it doesn’t decrease it. It is great because you", "from the subjects, I’m asking everyone to be much more open and giving\n about their image than most people typically are. I’m giving, you’re\n giving, we’re all giving to participate and to try to create this\n wonderful work, and allow others to create derivative works.\nOf course people can abuse that, just like they can abuse anything. But\n I want people to see the value in sharing over the fear in sharing. The\n fact is, it’s much more likely that somebody is going to use these\n pictures for something positive, rather than for something negative. The\n benefits greatly outweigh the risks. I think we spend way too much of\n our lives worrying about the risks, at the cost of a lot of the\n benefits.\nThis is a celebration of all of the people who are willing to give. In a", "balance between business and the non-business elements of the movement\n is essential. My job is to keep that focus and maintain that balance.\n Also, CC needs to run smoothly as an organization and there is a lot of\n operational work that we all need to do. My photography is a way for me\n to participate in a small measure on the creative side of the Free\n Culture movement, and helps me see things from that perspective as well.\nHowever, I believe in emergent democracy and the importance of trying to\n celebrate the community more than the heroes. Of course, I’m a huge fan\n of Larry’s and I have great respect for the leaders of our movement. But\n more than anything, I’m thankful for and respectful of all of the\n participants who aren’t so well known and who are essential to moving\n everything forward.", "kicking myself because it was terrible. But then the Leica M8 came out,\n and I bought one at the beginning of 2007. The M8 really got me to where\n I could use my old gear, and it had enough megapixels to be as good as\n some film.\nAnother way of saying it was that there was a gear breakthrough at the\n beginning of last year. Okay, that’s pretty materialistic! So there was\n a technology breakthrough, let’s call it that, that allowed me to switch\n completely away from film, and I think this happened to a lot of\n photographers. It caused an explosion of content and an increase in the\n quality of content on sites like Flickr. It has\n allowed amateurs to create a business model with professionals.\n Interestingly, I think these new high-end amateurs are buying more", "way, giving up your image and allowing anyone to use it: it’s the\n ultimate gift. In one way it’s kind of vain. [laughs] But in another\n way it’s wonderful. A Wikipedia article on some person but with no\n picture is sad.\nBesides Wikipedia, how do you imagine these photos being used?\nThey can be used in textbooks and in mainstream media articles about the\n person. Now they can get a picture that represents the person, at least\n from my perspective. That said, I shouldn’t be the only person doing\n this. More people should do the same, and make the photographs available\n freely. For one, I feel that “free” CC licensed photos have a much\n higher chance of not disappearing. But I don’t know exactly how these\n photos are going to be used, so in a sense I’m curious. For example,", "Personally, I don’t think it’s ultimately meaningful to talk about one\n individual’s personal contribution to any movement. The real meaning is\n in the whole movement. I’m just one participant. Just another free soul.", "get to meet all these people. But it is bad for the environment, and bad\n for our jet lag.\nHow would you characterize your contributions to free culture?\nI think it’s mostly incremental. I think there is very little we\n actually do all by ourselves, and I hate saying, “I did this” or “I did\n that.” I think that in most cases, focusing on individual contributions\n or achievements undervalues the importance of everyone else involved.\nHaving said that, I think my main contribution is probably in supporting\n Creative Commons as a fan, board member, chairman of the board and now\n CEO. I think CC has a significant role, and helping to keep it on track\n and growing is probably the single most important role that I have in\n Free Culture.\nSpecifically, I think that trying to keep an international focus and a", "science and technology to promote sharing in research. And as of now, we\n have the license ported to at least 44 jurisdictions, and the number of\n countries with projects continues to grow. In many ways, the movement\n outside of the United States has become much bigger than the movement in\n the United States. Although the United States is still slightly farther\n ahead in terms of commercialization, the size of the whole free culture\n movement outside of the United States is huge now. The CC China Photo\n exhibit was just amazing. There were some great\n images, and a lot of the photographers were professionals. This is\n beyond what anybody has done in the US. A lot of the progress that we’re\n making is international.\nWhat are your personal realizations or experiences?\nWell, we’re all getting old, if you look at these pictures. But there’s", "I used to be darkroom geek. I loved my darkroom, and even when I didn’t\n have my darkroom anymore, I still was shooting 6x6 Hasselblad 120 film\n and processing it in a special lab, and then digitizing it. For me, that\n film was it. You could never get as good as medium-format film or\n large-format film\nAt the time, the digital Hasselblad backs were too expensive, and were\n still not as good as 8x10 film. So there was this whole period where the\n darkroom was not all that exciting, but the digital wasn’t perfect. I\n went through a limbo period. I had invested so much in my Hasselblad\n system, and my Leica M6 set. I had bought the Leica R8, but I was", "released their album, Ghost, under a Creative Commons license. The list\n goes on. Many people are asking: can you make money and share? The\n answer is, yes. CC is becoming an important part of the business\n discussion.\nBut one thing that happens when a movement like CC becomes a business\n thing, is that a lot of the pioneers fade into the background, and it\n becomes a part of industry. This happened to the Internet. And so while\n you still have the core people who still remember and hold the torch for\n the philosophical side, the Internet has become much more of a business.\n Now, when you go to many Internet conferences, it’s mostly salesmen in\n attendance.\nI believe that the success of the Internet has two parts. The first part\n is the market- driven business side, which has made the Internet", "recently I received the Harvard Berkman Center pamphlet. It was a report\n of what they’re doing, and they also had a bunch of my pictures in\n there. They all had attribution, and it made me feel really good. There\n were pictures of different Berkman Center members that I had taken in\n various places all over the world. I think that the subject is probably\n happy with this, and I’m happy, and the Berkman Center’s happy because\n they’re not all pictures of people sitting at desks in the Berkman\n Center. There’s one more important thing: Creative Commons is great for\n original creative works or derivative creative works, but when it\n involves human images, it gets very complicated. We all know the Virgin\n Mobile case, where Virgin used CC licensed images in an advertisement\n without getting permission from the models, and got in trouble. What" ], [ "Just another free soul\nIn his foreword to the book, Lessig writes that you understand your subjects “by learning to see them in a certain way.” What is that certain way?\nI think I’m trying to get a mental image of a person, certain\n expressions, or what I think that person is about. I’m trying to capture\n what I think they look like, which is many times a minority of their\n typical expressions, or their typical stance. So, if I’m taking pictures\n of Larry [Lessig], I want to have his signature hand gestures, and not\n just random ones.\nI think I’m trying to capture pictures of people that help others see\n what they’re about. Some photographers will make someone look the way\n the photographer wants them to look, and not the way they appear, so\n they’ll pick the one picture out of 100 where the guy looks more", "someone’s soul from his or her image. There are a lot of things that\n make this hard. A lot of people are uncomfortable in front of a camera,\n or might make expressions that aren’t very natural for them. And if the\n person is nervous, it’s very difficult to try to see what it is that\n you’re trying to capture.\nA lot of what I’m doing is, I just start shooting photos. After half an\n hour of having their picture taken, people start to ignore you. Or I’ll\n take pictures when I’m talking to people about what they’re doing, so\n after a while they get distracted by the conversation and forget about\n the camera. That’s something that I’m not perfect at, but I’m getting\n better.\nI think good photographers are also able to disarm people through", "conversation, but still, it’s difficult to have a disarming conversation\n with somebody you don’t know, or to make them laugh. Many times people\n make a face for me that they wouldn’t make for a professional\n photographer.\nFor instance, a board meeting picture, like the one with Eric Saltzman:\n that was during a very tense discussion. I’ve found that people are at\n their most animated at these kinds of meetings, and look the most alive\n when they are under a lot of pressure, and super- focused. But usually\n if an outsider is in the room, they won’t get into that. I mean, it\n would be difficult for a cameraman to be in a room where a board is\n having a heated debate.\nBut those are the things that I’m trying to capture, because most people", "egotistical than he really is. Some photographers are almost medical,\n and are going after a perfect portrait. I’m somewhere in between.\nIt’s amazing how many people will upload snapshots of people where the\n pictures don’t look like them at all. To me, uploading a picture that is\n not an easily recognizable picture of that person defeats the point,\n which I’m working toward, to try to express who they are. On the other\n hand, professional photographers usually have a subject whom they don’t\n know personally, so they end up having to try to capture an image that\n they’ve created based on who they think the person is or how they want\n that person to appear. You know how sculptors often say that they’re\n just freeing an image from a block? What I’m trying to do is free", "don’t get to see that. At the Creative Commons board meeting, Larry\n asked me to put the camera away after awhile [laughs] because it was\n distracting. We were having a very heated discussion and I was taking\n all of these pictures. But he credited me later because afterward those\n pictures turned out the best.\nIn your mind, what is a ‘Freesoul’ ?\nA freesoul is somewhat of a pun. On the one hand it means you are free,\n liberated. You, as a human spirit, are open. And then, it also has the\n meaning that you are unencumbered legally, that you are free, as in\n ‘free software.’\nThere’s a paradox: with many people’s Wikipedia\n articles to which I’ve contributed, when it comes to the picture, many", "friends, and they’re not in their hometown.\nThat’s the really interesting thing that is happening right now: it’s\n really increasing your ability to spend quality time with, actually, a\n smaller number of people. It allows you to actively filter. Your\n meetings don’t have to be random. If I look at the list of people in\n this book, although there are some obvious people missing whom I didn’t\n see last year, probably met more of my friends last year, my real\n friends, than I’ve met in any other year. I know my travels were crazy,\n but I think that the online world has allowed me to do that.\nWhat’s great about photography is that it captures the moment that I was\n sharing with that person. It’s not just a connection on a social network\n online, which is really pretty binary. I can look at all these photos", "from the subjects, I’m asking everyone to be much more open and giving\n about their image than most people typically are. I’m giving, you’re\n giving, we’re all giving to participate and to try to create this\n wonderful work, and allow others to create derivative works.\nOf course people can abuse that, just like they can abuse anything. But\n I want people to see the value in sharing over the fear in sharing. The\n fact is, it’s much more likely that somebody is going to use these\n pictures for something positive, rather than for something negative. The\n benefits greatly outweigh the risks. I think we spend way too much of\n our lives worrying about the risks, at the cost of a lot of the\n benefits.\nThis is a celebration of all of the people who are willing to give. In a", "photography books and photographs and are probably providing an\n increasing revenue stream for professional photographers. I think most\n amateurs, including myself, are paying homage to the professionals and\n not trying to “compete” with them.\nDespite the existence of social software, what is still important about meeting people face-to-face?\nFor me, the right way to use a lot of the new social software is by\n making it easier to spend more physical time with the people you like\n best. Dopplr is a great example. When\n I visit a city, I will see all of the people who are in the city at the\n same time. When I went to London awhile ago, there were 47 people I knew\n in London, and a huge percentage of those people don’t live there. I\n would bet that more than half of the photos in this book are pictures of", "and remember exactly what we were doing, what we were eating, what we\n were drinking, what we were talking about, and to me that’s a much more\n rich experience.\nIt’s the combination of social software and photography. For me, reality\n is “the present” plus what you remember from the past. I think this\n project is really sharing memories with people. Blog posts contribute as\n well, but to me photography is a really good way of doing that. When I\n look at the expressions, I remember the moment and get a sense of\n presence.\nI think the main problem for me is the environmental impact of flying\n around. Just as I never believed that we would have a paperless office,\n being able to connect with people through social software mostly\n increases your travel, it doesn’t decrease it. It is great because you", "of these people don’t have any free photos of themselves on the web, so\n while they are “notable” on Wikipedia, their images aren’t free of the\n copyright of the photographer, or the institution who hired the\n photographer to take the picture. Often, even the subject of the article\n can’t make an image available to the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community.\nThis means that a lot of people who have a Net presence have a legally\n encumbered Net presence. People who are invited to conferences get asked\n all the time, “By the way, do you have a photo that we can use?” But\n they don’t. By making these pictures available under a Creative Commons\n license, now they do. This is solving the issue of legal freedom.\nThe third part of the pun is that, since I’m asking for a model release", "another thing, though, about this book: the number of\n professional-quality amateurs has increased significantly due to the\n importance of digital in both professional and high-end amateur\n photography I hate to say it, a lot of people love the darkroom, but it\n really feels like the death of the darkroom with this year.\nWith new 22 megapixel cameras coming in under $10,000, and Lightroom\n and some of this software at a couple hundred dollars, it doesn’t really\n make sense, except for particularly fussy artists, to do wet-work\n anymore. If you’re a commercial photographer or a high-end amateur, you\n can do anything you used to do in the darkroom. I think it has really\n lowered the bar. I don’t know how that affects the industry directly,\n but for me, it bridged a huge gap.", "balance between business and the non-business elements of the movement\n is essential. My job is to keep that focus and maintain that balance.\n Also, CC needs to run smoothly as an organization and there is a lot of\n operational work that we all need to do. My photography is a way for me\n to participate in a small measure on the creative side of the Free\n Culture movement, and helps me see things from that perspective as well.\nHowever, I believe in emergent democracy and the importance of trying to\n celebrate the community more than the heroes. Of course, I’m a huge fan\n of Larry’s and I have great respect for the leaders of our movement. But\n more than anything, I’m thankful for and respectful of all of the\n participants who aren’t so well known and who are essential to moving\n everything forward.", "kicking myself because it was terrible. But then the Leica M8 came out,\n and I bought one at the beginning of 2007. The M8 really got me to where\n I could use my old gear, and it had enough megapixels to be as good as\n some film.\nAnother way of saying it was that there was a gear breakthrough at the\n beginning of last year. Okay, that’s pretty materialistic! So there was\n a technology breakthrough, let’s call it that, that allowed me to switch\n completely away from film, and I think this happened to a lot of\n photographers. It caused an explosion of content and an increase in the\n quality of content on sites like Flickr. It has\n allowed amateurs to create a business model with professionals.\n Interestingly, I think these new high-end amateurs are buying more", "way, giving up your image and allowing anyone to use it: it’s the\n ultimate gift. In one way it’s kind of vain. [laughs] But in another\n way it’s wonderful. A Wikipedia article on some person but with no\n picture is sad.\nBesides Wikipedia, how do you imagine these photos being used?\nThey can be used in textbooks and in mainstream media articles about the\n person. Now they can get a picture that represents the person, at least\n from my perspective. That said, I shouldn’t be the only person doing\n this. More people should do the same, and make the photographs available\n freely. For one, I feel that “free” CC licensed photos have a much\n higher chance of not disappearing. But I don’t know exactly how these\n photos are going to be used, so in a sense I’m curious. For example,", "get to meet all these people. But it is bad for the environment, and bad\n for our jet lag.\nHow would you characterize your contributions to free culture?\nI think it’s mostly incremental. I think there is very little we\n actually do all by ourselves, and I hate saying, “I did this” or “I did\n that.” I think that in most cases, focusing on individual contributions\n or achievements undervalues the importance of everyone else involved.\nHaving said that, I think my main contribution is probably in supporting\n Creative Commons as a fan, board member, chairman of the board and now\n CEO. I think CC has a significant role, and helping to keep it on track\n and growing is probably the single most important role that I have in\n Free Culture.\nSpecifically, I think that trying to keep an international focus and a", "Personally, I don’t think it’s ultimately meaningful to talk about one\n individual’s personal contribution to any movement. The real meaning is\n in the whole movement. I’m just one participant. Just another free soul.", "recently I received the Harvard Berkman Center pamphlet. It was a report\n of what they’re doing, and they also had a bunch of my pictures in\n there. They all had attribution, and it made me feel really good. There\n were pictures of different Berkman Center members that I had taken in\n various places all over the world. I think that the subject is probably\n happy with this, and I’m happy, and the Berkman Center’s happy because\n they’re not all pictures of people sitting at desks in the Berkman\n Center. There’s one more important thing: Creative Commons is great for\n original creative works or derivative creative works, but when it\n involves human images, it gets very complicated. We all know the Virgin\n Mobile case, where Virgin used CC licensed images in an advertisement\n without getting permission from the models, and got in trouble. What", "science and technology to promote sharing in research. And as of now, we\n have the license ported to at least 44 jurisdictions, and the number of\n countries with projects continues to grow. In many ways, the movement\n outside of the United States has become much bigger than the movement in\n the United States. Although the United States is still slightly farther\n ahead in terms of commercialization, the size of the whole free culture\n movement outside of the United States is huge now. The CC China Photo\n exhibit was just amazing. There were some great\n images, and a lot of the photographers were professionals. This is\n beyond what anybody has done in the US. A lot of the progress that we’re\n making is international.\nWhat are your personal realizations or experiences?\nWell, we’re all getting old, if you look at these pictures. But there’s", "released their album, Ghost, under a Creative Commons license. The list\n goes on. Many people are asking: can you make money and share? The\n answer is, yes. CC is becoming an important part of the business\n discussion.\nBut one thing that happens when a movement like CC becomes a business\n thing, is that a lot of the pioneers fade into the background, and it\n becomes a part of industry. This happened to the Internet. And so while\n you still have the core people who still remember and hold the torch for\n the philosophical side, the Internet has become much more of a business.\n Now, when you go to many Internet conferences, it’s mostly salesmen in\n attendance.\nI believe that the success of the Internet has two parts. The first part\n is the market- driven business side, which has made the Internet", "affordable and ubiquitous. The second part is the strong movement of\n participants who fight to keep the Internet open and try to prevent the\n business side from corrupting the fundamental elements that make the\n Internet great. The Net Neutrality or Open Network discussion going on\n right now is a good example of the importance of continuing to balance\n these principles with business interests.\nSimilarly, I think that business interests can help make Creative\n Commons ubiquitous and more easily accessible to everyone. However, I\n think it’s important to remember to keep pushing to make content more\n “free” and not allow businesses to use Creative Commons in exploitive or\n destructive ways.\nIn addition to the business side, Creative Commons is being used by\n educators to create open courseware around the world and in the area of" ], [ "conversation, but still, it’s difficult to have a disarming conversation\n with somebody you don’t know, or to make them laugh. Many times people\n make a face for me that they wouldn’t make for a professional\n photographer.\nFor instance, a board meeting picture, like the one with Eric Saltzman:\n that was during a very tense discussion. I’ve found that people are at\n their most animated at these kinds of meetings, and look the most alive\n when they are under a lot of pressure, and super- focused. But usually\n if an outsider is in the room, they won’t get into that. I mean, it\n would be difficult for a cameraman to be in a room where a board is\n having a heated debate.\nBut those are the things that I’m trying to capture, because most people", "someone’s soul from his or her image. There are a lot of things that\n make this hard. A lot of people are uncomfortable in front of a camera,\n or might make expressions that aren’t very natural for them. And if the\n person is nervous, it’s very difficult to try to see what it is that\n you’re trying to capture.\nA lot of what I’m doing is, I just start shooting photos. After half an\n hour of having their picture taken, people start to ignore you. Or I’ll\n take pictures when I’m talking to people about what they’re doing, so\n after a while they get distracted by the conversation and forget about\n the camera. That’s something that I’m not perfect at, but I’m getting\n better.\nI think good photographers are also able to disarm people through", "Just another free soul\nIn his foreword to the book, Lessig writes that you understand your subjects “by learning to see them in a certain way.” What is that certain way?\nI think I’m trying to get a mental image of a person, certain\n expressions, or what I think that person is about. I’m trying to capture\n what I think they look like, which is many times a minority of their\n typical expressions, or their typical stance. So, if I’m taking pictures\n of Larry [Lessig], I want to have his signature hand gestures, and not\n just random ones.\nI think I’m trying to capture pictures of people that help others see\n what they’re about. Some photographers will make someone look the way\n the photographer wants them to look, and not the way they appear, so\n they’ll pick the one picture out of 100 where the guy looks more", "from the subjects, I’m asking everyone to be much more open and giving\n about their image than most people typically are. I’m giving, you’re\n giving, we’re all giving to participate and to try to create this\n wonderful work, and allow others to create derivative works.\nOf course people can abuse that, just like they can abuse anything. But\n I want people to see the value in sharing over the fear in sharing. The\n fact is, it’s much more likely that somebody is going to use these\n pictures for something positive, rather than for something negative. The\n benefits greatly outweigh the risks. I think we spend way too much of\n our lives worrying about the risks, at the cost of a lot of the\n benefits.\nThis is a celebration of all of the people who are willing to give. In a", "egotistical than he really is. Some photographers are almost medical,\n and are going after a perfect portrait. I’m somewhere in between.\nIt’s amazing how many people will upload snapshots of people where the\n pictures don’t look like them at all. To me, uploading a picture that is\n not an easily recognizable picture of that person defeats the point,\n which I’m working toward, to try to express who they are. On the other\n hand, professional photographers usually have a subject whom they don’t\n know personally, so they end up having to try to capture an image that\n they’ve created based on who they think the person is or how they want\n that person to appear. You know how sculptors often say that they’re\n just freeing an image from a block? What I’m trying to do is free", "of these people don’t have any free photos of themselves on the web, so\n while they are “notable” on Wikipedia, their images aren’t free of the\n copyright of the photographer, or the institution who hired the\n photographer to take the picture. Often, even the subject of the article\n can’t make an image available to the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community.\nThis means that a lot of people who have a Net presence have a legally\n encumbered Net presence. People who are invited to conferences get asked\n all the time, “By the way, do you have a photo that we can use?” But\n they don’t. By making these pictures available under a Creative Commons\n license, now they do. This is solving the issue of legal freedom.\nThe third part of the pun is that, since I’m asking for a model release", "don’t get to see that. At the Creative Commons board meeting, Larry\n asked me to put the camera away after awhile [laughs] because it was\n distracting. We were having a very heated discussion and I was taking\n all of these pictures. But he credited me later because afterward those\n pictures turned out the best.\nIn your mind, what is a ‘Freesoul’ ?\nA freesoul is somewhat of a pun. On the one hand it means you are free,\n liberated. You, as a human spirit, are open. And then, it also has the\n meaning that you are unencumbered legally, that you are free, as in\n ‘free software.’\nThere’s a paradox: with many people’s Wikipedia\n articles to which I’ve contributed, when it comes to the picture, many", "way, giving up your image and allowing anyone to use it: it’s the\n ultimate gift. In one way it’s kind of vain. [laughs] But in another\n way it’s wonderful. A Wikipedia article on some person but with no\n picture is sad.\nBesides Wikipedia, how do you imagine these photos being used?\nThey can be used in textbooks and in mainstream media articles about the\n person. Now they can get a picture that represents the person, at least\n from my perspective. That said, I shouldn’t be the only person doing\n this. More people should do the same, and make the photographs available\n freely. For one, I feel that “free” CC licensed photos have a much\n higher chance of not disappearing. But I don’t know exactly how these\n photos are going to be used, so in a sense I’m curious. For example,", "Personally, I don’t think it’s ultimately meaningful to talk about one\n individual’s personal contribution to any movement. The real meaning is\n in the whole movement. I’m just one participant. Just another free soul.", "get to meet all these people. But it is bad for the environment, and bad\n for our jet lag.\nHow would you characterize your contributions to free culture?\nI think it’s mostly incremental. I think there is very little we\n actually do all by ourselves, and I hate saying, “I did this” or “I did\n that.” I think that in most cases, focusing on individual contributions\n or achievements undervalues the importance of everyone else involved.\nHaving said that, I think my main contribution is probably in supporting\n Creative Commons as a fan, board member, chairman of the board and now\n CEO. I think CC has a significant role, and helping to keep it on track\n and growing is probably the single most important role that I have in\n Free Culture.\nSpecifically, I think that trying to keep an international focus and a", "photography books and photographs and are probably providing an\n increasing revenue stream for professional photographers. I think most\n amateurs, including myself, are paying homage to the professionals and\n not trying to “compete” with them.\nDespite the existence of social software, what is still important about meeting people face-to-face?\nFor me, the right way to use a lot of the new social software is by\n making it easier to spend more physical time with the people you like\n best. Dopplr is a great example. When\n I visit a city, I will see all of the people who are in the city at the\n same time. When I went to London awhile ago, there were 47 people I knew\n in London, and a huge percentage of those people don’t live there. I\n would bet that more than half of the photos in this book are pictures of", "and remember exactly what we were doing, what we were eating, what we\n were drinking, what we were talking about, and to me that’s a much more\n rich experience.\nIt’s the combination of social software and photography. For me, reality\n is “the present” plus what you remember from the past. I think this\n project is really sharing memories with people. Blog posts contribute as\n well, but to me photography is a really good way of doing that. When I\n look at the expressions, I remember the moment and get a sense of\n presence.\nI think the main problem for me is the environmental impact of flying\n around. Just as I never believed that we would have a paperless office,\n being able to connect with people through social software mostly\n increases your travel, it doesn’t decrease it. It is great because you", "balance between business and the non-business elements of the movement\n is essential. My job is to keep that focus and maintain that balance.\n Also, CC needs to run smoothly as an organization and there is a lot of\n operational work that we all need to do. My photography is a way for me\n to participate in a small measure on the creative side of the Free\n Culture movement, and helps me see things from that perspective as well.\nHowever, I believe in emergent democracy and the importance of trying to\n celebrate the community more than the heroes. Of course, I’m a huge fan\n of Larry’s and I have great respect for the leaders of our movement. But\n more than anything, I’m thankful for and respectful of all of the\n participants who aren’t so well known and who are essential to moving\n everything forward.", "friends, and they’re not in their hometown.\nThat’s the really interesting thing that is happening right now: it’s\n really increasing your ability to spend quality time with, actually, a\n smaller number of people. It allows you to actively filter. Your\n meetings don’t have to be random. If I look at the list of people in\n this book, although there are some obvious people missing whom I didn’t\n see last year, probably met more of my friends last year, my real\n friends, than I’ve met in any other year. I know my travels were crazy,\n but I think that the online world has allowed me to do that.\nWhat’s great about photography is that it captures the moment that I was\n sharing with that person. It’s not just a connection on a social network\n online, which is really pretty binary. I can look at all these photos", "recently I received the Harvard Berkman Center pamphlet. It was a report\n of what they’re doing, and they also had a bunch of my pictures in\n there. They all had attribution, and it made me feel really good. There\n were pictures of different Berkman Center members that I had taken in\n various places all over the world. I think that the subject is probably\n happy with this, and I’m happy, and the Berkman Center’s happy because\n they’re not all pictures of people sitting at desks in the Berkman\n Center. There’s one more important thing: Creative Commons is great for\n original creative works or derivative creative works, but when it\n involves human images, it gets very complicated. We all know the Virgin\n Mobile case, where Virgin used CC licensed images in an advertisement\n without getting permission from the models, and got in trouble. What", "another thing, though, about this book: the number of\n professional-quality amateurs has increased significantly due to the\n importance of digital in both professional and high-end amateur\n photography I hate to say it, a lot of people love the darkroom, but it\n really feels like the death of the darkroom with this year.\nWith new 22 megapixel cameras coming in under $10,000, and Lightroom\n and some of this software at a couple hundred dollars, it doesn’t really\n make sense, except for particularly fussy artists, to do wet-work\n anymore. If you’re a commercial photographer or a high-end amateur, you\n can do anything you used to do in the darkroom. I think it has really\n lowered the bar. I don’t know how that affects the industry directly,\n but for me, it bridged a huge gap.", "science and technology to promote sharing in research. And as of now, we\n have the license ported to at least 44 jurisdictions, and the number of\n countries with projects continues to grow. In many ways, the movement\n outside of the United States has become much bigger than the movement in\n the United States. Although the United States is still slightly farther\n ahead in terms of commercialization, the size of the whole free culture\n movement outside of the United States is huge now. The CC China Photo\n exhibit was just amazing. There were some great\n images, and a lot of the photographers were professionals. This is\n beyond what anybody has done in the US. A lot of the progress that we’re\n making is international.\nWhat are your personal realizations or experiences?\nWell, we’re all getting old, if you look at these pictures. But there’s", "we’re trying to do here is to expand beyond just copyright, to make it\n more thorough from a legal perspective. It’s also an important\n educational point, so people understand that, in addition to the\n Creative Commons licenses, we need people to provide other rights in\n cases where the law requires such rights to be cleared before reuse.\nWhat have you learned about the people in these networks, just in the past year?\nThat’s a good question. I think that at least Creative Commons has\n become much more mainstream. Creative Commons has moved from a fringy\n academic discussion to a boardroom discussion. Yahoo announced that it\n will be using Creative Commons for all of their basic infrastructure,\n and integrating it all. Google has CC search in their advanced search.\nMicrosoft is working with CC as well and have a plug-in. Nine Inch Nails", "kicking myself because it was terrible. But then the Leica M8 came out,\n and I bought one at the beginning of 2007. The M8 really got me to where\n I could use my old gear, and it had enough megapixels to be as good as\n some film.\nAnother way of saying it was that there was a gear breakthrough at the\n beginning of last year. Okay, that’s pretty materialistic! So there was\n a technology breakthrough, let’s call it that, that allowed me to switch\n completely away from film, and I think this happened to a lot of\n photographers. It caused an explosion of content and an increase in the\n quality of content on sites like Flickr. It has\n allowed amateurs to create a business model with professionals.\n Interestingly, I think these new high-end amateurs are buying more", "released their album, Ghost, under a Creative Commons license. The list\n goes on. Many people are asking: can you make money and share? The\n answer is, yes. CC is becoming an important part of the business\n discussion.\nBut one thing that happens when a movement like CC becomes a business\n thing, is that a lot of the pioneers fade into the background, and it\n becomes a part of industry. This happened to the Internet. And so while\n you still have the core people who still remember and hold the torch for\n the philosophical side, the Internet has become much more of a business.\n Now, when you go to many Internet conferences, it’s mostly salesmen in\n attendance.\nI believe that the success of the Internet has two parts. The first part\n is the market- driven business side, which has made the Internet" ], [ "Just another free soul\nIn his foreword to the book, Lessig writes that you understand your subjects “by learning to see them in a certain way.” What is that certain way?\nI think I’m trying to get a mental image of a person, certain\n expressions, or what I think that person is about. I’m trying to capture\n what I think they look like, which is many times a minority of their\n typical expressions, or their typical stance. So, if I’m taking pictures\n of Larry [Lessig], I want to have his signature hand gestures, and not\n just random ones.\nI think I’m trying to capture pictures of people that help others see\n what they’re about. Some photographers will make someone look the way\n the photographer wants them to look, and not the way they appear, so\n they’ll pick the one picture out of 100 where the guy looks more", "get to meet all these people. But it is bad for the environment, and bad\n for our jet lag.\nHow would you characterize your contributions to free culture?\nI think it’s mostly incremental. I think there is very little we\n actually do all by ourselves, and I hate saying, “I did this” or “I did\n that.” I think that in most cases, focusing on individual contributions\n or achievements undervalues the importance of everyone else involved.\nHaving said that, I think my main contribution is probably in supporting\n Creative Commons as a fan, board member, chairman of the board and now\n CEO. I think CC has a significant role, and helping to keep it on track\n and growing is probably the single most important role that I have in\n Free Culture.\nSpecifically, I think that trying to keep an international focus and a", "Personally, I don’t think it’s ultimately meaningful to talk about one\n individual’s personal contribution to any movement. The real meaning is\n in the whole movement. I’m just one participant. Just another free soul.", "of these people don’t have any free photos of themselves on the web, so\n while they are “notable” on Wikipedia, their images aren’t free of the\n copyright of the photographer, or the institution who hired the\n photographer to take the picture. Often, even the subject of the article\n can’t make an image available to the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community.\nThis means that a lot of people who have a Net presence have a legally\n encumbered Net presence. People who are invited to conferences get asked\n all the time, “By the way, do you have a photo that we can use?” But\n they don’t. By making these pictures available under a Creative Commons\n license, now they do. This is solving the issue of legal freedom.\nThe third part of the pun is that, since I’m asking for a model release", "conversation, but still, it’s difficult to have a disarming conversation\n with somebody you don’t know, or to make them laugh. Many times people\n make a face for me that they wouldn’t make for a professional\n photographer.\nFor instance, a board meeting picture, like the one with Eric Saltzman:\n that was during a very tense discussion. I’ve found that people are at\n their most animated at these kinds of meetings, and look the most alive\n when they are under a lot of pressure, and super- focused. But usually\n if an outsider is in the room, they won’t get into that. I mean, it\n would be difficult for a cameraman to be in a room where a board is\n having a heated debate.\nBut those are the things that I’m trying to capture, because most people", "don’t get to see that. At the Creative Commons board meeting, Larry\n asked me to put the camera away after awhile [laughs] because it was\n distracting. We were having a very heated discussion and I was taking\n all of these pictures. But he credited me later because afterward those\n pictures turned out the best.\nIn your mind, what is a ‘Freesoul’ ?\nA freesoul is somewhat of a pun. On the one hand it means you are free,\n liberated. You, as a human spirit, are open. And then, it also has the\n meaning that you are unencumbered legally, that you are free, as in\n ‘free software.’\nThere’s a paradox: with many people’s Wikipedia\n articles to which I’ve contributed, when it comes to the picture, many", "released their album, Ghost, under a Creative Commons license. The list\n goes on. Many people are asking: can you make money and share? The\n answer is, yes. CC is becoming an important part of the business\n discussion.\nBut one thing that happens when a movement like CC becomes a business\n thing, is that a lot of the pioneers fade into the background, and it\n becomes a part of industry. This happened to the Internet. And so while\n you still have the core people who still remember and hold the torch for\n the philosophical side, the Internet has become much more of a business.\n Now, when you go to many Internet conferences, it’s mostly salesmen in\n attendance.\nI believe that the success of the Internet has two parts. The first part\n is the market- driven business side, which has made the Internet", "egotistical than he really is. Some photographers are almost medical,\n and are going after a perfect portrait. I’m somewhere in between.\nIt’s amazing how many people will upload snapshots of people where the\n pictures don’t look like them at all. To me, uploading a picture that is\n not an easily recognizable picture of that person defeats the point,\n which I’m working toward, to try to express who they are. On the other\n hand, professional photographers usually have a subject whom they don’t\n know personally, so they end up having to try to capture an image that\n they’ve created based on who they think the person is or how they want\n that person to appear. You know how sculptors often say that they’re\n just freeing an image from a block? What I’m trying to do is free", "balance between business and the non-business elements of the movement\n is essential. My job is to keep that focus and maintain that balance.\n Also, CC needs to run smoothly as an organization and there is a lot of\n operational work that we all need to do. My photography is a way for me\n to participate in a small measure on the creative side of the Free\n Culture movement, and helps me see things from that perspective as well.\nHowever, I believe in emergent democracy and the importance of trying to\n celebrate the community more than the heroes. Of course, I’m a huge fan\n of Larry’s and I have great respect for the leaders of our movement. But\n more than anything, I’m thankful for and respectful of all of the\n participants who aren’t so well known and who are essential to moving\n everything forward.", "from the subjects, I’m asking everyone to be much more open and giving\n about their image than most people typically are. I’m giving, you’re\n giving, we’re all giving to participate and to try to create this\n wonderful work, and allow others to create derivative works.\nOf course people can abuse that, just like they can abuse anything. But\n I want people to see the value in sharing over the fear in sharing. The\n fact is, it’s much more likely that somebody is going to use these\n pictures for something positive, rather than for something negative. The\n benefits greatly outweigh the risks. I think we spend way too much of\n our lives worrying about the risks, at the cost of a lot of the\n benefits.\nThis is a celebration of all of the people who are willing to give. In a", "affordable and ubiquitous. The second part is the strong movement of\n participants who fight to keep the Internet open and try to prevent the\n business side from corrupting the fundamental elements that make the\n Internet great. The Net Neutrality or Open Network discussion going on\n right now is a good example of the importance of continuing to balance\n these principles with business interests.\nSimilarly, I think that business interests can help make Creative\n Commons ubiquitous and more easily accessible to everyone. However, I\n think it’s important to remember to keep pushing to make content more\n “free” and not allow businesses to use Creative Commons in exploitive or\n destructive ways.\nIn addition to the business side, Creative Commons is being used by\n educators to create open courseware around the world and in the area of", "science and technology to promote sharing in research. And as of now, we\n have the license ported to at least 44 jurisdictions, and the number of\n countries with projects continues to grow. In many ways, the movement\n outside of the United States has become much bigger than the movement in\n the United States. Although the United States is still slightly farther\n ahead in terms of commercialization, the size of the whole free culture\n movement outside of the United States is huge now. The CC China Photo\n exhibit was just amazing. There were some great\n images, and a lot of the photographers were professionals. This is\n beyond what anybody has done in the US. A lot of the progress that we’re\n making is international.\nWhat are your personal realizations or experiences?\nWell, we’re all getting old, if you look at these pictures. But there’s", "someone’s soul from his or her image. There are a lot of things that\n make this hard. A lot of people are uncomfortable in front of a camera,\n or might make expressions that aren’t very natural for them. And if the\n person is nervous, it’s very difficult to try to see what it is that\n you’re trying to capture.\nA lot of what I’m doing is, I just start shooting photos. After half an\n hour of having their picture taken, people start to ignore you. Or I’ll\n take pictures when I’m talking to people about what they’re doing, so\n after a while they get distracted by the conversation and forget about\n the camera. That’s something that I’m not perfect at, but I’m getting\n better.\nI think good photographers are also able to disarm people through", "photography books and photographs and are probably providing an\n increasing revenue stream for professional photographers. I think most\n amateurs, including myself, are paying homage to the professionals and\n not trying to “compete” with them.\nDespite the existence of social software, what is still important about meeting people face-to-face?\nFor me, the right way to use a lot of the new social software is by\n making it easier to spend more physical time with the people you like\n best. Dopplr is a great example. When\n I visit a city, I will see all of the people who are in the city at the\n same time. When I went to London awhile ago, there were 47 people I knew\n in London, and a huge percentage of those people don’t live there. I\n would bet that more than half of the photos in this book are pictures of", "way, giving up your image and allowing anyone to use it: it’s the\n ultimate gift. In one way it’s kind of vain. [laughs] But in another\n way it’s wonderful. A Wikipedia article on some person but with no\n picture is sad.\nBesides Wikipedia, how do you imagine these photos being used?\nThey can be used in textbooks and in mainstream media articles about the\n person. Now they can get a picture that represents the person, at least\n from my perspective. That said, I shouldn’t be the only person doing\n this. More people should do the same, and make the photographs available\n freely. For one, I feel that “free” CC licensed photos have a much\n higher chance of not disappearing. But I don’t know exactly how these\n photos are going to be used, so in a sense I’m curious. For example,", "another thing, though, about this book: the number of\n professional-quality amateurs has increased significantly due to the\n importance of digital in both professional and high-end amateur\n photography I hate to say it, a lot of people love the darkroom, but it\n really feels like the death of the darkroom with this year.\nWith new 22 megapixel cameras coming in under $10,000, and Lightroom\n and some of this software at a couple hundred dollars, it doesn’t really\n make sense, except for particularly fussy artists, to do wet-work\n anymore. If you’re a commercial photographer or a high-end amateur, you\n can do anything you used to do in the darkroom. I think it has really\n lowered the bar. I don’t know how that affects the industry directly,\n but for me, it bridged a huge gap.", "and remember exactly what we were doing, what we were eating, what we\n were drinking, what we were talking about, and to me that’s a much more\n rich experience.\nIt’s the combination of social software and photography. For me, reality\n is “the present” plus what you remember from the past. I think this\n project is really sharing memories with people. Blog posts contribute as\n well, but to me photography is a really good way of doing that. When I\n look at the expressions, I remember the moment and get a sense of\n presence.\nI think the main problem for me is the environmental impact of flying\n around. Just as I never believed that we would have a paperless office,\n being able to connect with people through social software mostly\n increases your travel, it doesn’t decrease it. It is great because you", "recently I received the Harvard Berkman Center pamphlet. It was a report\n of what they’re doing, and they also had a bunch of my pictures in\n there. They all had attribution, and it made me feel really good. There\n were pictures of different Berkman Center members that I had taken in\n various places all over the world. I think that the subject is probably\n happy with this, and I’m happy, and the Berkman Center’s happy because\n they’re not all pictures of people sitting at desks in the Berkman\n Center. There’s one more important thing: Creative Commons is great for\n original creative works or derivative creative works, but when it\n involves human images, it gets very complicated. We all know the Virgin\n Mobile case, where Virgin used CC licensed images in an advertisement\n without getting permission from the models, and got in trouble. What", "kicking myself because it was terrible. But then the Leica M8 came out,\n and I bought one at the beginning of 2007. The M8 really got me to where\n I could use my old gear, and it had enough megapixels to be as good as\n some film.\nAnother way of saying it was that there was a gear breakthrough at the\n beginning of last year. Okay, that’s pretty materialistic! So there was\n a technology breakthrough, let’s call it that, that allowed me to switch\n completely away from film, and I think this happened to a lot of\n photographers. It caused an explosion of content and an increase in the\n quality of content on sites like Flickr. It has\n allowed amateurs to create a business model with professionals.\n Interestingly, I think these new high-end amateurs are buying more", "friends, and they’re not in their hometown.\nThat’s the really interesting thing that is happening right now: it’s\n really increasing your ability to spend quality time with, actually, a\n smaller number of people. It allows you to actively filter. Your\n meetings don’t have to be random. If I look at the list of people in\n this book, although there are some obvious people missing whom I didn’t\n see last year, probably met more of my friends last year, my real\n friends, than I’ve met in any other year. I know my travels were crazy,\n but I think that the online world has allowed me to do that.\nWhat’s great about photography is that it captures the moment that I was\n sharing with that person. It’s not just a connection on a social network\n online, which is really pretty binary. I can look at all these photos" ], [ "affordable and ubiquitous. The second part is the strong movement of\n participants who fight to keep the Internet open and try to prevent the\n business side from corrupting the fundamental elements that make the\n Internet great. The Net Neutrality or Open Network discussion going on\n right now is a good example of the importance of continuing to balance\n these principles with business interests.\nSimilarly, I think that business interests can help make Creative\n Commons ubiquitous and more easily accessible to everyone. However, I\n think it’s important to remember to keep pushing to make content more\n “free” and not allow businesses to use Creative Commons in exploitive or\n destructive ways.\nIn addition to the business side, Creative Commons is being used by\n educators to create open courseware around the world and in the area of", "recently I received the Harvard Berkman Center pamphlet. It was a report\n of what they’re doing, and they also had a bunch of my pictures in\n there. They all had attribution, and it made me feel really good. There\n were pictures of different Berkman Center members that I had taken in\n various places all over the world. I think that the subject is probably\n happy with this, and I’m happy, and the Berkman Center’s happy because\n they’re not all pictures of people sitting at desks in the Berkman\n Center. There’s one more important thing: Creative Commons is great for\n original creative works or derivative creative works, but when it\n involves human images, it gets very complicated. We all know the Virgin\n Mobile case, where Virgin used CC licensed images in an advertisement\n without getting permission from the models, and got in trouble. What", "released their album, Ghost, under a Creative Commons license. The list\n goes on. Many people are asking: can you make money and share? The\n answer is, yes. CC is becoming an important part of the business\n discussion.\nBut one thing that happens when a movement like CC becomes a business\n thing, is that a lot of the pioneers fade into the background, and it\n becomes a part of industry. This happened to the Internet. And so while\n you still have the core people who still remember and hold the torch for\n the philosophical side, the Internet has become much more of a business.\n Now, when you go to many Internet conferences, it’s mostly salesmen in\n attendance.\nI believe that the success of the Internet has two parts. The first part\n is the market- driven business side, which has made the Internet", "we’re trying to do here is to expand beyond just copyright, to make it\n more thorough from a legal perspective. It’s also an important\n educational point, so people understand that, in addition to the\n Creative Commons licenses, we need people to provide other rights in\n cases where the law requires such rights to be cleared before reuse.\nWhat have you learned about the people in these networks, just in the past year?\nThat’s a good question. I think that at least Creative Commons has\n become much more mainstream. Creative Commons has moved from a fringy\n academic discussion to a boardroom discussion. Yahoo announced that it\n will be using Creative Commons for all of their basic infrastructure,\n and integrating it all. Google has CC search in their advanced search.\nMicrosoft is working with CC as well and have a plug-in. Nine Inch Nails", "way, giving up your image and allowing anyone to use it: it’s the\n ultimate gift. In one way it’s kind of vain. [laughs] But in another\n way it’s wonderful. A Wikipedia article on some person but with no\n picture is sad.\nBesides Wikipedia, how do you imagine these photos being used?\nThey can be used in textbooks and in mainstream media articles about the\n person. Now they can get a picture that represents the person, at least\n from my perspective. That said, I shouldn’t be the only person doing\n this. More people should do the same, and make the photographs available\n freely. For one, I feel that “free” CC licensed photos have a much\n higher chance of not disappearing. But I don’t know exactly how these\n photos are going to be used, so in a sense I’m curious. For example,", "science and technology to promote sharing in research. And as of now, we\n have the license ported to at least 44 jurisdictions, and the number of\n countries with projects continues to grow. In many ways, the movement\n outside of the United States has become much bigger than the movement in\n the United States. Although the United States is still slightly farther\n ahead in terms of commercialization, the size of the whole free culture\n movement outside of the United States is huge now. The CC China Photo\n exhibit was just amazing. There were some great\n images, and a lot of the photographers were professionals. This is\n beyond what anybody has done in the US. A lot of the progress that we’re\n making is international.\nWhat are your personal realizations or experiences?\nWell, we’re all getting old, if you look at these pictures. But there’s", "of these people don’t have any free photos of themselves on the web, so\n while they are “notable” on Wikipedia, their images aren’t free of the\n copyright of the photographer, or the institution who hired the\n photographer to take the picture. Often, even the subject of the article\n can’t make an image available to the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community.\nThis means that a lot of people who have a Net presence have a legally\n encumbered Net presence. People who are invited to conferences get asked\n all the time, “By the way, do you have a photo that we can use?” But\n they don’t. By making these pictures available under a Creative Commons\n license, now they do. This is solving the issue of legal freedom.\nThe third part of the pun is that, since I’m asking for a model release", "from the subjects, I’m asking everyone to be much more open and giving\n about their image than most people typically are. I’m giving, you’re\n giving, we’re all giving to participate and to try to create this\n wonderful work, and allow others to create derivative works.\nOf course people can abuse that, just like they can abuse anything. But\n I want people to see the value in sharing over the fear in sharing. The\n fact is, it’s much more likely that somebody is going to use these\n pictures for something positive, rather than for something negative. The\n benefits greatly outweigh the risks. I think we spend way too much of\n our lives worrying about the risks, at the cost of a lot of the\n benefits.\nThis is a celebration of all of the people who are willing to give. In a", "don’t get to see that. At the Creative Commons board meeting, Larry\n asked me to put the camera away after awhile [laughs] because it was\n distracting. We were having a very heated discussion and I was taking\n all of these pictures. But he credited me later because afterward those\n pictures turned out the best.\nIn your mind, what is a ‘Freesoul’ ?\nA freesoul is somewhat of a pun. On the one hand it means you are free,\n liberated. You, as a human spirit, are open. And then, it also has the\n meaning that you are unencumbered legally, that you are free, as in\n ‘free software.’\nThere’s a paradox: with many people’s Wikipedia\n articles to which I’ve contributed, when it comes to the picture, many", "get to meet all these people. But it is bad for the environment, and bad\n for our jet lag.\nHow would you characterize your contributions to free culture?\nI think it’s mostly incremental. I think there is very little we\n actually do all by ourselves, and I hate saying, “I did this” or “I did\n that.” I think that in most cases, focusing on individual contributions\n or achievements undervalues the importance of everyone else involved.\nHaving said that, I think my main contribution is probably in supporting\n Creative Commons as a fan, board member, chairman of the board and now\n CEO. I think CC has a significant role, and helping to keep it on track\n and growing is probably the single most important role that I have in\n Free Culture.\nSpecifically, I think that trying to keep an international focus and a", "balance between business and the non-business elements of the movement\n is essential. My job is to keep that focus and maintain that balance.\n Also, CC needs to run smoothly as an organization and there is a lot of\n operational work that we all need to do. My photography is a way for me\n to participate in a small measure on the creative side of the Free\n Culture movement, and helps me see things from that perspective as well.\nHowever, I believe in emergent democracy and the importance of trying to\n celebrate the community more than the heroes. Of course, I’m a huge fan\n of Larry’s and I have great respect for the leaders of our movement. But\n more than anything, I’m thankful for and respectful of all of the\n participants who aren’t so well known and who are essential to moving\n everything forward.", "Just another free soul\nIn his foreword to the book, Lessig writes that you understand your subjects “by learning to see them in a certain way.” What is that certain way?\nI think I’m trying to get a mental image of a person, certain\n expressions, or what I think that person is about. I’m trying to capture\n what I think they look like, which is many times a minority of their\n typical expressions, or their typical stance. So, if I’m taking pictures\n of Larry [Lessig], I want to have his signature hand gestures, and not\n just random ones.\nI think I’m trying to capture pictures of people that help others see\n what they’re about. Some photographers will make someone look the way\n the photographer wants them to look, and not the way they appear, so\n they’ll pick the one picture out of 100 where the guy looks more", "photography books and photographs and are probably providing an\n increasing revenue stream for professional photographers. I think most\n amateurs, including myself, are paying homage to the professionals and\n not trying to “compete” with them.\nDespite the existence of social software, what is still important about meeting people face-to-face?\nFor me, the right way to use a lot of the new social software is by\n making it easier to spend more physical time with the people you like\n best. Dopplr is a great example. When\n I visit a city, I will see all of the people who are in the city at the\n same time. When I went to London awhile ago, there were 47 people I knew\n in London, and a huge percentage of those people don’t live there. I\n would bet that more than half of the photos in this book are pictures of", "another thing, though, about this book: the number of\n professional-quality amateurs has increased significantly due to the\n importance of digital in both professional and high-end amateur\n photography I hate to say it, a lot of people love the darkroom, but it\n really feels like the death of the darkroom with this year.\nWith new 22 megapixel cameras coming in under $10,000, and Lightroom\n and some of this software at a couple hundred dollars, it doesn’t really\n make sense, except for particularly fussy artists, to do wet-work\n anymore. If you’re a commercial photographer or a high-end amateur, you\n can do anything you used to do in the darkroom. I think it has really\n lowered the bar. I don’t know how that affects the industry directly,\n but for me, it bridged a huge gap.", "and remember exactly what we were doing, what we were eating, what we\n were drinking, what we were talking about, and to me that’s a much more\n rich experience.\nIt’s the combination of social software and photography. For me, reality\n is “the present” plus what you remember from the past. I think this\n project is really sharing memories with people. Blog posts contribute as\n well, but to me photography is a really good way of doing that. When I\n look at the expressions, I remember the moment and get a sense of\n presence.\nI think the main problem for me is the environmental impact of flying\n around. Just as I never believed that we would have a paperless office,\n being able to connect with people through social software mostly\n increases your travel, it doesn’t decrease it. It is great because you", "egotistical than he really is. Some photographers are almost medical,\n and are going after a perfect portrait. I’m somewhere in between.\nIt’s amazing how many people will upload snapshots of people where the\n pictures don’t look like them at all. To me, uploading a picture that is\n not an easily recognizable picture of that person defeats the point,\n which I’m working toward, to try to express who they are. On the other\n hand, professional photographers usually have a subject whom they don’t\n know personally, so they end up having to try to capture an image that\n they’ve created based on who they think the person is or how they want\n that person to appear. You know how sculptors often say that they’re\n just freeing an image from a block? What I’m trying to do is free", "kicking myself because it was terrible. But then the Leica M8 came out,\n and I bought one at the beginning of 2007. The M8 really got me to where\n I could use my old gear, and it had enough megapixels to be as good as\n some film.\nAnother way of saying it was that there was a gear breakthrough at the\n beginning of last year. Okay, that’s pretty materialistic! So there was\n a technology breakthrough, let’s call it that, that allowed me to switch\n completely away from film, and I think this happened to a lot of\n photographers. It caused an explosion of content and an increase in the\n quality of content on sites like Flickr. It has\n allowed amateurs to create a business model with professionals.\n Interestingly, I think these new high-end amateurs are buying more", "someone’s soul from his or her image. There are a lot of things that\n make this hard. A lot of people are uncomfortable in front of a camera,\n or might make expressions that aren’t very natural for them. And if the\n person is nervous, it’s very difficult to try to see what it is that\n you’re trying to capture.\nA lot of what I’m doing is, I just start shooting photos. After half an\n hour of having their picture taken, people start to ignore you. Or I’ll\n take pictures when I’m talking to people about what they’re doing, so\n after a while they get distracted by the conversation and forget about\n the camera. That’s something that I’m not perfect at, but I’m getting\n better.\nI think good photographers are also able to disarm people through", "friends, and they’re not in their hometown.\nThat’s the really interesting thing that is happening right now: it’s\n really increasing your ability to spend quality time with, actually, a\n smaller number of people. It allows you to actively filter. Your\n meetings don’t have to be random. If I look at the list of people in\n this book, although there are some obvious people missing whom I didn’t\n see last year, probably met more of my friends last year, my real\n friends, than I’ve met in any other year. I know my travels were crazy,\n but I think that the online world has allowed me to do that.\nWhat’s great about photography is that it captures the moment that I was\n sharing with that person. It’s not just a connection on a social network\n online, which is really pretty binary. I can look at all these photos", "conversation, but still, it’s difficult to have a disarming conversation\n with somebody you don’t know, or to make them laugh. Many times people\n make a face for me that they wouldn’t make for a professional\n photographer.\nFor instance, a board meeting picture, like the one with Eric Saltzman:\n that was during a very tense discussion. I’ve found that people are at\n their most animated at these kinds of meetings, and look the most alive\n when they are under a lot of pressure, and super- focused. But usually\n if an outsider is in the room, they won’t get into that. I mean, it\n would be difficult for a cameraman to be in a room where a board is\n having a heated debate.\nBut those are the things that I’m trying to capture, because most people" ], [ "of these people don’t have any free photos of themselves on the web, so\n while they are “notable” on Wikipedia, their images aren’t free of the\n copyright of the photographer, or the institution who hired the\n photographer to take the picture. Often, even the subject of the article\n can’t make an image available to the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community.\nThis means that a lot of people who have a Net presence have a legally\n encumbered Net presence. People who are invited to conferences get asked\n all the time, “By the way, do you have a photo that we can use?” But\n they don’t. By making these pictures available under a Creative Commons\n license, now they do. This is solving the issue of legal freedom.\nThe third part of the pun is that, since I’m asking for a model release", "balance between business and the non-business elements of the movement\n is essential. My job is to keep that focus and maintain that balance.\n Also, CC needs to run smoothly as an organization and there is a lot of\n operational work that we all need to do. My photography is a way for me\n to participate in a small measure on the creative side of the Free\n Culture movement, and helps me see things from that perspective as well.\nHowever, I believe in emergent democracy and the importance of trying to\n celebrate the community more than the heroes. Of course, I’m a huge fan\n of Larry’s and I have great respect for the leaders of our movement. But\n more than anything, I’m thankful for and respectful of all of the\n participants who aren’t so well known and who are essential to moving\n everything forward.", "don’t get to see that. At the Creative Commons board meeting, Larry\n asked me to put the camera away after awhile [laughs] because it was\n distracting. We were having a very heated discussion and I was taking\n all of these pictures. But he credited me later because afterward those\n pictures turned out the best.\nIn your mind, what is a ‘Freesoul’ ?\nA freesoul is somewhat of a pun. On the one hand it means you are free,\n liberated. You, as a human spirit, are open. And then, it also has the\n meaning that you are unencumbered legally, that you are free, as in\n ‘free software.’\nThere’s a paradox: with many people’s Wikipedia\n articles to which I’ve contributed, when it comes to the picture, many", "Just another free soul\nIn his foreword to the book, Lessig writes that you understand your subjects “by learning to see them in a certain way.” What is that certain way?\nI think I’m trying to get a mental image of a person, certain\n expressions, or what I think that person is about. I’m trying to capture\n what I think they look like, which is many times a minority of their\n typical expressions, or their typical stance. So, if I’m taking pictures\n of Larry [Lessig], I want to have his signature hand gestures, and not\n just random ones.\nI think I’m trying to capture pictures of people that help others see\n what they’re about. Some photographers will make someone look the way\n the photographer wants them to look, and not the way they appear, so\n they’ll pick the one picture out of 100 where the guy looks more", "way, giving up your image and allowing anyone to use it: it’s the\n ultimate gift. In one way it’s kind of vain. [laughs] But in another\n way it’s wonderful. A Wikipedia article on some person but with no\n picture is sad.\nBesides Wikipedia, how do you imagine these photos being used?\nThey can be used in textbooks and in mainstream media articles about the\n person. Now they can get a picture that represents the person, at least\n from my perspective. That said, I shouldn’t be the only person doing\n this. More people should do the same, and make the photographs available\n freely. For one, I feel that “free” CC licensed photos have a much\n higher chance of not disappearing. But I don’t know exactly how these\n photos are going to be used, so in a sense I’m curious. For example,", "get to meet all these people. But it is bad for the environment, and bad\n for our jet lag.\nHow would you characterize your contributions to free culture?\nI think it’s mostly incremental. I think there is very little we\n actually do all by ourselves, and I hate saying, “I did this” or “I did\n that.” I think that in most cases, focusing on individual contributions\n or achievements undervalues the importance of everyone else involved.\nHaving said that, I think my main contribution is probably in supporting\n Creative Commons as a fan, board member, chairman of the board and now\n CEO. I think CC has a significant role, and helping to keep it on track\n and growing is probably the single most important role that I have in\n Free Culture.\nSpecifically, I think that trying to keep an international focus and a", "and remember exactly what we were doing, what we were eating, what we\n were drinking, what we were talking about, and to me that’s a much more\n rich experience.\nIt’s the combination of social software and photography. For me, reality\n is “the present” plus what you remember from the past. I think this\n project is really sharing memories with people. Blog posts contribute as\n well, but to me photography is a really good way of doing that. When I\n look at the expressions, I remember the moment and get a sense of\n presence.\nI think the main problem for me is the environmental impact of flying\n around. Just as I never believed that we would have a paperless office,\n being able to connect with people through social software mostly\n increases your travel, it doesn’t decrease it. It is great because you", "from the subjects, I’m asking everyone to be much more open and giving\n about their image than most people typically are. I’m giving, you’re\n giving, we’re all giving to participate and to try to create this\n wonderful work, and allow others to create derivative works.\nOf course people can abuse that, just like they can abuse anything. But\n I want people to see the value in sharing over the fear in sharing. The\n fact is, it’s much more likely that somebody is going to use these\n pictures for something positive, rather than for something negative. The\n benefits greatly outweigh the risks. I think we spend way too much of\n our lives worrying about the risks, at the cost of a lot of the\n benefits.\nThis is a celebration of all of the people who are willing to give. In a", "affordable and ubiquitous. The second part is the strong movement of\n participants who fight to keep the Internet open and try to prevent the\n business side from corrupting the fundamental elements that make the\n Internet great. The Net Neutrality or Open Network discussion going on\n right now is a good example of the importance of continuing to balance\n these principles with business interests.\nSimilarly, I think that business interests can help make Creative\n Commons ubiquitous and more easily accessible to everyone. However, I\n think it’s important to remember to keep pushing to make content more\n “free” and not allow businesses to use Creative Commons in exploitive or\n destructive ways.\nIn addition to the business side, Creative Commons is being used by\n educators to create open courseware around the world and in the area of", "we’re trying to do here is to expand beyond just copyright, to make it\n more thorough from a legal perspective. It’s also an important\n educational point, so people understand that, in addition to the\n Creative Commons licenses, we need people to provide other rights in\n cases where the law requires such rights to be cleared before reuse.\nWhat have you learned about the people in these networks, just in the past year?\nThat’s a good question. I think that at least Creative Commons has\n become much more mainstream. Creative Commons has moved from a fringy\n academic discussion to a boardroom discussion. Yahoo announced that it\n will be using Creative Commons for all of their basic infrastructure,\n and integrating it all. Google has CC search in their advanced search.\nMicrosoft is working with CC as well and have a plug-in. Nine Inch Nails", "Personally, I don’t think it’s ultimately meaningful to talk about one\n individual’s personal contribution to any movement. The real meaning is\n in the whole movement. I’m just one participant. Just another free soul.", "released their album, Ghost, under a Creative Commons license. The list\n goes on. Many people are asking: can you make money and share? The\n answer is, yes. CC is becoming an important part of the business\n discussion.\nBut one thing that happens when a movement like CC becomes a business\n thing, is that a lot of the pioneers fade into the background, and it\n becomes a part of industry. This happened to the Internet. And so while\n you still have the core people who still remember and hold the torch for\n the philosophical side, the Internet has become much more of a business.\n Now, when you go to many Internet conferences, it’s mostly salesmen in\n attendance.\nI believe that the success of the Internet has two parts. The first part\n is the market- driven business side, which has made the Internet", "conversation, but still, it’s difficult to have a disarming conversation\n with somebody you don’t know, or to make them laugh. Many times people\n make a face for me that they wouldn’t make for a professional\n photographer.\nFor instance, a board meeting picture, like the one with Eric Saltzman:\n that was during a very tense discussion. I’ve found that people are at\n their most animated at these kinds of meetings, and look the most alive\n when they are under a lot of pressure, and super- focused. But usually\n if an outsider is in the room, they won’t get into that. I mean, it\n would be difficult for a cameraman to be in a room where a board is\n having a heated debate.\nBut those are the things that I’m trying to capture, because most people", "egotistical than he really is. Some photographers are almost medical,\n and are going after a perfect portrait. I’m somewhere in between.\nIt’s amazing how many people will upload snapshots of people where the\n pictures don’t look like them at all. To me, uploading a picture that is\n not an easily recognizable picture of that person defeats the point,\n which I’m working toward, to try to express who they are. On the other\n hand, professional photographers usually have a subject whom they don’t\n know personally, so they end up having to try to capture an image that\n they’ve created based on who they think the person is or how they want\n that person to appear. You know how sculptors often say that they’re\n just freeing an image from a block? What I’m trying to do is free", "recently I received the Harvard Berkman Center pamphlet. It was a report\n of what they’re doing, and they also had a bunch of my pictures in\n there. They all had attribution, and it made me feel really good. There\n were pictures of different Berkman Center members that I had taken in\n various places all over the world. I think that the subject is probably\n happy with this, and I’m happy, and the Berkman Center’s happy because\n they’re not all pictures of people sitting at desks in the Berkman\n Center. There’s one more important thing: Creative Commons is great for\n original creative works or derivative creative works, but when it\n involves human images, it gets very complicated. We all know the Virgin\n Mobile case, where Virgin used CC licensed images in an advertisement\n without getting permission from the models, and got in trouble. What", "science and technology to promote sharing in research. And as of now, we\n have the license ported to at least 44 jurisdictions, and the number of\n countries with projects continues to grow. In many ways, the movement\n outside of the United States has become much bigger than the movement in\n the United States. Although the United States is still slightly farther\n ahead in terms of commercialization, the size of the whole free culture\n movement outside of the United States is huge now. The CC China Photo\n exhibit was just amazing. There were some great\n images, and a lot of the photographers were professionals. This is\n beyond what anybody has done in the US. A lot of the progress that we’re\n making is international.\nWhat are your personal realizations or experiences?\nWell, we’re all getting old, if you look at these pictures. But there’s", "someone’s soul from his or her image. There are a lot of things that\n make this hard. A lot of people are uncomfortable in front of a camera,\n or might make expressions that aren’t very natural for them. And if the\n person is nervous, it’s very difficult to try to see what it is that\n you’re trying to capture.\nA lot of what I’m doing is, I just start shooting photos. After half an\n hour of having their picture taken, people start to ignore you. Or I’ll\n take pictures when I’m talking to people about what they’re doing, so\n after a while they get distracted by the conversation and forget about\n the camera. That’s something that I’m not perfect at, but I’m getting\n better.\nI think good photographers are also able to disarm people through", "photography books and photographs and are probably providing an\n increasing revenue stream for professional photographers. I think most\n amateurs, including myself, are paying homage to the professionals and\n not trying to “compete” with them.\nDespite the existence of social software, what is still important about meeting people face-to-face?\nFor me, the right way to use a lot of the new social software is by\n making it easier to spend more physical time with the people you like\n best. Dopplr is a great example. When\n I visit a city, I will see all of the people who are in the city at the\n same time. When I went to London awhile ago, there were 47 people I knew\n in London, and a huge percentage of those people don’t live there. I\n would bet that more than half of the photos in this book are pictures of", "kicking myself because it was terrible. But then the Leica M8 came out,\n and I bought one at the beginning of 2007. The M8 really got me to where\n I could use my old gear, and it had enough megapixels to be as good as\n some film.\nAnother way of saying it was that there was a gear breakthrough at the\n beginning of last year. Okay, that’s pretty materialistic! So there was\n a technology breakthrough, let’s call it that, that allowed me to switch\n completely away from film, and I think this happened to a lot of\n photographers. It caused an explosion of content and an increase in the\n quality of content on sites like Flickr. It has\n allowed amateurs to create a business model with professionals.\n Interestingly, I think these new high-end amateurs are buying more", "another thing, though, about this book: the number of\n professional-quality amateurs has increased significantly due to the\n importance of digital in both professional and high-end amateur\n photography I hate to say it, a lot of people love the darkroom, but it\n really feels like the death of the darkroom with this year.\nWith new 22 megapixel cameras coming in under $10,000, and Lightroom\n and some of this software at a couple hundred dollars, it doesn’t really\n make sense, except for particularly fussy artists, to do wet-work\n anymore. If you’re a commercial photographer or a high-end amateur, you\n can do anything you used to do in the darkroom. I think it has really\n lowered the bar. I don’t know how that affects the industry directly,\n but for me, it bridged a huge gap." ], [ "Personally, I don’t think it’s ultimately meaningful to talk about one\n individual’s personal contribution to any movement. The real meaning is\n in the whole movement. I’m just one participant. Just another free soul.", "Just another free soul\nIn his foreword to the book, Lessig writes that you understand your subjects “by learning to see them in a certain way.” What is that certain way?\nI think I’m trying to get a mental image of a person, certain\n expressions, or what I think that person is about. I’m trying to capture\n what I think they look like, which is many times a minority of their\n typical expressions, or their typical stance. So, if I’m taking pictures\n of Larry [Lessig], I want to have his signature hand gestures, and not\n just random ones.\nI think I’m trying to capture pictures of people that help others see\n what they’re about. Some photographers will make someone look the way\n the photographer wants them to look, and not the way they appear, so\n they’ll pick the one picture out of 100 where the guy looks more", "and remember exactly what we were doing, what we were eating, what we\n were drinking, what we were talking about, and to me that’s a much more\n rich experience.\nIt’s the combination of social software and photography. For me, reality\n is “the present” plus what you remember from the past. I think this\n project is really sharing memories with people. Blog posts contribute as\n well, but to me photography is a really good way of doing that. When I\n look at the expressions, I remember the moment and get a sense of\n presence.\nI think the main problem for me is the environmental impact of flying\n around. Just as I never believed that we would have a paperless office,\n being able to connect with people through social software mostly\n increases your travel, it doesn’t decrease it. It is great because you", "get to meet all these people. But it is bad for the environment, and bad\n for our jet lag.\nHow would you characterize your contributions to free culture?\nI think it’s mostly incremental. I think there is very little we\n actually do all by ourselves, and I hate saying, “I did this” or “I did\n that.” I think that in most cases, focusing on individual contributions\n or achievements undervalues the importance of everyone else involved.\nHaving said that, I think my main contribution is probably in supporting\n Creative Commons as a fan, board member, chairman of the board and now\n CEO. I think CC has a significant role, and helping to keep it on track\n and growing is probably the single most important role that I have in\n Free Culture.\nSpecifically, I think that trying to keep an international focus and a", "photography books and photographs and are probably providing an\n increasing revenue stream for professional photographers. I think most\n amateurs, including myself, are paying homage to the professionals and\n not trying to “compete” with them.\nDespite the existence of social software, what is still important about meeting people face-to-face?\nFor me, the right way to use a lot of the new social software is by\n making it easier to spend more physical time with the people you like\n best. Dopplr is a great example. When\n I visit a city, I will see all of the people who are in the city at the\n same time. When I went to London awhile ago, there were 47 people I knew\n in London, and a huge percentage of those people don’t live there. I\n would bet that more than half of the photos in this book are pictures of", "way, giving up your image and allowing anyone to use it: it’s the\n ultimate gift. In one way it’s kind of vain. [laughs] But in another\n way it’s wonderful. A Wikipedia article on some person but with no\n picture is sad.\nBesides Wikipedia, how do you imagine these photos being used?\nThey can be used in textbooks and in mainstream media articles about the\n person. Now they can get a picture that represents the person, at least\n from my perspective. That said, I shouldn’t be the only person doing\n this. More people should do the same, and make the photographs available\n freely. For one, I feel that “free” CC licensed photos have a much\n higher chance of not disappearing. But I don’t know exactly how these\n photos are going to be used, so in a sense I’m curious. For example,", "from the subjects, I’m asking everyone to be much more open and giving\n about their image than most people typically are. I’m giving, you’re\n giving, we’re all giving to participate and to try to create this\n wonderful work, and allow others to create derivative works.\nOf course people can abuse that, just like they can abuse anything. But\n I want people to see the value in sharing over the fear in sharing. The\n fact is, it’s much more likely that somebody is going to use these\n pictures for something positive, rather than for something negative. The\n benefits greatly outweigh the risks. I think we spend way too much of\n our lives worrying about the risks, at the cost of a lot of the\n benefits.\nThis is a celebration of all of the people who are willing to give. In a", "science and technology to promote sharing in research. And as of now, we\n have the license ported to at least 44 jurisdictions, and the number of\n countries with projects continues to grow. In many ways, the movement\n outside of the United States has become much bigger than the movement in\n the United States. Although the United States is still slightly farther\n ahead in terms of commercialization, the size of the whole free culture\n movement outside of the United States is huge now. The CC China Photo\n exhibit was just amazing. There were some great\n images, and a lot of the photographers were professionals. This is\n beyond what anybody has done in the US. A lot of the progress that we’re\n making is international.\nWhat are your personal realizations or experiences?\nWell, we’re all getting old, if you look at these pictures. But there’s", "someone’s soul from his or her image. There are a lot of things that\n make this hard. A lot of people are uncomfortable in front of a camera,\n or might make expressions that aren’t very natural for them. And if the\n person is nervous, it’s very difficult to try to see what it is that\n you’re trying to capture.\nA lot of what I’m doing is, I just start shooting photos. After half an\n hour of having their picture taken, people start to ignore you. Or I’ll\n take pictures when I’m talking to people about what they’re doing, so\n after a while they get distracted by the conversation and forget about\n the camera. That’s something that I’m not perfect at, but I’m getting\n better.\nI think good photographers are also able to disarm people through", "balance between business and the non-business elements of the movement\n is essential. My job is to keep that focus and maintain that balance.\n Also, CC needs to run smoothly as an organization and there is a lot of\n operational work that we all need to do. My photography is a way for me\n to participate in a small measure on the creative side of the Free\n Culture movement, and helps me see things from that perspective as well.\nHowever, I believe in emergent democracy and the importance of trying to\n celebrate the community more than the heroes. Of course, I’m a huge fan\n of Larry’s and I have great respect for the leaders of our movement. But\n more than anything, I’m thankful for and respectful of all of the\n participants who aren’t so well known and who are essential to moving\n everything forward.", "don’t get to see that. At the Creative Commons board meeting, Larry\n asked me to put the camera away after awhile [laughs] because it was\n distracting. We were having a very heated discussion and I was taking\n all of these pictures. But he credited me later because afterward those\n pictures turned out the best.\nIn your mind, what is a ‘Freesoul’ ?\nA freesoul is somewhat of a pun. On the one hand it means you are free,\n liberated. You, as a human spirit, are open. And then, it also has the\n meaning that you are unencumbered legally, that you are free, as in\n ‘free software.’\nThere’s a paradox: with many people’s Wikipedia\n articles to which I’ve contributed, when it comes to the picture, many", "of these people don’t have any free photos of themselves on the web, so\n while they are “notable” on Wikipedia, their images aren’t free of the\n copyright of the photographer, or the institution who hired the\n photographer to take the picture. Often, even the subject of the article\n can’t make an image available to the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community.\nThis means that a lot of people who have a Net presence have a legally\n encumbered Net presence. People who are invited to conferences get asked\n all the time, “By the way, do you have a photo that we can use?” But\n they don’t. By making these pictures available under a Creative Commons\n license, now they do. This is solving the issue of legal freedom.\nThe third part of the pun is that, since I’m asking for a model release", "friends, and they’re not in their hometown.\nThat’s the really interesting thing that is happening right now: it’s\n really increasing your ability to spend quality time with, actually, a\n smaller number of people. It allows you to actively filter. Your\n meetings don’t have to be random. If I look at the list of people in\n this book, although there are some obvious people missing whom I didn’t\n see last year, probably met more of my friends last year, my real\n friends, than I’ve met in any other year. I know my travels were crazy,\n but I think that the online world has allowed me to do that.\nWhat’s great about photography is that it captures the moment that I was\n sharing with that person. It’s not just a connection on a social network\n online, which is really pretty binary. I can look at all these photos", "egotistical than he really is. Some photographers are almost medical,\n and are going after a perfect portrait. I’m somewhere in between.\nIt’s amazing how many people will upload snapshots of people where the\n pictures don’t look like them at all. To me, uploading a picture that is\n not an easily recognizable picture of that person defeats the point,\n which I’m working toward, to try to express who they are. On the other\n hand, professional photographers usually have a subject whom they don’t\n know personally, so they end up having to try to capture an image that\n they’ve created based on who they think the person is or how they want\n that person to appear. You know how sculptors often say that they’re\n just freeing an image from a block? What I’m trying to do is free", "conversation, but still, it’s difficult to have a disarming conversation\n with somebody you don’t know, or to make them laugh. Many times people\n make a face for me that they wouldn’t make for a professional\n photographer.\nFor instance, a board meeting picture, like the one with Eric Saltzman:\n that was during a very tense discussion. I’ve found that people are at\n their most animated at these kinds of meetings, and look the most alive\n when they are under a lot of pressure, and super- focused. But usually\n if an outsider is in the room, they won’t get into that. I mean, it\n would be difficult for a cameraman to be in a room where a board is\n having a heated debate.\nBut those are the things that I’m trying to capture, because most people", "another thing, though, about this book: the number of\n professional-quality amateurs has increased significantly due to the\n importance of digital in both professional and high-end amateur\n photography I hate to say it, a lot of people love the darkroom, but it\n really feels like the death of the darkroom with this year.\nWith new 22 megapixel cameras coming in under $10,000, and Lightroom\n and some of this software at a couple hundred dollars, it doesn’t really\n make sense, except for particularly fussy artists, to do wet-work\n anymore. If you’re a commercial photographer or a high-end amateur, you\n can do anything you used to do in the darkroom. I think it has really\n lowered the bar. I don’t know how that affects the industry directly,\n but for me, it bridged a huge gap.", "released their album, Ghost, under a Creative Commons license. The list\n goes on. Many people are asking: can you make money and share? The\n answer is, yes. CC is becoming an important part of the business\n discussion.\nBut one thing that happens when a movement like CC becomes a business\n thing, is that a lot of the pioneers fade into the background, and it\n becomes a part of industry. This happened to the Internet. And so while\n you still have the core people who still remember and hold the torch for\n the philosophical side, the Internet has become much more of a business.\n Now, when you go to many Internet conferences, it’s mostly salesmen in\n attendance.\nI believe that the success of the Internet has two parts. The first part\n is the market- driven business side, which has made the Internet", "affordable and ubiquitous. The second part is the strong movement of\n participants who fight to keep the Internet open and try to prevent the\n business side from corrupting the fundamental elements that make the\n Internet great. The Net Neutrality or Open Network discussion going on\n right now is a good example of the importance of continuing to balance\n these principles with business interests.\nSimilarly, I think that business interests can help make Creative\n Commons ubiquitous and more easily accessible to everyone. However, I\n think it’s important to remember to keep pushing to make content more\n “free” and not allow businesses to use Creative Commons in exploitive or\n destructive ways.\nIn addition to the business side, Creative Commons is being used by\n educators to create open courseware around the world and in the area of", "kicking myself because it was terrible. But then the Leica M8 came out,\n and I bought one at the beginning of 2007. The M8 really got me to where\n I could use my old gear, and it had enough megapixels to be as good as\n some film.\nAnother way of saying it was that there was a gear breakthrough at the\n beginning of last year. Okay, that’s pretty materialistic! So there was\n a technology breakthrough, let’s call it that, that allowed me to switch\n completely away from film, and I think this happened to a lot of\n photographers. It caused an explosion of content and an increase in the\n quality of content on sites like Flickr. It has\n allowed amateurs to create a business model with professionals.\n Interestingly, I think these new high-end amateurs are buying more", "we’re trying to do here is to expand beyond just copyright, to make it\n more thorough from a legal perspective. It’s also an important\n educational point, so people understand that, in addition to the\n Creative Commons licenses, we need people to provide other rights in\n cases where the law requires such rights to be cleared before reuse.\nWhat have you learned about the people in these networks, just in the past year?\nThat’s a good question. I think that at least Creative Commons has\n become much more mainstream. Creative Commons has moved from a fringy\n academic discussion to a boardroom discussion. Yahoo announced that it\n will be using Creative Commons for all of their basic infrastructure,\n and integrating it all. Google has CC search in their advanced search.\nMicrosoft is working with CC as well and have a plug-in. Nine Inch Nails" ] ]
valid	62314	[ "How does Koroby feel about marrying Yasak?", "What is an example of foreshadowing in the story?", "From the text, what can we infer about Yasuk's social status in this society?", "Which of the following is not a reason why Koroby is impressed by the stranger who lands in a spaceship?", "Why does the stranger land on Venus?", "How does Robert view Koroby?", "Why does Robert reject Koroby?", "What technology have the people of Venus not developed?", "Why does Koroby not have a concept of space?", "What is revealed about the fate of humans on Earth at the end of the story?" ]	[ [ "She wants to marry him for his money, since he will spare no expense for Koroby", "She is afraid to marry him because he has a reputation for being cruel", "She is uncertain whether she is making the right choice, but she is going to marry him because she has no better option", "She is excited to marry him because he is her true love" ], [ "Yasak is too practical to buy a new litter, indicating that he will refuse to buy Koroby the expensive dresses she wants once they are married", "Koroby wishes that a man of her dreams will fall from the sky, and then an outsider does land on the planet", "Koroby's feels like a bird in a nest on her litter, and then later she flies away from the planet like a bird", "Koroby feels like she is floating on her litter, and later she floats in space on a spaceship" ], [ "Yasak is an outcast ", "Yasak is a poor peasant who cannot afford a dowry for Koroby", "Yasak is a powerful man who can afford servants", "Yasak is from a rich family but has spent his fortune recklessly" ], [ "His gun looks deadly", "His spaceship is made from metal, which is not a common building material on Venus", "He appears to be wearing sophisticated armor", "He is more good-looking than Yasak" ], [ "To enlighten the people of Venus by showing them advanced technology", "To take Koroby back to his planet", "To observe the people of Venus and send his observations back home", "He lands there by mistake" ], [ "He views her as an obstacle to getting back home to his planet", "He views her as a primitive being needing protection", "He views her as an inferior being and feels only apathy for her", "He views her as a potential mate " ], [ "He is in love with another person on his home planet", "He doesn't want to become involved with a married woman", "He doesn't have emotions because he is actually a robot", "He thinks her love is too sudden to actually be true love" ], [ "Electricity", "Glassmaking", "Creating fire", "Metallurgy" ], [ "She has never been able to see space or stars because clouds always cover the sky on Venus", "She is a robot with no ability to think abstractly", "She and all the other inhabitants of Venus are blind", "She is too young to understand the idea of space" ], [ "They have all left for other planets", "Robots have subjugated them", "Robert is the last human left since all the others died out due to disease", "They have evolved into a new species of cyborgs" ] ]	[ 3, 2, 3, 1, 4, 3, 3, 1, 1, 2 ]	[ 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "\"Oh,\" Koroby said disappointedly, and sat upright. \"I feel as if I'd\n been lying here for weeks. Where's Yasak? Where's the strange man in\n armor?\"\n\n\n \"Yasak's out somewhere. The stranger man is in the room at the end of\n the hall.\"\n\n\n \"Fetch me something to wear—that's good enough,\" the girl accepted the\n mantle offered by the slave. \"Quick, some water—I must wash.\"\n\n\n In a few minutes she was lightly running down the hall; she knocked on\n the door of Robert's room. \"May I come in?\"\n\n\n He did not answer. She waited a little and went in. He was seated on\n one of the carved chairs, fussing over some scraps of metal on the\n table. He did not look up.", "Koroby stared defiantly at the laughing faces of her bridesmaids. She\n shrugged hopelessly. \"I don't care,\" she said slowly. \"It will be nice\n to have Yasak for a husband—yes. And perhaps I do love him. I don't\n know.\" She tightened her lips as she reflected on it.\n\n\n She left them, moving gracefully to the door. Venus-girls were\n generally of truly elfin proportions, so delicately slim that they\n seemed incapable of the slightest exertion. But Koroby's body\n was—compared to her friends'—voluptuous.\n\n\n She rested against the door-frame, watching the red of the afterglow\n deepen to purple. \"I want romance,\" she said, so softly that the girls\n had to strain forward to hear her. \"I wish that there were other worlds\n than this—and that someone would drop out of the skies and claim\n me ... and take me away from here, away from all this—this monotony!\"", "His face swung up to hers. \"But—there's no path that way—\"\n\n\n \"I don't care,\" she said. \"Take me there.\" Her order had reached the\n others' ears, and they slowed their pace.\n\n\n \"Lady—believe me—it's impossible. There's nothing but matted jungle\n in that direction—we'd have to hack our way as we go along. And who\n knows how far away that light is? Besides, you're on your way to be\n married.\"\n\n\n \"Take me to that light!\" she persisted.\n\n\n They set the litter down. \"We can't do that,\" one man said to another.\n\n\n Koroby stepped out to the path, straightened up, her eyes on the glow.\n \"You'd better,\" she said ominously. \"Otherwise, I'll make a complaint\n to Yasak—\"", "Koroby reached the City wall, panted through the gate into a shrieking\n crowd. Someone grasped her roughly—she was too breathless to do more\n than gasp for air—and shook her violently. \"You fool, you utter\n fool! What did you think you were doing?\" Others clamored around her,\n reaching for her. Then she heard Yasak's voice. Face stern, he pushed\n through the crowd, pressed her to him. \"Let her alone—Let her alone, I\n say!\"", "\"You will stay with me while you are in the City, of course,\" Yasak\n said, as they walked. He eyed this handsome stranger speculatively, and\n then turned to shout an necessary order. \"You, there, keep in line!\" He\n glanced at Robert furtively to see if this had impressed him at all.\nIt was day. Koroby sat up in bed and scanned her surroundings. She was\n in Yasak's house. The bed was very soft, the coverlets of the finest\n weave. The furniture was elegantly carved and painted; there were even\n paintings on the walls.\n\n\n A woman came to the bed. She was stocky and wore drab grey: the blue\n circles tattooed on her cheeks proclaimed her a slave. \"How do you\n feel?\" she asked.\n\n\n \"Fairly well. How long have I been ill?\" Koroby asked, sweetly weak.\n\n\n \"You haven't been ill. They brought you in last night.\"", "\"Robert—I'm mad about you! I've dreamed of your coming—all my life!\n Don't be so cruel—so cold to me! You mock me, say that I'm nothing,\n that I'm not worthy of you—\"\n\n\n She stepped back from him, clenching her hands. \"Oh, I hate you—hate\n you! You don't care the least bit about me—and I've shamed myself in\n front of you—I, supposed to be Yasak's wife by now!\" She began to\n cry, hid her face in suddenly lax fingers. She looked up fiercely. \"I\n could kill you!\" Robert stood immobile, no trace of feeling marring the\n perfection of his face. \"I could kill you, and I will kill you!\" she\n sprang at him.\n\n\n \"You'll hurt yourself,\" he admonished kindly, and after she had\n pummeled his chest, bruising her fingers on his armor, she turned away.", "Grumbling, they bent to the conveyance's poles, and Koroby lithely\n slipped to the cushions. They turned off the path, plodded through the\n deep grass toward the light. The litter lurched violently as their\n feet caught in the tangled grass, and clouds of fine dust arose from\n the disturbed blades.\nBy the time they reached the source of the light, they were quite\n demoralized. The musicians had not accompanied them, preferring to\n carry the message to Yasak in the Stone City that his prospective\n bride had gone off on a mad journey. The bearers were powdered grey\n with dust, striped with blood where the dry grass-stems had cut them.\n They were exhausted and panting. Koroby was walking beside them, for\n they had abandoned the litter finally. Her blue drapery was ripped and\n rumpled; her carefully-arranged braids had fallen loose; dust on her\n face had hid its youthful color, aging her.", "But Koroby, with supreme confidence, walked toward the stranger, her\n lovely body graceful as a cat's, her face radiant. The man did not hear\n her. She halted behind him, waited silent, expectant, excited—but he\n did not turn. The green fire sputtered upward. At last the girl stepped\n to the man's side and gently touched him again. He turned, and her\n heart faltered: she swayed with bliss.\n\n\n He was probably a god. Not even handsome Yasak looked like this. Here\n was a face so finely-chiseled, so perfectly proportioned, that it was\n almost frightening, unhuman, mechanical. It was unlined and without\n expression, somehow unreal. Mysterious, compelling.", "There was a rap at the doorway; they turned. One of the litter-bearers\n loomed darker than the gloomy sky. \"Are you ready?\" he asked.\n\n\n Koroby twirled before the mirror, criticizing her appearance. \"Yes,\n ready,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Ready!\" the girls cried. Then there was a little silence.\n\n\n \"Shall we go now?\" Koroby asked, and the litter-carrier nodded. Koroby\n kissed the girls, one after another. \"Here, Shonka—you can have this\n bracelet you've always liked. And this is for you, Lolla. And here,\n Trossa—and you, Shia. Goodbye, darlings, goodbye—come and see me\n whenever you can!\"\n\n\n \"Goodbye, Koroby!\"", "\"This way,\" the litter-carrier announced, touching the girl's arm. They\n stumbled over the rutted clearing toward the twinkling sparks that were\n the lights of the other litter-bearers, colored sparks as befitted\n a wedding-conveyance. The winking lights were enclosed in shells of\n colored glass for another reason—the danger of their firing the papery\n jungle verdure.\nIt was not a new litter, built especially for the occasion—Yasak was\n too practical a man to sanction any kind of waste. It was the same\n old litter that Koroby had been watching come and go ever since she\n was a little girl, a canopied framework of gaudily-painted carvings.\n She had wondered, watching it pass, whether its cushioned floor was\n soft, and now, as she stepped into the litter, she patted the padding\n experimentally. Yes, it was soft .... And fragrant, too—a shade too\n fragrant. It smelled stale, hinting of other occupants, other brides\n being borne to other weddings....", "She turned back to her friends, went to them, one of her hands, patting\n the head of the kneeling one. She eyed herself in the mirror.\n\n\n \"Well—heigh-ho! There don't seem to be any other worlds, and nobody is\n going to steal me away from Yasak, so I might as well get on with my\n preparations. The men with the litter will be here soon to carry me to\n the Stone City.\"\n\n\n She ran slim hands down her sides, smoothing the blue sarong; she\n fondled her dark braids. \"Trossa, how about some flowers at my ears—or\n do you think that it would look a little too much—?\" Her eyes sought\n the mirror, and her lips parted in an irreprehensible smile. She\n trilled softly to herself, \"Yes, I am beautiful tonight—the loveliest\n woman Yasak will ever see!\" And then, regretfully, sullenly, \"But oh,\n if only\nHe\nwould come ... the man of my dreams!\"", "They watched the conflagration, Yasak and Koroby, from a higher part of\n the wall than where the others were gathered. They could glimpse Robert\n now and then. He was running, trying to outrace the flames. Then they\n swept around him, circling him—his arms flailed frantically.\nThe fire had passed over the horizon. The air was blue with smoke,\n difficult to breathe, and ashes were drifting lightly down like\n dove-colored snow. Yasak, watery eyed, a cloth pressed to his nose, was\n walking with several others over the smoking earth and still warm ashes\n up to his knees. In one hand he held a stick. He stopped and pointed.\n \"He fell about here,\" he said, and began to probe the ashes with the\n stick.\n\n\n He struck something. \"Here he is!\" he cried. The others hurried to the\n spot and scooped ashes away, dog-fashion, until Robert's remains were\n laid clear. There were exclamations of amazement and perplexity from\n the people.", "Koroby huddled on a chair, sobbing. Then she dried her eyes on the\n backs of her hands. She went to the narrow slits that served as windows\n and unfastened the translucent shutter of one. Down in the City street,\n Robert was walking away. Her eyes hardened, and her fingers spread\n into ugly claws. Without bothering to pull the shutter in place she\n hurried out of the room, ran eagerly down the hall. She stopped at\n the armor-rack at the main hall on her way outside, and snatched up a\nsiatcha\n—a firestone. Then she slipped outside and down the street.\nThe City's wall was not far behind. Robert was visible in the distance,\n striding toward his sky-ship, a widening cloud of dust rising behind\n him like the spreading wake of a boat. Koroby stood on tip-toe, waving\n and calling after him, \"Robert! Robert! Come back!\" but he did not seem\n to hear.", "But at last she could go no farther. She had forced herself along\n because she wanted to impress this indifferent man that she was not as\n inferior as he might think—but now she could not go on. With a little\n cry almost of relief, she sank to the ground and lay semi-conscious, so\n weary that the very pain of it seemed on the point of pleasure.\n\n\n Robert dipped down, scooped her up, and carried her.\n\n\n Lights glimmered ahead; shouts reached them. It was a searching party,\n Yasak in it. The litter-carriers who could still speak blurted out what\n had happened. \"A green light—loud sounds—fire—this man there—\" and\n then dropped into sleep.\n\n\n \"Someone carry these men,\" Yasak ordered. To Robert he said, \"We're not\n very far from the path to the City now. Shall I carry the girl?\"\n\n\n \"It makes no difference,\" Robert said.", "\"Thank you for carrying me, Robert.\" He did not reply. \"Robert—I\n dreamed of you last night. I dreamed you built another round house and\n that we both flew away in it. Yasak had to stay behind, and he was\n furious. Robert! Aren't you listening?\"\n\n\n \"I hear you.\"\n\n\n \"Don't you think it was an exciting dream?\" He shook his head. \"But\n why? Robert\"—she laid longing hands on his shoulders—\"can't you see\n that I'm in love with you?\" He shrugged. \"I believe you don't know what\n love is!\"\n\n\n \"I had a faint idea of it when I looked into your mind,\" he said. \"I'm\n afraid I haven't any use for it. Where I come from there is no love,\n and there shouldn't be here, either. It's a waste of time.\"", "He was very tall, and his shoulders were very wide. Oh, but he looked\n like a man, and stood like one—even though his hands were folded\n behind his back and he was probably dejected. A man in a house from the\n sky—\n\n\n Koroby hastily grasped a corner of her gown, moistened it with saliva,\n and scrubbed her face. She rearranged her hair, and stepped forward.\n\n\n \"Don't go there—it's magic—he'll cast a spell—!\" one of the bearers\n whispered urgently, reaching after her, but Koroby pushed him away. The\n litter-carriers watched the girl go, unconsciously huddling together\n as if feeling the need for combined strength. They withdrew into the\n jungle's shadows, and waited there anxiously, ready at any moment to\n run away.", "He was walking along, head erect, apparently quite at ease, while the\n litter bearers and Koroby could barely drag themselves with him. The\n girl's garment was a tattered ruin. Her skin was gritty with dust, and\n she was bleeding from many scratches. She tripped over tangled roots\n and exclaimed in pain. Then the man took one of the strange implements\n from his belt, pressed a knob on it, and light appeared as if by magic!\n He handed the stick to Koroby, but she was afraid to touch it. This was\n a strange light that gave no heat, nor flickered in the breeze. Finally\n she accepted it from him, but carried it gingerly at arm's length.\n\n\n She refused to believe that he had no name, and so he named himself.\n \"Call me Robert. It is an ancient name on Terra.\"\n\n\n \"Robert,\" she said, and, \"Robert.\"", "Her lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. \"And I?\"\n\n\n His voice sounded almost surprised. \"What about you?\"\n\n\n \"You see nothing about me worthy of your respect? Are you infinitely\n superior to me—\nme\n?\"\n\n\n He looked her up and down. \"Of course!\"\n\n\n Her eyes jerked wide open and she took a deep breath. \"And just who do\n you think you are? A god?\"\n\n\n He shook his head. \"No. Just better informed, for one thing. And—\"\n\n\n Koroby cut him short. \"What's your name?\"\n\n\n \"I have none.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, you have none?\"", "Koroby fingered the flowers around her throat, her eyes rapt on the\n passing trees. Her lips moved in the barest murmur: \"If only—!\"\n and again, \"Oh, if only—!\" But the music trickled on, and nothing\n happened; the litter seemed to float along—none of the bearers even\n stumbled.\n\n\n They came to a cleared space of waist-high grass. It was like a canyon\n steeply walled by cliffs of verdure. The litter jerked as it glided\n along, and Koroby heard one of the bearers exclaim gruffly, \"Listen!\"\n Then the litter resumed its dream-like floating on the backs of the men.\n\n\n \"What was it?\" another bearer asked.\n\n\n \"Thought I heard something,\" the other replied. \"Shrill and high—like\n something screaming—\"\n\n\n Koroby peered out. \"A\ngnau\n?\" she asked.", "\"Goodbye! Goodbye!\" They crowded around her, embracing, babbling\n farewells, shreds of advice. Trossa began to cry. Finally Koroby broke\n away from them, went to the door. She took a last look at the interior\n of the little hut, dim in the lamplight—at the hard bed of laced\ngnau\n-hide strips, the crude but beautifully-carved charts and chests.\n Then she turned and stepped out into the night." ], [ "There was a rap at the doorway; they turned. One of the litter-bearers\n loomed darker than the gloomy sky. \"Are you ready?\" he asked.\n\n\n Koroby twirled before the mirror, criticizing her appearance. \"Yes,\n ready,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Ready!\" the girls cried. Then there was a little silence.\n\n\n \"Shall we go now?\" Koroby asked, and the litter-carrier nodded. Koroby\n kissed the girls, one after another. \"Here, Shonka—you can have this\n bracelet you've always liked. And this is for you, Lolla. And here,\n Trossa—and you, Shia. Goodbye, darlings, goodbye—come and see me\n whenever you can!\"\n\n\n \"Goodbye, Koroby!\"", "\"—He'll smile and touch my cheek,\nAnd maybe more;\nAnd though we'll neither speak,\nWe'll know the score—\"\nSuddenly he put his hands to her cheeks and bent close to her, his eyes\n peering into hers as though he were searching for something he had lost\n in them. She spoke her thought: \"What are you doing? You seem to be\n reading my mind!\"\n\n\n Without removing hands, he nodded. \"Reading—mind.\" He stared long\n into her eyes. His dispassionate, too-perfect face began to frighten\n her. She slipped back from him, her hand clutching her throat.\n\n\n He straightened up and spoke—haltingly at first, then with growing\n assurance. \"Don't be afraid. I mean you no harm.\" She trembled. It was\n such a wonderful voice—it was as she had always dreamed it! But she\n had never really believed in the dream....", "She turned back to her friends, went to them, one of her hands, patting\n the head of the kneeling one. She eyed herself in the mirror.\n\n\n \"Well—heigh-ho! There don't seem to be any other worlds, and nobody is\n going to steal me away from Yasak, so I might as well get on with my\n preparations. The men with the litter will be here soon to carry me to\n the Stone City.\"\n\n\n She ran slim hands down her sides, smoothing the blue sarong; she\n fondled her dark braids. \"Trossa, how about some flowers at my ears—or\n do you think that it would look a little too much—?\" Her eyes sought\n the mirror, and her lips parted in an irreprehensible smile. She\n trilled softly to herself, \"Yes, I am beautiful tonight—the loveliest\n woman Yasak will ever see!\" And then, regretfully, sullenly, \"But oh,\n if only\nHe\nwould come ... the man of my dreams!\"", "Koroby fingered the flowers around her throat, her eyes rapt on the\n passing trees. Her lips moved in the barest murmur: \"If only—!\"\n and again, \"Oh, if only—!\" But the music trickled on, and nothing\n happened; the litter seemed to float along—none of the bearers even\n stumbled.\n\n\n They came to a cleared space of waist-high grass. It was like a canyon\n steeply walled by cliffs of verdure. The litter jerked as it glided\n along, and Koroby heard one of the bearers exclaim gruffly, \"Listen!\"\n Then the litter resumed its dream-like floating on the backs of the men.\n\n\n \"What was it?\" another bearer asked.\n\n\n \"Thought I heard something,\" the other replied. \"Shrill and high—like\n something screaming—\"\n\n\n Koroby peered out. \"A\ngnau\n?\" she asked.", "The men eyed each other, mentally shrugging. \"Well—\" one yielded.\n\n\n The girl whirled impatiently on the others. \"Hurry!\" she cried. \"If you\n won't take me, I'll go by myself. I must get to that fire, whatever it\n is!\" She put a hand to her heart. \"I must! I must!\" Then she faced the\n green glare again, smiling to herself.\n\n\n \"You can't do that!\" a carrier cried.\n\n\n \"Well, then, you take me,\" she said over her shoulder.", "They watched the conflagration, Yasak and Koroby, from a higher part of\n the wall than where the others were gathered. They could glimpse Robert\n now and then. He was running, trying to outrace the flames. Then they\n swept around him, circling him—his arms flailed frantically.\nThe fire had passed over the horizon. The air was blue with smoke,\n difficult to breathe, and ashes were drifting lightly down like\n dove-colored snow. Yasak, watery eyed, a cloth pressed to his nose, was\n walking with several others over the smoking earth and still warm ashes\n up to his knees. In one hand he held a stick. He stopped and pointed.\n \"He fell about here,\" he said, and began to probe the ashes with the\n stick.\n\n\n He struck something. \"Here he is!\" he cried. The others hurried to the\n spot and scooped ashes away, dog-fashion, until Robert's remains were\n laid clear. There were exclamations of amazement and perplexity from\n the people.", "\"This way,\" the litter-carrier announced, touching the girl's arm. They\n stumbled over the rutted clearing toward the twinkling sparks that were\n the lights of the other litter-bearers, colored sparks as befitted\n a wedding-conveyance. The winking lights were enclosed in shells of\n colored glass for another reason—the danger of their firing the papery\n jungle verdure.\nIt was not a new litter, built especially for the occasion—Yasak was\n too practical a man to sanction any kind of waste. It was the same\n old litter that Koroby had been watching come and go ever since she\n was a little girl, a canopied framework of gaudily-painted carvings.\n She had wondered, watching it pass, whether its cushioned floor was\n soft, and now, as she stepped into the litter, she patted the padding\n experimentally. Yes, it was soft .... And fragrant, too—a shade too\n fragrant. It smelled stale, hinting of other occupants, other brides\n being borne to other weddings....", "He was very tall, and his shoulders were very wide. Oh, but he looked\n like a man, and stood like one—even though his hands were folded\n behind his back and he was probably dejected. A man in a house from the\n sky—\n\n\n Koroby hastily grasped a corner of her gown, moistened it with saliva,\n and scrubbed her face. She rearranged her hair, and stepped forward.\n\n\n \"Don't go there—it's magic—he'll cast a spell—!\" one of the bearers\n whispered urgently, reaching after her, but Koroby pushed him away. The\n litter-carriers watched the girl go, unconsciously huddling together\n as if feeling the need for combined strength. They withdrew into the\n jungle's shadows, and waited there anxiously, ready at any moment to\n run away.", "Grumbling, they bent to the conveyance's poles, and Koroby lithely\n slipped to the cushions. They turned off the path, plodded through the\n deep grass toward the light. The litter lurched violently as their\n feet caught in the tangled grass, and clouds of fine dust arose from\n the disturbed blades.\nBy the time they reached the source of the light, they were quite\n demoralized. The musicians had not accompanied them, preferring to\n carry the message to Yasak in the Stone City that his prospective\n bride had gone off on a mad journey. The bearers were powdered grey\n with dust, striped with blood where the dry grass-stems had cut them.\n They were exhausted and panting. Koroby was walking beside them, for\n they had abandoned the litter finally. Her blue drapery was ripped and\n rumpled; her carefully-arranged braids had fallen loose; dust on her\n face had hid its youthful color, aging her.", "\"I don't know,\" the bearer volunteered.\n\n\n Koroby lifted a hand. \"Stop the litter,\" she said.\nThe conveyance halted. Koroby leaning out, the men peering around them,\n they listened. One of the bearers shouted at the musicians; the music\n ceased. There was nothing to be heard except the whisper of the breeze\n in the grass.\n\n\n Then the girl heard it—a shrill, distant whine, dying away, then\n growing louder—and louder—it seemed to be approaching—from the sky—\n\n\n All the faces were lifted up now, worriedly. The whine grew\n louder—Koroby's hands clenched nervously on the wreaths at her throat—\n\n\n Then, far ahead, a series of bright flashes, like the lightning of the\n dust-storms, but brilliantly green. A silence, then staccatto reports,\n certainly not thunder—unlike any sound that Koroby had ever heard.", "\"Thank you for carrying me, Robert.\" He did not reply. \"Robert—I\n dreamed of you last night. I dreamed you built another round house and\n that we both flew away in it. Yasak had to stay behind, and he was\n furious. Robert! Aren't you listening?\"\n\n\n \"I hear you.\"\n\n\n \"Don't you think it was an exciting dream?\" He shook his head. \"But\n why? Robert\"—she laid longing hands on his shoulders—\"can't you see\n that I'm in love with you?\" He shrugged. \"I believe you don't know what\n love is!\"\n\n\n \"I had a faint idea of it when I looked into your mind,\" he said. \"I'm\n afraid I haven't any use for it. Where I come from there is no love,\n and there shouldn't be here, either. It's a waste of time.\"", "There was a babble of voices as the musicians crowded together, asking\n what had it been, and where—just exactly—could one suppose it had\n happened, that thunder—was it going to storm!\n\n\n They waited, but nothing further happened—there were no more stabs of\n green light nor detonations. The bearers stooped to lift the litter's\n poles to their shoulders. \"Shall we go on?\" one of them asked Koroby.\n\n\n She waved a hand. \"Yes, go on.\"\nThe litter resumed its gentle swaying, but the music did not start\n again. Then, from the direction of the light-flashes, a glow appeared,\n shining steadily, green as the flashes had been. Noticing it, Koroby\n frowned. Then the path bent, and the glow swung to one side.\n\n\n Suddenly Koroby reached out, tapped the shoulder of the closet bearer.\n \"Go toward the light.\"", "His face swung up to hers. \"But—there's no path that way—\"\n\n\n \"I don't care,\" she said. \"Take me there.\" Her order had reached the\n others' ears, and they slowed their pace.\n\n\n \"Lady—believe me—it's impossible. There's nothing but matted jungle\n in that direction—we'd have to hack our way as we go along. And who\n knows how far away that light is? Besides, you're on your way to be\n married.\"\n\n\n \"Take me to that light!\" she persisted.\n\n\n They set the litter down. \"We can't do that,\" one man said to another.\n\n\n Koroby stepped out to the path, straightened up, her eyes on the glow.\n \"You'd better,\" she said ominously. \"Otherwise, I'll make a complaint\n to Yasak—\"", "Koroby huddled on a chair, sobbing. Then she dried her eyes on the\n backs of her hands. She went to the narrow slits that served as windows\n and unfastened the translucent shutter of one. Down in the City street,\n Robert was walking away. Her eyes hardened, and her fingers spread\n into ugly claws. Without bothering to pull the shutter in place she\n hurried out of the room, ran eagerly down the hall. She stopped at\n the armor-rack at the main hall on her way outside, and snatched up a\nsiatcha\n—a firestone. Then she slipped outside and down the street.\nThe City's wall was not far behind. Robert was visible in the distance,\n striding toward his sky-ship, a widening cloud of dust rising behind\n him like the spreading wake of a boat. Koroby stood on tip-toe, waving\n and calling after him, \"Robert! Robert! Come back!\" but he did not seem\n to hear.", "She watched him a little longer. Then she deliberately stooped and drew\n the firestone out of its sheath. She touched it to a blade of the tall\n grass. A little orange flame licked up, slowly quested along the blade,\n down to the ground and up another stem. It slipped over to another\n stem, and another, growing larger, hotter—Koroby stepped back from the\n writhing fire, her hand protectively over her face.\n\n\n The flames crackled at first—like the crumpling of thin paper. Then,\n as they widened and began climbing hand over hand up an invisible\n ladder, they roared. Koroby was running back toward the City now, away\n from the heat. The fire spread in a long line over the prairie. Above\n its roar came shouts from the City. The flames rose in a monstrous\n twisting pillar, brighter than even the dust-palled sky, lighting the\n buildings and the prairie. The heat was dreadful.", "Garlands of flowers occupied a good deal of space in it. Settled among\n them, she felt like a bird in a strange nest. She leaned back among\n them; they rustled dryly. Too bad—it had been such a dry year—\n\n\n \"You're comfortable?\" the litter bearer asked. Koroby nodded, and the\n litter was lifted, was carried along the path.\n\n\n The procession filed into the jungle, into a tunnel of arched branches,\n of elephant-eared leaves. Above the monotonous music came the hiss of\n the torches, the occasional startled cry of a wakened bird. The glow of\n the flames, in the dusty air, hung around the party, sharply defined,\n like a cloak of light. At times a breeze would shake the ceiling of\n foliage, producing the sound of rolling surf.", "He was walking along, head erect, apparently quite at ease, while the\n litter bearers and Koroby could barely drag themselves with him. The\n girl's garment was a tattered ruin. Her skin was gritty with dust, and\n she was bleeding from many scratches. She tripped over tangled roots\n and exclaimed in pain. Then the man took one of the strange implements\n from his belt, pressed a knob on it, and light appeared as if by magic!\n He handed the stick to Koroby, but she was afraid to touch it. This was\n a strange light that gave no heat, nor flickered in the breeze. Finally\n she accepted it from him, but carried it gingerly at arm's length.\n\n\n She refused to believe that he had no name, and so he named himself.\n \"Call me Robert. It is an ancient name on Terra.\"\n\n\n \"Robert,\" she said, and, \"Robert.\"", "The expedition emerged from the jungle on a sandy stretch of barren\n land. A thousand feet away a gigantic metal object lay on the sand,\n crumpled as though it had dropped from a great distance. It had been\n globular before the crash, and was pierced with holes like windows.\n What could it possibly be? A house? But whoever heard of a metal house?\n Why, who could forge such a thing! Yasak's house in the City had iron\n doors, and they were considered one of the most wonderful things of the\n age. It would take a giant to make such a ponderous thing as this.\n\n\n A house, fallen from the sky? The green lights poured out of its\n crumpled part, and a strange bubbling and hissing filled the air.\n\n\n Koroby stopped short, clasping her hands and involuntarily uttering a\n squeal of joyful excitement, for between her and the blaze, his eyes on\n the destruction, stood a man.....", "But Koroby, with supreme confidence, walked toward the stranger, her\n lovely body graceful as a cat's, her face radiant. The man did not hear\n her. She halted behind him, waited silent, expectant, excited—but he\n did not turn. The green fire sputtered upward. At last the girl stepped\n to the man's side and gently touched him again. He turned, and her\n heart faltered: she swayed with bliss.\n\n\n He was probably a god. Not even handsome Yasak looked like this. Here\n was a face so finely-chiseled, so perfectly proportioned, that it was\n almost frightening, unhuman, mechanical. It was unlined and without\n expression, somehow unreal. Mysterious, compelling.", "\"Robert—I'm mad about you! I've dreamed of your coming—all my life!\n Don't be so cruel—so cold to me! You mock me, say that I'm nothing,\n that I'm not worthy of you—\"\n\n\n She stepped back from him, clenching her hands. \"Oh, I hate you—hate\n you! You don't care the least bit about me—and I've shamed myself in\n front of you—I, supposed to be Yasak's wife by now!\" She began to\n cry, hid her face in suddenly lax fingers. She looked up fiercely. \"I\n could kill you!\" Robert stood immobile, no trace of feeling marring the\n perfection of his face. \"I could kill you, and I will kill you!\" she\n sprang at him.\n\n\n \"You'll hurt yourself,\" he admonished kindly, and after she had\n pummeled his chest, bruising her fingers on his armor, she turned away." ], [ "They watched the conflagration, Yasak and Koroby, from a higher part of\n the wall than where the others were gathered. They could glimpse Robert\n now and then. He was running, trying to outrace the flames. Then they\n swept around him, circling him—his arms flailed frantically.\nThe fire had passed over the horizon. The air was blue with smoke,\n difficult to breathe, and ashes were drifting lightly down like\n dove-colored snow. Yasak, watery eyed, a cloth pressed to his nose, was\n walking with several others over the smoking earth and still warm ashes\n up to his knees. In one hand he held a stick. He stopped and pointed.\n \"He fell about here,\" he said, and began to probe the ashes with the\n stick.\n\n\n He struck something. \"Here he is!\" he cried. The others hurried to the\n spot and scooped ashes away, dog-fashion, until Robert's remains were\n laid clear. There were exclamations of amazement and perplexity from\n the people.", "\"You will stay with me while you are in the City, of course,\" Yasak\n said, as they walked. He eyed this handsome stranger speculatively, and\n then turned to shout an necessary order. \"You, there, keep in line!\" He\n glanced at Robert furtively to see if this had impressed him at all.\nIt was day. Koroby sat up in bed and scanned her surroundings. She was\n in Yasak's house. The bed was very soft, the coverlets of the finest\n weave. The furniture was elegantly carved and painted; there were even\n paintings on the walls.\n\n\n A woman came to the bed. She was stocky and wore drab grey: the blue\n circles tattooed on her cheeks proclaimed her a slave. \"How do you\n feel?\" she asked.\n\n\n \"Fairly well. How long have I been ill?\" Koroby asked, sweetly weak.\n\n\n \"You haven't been ill. They brought you in last night.\"", "Koroby reached the City wall, panted through the gate into a shrieking\n crowd. Someone grasped her roughly—she was too breathless to do more\n than gasp for air—and shook her violently. \"You fool, you utter\n fool! What did you think you were doing?\" Others clamored around her,\n reaching for her. Then she heard Yasak's voice. Face stern, he pushed\n through the crowd, pressed her to him. \"Let her alone—Let her alone, I\n say!\"", "\"This way,\" the litter-carrier announced, touching the girl's arm. They\n stumbled over the rutted clearing toward the twinkling sparks that were\n the lights of the other litter-bearers, colored sparks as befitted\n a wedding-conveyance. The winking lights were enclosed in shells of\n colored glass for another reason—the danger of their firing the papery\n jungle verdure.\nIt was not a new litter, built especially for the occasion—Yasak was\n too practical a man to sanction any kind of waste. It was the same\n old litter that Koroby had been watching come and go ever since she\n was a little girl, a canopied framework of gaudily-painted carvings.\n She had wondered, watching it pass, whether its cushioned floor was\n soft, and now, as she stepped into the litter, she patted the padding\n experimentally. Yes, it was soft .... And fragrant, too—a shade too\n fragrant. It smelled stale, hinting of other occupants, other brides\n being borne to other weddings....", "But at last she could go no farther. She had forced herself along\n because she wanted to impress this indifferent man that she was not as\n inferior as he might think—but now she could not go on. With a little\n cry almost of relief, she sank to the ground and lay semi-conscious, so\n weary that the very pain of it seemed on the point of pleasure.\n\n\n Robert dipped down, scooped her up, and carried her.\n\n\n Lights glimmered ahead; shouts reached them. It was a searching party,\n Yasak in it. The litter-carriers who could still speak blurted out what\n had happened. \"A green light—loud sounds—fire—this man there—\" and\n then dropped into sleep.\n\n\n \"Someone carry these men,\" Yasak ordered. To Robert he said, \"We're not\n very far from the path to the City now. Shall I carry the girl?\"\n\n\n \"It makes no difference,\" Robert said.", "His face swung up to hers. \"But—there's no path that way—\"\n\n\n \"I don't care,\" she said. \"Take me there.\" Her order had reached the\n others' ears, and they slowed their pace.\n\n\n \"Lady—believe me—it's impossible. There's nothing but matted jungle\n in that direction—we'd have to hack our way as we go along. And who\n knows how far away that light is? Besides, you're on your way to be\n married.\"\n\n\n \"Take me to that light!\" she persisted.\n\n\n They set the litter down. \"We can't do that,\" one man said to another.\n\n\n Koroby stepped out to the path, straightened up, her eyes on the glow.\n \"You'd better,\" she said ominously. \"Otherwise, I'll make a complaint\n to Yasak—\"", "She turned back to her friends, went to them, one of her hands, patting\n the head of the kneeling one. She eyed herself in the mirror.\n\n\n \"Well—heigh-ho! There don't seem to be any other worlds, and nobody is\n going to steal me away from Yasak, so I might as well get on with my\n preparations. The men with the litter will be here soon to carry me to\n the Stone City.\"\n\n\n She ran slim hands down her sides, smoothing the blue sarong; she\n fondled her dark braids. \"Trossa, how about some flowers at my ears—or\n do you think that it would look a little too much—?\" Her eyes sought\n the mirror, and her lips parted in an irreprehensible smile. She\n trilled softly to herself, \"Yes, I am beautiful tonight—the loveliest\n woman Yasak will ever see!\" And then, regretfully, sullenly, \"But oh,\n if only\nHe\nwould come ... the man of my dreams!\"", "Grumbling, they bent to the conveyance's poles, and Koroby lithely\n slipped to the cushions. They turned off the path, plodded through the\n deep grass toward the light. The litter lurched violently as their\n feet caught in the tangled grass, and clouds of fine dust arose from\n the disturbed blades.\nBy the time they reached the source of the light, they were quite\n demoralized. The musicians had not accompanied them, preferring to\n carry the message to Yasak in the Stone City that his prospective\n bride had gone off on a mad journey. The bearers were powdered grey\n with dust, striped with blood where the dry grass-stems had cut them.\n They were exhausted and panting. Koroby was walking beside them, for\n they had abandoned the litter finally. Her blue drapery was ripped and\n rumpled; her carefully-arranged braids had fallen loose; dust on her\n face had hid its youthful color, aging her.", "\"Oh,\" Koroby said disappointedly, and sat upright. \"I feel as if I'd\n been lying here for weeks. Where's Yasak? Where's the strange man in\n armor?\"\n\n\n \"Yasak's out somewhere. The stranger man is in the room at the end of\n the hall.\"\n\n\n \"Fetch me something to wear—that's good enough,\" the girl accepted the\n mantle offered by the slave. \"Quick, some water—I must wash.\"\n\n\n In a few minutes she was lightly running down the hall; she knocked on\n the door of Robert's room. \"May I come in?\"\n\n\n He did not answer. She waited a little and went in. He was seated on\n one of the carved chairs, fussing over some scraps of metal on the\n table. He did not look up.", "\"Robert—I'm mad about you! I've dreamed of your coming—all my life!\n Don't be so cruel—so cold to me! You mock me, say that I'm nothing,\n that I'm not worthy of you—\"\n\n\n She stepped back from him, clenching her hands. \"Oh, I hate you—hate\n you! You don't care the least bit about me—and I've shamed myself in\n front of you—I, supposed to be Yasak's wife by now!\" She began to\n cry, hid her face in suddenly lax fingers. She looked up fiercely. \"I\n could kill you!\" Robert stood immobile, no trace of feeling marring the\n perfection of his face. \"I could kill you, and I will kill you!\" she\n sprang at him.\n\n\n \"You'll hurt yourself,\" he admonished kindly, and after she had\n pummeled his chest, bruising her fingers on his armor, she turned away.", "\"Thank you for carrying me, Robert.\" He did not reply. \"Robert—I\n dreamed of you last night. I dreamed you built another round house and\n that we both flew away in it. Yasak had to stay behind, and he was\n furious. Robert! Aren't you listening?\"\n\n\n \"I hear you.\"\n\n\n \"Don't you think it was an exciting dream?\" He shook his head. \"But\n why? Robert\"—she laid longing hands on his shoulders—\"can't you see\n that I'm in love with you?\" He shrugged. \"I believe you don't know what\n love is!\"\n\n\n \"I had a faint idea of it when I looked into your mind,\" he said. \"I'm\n afraid I haven't any use for it. Where I come from there is no love,\n and there shouldn't be here, either. It's a waste of time.\"", "Koroby stared defiantly at the laughing faces of her bridesmaids. She\n shrugged hopelessly. \"I don't care,\" she said slowly. \"It will be nice\n to have Yasak for a husband—yes. And perhaps I do love him. I don't\n know.\" She tightened her lips as she reflected on it.\n\n\n She left them, moving gracefully to the door. Venus-girls were\n generally of truly elfin proportions, so delicately slim that they\n seemed incapable of the slightest exertion. But Koroby's body\n was—compared to her friends'—voluptuous.\n\n\n She rested against the door-frame, watching the red of the afterglow\n deepen to purple. \"I want romance,\" she said, so softly that the girls\n had to strain forward to hear her. \"I wish that there were other worlds\n than this—and that someone would drop out of the skies and claim\n me ... and take me away from here, away from all this—this monotony!\"", "The expedition emerged from the jungle on a sandy stretch of barren\n land. A thousand feet away a gigantic metal object lay on the sand,\n crumpled as though it had dropped from a great distance. It had been\n globular before the crash, and was pierced with holes like windows.\n What could it possibly be? A house? But whoever heard of a metal house?\n Why, who could forge such a thing! Yasak's house in the City had iron\n doors, and they were considered one of the most wonderful things of the\n age. It would take a giant to make such a ponderous thing as this.\n\n\n A house, fallen from the sky? The green lights poured out of its\n crumpled part, and a strange bubbling and hissing filled the air.\n\n\n Koroby stopped short, clasping her hands and involuntarily uttering a\n squeal of joyful excitement, for between her and the blaze, his eyes on\n the destruction, stood a man.....", "But Koroby, with supreme confidence, walked toward the stranger, her\n lovely body graceful as a cat's, her face radiant. The man did not hear\n her. She halted behind him, waited silent, expectant, excited—but he\n did not turn. The green fire sputtered upward. At last the girl stepped\n to the man's side and gently touched him again. He turned, and her\n heart faltered: she swayed with bliss.\n\n\n He was probably a god. Not even handsome Yasak looked like this. Here\n was a face so finely-chiseled, so perfectly proportioned, that it was\n almost frightening, unhuman, mechanical. It was unlined and without\n expression, somehow unreal. Mysterious, compelling.", "It was a metal skeleton, and the fragments of complicated machinery,\n caked with soot.\n\n\n \"He wasn't human at all!\" Yasak marvelled. \"He was some kind of a toy\n made to look like a man—that's why he wore armor, and his face never\n changed expression—\"\n\n\n \"Magic!\" someone cried, and backed away.\n\n\n \"Magic!\" the others repeated, and edged back ... and that was the\n end of one of those robots which had been fashioned as servants for\n Terrestial men, made in Man's likeness to appease Man's vanity, then\n conquered him.", "There was a rap at the doorway; they turned. One of the litter-bearers\n loomed darker than the gloomy sky. \"Are you ready?\" he asked.\n\n\n Koroby twirled before the mirror, criticizing her appearance. \"Yes,\n ready,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Ready!\" the girls cried. Then there was a little silence.\n\n\n \"Shall we go now?\" Koroby asked, and the litter-carrier nodded. Koroby\n kissed the girls, one after another. \"Here, Shonka—you can have this\n bracelet you've always liked. And this is for you, Lolla. And here,\n Trossa—and you, Shia. Goodbye, darlings, goodbye—come and see me\n whenever you can!\"\n\n\n \"Goodbye, Koroby!\"", "He was very tall, and his shoulders were very wide. Oh, but he looked\n like a man, and stood like one—even though his hands were folded\n behind his back and he was probably dejected. A man in a house from the\n sky—\n\n\n Koroby hastily grasped a corner of her gown, moistened it with saliva,\n and scrubbed her face. She rearranged her hair, and stepped forward.\n\n\n \"Don't go there—it's magic—he'll cast a spell—!\" one of the bearers\n whispered urgently, reaching after her, but Koroby pushed him away. The\n litter-carriers watched the girl go, unconsciously huddling together\n as if feeling the need for combined strength. They withdrew into the\n jungle's shadows, and waited there anxiously, ready at any moment to\n run away.", "Koroby fingered the flowers around her throat, her eyes rapt on the\n passing trees. Her lips moved in the barest murmur: \"If only—!\"\n and again, \"Oh, if only—!\" But the music trickled on, and nothing\n happened; the litter seemed to float along—none of the bearers even\n stumbled.\n\n\n They came to a cleared space of waist-high grass. It was like a canyon\n steeply walled by cliffs of verdure. The litter jerked as it glided\n along, and Koroby heard one of the bearers exclaim gruffly, \"Listen!\"\n Then the litter resumed its dream-like floating on the backs of the men.\n\n\n \"What was it?\" another bearer asked.\n\n\n \"Thought I heard something,\" the other replied. \"Shrill and high—like\n something screaming—\"\n\n\n Koroby peered out. \"A\ngnau\n?\" she asked.", "Her lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. \"And I?\"\n\n\n His voice sounded almost surprised. \"What about you?\"\n\n\n \"You see nothing about me worthy of your respect? Are you infinitely\n superior to me—\nme\n?\"\n\n\n He looked her up and down. \"Of course!\"\n\n\n Her eyes jerked wide open and she took a deep breath. \"And just who do\n you think you are? A god?\"\n\n\n He shook his head. \"No. Just better informed, for one thing. And—\"\n\n\n Koroby cut him short. \"What's your name?\"\n\n\n \"I have none.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, you have none?\"", "\"I don't know,\" the bearer volunteered.\n\n\n Koroby lifted a hand. \"Stop the litter,\" she said.\nThe conveyance halted. Koroby leaning out, the men peering around them,\n they listened. One of the bearers shouted at the musicians; the music\n ceased. There was nothing to be heard except the whisper of the breeze\n in the grass.\n\n\n Then the girl heard it—a shrill, distant whine, dying away, then\n growing louder—and louder—it seemed to be approaching—from the sky—\n\n\n All the faces were lifted up now, worriedly. The whine grew\n louder—Koroby's hands clenched nervously on the wreaths at her throat—\n\n\n Then, far ahead, a series of bright flashes, like the lightning of the\n dust-storms, but brilliantly green. A silence, then staccatto reports,\n certainly not thunder—unlike any sound that Koroby had ever heard." ], [ "He was looking at the wrecked globe of metal. \"So there are people on\n Venus!\" he said slowly.\n\n\n Koroby watched him, forgot her fear, and went eagerly to him, took his\n arm. \"Who are you?\" she asked. \"Tell me your name!\"\n\n\n He turned his mask of a face to her. \"My name? I have none,\" he said.\n\n\n \"No name? But who are you? Where are you from? And what is that?\" She\n pointed at the metal globe.\n\n\n \"The vehicle by which I came here from a land beyond the sky,\" he said.\n She had no concept of stars or space, and he could not fully explain.\n \"From a world known as Terra.\"\n\n\n She was silent a moment, stunned. So there was another world! Then she\n asked, \"Is it far? Have you come to take me there?\"", "But Koroby, with supreme confidence, walked toward the stranger, her\n lovely body graceful as a cat's, her face radiant. The man did not hear\n her. She halted behind him, waited silent, expectant, excited—but he\n did not turn. The green fire sputtered upward. At last the girl stepped\n to the man's side and gently touched him again. He turned, and her\n heart faltered: she swayed with bliss.\n\n\n He was probably a god. Not even handsome Yasak looked like this. Here\n was a face so finely-chiseled, so perfectly proportioned, that it was\n almost frightening, unhuman, mechanical. It was unlined and without\n expression, somehow unreal. Mysterious, compelling.", "He was clothed very peculiarly. A wonderfully-made metallic garment\n enclosed his whole body—legs and all, unlike the Venus-men's tunics.\n Even his feet were covered. Perhaps it was armor—though the Venus-men\n usually wore only breastplate and greaves. And a helmet hid all of\n the man's head except his face. Around his waist was a belt with many\n incomprehensible objects dangling from it. If he was so well armored,\n why was he not carrying a sword—a dagger at least! Of what use were\n those things on his belt—for instance, that notched L-shaped thing? It\n would not even make a decent club!\n\n\n The stranger did not speak, merely gazed deeply into Koroby's eyes. And\n she, returning the gaze, wondered if he was peering into her very soul.\n The words of a folk-ballad came to her:", "The expedition emerged from the jungle on a sandy stretch of barren\n land. A thousand feet away a gigantic metal object lay on the sand,\n crumpled as though it had dropped from a great distance. It had been\n globular before the crash, and was pierced with holes like windows.\n What could it possibly be? A house? But whoever heard of a metal house?\n Why, who could forge such a thing! Yasak's house in the City had iron\n doors, and they were considered one of the most wonderful things of the\n age. It would take a giant to make such a ponderous thing as this.\n\n\n A house, fallen from the sky? The green lights poured out of its\n crumpled part, and a strange bubbling and hissing filled the air.\n\n\n Koroby stopped short, clasping her hands and involuntarily uttering a\n squeal of joyful excitement, for between her and the blaze, his eyes on\n the destruction, stood a man.....", "He was walking along, head erect, apparently quite at ease, while the\n litter bearers and Koroby could barely drag themselves with him. The\n girl's garment was a tattered ruin. Her skin was gritty with dust, and\n she was bleeding from many scratches. She tripped over tangled roots\n and exclaimed in pain. Then the man took one of the strange implements\n from his belt, pressed a knob on it, and light appeared as if by magic!\n He handed the stick to Koroby, but she was afraid to touch it. This was\n a strange light that gave no heat, nor flickered in the breeze. Finally\n she accepted it from him, but carried it gingerly at arm's length.\n\n\n She refused to believe that he had no name, and so he named himself.\n \"Call me Robert. It is an ancient name on Terra.\"\n\n\n \"Robert,\" she said, and, \"Robert.\"", "He seemed just a trifle bored. \"We gave up names long ago on my world.\n We are concerned with more weighty things than our own selves. But I\n have a personal problem now,\" he said, making a peculiar sound that\n was not quite a sigh. \"Here I am stranded on Venus, my ship utterly\n wrecked, and I'm due at the Reisezek Convention in two weeks. You\"—he\n gripped Koroby's shoulder, and his strength made her wince—\"tell me,\n where is the nearest city? I must communicate with my people at once.\"\n\n\n She pointed. \"The Stone City's that way.\"\n\n\n \"Good,\" he said. \"Let's go there.\"", "Here the similarity between her dream and actual experience ended.\n What was he thinking as he eyed her for a long moment? She had no way\n of guessing. He said, \"No, I am not going to take you back there.\" Her\n month gaped in surprise, and he continued, \"As for the distance to\n Terra—it is incredibly far away.\"\n\n\n The glare was beginning to die, the green flames' hissing fading to a\n whisper. They watched the melting globe sag on the sand. Then Koroby\n said, \"But if it is so far away, how could you speak my language? There\n are some tribes beyond the jungle whose language is unlike ours—\"\n\n\n \"I read your mind,\" he explained indifferently. \"I have a remarkable\n memory.\"\n\n\n \"Remarkable indeed!\" she mocked. \"No one here could do that.\"\n\n\n \"But my race is infinitely superior to yours,\" he said blandly. \"You\n little people—ah—\" He gestured airily.", "\"Oh,\" Koroby said disappointedly, and sat upright. \"I feel as if I'd\n been lying here for weeks. Where's Yasak? Where's the strange man in\n armor?\"\n\n\n \"Yasak's out somewhere. The stranger man is in the room at the end of\n the hall.\"\n\n\n \"Fetch me something to wear—that's good enough,\" the girl accepted the\n mantle offered by the slave. \"Quick, some water—I must wash.\"\n\n\n In a few minutes she was lightly running down the hall; she knocked on\n the door of Robert's room. \"May I come in?\"\n\n\n He did not answer. She waited a little and went in. He was seated on\n one of the carved chairs, fussing over some scraps of metal on the\n table. He did not look up.", "They took another glance at the metal globe and the green fire, which\n by now had died to a fitful glimmer. Then the stranger and the girl\n started toward the jungle, where the litter-bearers awaited them.\nAs the party was struggling through the prairie's tall grass, the man\n said to Koroby, \"I realize from the pictures in your mind that there\n is no means in your city of communicating directly with my people. But\n it seems that there are materials which I can utilize in building a\n signal—\"", "Koroby huddled on a chair, sobbing. Then she dried her eyes on the\n backs of her hands. She went to the narrow slits that served as windows\n and unfastened the translucent shutter of one. Down in the City street,\n Robert was walking away. Her eyes hardened, and her fingers spread\n into ugly claws. Without bothering to pull the shutter in place she\n hurried out of the room, ran eagerly down the hall. She stopped at\n the armor-rack at the main hall on her way outside, and snatched up a\nsiatcha\n—a firestone. Then she slipped outside and down the street.\nThe City's wall was not far behind. Robert was visible in the distance,\n striding toward his sky-ship, a widening cloud of dust rising behind\n him like the spreading wake of a boat. Koroby stood on tip-toe, waving\n and calling after him, \"Robert! Robert! Come back!\" but he did not seem\n to hear.", "Koroby stared defiantly at the laughing faces of her bridesmaids. She\n shrugged hopelessly. \"I don't care,\" she said slowly. \"It will be nice\n to have Yasak for a husband—yes. And perhaps I do love him. I don't\n know.\" She tightened her lips as she reflected on it.\n\n\n She left them, moving gracefully to the door. Venus-girls were\n generally of truly elfin proportions, so delicately slim that they\n seemed incapable of the slightest exertion. But Koroby's body\n was—compared to her friends'—voluptuous.\n\n\n She rested against the door-frame, watching the red of the afterglow\n deepen to purple. \"I want romance,\" she said, so softly that the girls\n had to strain forward to hear her. \"I wish that there were other worlds\n than this—and that someone would drop out of the skies and claim\n me ... and take me away from here, away from all this—this monotony!\"", "\"I don't know,\" the bearer volunteered.\n\n\n Koroby lifted a hand. \"Stop the litter,\" she said.\nThe conveyance halted. Koroby leaning out, the men peering around them,\n they listened. One of the bearers shouted at the musicians; the music\n ceased. There was nothing to be heard except the whisper of the breeze\n in the grass.\n\n\n Then the girl heard it—a shrill, distant whine, dying away, then\n growing louder—and louder—it seemed to be approaching—from the sky—\n\n\n All the faces were lifted up now, worriedly. The whine grew\n louder—Koroby's hands clenched nervously on the wreaths at her throat—\n\n\n Then, far ahead, a series of bright flashes, like the lightning of the\n dust-storms, but brilliantly green. A silence, then staccatto reports,\n certainly not thunder—unlike any sound that Koroby had ever heard.", "He was very tall, and his shoulders were very wide. Oh, but he looked\n like a man, and stood like one—even though his hands were folded\n behind his back and he was probably dejected. A man in a house from the\n sky—\n\n\n Koroby hastily grasped a corner of her gown, moistened it with saliva,\n and scrubbed her face. She rearranged her hair, and stepped forward.\n\n\n \"Don't go there—it's magic—he'll cast a spell—!\" one of the bearers\n whispered urgently, reaching after her, but Koroby pushed him away. The\n litter-carriers watched the girl go, unconsciously huddling together\n as if feeling the need for combined strength. They withdrew into the\n jungle's shadows, and waited there anxiously, ready at any moment to\n run away.", "There was a rap at the doorway; they turned. One of the litter-bearers\n loomed darker than the gloomy sky. \"Are you ready?\" he asked.\n\n\n Koroby twirled before the mirror, criticizing her appearance. \"Yes,\n ready,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Ready!\" the girls cried. Then there was a little silence.\n\n\n \"Shall we go now?\" Koroby asked, and the litter-carrier nodded. Koroby\n kissed the girls, one after another. \"Here, Shonka—you can have this\n bracelet you've always liked. And this is for you, Lolla. And here,\n Trossa—and you, Shia. Goodbye, darlings, goodbye—come and see me\n whenever you can!\"\n\n\n \"Goodbye, Koroby!\"", "Koroby fingered the flowers around her throat, her eyes rapt on the\n passing trees. Her lips moved in the barest murmur: \"If only—!\"\n and again, \"Oh, if only—!\" But the music trickled on, and nothing\n happened; the litter seemed to float along—none of the bearers even\n stumbled.\n\n\n They came to a cleared space of waist-high grass. It was like a canyon\n steeply walled by cliffs of verdure. The litter jerked as it glided\n along, and Koroby heard one of the bearers exclaim gruffly, \"Listen!\"\n Then the litter resumed its dream-like floating on the backs of the men.\n\n\n \"What was it?\" another bearer asked.\n\n\n \"Thought I heard something,\" the other replied. \"Shrill and high—like\n something screaming—\"\n\n\n Koroby peered out. \"A\ngnau\n?\" she asked.", "\"You will stay with me while you are in the City, of course,\" Yasak\n said, as they walked. He eyed this handsome stranger speculatively, and\n then turned to shout an necessary order. \"You, there, keep in line!\" He\n glanced at Robert furtively to see if this had impressed him at all.\nIt was day. Koroby sat up in bed and scanned her surroundings. She was\n in Yasak's house. The bed was very soft, the coverlets of the finest\n weave. The furniture was elegantly carved and painted; there were even\n paintings on the walls.\n\n\n A woman came to the bed. She was stocky and wore drab grey: the blue\n circles tattooed on her cheeks proclaimed her a slave. \"How do you\n feel?\" she asked.\n\n\n \"Fairly well. How long have I been ill?\" Koroby asked, sweetly weak.\n\n\n \"You haven't been ill. They brought you in last night.\"", "Her lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. \"And I?\"\n\n\n His voice sounded almost surprised. \"What about you?\"\n\n\n \"You see nothing about me worthy of your respect? Are you infinitely\n superior to me—\nme\n?\"\n\n\n He looked her up and down. \"Of course!\"\n\n\n Her eyes jerked wide open and she took a deep breath. \"And just who do\n you think you are? A god?\"\n\n\n He shook his head. \"No. Just better informed, for one thing. And—\"\n\n\n Koroby cut him short. \"What's your name?\"\n\n\n \"I have none.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, you have none?\"", "They watched the conflagration, Yasak and Koroby, from a higher part of\n the wall than where the others were gathered. They could glimpse Robert\n now and then. He was running, trying to outrace the flames. Then they\n swept around him, circling him—his arms flailed frantically.\nThe fire had passed over the horizon. The air was blue with smoke,\n difficult to breathe, and ashes were drifting lightly down like\n dove-colored snow. Yasak, watery eyed, a cloth pressed to his nose, was\n walking with several others over the smoking earth and still warm ashes\n up to his knees. In one hand he held a stick. He stopped and pointed.\n \"He fell about here,\" he said, and began to probe the ashes with the\n stick.\n\n\n He struck something. \"Here he is!\" he cried. The others hurried to the\n spot and scooped ashes away, dog-fashion, until Robert's remains were\n laid clear. There were exclamations of amazement and perplexity from\n the people.", "Koroby reached the City wall, panted through the gate into a shrieking\n crowd. Someone grasped her roughly—she was too breathless to do more\n than gasp for air—and shook her violently. \"You fool, you utter\n fool! What did you think you were doing?\" Others clamored around her,\n reaching for her. Then she heard Yasak's voice. Face stern, he pushed\n through the crowd, pressed her to him. \"Let her alone—Let her alone, I\n say!\"", "There was a babble of voices as the musicians crowded together, asking\n what had it been, and where—just exactly—could one suppose it had\n happened, that thunder—was it going to storm!\n\n\n They waited, but nothing further happened—there were no more stabs of\n green light nor detonations. The bearers stooped to lift the litter's\n poles to their shoulders. \"Shall we go on?\" one of them asked Koroby.\n\n\n She waved a hand. \"Yes, go on.\"\nThe litter resumed its gentle swaying, but the music did not start\n again. Then, from the direction of the light-flashes, a glow appeared,\n shining steadily, green as the flashes had been. Noticing it, Koroby\n frowned. Then the path bent, and the glow swung to one side.\n\n\n Suddenly Koroby reached out, tapped the shoulder of the closet bearer.\n \"Go toward the light.\"" ], [ "He was looking at the wrecked globe of metal. \"So there are people on\n Venus!\" he said slowly.\n\n\n Koroby watched him, forgot her fear, and went eagerly to him, took his\n arm. \"Who are you?\" she asked. \"Tell me your name!\"\n\n\n He turned his mask of a face to her. \"My name? I have none,\" he said.\n\n\n \"No name? But who are you? Where are you from? And what is that?\" She\n pointed at the metal globe.\n\n\n \"The vehicle by which I came here from a land beyond the sky,\" he said.\n She had no concept of stars or space, and he could not fully explain.\n \"From a world known as Terra.\"\n\n\n She was silent a moment, stunned. So there was another world! Then she\n asked, \"Is it far? Have you come to take me there?\"", "He seemed just a trifle bored. \"We gave up names long ago on my world.\n We are concerned with more weighty things than our own selves. But I\n have a personal problem now,\" he said, making a peculiar sound that\n was not quite a sigh. \"Here I am stranded on Venus, my ship utterly\n wrecked, and I'm due at the Reisezek Convention in two weeks. You\"—he\n gripped Koroby's shoulder, and his strength made her wince—\"tell me,\n where is the nearest city? I must communicate with my people at once.\"\n\n\n She pointed. \"The Stone City's that way.\"\n\n\n \"Good,\" he said. \"Let's go there.\"", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nIt was twilight on Venus—the rusty red that the eyes notice when\n their closed lids are raised to light. Against the glow, fantastically\n twisted trees spread claws of spiky leaves, and a group of clay huts\n thrust up sharp edges of shadow, like the abandoned toy blocks of a\n gigantic child. There was no sign of clear sky and stars—the heavens\n were roofed by a perpetual ceiling of dust-clouds.\n\n\n A light glimmered in one of the huts. Feminine voices rippled across\n the clearing and into the jungle. There was laughter, then someone's\n faint and wistful sigh. One of the voices mourned, in the twittering\n Venusian speech, \"How I envy you, Koroby! I wish I were being married\n tonight, like you!\"", "The expedition emerged from the jungle on a sandy stretch of barren\n land. A thousand feet away a gigantic metal object lay on the sand,\n crumpled as though it had dropped from a great distance. It had been\n globular before the crash, and was pierced with holes like windows.\n What could it possibly be? A house? But whoever heard of a metal house?\n Why, who could forge such a thing! Yasak's house in the City had iron\n doors, and they were considered one of the most wonderful things of the\n age. It would take a giant to make such a ponderous thing as this.\n\n\n A house, fallen from the sky? The green lights poured out of its\n crumpled part, and a strange bubbling and hissing filled the air.\n\n\n Koroby stopped short, clasping her hands and involuntarily uttering a\n squeal of joyful excitement, for between her and the blaze, his eyes on\n the destruction, stood a man.....", "He was clothed very peculiarly. A wonderfully-made metallic garment\n enclosed his whole body—legs and all, unlike the Venus-men's tunics.\n Even his feet were covered. Perhaps it was armor—though the Venus-men\n usually wore only breastplate and greaves. And a helmet hid all of\n the man's head except his face. Around his waist was a belt with many\n incomprehensible objects dangling from it. If he was so well armored,\n why was he not carrying a sword—a dagger at least! Of what use were\n those things on his belt—for instance, that notched L-shaped thing? It\n would not even make a decent club!\n\n\n The stranger did not speak, merely gazed deeply into Koroby's eyes. And\n she, returning the gaze, wondered if he was peering into her very soul.\n The words of a folk-ballad came to her:", "Here the similarity between her dream and actual experience ended.\n What was he thinking as he eyed her for a long moment? She had no way\n of guessing. He said, \"No, I am not going to take you back there.\" Her\n month gaped in surprise, and he continued, \"As for the distance to\n Terra—it is incredibly far away.\"\n\n\n The glare was beginning to die, the green flames' hissing fading to a\n whisper. They watched the melting globe sag on the sand. Then Koroby\n said, \"But if it is so far away, how could you speak my language? There\n are some tribes beyond the jungle whose language is unlike ours—\"\n\n\n \"I read your mind,\" he explained indifferently. \"I have a remarkable\n memory.\"\n\n\n \"Remarkable indeed!\" she mocked. \"No one here could do that.\"\n\n\n \"But my race is infinitely superior to yours,\" he said blandly. \"You\n little people—ah—\" He gestured airily.", "Koroby stared defiantly at the laughing faces of her bridesmaids. She\n shrugged hopelessly. \"I don't care,\" she said slowly. \"It will be nice\n to have Yasak for a husband—yes. And perhaps I do love him. I don't\n know.\" She tightened her lips as she reflected on it.\n\n\n She left them, moving gracefully to the door. Venus-girls were\n generally of truly elfin proportions, so delicately slim that they\n seemed incapable of the slightest exertion. But Koroby's body\n was—compared to her friends'—voluptuous.\n\n\n She rested against the door-frame, watching the red of the afterglow\n deepen to purple. \"I want romance,\" she said, so softly that the girls\n had to strain forward to hear her. \"I wish that there were other worlds\n than this—and that someone would drop out of the skies and claim\n me ... and take me away from here, away from all this—this monotony!\"", "STRANGER FROM SPACE\nBy HANNES BOK\nShe prayed that a God would come from the skies\n\n and carry her away to bright adventures. But\n\n when he came in a metal globe, she knew only\n\n disappointment—for his godliness was oddly strange!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories March 1943.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that", "They took another glance at the metal globe and the green fire, which\n by now had died to a fitful glimmer. Then the stranger and the girl\n started toward the jungle, where the litter-bearers awaited them.\nAs the party was struggling through the prairie's tall grass, the man\n said to Koroby, \"I realize from the pictures in your mind that there\n is no means in your city of communicating directly with my people. But\n it seems that there are materials which I can utilize in building a\n signal—\"", "He was walking along, head erect, apparently quite at ease, while the\n litter bearers and Koroby could barely drag themselves with him. The\n girl's garment was a tattered ruin. Her skin was gritty with dust, and\n she was bleeding from many scratches. She tripped over tangled roots\n and exclaimed in pain. Then the man took one of the strange implements\n from his belt, pressed a knob on it, and light appeared as if by magic!\n He handed the stick to Koroby, but she was afraid to touch it. This was\n a strange light that gave no heat, nor flickered in the breeze. Finally\n she accepted it from him, but carried it gingerly at arm's length.\n\n\n She refused to believe that he had no name, and so he named himself.\n \"Call me Robert. It is an ancient name on Terra.\"\n\n\n \"Robert,\" she said, and, \"Robert.\"", "\"Thank you for carrying me, Robert.\" He did not reply. \"Robert—I\n dreamed of you last night. I dreamed you built another round house and\n that we both flew away in it. Yasak had to stay behind, and he was\n furious. Robert! Aren't you listening?\"\n\n\n \"I hear you.\"\n\n\n \"Don't you think it was an exciting dream?\" He shook his head. \"But\n why? Robert\"—she laid longing hands on his shoulders—\"can't you see\n that I'm in love with you?\" He shrugged. \"I believe you don't know what\n love is!\"\n\n\n \"I had a faint idea of it when I looked into your mind,\" he said. \"I'm\n afraid I haven't any use for it. Where I come from there is no love,\n and there shouldn't be here, either. It's a waste of time.\"", "\"I don't know,\" the bearer volunteered.\n\n\n Koroby lifted a hand. \"Stop the litter,\" she said.\nThe conveyance halted. Koroby leaning out, the men peering around them,\n they listened. One of the bearers shouted at the musicians; the music\n ceased. There was nothing to be heard except the whisper of the breeze\n in the grass.\n\n\n Then the girl heard it—a shrill, distant whine, dying away, then\n growing louder—and louder—it seemed to be approaching—from the sky—\n\n\n All the faces were lifted up now, worriedly. The whine grew\n louder—Koroby's hands clenched nervously on the wreaths at her throat—\n\n\n Then, far ahead, a series of bright flashes, like the lightning of the\n dust-storms, but brilliantly green. A silence, then staccatto reports,\n certainly not thunder—unlike any sound that Koroby had ever heard.", "But Koroby, with supreme confidence, walked toward the stranger, her\n lovely body graceful as a cat's, her face radiant. The man did not hear\n her. She halted behind him, waited silent, expectant, excited—but he\n did not turn. The green fire sputtered upward. At last the girl stepped\n to the man's side and gently touched him again. He turned, and her\n heart faltered: she swayed with bliss.\n\n\n He was probably a god. Not even handsome Yasak looked like this. Here\n was a face so finely-chiseled, so perfectly proportioned, that it was\n almost frightening, unhuman, mechanical. It was unlined and without\n expression, somehow unreal. Mysterious, compelling.", "There was a babble of voices as the musicians crowded together, asking\n what had it been, and where—just exactly—could one suppose it had\n happened, that thunder—was it going to storm!\n\n\n They waited, but nothing further happened—there were no more stabs of\n green light nor detonations. The bearers stooped to lift the litter's\n poles to their shoulders. \"Shall we go on?\" one of them asked Koroby.\n\n\n She waved a hand. \"Yes, go on.\"\nThe litter resumed its gentle swaying, but the music did not start\n again. Then, from the direction of the light-flashes, a glow appeared,\n shining steadily, green as the flashes had been. Noticing it, Koroby\n frowned. Then the path bent, and the glow swung to one side.\n\n\n Suddenly Koroby reached out, tapped the shoulder of the closet bearer.\n \"Go toward the light.\"", "He was very tall, and his shoulders were very wide. Oh, but he looked\n like a man, and stood like one—even though his hands were folded\n behind his back and he was probably dejected. A man in a house from the\n sky—\n\n\n Koroby hastily grasped a corner of her gown, moistened it with saliva,\n and scrubbed her face. She rearranged her hair, and stepped forward.\n\n\n \"Don't go there—it's magic—he'll cast a spell—!\" one of the bearers\n whispered urgently, reaching after her, but Koroby pushed him away. The\n litter-carriers watched the girl go, unconsciously huddling together\n as if feeling the need for combined strength. They withdrew into the\n jungle's shadows, and waited there anxiously, ready at any moment to\n run away.", "The men eyed each other, mentally shrugging. \"Well—\" one yielded.\n\n\n The girl whirled impatiently on the others. \"Hurry!\" she cried. \"If you\n won't take me, I'll go by myself. I must get to that fire, whatever it\n is!\" She put a hand to her heart. \"I must! I must!\" Then she faced the\n green glare again, smiling to herself.\n\n\n \"You can't do that!\" a carrier cried.\n\n\n \"Well, then, you take me,\" she said over her shoulder.", "Koroby huddled on a chair, sobbing. Then she dried her eyes on the\n backs of her hands. She went to the narrow slits that served as windows\n and unfastened the translucent shutter of one. Down in the City street,\n Robert was walking away. Her eyes hardened, and her fingers spread\n into ugly claws. Without bothering to pull the shutter in place she\n hurried out of the room, ran eagerly down the hall. She stopped at\n the armor-rack at the main hall on her way outside, and snatched up a\nsiatcha\n—a firestone. Then she slipped outside and down the street.\nThe City's wall was not far behind. Robert was visible in the distance,\n striding toward his sky-ship, a widening cloud of dust rising behind\n him like the spreading wake of a boat. Koroby stood on tip-toe, waving\n and calling after him, \"Robert! Robert! Come back!\" but he did not seem\n to hear.", "But at last she could go no farther. She had forced herself along\n because she wanted to impress this indifferent man that she was not as\n inferior as he might think—but now she could not go on. With a little\n cry almost of relief, she sank to the ground and lay semi-conscious, so\n weary that the very pain of it seemed on the point of pleasure.\n\n\n Robert dipped down, scooped her up, and carried her.\n\n\n Lights glimmered ahead; shouts reached them. It was a searching party,\n Yasak in it. The litter-carriers who could still speak blurted out what\n had happened. \"A green light—loud sounds—fire—this man there—\" and\n then dropped into sleep.\n\n\n \"Someone carry these men,\" Yasak ordered. To Robert he said, \"We're not\n very far from the path to the City now. Shall I carry the girl?\"\n\n\n \"It makes no difference,\" Robert said.", "She turned back to her friends, went to them, one of her hands, patting\n the head of the kneeling one. She eyed herself in the mirror.\n\n\n \"Well—heigh-ho! There don't seem to be any other worlds, and nobody is\n going to steal me away from Yasak, so I might as well get on with my\n preparations. The men with the litter will be here soon to carry me to\n the Stone City.\"\n\n\n She ran slim hands down her sides, smoothing the blue sarong; she\n fondled her dark braids. \"Trossa, how about some flowers at my ears—or\n do you think that it would look a little too much—?\" Her eyes sought\n the mirror, and her lips parted in an irreprehensible smile. She\n trilled softly to herself, \"Yes, I am beautiful tonight—the loveliest\n woman Yasak will ever see!\" And then, regretfully, sullenly, \"But oh,\n if only\nHe\nwould come ... the man of my dreams!\"", "It was a metal skeleton, and the fragments of complicated machinery,\n caked with soot.\n\n\n \"He wasn't human at all!\" Yasak marvelled. \"He was some kind of a toy\n made to look like a man—that's why he wore armor, and his face never\n changed expression—\"\n\n\n \"Magic!\" someone cried, and backed away.\n\n\n \"Magic!\" the others repeated, and edged back ... and that was the\n end of one of those robots which had been fashioned as servants for\n Terrestial men, made in Man's likeness to appease Man's vanity, then\n conquered him." ], [ "\"Oh,\" Koroby said disappointedly, and sat upright. \"I feel as if I'd\n been lying here for weeks. Where's Yasak? Where's the strange man in\n armor?\"\n\n\n \"Yasak's out somewhere. The stranger man is in the room at the end of\n the hall.\"\n\n\n \"Fetch me something to wear—that's good enough,\" the girl accepted the\n mantle offered by the slave. \"Quick, some water—I must wash.\"\n\n\n In a few minutes she was lightly running down the hall; she knocked on\n the door of Robert's room. \"May I come in?\"\n\n\n He did not answer. She waited a little and went in. He was seated on\n one of the carved chairs, fussing over some scraps of metal on the\n table. He did not look up.", "They watched the conflagration, Yasak and Koroby, from a higher part of\n the wall than where the others were gathered. They could glimpse Robert\n now and then. He was running, trying to outrace the flames. Then they\n swept around him, circling him—his arms flailed frantically.\nThe fire had passed over the horizon. The air was blue with smoke,\n difficult to breathe, and ashes were drifting lightly down like\n dove-colored snow. Yasak, watery eyed, a cloth pressed to his nose, was\n walking with several others over the smoking earth and still warm ashes\n up to his knees. In one hand he held a stick. He stopped and pointed.\n \"He fell about here,\" he said, and began to probe the ashes with the\n stick.\n\n\n He struck something. \"Here he is!\" he cried. The others hurried to the\n spot and scooped ashes away, dog-fashion, until Robert's remains were\n laid clear. There were exclamations of amazement and perplexity from\n the people.", "Koroby huddled on a chair, sobbing. Then she dried her eyes on the\n backs of her hands. She went to the narrow slits that served as windows\n and unfastened the translucent shutter of one. Down in the City street,\n Robert was walking away. Her eyes hardened, and her fingers spread\n into ugly claws. Without bothering to pull the shutter in place she\n hurried out of the room, ran eagerly down the hall. She stopped at\n the armor-rack at the main hall on her way outside, and snatched up a\nsiatcha\n—a firestone. Then she slipped outside and down the street.\nThe City's wall was not far behind. Robert was visible in the distance,\n striding toward his sky-ship, a widening cloud of dust rising behind\n him like the spreading wake of a boat. Koroby stood on tip-toe, waving\n and calling after him, \"Robert! Robert! Come back!\" but he did not seem\n to hear.", "He was walking along, head erect, apparently quite at ease, while the\n litter bearers and Koroby could barely drag themselves with him. The\n girl's garment was a tattered ruin. Her skin was gritty with dust, and\n she was bleeding from many scratches. She tripped over tangled roots\n and exclaimed in pain. Then the man took one of the strange implements\n from his belt, pressed a knob on it, and light appeared as if by magic!\n He handed the stick to Koroby, but she was afraid to touch it. This was\n a strange light that gave no heat, nor flickered in the breeze. Finally\n she accepted it from him, but carried it gingerly at arm's length.\n\n\n She refused to believe that he had no name, and so he named himself.\n \"Call me Robert. It is an ancient name on Terra.\"\n\n\n \"Robert,\" she said, and, \"Robert.\"", "But Koroby, with supreme confidence, walked toward the stranger, her\n lovely body graceful as a cat's, her face radiant. The man did not hear\n her. She halted behind him, waited silent, expectant, excited—but he\n did not turn. The green fire sputtered upward. At last the girl stepped\n to the man's side and gently touched him again. He turned, and her\n heart faltered: she swayed with bliss.\n\n\n He was probably a god. Not even handsome Yasak looked like this. Here\n was a face so finely-chiseled, so perfectly proportioned, that it was\n almost frightening, unhuman, mechanical. It was unlined and without\n expression, somehow unreal. Mysterious, compelling.", "There was a rap at the doorway; they turned. One of the litter-bearers\n loomed darker than the gloomy sky. \"Are you ready?\" he asked.\n\n\n Koroby twirled before the mirror, criticizing her appearance. \"Yes,\n ready,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Ready!\" the girls cried. Then there was a little silence.\n\n\n \"Shall we go now?\" Koroby asked, and the litter-carrier nodded. Koroby\n kissed the girls, one after another. \"Here, Shonka—you can have this\n bracelet you've always liked. And this is for you, Lolla. And here,\n Trossa—and you, Shia. Goodbye, darlings, goodbye—come and see me\n whenever you can!\"\n\n\n \"Goodbye, Koroby!\"", "\"You will stay with me while you are in the City, of course,\" Yasak\n said, as they walked. He eyed this handsome stranger speculatively, and\n then turned to shout an necessary order. \"You, there, keep in line!\" He\n glanced at Robert furtively to see if this had impressed him at all.\nIt was day. Koroby sat up in bed and scanned her surroundings. She was\n in Yasak's house. The bed was very soft, the coverlets of the finest\n weave. The furniture was elegantly carved and painted; there were even\n paintings on the walls.\n\n\n A woman came to the bed. She was stocky and wore drab grey: the blue\n circles tattooed on her cheeks proclaimed her a slave. \"How do you\n feel?\" she asked.\n\n\n \"Fairly well. How long have I been ill?\" Koroby asked, sweetly weak.\n\n\n \"You haven't been ill. They brought you in last night.\"", "\"Thank you for carrying me, Robert.\" He did not reply. \"Robert—I\n dreamed of you last night. I dreamed you built another round house and\n that we both flew away in it. Yasak had to stay behind, and he was\n furious. Robert! Aren't you listening?\"\n\n\n \"I hear you.\"\n\n\n \"Don't you think it was an exciting dream?\" He shook his head. \"But\n why? Robert\"—she laid longing hands on his shoulders—\"can't you see\n that I'm in love with you?\" He shrugged. \"I believe you don't know what\n love is!\"\n\n\n \"I had a faint idea of it when I looked into your mind,\" he said. \"I'm\n afraid I haven't any use for it. Where I come from there is no love,\n and there shouldn't be here, either. It's a waste of time.\"", "Koroby reached the City wall, panted through the gate into a shrieking\n crowd. Someone grasped her roughly—she was too breathless to do more\n than gasp for air—and shook her violently. \"You fool, you utter\n fool! What did you think you were doing?\" Others clamored around her,\n reaching for her. Then she heard Yasak's voice. Face stern, he pushed\n through the crowd, pressed her to him. \"Let her alone—Let her alone, I\n say!\"", "Koroby fingered the flowers around her throat, her eyes rapt on the\n passing trees. Her lips moved in the barest murmur: \"If only—!\"\n and again, \"Oh, if only—!\" But the music trickled on, and nothing\n happened; the litter seemed to float along—none of the bearers even\n stumbled.\n\n\n They came to a cleared space of waist-high grass. It was like a canyon\n steeply walled by cliffs of verdure. The litter jerked as it glided\n along, and Koroby heard one of the bearers exclaim gruffly, \"Listen!\"\n Then the litter resumed its dream-like floating on the backs of the men.\n\n\n \"What was it?\" another bearer asked.\n\n\n \"Thought I heard something,\" the other replied. \"Shrill and high—like\n something screaming—\"\n\n\n Koroby peered out. \"A\ngnau\n?\" she asked.", "He was clothed very peculiarly. A wonderfully-made metallic garment\n enclosed his whole body—legs and all, unlike the Venus-men's tunics.\n Even his feet were covered. Perhaps it was armor—though the Venus-men\n usually wore only breastplate and greaves. And a helmet hid all of\n the man's head except his face. Around his waist was a belt with many\n incomprehensible objects dangling from it. If he was so well armored,\n why was he not carrying a sword—a dagger at least! Of what use were\n those things on his belt—for instance, that notched L-shaped thing? It\n would not even make a decent club!\n\n\n The stranger did not speak, merely gazed deeply into Koroby's eyes. And\n she, returning the gaze, wondered if he was peering into her very soul.\n The words of a folk-ballad came to her:", "\"Robert—I'm mad about you! I've dreamed of your coming—all my life!\n Don't be so cruel—so cold to me! You mock me, say that I'm nothing,\n that I'm not worthy of you—\"\n\n\n She stepped back from him, clenching her hands. \"Oh, I hate you—hate\n you! You don't care the least bit about me—and I've shamed myself in\n front of you—I, supposed to be Yasak's wife by now!\" She began to\n cry, hid her face in suddenly lax fingers. She looked up fiercely. \"I\n could kill you!\" Robert stood immobile, no trace of feeling marring the\n perfection of his face. \"I could kill you, and I will kill you!\" she\n sprang at him.\n\n\n \"You'll hurt yourself,\" he admonished kindly, and after she had\n pummeled his chest, bruising her fingers on his armor, she turned away.", "Koroby stared defiantly at the laughing faces of her bridesmaids. She\n shrugged hopelessly. \"I don't care,\" she said slowly. \"It will be nice\n to have Yasak for a husband—yes. And perhaps I do love him. I don't\n know.\" She tightened her lips as she reflected on it.\n\n\n She left them, moving gracefully to the door. Venus-girls were\n generally of truly elfin proportions, so delicately slim that they\n seemed incapable of the slightest exertion. But Koroby's body\n was—compared to her friends'—voluptuous.\n\n\n She rested against the door-frame, watching the red of the afterglow\n deepen to purple. \"I want romance,\" she said, so softly that the girls\n had to strain forward to hear her. \"I wish that there were other worlds\n than this—and that someone would drop out of the skies and claim\n me ... and take me away from here, away from all this—this monotony!\"", "Grumbling, they bent to the conveyance's poles, and Koroby lithely\n slipped to the cushions. They turned off the path, plodded through the\n deep grass toward the light. The litter lurched violently as their\n feet caught in the tangled grass, and clouds of fine dust arose from\n the disturbed blades.\nBy the time they reached the source of the light, they were quite\n demoralized. The musicians had not accompanied them, preferring to\n carry the message to Yasak in the Stone City that his prospective\n bride had gone off on a mad journey. The bearers were powdered grey\n with dust, striped with blood where the dry grass-stems had cut them.\n They were exhausted and panting. Koroby was walking beside them, for\n they had abandoned the litter finally. Her blue drapery was ripped and\n rumpled; her carefully-arranged braids had fallen loose; dust on her\n face had hid its youthful color, aging her.", "He was very tall, and his shoulders were very wide. Oh, but he looked\n like a man, and stood like one—even though his hands were folded\n behind his back and he was probably dejected. A man in a house from the\n sky—\n\n\n Koroby hastily grasped a corner of her gown, moistened it with saliva,\n and scrubbed her face. She rearranged her hair, and stepped forward.\n\n\n \"Don't go there—it's magic—he'll cast a spell—!\" one of the bearers\n whispered urgently, reaching after her, but Koroby pushed him away. The\n litter-carriers watched the girl go, unconsciously huddling together\n as if feeling the need for combined strength. They withdrew into the\n jungle's shadows, and waited there anxiously, ready at any moment to\n run away.", "She watched him a little longer. Then she deliberately stooped and drew\n the firestone out of its sheath. She touched it to a blade of the tall\n grass. A little orange flame licked up, slowly quested along the blade,\n down to the ground and up another stem. It slipped over to another\n stem, and another, growing larger, hotter—Koroby stepped back from the\n writhing fire, her hand protectively over her face.\n\n\n The flames crackled at first—like the crumpling of thin paper. Then,\n as they widened and began climbing hand over hand up an invisible\n ladder, they roared. Koroby was running back toward the City now, away\n from the heat. The fire spread in a long line over the prairie. Above\n its roar came shouts from the City. The flames rose in a monstrous\n twisting pillar, brighter than even the dust-palled sky, lighting the\n buildings and the prairie. The heat was dreadful.", "Here the similarity between her dream and actual experience ended.\n What was he thinking as he eyed her for a long moment? She had no way\n of guessing. He said, \"No, I am not going to take you back there.\" Her\n month gaped in surprise, and he continued, \"As for the distance to\n Terra—it is incredibly far away.\"\n\n\n The glare was beginning to die, the green flames' hissing fading to a\n whisper. They watched the melting globe sag on the sand. Then Koroby\n said, \"But if it is so far away, how could you speak my language? There\n are some tribes beyond the jungle whose language is unlike ours—\"\n\n\n \"I read your mind,\" he explained indifferently. \"I have a remarkable\n memory.\"\n\n\n \"Remarkable indeed!\" she mocked. \"No one here could do that.\"\n\n\n \"But my race is infinitely superior to yours,\" he said blandly. \"You\n little people—ah—\" He gestured airily.", "His face swung up to hers. \"But—there's no path that way—\"\n\n\n \"I don't care,\" she said. \"Take me there.\" Her order had reached the\n others' ears, and they slowed their pace.\n\n\n \"Lady—believe me—it's impossible. There's nothing but matted jungle\n in that direction—we'd have to hack our way as we go along. And who\n knows how far away that light is? Besides, you're on your way to be\n married.\"\n\n\n \"Take me to that light!\" she persisted.\n\n\n They set the litter down. \"We can't do that,\" one man said to another.\n\n\n Koroby stepped out to the path, straightened up, her eyes on the glow.\n \"You'd better,\" she said ominously. \"Otherwise, I'll make a complaint\n to Yasak—\"", "\"Goodbye! Goodbye!\" They crowded around her, embracing, babbling\n farewells, shreds of advice. Trossa began to cry. Finally Koroby broke\n away from them, went to the door. She took a last look at the interior\n of the little hut, dim in the lamplight—at the hard bed of laced\ngnau\n-hide strips, the crude but beautifully-carved charts and chests.\n Then she turned and stepped out into the night.", "Her lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. \"And I?\"\n\n\n His voice sounded almost surprised. \"What about you?\"\n\n\n \"You see nothing about me worthy of your respect? Are you infinitely\n superior to me—\nme\n?\"\n\n\n He looked her up and down. \"Of course!\"\n\n\n Her eyes jerked wide open and she took a deep breath. \"And just who do\n you think you are? A god?\"\n\n\n He shook his head. \"No. Just better informed, for one thing. And—\"\n\n\n Koroby cut him short. \"What's your name?\"\n\n\n \"I have none.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, you have none?\"" ], [ "\"Oh,\" Koroby said disappointedly, and sat upright. \"I feel as if I'd\n been lying here for weeks. Where's Yasak? Where's the strange man in\n armor?\"\n\n\n \"Yasak's out somewhere. The stranger man is in the room at the end of\n the hall.\"\n\n\n \"Fetch me something to wear—that's good enough,\" the girl accepted the\n mantle offered by the slave. \"Quick, some water—I must wash.\"\n\n\n In a few minutes she was lightly running down the hall; she knocked on\n the door of Robert's room. \"May I come in?\"\n\n\n He did not answer. She waited a little and went in. He was seated on\n one of the carved chairs, fussing over some scraps of metal on the\n table. He did not look up.", "Koroby huddled on a chair, sobbing. Then she dried her eyes on the\n backs of her hands. She went to the narrow slits that served as windows\n and unfastened the translucent shutter of one. Down in the City street,\n Robert was walking away. Her eyes hardened, and her fingers spread\n into ugly claws. Without bothering to pull the shutter in place she\n hurried out of the room, ran eagerly down the hall. She stopped at\n the armor-rack at the main hall on her way outside, and snatched up a\nsiatcha\n—a firestone. Then she slipped outside and down the street.\nThe City's wall was not far behind. Robert was visible in the distance,\n striding toward his sky-ship, a widening cloud of dust rising behind\n him like the spreading wake of a boat. Koroby stood on tip-toe, waving\n and calling after him, \"Robert! Robert! Come back!\" but he did not seem\n to hear.", "They watched the conflagration, Yasak and Koroby, from a higher part of\n the wall than where the others were gathered. They could glimpse Robert\n now and then. He was running, trying to outrace the flames. Then they\n swept around him, circling him—his arms flailed frantically.\nThe fire had passed over the horizon. The air was blue with smoke,\n difficult to breathe, and ashes were drifting lightly down like\n dove-colored snow. Yasak, watery eyed, a cloth pressed to his nose, was\n walking with several others over the smoking earth and still warm ashes\n up to his knees. In one hand he held a stick. He stopped and pointed.\n \"He fell about here,\" he said, and began to probe the ashes with the\n stick.\n\n\n He struck something. \"Here he is!\" he cried. The others hurried to the\n spot and scooped ashes away, dog-fashion, until Robert's remains were\n laid clear. There were exclamations of amazement and perplexity from\n the people.", "He was walking along, head erect, apparently quite at ease, while the\n litter bearers and Koroby could barely drag themselves with him. The\n girl's garment was a tattered ruin. Her skin was gritty with dust, and\n she was bleeding from many scratches. She tripped over tangled roots\n and exclaimed in pain. Then the man took one of the strange implements\n from his belt, pressed a knob on it, and light appeared as if by magic!\n He handed the stick to Koroby, but she was afraid to touch it. This was\n a strange light that gave no heat, nor flickered in the breeze. Finally\n she accepted it from him, but carried it gingerly at arm's length.\n\n\n She refused to believe that he had no name, and so he named himself.\n \"Call me Robert. It is an ancient name on Terra.\"\n\n\n \"Robert,\" she said, and, \"Robert.\"", "There was a rap at the doorway; they turned. One of the litter-bearers\n loomed darker than the gloomy sky. \"Are you ready?\" he asked.\n\n\n Koroby twirled before the mirror, criticizing her appearance. \"Yes,\n ready,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Ready!\" the girls cried. Then there was a little silence.\n\n\n \"Shall we go now?\" Koroby asked, and the litter-carrier nodded. Koroby\n kissed the girls, one after another. \"Here, Shonka—you can have this\n bracelet you've always liked. And this is for you, Lolla. And here,\n Trossa—and you, Shia. Goodbye, darlings, goodbye—come and see me\n whenever you can!\"\n\n\n \"Goodbye, Koroby!\"", "But Koroby, with supreme confidence, walked toward the stranger, her\n lovely body graceful as a cat's, her face radiant. The man did not hear\n her. She halted behind him, waited silent, expectant, excited—but he\n did not turn. The green fire sputtered upward. At last the girl stepped\n to the man's side and gently touched him again. He turned, and her\n heart faltered: she swayed with bliss.\n\n\n He was probably a god. Not even handsome Yasak looked like this. Here\n was a face so finely-chiseled, so perfectly proportioned, that it was\n almost frightening, unhuman, mechanical. It was unlined and without\n expression, somehow unreal. Mysterious, compelling.", "\"Thank you for carrying me, Robert.\" He did not reply. \"Robert—I\n dreamed of you last night. I dreamed you built another round house and\n that we both flew away in it. Yasak had to stay behind, and he was\n furious. Robert! Aren't you listening?\"\n\n\n \"I hear you.\"\n\n\n \"Don't you think it was an exciting dream?\" He shook his head. \"But\n why? Robert\"—she laid longing hands on his shoulders—\"can't you see\n that I'm in love with you?\" He shrugged. \"I believe you don't know what\n love is!\"\n\n\n \"I had a faint idea of it when I looked into your mind,\" he said. \"I'm\n afraid I haven't any use for it. Where I come from there is no love,\n and there shouldn't be here, either. It's a waste of time.\"", "\"You will stay with me while you are in the City, of course,\" Yasak\n said, as they walked. He eyed this handsome stranger speculatively, and\n then turned to shout an necessary order. \"You, there, keep in line!\" He\n glanced at Robert furtively to see if this had impressed him at all.\nIt was day. Koroby sat up in bed and scanned her surroundings. She was\n in Yasak's house. The bed was very soft, the coverlets of the finest\n weave. The furniture was elegantly carved and painted; there were even\n paintings on the walls.\n\n\n A woman came to the bed. She was stocky and wore drab grey: the blue\n circles tattooed on her cheeks proclaimed her a slave. \"How do you\n feel?\" she asked.\n\n\n \"Fairly well. How long have I been ill?\" Koroby asked, sweetly weak.\n\n\n \"You haven't been ill. They brought you in last night.\"", "\"Robert—I'm mad about you! I've dreamed of your coming—all my life!\n Don't be so cruel—so cold to me! You mock me, say that I'm nothing,\n that I'm not worthy of you—\"\n\n\n She stepped back from him, clenching her hands. \"Oh, I hate you—hate\n you! You don't care the least bit about me—and I've shamed myself in\n front of you—I, supposed to be Yasak's wife by now!\" She began to\n cry, hid her face in suddenly lax fingers. She looked up fiercely. \"I\n could kill you!\" Robert stood immobile, no trace of feeling marring the\n perfection of his face. \"I could kill you, and I will kill you!\" she\n sprang at him.\n\n\n \"You'll hurt yourself,\" he admonished kindly, and after she had\n pummeled his chest, bruising her fingers on his armor, she turned away.", "Koroby reached the City wall, panted through the gate into a shrieking\n crowd. Someone grasped her roughly—she was too breathless to do more\n than gasp for air—and shook her violently. \"You fool, you utter\n fool! What did you think you were doing?\" Others clamored around her,\n reaching for her. Then she heard Yasak's voice. Face stern, he pushed\n through the crowd, pressed her to him. \"Let her alone—Let her alone, I\n say!\"", "\"Goodbye! Goodbye!\" They crowded around her, embracing, babbling\n farewells, shreds of advice. Trossa began to cry. Finally Koroby broke\n away from them, went to the door. She took a last look at the interior\n of the little hut, dim in the lamplight—at the hard bed of laced\ngnau\n-hide strips, the crude but beautifully-carved charts and chests.\n Then she turned and stepped out into the night.", "Grumbling, they bent to the conveyance's poles, and Koroby lithely\n slipped to the cushions. They turned off the path, plodded through the\n deep grass toward the light. The litter lurched violently as their\n feet caught in the tangled grass, and clouds of fine dust arose from\n the disturbed blades.\nBy the time they reached the source of the light, they were quite\n demoralized. The musicians had not accompanied them, preferring to\n carry the message to Yasak in the Stone City that his prospective\n bride had gone off on a mad journey. The bearers were powdered grey\n with dust, striped with blood where the dry grass-stems had cut them.\n They were exhausted and panting. Koroby was walking beside them, for\n they had abandoned the litter finally. Her blue drapery was ripped and\n rumpled; her carefully-arranged braids had fallen loose; dust on her\n face had hid its youthful color, aging her.", "His face swung up to hers. \"But—there's no path that way—\"\n\n\n \"I don't care,\" she said. \"Take me there.\" Her order had reached the\n others' ears, and they slowed their pace.\n\n\n \"Lady—believe me—it's impossible. There's nothing but matted jungle\n in that direction—we'd have to hack our way as we go along. And who\n knows how far away that light is? Besides, you're on your way to be\n married.\"\n\n\n \"Take me to that light!\" she persisted.\n\n\n They set the litter down. \"We can't do that,\" one man said to another.\n\n\n Koroby stepped out to the path, straightened up, her eyes on the glow.\n \"You'd better,\" she said ominously. \"Otherwise, I'll make a complaint\n to Yasak—\"", "Koroby fingered the flowers around her throat, her eyes rapt on the\n passing trees. Her lips moved in the barest murmur: \"If only—!\"\n and again, \"Oh, if only—!\" But the music trickled on, and nothing\n happened; the litter seemed to float along—none of the bearers even\n stumbled.\n\n\n They came to a cleared space of waist-high grass. It was like a canyon\n steeply walled by cliffs of verdure. The litter jerked as it glided\n along, and Koroby heard one of the bearers exclaim gruffly, \"Listen!\"\n Then the litter resumed its dream-like floating on the backs of the men.\n\n\n \"What was it?\" another bearer asked.\n\n\n \"Thought I heard something,\" the other replied. \"Shrill and high—like\n something screaming—\"\n\n\n Koroby peered out. \"A\ngnau\n?\" she asked.", "Koroby stared defiantly at the laughing faces of her bridesmaids. She\n shrugged hopelessly. \"I don't care,\" she said slowly. \"It will be nice\n to have Yasak for a husband—yes. And perhaps I do love him. I don't\n know.\" She tightened her lips as she reflected on it.\n\n\n She left them, moving gracefully to the door. Venus-girls were\n generally of truly elfin proportions, so delicately slim that they\n seemed incapable of the slightest exertion. But Koroby's body\n was—compared to her friends'—voluptuous.\n\n\n She rested against the door-frame, watching the red of the afterglow\n deepen to purple. \"I want romance,\" she said, so softly that the girls\n had to strain forward to hear her. \"I wish that there were other worlds\n than this—and that someone would drop out of the skies and claim\n me ... and take me away from here, away from all this—this monotony!\"", "\"And now if you're through playing your incomprehensible little scene,\"\n Robert said, \"I hope you will excuse me. I regret that I have no\n emotions—I was never allowed them. But it is an esthetic regret.... I\n must go back to my wrecked ship now and arrange the signals there.\" He\n did not wait for her leave, but strode out of the room.", "Here the similarity between her dream and actual experience ended.\n What was he thinking as he eyed her for a long moment? She had no way\n of guessing. He said, \"No, I am not going to take you back there.\" Her\n month gaped in surprise, and he continued, \"As for the distance to\n Terra—it is incredibly far away.\"\n\n\n The glare was beginning to die, the green flames' hissing fading to a\n whisper. They watched the melting globe sag on the sand. Then Koroby\n said, \"But if it is so far away, how could you speak my language? There\n are some tribes beyond the jungle whose language is unlike ours—\"\n\n\n \"I read your mind,\" he explained indifferently. \"I have a remarkable\n memory.\"\n\n\n \"Remarkable indeed!\" she mocked. \"No one here could do that.\"\n\n\n \"But my race is infinitely superior to yours,\" he said blandly. \"You\n little people—ah—\" He gestured airily.", "He was clothed very peculiarly. A wonderfully-made metallic garment\n enclosed his whole body—legs and all, unlike the Venus-men's tunics.\n Even his feet were covered. Perhaps it was armor—though the Venus-men\n usually wore only breastplate and greaves. And a helmet hid all of\n the man's head except his face. Around his waist was a belt with many\n incomprehensible objects dangling from it. If he was so well armored,\n why was he not carrying a sword—a dagger at least! Of what use were\n those things on his belt—for instance, that notched L-shaped thing? It\n would not even make a decent club!\n\n\n The stranger did not speak, merely gazed deeply into Koroby's eyes. And\n she, returning the gaze, wondered if he was peering into her very soul.\n The words of a folk-ballad came to her:", "She watched him a little longer. Then she deliberately stooped and drew\n the firestone out of its sheath. She touched it to a blade of the tall\n grass. A little orange flame licked up, slowly quested along the blade,\n down to the ground and up another stem. It slipped over to another\n stem, and another, growing larger, hotter—Koroby stepped back from the\n writhing fire, her hand protectively over her face.\n\n\n The flames crackled at first—like the crumpling of thin paper. Then,\n as they widened and began climbing hand over hand up an invisible\n ladder, they roared. Koroby was running back toward the City now, away\n from the heat. The fire spread in a long line over the prairie. Above\n its roar came shouts from the City. The flames rose in a monstrous\n twisting pillar, brighter than even the dust-palled sky, lighting the\n buildings and the prairie. The heat was dreadful.", "He was very tall, and his shoulders were very wide. Oh, but he looked\n like a man, and stood like one—even though his hands were folded\n behind his back and he was probably dejected. A man in a house from the\n sky—\n\n\n Koroby hastily grasped a corner of her gown, moistened it with saliva,\n and scrubbed her face. She rearranged her hair, and stepped forward.\n\n\n \"Don't go there—it's magic—he'll cast a spell—!\" one of the bearers\n whispered urgently, reaching after her, but Koroby pushed him away. The\n litter-carriers watched the girl go, unconsciously huddling together\n as if feeling the need for combined strength. They withdrew into the\n jungle's shadows, and waited there anxiously, ready at any moment to\n run away." ], [ "He was looking at the wrecked globe of metal. \"So there are people on\n Venus!\" he said slowly.\n\n\n Koroby watched him, forgot her fear, and went eagerly to him, took his\n arm. \"Who are you?\" she asked. \"Tell me your name!\"\n\n\n He turned his mask of a face to her. \"My name? I have none,\" he said.\n\n\n \"No name? But who are you? Where are you from? And what is that?\" She\n pointed at the metal globe.\n\n\n \"The vehicle by which I came here from a land beyond the sky,\" he said.\n She had no concept of stars or space, and he could not fully explain.\n \"From a world known as Terra.\"\n\n\n She was silent a moment, stunned. So there was another world! Then she\n asked, \"Is it far? Have you come to take me there?\"", "He seemed just a trifle bored. \"We gave up names long ago on my world.\n We are concerned with more weighty things than our own selves. But I\n have a personal problem now,\" he said, making a peculiar sound that\n was not quite a sigh. \"Here I am stranded on Venus, my ship utterly\n wrecked, and I'm due at the Reisezek Convention in two weeks. You\"—he\n gripped Koroby's shoulder, and his strength made her wince—\"tell me,\n where is the nearest city? I must communicate with my people at once.\"\n\n\n She pointed. \"The Stone City's that way.\"\n\n\n \"Good,\" he said. \"Let's go there.\"", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nIt was twilight on Venus—the rusty red that the eyes notice when\n their closed lids are raised to light. Against the glow, fantastically\n twisted trees spread claws of spiky leaves, and a group of clay huts\n thrust up sharp edges of shadow, like the abandoned toy blocks of a\n gigantic child. There was no sign of clear sky and stars—the heavens\n were roofed by a perpetual ceiling of dust-clouds.\n\n\n A light glimmered in one of the huts. Feminine voices rippled across\n the clearing and into the jungle. There was laughter, then someone's\n faint and wistful sigh. One of the voices mourned, in the twittering\n Venusian speech, \"How I envy you, Koroby! I wish I were being married\n tonight, like you!\"", "He was clothed very peculiarly. A wonderfully-made metallic garment\n enclosed his whole body—legs and all, unlike the Venus-men's tunics.\n Even his feet were covered. Perhaps it was armor—though the Venus-men\n usually wore only breastplate and greaves. And a helmet hid all of\n the man's head except his face. Around his waist was a belt with many\n incomprehensible objects dangling from it. If he was so well armored,\n why was he not carrying a sword—a dagger at least! Of what use were\n those things on his belt—for instance, that notched L-shaped thing? It\n would not even make a decent club!\n\n\n The stranger did not speak, merely gazed deeply into Koroby's eyes. And\n she, returning the gaze, wondered if he was peering into her very soul.\n The words of a folk-ballad came to her:", "\"I don't know,\" the bearer volunteered.\n\n\n Koroby lifted a hand. \"Stop the litter,\" she said.\nThe conveyance halted. Koroby leaning out, the men peering around them,\n they listened. One of the bearers shouted at the musicians; the music\n ceased. There was nothing to be heard except the whisper of the breeze\n in the grass.\n\n\n Then the girl heard it—a shrill, distant whine, dying away, then\n growing louder—and louder—it seemed to be approaching—from the sky—\n\n\n All the faces were lifted up now, worriedly. The whine grew\n louder—Koroby's hands clenched nervously on the wreaths at her throat—\n\n\n Then, far ahead, a series of bright flashes, like the lightning of the\n dust-storms, but brilliantly green. A silence, then staccatto reports,\n certainly not thunder—unlike any sound that Koroby had ever heard.", "Koroby stared defiantly at the laughing faces of her bridesmaids. She\n shrugged hopelessly. \"I don't care,\" she said slowly. \"It will be nice\n to have Yasak for a husband—yes. And perhaps I do love him. I don't\n know.\" She tightened her lips as she reflected on it.\n\n\n She left them, moving gracefully to the door. Venus-girls were\n generally of truly elfin proportions, so delicately slim that they\n seemed incapable of the slightest exertion. But Koroby's body\n was—compared to her friends'—voluptuous.\n\n\n She rested against the door-frame, watching the red of the afterglow\n deepen to purple. \"I want romance,\" she said, so softly that the girls\n had to strain forward to hear her. \"I wish that there were other worlds\n than this—and that someone would drop out of the skies and claim\n me ... and take me away from here, away from all this—this monotony!\"", "They took another glance at the metal globe and the green fire, which\n by now had died to a fitful glimmer. Then the stranger and the girl\n started toward the jungle, where the litter-bearers awaited them.\nAs the party was struggling through the prairie's tall grass, the man\n said to Koroby, \"I realize from the pictures in your mind that there\n is no means in your city of communicating directly with my people. But\n it seems that there are materials which I can utilize in building a\n signal—\"", "The expedition emerged from the jungle on a sandy stretch of barren\n land. A thousand feet away a gigantic metal object lay on the sand,\n crumpled as though it had dropped from a great distance. It had been\n globular before the crash, and was pierced with holes like windows.\n What could it possibly be? A house? But whoever heard of a metal house?\n Why, who could forge such a thing! Yasak's house in the City had iron\n doors, and they were considered one of the most wonderful things of the\n age. It would take a giant to make such a ponderous thing as this.\n\n\n A house, fallen from the sky? The green lights poured out of its\n crumpled part, and a strange bubbling and hissing filled the air.\n\n\n Koroby stopped short, clasping her hands and involuntarily uttering a\n squeal of joyful excitement, for between her and the blaze, his eyes on\n the destruction, stood a man.....", "Here the similarity between her dream and actual experience ended.\n What was he thinking as he eyed her for a long moment? She had no way\n of guessing. He said, \"No, I am not going to take you back there.\" Her\n month gaped in surprise, and he continued, \"As for the distance to\n Terra—it is incredibly far away.\"\n\n\n The glare was beginning to die, the green flames' hissing fading to a\n whisper. They watched the melting globe sag on the sand. Then Koroby\n said, \"But if it is so far away, how could you speak my language? There\n are some tribes beyond the jungle whose language is unlike ours—\"\n\n\n \"I read your mind,\" he explained indifferently. \"I have a remarkable\n memory.\"\n\n\n \"Remarkable indeed!\" she mocked. \"No one here could do that.\"\n\n\n \"But my race is infinitely superior to yours,\" he said blandly. \"You\n little people—ah—\" He gestured airily.", "\"Thank you for carrying me, Robert.\" He did not reply. \"Robert—I\n dreamed of you last night. I dreamed you built another round house and\n that we both flew away in it. Yasak had to stay behind, and he was\n furious. Robert! Aren't you listening?\"\n\n\n \"I hear you.\"\n\n\n \"Don't you think it was an exciting dream?\" He shook his head. \"But\n why? Robert\"—she laid longing hands on his shoulders—\"can't you see\n that I'm in love with you?\" He shrugged. \"I believe you don't know what\n love is!\"\n\n\n \"I had a faint idea of it when I looked into your mind,\" he said. \"I'm\n afraid I haven't any use for it. Where I come from there is no love,\n and there shouldn't be here, either. It's a waste of time.\"", "He was walking along, head erect, apparently quite at ease, while the\n litter bearers and Koroby could barely drag themselves with him. The\n girl's garment was a tattered ruin. Her skin was gritty with dust, and\n she was bleeding from many scratches. She tripped over tangled roots\n and exclaimed in pain. Then the man took one of the strange implements\n from his belt, pressed a knob on it, and light appeared as if by magic!\n He handed the stick to Koroby, but she was afraid to touch it. This was\n a strange light that gave no heat, nor flickered in the breeze. Finally\n she accepted it from him, but carried it gingerly at arm's length.\n\n\n She refused to believe that he had no name, and so he named himself.\n \"Call me Robert. It is an ancient name on Terra.\"\n\n\n \"Robert,\" she said, and, \"Robert.\"", "It was a metal skeleton, and the fragments of complicated machinery,\n caked with soot.\n\n\n \"He wasn't human at all!\" Yasak marvelled. \"He was some kind of a toy\n made to look like a man—that's why he wore armor, and his face never\n changed expression—\"\n\n\n \"Magic!\" someone cried, and backed away.\n\n\n \"Magic!\" the others repeated, and edged back ... and that was the\n end of one of those robots which had been fashioned as servants for\n Terrestial men, made in Man's likeness to appease Man's vanity, then\n conquered him.", "Koroby huddled on a chair, sobbing. Then she dried her eyes on the\n backs of her hands. She went to the narrow slits that served as windows\n and unfastened the translucent shutter of one. Down in the City street,\n Robert was walking away. Her eyes hardened, and her fingers spread\n into ugly claws. Without bothering to pull the shutter in place she\n hurried out of the room, ran eagerly down the hall. She stopped at\n the armor-rack at the main hall on her way outside, and snatched up a\nsiatcha\n—a firestone. Then she slipped outside and down the street.\nThe City's wall was not far behind. Robert was visible in the distance,\n striding toward his sky-ship, a widening cloud of dust rising behind\n him like the spreading wake of a boat. Koroby stood on tip-toe, waving\n and calling after him, \"Robert! Robert! Come back!\" but he did not seem\n to hear.", "She turned back to her friends, went to them, one of her hands, patting\n the head of the kneeling one. She eyed herself in the mirror.\n\n\n \"Well—heigh-ho! There don't seem to be any other worlds, and nobody is\n going to steal me away from Yasak, so I might as well get on with my\n preparations. The men with the litter will be here soon to carry me to\n the Stone City.\"\n\n\n She ran slim hands down her sides, smoothing the blue sarong; she\n fondled her dark braids. \"Trossa, how about some flowers at my ears—or\n do you think that it would look a little too much—?\" Her eyes sought\n the mirror, and her lips parted in an irreprehensible smile. She\n trilled softly to herself, \"Yes, I am beautiful tonight—the loveliest\n woman Yasak will ever see!\" And then, regretfully, sullenly, \"But oh,\n if only\nHe\nwould come ... the man of my dreams!\"", "Grumbling, they bent to the conveyance's poles, and Koroby lithely\n slipped to the cushions. They turned off the path, plodded through the\n deep grass toward the light. The litter lurched violently as their\n feet caught in the tangled grass, and clouds of fine dust arose from\n the disturbed blades.\nBy the time they reached the source of the light, they were quite\n demoralized. The musicians had not accompanied them, preferring to\n carry the message to Yasak in the Stone City that his prospective\n bride had gone off on a mad journey. The bearers were powdered grey\n with dust, striped with blood where the dry grass-stems had cut them.\n They were exhausted and panting. Koroby was walking beside them, for\n they had abandoned the litter finally. Her blue drapery was ripped and\n rumpled; her carefully-arranged braids had fallen loose; dust on her\n face had hid its youthful color, aging her.", "Koroby fingered the flowers around her throat, her eyes rapt on the\n passing trees. Her lips moved in the barest murmur: \"If only—!\"\n and again, \"Oh, if only—!\" But the music trickled on, and nothing\n happened; the litter seemed to float along—none of the bearers even\n stumbled.\n\n\n They came to a cleared space of waist-high grass. It was like a canyon\n steeply walled by cliffs of verdure. The litter jerked as it glided\n along, and Koroby heard one of the bearers exclaim gruffly, \"Listen!\"\n Then the litter resumed its dream-like floating on the backs of the men.\n\n\n \"What was it?\" another bearer asked.\n\n\n \"Thought I heard something,\" the other replied. \"Shrill and high—like\n something screaming—\"\n\n\n Koroby peered out. \"A\ngnau\n?\" she asked.", "There was a rap at the doorway; they turned. One of the litter-bearers\n loomed darker than the gloomy sky. \"Are you ready?\" he asked.\n\n\n Koroby twirled before the mirror, criticizing her appearance. \"Yes,\n ready,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Ready!\" the girls cried. Then there was a little silence.\n\n\n \"Shall we go now?\" Koroby asked, and the litter-carrier nodded. Koroby\n kissed the girls, one after another. \"Here, Shonka—you can have this\n bracelet you've always liked. And this is for you, Lolla. And here,\n Trossa—and you, Shia. Goodbye, darlings, goodbye—come and see me\n whenever you can!\"\n\n\n \"Goodbye, Koroby!\"", "The men eyed each other, mentally shrugging. \"Well—\" one yielded.\n\n\n The girl whirled impatiently on the others. \"Hurry!\" she cried. \"If you\n won't take me, I'll go by myself. I must get to that fire, whatever it\n is!\" She put a hand to her heart. \"I must! I must!\" Then she faced the\n green glare again, smiling to herself.\n\n\n \"You can't do that!\" a carrier cried.\n\n\n \"Well, then, you take me,\" she said over her shoulder.", "She watched him a little longer. Then she deliberately stooped and drew\n the firestone out of its sheath. She touched it to a blade of the tall\n grass. A little orange flame licked up, slowly quested along the blade,\n down to the ground and up another stem. It slipped over to another\n stem, and another, growing larger, hotter—Koroby stepped back from the\n writhing fire, her hand protectively over her face.\n\n\n The flames crackled at first—like the crumpling of thin paper. Then,\n as they widened and began climbing hand over hand up an invisible\n ladder, they roared. Koroby was running back toward the City now, away\n from the heat. The fire spread in a long line over the prairie. Above\n its roar came shouts from the City. The flames rose in a monstrous\n twisting pillar, brighter than even the dust-palled sky, lighting the\n buildings and the prairie. The heat was dreadful.", "\"This way,\" the litter-carrier announced, touching the girl's arm. They\n stumbled over the rutted clearing toward the twinkling sparks that were\n the lights of the other litter-bearers, colored sparks as befitted\n a wedding-conveyance. The winking lights were enclosed in shells of\n colored glass for another reason—the danger of their firing the papery\n jungle verdure.\nIt was not a new litter, built especially for the occasion—Yasak was\n too practical a man to sanction any kind of waste. It was the same\n old litter that Koroby had been watching come and go ever since she\n was a little girl, a canopied framework of gaudily-painted carvings.\n She had wondered, watching it pass, whether its cushioned floor was\n soft, and now, as she stepped into the litter, she patted the padding\n experimentally. Yes, it was soft .... And fragrant, too—a shade too\n fragrant. It smelled stale, hinting of other occupants, other brides\n being borne to other weddings...." ], [ "Here the similarity between her dream and actual experience ended.\n What was he thinking as he eyed her for a long moment? She had no way\n of guessing. He said, \"No, I am not going to take you back there.\" Her\n month gaped in surprise, and he continued, \"As for the distance to\n Terra—it is incredibly far away.\"\n\n\n The glare was beginning to die, the green flames' hissing fading to a\n whisper. They watched the melting globe sag on the sand. Then Koroby\n said, \"But if it is so far away, how could you speak my language? There\n are some tribes beyond the jungle whose language is unlike ours—\"\n\n\n \"I read your mind,\" he explained indifferently. \"I have a remarkable\n memory.\"\n\n\n \"Remarkable indeed!\" she mocked. \"No one here could do that.\"\n\n\n \"But my race is infinitely superior to yours,\" he said blandly. \"You\n little people—ah—\" He gestured airily.", "\"Oh,\" Koroby said disappointedly, and sat upright. \"I feel as if I'd\n been lying here for weeks. Where's Yasak? Where's the strange man in\n armor?\"\n\n\n \"Yasak's out somewhere. The stranger man is in the room at the end of\n the hall.\"\n\n\n \"Fetch me something to wear—that's good enough,\" the girl accepted the\n mantle offered by the slave. \"Quick, some water—I must wash.\"\n\n\n In a few minutes she was lightly running down the hall; she knocked on\n the door of Robert's room. \"May I come in?\"\n\n\n He did not answer. She waited a little and went in. He was seated on\n one of the carved chairs, fussing over some scraps of metal on the\n table. He did not look up.", "Koroby huddled on a chair, sobbing. Then she dried her eyes on the\n backs of her hands. She went to the narrow slits that served as windows\n and unfastened the translucent shutter of one. Down in the City street,\n Robert was walking away. Her eyes hardened, and her fingers spread\n into ugly claws. Without bothering to pull the shutter in place she\n hurried out of the room, ran eagerly down the hall. She stopped at\n the armor-rack at the main hall on her way outside, and snatched up a\nsiatcha\n—a firestone. Then she slipped outside and down the street.\nThe City's wall was not far behind. Robert was visible in the distance,\n striding toward his sky-ship, a widening cloud of dust rising behind\n him like the spreading wake of a boat. Koroby stood on tip-toe, waving\n and calling after him, \"Robert! Robert! Come back!\" but he did not seem\n to hear.", "He was walking along, head erect, apparently quite at ease, while the\n litter bearers and Koroby could barely drag themselves with him. The\n girl's garment was a tattered ruin. Her skin was gritty with dust, and\n she was bleeding from many scratches. She tripped over tangled roots\n and exclaimed in pain. Then the man took one of the strange implements\n from his belt, pressed a knob on it, and light appeared as if by magic!\n He handed the stick to Koroby, but she was afraid to touch it. This was\n a strange light that gave no heat, nor flickered in the breeze. Finally\n she accepted it from him, but carried it gingerly at arm's length.\n\n\n She refused to believe that he had no name, and so he named himself.\n \"Call me Robert. It is an ancient name on Terra.\"\n\n\n \"Robert,\" she said, and, \"Robert.\"", "There was a rap at the doorway; they turned. One of the litter-bearers\n loomed darker than the gloomy sky. \"Are you ready?\" he asked.\n\n\n Koroby twirled before the mirror, criticizing her appearance. \"Yes,\n ready,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Ready!\" the girls cried. Then there was a little silence.\n\n\n \"Shall we go now?\" Koroby asked, and the litter-carrier nodded. Koroby\n kissed the girls, one after another. \"Here, Shonka—you can have this\n bracelet you've always liked. And this is for you, Lolla. And here,\n Trossa—and you, Shia. Goodbye, darlings, goodbye—come and see me\n whenever you can!\"\n\n\n \"Goodbye, Koroby!\"", "He seemed just a trifle bored. \"We gave up names long ago on my world.\n We are concerned with more weighty things than our own selves. But I\n have a personal problem now,\" he said, making a peculiar sound that\n was not quite a sigh. \"Here I am stranded on Venus, my ship utterly\n wrecked, and I'm due at the Reisezek Convention in two weeks. You\"—he\n gripped Koroby's shoulder, and his strength made her wince—\"tell me,\n where is the nearest city? I must communicate with my people at once.\"\n\n\n She pointed. \"The Stone City's that way.\"\n\n\n \"Good,\" he said. \"Let's go there.\"", "Koroby stared defiantly at the laughing faces of her bridesmaids. She\n shrugged hopelessly. \"I don't care,\" she said slowly. \"It will be nice\n to have Yasak for a husband—yes. And perhaps I do love him. I don't\n know.\" She tightened her lips as she reflected on it.\n\n\n She left them, moving gracefully to the door. Venus-girls were\n generally of truly elfin proportions, so delicately slim that they\n seemed incapable of the slightest exertion. But Koroby's body\n was—compared to her friends'—voluptuous.\n\n\n She rested against the door-frame, watching the red of the afterglow\n deepen to purple. \"I want romance,\" she said, so softly that the girls\n had to strain forward to hear her. \"I wish that there were other worlds\n than this—and that someone would drop out of the skies and claim\n me ... and take me away from here, away from all this—this monotony!\"", "But Koroby, with supreme confidence, walked toward the stranger, her\n lovely body graceful as a cat's, her face radiant. The man did not hear\n her. She halted behind him, waited silent, expectant, excited—but he\n did not turn. The green fire sputtered upward. At last the girl stepped\n to the man's side and gently touched him again. He turned, and her\n heart faltered: she swayed with bliss.\n\n\n He was probably a god. Not even handsome Yasak looked like this. Here\n was a face so finely-chiseled, so perfectly proportioned, that it was\n almost frightening, unhuman, mechanical. It was unlined and without\n expression, somehow unreal. Mysterious, compelling.", "He was looking at the wrecked globe of metal. \"So there are people on\n Venus!\" he said slowly.\n\n\n Koroby watched him, forgot her fear, and went eagerly to him, took his\n arm. \"Who are you?\" she asked. \"Tell me your name!\"\n\n\n He turned his mask of a face to her. \"My name? I have none,\" he said.\n\n\n \"No name? But who are you? Where are you from? And what is that?\" She\n pointed at the metal globe.\n\n\n \"The vehicle by which I came here from a land beyond the sky,\" he said.\n She had no concept of stars or space, and he could not fully explain.\n \"From a world known as Terra.\"\n\n\n She was silent a moment, stunned. So there was another world! Then she\n asked, \"Is it far? Have you come to take me there?\"", "Koroby fingered the flowers around her throat, her eyes rapt on the\n passing trees. Her lips moved in the barest murmur: \"If only—!\"\n and again, \"Oh, if only—!\" But the music trickled on, and nothing\n happened; the litter seemed to float along—none of the bearers even\n stumbled.\n\n\n They came to a cleared space of waist-high grass. It was like a canyon\n steeply walled by cliffs of verdure. The litter jerked as it glided\n along, and Koroby heard one of the bearers exclaim gruffly, \"Listen!\"\n Then the litter resumed its dream-like floating on the backs of the men.\n\n\n \"What was it?\" another bearer asked.\n\n\n \"Thought I heard something,\" the other replied. \"Shrill and high—like\n something screaming—\"\n\n\n Koroby peered out. \"A\ngnau\n?\" she asked.", "He was clothed very peculiarly. A wonderfully-made metallic garment\n enclosed his whole body—legs and all, unlike the Venus-men's tunics.\n Even his feet were covered. Perhaps it was armor—though the Venus-men\n usually wore only breastplate and greaves. And a helmet hid all of\n the man's head except his face. Around his waist was a belt with many\n incomprehensible objects dangling from it. If he was so well armored,\n why was he not carrying a sword—a dagger at least! Of what use were\n those things on his belt—for instance, that notched L-shaped thing? It\n would not even make a decent club!\n\n\n The stranger did not speak, merely gazed deeply into Koroby's eyes. And\n she, returning the gaze, wondered if he was peering into her very soul.\n The words of a folk-ballad came to her:", "Her lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. \"And I?\"\n\n\n His voice sounded almost surprised. \"What about you?\"\n\n\n \"You see nothing about me worthy of your respect? Are you infinitely\n superior to me—\nme\n?\"\n\n\n He looked her up and down. \"Of course!\"\n\n\n Her eyes jerked wide open and she took a deep breath. \"And just who do\n you think you are? A god?\"\n\n\n He shook his head. \"No. Just better informed, for one thing. And—\"\n\n\n Koroby cut him short. \"What's your name?\"\n\n\n \"I have none.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, you have none?\"", "Grumbling, they bent to the conveyance's poles, and Koroby lithely\n slipped to the cushions. They turned off the path, plodded through the\n deep grass toward the light. The litter lurched violently as their\n feet caught in the tangled grass, and clouds of fine dust arose from\n the disturbed blades.\nBy the time they reached the source of the light, they were quite\n demoralized. The musicians had not accompanied them, preferring to\n carry the message to Yasak in the Stone City that his prospective\n bride had gone off on a mad journey. The bearers were powdered grey\n with dust, striped with blood where the dry grass-stems had cut them.\n They were exhausted and panting. Koroby was walking beside them, for\n they had abandoned the litter finally. Her blue drapery was ripped and\n rumpled; her carefully-arranged braids had fallen loose; dust on her\n face had hid its youthful color, aging her.", "She watched him a little longer. Then she deliberately stooped and drew\n the firestone out of its sheath. She touched it to a blade of the tall\n grass. A little orange flame licked up, slowly quested along the blade,\n down to the ground and up another stem. It slipped over to another\n stem, and another, growing larger, hotter—Koroby stepped back from the\n writhing fire, her hand protectively over her face.\n\n\n The flames crackled at first—like the crumpling of thin paper. Then,\n as they widened and began climbing hand over hand up an invisible\n ladder, they roared. Koroby was running back toward the City now, away\n from the heat. The fire spread in a long line over the prairie. Above\n its roar came shouts from the City. The flames rose in a monstrous\n twisting pillar, brighter than even the dust-palled sky, lighting the\n buildings and the prairie. The heat was dreadful.", "They watched the conflagration, Yasak and Koroby, from a higher part of\n the wall than where the others were gathered. They could glimpse Robert\n now and then. He was running, trying to outrace the flames. Then they\n swept around him, circling him—his arms flailed frantically.\nThe fire had passed over the horizon. The air was blue with smoke,\n difficult to breathe, and ashes were drifting lightly down like\n dove-colored snow. Yasak, watery eyed, a cloth pressed to his nose, was\n walking with several others over the smoking earth and still warm ashes\n up to his knees. In one hand he held a stick. He stopped and pointed.\n \"He fell about here,\" he said, and began to probe the ashes with the\n stick.\n\n\n He struck something. \"Here he is!\" he cried. The others hurried to the\n spot and scooped ashes away, dog-fashion, until Robert's remains were\n laid clear. There were exclamations of amazement and perplexity from\n the people.", "\"Thank you for carrying me, Robert.\" He did not reply. \"Robert—I\n dreamed of you last night. I dreamed you built another round house and\n that we both flew away in it. Yasak had to stay behind, and he was\n furious. Robert! Aren't you listening?\"\n\n\n \"I hear you.\"\n\n\n \"Don't you think it was an exciting dream?\" He shook his head. \"But\n why? Robert\"—she laid longing hands on his shoulders—\"can't you see\n that I'm in love with you?\" He shrugged. \"I believe you don't know what\n love is!\"\n\n\n \"I had a faint idea of it when I looked into your mind,\" he said. \"I'm\n afraid I haven't any use for it. Where I come from there is no love,\n and there shouldn't be here, either. It's a waste of time.\"", "They took another glance at the metal globe and the green fire, which\n by now had died to a fitful glimmer. Then the stranger and the girl\n started toward the jungle, where the litter-bearers awaited them.\nAs the party was struggling through the prairie's tall grass, the man\n said to Koroby, \"I realize from the pictures in your mind that there\n is no means in your city of communicating directly with my people. But\n it seems that there are materials which I can utilize in building a\n signal—\"", "Koroby reached the City wall, panted through the gate into a shrieking\n crowd. Someone grasped her roughly—she was too breathless to do more\n than gasp for air—and shook her violently. \"You fool, you utter\n fool! What did you think you were doing?\" Others clamored around her,\n reaching for her. Then she heard Yasak's voice. Face stern, he pushed\n through the crowd, pressed her to him. \"Let her alone—Let her alone, I\n say!\"", "\"Goodbye! Goodbye!\" They crowded around her, embracing, babbling\n farewells, shreds of advice. Trossa began to cry. Finally Koroby broke\n away from them, went to the door. She took a last look at the interior\n of the little hut, dim in the lamplight—at the hard bed of laced\ngnau\n-hide strips, the crude but beautifully-carved charts and chests.\n Then she turned and stepped out into the night.", "\"I don't know,\" the bearer volunteered.\n\n\n Koroby lifted a hand. \"Stop the litter,\" she said.\nThe conveyance halted. Koroby leaning out, the men peering around them,\n they listened. One of the bearers shouted at the musicians; the music\n ceased. There was nothing to be heard except the whisper of the breeze\n in the grass.\n\n\n Then the girl heard it—a shrill, distant whine, dying away, then\n growing louder—and louder—it seemed to be approaching—from the sky—\n\n\n All the faces were lifted up now, worriedly. The whine grew\n louder—Koroby's hands clenched nervously on the wreaths at her throat—\n\n\n Then, far ahead, a series of bright flashes, like the lightning of the\n dust-storms, but brilliantly green. A silence, then staccatto reports,\n certainly not thunder—unlike any sound that Koroby had ever heard." ], [ "He was looking at the wrecked globe of metal. \"So there are people on\n Venus!\" he said slowly.\n\n\n Koroby watched him, forgot her fear, and went eagerly to him, took his\n arm. \"Who are you?\" she asked. \"Tell me your name!\"\n\n\n He turned his mask of a face to her. \"My name? I have none,\" he said.\n\n\n \"No name? But who are you? Where are you from? And what is that?\" She\n pointed at the metal globe.\n\n\n \"The vehicle by which I came here from a land beyond the sky,\" he said.\n She had no concept of stars or space, and he could not fully explain.\n \"From a world known as Terra.\"\n\n\n She was silent a moment, stunned. So there was another world! Then she\n asked, \"Is it far? Have you come to take me there?\"", "It was a metal skeleton, and the fragments of complicated machinery,\n caked with soot.\n\n\n \"He wasn't human at all!\" Yasak marvelled. \"He was some kind of a toy\n made to look like a man—that's why he wore armor, and his face never\n changed expression—\"\n\n\n \"Magic!\" someone cried, and backed away.\n\n\n \"Magic!\" the others repeated, and edged back ... and that was the\n end of one of those robots which had been fashioned as servants for\n Terrestial men, made in Man's likeness to appease Man's vanity, then\n conquered him.", "He seemed just a trifle bored. \"We gave up names long ago on my world.\n We are concerned with more weighty things than our own selves. But I\n have a personal problem now,\" he said, making a peculiar sound that\n was not quite a sigh. \"Here I am stranded on Venus, my ship utterly\n wrecked, and I'm due at the Reisezek Convention in two weeks. You\"—he\n gripped Koroby's shoulder, and his strength made her wince—\"tell me,\n where is the nearest city? I must communicate with my people at once.\"\n\n\n She pointed. \"The Stone City's that way.\"\n\n\n \"Good,\" he said. \"Let's go there.\"", "The expedition emerged from the jungle on a sandy stretch of barren\n land. A thousand feet away a gigantic metal object lay on the sand,\n crumpled as though it had dropped from a great distance. It had been\n globular before the crash, and was pierced with holes like windows.\n What could it possibly be? A house? But whoever heard of a metal house?\n Why, who could forge such a thing! Yasak's house in the City had iron\n doors, and they were considered one of the most wonderful things of the\n age. It would take a giant to make such a ponderous thing as this.\n\n\n A house, fallen from the sky? The green lights poured out of its\n crumpled part, and a strange bubbling and hissing filled the air.\n\n\n Koroby stopped short, clasping her hands and involuntarily uttering a\n squeal of joyful excitement, for between her and the blaze, his eyes on\n the destruction, stood a man.....", "They took another glance at the metal globe and the green fire, which\n by now had died to a fitful glimmer. Then the stranger and the girl\n started toward the jungle, where the litter-bearers awaited them.\nAs the party was struggling through the prairie's tall grass, the man\n said to Koroby, \"I realize from the pictures in your mind that there\n is no means in your city of communicating directly with my people. But\n it seems that there are materials which I can utilize in building a\n signal—\"", "Here the similarity between her dream and actual experience ended.\n What was he thinking as he eyed her for a long moment? She had no way\n of guessing. He said, \"No, I am not going to take you back there.\" Her\n month gaped in surprise, and he continued, \"As for the distance to\n Terra—it is incredibly far away.\"\n\n\n The glare was beginning to die, the green flames' hissing fading to a\n whisper. They watched the melting globe sag on the sand. Then Koroby\n said, \"But if it is so far away, how could you speak my language? There\n are some tribes beyond the jungle whose language is unlike ours—\"\n\n\n \"I read your mind,\" he explained indifferently. \"I have a remarkable\n memory.\"\n\n\n \"Remarkable indeed!\" she mocked. \"No one here could do that.\"\n\n\n \"But my race is infinitely superior to yours,\" he said blandly. \"You\n little people—ah—\" He gestured airily.", "They watched the conflagration, Yasak and Koroby, from a higher part of\n the wall than where the others were gathered. They could glimpse Robert\n now and then. He was running, trying to outrace the flames. Then they\n swept around him, circling him—his arms flailed frantically.\nThe fire had passed over the horizon. The air was blue with smoke,\n difficult to breathe, and ashes were drifting lightly down like\n dove-colored snow. Yasak, watery eyed, a cloth pressed to his nose, was\n walking with several others over the smoking earth and still warm ashes\n up to his knees. In one hand he held a stick. He stopped and pointed.\n \"He fell about here,\" he said, and began to probe the ashes with the\n stick.\n\n\n He struck something. \"Here he is!\" he cried. The others hurried to the\n spot and scooped ashes away, dog-fashion, until Robert's remains were\n laid clear. There were exclamations of amazement and perplexity from\n the people.", "He was walking along, head erect, apparently quite at ease, while the\n litter bearers and Koroby could barely drag themselves with him. The\n girl's garment was a tattered ruin. Her skin was gritty with dust, and\n she was bleeding from many scratches. She tripped over tangled roots\n and exclaimed in pain. Then the man took one of the strange implements\n from his belt, pressed a knob on it, and light appeared as if by magic!\n He handed the stick to Koroby, but she was afraid to touch it. This was\n a strange light that gave no heat, nor flickered in the breeze. Finally\n she accepted it from him, but carried it gingerly at arm's length.\n\n\n She refused to believe that he had no name, and so he named himself.\n \"Call me Robert. It is an ancient name on Terra.\"\n\n\n \"Robert,\" she said, and, \"Robert.\"", "There was a rap at the doorway; they turned. One of the litter-bearers\n loomed darker than the gloomy sky. \"Are you ready?\" he asked.\n\n\n Koroby twirled before the mirror, criticizing her appearance. \"Yes,\n ready,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Ready!\" the girls cried. Then there was a little silence.\n\n\n \"Shall we go now?\" Koroby asked, and the litter-carrier nodded. Koroby\n kissed the girls, one after another. \"Here, Shonka—you can have this\n bracelet you've always liked. And this is for you, Lolla. And here,\n Trossa—and you, Shia. Goodbye, darlings, goodbye—come and see me\n whenever you can!\"\n\n\n \"Goodbye, Koroby!\"", "\"Thank you for carrying me, Robert.\" He did not reply. \"Robert—I\n dreamed of you last night. I dreamed you built another round house and\n that we both flew away in it. Yasak had to stay behind, and he was\n furious. Robert! Aren't you listening?\"\n\n\n \"I hear you.\"\n\n\n \"Don't you think it was an exciting dream?\" He shook his head. \"But\n why? Robert\"—she laid longing hands on his shoulders—\"can't you see\n that I'm in love with you?\" He shrugged. \"I believe you don't know what\n love is!\"\n\n\n \"I had a faint idea of it when I looked into your mind,\" he said. \"I'm\n afraid I haven't any use for it. Where I come from there is no love,\n and there shouldn't be here, either. It's a waste of time.\"", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nIt was twilight on Venus—the rusty red that the eyes notice when\n their closed lids are raised to light. Against the glow, fantastically\n twisted trees spread claws of spiky leaves, and a group of clay huts\n thrust up sharp edges of shadow, like the abandoned toy blocks of a\n gigantic child. There was no sign of clear sky and stars—the heavens\n were roofed by a perpetual ceiling of dust-clouds.\n\n\n A light glimmered in one of the huts. Feminine voices rippled across\n the clearing and into the jungle. There was laughter, then someone's\n faint and wistful sigh. One of the voices mourned, in the twittering\n Venusian speech, \"How I envy you, Koroby! I wish I were being married\n tonight, like you!\"", "\"I don't know,\" the bearer volunteered.\n\n\n Koroby lifted a hand. \"Stop the litter,\" she said.\nThe conveyance halted. Koroby leaning out, the men peering around them,\n they listened. One of the bearers shouted at the musicians; the music\n ceased. There was nothing to be heard except the whisper of the breeze\n in the grass.\n\n\n Then the girl heard it—a shrill, distant whine, dying away, then\n growing louder—and louder—it seemed to be approaching—from the sky—\n\n\n All the faces were lifted up now, worriedly. The whine grew\n louder—Koroby's hands clenched nervously on the wreaths at her throat—\n\n\n Then, far ahead, a series of bright flashes, like the lightning of the\n dust-storms, but brilliantly green. A silence, then staccatto reports,\n certainly not thunder—unlike any sound that Koroby had ever heard.", "But at last she could go no farther. She had forced herself along\n because she wanted to impress this indifferent man that she was not as\n inferior as he might think—but now she could not go on. With a little\n cry almost of relief, she sank to the ground and lay semi-conscious, so\n weary that the very pain of it seemed on the point of pleasure.\n\n\n Robert dipped down, scooped her up, and carried her.\n\n\n Lights glimmered ahead; shouts reached them. It was a searching party,\n Yasak in it. The litter-carriers who could still speak blurted out what\n had happened. \"A green light—loud sounds—fire—this man there—\" and\n then dropped into sleep.\n\n\n \"Someone carry these men,\" Yasak ordered. To Robert he said, \"We're not\n very far from the path to the City now. Shall I carry the girl?\"\n\n\n \"It makes no difference,\" Robert said.", "There was a babble of voices as the musicians crowded together, asking\n what had it been, and where—just exactly—could one suppose it had\n happened, that thunder—was it going to storm!\n\n\n They waited, but nothing further happened—there were no more stabs of\n green light nor detonations. The bearers stooped to lift the litter's\n poles to their shoulders. \"Shall we go on?\" one of them asked Koroby.\n\n\n She waved a hand. \"Yes, go on.\"\nThe litter resumed its gentle swaying, but the music did not start\n again. Then, from the direction of the light-flashes, a glow appeared,\n shining steadily, green as the flashes had been. Noticing it, Koroby\n frowned. Then the path bent, and the glow swung to one side.\n\n\n Suddenly Koroby reached out, tapped the shoulder of the closet bearer.\n \"Go toward the light.\"", "The men eyed each other, mentally shrugging. \"Well—\" one yielded.\n\n\n The girl whirled impatiently on the others. \"Hurry!\" she cried. \"If you\n won't take me, I'll go by myself. I must get to that fire, whatever it\n is!\" She put a hand to her heart. \"I must! I must!\" Then she faced the\n green glare again, smiling to herself.\n\n\n \"You can't do that!\" a carrier cried.\n\n\n \"Well, then, you take me,\" she said over her shoulder.", "Koroby huddled on a chair, sobbing. Then she dried her eyes on the\n backs of her hands. She went to the narrow slits that served as windows\n and unfastened the translucent shutter of one. Down in the City street,\n Robert was walking away. Her eyes hardened, and her fingers spread\n into ugly claws. Without bothering to pull the shutter in place she\n hurried out of the room, ran eagerly down the hall. She stopped at\n the armor-rack at the main hall on her way outside, and snatched up a\nsiatcha\n—a firestone. Then she slipped outside and down the street.\nThe City's wall was not far behind. Robert was visible in the distance,\n striding toward his sky-ship, a widening cloud of dust rising behind\n him like the spreading wake of a boat. Koroby stood on tip-toe, waving\n and calling after him, \"Robert! Robert! Come back!\" but he did not seem\n to hear.", "\"—He'll smile and touch my cheek,\nAnd maybe more;\nAnd though we'll neither speak,\nWe'll know the score—\"\nSuddenly he put his hands to her cheeks and bent close to her, his eyes\n peering into hers as though he were searching for something he had lost\n in them. She spoke her thought: \"What are you doing? You seem to be\n reading my mind!\"\n\n\n Without removing hands, he nodded. \"Reading—mind.\" He stared long\n into her eyes. His dispassionate, too-perfect face began to frighten\n her. She slipped back from him, her hand clutching her throat.\n\n\n He straightened up and spoke—haltingly at first, then with growing\n assurance. \"Don't be afraid. I mean you no harm.\" She trembled. It was\n such a wonderful voice—it was as she had always dreamed it! But she\n had never really believed in the dream....", "Koroby fingered the flowers around her throat, her eyes rapt on the\n passing trees. Her lips moved in the barest murmur: \"If only—!\"\n and again, \"Oh, if only—!\" But the music trickled on, and nothing\n happened; the litter seemed to float along—none of the bearers even\n stumbled.\n\n\n They came to a cleared space of waist-high grass. It was like a canyon\n steeply walled by cliffs of verdure. The litter jerked as it glided\n along, and Koroby heard one of the bearers exclaim gruffly, \"Listen!\"\n Then the litter resumed its dream-like floating on the backs of the men.\n\n\n \"What was it?\" another bearer asked.\n\n\n \"Thought I heard something,\" the other replied. \"Shrill and high—like\n something screaming—\"\n\n\n Koroby peered out. \"A\ngnau\n?\" she asked.", "Koroby stared defiantly at the laughing faces of her bridesmaids. She\n shrugged hopelessly. \"I don't care,\" she said slowly. \"It will be nice\n to have Yasak for a husband—yes. And perhaps I do love him. I don't\n know.\" She tightened her lips as she reflected on it.\n\n\n She left them, moving gracefully to the door. Venus-girls were\n generally of truly elfin proportions, so delicately slim that they\n seemed incapable of the slightest exertion. But Koroby's body\n was—compared to her friends'—voluptuous.\n\n\n She rested against the door-frame, watching the red of the afterglow\n deepen to purple. \"I want romance,\" she said, so softly that the girls\n had to strain forward to hear her. \"I wish that there were other worlds\n than this—and that someone would drop out of the skies and claim\n me ... and take me away from here, away from all this—this monotony!\"", "He was clothed very peculiarly. A wonderfully-made metallic garment\n enclosed his whole body—legs and all, unlike the Venus-men's tunics.\n Even his feet were covered. Perhaps it was armor—though the Venus-men\n usually wore only breastplate and greaves. And a helmet hid all of\n the man's head except his face. Around his waist was a belt with many\n incomprehensible objects dangling from it. If he was so well armored,\n why was he not carrying a sword—a dagger at least! Of what use were\n those things on his belt—for instance, that notched L-shaped thing? It\n would not even make a decent club!\n\n\n The stranger did not speak, merely gazed deeply into Koroby's eyes. And\n she, returning the gaze, wondered if he was peering into her very soul.\n The words of a folk-ballad came to her:" ] ]
valid	20008	[ "What does the author say about correlating athletic ability with race?", "When does the author think we will have an Olympics in which no new records are set?", "What is not listed as a trend in human development?", "What is one of the main reasons the top athletes are so superior now?", "How does improved medical care impact athletic ability?", "Which factor is not listed as being related to the large pool of good athletes?", "Why do the British win fewer medals than they used to?", "The author believes that athletic ability changes over time mainly due to:", "The author believes that innovations in athletic training have the most impact on:" ]	[ [ "There is a correlation because more Africans win track events", "It is possible to test for a correlation even though one has not yet been proven", "There is a correlation because Asians are not as good at sports", "The ability is most likely due to environment and training rather than race" ], [ "Never", "At some point in the far future", "Within 20 years", "Within 40 years" ], [ "People go through puberty at an earlier age", "People eat healthier", "People live longer", "People are taller" ], [ "It's genetic", "There are more healthy people to choose from", "There is a racial correlation", "People have easier lives now" ], [ "Only directly", "Only indirectly", "It's impossible to determine", "Directly and indirectly" ], [ "The large population of the earth", "The post-colonial era", "The population as a whole is more literate", "The expanding middle class worldwide" ], [ "Due to the effects of World War I", "Due to the post-colonial era", "Due to other countries being better able to compete now", "Due to less focus on athletics in their country" ], [ "Top athletes having fewer children", "Innate factors", "Environment", "Natural selection and genetics" ], [ "Multiple generations of humans over time", "One generation of humans", "An athlete from a developed nation", "A single individual" ] ]	[ 4, 2, 2, 2, 4, 3, 3, 3, 2 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "That doesn't mean, however, that genetic differences in athletic ability can be correlated automatically with race. That is a claim that is impossible to test, because you cannot control, in an experimental sense,", "than everyone else, since they are in the habit of running immense distances to and from primary school, middle school, and high school. The training is what's crucial, not the blackness. The Chinese sports establishment also has carried out an enormous,", "and effective, experiment to help dispel the myth that race has a direct relation to athletic ability. Until recently, a quick glance at the medals table confirmed every stereotype people held about Asians and sports. Then the Chinese decided to produce", "you, therefore, conclude that Africans have better genes for running than Asians do? No. Environmental differences between the two groups could account for differing levels of athletic success. It is scarcely surprising that Ethiopian or Kenyan distance runners do better", "Just because nurture has a more significant effect on athletic performance doesn't mean that nature lies dormant, though. Genetic variation exists for just about any trait you choose to study, and the", "ability to run quickly would be no exception. To take a trivial case, we know that the inheritance of extra fingers or toes is determined genetically. It is quite possible that the possession of an extra toe would hinder an aspiring", "environmental differences among the study groups. Sure, you will find more Africans or descendants of Africans standing on the podiums at the end of Olympic track events. And you will find far fewer Asians on those same podiums. But can", "Better health care affects athletic ability directly. This is true in the trivial case in which, say, antibiotics cure a runner's fever before the big race, but it may also be true in a more significant way. Diseases contracted in early infancy can have a lifetime impact on health--not necessarily a big one, but an impact nevertheless. Previous generations bore scars from all sorts of non-life-threatening diseases, the stuff everyone picked up as a baby. Nowadays, though, more and more people grow up with no history of disease. Since top athletes inevitably are drawn from the healthiest sector of the population, a generally superior system of health care means a bigger pool of people to draw from. You are much more likely to find someone who can run a mile in 3:30 in a sample of several million superbly healthy people than you are in a sample of 10,000.", "A lot of entrepreneurs and technophiles would like us to think that the answer has to do with discoveries in the world of sports technology. A new Nike shoe is trumpeted as something that will shave at least one-thousandth of a second off your 100-meter time. Trainers measure the rate of buildup of lactic acid in your muscles, then claim that their programs will control it. Nutritionists fine-tune athletes' diets. Even the old sexual-abstinence-before-the-race dogma is being re-evaluated under the all-seeing eye of science. But I consider all this little more than tinkering. Sports records would continue to tumble even if training methods or athletic clothing or sexual practices were exactly the same today as they were in 1896, when the first modern Olympics took place. These minor miracles are the product neither of technology nor of training but of demographic patterns that affect us all.", "miler--their genes have affected their athletic performance. One genetic factor that may be influencing performance trends is what is known as \"hybrid vigor.\" Cattle breeders have known about this for a long time: Take two inbred lines of cattle, cross", "The pool of potential athletes has expanded in other ways, too. First, the population has exploded. Second, we are coming ever closer to a worldwide middle class, the class from which athletes typically are drawn. Whether, in an age of multinational capitalism, we may talk reasonably about a post-colonial era is way beyond the scope of this article. The fact remains, however, that the developing world is doing just that--developing. Even Mozambique, which ranks at, or near, the bottom of national per capita gross national product tables, has shown an increase of some 20 percent in adult literacy rates over the past 20 years. Literacy rates are merely an index of education, which itself is another way of talking about a global move away from a hand-to-mouth lifestyle.", "The decline of empire has its Olympic corollaries. Britain won, on average, 17 gold medals per Olympics in the five official games held in its imperial heyday before World War I. That average has dropped to only five medals per Olympics in the 17 held since. This is not a reflection of declining athletic standards in Britain, however; it's a function of how much more competitive other nations have become. The Olympics originally were the preserve of the socioeconomic elite of the socioeconomic elite among nations. Consider this: Only 13 nations participated in 1896, but there were 172 in 1992. Black Africans didn't take part until the third modern games, held in St. Louis in 1908. Even this was accidental: Lentauw and Yamasami, Zulu tribesmen, entered the marathon because they happened to be in St. Louis as part of an exhibit about the Boer war. Lentauw finished ninth despite being chased into a cornfield by dogs.", "Since all these are changes in how we live, not anything innate, we have to conclude that what we are describing here are effects of environment, not genes. Let us assume that our 1900 and 1990 12-year-olds are identical twins magically born 90 years apart. The 1990 girl still will grow up faster, end up bigger, menstruate earlier, and live longer than the 1900 girl. Perhaps way, way back in human history, when our forebears were still fleeing saber-toothed tigers, natural selection for athletic prowess came into play. But all that ended long ago. Indeed, the laws of natural selection probably work against athletes these days: Given the rigors of training schedules, it is possible that today's top athletes have fewer children than average.", "Human improvement, like race-horse improvement, must eventually bow to the basic constraints of biomechanics. The age of menarche cannot keep on falling forever. On the other hand, it is clear from the remarkable demographic changes of just the past 20 years that these long-term trends are with us still. They may be slowing down in some more developed societies, but they roar along in others. And these trends will continue to fuel the improvement in athletic performance. Several new records will be set in Atlanta. And in Sydney in 2000, and wherever the Olympics are held in 2044. We will continue running faster and jumping further for a good long while to come.", "On May 6, 1954, at Oxford University's Iffley Road track, Roger Bannister became, by just half a second, the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. The Holy Grail of middle-distance running was his. Forty-two years later, however, that achievement seems less significant. Four-minute miles are commonplace; the current record, held by Algerian Noureddine Morceli, is 3:44 , more than 5 percent faster than Bannister's speed. What Iffley Road witnessed was just another step along the road to an ever quicker mile, part of the inexorable improvement of athletic performance that we usually take for granted, particularly when the Olympics roll around. If you stop to think about it, though, such constant progress is remarkable. After all, as biomechanical machines with a standard set of parts, humans should be subject to the same limitations we see in, say, automobiles. How come they aren't?", "What do such trends have to do with athletic performance? Well, if we're living longer and growing up faster, that must mean we're producing bigger, better bodies. Better bodies imply faster miles. We run faster and faster for the same reason it is now common for 11-year-old girls to menstruate. But why are these things happening?", "The Olympic Gene Pool \n\n Why the human race keeps getting faster. \n\n By Andrew Berry \n\n ( 2,168 words; posted Thursday, July 4; to be composted Thursday, July 11 )", "There are some barriers that simply cannot be broken. We will never run a mile at the same speed at which we now run 100 meters, for instance. The laws of oxygen exchange will not permit it. Race horses seem already to have hit that outer limit. For years, they were as good as human athletes at pushing back speed records, but then they simply stopped getting faster. Take the prestigious British Derby. From 1850 to 1930, winning times dropped from 2:55 to 2:39. But from 1986 to 1996, the average time has been--2:39. Unlike people, race horses are specifically bred and reared to run. Generations of careful genetic selection have ensured that today's race horse has every possible speed-enhancing characteristic. Training techniques, too, are tremendously sophisticated. But you can go only so far. You can only breed horses with ultralight thin bones to a certain point; the bones will break under stress if they get any lighter.", "You can bring a single generation up to speed through training, but the trends we're dealing with transcend individual generations. Which brings us to another question: Will there come a time when the human machine will hit some sort of natural limit and an Olympic Games pass without a single record tumbling? In principle, yes.", "at unprecedented rates. Perhaps, just perhaps, such hybridization is being translated into enhanced performance." ], [ "Human improvement, like race-horse improvement, must eventually bow to the basic constraints of biomechanics. The age of menarche cannot keep on falling forever. On the other hand, it is clear from the remarkable demographic changes of just the past 20 years that these long-term trends are with us still. They may be slowing down in some more developed societies, but they roar along in others. And these trends will continue to fuel the improvement in athletic performance. Several new records will be set in Atlanta. And in Sydney in 2000, and wherever the Olympics are held in 2044. We will continue running faster and jumping further for a good long while to come.", "A lot of entrepreneurs and technophiles would like us to think that the answer has to do with discoveries in the world of sports technology. A new Nike shoe is trumpeted as something that will shave at least one-thousandth of a second off your 100-meter time. Trainers measure the rate of buildup of lactic acid in your muscles, then claim that their programs will control it. Nutritionists fine-tune athletes' diets. Even the old sexual-abstinence-before-the-race dogma is being re-evaluated under the all-seeing eye of science. But I consider all this little more than tinkering. Sports records would continue to tumble even if training methods or athletic clothing or sexual practices were exactly the same today as they were in 1896, when the first modern Olympics took place. These minor miracles are the product neither of technology nor of training but of demographic patterns that affect us all.", "You can bring a single generation up to speed through training, but the trends we're dealing with transcend individual generations. Which brings us to another question: Will there come a time when the human machine will hit some sort of natural limit and an Olympic Games pass without a single record tumbling? In principle, yes.", "On May 6, 1954, at Oxford University's Iffley Road track, Roger Bannister became, by just half a second, the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. The Holy Grail of middle-distance running was his. Forty-two years later, however, that achievement seems less significant. Four-minute miles are commonplace; the current record, held by Algerian Noureddine Morceli, is 3:44 , more than 5 percent faster than Bannister's speed. What Iffley Road witnessed was just another step along the road to an ever quicker mile, part of the inexorable improvement of athletic performance that we usually take for granted, particularly when the Olympics roll around. If you stop to think about it, though, such constant progress is remarkable. After all, as biomechanical machines with a standard set of parts, humans should be subject to the same limitations we see in, say, automobiles. How come they aren't?", "There are some barriers that simply cannot be broken. We will never run a mile at the same speed at which we now run 100 meters, for instance. The laws of oxygen exchange will not permit it. Race horses seem already to have hit that outer limit. For years, they were as good as human athletes at pushing back speed records, but then they simply stopped getting faster. Take the prestigious British Derby. From 1850 to 1930, winning times dropped from 2:55 to 2:39. But from 1986 to 1996, the average time has been--2:39. Unlike people, race horses are specifically bred and reared to run. Generations of careful genetic selection have ensured that today's race horse has every possible speed-enhancing characteristic. Training techniques, too, are tremendously sophisticated. But you can go only so far. You can only breed horses with ultralight thin bones to a certain point; the bones will break under stress if they get any lighter.", "The Olympic Gene Pool \n\n Why the human race keeps getting faster. \n\n By Andrew Berry \n\n ( 2,168 words; posted Thursday, July 4; to be composted Thursday, July 11 )", "What do such trends have to do with athletic performance? Well, if we're living longer and growing up faster, that must mean we're producing bigger, better bodies. Better bodies imply faster miles. We run faster and faster for the same reason it is now common for 11-year-old girls to menstruate. But why are these things happening?", "Since all these are changes in how we live, not anything innate, we have to conclude that what we are describing here are effects of environment, not genes. Let us assume that our 1900 and 1990 12-year-olds are identical twins magically born 90 years apart. The 1990 girl still will grow up faster, end up bigger, menstruate earlier, and live longer than the 1900 girl. Perhaps way, way back in human history, when our forebears were still fleeing saber-toothed tigers, natural selection for athletic prowess came into play. But all that ended long ago. Indeed, the laws of natural selection probably work against athletes these days: Given the rigors of training schedules, it is possible that today's top athletes have fewer children than average.", "The decline of empire has its Olympic corollaries. Britain won, on average, 17 gold medals per Olympics in the five official games held in its imperial heyday before World War I. That average has dropped to only five medals per Olympics in the 17 held since. This is not a reflection of declining athletic standards in Britain, however; it's a function of how much more competitive other nations have become. The Olympics originally were the preserve of the socioeconomic elite of the socioeconomic elite among nations. Consider this: Only 13 nations participated in 1896, but there were 172 in 1992. Black Africans didn't take part until the third modern games, held in St. Louis in 1908. Even this was accidental: Lentauw and Yamasami, Zulu tribesmen, entered the marathon because they happened to be in St. Louis as part of an exhibit about the Boer war. Lentauw finished ninth despite being chased into a cornfield by dogs.", "The pool of potential athletes has expanded in other ways, too. First, the population has exploded. Second, we are coming ever closer to a worldwide middle class, the class from which athletes typically are drawn. Whether, in an age of multinational capitalism, we may talk reasonably about a post-colonial era is way beyond the scope of this article. The fact remains, however, that the developing world is doing just that--developing. Even Mozambique, which ranks at, or near, the bottom of national per capita gross national product tables, has shown an increase of some 20 percent in adult literacy rates over the past 20 years. Literacy rates are merely an index of education, which itself is another way of talking about a global move away from a hand-to-mouth lifestyle.", "Better health care affects athletic ability directly. This is true in the trivial case in which, say, antibiotics cure a runner's fever before the big race, but it may also be true in a more significant way. Diseases contracted in early infancy can have a lifetime impact on health--not necessarily a big one, but an impact nevertheless. Previous generations bore scars from all sorts of non-life-threatening diseases, the stuff everyone picked up as a baby. Nowadays, though, more and more people grow up with no history of disease. Since top athletes inevitably are drawn from the healthiest sector of the population, a generally superior system of health care means a bigger pool of people to draw from. You are much more likely to find someone who can run a mile in 3:30 in a sample of several million superbly healthy people than you are in a sample of 10,000.", "record-breaking female distance runners (and swimmers), and, boy, did they ever. In 1992, China ranked fourth in the Olympic-medal haul.", "and effective, experiment to help dispel the myth that race has a direct relation to athletic ability. Until recently, a quick glance at the medals table confirmed every stereotype people held about Asians and sports. Then the Chinese decided to produce", "than everyone else, since they are in the habit of running immense distances to and from primary school, middle school, and high school. The training is what's crucial, not the blackness. The Chinese sports establishment also has carried out an enormous,", "miler--their genes have affected their athletic performance. One genetic factor that may be influencing performance trends is what is known as \"hybrid vigor.\" Cattle breeders have known about this for a long time: Take two inbred lines of cattle, cross", "Probably the most striking change, though, is how much more quickly children are maturing. A 12-year-old child in 1990 who was in what the World Health Organization calls \"average economic circumstances\" was about 9 inches taller than his or her 1900 counterpart. This is not solely the product of the first trend--the increase in average size--but also due to the fact that children develop faster. Girls menstruate earlier than they used to. The age of menarche (the onset of menstruation) has decreased by three or four months per decade in average sections of Western European populations for the past 150 years. There is a good chance that our 1990 12-year-old already had started to menstruate. Her 1900 counterpart would still have had three years to wait.", "ability to run quickly would be no exception. To take a trivial case, we know that the inheritance of extra fingers or toes is determined genetically. It is quite possible that the possession of an extra toe would hinder an aspiring", "environmental differences among the study groups. Sure, you will find more Africans or descendants of Africans standing on the podiums at the end of Olympic track events. And you will find far fewer Asians on those same podiums. But can", "Demographers have offered a variety of explanations, but the main one is that our diet is improving. A 12-year-old ate better in 1990 than she would have in the Victorian era. This", "you, therefore, conclude that Africans have better genes for running than Asians do? No. Environmental differences between the two groups could account for differing levels of athletic success. It is scarcely surprising that Ethiopian or Kenyan distance runners do better" ], [ "Over the past century, the human race has been affected by a slew of what demographers call \"secular\" trends. (In this context, \"secular\" does not refer to a trend's lack of spirituality but to its longevity: Secular trends are long-term modifications, not just brief fluctuations.) One such trend is an increase in average size. You have to stoop to get through the doorways of a Tudor cottage in England because its inhabitants were smaller than you are, not because they had a penchant for crouching. Another trend is in life expectancy. People are living longer. Life expectancy in Africa increased over the past 20 years from 46 to 53 years. Over the same period in Europe, where things were already pretty comfortable to begin with, life expectancy increased from 71 to 75 years. The global average was an increase from 58 to 65 years.", "Probably the most striking change, though, is how much more quickly children are maturing. A 12-year-old child in 1990 who was in what the World Health Organization calls \"average economic circumstances\" was about 9 inches taller than his or her 1900 counterpart. This is not solely the product of the first trend--the increase in average size--but also due to the fact that children develop faster. Girls menstruate earlier than they used to. The age of menarche (the onset of menstruation) has decreased by three or four months per decade in average sections of Western European populations for the past 150 years. There is a good chance that our 1990 12-year-old already had started to menstruate. Her 1900 counterpart would still have had three years to wait.", "Since all these are changes in how we live, not anything innate, we have to conclude that what we are describing here are effects of environment, not genes. Let us assume that our 1900 and 1990 12-year-olds are identical twins magically born 90 years apart. The 1990 girl still will grow up faster, end up bigger, menstruate earlier, and live longer than the 1900 girl. Perhaps way, way back in human history, when our forebears were still fleeing saber-toothed tigers, natural selection for athletic prowess came into play. But all that ended long ago. Indeed, the laws of natural selection probably work against athletes these days: Given the rigors of training schedules, it is possible that today's top athletes have fewer children than average.", "Human improvement, like race-horse improvement, must eventually bow to the basic constraints of biomechanics. The age of menarche cannot keep on falling forever. On the other hand, it is clear from the remarkable demographic changes of just the past 20 years that these long-term trends are with us still. They may be slowing down in some more developed societies, but they roar along in others. And these trends will continue to fuel the improvement in athletic performance. Several new records will be set in Atlanta. And in Sydney in 2000, and wherever the Olympics are held in 2044. We will continue running faster and jumping further for a good long while to come.", "Demographers have offered a variety of explanations, but the main one is that our diet is improving. A 12-year-old ate better in 1990 than she would have in the Victorian era. This", "What do such trends have to do with athletic performance? Well, if we're living longer and growing up faster, that must mean we're producing bigger, better bodies. Better bodies imply faster miles. We run faster and faster for the same reason it is now common for 11-year-old girls to menstruate. But why are these things happening?", "A lot of entrepreneurs and technophiles would like us to think that the answer has to do with discoveries in the world of sports technology. A new Nike shoe is trumpeted as something that will shave at least one-thousandth of a second off your 100-meter time. Trainers measure the rate of buildup of lactic acid in your muscles, then claim that their programs will control it. Nutritionists fine-tune athletes' diets. Even the old sexual-abstinence-before-the-race dogma is being re-evaluated under the all-seeing eye of science. But I consider all this little more than tinkering. Sports records would continue to tumble even if training methods or athletic clothing or sexual practices were exactly the same today as they were in 1896, when the first modern Olympics took place. These minor miracles are the product neither of technology nor of training but of demographic patterns that affect us all.", "Another explanation is that health care is getting better. In 1991, according to the WHO, more than 75 percent of all 1-year-olds worldwide were immunized against a range of common diseases. Smallpox, that scourge of previous generations, now is", "You can bring a single generation up to speed through training, but the trends we're dealing with transcend individual generations. Which brings us to another question: Will there come a time when the human machine will hit some sort of natural limit and an Olympic Games pass without a single record tumbling? In principle, yes.", "The pool of potential athletes has expanded in other ways, too. First, the population has exploded. Second, we are coming ever closer to a worldwide middle class, the class from which athletes typically are drawn. Whether, in an age of multinational capitalism, we may talk reasonably about a post-colonial era is way beyond the scope of this article. The fact remains, however, that the developing world is doing just that--developing. Even Mozambique, which ranks at, or near, the bottom of national per capita gross national product tables, has shown an increase of some 20 percent in adult literacy rates over the past 20 years. Literacy rates are merely an index of education, which itself is another way of talking about a global move away from a hand-to-mouth lifestyle.", "effectively extinct. Probably the best measure of how much healthier we are is the rate of infant mortality, which measures both the health of the mother (a sickly mother is more likely to produce a sickly baby) and the health of", "African average, for instance, has dropped from 135 deaths per 1000 births to 95. But there are also significant improvements in the developed world, with infant deaths dropping in Europe over the same 20-year period from 24 per 1000 live", "conclusion is supported by studies of the social elite: Because its members were well-nourished even in the early years of this century, this group has experienced relatively little change, over the past 100 years, in the age girls first menstruate.", "the baby. In the past 20 years, infant mortality around the world has dropped from 92 deaths per 1000 live births to just 62. A lot of this can be chalked up to primary-heath-care programs in the developing world--the", "miler--their genes have affected their athletic performance. One genetic factor that may be influencing performance trends is what is known as \"hybrid vigor.\" Cattle breeders have known about this for a long time: Take two inbred lines of cattle, cross", "There are some barriers that simply cannot be broken. We will never run a mile at the same speed at which we now run 100 meters, for instance. The laws of oxygen exchange will not permit it. Race horses seem already to have hit that outer limit. For years, they were as good as human athletes at pushing back speed records, but then they simply stopped getting faster. Take the prestigious British Derby. From 1850 to 1930, winning times dropped from 2:55 to 2:39. But from 1986 to 1996, the average time has been--2:39. Unlike people, race horses are specifically bred and reared to run. Generations of careful genetic selection have ensured that today's race horse has every possible speed-enhancing characteristic. Training techniques, too, are tremendously sophisticated. But you can go only so far. You can only breed horses with ultralight thin bones to a certain point; the bones will break under stress if they get any lighter.", "On May 6, 1954, at Oxford University's Iffley Road track, Roger Bannister became, by just half a second, the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. The Holy Grail of middle-distance running was his. Forty-two years later, however, that achievement seems less significant. Four-minute miles are commonplace; the current record, held by Algerian Noureddine Morceli, is 3:44 , more than 5 percent faster than Bannister's speed. What Iffley Road witnessed was just another step along the road to an ever quicker mile, part of the inexorable improvement of athletic performance that we usually take for granted, particularly when the Olympics roll around. If you stop to think about it, though, such constant progress is remarkable. After all, as biomechanical machines with a standard set of parts, humans should be subject to the same limitations we see in, say, automobiles. How come they aren't?", "than everyone else, since they are in the habit of running immense distances to and from primary school, middle school, and high school. The training is what's crucial, not the blackness. The Chinese sports establishment also has carried out an enormous,", "number of theories to account for this at the genetic level, but it has proved difficult to discriminate among them. It is possible that modern humans exhibit some form of hybrid vigor simply because migration and admixture of populations are now occurring", "The decline of empire has its Olympic corollaries. Britain won, on average, 17 gold medals per Olympics in the five official games held in its imperial heyday before World War I. That average has dropped to only five medals per Olympics in the 17 held since. This is not a reflection of declining athletic standards in Britain, however; it's a function of how much more competitive other nations have become. The Olympics originally were the preserve of the socioeconomic elite of the socioeconomic elite among nations. Consider this: Only 13 nations participated in 1896, but there were 172 in 1992. Black Africans didn't take part until the third modern games, held in St. Louis in 1908. Even this was accidental: Lentauw and Yamasami, Zulu tribesmen, entered the marathon because they happened to be in St. Louis as part of an exhibit about the Boer war. Lentauw finished ninth despite being chased into a cornfield by dogs." ], [ "A lot of entrepreneurs and technophiles would like us to think that the answer has to do with discoveries in the world of sports technology. A new Nike shoe is trumpeted as something that will shave at least one-thousandth of a second off your 100-meter time. Trainers measure the rate of buildup of lactic acid in your muscles, then claim that their programs will control it. Nutritionists fine-tune athletes' diets. Even the old sexual-abstinence-before-the-race dogma is being re-evaluated under the all-seeing eye of science. But I consider all this little more than tinkering. Sports records would continue to tumble even if training methods or athletic clothing or sexual practices were exactly the same today as they were in 1896, when the first modern Olympics took place. These minor miracles are the product neither of technology nor of training but of demographic patterns that affect us all.", "than everyone else, since they are in the habit of running immense distances to and from primary school, middle school, and high school. The training is what's crucial, not the blackness. The Chinese sports establishment also has carried out an enormous,", "Better health care affects athletic ability directly. This is true in the trivial case in which, say, antibiotics cure a runner's fever before the big race, but it may also be true in a more significant way. Diseases contracted in early infancy can have a lifetime impact on health--not necessarily a big one, but an impact nevertheless. Previous generations bore scars from all sorts of non-life-threatening diseases, the stuff everyone picked up as a baby. Nowadays, though, more and more people grow up with no history of disease. Since top athletes inevitably are drawn from the healthiest sector of the population, a generally superior system of health care means a bigger pool of people to draw from. You are much more likely to find someone who can run a mile in 3:30 in a sample of several million superbly healthy people than you are in a sample of 10,000.", "The pool of potential athletes has expanded in other ways, too. First, the population has exploded. Second, we are coming ever closer to a worldwide middle class, the class from which athletes typically are drawn. Whether, in an age of multinational capitalism, we may talk reasonably about a post-colonial era is way beyond the scope of this article. The fact remains, however, that the developing world is doing just that--developing. Even Mozambique, which ranks at, or near, the bottom of national per capita gross national product tables, has shown an increase of some 20 percent in adult literacy rates over the past 20 years. Literacy rates are merely an index of education, which itself is another way of talking about a global move away from a hand-to-mouth lifestyle.", "Since all these are changes in how we live, not anything innate, we have to conclude that what we are describing here are effects of environment, not genes. Let us assume that our 1900 and 1990 12-year-olds are identical twins magically born 90 years apart. The 1990 girl still will grow up faster, end up bigger, menstruate earlier, and live longer than the 1900 girl. Perhaps way, way back in human history, when our forebears were still fleeing saber-toothed tigers, natural selection for athletic prowess came into play. But all that ended long ago. Indeed, the laws of natural selection probably work against athletes these days: Given the rigors of training schedules, it is possible that today's top athletes have fewer children than average.", "On May 6, 1954, at Oxford University's Iffley Road track, Roger Bannister became, by just half a second, the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. The Holy Grail of middle-distance running was his. Forty-two years later, however, that achievement seems less significant. Four-minute miles are commonplace; the current record, held by Algerian Noureddine Morceli, is 3:44 , more than 5 percent faster than Bannister's speed. What Iffley Road witnessed was just another step along the road to an ever quicker mile, part of the inexorable improvement of athletic performance that we usually take for granted, particularly when the Olympics roll around. If you stop to think about it, though, such constant progress is remarkable. After all, as biomechanical machines with a standard set of parts, humans should be subject to the same limitations we see in, say, automobiles. How come they aren't?", "Human improvement, like race-horse improvement, must eventually bow to the basic constraints of biomechanics. The age of menarche cannot keep on falling forever. On the other hand, it is clear from the remarkable demographic changes of just the past 20 years that these long-term trends are with us still. They may be slowing down in some more developed societies, but they roar along in others. And these trends will continue to fuel the improvement in athletic performance. Several new records will be set in Atlanta. And in Sydney in 2000, and wherever the Olympics are held in 2044. We will continue running faster and jumping further for a good long while to come.", "Just because nurture has a more significant effect on athletic performance doesn't mean that nature lies dormant, though. Genetic variation exists for just about any trait you choose to study, and the", "There are some barriers that simply cannot be broken. We will never run a mile at the same speed at which we now run 100 meters, for instance. The laws of oxygen exchange will not permit it. Race horses seem already to have hit that outer limit. For years, they were as good as human athletes at pushing back speed records, but then they simply stopped getting faster. Take the prestigious British Derby. From 1850 to 1930, winning times dropped from 2:55 to 2:39. But from 1986 to 1996, the average time has been--2:39. Unlike people, race horses are specifically bred and reared to run. Generations of careful genetic selection have ensured that today's race horse has every possible speed-enhancing characteristic. Training techniques, too, are tremendously sophisticated. But you can go only so far. You can only breed horses with ultralight thin bones to a certain point; the bones will break under stress if they get any lighter.", "What do such trends have to do with athletic performance? Well, if we're living longer and growing up faster, that must mean we're producing bigger, better bodies. Better bodies imply faster miles. We run faster and faster for the same reason it is now common for 11-year-old girls to menstruate. But why are these things happening?", "You can bring a single generation up to speed through training, but the trends we're dealing with transcend individual generations. Which brings us to another question: Will there come a time when the human machine will hit some sort of natural limit and an Olympic Games pass without a single record tumbling? In principle, yes.", "miler--their genes have affected their athletic performance. One genetic factor that may be influencing performance trends is what is known as \"hybrid vigor.\" Cattle breeders have known about this for a long time: Take two inbred lines of cattle, cross", "The decline of empire has its Olympic corollaries. Britain won, on average, 17 gold medals per Olympics in the five official games held in its imperial heyday before World War I. That average has dropped to only five medals per Olympics in the 17 held since. This is not a reflection of declining athletic standards in Britain, however; it's a function of how much more competitive other nations have become. The Olympics originally were the preserve of the socioeconomic elite of the socioeconomic elite among nations. Consider this: Only 13 nations participated in 1896, but there were 172 in 1992. Black Africans didn't take part until the third modern games, held in St. Louis in 1908. Even this was accidental: Lentauw and Yamasami, Zulu tribesmen, entered the marathon because they happened to be in St. Louis as part of an exhibit about the Boer war. Lentauw finished ninth despite being chased into a cornfield by dogs.", "you, therefore, conclude that Africans have better genes for running than Asians do? No. Environmental differences between the two groups could account for differing levels of athletic success. It is scarcely surprising that Ethiopian or Kenyan distance runners do better", "The Olympic Gene Pool \n\n Why the human race keeps getting faster. \n\n By Andrew Berry \n\n ( 2,168 words; posted Thursday, July 4; to be composted Thursday, July 11 )", "environmental differences among the study groups. Sure, you will find more Africans or descendants of Africans standing on the podiums at the end of Olympic track events. And you will find far fewer Asians on those same podiums. But can", "and effective, experiment to help dispel the myth that race has a direct relation to athletic ability. Until recently, a quick glance at the medals table confirmed every stereotype people held about Asians and sports. Then the Chinese decided to produce", "That doesn't mean, however, that genetic differences in athletic ability can be correlated automatically with race. That is a claim that is impossible to test, because you cannot control, in an experimental sense,", "ability to run quickly would be no exception. To take a trivial case, we know that the inheritance of extra fingers or toes is determined genetically. It is quite possible that the possession of an extra toe would hinder an aspiring", "Demographers have offered a variety of explanations, but the main one is that our diet is improving. A 12-year-old ate better in 1990 than she would have in the Victorian era. This" ], [ "Better health care affects athletic ability directly. This is true in the trivial case in which, say, antibiotics cure a runner's fever before the big race, but it may also be true in a more significant way. Diseases contracted in early infancy can have a lifetime impact on health--not necessarily a big one, but an impact nevertheless. Previous generations bore scars from all sorts of non-life-threatening diseases, the stuff everyone picked up as a baby. Nowadays, though, more and more people grow up with no history of disease. Since top athletes inevitably are drawn from the healthiest sector of the population, a generally superior system of health care means a bigger pool of people to draw from. You are much more likely to find someone who can run a mile in 3:30 in a sample of several million superbly healthy people than you are in a sample of 10,000.", "A lot of entrepreneurs and technophiles would like us to think that the answer has to do with discoveries in the world of sports technology. A new Nike shoe is trumpeted as something that will shave at least one-thousandth of a second off your 100-meter time. Trainers measure the rate of buildup of lactic acid in your muscles, then claim that their programs will control it. Nutritionists fine-tune athletes' diets. Even the old sexual-abstinence-before-the-race dogma is being re-evaluated under the all-seeing eye of science. But I consider all this little more than tinkering. Sports records would continue to tumble even if training methods or athletic clothing or sexual practices were exactly the same today as they were in 1896, when the first modern Olympics took place. These minor miracles are the product neither of technology nor of training but of demographic patterns that affect us all.", "Human improvement, like race-horse improvement, must eventually bow to the basic constraints of biomechanics. The age of menarche cannot keep on falling forever. On the other hand, it is clear from the remarkable demographic changes of just the past 20 years that these long-term trends are with us still. They may be slowing down in some more developed societies, but they roar along in others. And these trends will continue to fuel the improvement in athletic performance. Several new records will be set in Atlanta. And in Sydney in 2000, and wherever the Olympics are held in 2044. We will continue running faster and jumping further for a good long while to come.", "On May 6, 1954, at Oxford University's Iffley Road track, Roger Bannister became, by just half a second, the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. The Holy Grail of middle-distance running was his. Forty-two years later, however, that achievement seems less significant. Four-minute miles are commonplace; the current record, held by Algerian Noureddine Morceli, is 3:44 , more than 5 percent faster than Bannister's speed. What Iffley Road witnessed was just another step along the road to an ever quicker mile, part of the inexorable improvement of athletic performance that we usually take for granted, particularly when the Olympics roll around. If you stop to think about it, though, such constant progress is remarkable. After all, as biomechanical machines with a standard set of parts, humans should be subject to the same limitations we see in, say, automobiles. How come they aren't?", "The pool of potential athletes has expanded in other ways, too. First, the population has exploded. Second, we are coming ever closer to a worldwide middle class, the class from which athletes typically are drawn. Whether, in an age of multinational capitalism, we may talk reasonably about a post-colonial era is way beyond the scope of this article. The fact remains, however, that the developing world is doing just that--developing. Even Mozambique, which ranks at, or near, the bottom of national per capita gross national product tables, has shown an increase of some 20 percent in adult literacy rates over the past 20 years. Literacy rates are merely an index of education, which itself is another way of talking about a global move away from a hand-to-mouth lifestyle.", "Since all these are changes in how we live, not anything innate, we have to conclude that what we are describing here are effects of environment, not genes. Let us assume that our 1900 and 1990 12-year-olds are identical twins magically born 90 years apart. The 1990 girl still will grow up faster, end up bigger, menstruate earlier, and live longer than the 1900 girl. Perhaps way, way back in human history, when our forebears were still fleeing saber-toothed tigers, natural selection for athletic prowess came into play. But all that ended long ago. Indeed, the laws of natural selection probably work against athletes these days: Given the rigors of training schedules, it is possible that today's top athletes have fewer children than average.", "What do such trends have to do with athletic performance? Well, if we're living longer and growing up faster, that must mean we're producing bigger, better bodies. Better bodies imply faster miles. We run faster and faster for the same reason it is now common for 11-year-old girls to menstruate. But why are these things happening?", "Just because nurture has a more significant effect on athletic performance doesn't mean that nature lies dormant, though. Genetic variation exists for just about any trait you choose to study, and the", "There are some barriers that simply cannot be broken. We will never run a mile at the same speed at which we now run 100 meters, for instance. The laws of oxygen exchange will not permit it. Race horses seem already to have hit that outer limit. For years, they were as good as human athletes at pushing back speed records, but then they simply stopped getting faster. Take the prestigious British Derby. From 1850 to 1930, winning times dropped from 2:55 to 2:39. But from 1986 to 1996, the average time has been--2:39. Unlike people, race horses are specifically bred and reared to run. Generations of careful genetic selection have ensured that today's race horse has every possible speed-enhancing characteristic. Training techniques, too, are tremendously sophisticated. But you can go only so far. You can only breed horses with ultralight thin bones to a certain point; the bones will break under stress if they get any lighter.", "The decline of empire has its Olympic corollaries. Britain won, on average, 17 gold medals per Olympics in the five official games held in its imperial heyday before World War I. That average has dropped to only five medals per Olympics in the 17 held since. This is not a reflection of declining athletic standards in Britain, however; it's a function of how much more competitive other nations have become. The Olympics originally were the preserve of the socioeconomic elite of the socioeconomic elite among nations. Consider this: Only 13 nations participated in 1896, but there were 172 in 1992. Black Africans didn't take part until the third modern games, held in St. Louis in 1908. Even this was accidental: Lentauw and Yamasami, Zulu tribesmen, entered the marathon because they happened to be in St. Louis as part of an exhibit about the Boer war. Lentauw finished ninth despite being chased into a cornfield by dogs.", "miler--their genes have affected their athletic performance. One genetic factor that may be influencing performance trends is what is known as \"hybrid vigor.\" Cattle breeders have known about this for a long time: Take two inbred lines of cattle, cross", "and effective, experiment to help dispel the myth that race has a direct relation to athletic ability. Until recently, a quick glance at the medals table confirmed every stereotype people held about Asians and sports. Then the Chinese decided to produce", "than everyone else, since they are in the habit of running immense distances to and from primary school, middle school, and high school. The training is what's crucial, not the blackness. The Chinese sports establishment also has carried out an enormous,", "You can bring a single generation up to speed through training, but the trends we're dealing with transcend individual generations. Which brings us to another question: Will there come a time when the human machine will hit some sort of natural limit and an Olympic Games pass without a single record tumbling? In principle, yes.", "The Olympic Gene Pool \n\n Why the human race keeps getting faster. \n\n By Andrew Berry \n\n ( 2,168 words; posted Thursday, July 4; to be composted Thursday, July 11 )", "That doesn't mean, however, that genetic differences in athletic ability can be correlated automatically with race. That is a claim that is impossible to test, because you cannot control, in an experimental sense,", "ability to run quickly would be no exception. To take a trivial case, we know that the inheritance of extra fingers or toes is determined genetically. It is quite possible that the possession of an extra toe would hinder an aspiring", "Demographers have offered a variety of explanations, but the main one is that our diet is improving. A 12-year-old ate better in 1990 than she would have in the Victorian era. This", "Probably the most striking change, though, is how much more quickly children are maturing. A 12-year-old child in 1990 who was in what the World Health Organization calls \"average economic circumstances\" was about 9 inches taller than his or her 1900 counterpart. This is not solely the product of the first trend--the increase in average size--but also due to the fact that children develop faster. Girls menstruate earlier than they used to. The age of menarche (the onset of menstruation) has decreased by three or four months per decade in average sections of Western European populations for the past 150 years. There is a good chance that our 1990 12-year-old already had started to menstruate. Her 1900 counterpart would still have had three years to wait.", "you, therefore, conclude that Africans have better genes for running than Asians do? No. Environmental differences between the two groups could account for differing levels of athletic success. It is scarcely surprising that Ethiopian or Kenyan distance runners do better" ], [ "than everyone else, since they are in the habit of running immense distances to and from primary school, middle school, and high school. The training is what's crucial, not the blackness. The Chinese sports establishment also has carried out an enormous,", "The pool of potential athletes has expanded in other ways, too. First, the population has exploded. Second, we are coming ever closer to a worldwide middle class, the class from which athletes typically are drawn. Whether, in an age of multinational capitalism, we may talk reasonably about a post-colonial era is way beyond the scope of this article. The fact remains, however, that the developing world is doing just that--developing. Even Mozambique, which ranks at, or near, the bottom of national per capita gross national product tables, has shown an increase of some 20 percent in adult literacy rates over the past 20 years. Literacy rates are merely an index of education, which itself is another way of talking about a global move away from a hand-to-mouth lifestyle.", "Better health care affects athletic ability directly. This is true in the trivial case in which, say, antibiotics cure a runner's fever before the big race, but it may also be true in a more significant way. Diseases contracted in early infancy can have a lifetime impact on health--not necessarily a big one, but an impact nevertheless. Previous generations bore scars from all sorts of non-life-threatening diseases, the stuff everyone picked up as a baby. Nowadays, though, more and more people grow up with no history of disease. Since top athletes inevitably are drawn from the healthiest sector of the population, a generally superior system of health care means a bigger pool of people to draw from. You are much more likely to find someone who can run a mile in 3:30 in a sample of several million superbly healthy people than you are in a sample of 10,000.", "A lot of entrepreneurs and technophiles would like us to think that the answer has to do with discoveries in the world of sports technology. A new Nike shoe is trumpeted as something that will shave at least one-thousandth of a second off your 100-meter time. Trainers measure the rate of buildup of lactic acid in your muscles, then claim that their programs will control it. Nutritionists fine-tune athletes' diets. Even the old sexual-abstinence-before-the-race dogma is being re-evaluated under the all-seeing eye of science. But I consider all this little more than tinkering. Sports records would continue to tumble even if training methods or athletic clothing or sexual practices were exactly the same today as they were in 1896, when the first modern Olympics took place. These minor miracles are the product neither of technology nor of training but of demographic patterns that affect us all.", "Just because nurture has a more significant effect on athletic performance doesn't mean that nature lies dormant, though. Genetic variation exists for just about any trait you choose to study, and the", "miler--their genes have affected their athletic performance. One genetic factor that may be influencing performance trends is what is known as \"hybrid vigor.\" Cattle breeders have known about this for a long time: Take two inbred lines of cattle, cross", "The Olympic Gene Pool \n\n Why the human race keeps getting faster. \n\n By Andrew Berry \n\n ( 2,168 words; posted Thursday, July 4; to be composted Thursday, July 11 )", "and effective, experiment to help dispel the myth that race has a direct relation to athletic ability. Until recently, a quick glance at the medals table confirmed every stereotype people held about Asians and sports. Then the Chinese decided to produce", "you, therefore, conclude that Africans have better genes for running than Asians do? No. Environmental differences between the two groups could account for differing levels of athletic success. It is scarcely surprising that Ethiopian or Kenyan distance runners do better", "Since all these are changes in how we live, not anything innate, we have to conclude that what we are describing here are effects of environment, not genes. Let us assume that our 1900 and 1990 12-year-olds are identical twins magically born 90 years apart. The 1990 girl still will grow up faster, end up bigger, menstruate earlier, and live longer than the 1900 girl. Perhaps way, way back in human history, when our forebears were still fleeing saber-toothed tigers, natural selection for athletic prowess came into play. But all that ended long ago. Indeed, the laws of natural selection probably work against athletes these days: Given the rigors of training schedules, it is possible that today's top athletes have fewer children than average.", "ability to run quickly would be no exception. To take a trivial case, we know that the inheritance of extra fingers or toes is determined genetically. It is quite possible that the possession of an extra toe would hinder an aspiring", "environmental differences among the study groups. Sure, you will find more Africans or descendants of Africans standing on the podiums at the end of Olympic track events. And you will find far fewer Asians on those same podiums. But can", "That doesn't mean, however, that genetic differences in athletic ability can be correlated automatically with race. That is a claim that is impossible to test, because you cannot control, in an experimental sense,", "The decline of empire has its Olympic corollaries. Britain won, on average, 17 gold medals per Olympics in the five official games held in its imperial heyday before World War I. That average has dropped to only five medals per Olympics in the 17 held since. This is not a reflection of declining athletic standards in Britain, however; it's a function of how much more competitive other nations have become. The Olympics originally were the preserve of the socioeconomic elite of the socioeconomic elite among nations. Consider this: Only 13 nations participated in 1896, but there were 172 in 1992. Black Africans didn't take part until the third modern games, held in St. Louis in 1908. Even this was accidental: Lentauw and Yamasami, Zulu tribesmen, entered the marathon because they happened to be in St. Louis as part of an exhibit about the Boer war. Lentauw finished ninth despite being chased into a cornfield by dogs.", "Human improvement, like race-horse improvement, must eventually bow to the basic constraints of biomechanics. The age of menarche cannot keep on falling forever. On the other hand, it is clear from the remarkable demographic changes of just the past 20 years that these long-term trends are with us still. They may be slowing down in some more developed societies, but they roar along in others. And these trends will continue to fuel the improvement in athletic performance. Several new records will be set in Atlanta. And in Sydney in 2000, and wherever the Olympics are held in 2044. We will continue running faster and jumping further for a good long while to come.", "On May 6, 1954, at Oxford University's Iffley Road track, Roger Bannister became, by just half a second, the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. The Holy Grail of middle-distance running was his. Forty-two years later, however, that achievement seems less significant. Four-minute miles are commonplace; the current record, held by Algerian Noureddine Morceli, is 3:44 , more than 5 percent faster than Bannister's speed. What Iffley Road witnessed was just another step along the road to an ever quicker mile, part of the inexorable improvement of athletic performance that we usually take for granted, particularly when the Olympics roll around. If you stop to think about it, though, such constant progress is remarkable. After all, as biomechanical machines with a standard set of parts, humans should be subject to the same limitations we see in, say, automobiles. How come they aren't?", "record-breaking female distance runners (and swimmers), and, boy, did they ever. In 1992, China ranked fourth in the Olympic-medal haul.", "What do such trends have to do with athletic performance? Well, if we're living longer and growing up faster, that must mean we're producing bigger, better bodies. Better bodies imply faster miles. We run faster and faster for the same reason it is now common for 11-year-old girls to menstruate. But why are these things happening?", "There are some barriers that simply cannot be broken. We will never run a mile at the same speed at which we now run 100 meters, for instance. The laws of oxygen exchange will not permit it. Race horses seem already to have hit that outer limit. For years, they were as good as human athletes at pushing back speed records, but then they simply stopped getting faster. Take the prestigious British Derby. From 1850 to 1930, winning times dropped from 2:55 to 2:39. But from 1986 to 1996, the average time has been--2:39. Unlike people, race horses are specifically bred and reared to run. Generations of careful genetic selection have ensured that today's race horse has every possible speed-enhancing characteristic. Training techniques, too, are tremendously sophisticated. But you can go only so far. You can only breed horses with ultralight thin bones to a certain point; the bones will break under stress if they get any lighter.", "You can bring a single generation up to speed through training, but the trends we're dealing with transcend individual generations. Which brings us to another question: Will there come a time when the human machine will hit some sort of natural limit and an Olympic Games pass without a single record tumbling? In principle, yes." ], [ "The decline of empire has its Olympic corollaries. Britain won, on average, 17 gold medals per Olympics in the five official games held in its imperial heyday before World War I. That average has dropped to only five medals per Olympics in the 17 held since. This is not a reflection of declining athletic standards in Britain, however; it's a function of how much more competitive other nations have become. The Olympics originally were the preserve of the socioeconomic elite of the socioeconomic elite among nations. Consider this: Only 13 nations participated in 1896, but there were 172 in 1992. Black Africans didn't take part until the third modern games, held in St. Louis in 1908. Even this was accidental: Lentauw and Yamasami, Zulu tribesmen, entered the marathon because they happened to be in St. Louis as part of an exhibit about the Boer war. Lentauw finished ninth despite being chased into a cornfield by dogs.", "A lot of entrepreneurs and technophiles would like us to think that the answer has to do with discoveries in the world of sports technology. A new Nike shoe is trumpeted as something that will shave at least one-thousandth of a second off your 100-meter time. Trainers measure the rate of buildup of lactic acid in your muscles, then claim that their programs will control it. Nutritionists fine-tune athletes' diets. Even the old sexual-abstinence-before-the-race dogma is being re-evaluated under the all-seeing eye of science. But I consider all this little more than tinkering. Sports records would continue to tumble even if training methods or athletic clothing or sexual practices were exactly the same today as they were in 1896, when the first modern Olympics took place. These minor miracles are the product neither of technology nor of training but of demographic patterns that affect us all.", "and effective, experiment to help dispel the myth that race has a direct relation to athletic ability. Until recently, a quick glance at the medals table confirmed every stereotype people held about Asians and sports. Then the Chinese decided to produce", "than everyone else, since they are in the habit of running immense distances to and from primary school, middle school, and high school. The training is what's crucial, not the blackness. The Chinese sports establishment also has carried out an enormous,", "The pool of potential athletes has expanded in other ways, too. First, the population has exploded. Second, we are coming ever closer to a worldwide middle class, the class from which athletes typically are drawn. Whether, in an age of multinational capitalism, we may talk reasonably about a post-colonial era is way beyond the scope of this article. The fact remains, however, that the developing world is doing just that--developing. Even Mozambique, which ranks at, or near, the bottom of national per capita gross national product tables, has shown an increase of some 20 percent in adult literacy rates over the past 20 years. Literacy rates are merely an index of education, which itself is another way of talking about a global move away from a hand-to-mouth lifestyle.", "On May 6, 1954, at Oxford University's Iffley Road track, Roger Bannister became, by just half a second, the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. The Holy Grail of middle-distance running was his. Forty-two years later, however, that achievement seems less significant. Four-minute miles are commonplace; the current record, held by Algerian Noureddine Morceli, is 3:44 , more than 5 percent faster than Bannister's speed. What Iffley Road witnessed was just another step along the road to an ever quicker mile, part of the inexorable improvement of athletic performance that we usually take for granted, particularly when the Olympics roll around. If you stop to think about it, though, such constant progress is remarkable. After all, as biomechanical machines with a standard set of parts, humans should be subject to the same limitations we see in, say, automobiles. How come they aren't?", "Better health care affects athletic ability directly. This is true in the trivial case in which, say, antibiotics cure a runner's fever before the big race, but it may also be true in a more significant way. Diseases contracted in early infancy can have a lifetime impact on health--not necessarily a big one, but an impact nevertheless. Previous generations bore scars from all sorts of non-life-threatening diseases, the stuff everyone picked up as a baby. Nowadays, though, more and more people grow up with no history of disease. Since top athletes inevitably are drawn from the healthiest sector of the population, a generally superior system of health care means a bigger pool of people to draw from. You are much more likely to find someone who can run a mile in 3:30 in a sample of several million superbly healthy people than you are in a sample of 10,000.", "The Olympic Gene Pool \n\n Why the human race keeps getting faster. \n\n By Andrew Berry \n\n ( 2,168 words; posted Thursday, July 4; to be composted Thursday, July 11 )", "Since all these are changes in how we live, not anything innate, we have to conclude that what we are describing here are effects of environment, not genes. Let us assume that our 1900 and 1990 12-year-olds are identical twins magically born 90 years apart. The 1990 girl still will grow up faster, end up bigger, menstruate earlier, and live longer than the 1900 girl. Perhaps way, way back in human history, when our forebears were still fleeing saber-toothed tigers, natural selection for athletic prowess came into play. But all that ended long ago. Indeed, the laws of natural selection probably work against athletes these days: Given the rigors of training schedules, it is possible that today's top athletes have fewer children than average.", "You can bring a single generation up to speed through training, but the trends we're dealing with transcend individual generations. Which brings us to another question: Will there come a time when the human machine will hit some sort of natural limit and an Olympic Games pass without a single record tumbling? In principle, yes.", "Human improvement, like race-horse improvement, must eventually bow to the basic constraints of biomechanics. The age of menarche cannot keep on falling forever. On the other hand, it is clear from the remarkable demographic changes of just the past 20 years that these long-term trends are with us still. They may be slowing down in some more developed societies, but they roar along in others. And these trends will continue to fuel the improvement in athletic performance. Several new records will be set in Atlanta. And in Sydney in 2000, and wherever the Olympics are held in 2044. We will continue running faster and jumping further for a good long while to come.", "record-breaking female distance runners (and swimmers), and, boy, did they ever. In 1992, China ranked fourth in the Olympic-medal haul.", "Demographers have offered a variety of explanations, but the main one is that our diet is improving. A 12-year-old ate better in 1990 than she would have in the Victorian era. This", "What do such trends have to do with athletic performance? Well, if we're living longer and growing up faster, that must mean we're producing bigger, better bodies. Better bodies imply faster miles. We run faster and faster for the same reason it is now common for 11-year-old girls to menstruate. But why are these things happening?", "There are some barriers that simply cannot be broken. We will never run a mile at the same speed at which we now run 100 meters, for instance. The laws of oxygen exchange will not permit it. Race horses seem already to have hit that outer limit. For years, they were as good as human athletes at pushing back speed records, but then they simply stopped getting faster. Take the prestigious British Derby. From 1850 to 1930, winning times dropped from 2:55 to 2:39. But from 1986 to 1996, the average time has been--2:39. Unlike people, race horses are specifically bred and reared to run. Generations of careful genetic selection have ensured that today's race horse has every possible speed-enhancing characteristic. Training techniques, too, are tremendously sophisticated. But you can go only so far. You can only breed horses with ultralight thin bones to a certain point; the bones will break under stress if they get any lighter.", "environmental differences among the study groups. Sure, you will find more Africans or descendants of Africans standing on the podiums at the end of Olympic track events. And you will find far fewer Asians on those same podiums. But can", "Probably the most striking change, though, is how much more quickly children are maturing. A 12-year-old child in 1990 who was in what the World Health Organization calls \"average economic circumstances\" was about 9 inches taller than his or her 1900 counterpart. This is not solely the product of the first trend--the increase in average size--but also due to the fact that children develop faster. Girls menstruate earlier than they used to. The age of menarche (the onset of menstruation) has decreased by three or four months per decade in average sections of Western European populations for the past 150 years. There is a good chance that our 1990 12-year-old already had started to menstruate. Her 1900 counterpart would still have had three years to wait.", "Over the past century, the human race has been affected by a slew of what demographers call \"secular\" trends. (In this context, \"secular\" does not refer to a trend's lack of spirituality but to its longevity: Secular trends are long-term modifications, not just brief fluctuations.) One such trend is an increase in average size. You have to stoop to get through the doorways of a Tudor cottage in England because its inhabitants were smaller than you are, not because they had a penchant for crouching. Another trend is in life expectancy. People are living longer. Life expectancy in Africa increased over the past 20 years from 46 to 53 years. Over the same period in Europe, where things were already pretty comfortable to begin with, life expectancy increased from 71 to 75 years. The global average was an increase from 58 to 65 years.", "you, therefore, conclude that Africans have better genes for running than Asians do? No. Environmental differences between the two groups could account for differing levels of athletic success. It is scarcely surprising that Ethiopian or Kenyan distance runners do better", "miler--their genes have affected their athletic performance. One genetic factor that may be influencing performance trends is what is known as \"hybrid vigor.\" Cattle breeders have known about this for a long time: Take two inbred lines of cattle, cross" ], [ "Since all these are changes in how we live, not anything innate, we have to conclude that what we are describing here are effects of environment, not genes. Let us assume that our 1900 and 1990 12-year-olds are identical twins magically born 90 years apart. The 1990 girl still will grow up faster, end up bigger, menstruate earlier, and live longer than the 1900 girl. Perhaps way, way back in human history, when our forebears were still fleeing saber-toothed tigers, natural selection for athletic prowess came into play. But all that ended long ago. Indeed, the laws of natural selection probably work against athletes these days: Given the rigors of training schedules, it is possible that today's top athletes have fewer children than average.", "A lot of entrepreneurs and technophiles would like us to think that the answer has to do with discoveries in the world of sports technology. A new Nike shoe is trumpeted as something that will shave at least one-thousandth of a second off your 100-meter time. Trainers measure the rate of buildup of lactic acid in your muscles, then claim that their programs will control it. Nutritionists fine-tune athletes' diets. Even the old sexual-abstinence-before-the-race dogma is being re-evaluated under the all-seeing eye of science. But I consider all this little more than tinkering. Sports records would continue to tumble even if training methods or athletic clothing or sexual practices were exactly the same today as they were in 1896, when the first modern Olympics took place. These minor miracles are the product neither of technology nor of training but of demographic patterns that affect us all.", "Human improvement, like race-horse improvement, must eventually bow to the basic constraints of biomechanics. The age of menarche cannot keep on falling forever. On the other hand, it is clear from the remarkable demographic changes of just the past 20 years that these long-term trends are with us still. They may be slowing down in some more developed societies, but they roar along in others. And these trends will continue to fuel the improvement in athletic performance. Several new records will be set in Atlanta. And in Sydney in 2000, and wherever the Olympics are held in 2044. We will continue running faster and jumping further for a good long while to come.", "On May 6, 1954, at Oxford University's Iffley Road track, Roger Bannister became, by just half a second, the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. The Holy Grail of middle-distance running was his. Forty-two years later, however, that achievement seems less significant. Four-minute miles are commonplace; the current record, held by Algerian Noureddine Morceli, is 3:44 , more than 5 percent faster than Bannister's speed. What Iffley Road witnessed was just another step along the road to an ever quicker mile, part of the inexorable improvement of athletic performance that we usually take for granted, particularly when the Olympics roll around. If you stop to think about it, though, such constant progress is remarkable. After all, as biomechanical machines with a standard set of parts, humans should be subject to the same limitations we see in, say, automobiles. How come they aren't?", "Just because nurture has a more significant effect on athletic performance doesn't mean that nature lies dormant, though. Genetic variation exists for just about any trait you choose to study, and the", "What do such trends have to do with athletic performance? Well, if we're living longer and growing up faster, that must mean we're producing bigger, better bodies. Better bodies imply faster miles. We run faster and faster for the same reason it is now common for 11-year-old girls to menstruate. But why are these things happening?", "than everyone else, since they are in the habit of running immense distances to and from primary school, middle school, and high school. The training is what's crucial, not the blackness. The Chinese sports establishment also has carried out an enormous,", "Better health care affects athletic ability directly. This is true in the trivial case in which, say, antibiotics cure a runner's fever before the big race, but it may also be true in a more significant way. Diseases contracted in early infancy can have a lifetime impact on health--not necessarily a big one, but an impact nevertheless. Previous generations bore scars from all sorts of non-life-threatening diseases, the stuff everyone picked up as a baby. Nowadays, though, more and more people grow up with no history of disease. Since top athletes inevitably are drawn from the healthiest sector of the population, a generally superior system of health care means a bigger pool of people to draw from. You are much more likely to find someone who can run a mile in 3:30 in a sample of several million superbly healthy people than you are in a sample of 10,000.", "The pool of potential athletes has expanded in other ways, too. First, the population has exploded. Second, we are coming ever closer to a worldwide middle class, the class from which athletes typically are drawn. Whether, in an age of multinational capitalism, we may talk reasonably about a post-colonial era is way beyond the scope of this article. The fact remains, however, that the developing world is doing just that--developing. Even Mozambique, which ranks at, or near, the bottom of national per capita gross national product tables, has shown an increase of some 20 percent in adult literacy rates over the past 20 years. Literacy rates are merely an index of education, which itself is another way of talking about a global move away from a hand-to-mouth lifestyle.", "That doesn't mean, however, that genetic differences in athletic ability can be correlated automatically with race. That is a claim that is impossible to test, because you cannot control, in an experimental sense,", "You can bring a single generation up to speed through training, but the trends we're dealing with transcend individual generations. Which brings us to another question: Will there come a time when the human machine will hit some sort of natural limit and an Olympic Games pass without a single record tumbling? In principle, yes.", "ability to run quickly would be no exception. To take a trivial case, we know that the inheritance of extra fingers or toes is determined genetically. It is quite possible that the possession of an extra toe would hinder an aspiring", "and effective, experiment to help dispel the myth that race has a direct relation to athletic ability. Until recently, a quick glance at the medals table confirmed every stereotype people held about Asians and sports. Then the Chinese decided to produce", "There are some barriers that simply cannot be broken. We will never run a mile at the same speed at which we now run 100 meters, for instance. The laws of oxygen exchange will not permit it. Race horses seem already to have hit that outer limit. For years, they were as good as human athletes at pushing back speed records, but then they simply stopped getting faster. Take the prestigious British Derby. From 1850 to 1930, winning times dropped from 2:55 to 2:39. But from 1986 to 1996, the average time has been--2:39. Unlike people, race horses are specifically bred and reared to run. Generations of careful genetic selection have ensured that today's race horse has every possible speed-enhancing characteristic. Training techniques, too, are tremendously sophisticated. But you can go only so far. You can only breed horses with ultralight thin bones to a certain point; the bones will break under stress if they get any lighter.", "miler--their genes have affected their athletic performance. One genetic factor that may be influencing performance trends is what is known as \"hybrid vigor.\" Cattle breeders have known about this for a long time: Take two inbred lines of cattle, cross", "The Olympic Gene Pool \n\n Why the human race keeps getting faster. \n\n By Andrew Berry \n\n ( 2,168 words; posted Thursday, July 4; to be composted Thursday, July 11 )", "The decline of empire has its Olympic corollaries. Britain won, on average, 17 gold medals per Olympics in the five official games held in its imperial heyday before World War I. That average has dropped to only five medals per Olympics in the 17 held since. This is not a reflection of declining athletic standards in Britain, however; it's a function of how much more competitive other nations have become. The Olympics originally were the preserve of the socioeconomic elite of the socioeconomic elite among nations. Consider this: Only 13 nations participated in 1896, but there were 172 in 1992. Black Africans didn't take part until the third modern games, held in St. Louis in 1908. Even this was accidental: Lentauw and Yamasami, Zulu tribesmen, entered the marathon because they happened to be in St. Louis as part of an exhibit about the Boer war. Lentauw finished ninth despite being chased into a cornfield by dogs.", "you, therefore, conclude that Africans have better genes for running than Asians do? No. Environmental differences between the two groups could account for differing levels of athletic success. It is scarcely surprising that Ethiopian or Kenyan distance runners do better", "Probably the most striking change, though, is how much more quickly children are maturing. A 12-year-old child in 1990 who was in what the World Health Organization calls \"average economic circumstances\" was about 9 inches taller than his or her 1900 counterpart. This is not solely the product of the first trend--the increase in average size--but also due to the fact that children develop faster. Girls menstruate earlier than they used to. The age of menarche (the onset of menstruation) has decreased by three or four months per decade in average sections of Western European populations for the past 150 years. There is a good chance that our 1990 12-year-old already had started to menstruate. Her 1900 counterpart would still have had three years to wait.", "environmental differences among the study groups. Sure, you will find more Africans or descendants of Africans standing on the podiums at the end of Olympic track events. And you will find far fewer Asians on those same podiums. But can" ], [ "A lot of entrepreneurs and technophiles would like us to think that the answer has to do with discoveries in the world of sports technology. A new Nike shoe is trumpeted as something that will shave at least one-thousandth of a second off your 100-meter time. Trainers measure the rate of buildup of lactic acid in your muscles, then claim that their programs will control it. Nutritionists fine-tune athletes' diets. Even the old sexual-abstinence-before-the-race dogma is being re-evaluated under the all-seeing eye of science. But I consider all this little more than tinkering. Sports records would continue to tumble even if training methods or athletic clothing or sexual practices were exactly the same today as they were in 1896, when the first modern Olympics took place. These minor miracles are the product neither of technology nor of training but of demographic patterns that affect us all.", "Better health care affects athletic ability directly. This is true in the trivial case in which, say, antibiotics cure a runner's fever before the big race, but it may also be true in a more significant way. Diseases contracted in early infancy can have a lifetime impact on health--not necessarily a big one, but an impact nevertheless. Previous generations bore scars from all sorts of non-life-threatening diseases, the stuff everyone picked up as a baby. Nowadays, though, more and more people grow up with no history of disease. Since top athletes inevitably are drawn from the healthiest sector of the population, a generally superior system of health care means a bigger pool of people to draw from. You are much more likely to find someone who can run a mile in 3:30 in a sample of several million superbly healthy people than you are in a sample of 10,000.", "than everyone else, since they are in the habit of running immense distances to and from primary school, middle school, and high school. The training is what's crucial, not the blackness. The Chinese sports establishment also has carried out an enormous,", "On May 6, 1954, at Oxford University's Iffley Road track, Roger Bannister became, by just half a second, the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. The Holy Grail of middle-distance running was his. Forty-two years later, however, that achievement seems less significant. Four-minute miles are commonplace; the current record, held by Algerian Noureddine Morceli, is 3:44 , more than 5 percent faster than Bannister's speed. What Iffley Road witnessed was just another step along the road to an ever quicker mile, part of the inexorable improvement of athletic performance that we usually take for granted, particularly when the Olympics roll around. If you stop to think about it, though, such constant progress is remarkable. After all, as biomechanical machines with a standard set of parts, humans should be subject to the same limitations we see in, say, automobiles. How come they aren't?", "Human improvement, like race-horse improvement, must eventually bow to the basic constraints of biomechanics. The age of menarche cannot keep on falling forever. On the other hand, it is clear from the remarkable demographic changes of just the past 20 years that these long-term trends are with us still. They may be slowing down in some more developed societies, but they roar along in others. And these trends will continue to fuel the improvement in athletic performance. Several new records will be set in Atlanta. And in Sydney in 2000, and wherever the Olympics are held in 2044. We will continue running faster and jumping further for a good long while to come.", "Just because nurture has a more significant effect on athletic performance doesn't mean that nature lies dormant, though. Genetic variation exists for just about any trait you choose to study, and the", "Since all these are changes in how we live, not anything innate, we have to conclude that what we are describing here are effects of environment, not genes. Let us assume that our 1900 and 1990 12-year-olds are identical twins magically born 90 years apart. The 1990 girl still will grow up faster, end up bigger, menstruate earlier, and live longer than the 1900 girl. Perhaps way, way back in human history, when our forebears were still fleeing saber-toothed tigers, natural selection for athletic prowess came into play. But all that ended long ago. Indeed, the laws of natural selection probably work against athletes these days: Given the rigors of training schedules, it is possible that today's top athletes have fewer children than average.", "The pool of potential athletes has expanded in other ways, too. First, the population has exploded. Second, we are coming ever closer to a worldwide middle class, the class from which athletes typically are drawn. Whether, in an age of multinational capitalism, we may talk reasonably about a post-colonial era is way beyond the scope of this article. The fact remains, however, that the developing world is doing just that--developing. Even Mozambique, which ranks at, or near, the bottom of national per capita gross national product tables, has shown an increase of some 20 percent in adult literacy rates over the past 20 years. Literacy rates are merely an index of education, which itself is another way of talking about a global move away from a hand-to-mouth lifestyle.", "You can bring a single generation up to speed through training, but the trends we're dealing with transcend individual generations. Which brings us to another question: Will there come a time when the human machine will hit some sort of natural limit and an Olympic Games pass without a single record tumbling? In principle, yes.", "miler--their genes have affected their athletic performance. One genetic factor that may be influencing performance trends is what is known as \"hybrid vigor.\" Cattle breeders have known about this for a long time: Take two inbred lines of cattle, cross", "What do such trends have to do with athletic performance? Well, if we're living longer and growing up faster, that must mean we're producing bigger, better bodies. Better bodies imply faster miles. We run faster and faster for the same reason it is now common for 11-year-old girls to menstruate. But why are these things happening?", "and effective, experiment to help dispel the myth that race has a direct relation to athletic ability. Until recently, a quick glance at the medals table confirmed every stereotype people held about Asians and sports. Then the Chinese decided to produce", "There are some barriers that simply cannot be broken. We will never run a mile at the same speed at which we now run 100 meters, for instance. The laws of oxygen exchange will not permit it. Race horses seem already to have hit that outer limit. For years, they were as good as human athletes at pushing back speed records, but then they simply stopped getting faster. Take the prestigious British Derby. From 1850 to 1930, winning times dropped from 2:55 to 2:39. But from 1986 to 1996, the average time has been--2:39. Unlike people, race horses are specifically bred and reared to run. Generations of careful genetic selection have ensured that today's race horse has every possible speed-enhancing characteristic. Training techniques, too, are tremendously sophisticated. But you can go only so far. You can only breed horses with ultralight thin bones to a certain point; the bones will break under stress if they get any lighter.", "The decline of empire has its Olympic corollaries. Britain won, on average, 17 gold medals per Olympics in the five official games held in its imperial heyday before World War I. That average has dropped to only five medals per Olympics in the 17 held since. This is not a reflection of declining athletic standards in Britain, however; it's a function of how much more competitive other nations have become. The Olympics originally were the preserve of the socioeconomic elite of the socioeconomic elite among nations. Consider this: Only 13 nations participated in 1896, but there were 172 in 1992. Black Africans didn't take part until the third modern games, held in St. Louis in 1908. Even this was accidental: Lentauw and Yamasami, Zulu tribesmen, entered the marathon because they happened to be in St. Louis as part of an exhibit about the Boer war. Lentauw finished ninth despite being chased into a cornfield by dogs.", "That doesn't mean, however, that genetic differences in athletic ability can be correlated automatically with race. That is a claim that is impossible to test, because you cannot control, in an experimental sense,", "The Olympic Gene Pool \n\n Why the human race keeps getting faster. \n\n By Andrew Berry \n\n ( 2,168 words; posted Thursday, July 4; to be composted Thursday, July 11 )", "ability to run quickly would be no exception. To take a trivial case, we know that the inheritance of extra fingers or toes is determined genetically. It is quite possible that the possession of an extra toe would hinder an aspiring", "you, therefore, conclude that Africans have better genes for running than Asians do? No. Environmental differences between the two groups could account for differing levels of athletic success. It is scarcely surprising that Ethiopian or Kenyan distance runners do better", "environmental differences among the study groups. Sure, you will find more Africans or descendants of Africans standing on the podiums at the end of Olympic track events. And you will find far fewer Asians on those same podiums. But can", "record-breaking female distance runners (and swimmers), and, boy, did they ever. In 1992, China ranked fourth in the Olympic-medal haul." ] ]
valid	63833	[ "Of the following choices, which best describes Ivy?", "Of the following options, which best describes the Captain?", "Does it seem like there's a romantic component to Ivy and the Captain's relationship?", "What is interesting about the Aphrodite?", "How would you describe the author's style throughout the passage?", "How would you describe the changes in tone throughout the passage?", "Why might a person not be the hugest fan of Captain?", "Of the following options, who might want to read this passage the most?", "Do you think this story has a happy ending?" ]	[ [ "beautiful and feminine", "independent and determined", "confident and myopic", "quiet and smart" ], [ "stubborn and competent", "funny and kind", "handsome and witty", "open-minded and bold" ], [ "Yes, they both show feelings for each other but they have yet to enter a relationship", "Possible, Ivy has feelings for him by the end but it remains unclear", "No, they're just coworkers and nothing more is addressed beyond that", "Possibly, the Captain has feelings for her by the end but it remains unclear" ], [ "It's a brand new ship", "It's an old ship and its predecessors were retired after having successful runs as ships", "It's an old ship and its predecessors previously failed in their missions", "It's an old ship that doesn't work but contains a plethora of interesting data" ], [ "He uses lots of historical data from previous science fiction universes", "He uses lots of technical details and technologies to immerse the reader in the lore", "He uses lots of humor to make the technical elements more entertaining", "He uses lots of descriptions of the ship's surroundings to show the peaceful voyages the Aphrodite goes on" ], [ "The story remains relatively calm except for the climax", "The story has an early climax with a big reveal, but the majority of the story is nerdy and filled with space-travel details", "The story is intense at the beginning but calms by the end", "The story remains fast-paced and stressful throughout" ], [ "He's actively racist with regard to his crew members", "He's actively sexist with regard to his crew members", "He's overconfident at times and can be rude", "He doesn't listen to his crew most of the time" ], [ "A sci-fi fan who likes romance-heavy stories", "A sci-fi fan who likes suspense and watching friendships grow", "A fan of fantasy-adventure stories", "A fan of adventure stories where the protagonist has to fit in with a new group" ], [ "No, the Captain really wants to date Ivy but it doesn't seem like it's gonna happen", "Yes, the Captain is successful and he's dating Ivy", "Yes, they were successful on their mission", "For the most part, they succeeded on their mission but the Captain and Ivy aren't together" ] ]	[ 2, 1, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 2, 4 ]	[ 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "\"All right,\" said Strike, setting down his glass. \"What's on your mind,\n Cob? Something's eating you.\"\n\n\n Whitley nodded very slowly. He took a long pull at his highball. \"I\n understand that you goofballed your chances of getting the\nGanymede\nback when Gorman spoke his piece to you....\"\n\n\n \"All I said to him....\"\n\n\n \"I know. I know what you said ... and it won't bear repeating. But\n you're not fooling me. You've fallen for old Lover-Girl and you don't\n want to leave her. Ver-ry commendable. Loyal! Stout fellah! But what\n about Ivy?\"\n\n\n \"Ivy?\"\n\n\n Cob looked away. \"I thought that you and she ... well, I thought that\n when we got back ... well....\"", "Swiftly, the fat, ungainly shape of old Aphrodisiac drew near. In her\n flying-bridge, Strike and Ivy Hendricks watched the stricken ships in\n the darkened viewport.\n\n\n The temperature stood at 140° and the air was bitter with the smell\n of hot metal. Ivy's blouse clung to her body, soaked through with\n perspiration. Sweat ran from her hair into her eyes and she gasped\n for breath in the oven hot compartment. Strike watched her with\n apprehension.", "For all the tension between the occupants of the flying-bridge, Strike\n and Ivy Hendricks worked well together. And after a second week in\n space, a reluctant admiration was replacing the resentment between\n them. Ivy spent whatever time she could spare tinkering with her\n father's pet surge-circuit and Strike began to realize that there was\n little she did not know about spaceship engineering. Then, too, Ivy\n spent a lot of time at the controls, and Strike was forced to admit\n that he had never seen a finer job of piloting done by man or woman.\n\n\n And finally, Ivy hated old Brass-bottom Gorman even more than Strike\n did. She felt that Gorman had ruined her father's career, and she was\n dedicating her life to proving her father right and Brass-bottom wrong.\n There's nothing in the cosmos to nurture friendship like a common enemy.", "Ivy's eyes snapped angrily. \"That's not what I meant, and you know it!\n I mean this!\" She touched the red-sealed surge-circuit rheostat.\n\n\n \"That's very nice, Lieutenant,\" commented Cob drily. \"And I know that\n you've been very busy adjusting that gismo. But I seem to recall that\n the last time that circuit was uncorked everyone aboard became part of\n the woodwork ... very messily, too.\"\n\n\n \"Let me understand you, Ivy,\" said Strike in a flat voice. \"What you\n are suggesting is that I risk my ship and the lives of all of us trying\n to pull old Gorman's fat out of the fire with a drive that's blown\n skyhigh three times out of three. Very neat.\"", "Ivy fought her reeling senses and the bucking ship as the slack came\n out of the cable. Blackness was flickering at the edges of her field\n of vision. She could scarcely lift her hand to the red-sealed circuit\n rheostat. Shudderingly, she made the effort ... and failed. Conscious,\n but too spent to move, she collapsed over the blistering hot instrument\n panel.\n\n\n \"\nIvy!\n\" Strike was beside her, cradling her head in his arm.\n\n\n \"I ... I ... can't make it ... Strike. You'll ... have to run ... the\n show ... after ... all.\"\n\n\n Strike laid her gently in an acceleration chair and turned toward the\n control panel. His head was throbbing painfully as he broke the seal on\n the surge-circuit.", "There were tears bright in Ivy Hendricks' eyes and she sounded\n desperate. \"But we can save those ships! We can, I\nknow\nwe can! My\n father designed this ship! I know every rivet of her! Those idiots off\n Callisto didn't know what they were doing. These ships needed specially\n trained men. Father told them that! And I'm trained! I can take her in\n and save those ships!\" Her expression turned to one of disgust. \"Or are\n you afraid?\"\n\n\n \"Frankly, Ivy, I haven't enough sense to be afraid. But are you so\n certain that we can pull this off? If I make a mistake this time ...\n it'll be the last. For all of us.\"\n\n\n \"We can do it,\" said Ivy Hendricks simply.\n\n\n Strike turned to Cob. \"What do you say, Cob? Shall we make it hotter in\n here?\"", "\"That's about all there is to tell you. As soon as our rather\n leisurely E/O gets here, we can jet with Aunt Nelly's postcard.\" He\n nodded. \"That's the story. Lift ship in....\" He glanced at his wrist\n chronograph, \"... in an hour and five.\"\n\n\n The officers filed out and Cob Whitley stuck his head into the room.\n \"Captain?\"\n\n\n \"Come in, Cob.\" Strike's dark brows knit at the sight of the uniformed\n girl in the doorway.\n\n\n Cob's face was sober, but hidden amusement was kindling behind his\n eyes. \"Captain, may I present Lieutenant Hendricks? Lieutenant\nI-vy\nHendricks?\"\n\n\n Strike looked blankly at the girl.\n\n\n \"Our new E/O, Captain,\" prompted Whitley.", "Strike shook his head. \"She's gone to the Bureau of Ships with a\n designing job.\"\n\n\n Cob waved an expressive arm in the air. \"But dammit, man, I thought....\"\n\n\n \"The answer is\nno\n. Ivy's a nice girl ... but....\" He paused and\n sighed. \"Since she was promoted to her father's old rank ... well....\"\n He shrugged. \"Who wants a wife that ranks you?\"\n\n\n \"Never thought of that,\" mused Cob. For a long while he was silent;\n then he pulled out an address book and leafed through until he came to\n the pages marked \"Canalopolis, Mars.\"\n\n\n And he was gratified to see that Lieutenant Commander David Farragut\n Strykalski III was doing the same.", "And she agreed.\nOld Aphrodisiac had reached perihelion when it happened. The\n thermometer stood at 135° and tempers were snapping. Cob and Celia\n Graham had tangled about some minor point concerning Lover-Girl's\n weight and balance. Ivy went about her work on the bridge without\n speaking, and Strike made no attempt to brighten her sudden depression.\n Lieutenant Evans had punched Bayne, the Tactical Astrophysicist,\n in the eye for some disparaging remark about Southern California\n womanhood. The ratings were grumbling about the food....\n\n\n And then it happened.", "Cob snatched the flimsy from Sparks' hands and galloped for the\n flying-bridge. He burst in and waved the message excitedly in front of\n Strykalski's face.\n\n\n \"Have a look at this! Ye gods and little catfish! Read it!\"\n\n\n \"Well, dammit, hold it still so I can!\" snapped Strike. He read the\n message and passed it to Ivy Hendricks with a shake of his head.\n\n\n She read it through and looked up exultantly. \"This is\nit\n! This is\n the chance I've been praying for, Strike!\"\n\n\n He returned her gaze sourly. \"For Gorman to fall into the sun? I recall\n I said something of the sort myself, but there are other men on those\n ships. And, if I know Captain Varni on the\nLachesis\n, he won't let go\n that line even if he fries himself.\"", "Strike was in the observation blister forward, when Ensign Graham\n called to say that she had picked up a radar contact sunward. The\n IFF showed the pips to be the\nLachesis\nand the\nAtropos\n. The two\n dreadnaughts were engaged in coronary research patrol ... a purely\n routine business. But the thing that made Strike curse under his breath\n was Celia Graham's notation that the\nAtropos\ncarried none other than\n Space Admiral Horatio Gorman, Cominch Inplan.\n\n\n Strike thought it a pity that old Brass-bottom couldn't fall into\n Hell's hottest pit ... and he told Ivy so.", "Strike returned to the squawk-box. \"Radar!\"\n\n\n \"Graham here,\" replied Celia from her station.\n\n\n \"Get a radar fix on the\nLachesis\nand hold it. Send your dope up to\n Evans and tell him to send us a range estimate.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Captain,\" the girl replied crisply.\n\n\n \"Gun deck!\"\n\n\n \"Gun deck here, sir,\" came a feminine voice.\n\n\n \"Have number two starboard torpedo tube loaded with a fish and a spool\n of cable. Be ready to let fly on short notice ... any range.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir!\" The girl switched off.\n\n\n \"And now you, Miss Hendricks.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Captain?\" Her voice was low.\n\n\n \"Take over Control ... and Ivy....\"", "\"The first David Farragut Strykalski, son of a sea-loving Polish\n immigrant, emerged from World War II a four-striper and Congressional\n Medal winner. Then came David Farragut Strykalski, Jr., and, in the\n abortive Atomic War that terrified the world in 1961, he won a United\n Nations Peace Citation. And then came David Farragut Strykalski III ...\n me.\n\n\n \"From such humble beginnings do great traditions grow. But something\n happened when I came into the picture. I don't fit with the rest of\n them. Call it luck or temperament or what have you.", "\"Uh ... welcome aboard, Miss Hendricks,\" was all the Captain could find\n to say.\n\n\n The girl's eyes were cold and unfriendly. \"Thank you, Captain.\" Her\n voice was like cracked ice tinkling in a glass. \"If I may have your\n permission to inspect the drives, Captain, I\nmay\nbe able to\n convince you that the designer of this vessel was not ... as you seem\n to think ... a senile incompetent.\"\n\n\n Strike was perplexed, and he showed it. \"Why, certainly ... uh ...\n Miss ... but why should you be so....\"", "Carefully, Ivy circled the two warships. From the starboard tube on\n the gun-deck, a homing rocket leapt toward the\nAtropos\n. It plunged\n straight and true, spilling cable as it flew. It slammed up against\n the hull, and stuck there, fast to the battleship's flank. Quickly,\n a robocrane drew it within the ship and the cable was made secure.\n Like cosmic replicas of the ancient South American \"bolas,\" the three\n spacecraft whirled in space ... and all three began that sunward plunge\n together.\nThey were diving into the sun.\nThe heat in the\nAphrodite's\nbridge was unbearable. The thermometer\n showed 145° and it seemed to Strike that Hell must be cool by\n comparison.", "Strike stretched his long legs out on the steel deck. \"A Lieutenant\n Hendricks, I. V. Hendricks, is what the orders say.\"\n\n\n Cob thought hard for a moment and then shrugged his shoulders. \"I. V.\n Hendricks.\" He shook his head. \"Don't know him.\"\nThe other officers of the\nT.R.S. Aphrodite\nwere in conference with\n the Captain when Cob and the girl at his side reached the flying\n bridge. She was tall and dark-haired with regular features and pale\n blue eyes. She wore a service jumper with two silver stripes on the\n shoulder-straps, and even the shapeless garment could not hide the\n obvious trimness of her figure.\n\n\n Strike's back was toward the bulkhead, and he was addressing the others.", "Her designer, Harlan Hendricks, had been awarded a Legion of Merit\n for her, and every silver-braided admiral in the Fleet had dreamed\n of hoisting his flag on one of her class. There had been three. The\nArtemis\n, the\nAndromeda\n, and the prototype ... old Aphrodisiac. The\n three vessels had gone into action off Callisto after the Phobos Raid\n had set off hostilities between the Ionians and the Solarian Combine.\n\n\n All three were miserable failures.\n\n\n The eager officers commanding the three monitors had found the circuit\n too appealing to their hot little hands. They used it ... in some way,\n wrongly.", "The scaly bulk of the Tellurian Rocket Ship\nAphrodite\nloomed\n unhappily into the thick air above the two men as they reached the\n ventral valve. Strike raised reluctant eyes to the sloping flank of the\n fat spaceship.\n\n\n \"It looks,\" he commented bitterly, \"like a pregnant carp.\"\n\n\n Senior Lieutenant Coburn Whitley—\"Cob\" to his friends—nodded in\n agreement. \"That's our Lover-Girl ... old Aphrodisiac herself. The ship\n with the poison personality.\" Cob was the\nAphrodite's\nExecutive,\n and he had been with her a full year ... which was a record for Execs\n on the\nAphrodite\n. She generally sent them Earthside with nervous\n breakdowns in half that time.\n\n\n \"Tell me, Captain,\" continued Cob curiously, \"how does it happen\n that you of all people happened to draw this tub for a command? I\n thought....\"", "Whitley's smile was expansive. \"Strike, I think you're going to like\n our old tin pot here.\" He patted the\nAphrodite's\nnether belly\n affectionately. \"She's old ... but she's loose. And we're not likely to\n meet any Ambassadors or Admirals with her, either.\"\n\n\n Strykalski sighed, still thinking of his sleek\nGanymede\n. \"She'll\n carry the mail, I suppose. And that's about all that's expected of her.\"\n\n\n Cob shrugged philosophically. \"Better than tanking that stinking rocket\n fuel, anyway. Deep space?\"\n\n\n Strike shook his head. \"Venus-Mars.\"\n\n\n Cob scratched his chin speculatively. \"Perihelion run. Hot work.\"", "Strike lowered his head to clear the arch of the flying-bridge\n bulkhead. Cob followed. He trailed his Captain through a jungle\n of chrome piping to the main control panels. Strike sank into an\n acceleration chair in front of the red DANGER seal on the surge-circuit\n rheostat.\n\n\n \"Looks like a drug-store fountain, doesn't it?\" commented Cob.\n\n\n Strykalski nodded sadly, thinking of the padded smoothness of the\nGanymede's\nflying-bridge. \"But she's home to us, anyway.\"\n\n\n The thick Venusian fog had closed in around the top levels of the ship,\n hugging the ports and cutting off all view of the field outside. Strike\n reached for the squawk-box control." ], [ "\"Uh ... welcome aboard, Miss Hendricks,\" was all the Captain could find\n to say.\n\n\n The girl's eyes were cold and unfriendly. \"Thank you, Captain.\" Her\n voice was like cracked ice tinkling in a glass. \"If I may have your\n permission to inspect the drives, Captain, I\nmay\nbe able to\n convince you that the designer of this vessel was not ... as you seem\n to think ... a senile incompetent.\"\n\n\n Strike was perplexed, and he showed it. \"Why, certainly ... uh ...\n Miss ... but why should you be so....\"", "\"Now hear this. All officer personnel will assemble in the flying\n bridge at 600 hours for Captain's briefing. Officer of the Deck will\n recall any enlisted personnel now on liberty....\"\n\n\n Whitley was on his feet, all the slackness gone from his manner.\n \"Orders, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"We can't do anything until the new Engineering Officer gets here.\n They're sending someone down from the\nAntigone\n, and I expect him by\n 600 hours. In the meantime you'll take over his part of the work. See\n to it that we are fueled and ready to lift ship by 602. Base will start\n loading the mail at 599:30. That's about all.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir.\" Whitley saluted and turned to go. At the bulkhead, he\n paused. \"Captain,\" he asked, \"Who is the new E/O to be?\"", "The scaly bulk of the Tellurian Rocket Ship\nAphrodite\nloomed\n unhappily into the thick air above the two men as they reached the\n ventral valve. Strike raised reluctant eyes to the sloping flank of the\n fat spaceship.\n\n\n \"It looks,\" he commented bitterly, \"like a pregnant carp.\"\n\n\n Senior Lieutenant Coburn Whitley—\"Cob\" to his friends—nodded in\n agreement. \"That's our Lover-Girl ... old Aphrodisiac herself. The ship\n with the poison personality.\" Cob was the\nAphrodite's\nExecutive,\n and he had been with her a full year ... which was a record for Execs\n on the\nAphrodite\n. She generally sent them Earthside with nervous\n breakdowns in half that time.\n\n\n \"Tell me, Captain,\" continued Cob curiously, \"how does it happen\n that you of all people happened to draw this tub for a command? I\n thought....\"", "Cob snatched the flimsy from Sparks' hands and galloped for the\n flying-bridge. He burst in and waved the message excitedly in front of\n Strykalski's face.\n\n\n \"Have a look at this! Ye gods and little catfish! Read it!\"\n\n\n \"Well, dammit, hold it still so I can!\" snapped Strike. He read the\n message and passed it to Ivy Hendricks with a shake of his head.\n\n\n She read it through and looked up exultantly. \"This is\nit\n! This is\n the chance I've been praying for, Strike!\"\n\n\n He returned her gaze sourly. \"For Gorman to fall into the sun? I recall\n I said something of the sort myself, but there are other men on those\n ships. And, if I know Captain Varni on the\nLachesis\n, he won't let go\n that line even if he fries himself.\"", "\"You know Gorman?\" queried Strykalski.\n\n\n Cob nodded. \"Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. Old Brass-bottom Gorman?\"\n\n\n \"The same.\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" Cob ran a hand over his chin speculatively, \"I know Gorman's\n a prize stinker ... but you were in command of the\nGanymede\n. And,\n after all, you come from an old service family and all that. How come\n this?\" He indicated the monitor expressively.\n\n\n Strike sighed. \"Well, now, Cob, I'll tell you. You'll be spacing with\n me and I guess you've a right to know the worst ... not that you\n wouldn't find it out anyway. I come from a long line of very sharp\n operators. Seven generations of officers and gentlemen. Lousy with\n tradition.", "Ivy's eyes snapped angrily. \"That's not what I meant, and you know it!\n I mean this!\" She touched the red-sealed surge-circuit rheostat.\n\n\n \"That's very nice, Lieutenant,\" commented Cob drily. \"And I know that\n you've been very busy adjusting that gismo. But I seem to recall that\n the last time that circuit was uncorked everyone aboard became part of\n the woodwork ... very messily, too.\"\n\n\n \"Let me understand you, Ivy,\" said Strike in a flat voice. \"What you\n are suggesting is that I risk my ship and the lives of all of us trying\n to pull old Gorman's fat out of the fire with a drive that's blown\n skyhigh three times out of three. Very neat.\"", "There were tears bright in Ivy Hendricks' eyes and she sounded\n desperate. \"But we can save those ships! We can, I\nknow\nwe can! My\n father designed this ship! I know every rivet of her! Those idiots off\n Callisto didn't know what they were doing. These ships needed specially\n trained men. Father told them that! And I'm trained! I can take her in\n and save those ships!\" Her expression turned to one of disgust. \"Or are\n you afraid?\"\n\n\n \"Frankly, Ivy, I haven't enough sense to be afraid. But are you so\n certain that we can pull this off? If I make a mistake this time ...\n it'll be the last. For all of us.\"\n\n\n \"We can do it,\" said Ivy Hendricks simply.\n\n\n Strike turned to Cob. \"What do you say, Cob? Shall we make it hotter in\n here?\"", "Strike lowered his head to clear the arch of the flying-bridge\n bulkhead. Cob followed. He trailed his Captain through a jungle\n of chrome piping to the main control panels. Strike sank into an\n acceleration chair in front of the red DANGER seal on the surge-circuit\n rheostat.\n\n\n \"Looks like a drug-store fountain, doesn't it?\" commented Cob.\n\n\n Strykalski nodded sadly, thinking of the padded smoothness of the\nGanymede's\nflying-bridge. \"But she's home to us, anyway.\"\n\n\n The thick Venusian fog had closed in around the top levels of the ship,\n hugging the ports and cutting off all view of the field outside. Strike\n reached for the squawk-box control.", "\"The first David Farragut Strykalski, son of a sea-loving Polish\n immigrant, emerged from World War II a four-striper and Congressional\n Medal winner. Then came David Farragut Strykalski, Jr., and, in the\n abortive Atomic War that terrified the world in 1961, he won a United\n Nations Peace Citation. And then came David Farragut Strykalski III ...\n me.\n\n\n \"From such humble beginnings do great traditions grow. But something\n happened when I came into the picture. I don't fit with the rest of\n them. Call it luck or temperament or what have you.", "The girl's voice was even colder than before as she said, \"Harlan\n Hendricks, Captain, is my father.\"\nA week in space had convinced Strike that he commanded a jinx ship.\n Jetting sunward from Venus, the cantankerous\nAphrodite\nhad burned a\n steering tube through, and it had been necessary to go into free-fall\n while Jenkins, the Assistant E/O, and a damage control party effected\n repairs. When the power was again applied, Old Aphrodisiac was running\n ten hours behind schedule, and Strike and Evans, the Astrogation\n Officer, were sweating out the unforeseen changes introduced into the\n orbital calculations by the time spent in free-fall.\n\n\n The\nAphrodite\nrumbled on toward the orbit of Mercury....", "Swiftly, the fat, ungainly shape of old Aphrodisiac drew near. In her\n flying-bridge, Strike and Ivy Hendricks watched the stricken ships in\n the darkened viewport.\n\n\n The temperature stood at 140° and the air was bitter with the smell\n of hot metal. Ivy's blouse clung to her body, soaked through with\n perspiration. Sweat ran from her hair into her eyes and she gasped\n for breath in the oven hot compartment. Strike watched her with\n apprehension.", "\"... and that's about the story. We are to jet within 28,000,000 miles\n of Sol. Orbit is trans-Mercurian hyperbolic. With Mars in opposition,\n we have to make a perihelion run and it won't be pleasant. But I'm\n certain this old boiler can take it. I understand the old boy who\n designed her wasn't as incompetent as they say. But Space Regs are\n specific about mail runs. This is important to you, Evans. Your\n astrogation has to be accurate to within twenty-five miles plus or\n minus the shortest route. And there'll be no breaking orbit. Now be\n certain that the refrigeration units are checked, Mister Wilkins,\n especially in the hydroponic cells. Pure air is going to be important.\"", "Strike stretched his long legs out on the steel deck. \"A Lieutenant\n Hendricks, I. V. Hendricks, is what the orders say.\"\n\n\n Cob thought hard for a moment and then shrugged his shoulders. \"I. V.\n Hendricks.\" He shook his head. \"Don't know him.\"\nThe other officers of the\nT.R.S. Aphrodite\nwere in conference with\n the Captain when Cob and the girl at his side reached the flying\n bridge. She was tall and dark-haired with regular features and pale\n blue eyes. She wore a service jumper with two silver stripes on the\n shoulder-straps, and even the shapeless garment could not hide the\n obvious trimness of her figure.\n\n\n Strike's back was toward the bulkhead, and he was addressing the others.", "\"That's about all there is to tell you. As soon as our rather\n leisurely E/O gets here, we can jet with Aunt Nelly's postcard.\" He\n nodded. \"That's the story. Lift ship in....\" He glanced at his wrist\n chronograph, \"... in an hour and five.\"\n\n\n The officers filed out and Cob Whitley stuck his head into the room.\n \"Captain?\"\n\n\n \"Come in, Cob.\" Strike's dark brows knit at the sight of the uniformed\n girl in the doorway.\n\n\n Cob's face was sober, but hidden amusement was kindling behind his\n eyes. \"Captain, may I present Lieutenant Hendricks? Lieutenant\nI-vy\nHendricks?\"\n\n\n Strike looked blankly at the girl.\n\n\n \"Our new E/O, Captain,\" prompted Whitley.", "Ivy fought her reeling senses and the bucking ship as the slack came\n out of the cable. Blackness was flickering at the edges of her field\n of vision. She could scarcely lift her hand to the red-sealed circuit\n rheostat. Shudderingly, she made the effort ... and failed. Conscious,\n but too spent to move, she collapsed over the blistering hot instrument\n panel.\n\n\n \"\nIvy!\n\" Strike was beside her, cradling her head in his arm.\n\n\n \"I ... I ... can't make it ... Strike. You'll ... have to run ... the\n show ... after ... all.\"\n\n\n Strike laid her gently in an acceleration chair and turned toward the\n control panel. His head was throbbing painfully as he broke the seal on\n the surge-circuit.", "Whitley shrugged. \"If you say so, Strike. It's good enough for me.\"\n\n\n Celia Graham left the bridge shaking her head. \"We'll all be dead soon.\n And me so young and pretty.\"\n\n\n Strike turned to the squawk-box. \"Evans!\"\n\n\n \"Evans here,\" came the reply.\n\n\n \"Have Sparks get a DF fix on the\nAtropos\nand hold it. We'll home on\n their carrier wave. They're in trouble and we're going after them. Plot\n the course.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Captain.\"\n\n\n Strike turned to Cob. \"Have the gun-crews stand by to relieve the\n black-gang in the tube rooms. It's going to get hotter than the hinges\n of hell down there and we'll have to shorten shifts.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir!\" Cob saluted and was gone.", "The\nAphrodite\nwas refitted for space. And because it was an integral\n part of her design, the circuit was rebuilt ... and sealed. She became\n a workhorse, growing more cantankerous with each passing year. She\n carried personnel.... She trucked ores. She ferried skeeterboats and\n tanked rocket fuel. Now, she would carry the mail. She would lift from\n Venusport and jet to Canalopolis, Mars, without delay or variation.\n Regulations, tradition and Admiral Gorman of the Inner Planet Fleet\n required it. And it was now up to David Farragut Strykalski III to see\n to it that she did....\n\n\n The Officer of the Deck, a trim blonde girl in spotless greys saluted\n smartly as Strike and Cob stepped through the valve.", "\"Me again. The\nGanymede's\nwhole crew ended up in the Luna Base brig.\n We celebrated a bit too freely.\"\n\n\n Cob Whitley looked admiringly at his new Commander. \"That was the night\n after the\nGanymede\nbroke the record for the Centaurus B-Earth run,\n wasn't it? And then wasn't there something about....\"\n\n\n \"Canalopolis?\"\n\n\n Whitley nodded.\n\n\n \"That time I called the Martian Ambassador a spy. It was at a Tellurian\n Embassy Ball.\"\n\n\n \"I begin to see what you mean, Captain.\"\n\n\n \"Strike's the name, Cob.\"", "And she agreed.\nOld Aphrodisiac had reached perihelion when it happened. The\n thermometer stood at 135° and tempers were snapping. Cob and Celia\n Graham had tangled about some minor point concerning Lover-Girl's\n weight and balance. Ivy went about her work on the bridge without\n speaking, and Strike made no attempt to brighten her sudden depression.\n Lieutenant Evans had punched Bayne, the Tactical Astrophysicist,\n in the eye for some disparaging remark about Southern California\n womanhood. The ratings were grumbling about the food....\n\n\n And then it happened.", "Strike returned to the squawk-box. \"Radar!\"\n\n\n \"Graham here,\" replied Celia from her station.\n\n\n \"Get a radar fix on the\nLachesis\nand hold it. Send your dope up to\n Evans and tell him to send us a range estimate.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Captain,\" the girl replied crisply.\n\n\n \"Gun deck!\"\n\n\n \"Gun deck here, sir,\" came a feminine voice.\n\n\n \"Have number two starboard torpedo tube loaded with a fish and a spool\n of cable. Be ready to let fly on short notice ... any range.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir!\" The girl switched off.\n\n\n \"And now you, Miss Hendricks.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Captain?\" Her voice was low.\n\n\n \"Take over Control ... and Ivy....\"" ], [ "\"All right,\" said Strike, setting down his glass. \"What's on your mind,\n Cob? Something's eating you.\"\n\n\n Whitley nodded very slowly. He took a long pull at his highball. \"I\n understand that you goofballed your chances of getting the\nGanymede\nback when Gorman spoke his piece to you....\"\n\n\n \"All I said to him....\"\n\n\n \"I know. I know what you said ... and it won't bear repeating. But\n you're not fooling me. You've fallen for old Lover-Girl and you don't\n want to leave her. Ver-ry commendable. Loyal! Stout fellah! But what\n about Ivy?\"\n\n\n \"Ivy?\"\n\n\n Cob looked away. \"I thought that you and she ... well, I thought that\n when we got back ... well....\"", "For all the tension between the occupants of the flying-bridge, Strike\n and Ivy Hendricks worked well together. And after a second week in\n space, a reluctant admiration was replacing the resentment between\n them. Ivy spent whatever time she could spare tinkering with her\n father's pet surge-circuit and Strike began to realize that there was\n little she did not know about spaceship engineering. Then, too, Ivy\n spent a lot of time at the controls, and Strike was forced to admit\n that he had never seen a finer job of piloting done by man or woman.\n\n\n And finally, Ivy hated old Brass-bottom Gorman even more than Strike\n did. She felt that Gorman had ruined her father's career, and she was\n dedicating her life to proving her father right and Brass-bottom wrong.\n There's nothing in the cosmos to nurture friendship like a common enemy.", "Swiftly, the fat, ungainly shape of old Aphrodisiac drew near. In her\n flying-bridge, Strike and Ivy Hendricks watched the stricken ships in\n the darkened viewport.\n\n\n The temperature stood at 140° and the air was bitter with the smell\n of hot metal. Ivy's blouse clung to her body, soaked through with\n perspiration. Sweat ran from her hair into her eyes and she gasped\n for breath in the oven hot compartment. Strike watched her with\n apprehension.", "\"That's about all there is to tell you. As soon as our rather\n leisurely E/O gets here, we can jet with Aunt Nelly's postcard.\" He\n nodded. \"That's the story. Lift ship in....\" He glanced at his wrist\n chronograph, \"... in an hour and five.\"\n\n\n The officers filed out and Cob Whitley stuck his head into the room.\n \"Captain?\"\n\n\n \"Come in, Cob.\" Strike's dark brows knit at the sight of the uniformed\n girl in the doorway.\n\n\n Cob's face was sober, but hidden amusement was kindling behind his\n eyes. \"Captain, may I present Lieutenant Hendricks? Lieutenant\nI-vy\nHendricks?\"\n\n\n Strike looked blankly at the girl.\n\n\n \"Our new E/O, Captain,\" prompted Whitley.", "Ivy fought her reeling senses and the bucking ship as the slack came\n out of the cable. Blackness was flickering at the edges of her field\n of vision. She could scarcely lift her hand to the red-sealed circuit\n rheostat. Shudderingly, she made the effort ... and failed. Conscious,\n but too spent to move, she collapsed over the blistering hot instrument\n panel.\n\n\n \"\nIvy!\n\" Strike was beside her, cradling her head in his arm.\n\n\n \"I ... I ... can't make it ... Strike. You'll ... have to run ... the\n show ... after ... all.\"\n\n\n Strike laid her gently in an acceleration chair and turned toward the\n control panel. His head was throbbing painfully as he broke the seal on\n the surge-circuit.", "There were tears bright in Ivy Hendricks' eyes and she sounded\n desperate. \"But we can save those ships! We can, I\nknow\nwe can! My\n father designed this ship! I know every rivet of her! Those idiots off\n Callisto didn't know what they were doing. These ships needed specially\n trained men. Father told them that! And I'm trained! I can take her in\n and save those ships!\" Her expression turned to one of disgust. \"Or are\n you afraid?\"\n\n\n \"Frankly, Ivy, I haven't enough sense to be afraid. But are you so\n certain that we can pull this off? If I make a mistake this time ...\n it'll be the last. For all of us.\"\n\n\n \"We can do it,\" said Ivy Hendricks simply.\n\n\n Strike turned to Cob. \"What do you say, Cob? Shall we make it hotter in\n here?\"", "Strike shook his head. \"She's gone to the Bureau of Ships with a\n designing job.\"\n\n\n Cob waved an expressive arm in the air. \"But dammit, man, I thought....\"\n\n\n \"The answer is\nno\n. Ivy's a nice girl ... but....\" He paused and\n sighed. \"Since she was promoted to her father's old rank ... well....\"\n He shrugged. \"Who wants a wife that ranks you?\"\n\n\n \"Never thought of that,\" mused Cob. For a long while he was silent;\n then he pulled out an address book and leafed through until he came to\n the pages marked \"Canalopolis, Mars.\"\n\n\n And he was gratified to see that Lieutenant Commander David Farragut\n Strykalski III was doing the same.", "Ivy's eyes snapped angrily. \"That's not what I meant, and you know it!\n I mean this!\" She touched the red-sealed surge-circuit rheostat.\n\n\n \"That's very nice, Lieutenant,\" commented Cob drily. \"And I know that\n you've been very busy adjusting that gismo. But I seem to recall that\n the last time that circuit was uncorked everyone aboard became part of\n the woodwork ... very messily, too.\"\n\n\n \"Let me understand you, Ivy,\" said Strike in a flat voice. \"What you\n are suggesting is that I risk my ship and the lives of all of us trying\n to pull old Gorman's fat out of the fire with a drive that's blown\n skyhigh three times out of three. Very neat.\"", "And she agreed.\nOld Aphrodisiac had reached perihelion when it happened. The\n thermometer stood at 135° and tempers were snapping. Cob and Celia\n Graham had tangled about some minor point concerning Lover-Girl's\n weight and balance. Ivy went about her work on the bridge without\n speaking, and Strike made no attempt to brighten her sudden depression.\n Lieutenant Evans had punched Bayne, the Tactical Astrophysicist,\n in the eye for some disparaging remark about Southern California\n womanhood. The ratings were grumbling about the food....\n\n\n And then it happened.", "Cob snatched the flimsy from Sparks' hands and galloped for the\n flying-bridge. He burst in and waved the message excitedly in front of\n Strykalski's face.\n\n\n \"Have a look at this! Ye gods and little catfish! Read it!\"\n\n\n \"Well, dammit, hold it still so I can!\" snapped Strike. He read the\n message and passed it to Ivy Hendricks with a shake of his head.\n\n\n She read it through and looked up exultantly. \"This is\nit\n! This is\n the chance I've been praying for, Strike!\"\n\n\n He returned her gaze sourly. \"For Gorman to fall into the sun? I recall\n I said something of the sort myself, but there are other men on those\n ships. And, if I know Captain Varni on the\nLachesis\n, he won't let go\n that line even if he fries himself.\"", "Strike returned to the squawk-box. \"Radar!\"\n\n\n \"Graham here,\" replied Celia from her station.\n\n\n \"Get a radar fix on the\nLachesis\nand hold it. Send your dope up to\n Evans and tell him to send us a range estimate.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Captain,\" the girl replied crisply.\n\n\n \"Gun deck!\"\n\n\n \"Gun deck here, sir,\" came a feminine voice.\n\n\n \"Have number two starboard torpedo tube loaded with a fish and a spool\n of cable. Be ready to let fly on short notice ... any range.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir!\" The girl switched off.\n\n\n \"And now you, Miss Hendricks.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Captain?\" Her voice was low.\n\n\n \"Take over Control ... and Ivy....\"", "\"Uh ... welcome aboard, Miss Hendricks,\" was all the Captain could find\n to say.\n\n\n The girl's eyes were cold and unfriendly. \"Thank you, Captain.\" Her\n voice was like cracked ice tinkling in a glass. \"If I may have your\n permission to inspect the drives, Captain, I\nmay\nbe able to\n convince you that the designer of this vessel was not ... as you seem\n to think ... a senile incompetent.\"\n\n\n Strike was perplexed, and he showed it. \"Why, certainly ... uh ...\n Miss ... but why should you be so....\"", "Strike stretched his long legs out on the steel deck. \"A Lieutenant\n Hendricks, I. V. Hendricks, is what the orders say.\"\n\n\n Cob thought hard for a moment and then shrugged his shoulders. \"I. V.\n Hendricks.\" He shook his head. \"Don't know him.\"\nThe other officers of the\nT.R.S. Aphrodite\nwere in conference with\n the Captain when Cob and the girl at his side reached the flying\n bridge. She was tall and dark-haired with regular features and pale\n blue eyes. She wore a service jumper with two silver stripes on the\n shoulder-straps, and even the shapeless garment could not hide the\n obvious trimness of her figure.\n\n\n Strike's back was toward the bulkhead, and he was addressing the others.", "The scaly bulk of the Tellurian Rocket Ship\nAphrodite\nloomed\n unhappily into the thick air above the two men as they reached the\n ventral valve. Strike raised reluctant eyes to the sloping flank of the\n fat spaceship.\n\n\n \"It looks,\" he commented bitterly, \"like a pregnant carp.\"\n\n\n Senior Lieutenant Coburn Whitley—\"Cob\" to his friends—nodded in\n agreement. \"That's our Lover-Girl ... old Aphrodisiac herself. The ship\n with the poison personality.\" Cob was the\nAphrodite's\nExecutive,\n and he had been with her a full year ... which was a record for Execs\n on the\nAphrodite\n. She generally sent them Earthside with nervous\n breakdowns in half that time.\n\n\n \"Tell me, Captain,\" continued Cob curiously, \"how does it happen\n that you of all people happened to draw this tub for a command? I\n thought....\"", "Strike was in the observation blister forward, when Ensign Graham\n called to say that she had picked up a radar contact sunward. The\n IFF showed the pips to be the\nLachesis\nand the\nAtropos\n. The two\n dreadnaughts were engaged in coronary research patrol ... a purely\n routine business. But the thing that made Strike curse under his breath\n was Celia Graham's notation that the\nAtropos\ncarried none other than\n Space Admiral Horatio Gorman, Cominch Inplan.\n\n\n Strike thought it a pity that old Brass-bottom couldn't fall into\n Hell's hottest pit ... and he told Ivy so.", "\"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"Don't kill us off.\" He smiled down at her.", "The girl's voice was even colder than before as she said, \"Harlan\n Hendricks, Captain, is my father.\"\nA week in space had convinced Strike that he commanded a jinx ship.\n Jetting sunward from Venus, the cantankerous\nAphrodite\nhad burned a\n steering tube through, and it had been necessary to go into free-fall\n while Jenkins, the Assistant E/O, and a damage control party effected\n repairs. When the power was again applied, Old Aphrodisiac was running\n ten hours behind schedule, and Strike and Evans, the Astrogation\n Officer, were sweating out the unforeseen changes introduced into the\n orbital calculations by the time spent in free-fall.\n\n\n The\nAphrodite\nrumbled on toward the orbit of Mercury....", "\"... and that's about the story. We are to jet within 28,000,000 miles\n of Sol. Orbit is trans-Mercurian hyperbolic. With Mars in opposition,\n we have to make a perihelion run and it won't be pleasant. But I'm\n certain this old boiler can take it. I understand the old boy who\n designed her wasn't as incompetent as they say. But Space Regs are\n specific about mail runs. This is important to you, Evans. Your\n astrogation has to be accurate to within twenty-five miles plus or\n minus the shortest route. And there'll be no breaking orbit. Now be\n certain that the refrigeration units are checked, Mister Wilkins,\n especially in the hydroponic cells. Pure air is going to be important.\"", "Whitley's smile was expansive. \"Strike, I think you're going to like\n our old tin pot here.\" He patted the\nAphrodite's\nnether belly\n affectionately. \"She's old ... but she's loose. And we're not likely to\n meet any Ambassadors or Admirals with her, either.\"\n\n\n Strykalski sighed, still thinking of his sleek\nGanymede\n. \"She'll\n carry the mail, I suppose. And that's about all that's expected of her.\"\n\n\n Cob shrugged philosophically. \"Better than tanking that stinking rocket\n fuel, anyway. Deep space?\"\n\n\n Strike shook his head. \"Venus-Mars.\"\n\n\n Cob scratched his chin speculatively. \"Perihelion run. Hot work.\"", "The\nAphrodite\nwas refitted for space. And because it was an integral\n part of her design, the circuit was rebuilt ... and sealed. She became\n a workhorse, growing more cantankerous with each passing year. She\n carried personnel.... She trucked ores. She ferried skeeterboats and\n tanked rocket fuel. Now, she would carry the mail. She would lift from\n Venusport and jet to Canalopolis, Mars, without delay or variation.\n Regulations, tradition and Admiral Gorman of the Inner Planet Fleet\n required it. And it was now up to David Farragut Strykalski III to see\n to it that she did....\n\n\n The Officer of the Deck, a trim blonde girl in spotless greys saluted\n smartly as Strike and Cob stepped through the valve." ], [ "Swiftly, the fat, ungainly shape of old Aphrodisiac drew near. In her\n flying-bridge, Strike and Ivy Hendricks watched the stricken ships in\n the darkened viewport.\n\n\n The temperature stood at 140° and the air was bitter with the smell\n of hot metal. Ivy's blouse clung to her body, soaked through with\n perspiration. Sweat ran from her hair into her eyes and she gasped\n for breath in the oven hot compartment. Strike watched her with\n apprehension.", "The\nAphrodite\nwas refitted for space. And because it was an integral\n part of her design, the circuit was rebuilt ... and sealed. She became\n a workhorse, growing more cantankerous with each passing year. She\n carried personnel.... She trucked ores. She ferried skeeterboats and\n tanked rocket fuel. Now, she would carry the mail. She would lift from\n Venusport and jet to Canalopolis, Mars, without delay or variation.\n Regulations, tradition and Admiral Gorman of the Inner Planet Fleet\n required it. And it was now up to David Farragut Strykalski III to see\n to it that she did....\n\n\n The Officer of the Deck, a trim blonde girl in spotless greys saluted\n smartly as Strike and Cob stepped through the valve.", "Strike was again looking at the spaceship's unprepossessing exterior.\n \"A surge-circuit monitor, so help me.\"\n\n\n Cob nodded agreement. \"The last of her class.\"\nAnd she was not an inspiring sight. The fantastically misnamed\nAphrodite\nwas a surge-circuit monitor of twenty guns built some ten\n years back in the period immediately preceding the Ionian Subjugation\n Incident. She had been designed primarily for atomics, with a\n surge-circuit set-up for interstellar flight. At least that was the\n planner's view. In those days, interstellar astrogation was in its\n formative stage, and at the time of the\nAphrodite's\nlaunching the\n surge-circuit was hailed as the very latest in space drives.", "Her designer, Harlan Hendricks, had been awarded a Legion of Merit\n for her, and every silver-braided admiral in the Fleet had dreamed\n of hoisting his flag on one of her class. There had been three. The\nArtemis\n, the\nAndromeda\n, and the prototype ... old Aphrodisiac. The\n three vessels had gone into action off Callisto after the Phobos Raid\n had set off hostilities between the Ionians and the Solarian Combine.\n\n\n All three were miserable failures.\n\n\n The eager officers commanding the three monitors had found the circuit\n too appealing to their hot little hands. They used it ... in some way,\n wrongly.", "The scaly bulk of the Tellurian Rocket Ship\nAphrodite\nloomed\n unhappily into the thick air above the two men as they reached the\n ventral valve. Strike raised reluctant eyes to the sloping flank of the\n fat spaceship.\n\n\n \"It looks,\" he commented bitterly, \"like a pregnant carp.\"\n\n\n Senior Lieutenant Coburn Whitley—\"Cob\" to his friends—nodded in\n agreement. \"That's our Lover-Girl ... old Aphrodisiac herself. The ship\n with the poison personality.\" Cob was the\nAphrodite's\nExecutive,\n and he had been with her a full year ... which was a record for Execs\n on the\nAphrodite\n. She generally sent them Earthside with nervous\n breakdowns in half that time.\n\n\n \"Tell me, Captain,\" continued Cob curiously, \"how does it happen\n that you of all people happened to draw this tub for a command? I\n thought....\"", "Whitley's smile was expansive. \"Strike, I think you're going to like\n our old tin pot here.\" He patted the\nAphrodite's\nnether belly\n affectionately. \"She's old ... but she's loose. And we're not likely to\n meet any Ambassadors or Admirals with her, either.\"\n\n\n Strykalski sighed, still thinking of his sleek\nGanymede\n. \"She'll\n carry the mail, I suppose. And that's about all that's expected of her.\"\n\n\n Cob shrugged philosophically. \"Better than tanking that stinking rocket\n fuel, anyway. Deep space?\"\n\n\n Strike shook his head. \"Venus-Mars.\"\n\n\n Cob scratched his chin speculatively. \"Perihelion run. Hot work.\"", "And she agreed.\nOld Aphrodisiac had reached perihelion when it happened. The\n thermometer stood at 135° and tempers were snapping. Cob and Celia\n Graham had tangled about some minor point concerning Lover-Girl's\n weight and balance. Ivy went about her work on the bridge without\n speaking, and Strike made no attempt to brighten her sudden depression.\n Lieutenant Evans had punched Bayne, the Tactical Astrophysicist,\n in the eye for some disparaging remark about Southern California\n womanhood. The ratings were grumbling about the food....\n\n\n And then it happened.", "She nodded silently and took her place at the control panel. Smoothly\n she turned old Aphrodisiac's nose sunward....\nLashed together with a length of unbreakable beryllium steel cable,\n the\nLachesis\nand the\nAtropos\nfell helplessly toward the sun. The\n frantic flame that lashed out from the\nLachesis'\ntube was fading, her\n fission chambers fusing under the terrific heat of splitting atoms.\n Still she tried. She could not desert her sister ship, nor could she\n save her. Already the two ships had fallen to within 18,000,000 miles\n of the sun's terrifying atmosphere of glowing gases. The prominences", "At 30,000,000 miles from the sun, the\nAphrodite's\nrefrigeration\n units could no longer keep the interior of the ship at a comfortable\n temperature. The thermometer stood at 102°F, the very metal of\n the ship's fittings hot to the touch. Uniforms were discarded,\n insignia of rank vanished. The men dressed in fiberglass shorts and\n spaceboots, sweat making their naked bodies gleam like copper under the\n sodium-vapor lights. The women in the crew added only light blouses to\n their shorts ... and suffered from extra clothing.", "Strike felt vaguely uncomfortable. He knew, of course, that at least a\n third of the personnel on board non-combat vessels of the Inner Planet\n Fleet was female, but he had never actually had women on board a ship\n of his own, and he felt quite certain that he preferred them elsewhere.\n\n\n Cob sensed his discomfort. \"That was Celia Graham, Strike. Ensign.\n Radar Officer. She's good, too.\"\n\n\n Strike shook his head. \"Don't like women in space. They make me\n uncomfortable.\"\n\n\n Cob shrugged. \"Celia's the only officer. But about a quarter of our\n ratings are women.\" He grinned maliciously. \"Equal rights, you know.\"\n\n\n \"No doubt,\" commented the other sourly. \"Is that why they named\n this ... ship 'Aphrodite'?\"\n\n\n Whitley saw fit to consider the question rhetorical and remained silent.", "The girl's voice was even colder than before as she said, \"Harlan\n Hendricks, Captain, is my father.\"\nA week in space had convinced Strike that he commanded a jinx ship.\n Jetting sunward from Venus, the cantankerous\nAphrodite\nhad burned a\n steering tube through, and it had been necessary to go into free-fall\n while Jenkins, the Assistant E/O, and a damage control party effected\n repairs. When the power was again applied, Old Aphrodisiac was running\n ten hours behind schedule, and Strike and Evans, the Astrogation\n Officer, were sweating out the unforeseen changes introduced into the\n orbital calculations by the time spent in free-fall.\n\n\n The\nAphrodite\nrumbled on toward the orbit of Mercury....", "Carefully, Ivy circled the two warships. From the starboard tube on\n the gun-deck, a homing rocket leapt toward the\nAtropos\n. It plunged\n straight and true, spilling cable as it flew. It slammed up against\n the hull, and stuck there, fast to the battleship's flank. Quickly,\n a robocrane drew it within the ship and the cable was made secure.\n Like cosmic replicas of the ancient South American \"bolas,\" the three\n spacecraft whirled in space ... and all three began that sunward plunge\n together.\nThey were diving into the sun.\nThe heat in the\nAphrodite's\nbridge was unbearable. The thermometer\n showed 145° and it seemed to Strike that Hell must be cool by\n comparison.", "Strike stretched his long legs out on the steel deck. \"A Lieutenant\n Hendricks, I. V. Hendricks, is what the orders say.\"\n\n\n Cob thought hard for a moment and then shrugged his shoulders. \"I. V.\n Hendricks.\" He shook his head. \"Don't know him.\"\nThe other officers of the\nT.R.S. Aphrodite\nwere in conference with\n the Captain when Cob and the girl at his side reached the flying\n bridge. She was tall and dark-haired with regular features and pale\n blue eyes. She wore a service jumper with two silver stripes on the\n shoulder-straps, and even the shapeless garment could not hide the\n obvious trimness of her figure.\n\n\n Strike's back was toward the bulkhead, and he was addressing the others.", "Jinx Ship To The Rescue\nBy ALFRED COPPEL, JR.\nStand by for\nT.R.S. Aphrodite\n, butt of the Space\n\n Navy. She's got something terrific in her guts and only\n\n her ice-cold lady engineer can coax it out of her!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Winter 1948.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that", "The last thing he remembered was a voice. It sounded like Bayne's. And\n it was shouting. \"We're moving 'em! We're pulling away! We're....\" And\n that was all.\n\n\n The space-tug\nScylla\nfound them.\n\n\n The three ships ...\nAtropos\n,\nLachesis\n, and old Aphrodisiac ...\n lashed together and drifting in space. Every man and woman aboard out\n cold from the acceleration, and\nAphrodite's\ntanks bone dry. But they\n were a safe 80,000,000 miles from Sol....\nThe orchestra was subdued, the officer's club softly lighted. Cob\n leaned his elbow on the bar and bent to inspect the blue ribbon of the\n Spatial Cross on Strike's chest. Then he inspected his own and nodded\n with tipsy satisfaction. He stared out at the Martian night beyond the\n broad windows and back again at Strike. His frown was puzzled.", "The\nArtemis\nexploded. The\nAndromeda\nvanished in the general\n direction of Coma Berenices glowing white hot from the heat of a\n ruptured fission chamber and spewing gamma rays in all directions.\n And the\nAphrodite's\nstarboard tubes blew, causing her to spend her\n store of vicious energy spinning like a Fourth of July pinwheel under\n 20 gravities until all her interior fittings ... including crew were a\n tangled, pulpy mess within her pressure hull.", "\"Uh ... welcome aboard, Miss Hendricks,\" was all the Captain could find\n to say.\n\n\n The girl's eyes were cold and unfriendly. \"Thank you, Captain.\" Her\n voice was like cracked ice tinkling in a glass. \"If I may have your\n permission to inspect the drives, Captain, I\nmay\nbe able to\n convince you that the designer of this vessel was not ... as you seem\n to think ... a senile incompetent.\"\n\n\n Strike was perplexed, and he showed it. \"Why, certainly ... uh ...\n Miss ... but why should you be so....\"", "\"That's about all there is to tell you. As soon as our rather\n leisurely E/O gets here, we can jet with Aunt Nelly's postcard.\" He\n nodded. \"That's the story. Lift ship in....\" He glanced at his wrist\n chronograph, \"... in an hour and five.\"\n\n\n The officers filed out and Cob Whitley stuck his head into the room.\n \"Captain?\"\n\n\n \"Come in, Cob.\" Strike's dark brows knit at the sight of the uniformed\n girl in the doorway.\n\n\n Cob's face was sober, but hidden amusement was kindling behind his\n eyes. \"Captain, may I present Lieutenant Hendricks? Lieutenant\nI-vy\nHendricks?\"\n\n\n Strike looked blankly at the girl.\n\n\n \"Our new E/O, Captain,\" prompted Whitley.", "Strike lowered his head to clear the arch of the flying-bridge\n bulkhead. Cob followed. He trailed his Captain through a jungle\n of chrome piping to the main control panels. Strike sank into an\n acceleration chair in front of the red DANGER seal on the surge-circuit\n rheostat.\n\n\n \"Looks like a drug-store fountain, doesn't it?\" commented Cob.\n\n\n Strykalski nodded sadly, thinking of the padded smoothness of the\nGanymede's\nflying-bridge. \"But she's home to us, anyway.\"\n\n\n The thick Venusian fog had closed in around the top levels of the ship,\n hugging the ports and cutting off all view of the field outside. Strike\n reached for the squawk-box control.", "Strike was in the observation blister forward, when Ensign Graham\n called to say that she had picked up a radar contact sunward. The\n IFF showed the pips to be the\nLachesis\nand the\nAtropos\n. The two\n dreadnaughts were engaged in coronary research patrol ... a purely\n routine business. But the thing that made Strike curse under his breath\n was Celia Graham's notation that the\nAtropos\ncarried none other than\n Space Admiral Horatio Gorman, Cominch Inplan.\n\n\n Strike thought it a pity that old Brass-bottom couldn't fall into\n Hell's hottest pit ... and he told Ivy so." ], [ "Swiftly, the fat, ungainly shape of old Aphrodisiac drew near. In her\n flying-bridge, Strike and Ivy Hendricks watched the stricken ships in\n the darkened viewport.\n\n\n The temperature stood at 140° and the air was bitter with the smell\n of hot metal. Ivy's blouse clung to her body, soaked through with\n perspiration. Sweat ran from her hair into her eyes and she gasped\n for breath in the oven hot compartment. Strike watched her with\n apprehension.", "And she agreed.\nOld Aphrodisiac had reached perihelion when it happened. The\n thermometer stood at 135° and tempers were snapping. Cob and Celia\n Graham had tangled about some minor point concerning Lover-Girl's\n weight and balance. Ivy went about her work on the bridge without\n speaking, and Strike made no attempt to brighten her sudden depression.\n Lieutenant Evans had punched Bayne, the Tactical Astrophysicist,\n in the eye for some disparaging remark about Southern California\n womanhood. The ratings were grumbling about the food....\n\n\n And then it happened.", "\"... and that's about the story. We are to jet within 28,000,000 miles\n of Sol. Orbit is trans-Mercurian hyperbolic. With Mars in opposition,\n we have to make a perihelion run and it won't be pleasant. But I'm\n certain this old boiler can take it. I understand the old boy who\n designed her wasn't as incompetent as they say. But Space Regs are\n specific about mail runs. This is important to you, Evans. Your\n astrogation has to be accurate to within twenty-five miles plus or\n minus the shortest route. And there'll be no breaking orbit. Now be\n certain that the refrigeration units are checked, Mister Wilkins,\n especially in the hydroponic cells. Pure air is going to be important.\"", "Slowly he turned the rheostat. Relays chattered. From deep within\n old Lover-Girl's vitals came a low whine. He fed more power into the\n circuit. Cadmium rods slipped into lead sheaths decks below in the\n tube-rooms. The whining rose in pitch. The spinning of the ships in\n space slowed. Stopped. With painful deliberation, they swung into line.\n\n\n More power. The whine changed to a shriek. A banshee wail.\n\n\n Cob's voice came through the squawk-box, soberly. \"Strike, Celia's\n fainted down here. We can't take much more of this heat.\"\n\n\n \"We're trying, Cob!\" shouted Strike over the whine of the circuit. The\n gauges showed the accumulators full. \"\nNow!\n\" He spun the rheostat to\n the stops, and black space burst over his brain....", "Strike lowered his head to clear the arch of the flying-bridge\n bulkhead. Cob followed. He trailed his Captain through a jungle\n of chrome piping to the main control panels. Strike sank into an\n acceleration chair in front of the red DANGER seal on the surge-circuit\n rheostat.\n\n\n \"Looks like a drug-store fountain, doesn't it?\" commented Cob.\n\n\n Strykalski nodded sadly, thinking of the padded smoothness of the\nGanymede's\nflying-bridge. \"But she's home to us, anyway.\"\n\n\n The thick Venusian fog had closed in around the top levels of the ship,\n hugging the ports and cutting off all view of the field outside. Strike\n reached for the squawk-box control.", "\"Uh ... welcome aboard, Miss Hendricks,\" was all the Captain could find\n to say.\n\n\n The girl's eyes were cold and unfriendly. \"Thank you, Captain.\" Her\n voice was like cracked ice tinkling in a glass. \"If I may have your\n permission to inspect the drives, Captain, I\nmay\nbe able to\n convince you that the designer of this vessel was not ... as you seem\n to think ... a senile incompetent.\"\n\n\n Strike was perplexed, and he showed it. \"Why, certainly ... uh ...\n Miss ... but why should you be so....\"", "Ivy fought her reeling senses and the bucking ship as the slack came\n out of the cable. Blackness was flickering at the edges of her field\n of vision. She could scarcely lift her hand to the red-sealed circuit\n rheostat. Shudderingly, she made the effort ... and failed. Conscious,\n but too spent to move, she collapsed over the blistering hot instrument\n panel.\n\n\n \"\nIvy!\n\" Strike was beside her, cradling her head in his arm.\n\n\n \"I ... I ... can't make it ... Strike. You'll ... have to run ... the\n show ... after ... all.\"\n\n\n Strike laid her gently in an acceleration chair and turned toward the\n control panel. His head was throbbing painfully as he broke the seal on\n the surge-circuit.", "that spouted spaceward seemed like great fiery tentacles reaching for\n the trapped men on board the warships. The atmospheric guiding fins,\n the gun-turrets and other protuberances on both ships were beginning\n to melt under the fierce radiance. Only the huge refrigeration plants\n on the vessels made life within them possible. And, even so, men were\n dying.", "\"That's about all there is to tell you. As soon as our rather\n leisurely E/O gets here, we can jet with Aunt Nelly's postcard.\" He\n nodded. \"That's the story. Lift ship in....\" He glanced at his wrist\n chronograph, \"... in an hour and five.\"\n\n\n The officers filed out and Cob Whitley stuck his head into the room.\n \"Captain?\"\n\n\n \"Come in, Cob.\" Strike's dark brows knit at the sight of the uniformed\n girl in the doorway.\n\n\n Cob's face was sober, but hidden amusement was kindling behind his\n eyes. \"Captain, may I present Lieutenant Hendricks? Lieutenant\nI-vy\nHendricks?\"\n\n\n Strike looked blankly at the girl.\n\n\n \"Our new E/O, Captain,\" prompted Whitley.", "The scaly bulk of the Tellurian Rocket Ship\nAphrodite\nloomed\n unhappily into the thick air above the two men as they reached the\n ventral valve. Strike raised reluctant eyes to the sloping flank of the\n fat spaceship.\n\n\n \"It looks,\" he commented bitterly, \"like a pregnant carp.\"\n\n\n Senior Lieutenant Coburn Whitley—\"Cob\" to his friends—nodded in\n agreement. \"That's our Lover-Girl ... old Aphrodisiac herself. The ship\n with the poison personality.\" Cob was the\nAphrodite's\nExecutive,\n and he had been with her a full year ... which was a record for Execs\n on the\nAphrodite\n. She generally sent them Earthside with nervous\n breakdowns in half that time.\n\n\n \"Tell me, Captain,\" continued Cob curiously, \"how does it happen\n that you of all people happened to draw this tub for a command? I\n thought....\"", "\"The first David Farragut Strykalski, son of a sea-loving Polish\n immigrant, emerged from World War II a four-striper and Congressional\n Medal winner. Then came David Farragut Strykalski, Jr., and, in the\n abortive Atomic War that terrified the world in 1961, he won a United\n Nations Peace Citation. And then came David Farragut Strykalski III ...\n me.\n\n\n \"From such humble beginnings do great traditions grow. But something\n happened when I came into the picture. I don't fit with the rest of\n them. Call it luck or temperament or what have you.", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nBrevet Lieutenant Commander David Farragut Strykalski III of the\n Tellurian Wing, Combined Solarian Navies, stood ankle deep in the\n viscous mud of Venusport Base and surveyed his new command with a\n jaundiced eye. The hot, slimy, greenish rain that drenched Venusport\n for two-thirds of the 720-hour day had stopped at last, but now a\n miasmic fog was rising from the surrounding swampland, rolling across\n the mushy landing ramp toward the grounded spaceship. Visibility was\n dropping fast, and soon porto-sonar sets would have to be used to find\n the way about the surface Base. It was an ordinary day on Venus.\n\n\n Strike cursed Space Admiral Gorman and all his ancestors with a wealth\n of feeling. Then he motioned wearily to his companion, and together\n they sloshed through the mud toward the ancient monitor.", "She nodded silently and took her place at the control panel. Smoothly\n she turned old Aphrodisiac's nose sunward....\nLashed together with a length of unbreakable beryllium steel cable,\n the\nLachesis\nand the\nAtropos\nfell helplessly toward the sun. The\n frantic flame that lashed out from the\nLachesis'\ntube was fading, her\n fission chambers fusing under the terrific heat of splitting atoms.\n Still she tried. She could not desert her sister ship, nor could she\n save her. Already the two ships had fallen to within 18,000,000 miles\n of the sun's terrifying atmosphere of glowing gases. The prominences", "At 30,000,000 miles from the sun, the\nAphrodite's\nrefrigeration\n units could no longer keep the interior of the ship at a comfortable\n temperature. The thermometer stood at 102°F, the very metal of\n the ship's fittings hot to the touch. Uniforms were discarded,\n insignia of rank vanished. The men dressed in fiberglass shorts and\n spaceboots, sweat making their naked bodies gleam like copper under the\n sodium-vapor lights. The women in the crew added only light blouses to\n their shorts ... and suffered from extra clothing.", "The last thing he remembered was a voice. It sounded like Bayne's. And\n it was shouting. \"We're moving 'em! We're pulling away! We're....\" And\n that was all.\n\n\n The space-tug\nScylla\nfound them.\n\n\n The three ships ...\nAtropos\n,\nLachesis\n, and old Aphrodisiac ...\n lashed together and drifting in space. Every man and woman aboard out\n cold from the acceleration, and\nAphrodite's\ntanks bone dry. But they\n were a safe 80,000,000 miles from Sol....\nThe orchestra was subdued, the officer's club softly lighted. Cob\n leaned his elbow on the bar and bent to inspect the blue ribbon of the\n Spatial Cross on Strike's chest. Then he inspected his own and nodded\n with tipsy satisfaction. He stared out at the Martian night beyond the\n broad windows and back again at Strike. His frown was puzzled.", "The girl's voice was even colder than before as she said, \"Harlan\n Hendricks, Captain, is my father.\"\nA week in space had convinced Strike that he commanded a jinx ship.\n Jetting sunward from Venus, the cantankerous\nAphrodite\nhad burned a\n steering tube through, and it had been necessary to go into free-fall\n while Jenkins, the Assistant E/O, and a damage control party effected\n repairs. When the power was again applied, Old Aphrodisiac was running\n ten hours behind schedule, and Strike and Evans, the Astrogation\n Officer, were sweating out the unforeseen changes introduced into the\n orbital calculations by the time spent in free-fall.\n\n\n The\nAphrodite\nrumbled on toward the orbit of Mercury....", "Ivy's eyes snapped angrily. \"That's not what I meant, and you know it!\n I mean this!\" She touched the red-sealed surge-circuit rheostat.\n\n\n \"That's very nice, Lieutenant,\" commented Cob drily. \"And I know that\n you've been very busy adjusting that gismo. But I seem to recall that\n the last time that circuit was uncorked everyone aboard became part of\n the woodwork ... very messily, too.\"\n\n\n \"Let me understand you, Ivy,\" said Strike in a flat voice. \"What you\n are suggesting is that I risk my ship and the lives of all of us trying\n to pull old Gorman's fat out of the fire with a drive that's blown\n skyhigh three times out of three. Very neat.\"", "For all the tension between the occupants of the flying-bridge, Strike\n and Ivy Hendricks worked well together. And after a second week in\n space, a reluctant admiration was replacing the resentment between\n them. Ivy spent whatever time she could spare tinkering with her\n father's pet surge-circuit and Strike began to realize that there was\n little she did not know about spaceship engineering. Then, too, Ivy\n spent a lot of time at the controls, and Strike was forced to admit\n that he had never seen a finer job of piloting done by man or woman.\n\n\n And finally, Ivy hated old Brass-bottom Gorman even more than Strike\n did. She felt that Gorman had ruined her father's career, and she was\n dedicating her life to proving her father right and Brass-bottom wrong.\n There's nothing in the cosmos to nurture friendship like a common enemy.", "Carefully, Ivy circled the two warships. From the starboard tube on\n the gun-deck, a homing rocket leapt toward the\nAtropos\n. It plunged\n straight and true, spilling cable as it flew. It slammed up against\n the hull, and stuck there, fast to the battleship's flank. Quickly,\n a robocrane drew it within the ship and the cable was made secure.\n Like cosmic replicas of the ancient South American \"bolas,\" the three\n spacecraft whirled in space ... and all three began that sunward plunge\n together.\nThey were diving into the sun.\nThe heat in the\nAphrodite's\nbridge was unbearable. The thermometer\n showed 145° and it seemed to Strike that Hell must be cool by\n comparison.", "\"All right,\" said Strike, setting down his glass. \"What's on your mind,\n Cob? Something's eating you.\"\n\n\n Whitley nodded very slowly. He took a long pull at his highball. \"I\n understand that you goofballed your chances of getting the\nGanymede\nback when Gorman spoke his piece to you....\"\n\n\n \"All I said to him....\"\n\n\n \"I know. I know what you said ... and it won't bear repeating. But\n you're not fooling me. You've fallen for old Lover-Girl and you don't\n want to leave her. Ver-ry commendable. Loyal! Stout fellah! But what\n about Ivy?\"\n\n\n \"Ivy?\"\n\n\n Cob looked away. \"I thought that you and she ... well, I thought that\n when we got back ... well....\"" ], [ "Swiftly, the fat, ungainly shape of old Aphrodisiac drew near. In her\n flying-bridge, Strike and Ivy Hendricks watched the stricken ships in\n the darkened viewport.\n\n\n The temperature stood at 140° and the air was bitter with the smell\n of hot metal. Ivy's blouse clung to her body, soaked through with\n perspiration. Sweat ran from her hair into her eyes and she gasped\n for breath in the oven hot compartment. Strike watched her with\n apprehension.", "And she agreed.\nOld Aphrodisiac had reached perihelion when it happened. The\n thermometer stood at 135° and tempers were snapping. Cob and Celia\n Graham had tangled about some minor point concerning Lover-Girl's\n weight and balance. Ivy went about her work on the bridge without\n speaking, and Strike made no attempt to brighten her sudden depression.\n Lieutenant Evans had punched Bayne, the Tactical Astrophysicist,\n in the eye for some disparaging remark about Southern California\n womanhood. The ratings were grumbling about the food....\n\n\n And then it happened.", "\"Uh ... welcome aboard, Miss Hendricks,\" was all the Captain could find\n to say.\n\n\n The girl's eyes were cold and unfriendly. \"Thank you, Captain.\" Her\n voice was like cracked ice tinkling in a glass. \"If I may have your\n permission to inspect the drives, Captain, I\nmay\nbe able to\n convince you that the designer of this vessel was not ... as you seem\n to think ... a senile incompetent.\"\n\n\n Strike was perplexed, and he showed it. \"Why, certainly ... uh ...\n Miss ... but why should you be so....\"", "Slowly he turned the rheostat. Relays chattered. From deep within\n old Lover-Girl's vitals came a low whine. He fed more power into the\n circuit. Cadmium rods slipped into lead sheaths decks below in the\n tube-rooms. The whining rose in pitch. The spinning of the ships in\n space slowed. Stopped. With painful deliberation, they swung into line.\n\n\n More power. The whine changed to a shriek. A banshee wail.\n\n\n Cob's voice came through the squawk-box, soberly. \"Strike, Celia's\n fainted down here. We can't take much more of this heat.\"\n\n\n \"We're trying, Cob!\" shouted Strike over the whine of the circuit. The\n gauges showed the accumulators full. \"\nNow!\n\" He spun the rheostat to\n the stops, and black space burst over his brain....", "\"All right,\" said Strike, setting down his glass. \"What's on your mind,\n Cob? Something's eating you.\"\n\n\n Whitley nodded very slowly. He took a long pull at his highball. \"I\n understand that you goofballed your chances of getting the\nGanymede\nback when Gorman spoke his piece to you....\"\n\n\n \"All I said to him....\"\n\n\n \"I know. I know what you said ... and it won't bear repeating. But\n you're not fooling me. You've fallen for old Lover-Girl and you don't\n want to leave her. Ver-ry commendable. Loyal! Stout fellah! But what\n about Ivy?\"\n\n\n \"Ivy?\"\n\n\n Cob looked away. \"I thought that you and she ... well, I thought that\n when we got back ... well....\"", "Strike lowered his head to clear the arch of the flying-bridge\n bulkhead. Cob followed. He trailed his Captain through a jungle\n of chrome piping to the main control panels. Strike sank into an\n acceleration chair in front of the red DANGER seal on the surge-circuit\n rheostat.\n\n\n \"Looks like a drug-store fountain, doesn't it?\" commented Cob.\n\n\n Strykalski nodded sadly, thinking of the padded smoothness of the\nGanymede's\nflying-bridge. \"But she's home to us, anyway.\"\n\n\n The thick Venusian fog had closed in around the top levels of the ship,\n hugging the ports and cutting off all view of the field outside. Strike\n reached for the squawk-box control.", "Ivy's eyes snapped angrily. \"That's not what I meant, and you know it!\n I mean this!\" She touched the red-sealed surge-circuit rheostat.\n\n\n \"That's very nice, Lieutenant,\" commented Cob drily. \"And I know that\n you've been very busy adjusting that gismo. But I seem to recall that\n the last time that circuit was uncorked everyone aboard became part of\n the woodwork ... very messily, too.\"\n\n\n \"Let me understand you, Ivy,\" said Strike in a flat voice. \"What you\n are suggesting is that I risk my ship and the lives of all of us trying\n to pull old Gorman's fat out of the fire with a drive that's blown\n skyhigh three times out of three. Very neat.\"", "Ivy fought her reeling senses and the bucking ship as the slack came\n out of the cable. Blackness was flickering at the edges of her field\n of vision. She could scarcely lift her hand to the red-sealed circuit\n rheostat. Shudderingly, she made the effort ... and failed. Conscious,\n but too spent to move, she collapsed over the blistering hot instrument\n panel.\n\n\n \"\nIvy!\n\" Strike was beside her, cradling her head in his arm.\n\n\n \"I ... I ... can't make it ... Strike. You'll ... have to run ... the\n show ... after ... all.\"\n\n\n Strike laid her gently in an acceleration chair and turned toward the\n control panel. His head was throbbing painfully as he broke the seal on\n the surge-circuit.", "For all the tension between the occupants of the flying-bridge, Strike\n and Ivy Hendricks worked well together. And after a second week in\n space, a reluctant admiration was replacing the resentment between\n them. Ivy spent whatever time she could spare tinkering with her\n father's pet surge-circuit and Strike began to realize that there was\n little she did not know about spaceship engineering. Then, too, Ivy\n spent a lot of time at the controls, and Strike was forced to admit\n that he had never seen a finer job of piloting done by man or woman.\n\n\n And finally, Ivy hated old Brass-bottom Gorman even more than Strike\n did. She felt that Gorman had ruined her father's career, and she was\n dedicating her life to proving her father right and Brass-bottom wrong.\n There's nothing in the cosmos to nurture friendship like a common enemy.", "\"... and that's about the story. We are to jet within 28,000,000 miles\n of Sol. Orbit is trans-Mercurian hyperbolic. With Mars in opposition,\n we have to make a perihelion run and it won't be pleasant. But I'm\n certain this old boiler can take it. I understand the old boy who\n designed her wasn't as incompetent as they say. But Space Regs are\n specific about mail runs. This is important to you, Evans. Your\n astrogation has to be accurate to within twenty-five miles plus or\n minus the shortest route. And there'll be no breaking orbit. Now be\n certain that the refrigeration units are checked, Mister Wilkins,\n especially in the hydroponic cells. Pure air is going to be important.\"", "Whitley shrugged. \"If you say so, Strike. It's good enough for me.\"\n\n\n Celia Graham left the bridge shaking her head. \"We'll all be dead soon.\n And me so young and pretty.\"\n\n\n Strike turned to the squawk-box. \"Evans!\"\n\n\n \"Evans here,\" came the reply.\n\n\n \"Have Sparks get a DF fix on the\nAtropos\nand hold it. We'll home on\n their carrier wave. They're in trouble and we're going after them. Plot\n the course.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Captain.\"\n\n\n Strike turned to Cob. \"Have the gun-crews stand by to relieve the\n black-gang in the tube rooms. It's going to get hotter than the hinges\n of hell down there and we'll have to shorten shifts.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir!\" Cob saluted and was gone.", "The scaly bulk of the Tellurian Rocket Ship\nAphrodite\nloomed\n unhappily into the thick air above the two men as they reached the\n ventral valve. Strike raised reluctant eyes to the sloping flank of the\n fat spaceship.\n\n\n \"It looks,\" he commented bitterly, \"like a pregnant carp.\"\n\n\n Senior Lieutenant Coburn Whitley—\"Cob\" to his friends—nodded in\n agreement. \"That's our Lover-Girl ... old Aphrodisiac herself. The ship\n with the poison personality.\" Cob was the\nAphrodite's\nExecutive,\n and he had been with her a full year ... which was a record for Execs\n on the\nAphrodite\n. She generally sent them Earthside with nervous\n breakdowns in half that time.\n\n\n \"Tell me, Captain,\" continued Cob curiously, \"how does it happen\n that you of all people happened to draw this tub for a command? I\n thought....\"", "that spouted spaceward seemed like great fiery tentacles reaching for\n the trapped men on board the warships. The atmospheric guiding fins,\n the gun-turrets and other protuberances on both ships were beginning\n to melt under the fierce radiance. Only the huge refrigeration plants\n on the vessels made life within them possible. And, even so, men were\n dying.", "\"That's about all there is to tell you. As soon as our rather\n leisurely E/O gets here, we can jet with Aunt Nelly's postcard.\" He\n nodded. \"That's the story. Lift ship in....\" He glanced at his wrist\n chronograph, \"... in an hour and five.\"\n\n\n The officers filed out and Cob Whitley stuck his head into the room.\n \"Captain?\"\n\n\n \"Come in, Cob.\" Strike's dark brows knit at the sight of the uniformed\n girl in the doorway.\n\n\n Cob's face was sober, but hidden amusement was kindling behind his\n eyes. \"Captain, may I present Lieutenant Hendricks? Lieutenant\nI-vy\nHendricks?\"\n\n\n Strike looked blankly at the girl.\n\n\n \"Our new E/O, Captain,\" prompted Whitley.", "Cob snatched the flimsy from Sparks' hands and galloped for the\n flying-bridge. He burst in and waved the message excitedly in front of\n Strykalski's face.\n\n\n \"Have a look at this! Ye gods and little catfish! Read it!\"\n\n\n \"Well, dammit, hold it still so I can!\" snapped Strike. He read the\n message and passed it to Ivy Hendricks with a shake of his head.\n\n\n She read it through and looked up exultantly. \"This is\nit\n! This is\n the chance I've been praying for, Strike!\"\n\n\n He returned her gaze sourly. \"For Gorman to fall into the sun? I recall\n I said something of the sort myself, but there are other men on those\n ships. And, if I know Captain Varni on the\nLachesis\n, he won't let go\n that line even if he fries himself.\"", "The girl's voice was even colder than before as she said, \"Harlan\n Hendricks, Captain, is my father.\"\nA week in space had convinced Strike that he commanded a jinx ship.\n Jetting sunward from Venus, the cantankerous\nAphrodite\nhad burned a\n steering tube through, and it had been necessary to go into free-fall\n while Jenkins, the Assistant E/O, and a damage control party effected\n repairs. When the power was again applied, Old Aphrodisiac was running\n ten hours behind schedule, and Strike and Evans, the Astrogation\n Officer, were sweating out the unforeseen changes introduced into the\n orbital calculations by the time spent in free-fall.\n\n\n The\nAphrodite\nrumbled on toward the orbit of Mercury....", "\"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"Don't kill us off.\" He smiled down at her.", "There were tears bright in Ivy Hendricks' eyes and she sounded\n desperate. \"But we can save those ships! We can, I\nknow\nwe can! My\n father designed this ship! I know every rivet of her! Those idiots off\n Callisto didn't know what they were doing. These ships needed specially\n trained men. Father told them that! And I'm trained! I can take her in\n and save those ships!\" Her expression turned to one of disgust. \"Or are\n you afraid?\"\n\n\n \"Frankly, Ivy, I haven't enough sense to be afraid. But are you so\n certain that we can pull this off? If I make a mistake this time ...\n it'll be the last. For all of us.\"\n\n\n \"We can do it,\" said Ivy Hendricks simply.\n\n\n Strike turned to Cob. \"What do you say, Cob? Shall we make it hotter in\n here?\"", "The last thing he remembered was a voice. It sounded like Bayne's. And\n it was shouting. \"We're moving 'em! We're pulling away! We're....\" And\n that was all.\n\n\n The space-tug\nScylla\nfound them.\n\n\n The three ships ...\nAtropos\n,\nLachesis\n, and old Aphrodisiac ...\n lashed together and drifting in space. Every man and woman aboard out\n cold from the acceleration, and\nAphrodite's\ntanks bone dry. But they\n were a safe 80,000,000 miles from Sol....\nThe orchestra was subdued, the officer's club softly lighted. Cob\n leaned his elbow on the bar and bent to inspect the blue ribbon of the\n Spatial Cross on Strike's chest. Then he inspected his own and nodded\n with tipsy satisfaction. He stared out at the Martian night beyond the\n broad windows and back again at Strike. His frown was puzzled.", "At 30,000,000 miles from the sun, the\nAphrodite's\nrefrigeration\n units could no longer keep the interior of the ship at a comfortable\n temperature. The thermometer stood at 102°F, the very metal of\n the ship's fittings hot to the touch. Uniforms were discarded,\n insignia of rank vanished. The men dressed in fiberglass shorts and\n spaceboots, sweat making their naked bodies gleam like copper under the\n sodium-vapor lights. The women in the crew added only light blouses to\n their shorts ... and suffered from extra clothing." ], [ "\"Uh ... welcome aboard, Miss Hendricks,\" was all the Captain could find\n to say.\n\n\n The girl's eyes were cold and unfriendly. \"Thank you, Captain.\" Her\n voice was like cracked ice tinkling in a glass. \"If I may have your\n permission to inspect the drives, Captain, I\nmay\nbe able to\n convince you that the designer of this vessel was not ... as you seem\n to think ... a senile incompetent.\"\n\n\n Strike was perplexed, and he showed it. \"Why, certainly ... uh ...\n Miss ... but why should you be so....\"", "The scaly bulk of the Tellurian Rocket Ship\nAphrodite\nloomed\n unhappily into the thick air above the two men as they reached the\n ventral valve. Strike raised reluctant eyes to the sloping flank of the\n fat spaceship.\n\n\n \"It looks,\" he commented bitterly, \"like a pregnant carp.\"\n\n\n Senior Lieutenant Coburn Whitley—\"Cob\" to his friends—nodded in\n agreement. \"That's our Lover-Girl ... old Aphrodisiac herself. The ship\n with the poison personality.\" Cob was the\nAphrodite's\nExecutive,\n and he had been with her a full year ... which was a record for Execs\n on the\nAphrodite\n. She generally sent them Earthside with nervous\n breakdowns in half that time.\n\n\n \"Tell me, Captain,\" continued Cob curiously, \"how does it happen\n that you of all people happened to draw this tub for a command? I\n thought....\"", "\"Me again. The\nGanymede's\nwhole crew ended up in the Luna Base brig.\n We celebrated a bit too freely.\"\n\n\n Cob Whitley looked admiringly at his new Commander. \"That was the night\n after the\nGanymede\nbroke the record for the Centaurus B-Earth run,\n wasn't it? And then wasn't there something about....\"\n\n\n \"Canalopolis?\"\n\n\n Whitley nodded.\n\n\n \"That time I called the Martian Ambassador a spy. It was at a Tellurian\n Embassy Ball.\"\n\n\n \"I begin to see what you mean, Captain.\"\n\n\n \"Strike's the name, Cob.\"", "For all the tension between the occupants of the flying-bridge, Strike\n and Ivy Hendricks worked well together. And after a second week in\n space, a reluctant admiration was replacing the resentment between\n them. Ivy spent whatever time she could spare tinkering with her\n father's pet surge-circuit and Strike began to realize that there was\n little she did not know about spaceship engineering. Then, too, Ivy\n spent a lot of time at the controls, and Strike was forced to admit\n that he had never seen a finer job of piloting done by man or woman.\n\n\n And finally, Ivy hated old Brass-bottom Gorman even more than Strike\n did. She felt that Gorman had ruined her father's career, and she was\n dedicating her life to proving her father right and Brass-bottom wrong.\n There's nothing in the cosmos to nurture friendship like a common enemy.", "\"That's about all there is to tell you. As soon as our rather\n leisurely E/O gets here, we can jet with Aunt Nelly's postcard.\" He\n nodded. \"That's the story. Lift ship in....\" He glanced at his wrist\n chronograph, \"... in an hour and five.\"\n\n\n The officers filed out and Cob Whitley stuck his head into the room.\n \"Captain?\"\n\n\n \"Come in, Cob.\" Strike's dark brows knit at the sight of the uniformed\n girl in the doorway.\n\n\n Cob's face was sober, but hidden amusement was kindling behind his\n eyes. \"Captain, may I present Lieutenant Hendricks? Lieutenant\nI-vy\nHendricks?\"\n\n\n Strike looked blankly at the girl.\n\n\n \"Our new E/O, Captain,\" prompted Whitley.", "The girl's voice was even colder than before as she said, \"Harlan\n Hendricks, Captain, is my father.\"\nA week in space had convinced Strike that he commanded a jinx ship.\n Jetting sunward from Venus, the cantankerous\nAphrodite\nhad burned a\n steering tube through, and it had been necessary to go into free-fall\n while Jenkins, the Assistant E/O, and a damage control party effected\n repairs. When the power was again applied, Old Aphrodisiac was running\n ten hours behind schedule, and Strike and Evans, the Astrogation\n Officer, were sweating out the unforeseen changes introduced into the\n orbital calculations by the time spent in free-fall.\n\n\n The\nAphrodite\nrumbled on toward the orbit of Mercury....", "There were tears bright in Ivy Hendricks' eyes and she sounded\n desperate. \"But we can save those ships! We can, I\nknow\nwe can! My\n father designed this ship! I know every rivet of her! Those idiots off\n Callisto didn't know what they were doing. These ships needed specially\n trained men. Father told them that! And I'm trained! I can take her in\n and save those ships!\" Her expression turned to one of disgust. \"Or are\n you afraid?\"\n\n\n \"Frankly, Ivy, I haven't enough sense to be afraid. But are you so\n certain that we can pull this off? If I make a mistake this time ...\n it'll be the last. For all of us.\"\n\n\n \"We can do it,\" said Ivy Hendricks simply.\n\n\n Strike turned to Cob. \"What do you say, Cob? Shall we make it hotter in\n here?\"", "\"Now hear this. All officer personnel will assemble in the flying\n bridge at 600 hours for Captain's briefing. Officer of the Deck will\n recall any enlisted personnel now on liberty....\"\n\n\n Whitley was on his feet, all the slackness gone from his manner.\n \"Orders, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"We can't do anything until the new Engineering Officer gets here.\n They're sending someone down from the\nAntigone\n, and I expect him by\n 600 hours. In the meantime you'll take over his part of the work. See\n to it that we are fueled and ready to lift ship by 602. Base will start\n loading the mail at 599:30. That's about all.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir.\" Whitley saluted and turned to go. At the bulkhead, he\n paused. \"Captain,\" he asked, \"Who is the new E/O to be?\"", "\"The first David Farragut Strykalski, son of a sea-loving Polish\n immigrant, emerged from World War II a four-striper and Congressional\n Medal winner. Then came David Farragut Strykalski, Jr., and, in the\n abortive Atomic War that terrified the world in 1961, he won a United\n Nations Peace Citation. And then came David Farragut Strykalski III ...\n me.\n\n\n \"From such humble beginnings do great traditions grow. But something\n happened when I came into the picture. I don't fit with the rest of\n them. Call it luck or temperament or what have you.", "Strike stretched his long legs out on the steel deck. \"A Lieutenant\n Hendricks, I. V. Hendricks, is what the orders say.\"\n\n\n Cob thought hard for a moment and then shrugged his shoulders. \"I. V.\n Hendricks.\" He shook his head. \"Don't know him.\"\nThe other officers of the\nT.R.S. Aphrodite\nwere in conference with\n the Captain when Cob and the girl at his side reached the flying\n bridge. She was tall and dark-haired with regular features and pale\n blue eyes. She wore a service jumper with two silver stripes on the\n shoulder-straps, and even the shapeless garment could not hide the\n obvious trimness of her figure.\n\n\n Strike's back was toward the bulkhead, and he was addressing the others.", "\"In the first place I seem to have an uncanny talent for saying the\n wrong thing to the wrong person. Gorman for example. And I take too\n much on my own initiative. Gorman doesn't like that. I lost the\nGanymede\nbecause I left my station where I was supposed to be running\n section-lines to take on a bunch of colonists I thought were in\n danger....\"\n\n\n \"The Procyon A people?\" asked Cob.\n\n\n \"So you've heard about it.\" Strike shook his head sadly. \"My tactical\n astrophysicist warned me that Procyon A might go nova. I left my\n routine post and loaded up on colonists.\" He shrugged. \"Wrong guess. No\n nova. I made an ass of myself and lost the\nGanymede\n. Gorman gave it\n to his former aide. I got this.\"\n\n\n Cob coughed slightly. \"I heard something about Ley City, too.\"", "Cob snatched the flimsy from Sparks' hands and galloped for the\n flying-bridge. He burst in and waved the message excitedly in front of\n Strykalski's face.\n\n\n \"Have a look at this! Ye gods and little catfish! Read it!\"\n\n\n \"Well, dammit, hold it still so I can!\" snapped Strike. He read the\n message and passed it to Ivy Hendricks with a shake of his head.\n\n\n She read it through and looked up exultantly. \"This is\nit\n! This is\n the chance I've been praying for, Strike!\"\n\n\n He returned her gaze sourly. \"For Gorman to fall into the sun? I recall\n I said something of the sort myself, but there are other men on those\n ships. And, if I know Captain Varni on the\nLachesis\n, he won't let go\n that line even if he fries himself.\"", "\"You know Gorman?\" queried Strykalski.\n\n\n Cob nodded. \"Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. Old Brass-bottom Gorman?\"\n\n\n \"The same.\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" Cob ran a hand over his chin speculatively, \"I know Gorman's\n a prize stinker ... but you were in command of the\nGanymede\n. And,\n after all, you come from an old service family and all that. How come\n this?\" He indicated the monitor expressively.\n\n\n Strike sighed. \"Well, now, Cob, I'll tell you. You'll be spacing with\n me and I guess you've a right to know the worst ... not that you\n wouldn't find it out anyway. I come from a long line of very sharp\n operators. Seven generations of officers and gentlemen. Lousy with\n tradition.", "Ivy's eyes snapped angrily. \"That's not what I meant, and you know it!\n I mean this!\" She touched the red-sealed surge-circuit rheostat.\n\n\n \"That's very nice, Lieutenant,\" commented Cob drily. \"And I know that\n you've been very busy adjusting that gismo. But I seem to recall that\n the last time that circuit was uncorked everyone aboard became part of\n the woodwork ... very messily, too.\"\n\n\n \"Let me understand you, Ivy,\" said Strike in a flat voice. \"What you\n are suggesting is that I risk my ship and the lives of all of us trying\n to pull old Gorman's fat out of the fire with a drive that's blown\n skyhigh three times out of three. Very neat.\"", "\"... and that's about the story. We are to jet within 28,000,000 miles\n of Sol. Orbit is trans-Mercurian hyperbolic. With Mars in opposition,\n we have to make a perihelion run and it won't be pleasant. But I'm\n certain this old boiler can take it. I understand the old boy who\n designed her wasn't as incompetent as they say. But Space Regs are\n specific about mail runs. This is important to you, Evans. Your\n astrogation has to be accurate to within twenty-five miles plus or\n minus the shortest route. And there'll be no breaking orbit. Now be\n certain that the refrigeration units are checked, Mister Wilkins,\n especially in the hydroponic cells. Pure air is going to be important.\"", "Swiftly, the fat, ungainly shape of old Aphrodisiac drew near. In her\n flying-bridge, Strike and Ivy Hendricks watched the stricken ships in\n the darkened viewport.\n\n\n The temperature stood at 140° and the air was bitter with the smell\n of hot metal. Ivy's blouse clung to her body, soaked through with\n perspiration. Sweat ran from her hair into her eyes and she gasped\n for breath in the oven hot compartment. Strike watched her with\n apprehension.", "Strike shook his head. \"She's gone to the Bureau of Ships with a\n designing job.\"\n\n\n Cob waved an expressive arm in the air. \"But dammit, man, I thought....\"\n\n\n \"The answer is\nno\n. Ivy's a nice girl ... but....\" He paused and\n sighed. \"Since she was promoted to her father's old rank ... well....\"\n He shrugged. \"Who wants a wife that ranks you?\"\n\n\n \"Never thought of that,\" mused Cob. For a long while he was silent;\n then he pulled out an address book and leafed through until he came to\n the pages marked \"Canalopolis, Mars.\"\n\n\n And he was gratified to see that Lieutenant Commander David Farragut\n Strykalski III was doing the same.", "Whitley shrugged. \"If you say so, Strike. It's good enough for me.\"\n\n\n Celia Graham left the bridge shaking her head. \"We'll all be dead soon.\n And me so young and pretty.\"\n\n\n Strike turned to the squawk-box. \"Evans!\"\n\n\n \"Evans here,\" came the reply.\n\n\n \"Have Sparks get a DF fix on the\nAtropos\nand hold it. We'll home on\n their carrier wave. They're in trouble and we're going after them. Plot\n the course.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, Captain.\"\n\n\n Strike turned to Cob. \"Have the gun-crews stand by to relieve the\n black-gang in the tube rooms. It's going to get hotter than the hinges\n of hell down there and we'll have to shorten shifts.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir!\" Cob saluted and was gone.", "Whitley's smile was expansive. \"Strike, I think you're going to like\n our old tin pot here.\" He patted the\nAphrodite's\nnether belly\n affectionately. \"She's old ... but she's loose. And we're not likely to\n meet any Ambassadors or Admirals with her, either.\"\n\n\n Strykalski sighed, still thinking of his sleek\nGanymede\n. \"She'll\n carry the mail, I suppose. And that's about all that's expected of her.\"\n\n\n Cob shrugged philosophically. \"Better than tanking that stinking rocket\n fuel, anyway. Deep space?\"\n\n\n Strike shook his head. \"Venus-Mars.\"\n\n\n Cob scratched his chin speculatively. \"Perihelion run. Hot work.\"", "And she agreed.\nOld Aphrodisiac had reached perihelion when it happened. The\n thermometer stood at 135° and tempers were snapping. Cob and Celia\n Graham had tangled about some minor point concerning Lover-Girl's\n weight and balance. Ivy went about her work on the bridge without\n speaking, and Strike made no attempt to brighten her sudden depression.\n Lieutenant Evans had punched Bayne, the Tactical Astrophysicist,\n in the eye for some disparaging remark about Southern California\n womanhood. The ratings were grumbling about the food....\n\n\n And then it happened." ], [ "Cob snatched the flimsy from Sparks' hands and galloped for the\n flying-bridge. He burst in and waved the message excitedly in front of\n Strykalski's face.\n\n\n \"Have a look at this! Ye gods and little catfish! Read it!\"\n\n\n \"Well, dammit, hold it still so I can!\" snapped Strike. He read the\n message and passed it to Ivy Hendricks with a shake of his head.\n\n\n She read it through and looked up exultantly. \"This is\nit\n! This is\n the chance I've been praying for, Strike!\"\n\n\n He returned her gaze sourly. \"For Gorman to fall into the sun? I recall\n I said something of the sort myself, but there are other men on those\n ships. And, if I know Captain Varni on the\nLachesis\n, he won't let go\n that line even if he fries himself.\"", "\"All right,\" said Strike, setting down his glass. \"What's on your mind,\n Cob? Something's eating you.\"\n\n\n Whitley nodded very slowly. He took a long pull at his highball. \"I\n understand that you goofballed your chances of getting the\nGanymede\nback when Gorman spoke his piece to you....\"\n\n\n \"All I said to him....\"\n\n\n \"I know. I know what you said ... and it won't bear repeating. But\n you're not fooling me. You've fallen for old Lover-Girl and you don't\n want to leave her. Ver-ry commendable. Loyal! Stout fellah! But what\n about Ivy?\"\n\n\n \"Ivy?\"\n\n\n Cob looked away. \"I thought that you and she ... well, I thought that\n when we got back ... well....\"", "Swiftly, the fat, ungainly shape of old Aphrodisiac drew near. In her\n flying-bridge, Strike and Ivy Hendricks watched the stricken ships in\n the darkened viewport.\n\n\n The temperature stood at 140° and the air was bitter with the smell\n of hot metal. Ivy's blouse clung to her body, soaked through with\n perspiration. Sweat ran from her hair into her eyes and she gasped\n for breath in the oven hot compartment. Strike watched her with\n apprehension.", "Ivy's eyes snapped angrily. \"That's not what I meant, and you know it!\n I mean this!\" She touched the red-sealed surge-circuit rheostat.\n\n\n \"That's very nice, Lieutenant,\" commented Cob drily. \"And I know that\n you've been very busy adjusting that gismo. But I seem to recall that\n the last time that circuit was uncorked everyone aboard became part of\n the woodwork ... very messily, too.\"\n\n\n \"Let me understand you, Ivy,\" said Strike in a flat voice. \"What you\n are suggesting is that I risk my ship and the lives of all of us trying\n to pull old Gorman's fat out of the fire with a drive that's blown\n skyhigh three times out of three. Very neat.\"", "There were tears bright in Ivy Hendricks' eyes and she sounded\n desperate. \"But we can save those ships! We can, I\nknow\nwe can! My\n father designed this ship! I know every rivet of her! Those idiots off\n Callisto didn't know what they were doing. These ships needed specially\n trained men. Father told them that! And I'm trained! I can take her in\n and save those ships!\" Her expression turned to one of disgust. \"Or are\n you afraid?\"\n\n\n \"Frankly, Ivy, I haven't enough sense to be afraid. But are you so\n certain that we can pull this off? If I make a mistake this time ...\n it'll be the last. For all of us.\"\n\n\n \"We can do it,\" said Ivy Hendricks simply.\n\n\n Strike turned to Cob. \"What do you say, Cob? Shall we make it hotter in\n here?\"", "And she agreed.\nOld Aphrodisiac had reached perihelion when it happened. The\n thermometer stood at 135° and tempers were snapping. Cob and Celia\n Graham had tangled about some minor point concerning Lover-Girl's\n weight and balance. Ivy went about her work on the bridge without\n speaking, and Strike made no attempt to brighten her sudden depression.\n Lieutenant Evans had punched Bayne, the Tactical Astrophysicist,\n in the eye for some disparaging remark about Southern California\n womanhood. The ratings were grumbling about the food....\n\n\n And then it happened.", "\"You know Gorman?\" queried Strykalski.\n\n\n Cob nodded. \"Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. Old Brass-bottom Gorman?\"\n\n\n \"The same.\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" Cob ran a hand over his chin speculatively, \"I know Gorman's\n a prize stinker ... but you were in command of the\nGanymede\n. And,\n after all, you come from an old service family and all that. How come\n this?\" He indicated the monitor expressively.\n\n\n Strike sighed. \"Well, now, Cob, I'll tell you. You'll be spacing with\n me and I guess you've a right to know the worst ... not that you\n wouldn't find it out anyway. I come from a long line of very sharp\n operators. Seven generations of officers and gentlemen. Lousy with\n tradition.", "\"Uh ... welcome aboard, Miss Hendricks,\" was all the Captain could find\n to say.\n\n\n The girl's eyes were cold and unfriendly. \"Thank you, Captain.\" Her\n voice was like cracked ice tinkling in a glass. \"If I may have your\n permission to inspect the drives, Captain, I\nmay\nbe able to\n convince you that the designer of this vessel was not ... as you seem\n to think ... a senile incompetent.\"\n\n\n Strike was perplexed, and he showed it. \"Why, certainly ... uh ...\n Miss ... but why should you be so....\"", "\"Now hear this. All officer personnel will assemble in the flying\n bridge at 600 hours for Captain's briefing. Officer of the Deck will\n recall any enlisted personnel now on liberty....\"\n\n\n Whitley was on his feet, all the slackness gone from his manner.\n \"Orders, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"We can't do anything until the new Engineering Officer gets here.\n They're sending someone down from the\nAntigone\n, and I expect him by\n 600 hours. In the meantime you'll take over his part of the work. See\n to it that we are fueled and ready to lift ship by 602. Base will start\n loading the mail at 599:30. That's about all.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir.\" Whitley saluted and turned to go. At the bulkhead, he\n paused. \"Captain,\" he asked, \"Who is the new E/O to be?\"", "\"That's about all there is to tell you. As soon as our rather\n leisurely E/O gets here, we can jet with Aunt Nelly's postcard.\" He\n nodded. \"That's the story. Lift ship in....\" He glanced at his wrist\n chronograph, \"... in an hour and five.\"\n\n\n The officers filed out and Cob Whitley stuck his head into the room.\n \"Captain?\"\n\n\n \"Come in, Cob.\" Strike's dark brows knit at the sight of the uniformed\n girl in the doorway.\n\n\n Cob's face was sober, but hidden amusement was kindling behind his\n eyes. \"Captain, may I present Lieutenant Hendricks? Lieutenant\nI-vy\nHendricks?\"\n\n\n Strike looked blankly at the girl.\n\n\n \"Our new E/O, Captain,\" prompted Whitley.", "\"The first David Farragut Strykalski, son of a sea-loving Polish\n immigrant, emerged from World War II a four-striper and Congressional\n Medal winner. Then came David Farragut Strykalski, Jr., and, in the\n abortive Atomic War that terrified the world in 1961, he won a United\n Nations Peace Citation. And then came David Farragut Strykalski III ...\n me.\n\n\n \"From such humble beginnings do great traditions grow. But something\n happened when I came into the picture. I don't fit with the rest of\n them. Call it luck or temperament or what have you.", "The scaly bulk of the Tellurian Rocket Ship\nAphrodite\nloomed\n unhappily into the thick air above the two men as they reached the\n ventral valve. Strike raised reluctant eyes to the sloping flank of the\n fat spaceship.\n\n\n \"It looks,\" he commented bitterly, \"like a pregnant carp.\"\n\n\n Senior Lieutenant Coburn Whitley—\"Cob\" to his friends—nodded in\n agreement. \"That's our Lover-Girl ... old Aphrodisiac herself. The ship\n with the poison personality.\" Cob was the\nAphrodite's\nExecutive,\n and he had been with her a full year ... which was a record for Execs\n on the\nAphrodite\n. She generally sent them Earthside with nervous\n breakdowns in half that time.\n\n\n \"Tell me, Captain,\" continued Cob curiously, \"how does it happen\n that you of all people happened to draw this tub for a command? I\n thought....\"", "Strike shook his head. \"She's gone to the Bureau of Ships with a\n designing job.\"\n\n\n Cob waved an expressive arm in the air. \"But dammit, man, I thought....\"\n\n\n \"The answer is\nno\n. Ivy's a nice girl ... but....\" He paused and\n sighed. \"Since she was promoted to her father's old rank ... well....\"\n He shrugged. \"Who wants a wife that ranks you?\"\n\n\n \"Never thought of that,\" mused Cob. For a long while he was silent;\n then he pulled out an address book and leafed through until he came to\n the pages marked \"Canalopolis, Mars.\"\n\n\n And he was gratified to see that Lieutenant Commander David Farragut\n Strykalski III was doing the same.", "Strike lowered his head to clear the arch of the flying-bridge\n bulkhead. Cob followed. He trailed his Captain through a jungle\n of chrome piping to the main control panels. Strike sank into an\n acceleration chair in front of the red DANGER seal on the surge-circuit\n rheostat.\n\n\n \"Looks like a drug-store fountain, doesn't it?\" commented Cob.\n\n\n Strykalski nodded sadly, thinking of the padded smoothness of the\nGanymede's\nflying-bridge. \"But she's home to us, anyway.\"\n\n\n The thick Venusian fog had closed in around the top levels of the ship,\n hugging the ports and cutting off all view of the field outside. Strike\n reached for the squawk-box control.", "Ivy fought her reeling senses and the bucking ship as the slack came\n out of the cable. Blackness was flickering at the edges of her field\n of vision. She could scarcely lift her hand to the red-sealed circuit\n rheostat. Shudderingly, she made the effort ... and failed. Conscious,\n but too spent to move, she collapsed over the blistering hot instrument\n panel.\n\n\n \"\nIvy!\n\" Strike was beside her, cradling her head in his arm.\n\n\n \"I ... I ... can't make it ... Strike. You'll ... have to run ... the\n show ... after ... all.\"\n\n\n Strike laid her gently in an acceleration chair and turned toward the\n control panel. His head was throbbing painfully as he broke the seal on\n the surge-circuit.", "\"... and that's about the story. We are to jet within 28,000,000 miles\n of Sol. Orbit is trans-Mercurian hyperbolic. With Mars in opposition,\n we have to make a perihelion run and it won't be pleasant. But I'm\n certain this old boiler can take it. I understand the old boy who\n designed her wasn't as incompetent as they say. But Space Regs are\n specific about mail runs. This is important to you, Evans. Your\n astrogation has to be accurate to within twenty-five miles plus or\n minus the shortest route. And there'll be no breaking orbit. Now be\n certain that the refrigeration units are checked, Mister Wilkins,\n especially in the hydroponic cells. Pure air is going to be important.\"", "Slowly he turned the rheostat. Relays chattered. From deep within\n old Lover-Girl's vitals came a low whine. He fed more power into the\n circuit. Cadmium rods slipped into lead sheaths decks below in the\n tube-rooms. The whining rose in pitch. The spinning of the ships in\n space slowed. Stopped. With painful deliberation, they swung into line.\n\n\n More power. The whine changed to a shriek. A banshee wail.\n\n\n Cob's voice came through the squawk-box, soberly. \"Strike, Celia's\n fainted down here. We can't take much more of this heat.\"\n\n\n \"We're trying, Cob!\" shouted Strike over the whine of the circuit. The\n gauges showed the accumulators full. \"\nNow!\n\" He spun the rheostat to\n the stops, and black space burst over his brain....", "For all the tension between the occupants of the flying-bridge, Strike\n and Ivy Hendricks worked well together. And after a second week in\n space, a reluctant admiration was replacing the resentment between\n them. Ivy spent whatever time she could spare tinkering with her\n father's pet surge-circuit and Strike began to realize that there was\n little she did not know about spaceship engineering. Then, too, Ivy\n spent a lot of time at the controls, and Strike was forced to admit\n that he had never seen a finer job of piloting done by man or woman.\n\n\n And finally, Ivy hated old Brass-bottom Gorman even more than Strike\n did. She felt that Gorman had ruined her father's career, and she was\n dedicating her life to proving her father right and Brass-bottom wrong.\n There's nothing in the cosmos to nurture friendship like a common enemy.", "\"Me again. The\nGanymede's\nwhole crew ended up in the Luna Base brig.\n We celebrated a bit too freely.\"\n\n\n Cob Whitley looked admiringly at his new Commander. \"That was the night\n after the\nGanymede\nbroke the record for the Centaurus B-Earth run,\n wasn't it? And then wasn't there something about....\"\n\n\n \"Canalopolis?\"\n\n\n Whitley nodded.\n\n\n \"That time I called the Martian Ambassador a spy. It was at a Tellurian\n Embassy Ball.\"\n\n\n \"I begin to see what you mean, Captain.\"\n\n\n \"Strike's the name, Cob.\"", "\"In the first place I seem to have an uncanny talent for saying the\n wrong thing to the wrong person. Gorman for example. And I take too\n much on my own initiative. Gorman doesn't like that. I lost the\nGanymede\nbecause I left my station where I was supposed to be running\n section-lines to take on a bunch of colonists I thought were in\n danger....\"\n\n\n \"The Procyon A people?\" asked Cob.\n\n\n \"So you've heard about it.\" Strike shook his head sadly. \"My tactical\n astrophysicist warned me that Procyon A might go nova. I left my\n routine post and loaded up on colonists.\" He shrugged. \"Wrong guess. No\n nova. I made an ass of myself and lost the\nGanymede\n. Gorman gave it\n to his former aide. I got this.\"\n\n\n Cob coughed slightly. \"I heard something about Ley City, too.\"" ], [ "\"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"Don't kill us off.\" He smiled down at her.", "\"That's about all there is to tell you. As soon as our rather\n leisurely E/O gets here, we can jet with Aunt Nelly's postcard.\" He\n nodded. \"That's the story. Lift ship in....\" He glanced at his wrist\n chronograph, \"... in an hour and five.\"\n\n\n The officers filed out and Cob Whitley stuck his head into the room.\n \"Captain?\"\n\n\n \"Come in, Cob.\" Strike's dark brows knit at the sight of the uniformed\n girl in the doorway.\n\n\n Cob's face was sober, but hidden amusement was kindling behind his\n eyes. \"Captain, may I present Lieutenant Hendricks? Lieutenant\nI-vy\nHendricks?\"\n\n\n Strike looked blankly at the girl.\n\n\n \"Our new E/O, Captain,\" prompted Whitley.", "\"All right,\" said Strike, setting down his glass. \"What's on your mind,\n Cob? Something's eating you.\"\n\n\n Whitley nodded very slowly. He took a long pull at his highball. \"I\n understand that you goofballed your chances of getting the\nGanymede\nback when Gorman spoke his piece to you....\"\n\n\n \"All I said to him....\"\n\n\n \"I know. I know what you said ... and it won't bear repeating. But\n you're not fooling me. You've fallen for old Lover-Girl and you don't\n want to leave her. Ver-ry commendable. Loyal! Stout fellah! But what\n about Ivy?\"\n\n\n \"Ivy?\"\n\n\n Cob looked away. \"I thought that you and she ... well, I thought that\n when we got back ... well....\"", "And she agreed.\nOld Aphrodisiac had reached perihelion when it happened. The\n thermometer stood at 135° and tempers were snapping. Cob and Celia\n Graham had tangled about some minor point concerning Lover-Girl's\n weight and balance. Ivy went about her work on the bridge without\n speaking, and Strike made no attempt to brighten her sudden depression.\n Lieutenant Evans had punched Bayne, the Tactical Astrophysicist,\n in the eye for some disparaging remark about Southern California\n womanhood. The ratings were grumbling about the food....\n\n\n And then it happened.", "Swiftly, the fat, ungainly shape of old Aphrodisiac drew near. In her\n flying-bridge, Strike and Ivy Hendricks watched the stricken ships in\n the darkened viewport.\n\n\n The temperature stood at 140° and the air was bitter with the smell\n of hot metal. Ivy's blouse clung to her body, soaked through with\n perspiration. Sweat ran from her hair into her eyes and she gasped\n for breath in the oven hot compartment. Strike watched her with\n apprehension.", "\"... and that's about the story. We are to jet within 28,000,000 miles\n of Sol. Orbit is trans-Mercurian hyperbolic. With Mars in opposition,\n we have to make a perihelion run and it won't be pleasant. But I'm\n certain this old boiler can take it. I understand the old boy who\n designed her wasn't as incompetent as they say. But Space Regs are\n specific about mail runs. This is important to you, Evans. Your\n astrogation has to be accurate to within twenty-five miles plus or\n minus the shortest route. And there'll be no breaking orbit. Now be\n certain that the refrigeration units are checked, Mister Wilkins,\n especially in the hydroponic cells. Pure air is going to be important.\"", "There were tears bright in Ivy Hendricks' eyes and she sounded\n desperate. \"But we can save those ships! We can, I\nknow\nwe can! My\n father designed this ship! I know every rivet of her! Those idiots off\n Callisto didn't know what they were doing. These ships needed specially\n trained men. Father told them that! And I'm trained! I can take her in\n and save those ships!\" Her expression turned to one of disgust. \"Or are\n you afraid?\"\n\n\n \"Frankly, Ivy, I haven't enough sense to be afraid. But are you so\n certain that we can pull this off? If I make a mistake this time ...\n it'll be the last. For all of us.\"\n\n\n \"We can do it,\" said Ivy Hendricks simply.\n\n\n Strike turned to Cob. \"What do you say, Cob? Shall we make it hotter in\n here?\"", "\"The first David Farragut Strykalski, son of a sea-loving Polish\n immigrant, emerged from World War II a four-striper and Congressional\n Medal winner. Then came David Farragut Strykalski, Jr., and, in the\n abortive Atomic War that terrified the world in 1961, he won a United\n Nations Peace Citation. And then came David Farragut Strykalski III ...\n me.\n\n\n \"From such humble beginnings do great traditions grow. But something\n happened when I came into the picture. I don't fit with the rest of\n them. Call it luck or temperament or what have you.", "For all the tension between the occupants of the flying-bridge, Strike\n and Ivy Hendricks worked well together. And after a second week in\n space, a reluctant admiration was replacing the resentment between\n them. Ivy spent whatever time she could spare tinkering with her\n father's pet surge-circuit and Strike began to realize that there was\n little she did not know about spaceship engineering. Then, too, Ivy\n spent a lot of time at the controls, and Strike was forced to admit\n that he had never seen a finer job of piloting done by man or woman.\n\n\n And finally, Ivy hated old Brass-bottom Gorman even more than Strike\n did. She felt that Gorman had ruined her father's career, and she was\n dedicating her life to proving her father right and Brass-bottom wrong.\n There's nothing in the cosmos to nurture friendship like a common enemy.", "Ivy fought her reeling senses and the bucking ship as the slack came\n out of the cable. Blackness was flickering at the edges of her field\n of vision. She could scarcely lift her hand to the red-sealed circuit\n rheostat. Shudderingly, she made the effort ... and failed. Conscious,\n but too spent to move, she collapsed over the blistering hot instrument\n panel.\n\n\n \"\nIvy!\n\" Strike was beside her, cradling her head in his arm.\n\n\n \"I ... I ... can't make it ... Strike. You'll ... have to run ... the\n show ... after ... all.\"\n\n\n Strike laid her gently in an acceleration chair and turned toward the\n control panel. His head was throbbing painfully as he broke the seal on\n the surge-circuit.", "\"Uh ... welcome aboard, Miss Hendricks,\" was all the Captain could find\n to say.\n\n\n The girl's eyes were cold and unfriendly. \"Thank you, Captain.\" Her\n voice was like cracked ice tinkling in a glass. \"If I may have your\n permission to inspect the drives, Captain, I\nmay\nbe able to\n convince you that the designer of this vessel was not ... as you seem\n to think ... a senile incompetent.\"\n\n\n Strike was perplexed, and he showed it. \"Why, certainly ... uh ...\n Miss ... but why should you be so....\"", "Strike shook his head. \"She's gone to the Bureau of Ships with a\n designing job.\"\n\n\n Cob waved an expressive arm in the air. \"But dammit, man, I thought....\"\n\n\n \"The answer is\nno\n. Ivy's a nice girl ... but....\" He paused and\n sighed. \"Since she was promoted to her father's old rank ... well....\"\n He shrugged. \"Who wants a wife that ranks you?\"\n\n\n \"Never thought of that,\" mused Cob. For a long while he was silent;\n then he pulled out an address book and leafed through until he came to\n the pages marked \"Canalopolis, Mars.\"\n\n\n And he was gratified to see that Lieutenant Commander David Farragut\n Strykalski III was doing the same.", "She nodded silently and took her place at the control panel. Smoothly\n she turned old Aphrodisiac's nose sunward....\nLashed together with a length of unbreakable beryllium steel cable,\n the\nLachesis\nand the\nAtropos\nfell helplessly toward the sun. The\n frantic flame that lashed out from the\nLachesis'\ntube was fading, her\n fission chambers fusing under the terrific heat of splitting atoms.\n Still she tried. She could not desert her sister ship, nor could she\n save her. Already the two ships had fallen to within 18,000,000 miles\n of the sun's terrifying atmosphere of glowing gases. The prominences", "The scaly bulk of the Tellurian Rocket Ship\nAphrodite\nloomed\n unhappily into the thick air above the two men as they reached the\n ventral valve. Strike raised reluctant eyes to the sloping flank of the\n fat spaceship.\n\n\n \"It looks,\" he commented bitterly, \"like a pregnant carp.\"\n\n\n Senior Lieutenant Coburn Whitley—\"Cob\" to his friends—nodded in\n agreement. \"That's our Lover-Girl ... old Aphrodisiac herself. The ship\n with the poison personality.\" Cob was the\nAphrodite's\nExecutive,\n and he had been with her a full year ... which was a record for Execs\n on the\nAphrodite\n. She generally sent them Earthside with nervous\n breakdowns in half that time.\n\n\n \"Tell me, Captain,\" continued Cob curiously, \"how does it happen\n that you of all people happened to draw this tub for a command? I\n thought....\"", "Ivy's eyes snapped angrily. \"That's not what I meant, and you know it!\n I mean this!\" She touched the red-sealed surge-circuit rheostat.\n\n\n \"That's very nice, Lieutenant,\" commented Cob drily. \"And I know that\n you've been very busy adjusting that gismo. But I seem to recall that\n the last time that circuit was uncorked everyone aboard became part of\n the woodwork ... very messily, too.\"\n\n\n \"Let me understand you, Ivy,\" said Strike in a flat voice. \"What you\n are suggesting is that I risk my ship and the lives of all of us trying\n to pull old Gorman's fat out of the fire with a drive that's blown\n skyhigh three times out of three. Very neat.\"", "\"Me again. The\nGanymede's\nwhole crew ended up in the Luna Base brig.\n We celebrated a bit too freely.\"\n\n\n Cob Whitley looked admiringly at his new Commander. \"That was the night\n after the\nGanymede\nbroke the record for the Centaurus B-Earth run,\n wasn't it? And then wasn't there something about....\"\n\n\n \"Canalopolis?\"\n\n\n Whitley nodded.\n\n\n \"That time I called the Martian Ambassador a spy. It was at a Tellurian\n Embassy Ball.\"\n\n\n \"I begin to see what you mean, Captain.\"\n\n\n \"Strike's the name, Cob.\"", "The last thing he remembered was a voice. It sounded like Bayne's. And\n it was shouting. \"We're moving 'em! We're pulling away! We're....\" And\n that was all.\n\n\n The space-tug\nScylla\nfound them.\n\n\n The three ships ...\nAtropos\n,\nLachesis\n, and old Aphrodisiac ...\n lashed together and drifting in space. Every man and woman aboard out\n cold from the acceleration, and\nAphrodite's\ntanks bone dry. But they\n were a safe 80,000,000 miles from Sol....\nThe orchestra was subdued, the officer's club softly lighted. Cob\n leaned his elbow on the bar and bent to inspect the blue ribbon of the\n Spatial Cross on Strike's chest. Then he inspected his own and nodded\n with tipsy satisfaction. He stared out at the Martian night beyond the\n broad windows and back again at Strike. His frown was puzzled.", "Cob was in the radio room when Sparks pulled the flimsy from the\n scrambler. It was a distress signal from the\nLachesis\n. The\nAtropos\nhad burst a fission chamber and was falling into the sun.\n Radiation made a transfer of personnel impossible, and the\nAtropos\nskeeterboats didn't have the power to pull away from the looming star.\n The\nLachesis\nhad a line on the sister dreadnaught and was valiantly\n trying to pull the heavy vessel to safety, but even the thundering\n power of the\nLachesis'\nmighty drive wasn't enough to break Sol's\n deathgrip on the battleship.\n\n\n A fleet of souped-up space-tugs was on its way from Luna and Venusport,\n but they could not possibly arrive on time. And it was doubtful that\n even the tugs had the necessary power to drag the crippled\nAtropos\naway from a fiery end.", "Slowly he turned the rheostat. Relays chattered. From deep within\n old Lover-Girl's vitals came a low whine. He fed more power into the\n circuit. Cadmium rods slipped into lead sheaths decks below in the\n tube-rooms. The whining rose in pitch. The spinning of the ships in\n space slowed. Stopped. With painful deliberation, they swung into line.\n\n\n More power. The whine changed to a shriek. A banshee wail.\n\n\n Cob's voice came through the squawk-box, soberly. \"Strike, Celia's\n fainted down here. We can't take much more of this heat.\"\n\n\n \"We're trying, Cob!\" shouted Strike over the whine of the circuit. The\n gauges showed the accumulators full. \"\nNow!\n\" He spun the rheostat to\n the stops, and black space burst over his brain....", "Cob snatched the flimsy from Sparks' hands and galloped for the\n flying-bridge. He burst in and waved the message excitedly in front of\n Strykalski's face.\n\n\n \"Have a look at this! Ye gods and little catfish! Read it!\"\n\n\n \"Well, dammit, hold it still so I can!\" snapped Strike. He read the\n message and passed it to Ivy Hendricks with a shake of his head.\n\n\n She read it through and looked up exultantly. \"This is\nit\n! This is\n the chance I've been praying for, Strike!\"\n\n\n He returned her gaze sourly. \"For Gorman to fall into the sun? I recall\n I said something of the sort myself, but there are other men on those\n ships. And, if I know Captain Varni on the\nLachesis\n, he won't let go\n that line even if he fries himself.\"" ] ]
valid	50948	[ "Approximately how many farm animals were there in the Americas?", "Why was Max happy to be paid with fruit?", "How many children did Albin have?", "What had Albin had to do with the machine before he got inside it?", "Why did Max need to be the one to use the machine?", "What was inside the metal box?", "What was Max's task?", "Why did Max think the world in the story was wonderful?", "What did Albin hope he would accomplish?" ]	[ [ "12", "18", "30", "5" ], [ "He was a civil servant", "He loved apricots", "His children loved fruit", "Food was very scarce" ], [ "5", "2", "1", "7" ], [ "He had helped build it", "He had never seen it before", "He had seen it once before", "His great grandfather had helped build it" ], [ "He was the only one who could stay conscious in it", "He had built it", "His coworkers insisted that he do it", "He was in charge of the project" ], [ "The story of a war", "The story of the epidemic", "The story of how to avoid the blight", "The story of the blight" ], [ "To push the switch to the right", "To pull the switch toward him", "To push the switch away from him", "To push the switch to the left" ], [ "Everyone had plenty of everything they needed", "There were very few people", "No one had to work", "A missile had not exploded in Brazil" ], [ "Making his life more exciting", "Becoming more powerful", "Making his life safer", "Making the world more prosperous" ] ]	[ 3, 4, 2, 1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1 ]	[ 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "Then the virus adjusted to wheat and corn—and famine howled in every\n street of the planet. All attempts by botanists to control the Blight\n failed because of the swiftness of its onslaught. And after it had fed,\n it hit again at a new plant and another and another.\n\n\n Most of the world's non-human mammals had been slaughtered for food\n long before they could starve to death. Many insects, too, before they\n became extinct at the loss of their edible plants, served to assuage\n hunger to some small extent.\n\n\n But the nutritive potential of Earth was steadily diminishing in a\n horrifying geometric progression. Recently, it had been observed,\n plankton—the tiny organism on which most of the sea's ecology was\n based—had started to disappear, and with its diminution, dead fish had\n begun to pile up on the beaches.", "They with their easy lives, what did they know what existence had been\n like for such as he? Hunger, always hunger, scrabbling, servility, and\n more hunger. Every time things got really tight, you and your wife\n looking sideways at your kids and wondering which of them would bring\n the best price. Buying security for them, as he was now, at the risk of\n his life.\n\n\n But in this other world, this other 2089, there was a state that took\n care of you and that treasured your children. A man like himself, with\nfive\nchildren—why, he'd be a big man, maybe the biggest man on\n Earth! And he'd have robots to work for him and lots of food. Above\n all, lots and lots of food.", "If his great-grandfather had not volunteered for the earliest\n time-travel experiments way back in the nineteen-seventies, back even\n before the Blight, it would never have been discovered that he and his\n seed possessed a great deal of immunity to extra-temporal blackout.\n\n\n And if that had not been discovered, the ruling powers of Earth, more\n than a century later, would never have plucked Max Alben out of an\n obscure civil-service job as a relief guard at the North American\n Chicken Reservation to his present heroic and remunerative eminence.\n He would still be patrolling the barbed wire that surrounded the three\n white leghorn hens and two roosters—about one-sixth of the known\n livestock wealth of the Western Hemisphere—thoroughly content with\n the half-pail of dried apricots he received each and every payday.", "He twisted around, reaching overhead for the lever which activated the\n forces that drove the time machine.\nflick!\nIt was strange, Max Alben reflected, that this time travel business,\n which knocked unconscious everyone who tried it, only made him feel\n slightly dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni,\n he had been told. There must be some complicated scientific explanation\n for it, he decided—and that would make it none of his business. Better\n forget about it.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a heavy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of patrolling his beat at the North American Chicken Reservation in a\n thick fog.", "Mankind had lunged out desperately in all directions in an effort to\n survive, but nothing had worked for any length of time. Even the other\n planets of the Solar System, which had been reached and explored\n at a tremendous cost in remaining resources, had yielded no edible\n vegetation. Synthetics had failed to fill the prodigious gap.\n\n\n In the midst of the sharply increasing hunger, social controls had\n pretty much dissolved. Pathetic attempts at rationing still continued,\n but black markets became the only markets, and black marketeers the\n barons of life. Starvation took the hindmost, and only the most agile\n economically lived in comparative comfort. Law and order were had only\n by those who could afford to pay for them and children of impoverished\n families were sold on the open market for a bit of food.\n\n\n But the Blight was still adjusting to new plants and the food supply\n kept shrinking. In another century....", "The problems all began with the Guided Missile Experiment of 1976, he\n read. There had been a number of such experiments, but it was the one\n of 1976 that finally did the damage the biologists had been warning\n about. The missile with its deadly warhead exploded in the Brazilian\n jungle through some absolutely unforgivable error in the remote-control\n station, the officer in charge of the station was reprimanded and the\n men under him court-martialed, and the Brazilian government was paid a\n handsome compensation for the damage.\nBut there had been more damage than anyone knew at the time. A plant\n virus, similar to the tobacco mosaic, had mutated under the impact\n of radioactivity. Five years later, it burst out of the jungle and\n completely wiped out every last rice plant on Earth. Japan and a large\n part of Asia became semi-deserts inhabited by a few struggling nomads.", "\"And he pulls the red switch toward him,\" Gomez, the dandelion-root\n magnate, reminded him sharply, impatiently.\n\n\n \"Ah, yes, the red switch. He pulls the little red switch toward him.\n Thank you, Mr. Gomez, thank you very much, sir. He pulls the little\n red switch on the green instrument panel toward him, thus preventing\n the error that caused the missile to explode in the Brazilian jungle\n and causing it, instead, to explode somewhere in the mid-Pacific, as\n originally planned.\"", "The problems all began with the Guided Missile Experiment of 1976,\n he read. There had been a number of such experiments, but it was\n the one of 1976 that finally did the damage the biologists had been\n warning about. The missile with its deadly warhead exploded in the\n Pacific Ocean as planned, the physicists and the military men went\n home to study their notes, and the world shivered once more over the\n approaching war and tried to forget about it.", "But there was fallout, a radioactive rain several hundred miles to\n the north, and a small fishing fleet got thoroughly soaked by it.\n Fortunately, the radioactivity in the rain was sufficiently low to do\n little obvious physical damage: All it did was cause a mutation in the\n mumps virus that several of the men in the fleet were incubating at the\n time, having caught it from the children of the fishing town, among\n whom a minor epidemic was raging.\nThe fleet returned to its home town, which promptly came down with the\n new kind of mumps. Dr. Llewellyn Shapiro, the only physician in town,\n was the first man to note that, while the symptoms of this disease were\n substantially milder than those of its unmutated parent, practically no\n one was immune to it and its effects on human reproductivity were truly\n terrible. Most people were completely sterilized by it. The rest were\n rendered much less capable of fathering or bearing offspring.", "The Secretary-General of the United Nations beamed. \"Thus preventing\n the Blight, making it nonexistent, as it were, producing a present-day\n world in which the Blight never occurred. That is correct, is it not,\n gentlemen?\" he asked, turning anxiously again.\nNone of the half-dozen men on couches deigned to answer him. And\n Alben kept his eyes deferentially in their direction, too, as he had\n throughout this period of last-minute instruction.\n\n\n He knew who ruled his world—these stolid, well-fed men in clean\n garments with a minimum of patches, and where patches occurred, at\n least they were the color of the surrounding cloth.\n\n\n Sadha might be Secretary-General of the United Nations, but that\n was still a civil-service job, only a few social notches higher\n than a chicken guard. His clothes were fully as ragged, fully as\n multi-colored, as those that Alben had stepped out of. And the gnawing\n in his stomach was no doubt almost as great.", "Genetic research had the very best minds prodded into it; the lesser\n ones went into the other sciences. Everyone on Earth was engaged in\n some form of scientific research to some extent. Since the population\n was now so limited in proportion to the great resources available, all\n physical labor had long been done by robots. The government saw to it\n that everybody had an ample supply of goods and, in return, asked only\n that they experiment without any risk to their own lives—every human\n being was now a much-prized, highly guarded rarity.\n\n\n There were less than a hundred thousand of them, well below the danger\n point, it had been estimated, where a species might be wiped out by a\n new calamity. Not that another calamity would be needed. Since the end\n of the Epidemic, the birth rate had been moving further and further\n behind the death rate. In another century....\n\n\n That was why a desperate and secret attempt to alter the past was being\n made. This kind of world was evidently impossible.", "Shapiro's Mumps spread over the entire planet in the next few decades.\n It leaped across every quarantine erected; for a long time, it\n successfully defied all the vaccines and serums attempted against\n it. Then, when a vaccine was finally perfected, humanity discovered\n to its dismay that its generative powers had been permanently and\n fundamentally impaired.\n\n\n Something had happened to the germ plasm. A large percentage of\n individuals were born sterile, and, of those who were not, one child\n was usually the most that could be expected, a two-child parent being\n quite rare and a three-child parent almost unknown.\n\n\n Strict eugenic control was instituted by the Security Council of the\n United Nations so that fertile men and women would not be wasted upon\n non-fertile mates. Fertility was the most important avenue to social\n status, and right after it came successful genetic research.", "\"We've decided to add a further precaution at the last moment,\" the old\n man said. \"That is, the scientists have suggested it and I have—er—I\n have given my approval.\"\n\n\n The last remark was added with a slight questioning note as the\n Secretary-General of the United Nations looked back rapidly at the\n black market princes on the couches behind him. Since they stared back\n stonily, but offered no objection, he coughed in relief and returned to\n Alben.\n\n\n \"I am sure, young man, that I don't have to go into the details of your\n instructions once more. You enter the time machine and go back the\n duration for which it has been preset, a hundred and thirteen years, to\n the moment after the Guided Missile of 1976 was launched. It\nis\n1976,\n isn't it?\" he asked, suddenly uncertain.", "Max Alben finished the manuscript and sighed. What a wonderful world!\n What a comfortable place to live!\n\n\n He walked to the rear dials and began the process of materializing at\n the crucial moment on April 18, 1976.\nflick!\nIt was odd, Mac Albin reflected, that these temporal journeys, which\n induced coma in everyone who tried it, only made him feel slightly\n dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni, he\n knew. Maybe there was some genetic relationship with his above-average\n fertility—might be a good idea to mention the idea to a biologist or\n two when he returned.\nIf\nhe returned.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a soupy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of the problems of landing a helicopter in a thick fog when the robot\n butler had not been told to turn on the ground lights.", "Albin grimaced in annoyance. \"I\nam\nexcited by doing something\n besides sitting in a safe little corner working out safe little\n abstractions for the first time in my life. But I know that this is a\n first experiment. Honestly, Hugo, I really have enough intelligence to\n recognize that simple fact. I know that if anything unexpected pops up,\n anything we didn't foresee, I'm supposed to come scuttling back and ask\n for advice.\"\n\n\n \"I hope you do,\" Bob Skeat sighed. \"I hope you do know that. A\n twentieth century poet once wrote something to the effect that the\n world will end not with a bang, but a whimper. Well, our world is\n ending with a whimper. Try to see that it doesn't end with a bang,\n either.\"\n\n\n \"That I'll promise you,\" Albin said a trifle disgustedly. \"It'll end\n with neither a bang\nnor\na whimper. So long, Hugo. So long, Bob.\"", "He picked up the sealed metal cylinder, walked to the entrance of the\n time machine and tossed it into the gray murk. A solid object floating\n near the entrance caught his eye. He put his arm out—whew, it was\n cold!—and pulled it inside.\n\n\n A small metal box. Funny. What was it doing out there? Curiously,\n he opened it, hoping to find something valuable. Nothing but a few\n sheets of paper, Alben noted disappointedly. He began to read them\n slowly, very slowly, for the manuscript was full of a lot of long and\n complicated words, like a letter from one bookworm scientist to another.", "He picked up the small metal box, twisted around to face the opening\n of the time machine and dropped it into the gray murk. A solid object\n floating near the opening attracted his attention. He shot his arm\n out—it was\ncold\n, as cold as they had figured—and pulled the object\n inside.\n\n\n A sealed metal cylinder. Strange. What was it doing out there?\n Anxiously, he opened it, not daring to believe he'd find a document\n inside. Yes, that was exactly what it was, he saw excitedly. He began\n to read it rapidly, very rapidly, as if it were a newly published paper\n on neutrinos. Besides, the manuscript was written with almost painful\n simplicity, like a textbook composed by a stuffy pedagogue for the use\n of morons.", "He shrugged rapidly out of his rags, as he had been instructed in the\n anteroom, and stepped into the housing of the enormous mechanism.\n This was the first time he had seen it, since he had been taught\n how to operate it on a dummy model, and now he stared at the great\n transparent coils and the susurrating energy bubble with much respect.\n\n\n This machine, the pride and the hope of 2089, was something almost\n outside his powers of comprehension. But Max Alben knew how to run it,\n and he knew, roughly, what it was supposed to accomplish. He knew also\n that this was the first backward journey of any great duration and,\n being scientifically unpredictable, might well be the death of him.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he muttered again affectionately.", "But in this other world, this other 2089, someone like himself would\n be a monarch of the black market, a suzerain of chaos, making his own\n rules, taking his own women. So what if the weaklings, those unfit to\n carry on the race, went to the wall? His kind wouldn't.\n\n\n He'd formed a pretty good idea of the kind of men who ruled that other\n world, from the document in the sealed metal cylinder. The black\n marketeers had not even read it. Why, the fools had obviously been\n duped by the technicians into permitting the experiment; they had not\n grasped the idea that an alternate time track would mean their own\n non-existence.\n\n\n This other world had its troubles, but it was certainly a livelier\n place than where he'd come from. It deserved a chance. Yes, that was\n how he felt: his world was drowsily moribund; this alternate was\n starving but managing to flail away at destiny. It\ndeserved\na chance.", "Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nAs the equipment of the remote-control station began to oscillate into\n reality all around him, Mac Albin felt a bit of shame at what he was\n doing. He'd promised Bob and Hugo to drop the experiment at any stage\n if a new factor showed up. He knew he should go back with this new\n information and have all three of them kick it around.\n\n\n But what would they be able to tell him, they with their blissful\n adjustment to their thoroughly blueprinted lives? They, at least, had\n been ordered to marry women they could live with; he'd drawn a female\n with whom he was completely incompatible in any but a genetic sense.\n Genetics! He was tired of genetics and the sanctity of human life,\n tired to the tip of his uncalloused fingers, tired to the recesses\n of his unused muscles. He was tired of having to undertake a simple\n adventure like a thief in the night." ], [ "They with their easy lives, what did they know what existence had been\n like for such as he? Hunger, always hunger, scrabbling, servility, and\n more hunger. Every time things got really tight, you and your wife\n looking sideways at your kids and wondering which of them would bring\n the best price. Buying security for them, as he was now, at the risk of\n his life.\n\n\n But in this other world, this other 2089, there was a state that took\n care of you and that treasured your children. A man like himself, with\nfive\nchildren—why, he'd be a big man, maybe the biggest man on\n Earth! And he'd have robots to work for him and lots of food. Above\n all, lots and lots of food.", "If his great-grandfather had not volunteered for the earliest\n time-travel experiments way back in the nineteen-seventies, back even\n before the Blight, it would never have been discovered that he and his\n seed possessed a great deal of immunity to extra-temporal blackout.\n\n\n And if that had not been discovered, the ruling powers of Earth, more\n than a century later, would never have plucked Max Alben out of an\n obscure civil-service job as a relief guard at the North American\n Chicken Reservation to his present heroic and remunerative eminence.\n He would still be patrolling the barbed wire that surrounded the three\n white leghorn hens and two roosters—about one-sixth of the known\n livestock wealth of the Western Hemisphere—thoroughly content with\n the half-pail of dried apricots he received each and every payday.", "No, if his great-grandfather had not demonstrated long ago his unique\n capacity for remaining conscious during time travel, Max Alben would\n not now be shifting from foot to foot in a physics laboratory,\n facing the black market kings of the world and awaiting their final\n instructions with an uncertain and submissive grin.\nMen like O'Hara, who controlled mushrooms, Levney, the blackberry\n tycoon, Sorgasso, the packaged-worm monopolist—would black marketeers\n of their tremendous stature so much as waste a glance on someone like\n Alben ordinarily, let alone confer a lifetime pension on his wife and\n five children of a full spoonful each of non-synthetic sugar a day?\n\n\n Even if he didn't come back, his family was provided for like almost no\n other family on Earth. This was a damn good job and he was lucky.\n\n\n Alben noticed that Abd Sadha had risen from the straight chair at\n the far side of the room and was approaching him with a sealed metal\n cylinder in one hand.", "Max Alben finished the manuscript and sighed. What a wonderful world!\n What a comfortable place to live!\n\n\n He walked to the rear dials and began the process of materializing at\n the crucial moment on April 18, 1976.\nflick!\nIt was odd, Mac Albin reflected, that these temporal journeys, which\n induced coma in everyone who tried it, only made him feel slightly\n dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni, he\n knew. Maybe there was some genetic relationship with his above-average\n fertility—might be a good idea to mention the idea to a biologist or\n two when he returned.\nIf\nhe returned.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a soupy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of the problems of landing a helicopter in a thick fog when the robot\n butler had not been told to turn on the ground lights.", "He shrugged rapidly out of his rags, as he had been instructed in the\n anteroom, and stepped into the housing of the enormous mechanism.\n This was the first time he had seen it, since he had been taught\n how to operate it on a dummy model, and now he stared at the great\n transparent coils and the susurrating energy bubble with much respect.\n\n\n This machine, the pride and the hope of 2089, was something almost\n outside his powers of comprehension. But Max Alben knew how to run it,\n and he knew, roughly, what it was supposed to accomplish. He knew also\n that this was the first backward journey of any great duration and,\n being scientifically unpredictable, might well be the death of him.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he muttered again affectionately.", "He twisted around, reaching overhead for the lever which activated the\n forces that drove the time machine.\nflick!\nIt was strange, Max Alben reflected, that this time travel business,\n which knocked unconscious everyone who tried it, only made him feel\n slightly dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni,\n he had been told. There must be some complicated scientific explanation\n for it, he decided—and that would make it none of his business. Better\n forget about it.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a heavy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of patrolling his beat at the North American Chicken Reservation in a\n thick fog.", "Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nAs the equipment of the remote-control station began to oscillate into\n reality all around him, Mac Albin felt a bit of shame at what he was\n doing. He'd promised Bob and Hugo to drop the experiment at any stage\n if a new factor showed up. He knew he should go back with this new\n information and have all three of them kick it around.\n\n\n But what would they be able to tell him, they with their blissful\n adjustment to their thoroughly blueprinted lives? They, at least, had\n been ordered to marry women they could live with; he'd drawn a female\n with whom he was completely incompatible in any but a genetic sense.\n Genetics! He was tired of genetics and the sanctity of human life,\n tired to the tip of his uncalloused fingers, tired to the recesses\n of his unused muscles. He was tired of having to undertake a simple\n adventure like a thief in the night.", "Levney sat up on his couch and snapped his fingers peremptorily. \"I\n just heard Gomez tell you to get this thing moving, Sadha. And it isn't\n moving. We're busy men. We've wasted enough time.\"\n\n\n \"I was just trying to explain a crucial final fact,\" the\n Secretary-General apologized. \"A fact which may be highly—\"\n\n\n \"You've explained enough facts.\" Levney turned to the man inside the\n time machine. \"Hey, fella. You.\nMove!\n\"\n\n\n Max Alben gulped and nodded violently. He darted to the rear of the\n machine and turned the dial which activated it.\nflick!\nIt was a good job and Mac Albin knew whom he had to thank for it—his\n great-grandfather.", "Albin decided that he was experiencing renunciation and felt proud.\n\n\n He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,\n disregarding the roomful of military figures since he knew they could\n not see him. The single red switch pointed downward on the instrument\n panel. That was the gimmick that controlled the course of the missile.\n Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway decent world!\n\n\n Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\n... pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... toward him.\nflick!\n... from him.\nflick!", "He'd even be a scientist—\neveryone\nwas a scientist there, weren't\n they?—and he'd have a big laboratory all to himself. This other world\n had its troubles, but it was a lot nicer place than where he'd come\n from. He wouldn't return. He'd go through with it.\n\n\n The fear left him and, for the first time in his life, Max Alben felt\n the sensation of power.\n\n\n He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,\n sweating a bit at the sight of the roomful of military figures, despite\n the technicians' reassurances that all this would be happening too fast\n to be visible. He saw the single red switch pointing upward on the\n instrument panel. The switch that controlled the course of the missile.\n Now! Now to make a halfway decent world!", "The Secretary-General of the United Nations beamed. \"Thus preventing\n the Blight, making it nonexistent, as it were, producing a present-day\n world in which the Blight never occurred. That is correct, is it not,\n gentlemen?\" he asked, turning anxiously again.\nNone of the half-dozen men on couches deigned to answer him. And\n Alben kept his eyes deferentially in their direction, too, as he had\n throughout this period of last-minute instruction.\n\n\n He knew who ruled his world—these stolid, well-fed men in clean\n garments with a minimum of patches, and where patches occurred, at\n least they were the color of the surrounding cloth.\n\n\n Sadha might be Secretary-General of the United Nations, but that\n was still a civil-service job, only a few social notches higher\n than a chicken guard. His clothes were fully as ragged, fully as\n multi-colored, as those that Alben had stepped out of. And the gnawing\n in his stomach was no doubt almost as great.", "\"Wait a minute, Mac,\" Skeat said and crossed to the other side of the\n narrow laboratory.\nAlbin and Honek watched him stuff several sheets of paper into a small\n metal box which he closed without locking.\n\n\n \"You will take care of yourself, won't you, Mac?\" Hugo Honek pleaded.\n \"Any time you feel like taking an unnecessary risk, remember that Bob\n and I will have to stand trial if you don't come back. We might be\n sentenced to complete loss of professional status and spend the rest of\n our lives supervising robot factories.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, it won't be that bad,\" Albin reassured him absent-mindedly from\n where he lay contorted inside the time machine. He watched Skeat coming\n toward him with the box.", "Of All Possible Worlds\nBy WILLIAM TENN\n\n\n Illustrated by GAUGHAN\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nChanging the world is simple; the trick is\n \nto do it before you have a chance to undo it!\nIt was a good job and Max Alben knew whom he had to thank for it—his\n great-grandfather.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he muttered as he hurried into the\n laboratory slightly ahead of the escorting technicians, all of them,\n despite the excitement of the moment, remembering to bob their heads\n deferentially at the half-dozen full-fleshed and hard-faced men\n lolling on the couches that had been set up around the time machine.", "And if that had not been discovered, the Albins would not have become\n physicists upon the passage of the United Nations law that everyone\n on Earth—absolutely without exception—had to choose a branch of\n research science in which to specialize. In the flabby, careful,\n life-guarding world the Earth had become, Mac Albin would never have\n been reluctantly selected by his two co-workers as the one to carry the\n forbidden banner of dangerous experiment.\n\n\n No, if his great-grandfather had not demonstrated long ago his unique\n capacity for remaining conscious during time travel, Mac Albin would\n probably be a biologist today like almost everyone else on Earth,\n laboriously working out dreary gene problems instead of embarking on\n the greatest adventure Man had known to date.\n\n\n Even if he didn't come back, he had at last found a socially useful\n escape from genetic responsibility to humanity in general and his own\n family in particular. This was a damn good job and he was lucky.", "Albin grimaced in annoyance. \"I\nam\nexcited by doing something\n besides sitting in a safe little corner working out safe little\n abstractions for the first time in my life. But I know that this is a\n first experiment. Honestly, Hugo, I really have enough intelligence to\n recognize that simple fact. I know that if anything unexpected pops up,\n anything we didn't foresee, I'm supposed to come scuttling back and ask\n for advice.\"\n\n\n \"I hope you do,\" Bob Skeat sighed. \"I hope you do know that. A\n twentieth century poet once wrote something to the effect that the\n world will end not with a bang, but a whimper. Well, our world is\n ending with a whimper. Try to see that it doesn't end with a bang,\n either.\"\n\n\n \"That I'll promise you,\" Albin said a trifle disgustedly. \"It'll end\n with neither a bang\nnor\na whimper. So long, Hugo. So long, Bob.\"", "That was why the planet's powerful individuals had been persuaded to\n pool their wealth in a desperate attempt to alter the past. This kind\n of world was manifestly impossible.\n\n\n Mac Albin finished the document and sighed. What a magnificent world!\n What an exciting place to live!\n\n\n He dropped his hand on the side levers and began the process of\n materializing at the crucial moment on April 18, 1976.\nflick!\nAs the equipment of the remote-control station began to take on a\n blurred reality all around him, Max Alben felt a bit of fear at what\n he was doing. The technicians, he remembered, the Secretary-General,\n even the black market kings, had all warned him not to go ahead with\n his instructions if anything unusual turned up. That was an awful lot\n of power to disobey: he knew he should return with this new information\n and let better minds work on it.", "\"And he pulls the red switch toward him,\" Gomez, the dandelion-root\n magnate, reminded him sharply, impatiently.\n\n\n \"Ah, yes, the red switch. He pulls the little red switch toward him.\n Thank you, Mr. Gomez, thank you very much, sir. He pulls the little\n red switch on the green instrument panel toward him, thus preventing\n the error that caused the missile to explode in the Brazilian jungle\n and causing it, instead, to explode somewhere in the mid-Pacific, as\n originally planned.\"", "He picked up the sealed metal cylinder, walked to the entrance of the\n time machine and tossed it into the gray murk. A solid object floating\n near the entrance caught his eye. He put his arm out—whew, it was\n cold!—and pulled it inside.\n\n\n A small metal box. Funny. What was it doing out there? Curiously,\n he opened it, hoping to find something valuable. Nothing but a few\n sheets of paper, Alben noted disappointedly. He began to read them\n slowly, very slowly, for the manuscript was full of a lot of long and\n complicated words, like a letter from one bookworm scientist to another.", "\"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he laughed as he looked at the morose faces\n of his two colleagues. Bob Skeat and Hugo Honek had done as much as he\n to build the tiny time machine in the secret lab under the helicopter\n garage, and they were fully as eager to go, but—unfortunately for\n them—they were not descended from the right ancestor.\n\n\n Leisurely, he unzipped the richly embroidered garment that, as the\n father of two children, he was privileged to wear, and wriggled into\n the housing of the complex little mechanism. This was hardly the\n first time he had seen it, since he'd been helping to build the device\n from the moment Honek had nodded and risen from the drafting board,\n and now he barely wasted a glance on the thumb-size translucent coils\n growing out of the almost microscopic energy bubbles which powered them.", "He picked up the small metal box, twisted around to face the opening\n of the time machine and dropped it into the gray murk. A solid object\n floating near the opening attracted his attention. He shot his arm\n out—it was\ncold\n, as cold as they had figured—and pulled the object\n inside.\n\n\n A sealed metal cylinder. Strange. What was it doing out there?\n Anxiously, he opened it, not daring to believe he'd find a document\n inside. Yes, that was exactly what it was, he saw excitedly. He began\n to read it rapidly, very rapidly, as if it were a newly published paper\n on neutrinos. Besides, the manuscript was written with almost painful\n simplicity, like a textbook composed by a stuffy pedagogue for the use\n of morons." ], [ "Albin grimaced in annoyance. \"I\nam\nexcited by doing something\n besides sitting in a safe little corner working out safe little\n abstractions for the first time in my life. But I know that this is a\n first experiment. Honestly, Hugo, I really have enough intelligence to\n recognize that simple fact. I know that if anything unexpected pops up,\n anything we didn't foresee, I'm supposed to come scuttling back and ask\n for advice.\"\n\n\n \"I hope you do,\" Bob Skeat sighed. \"I hope you do know that. A\n twentieth century poet once wrote something to the effect that the\n world will end not with a bang, but a whimper. Well, our world is\n ending with a whimper. Try to see that it doesn't end with a bang,\n either.\"\n\n\n \"That I'll promise you,\" Albin said a trifle disgustedly. \"It'll end\n with neither a bang\nnor\na whimper. So long, Hugo. So long, Bob.\"", "Honek shrugged his shoulders. \"It might be a lot worse than even that\n and you know it. The disappearance of a two-time father is going to\n leave an awful big vacancy in the world. One-timers, like Bob and\n me, are all over the place; if either of us dropped out of sight, it\n wouldn't cause nearly as much uproar.\"\n\n\n \"But Bob and you both tried to operate the machine,\" Albin reminded\n him. \"And you blacked out after a fifteen-second temporal displacement.\n So I'm the only chance, the only way to stop the human race from\n dwindling and dwindling till it hits absolute zero, like that fat old\n Security Council seems willing for it to do.\"", "Albin decided that he was experiencing renunciation and felt proud.\n\n\n He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,\n disregarding the roomful of military figures since he knew they could\n not see him. The single red switch pointed downward on the instrument\n panel. That was the gimmick that controlled the course of the missile.\n Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway decent world!\n\n\n Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\n... pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... toward him.\nflick!\n... from him.\nflick!", "Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nAs the equipment of the remote-control station began to oscillate into\n reality all around him, Mac Albin felt a bit of shame at what he was\n doing. He'd promised Bob and Hugo to drop the experiment at any stage\n if a new factor showed up. He knew he should go back with this new\n information and have all three of them kick it around.\n\n\n But what would they be able to tell him, they with their blissful\n adjustment to their thoroughly blueprinted lives? They, at least, had\n been ordered to marry women they could live with; he'd drawn a female\n with whom he was completely incompatible in any but a genetic sense.\n Genetics! He was tired of genetics and the sanctity of human life,\n tired to the tip of his uncalloused fingers, tired to the recesses\n of his unused muscles. He was tired of having to undertake a simple\n adventure like a thief in the night.", "The Secretary-General of the United Nations beamed. \"Thus preventing\n the Blight, making it nonexistent, as it were, producing a present-day\n world in which the Blight never occurred. That is correct, is it not,\n gentlemen?\" he asked, turning anxiously again.\nNone of the half-dozen men on couches deigned to answer him. And\n Alben kept his eyes deferentially in their direction, too, as he had\n throughout this period of last-minute instruction.\n\n\n He knew who ruled his world—these stolid, well-fed men in clean\n garments with a minimum of patches, and where patches occurred, at\n least they were the color of the surrounding cloth.\n\n\n Sadha might be Secretary-General of the United Nations, but that\n was still a civil-service job, only a few social notches higher\n than a chicken guard. His clothes were fully as ragged, fully as\n multi-colored, as those that Alben had stepped out of. And the gnawing\n in his stomach was no doubt almost as great.", "\"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he laughed as he looked at the morose faces\n of his two colleagues. Bob Skeat and Hugo Honek had done as much as he\n to build the tiny time machine in the secret lab under the helicopter\n garage, and they were fully as eager to go, but—unfortunately for\n them—they were not descended from the right ancestor.\n\n\n Leisurely, he unzipped the richly embroidered garment that, as the\n father of two children, he was privileged to wear, and wriggled into\n the housing of the complex little mechanism. This was hardly the\n first time he had seen it, since he'd been helping to build the device\n from the moment Honek had nodded and risen from the drafting board,\n and now he barely wasted a glance on the thumb-size translucent coils\n growing out of the almost microscopic energy bubbles which powered them.", "Max Alben finished the manuscript and sighed. What a wonderful world!\n What a comfortable place to live!\n\n\n He walked to the rear dials and began the process of materializing at\n the crucial moment on April 18, 1976.\nflick!\nIt was odd, Mac Albin reflected, that these temporal journeys, which\n induced coma in everyone who tried it, only made him feel slightly\n dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni, he\n knew. Maybe there was some genetic relationship with his above-average\n fertility—might be a good idea to mention the idea to a biologist or\n two when he returned.\nIf\nhe returned.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a soupy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of the problems of landing a helicopter in a thick fog when the robot\n butler had not been told to turn on the ground lights.", "He twisted around, reaching overhead for the lever which activated the\n forces that drove the time machine.\nflick!\nIt was strange, Max Alben reflected, that this time travel business,\n which knocked unconscious everyone who tried it, only made him feel\n slightly dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni,\n he had been told. There must be some complicated scientific explanation\n for it, he decided—and that would make it none of his business. Better\n forget about it.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a heavy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of patrolling his beat at the North American Chicken Reservation in a\n thick fog.", "And if that had not been discovered, the Albins would not have become\n physicists upon the passage of the United Nations law that everyone\n on Earth—absolutely without exception—had to choose a branch of\n research science in which to specialize. In the flabby, careful,\n life-guarding world the Earth had become, Mac Albin would never have\n been reluctantly selected by his two co-workers as the one to carry the\n forbidden banner of dangerous experiment.\n\n\n No, if his great-grandfather had not demonstrated long ago his unique\n capacity for remaining conscious during time travel, Mac Albin would\n probably be a biologist today like almost everyone else on Earth,\n laboriously working out dreary gene problems instead of embarking on\n the greatest adventure Man had known to date.\n\n\n Even if he didn't come back, he had at last found a socially useful\n escape from genetic responsibility to humanity in general and his own\n family in particular. This was a damn good job and he was lucky.", "They with their easy lives, what did they know what existence had been\n like for such as he? Hunger, always hunger, scrabbling, servility, and\n more hunger. Every time things got really tight, you and your wife\n looking sideways at your kids and wondering which of them would bring\n the best price. Buying security for them, as he was now, at the risk of\n his life.\n\n\n But in this other world, this other 2089, there was a state that took\n care of you and that treasured your children. A man like himself, with\nfive\nchildren—why, he'd be a big man, maybe the biggest man on\n Earth! And he'd have robots to work for him and lots of food. Above\n all, lots and lots of food.", "This machine was the last hope, of 2089, even if the world of 2089, as\n a whole, did not know of its existence and would try to prevent its\n being put into operation. But it meant a lot more to Mac Albin than\n merely saving a world. It meant an adventurous mission with the risk of\n death.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he laughed again happily.\n\n\n If his great-grandfather had not volunteered for the earliest\n time-travel experiments way back in the nineteen-seventies, back even\n before the Epidemic, it would never have been discovered that he and\n his seed possessed a great deal of immunity to extra-temporal blackout.", "No, if his great-grandfather had not demonstrated long ago his unique\n capacity for remaining conscious during time travel, Max Alben would\n not now be shifting from foot to foot in a physics laboratory,\n facing the black market kings of the world and awaiting their final\n instructions with an uncertain and submissive grin.\nMen like O'Hara, who controlled mushrooms, Levney, the blackberry\n tycoon, Sorgasso, the packaged-worm monopolist—would black marketeers\n of their tremendous stature so much as waste a glance on someone like\n Alben ordinarily, let alone confer a lifetime pension on his wife and\n five children of a full spoonful each of non-synthetic sugar a day?\n\n\n Even if he didn't come back, his family was provided for like almost no\n other family on Earth. This was a damn good job and he was lucky.\n\n\n Alben noticed that Abd Sadha had risen from the straight chair at\n the far side of the room and was approaching him with a sealed metal\n cylinder in one hand.", "He shrugged rapidly out of his rags, as he had been instructed in the\n anteroom, and stepped into the housing of the enormous mechanism.\n This was the first time he had seen it, since he had been taught\n how to operate it on a dummy model, and now he stared at the great\n transparent coils and the susurrating energy bubble with much respect.\n\n\n This machine, the pride and the hope of 2089, was something almost\n outside his powers of comprehension. But Max Alben knew how to run it,\n and he knew, roughly, what it was supposed to accomplish. He knew also\n that this was the first backward journey of any great duration and,\n being scientifically unpredictable, might well be the death of him.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he muttered again affectionately.", "If his great-grandfather had not volunteered for the earliest\n time-travel experiments way back in the nineteen-seventies, back even\n before the Blight, it would never have been discovered that he and his\n seed possessed a great deal of immunity to extra-temporal blackout.\n\n\n And if that had not been discovered, the ruling powers of Earth, more\n than a century later, would never have plucked Max Alben out of an\n obscure civil-service job as a relief guard at the North American\n Chicken Reservation to his present heroic and remunerative eminence.\n He would still be patrolling the barbed wire that surrounded the three\n white leghorn hens and two roosters—about one-sixth of the known\n livestock wealth of the Western Hemisphere—thoroughly content with\n the half-pail of dried apricots he received each and every payday.", "\"Wait a minute, Mac,\" Skeat said and crossed to the other side of the\n narrow laboratory.\nAlbin and Honek watched him stuff several sheets of paper into a small\n metal box which he closed without locking.\n\n\n \"You will take care of yourself, won't you, Mac?\" Hugo Honek pleaded.\n \"Any time you feel like taking an unnecessary risk, remember that Bob\n and I will have to stand trial if you don't come back. We might be\n sentenced to complete loss of professional status and spend the rest of\n our lives supervising robot factories.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, it won't be that bad,\" Albin reassured him absent-mindedly from\n where he lay contorted inside the time machine. He watched Skeat coming\n toward him with the box.", "Shapiro's Mumps spread over the entire planet in the next few decades.\n It leaped across every quarantine erected; for a long time, it\n successfully defied all the vaccines and serums attempted against\n it. Then, when a vaccine was finally perfected, humanity discovered\n to its dismay that its generative powers had been permanently and\n fundamentally impaired.\n\n\n Something had happened to the germ plasm. A large percentage of\n individuals were born sterile, and, of those who were not, one child\n was usually the most that could be expected, a two-child parent being\n quite rare and a three-child parent almost unknown.\n\n\n Strict eugenic control was instituted by the Security Council of the\n United Nations so that fertile men and women would not be wasted upon\n non-fertile mates. Fertility was the most important avenue to social\n status, and right after it came successful genetic research.", "\"We've decided to add a further precaution at the last moment,\" the old\n man said. \"That is, the scientists have suggested it and I have—er—I\n have given my approval.\"\n\n\n The last remark was added with a slight questioning note as the\n Secretary-General of the United Nations looked back rapidly at the\n black market princes on the couches behind him. Since they stared back\n stonily, but offered no objection, he coughed in relief and returned to\n Alben.\n\n\n \"I am sure, young man, that I don't have to go into the details of your\n instructions once more. You enter the time machine and go back the\n duration for which it has been preset, a hundred and thirteen years, to\n the moment after the Guided Missile of 1976 was launched. It\nis\n1976,\n isn't it?\" he asked, suddenly uncertain.", "Levney sat up on his couch and snapped his fingers peremptorily. \"I\n just heard Gomez tell you to get this thing moving, Sadha. And it isn't\n moving. We're busy men. We've wasted enough time.\"\n\n\n \"I was just trying to explain a crucial final fact,\" the\n Secretary-General apologized. \"A fact which may be highly—\"\n\n\n \"You've explained enough facts.\" Levney turned to the man inside the\n time machine. \"Hey, fella. You.\nMove!\n\"\n\n\n Max Alben gulped and nodded violently. He darted to the rear of the\n machine and turned the dial which activated it.\nflick!\nIt was a good job and Mac Albin knew whom he had to thank for it—his\n great-grandfather.", "But there was fallout, a radioactive rain several hundred miles to\n the north, and a small fishing fleet got thoroughly soaked by it.\n Fortunately, the radioactivity in the rain was sufficiently low to do\n little obvious physical damage: All it did was cause a mutation in the\n mumps virus that several of the men in the fleet were incubating at the\n time, having caught it from the children of the fishing town, among\n whom a minor epidemic was raging.\nThe fleet returned to its home town, which promptly came down with the\n new kind of mumps. Dr. Llewellyn Shapiro, the only physician in town,\n was the first man to note that, while the symptoms of this disease were\n substantially milder than those of its unmutated parent, practically no\n one was immune to it and its effects on human reproductivity were truly\n terrible. Most people were completely sterilized by it. The rest were\n rendered much less capable of fathering or bearing offspring.", "Of All Possible Worlds\nBy WILLIAM TENN\n\n\n Illustrated by GAUGHAN\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nChanging the world is simple; the trick is\n \nto do it before you have a chance to undo it!\nIt was a good job and Max Alben knew whom he had to thank for it—his\n great-grandfather.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he muttered as he hurried into the\n laboratory slightly ahead of the escorting technicians, all of them,\n despite the excitement of the moment, remembering to bob their heads\n deferentially at the half-dozen full-fleshed and hard-faced men\n lolling on the couches that had been set up around the time machine." ], [ "\"Wait a minute, Mac,\" Skeat said and crossed to the other side of the\n narrow laboratory.\nAlbin and Honek watched him stuff several sheets of paper into a small\n metal box which he closed without locking.\n\n\n \"You will take care of yourself, won't you, Mac?\" Hugo Honek pleaded.\n \"Any time you feel like taking an unnecessary risk, remember that Bob\n and I will have to stand trial if you don't come back. We might be\n sentenced to complete loss of professional status and spend the rest of\n our lives supervising robot factories.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, it won't be that bad,\" Albin reassured him absent-mindedly from\n where he lay contorted inside the time machine. He watched Skeat coming\n toward him with the box.", "He shrugged rapidly out of his rags, as he had been instructed in the\n anteroom, and stepped into the housing of the enormous mechanism.\n This was the first time he had seen it, since he had been taught\n how to operate it on a dummy model, and now he stared at the great\n transparent coils and the susurrating energy bubble with much respect.\n\n\n This machine, the pride and the hope of 2089, was something almost\n outside his powers of comprehension. But Max Alben knew how to run it,\n and he knew, roughly, what it was supposed to accomplish. He knew also\n that this was the first backward journey of any great duration and,\n being scientifically unpredictable, might well be the death of him.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he muttered again affectionately.", "Albin decided that he was experiencing renunciation and felt proud.\n\n\n He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,\n disregarding the roomful of military figures since he knew they could\n not see him. The single red switch pointed downward on the instrument\n panel. That was the gimmick that controlled the course of the missile.\n Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway decent world!\n\n\n Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\n... pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... toward him.\nflick!\n... from him.\nflick!", "Albin grimaced in annoyance. \"I\nam\nexcited by doing something\n besides sitting in a safe little corner working out safe little\n abstractions for the first time in my life. But I know that this is a\n first experiment. Honestly, Hugo, I really have enough intelligence to\n recognize that simple fact. I know that if anything unexpected pops up,\n anything we didn't foresee, I'm supposed to come scuttling back and ask\n for advice.\"\n\n\n \"I hope you do,\" Bob Skeat sighed. \"I hope you do know that. A\n twentieth century poet once wrote something to the effect that the\n world will end not with a bang, but a whimper. Well, our world is\n ending with a whimper. Try to see that it doesn't end with a bang,\n either.\"\n\n\n \"That I'll promise you,\" Albin said a trifle disgustedly. \"It'll end\n with neither a bang\nnor\na whimper. So long, Hugo. So long, Bob.\"", "This machine was the last hope, of 2089, even if the world of 2089, as\n a whole, did not know of its existence and would try to prevent its\n being put into operation. But it meant a lot more to Mac Albin than\n merely saving a world. It meant an adventurous mission with the risk of\n death.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he laughed again happily.\n\n\n If his great-grandfather had not volunteered for the earliest\n time-travel experiments way back in the nineteen-seventies, back even\n before the Epidemic, it would never have been discovered that he and\n his seed possessed a great deal of immunity to extra-temporal blackout.", "Levney sat up on his couch and snapped his fingers peremptorily. \"I\n just heard Gomez tell you to get this thing moving, Sadha. And it isn't\n moving. We're busy men. We've wasted enough time.\"\n\n\n \"I was just trying to explain a crucial final fact,\" the\n Secretary-General apologized. \"A fact which may be highly—\"\n\n\n \"You've explained enough facts.\" Levney turned to the man inside the\n time machine. \"Hey, fella. You.\nMove!\n\"\n\n\n Max Alben gulped and nodded violently. He darted to the rear of the\n machine and turned the dial which activated it.\nflick!\nIt was a good job and Mac Albin knew whom he had to thank for it—his\n great-grandfather.", "He twisted around, reaching overhead for the lever which activated the\n forces that drove the time machine.\nflick!\nIt was strange, Max Alben reflected, that this time travel business,\n which knocked unconscious everyone who tried it, only made him feel\n slightly dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni,\n he had been told. There must be some complicated scientific explanation\n for it, he decided—and that would make it none of his business. Better\n forget about it.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a heavy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of patrolling his beat at the North American Chicken Reservation in a\n thick fog.", "Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nAs the equipment of the remote-control station began to oscillate into\n reality all around him, Mac Albin felt a bit of shame at what he was\n doing. He'd promised Bob and Hugo to drop the experiment at any stage\n if a new factor showed up. He knew he should go back with this new\n information and have all three of them kick it around.\n\n\n But what would they be able to tell him, they with their blissful\n adjustment to their thoroughly blueprinted lives? They, at least, had\n been ordered to marry women they could live with; he'd drawn a female\n with whom he was completely incompatible in any but a genetic sense.\n Genetics! He was tired of genetics and the sanctity of human life,\n tired to the tip of his uncalloused fingers, tired to the recesses\n of his unused muscles. He was tired of having to undertake a simple\n adventure like a thief in the night.", "Honek shrugged his shoulders. \"It might be a lot worse than even that\n and you know it. The disappearance of a two-time father is going to\n leave an awful big vacancy in the world. One-timers, like Bob and\n me, are all over the place; if either of us dropped out of sight, it\n wouldn't cause nearly as much uproar.\"\n\n\n \"But Bob and you both tried to operate the machine,\" Albin reminded\n him. \"And you blacked out after a fifteen-second temporal displacement.\n So I'm the only chance, the only way to stop the human race from\n dwindling and dwindling till it hits absolute zero, like that fat old\n Security Council seems willing for it to do.\"", "\"You understand, do you not, young man, that if anything goes wrong,\"\n Abd Sadha asked, his head nodding tremulously and anticipating the\n answer, \"if anything unexpected, unprepared-for, occurs, you are not to\n continue with the experiment but return immediately?\"\n\n\n \"He understands everything he has to understand,\" Gomez told him.\n \"Let's get this thing moving.\"\n\n\n The old man smiled again. \"Yes. Of course, Mr. Gomez.\" He came up to\n where Alben stood in the entrance of the time machine and handed the\n sealed metal cylinder to him. \"This is the precaution the scientists\n have just added. When you arrive at your destination, just before\n materializing, you will release it into the surrounding temporal\n medium. Our purpose here, as you no doubt—\"", "\"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he laughed as he looked at the morose faces\n of his two colleagues. Bob Skeat and Hugo Honek had done as much as he\n to build the tiny time machine in the secret lab under the helicopter\n garage, and they were fully as eager to go, but—unfortunately for\n them—they were not descended from the right ancestor.\n\n\n Leisurely, he unzipped the richly embroidered garment that, as the\n father of two children, he was privileged to wear, and wriggled into\n the housing of the complex little mechanism. This was hardly the\n first time he had seen it, since he'd been helping to build the device\n from the moment Honek had nodded and risen from the drafting board,\n and now he barely wasted a glance on the thumb-size translucent coils\n growing out of the almost microscopic energy bubbles which powered them.", "He'd even be a scientist—\neveryone\nwas a scientist there, weren't\n they?—and he'd have a big laboratory all to himself. This other world\n had its troubles, but it was a lot nicer place than where he'd come\n from. He wouldn't return. He'd go through with it.\n\n\n The fear left him and, for the first time in his life, Max Alben felt\n the sensation of power.\n\n\n He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,\n sweating a bit at the sight of the roomful of military figures, despite\n the technicians' reassurances that all this would be happening too fast\n to be visible. He saw the single red switch pointing upward on the\n instrument panel. The switch that controlled the course of the missile.\n Now! Now to make a halfway decent world!", "Max Alben finished the manuscript and sighed. What a wonderful world!\n What a comfortable place to live!\n\n\n He walked to the rear dials and began the process of materializing at\n the crucial moment on April 18, 1976.\nflick!\nIt was odd, Mac Albin reflected, that these temporal journeys, which\n induced coma in everyone who tried it, only made him feel slightly\n dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni, he\n knew. Maybe there was some genetic relationship with his above-average\n fertility—might be a good idea to mention the idea to a biologist or\n two when he returned.\nIf\nhe returned.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a soupy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of the problems of landing a helicopter in a thick fog when the robot\n butler had not been told to turn on the ground lights.", "He picked up the sealed metal cylinder, walked to the entrance of the\n time machine and tossed it into the gray murk. A solid object floating\n near the entrance caught his eye. He put his arm out—whew, it was\n cold!—and pulled it inside.\n\n\n A small metal box. Funny. What was it doing out there? Curiously,\n he opened it, hoping to find something valuable. Nothing but a few\n sheets of paper, Alben noted disappointedly. He began to read them\n slowly, very slowly, for the manuscript was full of a lot of long and\n complicated words, like a letter from one bookworm scientist to another.", "According to the insulated register, he was now in 1976. He lowered\n speed until he registered April, then maneuvered slowly backward\n through time to the eighteenth, the day of the infamous Guided Missile\n Experiment. Carefully, carefully, like an obstetrician supervising\n surgical robots at an unusually difficult birth, he watched the\n register until it rolled to rest against the notch that indicated the\n exactly crucial moment. Then he pushed a button and froze the machine\n where it was.\n\n\n All he had to do now was materialize in the right spot, flash out and\n push the red switch from him. Then his exciting adventure would be over.\n\n\n But....\n\n\n He paused and tapped at his sleek chin. He was supposed to do something\n a second before materialization. Yes, that nervous theoretician, Bob\n Skeat, had given him a last suggestion.", "And if that had not been discovered, the Albins would not have become\n physicists upon the passage of the United Nations law that everyone\n on Earth—absolutely without exception—had to choose a branch of\n research science in which to specialize. In the flabby, careful,\n life-guarding world the Earth had become, Mac Albin would never have\n been reluctantly selected by his two co-workers as the one to carry the\n forbidden banner of dangerous experiment.\n\n\n No, if his great-grandfather had not demonstrated long ago his unique\n capacity for remaining conscious during time travel, Mac Albin would\n probably be a biologist today like almost everyone else on Earth,\n laboriously working out dreary gene problems instead of embarking on\n the greatest adventure Man had known to date.\n\n\n Even if he didn't come back, he had at last found a socially useful\n escape from genetic responsibility to humanity in general and his own\n family in particular. This was a damn good job and he was lucky.", "According to his gauges, he was now in 1976. He cut speed until he hit\n the last day of April, then cut speed again, drifting slowly backward\n to the eighteenth, the day of the infamous Guided Missile Experiment.\n Carefully, carefully, like a man handling a strange bomb made on a\n strange planet, he watched the center gauge until the needle came to\n rest against the thin etched line that indicated the exactly crucial\n moment. Then he pulled the brake and stopped the machine dead.\n\n\n All he had to do now was materialize in the right spot, flash out and\n pull the red switch toward him. Then his well-paid assignment would be\n done.\n\n\n But....\n\n\n He stopped and scratched his dirt-matted hair. Wasn't there something\n he was supposed to do a second before materialization? Yes, that\n useless old windbag, Sadha, had given him a last instruction.", "\"Yes, sir,\" one of the technicians standing by the time machine said\n respectfully. \"The experiment with an atomic warhead guided missile\n that resulted in the Blight was conducted on this site on April 18,\n 1976.\" He glanced proudly at the unemotional men on the couches, very\n much like a small boy after completing a recitation before visiting\n dignitaries from the Board of Education.\n\n\n \"Just so.\" Abd Sadha nodded. \"April 18, 1976. And on this site. You\n see, young man, you will materialize at the very moment and on the\n very spot where the remote-control station handling the missile\n was—er—handling the missile. You will be in a superb position, a\n superb position, to deflect the missile in its downward course and\n alter human history for the better. Very much for the better. Yes.\"\n\n\n He paused, having evidently stumbled out of his thought sequence.", "\"We've decided to add a further precaution at the last moment,\" the old\n man said. \"That is, the scientists have suggested it and I have—er—I\n have given my approval.\"\n\n\n The last remark was added with a slight questioning note as the\n Secretary-General of the United Nations looked back rapidly at the\n black market princes on the couches behind him. Since they stared back\n stonily, but offered no objection, he coughed in relief and returned to\n Alben.\n\n\n \"I am sure, young man, that I don't have to go into the details of your\n instructions once more. You enter the time machine and go back the\n duration for which it has been preset, a hundred and thirteen years, to\n the moment after the Guided Missile of 1976 was launched. It\nis\n1976,\n isn't it?\" he asked, suddenly uncertain.", "Of All Possible Worlds\nBy WILLIAM TENN\n\n\n Illustrated by GAUGHAN\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nChanging the world is simple; the trick is\n \nto do it before you have a chance to undo it!\nIt was a good job and Max Alben knew whom he had to thank for it—his\n great-grandfather.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he muttered as he hurried into the\n laboratory slightly ahead of the escorting technicians, all of them,\n despite the excitement of the moment, remembering to bob their heads\n deferentially at the half-dozen full-fleshed and hard-faced men\n lolling on the couches that had been set up around the time machine." ], [ "Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nAs the equipment of the remote-control station began to oscillate into\n reality all around him, Mac Albin felt a bit of shame at what he was\n doing. He'd promised Bob and Hugo to drop the experiment at any stage\n if a new factor showed up. He knew he should go back with this new\n information and have all three of them kick it around.\n\n\n But what would they be able to tell him, they with their blissful\n adjustment to their thoroughly blueprinted lives? They, at least, had\n been ordered to marry women they could live with; he'd drawn a female\n with whom he was completely incompatible in any but a genetic sense.\n Genetics! He was tired of genetics and the sanctity of human life,\n tired to the tip of his uncalloused fingers, tired to the recesses\n of his unused muscles. He was tired of having to undertake a simple\n adventure like a thief in the night.", "He'd even be a scientist—\neveryone\nwas a scientist there, weren't\n they?—and he'd have a big laboratory all to himself. This other world\n had its troubles, but it was a lot nicer place than where he'd come\n from. He wouldn't return. He'd go through with it.\n\n\n The fear left him and, for the first time in his life, Max Alben felt\n the sensation of power.\n\n\n He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,\n sweating a bit at the sight of the roomful of military figures, despite\n the technicians' reassurances that all this would be happening too fast\n to be visible. He saw the single red switch pointing upward on the\n instrument panel. The switch that controlled the course of the missile.\n Now! Now to make a halfway decent world!", "He shrugged rapidly out of his rags, as he had been instructed in the\n anteroom, and stepped into the housing of the enormous mechanism.\n This was the first time he had seen it, since he had been taught\n how to operate it on a dummy model, and now he stared at the great\n transparent coils and the susurrating energy bubble with much respect.\n\n\n This machine, the pride and the hope of 2089, was something almost\n outside his powers of comprehension. But Max Alben knew how to run it,\n and he knew, roughly, what it was supposed to accomplish. He knew also\n that this was the first backward journey of any great duration and,\n being scientifically unpredictable, might well be the death of him.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he muttered again affectionately.", "Levney sat up on his couch and snapped his fingers peremptorily. \"I\n just heard Gomez tell you to get this thing moving, Sadha. And it isn't\n moving. We're busy men. We've wasted enough time.\"\n\n\n \"I was just trying to explain a crucial final fact,\" the\n Secretary-General apologized. \"A fact which may be highly—\"\n\n\n \"You've explained enough facts.\" Levney turned to the man inside the\n time machine. \"Hey, fella. You.\nMove!\n\"\n\n\n Max Alben gulped and nodded violently. He darted to the rear of the\n machine and turned the dial which activated it.\nflick!\nIt was a good job and Mac Albin knew whom he had to thank for it—his\n great-grandfather.", "He twisted around, reaching overhead for the lever which activated the\n forces that drove the time machine.\nflick!\nIt was strange, Max Alben reflected, that this time travel business,\n which knocked unconscious everyone who tried it, only made him feel\n slightly dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni,\n he had been told. There must be some complicated scientific explanation\n for it, he decided—and that would make it none of his business. Better\n forget about it.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a heavy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of patrolling his beat at the North American Chicken Reservation in a\n thick fog.", "Max Alben finished the manuscript and sighed. What a wonderful world!\n What a comfortable place to live!\n\n\n He walked to the rear dials and began the process of materializing at\n the crucial moment on April 18, 1976.\nflick!\nIt was odd, Mac Albin reflected, that these temporal journeys, which\n induced coma in everyone who tried it, only made him feel slightly\n dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni, he\n knew. Maybe there was some genetic relationship with his above-average\n fertility—might be a good idea to mention the idea to a biologist or\n two when he returned.\nIf\nhe returned.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a soupy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of the problems of landing a helicopter in a thick fog when the robot\n butler had not been told to turn on the ground lights.", "This machine was the last hope, of 2089, even if the world of 2089, as\n a whole, did not know of its existence and would try to prevent its\n being put into operation. But it meant a lot more to Mac Albin than\n merely saving a world. It meant an adventurous mission with the risk of\n death.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he laughed again happily.\n\n\n If his great-grandfather had not volunteered for the earliest\n time-travel experiments way back in the nineteen-seventies, back even\n before the Epidemic, it would never have been discovered that he and\n his seed possessed a great deal of immunity to extra-temporal blackout.", "\"Wait a minute, Mac,\" Skeat said and crossed to the other side of the\n narrow laboratory.\nAlbin and Honek watched him stuff several sheets of paper into a small\n metal box which he closed without locking.\n\n\n \"You will take care of yourself, won't you, Mac?\" Hugo Honek pleaded.\n \"Any time you feel like taking an unnecessary risk, remember that Bob\n and I will have to stand trial if you don't come back. We might be\n sentenced to complete loss of professional status and spend the rest of\n our lives supervising robot factories.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, it won't be that bad,\" Albin reassured him absent-mindedly from\n where he lay contorted inside the time machine. He watched Skeat coming\n toward him with the box.", "Albin decided that he was experiencing renunciation and felt proud.\n\n\n He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,\n disregarding the roomful of military figures since he knew they could\n not see him. The single red switch pointed downward on the instrument\n panel. That was the gimmick that controlled the course of the missile.\n Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway decent world!\n\n\n Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\n... pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... toward him.\nflick!\n... from him.\nflick!", "Honek shrugged his shoulders. \"It might be a lot worse than even that\n and you know it. The disappearance of a two-time father is going to\n leave an awful big vacancy in the world. One-timers, like Bob and\n me, are all over the place; if either of us dropped out of sight, it\n wouldn't cause nearly as much uproar.\"\n\n\n \"But Bob and you both tried to operate the machine,\" Albin reminded\n him. \"And you blacked out after a fifteen-second temporal displacement.\n So I'm the only chance, the only way to stop the human race from\n dwindling and dwindling till it hits absolute zero, like that fat old\n Security Council seems willing for it to do.\"", "No, if his great-grandfather had not demonstrated long ago his unique\n capacity for remaining conscious during time travel, Max Alben would\n not now be shifting from foot to foot in a physics laboratory,\n facing the black market kings of the world and awaiting their final\n instructions with an uncertain and submissive grin.\nMen like O'Hara, who controlled mushrooms, Levney, the blackberry\n tycoon, Sorgasso, the packaged-worm monopolist—would black marketeers\n of their tremendous stature so much as waste a glance on someone like\n Alben ordinarily, let alone confer a lifetime pension on his wife and\n five children of a full spoonful each of non-synthetic sugar a day?\n\n\n Even if he didn't come back, his family was provided for like almost no\n other family on Earth. This was a damn good job and he was lucky.\n\n\n Alben noticed that Abd Sadha had risen from the straight chair at\n the far side of the room and was approaching him with a sealed metal\n cylinder in one hand.", "And if that had not been discovered, the Albins would not have become\n physicists upon the passage of the United Nations law that everyone\n on Earth—absolutely without exception—had to choose a branch of\n research science in which to specialize. In the flabby, careful,\n life-guarding world the Earth had become, Mac Albin would never have\n been reluctantly selected by his two co-workers as the one to carry the\n forbidden banner of dangerous experiment.\n\n\n No, if his great-grandfather had not demonstrated long ago his unique\n capacity for remaining conscious during time travel, Mac Albin would\n probably be a biologist today like almost everyone else on Earth,\n laboriously working out dreary gene problems instead of embarking on\n the greatest adventure Man had known to date.\n\n\n Even if he didn't come back, he had at last found a socially useful\n escape from genetic responsibility to humanity in general and his own\n family in particular. This was a damn good job and he was lucky.", "If his great-grandfather had not volunteered for the earliest\n time-travel experiments way back in the nineteen-seventies, back even\n before the Blight, it would never have been discovered that he and his\n seed possessed a great deal of immunity to extra-temporal blackout.\n\n\n And if that had not been discovered, the ruling powers of Earth, more\n than a century later, would never have plucked Max Alben out of an\n obscure civil-service job as a relief guard at the North American\n Chicken Reservation to his present heroic and remunerative eminence.\n He would still be patrolling the barbed wire that surrounded the three\n white leghorn hens and two roosters—about one-sixth of the known\n livestock wealth of the Western Hemisphere—thoroughly content with\n the half-pail of dried apricots he received each and every payday.", "Of All Possible Worlds\nBy WILLIAM TENN\n\n\n Illustrated by GAUGHAN\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nChanging the world is simple; the trick is\n \nto do it before you have a chance to undo it!\nIt was a good job and Max Alben knew whom he had to thank for it—his\n great-grandfather.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he muttered as he hurried into the\n laboratory slightly ahead of the escorting technicians, all of them,\n despite the excitement of the moment, remembering to bob their heads\n deferentially at the half-dozen full-fleshed and hard-faced men\n lolling on the couches that had been set up around the time machine.", "According to the insulated register, he was now in 1976. He lowered\n speed until he registered April, then maneuvered slowly backward\n through time to the eighteenth, the day of the infamous Guided Missile\n Experiment. Carefully, carefully, like an obstetrician supervising\n surgical robots at an unusually difficult birth, he watched the\n register until it rolled to rest against the notch that indicated the\n exactly crucial moment. Then he pushed a button and froze the machine\n where it was.\n\n\n All he had to do now was materialize in the right spot, flash out and\n push the red switch from him. Then his exciting adventure would be over.\n\n\n But....\n\n\n He paused and tapped at his sleek chin. He was supposed to do something\n a second before materialization. Yes, that nervous theoretician, Bob\n Skeat, had given him a last suggestion.", "According to his gauges, he was now in 1976. He cut speed until he hit\n the last day of April, then cut speed again, drifting slowly backward\n to the eighteenth, the day of the infamous Guided Missile Experiment.\n Carefully, carefully, like a man handling a strange bomb made on a\n strange planet, he watched the center gauge until the needle came to\n rest against the thin etched line that indicated the exactly crucial\n moment. Then he pulled the brake and stopped the machine dead.\n\n\n All he had to do now was materialize in the right spot, flash out and\n pull the red switch toward him. Then his well-paid assignment would be\n done.\n\n\n But....\n\n\n He stopped and scratched his dirt-matted hair. Wasn't there something\n he was supposed to do a second before materialization? Yes, that\n useless old windbag, Sadha, had given him a last instruction.", "\"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he laughed as he looked at the morose faces\n of his two colleagues. Bob Skeat and Hugo Honek had done as much as he\n to build the tiny time machine in the secret lab under the helicopter\n garage, and they were fully as eager to go, but—unfortunately for\n them—they were not descended from the right ancestor.\n\n\n Leisurely, he unzipped the richly embroidered garment that, as the\n father of two children, he was privileged to wear, and wriggled into\n the housing of the complex little mechanism. This was hardly the\n first time he had seen it, since he'd been helping to build the device\n from the moment Honek had nodded and risen from the drafting board,\n and now he barely wasted a glance on the thumb-size translucent coils\n growing out of the almost microscopic energy bubbles which powered them.", "That was why the planet's powerful individuals had been persuaded to\n pool their wealth in a desperate attempt to alter the past. This kind\n of world was manifestly impossible.\n\n\n Mac Albin finished the document and sighed. What a magnificent world!\n What an exciting place to live!\n\n\n He dropped his hand on the side levers and began the process of\n materializing at the crucial moment on April 18, 1976.\nflick!\nAs the equipment of the remote-control station began to take on a\n blurred reality all around him, Max Alben felt a bit of fear at what\n he was doing. The technicians, he remembered, the Secretary-General,\n even the black market kings, had all warned him not to go ahead with\n his instructions if anything unusual turned up. That was an awful lot\n of power to disobey: he knew he should return with this new information\n and let better minds work on it.", "\"Yes, sir,\" one of the technicians standing by the time machine said\n respectfully. \"The experiment with an atomic warhead guided missile\n that resulted in the Blight was conducted on this site on April 18,\n 1976.\" He glanced proudly at the unemotional men on the couches, very\n much like a small boy after completing a recitation before visiting\n dignitaries from the Board of Education.\n\n\n \"Just so.\" Abd Sadha nodded. \"April 18, 1976. And on this site. You\n see, young man, you will materialize at the very moment and on the\n very spot where the remote-control station handling the missile\n was—er—handling the missile. You will be in a superb position, a\n superb position, to deflect the missile in its downward course and\n alter human history for the better. Very much for the better. Yes.\"\n\n\n He paused, having evidently stumbled out of his thought sequence.", "But in this other world, this other 2089, someone like himself would\n be a monarch of the black market, a suzerain of chaos, making his own\n rules, taking his own women. So what if the weaklings, those unfit to\n carry on the race, went to the wall? His kind wouldn't.\n\n\n He'd formed a pretty good idea of the kind of men who ruled that other\n world, from the document in the sealed metal cylinder. The black\n marketeers had not even read it. Why, the fools had obviously been\n duped by the technicians into permitting the experiment; they had not\n grasped the idea that an alternate time track would mean their own\n non-existence.\n\n\n This other world had its troubles, but it was certainly a livelier\n place than where he'd come from. It deserved a chance. Yes, that was\n how he felt: his world was drowsily moribund; this alternate was\n starving but managing to flail away at destiny. It\ndeserved\na chance." ], [ "\"Wait a minute, Mac,\" Skeat said and crossed to the other side of the\n narrow laboratory.\nAlbin and Honek watched him stuff several sheets of paper into a small\n metal box which he closed without locking.\n\n\n \"You will take care of yourself, won't you, Mac?\" Hugo Honek pleaded.\n \"Any time you feel like taking an unnecessary risk, remember that Bob\n and I will have to stand trial if you don't come back. We might be\n sentenced to complete loss of professional status and spend the rest of\n our lives supervising robot factories.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, it won't be that bad,\" Albin reassured him absent-mindedly from\n where he lay contorted inside the time machine. He watched Skeat coming\n toward him with the box.", "He picked up the sealed metal cylinder, walked to the entrance of the\n time machine and tossed it into the gray murk. A solid object floating\n near the entrance caught his eye. He put his arm out—whew, it was\n cold!—and pulled it inside.\n\n\n A small metal box. Funny. What was it doing out there? Curiously,\n he opened it, hoping to find something valuable. Nothing but a few\n sheets of paper, Alben noted disappointedly. He began to read them\n slowly, very slowly, for the manuscript was full of a lot of long and\n complicated words, like a letter from one bookworm scientist to another.", "He picked up the small metal box, twisted around to face the opening\n of the time machine and dropped it into the gray murk. A solid object\n floating near the opening attracted his attention. He shot his arm\n out—it was\ncold\n, as cold as they had figured—and pulled the object\n inside.\n\n\n A sealed metal cylinder. Strange. What was it doing out there?\n Anxiously, he opened it, not daring to believe he'd find a document\n inside. Yes, that was exactly what it was, he saw excitedly. He began\n to read it rapidly, very rapidly, as if it were a newly published paper\n on neutrinos. Besides, the manuscript was written with almost painful\n simplicity, like a textbook composed by a stuffy pedagogue for the use\n of morons.", "\"You understand, do you not, young man, that if anything goes wrong,\"\n Abd Sadha asked, his head nodding tremulously and anticipating the\n answer, \"if anything unexpected, unprepared-for, occurs, you are not to\n continue with the experiment but return immediately?\"\n\n\n \"He understands everything he has to understand,\" Gomez told him.\n \"Let's get this thing moving.\"\n\n\n The old man smiled again. \"Yes. Of course, Mr. Gomez.\" He came up to\n where Alben stood in the entrance of the time machine and handed the\n sealed metal cylinder to him. \"This is the precaution the scientists\n have just added. When you arrive at your destination, just before\n materializing, you will release it into the surrounding temporal\n medium. Our purpose here, as you no doubt—\"", "\"Well, all you do, if I have this figured right, is shove the metal\n box containing the manuscript out into the surrounding temporal medium\n a moment before you materialize to do your job. That temporal medium\n in which you'll be traveling is something that exists independent of\n and autonomous to all possible futures. It's my hunch that something\n that's immersed in it will not be altered by a new time sequence.\"\n\"Remind him to be careful, Bob,\" Honek rumbled. \"He thinks he's Captain\n Blood and this is his big chance to run away to sea and become a\n swashbuckling pirate.\"", "\"Take it easy, Mac,\" Bob Skeat said as he handed the metal box to\n Albin. \"The Security Council is just trying to solve the problem in\n their way, the conservative way: a worldwide concentration on genetics\n research coupled with the maximum preservation of existing human lives,\n especially those that have a high reproductive potential. We three\n disagree with them; we've been skulking down here nights to solve it\nour\nway, and ours is a radical approach and plenty risky. That's\n the reason for the metal box—trying to cover one more explosive\n possibility.\"\n\n\n Albin turned it around curiously. \"How?\"\n\n\n \"I sat up all last night writing the manuscript that's inside it. Look,\n Mac, when you go back to the Guided Missile Experiment of 1976 and\n push that red switch away from you, a lot of other things are going to\n happen than just deflecting the missile so that it will explode in the\n Brazilian jungle instead of the Pacific Ocean.\"", "He shrugged rapidly out of his rags, as he had been instructed in the\n anteroom, and stepped into the housing of the enormous mechanism.\n This was the first time he had seen it, since he had been taught\n how to operate it on a dummy model, and now he stared at the great\n transparent coils and the susurrating energy bubble with much respect.\n\n\n This machine, the pride and the hope of 2089, was something almost\n outside his powers of comprehension. But Max Alben knew how to run it,\n and he knew, roughly, what it was supposed to accomplish. He knew also\n that this was the first backward journey of any great duration and,\n being scientifically unpredictable, might well be the death of him.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he muttered again affectionately.", "\"And he pulls the red switch toward him,\" Gomez, the dandelion-root\n magnate, reminded him sharply, impatiently.\n\n\n \"Ah, yes, the red switch. He pulls the little red switch toward him.\n Thank you, Mr. Gomez, thank you very much, sir. He pulls the little\n red switch on the green instrument panel toward him, thus preventing\n the error that caused the missile to explode in the Brazilian jungle\n and causing it, instead, to explode somewhere in the mid-Pacific, as\n originally planned.\"", "He twisted around, reaching overhead for the lever which activated the\n forces that drove the time machine.\nflick!\nIt was strange, Max Alben reflected, that this time travel business,\n which knocked unconscious everyone who tried it, only made him feel\n slightly dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni,\n he had been told. There must be some complicated scientific explanation\n for it, he decided—and that would make it none of his business. Better\n forget about it.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a heavy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of patrolling his beat at the North American Chicken Reservation in a\n thick fog.", "According to the insulated register, he was now in 1976. He lowered\n speed until he registered April, then maneuvered slowly backward\n through time to the eighteenth, the day of the infamous Guided Missile\n Experiment. Carefully, carefully, like an obstetrician supervising\n surgical robots at an unusually difficult birth, he watched the\n register until it rolled to rest against the notch that indicated the\n exactly crucial moment. Then he pushed a button and froze the machine\n where it was.\n\n\n All he had to do now was materialize in the right spot, flash out and\n push the red switch from him. Then his exciting adventure would be over.\n\n\n But....\n\n\n He paused and tapped at his sleek chin. He was supposed to do something\n a second before materialization. Yes, that nervous theoretician, Bob\n Skeat, had given him a last suggestion.", "Albin decided that he was experiencing renunciation and felt proud.\n\n\n He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,\n disregarding the roomful of military figures since he knew they could\n not see him. The single red switch pointed downward on the instrument\n panel. That was the gimmick that controlled the course of the missile.\n Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway decent world!\n\n\n Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\n... pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... toward him.\nflick!\n... from him.\nflick!", "Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nAs the equipment of the remote-control station began to oscillate into\n reality all around him, Mac Albin felt a bit of shame at what he was\n doing. He'd promised Bob and Hugo to drop the experiment at any stage\n if a new factor showed up. He knew he should go back with this new\n information and have all three of them kick it around.\n\n\n But what would they be able to tell him, they with their blissful\n adjustment to their thoroughly blueprinted lives? They, at least, had\n been ordered to marry women they could live with; he'd drawn a female\n with whom he was completely incompatible in any but a genetic sense.\n Genetics! He was tired of genetics and the sanctity of human life,\n tired to the tip of his uncalloused fingers, tired to the recesses\n of his unused muscles. He was tired of having to undertake a simple\n adventure like a thief in the night.", "Levney sat up on his couch and snapped his fingers peremptorily. \"I\n just heard Gomez tell you to get this thing moving, Sadha. And it isn't\n moving. We're busy men. We've wasted enough time.\"\n\n\n \"I was just trying to explain a crucial final fact,\" the\n Secretary-General apologized. \"A fact which may be highly—\"\n\n\n \"You've explained enough facts.\" Levney turned to the man inside the\n time machine. \"Hey, fella. You.\nMove!\n\"\n\n\n Max Alben gulped and nodded violently. He darted to the rear of the\n machine and turned the dial which activated it.\nflick!\nIt was a good job and Mac Albin knew whom he had to thank for it—his\n great-grandfather.", "\"Maybe it is, but that's my job. Hugo's the designer of the time\n machine and you're the operator, but I'm the theoretical man in this\n research team. It's my job to look for trouble. So, just in case, I\n wrote a brief history of the world from the time the missile exploded\n in the Pacific. It tells why ours is the worst possible of futures.\n It's in that box.\"\n\n\n \"What do I do with it—hand it to the guy from the alternate 2089?\"", "\"Yes, sir,\" one of the technicians standing by the time machine said\n respectfully. \"The experiment with an atomic warhead guided missile\n that resulted in the Blight was conducted on this site on April 18,\n 1976.\" He glanced proudly at the unemotional men on the couches, very\n much like a small boy after completing a recitation before visiting\n dignitaries from the Board of Education.\n\n\n \"Just so.\" Abd Sadha nodded. \"April 18, 1976. And on this site. You\n see, young man, you will materialize at the very moment and on the\n very spot where the remote-control station handling the missile\n was—er—handling the missile. You will be in a superb position, a\n superb position, to deflect the missile in its downward course and\n alter human history for the better. Very much for the better. Yes.\"\n\n\n He paused, having evidently stumbled out of his thought sequence.", "According to his gauges, he was now in 1976. He cut speed until he hit\n the last day of April, then cut speed again, drifting slowly backward\n to the eighteenth, the day of the infamous Guided Missile Experiment.\n Carefully, carefully, like a man handling a strange bomb made on a\n strange planet, he watched the center gauge until the needle came to\n rest against the thin etched line that indicated the exactly crucial\n moment. Then he pulled the brake and stopped the machine dead.\n\n\n All he had to do now was materialize in the right spot, flash out and\n pull the red switch toward him. Then his well-paid assignment would be\n done.\n\n\n But....\n\n\n He stopped and scratched his dirt-matted hair. Wasn't there something\n he was supposed to do a second before materialization? Yes, that\n useless old windbag, Sadha, had given him a last instruction.", "Albin grimaced in annoyance. \"I\nam\nexcited by doing something\n besides sitting in a safe little corner working out safe little\n abstractions for the first time in my life. But I know that this is a\n first experiment. Honestly, Hugo, I really have enough intelligence to\n recognize that simple fact. I know that if anything unexpected pops up,\n anything we didn't foresee, I'm supposed to come scuttling back and ask\n for advice.\"\n\n\n \"I hope you do,\" Bob Skeat sighed. \"I hope you do know that. A\n twentieth century poet once wrote something to the effect that the\n world will end not with a bang, but a whimper. Well, our world is\n ending with a whimper. Try to see that it doesn't end with a bang,\n either.\"\n\n\n \"That I'll promise you,\" Albin said a trifle disgustedly. \"It'll end\n with neither a bang\nnor\na whimper. So long, Hugo. So long, Bob.\"", "But in this other world, this other 2089, someone like himself would\n be a monarch of the black market, a suzerain of chaos, making his own\n rules, taking his own women. So what if the weaklings, those unfit to\n carry on the race, went to the wall? His kind wouldn't.\n\n\n He'd formed a pretty good idea of the kind of men who ruled that other\n world, from the document in the sealed metal cylinder. The black\n marketeers had not even read it. Why, the fools had obviously been\n duped by the technicians into permitting the experiment; they had not\n grasped the idea that an alternate time track would mean their own\n non-existence.\n\n\n This other world had its troubles, but it was certainly a livelier\n place than where he'd come from. It deserved a chance. Yes, that was\n how he felt: his world was drowsily moribund; this alternate was\n starving but managing to flail away at destiny. It\ndeserved\na chance.", "\"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he laughed as he looked at the morose faces\n of his two colleagues. Bob Skeat and Hugo Honek had done as much as he\n to build the tiny time machine in the secret lab under the helicopter\n garage, and they were fully as eager to go, but—unfortunately for\n them—they were not descended from the right ancestor.\n\n\n Leisurely, he unzipped the richly embroidered garment that, as the\n father of two children, he was privileged to wear, and wriggled into\n the housing of the complex little mechanism. This was hardly the\n first time he had seen it, since he'd been helping to build the device\n from the moment Honek had nodded and risen from the drafting board,\n and now he barely wasted a glance on the thumb-size translucent coils\n growing out of the almost microscopic energy bubbles which powered them.", "The small fat man exasperatedly hit the side of the time machine with\n a well-cushioned palm. \"You know better. There won't be any alternate\n 2089 until you push that red switch on the green instrument panel. The\n moment you do, our world, with all its slow slide to extinction, goes\n out and its alternate goes on—just like two electric light bulbs on a\n push-pull circuit. We and every single one of our artifacts, including\n the time machine, disappear. The problem is how to keep that manuscript\n from disappearing." ], [ "Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nAs the equipment of the remote-control station began to oscillate into\n reality all around him, Mac Albin felt a bit of shame at what he was\n doing. He'd promised Bob and Hugo to drop the experiment at any stage\n if a new factor showed up. He knew he should go back with this new\n information and have all three of them kick it around.\n\n\n But what would they be able to tell him, they with their blissful\n adjustment to their thoroughly blueprinted lives? They, at least, had\n been ordered to marry women they could live with; he'd drawn a female\n with whom he was completely incompatible in any but a genetic sense.\n Genetics! He was tired of genetics and the sanctity of human life,\n tired to the tip of his uncalloused fingers, tired to the recesses\n of his unused muscles. He was tired of having to undertake a simple\n adventure like a thief in the night.", "He'd even be a scientist—\neveryone\nwas a scientist there, weren't\n they?—and he'd have a big laboratory all to himself. This other world\n had its troubles, but it was a lot nicer place than where he'd come\n from. He wouldn't return. He'd go through with it.\n\n\n The fear left him and, for the first time in his life, Max Alben felt\n the sensation of power.\n\n\n He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,\n sweating a bit at the sight of the roomful of military figures, despite\n the technicians' reassurances that all this would be happening too fast\n to be visible. He saw the single red switch pointing upward on the\n instrument panel. The switch that controlled the course of the missile.\n Now! Now to make a halfway decent world!", "He twisted around, reaching overhead for the lever which activated the\n forces that drove the time machine.\nflick!\nIt was strange, Max Alben reflected, that this time travel business,\n which knocked unconscious everyone who tried it, only made him feel\n slightly dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni,\n he had been told. There must be some complicated scientific explanation\n for it, he decided—and that would make it none of his business. Better\n forget about it.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a heavy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of patrolling his beat at the North American Chicken Reservation in a\n thick fog.", "He shrugged rapidly out of his rags, as he had been instructed in the\n anteroom, and stepped into the housing of the enormous mechanism.\n This was the first time he had seen it, since he had been taught\n how to operate it on a dummy model, and now he stared at the great\n transparent coils and the susurrating energy bubble with much respect.\n\n\n This machine, the pride and the hope of 2089, was something almost\n outside his powers of comprehension. But Max Alben knew how to run it,\n and he knew, roughly, what it was supposed to accomplish. He knew also\n that this was the first backward journey of any great duration and,\n being scientifically unpredictable, might well be the death of him.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he muttered again affectionately.", "Max Alben finished the manuscript and sighed. What a wonderful world!\n What a comfortable place to live!\n\n\n He walked to the rear dials and began the process of materializing at\n the crucial moment on April 18, 1976.\nflick!\nIt was odd, Mac Albin reflected, that these temporal journeys, which\n induced coma in everyone who tried it, only made him feel slightly\n dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni, he\n knew. Maybe there was some genetic relationship with his above-average\n fertility—might be a good idea to mention the idea to a biologist or\n two when he returned.\nIf\nhe returned.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a soupy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of the problems of landing a helicopter in a thick fog when the robot\n butler had not been told to turn on the ground lights.", "Levney sat up on his couch and snapped his fingers peremptorily. \"I\n just heard Gomez tell you to get this thing moving, Sadha. And it isn't\n moving. We're busy men. We've wasted enough time.\"\n\n\n \"I was just trying to explain a crucial final fact,\" the\n Secretary-General apologized. \"A fact which may be highly—\"\n\n\n \"You've explained enough facts.\" Levney turned to the man inside the\n time machine. \"Hey, fella. You.\nMove!\n\"\n\n\n Max Alben gulped and nodded violently. He darted to the rear of the\n machine and turned the dial which activated it.\nflick!\nIt was a good job and Mac Albin knew whom he had to thank for it—his\n great-grandfather.", "Albin decided that he was experiencing renunciation and felt proud.\n\n\n He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,\n disregarding the roomful of military figures since he knew they could\n not see him. The single red switch pointed downward on the instrument\n panel. That was the gimmick that controlled the course of the missile.\n Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway decent world!\n\n\n Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\n... pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... toward him.\nflick!\n... from him.\nflick!", "No, if his great-grandfather had not demonstrated long ago his unique\n capacity for remaining conscious during time travel, Max Alben would\n not now be shifting from foot to foot in a physics laboratory,\n facing the black market kings of the world and awaiting their final\n instructions with an uncertain and submissive grin.\nMen like O'Hara, who controlled mushrooms, Levney, the blackberry\n tycoon, Sorgasso, the packaged-worm monopolist—would black marketeers\n of their tremendous stature so much as waste a glance on someone like\n Alben ordinarily, let alone confer a lifetime pension on his wife and\n five children of a full spoonful each of non-synthetic sugar a day?\n\n\n Even if he didn't come back, his family was provided for like almost no\n other family on Earth. This was a damn good job and he was lucky.\n\n\n Alben noticed that Abd Sadha had risen from the straight chair at\n the far side of the room and was approaching him with a sealed metal\n cylinder in one hand.", "If his great-grandfather had not volunteered for the earliest\n time-travel experiments way back in the nineteen-seventies, back even\n before the Blight, it would never have been discovered that he and his\n seed possessed a great deal of immunity to extra-temporal blackout.\n\n\n And if that had not been discovered, the ruling powers of Earth, more\n than a century later, would never have plucked Max Alben out of an\n obscure civil-service job as a relief guard at the North American\n Chicken Reservation to his present heroic and remunerative eminence.\n He would still be patrolling the barbed wire that surrounded the three\n white leghorn hens and two roosters—about one-sixth of the known\n livestock wealth of the Western Hemisphere—thoroughly content with\n the half-pail of dried apricots he received each and every payday.", "\"Wait a minute, Mac,\" Skeat said and crossed to the other side of the\n narrow laboratory.\nAlbin and Honek watched him stuff several sheets of paper into a small\n metal box which he closed without locking.\n\n\n \"You will take care of yourself, won't you, Mac?\" Hugo Honek pleaded.\n \"Any time you feel like taking an unnecessary risk, remember that Bob\n and I will have to stand trial if you don't come back. We might be\n sentenced to complete loss of professional status and spend the rest of\n our lives supervising robot factories.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, it won't be that bad,\" Albin reassured him absent-mindedly from\n where he lay contorted inside the time machine. He watched Skeat coming\n toward him with the box.", "Of All Possible Worlds\nBy WILLIAM TENN\n\n\n Illustrated by GAUGHAN\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nChanging the world is simple; the trick is\n \nto do it before you have a chance to undo it!\nIt was a good job and Max Alben knew whom he had to thank for it—his\n great-grandfather.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he muttered as he hurried into the\n laboratory slightly ahead of the escorting technicians, all of them,\n despite the excitement of the moment, remembering to bob their heads\n deferentially at the half-dozen full-fleshed and hard-faced men\n lolling on the couches that had been set up around the time machine.", "Albin grimaced in annoyance. \"I\nam\nexcited by doing something\n besides sitting in a safe little corner working out safe little\n abstractions for the first time in my life. But I know that this is a\n first experiment. Honestly, Hugo, I really have enough intelligence to\n recognize that simple fact. I know that if anything unexpected pops up,\n anything we didn't foresee, I'm supposed to come scuttling back and ask\n for advice.\"\n\n\n \"I hope you do,\" Bob Skeat sighed. \"I hope you do know that. A\n twentieth century poet once wrote something to the effect that the\n world will end not with a bang, but a whimper. Well, our world is\n ending with a whimper. Try to see that it doesn't end with a bang,\n either.\"\n\n\n \"That I'll promise you,\" Albin said a trifle disgustedly. \"It'll end\n with neither a bang\nnor\na whimper. So long, Hugo. So long, Bob.\"", "The Secretary-General of the United Nations beamed. \"Thus preventing\n the Blight, making it nonexistent, as it were, producing a present-day\n world in which the Blight never occurred. That is correct, is it not,\n gentlemen?\" he asked, turning anxiously again.\nNone of the half-dozen men on couches deigned to answer him. And\n Alben kept his eyes deferentially in their direction, too, as he had\n throughout this period of last-minute instruction.\n\n\n He knew who ruled his world—these stolid, well-fed men in clean\n garments with a minimum of patches, and where patches occurred, at\n least they were the color of the surrounding cloth.\n\n\n Sadha might be Secretary-General of the United Nations, but that\n was still a civil-service job, only a few social notches higher\n than a chicken guard. His clothes were fully as ragged, fully as\n multi-colored, as those that Alben had stepped out of. And the gnawing\n in his stomach was no doubt almost as great.", "\"And he pulls the red switch toward him,\" Gomez, the dandelion-root\n magnate, reminded him sharply, impatiently.\n\n\n \"Ah, yes, the red switch. He pulls the little red switch toward him.\n Thank you, Mr. Gomez, thank you very much, sir. He pulls the little\n red switch on the green instrument panel toward him, thus preventing\n the error that caused the missile to explode in the Brazilian jungle\n and causing it, instead, to explode somewhere in the mid-Pacific, as\n originally planned.\"", "They with their easy lives, what did they know what existence had been\n like for such as he? Hunger, always hunger, scrabbling, servility, and\n more hunger. Every time things got really tight, you and your wife\n looking sideways at your kids and wondering which of them would bring\n the best price. Buying security for them, as he was now, at the risk of\n his life.\n\n\n But in this other world, this other 2089, there was a state that took\n care of you and that treasured your children. A man like himself, with\nfive\nchildren—why, he'd be a big man, maybe the biggest man on\n Earth! And he'd have robots to work for him and lots of food. Above\n all, lots and lots of food.", "According to his gauges, he was now in 1976. He cut speed until he hit\n the last day of April, then cut speed again, drifting slowly backward\n to the eighteenth, the day of the infamous Guided Missile Experiment.\n Carefully, carefully, like a man handling a strange bomb made on a\n strange planet, he watched the center gauge until the needle came to\n rest against the thin etched line that indicated the exactly crucial\n moment. Then he pulled the brake and stopped the machine dead.\n\n\n All he had to do now was materialize in the right spot, flash out and\n pull the red switch toward him. Then his well-paid assignment would be\n done.\n\n\n But....\n\n\n He stopped and scratched his dirt-matted hair. Wasn't there something\n he was supposed to do a second before materialization? Yes, that\n useless old windbag, Sadha, had given him a last instruction.", "And if that had not been discovered, the Albins would not have become\n physicists upon the passage of the United Nations law that everyone\n on Earth—absolutely without exception—had to choose a branch of\n research science in which to specialize. In the flabby, careful,\n life-guarding world the Earth had become, Mac Albin would never have\n been reluctantly selected by his two co-workers as the one to carry the\n forbidden banner of dangerous experiment.\n\n\n No, if his great-grandfather had not demonstrated long ago his unique\n capacity for remaining conscious during time travel, Mac Albin would\n probably be a biologist today like almost everyone else on Earth,\n laboriously working out dreary gene problems instead of embarking on\n the greatest adventure Man had known to date.\n\n\n Even if he didn't come back, he had at last found a socially useful\n escape from genetic responsibility to humanity in general and his own\n family in particular. This was a damn good job and he was lucky.", "\"Yes, sir,\" one of the technicians standing by the time machine said\n respectfully. \"The experiment with an atomic warhead guided missile\n that resulted in the Blight was conducted on this site on April 18,\n 1976.\" He glanced proudly at the unemotional men on the couches, very\n much like a small boy after completing a recitation before visiting\n dignitaries from the Board of Education.\n\n\n \"Just so.\" Abd Sadha nodded. \"April 18, 1976. And on this site. You\n see, young man, you will materialize at the very moment and on the\n very spot where the remote-control station handling the missile\n was—er—handling the missile. You will be in a superb position, a\n superb position, to deflect the missile in its downward course and\n alter human history for the better. Very much for the better. Yes.\"\n\n\n He paused, having evidently stumbled out of his thought sequence.", "Honek shrugged his shoulders. \"It might be a lot worse than even that\n and you know it. The disappearance of a two-time father is going to\n leave an awful big vacancy in the world. One-timers, like Bob and\n me, are all over the place; if either of us dropped out of sight, it\n wouldn't cause nearly as much uproar.\"\n\n\n \"But Bob and you both tried to operate the machine,\" Albin reminded\n him. \"And you blacked out after a fifteen-second temporal displacement.\n So I'm the only chance, the only way to stop the human race from\n dwindling and dwindling till it hits absolute zero, like that fat old\n Security Council seems willing for it to do.\"", "That was why the planet's powerful individuals had been persuaded to\n pool their wealth in a desperate attempt to alter the past. This kind\n of world was manifestly impossible.\n\n\n Mac Albin finished the document and sighed. What a magnificent world!\n What an exciting place to live!\n\n\n He dropped his hand on the side levers and began the process of\n materializing at the crucial moment on April 18, 1976.\nflick!\nAs the equipment of the remote-control station began to take on a\n blurred reality all around him, Max Alben felt a bit of fear at what\n he was doing. The technicians, he remembered, the Secretary-General,\n even the black market kings, had all warned him not to go ahead with\n his instructions if anything unusual turned up. That was an awful lot\n of power to disobey: he knew he should return with this new information\n and let better minds work on it." ], [ "Max Alben finished the manuscript and sighed. What a wonderful world!\n What a comfortable place to live!\n\n\n He walked to the rear dials and began the process of materializing at\n the crucial moment on April 18, 1976.\nflick!\nIt was odd, Mac Albin reflected, that these temporal journeys, which\n induced coma in everyone who tried it, only made him feel slightly\n dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni, he\n knew. Maybe there was some genetic relationship with his above-average\n fertility—might be a good idea to mention the idea to a biologist or\n two when he returned.\nIf\nhe returned.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a soupy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of the problems of landing a helicopter in a thick fog when the robot\n butler had not been told to turn on the ground lights.", "He'd even be a scientist—\neveryone\nwas a scientist there, weren't\n they?—and he'd have a big laboratory all to himself. This other world\n had its troubles, but it was a lot nicer place than where he'd come\n from. He wouldn't return. He'd go through with it.\n\n\n The fear left him and, for the first time in his life, Max Alben felt\n the sensation of power.\n\n\n He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,\n sweating a bit at the sight of the roomful of military figures, despite\n the technicians' reassurances that all this would be happening too fast\n to be visible. He saw the single red switch pointing upward on the\n instrument panel. The switch that controlled the course of the missile.\n Now! Now to make a halfway decent world!", "Albin decided that he was experiencing renunciation and felt proud.\n\n\n He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,\n disregarding the roomful of military figures since he knew they could\n not see him. The single red switch pointed downward on the instrument\n panel. That was the gimmick that controlled the course of the missile.\n Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway decent world!\n\n\n Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\n... pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... toward him.\nflick!\n... from him.\nflick!", "They with their easy lives, what did they know what existence had been\n like for such as he? Hunger, always hunger, scrabbling, servility, and\n more hunger. Every time things got really tight, you and your wife\n looking sideways at your kids and wondering which of them would bring\n the best price. Buying security for them, as he was now, at the risk of\n his life.\n\n\n But in this other world, this other 2089, there was a state that took\n care of you and that treasured your children. A man like himself, with\nfive\nchildren—why, he'd be a big man, maybe the biggest man on\n Earth! And he'd have robots to work for him and lots of food. Above\n all, lots and lots of food.", "Of All Possible Worlds\nBy WILLIAM TENN\n\n\n Illustrated by GAUGHAN\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nChanging the world is simple; the trick is\n \nto do it before you have a chance to undo it!\nIt was a good job and Max Alben knew whom he had to thank for it—his\n great-grandfather.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he muttered as he hurried into the\n laboratory slightly ahead of the escorting technicians, all of them,\n despite the excitement of the moment, remembering to bob their heads\n deferentially at the half-dozen full-fleshed and hard-faced men\n lolling on the couches that had been set up around the time machine.", "He shrugged rapidly out of his rags, as he had been instructed in the\n anteroom, and stepped into the housing of the enormous mechanism.\n This was the first time he had seen it, since he had been taught\n how to operate it on a dummy model, and now he stared at the great\n transparent coils and the susurrating energy bubble with much respect.\n\n\n This machine, the pride and the hope of 2089, was something almost\n outside his powers of comprehension. But Max Alben knew how to run it,\n and he knew, roughly, what it was supposed to accomplish. He knew also\n that this was the first backward journey of any great duration and,\n being scientifically unpredictable, might well be the death of him.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he muttered again affectionately.", "He twisted around, reaching overhead for the lever which activated the\n forces that drove the time machine.\nflick!\nIt was strange, Max Alben reflected, that this time travel business,\n which knocked unconscious everyone who tried it, only made him feel\n slightly dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni,\n he had been told. There must be some complicated scientific explanation\n for it, he decided—and that would make it none of his business. Better\n forget about it.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a heavy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of patrolling his beat at the North American Chicken Reservation in a\n thick fog.", "If his great-grandfather had not volunteered for the earliest\n time-travel experiments way back in the nineteen-seventies, back even\n before the Blight, it would never have been discovered that he and his\n seed possessed a great deal of immunity to extra-temporal blackout.\n\n\n And if that had not been discovered, the ruling powers of Earth, more\n than a century later, would never have plucked Max Alben out of an\n obscure civil-service job as a relief guard at the North American\n Chicken Reservation to his present heroic and remunerative eminence.\n He would still be patrolling the barbed wire that surrounded the three\n white leghorn hens and two roosters—about one-sixth of the known\n livestock wealth of the Western Hemisphere—thoroughly content with\n the half-pail of dried apricots he received each and every payday.", "Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nAs the equipment of the remote-control station began to oscillate into\n reality all around him, Mac Albin felt a bit of shame at what he was\n doing. He'd promised Bob and Hugo to drop the experiment at any stage\n if a new factor showed up. He knew he should go back with this new\n information and have all three of them kick it around.\n\n\n But what would they be able to tell him, they with their blissful\n adjustment to their thoroughly blueprinted lives? They, at least, had\n been ordered to marry women they could live with; he'd drawn a female\n with whom he was completely incompatible in any but a genetic sense.\n Genetics! He was tired of genetics and the sanctity of human life,\n tired to the tip of his uncalloused fingers, tired to the recesses\n of his unused muscles. He was tired of having to undertake a simple\n adventure like a thief in the night.", "No, if his great-grandfather had not demonstrated long ago his unique\n capacity for remaining conscious during time travel, Max Alben would\n not now be shifting from foot to foot in a physics laboratory,\n facing the black market kings of the world and awaiting their final\n instructions with an uncertain and submissive grin.\nMen like O'Hara, who controlled mushrooms, Levney, the blackberry\n tycoon, Sorgasso, the packaged-worm monopolist—would black marketeers\n of their tremendous stature so much as waste a glance on someone like\n Alben ordinarily, let alone confer a lifetime pension on his wife and\n five children of a full spoonful each of non-synthetic sugar a day?\n\n\n Even if he didn't come back, his family was provided for like almost no\n other family on Earth. This was a damn good job and he was lucky.\n\n\n Alben noticed that Abd Sadha had risen from the straight chair at\n the far side of the room and was approaching him with a sealed metal\n cylinder in one hand.", "And if that had not been discovered, the Albins would not have become\n physicists upon the passage of the United Nations law that everyone\n on Earth—absolutely without exception—had to choose a branch of\n research science in which to specialize. In the flabby, careful,\n life-guarding world the Earth had become, Mac Albin would never have\n been reluctantly selected by his two co-workers as the one to carry the\n forbidden banner of dangerous experiment.\n\n\n No, if his great-grandfather had not demonstrated long ago his unique\n capacity for remaining conscious during time travel, Mac Albin would\n probably be a biologist today like almost everyone else on Earth,\n laboriously working out dreary gene problems instead of embarking on\n the greatest adventure Man had known to date.\n\n\n Even if he didn't come back, he had at last found a socially useful\n escape from genetic responsibility to humanity in general and his own\n family in particular. This was a damn good job and he was lucky.", "That was why the planet's powerful individuals had been persuaded to\n pool their wealth in a desperate attempt to alter the past. This kind\n of world was manifestly impossible.\n\n\n Mac Albin finished the document and sighed. What a magnificent world!\n What an exciting place to live!\n\n\n He dropped his hand on the side levers and began the process of\n materializing at the crucial moment on April 18, 1976.\nflick!\nAs the equipment of the remote-control station began to take on a\n blurred reality all around him, Max Alben felt a bit of fear at what\n he was doing. The technicians, he remembered, the Secretary-General,\n even the black market kings, had all warned him not to go ahead with\n his instructions if anything unusual turned up. That was an awful lot\n of power to disobey: he knew he should return with this new information\n and let better minds work on it.", "But in this other world, this other 2089, someone like himself would\n be a monarch of the black market, a suzerain of chaos, making his own\n rules, taking his own women. So what if the weaklings, those unfit to\n carry on the race, went to the wall? His kind wouldn't.\n\n\n He'd formed a pretty good idea of the kind of men who ruled that other\n world, from the document in the sealed metal cylinder. The black\n marketeers had not even read it. Why, the fools had obviously been\n duped by the technicians into permitting the experiment; they had not\n grasped the idea that an alternate time track would mean their own\n non-existence.\n\n\n This other world had its troubles, but it was certainly a livelier\n place than where he'd come from. It deserved a chance. Yes, that was\n how he felt: his world was drowsily moribund; this alternate was\n starving but managing to flail away at destiny. It\ndeserved\na chance.", "The Secretary-General of the United Nations beamed. \"Thus preventing\n the Blight, making it nonexistent, as it were, producing a present-day\n world in which the Blight never occurred. That is correct, is it not,\n gentlemen?\" he asked, turning anxiously again.\nNone of the half-dozen men on couches deigned to answer him. And\n Alben kept his eyes deferentially in their direction, too, as he had\n throughout this period of last-minute instruction.\n\n\n He knew who ruled his world—these stolid, well-fed men in clean\n garments with a minimum of patches, and where patches occurred, at\n least they were the color of the surrounding cloth.\n\n\n Sadha might be Secretary-General of the United Nations, but that\n was still a civil-service job, only a few social notches higher\n than a chicken guard. His clothes were fully as ragged, fully as\n multi-colored, as those that Alben had stepped out of. And the gnawing\n in his stomach was no doubt almost as great.", "Levney sat up on his couch and snapped his fingers peremptorily. \"I\n just heard Gomez tell you to get this thing moving, Sadha. And it isn't\n moving. We're busy men. We've wasted enough time.\"\n\n\n \"I was just trying to explain a crucial final fact,\" the\n Secretary-General apologized. \"A fact which may be highly—\"\n\n\n \"You've explained enough facts.\" Levney turned to the man inside the\n time machine. \"Hey, fella. You.\nMove!\n\"\n\n\n Max Alben gulped and nodded violently. He darted to the rear of the\n machine and turned the dial which activated it.\nflick!\nIt was a good job and Mac Albin knew whom he had to thank for it—his\n great-grandfather.", "Albin grimaced in annoyance. \"I\nam\nexcited by doing something\n besides sitting in a safe little corner working out safe little\n abstractions for the first time in my life. But I know that this is a\n first experiment. Honestly, Hugo, I really have enough intelligence to\n recognize that simple fact. I know that if anything unexpected pops up,\n anything we didn't foresee, I'm supposed to come scuttling back and ask\n for advice.\"\n\n\n \"I hope you do,\" Bob Skeat sighed. \"I hope you do know that. A\n twentieth century poet once wrote something to the effect that the\n world will end not with a bang, but a whimper. Well, our world is\n ending with a whimper. Try to see that it doesn't end with a bang,\n either.\"\n\n\n \"That I'll promise you,\" Albin said a trifle disgustedly. \"It'll end\n with neither a bang\nnor\na whimper. So long, Hugo. So long, Bob.\"", "This machine was the last hope, of 2089, even if the world of 2089, as\n a whole, did not know of its existence and would try to prevent its\n being put into operation. But it meant a lot more to Mac Albin than\n merely saving a world. It meant an adventurous mission with the risk of\n death.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he laughed again happily.\n\n\n If his great-grandfather had not volunteered for the earliest\n time-travel experiments way back in the nineteen-seventies, back even\n before the Epidemic, it would never have been discovered that he and\n his seed possessed a great deal of immunity to extra-temporal blackout.", "Genetic research had the very best minds prodded into it; the lesser\n ones went into the other sciences. Everyone on Earth was engaged in\n some form of scientific research to some extent. Since the population\n was now so limited in proportion to the great resources available, all\n physical labor had long been done by robots. The government saw to it\n that everybody had an ample supply of goods and, in return, asked only\n that they experiment without any risk to their own lives—every human\n being was now a much-prized, highly guarded rarity.\n\n\n There were less than a hundred thousand of them, well below the danger\n point, it had been estimated, where a species might be wiped out by a\n new calamity. Not that another calamity would be needed. Since the end\n of the Epidemic, the birth rate had been moving further and further\n behind the death rate. In another century....\n\n\n That was why a desperate and secret attempt to alter the past was being\n made. This kind of world was evidently impossible.", "Honek shrugged his shoulders. \"It might be a lot worse than even that\n and you know it. The disappearance of a two-time father is going to\n leave an awful big vacancy in the world. One-timers, like Bob and\n me, are all over the place; if either of us dropped out of sight, it\n wouldn't cause nearly as much uproar.\"\n\n\n \"But Bob and you both tried to operate the machine,\" Albin reminded\n him. \"And you blacked out after a fifteen-second temporal displacement.\n So I'm the only chance, the only way to stop the human race from\n dwindling and dwindling till it hits absolute zero, like that fat old\n Security Council seems willing for it to do.\"", "He picked up the small metal box, twisted around to face the opening\n of the time machine and dropped it into the gray murk. A solid object\n floating near the opening attracted his attention. He shot his arm\n out—it was\ncold\n, as cold as they had figured—and pulled the object\n inside.\n\n\n A sealed metal cylinder. Strange. What was it doing out there?\n Anxiously, he opened it, not daring to believe he'd find a document\n inside. Yes, that was exactly what it was, he saw excitedly. He began\n to read it rapidly, very rapidly, as if it were a newly published paper\n on neutrinos. Besides, the manuscript was written with almost painful\n simplicity, like a textbook composed by a stuffy pedagogue for the use\n of morons." ], [ "Albin grimaced in annoyance. \"I\nam\nexcited by doing something\n besides sitting in a safe little corner working out safe little\n abstractions for the first time in my life. But I know that this is a\n first experiment. Honestly, Hugo, I really have enough intelligence to\n recognize that simple fact. I know that if anything unexpected pops up,\n anything we didn't foresee, I'm supposed to come scuttling back and ask\n for advice.\"\n\n\n \"I hope you do,\" Bob Skeat sighed. \"I hope you do know that. A\n twentieth century poet once wrote something to the effect that the\n world will end not with a bang, but a whimper. Well, our world is\n ending with a whimper. Try to see that it doesn't end with a bang,\n either.\"\n\n\n \"That I'll promise you,\" Albin said a trifle disgustedly. \"It'll end\n with neither a bang\nnor\na whimper. So long, Hugo. So long, Bob.\"", "Albin decided that he was experiencing renunciation and felt proud.\n\n\n He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,\n disregarding the roomful of military figures since he knew they could\n not see him. The single red switch pointed downward on the instrument\n panel. That was the gimmick that controlled the course of the missile.\n Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway decent world!\n\n\n Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nNow! Now to make a halfway interesting world!\n\n\n Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\n... pushed the little red switch from him.\nflick!\n... toward him.\nflick!\n... from him.\nflick!", "Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.\nflick!\nAs the equipment of the remote-control station began to oscillate into\n reality all around him, Mac Albin felt a bit of shame at what he was\n doing. He'd promised Bob and Hugo to drop the experiment at any stage\n if a new factor showed up. He knew he should go back with this new\n information and have all three of them kick it around.\n\n\n But what would they be able to tell him, they with their blissful\n adjustment to their thoroughly blueprinted lives? They, at least, had\n been ordered to marry women they could live with; he'd drawn a female\n with whom he was completely incompatible in any but a genetic sense.\n Genetics! He was tired of genetics and the sanctity of human life,\n tired to the tip of his uncalloused fingers, tired to the recesses\n of his unused muscles. He was tired of having to undertake a simple\n adventure like a thief in the night.", "He'd even be a scientist—\neveryone\nwas a scientist there, weren't\n they?—and he'd have a big laboratory all to himself. This other world\n had its troubles, but it was a lot nicer place than where he'd come\n from. He wouldn't return. He'd go through with it.\n\n\n The fear left him and, for the first time in his life, Max Alben felt\n the sensation of power.\n\n\n He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,\n sweating a bit at the sight of the roomful of military figures, despite\n the technicians' reassurances that all this would be happening too fast\n to be visible. He saw the single red switch pointing upward on the\n instrument panel. The switch that controlled the course of the missile.\n Now! Now to make a halfway decent world!", "He shrugged rapidly out of his rags, as he had been instructed in the\n anteroom, and stepped into the housing of the enormous mechanism.\n This was the first time he had seen it, since he had been taught\n how to operate it on a dummy model, and now he stared at the great\n transparent coils and the susurrating energy bubble with much respect.\n\n\n This machine, the pride and the hope of 2089, was something almost\n outside his powers of comprehension. But Max Alben knew how to run it,\n and he knew, roughly, what it was supposed to accomplish. He knew also\n that this was the first backward journey of any great duration and,\n being scientifically unpredictable, might well be the death of him.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he muttered again affectionately.", "The Secretary-General of the United Nations beamed. \"Thus preventing\n the Blight, making it nonexistent, as it were, producing a present-day\n world in which the Blight never occurred. That is correct, is it not,\n gentlemen?\" he asked, turning anxiously again.\nNone of the half-dozen men on couches deigned to answer him. And\n Alben kept his eyes deferentially in their direction, too, as he had\n throughout this period of last-minute instruction.\n\n\n He knew who ruled his world—these stolid, well-fed men in clean\n garments with a minimum of patches, and where patches occurred, at\n least they were the color of the surrounding cloth.\n\n\n Sadha might be Secretary-General of the United Nations, but that\n was still a civil-service job, only a few social notches higher\n than a chicken guard. His clothes were fully as ragged, fully as\n multi-colored, as those that Alben had stepped out of. And the gnawing\n in his stomach was no doubt almost as great.", "And if that had not been discovered, the Albins would not have become\n physicists upon the passage of the United Nations law that everyone\n on Earth—absolutely without exception—had to choose a branch of\n research science in which to specialize. In the flabby, careful,\n life-guarding world the Earth had become, Mac Albin would never have\n been reluctantly selected by his two co-workers as the one to carry the\n forbidden banner of dangerous experiment.\n\n\n No, if his great-grandfather had not demonstrated long ago his unique\n capacity for remaining conscious during time travel, Mac Albin would\n probably be a biologist today like almost everyone else on Earth,\n laboriously working out dreary gene problems instead of embarking on\n the greatest adventure Man had known to date.\n\n\n Even if he didn't come back, he had at last found a socially useful\n escape from genetic responsibility to humanity in general and his own\n family in particular. This was a damn good job and he was lucky.", "Honek shrugged his shoulders. \"It might be a lot worse than even that\n and you know it. The disappearance of a two-time father is going to\n leave an awful big vacancy in the world. One-timers, like Bob and\n me, are all over the place; if either of us dropped out of sight, it\n wouldn't cause nearly as much uproar.\"\n\n\n \"But Bob and you both tried to operate the machine,\" Albin reminded\n him. \"And you blacked out after a fifteen-second temporal displacement.\n So I'm the only chance, the only way to stop the human race from\n dwindling and dwindling till it hits absolute zero, like that fat old\n Security Council seems willing for it to do.\"", "This machine was the last hope, of 2089, even if the world of 2089, as\n a whole, did not know of its existence and would try to prevent its\n being put into operation. But it meant a lot more to Mac Albin than\n merely saving a world. It meant an adventurous mission with the risk of\n death.\n\n\n \"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he laughed again happily.\n\n\n If his great-grandfather had not volunteered for the earliest\n time-travel experiments way back in the nineteen-seventies, back even\n before the Epidemic, it would never have been discovered that he and\n his seed possessed a great deal of immunity to extra-temporal blackout.", "Max Alben finished the manuscript and sighed. What a wonderful world!\n What a comfortable place to live!\n\n\n He walked to the rear dials and began the process of materializing at\n the crucial moment on April 18, 1976.\nflick!\nIt was odd, Mac Albin reflected, that these temporal journeys, which\n induced coma in everyone who tried it, only made him feel slightly\n dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni, he\n knew. Maybe there was some genetic relationship with his above-average\n fertility—might be a good idea to mention the idea to a biologist or\n two when he returned.\nIf\nhe returned.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a soupy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of the problems of landing a helicopter in a thick fog when the robot\n butler had not been told to turn on the ground lights.", "\"Wait a minute, Mac,\" Skeat said and crossed to the other side of the\n narrow laboratory.\nAlbin and Honek watched him stuff several sheets of paper into a small\n metal box which he closed without locking.\n\n\n \"You will take care of yourself, won't you, Mac?\" Hugo Honek pleaded.\n \"Any time you feel like taking an unnecessary risk, remember that Bob\n and I will have to stand trial if you don't come back. We might be\n sentenced to complete loss of professional status and spend the rest of\n our lives supervising robot factories.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, it won't be that bad,\" Albin reassured him absent-mindedly from\n where he lay contorted inside the time machine. He watched Skeat coming\n toward him with the box.", "No, if his great-grandfather had not demonstrated long ago his unique\n capacity for remaining conscious during time travel, Max Alben would\n not now be shifting from foot to foot in a physics laboratory,\n facing the black market kings of the world and awaiting their final\n instructions with an uncertain and submissive grin.\nMen like O'Hara, who controlled mushrooms, Levney, the blackberry\n tycoon, Sorgasso, the packaged-worm monopolist—would black marketeers\n of their tremendous stature so much as waste a glance on someone like\n Alben ordinarily, let alone confer a lifetime pension on his wife and\n five children of a full spoonful each of non-synthetic sugar a day?\n\n\n Even if he didn't come back, his family was provided for like almost no\n other family on Earth. This was a damn good job and he was lucky.\n\n\n Alben noticed that Abd Sadha had risen from the straight chair at\n the far side of the room and was approaching him with a sealed metal\n cylinder in one hand.", "He twisted around, reaching overhead for the lever which activated the\n forces that drove the time machine.\nflick!\nIt was strange, Max Alben reflected, that this time travel business,\n which knocked unconscious everyone who tried it, only made him feel\n slightly dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni,\n he had been told. There must be some complicated scientific explanation\n for it, he decided—and that would make it none of his business. Better\n forget about it.\n\n\n All around the time machine, there was a heavy gray murk in which\n objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him\n of patrolling his beat at the North American Chicken Reservation in a\n thick fog.", "That was why the planet's powerful individuals had been persuaded to\n pool their wealth in a desperate attempt to alter the past. This kind\n of world was manifestly impossible.\n\n\n Mac Albin finished the document and sighed. What a magnificent world!\n What an exciting place to live!\n\n\n He dropped his hand on the side levers and began the process of\n materializing at the crucial moment on April 18, 1976.\nflick!\nAs the equipment of the remote-control station began to take on a\n blurred reality all around him, Max Alben felt a bit of fear at what\n he was doing. The technicians, he remembered, the Secretary-General,\n even the black market kings, had all warned him not to go ahead with\n his instructions if anything unusual turned up. That was an awful lot\n of power to disobey: he knew he should return with this new information\n and let better minds work on it.", "Levney sat up on his couch and snapped his fingers peremptorily. \"I\n just heard Gomez tell you to get this thing moving, Sadha. And it isn't\n moving. We're busy men. We've wasted enough time.\"\n\n\n \"I was just trying to explain a crucial final fact,\" the\n Secretary-General apologized. \"A fact which may be highly—\"\n\n\n \"You've explained enough facts.\" Levney turned to the man inside the\n time machine. \"Hey, fella. You.\nMove!\n\"\n\n\n Max Alben gulped and nodded violently. He darted to the rear of the\n machine and turned the dial which activated it.\nflick!\nIt was a good job and Mac Albin knew whom he had to thank for it—his\n great-grandfather.", "They with their easy lives, what did they know what existence had been\n like for such as he? Hunger, always hunger, scrabbling, servility, and\n more hunger. Every time things got really tight, you and your wife\n looking sideways at your kids and wondering which of them would bring\n the best price. Buying security for them, as he was now, at the risk of\n his life.\n\n\n But in this other world, this other 2089, there was a state that took\n care of you and that treasured your children. A man like himself, with\nfive\nchildren—why, he'd be a big man, maybe the biggest man on\n Earth! And he'd have robots to work for him and lots of food. Above\n all, lots and lots of food.", "\"Good old Giovanni Albeni,\" he laughed as he looked at the morose faces\n of his two colleagues. Bob Skeat and Hugo Honek had done as much as he\n to build the tiny time machine in the secret lab under the helicopter\n garage, and they were fully as eager to go, but—unfortunately for\n them—they were not descended from the right ancestor.\n\n\n Leisurely, he unzipped the richly embroidered garment that, as the\n father of two children, he was privileged to wear, and wriggled into\n the housing of the complex little mechanism. This was hardly the\n first time he had seen it, since he'd been helping to build the device\n from the moment Honek had nodded and risen from the drafting board,\n and now he barely wasted a glance on the thumb-size translucent coils\n growing out of the almost microscopic energy bubbles which powered them.", "\"You understand, do you not, young man, that if anything goes wrong,\"\n Abd Sadha asked, his head nodding tremulously and anticipating the\n answer, \"if anything unexpected, unprepared-for, occurs, you are not to\n continue with the experiment but return immediately?\"\n\n\n \"He understands everything he has to understand,\" Gomez told him.\n \"Let's get this thing moving.\"\n\n\n The old man smiled again. \"Yes. Of course, Mr. Gomez.\" He came up to\n where Alben stood in the entrance of the time machine and handed the\n sealed metal cylinder to him. \"This is the precaution the scientists\n have just added. When you arrive at your destination, just before\n materializing, you will release it into the surrounding temporal\n medium. Our purpose here, as you no doubt—\"", "If his great-grandfather had not volunteered for the earliest\n time-travel experiments way back in the nineteen-seventies, back even\n before the Blight, it would never have been discovered that he and his\n seed possessed a great deal of immunity to extra-temporal blackout.\n\n\n And if that had not been discovered, the ruling powers of Earth, more\n than a century later, would never have plucked Max Alben out of an\n obscure civil-service job as a relief guard at the North American\n Chicken Reservation to his present heroic and remunerative eminence.\n He would still be patrolling the barbed wire that surrounded the three\n white leghorn hens and two roosters—about one-sixth of the known\n livestock wealth of the Western Hemisphere—thoroughly content with\n the half-pail of dried apricots he received each and every payday.", "But in this other world, this other 2089, someone like himself would\n be a monarch of the black market, a suzerain of chaos, making his own\n rules, taking his own women. So what if the weaklings, those unfit to\n carry on the race, went to the wall? His kind wouldn't.\n\n\n He'd formed a pretty good idea of the kind of men who ruled that other\n world, from the document in the sealed metal cylinder. The black\n marketeers had not even read it. Why, the fools had obviously been\n duped by the technicians into permitting the experiment; they had not\n grasped the idea that an alternate time track would mean their own\n non-existence.\n\n\n This other world had its troubles, but it was certainly a livelier\n place than where he'd come from. It deserved a chance. Yes, that was\n how he felt: his world was drowsily moribund; this alternate was\n starving but managing to flail away at destiny. It\ndeserved\na chance." ] ]
valid	51267	[ "What was the passage of time over the course of the story?", "Who made the mistake that allowed Peter to return to Earth?", "What does Peter intend to do upon his return to Earth?", "What do we know about Peter’s mental abilities?", "What information does Peter obtain that the Gool kept hidden?", "What was the mission of the Gool?", "How does Peter act outwardly?", "How many times did the Gool probe Peter’s mind?", "Why was Peter on a trip to contact the Gool?" ]	[ [ "Days", "Months", "Hours", "Weeks" ], [ "There was no mistake", "The missile operator that miscalculated trajectory to Peter’s ship", "The mission’s control programming which auto-routed him home in the escape pod", "The operator of the security net around Earth" ], [ "Initiate nuclear war across Earth", "Infiltrate military headquarters and report back to the Gool", "Cause harm to the people who chose to let him die for fear of his control by the Gool", "Explain his discoveries" ], [ "He discovered through his training that he can manipulate telepathically", "He is being controlled by the Gool", "He is only imagining that he has telepathy since he has gone mad", "He has known his telepathy since childhood and that’s why he went into psychodynamics" ], [ "The location of a wormhole to distant resource-rich planets", "They are telepathic", "They have cloning technology", "They solved teleportation" ], [ "Use control of Peter to ship them resources from Earth to sustain their people", "Expand their kind through the universe", "Take control of Earth and move their colony there", "Crumble Earth’s military resources" ], [ "Egotistical, Rude", "Maniacally", "Aloof", "Discrete, calculated" ], [ "Twice", "The Gool never succeeded in probing his brain", "He never found out", "Once" ], [ "His mission included studying Gool mental capacities", "He piloted the spaceship on the mission to contact the Gool", "His mission was to infiltrate the minds of the Gool and sabotage them from inside", "Earth wanted to test his telepathic abilities on their Gool enemies" ] ]	[ 1, 1, 4, 1, 4, 2, 4, 4, 1 ]	[ 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "A timeless time passed. I wandered among patterns of white light and\n white sound, plumbed the deepest recesses of hidden Gool thoughts,\n fared along strange ways examining the shapes and colors of the\n concepts of an alien mind.\n\n\n I paused at last, scanning a multi-ordinal structure of pattern within\n pattern; the diagrammed circuits of a strange machine.\n\n\n I followed through its logic-sequence; and, like a bomb-burst, its\n meaning exploded in my mind.\n\n\n From the vile nest deep under the dark surface of the Gool world in\n its lonely trans-Plutonian orbit, I had plucked the ultimate secret of\n their kind.", "My host took two dog-eared bills from his shirt pocket, dropped them\n on the counter and waited while the girl filled a glass. He picked it\n up and started out.\n\n\n \"Hey! Where you goin' with my glass?\"\n\n\n The trainman crossed the platform, headed for the boxcar. He slid the\n loose door back a few inches against the slack latch, pushed the bag\n inside, placed the glass of water beside it, then pulled off his grimy\n railroader's cap and pushed it through the opening. He turned. The girl\n watched from the platform. A rattle passed down the line and the train\n started up with a lurch. The man walked back toward the girl. I heard\n him say: \"Friend o' mine in there—just passin' through.\"", "My host went on to the counter, gestured toward the waxed-paper-wrapped\n sandwiches under a glass cover. \"I'll take 'em all. And candy bars, and\n cigarettes. And give me a big glass of water.\"\n\n\n \"Better git out there and look after yer train,\" the girl said\n carelessly. \"When'd you git so all-fired hungry all of a sudden?\"\n\n\n \"Put it in a bag. Quick.\"\n\n\n \"Look who's getting bossy—\"\n\n\n My host rounded the counter, picked up a used paper bag, began stuffing\n food in it. The girl stared at him, then pushed him back. \"You git back\n around that counter!\"\n\n\n She filled the bag, took a pencil from behind her ear.\n\n\n \"That'll be one eighty-five. Cash.\"", "There was a first-aid cabinet across the compartment from me. I\n tried my right leg, felt broken bone-ends grate with a sensation\n that transcended pain. I heaved with the other leg, scrabbled with\n the charred arm. The crawl to the cabinet dwarfed Hillary's trek\n up Everest, but I reached it after a couple of years, and found the\n microswitch on the floor that activated the thing, and then I was\n fading out again....\nI came out of it clear-headed but weak. My right leg was numb, but\n reasonably comfortable, clamped tight in a walking brace. I put up\n a hand and felt a shaved skull, with sutures. It must have been a\n fracture. The left arm—well, it was still there, wrapped to the", "I picked my way across mushy ground to a pot-holed black-top road,\n started limping toward a few car lights visible half a mile away. It\n was already hot. The swamp air was like warmed-over subway fumes.\n Through the drugs, I could feel my pulse throbbing in my various\n wounds. I reached out and touched the driver's mind; he was thinking\n about shrimps, a fish-hook wound on his left thumb and a girl with\n black hair. \"Want a lift?\" he called.\n\n\n I thanked him and got in. He gave me a glance and I pinched off his\n budding twinge of curiosity. It was almost an effort now not to follow\n his thoughts. It was as though my mind, having learned the trick of\n communications with others, instinctively reached out toward them.", "I gritted my teeth, pulled myself into the car, crawled to a dark\n corner behind a crate and slumped down. I tried to evoke a personality\n fraction to set as a guard, a part of my mind to stay awake and warn\n me of danger. It was too much trouble. I relaxed and let it all slide\n down into darkness.\nThe car swayed, click-clack, click-clack. I opened my eyes, saw yellow\n sunlight in a bar across the litter on the floor. The power truss\n creaked, pulling at my arm. My broken leg was throbbing its indignation\n at the treatment it had received—walking brace and all—and the burned\n arm was yelling aloud for more of that nice dope that had been keeping\n it from realizing how bad it was. All things considered, I felt like a\n badly embalmed mummy—except that I was hungry. I had been a fool not\n to fill my pockets when I left the escape capsule in the shallows off\n Key Largo, but things had been happening too fast.", "I had barely made it to the fishing boat, whose owner I had coerced\n into rendezvousing with me before shells started dropping around us. If\n the gunners on the cruiser ten miles away had had any luck, they would\n have finished me—and the hapless fisherman—right then. We rode out a\n couple of near misses, before I put the cruiser's gunnery crew off the\n air.\n\n\n At a fishing camp on the beach, I found a car—with driver. He dropped\n me at the railyard, and drove off under the impression he was in town\n for groceries. He'd never believe he'd seen me.\n\n\n Now I'd had my sleep. I had to start getting ready for the next act of\n the farce.", "I dropped the contact, found another, who leaped to the panel,\n detonated the remainder of the flight of six missiles. Then I withdrew.\n I would have a few minutes' stay of execution now.\n\n\n I was ten miles from shore. The capsule had its own power plant. I\n started it up, switched on the external viewer. I saw dark sea, the\n glint of star-light on the choppy surface, in the distance a glow on\n the horizon that would be Key West. I plugged the course into the\n pilot, then leaned back and felt outward with my mind for the next\n attacker.\nIV\n\n\n It was dark in the trainyard. I moved along the tracks in a stumbling\n walk. Just a few more minutes, I was telling myself.\nA few more\n minutes and you can lie down ... rest....\nThe shadowed bulk of a box car loomed up, its open door a blacker\n square. I leaned against the sill, breathing hard, then reached inside\n for a grip with my good hand.", "\"—\nlousy job. What's the use? Little witch in the lunch room ... up in\n the hills, squirrel hunting, bottle of whiskey....\n\"\n\n\n I settled into control gently, trying not to alarm the man. I saw\n through his eyes the dusty box car, the rust on the tracks, the\n listless weeds growing among cinders, and the weathered boards of\n the platform. I turned him, and saw the dingy glass of the telegraph\n window, a sagging screen door with a chipped enameled cola sign.\n\n\n I walked the man to the door, and through it. Behind a linoleum-topped\n counter, a coarse-skinned teen-age girl with heavy breasts and wet\n patches under her arms looked up without interest as the door banged.", "I pressed the release on the power truss, gingerly unclamped it, then\n rigged a sling from a strip of shirt tail. I tied the arm to my side as\n inconspicuously as possible. I didn't disturb the bandages.\n\n\n I needed new clothes—or at least different ones—and something to\n cover my shaved skull. I couldn't stay hidden forever. The yard cop had\n recognized me at a glance.\n\n\n I lay back, waiting for the train to slow for a town. I wasn't unduly\n worried—at the moment. The watchman probably hadn't convinced anyone\n he'd actually seen me. Maybe he hadn't been too sure himself.\n\n\n The click-clack slowed and the train shuddered to a stop. I crept to\n the door, peered through the crack. There were sunny fields, a few low\n buildings in the distance, the corner of a platform. I closed my eyes\n and let my awareness stretch out.", "I drank the water first, ate a sandwich, then lit a cigarette and lay\n back. So far so good. The crates in the car were marked \"U. S. Naval\n Aerospace Station, Bayou Le Cochon\". With any luck I'd reach New\n Orleans in another twelve hours. The first step of my plan included a\n raid on the Delta National Labs; but that was tomorrow. That could\n wait.\nIt was a little before dawn when I crawled out of the car at a siding\n in the swampy country a few miles out of New Orleans. I wasn't feeling\n good, but I had a stake in staying on my feet. I still had a few miles\n in me. I had my supplies—a few candy bars and some cigarettes—stuffed\n in the pockets of the tattered issue coverall. Otherwise, I was\n unencumbered. Unless you wanted to count the walking brace on my right\n leg and the sling binding my arm.", "I finished talking and flopped back, waiting for Kayle's reply. On the\n screen, his flickering image gazed back impatiently, looking as hostile\n as a swing-shift ward nurse. It would be half an hour before I would\n get his reaction to my report. I dozed off—and awoke with a start.\n Kayle was talking.\n\n\n \"—your report. I won't mince words. They're wondering at your role in\n the disaster. How does it happen that you alone survived?\"\n\n\n \"How the hell do I know?\" I yelled—or croaked. But Kayle's voice was\n droning on:\n\n\n \"... you Psychodynamics people have been telling me the Gool may\n have some kind of long-range telehypnotic ability that might make it\n possible for them to subvert a loyal man without his knowledge. You've\n told me yourself that you blacked out during the attack—and came to on\n the lifeboat, with no recollection of how you got there.", "An hour later he dropped me on a street corner in a shabby marketing\n district of the city and drove off. I hoped he made out all right with\n the dark-haired girl. I spotted a used-clothing store and headed for it.\n\n\n Twenty minutes later I was back on the sidewalk, dressed in a\n pinkish-gray suit that had been cut a long time ago by a Latin\n tailor—maybe to settle a grudge. The shirt that went with it was\n an unsuccessful violet. The black string tie lent a dubious air of\n distinction. I'd swapped the railroader's cap for a tarnished beret.\n The man who had supplied the outfit was still asleep. I figured\n I'd done him a favor by taking it. I couldn't hope to pass for a\n fisherman—I wasn't the type. Maybe I'd get by as a coffee-house\n derelict.", "He jumped out, opened my door, helped me out with a hand under my good\n elbow. \"I'll get your change, sir,\" he said, reaching for his hip.\n\n\n \"Keep it.\"\n\n\n \"Thank YOU.\" He hesitated. \"Maybe I oughta stick around. You know.\"\n\n\n \"I'll be all right.\"\n\n\n \"I hope so,\" he said. \"A man like you—you and me—\" he winked. \"After\n all, we ain't both wearing berets fer nothing.\"\n\n\n \"True,\" I said. \"Consider your tip doubled. Now drive away into the\n sunrise and forget you ever saw me.\"", "I walked past fly-covered fish stalls, racks of faded garments, grimy\n vegetables in bins, enough paint-flaked wrought iron to cage a herd of\n brontosauri, and fetched up at a cab stand. I picked a fat driver with\n a wart.\n\n\n \"How much to the Delta National Laboratories?\"\n\n\n He rolled an eye toward me, shifted his toothpick.\n\n\n \"What ya wanna go out there for? Nothing out there.\"\n\n\n \"I'm a tourist,\" I said. \"They told me before I left home not to miss\n it.\"\n\n\n He grunted, reached back and opened the door. I got in. He flipped his\n flag down, started up with a clash of gears and pulled out without\n looking.\n\n\n \"How far is it?\" I asked him.\n\n\n \"It ain't far. Mile, mile and a quarter.\"", "I opened my eyes and took a look around. I was on the floor next to\n an unpadded acceleration couch—the kind the Terrestrial Space Arm\n installs in seldom-used lifeboats. There were three more couches, but\n no one in them. I tried to sit up. It wasn't easy but, by applying a\n lot more will-power than should be required of a sick man, I made it.\n I took a look at my left arm. Baked. The hand was only medium rare,\n but the forearm was black, with deep red showing at the bottom of the\n cracks where the crisped upper layers had burst....", "I wasn't, of course. I was still the same Peter Granthan,\n psychodynamicist, who had started out with Dayan's fleet six weeks\n earlier. The thoughts I was having weren't brilliant, but they were\n mine, all mine....\n\n\n But how could I be sure of that?\n\n\n Maybe there was something in Kayle's suspicion. If the Gool were as\n skillful as we thought, they would have left no overt indications of\n their tampering—not at a conscious level.\n\n\n But this was where psychodynamics training came in. I had been reacting\n like any scared casualty, aching to get home and lick his wounds. But I\n wasn't just any casualty. I had been trained in the subtleties of the\n mind—and I had been prepared for just such an attack.", "\"Hey, you birds are mixed up,\" I protested. \"I'm cleared all the way. I\n checked in with DEW—\"\n\n\n It was time to disappear. I blanked off all transmission, hit the\n controls, following my evasive pattern. And again I reached out—\n\n\n A radar man at a site in the Pacific, fifteen thousand miles away, rose\n from his chair, crossed the darkened room and threw a switch. The radar\n screens blanked off....\n\n\n For an hour I rode the long orbit down, fending off attack after\n attack. Then I was clear, skimming the surface of the ocean a few miles\n southeast of Key West. The boat hit hard. I felt the floor rise up,\n over, buffeting me against the restraining harness.\n\n\n I hauled at the release lever, felt a long moment of giddy\n disorientation as the escape capsule separated from the sinking\n lifeboat deep under the surface. Then my escape capsule was bobbing on\n the water.", "Now was the time to make use of that training. It had given me one\n resource. I could unlock the memories of my subconscious—and see again\n what had happened.\n\n\n I lay back, cleared my mind of extraneous thoughts, and concentrated on\n the trigger word that would key an auto-hypnotic sequence....\n\n\n Sense impressions faded. I was alone in the nebulous emptiness of a\n first-level trance. I keyed a second word, slipped below the misty\n surface into a dreamworld of vague phantasmagoric figures milling in\n their limbo of sub-conceptualization. I penetrated deeper, broke\n through into the vividly hallucinatory third level, where images of\n mirror-bright immediacy clamored for attention. And deeper....\nThe immense orderly confusion of the basic memory level lay before\n me. Abstracted from it, aloof and observant, the monitoring\n personality-fraction scanned the pattern, searching the polydimensional\n continuum for evidence of an alien intrusion.", "Presently Kayle replied. \"Yes,\" he said. \"You'll have to enter a\n parking orbit. Perhaps there will be developments soon which will make\n it possible to ... ah ... restudy the situation.\" He didn't meet my\n eye. I knew what he was thinking. He'd spare me the mental anguish of\n knowing what was coming. I couldn't really blame him; he was doing\n what he thought was the right thing. And I'd have to go along and\n pretend—right up until the warheads struck—that I didn't know I'd\n been condemned to death.\nII\n\n\n I tried to gather my wits and think my way through the situation. I\n was alone and injured, aboard a lifeboat that would be the focus of a\n converging flight of missiles as soon as I approached within battery\n range of Earth. I had gotten clear of the Gool, but I wouldn't survive\n my next meeting with my own kind. They couldn't take the chance that I\n was acting under Gool orders." ], [ "\"Z four-oh-two, countermand DEW Line clearance! Repeat, clearance\n countermanded! Emergency course change to standard hyperbolic code\n ninety-eight. Do not attempt re-entry. Repeat: do not attempt re-entry!\"\n\n\n It hadn't taken Kayle long to see that I'd gotten past the outer line\n of defense. A few more minutes' grace would have helped. I'd play it\n dumb, and hope for a little luck.\n\n\n \"Planetary, Z four-oh-two here. Say, I'm afraid I missed part of that,\n fellows. I'm a little banged up—I guess I switched frequencies on you.\n What was that after 'pick up channel forty-three'...?\"\n\n\n \"Four-oh-two, sheer off there! You're not cleared for re-entry!\"", "Presently Kayle replied. \"Yes,\" he said. \"You'll have to enter a\n parking orbit. Perhaps there will be developments soon which will make\n it possible to ... ah ... restudy the situation.\" He didn't meet my\n eye. I knew what he was thinking. He'd spare me the mental anguish of\n knowing what was coming. I couldn't really blame him; he was doing\n what he thought was the right thing. And I'd have to go along and\n pretend—right up until the warheads struck—that I didn't know I'd\n been condemned to death.\nII\n\n\n I tried to gather my wits and think my way through the situation. I\n was alone and injured, aboard a lifeboat that would be the focus of a\n converging flight of missiles as soon as I approached within battery\n range of Earth. I had gotten clear of the Gool, but I wouldn't survive\n my next meeting with my own kind. They couldn't take the chance that I\n was acting under Gool orders.", "I would have to risk calling Kayle now—but by voluntarily giving my\n position away, I should convince him I was still on our side—and I was\n badly in need of a pick-up. I flipped the sending key.\n\n\n \"This is Z four-oh-two,\" I said. \"I have an urgent report for Colonel\n Kayle of Aerospace Intelligence.\"\n\n\n Kayle's face appeared. \"Don't fight it, Granthan,\" he croaked. \"You\n penetrated the planetary defenses—God knows how. I—\"\n\n\n \"Later,\" I snapped. \"How about calling off your dogs now? And send\n somebody out here to pick me up, before I add sea-sickness to my other\n complaints.\"", "But not if I could help it.\n\n\n The Gool had evolved a plan—but they'd had a stroke of bad luck.\n\n\n In the past, they had managed to control a man here and there, among\n the fleets, far from home, but only at a superficial level. Enough,\n perhaps, to wreck a ship, but not the complete control needed to send a\n man back to Earth under Gool compulsion, to carry out complex sabotage.\n\n\n Then they had found me, alone, a sole survivor, free from the clutter\n of the other mind-fields. It had been their misfortune to pick a\n psychodynamicist. Instead of gaining a patient slave, they had opened\n the fortress door to an unseen spy. Now that I was there, I would see\n what I could steal.", "I tried to reason with him. I reminded him how I had readied myself\n for the trip with sessions on the encephaloscope, setting up the\n cross-networks of conditioned defensive responses, the shunt circuits\n to the decoy pseudo-personality, leaving my volitional ego free. I\n talked about subliminal hypnotics and the resilience quotient of the\n ego-complex.\n\n\n I might have saved my breath.\n\n\n \"I don't understand that psychodynamics jargon, Granthan,\" he snapped.\n \"It smacks of mysticism. But I understand what the Gool have done to\n you well enough. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\n I leaned back and chewed the inside of my lip and thought unkind\n thoughts about Colonel Ausar Kayle. Then I settled down to solve the\n problem at hand.", "I wasn't, of course. I was still the same Peter Granthan,\n psychodynamicist, who had started out with Dayan's fleet six weeks\n earlier. The thoughts I was having weren't brilliant, but they were\n mine, all mine....\n\n\n But how could I be sure of that?\n\n\n Maybe there was something in Kayle's suspicion. If the Gool were as\n skillful as we thought, they would have left no overt indications of\n their tampering—not at a conscious level.\n\n\n But this was where psychodynamics training came in. I had been reacting\n like any scared casualty, aching to get home and lick his wounds. But I\n wasn't just any casualty. I had been trained in the subtleties of the\n mind—and I had been prepared for just such an attack.", "I finished talking and flopped back, waiting for Kayle's reply. On the\n screen, his flickering image gazed back impatiently, looking as hostile\n as a swing-shift ward nurse. It would be half an hour before I would\n get his reaction to my report. I dozed off—and awoke with a start.\n Kayle was talking.\n\n\n \"—your report. I won't mince words. They're wondering at your role in\n the disaster. How does it happen that you alone survived?\"\n\n\n \"How the hell do I know?\" I yelled—or croaked. But Kayle's voice was\n droning on:\n\n\n \"... you Psychodynamics people have been telling me the Gool may\n have some kind of long-range telehypnotic ability that might make it\n possible for them to subvert a loyal man without his knowledge. You've\n told me yourself that you blacked out during the attack—and came to on\n the lifeboat, with no recollection of how you got there.", "I flipped the switch and gave the emergency call-letters Col. Ausar\n Kayle of Aerospace Intelligence had assigned to me a few weeks before.\n It was almost five minutes before the \"acknowledge\" came through from\n the Ganymede relay station, another ten minutes before Kayle's face\n swam into view. Even through the blur of the screen I could see the\n haggard look.\n\n\n \"Granthan!\" he burst out. \"Where are the others? What happened out\n there?\" I turned him down to a mutter.\n\n\n \"Hold on,\" I said. \"I'll tell you. Recorders going?\" I didn't wait for\n an answer—not with a fifteen-minute transmission lag. I plowed on:\n\n\n \"\nBelshazzar\nwas sabotaged. So was\nGilgamesh\n—I think. I got out. I\n lost a little skin, but the aid cabinet has the case in hand. Tell the\n Med people the drinks are on me.\"", "\"Mr. Granthan, I am General Titus. On behalf of your country, and\n in the name of the President—who has been apprised of this tragic\n situation—it is my privilege to inform you that you will be awarded\n the Congressional Medal of Honor—posthumously—for your heroic effort.\n Although you failed, and have in fact been forced, against your will,\n to carry out the schemes of the inhuman enemy, this in no way detracts\n from your gallant attempt. Mr. Granthan, I salute you.\"\n\n\n The general's arm went up in a rigid gesture.\n\n\n \"Stow that, you pompous idiot!\" I barked. \"I'm no spy!\"\n\n\n Kayle was back, blanking out the startled face of the general.\n\n\n \"Goodbye, Granthan. Try to understand....\"", "\"This is war, Granthan. War against a vicious enemy who strike without\n warning and without mercy. You were sent out to investigate the\n possibility of—what's that term you use?—hyper-cortical invasion. You\n know better than most the risk I'd be running if you were allowed to\n pass the patrol line.\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Granthan. I can't let you land on Earth. I can't accept\n the risk.\"\n\n\n \"What do I do now?\" I stormed. \"Go into orbit and eat pills and hope\n you think of something? I need a doctor!\"", "\"Hey, you birds are mixed up,\" I protested. \"I'm cleared all the way. I\n checked in with DEW—\"\n\n\n It was time to disappear. I blanked off all transmission, hit the\n controls, following my evasive pattern. And again I reached out—\n\n\n A radar man at a site in the Pacific, fifteen thousand miles away, rose\n from his chair, crossed the darkened room and threw a switch. The radar\n screens blanked off....\n\n\n For an hour I rode the long orbit down, fending off attack after\n attack. Then I was clear, skimming the surface of the ocean a few miles\n southeast of Key West. The boat hit hard. I felt the floor rise up,\n over, buffeting me against the restraining harness.\n\n\n I hauled at the release lever, felt a long moment of giddy\n disorientation as the escape capsule separated from the sinking\n lifeboat deep under the surface. Then my escape capsule was bobbing on\n the water.", "I closed my eyes, reached out—as the Gool mind had reached out to\n me—and felt the touch of a Signals Officer's mind, forty thousand\n miles distant, aboard the patrol vessel. There was a brief flurry of\n struggle; then I dictated my instructions. The Signals Officer punched\n keys, spoke into his microphone:\n\n\n \"As you were, Z four-oh-two. Continue on present course. At Oh-nineteen\n seconds, pick up planetary for re-entry and let-down.\"\n\n\n I blanked out the man's recollection of what had happened, caught his\n belated puzzlement as I broke contact. But I was clear of the DEW line\n now, rapidly approaching atmosphere.\n\n\n \"Z four-oh-two,\" the speaker crackled. \"This is planetary control. I am\n picking you up on channel forty-three, for re-entry and let-down.\"\n\n\n There was a long pause. Then:", "I flipped the switch, sat gripping the couch, my stomach rising with\n each heave of the floating escape capsule. I had perhaps five minutes.\n The missiles would be from Canaveral.\n\n\n I closed my eyes, forced myself to relax, reached out....\n\n\n I sensed the distant shore, the hot buzz of human minds at work in the\n cities. I followed the coastline, found the Missile Base, flicked\n through the cluster of minds.\n\n\n \"—\nmissile on course; do right, baby. That's it, right in the slot.\n\"\n\n\n I fingered my way through the man's mind and found the control centers.\n He turned stiffly from the plotting board, tottered to a panel to slam\n his hand against the destruct button.\n\n\n Men fell on him, dragged him back. \"—\nfool, why did you blow it?\n\"", "I dropped the contact, found another, who leaped to the panel,\n detonated the remainder of the flight of six missiles. Then I withdrew.\n I would have a few minutes' stay of execution now.\n\n\n I was ten miles from shore. The capsule had its own power plant. I\n started it up, switched on the external viewer. I saw dark sea, the\n glint of star-light on the choppy surface, in the distance a glow on\n the horizon that would be Key West. I plugged the course into the\n pilot, then leaned back and felt outward with my mind for the next\n attacker.\nIV\n\n\n It was dark in the trainyard. I moved along the tracks in a stumbling\n walk. Just a few more minutes, I was telling myself.\nA few more\n minutes and you can lie down ... rest....\nThe shadowed bulk of a box car loomed up, its open door a blacker\n square. I leaned against the sill, breathing hard, then reached inside\n for a grip with my good hand.", "As far as I knew, I was the first recorded survivor of contact with the\n Gool—if I survived.\n\n\n I was still a long way from home, and I hadn't yet checked on the\n condition of the lifeboat. I glanced toward the entry port. It was\n dogged shut. I could see black marks where my burned hand had been at\n work.\n\n\n I fumbled my way into a couch and tried to think. In my condition—with\n a broken leg and third-degree burns, plus a fractured skull—I\n shouldn't have been able to fall out of bed, much less make the trip\n from\nBelshazzar's\nCCC to the boat; and how had I managed to dog that\n port shut? In an emergency a man was capable of great exertions. But\n running on a broken femur, handling heavy levers with charred fingers\n and thinking with a cracked head were overdoing it. Still, I was\n here—and it was time to get a call through to TSA headquarters.", "Now was the time to make use of that training. It had given me one\n resource. I could unlock the memories of my subconscious—and see again\n what had happened.\n\n\n I lay back, cleared my mind of extraneous thoughts, and concentrated on\n the trigger word that would key an auto-hypnotic sequence....\n\n\n Sense impressions faded. I was alone in the nebulous emptiness of a\n first-level trance. I keyed a second word, slipped below the misty\n surface into a dreamworld of vague phantasmagoric figures milling in\n their limbo of sub-conceptualization. I penetrated deeper, broke\n through into the vividly hallucinatory third level, where images of\n mirror-bright immediacy clamored for attention. And deeper....\nThe immense orderly confusion of the basic memory level lay before\n me. Abstracted from it, aloof and observant, the monitoring\n personality-fraction scanned the pattern, searching the polydimensional\n continuum for evidence of an alien intrusion.", "\"We have you pinpointed,\" Kayle cut in. \"It's no use fighting it,\n Granthan.\"\nI felt cold sweat pop out on my forehead. \"You've got to listen,\n Kayle,\" I shouted. \"I suppose you've got missiles on the way already.\n Call them back! I have information that can win the war—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Granthan,\" Kayle said. \"It's too late—even if I could\n take the chance you were right.\"\n\n\n A different face appeared on the screen.", "A part of my mind watched as the memory unreeled. I listened to the\n voices—yet not voices, merely the shape of concepts, indescribably\n intricate. I saw how the decoy pseudo-personality which I had\n concretized for the purpose in a hundred training sessions had fought\n against the intruding stimuli—then yielded under the relentless thrust\n of the alien probe. I watched as the Gool operator took over the motor\n centers, caused me to crawl through the choking smoke of the devastated\n control compartment toward the escape hatch. Fire leaped up, blocking\n the way. I went on, felt ghostly flames whipping at me—and then the\n hatch was open and I pulled myself through, forcing the broken leg.\n My blackened hand fumbled at the locking wheel. Then the blast as\n the lifeboat leaped clear of the disintegrating dreadnought—and the\n world-ending impact as I fell.\n\n\n At a level far below the conscious, the embattled pseudo-personality\n lashed out again—fighting the invader.", "A timeless time passed. I wandered among patterns of white light and\n white sound, plumbed the deepest recesses of hidden Gool thoughts,\n fared along strange ways examining the shapes and colors of the\n concepts of an alien mind.\n\n\n I paused at last, scanning a multi-ordinal structure of pattern within\n pattern; the diagrammed circuits of a strange machine.\n\n\n I followed through its logic-sequence; and, like a bomb-burst, its\n meaning exploded in my mind.\n\n\n From the vile nest deep under the dark surface of the Gool world in\n its lonely trans-Plutonian orbit, I had plucked the ultimate secret of\n their kind.", "discovered, worlds where food was free for the taking. Not sulphur\n alone, but potassium, calcium, iron and all the metals—riches\n beyond belief in endless profusion. No longer would the Gool tribe\n cluster—those who remained of a once-great race—at a single feeding\n trough. They would spread out across a galaxy—and beyond." ], [ "Presently Kayle replied. \"Yes,\" he said. \"You'll have to enter a\n parking orbit. Perhaps there will be developments soon which will make\n it possible to ... ah ... restudy the situation.\" He didn't meet my\n eye. I knew what he was thinking. He'd spare me the mental anguish of\n knowing what was coming. I couldn't really blame him; he was doing\n what he thought was the right thing. And I'd have to go along and\n pretend—right up until the warheads struck—that I didn't know I'd\n been condemned to death.\nII\n\n\n I tried to gather my wits and think my way through the situation. I\n was alone and injured, aboard a lifeboat that would be the focus of a\n converging flight of missiles as soon as I approached within battery\n range of Earth. I had gotten clear of the Gool, but I wouldn't survive\n my next meeting with my own kind. They couldn't take the chance that I\n was acting under Gool orders.", "I would have to risk calling Kayle now—but by voluntarily giving my\n position away, I should convince him I was still on our side—and I was\n badly in need of a pick-up. I flipped the sending key.\n\n\n \"This is Z four-oh-two,\" I said. \"I have an urgent report for Colonel\n Kayle of Aerospace Intelligence.\"\n\n\n Kayle's face appeared. \"Don't fight it, Granthan,\" he croaked. \"You\n penetrated the planetary defenses—God knows how. I—\"\n\n\n \"Later,\" I snapped. \"How about calling off your dogs now? And send\n somebody out here to pick me up, before I add sea-sickness to my other\n complaints.\"", "\"Z four-oh-two, countermand DEW Line clearance! Repeat, clearance\n countermanded! Emergency course change to standard hyperbolic code\n ninety-eight. Do not attempt re-entry. Repeat: do not attempt re-entry!\"\n\n\n It hadn't taken Kayle long to see that I'd gotten past the outer line\n of defense. A few more minutes' grace would have helped. I'd play it\n dumb, and hope for a little luck.\n\n\n \"Planetary, Z four-oh-two here. Say, I'm afraid I missed part of that,\n fellows. I'm a little banged up—I guess I switched frequencies on you.\n What was that after 'pick up channel forty-three'...?\"\n\n\n \"Four-oh-two, sheer off there! You're not cleared for re-entry!\"", "But not if I could help it.\n\n\n The Gool had evolved a plan—but they'd had a stroke of bad luck.\n\n\n In the past, they had managed to control a man here and there, among\n the fleets, far from home, but only at a superficial level. Enough,\n perhaps, to wreck a ship, but not the complete control needed to send a\n man back to Earth under Gool compulsion, to carry out complex sabotage.\n\n\n Then they had found me, alone, a sole survivor, free from the clutter\n of the other mind-fields. It had been their misfortune to pick a\n psychodynamicist. Instead of gaining a patient slave, they had opened\n the fortress door to an unseen spy. Now that I was there, I would see\n what I could steal.", "I wasn't, of course. I was still the same Peter Granthan,\n psychodynamicist, who had started out with Dayan's fleet six weeks\n earlier. The thoughts I was having weren't brilliant, but they were\n mine, all mine....\n\n\n But how could I be sure of that?\n\n\n Maybe there was something in Kayle's suspicion. If the Gool were as\n skillful as we thought, they would have left no overt indications of\n their tampering—not at a conscious level.\n\n\n But this was where psychodynamics training came in. I had been reacting\n like any scared casualty, aching to get home and lick his wounds. But I\n wasn't just any casualty. I had been trained in the subtleties of the\n mind—and I had been prepared for just such an attack.", "\"This is war, Granthan. War against a vicious enemy who strike without\n warning and without mercy. You were sent out to investigate the\n possibility of—what's that term you use?—hyper-cortical invasion. You\n know better than most the risk I'd be running if you were allowed to\n pass the patrol line.\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Granthan. I can't let you land on Earth. I can't accept\n the risk.\"\n\n\n \"What do I do now?\" I stormed. \"Go into orbit and eat pills and hope\n you think of something? I need a doctor!\"", "I dropped the contact, found another, who leaped to the panel,\n detonated the remainder of the flight of six missiles. Then I withdrew.\n I would have a few minutes' stay of execution now.\n\n\n I was ten miles from shore. The capsule had its own power plant. I\n started it up, switched on the external viewer. I saw dark sea, the\n glint of star-light on the choppy surface, in the distance a glow on\n the horizon that would be Key West. I plugged the course into the\n pilot, then leaned back and felt outward with my mind for the next\n attacker.\nIV\n\n\n It was dark in the trainyard. I moved along the tracks in a stumbling\n walk. Just a few more minutes, I was telling myself.\nA few more\n minutes and you can lie down ... rest....\nThe shadowed bulk of a box car loomed up, its open door a blacker\n square. I leaned against the sill, breathing hard, then reached inside\n for a grip with my good hand.", "I closed my eyes, reached out—as the Gool mind had reached out to\n me—and felt the touch of a Signals Officer's mind, forty thousand\n miles distant, aboard the patrol vessel. There was a brief flurry of\n struggle; then I dictated my instructions. The Signals Officer punched\n keys, spoke into his microphone:\n\n\n \"As you were, Z four-oh-two. Continue on present course. At Oh-nineteen\n seconds, pick up planetary for re-entry and let-down.\"\n\n\n I blanked out the man's recollection of what had happened, caught his\n belated puzzlement as I broke contact. But I was clear of the DEW line\n now, rapidly approaching atmosphere.\n\n\n \"Z four-oh-two,\" the speaker crackled. \"This is planetary control. I am\n picking you up on channel forty-three, for re-entry and let-down.\"\n\n\n There was a long pause. Then:", "I tried to reason with him. I reminded him how I had readied myself\n for the trip with sessions on the encephaloscope, setting up the\n cross-networks of conditioned defensive responses, the shunt circuits\n to the decoy pseudo-personality, leaving my volitional ego free. I\n talked about subliminal hypnotics and the resilience quotient of the\n ego-complex.\n\n\n I might have saved my breath.\n\n\n \"I don't understand that psychodynamics jargon, Granthan,\" he snapped.\n \"It smacks of mysticism. But I understand what the Gool have done to\n you well enough. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\n I leaned back and chewed the inside of my lip and thought unkind\n thoughts about Colonel Ausar Kayle. Then I settled down to solve the\n problem at hand.", "I flipped the switch and gave the emergency call-letters Col. Ausar\n Kayle of Aerospace Intelligence had assigned to me a few weeks before.\n It was almost five minutes before the \"acknowledge\" came through from\n the Ganymede relay station, another ten minutes before Kayle's face\n swam into view. Even through the blur of the screen I could see the\n haggard look.\n\n\n \"Granthan!\" he burst out. \"Where are the others? What happened out\n there?\" I turned him down to a mutter.\n\n\n \"Hold on,\" I said. \"I'll tell you. Recorders going?\" I didn't wait for\n an answer—not with a fifteen-minute transmission lag. I plowed on:\n\n\n \"\nBelshazzar\nwas sabotaged. So was\nGilgamesh\n—I think. I got out. I\n lost a little skin, but the aid cabinet has the case in hand. Tell the\n Med people the drinks are on me.\"", "As far as I knew, I was the first recorded survivor of contact with the\n Gool—if I survived.\n\n\n I was still a long way from home, and I hadn't yet checked on the\n condition of the lifeboat. I glanced toward the entry port. It was\n dogged shut. I could see black marks where my burned hand had been at\n work.\n\n\n I fumbled my way into a couch and tried to think. In my condition—with\n a broken leg and third-degree burns, plus a fractured skull—I\n shouldn't have been able to fall out of bed, much less make the trip\n from\nBelshazzar's\nCCC to the boat; and how had I managed to dog that\n port shut? In an emergency a man was capable of great exertions. But\n running on a broken femur, handling heavy levers with charred fingers\n and thinking with a cracked head were overdoing it. Still, I was\n here—and it was time to get a call through to TSA headquarters.", "I finished talking and flopped back, waiting for Kayle's reply. On the\n screen, his flickering image gazed back impatiently, looking as hostile\n as a swing-shift ward nurse. It would be half an hour before I would\n get his reaction to my report. I dozed off—and awoke with a start.\n Kayle was talking.\n\n\n \"—your report. I won't mince words. They're wondering at your role in\n the disaster. How does it happen that you alone survived?\"\n\n\n \"How the hell do I know?\" I yelled—or croaked. But Kayle's voice was\n droning on:\n\n\n \"... you Psychodynamics people have been telling me the Gool may\n have some kind of long-range telehypnotic ability that might make it\n possible for them to subvert a loyal man without his knowledge. You've\n told me yourself that you blacked out during the attack—and came to on\n the lifeboat, with no recollection of how you got there.", "\"Hey, you birds are mixed up,\" I protested. \"I'm cleared all the way. I\n checked in with DEW—\"\n\n\n It was time to disappear. I blanked off all transmission, hit the\n controls, following my evasive pattern. And again I reached out—\n\n\n A radar man at a site in the Pacific, fifteen thousand miles away, rose\n from his chair, crossed the darkened room and threw a switch. The radar\n screens blanked off....\n\n\n For an hour I rode the long orbit down, fending off attack after\n attack. Then I was clear, skimming the surface of the ocean a few miles\n southeast of Key West. The boat hit hard. I felt the floor rise up,\n over, buffeting me against the restraining harness.\n\n\n I hauled at the release lever, felt a long moment of giddy\n disorientation as the escape capsule separated from the sinking\n lifeboat deep under the surface. Then my escape capsule was bobbing on\n the water.", "I flipped the switch, sat gripping the couch, my stomach rising with\n each heave of the floating escape capsule. I had perhaps five minutes.\n The missiles would be from Canaveral.\n\n\n I closed my eyes, forced myself to relax, reached out....\n\n\n I sensed the distant shore, the hot buzz of human minds at work in the\n cities. I followed the coastline, found the Missile Base, flicked\n through the cluster of minds.\n\n\n \"—\nmissile on course; do right, baby. That's it, right in the slot.\n\"\n\n\n I fingered my way through the man's mind and found the control centers.\n He turned stiffly from the plotting board, tottered to a panel to slam\n his hand against the destruct button.\n\n\n Men fell on him, dragged him back. \"—\nfool, why did you blow it?\n\"", "A timeless time passed. I wandered among patterns of white light and\n white sound, plumbed the deepest recesses of hidden Gool thoughts,\n fared along strange ways examining the shapes and colors of the\n concepts of an alien mind.\n\n\n I paused at last, scanning a multi-ordinal structure of pattern within\n pattern; the diagrammed circuits of a strange machine.\n\n\n I followed through its logic-sequence; and, like a bomb-burst, its\n meaning exploded in my mind.\n\n\n From the vile nest deep under the dark surface of the Gool world in\n its lonely trans-Plutonian orbit, I had plucked the ultimate secret of\n their kind.", "I opened my eyes and took a look around. I was on the floor next to\n an unpadded acceleration couch—the kind the Terrestrial Space Arm\n installs in seldom-used lifeboats. There were three more couches, but\n no one in them. I tried to sit up. It wasn't easy but, by applying a\n lot more will-power than should be required of a sick man, I made it.\n I took a look at my left arm. Baked. The hand was only medium rare,\n but the forearm was black, with deep red showing at the bottom of the\n cracks where the crisped upper layers had burst....", "I keyed the chart file, flashed pages from the standard index on the\n reference screen, checking radar coverages, beacon ranges, monitor\n stations, controller fields. It looked as though a radar-negative boat\n the size of mine might possibly get through the defensive net with a\n daring pilot, and as a condemned spy, I could afford to be daring.\n\n\n And I had a few ideas.\nIII\n\n\n The shrilling of the proximity alarm blasted through the silence. For a\n wild moment I thought Kayle had beaten me to the punch; then I realized\n it was the routine DEW line patrol contact.\n\n\n \"Z four-oh-two, I am reading your IFF. Decelerate at 1.8 gee\n preparatory to picking up approach orbit....\"\n\n\n The screen went on droning out instructions. I fed them into the\n autopilot, at the same time running over my approach plan. The scout\n was moving in closer. I licked dry lips. It was time to try.", "\"We have you pinpointed,\" Kayle cut in. \"It's no use fighting it,\n Granthan.\"\nI felt cold sweat pop out on my forehead. \"You've got to listen,\n Kayle,\" I shouted. \"I suppose you've got missiles on the way already.\n Call them back! I have information that can win the war—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Granthan,\" Kayle said. \"It's too late—even if I could\n take the chance you were right.\"\n\n\n A different face appeared on the screen.", "\"Mr. Granthan, I am General Titus. On behalf of your country, and\n in the name of the President—who has been apprised of this tragic\n situation—it is my privilege to inform you that you will be awarded\n the Congressional Medal of Honor—posthumously—for your heroic effort.\n Although you failed, and have in fact been forced, against your will,\n to carry out the schemes of the inhuman enemy, this in no way detracts\n from your gallant attempt. Mr. Granthan, I salute you.\"\n\n\n The general's arm went up in a rigid gesture.\n\n\n \"Stow that, you pompous idiot!\" I barked. \"I'm no spy!\"\n\n\n Kayle was back, blanking out the startled face of the general.\n\n\n \"Goodbye, Granthan. Try to understand....\"", "discovered, worlds where food was free for the taking. Not sulphur\n alone, but potassium, calcium, iron and all the metals—riches\n beyond belief in endless profusion. No longer would the Gool tribe\n cluster—those who remained of a once-great race—at a single feeding\n trough. They would spread out across a galaxy—and beyond." ], [ "I wasn't, of course. I was still the same Peter Granthan,\n psychodynamicist, who had started out with Dayan's fleet six weeks\n earlier. The thoughts I was having weren't brilliant, but they were\n mine, all mine....\n\n\n But how could I be sure of that?\n\n\n Maybe there was something in Kayle's suspicion. If the Gool were as\n skillful as we thought, they would have left no overt indications of\n their tampering—not at a conscious level.\n\n\n But this was where psychodynamics training came in. I had been reacting\n like any scared casualty, aching to get home and lick his wounds. But I\n wasn't just any casualty. I had been trained in the subtleties of the\n mind—and I had been prepared for just such an attack.", "Gravel scrunched nearby. The beam of a flashlight lanced out, slipped\n along the weathered car, caught me. There was a startled exclamation.\n I ducked back, closed my eyes, felt out for his mind. There was a\n confused murmur of thought, a random intrusion of impressions from the\n city all around. It was hard, too hard. I had to sleep—\n\n\n I heard the snick of a revolver being cocked, and dropped flat as a\n gout of flame stabbed toward me, the imperative Bam! echoing between\n the cars. I caught the clear thought:\n\n\n \"God-awful looking, shaved head, arm stuck out; him all right—\"\n\n\n I reached out to his mind and struck at random. The light fell, went\n out, and I heard the unconscious body slam to the ground like a poled\n steer.\n\n\n It was easy—if I could only stay awake.", "But not if I could help it.\n\n\n The Gool had evolved a plan—but they'd had a stroke of bad luck.\n\n\n In the past, they had managed to control a man here and there, among\n the fleets, far from home, but only at a superficial level. Enough,\n perhaps, to wreck a ship, but not the complete control needed to send a\n man back to Earth under Gool compulsion, to carry out complex sabotage.\n\n\n Then they had found me, alone, a sole survivor, free from the clutter\n of the other mind-fields. It had been their misfortune to pick a\n psychodynamicist. Instead of gaining a patient slave, they had opened\n the fortress door to an unseen spy. Now that I was there, I would see\n what I could steal.", "I picked my way across mushy ground to a pot-holed black-top road,\n started limping toward a few car lights visible half a mile away. It\n was already hot. The swamp air was like warmed-over subway fumes.\n Through the drugs, I could feel my pulse throbbing in my various\n wounds. I reached out and touched the driver's mind; he was thinking\n about shrimps, a fish-hook wound on his left thumb and a girl with\n black hair. \"Want a lift?\" he called.\n\n\n I thanked him and got in. He gave me a glance and I pinched off his\n budding twinge of curiosity. It was almost an effort now not to follow\n his thoughts. It was as though my mind, having learned the trick of\n communications with others, instinctively reached out toward them.", "I finished talking and flopped back, waiting for Kayle's reply. On the\n screen, his flickering image gazed back impatiently, looking as hostile\n as a swing-shift ward nurse. It would be half an hour before I would\n get his reaction to my report. I dozed off—and awoke with a start.\n Kayle was talking.\n\n\n \"—your report. I won't mince words. They're wondering at your role in\n the disaster. How does it happen that you alone survived?\"\n\n\n \"How the hell do I know?\" I yelled—or croaked. But Kayle's voice was\n droning on:\n\n\n \"... you Psychodynamics people have been telling me the Gool may\n have some kind of long-range telehypnotic ability that might make it\n possible for them to subvert a loyal man without his knowledge. You've\n told me yourself that you blacked out during the attack—and came to on\n the lifeboat, with no recollection of how you got there.", "\"Pretty big place, I guess.\"\n\n\n He didn't answer.\n\n\n We went through a warehousing district, swung left along the\n waterfront, bumped over railroad tracks, and pulled up at a nine-foot\n cyclone fence with a locked gate.\n\n\n \"A buck ten,\" my driver said.\n\n\n I looked out at the fence, a barren field, a distant group of low\n buildings. \"What's this?\"\n\n\n \"This is the place you ast for. That'll be a buck ten, mister.\"\n\n\n I touched his mind, planted a couple of false impressions and withdrew.\n He blinked, then started up, drove around the field, pulled up at an\n open gate with a blue-uniformed guard. He looked back at me.\n\n\n \"You want I should drive in, sir?\"\n\n\n \"I'll get out here.\"", "I tried to reason with him. I reminded him how I had readied myself\n for the trip with sessions on the encephaloscope, setting up the\n cross-networks of conditioned defensive responses, the shunt circuits\n to the decoy pseudo-personality, leaving my volitional ego free. I\n talked about subliminal hypnotics and the resilience quotient of the\n ego-complex.\n\n\n I might have saved my breath.\n\n\n \"I don't understand that psychodynamics jargon, Granthan,\" he snapped.\n \"It smacks of mysticism. But I understand what the Gool have done to\n you well enough. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\n I leaned back and chewed the inside of my lip and thought unkind\n thoughts about Colonel Ausar Kayle. Then I settled down to solve the\n problem at hand.", "I dropped the contact, found another, who leaped to the panel,\n detonated the remainder of the flight of six missiles. Then I withdrew.\n I would have a few minutes' stay of execution now.\n\n\n I was ten miles from shore. The capsule had its own power plant. I\n started it up, switched on the external viewer. I saw dark sea, the\n glint of star-light on the choppy surface, in the distance a glow on\n the horizon that would be Key West. I plugged the course into the\n pilot, then leaned back and felt outward with my mind for the next\n attacker.\nIV\n\n\n It was dark in the trainyard. I moved along the tracks in a stumbling\n walk. Just a few more minutes, I was telling myself.\nA few more\n minutes and you can lie down ... rest....\nThe shadowed bulk of a box car loomed up, its open door a blacker\n square. I leaned against the sill, breathing hard, then reached inside\n for a grip with my good hand.", "I flipped the switch, sat gripping the couch, my stomach rising with\n each heave of the floating escape capsule. I had perhaps five minutes.\n The missiles would be from Canaveral.\n\n\n I closed my eyes, forced myself to relax, reached out....\n\n\n I sensed the distant shore, the hot buzz of human minds at work in the\n cities. I followed the coastline, found the Missile Base, flicked\n through the cluster of minds.\n\n\n \"—\nmissile on course; do right, baby. That's it, right in the slot.\n\"\n\n\n I fingered my way through the man's mind and found the control centers.\n He turned stiffly from the plotting board, tottered to a panel to slam\n his hand against the destruct button.\n\n\n Men fell on him, dragged him back. \"—\nfool, why did you blow it?\n\"", "I gritted my teeth, pulled myself into the car, crawled to a dark\n corner behind a crate and slumped down. I tried to evoke a personality\n fraction to set as a guard, a part of my mind to stay awake and warn\n me of danger. It was too much trouble. I relaxed and let it all slide\n down into darkness.\nThe car swayed, click-clack, click-clack. I opened my eyes, saw yellow\n sunlight in a bar across the litter on the floor. The power truss\n creaked, pulling at my arm. My broken leg was throbbing its indignation\n at the treatment it had received—walking brace and all—and the burned\n arm was yelling aloud for more of that nice dope that had been keeping\n it from realizing how bad it was. All things considered, I felt like a\n badly embalmed mummy—except that I was hungry. I had been a fool not\n to fill my pockets when I left the escape capsule in the shallows off\n Key Largo, but things had been happening too fast.", "\"\nAlmost it eluded me then, Effulgent Lord. Link with this lowly one!\n\"\n\n\n \"\nImpossible! Do you forget all my teachings? Cling, though you expend\n the last filament of your life-force!\n\"\n\n\n Free from all distraction, at a level where comprehension and retention\n are instantaneous and total, my monitoring basic personality fraction\n followed the skillful Gool mind as it engraved its commands deep in\n my subconscious. Then the touch withdrew, erasing the scars of its\n passage, to leave me unaware of its tampering—at a conscious level.\n\n\n Watching the Gool mind, I learned.\n\n\n The insinuating probe—a concept regarding which psychodynamicists had\n theorized—was no more than a pattern in emptiness....\n\n\n But a pattern which I could duplicate, now that I had seen what had\n been done to me.", "\"—\nlousy job. What's the use? Little witch in the lunch room ... up in\n the hills, squirrel hunting, bottle of whiskey....\n\"\n\n\n I settled into control gently, trying not to alarm the man. I saw\n through his eyes the dusty box car, the rust on the tracks, the\n listless weeds growing among cinders, and the weathered boards of\n the platform. I turned him, and saw the dingy glass of the telegraph\n window, a sagging screen door with a chipped enameled cola sign.\n\n\n I walked the man to the door, and through it. Behind a linoleum-topped\n counter, a coarse-skinned teen-age girl with heavy breasts and wet\n patches under her arms looked up without interest as the door banged.", "And found it.\n\n\n As the eye instantaneously detects a flicker of motion amid an infinity\n of static detail, so my inner eye perceived the subtle traces of the\n probing Gool mind, like a whispered touch deftly rearranging my buried\n motivations.\n\n\n I focused selectively, tuned to the recorded gestalt.\n\n\n \"\nIt is a contact, Effulgent One!\n\"\n\n\n \"\nSoftly, now! Nurture the spark well. It but trembles at the\n threshold....\n\"\n\n\n \"\nIt is elusive, Master! It wriggles like a gorm-worm in the eating\n trough!\n\"", "A part of my mind watched as the memory unreeled. I listened to the\n voices—yet not voices, merely the shape of concepts, indescribably\n intricate. I saw how the decoy pseudo-personality which I had\n concretized for the purpose in a hundred training sessions had fought\n against the intruding stimuli—then yielded under the relentless thrust\n of the alien probe. I watched as the Gool operator took over the motor\n centers, caused me to crawl through the choking smoke of the devastated\n control compartment toward the escape hatch. Fire leaped up, blocking\n the way. I went on, felt ghostly flames whipping at me—and then the\n hatch was open and I pulled myself through, forcing the broken leg.\n My blackened hand fumbled at the locking wheel. Then the blast as\n the lifeboat leaped clear of the disintegrating dreadnought—and the\n world-ending impact as I fell.\n\n\n At a level far below the conscious, the embattled pseudo-personality\n lashed out again—fighting the invader.", "I pressed the release on the power truss, gingerly unclamped it, then\n rigged a sling from a strip of shirt tail. I tied the arm to my side as\n inconspicuously as possible. I didn't disturb the bandages.\n\n\n I needed new clothes—or at least different ones—and something to\n cover my shaved skull. I couldn't stay hidden forever. The yard cop had\n recognized me at a glance.\n\n\n I lay back, waiting for the train to slow for a town. I wasn't unduly\n worried—at the moment. The watchman probably hadn't convinced anyone\n he'd actually seen me. Maybe he hadn't been too sure himself.\n\n\n The click-clack slowed and the train shuddered to a stop. I crept to\n the door, peered through the crack. There were sunny fields, a few low\n buildings in the distance, the corner of a platform. I closed my eyes\n and let my awareness stretch out.", "There was a first-aid cabinet across the compartment from me. I\n tried my right leg, felt broken bone-ends grate with a sensation\n that transcended pain. I heaved with the other leg, scrabbled with\n the charred arm. The crawl to the cabinet dwarfed Hillary's trek\n up Everest, but I reached it after a couple of years, and found the\n microswitch on the floor that activated the thing, and then I was\n fading out again....\nI came out of it clear-headed but weak. My right leg was numb, but\n reasonably comfortable, clamped tight in a walking brace. I put up\n a hand and felt a shaved skull, with sutures. It must have been a\n fracture. The left arm—well, it was still there, wrapped to the", "I was discovering that it wasn't necessary to hold tight control over\n every move of a subject. Once given the impulse to act, he would\n rationalize his behavior, fill in the details—and never know that the\n original idea hadn't been his own.", "I clamped down control. The Gool mind folded in on itself, gibbering.\n Not pausing to rest, I followed up, probed along my channel of contact,\n tracing patterns, scanning the flaccid Gool mind....", "A timeless time passed. I wandered among patterns of white light and\n white sound, plumbed the deepest recesses of hidden Gool thoughts,\n fared along strange ways examining the shapes and colors of the\n concepts of an alien mind.\n\n\n I paused at last, scanning a multi-ordinal structure of pattern within\n pattern; the diagrammed circuits of a strange machine.\n\n\n I followed through its logic-sequence; and, like a bomb-burst, its\n meaning exploded in my mind.\n\n\n From the vile nest deep under the dark surface of the Gool world in\n its lonely trans-Plutonian orbit, I had plucked the ultimate secret of\n their kind.", "Presently Kayle replied. \"Yes,\" he said. \"You'll have to enter a\n parking orbit. Perhaps there will be developments soon which will make\n it possible to ... ah ... restudy the situation.\" He didn't meet my\n eye. I knew what he was thinking. He'd spare me the mental anguish of\n knowing what was coming. I couldn't really blame him; he was doing\n what he thought was the right thing. And I'd have to go along and\n pretend—right up until the warheads struck—that I didn't know I'd\n been condemned to death.\nII\n\n\n I tried to gather my wits and think my way through the situation. I\n was alone and injured, aboard a lifeboat that would be the focus of a\n converging flight of missiles as soon as I approached within battery\n range of Earth. I had gotten clear of the Gool, but I wouldn't survive\n my next meeting with my own kind. They couldn't take the chance that I\n was acting under Gool orders." ], [ "But not if I could help it.\n\n\n The Gool had evolved a plan—but they'd had a stroke of bad luck.\n\n\n In the past, they had managed to control a man here and there, among\n the fleets, far from home, but only at a superficial level. Enough,\n perhaps, to wreck a ship, but not the complete control needed to send a\n man back to Earth under Gool compulsion, to carry out complex sabotage.\n\n\n Then they had found me, alone, a sole survivor, free from the clutter\n of the other mind-fields. It had been their misfortune to pick a\n psychodynamicist. Instead of gaining a patient slave, they had opened\n the fortress door to an unseen spy. Now that I was there, I would see\n what I could steal.", "A timeless time passed. I wandered among patterns of white light and\n white sound, plumbed the deepest recesses of hidden Gool thoughts,\n fared along strange ways examining the shapes and colors of the\n concepts of an alien mind.\n\n\n I paused at last, scanning a multi-ordinal structure of pattern within\n pattern; the diagrammed circuits of a strange machine.\n\n\n I followed through its logic-sequence; and, like a bomb-burst, its\n meaning exploded in my mind.\n\n\n From the vile nest deep under the dark surface of the Gool world in\n its lonely trans-Plutonian orbit, I had plucked the ultimate secret of\n their kind.", "discovered, worlds where food was free for the taking. Not sulphur\n alone, but potassium, calcium, iron and all the metals—riches\n beyond belief in endless profusion. No longer would the Gool tribe\n cluster—those who remained of a once-great race—at a single feeding\n trough. They would spread out across a galaxy—and beyond.", "I wasn't, of course. I was still the same Peter Granthan,\n psychodynamicist, who had started out with Dayan's fleet six weeks\n earlier. The thoughts I was having weren't brilliant, but they were\n mine, all mine....\n\n\n But how could I be sure of that?\n\n\n Maybe there was something in Kayle's suspicion. If the Gool were as\n skillful as we thought, they would have left no overt indications of\n their tampering—not at a conscious level.\n\n\n But this was where psychodynamics training came in. I had been reacting\n like any scared casualty, aching to get home and lick his wounds. But I\n wasn't just any casualty. I had been trained in the subtleties of the\n mind—and I had been prepared for just such an attack.", "And found it.\n\n\n As the eye instantaneously detects a flicker of motion amid an infinity\n of static detail, so my inner eye perceived the subtle traces of the\n probing Gool mind, like a whispered touch deftly rearranging my buried\n motivations.\n\n\n I focused selectively, tuned to the recorded gestalt.\n\n\n \"\nIt is a contact, Effulgent One!\n\"\n\n\n \"\nSoftly, now! Nurture the spark well. It but trembles at the\n threshold....\n\"\n\n\n \"\nIt is elusive, Master! It wriggles like a gorm-worm in the eating\n trough!\n\"", "\"\nAlmost it eluded me then, Effulgent Lord. Link with this lowly one!\n\"\n\n\n \"\nImpossible! Do you forget all my teachings? Cling, though you expend\n the last filament of your life-force!\n\"\n\n\n Free from all distraction, at a level where comprehension and retention\n are instantaneous and total, my monitoring basic personality fraction\n followed the skillful Gool mind as it engraved its commands deep in\n my subconscious. Then the touch withdrew, erasing the scars of its\n passage, to leave me unaware of its tampering—at a conscious level.\n\n\n Watching the Gool mind, I learned.\n\n\n The insinuating probe—a concept regarding which psychodynamicists had\n theorized—was no more than a pattern in emptiness....\n\n\n But a pattern which I could duplicate, now that I had seen what had\n been done to me.", "I clamped down control. The Gool mind folded in on itself, gibbering.\n Not pausing to rest, I followed up, probed along my channel of contact,\n tracing patterns, scanning the flaccid Gool mind....", "I tried to reason with him. I reminded him how I had readied myself\n for the trip with sessions on the encephaloscope, setting up the\n cross-networks of conditioned defensive responses, the shunt circuits\n to the decoy pseudo-personality, leaving my volitional ego free. I\n talked about subliminal hypnotics and the resilience quotient of the\n ego-complex.\n\n\n I might have saved my breath.\n\n\n \"I don't understand that psychodynamics jargon, Granthan,\" he snapped.\n \"It smacks of mysticism. But I understand what the Gool have done to\n you well enough. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\n I leaned back and chewed the inside of my lip and thought unkind\n thoughts about Colonel Ausar Kayle. Then I settled down to solve the\n problem at hand.", "Hesitantly, I felt for the immaterial fabric of the continuum, warping\n and manipulating it, copying the Gool probe. Like planes of paper-thin\n crystal, the polyfinite aspects of reality shifted into focus, aligning\n themselves.\n\n\n Abruptly, a channel lay open. As easily as I would stretch out my hand\n to pluck a moth from a night-flower, I reached across the unimaginable\n void—and sensed a pit blacker than the bottom floor of hell, and a\n glistening dark shape.\n\n\n There was a soundless shriek. \"\nEffulgence! It reached out—touched\n me!\n\"\nUsing the technique I had grasped from the Gool itself, I struck,\n stifling the outcry, invaded the fetid blackness and grappled the\n obscene gelatinous immensity of the Gool spy as it spasmed in a frenzy\n of xenophobia—a ton of liver writhing at the bottom of a dark well.", "I finished talking and flopped back, waiting for Kayle's reply. On the\n screen, his flickering image gazed back impatiently, looking as hostile\n as a swing-shift ward nurse. It would be half an hour before I would\n get his reaction to my report. I dozed off—and awoke with a start.\n Kayle was talking.\n\n\n \"—your report. I won't mince words. They're wondering at your role in\n the disaster. How does it happen that you alone survived?\"\n\n\n \"How the hell do I know?\" I yelled—or croaked. But Kayle's voice was\n droning on:\n\n\n \"... you Psychodynamics people have been telling me the Gool may\n have some kind of long-range telehypnotic ability that might make it\n possible for them to subvert a loyal man without his knowledge. You've\n told me yourself that you blacked out during the attack—and came to on\n the lifeboat, with no recollection of how you got there.", "A part of my mind watched as the memory unreeled. I listened to the\n voices—yet not voices, merely the shape of concepts, indescribably\n intricate. I saw how the decoy pseudo-personality which I had\n concretized for the purpose in a hundred training sessions had fought\n against the intruding stimuli—then yielded under the relentless thrust\n of the alien probe. I watched as the Gool operator took over the motor\n centers, caused me to crawl through the choking smoke of the devastated\n control compartment toward the escape hatch. Fire leaped up, blocking\n the way. I went on, felt ghostly flames whipping at me—and then the\n hatch was open and I pulled myself through, forcing the broken leg.\n My blackened hand fumbled at the locking wheel. Then the blast as\n the lifeboat leaped clear of the disintegrating dreadnought—and the\n world-ending impact as I fell.\n\n\n At a level far below the conscious, the embattled pseudo-personality\n lashed out again—fighting the invader.", "I saw a world of yellow seas lapping at endless shores of mud. There\n was a fuming pit, where liquid sulphur bubbled up from some inner\n source, filling an immense natural basin. The Gool clustered at its\n rim, feeding, each monstrous shape heaving against its neighbors for a\n more favorable position.\nI probed farther, saw the great cables of living nervous tissue that\n linked each eating organ with the brain-mass far underground. I traced\n the passages through which tendrils ran out to immense caverns where\n smaller creatures labored over strange devices. These, my host's memory\n told me, were the young of the Gool. Here they built the fleets that\n would transport the spawn to the new worlds the Prime Overlord had", "As far as I knew, I was the first recorded survivor of contact with the\n Gool—if I survived.\n\n\n I was still a long way from home, and I hadn't yet checked on the\n condition of the lifeboat. I glanced toward the entry port. It was\n dogged shut. I could see black marks where my burned hand had been at\n work.\n\n\n I fumbled my way into a couch and tried to think. In my condition—with\n a broken leg and third-degree burns, plus a fractured skull—I\n shouldn't have been able to fall out of bed, much less make the trip\n from\nBelshazzar's\nCCC to the boat; and how had I managed to dog that\n port shut? In an emergency a man was capable of great exertions. But\n running on a broken femur, handling heavy levers with charred fingers\n and thinking with a cracked head were overdoing it. Still, I was\n here—and it was time to get a call through to TSA headquarters.", "Presently Kayle replied. \"Yes,\" he said. \"You'll have to enter a\n parking orbit. Perhaps there will be developments soon which will make\n it possible to ... ah ... restudy the situation.\" He didn't meet my\n eye. I knew what he was thinking. He'd spare me the mental anguish of\n knowing what was coming. I couldn't really blame him; he was doing\n what he thought was the right thing. And I'd have to go along and\n pretend—right up until the warheads struck—that I didn't know I'd\n been condemned to death.\nII\n\n\n I tried to gather my wits and think my way through the situation. I\n was alone and injured, aboard a lifeboat that would be the focus of a\n converging flight of missiles as soon as I approached within battery\n range of Earth. I had gotten clear of the Gool, but I wouldn't survive\n my next meeting with my own kind. They couldn't take the chance that I\n was acting under Gool orders.", "I closed my eyes, reached out—as the Gool mind had reached out to\n me—and felt the touch of a Signals Officer's mind, forty thousand\n miles distant, aboard the patrol vessel. There was a brief flurry of\n struggle; then I dictated my instructions. The Signals Officer punched\n keys, spoke into his microphone:\n\n\n \"As you were, Z four-oh-two. Continue on present course. At Oh-nineteen\n seconds, pick up planetary for re-entry and let-down.\"\n\n\n I blanked out the man's recollection of what had happened, caught his\n belated puzzlement as I broke contact. But I was clear of the DEW line\n now, rapidly approaching atmosphere.\n\n\n \"Z four-oh-two,\" the speaker crackled. \"This is planetary control. I am\n picking you up on channel forty-three, for re-entry and let-down.\"\n\n\n There was a long pause. Then:", "I pressed the release on the power truss, gingerly unclamped it, then\n rigged a sling from a strip of shirt tail. I tied the arm to my side as\n inconspicuously as possible. I didn't disturb the bandages.\n\n\n I needed new clothes—or at least different ones—and something to\n cover my shaved skull. I couldn't stay hidden forever. The yard cop had\n recognized me at a glance.\n\n\n I lay back, waiting for the train to slow for a town. I wasn't unduly\n worried—at the moment. The watchman probably hadn't convinced anyone\n he'd actually seen me. Maybe he hadn't been too sure himself.\n\n\n The click-clack slowed and the train shuddered to a stop. I crept to\n the door, peered through the crack. There were sunny fields, a few low\n buildings in the distance, the corner of a platform. I closed my eyes\n and let my awareness stretch out.", "\"Pretty big place, I guess.\"\n\n\n He didn't answer.\n\n\n We went through a warehousing district, swung left along the\n waterfront, bumped over railroad tracks, and pulled up at a nine-foot\n cyclone fence with a locked gate.\n\n\n \"A buck ten,\" my driver said.\n\n\n I looked out at the fence, a barren field, a distant group of low\n buildings. \"What's this?\"\n\n\n \"This is the place you ast for. That'll be a buck ten, mister.\"\n\n\n I touched his mind, planted a couple of false impressions and withdrew.\n He blinked, then started up, drove around the field, pulled up at an\n open gate with a blue-uniformed guard. He looked back at me.\n\n\n \"You want I should drive in, sir?\"\n\n\n \"I'll get out here.\"", "\"Mr. Granthan, I am General Titus. On behalf of your country, and\n in the name of the President—who has been apprised of this tragic\n situation—it is my privilege to inform you that you will be awarded\n the Congressional Medal of Honor—posthumously—for your heroic effort.\n Although you failed, and have in fact been forced, against your will,\n to carry out the schemes of the inhuman enemy, this in no way detracts\n from your gallant attempt. Mr. Granthan, I salute you.\"\n\n\n The general's arm went up in a rigid gesture.\n\n\n \"Stow that, you pompous idiot!\" I barked. \"I'm no spy!\"\n\n\n Kayle was back, blanking out the startled face of the general.\n\n\n \"Goodbye, Granthan. Try to understand....\"", "I was discovering that it wasn't necessary to hold tight control over\n every move of a subject. Once given the impulse to act, he would\n rationalize his behavior, fill in the details—and never know that the\n original idea hadn't been his own.", "\"We have you pinpointed,\" Kayle cut in. \"It's no use fighting it,\n Granthan.\"\nI felt cold sweat pop out on my forehead. \"You've got to listen,\n Kayle,\" I shouted. \"I suppose you've got missiles on the way already.\n Call them back! I have information that can win the war—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Granthan,\" Kayle said. \"It's too late—even if I could\n take the chance you were right.\"\n\n\n A different face appeared on the screen." ], [ "A timeless time passed. I wandered among patterns of white light and\n white sound, plumbed the deepest recesses of hidden Gool thoughts,\n fared along strange ways examining the shapes and colors of the\n concepts of an alien mind.\n\n\n I paused at last, scanning a multi-ordinal structure of pattern within\n pattern; the diagrammed circuits of a strange machine.\n\n\n I followed through its logic-sequence; and, like a bomb-burst, its\n meaning exploded in my mind.\n\n\n From the vile nest deep under the dark surface of the Gool world in\n its lonely trans-Plutonian orbit, I had plucked the ultimate secret of\n their kind.", "But not if I could help it.\n\n\n The Gool had evolved a plan—but they'd had a stroke of bad luck.\n\n\n In the past, they had managed to control a man here and there, among\n the fleets, far from home, but only at a superficial level. Enough,\n perhaps, to wreck a ship, but not the complete control needed to send a\n man back to Earth under Gool compulsion, to carry out complex sabotage.\n\n\n Then they had found me, alone, a sole survivor, free from the clutter\n of the other mind-fields. It had been their misfortune to pick a\n psychodynamicist. Instead of gaining a patient slave, they had opened\n the fortress door to an unseen spy. Now that I was there, I would see\n what I could steal.", "discovered, worlds where food was free for the taking. Not sulphur\n alone, but potassium, calcium, iron and all the metals—riches\n beyond belief in endless profusion. No longer would the Gool tribe\n cluster—those who remained of a once-great race—at a single feeding\n trough. They would spread out across a galaxy—and beyond.", "I tried to reason with him. I reminded him how I had readied myself\n for the trip with sessions on the encephaloscope, setting up the\n cross-networks of conditioned defensive responses, the shunt circuits\n to the decoy pseudo-personality, leaving my volitional ego free. I\n talked about subliminal hypnotics and the resilience quotient of the\n ego-complex.\n\n\n I might have saved my breath.\n\n\n \"I don't understand that psychodynamics jargon, Granthan,\" he snapped.\n \"It smacks of mysticism. But I understand what the Gool have done to\n you well enough. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\n I leaned back and chewed the inside of my lip and thought unkind\n thoughts about Colonel Ausar Kayle. Then I settled down to solve the\n problem at hand.", "I saw a world of yellow seas lapping at endless shores of mud. There\n was a fuming pit, where liquid sulphur bubbled up from some inner\n source, filling an immense natural basin. The Gool clustered at its\n rim, feeding, each monstrous shape heaving against its neighbors for a\n more favorable position.\nI probed farther, saw the great cables of living nervous tissue that\n linked each eating organ with the brain-mass far underground. I traced\n the passages through which tendrils ran out to immense caverns where\n smaller creatures labored over strange devices. These, my host's memory\n told me, were the young of the Gool. Here they built the fleets that\n would transport the spawn to the new worlds the Prime Overlord had", "And found it.\n\n\n As the eye instantaneously detects a flicker of motion amid an infinity\n of static detail, so my inner eye perceived the subtle traces of the\n probing Gool mind, like a whispered touch deftly rearranging my buried\n motivations.\n\n\n I focused selectively, tuned to the recorded gestalt.\n\n\n \"\nIt is a contact, Effulgent One!\n\"\n\n\n \"\nSoftly, now! Nurture the spark well. It but trembles at the\n threshold....\n\"\n\n\n \"\nIt is elusive, Master! It wriggles like a gorm-worm in the eating\n trough!\n\"", "Hesitantly, I felt for the immaterial fabric of the continuum, warping\n and manipulating it, copying the Gool probe. Like planes of paper-thin\n crystal, the polyfinite aspects of reality shifted into focus, aligning\n themselves.\n\n\n Abruptly, a channel lay open. As easily as I would stretch out my hand\n to pluck a moth from a night-flower, I reached across the unimaginable\n void—and sensed a pit blacker than the bottom floor of hell, and a\n glistening dark shape.\n\n\n There was a soundless shriek. \"\nEffulgence! It reached out—touched\n me!\n\"\nUsing the technique I had grasped from the Gool itself, I struck,\n stifling the outcry, invaded the fetid blackness and grappled the\n obscene gelatinous immensity of the Gool spy as it spasmed in a frenzy\n of xenophobia—a ton of liver writhing at the bottom of a dark well.", "\"\nAlmost it eluded me then, Effulgent Lord. Link with this lowly one!\n\"\n\n\n \"\nImpossible! Do you forget all my teachings? Cling, though you expend\n the last filament of your life-force!\n\"\n\n\n Free from all distraction, at a level where comprehension and retention\n are instantaneous and total, my monitoring basic personality fraction\n followed the skillful Gool mind as it engraved its commands deep in\n my subconscious. Then the touch withdrew, erasing the scars of its\n passage, to leave me unaware of its tampering—at a conscious level.\n\n\n Watching the Gool mind, I learned.\n\n\n The insinuating probe—a concept regarding which psychodynamicists had\n theorized—was no more than a pattern in emptiness....\n\n\n But a pattern which I could duplicate, now that I had seen what had\n been done to me.", "Presently Kayle replied. \"Yes,\" he said. \"You'll have to enter a\n parking orbit. Perhaps there will be developments soon which will make\n it possible to ... ah ... restudy the situation.\" He didn't meet my\n eye. I knew what he was thinking. He'd spare me the mental anguish of\n knowing what was coming. I couldn't really blame him; he was doing\n what he thought was the right thing. And I'd have to go along and\n pretend—right up until the warheads struck—that I didn't know I'd\n been condemned to death.\nII\n\n\n I tried to gather my wits and think my way through the situation. I\n was alone and injured, aboard a lifeboat that would be the focus of a\n converging flight of missiles as soon as I approached within battery\n range of Earth. I had gotten clear of the Gool, but I wouldn't survive\n my next meeting with my own kind. They couldn't take the chance that I\n was acting under Gool orders.", "As far as I knew, I was the first recorded survivor of contact with the\n Gool—if I survived.\n\n\n I was still a long way from home, and I hadn't yet checked on the\n condition of the lifeboat. I glanced toward the entry port. It was\n dogged shut. I could see black marks where my burned hand had been at\n work.\n\n\n I fumbled my way into a couch and tried to think. In my condition—with\n a broken leg and third-degree burns, plus a fractured skull—I\n shouldn't have been able to fall out of bed, much less make the trip\n from\nBelshazzar's\nCCC to the boat; and how had I managed to dog that\n port shut? In an emergency a man was capable of great exertions. But\n running on a broken femur, handling heavy levers with charred fingers\n and thinking with a cracked head were overdoing it. Still, I was\n here—and it was time to get a call through to TSA headquarters.", "I wasn't, of course. I was still the same Peter Granthan,\n psychodynamicist, who had started out with Dayan's fleet six weeks\n earlier. The thoughts I was having weren't brilliant, but they were\n mine, all mine....\n\n\n But how could I be sure of that?\n\n\n Maybe there was something in Kayle's suspicion. If the Gool were as\n skillful as we thought, they would have left no overt indications of\n their tampering—not at a conscious level.\n\n\n But this was where psychodynamics training came in. I had been reacting\n like any scared casualty, aching to get home and lick his wounds. But I\n wasn't just any casualty. I had been trained in the subtleties of the\n mind—and I had been prepared for just such an attack.", "A part of my mind watched as the memory unreeled. I listened to the\n voices—yet not voices, merely the shape of concepts, indescribably\n intricate. I saw how the decoy pseudo-personality which I had\n concretized for the purpose in a hundred training sessions had fought\n against the intruding stimuli—then yielded under the relentless thrust\n of the alien probe. I watched as the Gool operator took over the motor\n centers, caused me to crawl through the choking smoke of the devastated\n control compartment toward the escape hatch. Fire leaped up, blocking\n the way. I went on, felt ghostly flames whipping at me—and then the\n hatch was open and I pulled myself through, forcing the broken leg.\n My blackened hand fumbled at the locking wheel. Then the blast as\n the lifeboat leaped clear of the disintegrating dreadnought—and the\n world-ending impact as I fell.\n\n\n At a level far below the conscious, the embattled pseudo-personality\n lashed out again—fighting the invader.", "I clamped down control. The Gool mind folded in on itself, gibbering.\n Not pausing to rest, I followed up, probed along my channel of contact,\n tracing patterns, scanning the flaccid Gool mind....", "I closed my eyes, reached out—as the Gool mind had reached out to\n me—and felt the touch of a Signals Officer's mind, forty thousand\n miles distant, aboard the patrol vessel. There was a brief flurry of\n struggle; then I dictated my instructions. The Signals Officer punched\n keys, spoke into his microphone:\n\n\n \"As you were, Z four-oh-two. Continue on present course. At Oh-nineteen\n seconds, pick up planetary for re-entry and let-down.\"\n\n\n I blanked out the man's recollection of what had happened, caught his\n belated puzzlement as I broke contact. But I was clear of the DEW line\n now, rapidly approaching atmosphere.\n\n\n \"Z four-oh-two,\" the speaker crackled. \"This is planetary control. I am\n picking you up on channel forty-three, for re-entry and let-down.\"\n\n\n There was a long pause. Then:", "I finished talking and flopped back, waiting for Kayle's reply. On the\n screen, his flickering image gazed back impatiently, looking as hostile\n as a swing-shift ward nurse. It would be half an hour before I would\n get his reaction to my report. I dozed off—and awoke with a start.\n Kayle was talking.\n\n\n \"—your report. I won't mince words. They're wondering at your role in\n the disaster. How does it happen that you alone survived?\"\n\n\n \"How the hell do I know?\" I yelled—or croaked. But Kayle's voice was\n droning on:\n\n\n \"... you Psychodynamics people have been telling me the Gool may\n have some kind of long-range telehypnotic ability that might make it\n possible for them to subvert a loyal man without his knowledge. You've\n told me yourself that you blacked out during the attack—and came to on\n the lifeboat, with no recollection of how you got there.", "Matter across space.\n\"You've got to listen to me, Kayle,\" I shouted. \"I know you think I'm\n a Gool robot. But what I have is too big to let you blow it up without\n a fight. Matter transmission! You know what that can mean to us. The\n concept is too complex to try to describe in words. You'll have to take\n my word for it. I can build it, though, using standard components, plus\n an infinite-area antenna and a moebius-wound coil—and a few other\n things....\"\n\n\n I harangued Kayle for a while, and then sweated out his answer. I was\n getting close now. If he couldn't see the beauty of my proposal, my\n screens would start to register the radiation of warheads any time now.\n\n\n Kayle came back—and his answer boiled down to \"no.\"", "I flipped the switch and gave the emergency call-letters Col. Ausar\n Kayle of Aerospace Intelligence had assigned to me a few weeks before.\n It was almost five minutes before the \"acknowledge\" came through from\n the Ganymede relay station, another ten minutes before Kayle's face\n swam into view. Even through the blur of the screen I could see the\n haggard look.\n\n\n \"Granthan!\" he burst out. \"Where are the others? What happened out\n there?\" I turned him down to a mutter.\n\n\n \"Hold on,\" I said. \"I'll tell you. Recorders going?\" I didn't wait for\n an answer—not with a fifteen-minute transmission lag. I plowed on:\n\n\n \"\nBelshazzar\nwas sabotaged. So was\nGilgamesh\n—I think. I got out. I\n lost a little skin, but the aid cabinet has the case in hand. Tell the\n Med people the drinks are on me.\"", "\"Hey, you birds are mixed up,\" I protested. \"I'm cleared all the way. I\n checked in with DEW—\"\n\n\n It was time to disappear. I blanked off all transmission, hit the\n controls, following my evasive pattern. And again I reached out—\n\n\n A radar man at a site in the Pacific, fifteen thousand miles away, rose\n from his chair, crossed the darkened room and threw a switch. The radar\n screens blanked off....\n\n\n For an hour I rode the long orbit down, fending off attack after\n attack. Then I was clear, skimming the surface of the ocean a few miles\n southeast of Key West. The boat hit hard. I felt the floor rise up,\n over, buffeting me against the restraining harness.\n\n\n I hauled at the release lever, felt a long moment of giddy\n disorientation as the escape capsule separated from the sinking\n lifeboat deep under the surface. Then my escape capsule was bobbing on\n the water.", "\"We have you pinpointed,\" Kayle cut in. \"It's no use fighting it,\n Granthan.\"\nI felt cold sweat pop out on my forehead. \"You've got to listen,\n Kayle,\" I shouted. \"I suppose you've got missiles on the way already.\n Call them back! I have information that can win the war—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Granthan,\" Kayle said. \"It's too late—even if I could\n take the chance you were right.\"\n\n\n A different face appeared on the screen.", "I dropped the contact, found another, who leaped to the panel,\n detonated the remainder of the flight of six missiles. Then I withdrew.\n I would have a few minutes' stay of execution now.\n\n\n I was ten miles from shore. The capsule had its own power plant. I\n started it up, switched on the external viewer. I saw dark sea, the\n glint of star-light on the choppy surface, in the distance a glow on\n the horizon that would be Key West. I plugged the course into the\n pilot, then leaned back and felt outward with my mind for the next\n attacker.\nIV\n\n\n It was dark in the trainyard. I moved along the tracks in a stumbling\n walk. Just a few more minutes, I was telling myself.\nA few more\n minutes and you can lie down ... rest....\nThe shadowed bulk of a box car loomed up, its open door a blacker\n square. I leaned against the sill, breathing hard, then reached inside\n for a grip with my good hand." ], [ "I wasn't, of course. I was still the same Peter Granthan,\n psychodynamicist, who had started out with Dayan's fleet six weeks\n earlier. The thoughts I was having weren't brilliant, but they were\n mine, all mine....\n\n\n But how could I be sure of that?\n\n\n Maybe there was something in Kayle's suspicion. If the Gool were as\n skillful as we thought, they would have left no overt indications of\n their tampering—not at a conscious level.\n\n\n But this was where psychodynamics training came in. I had been reacting\n like any scared casualty, aching to get home and lick his wounds. But I\n wasn't just any casualty. I had been trained in the subtleties of the\n mind—and I had been prepared for just such an attack.", "He jumped out, opened my door, helped me out with a hand under my good\n elbow. \"I'll get your change, sir,\" he said, reaching for his hip.\n\n\n \"Keep it.\"\n\n\n \"Thank YOU.\" He hesitated. \"Maybe I oughta stick around. You know.\"\n\n\n \"I'll be all right.\"\n\n\n \"I hope so,\" he said. \"A man like you—you and me—\" he winked. \"After\n all, we ain't both wearing berets fer nothing.\"\n\n\n \"True,\" I said. \"Consider your tip doubled. Now drive away into the\n sunrise and forget you ever saw me.\"", "I was discovering that it wasn't necessary to hold tight control over\n every move of a subject. Once given the impulse to act, he would\n rationalize his behavior, fill in the details—and never know that the\n original idea hadn't been his own.", "An hour later he dropped me on a street corner in a shabby marketing\n district of the city and drove off. I hoped he made out all right with\n the dark-haired girl. I spotted a used-clothing store and headed for it.\n\n\n Twenty minutes later I was back on the sidewalk, dressed in a\n pinkish-gray suit that had been cut a long time ago by a Latin\n tailor—maybe to settle a grudge. The shirt that went with it was\n an unsuccessful violet. The black string tie lent a dubious air of\n distinction. I'd swapped the railroader's cap for a tarnished beret.\n The man who had supplied the outfit was still asleep. I figured\n I'd done him a favor by taking it. I couldn't hope to pass for a\n fisherman—I wasn't the type. Maybe I'd get by as a coffee-house\n derelict.", "I tried to reason with him. I reminded him how I had readied myself\n for the trip with sessions on the encephaloscope, setting up the\n cross-networks of conditioned defensive responses, the shunt circuits\n to the decoy pseudo-personality, leaving my volitional ego free. I\n talked about subliminal hypnotics and the resilience quotient of the\n ego-complex.\n\n\n I might have saved my breath.\n\n\n \"I don't understand that psychodynamics jargon, Granthan,\" he snapped.\n \"It smacks of mysticism. But I understand what the Gool have done to\n you well enough. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\n I leaned back and chewed the inside of my lip and thought unkind\n thoughts about Colonel Ausar Kayle. Then I settled down to solve the\n problem at hand.", "I finished talking and flopped back, waiting for Kayle's reply. On the\n screen, his flickering image gazed back impatiently, looking as hostile\n as a swing-shift ward nurse. It would be half an hour before I would\n get his reaction to my report. I dozed off—and awoke with a start.\n Kayle was talking.\n\n\n \"—your report. I won't mince words. They're wondering at your role in\n the disaster. How does it happen that you alone survived?\"\n\n\n \"How the hell do I know?\" I yelled—or croaked. But Kayle's voice was\n droning on:\n\n\n \"... you Psychodynamics people have been telling me the Gool may\n have some kind of long-range telehypnotic ability that might make it\n possible for them to subvert a loyal man without his knowledge. You've\n told me yourself that you blacked out during the attack—and came to on\n the lifeboat, with no recollection of how you got there.", "I had barely made it to the fishing boat, whose owner I had coerced\n into rendezvousing with me before shells started dropping around us. If\n the gunners on the cruiser ten miles away had had any luck, they would\n have finished me—and the hapless fisherman—right then. We rode out a\n couple of near misses, before I put the cruiser's gunnery crew off the\n air.\n\n\n At a fishing camp on the beach, I found a car—with driver. He dropped\n me at the railyard, and drove off under the impression he was in town\n for groceries. He'd never believe he'd seen me.\n\n\n Now I'd had my sleep. I had to start getting ready for the next act of\n the farce.", "\"Pretty big place, I guess.\"\n\n\n He didn't answer.\n\n\n We went through a warehousing district, swung left along the\n waterfront, bumped over railroad tracks, and pulled up at a nine-foot\n cyclone fence with a locked gate.\n\n\n \"A buck ten,\" my driver said.\n\n\n I looked out at the fence, a barren field, a distant group of low\n buildings. \"What's this?\"\n\n\n \"This is the place you ast for. That'll be a buck ten, mister.\"\n\n\n I touched his mind, planted a couple of false impressions and withdrew.\n He blinked, then started up, drove around the field, pulled up at an\n open gate with a blue-uniformed guard. He looked back at me.\n\n\n \"You want I should drive in, sir?\"\n\n\n \"I'll get out here.\"", "I picked my way across mushy ground to a pot-holed black-top road,\n started limping toward a few car lights visible half a mile away. It\n was already hot. The swamp air was like warmed-over subway fumes.\n Through the drugs, I could feel my pulse throbbing in my various\n wounds. I reached out and touched the driver's mind; he was thinking\n about shrimps, a fish-hook wound on his left thumb and a girl with\n black hair. \"Want a lift?\" he called.\n\n\n I thanked him and got in. He gave me a glance and I pinched off his\n budding twinge of curiosity. It was almost an effort now not to follow\n his thoughts. It was as though my mind, having learned the trick of\n communications with others, instinctively reached out toward them.", "My host went on to the counter, gestured toward the waxed-paper-wrapped\n sandwiches under a glass cover. \"I'll take 'em all. And candy bars, and\n cigarettes. And give me a big glass of water.\"\n\n\n \"Better git out there and look after yer train,\" the girl said\n carelessly. \"When'd you git so all-fired hungry all of a sudden?\"\n\n\n \"Put it in a bag. Quick.\"\n\n\n \"Look who's getting bossy—\"\n\n\n My host rounded the counter, picked up a used paper bag, began stuffing\n food in it. The girl stared at him, then pushed him back. \"You git back\n around that counter!\"\n\n\n She filled the bag, took a pencil from behind her ear.\n\n\n \"That'll be one eighty-five. Cash.\"", "My host took two dog-eared bills from his shirt pocket, dropped them\n on the counter and waited while the girl filled a glass. He picked it\n up and started out.\n\n\n \"Hey! Where you goin' with my glass?\"\n\n\n The trainman crossed the platform, headed for the boxcar. He slid the\n loose door back a few inches against the slack latch, pushed the bag\n inside, placed the glass of water beside it, then pulled off his grimy\n railroader's cap and pushed it through the opening. He turned. The girl\n watched from the platform. A rattle passed down the line and the train\n started up with a lurch. The man walked back toward the girl. I heard\n him say: \"Friend o' mine in there—just passin' through.\"", "But not if I could help it.\n\n\n The Gool had evolved a plan—but they'd had a stroke of bad luck.\n\n\n In the past, they had managed to control a man here and there, among\n the fleets, far from home, but only at a superficial level. Enough,\n perhaps, to wreck a ship, but not the complete control needed to send a\n man back to Earth under Gool compulsion, to carry out complex sabotage.\n\n\n Then they had found me, alone, a sole survivor, free from the clutter\n of the other mind-fields. It had been their misfortune to pick a\n psychodynamicist. Instead of gaining a patient slave, they had opened\n the fortress door to an unseen spy. Now that I was there, I would see\n what I could steal.", "\"Mr. Granthan, I am General Titus. On behalf of your country, and\n in the name of the President—who has been apprised of this tragic\n situation—it is my privilege to inform you that you will be awarded\n the Congressional Medal of Honor—posthumously—for your heroic effort.\n Although you failed, and have in fact been forced, against your will,\n to carry out the schemes of the inhuman enemy, this in no way detracts\n from your gallant attempt. Mr. Granthan, I salute you.\"\n\n\n The general's arm went up in a rigid gesture.\n\n\n \"Stow that, you pompous idiot!\" I barked. \"I'm no spy!\"\n\n\n Kayle was back, blanking out the startled face of the general.\n\n\n \"Goodbye, Granthan. Try to understand....\"", "I gritted my teeth, pulled myself into the car, crawled to a dark\n corner behind a crate and slumped down. I tried to evoke a personality\n fraction to set as a guard, a part of my mind to stay awake and warn\n me of danger. It was too much trouble. I relaxed and let it all slide\n down into darkness.\nThe car swayed, click-clack, click-clack. I opened my eyes, saw yellow\n sunlight in a bar across the litter on the floor. The power truss\n creaked, pulling at my arm. My broken leg was throbbing its indignation\n at the treatment it had received—walking brace and all—and the burned\n arm was yelling aloud for more of that nice dope that had been keeping\n it from realizing how bad it was. All things considered, I felt like a\n badly embalmed mummy—except that I was hungry. I had been a fool not\n to fill my pockets when I left the escape capsule in the shallows off\n Key Largo, but things had been happening too fast.", "\"We have you pinpointed,\" Kayle cut in. \"It's no use fighting it,\n Granthan.\"\nI felt cold sweat pop out on my forehead. \"You've got to listen,\n Kayle,\" I shouted. \"I suppose you've got missiles on the way already.\n Call them back! I have information that can win the war—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Granthan,\" Kayle said. \"It's too late—even if I could\n take the chance you were right.\"\n\n\n A different face appeared on the screen.", "And found it.\n\n\n As the eye instantaneously detects a flicker of motion amid an infinity\n of static detail, so my inner eye perceived the subtle traces of the\n probing Gool mind, like a whispered touch deftly rearranging my buried\n motivations.\n\n\n I focused selectively, tuned to the recorded gestalt.\n\n\n \"\nIt is a contact, Effulgent One!\n\"\n\n\n \"\nSoftly, now! Nurture the spark well. It but trembles at the\n threshold....\n\"\n\n\n \"\nIt is elusive, Master! It wriggles like a gorm-worm in the eating\n trough!\n\"", "Gravel scrunched nearby. The beam of a flashlight lanced out, slipped\n along the weathered car, caught me. There was a startled exclamation.\n I ducked back, closed my eyes, felt out for his mind. There was a\n confused murmur of thought, a random intrusion of impressions from the\n city all around. It was hard, too hard. I had to sleep—\n\n\n I heard the snick of a revolver being cocked, and dropped flat as a\n gout of flame stabbed toward me, the imperative Bam! echoing between\n the cars. I caught the clear thought:\n\n\n \"God-awful looking, shaved head, arm stuck out; him all right—\"\n\n\n I reached out to his mind and struck at random. The light fell, went\n out, and I heard the unconscious body slam to the ground like a poled\n steer.\n\n\n It was easy—if I could only stay awake.", "shoulder and held out stiffly by a power truss that would keep the scar\n tissue from pulling up and crippling me. The steady pressure as the\n truss contracted wasn't anything to do a sense-tape on for replaying at\n leisure moments, but at least the cabinet hadn't amputated. I wasn't\n complaining.", "I dropped the contact, found another, who leaped to the panel,\n detonated the remainder of the flight of six missiles. Then I withdrew.\n I would have a few minutes' stay of execution now.\n\n\n I was ten miles from shore. The capsule had its own power plant. I\n started it up, switched on the external viewer. I saw dark sea, the\n glint of star-light on the choppy surface, in the distance a glow on\n the horizon that would be Key West. I plugged the course into the\n pilot, then leaned back and felt outward with my mind for the next\n attacker.\nIV\n\n\n It was dark in the trainyard. I moved along the tracks in a stumbling\n walk. Just a few more minutes, I was telling myself.\nA few more\n minutes and you can lie down ... rest....\nThe shadowed bulk of a box car loomed up, its open door a blacker\n square. I leaned against the sill, breathing hard, then reached inside\n for a grip with my good hand.", "I pressed the release on the power truss, gingerly unclamped it, then\n rigged a sling from a strip of shirt tail. I tied the arm to my side as\n inconspicuously as possible. I didn't disturb the bandages.\n\n\n I needed new clothes—or at least different ones—and something to\n cover my shaved skull. I couldn't stay hidden forever. The yard cop had\n recognized me at a glance.\n\n\n I lay back, waiting for the train to slow for a town. I wasn't unduly\n worried—at the moment. The watchman probably hadn't convinced anyone\n he'd actually seen me. Maybe he hadn't been too sure himself.\n\n\n The click-clack slowed and the train shuddered to a stop. I crept to\n the door, peered through the crack. There were sunny fields, a few low\n buildings in the distance, the corner of a platform. I closed my eyes\n and let my awareness stretch out." ], [ "I wasn't, of course. I was still the same Peter Granthan,\n psychodynamicist, who had started out with Dayan's fleet six weeks\n earlier. The thoughts I was having weren't brilliant, but they were\n mine, all mine....\n\n\n But how could I be sure of that?\n\n\n Maybe there was something in Kayle's suspicion. If the Gool were as\n skillful as we thought, they would have left no overt indications of\n their tampering—not at a conscious level.\n\n\n But this was where psychodynamics training came in. I had been reacting\n like any scared casualty, aching to get home and lick his wounds. But I\n wasn't just any casualty. I had been trained in the subtleties of the\n mind—and I had been prepared for just such an attack.", "And found it.\n\n\n As the eye instantaneously detects a flicker of motion amid an infinity\n of static detail, so my inner eye perceived the subtle traces of the\n probing Gool mind, like a whispered touch deftly rearranging my buried\n motivations.\n\n\n I focused selectively, tuned to the recorded gestalt.\n\n\n \"\nIt is a contact, Effulgent One!\n\"\n\n\n \"\nSoftly, now! Nurture the spark well. It but trembles at the\n threshold....\n\"\n\n\n \"\nIt is elusive, Master! It wriggles like a gorm-worm in the eating\n trough!\n\"", "But not if I could help it.\n\n\n The Gool had evolved a plan—but they'd had a stroke of bad luck.\n\n\n In the past, they had managed to control a man here and there, among\n the fleets, far from home, but only at a superficial level. Enough,\n perhaps, to wreck a ship, but not the complete control needed to send a\n man back to Earth under Gool compulsion, to carry out complex sabotage.\n\n\n Then they had found me, alone, a sole survivor, free from the clutter\n of the other mind-fields. It had been their misfortune to pick a\n psychodynamicist. Instead of gaining a patient slave, they had opened\n the fortress door to an unseen spy. Now that I was there, I would see\n what I could steal.", "A part of my mind watched as the memory unreeled. I listened to the\n voices—yet not voices, merely the shape of concepts, indescribably\n intricate. I saw how the decoy pseudo-personality which I had\n concretized for the purpose in a hundred training sessions had fought\n against the intruding stimuli—then yielded under the relentless thrust\n of the alien probe. I watched as the Gool operator took over the motor\n centers, caused me to crawl through the choking smoke of the devastated\n control compartment toward the escape hatch. Fire leaped up, blocking\n the way. I went on, felt ghostly flames whipping at me—and then the\n hatch was open and I pulled myself through, forcing the broken leg.\n My blackened hand fumbled at the locking wheel. Then the blast as\n the lifeboat leaped clear of the disintegrating dreadnought—and the\n world-ending impact as I fell.\n\n\n At a level far below the conscious, the embattled pseudo-personality\n lashed out again—fighting the invader.", "\"\nAlmost it eluded me then, Effulgent Lord. Link with this lowly one!\n\"\n\n\n \"\nImpossible! Do you forget all my teachings? Cling, though you expend\n the last filament of your life-force!\n\"\n\n\n Free from all distraction, at a level where comprehension and retention\n are instantaneous and total, my monitoring basic personality fraction\n followed the skillful Gool mind as it engraved its commands deep in\n my subconscious. Then the touch withdrew, erasing the scars of its\n passage, to leave me unaware of its tampering—at a conscious level.\n\n\n Watching the Gool mind, I learned.\n\n\n The insinuating probe—a concept regarding which psychodynamicists had\n theorized—was no more than a pattern in emptiness....\n\n\n But a pattern which I could duplicate, now that I had seen what had\n been done to me.", "A timeless time passed. I wandered among patterns of white light and\n white sound, plumbed the deepest recesses of hidden Gool thoughts,\n fared along strange ways examining the shapes and colors of the\n concepts of an alien mind.\n\n\n I paused at last, scanning a multi-ordinal structure of pattern within\n pattern; the diagrammed circuits of a strange machine.\n\n\n I followed through its logic-sequence; and, like a bomb-burst, its\n meaning exploded in my mind.\n\n\n From the vile nest deep under the dark surface of the Gool world in\n its lonely trans-Plutonian orbit, I had plucked the ultimate secret of\n their kind.", "I clamped down control. The Gool mind folded in on itself, gibbering.\n Not pausing to rest, I followed up, probed along my channel of contact,\n tracing patterns, scanning the flaccid Gool mind....", "Hesitantly, I felt for the immaterial fabric of the continuum, warping\n and manipulating it, copying the Gool probe. Like planes of paper-thin\n crystal, the polyfinite aspects of reality shifted into focus, aligning\n themselves.\n\n\n Abruptly, a channel lay open. As easily as I would stretch out my hand\n to pluck a moth from a night-flower, I reached across the unimaginable\n void—and sensed a pit blacker than the bottom floor of hell, and a\n glistening dark shape.\n\n\n There was a soundless shriek. \"\nEffulgence! It reached out—touched\n me!\n\"\nUsing the technique I had grasped from the Gool itself, I struck,\n stifling the outcry, invaded the fetid blackness and grappled the\n obscene gelatinous immensity of the Gool spy as it spasmed in a frenzy\n of xenophobia—a ton of liver writhing at the bottom of a dark well.", "I tried to reason with him. I reminded him how I had readied myself\n for the trip with sessions on the encephaloscope, setting up the\n cross-networks of conditioned defensive responses, the shunt circuits\n to the decoy pseudo-personality, leaving my volitional ego free. I\n talked about subliminal hypnotics and the resilience quotient of the\n ego-complex.\n\n\n I might have saved my breath.\n\n\n \"I don't understand that psychodynamics jargon, Granthan,\" he snapped.\n \"It smacks of mysticism. But I understand what the Gool have done to\n you well enough. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\n I leaned back and chewed the inside of my lip and thought unkind\n thoughts about Colonel Ausar Kayle. Then I settled down to solve the\n problem at hand.", "I closed my eyes, reached out—as the Gool mind had reached out to\n me—and felt the touch of a Signals Officer's mind, forty thousand\n miles distant, aboard the patrol vessel. There was a brief flurry of\n struggle; then I dictated my instructions. The Signals Officer punched\n keys, spoke into his microphone:\n\n\n \"As you were, Z four-oh-two. Continue on present course. At Oh-nineteen\n seconds, pick up planetary for re-entry and let-down.\"\n\n\n I blanked out the man's recollection of what had happened, caught his\n belated puzzlement as I broke contact. But I was clear of the DEW line\n now, rapidly approaching atmosphere.\n\n\n \"Z four-oh-two,\" the speaker crackled. \"This is planetary control. I am\n picking you up on channel forty-three, for re-entry and let-down.\"\n\n\n There was a long pause. Then:", "I finished talking and flopped back, waiting for Kayle's reply. On the\n screen, his flickering image gazed back impatiently, looking as hostile\n as a swing-shift ward nurse. It would be half an hour before I would\n get his reaction to my report. I dozed off—and awoke with a start.\n Kayle was talking.\n\n\n \"—your report. I won't mince words. They're wondering at your role in\n the disaster. How does it happen that you alone survived?\"\n\n\n \"How the hell do I know?\" I yelled—or croaked. But Kayle's voice was\n droning on:\n\n\n \"... you Psychodynamics people have been telling me the Gool may\n have some kind of long-range telehypnotic ability that might make it\n possible for them to subvert a loyal man without his knowledge. You've\n told me yourself that you blacked out during the attack—and came to on\n the lifeboat, with no recollection of how you got there.", "As far as I knew, I was the first recorded survivor of contact with the\n Gool—if I survived.\n\n\n I was still a long way from home, and I hadn't yet checked on the\n condition of the lifeboat. I glanced toward the entry port. It was\n dogged shut. I could see black marks where my burned hand had been at\n work.\n\n\n I fumbled my way into a couch and tried to think. In my condition—with\n a broken leg and third-degree burns, plus a fractured skull—I\n shouldn't have been able to fall out of bed, much less make the trip\n from\nBelshazzar's\nCCC to the boat; and how had I managed to dog that\n port shut? In an emergency a man was capable of great exertions. But\n running on a broken femur, handling heavy levers with charred fingers\n and thinking with a cracked head were overdoing it. Still, I was\n here—and it was time to get a call through to TSA headquarters.", "Now was the time to make use of that training. It had given me one\n resource. I could unlock the memories of my subconscious—and see again\n what had happened.\n\n\n I lay back, cleared my mind of extraneous thoughts, and concentrated on\n the trigger word that would key an auto-hypnotic sequence....\n\n\n Sense impressions faded. I was alone in the nebulous emptiness of a\n first-level trance. I keyed a second word, slipped below the misty\n surface into a dreamworld of vague phantasmagoric figures milling in\n their limbo of sub-conceptualization. I penetrated deeper, broke\n through into the vividly hallucinatory third level, where images of\n mirror-bright immediacy clamored for attention. And deeper....\nThe immense orderly confusion of the basic memory level lay before\n me. Abstracted from it, aloof and observant, the monitoring\n personality-fraction scanned the pattern, searching the polydimensional\n continuum for evidence of an alien intrusion.", "I saw a world of yellow seas lapping at endless shores of mud. There\n was a fuming pit, where liquid sulphur bubbled up from some inner\n source, filling an immense natural basin. The Gool clustered at its\n rim, feeding, each monstrous shape heaving against its neighbors for a\n more favorable position.\nI probed farther, saw the great cables of living nervous tissue that\n linked each eating organ with the brain-mass far underground. I traced\n the passages through which tendrils ran out to immense caverns where\n smaller creatures labored over strange devices. These, my host's memory\n told me, were the young of the Gool. Here they built the fleets that\n would transport the spawn to the new worlds the Prime Overlord had", "Presently Kayle replied. \"Yes,\" he said. \"You'll have to enter a\n parking orbit. Perhaps there will be developments soon which will make\n it possible to ... ah ... restudy the situation.\" He didn't meet my\n eye. I knew what he was thinking. He'd spare me the mental anguish of\n knowing what was coming. I couldn't really blame him; he was doing\n what he thought was the right thing. And I'd have to go along and\n pretend—right up until the warheads struck—that I didn't know I'd\n been condemned to death.\nII\n\n\n I tried to gather my wits and think my way through the situation. I\n was alone and injured, aboard a lifeboat that would be the focus of a\n converging flight of missiles as soon as I approached within battery\n range of Earth. I had gotten clear of the Gool, but I wouldn't survive\n my next meeting with my own kind. They couldn't take the chance that I\n was acting under Gool orders.", "I dropped the contact, found another, who leaped to the panel,\n detonated the remainder of the flight of six missiles. Then I withdrew.\n I would have a few minutes' stay of execution now.\n\n\n I was ten miles from shore. The capsule had its own power plant. I\n started it up, switched on the external viewer. I saw dark sea, the\n glint of star-light on the choppy surface, in the distance a glow on\n the horizon that would be Key West. I plugged the course into the\n pilot, then leaned back and felt outward with my mind for the next\n attacker.\nIV\n\n\n It was dark in the trainyard. I moved along the tracks in a stumbling\n walk. Just a few more minutes, I was telling myself.\nA few more\n minutes and you can lie down ... rest....\nThe shadowed bulk of a box car loomed up, its open door a blacker\n square. I leaned against the sill, breathing hard, then reached inside\n for a grip with my good hand.", "discovered, worlds where food was free for the taking. Not sulphur\n alone, but potassium, calcium, iron and all the metals—riches\n beyond belief in endless profusion. No longer would the Gool tribe\n cluster—those who remained of a once-great race—at a single feeding\n trough. They would spread out across a galaxy—and beyond.", "I flipped the switch, sat gripping the couch, my stomach rising with\n each heave of the floating escape capsule. I had perhaps five minutes.\n The missiles would be from Canaveral.\n\n\n I closed my eyes, forced myself to relax, reached out....\n\n\n I sensed the distant shore, the hot buzz of human minds at work in the\n cities. I followed the coastline, found the Missile Base, flicked\n through the cluster of minds.\n\n\n \"—\nmissile on course; do right, baby. That's it, right in the slot.\n\"\n\n\n I fingered my way through the man's mind and found the control centers.\n He turned stiffly from the plotting board, tottered to a panel to slam\n his hand against the destruct button.\n\n\n Men fell on him, dragged him back. \"—\nfool, why did you blow it?\n\"", "\"—\nlousy job. What's the use? Little witch in the lunch room ... up in\n the hills, squirrel hunting, bottle of whiskey....\n\"\n\n\n I settled into control gently, trying not to alarm the man. I saw\n through his eyes the dusty box car, the rust on the tracks, the\n listless weeds growing among cinders, and the weathered boards of\n the platform. I turned him, and saw the dingy glass of the telegraph\n window, a sagging screen door with a chipped enameled cola sign.\n\n\n I walked the man to the door, and through it. Behind a linoleum-topped\n counter, a coarse-skinned teen-age girl with heavy breasts and wet\n patches under her arms looked up without interest as the door banged.", "I picked my way across mushy ground to a pot-holed black-top road,\n started limping toward a few car lights visible half a mile away. It\n was already hot. The swamp air was like warmed-over subway fumes.\n Through the drugs, I could feel my pulse throbbing in my various\n wounds. I reached out and touched the driver's mind; he was thinking\n about shrimps, a fish-hook wound on his left thumb and a girl with\n black hair. \"Want a lift?\" he called.\n\n\n I thanked him and got in. He gave me a glance and I pinched off his\n budding twinge of curiosity. It was almost an effort now not to follow\n his thoughts. It was as though my mind, having learned the trick of\n communications with others, instinctively reached out toward them." ], [ "I tried to reason with him. I reminded him how I had readied myself\n for the trip with sessions on the encephaloscope, setting up the\n cross-networks of conditioned defensive responses, the shunt circuits\n to the decoy pseudo-personality, leaving my volitional ego free. I\n talked about subliminal hypnotics and the resilience quotient of the\n ego-complex.\n\n\n I might have saved my breath.\n\n\n \"I don't understand that psychodynamics jargon, Granthan,\" he snapped.\n \"It smacks of mysticism. But I understand what the Gool have done to\n you well enough. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\n I leaned back and chewed the inside of my lip and thought unkind\n thoughts about Colonel Ausar Kayle. Then I settled down to solve the\n problem at hand.", "But not if I could help it.\n\n\n The Gool had evolved a plan—but they'd had a stroke of bad luck.\n\n\n In the past, they had managed to control a man here and there, among\n the fleets, far from home, but only at a superficial level. Enough,\n perhaps, to wreck a ship, but not the complete control needed to send a\n man back to Earth under Gool compulsion, to carry out complex sabotage.\n\n\n Then they had found me, alone, a sole survivor, free from the clutter\n of the other mind-fields. It had been their misfortune to pick a\n psychodynamicist. Instead of gaining a patient slave, they had opened\n the fortress door to an unseen spy. Now that I was there, I would see\n what I could steal.", "As far as I knew, I was the first recorded survivor of contact with the\n Gool—if I survived.\n\n\n I was still a long way from home, and I hadn't yet checked on the\n condition of the lifeboat. I glanced toward the entry port. It was\n dogged shut. I could see black marks where my burned hand had been at\n work.\n\n\n I fumbled my way into a couch and tried to think. In my condition—with\n a broken leg and third-degree burns, plus a fractured skull—I\n shouldn't have been able to fall out of bed, much less make the trip\n from\nBelshazzar's\nCCC to the boat; and how had I managed to dog that\n port shut? In an emergency a man was capable of great exertions. But\n running on a broken femur, handling heavy levers with charred fingers\n and thinking with a cracked head were overdoing it. Still, I was\n here—and it was time to get a call through to TSA headquarters.", "I wasn't, of course. I was still the same Peter Granthan,\n psychodynamicist, who had started out with Dayan's fleet six weeks\n earlier. The thoughts I was having weren't brilliant, but they were\n mine, all mine....\n\n\n But how could I be sure of that?\n\n\n Maybe there was something in Kayle's suspicion. If the Gool were as\n skillful as we thought, they would have left no overt indications of\n their tampering—not at a conscious level.\n\n\n But this was where psychodynamics training came in. I had been reacting\n like any scared casualty, aching to get home and lick his wounds. But I\n wasn't just any casualty. I had been trained in the subtleties of the\n mind—and I had been prepared for just such an attack.", "A timeless time passed. I wandered among patterns of white light and\n white sound, plumbed the deepest recesses of hidden Gool thoughts,\n fared along strange ways examining the shapes and colors of the\n concepts of an alien mind.\n\n\n I paused at last, scanning a multi-ordinal structure of pattern within\n pattern; the diagrammed circuits of a strange machine.\n\n\n I followed through its logic-sequence; and, like a bomb-burst, its\n meaning exploded in my mind.\n\n\n From the vile nest deep under the dark surface of the Gool world in\n its lonely trans-Plutonian orbit, I had plucked the ultimate secret of\n their kind.", "discovered, worlds where food was free for the taking. Not sulphur\n alone, but potassium, calcium, iron and all the metals—riches\n beyond belief in endless profusion. No longer would the Gool tribe\n cluster—those who remained of a once-great race—at a single feeding\n trough. They would spread out across a galaxy—and beyond.", "Hesitantly, I felt for the immaterial fabric of the continuum, warping\n and manipulating it, copying the Gool probe. Like planes of paper-thin\n crystal, the polyfinite aspects of reality shifted into focus, aligning\n themselves.\n\n\n Abruptly, a channel lay open. As easily as I would stretch out my hand\n to pluck a moth from a night-flower, I reached across the unimaginable\n void—and sensed a pit blacker than the bottom floor of hell, and a\n glistening dark shape.\n\n\n There was a soundless shriek. \"\nEffulgence! It reached out—touched\n me!\n\"\nUsing the technique I had grasped from the Gool itself, I struck,\n stifling the outcry, invaded the fetid blackness and grappled the\n obscene gelatinous immensity of the Gool spy as it spasmed in a frenzy\n of xenophobia—a ton of liver writhing at the bottom of a dark well.", "And found it.\n\n\n As the eye instantaneously detects a flicker of motion amid an infinity\n of static detail, so my inner eye perceived the subtle traces of the\n probing Gool mind, like a whispered touch deftly rearranging my buried\n motivations.\n\n\n I focused selectively, tuned to the recorded gestalt.\n\n\n \"\nIt is a contact, Effulgent One!\n\"\n\n\n \"\nSoftly, now! Nurture the spark well. It but trembles at the\n threshold....\n\"\n\n\n \"\nIt is elusive, Master! It wriggles like a gorm-worm in the eating\n trough!\n\"", "I saw a world of yellow seas lapping at endless shores of mud. There\n was a fuming pit, where liquid sulphur bubbled up from some inner\n source, filling an immense natural basin. The Gool clustered at its\n rim, feeding, each monstrous shape heaving against its neighbors for a\n more favorable position.\nI probed farther, saw the great cables of living nervous tissue that\n linked each eating organ with the brain-mass far underground. I traced\n the passages through which tendrils ran out to immense caverns where\n smaller creatures labored over strange devices. These, my host's memory\n told me, were the young of the Gool. Here they built the fleets that\n would transport the spawn to the new worlds the Prime Overlord had", "I finished talking and flopped back, waiting for Kayle's reply. On the\n screen, his flickering image gazed back impatiently, looking as hostile\n as a swing-shift ward nurse. It would be half an hour before I would\n get his reaction to my report. I dozed off—and awoke with a start.\n Kayle was talking.\n\n\n \"—your report. I won't mince words. They're wondering at your role in\n the disaster. How does it happen that you alone survived?\"\n\n\n \"How the hell do I know?\" I yelled—or croaked. But Kayle's voice was\n droning on:\n\n\n \"... you Psychodynamics people have been telling me the Gool may\n have some kind of long-range telehypnotic ability that might make it\n possible for them to subvert a loyal man without his knowledge. You've\n told me yourself that you blacked out during the attack—and came to on\n the lifeboat, with no recollection of how you got there.", "\"\nAlmost it eluded me then, Effulgent Lord. Link with this lowly one!\n\"\n\n\n \"\nImpossible! Do you forget all my teachings? Cling, though you expend\n the last filament of your life-force!\n\"\n\n\n Free from all distraction, at a level where comprehension and retention\n are instantaneous and total, my monitoring basic personality fraction\n followed the skillful Gool mind as it engraved its commands deep in\n my subconscious. Then the touch withdrew, erasing the scars of its\n passage, to leave me unaware of its tampering—at a conscious level.\n\n\n Watching the Gool mind, I learned.\n\n\n The insinuating probe—a concept regarding which psychodynamicists had\n theorized—was no more than a pattern in emptiness....\n\n\n But a pattern which I could duplicate, now that I had seen what had\n been done to me.", "I closed my eyes, reached out—as the Gool mind had reached out to\n me—and felt the touch of a Signals Officer's mind, forty thousand\n miles distant, aboard the patrol vessel. There was a brief flurry of\n struggle; then I dictated my instructions. The Signals Officer punched\n keys, spoke into his microphone:\n\n\n \"As you were, Z four-oh-two. Continue on present course. At Oh-nineteen\n seconds, pick up planetary for re-entry and let-down.\"\n\n\n I blanked out the man's recollection of what had happened, caught his\n belated puzzlement as I broke contact. But I was clear of the DEW line\n now, rapidly approaching atmosphere.\n\n\n \"Z four-oh-two,\" the speaker crackled. \"This is planetary control. I am\n picking you up on channel forty-three, for re-entry and let-down.\"\n\n\n There was a long pause. Then:", "Presently Kayle replied. \"Yes,\" he said. \"You'll have to enter a\n parking orbit. Perhaps there will be developments soon which will make\n it possible to ... ah ... restudy the situation.\" He didn't meet my\n eye. I knew what he was thinking. He'd spare me the mental anguish of\n knowing what was coming. I couldn't really blame him; he was doing\n what he thought was the right thing. And I'd have to go along and\n pretend—right up until the warheads struck—that I didn't know I'd\n been condemned to death.\nII\n\n\n I tried to gather my wits and think my way through the situation. I\n was alone and injured, aboard a lifeboat that would be the focus of a\n converging flight of missiles as soon as I approached within battery\n range of Earth. I had gotten clear of the Gool, but I wouldn't survive\n my next meeting with my own kind. They couldn't take the chance that I\n was acting under Gool orders.", "I clamped down control. The Gool mind folded in on itself, gibbering.\n Not pausing to rest, I followed up, probed along my channel of contact,\n tracing patterns, scanning the flaccid Gool mind....", "I would have to risk calling Kayle now—but by voluntarily giving my\n position away, I should convince him I was still on our side—and I was\n badly in need of a pick-up. I flipped the sending key.\n\n\n \"This is Z four-oh-two,\" I said. \"I have an urgent report for Colonel\n Kayle of Aerospace Intelligence.\"\n\n\n Kayle's face appeared. \"Don't fight it, Granthan,\" he croaked. \"You\n penetrated the planetary defenses—God knows how. I—\"\n\n\n \"Later,\" I snapped. \"How about calling off your dogs now? And send\n somebody out here to pick me up, before I add sea-sickness to my other\n complaints.\"", "A part of my mind watched as the memory unreeled. I listened to the\n voices—yet not voices, merely the shape of concepts, indescribably\n intricate. I saw how the decoy pseudo-personality which I had\n concretized for the purpose in a hundred training sessions had fought\n against the intruding stimuli—then yielded under the relentless thrust\n of the alien probe. I watched as the Gool operator took over the motor\n centers, caused me to crawl through the choking smoke of the devastated\n control compartment toward the escape hatch. Fire leaped up, blocking\n the way. I went on, felt ghostly flames whipping at me—and then the\n hatch was open and I pulled myself through, forcing the broken leg.\n My blackened hand fumbled at the locking wheel. Then the blast as\n the lifeboat leaped clear of the disintegrating dreadnought—and the\n world-ending impact as I fell.\n\n\n At a level far below the conscious, the embattled pseudo-personality\n lashed out again—fighting the invader.", "I dropped the contact, found another, who leaped to the panel,\n detonated the remainder of the flight of six missiles. Then I withdrew.\n I would have a few minutes' stay of execution now.\n\n\n I was ten miles from shore. The capsule had its own power plant. I\n started it up, switched on the external viewer. I saw dark sea, the\n glint of star-light on the choppy surface, in the distance a glow on\n the horizon that would be Key West. I plugged the course into the\n pilot, then leaned back and felt outward with my mind for the next\n attacker.\nIV\n\n\n It was dark in the trainyard. I moved along the tracks in a stumbling\n walk. Just a few more minutes, I was telling myself.\nA few more\n minutes and you can lie down ... rest....\nThe shadowed bulk of a box car loomed up, its open door a blacker\n square. I leaned against the sill, breathing hard, then reached inside\n for a grip with my good hand.", "I flipped the switch and gave the emergency call-letters Col. Ausar\n Kayle of Aerospace Intelligence had assigned to me a few weeks before.\n It was almost five minutes before the \"acknowledge\" came through from\n the Ganymede relay station, another ten minutes before Kayle's face\n swam into view. Even through the blur of the screen I could see the\n haggard look.\n\n\n \"Granthan!\" he burst out. \"Where are the others? What happened out\n there?\" I turned him down to a mutter.\n\n\n \"Hold on,\" I said. \"I'll tell you. Recorders going?\" I didn't wait for\n an answer—not with a fifteen-minute transmission lag. I plowed on:\n\n\n \"\nBelshazzar\nwas sabotaged. So was\nGilgamesh\n—I think. I got out. I\n lost a little skin, but the aid cabinet has the case in hand. Tell the\n Med people the drinks are on me.\"", "\"Hey, you birds are mixed up,\" I protested. \"I'm cleared all the way. I\n checked in with DEW—\"\n\n\n It was time to disappear. I blanked off all transmission, hit the\n controls, following my evasive pattern. And again I reached out—\n\n\n A radar man at a site in the Pacific, fifteen thousand miles away, rose\n from his chair, crossed the darkened room and threw a switch. The radar\n screens blanked off....\n\n\n For an hour I rode the long orbit down, fending off attack after\n attack. Then I was clear, skimming the surface of the ocean a few miles\n southeast of Key West. The boat hit hard. I felt the floor rise up,\n over, buffeting me against the restraining harness.\n\n\n I hauled at the release lever, felt a long moment of giddy\n disorientation as the escape capsule separated from the sinking\n lifeboat deep under the surface. Then my escape capsule was bobbing on\n the water.", "I picked my way across mushy ground to a pot-holed black-top road,\n started limping toward a few car lights visible half a mile away. It\n was already hot. The swamp air was like warmed-over subway fumes.\n Through the drugs, I could feel my pulse throbbing in my various\n wounds. I reached out and touched the driver's mind; he was thinking\n about shrimps, a fish-hook wound on his left thumb and a girl with\n black hair. \"Want a lift?\" he called.\n\n\n I thanked him and got in. He gave me a glance and I pinched off his\n budding twinge of curiosity. It was almost an effort now not to follow\n his thoughts. It was as though my mind, having learned the trick of\n communications with others, instinctively reached out toward them." ] ]
valid	51295	[ "Why was Erica unhappy when Dan was describing his six previous wives?", "Why did the doctors let Dan leave the hospital?", "How long was Dan in recovery in the Hospital?", "Why did Dan believe that he was a lepidpoptera specialist? ", "What did Dan think Erica's motivation was for coming onto him physically?", "Who was Wysocki?", "Why did the receptionist at the hospital laugh at the Dan?", "Why was Dr. Crander so proud of his work on the patient?", "How did the hospital positively identify the patient from the accident?", "Who did the patient that was identified as Dan Merrol end up actually being? " ]	[ [ "Because Dan remembered all of their names", "Because she did not want to be the seventh wife", "Because did not know that Dan was married before hand", "Because Dan had not been married to these women" ], [ "They did not, he left in secret", "They were following Wysocki's theorem ", "They ran out of space for patients because of the accident", "They believed he was fully recovered" ], [ "Two months", "Three months", "Two weeks", "One Week" ], [ "He received a partial brain transplant from a lepidopterist", "He was repeating what the doctors from the hospital told him", "He was mis-remembering a former career", "He collected butterflies as a hobby" ], [ "She was afraid of him", "She felt sorry for him", "She missed him ", "She like his new body" ], [ "The Dr. working on Dan's recovery ", "A neuroscience researcher who's work helped save Dan", "A non-existent scientist that Dan made up", "One of the organ donors" ], [ "His physical appearance was comical", "His request to see the Dr. without an appointment was absurd", "He clumsily brushed her on the shoulder.", "She was surprised to see that he had returned" ], [ "They were able to rehabilitate Dan much more quickly than expected. ", "No one had ever spent that extreme amount of time in a regeneration tank before", "They thought the patient would never walk or talk again. ", "Overcoming the complexities involved in matching donor body parts." ], [ "His location during the crash ", "Mass-cell radiographs", "Dental records", "Erica identified the patient" ], [ "An unknown survivor of the wreck", "Samuel Kaufman", "Doctor Crander", "Dan Merrol himself" ] ]	[ 4, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 4, 2, 4 ]	[ 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "The Man Who Was Six\nBy F. L. WALLACE\n\n\n Illustrated by ASHMAN\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction September 1954.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThere is nothing at all like having a sound\n \nmind in a sound body, but Dan Merrol had too\n \nmuch of one—and also too much of the other!\n\"Sorry, darling,\" said Erica. She yawned, added, \"I've tried—but I\n just can't believe you're my husband.\"\n\n\n He felt his own yawn slip off his face. \"What do you mean? What am I\n doing here then?\"", "\"At the moment, who knows? Anyway, I'm a well-known actor and a\n musician and a first-rate mathematician. I can't remember any equations\n offhand except C equals pi R squared. It has to do with the velocity\n of light. And the rest of the stuff will come back in time.\" It was\n easier now that he'd started and he went on rapidly. \"I'm thirty-three\n and after making a lot of money wrestling, married six girls, not\n necessarily in this order—Lucille, Louise, Carolyn, Katherine, Shirley\n and Miriam.\" That was quite a few marriages—maybe it was thoughtless\n of him to have mentioned them. No woman approves her predecessors.\n\n\n \"That's six. Where do I come in?\"\n\n\n \"Erica. You're the seventh and best.\" It was just too many, now that he\n thought of it, and it didn't seem right.", "But why hadn't he told her? Shock? Perhaps—but where had those other\n identities come from—lepidopterist, musician, actor, mathematician\n and wrestler? And where had he got memories of wives, slender and\n passionate, petite and wild, casual and complaisant, nagging and\n insecure?\n\n\n Erica he didn't remember at all, save from last night, and what was\n that due to?\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" he asked, deliberately toying with the last\n bite of breakfast. It gave him time to think.\n\n\n \"They said they'd identified everyone, living or dead, and I supposed\n they had. After seeing you, I can believe they made any number of\n similar mistakes. Dan Merrol may be alive under another name. It will\n be hard to do, but I must try to find him. Some of the accident victims\n went to other hospitals, you know, the ones located nearest where they\n fell.\"", "She blinked at him. \"A patient?\" She didn't need to look twice to see\n that he had been one. \"The director does occasionally see ex-patients.\"\n\n\n He watched her appreciatively as she went inside. The way she walked,\n you'd think she had a special audience. Presently the door opened and\n she came back, batting her eyes vigorously.\n\n\n \"You can go in now,\" she said huskily. Strange, her voice had dropped\n an octave in less than a minute. \"The old boy tried to pretend he was\n in the middle of a grave emergency.\"\n\n\n On his way in, he miscalculated, or she did, and he brushed against\n her. The touch was pleasant, but not thrilling. That reaction seemed\n reserved for Erica.", "He pressed the buzzer and an angular woman in her early forties\n answered. \"Miss Jerrems, the Dan Merrol file.\"\n\n\n Miss Jerrems flashed a glance of open adoration at the doctor and\n before she could reel it in, her gaze swept past Dan, hesitated and\n returned to him. Her mouth opened and closed like that of a nervous\n goldfish and she darted from the room.\nThey see me and flee as fast as they can caper\n, thought Merrol. It\n was not wholly true—Crander didn't seem much affected. But he was a\n doctor and used to it. Furthermore, he probably had room for only one\n emotion at the moment—relief at the return of his patient.", "Crander traced out five areas he could feel, but not see. \"Samuel\n Kaufman, musician—Breed Mannly, cowboy actor—George Elkins,\n lepidopterist—Duke DeCaesares, wrestler—and Ben Eisenberg,\n mathematician, went into the places I tapped.\"\n\n\n Dan raised his head. Some things were clearer. The memories were\n authentic, but they weren't his—nor did the other wives belong to him.\n It was no wonder Erica had cringed at their names.\n\n\n \"These donors were dead, but you can be thankful we had parts of their\n brains available.\" Crander delved into the file and came up with a\n sheet.", "Erica came close and leaned comfortingly against him, but he wasn't\n comforted. \"I waited till I was sure. I didn't want to upset you.\"\n\n\n He wasn't as sure as she seemed to be now. Somehow, maybe he was still\n Dan Merrol—but he wasn't going to insist on it—not after looking at\n himself. Not after trying to sort out those damned memories.\n\n\n She was too kind, pretending to be a little attracted to him, to the\n scrambled face, to the mismatched lumps and limbs and shapes that,\n stretching the term, currently formed his body. It was clear what he\n had to do.\nThe jacket he had worn last night didn't fit. Erica cut off the sleeve\n that hung far over his fingertips on one side and basted it to the\n sleeve that ended well above his wrist, on the other. The shoulders\n were narrow, but the material would stretch and after shrugging around\n in it, he managed to expand it so it was not too tight.", "She sighed and drew away. \"That was a lucky guess on your age.\"\nDid that mean he wasn't right on anything else? From the expression\n on her face, it did. \"You've got to expect me to be confused in the\n beginning. Can't you really tell who I am?\"\n\n\n \"I\ncan't\n! You don't have the same personality at all.\" She glanced at\n her arm. There was a bruise on it.\n\n\n \"Did I do that?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"You did, though I'm sure you didn't mean to. I don't think you\n realized how strong you were. Dan was always too gentle—he must have\n been afraid of me. And\nyou\nweren't at all.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe I was impetuous,\" he said. \"But it was such a long time.\"", "The trousers were also a problem—six inches short with no material\n to add on, but here again Erica proved equal to the task and, using\n the cuffs, contrived to lengthen them. Shoes were another difficulty.\n For one foot the size was not bad, but he could almost step out of the\n other shoe. When she wasn't looking, he wadded up a spare sock and\n stuffed it in the toe.\n\n\n He looked critically at himself in the mirror. Dressed, his total\n effect was better than he had dared hope it would be. True, he did look\ndifferent\n.\n\n\n Erica gazed at him with melancholy affection. \"I can't understand why\n they let you out wearing those clothes—or for that matter, why they\n let you out at all.\"\n\n\n He must have given some explanation as he'd stumbled through the door.\n What was it?", "\"That's new, isn't it?\" she said. \"I always thought they watched the\n patient carefully.\"\n\n\n It ought to be new—he'd just invented it. \"You know how rapidly\n medical practices change,\" he said quickly. \"Anyway, when they\n examined me last night, I was much stronger than they expected—so,\n when I wanted to come home, they let me. It's their latest belief that\n initiative is more important than perfect health.\"\n\n\n \"Strange,\" she muttered. \"But you are very strong.\" She looked at him\n and blushed. \"Initiative, certainly you have. Dan could use some,\n wherever he is.\"\n\n\n Dan again, whether it was himself or another person. For a brief time,\n as she listened to him, he'd had the silly idea that.... But it could\n never happen to him. He'd better leave now while she was distracted and\n bewildered and believed what he was saying. \"I've got to go. I'm due\n back,\" he told her.", "\"Glad to see you,\" said Doctor Crander, behind the desk. He was nervous\n and harassed for so early in the morning. \"The receptionist didn't give\n me your name. For some reason she seems upset.\"\n\n\n She did at that, he thought—probably bewildered by his appearance. The\n hospital didn't seem to have a calming influence on either her or the\n doctor. \"That's why I came here. I'm not sure who I am. I thought I was\n Dan Merrol.\"\n\n\n Doctor Crander tried to fight his way through the desk. Being a little\n wider and solider, though not by much, the desk won. He contented\n himself by wiping his forehead. \"Our missing patient,\" he said, sighing\n with vast relief. \"For a while I had visions of....\" He then decided\n that visions were nothing a medical man should place much faith in.\n\n\n \"Then I\nam\nDan Merrol?\"", "\"Almost three months. But most of that time you were floating in\n gelatin in the regrowth tank, unconscious until yesterday.\" She\n leaned forward and caressed his cheek. \"Everything seems wrong, no\n matter how hard I try to believe otherwise. You don't have the same\n personality—you can't remember anything.\"\n\n\n \"And I have one brown eye and one green.\"\n\n\n \"It's not just that, darling. Go over to the mirror.\"\n\n\n He had been seriously injured and he was still weak from the shock. He\n got up and walked unsteadily to the mirror. \"Now what?\"\n\n\n \"Stand beside it. Do you see the line?\" Erica pointed to the glass.\n\n\n He did—it was a mark level with his chin. \"What does it mean?\"\n\n\n \"That should be the top of Dan Merrol's head,\" she said softly.", "It was then he'd grabbed her, to keep her from talking to the hospital.\n He'd been unnecessarily rough, but that could be ascribed to lack of\n coordination. She could have been terrified, might have resisted—but\n she hadn't. At that time, she must have half-believed he was Dan\n Merrol, still dangerously near the edges of post-regrowth shock.\nShe was looking at him, waiting for that explanation. He shook his\n mind frantically and the words came out. \"Self-therapy,\" he said\n briskly. \"The patient alone understands what he needs.\" She started to\n interrupt, but he shook his head and went on blithely. \"That's the\n first corollary of the theorem. The second is that there are critical\n times in the recovery of the patient. At such times, with the least\n possible supervision, he should be encouraged to make his own decisions\n and carry them through by himself, even though running a slight risk of\n physical complications.\"", "\"Your other eye's green,\" she told him.\n\n\n \"Of course—a replacement. I told you it was a serious accident. They\n had to use whatever was handy.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose so—but shouldn't they have tried to stick to the original\n color scheme?\"\n\n\n \"It's a little thing,\" he said. \"I'm lucky to be alive.\" He took her\n hand. \"I believe I can convince you I'm\nme\n.\"\n\n\n \"I wish you could.\" Her voice was low and sad and he couldn't guess why.\n\n\n \"My name is Dan Merrol.\"\n\n\n \"They told you that at the hospital.\"\n\n\n They hadn't—he'd read it on the chart. But he had been alone in the\n room and the name had to be his, and anyway he\nfelt\nlike Dan Merrol.\n \"Your name is Erica.\"", "Miss Jerrems came back, wheeling a large cart. Dan was surprised at the\n mass of records. Crander noticed his expression and smiled. \"You're\n our prize case, Merrol. I've never heard of anyone else surviving\n such extensive surgery. Naturally, we have a step-by-step account of\n everything we did.\"\n\n\n He turned to the woman. \"You may leave, Miss Jerrems.\" She went, but\n the adoration she had showed so openly for her employer seemed to have\n curdled in the last few moments.\n\n\n Crander dug into the files and rooted out photographs. \"Here are\n pictures of the wreckage in which you were found—notice that you were\n strapped in your seat—as you were received into the hospital—at\n various stages in surgery and finally, some taken from the files of the\n company for which you worked.\"\n\n\n Merrol winced. The photographic sequence was incontrovertible. He had\n been a handsome fellow.", "Even if he was sure, he didn't know whether he could tell her—and he\n wasn't sure any longer, although he had been. On the physical side of\n marriage, how could he ask her to share a body she'd have to laugh at?\n Later, he might tell her, if there was to be a 'later.' He pushed back\n his chair and looked at her uncertainly.\n\n\n \"Let me call a 'copter,\" she said. \"I hate to see you go.\"\n\n\n \"Wysocki's theorem,\" he told her. \"The patient has decided to walk.\"\n He weaved toward the door and twisted the knob. He turned in time to\n catch her in his arms.\n\n\n \"I know this is wrong,\" she said, pressing against him.", "\"Mass-cell radiographs. One was loaned by your employer. The other was\n taken just after your last operation. Both were corrected according\n to standard methods. One cell won't do it, ten yield an uncertain\n identity—but as few as a hundred cells from any part of the original\n body, excepting the blood, constitute proof more positive than\n fingerprints before the surgical exchange of limbs. Don't ask me\n why—no one knows. But it is true that cells differ from one body to\n the next, and this test detects the difference.\"\nThe mass-cell radiographs did seem identical and Dr. Crander seemed\n certain. Taken altogether, the evidence was overwhelming. There had\n been no mistake—he was Dan Merrol, though it was not difficult to\n understand why Erica couldn't believe he was her husband.", "\"They told you that too.\"\n\n\n She was wrong again, but it was probably wiser not to tell her how he\n knew. No one had said anything to him in the hospital. He hadn't given\n them a chance. He had awakened in a room and hadn't wanted to be alone.\n He'd got up and read the chart and searched dizzily through the closet.\n Clothes were hanging there and he'd put them on and muttered her name\n to himself. He'd sat down to gain strength and after a while he'd\n walked out and no one had stopped him.\n\n\n It was night when he left the hospital and the next thing he remembered\n was her face as he looked through the door. Her name hadn't been on the\n chart nor her address and yet he had found her. That proved something,\n didn't it? \"How could I forget you?\" he demanded.\n\n\n \"You may have known someone else with that name. When were we married?\"", "He felt the stubble on his face with his left hand—he\nthought\nit\n was his left hand—at least it was on that side. The emerging whiskers\n didn't feel like anything he remembered. Wait a minute—was it\nhis\nmemory? He leaned against the wall and nearly fell down. The length of\n that arm was unexpectedly different.\n\n\n He hobbled over to a chair and sat down, staring miserably at Erica as\n she began dressing. There was quite a contrast between the loveliness\n of her body and the circus comedy of his own.\n\n\n \"Difficult, isn't it?\" she said, tugging her bra together and closing\n the last snap, which took considerable effort. She was a small girl\n generally, though not around the chest.\n\n\n It was difficult and in addition to his physique there were the\n memories he couldn't account for. Come to think of it, he must have\n been awfully busy to have so many careers in such a short time—\nand\nall those wives too.", "Merrol turned away miserably. There were other things, but he had\n learned the essentials. He was Dan Merrol and there was nothing they\n could do for him until it was too late. How long could he expect Erica\n to wait?\n\n\n The doctor hadn't finished the medical session. \"Replacement of body\n parts is easy, after all. The big trouble came when we went into the\n brain.\"\n\n\n \"Brain?\" Dan was startled.\n\n\n \"How hard do you think your skull is?\" Crander came closer. \"Bend your\n head.\"\n\n\n Merrol obeyed and could feel the doctor's forefinger slice across his\n scalp in a mock operation. \"This sector was crushed.\" Roughly half his\n brain, it appeared. \"That's why so many memories were gone—not just\n from shock. In addition, other sectors were damaged and had to be\n replaced.\"" ], [ "\"That's new, isn't it?\" she said. \"I always thought they watched the\n patient carefully.\"\n\n\n It ought to be new—he'd just invented it. \"You know how rapidly\n medical practices change,\" he said quickly. \"Anyway, when they\n examined me last night, I was much stronger than they expected—so,\n when I wanted to come home, they let me. It's their latest belief that\n initiative is more important than perfect health.\"\n\n\n \"Strange,\" she muttered. \"But you are very strong.\" She looked at him\n and blushed. \"Initiative, certainly you have. Dan could use some,\n wherever he is.\"\n\n\n Dan again, whether it was himself or another person. For a brief time,\n as she listened to him, he'd had the silly idea that.... But it could\n never happen to him. He'd better leave now while she was distracted and\n bewildered and believed what he was saying. \"I've got to go. I'm due\n back,\" he told her.", "It was then he'd grabbed her, to keep her from talking to the hospital.\n He'd been unnecessarily rough, but that could be ascribed to lack of\n coordination. She could have been terrified, might have resisted—but\n she hadn't. At that time, she must have half-believed he was Dan\n Merrol, still dangerously near the edges of post-regrowth shock.\nShe was looking at him, waiting for that explanation. He shook his\n mind frantically and the words came out. \"Self-therapy,\" he said\n briskly. \"The patient alone understands what he needs.\" She started to\n interrupt, but he shook his head and went on blithely. \"That's the\n first corollary of the theorem. The second is that there are critical\n times in the recovery of the patient. At such times, with the least\n possible supervision, he should be encouraged to make his own decisions\n and carry them through by himself, even though running a slight risk of\n physical complications.\"", "The doctor came cautiously around the desk this time. \"Of course. I\n didn't expect that you'd come walking in my office—that's why I didn't\n recognize you immediately.\" He exhaled peevishly. \"Where did you go?\n We've been searching for you everywhere.\"\n\n\n It seemed wiser to Dan not to tell him everything. \"It was stuffy\n inside. I went out for a stroll before the nurse came in.\"\n\n\n Crander frowned, his nervousness rapidly disappearing. \"Then it was\n about an hour ago. We didn't think you could walk at all so soon, or we\n would have kept someone on duty through the night.\"\nThey had underestimated him, but he didn't mind. Of course, he didn't\n know how a patient from the regrowth tanks was supposed to act.\n The doctor took his pulse. \"Seems fine,\" he said, surprised. \"Sit\n down—please sit down.\"", "He pressed the buzzer and an angular woman in her early forties\n answered. \"Miss Jerrems, the Dan Merrol file.\"\n\n\n Miss Jerrems flashed a glance of open adoration at the doctor and\n before she could reel it in, her gaze swept past Dan, hesitated and\n returned to him. Her mouth opened and closed like that of a nervous\n goldfish and she darted from the room.\nThey see me and flee as fast as they can caper\n, thought Merrol. It\n was not wholly true—Crander didn't seem much affected. But he was a\n doctor and used to it. Furthermore, he probably had room for only one\n emotion at the moment—relief at the return of his patient.", "Miss Jerrems came back, wheeling a large cart. Dan was surprised at the\n mass of records. Crander noticed his expression and smiled. \"You're\n our prize case, Merrol. I've never heard of anyone else surviving\n such extensive surgery. Naturally, we have a step-by-step account of\n everything we did.\"\n\n\n He turned to the woman. \"You may leave, Miss Jerrems.\" She went, but\n the adoration she had showed so openly for her employer seemed to have\n curdled in the last few moments.\n\n\n Crander dug into the files and rooted out photographs. \"Here are\n pictures of the wreckage in which you were found—notice that you were\n strapped in your seat—as you were received into the hospital—at\n various stages in surgery and finally, some taken from the files of the\n company for which you worked.\"\n\n\n Merrol winced. The photographic sequence was incontrovertible. He had\n been a handsome fellow.", "\"Glad to see you,\" said Doctor Crander, behind the desk. He was nervous\n and harassed for so early in the morning. \"The receptionist didn't give\n me your name. For some reason she seems upset.\"\n\n\n She did at that, he thought—probably bewildered by his appearance. The\n hospital didn't seem to have a calming influence on either her or the\n doctor. \"That's why I came here. I'm not sure who I am. I thought I was\n Dan Merrol.\"\n\n\n Doctor Crander tried to fight his way through the desk. Being a little\n wider and solider, though not by much, the desk won. He contented\n himself by wiping his forehead. \"Our missing patient,\" he said, sighing\n with vast relief. \"For a while I had visions of....\" He then decided\n that visions were nothing a medical man should place much faith in.\n\n\n \"Then I\nam\nDan Merrol?\"", "\"You did a fine job,\" he said. Recalling the picture of the wreckage,\n he knew they had. \"But couldn't you have done just a little better?\"\nCrander's eyebrows bounced up. \"We're amazed at how well we have\n done. You can search case histories and find nothing comparable.\" His\n eyebrows dropped back into place. \"Of course, if you have a specific\n complaint....\"\n\n\n \"Nothing specific. But look at this hand....\"\n\n\n The doctor seized it. \"Beautiful, isn't it?\"\n\n\n \"Perhaps—taken by itself.\" Dan rolled up his sleeve. \"See how it joins\n the forearm.\"\n\n\n Crander waggled it gravely. \"It coordinates perfectly. I've observed\n you have complete control over it. The doctor's eye, my boy. The\n doctor's diagnostic eye.\"", "Without waiting for him to comply, Crander pushed him into a chair and\n began hauling out a variety of instruments with which he poked about\n his bewildered patient.\n\n\n Finally Crander seemed satisfied. \"Excellent,\" he said. \"If I didn't\n know better, I'd say you were almost fully recovered. A week ago, we\n considered removing you from the regrowth tank. Our decision to leave\n you there an extra week has paid off very, very nicely.\"\n\n\n Merrol wasn't as pleased as the doctor appeared to be. \"Granted you can\n identify me as the person who came out of regrowth—but does that mean\n I'm Dan Merrol? Could there be a mistake?\"\n\n\n Crander eyed him clinically. \"We don't ordinarily do this—but it is\n evident that with you peace of mind is more important than procedure.\n And you look well enough to stand the physical strain.\"", "He slowed down—he didn't want to attract attention. It was difficult\n but he learned to walk at a pedestrian pace. However poorly they'd\n matched his legs, they'd given him good ones.\n\n\n Last night, on an impulse, he'd left the hospital and now he had to go\n back.\nHad\nto? Of course. There were too many uncertainties still to\n be settled. He glanced around. It was still very early in the morning\n and normal traffic was just beginning. Maybe they hadn't missed him\n yet, though it was unlikely.\n\n\n He seemed to know the route well enough and covered the distance in a\n brief time. He turned in at the building and, scanning the directory,\n went at once to the proper floor and stopped at the desk.\nThe receptionist was busy with the drawer of the desk. \"Can I help\n you?\" she asked, continuing to peer down.\n\n\n \"The director—Doctor Crander. I don't have an appointment.\"", "Even if he was sure, he didn't know whether he could tell her—and he\n wasn't sure any longer, although he had been. On the physical side of\n marriage, how could he ask her to share a body she'd have to laugh at?\n Later, he might tell her, if there was to be a 'later.' He pushed back\n his chair and looked at her uncertainly.\n\n\n \"Let me call a 'copter,\" she said. \"I hate to see you go.\"\n\n\n \"Wysocki's theorem,\" he told her. \"The patient has decided to walk.\"\n He weaved toward the door and twisted the knob. He turned in time to\n catch her in his arms.\n\n\n \"I know this is wrong,\" she said, pressing against him.", "Merrol turned away miserably. There were other things, but he had\n learned the essentials. He was Dan Merrol and there was nothing they\n could do for him until it was too late. How long could he expect Erica\n to wait?\n\n\n The doctor hadn't finished the medical session. \"Replacement of body\n parts is easy, after all. The big trouble came when we went into the\n brain.\"\n\n\n \"Brain?\" Dan was startled.\n\n\n \"How hard do you think your skull is?\" Crander came closer. \"Bend your\n head.\"\n\n\n Merrol obeyed and could feel the doctor's forefinger slice across his\n scalp in a mock operation. \"This sector was crushed.\" Roughly half his\n brain, it appeared. \"That's why so many memories were gone—not just\n from shock. In addition, other sectors were damaged and had to be\n replaced.\"", "\"Can't you remember?\" Her laughter tinkled as she pushed him away and\n sat up. \"They said you were Dan Merrol at the hospital, but they must\n have been wrong.\"\n\n\n \"Hospitals don't make that kind of mistake,\" he said with a certainty\n he didn't altogether feel.\n\n\n \"But\nI\nshould know, shouldn't I?\"\n\n\n \"Of course, but....\" He did some verbal backstepping. \"It was a\n bad accident. You've got to expect that I won't be quite the same\n at first.\" He sat up. \"\nLook\nat me. Can't you tell who I am?\" She\n returned his gaze, then swayed toward him. He decided that she was\n highly attractive—but surely he ought to have known that long ago.\nWith a visible effort she leaned away from him. \"Your left eye does\n look familiar,\" she said cautiously. \"The brown one, I mean.\"\n\n\n \"The\nbrown\none?\"", "She blinked at him. \"A patient?\" She didn't need to look twice to see\n that he had been one. \"The director does occasionally see ex-patients.\"\n\n\n He watched her appreciatively as she went inside. The way she walked,\n you'd think she had a special audience. Presently the door opened and\n she came back, batting her eyes vigorously.\n\n\n \"You can go in now,\" she said huskily. Strange, her voice had dropped\n an octave in less than a minute. \"The old boy tried to pretend he was\n in the middle of a grave emergency.\"\n\n\n On his way in, he miscalculated, or she did, and he brushed against\n her. The touch was pleasant, but not thrilling. That reaction seemed\n reserved for Erica.", "Maybe he should have stayed in the hospital. It would have been easier\n to convince her there. But he'd been frantic to get home. \"It was quite\n a smashup,\" he said. \"You'll have to expect some lapses.\"\n\n\n \"I'm making allowances. But can't you tell me something about myself?\"\n\n\n He thought—and couldn't. He wasn't doing so well. \"Another lapse,\"\n he said gloomily and then brightened. \"But I can tell you lots about\n myself. For instance, I'm a specialist in lepidoptera.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\"", "But why hadn't he told her? Shock? Perhaps—but where had those other\n identities come from—lepidopterist, musician, actor, mathematician\n and wrestler? And where had he got memories of wives, slender and\n passionate, petite and wild, casual and complaisant, nagging and\n insecure?\n\n\n Erica he didn't remember at all, save from last night, and what was\n that due to?\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" he asked, deliberately toying with the last\n bite of breakfast. It gave him time to think.\n\n\n \"They said they'd identified everyone, living or dead, and I supposed\n they had. After seeing you, I can believe they made any number of\n similar mistakes. Dan Merrol may be alive under another name. It will\n be hard to do, but I must try to find him. Some of the accident victims\n went to other hospitals, you know, the ones located nearest where they\n fell.\"", "The trousers were also a problem—six inches short with no material\n to add on, but here again Erica proved equal to the task and, using\n the cuffs, contrived to lengthen them. Shoes were another difficulty.\n For one foot the size was not bad, but he could almost step out of the\n other shoe. When she wasn't looking, he wadded up a spare sock and\n stuffed it in the toe.\n\n\n He looked critically at himself in the mirror. Dressed, his total\n effect was better than he had dared hope it would be. True, he did look\ndifferent\n.\n\n\n Erica gazed at him with melancholy affection. \"I can't understand why\n they let you out wearing those clothes—or for that matter, why they\n let you out at all.\"\n\n\n He must have given some explanation as he'd stumbled through the door.\n What was it?", "\"They told you that too.\"\n\n\n She was wrong again, but it was probably wiser not to tell her how he\n knew. No one had said anything to him in the hospital. He hadn't given\n them a chance. He had awakened in a room and hadn't wanted to be alone.\n He'd got up and read the chart and searched dizzily through the closet.\n Clothes were hanging there and he'd put them on and muttered her name\n to himself. He'd sat down to gain strength and after a while he'd\n walked out and no one had stopped him.\n\n\n It was night when he left the hospital and the next thing he remembered\n was her face as he looked through the door. Her name hadn't been on the\n chart nor her address and yet he had found her. That proved something,\n didn't it? \"How could I forget you?\" he demanded.\n\n\n \"You may have known someone else with that name. When were we married?\"", "\"\nWhose\ntheorem?\"\n\n\n \"Wysocki's. I started to call the hospital and you wouldn't let me,\n because of the theorem. You said you'd explain it this morning.\" She\n glanced at the bruise on her arm.", "\"Mass-cell radiographs. One was loaned by your employer. The other was\n taken just after your last operation. Both were corrected according\n to standard methods. One cell won't do it, ten yield an uncertain\n identity—but as few as a hundred cells from any part of the original\n body, excepting the blood, constitute proof more positive than\n fingerprints before the surgical exchange of limbs. Don't ask me\n why—no one knows. But it is true that cells differ from one body to\n the next, and this test detects the difference.\"\nThe mass-cell radiographs did seem identical and Dr. Crander seemed\n certain. Taken altogether, the evidence was overwhelming. There had\n been no mistake—he was Dan Merrol, though it was not difficult to\n understand why Erica couldn't believe he was her husband.", "Erica came close and leaned comfortingly against him, but he wasn't\n comforted. \"I waited till I was sure. I didn't want to upset you.\"\n\n\n He wasn't as sure as she seemed to be now. Somehow, maybe he was still\n Dan Merrol—but he wasn't going to insist on it—not after looking at\n himself. Not after trying to sort out those damned memories.\n\n\n She was too kind, pretending to be a little attracted to him, to the\n scrambled face, to the mismatched lumps and limbs and shapes that,\n stretching the term, currently formed his body. It was clear what he\n had to do.\nThe jacket he had worn last night didn't fit. Erica cut off the sleeve\n that hung far over his fingertips on one side and basted it to the\n sleeve that ended well above his wrist, on the other. The shoulders\n were narrow, but the material would stretch and after shrugging around\n in it, he managed to expand it so it was not too tight." ], [ "It was then he'd grabbed her, to keep her from talking to the hospital.\n He'd been unnecessarily rough, but that could be ascribed to lack of\n coordination. She could have been terrified, might have resisted—but\n she hadn't. At that time, she must have half-believed he was Dan\n Merrol, still dangerously near the edges of post-regrowth shock.\nShe was looking at him, waiting for that explanation. He shook his\n mind frantically and the words came out. \"Self-therapy,\" he said\n briskly. \"The patient alone understands what he needs.\" She started to\n interrupt, but he shook his head and went on blithely. \"That's the\n first corollary of the theorem. The second is that there are critical\n times in the recovery of the patient. At such times, with the least\n possible supervision, he should be encouraged to make his own decisions\n and carry them through by himself, even though running a slight risk of\n physical complications.\"", "\"That's new, isn't it?\" she said. \"I always thought they watched the\n patient carefully.\"\n\n\n It ought to be new—he'd just invented it. \"You know how rapidly\n medical practices change,\" he said quickly. \"Anyway, when they\n examined me last night, I was much stronger than they expected—so,\n when I wanted to come home, they let me. It's their latest belief that\n initiative is more important than perfect health.\"\n\n\n \"Strange,\" she muttered. \"But you are very strong.\" She looked at him\n and blushed. \"Initiative, certainly you have. Dan could use some,\n wherever he is.\"\n\n\n Dan again, whether it was himself or another person. For a brief time,\n as she listened to him, he'd had the silly idea that.... But it could\n never happen to him. He'd better leave now while she was distracted and\n bewildered and believed what he was saying. \"I've got to go. I'm due\n back,\" he told her.", "The doctor came cautiously around the desk this time. \"Of course. I\n didn't expect that you'd come walking in my office—that's why I didn't\n recognize you immediately.\" He exhaled peevishly. \"Where did you go?\n We've been searching for you everywhere.\"\n\n\n It seemed wiser to Dan not to tell him everything. \"It was stuffy\n inside. I went out for a stroll before the nurse came in.\"\n\n\n Crander frowned, his nervousness rapidly disappearing. \"Then it was\n about an hour ago. We didn't think you could walk at all so soon, or we\n would have kept someone on duty through the night.\"\nThey had underestimated him, but he didn't mind. Of course, he didn't\n know how a patient from the regrowth tanks was supposed to act.\n The doctor took his pulse. \"Seems fine,\" he said, surprised. \"Sit\n down—please sit down.\"", "Miss Jerrems came back, wheeling a large cart. Dan was surprised at the\n mass of records. Crander noticed his expression and smiled. \"You're\n our prize case, Merrol. I've never heard of anyone else surviving\n such extensive surgery. Naturally, we have a step-by-step account of\n everything we did.\"\n\n\n He turned to the woman. \"You may leave, Miss Jerrems.\" She went, but\n the adoration she had showed so openly for her employer seemed to have\n curdled in the last few moments.\n\n\n Crander dug into the files and rooted out photographs. \"Here are\n pictures of the wreckage in which you were found—notice that you were\n strapped in your seat—as you were received into the hospital—at\n various stages in surgery and finally, some taken from the files of the\n company for which you worked.\"\n\n\n Merrol winced. The photographic sequence was incontrovertible. He had\n been a handsome fellow.", "\"Glad to see you,\" said Doctor Crander, behind the desk. He was nervous\n and harassed for so early in the morning. \"The receptionist didn't give\n me your name. For some reason she seems upset.\"\n\n\n She did at that, he thought—probably bewildered by his appearance. The\n hospital didn't seem to have a calming influence on either her or the\n doctor. \"That's why I came here. I'm not sure who I am. I thought I was\n Dan Merrol.\"\n\n\n Doctor Crander tried to fight his way through the desk. Being a little\n wider and solider, though not by much, the desk won. He contented\n himself by wiping his forehead. \"Our missing patient,\" he said, sighing\n with vast relief. \"For a while I had visions of....\" He then decided\n that visions were nothing a medical man should place much faith in.\n\n\n \"Then I\nam\nDan Merrol?\"", "He pressed the buzzer and an angular woman in her early forties\n answered. \"Miss Jerrems, the Dan Merrol file.\"\n\n\n Miss Jerrems flashed a glance of open adoration at the doctor and\n before she could reel it in, her gaze swept past Dan, hesitated and\n returned to him. Her mouth opened and closed like that of a nervous\n goldfish and she darted from the room.\nThey see me and flee as fast as they can caper\n, thought Merrol. It\n was not wholly true—Crander didn't seem much affected. But he was a\n doctor and used to it. Furthermore, he probably had room for only one\n emotion at the moment—relief at the return of his patient.", "Without waiting for him to comply, Crander pushed him into a chair and\n began hauling out a variety of instruments with which he poked about\n his bewildered patient.\n\n\n Finally Crander seemed satisfied. \"Excellent,\" he said. \"If I didn't\n know better, I'd say you were almost fully recovered. A week ago, we\n considered removing you from the regrowth tank. Our decision to leave\n you there an extra week has paid off very, very nicely.\"\n\n\n Merrol wasn't as pleased as the doctor appeared to be. \"Granted you can\n identify me as the person who came out of regrowth—but does that mean\n I'm Dan Merrol? Could there be a mistake?\"\n\n\n Crander eyed him clinically. \"We don't ordinarily do this—but it is\n evident that with you peace of mind is more important than procedure.\n And you look well enough to stand the physical strain.\"", "\"You did a fine job,\" he said. Recalling the picture of the wreckage,\n he knew they had. \"But couldn't you have done just a little better?\"\nCrander's eyebrows bounced up. \"We're amazed at how well we have\n done. You can search case histories and find nothing comparable.\" His\n eyebrows dropped back into place. \"Of course, if you have a specific\n complaint....\"\n\n\n \"Nothing specific. But look at this hand....\"\n\n\n The doctor seized it. \"Beautiful, isn't it?\"\n\n\n \"Perhaps—taken by itself.\" Dan rolled up his sleeve. \"See how it joins\n the forearm.\"\n\n\n Crander waggled it gravely. \"It coordinates perfectly. I've observed\n you have complete control over it. The doctor's eye, my boy. The\n doctor's diagnostic eye.\"", "Merrol turned away miserably. There were other things, but he had\n learned the essentials. He was Dan Merrol and there was nothing they\n could do for him until it was too late. How long could he expect Erica\n to wait?\n\n\n The doctor hadn't finished the medical session. \"Replacement of body\n parts is easy, after all. The big trouble came when we went into the\n brain.\"\n\n\n \"Brain?\" Dan was startled.\n\n\n \"How hard do you think your skull is?\" Crander came closer. \"Bend your\n head.\"\n\n\n Merrol obeyed and could feel the doctor's forefinger slice across his\n scalp in a mock operation. \"This sector was crushed.\" Roughly half his\n brain, it appeared. \"That's why so many memories were gone—not just\n from shock. In addition, other sectors were damaged and had to be\n replaced.\"", "\"Almost three months. But most of that time you were floating in\n gelatin in the regrowth tank, unconscious until yesterday.\" She\n leaned forward and caressed his cheek. \"Everything seems wrong, no\n matter how hard I try to believe otherwise. You don't have the same\n personality—you can't remember anything.\"\n\n\n \"And I have one brown eye and one green.\"\n\n\n \"It's not just that, darling. Go over to the mirror.\"\n\n\n He had been seriously injured and he was still weak from the shock. He\n got up and walked unsteadily to the mirror. \"Now what?\"\n\n\n \"Stand beside it. Do you see the line?\" Erica pointed to the glass.\n\n\n He did—it was a mark level with his chin. \"What does it mean?\"\n\n\n \"That should be the top of Dan Merrol's head,\" she said softly.", "She sighed and drew away. \"That was a lucky guess on your age.\"\nDid that mean he wasn't right on anything else? From the expression\n on her face, it did. \"You've got to expect me to be confused in the\n beginning. Can't you really tell who I am?\"\n\n\n \"I\ncan't\n! You don't have the same personality at all.\" She glanced at\n her arm. There was a bruise on it.\n\n\n \"Did I do that?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"You did, though I'm sure you didn't mean to. I don't think you\n realized how strong you were. Dan was always too gentle—he must have\n been afraid of me. And\nyou\nweren't at all.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe I was impetuous,\" he said. \"But it was such a long time.\"", "Maybe he should have stayed in the hospital. It would have been easier\n to convince her there. But he'd been frantic to get home. \"It was quite\n a smashup,\" he said. \"You'll have to expect some lapses.\"\n\n\n \"I'm making allowances. But can't you tell me something about myself?\"\n\n\n He thought—and couldn't. He wasn't doing so well. \"Another lapse,\"\n he said gloomily and then brightened. \"But I can tell you lots about\n myself. For instance, I'm a specialist in lepidoptera.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\"", "\"Can't you remember?\" Her laughter tinkled as she pushed him away and\n sat up. \"They said you were Dan Merrol at the hospital, but they must\n have been wrong.\"\n\n\n \"Hospitals don't make that kind of mistake,\" he said with a certainty\n he didn't altogether feel.\n\n\n \"But\nI\nshould know, shouldn't I?\"\n\n\n \"Of course, but....\" He did some verbal backstepping. \"It was a\n bad accident. You've got to expect that I won't be quite the same\n at first.\" He sat up. \"\nLook\nat me. Can't you tell who I am?\" She\n returned his gaze, then swayed toward him. He decided that she was\n highly attractive—but surely he ought to have known that long ago.\nWith a visible effort she leaned away from him. \"Your left eye does\n look familiar,\" she said cautiously. \"The brown one, I mean.\"\n\n\n \"The\nbrown\none?\"", "But why hadn't he told her? Shock? Perhaps—but where had those other\n identities come from—lepidopterist, musician, actor, mathematician\n and wrestler? And where had he got memories of wives, slender and\n passionate, petite and wild, casual and complaisant, nagging and\n insecure?\n\n\n Erica he didn't remember at all, save from last night, and what was\n that due to?\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" he asked, deliberately toying with the last\n bite of breakfast. It gave him time to think.\n\n\n \"They said they'd identified everyone, living or dead, and I supposed\n they had. After seeing you, I can believe they made any number of\n similar mistakes. Dan Merrol may be alive under another name. It will\n be hard to do, but I must try to find him. Some of the accident victims\n went to other hospitals, you know, the ones located nearest where they\n fell.\"", "Erica came close and leaned comfortingly against him, but he wasn't\n comforted. \"I waited till I was sure. I didn't want to upset you.\"\n\n\n He wasn't as sure as she seemed to be now. Somehow, maybe he was still\n Dan Merrol—but he wasn't going to insist on it—not after looking at\n himself. Not after trying to sort out those damned memories.\n\n\n She was too kind, pretending to be a little attracted to him, to the\n scrambled face, to the mismatched lumps and limbs and shapes that,\n stretching the term, currently formed his body. It was clear what he\n had to do.\nThe jacket he had worn last night didn't fit. Erica cut off the sleeve\n that hung far over his fingertips on one side and basted it to the\n sleeve that ended well above his wrist, on the other. The shoulders\n were narrow, but the material would stretch and after shrugging around\n in it, he managed to expand it so it was not too tight.", "\"They told you that too.\"\n\n\n She was wrong again, but it was probably wiser not to tell her how he\n knew. No one had said anything to him in the hospital. He hadn't given\n them a chance. He had awakened in a room and hadn't wanted to be alone.\n He'd got up and read the chart and searched dizzily through the closet.\n Clothes were hanging there and he'd put them on and muttered her name\n to himself. He'd sat down to gain strength and after a while he'd\n walked out and no one had stopped him.\n\n\n It was night when he left the hospital and the next thing he remembered\n was her face as he looked through the door. Her name hadn't been on the\n chart nor her address and yet he had found her. That proved something,\n didn't it? \"How could I forget you?\" he demanded.\n\n\n \"You may have known someone else with that name. When were we married?\"", "He slowed down—he didn't want to attract attention. It was difficult\n but he learned to walk at a pedestrian pace. However poorly they'd\n matched his legs, they'd given him good ones.\n\n\n Last night, on an impulse, he'd left the hospital and now he had to go\n back.\nHad\nto? Of course. There were too many uncertainties still to\n be settled. He glanced around. It was still very early in the morning\n and normal traffic was just beginning. Maybe they hadn't missed him\n yet, though it was unlikely.\n\n\n He seemed to know the route well enough and covered the distance in a\n brief time. He turned in at the building and, scanning the directory,\n went at once to the proper floor and stopped at the desk.\nThe receptionist was busy with the drawer of the desk. \"Can I help\n you?\" she asked, continuing to peer down.\n\n\n \"The director—Doctor Crander. I don't have an appointment.\"", "\"There were many others injured at the same time, you know—and you\n were one of the last to be extricated from the ship. Normally, when\n we have to replace a whole arm, we do so at the shoulder for obvious\n reasons. But the previously treated victims had depleted our supplies.\n Some needed only a hand and we gave them just that, others a hand and\n a forearm, and so on. When we got to you, we had to use leftovers or\n permit you to die—there wasn't time to send to other hospitals. In\n fact there wasn't any time at all—we actually thought you were dead,\n but soon found we were wrong.\"\n\n\n Crander stared at a crack in the ceiling. \"Further recovery will take\n other operations and your nervous system isn't up to it.\" He shook his\n head. \"Five years from now, we can help you, not before.\"", "Even if he was sure, he didn't know whether he could tell her—and he\n wasn't sure any longer, although he had been. On the physical side of\n marriage, how could he ask her to share a body she'd have to laugh at?\n Later, he might tell her, if there was to be a 'later.' He pushed back\n his chair and looked at her uncertainly.\n\n\n \"Let me call a 'copter,\" she said. \"I hate to see you go.\"\n\n\n \"Wysocki's theorem,\" he told her. \"The patient has decided to walk.\"\n He weaved toward the door and twisted the knob. He turned in time to\n catch her in his arms.\n\n\n \"I know this is wrong,\" she said, pressing against him.", "It might be wrong, but it was very pleasant, though he did guess her\n motives. She was a warmhearted girl and couldn't help pitying him.\n \"Don't be so damned considerate,\" he mumbled.\n\n\n \"You'll have to put me down,\" she said, averting her eyes.\n \"Otherwise.... You're an intolerable funny man.\"\n\n\n He knew it—he could see himself in the mirror. He was something to\n laugh at when anyone got tired of pretending sympathy. He put her down\n and stumbled out. He thought he could hear the bed creak as she threw\n herself on it.\nII\n\n\n Once he got started, walking wasn't hard. His left side swung at a\n different rate from his right, but that was due to the variation in\n the length of his thighs and lower legs, and the two rhythms could be\n reconciled. He swept along, gaining control of his muscles. He became\n aware that he was whizzing past everyone." ], [ "Maybe he should have stayed in the hospital. It would have been easier\n to convince her there. But he'd been frantic to get home. \"It was quite\n a smashup,\" he said. \"You'll have to expect some lapses.\"\n\n\n \"I'm making allowances. But can't you tell me something about myself?\"\n\n\n He thought—and couldn't. He wasn't doing so well. \"Another lapse,\"\n he said gloomily and then brightened. \"But I can tell you lots about\n myself. For instance, I'm a specialist in lepidoptera.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\"", "But why hadn't he told her? Shock? Perhaps—but where had those other\n identities come from—lepidopterist, musician, actor, mathematician\n and wrestler? And where had he got memories of wives, slender and\n passionate, petite and wild, casual and complaisant, nagging and\n insecure?\n\n\n Erica he didn't remember at all, save from last night, and what was\n that due to?\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" he asked, deliberately toying with the last\n bite of breakfast. It gave him time to think.\n\n\n \"They said they'd identified everyone, living or dead, and I supposed\n they had. After seeing you, I can believe they made any number of\n similar mistakes. Dan Merrol may be alive under another name. It will\n be hard to do, but I must try to find him. Some of the accident victims\n went to other hospitals, you know, the ones located nearest where they\n fell.\"", "He pressed the buzzer and an angular woman in her early forties\n answered. \"Miss Jerrems, the Dan Merrol file.\"\n\n\n Miss Jerrems flashed a glance of open adoration at the doctor and\n before she could reel it in, her gaze swept past Dan, hesitated and\n returned to him. Her mouth opened and closed like that of a nervous\n goldfish and she darted from the room.\nThey see me and flee as fast as they can caper\n, thought Merrol. It\n was not wholly true—Crander didn't seem much affected. But he was a\n doctor and used to it. Furthermore, he probably had room for only one\n emotion at the moment—relief at the return of his patient.", "\"Glad to see you,\" said Doctor Crander, behind the desk. He was nervous\n and harassed for so early in the morning. \"The receptionist didn't give\n me your name. For some reason she seems upset.\"\n\n\n She did at that, he thought—probably bewildered by his appearance. The\n hospital didn't seem to have a calming influence on either her or the\n doctor. \"That's why I came here. I'm not sure who I am. I thought I was\n Dan Merrol.\"\n\n\n Doctor Crander tried to fight his way through the desk. Being a little\n wider and solider, though not by much, the desk won. He contented\n himself by wiping his forehead. \"Our missing patient,\" he said, sighing\n with vast relief. \"For a while I had visions of....\" He then decided\n that visions were nothing a medical man should place much faith in.\n\n\n \"Then I\nam\nDan Merrol?\"", "\"That's new, isn't it?\" she said. \"I always thought they watched the\n patient carefully.\"\n\n\n It ought to be new—he'd just invented it. \"You know how rapidly\n medical practices change,\" he said quickly. \"Anyway, when they\n examined me last night, I was much stronger than they expected—so,\n when I wanted to come home, they let me. It's their latest belief that\n initiative is more important than perfect health.\"\n\n\n \"Strange,\" she muttered. \"But you are very strong.\" She looked at him\n and blushed. \"Initiative, certainly you have. Dan could use some,\n wherever he is.\"\n\n\n Dan again, whether it was himself or another person. For a brief time,\n as she listened to him, he'd had the silly idea that.... But it could\n never happen to him. He'd better leave now while she was distracted and\n bewildered and believed what he was saying. \"I've got to go. I'm due\n back,\" he told her.", "It was then he'd grabbed her, to keep her from talking to the hospital.\n He'd been unnecessarily rough, but that could be ascribed to lack of\n coordination. She could have been terrified, might have resisted—but\n she hadn't. At that time, she must have half-believed he was Dan\n Merrol, still dangerously near the edges of post-regrowth shock.\nShe was looking at him, waiting for that explanation. He shook his\n mind frantically and the words came out. \"Self-therapy,\" he said\n briskly. \"The patient alone understands what he needs.\" She started to\n interrupt, but he shook his head and went on blithely. \"That's the\n first corollary of the theorem. The second is that there are critical\n times in the recovery of the patient. At such times, with the least\n possible supervision, he should be encouraged to make his own decisions\n and carry them through by himself, even though running a slight risk of\n physical complications.\"", "\"You did a fine job,\" he said. Recalling the picture of the wreckage,\n he knew they had. \"But couldn't you have done just a little better?\"\nCrander's eyebrows bounced up. \"We're amazed at how well we have\n done. You can search case histories and find nothing comparable.\" His\n eyebrows dropped back into place. \"Of course, if you have a specific\n complaint....\"\n\n\n \"Nothing specific. But look at this hand....\"\n\n\n The doctor seized it. \"Beautiful, isn't it?\"\n\n\n \"Perhaps—taken by itself.\" Dan rolled up his sleeve. \"See how it joins\n the forearm.\"\n\n\n Crander waggled it gravely. \"It coordinates perfectly. I've observed\n you have complete control over it. The doctor's eye, my boy. The\n doctor's diagnostic eye.\"", "Miss Jerrems came back, wheeling a large cart. Dan was surprised at the\n mass of records. Crander noticed his expression and smiled. \"You're\n our prize case, Merrol. I've never heard of anyone else surviving\n such extensive surgery. Naturally, we have a step-by-step account of\n everything we did.\"\n\n\n He turned to the woman. \"You may leave, Miss Jerrems.\" She went, but\n the adoration she had showed so openly for her employer seemed to have\n curdled in the last few moments.\n\n\n Crander dug into the files and rooted out photographs. \"Here are\n pictures of the wreckage in which you were found—notice that you were\n strapped in your seat—as you were received into the hospital—at\n various stages in surgery and finally, some taken from the files of the\n company for which you worked.\"\n\n\n Merrol winced. The photographic sequence was incontrovertible. He had\n been a handsome fellow.", "Crander traced out five areas he could feel, but not see. \"Samuel\n Kaufman, musician—Breed Mannly, cowboy actor—George Elkins,\n lepidopterist—Duke DeCaesares, wrestler—and Ben Eisenberg,\n mathematician, went into the places I tapped.\"\n\n\n Dan raised his head. Some things were clearer. The memories were\n authentic, but they weren't his—nor did the other wives belong to him.\n It was no wonder Erica had cringed at their names.\n\n\n \"These donors were dead, but you can be thankful we had parts of their\n brains available.\" Crander delved into the file and came up with a\n sheet.", "The Man Who Was Six\nBy F. L. WALLACE\n\n\n Illustrated by ASHMAN\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction September 1954.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThere is nothing at all like having a sound\n \nmind in a sound body, but Dan Merrol had too\n \nmuch of one—and also too much of the other!\n\"Sorry, darling,\" said Erica. She yawned, added, \"I've tried—but I\n just can't believe you're my husband.\"\n\n\n He felt his own yawn slip off his face. \"What do you mean? What am I\n doing here then?\"", "\"Parts of the two ships fell together, the rest were scattered. There\n was some interchange of passengers in the wreckage, but since you were\n found in the control compartment of the Mars liner, they assumed you\n were the pilot. They never let me see you until yesterday and then\n it was just a glimpse. I took their word when they said you were Dan\n Merrol.\"\n\n\n At least he knew who or what Dan Merrol was—the pilot of the Mars\n liner. They had assumed he was the pilot because of where he was found,\n but he might have been tossed there—impact did strange things.\n\n\n Dan Merrol was a spaceship pilot and he hadn't included it among his\n skills. It was strange that she had believed him at all. But now that\n it was out in the open, he did remember some facts about spaceships. He\n felt he could manage a takeoff at this instant.", "She sighed and drew away. \"That was a lucky guess on your age.\"\nDid that mean he wasn't right on anything else? From the expression\n on her face, it did. \"You've got to expect me to be confused in the\n beginning. Can't you really tell who I am?\"\n\n\n \"I\ncan't\n! You don't have the same personality at all.\" She glanced at\n her arm. There was a bruise on it.\n\n\n \"Did I do that?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"You did, though I'm sure you didn't mean to. I don't think you\n realized how strong you were. Dan was always too gentle—he must have\n been afraid of me. And\nyou\nweren't at all.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe I was impetuous,\" he said. \"But it was such a long time.\"", "Erica came close and leaned comfortingly against him, but he wasn't\n comforted. \"I waited till I was sure. I didn't want to upset you.\"\n\n\n He wasn't as sure as she seemed to be now. Somehow, maybe he was still\n Dan Merrol—but he wasn't going to insist on it—not after looking at\n himself. Not after trying to sort out those damned memories.\n\n\n She was too kind, pretending to be a little attracted to him, to the\n scrambled face, to the mismatched lumps and limbs and shapes that,\n stretching the term, currently formed his body. It was clear what he\n had to do.\nThe jacket he had worn last night didn't fit. Erica cut off the sleeve\n that hung far over his fingertips on one side and basted it to the\n sleeve that ended well above his wrist, on the other. The shoulders\n were narrow, but the material would stretch and after shrugging around\n in it, he managed to expand it so it was not too tight.", "\"Mass-cell radiographs. One was loaned by your employer. The other was\n taken just after your last operation. Both were corrected according\n to standard methods. One cell won't do it, ten yield an uncertain\n identity—but as few as a hundred cells from any part of the original\n body, excepting the blood, constitute proof more positive than\n fingerprints before the surgical exchange of limbs. Don't ask me\n why—no one knows. But it is true that cells differ from one body to\n the next, and this test detects the difference.\"\nThe mass-cell radiographs did seem identical and Dr. Crander seemed\n certain. Taken altogether, the evidence was overwhelming. There had\n been no mistake—he was Dan Merrol, though it was not difficult to\n understand why Erica couldn't believe he was her husband.", "Merrol turned away miserably. There were other things, but he had\n learned the essentials. He was Dan Merrol and there was nothing they\n could do for him until it was too late. How long could he expect Erica\n to wait?\n\n\n The doctor hadn't finished the medical session. \"Replacement of body\n parts is easy, after all. The big trouble came when we went into the\n brain.\"\n\n\n \"Brain?\" Dan was startled.\n\n\n \"How hard do you think your skull is?\" Crander came closer. \"Bend your\n head.\"\n\n\n Merrol obeyed and could feel the doctor's forefinger slice across his\n scalp in a mock operation. \"This sector was crushed.\" Roughly half his\n brain, it appeared. \"That's why so many memories were gone—not just\n from shock. In addition, other sectors were damaged and had to be\n replaced.\"", "Without waiting for him to comply, Crander pushed him into a chair and\n began hauling out a variety of instruments with which he poked about\n his bewildered patient.\n\n\n Finally Crander seemed satisfied. \"Excellent,\" he said. \"If I didn't\n know better, I'd say you were almost fully recovered. A week ago, we\n considered removing you from the regrowth tank. Our decision to leave\n you there an extra week has paid off very, very nicely.\"\n\n\n Merrol wasn't as pleased as the doctor appeared to be. \"Granted you can\n identify me as the person who came out of regrowth—but does that mean\n I'm Dan Merrol? Could there be a mistake?\"\n\n\n Crander eyed him clinically. \"We don't ordinarily do this—but it is\n evident that with you peace of mind is more important than procedure.\n And you look well enough to stand the physical strain.\"", "\"Can't you remember?\" Her laughter tinkled as she pushed him away and\n sat up. \"They said you were Dan Merrol at the hospital, but they must\n have been wrong.\"\n\n\n \"Hospitals don't make that kind of mistake,\" he said with a certainty\n he didn't altogether feel.\n\n\n \"But\nI\nshould know, shouldn't I?\"\n\n\n \"Of course, but....\" He did some verbal backstepping. \"It was a\n bad accident. You've got to expect that I won't be quite the same\n at first.\" He sat up. \"\nLook\nat me. Can't you tell who I am?\" She\n returned his gaze, then swayed toward him. He decided that she was\n highly attractive—but surely he ought to have known that long ago.\nWith a visible effort she leaned away from him. \"Your left eye does\n look familiar,\" she said cautiously. \"The brown one, I mean.\"\n\n\n \"The\nbrown\none?\"", "It might be wrong, but it was very pleasant, though he did guess her\n motives. She was a warmhearted girl and couldn't help pitying him.\n \"Don't be so damned considerate,\" he mumbled.\n\n\n \"You'll have to put me down,\" she said, averting her eyes.\n \"Otherwise.... You're an intolerable funny man.\"\n\n\n He knew it—he could see himself in the mirror. He was something to\n laugh at when anyone got tired of pretending sympathy. He put her down\n and stumbled out. He thought he could hear the bed creak as she threw\n herself on it.\nII\n\n\n Once he got started, walking wasn't hard. His left side swung at a\n different rate from his right, but that was due to the variation in\n the length of his thighs and lower legs, and the two rhythms could be\n reconciled. He swept along, gaining control of his muscles. He became\n aware that he was whizzing past everyone.", "The doctor came cautiously around the desk this time. \"Of course. I\n didn't expect that you'd come walking in my office—that's why I didn't\n recognize you immediately.\" He exhaled peevishly. \"Where did you go?\n We've been searching for you everywhere.\"\n\n\n It seemed wiser to Dan not to tell him everything. \"It was stuffy\n inside. I went out for a stroll before the nurse came in.\"\n\n\n Crander frowned, his nervousness rapidly disappearing. \"Then it was\n about an hour ago. We didn't think you could walk at all so soon, or we\n would have kept someone on duty through the night.\"\nThey had underestimated him, but he didn't mind. Of course, he didn't\n know how a patient from the regrowth tanks was supposed to act.\n The doctor took his pulse. \"Seems fine,\" he said, surprised. \"Sit\n down—please sit down.\"", "She blinked at him. \"A patient?\" She didn't need to look twice to see\n that he had been one. \"The director does occasionally see ex-patients.\"\n\n\n He watched her appreciatively as she went inside. The way she walked,\n you'd think she had a special audience. Presently the door opened and\n she came back, batting her eyes vigorously.\n\n\n \"You can go in now,\" she said huskily. Strange, her voice had dropped\n an octave in less than a minute. \"The old boy tried to pretend he was\n in the middle of a grave emergency.\"\n\n\n On his way in, he miscalculated, or she did, and he brushed against\n her. The touch was pleasant, but not thrilling. That reaction seemed\n reserved for Erica." ], [ "It was then he'd grabbed her, to keep her from talking to the hospital.\n He'd been unnecessarily rough, but that could be ascribed to lack of\n coordination. She could have been terrified, might have resisted—but\n she hadn't. At that time, she must have half-believed he was Dan\n Merrol, still dangerously near the edges of post-regrowth shock.\nShe was looking at him, waiting for that explanation. He shook his\n mind frantically and the words came out. \"Self-therapy,\" he said\n briskly. \"The patient alone understands what he needs.\" She started to\n interrupt, but he shook his head and went on blithely. \"That's the\n first corollary of the theorem. The second is that there are critical\n times in the recovery of the patient. At such times, with the least\n possible supervision, he should be encouraged to make his own decisions\n and carry them through by himself, even though running a slight risk of\n physical complications.\"", "She blinked at him. \"A patient?\" She didn't need to look twice to see\n that he had been one. \"The director does occasionally see ex-patients.\"\n\n\n He watched her appreciatively as she went inside. The way she walked,\n you'd think she had a special audience. Presently the door opened and\n she came back, batting her eyes vigorously.\n\n\n \"You can go in now,\" she said huskily. Strange, her voice had dropped\n an octave in less than a minute. \"The old boy tried to pretend he was\n in the middle of a grave emergency.\"\n\n\n On his way in, he miscalculated, or she did, and he brushed against\n her. The touch was pleasant, but not thrilling. That reaction seemed\n reserved for Erica.", "Erica came close and leaned comfortingly against him, but he wasn't\n comforted. \"I waited till I was sure. I didn't want to upset you.\"\n\n\n He wasn't as sure as she seemed to be now. Somehow, maybe he was still\n Dan Merrol—but he wasn't going to insist on it—not after looking at\n himself. Not after trying to sort out those damned memories.\n\n\n She was too kind, pretending to be a little attracted to him, to the\n scrambled face, to the mismatched lumps and limbs and shapes that,\n stretching the term, currently formed his body. It was clear what he\n had to do.\nThe jacket he had worn last night didn't fit. Erica cut off the sleeve\n that hung far over his fingertips on one side and basted it to the\n sleeve that ended well above his wrist, on the other. The shoulders\n were narrow, but the material would stretch and after shrugging around\n in it, he managed to expand it so it was not too tight.", "\"That's new, isn't it?\" she said. \"I always thought they watched the\n patient carefully.\"\n\n\n It ought to be new—he'd just invented it. \"You know how rapidly\n medical practices change,\" he said quickly. \"Anyway, when they\n examined me last night, I was much stronger than they expected—so,\n when I wanted to come home, they let me. It's their latest belief that\n initiative is more important than perfect health.\"\n\n\n \"Strange,\" she muttered. \"But you are very strong.\" She looked at him\n and blushed. \"Initiative, certainly you have. Dan could use some,\n wherever he is.\"\n\n\n Dan again, whether it was himself or another person. For a brief time,\n as she listened to him, he'd had the silly idea that.... But it could\n never happen to him. He'd better leave now while she was distracted and\n bewildered and believed what he was saying. \"I've got to go. I'm due\n back,\" he told her.", "He pressed the buzzer and an angular woman in her early forties\n answered. \"Miss Jerrems, the Dan Merrol file.\"\n\n\n Miss Jerrems flashed a glance of open adoration at the doctor and\n before she could reel it in, her gaze swept past Dan, hesitated and\n returned to him. Her mouth opened and closed like that of a nervous\n goldfish and she darted from the room.\nThey see me and flee as fast as they can caper\n, thought Merrol. It\n was not wholly true—Crander didn't seem much affected. But he was a\n doctor and used to it. Furthermore, he probably had room for only one\n emotion at the moment—relief at the return of his patient.", "She sighed and drew away. \"That was a lucky guess on your age.\"\nDid that mean he wasn't right on anything else? From the expression\n on her face, it did. \"You've got to expect me to be confused in the\n beginning. Can't you really tell who I am?\"\n\n\n \"I\ncan't\n! You don't have the same personality at all.\" She glanced at\n her arm. There was a bruise on it.\n\n\n \"Did I do that?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"You did, though I'm sure you didn't mean to. I don't think you\n realized how strong you were. Dan was always too gentle—he must have\n been afraid of me. And\nyou\nweren't at all.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe I was impetuous,\" he said. \"But it was such a long time.\"", "Even if he was sure, he didn't know whether he could tell her—and he\n wasn't sure any longer, although he had been. On the physical side of\n marriage, how could he ask her to share a body she'd have to laugh at?\n Later, he might tell her, if there was to be a 'later.' He pushed back\n his chair and looked at her uncertainly.\n\n\n \"Let me call a 'copter,\" she said. \"I hate to see you go.\"\n\n\n \"Wysocki's theorem,\" he told her. \"The patient has decided to walk.\"\n He weaved toward the door and twisted the knob. He turned in time to\n catch her in his arms.\n\n\n \"I know this is wrong,\" she said, pressing against him.", "But why hadn't he told her? Shock? Perhaps—but where had those other\n identities come from—lepidopterist, musician, actor, mathematician\n and wrestler? And where had he got memories of wives, slender and\n passionate, petite and wild, casual and complaisant, nagging and\n insecure?\n\n\n Erica he didn't remember at all, save from last night, and what was\n that due to?\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" he asked, deliberately toying with the last\n bite of breakfast. It gave him time to think.\n\n\n \"They said they'd identified everyone, living or dead, and I supposed\n they had. After seeing you, I can believe they made any number of\n similar mistakes. Dan Merrol may be alive under another name. It will\n be hard to do, but I must try to find him. Some of the accident victims\n went to other hospitals, you know, the ones located nearest where they\n fell.\"", "\"Almost three months. But most of that time you were floating in\n gelatin in the regrowth tank, unconscious until yesterday.\" She\n leaned forward and caressed his cheek. \"Everything seems wrong, no\n matter how hard I try to believe otherwise. You don't have the same\n personality—you can't remember anything.\"\n\n\n \"And I have one brown eye and one green.\"\n\n\n \"It's not just that, darling. Go over to the mirror.\"\n\n\n He had been seriously injured and he was still weak from the shock. He\n got up and walked unsteadily to the mirror. \"Now what?\"\n\n\n \"Stand beside it. Do you see the line?\" Erica pointed to the glass.\n\n\n He did—it was a mark level with his chin. \"What does it mean?\"\n\n\n \"That should be the top of Dan Merrol's head,\" she said softly.", "Merrol turned away miserably. There were other things, but he had\n learned the essentials. He was Dan Merrol and there was nothing they\n could do for him until it was too late. How long could he expect Erica\n to wait?\n\n\n The doctor hadn't finished the medical session. \"Replacement of body\n parts is easy, after all. The big trouble came when we went into the\n brain.\"\n\n\n \"Brain?\" Dan was startled.\n\n\n \"How hard do you think your skull is?\" Crander came closer. \"Bend your\n head.\"\n\n\n Merrol obeyed and could feel the doctor's forefinger slice across his\n scalp in a mock operation. \"This sector was crushed.\" Roughly half his\n brain, it appeared. \"That's why so many memories were gone—not just\n from shock. In addition, other sectors were damaged and had to be\n replaced.\"", "The trousers were also a problem—six inches short with no material\n to add on, but here again Erica proved equal to the task and, using\n the cuffs, contrived to lengthen them. Shoes were another difficulty.\n For one foot the size was not bad, but he could almost step out of the\n other shoe. When she wasn't looking, he wadded up a spare sock and\n stuffed it in the toe.\n\n\n He looked critically at himself in the mirror. Dressed, his total\n effect was better than he had dared hope it would be. True, he did look\ndifferent\n.\n\n\n Erica gazed at him with melancholy affection. \"I can't understand why\n they let you out wearing those clothes—or for that matter, why they\n let you out at all.\"\n\n\n He must have given some explanation as he'd stumbled through the door.\n What was it?", "Miss Jerrems came back, wheeling a large cart. Dan was surprised at the\n mass of records. Crander noticed his expression and smiled. \"You're\n our prize case, Merrol. I've never heard of anyone else surviving\n such extensive surgery. Naturally, we have a step-by-step account of\n everything we did.\"\n\n\n He turned to the woman. \"You may leave, Miss Jerrems.\" She went, but\n the adoration she had showed so openly for her employer seemed to have\n curdled in the last few moments.\n\n\n Crander dug into the files and rooted out photographs. \"Here are\n pictures of the wreckage in which you were found—notice that you were\n strapped in your seat—as you were received into the hospital—at\n various stages in surgery and finally, some taken from the files of the\n company for which you worked.\"\n\n\n Merrol winced. The photographic sequence was incontrovertible. He had\n been a handsome fellow.", "He felt the stubble on his face with his left hand—he\nthought\nit\n was his left hand—at least it was on that side. The emerging whiskers\n didn't feel like anything he remembered. Wait a minute—was it\nhis\nmemory? He leaned against the wall and nearly fell down. The length of\n that arm was unexpectedly different.\n\n\n He hobbled over to a chair and sat down, staring miserably at Erica as\n she began dressing. There was quite a contrast between the loveliness\n of her body and the circus comedy of his own.\n\n\n \"Difficult, isn't it?\" she said, tugging her bra together and closing\n the last snap, which took considerable effort. She was a small girl\n generally, though not around the chest.\n\n\n It was difficult and in addition to his physique there were the\n memories he couldn't account for. Come to think of it, he must have\n been awfully busy to have so many careers in such a short time—\nand\nall those wives too.", "Crander traced out five areas he could feel, but not see. \"Samuel\n Kaufman, musician—Breed Mannly, cowboy actor—George Elkins,\n lepidopterist—Duke DeCaesares, wrestler—and Ben Eisenberg,\n mathematician, went into the places I tapped.\"\n\n\n Dan raised his head. Some things were clearer. The memories were\n authentic, but they weren't his—nor did the other wives belong to him.\n It was no wonder Erica had cringed at their names.\n\n\n \"These donors were dead, but you can be thankful we had parts of their\n brains available.\" Crander delved into the file and came up with a\n sheet.", "\"Then the director can't see you.\" The girl looked up and her firmly\n polite expression became a grimace of barely suppressed laughter.\n\n\n Then laughter was swept away. What replaced it he couldn't say, but it\n didn't seem related to humor. She placed her hand near his but it went\n astray and got tangled with his fingers. \"I just thought of a joke,\"\n she murmured. \"Please don't think that I consider you at all funny.\"\n\n\n The hell she didn't—and it was the second time within the hour a woman\n had used that word on him. He wished they'd stop. He took back his\n hand, the slender one, an exquisite thing that might once have belonged\n to a musician. Was there an instrument played with one hand? The other\n one was far larger and clumsier, more suited to mayhem than music.\n \"When can I see the director?\"", "\"Can't you remember?\" Her laughter tinkled as she pushed him away and\n sat up. \"They said you were Dan Merrol at the hospital, but they must\n have been wrong.\"\n\n\n \"Hospitals don't make that kind of mistake,\" he said with a certainty\n he didn't altogether feel.\n\n\n \"But\nI\nshould know, shouldn't I?\"\n\n\n \"Of course, but....\" He did some verbal backstepping. \"It was a\n bad accident. You've got to expect that I won't be quite the same\n at first.\" He sat up. \"\nLook\nat me. Can't you tell who I am?\" She\n returned his gaze, then swayed toward him. He decided that she was\n highly attractive—but surely he ought to have known that long ago.\nWith a visible effort she leaned away from him. \"Your left eye does\n look familiar,\" she said cautiously. \"The brown one, I mean.\"\n\n\n \"The\nbrown\none?\"", "The Man Who Was Six\nBy F. L. WALLACE\n\n\n Illustrated by ASHMAN\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction September 1954.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThere is nothing at all like having a sound\n \nmind in a sound body, but Dan Merrol had too\n \nmuch of one—and also too much of the other!\n\"Sorry, darling,\" said Erica. She yawned, added, \"I've tried—but I\n just can't believe you're my husband.\"\n\n\n He felt his own yawn slip off his face. \"What do you mean? What am I\n doing here then?\"", "\"Mass-cell radiographs. One was loaned by your employer. The other was\n taken just after your last operation. Both were corrected according\n to standard methods. One cell won't do it, ten yield an uncertain\n identity—but as few as a hundred cells from any part of the original\n body, excepting the blood, constitute proof more positive than\n fingerprints before the surgical exchange of limbs. Don't ask me\n why—no one knows. But it is true that cells differ from one body to\n the next, and this test detects the difference.\"\nThe mass-cell radiographs did seem identical and Dr. Crander seemed\n certain. Taken altogether, the evidence was overwhelming. There had\n been no mistake—he was Dan Merrol, though it was not difficult to\n understand why Erica couldn't believe he was her husband.", "\"Glad to see you,\" said Doctor Crander, behind the desk. He was nervous\n and harassed for so early in the morning. \"The receptionist didn't give\n me your name. For some reason she seems upset.\"\n\n\n She did at that, he thought—probably bewildered by his appearance. The\n hospital didn't seem to have a calming influence on either her or the\n doctor. \"That's why I came here. I'm not sure who I am. I thought I was\n Dan Merrol.\"\n\n\n Doctor Crander tried to fight his way through the desk. Being a little\n wider and solider, though not by much, the desk won. He contented\n himself by wiping his forehead. \"Our missing patient,\" he said, sighing\n with vast relief. \"For a while I had visions of....\" He then decided\n that visions were nothing a medical man should place much faith in.\n\n\n \"Then I\nam\nDan Merrol?\"", "It might be wrong, but it was very pleasant, though he did guess her\n motives. She was a warmhearted girl and couldn't help pitying him.\n \"Don't be so damned considerate,\" he mumbled.\n\n\n \"You'll have to put me down,\" she said, averting her eyes.\n \"Otherwise.... You're an intolerable funny man.\"\n\n\n He knew it—he could see himself in the mirror. He was something to\n laugh at when anyone got tired of pretending sympathy. He put her down\n and stumbled out. He thought he could hear the bed creak as she threw\n herself on it.\nII\n\n\n Once he got started, walking wasn't hard. His left side swung at a\n different rate from his right, but that was due to the variation in\n the length of his thighs and lower legs, and the two rhythms could be\n reconciled. He swept along, gaining control of his muscles. He became\n aware that he was whizzing past everyone." ], [ "\"\nWhose\ntheorem?\"\n\n\n \"Wysocki's. I started to call the hospital and you wouldn't let me,\n because of the theorem. You said you'd explain it this morning.\" She\n glanced at the bruise on her arm.", "\"When I brought the clothes yesterday, they told me I couldn't see you\n for a day or so,\" she mused aloud. \"It was the first time you'd been\n out of the regrowth tank—where no one could see you—and they didn't\n know the clothes wouldn't fit. You were covered with a sheet, sleeping,\n I think. They let me peek in and I could make out a corner of your\n face.\"\n\n\n It was the clothes, plus the brief glimpse of his face, which had made\n her think she recognized him when he came in.\n\n\n \"They told me you'd have to have psychotherapy and I'd have to have\n orientation before I could see you. That's why I was so surprised when\n you rang the bell.\"\n\n\n His head was churning with ideas, trying to sort them out. Part of last\n night was dim, part sharp and satisfying.\n\n\n \"What's Wysocki's theorem?\" she asked.", "Even if he was sure, he didn't know whether he could tell her—and he\n wasn't sure any longer, although he had been. On the physical side of\n marriage, how could he ask her to share a body she'd have to laugh at?\n Later, he might tell her, if there was to be a 'later.' He pushed back\n his chair and looked at her uncertainly.\n\n\n \"Let me call a 'copter,\" she said. \"I hate to see you go.\"\n\n\n \"Wysocki's theorem,\" he told her. \"The patient has decided to walk.\"\n He weaved toward the door and twisted the knob. He turned in time to\n catch her in his arms.\n\n\n \"I know this is wrong,\" she said, pressing against him.", "The trousers were also a problem—six inches short with no material\n to add on, but here again Erica proved equal to the task and, using\n the cuffs, contrived to lengthen them. Shoes were another difficulty.\n For one foot the size was not bad, but he could almost step out of the\n other shoe. When she wasn't looking, he wadded up a spare sock and\n stuffed it in the toe.\n\n\n He looked critically at himself in the mirror. Dressed, his total\n effect was better than he had dared hope it would be. True, he did look\ndifferent\n.\n\n\n Erica gazed at him with melancholy affection. \"I can't understand why\n they let you out wearing those clothes—or for that matter, why they\n let you out at all.\"\n\n\n He must have given some explanation as he'd stumbled through the door.\n What was it?", "\"Here are some body part contributors.\" He read rapidly. \"Dimwiddie,\n Barton, Colton, Morton, Flam and Carnera were responsible for arms and\n hands. Greenberg, Rochefault, Gonzalez, Tall-Cloud, Gowraddy and Tsin\n supplied feet and legs.\"", "\"You did a fine job,\" he said. Recalling the picture of the wreckage,\n he knew they had. \"But couldn't you have done just a little better?\"\nCrander's eyebrows bounced up. \"We're amazed at how well we have\n done. You can search case histories and find nothing comparable.\" His\n eyebrows dropped back into place. \"Of course, if you have a specific\n complaint....\"\n\n\n \"Nothing specific. But look at this hand....\"\n\n\n The doctor seized it. \"Beautiful, isn't it?\"\n\n\n \"Perhaps—taken by itself.\" Dan rolled up his sleeve. \"See how it joins\n the forearm.\"\n\n\n Crander waggled it gravely. \"It coordinates perfectly. I've observed\n you have complete control over it. The doctor's eye, my boy. The\n doctor's diagnostic eye.\"", "Miss Jerrems came back, wheeling a large cart. Dan was surprised at the\n mass of records. Crander noticed his expression and smiled. \"You're\n our prize case, Merrol. I've never heard of anyone else surviving\n such extensive surgery. Naturally, we have a step-by-step account of\n everything we did.\"\n\n\n He turned to the woman. \"You may leave, Miss Jerrems.\" She went, but\n the adoration she had showed so openly for her employer seemed to have\n curdled in the last few moments.\n\n\n Crander dug into the files and rooted out photographs. \"Here are\n pictures of the wreckage in which you were found—notice that you were\n strapped in your seat—as you were received into the hospital—at\n various stages in surgery and finally, some taken from the files of the\n company for which you worked.\"\n\n\n Merrol winced. The photographic sequence was incontrovertible. He had\n been a handsome fellow.", "\"Then the director can't see you.\" The girl looked up and her firmly\n polite expression became a grimace of barely suppressed laughter.\n\n\n Then laughter was swept away. What replaced it he couldn't say, but it\n didn't seem related to humor. She placed her hand near his but it went\n astray and got tangled with his fingers. \"I just thought of a joke,\"\n she murmured. \"Please don't think that I consider you at all funny.\"\n\n\n The hell she didn't—and it was the second time within the hour a woman\n had used that word on him. He wished they'd stop. He took back his\n hand, the slender one, an exquisite thing that might once have belonged\n to a musician. Was there an instrument played with one hand? The other\n one was far larger and clumsier, more suited to mayhem than music.\n \"When can I see the director?\"", "He pressed the buzzer and an angular woman in her early forties\n answered. \"Miss Jerrems, the Dan Merrol file.\"\n\n\n Miss Jerrems flashed a glance of open adoration at the doctor and\n before she could reel it in, her gaze swept past Dan, hesitated and\n returned to him. Her mouth opened and closed like that of a nervous\n goldfish and she darted from the room.\nThey see me and flee as fast as they can caper\n, thought Merrol. It\n was not wholly true—Crander didn't seem much affected. But he was a\n doctor and used to it. Furthermore, he probably had room for only one\n emotion at the moment—relief at the return of his patient.", "It might be wrong, but it was very pleasant, though he did guess her\n motives. She was a warmhearted girl and couldn't help pitying him.\n \"Don't be so damned considerate,\" he mumbled.\n\n\n \"You'll have to put me down,\" she said, averting her eyes.\n \"Otherwise.... You're an intolerable funny man.\"\n\n\n He knew it—he could see himself in the mirror. He was something to\n laugh at when anyone got tired of pretending sympathy. He put her down\n and stumbled out. He thought he could hear the bed creak as she threw\n herself on it.\nII\n\n\n Once he got started, walking wasn't hard. His left side swung at a\n different rate from his right, but that was due to the variation in\n the length of his thighs and lower legs, and the two rhythms could be\n reconciled. He swept along, gaining control of his muscles. He became\n aware that he was whizzing past everyone.", "But why hadn't he told her? Shock? Perhaps—but where had those other\n identities come from—lepidopterist, musician, actor, mathematician\n and wrestler? And where had he got memories of wives, slender and\n passionate, petite and wild, casual and complaisant, nagging and\n insecure?\n\n\n Erica he didn't remember at all, save from last night, and what was\n that due to?\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" he asked, deliberately toying with the last\n bite of breakfast. It gave him time to think.\n\n\n \"They said they'd identified everyone, living or dead, and I supposed\n they had. After seeing you, I can believe they made any number of\n similar mistakes. Dan Merrol may be alive under another name. It will\n be hard to do, but I must try to find him. Some of the accident victims\n went to other hospitals, you know, the ones located nearest where they\n fell.\"", "It was then he'd grabbed her, to keep her from talking to the hospital.\n He'd been unnecessarily rough, but that could be ascribed to lack of\n coordination. She could have been terrified, might have resisted—but\n she hadn't. At that time, she must have half-believed he was Dan\n Merrol, still dangerously near the edges of post-regrowth shock.\nShe was looking at him, waiting for that explanation. He shook his\n mind frantically and the words came out. \"Self-therapy,\" he said\n briskly. \"The patient alone understands what he needs.\" She started to\n interrupt, but he shook his head and went on blithely. \"That's the\n first corollary of the theorem. The second is that there are critical\n times in the recovery of the patient. At such times, with the least\n possible supervision, he should be encouraged to make his own decisions\n and carry them through by himself, even though running a slight risk of\n physical complications.\"", "She blinked at him. \"A patient?\" She didn't need to look twice to see\n that he had been one. \"The director does occasionally see ex-patients.\"\n\n\n He watched her appreciatively as she went inside. The way she walked,\n you'd think she had a special audience. Presently the door opened and\n she came back, batting her eyes vigorously.\n\n\n \"You can go in now,\" she said huskily. Strange, her voice had dropped\n an octave in less than a minute. \"The old boy tried to pretend he was\n in the middle of a grave emergency.\"\n\n\n On his way in, he miscalculated, or she did, and he brushed against\n her. The touch was pleasant, but not thrilling. That reaction seemed\n reserved for Erica.", "\"That's new, isn't it?\" she said. \"I always thought they watched the\n patient carefully.\"\n\n\n It ought to be new—he'd just invented it. \"You know how rapidly\n medical practices change,\" he said quickly. \"Anyway, when they\n examined me last night, I was much stronger than they expected—so,\n when I wanted to come home, they let me. It's their latest belief that\n initiative is more important than perfect health.\"\n\n\n \"Strange,\" she muttered. \"But you are very strong.\" She looked at him\n and blushed. \"Initiative, certainly you have. Dan could use some,\n wherever he is.\"\n\n\n Dan again, whether it was himself or another person. For a brief time,\n as she listened to him, he'd had the silly idea that.... But it could\n never happen to him. He'd better leave now while she was distracted and\n bewildered and believed what he was saying. \"I've got to go. I'm due\n back,\" he told her.", "Maybe he should have stayed in the hospital. It would have been easier\n to convince her there. But he'd been frantic to get home. \"It was quite\n a smashup,\" he said. \"You'll have to expect some lapses.\"\n\n\n \"I'm making allowances. But can't you tell me something about myself?\"\n\n\n He thought—and couldn't. He wasn't doing so well. \"Another lapse,\"\n he said gloomily and then brightened. \"But I can tell you lots about\n myself. For instance, I'm a specialist in lepidoptera.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\"", "\"Glad to see you,\" said Doctor Crander, behind the desk. He was nervous\n and harassed for so early in the morning. \"The receptionist didn't give\n me your name. For some reason she seems upset.\"\n\n\n She did at that, he thought—probably bewildered by his appearance. The\n hospital didn't seem to have a calming influence on either her or the\n doctor. \"That's why I came here. I'm not sure who I am. I thought I was\n Dan Merrol.\"\n\n\n Doctor Crander tried to fight his way through the desk. Being a little\n wider and solider, though not by much, the desk won. He contented\n himself by wiping his forehead. \"Our missing patient,\" he said, sighing\n with vast relief. \"For a while I had visions of....\" He then decided\n that visions were nothing a medical man should place much faith in.\n\n\n \"Then I\nam\nDan Merrol?\"", "Crander traced out five areas he could feel, but not see. \"Samuel\n Kaufman, musician—Breed Mannly, cowboy actor—George Elkins,\n lepidopterist—Duke DeCaesares, wrestler—and Ben Eisenberg,\n mathematician, went into the places I tapped.\"\n\n\n Dan raised his head. Some things were clearer. The memories were\n authentic, but they weren't his—nor did the other wives belong to him.\n It was no wonder Erica had cringed at their names.\n\n\n \"These donors were dead, but you can be thankful we had parts of their\n brains available.\" Crander delved into the file and came up with a\n sheet.", "\"They told you that too.\"\n\n\n She was wrong again, but it was probably wiser not to tell her how he\n knew. No one had said anything to him in the hospital. He hadn't given\n them a chance. He had awakened in a room and hadn't wanted to be alone.\n He'd got up and read the chart and searched dizzily through the closet.\n Clothes were hanging there and he'd put them on and muttered her name\n to himself. He'd sat down to gain strength and after a while he'd\n walked out and no one had stopped him.\n\n\n It was night when he left the hospital and the next thing he remembered\n was her face as he looked through the door. Her name hadn't been on the\n chart nor her address and yet he had found her. That proved something,\n didn't it? \"How could I forget you?\" he demanded.\n\n\n \"You may have known someone else with that name. When were we married?\"", "\"At the moment, who knows? Anyway, I'm a well-known actor and a\n musician and a first-rate mathematician. I can't remember any equations\n offhand except C equals pi R squared. It has to do with the velocity\n of light. And the rest of the stuff will come back in time.\" It was\n easier now that he'd started and he went on rapidly. \"I'm thirty-three\n and after making a lot of money wrestling, married six girls, not\n necessarily in this order—Lucille, Louise, Carolyn, Katherine, Shirley\n and Miriam.\" That was quite a few marriages—maybe it was thoughtless\n of him to have mentioned them. No woman approves her predecessors.\n\n\n \"That's six. Where do I come in?\"\n\n\n \"Erica. You're the seventh and best.\" It was just too many, now that he\n thought of it, and it didn't seem right.", "The Man Who Was Six\nBy F. L. WALLACE\n\n\n Illustrated by ASHMAN\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction September 1954.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThere is nothing at all like having a sound\n \nmind in a sound body, but Dan Merrol had too\n \nmuch of one—and also too much of the other!\n\"Sorry, darling,\" said Erica. She yawned, added, \"I've tried—but I\n just can't believe you're my husband.\"\n\n\n He felt his own yawn slip off his face. \"What do you mean? What am I\n doing here then?\"" ], [ "He pressed the buzzer and an angular woman in her early forties\n answered. \"Miss Jerrems, the Dan Merrol file.\"\n\n\n Miss Jerrems flashed a glance of open adoration at the doctor and\n before she could reel it in, her gaze swept past Dan, hesitated and\n returned to him. Her mouth opened and closed like that of a nervous\n goldfish and she darted from the room.\nThey see me and flee as fast as they can caper\n, thought Merrol. It\n was not wholly true—Crander didn't seem much affected. But he was a\n doctor and used to it. Furthermore, he probably had room for only one\n emotion at the moment—relief at the return of his patient.", "It was then he'd grabbed her, to keep her from talking to the hospital.\n He'd been unnecessarily rough, but that could be ascribed to lack of\n coordination. She could have been terrified, might have resisted—but\n she hadn't. At that time, she must have half-believed he was Dan\n Merrol, still dangerously near the edges of post-regrowth shock.\nShe was looking at him, waiting for that explanation. He shook his\n mind frantically and the words came out. \"Self-therapy,\" he said\n briskly. \"The patient alone understands what he needs.\" She started to\n interrupt, but he shook his head and went on blithely. \"That's the\n first corollary of the theorem. The second is that there are critical\n times in the recovery of the patient. At such times, with the least\n possible supervision, he should be encouraged to make his own decisions\n and carry them through by himself, even though running a slight risk of\n physical complications.\"", "\"Glad to see you,\" said Doctor Crander, behind the desk. He was nervous\n and harassed for so early in the morning. \"The receptionist didn't give\n me your name. For some reason she seems upset.\"\n\n\n She did at that, he thought—probably bewildered by his appearance. The\n hospital didn't seem to have a calming influence on either her or the\n doctor. \"That's why I came here. I'm not sure who I am. I thought I was\n Dan Merrol.\"\n\n\n Doctor Crander tried to fight his way through the desk. Being a little\n wider and solider, though not by much, the desk won. He contented\n himself by wiping his forehead. \"Our missing patient,\" he said, sighing\n with vast relief. \"For a while I had visions of....\" He then decided\n that visions were nothing a medical man should place much faith in.\n\n\n \"Then I\nam\nDan Merrol?\"", "\"That's new, isn't it?\" she said. \"I always thought they watched the\n patient carefully.\"\n\n\n It ought to be new—he'd just invented it. \"You know how rapidly\n medical practices change,\" he said quickly. \"Anyway, when they\n examined me last night, I was much stronger than they expected—so,\n when I wanted to come home, they let me. It's their latest belief that\n initiative is more important than perfect health.\"\n\n\n \"Strange,\" she muttered. \"But you are very strong.\" She looked at him\n and blushed. \"Initiative, certainly you have. Dan could use some,\n wherever he is.\"\n\n\n Dan again, whether it was himself or another person. For a brief time,\n as she listened to him, he'd had the silly idea that.... But it could\n never happen to him. He'd better leave now while she was distracted and\n bewildered and believed what he was saying. \"I've got to go. I'm due\n back,\" he told her.", "Miss Jerrems came back, wheeling a large cart. Dan was surprised at the\n mass of records. Crander noticed his expression and smiled. \"You're\n our prize case, Merrol. I've never heard of anyone else surviving\n such extensive surgery. Naturally, we have a step-by-step account of\n everything we did.\"\n\n\n He turned to the woman. \"You may leave, Miss Jerrems.\" She went, but\n the adoration she had showed so openly for her employer seemed to have\n curdled in the last few moments.\n\n\n Crander dug into the files and rooted out photographs. \"Here are\n pictures of the wreckage in which you were found—notice that you were\n strapped in your seat—as you were received into the hospital—at\n various stages in surgery and finally, some taken from the files of the\n company for which you worked.\"\n\n\n Merrol winced. The photographic sequence was incontrovertible. He had\n been a handsome fellow.", "\"Then the director can't see you.\" The girl looked up and her firmly\n polite expression became a grimace of barely suppressed laughter.\n\n\n Then laughter was swept away. What replaced it he couldn't say, but it\n didn't seem related to humor. She placed her hand near his but it went\n astray and got tangled with his fingers. \"I just thought of a joke,\"\n she murmured. \"Please don't think that I consider you at all funny.\"\n\n\n The hell she didn't—and it was the second time within the hour a woman\n had used that word on him. He wished they'd stop. He took back his\n hand, the slender one, an exquisite thing that might once have belonged\n to a musician. Was there an instrument played with one hand? The other\n one was far larger and clumsier, more suited to mayhem than music.\n \"When can I see the director?\"", "She blinked at him. \"A patient?\" She didn't need to look twice to see\n that he had been one. \"The director does occasionally see ex-patients.\"\n\n\n He watched her appreciatively as she went inside. The way she walked,\n you'd think she had a special audience. Presently the door opened and\n she came back, batting her eyes vigorously.\n\n\n \"You can go in now,\" she said huskily. Strange, her voice had dropped\n an octave in less than a minute. \"The old boy tried to pretend he was\n in the middle of a grave emergency.\"\n\n\n On his way in, he miscalculated, or she did, and he brushed against\n her. The touch was pleasant, but not thrilling. That reaction seemed\n reserved for Erica.", "The doctor came cautiously around the desk this time. \"Of course. I\n didn't expect that you'd come walking in my office—that's why I didn't\n recognize you immediately.\" He exhaled peevishly. \"Where did you go?\n We've been searching for you everywhere.\"\n\n\n It seemed wiser to Dan not to tell him everything. \"It was stuffy\n inside. I went out for a stroll before the nurse came in.\"\n\n\n Crander frowned, his nervousness rapidly disappearing. \"Then it was\n about an hour ago. We didn't think you could walk at all so soon, or we\n would have kept someone on duty through the night.\"\nThey had underestimated him, but he didn't mind. Of course, he didn't\n know how a patient from the regrowth tanks was supposed to act.\n The doctor took his pulse. \"Seems fine,\" he said, surprised. \"Sit\n down—please sit down.\"", "Even if he was sure, he didn't know whether he could tell her—and he\n wasn't sure any longer, although he had been. On the physical side of\n marriage, how could he ask her to share a body she'd have to laugh at?\n Later, he might tell her, if there was to be a 'later.' He pushed back\n his chair and looked at her uncertainly.\n\n\n \"Let me call a 'copter,\" she said. \"I hate to see you go.\"\n\n\n \"Wysocki's theorem,\" he told her. \"The patient has decided to walk.\"\n He weaved toward the door and twisted the knob. He turned in time to\n catch her in his arms.\n\n\n \"I know this is wrong,\" she said, pressing against him.", "\"You did a fine job,\" he said. Recalling the picture of the wreckage,\n he knew they had. \"But couldn't you have done just a little better?\"\nCrander's eyebrows bounced up. \"We're amazed at how well we have\n done. You can search case histories and find nothing comparable.\" His\n eyebrows dropped back into place. \"Of course, if you have a specific\n complaint....\"\n\n\n \"Nothing specific. But look at this hand....\"\n\n\n The doctor seized it. \"Beautiful, isn't it?\"\n\n\n \"Perhaps—taken by itself.\" Dan rolled up his sleeve. \"See how it joins\n the forearm.\"\n\n\n Crander waggled it gravely. \"It coordinates perfectly. I've observed\n you have complete control over it. The doctor's eye, my boy. The\n doctor's diagnostic eye.\"", "It might be wrong, but it was very pleasant, though he did guess her\n motives. She was a warmhearted girl and couldn't help pitying him.\n \"Don't be so damned considerate,\" he mumbled.\n\n\n \"You'll have to put me down,\" she said, averting her eyes.\n \"Otherwise.... You're an intolerable funny man.\"\n\n\n He knew it—he could see himself in the mirror. He was something to\n laugh at when anyone got tired of pretending sympathy. He put her down\n and stumbled out. He thought he could hear the bed creak as she threw\n herself on it.\nII\n\n\n Once he got started, walking wasn't hard. His left side swung at a\n different rate from his right, but that was due to the variation in\n the length of his thighs and lower legs, and the two rhythms could be\n reconciled. He swept along, gaining control of his muscles. He became\n aware that he was whizzing past everyone.", "\"Can't you remember?\" Her laughter tinkled as she pushed him away and\n sat up. \"They said you were Dan Merrol at the hospital, but they must\n have been wrong.\"\n\n\n \"Hospitals don't make that kind of mistake,\" he said with a certainty\n he didn't altogether feel.\n\n\n \"But\nI\nshould know, shouldn't I?\"\n\n\n \"Of course, but....\" He did some verbal backstepping. \"It was a\n bad accident. You've got to expect that I won't be quite the same\n at first.\" He sat up. \"\nLook\nat me. Can't you tell who I am?\" She\n returned his gaze, then swayed toward him. He decided that she was\n highly attractive—but surely he ought to have known that long ago.\nWith a visible effort she leaned away from him. \"Your left eye does\n look familiar,\" she said cautiously. \"The brown one, I mean.\"\n\n\n \"The\nbrown\none?\"", "Maybe he should have stayed in the hospital. It would have been easier\n to convince her there. But he'd been frantic to get home. \"It was quite\n a smashup,\" he said. \"You'll have to expect some lapses.\"\n\n\n \"I'm making allowances. But can't you tell me something about myself?\"\n\n\n He thought—and couldn't. He wasn't doing so well. \"Another lapse,\"\n he said gloomily and then brightened. \"But I can tell you lots about\n myself. For instance, I'm a specialist in lepidoptera.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\"", "He slowed down—he didn't want to attract attention. It was difficult\n but he learned to walk at a pedestrian pace. However poorly they'd\n matched his legs, they'd given him good ones.\n\n\n Last night, on an impulse, he'd left the hospital and now he had to go\n back.\nHad\nto? Of course. There were too many uncertainties still to\n be settled. He glanced around. It was still very early in the morning\n and normal traffic was just beginning. Maybe they hadn't missed him\n yet, though it was unlikely.\n\n\n He seemed to know the route well enough and covered the distance in a\n brief time. He turned in at the building and, scanning the directory,\n went at once to the proper floor and stopped at the desk.\nThe receptionist was busy with the drawer of the desk. \"Can I help\n you?\" she asked, continuing to peer down.\n\n\n \"The director—Doctor Crander. I don't have an appointment.\"", "Merrol turned away miserably. There were other things, but he had\n learned the essentials. He was Dan Merrol and there was nothing they\n could do for him until it was too late. How long could he expect Erica\n to wait?\n\n\n The doctor hadn't finished the medical session. \"Replacement of body\n parts is easy, after all. The big trouble came when we went into the\n brain.\"\n\n\n \"Brain?\" Dan was startled.\n\n\n \"How hard do you think your skull is?\" Crander came closer. \"Bend your\n head.\"\n\n\n Merrol obeyed and could feel the doctor's forefinger slice across his\n scalp in a mock operation. \"This sector was crushed.\" Roughly half his\n brain, it appeared. \"That's why so many memories were gone—not just\n from shock. In addition, other sectors were damaged and had to be\n replaced.\"", "She sighed and drew away. \"That was a lucky guess on your age.\"\nDid that mean he wasn't right on anything else? From the expression\n on her face, it did. \"You've got to expect me to be confused in the\n beginning. Can't you really tell who I am?\"\n\n\n \"I\ncan't\n! You don't have the same personality at all.\" She glanced at\n her arm. There was a bruise on it.\n\n\n \"Did I do that?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"You did, though I'm sure you didn't mean to. I don't think you\n realized how strong you were. Dan was always too gentle—he must have\n been afraid of me. And\nyou\nweren't at all.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe I was impetuous,\" he said. \"But it was such a long time.\"", "Quickly, he scanned himself. It was the same elsewhere. The upper right\n arm was massive, too big for the shoulder it merged with. And the\n forearm, while long, was slender. He blinked and looked again. While\n they were patching him up, did they really think he needed black, red\n and brown hair? He wondered how a beagle felt.\nWhat were they, a bunch of humorists? Did they, for comic effect, piece\n together a body out of bits and scraps left over from a chopping block?\n It was himself he was looking at, otherwise he'd say the results were\n neither hideous nor horrible, but merely—well, what? Ludicrous and\n laughable—and there were complications in that too. Who wants to be\n an involuntary clown, a physical buffoon that Mother Nature hadn't\n duplicated since Man began?", "\"They told you that too.\"\n\n\n She was wrong again, but it was probably wiser not to tell her how he\n knew. No one had said anything to him in the hospital. He hadn't given\n them a chance. He had awakened in a room and hadn't wanted to be alone.\n He'd got up and read the chart and searched dizzily through the closet.\n Clothes were hanging there and he'd put them on and muttered her name\n to himself. He'd sat down to gain strength and after a while he'd\n walked out and no one had stopped him.\n\n\n It was night when he left the hospital and the next thing he remembered\n was her face as he looked through the door. Her name hadn't been on the\n chart nor her address and yet he had found her. That proved something,\n didn't it? \"How could I forget you?\" he demanded.\n\n\n \"You may have known someone else with that name. When were we married?\"", "\"\nWhose\ntheorem?\"\n\n\n \"Wysocki's. I started to call the hospital and you wouldn't let me,\n because of the theorem. You said you'd explain it this morning.\" She\n glanced at the bruise on her arm.", "Without waiting for him to comply, Crander pushed him into a chair and\n began hauling out a variety of instruments with which he poked about\n his bewildered patient.\n\n\n Finally Crander seemed satisfied. \"Excellent,\" he said. \"If I didn't\n know better, I'd say you were almost fully recovered. A week ago, we\n considered removing you from the regrowth tank. Our decision to leave\n you there an extra week has paid off very, very nicely.\"\n\n\n Merrol wasn't as pleased as the doctor appeared to be. \"Granted you can\n identify me as the person who came out of regrowth—but does that mean\n I'm Dan Merrol? Could there be a mistake?\"\n\n\n Crander eyed him clinically. \"We don't ordinarily do this—but it is\n evident that with you peace of mind is more important than procedure.\n And you look well enough to stand the physical strain.\"" ], [ "\"You did a fine job,\" he said. Recalling the picture of the wreckage,\n he knew they had. \"But couldn't you have done just a little better?\"\nCrander's eyebrows bounced up. \"We're amazed at how well we have\n done. You can search case histories and find nothing comparable.\" His\n eyebrows dropped back into place. \"Of course, if you have a specific\n complaint....\"\n\n\n \"Nothing specific. But look at this hand....\"\n\n\n The doctor seized it. \"Beautiful, isn't it?\"\n\n\n \"Perhaps—taken by itself.\" Dan rolled up his sleeve. \"See how it joins\n the forearm.\"\n\n\n Crander waggled it gravely. \"It coordinates perfectly. I've observed\n you have complete control over it. The doctor's eye, my boy. The\n doctor's diagnostic eye.\"", "\"Glad to see you,\" said Doctor Crander, behind the desk. He was nervous\n and harassed for so early in the morning. \"The receptionist didn't give\n me your name. For some reason she seems upset.\"\n\n\n She did at that, he thought—probably bewildered by his appearance. The\n hospital didn't seem to have a calming influence on either her or the\n doctor. \"That's why I came here. I'm not sure who I am. I thought I was\n Dan Merrol.\"\n\n\n Doctor Crander tried to fight his way through the desk. Being a little\n wider and solider, though not by much, the desk won. He contented\n himself by wiping his forehead. \"Our missing patient,\" he said, sighing\n with vast relief. \"For a while I had visions of....\" He then decided\n that visions were nothing a medical man should place much faith in.\n\n\n \"Then I\nam\nDan Merrol?\"", "Miss Jerrems came back, wheeling a large cart. Dan was surprised at the\n mass of records. Crander noticed his expression and smiled. \"You're\n our prize case, Merrol. I've never heard of anyone else surviving\n such extensive surgery. Naturally, we have a step-by-step account of\n everything we did.\"\n\n\n He turned to the woman. \"You may leave, Miss Jerrems.\" She went, but\n the adoration she had showed so openly for her employer seemed to have\n curdled in the last few moments.\n\n\n Crander dug into the files and rooted out photographs. \"Here are\n pictures of the wreckage in which you were found—notice that you were\n strapped in your seat—as you were received into the hospital—at\n various stages in surgery and finally, some taken from the files of the\n company for which you worked.\"\n\n\n Merrol winced. The photographic sequence was incontrovertible. He had\n been a handsome fellow.", "The doctor came cautiously around the desk this time. \"Of course. I\n didn't expect that you'd come walking in my office—that's why I didn't\n recognize you immediately.\" He exhaled peevishly. \"Where did you go?\n We've been searching for you everywhere.\"\n\n\n It seemed wiser to Dan not to tell him everything. \"It was stuffy\n inside. I went out for a stroll before the nurse came in.\"\n\n\n Crander frowned, his nervousness rapidly disappearing. \"Then it was\n about an hour ago. We didn't think you could walk at all so soon, or we\n would have kept someone on duty through the night.\"\nThey had underestimated him, but he didn't mind. Of course, he didn't\n know how a patient from the regrowth tanks was supposed to act.\n The doctor took his pulse. \"Seems fine,\" he said, surprised. \"Sit\n down—please sit down.\"", "He pressed the buzzer and an angular woman in her early forties\n answered. \"Miss Jerrems, the Dan Merrol file.\"\n\n\n Miss Jerrems flashed a glance of open adoration at the doctor and\n before she could reel it in, her gaze swept past Dan, hesitated and\n returned to him. Her mouth opened and closed like that of a nervous\n goldfish and she darted from the room.\nThey see me and flee as fast as they can caper\n, thought Merrol. It\n was not wholly true—Crander didn't seem much affected. But he was a\n doctor and used to it. Furthermore, he probably had room for only one\n emotion at the moment—relief at the return of his patient.", "He slowed down—he didn't want to attract attention. It was difficult\n but he learned to walk at a pedestrian pace. However poorly they'd\n matched his legs, they'd given him good ones.\n\n\n Last night, on an impulse, he'd left the hospital and now he had to go\n back.\nHad\nto? Of course. There were too many uncertainties still to\n be settled. He glanced around. It was still very early in the morning\n and normal traffic was just beginning. Maybe they hadn't missed him\n yet, though it was unlikely.\n\n\n He seemed to know the route well enough and covered the distance in a\n brief time. He turned in at the building and, scanning the directory,\n went at once to the proper floor and stopped at the desk.\nThe receptionist was busy with the drawer of the desk. \"Can I help\n you?\" she asked, continuing to peer down.\n\n\n \"The director—Doctor Crander. I don't have an appointment.\"", "Without waiting for him to comply, Crander pushed him into a chair and\n began hauling out a variety of instruments with which he poked about\n his bewildered patient.\n\n\n Finally Crander seemed satisfied. \"Excellent,\" he said. \"If I didn't\n know better, I'd say you were almost fully recovered. A week ago, we\n considered removing you from the regrowth tank. Our decision to leave\n you there an extra week has paid off very, very nicely.\"\n\n\n Merrol wasn't as pleased as the doctor appeared to be. \"Granted you can\n identify me as the person who came out of regrowth—but does that mean\n I'm Dan Merrol? Could there be a mistake?\"\n\n\n Crander eyed him clinically. \"We don't ordinarily do this—but it is\n evident that with you peace of mind is more important than procedure.\n And you look well enough to stand the physical strain.\"", "It was then he'd grabbed her, to keep her from talking to the hospital.\n He'd been unnecessarily rough, but that could be ascribed to lack of\n coordination. She could have been terrified, might have resisted—but\n she hadn't. At that time, she must have half-believed he was Dan\n Merrol, still dangerously near the edges of post-regrowth shock.\nShe was looking at him, waiting for that explanation. He shook his\n mind frantically and the words came out. \"Self-therapy,\" he said\n briskly. \"The patient alone understands what he needs.\" She started to\n interrupt, but he shook his head and went on blithely. \"That's the\n first corollary of the theorem. The second is that there are critical\n times in the recovery of the patient. At such times, with the least\n possible supervision, he should be encouraged to make his own decisions\n and carry them through by himself, even though running a slight risk of\n physical complications.\"", "\"That's new, isn't it?\" she said. \"I always thought they watched the\n patient carefully.\"\n\n\n It ought to be new—he'd just invented it. \"You know how rapidly\n medical practices change,\" he said quickly. \"Anyway, when they\n examined me last night, I was much stronger than they expected—so,\n when I wanted to come home, they let me. It's their latest belief that\n initiative is more important than perfect health.\"\n\n\n \"Strange,\" she muttered. \"But you are very strong.\" She looked at him\n and blushed. \"Initiative, certainly you have. Dan could use some,\n wherever he is.\"\n\n\n Dan again, whether it was himself or another person. For a brief time,\n as she listened to him, he'd had the silly idea that.... But it could\n never happen to him. He'd better leave now while she was distracted and\n bewildered and believed what he was saying. \"I've got to go. I'm due\n back,\" he told her.", "It might be wrong, but it was very pleasant, though he did guess her\n motives. She was a warmhearted girl and couldn't help pitying him.\n \"Don't be so damned considerate,\" he mumbled.\n\n\n \"You'll have to put me down,\" she said, averting her eyes.\n \"Otherwise.... You're an intolerable funny man.\"\n\n\n He knew it—he could see himself in the mirror. He was something to\n laugh at when anyone got tired of pretending sympathy. He put her down\n and stumbled out. He thought he could hear the bed creak as she threw\n herself on it.\nII\n\n\n Once he got started, walking wasn't hard. His left side swung at a\n different rate from his right, but that was due to the variation in\n the length of his thighs and lower legs, and the two rhythms could be\n reconciled. He swept along, gaining control of his muscles. He became\n aware that he was whizzing past everyone.", "She blinked at him. \"A patient?\" She didn't need to look twice to see\n that he had been one. \"The director does occasionally see ex-patients.\"\n\n\n He watched her appreciatively as she went inside. The way she walked,\n you'd think she had a special audience. Presently the door opened and\n she came back, batting her eyes vigorously.\n\n\n \"You can go in now,\" she said huskily. Strange, her voice had dropped\n an octave in less than a minute. \"The old boy tried to pretend he was\n in the middle of a grave emergency.\"\n\n\n On his way in, he miscalculated, or she did, and he brushed against\n her. The touch was pleasant, but not thrilling. That reaction seemed\n reserved for Erica.", "The other just didn't understand. \"But the size—it doesn't match my\n arm!\"\n\n\n \"Doesn't\nmatch\n?\" cried the doctor. \"Do you have any idea of the\n biological ways in which it\ndoes\nmatch? True, it may not be\n esthetically harmonized, but here we delve into the mysteries of the\n human organism, and we can hardly be striving for Botticelli bodies and\n Michelangelo men. First, your hand moves freely at the joint, a triumph\n of surgical skill.\" He moved the hand experimentally, to show Merrol\n how it was done. He dropped the hand and hurried to a screen against\n the wall.\n\n\n Crander drew his finger across the surface and the mark remained. \"You\n know about Rh positive and negative blood. Mixed, they can be lethal.\n This was discovered long ago, by someone I've forgotten. But there are\n other factors just as potent and far more complex.\"", "\"There were many others injured at the same time, you know—and you\n were one of the last to be extricated from the ship. Normally, when\n we have to replace a whole arm, we do so at the shoulder for obvious\n reasons. But the previously treated victims had depleted our supplies.\n Some needed only a hand and we gave them just that, others a hand and\n a forearm, and so on. When we got to you, we had to use leftovers or\n permit you to die—there wasn't time to send to other hospitals. In\n fact there wasn't any time at all—we actually thought you were dead,\n but soon found we were wrong.\"\n\n\n Crander stared at a crack in the ceiling. \"Further recovery will take\n other operations and your nervous system isn't up to it.\" He shook his\n head. \"Five years from now, we can help you, not before.\"", "Merrol turned away miserably. There were other things, but he had\n learned the essentials. He was Dan Merrol and there was nothing they\n could do for him until it was too late. How long could he expect Erica\n to wait?\n\n\n The doctor hadn't finished the medical session. \"Replacement of body\n parts is easy, after all. The big trouble came when we went into the\n brain.\"\n\n\n \"Brain?\" Dan was startled.\n\n\n \"How hard do you think your skull is?\" Crander came closer. \"Bend your\n head.\"\n\n\n Merrol obeyed and could feel the doctor's forefinger slice across his\n scalp in a mock operation. \"This sector was crushed.\" Roughly half his\n brain, it appeared. \"That's why so many memories were gone—not just\n from shock. In addition, other sectors were damaged and had to be\n replaced.\"", "Quickly, he scanned himself. It was the same elsewhere. The upper right\n arm was massive, too big for the shoulder it merged with. And the\n forearm, while long, was slender. He blinked and looked again. While\n they were patching him up, did they really think he needed black, red\n and brown hair? He wondered how a beagle felt.\nWhat were they, a bunch of humorists? Did they, for comic effect, piece\n together a body out of bits and scraps left over from a chopping block?\n It was himself he was looking at, otherwise he'd say the results were\n neither hideous nor horrible, but merely—well, what? Ludicrous and\n laughable—and there were complications in that too. Who wants to be\n an involuntary clown, a physical buffoon that Mother Nature hadn't\n duplicated since Man began?", "Crander traced out five areas he could feel, but not see. \"Samuel\n Kaufman, musician—Breed Mannly, cowboy actor—George Elkins,\n lepidopterist—Duke DeCaesares, wrestler—and Ben Eisenberg,\n mathematician, went into the places I tapped.\"\n\n\n Dan raised his head. Some things were clearer. The memories were\n authentic, but they weren't his—nor did the other wives belong to him.\n It was no wonder Erica had cringed at their names.\n\n\n \"These donors were dead, but you can be thankful we had parts of their\n brains available.\" Crander delved into the file and came up with a\n sheet.", "Maybe he should have stayed in the hospital. It would have been easier\n to convince her there. But he'd been frantic to get home. \"It was quite\n a smashup,\" he said. \"You'll have to expect some lapses.\"\n\n\n \"I'm making allowances. But can't you tell me something about myself?\"\n\n\n He thought—and couldn't. He wasn't doing so well. \"Another lapse,\"\n he said gloomily and then brightened. \"But I can tell you lots about\n myself. For instance, I'm a specialist in lepidoptera.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\"", "\"Mass-cell radiographs. One was loaned by your employer. The other was\n taken just after your last operation. Both were corrected according\n to standard methods. One cell won't do it, ten yield an uncertain\n identity—but as few as a hundred cells from any part of the original\n body, excepting the blood, constitute proof more positive than\n fingerprints before the surgical exchange of limbs. Don't ask me\n why—no one knows. But it is true that cells differ from one body to\n the next, and this test detects the difference.\"\nThe mass-cell radiographs did seem identical and Dr. Crander seemed\n certain. Taken altogether, the evidence was overwhelming. There had\n been no mistake—he was Dan Merrol, though it was not difficult to\n understand why Erica couldn't believe he was her husband.", "\"That's the beginning, but at the sensory organs we leave the simple\n stuff behind. Take the eye, for instance.\" Merrol leaned away because\n Dr. Crander seemed about to pluck one of Dan's eyes from its socket.\n \"Surgical and growth factors involved in splicing a massive nerve\n bundle pass any layman's comprehension. There are no non-technical\n terms to describe it.\"\nIt was just as well—Merrol didn't want a lecture. He extended his\n arms. One was of normal length, the other longer. \"Do you think you can\n do something with this? I don't mind variation in thickness—some of\n that will smooth out as I exercise—but I'd like them the same length.\"", "Erica came close and leaned comfortingly against him, but he wasn't\n comforted. \"I waited till I was sure. I didn't want to upset you.\"\n\n\n He wasn't as sure as she seemed to be now. Somehow, maybe he was still\n Dan Merrol—but he wasn't going to insist on it—not after looking at\n himself. Not after trying to sort out those damned memories.\n\n\n She was too kind, pretending to be a little attracted to him, to the\n scrambled face, to the mismatched lumps and limbs and shapes that,\n stretching the term, currently formed his body. It was clear what he\n had to do.\nThe jacket he had worn last night didn't fit. Erica cut off the sleeve\n that hung far over his fingertips on one side and basted it to the\n sleeve that ended well above his wrist, on the other. The shoulders\n were narrow, but the material would stretch and after shrugging around\n in it, he managed to expand it so it was not too tight." ], [ "\"Glad to see you,\" said Doctor Crander, behind the desk. He was nervous\n and harassed for so early in the morning. \"The receptionist didn't give\n me your name. For some reason she seems upset.\"\n\n\n She did at that, he thought—probably bewildered by his appearance. The\n hospital didn't seem to have a calming influence on either her or the\n doctor. \"That's why I came here. I'm not sure who I am. I thought I was\n Dan Merrol.\"\n\n\n Doctor Crander tried to fight his way through the desk. Being a little\n wider and solider, though not by much, the desk won. He contented\n himself by wiping his forehead. \"Our missing patient,\" he said, sighing\n with vast relief. \"For a while I had visions of....\" He then decided\n that visions were nothing a medical man should place much faith in.\n\n\n \"Then I\nam\nDan Merrol?\"", "Miss Jerrems came back, wheeling a large cart. Dan was surprised at the\n mass of records. Crander noticed his expression and smiled. \"You're\n our prize case, Merrol. I've never heard of anyone else surviving\n such extensive surgery. Naturally, we have a step-by-step account of\n everything we did.\"\n\n\n He turned to the woman. \"You may leave, Miss Jerrems.\" She went, but\n the adoration she had showed so openly for her employer seemed to have\n curdled in the last few moments.\n\n\n Crander dug into the files and rooted out photographs. \"Here are\n pictures of the wreckage in which you were found—notice that you were\n strapped in your seat—as you were received into the hospital—at\n various stages in surgery and finally, some taken from the files of the\n company for which you worked.\"\n\n\n Merrol winced. The photographic sequence was incontrovertible. He had\n been a handsome fellow.", "\"Mass-cell radiographs. One was loaned by your employer. The other was\n taken just after your last operation. Both were corrected according\n to standard methods. One cell won't do it, ten yield an uncertain\n identity—but as few as a hundred cells from any part of the original\n body, excepting the blood, constitute proof more positive than\n fingerprints before the surgical exchange of limbs. Don't ask me\n why—no one knows. But it is true that cells differ from one body to\n the next, and this test detects the difference.\"\nThe mass-cell radiographs did seem identical and Dr. Crander seemed\n certain. Taken altogether, the evidence was overwhelming. There had\n been no mistake—he was Dan Merrol, though it was not difficult to\n understand why Erica couldn't believe he was her husband.", "Maybe he should have stayed in the hospital. It would have been easier\n to convince her there. But he'd been frantic to get home. \"It was quite\n a smashup,\" he said. \"You'll have to expect some lapses.\"\n\n\n \"I'm making allowances. But can't you tell me something about myself?\"\n\n\n He thought—and couldn't. He wasn't doing so well. \"Another lapse,\"\n he said gloomily and then brightened. \"But I can tell you lots about\n myself. For instance, I'm a specialist in lepidoptera.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\"", "It was then he'd grabbed her, to keep her from talking to the hospital.\n He'd been unnecessarily rough, but that could be ascribed to lack of\n coordination. She could have been terrified, might have resisted—but\n she hadn't. At that time, she must have half-believed he was Dan\n Merrol, still dangerously near the edges of post-regrowth shock.\nShe was looking at him, waiting for that explanation. He shook his\n mind frantically and the words came out. \"Self-therapy,\" he said\n briskly. \"The patient alone understands what he needs.\" She started to\n interrupt, but he shook his head and went on blithely. \"That's the\n first corollary of the theorem. The second is that there are critical\n times in the recovery of the patient. At such times, with the least\n possible supervision, he should be encouraged to make his own decisions\n and carry them through by himself, even though running a slight risk of\n physical complications.\"", "But why hadn't he told her? Shock? Perhaps—but where had those other\n identities come from—lepidopterist, musician, actor, mathematician\n and wrestler? And where had he got memories of wives, slender and\n passionate, petite and wild, casual and complaisant, nagging and\n insecure?\n\n\n Erica he didn't remember at all, save from last night, and what was\n that due to?\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" he asked, deliberately toying with the last\n bite of breakfast. It gave him time to think.\n\n\n \"They said they'd identified everyone, living or dead, and I supposed\n they had. After seeing you, I can believe they made any number of\n similar mistakes. Dan Merrol may be alive under another name. It will\n be hard to do, but I must try to find him. Some of the accident victims\n went to other hospitals, you know, the ones located nearest where they\n fell.\"", "Without waiting for him to comply, Crander pushed him into a chair and\n began hauling out a variety of instruments with which he poked about\n his bewildered patient.\n\n\n Finally Crander seemed satisfied. \"Excellent,\" he said. \"If I didn't\n know better, I'd say you were almost fully recovered. A week ago, we\n considered removing you from the regrowth tank. Our decision to leave\n you there an extra week has paid off very, very nicely.\"\n\n\n Merrol wasn't as pleased as the doctor appeared to be. \"Granted you can\n identify me as the person who came out of regrowth—but does that mean\n I'm Dan Merrol? Could there be a mistake?\"\n\n\n Crander eyed him clinically. \"We don't ordinarily do this—but it is\n evident that with you peace of mind is more important than procedure.\n And you look well enough to stand the physical strain.\"", "\"They told you that too.\"\n\n\n She was wrong again, but it was probably wiser not to tell her how he\n knew. No one had said anything to him in the hospital. He hadn't given\n them a chance. He had awakened in a room and hadn't wanted to be alone.\n He'd got up and read the chart and searched dizzily through the closet.\n Clothes were hanging there and he'd put them on and muttered her name\n to himself. He'd sat down to gain strength and after a while he'd\n walked out and no one had stopped him.\n\n\n It was night when he left the hospital and the next thing he remembered\n was her face as he looked through the door. Her name hadn't been on the\n chart nor her address and yet he had found her. That proved something,\n didn't it? \"How could I forget you?\" he demanded.\n\n\n \"You may have known someone else with that name. When were we married?\"", "He slowed down—he didn't want to attract attention. It was difficult\n but he learned to walk at a pedestrian pace. However poorly they'd\n matched his legs, they'd given him good ones.\n\n\n Last night, on an impulse, he'd left the hospital and now he had to go\n back.\nHad\nto? Of course. There were too many uncertainties still to\n be settled. He glanced around. It was still very early in the morning\n and normal traffic was just beginning. Maybe they hadn't missed him\n yet, though it was unlikely.\n\n\n He seemed to know the route well enough and covered the distance in a\n brief time. He turned in at the building and, scanning the directory,\n went at once to the proper floor and stopped at the desk.\nThe receptionist was busy with the drawer of the desk. \"Can I help\n you?\" she asked, continuing to peer down.\n\n\n \"The director—Doctor Crander. I don't have an appointment.\"", "He pressed the buzzer and an angular woman in her early forties\n answered. \"Miss Jerrems, the Dan Merrol file.\"\n\n\n Miss Jerrems flashed a glance of open adoration at the doctor and\n before she could reel it in, her gaze swept past Dan, hesitated and\n returned to him. Her mouth opened and closed like that of a nervous\n goldfish and she darted from the room.\nThey see me and flee as fast as they can caper\n, thought Merrol. It\n was not wholly true—Crander didn't seem much affected. But he was a\n doctor and used to it. Furthermore, he probably had room for only one\n emotion at the moment—relief at the return of his patient.", "\"You did a fine job,\" he said. Recalling the picture of the wreckage,\n he knew they had. \"But couldn't you have done just a little better?\"\nCrander's eyebrows bounced up. \"We're amazed at how well we have\n done. You can search case histories and find nothing comparable.\" His\n eyebrows dropped back into place. \"Of course, if you have a specific\n complaint....\"\n\n\n \"Nothing specific. But look at this hand....\"\n\n\n The doctor seized it. \"Beautiful, isn't it?\"\n\n\n \"Perhaps—taken by itself.\" Dan rolled up his sleeve. \"See how it joins\n the forearm.\"\n\n\n Crander waggled it gravely. \"It coordinates perfectly. I've observed\n you have complete control over it. The doctor's eye, my boy. The\n doctor's diagnostic eye.\"", "She blinked at him. \"A patient?\" She didn't need to look twice to see\n that he had been one. \"The director does occasionally see ex-patients.\"\n\n\n He watched her appreciatively as she went inside. The way she walked,\n you'd think she had a special audience. Presently the door opened and\n she came back, batting her eyes vigorously.\n\n\n \"You can go in now,\" she said huskily. Strange, her voice had dropped\n an octave in less than a minute. \"The old boy tried to pretend he was\n in the middle of a grave emergency.\"\n\n\n On his way in, he miscalculated, or she did, and he brushed against\n her. The touch was pleasant, but not thrilling. That reaction seemed\n reserved for Erica.", "The doctor came cautiously around the desk this time. \"Of course. I\n didn't expect that you'd come walking in my office—that's why I didn't\n recognize you immediately.\" He exhaled peevishly. \"Where did you go?\n We've been searching for you everywhere.\"\n\n\n It seemed wiser to Dan not to tell him everything. \"It was stuffy\n inside. I went out for a stroll before the nurse came in.\"\n\n\n Crander frowned, his nervousness rapidly disappearing. \"Then it was\n about an hour ago. We didn't think you could walk at all so soon, or we\n would have kept someone on duty through the night.\"\nThey had underestimated him, but he didn't mind. Of course, he didn't\n know how a patient from the regrowth tanks was supposed to act.\n The doctor took his pulse. \"Seems fine,\" he said, surprised. \"Sit\n down—please sit down.\"", "\"Can't you remember?\" Her laughter tinkled as she pushed him away and\n sat up. \"They said you were Dan Merrol at the hospital, but they must\n have been wrong.\"\n\n\n \"Hospitals don't make that kind of mistake,\" he said with a certainty\n he didn't altogether feel.\n\n\n \"But\nI\nshould know, shouldn't I?\"\n\n\n \"Of course, but....\" He did some verbal backstepping. \"It was a\n bad accident. You've got to expect that I won't be quite the same\n at first.\" He sat up. \"\nLook\nat me. Can't you tell who I am?\" She\n returned his gaze, then swayed toward him. He decided that she was\n highly attractive—but surely he ought to have known that long ago.\nWith a visible effort she leaned away from him. \"Your left eye does\n look familiar,\" she said cautiously. \"The brown one, I mean.\"\n\n\n \"The\nbrown\none?\"", "Quickly, he scanned himself. It was the same elsewhere. The upper right\n arm was massive, too big for the shoulder it merged with. And the\n forearm, while long, was slender. He blinked and looked again. While\n they were patching him up, did they really think he needed black, red\n and brown hair? He wondered how a beagle felt.\nWhat were they, a bunch of humorists? Did they, for comic effect, piece\n together a body out of bits and scraps left over from a chopping block?\n It was himself he was looking at, otherwise he'd say the results were\n neither hideous nor horrible, but merely—well, what? Ludicrous and\n laughable—and there were complications in that too. Who wants to be\n an involuntary clown, a physical buffoon that Mother Nature hadn't\n duplicated since Man began?", "\"That's new, isn't it?\" she said. \"I always thought they watched the\n patient carefully.\"\n\n\n It ought to be new—he'd just invented it. \"You know how rapidly\n medical practices change,\" he said quickly. \"Anyway, when they\n examined me last night, I was much stronger than they expected—so,\n when I wanted to come home, they let me. It's their latest belief that\n initiative is more important than perfect health.\"\n\n\n \"Strange,\" she muttered. \"But you are very strong.\" She looked at him\n and blushed. \"Initiative, certainly you have. Dan could use some,\n wherever he is.\"\n\n\n Dan again, whether it was himself or another person. For a brief time,\n as she listened to him, he'd had the silly idea that.... But it could\n never happen to him. He'd better leave now while she was distracted and\n bewildered and believed what he was saying. \"I've got to go. I'm due\n back,\" he told her.", "\"Your other eye's green,\" she told him.\n\n\n \"Of course—a replacement. I told you it was a serious accident. They\n had to use whatever was handy.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose so—but shouldn't they have tried to stick to the original\n color scheme?\"\n\n\n \"It's a little thing,\" he said. \"I'm lucky to be alive.\" He took her\n hand. \"I believe I can convince you I'm\nme\n.\"\n\n\n \"I wish you could.\" Her voice was low and sad and he couldn't guess why.\n\n\n \"My name is Dan Merrol.\"\n\n\n \"They told you that at the hospital.\"\n\n\n They hadn't—he'd read it on the chart. But he had been alone in the\n room and the name had to be his, and anyway he\nfelt\nlike Dan Merrol.\n \"Your name is Erica.\"", "The other just didn't understand. \"But the size—it doesn't match my\n arm!\"\n\n\n \"Doesn't\nmatch\n?\" cried the doctor. \"Do you have any idea of the\n biological ways in which it\ndoes\nmatch? True, it may not be\n esthetically harmonized, but here we delve into the mysteries of the\n human organism, and we can hardly be striving for Botticelli bodies and\n Michelangelo men. First, your hand moves freely at the joint, a triumph\n of surgical skill.\" He moved the hand experimentally, to show Merrol\n how it was done. He dropped the hand and hurried to a screen against\n the wall.\n\n\n Crander drew his finger across the surface and the mark remained. \"You\n know about Rh positive and negative blood. Mixed, they can be lethal.\n This was discovered long ago, by someone I've forgotten. But there are\n other factors just as potent and far more complex.\"", "\"\nWhose\ntheorem?\"\n\n\n \"Wysocki's. I started to call the hospital and you wouldn't let me,\n because of the theorem. You said you'd explain it this morning.\" She\n glanced at the bruise on her arm.", "\"How much do you remember of the accident?\" She shoved aside her own\n food and sat watching him.\nNot a thing, now that she asked. In fact, there wasn't much he did\n remember. There had been the chart at his bed-side, with one word\n scrawled on it—\naccident\n—and that was where he'd got the idea. There\n had been other marks too, but he hadn't been able to decipher them. He\n nodded and said nothing and she took it as he thought she would.\n\n\n \"It wasn't anybody's fault. The warning devices which were supposed to\n work didn't,\" she began. \"A Moon ship collided with a Mars liner in\n the upper atmosphere. The ships broke up in several parts and since\n they are compartmented and the delay rockets switched on immediately,\n the separate parts fell rather gently, considering how high they were.\n Casualties weren't as great as you might think." ], [ "\"Glad to see you,\" said Doctor Crander, behind the desk. He was nervous\n and harassed for so early in the morning. \"The receptionist didn't give\n me your name. For some reason she seems upset.\"\n\n\n She did at that, he thought—probably bewildered by his appearance. The\n hospital didn't seem to have a calming influence on either her or the\n doctor. \"That's why I came here. I'm not sure who I am. I thought I was\n Dan Merrol.\"\n\n\n Doctor Crander tried to fight his way through the desk. Being a little\n wider and solider, though not by much, the desk won. He contented\n himself by wiping his forehead. \"Our missing patient,\" he said, sighing\n with vast relief. \"For a while I had visions of....\" He then decided\n that visions were nothing a medical man should place much faith in.\n\n\n \"Then I\nam\nDan Merrol?\"", "But why hadn't he told her? Shock? Perhaps—but where had those other\n identities come from—lepidopterist, musician, actor, mathematician\n and wrestler? And where had he got memories of wives, slender and\n passionate, petite and wild, casual and complaisant, nagging and\n insecure?\n\n\n Erica he didn't remember at all, save from last night, and what was\n that due to?\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" he asked, deliberately toying with the last\n bite of breakfast. It gave him time to think.\n\n\n \"They said they'd identified everyone, living or dead, and I supposed\n they had. After seeing you, I can believe they made any number of\n similar mistakes. Dan Merrol may be alive under another name. It will\n be hard to do, but I must try to find him. Some of the accident victims\n went to other hospitals, you know, the ones located nearest where they\n fell.\"", "Without waiting for him to comply, Crander pushed him into a chair and\n began hauling out a variety of instruments with which he poked about\n his bewildered patient.\n\n\n Finally Crander seemed satisfied. \"Excellent,\" he said. \"If I didn't\n know better, I'd say you were almost fully recovered. A week ago, we\n considered removing you from the regrowth tank. Our decision to leave\n you there an extra week has paid off very, very nicely.\"\n\n\n Merrol wasn't as pleased as the doctor appeared to be. \"Granted you can\n identify me as the person who came out of regrowth—but does that mean\n I'm Dan Merrol? Could there be a mistake?\"\n\n\n Crander eyed him clinically. \"We don't ordinarily do this—but it is\n evident that with you peace of mind is more important than procedure.\n And you look well enough to stand the physical strain.\"", "\"Mass-cell radiographs. One was loaned by your employer. The other was\n taken just after your last operation. Both were corrected according\n to standard methods. One cell won't do it, ten yield an uncertain\n identity—but as few as a hundred cells from any part of the original\n body, excepting the blood, constitute proof more positive than\n fingerprints before the surgical exchange of limbs. Don't ask me\n why—no one knows. But it is true that cells differ from one body to\n the next, and this test detects the difference.\"\nThe mass-cell radiographs did seem identical and Dr. Crander seemed\n certain. Taken altogether, the evidence was overwhelming. There had\n been no mistake—he was Dan Merrol, though it was not difficult to\n understand why Erica couldn't believe he was her husband.", "Miss Jerrems came back, wheeling a large cart. Dan was surprised at the\n mass of records. Crander noticed his expression and smiled. \"You're\n our prize case, Merrol. I've never heard of anyone else surviving\n such extensive surgery. Naturally, we have a step-by-step account of\n everything we did.\"\n\n\n He turned to the woman. \"You may leave, Miss Jerrems.\" She went, but\n the adoration she had showed so openly for her employer seemed to have\n curdled in the last few moments.\n\n\n Crander dug into the files and rooted out photographs. \"Here are\n pictures of the wreckage in which you were found—notice that you were\n strapped in your seat—as you were received into the hospital—at\n various stages in surgery and finally, some taken from the files of the\n company for which you worked.\"\n\n\n Merrol winced. The photographic sequence was incontrovertible. He had\n been a handsome fellow.", "It was then he'd grabbed her, to keep her from talking to the hospital.\n He'd been unnecessarily rough, but that could be ascribed to lack of\n coordination. She could have been terrified, might have resisted—but\n she hadn't. At that time, she must have half-believed he was Dan\n Merrol, still dangerously near the edges of post-regrowth shock.\nShe was looking at him, waiting for that explanation. He shook his\n mind frantically and the words came out. \"Self-therapy,\" he said\n briskly. \"The patient alone understands what he needs.\" She started to\n interrupt, but he shook his head and went on blithely. \"That's the\n first corollary of the theorem. The second is that there are critical\n times in the recovery of the patient. At such times, with the least\n possible supervision, he should be encouraged to make his own decisions\n and carry them through by himself, even though running a slight risk of\n physical complications.\"", "\"Can't you remember?\" Her laughter tinkled as she pushed him away and\n sat up. \"They said you were Dan Merrol at the hospital, but they must\n have been wrong.\"\n\n\n \"Hospitals don't make that kind of mistake,\" he said with a certainty\n he didn't altogether feel.\n\n\n \"But\nI\nshould know, shouldn't I?\"\n\n\n \"Of course, but....\" He did some verbal backstepping. \"It was a\n bad accident. You've got to expect that I won't be quite the same\n at first.\" He sat up. \"\nLook\nat me. Can't you tell who I am?\" She\n returned his gaze, then swayed toward him. He decided that she was\n highly attractive—but surely he ought to have known that long ago.\nWith a visible effort she leaned away from him. \"Your left eye does\n look familiar,\" she said cautiously. \"The brown one, I mean.\"\n\n\n \"The\nbrown\none?\"", "He pressed the buzzer and an angular woman in her early forties\n answered. \"Miss Jerrems, the Dan Merrol file.\"\n\n\n Miss Jerrems flashed a glance of open adoration at the doctor and\n before she could reel it in, her gaze swept past Dan, hesitated and\n returned to him. Her mouth opened and closed like that of a nervous\n goldfish and she darted from the room.\nThey see me and flee as fast as they can caper\n, thought Merrol. It\n was not wholly true—Crander didn't seem much affected. But he was a\n doctor and used to it. Furthermore, he probably had room for only one\n emotion at the moment—relief at the return of his patient.", "Merrol turned away miserably. There were other things, but he had\n learned the essentials. He was Dan Merrol and there was nothing they\n could do for him until it was too late. How long could he expect Erica\n to wait?\n\n\n The doctor hadn't finished the medical session. \"Replacement of body\n parts is easy, after all. The big trouble came when we went into the\n brain.\"\n\n\n \"Brain?\" Dan was startled.\n\n\n \"How hard do you think your skull is?\" Crander came closer. \"Bend your\n head.\"\n\n\n Merrol obeyed and could feel the doctor's forefinger slice across his\n scalp in a mock operation. \"This sector was crushed.\" Roughly half his\n brain, it appeared. \"That's why so many memories were gone—not just\n from shock. In addition, other sectors were damaged and had to be\n replaced.\"", "Erica came close and leaned comfortingly against him, but he wasn't\n comforted. \"I waited till I was sure. I didn't want to upset you.\"\n\n\n He wasn't as sure as she seemed to be now. Somehow, maybe he was still\n Dan Merrol—but he wasn't going to insist on it—not after looking at\n himself. Not after trying to sort out those damned memories.\n\n\n She was too kind, pretending to be a little attracted to him, to the\n scrambled face, to the mismatched lumps and limbs and shapes that,\n stretching the term, currently formed his body. It was clear what he\n had to do.\nThe jacket he had worn last night didn't fit. Erica cut off the sleeve\n that hung far over his fingertips on one side and basted it to the\n sleeve that ended well above his wrist, on the other. The shoulders\n were narrow, but the material would stretch and after shrugging around\n in it, he managed to expand it so it was not too tight.", "\"Your other eye's green,\" she told him.\n\n\n \"Of course—a replacement. I told you it was a serious accident. They\n had to use whatever was handy.\"\n\n\n \"I suppose so—but shouldn't they have tried to stick to the original\n color scheme?\"\n\n\n \"It's a little thing,\" he said. \"I'm lucky to be alive.\" He took her\n hand. \"I believe I can convince you I'm\nme\n.\"\n\n\n \"I wish you could.\" Her voice was low and sad and he couldn't guess why.\n\n\n \"My name is Dan Merrol.\"\n\n\n \"They told you that at the hospital.\"\n\n\n They hadn't—he'd read it on the chart. But he had been alone in the\n room and the name had to be his, and anyway he\nfelt\nlike Dan Merrol.\n \"Your name is Erica.\"", "\"That's new, isn't it?\" she said. \"I always thought they watched the\n patient carefully.\"\n\n\n It ought to be new—he'd just invented it. \"You know how rapidly\n medical practices change,\" he said quickly. \"Anyway, when they\n examined me last night, I was much stronger than they expected—so,\n when I wanted to come home, they let me. It's their latest belief that\n initiative is more important than perfect health.\"\n\n\n \"Strange,\" she muttered. \"But you are very strong.\" She looked at him\n and blushed. \"Initiative, certainly you have. Dan could use some,\n wherever he is.\"\n\n\n Dan again, whether it was himself or another person. For a brief time,\n as she listened to him, he'd had the silly idea that.... But it could\n never happen to him. He'd better leave now while she was distracted and\n bewildered and believed what he was saying. \"I've got to go. I'm due\n back,\" he told her.", "\"Almost three months. But most of that time you were floating in\n gelatin in the regrowth tank, unconscious until yesterday.\" She\n leaned forward and caressed his cheek. \"Everything seems wrong, no\n matter how hard I try to believe otherwise. You don't have the same\n personality—you can't remember anything.\"\n\n\n \"And I have one brown eye and one green.\"\n\n\n \"It's not just that, darling. Go over to the mirror.\"\n\n\n He had been seriously injured and he was still weak from the shock. He\n got up and walked unsteadily to the mirror. \"Now what?\"\n\n\n \"Stand beside it. Do you see the line?\" Erica pointed to the glass.\n\n\n He did—it was a mark level with his chin. \"What does it mean?\"\n\n\n \"That should be the top of Dan Merrol's head,\" she said softly.", "Crander traced out five areas he could feel, but not see. \"Samuel\n Kaufman, musician—Breed Mannly, cowboy actor—George Elkins,\n lepidopterist—Duke DeCaesares, wrestler—and Ben Eisenberg,\n mathematician, went into the places I tapped.\"\n\n\n Dan raised his head. Some things were clearer. The memories were\n authentic, but they weren't his—nor did the other wives belong to him.\n It was no wonder Erica had cringed at their names.\n\n\n \"These donors were dead, but you can be thankful we had parts of their\n brains available.\" Crander delved into the file and came up with a\n sheet.", "\"You did a fine job,\" he said. Recalling the picture of the wreckage,\n he knew they had. \"But couldn't you have done just a little better?\"\nCrander's eyebrows bounced up. \"We're amazed at how well we have\n done. You can search case histories and find nothing comparable.\" His\n eyebrows dropped back into place. \"Of course, if you have a specific\n complaint....\"\n\n\n \"Nothing specific. But look at this hand....\"\n\n\n The doctor seized it. \"Beautiful, isn't it?\"\n\n\n \"Perhaps—taken by itself.\" Dan rolled up his sleeve. \"See how it joins\n the forearm.\"\n\n\n Crander waggled it gravely. \"It coordinates perfectly. I've observed\n you have complete control over it. The doctor's eye, my boy. The\n doctor's diagnostic eye.\"", "She blinked at him. \"A patient?\" She didn't need to look twice to see\n that he had been one. \"The director does occasionally see ex-patients.\"\n\n\n He watched her appreciatively as she went inside. The way she walked,\n you'd think she had a special audience. Presently the door opened and\n she came back, batting her eyes vigorously.\n\n\n \"You can go in now,\" she said huskily. Strange, her voice had dropped\n an octave in less than a minute. \"The old boy tried to pretend he was\n in the middle of a grave emergency.\"\n\n\n On his way in, he miscalculated, or she did, and he brushed against\n her. The touch was pleasant, but not thrilling. That reaction seemed\n reserved for Erica.", "She sighed and drew away. \"That was a lucky guess on your age.\"\nDid that mean he wasn't right on anything else? From the expression\n on her face, it did. \"You've got to expect me to be confused in the\n beginning. Can't you really tell who I am?\"\n\n\n \"I\ncan't\n! You don't have the same personality at all.\" She glanced at\n her arm. There was a bruise on it.\n\n\n \"Did I do that?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"You did, though I'm sure you didn't mean to. I don't think you\n realized how strong you were. Dan was always too gentle—he must have\n been afraid of me. And\nyou\nweren't at all.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe I was impetuous,\" he said. \"But it was such a long time.\"", "\"Parts of the two ships fell together, the rest were scattered. There\n was some interchange of passengers in the wreckage, but since you were\n found in the control compartment of the Mars liner, they assumed you\n were the pilot. They never let me see you until yesterday and then\n it was just a glimpse. I took their word when they said you were Dan\n Merrol.\"\n\n\n At least he knew who or what Dan Merrol was—the pilot of the Mars\n liner. They had assumed he was the pilot because of where he was found,\n but he might have been tossed there—impact did strange things.\n\n\n Dan Merrol was a spaceship pilot and he hadn't included it among his\n skills. It was strange that she had believed him at all. But now that\n it was out in the open, he did remember some facts about spaceships. He\n felt he could manage a takeoff at this instant.", "The doctor came cautiously around the desk this time. \"Of course. I\n didn't expect that you'd come walking in my office—that's why I didn't\n recognize you immediately.\" He exhaled peevishly. \"Where did you go?\n We've been searching for you everywhere.\"\n\n\n It seemed wiser to Dan not to tell him everything. \"It was stuffy\n inside. I went out for a stroll before the nurse came in.\"\n\n\n Crander frowned, his nervousness rapidly disappearing. \"Then it was\n about an hour ago. We didn't think you could walk at all so soon, or we\n would have kept someone on duty through the night.\"\nThey had underestimated him, but he didn't mind. Of course, he didn't\n know how a patient from the regrowth tanks was supposed to act.\n The doctor took his pulse. \"Seems fine,\" he said, surprised. \"Sit\n down—please sit down.\"", "The Man Who Was Six\nBy F. L. WALLACE\n\n\n Illustrated by ASHMAN\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction September 1954.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThere is nothing at all like having a sound\n \nmind in a sound body, but Dan Merrol had too\n \nmuch of one—and also too much of the other!\n\"Sorry, darling,\" said Erica. She yawned, added, \"I've tried—but I\n just can't believe you're my husband.\"\n\n\n He felt his own yawn slip off his face. \"What do you mean? What am I\n doing here then?\"" ] ]
valid	22579	[ "What production process caused the Puffyloaves to float away?", "Who is the highest ranking employee at Puffyloaves mentioned in this story?", "What changes Meg's mind about a relationship with Roger?", "What qualities does the Tin Philosopher think are most valued in bread?", "Why was Roger mortified at the news about the cancelled metal-foil wrapper order?", "What was the main reason for hydrogen being substituted for helium?", "Why were the Puffyloaves flaming when hit with incendiary rounds?", "What caused the loaves to eventually fall on the Ukraine?", "Why was Roger ecstatic when putting on Meg's headphones?", "What made Roger decide to sell Puffyloaves like balloons?" ]	[ [ "Being made with Helium", "Being made with yeast", "Being made with Carbon Dioxide", "Being made with hydrogen" ], [ "Rose Thinker", "Roger Snedden", "Phineas T. Gryce", "Meg Winterly" ], [ "His jingle writing ability", "His handling of the crisis at hand", "His thoroughbred nerves", "His deal with the Martian ambassador" ], [ "Lighter and paler", "Stronger and harder", "Heavier and darker", "More nutritious" ], [ "The consumers would now be able to see the product", "The loaves would go stale much more quickly now", "They now had nothing to wrap the loaves with", "The loaves would now be too light and float away" ], [ "It was much cheaper", "The helium made the loaves taste bad", "Helium would make the loaves too light ", "The government halted supply of helium" ], [ "There was too much bran and germ left in the wheat used to make the loaves ", "The helium in the loaves was catching on fire", "Oxygen mixing into the hydrogen and creating a flammable substance", "The clear plastic wrappers were extremely flammable" ], [ "A storm generated by the weather service", "A Bulgarian evangelist who did so on accident", "Being shot down by Soviet planes", "The sun bursting the plastic wrappers" ], [ "He was escaping from the discussion with P.T. Gryce", "He was happy to be sharing with Meg", "He found out he was getting a promotion", "He had solved the crisis that he created" ], [ "Shipping constraints", "Government regulation", "Cheaper packaging materials", "Children's demands of their parents" ] ]	[ 4, 3, 2, 1, 4, 4, 3, 4, 4, 4 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "Thus instantly risen, the dough\n was clipped into loaves and shot\n into radionic ovens forming the\n midsections of the metal serpents.\n There the bread was baked in a\n matter of seconds, a fierce heat-front\n browning the crusts, and the\n piping-hot loaves sealed in transparent\n plastic bearing the proud\n Puffyloaf emblem (two cherubs\n circling a floating loaf) and ejected\n onto the delivery platform at each\n serpent's rear end, where a cluster\n of pickup machines, like hungry\n piglets, snatched at the loaves\n with hygienic claws.\n\n\n A few loaves would be hurried\n off for the day's consumption,\n the majority stored for winter in\n strategically located mammoth\n deep freezes.", "\"But that isn't all! The far\n greater demand everywhere is for\n Puffyloaves that will actually float.\n Public Relations, Child Liaison\n Division, reports that the kiddies\n are making their mothers' lives\n miserable about it. If only we can\n figure out some way to make\n hydrogen non-explosive or the\n helium loaf float just a little—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure we can take care of\n that quite handily,\" Tin Philosopher\n interrupted briskly. \"Puffyloaf\n has kept it a corporation secret—even\n you've never been told\n about it—but just before he went\n crazy, Everett Whitehead discovered\n a way to make bread using\n only half as much flour as we do in\n the present loaf. Using this secret\n technique, which we've been saving\n for just such an emergency, it will\n be possible to bake a helium loaf as\n buoyant in every respect as the\n hydrogen loaf.\"", "Tin Philosopher kicked her under\n the table, while observing, \"So\n you see, Roger, that the non-delivery\n of the hydrogen loaf carries\n some consolations. And I must confess\n that one aspect of the affair\n gives me great satisfaction, not as a\n Board Member but as a private\n machine. You have at last made a\n reality of the 'rises through the air'\n part of Puffybread's theme. They\n can't ever take that away from you.\n By now, half the inhabitants of the\n Great Plains must have observed\n our flying loaves rising high.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce shot a frightened\n look at the west windows and\n found his full voice.\n\n\n \"Stop the mills!\" he roared at\n Meg Winterly, who nodded and\n whispered urgently into her mike.", "Here the machine shuddered\n with delicate clinkings. \"Therefore,\n we of Puffyloaf are taking today\n what may be the ultimate step\n toward purity: we are aerating our\n loaves with the noble gas helium,\n an element which remains virginal\n in the face of all chemical temptations\n and whose slim molecules are\n eleven times lighter than obese\n carbon dioxide—yes, noble uncontaminable\n helium, which, if it be a\n kind of ash, is yet the ash only of\n radioactive burning, accomplished\n or initiated entirely on the Sun, a\n safe 93 million miles from this\n planet. Let's have a cheer for the\n helium loaf!\"\nWITHOUT changing expression,\n Phineas T. Gryce rapped\n the table thrice in solemn applause,\n while the others bowed their heads.", "\"Puffyloaf could do with a little\n of that,\" the business girl observed\n judiciously. \"The way sales have\n been plummeting, it won't be long\n before the Government deeds our\n desks to the managers of Fairy\n Bread and asks us to take the Big\n Jump. But just where does your\n quick thinking come into this, Mr.\n Snedden? You can't be referring to\n the helium—that was Rose Thinker's\n brainwave.\"\n\n\n She studied him suspiciously.\n \"You've birthed another promotional\n bumble, Roger. I can see it\n in your eyes. I only hope it's not\n as big a one as when you put the\n Martian ambassador on 3D and he\n thanked you profusely for the gross\n of Puffyloaves, assuring you that\n he'd never slept on a softer mattress\n in all his life on two planets.\"", "\"Then, early in the twenty-first\n century, came the epochal researches\n of Everett Whitehead,\n Puffyloaf chemist, culminating in\n his paper 'The Structural Bubble\n in Cereal Masses' and making possible\n the baking of airtight bread\n twenty times stronger (for its\n weight) than steel and of a\n lightness that would have been\n incredible even to the advanced\n chemist-bakers of the twentieth\n century—a lightness so great that,\n besides forming the backbone of\n our own promotion, it has forever\n since been capitalized on by our\n conscienceless competitors of Fairy\n Bread with their enduring slogan:\n 'It Makes Ghost Toast'.\"\n\n\n \"That's a beaut, all right, that\n ecto-dough blurb,\" Rose Thinker\n admitted, bugging her photocells\n sadly. \"Wait a sec. How about?—", "Private fliers approached the\n brown and glistening bread-front in\n curiosity and dipped back in awe.\n Aero-expresslines organized sightseeing\n flights along the flanks.\n Planes of the government forestry\n and agricultural services and 'copters\n bearing the Puffyloaf emblem\n hovered on the fringes, watching\n developments and waiting for orders.\n A squadron of supersonic\n fighters hung menacingly above.\n\n\n The behavior of birds varied\n considerably. Most fled or gave the\n loaves a wide berth, but some\n bolder species, discovering the minimal\n nutritive nature of the translucent\n brown objects, attacked\n them furiously with beaks and\n claws. Hydrogen diffusing slowly\n through the crusts had now distended\n most of the sealed plastic\n wrappers into little balloons, which\n ruptured, when pierced, with disconcerting\npops\n.", "World distribution was given to\n a series of photographs showing\n peasants queueing up to trade scavenged\n Puffyloaves for traditional\n black bread, recently aerated itself\n but still extra solid by comparison,\n the rate of exchange demanded by\n the Moscow teams being twenty\n Puffyloaves to one of pumpernickel.\n\n\n Another series of photographs,\n picturing chubby workers' children\n being blown to bits by booby-trapped\n bread, was quietly destroyed.\n\n\n Congratulatory notes were exchanged\n by various national governments\n and world organizations,\n including the Brotherhood of Free\n Business Machines. The great\n bread flight was over, though for\n several weeks afterward scattered\n falls of loaves occurred, giving rise\n to a new folklore of manna among\n lonely Arabian tribesmen, and in\n one well-authenticated instance in\n Tibet, sustaining life in a party of\n mountaineers cut off by a snow\n slide.", "But now, behold a wonder! As\n loaves began to appear on the\n delivery platform of the first walking\n mill to get into action, they\n did not linger on the conveyor\n belt, but rose gently into the air\n and slowly traveled off down-wind\n across the hot rippling fields.\nTHE robot claws of the pickup\n machines clutched in vain, and,\n not noticing the difference, proceeded\n carefully to stack emptiness,\n tier by tier. One errant loaf,\n rising more sluggishly than its fellows,\n was snagged by a thrusting\n claw. The machine paused, clumsily\n wiped off the injured loaf, set\n it aside—where it bobbed on one\n corner, unable to take off again—and\n went back to the work of\n storing nothingness.\n\n\n A flock of crows rose from the\n trees of a nearby shelterbelt as the\n flight of loaves approached. The\n crows swooped to investigate and\n then suddenly scattered, screeching\n in panic.", "\"Hydrogen is twice as light as\n helium,\" Tin Philosopher remarked\n judiciously.\n\n\n \"And many times cheaper—did\n you know that?\" Roger countered\n feebly. \"Yes, I substituted hydrogen.\n The metal-foil wrapping would\n have added just enough weight to\n counteract the greater buoyancy of\n the hydrogen loaf. But—\"\n\n\n \"So, when this morning's loaves\n began to arrive on the delivery\n platforms of the walking mills....\"\n Tin Philosopher left the remark\n unfinished.\n\n\n \"Exactly,\" Roger agreed dismally.\n\n\n \"Let me ask you, Mr. Snedden,\"\n Gryce interjected, still in low tones,\n \"if you expected people to jump to\n the kitchen ceiling for their Puffybread\n after taking off the metal\n wrapper, or reach for the sky if\n they happened to unwrap the stuff\n outdoors?\"", "\"Thanks, T.P.,\" P.T. then said.\n \"And now for the Moment of\n Truth. Miss Winterly, how is the\n helium loaf selling?\"\n\n\n The business girl clapped on a\n pair of earphones and whispered\n into a lapel mike. Her gaze grew\n abstracted as she mentally translated\n flurries of brief squawks into\n coherent messages. Suddenly a single\n vertical furrow creased her\n matchlessly smooth brow.\n\n\n \"It isn't, Mr. Gryce!\" she gasped\n in horror. \"Fairy Bread is outselling\n Puffyloaves by an infinity factor.\n So far this morning,\nthere has\n not been one single delivery of\n Puffyloaves to any sales spot\n! Complaints\n about non-delivery are pouring\n in from both walking stores and\n sessile shops.\"", "\"Ladies—\" he inclined his photocells\n toward Rose Thinker and Meg—\"and\n gentlemen. This is a historic\n occasion in Old Puffy's long history,\n the inauguration of the helium-filled\n loaf ('So Light It Almost Floats\n Away!') in which that inert and\n heaven-aspiring gas replaces old-fashioned\n carbon dioxide. Later,\n there will be kudos for Rose\n Thinker, whose bright relays genius-sparked\n the idea, and also for Roger\n Snedden, who took care of the\n details.\n\n\n \"By the by, Racehorse, that was\n a brilliant piece of work getting the\n helium out of the government—they've\n been pretty stuffy lately\n about their monopoly. But first I\n want to throw wide the casement in\n your minds that opens on the Long\n View of Things.\"", "As they advanced, their heads\n swung lazily from side to side, very\n much like snakes, gobbling the yellow\n grain. In their throats, it was\n threshed, the chaff bundled and\n burped aside for pickup by the\n crawl trucks of a chemical corporation,\n the kernels quick-dried\n and blown along into the mighty\n chests of the machines. There the\n tireless mills ground the kernels\n to flour, which was instantly sifted,\n the bran being packaged and\n dropped like the chaff for pickup.\n A cluster of tanks which gave\n the metal serpents a decidedly\n humpbacked appearance added\n water, shortening, salt and other\n ingredients, some named and some\n not. The dough was at the same\n time infused with gas from a tank\n conspicuously labeled \"Carbon\n Dioxide\" (\"No Yeast Creatures\n in Your Bread!\").", "\"A sensible suggestion,\" Tin\n Philosopher said. \"But it comes a\n trifle late in the day. If the mills\n are still walking and grinding, approximately\n seven billion Puffyloaves\n are at this moment cruising\n eastward over Middle America.\n Remember that a six-month supply\n for deep-freeze is involved and that\n the current consumption of bread,\n due to its matchless airiness, is\n eight and one-half loaves per person\n per day.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce carefully inserted\n both hands into his scanty\n hair, feeling for a good grip. He\n leaned menacingly toward Roger\n who, chin resting on the table, regarded\n him apathetically.", "The others, reviving, watched\n him, at first dully, then with quickening\n interest, especially when he\n jerked off the earphones with a\n happy shout and sprang to his feet.\n\"LISTEN to this!\" he cried in\n a ringing voice. \"As a result\n of the worldwide publicity, Puffyloaves\n are outselling Fairy Bread\n three to one—and that's just the\n old carbon-dioxide stock from our\n freezers! It's almost exhausted, but\n the government, now that the\n Ukrainian crisis is over, has taken\n the ban off helium and will also\n sell us stockpiled wheat if we need\n it. We can have our walking mills\n burrowing into the wheat caves in\n a matter of hours!", "Below, neck-craning citizens\n crowded streets and back yards,\n cranks and cultists had a field day,\n while local and national governments\n raged indiscriminately at\n Puffyloaf and at each other.\n\n\n Rumors that a fusion weapon\n would be exploded in the midst of\n the flying bread drew angry protests\n from conservationists and a flood\n of telefax pamphlets titled \"H-Loaf\n or H-bomb?\"\n\n\n Stockholm sent a mystifying\n note of praise to the United Nations\n Food Organization.\n\n\n Delhi issued nervous denials of a\n millet blight that no one had heard\n of until that moment and reaffirmed\n India's ability to feed her\n population with no outside help\n except the usual.", "Phineas T. Gryce, escaping from\n his own managerial suite, raged\n about the city, demanding general\n cooperation in the stretching of\n great nets between the skyscrapers\n to trap the errant loaves. He was\n captured by Tin Philosopher, escaped\n again, and was found posted\n with oxygen mask and submachine gun\n on the topmost spire of Puffyloaf\n Tower, apparently determined\n to shoot down the loaves as they\n appeared and before they involved\n his company in more trouble with\n Customs and the State Department.\n\n\n Recaptured by Tin Philosopher,\n who suffered only minor bullet\n holes, he was given a series of mild\n electroshocks and returned to the\n conference table, calm and clear-headed\n as ever.", "\"Mr. Gryce,\" Roger said reproachfully,\n \"you have often assured\n me that what people do with\n Puffybread after they buy it is no\n concern of ours.\"\n\n\n \"I seem to recall,\" Rose Thinker\n chirped somewhat unkindly, \"that\n dictum was created to answer inquiries\n after Roger put the famous\n sculptures-in-miniature artist on 3D\n and he testified that he always\n molded his first attempts from\n Puffybread, one jumbo loaf squeezing\n down to approximately the size\n of a peanut.\"\nHER photocells dimmed and\n brightened. \"Oh, boy—hydrogen!\n The loaf's unwrapped. After\n a while, in spite of the crust-seal, a\n little oxygen diffuses in. An explosive\n mixture. Housewife in curlers\n and kimono pops a couple slices in\n the toaster. Boom!\"\n\n\n The three human beings in the\n room winced.", "Bread\n\n Overhead\nBy FRITZ LEIBER\nThe Staff of Life suddenly and\n\n disconcertingly sprouted wings\n\n —and mankind had to eat crow!\nIllustrated by WOOD\nAS a blisteringly hot but\n guaranteed weather-controlled\n future summer day\n dawned on the Mississippi Valley,\n the walking mills of Puffy Products\n (\"Spike to Loaf in One\n Operation!\") began to tread delicately\n on their centipede legs\n across the wheat fields of Kansas.\n\n\n The walking mills resembled fat\n metal serpents, rather larger than\n those Chinese paper dragons animated\n by files of men in procession.\n Sensory robot devices in\n their noses informed them that\n the waiting wheat had reached ripe\n perfection.", "\"Good!\" Roger cried. \"We'll\n tether 'em on strings and sell 'em\n like balloons. No mother-child\n shopping team will leave the store\n without a cluster. Buying bread\n balloons will be the big event of\n the day for kiddies. It'll make the\n carry-home shopping load lighter\n too! I'll issue orders at once—\"\nHE broke off, looking at Phineas\n T. Gryce, said with quiet\n assurance, \"Excuse me, sir, if I\n seem to be taking too much upon\n myself.\"\n\n\n \"Not at all, son; go straight\n ahead,\" the great manager said approvingly.\n \"You're\"—he laughed\n in anticipation of getting off a\n memorable remark—\"rising to the\n challenging situation like a genuine\n Puffyloaf.\"\n\n\n Megera Winterly looked from\n the older man to the younger.\n Then in a single leap she was upon\n Roger, her arms wrapped tightly\n around him." ], [ "Phineas T. Gryce, escaping from\n his own managerial suite, raged\n about the city, demanding general\n cooperation in the stretching of\n great nets between the skyscrapers\n to trap the errant loaves. He was\n captured by Tin Philosopher, escaped\n again, and was found posted\n with oxygen mask and submachine gun\n on the topmost spire of Puffyloaf\n Tower, apparently determined\n to shoot down the loaves as they\n appeared and before they involved\n his company in more trouble with\n Customs and the State Department.\n\n\n Recaptured by Tin Philosopher,\n who suffered only minor bullet\n holes, he was given a series of mild\n electroshocks and returned to the\n conference table, calm and clear-headed\n as ever.", "\"Puffyloaf could do with a little\n of that,\" the business girl observed\n judiciously. \"The way sales have\n been plummeting, it won't be long\n before the Government deeds our\n desks to the managers of Fairy\n Bread and asks us to take the Big\n Jump. But just where does your\n quick thinking come into this, Mr.\n Snedden? You can't be referring to\n the helium—that was Rose Thinker's\n brainwave.\"\n\n\n She studied him suspiciously.\n \"You've birthed another promotional\n bumble, Roger. I can see it\n in your eyes. I only hope it's not\n as big a one as when you put the\n Martian ambassador on 3D and he\n thanked you profusely for the gross\n of Puffyloaves, assuring you that\n he'd never slept on a softer mattress\n in all his life on two planets.\"", "Tin Philosopher kicked her under\n the table, while observing, \"So\n you see, Roger, that the non-delivery\n of the hydrogen loaf carries\n some consolations. And I must confess\n that one aspect of the affair\n gives me great satisfaction, not as a\n Board Member but as a private\n machine. You have at last made a\n reality of the 'rises through the air'\n part of Puffybread's theme. They\n can't ever take that away from you.\n By now, half the inhabitants of the\n Great Plains must have observed\n our flying loaves rising high.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce shot a frightened\n look at the west windows and\n found his full voice.\n\n\n \"Stop the mills!\" he roared at\n Meg Winterly, who nodded and\n whispered urgently into her mike.", "\"Thanks, T.P.,\" P.T. then said.\n \"And now for the Moment of\n Truth. Miss Winterly, how is the\n helium loaf selling?\"\n\n\n The business girl clapped on a\n pair of earphones and whispered\n into a lapel mike. Her gaze grew\n abstracted as she mentally translated\n flurries of brief squawks into\n coherent messages. Suddenly a single\n vertical furrow creased her\n matchlessly smooth brow.\n\n\n \"It isn't, Mr. Gryce!\" she gasped\n in horror. \"Fairy Bread is outselling\n Puffyloaves by an infinity factor.\n So far this morning,\nthere has\n not been one single delivery of\n Puffyloaves to any sales spot\n! Complaints\n about non-delivery are pouring\n in from both walking stores and\n sessile shops.\"", "\"Er ... ah ... er....\" Roger\n said in winning tones. \"Well, you\n see, the fact is that I....\"\n\n\n \"Hold it,\" Meg interrupted\n crisply. \"Triple-urgent from Public\n Relations, Safety Division. Tulsa-Topeka\n aero-express makes emergency\n landing after being buffeted\n in encounter with vast flight of\n objects first described as brown\n birds, although no failures reported\n in airway's electronic anti-bird\n fences. After grounding safely near\n Emporia—no fatalities—pilot's\n windshield found thinly plastered\n with soft white-and-brown material.\n Emblems on plastic wrappers embedded\n in material identify it incontrovertibly\n as an undetermined\n number of Puffyloaves cruising at\n three thousand feet!\"", "Here the machine shuddered\n with delicate clinkings. \"Therefore,\n we of Puffyloaf are taking today\n what may be the ultimate step\n toward purity: we are aerating our\n loaves with the noble gas helium,\n an element which remains virginal\n in the face of all chemical temptations\n and whose slim molecules are\n eleven times lighter than obese\n carbon dioxide—yes, noble uncontaminable\n helium, which, if it be a\n kind of ash, is yet the ash only of\n radioactive burning, accomplished\n or initiated entirely on the Sun, a\n safe 93 million miles from this\n planet. Let's have a cheer for the\n helium loaf!\"\nWITHOUT changing expression,\n Phineas T. Gryce rapped\n the table thrice in solemn applause,\n while the others bowed their heads.", "\"But that isn't all! The far\n greater demand everywhere is for\n Puffyloaves that will actually float.\n Public Relations, Child Liaison\n Division, reports that the kiddies\n are making their mothers' lives\n miserable about it. If only we can\n figure out some way to make\n hydrogen non-explosive or the\n helium loaf float just a little—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure we can take care of\n that quite handily,\" Tin Philosopher\n interrupted briskly. \"Puffyloaf\n has kept it a corporation secret—even\n you've never been told\n about it—but just before he went\n crazy, Everett Whitehead discovered\n a way to make bread using\n only half as much flour as we do in\n the present loaf. Using this secret\n technique, which we've been saving\n for just such an emergency, it will\n be possible to bake a helium loaf as\n buoyant in every respect as the\n hydrogen loaf.\"", "\"Ladies—\" he inclined his photocells\n toward Rose Thinker and Meg—\"and\n gentlemen. This is a historic\n occasion in Old Puffy's long history,\n the inauguration of the helium-filled\n loaf ('So Light It Almost Floats\n Away!') in which that inert and\n heaven-aspiring gas replaces old-fashioned\n carbon dioxide. Later,\n there will be kudos for Rose\n Thinker, whose bright relays genius-sparked\n the idea, and also for Roger\n Snedden, who took care of the\n details.\n\n\n \"By the by, Racehorse, that was\n a brilliant piece of work getting the\n helium out of the government—they've\n been pretty stuffy lately\n about their monopoly. But first I\n want to throw wide the casement in\n your minds that opens on the Long\n View of Things.\"", "\"Mr. Gryce,\" Roger said reproachfully,\n \"you have often assured\n me that what people do with\n Puffybread after they buy it is no\n concern of ours.\"\n\n\n \"I seem to recall,\" Rose Thinker\n chirped somewhat unkindly, \"that\n dictum was created to answer inquiries\n after Roger put the famous\n sculptures-in-miniature artist on 3D\n and he testified that he always\n molded his first attempts from\n Puffybread, one jumbo loaf squeezing\n down to approximately the size\n of a peanut.\"\nHER photocells dimmed and\n brightened. \"Oh, boy—hydrogen!\n The loaf's unwrapped. After\n a while, in spite of the crust-seal, a\n little oxygen diffuses in. An explosive\n mixture. Housewife in curlers\n and kimono pops a couple slices in\n the toaster. Boom!\"\n\n\n The three human beings in the\n room winced.", "Thus instantly risen, the dough\n was clipped into loaves and shot\n into radionic ovens forming the\n midsections of the metal serpents.\n There the bread was baked in a\n matter of seconds, a fierce heat-front\n browning the crusts, and the\n piping-hot loaves sealed in transparent\n plastic bearing the proud\n Puffyloaf emblem (two cherubs\n circling a floating loaf) and ejected\n onto the delivery platform at each\n serpent's rear end, where a cluster\n of pickup machines, like hungry\n piglets, snatched at the loaves\n with hygienic claws.\n\n\n A few loaves would be hurried\n off for the day's consumption,\n the majority stored for winter in\n strategically located mammoth\n deep freezes.", "\"A sensible suggestion,\" Tin\n Philosopher said. \"But it comes a\n trifle late in the day. If the mills\n are still walking and grinding, approximately\n seven billion Puffyloaves\n are at this moment cruising\n eastward over Middle America.\n Remember that a six-month supply\n for deep-freeze is involved and that\n the current consumption of bread,\n due to its matchless airiness, is\n eight and one-half loaves per person\n per day.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce carefully inserted\n both hands into his scanty\n hair, feeling for a good grip. He\n leaned menacingly toward Roger\n who, chin resting on the table, regarded\n him apathetically.", "\"Good!\" Roger cried. \"We'll\n tether 'em on strings and sell 'em\n like balloons. No mother-child\n shopping team will leave the store\n without a cluster. Buying bread\n balloons will be the big event of\n the day for kiddies. It'll make the\n carry-home shopping load lighter\n too! I'll issue orders at once—\"\nHE broke off, looking at Phineas\n T. Gryce, said with quiet\n assurance, \"Excuse me, sir, if I\n seem to be taking too much upon\n myself.\"\n\n\n \"Not at all, son; go straight\n ahead,\" the great manager said approvingly.\n \"You're\"—he laughed\n in anticipation of getting off a\n memorable remark—\"rising to the\n challenging situation like a genuine\n Puffyloaf.\"\n\n\n Megera Winterly looked from\n the older man to the younger.\n Then in a single leap she was upon\n Roger, her arms wrapped tightly\n around him.", "The others, reviving, watched\n him, at first dully, then with quickening\n interest, especially when he\n jerked off the earphones with a\n happy shout and sprang to his feet.\n\"LISTEN to this!\" he cried in\n a ringing voice. \"As a result\n of the worldwide publicity, Puffyloaves\n are outselling Fairy Bread\n three to one—and that's just the\n old carbon-dioxide stock from our\n freezers! It's almost exhausted, but\n the government, now that the\n Ukrainian crisis is over, has taken\n the ban off helium and will also\n sell us stockpiled wheat if we need\n it. We can have our walking mills\n burrowing into the wheat caves in\n a matter of hours!", "Below, neck-craning citizens\n crowded streets and back yards,\n cranks and cultists had a field day,\n while local and national governments\n raged indiscriminately at\n Puffyloaf and at each other.\n\n\n Rumors that a fusion weapon\n would be exploded in the midst of\n the flying bread drew angry protests\n from conservationists and a flood\n of telefax pamphlets titled \"H-Loaf\n or H-bomb?\"\n\n\n Stockholm sent a mystifying\n note of praise to the United Nations\n Food Organization.\n\n\n Delhi issued nervous denials of a\n millet blight that no one had heard\n of until that moment and reaffirmed\n India's ability to feed her\n population with no outside help\n except the usual.", "\"Why don't you jump out the\n window, Roger, remembering to\n shut the airlock after you?\" the\n Golden Glacier said in tones not\n unkind. \"When are your high-strung,\n thoroughbred nerves going\n to accept the fact that I would\n never consider marriage with a\n business inferior? You have about\n as much chance as a starving\n Ukrainian kulak now that Moscow's\n clapped on the interdict.\"\nROGER'S voice was calm, although\n his eyes were feverishly\n bright, as he replied, \"A lot\n of things are going to be different\n around here, Meg, as soon as the\n Board is forced to admit that only\n my quick thinking made it possible\n to bring the name of Puffyloaf in\n front of the whole world.\"", "Roger nodded obediently. But\n his pallor increased a shade, the\n pupils of his eyes disappeared under\n the upper lids, and his head\n burrowed beneath his forearms.\n\n\n \"Oh, boy,\" Rose Thinker called\n gayly to Tin Philosopher, \"this\n looks like the start of a real crisis\n session! Did you remember to\n bring spare batteries?\"\nMEANWHILE, the monstrous\n flight of Puffyloaves, filling\n midwestern skies as no small fliers\n had since the days of the passenger\n pigeon, soared steadily onward.", "About one thousand miles farther\n on in that direction, where a cluster\n of stratosphere-tickling towers\n marked the location of the metropolis\n of NewNew York, a tender\n scene was being enacted in the\n pressurized penthouse managerial\n suite of Puffy Products. Megera\n Winterly, Secretary in Chief to the\n Managerial Board and referred to\n by her underlings as the Blonde\n Icicle, was dealing with the advances\n of Roger (\"Racehorse\")\n Snedden, Assistant Secretary to the\n Board and often indistinguishable\n from any passing office boy.", "Back in NewNew York, the\n managerial board of Puffy Products\n slumped in utter collapse\n around the conference table, the\n long crisis session at last ended.\n Empty coffee cartons were scattered\n around the chairs of the three\n humans, dead batteries around\n those of the two machines. For a\n while, there was no movement\n whatsoever. Then Roger Snedden\n reached out wearily for the earphones\n where Megera Winterly\n had hurled them down, adjusted\n them to his head, pushed a button\n and listened apathetically.\n\n\n After a bit, his gaze brightened.\n He pushed more buttons and listened\n more eagerly. Soon he was\n sitting tensely upright on his stool,\n eyes bright and lower face all\n a-smile, muttering terse comments\n and questions into the lapel mike\n torn from Meg's fair neck.", "\"Then, early in the twenty-first\n century, came the epochal researches\n of Everett Whitehead,\n Puffyloaf chemist, culminating in\n his paper 'The Structural Bubble\n in Cereal Masses' and making possible\n the baking of airtight bread\n twenty times stronger (for its\n weight) than steel and of a\n lightness that would have been\n incredible even to the advanced\n chemist-bakers of the twentieth\n century—a lightness so great that,\n besides forming the backbone of\n our own promotion, it has forever\n since been capitalized on by our\n conscienceless competitors of Fairy\n Bread with their enduring slogan:\n 'It Makes Ghost Toast'.\"\n\n\n \"That's a beaut, all right, that\n ecto-dough blurb,\" Rose Thinker\n admitted, bugging her photocells\n sadly. \"Wait a sec. How about?—", "\"Hold it!\" Meg called sharply.\n \"Flock of multiple-urgents coming\n in. News Liaison: information bureaus\n swamped with flying-bread\n inquiries. Aero-expresslines: Clear\n our airways or face law suit. U. S.\n Army: Why do loaves flame when\n hit by incendiary bullets? U. S.\n Customs: If bread intended for\n export, get export license or face\n prosecution. Russian Consulate in\n Chicago: Advise on destination of\n bread-lift. And some Kansas church\n is accusing us of a hoax inciting to\n blasphemy, of faking miracles—I\n don't know\nwhy\n.\"\n\n\n The business girl tore off her\n headphones. \"Roger Snedden,\" she\n cried with a hysteria that would\n have dumfounded her underlings,\n \"you've brought the name of Puffyloaf\n in front of the whole world, all\n right! Now do something about the\n situation!\"" ], [ "\"Why don't you jump out the\n window, Roger, remembering to\n shut the airlock after you?\" the\n Golden Glacier said in tones not\n unkind. \"When are your high-strung,\n thoroughbred nerves going\n to accept the fact that I would\n never consider marriage with a\n business inferior? You have about\n as much chance as a starving\n Ukrainian kulak now that Moscow's\n clapped on the interdict.\"\nROGER'S voice was calm, although\n his eyes were feverishly\n bright, as he replied, \"A lot\n of things are going to be different\n around here, Meg, as soon as the\n Board is forced to admit that only\n my quick thinking made it possible\n to bring the name of Puffyloaf in\n front of the whole world.\"", "\"My sweet little ever-victorious,\n self-propelled monkey wrench!\" she\n crooned in his ear. Roger looked\n fatuously over her soft shoulder at\n Tin Philosopher who, as if moved\n by some similar feeling, reached\n over and touched claws with Rose\n Thinker.\n\n\n This, however, was what he telegraphed\n silently to his fellow machine\n across the circuit so completed:", "About one thousand miles farther\n on in that direction, where a cluster\n of stratosphere-tickling towers\n marked the location of the metropolis\n of NewNew York, a tender\n scene was being enacted in the\n pressurized penthouse managerial\n suite of Puffy Products. Megera\n Winterly, Secretary in Chief to the\n Managerial Board and referred to\n by her underlings as the Blonde\n Icicle, was dealing with the advances\n of Roger (\"Racehorse\")\n Snedden, Assistant Secretary to the\n Board and often indistinguishable\n from any passing office boy.", "\"Er ... ah ... er....\" Roger\n said in winning tones. \"Well, you\n see, the fact is that I....\"\n\n\n \"Hold it,\" Meg interrupted\n crisply. \"Triple-urgent from Public\n Relations, Safety Division. Tulsa-Topeka\n aero-express makes emergency\n landing after being buffeted\n in encounter with vast flight of\n objects first described as brown\n birds, although no failures reported\n in airway's electronic anti-bird\n fences. After grounding safely near\n Emporia—no fatalities—pilot's\n windshield found thinly plastered\n with soft white-and-brown material.\n Emblems on plastic wrappers embedded\n in material identify it incontrovertibly\n as an undetermined\n number of Puffyloaves cruising at\n three thousand feet!\"", "\"Listen to me, Meg. Today—yes,\n today!—you're going to see\n the Board eating out of my hand.\"\n\n\n \"Hah! I guarantee you won't\n have any fingers left. You're bold\n enough now, but when Mr. Gryce\n and those two big machines come\n through that door—\"\n\n\n \"Now wait a minute, Meg—\"\n\n\n \"Hush! They're coming now!\"\n\n\n Roger leaped three feet in the\n air, but managed to land without a\n sound and edged toward his stool.\n Through the dilating iris of the\n door strode Phineas T. Gryce,\n flanked by Rose Thinker and Tin\n Philosopher.", "Tin Philosopher kicked her under\n the table, while observing, \"So\n you see, Roger, that the non-delivery\n of the hydrogen loaf carries\n some consolations. And I must confess\n that one aspect of the affair\n gives me great satisfaction, not as a\n Board Member but as a private\n machine. You have at last made a\n reality of the 'rises through the air'\n part of Puffybread's theme. They\n can't ever take that away from you.\n By now, half the inhabitants of the\n Great Plains must have observed\n our flying loaves rising high.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce shot a frightened\n look at the west windows and\n found his full voice.\n\n\n \"Stop the mills!\" he roared at\n Meg Winterly, who nodded and\n whispered urgently into her mike.", "Back in NewNew York, the\n managerial board of Puffy Products\n slumped in utter collapse\n around the conference table, the\n long crisis session at last ended.\n Empty coffee cartons were scattered\n around the chairs of the three\n humans, dead batteries around\n those of the two machines. For a\n while, there was no movement\n whatsoever. Then Roger Snedden\n reached out wearily for the earphones\n where Megera Winterly\n had hurled them down, adjusted\n them to his head, pushed a button\n and listened apathetically.\n\n\n After a bit, his gaze brightened.\n He pushed more buttons and listened\n more eagerly. Soon he was\n sitting tensely upright on his stool,\n eyes bright and lower face all\n a-smile, muttering terse comments\n and questions into the lapel mike\n torn from Meg's fair neck.", "\"Good!\" Roger cried. \"We'll\n tether 'em on strings and sell 'em\n like balloons. No mother-child\n shopping team will leave the store\n without a cluster. Buying bread\n balloons will be the big event of\n the day for kiddies. It'll make the\n carry-home shopping load lighter\n too! I'll issue orders at once—\"\nHE broke off, looking at Phineas\n T. Gryce, said with quiet\n assurance, \"Excuse me, sir, if I\n seem to be taking too much upon\n myself.\"\n\n\n \"Not at all, son; go straight\n ahead,\" the great manager said approvingly.\n \"You're\"—he laughed\n in anticipation of getting off a\n memorable remark—\"rising to the\n challenging situation like a genuine\n Puffyloaf.\"\n\n\n Megera Winterly looked from\n the older man to the younger.\n Then in a single leap she was upon\n Roger, her arms wrapped tightly\n around him.", "The man approached the conference\n table in the center of the room\n with measured pace and gravely\n expressionless face. The rose-tinted\n machine on his left did a couple\n of impulsive pirouettes on the way\n and twittered a greeting to Meg\n and Roger. The other machine quietly\n took the third of the high seats\n and lifted a claw at Meg, who now\n occupied a stool twice the height of\n Roger's.\n\n\n \"Miss Winterly, please—our\n theme.\"\n\n\n The Blonde Icicle's face thawed\n into a little-girl smile as she chanted\n bubblingly:", "Roger nodded obediently. But\n his pallor increased a shade, the\n pupils of his eyes disappeared under\n the upper lids, and his head\n burrowed beneath his forearms.\n\n\n \"Oh, boy,\" Rose Thinker called\n gayly to Tin Philosopher, \"this\n looks like the start of a real crisis\n session! Did you remember to\n bring spare batteries?\"\nMEANWHILE, the monstrous\n flight of Puffyloaves, filling\n midwestern skies as no small fliers\n had since the days of the passenger\n pigeon, soared steadily onward.", "\"Hold it!\" Meg called sharply.\n \"Flock of multiple-urgents coming\n in. News Liaison: information bureaus\n swamped with flying-bread\n inquiries. Aero-expresslines: Clear\n our airways or face law suit. U. S.\n Army: Why do loaves flame when\n hit by incendiary bullets? U. S.\n Customs: If bread intended for\n export, get export license or face\n prosecution. Russian Consulate in\n Chicago: Advise on destination of\n bread-lift. And some Kansas church\n is accusing us of a hoax inciting to\n blasphemy, of faking miracles—I\n don't know\nwhy\n.\"\n\n\n The business girl tore off her\n headphones. \"Roger Snedden,\" she\n cried with a hysteria that would\n have dumfounded her underlings,\n \"you've brought the name of Puffyloaf\n in front of the whole world, all\n right! Now do something about the\n situation!\"", "\"Ladies—\" he inclined his photocells\n toward Rose Thinker and Meg—\"and\n gentlemen. This is a historic\n occasion in Old Puffy's long history,\n the inauguration of the helium-filled\n loaf ('So Light It Almost Floats\n Away!') in which that inert and\n heaven-aspiring gas replaces old-fashioned\n carbon dioxide. Later,\n there will be kudos for Rose\n Thinker, whose bright relays genius-sparked\n the idea, and also for Roger\n Snedden, who took care of the\n details.\n\n\n \"By the by, Racehorse, that was\n a brilliant piece of work getting the\n helium out of the government—they've\n been pretty stuffy lately\n about their monopoly. But first I\n want to throw wide the casement in\n your minds that opens on the Long\n View of Things.\"", "\"Of course! Just what is behind\n all this, Mr. Snedden?\nWhat\nrecalculations\n were you trusting, when\n our physicists had demonstrated\n months ago that the helium loaf\n was safely stackable in light airs\n and gentle breezes—winds up to\n Beaufort's scale 3.\nWhy\nshould a\n change from heavier to lighter\n wrappers result in complete non-delivery?\"\nROGER Snedden's paleness became\n tinged with an interesting\n green. He cleared his throat\n and made strange gulping noises.\n Tin Philosopher's photocells focused\n on him calmly, Rose\n Thinker's with unfeigned excitement.\n P.T. Gryce's frown grew\n blacker by the moment, while\n Megera Winterly's Venus-mask\n showed an odd dawning of dismay\n and awe. She was getting new\n squawks in her earphones.", "\"A sensible suggestion,\" Tin\n Philosopher said. \"But it comes a\n trifle late in the day. If the mills\n are still walking and grinding, approximately\n seven billion Puffyloaves\n are at this moment cruising\n eastward over Middle America.\n Remember that a six-month supply\n for deep-freeze is involved and that\n the current consumption of bread,\n due to its matchless airiness, is\n eight and one-half loaves per person\n per day.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce carefully inserted\n both hands into his scanty\n hair, feeling for a good grip. He\n leaned menacingly toward Roger\n who, chin resting on the table, regarded\n him apathetically.", "\"Mr. Gryce,\" Roger said reproachfully,\n \"you have often assured\n me that what people do with\n Puffybread after they buy it is no\n concern of ours.\"\n\n\n \"I seem to recall,\" Rose Thinker\n chirped somewhat unkindly, \"that\n dictum was created to answer inquiries\n after Roger put the famous\n sculptures-in-miniature artist on 3D\n and he testified that he always\n molded his first attempts from\n Puffybread, one jumbo loaf squeezing\n down to approximately the size\n of a peanut.\"\nHER photocells dimmed and\n brightened. \"Oh, boy—hydrogen!\n The loaf's unwrapped. After\n a while, in spite of the crust-seal, a\n little oxygen diffuses in. An explosive\n mixture. Housewife in curlers\n and kimono pops a couple slices in\n the toaster. Boom!\"\n\n\n The three human beings in the\n room winced.", "The others, reviving, watched\n him, at first dully, then with quickening\n interest, especially when he\n jerked off the earphones with a\n happy shout and sprang to his feet.\n\"LISTEN to this!\" he cried in\n a ringing voice. \"As a result\n of the worldwide publicity, Puffyloaves\n are outselling Fairy Bread\n three to one—and that's just the\n old carbon-dioxide stock from our\n freezers! It's almost exhausted, but\n the government, now that the\n Ukrainian crisis is over, has taken\n the ban off helium and will also\n sell us stockpiled wheat if we need\n it. We can have our walking mills\n burrowing into the wheat caves in\n a matter of hours!", "\"Why, you fool! I noticed that\n order for metal-foil wrappers, assumed\n it was some sub-secretary's\n mistake, and canceled it last night!\"\n\n\n Roger Snedden turned pale.\n \"You canceled it?\" he quavered.\n \"And told them to go back to the\n lighter plastic wrappers?\"", "\"Puffyloaf could do with a little\n of that,\" the business girl observed\n judiciously. \"The way sales have\n been plummeting, it won't be long\n before the Government deeds our\n desks to the managers of Fairy\n Bread and asks us to take the Big\n Jump. But just where does your\n quick thinking come into this, Mr.\n Snedden? You can't be referring to\n the helium—that was Rose Thinker's\n brainwave.\"\n\n\n She studied him suspiciously.\n \"You've birthed another promotional\n bumble, Roger. I can see it\n in your eyes. I only hope it's not\n as big a one as when you put the\n Martian ambassador on 3D and he\n thanked you profusely for the gross\n of Puffyloaves, assuring you that\n he'd never slept on a softer mattress\n in all his life on two planets.\"", "\"\nWork and pray,\nLive on hay.\nYou'll get pie\nIn the sky\nWhen you die—\nIt's a lie!\n\"I don't know why we chanted\n it,\" she added. \"We didn't want pie—or\n hay, for that matter. And\n machines don't pray, except Tibetan\n prayer wheels.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce shook his head.\n \"Labor relations are another topic\n we should stay far away from.\n However, dear Rose, I'm glad you\n keep trying to outjingle those dirty\n crooks at Fairy Bread.\" He scowled,\n turning back his attention to Tin\n Philosopher. \"I get whopping mad,\n Old Machine, whenever I hear that\n other slogan of theirs, the discriminatory\n one—'Untouched by Robot\n Claws.' Just because they employ a\n few filthy androids in their factories!\"", "Eyes and photocells turned inquisitorially\n upon Roger Snedden.\n He went from green to Puffyloaf\n white and blurted: \"All right, I did\n it, but it was the only way out!\n Yesterday morning, due to the\n Ukrainian crisis, the government\n stopped sales and deliveries of all\n strategic stockpiled materials, including\n helium gas. Puffy's new\n program of advertising and promotion,\n based on the lighter loaf, was\n already rolling. There was only one\n thing to do, there being only one\n other gas comparable in lightness\n to helium. I diverted the necessary\n quantity of hydrogen gas from the\n Hydrogenated Oils Section of our\n Magna-Margarine Division and\n substituted it for the helium.\"\n\n\n \"You substituted ... hydrogen ... for\n the ... helium?\" Phineas\n T. Gryce faltered in low mechanical\n tones, taking four steps backward." ], [ "\"\nMade up of tiny wheaten motes\nAnd reinforced with sturdy oats,\nIt rises through the air and floats—\nThe bread on which all Terra dotes!\n\"\n\"THANK YOU, Miss Winterly,\"\n said Tin Philosopher.\n \"Though a purely figurative statement,\n that bit about rising through\n the air always gets me—here.\" He\n rapped his midsection, which gave\n off a high musical\nclang\n.", "\"For a while, barbarous faddists—blind\n to the deeply spiritual nature\n of bread, which is recognized\n by all great religions—held back\n our march toward perfection with\n their hair-splitting insistence on the\n vitamin content of the wheat germ,\n but their case collapsed when tasteless\n colorless substitutes were\n triumphantly synthesized and introduced\n into the loaf, which for flawless\n purity, unequaled airiness and\n sheer intangible goodness was rapidly\n becoming mankind's supreme\n gustatory experience.\"\n\n\n \"I wonder what the stuff tastes\n like,\" Rose Thinker said out of a\n clear sky.\n\n\n \"I wonder what taste tastes like,\"\n Tin Philosopher echoed dreamily.\n Recovering himself, he continued:", "Rose Thinker spun twice on her\n chair and opened her photocells\n wide. Tin Philosopher coughed to\n limber up the diaphragm of his\n speaker and continued:\n\n\n \"Ever since the first cave wife\n boasted to her next-den neighbor\n about the superior paleness and fluffiness\n of her tortillas, mankind has\n sought lighter, whiter bread. Indeed,\n thinkers wiser than myself have\n equated the whole upward course of\n culture with this poignant quest.\n Yeast was a wonderful discovery—for\n its primitive day. Sifting the\n bran and wheat germ from the flour\n was an even more important advance.\n Early bleaching and preserving\n chemicals played their humble\n parts.", "Tin Philosopher lifted one of his\n own sets of bright talons. \"Thanks,\n P.T. But to continue my historical\n resume, the next great advance in\n the baking art was the substitution\n of purified carbon dioxide, recovered\n from coal smoke, for the gas\n generated by yeast organisms indwelling\n in the dough and later\n killed by the heat of baking, their\n corpses remaining\nin situ\n. But even\n purified carbon dioxide is itself a\n rather repugnant gas, a product of\n metabolism whether fast or slow,\n and forever associated with those\n life processes which are obnoxious\n to the fastidious.\"", "\"A sensible suggestion,\" Tin\n Philosopher said. \"But it comes a\n trifle late in the day. If the mills\n are still walking and grinding, approximately\n seven billion Puffyloaves\n are at this moment cruising\n eastward over Middle America.\n Remember that a six-month supply\n for deep-freeze is involved and that\n the current consumption of bread,\n due to its matchless airiness, is\n eight and one-half loaves per person\n per day.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce carefully inserted\n both hands into his scanty\n hair, feeling for a good grip. He\n leaned menacingly toward Roger\n who, chin resting on the table, regarded\n him apathetically.", "Tin Philosopher kicked her under\n the table, while observing, \"So\n you see, Roger, that the non-delivery\n of the hydrogen loaf carries\n some consolations. And I must confess\n that one aspect of the affair\n gives me great satisfaction, not as a\n Board Member but as a private\n machine. You have at last made a\n reality of the 'rises through the air'\n part of Puffybread's theme. They\n can't ever take that away from you.\n By now, half the inhabitants of the\n Great Plains must have observed\n our flying loaves rising high.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce shot a frightened\n look at the west windows and\n found his full voice.\n\n\n \"Stop the mills!\" he roared at\n Meg Winterly, who nodded and\n whispered urgently into her mike.", "\"But that isn't all! The far\n greater demand everywhere is for\n Puffyloaves that will actually float.\n Public Relations, Child Liaison\n Division, reports that the kiddies\n are making their mothers' lives\n miserable about it. If only we can\n figure out some way to make\n hydrogen non-explosive or the\n helium loaf float just a little—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure we can take care of\n that quite handily,\" Tin Philosopher\n interrupted briskly. \"Puffyloaf\n has kept it a corporation secret—even\n you've never been told\n about it—but just before he went\n crazy, Everett Whitehead discovered\n a way to make bread using\n only half as much flour as we do in\n the present loaf. Using this secret\n technique, which we've been saving\n for just such an emergency, it will\n be possible to bake a helium loaf as\n buoyant in every respect as the\n hydrogen loaf.\"", "\"Hydrogen is twice as light as\n helium,\" Tin Philosopher remarked\n judiciously.\n\n\n \"And many times cheaper—did\n you know that?\" Roger countered\n feebly. \"Yes, I substituted hydrogen.\n The metal-foil wrapping would\n have added just enough weight to\n counteract the greater buoyancy of\n the hydrogen loaf. But—\"\n\n\n \"So, when this morning's loaves\n began to arrive on the delivery\n platforms of the walking mills....\"\n Tin Philosopher left the remark\n unfinished.\n\n\n \"Exactly,\" Roger agreed dismally.\n\n\n \"Let me ask you, Mr. Snedden,\"\n Gryce interjected, still in low tones,\n \"if you expected people to jump to\n the kitchen ceiling for their Puffybread\n after taking off the metal\n wrapper, or reach for the sky if\n they happened to unwrap the stuff\n outdoors?\"", "\"Then, early in the twenty-first\n century, came the epochal researches\n of Everett Whitehead,\n Puffyloaf chemist, culminating in\n his paper 'The Structural Bubble\n in Cereal Masses' and making possible\n the baking of airtight bread\n twenty times stronger (for its\n weight) than steel and of a\n lightness that would have been\n incredible even to the advanced\n chemist-bakers of the twentieth\n century—a lightness so great that,\n besides forming the backbone of\n our own promotion, it has forever\n since been capitalized on by our\n conscienceless competitors of Fairy\n Bread with their enduring slogan:\n 'It Makes Ghost Toast'.\"\n\n\n \"That's a beaut, all right, that\n ecto-dough blurb,\" Rose Thinker\n admitted, bugging her photocells\n sadly. \"Wait a sec. How about?—", "Phineas T. Gryce, escaping from\n his own managerial suite, raged\n about the city, demanding general\n cooperation in the stretching of\n great nets between the skyscrapers\n to trap the errant loaves. He was\n captured by Tin Philosopher, escaped\n again, and was found posted\n with oxygen mask and submachine gun\n on the topmost spire of Puffyloaf\n Tower, apparently determined\n to shoot down the loaves as they\n appeared and before they involved\n his company in more trouble with\n Customs and the State Department.\n\n\n Recaptured by Tin Philosopher,\n who suffered only minor bullet\n holes, he was given a series of mild\n electroshocks and returned to the\n conference table, calm and clear-headed\n as ever.", "Here the machine shuddered\n with delicate clinkings. \"Therefore,\n we of Puffyloaf are taking today\n what may be the ultimate step\n toward purity: we are aerating our\n loaves with the noble gas helium,\n an element which remains virginal\n in the face of all chemical temptations\n and whose slim molecules are\n eleven times lighter than obese\n carbon dioxide—yes, noble uncontaminable\n helium, which, if it be a\n kind of ash, is yet the ash only of\n radioactive burning, accomplished\n or initiated entirely on the Sun, a\n safe 93 million miles from this\n planet. Let's have a cheer for the\n helium loaf!\"\nWITHOUT changing expression,\n Phineas T. Gryce rapped\n the table thrice in solemn applause,\n while the others bowed their heads.", "\"\nWork and pray,\nLive on hay.\nYou'll get pie\nIn the sky\nWhen you die—\nIt's a lie!\n\"I don't know why we chanted\n it,\" she added. \"We didn't want pie—or\n hay, for that matter. And\n machines don't pray, except Tibetan\n prayer wheels.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce shook his head.\n \"Labor relations are another topic\n we should stay far away from.\n However, dear Rose, I'm glad you\n keep trying to outjingle those dirty\n crooks at Fairy Bread.\" He scowled,\n turning back his attention to Tin\n Philosopher. \"I get whopping mad,\n Old Machine, whenever I hear that\n other slogan of theirs, the discriminatory\n one—'Untouched by Robot\n Claws.' Just because they employ a\n few filthy androids in their factories!\"", "\"My sweet little ever-victorious,\n self-propelled monkey wrench!\" she\n crooned in his ear. Roger looked\n fatuously over her soft shoulder at\n Tin Philosopher who, as if moved\n by some similar feeling, reached\n over and touched claws with Rose\n Thinker.\n\n\n This, however, was what he telegraphed\n silently to his fellow machine\n across the circuit so completed:", "A mood of spirituality strongly\n tinged with humor seized the people\n of the world. Ministers sermonized\n about the bread, variously\n interpreting it as a call to charity,\n a warning against gluttony, a parable\n of the evanescence of all\n earthly things, and a divine joke.\n Husbands and wives, facing each\n other across their walls of breakfast\n toast, burst into laughter. The\n mere sight of a loaf of bread anywhere\n was enough to evoke guffaws.\n An obscure sect, having as\n part of its creed the injunction\n \"Don't take yourself so damn seriously,\"\n won new adherents.\n\n\n The bread flight, rising above an\n Atlantic storm widely reported to\n have destroyed it, passed unobserved\n across a foggy England and\n rose out of the overcast only over\n Mittel-europa. The loaves had at\n last reached their maximum altitude.", "\"\nThere'll be bread\nOverhead\nWhen you're dead—\nIt is said.\n\"\nPHINEAS T. GRYCE wrinkled\n his nostrils at the pink machine\n as if he smelled her insulation\n smoldering. He said mildly, \"A\n somewhat unhappy jingle, Rose,\n referring as it does to the end of\n the customer as consumer. Moreover,\n we shouldn't overplay the\n figurative 'rises through the air'\n angle. What inspired you?\"\n\n\n She shrugged. \"I don't know—oh,\n yes, I do. I was remembering\n one of the workers' songs we machines\n used to chant during the Big\n Strike—", "As they advanced, their heads\n swung lazily from side to side, very\n much like snakes, gobbling the yellow\n grain. In their throats, it was\n threshed, the chaff bundled and\n burped aside for pickup by the\n crawl trucks of a chemical corporation,\n the kernels quick-dried\n and blown along into the mighty\n chests of the machines. There the\n tireless mills ground the kernels\n to flour, which was instantly sifted,\n the bran being packaged and\n dropped like the chaff for pickup.\n A cluster of tanks which gave\n the metal serpents a decidedly\n humpbacked appearance added\n water, shortening, salt and other\n ingredients, some named and some\n not. The dough was at the same\n time infused with gas from a tank\n conspicuously labeled \"Carbon\n Dioxide\" (\"No Yeast Creatures\n in Your Bread!\").", "World distribution was given to\n a series of photographs showing\n peasants queueing up to trade scavenged\n Puffyloaves for traditional\n black bread, recently aerated itself\n but still extra solid by comparison,\n the rate of exchange demanded by\n the Moscow teams being twenty\n Puffyloaves to one of pumpernickel.\n\n\n Another series of photographs,\n picturing chubby workers' children\n being blown to bits by booby-trapped\n bread, was quietly destroyed.\n\n\n Congratulatory notes were exchanged\n by various national governments\n and world organizations,\n including the Brotherhood of Free\n Business Machines. The great\n bread flight was over, though for\n several weeks afterward scattered\n falls of loaves occurred, giving rise\n to a new folklore of manna among\n lonely Arabian tribesmen, and in\n one well-authenticated instance in\n Tibet, sustaining life in a party of\n mountaineers cut off by a snow\n slide.", "Roger nodded obediently. But\n his pallor increased a shade, the\n pupils of his eyes disappeared under\n the upper lids, and his head\n burrowed beneath his forearms.\n\n\n \"Oh, boy,\" Rose Thinker called\n gayly to Tin Philosopher, \"this\n looks like the start of a real crisis\n session! Did you remember to\n bring spare batteries?\"\nMEANWHILE, the monstrous\n flight of Puffyloaves, filling\n midwestern skies as no small fliers\n had since the days of the passenger\n pigeon, soared steadily onward.", "Thus instantly risen, the dough\n was clipped into loaves and shot\n into radionic ovens forming the\n midsections of the metal serpents.\n There the bread was baked in a\n matter of seconds, a fierce heat-front\n browning the crusts, and the\n piping-hot loaves sealed in transparent\n plastic bearing the proud\n Puffyloaf emblem (two cherubs\n circling a floating loaf) and ejected\n onto the delivery platform at each\n serpent's rear end, where a cluster\n of pickup machines, like hungry\n piglets, snatched at the loaves\n with hygienic claws.\n\n\n A few loaves would be hurried\n off for the day's consumption,\n the majority stored for winter in\n strategically located mammoth\n deep freezes.", "\"Ladies—\" he inclined his photocells\n toward Rose Thinker and Meg—\"and\n gentlemen. This is a historic\n occasion in Old Puffy's long history,\n the inauguration of the helium-filled\n loaf ('So Light It Almost Floats\n Away!') in which that inert and\n heaven-aspiring gas replaces old-fashioned\n carbon dioxide. Later,\n there will be kudos for Rose\n Thinker, whose bright relays genius-sparked\n the idea, and also for Roger\n Snedden, who took care of the\n details.\n\n\n \"By the by, Racehorse, that was\n a brilliant piece of work getting the\n helium out of the government—they've\n been pretty stuffy lately\n about their monopoly. But first I\n want to throw wide the casement in\n your minds that opens on the Long\n View of Things.\"" ], [ "\"Why, you fool! I noticed that\n order for metal-foil wrappers, assumed\n it was some sub-secretary's\n mistake, and canceled it last night!\"\n\n\n Roger Snedden turned pale.\n \"You canceled it?\" he quavered.\n \"And told them to go back to the\n lighter plastic wrappers?\"", "\"Mr. Snedden!\" Gryce barked.\n \"What bug in the new helium\n process might account for this\n delay?\"\n\n\n Roger was on his feet, looking\n bewildered. \"I can't imagine, sir,\n unless—just possibly—there's\n been some unforeseeable difficulty\n involving the new metal-foil wrappers.\"\n\n\n \"Metal-foil wrappers? Were\nyou\nresponsible for those?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. Last-minute recalculations\n showed that the extra lightness\n of the new loaf might be great\n enough to cause drift during stackage.\n Drafts in stores might topple\n sales pyramids. Metal-foil wrappers,\n by their added weight, took\n care of the difficulty.\"\n\n\n \"And you ordered them without\n consulting the Board?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. There was hardly time\n and—\"", "\"Er ... ah ... er....\" Roger\n said in winning tones. \"Well, you\n see, the fact is that I....\"\n\n\n \"Hold it,\" Meg interrupted\n crisply. \"Triple-urgent from Public\n Relations, Safety Division. Tulsa-Topeka\n aero-express makes emergency\n landing after being buffeted\n in encounter with vast flight of\n objects first described as brown\n birds, although no failures reported\n in airway's electronic anti-bird\n fences. After grounding safely near\n Emporia—no fatalities—pilot's\n windshield found thinly plastered\n with soft white-and-brown material.\n Emblems on plastic wrappers embedded\n in material identify it incontrovertibly\n as an undetermined\n number of Puffyloaves cruising at\n three thousand feet!\"", "\"Of course! Just what is behind\n all this, Mr. Snedden?\nWhat\nrecalculations\n were you trusting, when\n our physicists had demonstrated\n months ago that the helium loaf\n was safely stackable in light airs\n and gentle breezes—winds up to\n Beaufort's scale 3.\nWhy\nshould a\n change from heavier to lighter\n wrappers result in complete non-delivery?\"\nROGER Snedden's paleness became\n tinged with an interesting\n green. He cleared his throat\n and made strange gulping noises.\n Tin Philosopher's photocells focused\n on him calmly, Rose\n Thinker's with unfeigned excitement.\n P.T. Gryce's frown grew\n blacker by the moment, while\n Megera Winterly's Venus-mask\n showed an odd dawning of dismay\n and awe. She was getting new\n squawks in her earphones.", "Back in NewNew York, the\n managerial board of Puffy Products\n slumped in utter collapse\n around the conference table, the\n long crisis session at last ended.\n Empty coffee cartons were scattered\n around the chairs of the three\n humans, dead batteries around\n those of the two machines. For a\n while, there was no movement\n whatsoever. Then Roger Snedden\n reached out wearily for the earphones\n where Megera Winterly\n had hurled them down, adjusted\n them to his head, pushed a button\n and listened apathetically.\n\n\n After a bit, his gaze brightened.\n He pushed more buttons and listened\n more eagerly. Soon he was\n sitting tensely upright on his stool,\n eyes bright and lower face all\n a-smile, muttering terse comments\n and questions into the lapel mike\n torn from Meg's fair neck.", "Roger nodded obediently. But\n his pallor increased a shade, the\n pupils of his eyes disappeared under\n the upper lids, and his head\n burrowed beneath his forearms.\n\n\n \"Oh, boy,\" Rose Thinker called\n gayly to Tin Philosopher, \"this\n looks like the start of a real crisis\n session! Did you remember to\n bring spare batteries?\"\nMEANWHILE, the monstrous\n flight of Puffyloaves, filling\n midwestern skies as no small fliers\n had since the days of the passenger\n pigeon, soared steadily onward.", "\"Hydrogen is twice as light as\n helium,\" Tin Philosopher remarked\n judiciously.\n\n\n \"And many times cheaper—did\n you know that?\" Roger countered\n feebly. \"Yes, I substituted hydrogen.\n The metal-foil wrapping would\n have added just enough weight to\n counteract the greater buoyancy of\n the hydrogen loaf. But—\"\n\n\n \"So, when this morning's loaves\n began to arrive on the delivery\n platforms of the walking mills....\"\n Tin Philosopher left the remark\n unfinished.\n\n\n \"Exactly,\" Roger agreed dismally.\n\n\n \"Let me ask you, Mr. Snedden,\"\n Gryce interjected, still in low tones,\n \"if you expected people to jump to\n the kitchen ceiling for their Puffybread\n after taking off the metal\n wrapper, or reach for the sky if\n they happened to unwrap the stuff\n outdoors?\"", "Tin Philosopher kicked her under\n the table, while observing, \"So\n you see, Roger, that the non-delivery\n of the hydrogen loaf carries\n some consolations. And I must confess\n that one aspect of the affair\n gives me great satisfaction, not as a\n Board Member but as a private\n machine. You have at last made a\n reality of the 'rises through the air'\n part of Puffybread's theme. They\n can't ever take that away from you.\n By now, half the inhabitants of the\n Great Plains must have observed\n our flying loaves rising high.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce shot a frightened\n look at the west windows and\n found his full voice.\n\n\n \"Stop the mills!\" he roared at\n Meg Winterly, who nodded and\n whispered urgently into her mike.", "\"My sweet little ever-victorious,\n self-propelled monkey wrench!\" she\n crooned in his ear. Roger looked\n fatuously over her soft shoulder at\n Tin Philosopher who, as if moved\n by some similar feeling, reached\n over and touched claws with Rose\n Thinker.\n\n\n This, however, was what he telegraphed\n silently to his fellow machine\n across the circuit so completed:", "\"Mr. Gryce,\" Roger said reproachfully,\n \"you have often assured\n me that what people do with\n Puffybread after they buy it is no\n concern of ours.\"\n\n\n \"I seem to recall,\" Rose Thinker\n chirped somewhat unkindly, \"that\n dictum was created to answer inquiries\n after Roger put the famous\n sculptures-in-miniature artist on 3D\n and he testified that he always\n molded his first attempts from\n Puffybread, one jumbo loaf squeezing\n down to approximately the size\n of a peanut.\"\nHER photocells dimmed and\n brightened. \"Oh, boy—hydrogen!\n The loaf's unwrapped. After\n a while, in spite of the crust-seal, a\n little oxygen diffuses in. An explosive\n mixture. Housewife in curlers\n and kimono pops a couple slices in\n the toaster. Boom!\"\n\n\n The three human beings in the\n room winced.", "\"A sensible suggestion,\" Tin\n Philosopher said. \"But it comes a\n trifle late in the day. If the mills\n are still walking and grinding, approximately\n seven billion Puffyloaves\n are at this moment cruising\n eastward over Middle America.\n Remember that a six-month supply\n for deep-freeze is involved and that\n the current consumption of bread,\n due to its matchless airiness, is\n eight and one-half loaves per person\n per day.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce carefully inserted\n both hands into his scanty\n hair, feeling for a good grip. He\n leaned menacingly toward Roger\n who, chin resting on the table, regarded\n him apathetically.", "\"Why don't you jump out the\n window, Roger, remembering to\n shut the airlock after you?\" the\n Golden Glacier said in tones not\n unkind. \"When are your high-strung,\n thoroughbred nerves going\n to accept the fact that I would\n never consider marriage with a\n business inferior? You have about\n as much chance as a starving\n Ukrainian kulak now that Moscow's\n clapped on the interdict.\"\nROGER'S voice was calm, although\n his eyes were feverishly\n bright, as he replied, \"A lot\n of things are going to be different\n around here, Meg, as soon as the\n Board is forced to admit that only\n my quick thinking made it possible\n to bring the name of Puffyloaf in\n front of the whole world.\"", "Eyes and photocells turned inquisitorially\n upon Roger Snedden.\n He went from green to Puffyloaf\n white and blurted: \"All right, I did\n it, but it was the only way out!\n Yesterday morning, due to the\n Ukrainian crisis, the government\n stopped sales and deliveries of all\n strategic stockpiled materials, including\n helium gas. Puffy's new\n program of advertising and promotion,\n based on the lighter loaf, was\n already rolling. There was only one\n thing to do, there being only one\n other gas comparable in lightness\n to helium. I diverted the necessary\n quantity of hydrogen gas from the\n Hydrogenated Oils Section of our\n Magna-Margarine Division and\n substituted it for the helium.\"\n\n\n \"You substituted ... hydrogen ... for\n the ... helium?\" Phineas\n T. Gryce faltered in low mechanical\n tones, taking four steps backward.", "\"Thanks, T.P.,\" P.T. then said.\n \"And now for the Moment of\n Truth. Miss Winterly, how is the\n helium loaf selling?\"\n\n\n The business girl clapped on a\n pair of earphones and whispered\n into a lapel mike. Her gaze grew\n abstracted as she mentally translated\n flurries of brief squawks into\n coherent messages. Suddenly a single\n vertical furrow creased her\n matchlessly smooth brow.\n\n\n \"It isn't, Mr. Gryce!\" she gasped\n in horror. \"Fairy Bread is outselling\n Puffyloaves by an infinity factor.\n So far this morning,\nthere has\n not been one single delivery of\n Puffyloaves to any sales spot\n! Complaints\n about non-delivery are pouring\n in from both walking stores and\n sessile shops.\"", "\"Ladies—\" he inclined his photocells\n toward Rose Thinker and Meg—\"and\n gentlemen. This is a historic\n occasion in Old Puffy's long history,\n the inauguration of the helium-filled\n loaf ('So Light It Almost Floats\n Away!') in which that inert and\n heaven-aspiring gas replaces old-fashioned\n carbon dioxide. Later,\n there will be kudos for Rose\n Thinker, whose bright relays genius-sparked\n the idea, and also for Roger\n Snedden, who took care of the\n details.\n\n\n \"By the by, Racehorse, that was\n a brilliant piece of work getting the\n helium out of the government—they've\n been pretty stuffy lately\n about their monopoly. But first I\n want to throw wide the casement in\n your minds that opens on the Long\n View of Things.\"", "\"Hold it!\" Meg called sharply.\n \"Flock of multiple-urgents coming\n in. News Liaison: information bureaus\n swamped with flying-bread\n inquiries. Aero-expresslines: Clear\n our airways or face law suit. U. S.\n Army: Why do loaves flame when\n hit by incendiary bullets? U. S.\n Customs: If bread intended for\n export, get export license or face\n prosecution. Russian Consulate in\n Chicago: Advise on destination of\n bread-lift. And some Kansas church\n is accusing us of a hoax inciting to\n blasphemy, of faking miracles—I\n don't know\nwhy\n.\"\n\n\n The business girl tore off her\n headphones. \"Roger Snedden,\" she\n cried with a hysteria that would\n have dumfounded her underlings,\n \"you've brought the name of Puffyloaf\n in front of the whole world, all\n right! Now do something about the\n situation!\"", "Phineas T. Gryce, escaping from\n his own managerial suite, raged\n about the city, demanding general\n cooperation in the stretching of\n great nets between the skyscrapers\n to trap the errant loaves. He was\n captured by Tin Philosopher, escaped\n again, and was found posted\n with oxygen mask and submachine gun\n on the topmost spire of Puffyloaf\n Tower, apparently determined\n to shoot down the loaves as they\n appeared and before they involved\n his company in more trouble with\n Customs and the State Department.\n\n\n Recaptured by Tin Philosopher,\n who suffered only minor bullet\n holes, he was given a series of mild\n electroshocks and returned to the\n conference table, calm and clear-headed\n as ever.", "\"Good!\" Roger cried. \"We'll\n tether 'em on strings and sell 'em\n like balloons. No mother-child\n shopping team will leave the store\n without a cluster. Buying bread\n balloons will be the big event of\n the day for kiddies. It'll make the\n carry-home shopping load lighter\n too! I'll issue orders at once—\"\nHE broke off, looking at Phineas\n T. Gryce, said with quiet\n assurance, \"Excuse me, sir, if I\n seem to be taking too much upon\n myself.\"\n\n\n \"Not at all, son; go straight\n ahead,\" the great manager said approvingly.\n \"You're\"—he laughed\n in anticipation of getting off a\n memorable remark—\"rising to the\n challenging situation like a genuine\n Puffyloaf.\"\n\n\n Megera Winterly looked from\n the older man to the younger.\n Then in a single leap she was upon\n Roger, her arms wrapped tightly\n around him.", "The others, reviving, watched\n him, at first dully, then with quickening\n interest, especially when he\n jerked off the earphones with a\n happy shout and sprang to his feet.\n\"LISTEN to this!\" he cried in\n a ringing voice. \"As a result\n of the worldwide publicity, Puffyloaves\n are outselling Fairy Bread\n three to one—and that's just the\n old carbon-dioxide stock from our\n freezers! It's almost exhausted, but\n the government, now that the\n Ukrainian crisis is over, has taken\n the ban off helium and will also\n sell us stockpiled wheat if we need\n it. We can have our walking mills\n burrowing into the wheat caves in\n a matter of hours!", "About one thousand miles farther\n on in that direction, where a cluster\n of stratosphere-tickling towers\n marked the location of the metropolis\n of NewNew York, a tender\n scene was being enacted in the\n pressurized penthouse managerial\n suite of Puffy Products. Megera\n Winterly, Secretary in Chief to the\n Managerial Board and referred to\n by her underlings as the Blonde\n Icicle, was dealing with the advances\n of Roger (\"Racehorse\")\n Snedden, Assistant Secretary to the\n Board and often indistinguishable\n from any passing office boy." ], [ "Eyes and photocells turned inquisitorially\n upon Roger Snedden.\n He went from green to Puffyloaf\n white and blurted: \"All right, I did\n it, but it was the only way out!\n Yesterday morning, due to the\n Ukrainian crisis, the government\n stopped sales and deliveries of all\n strategic stockpiled materials, including\n helium gas. Puffy's new\n program of advertising and promotion,\n based on the lighter loaf, was\n already rolling. There was only one\n thing to do, there being only one\n other gas comparable in lightness\n to helium. I diverted the necessary\n quantity of hydrogen gas from the\n Hydrogenated Oils Section of our\n Magna-Margarine Division and\n substituted it for the helium.\"\n\n\n \"You substituted ... hydrogen ... for\n the ... helium?\" Phineas\n T. Gryce faltered in low mechanical\n tones, taking four steps backward.", "\"Hydrogen is twice as light as\n helium,\" Tin Philosopher remarked\n judiciously.\n\n\n \"And many times cheaper—did\n you know that?\" Roger countered\n feebly. \"Yes, I substituted hydrogen.\n The metal-foil wrapping would\n have added just enough weight to\n counteract the greater buoyancy of\n the hydrogen loaf. But—\"\n\n\n \"So, when this morning's loaves\n began to arrive on the delivery\n platforms of the walking mills....\"\n Tin Philosopher left the remark\n unfinished.\n\n\n \"Exactly,\" Roger agreed dismally.\n\n\n \"Let me ask you, Mr. Snedden,\"\n Gryce interjected, still in low tones,\n \"if you expected people to jump to\n the kitchen ceiling for their Puffybread\n after taking off the metal\n wrapper, or reach for the sky if\n they happened to unwrap the stuff\n outdoors?\"", "Here the machine shuddered\n with delicate clinkings. \"Therefore,\n we of Puffyloaf are taking today\n what may be the ultimate step\n toward purity: we are aerating our\n loaves with the noble gas helium,\n an element which remains virginal\n in the face of all chemical temptations\n and whose slim molecules are\n eleven times lighter than obese\n carbon dioxide—yes, noble uncontaminable\n helium, which, if it be a\n kind of ash, is yet the ash only of\n radioactive burning, accomplished\n or initiated entirely on the Sun, a\n safe 93 million miles from this\n planet. Let's have a cheer for the\n helium loaf!\"\nWITHOUT changing expression,\n Phineas T. Gryce rapped\n the table thrice in solemn applause,\n while the others bowed their heads.", "\"Ladies—\" he inclined his photocells\n toward Rose Thinker and Meg—\"and\n gentlemen. This is a historic\n occasion in Old Puffy's long history,\n the inauguration of the helium-filled\n loaf ('So Light It Almost Floats\n Away!') in which that inert and\n heaven-aspiring gas replaces old-fashioned\n carbon dioxide. Later,\n there will be kudos for Rose\n Thinker, whose bright relays genius-sparked\n the idea, and also for Roger\n Snedden, who took care of the\n details.\n\n\n \"By the by, Racehorse, that was\n a brilliant piece of work getting the\n helium out of the government—they've\n been pretty stuffy lately\n about their monopoly. But first I\n want to throw wide the casement in\n your minds that opens on the Long\n View of Things.\"", "\"But that isn't all! The far\n greater demand everywhere is for\n Puffyloaves that will actually float.\n Public Relations, Child Liaison\n Division, reports that the kiddies\n are making their mothers' lives\n miserable about it. If only we can\n figure out some way to make\n hydrogen non-explosive or the\n helium loaf float just a little—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure we can take care of\n that quite handily,\" Tin Philosopher\n interrupted briskly. \"Puffyloaf\n has kept it a corporation secret—even\n you've never been told\n about it—but just before he went\n crazy, Everett Whitehead discovered\n a way to make bread using\n only half as much flour as we do in\n the present loaf. Using this secret\n technique, which we've been saving\n for just such an emergency, it will\n be possible to bake a helium loaf as\n buoyant in every respect as the\n hydrogen loaf.\"", "\"Mr. Snedden!\" Gryce barked.\n \"What bug in the new helium\n process might account for this\n delay?\"\n\n\n Roger was on his feet, looking\n bewildered. \"I can't imagine, sir,\n unless—just possibly—there's\n been some unforeseeable difficulty\n involving the new metal-foil wrappers.\"\n\n\n \"Metal-foil wrappers? Were\nyou\nresponsible for those?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. Last-minute recalculations\n showed that the extra lightness\n of the new loaf might be great\n enough to cause drift during stackage.\n Drafts in stores might topple\n sales pyramids. Metal-foil wrappers,\n by their added weight, took\n care of the difficulty.\"\n\n\n \"And you ordered them without\n consulting the Board?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. There was hardly time\n and—\"", "\"Of course! Just what is behind\n all this, Mr. Snedden?\nWhat\nrecalculations\n were you trusting, when\n our physicists had demonstrated\n months ago that the helium loaf\n was safely stackable in light airs\n and gentle breezes—winds up to\n Beaufort's scale 3.\nWhy\nshould a\n change from heavier to lighter\n wrappers result in complete non-delivery?\"\nROGER Snedden's paleness became\n tinged with an interesting\n green. He cleared his throat\n and made strange gulping noises.\n Tin Philosopher's photocells focused\n on him calmly, Rose\n Thinker's with unfeigned excitement.\n P.T. Gryce's frown grew\n blacker by the moment, while\n Megera Winterly's Venus-mask\n showed an odd dawning of dismay\n and awe. She was getting new\n squawks in her earphones.", "The Sun's rays beat through the\n rarified air on the distended plastic\n wrappers, increasing still further\n the pressure of the confined hydrogen.\n They burst by the millions\n and tens of millions. A high-flying\n Bulgarian evangelist, who had happened\n to mistake the up-lever for\n the east-lever in the cockpit of his\n flier and who was the sole witness\n of the event, afterward described it\n as \"the foaming of a sea of diamonds,\n the crackle of God's\n knuckles.\"\nBY THE millions and tens of\n millions, the loaves coasted\n down into the starving Ukraine.\n Shaken by a week of humor that\n threatened to invade even its own\n grim precincts, the Kremlin made\n a sudden about-face. A new policy\n was instituted of communal ownership\n of the produce of communal\n farms, and teams of hunger-fighters\n and caravans of trucks loaded with\n pumpernickel were dispatched into\n the Ukraine.", "\"Mr. Gryce,\" Roger said reproachfully,\n \"you have often assured\n me that what people do with\n Puffybread after they buy it is no\n concern of ours.\"\n\n\n \"I seem to recall,\" Rose Thinker\n chirped somewhat unkindly, \"that\n dictum was created to answer inquiries\n after Roger put the famous\n sculptures-in-miniature artist on 3D\n and he testified that he always\n molded his first attempts from\n Puffybread, one jumbo loaf squeezing\n down to approximately the size\n of a peanut.\"\nHER photocells dimmed and\n brightened. \"Oh, boy—hydrogen!\n The loaf's unwrapped. After\n a while, in spite of the crust-seal, a\n little oxygen diffuses in. An explosive\n mixture. Housewife in curlers\n and kimono pops a couple slices in\n the toaster. Boom!\"\n\n\n The three human beings in the\n room winced.", "\"Why, you fool! I noticed that\n order for metal-foil wrappers, assumed\n it was some sub-secretary's\n mistake, and canceled it last night!\"\n\n\n Roger Snedden turned pale.\n \"You canceled it?\" he quavered.\n \"And told them to go back to the\n lighter plastic wrappers?\"", "The others, reviving, watched\n him, at first dully, then with quickening\n interest, especially when he\n jerked off the earphones with a\n happy shout and sprang to his feet.\n\"LISTEN to this!\" he cried in\n a ringing voice. \"As a result\n of the worldwide publicity, Puffyloaves\n are outselling Fairy Bread\n three to one—and that's just the\n old carbon-dioxide stock from our\n freezers! It's almost exhausted, but\n the government, now that the\n Ukrainian crisis is over, has taken\n the ban off helium and will also\n sell us stockpiled wheat if we need\n it. We can have our walking mills\n burrowing into the wheat caves in\n a matter of hours!", "Tin Philosopher lifted one of his\n own sets of bright talons. \"Thanks,\n P.T. But to continue my historical\n resume, the next great advance in\n the baking art was the substitution\n of purified carbon dioxide, recovered\n from coal smoke, for the gas\n generated by yeast organisms indwelling\n in the dough and later\n killed by the heat of baking, their\n corpses remaining\nin situ\n. But even\n purified carbon dioxide is itself a\n rather repugnant gas, a product of\n metabolism whether fast or slow,\n and forever associated with those\n life processes which are obnoxious\n to the fastidious.\"", "\"Thanks, T.P.,\" P.T. then said.\n \"And now for the Moment of\n Truth. Miss Winterly, how is the\n helium loaf selling?\"\n\n\n The business girl clapped on a\n pair of earphones and whispered\n into a lapel mike. Her gaze grew\n abstracted as she mentally translated\n flurries of brief squawks into\n coherent messages. Suddenly a single\n vertical furrow creased her\n matchlessly smooth brow.\n\n\n \"It isn't, Mr. Gryce!\" she gasped\n in horror. \"Fairy Bread is outselling\n Puffyloaves by an infinity factor.\n So far this morning,\nthere has\n not been one single delivery of\n Puffyloaves to any sales spot\n! Complaints\n about non-delivery are pouring\n in from both walking stores and\n sessile shops.\"", "\"Puffyloaf could do with a little\n of that,\" the business girl observed\n judiciously. \"The way sales have\n been plummeting, it won't be long\n before the Government deeds our\n desks to the managers of Fairy\n Bread and asks us to take the Big\n Jump. But just where does your\n quick thinking come into this, Mr.\n Snedden? You can't be referring to\n the helium—that was Rose Thinker's\n brainwave.\"\n\n\n She studied him suspiciously.\n \"You've birthed another promotional\n bumble, Roger. I can see it\n in your eyes. I only hope it's not\n as big a one as when you put the\n Martian ambassador on 3D and he\n thanked you profusely for the gross\n of Puffyloaves, assuring you that\n he'd never slept on a softer mattress\n in all his life on two planets.\"", "\"For a while, barbarous faddists—blind\n to the deeply spiritual nature\n of bread, which is recognized\n by all great religions—held back\n our march toward perfection with\n their hair-splitting insistence on the\n vitamin content of the wheat germ,\n but their case collapsed when tasteless\n colorless substitutes were\n triumphantly synthesized and introduced\n into the loaf, which for flawless\n purity, unequaled airiness and\n sheer intangible goodness was rapidly\n becoming mankind's supreme\n gustatory experience.\"\n\n\n \"I wonder what the stuff tastes\n like,\" Rose Thinker said out of a\n clear sky.\n\n\n \"I wonder what taste tastes like,\"\n Tin Philosopher echoed dreamily.\n Recovering himself, he continued:", "\"A sensible suggestion,\" Tin\n Philosopher said. \"But it comes a\n trifle late in the day. If the mills\n are still walking and grinding, approximately\n seven billion Puffyloaves\n are at this moment cruising\n eastward over Middle America.\n Remember that a six-month supply\n for deep-freeze is involved and that\n the current consumption of bread,\n due to its matchless airiness, is\n eight and one-half loaves per person\n per day.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce carefully inserted\n both hands into his scanty\n hair, feeling for a good grip. He\n leaned menacingly toward Roger\n who, chin resting on the table, regarded\n him apathetically.", "Tin Philosopher kicked her under\n the table, while observing, \"So\n you see, Roger, that the non-delivery\n of the hydrogen loaf carries\n some consolations. And I must confess\n that one aspect of the affair\n gives me great satisfaction, not as a\n Board Member but as a private\n machine. You have at last made a\n reality of the 'rises through the air'\n part of Puffybread's theme. They\n can't ever take that away from you.\n By now, half the inhabitants of the\n Great Plains must have observed\n our flying loaves rising high.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce shot a frightened\n look at the west windows and\n found his full voice.\n\n\n \"Stop the mills!\" he roared at\n Meg Winterly, who nodded and\n whispered urgently into her mike.", "Rose Thinker spun twice on her\n chair and opened her photocells\n wide. Tin Philosopher coughed to\n limber up the diaphragm of his\n speaker and continued:\n\n\n \"Ever since the first cave wife\n boasted to her next-den neighbor\n about the superior paleness and fluffiness\n of her tortillas, mankind has\n sought lighter, whiter bread. Indeed,\n thinkers wiser than myself have\n equated the whole upward course of\n culture with this poignant quest.\n Yeast was a wonderful discovery—for\n its primitive day. Sifting the\n bran and wheat germ from the flour\n was an even more important advance.\n Early bleaching and preserving\n chemicals played their humble\n parts.", "\"Then, early in the twenty-first\n century, came the epochal researches\n of Everett Whitehead,\n Puffyloaf chemist, culminating in\n his paper 'The Structural Bubble\n in Cereal Masses' and making possible\n the baking of airtight bread\n twenty times stronger (for its\n weight) than steel and of a\n lightness that would have been\n incredible even to the advanced\n chemist-bakers of the twentieth\n century—a lightness so great that,\n besides forming the backbone of\n our own promotion, it has forever\n since been capitalized on by our\n conscienceless competitors of Fairy\n Bread with their enduring slogan:\n 'It Makes Ghost Toast'.\"\n\n\n \"That's a beaut, all right, that\n ecto-dough blurb,\" Rose Thinker\n admitted, bugging her photocells\n sadly. \"Wait a sec. How about?—", "The man approached the conference\n table in the center of the room\n with measured pace and gravely\n expressionless face. The rose-tinted\n machine on his left did a couple\n of impulsive pirouettes on the way\n and twittered a greeting to Meg\n and Roger. The other machine quietly\n took the third of the high seats\n and lifted a claw at Meg, who now\n occupied a stool twice the height of\n Roger's.\n\n\n \"Miss Winterly, please—our\n theme.\"\n\n\n The Blonde Icicle's face thawed\n into a little-girl smile as she chanted\n bubblingly:" ], [ "Thus instantly risen, the dough\n was clipped into loaves and shot\n into radionic ovens forming the\n midsections of the metal serpents.\n There the bread was baked in a\n matter of seconds, a fierce heat-front\n browning the crusts, and the\n piping-hot loaves sealed in transparent\n plastic bearing the proud\n Puffyloaf emblem (two cherubs\n circling a floating loaf) and ejected\n onto the delivery platform at each\n serpent's rear end, where a cluster\n of pickup machines, like hungry\n piglets, snatched at the loaves\n with hygienic claws.\n\n\n A few loaves would be hurried\n off for the day's consumption,\n the majority stored for winter in\n strategically located mammoth\n deep freezes.", "Private fliers approached the\n brown and glistening bread-front in\n curiosity and dipped back in awe.\n Aero-expresslines organized sightseeing\n flights along the flanks.\n Planes of the government forestry\n and agricultural services and 'copters\n bearing the Puffyloaf emblem\n hovered on the fringes, watching\n developments and waiting for orders.\n A squadron of supersonic\n fighters hung menacingly above.\n\n\n The behavior of birds varied\n considerably. Most fled or gave the\n loaves a wide berth, but some\n bolder species, discovering the minimal\n nutritive nature of the translucent\n brown objects, attacked\n them furiously with beaks and\n claws. Hydrogen diffusing slowly\n through the crusts had now distended\n most of the sealed plastic\n wrappers into little balloons, which\n ruptured, when pierced, with disconcerting\npops\n.", "Below, neck-craning citizens\n crowded streets and back yards,\n cranks and cultists had a field day,\n while local and national governments\n raged indiscriminately at\n Puffyloaf and at each other.\n\n\n Rumors that a fusion weapon\n would be exploded in the midst of\n the flying bread drew angry protests\n from conservationists and a flood\n of telefax pamphlets titled \"H-Loaf\n or H-bomb?\"\n\n\n Stockholm sent a mystifying\n note of praise to the United Nations\n Food Organization.\n\n\n Delhi issued nervous denials of a\n millet blight that no one had heard\n of until that moment and reaffirmed\n India's ability to feed her\n population with no outside help\n except the usual.", "Here the machine shuddered\n with delicate clinkings. \"Therefore,\n we of Puffyloaf are taking today\n what may be the ultimate step\n toward purity: we are aerating our\n loaves with the noble gas helium,\n an element which remains virginal\n in the face of all chemical temptations\n and whose slim molecules are\n eleven times lighter than obese\n carbon dioxide—yes, noble uncontaminable\n helium, which, if it be a\n kind of ash, is yet the ash only of\n radioactive burning, accomplished\n or initiated entirely on the Sun, a\n safe 93 million miles from this\n planet. Let's have a cheer for the\n helium loaf!\"\nWITHOUT changing expression,\n Phineas T. Gryce rapped\n the table thrice in solemn applause,\n while the others bowed their heads.", "\"Er ... ah ... er....\" Roger\n said in winning tones. \"Well, you\n see, the fact is that I....\"\n\n\n \"Hold it,\" Meg interrupted\n crisply. \"Triple-urgent from Public\n Relations, Safety Division. Tulsa-Topeka\n aero-express makes emergency\n landing after being buffeted\n in encounter with vast flight of\n objects first described as brown\n birds, although no failures reported\n in airway's electronic anti-bird\n fences. After grounding safely near\n Emporia—no fatalities—pilot's\n windshield found thinly plastered\n with soft white-and-brown material.\n Emblems on plastic wrappers embedded\n in material identify it incontrovertibly\n as an undetermined\n number of Puffyloaves cruising at\n three thousand feet!\"", "Roger nodded obediently. But\n his pallor increased a shade, the\n pupils of his eyes disappeared under\n the upper lids, and his head\n burrowed beneath his forearms.\n\n\n \"Oh, boy,\" Rose Thinker called\n gayly to Tin Philosopher, \"this\n looks like the start of a real crisis\n session! Did you remember to\n bring spare batteries?\"\nMEANWHILE, the monstrous\n flight of Puffyloaves, filling\n midwestern skies as no small fliers\n had since the days of the passenger\n pigeon, soared steadily onward.", "\"Hold it!\" Meg called sharply.\n \"Flock of multiple-urgents coming\n in. News Liaison: information bureaus\n swamped with flying-bread\n inquiries. Aero-expresslines: Clear\n our airways or face law suit. U. S.\n Army: Why do loaves flame when\n hit by incendiary bullets? U. S.\n Customs: If bread intended for\n export, get export license or face\n prosecution. Russian Consulate in\n Chicago: Advise on destination of\n bread-lift. And some Kansas church\n is accusing us of a hoax inciting to\n blasphemy, of faking miracles—I\n don't know\nwhy\n.\"\n\n\n The business girl tore off her\n headphones. \"Roger Snedden,\" she\n cried with a hysteria that would\n have dumfounded her underlings,\n \"you've brought the name of Puffyloaf\n in front of the whole world, all\n right! Now do something about the\n situation!\"", "World distribution was given to\n a series of photographs showing\n peasants queueing up to trade scavenged\n Puffyloaves for traditional\n black bread, recently aerated itself\n but still extra solid by comparison,\n the rate of exchange demanded by\n the Moscow teams being twenty\n Puffyloaves to one of pumpernickel.\n\n\n Another series of photographs,\n picturing chubby workers' children\n being blown to bits by booby-trapped\n bread, was quietly destroyed.\n\n\n Congratulatory notes were exchanged\n by various national governments\n and world organizations,\n including the Brotherhood of Free\n Business Machines. The great\n bread flight was over, though for\n several weeks afterward scattered\n falls of loaves occurred, giving rise\n to a new folklore of manna among\n lonely Arabian tribesmen, and in\n one well-authenticated instance in\n Tibet, sustaining life in a party of\n mountaineers cut off by a snow\n slide.", "Phineas T. Gryce, escaping from\n his own managerial suite, raged\n about the city, demanding general\n cooperation in the stretching of\n great nets between the skyscrapers\n to trap the errant loaves. He was\n captured by Tin Philosopher, escaped\n again, and was found posted\n with oxygen mask and submachine gun\n on the topmost spire of Puffyloaf\n Tower, apparently determined\n to shoot down the loaves as they\n appeared and before they involved\n his company in more trouble with\n Customs and the State Department.\n\n\n Recaptured by Tin Philosopher,\n who suffered only minor bullet\n holes, he was given a series of mild\n electroshocks and returned to the\n conference table, calm and clear-headed\n as ever.", "\"But that isn't all! The far\n greater demand everywhere is for\n Puffyloaves that will actually float.\n Public Relations, Child Liaison\n Division, reports that the kiddies\n are making their mothers' lives\n miserable about it. If only we can\n figure out some way to make\n hydrogen non-explosive or the\n helium loaf float just a little—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure we can take care of\n that quite handily,\" Tin Philosopher\n interrupted briskly. \"Puffyloaf\n has kept it a corporation secret—even\n you've never been told\n about it—but just before he went\n crazy, Everett Whitehead discovered\n a way to make bread using\n only half as much flour as we do in\n the present loaf. Using this secret\n technique, which we've been saving\n for just such an emergency, it will\n be possible to bake a helium loaf as\n buoyant in every respect as the\n hydrogen loaf.\"", "Tin Philosopher kicked her under\n the table, while observing, \"So\n you see, Roger, that the non-delivery\n of the hydrogen loaf carries\n some consolations. And I must confess\n that one aspect of the affair\n gives me great satisfaction, not as a\n Board Member but as a private\n machine. You have at last made a\n reality of the 'rises through the air'\n part of Puffybread's theme. They\n can't ever take that away from you.\n By now, half the inhabitants of the\n Great Plains must have observed\n our flying loaves rising high.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce shot a frightened\n look at the west windows and\n found his full voice.\n\n\n \"Stop the mills!\" he roared at\n Meg Winterly, who nodded and\n whispered urgently into her mike.", "\"Then, early in the twenty-first\n century, came the epochal researches\n of Everett Whitehead,\n Puffyloaf chemist, culminating in\n his paper 'The Structural Bubble\n in Cereal Masses' and making possible\n the baking of airtight bread\n twenty times stronger (for its\n weight) than steel and of a\n lightness that would have been\n incredible even to the advanced\n chemist-bakers of the twentieth\n century—a lightness so great that,\n besides forming the backbone of\n our own promotion, it has forever\n since been capitalized on by our\n conscienceless competitors of Fairy\n Bread with their enduring slogan:\n 'It Makes Ghost Toast'.\"\n\n\n \"That's a beaut, all right, that\n ecto-dough blurb,\" Rose Thinker\n admitted, bugging her photocells\n sadly. \"Wait a sec. How about?—", "\"Mr. Gryce,\" Roger said reproachfully,\n \"you have often assured\n me that what people do with\n Puffybread after they buy it is no\n concern of ours.\"\n\n\n \"I seem to recall,\" Rose Thinker\n chirped somewhat unkindly, \"that\n dictum was created to answer inquiries\n after Roger put the famous\n sculptures-in-miniature artist on 3D\n and he testified that he always\n molded his first attempts from\n Puffybread, one jumbo loaf squeezing\n down to approximately the size\n of a peanut.\"\nHER photocells dimmed and\n brightened. \"Oh, boy—hydrogen!\n The loaf's unwrapped. After\n a while, in spite of the crust-seal, a\n little oxygen diffuses in. An explosive\n mixture. Housewife in curlers\n and kimono pops a couple slices in\n the toaster. Boom!\"\n\n\n The three human beings in the\n room winced.", "As they advanced, their heads\n swung lazily from side to side, very\n much like snakes, gobbling the yellow\n grain. In their throats, it was\n threshed, the chaff bundled and\n burped aside for pickup by the\n crawl trucks of a chemical corporation,\n the kernels quick-dried\n and blown along into the mighty\n chests of the machines. There the\n tireless mills ground the kernels\n to flour, which was instantly sifted,\n the bran being packaged and\n dropped like the chaff for pickup.\n A cluster of tanks which gave\n the metal serpents a decidedly\n humpbacked appearance added\n water, shortening, salt and other\n ingredients, some named and some\n not. The dough was at the same\n time infused with gas from a tank\n conspicuously labeled \"Carbon\n Dioxide\" (\"No Yeast Creatures\n in Your Bread!\").", "\"Puffyloaf could do with a little\n of that,\" the business girl observed\n judiciously. \"The way sales have\n been plummeting, it won't be long\n before the Government deeds our\n desks to the managers of Fairy\n Bread and asks us to take the Big\n Jump. But just where does your\n quick thinking come into this, Mr.\n Snedden? You can't be referring to\n the helium—that was Rose Thinker's\n brainwave.\"\n\n\n She studied him suspiciously.\n \"You've birthed another promotional\n bumble, Roger. I can see it\n in your eyes. I only hope it's not\n as big a one as when you put the\n Martian ambassador on 3D and he\n thanked you profusely for the gross\n of Puffyloaves, assuring you that\n he'd never slept on a softer mattress\n in all his life on two planets.\"", "The others, reviving, watched\n him, at first dully, then with quickening\n interest, especially when he\n jerked off the earphones with a\n happy shout and sprang to his feet.\n\"LISTEN to this!\" he cried in\n a ringing voice. \"As a result\n of the worldwide publicity, Puffyloaves\n are outselling Fairy Bread\n three to one—and that's just the\n old carbon-dioxide stock from our\n freezers! It's almost exhausted, but\n the government, now that the\n Ukrainian crisis is over, has taken\n the ban off helium and will also\n sell us stockpiled wheat if we need\n it. We can have our walking mills\n burrowing into the wheat caves in\n a matter of hours!", "\"Ladies—\" he inclined his photocells\n toward Rose Thinker and Meg—\"and\n gentlemen. This is a historic\n occasion in Old Puffy's long history,\n the inauguration of the helium-filled\n loaf ('So Light It Almost Floats\n Away!') in which that inert and\n heaven-aspiring gas replaces old-fashioned\n carbon dioxide. Later,\n there will be kudos for Rose\n Thinker, whose bright relays genius-sparked\n the idea, and also for Roger\n Snedden, who took care of the\n details.\n\n\n \"By the by, Racehorse, that was\n a brilliant piece of work getting the\n helium out of the government—they've\n been pretty stuffy lately\n about their monopoly. But first I\n want to throw wide the casement in\n your minds that opens on the Long\n View of Things.\"", "\"A sensible suggestion,\" Tin\n Philosopher said. \"But it comes a\n trifle late in the day. If the mills\n are still walking and grinding, approximately\n seven billion Puffyloaves\n are at this moment cruising\n eastward over Middle America.\n Remember that a six-month supply\n for deep-freeze is involved and that\n the current consumption of bread,\n due to its matchless airiness, is\n eight and one-half loaves per person\n per day.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce carefully inserted\n both hands into his scanty\n hair, feeling for a good grip. He\n leaned menacingly toward Roger\n who, chin resting on the table, regarded\n him apathetically.", "\"Thanks, T.P.,\" P.T. then said.\n \"And now for the Moment of\n Truth. Miss Winterly, how is the\n helium loaf selling?\"\n\n\n The business girl clapped on a\n pair of earphones and whispered\n into a lapel mike. Her gaze grew\n abstracted as she mentally translated\n flurries of brief squawks into\n coherent messages. Suddenly a single\n vertical furrow creased her\n matchlessly smooth brow.\n\n\n \"It isn't, Mr. Gryce!\" she gasped\n in horror. \"Fairy Bread is outselling\n Puffyloaves by an infinity factor.\n So far this morning,\nthere has\n not been one single delivery of\n Puffyloaves to any sales spot\n! Complaints\n about non-delivery are pouring\n in from both walking stores and\n sessile shops.\"", "Bread\n\n Overhead\nBy FRITZ LEIBER\nThe Staff of Life suddenly and\n\n disconcertingly sprouted wings\n\n —and mankind had to eat crow!\nIllustrated by WOOD\nAS a blisteringly hot but\n guaranteed weather-controlled\n future summer day\n dawned on the Mississippi Valley,\n the walking mills of Puffy Products\n (\"Spike to Loaf in One\n Operation!\") began to tread delicately\n on their centipede legs\n across the wheat fields of Kansas.\n\n\n The walking mills resembled fat\n metal serpents, rather larger than\n those Chinese paper dragons animated\n by files of men in procession.\n Sensory robot devices in\n their noses informed them that\n the waiting wheat had reached ripe\n perfection." ], [ "World distribution was given to\n a series of photographs showing\n peasants queueing up to trade scavenged\n Puffyloaves for traditional\n black bread, recently aerated itself\n but still extra solid by comparison,\n the rate of exchange demanded by\n the Moscow teams being twenty\n Puffyloaves to one of pumpernickel.\n\n\n Another series of photographs,\n picturing chubby workers' children\n being blown to bits by booby-trapped\n bread, was quietly destroyed.\n\n\n Congratulatory notes were exchanged\n by various national governments\n and world organizations,\n including the Brotherhood of Free\n Business Machines. The great\n bread flight was over, though for\n several weeks afterward scattered\n falls of loaves occurred, giving rise\n to a new folklore of manna among\n lonely Arabian tribesmen, and in\n one well-authenticated instance in\n Tibet, sustaining life in a party of\n mountaineers cut off by a snow\n slide.", "The Sun's rays beat through the\n rarified air on the distended plastic\n wrappers, increasing still further\n the pressure of the confined hydrogen.\n They burst by the millions\n and tens of millions. A high-flying\n Bulgarian evangelist, who had happened\n to mistake the up-lever for\n the east-lever in the cockpit of his\n flier and who was the sole witness\n of the event, afterward described it\n as \"the foaming of a sea of diamonds,\n the crackle of God's\n knuckles.\"\nBY THE millions and tens of\n millions, the loaves coasted\n down into the starving Ukraine.\n Shaken by a week of humor that\n threatened to invade even its own\n grim precincts, the Kremlin made\n a sudden about-face. A new policy\n was instituted of communal ownership\n of the produce of communal\n farms, and teams of hunger-fighters\n and caravans of trucks loaded with\n pumpernickel were dispatched into\n the Ukraine.", "Below, neck-craning citizens\n crowded streets and back yards,\n cranks and cultists had a field day,\n while local and national governments\n raged indiscriminately at\n Puffyloaf and at each other.\n\n\n Rumors that a fusion weapon\n would be exploded in the midst of\n the flying bread drew angry protests\n from conservationists and a flood\n of telefax pamphlets titled \"H-Loaf\n or H-bomb?\"\n\n\n Stockholm sent a mystifying\n note of praise to the United Nations\n Food Organization.\n\n\n Delhi issued nervous denials of a\n millet blight that no one had heard\n of until that moment and reaffirmed\n India's ability to feed her\n population with no outside help\n except the usual.", "But the bread flight, swinging\n away from a hurricane moving up\n the Atlantic coast, crossed a\n clouded-in Boston by night and\n disappeared into a high Atlantic\n overcast, also thereby evading a\n local storm generated by the\n Weather Department in a last-minute\n effort to bring down or at\n least disperse the H-loaves.\n\n\n Warnings and counterwarnings\n by Communist and Capitalist governments\n seriously interfered with\n military trailing of the flight during\n this period and it was actually\n lost in touch with for several days.\n\n\n At scattered points, seagulls were\n observed fighting over individual\n loaves floating down from the gray\n roof—that was all.", "A mood of spirituality strongly\n tinged with humor seized the people\n of the world. Ministers sermonized\n about the bread, variously\n interpreting it as a call to charity,\n a warning against gluttony, a parable\n of the evanescence of all\n earthly things, and a divine joke.\n Husbands and wives, facing each\n other across their walls of breakfast\n toast, burst into laughter. The\n mere sight of a loaf of bread anywhere\n was enough to evoke guffaws.\n An obscure sect, having as\n part of its creed the injunction\n \"Don't take yourself so damn seriously,\"\n won new adherents.\n\n\n The bread flight, rising above an\n Atlantic storm widely reported to\n have destroyed it, passed unobserved\n across a foggy England and\n rose out of the overcast only over\n Mittel-europa. The loaves had at\n last reached their maximum altitude.", "The congregation of an open-walled\n country church, standing\n up to recite the most familiar of\n Christian prayers, had just reached\n the petition for daily sustenance,\n when a sub-flight of the loaves,\n either forced down by a vagrant\n wind or lacking the natural buoyancy\n of the rest, came coasting silently\n as the sunbeams between the\n graceful pillars at the altar end of\n the building.\n\n\n Meanwhile, the main flight, now\n augmented by other bread flocks\n from scores and hundreds of walking\n mills that had started work a\n little later, mounted slowly and\n majestically into the cirrus-flecked\n upper air, where a steady\n wind was blowing strongly toward\n the east.", "But now, behold a wonder! As\n loaves began to appear on the\n delivery platform of the first walking\n mill to get into action, they\n did not linger on the conveyor\n belt, but rose gently into the air\n and slowly traveled off down-wind\n across the hot rippling fields.\nTHE robot claws of the pickup\n machines clutched in vain, and,\n not noticing the difference, proceeded\n carefully to stack emptiness,\n tier by tier. One errant loaf,\n rising more sluggishly than its fellows,\n was snagged by a thrusting\n claw. The machine paused, clumsily\n wiped off the injured loaf, set\n it aside—where it bobbed on one\n corner, unable to take off again—and\n went back to the work of\n storing nothingness.\n\n\n A flock of crows rose from the\n trees of a nearby shelterbelt as the\n flight of loaves approached. The\n crows swooped to investigate and\n then suddenly scattered, screeching\n in panic.", "Radio Moscow asserted that the\n Kremlin would brook no interference\n in its treatment of the Ukrainians,\n jokingly referred to the flying\n bread as a farce perpetrated by\n mad internationalists inhabiting\n Cloud Cuckoo Land, added contradictory\n references to airborne\n bread booby-trapped by Capitalist\n gangsters, and then fell moodily\n silent on the whole topic.\n\n\n Radio Venus reported to its\n winged audience that Earth's\n inhabitants were establishing food\n depots in the upper air, preparatory\n to taking up permanent aerial\n residence \"such as we have always\n enjoyed on Venus.\"\nNEWNEW YORK made feverish\n preparations for the passage\n of the flying bread. Tickets\n for sightseeing space in skyscrapers\n were sold at high prices; cold meats\n and potted spreads were hawked to\n viewers with the assurance that\n they would be able to snag the\n bread out of the air and enjoy a\n historic sandwich.", "Private fliers approached the\n brown and glistening bread-front in\n curiosity and dipped back in awe.\n Aero-expresslines organized sightseeing\n flights along the flanks.\n Planes of the government forestry\n and agricultural services and 'copters\n bearing the Puffyloaf emblem\n hovered on the fringes, watching\n developments and waiting for orders.\n A squadron of supersonic\n fighters hung menacingly above.\n\n\n The behavior of birds varied\n considerably. Most fled or gave the\n loaves a wide berth, but some\n bolder species, discovering the minimal\n nutritive nature of the translucent\n brown objects, attacked\n them furiously with beaks and\n claws. Hydrogen diffusing slowly\n through the crusts had now distended\n most of the sealed plastic\n wrappers into little balloons, which\n ruptured, when pierced, with disconcerting\npops\n.", "Tin Philosopher kicked her under\n the table, while observing, \"So\n you see, Roger, that the non-delivery\n of the hydrogen loaf carries\n some consolations. And I must confess\n that one aspect of the affair\n gives me great satisfaction, not as a\n Board Member but as a private\n machine. You have at last made a\n reality of the 'rises through the air'\n part of Puffybread's theme. They\n can't ever take that away from you.\n By now, half the inhabitants of the\n Great Plains must have observed\n our flying loaves rising high.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce shot a frightened\n look at the west windows and\n found his full voice.\n\n\n \"Stop the mills!\" he roared at\n Meg Winterly, who nodded and\n whispered urgently into her mike.", "The others, reviving, watched\n him, at first dully, then with quickening\n interest, especially when he\n jerked off the earphones with a\n happy shout and sprang to his feet.\n\"LISTEN to this!\" he cried in\n a ringing voice. \"As a result\n of the worldwide publicity, Puffyloaves\n are outselling Fairy Bread\n three to one—and that's just the\n old carbon-dioxide stock from our\n freezers! It's almost exhausted, but\n the government, now that the\n Ukrainian crisis is over, has taken\n the ban off helium and will also\n sell us stockpiled wheat if we need\n it. We can have our walking mills\n burrowing into the wheat caves in\n a matter of hours!", "Thus instantly risen, the dough\n was clipped into loaves and shot\n into radionic ovens forming the\n midsections of the metal serpents.\n There the bread was baked in a\n matter of seconds, a fierce heat-front\n browning the crusts, and the\n piping-hot loaves sealed in transparent\n plastic bearing the proud\n Puffyloaf emblem (two cherubs\n circling a floating loaf) and ejected\n onto the delivery platform at each\n serpent's rear end, where a cluster\n of pickup machines, like hungry\n piglets, snatched at the loaves\n with hygienic claws.\n\n\n A few loaves would be hurried\n off for the day's consumption,\n the majority stored for winter in\n strategically located mammoth\n deep freezes.", "\"A sensible suggestion,\" Tin\n Philosopher said. \"But it comes a\n trifle late in the day. If the mills\n are still walking and grinding, approximately\n seven billion Puffyloaves\n are at this moment cruising\n eastward over Middle America.\n Remember that a six-month supply\n for deep-freeze is involved and that\n the current consumption of bread,\n due to its matchless airiness, is\n eight and one-half loaves per person\n per day.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce carefully inserted\n both hands into his scanty\n hair, feeling for a good grip. He\n leaned menacingly toward Roger\n who, chin resting on the table, regarded\n him apathetically.", "\"Hold it!\" Meg called sharply.\n \"Flock of multiple-urgents coming\n in. News Liaison: information bureaus\n swamped with flying-bread\n inquiries. Aero-expresslines: Clear\n our airways or face law suit. U. S.\n Army: Why do loaves flame when\n hit by incendiary bullets? U. S.\n Customs: If bread intended for\n export, get export license or face\n prosecution. Russian Consulate in\n Chicago: Advise on destination of\n bread-lift. And some Kansas church\n is accusing us of a hoax inciting to\n blasphemy, of faking miracles—I\n don't know\nwhy\n.\"\n\n\n The business girl tore off her\n headphones. \"Roger Snedden,\" she\n cried with a hysteria that would\n have dumfounded her underlings,\n \"you've brought the name of Puffyloaf\n in front of the whole world, all\n right! Now do something about the\n situation!\"", "Phineas T. Gryce, escaping from\n his own managerial suite, raged\n about the city, demanding general\n cooperation in the stretching of\n great nets between the skyscrapers\n to trap the errant loaves. He was\n captured by Tin Philosopher, escaped\n again, and was found posted\n with oxygen mask and submachine gun\n on the topmost spire of Puffyloaf\n Tower, apparently determined\n to shoot down the loaves as they\n appeared and before they involved\n his company in more trouble with\n Customs and the State Department.\n\n\n Recaptured by Tin Philosopher,\n who suffered only minor bullet\n holes, he was given a series of mild\n electroshocks and returned to the\n conference table, calm and clear-headed\n as ever.", "\"Er ... ah ... er....\" Roger\n said in winning tones. \"Well, you\n see, the fact is that I....\"\n\n\n \"Hold it,\" Meg interrupted\n crisply. \"Triple-urgent from Public\n Relations, Safety Division. Tulsa-Topeka\n aero-express makes emergency\n landing after being buffeted\n in encounter with vast flight of\n objects first described as brown\n birds, although no failures reported\n in airway's electronic anti-bird\n fences. After grounding safely near\n Emporia—no fatalities—pilot's\n windshield found thinly plastered\n with soft white-and-brown material.\n Emblems on plastic wrappers embedded\n in material identify it incontrovertibly\n as an undetermined\n number of Puffyloaves cruising at\n three thousand feet!\"", "Bread\n\n Overhead\nBy FRITZ LEIBER\nThe Staff of Life suddenly and\n\n disconcertingly sprouted wings\n\n —and mankind had to eat crow!\nIllustrated by WOOD\nAS a blisteringly hot but\n guaranteed weather-controlled\n future summer day\n dawned on the Mississippi Valley,\n the walking mills of Puffy Products\n (\"Spike to Loaf in One\n Operation!\") began to tread delicately\n on their centipede legs\n across the wheat fields of Kansas.\n\n\n The walking mills resembled fat\n metal serpents, rather larger than\n those Chinese paper dragons animated\n by files of men in procession.\n Sensory robot devices in\n their noses informed them that\n the waiting wheat had reached ripe\n perfection.", "As they advanced, their heads\n swung lazily from side to side, very\n much like snakes, gobbling the yellow\n grain. In their throats, it was\n threshed, the chaff bundled and\n burped aside for pickup by the\n crawl trucks of a chemical corporation,\n the kernels quick-dried\n and blown along into the mighty\n chests of the machines. There the\n tireless mills ground the kernels\n to flour, which was instantly sifted,\n the bran being packaged and\n dropped like the chaff for pickup.\n A cluster of tanks which gave\n the metal serpents a decidedly\n humpbacked appearance added\n water, shortening, salt and other\n ingredients, some named and some\n not. The dough was at the same\n time infused with gas from a tank\n conspicuously labeled \"Carbon\n Dioxide\" (\"No Yeast Creatures\n in Your Bread!\").", "Roger nodded obediently. But\n his pallor increased a shade, the\n pupils of his eyes disappeared under\n the upper lids, and his head\n burrowed beneath his forearms.\n\n\n \"Oh, boy,\" Rose Thinker called\n gayly to Tin Philosopher, \"this\n looks like the start of a real crisis\n session! Did you remember to\n bring spare batteries?\"\nMEANWHILE, the monstrous\n flight of Puffyloaves, filling\n midwestern skies as no small fliers\n had since the days of the passenger\n pigeon, soared steadily onward.", "\"Hydrogen is twice as light as\n helium,\" Tin Philosopher remarked\n judiciously.\n\n\n \"And many times cheaper—did\n you know that?\" Roger countered\n feebly. \"Yes, I substituted hydrogen.\n The metal-foil wrapping would\n have added just enough weight to\n counteract the greater buoyancy of\n the hydrogen loaf. But—\"\n\n\n \"So, when this morning's loaves\n began to arrive on the delivery\n platforms of the walking mills....\"\n Tin Philosopher left the remark\n unfinished.\n\n\n \"Exactly,\" Roger agreed dismally.\n\n\n \"Let me ask you, Mr. Snedden,\"\n Gryce interjected, still in low tones,\n \"if you expected people to jump to\n the kitchen ceiling for their Puffybread\n after taking off the metal\n wrapper, or reach for the sky if\n they happened to unwrap the stuff\n outdoors?\"" ], [ "\"My sweet little ever-victorious,\n self-propelled monkey wrench!\" she\n crooned in his ear. Roger looked\n fatuously over her soft shoulder at\n Tin Philosopher who, as if moved\n by some similar feeling, reached\n over and touched claws with Rose\n Thinker.\n\n\n This, however, was what he telegraphed\n silently to his fellow machine\n across the circuit so completed:", "Back in NewNew York, the\n managerial board of Puffy Products\n slumped in utter collapse\n around the conference table, the\n long crisis session at last ended.\n Empty coffee cartons were scattered\n around the chairs of the three\n humans, dead batteries around\n those of the two machines. For a\n while, there was no movement\n whatsoever. Then Roger Snedden\n reached out wearily for the earphones\n where Megera Winterly\n had hurled them down, adjusted\n them to his head, pushed a button\n and listened apathetically.\n\n\n After a bit, his gaze brightened.\n He pushed more buttons and listened\n more eagerly. Soon he was\n sitting tensely upright on his stool,\n eyes bright and lower face all\n a-smile, muttering terse comments\n and questions into the lapel mike\n torn from Meg's fair neck.", "The man approached the conference\n table in the center of the room\n with measured pace and gravely\n expressionless face. The rose-tinted\n machine on his left did a couple\n of impulsive pirouettes on the way\n and twittered a greeting to Meg\n and Roger. The other machine quietly\n took the third of the high seats\n and lifted a claw at Meg, who now\n occupied a stool twice the height of\n Roger's.\n\n\n \"Miss Winterly, please—our\n theme.\"\n\n\n The Blonde Icicle's face thawed\n into a little-girl smile as she chanted\n bubblingly:", "Roger nodded obediently. But\n his pallor increased a shade, the\n pupils of his eyes disappeared under\n the upper lids, and his head\n burrowed beneath his forearms.\n\n\n \"Oh, boy,\" Rose Thinker called\n gayly to Tin Philosopher, \"this\n looks like the start of a real crisis\n session! Did you remember to\n bring spare batteries?\"\nMEANWHILE, the monstrous\n flight of Puffyloaves, filling\n midwestern skies as no small fliers\n had since the days of the passenger\n pigeon, soared steadily onward.", "\"Listen to me, Meg. Today—yes,\n today!—you're going to see\n the Board eating out of my hand.\"\n\n\n \"Hah! I guarantee you won't\n have any fingers left. You're bold\n enough now, but when Mr. Gryce\n and those two big machines come\n through that door—\"\n\n\n \"Now wait a minute, Meg—\"\n\n\n \"Hush! They're coming now!\"\n\n\n Roger leaped three feet in the\n air, but managed to land without a\n sound and edged toward his stool.\n Through the dilating iris of the\n door strode Phineas T. Gryce,\n flanked by Rose Thinker and Tin\n Philosopher.", "\"Why don't you jump out the\n window, Roger, remembering to\n shut the airlock after you?\" the\n Golden Glacier said in tones not\n unkind. \"When are your high-strung,\n thoroughbred nerves going\n to accept the fact that I would\n never consider marriage with a\n business inferior? You have about\n as much chance as a starving\n Ukrainian kulak now that Moscow's\n clapped on the interdict.\"\nROGER'S voice was calm, although\n his eyes were feverishly\n bright, as he replied, \"A lot\n of things are going to be different\n around here, Meg, as soon as the\n Board is forced to admit that only\n my quick thinking made it possible\n to bring the name of Puffyloaf in\n front of the whole world.\"", "\"Er ... ah ... er....\" Roger\n said in winning tones. \"Well, you\n see, the fact is that I....\"\n\n\n \"Hold it,\" Meg interrupted\n crisply. \"Triple-urgent from Public\n Relations, Safety Division. Tulsa-Topeka\n aero-express makes emergency\n landing after being buffeted\n in encounter with vast flight of\n objects first described as brown\n birds, although no failures reported\n in airway's electronic anti-bird\n fences. After grounding safely near\n Emporia—no fatalities—pilot's\n windshield found thinly plastered\n with soft white-and-brown material.\n Emblems on plastic wrappers embedded\n in material identify it incontrovertibly\n as an undetermined\n number of Puffyloaves cruising at\n three thousand feet!\"", "About one thousand miles farther\n on in that direction, where a cluster\n of stratosphere-tickling towers\n marked the location of the metropolis\n of NewNew York, a tender\n scene was being enacted in the\n pressurized penthouse managerial\n suite of Puffy Products. Megera\n Winterly, Secretary in Chief to the\n Managerial Board and referred to\n by her underlings as the Blonde\n Icicle, was dealing with the advances\n of Roger (\"Racehorse\")\n Snedden, Assistant Secretary to the\n Board and often indistinguishable\n from any passing office boy.", "The others, reviving, watched\n him, at first dully, then with quickening\n interest, especially when he\n jerked off the earphones with a\n happy shout and sprang to his feet.\n\"LISTEN to this!\" he cried in\n a ringing voice. \"As a result\n of the worldwide publicity, Puffyloaves\n are outselling Fairy Bread\n three to one—and that's just the\n old carbon-dioxide stock from our\n freezers! It's almost exhausted, but\n the government, now that the\n Ukrainian crisis is over, has taken\n the ban off helium and will also\n sell us stockpiled wheat if we need\n it. We can have our walking mills\n burrowing into the wheat caves in\n a matter of hours!", "\"Good!\" Roger cried. \"We'll\n tether 'em on strings and sell 'em\n like balloons. No mother-child\n shopping team will leave the store\n without a cluster. Buying bread\n balloons will be the big event of\n the day for kiddies. It'll make the\n carry-home shopping load lighter\n too! I'll issue orders at once—\"\nHE broke off, looking at Phineas\n T. Gryce, said with quiet\n assurance, \"Excuse me, sir, if I\n seem to be taking too much upon\n myself.\"\n\n\n \"Not at all, son; go straight\n ahead,\" the great manager said approvingly.\n \"You're\"—he laughed\n in anticipation of getting off a\n memorable remark—\"rising to the\n challenging situation like a genuine\n Puffyloaf.\"\n\n\n Megera Winterly looked from\n the older man to the younger.\n Then in a single leap she was upon\n Roger, her arms wrapped tightly\n around him.", "\"Hold it!\" Meg called sharply.\n \"Flock of multiple-urgents coming\n in. News Liaison: information bureaus\n swamped with flying-bread\n inquiries. Aero-expresslines: Clear\n our airways or face law suit. U. S.\n Army: Why do loaves flame when\n hit by incendiary bullets? U. S.\n Customs: If bread intended for\n export, get export license or face\n prosecution. Russian Consulate in\n Chicago: Advise on destination of\n bread-lift. And some Kansas church\n is accusing us of a hoax inciting to\n blasphemy, of faking miracles—I\n don't know\nwhy\n.\"\n\n\n The business girl tore off her\n headphones. \"Roger Snedden,\" she\n cried with a hysteria that would\n have dumfounded her underlings,\n \"you've brought the name of Puffyloaf\n in front of the whole world, all\n right! Now do something about the\n situation!\"", "Tin Philosopher kicked her under\n the table, while observing, \"So\n you see, Roger, that the non-delivery\n of the hydrogen loaf carries\n some consolations. And I must confess\n that one aspect of the affair\n gives me great satisfaction, not as a\n Board Member but as a private\n machine. You have at last made a\n reality of the 'rises through the air'\n part of Puffybread's theme. They\n can't ever take that away from you.\n By now, half the inhabitants of the\n Great Plains must have observed\n our flying loaves rising high.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce shot a frightened\n look at the west windows and\n found his full voice.\n\n\n \"Stop the mills!\" he roared at\n Meg Winterly, who nodded and\n whispered urgently into her mike.", "\"Ladies—\" he inclined his photocells\n toward Rose Thinker and Meg—\"and\n gentlemen. This is a historic\n occasion in Old Puffy's long history,\n the inauguration of the helium-filled\n loaf ('So Light It Almost Floats\n Away!') in which that inert and\n heaven-aspiring gas replaces old-fashioned\n carbon dioxide. Later,\n there will be kudos for Rose\n Thinker, whose bright relays genius-sparked\n the idea, and also for Roger\n Snedden, who took care of the\n details.\n\n\n \"By the by, Racehorse, that was\n a brilliant piece of work getting the\n helium out of the government—they've\n been pretty stuffy lately\n about their monopoly. But first I\n want to throw wide the casement in\n your minds that opens on the Long\n View of Things.\"", "\"Of course! Just what is behind\n all this, Mr. Snedden?\nWhat\nrecalculations\n were you trusting, when\n our physicists had demonstrated\n months ago that the helium loaf\n was safely stackable in light airs\n and gentle breezes—winds up to\n Beaufort's scale 3.\nWhy\nshould a\n change from heavier to lighter\n wrappers result in complete non-delivery?\"\nROGER Snedden's paleness became\n tinged with an interesting\n green. He cleared his throat\n and made strange gulping noises.\n Tin Philosopher's photocells focused\n on him calmly, Rose\n Thinker's with unfeigned excitement.\n P.T. Gryce's frown grew\n blacker by the moment, while\n Megera Winterly's Venus-mask\n showed an odd dawning of dismay\n and awe. She was getting new\n squawks in her earphones.", "Here the machine shuddered\n with delicate clinkings. \"Therefore,\n we of Puffyloaf are taking today\n what may be the ultimate step\n toward purity: we are aerating our\n loaves with the noble gas helium,\n an element which remains virginal\n in the face of all chemical temptations\n and whose slim molecules are\n eleven times lighter than obese\n carbon dioxide—yes, noble uncontaminable\n helium, which, if it be a\n kind of ash, is yet the ash only of\n radioactive burning, accomplished\n or initiated entirely on the Sun, a\n safe 93 million miles from this\n planet. Let's have a cheer for the\n helium loaf!\"\nWITHOUT changing expression,\n Phineas T. Gryce rapped\n the table thrice in solemn applause,\n while the others bowed their heads.", "Phineas T. Gryce, escaping from\n his own managerial suite, raged\n about the city, demanding general\n cooperation in the stretching of\n great nets between the skyscrapers\n to trap the errant loaves. He was\n captured by Tin Philosopher, escaped\n again, and was found posted\n with oxygen mask and submachine gun\n on the topmost spire of Puffyloaf\n Tower, apparently determined\n to shoot down the loaves as they\n appeared and before they involved\n his company in more trouble with\n Customs and the State Department.\n\n\n Recaptured by Tin Philosopher,\n who suffered only minor bullet\n holes, he was given a series of mild\n electroshocks and returned to the\n conference table, calm and clear-headed\n as ever.", "\"Mr. Gryce,\" Roger said reproachfully,\n \"you have often assured\n me that what people do with\n Puffybread after they buy it is no\n concern of ours.\"\n\n\n \"I seem to recall,\" Rose Thinker\n chirped somewhat unkindly, \"that\n dictum was created to answer inquiries\n after Roger put the famous\n sculptures-in-miniature artist on 3D\n and he testified that he always\n molded his first attempts from\n Puffybread, one jumbo loaf squeezing\n down to approximately the size\n of a peanut.\"\nHER photocells dimmed and\n brightened. \"Oh, boy—hydrogen!\n The loaf's unwrapped. After\n a while, in spite of the crust-seal, a\n little oxygen diffuses in. An explosive\n mixture. Housewife in curlers\n and kimono pops a couple slices in\n the toaster. Boom!\"\n\n\n The three human beings in the\n room winced.", "Eyes and photocells turned inquisitorially\n upon Roger Snedden.\n He went from green to Puffyloaf\n white and blurted: \"All right, I did\n it, but it was the only way out!\n Yesterday morning, due to the\n Ukrainian crisis, the government\n stopped sales and deliveries of all\n strategic stockpiled materials, including\n helium gas. Puffy's new\n program of advertising and promotion,\n based on the lighter loaf, was\n already rolling. There was only one\n thing to do, there being only one\n other gas comparable in lightness\n to helium. I diverted the necessary\n quantity of hydrogen gas from the\n Hydrogenated Oils Section of our\n Magna-Margarine Division and\n substituted it for the helium.\"\n\n\n \"You substituted ... hydrogen ... for\n the ... helium?\" Phineas\n T. Gryce faltered in low mechanical\n tones, taking four steps backward.", "\"Puffyloaf could do with a little\n of that,\" the business girl observed\n judiciously. \"The way sales have\n been plummeting, it won't be long\n before the Government deeds our\n desks to the managers of Fairy\n Bread and asks us to take the Big\n Jump. But just where does your\n quick thinking come into this, Mr.\n Snedden? You can't be referring to\n the helium—that was Rose Thinker's\n brainwave.\"\n\n\n She studied him suspiciously.\n \"You've birthed another promotional\n bumble, Roger. I can see it\n in your eyes. I only hope it's not\n as big a one as when you put the\n Martian ambassador on 3D and he\n thanked you profusely for the gross\n of Puffyloaves, assuring you that\n he'd never slept on a softer mattress\n in all his life on two planets.\"", "\"Hydrogen is twice as light as\n helium,\" Tin Philosopher remarked\n judiciously.\n\n\n \"And many times cheaper—did\n you know that?\" Roger countered\n feebly. \"Yes, I substituted hydrogen.\n The metal-foil wrapping would\n have added just enough weight to\n counteract the greater buoyancy of\n the hydrogen loaf. But—\"\n\n\n \"So, when this morning's loaves\n began to arrive on the delivery\n platforms of the walking mills....\"\n Tin Philosopher left the remark\n unfinished.\n\n\n \"Exactly,\" Roger agreed dismally.\n\n\n \"Let me ask you, Mr. Snedden,\"\n Gryce interjected, still in low tones,\n \"if you expected people to jump to\n the kitchen ceiling for their Puffybread\n after taking off the metal\n wrapper, or reach for the sky if\n they happened to unwrap the stuff\n outdoors?\"" ], [ "\"Good!\" Roger cried. \"We'll\n tether 'em on strings and sell 'em\n like balloons. No mother-child\n shopping team will leave the store\n without a cluster. Buying bread\n balloons will be the big event of\n the day for kiddies. It'll make the\n carry-home shopping load lighter\n too! I'll issue orders at once—\"\nHE broke off, looking at Phineas\n T. Gryce, said with quiet\n assurance, \"Excuse me, sir, if I\n seem to be taking too much upon\n myself.\"\n\n\n \"Not at all, son; go straight\n ahead,\" the great manager said approvingly.\n \"You're\"—he laughed\n in anticipation of getting off a\n memorable remark—\"rising to the\n challenging situation like a genuine\n Puffyloaf.\"\n\n\n Megera Winterly looked from\n the older man to the younger.\n Then in a single leap she was upon\n Roger, her arms wrapped tightly\n around him.", "\"Puffyloaf could do with a little\n of that,\" the business girl observed\n judiciously. \"The way sales have\n been plummeting, it won't be long\n before the Government deeds our\n desks to the managers of Fairy\n Bread and asks us to take the Big\n Jump. But just where does your\n quick thinking come into this, Mr.\n Snedden? You can't be referring to\n the helium—that was Rose Thinker's\n brainwave.\"\n\n\n She studied him suspiciously.\n \"You've birthed another promotional\n bumble, Roger. I can see it\n in your eyes. I only hope it's not\n as big a one as when you put the\n Martian ambassador on 3D and he\n thanked you profusely for the gross\n of Puffyloaves, assuring you that\n he'd never slept on a softer mattress\n in all his life on two planets.\"", "\"Ladies—\" he inclined his photocells\n toward Rose Thinker and Meg—\"and\n gentlemen. This is a historic\n occasion in Old Puffy's long history,\n the inauguration of the helium-filled\n loaf ('So Light It Almost Floats\n Away!') in which that inert and\n heaven-aspiring gas replaces old-fashioned\n carbon dioxide. Later,\n there will be kudos for Rose\n Thinker, whose bright relays genius-sparked\n the idea, and also for Roger\n Snedden, who took care of the\n details.\n\n\n \"By the by, Racehorse, that was\n a brilliant piece of work getting the\n helium out of the government—they've\n been pretty stuffy lately\n about their monopoly. But first I\n want to throw wide the casement in\n your minds that opens on the Long\n View of Things.\"", "Roger nodded obediently. But\n his pallor increased a shade, the\n pupils of his eyes disappeared under\n the upper lids, and his head\n burrowed beneath his forearms.\n\n\n \"Oh, boy,\" Rose Thinker called\n gayly to Tin Philosopher, \"this\n looks like the start of a real crisis\n session! Did you remember to\n bring spare batteries?\"\nMEANWHILE, the monstrous\n flight of Puffyloaves, filling\n midwestern skies as no small fliers\n had since the days of the passenger\n pigeon, soared steadily onward.", "\"Mr. Gryce,\" Roger said reproachfully,\n \"you have often assured\n me that what people do with\n Puffybread after they buy it is no\n concern of ours.\"\n\n\n \"I seem to recall,\" Rose Thinker\n chirped somewhat unkindly, \"that\n dictum was created to answer inquiries\n after Roger put the famous\n sculptures-in-miniature artist on 3D\n and he testified that he always\n molded his first attempts from\n Puffybread, one jumbo loaf squeezing\n down to approximately the size\n of a peanut.\"\nHER photocells dimmed and\n brightened. \"Oh, boy—hydrogen!\n The loaf's unwrapped. After\n a while, in spite of the crust-seal, a\n little oxygen diffuses in. An explosive\n mixture. Housewife in curlers\n and kimono pops a couple slices in\n the toaster. Boom!\"\n\n\n The three human beings in the\n room winced.", "\"Thanks, T.P.,\" P.T. then said.\n \"And now for the Moment of\n Truth. Miss Winterly, how is the\n helium loaf selling?\"\n\n\n The business girl clapped on a\n pair of earphones and whispered\n into a lapel mike. Her gaze grew\n abstracted as she mentally translated\n flurries of brief squawks into\n coherent messages. Suddenly a single\n vertical furrow creased her\n matchlessly smooth brow.\n\n\n \"It isn't, Mr. Gryce!\" she gasped\n in horror. \"Fairy Bread is outselling\n Puffyloaves by an infinity factor.\n So far this morning,\nthere has\n not been one single delivery of\n Puffyloaves to any sales spot\n! Complaints\n about non-delivery are pouring\n in from both walking stores and\n sessile shops.\"", "\"But that isn't all! The far\n greater demand everywhere is for\n Puffyloaves that will actually float.\n Public Relations, Child Liaison\n Division, reports that the kiddies\n are making their mothers' lives\n miserable about it. If only we can\n figure out some way to make\n hydrogen non-explosive or the\n helium loaf float just a little—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure we can take care of\n that quite handily,\" Tin Philosopher\n interrupted briskly. \"Puffyloaf\n has kept it a corporation secret—even\n you've never been told\n about it—but just before he went\n crazy, Everett Whitehead discovered\n a way to make bread using\n only half as much flour as we do in\n the present loaf. Using this secret\n technique, which we've been saving\n for just such an emergency, it will\n be possible to bake a helium loaf as\n buoyant in every respect as the\n hydrogen loaf.\"", "\"Er ... ah ... er....\" Roger\n said in winning tones. \"Well, you\n see, the fact is that I....\"\n\n\n \"Hold it,\" Meg interrupted\n crisply. \"Triple-urgent from Public\n Relations, Safety Division. Tulsa-Topeka\n aero-express makes emergency\n landing after being buffeted\n in encounter with vast flight of\n objects first described as brown\n birds, although no failures reported\n in airway's electronic anti-bird\n fences. After grounding safely near\n Emporia—no fatalities—pilot's\n windshield found thinly plastered\n with soft white-and-brown material.\n Emblems on plastic wrappers embedded\n in material identify it incontrovertibly\n as an undetermined\n number of Puffyloaves cruising at\n three thousand feet!\"", "\"Hydrogen is twice as light as\n helium,\" Tin Philosopher remarked\n judiciously.\n\n\n \"And many times cheaper—did\n you know that?\" Roger countered\n feebly. \"Yes, I substituted hydrogen.\n The metal-foil wrapping would\n have added just enough weight to\n counteract the greater buoyancy of\n the hydrogen loaf. But—\"\n\n\n \"So, when this morning's loaves\n began to arrive on the delivery\n platforms of the walking mills....\"\n Tin Philosopher left the remark\n unfinished.\n\n\n \"Exactly,\" Roger agreed dismally.\n\n\n \"Let me ask you, Mr. Snedden,\"\n Gryce interjected, still in low tones,\n \"if you expected people to jump to\n the kitchen ceiling for their Puffybread\n after taking off the metal\n wrapper, or reach for the sky if\n they happened to unwrap the stuff\n outdoors?\"", "\"A sensible suggestion,\" Tin\n Philosopher said. \"But it comes a\n trifle late in the day. If the mills\n are still walking and grinding, approximately\n seven billion Puffyloaves\n are at this moment cruising\n eastward over Middle America.\n Remember that a six-month supply\n for deep-freeze is involved and that\n the current consumption of bread,\n due to its matchless airiness, is\n eight and one-half loaves per person\n per day.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce carefully inserted\n both hands into his scanty\n hair, feeling for a good grip. He\n leaned menacingly toward Roger\n who, chin resting on the table, regarded\n him apathetically.", "\"Why don't you jump out the\n window, Roger, remembering to\n shut the airlock after you?\" the\n Golden Glacier said in tones not\n unkind. \"When are your high-strung,\n thoroughbred nerves going\n to accept the fact that I would\n never consider marriage with a\n business inferior? You have about\n as much chance as a starving\n Ukrainian kulak now that Moscow's\n clapped on the interdict.\"\nROGER'S voice was calm, although\n his eyes were feverishly\n bright, as he replied, \"A lot\n of things are going to be different\n around here, Meg, as soon as the\n Board is forced to admit that only\n my quick thinking made it possible\n to bring the name of Puffyloaf in\n front of the whole world.\"", "\"Then, early in the twenty-first\n century, came the epochal researches\n of Everett Whitehead,\n Puffyloaf chemist, culminating in\n his paper 'The Structural Bubble\n in Cereal Masses' and making possible\n the baking of airtight bread\n twenty times stronger (for its\n weight) than steel and of a\n lightness that would have been\n incredible even to the advanced\n chemist-bakers of the twentieth\n century—a lightness so great that,\n besides forming the backbone of\n our own promotion, it has forever\n since been capitalized on by our\n conscienceless competitors of Fairy\n Bread with their enduring slogan:\n 'It Makes Ghost Toast'.\"\n\n\n \"That's a beaut, all right, that\n ecto-dough blurb,\" Rose Thinker\n admitted, bugging her photocells\n sadly. \"Wait a sec. How about?—", "Tin Philosopher kicked her under\n the table, while observing, \"So\n you see, Roger, that the non-delivery\n of the hydrogen loaf carries\n some consolations. And I must confess\n that one aspect of the affair\n gives me great satisfaction, not as a\n Board Member but as a private\n machine. You have at last made a\n reality of the 'rises through the air'\n part of Puffybread's theme. They\n can't ever take that away from you.\n By now, half the inhabitants of the\n Great Plains must have observed\n our flying loaves rising high.\"\n\n\n Phineas T. Gryce shot a frightened\n look at the west windows and\n found his full voice.\n\n\n \"Stop the mills!\" he roared at\n Meg Winterly, who nodded and\n whispered urgently into her mike.", "Eyes and photocells turned inquisitorially\n upon Roger Snedden.\n He went from green to Puffyloaf\n white and blurted: \"All right, I did\n it, but it was the only way out!\n Yesterday morning, due to the\n Ukrainian crisis, the government\n stopped sales and deliveries of all\n strategic stockpiled materials, including\n helium gas. Puffy's new\n program of advertising and promotion,\n based on the lighter loaf, was\n already rolling. There was only one\n thing to do, there being only one\n other gas comparable in lightness\n to helium. I diverted the necessary\n quantity of hydrogen gas from the\n Hydrogenated Oils Section of our\n Magna-Margarine Division and\n substituted it for the helium.\"\n\n\n \"You substituted ... hydrogen ... for\n the ... helium?\" Phineas\n T. Gryce faltered in low mechanical\n tones, taking four steps backward.", "The others, reviving, watched\n him, at first dully, then with quickening\n interest, especially when he\n jerked off the earphones with a\n happy shout and sprang to his feet.\n\"LISTEN to this!\" he cried in\n a ringing voice. \"As a result\n of the worldwide publicity, Puffyloaves\n are outselling Fairy Bread\n three to one—and that's just the\n old carbon-dioxide stock from our\n freezers! It's almost exhausted, but\n the government, now that the\n Ukrainian crisis is over, has taken\n the ban off helium and will also\n sell us stockpiled wheat if we need\n it. We can have our walking mills\n burrowing into the wheat caves in\n a matter of hours!", "Here the machine shuddered\n with delicate clinkings. \"Therefore,\n we of Puffyloaf are taking today\n what may be the ultimate step\n toward purity: we are aerating our\n loaves with the noble gas helium,\n an element which remains virginal\n in the face of all chemical temptations\n and whose slim molecules are\n eleven times lighter than obese\n carbon dioxide—yes, noble uncontaminable\n helium, which, if it be a\n kind of ash, is yet the ash only of\n radioactive burning, accomplished\n or initiated entirely on the Sun, a\n safe 93 million miles from this\n planet. Let's have a cheer for the\n helium loaf!\"\nWITHOUT changing expression,\n Phineas T. Gryce rapped\n the table thrice in solemn applause,\n while the others bowed their heads.", "Private fliers approached the\n brown and glistening bread-front in\n curiosity and dipped back in awe.\n Aero-expresslines organized sightseeing\n flights along the flanks.\n Planes of the government forestry\n and agricultural services and 'copters\n bearing the Puffyloaf emblem\n hovered on the fringes, watching\n developments and waiting for orders.\n A squadron of supersonic\n fighters hung menacingly above.\n\n\n The behavior of birds varied\n considerably. Most fled or gave the\n loaves a wide berth, but some\n bolder species, discovering the minimal\n nutritive nature of the translucent\n brown objects, attacked\n them furiously with beaks and\n claws. Hydrogen diffusing slowly\n through the crusts had now distended\n most of the sealed plastic\n wrappers into little balloons, which\n ruptured, when pierced, with disconcerting\npops\n.", "Phineas T. Gryce, escaping from\n his own managerial suite, raged\n about the city, demanding general\n cooperation in the stretching of\n great nets between the skyscrapers\n to trap the errant loaves. He was\n captured by Tin Philosopher, escaped\n again, and was found posted\n with oxygen mask and submachine gun\n on the topmost spire of Puffyloaf\n Tower, apparently determined\n to shoot down the loaves as they\n appeared and before they involved\n his company in more trouble with\n Customs and the State Department.\n\n\n Recaptured by Tin Philosopher,\n who suffered only minor bullet\n holes, he was given a series of mild\n electroshocks and returned to the\n conference table, calm and clear-headed\n as ever.", "Thus instantly risen, the dough\n was clipped into loaves and shot\n into radionic ovens forming the\n midsections of the metal serpents.\n There the bread was baked in a\n matter of seconds, a fierce heat-front\n browning the crusts, and the\n piping-hot loaves sealed in transparent\n plastic bearing the proud\n Puffyloaf emblem (two cherubs\n circling a floating loaf) and ejected\n onto the delivery platform at each\n serpent's rear end, where a cluster\n of pickup machines, like hungry\n piglets, snatched at the loaves\n with hygienic claws.\n\n\n A few loaves would be hurried\n off for the day's consumption,\n the majority stored for winter in\n strategically located mammoth\n deep freezes.", "Back in NewNew York, the\n managerial board of Puffy Products\n slumped in utter collapse\n around the conference table, the\n long crisis session at last ended.\n Empty coffee cartons were scattered\n around the chairs of the three\n humans, dead batteries around\n those of the two machines. For a\n while, there was no movement\n whatsoever. Then Roger Snedden\n reached out wearily for the earphones\n where Megera Winterly\n had hurled them down, adjusted\n them to his head, pushed a button\n and listened apathetically.\n\n\n After a bit, his gaze brightened.\n He pushed more buttons and listened\n more eagerly. Soon he was\n sitting tensely upright on his stool,\n eyes bright and lower face all\n a-smile, muttering terse comments\n and questions into the lapel mike\n torn from Meg's fair neck." ] ]
valid	22967	[ "What was the name of the stoker from the title?", "Why does the stranger want to join the trip?", "Do Mac and the narrator trust the stranger?", "Why did the Jeks allow the stranger on their ship?", "Why does the stranger want to join the Jek crew?", "Why did relations between humans and aliens improve after the stranger's travels?", "Which of the following best describes the Jeks, Nosurwey, and Lud?", "Which of the following words best describes the stranger?", "Which of the following is a lesson we can learn from this story?" ]	[ [ "MacReidie", "Baker", "Unknown", "Daniels" ], [ "He wants to fight", "He wants to work", "He is desperate", "He is bored" ], [ "No, he could cause trouble with other races", "Yes, he is a great stoker", "Yes, he was a respected marine", "No, he could cause trouble on the ship" ], [ "He snuck on", "He earned respect", "The will allow anyone on their ship", "He tricked them" ], [ "He wants to travel and work", "He is going to sabotage their nuclear drive", "He does not like his own people", "He wants to join the winning side" ], [ "He put a face to the human race", "He just worked and traveled", "He did all of these things", "He proved the value of humanity" ], [ "Gentle", "Powerful", "Wise", "Grudge-holding" ], [ "Angry", "Tough", "Happy", "Lost" ], [ "Aliens are dangerous.", "Do not lose yourself in defeat", "Travel as much as possible", "Do your job without causing trouble" ] ]	[ 3, 2, 1, 2, 1, 3, 2, 2, 2 ]	[ 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "THE STOKER\n\n AND THE STARS\nBY JOHN A. SENTRY\nWhen\nyou've had your ears pinned\n back in a bowknot, it's sometimes hard\n to remember that an intelligent people\n has no respect for a whipped enemy\n ... but does for a fairly beaten enemy.\nIllustrated by van Dongen\nKnow\n him? Yes, I know\n him—\nknew\nhim. That\n was twenty years ago.\n\n\n Everybody knows\n him now. Everybody\n who passed him on the street knows\n him. Everybody who went to the same\n schools, or even to different schools\n in different towns, knows him now.\n Ask them. But I knew him. I lived\n three feet away from him for a month\n and a half. I shipped with him and\n called him by his first name.\n\n\n What was he like? What was he\n thinking, sitting on the edge of his\n bunk with his jaw in his palm and\n his eyes on the stars? What did he\n think he was after?", "\"I'll stoke.\"\n\n\n MacReidie looked over toward me\n and frowned. I shrugged my shoulders\n helplessly. I was a little afraid\n of the stranger, too.\n\n\n The trouble was the look of him.\n It was the look you saw in the bars\n back on Earth, where the veterans of\n the war sat and stared down into\n their glasses, waiting for night to\n fall so they could go out into the\n alleys and have drunken fights among\n themselves. But he had brought that\n look to Mars, to the landing field,\n and out here there was something\n disquieting about it.\n\n\n He'd caught Mac's look and turned\n his head to me. \"I'll stoke,\" he repeated.", "I saw MacReidie's mouth turn\n down at the corners. But he couldn't\n gainsay the man any more than I\n could. MacReidie wasn't a mumbling\n man, so he said angrily: \"O.K.,\n bucko, you'll stoke. Go and sign on.\"", "So, I don't know. The older I get,\n the less I know. The thing people remember\n the stoker for—the thing\n that makes him famous, and, I think,\n annoys him—I'm fairly sure is only\n incidental to what he really did. If he\n did anything. If he meant to. I wish\n I could be sure of the exact answer\n he found in the bottom of that last\n glass at the bar before he worked his\n passage to Mars and the\nSerenus\n, and\n began it all.", "What was he thinking of? Make\n your own choice. I think I came close\n to knowing him, at that moment, but\n until human beings turn telepath, no\n man can be sure of another.\n\n\n He shook himself like a dog out\n of cold water, and got into his bunk.\n I got into mine, and after a while\n I fell asleep.\nI don't know what MacReidie may\n have told the skipper about the stoker,\n or if he tried to tell him anything.\n The captain was the senior ticket\n holder in the Merchant Service, and\n a good man, in his day. He kept\n mostly to his cabin. And there was\n nothing MacReidie could do on his\n own authority—nothing simple, that\n is. And the stoker had saved the\n ship, and ...", "\"Got a job?\" he asked, looking at\n MacReidie.\n\n\n Mac looked him over. He saw the\n same things I'd seen. He shook his\n head. \"Not for you. The only thing\n we're short on is stokers.\"", "We heard about our stoker, occasionally.\n He shipped with the Lud,\n and the Nosurwey, and some people\n beyond them, getting along, going to\n all kinds of places. Pay no attention\n to the precise red lines you see on the\n star maps; nobody knows exactly\n what path he wandered from people\n to people. Nobody could. He just\n kept signing on with whatever ship\n was going deeper into the galaxy,\n going farther and farther. He messed\n with green shipmates and blue ones.\n One and two and three heads, tails,\n six legs—after all, ships are ships\n and they've all got to have something\n to push them along. If a man knows\n his business, why not? A man can\n live on all kinds of food, if he wants\n to get used to it. And any nontoxic\n atmosphere will do, as long as there's\n enough oxygen in it.", "He went on for another twenty\n minutes. Then his voice thinned out,\n and I heard him cough a little.\n \"Daniels,\" he said, \"get a relief\n down here for me.\nJump to it!\n\" He\n said the last part in a Master's voice.\n Daniels didn't ask questions. He sent\n a man on his way down.\n\n\n He'd been singing, the stoker had.\n He'd been singing while he worked\n with one arm dead, one sleeve ripped\n open and badly patched because the\n fabric was slippery with blood.\n There'd been a flashover in the drivers.\n By the time his relief got down\n there, he had the insulation back on,\n and the drive was purring along the\n way it should have been. It hadn't\n even missed a beat.\n\n\n He went down to sick bay, got the\n arm wrapped, and would have gone\n back on shift if Daniels'd let him.", "You wouldn't know. There's no\n such thing as a stoker any more, with\n automatic ships. But the stranger\n knew what Mac meant.\nSerenus\nhad what they called an\n electronic drive. She had to run with\n an evacuated engine room. The leaking\n electricity would have broken any\n stray air down to ozone, which eats\n metal and rots lungs. So the engine\n room had the air pumped out of her,\n and the stokers who tended the dials\n and set the cathode attitudes had to\n wear suits, smelling themselves for\n twelve hours at a time and standing\n a good chance of cooking where they\n sat when the drive arced.\nSerenus\nwas\n an ugly old tub. At that, we were the\n better of the two interstellar freighters\n the human race had left.\n\n\n \"You're bound over the border,\n aren't you?\"\n\n\n MacReidie nodded. \"That's right.\n But—\"", "MacReidie was my relief on the\n bridge. When he came up, he didn't\n relieve me right away. He stood next\n to my chair and looked out through\n the ports.\n\n\n \"Captain leave any special instructions\n in the Order Book?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Just the usual. Keep a tight watch\n and proceed cautiously.\"\n\n\n \"That new stoker,\" Mac said.\n\n\n \"Yeah?\"\n\n\n \"I knew there was something\n wrong with him. He's got an old\n Marine uniform in his duffel.\"\n\n\n I didn't say anything. Mac glanced\n over at me. \"Well?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\" I didn't.\n\n\n I couldn't say I was surprised. It\n had to be something like that, about\n the stoker. The mark was on him, as\n I've said.", "We were almost through when\n Mac suddenly grabbed my arm.\n \"Look!\"\n\n\n The stoker was coming down on\n one of the cargo slings. He stood\n upright, his booted feet planted wide,\n one arm curled up over his head and\n around the hoist cable. He was in his\n dusty brown Marine uniform, the\n scarlet collar tabs bright as blood at\n his throat, his major's insignia glittering\n at his shoulders, the battle\n stripes on his sleeves.\n\n\n The Jeks stopped their lifts. They\n knew that uniform. They sat up in\n their saddles and watched him come\n down. When the sling touched the\n ground, he jumped off quietly and\n walked toward the nearest Jek. They\n all followed him with their eyes.", "I think what kept anything from\n happening between MacReidie and\n the stoker, or anyone else and the\n stoker, was that it would have meant\n trouble in the ship. Trouble, confined\n to our little percentage of the ship's\n volume, could seem like something\n much more important than the fate\n of the human race. It may not seem\n that way to you. But as long as no\n one began anything, we could all get\n along. We could have a good trip.\n\n\n MacReidie worried, I'm sure. I\n worried, sometimes. But nothing\n happened.", "The stoker shrugged. \"Ships are\n ships, and physics is physics, no matter\n where you go. I'll make out.\"\n\n\n \"What kind of a deal did you\n make with them? What do you think\n you're up to?\"\n\n\n The stoker shook his head. \"No\n deal. I signed on as a crewman. I'll\n do a crewman's work for a crewman's\n wages. I thought I'd wander around a\n while. It ought to be interesting,\" he\n said.\n\n\n \"On a Jek ship.\"\n\n\n \"Anybody's ship. When I get to\n their home world, I'll probably ship\n out with some people from farther\n on. Why not? It's honest work.\"\n\n\n MacReidie had no answer to that.\n\n\n \"But—\" I said.", "I don't know what he did, to make\n things so much better for us. I don't\n know if he did anything, but stoke\n their ships and, I suppose, fix them\n when they were in trouble. I wonder\n if he sang dirty songs in that bad\n voice of his, to people who couldn't\n possibly understand what the songs\n were about. All I know is, for some\n reason those people slowly began\n treating us with respect. We changed,\n too, I think—I'm not the same man\n I was ... I think—not altogether\n the same; I'm a captain now, with\n master's papers, and you won't find\n me in my cabin very often ... there's\n a kind of joy in standing on a bridge,\n looking out at the stars you're moving\n toward. I wonder if it mightn't\n have kept my old captain out of that\n place he died in, finally, if he'd tried\n it.", "He might have come from any\n town on Earth. Don't believe the historians\n too much. Don't pay too much\n attention to the Chamber of Commerce\n plaques. When a man's name\n becomes public property, strange\n things happen to the facts.\nIt was MacReidie who first found\n out what he'd done during the war.\n\n\n I've got to explain about MacReidie.\n He takes his opinions fast\n and strong. He's a good man—is, or\n was; I haven't seen him for a long\n while—but he liked things simple.\n\n\n MacReidie said the duffelbag broke\n loose and floated into the middle of\n the bunkroom during acceleration.\n He opened it to see whose it was.\n When he found out, he closed it up\n and strapped it back in its place at\n the foot of the stoker's bunk.", "\"I don't know, Mac,\" I said. \"Go\n easy.\" I could feel the knots in my\n stomach. I didn't want any trouble.\n Not from the stoker, not from Mac.\n None of us wanted trouble—not\n even Mac, but he'd cause it to get\n rid of it, if you follow what I mean\n about his kind of man.\n\n\n Mac hit the viewport with his fist.\n \"Easy! Easy—nothing's easy. I hate\n this life,\" he said in a murderous\n voice. \"I don't know why I keep\n signing on. Mars to Centaurus and\n back, back and forth, in an old rust\n tub that's going to blow herself up\n one of these—\"\nDaniels called me on the phone\n from Communications. \"Turn up\n your Intercom volume,\" he said.\n \"The stoker's jamming the circuit.\"\n\n\n I kicked the selector switch over,\n and this is what I got:", "\"We've got to stop him,\" Mac\n said, and both of us started toward\n him. His hands were both in plain\n sight, one holding his duffelbag,\n which was swelled out with the bulk\n of his airsuit. He wasn't carrying a\n weapon of any kind. He was walking\n casually, taking his time.\n\n\n Mac and I had almost reached him\n when a Jek with insignia on his\n coveralls suddenly jumped down\n from his lift and came forward to\n meet him. It was an odd thing to\n see—the stoker, and the Jek, who\n did not stand as tall. MacReidie and\n I stepped back.\n\n\n The Jek was coal black, his scales\n glittering in the cold sunlight, his\n hatchet-face inscrutable. He stopped\n when the stoker was a few paces\n away. The stoker stopped, too. All\n the Jeks were watching him and paying\n no attention to anything else. The\n field might as well have been empty\n except for those two.", "The stoker nodded, and they walked\n over to his vehicle together. They\n drove away, toward the Jek ship.\n\n\n \"All right, let's get back to work,\"\n another Jek said to MacReidie and\n myself, and we went back to unloading\n cargo.\nThe stoker came back to our ship\n that night, without his duffelbag. He\n found me and said:\n\n\n \"I'm signing off the ship. Going\n with the Jeks.\"\n\n\n MacReidie was with me. He said\n loudly: \"What do you mean, you're\n going with the Jeks?\"\n\n\n \"I signed on their ship,\" the stoker\n said. \"Stoking. They've got a micro-nuclear\n drive. It's been a while since\n I worked with one, but I think I'll\n make out all right, even with the\n screwball way they've got it set up.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\"", "And maybe it got to him, too. It\n may explain something. He and I\n were the last to leave. We went to\n the bunkroom, and he stopped in the\n middle of taking off his shirt. He\n stood there, looking out the porthole,\n and forgot I was there. I heard him\n reciting something, softly, under his\n breath, and I stepped a little closer.\n This is what it was:\n\n\"\nThe rockets rise against the skies,\nSlowly; in sunlight gleaming\nWith silver hue upon the blue.\nAnd the universe waits, dreaming.\n\"\nFor men must go where the flame-winds blow,\nThe gas clouds softly plaiting;\nWhere stars are spun and worlds begun,\nAnd men will find them waiting.\n\"\nThe song that roars where the rocket soars\nIs the song of the stellar flame;\nThe dreams of Man and galactic span\nAre equal and much the same.\n\"", "\"What?\" He looked at me as if\n he couldn't understand what might\n be bothering me, but I think perhaps\n he could.\n\n\n \"Nothing,\" I said, and that was\n that, except MacReidie was always a\n sourer man from that time up to as\n long as I knew him afterwards. We\n took off in the morning. The stoker\n had already left on the Jek ship, and\n it turned out he'd trained an apprentice\n boy to take his place.\nIt was strange how things became\n different for us, little by little after\n that. It was never anything you could\n put your finger on, but the Jeks began\n taking more goods, and giving us\n things we needed when we told them\n we wanted them. After a while,\nSerenus\nwas going a little deeper into\n Jek territory, and when she wore out,\n the two replacements let us trade with\n the Lud, too. Then it was the Nosurwey,\n and other people beyond them,\n and things just got better for us,\n somehow." ], [ "\"Thanks.\" The stranger walked\n quietly away. He wrapped a hand\n around the cable on a cargo hook and\n rode into the hold on top of some\n freight. Mac spat on the ground and\n went back to supervising his end of\n the loading. I was busy with mine,\n and it wasn't until we'd gotten the\nSerenus\nloaded and buttoned up that\n Mac and I even spoke to each other\n again. Then we talked about the trip.\n We didn't talk about the stranger.\nDaniels, the Third, had signed him\n on and had moved him into the empty\n bunk above mine. We slept all in\n a bunch on the\nSerenus", "\"I'll stoke.\"\n\n\n MacReidie looked over toward me\n and frowned. I shrugged my shoulders\n helplessly. I was a little afraid\n of the stranger, too.\n\n\n The trouble was the look of him.\n It was the look you saw in the bars\n back on Earth, where the veterans of\n the war sat and stared down into\n their glasses, waiting for night to\n fall so they could go out into the\n alleys and have drunken fights among\n themselves. But he had brought that\n look to Mars, to the landing field,\n and out here there was something\n disquieting about it.\n\n\n He'd caught Mac's look and turned\n his head to me. \"I'll stoke,\" he repeated.", "\"You don't know,\" Mac said. \"It's\n there. In his duffel. Damn it, we're\n going out to trade with his sworn\n enemies! Why do you suppose he\n wanted to sign on? Why do you suppose\n he's so eager to go!\"\n\n\n \"You think he's going to try to\n start something?\"\n\n\n \"Think! That's exactly what he's\n going for. One last big alley fight.\n One last brawl. When they cut him\n down—do you suppose they'll stop\n with him? They'll kill us, and then\n they'll go in and stamp Earth flat!\n You know it as well as I do.\"", "We heard about our stoker, occasionally.\n He shipped with the Lud,\n and the Nosurwey, and some people\n beyond them, getting along, going to\n all kinds of places. Pay no attention\n to the precise red lines you see on the\n star maps; nobody knows exactly\n what path he wandered from people\n to people. Nobody could. He just\n kept signing on with whatever ship\n was going deeper into the galaxy,\n going farther and farther. He messed\n with green shipmates and blue ones.\n One and two and three heads, tails,\n six legs—after all, ships are ships\n and they've all got to have something\n to push them along. If a man knows\n his business, why not? A man can\n live on all kinds of food, if he wants\n to get used to it. And any nontoxic\n atmosphere will do, as long as there's\n enough oxygen in it.", "What was he thinking of? Make\n your own choice. I think I came close\n to knowing him, at that moment, but\n until human beings turn telepath, no\n man can be sure of another.\n\n\n He shook himself like a dog out\n of cold water, and got into his bunk.\n I got into mine, and after a while\n I fell asleep.\nI don't know what MacReidie may\n have told the skipper about the stoker,\n or if he tried to tell him anything.\n The captain was the senior ticket\n holder in the Merchant Service, and\n a good man, in his day. He kept\n mostly to his cabin. And there was\n nothing MacReidie could do on his\n own authority—nothing simple, that\n is. And the stoker had saved the\n ship, and ...", "I don't know what he did, to make\n things so much better for us. I don't\n know if he did anything, but stoke\n their ships and, I suppose, fix them\n when they were in trouble. I wonder\n if he sang dirty songs in that bad\n voice of his, to people who couldn't\n possibly understand what the songs\n were about. All I know is, for some\n reason those people slowly began\n treating us with respect. We changed,\n too, I think—I'm not the same man\n I was ... I think—not altogether\n the same; I'm a captain now, with\n master's papers, and you won't find\n me in my cabin very often ... there's\n a kind of joy in standing on a bridge,\n looking out at the stars you're moving\n toward. I wonder if it mightn't\n have kept my old captain out of that\n place he died in, finally, if he'd tried\n it.", "And maybe it got to him, too. It\n may explain something. He and I\n were the last to leave. We went to\n the bunkroom, and he stopped in the\n middle of taking off his shirt. He\n stood there, looking out the porthole,\n and forgot I was there. I heard him\n reciting something, softly, under his\n breath, and I stepped a little closer.\n This is what it was:\n\n\"\nThe rockets rise against the skies,\nSlowly; in sunlight gleaming\nWith silver hue upon the blue.\nAnd the universe waits, dreaming.\n\"\nFor men must go where the flame-winds blow,\nThe gas clouds softly plaiting;\nWhere stars are spun and worlds begun,\nAnd men will find them waiting.\n\"\nThe song that roars where the rocket soars\nIs the song of the stellar flame;\nThe dreams of Man and galactic span\nAre equal and much the same.\n\"", "I saw MacReidie's mouth turn\n down at the corners. But he couldn't\n gainsay the man any more than I\n could. MacReidie wasn't a mumbling\n man, so he said angrily: \"O.K.,\n bucko, you'll stoke. Go and sign on.\"", "You wouldn't know. There's no\n such thing as a stoker any more, with\n automatic ships. But the stranger\n knew what Mac meant.\nSerenus\nhad what they called an\n electronic drive. She had to run with\n an evacuated engine room. The leaking\n electricity would have broken any\n stray air down to ozone, which eats\n metal and rots lungs. So the engine\n room had the air pumped out of her,\n and the stokers who tended the dials\n and set the cathode attitudes had to\n wear suits, smelling themselves for\n twelve hours at a time and standing\n a good chance of cooking where they\n sat when the drive arced.\nSerenus\nwas\n an ugly old tub. At that, we were the\n better of the two interstellar freighters\n the human race had left.\n\n\n \"You're bound over the border,\n aren't you?\"\n\n\n MacReidie nodded. \"That's right.\n But—\"", "We liked it that way. Understand\n me—we didn't accept it, we didn't\n knuckle under with waiting murder\n in our hearts—we\nliked\nit. We were\n grateful just to be left alone again.\n We were happy we hadn't been\n wiped out like the upstarts the rest\n of the Universe thought us to be.\n When they let us keep our own solar\n system and carry on a trickle of trade\n with the outside, we accepted it for\n the fantastically generous gift it was.\n Too many of our best men were dead\n for us to have any remaining claim\n on these things in our own right. I\n know how it was. I was there, twenty\n years ago. I was a little, pudgy\n man with short breath and a high-pitched\n voice. I was a typical Earthman.\nWe were out on a God-forsaken\n landing field on Mars, MacReidie\n and I, loading cargo aboard the\nSerenus\n. MacReidie was First Officer.\n I was Second. The stranger came\n walking up to us.", "He was a very quiet man. Quiet in\n the way he moved and talked. When\n we were both climbing into our\n bunks, that first night, I introduced\n myself and he introduced himself.\n Then he heaved himself into his\n bunk, rolled over on his side, fixed\n his straps, and fell asleep. He was\n always friendly toward me, but he\n must have been very tired that first\n night. I often wondered what kind\n of a life he'd lived after the war—what\n he'd done that made him different\n from the men who simply\n grew older in the bars. I wonder,\n now, if he really did do anything\n different. In an odd way, I like to\n think that one day, in a bar, on a\n day that seemed like all the rest to\n him when it began, he suddenly looked\n up with some new thought, put\n down his glass, and walked straight\n to the Earth-Mars shuttle field.", "He might have come from any\n town on Earth. Don't believe the historians\n too much. Don't pay too much\n attention to the Chamber of Commerce\n plaques. When a man's name\n becomes public property, strange\n things happen to the facts.\nIt was MacReidie who first found\n out what he'd done during the war.\n\n\n I've got to explain about MacReidie.\n He takes his opinions fast\n and strong. He's a good man—is, or\n was; I haven't seen him for a long\n while—but he liked things simple.\n\n\n MacReidie said the duffelbag broke\n loose and floated into the middle of\n the bunkroom during acceleration.\n He opened it to see whose it was.\n When he found out, he closed it up\n and strapped it back in its place at\n the foot of the stoker's bunk.", "So, I don't know. The older I get,\n the less I know. The thing people remember\n the stoker for—the thing\n that makes him famous, and, I think,\n annoys him—I'm fairly sure is only\n incidental to what he really did. If he\n did anything. If he meant to. I wish\n I could be sure of the exact answer\n he found in the bottom of that last\n glass at the bar before he worked his\n passage to Mars and the\nSerenus\n, and\n began it all.", "THE STOKER\n\n AND THE STARS\nBY JOHN A. SENTRY\nWhen\nyou've had your ears pinned\n back in a bowknot, it's sometimes hard\n to remember that an intelligent people\n has no respect for a whipped enemy\n ... but does for a fairly beaten enemy.\nIllustrated by van Dongen\nKnow\n him? Yes, I know\n him—\nknew\nhim. That\n was twenty years ago.\n\n\n Everybody knows\n him now. Everybody\n who passed him on the street knows\n him. Everybody who went to the same\n schools, or even to different schools\n in different towns, knows him now.\n Ask them. But I knew him. I lived\n three feet away from him for a month\n and a half. I shipped with him and\n called him by his first name.\n\n\n What was he like? What was he\n thinking, sitting on the edge of his\n bunk with his jaw in his palm and\n his eyes on the stars? What did he\n think he was after?", "The stoker shrugged. \"Ships are\n ships, and physics is physics, no matter\n where you go. I'll make out.\"\n\n\n \"What kind of a deal did you\n make with them? What do you think\n you're up to?\"\n\n\n The stoker shook his head. \"No\n deal. I signed on as a crewman. I'll\n do a crewman's work for a crewman's\n wages. I thought I'd wander around a\n while. It ought to be interesting,\" he\n said.\n\n\n \"On a Jek ship.\"\n\n\n \"Anybody's ship. When I get to\n their home world, I'll probably ship\n out with some people from farther\n on. Why not? It's honest work.\"\n\n\n MacReidie had no answer to that.\n\n\n \"But—\" I said.", "\"Got a job?\" he asked, looking at\n MacReidie.\n\n\n Mac looked him over. He saw the\n same things I'd seen. He shook his\n head. \"Not for you. The only thing\n we're short on is stokers.\"", "I think what kept anything from\n happening between MacReidie and\n the stoker, or anyone else and the\n stoker, was that it would have meant\n trouble in the ship. Trouble, confined\n to our little percentage of the ship's\n volume, could seem like something\n much more important than the fate\n of the human race. It may not seem\n that way to you. But as long as no\n one began anything, we could all get\n along. We could have a good trip.\n\n\n MacReidie worried, I'm sure. I\n worried, sometimes. But nothing\n happened.", "The stoker nodded, and they walked\n over to his vehicle together. They\n drove away, toward the Jek ship.\n\n\n \"All right, let's get back to work,\"\n another Jek said to MacReidie and\n myself, and we went back to unloading\n cargo.\nThe stoker came back to our ship\n that night, without his duffelbag. He\n found me and said:\n\n\n \"I'm signing off the ship. Going\n with the Jeks.\"\n\n\n MacReidie was with me. He said\n loudly: \"What do you mean, you're\n going with the Jeks?\"\n\n\n \"I signed on their ship,\" the stoker\n said. \"Stoking. They've got a micro-nuclear\n drive. It's been a while since\n I worked with one, but I think I'll\n make out all right, even with the\n screwball way they've got it set up.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\"", "We were almost through when\n Mac suddenly grabbed my arm.\n \"Look!\"\n\n\n The stoker was coming down on\n one of the cargo slings. He stood\n upright, his booted feet planted wide,\n one arm curled up over his head and\n around the hoist cable. He was in his\n dusty brown Marine uniform, the\n scarlet collar tabs bright as blood at\n his throat, his major's insignia glittering\n at his shoulders, the battle\n stripes on his sleeves.\n\n\n The Jeks stopped their lifts. They\n knew that uniform. They sat up in\n their saddles and watched him come\n down. When the sling touched the\n ground, he jumped off quietly and\n walked toward the nearest Jek. They\n all followed him with their eyes.", "I didn't know what to say. MacReidie\n and I—almost all of the men\n in the Merchant Marine—hadn't\n served in the combat arms. We had\n freighted supplies, and we had seen\n ships dying on the runs—we'd had\n our own brushes with commerce raiders,\n and we'd known enough men\n who joined the combat forces. But\n very few of the men came back, and\n the war this man had fought hadn't\n been the same as ours. He'd commanded\n a fighting ship, somewhere,\n and come to grips with things we\n simply didn't know about. The mark\n was on him, but not on us. I couldn't\n meet his eyes. \"O.K. by me,\" I mumbled\n at last." ], [ "\"Thanks.\" The stranger walked\n quietly away. He wrapped a hand\n around the cable on a cargo hook and\n rode into the hold on top of some\n freight. Mac spat on the ground and\n went back to supervising his end of\n the loading. I was busy with mine,\n and it wasn't until we'd gotten the\nSerenus\nloaded and buttoned up that\n Mac and I even spoke to each other\n again. Then we talked about the trip.\n We didn't talk about the stranger.\nDaniels, the Third, had signed him\n on and had moved him into the empty\n bunk above mine. We slept all in\n a bunch on the\nSerenus", "\"We've got to stop him,\" Mac\n said, and both of us started toward\n him. His hands were both in plain\n sight, one holding his duffelbag,\n which was swelled out with the bulk\n of his airsuit. He wasn't carrying a\n weapon of any kind. He was walking\n casually, taking his time.\n\n\n Mac and I had almost reached him\n when a Jek with insignia on his\n coveralls suddenly jumped down\n from his lift and came forward to\n meet him. It was an odd thing to\n see—the stoker, and the Jek, who\n did not stand as tall. MacReidie and\n I stepped back.\n\n\n The Jek was coal black, his scales\n glittering in the cold sunlight, his\n hatchet-face inscrutable. He stopped\n when the stoker was a few paces\n away. The stoker stopped, too. All\n the Jeks were watching him and paying\n no attention to anything else. The\n field might as well have been empty\n except for those two.", "MacReidie was my relief on the\n bridge. When he came up, he didn't\n relieve me right away. He stood next\n to my chair and looked out through\n the ports.\n\n\n \"Captain leave any special instructions\n in the Order Book?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Just the usual. Keep a tight watch\n and proceed cautiously.\"\n\n\n \"That new stoker,\" Mac said.\n\n\n \"Yeah?\"\n\n\n \"I knew there was something\n wrong with him. He's got an old\n Marine uniform in his duffel.\"\n\n\n I didn't say anything. Mac glanced\n over at me. \"Well?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\" I didn't.\n\n\n I couldn't say I was surprised. It\n had to be something like that, about\n the stoker. The mark was on him, as\n I've said.", "What was he thinking of? Make\n your own choice. I think I came close\n to knowing him, at that moment, but\n until human beings turn telepath, no\n man can be sure of another.\n\n\n He shook himself like a dog out\n of cold water, and got into his bunk.\n I got into mine, and after a while\n I fell asleep.\nI don't know what MacReidie may\n have told the skipper about the stoker,\n or if he tried to tell him anything.\n The captain was the senior ticket\n holder in the Merchant Service, and\n a good man, in his day. He kept\n mostly to his cabin. And there was\n nothing MacReidie could do on his\n own authority—nothing simple, that\n is. And the stoker had saved the\n ship, and ...", "I saw MacReidie's mouth turn\n down at the corners. But he couldn't\n gainsay the man any more than I\n could. MacReidie wasn't a mumbling\n man, so he said angrily: \"O.K.,\n bucko, you'll stoke. Go and sign on.\"", "He might have come from any\n town on Earth. Don't believe the historians\n too much. Don't pay too much\n attention to the Chamber of Commerce\n plaques. When a man's name\n becomes public property, strange\n things happen to the facts.\nIt was MacReidie who first found\n out what he'd done during the war.\n\n\n I've got to explain about MacReidie.\n He takes his opinions fast\n and strong. He's a good man—is, or\n was; I haven't seen him for a long\n while—but he liked things simple.\n\n\n MacReidie said the duffelbag broke\n loose and floated into the middle of\n the bunkroom during acceleration.\n He opened it to see whose it was.\n When he found out, he closed it up\n and strapped it back in its place at\n the foot of the stoker's bunk.", "\"You don't know,\" Mac said. \"It's\n there. In his duffel. Damn it, we're\n going out to trade with his sworn\n enemies! Why do you suppose he\n wanted to sign on? Why do you suppose\n he's so eager to go!\"\n\n\n \"You think he's going to try to\n start something?\"\n\n\n \"Think! That's exactly what he's\n going for. One last big alley fight.\n One last brawl. When they cut him\n down—do you suppose they'll stop\n with him? They'll kill us, and then\n they'll go in and stamp Earth flat!\n You know it as well as I do.\"", "I think what kept anything from\n happening between MacReidie and\n the stoker, or anyone else and the\n stoker, was that it would have meant\n trouble in the ship. Trouble, confined\n to our little percentage of the ship's\n volume, could seem like something\n much more important than the fate\n of the human race. It may not seem\n that way to you. But as long as no\n one began anything, we could all get\n along. We could have a good trip.\n\n\n MacReidie worried, I'm sure. I\n worried, sometimes. But nothing\n happened.", "\"I'll stoke.\"\n\n\n MacReidie looked over toward me\n and frowned. I shrugged my shoulders\n helplessly. I was a little afraid\n of the stranger, too.\n\n\n The trouble was the look of him.\n It was the look you saw in the bars\n back on Earth, where the veterans of\n the war sat and stared down into\n their glasses, waiting for night to\n fall so they could go out into the\n alleys and have drunken fights among\n themselves. But he had brought that\n look to Mars, to the landing field,\n and out here there was something\n disquieting about it.\n\n\n He'd caught Mac's look and turned\n his head to me. \"I'll stoke,\" he repeated.", "We were almost through when\n Mac suddenly grabbed my arm.\n \"Look!\"\n\n\n The stoker was coming down on\n one of the cargo slings. He stood\n upright, his booted feet planted wide,\n one arm curled up over his head and\n around the hoist cable. He was in his\n dusty brown Marine uniform, the\n scarlet collar tabs bright as blood at\n his throat, his major's insignia glittering\n at his shoulders, the battle\n stripes on his sleeves.\n\n\n The Jeks stopped their lifts. They\n knew that uniform. They sat up in\n their saddles and watched him come\n down. When the sling touched the\n ground, he jumped off quietly and\n walked toward the nearest Jek. They\n all followed him with their eyes.", "\"Got a job?\" he asked, looking at\n MacReidie.\n\n\n Mac looked him over. He saw the\n same things I'd seen. He shook his\n head. \"Not for you. The only thing\n we're short on is stokers.\"", "You wouldn't know. There's no\n such thing as a stoker any more, with\n automatic ships. But the stranger\n knew what Mac meant.\nSerenus\nhad what they called an\n electronic drive. She had to run with\n an evacuated engine room. The leaking\n electricity would have broken any\n stray air down to ozone, which eats\n metal and rots lungs. So the engine\n room had the air pumped out of her,\n and the stokers who tended the dials\n and set the cathode attitudes had to\n wear suits, smelling themselves for\n twelve hours at a time and standing\n a good chance of cooking where they\n sat when the drive arced.\nSerenus\nwas\n an ugly old tub. At that, we were the\n better of the two interstellar freighters\n the human race had left.\n\n\n \"You're bound over the border,\n aren't you?\"\n\n\n MacReidie nodded. \"That's right.\n But—\"", "We liked it that way. Understand\n me—we didn't accept it, we didn't\n knuckle under with waiting murder\n in our hearts—we\nliked\nit. We were\n grateful just to be left alone again.\n We were happy we hadn't been\n wiped out like the upstarts the rest\n of the Universe thought us to be.\n When they let us keep our own solar\n system and carry on a trickle of trade\n with the outside, we accepted it for\n the fantastically generous gift it was.\n Too many of our best men were dead\n for us to have any remaining claim\n on these things in our own right. I\n know how it was. I was there, twenty\n years ago. I was a little, pudgy\n man with short breath and a high-pitched\n voice. I was a typical Earthman.\nWe were out on a God-forsaken\n landing field on Mars, MacReidie\n and I, loading cargo aboard the\nSerenus\n. MacReidie was First Officer.\n I was Second. The stranger came\n walking up to us.", "\"What?\" He looked at me as if\n he couldn't understand what might\n be bothering me, but I think perhaps\n he could.\n\n\n \"Nothing,\" I said, and that was\n that, except MacReidie was always a\n sourer man from that time up to as\n long as I knew him afterwards. We\n took off in the morning. The stoker\n had already left on the Jek ship, and\n it turned out he'd trained an apprentice\n boy to take his place.\nIt was strange how things became\n different for us, little by little after\n that. It was never anything you could\n put your finger on, but the Jeks began\n taking more goods, and giving us\n things we needed when we told them\n we wanted them. After a while,\nSerenus\nwas going a little deeper into\n Jek territory, and when she wore out,\n the two replacements let us trade with\n the Lud, too. Then it was the Nosurwey,\n and other people beyond them,\n and things just got better for us,\n somehow.", "\"They'll kill him. They'll kill him\n right now,\" MacReidie whispered.\n\n\n They ought to have. If I'd been\n a Jek, I would have thought that uniform\n was a death warrant. But the\n Jek spoke to him:\n\n\n \"Are you entitled to wear that?\"\n\n\n \"I was at this planet in '39. I was\n closer to your home world the year\n before that,\" the stoker said. \"I was\n captain of a destroyer. If I'd had a\n cruiser's range, I would have reached\n it.\" He looked at the Jek. \"Where\n were you?\"\n\n\n \"I was here when you were.\"\n\n\n \"I want to speak to your ship's\n captain.\"\n\n\n \"All right. I'll drive you over.\"", "The stoker shrugged. \"Ships are\n ships, and physics is physics, no matter\n where you go. I'll make out.\"\n\n\n \"What kind of a deal did you\n make with them? What do you think\n you're up to?\"\n\n\n The stoker shook his head. \"No\n deal. I signed on as a crewman. I'll\n do a crewman's work for a crewman's\n wages. I thought I'd wander around a\n while. It ought to be interesting,\" he\n said.\n\n\n \"On a Jek ship.\"\n\n\n \"Anybody's ship. When I get to\n their home world, I'll probably ship\n out with some people from farther\n on. Why not? It's honest work.\"\n\n\n MacReidie had no answer to that.\n\n\n \"But—\" I said.", "\"I don't know, Mac,\" I said. \"Go\n easy.\" I could feel the knots in my\n stomach. I didn't want any trouble.\n Not from the stoker, not from Mac.\n None of us wanted trouble—not\n even Mac, but he'd cause it to get\n rid of it, if you follow what I mean\n about his kind of man.\n\n\n Mac hit the viewport with his fist.\n \"Easy! Easy—nothing's easy. I hate\n this life,\" he said in a murderous\n voice. \"I don't know why I keep\n signing on. Mars to Centaurus and\n back, back and forth, in an old rust\n tub that's going to blow herself up\n one of these—\"\nDaniels called me on the phone\n from Communications. \"Turn up\n your Intercom volume,\" he said.\n \"The stoker's jamming the circuit.\"\n\n\n I kicked the selector switch over,\n and this is what I got:", "I didn't know what to say. MacReidie\n and I—almost all of the men\n in the Merchant Marine—hadn't\n served in the combat arms. We had\n freighted supplies, and we had seen\n ships dying on the runs—we'd had\n our own brushes with commerce raiders,\n and we'd known enough men\n who joined the combat forces. But\n very few of the men came back, and\n the war this man had fought hadn't\n been the same as ours. He'd commanded\n a fighting ship, somewhere,\n and come to grips with things we\n simply didn't know about. The mark\n was on him, but not on us. I couldn't\n meet his eyes. \"O.K. by me,\" I mumbled\n at last.", "The stoker nodded, and they walked\n over to his vehicle together. They\n drove away, toward the Jek ship.\n\n\n \"All right, let's get back to work,\"\n another Jek said to MacReidie and\n myself, and we went back to unloading\n cargo.\nThe stoker came back to our ship\n that night, without his duffelbag. He\n found me and said:\n\n\n \"I'm signing off the ship. Going\n with the Jeks.\"\n\n\n MacReidie was with me. He said\n loudly: \"What do you mean, you're\n going with the Jeks?\"\n\n\n \"I signed on their ship,\" the stoker\n said. \"Stoking. They've got a micro-nuclear\n drive. It's been a while since\n I worked with one, but I think I'll\n make out all right, even with the\n screwball way they've got it set up.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\"", "THE STOKER\n\n AND THE STARS\nBY JOHN A. SENTRY\nWhen\nyou've had your ears pinned\n back in a bowknot, it's sometimes hard\n to remember that an intelligent people\n has no respect for a whipped enemy\n ... but does for a fairly beaten enemy.\nIllustrated by van Dongen\nKnow\n him? Yes, I know\n him—\nknew\nhim. That\n was twenty years ago.\n\n\n Everybody knows\n him now. Everybody\n who passed him on the street knows\n him. Everybody who went to the same\n schools, or even to different schools\n in different towns, knows him now.\n Ask them. But I knew him. I lived\n three feet away from him for a month\n and a half. I shipped with him and\n called him by his first name.\n\n\n What was he like? What was he\n thinking, sitting on the edge of his\n bunk with his jaw in his palm and\n his eyes on the stars? What did he\n think he was after?" ], [ "The stoker shrugged. \"Ships are\n ships, and physics is physics, no matter\n where you go. I'll make out.\"\n\n\n \"What kind of a deal did you\n make with them? What do you think\n you're up to?\"\n\n\n The stoker shook his head. \"No\n deal. I signed on as a crewman. I'll\n do a crewman's work for a crewman's\n wages. I thought I'd wander around a\n while. It ought to be interesting,\" he\n said.\n\n\n \"On a Jek ship.\"\n\n\n \"Anybody's ship. When I get to\n their home world, I'll probably ship\n out with some people from farther\n on. Why not? It's honest work.\"\n\n\n MacReidie had no answer to that.\n\n\n \"But—\" I said.", "\"They'll kill him. They'll kill him\n right now,\" MacReidie whispered.\n\n\n They ought to have. If I'd been\n a Jek, I would have thought that uniform\n was a death warrant. But the\n Jek spoke to him:\n\n\n \"Are you entitled to wear that?\"\n\n\n \"I was at this planet in '39. I was\n closer to your home world the year\n before that,\" the stoker said. \"I was\n captain of a destroyer. If I'd had a\n cruiser's range, I would have reached\n it.\" He looked at the Jek. \"Where\n were you?\"\n\n\n \"I was here when you were.\"\n\n\n \"I want to speak to your ship's\n captain.\"\n\n\n \"All right. I'll drive you over.\"", "\"What?\" He looked at me as if\n he couldn't understand what might\n be bothering me, but I think perhaps\n he could.\n\n\n \"Nothing,\" I said, and that was\n that, except MacReidie was always a\n sourer man from that time up to as\n long as I knew him afterwards. We\n took off in the morning. The stoker\n had already left on the Jek ship, and\n it turned out he'd trained an apprentice\n boy to take his place.\nIt was strange how things became\n different for us, little by little after\n that. It was never anything you could\n put your finger on, but the Jeks began\n taking more goods, and giving us\n things we needed when we told them\n we wanted them. After a while,\nSerenus\nwas going a little deeper into\n Jek territory, and when she wore out,\n the two replacements let us trade with\n the Lud, too. Then it was the Nosurwey,\n and other people beyond them,\n and things just got better for us,\n somehow.", "The stoker nodded, and they walked\n over to his vehicle together. They\n drove away, toward the Jek ship.\n\n\n \"All right, let's get back to work,\"\n another Jek said to MacReidie and\n myself, and we went back to unloading\n cargo.\nThe stoker came back to our ship\n that night, without his duffelbag. He\n found me and said:\n\n\n \"I'm signing off the ship. Going\n with the Jeks.\"\n\n\n MacReidie was with me. He said\n loudly: \"What do you mean, you're\n going with the Jeks?\"\n\n\n \"I signed on their ship,\" the stoker\n said. \"Stoking. They've got a micro-nuclear\n drive. It's been a while since\n I worked with one, but I think I'll\n make out all right, even with the\n screwball way they've got it set up.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\"", "\"Thanks.\" The stranger walked\n quietly away. He wrapped a hand\n around the cable on a cargo hook and\n rode into the hold on top of some\n freight. Mac spat on the ground and\n went back to supervising his end of\n the loading. I was busy with mine,\n and it wasn't until we'd gotten the\nSerenus\nloaded and buttoned up that\n Mac and I even spoke to each other\n again. Then we talked about the trip.\n We didn't talk about the stranger.\nDaniels, the Third, had signed him\n on and had moved him into the empty\n bunk above mine. We slept all in\n a bunch on the\nSerenus", "\"We've got to stop him,\" Mac\n said, and both of us started toward\n him. His hands were both in plain\n sight, one holding his duffelbag,\n which was swelled out with the bulk\n of his airsuit. He wasn't carrying a\n weapon of any kind. He was walking\n casually, taking his time.\n\n\n Mac and I had almost reached him\n when a Jek with insignia on his\n coveralls suddenly jumped down\n from his lift and came forward to\n meet him. It was an odd thing to\n see—the stoker, and the Jek, who\n did not stand as tall. MacReidie and\n I stepped back.\n\n\n The Jek was coal black, his scales\n glittering in the cold sunlight, his\n hatchet-face inscrutable. He stopped\n when the stoker was a few paces\n away. The stoker stopped, too. All\n the Jeks were watching him and paying\n no attention to anything else. The\n field might as well have been empty\n except for those two.", "You wouldn't know. There's no\n such thing as a stoker any more, with\n automatic ships. But the stranger\n knew what Mac meant.\nSerenus\nhad what they called an\n electronic drive. She had to run with\n an evacuated engine room. The leaking\n electricity would have broken any\n stray air down to ozone, which eats\n metal and rots lungs. So the engine\n room had the air pumped out of her,\n and the stokers who tended the dials\n and set the cathode attitudes had to\n wear suits, smelling themselves for\n twelve hours at a time and standing\n a good chance of cooking where they\n sat when the drive arced.\nSerenus\nwas\n an ugly old tub. At that, we were the\n better of the two interstellar freighters\n the human race had left.\n\n\n \"You're bound over the border,\n aren't you?\"\n\n\n MacReidie nodded. \"That's right.\n But—\"", "We heard about our stoker, occasionally.\n He shipped with the Lud,\n and the Nosurwey, and some people\n beyond them, getting along, going to\n all kinds of places. Pay no attention\n to the precise red lines you see on the\n star maps; nobody knows exactly\n what path he wandered from people\n to people. Nobody could. He just\n kept signing on with whatever ship\n was going deeper into the galaxy,\n going farther and farther. He messed\n with green shipmates and blue ones.\n One and two and three heads, tails,\n six legs—after all, ships are ships\n and they've all got to have something\n to push them along. If a man knows\n his business, why not? A man can\n live on all kinds of food, if he wants\n to get used to it. And any nontoxic\n atmosphere will do, as long as there's\n enough oxygen in it.", "We were almost through when\n Mac suddenly grabbed my arm.\n \"Look!\"\n\n\n The stoker was coming down on\n one of the cargo slings. He stood\n upright, his booted feet planted wide,\n one arm curled up over his head and\n around the hoist cable. He was in his\n dusty brown Marine uniform, the\n scarlet collar tabs bright as blood at\n his throat, his major's insignia glittering\n at his shoulders, the battle\n stripes on his sleeves.\n\n\n The Jeks stopped their lifts. They\n knew that uniform. They sat up in\n their saddles and watched him come\n down. When the sling touched the\n ground, he jumped off quietly and\n walked toward the nearest Jek. They\n all followed him with their eyes.", "I don't know what he did, to make\n things so much better for us. I don't\n know if he did anything, but stoke\n their ships and, I suppose, fix them\n when they were in trouble. I wonder\n if he sang dirty songs in that bad\n voice of his, to people who couldn't\n possibly understand what the songs\n were about. All I know is, for some\n reason those people slowly began\n treating us with respect. We changed,\n too, I think—I'm not the same man\n I was ... I think—not altogether\n the same; I'm a captain now, with\n master's papers, and you won't find\n me in my cabin very often ... there's\n a kind of joy in standing on a bridge,\n looking out at the stars you're moving\n toward. I wonder if it mightn't\n have kept my old captain out of that\n place he died in, finally, if he'd tried\n it.", "What was he thinking of? Make\n your own choice. I think I came close\n to knowing him, at that moment, but\n until human beings turn telepath, no\n man can be sure of another.\n\n\n He shook himself like a dog out\n of cold water, and got into his bunk.\n I got into mine, and after a while\n I fell asleep.\nI don't know what MacReidie may\n have told the skipper about the stoker,\n or if he tried to tell him anything.\n The captain was the senior ticket\n holder in the Merchant Service, and\n a good man, in his day. He kept\n mostly to his cabin. And there was\n nothing MacReidie could do on his\n own authority—nothing simple, that\n is. And the stoker had saved the\n ship, and ...", "THE STOKER\n\n AND THE STARS\nBY JOHN A. SENTRY\nWhen\nyou've had your ears pinned\n back in a bowknot, it's sometimes hard\n to remember that an intelligent people\n has no respect for a whipped enemy\n ... but does for a fairly beaten enemy.\nIllustrated by van Dongen\nKnow\n him? Yes, I know\n him—\nknew\nhim. That\n was twenty years ago.\n\n\n Everybody knows\n him now. Everybody\n who passed him on the street knows\n him. Everybody who went to the same\n schools, or even to different schools\n in different towns, knows him now.\n Ask them. But I knew him. I lived\n three feet away from him for a month\n and a half. I shipped with him and\n called him by his first name.\n\n\n What was he like? What was he\n thinking, sitting on the edge of his\n bunk with his jaw in his palm and\n his eyes on the stars? What did he\n think he was after?", "MacReidie was my relief on the\n bridge. When he came up, he didn't\n relieve me right away. He stood next\n to my chair and looked out through\n the ports.\n\n\n \"Captain leave any special instructions\n in the Order Book?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Just the usual. Keep a tight watch\n and proceed cautiously.\"\n\n\n \"That new stoker,\" Mac said.\n\n\n \"Yeah?\"\n\n\n \"I knew there was something\n wrong with him. He's got an old\n Marine uniform in his duffel.\"\n\n\n I didn't say anything. Mac glanced\n over at me. \"Well?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\" I didn't.\n\n\n I couldn't say I was surprised. It\n had to be something like that, about\n the stoker. The mark was on him, as\n I've said.", "But I found that this trip wasn't\n quite the same. I found myself looking\n at the factor's post, and I realized\n for the first time that the Lud hadn't\n built it. It was a leftover from the\n old colonial human government. And\n the city on the horizon—men had\n built it; the touch of our architecture\n was on every building. I wondered\n why it had never occurred to me that\n this was so. It made the landfall different\n from all the others, somehow.\n It gave a new face to the entire\n planet.\nMac and I and some of the other\n crewmen went down on the field to\n handle the unloading. Jeks on self-propelled\n cargo lifts jockeyed among\n us, scooping up the loads as we unhooked\n the slings, bringing cases of\n machinery from their own ship. They\n sat atop their vehicles, lean and\n aloof, dashing in, whirling, shooting\n across the field to their ship and\n back like wild horsemen on the plains\n of Earth, paying us no notice.", "When we reached Alpha Centaurus,\n and set down at the trading field\n on the second planet, it was the same\n as the other trips we'd made, and the\n same kind of landfall. The Lud factor\n came out of his post after we'd\n waited for a while, and gave us our\n permit to disembark. There was a Jek\n ship at the other end of the field,\n loaded with the cargo we would get\n in exchange for our holdful of\n goods. We had the usual things;\n wine, music tapes, furs, and the like.\n The Jeks had been giving us light\n machinery lately—probably we'd get\n two or three more loads, and then\n they'd begin giving us something\n else.", "We liked it that way. Understand\n me—we didn't accept it, we didn't\n knuckle under with waiting murder\n in our hearts—we\nliked\nit. We were\n grateful just to be left alone again.\n We were happy we hadn't been\n wiped out like the upstarts the rest\n of the Universe thought us to be.\n When they let us keep our own solar\n system and carry on a trickle of trade\n with the outside, we accepted it for\n the fantastically generous gift it was.\n Too many of our best men were dead\n for us to have any remaining claim\n on these things in our own right. I\n know how it was. I was there, twenty\n years ago. I was a little, pudgy\n man with short breath and a high-pitched\n voice. I was a typical Earthman.\nWe were out on a God-forsaken\n landing field on Mars, MacReidie\n and I, loading cargo aboard the\nSerenus\n. MacReidie was First Officer.\n I was Second. The stranger came\n walking up to us.", "I think what kept anything from\n happening between MacReidie and\n the stoker, or anyone else and the\n stoker, was that it would have meant\n trouble in the ship. Trouble, confined\n to our little percentage of the ship's\n volume, could seem like something\n much more important than the fate\n of the human race. It may not seem\n that way to you. But as long as no\n one began anything, we could all get\n along. We could have a good trip.\n\n\n MacReidie worried, I'm sure. I\n worried, sometimes. But nothing\n happened.", "\"I'll stoke.\"\n\n\n MacReidie looked over toward me\n and frowned. I shrugged my shoulders\n helplessly. I was a little afraid\n of the stranger, too.\n\n\n The trouble was the look of him.\n It was the look you saw in the bars\n back on Earth, where the veterans of\n the war sat and stared down into\n their glasses, waiting for night to\n fall so they could go out into the\n alleys and have drunken fights among\n themselves. But he had brought that\n look to Mars, to the landing field,\n and out here there was something\n disquieting about it.\n\n\n He'd caught Mac's look and turned\n his head to me. \"I'll stoke,\" he repeated.", "—officers and\n crew. Even so, we had to sleep in\n shifts, with the ship's designers giving\n ninety per cent of her space to\n cargo, and eight per cent to power\n and control. That left very little for\n the people, who were crammed in\n any way they could be. I said empty\n bunk. What I meant was, empty during\n my sleep shift. That meant he\n and I'd be sharing work shifts—me\n up in the control blister, parked in\n a soft chair, and him down in the\n engine room, broiling in a suit for\n twelve hours.", "He might have come from any\n town on Earth. Don't believe the historians\n too much. Don't pay too much\n attention to the Chamber of Commerce\n plaques. When a man's name\n becomes public property, strange\n things happen to the facts.\nIt was MacReidie who first found\n out what he'd done during the war.\n\n\n I've got to explain about MacReidie.\n He takes his opinions fast\n and strong. He's a good man—is, or\n was; I haven't seen him for a long\n while—but he liked things simple.\n\n\n MacReidie said the duffelbag broke\n loose and floated into the middle of\n the bunkroom during acceleration.\n He opened it to see whose it was.\n When he found out, he closed it up\n and strapped it back in its place at\n the foot of the stoker's bunk." ], [ "The stoker shrugged. \"Ships are\n ships, and physics is physics, no matter\n where you go. I'll make out.\"\n\n\n \"What kind of a deal did you\n make with them? What do you think\n you're up to?\"\n\n\n The stoker shook his head. \"No\n deal. I signed on as a crewman. I'll\n do a crewman's work for a crewman's\n wages. I thought I'd wander around a\n while. It ought to be interesting,\" he\n said.\n\n\n \"On a Jek ship.\"\n\n\n \"Anybody's ship. When I get to\n their home world, I'll probably ship\n out with some people from farther\n on. Why not? It's honest work.\"\n\n\n MacReidie had no answer to that.\n\n\n \"But—\" I said.", "The stoker nodded, and they walked\n over to his vehicle together. They\n drove away, toward the Jek ship.\n\n\n \"All right, let's get back to work,\"\n another Jek said to MacReidie and\n myself, and we went back to unloading\n cargo.\nThe stoker came back to our ship\n that night, without his duffelbag. He\n found me and said:\n\n\n \"I'm signing off the ship. Going\n with the Jeks.\"\n\n\n MacReidie was with me. He said\n loudly: \"What do you mean, you're\n going with the Jeks?\"\n\n\n \"I signed on their ship,\" the stoker\n said. \"Stoking. They've got a micro-nuclear\n drive. It's been a while since\n I worked with one, but I think I'll\n make out all right, even with the\n screwball way they've got it set up.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\"", "\"They'll kill him. They'll kill him\n right now,\" MacReidie whispered.\n\n\n They ought to have. If I'd been\n a Jek, I would have thought that uniform\n was a death warrant. But the\n Jek spoke to him:\n\n\n \"Are you entitled to wear that?\"\n\n\n \"I was at this planet in '39. I was\n closer to your home world the year\n before that,\" the stoker said. \"I was\n captain of a destroyer. If I'd had a\n cruiser's range, I would have reached\n it.\" He looked at the Jek. \"Where\n were you?\"\n\n\n \"I was here when you were.\"\n\n\n \"I want to speak to your ship's\n captain.\"\n\n\n \"All right. I'll drive you over.\"", "\"Thanks.\" The stranger walked\n quietly away. He wrapped a hand\n around the cable on a cargo hook and\n rode into the hold on top of some\n freight. Mac spat on the ground and\n went back to supervising his end of\n the loading. I was busy with mine,\n and it wasn't until we'd gotten the\nSerenus\nloaded and buttoned up that\n Mac and I even spoke to each other\n again. Then we talked about the trip.\n We didn't talk about the stranger.\nDaniels, the Third, had signed him\n on and had moved him into the empty\n bunk above mine. We slept all in\n a bunch on the\nSerenus", "\"What?\" He looked at me as if\n he couldn't understand what might\n be bothering me, but I think perhaps\n he could.\n\n\n \"Nothing,\" I said, and that was\n that, except MacReidie was always a\n sourer man from that time up to as\n long as I knew him afterwards. We\n took off in the morning. The stoker\n had already left on the Jek ship, and\n it turned out he'd trained an apprentice\n boy to take his place.\nIt was strange how things became\n different for us, little by little after\n that. It was never anything you could\n put your finger on, but the Jeks began\n taking more goods, and giving us\n things we needed when we told them\n we wanted them. After a while,\nSerenus\nwas going a little deeper into\n Jek territory, and when she wore out,\n the two replacements let us trade with\n the Lud, too. Then it was the Nosurwey,\n and other people beyond them,\n and things just got better for us,\n somehow.", "\"We've got to stop him,\" Mac\n said, and both of us started toward\n him. His hands were both in plain\n sight, one holding his duffelbag,\n which was swelled out with the bulk\n of his airsuit. He wasn't carrying a\n weapon of any kind. He was walking\n casually, taking his time.\n\n\n Mac and I had almost reached him\n when a Jek with insignia on his\n coveralls suddenly jumped down\n from his lift and came forward to\n meet him. It was an odd thing to\n see—the stoker, and the Jek, who\n did not stand as tall. MacReidie and\n I stepped back.\n\n\n The Jek was coal black, his scales\n glittering in the cold sunlight, his\n hatchet-face inscrutable. He stopped\n when the stoker was a few paces\n away. The stoker stopped, too. All\n the Jeks were watching him and paying\n no attention to anything else. The\n field might as well have been empty\n except for those two.", "We heard about our stoker, occasionally.\n He shipped with the Lud,\n and the Nosurwey, and some people\n beyond them, getting along, going to\n all kinds of places. Pay no attention\n to the precise red lines you see on the\n star maps; nobody knows exactly\n what path he wandered from people\n to people. Nobody could. He just\n kept signing on with whatever ship\n was going deeper into the galaxy,\n going farther and farther. He messed\n with green shipmates and blue ones.\n One and two and three heads, tails,\n six legs—after all, ships are ships\n and they've all got to have something\n to push them along. If a man knows\n his business, why not? A man can\n live on all kinds of food, if he wants\n to get used to it. And any nontoxic\n atmosphere will do, as long as there's\n enough oxygen in it.", "I don't know what he did, to make\n things so much better for us. I don't\n know if he did anything, but stoke\n their ships and, I suppose, fix them\n when they were in trouble. I wonder\n if he sang dirty songs in that bad\n voice of his, to people who couldn't\n possibly understand what the songs\n were about. All I know is, for some\n reason those people slowly began\n treating us with respect. We changed,\n too, I think—I'm not the same man\n I was ... I think—not altogether\n the same; I'm a captain now, with\n master's papers, and you won't find\n me in my cabin very often ... there's\n a kind of joy in standing on a bridge,\n looking out at the stars you're moving\n toward. I wonder if it mightn't\n have kept my old captain out of that\n place he died in, finally, if he'd tried\n it.", "You wouldn't know. There's no\n such thing as a stoker any more, with\n automatic ships. But the stranger\n knew what Mac meant.\nSerenus\nhad what they called an\n electronic drive. She had to run with\n an evacuated engine room. The leaking\n electricity would have broken any\n stray air down to ozone, which eats\n metal and rots lungs. So the engine\n room had the air pumped out of her,\n and the stokers who tended the dials\n and set the cathode attitudes had to\n wear suits, smelling themselves for\n twelve hours at a time and standing\n a good chance of cooking where they\n sat when the drive arced.\nSerenus\nwas\n an ugly old tub. At that, we were the\n better of the two interstellar freighters\n the human race had left.\n\n\n \"You're bound over the border,\n aren't you?\"\n\n\n MacReidie nodded. \"That's right.\n But—\"", "We were almost through when\n Mac suddenly grabbed my arm.\n \"Look!\"\n\n\n The stoker was coming down on\n one of the cargo slings. He stood\n upright, his booted feet planted wide,\n one arm curled up over his head and\n around the hoist cable. He was in his\n dusty brown Marine uniform, the\n scarlet collar tabs bright as blood at\n his throat, his major's insignia glittering\n at his shoulders, the battle\n stripes on his sleeves.\n\n\n The Jeks stopped their lifts. They\n knew that uniform. They sat up in\n their saddles and watched him come\n down. When the sling touched the\n ground, he jumped off quietly and\n walked toward the nearest Jek. They\n all followed him with their eyes.", "\"I'll stoke.\"\n\n\n MacReidie looked over toward me\n and frowned. I shrugged my shoulders\n helplessly. I was a little afraid\n of the stranger, too.\n\n\n The trouble was the look of him.\n It was the look you saw in the bars\n back on Earth, where the veterans of\n the war sat and stared down into\n their glasses, waiting for night to\n fall so they could go out into the\n alleys and have drunken fights among\n themselves. But he had brought that\n look to Mars, to the landing field,\n and out here there was something\n disquieting about it.\n\n\n He'd caught Mac's look and turned\n his head to me. \"I'll stoke,\" he repeated.", "\"You don't know,\" Mac said. \"It's\n there. In his duffel. Damn it, we're\n going out to trade with his sworn\n enemies! Why do you suppose he\n wanted to sign on? Why do you suppose\n he's so eager to go!\"\n\n\n \"You think he's going to try to\n start something?\"\n\n\n \"Think! That's exactly what he's\n going for. One last big alley fight.\n One last brawl. When they cut him\n down—do you suppose they'll stop\n with him? They'll kill us, and then\n they'll go in and stamp Earth flat!\n You know it as well as I do.\"", "And maybe it got to him, too. It\n may explain something. He and I\n were the last to leave. We went to\n the bunkroom, and he stopped in the\n middle of taking off his shirt. He\n stood there, looking out the porthole,\n and forgot I was there. I heard him\n reciting something, softly, under his\n breath, and I stepped a little closer.\n This is what it was:\n\n\"\nThe rockets rise against the skies,\nSlowly; in sunlight gleaming\nWith silver hue upon the blue.\nAnd the universe waits, dreaming.\n\"\nFor men must go where the flame-winds blow,\nThe gas clouds softly plaiting;\nWhere stars are spun and worlds begun,\nAnd men will find them waiting.\n\"\nThe song that roars where the rocket soars\nIs the song of the stellar flame;\nThe dreams of Man and galactic span\nAre equal and much the same.\n\"", "\"\n—so there we were at a million\n per, and the air was gettin' thick. The\n Skipper says 'Cheer up, brave boys,\n we'll—'\n\"\n\n\n He was singing. He had a terrible\n voice, but he could carry a tune, and\n he was hammering it out at the top\n of his lungs.\n\n\n \"\nTwas the last cruise of the\nVenus,\nby God you should of seen us! The\n pipes were full of whisky, and just\n to make things risky, the jets\n were ...\n\"\n\n\n The crew were chuckling into their\n own chest phones. I could hear Daniels\n trying to cut him off. But he\n kept going. I started laughing myself.\n No one's supposed to jam an\n intercom, but it made the crew feel\n good. When the crew feels good, the\n ship runs right, and it had been a\n long time since they'd been happy.", "What was he thinking of? Make\n your own choice. I think I came close\n to knowing him, at that moment, but\n until human beings turn telepath, no\n man can be sure of another.\n\n\n He shook himself like a dog out\n of cold water, and got into his bunk.\n I got into mine, and after a while\n I fell asleep.\nI don't know what MacReidie may\n have told the skipper about the stoker,\n or if he tried to tell him anything.\n The captain was the senior ticket\n holder in the Merchant Service, and\n a good man, in his day. He kept\n mostly to his cabin. And there was\n nothing MacReidie could do on his\n own authority—nothing simple, that\n is. And the stoker had saved the\n ship, and ...", "\"I don't know, Mac,\" I said. \"Go\n easy.\" I could feel the knots in my\n stomach. I didn't want any trouble.\n Not from the stoker, not from Mac.\n None of us wanted trouble—not\n even Mac, but he'd cause it to get\n rid of it, if you follow what I mean\n about his kind of man.\n\n\n Mac hit the viewport with his fist.\n \"Easy! Easy—nothing's easy. I hate\n this life,\" he said in a murderous\n voice. \"I don't know why I keep\n signing on. Mars to Centaurus and\n back, back and forth, in an old rust\n tub that's going to blow herself up\n one of these—\"\nDaniels called me on the phone\n from Communications. \"Turn up\n your Intercom volume,\" he said.\n \"The stoker's jamming the circuit.\"\n\n\n I kicked the selector switch over,\n and this is what I got:", "THE STOKER\n\n AND THE STARS\nBY JOHN A. SENTRY\nWhen\nyou've had your ears pinned\n back in a bowknot, it's sometimes hard\n to remember that an intelligent people\n has no respect for a whipped enemy\n ... but does for a fairly beaten enemy.\nIllustrated by van Dongen\nKnow\n him? Yes, I know\n him—\nknew\nhim. That\n was twenty years ago.\n\n\n Everybody knows\n him now. Everybody\n who passed him on the street knows\n him. Everybody who went to the same\n schools, or even to different schools\n in different towns, knows him now.\n Ask them. But I knew him. I lived\n three feet away from him for a month\n and a half. I shipped with him and\n called him by his first name.\n\n\n What was he like? What was he\n thinking, sitting on the edge of his\n bunk with his jaw in his palm and\n his eyes on the stars? What did he\n think he was after?", "—officers and\n crew. Even so, we had to sleep in\n shifts, with the ship's designers giving\n ninety per cent of her space to\n cargo, and eight per cent to power\n and control. That left very little for\n the people, who were crammed in\n any way they could be. I said empty\n bunk. What I meant was, empty during\n my sleep shift. That meant he\n and I'd be sharing work shifts—me\n up in the control blister, parked in\n a soft chair, and him down in the\n engine room, broiling in a suit for\n twelve hours.", "We liked it that way. Understand\n me—we didn't accept it, we didn't\n knuckle under with waiting murder\n in our hearts—we\nliked\nit. We were\n grateful just to be left alone again.\n We were happy we hadn't been\n wiped out like the upstarts the rest\n of the Universe thought us to be.\n When they let us keep our own solar\n system and carry on a trickle of trade\n with the outside, we accepted it for\n the fantastically generous gift it was.\n Too many of our best men were dead\n for us to have any remaining claim\n on these things in our own right. I\n know how it was. I was there, twenty\n years ago. I was a little, pudgy\n man with short breath and a high-pitched\n voice. I was a typical Earthman.\nWe were out on a God-forsaken\n landing field on Mars, MacReidie\n and I, loading cargo aboard the\nSerenus\n. MacReidie was First Officer.\n I was Second. The stranger came\n walking up to us.", "But I found that this trip wasn't\n quite the same. I found myself looking\n at the factor's post, and I realized\n for the first time that the Lud hadn't\n built it. It was a leftover from the\n old colonial human government. And\n the city on the horizon—men had\n built it; the touch of our architecture\n was on every building. I wondered\n why it had never occurred to me that\n this was so. It made the landfall different\n from all the others, somehow.\n It gave a new face to the entire\n planet.\nMac and I and some of the other\n crewmen went down on the field to\n handle the unloading. Jeks on self-propelled\n cargo lifts jockeyed among\n us, scooping up the loads as we unhooked\n the slings, bringing cases of\n machinery from their own ship. They\n sat atop their vehicles, lean and\n aloof, dashing in, whirling, shooting\n across the field to their ship and\n back like wild horsemen on the plains\n of Earth, paying us no notice." ], [ "\"What?\" He looked at me as if\n he couldn't understand what might\n be bothering me, but I think perhaps\n he could.\n\n\n \"Nothing,\" I said, and that was\n that, except MacReidie was always a\n sourer man from that time up to as\n long as I knew him afterwards. We\n took off in the morning. The stoker\n had already left on the Jek ship, and\n it turned out he'd trained an apprentice\n boy to take his place.\nIt was strange how things became\n different for us, little by little after\n that. It was never anything you could\n put your finger on, but the Jeks began\n taking more goods, and giving us\n things we needed when we told them\n we wanted them. After a while,\nSerenus\nwas going a little deeper into\n Jek territory, and when she wore out,\n the two replacements let us trade with\n the Lud, too. Then it was the Nosurwey,\n and other people beyond them,\n and things just got better for us,\n somehow.", "We liked it that way. Understand\n me—we didn't accept it, we didn't\n knuckle under with waiting murder\n in our hearts—we\nliked\nit. We were\n grateful just to be left alone again.\n We were happy we hadn't been\n wiped out like the upstarts the rest\n of the Universe thought us to be.\n When they let us keep our own solar\n system and carry on a trickle of trade\n with the outside, we accepted it for\n the fantastically generous gift it was.\n Too many of our best men were dead\n for us to have any remaining claim\n on these things in our own right. I\n know how it was. I was there, twenty\n years ago. I was a little, pudgy\n man with short breath and a high-pitched\n voice. I was a typical Earthman.\nWe were out on a God-forsaken\n landing field on Mars, MacReidie\n and I, loading cargo aboard the\nSerenus\n. MacReidie was First Officer.\n I was Second. The stranger came\n walking up to us.", "We heard about our stoker, occasionally.\n He shipped with the Lud,\n and the Nosurwey, and some people\n beyond them, getting along, going to\n all kinds of places. Pay no attention\n to the precise red lines you see on the\n star maps; nobody knows exactly\n what path he wandered from people\n to people. Nobody could. He just\n kept signing on with whatever ship\n was going deeper into the galaxy,\n going farther and farther. He messed\n with green shipmates and blue ones.\n One and two and three heads, tails,\n six legs—after all, ships are ships\n and they've all got to have something\n to push them along. If a man knows\n his business, why not? A man can\n live on all kinds of food, if he wants\n to get used to it. And any nontoxic\n atmosphere will do, as long as there's\n enough oxygen in it.", "We were beaten. We moved out\n beyond Centaurus, and Sirius, and\n then we met the Jeks, the Nosurwey,\n the Lud. We tried Terrestrial know-how,\n we tried Production Miracles,\n we tried patriotism, we tried damning\n the torpedoes and full speed\n ahead ... and we were smashed back\n like mayflies in the wind. We died in\n droves, and we retreated from the\n guttering fires of a dozen planets, we\n dug in, we fought through the last\n ditch, and we were dying on Earth\n itself before Baker mutinied, shot\n Cope, and surrendered the remainder\n of the human race to the wiser, gentler\n races in the stars. That way, we\n lived. That way, we were permitted\n to carry on our little concerns, and\n mind our manners. The Jeks and the\n Lud and the Nosurwey returned to\n their own affairs, and we knew they\n would leave us alone so long as we\n didn't bother them.", "I don't know what he did, to make\n things so much better for us. I don't\n know if he did anything, but stoke\n their ships and, I suppose, fix them\n when they were in trouble. I wonder\n if he sang dirty songs in that bad\n voice of his, to people who couldn't\n possibly understand what the songs\n were about. All I know is, for some\n reason those people slowly began\n treating us with respect. We changed,\n too, I think—I'm not the same man\n I was ... I think—not altogether\n the same; I'm a captain now, with\n master's papers, and you won't find\n me in my cabin very often ... there's\n a kind of joy in standing on a bridge,\n looking out at the stars you're moving\n toward. I wonder if it mightn't\n have kept my old captain out of that\n place he died in, finally, if he'd tried\n it.", "But I found that this trip wasn't\n quite the same. I found myself looking\n at the factor's post, and I realized\n for the first time that the Lud hadn't\n built it. It was a leftover from the\n old colonial human government. And\n the city on the horizon—men had\n built it; the touch of our architecture\n was on every building. I wondered\n why it had never occurred to me that\n this was so. It made the landfall different\n from all the others, somehow.\n It gave a new face to the entire\n planet.\nMac and I and some of the other\n crewmen went down on the field to\n handle the unloading. Jeks on self-propelled\n cargo lifts jockeyed among\n us, scooping up the loads as we unhooked\n the slings, bringing cases of\n machinery from their own ship. They\n sat atop their vehicles, lean and\n aloof, dashing in, whirling, shooting\n across the field to their ship and\n back like wild horsemen on the plains\n of Earth, paying us no notice.", "I couldn't really describe him to\n you. He had a duffelbag in his hand\n and a packed airsuit on his back. The\n skin of his face had been dried out\n by ship's air, burned by ultraviolet\n and broiled by infra red. The pupils\n of his eyes had little cloudy specks in\n them where the cosmic rays had shot\n through them. But his eyes were\n steady and his body was hard. What\n did he look like? He looked like a\n man.\nIt was after the war, and we were\n beaten. There used to be a school of\n thought among us that deplored our\n combativeness; before we had ever\n met any people from off Earth, even,\n you could hear people saying we\n were toughest, cruelest life-form in\n the Universe, unfit to mingle with\n the gentler wiser races in the stars,\n and a sure bet to steal their galaxy\n and corrupt it forever. Where\n these people got their information, I\n don't know.", "The stoker shrugged. \"Ships are\n ships, and physics is physics, no matter\n where you go. I'll make out.\"\n\n\n \"What kind of a deal did you\n make with them? What do you think\n you're up to?\"\n\n\n The stoker shook his head. \"No\n deal. I signed on as a crewman. I'll\n do a crewman's work for a crewman's\n wages. I thought I'd wander around a\n while. It ought to be interesting,\" he\n said.\n\n\n \"On a Jek ship.\"\n\n\n \"Anybody's ship. When I get to\n their home world, I'll probably ship\n out with some people from farther\n on. Why not? It's honest work.\"\n\n\n MacReidie had no answer to that.\n\n\n \"But—\" I said.", "When we reached Alpha Centaurus,\n and set down at the trading field\n on the second planet, it was the same\n as the other trips we'd made, and the\n same kind of landfall. The Lud factor\n came out of his post after we'd\n waited for a while, and gave us our\n permit to disembark. There was a Jek\n ship at the other end of the field,\n loaded with the cargo we would get\n in exchange for our holdful of\n goods. We had the usual things;\n wine, music tapes, furs, and the like.\n The Jeks had been giving us light\n machinery lately—probably we'd get\n two or three more loads, and then\n they'd begin giving us something\n else.", "\"They'll kill him. They'll kill him\n right now,\" MacReidie whispered.\n\n\n They ought to have. If I'd been\n a Jek, I would have thought that uniform\n was a death warrant. But the\n Jek spoke to him:\n\n\n \"Are you entitled to wear that?\"\n\n\n \"I was at this planet in '39. I was\n closer to your home world the year\n before that,\" the stoker said. \"I was\n captain of a destroyer. If I'd had a\n cruiser's range, I would have reached\n it.\" He looked at the Jek. \"Where\n were you?\"\n\n\n \"I was here when you were.\"\n\n\n \"I want to speak to your ship's\n captain.\"\n\n\n \"All right. I'll drive you over.\"", "I think what kept anything from\n happening between MacReidie and\n the stoker, or anyone else and the\n stoker, was that it would have meant\n trouble in the ship. Trouble, confined\n to our little percentage of the ship's\n volume, could seem like something\n much more important than the fate\n of the human race. It may not seem\n that way to you. But as long as no\n one began anything, we could all get\n along. We could have a good trip.\n\n\n MacReidie worried, I'm sure. I\n worried, sometimes. But nothing\n happened.", "The stoker nodded, and they walked\n over to his vehicle together. They\n drove away, toward the Jek ship.\n\n\n \"All right, let's get back to work,\"\n another Jek said to MacReidie and\n myself, and we went back to unloading\n cargo.\nThe stoker came back to our ship\n that night, without his duffelbag. He\n found me and said:\n\n\n \"I'm signing off the ship. Going\n with the Jeks.\"\n\n\n MacReidie was with me. He said\n loudly: \"What do you mean, you're\n going with the Jeks?\"\n\n\n \"I signed on their ship,\" the stoker\n said. \"Stoking. They've got a micro-nuclear\n drive. It's been a while since\n I worked with one, but I think I'll\n make out all right, even with the\n screwball way they've got it set up.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\"", "\"Thanks.\" The stranger walked\n quietly away. He wrapped a hand\n around the cable on a cargo hook and\n rode into the hold on top of some\n freight. Mac spat on the ground and\n went back to supervising his end of\n the loading. I was busy with mine,\n and it wasn't until we'd gotten the\nSerenus\nloaded and buttoned up that\n Mac and I even spoke to each other\n again. Then we talked about the trip.\n We didn't talk about the stranger.\nDaniels, the Third, had signed him\n on and had moved him into the empty\n bunk above mine. We slept all in\n a bunch on the\nSerenus", "You wouldn't know. There's no\n such thing as a stoker any more, with\n automatic ships. But the stranger\n knew what Mac meant.\nSerenus\nhad what they called an\n electronic drive. She had to run with\n an evacuated engine room. The leaking\n electricity would have broken any\n stray air down to ozone, which eats\n metal and rots lungs. So the engine\n room had the air pumped out of her,\n and the stokers who tended the dials\n and set the cathode attitudes had to\n wear suits, smelling themselves for\n twelve hours at a time and standing\n a good chance of cooking where they\n sat when the drive arced.\nSerenus\nwas\n an ugly old tub. At that, we were the\n better of the two interstellar freighters\n the human race had left.\n\n\n \"You're bound over the border,\n aren't you?\"\n\n\n MacReidie nodded. \"That's right.\n But—\"", "\"We've got to stop him,\" Mac\n said, and both of us started toward\n him. His hands were both in plain\n sight, one holding his duffelbag,\n which was swelled out with the bulk\n of his airsuit. He wasn't carrying a\n weapon of any kind. He was walking\n casually, taking his time.\n\n\n Mac and I had almost reached him\n when a Jek with insignia on his\n coveralls suddenly jumped down\n from his lift and came forward to\n meet him. It was an odd thing to\n see—the stoker, and the Jek, who\n did not stand as tall. MacReidie and\n I stepped back.\n\n\n The Jek was coal black, his scales\n glittering in the cold sunlight, his\n hatchet-face inscrutable. He stopped\n when the stoker was a few paces\n away. The stoker stopped, too. All\n the Jeks were watching him and paying\n no attention to anything else. The\n field might as well have been empty\n except for those two.", "He was a very quiet man. Quiet in\n the way he moved and talked. When\n we were both climbing into our\n bunks, that first night, I introduced\n myself and he introduced himself.\n Then he heaved himself into his\n bunk, rolled over on his side, fixed\n his straps, and fell asleep. He was\n always friendly toward me, but he\n must have been very tired that first\n night. I often wondered what kind\n of a life he'd lived after the war—what\n he'd done that made him different\n from the men who simply\n grew older in the bars. I wonder,\n now, if he really did do anything\n different. In an odd way, I like to\n think that one day, in a bar, on a\n day that seemed like all the rest to\n him when it began, he suddenly looked\n up with some new thought, put\n down his glass, and walked straight\n to the Earth-Mars shuttle field.", "\"You don't know,\" Mac said. \"It's\n there. In his duffel. Damn it, we're\n going out to trade with his sworn\n enemies! Why do you suppose he\n wanted to sign on? Why do you suppose\n he's so eager to go!\"\n\n\n \"You think he's going to try to\n start something?\"\n\n\n \"Think! That's exactly what he's\n going for. One last big alley fight.\n One last brawl. When they cut him\n down—do you suppose they'll stop\n with him? They'll kill us, and then\n they'll go in and stamp Earth flat!\n You know it as well as I do.\"", "And maybe it got to him, too. It\n may explain something. He and I\n were the last to leave. We went to\n the bunkroom, and he stopped in the\n middle of taking off his shirt. He\n stood there, looking out the porthole,\n and forgot I was there. I heard him\n reciting something, softly, under his\n breath, and I stepped a little closer.\n This is what it was:\n\n\"\nThe rockets rise against the skies,\nSlowly; in sunlight gleaming\nWith silver hue upon the blue.\nAnd the universe waits, dreaming.\n\"\nFor men must go where the flame-winds blow,\nThe gas clouds softly plaiting;\nWhere stars are spun and worlds begun,\nAnd men will find them waiting.\n\"\nThe song that roars where the rocket soars\nIs the song of the stellar flame;\nThe dreams of Man and galactic span\nAre equal and much the same.\n\"", "He might have come from any\n town on Earth. Don't believe the historians\n too much. Don't pay too much\n attention to the Chamber of Commerce\n plaques. When a man's name\n becomes public property, strange\n things happen to the facts.\nIt was MacReidie who first found\n out what he'd done during the war.\n\n\n I've got to explain about MacReidie.\n He takes his opinions fast\n and strong. He's a good man—is, or\n was; I haven't seen him for a long\n while—but he liked things simple.\n\n\n MacReidie said the duffelbag broke\n loose and floated into the middle of\n the bunkroom during acceleration.\n He opened it to see whose it was.\n When he found out, he closed it up\n and strapped it back in its place at\n the foot of the stoker's bunk.", "It was the Marines that did Earth's\n best dying. It had to be. They were\n trained to be the best we had, and\n they believed in their training. They\n were the ones who slashed back the\n deepest when the other side hit us.\n They were the ones who sallied out\n into the doomed spaces between the\n stars and took the war to the other\n side as well as any human force could\n ever hope to. They were always the\n last to leave an abandoned position.\n If Earth had been giving medals to\n members of her forces in the war,\n every man in the Corps would have\n had the Medal of Honor two and\n three times over. Posthumously. I\n don't believe there were ten of them\n left alive when Cope was shot. Cope\n was one of them. They were a kind\n of human being neither MacReidie\n nor I could hope to understand." ], [ "\"What?\" He looked at me as if\n he couldn't understand what might\n be bothering me, but I think perhaps\n he could.\n\n\n \"Nothing,\" I said, and that was\n that, except MacReidie was always a\n sourer man from that time up to as\n long as I knew him afterwards. We\n took off in the morning. The stoker\n had already left on the Jek ship, and\n it turned out he'd trained an apprentice\n boy to take his place.\nIt was strange how things became\n different for us, little by little after\n that. It was never anything you could\n put your finger on, but the Jeks began\n taking more goods, and giving us\n things we needed when we told them\n we wanted them. After a while,\nSerenus\nwas going a little deeper into\n Jek territory, and when she wore out,\n the two replacements let us trade with\n the Lud, too. Then it was the Nosurwey,\n and other people beyond them,\n and things just got better for us,\n somehow.", "\"We've got to stop him,\" Mac\n said, and both of us started toward\n him. His hands were both in plain\n sight, one holding his duffelbag,\n which was swelled out with the bulk\n of his airsuit. He wasn't carrying a\n weapon of any kind. He was walking\n casually, taking his time.\n\n\n Mac and I had almost reached him\n when a Jek with insignia on his\n coveralls suddenly jumped down\n from his lift and came forward to\n meet him. It was an odd thing to\n see—the stoker, and the Jek, who\n did not stand as tall. MacReidie and\n I stepped back.\n\n\n The Jek was coal black, his scales\n glittering in the cold sunlight, his\n hatchet-face inscrutable. He stopped\n when the stoker was a few paces\n away. The stoker stopped, too. All\n the Jeks were watching him and paying\n no attention to anything else. The\n field might as well have been empty\n except for those two.", "We were beaten. We moved out\n beyond Centaurus, and Sirius, and\n then we met the Jeks, the Nosurwey,\n the Lud. We tried Terrestrial know-how,\n we tried Production Miracles,\n we tried patriotism, we tried damning\n the torpedoes and full speed\n ahead ... and we were smashed back\n like mayflies in the wind. We died in\n droves, and we retreated from the\n guttering fires of a dozen planets, we\n dug in, we fought through the last\n ditch, and we were dying on Earth\n itself before Baker mutinied, shot\n Cope, and surrendered the remainder\n of the human race to the wiser, gentler\n races in the stars. That way, we\n lived. That way, we were permitted\n to carry on our little concerns, and\n mind our manners. The Jeks and the\n Lud and the Nosurwey returned to\n their own affairs, and we knew they\n would leave us alone so long as we\n didn't bother them.", "\"They'll kill him. They'll kill him\n right now,\" MacReidie whispered.\n\n\n They ought to have. If I'd been\n a Jek, I would have thought that uniform\n was a death warrant. But the\n Jek spoke to him:\n\n\n \"Are you entitled to wear that?\"\n\n\n \"I was at this planet in '39. I was\n closer to your home world the year\n before that,\" the stoker said. \"I was\n captain of a destroyer. If I'd had a\n cruiser's range, I would have reached\n it.\" He looked at the Jek. \"Where\n were you?\"\n\n\n \"I was here when you were.\"\n\n\n \"I want to speak to your ship's\n captain.\"\n\n\n \"All right. I'll drive you over.\"", "We were almost through when\n Mac suddenly grabbed my arm.\n \"Look!\"\n\n\n The stoker was coming down on\n one of the cargo slings. He stood\n upright, his booted feet planted wide,\n one arm curled up over his head and\n around the hoist cable. He was in his\n dusty brown Marine uniform, the\n scarlet collar tabs bright as blood at\n his throat, his major's insignia glittering\n at his shoulders, the battle\n stripes on his sleeves.\n\n\n The Jeks stopped their lifts. They\n knew that uniform. They sat up in\n their saddles and watched him come\n down. When the sling touched the\n ground, he jumped off quietly and\n walked toward the nearest Jek. They\n all followed him with their eyes.", "The stoker nodded, and they walked\n over to his vehicle together. They\n drove away, toward the Jek ship.\n\n\n \"All right, let's get back to work,\"\n another Jek said to MacReidie and\n myself, and we went back to unloading\n cargo.\nThe stoker came back to our ship\n that night, without his duffelbag. He\n found me and said:\n\n\n \"I'm signing off the ship. Going\n with the Jeks.\"\n\n\n MacReidie was with me. He said\n loudly: \"What do you mean, you're\n going with the Jeks?\"\n\n\n \"I signed on their ship,\" the stoker\n said. \"Stoking. They've got a micro-nuclear\n drive. It's been a while since\n I worked with one, but I think I'll\n make out all right, even with the\n screwball way they've got it set up.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\"", "But I found that this trip wasn't\n quite the same. I found myself looking\n at the factor's post, and I realized\n for the first time that the Lud hadn't\n built it. It was a leftover from the\n old colonial human government. And\n the city on the horizon—men had\n built it; the touch of our architecture\n was on every building. I wondered\n why it had never occurred to me that\n this was so. It made the landfall different\n from all the others, somehow.\n It gave a new face to the entire\n planet.\nMac and I and some of the other\n crewmen went down on the field to\n handle the unloading. Jeks on self-propelled\n cargo lifts jockeyed among\n us, scooping up the loads as we unhooked\n the slings, bringing cases of\n machinery from their own ship. They\n sat atop their vehicles, lean and\n aloof, dashing in, whirling, shooting\n across the field to their ship and\n back like wild horsemen on the plains\n of Earth, paying us no notice.", "The stoker shrugged. \"Ships are\n ships, and physics is physics, no matter\n where you go. I'll make out.\"\n\n\n \"What kind of a deal did you\n make with them? What do you think\n you're up to?\"\n\n\n The stoker shook his head. \"No\n deal. I signed on as a crewman. I'll\n do a crewman's work for a crewman's\n wages. I thought I'd wander around a\n while. It ought to be interesting,\" he\n said.\n\n\n \"On a Jek ship.\"\n\n\n \"Anybody's ship. When I get to\n their home world, I'll probably ship\n out with some people from farther\n on. Why not? It's honest work.\"\n\n\n MacReidie had no answer to that.\n\n\n \"But—\" I said.", "We heard about our stoker, occasionally.\n He shipped with the Lud,\n and the Nosurwey, and some people\n beyond them, getting along, going to\n all kinds of places. Pay no attention\n to the precise red lines you see on the\n star maps; nobody knows exactly\n what path he wandered from people\n to people. Nobody could. He just\n kept signing on with whatever ship\n was going deeper into the galaxy,\n going farther and farther. He messed\n with green shipmates and blue ones.\n One and two and three heads, tails,\n six legs—after all, ships are ships\n and they've all got to have something\n to push them along. If a man knows\n his business, why not? A man can\n live on all kinds of food, if he wants\n to get used to it. And any nontoxic\n atmosphere will do, as long as there's\n enough oxygen in it.", "When we reached Alpha Centaurus,\n and set down at the trading field\n on the second planet, it was the same\n as the other trips we'd made, and the\n same kind of landfall. The Lud factor\n came out of his post after we'd\n waited for a while, and gave us our\n permit to disembark. There was a Jek\n ship at the other end of the field,\n loaded with the cargo we would get\n in exchange for our holdful of\n goods. We had the usual things;\n wine, music tapes, furs, and the like.\n The Jeks had been giving us light\n machinery lately—probably we'd get\n two or three more loads, and then\n they'd begin giving us something\n else.", "THE STOKER\n\n AND THE STARS\nBY JOHN A. SENTRY\nWhen\nyou've had your ears pinned\n back in a bowknot, it's sometimes hard\n to remember that an intelligent people\n has no respect for a whipped enemy\n ... but does for a fairly beaten enemy.\nIllustrated by van Dongen\nKnow\n him? Yes, I know\n him—\nknew\nhim. That\n was twenty years ago.\n\n\n Everybody knows\n him now. Everybody\n who passed him on the street knows\n him. Everybody who went to the same\n schools, or even to different schools\n in different towns, knows him now.\n Ask them. But I knew him. I lived\n three feet away from him for a month\n and a half. I shipped with him and\n called him by his first name.\n\n\n What was he like? What was he\n thinking, sitting on the edge of his\n bunk with his jaw in his palm and\n his eyes on the stars? What did he\n think he was after?", "So, I don't know. The older I get,\n the less I know. The thing people remember\n the stoker for—the thing\n that makes him famous, and, I think,\n annoys him—I'm fairly sure is only\n incidental to what he really did. If he\n did anything. If he meant to. I wish\n I could be sure of the exact answer\n he found in the bottom of that last\n glass at the bar before he worked his\n passage to Mars and the\nSerenus\n, and\n began it all.", "You wouldn't know. There's no\n such thing as a stoker any more, with\n automatic ships. But the stranger\n knew what Mac meant.\nSerenus\nhad what they called an\n electronic drive. She had to run with\n an evacuated engine room. The leaking\n electricity would have broken any\n stray air down to ozone, which eats\n metal and rots lungs. So the engine\n room had the air pumped out of her,\n and the stokers who tended the dials\n and set the cathode attitudes had to\n wear suits, smelling themselves for\n twelve hours at a time and standing\n a good chance of cooking where they\n sat when the drive arced.\nSerenus\nwas\n an ugly old tub. At that, we were the\n better of the two interstellar freighters\n the human race had left.\n\n\n \"You're bound over the border,\n aren't you?\"\n\n\n MacReidie nodded. \"That's right.\n But—\"", "I couldn't really describe him to\n you. He had a duffelbag in his hand\n and a packed airsuit on his back. The\n skin of his face had been dried out\n by ship's air, burned by ultraviolet\n and broiled by infra red. The pupils\n of his eyes had little cloudy specks in\n them where the cosmic rays had shot\n through them. But his eyes were\n steady and his body was hard. What\n did he look like? He looked like a\n man.\nIt was after the war, and we were\n beaten. There used to be a school of\n thought among us that deplored our\n combativeness; before we had ever\n met any people from off Earth, even,\n you could hear people saying we\n were toughest, cruelest life-form in\n the Universe, unfit to mingle with\n the gentler wiser races in the stars,\n and a sure bet to steal their galaxy\n and corrupt it forever. Where\n these people got their information, I\n don't know.", "We liked it that way. Understand\n me—we didn't accept it, we didn't\n knuckle under with waiting murder\n in our hearts—we\nliked\nit. We were\n grateful just to be left alone again.\n We were happy we hadn't been\n wiped out like the upstarts the rest\n of the Universe thought us to be.\n When they let us keep our own solar\n system and carry on a trickle of trade\n with the outside, we accepted it for\n the fantastically generous gift it was.\n Too many of our best men were dead\n for us to have any remaining claim\n on these things in our own right. I\n know how it was. I was there, twenty\n years ago. I was a little, pudgy\n man with short breath and a high-pitched\n voice. I was a typical Earthman.\nWe were out on a God-forsaken\n landing field on Mars, MacReidie\n and I, loading cargo aboard the\nSerenus\n. MacReidie was First Officer.\n I was Second. The stranger came\n walking up to us.", "MacReidie was my relief on the\n bridge. When he came up, he didn't\n relieve me right away. He stood next\n to my chair and looked out through\n the ports.\n\n\n \"Captain leave any special instructions\n in the Order Book?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Just the usual. Keep a tight watch\n and proceed cautiously.\"\n\n\n \"That new stoker,\" Mac said.\n\n\n \"Yeah?\"\n\n\n \"I knew there was something\n wrong with him. He's got an old\n Marine uniform in his duffel.\"\n\n\n I didn't say anything. Mac glanced\n over at me. \"Well?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\" I didn't.\n\n\n I couldn't say I was surprised. It\n had to be something like that, about\n the stoker. The mark was on him, as\n I've said.", "\"You don't know,\" Mac said. \"It's\n there. In his duffel. Damn it, we're\n going out to trade with his sworn\n enemies! Why do you suppose he\n wanted to sign on? Why do you suppose\n he's so eager to go!\"\n\n\n \"You think he's going to try to\n start something?\"\n\n\n \"Think! That's exactly what he's\n going for. One last big alley fight.\n One last brawl. When they cut him\n down—do you suppose they'll stop\n with him? They'll kill us, and then\n they'll go in and stamp Earth flat!\n You know it as well as I do.\"", "\"I'll stoke.\"\n\n\n MacReidie looked over toward me\n and frowned. I shrugged my shoulders\n helplessly. I was a little afraid\n of the stranger, too.\n\n\n The trouble was the look of him.\n It was the look you saw in the bars\n back on Earth, where the veterans of\n the war sat and stared down into\n their glasses, waiting for night to\n fall so they could go out into the\n alleys and have drunken fights among\n themselves. But he had brought that\n look to Mars, to the landing field,\n and out here there was something\n disquieting about it.\n\n\n He'd caught Mac's look and turned\n his head to me. \"I'll stoke,\" he repeated.", "And maybe it got to him, too. It\n may explain something. He and I\n were the last to leave. We went to\n the bunkroom, and he stopped in the\n middle of taking off his shirt. He\n stood there, looking out the porthole,\n and forgot I was there. I heard him\n reciting something, softly, under his\n breath, and I stepped a little closer.\n This is what it was:\n\n\"\nThe rockets rise against the skies,\nSlowly; in sunlight gleaming\nWith silver hue upon the blue.\nAnd the universe waits, dreaming.\n\"\nFor men must go where the flame-winds blow,\nThe gas clouds softly plaiting;\nWhere stars are spun and worlds begun,\nAnd men will find them waiting.\n\"\nThe song that roars where the rocket soars\nIs the song of the stellar flame;\nThe dreams of Man and galactic span\nAre equal and much the same.\n\"", "It was the Marines that did Earth's\n best dying. It had to be. They were\n trained to be the best we had, and\n they believed in their training. They\n were the ones who slashed back the\n deepest when the other side hit us.\n They were the ones who sallied out\n into the doomed spaces between the\n stars and took the war to the other\n side as well as any human force could\n ever hope to. They were always the\n last to leave an abandoned position.\n If Earth had been giving medals to\n members of her forces in the war,\n every man in the Corps would have\n had the Medal of Honor two and\n three times over. Posthumously. I\n don't believe there were ten of them\n left alive when Cope was shot. Cope\n was one of them. They were a kind\n of human being neither MacReidie\n nor I could hope to understand." ], [ "\"Thanks.\" The stranger walked\n quietly away. He wrapped a hand\n around the cable on a cargo hook and\n rode into the hold on top of some\n freight. Mac spat on the ground and\n went back to supervising his end of\n the loading. I was busy with mine,\n and it wasn't until we'd gotten the\nSerenus\nloaded and buttoned up that\n Mac and I even spoke to each other\n again. Then we talked about the trip.\n We didn't talk about the stranger.\nDaniels, the Third, had signed him\n on and had moved him into the empty\n bunk above mine. We slept all in\n a bunch on the\nSerenus", "\"I'll stoke.\"\n\n\n MacReidie looked over toward me\n and frowned. I shrugged my shoulders\n helplessly. I was a little afraid\n of the stranger, too.\n\n\n The trouble was the look of him.\n It was the look you saw in the bars\n back on Earth, where the veterans of\n the war sat and stared down into\n their glasses, waiting for night to\n fall so they could go out into the\n alleys and have drunken fights among\n themselves. But he had brought that\n look to Mars, to the landing field,\n and out here there was something\n disquieting about it.\n\n\n He'd caught Mac's look and turned\n his head to me. \"I'll stoke,\" he repeated.", "I couldn't really describe him to\n you. He had a duffelbag in his hand\n and a packed airsuit on his back. The\n skin of his face had been dried out\n by ship's air, burned by ultraviolet\n and broiled by infra red. The pupils\n of his eyes had little cloudy specks in\n them where the cosmic rays had shot\n through them. But his eyes were\n steady and his body was hard. What\n did he look like? He looked like a\n man.\nIt was after the war, and we were\n beaten. There used to be a school of\n thought among us that deplored our\n combativeness; before we had ever\n met any people from off Earth, even,\n you could hear people saying we\n were toughest, cruelest life-form in\n the Universe, unfit to mingle with\n the gentler wiser races in the stars,\n and a sure bet to steal their galaxy\n and corrupt it forever. Where\n these people got their information, I\n don't know.", "We were almost through when\n Mac suddenly grabbed my arm.\n \"Look!\"\n\n\n The stoker was coming down on\n one of the cargo slings. He stood\n upright, his booted feet planted wide,\n one arm curled up over his head and\n around the hoist cable. He was in his\n dusty brown Marine uniform, the\n scarlet collar tabs bright as blood at\n his throat, his major's insignia glittering\n at his shoulders, the battle\n stripes on his sleeves.\n\n\n The Jeks stopped their lifts. They\n knew that uniform. They sat up in\n their saddles and watched him come\n down. When the sling touched the\n ground, he jumped off quietly and\n walked toward the nearest Jek. They\n all followed him with their eyes.", "He might have come from any\n town on Earth. Don't believe the historians\n too much. Don't pay too much\n attention to the Chamber of Commerce\n plaques. When a man's name\n becomes public property, strange\n things happen to the facts.\nIt was MacReidie who first found\n out what he'd done during the war.\n\n\n I've got to explain about MacReidie.\n He takes his opinions fast\n and strong. He's a good man—is, or\n was; I haven't seen him for a long\n while—but he liked things simple.\n\n\n MacReidie said the duffelbag broke\n loose and floated into the middle of\n the bunkroom during acceleration.\n He opened it to see whose it was.\n When he found out, he closed it up\n and strapped it back in its place at\n the foot of the stoker's bunk.", "THE STOKER\n\n AND THE STARS\nBY JOHN A. SENTRY\nWhen\nyou've had your ears pinned\n back in a bowknot, it's sometimes hard\n to remember that an intelligent people\n has no respect for a whipped enemy\n ... but does for a fairly beaten enemy.\nIllustrated by van Dongen\nKnow\n him? Yes, I know\n him—\nknew\nhim. That\n was twenty years ago.\n\n\n Everybody knows\n him now. Everybody\n who passed him on the street knows\n him. Everybody who went to the same\n schools, or even to different schools\n in different towns, knows him now.\n Ask them. But I knew him. I lived\n three feet away from him for a month\n and a half. I shipped with him and\n called him by his first name.\n\n\n What was he like? What was he\n thinking, sitting on the edge of his\n bunk with his jaw in his palm and\n his eyes on the stars? What did he\n think he was after?", "We liked it that way. Understand\n me—we didn't accept it, we didn't\n knuckle under with waiting murder\n in our hearts—we\nliked\nit. We were\n grateful just to be left alone again.\n We were happy we hadn't been\n wiped out like the upstarts the rest\n of the Universe thought us to be.\n When they let us keep our own solar\n system and carry on a trickle of trade\n with the outside, we accepted it for\n the fantastically generous gift it was.\n Too many of our best men were dead\n for us to have any remaining claim\n on these things in our own right. I\n know how it was. I was there, twenty\n years ago. I was a little, pudgy\n man with short breath and a high-pitched\n voice. I was a typical Earthman.\nWe were out on a God-forsaken\n landing field on Mars, MacReidie\n and I, loading cargo aboard the\nSerenus\n. MacReidie was First Officer.\n I was Second. The stranger came\n walking up to us.", "What was he thinking of? Make\n your own choice. I think I came close\n to knowing him, at that moment, but\n until human beings turn telepath, no\n man can be sure of another.\n\n\n He shook himself like a dog out\n of cold water, and got into his bunk.\n I got into mine, and after a while\n I fell asleep.\nI don't know what MacReidie may\n have told the skipper about the stoker,\n or if he tried to tell him anything.\n The captain was the senior ticket\n holder in the Merchant Service, and\n a good man, in his day. He kept\n mostly to his cabin. And there was\n nothing MacReidie could do on his\n own authority—nothing simple, that\n is. And the stoker had saved the\n ship, and ...", "You wouldn't know. There's no\n such thing as a stoker any more, with\n automatic ships. But the stranger\n knew what Mac meant.\nSerenus\nhad what they called an\n electronic drive. She had to run with\n an evacuated engine room. The leaking\n electricity would have broken any\n stray air down to ozone, which eats\n metal and rots lungs. So the engine\n room had the air pumped out of her,\n and the stokers who tended the dials\n and set the cathode attitudes had to\n wear suits, smelling themselves for\n twelve hours at a time and standing\n a good chance of cooking where they\n sat when the drive arced.\nSerenus\nwas\n an ugly old tub. At that, we were the\n better of the two interstellar freighters\n the human race had left.\n\n\n \"You're bound over the border,\n aren't you?\"\n\n\n MacReidie nodded. \"That's right.\n But—\"", "So, I don't know. The older I get,\n the less I know. The thing people remember\n the stoker for—the thing\n that makes him famous, and, I think,\n annoys him—I'm fairly sure is only\n incidental to what he really did. If he\n did anything. If he meant to. I wish\n I could be sure of the exact answer\n he found in the bottom of that last\n glass at the bar before he worked his\n passage to Mars and the\nSerenus\n, and\n began it all.", "We heard about our stoker, occasionally.\n He shipped with the Lud,\n and the Nosurwey, and some people\n beyond them, getting along, going to\n all kinds of places. Pay no attention\n to the precise red lines you see on the\n star maps; nobody knows exactly\n what path he wandered from people\n to people. Nobody could. He just\n kept signing on with whatever ship\n was going deeper into the galaxy,\n going farther and farther. He messed\n with green shipmates and blue ones.\n One and two and three heads, tails,\n six legs—after all, ships are ships\n and they've all got to have something\n to push them along. If a man knows\n his business, why not? A man can\n live on all kinds of food, if he wants\n to get used to it. And any nontoxic\n atmosphere will do, as long as there's\n enough oxygen in it.", "MacReidie was my relief on the\n bridge. When he came up, he didn't\n relieve me right away. He stood next\n to my chair and looked out through\n the ports.\n\n\n \"Captain leave any special instructions\n in the Order Book?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Just the usual. Keep a tight watch\n and proceed cautiously.\"\n\n\n \"That new stoker,\" Mac said.\n\n\n \"Yeah?\"\n\n\n \"I knew there was something\n wrong with him. He's got an old\n Marine uniform in his duffel.\"\n\n\n I didn't say anything. Mac glanced\n over at me. \"Well?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\" I didn't.\n\n\n I couldn't say I was surprised. It\n had to be something like that, about\n the stoker. The mark was on him, as\n I've said.", "\"We've got to stop him,\" Mac\n said, and both of us started toward\n him. His hands were both in plain\n sight, one holding his duffelbag,\n which was swelled out with the bulk\n of his airsuit. He wasn't carrying a\n weapon of any kind. He was walking\n casually, taking his time.\n\n\n Mac and I had almost reached him\n when a Jek with insignia on his\n coveralls suddenly jumped down\n from his lift and came forward to\n meet him. It was an odd thing to\n see—the stoker, and the Jek, who\n did not stand as tall. MacReidie and\n I stepped back.\n\n\n The Jek was coal black, his scales\n glittering in the cold sunlight, his\n hatchet-face inscrutable. He stopped\n when the stoker was a few paces\n away. The stoker stopped, too. All\n the Jeks were watching him and paying\n no attention to anything else. The\n field might as well have been empty\n except for those two.", "He was a very quiet man. Quiet in\n the way he moved and talked. When\n we were both climbing into our\n bunks, that first night, I introduced\n myself and he introduced himself.\n Then he heaved himself into his\n bunk, rolled over on his side, fixed\n his straps, and fell asleep. He was\n always friendly toward me, but he\n must have been very tired that first\n night. I often wondered what kind\n of a life he'd lived after the war—what\n he'd done that made him different\n from the men who simply\n grew older in the bars. I wonder,\n now, if he really did do anything\n different. In an odd way, I like to\n think that one day, in a bar, on a\n day that seemed like all the rest to\n him when it began, he suddenly looked\n up with some new thought, put\n down his glass, and walked straight\n to the Earth-Mars shuttle field.", "\"What?\" He looked at me as if\n he couldn't understand what might\n be bothering me, but I think perhaps\n he could.\n\n\n \"Nothing,\" I said, and that was\n that, except MacReidie was always a\n sourer man from that time up to as\n long as I knew him afterwards. We\n took off in the morning. The stoker\n had already left on the Jek ship, and\n it turned out he'd trained an apprentice\n boy to take his place.\nIt was strange how things became\n different for us, little by little after\n that. It was never anything you could\n put your finger on, but the Jeks began\n taking more goods, and giving us\n things we needed when we told them\n we wanted them. After a while,\nSerenus\nwas going a little deeper into\n Jek territory, and when she wore out,\n the two replacements let us trade with\n the Lud, too. Then it was the Nosurwey,\n and other people beyond them,\n and things just got better for us,\n somehow.", "I don't know what he did, to make\n things so much better for us. I don't\n know if he did anything, but stoke\n their ships and, I suppose, fix them\n when they were in trouble. I wonder\n if he sang dirty songs in that bad\n voice of his, to people who couldn't\n possibly understand what the songs\n were about. All I know is, for some\n reason those people slowly began\n treating us with respect. We changed,\n too, I think—I'm not the same man\n I was ... I think—not altogether\n the same; I'm a captain now, with\n master's papers, and you won't find\n me in my cabin very often ... there's\n a kind of joy in standing on a bridge,\n looking out at the stars you're moving\n toward. I wonder if it mightn't\n have kept my old captain out of that\n place he died in, finally, if he'd tried\n it.", "And maybe it got to him, too. It\n may explain something. He and I\n were the last to leave. We went to\n the bunkroom, and he stopped in the\n middle of taking off his shirt. He\n stood there, looking out the porthole,\n and forgot I was there. I heard him\n reciting something, softly, under his\n breath, and I stepped a little closer.\n This is what it was:\n\n\"\nThe rockets rise against the skies,\nSlowly; in sunlight gleaming\nWith silver hue upon the blue.\nAnd the universe waits, dreaming.\n\"\nFor men must go where the flame-winds blow,\nThe gas clouds softly plaiting;\nWhere stars are spun and worlds begun,\nAnd men will find them waiting.\n\"\nThe song that roars where the rocket soars\nIs the song of the stellar flame;\nThe dreams of Man and galactic span\nAre equal and much the same.\n\"", "I saw MacReidie's mouth turn\n down at the corners. But he couldn't\n gainsay the man any more than I\n could. MacReidie wasn't a mumbling\n man, so he said angrily: \"O.K.,\n bucko, you'll stoke. Go and sign on.\"", "But I found that this trip wasn't\n quite the same. I found myself looking\n at the factor's post, and I realized\n for the first time that the Lud hadn't\n built it. It was a leftover from the\n old colonial human government. And\n the city on the horizon—men had\n built it; the touch of our architecture\n was on every building. I wondered\n why it had never occurred to me that\n this was so. It made the landfall different\n from all the others, somehow.\n It gave a new face to the entire\n planet.\nMac and I and some of the other\n crewmen went down on the field to\n handle the unloading. Jeks on self-propelled\n cargo lifts jockeyed among\n us, scooping up the loads as we unhooked\n the slings, bringing cases of\n machinery from their own ship. They\n sat atop their vehicles, lean and\n aloof, dashing in, whirling, shooting\n across the field to their ship and\n back like wild horsemen on the plains\n of Earth, paying us no notice.", "I didn't know what to say. MacReidie\n and I—almost all of the men\n in the Merchant Marine—hadn't\n served in the combat arms. We had\n freighted supplies, and we had seen\n ships dying on the runs—we'd had\n our own brushes with commerce raiders,\n and we'd known enough men\n who joined the combat forces. But\n very few of the men came back, and\n the war this man had fought hadn't\n been the same as ours. He'd commanded\n a fighting ship, somewhere,\n and come to grips with things we\n simply didn't know about. The mark\n was on him, but not on us. I couldn't\n meet his eyes. \"O.K. by me,\" I mumbled\n at last." ], [ "I don't know what he did, to make\n things so much better for us. I don't\n know if he did anything, but stoke\n their ships and, I suppose, fix them\n when they were in trouble. I wonder\n if he sang dirty songs in that bad\n voice of his, to people who couldn't\n possibly understand what the songs\n were about. All I know is, for some\n reason those people slowly began\n treating us with respect. We changed,\n too, I think—I'm not the same man\n I was ... I think—not altogether\n the same; I'm a captain now, with\n master's papers, and you won't find\n me in my cabin very often ... there's\n a kind of joy in standing on a bridge,\n looking out at the stars you're moving\n toward. I wonder if it mightn't\n have kept my old captain out of that\n place he died in, finally, if he'd tried\n it.", "We were beaten. We moved out\n beyond Centaurus, and Sirius, and\n then we met the Jeks, the Nosurwey,\n the Lud. We tried Terrestrial know-how,\n we tried Production Miracles,\n we tried patriotism, we tried damning\n the torpedoes and full speed\n ahead ... and we were smashed back\n like mayflies in the wind. We died in\n droves, and we retreated from the\n guttering fires of a dozen planets, we\n dug in, we fought through the last\n ditch, and we were dying on Earth\n itself before Baker mutinied, shot\n Cope, and surrendered the remainder\n of the human race to the wiser, gentler\n races in the stars. That way, we\n lived. That way, we were permitted\n to carry on our little concerns, and\n mind our manners. The Jeks and the\n Lud and the Nosurwey returned to\n their own affairs, and we knew they\n would leave us alone so long as we\n didn't bother them.", "He went on for another twenty\n minutes. Then his voice thinned out,\n and I heard him cough a little.\n \"Daniels,\" he said, \"get a relief\n down here for me.\nJump to it!\n\" He\n said the last part in a Master's voice.\n Daniels didn't ask questions. He sent\n a man on his way down.\n\n\n He'd been singing, the stoker had.\n He'd been singing while he worked\n with one arm dead, one sleeve ripped\n open and badly patched because the\n fabric was slippery with blood.\n There'd been a flashover in the drivers.\n By the time his relief got down\n there, he had the insulation back on,\n and the drive was purring along the\n way it should have been. It hadn't\n even missed a beat.\n\n\n He went down to sick bay, got the\n arm wrapped, and would have gone\n back on shift if Daniels'd let him.", "What was he thinking of? Make\n your own choice. I think I came close\n to knowing him, at that moment, but\n until human beings turn telepath, no\n man can be sure of another.\n\n\n He shook himself like a dog out\n of cold water, and got into his bunk.\n I got into mine, and after a while\n I fell asleep.\nI don't know what MacReidie may\n have told the skipper about the stoker,\n or if he tried to tell him anything.\n The captain was the senior ticket\n holder in the Merchant Service, and\n a good man, in his day. He kept\n mostly to his cabin. And there was\n nothing MacReidie could do on his\n own authority—nothing simple, that\n is. And the stoker had saved the\n ship, and ...", "\"What?\" He looked at me as if\n he couldn't understand what might\n be bothering me, but I think perhaps\n he could.\n\n\n \"Nothing,\" I said, and that was\n that, except MacReidie was always a\n sourer man from that time up to as\n long as I knew him afterwards. We\n took off in the morning. The stoker\n had already left on the Jek ship, and\n it turned out he'd trained an apprentice\n boy to take his place.\nIt was strange how things became\n different for us, little by little after\n that. It was never anything you could\n put your finger on, but the Jeks began\n taking more goods, and giving us\n things we needed when we told them\n we wanted them. After a while,\nSerenus\nwas going a little deeper into\n Jek territory, and when she wore out,\n the two replacements let us trade with\n the Lud, too. Then it was the Nosurwey,\n and other people beyond them,\n and things just got better for us,\n somehow.", "So, I don't know. The older I get,\n the less I know. The thing people remember\n the stoker for—the thing\n that makes him famous, and, I think,\n annoys him—I'm fairly sure is only\n incidental to what he really did. If he\n did anything. If he meant to. I wish\n I could be sure of the exact answer\n he found in the bottom of that last\n glass at the bar before he worked his\n passage to Mars and the\nSerenus\n, and\n began it all.", "We heard about our stoker, occasionally.\n He shipped with the Lud,\n and the Nosurwey, and some people\n beyond them, getting along, going to\n all kinds of places. Pay no attention\n to the precise red lines you see on the\n star maps; nobody knows exactly\n what path he wandered from people\n to people. Nobody could. He just\n kept signing on with whatever ship\n was going deeper into the galaxy,\n going farther and farther. He messed\n with green shipmates and blue ones.\n One and two and three heads, tails,\n six legs—after all, ships are ships\n and they've all got to have something\n to push them along. If a man knows\n his business, why not? A man can\n live on all kinds of food, if he wants\n to get used to it. And any nontoxic\n atmosphere will do, as long as there's\n enough oxygen in it.", "I think what kept anything from\n happening between MacReidie and\n the stoker, or anyone else and the\n stoker, was that it would have meant\n trouble in the ship. Trouble, confined\n to our little percentage of the ship's\n volume, could seem like something\n much more important than the fate\n of the human race. It may not seem\n that way to you. But as long as no\n one began anything, we could all get\n along. We could have a good trip.\n\n\n MacReidie worried, I'm sure. I\n worried, sometimes. But nothing\n happened.", "And maybe it got to him, too. It\n may explain something. He and I\n were the last to leave. We went to\n the bunkroom, and he stopped in the\n middle of taking off his shirt. He\n stood there, looking out the porthole,\n and forgot I was there. I heard him\n reciting something, softly, under his\n breath, and I stepped a little closer.\n This is what it was:\n\n\"\nThe rockets rise against the skies,\nSlowly; in sunlight gleaming\nWith silver hue upon the blue.\nAnd the universe waits, dreaming.\n\"\nFor men must go where the flame-winds blow,\nThe gas clouds softly plaiting;\nWhere stars are spun and worlds begun,\nAnd men will find them waiting.\n\"\nThe song that roars where the rocket soars\nIs the song of the stellar flame;\nThe dreams of Man and galactic span\nAre equal and much the same.\n\"", "We were almost through when\n Mac suddenly grabbed my arm.\n \"Look!\"\n\n\n The stoker was coming down on\n one of the cargo slings. He stood\n upright, his booted feet planted wide,\n one arm curled up over his head and\n around the hoist cable. He was in his\n dusty brown Marine uniform, the\n scarlet collar tabs bright as blood at\n his throat, his major's insignia glittering\n at his shoulders, the battle\n stripes on his sleeves.\n\n\n The Jeks stopped their lifts. They\n knew that uniform. They sat up in\n their saddles and watched him come\n down. When the sling touched the\n ground, he jumped off quietly and\n walked toward the nearest Jek. They\n all followed him with their eyes.", "He might have come from any\n town on Earth. Don't believe the historians\n too much. Don't pay too much\n attention to the Chamber of Commerce\n plaques. When a man's name\n becomes public property, strange\n things happen to the facts.\nIt was MacReidie who first found\n out what he'd done during the war.\n\n\n I've got to explain about MacReidie.\n He takes his opinions fast\n and strong. He's a good man—is, or\n was; I haven't seen him for a long\n while—but he liked things simple.\n\n\n MacReidie said the duffelbag broke\n loose and floated into the middle of\n the bunkroom during acceleration.\n He opened it to see whose it was.\n When he found out, he closed it up\n and strapped it back in its place at\n the foot of the stoker's bunk.", "\"You don't know,\" Mac said. \"It's\n there. In his duffel. Damn it, we're\n going out to trade with his sworn\n enemies! Why do you suppose he\n wanted to sign on? Why do you suppose\n he's so eager to go!\"\n\n\n \"You think he's going to try to\n start something?\"\n\n\n \"Think! That's exactly what he's\n going for. One last big alley fight.\n One last brawl. When they cut him\n down—do you suppose they'll stop\n with him? They'll kill us, and then\n they'll go in and stamp Earth flat!\n You know it as well as I do.\"", "THE STOKER\n\n AND THE STARS\nBY JOHN A. SENTRY\nWhen\nyou've had your ears pinned\n back in a bowknot, it's sometimes hard\n to remember that an intelligent people\n has no respect for a whipped enemy\n ... but does for a fairly beaten enemy.\nIllustrated by van Dongen\nKnow\n him? Yes, I know\n him—\nknew\nhim. That\n was twenty years ago.\n\n\n Everybody knows\n him now. Everybody\n who passed him on the street knows\n him. Everybody who went to the same\n schools, or even to different schools\n in different towns, knows him now.\n Ask them. But I knew him. I lived\n three feet away from him for a month\n and a half. I shipped with him and\n called him by his first name.\n\n\n What was he like? What was he\n thinking, sitting on the edge of his\n bunk with his jaw in his palm and\n his eyes on the stars? What did he\n think he was after?", "\"We've got to stop him,\" Mac\n said, and both of us started toward\n him. His hands were both in plain\n sight, one holding his duffelbag,\n which was swelled out with the bulk\n of his airsuit. He wasn't carrying a\n weapon of any kind. He was walking\n casually, taking his time.\n\n\n Mac and I had almost reached him\n when a Jek with insignia on his\n coveralls suddenly jumped down\n from his lift and came forward to\n meet him. It was an odd thing to\n see—the stoker, and the Jek, who\n did not stand as tall. MacReidie and\n I stepped back.\n\n\n The Jek was coal black, his scales\n glittering in the cold sunlight, his\n hatchet-face inscrutable. He stopped\n when the stoker was a few paces\n away. The stoker stopped, too. All\n the Jeks were watching him and paying\n no attention to anything else. The\n field might as well have been empty\n except for those two.", "I couldn't really describe him to\n you. He had a duffelbag in his hand\n and a packed airsuit on his back. The\n skin of his face had been dried out\n by ship's air, burned by ultraviolet\n and broiled by infra red. The pupils\n of his eyes had little cloudy specks in\n them where the cosmic rays had shot\n through them. But his eyes were\n steady and his body was hard. What\n did he look like? He looked like a\n man.\nIt was after the war, and we were\n beaten. There used to be a school of\n thought among us that deplored our\n combativeness; before we had ever\n met any people from off Earth, even,\n you could hear people saying we\n were toughest, cruelest life-form in\n the Universe, unfit to mingle with\n the gentler wiser races in the stars,\n and a sure bet to steal their galaxy\n and corrupt it forever. Where\n these people got their information, I\n don't know.", "We liked it that way. Understand\n me—we didn't accept it, we didn't\n knuckle under with waiting murder\n in our hearts—we\nliked\nit. We were\n grateful just to be left alone again.\n We were happy we hadn't been\n wiped out like the upstarts the rest\n of the Universe thought us to be.\n When they let us keep our own solar\n system and carry on a trickle of trade\n with the outside, we accepted it for\n the fantastically generous gift it was.\n Too many of our best men were dead\n for us to have any remaining claim\n on these things in our own right. I\n know how it was. I was there, twenty\n years ago. I was a little, pudgy\n man with short breath and a high-pitched\n voice. I was a typical Earthman.\nWe were out on a God-forsaken\n landing field on Mars, MacReidie\n and I, loading cargo aboard the\nSerenus\n. MacReidie was First Officer.\n I was Second. The stranger came\n walking up to us.", "MacReidie was my relief on the\n bridge. When he came up, he didn't\n relieve me right away. He stood next\n to my chair and looked out through\n the ports.\n\n\n \"Captain leave any special instructions\n in the Order Book?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Just the usual. Keep a tight watch\n and proceed cautiously.\"\n\n\n \"That new stoker,\" Mac said.\n\n\n \"Yeah?\"\n\n\n \"I knew there was something\n wrong with him. He's got an old\n Marine uniform in his duffel.\"\n\n\n I didn't say anything. Mac glanced\n over at me. \"Well?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\" I didn't.\n\n\n I couldn't say I was surprised. It\n had to be something like that, about\n the stoker. The mark was on him, as\n I've said.", "He was a very quiet man. Quiet in\n the way he moved and talked. When\n we were both climbing into our\n bunks, that first night, I introduced\n myself and he introduced himself.\n Then he heaved himself into his\n bunk, rolled over on his side, fixed\n his straps, and fell asleep. He was\n always friendly toward me, but he\n must have been very tired that first\n night. I often wondered what kind\n of a life he'd lived after the war—what\n he'd done that made him different\n from the men who simply\n grew older in the bars. I wonder,\n now, if he really did do anything\n different. In an odd way, I like to\n think that one day, in a bar, on a\n day that seemed like all the rest to\n him when it began, he suddenly looked\n up with some new thought, put\n down his glass, and walked straight\n to the Earth-Mars shuttle field.", "I saw MacReidie's mouth turn\n down at the corners. But he couldn't\n gainsay the man any more than I\n could. MacReidie wasn't a mumbling\n man, so he said angrily: \"O.K.,\n bucko, you'll stoke. Go and sign on.\"", "\"\n—so there we were at a million\n per, and the air was gettin' thick. The\n Skipper says 'Cheer up, brave boys,\n we'll—'\n\"\n\n\n He was singing. He had a terrible\n voice, but he could carry a tune, and\n he was hammering it out at the top\n of his lungs.\n\n\n \"\nTwas the last cruise of the\nVenus,\nby God you should of seen us! The\n pipes were full of whisky, and just\n to make things risky, the jets\n were ...\n\"\n\n\n The crew were chuckling into their\n own chest phones. I could hear Daniels\n trying to cut him off. But he\n kept going. I started laughing myself.\n No one's supposed to jam an\n intercom, but it made the crew feel\n good. When the crew feels good, the\n ship runs right, and it had been a\n long time since they'd been happy." ] ]
valid	59368	[ "How does memory erasing work in the story?", "Who lives with Ronnie?", "How much time passes during the story?", "Where does the family live?", "How many adult characters have speaking roles?", "What is the relationship like between Edith and Ronnie?", "When does Dad think books should have been destroyed?", "What is the relationship like between Ronnie and David?", "What qualities does a person need before they are taught to read?", "Why was reading forbidden?" ]	[ [ "Reading can only be scrambled in a person’s memory, but not erased", "It is done only to families that abandon their children", "All experiences are completely forgotten for a given time period", "Select memories can be wiped out" ], [ "Mom, Dad", "Mom, Dad, Grandmother", "Mom, Dad, Kenny", "Mom, Grandmother, Mr. Davis" ], [ "Part of a day", "Two years", "A month", "Eight years" ], [ "In a suburb in Illinois", "In an apartment in the city", "In Washington, DC for Dad’s work", "In a small town near the countryside" ], [ "Three", "Two", "Four", "Five" ], [ "Edith is strict with no tolerance towards Ronnie", "Edith taught Ronnie to read", "They are kindred spirits that had similar interests in childhood", "Edith adopted Ronnie in his childhood" ], [ "Before 1925", "In the year 2000", "Before 1956", "In the year 2056" ], [ "Ronnie plays with David after school", "David is angry with Ronnie and desperate for solutions", "David taught Ronnie to read secretly", "David is tolerant of Ronnie’s desire to learn" ], [ "Lack of farming skills", "High IQ, no mechanical abilities", "Government credentials", "Status, allegiance" ], [ "It created castes", "It turned citizens against the government, making it risky for a child of a government employee to learn to read", "It is not revealed", "It turned people away from the hard labor the government required of them" ] ]	[ 3, 1, 1, 4, 2, 3, 3, 2, 4, 3 ]	[ 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "Dad rose, fists clenched, staring strangely at nothing.\n\n\n \"Two years,\" he breathed. \"I thought I had a good son, and yet for two\n years—\" He shook his head unbelievingly. \"Maybe it's my own fault.\n Maybe I shouldn't have come to this small town. I should have taken a\n house in Washington instead of trying to commute.\"\n\n\n \"David,\" said Mom, very seriously, almost as if she were praying, \"it\n won't be necessary to have him memory-washed, will it?\"\n\n\n Dad looked at Mom, frowning. Then he gazed at Ronnie. His soft-spoken\n words were as ominous as the low growl of thunder:", "Silence settled over the room, punctuated only by the ticking of the\n antique clock. All movement seemed frozen, as if the room lay at the\n bottom of a cold, thick sea.\n\n\n \"David,\" Mom finally said.\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one solution. We can't destroy two years of Ronnie's\n memory—you said that yourself. So we'll have to take him to a\n psychiatrist or maybe a psychoneurologist. A few short treatments—\"\n\n\n Dad interrupted: \"But he'd\nstill\nremember how to read, unconsciously\n anyway. Even permi-hypnosis would wear off in time. The boy can't keep\n going to psychiatrists for the rest of his life.\"\n\n\n Thoughtfully he laced his fingers together. \"Edith, what kind of a book\n was he reading?\"", "A corner of Mom's mouth twitched. \"David, I didn't want anything like\n this. I thought maybe Ronnie could have a few private psychiatric\n treatments. They can do wonderful things now—permi-hypnosis, creations\n of artificial psychic blocks. A memory-wash would mean that Ronnie'd\n have the mind of a six-year-old child again. He'd have to start to\n school all over again.\"\n\n\n Dad returned to his chair. He buried his face in trembling hands, and\n some of his anger seemed replaced by despair. \"Lord, Edith, I don't\n know what to do.\"\n\n\n He looked up abruptly, as if struck by a chilling new thought. \"You\n can't keep a two-year memory-wash a secret. I never thought of that\n before. Why, that alone would mean the end of my promotions.\"", "Mom's face paled. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"You've interested Ronnie in old things. To a child in its formative\n years, in a pleasant house, these things symbolize peace and security.\n Ronnie's been conditioned from the very time of his birth to like old\n things. It was natural for him to be attracted by books. And we were\n just too stupid to realize it.\"\n\n\n Mom whispered hoarsely, \"I'm sorry, David.\"\n\n\n Hot anger flashed in Dad's eyes. \"It isn't enough to be sorry. Don't\n you see what this means? Ronnie'll have to be memory-washed back to the\n time of birth. He'll have to start life all over again.\"\n\n\n \"No, David, no!\"", "\"And in my position I can't afford to have an eight-year-old son with\n the mind of a new-born baby. It's got to be Abandonment, Edith, there's\n no other way. The boy can start life over in a reformatory, with a\n complete memory-wash. He'll never know we existed, and he'll never\n bother us again.\"\n\n\n Mom ran up to Dad. She put her hands on his shoulders. Great sobs burst\n from her shaking body.\n\n\n \"You can't, David! I won't let—\"\n\n\n He slapped her then with the palm of his hand. The sound was like a\n pistol shot in the hot, tight air.\n\n\n Dad stood now like a colossus carved of black ice. His right hand was\n still upraised, ready to strike again.\n\n\n Then his hand fell. His mind seemed to be toying with a new thought, a\n new concept.", "\"Damn it, son, how could you even\nthink\nof being a Reader? You've got\n a life-sized, 3-D video here, and we put on the smell and touch and\n heat attachments just for you. You can listen to any tape in the world\n at school. Ronnie, don't you realize I'd lose my job if people knew I\n had a Reader for a son?\"\n\n\n \"B—but, Daddy—\"\n\n\n Dad jumped to his feet. \"I hate to say it, Edith, but we've got to put\n this boy in a reformatory. Maybe a good memory-wash will take some of\n the nonsense out of him!\"\nRonnie suppressed a sob. \"No, Daddy, don't let them take away my brain.\n Please—\"\n\n\n Dad stood very tall and very stiff, not even looking at him. \"They\n won't take your brain, just your memory for the past two years.\"", "Sound and movement below. Mom flicking off the controls of the\n kitchen's Auto-Chef. The slow stride of her high heels through the\n living room. The slamming of a gyro-car door. The opening of the front\n door of the house.\n\n\n Dad's deep, happy voice echoed up the stairway:\n\n\n \"Hi, beautiful!\"\n\n\n Ronnie huddled in the darkness by the half-open bedroom door.\nPlease, Mama\n, his mind cried,\nplease don't tell Daddy what I did.\nThere was a droning, indistinct murmur.\n\n\n Dad burst, \"He was doing\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n More murmuring.\n\n\n \"I can't believe it. You really saw him?... I'll be damned.\"", "\"Old,\" he mused, \"—so very old. Ironic, isn't it? Our lives are being\n wrecked by things that should have been destroyed and forgotten a\n hundred years ago.\"\n\n\n A sudden frown contorted his dark features.\nTick-de-tock, tick-de-tock\n, said the antique clock.\n\n\n \"A hundred years old,\" he repeated. His mouth became a hard, thin line.\n \"Edith, I think I know why Ronnie wanted to read, why he fell into the\n trap so easily.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, David?\"\n\n\n Dad nodded at the clock, and the slow, smouldering anger returned to\n his face. \"It's\nyour\nfault, Edith. You've always liked old things.\n That clock of your great-great-grandmother's. Those old prints on the\n wall. That stamp collection you started for Ronnie—stamps dated way\n back to the 1940's.\"", "He threw the books to the floor. He stepped backward. His face was a\n mask of combined sorrow, disbelief, and rage.\n\n\n \"\nEdith.\n\" He spat the name as if it were acid on his tongue. \"Edith,\nyou can read\n!\"\nMom sucked in her sobs. Her chalk-white cheeks were still streaked with\n rivulets of tears.\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, David. I've never told anyone—not even Ronnie. I haven't\n read a book, haven't even looked at one since we were married. I've\n tried to be a good wife—\"\n\n\n \"A good wife.\" Dad sneered. His face was so ugly that Ronnie looked\n away.\n\n\n Mom continued, \"I—I learned when I was just a girl. I was young like\n Ronnie. You know how young people are—reckless, eager to do forbidden\n things.\"", "A tremor passed through Mom's slender body. \"There were three books on\n his bed. I'm not sure which one he was actually reading.\"\n\n\n Dad groaned. \"\nThree\nof them. Did you burn them?\"\n\n\n \"No, dear, not yet.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know. Ronnie seemed to like them so much. I thought that maybe\n tonight, after you d seen them—\"\n\n\n \"Get them, damn it. Let's burn the filthy things.\"\n\n\n Mom went to a mahogany chest in the dining room, produced three faded\n volumes. She put them on the hassock at Dad's feet.\n\n\n Dad gingerly turned a cover. His lips curled in disgust as if he were\n touching a rotting corpse.", "Ronnie silently closed the bedroom door.\nWhy did you tell him, Mama? Why did you have to tell him?\n\"Ronnie!\" Dad called.\n\n\n Ronnie held his breath. His legs seemed as numb and nerveless as the\n stumps of dead trees.\n\n\n \"\nRonnie! Come down here!\n\"\nLike an automaton, Ronnie shuffled out of his bedroom. He stepped\n on the big silver disk on the landing. The auto-stairs clicked into\n humming movement under his weight.\n\n\n To his left, on the wall, he caught kaleidoscopic glimpses of Mom's old\n pictures, copies of paintings by medieval artists like Rembrandt, Van\n Gogh, Cezanne, Dali. The faces seemed to be mocking him. Ronnie felt\n like a wounded bird falling out of the sky.\n\n\n He saw that Dad and Mom were waiting for him.", "He seized one of the books on the hassock.\n\n\n \"Edith,\" he said crisply, \"just what was Ronnie reading? What's the\n name of this book?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe—The Adventures of Tom Sawyer\n,\" said Mom through her sobs.\n\n\n He grabbed the second book, held it before her shimmering vision.\n\n\n \"And the name of this?\"\n\n\n \"\nTarzan of The Apes.\n\" Mom's voice was a barely audible croak.\n\n\n \"Who's the author?\"\n\n\n \"Edgar Rice Burroughs.\"\n\n\n \"And this one?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe Wizard of Oz.\n\"\n\n\n \"Who wrote it?\"\n\n\n \"L. Frank Baum.\"", "To Ronnie, the clock seemed to be saying:\nDaddy's coming, Daddy's coming.\nThe soft shadows of September twilight in this year of 2056 were\n seeping into the bedroom. Ronnie welcomed the fall of darkness. He\n wanted to sink into its deep silence, to become one with it, to escape\n forever from savage tongues and angry eyes.\n\n\n A burst of hope entered Ronnie's fear-filled eyes. Maybe something\n would happen. Maybe Dad would have an accident. Maybe—\n\n\n He bit his lip hard, shook his head. No. No matter what Dad might do,\n it wasn't right to wish—\n\n\n The whirling whine of a gyro-car mushroomed up from the landing\n platform outside.\n\n\n Ronnie shivered, his pulse quickening. The muscles in his small body\n were like a web of taut-drawn wires.", "\"Mr. Davis isn't normal,\" Dad snapped. \"He's a hermit. No decent family\n would let him in their house. He grows his own food and sometimes he\n takes care of gardens for people. I want you to have more than that. I\n want you to have a nice home and be respected by people.\"\n\n\n Dad puffed furiously on his cigarette.\n\n\n \"And you can't get ahead if people know you've been a Reader. That's\n something you can't live down. No matter how hard you try, people\n always stumble upon the truth.\"", "Ronnie tried to keep his legs from shaking. \"It was—Daddy, you won't\n make trouble, will you?\"\n\n\n \"This is between you and me, son. We don't care about anyone else.\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was Kenny Davis. He—\"\n\n\n Dad's fingers tightened on Ronnie's arms. \"Kenny Davis!\" he spat. \"The\n boy's no good. His father never had a job in his life. Nobody'd even\n offer him a job. Why, the whole town knows he's a Reader!\"\n\n\n Mom stepped forward. \"David, you promised you'd be sensible about this.\n You promised you wouldn't get angry.\"\n\n\n Dad grunted. \"All right, son. Go ahead.\"\n\n\n \"Well, one day after school Kenny said he'd show me something. He took\n me to his house—\"", "Ronnie scowled. \"But if things are written down, someone has to read\n them, don't they?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, son. One person in ten thousand might reach the point where\n his corporation or bureau will teach him to read. But you prove your\n ability and loyalty first. By the time you're 35 or 40, they might\nwant\nyou to learn to read. But for young people and children—well,\n it just isn't done. Why, the President himself wasn't trusted to learn\n till he was nearly fifty!\"\n\n\n Dad straightened his shoulders. \"Look at me. I'm only 30, but I've been\n a messenger for Secret material already. In a few years, if things go\n well, I should be handling\nTop\n-Secret stuff. And who knows? Maybe by\n the time I'm 50 I'll be\ngiving\norders instead of carrying them. Then\n I'll learn to read, too. That's the right way to do it.\"", "\"You went to that\nshack\n? You actually—\"\n\n\n \"Dear,\" said Mom. \"You promised.\"\n\n\n A moment of silence.\n\n\n Ronnie said, \"He took me to his house. I met his dad. Mr. Davis is lots\n of fun. He has a beard and he paints pictures and he's collected almost\n five hundred books.\"\n\n\n Ronnie's voice quavered.\n\n\n \"Go on,\" said Dad sternly.\n\n\n \"And I—and Mr. Davis said he'd teach me to read them if I promised not\n to tell anybody. So he taught me a little every day after school—oh,\n Dad, books are fun to read. They tell you things you can't see on the\n video or hear on the tapes.\"\n\n\n \"How long ago did all this start?\n\n\n \"T—two years ago.\"", "Mom's round blue eyes were full of mist and sadness. She hadn't\n bothered to smooth her clipped, creamy-brown hair as she always did\n when Dad was coming home.\n\n\n And Dad, handsome in his night-black, skin-tight Pentagon uniform, had\n become a hostile stranger with narrowed eyes of black fire.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Ronnie?\" asked Dad. \"Were you really—really reading a\n book?\"\n\n\n Ronnie gulped. He nodded.\n\n\n \"Good Lord,\" Dad murmured. He took a deep breath and squatted down,\n held Ronnie's arms and looked hard into his eyes. For an instant he\n became the kind, understanding father that Ronnie knew.\n\n\n \"Tell me all about it, son. Where did you get the book? Who taught you\n to read?\"", "Ronnie shifted uncomfortably on the hassock. \"But can't a Reader get a\n job that's not so important. Like a barber or a plumber or—\"\n\n\n \"Don't you understand? The barber and plumbing equipment corporations\n set up their stores and hire men to work for them. You think they'd\n hire a Reader? People'd say you were a spy or a subversive or that\n you're crazy like old man Davis.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Davis isn't crazy. And he isn't old. He's young, just like you,\n and—\"\n\n\n \"Ronnie!\"\n\n\n Dad's voice was knife-sharp and December-cold. Ronnie slipped off the\n hassock as if struck physically by the fury of the voice. He sat\n sprawled on his small posterior, fresh fear etched on his thin features.", "Her words echoed in the room until absorbed by the ceaseless, ticking\n clock. Mom stood straight and unashamed. Dad's gaze traveled slowly to\n Ronnie, to Mom, to the clock, back and forth.\n\n\n At last he said, \"Get out.\"\n\n\n Mom stared blankly.\n\n\n \"Get out. Both of you. You can send for your things later. I never want\n to see either of you again.\"\n\n\n \"David—\"\n\n\n \"I said\nget out\n!\"\n\n\n Ronnie and Mom left the house. Outside, the night was dark and a wind\n was rising. Mom shivered in her thin house cloak.\n\n\n \"Where will we go, Ronnie? Where, where—\"\n\n\n \"I know a place. Maybe we can stay there—for a little while.\"" ], [ "\"A little while?\" Mom echoed. Her mind seemed frozen by the cold wind.\n\n\n Ronnie led her through the cold, windy streets. They left the lights of\n the town behind them. They stumbled over a rough, dirt country road.\n They came to a small, rough-boarded house in the deep shadow of an\n eucalyptus grove. The windows of the house were like friendly eyes of\n warm golden light.\n\n\n An instant later a door opened and a small boy ran out to meet them.\n\n\n \"Hi, Kenny.\"\n\n\n \"Hi. Who's that? Your mom?\"\n\n\n \"Yep. Mr. Davis in?\"\n\n\n \"Sure.\"\n\n\n And a kindly-faced, bearded young man appeared in the golden doorway,\n smiling.\n\n\n Ronnie and Mom stepped inside.", "Ronnie tried to keep his legs from shaking. \"It was—Daddy, you won't\n make trouble, will you?\"\n\n\n \"This is between you and me, son. We don't care about anyone else.\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was Kenny Davis. He—\"\n\n\n Dad's fingers tightened on Ronnie's arms. \"Kenny Davis!\" he spat. \"The\n boy's no good. His father never had a job in his life. Nobody'd even\n offer him a job. Why, the whole town knows he's a Reader!\"\n\n\n Mom stepped forward. \"David, you promised you'd be sensible about this.\n You promised you wouldn't get angry.\"\n\n\n Dad grunted. \"All right, son. Go ahead.\"\n\n\n \"Well, one day after school Kenny said he'd show me something. He took\n me to his house—\"", "Sound and movement below. Mom flicking off the controls of the\n kitchen's Auto-Chef. The slow stride of her high heels through the\n living room. The slamming of a gyro-car door. The opening of the front\n door of the house.\n\n\n Dad's deep, happy voice echoed up the stairway:\n\n\n \"Hi, beautiful!\"\n\n\n Ronnie huddled in the darkness by the half-open bedroom door.\nPlease, Mama\n, his mind cried,\nplease don't tell Daddy what I did.\nThere was a droning, indistinct murmur.\n\n\n Dad burst, \"He was doing\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n More murmuring.\n\n\n \"I can't believe it. You really saw him?... I'll be damned.\"", "Ronnie silently closed the bedroom door.\nWhy did you tell him, Mama? Why did you have to tell him?\n\"Ronnie!\" Dad called.\n\n\n Ronnie held his breath. His legs seemed as numb and nerveless as the\n stumps of dead trees.\n\n\n \"\nRonnie! Come down here!\n\"\nLike an automaton, Ronnie shuffled out of his bedroom. He stepped\n on the big silver disk on the landing. The auto-stairs clicked into\n humming movement under his weight.\n\n\n To his left, on the wall, he caught kaleidoscopic glimpses of Mom's old\n pictures, copies of paintings by medieval artists like Rembrandt, Van\n Gogh, Cezanne, Dali. The faces seemed to be mocking him. Ronnie felt\n like a wounded bird falling out of the sky.\n\n\n He saw that Dad and Mom were waiting for him.", "Her words echoed in the room until absorbed by the ceaseless, ticking\n clock. Mom stood straight and unashamed. Dad's gaze traveled slowly to\n Ronnie, to Mom, to the clock, back and forth.\n\n\n At last he said, \"Get out.\"\n\n\n Mom stared blankly.\n\n\n \"Get out. Both of you. You can send for your things later. I never want\n to see either of you again.\"\n\n\n \"David—\"\n\n\n \"I said\nget out\n!\"\n\n\n Ronnie and Mom left the house. Outside, the night was dark and a wind\n was rising. Mom shivered in her thin house cloak.\n\n\n \"Where will we go, Ronnie? Where, where—\"\n\n\n \"I know a place. Maybe we can stay there—for a little while.\"", "To Ronnie, the clock seemed to be saying:\nDaddy's coming, Daddy's coming.\nThe soft shadows of September twilight in this year of 2056 were\n seeping into the bedroom. Ronnie welcomed the fall of darkness. He\n wanted to sink into its deep silence, to become one with it, to escape\n forever from savage tongues and angry eyes.\n\n\n A burst of hope entered Ronnie's fear-filled eyes. Maybe something\n would happen. Maybe Dad would have an accident. Maybe—\n\n\n He bit his lip hard, shook his head. No. No matter what Dad might do,\n it wasn't right to wish—\n\n\n The whirling whine of a gyro-car mushroomed up from the landing\n platform outside.\n\n\n Ronnie shivered, his pulse quickening. The muscles in his small body\n were like a web of taut-drawn wires.", "Ronnie shifted uncomfortably on the hassock. \"But can't a Reader get a\n job that's not so important. Like a barber or a plumber or—\"\n\n\n \"Don't you understand? The barber and plumbing equipment corporations\n set up their stores and hire men to work for them. You think they'd\n hire a Reader? People'd say you were a spy or a subversive or that\n you're crazy like old man Davis.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Davis isn't crazy. And he isn't old. He's young, just like you,\n and—\"\n\n\n \"Ronnie!\"\n\n\n Dad's voice was knife-sharp and December-cold. Ronnie slipped off the\n hassock as if struck physically by the fury of the voice. He sat\n sprawled on his small posterior, fresh fear etched on his thin features.", "Mom's face paled. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"You've interested Ronnie in old things. To a child in its formative\n years, in a pleasant house, these things symbolize peace and security.\n Ronnie's been conditioned from the very time of his birth to like old\n things. It was natural for him to be attracted by books. And we were\n just too stupid to realize it.\"\n\n\n Mom whispered hoarsely, \"I'm sorry, David.\"\n\n\n Hot anger flashed in Dad's eyes. \"It isn't enough to be sorry. Don't\n you see what this means? Ronnie'll have to be memory-washed back to the\n time of birth. He'll have to start life all over again.\"\n\n\n \"No, David, no!\"", "\"I don't know, Edith. I don't know.\"\nDad strode to his easy chair by the fireplace. He sank into its\n foam-rubber softness, sighing. He murmured a syllable into a tiny\n ball-mike on the side of the chair. A metallic hand raised a lighted\n cigarette to his lips.\n\n\n \"Come here, son.\"\n\n\n Ronnie followed and sat on the hassock by Dad's feet.\n\n\n \"Maybe I've never really explained things to you, Ronnie. You see, you\n won't always be a boy. Someday you'll have to find a way of making a\n living. You've only two choices: You work for the government, like I\n do, or for a corporation.\"\n\n\n Ronnie blinked. \"Mr. Davis doesn't work for the gover'ment or for a\n corpor-ation.\"", "\"Old,\" he mused, \"—so very old. Ironic, isn't it? Our lives are being\n wrecked by things that should have been destroyed and forgotten a\n hundred years ago.\"\n\n\n A sudden frown contorted his dark features.\nTick-de-tock, tick-de-tock\n, said the antique clock.\n\n\n \"A hundred years old,\" he repeated. His mouth became a hard, thin line.\n \"Edith, I think I know why Ronnie wanted to read, why he fell into the\n trap so easily.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, David?\"\n\n\n Dad nodded at the clock, and the slow, smouldering anger returned to\n his face. \"It's\nyour\nfault, Edith. You've always liked old things.\n That clock of your great-great-grandmother's. Those old prints on the\n wall. That stamp collection you started for Ronnie—stamps dated way\n back to the 1940's.\"", "\"You went to that\nshack\n? You actually—\"\n\n\n \"Dear,\" said Mom. \"You promised.\"\n\n\n A moment of silence.\n\n\n Ronnie said, \"He took me to his house. I met his dad. Mr. Davis is lots\n of fun. He has a beard and he paints pictures and he's collected almost\n five hundred books.\"\n\n\n Ronnie's voice quavered.\n\n\n \"Go on,\" said Dad sternly.\n\n\n \"And I—and Mr. Davis said he'd teach me to read them if I promised not\n to tell anybody. So he taught me a little every day after school—oh,\n Dad, books are fun to read. They tell you things you can't see on the\n video or hear on the tapes.\"\n\n\n \"How long ago did all this start?\n\n\n \"T—two years ago.\"", "Mom's round blue eyes were full of mist and sadness. She hadn't\n bothered to smooth her clipped, creamy-brown hair as she always did\n when Dad was coming home.\n\n\n And Dad, handsome in his night-black, skin-tight Pentagon uniform, had\n become a hostile stranger with narrowed eyes of black fire.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Ronnie?\" asked Dad. \"Were you really—really reading a\n book?\"\n\n\n Ronnie gulped. He nodded.\n\n\n \"Good Lord,\" Dad murmured. He took a deep breath and squatted down,\n held Ronnie's arms and looked hard into his eyes. For an instant he\n became the kind, understanding father that Ronnie knew.\n\n\n \"Tell me all about it, son. Where did you get the book? Who taught you\n to read?\"", "A tremor passed through Mom's slender body. \"There were three books on\n his bed. I'm not sure which one he was actually reading.\"\n\n\n Dad groaned. \"\nThree\nof them. Did you burn them?\"\n\n\n \"No, dear, not yet.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know. Ronnie seemed to like them so much. I thought that maybe\n tonight, after you d seen them—\"\n\n\n \"Get them, damn it. Let's burn the filthy things.\"\n\n\n Mom went to a mahogany chest in the dining room, produced three faded\n volumes. She put them on the hassock at Dad's feet.\n\n\n Dad gingerly turned a cover. His lips curled in disgust as if he were\n touching a rotting corpse.", "A corner of Mom's mouth twitched. \"David, I didn't want anything like\n this. I thought maybe Ronnie could have a few private psychiatric\n treatments. They can do wonderful things now—permi-hypnosis, creations\n of artificial psychic blocks. A memory-wash would mean that Ronnie'd\n have the mind of a six-year-old child again. He'd have to start to\n school all over again.\"\n\n\n Dad returned to his chair. He buried his face in trembling hands, and\n some of his anger seemed replaced by despair. \"Lord, Edith, I don't\n know what to do.\"\n\n\n He looked up abruptly, as if struck by a chilling new thought. \"You\n can't keep a two-year memory-wash a secret. I never thought of that\n before. Why, that alone would mean the end of my promotions.\"", "Dad rose, fists clenched, staring strangely at nothing.\n\n\n \"Two years,\" he breathed. \"I thought I had a good son, and yet for two\n years—\" He shook his head unbelievingly. \"Maybe it's my own fault.\n Maybe I shouldn't have come to this small town. I should have taken a\n house in Washington instead of trying to commute.\"\n\n\n \"David,\" said Mom, very seriously, almost as if she were praying, \"it\n won't be necessary to have him memory-washed, will it?\"\n\n\n Dad looked at Mom, frowning. Then he gazed at Ronnie. His soft-spoken\n words were as ominous as the low growl of thunder:", "He threw the books to the floor. He stepped backward. His face was a\n mask of combined sorrow, disbelief, and rage.\n\n\n \"\nEdith.\n\" He spat the name as if it were acid on his tongue. \"Edith,\nyou can read\n!\"\nMom sucked in her sobs. Her chalk-white cheeks were still streaked with\n rivulets of tears.\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, David. I've never told anyone—not even Ronnie. I haven't\n read a book, haven't even looked at one since we were married. I've\n tried to be a good wife—\"\n\n\n \"A good wife.\" Dad sneered. His face was so ugly that Ronnie looked\n away.\n\n\n Mom continued, \"I—I learned when I was just a girl. I was young like\n Ronnie. You know how young people are—reckless, eager to do forbidden\n things.\"", "\"Mr. Davis isn't normal,\" Dad snapped. \"He's a hermit. No decent family\n would let him in their house. He grows his own food and sometimes he\n takes care of gardens for people. I want you to have more than that. I\n want you to have a nice home and be respected by people.\"\n\n\n Dad puffed furiously on his cigarette.\n\n\n \"And you can't get ahead if people know you've been a Reader. That's\n something you can't live down. No matter how hard you try, people\n always stumble upon the truth.\"", "\"You lied to me,\" Dad snapped. \"For ten years you've lied to me. Why\n did you want to read, Edith?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n Mom was silent for a few seconds. She was breathing heavily, but no\n longer crying. A calmness entered her features, and for the first time\n tonight Ronnie saw no fear in her eyes.\n\n\n \"I wanted to read,\" she said, her voice firm and proud, \"because, as\n Ronnie said, it's fun. The video's nice, with its dancers and lovers\n and Indians and spacemen—but sometimes you want more than that.\n Sometimes you want to know how people feel deep inside and how they\n think. And there are beautiful words and beautiful thoughts, just like\n there are beautiful paintings. It isn't enough just to hear them and\n then forget them. Sometimes you want to keep the words and thoughts\n before you because in that way you feel that they belong to you.\"", "He seized one of the books on the hassock.\n\n\n \"Edith,\" he said crisply, \"just what was Ronnie reading? What's the\n name of this book?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe—The Adventures of Tom Sawyer\n,\" said Mom through her sobs.\n\n\n He grabbed the second book, held it before her shimmering vision.\n\n\n \"And the name of this?\"\n\n\n \"\nTarzan of The Apes.\n\" Mom's voice was a barely audible croak.\n\n\n \"Who's the author?\"\n\n\n \"Edgar Rice Burroughs.\"\n\n\n \"And this one?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe Wizard of Oz.\n\"\n\n\n \"Who wrote it?\"\n\n\n \"L. Frank Baum.\"", "Ronnie scowled. \"But if things are written down, someone has to read\n them, don't they?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, son. One person in ten thousand might reach the point where\n his corporation or bureau will teach him to read. But you prove your\n ability and loyalty first. By the time you're 35 or 40, they might\nwant\nyou to learn to read. But for young people and children—well,\n it just isn't done. Why, the President himself wasn't trusted to learn\n till he was nearly fifty!\"\n\n\n Dad straightened his shoulders. \"Look at me. I'm only 30, but I've been\n a messenger for Secret material already. In a few years, if things go\n well, I should be handling\nTop\n-Secret stuff. And who knows? Maybe by\n the time I'm 50 I'll be\ngiving\norders instead of carrying them. Then\n I'll learn to read, too. That's the right way to do it.\"" ], [ "\"A little while?\" Mom echoed. Her mind seemed frozen by the cold wind.\n\n\n Ronnie led her through the cold, windy streets. They left the lights of\n the town behind them. They stumbled over a rough, dirt country road.\n They came to a small, rough-boarded house in the deep shadow of an\n eucalyptus grove. The windows of the house were like friendly eyes of\n warm golden light.\n\n\n An instant later a door opened and a small boy ran out to meet them.\n\n\n \"Hi, Kenny.\"\n\n\n \"Hi. Who's that? Your mom?\"\n\n\n \"Yep. Mr. Davis in?\"\n\n\n \"Sure.\"\n\n\n And a kindly-faced, bearded young man appeared in the golden doorway,\n smiling.\n\n\n Ronnie and Mom stepped inside.", "Her words echoed in the room until absorbed by the ceaseless, ticking\n clock. Mom stood straight and unashamed. Dad's gaze traveled slowly to\n Ronnie, to Mom, to the clock, back and forth.\n\n\n At last he said, \"Get out.\"\n\n\n Mom stared blankly.\n\n\n \"Get out. Both of you. You can send for your things later. I never want\n to see either of you again.\"\n\n\n \"David—\"\n\n\n \"I said\nget out\n!\"\n\n\n Ronnie and Mom left the house. Outside, the night was dark and a wind\n was rising. Mom shivered in her thin house cloak.\n\n\n \"Where will we go, Ronnie? Where, where—\"\n\n\n \"I know a place. Maybe we can stay there—for a little while.\"", "To Ronnie, the clock seemed to be saying:\nDaddy's coming, Daddy's coming.\nThe soft shadows of September twilight in this year of 2056 were\n seeping into the bedroom. Ronnie welcomed the fall of darkness. He\n wanted to sink into its deep silence, to become one with it, to escape\n forever from savage tongues and angry eyes.\n\n\n A burst of hope entered Ronnie's fear-filled eyes. Maybe something\n would happen. Maybe Dad would have an accident. Maybe—\n\n\n He bit his lip hard, shook his head. No. No matter what Dad might do,\n it wasn't right to wish—\n\n\n The whirling whine of a gyro-car mushroomed up from the landing\n platform outside.\n\n\n Ronnie shivered, his pulse quickening. The muscles in his small body\n were like a web of taut-drawn wires.", "\"You went to that\nshack\n? You actually—\"\n\n\n \"Dear,\" said Mom. \"You promised.\"\n\n\n A moment of silence.\n\n\n Ronnie said, \"He took me to his house. I met his dad. Mr. Davis is lots\n of fun. He has a beard and he paints pictures and he's collected almost\n five hundred books.\"\n\n\n Ronnie's voice quavered.\n\n\n \"Go on,\" said Dad sternly.\n\n\n \"And I—and Mr. Davis said he'd teach me to read them if I promised not\n to tell anybody. So he taught me a little every day after school—oh,\n Dad, books are fun to read. They tell you things you can't see on the\n video or hear on the tapes.\"\n\n\n \"How long ago did all this start?\n\n\n \"T—two years ago.\"", "\"Old,\" he mused, \"—so very old. Ironic, isn't it? Our lives are being\n wrecked by things that should have been destroyed and forgotten a\n hundred years ago.\"\n\n\n A sudden frown contorted his dark features.\nTick-de-tock, tick-de-tock\n, said the antique clock.\n\n\n \"A hundred years old,\" he repeated. His mouth became a hard, thin line.\n \"Edith, I think I know why Ronnie wanted to read, why he fell into the\n trap so easily.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, David?\"\n\n\n Dad nodded at the clock, and the slow, smouldering anger returned to\n his face. \"It's\nyour\nfault, Edith. You've always liked old things.\n That clock of your great-great-grandmother's. Those old prints on the\n wall. That stamp collection you started for Ronnie—stamps dated way\n back to the 1940's.\"", "Sound and movement below. Mom flicking off the controls of the\n kitchen's Auto-Chef. The slow stride of her high heels through the\n living room. The slamming of a gyro-car door. The opening of the front\n door of the house.\n\n\n Dad's deep, happy voice echoed up the stairway:\n\n\n \"Hi, beautiful!\"\n\n\n Ronnie huddled in the darkness by the half-open bedroom door.\nPlease, Mama\n, his mind cried,\nplease don't tell Daddy what I did.\nThere was a droning, indistinct murmur.\n\n\n Dad burst, \"He was doing\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n More murmuring.\n\n\n \"I can't believe it. You really saw him?... I'll be damned.\"", "He threw the books to the floor. He stepped backward. His face was a\n mask of combined sorrow, disbelief, and rage.\n\n\n \"\nEdith.\n\" He spat the name as if it were acid on his tongue. \"Edith,\nyou can read\n!\"\nMom sucked in her sobs. Her chalk-white cheeks were still streaked with\n rivulets of tears.\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, David. I've never told anyone—not even Ronnie. I haven't\n read a book, haven't even looked at one since we were married. I've\n tried to be a good wife—\"\n\n\n \"A good wife.\" Dad sneered. His face was so ugly that Ronnie looked\n away.\n\n\n Mom continued, \"I—I learned when I was just a girl. I was young like\n Ronnie. You know how young people are—reckless, eager to do forbidden\n things.\"", "A tremor passed through Mom's slender body. \"There were three books on\n his bed. I'm not sure which one he was actually reading.\"\n\n\n Dad groaned. \"\nThree\nof them. Did you burn them?\"\n\n\n \"No, dear, not yet.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know. Ronnie seemed to like them so much. I thought that maybe\n tonight, after you d seen them—\"\n\n\n \"Get them, damn it. Let's burn the filthy things.\"\n\n\n Mom went to a mahogany chest in the dining room, produced three faded\n volumes. She put them on the hassock at Dad's feet.\n\n\n Dad gingerly turned a cover. His lips curled in disgust as if he were\n touching a rotting corpse.", "Ronnie tried to keep his legs from shaking. \"It was—Daddy, you won't\n make trouble, will you?\"\n\n\n \"This is between you and me, son. We don't care about anyone else.\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was Kenny Davis. He—\"\n\n\n Dad's fingers tightened on Ronnie's arms. \"Kenny Davis!\" he spat. \"The\n boy's no good. His father never had a job in his life. Nobody'd even\n offer him a job. Why, the whole town knows he's a Reader!\"\n\n\n Mom stepped forward. \"David, you promised you'd be sensible about this.\n You promised you wouldn't get angry.\"\n\n\n Dad grunted. \"All right, son. Go ahead.\"\n\n\n \"Well, one day after school Kenny said he'd show me something. He took\n me to his house—\"", "Ronnie silently closed the bedroom door.\nWhy did you tell him, Mama? Why did you have to tell him?\n\"Ronnie!\" Dad called.\n\n\n Ronnie held his breath. His legs seemed as numb and nerveless as the\n stumps of dead trees.\n\n\n \"\nRonnie! Come down here!\n\"\nLike an automaton, Ronnie shuffled out of his bedroom. He stepped\n on the big silver disk on the landing. The auto-stairs clicked into\n humming movement under his weight.\n\n\n To his left, on the wall, he caught kaleidoscopic glimpses of Mom's old\n pictures, copies of paintings by medieval artists like Rembrandt, Van\n Gogh, Cezanne, Dali. The faces seemed to be mocking him. Ronnie felt\n like a wounded bird falling out of the sky.\n\n\n He saw that Dad and Mom were waiting for him.", "Dad rose, fists clenched, staring strangely at nothing.\n\n\n \"Two years,\" he breathed. \"I thought I had a good son, and yet for two\n years—\" He shook his head unbelievingly. \"Maybe it's my own fault.\n Maybe I shouldn't have come to this small town. I should have taken a\n house in Washington instead of trying to commute.\"\n\n\n \"David,\" said Mom, very seriously, almost as if she were praying, \"it\n won't be necessary to have him memory-washed, will it?\"\n\n\n Dad looked at Mom, frowning. Then he gazed at Ronnie. His soft-spoken\n words were as ominous as the low growl of thunder:", "Silence settled over the room, punctuated only by the ticking of the\n antique clock. All movement seemed frozen, as if the room lay at the\n bottom of a cold, thick sea.\n\n\n \"David,\" Mom finally said.\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one solution. We can't destroy two years of Ronnie's\n memory—you said that yourself. So we'll have to take him to a\n psychiatrist or maybe a psychoneurologist. A few short treatments—\"\n\n\n Dad interrupted: \"But he'd\nstill\nremember how to read, unconsciously\n anyway. Even permi-hypnosis would wear off in time. The boy can't keep\n going to psychiatrists for the rest of his life.\"\n\n\n Thoughtfully he laced his fingers together. \"Edith, what kind of a book\n was he reading?\"", "Mom's round blue eyes were full of mist and sadness. She hadn't\n bothered to smooth her clipped, creamy-brown hair as she always did\n when Dad was coming home.\n\n\n And Dad, handsome in his night-black, skin-tight Pentagon uniform, had\n become a hostile stranger with narrowed eyes of black fire.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Ronnie?\" asked Dad. \"Were you really—really reading a\n book?\"\n\n\n Ronnie gulped. He nodded.\n\n\n \"Good Lord,\" Dad murmured. He took a deep breath and squatted down,\n held Ronnie's arms and looked hard into his eyes. For an instant he\n became the kind, understanding father that Ronnie knew.\n\n\n \"Tell me all about it, son. Where did you get the book? Who taught you\n to read?\"", "\"You lied to me,\" Dad snapped. \"For ten years you've lied to me. Why\n did you want to read, Edith?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n Mom was silent for a few seconds. She was breathing heavily, but no\n longer crying. A calmness entered her features, and for the first time\n tonight Ronnie saw no fear in her eyes.\n\n\n \"I wanted to read,\" she said, her voice firm and proud, \"because, as\n Ronnie said, it's fun. The video's nice, with its dancers and lovers\n and Indians and spacemen—but sometimes you want more than that.\n Sometimes you want to know how people feel deep inside and how they\n think. And there are beautiful words and beautiful thoughts, just like\n there are beautiful paintings. It isn't enough just to hear them and\n then forget them. Sometimes you want to keep the words and thoughts\n before you because in that way you feel that they belong to you.\"", "Mom's face paled. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"You've interested Ronnie in old things. To a child in its formative\n years, in a pleasant house, these things symbolize peace and security.\n Ronnie's been conditioned from the very time of his birth to like old\n things. It was natural for him to be attracted by books. And we were\n just too stupid to realize it.\"\n\n\n Mom whispered hoarsely, \"I'm sorry, David.\"\n\n\n Hot anger flashed in Dad's eyes. \"It isn't enough to be sorry. Don't\n you see what this means? Ronnie'll have to be memory-washed back to the\n time of birth. He'll have to start life all over again.\"\n\n\n \"No, David, no!\"", "He seized one of the books on the hassock.\n\n\n \"Edith,\" he said crisply, \"just what was Ronnie reading? What's the\n name of this book?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe—The Adventures of Tom Sawyer\n,\" said Mom through her sobs.\n\n\n He grabbed the second book, held it before her shimmering vision.\n\n\n \"And the name of this?\"\n\n\n \"\nTarzan of The Apes.\n\" Mom's voice was a barely audible croak.\n\n\n \"Who's the author?\"\n\n\n \"Edgar Rice Burroughs.\"\n\n\n \"And this one?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe Wizard of Oz.\n\"\n\n\n \"Who wrote it?\"\n\n\n \"L. Frank Baum.\"", "\"And in my position I can't afford to have an eight-year-old son with\n the mind of a new-born baby. It's got to be Abandonment, Edith, there's\n no other way. The boy can start life over in a reformatory, with a\n complete memory-wash. He'll never know we existed, and he'll never\n bother us again.\"\n\n\n Mom ran up to Dad. She put her hands on his shoulders. Great sobs burst\n from her shaking body.\n\n\n \"You can't, David! I won't let—\"\n\n\n He slapped her then with the palm of his hand. The sound was like a\n pistol shot in the hot, tight air.\n\n\n Dad stood now like a colossus carved of black ice. His right hand was\n still upraised, ready to strike again.\n\n\n Then his hand fell. His mind seemed to be toying with a new thought, a\n new concept.", "A corner of Mom's mouth twitched. \"David, I didn't want anything like\n this. I thought maybe Ronnie could have a few private psychiatric\n treatments. They can do wonderful things now—permi-hypnosis, creations\n of artificial psychic blocks. A memory-wash would mean that Ronnie'd\n have the mind of a six-year-old child again. He'd have to start to\n school all over again.\"\n\n\n Dad returned to his chair. He buried his face in trembling hands, and\n some of his anger seemed replaced by despair. \"Lord, Edith, I don't\n know what to do.\"\n\n\n He looked up abruptly, as if struck by a chilling new thought. \"You\n can't keep a two-year memory-wash a secret. I never thought of that\n before. Why, that alone would mean the end of my promotions.\"", "\"Mr. Davis isn't normal,\" Dad snapped. \"He's a hermit. No decent family\n would let him in their house. He grows his own food and sometimes he\n takes care of gardens for people. I want you to have more than that. I\n want you to have a nice home and be respected by people.\"\n\n\n Dad puffed furiously on his cigarette.\n\n\n \"And you can't get ahead if people know you've been a Reader. That's\n something you can't live down. No matter how hard you try, people\n always stumble upon the truth.\"", "\"Damn it, son, how could you even\nthink\nof being a Reader? You've got\n a life-sized, 3-D video here, and we put on the smell and touch and\n heat attachments just for you. You can listen to any tape in the world\n at school. Ronnie, don't you realize I'd lose my job if people knew I\n had a Reader for a son?\"\n\n\n \"B—but, Daddy—\"\n\n\n Dad jumped to his feet. \"I hate to say it, Edith, but we've got to put\n this boy in a reformatory. Maybe a good memory-wash will take some of\n the nonsense out of him!\"\nRonnie suppressed a sob. \"No, Daddy, don't let them take away my brain.\n Please—\"\n\n\n Dad stood very tall and very stiff, not even looking at him. \"They\n won't take your brain, just your memory for the past two years.\"" ], [ "\"A little while?\" Mom echoed. Her mind seemed frozen by the cold wind.\n\n\n Ronnie led her through the cold, windy streets. They left the lights of\n the town behind them. They stumbled over a rough, dirt country road.\n They came to a small, rough-boarded house in the deep shadow of an\n eucalyptus grove. The windows of the house were like friendly eyes of\n warm golden light.\n\n\n An instant later a door opened and a small boy ran out to meet them.\n\n\n \"Hi, Kenny.\"\n\n\n \"Hi. Who's that? Your mom?\"\n\n\n \"Yep. Mr. Davis in?\"\n\n\n \"Sure.\"\n\n\n And a kindly-faced, bearded young man appeared in the golden doorway,\n smiling.\n\n\n Ronnie and Mom stepped inside.", "Her words echoed in the room until absorbed by the ceaseless, ticking\n clock. Mom stood straight and unashamed. Dad's gaze traveled slowly to\n Ronnie, to Mom, to the clock, back and forth.\n\n\n At last he said, \"Get out.\"\n\n\n Mom stared blankly.\n\n\n \"Get out. Both of you. You can send for your things later. I never want\n to see either of you again.\"\n\n\n \"David—\"\n\n\n \"I said\nget out\n!\"\n\n\n Ronnie and Mom left the house. Outside, the night was dark and a wind\n was rising. Mom shivered in her thin house cloak.\n\n\n \"Where will we go, Ronnie? Where, where—\"\n\n\n \"I know a place. Maybe we can stay there—for a little while.\"", "Ronnie silently closed the bedroom door.\nWhy did you tell him, Mama? Why did you have to tell him?\n\"Ronnie!\" Dad called.\n\n\n Ronnie held his breath. His legs seemed as numb and nerveless as the\n stumps of dead trees.\n\n\n \"\nRonnie! Come down here!\n\"\nLike an automaton, Ronnie shuffled out of his bedroom. He stepped\n on the big silver disk on the landing. The auto-stairs clicked into\n humming movement under his weight.\n\n\n To his left, on the wall, he caught kaleidoscopic glimpses of Mom's old\n pictures, copies of paintings by medieval artists like Rembrandt, Van\n Gogh, Cezanne, Dali. The faces seemed to be mocking him. Ronnie felt\n like a wounded bird falling out of the sky.\n\n\n He saw that Dad and Mom were waiting for him.", "\"Mr. Davis isn't normal,\" Dad snapped. \"He's a hermit. No decent family\n would let him in their house. He grows his own food and sometimes he\n takes care of gardens for people. I want you to have more than that. I\n want you to have a nice home and be respected by people.\"\n\n\n Dad puffed furiously on his cigarette.\n\n\n \"And you can't get ahead if people know you've been a Reader. That's\n something you can't live down. No matter how hard you try, people\n always stumble upon the truth.\"", "Sound and movement below. Mom flicking off the controls of the\n kitchen's Auto-Chef. The slow stride of her high heels through the\n living room. The slamming of a gyro-car door. The opening of the front\n door of the house.\n\n\n Dad's deep, happy voice echoed up the stairway:\n\n\n \"Hi, beautiful!\"\n\n\n Ronnie huddled in the darkness by the half-open bedroom door.\nPlease, Mama\n, his mind cried,\nplease don't tell Daddy what I did.\nThere was a droning, indistinct murmur.\n\n\n Dad burst, \"He was doing\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n More murmuring.\n\n\n \"I can't believe it. You really saw him?... I'll be damned.\"", "Dad rose, fists clenched, staring strangely at nothing.\n\n\n \"Two years,\" he breathed. \"I thought I had a good son, and yet for two\n years—\" He shook his head unbelievingly. \"Maybe it's my own fault.\n Maybe I shouldn't have come to this small town. I should have taken a\n house in Washington instead of trying to commute.\"\n\n\n \"David,\" said Mom, very seriously, almost as if she were praying, \"it\n won't be necessary to have him memory-washed, will it?\"\n\n\n Dad looked at Mom, frowning. Then he gazed at Ronnie. His soft-spoken\n words were as ominous as the low growl of thunder:", "A tremor passed through Mom's slender body. \"There were three books on\n his bed. I'm not sure which one he was actually reading.\"\n\n\n Dad groaned. \"\nThree\nof them. Did you burn them?\"\n\n\n \"No, dear, not yet.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know. Ronnie seemed to like them so much. I thought that maybe\n tonight, after you d seen them—\"\n\n\n \"Get them, damn it. Let's burn the filthy things.\"\n\n\n Mom went to a mahogany chest in the dining room, produced three faded\n volumes. She put them on the hassock at Dad's feet.\n\n\n Dad gingerly turned a cover. His lips curled in disgust as if he were\n touching a rotting corpse.", "Mom's round blue eyes were full of mist and sadness. She hadn't\n bothered to smooth her clipped, creamy-brown hair as she always did\n when Dad was coming home.\n\n\n And Dad, handsome in his night-black, skin-tight Pentagon uniform, had\n become a hostile stranger with narrowed eyes of black fire.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Ronnie?\" asked Dad. \"Were you really—really reading a\n book?\"\n\n\n Ronnie gulped. He nodded.\n\n\n \"Good Lord,\" Dad murmured. He took a deep breath and squatted down,\n held Ronnie's arms and looked hard into his eyes. For an instant he\n became the kind, understanding father that Ronnie knew.\n\n\n \"Tell me all about it, son. Where did you get the book? Who taught you\n to read?\"", "To Ronnie, the clock seemed to be saying:\nDaddy's coming, Daddy's coming.\nThe soft shadows of September twilight in this year of 2056 were\n seeping into the bedroom. Ronnie welcomed the fall of darkness. He\n wanted to sink into its deep silence, to become one with it, to escape\n forever from savage tongues and angry eyes.\n\n\n A burst of hope entered Ronnie's fear-filled eyes. Maybe something\n would happen. Maybe Dad would have an accident. Maybe—\n\n\n He bit his lip hard, shook his head. No. No matter what Dad might do,\n it wasn't right to wish—\n\n\n The whirling whine of a gyro-car mushroomed up from the landing\n platform outside.\n\n\n Ronnie shivered, his pulse quickening. The muscles in his small body\n were like a web of taut-drawn wires.", "\"You went to that\nshack\n? You actually—\"\n\n\n \"Dear,\" said Mom. \"You promised.\"\n\n\n A moment of silence.\n\n\n Ronnie said, \"He took me to his house. I met his dad. Mr. Davis is lots\n of fun. He has a beard and he paints pictures and he's collected almost\n five hundred books.\"\n\n\n Ronnie's voice quavered.\n\n\n \"Go on,\" said Dad sternly.\n\n\n \"And I—and Mr. Davis said he'd teach me to read them if I promised not\n to tell anybody. So he taught me a little every day after school—oh,\n Dad, books are fun to read. They tell you things you can't see on the\n video or hear on the tapes.\"\n\n\n \"How long ago did all this start?\n\n\n \"T—two years ago.\"", "Ronnie tried to keep his legs from shaking. \"It was—Daddy, you won't\n make trouble, will you?\"\n\n\n \"This is between you and me, son. We don't care about anyone else.\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was Kenny Davis. He—\"\n\n\n Dad's fingers tightened on Ronnie's arms. \"Kenny Davis!\" he spat. \"The\n boy's no good. His father never had a job in his life. Nobody'd even\n offer him a job. Why, the whole town knows he's a Reader!\"\n\n\n Mom stepped forward. \"David, you promised you'd be sensible about this.\n You promised you wouldn't get angry.\"\n\n\n Dad grunted. \"All right, son. Go ahead.\"\n\n\n \"Well, one day after school Kenny said he'd show me something. He took\n me to his house—\"", "\"Old,\" he mused, \"—so very old. Ironic, isn't it? Our lives are being\n wrecked by things that should have been destroyed and forgotten a\n hundred years ago.\"\n\n\n A sudden frown contorted his dark features.\nTick-de-tock, tick-de-tock\n, said the antique clock.\n\n\n \"A hundred years old,\" he repeated. His mouth became a hard, thin line.\n \"Edith, I think I know why Ronnie wanted to read, why he fell into the\n trap so easily.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, David?\"\n\n\n Dad nodded at the clock, and the slow, smouldering anger returned to\n his face. \"It's\nyour\nfault, Edith. You've always liked old things.\n That clock of your great-great-grandmother's. Those old prints on the\n wall. That stamp collection you started for Ronnie—stamps dated way\n back to the 1940's.\"", "He threw the books to the floor. He stepped backward. His face was a\n mask of combined sorrow, disbelief, and rage.\n\n\n \"\nEdith.\n\" He spat the name as if it were acid on his tongue. \"Edith,\nyou can read\n!\"\nMom sucked in her sobs. Her chalk-white cheeks were still streaked with\n rivulets of tears.\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, David. I've never told anyone—not even Ronnie. I haven't\n read a book, haven't even looked at one since we were married. I've\n tried to be a good wife—\"\n\n\n \"A good wife.\" Dad sneered. His face was so ugly that Ronnie looked\n away.\n\n\n Mom continued, \"I—I learned when I was just a girl. I was young like\n Ronnie. You know how young people are—reckless, eager to do forbidden\n things.\"", "Mom's face paled. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"You've interested Ronnie in old things. To a child in its formative\n years, in a pleasant house, these things symbolize peace and security.\n Ronnie's been conditioned from the very time of his birth to like old\n things. It was natural for him to be attracted by books. And we were\n just too stupid to realize it.\"\n\n\n Mom whispered hoarsely, \"I'm sorry, David.\"\n\n\n Hot anger flashed in Dad's eyes. \"It isn't enough to be sorry. Don't\n you see what this means? Ronnie'll have to be memory-washed back to the\n time of birth. He'll have to start life all over again.\"\n\n\n \"No, David, no!\"", "\"You lied to me,\" Dad snapped. \"For ten years you've lied to me. Why\n did you want to read, Edith?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n Mom was silent for a few seconds. She was breathing heavily, but no\n longer crying. A calmness entered her features, and for the first time\n tonight Ronnie saw no fear in her eyes.\n\n\n \"I wanted to read,\" she said, her voice firm and proud, \"because, as\n Ronnie said, it's fun. The video's nice, with its dancers and lovers\n and Indians and spacemen—but sometimes you want more than that.\n Sometimes you want to know how people feel deep inside and how they\n think. And there are beautiful words and beautiful thoughts, just like\n there are beautiful paintings. It isn't enough just to hear them and\n then forget them. Sometimes you want to keep the words and thoughts\n before you because in that way you feel that they belong to you.\"", "\"I don't know, Edith. I don't know.\"\nDad strode to his easy chair by the fireplace. He sank into its\n foam-rubber softness, sighing. He murmured a syllable into a tiny\n ball-mike on the side of the chair. A metallic hand raised a lighted\n cigarette to his lips.\n\n\n \"Come here, son.\"\n\n\n Ronnie followed and sat on the hassock by Dad's feet.\n\n\n \"Maybe I've never really explained things to you, Ronnie. You see, you\n won't always be a boy. Someday you'll have to find a way of making a\n living. You've only two choices: You work for the government, like I\n do, or for a corporation.\"\n\n\n Ronnie blinked. \"Mr. Davis doesn't work for the gover'ment or for a\n corpor-ation.\"", "He seized one of the books on the hassock.\n\n\n \"Edith,\" he said crisply, \"just what was Ronnie reading? What's the\n name of this book?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe—The Adventures of Tom Sawyer\n,\" said Mom through her sobs.\n\n\n He grabbed the second book, held it before her shimmering vision.\n\n\n \"And the name of this?\"\n\n\n \"\nTarzan of The Apes.\n\" Mom's voice was a barely audible croak.\n\n\n \"Who's the author?\"\n\n\n \"Edgar Rice Burroughs.\"\n\n\n \"And this one?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe Wizard of Oz.\n\"\n\n\n \"Who wrote it?\"\n\n\n \"L. Frank Baum.\"", "\"And in my position I can't afford to have an eight-year-old son with\n the mind of a new-born baby. It's got to be Abandonment, Edith, there's\n no other way. The boy can start life over in a reformatory, with a\n complete memory-wash. He'll never know we existed, and he'll never\n bother us again.\"\n\n\n Mom ran up to Dad. She put her hands on his shoulders. Great sobs burst\n from her shaking body.\n\n\n \"You can't, David! I won't let—\"\n\n\n He slapped her then with the palm of his hand. The sound was like a\n pistol shot in the hot, tight air.\n\n\n Dad stood now like a colossus carved of black ice. His right hand was\n still upraised, ready to strike again.\n\n\n Then his hand fell. His mind seemed to be toying with a new thought, a\n new concept.", "Ronnie shifted uncomfortably on the hassock. \"But can't a Reader get a\n job that's not so important. Like a barber or a plumber or—\"\n\n\n \"Don't you understand? The barber and plumbing equipment corporations\n set up their stores and hire men to work for them. You think they'd\n hire a Reader? People'd say you were a spy or a subversive or that\n you're crazy like old man Davis.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Davis isn't crazy. And he isn't old. He's young, just like you,\n and—\"\n\n\n \"Ronnie!\"\n\n\n Dad's voice was knife-sharp and December-cold. Ronnie slipped off the\n hassock as if struck physically by the fury of the voice. He sat\n sprawled on his small posterior, fresh fear etched on his thin features.", "Silence settled over the room, punctuated only by the ticking of the\n antique clock. All movement seemed frozen, as if the room lay at the\n bottom of a cold, thick sea.\n\n\n \"David,\" Mom finally said.\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one solution. We can't destroy two years of Ronnie's\n memory—you said that yourself. So we'll have to take him to a\n psychiatrist or maybe a psychoneurologist. A few short treatments—\"\n\n\n Dad interrupted: \"But he'd\nstill\nremember how to read, unconsciously\n anyway. Even permi-hypnosis would wear off in time. The boy can't keep\n going to psychiatrists for the rest of his life.\"\n\n\n Thoughtfully he laced his fingers together. \"Edith, what kind of a book\n was he reading?\"" ], [ "\"A little while?\" Mom echoed. Her mind seemed frozen by the cold wind.\n\n\n Ronnie led her through the cold, windy streets. They left the lights of\n the town behind them. They stumbled over a rough, dirt country road.\n They came to a small, rough-boarded house in the deep shadow of an\n eucalyptus grove. The windows of the house were like friendly eyes of\n warm golden light.\n\n\n An instant later a door opened and a small boy ran out to meet them.\n\n\n \"Hi, Kenny.\"\n\n\n \"Hi. Who's that? Your mom?\"\n\n\n \"Yep. Mr. Davis in?\"\n\n\n \"Sure.\"\n\n\n And a kindly-faced, bearded young man appeared in the golden doorway,\n smiling.\n\n\n Ronnie and Mom stepped inside.", "Sound and movement below. Mom flicking off the controls of the\n kitchen's Auto-Chef. The slow stride of her high heels through the\n living room. The slamming of a gyro-car door. The opening of the front\n door of the house.\n\n\n Dad's deep, happy voice echoed up the stairway:\n\n\n \"Hi, beautiful!\"\n\n\n Ronnie huddled in the darkness by the half-open bedroom door.\nPlease, Mama\n, his mind cried,\nplease don't tell Daddy what I did.\nThere was a droning, indistinct murmur.\n\n\n Dad burst, \"He was doing\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n More murmuring.\n\n\n \"I can't believe it. You really saw him?... I'll be damned.\"", "\"You lied to me,\" Dad snapped. \"For ten years you've lied to me. Why\n did you want to read, Edith?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n Mom was silent for a few seconds. She was breathing heavily, but no\n longer crying. A calmness entered her features, and for the first time\n tonight Ronnie saw no fear in her eyes.\n\n\n \"I wanted to read,\" she said, her voice firm and proud, \"because, as\n Ronnie said, it's fun. The video's nice, with its dancers and lovers\n and Indians and spacemen—but sometimes you want more than that.\n Sometimes you want to know how people feel deep inside and how they\n think. And there are beautiful words and beautiful thoughts, just like\n there are beautiful paintings. It isn't enough just to hear them and\n then forget them. Sometimes you want to keep the words and thoughts\n before you because in that way you feel that they belong to you.\"", "Her words echoed in the room until absorbed by the ceaseless, ticking\n clock. Mom stood straight and unashamed. Dad's gaze traveled slowly to\n Ronnie, to Mom, to the clock, back and forth.\n\n\n At last he said, \"Get out.\"\n\n\n Mom stared blankly.\n\n\n \"Get out. Both of you. You can send for your things later. I never want\n to see either of you again.\"\n\n\n \"David—\"\n\n\n \"I said\nget out\n!\"\n\n\n Ronnie and Mom left the house. Outside, the night was dark and a wind\n was rising. Mom shivered in her thin house cloak.\n\n\n \"Where will we go, Ronnie? Where, where—\"\n\n\n \"I know a place. Maybe we can stay there—for a little while.\"", "\"You went to that\nshack\n? You actually—\"\n\n\n \"Dear,\" said Mom. \"You promised.\"\n\n\n A moment of silence.\n\n\n Ronnie said, \"He took me to his house. I met his dad. Mr. Davis is lots\n of fun. He has a beard and he paints pictures and he's collected almost\n five hundred books.\"\n\n\n Ronnie's voice quavered.\n\n\n \"Go on,\" said Dad sternly.\n\n\n \"And I—and Mr. Davis said he'd teach me to read them if I promised not\n to tell anybody. So he taught me a little every day after school—oh,\n Dad, books are fun to read. They tell you things you can't see on the\n video or hear on the tapes.\"\n\n\n \"How long ago did all this start?\n\n\n \"T—two years ago.\"", "He threw the books to the floor. He stepped backward. His face was a\n mask of combined sorrow, disbelief, and rage.\n\n\n \"\nEdith.\n\" He spat the name as if it were acid on his tongue. \"Edith,\nyou can read\n!\"\nMom sucked in her sobs. Her chalk-white cheeks were still streaked with\n rivulets of tears.\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, David. I've never told anyone—not even Ronnie. I haven't\n read a book, haven't even looked at one since we were married. I've\n tried to be a good wife—\"\n\n\n \"A good wife.\" Dad sneered. His face was so ugly that Ronnie looked\n away.\n\n\n Mom continued, \"I—I learned when I was just a girl. I was young like\n Ronnie. You know how young people are—reckless, eager to do forbidden\n things.\"", "He seized one of the books on the hassock.\n\n\n \"Edith,\" he said crisply, \"just what was Ronnie reading? What's the\n name of this book?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe—The Adventures of Tom Sawyer\n,\" said Mom through her sobs.\n\n\n He grabbed the second book, held it before her shimmering vision.\n\n\n \"And the name of this?\"\n\n\n \"\nTarzan of The Apes.\n\" Mom's voice was a barely audible croak.\n\n\n \"Who's the author?\"\n\n\n \"Edgar Rice Burroughs.\"\n\n\n \"And this one?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe Wizard of Oz.\n\"\n\n\n \"Who wrote it?\"\n\n\n \"L. Frank Baum.\"", "Mom's round blue eyes were full of mist and sadness. She hadn't\n bothered to smooth her clipped, creamy-brown hair as she always did\n when Dad was coming home.\n\n\n And Dad, handsome in his night-black, skin-tight Pentagon uniform, had\n become a hostile stranger with narrowed eyes of black fire.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Ronnie?\" asked Dad. \"Were you really—really reading a\n book?\"\n\n\n Ronnie gulped. He nodded.\n\n\n \"Good Lord,\" Dad murmured. He took a deep breath and squatted down,\n held Ronnie's arms and looked hard into his eyes. For an instant he\n became the kind, understanding father that Ronnie knew.\n\n\n \"Tell me all about it, son. Where did you get the book? Who taught you\n to read?\"", "Ronnie tried to keep his legs from shaking. \"It was—Daddy, you won't\n make trouble, will you?\"\n\n\n \"This is between you and me, son. We don't care about anyone else.\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was Kenny Davis. He—\"\n\n\n Dad's fingers tightened on Ronnie's arms. \"Kenny Davis!\" he spat. \"The\n boy's no good. His father never had a job in his life. Nobody'd even\n offer him a job. Why, the whole town knows he's a Reader!\"\n\n\n Mom stepped forward. \"David, you promised you'd be sensible about this.\n You promised you wouldn't get angry.\"\n\n\n Dad grunted. \"All right, son. Go ahead.\"\n\n\n \"Well, one day after school Kenny said he'd show me something. He took\n me to his house—\"", "Ronnie silently closed the bedroom door.\nWhy did you tell him, Mama? Why did you have to tell him?\n\"Ronnie!\" Dad called.\n\n\n Ronnie held his breath. His legs seemed as numb and nerveless as the\n stumps of dead trees.\n\n\n \"\nRonnie! Come down here!\n\"\nLike an automaton, Ronnie shuffled out of his bedroom. He stepped\n on the big silver disk on the landing. The auto-stairs clicked into\n humming movement under his weight.\n\n\n To his left, on the wall, he caught kaleidoscopic glimpses of Mom's old\n pictures, copies of paintings by medieval artists like Rembrandt, Van\n Gogh, Cezanne, Dali. The faces seemed to be mocking him. Ronnie felt\n like a wounded bird falling out of the sky.\n\n\n He saw that Dad and Mom were waiting for him.", "\"Old,\" he mused, \"—so very old. Ironic, isn't it? Our lives are being\n wrecked by things that should have been destroyed and forgotten a\n hundred years ago.\"\n\n\n A sudden frown contorted his dark features.\nTick-de-tock, tick-de-tock\n, said the antique clock.\n\n\n \"A hundred years old,\" he repeated. His mouth became a hard, thin line.\n \"Edith, I think I know why Ronnie wanted to read, why he fell into the\n trap so easily.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, David?\"\n\n\n Dad nodded at the clock, and the slow, smouldering anger returned to\n his face. \"It's\nyour\nfault, Edith. You've always liked old things.\n That clock of your great-great-grandmother's. Those old prints on the\n wall. That stamp collection you started for Ronnie—stamps dated way\n back to the 1940's.\"", "Dad rose, fists clenched, staring strangely at nothing.\n\n\n \"Two years,\" he breathed. \"I thought I had a good son, and yet for two\n years—\" He shook his head unbelievingly. \"Maybe it's my own fault.\n Maybe I shouldn't have come to this small town. I should have taken a\n house in Washington instead of trying to commute.\"\n\n\n \"David,\" said Mom, very seriously, almost as if she were praying, \"it\n won't be necessary to have him memory-washed, will it?\"\n\n\n Dad looked at Mom, frowning. Then he gazed at Ronnie. His soft-spoken\n words were as ominous as the low growl of thunder:", "To Ronnie, the clock seemed to be saying:\nDaddy's coming, Daddy's coming.\nThe soft shadows of September twilight in this year of 2056 were\n seeping into the bedroom. Ronnie welcomed the fall of darkness. He\n wanted to sink into its deep silence, to become one with it, to escape\n forever from savage tongues and angry eyes.\n\n\n A burst of hope entered Ronnie's fear-filled eyes. Maybe something\n would happen. Maybe Dad would have an accident. Maybe—\n\n\n He bit his lip hard, shook his head. No. No matter what Dad might do,\n it wasn't right to wish—\n\n\n The whirling whine of a gyro-car mushroomed up from the landing\n platform outside.\n\n\n Ronnie shivered, his pulse quickening. The muscles in his small body\n were like a web of taut-drawn wires.", "A tremor passed through Mom's slender body. \"There were three books on\n his bed. I'm not sure which one he was actually reading.\"\n\n\n Dad groaned. \"\nThree\nof them. Did you burn them?\"\n\n\n \"No, dear, not yet.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know. Ronnie seemed to like them so much. I thought that maybe\n tonight, after you d seen them—\"\n\n\n \"Get them, damn it. Let's burn the filthy things.\"\n\n\n Mom went to a mahogany chest in the dining room, produced three faded\n volumes. She put them on the hassock at Dad's feet.\n\n\n Dad gingerly turned a cover. His lips curled in disgust as if he were\n touching a rotting corpse.", "\"And in my position I can't afford to have an eight-year-old son with\n the mind of a new-born baby. It's got to be Abandonment, Edith, there's\n no other way. The boy can start life over in a reformatory, with a\n complete memory-wash. He'll never know we existed, and he'll never\n bother us again.\"\n\n\n Mom ran up to Dad. She put her hands on his shoulders. Great sobs burst\n from her shaking body.\n\n\n \"You can't, David! I won't let—\"\n\n\n He slapped her then with the palm of his hand. The sound was like a\n pistol shot in the hot, tight air.\n\n\n Dad stood now like a colossus carved of black ice. His right hand was\n still upraised, ready to strike again.\n\n\n Then his hand fell. His mind seemed to be toying with a new thought, a\n new concept.", "Silence settled over the room, punctuated only by the ticking of the\n antique clock. All movement seemed frozen, as if the room lay at the\n bottom of a cold, thick sea.\n\n\n \"David,\" Mom finally said.\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one solution. We can't destroy two years of Ronnie's\n memory—you said that yourself. So we'll have to take him to a\n psychiatrist or maybe a psychoneurologist. A few short treatments—\"\n\n\n Dad interrupted: \"But he'd\nstill\nremember how to read, unconsciously\n anyway. Even permi-hypnosis would wear off in time. The boy can't keep\n going to psychiatrists for the rest of his life.\"\n\n\n Thoughtfully he laced his fingers together. \"Edith, what kind of a book\n was he reading?\"", "\"I don't know, Edith. I don't know.\"\nDad strode to his easy chair by the fireplace. He sank into its\n foam-rubber softness, sighing. He murmured a syllable into a tiny\n ball-mike on the side of the chair. A metallic hand raised a lighted\n cigarette to his lips.\n\n\n \"Come here, son.\"\n\n\n Ronnie followed and sat on the hassock by Dad's feet.\n\n\n \"Maybe I've never really explained things to you, Ronnie. You see, you\n won't always be a boy. Someday you'll have to find a way of making a\n living. You've only two choices: You work for the government, like I\n do, or for a corporation.\"\n\n\n Ronnie blinked. \"Mr. Davis doesn't work for the gover'ment or for a\n corpor-ation.\"", "Ronnie scowled. \"But if things are written down, someone has to read\n them, don't they?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, son. One person in ten thousand might reach the point where\n his corporation or bureau will teach him to read. But you prove your\n ability and loyalty first. By the time you're 35 or 40, they might\nwant\nyou to learn to read. But for young people and children—well,\n it just isn't done. Why, the President himself wasn't trusted to learn\n till he was nearly fifty!\"\n\n\n Dad straightened his shoulders. \"Look at me. I'm only 30, but I've been\n a messenger for Secret material already. In a few years, if things go\n well, I should be handling\nTop\n-Secret stuff. And who knows? Maybe by\n the time I'm 50 I'll be\ngiving\norders instead of carrying them. Then\n I'll learn to read, too. That's the right way to do it.\"", "Mom's face paled. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"You've interested Ronnie in old things. To a child in its formative\n years, in a pleasant house, these things symbolize peace and security.\n Ronnie's been conditioned from the very time of his birth to like old\n things. It was natural for him to be attracted by books. And we were\n just too stupid to realize it.\"\n\n\n Mom whispered hoarsely, \"I'm sorry, David.\"\n\n\n Hot anger flashed in Dad's eyes. \"It isn't enough to be sorry. Don't\n you see what this means? Ronnie'll have to be memory-washed back to the\n time of birth. He'll have to start life all over again.\"\n\n\n \"No, David, no!\"", "\"Mr. Davis isn't normal,\" Dad snapped. \"He's a hermit. No decent family\n would let him in their house. He grows his own food and sometimes he\n takes care of gardens for people. I want you to have more than that. I\n want you to have a nice home and be respected by people.\"\n\n\n Dad puffed furiously on his cigarette.\n\n\n \"And you can't get ahead if people know you've been a Reader. That's\n something you can't live down. No matter how hard you try, people\n always stumble upon the truth.\"" ], [ "\"Old,\" he mused, \"—so very old. Ironic, isn't it? Our lives are being\n wrecked by things that should have been destroyed and forgotten a\n hundred years ago.\"\n\n\n A sudden frown contorted his dark features.\nTick-de-tock, tick-de-tock\n, said the antique clock.\n\n\n \"A hundred years old,\" he repeated. His mouth became a hard, thin line.\n \"Edith, I think I know why Ronnie wanted to read, why he fell into the\n trap so easily.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, David?\"\n\n\n Dad nodded at the clock, and the slow, smouldering anger returned to\n his face. \"It's\nyour\nfault, Edith. You've always liked old things.\n That clock of your great-great-grandmother's. Those old prints on the\n wall. That stamp collection you started for Ronnie—stamps dated way\n back to the 1940's.\"", "He threw the books to the floor. He stepped backward. His face was a\n mask of combined sorrow, disbelief, and rage.\n\n\n \"\nEdith.\n\" He spat the name as if it were acid on his tongue. \"Edith,\nyou can read\n!\"\nMom sucked in her sobs. Her chalk-white cheeks were still streaked with\n rivulets of tears.\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, David. I've never told anyone—not even Ronnie. I haven't\n read a book, haven't even looked at one since we were married. I've\n tried to be a good wife—\"\n\n\n \"A good wife.\" Dad sneered. His face was so ugly that Ronnie looked\n away.\n\n\n Mom continued, \"I—I learned when I was just a girl. I was young like\n Ronnie. You know how young people are—reckless, eager to do forbidden\n things.\"", "\"A little while?\" Mom echoed. Her mind seemed frozen by the cold wind.\n\n\n Ronnie led her through the cold, windy streets. They left the lights of\n the town behind them. They stumbled over a rough, dirt country road.\n They came to a small, rough-boarded house in the deep shadow of an\n eucalyptus grove. The windows of the house were like friendly eyes of\n warm golden light.\n\n\n An instant later a door opened and a small boy ran out to meet them.\n\n\n \"Hi, Kenny.\"\n\n\n \"Hi. Who's that? Your mom?\"\n\n\n \"Yep. Mr. Davis in?\"\n\n\n \"Sure.\"\n\n\n And a kindly-faced, bearded young man appeared in the golden doorway,\n smiling.\n\n\n Ronnie and Mom stepped inside.", "\"I don't know, Edith. I don't know.\"\nDad strode to his easy chair by the fireplace. He sank into its\n foam-rubber softness, sighing. He murmured a syllable into a tiny\n ball-mike on the side of the chair. A metallic hand raised a lighted\n cigarette to his lips.\n\n\n \"Come here, son.\"\n\n\n Ronnie followed and sat on the hassock by Dad's feet.\n\n\n \"Maybe I've never really explained things to you, Ronnie. You see, you\n won't always be a boy. Someday you'll have to find a way of making a\n living. You've only two choices: You work for the government, like I\n do, or for a corporation.\"\n\n\n Ronnie blinked. \"Mr. Davis doesn't work for the gover'ment or for a\n corpor-ation.\"", "\"You lied to me,\" Dad snapped. \"For ten years you've lied to me. Why\n did you want to read, Edith?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n Mom was silent for a few seconds. She was breathing heavily, but no\n longer crying. A calmness entered her features, and for the first time\n tonight Ronnie saw no fear in her eyes.\n\n\n \"I wanted to read,\" she said, her voice firm and proud, \"because, as\n Ronnie said, it's fun. The video's nice, with its dancers and lovers\n and Indians and spacemen—but sometimes you want more than that.\n Sometimes you want to know how people feel deep inside and how they\n think. And there are beautiful words and beautiful thoughts, just like\n there are beautiful paintings. It isn't enough just to hear them and\n then forget them. Sometimes you want to keep the words and thoughts\n before you because in that way you feel that they belong to you.\"", "Ronnie tried to keep his legs from shaking. \"It was—Daddy, you won't\n make trouble, will you?\"\n\n\n \"This is between you and me, son. We don't care about anyone else.\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was Kenny Davis. He—\"\n\n\n Dad's fingers tightened on Ronnie's arms. \"Kenny Davis!\" he spat. \"The\n boy's no good. His father never had a job in his life. Nobody'd even\n offer him a job. Why, the whole town knows he's a Reader!\"\n\n\n Mom stepped forward. \"David, you promised you'd be sensible about this.\n You promised you wouldn't get angry.\"\n\n\n Dad grunted. \"All right, son. Go ahead.\"\n\n\n \"Well, one day after school Kenny said he'd show me something. He took\n me to his house—\"", "A corner of Mom's mouth twitched. \"David, I didn't want anything like\n this. I thought maybe Ronnie could have a few private psychiatric\n treatments. They can do wonderful things now—permi-hypnosis, creations\n of artificial psychic blocks. A memory-wash would mean that Ronnie'd\n have the mind of a six-year-old child again. He'd have to start to\n school all over again.\"\n\n\n Dad returned to his chair. He buried his face in trembling hands, and\n some of his anger seemed replaced by despair. \"Lord, Edith, I don't\n know what to do.\"\n\n\n He looked up abruptly, as if struck by a chilling new thought. \"You\n can't keep a two-year memory-wash a secret. I never thought of that\n before. Why, that alone would mean the end of my promotions.\"", "Ronnie silently closed the bedroom door.\nWhy did you tell him, Mama? Why did you have to tell him?\n\"Ronnie!\" Dad called.\n\n\n Ronnie held his breath. His legs seemed as numb and nerveless as the\n stumps of dead trees.\n\n\n \"\nRonnie! Come down here!\n\"\nLike an automaton, Ronnie shuffled out of his bedroom. He stepped\n on the big silver disk on the landing. The auto-stairs clicked into\n humming movement under his weight.\n\n\n To his left, on the wall, he caught kaleidoscopic glimpses of Mom's old\n pictures, copies of paintings by medieval artists like Rembrandt, Van\n Gogh, Cezanne, Dali. The faces seemed to be mocking him. Ronnie felt\n like a wounded bird falling out of the sky.\n\n\n He saw that Dad and Mom were waiting for him.", "Sound and movement below. Mom flicking off the controls of the\n kitchen's Auto-Chef. The slow stride of her high heels through the\n living room. The slamming of a gyro-car door. The opening of the front\n door of the house.\n\n\n Dad's deep, happy voice echoed up the stairway:\n\n\n \"Hi, beautiful!\"\n\n\n Ronnie huddled in the darkness by the half-open bedroom door.\nPlease, Mama\n, his mind cried,\nplease don't tell Daddy what I did.\nThere was a droning, indistinct murmur.\n\n\n Dad burst, \"He was doing\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n More murmuring.\n\n\n \"I can't believe it. You really saw him?... I'll be damned.\"", "Her words echoed in the room until absorbed by the ceaseless, ticking\n clock. Mom stood straight and unashamed. Dad's gaze traveled slowly to\n Ronnie, to Mom, to the clock, back and forth.\n\n\n At last he said, \"Get out.\"\n\n\n Mom stared blankly.\n\n\n \"Get out. Both of you. You can send for your things later. I never want\n to see either of you again.\"\n\n\n \"David—\"\n\n\n \"I said\nget out\n!\"\n\n\n Ronnie and Mom left the house. Outside, the night was dark and a wind\n was rising. Mom shivered in her thin house cloak.\n\n\n \"Where will we go, Ronnie? Where, where—\"\n\n\n \"I know a place. Maybe we can stay there—for a little while.\"", "To Ronnie, the clock seemed to be saying:\nDaddy's coming, Daddy's coming.\nThe soft shadows of September twilight in this year of 2056 were\n seeping into the bedroom. Ronnie welcomed the fall of darkness. He\n wanted to sink into its deep silence, to become one with it, to escape\n forever from savage tongues and angry eyes.\n\n\n A burst of hope entered Ronnie's fear-filled eyes. Maybe something\n would happen. Maybe Dad would have an accident. Maybe—\n\n\n He bit his lip hard, shook his head. No. No matter what Dad might do,\n it wasn't right to wish—\n\n\n The whirling whine of a gyro-car mushroomed up from the landing\n platform outside.\n\n\n Ronnie shivered, his pulse quickening. The muscles in his small body\n were like a web of taut-drawn wires.", "Mom's face paled. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"You've interested Ronnie in old things. To a child in its formative\n years, in a pleasant house, these things symbolize peace and security.\n Ronnie's been conditioned from the very time of his birth to like old\n things. It was natural for him to be attracted by books. And we were\n just too stupid to realize it.\"\n\n\n Mom whispered hoarsely, \"I'm sorry, David.\"\n\n\n Hot anger flashed in Dad's eyes. \"It isn't enough to be sorry. Don't\n you see what this means? Ronnie'll have to be memory-washed back to the\n time of birth. He'll have to start life all over again.\"\n\n\n \"No, David, no!\"", "He seized one of the books on the hassock.\n\n\n \"Edith,\" he said crisply, \"just what was Ronnie reading? What's the\n name of this book?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe—The Adventures of Tom Sawyer\n,\" said Mom through her sobs.\n\n\n He grabbed the second book, held it before her shimmering vision.\n\n\n \"And the name of this?\"\n\n\n \"\nTarzan of The Apes.\n\" Mom's voice was a barely audible croak.\n\n\n \"Who's the author?\"\n\n\n \"Edgar Rice Burroughs.\"\n\n\n \"And this one?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe Wizard of Oz.\n\"\n\n\n \"Who wrote it?\"\n\n\n \"L. Frank Baum.\"", "Mom's round blue eyes were full of mist and sadness. She hadn't\n bothered to smooth her clipped, creamy-brown hair as she always did\n when Dad was coming home.\n\n\n And Dad, handsome in his night-black, skin-tight Pentagon uniform, had\n become a hostile stranger with narrowed eyes of black fire.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Ronnie?\" asked Dad. \"Were you really—really reading a\n book?\"\n\n\n Ronnie gulped. He nodded.\n\n\n \"Good Lord,\" Dad murmured. He took a deep breath and squatted down,\n held Ronnie's arms and looked hard into his eyes. For an instant he\n became the kind, understanding father that Ronnie knew.\n\n\n \"Tell me all about it, son. Where did you get the book? Who taught you\n to read?\"", "Dad rose, fists clenched, staring strangely at nothing.\n\n\n \"Two years,\" he breathed. \"I thought I had a good son, and yet for two\n years—\" He shook his head unbelievingly. \"Maybe it's my own fault.\n Maybe I shouldn't have come to this small town. I should have taken a\n house in Washington instead of trying to commute.\"\n\n\n \"David,\" said Mom, very seriously, almost as if she were praying, \"it\n won't be necessary to have him memory-washed, will it?\"\n\n\n Dad looked at Mom, frowning. Then he gazed at Ronnie. His soft-spoken\n words were as ominous as the low growl of thunder:", "A tremor passed through Mom's slender body. \"There were three books on\n his bed. I'm not sure which one he was actually reading.\"\n\n\n Dad groaned. \"\nThree\nof them. Did you burn them?\"\n\n\n \"No, dear, not yet.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know. Ronnie seemed to like them so much. I thought that maybe\n tonight, after you d seen them—\"\n\n\n \"Get them, damn it. Let's burn the filthy things.\"\n\n\n Mom went to a mahogany chest in the dining room, produced three faded\n volumes. She put them on the hassock at Dad's feet.\n\n\n Dad gingerly turned a cover. His lips curled in disgust as if he were\n touching a rotting corpse.", "\"You went to that\nshack\n? You actually—\"\n\n\n \"Dear,\" said Mom. \"You promised.\"\n\n\n A moment of silence.\n\n\n Ronnie said, \"He took me to his house. I met his dad. Mr. Davis is lots\n of fun. He has a beard and he paints pictures and he's collected almost\n five hundred books.\"\n\n\n Ronnie's voice quavered.\n\n\n \"Go on,\" said Dad sternly.\n\n\n \"And I—and Mr. Davis said he'd teach me to read them if I promised not\n to tell anybody. So he taught me a little every day after school—oh,\n Dad, books are fun to read. They tell you things you can't see on the\n video or hear on the tapes.\"\n\n\n \"How long ago did all this start?\n\n\n \"T—two years ago.\"", "Ronnie shifted uncomfortably on the hassock. \"But can't a Reader get a\n job that's not so important. Like a barber or a plumber or—\"\n\n\n \"Don't you understand? The barber and plumbing equipment corporations\n set up their stores and hire men to work for them. You think they'd\n hire a Reader? People'd say you were a spy or a subversive or that\n you're crazy like old man Davis.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Davis isn't crazy. And he isn't old. He's young, just like you,\n and—\"\n\n\n \"Ronnie!\"\n\n\n Dad's voice was knife-sharp and December-cold. Ronnie slipped off the\n hassock as if struck physically by the fury of the voice. He sat\n sprawled on his small posterior, fresh fear etched on his thin features.", "Silence settled over the room, punctuated only by the ticking of the\n antique clock. All movement seemed frozen, as if the room lay at the\n bottom of a cold, thick sea.\n\n\n \"David,\" Mom finally said.\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one solution. We can't destroy two years of Ronnie's\n memory—you said that yourself. So we'll have to take him to a\n psychiatrist or maybe a psychoneurologist. A few short treatments—\"\n\n\n Dad interrupted: \"But he'd\nstill\nremember how to read, unconsciously\n anyway. Even permi-hypnosis would wear off in time. The boy can't keep\n going to psychiatrists for the rest of his life.\"\n\n\n Thoughtfully he laced his fingers together. \"Edith, what kind of a book\n was he reading?\"", "\"And in my position I can't afford to have an eight-year-old son with\n the mind of a new-born baby. It's got to be Abandonment, Edith, there's\n no other way. The boy can start life over in a reformatory, with a\n complete memory-wash. He'll never know we existed, and he'll never\n bother us again.\"\n\n\n Mom ran up to Dad. She put her hands on his shoulders. Great sobs burst\n from her shaking body.\n\n\n \"You can't, David! I won't let—\"\n\n\n He slapped her then with the palm of his hand. The sound was like a\n pistol shot in the hot, tight air.\n\n\n Dad stood now like a colossus carved of black ice. His right hand was\n still upraised, ready to strike again.\n\n\n Then his hand fell. His mind seemed to be toying with a new thought, a\n new concept." ], [ "A tremor passed through Mom's slender body. \"There were three books on\n his bed. I'm not sure which one he was actually reading.\"\n\n\n Dad groaned. \"\nThree\nof them. Did you burn them?\"\n\n\n \"No, dear, not yet.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know. Ronnie seemed to like them so much. I thought that maybe\n tonight, after you d seen them—\"\n\n\n \"Get them, damn it. Let's burn the filthy things.\"\n\n\n Mom went to a mahogany chest in the dining room, produced three faded\n volumes. She put them on the hassock at Dad's feet.\n\n\n Dad gingerly turned a cover. His lips curled in disgust as if he were\n touching a rotting corpse.", "Mom's face paled. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"You've interested Ronnie in old things. To a child in its formative\n years, in a pleasant house, these things symbolize peace and security.\n Ronnie's been conditioned from the very time of his birth to like old\n things. It was natural for him to be attracted by books. And we were\n just too stupid to realize it.\"\n\n\n Mom whispered hoarsely, \"I'm sorry, David.\"\n\n\n Hot anger flashed in Dad's eyes. \"It isn't enough to be sorry. Don't\n you see what this means? Ronnie'll have to be memory-washed back to the\n time of birth. He'll have to start life all over again.\"\n\n\n \"No, David, no!\"", "\"Old,\" he mused, \"—so very old. Ironic, isn't it? Our lives are being\n wrecked by things that should have been destroyed and forgotten a\n hundred years ago.\"\n\n\n A sudden frown contorted his dark features.\nTick-de-tock, tick-de-tock\n, said the antique clock.\n\n\n \"A hundred years old,\" he repeated. His mouth became a hard, thin line.\n \"Edith, I think I know why Ronnie wanted to read, why he fell into the\n trap so easily.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, David?\"\n\n\n Dad nodded at the clock, and the slow, smouldering anger returned to\n his face. \"It's\nyour\nfault, Edith. You've always liked old things.\n That clock of your great-great-grandmother's. Those old prints on the\n wall. That stamp collection you started for Ronnie—stamps dated way\n back to the 1940's.\"", "Dad rose, fists clenched, staring strangely at nothing.\n\n\n \"Two years,\" he breathed. \"I thought I had a good son, and yet for two\n years—\" He shook his head unbelievingly. \"Maybe it's my own fault.\n Maybe I shouldn't have come to this small town. I should have taken a\n house in Washington instead of trying to commute.\"\n\n\n \"David,\" said Mom, very seriously, almost as if she were praying, \"it\n won't be necessary to have him memory-washed, will it?\"\n\n\n Dad looked at Mom, frowning. Then he gazed at Ronnie. His soft-spoken\n words were as ominous as the low growl of thunder:", "He threw the books to the floor. He stepped backward. His face was a\n mask of combined sorrow, disbelief, and rage.\n\n\n \"\nEdith.\n\" He spat the name as if it were acid on his tongue. \"Edith,\nyou can read\n!\"\nMom sucked in her sobs. Her chalk-white cheeks were still streaked with\n rivulets of tears.\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, David. I've never told anyone—not even Ronnie. I haven't\n read a book, haven't even looked at one since we were married. I've\n tried to be a good wife—\"\n\n\n \"A good wife.\" Dad sneered. His face was so ugly that Ronnie looked\n away.\n\n\n Mom continued, \"I—I learned when I was just a girl. I was young like\n Ronnie. You know how young people are—reckless, eager to do forbidden\n things.\"", "\"You went to that\nshack\n? You actually—\"\n\n\n \"Dear,\" said Mom. \"You promised.\"\n\n\n A moment of silence.\n\n\n Ronnie said, \"He took me to his house. I met his dad. Mr. Davis is lots\n of fun. He has a beard and he paints pictures and he's collected almost\n five hundred books.\"\n\n\n Ronnie's voice quavered.\n\n\n \"Go on,\" said Dad sternly.\n\n\n \"And I—and Mr. Davis said he'd teach me to read them if I promised not\n to tell anybody. So he taught me a little every day after school—oh,\n Dad, books are fun to read. They tell you things you can't see on the\n video or hear on the tapes.\"\n\n\n \"How long ago did all this start?\n\n\n \"T—two years ago.\"", "Mom's round blue eyes were full of mist and sadness. She hadn't\n bothered to smooth her clipped, creamy-brown hair as she always did\n when Dad was coming home.\n\n\n And Dad, handsome in his night-black, skin-tight Pentagon uniform, had\n become a hostile stranger with narrowed eyes of black fire.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Ronnie?\" asked Dad. \"Were you really—really reading a\n book?\"\n\n\n Ronnie gulped. He nodded.\n\n\n \"Good Lord,\" Dad murmured. He took a deep breath and squatted down,\n held Ronnie's arms and looked hard into his eyes. For an instant he\n became the kind, understanding father that Ronnie knew.\n\n\n \"Tell me all about it, son. Where did you get the book? Who taught you\n to read?\"", "\"You lied to me,\" Dad snapped. \"For ten years you've lied to me. Why\n did you want to read, Edith?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n Mom was silent for a few seconds. She was breathing heavily, but no\n longer crying. A calmness entered her features, and for the first time\n tonight Ronnie saw no fear in her eyes.\n\n\n \"I wanted to read,\" she said, her voice firm and proud, \"because, as\n Ronnie said, it's fun. The video's nice, with its dancers and lovers\n and Indians and spacemen—but sometimes you want more than that.\n Sometimes you want to know how people feel deep inside and how they\n think. And there are beautiful words and beautiful thoughts, just like\n there are beautiful paintings. It isn't enough just to hear them and\n then forget them. Sometimes you want to keep the words and thoughts\n before you because in that way you feel that they belong to you.\"", "He seized one of the books on the hassock.\n\n\n \"Edith,\" he said crisply, \"just what was Ronnie reading? What's the\n name of this book?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe—The Adventures of Tom Sawyer\n,\" said Mom through her sobs.\n\n\n He grabbed the second book, held it before her shimmering vision.\n\n\n \"And the name of this?\"\n\n\n \"\nTarzan of The Apes.\n\" Mom's voice was a barely audible croak.\n\n\n \"Who's the author?\"\n\n\n \"Edgar Rice Burroughs.\"\n\n\n \"And this one?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe Wizard of Oz.\n\"\n\n\n \"Who wrote it?\"\n\n\n \"L. Frank Baum.\"", "\"Damn it, son, how could you even\nthink\nof being a Reader? You've got\n a life-sized, 3-D video here, and we put on the smell and touch and\n heat attachments just for you. You can listen to any tape in the world\n at school. Ronnie, don't you realize I'd lose my job if people knew I\n had a Reader for a son?\"\n\n\n \"B—but, Daddy—\"\n\n\n Dad jumped to his feet. \"I hate to say it, Edith, but we've got to put\n this boy in a reformatory. Maybe a good memory-wash will take some of\n the nonsense out of him!\"\nRonnie suppressed a sob. \"No, Daddy, don't let them take away my brain.\n Please—\"\n\n\n Dad stood very tall and very stiff, not even looking at him. \"They\n won't take your brain, just your memory for the past two years.\"", "\"Mr. Davis isn't normal,\" Dad snapped. \"He's a hermit. No decent family\n would let him in their house. He grows his own food and sometimes he\n takes care of gardens for people. I want you to have more than that. I\n want you to have a nice home and be respected by people.\"\n\n\n Dad puffed furiously on his cigarette.\n\n\n \"And you can't get ahead if people know you've been a Reader. That's\n something you can't live down. No matter how hard you try, people\n always stumble upon the truth.\"", "Ronnie scowled. \"But if things are written down, someone has to read\n them, don't they?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, son. One person in ten thousand might reach the point where\n his corporation or bureau will teach him to read. But you prove your\n ability and loyalty first. By the time you're 35 or 40, they might\nwant\nyou to learn to read. But for young people and children—well,\n it just isn't done. Why, the President himself wasn't trusted to learn\n till he was nearly fifty!\"\n\n\n Dad straightened his shoulders. \"Look at me. I'm only 30, but I've been\n a messenger for Secret material already. In a few years, if things go\n well, I should be handling\nTop\n-Secret stuff. And who knows? Maybe by\n the time I'm 50 I'll be\ngiving\norders instead of carrying them. Then\n I'll learn to read, too. That's the right way to do it.\"", "To Ronnie, the clock seemed to be saying:\nDaddy's coming, Daddy's coming.\nThe soft shadows of September twilight in this year of 2056 were\n seeping into the bedroom. Ronnie welcomed the fall of darkness. He\n wanted to sink into its deep silence, to become one with it, to escape\n forever from savage tongues and angry eyes.\n\n\n A burst of hope entered Ronnie's fear-filled eyes. Maybe something\n would happen. Maybe Dad would have an accident. Maybe—\n\n\n He bit his lip hard, shook his head. No. No matter what Dad might do,\n it wasn't right to wish—\n\n\n The whirling whine of a gyro-car mushroomed up from the landing\n platform outside.\n\n\n Ronnie shivered, his pulse quickening. The muscles in his small body\n were like a web of taut-drawn wires.", "\"And in my position I can't afford to have an eight-year-old son with\n the mind of a new-born baby. It's got to be Abandonment, Edith, there's\n no other way. The boy can start life over in a reformatory, with a\n complete memory-wash. He'll never know we existed, and he'll never\n bother us again.\"\n\n\n Mom ran up to Dad. She put her hands on his shoulders. Great sobs burst\n from her shaking body.\n\n\n \"You can't, David! I won't let—\"\n\n\n He slapped her then with the palm of his hand. The sound was like a\n pistol shot in the hot, tight air.\n\n\n Dad stood now like a colossus carved of black ice. His right hand was\n still upraised, ready to strike again.\n\n\n Then his hand fell. His mind seemed to be toying with a new thought, a\n new concept.", "Ronnie silently closed the bedroom door.\nWhy did you tell him, Mama? Why did you have to tell him?\n\"Ronnie!\" Dad called.\n\n\n Ronnie held his breath. His legs seemed as numb and nerveless as the\n stumps of dead trees.\n\n\n \"\nRonnie! Come down here!\n\"\nLike an automaton, Ronnie shuffled out of his bedroom. He stepped\n on the big silver disk on the landing. The auto-stairs clicked into\n humming movement under his weight.\n\n\n To his left, on the wall, he caught kaleidoscopic glimpses of Mom's old\n pictures, copies of paintings by medieval artists like Rembrandt, Van\n Gogh, Cezanne, Dali. The faces seemed to be mocking him. Ronnie felt\n like a wounded bird falling out of the sky.\n\n\n He saw that Dad and Mom were waiting for him.", "Ronnie tried to keep his legs from shaking. \"It was—Daddy, you won't\n make trouble, will you?\"\n\n\n \"This is between you and me, son. We don't care about anyone else.\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was Kenny Davis. He—\"\n\n\n Dad's fingers tightened on Ronnie's arms. \"Kenny Davis!\" he spat. \"The\n boy's no good. His father never had a job in his life. Nobody'd even\n offer him a job. Why, the whole town knows he's a Reader!\"\n\n\n Mom stepped forward. \"David, you promised you'd be sensible about this.\n You promised you wouldn't get angry.\"\n\n\n Dad grunted. \"All right, son. Go ahead.\"\n\n\n \"Well, one day after school Kenny said he'd show me something. He took\n me to his house—\"", "A corner of Mom's mouth twitched. \"David, I didn't want anything like\n this. I thought maybe Ronnie could have a few private psychiatric\n treatments. They can do wonderful things now—permi-hypnosis, creations\n of artificial psychic blocks. A memory-wash would mean that Ronnie'd\n have the mind of a six-year-old child again. He'd have to start to\n school all over again.\"\n\n\n Dad returned to his chair. He buried his face in trembling hands, and\n some of his anger seemed replaced by despair. \"Lord, Edith, I don't\n know what to do.\"\n\n\n He looked up abruptly, as if struck by a chilling new thought. \"You\n can't keep a two-year memory-wash a secret. I never thought of that\n before. Why, that alone would mean the end of my promotions.\"", "Silence settled over the room, punctuated only by the ticking of the\n antique clock. All movement seemed frozen, as if the room lay at the\n bottom of a cold, thick sea.\n\n\n \"David,\" Mom finally said.\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one solution. We can't destroy two years of Ronnie's\n memory—you said that yourself. So we'll have to take him to a\n psychiatrist or maybe a psychoneurologist. A few short treatments—\"\n\n\n Dad interrupted: \"But he'd\nstill\nremember how to read, unconsciously\n anyway. Even permi-hypnosis would wear off in time. The boy can't keep\n going to psychiatrists for the rest of his life.\"\n\n\n Thoughtfully he laced his fingers together. \"Edith, what kind of a book\n was he reading?\"", "Sound and movement below. Mom flicking off the controls of the\n kitchen's Auto-Chef. The slow stride of her high heels through the\n living room. The slamming of a gyro-car door. The opening of the front\n door of the house.\n\n\n Dad's deep, happy voice echoed up the stairway:\n\n\n \"Hi, beautiful!\"\n\n\n Ronnie huddled in the darkness by the half-open bedroom door.\nPlease, Mama\n, his mind cried,\nplease don't tell Daddy what I did.\nThere was a droning, indistinct murmur.\n\n\n Dad burst, \"He was doing\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n More murmuring.\n\n\n \"I can't believe it. You really saw him?... I'll be damned.\"", "\"I don't know, Edith. I don't know.\"\nDad strode to his easy chair by the fireplace. He sank into its\n foam-rubber softness, sighing. He murmured a syllable into a tiny\n ball-mike on the side of the chair. A metallic hand raised a lighted\n cigarette to his lips.\n\n\n \"Come here, son.\"\n\n\n Ronnie followed and sat on the hassock by Dad's feet.\n\n\n \"Maybe I've never really explained things to you, Ronnie. You see, you\n won't always be a boy. Someday you'll have to find a way of making a\n living. You've only two choices: You work for the government, like I\n do, or for a corporation.\"\n\n\n Ronnie blinked. \"Mr. Davis doesn't work for the gover'ment or for a\n corpor-ation.\"" ], [ "Ronnie tried to keep his legs from shaking. \"It was—Daddy, you won't\n make trouble, will you?\"\n\n\n \"This is between you and me, son. We don't care about anyone else.\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was Kenny Davis. He—\"\n\n\n Dad's fingers tightened on Ronnie's arms. \"Kenny Davis!\" he spat. \"The\n boy's no good. His father never had a job in his life. Nobody'd even\n offer him a job. Why, the whole town knows he's a Reader!\"\n\n\n Mom stepped forward. \"David, you promised you'd be sensible about this.\n You promised you wouldn't get angry.\"\n\n\n Dad grunted. \"All right, son. Go ahead.\"\n\n\n \"Well, one day after school Kenny said he'd show me something. He took\n me to his house—\"", "A corner of Mom's mouth twitched. \"David, I didn't want anything like\n this. I thought maybe Ronnie could have a few private psychiatric\n treatments. They can do wonderful things now—permi-hypnosis, creations\n of artificial psychic blocks. A memory-wash would mean that Ronnie'd\n have the mind of a six-year-old child again. He'd have to start to\n school all over again.\"\n\n\n Dad returned to his chair. He buried his face in trembling hands, and\n some of his anger seemed replaced by despair. \"Lord, Edith, I don't\n know what to do.\"\n\n\n He looked up abruptly, as if struck by a chilling new thought. \"You\n can't keep a two-year memory-wash a secret. I never thought of that\n before. Why, that alone would mean the end of my promotions.\"", "\"Old,\" he mused, \"—so very old. Ironic, isn't it? Our lives are being\n wrecked by things that should have been destroyed and forgotten a\n hundred years ago.\"\n\n\n A sudden frown contorted his dark features.\nTick-de-tock, tick-de-tock\n, said the antique clock.\n\n\n \"A hundred years old,\" he repeated. His mouth became a hard, thin line.\n \"Edith, I think I know why Ronnie wanted to read, why he fell into the\n trap so easily.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, David?\"\n\n\n Dad nodded at the clock, and the slow, smouldering anger returned to\n his face. \"It's\nyour\nfault, Edith. You've always liked old things.\n That clock of your great-great-grandmother's. Those old prints on the\n wall. That stamp collection you started for Ronnie—stamps dated way\n back to the 1940's.\"", "Mom's face paled. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"You've interested Ronnie in old things. To a child in its formative\n years, in a pleasant house, these things symbolize peace and security.\n Ronnie's been conditioned from the very time of his birth to like old\n things. It was natural for him to be attracted by books. And we were\n just too stupid to realize it.\"\n\n\n Mom whispered hoarsely, \"I'm sorry, David.\"\n\n\n Hot anger flashed in Dad's eyes. \"It isn't enough to be sorry. Don't\n you see what this means? Ronnie'll have to be memory-washed back to the\n time of birth. He'll have to start life all over again.\"\n\n\n \"No, David, no!\"", "\"A little while?\" Mom echoed. Her mind seemed frozen by the cold wind.\n\n\n Ronnie led her through the cold, windy streets. They left the lights of\n the town behind them. They stumbled over a rough, dirt country road.\n They came to a small, rough-boarded house in the deep shadow of an\n eucalyptus grove. The windows of the house were like friendly eyes of\n warm golden light.\n\n\n An instant later a door opened and a small boy ran out to meet them.\n\n\n \"Hi, Kenny.\"\n\n\n \"Hi. Who's that? Your mom?\"\n\n\n \"Yep. Mr. Davis in?\"\n\n\n \"Sure.\"\n\n\n And a kindly-faced, bearded young man appeared in the golden doorway,\n smiling.\n\n\n Ronnie and Mom stepped inside.", "Dad rose, fists clenched, staring strangely at nothing.\n\n\n \"Two years,\" he breathed. \"I thought I had a good son, and yet for two\n years—\" He shook his head unbelievingly. \"Maybe it's my own fault.\n Maybe I shouldn't have come to this small town. I should have taken a\n house in Washington instead of trying to commute.\"\n\n\n \"David,\" said Mom, very seriously, almost as if she were praying, \"it\n won't be necessary to have him memory-washed, will it?\"\n\n\n Dad looked at Mom, frowning. Then he gazed at Ronnie. His soft-spoken\n words were as ominous as the low growl of thunder:", "He threw the books to the floor. He stepped backward. His face was a\n mask of combined sorrow, disbelief, and rage.\n\n\n \"\nEdith.\n\" He spat the name as if it were acid on his tongue. \"Edith,\nyou can read\n!\"\nMom sucked in her sobs. Her chalk-white cheeks were still streaked with\n rivulets of tears.\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, David. I've never told anyone—not even Ronnie. I haven't\n read a book, haven't even looked at one since we were married. I've\n tried to be a good wife—\"\n\n\n \"A good wife.\" Dad sneered. His face was so ugly that Ronnie looked\n away.\n\n\n Mom continued, \"I—I learned when I was just a girl. I was young like\n Ronnie. You know how young people are—reckless, eager to do forbidden\n things.\"", "Ronnie silently closed the bedroom door.\nWhy did you tell him, Mama? Why did you have to tell him?\n\"Ronnie!\" Dad called.\n\n\n Ronnie held his breath. His legs seemed as numb and nerveless as the\n stumps of dead trees.\n\n\n \"\nRonnie! Come down here!\n\"\nLike an automaton, Ronnie shuffled out of his bedroom. He stepped\n on the big silver disk on the landing. The auto-stairs clicked into\n humming movement under his weight.\n\n\n To his left, on the wall, he caught kaleidoscopic glimpses of Mom's old\n pictures, copies of paintings by medieval artists like Rembrandt, Van\n Gogh, Cezanne, Dali. The faces seemed to be mocking him. Ronnie felt\n like a wounded bird falling out of the sky.\n\n\n He saw that Dad and Mom were waiting for him.", "Sound and movement below. Mom flicking off the controls of the\n kitchen's Auto-Chef. The slow stride of her high heels through the\n living room. The slamming of a gyro-car door. The opening of the front\n door of the house.\n\n\n Dad's deep, happy voice echoed up the stairway:\n\n\n \"Hi, beautiful!\"\n\n\n Ronnie huddled in the darkness by the half-open bedroom door.\nPlease, Mama\n, his mind cried,\nplease don't tell Daddy what I did.\nThere was a droning, indistinct murmur.\n\n\n Dad burst, \"He was doing\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n More murmuring.\n\n\n \"I can't believe it. You really saw him?... I'll be damned.\"", "Her words echoed in the room until absorbed by the ceaseless, ticking\n clock. Mom stood straight and unashamed. Dad's gaze traveled slowly to\n Ronnie, to Mom, to the clock, back and forth.\n\n\n At last he said, \"Get out.\"\n\n\n Mom stared blankly.\n\n\n \"Get out. Both of you. You can send for your things later. I never want\n to see either of you again.\"\n\n\n \"David—\"\n\n\n \"I said\nget out\n!\"\n\n\n Ronnie and Mom left the house. Outside, the night was dark and a wind\n was rising. Mom shivered in her thin house cloak.\n\n\n \"Where will we go, Ronnie? Where, where—\"\n\n\n \"I know a place. Maybe we can stay there—for a little while.\"", "To Ronnie, the clock seemed to be saying:\nDaddy's coming, Daddy's coming.\nThe soft shadows of September twilight in this year of 2056 were\n seeping into the bedroom. Ronnie welcomed the fall of darkness. He\n wanted to sink into its deep silence, to become one with it, to escape\n forever from savage tongues and angry eyes.\n\n\n A burst of hope entered Ronnie's fear-filled eyes. Maybe something\n would happen. Maybe Dad would have an accident. Maybe—\n\n\n He bit his lip hard, shook his head. No. No matter what Dad might do,\n it wasn't right to wish—\n\n\n The whirling whine of a gyro-car mushroomed up from the landing\n platform outside.\n\n\n Ronnie shivered, his pulse quickening. The muscles in his small body\n were like a web of taut-drawn wires.", "\"You went to that\nshack\n? You actually—\"\n\n\n \"Dear,\" said Mom. \"You promised.\"\n\n\n A moment of silence.\n\n\n Ronnie said, \"He took me to his house. I met his dad. Mr. Davis is lots\n of fun. He has a beard and he paints pictures and he's collected almost\n five hundred books.\"\n\n\n Ronnie's voice quavered.\n\n\n \"Go on,\" said Dad sternly.\n\n\n \"And I—and Mr. Davis said he'd teach me to read them if I promised not\n to tell anybody. So he taught me a little every day after school—oh,\n Dad, books are fun to read. They tell you things you can't see on the\n video or hear on the tapes.\"\n\n\n \"How long ago did all this start?\n\n\n \"T—two years ago.\"", "Silence settled over the room, punctuated only by the ticking of the\n antique clock. All movement seemed frozen, as if the room lay at the\n bottom of a cold, thick sea.\n\n\n \"David,\" Mom finally said.\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one solution. We can't destroy two years of Ronnie's\n memory—you said that yourself. So we'll have to take him to a\n psychiatrist or maybe a psychoneurologist. A few short treatments—\"\n\n\n Dad interrupted: \"But he'd\nstill\nremember how to read, unconsciously\n anyway. Even permi-hypnosis would wear off in time. The boy can't keep\n going to psychiatrists for the rest of his life.\"\n\n\n Thoughtfully he laced his fingers together. \"Edith, what kind of a book\n was he reading?\"", "Ronnie shifted uncomfortably on the hassock. \"But can't a Reader get a\n job that's not so important. Like a barber or a plumber or—\"\n\n\n \"Don't you understand? The barber and plumbing equipment corporations\n set up their stores and hire men to work for them. You think they'd\n hire a Reader? People'd say you were a spy or a subversive or that\n you're crazy like old man Davis.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Davis isn't crazy. And he isn't old. He's young, just like you,\n and—\"\n\n\n \"Ronnie!\"\n\n\n Dad's voice was knife-sharp and December-cold. Ronnie slipped off the\n hassock as if struck physically by the fury of the voice. He sat\n sprawled on his small posterior, fresh fear etched on his thin features.", "\"I don't know, Edith. I don't know.\"\nDad strode to his easy chair by the fireplace. He sank into its\n foam-rubber softness, sighing. He murmured a syllable into a tiny\n ball-mike on the side of the chair. A metallic hand raised a lighted\n cigarette to his lips.\n\n\n \"Come here, son.\"\n\n\n Ronnie followed and sat on the hassock by Dad's feet.\n\n\n \"Maybe I've never really explained things to you, Ronnie. You see, you\n won't always be a boy. Someday you'll have to find a way of making a\n living. You've only two choices: You work for the government, like I\n do, or for a corporation.\"\n\n\n Ronnie blinked. \"Mr. Davis doesn't work for the gover'ment or for a\n corpor-ation.\"", "A tremor passed through Mom's slender body. \"There were three books on\n his bed. I'm not sure which one he was actually reading.\"\n\n\n Dad groaned. \"\nThree\nof them. Did you burn them?\"\n\n\n \"No, dear, not yet.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know. Ronnie seemed to like them so much. I thought that maybe\n tonight, after you d seen them—\"\n\n\n \"Get them, damn it. Let's burn the filthy things.\"\n\n\n Mom went to a mahogany chest in the dining room, produced three faded\n volumes. She put them on the hassock at Dad's feet.\n\n\n Dad gingerly turned a cover. His lips curled in disgust as if he were\n touching a rotting corpse.", "Mom's round blue eyes were full of mist and sadness. She hadn't\n bothered to smooth her clipped, creamy-brown hair as she always did\n when Dad was coming home.\n\n\n And Dad, handsome in his night-black, skin-tight Pentagon uniform, had\n become a hostile stranger with narrowed eyes of black fire.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Ronnie?\" asked Dad. \"Were you really—really reading a\n book?\"\n\n\n Ronnie gulped. He nodded.\n\n\n \"Good Lord,\" Dad murmured. He took a deep breath and squatted down,\n held Ronnie's arms and looked hard into his eyes. For an instant he\n became the kind, understanding father that Ronnie knew.\n\n\n \"Tell me all about it, son. Where did you get the book? Who taught you\n to read?\"", "\"You lied to me,\" Dad snapped. \"For ten years you've lied to me. Why\n did you want to read, Edith?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n Mom was silent for a few seconds. She was breathing heavily, but no\n longer crying. A calmness entered her features, and for the first time\n tonight Ronnie saw no fear in her eyes.\n\n\n \"I wanted to read,\" she said, her voice firm and proud, \"because, as\n Ronnie said, it's fun. The video's nice, with its dancers and lovers\n and Indians and spacemen—but sometimes you want more than that.\n Sometimes you want to know how people feel deep inside and how they\n think. And there are beautiful words and beautiful thoughts, just like\n there are beautiful paintings. It isn't enough just to hear them and\n then forget them. Sometimes you want to keep the words and thoughts\n before you because in that way you feel that they belong to you.\"", "\"Mr. Davis isn't normal,\" Dad snapped. \"He's a hermit. No decent family\n would let him in their house. He grows his own food and sometimes he\n takes care of gardens for people. I want you to have more than that. I\n want you to have a nice home and be respected by people.\"\n\n\n Dad puffed furiously on his cigarette.\n\n\n \"And you can't get ahead if people know you've been a Reader. That's\n something you can't live down. No matter how hard you try, people\n always stumble upon the truth.\"", "\"And in my position I can't afford to have an eight-year-old son with\n the mind of a new-born baby. It's got to be Abandonment, Edith, there's\n no other way. The boy can start life over in a reformatory, with a\n complete memory-wash. He'll never know we existed, and he'll never\n bother us again.\"\n\n\n Mom ran up to Dad. She put her hands on his shoulders. Great sobs burst\n from her shaking body.\n\n\n \"You can't, David! I won't let—\"\n\n\n He slapped her then with the palm of his hand. The sound was like a\n pistol shot in the hot, tight air.\n\n\n Dad stood now like a colossus carved of black ice. His right hand was\n still upraised, ready to strike again.\n\n\n Then his hand fell. His mind seemed to be toying with a new thought, a\n new concept." ], [ "\"You lied to me,\" Dad snapped. \"For ten years you've lied to me. Why\n did you want to read, Edith?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n Mom was silent for a few seconds. She was breathing heavily, but no\n longer crying. A calmness entered her features, and for the first time\n tonight Ronnie saw no fear in her eyes.\n\n\n \"I wanted to read,\" she said, her voice firm and proud, \"because, as\n Ronnie said, it's fun. The video's nice, with its dancers and lovers\n and Indians and spacemen—but sometimes you want more than that.\n Sometimes you want to know how people feel deep inside and how they\n think. And there are beautiful words and beautiful thoughts, just like\n there are beautiful paintings. It isn't enough just to hear them and\n then forget them. Sometimes you want to keep the words and thoughts\n before you because in that way you feel that they belong to you.\"", "He threw the books to the floor. He stepped backward. His face was a\n mask of combined sorrow, disbelief, and rage.\n\n\n \"\nEdith.\n\" He spat the name as if it were acid on his tongue. \"Edith,\nyou can read\n!\"\nMom sucked in her sobs. Her chalk-white cheeks were still streaked with\n rivulets of tears.\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, David. I've never told anyone—not even Ronnie. I haven't\n read a book, haven't even looked at one since we were married. I've\n tried to be a good wife—\"\n\n\n \"A good wife.\" Dad sneered. His face was so ugly that Ronnie looked\n away.\n\n\n Mom continued, \"I—I learned when I was just a girl. I was young like\n Ronnie. You know how young people are—reckless, eager to do forbidden\n things.\"", "Ronnie scowled. \"But if things are written down, someone has to read\n them, don't they?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, son. One person in ten thousand might reach the point where\n his corporation or bureau will teach him to read. But you prove your\n ability and loyalty first. By the time you're 35 or 40, they might\nwant\nyou to learn to read. But for young people and children—well,\n it just isn't done. Why, the President himself wasn't trusted to learn\n till he was nearly fifty!\"\n\n\n Dad straightened his shoulders. \"Look at me. I'm only 30, but I've been\n a messenger for Secret material already. In a few years, if things go\n well, I should be handling\nTop\n-Secret stuff. And who knows? Maybe by\n the time I'm 50 I'll be\ngiving\norders instead of carrying them. Then\n I'll learn to read, too. That's the right way to do it.\"", "\"You went to that\nshack\n? You actually—\"\n\n\n \"Dear,\" said Mom. \"You promised.\"\n\n\n A moment of silence.\n\n\n Ronnie said, \"He took me to his house. I met his dad. Mr. Davis is lots\n of fun. He has a beard and he paints pictures and he's collected almost\n five hundred books.\"\n\n\n Ronnie's voice quavered.\n\n\n \"Go on,\" said Dad sternly.\n\n\n \"And I—and Mr. Davis said he'd teach me to read them if I promised not\n to tell anybody. So he taught me a little every day after school—oh,\n Dad, books are fun to read. They tell you things you can't see on the\n video or hear on the tapes.\"\n\n\n \"How long ago did all this start?\n\n\n \"T—two years ago.\"", "Mom's round blue eyes were full of mist and sadness. She hadn't\n bothered to smooth her clipped, creamy-brown hair as she always did\n when Dad was coming home.\n\n\n And Dad, handsome in his night-black, skin-tight Pentagon uniform, had\n become a hostile stranger with narrowed eyes of black fire.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Ronnie?\" asked Dad. \"Were you really—really reading a\n book?\"\n\n\n Ronnie gulped. He nodded.\n\n\n \"Good Lord,\" Dad murmured. He took a deep breath and squatted down,\n held Ronnie's arms and looked hard into his eyes. For an instant he\n became the kind, understanding father that Ronnie knew.\n\n\n \"Tell me all about it, son. Where did you get the book? Who taught you\n to read?\"", "Ronnie shifted uncomfortably on the hassock. \"But can't a Reader get a\n job that's not so important. Like a barber or a plumber or—\"\n\n\n \"Don't you understand? The barber and plumbing equipment corporations\n set up their stores and hire men to work for them. You think they'd\n hire a Reader? People'd say you were a spy or a subversive or that\n you're crazy like old man Davis.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Davis isn't crazy. And he isn't old. He's young, just like you,\n and—\"\n\n\n \"Ronnie!\"\n\n\n Dad's voice was knife-sharp and December-cold. Ronnie slipped off the\n hassock as if struck physically by the fury of the voice. He sat\n sprawled on his small posterior, fresh fear etched on his thin features.", "Ronnie tried to keep his legs from shaking. \"It was—Daddy, you won't\n make trouble, will you?\"\n\n\n \"This is between you and me, son. We don't care about anyone else.\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was Kenny Davis. He—\"\n\n\n Dad's fingers tightened on Ronnie's arms. \"Kenny Davis!\" he spat. \"The\n boy's no good. His father never had a job in his life. Nobody'd even\n offer him a job. Why, the whole town knows he's a Reader!\"\n\n\n Mom stepped forward. \"David, you promised you'd be sensible about this.\n You promised you wouldn't get angry.\"\n\n\n Dad grunted. \"All right, son. Go ahead.\"\n\n\n \"Well, one day after school Kenny said he'd show me something. He took\n me to his house—\"", "\"Mr. Davis isn't normal,\" Dad snapped. \"He's a hermit. No decent family\n would let him in their house. He grows his own food and sometimes he\n takes care of gardens for people. I want you to have more than that. I\n want you to have a nice home and be respected by people.\"\n\n\n Dad puffed furiously on his cigarette.\n\n\n \"And you can't get ahead if people know you've been a Reader. That's\n something you can't live down. No matter how hard you try, people\n always stumble upon the truth.\"", "A tremor passed through Mom's slender body. \"There were three books on\n his bed. I'm not sure which one he was actually reading.\"\n\n\n Dad groaned. \"\nThree\nof them. Did you burn them?\"\n\n\n \"No, dear, not yet.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know. Ronnie seemed to like them so much. I thought that maybe\n tonight, after you d seen them—\"\n\n\n \"Get them, damn it. Let's burn the filthy things.\"\n\n\n Mom went to a mahogany chest in the dining room, produced three faded\n volumes. She put them on the hassock at Dad's feet.\n\n\n Dad gingerly turned a cover. His lips curled in disgust as if he were\n touching a rotting corpse.", "Mom's face paled. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"You've interested Ronnie in old things. To a child in its formative\n years, in a pleasant house, these things symbolize peace and security.\n Ronnie's been conditioned from the very time of his birth to like old\n things. It was natural for him to be attracted by books. And we were\n just too stupid to realize it.\"\n\n\n Mom whispered hoarsely, \"I'm sorry, David.\"\n\n\n Hot anger flashed in Dad's eyes. \"It isn't enough to be sorry. Don't\n you see what this means? Ronnie'll have to be memory-washed back to the\n time of birth. He'll have to start life all over again.\"\n\n\n \"No, David, no!\"", "He seized one of the books on the hassock.\n\n\n \"Edith,\" he said crisply, \"just what was Ronnie reading? What's the\n name of this book?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe—The Adventures of Tom Sawyer\n,\" said Mom through her sobs.\n\n\n He grabbed the second book, held it before her shimmering vision.\n\n\n \"And the name of this?\"\n\n\n \"\nTarzan of The Apes.\n\" Mom's voice was a barely audible croak.\n\n\n \"Who's the author?\"\n\n\n \"Edgar Rice Burroughs.\"\n\n\n \"And this one?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe Wizard of Oz.\n\"\n\n\n \"Who wrote it?\"\n\n\n \"L. Frank Baum.\"", "\"Damn it, son, how could you even\nthink\nof being a Reader? You've got\n a life-sized, 3-D video here, and we put on the smell and touch and\n heat attachments just for you. You can listen to any tape in the world\n at school. Ronnie, don't you realize I'd lose my job if people knew I\n had a Reader for a son?\"\n\n\n \"B—but, Daddy—\"\n\n\n Dad jumped to his feet. \"I hate to say it, Edith, but we've got to put\n this boy in a reformatory. Maybe a good memory-wash will take some of\n the nonsense out of him!\"\nRonnie suppressed a sob. \"No, Daddy, don't let them take away my brain.\n Please—\"\n\n\n Dad stood very tall and very stiff, not even looking at him. \"They\n won't take your brain, just your memory for the past two years.\"", "\"Old,\" he mused, \"—so very old. Ironic, isn't it? Our lives are being\n wrecked by things that should have been destroyed and forgotten a\n hundred years ago.\"\n\n\n A sudden frown contorted his dark features.\nTick-de-tock, tick-de-tock\n, said the antique clock.\n\n\n \"A hundred years old,\" he repeated. His mouth became a hard, thin line.\n \"Edith, I think I know why Ronnie wanted to read, why he fell into the\n trap so easily.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, David?\"\n\n\n Dad nodded at the clock, and the slow, smouldering anger returned to\n his face. \"It's\nyour\nfault, Edith. You've always liked old things.\n That clock of your great-great-grandmother's. Those old prints on the\n wall. That stamp collection you started for Ronnie—stamps dated way\n back to the 1940's.\"", "Silence settled over the room, punctuated only by the ticking of the\n antique clock. All movement seemed frozen, as if the room lay at the\n bottom of a cold, thick sea.\n\n\n \"David,\" Mom finally said.\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one solution. We can't destroy two years of Ronnie's\n memory—you said that yourself. So we'll have to take him to a\n psychiatrist or maybe a psychoneurologist. A few short treatments—\"\n\n\n Dad interrupted: \"But he'd\nstill\nremember how to read, unconsciously\n anyway. Even permi-hypnosis would wear off in time. The boy can't keep\n going to psychiatrists for the rest of his life.\"\n\n\n Thoughtfully he laced his fingers together. \"Edith, what kind of a book\n was he reading?\"", "Dad cleared his throat. \"You see, when you get a job, all the\n information you handle will have a classification. It'll be Restricted,\n Low-Confidential, Confidential, High-Confidential, Secret, Top-Secret.\n And all this information will be in writing. No matter what you do,\n you'll have access to some of this information at one time or another.\"\n\"B—but why do these things have to be so secret?\" Ronnie asked.\n\n\n \"Because of competitors, in the case of corporations—or because of\n enemy nations in the case of government work. The written material you\n might have access to could describe secret weapons and new processes\n or plans for next year's advertising—maybe even a scheme for, er,\n liquidation of a rival. If all facts and policies were made public,\n there might be criticism, controversy, opposition by certain groups.\n The less people know about things, the better. So we have to keep all\n these things secret.\"", "To Ronnie, the clock seemed to be saying:\nDaddy's coming, Daddy's coming.\nThe soft shadows of September twilight in this year of 2056 were\n seeping into the bedroom. Ronnie welcomed the fall of darkness. He\n wanted to sink into its deep silence, to become one with it, to escape\n forever from savage tongues and angry eyes.\n\n\n A burst of hope entered Ronnie's fear-filled eyes. Maybe something\n would happen. Maybe Dad would have an accident. Maybe—\n\n\n He bit his lip hard, shook his head. No. No matter what Dad might do,\n it wasn't right to wish—\n\n\n The whirling whine of a gyro-car mushroomed up from the landing\n platform outside.\n\n\n Ronnie shivered, his pulse quickening. The muscles in his small body\n were like a web of taut-drawn wires.", "Ronnie silently closed the bedroom door.\nWhy did you tell him, Mama? Why did you have to tell him?\n\"Ronnie!\" Dad called.\n\n\n Ronnie held his breath. His legs seemed as numb and nerveless as the\n stumps of dead trees.\n\n\n \"\nRonnie! Come down here!\n\"\nLike an automaton, Ronnie shuffled out of his bedroom. He stepped\n on the big silver disk on the landing. The auto-stairs clicked into\n humming movement under his weight.\n\n\n To his left, on the wall, he caught kaleidoscopic glimpses of Mom's old\n pictures, copies of paintings by medieval artists like Rembrandt, Van\n Gogh, Cezanne, Dali. The faces seemed to be mocking him. Ronnie felt\n like a wounded bird falling out of the sky.\n\n\n He saw that Dad and Mom were waiting for him.", "Dad rose, fists clenched, staring strangely at nothing.\n\n\n \"Two years,\" he breathed. \"I thought I had a good son, and yet for two\n years—\" He shook his head unbelievingly. \"Maybe it's my own fault.\n Maybe I shouldn't have come to this small town. I should have taken a\n house in Washington instead of trying to commute.\"\n\n\n \"David,\" said Mom, very seriously, almost as if she were praying, \"it\n won't be necessary to have him memory-washed, will it?\"\n\n\n Dad looked at Mom, frowning. Then he gazed at Ronnie. His soft-spoken\n words were as ominous as the low growl of thunder:", "Her words echoed in the room until absorbed by the ceaseless, ticking\n clock. Mom stood straight and unashamed. Dad's gaze traveled slowly to\n Ronnie, to Mom, to the clock, back and forth.\n\n\n At last he said, \"Get out.\"\n\n\n Mom stared blankly.\n\n\n \"Get out. Both of you. You can send for your things later. I never want\n to see either of you again.\"\n\n\n \"David—\"\n\n\n \"I said\nget out\n!\"\n\n\n Ronnie and Mom left the house. Outside, the night was dark and a wind\n was rising. Mom shivered in her thin house cloak.\n\n\n \"Where will we go, Ronnie? Where, where—\"\n\n\n \"I know a place. Maybe we can stay there—for a little while.\"", "\"I don't know, Edith. I don't know.\"\nDad strode to his easy chair by the fireplace. He sank into its\n foam-rubber softness, sighing. He murmured a syllable into a tiny\n ball-mike on the side of the chair. A metallic hand raised a lighted\n cigarette to his lips.\n\n\n \"Come here, son.\"\n\n\n Ronnie followed and sat on the hassock by Dad's feet.\n\n\n \"Maybe I've never really explained things to you, Ronnie. You see, you\n won't always be a boy. Someday you'll have to find a way of making a\n living. You've only two choices: You work for the government, like I\n do, or for a corporation.\"\n\n\n Ronnie blinked. \"Mr. Davis doesn't work for the gover'ment or for a\n corpor-ation.\"" ], [ "He threw the books to the floor. He stepped backward. His face was a\n mask of combined sorrow, disbelief, and rage.\n\n\n \"\nEdith.\n\" He spat the name as if it were acid on his tongue. \"Edith,\nyou can read\n!\"\nMom sucked in her sobs. Her chalk-white cheeks were still streaked with\n rivulets of tears.\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, David. I've never told anyone—not even Ronnie. I haven't\n read a book, haven't even looked at one since we were married. I've\n tried to be a good wife—\"\n\n\n \"A good wife.\" Dad sneered. His face was so ugly that Ronnie looked\n away.\n\n\n Mom continued, \"I—I learned when I was just a girl. I was young like\n Ronnie. You know how young people are—reckless, eager to do forbidden\n things.\"", "\"You lied to me,\" Dad snapped. \"For ten years you've lied to me. Why\n did you want to read, Edith?\nWhy?\n\"\n\n\n Mom was silent for a few seconds. She was breathing heavily, but no\n longer crying. A calmness entered her features, and for the first time\n tonight Ronnie saw no fear in her eyes.\n\n\n \"I wanted to read,\" she said, her voice firm and proud, \"because, as\n Ronnie said, it's fun. The video's nice, with its dancers and lovers\n and Indians and spacemen—but sometimes you want more than that.\n Sometimes you want to know how people feel deep inside and how they\n think. And there are beautiful words and beautiful thoughts, just like\n there are beautiful paintings. It isn't enough just to hear them and\n then forget them. Sometimes you want to keep the words and thoughts\n before you because in that way you feel that they belong to you.\"", "A tremor passed through Mom's slender body. \"There were three books on\n his bed. I'm not sure which one he was actually reading.\"\n\n\n Dad groaned. \"\nThree\nof them. Did you burn them?\"\n\n\n \"No, dear, not yet.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know. Ronnie seemed to like them so much. I thought that maybe\n tonight, after you d seen them—\"\n\n\n \"Get them, damn it. Let's burn the filthy things.\"\n\n\n Mom went to a mahogany chest in the dining room, produced three faded\n volumes. She put them on the hassock at Dad's feet.\n\n\n Dad gingerly turned a cover. His lips curled in disgust as if he were\n touching a rotting corpse.", "Mom's round blue eyes were full of mist and sadness. She hadn't\n bothered to smooth her clipped, creamy-brown hair as she always did\n when Dad was coming home.\n\n\n And Dad, handsome in his night-black, skin-tight Pentagon uniform, had\n become a hostile stranger with narrowed eyes of black fire.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Ronnie?\" asked Dad. \"Were you really—really reading a\n book?\"\n\n\n Ronnie gulped. He nodded.\n\n\n \"Good Lord,\" Dad murmured. He took a deep breath and squatted down,\n held Ronnie's arms and looked hard into his eyes. For an instant he\n became the kind, understanding father that Ronnie knew.\n\n\n \"Tell me all about it, son. Where did you get the book? Who taught you\n to read?\"", "\"You went to that\nshack\n? You actually—\"\n\n\n \"Dear,\" said Mom. \"You promised.\"\n\n\n A moment of silence.\n\n\n Ronnie said, \"He took me to his house. I met his dad. Mr. Davis is lots\n of fun. He has a beard and he paints pictures and he's collected almost\n five hundred books.\"\n\n\n Ronnie's voice quavered.\n\n\n \"Go on,\" said Dad sternly.\n\n\n \"And I—and Mr. Davis said he'd teach me to read them if I promised not\n to tell anybody. So he taught me a little every day after school—oh,\n Dad, books are fun to read. They tell you things you can't see on the\n video or hear on the tapes.\"\n\n\n \"How long ago did all this start?\n\n\n \"T—two years ago.\"", "\"Mr. Davis isn't normal,\" Dad snapped. \"He's a hermit. No decent family\n would let him in their house. He grows his own food and sometimes he\n takes care of gardens for people. I want you to have more than that. I\n want you to have a nice home and be respected by people.\"\n\n\n Dad puffed furiously on his cigarette.\n\n\n \"And you can't get ahead if people know you've been a Reader. That's\n something you can't live down. No matter how hard you try, people\n always stumble upon the truth.\"", "Ronnie scowled. \"But if things are written down, someone has to read\n them, don't they?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, son. One person in ten thousand might reach the point where\n his corporation or bureau will teach him to read. But you prove your\n ability and loyalty first. By the time you're 35 or 40, they might\nwant\nyou to learn to read. But for young people and children—well,\n it just isn't done. Why, the President himself wasn't trusted to learn\n till he was nearly fifty!\"\n\n\n Dad straightened his shoulders. \"Look at me. I'm only 30, but I've been\n a messenger for Secret material already. In a few years, if things go\n well, I should be handling\nTop\n-Secret stuff. And who knows? Maybe by\n the time I'm 50 I'll be\ngiving\norders instead of carrying them. Then\n I'll learn to read, too. That's the right way to do it.\"", "Ronnie tried to keep his legs from shaking. \"It was—Daddy, you won't\n make trouble, will you?\"\n\n\n \"This is between you and me, son. We don't care about anyone else.\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was Kenny Davis. He—\"\n\n\n Dad's fingers tightened on Ronnie's arms. \"Kenny Davis!\" he spat. \"The\n boy's no good. His father never had a job in his life. Nobody'd even\n offer him a job. Why, the whole town knows he's a Reader!\"\n\n\n Mom stepped forward. \"David, you promised you'd be sensible about this.\n You promised you wouldn't get angry.\"\n\n\n Dad grunted. \"All right, son. Go ahead.\"\n\n\n \"Well, one day after school Kenny said he'd show me something. He took\n me to his house—\"", "Mom's face paled. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"You've interested Ronnie in old things. To a child in its formative\n years, in a pleasant house, these things symbolize peace and security.\n Ronnie's been conditioned from the very time of his birth to like old\n things. It was natural for him to be attracted by books. And we were\n just too stupid to realize it.\"\n\n\n Mom whispered hoarsely, \"I'm sorry, David.\"\n\n\n Hot anger flashed in Dad's eyes. \"It isn't enough to be sorry. Don't\n you see what this means? Ronnie'll have to be memory-washed back to the\n time of birth. He'll have to start life all over again.\"\n\n\n \"No, David, no!\"", "Ronnie shifted uncomfortably on the hassock. \"But can't a Reader get a\n job that's not so important. Like a barber or a plumber or—\"\n\n\n \"Don't you understand? The barber and plumbing equipment corporations\n set up their stores and hire men to work for them. You think they'd\n hire a Reader? People'd say you were a spy or a subversive or that\n you're crazy like old man Davis.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Davis isn't crazy. And he isn't old. He's young, just like you,\n and—\"\n\n\n \"Ronnie!\"\n\n\n Dad's voice was knife-sharp and December-cold. Ronnie slipped off the\n hassock as if struck physically by the fury of the voice. He sat\n sprawled on his small posterior, fresh fear etched on his thin features.", "\"Old,\" he mused, \"—so very old. Ironic, isn't it? Our lives are being\n wrecked by things that should have been destroyed and forgotten a\n hundred years ago.\"\n\n\n A sudden frown contorted his dark features.\nTick-de-tock, tick-de-tock\n, said the antique clock.\n\n\n \"A hundred years old,\" he repeated. His mouth became a hard, thin line.\n \"Edith, I think I know why Ronnie wanted to read, why he fell into the\n trap so easily.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, David?\"\n\n\n Dad nodded at the clock, and the slow, smouldering anger returned to\n his face. \"It's\nyour\nfault, Edith. You've always liked old things.\n That clock of your great-great-grandmother's. Those old prints on the\n wall. That stamp collection you started for Ronnie—stamps dated way\n back to the 1940's.\"", "Silence settled over the room, punctuated only by the ticking of the\n antique clock. All movement seemed frozen, as if the room lay at the\n bottom of a cold, thick sea.\n\n\n \"David,\" Mom finally said.\n\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one solution. We can't destroy two years of Ronnie's\n memory—you said that yourself. So we'll have to take him to a\n psychiatrist or maybe a psychoneurologist. A few short treatments—\"\n\n\n Dad interrupted: \"But he'd\nstill\nremember how to read, unconsciously\n anyway. Even permi-hypnosis would wear off in time. The boy can't keep\n going to psychiatrists for the rest of his life.\"\n\n\n Thoughtfully he laced his fingers together. \"Edith, what kind of a book\n was he reading?\"", "He seized one of the books on the hassock.\n\n\n \"Edith,\" he said crisply, \"just what was Ronnie reading? What's the\n name of this book?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe—The Adventures of Tom Sawyer\n,\" said Mom through her sobs.\n\n\n He grabbed the second book, held it before her shimmering vision.\n\n\n \"And the name of this?\"\n\n\n \"\nTarzan of The Apes.\n\" Mom's voice was a barely audible croak.\n\n\n \"Who's the author?\"\n\n\n \"Edgar Rice Burroughs.\"\n\n\n \"And this one?\"\n\n\n \"\nThe Wizard of Oz.\n\"\n\n\n \"Who wrote it?\"\n\n\n \"L. Frank Baum.\"", "\"Damn it, son, how could you even\nthink\nof being a Reader? You've got\n a life-sized, 3-D video here, and we put on the smell and touch and\n heat attachments just for you. You can listen to any tape in the world\n at school. Ronnie, don't you realize I'd lose my job if people knew I\n had a Reader for a son?\"\n\n\n \"B—but, Daddy—\"\n\n\n Dad jumped to his feet. \"I hate to say it, Edith, but we've got to put\n this boy in a reformatory. Maybe a good memory-wash will take some of\n the nonsense out of him!\"\nRonnie suppressed a sob. \"No, Daddy, don't let them take away my brain.\n Please—\"\n\n\n Dad stood very tall and very stiff, not even looking at him. \"They\n won't take your brain, just your memory for the past two years.\"", "Dad rose, fists clenched, staring strangely at nothing.\n\n\n \"Two years,\" he breathed. \"I thought I had a good son, and yet for two\n years—\" He shook his head unbelievingly. \"Maybe it's my own fault.\n Maybe I shouldn't have come to this small town. I should have taken a\n house in Washington instead of trying to commute.\"\n\n\n \"David,\" said Mom, very seriously, almost as if she were praying, \"it\n won't be necessary to have him memory-washed, will it?\"\n\n\n Dad looked at Mom, frowning. Then he gazed at Ronnie. His soft-spoken\n words were as ominous as the low growl of thunder:", "Her words echoed in the room until absorbed by the ceaseless, ticking\n clock. Mom stood straight and unashamed. Dad's gaze traveled slowly to\n Ronnie, to Mom, to the clock, back and forth.\n\n\n At last he said, \"Get out.\"\n\n\n Mom stared blankly.\n\n\n \"Get out. Both of you. You can send for your things later. I never want\n to see either of you again.\"\n\n\n \"David—\"\n\n\n \"I said\nget out\n!\"\n\n\n Ronnie and Mom left the house. Outside, the night was dark and a wind\n was rising. Mom shivered in her thin house cloak.\n\n\n \"Where will we go, Ronnie? Where, where—\"\n\n\n \"I know a place. Maybe we can stay there—for a little while.\"", "Ronnie silently closed the bedroom door.\nWhy did you tell him, Mama? Why did you have to tell him?\n\"Ronnie!\" Dad called.\n\n\n Ronnie held his breath. His legs seemed as numb and nerveless as the\n stumps of dead trees.\n\n\n \"\nRonnie! Come down here!\n\"\nLike an automaton, Ronnie shuffled out of his bedroom. He stepped\n on the big silver disk on the landing. The auto-stairs clicked into\n humming movement under his weight.\n\n\n To his left, on the wall, he caught kaleidoscopic glimpses of Mom's old\n pictures, copies of paintings by medieval artists like Rembrandt, Van\n Gogh, Cezanne, Dali. The faces seemed to be mocking him. Ronnie felt\n like a wounded bird falling out of the sky.\n\n\n He saw that Dad and Mom were waiting for him.", "Sound and movement below. Mom flicking off the controls of the\n kitchen's Auto-Chef. The slow stride of her high heels through the\n living room. The slamming of a gyro-car door. The opening of the front\n door of the house.\n\n\n Dad's deep, happy voice echoed up the stairway:\n\n\n \"Hi, beautiful!\"\n\n\n Ronnie huddled in the darkness by the half-open bedroom door.\nPlease, Mama\n, his mind cried,\nplease don't tell Daddy what I did.\nThere was a droning, indistinct murmur.\n\n\n Dad burst, \"He was doing\nwhat\n?\"\n\n\n More murmuring.\n\n\n \"I can't believe it. You really saw him?... I'll be damned.\"", "To Ronnie, the clock seemed to be saying:\nDaddy's coming, Daddy's coming.\nThe soft shadows of September twilight in this year of 2056 were\n seeping into the bedroom. Ronnie welcomed the fall of darkness. He\n wanted to sink into its deep silence, to become one with it, to escape\n forever from savage tongues and angry eyes.\n\n\n A burst of hope entered Ronnie's fear-filled eyes. Maybe something\n would happen. Maybe Dad would have an accident. Maybe—\n\n\n He bit his lip hard, shook his head. No. No matter what Dad might do,\n it wasn't right to wish—\n\n\n The whirling whine of a gyro-car mushroomed up from the landing\n platform outside.\n\n\n Ronnie shivered, his pulse quickening. The muscles in his small body\n were like a web of taut-drawn wires.", "\"And in my position I can't afford to have an eight-year-old son with\n the mind of a new-born baby. It's got to be Abandonment, Edith, there's\n no other way. The boy can start life over in a reformatory, with a\n complete memory-wash. He'll never know we existed, and he'll never\n bother us again.\"\n\n\n Mom ran up to Dad. She put her hands on his shoulders. Great sobs burst\n from her shaking body.\n\n\n \"You can't, David! I won't let—\"\n\n\n He slapped her then with the palm of his hand. The sound was like a\n pistol shot in the hot, tight air.\n\n\n Dad stood now like a colossus carved of black ice. His right hand was\n still upraised, ready to strike again.\n\n\n Then his hand fell. His mind seemed to be toying with a new thought, a\n new concept." ] ]
test	62580	[ "Thig spends time at his boathouse for what main purposes?", "What seems to be Thigs main motivation for not wanting the Horde to invade earth?", "What is the fate of the earth if Thig cannot accompish his goals with the Horde?", "How does Thig differ from others of his race?", "Where does Thig draw inspiration for his plan?", "What happens to his wife's husband?", "In what way does Thig assimilate?", "How does Thig get the Horde to trust him?", "What does Thig tell the Hoard he plans to do to himself?\n", "The way Thig addresses his plan is much like" ]	[ [ "Working on becoming more human.", "Write the horror stories he is famous for.", "Both a and c.", "Write the western novels he is known for." ], [ "He really is indifferent to whether the Horde comes or not.", "He is afraid that the Earth's armies with overtake the Horde, bringing an end to his race.", "He does not feel he has fulfilled his purpose on Earth just yet.", "He has grown to enjoy his human lifestyle, and he is not ready to give that up." ], [ "The Horde will destroy the atmosphere, making life impossible.", "The Horde will destroy the planet.", "Nothing will happen to the planet, but Thig will be a political prisoner.", "The earth will destroy itself." ], [ " He is the only member of the Horde who actually has an emotional attachment to his race.", "He does not feel that the human race is worth saving.", "He has developed human emotions and qualities. ", "He doesn't." ], [ "The distruction of Earth is his inspiration.", "He has no plan.", "He draws his inspiration from his human self.", "His wife is his inspiration." ], [ "Thig kills him to take over his life. ", "He is killed by the Horde.", "He dies from radiation.", "He leaves her to join the Horde." ], [ "He cares about humans.", "All of the above.", "He loves his wife.", "He embrases the life of a writer." ], [ "He says that the Earth is the perfect place for them to live.", "He reports that Earthlings have a contagious disease.", "He says that he only stayed alive in order to save them.", "He tells the Horde that humans will destroy themselves." ], [ "He is going to take revenge for the death of his brothers.", "He is going to fight the Horde.", "He is going to run away with his family.", "He will kill himself once he saves the Horde." ], [ "A man who is trying to save those he loves above all.", "A person who is trying to save the Earth.", "A warrior of the Horde.", "A writer. He views the plan like a storyline." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Thig's compact body stiffened angrily. He came to his feet, his gaze\n roaming about the familiar disorder of the little boathouse. Here he\n came daily to write the lusty sagas of the Old West that had made the\n name of Lewis Terry familiar to millions of readers. Here beside the\n pot-bellied iron stove with the single cracked lid, he had worked\n long hours, striving vainly to forget that he was an alien being from\n another distant world.", "He loaded the little ship to its capacity with explosives from the\n stores on the island, and before he left he touched a match to the\n buildings. Then he blasted off, with the water clearing explosively\n from his spacer's overloaded jets to arouse the sleeping warriors of\n the Mikado.\nAfter that first foray Thig raided many an outlying island, and looted\n the sunken transports that lay in the shallowed water between some of\n the captured islands. He mounted a heavy machine gun in the nose of his\n agile little craft, and many a yellow man never returned to his home\n landing field. By days he hid near his objectives, in the jungle or the\n shallow water in the shadows of a jutting coral reef, and by night he\n moved like a giant crab, in his space suit, among the sunken ships.", "Ellen, Lewis Terry's wife, clenched the short letter that her husband\n had pressed into her hand as he kissed her earlier that evening. She\n did not know that he was really Thig, nor did the letter reveal that\n fact. If he was to die, he would die Lewis Terry. The letter told her\n simply that he must go away on a secret mission for several months. She\n understood now why the unshed tears had been bright in his eyes.\n\n\n Over the United States Thig blasted the life boat, and across the\n Pacific. He was getting as far from Long Island as he could, and one of\n his plans to destroy the Orthans called for many tons of explosives.\n Explosives, he told himself grimly, that the yellow men would furnish.", "Softly the bow of the little craft nosed up on the beach inside the\n harbor, and from its single lock stepped Thig. Naked he was now, as\n were all Hordemen, and from the harness of flexible plastic about his\n body there depended a decomposition blaster and an old butcher knife\n that he had whetted to razor sharpness.\n\n\n \"You hear something?\" asked one of the two guards.\n\n\n \"It was the waves,\" his comrade said, listening for a moment.\n\n\n \"In the darkness I can see nothing,\" grumbled the first Jap. \"Perhaps\n the Marines are landing.\"\n\n\n \"Ho,\" laughed the other guard, \"the Marines are thousands of miles\n away. They cannot stand against the power of our Emperor.\"\n\n\n \"It has been more than a year,\" said the fearful one, \"and we have not\n yet conquered all of California. I have heard that a few Marines are\n still hiding in the Solomons.\"", "\"You're staying locked,\" he said slowly, \"until the last Hordeman is\n wiped from the face of Earth.\" He smiled grimly as he reflected that\n his hero was trapped atop a waterless butte with a horde of Apaches\n howling below.\n\n\n \"Hope you can stick it out for eight or nine weeks without water,\n Brazos,\" he said to the typed pages he was leaving.\nThe life boat lifted sluggishly from the sands that had covered it for\n two years. Thig cleared each jet carefully, and then, finding them\n unharmed, he bored high into the stratosphere. Behind him the submarine\n patrol and the air-raid posts went mildly insane. They knew that some\n strange craft had roared up from the beach on Long Island, but they\n were never to know what it was.", "And the part of Thig's brain that was Lewis Terry was already busying\n itself with the plotting of a Western novel about the handcart\n pioneers.... Once he had rescued Brazos from that Apache-ringed mesa,\n he would get to work on it....", "\"My fuel is almost exhausted,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Prepare to dive into the Earth,\" said Urol in his emotionless voice.\n \"We cannot waste the power of our ship to ray you. The senseless\n assaults of the madmen caused us to waste much of our power.\"\n\n\n \"I am leaving now,\" said Thig. \"May the Law of the Horde endure\n forever!\" And under his breath: \"on Ortha.\"\n\n\n Thig let the life boat drop away from the other ship. Slowly it fell at\n first, and then faster as gravity gripped it. Fifty miles the ship must\n fall before it smashed into the ground. By that time the cruiser would\n be already beyond the orbit of the moon, and all they would see would\n be the moment of impact.", "There was an island not far from his landing place where the men with\n yellow skins had stored a great quantity of munitions and supplies. The\n fighting front was far to the East and at night no great precautions\n were taken. Any approaching fleet of bombers or surface ships would\n be detected long before they could reach this island. Nothing but\n submarines.\n\n\n Thig's space ship moved almost silently through the water offshore.\n The design of the ship that permitted no air to escape now permitted\n no water to enter. For many of the planets that Ortha claimed for her\n own possessed gaseous envelopes that were denser than water, and the\n Horde's ships were equipped to meet those conditions.", "\"The radio does not tell you that,\" scoffed the guard. \"We have sunk\n every American boat. There are no more American airplanes in the\n Pacific. Soon we will all move to America and have the white barbarians\n to wait upon us.\"\n\n\n \"Was that a Japanese bomber yesterday?\" The man's rifle thunked lightly\n against wood. \"There were circles on its wings.\"\n\n\n \"There may be a few left,\" was the excuse of the other guard. \"Now we\n must cease talking and walk our posts.\"\n\n\n Now Thig could make out the shapes of the guards as they went their\n way. One of them, the short, thick yellow man was coming slowly toward\n the tree that sheltered Thig. Perhaps he was dreaming of the fertile\n valleys of America, where the white-skinned men and women would be his\n servants, as he walked along.", "His stores of explosives he concealed in a great ring around the heart\n of the island—the only practical landing spot for the space cruiser,\n already slackening its terrific drive as it passed Pluto. How many tons\n of the deadly material he had collected he could not tell, but there\n was already sufficient to blow the island and everything upon it into\n oblivion.\n\n\n Time was growing short. Less than a day remained in which to bait the\n trap with his own ship for bait. The cruiser's detectors would pick\n up the\ntrylerium's\ncharacteristic radiations from the pitted walls\n of his rocket jets—the blasting jets of all space ships were made of\ntrylerium\n—and they would land nearby.\n\n\n That he would be blown up, too, in the explosion did not matter\n greatly, thought Thig. Ellen, the wife of the man he had helped kill,\n and the children, would be safe. Earth could go on in its own bloody\n blundering way to a glorious future.", "No, he would have to solve this problem by himself. Upon Thig, and Thig\n alone, rested the future of the two billions of mankind. If the Horde\n saw through his fanciful story about the disease that was carried from\n Venus in the bodies of Kam and Torp, Earth would soon be overrun by the\n Horde. The Horde was unimaginative and logical in all that it did, a\n robot race of super ant-beings—and they would destroy all the human\n race to prevent any future revolt.\n\n\n But if he could somehow thwart them; destroy this expedition, or send\n back another mute shipload of dead bodies as he had already done, Earth\n might not be visited again for several centuries. And she would be\n ready then, with a fully developed science of her own, to beat off any\n invasion from Ortha.", "He would have to play out the game as he had started it, until an\n opportunity came to strike, and then he would strike hard. He went over\n the story he had already told the Orthans, testing it for weak points\n that might give him the lie, and at last he was satisfied. In no way he\n had offended logic—the Great War that had spread across Earth since he\n first arrived would but serve to corroborate his story.\n\n\n With morning the explosion of bombs brought Thig to his feet. He\n cursed as he saw three airplanes circling overhead. They had come to\n investigate the mighty explosion that had sent a tidal wave rolling\n over the nearby atolls probably, but this was going to make it awkward\n for Thig to finish his task.\n\n\n The ships were Japanese light bombers he saw. They must have seen the\n circles that he had painted upon his tiny space ship, and mistaken the\n space cruiser for a larger Allied ship of some new design.", "A speaker from just inside the door broke in upon his labor. He dropped\n the rock and listened.\n\n\n \"Why do you attack the door?\" it asked.\n\n\n \"The lock is stuck,\" answered Thig.\n\n\n \"No,\" the Hordeman's voice said, \"the lock is not stuck. It is sealed\n against the possibility of contamination from the atmosphere of 72-P-3.\"\n\n\n \"I cannot join you?\" asked Thig as calmly as he could. Despair\n contracted his vitals as he saw this latest plan go glimmering.\n\n\n \"Naturally not!\" The speaker's voice showed as much surprise as it\n was possible for an Orthan to display. \"We can take no chances on the\n madness infecting any of us before we carry this information back to\n Ortha.\"\n\n\n \"I will tell you as much as I know,\" said Thig. \"It is fortunate that I\n am outside the ship.\"", "\"Yes,\" agreed the voice. \"Better that one die instead of four. The\n resources of the Horde must be conserved.\"\nAll through that first night after the space ship landed beside his\n little life boat, Thig lay on his sleeping deck trying to work out\n another method to overcome the four Hordemen inside their sturdy\n cruiser.\n\n\n Explosives were out; he had lost his opportunity to blast the great\n ship into shards when the Allied bomber had mistaken them for Japanese\n supplies. Trickery that would permit him to gain entrance was negated\n by the sealed ports and locks of the space cruiser. He could not blast\n an opening through the ship's skin with his decomposition blaster—it\n was designed to destroy only flesh or vegetable matter.", "Until he came to Earth, Thig had never known that there was such\n a thing as a lie. Among the men of Ortha there was no deceit or\n treachery. If they killed or destroyed, it was necessary. If they\n related any happening, however unimportant, it was painstakingly\n accurate. Imagination was a word that was meaningless among the\n disciplined billions of the Horde. They would not detect a lie for they\n would not recognize one! Earth was safe.\n\n\n \"That is good,\" he said. \"I will wait until you leave Earth, and then I\n will destroy the ship and myself.\"\n\n\n Over China they knifed, over the ruined cities and bomber fields, and\n down across Russia where vast armies locked in bloody combat. They saw\n here again great cities that were ravaged by war. Higher they climbed\n above the ocean, until, above North America, Thig dropped behind the\n great cruiser.\n\n\n He called the commander of the space cruiser then.", "He landed at last on a rocky strip of island that was outside the\n combat zone, and there commenced to lay out his trap. It would take\n many tons of explosives to penetrate the tough hull of the space ship\n he knew, but the ship must be destroyed. He had considered building\n a huge heat blaster, but the time was too limited and he knew how\n powerful were the protective shells of a space ship's skin.\n\n\n Gadgets he had considered; tricks that might gain for him entry into\n the ship where he could turn his own decomposition blaster on his\n brothers—all the tricks of the writing trade had passed muster before\n his mind's eye—but inevitably he returned to the decision that\n explosives gave the only certain means of destruction.", "Time went by swiftly, too swiftly, for there was no answer from the\n ship. He thought of taking off to meet them, but already the ship must\n be screaming down through the upper atmosphere. He shouted into the\n transmitter.\n\n\n A grating sound came from the receiver. A hollow sound of contact that\n he sensed rather than heard. A cold emotionless voice spoke in the\n strangely unfamiliar language of the Horde.\n\n\n \"Who is calling the ship from Planet 72-P-3?\" it demanded.\n\n\n \"A fellow Hordeman from Ortha,\" replied Thig hurriedly. \"I escaped from\n the space cruiser commanded by Torp, after madness claimed him. He\n struck down Kam first, and then attacked me. After he left me for dead,\n I took a lifeboat and escaped.\"\n\n\n \"You are Thig?\" said the even voice of the man from Ortha.\n\n\n \"That is right,\" acknowledged the other.", "\"But I did not escape,\" Thig told him. \"For many days after I returned\n to Earth I was insane. Torp and Kam had infected me as well. But I am\n strong, and I threw off the disease. At intervals it recurs but I strap\n myself down so I cannot harm myself before the madness passes.\"\n\n\n \"By the Law of the Horde,\" said Urol slowly, \"you should be destroyed\n if the disease is incurable.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I feared that another expedition would come and carry the\n madness back to the Horde. I kept myself alive to warn you. I will show\n you the ravages of the disease, and then destroy myself.\"\n\n\n \"It is good,\" agreed Urol. \"We are preparing to land now.\"", "It was his last mistake. The island dissolved into splintered\n fragments, and with it went the bomber and its brave crew.\nThig awaited the coming of the ship from Ortha on another island. He\n had accepted the destruction of his long weeks of planning with the\n fatalism that the Horde had taught him. Since one plan had fallen\n through he must use another. He would persuade the Orthans that he\n wanted to return to his own people, and once inside, with a little\n good fortune, he might be able to destroy them. He had killed his two\n fellows on the first expedition, but already his fertile imagination\n had invented a logical explanation of his presence on Earth.\n\n\n As the great ship swung down past Luna his radiophone came into play.\n Their detectors might pick up his weak signals at this distance even\n though they would have no reason to expect an Orthan ship here on\n Earth. His whole plan was based on the strategy of luring them here\n before they could start a thorough exploration of Earth.", "Nor could he lure a Japanese or Allied force of bombers to attack the\n Orthan ship. The weapons of the space cruiser would destroy such\n crude-winged mechanisms as might be thrown against them, and her own\n hull could not be damaged save by the most concentrated surprise\n attack. He knew how the Earthmen would work—a cautious bomber or two\n could attack first, and then, too late, a swarm of fighting planes and\n bombers would follow.\n\n\n He could not lure brave Allied fliers to their death in any such\n fashion, nor did he think that the yellow airmen could cause any\n worth-while damage—not that he cared how many of them were destroyed!\n He might be an alien being from another world, but there was now no\n more loyal American than Thig. He had permitted the identity of Lewis\n Terry to overcome his own entirely." ], [ "No, he would have to solve this problem by himself. Upon Thig, and Thig\n alone, rested the future of the two billions of mankind. If the Horde\n saw through his fanciful story about the disease that was carried from\n Venus in the bodies of Kam and Torp, Earth would soon be overrun by the\n Horde. The Horde was unimaginative and logical in all that it did, a\n robot race of super ant-beings—and they would destroy all the human\n race to prevent any future revolt.\n\n\n But if he could somehow thwart them; destroy this expedition, or send\n back another mute shipload of dead bodies as he had already done, Earth\n might not be visited again for several centuries. And she would be\n ready then, with a fully developed science of her own, to beat off any\n invasion from Ortha.", "\"But I did not escape,\" Thig told him. \"For many days after I returned\n to Earth I was insane. Torp and Kam had infected me as well. But I am\n strong, and I threw off the disease. At intervals it recurs but I strap\n myself down so I cannot harm myself before the madness passes.\"\n\n\n \"By the Law of the Horde,\" said Urol slowly, \"you should be destroyed\n if the disease is incurable.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I feared that another expedition would come and carry the\n madness back to the Horde. I kept myself alive to warn you. I will show\n you the ravages of the disease, and then destroy myself.\"\n\n\n \"It is good,\" agreed Urol. \"We are preparing to land now.\"", "Until he came to Earth, Thig had never known that there was such\n a thing as a lie. Among the men of Ortha there was no deceit or\n treachery. If they killed or destroyed, it was necessary. If they\n related any happening, however unimportant, it was painstakingly\n accurate. Imagination was a word that was meaningless among the\n disciplined billions of the Horde. They would not detect a lie for they\n would not recognize one! Earth was safe.\n\n\n \"That is good,\" he said. \"I will wait until you leave Earth, and then I\n will destroy the ship and myself.\"\n\n\n Over China they knifed, over the ruined cities and bomber fields, and\n down across Russia where vast armies locked in bloody combat. They saw\n here again great cities that were ravaged by war. Higher they climbed\n above the ocean, until, above North America, Thig dropped behind the\n great cruiser.\n\n\n He called the commander of the space cruiser then.", "\"We will return to Ortha with our reports at once,\" said Urol.\nThig sat frozen in his seat for a long moment staring at the\n transmitter. If he could only be certain that the Horde would find no\n flaws in his story; that Earth would never know the destruction that\n the Horde would bring.\n\n\n And then he laughed. Fool! The Orthans were unimaginative as\n domesticated cattle. They were robotized animals, all but devoid of\n intelligence. He should have remembered sooner, for he had been one of\n the Horde before he stole the memories of an Earthman, and fell in love\n with the dead man's woman!", "\"That is right,\" agreed Thig. \"I should have killed myself before you\n came.\" He paused. \"I should not have tried to warn you.\"\n\n\n \"You are wrong again,\" Urol told him. \"This madness destroys your\n reason. You were right in living until we came, to warn us. Now we can\n warn the Horde that 72-P-3 will be unsafe for colonization for many\n years.\"\n\n\n Thig felt his lips twitch into a grin. Fortunate that these ships were\n not equipped with telescreens. His story had convinced the methodical,\n robot-like Orthans. If he could keep them from learning that there was\n actually no madness on Earth until he could contrive to destroy them.\n\n\n The next words of the commander of the space cruiser sounded\n thunder-loud in his ears, tumbling his plans into ruin.", "Thig could almost see the Hordeman's smooth brow furrow with the\n unaccustomed task of thinking. The majority of the Horde's thinking was\n automatic, seldom did an alien thought intrude upon their formulized\n system of life. He smiled tautly—another gift from the dead man whose\n memories he had robbed was that of humor—as he listened for Urol's\n answer. There could be only one logical explanation for Thig's words.\n And Urol, like all the Hordemen, was a coldly logical being.\n\n\n \"There is madness on this world then?\" Urol asked.\n\n\n \"That is right.\" Thig drew upon the story-telling genius of Terry as he\n related the carefully plotted story that would permit him entrance to\n the Orthan ship. They must believe him....", "\"My fuel is almost exhausted,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Prepare to dive into the Earth,\" said Urol in his emotionless voice.\n \"We cannot waste the power of our ship to ray you. The senseless\n assaults of the madmen caused us to waste much of our power.\"\n\n\n \"I am leaving now,\" said Thig. \"May the Law of the Horde endure\n forever!\" And under his breath: \"on Ortha.\"\n\n\n Thig let the life boat drop away from the other ship. Slowly it fell at\n first, and then faster as gravity gripped it. Fifty miles the ship must\n fall before it smashed into the ground. By that time the cruiser would\n be already beyond the orbit of the moon, and all they would see would\n be the moment of impact.", "Curiosity, a trait that no other Orthan had possessed for many\n thousands of years, had impelled him to construct a small, but\n powerful, etherscope, and trace the fate of the space ship he had\n deserted. It had been built of odds and ends of material at night, but\n it opened the heavens before him. He saw planets and suns, countless\n light years distant many of them, and eventually he found Ortha—in\n time to see the space ship being boarded out in space by patrolling\n Hordemen, and quickly destroyed. They were taking no chances on the\n spread of the contagion from Earth among the Orthans.\n\n\n For the good of the Horde, the alien that was Lewis Terry knew, the\n patrolmen would transmit the information they received, and then\n destroy themselves. In their narrow philosophy of life only the Horde\n mattered. He had been like that when his name was Thig, and the\n memories of Lewis Terry were not yet part of his life.", "\"Yes,\" agreed the voice. \"Better that one die instead of four. The\n resources of the Horde must be conserved.\"\nAll through that first night after the space ship landed beside his\n little life boat, Thig lay on his sleeping deck trying to work out\n another method to overcome the four Hordemen inside their sturdy\n cruiser.\n\n\n Explosives were out; he had lost his opportunity to blast the great\n ship into shards when the Allied bomber had mistaken them for Japanese\n supplies. Trickery that would permit him to gain entrance was negated\n by the sealed ports and locks of the space cruiser. He could not blast\n an opening through the ship's skin with his decomposition blaster—it\n was designed to destroy only flesh or vegetable matter.", "It was his last mistake. The island dissolved into splintered\n fragments, and with it went the bomber and its brave crew.\nThig awaited the coming of the ship from Ortha on another island. He\n had accepted the destruction of his long weeks of planning with the\n fatalism that the Horde had taught him. Since one plan had fallen\n through he must use another. He would persuade the Orthans that he\n wanted to return to his own people, and once inside, with a little\n good fortune, he might be able to destroy them. He had killed his two\n fellows on the first expedition, but already his fertile imagination\n had invented a logical explanation of his presence on Earth.\n\n\n As the great ship swung down past Luna his radiophone came into play.\n Their detectors might pick up his weak signals at this distance even\n though they would have no reason to expect an Orthan ship here on\n Earth. His whole plan was based on the strategy of luring them here\n before they could start a thorough exploration of Earth.", "A speaker from just inside the door broke in upon his labor. He dropped\n the rock and listened.\n\n\n \"Why do you attack the door?\" it asked.\n\n\n \"The lock is stuck,\" answered Thig.\n\n\n \"No,\" the Hordeman's voice said, \"the lock is not stuck. It is sealed\n against the possibility of contamination from the atmosphere of 72-P-3.\"\n\n\n \"I cannot join you?\" asked Thig as calmly as he could. Despair\n contracted his vitals as he saw this latest plan go glimmering.\n\n\n \"Naturally not!\" The speaker's voice showed as much surprise as it\n was possible for an Orthan to display. \"We can take no chances on the\n madness infecting any of us before we carry this information back to\n Ortha.\"\n\n\n \"I will tell you as much as I know,\" said Thig. \"It is fortunate that I\n am outside the ship.\"", "And now another space ship was coming to Earth, coming to check on\n the findings of that earlier ill-fated expedition, and he alone could\n checkmate them!... If he had only kept watch on Ortha!\n\n\n He had two months, possibly a few days more than that, in which to\n destroy this second expedition that meant conquest and certain death\n for all Earth's warring millions! Two months to prepare!\n\n\n For the good of Ellen and the children, the children of the dead man\n whose identity he had stolen, he must succeed. The lusty primitives of\n this rich green world must never be replaced by the disciplined robot\n race that was the Horde.\n\n\n He covered his typewriter. The lock snapped with finality as he turned\n the key. He flexed the muscles of great arms, much too powerful for\n the meek appearance of the writer they were, and the blood beat hot\n through his squat body.", "Another airplane climbed clumsily up to meet this wingless metal arrow.\n His sights centered on the target. Abruptly the enemy ship was gone,\n whiffed away by the terrific invisible rays of the space cruiser's\n atomic batteries. Thig frowned. These Orthans!\nThig climbed. The remaining Jap ship did not attempt escape. Instead\n it dove straight upon its target. Down it went screaming, its wings\n ripping away from the fuselage with the battering of the air at this\n terrific speed, even as the atomic cannons blasted again and again. The\n space ship's guns handled awkwardly on the ground.\n\n\n Suddenly, the airplane disintegrated as an atomic bolt hit it squarely.\n The space ship ceased firing, and Thig slipped his ship back to earth.\n He clicked open his transmitter.\n\n\n \"You will be destroyed before we return to Ortha,\" said Urol. \"We\n cannot permit one of the Horde to live whose body and brain differ from\n the rest of us.\"", "QUEST'S END\nBy BASIL WELLS\nThig's quest was not yet finished, for the Hordes\n\n of Ortha had sent another ship across the Void.\n\n Only he could halt Earth's destruction—with\n\n a weapon that was but a thought in his mind.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Spring 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n\"I was a fool,\" gritted Thig. His eye crowded the eyepiece of the\n compact metal case on the table before him. The window was open and\n the ugly metal snout of the instrument pointed toward the eastern\n horizon. \"I should have expected the men of Ortha to send a second\n expedition to Earth!\"", "Nor could he lure a Japanese or Allied force of bombers to attack the\n Orthan ship. The weapons of the space cruiser would destroy such\n crude-winged mechanisms as might be thrown against them, and her own\n hull could not be damaged save by the most concentrated surprise\n attack. He knew how the Earthmen would work—a cautious bomber or two\n could attack first, and then, too late, a swarm of fighting planes and\n bombers would follow.\n\n\n He could not lure brave Allied fliers to their death in any such\n fashion, nor did he think that the yellow airmen could cause any\n worth-while damage—not that he cared how many of them were destroyed!\n He might be an alien being from another world, but there was now no\n more loyal American than Thig. He had permitted the identity of Lewis\n Terry to overcome his own entirely.", "There was an island not far from his landing place where the men with\n yellow skins had stored a great quantity of munitions and supplies. The\n fighting front was far to the East and at night no great precautions\n were taken. Any approaching fleet of bombers or surface ships would\n be detected long before they could reach this island. Nothing but\n submarines.\n\n\n Thig's space ship moved almost silently through the water offshore.\n The design of the ship that permitted no air to escape now permitted\n no water to enter. For many of the planets that Ortha claimed for her\n own possessed gaseous envelopes that were denser than water, and the\n Horde's ships were equipped to meet those conditions.", "Time went by swiftly, too swiftly, for there was no answer from the\n ship. He thought of taking off to meet them, but already the ship must\n be screaming down through the upper atmosphere. He shouted into the\n transmitter.\n\n\n A grating sound came from the receiver. A hollow sound of contact that\n he sensed rather than heard. A cold emotionless voice spoke in the\n strangely unfamiliar language of the Horde.\n\n\n \"Who is calling the ship from Planet 72-P-3?\" it demanded.\n\n\n \"A fellow Hordeman from Ortha,\" replied Thig hurriedly. \"I escaped from\n the space cruiser commanded by Torp, after madness claimed him. He\n struck down Kam first, and then attacked me. After he left me for dead,\n I took a lifeboat and escaped.\"\n\n\n \"You are Thig?\" said the even voice of the man from Ortha.\n\n\n \"That is right,\" acknowledged the other.", "He would have to play out the game as he had started it, until an\n opportunity came to strike, and then he would strike hard. He went over\n the story he had already told the Orthans, testing it for weak points\n that might give him the lie, and at last he was satisfied. In no way he\n had offended logic—the Great War that had spread across Earth since he\n first arrived would but serve to corroborate his story.\n\n\n With morning the explosion of bombs brought Thig to his feet. He\n cursed as he saw three airplanes circling overhead. They had come to\n investigate the mighty explosion that had sent a tidal wave rolling\n over the nearby atolls probably, but this was going to make it awkward\n for Thig to finish his task.\n\n\n The ships were Japanese light bombers he saw. They must have seen the\n circles that he had painted upon his tiny space ship, and mistaken the\n space cruiser for a larger Allied ship of some new design.", "His receiver crackled as he answered the curt demands of Urol.\n\n\n \"They are the Mad Ones,\" Thig said. \"Their madness causes them to fight\n among themselves. They drop their puny explosives foolishly upon the\n homes of other human cattle, taking great pleasure in wanton slaughter.\"\n\n\n \"But why do they attack us?\" asked Urol. \"Our ship cannot be harmed by\n their containers of expanding gases!\"\n\n\n \"It is because they are insane, their minds diseased hopelessly.\" Thig\n smiled to himself. \"I will go up to meet them, and destroy them with\n one of their own weapons.\"", "Ellen, Lewis Terry's wife, clenched the short letter that her husband\n had pressed into her hand as he kissed her earlier that evening. She\n did not know that he was really Thig, nor did the letter reveal that\n fact. If he was to die, he would die Lewis Terry. The letter told her\n simply that he must go away on a secret mission for several months. She\n understood now why the unshed tears had been bright in his eyes.\n\n\n Over the United States Thig blasted the life boat, and across the\n Pacific. He was getting as far from Long Island as he could, and one of\n his plans to destroy the Orthans called for many tons of explosives.\n Explosives, he told himself grimly, that the yellow men would furnish." ], [ "No, he would have to solve this problem by himself. Upon Thig, and Thig\n alone, rested the future of the two billions of mankind. If the Horde\n saw through his fanciful story about the disease that was carried from\n Venus in the bodies of Kam and Torp, Earth would soon be overrun by the\n Horde. The Horde was unimaginative and logical in all that it did, a\n robot race of super ant-beings—and they would destroy all the human\n race to prevent any future revolt.\n\n\n But if he could somehow thwart them; destroy this expedition, or send\n back another mute shipload of dead bodies as he had already done, Earth\n might not be visited again for several centuries. And she would be\n ready then, with a fully developed science of her own, to beat off any\n invasion from Ortha.", "\"But I did not escape,\" Thig told him. \"For many days after I returned\n to Earth I was insane. Torp and Kam had infected me as well. But I am\n strong, and I threw off the disease. At intervals it recurs but I strap\n myself down so I cannot harm myself before the madness passes.\"\n\n\n \"By the Law of the Horde,\" said Urol slowly, \"you should be destroyed\n if the disease is incurable.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I feared that another expedition would come and carry the\n madness back to the Horde. I kept myself alive to warn you. I will show\n you the ravages of the disease, and then destroy myself.\"\n\n\n \"It is good,\" agreed Urol. \"We are preparing to land now.\"", "\"My fuel is almost exhausted,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Prepare to dive into the Earth,\" said Urol in his emotionless voice.\n \"We cannot waste the power of our ship to ray you. The senseless\n assaults of the madmen caused us to waste much of our power.\"\n\n\n \"I am leaving now,\" said Thig. \"May the Law of the Horde endure\n forever!\" And under his breath: \"on Ortha.\"\n\n\n Thig let the life boat drop away from the other ship. Slowly it fell at\n first, and then faster as gravity gripped it. Fifty miles the ship must\n fall before it smashed into the ground. By that time the cruiser would\n be already beyond the orbit of the moon, and all they would see would\n be the moment of impact.", "\"We will return to Ortha with our reports at once,\" said Urol.\nThig sat frozen in his seat for a long moment staring at the\n transmitter. If he could only be certain that the Horde would find no\n flaws in his story; that Earth would never know the destruction that\n the Horde would bring.\n\n\n And then he laughed. Fool! The Orthans were unimaginative as\n domesticated cattle. They were robotized animals, all but devoid of\n intelligence. He should have remembered sooner, for he had been one of\n the Horde before he stole the memories of an Earthman, and fell in love\n with the dead man's woman!", "\"That is right,\" agreed Thig. \"I should have killed myself before you\n came.\" He paused. \"I should not have tried to warn you.\"\n\n\n \"You are wrong again,\" Urol told him. \"This madness destroys your\n reason. You were right in living until we came, to warn us. Now we can\n warn the Horde that 72-P-3 will be unsafe for colonization for many\n years.\"\n\n\n Thig felt his lips twitch into a grin. Fortunate that these ships were\n not equipped with telescreens. His story had convinced the methodical,\n robot-like Orthans. If he could keep them from learning that there was\n actually no madness on Earth until he could contrive to destroy them.\n\n\n The next words of the commander of the space cruiser sounded\n thunder-loud in his ears, tumbling his plans into ruin.", "Until he came to Earth, Thig had never known that there was such\n a thing as a lie. Among the men of Ortha there was no deceit or\n treachery. If they killed or destroyed, it was necessary. If they\n related any happening, however unimportant, it was painstakingly\n accurate. Imagination was a word that was meaningless among the\n disciplined billions of the Horde. They would not detect a lie for they\n would not recognize one! Earth was safe.\n\n\n \"That is good,\" he said. \"I will wait until you leave Earth, and then I\n will destroy the ship and myself.\"\n\n\n Over China they knifed, over the ruined cities and bomber fields, and\n down across Russia where vast armies locked in bloody combat. They saw\n here again great cities that were ravaged by war. Higher they climbed\n above the ocean, until, above North America, Thig dropped behind the\n great cruiser.\n\n\n He called the commander of the space cruiser then.", "It was his last mistake. The island dissolved into splintered\n fragments, and with it went the bomber and its brave crew.\nThig awaited the coming of the ship from Ortha on another island. He\n had accepted the destruction of his long weeks of planning with the\n fatalism that the Horde had taught him. Since one plan had fallen\n through he must use another. He would persuade the Orthans that he\n wanted to return to his own people, and once inside, with a little\n good fortune, he might be able to destroy them. He had killed his two\n fellows on the first expedition, but already his fertile imagination\n had invented a logical explanation of his presence on Earth.\n\n\n As the great ship swung down past Luna his radiophone came into play.\n Their detectors might pick up his weak signals at this distance even\n though they would have no reason to expect an Orthan ship here on\n Earth. His whole plan was based on the strategy of luring them here\n before they could start a thorough exploration of Earth.", "Thig could almost see the Hordeman's smooth brow furrow with the\n unaccustomed task of thinking. The majority of the Horde's thinking was\n automatic, seldom did an alien thought intrude upon their formulized\n system of life. He smiled tautly—another gift from the dead man whose\n memories he had robbed was that of humor—as he listened for Urol's\n answer. There could be only one logical explanation for Thig's words.\n And Urol, like all the Hordemen, was a coldly logical being.\n\n\n \"There is madness on this world then?\" Urol asked.\n\n\n \"That is right.\" Thig drew upon the story-telling genius of Terry as he\n related the carefully plotted story that would permit him entrance to\n the Orthan ship. They must believe him....", "\"Yes,\" agreed the voice. \"Better that one die instead of four. The\n resources of the Horde must be conserved.\"\nAll through that first night after the space ship landed beside his\n little life boat, Thig lay on his sleeping deck trying to work out\n another method to overcome the four Hordemen inside their sturdy\n cruiser.\n\n\n Explosives were out; he had lost his opportunity to blast the great\n ship into shards when the Allied bomber had mistaken them for Japanese\n supplies. Trickery that would permit him to gain entrance was negated\n by the sealed ports and locks of the space cruiser. He could not blast\n an opening through the ship's skin with his decomposition blaster—it\n was designed to destroy only flesh or vegetable matter.", "And now another space ship was coming to Earth, coming to check on\n the findings of that earlier ill-fated expedition, and he alone could\n checkmate them!... If he had only kept watch on Ortha!\n\n\n He had two months, possibly a few days more than that, in which to\n destroy this second expedition that meant conquest and certain death\n for all Earth's warring millions! Two months to prepare!\n\n\n For the good of Ellen and the children, the children of the dead man\n whose identity he had stolen, he must succeed. The lusty primitives of\n this rich green world must never be replaced by the disciplined robot\n race that was the Horde.\n\n\n He covered his typewriter. The lock snapped with finality as he turned\n the key. He flexed the muscles of great arms, much too powerful for\n the meek appearance of the writer they were, and the blood beat hot\n through his squat body.", "Another airplane climbed clumsily up to meet this wingless metal arrow.\n His sights centered on the target. Abruptly the enemy ship was gone,\n whiffed away by the terrific invisible rays of the space cruiser's\n atomic batteries. Thig frowned. These Orthans!\nThig climbed. The remaining Jap ship did not attempt escape. Instead\n it dove straight upon its target. Down it went screaming, its wings\n ripping away from the fuselage with the battering of the air at this\n terrific speed, even as the atomic cannons blasted again and again. The\n space ship's guns handled awkwardly on the ground.\n\n\n Suddenly, the airplane disintegrated as an atomic bolt hit it squarely.\n The space ship ceased firing, and Thig slipped his ship back to earth.\n He clicked open his transmitter.\n\n\n \"You will be destroyed before we return to Ortha,\" said Urol. \"We\n cannot permit one of the Horde to live whose body and brain differ from\n the rest of us.\"", "Time went by swiftly, too swiftly, for there was no answer from the\n ship. He thought of taking off to meet them, but already the ship must\n be screaming down through the upper atmosphere. He shouted into the\n transmitter.\n\n\n A grating sound came from the receiver. A hollow sound of contact that\n he sensed rather than heard. A cold emotionless voice spoke in the\n strangely unfamiliar language of the Horde.\n\n\n \"Who is calling the ship from Planet 72-P-3?\" it demanded.\n\n\n \"A fellow Hordeman from Ortha,\" replied Thig hurriedly. \"I escaped from\n the space cruiser commanded by Torp, after madness claimed him. He\n struck down Kam first, and then attacked me. After he left me for dead,\n I took a lifeboat and escaped.\"\n\n\n \"You are Thig?\" said the even voice of the man from Ortha.\n\n\n \"That is right,\" acknowledged the other.", "Curiosity, a trait that no other Orthan had possessed for many\n thousands of years, had impelled him to construct a small, but\n powerful, etherscope, and trace the fate of the space ship he had\n deserted. It had been built of odds and ends of material at night, but\n it opened the heavens before him. He saw planets and suns, countless\n light years distant many of them, and eventually he found Ortha—in\n time to see the space ship being boarded out in space by patrolling\n Hordemen, and quickly destroyed. They were taking no chances on the\n spread of the contagion from Earth among the Orthans.\n\n\n For the good of the Horde, the alien that was Lewis Terry knew, the\n patrolmen would transmit the information they received, and then\n destroy themselves. In their narrow philosophy of life only the Horde\n mattered. He had been like that when his name was Thig, and the\n memories of Lewis Terry were not yet part of his life.", "QUEST'S END\nBy BASIL WELLS\nThig's quest was not yet finished, for the Hordes\n\n of Ortha had sent another ship across the Void.\n\n Only he could halt Earth's destruction—with\n\n a weapon that was but a thought in his mind.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Spring 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n\"I was a fool,\" gritted Thig. His eye crowded the eyepiece of the\n compact metal case on the table before him. The window was open and\n the ugly metal snout of the instrument pointed toward the eastern\n horizon. \"I should have expected the men of Ortha to send a second\n expedition to Earth!\"", "A speaker from just inside the door broke in upon his labor. He dropped\n the rock and listened.\n\n\n \"Why do you attack the door?\" it asked.\n\n\n \"The lock is stuck,\" answered Thig.\n\n\n \"No,\" the Hordeman's voice said, \"the lock is not stuck. It is sealed\n against the possibility of contamination from the atmosphere of 72-P-3.\"\n\n\n \"I cannot join you?\" asked Thig as calmly as he could. Despair\n contracted his vitals as he saw this latest plan go glimmering.\n\n\n \"Naturally not!\" The speaker's voice showed as much surprise as it\n was possible for an Orthan to display. \"We can take no chances on the\n madness infecting any of us before we carry this information back to\n Ortha.\"\n\n\n \"I will tell you as much as I know,\" said Thig. \"It is fortunate that I\n am outside the ship.\"", "His stores of explosives he concealed in a great ring around the heart\n of the island—the only practical landing spot for the space cruiser,\n already slackening its terrific drive as it passed Pluto. How many tons\n of the deadly material he had collected he could not tell, but there\n was already sufficient to blow the island and everything upon it into\n oblivion.\n\n\n Time was growing short. Less than a day remained in which to bait the\n trap with his own ship for bait. The cruiser's detectors would pick\n up the\ntrylerium's\ncharacteristic radiations from the pitted walls\n of his rocket jets—the blasting jets of all space ships were made of\ntrylerium\n—and they would land nearby.\n\n\n That he would be blown up, too, in the explosion did not matter\n greatly, thought Thig. Ellen, the wife of the man he had helped kill,\n and the children, would be safe. Earth could go on in its own bloody\n blundering way to a glorious future.", "Friction was heating the metal skin of the ship slowly as it fell. Thig\n locked the controls; set the rocket relays for increasingly powerful\n thrusts of power, and waddled clumsily out through the lock into the\n frigid thin air of the stratosphere. He stepped out into emptiness.\n\n\n Inside the space suit it was warm, and the air was clean. When he had\n fallen a few miles farther he would open the glider wings, that were\n built into all Orthan suits instead of parachutes, and land on Long\n Island. But not until he was sheltered by the clouds from the view of\n the space cruiser.\n\n\n He was going back to Ellen and the children with the knowledge that\n Earth was saved from the Horde—saved by nothing more deadly than a lie!", "\"You're staying locked,\" he said slowly, \"until the last Hordeman is\n wiped from the face of Earth.\" He smiled grimly as he reflected that\n his hero was trapped atop a waterless butte with a horde of Apaches\n howling below.\n\n\n \"Hope you can stick it out for eight or nine weeks without water,\n Brazos,\" he said to the typed pages he was leaving.\nThe life boat lifted sluggishly from the sands that had covered it for\n two years. Thig cleared each jet carefully, and then, finding them\n unharmed, he bored high into the stratosphere. Behind him the submarine\n patrol and the air-raid posts went mildly insane. They knew that some\n strange craft had roared up from the beach on Long Island, but they\n were never to know what it was.", "He would have to play out the game as he had started it, until an\n opportunity came to strike, and then he would strike hard. He went over\n the story he had already told the Orthans, testing it for weak points\n that might give him the lie, and at last he was satisfied. In no way he\n had offended logic—the Great War that had spread across Earth since he\n first arrived would but serve to corroborate his story.\n\n\n With morning the explosion of bombs brought Thig to his feet. He\n cursed as he saw three airplanes circling overhead. They had come to\n investigate the mighty explosion that had sent a tidal wave rolling\n over the nearby atolls probably, but this was going to make it awkward\n for Thig to finish his task.\n\n\n The ships were Japanese light bombers he saw. They must have seen the\n circles that he had painted upon his tiny space ship, and mistaken the\n space cruiser for a larger Allied ship of some new design.", "Softly the bow of the little craft nosed up on the beach inside the\n harbor, and from its single lock stepped Thig. Naked he was now, as\n were all Hordemen, and from the harness of flexible plastic about his\n body there depended a decomposition blaster and an old butcher knife\n that he had whetted to razor sharpness.\n\n\n \"You hear something?\" asked one of the two guards.\n\n\n \"It was the waves,\" his comrade said, listening for a moment.\n\n\n \"In the darkness I can see nothing,\" grumbled the first Jap. \"Perhaps\n the Marines are landing.\"\n\n\n \"Ho,\" laughed the other guard, \"the Marines are thousands of miles\n away. They cannot stand against the power of our Emperor.\"\n\n\n \"It has been more than a year,\" said the fearful one, \"and we have not\n yet conquered all of California. I have heard that a few Marines are\n still hiding in the Solomons.\"" ], [ "Thig's compact body stiffened angrily. He came to his feet, his gaze\n roaming about the familiar disorder of the little boathouse. Here he\n came daily to write the lusty sagas of the Old West that had made the\n name of Lewis Terry familiar to millions of readers. Here beside the\n pot-bellied iron stove with the single cracked lid, he had worked\n long hours, striving vainly to forget that he was an alien being from\n another distant world.", "\"But I did not escape,\" Thig told him. \"For many days after I returned\n to Earth I was insane. Torp and Kam had infected me as well. But I am\n strong, and I threw off the disease. At intervals it recurs but I strap\n myself down so I cannot harm myself before the madness passes.\"\n\n\n \"By the Law of the Horde,\" said Urol slowly, \"you should be destroyed\n if the disease is incurable.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I feared that another expedition would come and carry the\n madness back to the Horde. I kept myself alive to warn you. I will show\n you the ravages of the disease, and then destroy myself.\"\n\n\n \"It is good,\" agreed Urol. \"We are preparing to land now.\"", "Thig could almost see the Hordeman's smooth brow furrow with the\n unaccustomed task of thinking. The majority of the Horde's thinking was\n automatic, seldom did an alien thought intrude upon their formulized\n system of life. He smiled tautly—another gift from the dead man whose\n memories he had robbed was that of humor—as he listened for Urol's\n answer. There could be only one logical explanation for Thig's words.\n And Urol, like all the Hordemen, was a coldly logical being.\n\n\n \"There is madness on this world then?\" Urol asked.\n\n\n \"That is right.\" Thig drew upon the story-telling genius of Terry as he\n related the carefully plotted story that would permit him entrance to\n the Orthan ship. They must believe him....", "Until he came to Earth, Thig had never known that there was such\n a thing as a lie. Among the men of Ortha there was no deceit or\n treachery. If they killed or destroyed, it was necessary. If they\n related any happening, however unimportant, it was painstakingly\n accurate. Imagination was a word that was meaningless among the\n disciplined billions of the Horde. They would not detect a lie for they\n would not recognize one! Earth was safe.\n\n\n \"That is good,\" he said. \"I will wait until you leave Earth, and then I\n will destroy the ship and myself.\"\n\n\n Over China they knifed, over the ruined cities and bomber fields, and\n down across Russia where vast armies locked in bloody combat. They saw\n here again great cities that were ravaged by war. Higher they climbed\n above the ocean, until, above North America, Thig dropped behind the\n great cruiser.\n\n\n He called the commander of the space cruiser then.", "No, he would have to solve this problem by himself. Upon Thig, and Thig\n alone, rested the future of the two billions of mankind. If the Horde\n saw through his fanciful story about the disease that was carried from\n Venus in the bodies of Kam and Torp, Earth would soon be overrun by the\n Horde. The Horde was unimaginative and logical in all that it did, a\n robot race of super ant-beings—and they would destroy all the human\n race to prevent any future revolt.\n\n\n But if he could somehow thwart them; destroy this expedition, or send\n back another mute shipload of dead bodies as he had already done, Earth\n might not be visited again for several centuries. And she would be\n ready then, with a fully developed science of her own, to beat off any\n invasion from Ortha.", "And the part of Thig's brain that was Lewis Terry was already busying\n itself with the plotting of a Western novel about the handcart\n pioneers.... Once he had rescued Brazos from that Apache-ringed mesa,\n he would get to work on it....", "\"Yes,\" agreed the voice. \"Better that one die instead of four. The\n resources of the Horde must be conserved.\"\nAll through that first night after the space ship landed beside his\n little life boat, Thig lay on his sleeping deck trying to work out\n another method to overcome the four Hordemen inside their sturdy\n cruiser.\n\n\n Explosives were out; he had lost his opportunity to blast the great\n ship into shards when the Allied bomber had mistaken them for Japanese\n supplies. Trickery that would permit him to gain entrance was negated\n by the sealed ports and locks of the space cruiser. He could not blast\n an opening through the ship's skin with his decomposition blaster—it\n was designed to destroy only flesh or vegetable matter.", "A speaker from just inside the door broke in upon his labor. He dropped\n the rock and listened.\n\n\n \"Why do you attack the door?\" it asked.\n\n\n \"The lock is stuck,\" answered Thig.\n\n\n \"No,\" the Hordeman's voice said, \"the lock is not stuck. It is sealed\n against the possibility of contamination from the atmosphere of 72-P-3.\"\n\n\n \"I cannot join you?\" asked Thig as calmly as he could. Despair\n contracted his vitals as he saw this latest plan go glimmering.\n\n\n \"Naturally not!\" The speaker's voice showed as much surprise as it\n was possible for an Orthan to display. \"We can take no chances on the\n madness infecting any of us before we carry this information back to\n Ortha.\"\n\n\n \"I will tell you as much as I know,\" said Thig. \"It is fortunate that I\n am outside the ship.\"", "\"My fuel is almost exhausted,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Prepare to dive into the Earth,\" said Urol in his emotionless voice.\n \"We cannot waste the power of our ship to ray you. The senseless\n assaults of the madmen caused us to waste much of our power.\"\n\n\n \"I am leaving now,\" said Thig. \"May the Law of the Horde endure\n forever!\" And under his breath: \"on Ortha.\"\n\n\n Thig let the life boat drop away from the other ship. Slowly it fell at\n first, and then faster as gravity gripped it. Fifty miles the ship must\n fall before it smashed into the ground. By that time the cruiser would\n be already beyond the orbit of the moon, and all they would see would\n be the moment of impact.", "His receiver crackled as he answered the curt demands of Urol.\n\n\n \"They are the Mad Ones,\" Thig said. \"Their madness causes them to fight\n among themselves. They drop their puny explosives foolishly upon the\n homes of other human cattle, taking great pleasure in wanton slaughter.\"\n\n\n \"But why do they attack us?\" asked Urol. \"Our ship cannot be harmed by\n their containers of expanding gases!\"\n\n\n \"It is because they are insane, their minds diseased hopelessly.\" Thig\n smiled to himself. \"I will go up to meet them, and destroy them with\n one of their own weapons.\"", "Curiosity, a trait that no other Orthan had possessed for many\n thousands of years, had impelled him to construct a small, but\n powerful, etherscope, and trace the fate of the space ship he had\n deserted. It had been built of odds and ends of material at night, but\n it opened the heavens before him. He saw planets and suns, countless\n light years distant many of them, and eventually he found Ortha—in\n time to see the space ship being boarded out in space by patrolling\n Hordemen, and quickly destroyed. They were taking no chances on the\n spread of the contagion from Earth among the Orthans.\n\n\n For the good of the Horde, the alien that was Lewis Terry knew, the\n patrolmen would transmit the information they received, and then\n destroy themselves. In their narrow philosophy of life only the Horde\n mattered. He had been like that when his name was Thig, and the\n memories of Lewis Terry were not yet part of his life.", "\"The radio does not tell you that,\" scoffed the guard. \"We have sunk\n every American boat. There are no more American airplanes in the\n Pacific. Soon we will all move to America and have the white barbarians\n to wait upon us.\"\n\n\n \"Was that a Japanese bomber yesterday?\" The man's rifle thunked lightly\n against wood. \"There were circles on its wings.\"\n\n\n \"There may be a few left,\" was the excuse of the other guard. \"Now we\n must cease talking and walk our posts.\"\n\n\n Now Thig could make out the shapes of the guards as they went their\n way. One of them, the short, thick yellow man was coming slowly toward\n the tree that sheltered Thig. Perhaps he was dreaming of the fertile\n valleys of America, where the white-skinned men and women would be his\n servants, as he walked along.", "Softly the bow of the little craft nosed up on the beach inside the\n harbor, and from its single lock stepped Thig. Naked he was now, as\n were all Hordemen, and from the harness of flexible plastic about his\n body there depended a decomposition blaster and an old butcher knife\n that he had whetted to razor sharpness.\n\n\n \"You hear something?\" asked one of the two guards.\n\n\n \"It was the waves,\" his comrade said, listening for a moment.\n\n\n \"In the darkness I can see nothing,\" grumbled the first Jap. \"Perhaps\n the Marines are landing.\"\n\n\n \"Ho,\" laughed the other guard, \"the Marines are thousands of miles\n away. They cannot stand against the power of our Emperor.\"\n\n\n \"It has been more than a year,\" said the fearful one, \"and we have not\n yet conquered all of California. I have heard that a few Marines are\n still hiding in the Solomons.\"", "He would have to play out the game as he had started it, until an\n opportunity came to strike, and then he would strike hard. He went over\n the story he had already told the Orthans, testing it for weak points\n that might give him the lie, and at last he was satisfied. In no way he\n had offended logic—the Great War that had spread across Earth since he\n first arrived would but serve to corroborate his story.\n\n\n With morning the explosion of bombs brought Thig to his feet. He\n cursed as he saw three airplanes circling overhead. They had come to\n investigate the mighty explosion that had sent a tidal wave rolling\n over the nearby atolls probably, but this was going to make it awkward\n for Thig to finish his task.\n\n\n The ships were Japanese light bombers he saw. They must have seen the\n circles that he had painted upon his tiny space ship, and mistaken the\n space cruiser for a larger Allied ship of some new design.", "Nor could he lure a Japanese or Allied force of bombers to attack the\n Orthan ship. The weapons of the space cruiser would destroy such\n crude-winged mechanisms as might be thrown against them, and her own\n hull could not be damaged save by the most concentrated surprise\n attack. He knew how the Earthmen would work—a cautious bomber or two\n could attack first, and then, too late, a swarm of fighting planes and\n bombers would follow.\n\n\n He could not lure brave Allied fliers to their death in any such\n fashion, nor did he think that the yellow airmen could cause any\n worth-while damage—not that he cared how many of them were destroyed!\n He might be an alien being from another world, but there was now no\n more loyal American than Thig. He had permitted the identity of Lewis\n Terry to overcome his own entirely.", "Time went by swiftly, too swiftly, for there was no answer from the\n ship. He thought of taking off to meet them, but already the ship must\n be screaming down through the upper atmosphere. He shouted into the\n transmitter.\n\n\n A grating sound came from the receiver. A hollow sound of contact that\n he sensed rather than heard. A cold emotionless voice spoke in the\n strangely unfamiliar language of the Horde.\n\n\n \"Who is calling the ship from Planet 72-P-3?\" it demanded.\n\n\n \"A fellow Hordeman from Ortha,\" replied Thig hurriedly. \"I escaped from\n the space cruiser commanded by Torp, after madness claimed him. He\n struck down Kam first, and then attacked me. After he left me for dead,\n I took a lifeboat and escaped.\"\n\n\n \"You are Thig?\" said the even voice of the man from Ortha.\n\n\n \"That is right,\" acknowledged the other.", "Another airplane climbed clumsily up to meet this wingless metal arrow.\n His sights centered on the target. Abruptly the enemy ship was gone,\n whiffed away by the terrific invisible rays of the space cruiser's\n atomic batteries. Thig frowned. These Orthans!\nThig climbed. The remaining Jap ship did not attempt escape. Instead\n it dove straight upon its target. Down it went screaming, its wings\n ripping away from the fuselage with the battering of the air at this\n terrific speed, even as the atomic cannons blasted again and again. The\n space ship's guns handled awkwardly on the ground.\n\n\n Suddenly, the airplane disintegrated as an atomic bolt hit it squarely.\n The space ship ceased firing, and Thig slipped his ship back to earth.\n He clicked open his transmitter.\n\n\n \"You will be destroyed before we return to Ortha,\" said Urol. \"We\n cannot permit one of the Horde to live whose body and brain differ from\n the rest of us.\"", "\"That is right,\" agreed Thig. \"I should have killed myself before you\n came.\" He paused. \"I should not have tried to warn you.\"\n\n\n \"You are wrong again,\" Urol told him. \"This madness destroys your\n reason. You were right in living until we came, to warn us. Now we can\n warn the Horde that 72-P-3 will be unsafe for colonization for many\n years.\"\n\n\n Thig felt his lips twitch into a grin. Fortunate that these ships were\n not equipped with telescreens. His story had convinced the methodical,\n robot-like Orthans. If he could keep them from learning that there was\n actually no madness on Earth until he could contrive to destroy them.\n\n\n The next words of the commander of the space cruiser sounded\n thunder-loud in his ears, tumbling his plans into ruin.", "Abruptly great fingers clamped around his throat, and he felt the sting\n of something that slammed against his chest. His feet scuffed at the\n soil, and then a great roaring filled his ears.\n\n\n Thig eased the limp body to the earth. The other slim guard had halted,\n his nervously acute ears picking up some vague sound.\n\n\n \"What—what was that?\" he called to his comrade.\n\n\n Thig eased his blaster from its holster. In a moment the guard would\n arouse the other members of the garrison. The distance was too great\n for the knife—the man would be able to fire his rifle before he\n reached him.\n\n\n The weapon's invisible rays slammed the Jap's body backward. Even as he\n fell the flesh was falling, rotted by the blaster's swift decomposing\n action, from the man's bones. A moment later only the crumbling bones\n of a skeleton remained of what had been a soldier.", "He loaded the little ship to its capacity with explosives from the\n stores on the island, and before he left he touched a match to the\n buildings. Then he blasted off, with the water clearing explosively\n from his spacer's overloaded jets to arouse the sleeping warriors of\n the Mikado.\nAfter that first foray Thig raided many an outlying island, and looted\n the sunken transports that lay in the shallowed water between some of\n the captured islands. He mounted a heavy machine gun in the nose of his\n agile little craft, and many a yellow man never returned to his home\n landing field. By days he hid near his objectives, in the jungle or the\n shallow water in the shadows of a jutting coral reef, and by night he\n moved like a giant crab, in his space suit, among the sunken ships." ], [ "No, he would have to solve this problem by himself. Upon Thig, and Thig\n alone, rested the future of the two billions of mankind. If the Horde\n saw through his fanciful story about the disease that was carried from\n Venus in the bodies of Kam and Torp, Earth would soon be overrun by the\n Horde. The Horde was unimaginative and logical in all that it did, a\n robot race of super ant-beings—and they would destroy all the human\n race to prevent any future revolt.\n\n\n But if he could somehow thwart them; destroy this expedition, or send\n back another mute shipload of dead bodies as he had already done, Earth\n might not be visited again for several centuries. And she would be\n ready then, with a fully developed science of her own, to beat off any\n invasion from Ortha.", "And the part of Thig's brain that was Lewis Terry was already busying\n itself with the plotting of a Western novel about the handcart\n pioneers.... Once he had rescued Brazos from that Apache-ringed mesa,\n he would get to work on it....", "He would have to play out the game as he had started it, until an\n opportunity came to strike, and then he would strike hard. He went over\n the story he had already told the Orthans, testing it for weak points\n that might give him the lie, and at last he was satisfied. In no way he\n had offended logic—the Great War that had spread across Earth since he\n first arrived would but serve to corroborate his story.\n\n\n With morning the explosion of bombs brought Thig to his feet. He\n cursed as he saw three airplanes circling overhead. They had come to\n investigate the mighty explosion that had sent a tidal wave rolling\n over the nearby atolls probably, but this was going to make it awkward\n for Thig to finish his task.\n\n\n The ships were Japanese light bombers he saw. They must have seen the\n circles that he had painted upon his tiny space ship, and mistaken the\n space cruiser for a larger Allied ship of some new design.", "Thig could almost see the Hordeman's smooth brow furrow with the\n unaccustomed task of thinking. The majority of the Horde's thinking was\n automatic, seldom did an alien thought intrude upon their formulized\n system of life. He smiled tautly—another gift from the dead man whose\n memories he had robbed was that of humor—as he listened for Urol's\n answer. There could be only one logical explanation for Thig's words.\n And Urol, like all the Hordemen, was a coldly logical being.\n\n\n \"There is madness on this world then?\" Urol asked.\n\n\n \"That is right.\" Thig drew upon the story-telling genius of Terry as he\n related the carefully plotted story that would permit him entrance to\n the Orthan ship. They must believe him....", "Thig's compact body stiffened angrily. He came to his feet, his gaze\n roaming about the familiar disorder of the little boathouse. Here he\n came daily to write the lusty sagas of the Old West that had made the\n name of Lewis Terry familiar to millions of readers. Here beside the\n pot-bellied iron stove with the single cracked lid, he had worked\n long hours, striving vainly to forget that he was an alien being from\n another distant world.", "\"My fuel is almost exhausted,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Prepare to dive into the Earth,\" said Urol in his emotionless voice.\n \"We cannot waste the power of our ship to ray you. The senseless\n assaults of the madmen caused us to waste much of our power.\"\n\n\n \"I am leaving now,\" said Thig. \"May the Law of the Horde endure\n forever!\" And under his breath: \"on Ortha.\"\n\n\n Thig let the life boat drop away from the other ship. Slowly it fell at\n first, and then faster as gravity gripped it. Fifty miles the ship must\n fall before it smashed into the ground. By that time the cruiser would\n be already beyond the orbit of the moon, and all they would see would\n be the moment of impact.", "He loaded the little ship to its capacity with explosives from the\n stores on the island, and before he left he touched a match to the\n buildings. Then he blasted off, with the water clearing explosively\n from his spacer's overloaded jets to arouse the sleeping warriors of\n the Mikado.\nAfter that first foray Thig raided many an outlying island, and looted\n the sunken transports that lay in the shallowed water between some of\n the captured islands. He mounted a heavy machine gun in the nose of his\n agile little craft, and many a yellow man never returned to his home\n landing field. By days he hid near his objectives, in the jungle or the\n shallow water in the shadows of a jutting coral reef, and by night he\n moved like a giant crab, in his space suit, among the sunken ships.", "Until he came to Earth, Thig had never known that there was such\n a thing as a lie. Among the men of Ortha there was no deceit or\n treachery. If they killed or destroyed, it was necessary. If they\n related any happening, however unimportant, it was painstakingly\n accurate. Imagination was a word that was meaningless among the\n disciplined billions of the Horde. They would not detect a lie for they\n would not recognize one! Earth was safe.\n\n\n \"That is good,\" he said. \"I will wait until you leave Earth, and then I\n will destroy the ship and myself.\"\n\n\n Over China they knifed, over the ruined cities and bomber fields, and\n down across Russia where vast armies locked in bloody combat. They saw\n here again great cities that were ravaged by war. Higher they climbed\n above the ocean, until, above North America, Thig dropped behind the\n great cruiser.\n\n\n He called the commander of the space cruiser then.", "It was his last mistake. The island dissolved into splintered\n fragments, and with it went the bomber and its brave crew.\nThig awaited the coming of the ship from Ortha on another island. He\n had accepted the destruction of his long weeks of planning with the\n fatalism that the Horde had taught him. Since one plan had fallen\n through he must use another. He would persuade the Orthans that he\n wanted to return to his own people, and once inside, with a little\n good fortune, he might be able to destroy them. He had killed his two\n fellows on the first expedition, but already his fertile imagination\n had invented a logical explanation of his presence on Earth.\n\n\n As the great ship swung down past Luna his radiophone came into play.\n Their detectors might pick up his weak signals at this distance even\n though they would have no reason to expect an Orthan ship here on\n Earth. His whole plan was based on the strategy of luring them here\n before they could start a thorough exploration of Earth.", "Nor could he lure a Japanese or Allied force of bombers to attack the\n Orthan ship. The weapons of the space cruiser would destroy such\n crude-winged mechanisms as might be thrown against them, and her own\n hull could not be damaged save by the most concentrated surprise\n attack. He knew how the Earthmen would work—a cautious bomber or two\n could attack first, and then, too late, a swarm of fighting planes and\n bombers would follow.\n\n\n He could not lure brave Allied fliers to their death in any such\n fashion, nor did he think that the yellow airmen could cause any\n worth-while damage—not that he cared how many of them were destroyed!\n He might be an alien being from another world, but there was now no\n more loyal American than Thig. He had permitted the identity of Lewis\n Terry to overcome his own entirely.", "\"But I did not escape,\" Thig told him. \"For many days after I returned\n to Earth I was insane. Torp and Kam had infected me as well. But I am\n strong, and I threw off the disease. At intervals it recurs but I strap\n myself down so I cannot harm myself before the madness passes.\"\n\n\n \"By the Law of the Horde,\" said Urol slowly, \"you should be destroyed\n if the disease is incurable.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I feared that another expedition would come and carry the\n madness back to the Horde. I kept myself alive to warn you. I will show\n you the ravages of the disease, and then destroy myself.\"\n\n\n \"It is good,\" agreed Urol. \"We are preparing to land now.\"", "\"Yes,\" agreed the voice. \"Better that one die instead of four. The\n resources of the Horde must be conserved.\"\nAll through that first night after the space ship landed beside his\n little life boat, Thig lay on his sleeping deck trying to work out\n another method to overcome the four Hordemen inside their sturdy\n cruiser.\n\n\n Explosives were out; he had lost his opportunity to blast the great\n ship into shards when the Allied bomber had mistaken them for Japanese\n supplies. Trickery that would permit him to gain entrance was negated\n by the sealed ports and locks of the space cruiser. He could not blast\n an opening through the ship's skin with his decomposition blaster—it\n was designed to destroy only flesh or vegetable matter.", "A speaker from just inside the door broke in upon his labor. He dropped\n the rock and listened.\n\n\n \"Why do you attack the door?\" it asked.\n\n\n \"The lock is stuck,\" answered Thig.\n\n\n \"No,\" the Hordeman's voice said, \"the lock is not stuck. It is sealed\n against the possibility of contamination from the atmosphere of 72-P-3.\"\n\n\n \"I cannot join you?\" asked Thig as calmly as he could. Despair\n contracted his vitals as he saw this latest plan go glimmering.\n\n\n \"Naturally not!\" The speaker's voice showed as much surprise as it\n was possible for an Orthan to display. \"We can take no chances on the\n madness infecting any of us before we carry this information back to\n Ortha.\"\n\n\n \"I will tell you as much as I know,\" said Thig. \"It is fortunate that I\n am outside the ship.\"", "His stores of explosives he concealed in a great ring around the heart\n of the island—the only practical landing spot for the space cruiser,\n already slackening its terrific drive as it passed Pluto. How many tons\n of the deadly material he had collected he could not tell, but there\n was already sufficient to blow the island and everything upon it into\n oblivion.\n\n\n Time was growing short. Less than a day remained in which to bait the\n trap with his own ship for bait. The cruiser's detectors would pick\n up the\ntrylerium's\ncharacteristic radiations from the pitted walls\n of his rocket jets—the blasting jets of all space ships were made of\ntrylerium\n—and they would land nearby.\n\n\n That he would be blown up, too, in the explosion did not matter\n greatly, thought Thig. Ellen, the wife of the man he had helped kill,\n and the children, would be safe. Earth could go on in its own bloody\n blundering way to a glorious future.", "\"The radio does not tell you that,\" scoffed the guard. \"We have sunk\n every American boat. There are no more American airplanes in the\n Pacific. Soon we will all move to America and have the white barbarians\n to wait upon us.\"\n\n\n \"Was that a Japanese bomber yesterday?\" The man's rifle thunked lightly\n against wood. \"There were circles on its wings.\"\n\n\n \"There may be a few left,\" was the excuse of the other guard. \"Now we\n must cease talking and walk our posts.\"\n\n\n Now Thig could make out the shapes of the guards as they went their\n way. One of them, the short, thick yellow man was coming slowly toward\n the tree that sheltered Thig. Perhaps he was dreaming of the fertile\n valleys of America, where the white-skinned men and women would be his\n servants, as he walked along.", "Ellen, Lewis Terry's wife, clenched the short letter that her husband\n had pressed into her hand as he kissed her earlier that evening. She\n did not know that he was really Thig, nor did the letter reveal that\n fact. If he was to die, he would die Lewis Terry. The letter told her\n simply that he must go away on a secret mission for several months. She\n understood now why the unshed tears had been bright in his eyes.\n\n\n Over the United States Thig blasted the life boat, and across the\n Pacific. He was getting as far from Long Island as he could, and one of\n his plans to destroy the Orthans called for many tons of explosives.\n Explosives, he told himself grimly, that the yellow men would furnish.", "His receiver crackled as he answered the curt demands of Urol.\n\n\n \"They are the Mad Ones,\" Thig said. \"Their madness causes them to fight\n among themselves. They drop their puny explosives foolishly upon the\n homes of other human cattle, taking great pleasure in wanton slaughter.\"\n\n\n \"But why do they attack us?\" asked Urol. \"Our ship cannot be harmed by\n their containers of expanding gases!\"\n\n\n \"It is because they are insane, their minds diseased hopelessly.\" Thig\n smiled to himself. \"I will go up to meet them, and destroy them with\n one of their own weapons.\"", "\"That is right,\" agreed Thig. \"I should have killed myself before you\n came.\" He paused. \"I should not have tried to warn you.\"\n\n\n \"You are wrong again,\" Urol told him. \"This madness destroys your\n reason. You were right in living until we came, to warn us. Now we can\n warn the Horde that 72-P-3 will be unsafe for colonization for many\n years.\"\n\n\n Thig felt his lips twitch into a grin. Fortunate that these ships were\n not equipped with telescreens. His story had convinced the methodical,\n robot-like Orthans. If he could keep them from learning that there was\n actually no madness on Earth until he could contrive to destroy them.\n\n\n The next words of the commander of the space cruiser sounded\n thunder-loud in his ears, tumbling his plans into ruin.", "\"That is unnecessary,\" said Urol, \"our own armament....\"\nThig snapped off the receiver. He sprang to the controls, and sent the\n little ship rocketing skyward. He patted the heavy machine-gun that had\n been part of his loot from one of the sunken transports. It was mounted\n in the nose of his craft, and already it had knocked a score of Zeros\n and other Jap planes from the skies.\n\n\n He dove upon one of the crawling winged enemy ships. The gun chattered\n briefly, and smoke and flames curled back from the doomed plane's\n engine. One!", "He landed at last on a rocky strip of island that was outside the\n combat zone, and there commenced to lay out his trap. It would take\n many tons of explosives to penetrate the tough hull of the space ship\n he knew, but the ship must be destroyed. He had considered building\n a huge heat blaster, but the time was too limited and he knew how\n powerful were the protective shells of a space ship's skin.\n\n\n Gadgets he had considered; tricks that might gain for him entry into\n the ship where he could turn his own decomposition blaster on his\n brothers—all the tricks of the writing trade had passed muster before\n his mind's eye—but inevitably he returned to the decision that\n explosives gave the only certain means of destruction." ], [ "Ellen, Lewis Terry's wife, clenched the short letter that her husband\n had pressed into her hand as he kissed her earlier that evening. She\n did not know that he was really Thig, nor did the letter reveal that\n fact. If he was to die, he would die Lewis Terry. The letter told her\n simply that he must go away on a secret mission for several months. She\n understood now why the unshed tears had been bright in his eyes.\n\n\n Over the United States Thig blasted the life boat, and across the\n Pacific. He was getting as far from Long Island as he could, and one of\n his plans to destroy the Orthans called for many tons of explosives.\n Explosives, he told himself grimly, that the yellow men would furnish.", "His stores of explosives he concealed in a great ring around the heart\n of the island—the only practical landing spot for the space cruiser,\n already slackening its terrific drive as it passed Pluto. How many tons\n of the deadly material he had collected he could not tell, but there\n was already sufficient to blow the island and everything upon it into\n oblivion.\n\n\n Time was growing short. Less than a day remained in which to bait the\n trap with his own ship for bait. The cruiser's detectors would pick\n up the\ntrylerium's\ncharacteristic radiations from the pitted walls\n of his rocket jets—the blasting jets of all space ships were made of\ntrylerium\n—and they would land nearby.\n\n\n That he would be blown up, too, in the explosion did not matter\n greatly, thought Thig. Ellen, the wife of the man he had helped kill,\n and the children, would be safe. Earth could go on in its own bloody\n blundering way to a glorious future.", "\"You're staying locked,\" he said slowly, \"until the last Hordeman is\n wiped from the face of Earth.\" He smiled grimly as he reflected that\n his hero was trapped atop a waterless butte with a horde of Apaches\n howling below.\n\n\n \"Hope you can stick it out for eight or nine weeks without water,\n Brazos,\" he said to the typed pages he was leaving.\nThe life boat lifted sluggishly from the sands that had covered it for\n two years. Thig cleared each jet carefully, and then, finding them\n unharmed, he bored high into the stratosphere. Behind him the submarine\n patrol and the air-raid posts went mildly insane. They knew that some\n strange craft had roared up from the beach on Long Island, but they\n were never to know what it was.", "Thig's compact body stiffened angrily. He came to his feet, his gaze\n roaming about the familiar disorder of the little boathouse. Here he\n came daily to write the lusty sagas of the Old West that had made the\n name of Lewis Terry familiar to millions of readers. Here beside the\n pot-bellied iron stove with the single cracked lid, he had worked\n long hours, striving vainly to forget that he was an alien being from\n another distant world.", "And the part of Thig's brain that was Lewis Terry was already busying\n itself with the plotting of a Western novel about the handcart\n pioneers.... Once he had rescued Brazos from that Apache-ringed mesa,\n he would get to work on it....", "No, he would have to solve this problem by himself. Upon Thig, and Thig\n alone, rested the future of the two billions of mankind. If the Horde\n saw through his fanciful story about the disease that was carried from\n Venus in the bodies of Kam and Torp, Earth would soon be overrun by the\n Horde. The Horde was unimaginative and logical in all that it did, a\n robot race of super ant-beings—and they would destroy all the human\n race to prevent any future revolt.\n\n\n But if he could somehow thwart them; destroy this expedition, or send\n back another mute shipload of dead bodies as he had already done, Earth\n might not be visited again for several centuries. And she would be\n ready then, with a fully developed science of her own, to beat off any\n invasion from Ortha.", "Softly the bow of the little craft nosed up on the beach inside the\n harbor, and from its single lock stepped Thig. Naked he was now, as\n were all Hordemen, and from the harness of flexible plastic about his\n body there depended a decomposition blaster and an old butcher knife\n that he had whetted to razor sharpness.\n\n\n \"You hear something?\" asked one of the two guards.\n\n\n \"It was the waves,\" his comrade said, listening for a moment.\n\n\n \"In the darkness I can see nothing,\" grumbled the first Jap. \"Perhaps\n the Marines are landing.\"\n\n\n \"Ho,\" laughed the other guard, \"the Marines are thousands of miles\n away. They cannot stand against the power of our Emperor.\"\n\n\n \"It has been more than a year,\" said the fearful one, \"and we have not\n yet conquered all of California. I have heard that a few Marines are\n still hiding in the Solomons.\"", "He landed at last on a rocky strip of island that was outside the\n combat zone, and there commenced to lay out his trap. It would take\n many tons of explosives to penetrate the tough hull of the space ship\n he knew, but the ship must be destroyed. He had considered building\n a huge heat blaster, but the time was too limited and he knew how\n powerful were the protective shells of a space ship's skin.\n\n\n Gadgets he had considered; tricks that might gain for him entry into\n the ship where he could turn his own decomposition blaster on his\n brothers—all the tricks of the writing trade had passed muster before\n his mind's eye—but inevitably he returned to the decision that\n explosives gave the only certain means of destruction.", "His receiver crackled as he answered the curt demands of Urol.\n\n\n \"They are the Mad Ones,\" Thig said. \"Their madness causes them to fight\n among themselves. They drop their puny explosives foolishly upon the\n homes of other human cattle, taking great pleasure in wanton slaughter.\"\n\n\n \"But why do they attack us?\" asked Urol. \"Our ship cannot be harmed by\n their containers of expanding gases!\"\n\n\n \"It is because they are insane, their minds diseased hopelessly.\" Thig\n smiled to himself. \"I will go up to meet them, and destroy them with\n one of their own weapons.\"", "\"But I did not escape,\" Thig told him. \"For many days after I returned\n to Earth I was insane. Torp and Kam had infected me as well. But I am\n strong, and I threw off the disease. At intervals it recurs but I strap\n myself down so I cannot harm myself before the madness passes.\"\n\n\n \"By the Law of the Horde,\" said Urol slowly, \"you should be destroyed\n if the disease is incurable.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I feared that another expedition would come and carry the\n madness back to the Horde. I kept myself alive to warn you. I will show\n you the ravages of the disease, and then destroy myself.\"\n\n\n \"It is good,\" agreed Urol. \"We are preparing to land now.\"", "But first he must bring back another load, the final link in the deadly\n ring about the landing place. Morning was at hand. He would have to\n work fast. He left the load where it lay and blasted off.\n\n\n The great bomber, with the circles painted on its wings, passed over\n the little island. It returned. The pilot shouted and bombs intended\n for a target several hundred miles to the south took their final plunge\n earthward.\n\n\n The ship was bullet-scarred—off its course—and since this was\n Japanese-dominated water his mistake was only natural. He took the\n caches of munitions for enemy supply dumps.", "He would have to play out the game as he had started it, until an\n opportunity came to strike, and then he would strike hard. He went over\n the story he had already told the Orthans, testing it for weak points\n that might give him the lie, and at last he was satisfied. In no way he\n had offended logic—the Great War that had spread across Earth since he\n first arrived would but serve to corroborate his story.\n\n\n With morning the explosion of bombs brought Thig to his feet. He\n cursed as he saw three airplanes circling overhead. They had come to\n investigate the mighty explosion that had sent a tidal wave rolling\n over the nearby atolls probably, but this was going to make it awkward\n for Thig to finish his task.\n\n\n The ships were Japanese light bombers he saw. They must have seen the\n circles that he had painted upon his tiny space ship, and mistaken the\n space cruiser for a larger Allied ship of some new design.", "It was his last mistake. The island dissolved into splintered\n fragments, and with it went the bomber and its brave crew.\nThig awaited the coming of the ship from Ortha on another island. He\n had accepted the destruction of his long weeks of planning with the\n fatalism that the Horde had taught him. Since one plan had fallen\n through he must use another. He would persuade the Orthans that he\n wanted to return to his own people, and once inside, with a little\n good fortune, he might be able to destroy them. He had killed his two\n fellows on the first expedition, but already his fertile imagination\n had invented a logical explanation of his presence on Earth.\n\n\n As the great ship swung down past Luna his radiophone came into play.\n Their detectors might pick up his weak signals at this distance even\n though they would have no reason to expect an Orthan ship here on\n Earth. His whole plan was based on the strategy of luring them here\n before they could start a thorough exploration of Earth.", "Time went by swiftly, too swiftly, for there was no answer from the\n ship. He thought of taking off to meet them, but already the ship must\n be screaming down through the upper atmosphere. He shouted into the\n transmitter.\n\n\n A grating sound came from the receiver. A hollow sound of contact that\n he sensed rather than heard. A cold emotionless voice spoke in the\n strangely unfamiliar language of the Horde.\n\n\n \"Who is calling the ship from Planet 72-P-3?\" it demanded.\n\n\n \"A fellow Hordeman from Ortha,\" replied Thig hurriedly. \"I escaped from\n the space cruiser commanded by Torp, after madness claimed him. He\n struck down Kam first, and then attacked me. After he left me for dead,\n I took a lifeboat and escaped.\"\n\n\n \"You are Thig?\" said the even voice of the man from Ortha.\n\n\n \"That is right,\" acknowledged the other.", "And now another space ship was coming to Earth, coming to check on\n the findings of that earlier ill-fated expedition, and he alone could\n checkmate them!... If he had only kept watch on Ortha!\n\n\n He had two months, possibly a few days more than that, in which to\n destroy this second expedition that meant conquest and certain death\n for all Earth's warring millions! Two months to prepare!\n\n\n For the good of Ellen and the children, the children of the dead man\n whose identity he had stolen, he must succeed. The lusty primitives of\n this rich green world must never be replaced by the disciplined robot\n race that was the Horde.\n\n\n He covered his typewriter. The lock snapped with finality as he turned\n the key. He flexed the muscles of great arms, much too powerful for\n the meek appearance of the writer they were, and the blood beat hot\n through his squat body.", "Until he came to Earth, Thig had never known that there was such\n a thing as a lie. Among the men of Ortha there was no deceit or\n treachery. If they killed or destroyed, it was necessary. If they\n related any happening, however unimportant, it was painstakingly\n accurate. Imagination was a word that was meaningless among the\n disciplined billions of the Horde. They would not detect a lie for they\n would not recognize one! Earth was safe.\n\n\n \"That is good,\" he said. \"I will wait until you leave Earth, and then I\n will destroy the ship and myself.\"\n\n\n Over China they knifed, over the ruined cities and bomber fields, and\n down across Russia where vast armies locked in bloody combat. They saw\n here again great cities that were ravaged by war. Higher they climbed\n above the ocean, until, above North America, Thig dropped behind the\n great cruiser.\n\n\n He called the commander of the space cruiser then.", "\"My fuel is almost exhausted,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Prepare to dive into the Earth,\" said Urol in his emotionless voice.\n \"We cannot waste the power of our ship to ray you. The senseless\n assaults of the madmen caused us to waste much of our power.\"\n\n\n \"I am leaving now,\" said Thig. \"May the Law of the Horde endure\n forever!\" And under his breath: \"on Ortha.\"\n\n\n Thig let the life boat drop away from the other ship. Slowly it fell at\n first, and then faster as gravity gripped it. Fifty miles the ship must\n fall before it smashed into the ground. By that time the cruiser would\n be already beyond the orbit of the moon, and all they would see would\n be the moment of impact.", "\"That is right,\" agreed Thig. \"I should have killed myself before you\n came.\" He paused. \"I should not have tried to warn you.\"\n\n\n \"You are wrong again,\" Urol told him. \"This madness destroys your\n reason. You were right in living until we came, to warn us. Now we can\n warn the Horde that 72-P-3 will be unsafe for colonization for many\n years.\"\n\n\n Thig felt his lips twitch into a grin. Fortunate that these ships were\n not equipped with telescreens. His story had convinced the methodical,\n robot-like Orthans. If he could keep them from learning that there was\n actually no madness on Earth until he could contrive to destroy them.\n\n\n The next words of the commander of the space cruiser sounded\n thunder-loud in his ears, tumbling his plans into ruin.", "Abruptly great fingers clamped around his throat, and he felt the sting\n of something that slammed against his chest. His feet scuffed at the\n soil, and then a great roaring filled his ears.\n\n\n Thig eased the limp body to the earth. The other slim guard had halted,\n his nervously acute ears picking up some vague sound.\n\n\n \"What—what was that?\" he called to his comrade.\n\n\n Thig eased his blaster from its holster. In a moment the guard would\n arouse the other members of the garrison. The distance was too great\n for the knife—the man would be able to fire his rifle before he\n reached him.\n\n\n The weapon's invisible rays slammed the Jap's body backward. Even as he\n fell the flesh was falling, rotted by the blaster's swift decomposing\n action, from the man's bones. A moment later only the crumbling bones\n of a skeleton remained of what had been a soldier.", "\"Yes,\" agreed the voice. \"Better that one die instead of four. The\n resources of the Horde must be conserved.\"\nAll through that first night after the space ship landed beside his\n little life boat, Thig lay on his sleeping deck trying to work out\n another method to overcome the four Hordemen inside their sturdy\n cruiser.\n\n\n Explosives were out; he had lost his opportunity to blast the great\n ship into shards when the Allied bomber had mistaken them for Japanese\n supplies. Trickery that would permit him to gain entrance was negated\n by the sealed ports and locks of the space cruiser. He could not blast\n an opening through the ship's skin with his decomposition blaster—it\n was designed to destroy only flesh or vegetable matter." ], [ "Thig's compact body stiffened angrily. He came to his feet, his gaze\n roaming about the familiar disorder of the little boathouse. Here he\n came daily to write the lusty sagas of the Old West that had made the\n name of Lewis Terry familiar to millions of readers. Here beside the\n pot-bellied iron stove with the single cracked lid, he had worked\n long hours, striving vainly to forget that he was an alien being from\n another distant world.", "And the part of Thig's brain that was Lewis Terry was already busying\n itself with the plotting of a Western novel about the handcart\n pioneers.... Once he had rescued Brazos from that Apache-ringed mesa,\n he would get to work on it....", "Thig could almost see the Hordeman's smooth brow furrow with the\n unaccustomed task of thinking. The majority of the Horde's thinking was\n automatic, seldom did an alien thought intrude upon their formulized\n system of life. He smiled tautly—another gift from the dead man whose\n memories he had robbed was that of humor—as he listened for Urol's\n answer. There could be only one logical explanation for Thig's words.\n And Urol, like all the Hordemen, was a coldly logical being.\n\n\n \"There is madness on this world then?\" Urol asked.\n\n\n \"That is right.\" Thig drew upon the story-telling genius of Terry as he\n related the carefully plotted story that would permit him entrance to\n the Orthan ship. They must believe him....", "No, he would have to solve this problem by himself. Upon Thig, and Thig\n alone, rested the future of the two billions of mankind. If the Horde\n saw through his fanciful story about the disease that was carried from\n Venus in the bodies of Kam and Torp, Earth would soon be overrun by the\n Horde. The Horde was unimaginative and logical in all that it did, a\n robot race of super ant-beings—and they would destroy all the human\n race to prevent any future revolt.\n\n\n But if he could somehow thwart them; destroy this expedition, or send\n back another mute shipload of dead bodies as he had already done, Earth\n might not be visited again for several centuries. And she would be\n ready then, with a fully developed science of her own, to beat off any\n invasion from Ortha.", "A speaker from just inside the door broke in upon his labor. He dropped\n the rock and listened.\n\n\n \"Why do you attack the door?\" it asked.\n\n\n \"The lock is stuck,\" answered Thig.\n\n\n \"No,\" the Hordeman's voice said, \"the lock is not stuck. It is sealed\n against the possibility of contamination from the atmosphere of 72-P-3.\"\n\n\n \"I cannot join you?\" asked Thig as calmly as he could. Despair\n contracted his vitals as he saw this latest plan go glimmering.\n\n\n \"Naturally not!\" The speaker's voice showed as much surprise as it\n was possible for an Orthan to display. \"We can take no chances on the\n madness infecting any of us before we carry this information back to\n Ortha.\"\n\n\n \"I will tell you as much as I know,\" said Thig. \"It is fortunate that I\n am outside the ship.\"", "\"But I did not escape,\" Thig told him. \"For many days after I returned\n to Earth I was insane. Torp and Kam had infected me as well. But I am\n strong, and I threw off the disease. At intervals it recurs but I strap\n myself down so I cannot harm myself before the madness passes.\"\n\n\n \"By the Law of the Horde,\" said Urol slowly, \"you should be destroyed\n if the disease is incurable.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I feared that another expedition would come and carry the\n madness back to the Horde. I kept myself alive to warn you. I will show\n you the ravages of the disease, and then destroy myself.\"\n\n\n \"It is good,\" agreed Urol. \"We are preparing to land now.\"", "\"My fuel is almost exhausted,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Prepare to dive into the Earth,\" said Urol in his emotionless voice.\n \"We cannot waste the power of our ship to ray you. The senseless\n assaults of the madmen caused us to waste much of our power.\"\n\n\n \"I am leaving now,\" said Thig. \"May the Law of the Horde endure\n forever!\" And under his breath: \"on Ortha.\"\n\n\n Thig let the life boat drop away from the other ship. Slowly it fell at\n first, and then faster as gravity gripped it. Fifty miles the ship must\n fall before it smashed into the ground. By that time the cruiser would\n be already beyond the orbit of the moon, and all they would see would\n be the moment of impact.", "Softly the bow of the little craft nosed up on the beach inside the\n harbor, and from its single lock stepped Thig. Naked he was now, as\n were all Hordemen, and from the harness of flexible plastic about his\n body there depended a decomposition blaster and an old butcher knife\n that he had whetted to razor sharpness.\n\n\n \"You hear something?\" asked one of the two guards.\n\n\n \"It was the waves,\" his comrade said, listening for a moment.\n\n\n \"In the darkness I can see nothing,\" grumbled the first Jap. \"Perhaps\n the Marines are landing.\"\n\n\n \"Ho,\" laughed the other guard, \"the Marines are thousands of miles\n away. They cannot stand against the power of our Emperor.\"\n\n\n \"It has been more than a year,\" said the fearful one, \"and we have not\n yet conquered all of California. I have heard that a few Marines are\n still hiding in the Solomons.\"", "Time went by swiftly, too swiftly, for there was no answer from the\n ship. He thought of taking off to meet them, but already the ship must\n be screaming down through the upper atmosphere. He shouted into the\n transmitter.\n\n\n A grating sound came from the receiver. A hollow sound of contact that\n he sensed rather than heard. A cold emotionless voice spoke in the\n strangely unfamiliar language of the Horde.\n\n\n \"Who is calling the ship from Planet 72-P-3?\" it demanded.\n\n\n \"A fellow Hordeman from Ortha,\" replied Thig hurriedly. \"I escaped from\n the space cruiser commanded by Torp, after madness claimed him. He\n struck down Kam first, and then attacked me. After he left me for dead,\n I took a lifeboat and escaped.\"\n\n\n \"You are Thig?\" said the even voice of the man from Ortha.\n\n\n \"That is right,\" acknowledged the other.", "\"The radio does not tell you that,\" scoffed the guard. \"We have sunk\n every American boat. There are no more American airplanes in the\n Pacific. Soon we will all move to America and have the white barbarians\n to wait upon us.\"\n\n\n \"Was that a Japanese bomber yesterday?\" The man's rifle thunked lightly\n against wood. \"There were circles on its wings.\"\n\n\n \"There may be a few left,\" was the excuse of the other guard. \"Now we\n must cease talking and walk our posts.\"\n\n\n Now Thig could make out the shapes of the guards as they went their\n way. One of them, the short, thick yellow man was coming slowly toward\n the tree that sheltered Thig. Perhaps he was dreaming of the fertile\n valleys of America, where the white-skinned men and women would be his\n servants, as he walked along.", "\"Yes,\" agreed the voice. \"Better that one die instead of four. The\n resources of the Horde must be conserved.\"\nAll through that first night after the space ship landed beside his\n little life boat, Thig lay on his sleeping deck trying to work out\n another method to overcome the four Hordemen inside their sturdy\n cruiser.\n\n\n Explosives were out; he had lost his opportunity to blast the great\n ship into shards when the Allied bomber had mistaken them for Japanese\n supplies. Trickery that would permit him to gain entrance was negated\n by the sealed ports and locks of the space cruiser. He could not blast\n an opening through the ship's skin with his decomposition blaster—it\n was designed to destroy only flesh or vegetable matter.", "Ellen, Lewis Terry's wife, clenched the short letter that her husband\n had pressed into her hand as he kissed her earlier that evening. She\n did not know that he was really Thig, nor did the letter reveal that\n fact. If he was to die, he would die Lewis Terry. The letter told her\n simply that he must go away on a secret mission for several months. She\n understood now why the unshed tears had been bright in his eyes.\n\n\n Over the United States Thig blasted the life boat, and across the\n Pacific. He was getting as far from Long Island as he could, and one of\n his plans to destroy the Orthans called for many tons of explosives.\n Explosives, he told himself grimly, that the yellow men would furnish.", "He loaded the little ship to its capacity with explosives from the\n stores on the island, and before he left he touched a match to the\n buildings. Then he blasted off, with the water clearing explosively\n from his spacer's overloaded jets to arouse the sleeping warriors of\n the Mikado.\nAfter that first foray Thig raided many an outlying island, and looted\n the sunken transports that lay in the shallowed water between some of\n the captured islands. He mounted a heavy machine gun in the nose of his\n agile little craft, and many a yellow man never returned to his home\n landing field. By days he hid near his objectives, in the jungle or the\n shallow water in the shadows of a jutting coral reef, and by night he\n moved like a giant crab, in his space suit, among the sunken ships.", "Until he came to Earth, Thig had never known that there was such\n a thing as a lie. Among the men of Ortha there was no deceit or\n treachery. If they killed or destroyed, it was necessary. If they\n related any happening, however unimportant, it was painstakingly\n accurate. Imagination was a word that was meaningless among the\n disciplined billions of the Horde. They would not detect a lie for they\n would not recognize one! Earth was safe.\n\n\n \"That is good,\" he said. \"I will wait until you leave Earth, and then I\n will destroy the ship and myself.\"\n\n\n Over China they knifed, over the ruined cities and bomber fields, and\n down across Russia where vast armies locked in bloody combat. They saw\n here again great cities that were ravaged by war. Higher they climbed\n above the ocean, until, above North America, Thig dropped behind the\n great cruiser.\n\n\n He called the commander of the space cruiser then.", "Nor could he lure a Japanese or Allied force of bombers to attack the\n Orthan ship. The weapons of the space cruiser would destroy such\n crude-winged mechanisms as might be thrown against them, and her own\n hull could not be damaged save by the most concentrated surprise\n attack. He knew how the Earthmen would work—a cautious bomber or two\n could attack first, and then, too late, a swarm of fighting planes and\n bombers would follow.\n\n\n He could not lure brave Allied fliers to their death in any such\n fashion, nor did he think that the yellow airmen could cause any\n worth-while damage—not that he cared how many of them were destroyed!\n He might be an alien being from another world, but there was now no\n more loyal American than Thig. He had permitted the identity of Lewis\n Terry to overcome his own entirely.", "He would have to play out the game as he had started it, until an\n opportunity came to strike, and then he would strike hard. He went over\n the story he had already told the Orthans, testing it for weak points\n that might give him the lie, and at last he was satisfied. In no way he\n had offended logic—the Great War that had spread across Earth since he\n first arrived would but serve to corroborate his story.\n\n\n With morning the explosion of bombs brought Thig to his feet. He\n cursed as he saw three airplanes circling overhead. They had come to\n investigate the mighty explosion that had sent a tidal wave rolling\n over the nearby atolls probably, but this was going to make it awkward\n for Thig to finish his task.\n\n\n The ships were Japanese light bombers he saw. They must have seen the\n circles that he had painted upon his tiny space ship, and mistaken the\n space cruiser for a larger Allied ship of some new design.", "Abruptly great fingers clamped around his throat, and he felt the sting\n of something that slammed against his chest. His feet scuffed at the\n soil, and then a great roaring filled his ears.\n\n\n Thig eased the limp body to the earth. The other slim guard had halted,\n his nervously acute ears picking up some vague sound.\n\n\n \"What—what was that?\" he called to his comrade.\n\n\n Thig eased his blaster from its holster. In a moment the guard would\n arouse the other members of the garrison. The distance was too great\n for the knife—the man would be able to fire his rifle before he\n reached him.\n\n\n The weapon's invisible rays slammed the Jap's body backward. Even as he\n fell the flesh was falling, rotted by the blaster's swift decomposing\n action, from the man's bones. A moment later only the crumbling bones\n of a skeleton remained of what had been a soldier.", "\"That is unnecessary,\" said Urol, \"our own armament....\"\nThig snapped off the receiver. He sprang to the controls, and sent the\n little ship rocketing skyward. He patted the heavy machine-gun that had\n been part of his loot from one of the sunken transports. It was mounted\n in the nose of his craft, and already it had knocked a score of Zeros\n and other Jap planes from the skies.\n\n\n He dove upon one of the crawling winged enemy ships. The gun chattered\n briefly, and smoke and flames curled back from the doomed plane's\n engine. One!", "There was an island not far from his landing place where the men with\n yellow skins had stored a great quantity of munitions and supplies. The\n fighting front was far to the East and at night no great precautions\n were taken. Any approaching fleet of bombers or surface ships would\n be detected long before they could reach this island. Nothing but\n submarines.\n\n\n Thig's space ship moved almost silently through the water offshore.\n The design of the ship that permitted no air to escape now permitted\n no water to enter. For many of the planets that Ortha claimed for her\n own possessed gaseous envelopes that were denser than water, and the\n Horde's ships were equipped to meet those conditions.", "His receiver crackled as he answered the curt demands of Urol.\n\n\n \"They are the Mad Ones,\" Thig said. \"Their madness causes them to fight\n among themselves. They drop their puny explosives foolishly upon the\n homes of other human cattle, taking great pleasure in wanton slaughter.\"\n\n\n \"But why do they attack us?\" asked Urol. \"Our ship cannot be harmed by\n their containers of expanding gases!\"\n\n\n \"It is because they are insane, their minds diseased hopelessly.\" Thig\n smiled to himself. \"I will go up to meet them, and destroy them with\n one of their own weapons.\"" ], [ "Thig could almost see the Hordeman's smooth brow furrow with the\n unaccustomed task of thinking. The majority of the Horde's thinking was\n automatic, seldom did an alien thought intrude upon their formulized\n system of life. He smiled tautly—another gift from the dead man whose\n memories he had robbed was that of humor—as he listened for Urol's\n answer. There could be only one logical explanation for Thig's words.\n And Urol, like all the Hordemen, was a coldly logical being.\n\n\n \"There is madness on this world then?\" Urol asked.\n\n\n \"That is right.\" Thig drew upon the story-telling genius of Terry as he\n related the carefully plotted story that would permit him entrance to\n the Orthan ship. They must believe him....", "\"But I did not escape,\" Thig told him. \"For many days after I returned\n to Earth I was insane. Torp and Kam had infected me as well. But I am\n strong, and I threw off the disease. At intervals it recurs but I strap\n myself down so I cannot harm myself before the madness passes.\"\n\n\n \"By the Law of the Horde,\" said Urol slowly, \"you should be destroyed\n if the disease is incurable.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I feared that another expedition would come and carry the\n madness back to the Horde. I kept myself alive to warn you. I will show\n you the ravages of the disease, and then destroy myself.\"\n\n\n \"It is good,\" agreed Urol. \"We are preparing to land now.\"", "No, he would have to solve this problem by himself. Upon Thig, and Thig\n alone, rested the future of the two billions of mankind. If the Horde\n saw through his fanciful story about the disease that was carried from\n Venus in the bodies of Kam and Torp, Earth would soon be overrun by the\n Horde. The Horde was unimaginative and logical in all that it did, a\n robot race of super ant-beings—and they would destroy all the human\n race to prevent any future revolt.\n\n\n But if he could somehow thwart them; destroy this expedition, or send\n back another mute shipload of dead bodies as he had already done, Earth\n might not be visited again for several centuries. And she would be\n ready then, with a fully developed science of her own, to beat off any\n invasion from Ortha.", "Time went by swiftly, too swiftly, for there was no answer from the\n ship. He thought of taking off to meet them, but already the ship must\n be screaming down through the upper atmosphere. He shouted into the\n transmitter.\n\n\n A grating sound came from the receiver. A hollow sound of contact that\n he sensed rather than heard. A cold emotionless voice spoke in the\n strangely unfamiliar language of the Horde.\n\n\n \"Who is calling the ship from Planet 72-P-3?\" it demanded.\n\n\n \"A fellow Hordeman from Ortha,\" replied Thig hurriedly. \"I escaped from\n the space cruiser commanded by Torp, after madness claimed him. He\n struck down Kam first, and then attacked me. After he left me for dead,\n I took a lifeboat and escaped.\"\n\n\n \"You are Thig?\" said the even voice of the man from Ortha.\n\n\n \"That is right,\" acknowledged the other.", "Until he came to Earth, Thig had never known that there was such\n a thing as a lie. Among the men of Ortha there was no deceit or\n treachery. If they killed or destroyed, it was necessary. If they\n related any happening, however unimportant, it was painstakingly\n accurate. Imagination was a word that was meaningless among the\n disciplined billions of the Horde. They would not detect a lie for they\n would not recognize one! Earth was safe.\n\n\n \"That is good,\" he said. \"I will wait until you leave Earth, and then I\n will destroy the ship and myself.\"\n\n\n Over China they knifed, over the ruined cities and bomber fields, and\n down across Russia where vast armies locked in bloody combat. They saw\n here again great cities that were ravaged by war. Higher they climbed\n above the ocean, until, above North America, Thig dropped behind the\n great cruiser.\n\n\n He called the commander of the space cruiser then.", "\"Yes,\" agreed the voice. \"Better that one die instead of four. The\n resources of the Horde must be conserved.\"\nAll through that first night after the space ship landed beside his\n little life boat, Thig lay on his sleeping deck trying to work out\n another method to overcome the four Hordemen inside their sturdy\n cruiser.\n\n\n Explosives were out; he had lost his opportunity to blast the great\n ship into shards when the Allied bomber had mistaken them for Japanese\n supplies. Trickery that would permit him to gain entrance was negated\n by the sealed ports and locks of the space cruiser. He could not blast\n an opening through the ship's skin with his decomposition blaster—it\n was designed to destroy only flesh or vegetable matter.", "\"We will return to Ortha with our reports at once,\" said Urol.\nThig sat frozen in his seat for a long moment staring at the\n transmitter. If he could only be certain that the Horde would find no\n flaws in his story; that Earth would never know the destruction that\n the Horde would bring.\n\n\n And then he laughed. Fool! The Orthans were unimaginative as\n domesticated cattle. They were robotized animals, all but devoid of\n intelligence. He should have remembered sooner, for he had been one of\n the Horde before he stole the memories of an Earthman, and fell in love\n with the dead man's woman!", "\"That is right,\" agreed Thig. \"I should have killed myself before you\n came.\" He paused. \"I should not have tried to warn you.\"\n\n\n \"You are wrong again,\" Urol told him. \"This madness destroys your\n reason. You were right in living until we came, to warn us. Now we can\n warn the Horde that 72-P-3 will be unsafe for colonization for many\n years.\"\n\n\n Thig felt his lips twitch into a grin. Fortunate that these ships were\n not equipped with telescreens. His story had convinced the methodical,\n robot-like Orthans. If he could keep them from learning that there was\n actually no madness on Earth until he could contrive to destroy them.\n\n\n The next words of the commander of the space cruiser sounded\n thunder-loud in his ears, tumbling his plans into ruin.", "It was his last mistake. The island dissolved into splintered\n fragments, and with it went the bomber and its brave crew.\nThig awaited the coming of the ship from Ortha on another island. He\n had accepted the destruction of his long weeks of planning with the\n fatalism that the Horde had taught him. Since one plan had fallen\n through he must use another. He would persuade the Orthans that he\n wanted to return to his own people, and once inside, with a little\n good fortune, he might be able to destroy them. He had killed his two\n fellows on the first expedition, but already his fertile imagination\n had invented a logical explanation of his presence on Earth.\n\n\n As the great ship swung down past Luna his radiophone came into play.\n Their detectors might pick up his weak signals at this distance even\n though they would have no reason to expect an Orthan ship here on\n Earth. His whole plan was based on the strategy of luring them here\n before they could start a thorough exploration of Earth.", "\"My fuel is almost exhausted,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Prepare to dive into the Earth,\" said Urol in his emotionless voice.\n \"We cannot waste the power of our ship to ray you. The senseless\n assaults of the madmen caused us to waste much of our power.\"\n\n\n \"I am leaving now,\" said Thig. \"May the Law of the Horde endure\n forever!\" And under his breath: \"on Ortha.\"\n\n\n Thig let the life boat drop away from the other ship. Slowly it fell at\n first, and then faster as gravity gripped it. Fifty miles the ship must\n fall before it smashed into the ground. By that time the cruiser would\n be already beyond the orbit of the moon, and all they would see would\n be the moment of impact.", "A speaker from just inside the door broke in upon his labor. He dropped\n the rock and listened.\n\n\n \"Why do you attack the door?\" it asked.\n\n\n \"The lock is stuck,\" answered Thig.\n\n\n \"No,\" the Hordeman's voice said, \"the lock is not stuck. It is sealed\n against the possibility of contamination from the atmosphere of 72-P-3.\"\n\n\n \"I cannot join you?\" asked Thig as calmly as he could. Despair\n contracted his vitals as he saw this latest plan go glimmering.\n\n\n \"Naturally not!\" The speaker's voice showed as much surprise as it\n was possible for an Orthan to display. \"We can take no chances on the\n madness infecting any of us before we carry this information back to\n Ortha.\"\n\n\n \"I will tell you as much as I know,\" said Thig. \"It is fortunate that I\n am outside the ship.\"", "He would have to play out the game as he had started it, until an\n opportunity came to strike, and then he would strike hard. He went over\n the story he had already told the Orthans, testing it for weak points\n that might give him the lie, and at last he was satisfied. In no way he\n had offended logic—the Great War that had spread across Earth since he\n first arrived would but serve to corroborate his story.\n\n\n With morning the explosion of bombs brought Thig to his feet. He\n cursed as he saw three airplanes circling overhead. They had come to\n investigate the mighty explosion that had sent a tidal wave rolling\n over the nearby atolls probably, but this was going to make it awkward\n for Thig to finish his task.\n\n\n The ships were Japanese light bombers he saw. They must have seen the\n circles that he had painted upon his tiny space ship, and mistaken the\n space cruiser for a larger Allied ship of some new design.", "Curiosity, a trait that no other Orthan had possessed for many\n thousands of years, had impelled him to construct a small, but\n powerful, etherscope, and trace the fate of the space ship he had\n deserted. It had been built of odds and ends of material at night, but\n it opened the heavens before him. He saw planets and suns, countless\n light years distant many of them, and eventually he found Ortha—in\n time to see the space ship being boarded out in space by patrolling\n Hordemen, and quickly destroyed. They were taking no chances on the\n spread of the contagion from Earth among the Orthans.\n\n\n For the good of the Horde, the alien that was Lewis Terry knew, the\n patrolmen would transmit the information they received, and then\n destroy themselves. In their narrow philosophy of life only the Horde\n mattered. He had been like that when his name was Thig, and the\n memories of Lewis Terry were not yet part of his life.", "And the part of Thig's brain that was Lewis Terry was already busying\n itself with the plotting of a Western novel about the handcart\n pioneers.... Once he had rescued Brazos from that Apache-ringed mesa,\n he would get to work on it....", "Softly the bow of the little craft nosed up on the beach inside the\n harbor, and from its single lock stepped Thig. Naked he was now, as\n were all Hordemen, and from the harness of flexible plastic about his\n body there depended a decomposition blaster and an old butcher knife\n that he had whetted to razor sharpness.\n\n\n \"You hear something?\" asked one of the two guards.\n\n\n \"It was the waves,\" his comrade said, listening for a moment.\n\n\n \"In the darkness I can see nothing,\" grumbled the first Jap. \"Perhaps\n the Marines are landing.\"\n\n\n \"Ho,\" laughed the other guard, \"the Marines are thousands of miles\n away. They cannot stand against the power of our Emperor.\"\n\n\n \"It has been more than a year,\" said the fearful one, \"and we have not\n yet conquered all of California. I have heard that a few Marines are\n still hiding in the Solomons.\"", "Nor could he lure a Japanese or Allied force of bombers to attack the\n Orthan ship. The weapons of the space cruiser would destroy such\n crude-winged mechanisms as might be thrown against them, and her own\n hull could not be damaged save by the most concentrated surprise\n attack. He knew how the Earthmen would work—a cautious bomber or two\n could attack first, and then, too late, a swarm of fighting planes and\n bombers would follow.\n\n\n He could not lure brave Allied fliers to their death in any such\n fashion, nor did he think that the yellow airmen could cause any\n worth-while damage—not that he cared how many of them were destroyed!\n He might be an alien being from another world, but there was now no\n more loyal American than Thig. He had permitted the identity of Lewis\n Terry to overcome his own entirely.", "Another airplane climbed clumsily up to meet this wingless metal arrow.\n His sights centered on the target. Abruptly the enemy ship was gone,\n whiffed away by the terrific invisible rays of the space cruiser's\n atomic batteries. Thig frowned. These Orthans!\nThig climbed. The remaining Jap ship did not attempt escape. Instead\n it dove straight upon its target. Down it went screaming, its wings\n ripping away from the fuselage with the battering of the air at this\n terrific speed, even as the atomic cannons blasted again and again. The\n space ship's guns handled awkwardly on the ground.\n\n\n Suddenly, the airplane disintegrated as an atomic bolt hit it squarely.\n The space ship ceased firing, and Thig slipped his ship back to earth.\n He clicked open his transmitter.\n\n\n \"You will be destroyed before we return to Ortha,\" said Urol. \"We\n cannot permit one of the Horde to live whose body and brain differ from\n the rest of us.\"", "Friction was heating the metal skin of the ship slowly as it fell. Thig\n locked the controls; set the rocket relays for increasingly powerful\n thrusts of power, and waddled clumsily out through the lock into the\n frigid thin air of the stratosphere. He stepped out into emptiness.\n\n\n Inside the space suit it was warm, and the air was clean. When he had\n fallen a few miles farther he would open the glider wings, that were\n built into all Orthan suits instead of parachutes, and land on Long\n Island. But not until he was sheltered by the clouds from the view of\n the space cruiser.\n\n\n He was going back to Ellen and the children with the knowledge that\n Earth was saved from the Horde—saved by nothing more deadly than a lie!", "There was an island not far from his landing place where the men with\n yellow skins had stored a great quantity of munitions and supplies. The\n fighting front was far to the East and at night no great precautions\n were taken. Any approaching fleet of bombers or surface ships would\n be detected long before they could reach this island. Nothing but\n submarines.\n\n\n Thig's space ship moved almost silently through the water offshore.\n The design of the ship that permitted no air to escape now permitted\n no water to enter. For many of the planets that Ortha claimed for her\n own possessed gaseous envelopes that were denser than water, and the\n Horde's ships were equipped to meet those conditions.", "And now another space ship was coming to Earth, coming to check on\n the findings of that earlier ill-fated expedition, and he alone could\n checkmate them!... If he had only kept watch on Ortha!\n\n\n He had two months, possibly a few days more than that, in which to\n destroy this second expedition that meant conquest and certain death\n for all Earth's warring millions! Two months to prepare!\n\n\n For the good of Ellen and the children, the children of the dead man\n whose identity he had stolen, he must succeed. The lusty primitives of\n this rich green world must never be replaced by the disciplined robot\n race that was the Horde.\n\n\n He covered his typewriter. The lock snapped with finality as he turned\n the key. He flexed the muscles of great arms, much too powerful for\n the meek appearance of the writer they were, and the blood beat hot\n through his squat body." ], [ "\"But I did not escape,\" Thig told him. \"For many days after I returned\n to Earth I was insane. Torp and Kam had infected me as well. But I am\n strong, and I threw off the disease. At intervals it recurs but I strap\n myself down so I cannot harm myself before the madness passes.\"\n\n\n \"By the Law of the Horde,\" said Urol slowly, \"you should be destroyed\n if the disease is incurable.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I feared that another expedition would come and carry the\n madness back to the Horde. I kept myself alive to warn you. I will show\n you the ravages of the disease, and then destroy myself.\"\n\n\n \"It is good,\" agreed Urol. \"We are preparing to land now.\"", "No, he would have to solve this problem by himself. Upon Thig, and Thig\n alone, rested the future of the two billions of mankind. If the Horde\n saw through his fanciful story about the disease that was carried from\n Venus in the bodies of Kam and Torp, Earth would soon be overrun by the\n Horde. The Horde was unimaginative and logical in all that it did, a\n robot race of super ant-beings—and they would destroy all the human\n race to prevent any future revolt.\n\n\n But if he could somehow thwart them; destroy this expedition, or send\n back another mute shipload of dead bodies as he had already done, Earth\n might not be visited again for several centuries. And she would be\n ready then, with a fully developed science of her own, to beat off any\n invasion from Ortha.", "\"That is right,\" agreed Thig. \"I should have killed myself before you\n came.\" He paused. \"I should not have tried to warn you.\"\n\n\n \"You are wrong again,\" Urol told him. \"This madness destroys your\n reason. You were right in living until we came, to warn us. Now we can\n warn the Horde that 72-P-3 will be unsafe for colonization for many\n years.\"\n\n\n Thig felt his lips twitch into a grin. Fortunate that these ships were\n not equipped with telescreens. His story had convinced the methodical,\n robot-like Orthans. If he could keep them from learning that there was\n actually no madness on Earth until he could contrive to destroy them.\n\n\n The next words of the commander of the space cruiser sounded\n thunder-loud in his ears, tumbling his plans into ruin.", "\"My fuel is almost exhausted,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Prepare to dive into the Earth,\" said Urol in his emotionless voice.\n \"We cannot waste the power of our ship to ray you. The senseless\n assaults of the madmen caused us to waste much of our power.\"\n\n\n \"I am leaving now,\" said Thig. \"May the Law of the Horde endure\n forever!\" And under his breath: \"on Ortha.\"\n\n\n Thig let the life boat drop away from the other ship. Slowly it fell at\n first, and then faster as gravity gripped it. Fifty miles the ship must\n fall before it smashed into the ground. By that time the cruiser would\n be already beyond the orbit of the moon, and all they would see would\n be the moment of impact.", "Thig could almost see the Hordeman's smooth brow furrow with the\n unaccustomed task of thinking. The majority of the Horde's thinking was\n automatic, seldom did an alien thought intrude upon their formulized\n system of life. He smiled tautly—another gift from the dead man whose\n memories he had robbed was that of humor—as he listened for Urol's\n answer. There could be only one logical explanation for Thig's words.\n And Urol, like all the Hordemen, was a coldly logical being.\n\n\n \"There is madness on this world then?\" Urol asked.\n\n\n \"That is right.\" Thig drew upon the story-telling genius of Terry as he\n related the carefully plotted story that would permit him entrance to\n the Orthan ship. They must believe him....", "A speaker from just inside the door broke in upon his labor. He dropped\n the rock and listened.\n\n\n \"Why do you attack the door?\" it asked.\n\n\n \"The lock is stuck,\" answered Thig.\n\n\n \"No,\" the Hordeman's voice said, \"the lock is not stuck. It is sealed\n against the possibility of contamination from the atmosphere of 72-P-3.\"\n\n\n \"I cannot join you?\" asked Thig as calmly as he could. Despair\n contracted his vitals as he saw this latest plan go glimmering.\n\n\n \"Naturally not!\" The speaker's voice showed as much surprise as it\n was possible for an Orthan to display. \"We can take no chances on the\n madness infecting any of us before we carry this information back to\n Ortha.\"\n\n\n \"I will tell you as much as I know,\" said Thig. \"It is fortunate that I\n am outside the ship.\"", "Until he came to Earth, Thig had never known that there was such\n a thing as a lie. Among the men of Ortha there was no deceit or\n treachery. If they killed or destroyed, it was necessary. If they\n related any happening, however unimportant, it was painstakingly\n accurate. Imagination was a word that was meaningless among the\n disciplined billions of the Horde. They would not detect a lie for they\n would not recognize one! Earth was safe.\n\n\n \"That is good,\" he said. \"I will wait until you leave Earth, and then I\n will destroy the ship and myself.\"\n\n\n Over China they knifed, over the ruined cities and bomber fields, and\n down across Russia where vast armies locked in bloody combat. They saw\n here again great cities that were ravaged by war. Higher they climbed\n above the ocean, until, above North America, Thig dropped behind the\n great cruiser.\n\n\n He called the commander of the space cruiser then.", "\"Yes,\" agreed the voice. \"Better that one die instead of four. The\n resources of the Horde must be conserved.\"\nAll through that first night after the space ship landed beside his\n little life boat, Thig lay on his sleeping deck trying to work out\n another method to overcome the four Hordemen inside their sturdy\n cruiser.\n\n\n Explosives were out; he had lost his opportunity to blast the great\n ship into shards when the Allied bomber had mistaken them for Japanese\n supplies. Trickery that would permit him to gain entrance was negated\n by the sealed ports and locks of the space cruiser. He could not blast\n an opening through the ship's skin with his decomposition blaster—it\n was designed to destroy only flesh or vegetable matter.", "And the part of Thig's brain that was Lewis Terry was already busying\n itself with the plotting of a Western novel about the handcart\n pioneers.... Once he had rescued Brazos from that Apache-ringed mesa,\n he would get to work on it....", "Thig's compact body stiffened angrily. He came to his feet, his gaze\n roaming about the familiar disorder of the little boathouse. Here he\n came daily to write the lusty sagas of the Old West that had made the\n name of Lewis Terry familiar to millions of readers. Here beside the\n pot-bellied iron stove with the single cracked lid, he had worked\n long hours, striving vainly to forget that he was an alien being from\n another distant world.", "Time went by swiftly, too swiftly, for there was no answer from the\n ship. He thought of taking off to meet them, but already the ship must\n be screaming down through the upper atmosphere. He shouted into the\n transmitter.\n\n\n A grating sound came from the receiver. A hollow sound of contact that\n he sensed rather than heard. A cold emotionless voice spoke in the\n strangely unfamiliar language of the Horde.\n\n\n \"Who is calling the ship from Planet 72-P-3?\" it demanded.\n\n\n \"A fellow Hordeman from Ortha,\" replied Thig hurriedly. \"I escaped from\n the space cruiser commanded by Torp, after madness claimed him. He\n struck down Kam first, and then attacked me. After he left me for dead,\n I took a lifeboat and escaped.\"\n\n\n \"You are Thig?\" said the even voice of the man from Ortha.\n\n\n \"That is right,\" acknowledged the other.", "Softly the bow of the little craft nosed up on the beach inside the\n harbor, and from its single lock stepped Thig. Naked he was now, as\n were all Hordemen, and from the harness of flexible plastic about his\n body there depended a decomposition blaster and an old butcher knife\n that he had whetted to razor sharpness.\n\n\n \"You hear something?\" asked one of the two guards.\n\n\n \"It was the waves,\" his comrade said, listening for a moment.\n\n\n \"In the darkness I can see nothing,\" grumbled the first Jap. \"Perhaps\n the Marines are landing.\"\n\n\n \"Ho,\" laughed the other guard, \"the Marines are thousands of miles\n away. They cannot stand against the power of our Emperor.\"\n\n\n \"It has been more than a year,\" said the fearful one, \"and we have not\n yet conquered all of California. I have heard that a few Marines are\n still hiding in the Solomons.\"", "Ellen, Lewis Terry's wife, clenched the short letter that her husband\n had pressed into her hand as he kissed her earlier that evening. She\n did not know that he was really Thig, nor did the letter reveal that\n fact. If he was to die, he would die Lewis Terry. The letter told her\n simply that he must go away on a secret mission for several months. She\n understood now why the unshed tears had been bright in his eyes.\n\n\n Over the United States Thig blasted the life boat, and across the\n Pacific. He was getting as far from Long Island as he could, and one of\n his plans to destroy the Orthans called for many tons of explosives.\n Explosives, he told himself grimly, that the yellow men would furnish.", "\"We will return to Ortha with our reports at once,\" said Urol.\nThig sat frozen in his seat for a long moment staring at the\n transmitter. If he could only be certain that the Horde would find no\n flaws in his story; that Earth would never know the destruction that\n the Horde would bring.\n\n\n And then he laughed. Fool! The Orthans were unimaginative as\n domesticated cattle. They were robotized animals, all but devoid of\n intelligence. He should have remembered sooner, for he had been one of\n the Horde before he stole the memories of an Earthman, and fell in love\n with the dead man's woman!", "His stores of explosives he concealed in a great ring around the heart\n of the island—the only practical landing spot for the space cruiser,\n already slackening its terrific drive as it passed Pluto. How many tons\n of the deadly material he had collected he could not tell, but there\n was already sufficient to blow the island and everything upon it into\n oblivion.\n\n\n Time was growing short. Less than a day remained in which to bait the\n trap with his own ship for bait. The cruiser's detectors would pick\n up the\ntrylerium's\ncharacteristic radiations from the pitted walls\n of his rocket jets—the blasting jets of all space ships were made of\ntrylerium\n—and they would land nearby.\n\n\n That he would be blown up, too, in the explosion did not matter\n greatly, thought Thig. Ellen, the wife of the man he had helped kill,\n and the children, would be safe. Earth could go on in its own bloody\n blundering way to a glorious future.", "\"The radio does not tell you that,\" scoffed the guard. \"We have sunk\n every American boat. There are no more American airplanes in the\n Pacific. Soon we will all move to America and have the white barbarians\n to wait upon us.\"\n\n\n \"Was that a Japanese bomber yesterday?\" The man's rifle thunked lightly\n against wood. \"There were circles on its wings.\"\n\n\n \"There may be a few left,\" was the excuse of the other guard. \"Now we\n must cease talking and walk our posts.\"\n\n\n Now Thig could make out the shapes of the guards as they went their\n way. One of them, the short, thick yellow man was coming slowly toward\n the tree that sheltered Thig. Perhaps he was dreaming of the fertile\n valleys of America, where the white-skinned men and women would be his\n servants, as he walked along.", "It was his last mistake. The island dissolved into splintered\n fragments, and with it went the bomber and its brave crew.\nThig awaited the coming of the ship from Ortha on another island. He\n had accepted the destruction of his long weeks of planning with the\n fatalism that the Horde had taught him. Since one plan had fallen\n through he must use another. He would persuade the Orthans that he\n wanted to return to his own people, and once inside, with a little\n good fortune, he might be able to destroy them. He had killed his two\n fellows on the first expedition, but already his fertile imagination\n had invented a logical explanation of his presence on Earth.\n\n\n As the great ship swung down past Luna his radiophone came into play.\n Their detectors might pick up his weak signals at this distance even\n though they would have no reason to expect an Orthan ship here on\n Earth. His whole plan was based on the strategy of luring them here\n before they could start a thorough exploration of Earth.", "His receiver crackled as he answered the curt demands of Urol.\n\n\n \"They are the Mad Ones,\" Thig said. \"Their madness causes them to fight\n among themselves. They drop their puny explosives foolishly upon the\n homes of other human cattle, taking great pleasure in wanton slaughter.\"\n\n\n \"But why do they attack us?\" asked Urol. \"Our ship cannot be harmed by\n their containers of expanding gases!\"\n\n\n \"It is because they are insane, their minds diseased hopelessly.\" Thig\n smiled to himself. \"I will go up to meet them, and destroy them with\n one of their own weapons.\"", "He would have to play out the game as he had started it, until an\n opportunity came to strike, and then he would strike hard. He went over\n the story he had already told the Orthans, testing it for weak points\n that might give him the lie, and at last he was satisfied. In no way he\n had offended logic—the Great War that had spread across Earth since he\n first arrived would but serve to corroborate his story.\n\n\n With morning the explosion of bombs brought Thig to his feet. He\n cursed as he saw three airplanes circling overhead. They had come to\n investigate the mighty explosion that had sent a tidal wave rolling\n over the nearby atolls probably, but this was going to make it awkward\n for Thig to finish his task.\n\n\n The ships were Japanese light bombers he saw. They must have seen the\n circles that he had painted upon his tiny space ship, and mistaken the\n space cruiser for a larger Allied ship of some new design.", "QUEST'S END\nBy BASIL WELLS\nThig's quest was not yet finished, for the Hordes\n\n of Ortha had sent another ship across the Void.\n\n Only he could halt Earth's destruction—with\n\n a weapon that was but a thought in his mind.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Spring 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n\"I was a fool,\" gritted Thig. His eye crowded the eyepiece of the\n compact metal case on the table before him. The window was open and\n the ugly metal snout of the instrument pointed toward the eastern\n horizon. \"I should have expected the men of Ortha to send a second\n expedition to Earth!\"" ], [ "And the part of Thig's brain that was Lewis Terry was already busying\n itself with the plotting of a Western novel about the handcart\n pioneers.... Once he had rescued Brazos from that Apache-ringed mesa,\n he would get to work on it....", "A speaker from just inside the door broke in upon his labor. He dropped\n the rock and listened.\n\n\n \"Why do you attack the door?\" it asked.\n\n\n \"The lock is stuck,\" answered Thig.\n\n\n \"No,\" the Hordeman's voice said, \"the lock is not stuck. It is sealed\n against the possibility of contamination from the atmosphere of 72-P-3.\"\n\n\n \"I cannot join you?\" asked Thig as calmly as he could. Despair\n contracted his vitals as he saw this latest plan go glimmering.\n\n\n \"Naturally not!\" The speaker's voice showed as much surprise as it\n was possible for an Orthan to display. \"We can take no chances on the\n madness infecting any of us before we carry this information back to\n Ortha.\"\n\n\n \"I will tell you as much as I know,\" said Thig. \"It is fortunate that I\n am outside the ship.\"", "Thig's compact body stiffened angrily. He came to his feet, his gaze\n roaming about the familiar disorder of the little boathouse. Here he\n came daily to write the lusty sagas of the Old West that had made the\n name of Lewis Terry familiar to millions of readers. Here beside the\n pot-bellied iron stove with the single cracked lid, he had worked\n long hours, striving vainly to forget that he was an alien being from\n another distant world.", "Time went by swiftly, too swiftly, for there was no answer from the\n ship. He thought of taking off to meet them, but already the ship must\n be screaming down through the upper atmosphere. He shouted into the\n transmitter.\n\n\n A grating sound came from the receiver. A hollow sound of contact that\n he sensed rather than heard. A cold emotionless voice spoke in the\n strangely unfamiliar language of the Horde.\n\n\n \"Who is calling the ship from Planet 72-P-3?\" it demanded.\n\n\n \"A fellow Hordeman from Ortha,\" replied Thig hurriedly. \"I escaped from\n the space cruiser commanded by Torp, after madness claimed him. He\n struck down Kam first, and then attacked me. After he left me for dead,\n I took a lifeboat and escaped.\"\n\n\n \"You are Thig?\" said the even voice of the man from Ortha.\n\n\n \"That is right,\" acknowledged the other.", "No, he would have to solve this problem by himself. Upon Thig, and Thig\n alone, rested the future of the two billions of mankind. If the Horde\n saw through his fanciful story about the disease that was carried from\n Venus in the bodies of Kam and Torp, Earth would soon be overrun by the\n Horde. The Horde was unimaginative and logical in all that it did, a\n robot race of super ant-beings—and they would destroy all the human\n race to prevent any future revolt.\n\n\n But if he could somehow thwart them; destroy this expedition, or send\n back another mute shipload of dead bodies as he had already done, Earth\n might not be visited again for several centuries. And she would be\n ready then, with a fully developed science of her own, to beat off any\n invasion from Ortha.", "\"My fuel is almost exhausted,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Prepare to dive into the Earth,\" said Urol in his emotionless voice.\n \"We cannot waste the power of our ship to ray you. The senseless\n assaults of the madmen caused us to waste much of our power.\"\n\n\n \"I am leaving now,\" said Thig. \"May the Law of the Horde endure\n forever!\" And under his breath: \"on Ortha.\"\n\n\n Thig let the life boat drop away from the other ship. Slowly it fell at\n first, and then faster as gravity gripped it. Fifty miles the ship must\n fall before it smashed into the ground. By that time the cruiser would\n be already beyond the orbit of the moon, and all they would see would\n be the moment of impact.", "His receiver crackled as he answered the curt demands of Urol.\n\n\n \"They are the Mad Ones,\" Thig said. \"Their madness causes them to fight\n among themselves. They drop their puny explosives foolishly upon the\n homes of other human cattle, taking great pleasure in wanton slaughter.\"\n\n\n \"But why do they attack us?\" asked Urol. \"Our ship cannot be harmed by\n their containers of expanding gases!\"\n\n\n \"It is because they are insane, their minds diseased hopelessly.\" Thig\n smiled to himself. \"I will go up to meet them, and destroy them with\n one of their own weapons.\"", "\"But I did not escape,\" Thig told him. \"For many days after I returned\n to Earth I was insane. Torp and Kam had infected me as well. But I am\n strong, and I threw off the disease. At intervals it recurs but I strap\n myself down so I cannot harm myself before the madness passes.\"\n\n\n \"By the Law of the Horde,\" said Urol slowly, \"you should be destroyed\n if the disease is incurable.\"\n\n\n \"I know. I feared that another expedition would come and carry the\n madness back to the Horde. I kept myself alive to warn you. I will show\n you the ravages of the disease, and then destroy myself.\"\n\n\n \"It is good,\" agreed Urol. \"We are preparing to land now.\"", "Ellen, Lewis Terry's wife, clenched the short letter that her husband\n had pressed into her hand as he kissed her earlier that evening. She\n did not know that he was really Thig, nor did the letter reveal that\n fact. If he was to die, he would die Lewis Terry. The letter told her\n simply that he must go away on a secret mission for several months. She\n understood now why the unshed tears had been bright in his eyes.\n\n\n Over the United States Thig blasted the life boat, and across the\n Pacific. He was getting as far from Long Island as he could, and one of\n his plans to destroy the Orthans called for many tons of explosives.\n Explosives, he told himself grimly, that the yellow men would furnish.", "Thig could almost see the Hordeman's smooth brow furrow with the\n unaccustomed task of thinking. The majority of the Horde's thinking was\n automatic, seldom did an alien thought intrude upon their formulized\n system of life. He smiled tautly—another gift from the dead man whose\n memories he had robbed was that of humor—as he listened for Urol's\n answer. There could be only one logical explanation for Thig's words.\n And Urol, like all the Hordemen, was a coldly logical being.\n\n\n \"There is madness on this world then?\" Urol asked.\n\n\n \"That is right.\" Thig drew upon the story-telling genius of Terry as he\n related the carefully plotted story that would permit him entrance to\n the Orthan ship. They must believe him....", "He would have to play out the game as he had started it, until an\n opportunity came to strike, and then he would strike hard. He went over\n the story he had already told the Orthans, testing it for weak points\n that might give him the lie, and at last he was satisfied. In no way he\n had offended logic—the Great War that had spread across Earth since he\n first arrived would but serve to corroborate his story.\n\n\n With morning the explosion of bombs brought Thig to his feet. He\n cursed as he saw three airplanes circling overhead. They had come to\n investigate the mighty explosion that had sent a tidal wave rolling\n over the nearby atolls probably, but this was going to make it awkward\n for Thig to finish his task.\n\n\n The ships were Japanese light bombers he saw. They must have seen the\n circles that he had painted upon his tiny space ship, and mistaken the\n space cruiser for a larger Allied ship of some new design.", "Until he came to Earth, Thig had never known that there was such\n a thing as a lie. Among the men of Ortha there was no deceit or\n treachery. If they killed or destroyed, it was necessary. If they\n related any happening, however unimportant, it was painstakingly\n accurate. Imagination was a word that was meaningless among the\n disciplined billions of the Horde. They would not detect a lie for they\n would not recognize one! Earth was safe.\n\n\n \"That is good,\" he said. \"I will wait until you leave Earth, and then I\n will destroy the ship and myself.\"\n\n\n Over China they knifed, over the ruined cities and bomber fields, and\n down across Russia where vast armies locked in bloody combat. They saw\n here again great cities that were ravaged by war. Higher they climbed\n above the ocean, until, above North America, Thig dropped behind the\n great cruiser.\n\n\n He called the commander of the space cruiser then.", "\"That is right,\" agreed Thig. \"I should have killed myself before you\n came.\" He paused. \"I should not have tried to warn you.\"\n\n\n \"You are wrong again,\" Urol told him. \"This madness destroys your\n reason. You were right in living until we came, to warn us. Now we can\n warn the Horde that 72-P-3 will be unsafe for colonization for many\n years.\"\n\n\n Thig felt his lips twitch into a grin. Fortunate that these ships were\n not equipped with telescreens. His story had convinced the methodical,\n robot-like Orthans. If he could keep them from learning that there was\n actually no madness on Earth until he could contrive to destroy them.\n\n\n The next words of the commander of the space cruiser sounded\n thunder-loud in his ears, tumbling his plans into ruin.", "\"Yes,\" agreed the voice. \"Better that one die instead of four. The\n resources of the Horde must be conserved.\"\nAll through that first night after the space ship landed beside his\n little life boat, Thig lay on his sleeping deck trying to work out\n another method to overcome the four Hordemen inside their sturdy\n cruiser.\n\n\n Explosives were out; he had lost his opportunity to blast the great\n ship into shards when the Allied bomber had mistaken them for Japanese\n supplies. Trickery that would permit him to gain entrance was negated\n by the sealed ports and locks of the space cruiser. He could not blast\n an opening through the ship's skin with his decomposition blaster—it\n was designed to destroy only flesh or vegetable matter.", "Softly the bow of the little craft nosed up on the beach inside the\n harbor, and from its single lock stepped Thig. Naked he was now, as\n were all Hordemen, and from the harness of flexible plastic about his\n body there depended a decomposition blaster and an old butcher knife\n that he had whetted to razor sharpness.\n\n\n \"You hear something?\" asked one of the two guards.\n\n\n \"It was the waves,\" his comrade said, listening for a moment.\n\n\n \"In the darkness I can see nothing,\" grumbled the first Jap. \"Perhaps\n the Marines are landing.\"\n\n\n \"Ho,\" laughed the other guard, \"the Marines are thousands of miles\n away. They cannot stand against the power of our Emperor.\"\n\n\n \"It has been more than a year,\" said the fearful one, \"and we have not\n yet conquered all of California. I have heard that a few Marines are\n still hiding in the Solomons.\"", "\"The radio does not tell you that,\" scoffed the guard. \"We have sunk\n every American boat. There are no more American airplanes in the\n Pacific. Soon we will all move to America and have the white barbarians\n to wait upon us.\"\n\n\n \"Was that a Japanese bomber yesterday?\" The man's rifle thunked lightly\n against wood. \"There were circles on its wings.\"\n\n\n \"There may be a few left,\" was the excuse of the other guard. \"Now we\n must cease talking and walk our posts.\"\n\n\n Now Thig could make out the shapes of the guards as they went their\n way. One of them, the short, thick yellow man was coming slowly toward\n the tree that sheltered Thig. Perhaps he was dreaming of the fertile\n valleys of America, where the white-skinned men and women would be his\n servants, as he walked along.", "It was his last mistake. The island dissolved into splintered\n fragments, and with it went the bomber and its brave crew.\nThig awaited the coming of the ship from Ortha on another island. He\n had accepted the destruction of his long weeks of planning with the\n fatalism that the Horde had taught him. Since one plan had fallen\n through he must use another. He would persuade the Orthans that he\n wanted to return to his own people, and once inside, with a little\n good fortune, he might be able to destroy them. He had killed his two\n fellows on the first expedition, but already his fertile imagination\n had invented a logical explanation of his presence on Earth.\n\n\n As the great ship swung down past Luna his radiophone came into play.\n Their detectors might pick up his weak signals at this distance even\n though they would have no reason to expect an Orthan ship here on\n Earth. His whole plan was based on the strategy of luring them here\n before they could start a thorough exploration of Earth.", "Nor could he lure a Japanese or Allied force of bombers to attack the\n Orthan ship. The weapons of the space cruiser would destroy such\n crude-winged mechanisms as might be thrown against them, and her own\n hull could not be damaged save by the most concentrated surprise\n attack. He knew how the Earthmen would work—a cautious bomber or two\n could attack first, and then, too late, a swarm of fighting planes and\n bombers would follow.\n\n\n He could not lure brave Allied fliers to their death in any such\n fashion, nor did he think that the yellow airmen could cause any\n worth-while damage—not that he cared how many of them were destroyed!\n He might be an alien being from another world, but there was now no\n more loyal American than Thig. He had permitted the identity of Lewis\n Terry to overcome his own entirely.", "\"That is unnecessary,\" said Urol, \"our own armament....\"\nThig snapped off the receiver. He sprang to the controls, and sent the\n little ship rocketing skyward. He patted the heavy machine-gun that had\n been part of his loot from one of the sunken transports. It was mounted\n in the nose of his craft, and already it had knocked a score of Zeros\n and other Jap planes from the skies.\n\n\n He dove upon one of the crawling winged enemy ships. The gun chattered\n briefly, and smoke and flames curled back from the doomed plane's\n engine. One!", "His stores of explosives he concealed in a great ring around the heart\n of the island—the only practical landing spot for the space cruiser,\n already slackening its terrific drive as it passed Pluto. How many tons\n of the deadly material he had collected he could not tell, but there\n was already sufficient to blow the island and everything upon it into\n oblivion.\n\n\n Time was growing short. Less than a day remained in which to bait the\n trap with his own ship for bait. The cruiser's detectors would pick\n up the\ntrylerium's\ncharacteristic radiations from the pitted walls\n of his rocket jets—the blasting jets of all space ships were made of\ntrylerium\n—and they would land nearby.\n\n\n That he would be blown up, too, in the explosion did not matter\n greatly, thought Thig. Ellen, the wife of the man he had helped kill,\n and the children, would be safe. Earth could go on in its own bloody\n blundering way to a glorious future." ] ]
test	61048	[ "With what body of literature does the author expect the reader to be familiar in order to understand his reference to Helen of Troy?", "How could Quidley’s attitude about the opposite sex best be described?", "What does Quidley do for a living?", "How did Quidley and Kay compare in size?", "What is different about the third message that Quidley intercepts compared to the first two?", "Which of the below is the best description of Kay’s tresses, as Quidley saw it?", "What it is the first strong clue to the reader that Kay and her friends might actually be aliens?", "Why is Kay taking Quidley as a mate particularly ironic in this story?", "Why were Kay and her friends passing notes back and forth in the library book by Taine?", "What was Kay’s mission on Earth?" ]	[ [ "Ancient Greek literature, which he assumes will be familiar to every well-educated reader.", "German literature, because Quidley recognized the similarities of the messages to the German language.", "It doesn’t actually pertain to literature, it pertains to Helen Mirren, the English actress who portrayed famous characters from English literature.", "English literature, which is why it is significant that the messages were hidden in Taine’s History of English Literature." ], [ "He loved women and was trying to find the perfect one to start a family with.", "He was a skirt-chaser uninterested in long-term commitment.", "He thought women made much better friends than men.", "He was indifferent to women, focusing his energy on his research and writing." ], [ "He is a highly successful writer who recently published a best-selling epic novel.", "He is a dilettante who writes an occasional piece for a magazine, but subsists mainly on funds provided by his family.", "He is a professor of the history of English literature.", "He is a librarian, which gives him access to many obscure works about literature." ], [ "Quidley appeared shorter, but only because Kay was wearing stiletto heels.", "Quidley was shorter.", "Kay was shorter.", "Quidley and Kay were the same height." ], [ "The first two messages were on yellow paper, while the third message was on white typing bond paper.", "The first two messages were written in italics, and the third message was plain text. ", "The first two messages have one set of repeated letters at the start and end, while the third one has a different set of repeated letters.", "The first two messages were folded into quarters, while the third message was just a doubled piece of paper." ], [ "They were short and stuck out every which way, as if they had been confined beneath a hat.", "They were curly and a lustrous dark black color.", "They smelled like a flower-scented shampoo.", "They were the same color as her eyes." ], [ "Quidley ponders what kind of association would have the kind of code he observed and in playing with the word order of a cliched phrase, generates the idea that it could be emissaries from a government not on this planet.", "The mere fact that the girl is in the literature section of a library is suspicious.", "Kay’s highly sensual come-on to Quidley the first time she goes to his place is very alien.", "It’s not normal for a girl to drive herself home in a convertible at night." ], [ "Because Quidley is clearly not the marrying kind.", "Because Quidley hates to travel and now he was going to have to go a long way from home.", "Because she was not really his type, yet he fell for her anyway.", "Because she is actually the perfect mate for him." ], [ "Kay was responsible for providing a pool of men to take back to her planet.", "Kay and the other women were looking for secretarial jobs, and were critiquing each other’s typing skills.", "Kay and the other women were rating the men they had dated.", "Kay and the other women were using the coded notes the same way Quidley used “Operation-Spill-the-Sugar” – as a pick-up method to attract men’s attention." ], [ "She came to round up men who were aberrant or useless on Earth and take them back to her planet as husbands.", "She came as part of an advance guard to assess the intelligence and capabilities of humans.", "She came to learn about human culture and take the best aspects of it back to her planet.", "She came to share the Good News about Second Coming, which has taken place on Fieu Dayol." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "Let it be said forthwith that old books were not the only item on\n Herbert Quidley's penchant-list. He liked old wood, too, and old\n paintings, not to mention old wine and old whiskey. But most of all he\n liked young girls. He especially liked them when they looked the way\n Helen of Troy must have looked when Paris took one gander at her and\n started building his ladder. This one was tall, with hyacinth hair and\n liquid blue eyes, and she had a Grecian symmetry of shape that would\n have made Paris' eyes pop had he been around to take notice. Paris\n wasn't, but Quidley's eyes, did the job.", "\"I didn't know you had a taste for Taine.\"\nHer voice seemed to come from far away, but she was standing right\n beside him, tall and bewitching; Helenesque as ever. Her blue eyes\n became great wells into which he found himself falling. With an effort,\n he pulled himself back. \"You're early tonight,\" he said lamely.\n\n\n She appropriated the message, read it. \"Put the book back,\" she said\n presently. Then, when he complied: \"Come on.\"\n\n\n \"Where are we going?\"\n\n\n \"I'm going to deliver a\nsnoll doper\nto Jilka. After that I'm going to\n take you home to meet my folks.\"\n\n\n The relieved sigh he heard was his own.\n\n\n They climbed into her convertible and she nosed it into the moving line\n of cars. \"How long have you been reading my mail?\" she asked.", "He decided to spend the evening plotting the epic novel which he\n intended to write someday. He set to work immediately. He plotted\n mentally, of course—notes were for the hacks and the other commercial\n non-geniuses who infested the modern literary world. Closing his eyes,\n he saw the whole vivid panorama of epic action and grand adventure\n flowing like a mighty and majestic river before his literary vision:\n the authentic and awe-inspiring background; the hordes of colorful\n characters; the handsome virile hero, the compelling Helenesque\n heroine.... God, it was going to be great! The best thing he'd ever\n done! See, already there was a crowd of book lovers in front of the\n bookstore, staring into the window where the new Herbert Quidley was", "Quidley winced. He was allergic to the term. Not that he ever let the\n presence of a boy friend deter him when he set out to conquer, but\n because the term itself brought to mind the word \"fiance,\" and the word\n \"fiance\" brought to mind still another word, one which repelled him\n violently. I.e., \"marriage\". Just the same, he decided to keep Taine's\nHistory\nunder observation for a while.\nHer boy friend turned out to be her girl friend, and her girl friend\n turned out to be a tall and lissome, lovely with a Helenesque air of\n her own. From the vantage point of a strategically located reading\n table, where he was keeping company with his favorite little magazine,\nThe Zeitgeist\n, Quidley watched her take a seemingly haphazard route\n to the shelf where Taine's\nHistory\nreposed, take the volume down,\n surreptitiously slip a folded sheet of yellow paper between its pages\n and return it to the shelf.", "On page 21 of the Taine tome he happened upon a sheet of yellow copy\n paper folded in four. Unfolding it, he read:\nasdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\n Cai: Sities towms copeis wotnid. Gind snoll doper nckli! Wilbe Fieu\n Dayol fot ig habe mot toseo knwo—te bijk weil en snoll doper—Klio,\n asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\nSince when, Quidley wondered, refolding the paper and putting it back\n in the book, had high-school typing students taken to reading Taine?\n Thoughtfully he replaced the book on the shelf and moved deeper into\n the literature section.\n\n\n He had just taken down Xenophon's\nAnabasis\nwhen he saw the girl walk\n in the door.", "After coming in the door, the girl deposited a book on the librarian's\n desk and headed for the literature section. Quickly Quidley lowered\n his eyes to the\nAnabasis\nand henceforth followed her progress out of\n their corners. When she came to the O's she paused, took down a book\n and glanced through it. Then she replaced it and moved on to the\n P's ... the Q's ... the R's. Barely three feet from him she paused\n again and took down Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\n.\n\n\n He simply could not believe it. The odds against two persons taking an\n interest in so esoteric a volume on a single night in a single library\n were ten thousand to one. And yet there was no gainsaying that the\n volume was in the girl's hands, and that she was riffling through it\n with the air of a seasoned browser.", "He wondered what her reaction would be if he asked her point-blank what\n a\nsnoll doper\nwas; whether she would reveal the nature of the amateur\n secret society to which she and Klio and Yoolna and Gorka belonged.\n It virtually had to be an amateur secret society. Unless, of course,\n they were foreigners. But what on earth foreign organization would be\n quixotic enough to employ Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\nas a\n communications medium when there was a telephone in every drugstore and\n a mailbox on every corner?\n\n\n Somehow the words \"what on earth foreign organization\" got turned\n around in his mind and became \"what foreign organization on earth\" and\n before he could summon his common sense to succor him, he experienced\n a rather bad moment. By the time the door chimes sounded he was his\n normal self again.", "And yet there she was, walking in the door, tall and blue-eyed and\n graceful; dark of hair and noble of mien; browsing in the philosophy\n section now, now the fiction section, now moving leisurely into the\n literature aisle and toward the T's....", "Presently she returned the book to the shelf, selected\n another—seemingly at random—and took it over to the librarian's desk.\n She waited statuesquely while the librarian processed it, then tucked\n it under her arm and whisked out the door into the misty April night.\n As soon as she disappeared, Quidley stepped over to the T's and took\n Taine down once more. Just as he had suspected. The makeshift bookmark\n was gone.\n\n\n He remembered how the asdf-;lkj exercise had given way to several lines\n of gibberish and then reappeared again. A camouflaged message? Or was\n it merely what it appeared to be on the surface—the efforts of an\n impatient typing student to type before his time?", "The Girls From Fieu Dayol\nBy ROBERT F. YOUNG\nThey were lovely and quick\n\n to learn—and their only\n\n faults were little ones!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nUp until the moment when he first looked into Hippolyte Adolphe Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\n, Herbert Quidley's penchant for old\n books had netted him nothing in the way of romance and intrigue.\n Not that he was a stranger to either. Far from it. But hitherto the\n background for both had been bedrooms and bars, not libraries.", "He straightened his tie with nervous fingers, checked to see if his\n shirt cuffs protruded the proper length from his coat sleeves, and\n looked around the room to see if everything was in place. Everything\n was—the typewriter uncovered and centered on the chrome-trimmed desk,\n with the sheaf of crinkly first-sheets beside it; the reference books\n stacked imposingly nearby;\nHarper's\n,\nThe Atlantic\nand\nThe Saturday\n Review\nshowing conspicuously in the magazine rack; the newly opened\n bottle of bourbon and the two snifter glasses on the sideboard; the\n small table set cozily for two—\nThe chimes sounded again. He opened the door.\n\n\n She walked in with a demure, \"Hello.\" He took her wrap. When he saw\n what she was wearing he had to tilt his head back so that his eyes\n wouldn't fall out of their sockets.", "He was so elated that when he arrived at his apartment he actually\n did try to write a profile. His own, of course. He sat down at his\n custom-built chrome-trimmed desk, inserted a blank sheet of paper in\n his custom-built typewriter and tried to arrange his thoughts. But as\n usual his mind raced ahead of the moment, and he saw the title,\nSelf\n Profile\n, nestling noticeably on the contents page of one of the Better\n Magazines, and presently he saw the piece itself in all its splendid\n array of colorful rhetoric, sparkling imagery and scintillating wit,\n occupying a two-page spread.", "It was some time before he returned to reality, and when he did the\n first thing that met his eyes was the uncompromisingly blank sheet of\n paper. Hurriedly he typed out a letter to his father, requesting an\n advance on his allowance, then, after a tall glass of vintage wine, he\n went to bed.\nIn telling him that she would be in town two nights hence, Kay had\n unwittingly apprised him that there would be no exchange of messages\n until that time, so the next evening he skipped his vigil at the\n library. The following evening, however, after readying his apartment\n for the forthcoming assignation, he hied himself to his reading-table\n post and took up\nThe Zeitgeist\nonce again.\n\n\n He had not thought it possible that there could be a third such woman.", "After she left he wasted no time in acquainting himself with the second\n message. It was as unintelligible as the first:\nasdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj Cai: Habe\n wotnid ig ist ending ifedererer te. T'lide sid Fieu Dayol po jestig\n toseo knwo, bijk weil en snoll doper entling—Yoolna. asdf ;lkj asdf\n ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\nWell, perhaps not quite as unintelligible. He knew, at least, who Cai\n was, and he knew—from the reappearance of the words\nwotnid\n,", "He decided on Operation Spill-the-sugar. It had stood him in good stead\n before, and he was rather fond of it. The procedure was quite simple.\n First you took note of the position of the sugar dispensers, then you\n situated yourself so that your intended victim was between you and the\n nearest one, then you ordered coffee without sugar in a low voice, and\n after the counterman or countergirl had served you, you waited till\n he/she was out of earshot and asked your i.v. to please pass the sugar.\n When she did so you let the dispenser slip from your fingers in such a\n way that some of its contents spilled on her lap—\n\n\n \"I'm terribly sorry,\" he said, righting it. \"Here, let me brush it off.\"\n\"It's all right, it's only sugar,\" she said, laughing.", "on display, trying to force its way into the jammed interior....\nCut\n to interior.\nFIRST EAGER CUSTOMER: Tell me quickly, are there any\n more copies of the new Herbert Quidley left? BOOK CLERK: A few. You\n don't know how lucky you are to get here before the first printing ran\n out. FIRST EAGER CUSTOMER: Give me a dozen. I want to make sure that\n my children and my children's children have a plentiful supply. BOOK\n CLERK: Sorry. Only one to a customer. Next? SECOND EAGER CUSTOMER: Tell\n me quickly, are ... there ... any ... more ... copies ... of—", "They touched glasses: \"Your liquor is as exquisite as your living room,\n Herbert. I shall have to come here more often.\" \"I hope you will, Kay.\"\n \"Though such conduct, I'm told, is morally reprehensible on the planet\n Earth.\" \"Not in this particular circle. Your hair is lovely.\" \"Thank\n you.... You haven't mentioned my perfume yet. Perhaps I'm standing too\n far away.... There!\" \"It's—it's as lovely as your hair, Kay.\" \"Um,\n kiss me again.\" \"I—I never figured—I mean, I engaged a caterer to\n serve us dinner at 9:30.\" \"Call him up. Make it 10:30.\"\nThe following evening found Quidley on tenter-hooks. The\nsnoll-doper\nmystery had acquired a new tang. He could hardly wait till the next\n message transfer took place.", "\"Not famous profiles, you understand. Just profiles that strike my\n fancy.\" He paused. She had raised her cup to her lips and was taking a\n dainty sip. \"You have a rather striking profile yourself, Miss—\"\n\n\n \"Smith. Kay Smith.\" She set the cup back on the counter and turned and\n faced him. For a second her eyes seemed to expand till they preoccupied\n his entire vision, till he could see nothing but their disturbingly\n clear—and suddenly cold—blueness. Panic touched him, then vanished\n when she said, \"Would you really consider word-painting\nmy\nprofile,\n Mr. Quidley?\"\nWould\nhe! \"When can I call?\"\n\n\n She hesitated for a moment. Then: \"I think it will be better if I call\n on you. There are quite a number of people living in our—our house.\n I'm afraid the quarters would be much too cramped for an artist like\n yourself to concentrate.\"", "Fieu\n Dayol\nand\nsnoll doper\n—that the two communications were in the\n same code. And certainly it was reasonable to assume that the last\n word—\nYoolna\n—was the name of the girl he had just seen, and that\n she was a different person from the\nKlio\nwhose name had appended the\n first message.", "He returned Taine to the shelf. After learning from the librarian that\n the girl's name was Kay Smith, he went out and got in his hardtop. The\n name rang a bell. Halfway home he realized why. The typing exercise had\n contained the word \"Cai\", and if you pronounced it with hard c, you got\n \"Kai\"—or \"Kay\". Obviously, then, the exercise had been a message, and\n had been deliberately inserted in a book no average person would dream\n of borrowing.\n\n\n By whom—her boy friend?" ], [ "Quidley winced. He was allergic to the term. Not that he ever let the\n presence of a boy friend deter him when he set out to conquer, but\n because the term itself brought to mind the word \"fiance,\" and the word\n \"fiance\" brought to mind still another word, one which repelled him\n violently. I.e., \"marriage\". Just the same, he decided to keep Taine's\nHistory\nunder observation for a while.\nHer boy friend turned out to be her girl friend, and her girl friend\n turned out to be a tall and lissome, lovely with a Helenesque air of\n her own. From the vantage point of a strategically located reading\n table, where he was keeping company with his favorite little magazine,\nThe Zeitgeist\n, Quidley watched her take a seemingly haphazard route\n to the shelf where Taine's\nHistory\nreposed, take the volume down,\n surreptitiously slip a folded sheet of yellow paper between its pages\n and return it to the shelf.", "Let it be said forthwith that old books were not the only item on\n Herbert Quidley's penchant-list. He liked old wood, too, and old\n paintings, not to mention old wine and old whiskey. But most of all he\n liked young girls. He especially liked them when they looked the way\n Helen of Troy must have looked when Paris took one gander at her and\n started building his ladder. This one was tall, with hyacinth hair and\n liquid blue eyes, and she had a Grecian symmetry of shape that would\n have made Paris' eyes pop had he been around to take notice. Paris\n wasn't, but Quidley's eyes, did the job.", "After coming in the door, the girl deposited a book on the librarian's\n desk and headed for the literature section. Quickly Quidley lowered\n his eyes to the\nAnabasis\nand henceforth followed her progress out of\n their corners. When she came to the O's she paused, took down a book\n and glanced through it. Then she replaced it and moved on to the\n P's ... the Q's ... the R's. Barely three feet from him she paused\n again and took down Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\n.\n\n\n He simply could not believe it. The odds against two persons taking an\n interest in so esoteric a volume on a single night in a single library\n were ten thousand to one. And yet there was no gainsaying that the\n volume was in the girl's hands, and that she was riffling through it\n with the air of a seasoned browser.", "Quidley glowed. Usually it required two or three days, and sometimes a\n week, to reach the apartment phase. \"Fine,\" he said. \"When can I expect\n you?\"\n\n\n She stood up and he got to his feet beside her. She was even taller\n than he had thought. In fact, if he hadn't been wearing Cuban heels,\n she'd have been taller than he was. \"I'll be in town night after next,\"\n she said. \"Will nine o'clock be convenient for you?\"\n\n\n \"Perfectly.\"\n\n\n \"Good-by for now then, Mr. Quidley.\"", "Apparently she had. At least there was a man with her—a rather\n woebegone, wilted creature who didn't even look up as they passed.\n Quidley watched them ascend the gangplank, the man in the lead, and\n disappear into the ship.\n\n\n \"Next,\" Kay said.\n\n\n Quidley shook his head. \"You're not taking\nme\nto another planet!\"\n\n\n She opened her purse and pulled out a small metallic object \"A\n little while ago you asked me what a\nsnoll doper\nwas,\" she said.\n \"Unfortunately interstellar law severely limits us in our choice of\n marriageable males, and we can take only those who refuse to conform\n to the sexual mores of their own societies.\" She did something to the\n object that caused it to extend itself into a long, tubular affair.\n \"\nThis\nis a\nsnoll doper\n.\"\n\n\n She prodded his ribs. \"March,\" she said.", "They touched glasses: \"Your liquor is as exquisite as your living room,\n Herbert. I shall have to come here more often.\" \"I hope you will, Kay.\"\n \"Though such conduct, I'm told, is morally reprehensible on the planet\n Earth.\" \"Not in this particular circle. Your hair is lovely.\" \"Thank\n you.... You haven't mentioned my perfume yet. Perhaps I'm standing too\n far away.... There!\" \"It's—it's as lovely as your hair, Kay.\" \"Um,\n kiss me again.\" \"I—I never figured—I mean, I engaged a caterer to\n serve us dinner at 9:30.\" \"Call him up. Make it 10:30.\"\nThe following evening found Quidley on tenter-hooks. The\nsnoll-doper\nmystery had acquired a new tang. He could hardly wait till the next\n message transfer took place.", "\"I'm hopelessly clumsy,\" he continued smoothly, brushing the gleaming\n crystals from her pleated skirt, noting the clean sweep of her thighs.\n \"I beseech you to forgive me.\"\n\n\n \"You're forgiven,\" she said, and he noticed then that she spoke with a\n slight accent.\n\n\n \"If you like, you can send it to the cleaners and have them send the\n bill to me. My address is 61 Park Place.\" He pulled out his wallet,\n chose an appropriate card, and handed it to her—\nHerbert Quidley:\nProfiliste\nHer forehead crinkled. \"\nProfiliste?\n\"\n\n\n \"I paint profiles with words,\" he said. \"You may have run across some\n of my pieces in the Better Magazines. I employ a variety of pseudonyms,\n of course.\"\n\n\n \"How interesting.\" She pronounced it \"anteresting.\"", "Presently she returned the book to the shelf, selected\n another—seemingly at random—and took it over to the librarian's desk.\n She waited statuesquely while the librarian processed it, then tucked\n it under her arm and whisked out the door into the misty April night.\n As soon as she disappeared, Quidley stepped over to the T's and took\n Taine down once more. Just as he had suspected. The makeshift bookmark\n was gone.\n\n\n He remembered how the asdf-;lkj exercise had given way to several lines\n of gibberish and then reappeared again. A camouflaged message? Or was\n it merely what it appeared to be on the surface—the efforts of an\n impatient typing student to type before his time?", "He went over to the sideboard, picked up the bottle of bourbon. She\n followed. He set the two snifter glasses side by side and tilted the\n bottle. \"Say when.\" \"When!\" \"I admire your dress—never saw anything\n quite like it.\" \"Thank you. The material is something new. Feel it.\"\n \"It's—it's almost like foam rubber. Cigarette?\" \"Thanks.... Is\n something wrong, Mr. Quidley?\" \"No, of course not. Why?\" \"Your hands\n are trembling.\" \"Oh. I'm—I'm afraid it's the present company, Miss\n Smith.\" \"Call me Kay.\"", "\"Not famous profiles, you understand. Just profiles that strike my\n fancy.\" He paused. She had raised her cup to her lips and was taking a\n dainty sip. \"You have a rather striking profile yourself, Miss—\"\n\n\n \"Smith. Kay Smith.\" She set the cup back on the counter and turned and\n faced him. For a second her eyes seemed to expand till they preoccupied\n his entire vision, till he could see nothing but their disturbingly\n clear—and suddenly cold—blueness. Panic touched him, then vanished\n when she said, \"Would you really consider word-painting\nmy\nprofile,\n Mr. Quidley?\"\nWould\nhe! \"When can I call?\"\n\n\n She hesitated for a moment. Then: \"I think it will be better if I call\n on you. There are quite a number of people living in our—our house.\n I'm afraid the quarters would be much too cramped for an artist like\n yourself to concentrate.\"", "The Girls From Fieu Dayol\nBy ROBERT F. YOUNG\nThey were lovely and quick\n\n to learn—and their only\n\n faults were little ones!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nUp until the moment when he first looked into Hippolyte Adolphe Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\n, Herbert Quidley's penchant for old\n books had netted him nothing in the way of romance and intrigue.\n Not that he was a stranger to either. Far from it. But hitherto the\n background for both had been bedrooms and bars, not libraries.", "On page 21 of the Taine tome he happened upon a sheet of yellow copy\n paper folded in four. Unfolding it, he read:\nasdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\n Cai: Sities towms copeis wotnid. Gind snoll doper nckli! Wilbe Fieu\n Dayol fot ig habe mot toseo knwo—te bijk weil en snoll doper—Klio,\n asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\nSince when, Quidley wondered, refolding the paper and putting it back\n in the book, had high-school typing students taken to reading Taine?\n Thoughtfully he replaced the book on the shelf and moved deeper into\n the literature section.\n\n\n He had just taken down Xenophon's\nAnabasis\nwhen he saw the girl walk\n in the door.", "The camouflage had varied, but the message was typical enough:\nfdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; Cai: Gind\n en snoll doper nckli! Wotnid antwaterer Fieu Dayol hid jestig snoll\n doper ifedererer te. Dep gogensplo snoll dopers ensing!—Gorka. fdsa\n jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl;\nJudging from the repeated use of the words,\nsnoll dopers\nwere the\n topic of the day. Annoyed, Quidley replaced the message and put the\n book back on the shelf. Then he returned to his apartment to await Kay.", "You could hardly call Kay a girl scout, though.\n\n\n Nevertheless, she was the key figure in the\nsnoll-doper\nenigma. The\n fact annoyed him, especially when he considered that a\nsnoll doper\n,\n for all he knew, could be anything from a Chinese fortune cooky to an\n H-bomb.\n\n\n He remembered Kay's odd accent. Was that the way a person would speak\n English if her own language ran something like \"\nist ifedereret, hid\n jestig snoll doper adwo\n?\"\n\n\n He remembered the way she had looked at him in the coffee bar.\n\n\n He remembered the material of her dress.\n\n\n He remembered how she had come to his room.", "He watched her get out, walk up the walk to the entrance and let\n herself in. He leaned his head back on the seat, lit a cigarette and\n exhaled a mixture of smoke and relief. On the way to meet her folks.\n So it was just an ordinary secret society after all. And here he'd\n been thinking that she was the key figure in a Martian plot to blow up\n Earth—\n\n\n Her\nfolks\n!\n\n\n Abruptly the full implication of the words got through to him, and he\n sat bolt-up-right on the seat. He was starting to climb out of the car\n when he saw Kay coming down the walk. Anyway, running away wouldn't\n solve his problem. A complete disappearing act was in order, and a\n complete disappearing act would take time. Meanwhile he would play\n along with her.\nA station wagon came up behind them, slowed, and matched its speed\n with theirs. \"Someone's following us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"Probably Jilka.\"", "It was some time before he returned to reality, and when he did the\n first thing that met his eyes was the uncompromisingly blank sheet of\n paper. Hurriedly he typed out a letter to his father, requesting an\n advance on his allowance, then, after a tall glass of vintage wine, he\n went to bed.\nIn telling him that she would be in town two nights hence, Kay had\n unwittingly apprised him that there would be no exchange of messages\n until that time, so the next evening he skipped his vigil at the\n library. The following evening, however, after readying his apartment\n for the forthcoming assignation, he hied himself to his reading-table\n post and took up\nThe Zeitgeist\nonce again.\n\n\n He had not thought it possible that there could be a third such woman.", "He straightened his tie with nervous fingers, checked to see if his\n shirt cuffs protruded the proper length from his coat sleeves, and\n looked around the room to see if everything was in place. Everything\n was—the typewriter uncovered and centered on the chrome-trimmed desk,\n with the sheaf of crinkly first-sheets beside it; the reference books\n stacked imposingly nearby;\nHarper's\n,\nThe Atlantic\nand\nThe Saturday\n Review\nshowing conspicuously in the magazine rack; the newly opened\n bottle of bourbon and the two snifter glasses on the sideboard; the\n small table set cozily for two—\nThe chimes sounded again. He opened the door.\n\n\n She walked in with a demure, \"Hello.\" He took her wrap. When he saw\n what she was wearing he had to tilt his head back so that his eyes\n wouldn't fall out of their sockets.", "Five minutes later the station wagon turned down a side street and\n disappeared. \"She's no longer with us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"She's got to pick someone up. She'll meet us later.\"\n\n\n \"At your folks'?\"\n\n\n \"At the ship.\"\n\n\n The city was thinning out around them now, and a few stars were visible\n in the night sky. Quidley watched them thoughtfully for a while. Then:\n \"What ship?\" he said.\n\n\n \"The one we're going to\nFieu Dayol\non.\"\n\n\n \"\nFieu Dayol?\n\"\n\n\n \"Persei 17 to you. I said I was going to take you home to meet my\n folks, didn't I?\"\n\n\n \"In other words, you're kidnapping me.\"", "He decided on Operation Spill-the-sugar. It had stood him in good stead\n before, and he was rather fond of it. The procedure was quite simple.\n First you took note of the position of the sugar dispensers, then you\n situated yourself so that your intended victim was between you and the\n nearest one, then you ordered coffee without sugar in a low voice, and\n after the counterman or countergirl had served you, you waited till\n he/she was out of earshot and asked your i.v. to please pass the sugar.\n When she did so you let the dispenser slip from your fingers in such a\n way that some of its contents spilled on her lap—\n\n\n \"I'm terribly sorry,\" he said, righting it. \"Here, let me brush it off.\"\n\"It's all right, it's only sugar,\" she said, laughing.", "He decided to spend the evening plotting the epic novel which he\n intended to write someday. He set to work immediately. He plotted\n mentally, of course—notes were for the hacks and the other commercial\n non-geniuses who infested the modern literary world. Closing his eyes,\n he saw the whole vivid panorama of epic action and grand adventure\n flowing like a mighty and majestic river before his literary vision:\n the authentic and awe-inspiring background; the hordes of colorful\n characters; the handsome virile hero, the compelling Helenesque\n heroine.... God, it was going to be great! The best thing he'd ever\n done! See, already there was a crowd of book lovers in front of the\n bookstore, staring into the window where the new Herbert Quidley was" ], [ "Quidley winced. He was allergic to the term. Not that he ever let the\n presence of a boy friend deter him when he set out to conquer, but\n because the term itself brought to mind the word \"fiance,\" and the word\n \"fiance\" brought to mind still another word, one which repelled him\n violently. I.e., \"marriage\". Just the same, he decided to keep Taine's\nHistory\nunder observation for a while.\nHer boy friend turned out to be her girl friend, and her girl friend\n turned out to be a tall and lissome, lovely with a Helenesque air of\n her own. From the vantage point of a strategically located reading\n table, where he was keeping company with his favorite little magazine,\nThe Zeitgeist\n, Quidley watched her take a seemingly haphazard route\n to the shelf where Taine's\nHistory\nreposed, take the volume down,\n surreptitiously slip a folded sheet of yellow paper between its pages\n and return it to the shelf.", "Quidley glowed. Usually it required two or three days, and sometimes a\n week, to reach the apartment phase. \"Fine,\" he said. \"When can I expect\n you?\"\n\n\n She stood up and he got to his feet beside her. She was even taller\n than he had thought. In fact, if he hadn't been wearing Cuban heels,\n she'd have been taller than he was. \"I'll be in town night after next,\"\n she said. \"Will nine o'clock be convenient for you?\"\n\n\n \"Perfectly.\"\n\n\n \"Good-by for now then, Mr. Quidley.\"", "Five minutes later the station wagon turned down a side street and\n disappeared. \"She's no longer with us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"She's got to pick someone up. She'll meet us later.\"\n\n\n \"At your folks'?\"\n\n\n \"At the ship.\"\n\n\n The city was thinning out around them now, and a few stars were visible\n in the night sky. Quidley watched them thoughtfully for a while. Then:\n \"What ship?\" he said.\n\n\n \"The one we're going to\nFieu Dayol\non.\"\n\n\n \"\nFieu Dayol?\n\"\n\n\n \"Persei 17 to you. I said I was going to take you home to meet my\n folks, didn't I?\"\n\n\n \"In other words, you're kidnapping me.\"", "Let it be said forthwith that old books were not the only item on\n Herbert Quidley's penchant-list. He liked old wood, too, and old\n paintings, not to mention old wine and old whiskey. But most of all he\n liked young girls. He especially liked them when they looked the way\n Helen of Troy must have looked when Paris took one gander at her and\n started building his ladder. This one was tall, with hyacinth hair and\n liquid blue eyes, and she had a Grecian symmetry of shape that would\n have made Paris' eyes pop had he been around to take notice. Paris\n wasn't, but Quidley's eyes, did the job.", "After coming in the door, the girl deposited a book on the librarian's\n desk and headed for the literature section. Quickly Quidley lowered\n his eyes to the\nAnabasis\nand henceforth followed her progress out of\n their corners. When she came to the O's she paused, took down a book\n and glanced through it. Then she replaced it and moved on to the\n P's ... the Q's ... the R's. Barely three feet from him she paused\n again and took down Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\n.\n\n\n He simply could not believe it. The odds against two persons taking an\n interest in so esoteric a volume on a single night in a single library\n were ten thousand to one. And yet there was no gainsaying that the\n volume was in the girl's hands, and that she was riffling through it\n with the air of a seasoned browser.", "\"I'm hopelessly clumsy,\" he continued smoothly, brushing the gleaming\n crystals from her pleated skirt, noting the clean sweep of her thighs.\n \"I beseech you to forgive me.\"\n\n\n \"You're forgiven,\" she said, and he noticed then that she spoke with a\n slight accent.\n\n\n \"If you like, you can send it to the cleaners and have them send the\n bill to me. My address is 61 Park Place.\" He pulled out his wallet,\n chose an appropriate card, and handed it to her—\nHerbert Quidley:\nProfiliste\nHer forehead crinkled. \"\nProfiliste?\n\"\n\n\n \"I paint profiles with words,\" he said. \"You may have run across some\n of my pieces in the Better Magazines. I employ a variety of pseudonyms,\n of course.\"\n\n\n \"How interesting.\" She pronounced it \"anteresting.\"", "\"Not famous profiles, you understand. Just profiles that strike my\n fancy.\" He paused. She had raised her cup to her lips and was taking a\n dainty sip. \"You have a rather striking profile yourself, Miss—\"\n\n\n \"Smith. Kay Smith.\" She set the cup back on the counter and turned and\n faced him. For a second her eyes seemed to expand till they preoccupied\n his entire vision, till he could see nothing but their disturbingly\n clear—and suddenly cold—blueness. Panic touched him, then vanished\n when she said, \"Would you really consider word-painting\nmy\nprofile,\n Mr. Quidley?\"\nWould\nhe! \"When can I call?\"\n\n\n She hesitated for a moment. Then: \"I think it will be better if I call\n on you. There are quite a number of people living in our—our house.\n I'm afraid the quarters would be much too cramped for an artist like\n yourself to concentrate.\"", "He watched her get out, walk up the walk to the entrance and let\n herself in. He leaned his head back on the seat, lit a cigarette and\n exhaled a mixture of smoke and relief. On the way to meet her folks.\n So it was just an ordinary secret society after all. And here he'd\n been thinking that she was the key figure in a Martian plot to blow up\n Earth—\n\n\n Her\nfolks\n!\n\n\n Abruptly the full implication of the words got through to him, and he\n sat bolt-up-right on the seat. He was starting to climb out of the car\n when he saw Kay coming down the walk. Anyway, running away wouldn't\n solve his problem. A complete disappearing act was in order, and a\n complete disappearing act would take time. Meanwhile he would play\n along with her.\nA station wagon came up behind them, slowed, and matched its speed\n with theirs. \"Someone's following us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"Probably Jilka.\"", "He went over to the sideboard, picked up the bottle of bourbon. She\n followed. He set the two snifter glasses side by side and tilted the\n bottle. \"Say when.\" \"When!\" \"I admire your dress—never saw anything\n quite like it.\" \"Thank you. The material is something new. Feel it.\"\n \"It's—it's almost like foam rubber. Cigarette?\" \"Thanks.... Is\n something wrong, Mr. Quidley?\" \"No, of course not. Why?\" \"Your hands\n are trembling.\" \"Oh. I'm—I'm afraid it's the present company, Miss\n Smith.\" \"Call me Kay.\"", "Presently she returned the book to the shelf, selected\n another—seemingly at random—and took it over to the librarian's desk.\n She waited statuesquely while the librarian processed it, then tucked\n it under her arm and whisked out the door into the misty April night.\n As soon as she disappeared, Quidley stepped over to the T's and took\n Taine down once more. Just as he had suspected. The makeshift bookmark\n was gone.\n\n\n He remembered how the asdf-;lkj exercise had given way to several lines\n of gibberish and then reappeared again. A camouflaged message? Or was\n it merely what it appeared to be on the surface—the efforts of an\n impatient typing student to type before his time?", "The camouflage had varied, but the message was typical enough:\nfdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; Cai: Gind\n en snoll doper nckli! Wotnid antwaterer Fieu Dayol hid jestig snoll\n doper ifedererer te. Dep gogensplo snoll dopers ensing!—Gorka. fdsa\n jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl;\nJudging from the repeated use of the words,\nsnoll dopers\nwere the\n topic of the day. Annoyed, Quidley replaced the message and put the\n book back on the shelf. Then he returned to his apartment to await Kay.", "They touched glasses: \"Your liquor is as exquisite as your living room,\n Herbert. I shall have to come here more often.\" \"I hope you will, Kay.\"\n \"Though such conduct, I'm told, is morally reprehensible on the planet\n Earth.\" \"Not in this particular circle. Your hair is lovely.\" \"Thank\n you.... You haven't mentioned my perfume yet. Perhaps I'm standing too\n far away.... There!\" \"It's—it's as lovely as your hair, Kay.\" \"Um,\n kiss me again.\" \"I—I never figured—I mean, I engaged a caterer to\n serve us dinner at 9:30.\" \"Call him up. Make it 10:30.\"\nThe following evening found Quidley on tenter-hooks. The\nsnoll-doper\nmystery had acquired a new tang. He could hardly wait till the next\n message transfer took place.", "Apparently she had. At least there was a man with her—a rather\n woebegone, wilted creature who didn't even look up as they passed.\n Quidley watched them ascend the gangplank, the man in the lead, and\n disappear into the ship.\n\n\n \"Next,\" Kay said.\n\n\n Quidley shook his head. \"You're not taking\nme\nto another planet!\"\n\n\n She opened her purse and pulled out a small metallic object \"A\n little while ago you asked me what a\nsnoll doper\nwas,\" she said.\n \"Unfortunately interstellar law severely limits us in our choice of\n marriageable males, and we can take only those who refuse to conform\n to the sexual mores of their own societies.\" She did something to the\n object that caused it to extend itself into a long, tubular affair.\n \"\nThis\nis a\nsnoll doper\n.\"\n\n\n She prodded his ribs. \"March,\" she said.", "On page 21 of the Taine tome he happened upon a sheet of yellow copy\n paper folded in four. Unfolding it, he read:\nasdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\n Cai: Sities towms copeis wotnid. Gind snoll doper nckli! Wilbe Fieu\n Dayol fot ig habe mot toseo knwo—te bijk weil en snoll doper—Klio,\n asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\nSince when, Quidley wondered, refolding the paper and putting it back\n in the book, had high-school typing students taken to reading Taine?\n Thoughtfully he replaced the book on the shelf and moved deeper into\n the literature section.\n\n\n He had just taken down Xenophon's\nAnabasis\nwhen he saw the girl walk\n in the door.", "He wondered what her reaction would be if he asked her point-blank what\n a\nsnoll doper\nwas; whether she would reveal the nature of the amateur\n secret society to which she and Klio and Yoolna and Gorka belonged.\n It virtually had to be an amateur secret society. Unless, of course,\n they were foreigners. But what on earth foreign organization would be\n quixotic enough to employ Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\nas a\n communications medium when there was a telephone in every drugstore and\n a mailbox on every corner?\n\n\n Somehow the words \"what on earth foreign organization\" got turned\n around in his mind and became \"what foreign organization on earth\" and\n before he could summon his common sense to succor him, he experienced\n a rather bad moment. By the time the door chimes sounded he was his\n normal self again.", "He decided to spend the evening plotting the epic novel which he\n intended to write someday. He set to work immediately. He plotted\n mentally, of course—notes were for the hacks and the other commercial\n non-geniuses who infested the modern literary world. Closing his eyes,\n he saw the whole vivid panorama of epic action and grand adventure\n flowing like a mighty and majestic river before his literary vision:\n the authentic and awe-inspiring background; the hordes of colorful\n characters; the handsome virile hero, the compelling Helenesque\n heroine.... God, it was going to be great! The best thing he'd ever\n done! See, already there was a crowd of book lovers in front of the\n bookstore, staring into the window where the new Herbert Quidley was", "\"Since the night before I met you.\"\n\n\n \"Was that the reason you spilled the sugar?\"\n\n\n \"Part of the reason,\" he said. \"What's a\nsnoll doper\n?\"\n\n\n She laughed. \"I don't think I'd better tell you just yet.\"\n\n\n He sighed again. \"But if Jilka wanted a\nsnoll doper\n,\" he said after a\n while, \"why in the world didn't she call you up and say so?\"\n\n\n \"Regulations.\" She pulled over to the curb in front of a brick\n apartment building. \"This is where Jilka lives. I'll explain when I get\n back.\"", "The Girls From Fieu Dayol\nBy ROBERT F. YOUNG\nThey were lovely and quick\n\n to learn—and their only\n\n faults were little ones!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nUp until the moment when he first looked into Hippolyte Adolphe Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\n, Herbert Quidley's penchant for old\n books had netted him nothing in the way of romance and intrigue.\n Not that he was a stranger to either. Far from it. But hitherto the\n background for both had been bedrooms and bars, not libraries.", "\"I didn't know you had a taste for Taine.\"\nHer voice seemed to come from far away, but she was standing right\n beside him, tall and bewitching; Helenesque as ever. Her blue eyes\n became great wells into which he found himself falling. With an effort,\n he pulled himself back. \"You're early tonight,\" he said lamely.\n\n\n She appropriated the message, read it. \"Put the book back,\" she said\n presently. Then, when he complied: \"Come on.\"\n\n\n \"Where are we going?\"\n\n\n \"I'm going to deliver a\nsnoll doper\nto Jilka. After that I'm going to\n take you home to meet my folks.\"\n\n\n The relieved sigh he heard was his own.\n\n\n They climbed into her convertible and she nosed it into the moving line\n of cars. \"How long have you been reading my mail?\" she asked.", "He was so elated that when he arrived at his apartment he actually\n did try to write a profile. His own, of course. He sat down at his\n custom-built chrome-trimmed desk, inserted a blank sheet of paper in\n his custom-built typewriter and tried to arrange his thoughts. But as\n usual his mind raced ahead of the moment, and he saw the title,\nSelf\n Profile\n, nestling noticeably on the contents page of one of the Better\n Magazines, and presently he saw the piece itself in all its splendid\n array of colorful rhetoric, sparkling imagery and scintillating wit,\n occupying a two-page spread." ], [ "Quidley glowed. Usually it required two or three days, and sometimes a\n week, to reach the apartment phase. \"Fine,\" he said. \"When can I expect\n you?\"\n\n\n She stood up and he got to his feet beside her. She was even taller\n than he had thought. In fact, if he hadn't been wearing Cuban heels,\n she'd have been taller than he was. \"I'll be in town night after next,\"\n she said. \"Will nine o'clock be convenient for you?\"\n\n\n \"Perfectly.\"\n\n\n \"Good-by for now then, Mr. Quidley.\"", "He went over to the sideboard, picked up the bottle of bourbon. She\n followed. He set the two snifter glasses side by side and tilted the\n bottle. \"Say when.\" \"When!\" \"I admire your dress—never saw anything\n quite like it.\" \"Thank you. The material is something new. Feel it.\"\n \"It's—it's almost like foam rubber. Cigarette?\" \"Thanks.... Is\n something wrong, Mr. Quidley?\" \"No, of course not. Why?\" \"Your hands\n are trembling.\" \"Oh. I'm—I'm afraid it's the present company, Miss\n Smith.\" \"Call me Kay.\"", "He watched her get out, walk up the walk to the entrance and let\n herself in. He leaned his head back on the seat, lit a cigarette and\n exhaled a mixture of smoke and relief. On the way to meet her folks.\n So it was just an ordinary secret society after all. And here he'd\n been thinking that she was the key figure in a Martian plot to blow up\n Earth—\n\n\n Her\nfolks\n!\n\n\n Abruptly the full implication of the words got through to him, and he\n sat bolt-up-right on the seat. He was starting to climb out of the car\n when he saw Kay coming down the walk. Anyway, running away wouldn't\n solve his problem. A complete disappearing act was in order, and a\n complete disappearing act would take time. Meanwhile he would play\n along with her.\nA station wagon came up behind them, slowed, and matched its speed\n with theirs. \"Someone's following us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"Probably Jilka.\"", "The camouflage had varied, but the message was typical enough:\nfdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; Cai: Gind\n en snoll doper nckli! Wotnid antwaterer Fieu Dayol hid jestig snoll\n doper ifedererer te. Dep gogensplo snoll dopers ensing!—Gorka. fdsa\n jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl;\nJudging from the repeated use of the words,\nsnoll dopers\nwere the\n topic of the day. Annoyed, Quidley replaced the message and put the\n book back on the shelf. Then he returned to his apartment to await Kay.", "Quidley winced. He was allergic to the term. Not that he ever let the\n presence of a boy friend deter him when he set out to conquer, but\n because the term itself brought to mind the word \"fiance,\" and the word\n \"fiance\" brought to mind still another word, one which repelled him\n violently. I.e., \"marriage\". Just the same, he decided to keep Taine's\nHistory\nunder observation for a while.\nHer boy friend turned out to be her girl friend, and her girl friend\n turned out to be a tall and lissome, lovely with a Helenesque air of\n her own. From the vantage point of a strategically located reading\n table, where he was keeping company with his favorite little magazine,\nThe Zeitgeist\n, Quidley watched her take a seemingly haphazard route\n to the shelf where Taine's\nHistory\nreposed, take the volume down,\n surreptitiously slip a folded sheet of yellow paper between its pages\n and return it to the shelf.", "You could hardly call Kay a girl scout, though.\n\n\n Nevertheless, she was the key figure in the\nsnoll-doper\nenigma. The\n fact annoyed him, especially when he considered that a\nsnoll doper\n,\n for all he knew, could be anything from a Chinese fortune cooky to an\n H-bomb.\n\n\n He remembered Kay's odd accent. Was that the way a person would speak\n English if her own language ran something like \"\nist ifedereret, hid\n jestig snoll doper adwo\n?\"\n\n\n He remembered the way she had looked at him in the coffee bar.\n\n\n He remembered the material of her dress.\n\n\n He remembered how she had come to his room.", "After coming in the door, the girl deposited a book on the librarian's\n desk and headed for the literature section. Quickly Quidley lowered\n his eyes to the\nAnabasis\nand henceforth followed her progress out of\n their corners. When she came to the O's she paused, took down a book\n and glanced through it. Then she replaced it and moved on to the\n P's ... the Q's ... the R's. Barely three feet from him she paused\n again and took down Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\n.\n\n\n He simply could not believe it. The odds against two persons taking an\n interest in so esoteric a volume on a single night in a single library\n were ten thousand to one. And yet there was no gainsaying that the\n volume was in the girl's hands, and that she was riffling through it\n with the air of a seasoned browser.", "Let it be said forthwith that old books were not the only item on\n Herbert Quidley's penchant-list. He liked old wood, too, and old\n paintings, not to mention old wine and old whiskey. But most of all he\n liked young girls. He especially liked them when they looked the way\n Helen of Troy must have looked when Paris took one gander at her and\n started building his ladder. This one was tall, with hyacinth hair and\n liquid blue eyes, and she had a Grecian symmetry of shape that would\n have made Paris' eyes pop had he been around to take notice. Paris\n wasn't, but Quidley's eyes, did the job.", "They touched glasses: \"Your liquor is as exquisite as your living room,\n Herbert. I shall have to come here more often.\" \"I hope you will, Kay.\"\n \"Though such conduct, I'm told, is morally reprehensible on the planet\n Earth.\" \"Not in this particular circle. Your hair is lovely.\" \"Thank\n you.... You haven't mentioned my perfume yet. Perhaps I'm standing too\n far away.... There!\" \"It's—it's as lovely as your hair, Kay.\" \"Um,\n kiss me again.\" \"I—I never figured—I mean, I engaged a caterer to\n serve us dinner at 9:30.\" \"Call him up. Make it 10:30.\"\nThe following evening found Quidley on tenter-hooks. The\nsnoll-doper\nmystery had acquired a new tang. He could hardly wait till the next\n message transfer took place.", "\"Not famous profiles, you understand. Just profiles that strike my\n fancy.\" He paused. She had raised her cup to her lips and was taking a\n dainty sip. \"You have a rather striking profile yourself, Miss—\"\n\n\n \"Smith. Kay Smith.\" She set the cup back on the counter and turned and\n faced him. For a second her eyes seemed to expand till they preoccupied\n his entire vision, till he could see nothing but their disturbingly\n clear—and suddenly cold—blueness. Panic touched him, then vanished\n when she said, \"Would you really consider word-painting\nmy\nprofile,\n Mr. Quidley?\"\nWould\nhe! \"When can I call?\"\n\n\n She hesitated for a moment. Then: \"I think it will be better if I call\n on you. There are quite a number of people living in our—our house.\n I'm afraid the quarters would be much too cramped for an artist like\n yourself to concentrate.\"", "Apparently she had. At least there was a man with her—a rather\n woebegone, wilted creature who didn't even look up as they passed.\n Quidley watched them ascend the gangplank, the man in the lead, and\n disappear into the ship.\n\n\n \"Next,\" Kay said.\n\n\n Quidley shook his head. \"You're not taking\nme\nto another planet!\"\n\n\n She opened her purse and pulled out a small metallic object \"A\n little while ago you asked me what a\nsnoll doper\nwas,\" she said.\n \"Unfortunately interstellar law severely limits us in our choice of\n marriageable males, and we can take only those who refuse to conform\n to the sexual mores of their own societies.\" She did something to the\n object that caused it to extend itself into a long, tubular affair.\n \"\nThis\nis a\nsnoll doper\n.\"\n\n\n She prodded his ribs. \"March,\" she said.", "Presently she returned the book to the shelf, selected\n another—seemingly at random—and took it over to the librarian's desk.\n She waited statuesquely while the librarian processed it, then tucked\n it under her arm and whisked out the door into the misty April night.\n As soon as she disappeared, Quidley stepped over to the T's and took\n Taine down once more. Just as he had suspected. The makeshift bookmark\n was gone.\n\n\n He remembered how the asdf-;lkj exercise had given way to several lines\n of gibberish and then reappeared again. A camouflaged message? Or was\n it merely what it appeared to be on the surface—the efforts of an\n impatient typing student to type before his time?", "\"They weren't messages. They were requisitions. I'm the ship's stock\n girl.\"\nApril fields stretched darkly away on either side of the highway.\n Presently she turned down a rutted road between two of them and they\n bounced and swayed back to a black blur of trees. \"Here we are,\" she\n said.\n\n\n Gradually he made out the sphere. It blended so flawlessly with its\n background that he wouldn't have been able to see it at all if he\n hadn't been informed of its existence. A gangplank sloped down from an\n open lock and came to rest just within the fringe of the trees.\n\n\n Lights danced in the darkness behind them as another car jounced down\n the rutted road. \"Jilka,\" Kay said. \"I wonder if she got him.\"", "Five minutes later the station wagon turned down a side street and\n disappeared. \"She's no longer with us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"She's got to pick someone up. She'll meet us later.\"\n\n\n \"At your folks'?\"\n\n\n \"At the ship.\"\n\n\n The city was thinning out around them now, and a few stars were visible\n in the night sky. Quidley watched them thoughtfully for a while. Then:\n \"What ship?\" he said.\n\n\n \"The one we're going to\nFieu Dayol\non.\"\n\n\n \"\nFieu Dayol?\n\"\n\n\n \"Persei 17 to you. I said I was going to take you home to meet my\n folks, didn't I?\"\n\n\n \"In other words, you're kidnapping me.\"", "On page 21 of the Taine tome he happened upon a sheet of yellow copy\n paper folded in four. Unfolding it, he read:\nasdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\n Cai: Sities towms copeis wotnid. Gind snoll doper nckli! Wilbe Fieu\n Dayol fot ig habe mot toseo knwo—te bijk weil en snoll doper—Klio,\n asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\nSince when, Quidley wondered, refolding the paper and putting it back\n in the book, had high-school typing students taken to reading Taine?\n Thoughtfully he replaced the book on the shelf and moved deeper into\n the literature section.\n\n\n He had just taken down Xenophon's\nAnabasis\nwhen he saw the girl walk\n in the door.", "He refolded the paper, replaced it between the pages, returned the book\n to the shelf and went back to the reading table and\nThe Zeitgeist\n.\n\n\n Kay didn't show up till almost closing time, and he was beginning\n to think that perhaps she wouldn't come around for the pickup till\n tomorrow when she finally walked in the door. She employed the same\n tactics she had employed the previous night, arriving, as though by\n chance, at the T-section and transferring the message with the same\n undetectable legerdemain to her purse. This time, when she walked out\n the door, he was not far behind her.\n\n\n She climbed into a sleek convertible and pulled into the street. It\n took him but a moment to gain his hardtop and start out after her.\n When, several blocks later, she pulled to the curb in front of an\n all-night coffee bar, he followed suit. After that, it was merely a\n matter of following her inside.", "He marched. Halfway up the plank he glanced back over his shoulder for\n a better look at the object pressed against his back.\n\n\n It bore a striking resemblance to a shotgun.", "\"I'm hopelessly clumsy,\" he continued smoothly, brushing the gleaming\n crystals from her pleated skirt, noting the clean sweep of her thighs.\n \"I beseech you to forgive me.\"\n\n\n \"You're forgiven,\" she said, and he noticed then that she spoke with a\n slight accent.\n\n\n \"If you like, you can send it to the cleaners and have them send the\n bill to me. My address is 61 Park Place.\" He pulled out his wallet,\n chose an appropriate card, and handed it to her—\nHerbert Quidley:\nProfiliste\nHer forehead crinkled. \"\nProfiliste?\n\"\n\n\n \"I paint profiles with words,\" he said. \"You may have run across some\n of my pieces in the Better Magazines. I employ a variety of pseudonyms,\n of course.\"\n\n\n \"How interesting.\" She pronounced it \"anteresting.\"", "ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ....\n\n\n Message no. 4, except for a slight variation in camouflage, ran true to\n form:\na;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj Cai: Habe te snoll dopers ensing?\n Wotnid ne Fieu Dayol ist ifederereret, hid jestig snoll doper. Gind\n ed, olro—Jilka. a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj\nQuidley sighed. What, he asked himself, standing in the library aisle\n and staring at the indecipherable words, was a normal girl like Kay\n doing in such a childish secret society? From the way she and her\n correspondents carried on you'd almost think they were Martian girl\n scouts on an interplanetary camping trip, trying for their merit badges\n in communications!", "He returned Taine to the shelf. After learning from the librarian that\n the girl's name was Kay Smith, he went out and got in his hardtop. The\n name rang a bell. Halfway home he realized why. The typing exercise had\n contained the word \"Cai\", and if you pronounced it with hard c, you got\n \"Kai\"—or \"Kay\". Obviously, then, the exercise had been a message, and\n had been deliberately inserted in a book no average person would dream\n of borrowing.\n\n\n By whom—her boy friend?" ], [ "The camouflage had varied, but the message was typical enough:\nfdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; Cai: Gind\n en snoll doper nckli! Wotnid antwaterer Fieu Dayol hid jestig snoll\n doper ifedererer te. Dep gogensplo snoll dopers ensing!—Gorka. fdsa\n jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl;\nJudging from the repeated use of the words,\nsnoll dopers\nwere the\n topic of the day. Annoyed, Quidley replaced the message and put the\n book back on the shelf. Then he returned to his apartment to await Kay.", "After she left he wasted no time in acquainting himself with the second\n message. It was as unintelligible as the first:\nasdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj Cai: Habe\n wotnid ig ist ending ifedererer te. T'lide sid Fieu Dayol po jestig\n toseo knwo, bijk weil en snoll doper entling—Yoolna. asdf ;lkj asdf\n ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\nWell, perhaps not quite as unintelligible. He knew, at least, who Cai\n was, and he knew—from the reappearance of the words\nwotnid\n,", "Presently she returned the book to the shelf, selected\n another—seemingly at random—and took it over to the librarian's desk.\n She waited statuesquely while the librarian processed it, then tucked\n it under her arm and whisked out the door into the misty April night.\n As soon as she disappeared, Quidley stepped over to the T's and took\n Taine down once more. Just as he had suspected. The makeshift bookmark\n was gone.\n\n\n He remembered how the asdf-;lkj exercise had given way to several lines\n of gibberish and then reappeared again. A camouflaged message? Or was\n it merely what it appeared to be on the surface—the efforts of an\n impatient typing student to type before his time?", "ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ....\n\n\n Message no. 4, except for a slight variation in camouflage, ran true to\n form:\na;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj Cai: Habe te snoll dopers ensing?\n Wotnid ne Fieu Dayol ist ifederereret, hid jestig snoll doper. Gind\n ed, olro—Jilka. a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj\nQuidley sighed. What, he asked himself, standing in the library aisle\n and staring at the indecipherable words, was a normal girl like Kay\n doing in such a childish secret society? From the way she and her\n correspondents carried on you'd almost think they were Martian girl\n scouts on an interplanetary camping trip, trying for their merit badges\n in communications!", "They touched glasses: \"Your liquor is as exquisite as your living room,\n Herbert. I shall have to come here more often.\" \"I hope you will, Kay.\"\n \"Though such conduct, I'm told, is morally reprehensible on the planet\n Earth.\" \"Not in this particular circle. Your hair is lovely.\" \"Thank\n you.... You haven't mentioned my perfume yet. Perhaps I'm standing too\n far away.... There!\" \"It's—it's as lovely as your hair, Kay.\" \"Um,\n kiss me again.\" \"I—I never figured—I mean, I engaged a caterer to\n serve us dinner at 9:30.\" \"Call him up. Make it 10:30.\"\nThe following evening found Quidley on tenter-hooks. The\nsnoll-doper\nmystery had acquired a new tang. He could hardly wait till the next\n message transfer took place.", "Fieu\n Dayol\nand\nsnoll doper\n—that the two communications were in the\n same code. And certainly it was reasonable to assume that the last\n word—\nYoolna\n—was the name of the girl he had just seen, and that\n she was a different person from the\nKlio\nwhose name had appended the\n first message.", "Quidley winced. He was allergic to the term. Not that he ever let the\n presence of a boy friend deter him when he set out to conquer, but\n because the term itself brought to mind the word \"fiance,\" and the word\n \"fiance\" brought to mind still another word, one which repelled him\n violently. I.e., \"marriage\". Just the same, he decided to keep Taine's\nHistory\nunder observation for a while.\nHer boy friend turned out to be her girl friend, and her girl friend\n turned out to be a tall and lissome, lovely with a Helenesque air of\n her own. From the vantage point of a strategically located reading\n table, where he was keeping company with his favorite little magazine,\nThe Zeitgeist\n, Quidley watched her take a seemingly haphazard route\n to the shelf where Taine's\nHistory\nreposed, take the volume down,\n surreptitiously slip a folded sheet of yellow paper between its pages\n and return it to the shelf.", "\"They weren't messages. They were requisitions. I'm the ship's stock\n girl.\"\nApril fields stretched darkly away on either side of the highway.\n Presently she turned down a rutted road between two of them and they\n bounced and swayed back to a black blur of trees. \"Here we are,\" she\n said.\n\n\n Gradually he made out the sphere. It blended so flawlessly with its\n background that he wouldn't have been able to see it at all if he\n hadn't been informed of its existence. A gangplank sloped down from an\n open lock and came to rest just within the fringe of the trees.\n\n\n Lights danced in the darkness behind them as another car jounced down\n the rutted road. \"Jilka,\" Kay said. \"I wonder if she got him.\"", "\"For two reasons: one, you're the particular man who compromised\n me. Two, there are\nnot\nplenty of men on\nFieu Dayol\n. Our race is\n identical to yours in everything except population-balance between the\n sexes. At periodic intervals the women on\nFieu Dayol\nso greatly\n outnumber the men that those of us who are temperamentally and\n emotionally unfitted to become spinsters have to look for\nwotnids\n—or\n mates—on other worlds. It's quite legal and quite respectable. As a\n matter of fact, we even have schools specializing in alien cultures\n to expedite our activities. Our biggest problem is the Interstellar\n statute forbidding us the use of local communications services and\n forbidding us to appear in public places. It was devised to facilitate\n the prosecution of interstellar black marketeers, but we're subject to\n it, too, and have to contrive communications systems of our own.\"\n\n\n \"But why were all the messages addressed to you?\"", "It was some time before he returned to reality, and when he did the\n first thing that met his eyes was the uncompromisingly blank sheet of\n paper. Hurriedly he typed out a letter to his father, requesting an\n advance on his allowance, then, after a tall glass of vintage wine, he\n went to bed.\nIn telling him that she would be in town two nights hence, Kay had\n unwittingly apprised him that there would be no exchange of messages\n until that time, so the next evening he skipped his vigil at the\n library. The following evening, however, after readying his apartment\n for the forthcoming assignation, he hied himself to his reading-table\n post and took up\nThe Zeitgeist\nonce again.\n\n\n He had not thought it possible that there could be a third such woman.", "Quidley glowed. Usually it required two or three days, and sometimes a\n week, to reach the apartment phase. \"Fine,\" he said. \"When can I expect\n you?\"\n\n\n She stood up and he got to his feet beside her. She was even taller\n than he had thought. In fact, if he hadn't been wearing Cuban heels,\n she'd have been taller than he was. \"I'll be in town night after next,\"\n she said. \"Will nine o'clock be convenient for you?\"\n\n\n \"Perfectly.\"\n\n\n \"Good-by for now then, Mr. Quidley.\"", "On page 21 of the Taine tome he happened upon a sheet of yellow copy\n paper folded in four. Unfolding it, he read:\nasdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\n Cai: Sities towms copeis wotnid. Gind snoll doper nckli! Wilbe Fieu\n Dayol fot ig habe mot toseo knwo—te bijk weil en snoll doper—Klio,\n asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\nSince when, Quidley wondered, refolding the paper and putting it back\n in the book, had high-school typing students taken to reading Taine?\n Thoughtfully he replaced the book on the shelf and moved deeper into\n the literature section.\n\n\n He had just taken down Xenophon's\nAnabasis\nwhen he saw the girl walk\n in the door.", "He watched her get out, walk up the walk to the entrance and let\n herself in. He leaned his head back on the seat, lit a cigarette and\n exhaled a mixture of smoke and relief. On the way to meet her folks.\n So it was just an ordinary secret society after all. And here he'd\n been thinking that she was the key figure in a Martian plot to blow up\n Earth—\n\n\n Her\nfolks\n!\n\n\n Abruptly the full implication of the words got through to him, and he\n sat bolt-up-right on the seat. He was starting to climb out of the car\n when he saw Kay coming down the walk. Anyway, running away wouldn't\n solve his problem. A complete disappearing act was in order, and a\n complete disappearing act would take time. Meanwhile he would play\n along with her.\nA station wagon came up behind them, slowed, and matched its speed\n with theirs. \"Someone's following us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"Probably Jilka.\"", "He returned Taine to the shelf. After learning from the librarian that\n the girl's name was Kay Smith, he went out and got in his hardtop. The\n name rang a bell. Halfway home he realized why. The typing exercise had\n contained the word \"Cai\", and if you pronounced it with hard c, you got\n \"Kai\"—or \"Kay\". Obviously, then, the exercise had been a message, and\n had been deliberately inserted in a book no average person would dream\n of borrowing.\n\n\n By whom—her boy friend?", "\"I didn't know you had a taste for Taine.\"\nHer voice seemed to come from far away, but she was standing right\n beside him, tall and bewitching; Helenesque as ever. Her blue eyes\n became great wells into which he found himself falling. With an effort,\n he pulled himself back. \"You're early tonight,\" he said lamely.\n\n\n She appropriated the message, read it. \"Put the book back,\" she said\n presently. Then, when he complied: \"Come on.\"\n\n\n \"Where are we going?\"\n\n\n \"I'm going to deliver a\nsnoll doper\nto Jilka. After that I'm going to\n take you home to meet my folks.\"\n\n\n The relieved sigh he heard was his own.\n\n\n They climbed into her convertible and she nosed it into the moving line\n of cars. \"How long have you been reading my mail?\" she asked.", "He wondered what her reaction would be if he asked her point-blank what\n a\nsnoll doper\nwas; whether she would reveal the nature of the amateur\n secret society to which she and Klio and Yoolna and Gorka belonged.\n It virtually had to be an amateur secret society. Unless, of course,\n they were foreigners. But what on earth foreign organization would be\n quixotic enough to employ Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\nas a\n communications medium when there was a telephone in every drugstore and\n a mailbox on every corner?\n\n\n Somehow the words \"what on earth foreign organization\" got turned\n around in his mind and became \"what foreign organization on earth\" and\n before he could summon his common sense to succor him, he experienced\n a rather bad moment. By the time the door chimes sounded he was his\n normal self again.", "He refolded the paper, replaced it between the pages, returned the book\n to the shelf and went back to the reading table and\nThe Zeitgeist\n.\n\n\n Kay didn't show up till almost closing time, and he was beginning\n to think that perhaps she wouldn't come around for the pickup till\n tomorrow when she finally walked in the door. She employed the same\n tactics she had employed the previous night, arriving, as though by\n chance, at the T-section and transferring the message with the same\n undetectable legerdemain to her purse. This time, when she walked out\n the door, he was not far behind her.\n\n\n She climbed into a sleek convertible and pulled into the street. It\n took him but a moment to gain his hardtop and start out after her.\n When, several blocks later, she pulled to the curb in front of an\n all-night coffee bar, he followed suit. After that, it was merely a\n matter of following her inside.", "Five minutes later the station wagon turned down a side street and\n disappeared. \"She's no longer with us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"She's got to pick someone up. She'll meet us later.\"\n\n\n \"At your folks'?\"\n\n\n \"At the ship.\"\n\n\n The city was thinning out around them now, and a few stars were visible\n in the night sky. Quidley watched them thoughtfully for a while. Then:\n \"What ship?\" he said.\n\n\n \"The one we're going to\nFieu Dayol\non.\"\n\n\n \"\nFieu Dayol?\n\"\n\n\n \"Persei 17 to you. I said I was going to take you home to meet my\n folks, didn't I?\"\n\n\n \"In other words, you're kidnapping me.\"", "After coming in the door, the girl deposited a book on the librarian's\n desk and headed for the literature section. Quickly Quidley lowered\n his eyes to the\nAnabasis\nand henceforth followed her progress out of\n their corners. When she came to the O's she paused, took down a book\n and glanced through it. Then she replaced it and moved on to the\n P's ... the Q's ... the R's. Barely three feet from him she paused\n again and took down Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\n.\n\n\n He simply could not believe it. The odds against two persons taking an\n interest in so esoteric a volume on a single night in a single library\n were ten thousand to one. And yet there was no gainsaying that the\n volume was in the girl's hands, and that she was riffling through it\n with the air of a seasoned browser.", "\"I'm hopelessly clumsy,\" he continued smoothly, brushing the gleaming\n crystals from her pleated skirt, noting the clean sweep of her thighs.\n \"I beseech you to forgive me.\"\n\n\n \"You're forgiven,\" she said, and he noticed then that she spoke with a\n slight accent.\n\n\n \"If you like, you can send it to the cleaners and have them send the\n bill to me. My address is 61 Park Place.\" He pulled out his wallet,\n chose an appropriate card, and handed it to her—\nHerbert Quidley:\nProfiliste\nHer forehead crinkled. \"\nProfiliste?\n\"\n\n\n \"I paint profiles with words,\" he said. \"You may have run across some\n of my pieces in the Better Magazines. I employ a variety of pseudonyms,\n of course.\"\n\n\n \"How interesting.\" She pronounced it \"anteresting.\"" ], [ "Let it be said forthwith that old books were not the only item on\n Herbert Quidley's penchant-list. He liked old wood, too, and old\n paintings, not to mention old wine and old whiskey. But most of all he\n liked young girls. He especially liked them when they looked the way\n Helen of Troy must have looked when Paris took one gander at her and\n started building his ladder. This one was tall, with hyacinth hair and\n liquid blue eyes, and she had a Grecian symmetry of shape that would\n have made Paris' eyes pop had he been around to take notice. Paris\n wasn't, but Quidley's eyes, did the job.", "He went over to the sideboard, picked up the bottle of bourbon. She\n followed. He set the two snifter glasses side by side and tilted the\n bottle. \"Say when.\" \"When!\" \"I admire your dress—never saw anything\n quite like it.\" \"Thank you. The material is something new. Feel it.\"\n \"It's—it's almost like foam rubber. Cigarette?\" \"Thanks.... Is\n something wrong, Mr. Quidley?\" \"No, of course not. Why?\" \"Your hands\n are trembling.\" \"Oh. I'm—I'm afraid it's the present company, Miss\n Smith.\" \"Call me Kay.\"", "Skin, mostly, in the upper regions. White, glowing skin on which her\n long hair lay like forest pools. As for her dress, it was as though\n she had fallen forward into immaculate snow, half-burying her breasts\n before catching herself on her elbows, then turning into a sitting\n position, the snow clinging to her skin in a glistening veneer;\n arising finally to her feet, resplendently attired.", "They touched glasses: \"Your liquor is as exquisite as your living room,\n Herbert. I shall have to come here more often.\" \"I hope you will, Kay.\"\n \"Though such conduct, I'm told, is morally reprehensible on the planet\n Earth.\" \"Not in this particular circle. Your hair is lovely.\" \"Thank\n you.... You haven't mentioned my perfume yet. Perhaps I'm standing too\n far away.... There!\" \"It's—it's as lovely as your hair, Kay.\" \"Um,\n kiss me again.\" \"I—I never figured—I mean, I engaged a caterer to\n serve us dinner at 9:30.\" \"Call him up. Make it 10:30.\"\nThe following evening found Quidley on tenter-hooks. The\nsnoll-doper\nmystery had acquired a new tang. He could hardly wait till the next\n message transfer took place.", "Quidley winced. He was allergic to the term. Not that he ever let the\n presence of a boy friend deter him when he set out to conquer, but\n because the term itself brought to mind the word \"fiance,\" and the word\n \"fiance\" brought to mind still another word, one which repelled him\n violently. I.e., \"marriage\". Just the same, he decided to keep Taine's\nHistory\nunder observation for a while.\nHer boy friend turned out to be her girl friend, and her girl friend\n turned out to be a tall and lissome, lovely with a Helenesque air of\n her own. From the vantage point of a strategically located reading\n table, where he was keeping company with his favorite little magazine,\nThe Zeitgeist\n, Quidley watched her take a seemingly haphazard route\n to the shelf where Taine's\nHistory\nreposed, take the volume down,\n surreptitiously slip a folded sheet of yellow paper between its pages\n and return it to the shelf.", "You could hardly call Kay a girl scout, though.\n\n\n Nevertheless, she was the key figure in the\nsnoll-doper\nenigma. The\n fact annoyed him, especially when he considered that a\nsnoll doper\n,\n for all he knew, could be anything from a Chinese fortune cooky to an\n H-bomb.\n\n\n He remembered Kay's odd accent. Was that the way a person would speak\n English if her own language ran something like \"\nist ifedereret, hid\n jestig snoll doper adwo\n?\"\n\n\n He remembered the way she had looked at him in the coffee bar.\n\n\n He remembered the material of her dress.\n\n\n He remembered how she had come to his room.", "After coming in the door, the girl deposited a book on the librarian's\n desk and headed for the literature section. Quickly Quidley lowered\n his eyes to the\nAnabasis\nand henceforth followed her progress out of\n their corners. When she came to the O's she paused, took down a book\n and glanced through it. Then she replaced it and moved on to the\n P's ... the Q's ... the R's. Barely three feet from him she paused\n again and took down Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\n.\n\n\n He simply could not believe it. The odds against two persons taking an\n interest in so esoteric a volume on a single night in a single library\n were ten thousand to one. And yet there was no gainsaying that the\n volume was in the girl's hands, and that she was riffling through it\n with the air of a seasoned browser.", "\"Not famous profiles, you understand. Just profiles that strike my\n fancy.\" He paused. She had raised her cup to her lips and was taking a\n dainty sip. \"You have a rather striking profile yourself, Miss—\"\n\n\n \"Smith. Kay Smith.\" She set the cup back on the counter and turned and\n faced him. For a second her eyes seemed to expand till they preoccupied\n his entire vision, till he could see nothing but their disturbingly\n clear—and suddenly cold—blueness. Panic touched him, then vanished\n when she said, \"Would you really consider word-painting\nmy\nprofile,\n Mr. Quidley?\"\nWould\nhe! \"When can I call?\"\n\n\n She hesitated for a moment. Then: \"I think it will be better if I call\n on you. There are quite a number of people living in our—our house.\n I'm afraid the quarters would be much too cramped for an artist like\n yourself to concentrate.\"", "Presently she returned the book to the shelf, selected\n another—seemingly at random—and took it over to the librarian's desk.\n She waited statuesquely while the librarian processed it, then tucked\n it under her arm and whisked out the door into the misty April night.\n As soon as she disappeared, Quidley stepped over to the T's and took\n Taine down once more. Just as he had suspected. The makeshift bookmark\n was gone.\n\n\n He remembered how the asdf-;lkj exercise had given way to several lines\n of gibberish and then reappeared again. A camouflaged message? Or was\n it merely what it appeared to be on the surface—the efforts of an\n impatient typing student to type before his time?", "The camouflage had varied, but the message was typical enough:\nfdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; Cai: Gind\n en snoll doper nckli! Wotnid antwaterer Fieu Dayol hid jestig snoll\n doper ifedererer te. Dep gogensplo snoll dopers ensing!—Gorka. fdsa\n jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl;\nJudging from the repeated use of the words,\nsnoll dopers\nwere the\n topic of the day. Annoyed, Quidley replaced the message and put the\n book back on the shelf. Then he returned to his apartment to await Kay.", "Quidley glowed. Usually it required two or three days, and sometimes a\n week, to reach the apartment phase. \"Fine,\" he said. \"When can I expect\n you?\"\n\n\n She stood up and he got to his feet beside her. She was even taller\n than he had thought. In fact, if he hadn't been wearing Cuban heels,\n she'd have been taller than he was. \"I'll be in town night after next,\"\n she said. \"Will nine o'clock be convenient for you?\"\n\n\n \"Perfectly.\"\n\n\n \"Good-by for now then, Mr. Quidley.\"", "On page 21 of the Taine tome he happened upon a sheet of yellow copy\n paper folded in four. Unfolding it, he read:\nasdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\n Cai: Sities towms copeis wotnid. Gind snoll doper nckli! Wilbe Fieu\n Dayol fot ig habe mot toseo knwo—te bijk weil en snoll doper—Klio,\n asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\nSince when, Quidley wondered, refolding the paper and putting it back\n in the book, had high-school typing students taken to reading Taine?\n Thoughtfully he replaced the book on the shelf and moved deeper into\n the literature section.\n\n\n He had just taken down Xenophon's\nAnabasis\nwhen he saw the girl walk\n in the door.", "And yet there she was, walking in the door, tall and blue-eyed and\n graceful; dark of hair and noble of mien; browsing in the philosophy\n section now, now the fiction section, now moving leisurely into the\n literature aisle and toward the T's....", "He watched her get out, walk up the walk to the entrance and let\n herself in. He leaned his head back on the seat, lit a cigarette and\n exhaled a mixture of smoke and relief. On the way to meet her folks.\n So it was just an ordinary secret society after all. And here he'd\n been thinking that she was the key figure in a Martian plot to blow up\n Earth—\n\n\n Her\nfolks\n!\n\n\n Abruptly the full implication of the words got through to him, and he\n sat bolt-up-right on the seat. He was starting to climb out of the car\n when he saw Kay coming down the walk. Anyway, running away wouldn't\n solve his problem. A complete disappearing act was in order, and a\n complete disappearing act would take time. Meanwhile he would play\n along with her.\nA station wagon came up behind them, slowed, and matched its speed\n with theirs. \"Someone's following us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"Probably Jilka.\"", "Apparently she had. At least there was a man with her—a rather\n woebegone, wilted creature who didn't even look up as they passed.\n Quidley watched them ascend the gangplank, the man in the lead, and\n disappear into the ship.\n\n\n \"Next,\" Kay said.\n\n\n Quidley shook his head. \"You're not taking\nme\nto another planet!\"\n\n\n She opened her purse and pulled out a small metallic object \"A\n little while ago you asked me what a\nsnoll doper\nwas,\" she said.\n \"Unfortunately interstellar law severely limits us in our choice of\n marriageable males, and we can take only those who refuse to conform\n to the sexual mores of their own societies.\" She did something to the\n object that caused it to extend itself into a long, tubular affair.\n \"\nThis\nis a\nsnoll doper\n.\"\n\n\n She prodded his ribs. \"March,\" she said.", "\"I'm hopelessly clumsy,\" he continued smoothly, brushing the gleaming\n crystals from her pleated skirt, noting the clean sweep of her thighs.\n \"I beseech you to forgive me.\"\n\n\n \"You're forgiven,\" she said, and he noticed then that she spoke with a\n slight accent.\n\n\n \"If you like, you can send it to the cleaners and have them send the\n bill to me. My address is 61 Park Place.\" He pulled out his wallet,\n chose an appropriate card, and handed it to her—\nHerbert Quidley:\nProfiliste\nHer forehead crinkled. \"\nProfiliste?\n\"\n\n\n \"I paint profiles with words,\" he said. \"You may have run across some\n of my pieces in the Better Magazines. I employ a variety of pseudonyms,\n of course.\"\n\n\n \"How interesting.\" She pronounced it \"anteresting.\"", "It was some time before he returned to reality, and when he did the\n first thing that met his eyes was the uncompromisingly blank sheet of\n paper. Hurriedly he typed out a letter to his father, requesting an\n advance on his allowance, then, after a tall glass of vintage wine, he\n went to bed.\nIn telling him that she would be in town two nights hence, Kay had\n unwittingly apprised him that there would be no exchange of messages\n until that time, so the next evening he skipped his vigil at the\n library. The following evening, however, after readying his apartment\n for the forthcoming assignation, he hied himself to his reading-table\n post and took up\nThe Zeitgeist\nonce again.\n\n\n He had not thought it possible that there could be a third such woman.", "The Girls From Fieu Dayol\nBy ROBERT F. YOUNG\nThey were lovely and quick\n\n to learn—and their only\n\n faults were little ones!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nUp until the moment when he first looked into Hippolyte Adolphe Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\n, Herbert Quidley's penchant for old\n books had netted him nothing in the way of romance and intrigue.\n Not that he was a stranger to either. Far from it. But hitherto the\n background for both had been bedrooms and bars, not libraries.", "He refolded the paper, replaced it between the pages, returned the book\n to the shelf and went back to the reading table and\nThe Zeitgeist\n.\n\n\n Kay didn't show up till almost closing time, and he was beginning\n to think that perhaps she wouldn't come around for the pickup till\n tomorrow when she finally walked in the door. She employed the same\n tactics she had employed the previous night, arriving, as though by\n chance, at the T-section and transferring the message with the same\n undetectable legerdemain to her purse. This time, when she walked out\n the door, he was not far behind her.\n\n\n She climbed into a sleek convertible and pulled into the street. It\n took him but a moment to gain his hardtop and start out after her.\n When, several blocks later, she pulled to the curb in front of an\n all-night coffee bar, he followed suit. After that, it was merely a\n matter of following her inside.", "ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ....\n\n\n Message no. 4, except for a slight variation in camouflage, ran true to\n form:\na;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj Cai: Habe te snoll dopers ensing?\n Wotnid ne Fieu Dayol ist ifederereret, hid jestig snoll doper. Gind\n ed, olro—Jilka. a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj\nQuidley sighed. What, he asked himself, standing in the library aisle\n and staring at the indecipherable words, was a normal girl like Kay\n doing in such a childish secret society? From the way she and her\n correspondents carried on you'd almost think they were Martian girl\n scouts on an interplanetary camping trip, trying for their merit badges\n in communications!" ], [ "You could hardly call Kay a girl scout, though.\n\n\n Nevertheless, she was the key figure in the\nsnoll-doper\nenigma. The\n fact annoyed him, especially when he considered that a\nsnoll doper\n,\n for all he knew, could be anything from a Chinese fortune cooky to an\n H-bomb.\n\n\n He remembered Kay's odd accent. Was that the way a person would speak\n English if her own language ran something like \"\nist ifedereret, hid\n jestig snoll doper adwo\n?\"\n\n\n He remembered the way she had looked at him in the coffee bar.\n\n\n He remembered the material of her dress.\n\n\n He remembered how she had come to his room.", "They touched glasses: \"Your liquor is as exquisite as your living room,\n Herbert. I shall have to come here more often.\" \"I hope you will, Kay.\"\n \"Though such conduct, I'm told, is morally reprehensible on the planet\n Earth.\" \"Not in this particular circle. Your hair is lovely.\" \"Thank\n you.... You haven't mentioned my perfume yet. Perhaps I'm standing too\n far away.... There!\" \"It's—it's as lovely as your hair, Kay.\" \"Um,\n kiss me again.\" \"I—I never figured—I mean, I engaged a caterer to\n serve us dinner at 9:30.\" \"Call him up. Make it 10:30.\"\nThe following evening found Quidley on tenter-hooks. The\nsnoll-doper\nmystery had acquired a new tang. He could hardly wait till the next\n message transfer took place.", "He watched her get out, walk up the walk to the entrance and let\n herself in. He leaned his head back on the seat, lit a cigarette and\n exhaled a mixture of smoke and relief. On the way to meet her folks.\n So it was just an ordinary secret society after all. And here he'd\n been thinking that she was the key figure in a Martian plot to blow up\n Earth—\n\n\n Her\nfolks\n!\n\n\n Abruptly the full implication of the words got through to him, and he\n sat bolt-up-right on the seat. He was starting to climb out of the car\n when he saw Kay coming down the walk. Anyway, running away wouldn't\n solve his problem. A complete disappearing act was in order, and a\n complete disappearing act would take time. Meanwhile he would play\n along with her.\nA station wagon came up behind them, slowed, and matched its speed\n with theirs. \"Someone's following us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"Probably Jilka.\"", "ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ....\n\n\n Message no. 4, except for a slight variation in camouflage, ran true to\n form:\na;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj Cai: Habe te snoll dopers ensing?\n Wotnid ne Fieu Dayol ist ifederereret, hid jestig snoll doper. Gind\n ed, olro—Jilka. a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj\nQuidley sighed. What, he asked himself, standing in the library aisle\n and staring at the indecipherable words, was a normal girl like Kay\n doing in such a childish secret society? From the way she and her\n correspondents carried on you'd almost think they were Martian girl\n scouts on an interplanetary camping trip, trying for their merit badges\n in communications!", "\"They weren't messages. They were requisitions. I'm the ship's stock\n girl.\"\nApril fields stretched darkly away on either side of the highway.\n Presently she turned down a rutted road between two of them and they\n bounced and swayed back to a black blur of trees. \"Here we are,\" she\n said.\n\n\n Gradually he made out the sphere. It blended so flawlessly with its\n background that he wouldn't have been able to see it at all if he\n hadn't been informed of its existence. A gangplank sloped down from an\n open lock and came to rest just within the fringe of the trees.\n\n\n Lights danced in the darkness behind them as another car jounced down\n the rutted road. \"Jilka,\" Kay said. \"I wonder if she got him.\"", "Five minutes later the station wagon turned down a side street and\n disappeared. \"She's no longer with us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"She's got to pick someone up. She'll meet us later.\"\n\n\n \"At your folks'?\"\n\n\n \"At the ship.\"\n\n\n The city was thinning out around them now, and a few stars were visible\n in the night sky. Quidley watched them thoughtfully for a while. Then:\n \"What ship?\" he said.\n\n\n \"The one we're going to\nFieu Dayol\non.\"\n\n\n \"\nFieu Dayol?\n\"\n\n\n \"Persei 17 to you. I said I was going to take you home to meet my\n folks, didn't I?\"\n\n\n \"In other words, you're kidnapping me.\"", "He refolded the paper, replaced it between the pages, returned the book\n to the shelf and went back to the reading table and\nThe Zeitgeist\n.\n\n\n Kay didn't show up till almost closing time, and he was beginning\n to think that perhaps she wouldn't come around for the pickup till\n tomorrow when she finally walked in the door. She employed the same\n tactics she had employed the previous night, arriving, as though by\n chance, at the T-section and transferring the message with the same\n undetectable legerdemain to her purse. This time, when she walked out\n the door, he was not far behind her.\n\n\n She climbed into a sleek convertible and pulled into the street. It\n took him but a moment to gain his hardtop and start out after her.\n When, several blocks later, she pulled to the curb in front of an\n all-night coffee bar, he followed suit. After that, it was merely a\n matter of following her inside.", "Apparently she had. At least there was a man with her—a rather\n woebegone, wilted creature who didn't even look up as they passed.\n Quidley watched them ascend the gangplank, the man in the lead, and\n disappear into the ship.\n\n\n \"Next,\" Kay said.\n\n\n Quidley shook his head. \"You're not taking\nme\nto another planet!\"\n\n\n She opened her purse and pulled out a small metallic object \"A\n little while ago you asked me what a\nsnoll doper\nwas,\" she said.\n \"Unfortunately interstellar law severely limits us in our choice of\n marriageable males, and we can take only those who refuse to conform\n to the sexual mores of their own societies.\" She did something to the\n object that caused it to extend itself into a long, tubular affair.\n \"\nThis\nis a\nsnoll doper\n.\"\n\n\n She prodded his ribs. \"March,\" she said.", "Quidley winced. He was allergic to the term. Not that he ever let the\n presence of a boy friend deter him when he set out to conquer, but\n because the term itself brought to mind the word \"fiance,\" and the word\n \"fiance\" brought to mind still another word, one which repelled him\n violently. I.e., \"marriage\". Just the same, he decided to keep Taine's\nHistory\nunder observation for a while.\nHer boy friend turned out to be her girl friend, and her girl friend\n turned out to be a tall and lissome, lovely with a Helenesque air of\n her own. From the vantage point of a strategically located reading\n table, where he was keeping company with his favorite little magazine,\nThe Zeitgeist\n, Quidley watched her take a seemingly haphazard route\n to the shelf where Taine's\nHistory\nreposed, take the volume down,\n surreptitiously slip a folded sheet of yellow paper between its pages\n and return it to the shelf.", "He returned Taine to the shelf. After learning from the librarian that\n the girl's name was Kay Smith, he went out and got in his hardtop. The\n name rang a bell. Halfway home he realized why. The typing exercise had\n contained the word \"Cai\", and if you pronounced it with hard c, you got\n \"Kai\"—or \"Kay\". Obviously, then, the exercise had been a message, and\n had been deliberately inserted in a book no average person would dream\n of borrowing.\n\n\n By whom—her boy friend?", "He wondered what her reaction would be if he asked her point-blank what\n a\nsnoll doper\nwas; whether she would reveal the nature of the amateur\n secret society to which she and Klio and Yoolna and Gorka belonged.\n It virtually had to be an amateur secret society. Unless, of course,\n they were foreigners. But what on earth foreign organization would be\n quixotic enough to employ Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\nas a\n communications medium when there was a telephone in every drugstore and\n a mailbox on every corner?\n\n\n Somehow the words \"what on earth foreign organization\" got turned\n around in his mind and became \"what foreign organization on earth\" and\n before he could summon his common sense to succor him, he experienced\n a rather bad moment. By the time the door chimes sounded he was his\n normal self again.", "The camouflage had varied, but the message was typical enough:\nfdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; Cai: Gind\n en snoll doper nckli! Wotnid antwaterer Fieu Dayol hid jestig snoll\n doper ifedererer te. Dep gogensplo snoll dopers ensing!—Gorka. fdsa\n jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl;\nJudging from the repeated use of the words,\nsnoll dopers\nwere the\n topic of the day. Annoyed, Quidley replaced the message and put the\n book back on the shelf. Then he returned to his apartment to await Kay.", "Presently she returned the book to the shelf, selected\n another—seemingly at random—and took it over to the librarian's desk.\n She waited statuesquely while the librarian processed it, then tucked\n it under her arm and whisked out the door into the misty April night.\n As soon as she disappeared, Quidley stepped over to the T's and took\n Taine down once more. Just as he had suspected. The makeshift bookmark\n was gone.\n\n\n He remembered how the asdf-;lkj exercise had given way to several lines\n of gibberish and then reappeared again. A camouflaged message? Or was\n it merely what it appeared to be on the surface—the efforts of an\n impatient typing student to type before his time?", "He went over to the sideboard, picked up the bottle of bourbon. She\n followed. He set the two snifter glasses side by side and tilted the\n bottle. \"Say when.\" \"When!\" \"I admire your dress—never saw anything\n quite like it.\" \"Thank you. The material is something new. Feel it.\"\n \"It's—it's almost like foam rubber. Cigarette?\" \"Thanks.... Is\n something wrong, Mr. Quidley?\" \"No, of course not. Why?\" \"Your hands\n are trembling.\" \"Oh. I'm—I'm afraid it's the present company, Miss\n Smith.\" \"Call me Kay.\"", "After coming in the door, the girl deposited a book on the librarian's\n desk and headed for the literature section. Quickly Quidley lowered\n his eyes to the\nAnabasis\nand henceforth followed her progress out of\n their corners. When she came to the O's she paused, took down a book\n and glanced through it. Then she replaced it and moved on to the\n P's ... the Q's ... the R's. Barely three feet from him she paused\n again and took down Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\n.\n\n\n He simply could not believe it. The odds against two persons taking an\n interest in so esoteric a volume on a single night in a single library\n were ten thousand to one. And yet there was no gainsaying that the\n volume was in the girl's hands, and that she was riffling through it\n with the air of a seasoned browser.", "Fieu\n Dayol\nand\nsnoll doper\n—that the two communications were in the\n same code. And certainly it was reasonable to assume that the last\n word—\nYoolna\n—was the name of the girl he had just seen, and that\n she was a different person from the\nKlio\nwhose name had appended the\n first message.", "It was some time before he returned to reality, and when he did the\n first thing that met his eyes was the uncompromisingly blank sheet of\n paper. Hurriedly he typed out a letter to his father, requesting an\n advance on his allowance, then, after a tall glass of vintage wine, he\n went to bed.\nIn telling him that she would be in town two nights hence, Kay had\n unwittingly apprised him that there would be no exchange of messages\n until that time, so the next evening he skipped his vigil at the\n library. The following evening, however, after readying his apartment\n for the forthcoming assignation, he hied himself to his reading-table\n post and took up\nThe Zeitgeist\nonce again.\n\n\n He had not thought it possible that there could be a third such woman.", "After she left he wasted no time in acquainting himself with the second\n message. It was as unintelligible as the first:\nasdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj Cai: Habe\n wotnid ig ist ending ifedererer te. T'lide sid Fieu Dayol po jestig\n toseo knwo, bijk weil en snoll doper entling—Yoolna. asdf ;lkj asdf\n ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\nWell, perhaps not quite as unintelligible. He knew, at least, who Cai\n was, and he knew—from the reappearance of the words\nwotnid\n,", "On page 21 of the Taine tome he happened upon a sheet of yellow copy\n paper folded in four. Unfolding it, he read:\nasdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\n Cai: Sities towms copeis wotnid. Gind snoll doper nckli! Wilbe Fieu\n Dayol fot ig habe mot toseo knwo—te bijk weil en snoll doper—Klio,\n asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\nSince when, Quidley wondered, refolding the paper and putting it back\n in the book, had high-school typing students taken to reading Taine?\n Thoughtfully he replaced the book on the shelf and moved deeper into\n the literature section.\n\n\n He had just taken down Xenophon's\nAnabasis\nwhen he saw the girl walk\n in the door.", "\"I didn't know you had a taste for Taine.\"\nHer voice seemed to come from far away, but she was standing right\n beside him, tall and bewitching; Helenesque as ever. Her blue eyes\n became great wells into which he found himself falling. With an effort,\n he pulled himself back. \"You're early tonight,\" he said lamely.\n\n\n She appropriated the message, read it. \"Put the book back,\" she said\n presently. Then, when he complied: \"Come on.\"\n\n\n \"Where are we going?\"\n\n\n \"I'm going to deliver a\nsnoll doper\nto Jilka. After that I'm going to\n take you home to meet my folks.\"\n\n\n The relieved sigh he heard was his own.\n\n\n They climbed into her convertible and she nosed it into the moving line\n of cars. \"How long have you been reading my mail?\" she asked." ], [ "Apparently she had. At least there was a man with her—a rather\n woebegone, wilted creature who didn't even look up as they passed.\n Quidley watched them ascend the gangplank, the man in the lead, and\n disappear into the ship.\n\n\n \"Next,\" Kay said.\n\n\n Quidley shook his head. \"You're not taking\nme\nto another planet!\"\n\n\n She opened her purse and pulled out a small metallic object \"A\n little while ago you asked me what a\nsnoll doper\nwas,\" she said.\n \"Unfortunately interstellar law severely limits us in our choice of\n marriageable males, and we can take only those who refuse to conform\n to the sexual mores of their own societies.\" She did something to the\n object that caused it to extend itself into a long, tubular affair.\n \"\nThis\nis a\nsnoll doper\n.\"\n\n\n She prodded his ribs. \"March,\" she said.", "Quidley winced. He was allergic to the term. Not that he ever let the\n presence of a boy friend deter him when he set out to conquer, but\n because the term itself brought to mind the word \"fiance,\" and the word\n \"fiance\" brought to mind still another word, one which repelled him\n violently. I.e., \"marriage\". Just the same, he decided to keep Taine's\nHistory\nunder observation for a while.\nHer boy friend turned out to be her girl friend, and her girl friend\n turned out to be a tall and lissome, lovely with a Helenesque air of\n her own. From the vantage point of a strategically located reading\n table, where he was keeping company with his favorite little magazine,\nThe Zeitgeist\n, Quidley watched her take a seemingly haphazard route\n to the shelf where Taine's\nHistory\nreposed, take the volume down,\n surreptitiously slip a folded sheet of yellow paper between its pages\n and return it to the shelf.", "He watched her get out, walk up the walk to the entrance and let\n herself in. He leaned his head back on the seat, lit a cigarette and\n exhaled a mixture of smoke and relief. On the way to meet her folks.\n So it was just an ordinary secret society after all. And here he'd\n been thinking that she was the key figure in a Martian plot to blow up\n Earth—\n\n\n Her\nfolks\n!\n\n\n Abruptly the full implication of the words got through to him, and he\n sat bolt-up-right on the seat. He was starting to climb out of the car\n when he saw Kay coming down the walk. Anyway, running away wouldn't\n solve his problem. A complete disappearing act was in order, and a\n complete disappearing act would take time. Meanwhile he would play\n along with her.\nA station wagon came up behind them, slowed, and matched its speed\n with theirs. \"Someone's following us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"Probably Jilka.\"", "He went over to the sideboard, picked up the bottle of bourbon. She\n followed. He set the two snifter glasses side by side and tilted the\n bottle. \"Say when.\" \"When!\" \"I admire your dress—never saw anything\n quite like it.\" \"Thank you. The material is something new. Feel it.\"\n \"It's—it's almost like foam rubber. Cigarette?\" \"Thanks.... Is\n something wrong, Mr. Quidley?\" \"No, of course not. Why?\" \"Your hands\n are trembling.\" \"Oh. I'm—I'm afraid it's the present company, Miss\n Smith.\" \"Call me Kay.\"", "You could hardly call Kay a girl scout, though.\n\n\n Nevertheless, she was the key figure in the\nsnoll-doper\nenigma. The\n fact annoyed him, especially when he considered that a\nsnoll doper\n,\n for all he knew, could be anything from a Chinese fortune cooky to an\n H-bomb.\n\n\n He remembered Kay's odd accent. Was that the way a person would speak\n English if her own language ran something like \"\nist ifedereret, hid\n jestig snoll doper adwo\n?\"\n\n\n He remembered the way she had looked at him in the coffee bar.\n\n\n He remembered the material of her dress.\n\n\n He remembered how she had come to his room.", "After coming in the door, the girl deposited a book on the librarian's\n desk and headed for the literature section. Quickly Quidley lowered\n his eyes to the\nAnabasis\nand henceforth followed her progress out of\n their corners. When she came to the O's she paused, took down a book\n and glanced through it. Then she replaced it and moved on to the\n P's ... the Q's ... the R's. Barely three feet from him she paused\n again and took down Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\n.\n\n\n He simply could not believe it. The odds against two persons taking an\n interest in so esoteric a volume on a single night in a single library\n were ten thousand to one. And yet there was no gainsaying that the\n volume was in the girl's hands, and that she was riffling through it\n with the air of a seasoned browser.", "The camouflage had varied, but the message was typical enough:\nfdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; Cai: Gind\n en snoll doper nckli! Wotnid antwaterer Fieu Dayol hid jestig snoll\n doper ifedererer te. Dep gogensplo snoll dopers ensing!—Gorka. fdsa\n jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl;\nJudging from the repeated use of the words,\nsnoll dopers\nwere the\n topic of the day. Annoyed, Quidley replaced the message and put the\n book back on the shelf. Then he returned to his apartment to await Kay.", "They touched glasses: \"Your liquor is as exquisite as your living room,\n Herbert. I shall have to come here more often.\" \"I hope you will, Kay.\"\n \"Though such conduct, I'm told, is morally reprehensible on the planet\n Earth.\" \"Not in this particular circle. Your hair is lovely.\" \"Thank\n you.... You haven't mentioned my perfume yet. Perhaps I'm standing too\n far away.... There!\" \"It's—it's as lovely as your hair, Kay.\" \"Um,\n kiss me again.\" \"I—I never figured—I mean, I engaged a caterer to\n serve us dinner at 9:30.\" \"Call him up. Make it 10:30.\"\nThe following evening found Quidley on tenter-hooks. The\nsnoll-doper\nmystery had acquired a new tang. He could hardly wait till the next\n message transfer took place.", "\"Not famous profiles, you understand. Just profiles that strike my\n fancy.\" He paused. She had raised her cup to her lips and was taking a\n dainty sip. \"You have a rather striking profile yourself, Miss—\"\n\n\n \"Smith. Kay Smith.\" She set the cup back on the counter and turned and\n faced him. For a second her eyes seemed to expand till they preoccupied\n his entire vision, till he could see nothing but their disturbingly\n clear—and suddenly cold—blueness. Panic touched him, then vanished\n when she said, \"Would you really consider word-painting\nmy\nprofile,\n Mr. Quidley?\"\nWould\nhe! \"When can I call?\"\n\n\n She hesitated for a moment. Then: \"I think it will be better if I call\n on you. There are quite a number of people living in our—our house.\n I'm afraid the quarters would be much too cramped for an artist like\n yourself to concentrate.\"", "Five minutes later the station wagon turned down a side street and\n disappeared. \"She's no longer with us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"She's got to pick someone up. She'll meet us later.\"\n\n\n \"At your folks'?\"\n\n\n \"At the ship.\"\n\n\n The city was thinning out around them now, and a few stars were visible\n in the night sky. Quidley watched them thoughtfully for a while. Then:\n \"What ship?\" he said.\n\n\n \"The one we're going to\nFieu Dayol\non.\"\n\n\n \"\nFieu Dayol?\n\"\n\n\n \"Persei 17 to you. I said I was going to take you home to meet my\n folks, didn't I?\"\n\n\n \"In other words, you're kidnapping me.\"", "Presently she returned the book to the shelf, selected\n another—seemingly at random—and took it over to the librarian's desk.\n She waited statuesquely while the librarian processed it, then tucked\n it under her arm and whisked out the door into the misty April night.\n As soon as she disappeared, Quidley stepped over to the T's and took\n Taine down once more. Just as he had suspected. The makeshift bookmark\n was gone.\n\n\n He remembered how the asdf-;lkj exercise had given way to several lines\n of gibberish and then reappeared again. A camouflaged message? Or was\n it merely what it appeared to be on the surface—the efforts of an\n impatient typing student to type before his time?", "Let it be said forthwith that old books were not the only item on\n Herbert Quidley's penchant-list. He liked old wood, too, and old\n paintings, not to mention old wine and old whiskey. But most of all he\n liked young girls. He especially liked them when they looked the way\n Helen of Troy must have looked when Paris took one gander at her and\n started building his ladder. This one was tall, with hyacinth hair and\n liquid blue eyes, and she had a Grecian symmetry of shape that would\n have made Paris' eyes pop had he been around to take notice. Paris\n wasn't, but Quidley's eyes, did the job.", "\"They weren't messages. They were requisitions. I'm the ship's stock\n girl.\"\nApril fields stretched darkly away on either side of the highway.\n Presently she turned down a rutted road between two of them and they\n bounced and swayed back to a black blur of trees. \"Here we are,\" she\n said.\n\n\n Gradually he made out the sphere. It blended so flawlessly with its\n background that he wouldn't have been able to see it at all if he\n hadn't been informed of its existence. A gangplank sloped down from an\n open lock and came to rest just within the fringe of the trees.\n\n\n Lights danced in the darkness behind them as another car jounced down\n the rutted road. \"Jilka,\" Kay said. \"I wonder if she got him.\"", "He refolded the paper, replaced it between the pages, returned the book\n to the shelf and went back to the reading table and\nThe Zeitgeist\n.\n\n\n Kay didn't show up till almost closing time, and he was beginning\n to think that perhaps she wouldn't come around for the pickup till\n tomorrow when she finally walked in the door. She employed the same\n tactics she had employed the previous night, arriving, as though by\n chance, at the T-section and transferring the message with the same\n undetectable legerdemain to her purse. This time, when she walked out\n the door, he was not far behind her.\n\n\n She climbed into a sleek convertible and pulled into the street. It\n took him but a moment to gain his hardtop and start out after her.\n When, several blocks later, she pulled to the curb in front of an\n all-night coffee bar, he followed suit. After that, it was merely a\n matter of following her inside.", "\"I'm hopelessly clumsy,\" he continued smoothly, brushing the gleaming\n crystals from her pleated skirt, noting the clean sweep of her thighs.\n \"I beseech you to forgive me.\"\n\n\n \"You're forgiven,\" she said, and he noticed then that she spoke with a\n slight accent.\n\n\n \"If you like, you can send it to the cleaners and have them send the\n bill to me. My address is 61 Park Place.\" He pulled out his wallet,\n chose an appropriate card, and handed it to her—\nHerbert Quidley:\nProfiliste\nHer forehead crinkled. \"\nProfiliste?\n\"\n\n\n \"I paint profiles with words,\" he said. \"You may have run across some\n of my pieces in the Better Magazines. I employ a variety of pseudonyms,\n of course.\"\n\n\n \"How interesting.\" She pronounced it \"anteresting.\"", "On page 21 of the Taine tome he happened upon a sheet of yellow copy\n paper folded in four. Unfolding it, he read:\nasdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\n Cai: Sities towms copeis wotnid. Gind snoll doper nckli! Wilbe Fieu\n Dayol fot ig habe mot toseo knwo—te bijk weil en snoll doper—Klio,\n asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\nSince when, Quidley wondered, refolding the paper and putting it back\n in the book, had high-school typing students taken to reading Taine?\n Thoughtfully he replaced the book on the shelf and moved deeper into\n the literature section.\n\n\n He had just taken down Xenophon's\nAnabasis\nwhen he saw the girl walk\n in the door.", "Quidley glowed. Usually it required two or three days, and sometimes a\n week, to reach the apartment phase. \"Fine,\" he said. \"When can I expect\n you?\"\n\n\n She stood up and he got to his feet beside her. She was even taller\n than he had thought. In fact, if he hadn't been wearing Cuban heels,\n she'd have been taller than he was. \"I'll be in town night after next,\"\n she said. \"Will nine o'clock be convenient for you?\"\n\n\n \"Perfectly.\"\n\n\n \"Good-by for now then, Mr. Quidley.\"", "It was some time before he returned to reality, and when he did the\n first thing that met his eyes was the uncompromisingly blank sheet of\n paper. Hurriedly he typed out a letter to his father, requesting an\n advance on his allowance, then, after a tall glass of vintage wine, he\n went to bed.\nIn telling him that she would be in town two nights hence, Kay had\n unwittingly apprised him that there would be no exchange of messages\n until that time, so the next evening he skipped his vigil at the\n library. The following evening, however, after readying his apartment\n for the forthcoming assignation, he hied himself to his reading-table\n post and took up\nThe Zeitgeist\nonce again.\n\n\n He had not thought it possible that there could be a third such woman.", "He returned Taine to the shelf. After learning from the librarian that\n the girl's name was Kay Smith, he went out and got in his hardtop. The\n name rang a bell. Halfway home he realized why. The typing exercise had\n contained the word \"Cai\", and if you pronounced it with hard c, you got\n \"Kai\"—or \"Kay\". Obviously, then, the exercise had been a message, and\n had been deliberately inserted in a book no average person would dream\n of borrowing.\n\n\n By whom—her boy friend?", "ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ....\n\n\n Message no. 4, except for a slight variation in camouflage, ran true to\n form:\na;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj Cai: Habe te snoll dopers ensing?\n Wotnid ne Fieu Dayol ist ifederereret, hid jestig snoll doper. Gind\n ed, olro—Jilka. a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj\nQuidley sighed. What, he asked himself, standing in the library aisle\n and staring at the indecipherable words, was a normal girl like Kay\n doing in such a childish secret society? From the way she and her\n correspondents carried on you'd almost think they were Martian girl\n scouts on an interplanetary camping trip, trying for their merit badges\n in communications!" ], [ "Quidley winced. He was allergic to the term. Not that he ever let the\n presence of a boy friend deter him when he set out to conquer, but\n because the term itself brought to mind the word \"fiance,\" and the word\n \"fiance\" brought to mind still another word, one which repelled him\n violently. I.e., \"marriage\". Just the same, he decided to keep Taine's\nHistory\nunder observation for a while.\nHer boy friend turned out to be her girl friend, and her girl friend\n turned out to be a tall and lissome, lovely with a Helenesque air of\n her own. From the vantage point of a strategically located reading\n table, where he was keeping company with his favorite little magazine,\nThe Zeitgeist\n, Quidley watched her take a seemingly haphazard route\n to the shelf where Taine's\nHistory\nreposed, take the volume down,\n surreptitiously slip a folded sheet of yellow paper between its pages\n and return it to the shelf.", "He returned Taine to the shelf. After learning from the librarian that\n the girl's name was Kay Smith, he went out and got in his hardtop. The\n name rang a bell. Halfway home he realized why. The typing exercise had\n contained the word \"Cai\", and if you pronounced it with hard c, you got\n \"Kai\"—or \"Kay\". Obviously, then, the exercise had been a message, and\n had been deliberately inserted in a book no average person would dream\n of borrowing.\n\n\n By whom—her boy friend?", "Presently she returned the book to the shelf, selected\n another—seemingly at random—and took it over to the librarian's desk.\n She waited statuesquely while the librarian processed it, then tucked\n it under her arm and whisked out the door into the misty April night.\n As soon as she disappeared, Quidley stepped over to the T's and took\n Taine down once more. Just as he had suspected. The makeshift bookmark\n was gone.\n\n\n He remembered how the asdf-;lkj exercise had given way to several lines\n of gibberish and then reappeared again. A camouflaged message? Or was\n it merely what it appeared to be on the surface—the efforts of an\n impatient typing student to type before his time?", "On page 21 of the Taine tome he happened upon a sheet of yellow copy\n paper folded in four. Unfolding it, he read:\nasdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\n Cai: Sities towms copeis wotnid. Gind snoll doper nckli! Wilbe Fieu\n Dayol fot ig habe mot toseo knwo—te bijk weil en snoll doper—Klio,\n asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\nSince when, Quidley wondered, refolding the paper and putting it back\n in the book, had high-school typing students taken to reading Taine?\n Thoughtfully he replaced the book on the shelf and moved deeper into\n the literature section.\n\n\n He had just taken down Xenophon's\nAnabasis\nwhen he saw the girl walk\n in the door.", "After coming in the door, the girl deposited a book on the librarian's\n desk and headed for the literature section. Quickly Quidley lowered\n his eyes to the\nAnabasis\nand henceforth followed her progress out of\n their corners. When she came to the O's she paused, took down a book\n and glanced through it. Then she replaced it and moved on to the\n P's ... the Q's ... the R's. Barely three feet from him she paused\n again and took down Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\n.\n\n\n He simply could not believe it. The odds against two persons taking an\n interest in so esoteric a volume on a single night in a single library\n were ten thousand to one. And yet there was no gainsaying that the\n volume was in the girl's hands, and that she was riffling through it\n with the air of a seasoned browser.", "\"I didn't know you had a taste for Taine.\"\nHer voice seemed to come from far away, but she was standing right\n beside him, tall and bewitching; Helenesque as ever. Her blue eyes\n became great wells into which he found himself falling. With an effort,\n he pulled himself back. \"You're early tonight,\" he said lamely.\n\n\n She appropriated the message, read it. \"Put the book back,\" she said\n presently. Then, when he complied: \"Come on.\"\n\n\n \"Where are we going?\"\n\n\n \"I'm going to deliver a\nsnoll doper\nto Jilka. After that I'm going to\n take you home to meet my folks.\"\n\n\n The relieved sigh he heard was his own.\n\n\n They climbed into her convertible and she nosed it into the moving line\n of cars. \"How long have you been reading my mail?\" she asked.", "It was some time before he returned to reality, and when he did the\n first thing that met his eyes was the uncompromisingly blank sheet of\n paper. Hurriedly he typed out a letter to his father, requesting an\n advance on his allowance, then, after a tall glass of vintage wine, he\n went to bed.\nIn telling him that she would be in town two nights hence, Kay had\n unwittingly apprised him that there would be no exchange of messages\n until that time, so the next evening he skipped his vigil at the\n library. The following evening, however, after readying his apartment\n for the forthcoming assignation, he hied himself to his reading-table\n post and took up\nThe Zeitgeist\nonce again.\n\n\n He had not thought it possible that there could be a third such woman.", "The camouflage had varied, but the message was typical enough:\nfdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; Cai: Gind\n en snoll doper nckli! Wotnid antwaterer Fieu Dayol hid jestig snoll\n doper ifedererer te. Dep gogensplo snoll dopers ensing!—Gorka. fdsa\n jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl;\nJudging from the repeated use of the words,\nsnoll dopers\nwere the\n topic of the day. Annoyed, Quidley replaced the message and put the\n book back on the shelf. Then he returned to his apartment to await Kay.", "He refolded the paper, replaced it between the pages, returned the book\n to the shelf and went back to the reading table and\nThe Zeitgeist\n.\n\n\n Kay didn't show up till almost closing time, and he was beginning\n to think that perhaps she wouldn't come around for the pickup till\n tomorrow when she finally walked in the door. She employed the same\n tactics she had employed the previous night, arriving, as though by\n chance, at the T-section and transferring the message with the same\n undetectable legerdemain to her purse. This time, when she walked out\n the door, he was not far behind her.\n\n\n She climbed into a sleek convertible and pulled into the street. It\n took him but a moment to gain his hardtop and start out after her.\n When, several blocks later, she pulled to the curb in front of an\n all-night coffee bar, he followed suit. After that, it was merely a\n matter of following her inside.", "ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ....\n\n\n Message no. 4, except for a slight variation in camouflage, ran true to\n form:\na;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj Cai: Habe te snoll dopers ensing?\n Wotnid ne Fieu Dayol ist ifederereret, hid jestig snoll doper. Gind\n ed, olro—Jilka. a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj\nQuidley sighed. What, he asked himself, standing in the library aisle\n and staring at the indecipherable words, was a normal girl like Kay\n doing in such a childish secret society? From the way she and her\n correspondents carried on you'd almost think they were Martian girl\n scouts on an interplanetary camping trip, trying for their merit badges\n in communications!", "He wondered what her reaction would be if he asked her point-blank what\n a\nsnoll doper\nwas; whether she would reveal the nature of the amateur\n secret society to which she and Klio and Yoolna and Gorka belonged.\n It virtually had to be an amateur secret society. Unless, of course,\n they were foreigners. But what on earth foreign organization would be\n quixotic enough to employ Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\nas a\n communications medium when there was a telephone in every drugstore and\n a mailbox on every corner?\n\n\n Somehow the words \"what on earth foreign organization\" got turned\n around in his mind and became \"what foreign organization on earth\" and\n before he could summon his common sense to succor him, he experienced\n a rather bad moment. By the time the door chimes sounded he was his\n normal self again.", "You could hardly call Kay a girl scout, though.\n\n\n Nevertheless, she was the key figure in the\nsnoll-doper\nenigma. The\n fact annoyed him, especially when he considered that a\nsnoll doper\n,\n for all he knew, could be anything from a Chinese fortune cooky to an\n H-bomb.\n\n\n He remembered Kay's odd accent. Was that the way a person would speak\n English if her own language ran something like \"\nist ifedereret, hid\n jestig snoll doper adwo\n?\"\n\n\n He remembered the way she had looked at him in the coffee bar.\n\n\n He remembered the material of her dress.\n\n\n He remembered how she had come to his room.", "And yet there she was, walking in the door, tall and blue-eyed and\n graceful; dark of hair and noble of mien; browsing in the philosophy\n section now, now the fiction section, now moving leisurely into the\n literature aisle and toward the T's....", "Let it be said forthwith that old books were not the only item on\n Herbert Quidley's penchant-list. He liked old wood, too, and old\n paintings, not to mention old wine and old whiskey. But most of all he\n liked young girls. He especially liked them when they looked the way\n Helen of Troy must have looked when Paris took one gander at her and\n started building his ladder. This one was tall, with hyacinth hair and\n liquid blue eyes, and she had a Grecian symmetry of shape that would\n have made Paris' eyes pop had he been around to take notice. Paris\n wasn't, but Quidley's eyes, did the job.", "They touched glasses: \"Your liquor is as exquisite as your living room,\n Herbert. I shall have to come here more often.\" \"I hope you will, Kay.\"\n \"Though such conduct, I'm told, is morally reprehensible on the planet\n Earth.\" \"Not in this particular circle. Your hair is lovely.\" \"Thank\n you.... You haven't mentioned my perfume yet. Perhaps I'm standing too\n far away.... There!\" \"It's—it's as lovely as your hair, Kay.\" \"Um,\n kiss me again.\" \"I—I never figured—I mean, I engaged a caterer to\n serve us dinner at 9:30.\" \"Call him up. Make it 10:30.\"\nThe following evening found Quidley on tenter-hooks. The\nsnoll-doper\nmystery had acquired a new tang. He could hardly wait till the next\n message transfer took place.", "The Girls From Fieu Dayol\nBy ROBERT F. YOUNG\nThey were lovely and quick\n\n to learn—and their only\n\n faults were little ones!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nUp until the moment when he first looked into Hippolyte Adolphe Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\n, Herbert Quidley's penchant for old\n books had netted him nothing in the way of romance and intrigue.\n Not that he was a stranger to either. Far from it. But hitherto the\n background for both had been bedrooms and bars, not libraries.", "He watched her get out, walk up the walk to the entrance and let\n herself in. He leaned his head back on the seat, lit a cigarette and\n exhaled a mixture of smoke and relief. On the way to meet her folks.\n So it was just an ordinary secret society after all. And here he'd\n been thinking that she was the key figure in a Martian plot to blow up\n Earth—\n\n\n Her\nfolks\n!\n\n\n Abruptly the full implication of the words got through to him, and he\n sat bolt-up-right on the seat. He was starting to climb out of the car\n when he saw Kay coming down the walk. Anyway, running away wouldn't\n solve his problem. A complete disappearing act was in order, and a\n complete disappearing act would take time. Meanwhile he would play\n along with her.\nA station wagon came up behind them, slowed, and matched its speed\n with theirs. \"Someone's following us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"Probably Jilka.\"", "\"They weren't messages. They were requisitions. I'm the ship's stock\n girl.\"\nApril fields stretched darkly away on either side of the highway.\n Presently she turned down a rutted road between two of them and they\n bounced and swayed back to a black blur of trees. \"Here we are,\" she\n said.\n\n\n Gradually he made out the sphere. It blended so flawlessly with its\n background that he wouldn't have been able to see it at all if he\n hadn't been informed of its existence. A gangplank sloped down from an\n open lock and came to rest just within the fringe of the trees.\n\n\n Lights danced in the darkness behind them as another car jounced down\n the rutted road. \"Jilka,\" Kay said. \"I wonder if she got him.\"", "He went over to the sideboard, picked up the bottle of bourbon. She\n followed. He set the two snifter glasses side by side and tilted the\n bottle. \"Say when.\" \"When!\" \"I admire your dress—never saw anything\n quite like it.\" \"Thank you. The material is something new. Feel it.\"\n \"It's—it's almost like foam rubber. Cigarette?\" \"Thanks.... Is\n something wrong, Mr. Quidley?\" \"No, of course not. Why?\" \"Your hands\n are trembling.\" \"Oh. I'm—I'm afraid it's the present company, Miss\n Smith.\" \"Call me Kay.\"", "After she left he wasted no time in acquainting himself with the second\n message. It was as unintelligible as the first:\nasdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj Cai: Habe\n wotnid ig ist ending ifedererer te. T'lide sid Fieu Dayol po jestig\n toseo knwo, bijk weil en snoll doper entling—Yoolna. asdf ;lkj asdf\n ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\nWell, perhaps not quite as unintelligible. He knew, at least, who Cai\n was, and he knew—from the reappearance of the words\nwotnid\n," ], [ "He watched her get out, walk up the walk to the entrance and let\n herself in. He leaned his head back on the seat, lit a cigarette and\n exhaled a mixture of smoke and relief. On the way to meet her folks.\n So it was just an ordinary secret society after all. And here he'd\n been thinking that she was the key figure in a Martian plot to blow up\n Earth—\n\n\n Her\nfolks\n!\n\n\n Abruptly the full implication of the words got through to him, and he\n sat bolt-up-right on the seat. He was starting to climb out of the car\n when he saw Kay coming down the walk. Anyway, running away wouldn't\n solve his problem. A complete disappearing act was in order, and a\n complete disappearing act would take time. Meanwhile he would play\n along with her.\nA station wagon came up behind them, slowed, and matched its speed\n with theirs. \"Someone's following us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"Probably Jilka.\"", "They touched glasses: \"Your liquor is as exquisite as your living room,\n Herbert. I shall have to come here more often.\" \"I hope you will, Kay.\"\n \"Though such conduct, I'm told, is morally reprehensible on the planet\n Earth.\" \"Not in this particular circle. Your hair is lovely.\" \"Thank\n you.... You haven't mentioned my perfume yet. Perhaps I'm standing too\n far away.... There!\" \"It's—it's as lovely as your hair, Kay.\" \"Um,\n kiss me again.\" \"I—I never figured—I mean, I engaged a caterer to\n serve us dinner at 9:30.\" \"Call him up. Make it 10:30.\"\nThe following evening found Quidley on tenter-hooks. The\nsnoll-doper\nmystery had acquired a new tang. He could hardly wait till the next\n message transfer took place.", "You could hardly call Kay a girl scout, though.\n\n\n Nevertheless, she was the key figure in the\nsnoll-doper\nenigma. The\n fact annoyed him, especially when he considered that a\nsnoll doper\n,\n for all he knew, could be anything from a Chinese fortune cooky to an\n H-bomb.\n\n\n He remembered Kay's odd accent. Was that the way a person would speak\n English if her own language ran something like \"\nist ifedereret, hid\n jestig snoll doper adwo\n?\"\n\n\n He remembered the way she had looked at him in the coffee bar.\n\n\n He remembered the material of her dress.\n\n\n He remembered how she had come to his room.", "\"They weren't messages. They were requisitions. I'm the ship's stock\n girl.\"\nApril fields stretched darkly away on either side of the highway.\n Presently she turned down a rutted road between two of them and they\n bounced and swayed back to a black blur of trees. \"Here we are,\" she\n said.\n\n\n Gradually he made out the sphere. It blended so flawlessly with its\n background that he wouldn't have been able to see it at all if he\n hadn't been informed of its existence. A gangplank sloped down from an\n open lock and came to rest just within the fringe of the trees.\n\n\n Lights danced in the darkness behind them as another car jounced down\n the rutted road. \"Jilka,\" Kay said. \"I wonder if she got him.\"", "He returned Taine to the shelf. After learning from the librarian that\n the girl's name was Kay Smith, he went out and got in his hardtop. The\n name rang a bell. Halfway home he realized why. The typing exercise had\n contained the word \"Cai\", and if you pronounced it with hard c, you got\n \"Kai\"—or \"Kay\". Obviously, then, the exercise had been a message, and\n had been deliberately inserted in a book no average person would dream\n of borrowing.\n\n\n By whom—her boy friend?", "It was some time before he returned to reality, and when he did the\n first thing that met his eyes was the uncompromisingly blank sheet of\n paper. Hurriedly he typed out a letter to his father, requesting an\n advance on his allowance, then, after a tall glass of vintage wine, he\n went to bed.\nIn telling him that she would be in town two nights hence, Kay had\n unwittingly apprised him that there would be no exchange of messages\n until that time, so the next evening he skipped his vigil at the\n library. The following evening, however, after readying his apartment\n for the forthcoming assignation, he hied himself to his reading-table\n post and took up\nThe Zeitgeist\nonce again.\n\n\n He had not thought it possible that there could be a third such woman.", "The camouflage had varied, but the message was typical enough:\nfdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; Cai: Gind\n en snoll doper nckli! Wotnid antwaterer Fieu Dayol hid jestig snoll\n doper ifedererer te. Dep gogensplo snoll dopers ensing!—Gorka. fdsa\n jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl;\nJudging from the repeated use of the words,\nsnoll dopers\nwere the\n topic of the day. Annoyed, Quidley replaced the message and put the\n book back on the shelf. Then he returned to his apartment to await Kay.", "He refolded the paper, replaced it between the pages, returned the book\n to the shelf and went back to the reading table and\nThe Zeitgeist\n.\n\n\n Kay didn't show up till almost closing time, and he was beginning\n to think that perhaps she wouldn't come around for the pickup till\n tomorrow when she finally walked in the door. She employed the same\n tactics she had employed the previous night, arriving, as though by\n chance, at the T-section and transferring the message with the same\n undetectable legerdemain to her purse. This time, when she walked out\n the door, he was not far behind her.\n\n\n She climbed into a sleek convertible and pulled into the street. It\n took him but a moment to gain his hardtop and start out after her.\n When, several blocks later, she pulled to the curb in front of an\n all-night coffee bar, he followed suit. After that, it was merely a\n matter of following her inside.", "Apparently she had. At least there was a man with her—a rather\n woebegone, wilted creature who didn't even look up as they passed.\n Quidley watched them ascend the gangplank, the man in the lead, and\n disappear into the ship.\n\n\n \"Next,\" Kay said.\n\n\n Quidley shook his head. \"You're not taking\nme\nto another planet!\"\n\n\n She opened her purse and pulled out a small metallic object \"A\n little while ago you asked me what a\nsnoll doper\nwas,\" she said.\n \"Unfortunately interstellar law severely limits us in our choice of\n marriageable males, and we can take only those who refuse to conform\n to the sexual mores of their own societies.\" She did something to the\n object that caused it to extend itself into a long, tubular affair.\n \"\nThis\nis a\nsnoll doper\n.\"\n\n\n She prodded his ribs. \"March,\" she said.", "He went over to the sideboard, picked up the bottle of bourbon. She\n followed. He set the two snifter glasses side by side and tilted the\n bottle. \"Say when.\" \"When!\" \"I admire your dress—never saw anything\n quite like it.\" \"Thank you. The material is something new. Feel it.\"\n \"It's—it's almost like foam rubber. Cigarette?\" \"Thanks.... Is\n something wrong, Mr. Quidley?\" \"No, of course not. Why?\" \"Your hands\n are trembling.\" \"Oh. I'm—I'm afraid it's the present company, Miss\n Smith.\" \"Call me Kay.\"", "Five minutes later the station wagon turned down a side street and\n disappeared. \"She's no longer with us,\" Quidley said.\n\n\n \"She's got to pick someone up. She'll meet us later.\"\n\n\n \"At your folks'?\"\n\n\n \"At the ship.\"\n\n\n The city was thinning out around them now, and a few stars were visible\n in the night sky. Quidley watched them thoughtfully for a while. Then:\n \"What ship?\" he said.\n\n\n \"The one we're going to\nFieu Dayol\non.\"\n\n\n \"\nFieu Dayol?\n\"\n\n\n \"Persei 17 to you. I said I was going to take you home to meet my\n folks, didn't I?\"\n\n\n \"In other words, you're kidnapping me.\"", "After she left he wasted no time in acquainting himself with the second\n message. It was as unintelligible as the first:\nasdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj Cai: Habe\n wotnid ig ist ending ifedererer te. T'lide sid Fieu Dayol po jestig\n toseo knwo, bijk weil en snoll doper entling—Yoolna. asdf ;lkj asdf\n ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj\nWell, perhaps not quite as unintelligible. He knew, at least, who Cai\n was, and he knew—from the reappearance of the words\nwotnid\n,", "He wondered what her reaction would be if he asked her point-blank what\n a\nsnoll doper\nwas; whether she would reveal the nature of the amateur\n secret society to which she and Klio and Yoolna and Gorka belonged.\n It virtually had to be an amateur secret society. Unless, of course,\n they were foreigners. But what on earth foreign organization would be\n quixotic enough to employ Taine's\nHistory of English Literature\nas a\n communications medium when there was a telephone in every drugstore and\n a mailbox on every corner?\n\n\n Somehow the words \"what on earth foreign organization\" got turned\n around in his mind and became \"what foreign organization on earth\" and\n before he could summon his common sense to succor him, he experienced\n a rather bad moment. By the time the door chimes sounded he was his\n normal self again.", "\"For two reasons: one, you're the particular man who compromised\n me. Two, there are\nnot\nplenty of men on\nFieu Dayol\n. Our race is\n identical to yours in everything except population-balance between the\n sexes. At periodic intervals the women on\nFieu Dayol\nso greatly\n outnumber the men that those of us who are temperamentally and\n emotionally unfitted to become spinsters have to look for\nwotnids\n—or\n mates—on other worlds. It's quite legal and quite respectable. As a\n matter of fact, we even have schools specializing in alien cultures\n to expedite our activities. Our biggest problem is the Interstellar\n statute forbidding us the use of local communications services and\n forbidding us to appear in public places. It was devised to facilitate\n the prosecution of interstellar black marketeers, but we're subject to\n it, too, and have to contrive communications systems of our own.\"\n\n\n \"But why were all the messages addressed to you?\"", "Presently she returned the book to the shelf, selected\n another—seemingly at random—and took it over to the librarian's desk.\n She waited statuesquely while the librarian processed it, then tucked\n it under her arm and whisked out the door into the misty April night.\n As soon as she disappeared, Quidley stepped over to the T's and took\n Taine down once more. Just as he had suspected. The makeshift bookmark\n was gone.\n\n\n He remembered how the asdf-;lkj exercise had given way to several lines\n of gibberish and then reappeared again. A camouflaged message? Or was\n it merely what it appeared to be on the surface—the efforts of an\n impatient typing student to type before his time?", "ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ....\n\n\n Message no. 4, except for a slight variation in camouflage, ran true to\n form:\na;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj Cai: Habe te snoll dopers ensing?\n Wotnid ne Fieu Dayol ist ifederereret, hid jestig snoll doper. Gind\n ed, olro—Jilka. a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj\nQuidley sighed. What, he asked himself, standing in the library aisle\n and staring at the indecipherable words, was a normal girl like Kay\n doing in such a childish secret society? From the way she and her\n correspondents carried on you'd almost think they were Martian girl\n scouts on an interplanetary camping trip, trying for their merit badges\n in communications!", "Fieu\n Dayol\nand\nsnoll doper\n—that the two communications were in the\n same code. And certainly it was reasonable to assume that the last\n word—\nYoolna\n—was the name of the girl he had just seen, and that\n she was a different person from the\nKlio\nwhose name had appended the\n first message.", "Quidley winced. He was allergic to the term. Not that he ever let the\n presence of a boy friend deter him when he set out to conquer, but\n because the term itself brought to mind the word \"fiance,\" and the word\n \"fiance\" brought to mind still another word, one which repelled him\n violently. I.e., \"marriage\". Just the same, he decided to keep Taine's\nHistory\nunder observation for a while.\nHer boy friend turned out to be her girl friend, and her girl friend\n turned out to be a tall and lissome, lovely with a Helenesque air of\n her own. From the vantage point of a strategically located reading\n table, where he was keeping company with his favorite little magazine,\nThe Zeitgeist\n, Quidley watched her take a seemingly haphazard route\n to the shelf where Taine's\nHistory\nreposed, take the volume down,\n surreptitiously slip a folded sheet of yellow paper between its pages\n and return it to the shelf.", "\"I didn't know you had a taste for Taine.\"\nHer voice seemed to come from far away, but she was standing right\n beside him, tall and bewitching; Helenesque as ever. Her blue eyes\n became great wells into which he found himself falling. With an effort,\n he pulled himself back. \"You're early tonight,\" he said lamely.\n\n\n She appropriated the message, read it. \"Put the book back,\" she said\n presently. Then, when he complied: \"Come on.\"\n\n\n \"Where are we going?\"\n\n\n \"I'm going to deliver a\nsnoll doper\nto Jilka. After that I'm going to\n take you home to meet my folks.\"\n\n\n The relieved sigh he heard was his own.\n\n\n They climbed into her convertible and she nosed it into the moving line\n of cars. \"How long have you been reading my mail?\" she asked.", "\"Not famous profiles, you understand. Just profiles that strike my\n fancy.\" He paused. She had raised her cup to her lips and was taking a\n dainty sip. \"You have a rather striking profile yourself, Miss—\"\n\n\n \"Smith. Kay Smith.\" She set the cup back on the counter and turned and\n faced him. For a second her eyes seemed to expand till they preoccupied\n his entire vision, till he could see nothing but their disturbingly\n clear—and suddenly cold—blueness. Panic touched him, then vanished\n when she said, \"Would you really consider word-painting\nmy\nprofile,\n Mr. Quidley?\"\nWould\nhe! \"When can I call?\"\n\n\n She hesitated for a moment. Then: \"I think it will be better if I call\n on you. There are quite a number of people living in our—our house.\n I'm afraid the quarters would be much too cramped for an artist like\n yourself to concentrate.\"" ] ]
test	63605	[ "When Eric falls into the canal and states \"with his face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone for an instant,\" what does it suggest about the city?", "What word below best describes the situation with the city Eric is in?", "What is ironic about Garve also being attracted to the city?", "What is humorous about Eric choosing to embrace the lLegen when the crowd captures him?", "What does the city represent in the passage?", "Why was it important to wait for a man named Eric to come and destroy the city?", "What does the decline of Mars suggest to the reader?", "Why did the elders want to destroy the city?", "Why do you think Garve wanted to stay in the city?", "What is symbolic of the title?" ]	[ [ "The city has a hold on Eric and was drawing him in", "The city was vast and foreboding", "No suggestion", "The city was in a dusty part of Mars" ], [ "Heaven ", "Purgatory", "Hell ", "Parabellum" ], [ "There was no irony about the attraction", "It was his curiosity that drove him there", "He had knew about the city the entire time", "He also had a hat that supported the attraction to the city" ], [ "The crowd laughed at Eric when he stated it", "The change their mind from whipping to killing Eric", "No humor at all ", "They didn't fall for the trick" ], [ "Desire leads to greed", "The bronze of Eric", "The fallacy of humans", "Earth" ], [ "N/A", "It gave credence to the prophecy", "Was random name that was chosen for no purpose ", "N/A" ], [ "Mars was inhabited by evil people", "The same thing can happen to Earth", "N/A", "Mars didn't decline and found the way to happiness" ], [ "The population eventually abused the machine", "They were forced by prophecy", "They did not want to force the destruction", "N/A" ], [ "N/A", "It is unknown", "Garve was attracted by the beautiful women", "He was going to be rich" ], [ "It describes the prophecy", "N/A", "The elders named it", "The title represents the two sides of the city" ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "He slid over the edge, sliding down the sloping sides of the canal.\n The rough sandstone tore at his dungarees, tore at his elbow where it\n touched but he did not feel the pain. His face was turned toward the\n towers, and the sound of his breathing was less than human.\n\n\n His feet caught a projecting bit of stone and were slowed for an\n instant, so that he turned sideways and rolled on, down into the red\n dust bottom of the canal, to lie face down in the dust, with the chin\n strap of the odd metallic hat cutting cruelly into his chin.\n\n\n He lay there an instant, knowing that now he had a chance. With his\n face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone\n for an instant. He had to get away, he knew that. He had to mount the\n sides of the canal and never look back.\n\n\n He told himself, \"I am Eric North, from Earth, the Third Planet of Sol,\n and this is not real.\"", "The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took\n fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, \"Whips, bring the whips,\" and\n fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless\n feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed\n through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates\n closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart\n hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and\n looked behind to be sure he was safe.\n\n\n The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, \"Come back,\n Eric North. Come back to the city.\"\n\n\n He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until\n his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.", "He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until\n he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the\n canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his\n haste. He wouldn't look again.\n\n\n The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It\n told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and\n wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city,\n waiting for him to claim them.\n\n\n He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head\n began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him,\n beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks.\n\n\n When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city.", "The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, \"Garve,\"\n wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note\n clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently\n and began to read. Garve had scrawled:\n\n\n \"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down\n to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some\n sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd\n better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and\n I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight\n down the canal.\"\n\n\n Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently\n Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been\n so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.", "He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. \"Eric,\" the voice said. \"Eric,\n you did come back.\" The voice was his brother's, and he whirled,\n seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of\n his brother. The figure cried, \"The hat! You fool, get rid of that\n hat!\" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked\n so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung\n away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.\n\n\n The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome\n than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, \"Come,\" and\n Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.\n\n\n Garve said, \"Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet\n someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from\n this side of the city.\"", "Eric asked, \"And I am to destroy the City?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. The time has come.\"\n\n\n \"But why?\" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling\n beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.\n\n\n Kroon said, \"There are difficulties. The machine builds according to\n the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual\n in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass.\n We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew\n drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and\n greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong\n is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own\n evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the\n beauty they have lost here.\"", "Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric\n selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They\n were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed\n with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That\n should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began\n walking back to the canal.\nThe return back to the city would always live in his mind as a\n phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he\n came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the\n wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same\n tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the\n wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen\n wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.", "And deep inside him some part of his mind said, \"This is a madness you\n cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known,\"\n and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame.\n\n\n He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings\n of the great door, crying, \"Let me in! Please, take me back into the\n city.\"\n\n\n And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a\n city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and\n minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound\n of the city was a macabre song of hate.\n\n\n He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the\n beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it\n was beautiful again.", "Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young\n suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling\n back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent\n that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply,\n oddly happy as they rode.\n\n\n After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the\n city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it\n contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city.\n It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched\n among enemies.\n\n\n The girl halted before the structure and said, \"Dismount here, Eric.\"\n\n\n Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had\n held her. She said, \"Knock three times on the door. I will see you\n again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here.\"", "Kroon said, \"I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the\n City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars\n ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and\n gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it\n became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and\n could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets.\n Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots\n destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for\n this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable\n again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the\n building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a\n small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars.\"\n\n\n \"This whole city is a machine!\" Eric asked.", "Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the\n arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver\n indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve\n North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he\n would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they\n had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would\n be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left.\n\n\n The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had\n established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's\n face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again.\n\n\n He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that\n he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a\n swift leap, calling, \"Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?\"", "Kroon sighed. \"The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even\n know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us,\n the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the\n machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we\n build and control the outward appearance of the city.\n\n\n \"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient\n Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be\n destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that\n our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power.\n The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze.\n It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man\n would come.\"", "Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to\n converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in\n the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, \"If you value\n my life don't use the gun.\"\n\n\n There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken\n prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men\n held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly,\n calculatingly. One of them said, \"Get the whips. If we whip him he will\n not come back.\" The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could\n hardly hear it.\n\n\n There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's\n words that these people were superstitious.", "He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the\n motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he\n stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat\n had not entirely failed him after all.\n\n\n He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to\n call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when\n it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps.\n And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the\n canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and\n the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he\n was beyond the range of the illusions.\n\n\n And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem,\n and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which\n he had been pitted.", "The Beast-Jewel of Mars\nBy V. E. THIESSEN\nThe city was strange, fantastic, beautiful.\n\n He'd never been there before, yet already he\n\n was a fabulous legendâ€”a dire, hateful legend.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Spring 1955.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nHe lay on his stomach, a lean man in faded one piece dungarees, and an\n odd metallic hat, peering over the side of the canal. Behind him the\n little winds sifted red dust into his collar, but he could not move; he\n could only sit there with his gaze riveted on the spires and minarets\n that twinkled in the distance, far down the bottom of the canal.", "When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy\n gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,\n \"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!\" The music was richer now, as if\n it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.\n\n\n A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue\n street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue\n leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew\n the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the\n sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, \"I give you the welcome\n of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it\n may be set in the records of the dreamers.\"\n\n\n The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, \"I am Eric\n North!\"", "One part of his mind said,\nThis is it, this is the fabled city of\n Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends,\n and I must go down there.\nYet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in\n the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and\n urgent.\nGet away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the\n city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk,\n a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those\n who came before you.\nHe strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic\n beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to\n close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open,\n staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin\n wail of music reached him, saying,\nCome into the city, come down into\n the fabled city\n.", "\"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this\n building.\" Kroon clasped his hands. \"Nolette, will you show Eric his\n quarters?\"", "The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was\n white. He cried aloud, \"It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the\n Legend.\" He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal\n hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.\nWhen Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about\n him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music.\n Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man\n came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang\n deafened Eric and the man cried, \"You are right. It is Eric the Bronze.\n Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city.\"", "There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric\n watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place\n there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had\n lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously\n presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. \"I am Kroon, the eldest of\n the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your\n identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some\n sort of explanation.\" He glanced around the room and asked, \"What is\n the judgment of the elders?\"\nEric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if\n in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, \"And what is your opinion,\n Daughter of the City?\"\n\n\n Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future.\n She said, \"He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt.\"" ], [ "\"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this\n building.\" Kroon clasped his hands. \"Nolette, will you show Eric his\n quarters?\"", "Eric asked, \"And I am to destroy the City?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. The time has come.\"\n\n\n \"But why?\" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling\n beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.\n\n\n Kroon said, \"There are difficulties. The machine builds according to\n the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual\n in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass.\n We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew\n drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and\n greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong\n is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own\n evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the\n beauty they have lost here.\"", "Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to\n converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in\n the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, \"If you value\n my life don't use the gun.\"\n\n\n There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken\n prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men\n held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly,\n calculatingly. One of them said, \"Get the whips. If we whip him he will\n not come back.\" The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could\n hardly hear it.\n\n\n There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's\n words that these people were superstitious.", "The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took\n fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, \"Whips, bring the whips,\" and\n fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless\n feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed\n through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates\n closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart\n hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and\n looked behind to be sure he was safe.\n\n\n The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, \"Come back,\n Eric North. Come back to the city.\"\n\n\n He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until\n his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.", "Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young\n suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling\n back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent\n that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply,\n oddly happy as they rode.\n\n\n After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the\n city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it\n contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city.\n It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched\n among enemies.\n\n\n The girl halted before the structure and said, \"Dismount here, Eric.\"\n\n\n Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had\n held her. She said, \"Knock three times on the door. I will see you\n again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here.\"", "There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric\n watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place\n there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had\n lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously\n presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. \"I am Kroon, the eldest of\n the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your\n identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some\n sort of explanation.\" He glanced around the room and asked, \"What is\n the judgment of the elders?\"\nEric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if\n in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, \"And what is your opinion,\n Daughter of the City?\"\n\n\n Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future.\n She said, \"He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt.\"", "Eric asked, \"And what is this Legend of Eric the Bronze? Why am I so\n despised in the city?\"\n\n\n Kroon answered, \"According to the Ancient Legend you will destroy the\n city. This, and other things.\"\n\n\n Eric gaped. No wonder the crowd had shown such hatred. But why were\n the elders so friendly? They were obviously the governing body, and if\n there was strife between them and the people it had not shown in the\n respect the crowd had accorded Nolette.", "He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. \"Eric,\" the voice said. \"Eric,\n you did come back.\" The voice was his brother's, and he whirled,\n seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of\n his brother. The figure cried, \"The hat! You fool, get rid of that\n hat!\" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked\n so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung\n away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.\n\n\n The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome\n than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, \"Come,\" and\n Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.\n\n\n Garve said, \"Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet\n someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from\n this side of the city.\"", "When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy\n gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,\n \"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!\" The music was richer now, as if\n it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.\n\n\n A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue\n street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue\n leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew\n the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the\n sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, \"I give you the welcome\n of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it\n may be set in the records of the dreamers.\"\n\n\n The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, \"I am Eric\n North!\"", "Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric\n selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They\n were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed\n with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That\n should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began\n walking back to the canal.\nThe return back to the city would always live in his mind as a\n phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he\n came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the\n wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same\n tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the\n wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen\n wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.", "The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was\n white. He cried aloud, \"It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the\n Legend.\" He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal\n hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.\nWhen Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about\n him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music.\n Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man\n came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang\n deafened Eric and the man cried, \"You are right. It is Eric the Bronze.\n Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city.\"", "The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, \"Garve,\"\n wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note\n clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently\n and began to read. Garve had scrawled:\n\n\n \"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down\n to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some\n sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd\n better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and\n I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight\n down the canal.\"\n\n\n Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently\n Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been\n so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.", "Kroon sighed. \"The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even\n know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us,\n the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the\n machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we\n build and control the outward appearance of the city.\n\n\n \"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient\n Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be\n destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that\n our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power.\n The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze.\n It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man\n would come.\"", "Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened\n the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well\n armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled\n at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another\n struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and\n escape. He asked, \"Who are the Elders?\"\n\n\n \"We are going to them, to the center of the city.\" Garve's voice\n sharpened, \"Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are\n looking after us. Don't look back.\"\n\n\n After a moment Garve said, \"I think they are following us. Get ready\n to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center.\n The Elders will be expecting you.\" Garve glanced back, and his voice\n sharpened, \"Now! Run!\"", "Kroon said, \"I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the\n City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars\n ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and\n gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it\n became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and\n could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets.\n Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots\n destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for\n this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable\n again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the\n building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a\n small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars.\"\n\n\n \"This whole city is a machine!\" Eric asked.", "Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the\n arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver\n indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve\n North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he\n would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they\n had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would\n be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left.\n\n\n The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had\n established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's\n face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again.\n\n\n He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that\n he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a\n swift leap, calling, \"Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?\"", "They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther\n up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight.\n\n\n Garve cried, \"In here,\" and pulled Eric into a crevice between two\n buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes.\n The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them.\n\n\n Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, \"Wait here. And if you\n value my life, don't use that gun.\" Then he was gone, running deerlike\n down the street.\n\n\n For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and\n two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. \"Let\n him go. Get the other one. The other one.\"", "And deep inside him some part of his mind said, \"This is a madness you\n cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known,\"\n and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame.\n\n\n He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings\n of the great door, crying, \"Let me in! Please, take me back into the\n city.\"\n\n\n And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a\n city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and\n minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound\n of the city was a macabre song of hate.\n\n\n He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the\n beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it\n was beautiful again.", "He slid over the edge, sliding down the sloping sides of the canal.\n The rough sandstone tore at his dungarees, tore at his elbow where it\n touched but he did not feel the pain. His face was turned toward the\n towers, and the sound of his breathing was less than human.\n\n\n His feet caught a projecting bit of stone and were slowed for an\n instant, so that he turned sideways and rolled on, down into the red\n dust bottom of the canal, to lie face down in the dust, with the chin\n strap of the odd metallic hat cutting cruelly into his chin.\n\n\n He lay there an instant, knowing that now he had a chance. With his\n face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone\n for an instant. He had to get away, he knew that. He had to mount the\n sides of the canal and never look back.\n\n\n He told himself, \"I am Eric North, from Earth, the Third Planet of Sol,\n and this is not real.\"", "Eric tensed to break away but now it was too late. His captors were\n alert. They increased the twist on his arms until he almost screamed\n with the pain.\n\n\n The crowd parted, and the guard came through, his red silk clothing\n gleaming in the sun, his sword bright and deadly. He stopped before\n Eric, and the sword swirled up like a saber, ready for a slashing cut\n downward across Eric's neck.\n\n\n A woman's voice, soft and yet authoritative, called, \"Hold!\" And a\n murmur of respect rippled through the crowd.\n\n\n \"Nolette! The Daughter of the City comes.\"" ], [ "Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric\n selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They\n were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed\n with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That\n should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began\n walking back to the canal.\nThe return back to the city would always live in his mind as a\n phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he\n came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the\n wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same\n tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the\n wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen\n wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.", "The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, \"Garve,\"\n wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note\n clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently\n and began to read. Garve had scrawled:\n\n\n \"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down\n to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some\n sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd\n better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and\n I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight\n down the canal.\"\n\n\n Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently\n Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been\n so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.", "\"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this\n building.\" Kroon clasped his hands. \"Nolette, will you show Eric his\n quarters?\"", "He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. \"Eric,\" the voice said. \"Eric,\n you did come back.\" The voice was his brother's, and he whirled,\n seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of\n his brother. The figure cried, \"The hat! You fool, get rid of that\n hat!\" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked\n so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung\n away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.\n\n\n The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome\n than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, \"Come,\" and\n Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.\n\n\n Garve said, \"Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet\n someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from\n this side of the city.\"", "And deep inside him some part of his mind said, \"This is a madness you\n cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known,\"\n and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame.\n\n\n He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings\n of the great door, crying, \"Let me in! Please, take me back into the\n city.\"\n\n\n And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a\n city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and\n minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound\n of the city was a macabre song of hate.\n\n\n He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the\n beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it\n was beautiful again.", "Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to\n converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in\n the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, \"If you value\n my life don't use the gun.\"\n\n\n There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken\n prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men\n held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly,\n calculatingly. One of them said, \"Get the whips. If we whip him he will\n not come back.\" The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could\n hardly hear it.\n\n\n There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's\n words that these people were superstitious.", "They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther\n up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight.\n\n\n Garve cried, \"In here,\" and pulled Eric into a crevice between two\n buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes.\n The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them.\n\n\n Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, \"Wait here. And if you\n value my life, don't use that gun.\" Then he was gone, running deerlike\n down the street.\n\n\n For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and\n two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. \"Let\n him go. Get the other one. The other one.\"", "Eric asked, \"And I am to destroy the City?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. The time has come.\"\n\n\n \"But why?\" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling\n beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.\n\n\n Kroon said, \"There are difficulties. The machine builds according to\n the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual\n in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass.\n We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew\n drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and\n greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong\n is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own\n evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the\n beauty they have lost here.\"", "Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the\n arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver\n indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve\n North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he\n would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they\n had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would\n be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left.\n\n\n The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had\n established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's\n face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again.\n\n\n He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that\n he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a\n swift leap, calling, \"Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?\"", "He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until\n he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the\n canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his\n haste. He wouldn't look again.\n\n\n The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It\n told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and\n wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city,\n waiting for him to claim them.\n\n\n He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head\n began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him,\n beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks.\n\n\n When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city.", "Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young\n suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling\n back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent\n that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply,\n oddly happy as they rode.\n\n\n After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the\n city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it\n contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city.\n It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched\n among enemies.\n\n\n The girl halted before the structure and said, \"Dismount here, Eric.\"\n\n\n Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had\n held her. She said, \"Knock three times on the door. I will see you\n again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here.\"", "He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the\n motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he\n stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat\n had not entirely failed him after all.\n\n\n He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to\n call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when\n it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps.\n And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the\n canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and\n the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he\n was beyond the range of the illusions.\n\n\n And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem,\n and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which\n he had been pitted.", "The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took\n fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, \"Whips, bring the whips,\" and\n fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless\n feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed\n through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates\n closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart\n hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and\n looked behind to be sure he was safe.\n\n\n The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, \"Come back,\n Eric North. Come back to the city.\"\n\n\n He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until\n his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.", "One part of his mind said,\nThis is it, this is the fabled city of\n Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends,\n and I must go down there.\nYet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in\n the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and\n urgent.\nGet away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the\n city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk,\n a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those\n who came before you.\nHe strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic\n beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to\n close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open,\n staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin\n wail of music reached him, saying,\nCome into the city, come down into\n the fabled city\n.", "When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy\n gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,\n \"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!\" The music was richer now, as if\n it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.\n\n\n A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue\n street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue\n leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew\n the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the\n sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, \"I give you the welcome\n of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it\n may be set in the records of the dreamers.\"\n\n\n The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, \"I am Eric\n North!\"", "The helmet contained an electrical circuit, designed as a shield\n against electrical waves tuned to affect his brain. But the hat had\n failed because the city, whatever it was, had adjusted to this revised\n pattern as he had approached it. Hence, the helmet had been no defense\n against illusion. However, when he had jerked the helmet off suddenly\n to beat on the door, his mental pattern had changed, too suddenly, and\n the machine caught up only after he had glimpsed another image. Then as\n the illusion adjusted replacing the helmet threw it off again.\n\n\n He grinned wryly. He would have liked to know more about the city,\n whatever it was. He would have liked to know more about the people he\n had seen, whether they were real or part of the illusion, and if they\n were as ugly as the second city had been.", "Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened\n the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well\n armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled\n at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another\n struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and\n escape. He asked, \"Who are the Elders?\"\n\n\n \"We are going to them, to the center of the city.\" Garve's voice\n sharpened, \"Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are\n looking after us. Don't look back.\"\n\n\n After a moment Garve said, \"I think they are following us. Get ready\n to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center.\n The Elders will be expecting you.\" Garve glanced back, and his voice\n sharpened, \"Now! Run!\"", "Kroon said, \"I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the\n City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars\n ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and\n gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it\n became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and\n could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets.\n Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots\n destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for\n this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable\n again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the\n building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a\n small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars.\"\n\n\n \"This whole city is a machine!\" Eric asked.", "The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was\n white. He cried aloud, \"It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the\n Legend.\" He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal\n hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.\nWhen Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about\n him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music.\n Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man\n came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang\n deafened Eric and the man cried, \"You are right. It is Eric the Bronze.\n Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city.\"", "The Beast-Jewel of Mars\nBy V. E. THIESSEN\nThe city was strange, fantastic, beautiful.\n\n He'd never been there before, yet already he\n\n was a fabulous legendâ€”a dire, hateful legend.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Spring 1955.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nHe lay on his stomach, a lean man in faded one piece dungarees, and an\n odd metallic hat, peering over the side of the canal. Behind him the\n little winds sifted red dust into his collar, but he could not move; he\n could only sit there with his gaze riveted on the spires and minarets\n that twinkled in the distance, far down the bottom of the canal." ], [ "He laughed, a great chest-shattering laugh that gusted out into the\n thin Martian air. He laughed and cried in a great voice, \"And can you\n so easily dispose of a Legend? If I am Eric of the Legend, can whips\n defeat the prophesy?\"\n\n\n There was an instant when he could have twisted loose. They stood,\n fear-bound at his words. But there was no place to hide, and without\n the use of his weapons Eric could not have gone far. He had to bluff it\n out.\nThen one of the men cried, \"Fools! It is true. We must take no chance\n with the whips. He would come back. But if he dies here before us now,\n then we may forget the prophesy.\"\n\n\n The crowd murmured and a second voice cried, \"Get the sword, get the\n guards, and kill him at once!\"", "Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to\n converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in\n the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, \"If you value\n my life don't use the gun.\"\n\n\n There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken\n prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men\n held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly,\n calculatingly. One of them said, \"Get the whips. If we whip him he will\n not come back.\" The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could\n hardly hear it.\n\n\n There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's\n words that these people were superstitious.", "Eric asked, \"You knew I'd come after you?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. The Legend said you'd be back.\"\n\n\n Eric stopped and whirled to face his brother. \"The Legend? Eric the\n Bronze? What is this wild fantasy?\"\n\n\n \"Not so loud!\" Garve's voice cautioned him. \"Of course the crowd called\n you that because of the copper hat and your heavy tan. But the Elders\n believe so too. I don't know what it is, Eric, reincarnation, prophesy,\n superstition, I only know that when I was with the Elders I believed\n them. You are a part of a Legend. You are Eric the Bronze.\"", "Eric turned his gaze to the side and saw the woman who had spoken. She\n was mounted upon a black horse with a jeweled bridle. She was young and\n her hair was long and free in the wind. She had ridden so softly across\n the fur street that no one had been aware of her presence.\nShe said, \"Let me touch this man. Let me feel the pulse of his heart so\n that I may know if he is truly the Bronze one of the Legend. Give me\n your hand, stranger.\" She leaned down and grasped his hand. Eric shook\n his arms free, and reached up and clung to the offered hand, thinking,\n \"If I pull her down perhaps I can use her as a shield.\" He tensed his\n muscles and began to pull.\n\n\n She cried, \"No! You fool. Come up on the horse,\" and pulled back with\n an energy as fierce as his own. Then he had swung up on the horse, and\n the animal leaped forward, its muffled gallop beating out a tattoo of\n freedom.", "Eric asked, \"And what is this Legend of Eric the Bronze? Why am I so\n despised in the city?\"\n\n\n Kroon answered, \"According to the Ancient Legend you will destroy the\n city. This, and other things.\"\n\n\n Eric gaped. No wonder the crowd had shown such hatred. But why were\n the elders so friendly? They were obviously the governing body, and if\n there was strife between them and the people it had not shown in the\n respect the crowd had accorded Nolette.", "The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took\n fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, \"Whips, bring the whips,\" and\n fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless\n feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed\n through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates\n closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart\n hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and\n looked behind to be sure he was safe.\n\n\n The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, \"Come back,\n Eric North. Come back to the city.\"\n\n\n He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until\n his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.", "The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was\n white. He cried aloud, \"It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the\n Legend.\" He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal\n hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.\nWhen Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about\n him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music.\n Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man\n came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang\n deafened Eric and the man cried, \"You are right. It is Eric the Bronze.\n Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city.\"", "Eric tensed to break away but now it was too late. His captors were\n alert. They increased the twist on his arms until he almost screamed\n with the pain.\n\n\n The crowd parted, and the guard came through, his red silk clothing\n gleaming in the sun, his sword bright and deadly. He stopped before\n Eric, and the sword swirled up like a saber, ready for a slashing cut\n downward across Eric's neck.\n\n\n A woman's voice, soft and yet authoritative, called, \"Hold!\" And a\n murmur of respect rippled through the crowd.\n\n\n \"Nolette! The Daughter of the City comes.\"", "Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened\n the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well\n armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled\n at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another\n struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and\n escape. He asked, \"Who are the Elders?\"\n\n\n \"We are going to them, to the center of the city.\" Garve's voice\n sharpened, \"Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are\n looking after us. Don't look back.\"\n\n\n After a moment Garve said, \"I think they are following us. Get ready\n to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center.\n The Elders will be expecting you.\" Garve glanced back, and his voice\n sharpened, \"Now! Run!\"", "He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. \"Eric,\" the voice said. \"Eric,\n you did come back.\" The voice was his brother's, and he whirled,\n seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of\n his brother. The figure cried, \"The hat! You fool, get rid of that\n hat!\" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked\n so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung\n away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.\n\n\n The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome\n than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, \"Come,\" and\n Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.\n\n\n Garve said, \"Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet\n someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from\n this side of the city.\"", "\"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this\n building.\" Kroon clasped his hands. \"Nolette, will you show Eric his\n quarters?\"", "Kroon sighed. \"The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even\n know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us,\n the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the\n machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we\n build and control the outward appearance of the city.\n\n\n \"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient\n Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be\n destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that\n our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power.\n The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze.\n It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man\n would come.\"", "There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric\n watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place\n there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had\n lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously\n presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. \"I am Kroon, the eldest of\n the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your\n identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some\n sort of explanation.\" He glanced around the room and asked, \"What is\n the judgment of the elders?\"\nEric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if\n in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, \"And what is your opinion,\n Daughter of the City?\"\n\n\n Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future.\n She said, \"He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt.\"", "They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther\n up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight.\n\n\n Garve cried, \"In here,\" and pulled Eric into a crevice between two\n buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes.\n The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them.\n\n\n Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, \"Wait here. And if you\n value my life, don't use that gun.\" Then he was gone, running deerlike\n down the street.\n\n\n For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and\n two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. \"Let\n him go. Get the other one. The other one.\"", "Eric said, \"I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a\n space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to\n protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield\n of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come\n is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?\"\n\n\n For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, \"The name Eric\n was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their\n thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far\n flung kind to return.\"\n\n\n Eric nodded. He asked, \"What happens now?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing. Dwell here with us and you will be safe from our people. If\n the prediction is not soon fulfilled and you are not the Eric of the\n Legend, you may stay or go as you desire.\"\n\n\n \"My brother, Garve. What about him?\"", "Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young\n suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling\n back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent\n that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply,\n oddly happy as they rode.\n\n\n After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the\n city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it\n contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city.\n It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched\n among enemies.\n\n\n The girl halted before the structure and said, \"Dismount here, Eric.\"\n\n\n Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had\n held her. She said, \"Knock three times on the door. I will see you\n again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here.\"", "Eric knocked on the door. The door was as plain as the building, made\n of a luminous plastic. It had all the beauty of the great gate door,\n but a more timeless, more functional beauty.\n\n\n The door opened and an old man greeted Eric. \"Come in. The Council\n awaits you. Follow me, please.\"\n\n\n Eric followed down a hallway and into a large room. The room was\n obviously designed for a conference room. A great table stood in the\n room, made of the same luminous plastic as the door of the building.\n Six men sat at this conference table. Eric's guide placed him in a\n chair at the base of the T-shaped table.", "He slid over the edge, sliding down the sloping sides of the canal.\n The rough sandstone tore at his dungarees, tore at his elbow where it\n touched but he did not feel the pain. His face was turned toward the\n towers, and the sound of his breathing was less than human.\n\n\n His feet caught a projecting bit of stone and were slowed for an\n instant, so that he turned sideways and rolled on, down into the red\n dust bottom of the canal, to lie face down in the dust, with the chin\n strap of the odd metallic hat cutting cruelly into his chin.\n\n\n He lay there an instant, knowing that now he had a chance. With his\n face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone\n for an instant. He had to get away, he knew that. He had to mount the\n sides of the canal and never look back.\n\n\n He told himself, \"I am Eric North, from Earth, the Third Planet of Sol,\n and this is not real.\"", "When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy\n gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,\n \"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!\" The music was richer now, as if\n it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.\n\n\n A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue\n street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue\n leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew\n the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the\n sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, \"I give you the welcome\n of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it\n may be set in the records of the dreamers.\"\n\n\n The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, \"I am Eric\n North!\"", "Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric\n selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They\n were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed\n with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That\n should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began\n walking back to the canal.\nThe return back to the city would always live in his mind as a\n phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he\n came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the\n wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same\n tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the\n wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen\n wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city." ], [ "And deep inside him some part of his mind said, \"This is a madness you\n cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known,\"\n and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame.\n\n\n He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings\n of the great door, crying, \"Let me in! Please, take me back into the\n city.\"\n\n\n And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a\n city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and\n minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound\n of the city was a macabre song of hate.\n\n\n He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the\n beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it\n was beautiful again.", "Eric asked, \"And I am to destroy the City?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. The time has come.\"\n\n\n \"But why?\" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling\n beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.\n\n\n Kroon said, \"There are difficulties. The machine builds according to\n the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual\n in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass.\n We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew\n drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and\n greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong\n is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own\n evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the\n beauty they have lost here.\"", "He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until\n he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the\n canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his\n haste. He wouldn't look again.\n\n\n The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It\n told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and\n wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city,\n waiting for him to claim them.\n\n\n He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head\n began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him,\n beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks.\n\n\n When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city.", "When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy\n gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,\n \"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!\" The music was richer now, as if\n it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.\n\n\n A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue\n street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue\n leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew\n the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the\n sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, \"I give you the welcome\n of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it\n may be set in the records of the dreamers.\"\n\n\n The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, \"I am Eric\n North!\"", "The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took\n fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, \"Whips, bring the whips,\" and\n fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless\n feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed\n through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates\n closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart\n hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and\n looked behind to be sure he was safe.\n\n\n The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, \"Come back,\n Eric North. Come back to the city.\"\n\n\n He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until\n his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.", "Kroon said, \"I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the\n City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars\n ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and\n gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it\n became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and\n could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets.\n Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots\n destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for\n this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable\n again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the\n building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a\n small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars.\"\n\n\n \"This whole city is a machine!\" Eric asked.", "\"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this\n building.\" Kroon clasped his hands. \"Nolette, will you show Eric his\n quarters?\"", "One part of his mind said,\nThis is it, this is the fabled city of\n Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends,\n and I must go down there.\nYet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in\n the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and\n urgent.\nGet away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the\n city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk,\n a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those\n who came before you.\nHe strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic\n beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to\n close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open,\n staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin\n wail of music reached him, saying,\nCome into the city, come down into\n the fabled city\n.", "Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young\n suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling\n back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent\n that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply,\n oddly happy as they rode.\n\n\n After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the\n city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it\n contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city.\n It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched\n among enemies.\n\n\n The girl halted before the structure and said, \"Dismount here, Eric.\"\n\n\n Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had\n held her. She said, \"Knock three times on the door. I will see you\n again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here.\"", "The helmet contained an electrical circuit, designed as a shield\n against electrical waves tuned to affect his brain. But the hat had\n failed because the city, whatever it was, had adjusted to this revised\n pattern as he had approached it. Hence, the helmet had been no defense\n against illusion. However, when he had jerked the helmet off suddenly\n to beat on the door, his mental pattern had changed, too suddenly, and\n the machine caught up only after he had glimpsed another image. Then as\n the illusion adjusted replacing the helmet threw it off again.\n\n\n He grinned wryly. He would have liked to know more about the city,\n whatever it was. He would have liked to know more about the people he\n had seen, whether they were real or part of the illusion, and if they\n were as ugly as the second city had been.", "Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric\n selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They\n were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed\n with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That\n should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began\n walking back to the canal.\nThe return back to the city would always live in his mind as a\n phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he\n came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the\n wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same\n tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the\n wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen\n wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.", "The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, \"Garve,\"\n wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note\n clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently\n and began to read. Garve had scrawled:\n\n\n \"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down\n to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some\n sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd\n better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and\n I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight\n down the canal.\"\n\n\n Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently\n Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been\n so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.", "The Beast-Jewel of Mars\nBy V. E. THIESSEN\nThe city was strange, fantastic, beautiful.\n\n He'd never been there before, yet already he\n\n was a fabulous legendâ€”a dire, hateful legend.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Spring 1955.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nHe lay on his stomach, a lean man in faded one piece dungarees, and an\n odd metallic hat, peering over the side of the canal. Behind him the\n little winds sifted red dust into his collar, but he could not move; he\n could only sit there with his gaze riveted on the spires and minarets\n that twinkled in the distance, far down the bottom of the canal.", "Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to\n converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in\n the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, \"If you value\n my life don't use the gun.\"\n\n\n There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken\n prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men\n held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly,\n calculatingly. One of them said, \"Get the whips. If we whip him he will\n not come back.\" The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could\n hardly hear it.\n\n\n There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's\n words that these people were superstitious.", "Kroon sighed. \"The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even\n know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us,\n the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the\n machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we\n build and control the outward appearance of the city.\n\n\n \"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient\n Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be\n destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that\n our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power.\n The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze.\n It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man\n would come.\"", "He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. \"Eric,\" the voice said. \"Eric,\n you did come back.\" The voice was his brother's, and he whirled,\n seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of\n his brother. The figure cried, \"The hat! You fool, get rid of that\n hat!\" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked\n so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung\n away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.\n\n\n The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome\n than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, \"Come,\" and\n Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.\n\n\n Garve said, \"Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet\n someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from\n this side of the city.\"", "There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric\n watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place\n there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had\n lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously\n presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. \"I am Kroon, the eldest of\n the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your\n identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some\n sort of explanation.\" He glanced around the room and asked, \"What is\n the judgment of the elders?\"\nEric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if\n in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, \"And what is your opinion,\n Daughter of the City?\"\n\n\n Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future.\n She said, \"He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt.\"", "Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened\n the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well\n armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled\n at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another\n struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and\n escape. He asked, \"Who are the Elders?\"\n\n\n \"We are going to them, to the center of the city.\" Garve's voice\n sharpened, \"Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are\n looking after us. Don't look back.\"\n\n\n After a moment Garve said, \"I think they are following us. Get ready\n to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center.\n The Elders will be expecting you.\" Garve glanced back, and his voice\n sharpened, \"Now! Run!\"", "He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the\n motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he\n stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat\n had not entirely failed him after all.\n\n\n He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to\n call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when\n it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps.\n And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the\n canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and\n the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he\n was beyond the range of the illusions.\n\n\n And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem,\n and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which\n he had been pitted.", "The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was\n white. He cried aloud, \"It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the\n Legend.\" He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal\n hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.\nWhen Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about\n him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music.\n Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man\n came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang\n deafened Eric and the man cried, \"You are right. It is Eric the Bronze.\n Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city.\"" ], [ "Eric asked, \"And I am to destroy the City?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. The time has come.\"\n\n\n \"But why?\" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling\n beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.\n\n\n Kroon said, \"There are difficulties. The machine builds according to\n the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual\n in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass.\n We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew\n drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and\n greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong\n is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own\n evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the\n beauty they have lost here.\"", "Kroon sighed. \"The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even\n know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us,\n the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the\n machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we\n build and control the outward appearance of the city.\n\n\n \"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient\n Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be\n destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that\n our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power.\n The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze.\n It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man\n would come.\"", "Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to\n converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in\n the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, \"If you value\n my life don't use the gun.\"\n\n\n There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken\n prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men\n held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly,\n calculatingly. One of them said, \"Get the whips. If we whip him he will\n not come back.\" The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could\n hardly hear it.\n\n\n There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's\n words that these people were superstitious.", "Eric asked, \"And what is this Legend of Eric the Bronze? Why am I so\n despised in the city?\"\n\n\n Kroon answered, \"According to the Ancient Legend you will destroy the\n city. This, and other things.\"\n\n\n Eric gaped. No wonder the crowd had shown such hatred. But why were\n the elders so friendly? They were obviously the governing body, and if\n there was strife between them and the people it had not shown in the\n respect the crowd had accorded Nolette.", "Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young\n suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling\n back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent\n that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply,\n oddly happy as they rode.\n\n\n After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the\n city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it\n contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city.\n It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched\n among enemies.\n\n\n The girl halted before the structure and said, \"Dismount here, Eric.\"\n\n\n Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had\n held her. She said, \"Knock three times on the door. I will see you\n again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here.\"", "Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the\n arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver\n indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve\n North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he\n would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they\n had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would\n be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left.\n\n\n The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had\n established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's\n face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again.\n\n\n He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that\n he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a\n swift leap, calling, \"Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?\"", "\"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this\n building.\" Kroon clasped his hands. \"Nolette, will you show Eric his\n quarters?\"", "There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric\n watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place\n there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had\n lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously\n presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. \"I am Kroon, the eldest of\n the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your\n identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some\n sort of explanation.\" He glanced around the room and asked, \"What is\n the judgment of the elders?\"\nEric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if\n in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, \"And what is your opinion,\n Daughter of the City?\"\n\n\n Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future.\n She said, \"He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt.\"", "When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy\n gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,\n \"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!\" The music was richer now, as if\n it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.\n\n\n A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue\n street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue\n leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew\n the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the\n sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, \"I give you the welcome\n of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it\n may be set in the records of the dreamers.\"\n\n\n The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, \"I am Eric\n North!\"", "He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. \"Eric,\" the voice said. \"Eric,\n you did come back.\" The voice was his brother's, and he whirled,\n seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of\n his brother. The figure cried, \"The hat! You fool, get rid of that\n hat!\" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked\n so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung\n away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.\n\n\n The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome\n than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, \"Come,\" and\n Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.\n\n\n Garve said, \"Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet\n someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from\n this side of the city.\"", "The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was\n white. He cried aloud, \"It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the\n Legend.\" He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal\n hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.\nWhen Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about\n him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music.\n Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man\n came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang\n deafened Eric and the man cried, \"You are right. It is Eric the Bronze.\n Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city.\"", "Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric\n selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They\n were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed\n with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That\n should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began\n walking back to the canal.\nThe return back to the city would always live in his mind as a\n phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he\n came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the\n wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same\n tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the\n wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen\n wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.", "Eric said, \"I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a\n space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to\n protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield\n of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come\n is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?\"\n\n\n For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, \"The name Eric\n was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their\n thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far\n flung kind to return.\"\n\n\n Eric nodded. He asked, \"What happens now?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing. Dwell here with us and you will be safe from our people. If\n the prediction is not soon fulfilled and you are not the Eric of the\n Legend, you may stay or go as you desire.\"\n\n\n \"My brother, Garve. What about him?\"", "The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took\n fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, \"Whips, bring the whips,\" and\n fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless\n feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed\n through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates\n closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart\n hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and\n looked behind to be sure he was safe.\n\n\n The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, \"Come back,\n Eric North. Come back to the city.\"\n\n\n He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until\n his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.", "Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened\n the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well\n armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled\n at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another\n struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and\n escape. He asked, \"Who are the Elders?\"\n\n\n \"We are going to them, to the center of the city.\" Garve's voice\n sharpened, \"Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are\n looking after us. Don't look back.\"\n\n\n After a moment Garve said, \"I think they are following us. Get ready\n to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center.\n The Elders will be expecting you.\" Garve glanced back, and his voice\n sharpened, \"Now! Run!\"", "He laughed, a great chest-shattering laugh that gusted out into the\n thin Martian air. He laughed and cried in a great voice, \"And can you\n so easily dispose of a Legend? If I am Eric of the Legend, can whips\n defeat the prophesy?\"\n\n\n There was an instant when he could have twisted loose. They stood,\n fear-bound at his words. But there was no place to hide, and without\n the use of his weapons Eric could not have gone far. He had to bluff it\n out.\nThen one of the men cried, \"Fools! It is true. We must take no chance\n with the whips. He would come back. But if he dies here before us now,\n then we may forget the prophesy.\"\n\n\n The crowd murmured and a second voice cried, \"Get the sword, get the\n guards, and kill him at once!\"", "Eric knocked on the door. The door was as plain as the building, made\n of a luminous plastic. It had all the beauty of the great gate door,\n but a more timeless, more functional beauty.\n\n\n The door opened and an old man greeted Eric. \"Come in. The Council\n awaits you. Follow me, please.\"\n\n\n Eric followed down a hallway and into a large room. The room was\n obviously designed for a conference room. A great table stood in the\n room, made of the same luminous plastic as the door of the building.\n Six men sat at this conference table. Eric's guide placed him in a\n chair at the base of the T-shaped table.", "The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, \"Garve,\"\n wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note\n clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently\n and began to read. Garve had scrawled:\n\n\n \"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down\n to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some\n sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd\n better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and\n I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight\n down the canal.\"\n\n\n Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently\n Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been\n so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.", "Kroon said, \"I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the\n City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars\n ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and\n gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it\n became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and\n could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets.\n Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots\n destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for\n this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable\n again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the\n building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a\n small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars.\"\n\n\n \"This whole city is a machine!\" Eric asked.", "Eric turned his gaze to the side and saw the woman who had spoken. She\n was mounted upon a black horse with a jeweled bridle. She was young and\n her hair was long and free in the wind. She had ridden so softly across\n the fur street that no one had been aware of her presence.\nShe said, \"Let me touch this man. Let me feel the pulse of his heart so\n that I may know if he is truly the Bronze one of the Legend. Give me\n your hand, stranger.\" She leaned down and grasped his hand. Eric shook\n his arms free, and reached up and clung to the offered hand, thinking,\n \"If I pull her down perhaps I can use her as a shield.\" He tensed his\n muscles and began to pull.\n\n\n She cried, \"No! You fool. Come up on the horse,\" and pulled back with\n an energy as fierce as his own. Then he had swung up on the horse, and\n the animal leaped forward, its muffled gallop beating out a tattoo of\n freedom." ], [ "Kroon said, \"I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the\n City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars\n ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and\n gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it\n became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and\n could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets.\n Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots\n destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for\n this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable\n again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the\n building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a\n small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars.\"\n\n\n \"This whole city is a machine!\" Eric asked.", "He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the\n motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he\n stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat\n had not entirely failed him after all.\n\n\n He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to\n call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when\n it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps.\n And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the\n canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and\n the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he\n was beyond the range of the illusions.\n\n\n And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem,\n and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which\n he had been pitted.", "One part of his mind said,\nThis is it, this is the fabled city of\n Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends,\n and I must go down there.\nYet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in\n the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and\n urgent.\nGet away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the\n city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk,\n a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those\n who came before you.\nHe strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic\n beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to\n close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open,\n staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin\n wail of music reached him, saying,\nCome into the city, come down into\n the fabled city\n.", "He laughed, a great chest-shattering laugh that gusted out into the\n thin Martian air. He laughed and cried in a great voice, \"And can you\n so easily dispose of a Legend? If I am Eric of the Legend, can whips\n defeat the prophesy?\"\n\n\n There was an instant when he could have twisted loose. They stood,\n fear-bound at his words. But there was no place to hide, and without\n the use of his weapons Eric could not have gone far. He had to bluff it\n out.\nThen one of the men cried, \"Fools! It is true. We must take no chance\n with the whips. He would come back. But if he dies here before us now,\n then we may forget the prophesy.\"\n\n\n The crowd murmured and a second voice cried, \"Get the sword, get the\n guards, and kill him at once!\"", "The Beast-Jewel of Mars\nBy V. E. THIESSEN\nThe city was strange, fantastic, beautiful.\n\n He'd never been there before, yet already he\n\n was a fabulous legendâ€”a dire, hateful legend.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Spring 1955.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nHe lay on his stomach, a lean man in faded one piece dungarees, and an\n odd metallic hat, peering over the side of the canal. Behind him the\n little winds sifted red dust into his collar, but he could not move; he\n could only sit there with his gaze riveted on the spires and minarets\n that twinkled in the distance, far down the bottom of the canal.", "He slid over the edge, sliding down the sloping sides of the canal.\n The rough sandstone tore at his dungarees, tore at his elbow where it\n touched but he did not feel the pain. His face was turned toward the\n towers, and the sound of his breathing was less than human.\n\n\n His feet caught a projecting bit of stone and were slowed for an\n instant, so that he turned sideways and rolled on, down into the red\n dust bottom of the canal, to lie face down in the dust, with the chin\n strap of the odd metallic hat cutting cruelly into his chin.\n\n\n He lay there an instant, knowing that now he had a chance. With his\n face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone\n for an instant. He had to get away, he knew that. He had to mount the\n sides of the canal and never look back.\n\n\n He told himself, \"I am Eric North, from Earth, the Third Planet of Sol,\n and this is not real.\"", "Kroon sighed. \"The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even\n know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us,\n the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the\n machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we\n build and control the outward appearance of the city.\n\n\n \"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient\n Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be\n destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that\n our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power.\n The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze.\n It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man\n would come.\"", "Eric asked, \"And I am to destroy the City?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. The time has come.\"\n\n\n \"But why?\" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling\n beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.\n\n\n Kroon said, \"There are difficulties. The machine builds according to\n the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual\n in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass.\n We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew\n drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and\n greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong\n is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own\n evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the\n beauty they have lost here.\"", "The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, \"Garve,\"\n wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note\n clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently\n and began to read. Garve had scrawled:\n\n\n \"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down\n to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some\n sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd\n better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and\n I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight\n down the canal.\"\n\n\n Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently\n Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been\n so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.", "Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to\n converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in\n the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, \"If you value\n my life don't use the gun.\"\n\n\n There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken\n prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men\n held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly,\n calculatingly. One of them said, \"Get the whips. If we whip him he will\n not come back.\" The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could\n hardly hear it.\n\n\n There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's\n words that these people were superstitious.", "The helmet contained an electrical circuit, designed as a shield\n against electrical waves tuned to affect his brain. But the hat had\n failed because the city, whatever it was, had adjusted to this revised\n pattern as he had approached it. Hence, the helmet had been no defense\n against illusion. However, when he had jerked the helmet off suddenly\n to beat on the door, his mental pattern had changed, too suddenly, and\n the machine caught up only after he had glimpsed another image. Then as\n the illusion adjusted replacing the helmet threw it off again.\n\n\n He grinned wryly. He would have liked to know more about the city,\n whatever it was. He would have liked to know more about the people he\n had seen, whether they were real or part of the illusion, and if they\n were as ugly as the second city had been.", "Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the\n arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver\n indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve\n North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he\n would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they\n had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would\n be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left.\n\n\n The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had\n established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's\n face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again.\n\n\n He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that\n he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a\n swift leap, calling, \"Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?\"", "He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until\n he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the\n canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his\n haste. He wouldn't look again.\n\n\n The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It\n told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and\n wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city,\n waiting for him to claim them.\n\n\n He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head\n began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him,\n beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks.\n\n\n When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city.", "\"Yes, or the product of one. The heart of it lies underneath our feet,\n in caverns beneath this building. The nature of the machine is this,\n that it translates thought into reality.\"\n\n\n Eric stared. The idea was staggering.\n\n\n \"This is essentially simple, although the technology is complex. It is\n necessary to have a recording device, to capture thought, a transmuting\n device capable of transmuting the red dust of the desert into any\n sort of material desired, and a construction device, to assemble this\n material into the pattern already recorded from thought.\" Kroon paused.\n \"You still doubt, my friend. Perhaps you are thirsty after your escape.\n Think strongly of a tall glass of cold water, visualize it in your\n mind, the sight and the fluidity and the touch of it.\"\n\n\n Eric did so. Without warning a glass of water stood on the table before\n him. He touched the water to his lips. It was cool and satisfying. He\n drank it, convinced completely.", "Eric said, \"I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a\n space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to\n protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield\n of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come\n is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?\"\n\n\n For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, \"The name Eric\n was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their\n thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far\n flung kind to return.\"\n\n\n Eric nodded. He asked, \"What happens now?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing. Dwell here with us and you will be safe from our people. If\n the prediction is not soon fulfilled and you are not the Eric of the\n Legend, you may stay or go as you desire.\"\n\n\n \"My brother, Garve. What about him?\"", "He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. \"Eric,\" the voice said. \"Eric,\n you did come back.\" The voice was his brother's, and he whirled,\n seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of\n his brother. The figure cried, \"The hat! You fool, get rid of that\n hat!\" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked\n so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung\n away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.\n\n\n The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome\n than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, \"Come,\" and\n Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.\n\n\n Garve said, \"Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet\n someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from\n this side of the city.\"", "They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther\n up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight.\n\n\n Garve cried, \"In here,\" and pulled Eric into a crevice between two\n buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes.\n The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them.\n\n\n Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, \"Wait here. And if you\n value my life, don't use that gun.\" Then he was gone, running deerlike\n down the street.\n\n\n For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and\n two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. \"Let\n him go. Get the other one. The other one.\"", "Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young\n suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling\n back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent\n that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply,\n oddly happy as they rode.\n\n\n After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the\n city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it\n contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city.\n It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched\n among enemies.\n\n\n The girl halted before the structure and said, \"Dismount here, Eric.\"\n\n\n Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had\n held her. She said, \"Knock three times on the door. I will see you\n again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here.\"", "The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took\n fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, \"Whips, bring the whips,\" and\n fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless\n feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed\n through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates\n closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart\n hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and\n looked behind to be sure he was safe.\n\n\n The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, \"Come back,\n Eric North. Come back to the city.\"\n\n\n He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until\n his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.", "The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was\n white. He cried aloud, \"It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the\n Legend.\" He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal\n hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.\nWhen Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about\n him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music.\n Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man\n came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang\n deafened Eric and the man cried, \"You are right. It is Eric the Bronze.\n Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city.\"" ], [ "Eric asked, \"And I am to destroy the City?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. The time has come.\"\n\n\n \"But why?\" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling\n beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.\n\n\n Kroon said, \"There are difficulties. The machine builds according to\n the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual\n in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass.\n We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew\n drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and\n greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong\n is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own\n evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the\n beauty they have lost here.\"", "Eric asked, \"And what is this Legend of Eric the Bronze? Why am I so\n despised in the city?\"\n\n\n Kroon answered, \"According to the Ancient Legend you will destroy the\n city. This, and other things.\"\n\n\n Eric gaped. No wonder the crowd had shown such hatred. But why were\n the elders so friendly? They were obviously the governing body, and if\n there was strife between them and the people it had not shown in the\n respect the crowd had accorded Nolette.", "Kroon sighed. \"The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even\n know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us,\n the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the\n machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we\n build and control the outward appearance of the city.\n\n\n \"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient\n Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be\n destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that\n our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power.\n The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze.\n It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man\n would come.\"", "Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened\n the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well\n armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled\n at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another\n struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and\n escape. He asked, \"Who are the Elders?\"\n\n\n \"We are going to them, to the center of the city.\" Garve's voice\n sharpened, \"Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are\n looking after us. Don't look back.\"\n\n\n After a moment Garve said, \"I think they are following us. Get ready\n to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center.\n The Elders will be expecting you.\" Garve glanced back, and his voice\n sharpened, \"Now! Run!\"", "There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric\n watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place\n there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had\n lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously\n presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. \"I am Kroon, the eldest of\n the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your\n identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some\n sort of explanation.\" He glanced around the room and asked, \"What is\n the judgment of the elders?\"\nEric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if\n in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, \"And what is your opinion,\n Daughter of the City?\"\n\n\n Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future.\n She said, \"He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt.\"", "Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to\n converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in\n the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, \"If you value\n my life don't use the gun.\"\n\n\n There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken\n prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men\n held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly,\n calculatingly. One of them said, \"Get the whips. If we whip him he will\n not come back.\" The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could\n hardly hear it.\n\n\n There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's\n words that these people were superstitious.", "Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the\n arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver\n indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve\n North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he\n would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they\n had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would\n be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left.\n\n\n The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had\n established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's\n face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again.\n\n\n He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that\n he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a\n swift leap, calling, \"Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?\"", "And deep inside him some part of his mind said, \"This is a madness you\n cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known,\"\n and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame.\n\n\n He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings\n of the great door, crying, \"Let me in! Please, take me back into the\n city.\"\n\n\n And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a\n city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and\n minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound\n of the city was a macabre song of hate.\n\n\n He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the\n beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it\n was beautiful again.", "Kroon said, \"I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the\n City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars\n ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and\n gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it\n became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and\n could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets.\n Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots\n destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for\n this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable\n again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the\n building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a\n small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars.\"\n\n\n \"This whole city is a machine!\" Eric asked.", "The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, \"Garve,\"\n wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note\n clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently\n and began to read. Garve had scrawled:\n\n\n \"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down\n to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some\n sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd\n better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and\n I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight\n down the canal.\"\n\n\n Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently\n Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been\n so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.", "The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was\n white. He cried aloud, \"It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the\n Legend.\" He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal\n hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.\nWhen Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about\n him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music.\n Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man\n came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang\n deafened Eric and the man cried, \"You are right. It is Eric the Bronze.\n Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city.\"", "\"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this\n building.\" Kroon clasped his hands. \"Nolette, will you show Eric his\n quarters?\"", "Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric\n selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They\n were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed\n with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That\n should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began\n walking back to the canal.\nThe return back to the city would always live in his mind as a\n phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he\n came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the\n wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same\n tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the\n wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen\n wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.", "He laughed, a great chest-shattering laugh that gusted out into the\n thin Martian air. He laughed and cried in a great voice, \"And can you\n so easily dispose of a Legend? If I am Eric of the Legend, can whips\n defeat the prophesy?\"\n\n\n There was an instant when he could have twisted loose. They stood,\n fear-bound at his words. But there was no place to hide, and without\n the use of his weapons Eric could not have gone far. He had to bluff it\n out.\nThen one of the men cried, \"Fools! It is true. We must take no chance\n with the whips. He would come back. But if he dies here before us now,\n then we may forget the prophesy.\"\n\n\n The crowd murmured and a second voice cried, \"Get the sword, get the\n guards, and kill him at once!\"", "They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther\n up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight.\n\n\n Garve cried, \"In here,\" and pulled Eric into a crevice between two\n buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes.\n The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them.\n\n\n Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, \"Wait here. And if you\n value my life, don't use that gun.\" Then he was gone, running deerlike\n down the street.\n\n\n For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and\n two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. \"Let\n him go. Get the other one. The other one.\"", "He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until\n he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the\n canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his\n haste. He wouldn't look again.\n\n\n The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It\n told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and\n wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city,\n waiting for him to claim them.\n\n\n He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head\n began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him,\n beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks.\n\n\n When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city.", "The helmet contained an electrical circuit, designed as a shield\n against electrical waves tuned to affect his brain. But the hat had\n failed because the city, whatever it was, had adjusted to this revised\n pattern as he had approached it. Hence, the helmet had been no defense\n against illusion. However, when he had jerked the helmet off suddenly\n to beat on the door, his mental pattern had changed, too suddenly, and\n the machine caught up only after he had glimpsed another image. Then as\n the illusion adjusted replacing the helmet threw it off again.\n\n\n He grinned wryly. He would have liked to know more about the city,\n whatever it was. He would have liked to know more about the people he\n had seen, whether they were real or part of the illusion, and if they\n were as ugly as the second city had been.", "The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took\n fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, \"Whips, bring the whips,\" and\n fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless\n feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed\n through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates\n closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart\n hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and\n looked behind to be sure he was safe.\n\n\n The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, \"Come back,\n Eric North. Come back to the city.\"\n\n\n He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until\n his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.", "One part of his mind said,\nThis is it, this is the fabled city of\n Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends,\n and I must go down there.\nYet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in\n the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and\n urgent.\nGet away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the\n city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk,\n a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those\n who came before you.\nHe strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic\n beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to\n close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open,\n staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin\n wail of music reached him, saying,\nCome into the city, come down into\n the fabled city\n.", "Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young\n suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling\n back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent\n that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply,\n oddly happy as they rode.\n\n\n After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the\n city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it\n contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city.\n It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched\n among enemies.\n\n\n The girl halted before the structure and said, \"Dismount here, Eric.\"\n\n\n Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had\n held her. She said, \"Knock three times on the door. I will see you\n again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here.\"" ], [ "\"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this\n building.\" Kroon clasped his hands. \"Nolette, will you show Eric his\n quarters?\"", "Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric\n selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They\n were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed\n with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That\n should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began\n walking back to the canal.\nThe return back to the city would always live in his mind as a\n phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he\n came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the\n wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same\n tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the\n wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen\n wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.", "The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, \"Garve,\"\n wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note\n clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently\n and began to read. Garve had scrawled:\n\n\n \"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down\n to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some\n sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd\n better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and\n I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight\n down the canal.\"\n\n\n Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently\n Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been\n so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.", "Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to\n converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in\n the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, \"If you value\n my life don't use the gun.\"\n\n\n There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken\n prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men\n held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly,\n calculatingly. One of them said, \"Get the whips. If we whip him he will\n not come back.\" The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could\n hardly hear it.\n\n\n There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's\n words that these people were superstitious.", "They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther\n up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight.\n\n\n Garve cried, \"In here,\" and pulled Eric into a crevice between two\n buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes.\n The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them.\n\n\n Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, \"Wait here. And if you\n value my life, don't use that gun.\" Then he was gone, running deerlike\n down the street.\n\n\n For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and\n two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. \"Let\n him go. Get the other one. The other one.\"", "Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the\n arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver\n indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve\n North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he\n would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they\n had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would\n be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left.\n\n\n The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had\n established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's\n face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again.\n\n\n He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that\n he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a\n swift leap, calling, \"Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?\"", "He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. \"Eric,\" the voice said. \"Eric,\n you did come back.\" The voice was his brother's, and he whirled,\n seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of\n his brother. The figure cried, \"The hat! You fool, get rid of that\n hat!\" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked\n so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung\n away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.\n\n\n The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome\n than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, \"Come,\" and\n Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.\n\n\n Garve said, \"Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet\n someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from\n this side of the city.\"", "And deep inside him some part of his mind said, \"This is a madness you\n cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known,\"\n and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame.\n\n\n He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings\n of the great door, crying, \"Let me in! Please, take me back into the\n city.\"\n\n\n And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a\n city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and\n minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound\n of the city was a macabre song of hate.\n\n\n He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the\n beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it\n was beautiful again.", "Eric asked, \"And I am to destroy the City?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. The time has come.\"\n\n\n \"But why?\" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling\n beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.\n\n\n Kroon said, \"There are difficulties. The machine builds according to\n the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual\n in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass.\n We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew\n drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and\n greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong\n is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own\n evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the\n beauty they have lost here.\"", "One part of his mind said,\nThis is it, this is the fabled city of\n Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends,\n and I must go down there.\nYet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in\n the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and\n urgent.\nGet away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the\n city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk,\n a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those\n who came before you.\nHe strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic\n beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to\n close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open,\n staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin\n wail of music reached him, saying,\nCome into the city, come down into\n the fabled city\n.", "Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened\n the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well\n armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled\n at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another\n struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and\n escape. He asked, \"Who are the Elders?\"\n\n\n \"We are going to them, to the center of the city.\" Garve's voice\n sharpened, \"Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are\n looking after us. Don't look back.\"\n\n\n After a moment Garve said, \"I think they are following us. Get ready\n to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center.\n The Elders will be expecting you.\" Garve glanced back, and his voice\n sharpened, \"Now! Run!\"", "Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young\n suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling\n back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent\n that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply,\n oddly happy as they rode.\n\n\n After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the\n city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it\n contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city.\n It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched\n among enemies.\n\n\n The girl halted before the structure and said, \"Dismount here, Eric.\"\n\n\n Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had\n held her. She said, \"Knock three times on the door. I will see you\n again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here.\"", "He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until\n he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the\n canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his\n haste. He wouldn't look again.\n\n\n The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It\n told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and\n wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city,\n waiting for him to claim them.\n\n\n He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head\n began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him,\n beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks.\n\n\n When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city.", "The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took\n fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, \"Whips, bring the whips,\" and\n fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless\n feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed\n through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates\n closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart\n hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and\n looked behind to be sure he was safe.\n\n\n The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, \"Come back,\n Eric North. Come back to the city.\"\n\n\n He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until\n his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.", "The helmet contained an electrical circuit, designed as a shield\n against electrical waves tuned to affect his brain. But the hat had\n failed because the city, whatever it was, had adjusted to this revised\n pattern as he had approached it. Hence, the helmet had been no defense\n against illusion. However, when he had jerked the helmet off suddenly\n to beat on the door, his mental pattern had changed, too suddenly, and\n the machine caught up only after he had glimpsed another image. Then as\n the illusion adjusted replacing the helmet threw it off again.\n\n\n He grinned wryly. He would have liked to know more about the city,\n whatever it was. He would have liked to know more about the people he\n had seen, whether they were real or part of the illusion, and if they\n were as ugly as the second city had been.", "Kroon said, \"I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the\n City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars\n ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and\n gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it\n became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and\n could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets.\n Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots\n destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for\n this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable\n again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the\n building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a\n small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars.\"\n\n\n \"This whole city is a machine!\" Eric asked.", "There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric\n watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place\n there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had\n lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously\n presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. \"I am Kroon, the eldest of\n the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your\n identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some\n sort of explanation.\" He glanced around the room and asked, \"What is\n the judgment of the elders?\"\nEric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if\n in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, \"And what is your opinion,\n Daughter of the City?\"\n\n\n Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future.\n She said, \"He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt.\"", "Eric said, \"I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a\n space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to\n protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield\n of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come\n is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?\"\n\n\n For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, \"The name Eric\n was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their\n thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far\n flung kind to return.\"\n\n\n Eric nodded. He asked, \"What happens now?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing. Dwell here with us and you will be safe from our people. If\n the prediction is not soon fulfilled and you are not the Eric of the\n Legend, you may stay or go as you desire.\"\n\n\n \"My brother, Garve. What about him?\"", "When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy\n gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,\n \"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!\" The music was richer now, as if\n it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.\n\n\n A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue\n street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue\n leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew\n the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the\n sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, \"I give you the welcome\n of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it\n may be set in the records of the dreamers.\"\n\n\n The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, \"I am Eric\n North!\"", "He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the\n motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he\n stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat\n had not entirely failed him after all.\n\n\n He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to\n call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when\n it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps.\n And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the\n canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and\n the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he\n was beyond the range of the illusions.\n\n\n And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem,\n and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which\n he had been pitted." ], [ "He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until\n he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the\n canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his\n haste. He wouldn't look again.\n\n\n The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It\n told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and\n wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city,\n waiting for him to claim them.\n\n\n He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head\n began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him,\n beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks.\n\n\n When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city.", "And deep inside him some part of his mind said, \"This is a madness you\n cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known,\"\n and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame.\n\n\n He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings\n of the great door, crying, \"Let me in! Please, take me back into the\n city.\"\n\n\n And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a\n city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and\n minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound\n of the city was a macabre song of hate.\n\n\n He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the\n beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it\n was beautiful again.", "He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. \"Eric,\" the voice said. \"Eric,\n you did come back.\" The voice was his brother's, and he whirled,\n seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of\n his brother. The figure cried, \"The hat! You fool, get rid of that\n hat!\" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked\n so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung\n away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.\n\n\n The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome\n than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, \"Come,\" and\n Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.\n\n\n Garve said, \"Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet\n someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from\n this side of the city.\"", "When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy\n gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,\n \"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!\" The music was richer now, as if\n it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.\n\n\n A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue\n street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue\n leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew\n the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the\n sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, \"I give you the welcome\n of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it\n may be set in the records of the dreamers.\"\n\n\n The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, \"I am Eric\n North!\"", "The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took\n fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, \"Whips, bring the whips,\" and\n fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless\n feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed\n through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates\n closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart\n hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and\n looked behind to be sure he was safe.\n\n\n The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, \"Come back,\n Eric North. Come back to the city.\"\n\n\n He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until\n his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.", "The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was\n white. He cried aloud, \"It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the\n Legend.\" He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal\n hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.\nWhen Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about\n him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music.\n Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man\n came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang\n deafened Eric and the man cried, \"You are right. It is Eric the Bronze.\n Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city.\"", "Kroon sighed. \"The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even\n know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us,\n the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the\n machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we\n build and control the outward appearance of the city.\n\n\n \"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient\n Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be\n destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that\n our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power.\n The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze.\n It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man\n would come.\"", "He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the\n motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he\n stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat\n had not entirely failed him after all.\n\n\n He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to\n call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when\n it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps.\n And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the\n canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and\n the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he\n was beyond the range of the illusions.\n\n\n And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem,\n and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which\n he had been pitted.", "Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to\n converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in\n the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, \"If you value\n my life don't use the gun.\"\n\n\n There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken\n prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men\n held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly,\n calculatingly. One of them said, \"Get the whips. If we whip him he will\n not come back.\" The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could\n hardly hear it.\n\n\n There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's\n words that these people were superstitious.", "He slid over the edge, sliding down the sloping sides of the canal.\n The rough sandstone tore at his dungarees, tore at his elbow where it\n touched but he did not feel the pain. His face was turned toward the\n towers, and the sound of his breathing was less than human.\n\n\n His feet caught a projecting bit of stone and were slowed for an\n instant, so that he turned sideways and rolled on, down into the red\n dust bottom of the canal, to lie face down in the dust, with the chin\n strap of the odd metallic hat cutting cruelly into his chin.\n\n\n He lay there an instant, knowing that now he had a chance. With his\n face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone\n for an instant. He had to get away, he knew that. He had to mount the\n sides of the canal and never look back.\n\n\n He told himself, \"I am Eric North, from Earth, the Third Planet of Sol,\n and this is not real.\"", "Eric turned his gaze to the side and saw the woman who had spoken. She\n was mounted upon a black horse with a jeweled bridle. She was young and\n her hair was long and free in the wind. She had ridden so softly across\n the fur street that no one had been aware of her presence.\nShe said, \"Let me touch this man. Let me feel the pulse of his heart so\n that I may know if he is truly the Bronze one of the Legend. Give me\n your hand, stranger.\" She leaned down and grasped his hand. Eric shook\n his arms free, and reached up and clung to the offered hand, thinking,\n \"If I pull her down perhaps I can use her as a shield.\" He tensed his\n muscles and began to pull.\n\n\n She cried, \"No! You fool. Come up on the horse,\" and pulled back with\n an energy as fierce as his own. Then he had swung up on the horse, and\n the animal leaped forward, its muffled gallop beating out a tattoo of\n freedom.", "Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young\n suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling\n back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent\n that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply,\n oddly happy as they rode.\n\n\n After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the\n city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it\n contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city.\n It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched\n among enemies.\n\n\n The girl halted before the structure and said, \"Dismount here, Eric.\"\n\n\n Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had\n held her. She said, \"Knock three times on the door. I will see you\n again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here.\"", "There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric\n watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place\n there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had\n lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously\n presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. \"I am Kroon, the eldest of\n the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your\n identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some\n sort of explanation.\" He glanced around the room and asked, \"What is\n the judgment of the elders?\"\nEric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if\n in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, \"And what is your opinion,\n Daughter of the City?\"\n\n\n Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future.\n She said, \"He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt.\"", "Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric\n selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They\n were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed\n with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That\n should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began\n walking back to the canal.\nThe return back to the city would always live in his mind as a\n phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he\n came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the\n wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same\n tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the\n wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen\n wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.", "\"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this\n building.\" Kroon clasped his hands. \"Nolette, will you show Eric his\n quarters?\"", "They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther\n up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight.\n\n\n Garve cried, \"In here,\" and pulled Eric into a crevice between two\n buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes.\n The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them.\n\n\n Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, \"Wait here. And if you\n value my life, don't use that gun.\" Then he was gone, running deerlike\n down the street.\n\n\n For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and\n two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. \"Let\n him go. Get the other one. The other one.\"", "Eric knocked on the door. The door was as plain as the building, made\n of a luminous plastic. It had all the beauty of the great gate door,\n but a more timeless, more functional beauty.\n\n\n The door opened and an old man greeted Eric. \"Come in. The Council\n awaits you. Follow me, please.\"\n\n\n Eric followed down a hallway and into a large room. The room was\n obviously designed for a conference room. A great table stood in the\n room, made of the same luminous plastic as the door of the building.\n Six men sat at this conference table. Eric's guide placed him in a\n chair at the base of the T-shaped table.", "Eric asked, \"You knew I'd come after you?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. The Legend said you'd be back.\"\n\n\n Eric stopped and whirled to face his brother. \"The Legend? Eric the\n Bronze? What is this wild fantasy?\"\n\n\n \"Not so loud!\" Garve's voice cautioned him. \"Of course the crowd called\n you that because of the copper hat and your heavy tan. But the Elders\n believe so too. I don't know what it is, Eric, reincarnation, prophesy,\n superstition, I only know that when I was with the Elders I believed\n them. You are a part of a Legend. You are Eric the Bronze.\"", "Kroon said, \"I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the\n City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars\n ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and\n gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it\n became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and\n could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets.\n Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots\n destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for\n this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable\n again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the\n building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a\n small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars.\"\n\n\n \"This whole city is a machine!\" Eric asked.", "Eric asked, \"And I am to destroy the City?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. The time has come.\"\n\n\n \"But why?\" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling\n beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.\n\n\n Kroon said, \"There are difficulties. The machine builds according to\n the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual\n in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass.\n We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew\n drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and\n greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong\n is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own\n evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the\n beauty they have lost here.\"" ] ]
test	51231	[ "How would you describe Alcala?", "How would you describe Camba?", "What is Syndrome Johnny?", "Why does Alcala omit information when talking to Camba?", "Why might someone not want to read this story?", "What is the setting like for this story?", "What evidence do we have to believe Alcala isn't the smartest person?", "Is Alcala a good person?", "What does Alcala research?", "Who might want to read this story the most?" ]	[ [ "Strange", "Funny", "Lovable", "Nice" ], [ "Stern", "Bold", "Kind", "Hilarious" ], [ "It's an actual man who causes the plagues", "It's the name of Patient Zero for the first plague", "It's a myth about a man who causes the plagues", "It's the name of Patient Zero for all of the plagues" ], [ "He loves his coworker too much", "He puts pieces of the puzzle together and wants to protect someone", "He's feeling ill so he can't recall information properly", "He loves his family too much" ], [ "It involves hard drugs", "It involves excessive gore", "It involves death", "It involves sexual violence" ], [ "It's on Earth 2 in the future", "It's on Earth in the present day", "It's on Earth in the future", "It's on Earth 3 in the future" ], [ "He doesn't realize that he could die soon if he lets certain things happen", "He doesn't realize that he could get arrested soon if he tells Camba the full truth", "He doesn't know how to get his wife medical help when he should know because he's a doctor", "He doesn't think about how his daughter will be negatively impacted by his experiments" ], [ "Alcala is neither good nor bad; he doesn't do much to prove himself on either extreme", "Alcala is not a good person", "Alcala does some morally questionable things but he seems to have some good intentions as well", "Alcala is a good person" ], [ "The long term impacts of silicon on the human body", "The impact of calcium on the human body after a microdose", "The impact of silicon on the human body after a microdose", "The long term impacts of calcium on the human body" ], [ "A teen who loves reading about space travel and medicine in space", "A philosophy student who cares about medical ethics", "A STEM student who loves to learn about the biological effects of plagues on the human body (even in fictional settings)", "A teen who wants to be a doctor" ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "As Alcala focused on the question, one errant whimsical thought\n suddenly flitted through the back of his mind. In red advertising\n letters: TRY OUR NEW MODEL RUST-PROOF, WATERPROOF, HEAT & SCALD\n RESISTANT, STRONG—EXTRA-LONG-WEARING HUMAN BEING!\n\n\n He laughed inwardly and finally answered: \"Friendship. Mutual interest\n in high ion colloidal suspensions and complex synthesis.\" Impatience\n suddenly mastered him. \"Exactly what is it you wish to know, Senor?\n Perhaps I could inform you if I knew the reasons for your interest.\"\n\n\n Camba chose a piece of salad with great care. \"We have reason to\n believe that he is Syndrome Johnny.\"", "Disconcerted, Alcala watched the 'copter lift away into the night,\n then, turning, saw that the lights were still on in the laboratory.\n Camba might have deduced something from that, if he knew that Nita and\n the girl were not supposed to be home.\n\n\n Alcala hurried in.\n\n\n Johnny hadn't left yet. He was sitting at Alcala's desk with his feet\n on the wastebasket, the way Alcala often liked to sit, reading a\n technical journal. He looked up, smiling. For a moment Alcala saw him\n with the new clarity of a stranger. The lean, weathered face; brown\n eyes with smile deltas at the corners; wide shoulders; steady, big\n hands holding the magazine—solid, able, and ruthless enough to see\n what had to be done, and do it.\n\n\n \"I was waiting for you, Ric.\"", "\"Three generations back, this pressure would have gone right through\n the hand.\" He took away the blade and there was only a very tiny cut.\n Putting the knife away, he brought out his lighter. The blue flame\n was steady and hot. Alcala held it close to the dashboard and put his\n finger directly over it, counting patiently, \"One, two, three, four,\n five—\" He pulled the lighter back, snapping it shut.\n\"Three generations ago, a man couldn't have held a finger over that\n flame for more than a tenth part of that count. Doesn't all this prove\n something to you?\"\n\n\n The 'copter was hovering above Alcala's house. Camba lowered it to\n the ground and opened the door before answering. \"It proves only that\n a good and worthy man will cut and burn his hand for an unworthy\n friendship. Good night.\"", "\"A biochemist.\" Alcala tried to see past the meditative mask of the\n thin dark face. \"He makes small job-lots of chemical compounds. Special\n bug spray for sale to experimental plantations, hormone spray for\n fruits, that sort of thing. Sometimes, when he collects some money\n ahead, he does research.\"\n\n\n Camba waited, and his silence became a question. Alcala spoke\n reluctantly, anger rising in him. \"Oh, it's genuine research. He has\n some patents and publications to his credit. You can confirm that if\n you choose.\" He was unable to keep the hostility out of his voice.\n\n\n A waiter came and placed steaming platters of food on the table. Camba\n waited until he was gone. \"You know him well, I presume. Is he sane?\"", "Alcala sat in the dark, looking through the windshield down at the\n bright street falling away below. \"I'm not a practicing medico; only\n one night a week do I come to the hospital. I'm a research man. I don't\n try to save individual lives. I'm dedicated to improving the average\n life, the average health. Can you understand that? Individuals may be\n sick and individuals may die, but the average lives on. And if the\n average is better, then I'm satisfied.\"\n\n\n The 'copter flew on. There was no answer.\n\n\n \"I'm not good with words,\" said Alcala. Then, taking out his pen-knife\n and unfolding it, he said, \"Watch!\" He put his index finger on the\n altimeter dial, where there was light, and pressed the blade against\n the flesh between his finger and his thumb. He increased the pressure\n until the flesh stood out white on either side of the blade, bending,\n but not cut.", "Alcala was tired, but there was nothing to do at home. Nita was at the\n health resort and Johnny had borrowed all his laboratory space for a\n special synthesis of some sort, and probably would be too busy even\n to talk. Interest stirred in him. This was a Federation investigator\n calling; the man's work was probably important. \"Tonight, if that's\n convenient. I'll be off duty in five minutes.\"\n\n\n Thirty minutes later they were ordering in a small cantina down the\n street from the hospital.\n\n\n Julio Camba, Federation Investigator, was a slender, dark man with\n sharp, glinting eyes. He spoke with a happy theatrical flourish.\n\n\n \"Order what you choose, Senor. We're on my expense account. The\n resources of the Federated States of all The Americas stand behind your\n menu.\"\n\n\n Alcala smiled. \"I wouldn't want to add to the national debt.\"", "Alcala waited for the words to clarify. After a moment, it ceased to\n be childish babble and became increasingly shocking. He remembered the\n first time he had met John Delgados, the smile, the strong handclasp.\n \"Call me Johnny,\" he had said. It had seemed no more than a nickname.\n\n\n The investigator was watching his expression with bright brown eyes.\n\n\n Johnny, yes ... but not Syndrome Johnny. He tried to think of some\n quick refutation. \"The whole thing is preposterous, Senor Camba. The\n myth of Syndrome Plague Johnny started about a century ago.\"", "The question was another shock. Alcala thought carefully, for any man\n might be insane in secret. \"Yes, so far as I know.\" He turned his\n attention to the steak, but first took three very large capsules from a\n bottle in his pocket.\n\n\n \"I would not expect that a doctor would need to take pills,\" Camba\n remarked with friendly mockery.\n\n\n \"I don't need them,\" Alcala explained. \"Mixed silicones. I'm guinea\n pigging.\"\n\n\n \"Can't such things be left to the guinea pigs?\" Camba asked, watching\n with revulsion as Alcala uncapped the second bottle and sprinkled a\n layer of gray powder over his steak.\n\n\n \"Guinea pigs have no assimilation of silicones; only man has that.\"", "\"Lives will be saved in the long run,\" Alcala said obstinately.\n \"Individual deaths are not important in the long run.\"\n\n\n \"That is hardly the philosophy for a doctor, is it?\" asked Camba with\n open irony, taking the bill and rising.\n\n\n They went out of the restaurant in silence. Camba's 'copter stood at\n the curb.\n\n\n \"Would you care for a lift home, Doctor Alcala?\" The offer was made\n with the utmost suavity.\n\n\n Alcala hesitated fractionally. \"Why, yes, thank you.\" It would not do\n to give the investigator any reason for suspicion by refusing.\n\n\n As the 'copter lifted into the air, Camba spoke with a more friendly\n note in his voice, as if he humored a child. \"Come, Alcala, you're a\n doctor dedicated to saving lives. How can you find sympathy for a\n murderer?\"", "\"Not at all, Senor. The Federated States are only too happy thus to\n express a fraction of their gratitude by adding a touch of luxury to\n the otherwise barren and self-sacrificing life of a scientist.\"\n\n\n \"You shame me,\" Alcala said dryly. It was true that he needed\n every spare penny for the health of Nita and the child, and for the\n laboratory. A penny saved from being spent on nourishment was a penny\n earned. He picked up the menu again and ordered steak.\n\n\n The investigator lit a cigar, asking casually: \"Do you know John\n Osborne Drake?\"\nAlcala searched his memory. \"No. I'm sorry....\" Then he felt for the\n first time how closely he was being watched, and knew how carefully his\n reaction and the tone of his voice had been analyzed. The interview was\n dangerous. For some reason, he was suspected of something.", "Running, Alcala went down the long half-lit stairs, out the back door\n and along the dark path toward the place where Johnny's 'copter had\n been parked.\n\n\n A light shone through the leaves. It was still there.\n\n\n \"Johnny!\"\n\n\n John Osborne Drake was putting his suitcase into the rear of the\n 'copter.\n\n\n \"What is it, Ric?\" he asked in a friendly voice without turning.\nIt would be impossible to ask him to change his mind.\nAlcala found\n a rock, raised it behind Syndrome Johnny's back. \"I know I'm being\n anti-social,\" he said regretfully, and then threw the rock away.\n\n\n His fist was enough like stone to crush a skull.", "John Drake rose and looked around the laboratory with something like\n triumph. \"They're too late. I made it, Ric. There's the catalyst\n cooling over there. This is the last step. I don't think I'll survive\n this plague, but I'll last long enough to set it going for the finish.\n The police won't stop me until it's too late.\"\nAnother plague!\n\n\n The last one had been before Alcala was born. He had not thought that\n Johnny would start another. It was a shock.\n\n\n Alcala walked over to the cage where he kept his white mice and looked\n in, trying to sort out his feelings. The white mice looked back\n with beady bright eyes, caged, not knowing they were waiting to be\n experimented upon.", "Ricardo Alcala pushed the plunger in gently, then carefully withdrew\n the hypodermic needle from the little girl's arm. \"There you are,\n Cosita,\" he said, smiling and rising from the chair beside the white\n bed.\n\n\n \"Will that make me better, Doctor?\" she piped feebly.\n\n\n He patted her hand. \"Be a good girl and you will be well tomorrow.\" He\n walked out into the hospital corridor to where the desk nurse held out\n a phone.\n\n\n \"Alcala speaking.\"\n\n\n The voice was unfamiliar. \"My deepest apologies for interrupting your\n work, Doctor. At this late hour I'm afraid I assumed you would be at\n home. The name is Camba, Federation Investigator on a health case. I\n would like to consult you.\"", "\"It seems a pity we can't even find out who the gentleman is,\" the\n Crimes Department head murmured, looking at the thumbprint wistfully.\n \"No crime, no records. No records, no evidence. No evidence, no proof\n of crime. Therefore, we must manufacture a small crime. He was attacked\n and he must have defended himself. Someone may have been hurt in the\n process.\" He pushed a button. \"Do you think if I send a man down there,\n he could persuade one of the mob to swear out a complaint?\"\n\n\n \"That's a rhetorical question,\" said the psychologist, trying to work\n out an uncertain correlation in his reports. \"With that sort of mob\n hysteria, the town would probably give you an affidavit of witchcraft.\"\n\"Phone for you, Doctor Alcala.\" The nurse was crisp but quiet, smiling\n down at the little girl before vanishing again.", "\"It's ridiculous!\" Alcala protested. \"Why would any man—\" His voice\n cut off as unrelated facts fell into a pattern. He sat for a moment,\n thinking intensely, seeing the century of plague as something he had\n never dreamed....\n\n\n A price.\n\n\n Not too high a price in the long run, considering what was purchased.\n Of course, the great change over into silicon catalysis would be a\n shock and require adjustment and, of course, the change must be made in\n several easy stages—and those who could not adjust would die.\n\n\n \"Go on, Doctor,\" Camba urged softly. \"'\nWhy\nwould any man—'\"\n\n\n He tried to find a way of explaining which would not seem to have any\n relationship to John Delgados. \"It has been recently discovered\"—but\n he did not say\nhow\nrecently—\"that the disease of Syndrome Plague\n was not a disease. It is an improvement.\" He had spoken clumsily.", "\"Doctor Alcala\"—the small man in the gray suit was tensely\n sober—\"John Delgados is very old, and John Delgados is not his proper\n name. I have traced his life back and back, through older and older\n records in Argentina, Panama, South Africa, the United States, China,\n Canada. Everywhere he has paid his taxes properly, put his fingerprints\n on file as a good citizen should. And he changed his name every twenty\n years, applying to the courts for permission with good honest reasons\n for changing his name. Everywhere he has been a laboratory worker, held\n patents, sometimes made a good deal of money. He is one hundred and\n forty years old. His first income tax was paid in 1970, exactly one\n hundred and twenty years ago.\"\n\n\n \"Other men are that old,\" said Alcala.", "Camba finished lighting the cigar and dropped the match into an\n ash-tray. \"Perhaps you know John Delgados?\" He leaned back into the\n shadowy corner of the booth.\n\n\n Johnny! Out of all the people in the world, how could the government be\n interested in him? Alcala tried to sound casual. \"An associate of mine.\n A friend.\"\n\n\n \"I would like to contact the gentleman.\" The request was completely\n unforceful, undemanding. \"I called, but he was not at home. Could you\n tell me where he might be?\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Senor Camba, but I cannot say. He could be on a business\n trip.\" Alcala was feeling increasingly nervous. Actually, Johnny was\n working at his laboratory.\n\n\n \"What do you know of his activities?\" Camba asked.", "\"No.\" Alcala knew that he was shaking hands with a man who would be\n thanked down all the successive generations of mankind. He noticed\n again the odd white web-work of scars on the back of Johnny's hand. He\n indicated them as casually as he could. \"Where did you pick those up?\"\nJohn Drake glanced at his hand. \"I don't know, Ric. Truthfully.\n I've had my brains beaten in too often to remember much any more.\n Unimportant. There are instructions outlining plans and methods filed\n in safety deposit boxes in almost every big city in the world. Always\n the same typing, always the same instructions. I can't remember who\n typed them, myself or my father, but I must have been expected to\n forget or they wouldn't be there. Up to eleven, my memory is all right,\n but after Dad started to remake me, everything gets fuzzy.\"\n\n\n \"After he did\nwhat\n?\"", "\"The Feds are after you.\" Ricardo Alcala had been running. He found he\n was panting and his heart was pounding.\n\n\n Delgados' smile did not change. \"It's all right, Ric. Everything's\n done. I can leave any time now.\" He indicated a square metal box\n standing in a corner. \"There's the stuff.\"\n\n\n What stuff? The product Johnny had been working on? \"You haven't time\n for that now, Johnny. You can't sell it. They'd watch for anyone of\n your description selling chemicals. Let me loan you some money.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks.\" Johnny was smiling oddly. \"Everything's set. I won't need it.\n How close are they to finding me?\"\n\n\n \"They don't know where you're staying.\" Alcala leaned on the desk edge\n and put out his hand. \"They tell me you're Syndrome Johnny.\"", "A timer clicked and John Delgados-Drake became all rapid efficient\n activity, moving from valve to valve. It lasted a half minute or less,\n then Drake had finished stripping off the lab whites to his street\n clothes. He picked up the square metal box containing the stuff he had\n made, tucked it under his arm and held out a solid hand again to Alcala.\n\n\n \"Good-by, Ric. Wish me luck. Close up the lab for me, will you?\"\n\n\n Alcala took the hand numbly and mumbled something, turned back to the\n cages and stared blindly at the mice. Drake's brisk footsteps clattered\n down the stairs.\nAnother step forward for the human race.\n\n\n God knew what wonders for the race were in that box. Perhaps something\n for nerve construction, something for the mind—the last and most\n important step. He should have asked." ], [ "Camba finished lighting the cigar and dropped the match into an\n ash-tray. \"Perhaps you know John Delgados?\" He leaned back into the\n shadowy corner of the booth.\n\n\n Johnny! Out of all the people in the world, how could the government be\n interested in him? Alcala tried to sound casual. \"An associate of mine.\n A friend.\"\n\n\n \"I would like to contact the gentleman.\" The request was completely\n unforceful, undemanding. \"I called, but he was not at home. Could you\n tell me where he might be?\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Senor Camba, but I cannot say. He could be on a business\n trip.\" Alcala was feeling increasingly nervous. Actually, Johnny was\n working at his laboratory.\n\n\n \"What do you know of his activities?\" Camba asked.", "\"A biochemist.\" Alcala tried to see past the meditative mask of the\n thin dark face. \"He makes small job-lots of chemical compounds. Special\n bug spray for sale to experimental plantations, hormone spray for\n fruits, that sort of thing. Sometimes, when he collects some money\n ahead, he does research.\"\n\n\n Camba waited, and his silence became a question. Alcala spoke\n reluctantly, anger rising in him. \"Oh, it's genuine research. He has\n some patents and publications to his credit. You can confirm that if\n you choose.\" He was unable to keep the hostility out of his voice.\n\n\n A waiter came and placed steaming platters of food on the table. Camba\n waited until he was gone. \"You know him well, I presume. Is he sane?\"", "\"Three generations back, this pressure would have gone right through\n the hand.\" He took away the blade and there was only a very tiny cut.\n Putting the knife away, he brought out his lighter. The blue flame\n was steady and hot. Alcala held it close to the dashboard and put his\n finger directly over it, counting patiently, \"One, two, three, four,\n five—\" He pulled the lighter back, snapping it shut.\n\"Three generations ago, a man couldn't have held a finger over that\n flame for more than a tenth part of that count. Doesn't all this prove\n something to you?\"\n\n\n The 'copter was hovering above Alcala's house. Camba lowered it to\n the ground and opened the door before answering. \"It proves only that\n a good and worthy man will cut and burn his hand for an unworthy\n friendship. Good night.\"", "\"Lives will be saved in the long run,\" Alcala said obstinately.\n \"Individual deaths are not important in the long run.\"\n\n\n \"That is hardly the philosophy for a doctor, is it?\" asked Camba with\n open irony, taking the bill and rising.\n\n\n They went out of the restaurant in silence. Camba's 'copter stood at\n the curb.\n\n\n \"Would you care for a lift home, Doctor Alcala?\" The offer was made\n with the utmost suavity.\n\n\n Alcala hesitated fractionally. \"Why, yes, thank you.\" It would not do\n to give the investigator any reason for suspicion by refusing.\n\n\n As the 'copter lifted into the air, Camba spoke with a more friendly\n note in his voice, as if he humored a child. \"Come, Alcala, you're a\n doctor dedicated to saving lives. How can you find sympathy for a\n murderer?\"", "\"Other men are old, yes. Those who survived the two successive plagues,\n were unusually durable.\" Camba finished and pushed back his plate.\n \"There is no crime in being long-lived, surely. But he has changed his\n name five times!\"\n\n\n \"That proves nothing. Whatever his reasons for changing his name, it\n doesn't prove that he is Syndrome Johnny any more than it proves he\n is the cow that jumped over the moon. Syndrome Johnny is a myth, a\n figment of mob delirium.\"\nAs he said it, he knew it was not true. A Federation investigator would\n not be on a wild goose chase.\n\n\n The plates were taken away and cups of steaming black coffee put\n between them. He would have to warn Johnny. It was strange how well you\n could know a man as well as he knew Johnny, firmly enough to believe\n that, despite evidence, everything the man did was right.\n\n\n \"Why must it be a myth?\" Camba asked softly.", "As Alcala focused on the question, one errant whimsical thought\n suddenly flitted through the back of his mind. In red advertising\n letters: TRY OUR NEW MODEL RUST-PROOF, WATERPROOF, HEAT & SCALD\n RESISTANT, STRONG—EXTRA-LONG-WEARING HUMAN BEING!\n\n\n He laughed inwardly and finally answered: \"Friendship. Mutual interest\n in high ion colloidal suspensions and complex synthesis.\" Impatience\n suddenly mastered him. \"Exactly what is it you wish to know, Senor?\n Perhaps I could inform you if I knew the reasons for your interest.\"\n\n\n Camba chose a piece of salad with great care. \"We have reason to\n believe that he is Syndrome Johnny.\"", "Camba smiled and took out a small notebook. \"The disease is connected\n with silicones, you say? The original name of John Delgados was John\n Osborne Drake. His father was Osborne Drake, a chemist at Dow Corning,\n who was sentenced to the electric chair in 1967 for unauthorized\n bacterial experiments which resulted in an accidental epidemic and\n eight deaths. Dow Corning was the first major manufactury of silicones\n in America, though not connected in any way with Osborne Drake's\n criminal experiments. It links together, does it not?\"\n\n\n \"It is not a disease, it is strength!\" Alcala insisted doggedly.\nThe small investigator looked up from his notebook and his smile was\n an unnatural thing, a baring of teeth. \"Half the world died of this\n strength, Senor. If you will not think of the men and women, think of\n the children. Millions of children died!\"\n\n\n The waiter brought the bill, dropping it on the table between them.", "Disconcerted, Alcala watched the 'copter lift away into the night,\n then, turning, saw that the lights were still on in the laboratory.\n Camba might have deduced something from that, if he knew that Nita and\n the girl were not supposed to be home.\n\n\n Alcala hurried in.\n\n\n Johnny hadn't left yet. He was sitting at Alcala's desk with his feet\n on the wastebasket, the way Alcala often liked to sit, reading a\n technical journal. He looked up, smiling. For a moment Alcala saw him\n with the new clarity of a stranger. The lean, weathered face; brown\n eyes with smile deltas at the corners; wide shoulders; steady, big\n hands holding the magazine—solid, able, and ruthless enough to see\n what had to be done, and do it.\n\n\n \"I was waiting for you, Ric.\"", "Alcala waited for the words to clarify. After a moment, it ceased to\n be childish babble and became increasingly shocking. He remembered the\n first time he had met John Delgados, the smile, the strong handclasp.\n \"Call me Johnny,\" he had said. It had seemed no more than a nickname.\n\n\n The investigator was watching his expression with bright brown eyes.\n\n\n Johnny, yes ... but not Syndrome Johnny. He tried to think of some\n quick refutation. \"The whole thing is preposterous, Senor Camba. The\n myth of Syndrome Plague Johnny started about a century ago.\"", "The question was another shock. Alcala thought carefully, for any man\n might be insane in secret. \"Yes, so far as I know.\" He turned his\n attention to the steak, but first took three very large capsules from a\n bottle in his pocket.\n\n\n \"I would not expect that a doctor would need to take pills,\" Camba\n remarked with friendly mockery.\n\n\n \"I don't need them,\" Alcala explained. \"Mixed silicones. I'm guinea\n pigging.\"\n\n\n \"Can't such things be left to the guinea pigs?\" Camba asked, watching\n with revulsion as Alcala uncapped the second bottle and sprinkled a\n layer of gray powder over his steak.\n\n\n \"Guinea pigs have no assimilation of silicones; only man has that.\"", "Alcala was tired, but there was nothing to do at home. Nita was at the\n health resort and Johnny had borrowed all his laboratory space for a\n special synthesis of some sort, and probably would be too busy even\n to talk. Interest stirred in him. This was a Federation investigator\n calling; the man's work was probably important. \"Tonight, if that's\n convenient. I'll be off duty in five minutes.\"\n\n\n Thirty minutes later they were ordering in a small cantina down the\n street from the hospital.\n\n\n Julio Camba, Federation Investigator, was a slender, dark man with\n sharp, glinting eyes. He spoke with a happy theatrical flourish.\n\n\n \"Order what you choose, Senor. We're on my expense account. The\n resources of the Federated States of all The Americas stand behind your\n menu.\"\n\n\n Alcala smiled. \"I wouldn't want to add to the national debt.\"", "\"An improvement on life?\" Camba laughed and nodded, but there were\n bitterness and anger burning behind the small man's smile. \"People\n can be improved to death by the millions. Yes, yes, go on, Senor. You\n fascinate me.\"\n\n\n \"We are stronger,\" Alcala told him. \"We are changed chemically. The\n race has been improved!\"\n\n\n \"Come, Doctor Alcala,\" Camba said with a sneering merriment, \"the\n Syndrome Plagues have come and they have gone. Where is this change?\"\n\n\n Alcala tried to express it clearly. \"We are stronger. Potentially, we\n are tremendously stronger. But we of this generation are still weak\n and ill, as our parents were, from the shock of the change. And we\n need silicone feeding; we have not adjusted yet. Our illness masks our\n strength.\" He thought of what that strength would be!", "\"Yes, of course. I should have remembered from your famous papers,\nThe\n Need Of Trace Silicon In Human Diet\nand\nSilicon Deficiency Diseases\n.\"\nObviously Camba had done considerable investigating of Alcala before\n approaching him. He had even given the titles of the research papers\n correctly. Alcala's wariness increased.\n\n\n \"What is the purpose of the experiment this time?\" asked the small dark\n Federation agent genially.\n\n\n \"To determine the safe limits of silicon consumption and if there are\n any dangers in an overdose.\"\n\n\n \"How do you determine that? By dropping dead?\"", "Ricardo Alcala pushed the plunger in gently, then carefully withdrew\n the hypodermic needle from the little girl's arm. \"There you are,\n Cosita,\" he said, smiling and rising from the chair beside the white\n bed.\n\n\n \"Will that make me better, Doctor?\" she piped feebly.\n\n\n He patted her hand. \"Be a good girl and you will be well tomorrow.\" He\n walked out into the hospital corridor to where the desk nurse held out\n a phone.\n\n\n \"Alcala speaking.\"\n\n\n The voice was unfamiliar. \"My deepest apologies for interrupting your\n work, Doctor. At this late hour I'm afraid I assumed you would be at\n home. The name is Camba, Federation Investigator on a health case. I\n would like to consult you.\"", "Tapping his fingers gently, his heavy fingers ... the answer was\n dreamily fantastic.\nI'm turning into silicon plastic myself\n, he\n thought. But how, why? He had not bothered to be curious before, but\n the question had always been—what were supposedly insoluble silicons\n doing assimilating into the human body at all?\n\n\n Several moments passed. He smoothed back his hair with his oddly heavy\n hand before picking up his fork again.\n\n\n \"I'm turning into plastic,\" he told Camba.\n\n\n \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing. A joke.\"\n\n\n Camba was turning into plastic, too. Everyone was. But the effect was\n accumulating slowly, by generations.\nCamba lay down his knife and started in again. \"What connections have\n you had with John Delgados?\"\nConcentrate on the immediate situation.\nAlcala and Johnny were\n obviously in danger of some sort of mistaken arrest and interrogation.", "\"It's ridiculous!\" Alcala protested. \"Why would any man—\" His voice\n cut off as unrelated facts fell into a pattern. He sat for a moment,\n thinking intensely, seeing the century of plague as something he had\n never dreamed....\n\n\n A price.\n\n\n Not too high a price in the long run, considering what was purchased.\n Of course, the great change over into silicon catalysis would be a\n shock and require adjustment and, of course, the change must be made in\n several easy stages—and those who could not adjust would die.\n\n\n \"Go on, Doctor,\" Camba urged softly. \"'\nWhy\nwould any man—'\"\n\n\n He tried to find a way of explaining which would not seem to have any\n relationship to John Delgados. \"It has been recently discovered\"—but\n he did not say\nhow\nrecently—\"that the disease of Syndrome Plague\n was not a disease. It is an improvement.\" He had spoken clumsily.", "\"It seems a pity we can't even find out who the gentleman is,\" the\n Crimes Department head murmured, looking at the thumbprint wistfully.\n \"No crime, no records. No records, no evidence. No evidence, no proof\n of crime. Therefore, we must manufacture a small crime. He was attacked\n and he must have defended himself. Someone may have been hurt in the\n process.\" He pushed a button. \"Do you think if I send a man down there,\n he could persuade one of the mob to swear out a complaint?\"\n\n\n \"That's a rhetorical question,\" said the psychologist, trying to work\n out an uncertain correlation in his reports. \"With that sort of mob\n hysteria, the town would probably give you an affidavit of witchcraft.\"\n\"Phone for you, Doctor Alcala.\" The nurse was crisp but quiet, smiling\n down at the little girl before vanishing again.", "\"Not at all, Senor. The Federated States are only too happy thus to\n express a fraction of their gratitude by adding a touch of luxury to\n the otherwise barren and self-sacrificing life of a scientist.\"\n\n\n \"You shame me,\" Alcala said dryly. It was true that he needed\n every spare penny for the health of Nita and the child, and for the\n laboratory. A penny saved from being spent on nourishment was a penny\n earned. He picked up the menu again and ordered steak.\n\n\n The investigator lit a cigar, asking casually: \"Do you know John\n Osborne Drake?\"\nAlcala searched his memory. \"No. I'm sorry....\" Then he felt for the\n first time how closely he was being watched, and knew how carefully his\n reaction and the tone of his voice had been analyzed. The interview was\n dangerous. For some reason, he was suspected of something.", "Alcala sat in the dark, looking through the windshield down at the\n bright street falling away below. \"I'm not a practicing medico; only\n one night a week do I come to the hospital. I'm a research man. I don't\n try to save individual lives. I'm dedicated to improving the average\n life, the average health. Can you understand that? Individuals may be\n sick and individuals may die, but the average lives on. And if the\n average is better, then I'm satisfied.\"\n\n\n The 'copter flew on. There was no answer.\n\n\n \"I'm not good with words,\" said Alcala. Then, taking out his pen-knife\n and unfolding it, he said, \"Watch!\" He put his index finger on the\n altimeter dial, where there was light, and pressed the blade against\n the flesh between his finger and his thumb. He increased the pressure\n until the flesh stood out white on either side of the blade, bending,\n but not cut.", "\"Uh-huh what?\" asked his superior, who was reading a newspaper with his\n feet up on the desk.\n\n\n \"Remember the myth, of Syndrome Johnny?\"\n\n\n \"Ghost of Syndrome Plague. Si, what of it?\"\n\n\n \"Titaquahapahel, Peru, population nine hundred, sent in a claim that he\n turned up there and they almost caught him. Crime Statistics rerouted\n the report to Mass Phenomena, of course. Mass Phenomena blew a tube and\n sent their folder on Syndrome Johnny over here. Every report they ever\n had on him for ninety years back! A memo came with it.\" He handed the\n memo over.\n\n\n The man behind the desk looked at it. It was a small graph and some\n mathematical symbols. \"What is it?\"" ], [ "\"It means,\" said the psychologist, smiling dryly, \"that every crazy\n report about our ghost has points of similarity to every other crazy\n report. The whole business of Syndrome Johnny has been in their 'funny\n coincidence' file for twenty years. This time the suspect hits the\n averaged description of Johnny too closely: A solid-looking man,\n unusual number of visible minor scars, and a disturbing habit of\n bending his fingers at the first-joint knuckles when he is thinking.\n The coincidence has gotten too damn funny. There's a chance we've been\n passing up a crime.\"\n\n\n \"An extensive crime,\" said the man at the desk softly. He reached\n for the folder. \"Yes, a considerable quantity of murder.\" He leafed\n through the folder and then thought a while, looking at the most recent\n reports. Thinking was what he was paid for, and he earned his excellent\n salary.", "\"Uh-huh what?\" asked his superior, who was reading a newspaper with his\n feet up on the desk.\n\n\n \"Remember the myth, of Syndrome Johnny?\"\n\n\n \"Ghost of Syndrome Plague. Si, what of it?\"\n\n\n \"Titaquahapahel, Peru, population nine hundred, sent in a claim that he\n turned up there and they almost caught him. Crime Statistics rerouted\n the report to Mass Phenomena, of course. Mass Phenomena blew a tube and\n sent their folder on Syndrome Johnny over here. Every report they ever\n had on him for ninety years back! A memo came with it.\" He handed the\n memo over.\n\n\n The man behind the desk looked at it. It was a small graph and some\n mathematical symbols. \"What is it?\"", "\"Sure. Syndrome Johnny. They use that myth in psychology class as a\n typical example of mass hysteria. When a city was nervous and expecting\n the plague to reach them, some superstitious fool would imagine he saw\n Syndrome Johnny and the population would panic. Symbol for Death or\n some such thing. People imagined they saw him in every corner of the\n world. Simultaneously, of course.\"\n\n\n It was a bright morning and they were at a window which looked out\n across green rolling fields to a towering glass-brick building in the\n distance.\n\n\n The student who had gone back to his paper suddenly looked up again.\n \"Some Peruvians here claim they saw Syndrome Johnny—\"\n\n\n \"Idiotic superstition! You'd think it would have died down when the\n plague died.\"\n\n\n The other grinned. \"The plague didn't die.\" He folded his newspaper\n slowly, obviously advancing an opening for a debate.", "Running, Alcala went down the long half-lit stairs, out the back door\n and along the dark path toward the place where Johnny's 'copter had\n been parked.\n\n\n A light shone through the leaves. It was still there.\n\n\n \"Johnny!\"\n\n\n John Osborne Drake was putting his suitcase into the rear of the\n 'copter.\n\n\n \"What is it, Ric?\" he asked in a friendly voice without turning.\nIt would be impossible to ask him to change his mind.\nAlcala found\n a rock, raised it behind Syndrome Johnny's back. \"I know I'm being\n anti-social,\" he said regretfully, and then threw the rock away.\n\n\n His fist was enough like stone to crush a skull.", "As Alcala focused on the question, one errant whimsical thought\n suddenly flitted through the back of his mind. In red advertising\n letters: TRY OUR NEW MODEL RUST-PROOF, WATERPROOF, HEAT & SCALD\n RESISTANT, STRONG—EXTRA-LONG-WEARING HUMAN BEING!\n\n\n He laughed inwardly and finally answered: \"Friendship. Mutual interest\n in high ion colloidal suspensions and complex synthesis.\" Impatience\n suddenly mastered him. \"Exactly what is it you wish to know, Senor?\n Perhaps I could inform you if I knew the reasons for your interest.\"\n\n\n Camba chose a piece of salad with great care. \"We have reason to\n believe that he is Syndrome Johnny.\"", "\"Other men are old, yes. Those who survived the two successive plagues,\n were unusually durable.\" Camba finished and pushed back his plate.\n \"There is no crime in being long-lived, surely. But he has changed his\n name five times!\"\n\n\n \"That proves nothing. Whatever his reasons for changing his name, it\n doesn't prove that he is Syndrome Johnny any more than it proves he\n is the cow that jumped over the moon. Syndrome Johnny is a myth, a\n figment of mob delirium.\"\nAs he said it, he knew it was not true. A Federation investigator would\n not be on a wild goose chase.\n\n\n The plates were taken away and cups of steaming black coffee put\n between them. He would have to warn Johnny. It was strange how well you\n could know a man as well as he knew Johnny, firmly enough to believe\n that, despite evidence, everything the man did was right.\n\n\n \"Why must it be a myth?\" Camba asked softly.", "\"The Feds are after you.\" Ricardo Alcala had been running. He found he\n was panting and his heart was pounding.\n\n\n Delgados' smile did not change. \"It's all right, Ric. Everything's\n done. I can leave any time now.\" He indicated a square metal box\n standing in a corner. \"There's the stuff.\"\n\n\n What stuff? The product Johnny had been working on? \"You haven't time\n for that now, Johnny. You can't sell it. They'd watch for anyone of\n your description selling chemicals. Let me loan you some money.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks.\" Johnny was smiling oddly. \"Everything's set. I won't need it.\n How close are they to finding me?\"\n\n\n \"They don't know where you're staying.\" Alcala leaned on the desk edge\n and put out his hand. \"They tell me you're Syndrome Johnny.\"", "Alcala waited for the words to clarify. After a moment, it ceased to\n be childish babble and became increasingly shocking. He remembered the\n first time he had met John Delgados, the smile, the strong handclasp.\n \"Call me Johnny,\" he had said. It had seemed no more than a nickname.\n\n\n The investigator was watching his expression with bright brown eyes.\n\n\n Johnny, yes ... but not Syndrome Johnny. He tried to think of some\n quick refutation. \"The whole thing is preposterous, Senor Camba. The\n myth of Syndrome Plague Johnny started about a century ago.\"", "Syndrome Johnny\nBY CHARLES DYE\n\n\n Illustrated by EMSH\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe plagues that struck mankind could be attributed\n\n to one man. But was he fiend ... or savior?\nThe blood was added to a pool of other blood, mixed, centrifuged,\n separated to plasma and corpuscles, irradiated slightly, pasteurized\n slightly, frozen, evaporated, and finally banked. Some of the plasma\n was used immediately for a woman who had bled too much in childbirth.\n\n\n She died.", "Johnny smiled tiredly and rested his head on one hand. \"He had to\n remake me chemically, you know. How could I spread change without\n being changed myself? I couldn't have two generations to adapt to\n it naturally like you, Ric. It had to be done artificially. It took\n years. You understand? I'm a community, a construction. The cells that\n carry on the silicon metabolism in me are not human. Dad adapted them\n for the purpose. I helped, but I can't remember any longer how it was\n done. I think when I've been badly damaged, organization scatters to\n the separate cells in my body. They can survive better that way, and\n they have powers of regrouping and healing. But memory can't be pasted\n together again or regrown.\"", "Disconcerted, Alcala watched the 'copter lift away into the night,\n then, turning, saw that the lights were still on in the laboratory.\n Camba might have deduced something from that, if he knew that Nita and\n the girl were not supposed to be home.\n\n\n Alcala hurried in.\n\n\n Johnny hadn't left yet. He was sitting at Alcala's desk with his feet\n on the wastebasket, the way Alcala often liked to sit, reading a\n technical journal. He looked up, smiling. For a moment Alcala saw him\n with the new clarity of a stranger. The lean, weathered face; brown\n eyes with smile deltas at the corners; wide shoulders; steady, big\n hands holding the magazine—solid, able, and ruthless enough to see\n what had to be done, and do it.\n\n\n \"I was waiting for you, Ric.\"", "John Drake rose and looked around the laboratory with something like\n triumph. \"They're too late. I made it, Ric. There's the catalyst\n cooling over there. This is the last step. I don't think I'll survive\n this plague, but I'll last long enough to set it going for the finish.\n The police won't stop me until it's too late.\"\nAnother plague!\n\n\n The last one had been before Alcala was born. He had not thought that\n Johnny would start another. It was a shock.\n\n\n Alcala walked over to the cage where he kept his white mice and looked\n in, trying to sort out his feelings. The white mice looked back\n with beady bright eyes, caged, not knowing they were waiting to be\n experimented upon.", "\"It's ridiculous!\" Alcala protested. \"Why would any man—\" His voice\n cut off as unrelated facts fell into a pattern. He sat for a moment,\n thinking intensely, seeing the century of plague as something he had\n never dreamed....\n\n\n A price.\n\n\n Not too high a price in the long run, considering what was purchased.\n Of course, the great change over into silicon catalysis would be a\n shock and require adjustment and, of course, the change must be made in\n several easy stages—and those who could not adjust would die.\n\n\n \"Go on, Doctor,\" Camba urged softly. \"'\nWhy\nwould any man—'\"\n\n\n He tried to find a way of explaining which would not seem to have any\n relationship to John Delgados. \"It has been recently discovered\"—but\n he did not say\nhow\nrecently—\"that the disease of Syndrome Plague\n was not a disease. It is an improvement.\" He had spoken clumsily.", "\"An improvement on life?\" Camba laughed and nodded, but there were\n bitterness and anger burning behind the small man's smile. \"People\n can be improved to death by the millions. Yes, yes, go on, Senor. You\n fascinate me.\"\n\n\n \"We are stronger,\" Alcala told him. \"We are changed chemically. The\n race has been improved!\"\n\n\n \"Come, Doctor Alcala,\" Camba said with a sneering merriment, \"the\n Syndrome Plagues have come and they have gone. Where is this change?\"\n\n\n Alcala tried to express it clearly. \"We are stronger. Potentially, we\n are tremendously stronger. But we of this generation are still weak\n and ill, as our parents were, from the shock of the change. And we\n need silicone feeding; we have not adjusted yet. Our illness masks our\n strength.\" He thought of what that strength would be!", "\"I thought you'd figured that one out.\" Johnny shook his hand formally.\n \"The name is John Osborne Drake. You aren't horrified?\"", "Camba finished lighting the cigar and dropped the match into an\n ash-tray. \"Perhaps you know John Delgados?\" He leaned back into the\n shadowy corner of the booth.\n\n\n Johnny! Out of all the people in the world, how could the government be\n interested in him? Alcala tried to sound casual. \"An associate of mine.\n A friend.\"\n\n\n \"I would like to contact the gentleman.\" The request was completely\n unforceful, undemanding. \"I called, but he was not at home. Could you\n tell me where he might be?\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Senor Camba, but I cannot say. He could be on a business\n trip.\" Alcala was feeling increasingly nervous. Actually, Johnny was\n working at his laboratory.\n\n\n \"What do you know of his activities?\" Camba asked.", "\"No.\" Alcala knew that he was shaking hands with a man who would be\n thanked down all the successive generations of mankind. He noticed\n again the odd white web-work of scars on the back of Johnny's hand. He\n indicated them as casually as he could. \"Where did you pick those up?\"\nJohn Drake glanced at his hand. \"I don't know, Ric. Truthfully.\n I've had my brains beaten in too often to remember much any more.\n Unimportant. There are instructions outlining plans and methods filed\n in safety deposit boxes in almost every big city in the world. Always\n the same typing, always the same instructions. I can't remember who\n typed them, myself or my father, but I must have been expected to\n forget or they wouldn't be there. Up to eleven, my memory is all right,\n but after Dad started to remake me, everything gets fuzzy.\"\n\n\n \"After he did\nwhat\n?\"", "\"Just too many people per acre,\" he said. \"All our work at improving\n production ... just one jump ahead of their rising population, one jump\n ahead of famine. Sometimes I wish to God there would be another plague\n to give us a breathing spell and a fair chance to get things organized.\"\n\n\n He went back to work and added another figure.\n\n\n Two months later, he was one of the first victims of the second plague.\nIn the dining hall of a university, a biochemical student glanced up\n from his paper to his breakfast companion. \"You remember Johnny, the\n mythical carrier that they told about during the first and second\n epidemics of Syndrome Plague?\"", "Camba smiled and took out a small notebook. \"The disease is connected\n with silicones, you say? The original name of John Delgados was John\n Osborne Drake. His father was Osborne Drake, a chemist at Dow Corning,\n who was sentenced to the electric chair in 1967 for unauthorized\n bacterial experiments which resulted in an accidental epidemic and\n eight deaths. Dow Corning was the first major manufactury of silicones\n in America, though not connected in any way with Osborne Drake's\n criminal experiments. It links together, does it not?\"\n\n\n \"It is not a disease, it is strength!\" Alcala insisted doggedly.\nThe small investigator looked up from his notebook and his smile was\n an unnatural thing, a baring of teeth. \"Half the world died of this\n strength, Senor. If you will not think of the men and women, think of\n the children. Millions of children died!\"\n\n\n The waiter brought the bill, dropping it on the table between them.", "Others received plasma and did not die. But their symptoms changed,\n including a syndrome of multiple endocrine unbalance, eccentricities of\n appetite and digestion, and a general pattern of emotional disturbance.\n\n\n An alert hospital administrator investigated the mortality rise and\n narrowed it to a question of who had donated blood the week before.\n After city residents were eliminated, there remained only the signed\n receipts and thumbprints of nine men. Nine healthy unregistered\n travelers poor enough to sell their blood for money, and among them a\n man who carried death in his veins. The nine thumbprints were broadcast\n to all police files and a search began.\n\n\n The effort was futile, for there were many victims who had sickened and\n grown partially well again without recognizing the strangeness of their\n illness." ], [ "Camba finished lighting the cigar and dropped the match into an\n ash-tray. \"Perhaps you know John Delgados?\" He leaned back into the\n shadowy corner of the booth.\n\n\n Johnny! Out of all the people in the world, how could the government be\n interested in him? Alcala tried to sound casual. \"An associate of mine.\n A friend.\"\n\n\n \"I would like to contact the gentleman.\" The request was completely\n unforceful, undemanding. \"I called, but he was not at home. Could you\n tell me where he might be?\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Senor Camba, but I cannot say. He could be on a business\n trip.\" Alcala was feeling increasingly nervous. Actually, Johnny was\n working at his laboratory.\n\n\n \"What do you know of his activities?\" Camba asked.", "As Alcala focused on the question, one errant whimsical thought\n suddenly flitted through the back of his mind. In red advertising\n letters: TRY OUR NEW MODEL RUST-PROOF, WATERPROOF, HEAT & SCALD\n RESISTANT, STRONG—EXTRA-LONG-WEARING HUMAN BEING!\n\n\n He laughed inwardly and finally answered: \"Friendship. Mutual interest\n in high ion colloidal suspensions and complex synthesis.\" Impatience\n suddenly mastered him. \"Exactly what is it you wish to know, Senor?\n Perhaps I could inform you if I knew the reasons for your interest.\"\n\n\n Camba chose a piece of salad with great care. \"We have reason to\n believe that he is Syndrome Johnny.\"", "Alcala was tired, but there was nothing to do at home. Nita was at the\n health resort and Johnny had borrowed all his laboratory space for a\n special synthesis of some sort, and probably would be too busy even\n to talk. Interest stirred in him. This was a Federation investigator\n calling; the man's work was probably important. \"Tonight, if that's\n convenient. I'll be off duty in five minutes.\"\n\n\n Thirty minutes later they were ordering in a small cantina down the\n street from the hospital.\n\n\n Julio Camba, Federation Investigator, was a slender, dark man with\n sharp, glinting eyes. He spoke with a happy theatrical flourish.\n\n\n \"Order what you choose, Senor. We're on my expense account. The\n resources of the Federated States of all The Americas stand behind your\n menu.\"\n\n\n Alcala smiled. \"I wouldn't want to add to the national debt.\"", "Alcala waited for the words to clarify. After a moment, it ceased to\n be childish babble and became increasingly shocking. He remembered the\n first time he had met John Delgados, the smile, the strong handclasp.\n \"Call me Johnny,\" he had said. It had seemed no more than a nickname.\n\n\n The investigator was watching his expression with bright brown eyes.\n\n\n Johnny, yes ... but not Syndrome Johnny. He tried to think of some\n quick refutation. \"The whole thing is preposterous, Senor Camba. The\n myth of Syndrome Plague Johnny started about a century ago.\"", "\"Lives will be saved in the long run,\" Alcala said obstinately.\n \"Individual deaths are not important in the long run.\"\n\n\n \"That is hardly the philosophy for a doctor, is it?\" asked Camba with\n open irony, taking the bill and rising.\n\n\n They went out of the restaurant in silence. Camba's 'copter stood at\n the curb.\n\n\n \"Would you care for a lift home, Doctor Alcala?\" The offer was made\n with the utmost suavity.\n\n\n Alcala hesitated fractionally. \"Why, yes, thank you.\" It would not do\n to give the investigator any reason for suspicion by refusing.\n\n\n As the 'copter lifted into the air, Camba spoke with a more friendly\n note in his voice, as if he humored a child. \"Come, Alcala, you're a\n doctor dedicated to saving lives. How can you find sympathy for a\n murderer?\"", "\"A biochemist.\" Alcala tried to see past the meditative mask of the\n thin dark face. \"He makes small job-lots of chemical compounds. Special\n bug spray for sale to experimental plantations, hormone spray for\n fruits, that sort of thing. Sometimes, when he collects some money\n ahead, he does research.\"\n\n\n Camba waited, and his silence became a question. Alcala spoke\n reluctantly, anger rising in him. \"Oh, it's genuine research. He has\n some patents and publications to his credit. You can confirm that if\n you choose.\" He was unable to keep the hostility out of his voice.\n\n\n A waiter came and placed steaming platters of food on the table. Camba\n waited until he was gone. \"You know him well, I presume. Is he sane?\"", "The question was another shock. Alcala thought carefully, for any man\n might be insane in secret. \"Yes, so far as I know.\" He turned his\n attention to the steak, but first took three very large capsules from a\n bottle in his pocket.\n\n\n \"I would not expect that a doctor would need to take pills,\" Camba\n remarked with friendly mockery.\n\n\n \"I don't need them,\" Alcala explained. \"Mixed silicones. I'm guinea\n pigging.\"\n\n\n \"Can't such things be left to the guinea pigs?\" Camba asked, watching\n with revulsion as Alcala uncapped the second bottle and sprinkled a\n layer of gray powder over his steak.\n\n\n \"Guinea pigs have no assimilation of silicones; only man has that.\"", "Disconcerted, Alcala watched the 'copter lift away into the night,\n then, turning, saw that the lights were still on in the laboratory.\n Camba might have deduced something from that, if he knew that Nita and\n the girl were not supposed to be home.\n\n\n Alcala hurried in.\n\n\n Johnny hadn't left yet. He was sitting at Alcala's desk with his feet\n on the wastebasket, the way Alcala often liked to sit, reading a\n technical journal. He looked up, smiling. For a moment Alcala saw him\n with the new clarity of a stranger. The lean, weathered face; brown\n eyes with smile deltas at the corners; wide shoulders; steady, big\n hands holding the magazine—solid, able, and ruthless enough to see\n what had to be done, and do it.\n\n\n \"I was waiting for you, Ric.\"", "Ricardo Alcala pushed the plunger in gently, then carefully withdrew\n the hypodermic needle from the little girl's arm. \"There you are,\n Cosita,\" he said, smiling and rising from the chair beside the white\n bed.\n\n\n \"Will that make me better, Doctor?\" she piped feebly.\n\n\n He patted her hand. \"Be a good girl and you will be well tomorrow.\" He\n walked out into the hospital corridor to where the desk nurse held out\n a phone.\n\n\n \"Alcala speaking.\"\n\n\n The voice was unfamiliar. \"My deepest apologies for interrupting your\n work, Doctor. At this late hour I'm afraid I assumed you would be at\n home. The name is Camba, Federation Investigator on a health case. I\n would like to consult you.\"", "\"Three generations back, this pressure would have gone right through\n the hand.\" He took away the blade and there was only a very tiny cut.\n Putting the knife away, he brought out his lighter. The blue flame\n was steady and hot. Alcala held it close to the dashboard and put his\n finger directly over it, counting patiently, \"One, two, three, four,\n five—\" He pulled the lighter back, snapping it shut.\n\"Three generations ago, a man couldn't have held a finger over that\n flame for more than a tenth part of that count. Doesn't all this prove\n something to you?\"\n\n\n The 'copter was hovering above Alcala's house. Camba lowered it to\n the ground and opened the door before answering. \"It proves only that\n a good and worthy man will cut and burn his hand for an unworthy\n friendship. Good night.\"", "\"Yes, of course. I should have remembered from your famous papers,\nThe\n Need Of Trace Silicon In Human Diet\nand\nSilicon Deficiency Diseases\n.\"\nObviously Camba had done considerable investigating of Alcala before\n approaching him. He had even given the titles of the research papers\n correctly. Alcala's wariness increased.\n\n\n \"What is the purpose of the experiment this time?\" asked the small dark\n Federation agent genially.\n\n\n \"To determine the safe limits of silicon consumption and if there are\n any dangers in an overdose.\"\n\n\n \"How do you determine that? By dropping dead?\"", "\"Not at all, Senor. The Federated States are only too happy thus to\n express a fraction of their gratitude by adding a touch of luxury to\n the otherwise barren and self-sacrificing life of a scientist.\"\n\n\n \"You shame me,\" Alcala said dryly. It was true that he needed\n every spare penny for the health of Nita and the child, and for the\n laboratory. A penny saved from being spent on nourishment was a penny\n earned. He picked up the menu again and ordered steak.\n\n\n The investigator lit a cigar, asking casually: \"Do you know John\n Osborne Drake?\"\nAlcala searched his memory. \"No. I'm sorry....\" Then he felt for the\n first time how closely he was being watched, and knew how carefully his\n reaction and the tone of his voice had been analyzed. The interview was\n dangerous. For some reason, he was suspected of something.", "\"It's ridiculous!\" Alcala protested. \"Why would any man—\" His voice\n cut off as unrelated facts fell into a pattern. He sat for a moment,\n thinking intensely, seeing the century of plague as something he had\n never dreamed....\n\n\n A price.\n\n\n Not too high a price in the long run, considering what was purchased.\n Of course, the great change over into silicon catalysis would be a\n shock and require adjustment and, of course, the change must be made in\n several easy stages—and those who could not adjust would die.\n\n\n \"Go on, Doctor,\" Camba urged softly. \"'\nWhy\nwould any man—'\"\n\n\n He tried to find a way of explaining which would not seem to have any\n relationship to John Delgados. \"It has been recently discovered\"—but\n he did not say\nhow\nrecently—\"that the disease of Syndrome Plague\n was not a disease. It is an improvement.\" He had spoken clumsily.", "Camba smiled and took out a small notebook. \"The disease is connected\n with silicones, you say? The original name of John Delgados was John\n Osborne Drake. His father was Osborne Drake, a chemist at Dow Corning,\n who was sentenced to the electric chair in 1967 for unauthorized\n bacterial experiments which resulted in an accidental epidemic and\n eight deaths. Dow Corning was the first major manufactury of silicones\n in America, though not connected in any way with Osborne Drake's\n criminal experiments. It links together, does it not?\"\n\n\n \"It is not a disease, it is strength!\" Alcala insisted doggedly.\nThe small investigator looked up from his notebook and his smile was\n an unnatural thing, a baring of teeth. \"Half the world died of this\n strength, Senor. If you will not think of the men and women, think of\n the children. Millions of children died!\"\n\n\n The waiter brought the bill, dropping it on the table between them.", "\"An improvement on life?\" Camba laughed and nodded, but there were\n bitterness and anger burning behind the small man's smile. \"People\n can be improved to death by the millions. Yes, yes, go on, Senor. You\n fascinate me.\"\n\n\n \"We are stronger,\" Alcala told him. \"We are changed chemically. The\n race has been improved!\"\n\n\n \"Come, Doctor Alcala,\" Camba said with a sneering merriment, \"the\n Syndrome Plagues have come and they have gone. Where is this change?\"\n\n\n Alcala tried to express it clearly. \"We are stronger. Potentially, we\n are tremendously stronger. But we of this generation are still weak\n and ill, as our parents were, from the shock of the change. And we\n need silicone feeding; we have not adjusted yet. Our illness masks our\n strength.\" He thought of what that strength would be!", "\"It seems a pity we can't even find out who the gentleman is,\" the\n Crimes Department head murmured, looking at the thumbprint wistfully.\n \"No crime, no records. No records, no evidence. No evidence, no proof\n of crime. Therefore, we must manufacture a small crime. He was attacked\n and he must have defended himself. Someone may have been hurt in the\n process.\" He pushed a button. \"Do you think if I send a man down there,\n he could persuade one of the mob to swear out a complaint?\"\n\n\n \"That's a rhetorical question,\" said the psychologist, trying to work\n out an uncertain correlation in his reports. \"With that sort of mob\n hysteria, the town would probably give you an affidavit of witchcraft.\"\n\"Phone for you, Doctor Alcala.\" The nurse was crisp but quiet, smiling\n down at the little girl before vanishing again.", "Tapping his fingers gently, his heavy fingers ... the answer was\n dreamily fantastic.\nI'm turning into silicon plastic myself\n, he\n thought. But how, why? He had not bothered to be curious before, but\n the question had always been—what were supposedly insoluble silicons\n doing assimilating into the human body at all?\n\n\n Several moments passed. He smoothed back his hair with his oddly heavy\n hand before picking up his fork again.\n\n\n \"I'm turning into plastic,\" he told Camba.\n\n\n \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing. A joke.\"\n\n\n Camba was turning into plastic, too. Everyone was. But the effect was\n accumulating slowly, by generations.\nCamba lay down his knife and started in again. \"What connections have\n you had with John Delgados?\"\nConcentrate on the immediate situation.\nAlcala and Johnny were\n obviously in danger of some sort of mistaken arrest and interrogation.", "Alcala sat in the dark, looking through the windshield down at the\n bright street falling away below. \"I'm not a practicing medico; only\n one night a week do I come to the hospital. I'm a research man. I don't\n try to save individual lives. I'm dedicated to improving the average\n life, the average health. Can you understand that? Individuals may be\n sick and individuals may die, but the average lives on. And if the\n average is better, then I'm satisfied.\"\n\n\n The 'copter flew on. There was no answer.\n\n\n \"I'm not good with words,\" said Alcala. Then, taking out his pen-knife\n and unfolding it, he said, \"Watch!\" He put his index finger on the\n altimeter dial, where there was light, and pressed the blade against\n the flesh between his finger and his thumb. He increased the pressure\n until the flesh stood out white on either side of the blade, bending,\n but not cut.", "\"No.\" Alcala knew that he was shaking hands with a man who would be\n thanked down all the successive generations of mankind. He noticed\n again the odd white web-work of scars on the back of Johnny's hand. He\n indicated them as casually as he could. \"Where did you pick those up?\"\nJohn Drake glanced at his hand. \"I don't know, Ric. Truthfully.\n I've had my brains beaten in too often to remember much any more.\n Unimportant. There are instructions outlining plans and methods filed\n in safety deposit boxes in almost every big city in the world. Always\n the same typing, always the same instructions. I can't remember who\n typed them, myself or my father, but I must have been expected to\n forget or they wouldn't be there. Up to eleven, my memory is all right,\n but after Dad started to remake me, everything gets fuzzy.\"\n\n\n \"After he did\nwhat\n?\"", "Running, Alcala went down the long half-lit stairs, out the back door\n and along the dark path toward the place where Johnny's 'copter had\n been parked.\n\n\n A light shone through the leaves. It was still there.\n\n\n \"Johnny!\"\n\n\n John Osborne Drake was putting his suitcase into the rear of the\n 'copter.\n\n\n \"What is it, Ric?\" he asked in a friendly voice without turning.\nIt would be impossible to ask him to change his mind.\nAlcala found\n a rock, raised it behind Syndrome Johnny's back. \"I know I'm being\n anti-social,\" he said regretfully, and then threw the rock away.\n\n\n His fist was enough like stone to crush a skull." ], [ "\"Three generations back, this pressure would have gone right through\n the hand.\" He took away the blade and there was only a very tiny cut.\n Putting the knife away, he brought out his lighter. The blue flame\n was steady and hot. Alcala held it close to the dashboard and put his\n finger directly over it, counting patiently, \"One, two, three, four,\n five—\" He pulled the lighter back, snapping it shut.\n\"Three generations ago, a man couldn't have held a finger over that\n flame for more than a tenth part of that count. Doesn't all this prove\n something to you?\"\n\n\n The 'copter was hovering above Alcala's house. Camba lowered it to\n the ground and opened the door before answering. \"It proves only that\n a good and worthy man will cut and burn his hand for an unworthy\n friendship. Good night.\"", "There came at last a pressure that was a thought emerging from the\n depth of intuition.\nDoctor Ricardo Alcala will die in the next plague,\n he and his ill wife Nita and his ill little girl.... And the name of\n Alcala will die forever as a weak strain blotted from the bloodstream\n of the race....\nHe'd find out what was in the box by dying of it!\n\n\n He tried to reason it out, but only could remember that Nita, already\n sickly, would have no chance. And Alcala's family genes, in attempting\n to adapt to the previous steps, had become almost sterile. It had been\n difficult having children. The next step would mean complete sterility.\n The name of Alcala would die. The future might be wonderful, but it\n would not be\nhis\nfuture!\n\n\n \"Johnny!\" he called suddenly, something like an icy lump hardening in\n his chest. How long had it been since Johnny had left?", "\"Lives will be saved in the long run,\" Alcala said obstinately.\n \"Individual deaths are not important in the long run.\"\n\n\n \"That is hardly the philosophy for a doctor, is it?\" asked Camba with\n open irony, taking the bill and rising.\n\n\n They went out of the restaurant in silence. Camba's 'copter stood at\n the curb.\n\n\n \"Would you care for a lift home, Doctor Alcala?\" The offer was made\n with the utmost suavity.\n\n\n Alcala hesitated fractionally. \"Why, yes, thank you.\" It would not do\n to give the investigator any reason for suspicion by refusing.\n\n\n As the 'copter lifted into the air, Camba spoke with a more friendly\n note in his voice, as if he humored a child. \"Come, Alcala, you're a\n doctor dedicated to saving lives. How can you find sympathy for a\n murderer?\"", "Alcala sat in the dark, looking through the windshield down at the\n bright street falling away below. \"I'm not a practicing medico; only\n one night a week do I come to the hospital. I'm a research man. I don't\n try to save individual lives. I'm dedicated to improving the average\n life, the average health. Can you understand that? Individuals may be\n sick and individuals may die, but the average lives on. And if the\n average is better, then I'm satisfied.\"\n\n\n The 'copter flew on. There was no answer.\n\n\n \"I'm not good with words,\" said Alcala. Then, taking out his pen-knife\n and unfolding it, he said, \"Watch!\" He put his index finger on the\n altimeter dial, where there was light, and pressed the blade against\n the flesh between his finger and his thumb. He increased the pressure\n until the flesh stood out white on either side of the blade, bending,\n but not cut.", "John Drake rose and looked around the laboratory with something like\n triumph. \"They're too late. I made it, Ric. There's the catalyst\n cooling over there. This is the last step. I don't think I'll survive\n this plague, but I'll last long enough to set it going for the finish.\n The police won't stop me until it's too late.\"\nAnother plague!\n\n\n The last one had been before Alcala was born. He had not thought that\n Johnny would start another. It was a shock.\n\n\n Alcala walked over to the cage where he kept his white mice and looked\n in, trying to sort out his feelings. The white mice looked back\n with beady bright eyes, caged, not knowing they were waiting to be\n experimented upon.", "\"Just too many people per acre,\" he said. \"All our work at improving\n production ... just one jump ahead of their rising population, one jump\n ahead of famine. Sometimes I wish to God there would be another plague\n to give us a breathing spell and a fair chance to get things organized.\"\n\n\n He went back to work and added another figure.\n\n\n Two months later, he was one of the first victims of the second plague.\nIn the dining hall of a university, a biochemical student glanced up\n from his paper to his breakfast companion. \"You remember Johnny, the\n mythical carrier that they told about during the first and second\n epidemics of Syndrome Plague?\"", "Others received plasma and did not die. But their symptoms changed,\n including a syndrome of multiple endocrine unbalance, eccentricities of\n appetite and digestion, and a general pattern of emotional disturbance.\n\n\n An alert hospital administrator investigated the mortality rise and\n narrowed it to a question of who had donated blood the week before.\n After city residents were eliminated, there remained only the signed\n receipts and thumbprints of nine men. Nine healthy unregistered\n travelers poor enough to sell their blood for money, and among them a\n man who carried death in his veins. The nine thumbprints were broadcast\n to all police files and a search began.\n\n\n The effort was futile, for there were many victims who had sickened and\n grown partially well again without recognizing the strangeness of their\n illness.", "He could be right. Perhaps the test should be stopped. Every day, with\n growing uneasiness, Alcala took his dose of silicon compound, and every\n day, the chemical seemed to be absorbed completely—not released or\n excreted—in a way that was unpleasantly reminiscent of the way arsenic\n accumulated without evident damage, then killed abruptly without\n warning.\nAlready, this evening, he had noticed that there was something faulty\n about his coordination and weight and surface sense. The restaurant\n door had swung back with a curious lightness, and the hollow metal\n handle had had a curious softness under his fingers. Something merely\n going wrong with the sensitivity of his fingers—?\n\n\n He tapped his fingertips on the heavy indestructible silicone plastic\n table top. There was a feeling of heaviness in his hands, and a feeling\n of faint rubbery\ngive\nin the table.", "\"Sure. Syndrome Johnny. They use that myth in psychology class as a\n typical example of mass hysteria. When a city was nervous and expecting\n the plague to reach them, some superstitious fool would imagine he saw\n Syndrome Johnny and the population would panic. Symbol for Death or\n some such thing. People imagined they saw him in every corner of the\n world. Simultaneously, of course.\"\n\n\n It was a bright morning and they were at a window which looked out\n across green rolling fields to a towering glass-brick building in the\n distance.\n\n\n The student who had gone back to his paper suddenly looked up again.\n \"Some Peruvians here claim they saw Syndrome Johnny—\"\n\n\n \"Idiotic superstition! You'd think it would have died down when the\n plague died.\"\n\n\n The other grinned. \"The plague didn't die.\" He folded his newspaper\n slowly, obviously advancing an opening for a debate.", "A timer clicked and John Delgados-Drake became all rapid efficient\n activity, moving from valve to valve. It lasted a half minute or less,\n then Drake had finished stripping off the lab whites to his street\n clothes. He picked up the square metal box containing the stuff he had\n made, tucked it under his arm and held out a solid hand again to Alcala.\n\n\n \"Good-by, Ric. Wish me luck. Close up the lab for me, will you?\"\n\n\n Alcala took the hand numbly and mumbled something, turned back to the\n cages and stared blindly at the mice. Drake's brisk footsteps clattered\n down the stairs.\nAnother step forward for the human race.\n\n\n God knew what wonders for the race were in that box. Perhaps something\n for nerve construction, something for the mind—the last and most\n important step. He should have asked.", "\"It seems a pity we can't even find out who the gentleman is,\" the\n Crimes Department head murmured, looking at the thumbprint wistfully.\n \"No crime, no records. No records, no evidence. No evidence, no proof\n of crime. Therefore, we must manufacture a small crime. He was attacked\n and he must have defended himself. Someone may have been hurt in the\n process.\" He pushed a button. \"Do you think if I send a man down there,\n he could persuade one of the mob to swear out a complaint?\"\n\n\n \"That's a rhetorical question,\" said the psychologist, trying to work\n out an uncertain correlation in his reports. \"With that sort of mob\n hysteria, the town would probably give you an affidavit of witchcraft.\"\n\"Phone for you, Doctor Alcala.\" The nurse was crisp but quiet, smiling\n down at the little girl before vanishing again.", "\"It means,\" said the psychologist, smiling dryly, \"that every crazy\n report about our ghost has points of similarity to every other crazy\n report. The whole business of Syndrome Johnny has been in their 'funny\n coincidence' file for twenty years. This time the suspect hits the\n averaged description of Johnny too closely: A solid-looking man,\n unusual number of visible minor scars, and a disturbing habit of\n bending his fingers at the first-joint knuckles when he is thinking.\n The coincidence has gotten too damn funny. There's a chance we've been\n passing up a crime.\"\n\n\n \"An extensive crime,\" said the man at the desk softly. He reached\n for the folder. \"Yes, a considerable quantity of murder.\" He leafed\n through the folder and then thought a while, looking at the most recent\n reports. Thinking was what he was paid for, and he earned his excellent\n salary.", "\"Uh-huh what?\" asked his superior, who was reading a newspaper with his\n feet up on the desk.\n\n\n \"Remember the myth, of Syndrome Johnny?\"\n\n\n \"Ghost of Syndrome Plague. Si, what of it?\"\n\n\n \"Titaquahapahel, Peru, population nine hundred, sent in a claim that he\n turned up there and they almost caught him. Crime Statistics rerouted\n the report to Mass Phenomena, of course. Mass Phenomena blew a tube and\n sent their folder on Syndrome Johnny over here. Every report they ever\n had on him for ninety years back! A memo came with it.\" He handed the\n memo over.\n\n\n The man behind the desk looked at it. It was a small graph and some\n mathematical symbols. \"What is it?\"", "\"Because we have sickened and recovered. We caught it on conception\n and recovered before birth. Proof? Why do you think that the countries\n which were known as the Hungry Lands are now well-fed, leisured,\n educated, advanced? Because the birth rate has fallen! Why has the\n birth rate fallen?\" He paused, then very carefully said, \"Because two\n out of three of all people who would have lived have died before birth,\n slain by Syndrome Plague. We are all carriers now, hosts to a new\n guest. And\"—his voice dropped to a mock sinister whisper—\"with such a\n stranger within our cells, at the heart of the intricate machinery of\n our lives, who knows what subtle changes have crept upon us unnoticed!\"\n\n\n His companion laughed. \"Eat your breakfast. You belong on a horror\n program!\"\nA police psychologist for the Federated States of The Americas was\n running through reports from the Bureau of Social Statistics. Suddenly\n he grunted, then a moment later said, \"Uh-huh!\"", "Three years later they reached the carrier stage and the epidemic\n spread to four cities. Three more years, and there was an epidemic\n which spread around the world, meeting another wave coming from the\n opposite direction. It killed two out of four, fifty out of a hundred,\n twenty-seven million out of fifty million. There was hysteria where\n it appeared. And where it had not appeared there were quarantines to\n fence it out. But it could not be fenced out. For two years it covered\n the world. And then it vanished again, leaving the survivors with a\n tendency toward glandular troubles.\n\n\n Time passed. The world grew richer, more orderly, more peaceful.\n\n\n A man paused in the midst of his work at the U.N. Food and Agriculture\n Commission. He looked up at the red and green production map of India.", "The question was another shock. Alcala thought carefully, for any man\n might be insane in secret. \"Yes, so far as I know.\" He turned his\n attention to the steak, but first took three very large capsules from a\n bottle in his pocket.\n\n\n \"I would not expect that a doctor would need to take pills,\" Camba\n remarked with friendly mockery.\n\n\n \"I don't need them,\" Alcala explained. \"Mixed silicones. I'm guinea\n pigging.\"\n\n\n \"Can't such things be left to the guinea pigs?\" Camba asked, watching\n with revulsion as Alcala uncapped the second bottle and sprinkled a\n layer of gray powder over his steak.\n\n\n \"Guinea pigs have no assimilation of silicones; only man has that.\"", "Camba smiled and took out a small notebook. \"The disease is connected\n with silicones, you say? The original name of John Delgados was John\n Osborne Drake. His father was Osborne Drake, a chemist at Dow Corning,\n who was sentenced to the electric chair in 1967 for unauthorized\n bacterial experiments which resulted in an accidental epidemic and\n eight deaths. Dow Corning was the first major manufactury of silicones\n in America, though not connected in any way with Osborne Drake's\n criminal experiments. It links together, does it not?\"\n\n\n \"It is not a disease, it is strength!\" Alcala insisted doggedly.\nThe small investigator looked up from his notebook and his smile was\n an unnatural thing, a baring of teeth. \"Half the world died of this\n strength, Senor. If you will not think of the men and women, think of\n the children. Millions of children died!\"\n\n\n The waiter brought the bill, dropping it on the table between them.", "\"Not at all, Senor. The Federated States are only too happy thus to\n express a fraction of their gratitude by adding a touch of luxury to\n the otherwise barren and self-sacrificing life of a scientist.\"\n\n\n \"You shame me,\" Alcala said dryly. It was true that he needed\n every spare penny for the health of Nita and the child, and for the\n laboratory. A penny saved from being spent on nourishment was a penny\n earned. He picked up the menu again and ordered steak.\n\n\n The investigator lit a cigar, asking casually: \"Do you know John\n Osborne Drake?\"\nAlcala searched his memory. \"No. I'm sorry....\" Then he felt for the\n first time how closely he was being watched, and knew how carefully his\n reaction and the tone of his voice had been analyzed. The interview was\n dangerous. For some reason, he was suspected of something.", "Tapping his fingers gently, his heavy fingers ... the answer was\n dreamily fantastic.\nI'm turning into silicon plastic myself\n, he\n thought. But how, why? He had not bothered to be curious before, but\n the question had always been—what were supposedly insoluble silicons\n doing assimilating into the human body at all?\n\n\n Several moments passed. He smoothed back his hair with his oddly heavy\n hand before picking up his fork again.\n\n\n \"I'm turning into plastic,\" he told Camba.\n\n\n \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing. A joke.\"\n\n\n Camba was turning into plastic, too. Everyone was. But the effect was\n accumulating slowly, by generations.\nCamba lay down his knife and started in again. \"What connections have\n you had with John Delgados?\"\nConcentrate on the immediate situation.\nAlcala and Johnny were\n obviously in danger of some sort of mistaken arrest and interrogation.", "Disconcerted, Alcala watched the 'copter lift away into the night,\n then, turning, saw that the lights were still on in the laboratory.\n Camba might have deduced something from that, if he knew that Nita and\n the girl were not supposed to be home.\n\n\n Alcala hurried in.\n\n\n Johnny hadn't left yet. He was sitting at Alcala's desk with his feet\n on the wastebasket, the way Alcala often liked to sit, reading a\n technical journal. He looked up, smiling. For a moment Alcala saw him\n with the new clarity of a stranger. The lean, weathered face; brown\n eyes with smile deltas at the corners; wide shoulders; steady, big\n hands holding the magazine—solid, able, and ruthless enough to see\n what had to be done, and do it.\n\n\n \"I was waiting for you, Ric.\"" ], [ "\"Three generations back, this pressure would have gone right through\n the hand.\" He took away the blade and there was only a very tiny cut.\n Putting the knife away, he brought out his lighter. The blue flame\n was steady and hot. Alcala held it close to the dashboard and put his\n finger directly over it, counting patiently, \"One, two, three, four,\n five—\" He pulled the lighter back, snapping it shut.\n\"Three generations ago, a man couldn't have held a finger over that\n flame for more than a tenth part of that count. Doesn't all this prove\n something to you?\"\n\n\n The 'copter was hovering above Alcala's house. Camba lowered it to\n the ground and opened the door before answering. \"It proves only that\n a good and worthy man will cut and burn his hand for an unworthy\n friendship. Good night.\"", "Three years later they reached the carrier stage and the epidemic\n spread to four cities. Three more years, and there was an epidemic\n which spread around the world, meeting another wave coming from the\n opposite direction. It killed two out of four, fifty out of a hundred,\n twenty-seven million out of fifty million. There was hysteria where\n it appeared. And where it had not appeared there were quarantines to\n fence it out. But it could not be fenced out. For two years it covered\n the world. And then it vanished again, leaving the survivors with a\n tendency toward glandular troubles.\n\n\n Time passed. The world grew richer, more orderly, more peaceful.\n\n\n A man paused in the midst of his work at the U.N. Food and Agriculture\n Commission. He looked up at the red and green production map of India.", "Alcala sat in the dark, looking through the windshield down at the\n bright street falling away below. \"I'm not a practicing medico; only\n one night a week do I come to the hospital. I'm a research man. I don't\n try to save individual lives. I'm dedicated to improving the average\n life, the average health. Can you understand that? Individuals may be\n sick and individuals may die, but the average lives on. And if the\n average is better, then I'm satisfied.\"\n\n\n The 'copter flew on. There was no answer.\n\n\n \"I'm not good with words,\" said Alcala. Then, taking out his pen-knife\n and unfolding it, he said, \"Watch!\" He put his index finger on the\n altimeter dial, where there was light, and pressed the blade against\n the flesh between his finger and his thumb. He increased the pressure\n until the flesh stood out white on either side of the blade, bending,\n but not cut.", "Disconcerted, Alcala watched the 'copter lift away into the night,\n then, turning, saw that the lights were still on in the laboratory.\n Camba might have deduced something from that, if he knew that Nita and\n the girl were not supposed to be home.\n\n\n Alcala hurried in.\n\n\n Johnny hadn't left yet. He was sitting at Alcala's desk with his feet\n on the wastebasket, the way Alcala often liked to sit, reading a\n technical journal. He looked up, smiling. For a moment Alcala saw him\n with the new clarity of a stranger. The lean, weathered face; brown\n eyes with smile deltas at the corners; wide shoulders; steady, big\n hands holding the magazine—solid, able, and ruthless enough to see\n what had to be done, and do it.\n\n\n \"I was waiting for you, Ric.\"", "\"Lives will be saved in the long run,\" Alcala said obstinately.\n \"Individual deaths are not important in the long run.\"\n\n\n \"That is hardly the philosophy for a doctor, is it?\" asked Camba with\n open irony, taking the bill and rising.\n\n\n They went out of the restaurant in silence. Camba's 'copter stood at\n the curb.\n\n\n \"Would you care for a lift home, Doctor Alcala?\" The offer was made\n with the utmost suavity.\n\n\n Alcala hesitated fractionally. \"Why, yes, thank you.\" It would not do\n to give the investigator any reason for suspicion by refusing.\n\n\n As the 'copter lifted into the air, Camba spoke with a more friendly\n note in his voice, as if he humored a child. \"Come, Alcala, you're a\n doctor dedicated to saving lives. How can you find sympathy for a\n murderer?\"", "A timer clicked and John Delgados-Drake became all rapid efficient\n activity, moving from valve to valve. It lasted a half minute or less,\n then Drake had finished stripping off the lab whites to his street\n clothes. He picked up the square metal box containing the stuff he had\n made, tucked it under his arm and held out a solid hand again to Alcala.\n\n\n \"Good-by, Ric. Wish me luck. Close up the lab for me, will you?\"\n\n\n Alcala took the hand numbly and mumbled something, turned back to the\n cages and stared blindly at the mice. Drake's brisk footsteps clattered\n down the stairs.\nAnother step forward for the human race.\n\n\n God knew what wonders for the race were in that box. Perhaps something\n for nerve construction, something for the mind—the last and most\n important step. He should have asked.", "John Drake rose and looked around the laboratory with something like\n triumph. \"They're too late. I made it, Ric. There's the catalyst\n cooling over there. This is the last step. I don't think I'll survive\n this plague, but I'll last long enough to set it going for the finish.\n The police won't stop me until it's too late.\"\nAnother plague!\n\n\n The last one had been before Alcala was born. He had not thought that\n Johnny would start another. It was a shock.\n\n\n Alcala walked over to the cage where he kept his white mice and looked\n in, trying to sort out his feelings. The white mice looked back\n with beady bright eyes, caged, not knowing they were waiting to be\n experimented upon.", "\"It seems a pity we can't even find out who the gentleman is,\" the\n Crimes Department head murmured, looking at the thumbprint wistfully.\n \"No crime, no records. No records, no evidence. No evidence, no proof\n of crime. Therefore, we must manufacture a small crime. He was attacked\n and he must have defended himself. Someone may have been hurt in the\n process.\" He pushed a button. \"Do you think if I send a man down there,\n he could persuade one of the mob to swear out a complaint?\"\n\n\n \"That's a rhetorical question,\" said the psychologist, trying to work\n out an uncertain correlation in his reports. \"With that sort of mob\n hysteria, the town would probably give you an affidavit of witchcraft.\"\n\"Phone for you, Doctor Alcala.\" The nurse was crisp but quiet, smiling\n down at the little girl before vanishing again.", "Running, Alcala went down the long half-lit stairs, out the back door\n and along the dark path toward the place where Johnny's 'copter had\n been parked.\n\n\n A light shone through the leaves. It was still there.\n\n\n \"Johnny!\"\n\n\n John Osborne Drake was putting his suitcase into the rear of the\n 'copter.\n\n\n \"What is it, Ric?\" he asked in a friendly voice without turning.\nIt would be impossible to ask him to change his mind.\nAlcala found\n a rock, raised it behind Syndrome Johnny's back. \"I know I'm being\n anti-social,\" he said regretfully, and then threw the rock away.\n\n\n His fist was enough like stone to crush a skull.", "\"Just too many people per acre,\" he said. \"All our work at improving\n production ... just one jump ahead of their rising population, one jump\n ahead of famine. Sometimes I wish to God there would be another plague\n to give us a breathing spell and a fair chance to get things organized.\"\n\n\n He went back to work and added another figure.\n\n\n Two months later, he was one of the first victims of the second plague.\nIn the dining hall of a university, a biochemical student glanced up\n from his paper to his breakfast companion. \"You remember Johnny, the\n mythical carrier that they told about during the first and second\n epidemics of Syndrome Plague?\"", "\"Sure. Syndrome Johnny. They use that myth in psychology class as a\n typical example of mass hysteria. When a city was nervous and expecting\n the plague to reach them, some superstitious fool would imagine he saw\n Syndrome Johnny and the population would panic. Symbol for Death or\n some such thing. People imagined they saw him in every corner of the\n world. Simultaneously, of course.\"\n\n\n It was a bright morning and they were at a window which looked out\n across green rolling fields to a towering glass-brick building in the\n distance.\n\n\n The student who had gone back to his paper suddenly looked up again.\n \"Some Peruvians here claim they saw Syndrome Johnny—\"\n\n\n \"Idiotic superstition! You'd think it would have died down when the\n plague died.\"\n\n\n The other grinned. \"The plague didn't die.\" He folded his newspaper\n slowly, obviously advancing an opening for a debate.", "Tapping his fingers gently, his heavy fingers ... the answer was\n dreamily fantastic.\nI'm turning into silicon plastic myself\n, he\n thought. But how, why? He had not bothered to be curious before, but\n the question had always been—what were supposedly insoluble silicons\n doing assimilating into the human body at all?\n\n\n Several moments passed. He smoothed back his hair with his oddly heavy\n hand before picking up his fork again.\n\n\n \"I'm turning into plastic,\" he told Camba.\n\n\n \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing. A joke.\"\n\n\n Camba was turning into plastic, too. Everyone was. But the effect was\n accumulating slowly, by generations.\nCamba lay down his knife and started in again. \"What connections have\n you had with John Delgados?\"\nConcentrate on the immediate situation.\nAlcala and Johnny were\n obviously in danger of some sort of mistaken arrest and interrogation.", "\"Not at all, Senor. The Federated States are only too happy thus to\n express a fraction of their gratitude by adding a touch of luxury to\n the otherwise barren and self-sacrificing life of a scientist.\"\n\n\n \"You shame me,\" Alcala said dryly. It was true that he needed\n every spare penny for the health of Nita and the child, and for the\n laboratory. A penny saved from being spent on nourishment was a penny\n earned. He picked up the menu again and ordered steak.\n\n\n The investigator lit a cigar, asking casually: \"Do you know John\n Osborne Drake?\"\nAlcala searched his memory. \"No. I'm sorry....\" Then he felt for the\n first time how closely he was being watched, and knew how carefully his\n reaction and the tone of his voice had been analyzed. The interview was\n dangerous. For some reason, he was suspected of something.", "Alcala was tired, but there was nothing to do at home. Nita was at the\n health resort and Johnny had borrowed all his laboratory space for a\n special synthesis of some sort, and probably would be too busy even\n to talk. Interest stirred in him. This was a Federation investigator\n calling; the man's work was probably important. \"Tonight, if that's\n convenient. I'll be off duty in five minutes.\"\n\n\n Thirty minutes later they were ordering in a small cantina down the\n street from the hospital.\n\n\n Julio Camba, Federation Investigator, was a slender, dark man with\n sharp, glinting eyes. He spoke with a happy theatrical flourish.\n\n\n \"Order what you choose, Senor. We're on my expense account. The\n resources of the Federated States of all The Americas stand behind your\n menu.\"\n\n\n Alcala smiled. \"I wouldn't want to add to the national debt.\"", "There came at last a pressure that was a thought emerging from the\n depth of intuition.\nDoctor Ricardo Alcala will die in the next plague,\n he and his ill wife Nita and his ill little girl.... And the name of\n Alcala will die forever as a weak strain blotted from the bloodstream\n of the race....\nHe'd find out what was in the box by dying of it!\n\n\n He tried to reason it out, but only could remember that Nita, already\n sickly, would have no chance. And Alcala's family genes, in attempting\n to adapt to the previous steps, had become almost sterile. It had been\n difficult having children. The next step would mean complete sterility.\n The name of Alcala would die. The future might be wonderful, but it\n would not be\nhis\nfuture!\n\n\n \"Johnny!\" he called suddenly, something like an icy lump hardening in\n his chest. How long had it been since Johnny had left?", "\"It means,\" said the psychologist, smiling dryly, \"that every crazy\n report about our ghost has points of similarity to every other crazy\n report. The whole business of Syndrome Johnny has been in their 'funny\n coincidence' file for twenty years. This time the suspect hits the\n averaged description of Johnny too closely: A solid-looking man,\n unusual number of visible minor scars, and a disturbing habit of\n bending his fingers at the first-joint knuckles when he is thinking.\n The coincidence has gotten too damn funny. There's a chance we've been\n passing up a crime.\"\n\n\n \"An extensive crime,\" said the man at the desk softly. He reached\n for the folder. \"Yes, a considerable quantity of murder.\" He leafed\n through the folder and then thought a while, looking at the most recent\n reports. Thinking was what he was paid for, and he earned his excellent\n salary.", "Camba smiled and took out a small notebook. \"The disease is connected\n with silicones, you say? The original name of John Delgados was John\n Osborne Drake. His father was Osborne Drake, a chemist at Dow Corning,\n who was sentenced to the electric chair in 1967 for unauthorized\n bacterial experiments which resulted in an accidental epidemic and\n eight deaths. Dow Corning was the first major manufactury of silicones\n in America, though not connected in any way with Osborne Drake's\n criminal experiments. It links together, does it not?\"\n\n\n \"It is not a disease, it is strength!\" Alcala insisted doggedly.\nThe small investigator looked up from his notebook and his smile was\n an unnatural thing, a baring of teeth. \"Half the world died of this\n strength, Senor. If you will not think of the men and women, think of\n the children. Millions of children died!\"\n\n\n The waiter brought the bill, dropping it on the table between them.", "He could be right. Perhaps the test should be stopped. Every day, with\n growing uneasiness, Alcala took his dose of silicon compound, and every\n day, the chemical seemed to be absorbed completely—not released or\n excreted—in a way that was unpleasantly reminiscent of the way arsenic\n accumulated without evident damage, then killed abruptly without\n warning.\nAlready, this evening, he had noticed that there was something faulty\n about his coordination and weight and surface sense. The restaurant\n door had swung back with a curious lightness, and the hollow metal\n handle had had a curious softness under his fingers. Something merely\n going wrong with the sensitivity of his fingers—?\n\n\n He tapped his fingertips on the heavy indestructible silicone plastic\n table top. There was a feeling of heaviness in his hands, and a feeling\n of faint rubbery\ngive\nin the table.", "\"Other men are old, yes. Those who survived the two successive plagues,\n were unusually durable.\" Camba finished and pushed back his plate.\n \"There is no crime in being long-lived, surely. But he has changed his\n name five times!\"\n\n\n \"That proves nothing. Whatever his reasons for changing his name, it\n doesn't prove that he is Syndrome Johnny any more than it proves he\n is the cow that jumped over the moon. Syndrome Johnny is a myth, a\n figment of mob delirium.\"\nAs he said it, he knew it was not true. A Federation investigator would\n not be on a wild goose chase.\n\n\n The plates were taken away and cups of steaming black coffee put\n between them. He would have to warn Johnny. It was strange how well you\n could know a man as well as he knew Johnny, firmly enough to believe\n that, despite evidence, everything the man did was right.\n\n\n \"Why must it be a myth?\" Camba asked softly.", "\"Uh-huh what?\" asked his superior, who was reading a newspaper with his\n feet up on the desk.\n\n\n \"Remember the myth, of Syndrome Johnny?\"\n\n\n \"Ghost of Syndrome Plague. Si, what of it?\"\n\n\n \"Titaquahapahel, Peru, population nine hundred, sent in a claim that he\n turned up there and they almost caught him. Crime Statistics rerouted\n the report to Mass Phenomena, of course. Mass Phenomena blew a tube and\n sent their folder on Syndrome Johnny over here. Every report they ever\n had on him for ninety years back! A memo came with it.\" He handed the\n memo over.\n\n\n The man behind the desk looked at it. It was a small graph and some\n mathematical symbols. \"What is it?\"" ], [ "As Alcala focused on the question, one errant whimsical thought\n suddenly flitted through the back of his mind. In red advertising\n letters: TRY OUR NEW MODEL RUST-PROOF, WATERPROOF, HEAT & SCALD\n RESISTANT, STRONG—EXTRA-LONG-WEARING HUMAN BEING!\n\n\n He laughed inwardly and finally answered: \"Friendship. Mutual interest\n in high ion colloidal suspensions and complex synthesis.\" Impatience\n suddenly mastered him. \"Exactly what is it you wish to know, Senor?\n Perhaps I could inform you if I knew the reasons for your interest.\"\n\n\n Camba chose a piece of salad with great care. \"We have reason to\n believe that he is Syndrome Johnny.\"", "The question was another shock. Alcala thought carefully, for any man\n might be insane in secret. \"Yes, so far as I know.\" He turned his\n attention to the steak, but first took three very large capsules from a\n bottle in his pocket.\n\n\n \"I would not expect that a doctor would need to take pills,\" Camba\n remarked with friendly mockery.\n\n\n \"I don't need them,\" Alcala explained. \"Mixed silicones. I'm guinea\n pigging.\"\n\n\n \"Can't such things be left to the guinea pigs?\" Camba asked, watching\n with revulsion as Alcala uncapped the second bottle and sprinkled a\n layer of gray powder over his steak.\n\n\n \"Guinea pigs have no assimilation of silicones; only man has that.\"", "\"Three generations back, this pressure would have gone right through\n the hand.\" He took away the blade and there was only a very tiny cut.\n Putting the knife away, he brought out his lighter. The blue flame\n was steady and hot. Alcala held it close to the dashboard and put his\n finger directly over it, counting patiently, \"One, two, three, four,\n five—\" He pulled the lighter back, snapping it shut.\n\"Three generations ago, a man couldn't have held a finger over that\n flame for more than a tenth part of that count. Doesn't all this prove\n something to you?\"\n\n\n The 'copter was hovering above Alcala's house. Camba lowered it to\n the ground and opened the door before answering. \"It proves only that\n a good and worthy man will cut and burn his hand for an unworthy\n friendship. Good night.\"", "Disconcerted, Alcala watched the 'copter lift away into the night,\n then, turning, saw that the lights were still on in the laboratory.\n Camba might have deduced something from that, if he knew that Nita and\n the girl were not supposed to be home.\n\n\n Alcala hurried in.\n\n\n Johnny hadn't left yet. He was sitting at Alcala's desk with his feet\n on the wastebasket, the way Alcala often liked to sit, reading a\n technical journal. He looked up, smiling. For a moment Alcala saw him\n with the new clarity of a stranger. The lean, weathered face; brown\n eyes with smile deltas at the corners; wide shoulders; steady, big\n hands holding the magazine—solid, able, and ruthless enough to see\n what had to be done, and do it.\n\n\n \"I was waiting for you, Ric.\"", "\"Lives will be saved in the long run,\" Alcala said obstinately.\n \"Individual deaths are not important in the long run.\"\n\n\n \"That is hardly the philosophy for a doctor, is it?\" asked Camba with\n open irony, taking the bill and rising.\n\n\n They went out of the restaurant in silence. Camba's 'copter stood at\n the curb.\n\n\n \"Would you care for a lift home, Doctor Alcala?\" The offer was made\n with the utmost suavity.\n\n\n Alcala hesitated fractionally. \"Why, yes, thank you.\" It would not do\n to give the investigator any reason for suspicion by refusing.\n\n\n As the 'copter lifted into the air, Camba spoke with a more friendly\n note in his voice, as if he humored a child. \"Come, Alcala, you're a\n doctor dedicated to saving lives. How can you find sympathy for a\n murderer?\"", "Alcala sat in the dark, looking through the windshield down at the\n bright street falling away below. \"I'm not a practicing medico; only\n one night a week do I come to the hospital. I'm a research man. I don't\n try to save individual lives. I'm dedicated to improving the average\n life, the average health. Can you understand that? Individuals may be\n sick and individuals may die, but the average lives on. And if the\n average is better, then I'm satisfied.\"\n\n\n The 'copter flew on. There was no answer.\n\n\n \"I'm not good with words,\" said Alcala. Then, taking out his pen-knife\n and unfolding it, he said, \"Watch!\" He put his index finger on the\n altimeter dial, where there was light, and pressed the blade against\n the flesh between his finger and his thumb. He increased the pressure\n until the flesh stood out white on either side of the blade, bending,\n but not cut.", "Alcala waited for the words to clarify. After a moment, it ceased to\n be childish babble and became increasingly shocking. He remembered the\n first time he had met John Delgados, the smile, the strong handclasp.\n \"Call me Johnny,\" he had said. It had seemed no more than a nickname.\n\n\n The investigator was watching his expression with bright brown eyes.\n\n\n Johnny, yes ... but not Syndrome Johnny. He tried to think of some\n quick refutation. \"The whole thing is preposterous, Senor Camba. The\n myth of Syndrome Plague Johnny started about a century ago.\"", "\"A biochemist.\" Alcala tried to see past the meditative mask of the\n thin dark face. \"He makes small job-lots of chemical compounds. Special\n bug spray for sale to experimental plantations, hormone spray for\n fruits, that sort of thing. Sometimes, when he collects some money\n ahead, he does research.\"\n\n\n Camba waited, and his silence became a question. Alcala spoke\n reluctantly, anger rising in him. \"Oh, it's genuine research. He has\n some patents and publications to his credit. You can confirm that if\n you choose.\" He was unable to keep the hostility out of his voice.\n\n\n A waiter came and placed steaming platters of food on the table. Camba\n waited until he was gone. \"You know him well, I presume. Is he sane?\"", "Running, Alcala went down the long half-lit stairs, out the back door\n and along the dark path toward the place where Johnny's 'copter had\n been parked.\n\n\n A light shone through the leaves. It was still there.\n\n\n \"Johnny!\"\n\n\n John Osborne Drake was putting his suitcase into the rear of the\n 'copter.\n\n\n \"What is it, Ric?\" he asked in a friendly voice without turning.\nIt would be impossible to ask him to change his mind.\nAlcala found\n a rock, raised it behind Syndrome Johnny's back. \"I know I'm being\n anti-social,\" he said regretfully, and then threw the rock away.\n\n\n His fist was enough like stone to crush a skull.", "\"It seems a pity we can't even find out who the gentleman is,\" the\n Crimes Department head murmured, looking at the thumbprint wistfully.\n \"No crime, no records. No records, no evidence. No evidence, no proof\n of crime. Therefore, we must manufacture a small crime. He was attacked\n and he must have defended himself. Someone may have been hurt in the\n process.\" He pushed a button. \"Do you think if I send a man down there,\n he could persuade one of the mob to swear out a complaint?\"\n\n\n \"That's a rhetorical question,\" said the psychologist, trying to work\n out an uncertain correlation in his reports. \"With that sort of mob\n hysteria, the town would probably give you an affidavit of witchcraft.\"\n\"Phone for you, Doctor Alcala.\" The nurse was crisp but quiet, smiling\n down at the little girl before vanishing again.", "\"Not at all, Senor. The Federated States are only too happy thus to\n express a fraction of their gratitude by adding a touch of luxury to\n the otherwise barren and self-sacrificing life of a scientist.\"\n\n\n \"You shame me,\" Alcala said dryly. It was true that he needed\n every spare penny for the health of Nita and the child, and for the\n laboratory. A penny saved from being spent on nourishment was a penny\n earned. He picked up the menu again and ordered steak.\n\n\n The investigator lit a cigar, asking casually: \"Do you know John\n Osborne Drake?\"\nAlcala searched his memory. \"No. I'm sorry....\" Then he felt for the\n first time how closely he was being watched, and knew how carefully his\n reaction and the tone of his voice had been analyzed. The interview was\n dangerous. For some reason, he was suspected of something.", "\"Doctor Alcala\"—the small man in the gray suit was tensely\n sober—\"John Delgados is very old, and John Delgados is not his proper\n name. I have traced his life back and back, through older and older\n records in Argentina, Panama, South Africa, the United States, China,\n Canada. Everywhere he has paid his taxes properly, put his fingerprints\n on file as a good citizen should. And he changed his name every twenty\n years, applying to the courts for permission with good honest reasons\n for changing his name. Everywhere he has been a laboratory worker, held\n patents, sometimes made a good deal of money. He is one hundred and\n forty years old. His first income tax was paid in 1970, exactly one\n hundred and twenty years ago.\"\n\n\n \"Other men are that old,\" said Alcala.", "Alcala was tired, but there was nothing to do at home. Nita was at the\n health resort and Johnny had borrowed all his laboratory space for a\n special synthesis of some sort, and probably would be too busy even\n to talk. Interest stirred in him. This was a Federation investigator\n calling; the man's work was probably important. \"Tonight, if that's\n convenient. I'll be off duty in five minutes.\"\n\n\n Thirty minutes later they were ordering in a small cantina down the\n street from the hospital.\n\n\n Julio Camba, Federation Investigator, was a slender, dark man with\n sharp, glinting eyes. He spoke with a happy theatrical flourish.\n\n\n \"Order what you choose, Senor. We're on my expense account. The\n resources of the Federated States of all The Americas stand behind your\n menu.\"\n\n\n Alcala smiled. \"I wouldn't want to add to the national debt.\"", "John Drake rose and looked around the laboratory with something like\n triumph. \"They're too late. I made it, Ric. There's the catalyst\n cooling over there. This is the last step. I don't think I'll survive\n this plague, but I'll last long enough to set it going for the finish.\n The police won't stop me until it's too late.\"\nAnother plague!\n\n\n The last one had been before Alcala was born. He had not thought that\n Johnny would start another. It was a shock.\n\n\n Alcala walked over to the cage where he kept his white mice and looked\n in, trying to sort out his feelings. The white mice looked back\n with beady bright eyes, caged, not knowing they were waiting to be\n experimented upon.", "\"It's ridiculous!\" Alcala protested. \"Why would any man—\" His voice\n cut off as unrelated facts fell into a pattern. He sat for a moment,\n thinking intensely, seeing the century of plague as something he had\n never dreamed....\n\n\n A price.\n\n\n Not too high a price in the long run, considering what was purchased.\n Of course, the great change over into silicon catalysis would be a\n shock and require adjustment and, of course, the change must be made in\n several easy stages—and those who could not adjust would die.\n\n\n \"Go on, Doctor,\" Camba urged softly. \"'\nWhy\nwould any man—'\"\n\n\n He tried to find a way of explaining which would not seem to have any\n relationship to John Delgados. \"It has been recently discovered\"—but\n he did not say\nhow\nrecently—\"that the disease of Syndrome Plague\n was not a disease. It is an improvement.\" He had spoken clumsily.", "\"No.\" Alcala knew that he was shaking hands with a man who would be\n thanked down all the successive generations of mankind. He noticed\n again the odd white web-work of scars on the back of Johnny's hand. He\n indicated them as casually as he could. \"Where did you pick those up?\"\nJohn Drake glanced at his hand. \"I don't know, Ric. Truthfully.\n I've had my brains beaten in too often to remember much any more.\n Unimportant. There are instructions outlining plans and methods filed\n in safety deposit boxes in almost every big city in the world. Always\n the same typing, always the same instructions. I can't remember who\n typed them, myself or my father, but I must have been expected to\n forget or they wouldn't be there. Up to eleven, my memory is all right,\n but after Dad started to remake me, everything gets fuzzy.\"\n\n\n \"After he did\nwhat\n?\"", "A timer clicked and John Delgados-Drake became all rapid efficient\n activity, moving from valve to valve. It lasted a half minute or less,\n then Drake had finished stripping off the lab whites to his street\n clothes. He picked up the square metal box containing the stuff he had\n made, tucked it under his arm and held out a solid hand again to Alcala.\n\n\n \"Good-by, Ric. Wish me luck. Close up the lab for me, will you?\"\n\n\n Alcala took the hand numbly and mumbled something, turned back to the\n cages and stared blindly at the mice. Drake's brisk footsteps clattered\n down the stairs.\nAnother step forward for the human race.\n\n\n God knew what wonders for the race were in that box. Perhaps something\n for nerve construction, something for the mind—the last and most\n important step. He should have asked.", "\"The Feds are after you.\" Ricardo Alcala had been running. He found he\n was panting and his heart was pounding.\n\n\n Delgados' smile did not change. \"It's all right, Ric. Everything's\n done. I can leave any time now.\" He indicated a square metal box\n standing in a corner. \"There's the stuff.\"\n\n\n What stuff? The product Johnny had been working on? \"You haven't time\n for that now, Johnny. You can't sell it. They'd watch for anyone of\n your description selling chemicals. Let me loan you some money.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks.\" Johnny was smiling oddly. \"Everything's set. I won't need it.\n How close are they to finding me?\"\n\n\n \"They don't know where you're staying.\" Alcala leaned on the desk edge\n and put out his hand. \"They tell me you're Syndrome Johnny.\"", "Camba finished lighting the cigar and dropped the match into an\n ash-tray. \"Perhaps you know John Delgados?\" He leaned back into the\n shadowy corner of the booth.\n\n\n Johnny! Out of all the people in the world, how could the government be\n interested in him? Alcala tried to sound casual. \"An associate of mine.\n A friend.\"\n\n\n \"I would like to contact the gentleman.\" The request was completely\n unforceful, undemanding. \"I called, but he was not at home. Could you\n tell me where he might be?\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Senor Camba, but I cannot say. He could be on a business\n trip.\" Alcala was feeling increasingly nervous. Actually, Johnny was\n working at his laboratory.\n\n\n \"What do you know of his activities?\" Camba asked.", "Ricardo Alcala pushed the plunger in gently, then carefully withdrew\n the hypodermic needle from the little girl's arm. \"There you are,\n Cosita,\" he said, smiling and rising from the chair beside the white\n bed.\n\n\n \"Will that make me better, Doctor?\" she piped feebly.\n\n\n He patted her hand. \"Be a good girl and you will be well tomorrow.\" He\n walked out into the hospital corridor to where the desk nurse held out\n a phone.\n\n\n \"Alcala speaking.\"\n\n\n The voice was unfamiliar. \"My deepest apologies for interrupting your\n work, Doctor. At this late hour I'm afraid I assumed you would be at\n home. The name is Camba, Federation Investigator on a health case. I\n would like to consult you.\"" ], [ "As Alcala focused on the question, one errant whimsical thought\n suddenly flitted through the back of his mind. In red advertising\n letters: TRY OUR NEW MODEL RUST-PROOF, WATERPROOF, HEAT & SCALD\n RESISTANT, STRONG—EXTRA-LONG-WEARING HUMAN BEING!\n\n\n He laughed inwardly and finally answered: \"Friendship. Mutual interest\n in high ion colloidal suspensions and complex synthesis.\" Impatience\n suddenly mastered him. \"Exactly what is it you wish to know, Senor?\n Perhaps I could inform you if I knew the reasons for your interest.\"\n\n\n Camba chose a piece of salad with great care. \"We have reason to\n believe that he is Syndrome Johnny.\"", "\"Lives will be saved in the long run,\" Alcala said obstinately.\n \"Individual deaths are not important in the long run.\"\n\n\n \"That is hardly the philosophy for a doctor, is it?\" asked Camba with\n open irony, taking the bill and rising.\n\n\n They went out of the restaurant in silence. Camba's 'copter stood at\n the curb.\n\n\n \"Would you care for a lift home, Doctor Alcala?\" The offer was made\n with the utmost suavity.\n\n\n Alcala hesitated fractionally. \"Why, yes, thank you.\" It would not do\n to give the investigator any reason for suspicion by refusing.\n\n\n As the 'copter lifted into the air, Camba spoke with a more friendly\n note in his voice, as if he humored a child. \"Come, Alcala, you're a\n doctor dedicated to saving lives. How can you find sympathy for a\n murderer?\"", "\"Three generations back, this pressure would have gone right through\n the hand.\" He took away the blade and there was only a very tiny cut.\n Putting the knife away, he brought out his lighter. The blue flame\n was steady and hot. Alcala held it close to the dashboard and put his\n finger directly over it, counting patiently, \"One, two, three, four,\n five—\" He pulled the lighter back, snapping it shut.\n\"Three generations ago, a man couldn't have held a finger over that\n flame for more than a tenth part of that count. Doesn't all this prove\n something to you?\"\n\n\n The 'copter was hovering above Alcala's house. Camba lowered it to\n the ground and opened the door before answering. \"It proves only that\n a good and worthy man will cut and burn his hand for an unworthy\n friendship. Good night.\"", "Disconcerted, Alcala watched the 'copter lift away into the night,\n then, turning, saw that the lights were still on in the laboratory.\n Camba might have deduced something from that, if he knew that Nita and\n the girl were not supposed to be home.\n\n\n Alcala hurried in.\n\n\n Johnny hadn't left yet. He was sitting at Alcala's desk with his feet\n on the wastebasket, the way Alcala often liked to sit, reading a\n technical journal. He looked up, smiling. For a moment Alcala saw him\n with the new clarity of a stranger. The lean, weathered face; brown\n eyes with smile deltas at the corners; wide shoulders; steady, big\n hands holding the magazine—solid, able, and ruthless enough to see\n what had to be done, and do it.\n\n\n \"I was waiting for you, Ric.\"", "\"A biochemist.\" Alcala tried to see past the meditative mask of the\n thin dark face. \"He makes small job-lots of chemical compounds. Special\n bug spray for sale to experimental plantations, hormone spray for\n fruits, that sort of thing. Sometimes, when he collects some money\n ahead, he does research.\"\n\n\n Camba waited, and his silence became a question. Alcala spoke\n reluctantly, anger rising in him. \"Oh, it's genuine research. He has\n some patents and publications to his credit. You can confirm that if\n you choose.\" He was unable to keep the hostility out of his voice.\n\n\n A waiter came and placed steaming platters of food on the table. Camba\n waited until he was gone. \"You know him well, I presume. Is he sane?\"", "Alcala sat in the dark, looking through the windshield down at the\n bright street falling away below. \"I'm not a practicing medico; only\n one night a week do I come to the hospital. I'm a research man. I don't\n try to save individual lives. I'm dedicated to improving the average\n life, the average health. Can you understand that? Individuals may be\n sick and individuals may die, but the average lives on. And if the\n average is better, then I'm satisfied.\"\n\n\n The 'copter flew on. There was no answer.\n\n\n \"I'm not good with words,\" said Alcala. Then, taking out his pen-knife\n and unfolding it, he said, \"Watch!\" He put his index finger on the\n altimeter dial, where there was light, and pressed the blade against\n the flesh between his finger and his thumb. He increased the pressure\n until the flesh stood out white on either side of the blade, bending,\n but not cut.", "The question was another shock. Alcala thought carefully, for any man\n might be insane in secret. \"Yes, so far as I know.\" He turned his\n attention to the steak, but first took three very large capsules from a\n bottle in his pocket.\n\n\n \"I would not expect that a doctor would need to take pills,\" Camba\n remarked with friendly mockery.\n\n\n \"I don't need them,\" Alcala explained. \"Mixed silicones. I'm guinea\n pigging.\"\n\n\n \"Can't such things be left to the guinea pigs?\" Camba asked, watching\n with revulsion as Alcala uncapped the second bottle and sprinkled a\n layer of gray powder over his steak.\n\n\n \"Guinea pigs have no assimilation of silicones; only man has that.\"", "\"Not at all, Senor. The Federated States are only too happy thus to\n express a fraction of their gratitude by adding a touch of luxury to\n the otherwise barren and self-sacrificing life of a scientist.\"\n\n\n \"You shame me,\" Alcala said dryly. It was true that he needed\n every spare penny for the health of Nita and the child, and for the\n laboratory. A penny saved from being spent on nourishment was a penny\n earned. He picked up the menu again and ordered steak.\n\n\n The investigator lit a cigar, asking casually: \"Do you know John\n Osborne Drake?\"\nAlcala searched his memory. \"No. I'm sorry....\" Then he felt for the\n first time how closely he was being watched, and knew how carefully his\n reaction and the tone of his voice had been analyzed. The interview was\n dangerous. For some reason, he was suspected of something.", "Running, Alcala went down the long half-lit stairs, out the back door\n and along the dark path toward the place where Johnny's 'copter had\n been parked.\n\n\n A light shone through the leaves. It was still there.\n\n\n \"Johnny!\"\n\n\n John Osborne Drake was putting his suitcase into the rear of the\n 'copter.\n\n\n \"What is it, Ric?\" he asked in a friendly voice without turning.\nIt would be impossible to ask him to change his mind.\nAlcala found\n a rock, raised it behind Syndrome Johnny's back. \"I know I'm being\n anti-social,\" he said regretfully, and then threw the rock away.\n\n\n His fist was enough like stone to crush a skull.", "Alcala was tired, but there was nothing to do at home. Nita was at the\n health resort and Johnny had borrowed all his laboratory space for a\n special synthesis of some sort, and probably would be too busy even\n to talk. Interest stirred in him. This was a Federation investigator\n calling; the man's work was probably important. \"Tonight, if that's\n convenient. I'll be off duty in five minutes.\"\n\n\n Thirty minutes later they were ordering in a small cantina down the\n street from the hospital.\n\n\n Julio Camba, Federation Investigator, was a slender, dark man with\n sharp, glinting eyes. He spoke with a happy theatrical flourish.\n\n\n \"Order what you choose, Senor. We're on my expense account. The\n resources of the Federated States of all The Americas stand behind your\n menu.\"\n\n\n Alcala smiled. \"I wouldn't want to add to the national debt.\"", "John Drake rose and looked around the laboratory with something like\n triumph. \"They're too late. I made it, Ric. There's the catalyst\n cooling over there. This is the last step. I don't think I'll survive\n this plague, but I'll last long enough to set it going for the finish.\n The police won't stop me until it's too late.\"\nAnother plague!\n\n\n The last one had been before Alcala was born. He had not thought that\n Johnny would start another. It was a shock.\n\n\n Alcala walked over to the cage where he kept his white mice and looked\n in, trying to sort out his feelings. The white mice looked back\n with beady bright eyes, caged, not knowing they were waiting to be\n experimented upon.", "Alcala waited for the words to clarify. After a moment, it ceased to\n be childish babble and became increasingly shocking. He remembered the\n first time he had met John Delgados, the smile, the strong handclasp.\n \"Call me Johnny,\" he had said. It had seemed no more than a nickname.\n\n\n The investigator was watching his expression with bright brown eyes.\n\n\n Johnny, yes ... but not Syndrome Johnny. He tried to think of some\n quick refutation. \"The whole thing is preposterous, Senor Camba. The\n myth of Syndrome Plague Johnny started about a century ago.\"", "Ricardo Alcala pushed the plunger in gently, then carefully withdrew\n the hypodermic needle from the little girl's arm. \"There you are,\n Cosita,\" he said, smiling and rising from the chair beside the white\n bed.\n\n\n \"Will that make me better, Doctor?\" she piped feebly.\n\n\n He patted her hand. \"Be a good girl and you will be well tomorrow.\" He\n walked out into the hospital corridor to where the desk nurse held out\n a phone.\n\n\n \"Alcala speaking.\"\n\n\n The voice was unfamiliar. \"My deepest apologies for interrupting your\n work, Doctor. At this late hour I'm afraid I assumed you would be at\n home. The name is Camba, Federation Investigator on a health case. I\n would like to consult you.\"", "\"It seems a pity we can't even find out who the gentleman is,\" the\n Crimes Department head murmured, looking at the thumbprint wistfully.\n \"No crime, no records. No records, no evidence. No evidence, no proof\n of crime. Therefore, we must manufacture a small crime. He was attacked\n and he must have defended himself. Someone may have been hurt in the\n process.\" He pushed a button. \"Do you think if I send a man down there,\n he could persuade one of the mob to swear out a complaint?\"\n\n\n \"That's a rhetorical question,\" said the psychologist, trying to work\n out an uncertain correlation in his reports. \"With that sort of mob\n hysteria, the town would probably give you an affidavit of witchcraft.\"\n\"Phone for you, Doctor Alcala.\" The nurse was crisp but quiet, smiling\n down at the little girl before vanishing again.", "\"It's ridiculous!\" Alcala protested. \"Why would any man—\" His voice\n cut off as unrelated facts fell into a pattern. He sat for a moment,\n thinking intensely, seeing the century of plague as something he had\n never dreamed....\n\n\n A price.\n\n\n Not too high a price in the long run, considering what was purchased.\n Of course, the great change over into silicon catalysis would be a\n shock and require adjustment and, of course, the change must be made in\n several easy stages—and those who could not adjust would die.\n\n\n \"Go on, Doctor,\" Camba urged softly. \"'\nWhy\nwould any man—'\"\n\n\n He tried to find a way of explaining which would not seem to have any\n relationship to John Delgados. \"It has been recently discovered\"—but\n he did not say\nhow\nrecently—\"that the disease of Syndrome Plague\n was not a disease. It is an improvement.\" He had spoken clumsily.", "\"Doctor Alcala\"—the small man in the gray suit was tensely\n sober—\"John Delgados is very old, and John Delgados is not his proper\n name. I have traced his life back and back, through older and older\n records in Argentina, Panama, South Africa, the United States, China,\n Canada. Everywhere he has paid his taxes properly, put his fingerprints\n on file as a good citizen should. And he changed his name every twenty\n years, applying to the courts for permission with good honest reasons\n for changing his name. Everywhere he has been a laboratory worker, held\n patents, sometimes made a good deal of money. He is one hundred and\n forty years old. His first income tax was paid in 1970, exactly one\n hundred and twenty years ago.\"\n\n\n \"Other men are that old,\" said Alcala.", "A timer clicked and John Delgados-Drake became all rapid efficient\n activity, moving from valve to valve. It lasted a half minute or less,\n then Drake had finished stripping off the lab whites to his street\n clothes. He picked up the square metal box containing the stuff he had\n made, tucked it under his arm and held out a solid hand again to Alcala.\n\n\n \"Good-by, Ric. Wish me luck. Close up the lab for me, will you?\"\n\n\n Alcala took the hand numbly and mumbled something, turned back to the\n cages and stared blindly at the mice. Drake's brisk footsteps clattered\n down the stairs.\nAnother step forward for the human race.\n\n\n God knew what wonders for the race were in that box. Perhaps something\n for nerve construction, something for the mind—the last and most\n important step. He should have asked.", "Camba finished lighting the cigar and dropped the match into an\n ash-tray. \"Perhaps you know John Delgados?\" He leaned back into the\n shadowy corner of the booth.\n\n\n Johnny! Out of all the people in the world, how could the government be\n interested in him? Alcala tried to sound casual. \"An associate of mine.\n A friend.\"\n\n\n \"I would like to contact the gentleman.\" The request was completely\n unforceful, undemanding. \"I called, but he was not at home. Could you\n tell me where he might be?\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Senor Camba, but I cannot say. He could be on a business\n trip.\" Alcala was feeling increasingly nervous. Actually, Johnny was\n working at his laboratory.\n\n\n \"What do you know of his activities?\" Camba asked.", "\"No.\" Alcala knew that he was shaking hands with a man who would be\n thanked down all the successive generations of mankind. He noticed\n again the odd white web-work of scars on the back of Johnny's hand. He\n indicated them as casually as he could. \"Where did you pick those up?\"\nJohn Drake glanced at his hand. \"I don't know, Ric. Truthfully.\n I've had my brains beaten in too often to remember much any more.\n Unimportant. There are instructions outlining plans and methods filed\n in safety deposit boxes in almost every big city in the world. Always\n the same typing, always the same instructions. I can't remember who\n typed them, myself or my father, but I must have been expected to\n forget or they wouldn't be there. Up to eleven, my memory is all right,\n but after Dad started to remake me, everything gets fuzzy.\"\n\n\n \"After he did\nwhat\n?\"", "\"The Feds are after you.\" Ricardo Alcala had been running. He found he\n was panting and his heart was pounding.\n\n\n Delgados' smile did not change. \"It's all right, Ric. Everything's\n done. I can leave any time now.\" He indicated a square metal box\n standing in a corner. \"There's the stuff.\"\n\n\n What stuff? The product Johnny had been working on? \"You haven't time\n for that now, Johnny. You can't sell it. They'd watch for anyone of\n your description selling chemicals. Let me loan you some money.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks.\" Johnny was smiling oddly. \"Everything's set. I won't need it.\n How close are they to finding me?\"\n\n\n \"They don't know where you're staying.\" Alcala leaned on the desk edge\n and put out his hand. \"They tell me you're Syndrome Johnny.\"" ], [ "\"A biochemist.\" Alcala tried to see past the meditative mask of the\n thin dark face. \"He makes small job-lots of chemical compounds. Special\n bug spray for sale to experimental plantations, hormone spray for\n fruits, that sort of thing. Sometimes, when he collects some money\n ahead, he does research.\"\n\n\n Camba waited, and his silence became a question. Alcala spoke\n reluctantly, anger rising in him. \"Oh, it's genuine research. He has\n some patents and publications to his credit. You can confirm that if\n you choose.\" He was unable to keep the hostility out of his voice.\n\n\n A waiter came and placed steaming platters of food on the table. Camba\n waited until he was gone. \"You know him well, I presume. Is he sane?\"", "As Alcala focused on the question, one errant whimsical thought\n suddenly flitted through the back of his mind. In red advertising\n letters: TRY OUR NEW MODEL RUST-PROOF, WATERPROOF, HEAT & SCALD\n RESISTANT, STRONG—EXTRA-LONG-WEARING HUMAN BEING!\n\n\n He laughed inwardly and finally answered: \"Friendship. Mutual interest\n in high ion colloidal suspensions and complex synthesis.\" Impatience\n suddenly mastered him. \"Exactly what is it you wish to know, Senor?\n Perhaps I could inform you if I knew the reasons for your interest.\"\n\n\n Camba chose a piece of salad with great care. \"We have reason to\n believe that he is Syndrome Johnny.\"", "The question was another shock. Alcala thought carefully, for any man\n might be insane in secret. \"Yes, so far as I know.\" He turned his\n attention to the steak, but first took three very large capsules from a\n bottle in his pocket.\n\n\n \"I would not expect that a doctor would need to take pills,\" Camba\n remarked with friendly mockery.\n\n\n \"I don't need them,\" Alcala explained. \"Mixed silicones. I'm guinea\n pigging.\"\n\n\n \"Can't such things be left to the guinea pigs?\" Camba asked, watching\n with revulsion as Alcala uncapped the second bottle and sprinkled a\n layer of gray powder over his steak.\n\n\n \"Guinea pigs have no assimilation of silicones; only man has that.\"", "Alcala was tired, but there was nothing to do at home. Nita was at the\n health resort and Johnny had borrowed all his laboratory space for a\n special synthesis of some sort, and probably would be too busy even\n to talk. Interest stirred in him. This was a Federation investigator\n calling; the man's work was probably important. \"Tonight, if that's\n convenient. I'll be off duty in five minutes.\"\n\n\n Thirty minutes later they were ordering in a small cantina down the\n street from the hospital.\n\n\n Julio Camba, Federation Investigator, was a slender, dark man with\n sharp, glinting eyes. He spoke with a happy theatrical flourish.\n\n\n \"Order what you choose, Senor. We're on my expense account. The\n resources of the Federated States of all The Americas stand behind your\n menu.\"\n\n\n Alcala smiled. \"I wouldn't want to add to the national debt.\"", "Alcala sat in the dark, looking through the windshield down at the\n bright street falling away below. \"I'm not a practicing medico; only\n one night a week do I come to the hospital. I'm a research man. I don't\n try to save individual lives. I'm dedicated to improving the average\n life, the average health. Can you understand that? Individuals may be\n sick and individuals may die, but the average lives on. And if the\n average is better, then I'm satisfied.\"\n\n\n The 'copter flew on. There was no answer.\n\n\n \"I'm not good with words,\" said Alcala. Then, taking out his pen-knife\n and unfolding it, he said, \"Watch!\" He put his index finger on the\n altimeter dial, where there was light, and pressed the blade against\n the flesh between his finger and his thumb. He increased the pressure\n until the flesh stood out white on either side of the blade, bending,\n but not cut.", "John Drake rose and looked around the laboratory with something like\n triumph. \"They're too late. I made it, Ric. There's the catalyst\n cooling over there. This is the last step. I don't think I'll survive\n this plague, but I'll last long enough to set it going for the finish.\n The police won't stop me until it's too late.\"\nAnother plague!\n\n\n The last one had been before Alcala was born. He had not thought that\n Johnny would start another. It was a shock.\n\n\n Alcala walked over to the cage where he kept his white mice and looked\n in, trying to sort out his feelings. The white mice looked back\n with beady bright eyes, caged, not knowing they were waiting to be\n experimented upon.", "Alcala waited for the words to clarify. After a moment, it ceased to\n be childish babble and became increasingly shocking. He remembered the\n first time he had met John Delgados, the smile, the strong handclasp.\n \"Call me Johnny,\" he had said. It had seemed no more than a nickname.\n\n\n The investigator was watching his expression with bright brown eyes.\n\n\n Johnny, yes ... but not Syndrome Johnny. He tried to think of some\n quick refutation. \"The whole thing is preposterous, Senor Camba. The\n myth of Syndrome Plague Johnny started about a century ago.\"", "\"Not at all, Senor. The Federated States are only too happy thus to\n express a fraction of their gratitude by adding a touch of luxury to\n the otherwise barren and self-sacrificing life of a scientist.\"\n\n\n \"You shame me,\" Alcala said dryly. It was true that he needed\n every spare penny for the health of Nita and the child, and for the\n laboratory. A penny saved from being spent on nourishment was a penny\n earned. He picked up the menu again and ordered steak.\n\n\n The investigator lit a cigar, asking casually: \"Do you know John\n Osborne Drake?\"\nAlcala searched his memory. \"No. I'm sorry....\" Then he felt for the\n first time how closely he was being watched, and knew how carefully his\n reaction and the tone of his voice had been analyzed. The interview was\n dangerous. For some reason, he was suspected of something.", "Ricardo Alcala pushed the plunger in gently, then carefully withdrew\n the hypodermic needle from the little girl's arm. \"There you are,\n Cosita,\" he said, smiling and rising from the chair beside the white\n bed.\n\n\n \"Will that make me better, Doctor?\" she piped feebly.\n\n\n He patted her hand. \"Be a good girl and you will be well tomorrow.\" He\n walked out into the hospital corridor to where the desk nurse held out\n a phone.\n\n\n \"Alcala speaking.\"\n\n\n The voice was unfamiliar. \"My deepest apologies for interrupting your\n work, Doctor. At this late hour I'm afraid I assumed you would be at\n home. The name is Camba, Federation Investigator on a health case. I\n would like to consult you.\"", "Disconcerted, Alcala watched the 'copter lift away into the night,\n then, turning, saw that the lights were still on in the laboratory.\n Camba might have deduced something from that, if he knew that Nita and\n the girl were not supposed to be home.\n\n\n Alcala hurried in.\n\n\n Johnny hadn't left yet. He was sitting at Alcala's desk with his feet\n on the wastebasket, the way Alcala often liked to sit, reading a\n technical journal. He looked up, smiling. For a moment Alcala saw him\n with the new clarity of a stranger. The lean, weathered face; brown\n eyes with smile deltas at the corners; wide shoulders; steady, big\n hands holding the magazine—solid, able, and ruthless enough to see\n what had to be done, and do it.\n\n\n \"I was waiting for you, Ric.\"", "\"Lives will be saved in the long run,\" Alcala said obstinately.\n \"Individual deaths are not important in the long run.\"\n\n\n \"That is hardly the philosophy for a doctor, is it?\" asked Camba with\n open irony, taking the bill and rising.\n\n\n They went out of the restaurant in silence. Camba's 'copter stood at\n the curb.\n\n\n \"Would you care for a lift home, Doctor Alcala?\" The offer was made\n with the utmost suavity.\n\n\n Alcala hesitated fractionally. \"Why, yes, thank you.\" It would not do\n to give the investigator any reason for suspicion by refusing.\n\n\n As the 'copter lifted into the air, Camba spoke with a more friendly\n note in his voice, as if he humored a child. \"Come, Alcala, you're a\n doctor dedicated to saving lives. How can you find sympathy for a\n murderer?\"", "\"Three generations back, this pressure would have gone right through\n the hand.\" He took away the blade and there was only a very tiny cut.\n Putting the knife away, he brought out his lighter. The blue flame\n was steady and hot. Alcala held it close to the dashboard and put his\n finger directly over it, counting patiently, \"One, two, three, four,\n five—\" He pulled the lighter back, snapping it shut.\n\"Three generations ago, a man couldn't have held a finger over that\n flame for more than a tenth part of that count. Doesn't all this prove\n something to you?\"\n\n\n The 'copter was hovering above Alcala's house. Camba lowered it to\n the ground and opened the door before answering. \"It proves only that\n a good and worthy man will cut and burn his hand for an unworthy\n friendship. Good night.\"", "\"Yes, of course. I should have remembered from your famous papers,\nThe\n Need Of Trace Silicon In Human Diet\nand\nSilicon Deficiency Diseases\n.\"\nObviously Camba had done considerable investigating of Alcala before\n approaching him. He had even given the titles of the research papers\n correctly. Alcala's wariness increased.\n\n\n \"What is the purpose of the experiment this time?\" asked the small dark\n Federation agent genially.\n\n\n \"To determine the safe limits of silicon consumption and if there are\n any dangers in an overdose.\"\n\n\n \"How do you determine that? By dropping dead?\"", "\"It's ridiculous!\" Alcala protested. \"Why would any man—\" His voice\n cut off as unrelated facts fell into a pattern. He sat for a moment,\n thinking intensely, seeing the century of plague as something he had\n never dreamed....\n\n\n A price.\n\n\n Not too high a price in the long run, considering what was purchased.\n Of course, the great change over into silicon catalysis would be a\n shock and require adjustment and, of course, the change must be made in\n several easy stages—and those who could not adjust would die.\n\n\n \"Go on, Doctor,\" Camba urged softly. \"'\nWhy\nwould any man—'\"\n\n\n He tried to find a way of explaining which would not seem to have any\n relationship to John Delgados. \"It has been recently discovered\"—but\n he did not say\nhow\nrecently—\"that the disease of Syndrome Plague\n was not a disease. It is an improvement.\" He had spoken clumsily.", "\"Doctor Alcala\"—the small man in the gray suit was tensely\n sober—\"John Delgados is very old, and John Delgados is not his proper\n name. I have traced his life back and back, through older and older\n records in Argentina, Panama, South Africa, the United States, China,\n Canada. Everywhere he has paid his taxes properly, put his fingerprints\n on file as a good citizen should. And he changed his name every twenty\n years, applying to the courts for permission with good honest reasons\n for changing his name. Everywhere he has been a laboratory worker, held\n patents, sometimes made a good deal of money. He is one hundred and\n forty years old. His first income tax was paid in 1970, exactly one\n hundred and twenty years ago.\"\n\n\n \"Other men are that old,\" said Alcala.", "A timer clicked and John Delgados-Drake became all rapid efficient\n activity, moving from valve to valve. It lasted a half minute or less,\n then Drake had finished stripping off the lab whites to his street\n clothes. He picked up the square metal box containing the stuff he had\n made, tucked it under his arm and held out a solid hand again to Alcala.\n\n\n \"Good-by, Ric. Wish me luck. Close up the lab for me, will you?\"\n\n\n Alcala took the hand numbly and mumbled something, turned back to the\n cages and stared blindly at the mice. Drake's brisk footsteps clattered\n down the stairs.\nAnother step forward for the human race.\n\n\n God knew what wonders for the race were in that box. Perhaps something\n for nerve construction, something for the mind—the last and most\n important step. He should have asked.", "\"It seems a pity we can't even find out who the gentleman is,\" the\n Crimes Department head murmured, looking at the thumbprint wistfully.\n \"No crime, no records. No records, no evidence. No evidence, no proof\n of crime. Therefore, we must manufacture a small crime. He was attacked\n and he must have defended himself. Someone may have been hurt in the\n process.\" He pushed a button. \"Do you think if I send a man down there,\n he could persuade one of the mob to swear out a complaint?\"\n\n\n \"That's a rhetorical question,\" said the psychologist, trying to work\n out an uncertain correlation in his reports. \"With that sort of mob\n hysteria, the town would probably give you an affidavit of witchcraft.\"\n\"Phone for you, Doctor Alcala.\" The nurse was crisp but quiet, smiling\n down at the little girl before vanishing again.", "Camba finished lighting the cigar and dropped the match into an\n ash-tray. \"Perhaps you know John Delgados?\" He leaned back into the\n shadowy corner of the booth.\n\n\n Johnny! Out of all the people in the world, how could the government be\n interested in him? Alcala tried to sound casual. \"An associate of mine.\n A friend.\"\n\n\n \"I would like to contact the gentleman.\" The request was completely\n unforceful, undemanding. \"I called, but he was not at home. Could you\n tell me where he might be?\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Senor Camba, but I cannot say. He could be on a business\n trip.\" Alcala was feeling increasingly nervous. Actually, Johnny was\n working at his laboratory.\n\n\n \"What do you know of his activities?\" Camba asked.", "\"No.\" Alcala knew that he was shaking hands with a man who would be\n thanked down all the successive generations of mankind. He noticed\n again the odd white web-work of scars on the back of Johnny's hand. He\n indicated them as casually as he could. \"Where did you pick those up?\"\nJohn Drake glanced at his hand. \"I don't know, Ric. Truthfully.\n I've had my brains beaten in too often to remember much any more.\n Unimportant. There are instructions outlining plans and methods filed\n in safety deposit boxes in almost every big city in the world. Always\n the same typing, always the same instructions. I can't remember who\n typed them, myself or my father, but I must have been expected to\n forget or they wouldn't be there. Up to eleven, my memory is all right,\n but after Dad started to remake me, everything gets fuzzy.\"\n\n\n \"After he did\nwhat\n?\"", "Camba smiled and took out a small notebook. \"The disease is connected\n with silicones, you say? The original name of John Delgados was John\n Osborne Drake. His father was Osborne Drake, a chemist at Dow Corning,\n who was sentenced to the electric chair in 1967 for unauthorized\n bacterial experiments which resulted in an accidental epidemic and\n eight deaths. Dow Corning was the first major manufactury of silicones\n in America, though not connected in any way with Osborne Drake's\n criminal experiments. It links together, does it not?\"\n\n\n \"It is not a disease, it is strength!\" Alcala insisted doggedly.\nThe small investigator looked up from his notebook and his smile was\n an unnatural thing, a baring of teeth. \"Half the world died of this\n strength, Senor. If you will not think of the men and women, think of\n the children. Millions of children died!\"\n\n\n The waiter brought the bill, dropping it on the table between them." ], [ "\"Three generations back, this pressure would have gone right through\n the hand.\" He took away the blade and there was only a very tiny cut.\n Putting the knife away, he brought out his lighter. The blue flame\n was steady and hot. Alcala held it close to the dashboard and put his\n finger directly over it, counting patiently, \"One, two, three, four,\n five—\" He pulled the lighter back, snapping it shut.\n\"Three generations ago, a man couldn't have held a finger over that\n flame for more than a tenth part of that count. Doesn't all this prove\n something to you?\"\n\n\n The 'copter was hovering above Alcala's house. Camba lowered it to\n the ground and opened the door before answering. \"It proves only that\n a good and worthy man will cut and burn his hand for an unworthy\n friendship. Good night.\"", "A timer clicked and John Delgados-Drake became all rapid efficient\n activity, moving from valve to valve. It lasted a half minute or less,\n then Drake had finished stripping off the lab whites to his street\n clothes. He picked up the square metal box containing the stuff he had\n made, tucked it under his arm and held out a solid hand again to Alcala.\n\n\n \"Good-by, Ric. Wish me luck. Close up the lab for me, will you?\"\n\n\n Alcala took the hand numbly and mumbled something, turned back to the\n cages and stared blindly at the mice. Drake's brisk footsteps clattered\n down the stairs.\nAnother step forward for the human race.\n\n\n God knew what wonders for the race were in that box. Perhaps something\n for nerve construction, something for the mind—the last and most\n important step. He should have asked.", "\"Lives will be saved in the long run,\" Alcala said obstinately.\n \"Individual deaths are not important in the long run.\"\n\n\n \"That is hardly the philosophy for a doctor, is it?\" asked Camba with\n open irony, taking the bill and rising.\n\n\n They went out of the restaurant in silence. Camba's 'copter stood at\n the curb.\n\n\n \"Would you care for a lift home, Doctor Alcala?\" The offer was made\n with the utmost suavity.\n\n\n Alcala hesitated fractionally. \"Why, yes, thank you.\" It would not do\n to give the investigator any reason for suspicion by refusing.\n\n\n As the 'copter lifted into the air, Camba spoke with a more friendly\n note in his voice, as if he humored a child. \"Come, Alcala, you're a\n doctor dedicated to saving lives. How can you find sympathy for a\n murderer?\"", "\"It seems a pity we can't even find out who the gentleman is,\" the\n Crimes Department head murmured, looking at the thumbprint wistfully.\n \"No crime, no records. No records, no evidence. No evidence, no proof\n of crime. Therefore, we must manufacture a small crime. He was attacked\n and he must have defended himself. Someone may have been hurt in the\n process.\" He pushed a button. \"Do you think if I send a man down there,\n he could persuade one of the mob to swear out a complaint?\"\n\n\n \"That's a rhetorical question,\" said the psychologist, trying to work\n out an uncertain correlation in his reports. \"With that sort of mob\n hysteria, the town would probably give you an affidavit of witchcraft.\"\n\"Phone for you, Doctor Alcala.\" The nurse was crisp but quiet, smiling\n down at the little girl before vanishing again.", "There came at last a pressure that was a thought emerging from the\n depth of intuition.\nDoctor Ricardo Alcala will die in the next plague,\n he and his ill wife Nita and his ill little girl.... And the name of\n Alcala will die forever as a weak strain blotted from the bloodstream\n of the race....\nHe'd find out what was in the box by dying of it!\n\n\n He tried to reason it out, but only could remember that Nita, already\n sickly, would have no chance. And Alcala's family genes, in attempting\n to adapt to the previous steps, had become almost sterile. It had been\n difficult having children. The next step would mean complete sterility.\n The name of Alcala would die. The future might be wonderful, but it\n would not be\nhis\nfuture!\n\n\n \"Johnny!\" he called suddenly, something like an icy lump hardening in\n his chest. How long had it been since Johnny had left?", "\"Just too many people per acre,\" he said. \"All our work at improving\n production ... just one jump ahead of their rising population, one jump\n ahead of famine. Sometimes I wish to God there would be another plague\n to give us a breathing spell and a fair chance to get things organized.\"\n\n\n He went back to work and added another figure.\n\n\n Two months later, he was one of the first victims of the second plague.\nIn the dining hall of a university, a biochemical student glanced up\n from his paper to his breakfast companion. \"You remember Johnny, the\n mythical carrier that they told about during the first and second\n epidemics of Syndrome Plague?\"", "John Drake rose and looked around the laboratory with something like\n triumph. \"They're too late. I made it, Ric. There's the catalyst\n cooling over there. This is the last step. I don't think I'll survive\n this plague, but I'll last long enough to set it going for the finish.\n The police won't stop me until it's too late.\"\nAnother plague!\n\n\n The last one had been before Alcala was born. He had not thought that\n Johnny would start another. It was a shock.\n\n\n Alcala walked over to the cage where he kept his white mice and looked\n in, trying to sort out his feelings. The white mice looked back\n with beady bright eyes, caged, not knowing they were waiting to be\n experimented upon.", "\"It means,\" said the psychologist, smiling dryly, \"that every crazy\n report about our ghost has points of similarity to every other crazy\n report. The whole business of Syndrome Johnny has been in their 'funny\n coincidence' file for twenty years. This time the suspect hits the\n averaged description of Johnny too closely: A solid-looking man,\n unusual number of visible minor scars, and a disturbing habit of\n bending his fingers at the first-joint knuckles when he is thinking.\n The coincidence has gotten too damn funny. There's a chance we've been\n passing up a crime.\"\n\n\n \"An extensive crime,\" said the man at the desk softly. He reached\n for the folder. \"Yes, a considerable quantity of murder.\" He leafed\n through the folder and then thought a while, looking at the most recent\n reports. Thinking was what he was paid for, and he earned his excellent\n salary.", "Alcala sat in the dark, looking through the windshield down at the\n bright street falling away below. \"I'm not a practicing medico; only\n one night a week do I come to the hospital. I'm a research man. I don't\n try to save individual lives. I'm dedicated to improving the average\n life, the average health. Can you understand that? Individuals may be\n sick and individuals may die, but the average lives on. And if the\n average is better, then I'm satisfied.\"\n\n\n The 'copter flew on. There was no answer.\n\n\n \"I'm not good with words,\" said Alcala. Then, taking out his pen-knife\n and unfolding it, he said, \"Watch!\" He put his index finger on the\n altimeter dial, where there was light, and pressed the blade against\n the flesh between his finger and his thumb. He increased the pressure\n until the flesh stood out white on either side of the blade, bending,\n but not cut.", "Others received plasma and did not die. But their symptoms changed,\n including a syndrome of multiple endocrine unbalance, eccentricities of\n appetite and digestion, and a general pattern of emotional disturbance.\n\n\n An alert hospital administrator investigated the mortality rise and\n narrowed it to a question of who had donated blood the week before.\n After city residents were eliminated, there remained only the signed\n receipts and thumbprints of nine men. Nine healthy unregistered\n travelers poor enough to sell their blood for money, and among them a\n man who carried death in his veins. The nine thumbprints were broadcast\n to all police files and a search began.\n\n\n The effort was futile, for there were many victims who had sickened and\n grown partially well again without recognizing the strangeness of their\n illness.", "\"Uh-huh what?\" asked his superior, who was reading a newspaper with his\n feet up on the desk.\n\n\n \"Remember the myth, of Syndrome Johnny?\"\n\n\n \"Ghost of Syndrome Plague. Si, what of it?\"\n\n\n \"Titaquahapahel, Peru, population nine hundred, sent in a claim that he\n turned up there and they almost caught him. Crime Statistics rerouted\n the report to Mass Phenomena, of course. Mass Phenomena blew a tube and\n sent their folder on Syndrome Johnny over here. Every report they ever\n had on him for ninety years back! A memo came with it.\" He handed the\n memo over.\n\n\n The man behind the desk looked at it. It was a small graph and some\n mathematical symbols. \"What is it?\"", "\"Sure. Syndrome Johnny. They use that myth in psychology class as a\n typical example of mass hysteria. When a city was nervous and expecting\n the plague to reach them, some superstitious fool would imagine he saw\n Syndrome Johnny and the population would panic. Symbol for Death or\n some such thing. People imagined they saw him in every corner of the\n world. Simultaneously, of course.\"\n\n\n It was a bright morning and they were at a window which looked out\n across green rolling fields to a towering glass-brick building in the\n distance.\n\n\n The student who had gone back to his paper suddenly looked up again.\n \"Some Peruvians here claim they saw Syndrome Johnny—\"\n\n\n \"Idiotic superstition! You'd think it would have died down when the\n plague died.\"\n\n\n The other grinned. \"The plague didn't die.\" He folded his newspaper\n slowly, obviously advancing an opening for a debate.", "\"Other men are old, yes. Those who survived the two successive plagues,\n were unusually durable.\" Camba finished and pushed back his plate.\n \"There is no crime in being long-lived, surely. But he has changed his\n name five times!\"\n\n\n \"That proves nothing. Whatever his reasons for changing his name, it\n doesn't prove that he is Syndrome Johnny any more than it proves he\n is the cow that jumped over the moon. Syndrome Johnny is a myth, a\n figment of mob delirium.\"\nAs he said it, he knew it was not true. A Federation investigator would\n not be on a wild goose chase.\n\n\n The plates were taken away and cups of steaming black coffee put\n between them. He would have to warn Johnny. It was strange how well you\n could know a man as well as he knew Johnny, firmly enough to believe\n that, despite evidence, everything the man did was right.\n\n\n \"Why must it be a myth?\" Camba asked softly.", "Tapping his fingers gently, his heavy fingers ... the answer was\n dreamily fantastic.\nI'm turning into silicon plastic myself\n, he\n thought. But how, why? He had not bothered to be curious before, but\n the question had always been—what were supposedly insoluble silicons\n doing assimilating into the human body at all?\n\n\n Several moments passed. He smoothed back his hair with his oddly heavy\n hand before picking up his fork again.\n\n\n \"I'm turning into plastic,\" he told Camba.\n\n\n \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing. A joke.\"\n\n\n Camba was turning into plastic, too. Everyone was. But the effect was\n accumulating slowly, by generations.\nCamba lay down his knife and started in again. \"What connections have\n you had with John Delgados?\"\nConcentrate on the immediate situation.\nAlcala and Johnny were\n obviously in danger of some sort of mistaken arrest and interrogation.", "Three years later they reached the carrier stage and the epidemic\n spread to four cities. Three more years, and there was an epidemic\n which spread around the world, meeting another wave coming from the\n opposite direction. It killed two out of four, fifty out of a hundred,\n twenty-seven million out of fifty million. There was hysteria where\n it appeared. And where it had not appeared there were quarantines to\n fence it out. But it could not be fenced out. For two years it covered\n the world. And then it vanished again, leaving the survivors with a\n tendency toward glandular troubles.\n\n\n Time passed. The world grew richer, more orderly, more peaceful.\n\n\n A man paused in the midst of his work at the U.N. Food and Agriculture\n Commission. He looked up at the red and green production map of India.", "\"Not at all, Senor. The Federated States are only too happy thus to\n express a fraction of their gratitude by adding a touch of luxury to\n the otherwise barren and self-sacrificing life of a scientist.\"\n\n\n \"You shame me,\" Alcala said dryly. It was true that he needed\n every spare penny for the health of Nita and the child, and for the\n laboratory. A penny saved from being spent on nourishment was a penny\n earned. He picked up the menu again and ordered steak.\n\n\n The investigator lit a cigar, asking casually: \"Do you know John\n Osborne Drake?\"\nAlcala searched his memory. \"No. I'm sorry....\" Then he felt for the\n first time how closely he was being watched, and knew how carefully his\n reaction and the tone of his voice had been analyzed. The interview was\n dangerous. For some reason, he was suspected of something.", "\"Because we have sickened and recovered. We caught it on conception\n and recovered before birth. Proof? Why do you think that the countries\n which were known as the Hungry Lands are now well-fed, leisured,\n educated, advanced? Because the birth rate has fallen! Why has the\n birth rate fallen?\" He paused, then very carefully said, \"Because two\n out of three of all people who would have lived have died before birth,\n slain by Syndrome Plague. We are all carriers now, hosts to a new\n guest. And\"—his voice dropped to a mock sinister whisper—\"with such a\n stranger within our cells, at the heart of the intricate machinery of\n our lives, who knows what subtle changes have crept upon us unnoticed!\"\n\n\n His companion laughed. \"Eat your breakfast. You belong on a horror\n program!\"\nA police psychologist for the Federated States of The Americas was\n running through reports from the Bureau of Social Statistics. Suddenly\n he grunted, then a moment later said, \"Uh-huh!\"", "Camba smiled and took out a small notebook. \"The disease is connected\n with silicones, you say? The original name of John Delgados was John\n Osborne Drake. His father was Osborne Drake, a chemist at Dow Corning,\n who was sentenced to the electric chair in 1967 for unauthorized\n bacterial experiments which resulted in an accidental epidemic and\n eight deaths. Dow Corning was the first major manufactury of silicones\n in America, though not connected in any way with Osborne Drake's\n criminal experiments. It links together, does it not?\"\n\n\n \"It is not a disease, it is strength!\" Alcala insisted doggedly.\nThe small investigator looked up from his notebook and his smile was\n an unnatural thing, a baring of teeth. \"Half the world died of this\n strength, Senor. If you will not think of the men and women, think of\n the children. Millions of children died!\"\n\n\n The waiter brought the bill, dropping it on the table between them.", "The question was another shock. Alcala thought carefully, for any man\n might be insane in secret. \"Yes, so far as I know.\" He turned his\n attention to the steak, but first took three very large capsules from a\n bottle in his pocket.\n\n\n \"I would not expect that a doctor would need to take pills,\" Camba\n remarked with friendly mockery.\n\n\n \"I don't need them,\" Alcala explained. \"Mixed silicones. I'm guinea\n pigging.\"\n\n\n \"Can't such things be left to the guinea pigs?\" Camba asked, watching\n with revulsion as Alcala uncapped the second bottle and sprinkled a\n layer of gray powder over his steak.\n\n\n \"Guinea pigs have no assimilation of silicones; only man has that.\"", "\"An improvement on life?\" Camba laughed and nodded, but there were\n bitterness and anger burning behind the small man's smile. \"People\n can be improved to death by the millions. Yes, yes, go on, Senor. You\n fascinate me.\"\n\n\n \"We are stronger,\" Alcala told him. \"We are changed chemically. The\n race has been improved!\"\n\n\n \"Come, Doctor Alcala,\" Camba said with a sneering merriment, \"the\n Syndrome Plagues have come and they have gone. Where is this change?\"\n\n\n Alcala tried to express it clearly. \"We are stronger. Potentially, we\n are tremendously stronger. But we of this generation are still weak\n and ill, as our parents were, from the shock of the change. And we\n need silicone feeding; we have not adjusted yet. Our illness masks our\n strength.\" He thought of what that strength would be!" ] ]
test	50441	[ "What ultimately convinces Roy to interfere with Phillip Prior?", "How did FitzMaugham become director of the Bureau of Population Equalization? ", "Why did Fred call Roy after Roy returned from the clinic?", "Why was Roy nervous during his lift ride with FitzMaugham?", "Why did Roy redecorate his office?", "What were the different strategies Popeek employed to achieve population equalization?", "Why was the stack of paperwork in Roy's office so high?", "Why was Roy so worried about his decision to save Phillip?", "How did Roy put a stop to Phillip's euthanasia?", "Why did Fred decide against reporting Roy for breaking the Equalization Law?" ]	[ [ "The poet Lyle Prior visits his office, and Roy is such a big fan of his poetry that he decides to help him.", "He thinks about all the tubercular poets whose work wouldn't have existed under an Equalization Law.", "He convinces himself that interfering just one time would have no effect on the future implementation of the Equalization Law.", "He becomes overwhelmed considering what it would be like to lose a newborn child." ], [ "He was appointed to that position by the previous director of the Bureau. ", "He was elected to that position after the passage of the Equalization Law. ", "He became the director after fighting for the Equalization Law as a senator.", "He was nominated to the position by the President of the United States." ], [ "He wanted to chastise him for visiting the clinic without stopping by to say hello.", "He wanted to warn Roy that FitzMaugham knew about his plot to save Phillip Prior.", "Fred had discovered Roy's tampering by reading through his computer's history.", "Fred called Roy to warn him that he would be reporting him for violating the Equalization Law." ], [ "He was terrified of lift rides.", "FitzMaugham saw Roy exit on the 20th floor, so Roy was worried he would figure out his plan.", "He was dealing with an internal conflict about whether or not to follow through on his plan to save Phillip.", "FitzMaugham had generously given him his job, and he would become his right-hand man, so he felt a lot of pressure any time he was in his presence." ], [ "He wanted to create a space where he felt safe from the judgement of the general public.", "He strongly disliked the architectural style of the Popeek building.", "He wanted to install some iridescent chrome trim along his walls and some sash windows.", "He preferred the Cullen Building style as opposed to the neo-Victorian style of the Popeek building." ], [ "Their approach was two-fold: Resettlement and euthanasia. ", "Their approach was three-fold: Happysleep, relocation, and birth control. ", "Their approach was two-fold: Euthanasia and contraceptive.", "Their approach was three-fold: Resettlement, Happysleep, and contraceptive." ], [ "The Bureau was newly formed, and the global population continued to rapidly increase.", "Roy was procrastinating because the work of ordering mass euthanasia was overwhelming him.", "He harbored a personal dislike for paperwork as he preferred to handle more big-picture situations.", "The Bureau was short-staffed and under-budgeted." ], [ "He felt it might snowball and eventually lead to the collapse of the Bureau. ", "He knew he was in line to replace FitzMaugham as Bureau director, and he didn't want to lose that opportunity.", "He was worried about his financial future and personal reputation.", "He knew that saving Phillip may cause Fred to lose his job as well. " ], [ "He leveraged his fraternal relationship with Fred to put a stop to it.", "He updated Phillip's clinical record and ordered the attendant to re-check patient records prior to euthanasia. ", "He pulled Phillip's patient record and deleted it from the computer files. ", "He visited the clinic and pressured the attending doctor to return Phillip to his family." ], [ "He called it payback for landing him his position at the Bureau. ", "Roy was his brother, and he loved him.", "The memory of their parents' deaths softened his heart, and he decided against it.", "He wanted to be able to use the knowledge of Roy's actions as leverage in the future." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization\n Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal\n as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators,\n or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.\n\n\n He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and\n the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done\n it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life,\n even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.\n\n\n Well, the thing was done.\n\n\n No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to\n finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant\n places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's\n activities.", "\"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now....\"\n\n\n Walton understood. \"No, Prior. Please don't ask.\" Walton's skin felt\n cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy.\n\n\n \"He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular.\n The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—\"\n\n\n Walton rose. \"\nNo\n,\" he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. \"Don't\n ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're\n an intelligent man; you understand our program.\"\n\n\n \"I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the\n Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—\"", "\"Neither. Leave him here with me.\"\n\n\n \"Are you sure you—\"\n\n\n \"Get out of here,\" Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked\n away, he added, \"And figure out some more efficient system for\n protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here\n and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's\n simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world\n who'd take this job. Now\nget out\n!\"\n\n\n They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed\n and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly\n unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations\n prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit\n that to the guards.\n\n\n \"Take a seat, Mr. Prior.\"", "Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child,\n and after that I'll keep within the law.\n\n\n He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The\n clinic was on the twentieth floor.\n\n\n \"Roy.\"\n\n\n At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise.\n He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood\n there.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham.\"\n\n\n The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly,\n his mop of white hair bright and full. \"You look preoccupied, boy.\n Something the matter?\"\n\n\n Walton shook his head quickly. \"Just a little tired, sir. There's been\n a lot of work lately.\"", "Walton had set up the schedule himself: the gas chamber delivered\n Happysleep each day at 1100 and 1500. He had about half an hour to save\n Philip Prior.\n\n\n He peered covertly over his shoulder; no one was in sight. He slipped\n the baby's card into his breast pocket.\n\n\n That done, he typed out a requisition for explanation of the\n gene-sorting code the clinic used. Symbols began pouring forth,\n and Walton puzzledly correlated them with the line of gibberish on\n Phillip Prior's record card. Finally he found the one he wanted:\n3f2,\n tubercular-prone\n.", "\"There's a Mr. Prior to see you,\" the annunciator's calm voice said.\n \"He insists it's an emergency.\"\n\n\n \"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see anyone for at least three hours.\" Walton\n stared gloomily at the growing pile of paper on his desk. \"Tell him he\n can have ten minutes with me at—oh, say, 1300.\"\n\n\n Walton heard an angry male voice muttering something in the outer\n office, and then the annunciator said, \"He insists he must see you\n immediately in reference to a Happysleep commitment.\"\n\n\n \"Commitments are irrevocable,\" Walton said heavily. The last thing in\n the world he wanted was to see a man whose child or parent had just\n been committed. \"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see him at all.\"", "Walton found his fingers trembling; he clamped them tight to the edge\n of his desk to steady himself. It was all right sitting up here in this\n ugly building and initialing commitment papers, but actually to\nsee\none of those people and try to convince him of the need—\n\n\n The door burst open.\n\n\n A tall, dark-haired man in an open jacket came rushing through and\n paused dramatically just over the threshold. Immediately behind him\n came three unsmiling men in the gray silk-sheen uniforms of security.\n They carried drawn needlers.\n\n\n \"Are you Administrator Walton?\" the big man asked, in an astonishingly\n deep, rich voice. \"I have to see you. I'm Lyle Prior.\"", "\"I have to thank you for granting me this audience,\" Prior said,\n without a hint of sarcasm in his booming voice. \"I realize you're a\n terribly busy man.\"\n\n\n \"I am.\" Another three inches of paper had deposited itself on Walton's\n desk since Prior had entered. \"You're very lucky to have hit the\n psychological moment for your entrance. At any other time I'd have\n had you brigged for a month, but just now I'm in need of a little\n diversion. Besides, I very much admire your work, Mr. Prior.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you.\" Again that humility, startling in so big and commanding a\n man. \"I hadn't expected to find—I mean that you—\"\n\n\n \"That a bureaucrat should admire poetry? Is that what you're groping\n for?\"\n\n\n Prior reddened. \"Yes,\" he admitted.", "\"I see.\" The deep, warm eyes bored into his. \"You ought to slow down a\n little, I think.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little.\"\n\n\n FitzMaugham chuckled. \"In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid\n you'll never learn how to relax, my boy.\"\n\n\n The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director\n to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed\nFourteen\n; there was\n a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed\ntwenty\n, covering\n the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his\n destination.\n\n\n As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, \"Did Mr. Prior come to\n see you this morning?\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Walton said.", "Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a\n towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He\n remembered what FitzMaugham had said:\nOnce we make even one exception,\n the whole framework crumbles.\nWell, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little\n doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he\n had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.\n\n\n The annunciator chimed and said, \"Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling\n you, sir.\"\n\n\n \"Put him on.\"\n\n\n The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had\n given way to wild-eyed tenseness.\n\n\n \"What is it, Doctor?\"\n\n\n \"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll\n never guess what just happened—\"", "\"Those who inherit your condition,\" Walton said gently. \"Go home, Mr.\n Prior. Burn me in effigy. Write a poem about me. But don't ask me to do\n the impossible. I can't catch any falling stars for you.\"\n\n\n Prior rose. He was immense, a hulking tragic figure staring broodingly\n at Walton. For the first time since the poet's abrupt entry, Walton\n feared violence. His fingers groped for the needle gun he kept in his\n upper left desk drawer.\n\n\n But Prior had no violence in him. \"I'll leave you,\" he said somberly.\n \"I'm sorry, sir. Deeply sorry. For both of us.\"\n\n\n Walton pressed the doorlock to let him out, then locked it again and\n slipped heavily into his chair. Three more reports slid out of the\n chute and landed on his desk. He stared at them as if they were three\n basilisks.", "Prior's baby.\n\n\n With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, \"If there\n are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for\n the next half-hour.\"\nII\nHe stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer\n office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening\n letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into\n the hallway.\n\n\n There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the\n lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek\n was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the\n second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a\n single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking\n as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought\n about repeal of the entire Equalization Law.", "Grinning, Walton said, \"I have to do\nsomething\nwhen I go home at\n night. I don't really read Popeek reports twenty-four hours a day. No\n more than twenty; that's my rule. I thought your last book was quite\n remarkable.\"\n\n\n \"The critics didn't,\" Prior said diffidently.\n\n\n \"Critics! What do they know?\" Walton demanded. \"They swing in cycles.\n Ten years ago it was form and technique, and you got the Melling Prize.\n Now it's message, political content that counts. That's not poetry, Mr.\n Prior—and there are still a few of us who recognize what poetry is.\n Take Yeats, for instance—\"\n\n\n Walton was ready to launch into a discussion of every poet from Prior\n back to Surrey and Wyatt; anything to keep from the job at hand,\n anything to keep his mind from Popeek. But Prior interrupted him.\n\n\n \"Mr. Walton....\"", "\"Really, Roy?\" His brother's tone was venomous. \"I happened to\n be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was\n curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of\n your conversation with the machine.\"\n\n\n Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb.\n He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and\n say, \"That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek\n computer outlet is confidential.\"\n\n\n \"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh,\n Roy?\"\n\n\n \"How much do you know?\"", "Frowning, he tried to remember the Prior boy's name. Ah ... Philip,\n wasn't it? He punched out a request for the card on Philip Prior.", "Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He\n nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass\n cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.\nIdiot!\nhe thought.\nFool!\nHe had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed\n to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see\n through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his\n father-substitute.\n\n\n FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time,\n but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for\n Fred....\n\n\n There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been\n particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now\n almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their\n parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had\n been sent to the public crèche.", "Prior's words haunted him.\nI was tubercular ... where would my poems\n be now?\nThe big humble man was one of the great poets. Keats had been\n tubercular too.\nWhat good are poets?\nhe asked himself savagely.\n\n\n The reply came swiftly:\nWhat good is anything, then?\nKeats,\n Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats, Donne, Pound, Matthews ... and Prior. How\n much duller life would be without them, Walton thought, picturing\n his bookshelf—his one bookshelf, in his crowded little cubicle of a\n one-room home.\n\n\n Sweat poured down his back as he groped toward his decision.\n\n\n The step he was considering would disqualify him from his job if he\n admitted it, though he wouldn't do that. Under the Equalization Law, it\n would be a criminal act.\n\n\n But just one baby wouldn't matter. Just one.", "\"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?\"\n\n\n \"That's right, sir,\" Walton said tightly.\n\n\n \"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was\n on his mind?\"\n\n\n Walton hesitated. \"He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep.\n Naturally, I had to turn him down.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally,\" FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. \"Once we make even one\n exception, the whole framework crumbles.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, sir.\"", "\"No guessing games, Falbrough. Speak up.\"\n\n\n \"I—well, sir, I ran checks on the seven babies they sent me this\n morning. And guess—I mean—well, one of them shouldn't have been sent\n to me!\"\n\n\n \"No!\"\n\n\n \"It's the truth, sir. A cute little baby indeed. I've got his card\n right here. The boy's name is Philip Prior, and his gene-pattern is\n fine.\"\n\n\n \"Any recommendation for euthanasia on the card?\" Walton asked.\n\n\n \"No, sir.\"", "As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek\n worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham\n had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at\n the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving\n mankind from itself.\n\n\n The director smiled. \"You never did learn how to budget your strength,\n Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad\n you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning,\n though. Mind if I join you?\"\n\n\n \"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?\"\n\n\n \"No, Mr. FitzMaugham.\" Walton felt as though he'd already been tried,\n drawn, and quartered. \"It requires personal attention.\"" ], [ "Since taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on\n the twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but\n that had created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant\n building. It couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though\n necessary; and, like the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the\n Bureau did not rate attractive quarters.\n\n\n So Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that\n trimmed the walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed\n the massive ceiling fixture to more subtle electroluminescents. But the\n mark of the last century was stamped irrevocably on both building and\n office.\n\n\n Which was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last\n century's foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all.", "As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek\n worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham\n had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at\n the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving\n mankind from itself.\n\n\n The director smiled. \"You never did learn how to budget your strength,\n Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad\n you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning,\n though. Mind if I join you?\"\n\n\n \"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?\"\n\n\n \"No, Mr. FitzMaugham.\" Walton felt as though he'd already been tried,\n drawn, and quartered. \"It requires personal attention.\"", "He shut his eyes, dug his thumbs into them until bright flares of light\n shot across his eyeballs, and refused to let himself be bothered by\n the multiple problems involved in dumping several hundred thousand\n Belgians into Patagonia. He forced himself to cling to one of Director\n FitzMaugham's oft-repeated maxims,\nIf you want to stay sane, think of\n these people as pawns in a chess game—not as human beings.\nWalton sighed. This was the biggest chess problem in the history of\n humanity, and the way it looked now, all the solutions led to checkmate\n in a century or less. They could keep equalizing population only so\n long, shifting like loggers riding logs in a rushing river, before\n trouble came.\n\n\n There was another matter to be attended to now. He picked up the\n voicewrite again. \"Memo from the assistant administrator, re\n establishment of new policy on reports from local agents: hire a staff\n of three clever girls to make a précis of each report, eliminating\n irrelevant data.\"", "After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an\n education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private\n secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant\n administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine,\n unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section\n of Popeek, thanks to Roy.", "\"Can I help—oh, it's you, Mr. Walton,\" a white-smocked technician\n said. Popeek employed a small army of technicians, each one faceless\n and without personality, but always ready to serve. \"Is there anything\n I can do?\"\n\n\n \"I'm simply running a routine checkup. Mind if I use the machine?\"\n\n\n \"Not at all, sir. Go right ahead.\"\n\n\n Walton grinned lightly and stepped forward. The technician practically\n backed out of his presence.\nNo doubt I must radiate charisma\n, he thought. Within the building he\n wore a sort of luminous halo, by virtue of being Director FitzMaugham's\n protégé and second-in-command. Outside, in the colder reality of the\n crowded metropolis, he kept his identity and Popeek rank quietly to\n himself.", "Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child,\n and after that I'll keep within the law.\n\n\n He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The\n clinic was on the twentieth floor.\n\n\n \"Roy.\"\n\n\n At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise.\n He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood\n there.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham.\"\n\n\n The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly,\n his mop of white hair bright and full. \"You look preoccupied, boy.\n Something the matter?\"\n\n\n Walton shook his head quickly. \"Just a little tired, sir. There's been\n a lot of work lately.\"", "\"I see.\" The deep, warm eyes bored into his. \"You ought to slow down a\n little, I think.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little.\"\n\n\n FitzMaugham chuckled. \"In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid\n you'll never learn how to relax, my boy.\"\n\n\n The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director\n to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed\nFourteen\n; there was\n a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed\ntwenty\n, covering\n the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his\n destination.\n\n\n As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, \"Did Mr. Prior come to\n see you this morning?\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Walton said.", "For it was\nhis\njob to tell parents their children were unfit to live;\nhe\nhad to uproot people from their homes and send them to remote\n areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged citizens,\n denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a\n decision: resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies,\n become a dictator in the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly.\n In other words, should he become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?\nCAST OF CHARACTERS\nROY WALTON\nHe had to adopt the motto—\nthe ends justify the means\n.\nFITZMAUGHAM", "Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a\n towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He\n remembered what FitzMaugham had said:\nOnce we make even one exception,\n the whole framework crumbles.\nWell, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little\n doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he\n had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.\n\n\n The annunciator chimed and said, \"Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling\n you, sir.\"\n\n\n \"Put him on.\"\n\n\n The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had\n given way to wild-eyed tenseness.\n\n\n \"What is it, Doctor?\"\n\n\n \"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll\n never guess what just happened—\"", "Walton stepped out of the tube and returned FitzMaugham's smile as the\n door closed again. Bitter thoughts assailed him as soon as he was alone.\nSome fine criminal you are. You've given the show away already! And\n damn that smooth paternal smile. FitzMaugham knows! He must know!\nWalton wavered, then abruptly made his decision. He sucked in a deep\n breath and walked briskly toward the big room where the euthanasia\n files were kept.\nThe room was large, as rooms went nowadays—thirty by twenty, with deck\n upon deck of Donnerson micro-memory-tubes racked along one wall and a\n bank of microfilm records along the other. In six weeks of life Popeek\n had piled up an impressive collection of data.\n\n\n While he stood there, the computer chattered, lights flashed. New facts\n poured into the memory banks. It probably went on day and night.", "\"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?\"\n\n\n \"That's right, sir,\" Walton said tightly.\n\n\n \"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was\n on his mind?\"\n\n\n Walton hesitated. \"He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep.\n Naturally, I had to turn him down.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally,\" FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. \"Once we make even one\n exception, the whole framework crumbles.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, sir.\"", "His reward for devoted service was—an assassin's bullet.\nFRED WALTON\nHis ambition was to fill his brother's shoes—but he underestimated\n their size.\nLEE PERCY\nHis specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills.\nPRIOR\nWith the pen as his only weapon, could he save his son?\nDR. LAMARRE\nHe died for discovering the secret of immortality.\nContents\nI\nThe offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly known\n as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors\n of the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of\n twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy", "Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He\n nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass\n cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.\nIdiot!\nhe thought.\nFool!\nHe had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed\n to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see\n through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his\n father-substitute.\n\n\n FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time,\n but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for\n Fred....\n\n\n There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been\n particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now\n almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their\n parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had\n been sent to the public crèche.", "\"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system,\n would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of\n this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton\n doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!\"\n\n\n \"Thanks for small blessings,\" Roy said acidly.\n\n\n \"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now,\n shall we?\"\n\n\n \"Anything you like,\" Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though\n the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen\n cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. \"I have some\n work to do now.\" His voice was barely audible.\n\n\n \"I won't keep you any longer, then,\" Fred said.\n\n\n The screen went dead.", "His desk was piled high with reports, and more kept arriving via\n pneumochute every minute. The job of assistant administrator was\n a thankless one, he thought; as much responsibility as Director\n FitzMaugham, and half the pay.\n\n\n He lifted a report from one eyebrow-high stack, smoothed the crinkly\n paper carefully, and read it.", "The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization\n Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal\n as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators,\n or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.\n\n\n He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and\n the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done\n it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life,\n even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.\n\n\n Well, the thing was done.\n\n\n No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to\n finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant\n places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's\n activities.", "Prior's baby.\n\n\n With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, \"If there\n are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for\n the next half-hour.\"\nII\nHe stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer\n office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening\n letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into\n the hallway.\n\n\n There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the\n lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek\n was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the\n second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a\n single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking\n as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought\n about repeal of the entire Equalization Law.", "Now came the real test: could he pry the baby away from the doctors\n without attracting too much attention to himself in the process?\nFive doctors were bustling back and forth as Walton entered the main\n section of the clinic. There must have been a hundred babies there,\n each in a little pen of its own, and the doctors were humming from one\n to the next, while anxious parents watched from screens above.\n\n\n The Equalization Law provided that every child be presented at its\n local clinic within two weeks of birth, for an examination and a\n certificate. Perhaps one in ten thousand would be denied a\n certificate ... and life.\n\n\n \"Hello, Mr. Walton. What brings you down here?\"\n\n\n Walton smiled affably. \"Just a routine investigation, Doctor. I try to\n keep in touch with every department we have, you know.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. FitzMaugham was down here to look around a little while ago. We're\n really getting a going-over today, Mr. Walton!\"", "\"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now....\"\n\n\n Walton understood. \"No, Prior. Please don't ask.\" Walton's skin felt\n cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy.\n\n\n \"He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular.\n The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—\"\n\n\n Walton rose. \"\nNo\n,\" he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. \"Don't\n ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're\n an intelligent man; you understand our program.\"\n\n\n \"I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the\n Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—\"", "It was a basic step, one that should have been taken long ago. Now,\n with three feet of reports stacked on his desk, it was mandatory. One\n of the troubles with Popeek was its newness; it had been established so\n suddenly that most of its procedures were still in the formative stage.\n\n\n He took another report from the heap. This one was the data sheet of\n the Zurich Euthanasia Center, and he gave it a cursory scanning. During\n the past week, eleven substandard children and twenty-three substandard\n adults had been sent on to Happysleep.\n\n\n That was the grimmest form of population equalization. Walton initialed\n the report, earmarked it for files, and dumped it in the pneumochute.\n\n\n The annunciator chimed.\n\n\n \"I'm busy,\" Walton said immediately." ], [ "\"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system,\n would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of\n this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton\n doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!\"\n\n\n \"Thanks for small blessings,\" Roy said acidly.\n\n\n \"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now,\n shall we?\"\n\n\n \"Anything you like,\" Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though\n the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen\n cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. \"I have some\n work to do now.\" His voice was barely audible.\n\n\n \"I won't keep you any longer, then,\" Fred said.\n\n\n The screen went dead.", "\"Umm. Yes.\" Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could\n do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his\n protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.\n\n\n \"Seen my brother around?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him\n for you, Mr. Walton?\"\n\n\n \"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later.\" Inwardly,\n Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in\n the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and\n Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.\n\n\n Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump,\n squalling babies, and said, \"Find many sour ones today?\"", "Even on the screen, Fred's neck and shoulders gave an impression of\n tremendous solidity and force. Walton waited for his brother's image to\n take shape, and when the time lag was over he said, \"Well, Fred? What\n goes?\"\n\n\n His brother's eyes flickered sleepily. \"They tell me you were down here\n a little while ago, Roy. How come I didn't rate a visit?\"\n\n\n \"I wasn't in your section. It was official business, anyway. I didn't\n have time.\"\n\n\n Walton fixed his eyes sharply on the caduceus emblem gleaming on Fred's\n lapel, and refused to look anywhere else.\n\n\n Fred said slowly, \"You had time to tinker with our computer, though.\"\n\n\n \"Official business!\"", "After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an\n education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private\n secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant\n administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine,\n unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section\n of Popeek, thanks to Roy.", "The annunciator chimed again. \"Your brother is on the wire, sir.\"\n\n\n Walton trembled imperceptibly as he said, \"Put him on.\" Somehow, Fred\n never called unless he could say or do something unpleasant. And\n Walton was very much afraid that his brother meant no good by this\n call. No good at all.\nIII\nRoy Walton watched his brother's head and shoulders take form out of\n the swirl of colors on the screen. Fred Walton was more compact, built\n closer to the ground than his rangy brother; he was a squat five-seven,\n next to Roy's lean six-two. Fred had always threatened to \"get even\"\n with his older brother as soon as they were the same size, but to\n Fred's great dismay he had never managed to catch up with Roy in height.", "Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He\n nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass\n cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.\nIdiot!\nhe thought.\nFool!\nHe had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed\n to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see\n through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his\n father-substitute.\n\n\n FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time,\n but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for\n Fred....\n\n\n There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been\n particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now\n almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their\n parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had\n been sent to the public crèche.", "Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a\n towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He\n remembered what FitzMaugham had said:\nOnce we make even one exception,\n the whole framework crumbles.\nWell, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little\n doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he\n had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.\n\n\n The annunciator chimed and said, \"Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling\n you, sir.\"\n\n\n \"Put him on.\"\n\n\n The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had\n given way to wild-eyed tenseness.\n\n\n \"What is it, Doctor?\"\n\n\n \"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll\n never guess what just happened—\"", "\"Really, Roy?\" His brother's tone was venomous. \"I happened to\n be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was\n curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of\n your conversation with the machine.\"\n\n\n Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb.\n He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and\n say, \"That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek\n computer outlet is confidential.\"\n\n\n \"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh,\n Roy?\"\n\n\n \"How much do you know?\"", "Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child,\n and after that I'll keep within the law.\n\n\n He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The\n clinic was on the twentieth floor.\n\n\n \"Roy.\"\n\n\n At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise.\n He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood\n there.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham.\"\n\n\n The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly,\n his mop of white hair bright and full. \"You look preoccupied, boy.\n Something the matter?\"\n\n\n Walton shook his head quickly. \"Just a little tired, sir. There's been\n a lot of work lately.\"", "The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization\n Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal\n as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators,\n or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.\n\n\n He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and\n the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done\n it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life,\n even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.\n\n\n Well, the thing was done.\n\n\n No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to\n finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant\n places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's\n activities.", "Walton chewed at a ragged cuticle for a moment, counterfeiting great\n anxiety. \"Falbrough, we're going to have to keep this very quiet.\n Someone slipped up in the examining room, and if word gets out that\n there's been as much as one mistake, we'll have a mob swarming over us\n in half an hour.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir.\" Falbrough looked terribly grave. \"What should I do, sir?\"\n\n\n \"Don't say a word about this to\nanyone\n, not even the men in the\n examining room. Fill out a certificate for the boy, find his parents,\n apologize and return him to them. And make sure you keep checking for\n any future cases of this sort.\"\n\n\n \"Certainly, sir. Is that all?\"\n\n\n \"It is,\" Walton said crisply, and broke the contact. He took a deep\n breath and stared bleakly at the far wall.", "As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek\n worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham\n had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at\n the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving\n mankind from itself.\n\n\n The director smiled. \"You never did learn how to budget your strength,\n Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad\n you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning,\n though. Mind if I join you?\"\n\n\n \"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?\"\n\n\n \"No, Mr. FitzMaugham.\" Walton felt as though he'd already been tried,\n drawn, and quartered. \"It requires personal attention.\"", "The lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back,\n revealing a neat, gleaming sign:\nFLOOR 20\nEuthanasia Clinic and Files\nWalton had forgotten the accursed sign. He began to wish he had avoided\n traveling down with the director. He felt that his purpose must seem\n nakedly obvious now.\n\n\n The old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. \"I guess you get off here,\"\n he said. \"I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really\n should take some time off for relaxation each day.\"\n\n\n \"I'll try, sir.\"", "Walton had set up the schedule himself: the gas chamber delivered\n Happysleep each day at 1100 and 1500. He had about half an hour to save\n Philip Prior.\n\n\n He peered covertly over his shoulder; no one was in sight. He slipped\n the baby's card into his breast pocket.\n\n\n That done, he typed out a requisition for explanation of the\n gene-sorting code the clinic used. Symbols began pouring forth,\n and Walton puzzledly correlated them with the line of gibberish on\n Phillip Prior's record card. Finally he found the one he wanted:\n3f2,\n tubercular-prone\n.", "\"There's a Mr. Prior to see you,\" the annunciator's calm voice said.\n \"He insists it's an emergency.\"\n\n\n \"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see anyone for at least three hours.\" Walton\n stared gloomily at the growing pile of paper on his desk. \"Tell him he\n can have ten minutes with me at—oh, say, 1300.\"\n\n\n Walton heard an angry male voice muttering something in the outer\n office, and then the annunciator said, \"He insists he must see you\n immediately in reference to a Happysleep commitment.\"\n\n\n \"Commitments are irrevocable,\" Walton said heavily. The last thing in\n the world he wanted was to see a man whose child or parent had just\n been committed. \"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see him at all.\"", "Frowning, he tried to remember the Prior boy's name. Ah ... Philip,\n wasn't it? He punched out a request for the card on Philip Prior.", "\"\nMistake?\nBut how—\"\n\n\n \"Never mind that, Falbrough. There was quite a tragic slip-up at one\n of the European centers yesterday. We may all hang for it if news gets\n out.\"\nHow glibly I reel this stuff off\n, Walton thought in amazement.\n\n\n Falbrough looked grave. \"I see, sir. Of course. We'll double-check\n everything from now on.\"\n\n\n \"Good. Begin with the 1100 batch.\"\n\n\n Walton couldn't bear to remain down in the clinic any longer. He left\n via a side exit, and signaled for a lift tube.", "\"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?\"\n\n\n \"That's right, sir,\" Walton said tightly.\n\n\n \"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was\n on his mind?\"\n\n\n Walton hesitated. \"He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep.\n Naturally, I had to turn him down.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally,\" FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. \"Once we make even one\n exception, the whole framework crumbles.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, sir.\"", "\"Neither. Leave him here with me.\"\n\n\n \"Are you sure you—\"\n\n\n \"Get out of here,\" Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked\n away, he added, \"And figure out some more efficient system for\n protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here\n and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's\n simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world\n who'd take this job. Now\nget out\n!\"\n\n\n They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed\n and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly\n unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations\n prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit\n that to the guards.\n\n\n \"Take a seat, Mr. Prior.\"", "\"Those who inherit your condition,\" Walton said gently. \"Go home, Mr.\n Prior. Burn me in effigy. Write a poem about me. But don't ask me to do\n the impossible. I can't catch any falling stars for you.\"\n\n\n Prior rose. He was immense, a hulking tragic figure staring broodingly\n at Walton. For the first time since the poet's abrupt entry, Walton\n feared violence. His fingers groped for the needle gun he kept in his\n upper left desk drawer.\n\n\n But Prior had no violence in him. \"I'll leave you,\" he said somberly.\n \"I'm sorry, sir. Deeply sorry. For both of us.\"\n\n\n Walton pressed the doorlock to let him out, then locked it again and\n slipped heavily into his chair. Three more reports slid out of the\n chute and landed on his desk. He stared at them as if they were three\n basilisks." ], [ "\"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system,\n would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of\n this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton\n doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!\"\n\n\n \"Thanks for small blessings,\" Roy said acidly.\n\n\n \"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now,\n shall we?\"\n\n\n \"Anything you like,\" Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though\n the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen\n cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. \"I have some\n work to do now.\" His voice was barely audible.\n\n\n \"I won't keep you any longer, then,\" Fred said.\n\n\n The screen went dead.", "As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek\n worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham\n had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at\n the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving\n mankind from itself.\n\n\n The director smiled. \"You never did learn how to budget your strength,\n Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad\n you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning,\n though. Mind if I join you?\"\n\n\n \"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?\"\n\n\n \"No, Mr. FitzMaugham.\" Walton felt as though he'd already been tried,\n drawn, and quartered. \"It requires personal attention.\"", "Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child,\n and after that I'll keep within the law.\n\n\n He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The\n clinic was on the twentieth floor.\n\n\n \"Roy.\"\n\n\n At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise.\n He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood\n there.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham.\"\n\n\n The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly,\n his mop of white hair bright and full. \"You look preoccupied, boy.\n Something the matter?\"\n\n\n Walton shook his head quickly. \"Just a little tired, sir. There's been\n a lot of work lately.\"", "After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an\n education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private\n secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant\n administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine,\n unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section\n of Popeek, thanks to Roy.", "\"I see.\" The deep, warm eyes bored into his. \"You ought to slow down a\n little, I think.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little.\"\n\n\n FitzMaugham chuckled. \"In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid\n you'll never learn how to relax, my boy.\"\n\n\n The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director\n to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed\nFourteen\n; there was\n a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed\ntwenty\n, covering\n the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his\n destination.\n\n\n As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, \"Did Mr. Prior come to\n see you this morning?\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Walton said.", "Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He\n nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass\n cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.\nIdiot!\nhe thought.\nFool!\nHe had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed\n to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see\n through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his\n father-substitute.\n\n\n FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time,\n but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for\n Fred....\n\n\n There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been\n particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now\n almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their\n parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had\n been sent to the public crèche.", "Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a\n towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He\n remembered what FitzMaugham had said:\nOnce we make even one exception,\n the whole framework crumbles.\nWell, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little\n doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he\n had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.\n\n\n The annunciator chimed and said, \"Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling\n you, sir.\"\n\n\n \"Put him on.\"\n\n\n The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had\n given way to wild-eyed tenseness.\n\n\n \"What is it, Doctor?\"\n\n\n \"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll\n never guess what just happened—\"", "The lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back,\n revealing a neat, gleaming sign:\nFLOOR 20\nEuthanasia Clinic and Files\nWalton had forgotten the accursed sign. He began to wish he had avoided\n traveling down with the director. He felt that his purpose must seem\n nakedly obvious now.\n\n\n The old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. \"I guess you get off here,\"\n he said. \"I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really\n should take some time off for relaxation each day.\"\n\n\n \"I'll try, sir.\"", "\"Can I help—oh, it's you, Mr. Walton,\" a white-smocked technician\n said. Popeek employed a small army of technicians, each one faceless\n and without personality, but always ready to serve. \"Is there anything\n I can do?\"\n\n\n \"I'm simply running a routine checkup. Mind if I use the machine?\"\n\n\n \"Not at all, sir. Go right ahead.\"\n\n\n Walton grinned lightly and stepped forward. The technician practically\n backed out of his presence.\nNo doubt I must radiate charisma\n, he thought. Within the building he\n wore a sort of luminous halo, by virtue of being Director FitzMaugham's\n protégé and second-in-command. Outside, in the colder reality of the\n crowded metropolis, he kept his identity and Popeek rank quietly to\n himself.", "\"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?\"\n\n\n \"That's right, sir,\" Walton said tightly.\n\n\n \"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was\n on his mind?\"\n\n\n Walton hesitated. \"He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep.\n Naturally, I had to turn him down.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally,\" FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. \"Once we make even one\n exception, the whole framework crumbles.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, sir.\"", "Since taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on\n the twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but\n that had created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant\n building. It couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though\n necessary; and, like the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the\n Bureau did not rate attractive quarters.\n\n\n So Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that\n trimmed the walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed\n the massive ceiling fixture to more subtle electroluminescents. But the\n mark of the last century was stamped irrevocably on both building and\n office.\n\n\n Which was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last\n century's foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all.", "The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization\n Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal\n as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators,\n or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.\n\n\n He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and\n the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done\n it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life,\n even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.\n\n\n Well, the thing was done.\n\n\n No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to\n finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant\n places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's\n activities.", "\"Umm. Yes.\" Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could\n do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his\n protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.\n\n\n \"Seen my brother around?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him\n for you, Mr. Walton?\"\n\n\n \"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later.\" Inwardly,\n Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in\n the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and\n Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.\n\n\n Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump,\n squalling babies, and said, \"Find many sour ones today?\"", "His desk was piled high with reports, and more kept arriving via\n pneumochute every minute. The job of assistant administrator was\n a thankless one, he thought; as much responsibility as Director\n FitzMaugham, and half the pay.\n\n\n He lifted a report from one eyebrow-high stack, smoothed the crinkly\n paper carefully, and read it.", "Prior's baby.\n\n\n With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, \"If there\n are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for\n the next half-hour.\"\nII\nHe stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer\n office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening\n letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into\n the hallway.\n\n\n There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the\n lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek\n was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the\n second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a\n single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking\n as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought\n about repeal of the entire Equalization Law.", "\"Neither. Leave him here with me.\"\n\n\n \"Are you sure you—\"\n\n\n \"Get out of here,\" Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked\n away, he added, \"And figure out some more efficient system for\n protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here\n and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's\n simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world\n who'd take this job. Now\nget out\n!\"\n\n\n They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed\n and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly\n unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations\n prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit\n that to the guards.\n\n\n \"Take a seat, Mr. Prior.\"", "The annunciator chimed again. \"Your brother is on the wire, sir.\"\n\n\n Walton trembled imperceptibly as he said, \"Put him on.\" Somehow, Fred\n never called unless he could say or do something unpleasant. And\n Walton was very much afraid that his brother meant no good by this\n call. No good at all.\nIII\nRoy Walton watched his brother's head and shoulders take form out of\n the swirl of colors on the screen. Fred Walton was more compact, built\n closer to the ground than his rangy brother; he was a squat five-seven,\n next to Roy's lean six-two. Fred had always threatened to \"get even\"\n with his older brother as soon as they were the same size, but to\n Fred's great dismay he had never managed to catch up with Roy in height.", "\"\nMistake?\nBut how—\"\n\n\n \"Never mind that, Falbrough. There was quite a tragic slip-up at one\n of the European centers yesterday. We may all hang for it if news gets\n out.\"\nHow glibly I reel this stuff off\n, Walton thought in amazement.\n\n\n Falbrough looked grave. \"I see, sir. Of course. We'll double-check\n everything from now on.\"\n\n\n \"Good. Begin with the 1100 batch.\"\n\n\n Walton couldn't bear to remain down in the clinic any longer. He left\n via a side exit, and signaled for a lift tube.", "\"Really, Roy?\" His brother's tone was venomous. \"I happened to\n be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was\n curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of\n your conversation with the machine.\"\n\n\n Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb.\n He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and\n say, \"That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek\n computer outlet is confidential.\"\n\n\n \"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh,\n Roy?\"\n\n\n \"How much do you know?\"", "For it was\nhis\njob to tell parents their children were unfit to live;\nhe\nhad to uproot people from their homes and send them to remote\n areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged citizens,\n denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a\n decision: resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies,\n become a dictator in the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly.\n In other words, should he become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?\nCAST OF CHARACTERS\nROY WALTON\nHe had to adopt the motto—\nthe ends justify the means\n.\nFITZMAUGHAM" ], [ "Since taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on\n the twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but\n that had created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant\n building. It couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though\n necessary; and, like the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the\n Bureau did not rate attractive quarters.\n\n\n So Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that\n trimmed the walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed\n the massive ceiling fixture to more subtle electroluminescents. But the\n mark of the last century was stamped irrevocably on both building and\n office.\n\n\n Which was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last\n century's foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all.", "After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an\n education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private\n secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant\n administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine,\n unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section\n of Popeek, thanks to Roy.", "As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek\n worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham\n had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at\n the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving\n mankind from itself.\n\n\n The director smiled. \"You never did learn how to budget your strength,\n Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad\n you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning,\n though. Mind if I join you?\"\n\n\n \"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?\"\n\n\n \"No, Mr. FitzMaugham.\" Walton felt as though he'd already been tried,\n drawn, and quartered. \"It requires personal attention.\"", "\"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system,\n would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of\n this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton\n doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!\"\n\n\n \"Thanks for small blessings,\" Roy said acidly.\n\n\n \"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now,\n shall we?\"\n\n\n \"Anything you like,\" Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though\n the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen\n cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. \"I have some\n work to do now.\" His voice was barely audible.\n\n\n \"I won't keep you any longer, then,\" Fred said.\n\n\n The screen went dead.", "Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a\n towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He\n remembered what FitzMaugham had said:\nOnce we make even one exception,\n the whole framework crumbles.\nWell, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little\n doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he\n had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.\n\n\n The annunciator chimed and said, \"Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling\n you, sir.\"\n\n\n \"Put him on.\"\n\n\n The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had\n given way to wild-eyed tenseness.\n\n\n \"What is it, Doctor?\"\n\n\n \"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll\n never guess what just happened—\"", "\"Umm. Yes.\" Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could\n do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his\n protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.\n\n\n \"Seen my brother around?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him\n for you, Mr. Walton?\"\n\n\n \"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later.\" Inwardly,\n Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in\n the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and\n Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.\n\n\n Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump,\n squalling babies, and said, \"Find many sour ones today?\"", "Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child,\n and after that I'll keep within the law.\n\n\n He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The\n clinic was on the twentieth floor.\n\n\n \"Roy.\"\n\n\n At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise.\n He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood\n there.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham.\"\n\n\n The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly,\n his mop of white hair bright and full. \"You look preoccupied, boy.\n Something the matter?\"\n\n\n Walton shook his head quickly. \"Just a little tired, sir. There's been\n a lot of work lately.\"", "Even on the screen, Fred's neck and shoulders gave an impression of\n tremendous solidity and force. Walton waited for his brother's image to\n take shape, and when the time lag was over he said, \"Well, Fred? What\n goes?\"\n\n\n His brother's eyes flickered sleepily. \"They tell me you were down here\n a little while ago, Roy. How come I didn't rate a visit?\"\n\n\n \"I wasn't in your section. It was official business, anyway. I didn't\n have time.\"\n\n\n Walton fixed his eyes sharply on the caduceus emblem gleaming on Fred's\n lapel, and refused to look anywhere else.\n\n\n Fred said slowly, \"You had time to tinker with our computer, though.\"\n\n\n \"Official business!\"", "The lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back,\n revealing a neat, gleaming sign:\nFLOOR 20\nEuthanasia Clinic and Files\nWalton had forgotten the accursed sign. He began to wish he had avoided\n traveling down with the director. He felt that his purpose must seem\n nakedly obvious now.\n\n\n The old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. \"I guess you get off here,\"\n he said. \"I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really\n should take some time off for relaxation each day.\"\n\n\n \"I'll try, sir.\"", "His reward for devoted service was—an assassin's bullet.\nFRED WALTON\nHis ambition was to fill his brother's shoes—but he underestimated\n their size.\nLEE PERCY\nHis specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills.\nPRIOR\nWith the pen as his only weapon, could he save his son?\nDR. LAMARRE\nHe died for discovering the secret of immortality.\nContents\nI\nThe offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly known\n as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors\n of the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of\n twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy", "\"I have to thank you for granting me this audience,\" Prior said,\n without a hint of sarcasm in his booming voice. \"I realize you're a\n terribly busy man.\"\n\n\n \"I am.\" Another three inches of paper had deposited itself on Walton's\n desk since Prior had entered. \"You're very lucky to have hit the\n psychological moment for your entrance. At any other time I'd have\n had you brigged for a month, but just now I'm in need of a little\n diversion. Besides, I very much admire your work, Mr. Prior.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you.\" Again that humility, startling in so big and commanding a\n man. \"I hadn't expected to find—I mean that you—\"\n\n\n \"That a bureaucrat should admire poetry? Is that what you're groping\n for?\"\n\n\n Prior reddened. \"Yes,\" he admitted.", "Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He\n nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass\n cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.\nIdiot!\nhe thought.\nFool!\nHe had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed\n to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see\n through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his\n father-substitute.\n\n\n FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time,\n but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for\n Fred....\n\n\n There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been\n particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now\n almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their\n parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had\n been sent to the public crèche.", "The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization\n Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal\n as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators,\n or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.\n\n\n He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and\n the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done\n it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life,\n even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.\n\n\n Well, the thing was done.\n\n\n No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to\n finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant\n places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's\n activities.", "\"I see.\" The deep, warm eyes bored into his. \"You ought to slow down a\n little, I think.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little.\"\n\n\n FitzMaugham chuckled. \"In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid\n you'll never learn how to relax, my boy.\"\n\n\n The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director\n to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed\nFourteen\n; there was\n a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed\ntwenty\n, covering\n the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his\n destination.\n\n\n As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, \"Did Mr. Prior come to\n see you this morning?\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Walton said.", "His desk was piled high with reports, and more kept arriving via\n pneumochute every minute. The job of assistant administrator was\n a thankless one, he thought; as much responsibility as Director\n FitzMaugham, and half the pay.\n\n\n He lifted a report from one eyebrow-high stack, smoothed the crinkly\n paper carefully, and read it.", "\"Really, Roy?\" His brother's tone was venomous. \"I happened to\n be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was\n curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of\n your conversation with the machine.\"\n\n\n Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb.\n He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and\n say, \"That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek\n computer outlet is confidential.\"\n\n\n \"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh,\n Roy?\"\n\n\n \"How much do you know?\"", "\"Neither. Leave him here with me.\"\n\n\n \"Are you sure you—\"\n\n\n \"Get out of here,\" Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked\n away, he added, \"And figure out some more efficient system for\n protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here\n and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's\n simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world\n who'd take this job. Now\nget out\n!\"\n\n\n They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed\n and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly\n unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations\n prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit\n that to the guards.\n\n\n \"Take a seat, Mr. Prior.\"", "Prior's baby.\n\n\n With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, \"If there\n are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for\n the next half-hour.\"\nII\nHe stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer\n office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening\n letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into\n the hallway.\n\n\n There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the\n lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek\n was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the\n second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a\n single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking\n as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought\n about repeal of the entire Equalization Law.", "\"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?\"\n\n\n \"That's right, sir,\" Walton said tightly.\n\n\n \"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was\n on his mind?\"\n\n\n Walton hesitated. \"He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep.\n Naturally, I had to turn him down.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally,\" FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. \"Once we make even one\n exception, the whole framework crumbles.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, sir.\"", "He shut his eyes, dug his thumbs into them until bright flares of light\n shot across his eyeballs, and refused to let himself be bothered by\n the multiple problems involved in dumping several hundred thousand\n Belgians into Patagonia. He forced himself to cling to one of Director\n FitzMaugham's oft-repeated maxims,\nIf you want to stay sane, think of\n these people as pawns in a chess game—not as human beings.\nWalton sighed. This was the biggest chess problem in the history of\n humanity, and the way it looked now, all the solutions led to checkmate\n in a century or less. They could keep equalizing population only so\n long, shifting like loggers riding logs in a rushing river, before\n trouble came.\n\n\n There was another matter to be attended to now. He picked up the\n voicewrite again. \"Memo from the assistant administrator, re\n establishment of new policy on reports from local agents: hire a staff\n of three clever girls to make a précis of each report, eliminating\n irrelevant data.\"" ], [ "In the six weeks of Popeek's existence, three thousand babies had been\n ticketed for Happysleep, and three thousand sets of degenerate genes\n had been wiped from the race. Ten thousand subnormal males had been\n sterilized. Eight thousand dying oldsters had reached their graves\n ahead of time.\n\n\n It was a tough-minded program. But why transmit palsy to unborn\n generations? Why let an adult idiot litter the world with subnormal\n progeny? Why force a man hopelessly cancerous to linger on in pain,\n consuming precious food?\n\n\n Unpleasant? Sure. But the world had voted for it. Until Lang and his\n team succeeded in terraforming Venus, or until the faster-than-light\n outfit opened the stars to mankind, something had to be done about\n Earth's overpopulation. There were seven billion now and the figure was\n still growing.", "It was a despatch from Horrocks, the Popeek agent currently on duty in\n Patagonia. It was dated\n4 June 2232\n, six days before, and after a\n long and rambling prologue in the usual Horrocks manner it went on to\n say,\nPopulation density remains low here: 17.3 per square mile, far\n below optimum. Looks like a prime candidate for equalization.\nWalton agreed. He reached for his voicewrite and said sharply, \"Memo\n from Assistant Administrator Walton, re equalization of ...\" He paused,\n picking a trouble-spot at random, \"... central Belgium. Will the\n section chief in charge of this area please consider the advisability\n of transferring population excess to fertile areas in Patagonia?\n Recommendation: establishment of industries in latter region, to ease\n transition.\"", "It was a basic step, one that should have been taken long ago. Now,\n with three feet of reports stacked on his desk, it was mandatory. One\n of the troubles with Popeek was its newness; it had been established so\n suddenly that most of its procedures were still in the formative stage.\n\n\n He took another report from the heap. This one was the data sheet of\n the Zurich Euthanasia Center, and he gave it a cursory scanning. During\n the past week, eleven substandard children and twenty-three substandard\n adults had been sent on to Happysleep.\n\n\n That was the grimmest form of population equalization. Walton initialed\n the report, earmarked it for files, and dumped it in the pneumochute.\n\n\n The annunciator chimed.\n\n\n \"I'm busy,\" Walton said immediately.", "Since taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on\n the twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but\n that had created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant\n building. It couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though\n necessary; and, like the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the\n Bureau did not rate attractive quarters.\n\n\n So Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that\n trimmed the walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed\n the massive ceiling fixture to more subtle electroluminescents. But the\n mark of the last century was stamped irrevocably on both building and\n office.\n\n\n Which was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last\n century's foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all.", "His reward for devoted service was—an assassin's bullet.\nFRED WALTON\nHis ambition was to fill his brother's shoes—but he underestimated\n their size.\nLEE PERCY\nHis specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills.\nPRIOR\nWith the pen as his only weapon, could he save his son?\nDR. LAMARRE\nHe died for discovering the secret of immortality.\nContents\nI\nThe offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly known\n as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors\n of the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of\n twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy", "The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization\n Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal\n as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators,\n or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.\n\n\n He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and\n the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done\n it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life,\n even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.\n\n\n Well, the thing was done.\n\n\n No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to\n finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant\n places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's\n activities.", "He shut his eyes, dug his thumbs into them until bright flares of light\n shot across his eyeballs, and refused to let himself be bothered by\n the multiple problems involved in dumping several hundred thousand\n Belgians into Patagonia. He forced himself to cling to one of Director\n FitzMaugham's oft-repeated maxims,\nIf you want to stay sane, think of\n these people as pawns in a chess game—not as human beings.\nWalton sighed. This was the biggest chess problem in the history of\n humanity, and the way it looked now, all the solutions led to checkmate\n in a century or less. They could keep equalizing population only so\n long, shifting like loggers riding logs in a rushing river, before\n trouble came.\n\n\n There was another matter to be attended to now. He picked up the\n voicewrite again. \"Memo from the assistant administrator, re\n establishment of new policy on reports from local agents: hire a staff\n of three clever girls to make a précis of each report, eliminating\n irrelevant data.\"", "Prior's baby.\n\n\n With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, \"If there\n are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for\n the next half-hour.\"\nII\nHe stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer\n office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening\n letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into\n the hallway.\n\n\n There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the\n lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek\n was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the\n second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a\n single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking\n as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought\n about repeal of the entire Equalization Law.", "As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek\n worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham\n had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at\n the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving\n mankind from itself.\n\n\n The director smiled. \"You never did learn how to budget your strength,\n Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad\n you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning,\n though. Mind if I join you?\"\n\n\n \"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?\"\n\n\n \"No, Mr. FitzMaugham.\" Walton felt as though he'd already been tried,\n drawn, and quartered. \"It requires personal attention.\"", "After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an\n education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private\n secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant\n administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine,\n unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section\n of Popeek, thanks to Roy.", "\"Can I help—oh, it's you, Mr. Walton,\" a white-smocked technician\n said. Popeek employed a small army of technicians, each one faceless\n and without personality, but always ready to serve. \"Is there anything\n I can do?\"\n\n\n \"I'm simply running a routine checkup. Mind if I use the machine?\"\n\n\n \"Not at all, sir. Go right ahead.\"\n\n\n Walton grinned lightly and stepped forward. The technician practically\n backed out of his presence.\nNo doubt I must radiate charisma\n, he thought. Within the building he\n wore a sort of luminous halo, by virtue of being Director FitzMaugham's\n protégé and second-in-command. Outside, in the colder reality of the\n crowded metropolis, he kept his identity and Popeek rank quietly to\n himself.", "\"Umm. Yes.\" Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could\n do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his\n protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.\n\n\n \"Seen my brother around?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him\n for you, Mr. Walton?\"\n\n\n \"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later.\" Inwardly,\n Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in\n the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and\n Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.\n\n\n Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump,\n squalling babies, and said, \"Find many sour ones today?\"", "Grinning, Walton said, \"I have to do\nsomething\nwhen I go home at\n night. I don't really read Popeek reports twenty-four hours a day. No\n more than twenty; that's my rule. I thought your last book was quite\n remarkable.\"\n\n\n \"The critics didn't,\" Prior said diffidently.\n\n\n \"Critics! What do they know?\" Walton demanded. \"They swing in cycles.\n Ten years ago it was form and technique, and you got the Melling Prize.\n Now it's message, political content that counts. That's not poetry, Mr.\n Prior—and there are still a few of us who recognize what poetry is.\n Take Yeats, for instance—\"\n\n\n Walton was ready to launch into a discussion of every poet from Prior\n back to Surrey and Wyatt; anything to keep from the job at hand,\n anything to keep his mind from Popeek. But Prior interrupted him.\n\n\n \"Mr. Walton....\"", "Walton, Popeek's assistant administrator, had to apologize to himself\n each morning as he entered the hideous place.", "Now came the real test: could he pry the baby away from the doctors\n without attracting too much attention to himself in the process?\nFive doctors were bustling back and forth as Walton entered the main\n section of the clinic. There must have been a hundred babies there,\n each in a little pen of its own, and the doctors were humming from one\n to the next, while anxious parents watched from screens above.\n\n\n The Equalization Law provided that every child be presented at its\n local clinic within two weeks of birth, for an examination and a\n certificate. Perhaps one in ten thousand would be denied a\n certificate ... and life.\n\n\n \"Hello, Mr. Walton. What brings you down here?\"\n\n\n Walton smiled affably. \"Just a routine investigation, Doctor. I try to\n keep in touch with every department we have, you know.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. FitzMaugham was down here to look around a little while ago. We're\n really getting a going-over today, Mr. Walton!\"", "By the 23rd century Earth's population had reached seven billion.\n Mankind was in danger of perishing for lack of elbow room—unless\n prompt measures were taken. Roy Walton had the power to enforce those\n measures. But though his job was in the service of humanity, he soon\n found himself the most hated man in the world.", "Prior's words haunted him.\nI was tubercular ... where would my poems\n be now?\nThe big humble man was one of the great poets. Keats had been\n tubercular too.\nWhat good are poets?\nhe asked himself savagely.\n\n\n The reply came swiftly:\nWhat good is anything, then?\nKeats,\n Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats, Donne, Pound, Matthews ... and Prior. How\n much duller life would be without them, Walton thought, picturing\n his bookshelf—his one bookshelf, in his crowded little cubicle of a\n one-room home.\n\n\n Sweat poured down his back as he groped toward his decision.\n\n\n The step he was considering would disqualify him from his job if he\n admitted it, though he wouldn't do that. Under the Equalization Law, it\n would be a criminal act.\n\n\n But just one baby wouldn't matter. Just one.", "\"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now....\"\n\n\n Walton understood. \"No, Prior. Please don't ask.\" Walton's skin felt\n cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy.\n\n\n \"He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular.\n The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—\"\n\n\n Walton rose. \"\nNo\n,\" he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. \"Don't\n ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're\n an intelligent man; you understand our program.\"\n\n\n \"I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the\n Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—\"", "Walton stepped out of the tube and returned FitzMaugham's smile as the\n door closed again. Bitter thoughts assailed him as soon as he was alone.\nSome fine criminal you are. You've given the show away already! And\n damn that smooth paternal smile. FitzMaugham knows! He must know!\nWalton wavered, then abruptly made his decision. He sucked in a deep\n breath and walked briskly toward the big room where the euthanasia\n files were kept.\nThe room was large, as rooms went nowadays—thirty by twenty, with deck\n upon deck of Donnerson micro-memory-tubes racked along one wall and a\n bank of microfilm records along the other. In six weeks of life Popeek\n had piled up an impressive collection of data.\n\n\n While he stood there, the computer chattered, lights flashed. New facts\n poured into the memory banks. It probably went on day and night.", "\"Really, Roy?\" His brother's tone was venomous. \"I happened to\n be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was\n curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of\n your conversation with the machine.\"\n\n\n Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb.\n He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and\n say, \"That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek\n computer outlet is confidential.\"\n\n\n \"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh,\n Roy?\"\n\n\n \"How much do you know?\"" ], [ "His desk was piled high with reports, and more kept arriving via\n pneumochute every minute. The job of assistant administrator was\n a thankless one, he thought; as much responsibility as Director\n FitzMaugham, and half the pay.\n\n\n He lifted a report from one eyebrow-high stack, smoothed the crinkly\n paper carefully, and read it.", "As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek\n worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham\n had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at\n the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving\n mankind from itself.\n\n\n The director smiled. \"You never did learn how to budget your strength,\n Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad\n you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning,\n though. Mind if I join you?\"\n\n\n \"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?\"\n\n\n \"No, Mr. FitzMaugham.\" Walton felt as though he'd already been tried,\n drawn, and quartered. \"It requires personal attention.\"", "After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an\n education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private\n secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant\n administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine,\n unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section\n of Popeek, thanks to Roy.", "Since taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on\n the twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but\n that had created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant\n building. It couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though\n necessary; and, like the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the\n Bureau did not rate attractive quarters.\n\n\n So Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that\n trimmed the walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed\n the massive ceiling fixture to more subtle electroluminescents. But the\n mark of the last century was stamped irrevocably on both building and\n office.\n\n\n Which was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last\n century's foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all.", "It was a basic step, one that should have been taken long ago. Now,\n with three feet of reports stacked on his desk, it was mandatory. One\n of the troubles with Popeek was its newness; it had been established so\n suddenly that most of its procedures were still in the formative stage.\n\n\n He took another report from the heap. This one was the data sheet of\n the Zurich Euthanasia Center, and he gave it a cursory scanning. During\n the past week, eleven substandard children and twenty-three substandard\n adults had been sent on to Happysleep.\n\n\n That was the grimmest form of population equalization. Walton initialed\n the report, earmarked it for files, and dumped it in the pneumochute.\n\n\n The annunciator chimed.\n\n\n \"I'm busy,\" Walton said immediately.", "Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a\n towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He\n remembered what FitzMaugham had said:\nOnce we make even one exception,\n the whole framework crumbles.\nWell, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little\n doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he\n had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.\n\n\n The annunciator chimed and said, \"Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling\n you, sir.\"\n\n\n \"Put him on.\"\n\n\n The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had\n given way to wild-eyed tenseness.\n\n\n \"What is it, Doctor?\"\n\n\n \"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll\n never guess what just happened—\"", "\"Umm. Yes.\" Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could\n do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his\n protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.\n\n\n \"Seen my brother around?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him\n for you, Mr. Walton?\"\n\n\n \"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later.\" Inwardly,\n Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in\n the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and\n Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.\n\n\n Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump,\n squalling babies, and said, \"Find many sour ones today?\"", "The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization\n Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal\n as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators,\n or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.\n\n\n He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and\n the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done\n it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life,\n even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.\n\n\n Well, the thing was done.\n\n\n No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to\n finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant\n places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's\n activities.", "\"I have to thank you for granting me this audience,\" Prior said,\n without a hint of sarcasm in his booming voice. \"I realize you're a\n terribly busy man.\"\n\n\n \"I am.\" Another three inches of paper had deposited itself on Walton's\n desk since Prior had entered. \"You're very lucky to have hit the\n psychological moment for your entrance. At any other time I'd have\n had you brigged for a month, but just now I'm in need of a little\n diversion. Besides, I very much admire your work, Mr. Prior.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you.\" Again that humility, startling in so big and commanding a\n man. \"I hadn't expected to find—I mean that you—\"\n\n\n \"That a bureaucrat should admire poetry? Is that what you're groping\n for?\"\n\n\n Prior reddened. \"Yes,\" he admitted.", "His reward for devoted service was—an assassin's bullet.\nFRED WALTON\nHis ambition was to fill his brother's shoes—but he underestimated\n their size.\nLEE PERCY\nHis specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills.\nPRIOR\nWith the pen as his only weapon, could he save his son?\nDR. LAMARRE\nHe died for discovering the secret of immortality.\nContents\nI\nThe offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly known\n as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors\n of the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of\n twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy", "\"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system,\n would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of\n this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton\n doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!\"\n\n\n \"Thanks for small blessings,\" Roy said acidly.\n\n\n \"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now,\n shall we?\"\n\n\n \"Anything you like,\" Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though\n the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen\n cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. \"I have some\n work to do now.\" His voice was barely audible.\n\n\n \"I won't keep you any longer, then,\" Fred said.\n\n\n The screen went dead.", "\"Really, Roy?\" His brother's tone was venomous. \"I happened to\n be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was\n curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of\n your conversation with the machine.\"\n\n\n Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb.\n He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and\n say, \"That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek\n computer outlet is confidential.\"\n\n\n \"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh,\n Roy?\"\n\n\n \"How much do you know?\"", "\"Those who inherit your condition,\" Walton said gently. \"Go home, Mr.\n Prior. Burn me in effigy. Write a poem about me. But don't ask me to do\n the impossible. I can't catch any falling stars for you.\"\n\n\n Prior rose. He was immense, a hulking tragic figure staring broodingly\n at Walton. For the first time since the poet's abrupt entry, Walton\n feared violence. His fingers groped for the needle gun he kept in his\n upper left desk drawer.\n\n\n But Prior had no violence in him. \"I'll leave you,\" he said somberly.\n \"I'm sorry, sir. Deeply sorry. For both of us.\"\n\n\n Walton pressed the doorlock to let him out, then locked it again and\n slipped heavily into his chair. Three more reports slid out of the\n chute and landed on his desk. He stared at them as if they were three\n basilisks.", "The lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back,\n revealing a neat, gleaming sign:\nFLOOR 20\nEuthanasia Clinic and Files\nWalton had forgotten the accursed sign. He began to wish he had avoided\n traveling down with the director. He felt that his purpose must seem\n nakedly obvious now.\n\n\n The old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. \"I guess you get off here,\"\n he said. \"I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really\n should take some time off for relaxation each day.\"\n\n\n \"I'll try, sir.\"", "\"There's a Mr. Prior to see you,\" the annunciator's calm voice said.\n \"He insists it's an emergency.\"\n\n\n \"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see anyone for at least three hours.\" Walton\n stared gloomily at the growing pile of paper on his desk. \"Tell him he\n can have ten minutes with me at—oh, say, 1300.\"\n\n\n Walton heard an angry male voice muttering something in the outer\n office, and then the annunciator said, \"He insists he must see you\n immediately in reference to a Happysleep commitment.\"\n\n\n \"Commitments are irrevocable,\" Walton said heavily. The last thing in\n the world he wanted was to see a man whose child or parent had just\n been committed. \"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see him at all.\"", "Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He\n nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass\n cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.\nIdiot!\nhe thought.\nFool!\nHe had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed\n to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see\n through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his\n father-substitute.\n\n\n FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time,\n but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for\n Fred....\n\n\n There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been\n particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now\n almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their\n parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had\n been sent to the public crèche.", "Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child,\n and after that I'll keep within the law.\n\n\n He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The\n clinic was on the twentieth floor.\n\n\n \"Roy.\"\n\n\n At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise.\n He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood\n there.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham.\"\n\n\n The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly,\n his mop of white hair bright and full. \"You look preoccupied, boy.\n Something the matter?\"\n\n\n Walton shook his head quickly. \"Just a little tired, sir. There's been\n a lot of work lately.\"", "Grinning, Walton said, \"I have to do\nsomething\nwhen I go home at\n night. I don't really read Popeek reports twenty-four hours a day. No\n more than twenty; that's my rule. I thought your last book was quite\n remarkable.\"\n\n\n \"The critics didn't,\" Prior said diffidently.\n\n\n \"Critics! What do they know?\" Walton demanded. \"They swing in cycles.\n Ten years ago it was form and technique, and you got the Melling Prize.\n Now it's message, political content that counts. That's not poetry, Mr.\n Prior—and there are still a few of us who recognize what poetry is.\n Take Yeats, for instance—\"\n\n\n Walton was ready to launch into a discussion of every poet from Prior\n back to Surrey and Wyatt; anything to keep from the job at hand,\n anything to keep his mind from Popeek. But Prior interrupted him.\n\n\n \"Mr. Walton....\"", "Walton stepped out of the tube and returned FitzMaugham's smile as the\n door closed again. Bitter thoughts assailed him as soon as he was alone.\nSome fine criminal you are. You've given the show away already! And\n damn that smooth paternal smile. FitzMaugham knows! He must know!\nWalton wavered, then abruptly made his decision. He sucked in a deep\n breath and walked briskly toward the big room where the euthanasia\n files were kept.\nThe room was large, as rooms went nowadays—thirty by twenty, with deck\n upon deck of Donnerson micro-memory-tubes racked along one wall and a\n bank of microfilm records along the other. In six weeks of life Popeek\n had piled up an impressive collection of data.\n\n\n While he stood there, the computer chattered, lights flashed. New facts\n poured into the memory banks. It probably went on day and night.", "\"I see.\" The deep, warm eyes bored into his. \"You ought to slow down a\n little, I think.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little.\"\n\n\n FitzMaugham chuckled. \"In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid\n you'll never learn how to relax, my boy.\"\n\n\n The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director\n to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed\nFourteen\n; there was\n a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed\ntwenty\n, covering\n the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his\n destination.\n\n\n As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, \"Did Mr. Prior come to\n see you this morning?\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Walton said." ], [ "Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He\n nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass\n cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.\nIdiot!\nhe thought.\nFool!\nHe had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed\n to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see\n through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his\n father-substitute.\n\n\n FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time,\n but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for\n Fred....\n\n\n There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been\n particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now\n almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their\n parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had\n been sent to the public crèche.", "Walton had set up the schedule himself: the gas chamber delivered\n Happysleep each day at 1100 and 1500. He had about half an hour to save\n Philip Prior.\n\n\n He peered covertly over his shoulder; no one was in sight. He slipped\n the baby's card into his breast pocket.\n\n\n That done, he typed out a requisition for explanation of the\n gene-sorting code the clinic used. Symbols began pouring forth,\n and Walton puzzledly correlated them with the line of gibberish on\n Phillip Prior's record card. Finally he found the one he wanted:\n3f2,\n tubercular-prone\n.", "Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child,\n and after that I'll keep within the law.\n\n\n He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The\n clinic was on the twentieth floor.\n\n\n \"Roy.\"\n\n\n At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise.\n He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood\n there.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham.\"\n\n\n The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly,\n his mop of white hair bright and full. \"You look preoccupied, boy.\n Something the matter?\"\n\n\n Walton shook his head quickly. \"Just a little tired, sir. There's been\n a lot of work lately.\"", "The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization\n Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal\n as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators,\n or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.\n\n\n He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and\n the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done\n it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life,\n even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.\n\n\n Well, the thing was done.\n\n\n No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to\n finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant\n places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's\n activities.", "\"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now....\"\n\n\n Walton understood. \"No, Prior. Please don't ask.\" Walton's skin felt\n cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy.\n\n\n \"He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular.\n The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—\"\n\n\n Walton rose. \"\nNo\n,\" he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. \"Don't\n ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're\n an intelligent man; you understand our program.\"\n\n\n \"I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the\n Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—\"", "\"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?\"\n\n\n \"That's right, sir,\" Walton said tightly.\n\n\n \"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was\n on his mind?\"\n\n\n Walton hesitated. \"He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep.\n Naturally, I had to turn him down.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally,\" FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. \"Once we make even one\n exception, the whole framework crumbles.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, sir.\"", "\"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system,\n would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of\n this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton\n doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!\"\n\n\n \"Thanks for small blessings,\" Roy said acidly.\n\n\n \"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now,\n shall we?\"\n\n\n \"Anything you like,\" Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though\n the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen\n cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. \"I have some\n work to do now.\" His voice was barely audible.\n\n\n \"I won't keep you any longer, then,\" Fred said.\n\n\n The screen went dead.", "Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a\n towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He\n remembered what FitzMaugham had said:\nOnce we make even one exception,\n the whole framework crumbles.\nWell, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little\n doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he\n had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.\n\n\n The annunciator chimed and said, \"Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling\n you, sir.\"\n\n\n \"Put him on.\"\n\n\n The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had\n given way to wild-eyed tenseness.\n\n\n \"What is it, Doctor?\"\n\n\n \"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll\n never guess what just happened—\"", "As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek\n worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham\n had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at\n the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving\n mankind from itself.\n\n\n The director smiled. \"You never did learn how to budget your strength,\n Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad\n you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning,\n though. Mind if I join you?\"\n\n\n \"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?\"\n\n\n \"No, Mr. FitzMaugham.\" Walton felt as though he'd already been tried,\n drawn, and quartered. \"It requires personal attention.\"", "For it was\nhis\njob to tell parents their children were unfit to live;\nhe\nhad to uproot people from their homes and send them to remote\n areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged citizens,\n denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a\n decision: resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies,\n become a dictator in the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly.\n In other words, should he become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?\nCAST OF CHARACTERS\nROY WALTON\nHe had to adopt the motto—\nthe ends justify the means\n.\nFITZMAUGHAM", "\"Really, Roy?\" His brother's tone was venomous. \"I happened to\n be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was\n curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of\n your conversation with the machine.\"\n\n\n Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb.\n He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and\n say, \"That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek\n computer outlet is confidential.\"\n\n\n \"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh,\n Roy?\"\n\n\n \"How much do you know?\"", "\"Umm. Yes.\" Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could\n do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his\n protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.\n\n\n \"Seen my brother around?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him\n for you, Mr. Walton?\"\n\n\n \"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later.\" Inwardly,\n Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in\n the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and\n Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.\n\n\n Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump,\n squalling babies, and said, \"Find many sour ones today?\"", "Prior's words haunted him.\nI was tubercular ... where would my poems\n be now?\nThe big humble man was one of the great poets. Keats had been\n tubercular too.\nWhat good are poets?\nhe asked himself savagely.\n\n\n The reply came swiftly:\nWhat good is anything, then?\nKeats,\n Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats, Donne, Pound, Matthews ... and Prior. How\n much duller life would be without them, Walton thought, picturing\n his bookshelf—his one bookshelf, in his crowded little cubicle of a\n one-room home.\n\n\n Sweat poured down his back as he groped toward his decision.\n\n\n The step he was considering would disqualify him from his job if he\n admitted it, though he wouldn't do that. Under the Equalization Law, it\n would be a criminal act.\n\n\n But just one baby wouldn't matter. Just one.", "After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an\n education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private\n secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant\n administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine,\n unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section\n of Popeek, thanks to Roy.", "\"No guessing games, Falbrough. Speak up.\"\n\n\n \"I—well, sir, I ran checks on the seven babies they sent me this\n morning. And guess—I mean—well, one of them shouldn't have been sent\n to me!\"\n\n\n \"No!\"\n\n\n \"It's the truth, sir. A cute little baby indeed. I've got his card\n right here. The boy's name is Philip Prior, and his gene-pattern is\n fine.\"\n\n\n \"Any recommendation for euthanasia on the card?\" Walton asked.\n\n\n \"No, sir.\"", "He scrapped the guide sheet he had and typed out a message to the\n machine.\nRevision of card number 3216847AB1 follows. Please alter in\n all circuits.\nHe proceeded to retype the child's card, omitting both the fatal symbol\n3f2\nand the notation recommending euthanasia from the new version.\n The machine beeped an acknowledgement. Walton smiled. So far, so good.\n\n\n Then, he requested the boy's file all over again. After the customary\n pause, a card numbered 3216847AB1 dropped out of the slot. He read it.\n\n\n The deletions had been made. As far as the machine was concerned,\n Philip Prior was a normal, healthy baby.\n\n\n He glanced at his watch. 1037. Still twenty-three minutes before this\n morning's haul of unfortunates was put away.", "Frowning, he tried to remember the Prior boy's name. Ah ... Philip,\n wasn't it? He punched out a request for the card on Philip Prior.", "\"There's a Mr. Prior to see you,\" the annunciator's calm voice said.\n \"He insists it's an emergency.\"\n\n\n \"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see anyone for at least three hours.\" Walton\n stared gloomily at the growing pile of paper on his desk. \"Tell him he\n can have ten minutes with me at—oh, say, 1300.\"\n\n\n Walton heard an angry male voice muttering something in the outer\n office, and then the annunciator said, \"He insists he must see you\n immediately in reference to a Happysleep commitment.\"\n\n\n \"Commitments are irrevocable,\" Walton said heavily. The last thing in\n the world he wanted was to see a man whose child or parent had just\n been committed. \"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see him at all.\"", "\"Neither. Leave him here with me.\"\n\n\n \"Are you sure you—\"\n\n\n \"Get out of here,\" Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked\n away, he added, \"And figure out some more efficient system for\n protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here\n and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's\n simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world\n who'd take this job. Now\nget out\n!\"\n\n\n They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed\n and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly\n unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations\n prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit\n that to the guards.\n\n\n \"Take a seat, Mr. Prior.\"", "\"Those who inherit your condition,\" Walton said gently. \"Go home, Mr.\n Prior. Burn me in effigy. Write a poem about me. But don't ask me to do\n the impossible. I can't catch any falling stars for you.\"\n\n\n Prior rose. He was immense, a hulking tragic figure staring broodingly\n at Walton. For the first time since the poet's abrupt entry, Walton\n feared violence. His fingers groped for the needle gun he kept in his\n upper left desk drawer.\n\n\n But Prior had no violence in him. \"I'll leave you,\" he said somberly.\n \"I'm sorry, sir. Deeply sorry. For both of us.\"\n\n\n Walton pressed the doorlock to let him out, then locked it again and\n slipped heavily into his chair. Three more reports slid out of the\n chute and landed on his desk. He stared at them as if they were three\n basilisks." ], [ "\"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now....\"\n\n\n Walton understood. \"No, Prior. Please don't ask.\" Walton's skin felt\n cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy.\n\n\n \"He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular.\n The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—\"\n\n\n Walton rose. \"\nNo\n,\" he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. \"Don't\n ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're\n an intelligent man; you understand our program.\"\n\n\n \"I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the\n Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—\"", "Walton had set up the schedule himself: the gas chamber delivered\n Happysleep each day at 1100 and 1500. He had about half an hour to save\n Philip Prior.\n\n\n He peered covertly over his shoulder; no one was in sight. He slipped\n the baby's card into his breast pocket.\n\n\n That done, he typed out a requisition for explanation of the\n gene-sorting code the clinic used. Symbols began pouring forth,\n and Walton puzzledly correlated them with the line of gibberish on\n Phillip Prior's record card. Finally he found the one he wanted:\n3f2,\n tubercular-prone\n.", "Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child,\n and after that I'll keep within the law.\n\n\n He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The\n clinic was on the twentieth floor.\n\n\n \"Roy.\"\n\n\n At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise.\n He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood\n there.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham.\"\n\n\n The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly,\n his mop of white hair bright and full. \"You look preoccupied, boy.\n Something the matter?\"\n\n\n Walton shook his head quickly. \"Just a little tired, sir. There's been\n a lot of work lately.\"", "He scrapped the guide sheet he had and typed out a message to the\n machine.\nRevision of card number 3216847AB1 follows. Please alter in\n all circuits.\nHe proceeded to retype the child's card, omitting both the fatal symbol\n3f2\nand the notation recommending euthanasia from the new version.\n The machine beeped an acknowledgement. Walton smiled. So far, so good.\n\n\n Then, he requested the boy's file all over again. After the customary\n pause, a card numbered 3216847AB1 dropped out of the slot. He read it.\n\n\n The deletions had been made. As far as the machine was concerned,\n Philip Prior was a normal, healthy baby.\n\n\n He glanced at his watch. 1037. Still twenty-three minutes before this\n morning's haul of unfortunates was put away.", "The lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back,\n revealing a neat, gleaming sign:\nFLOOR 20\nEuthanasia Clinic and Files\nWalton had forgotten the accursed sign. He began to wish he had avoided\n traveling down with the director. He felt that his purpose must seem\n nakedly obvious now.\n\n\n The old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. \"I guess you get off here,\"\n he said. \"I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really\n should take some time off for relaxation each day.\"\n\n\n \"I'll try, sir.\"", "\"You thought euthanasia was a fine thing for\nother\npeople. So did\n everyone else,\" Walton said. \"That's how the act was passed.\" Tenderly\n he said, \"I can't do it. I can't spare your son. Our doctors give a\n baby every chance to live.\"\n\n\n \"\nI\nwas tubercular. They cured me. What if they had practiced\n euthanasia a generation ago? Where would my poems be now?\"\n\n\n It was an unanswerable question; Walton tried to ignore it.\n \"Tuberculosis is an extremely rare disease, Mr. Prior. We can wipe\n it out completely if we strike at those with TB-susceptible genetic\n traits.\"\n\n\n \"Meaning you'll kill any children I have?\" Prior asked.", "Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He\n nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass\n cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.\nIdiot!\nhe thought.\nFool!\nHe had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed\n to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see\n through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his\n father-substitute.\n\n\n FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time,\n but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for\n Fred....\n\n\n There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been\n particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now\n almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their\n parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had\n been sent to the public crèche.", "\"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system,\n would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of\n this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton\n doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!\"\n\n\n \"Thanks for small blessings,\" Roy said acidly.\n\n\n \"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now,\n shall we?\"\n\n\n \"Anything you like,\" Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though\n the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen\n cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. \"I have some\n work to do now.\" His voice was barely audible.\n\n\n \"I won't keep you any longer, then,\" Fred said.\n\n\n The screen went dead.", "\"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?\"\n\n\n \"That's right, sir,\" Walton said tightly.\n\n\n \"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was\n on his mind?\"\n\n\n Walton hesitated. \"He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep.\n Naturally, I had to turn him down.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally,\" FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. \"Once we make even one\n exception, the whole framework crumbles.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, sir.\"", "Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a\n towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He\n remembered what FitzMaugham had said:\nOnce we make even one exception,\n the whole framework crumbles.\nWell, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little\n doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he\n had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.\n\n\n The annunciator chimed and said, \"Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling\n you, sir.\"\n\n\n \"Put him on.\"\n\n\n The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had\n given way to wild-eyed tenseness.\n\n\n \"What is it, Doctor?\"\n\n\n \"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll\n never guess what just happened—\"", "The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization\n Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal\n as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators,\n or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.\n\n\n He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and\n the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done\n it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life,\n even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.\n\n\n Well, the thing was done.\n\n\n No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to\n finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant\n places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's\n activities.", "\"Seven so far. They're scheduled for the 1100 chamber. Three tuberc,\n two blind, one congenital syph.\"\n\n\n \"That only makes six,\" Walton said.\n\n\n \"Oh, and a spastic,\" the doctor said. \"Biggest haul we've had yet.\n Seven in one morning.\"\n\n\n \"Have any trouble with the parents?\"\n\n\n \"What do you think?\" the doctor asked. \"But some of them seemed to\n understand. One of the tuberculars nearly raised the roof, though.\"\n\n\n Walton shuddered. \"You remember his name?\" he asked, with feigned calm.\n\n\n Silence for a moment. \"No. Darned if I can think of it. I can look it\n up for you if you like.\"\n\n\n \"Don't bother,\" Walton said hurriedly.", "\"No guessing games, Falbrough. Speak up.\"\n\n\n \"I—well, sir, I ran checks on the seven babies they sent me this\n morning. And guess—I mean—well, one of them shouldn't have been sent\n to me!\"\n\n\n \"No!\"\n\n\n \"It's the truth, sir. A cute little baby indeed. I've got his card\n right here. The boy's name is Philip Prior, and his gene-pattern is\n fine.\"\n\n\n \"Any recommendation for euthanasia on the card?\" Walton asked.\n\n\n \"No, sir.\"", "For it was\nhis\njob to tell parents their children were unfit to live;\nhe\nhad to uproot people from their homes and send them to remote\n areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged citizens,\n denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a\n decision: resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies,\n become a dictator in the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly.\n In other words, should he become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?\nCAST OF CHARACTERS\nROY WALTON\nHe had to adopt the motto—\nthe ends justify the means\n.\nFITZMAUGHAM", "As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek\n worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham\n had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at\n the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving\n mankind from itself.\n\n\n The director smiled. \"You never did learn how to budget your strength,\n Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad\n you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning,\n though. Mind if I join you?\"\n\n\n \"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?\"\n\n\n \"No, Mr. FitzMaugham.\" Walton felt as though he'd already been tried,\n drawn, and quartered. \"It requires personal attention.\"", "He moved on, down the winding corridor that led to the execution\n chamber. Falbrough, the executioner, was studying a list of names at\n his desk when Walton appeared.\n\n\n Falbrough didn't look like the sort of man who would enjoy his work. He\n was short and plump, with a high-domed bald head and glittering contact\n lenses in his weak blue eyes. \"Morning, Mr. Walton.\"\n\n\n \"Good morning, Doctor Falbrough. You'll be operating soon, won't you?\"\n\n\n \"Eleven hundred, as usual.\"\n\n\n \"Good. There's a new regulation in effect from now on,\" Walton said.\n \"To keep public opinion on our side.\"\n\n\n \"Sir?\"\n\n\n \"Henceforth, until further notice, you're to check each baby that\n comes to you against the main file, just to make sure there's been no\n mistake. Got that?\"", "\"Umm. Yes.\" Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could\n do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his\n protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.\n\n\n \"Seen my brother around?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him\n for you, Mr. Walton?\"\n\n\n \"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later.\" Inwardly,\n Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in\n the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and\n Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.\n\n\n Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump,\n squalling babies, and said, \"Find many sour ones today?\"", "Walton chewed at a ragged cuticle for a moment, counterfeiting great\n anxiety. \"Falbrough, we're going to have to keep this very quiet.\n Someone slipped up in the examining room, and if word gets out that\n there's been as much as one mistake, we'll have a mob swarming over us\n in half an hour.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir.\" Falbrough looked terribly grave. \"What should I do, sir?\"\n\n\n \"Don't say a word about this to\nanyone\n, not even the men in the\n examining room. Fill out a certificate for the boy, find his parents,\n apologize and return him to them. And make sure you keep checking for\n any future cases of this sort.\"\n\n\n \"Certainly, sir. Is that all?\"\n\n\n \"It is,\" Walton said crisply, and broke the contact. He took a deep\n breath and stared bleakly at the far wall.", "Walton stepped out of the tube and returned FitzMaugham's smile as the\n door closed again. Bitter thoughts assailed him as soon as he was alone.\nSome fine criminal you are. You've given the show away already! And\n damn that smooth paternal smile. FitzMaugham knows! He must know!\nWalton wavered, then abruptly made his decision. He sucked in a deep\n breath and walked briskly toward the big room where the euthanasia\n files were kept.\nThe room was large, as rooms went nowadays—thirty by twenty, with deck\n upon deck of Donnerson micro-memory-tubes racked along one wall and a\n bank of microfilm records along the other. In six weeks of life Popeek\n had piled up an impressive collection of data.\n\n\n While he stood there, the computer chattered, lights flashed. New facts\n poured into the memory banks. It probably went on day and night.", "\"Really, Roy?\" His brother's tone was venomous. \"I happened to\n be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was\n curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of\n your conversation with the machine.\"\n\n\n Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb.\n He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and\n say, \"That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek\n computer outlet is confidential.\"\n\n\n \"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh,\n Roy?\"\n\n\n \"How much do you know?\"" ], [ "\"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system,\n would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of\n this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton\n doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!\"\n\n\n \"Thanks for small blessings,\" Roy said acidly.\n\n\n \"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now,\n shall we?\"\n\n\n \"Anything you like,\" Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though\n the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen\n cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. \"I have some\n work to do now.\" His voice was barely audible.\n\n\n \"I won't keep you any longer, then,\" Fred said.\n\n\n The screen went dead.", "The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization\n Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal\n as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators,\n or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.\n\n\n He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and\n the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done\n it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life,\n even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.\n\n\n Well, the thing was done.\n\n\n No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to\n finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant\n places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's\n activities.", "Even on the screen, Fred's neck and shoulders gave an impression of\n tremendous solidity and force. Walton waited for his brother's image to\n take shape, and when the time lag was over he said, \"Well, Fred? What\n goes?\"\n\n\n His brother's eyes flickered sleepily. \"They tell me you were down here\n a little while ago, Roy. How come I didn't rate a visit?\"\n\n\n \"I wasn't in your section. It was official business, anyway. I didn't\n have time.\"\n\n\n Walton fixed his eyes sharply on the caduceus emblem gleaming on Fred's\n lapel, and refused to look anywhere else.\n\n\n Fred said slowly, \"You had time to tinker with our computer, though.\"\n\n\n \"Official business!\"", "\"Really, Roy?\" His brother's tone was venomous. \"I happened to\n be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was\n curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of\n your conversation with the machine.\"\n\n\n Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb.\n He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and\n say, \"That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek\n computer outlet is confidential.\"\n\n\n \"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh,\n Roy?\"\n\n\n \"How much do you know?\"", "Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He\n nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass\n cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.\nIdiot!\nhe thought.\nFool!\nHe had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed\n to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see\n through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his\n father-substitute.\n\n\n FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time,\n but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for\n Fred....\n\n\n There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been\n particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now\n almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their\n parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had\n been sent to the public crèche.", "After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an\n education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private\n secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant\n administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine,\n unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section\n of Popeek, thanks to Roy.", "As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek\n worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham\n had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at\n the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving\n mankind from itself.\n\n\n The director smiled. \"You never did learn how to budget your strength,\n Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad\n you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning,\n though. Mind if I join you?\"\n\n\n \"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?\"\n\n\n \"No, Mr. FitzMaugham.\" Walton felt as though he'd already been tried,\n drawn, and quartered. \"It requires personal attention.\"", "Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child,\n and after that I'll keep within the law.\n\n\n He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The\n clinic was on the twentieth floor.\n\n\n \"Roy.\"\n\n\n At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise.\n He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood\n there.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham.\"\n\n\n The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly,\n his mop of white hair bright and full. \"You look preoccupied, boy.\n Something the matter?\"\n\n\n Walton shook his head quickly. \"Just a little tired, sir. There's been\n a lot of work lately.\"", "The annunciator chimed again. \"Your brother is on the wire, sir.\"\n\n\n Walton trembled imperceptibly as he said, \"Put him on.\" Somehow, Fred\n never called unless he could say or do something unpleasant. And\n Walton was very much afraid that his brother meant no good by this\n call. No good at all.\nIII\nRoy Walton watched his brother's head and shoulders take form out of\n the swirl of colors on the screen. Fred Walton was more compact, built\n closer to the ground than his rangy brother; he was a squat five-seven,\n next to Roy's lean six-two. Fred had always threatened to \"get even\"\n with his older brother as soon as they were the same size, but to\n Fred's great dismay he had never managed to catch up with Roy in height.", "Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a\n towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He\n remembered what FitzMaugham had said:\nOnce we make even one exception,\n the whole framework crumbles.\nWell, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little\n doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he\n had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.\n\n\n The annunciator chimed and said, \"Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling\n you, sir.\"\n\n\n \"Put him on.\"\n\n\n The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had\n given way to wild-eyed tenseness.\n\n\n \"What is it, Doctor?\"\n\n\n \"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll\n never guess what just happened—\"", "\"Umm. Yes.\" Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could\n do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his\n protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.\n\n\n \"Seen my brother around?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him\n for you, Mr. Walton?\"\n\n\n \"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later.\" Inwardly,\n Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in\n the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and\n Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.\n\n\n Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump,\n squalling babies, and said, \"Find many sour ones today?\"", "Now came the real test: could he pry the baby away from the doctors\n without attracting too much attention to himself in the process?\nFive doctors were bustling back and forth as Walton entered the main\n section of the clinic. There must have been a hundred babies there,\n each in a little pen of its own, and the doctors were humming from one\n to the next, while anxious parents watched from screens above.\n\n\n The Equalization Law provided that every child be presented at its\n local clinic within two weeks of birth, for an examination and a\n certificate. Perhaps one in ten thousand would be denied a\n certificate ... and life.\n\n\n \"Hello, Mr. Walton. What brings you down here?\"\n\n\n Walton smiled affably. \"Just a routine investigation, Doctor. I try to\n keep in touch with every department we have, you know.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. FitzMaugham was down here to look around a little while ago. We're\n really getting a going-over today, Mr. Walton!\"", "Prior's baby.\n\n\n With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, \"If there\n are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for\n the next half-hour.\"\nII\nHe stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer\n office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening\n letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into\n the hallway.\n\n\n There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the\n lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek\n was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the\n second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a\n single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking\n as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought\n about repeal of the entire Equalization Law.", "\"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?\"\n\n\n \"That's right, sir,\" Walton said tightly.\n\n\n \"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was\n on his mind?\"\n\n\n Walton hesitated. \"He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep.\n Naturally, I had to turn him down.\"\n\n\n \"Naturally,\" FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. \"Once we make even one\n exception, the whole framework crumbles.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, sir.\"", "\"Yes?\"\n\n\n \"My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now....\"\n\n\n Walton understood. \"No, Prior. Please don't ask.\" Walton's skin felt\n cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy.\n\n\n \"He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular.\n The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—\"\n\n\n Walton rose. \"\nNo\n,\" he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. \"Don't\n ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're\n an intelligent man; you understand our program.\"\n\n\n \"I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the\n Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—\"", "\"I see.\" The deep, warm eyes bored into his. \"You ought to slow down a\n little, I think.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little.\"\n\n\n FitzMaugham chuckled. \"In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid\n you'll never learn how to relax, my boy.\"\n\n\n The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director\n to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed\nFourteen\n; there was\n a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed\ntwenty\n, covering\n the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his\n destination.\n\n\n As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, \"Did Mr. Prior come to\n see you this morning?\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Walton said.", "His reward for devoted service was—an assassin's bullet.\nFRED WALTON\nHis ambition was to fill his brother's shoes—but he underestimated\n their size.\nLEE PERCY\nHis specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills.\nPRIOR\nWith the pen as his only weapon, could he save his son?\nDR. LAMARRE\nHe died for discovering the secret of immortality.\nContents\nI\nThe offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly known\n as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors\n of the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of\n twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy", "Walton chewed at a ragged cuticle for a moment, counterfeiting great\n anxiety. \"Falbrough, we're going to have to keep this very quiet.\n Someone slipped up in the examining room, and if word gets out that\n there's been as much as one mistake, we'll have a mob swarming over us\n in half an hour.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir.\" Falbrough looked terribly grave. \"What should I do, sir?\"\n\n\n \"Don't say a word about this to\nanyone\n, not even the men in the\n examining room. Fill out a certificate for the boy, find his parents,\n apologize and return him to them. And make sure you keep checking for\n any future cases of this sort.\"\n\n\n \"Certainly, sir. Is that all?\"\n\n\n \"It is,\" Walton said crisply, and broke the contact. He took a deep\n breath and stared bleakly at the far wall.", "Prior's words haunted him.\nI was tubercular ... where would my poems\n be now?\nThe big humble man was one of the great poets. Keats had been\n tubercular too.\nWhat good are poets?\nhe asked himself savagely.\n\n\n The reply came swiftly:\nWhat good is anything, then?\nKeats,\n Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats, Donne, Pound, Matthews ... and Prior. How\n much duller life would be without them, Walton thought, picturing\n his bookshelf—his one bookshelf, in his crowded little cubicle of a\n one-room home.\n\n\n Sweat poured down his back as he groped toward his decision.\n\n\n The step he was considering would disqualify him from his job if he\n admitted it, though he wouldn't do that. Under the Equalization Law, it\n would be a criminal act.\n\n\n But just one baby wouldn't matter. Just one.", "\"Neither. Leave him here with me.\"\n\n\n \"Are you sure you—\"\n\n\n \"Get out of here,\" Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked\n away, he added, \"And figure out some more efficient system for\n protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here\n and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's\n simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world\n who'd take this job. Now\nget out\n!\"\n\n\n They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed\n and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly\n unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations\n prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit\n that to the guards.\n\n\n \"Take a seat, Mr. Prior.\"" ] ]
test	20036	[ "What does the author mean when they say it's tiring to always be a recipient of charity?", "Why does the writer argue that the information Africana provides doesn't actually educate?", "What is the author talking about when they reference thought-cliches?", "Why is it interesting that the speaker finds the book polished?", "What \"middlebrow\" is the author referencing throughout the passage?", "What seems to be the author's main problem with Africana?", "Why does the speaker feel that the reasoning behind black studies is anti-intellectual?", "Why does the speaker find Africana a \"waste\" of Gates' talent? " ]	[ [ "It's annoying to be pestered all the time, even if it's coming from a good place and from good will. ", "It's dehumanizing and infantilizing. They don't want to be treated as a subject, but as a person. ", "They don't understand why people view black people as targets for charity, and are annoyed by it. ", "They have no interest in philanthropy, and would rather earn than be given what they want. " ], [ "It's easily understood information, and thus doesn't really offer anything to learn from. ", "The information hasn't been thoroughly researched, as it only took 3 years to put together. ", "No one who actually wants to learn more on the topic is likley to pick up this book. ", "People aren't reading this book to engage with the topic, but to have what is essentially a dictionary to refer to. " ], [ "A thought-cliche is regurgitated information. ", "They are people's laziness causing them to avoid thinking deeply on subjects. ", "Written ideas that have already been done, yet are written about time and time again. ", "Ideas that support what a person already believes, and coddle the reader rather than challenge them. " ], [ "It speaks to the talent behind the writers, despite the complexity of the subject behind their book. ", "It shows that the speaker is much like the people they criticize, and is afraid to truly critic the book. ", "They spend so long harshly critiquing it, yet they recognize that it's well put together. ", "They didn't think the authors were capable of putting it together so nicely. " ], [ "The mediocrity that is affecting recent black intellectual work. ", "The average person and the baseline understanding of the subject. ", "The general market that Africana is appealing to. ", "The \"uneducated\", or anyone who is not considered an intellectual." ], [ "It's full of clichés and offers no new information. It's too easy to engage with. ", "It is contributing to a culture that is, as they see it, dumbing down black intellectualism. ", "It's a discredit to the authors who penned it, and their legacy of other works. ", "It's flooding the market with yet another \"encyclopedic\" book. " ], [ "They feel it focuses too much on race as a mission, rather than an individual trait. ", "They feel it's based on preserving identity, rather than asking questions and learning. ", "It's too far removed from its roots in the current time. ", "It's become too open to the public as something to contribute to. " ], [ "He has been defining the field of Black studies, and Africana does nothing to add to that. ", "They feel he's capable of much more, and this book is more about him rounding out his canon. ", "Africana is a poorly put together book, and it's disappointing to have seen it come from him. ", "They feel it took him much too long to product Africana, even with spending 4 years on it. " ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "that this book was published as an act of philanthropy, as something that ought to be done. (It is so tiresome as a black person to be the recipient of charity all the time, to be the object of the moral", "as a kind of typology about the struggle of black people to gain self-knowledge, a story that black people never tire of reciting, even today with a plethora of black bookshops and publishers grinding out books on black subjects or with", "someone said so in some reference book like Africana . Thought-clichés are like narcotics; people love them because they relieve them of the very thing they do not wish to do in any case, that is, think, think hard, and", "thought-clichés; it is, indeed, why most people will consult such a work, to find them and be comforted by them. No intellectual or scholar can, therefore, be fully at ease with a work of this sort, no matter his or", "think critically and against the grain of their own beliefs or psychological needs or neurotic fantasy projections. Thought-clichés confirm one's stupidity and one's laziness. With all the goodwill in the world, a book like Africana cannot help but produce", "and those who cater to the public's access to intellectual material by rounding off the rough edges and making it thoroughly anti-intellectual by designing and evoking certain emotional markers about \"struggle\" and \"resistance.\"", "ever reading what they are copying. Adults, with far too much deference for the printed word, tend to consult such a book in much the way they consult the dictionary or the Bible (or in the way baseball fanatics consult the", "her ideological stripe. Such a book as Africana simply washes the practitioners in the field in a sea of ambivalence, with a sense of lost faith, as we all stand before it a bit as Matthew Arnold stood before Dover Beach.", "But I suppose it is something of a triumph, which the publication of this book is meant to acknowledge, that black studies has achieved middlebrow status in the United States, that bourgeois people, both", "and objects, more \"education\" about its experience (more institutionalization of it, in other words, and more orthodoxy about its significance), that are all meant to reinforce its sense of identity, its psychological well-being, its sense of race mission, all important", "(politically incorrectly such as the present author or very much politically correctly like a good many very good scholars) are heartened by this commercial venture. Indeed, it would be disheartening, as well as entirely untrue, if one were to think", "about the black experience were published and continue to be published. The editors make no attempt to place their book within that particular context, a more accurate historical context for understanding the appearance of this book, as it was made possible not", "field has arrived to such an extent that a publisher thinks that it can make money, significant money, publishing such a work. Assignments in black studies have filtered down to the high-school, junior-high, and even elementary-school level (and remember the", "official record books): as the final arbiter, as that which settles all arguments. Why, for goodness' sake, would anyone actually read a book like this? Knowledge, in the instance of the definitive reference book, becomes entombed and sanctified, very much", "a kind of political and cultural moralism on the part of whites and a kind of fetishlike piety on the part of blacks. It can be, alas, a business of an entirely good sort or needful sort, justifying itself in the", "most thinking people in black studies find dangerous about the middlebrow apotheosis of the field is that it usually leads to the enshrinement of what Jacques Barzun calls thought-clichés, half-truths or non-truths that are accepted as the truth because", "black culture--globally speaking--which is why he is hated by Afrocentrists who take a somewhat different view of the long-term meaning of \"the coming of the white man\") is nothing less than the middlebrow arrival of black studies in American culture.", "alas, a Toni Morrison novel or one does not own a Wynton Marsalis album. (The truly knowing coves own albums by Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, no less, and do reports for their book clubs on the blues.) What", "reasons for the existence of black studies, but all clearly anti-intellectual. In other words, the forces that brought this book into existence had little enough to do with Du Bois--although evoking him is of critical importance to the book's audience", "book is the product of both a strong movement toward the intellectualization of black experience among an elite and the anti-intellectualization of black experience by the public at large (earnest and respectful of black experience as it has now generally become)" ], [ "It took him and Appiah only four years to produce Africana . Even with modern technology, that is an astonishing feat, so astonishing that some will dismiss the book (I have heard some comments of this sort even before the book", "think critically and against the grain of their own beliefs or psychological needs or neurotic fantasy projections. Thought-clichés confirm one's stupidity and one's laziness. With all the goodwill in the world, a book like Africana cannot help but produce", "That Du Bois--who exists in the field of black studies these days as rather the black equivalent of Einstein (theorist), Dr. Johnson (wordsmith), Emerson (humanist), and Kant (moral philosopher), separately and together, as it were--is evoked by the editors in their introduction provides this volume with a pedigree that I suppose they thought it needed, making Gates and Appiah our intellectual knights who have given us the Holy Grail. (The editors called the quest for producing a black encyclopedia \"a Holy Grail.\" More triumphalist history!) The introduction offers a good and useful account of Du Bois' attempt to produce an Africana encyclopedia, the professional jealousy he encountered, the racism that sometimes thwarted his efforts. It should be read by all who purchase the book.", "This book comes with a triumphant blaring of publishers' trumpets, and one supposes that it is a signal sort of triumph for black studies or Africana studies (take your pick of names). The", "someone said so in some reference book like Africana . Thought-clichés are like narcotics; people love them because they relieve them of the very thing they do not wish to do in any case, that is, think, think hard, and", "(In some more Afrocentric black homes, it may replace the Britannica entirely, that Eurocentric collection of lies, although Britannica has become as multicultural as everyone else these days.) Those of us who have labored in the field of black studies", "a current-events or social-studies class.) Moreover, blacks cannot be left out of Women's History Month or Veteran's Day or, for the truly daring, Gay Appreciation Month. So, a book like Africana is bound to get a great deal of", "her ideological stripe. Such a book as Africana simply washes the practitioners in the field in a sea of ambivalence, with a sense of lost faith, as we all stand before it a bit as Matthew Arnold stood before Dover Beach.", "But the history of the publication of this book is only incompletely told by the editors. After 1970, when black studies was established on the white college campus, a number of reference books", "Gates and Appiah, rather sentimentally and opportunistically, see themselves as the descendants of Du Bois, whose unfilled dream was to produce such a book, Gates seems to have cornered the market on black reference books that shape the canon of", "about the black experience were published and continue to be published. The editors make no attempt to place their book within that particular context, a more accurate historical context for understanding the appearance of this book, as it was made possible not", "field has arrived to such an extent that a publisher thinks that it can make money, significant money, publishing such a work. Assignments in black studies have filtered down to the high-school, junior-high, and even elementary-school level (and remember the", "I shall begin my next entry with a discussion of a set of entries in Africana , those dealing with aspects of Philadelphia, my hometown, and a response to David Nicholson's impressions of the book.", "that this book was published as an act of philanthropy, as something that ought to be done. (It is so tiresome as a black person to be the recipient of charity all the time, to be the object of the moral", "But I suppose it is something of a triumph, which the publication of this book is meant to acknowledge, that black studies has achieved middlebrow status in the United States, that bourgeois people, both", "as a kind of typology about the struggle of black people to gain self-knowledge, a story that black people never tire of reciting, even today with a plethora of black bookshops and publishers grinding out books on black subjects or with", "Encyclopedias, after all, are middlebrow, bourgeois books that tend, in the end, not to promote intellectual inquiry on the part of the people who use them but rather to stifle it. Children tend to copy verbatim from such books without", "reasons for the existence of black studies, but all clearly anti-intellectual. In other words, the forces that brought this book into existence had little enough to do with Du Bois--although evoking him is of critical importance to the book's audience", "black studies, that define the field and its major players. Building a canon is very important to Gates, and it is, without question, an important pedagogical pursuit. A field must have order and it must have pioneers and heroes. It is", "black culture--globally speaking--which is why he is hated by Afrocentrists who take a somewhat different view of the long-term meaning of \"the coming of the white man\") is nothing less than the middlebrow arrival of black studies in American culture." ], [ "thought-clichés; it is, indeed, why most people will consult such a work, to find them and be comforted by them. No intellectual or scholar can, therefore, be fully at ease with a work of this sort, no matter his or", "someone said so in some reference book like Africana . Thought-clichés are like narcotics; people love them because they relieve them of the very thing they do not wish to do in any case, that is, think, think hard, and", "think critically and against the grain of their own beliefs or psychological needs or neurotic fantasy projections. Thought-clichés confirm one's stupidity and one's laziness. With all the goodwill in the world, a book like Africana cannot help but produce", "most thinking people in black studies find dangerous about the middlebrow apotheosis of the field is that it usually leads to the enshrinement of what Jacques Barzun calls thought-clichés, half-truths or non-truths that are accepted as the truth because", "ever reading what they are copying. Adults, with far too much deference for the printed word, tend to consult such a book in much the way they consult the dictionary or the Bible (or in the way baseball fanatics consult the", "and those who cater to the public's access to intellectual material by rounding off the rough edges and making it thoroughly anti-intellectual by designing and evoking certain emotional markers about \"struggle\" and \"resistance.\"", "as a kind of typology about the struggle of black people to gain self-knowledge, a story that black people never tire of reciting, even today with a plethora of black bookshops and publishers grinding out books on black subjects or with", "that this book was published as an act of philanthropy, as something that ought to be done. (It is so tiresome as a black person to be the recipient of charity all the time, to be the object of the moral", "(politically incorrectly such as the present author or very much politically correctly like a good many very good scholars) are heartened by this commercial venture. Indeed, it would be disheartening, as well as entirely untrue, if one were to think", "her ideological stripe. Such a book as Africana simply washes the practitioners in the field in a sea of ambivalence, with a sense of lost faith, as we all stand before it a bit as Matthew Arnold stood before Dover Beach.", "Encyclopedias, after all, are middlebrow, bourgeois books that tend, in the end, not to promote intellectual inquiry on the part of the people who use them but rather to stifle it. Children tend to copy verbatim from such books without", "But I suppose it is something of a triumph, which the publication of this book is meant to acknowledge, that black studies has achieved middlebrow status in the United States, that bourgeois people, both", "book is the product of both a strong movement toward the intellectualization of black experience among an elite and the anti-intellectualization of black experience by the public at large (earnest and respectful of black experience as it has now generally become)", "and objects, more \"education\" about its experience (more institutionalization of it, in other words, and more orthodoxy about its significance), that are all meant to reinforce its sense of identity, its psychological well-being, its sense of race mission, all important", "about the black experience were published and continue to be published. The editors make no attempt to place their book within that particular context, a more accurate historical context for understanding the appearance of this book, as it was made possible not", "official record books): as the final arbiter, as that which settles all arguments. Why, for goodness' sake, would anyone actually read a book like this? Knowledge, in the instance of the definitive reference book, becomes entombed and sanctified, very much", "or if they have never seen a film by D. W. Griffith or Fritz Lang. How terrible at a party to discover that one has never seen The Grand Illusion --one of the all-time great films--or that one has not read,", "alas, a Toni Morrison novel or one does not own a Wynton Marsalis album. (The truly knowing coves own albums by Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, no less, and do reports for their book clubs on the blues.) What", "field has arrived to such an extent that a publisher thinks that it can make money, significant money, publishing such a work. Assignments in black studies have filtered down to the high-school, junior-high, and even elementary-school level (and remember the", "a kind of political and cultural moralism on the part of whites and a kind of fetishlike piety on the part of blacks. It can be, alas, a business of an entirely good sort or needful sort, justifying itself in the" ], [ "was published) as some half-baked enterprise. That would be a mistake, for this is an incredibly polished work. This is a beautiful book, one of the most striking reference works I have ever seen. Gates and Appiah must be quite the", "that this book was published as an act of philanthropy, as something that ought to be done. (It is so tiresome as a black person to be the recipient of charity all the time, to be the object of the moral", "(politically incorrectly such as the present author or very much politically correctly like a good many very good scholars) are heartened by this commercial venture. Indeed, it would be disheartening, as well as entirely untrue, if one were to think", "This book comes with a triumphant blaring of publishers' trumpets, and one supposes that it is a signal sort of triumph for black studies or Africana studies (take your pick of names). The", "But I suppose it is something of a triumph, which the publication of this book is meant to acknowledge, that black studies has achieved middlebrow status in the United States, that bourgeois people, both", "official record books): as the final arbiter, as that which settles all arguments. Why, for goodness' sake, would anyone actually read a book like this? Knowledge, in the instance of the definitive reference book, becomes entombed and sanctified, very much", "thought-clichés; it is, indeed, why most people will consult such a work, to find them and be comforted by them. No intellectual or scholar can, therefore, be fully at ease with a work of this sort, no matter his or", "ever reading what they are copying. Adults, with far too much deference for the printed word, tend to consult such a book in much the way they consult the dictionary or the Bible (or in the way baseball fanatics consult the", "her ideological stripe. Such a book as Africana simply washes the practitioners in the field in a sea of ambivalence, with a sense of lost faith, as we all stand before it a bit as Matthew Arnold stood before Dover Beach.", "as a kind of typology about the struggle of black people to gain self-knowledge, a story that black people never tire of reciting, even today with a plethora of black bookshops and publishers grinding out books on black subjects or with", "field has arrived to such an extent that a publisher thinks that it can make money, significant money, publishing such a work. Assignments in black studies have filtered down to the high-school, junior-high, and even elementary-school level (and remember the", "about the black experience were published and continue to be published. The editors make no attempt to place their book within that particular context, a more accurate historical context for understanding the appearance of this book, as it was made possible not", "It took him and Appiah only four years to produce Africana . Even with modern technology, that is an astonishing feat, so astonishing that some will dismiss the book (I have heard some comments of this sort even before the book", "I shall begin my next entry with a discussion of a set of entries in Africana , those dealing with aspects of Philadelphia, my hometown, and a response to David Nicholson's impressions of the book.", "book is the product of both a strong movement toward the intellectualization of black experience among an elite and the anti-intellectualization of black experience by the public at large (earnest and respectful of black experience as it has now generally become)", "someone said so in some reference book like Africana . Thought-clichés are like narcotics; people love them because they relieve them of the very thing they do not wish to do in any case, that is, think, think hard, and", "and those who cater to the public's access to intellectual material by rounding off the rough edges and making it thoroughly anti-intellectual by designing and evoking certain emotional markers about \"struggle\" and \"resistance.\"", "of it, but that is another issue for another type of review. It is amazing that Gates has done this volume so successfully and so quickly, that he has flooded the market with first-rate black reference books in such short order.", "That Du Bois--who exists in the field of black studies these days as rather the black equivalent of Einstein (theorist), Dr. Johnson (wordsmith), Emerson (humanist), and Kant (moral philosopher), separately and together, as it were--is evoked by the editors in their introduction provides this volume with a pedigree that I suppose they thought it needed, making Gates and Appiah our intellectual knights who have given us the Holy Grail. (The editors called the quest for producing a black encyclopedia \"a Holy Grail.\" More triumphalist history!) The introduction offers a good and useful account of Du Bois' attempt to produce an Africana encyclopedia, the professional jealousy he encountered, the racism that sometimes thwarted his efforts. It should be read by all who purchase the book.", "But the history of the publication of this book is only incompletely told by the editors. After 1970, when black studies was established on the white college campus, a number of reference books" ], [ "Triumph of the Middlebrow?", "But I suppose it is something of a triumph, which the publication of this book is meant to acknowledge, that black studies has achieved middlebrow status in the United States, that bourgeois people, both", "serving the anti-intellectual ends of the middlebrow, who want not to encounter knowledge and to wrestle with it but to store it as an authority on the bookshelf.", "most thinking people in black studies find dangerous about the middlebrow apotheosis of the field is that it usually leads to the enshrinement of what Jacques Barzun calls thought-clichés, half-truths or non-truths that are accepted as the truth because", "black culture--globally speaking--which is why he is hated by Afrocentrists who take a somewhat different view of the long-term meaning of \"the coming of the white man\") is nothing less than the middlebrow arrival of black studies in American culture.", "Encyclopedias, after all, are middlebrow, bourgeois books that tend, in the end, not to promote intellectual inquiry on the part of the people who use them but rather to stifle it. Children tend to copy verbatim from such books without", "and those who cater to the public's access to intellectual material by rounding off the rough edges and making it thoroughly anti-intellectual by designing and evoking certain emotional markers about \"struggle\" and \"resistance.\"", "ever reading what they are copying. Adults, with far too much deference for the printed word, tend to consult such a book in much the way they consult the dictionary or the Bible (or in the way baseball fanatics consult the", "book is the product of both a strong movement toward the intellectualization of black experience among an elite and the anti-intellectualization of black experience by the public at large (earnest and respectful of black experience as it has now generally become)", "her ideological stripe. Such a book as Africana simply washes the practitioners in the field in a sea of ambivalence, with a sense of lost faith, as we all stand before it a bit as Matthew Arnold stood before Dover Beach.", "field has arrived to such an extent that a publisher thinks that it can make money, significant money, publishing such a work. Assignments in black studies have filtered down to the high-school, junior-high, and even elementary-school level (and remember the", "that this book was published as an act of philanthropy, as something that ought to be done. (It is so tiresome as a black person to be the recipient of charity all the time, to be the object of the moral", "(politically incorrectly such as the present author or very much politically correctly like a good many very good scholars) are heartened by this commercial venture. Indeed, it would be disheartening, as well as entirely untrue, if one were to think", "thought-clichés; it is, indeed, why most people will consult such a work, to find them and be comforted by them. No intellectual or scholar can, therefore, be fully at ease with a work of this sort, no matter his or", "That Du Bois--who exists in the field of black studies these days as rather the black equivalent of Einstein (theorist), Dr. Johnson (wordsmith), Emerson (humanist), and Kant (moral philosopher), separately and together, as it were--is evoked by the editors in their introduction provides this volume with a pedigree that I suppose they thought it needed, making Gates and Appiah our intellectual knights who have given us the Holy Grail. (The editors called the quest for producing a black encyclopedia \"a Holy Grail.\" More triumphalist history!) The introduction offers a good and useful account of Du Bois' attempt to produce an Africana encyclopedia, the professional jealousy he encountered, the racism that sometimes thwarted his efforts. It should be read by all who purchase the book.", "This book comes with a triumphant blaring of publishers' trumpets, and one supposes that it is a signal sort of triumph for black studies or Africana studies (take your pick of names). The", "alas, a Toni Morrison novel or one does not own a Wynton Marsalis album. (The truly knowing coves own albums by Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, no less, and do reports for their book clubs on the blues.) What", "as a kind of typology about the struggle of black people to gain self-knowledge, a story that black people never tire of reciting, even today with a plethora of black bookshops and publishers grinding out books on black subjects or with", "about the black experience were published and continue to be published. The editors make no attempt to place their book within that particular context, a more accurate historical context for understanding the appearance of this book, as it was made possible not", "marketplace. But I would think that most black-studies scholars are only partly heartened by this; for this rather triumphalist book (and Gates is important in black studies, in part, for the promotion of a triumphalist view of black history and" ], [ "It took him and Appiah only four years to produce Africana . Even with modern technology, that is an astonishing feat, so astonishing that some will dismiss the book (I have heard some comments of this sort even before the book", "This book comes with a triumphant blaring of publishers' trumpets, and one supposes that it is a signal sort of triumph for black studies or Africana studies (take your pick of names). The", "her ideological stripe. Such a book as Africana simply washes the practitioners in the field in a sea of ambivalence, with a sense of lost faith, as we all stand before it a bit as Matthew Arnold stood before Dover Beach.", "I shall begin my next entry with a discussion of a set of entries in Africana , those dealing with aspects of Philadelphia, my hometown, and a response to David Nicholson's impressions of the book.", "think critically and against the grain of their own beliefs or psychological needs or neurotic fantasy projections. Thought-clichés confirm one's stupidity and one's laziness. With all the goodwill in the world, a book like Africana cannot help but produce", "That Du Bois--who exists in the field of black studies these days as rather the black equivalent of Einstein (theorist), Dr. Johnson (wordsmith), Emerson (humanist), and Kant (moral philosopher), separately and together, as it were--is evoked by the editors in their introduction provides this volume with a pedigree that I suppose they thought it needed, making Gates and Appiah our intellectual knights who have given us the Holy Grail. (The editors called the quest for producing a black encyclopedia \"a Holy Grail.\" More triumphalist history!) The introduction offers a good and useful account of Du Bois' attempt to produce an Africana encyclopedia, the professional jealousy he encountered, the racism that sometimes thwarted his efforts. It should be read by all who purchase the book.", "someone said so in some reference book like Africana . Thought-clichés are like narcotics; people love them because they relieve them of the very thing they do not wish to do in any case, that is, think, think hard, and", "a current-events or social-studies class.) Moreover, blacks cannot be left out of Women's History Month or Veteran's Day or, for the truly daring, Gay Appreciation Month. So, a book like Africana is bound to get a great deal of", "Gates and Appiah, rather sentimentally and opportunistically, see themselves as the descendants of Du Bois, whose unfilled dream was to produce such a book, Gates seems to have cornered the market on black reference books that shape the canon of", "Now, Gates and Appiah published a multicultural dictionary about a year ago, and Gates and Nellie McKay published the Norton Anthology of African American Literature shortly before that. With Africana , where", "But I suppose it is something of a triumph, which the publication of this book is meant to acknowledge, that black studies has achieved middlebrow status in the United States, that bourgeois people, both", "that this book was published as an act of philanthropy, as something that ought to be done. (It is so tiresome as a black person to be the recipient of charity all the time, to be the object of the moral", "black culture--globally speaking--which is why he is hated by Afrocentrists who take a somewhat different view of the long-term meaning of \"the coming of the white man\") is nothing less than the middlebrow arrival of black studies in American culture.", "marketplace. But I would think that most black-studies scholars are only partly heartened by this; for this rather triumphalist book (and Gates is important in black studies, in part, for the promotion of a triumphalist view of black history and", "was published) as some half-baked enterprise. That would be a mistake, for this is an incredibly polished work. This is a beautiful book, one of the most striking reference works I have ever seen. Gates and Appiah must be quite the", "But the history of the publication of this book is only incompletely told by the editors. After 1970, when black studies was established on the white college campus, a number of reference books", "reasons for the existence of black studies, but all clearly anti-intellectual. In other words, the forces that brought this book into existence had little enough to do with Du Bois--although evoking him is of critical importance to the book's audience", "(In some more Afrocentric black homes, it may replace the Britannica entirely, that Eurocentric collection of lies, although Britannica has become as multicultural as everyone else these days.) Those of us who have labored in the field of black studies", "field has arrived to such an extent that a publisher thinks that it can make money, significant money, publishing such a work. Assignments in black studies have filtered down to the high-school, junior-high, and even elementary-school level (and remember the", "about the black experience were published and continue to be published. The editors make no attempt to place their book within that particular context, a more accurate historical context for understanding the appearance of this book, as it was made possible not" ], [ "reasons for the existence of black studies, but all clearly anti-intellectual. In other words, the forces that brought this book into existence had little enough to do with Du Bois--although evoking him is of critical importance to the book's audience", "But I suppose it is something of a triumph, which the publication of this book is meant to acknowledge, that black studies has achieved middlebrow status in the United States, that bourgeois people, both", "black culture--globally speaking--which is why he is hated by Afrocentrists who take a somewhat different view of the long-term meaning of \"the coming of the white man\") is nothing less than the middlebrow arrival of black studies in American culture.", "That Du Bois--who exists in the field of black studies these days as rather the black equivalent of Einstein (theorist), Dr. Johnson (wordsmith), Emerson (humanist), and Kant (moral philosopher), separately and together, as it were--is evoked by the editors in their introduction provides this volume with a pedigree that I suppose they thought it needed, making Gates and Appiah our intellectual knights who have given us the Holy Grail. (The editors called the quest for producing a black encyclopedia \"a Holy Grail.\" More triumphalist history!) The introduction offers a good and useful account of Du Bois' attempt to produce an Africana encyclopedia, the professional jealousy he encountered, the racism that sometimes thwarted his efforts. It should be read by all who purchase the book.", "field has arrived to such an extent that a publisher thinks that it can make money, significant money, publishing such a work. Assignments in black studies have filtered down to the high-school, junior-high, and even elementary-school level (and remember the", "book is the product of both a strong movement toward the intellectualization of black experience among an elite and the anti-intellectualization of black experience by the public at large (earnest and respectful of black experience as it has now generally become)", "marketplace. But I would think that most black-studies scholars are only partly heartened by this; for this rather triumphalist book (and Gates is important in black studies, in part, for the promotion of a triumphalist view of black history and", "This book comes with a triumphant blaring of publishers' trumpets, and one supposes that it is a signal sort of triumph for black studies or Africana studies (take your pick of names). The", "most thinking people in black studies find dangerous about the middlebrow apotheosis of the field is that it usually leads to the enshrinement of what Jacques Barzun calls thought-clichés, half-truths or non-truths that are accepted as the truth because", "that this book was published as an act of philanthropy, as something that ought to be done. (It is so tiresome as a black person to be the recipient of charity all the time, to be the object of the moral", "It is good to know that, partly through the energetic offices of Henry Louis Gates, black studies can, as it were, pay its way these days and not be dependent for its existence on", "think critically and against the grain of their own beliefs or psychological needs or neurotic fantasy projections. Thought-clichés confirm one's stupidity and one's laziness. With all the goodwill in the world, a book like Africana cannot help but produce", "by Du Bois' dream in any respect but by the rise of multiculturalism and black studies as intellectual industries in the United States after 1970. The increasing professionalization of black studies made this book possible, more scholars in the field, both", "black studies, that define the field and its major players. Building a canon is very important to Gates, and it is, without question, an important pedagogical pursuit. A field must have order and it must have pioneers and heroes. It is", "But the history of the publication of this book is only incompletely told by the editors. After 1970, when black studies was established on the white college campus, a number of reference books", "about the black experience were published and continue to be published. The editors make no attempt to place their book within that particular context, a more accurate historical context for understanding the appearance of this book, as it was made possible not", "as a kind of typology about the struggle of black people to gain self-knowledge, a story that black people never tire of reciting, even today with a plethora of black bookshops and publishers grinding out books on black subjects or with", "(In some more Afrocentric black homes, it may replace the Britannica entirely, that Eurocentric collection of lies, although Britannica has become as multicultural as everyone else these days.) Those of us who have labored in the field of black studies", "someone said so in some reference book like Africana . Thought-clichés are like narcotics; people love them because they relieve them of the very thing they do not wish to do in any case, that is, think, think hard, and", "and those who cater to the public's access to intellectual material by rounding off the rough edges and making it thoroughly anti-intellectual by designing and evoking certain emotional markers about \"struggle\" and \"resistance.\"" ], [ "Gates and Appiah, rather sentimentally and opportunistically, see themselves as the descendants of Du Bois, whose unfilled dream was to produce such a book, Gates seems to have cornered the market on black reference books that shape the canon of", "That Du Bois--who exists in the field of black studies these days as rather the black equivalent of Einstein (theorist), Dr. Johnson (wordsmith), Emerson (humanist), and Kant (moral philosopher), separately and together, as it were--is evoked by the editors in their introduction provides this volume with a pedigree that I suppose they thought it needed, making Gates and Appiah our intellectual knights who have given us the Holy Grail. (The editors called the quest for producing a black encyclopedia \"a Holy Grail.\" More triumphalist history!) The introduction offers a good and useful account of Du Bois' attempt to produce an Africana encyclopedia, the professional jealousy he encountered, the racism that sometimes thwarted his efforts. It should be read by all who purchase the book.", "marketplace. But I would think that most black-studies scholars are only partly heartened by this; for this rather triumphalist book (and Gates is important in black studies, in part, for the promotion of a triumphalist view of black history and", "was published) as some half-baked enterprise. That would be a mistake, for this is an incredibly polished work. This is a beautiful book, one of the most striking reference works I have ever seen. Gates and Appiah must be quite the", "Now, Gates and Appiah published a multicultural dictionary about a year ago, and Gates and Nellie McKay published the Norton Anthology of African American Literature shortly before that. With Africana , where", "It is good to know that, partly through the energetic offices of Henry Louis Gates, black studies can, as it were, pay its way these days and not be dependent for its existence on", "This book comes with a triumphant blaring of publishers' trumpets, and one supposes that it is a signal sort of triumph for black studies or Africana studies (take your pick of names). The", "It took him and Appiah only four years to produce Africana . Even with modern technology, that is an astonishing feat, so astonishing that some will dismiss the book (I have heard some comments of this sort even before the book", "of it, but that is another issue for another type of review. It is amazing that Gates has done this volume so successfully and so quickly, that he has flooded the market with first-rate black reference books in such short order.", "her ideological stripe. Such a book as Africana simply washes the practitioners in the field in a sea of ambivalence, with a sense of lost faith, as we all stand before it a bit as Matthew Arnold stood before Dover Beach.", "black studies, that define the field and its major players. Building a canon is very important to Gates, and it is, without question, an important pedagogical pursuit. A field must have order and it must have pioneers and heroes. It is", "that this book was published as an act of philanthropy, as something that ought to be done. (It is so tiresome as a black person to be the recipient of charity all the time, to be the object of the moral", "black culture--globally speaking--which is why he is hated by Afrocentrists who take a somewhat different view of the long-term meaning of \"the coming of the white man\") is nothing less than the middlebrow arrival of black studies in American culture.", "also a power pursuit. He who defines the field controls it, in a manner of speaking. Some are jealous that Gates wants this sort of power. Others find it unseemly. I think Gates is wasting his considerable talents in the pursuit", "I shall begin my next entry with a discussion of a set of entries in Africana , those dealing with aspects of Philadelphia, my hometown, and a response to David Nicholson's impressions of the book.", "think critically and against the grain of their own beliefs or psychological needs or neurotic fantasy projections. Thought-clichés confirm one's stupidity and one's laziness. With all the goodwill in the world, a book like Africana cannot help but produce", "someone said so in some reference book like Africana . Thought-clichés are like narcotics; people love them because they relieve them of the very thing they do not wish to do in any case, that is, think, think hard, and", "But I suppose it is something of a triumph, which the publication of this book is meant to acknowledge, that black studies has achieved middlebrow status in the United States, that bourgeois people, both", "a current-events or social-studies class.) Moreover, blacks cannot be left out of Women's History Month or Veteran's Day or, for the truly daring, Gay Appreciation Month. So, a book like Africana is bound to get a great deal of", "reasons for the existence of black studies, but all clearly anti-intellectual. In other words, the forces that brought this book into existence had little enough to do with Du Bois--although evoking him is of critical importance to the book's audience" ] ]
test	20057	[ "What evidence can the ordinary person observe from the time of the sudden expansion of the universe?", "How did Albert Einstein's opinion of the big bang theory change over time?", "What unusual positions did religious authorities and scientists find themselves in as evidence for the big bang mounted in the 1950s?", "What is one of the key arguments against the apparent existence of a god who triggered the expansion of the universe?", "How does Stephen Hawking explain what caused the big bang?", "Where does the author come down on the question of what triggered the big bang?", "What is the difference between Quentin Smith's and Alexander Vilenkin's arguments against god as the big bang initiator? ", "How did communists feel about evidence for the big bang theory?", "What confirming evidence did an American astronomer find for the big bang theory advanced by a Belgian in the early 20th century?", "What did scientists prior to the 20th century think about the big bang theory?" ]	[ [ "The aurora borealis is caused by photons left over from the sudden expansion.", "A portion of the grainy static on a television screen set between channels is caused by light particles left over from the event.", "When your microwave makes a hissing sound while it cooks your food, that is caused by reverberating sound waves from the sudden expansion.", "The sunspot cycle is caused by continuing pressure waves of particles from the sudden expansion." ], [ "Originally, Einstein did not see a need to consider the possibility of an expanding/contracting universe, but once he realized that his equations required it, it became his most important discovery.", "Einstein believed from the start that the universe was expanding, though he did not understand why, and he never changed this opinion.", "He originally added a fudge factor to his relativity equations to avoid the need to consider an expanding/contracting universe. Near the end of his life, he said that adding that fudge factor was the biggest mistake of his career.", "He assigned a graduate student to determine the value of the universe's expansion/contraction coefficient in his relativity equations and the student reported it as 0, which Einstein accepted. Later, he said it was his biggest error." ], [ "Religious authorities were pleased that the big bang appeared to require the existence of a god to trigger it. Scientists immediately set about trying to show experimentally whether god existed or not.", "Religious authorities could take a pro-science position, since it supported their preconceived notion that a deity must have triggered the big bang; scientists found themselves denying a scientific finding to resist admitting that a god existed, which was unscientific.", "Marxists were forced to confront their atheism and adopt belief in a god, while the church confessed that if the big bang theory was true, and demanded a god to start it, then evolution was also true.", "Scientists were forced to admit that some of the other claims of miracles by the church merited investigation, while the church quickly sanctioned the teaching of evolution." ], [ "One must next answer the question of why a God who created a whole universe would spend so much time alternately hectoring and helping the people of one minor planet (Earth) in a minor spiral galaxy (ours).", "It stands to reason that if God could trigger one universe to come into being, he could trigger others. Where are the other universes?", "One must next answer the question of who created the god that set off the big bang.", "If God initiated the big bang, then he would have been destroyed by the initial extremely rapid expansion." ], [ "He believes that our universe could be, for example, an atom in the leg of someone's kitchen chair in a much larger universe, and came into being when the tree grew the cell that ended up in the wood of the chair.", "He theorizes that the universe is self-contained and without boundaries, which means it woudl have no beginning or end, which means that time has no real beginning, the beginning is an arbitrary choice.", "After an entire career in cosmology, he concluded that the sourceof the trigger for the big bang is unknowable.", "He theorizes that in a self-contained system, particles can pop in and out of existence as quantum theory predicts, and that the universe burst into being on its own from a patch of false vacuum." ], [ "As far as the author is concerned, no one can determine which theory is correct by experiment, and in the end, it does not affect his daily life, so he doesn't care which theory is right.", "He believes that the explanation that a Creator triggered the big bang is the best one.", "He makes a joke about it, quoting a satirical version of the bible, which indicates that he has no idea which theory is right and is sick of thinking about it.", "He believes that string theory explains the observed facts best. But string theory is complicated and difficult to understand." ], [ "Smith thinks it unlikely God would have set in motion an evolutionary process with such a low probability of producing intelligent life, while Vilenkin suggests, via a series of elegant mathematical proofs, that an ideal machine of unknown origin, but with no agency or power, could have done the job.", "Smith thinks it unlikely God would have set in motion an evolutionary process with such a low probability of producing intelligent life, while Vilenkin suggests, via a series of elegant mathematical proofs, that the original singularity that became the universe simply burst into being from nothing.", "Smith believes that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle guaranteed that the universal singularity would,by random chance, come to exist; while Vilenkin believes that an alien - not a god - from another universe already created, triggered the big bang for our own universe.", "Vilenkin thinks it unlikely God would have set in motion an evolutionary process with such a low probability of producing intelligent life, while Smith suggests, via a series of elegant mathematical proofs, that the original singularity that became the universe simply burst into being from nothing." ], [ "Because communists were looked down on and frequently harassed in the US, they kept a low profile, and did not comment on matters of science.", "They were ok with it because they had bigger concerns, like seizing the means of production and advancing the interests of the proletariat.", "Communists were generally people of the Eastern Orthodox faith, so they were happy that there was evidence of a god.", "They were quite put out because it went against their faith in the infinity and eternity of matter." ], [ "Through astronomical observations, the American confirmed the location of the edge of the universe and documented the continuing creation of new space at the expanding boundary.", "Through astronomical observations, the American confirmed that galaxies visible from Earth were all moving away, which meant the universe was expanding.", "Through astronomical observations, the American confirmed that galaxies visible from Earth were all moving toward us, which meant the universe was expanding.", "By using the Hubble telescope, the American confirmed that visible celestial objects were all moving away from Earth, indicating continued expansion of the universe." ], [ "Their idea of \"the universe\" was rather more limited, since they did not have access to good optical telescopes. What they thought of as \"the universe,\" we think of as \"the Milky Way Galaxy.\"", "Even with their crude telescopes, pre-20th century astronomers could observe that objects were moving apart from each other, so they believed the universe was expanding - they just didn't know why.", "Most early astronomers were Christians. They just assumed that God had created the universe, as indicated in Genesis.", "They thought the universe was static, but this was before the big bang theory was proposed." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "It was an ordained priest who took relativity to its logical conclusion. In 1927, Georges Lemaître of the University of Louvain in Belgium worked out an expanding model of the universe. Reasoning backward, he proposed that at some definite point in the past it must have originated from a primeval atom of infinitely concentrated energy. Two years later, Lemaître's model was confirmed by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who had observed that the galaxies everywhere around us were receding. Both theory and empirical evidence pointed to the same verdict: The universe had an abrupt beginning in time. \n\n Churchmen rejoiced. Proof of the biblical account of creation had dropped into their laps. Pope Pius XII, opening a conference at the Vatican in 1951, declared that this scientific theory of cosmic origins bore witness \"to that primordial 'Fiat lux ' uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation. ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore there is a creator, therefore God exists!\"", "Einstein overcame his metaphysical scruples about the big bang not long before his death in 1955, referring to his earlier attempt to dodge it by an ad hoc theoretical device as \"the greatest blunder of my career.\" As for Hoyle and the rest of the skeptics, they were finally won over in 1965, when two scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey accidentally detected a pervasive microwave hiss that turned out to be the echo of the big bang (at first they thought it was caused by pigeon droppings on their antenna). If you turn on your television and tune it between stations, about 10 percent of that black-and-white-speckled static you see is caused by photons left over from the cosmogonic event. What greater proof of the reality of the big bang--you can watch it on television!", "Big-Bang Theology \n\n Did God cause the big bang? That is what half a dozen new books about science and religion--whose authors range from a Reagan-administration official to an Israeli physicist to an elementary-particle-theorist-turned-Anglican-priest--are saying. The fact that the universe abruptly exploded into existence out of apparent nothingness some 15 billion years ago, they submit, means it must have had a supernatural creator. A couple of months ago the same claim was enthusiastically aired at a Washington conference sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center under the rubric \"Beyond the Death of God,\" with eminent thinkers such as Fred Barnes, Mona Charen, and Elliott Abrams in attendance. And the idea received a sympathetic hearing on William F. Buckley's show Firing Line a few weeks ago .", "The idea that only God could have caused the big bang is scarcely new. In fact, the big bang is probably the only idea in the history of science that was ever resisted because of its pro-God import. \n\n For much of the modern era, scientists followed Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton in believing the cosmos to be eternal and unchanging. But in 1917, when Albert Einstein applied his theory of relativity to space-time as a whole, his equations implied that the universe could not be static; it must be either expanding or contracting. This struck Einstein as grotesque, so he added to his theory a fiddle factor called the \"cosmological constant\" that eliminated the implication and held the universe still.", "and disappear all the time. An entire universe could do the same, claim some cosmologists. Calling themselves \"nothing theorists,\" they have produced models showing how the cosmos could have burst into being all by itself out of a patch of \"false", "OK, so the universe had a beginning, and hence a First Cause, which is, moreover, transcendent. How does it follow that this cause is God, or even God-like? Now there is an acute question. Philosopher Thomas Nagel has suggested that something humanly inconceivable lies behind the big bang. What, if anything, can really be inferred about the First Cause? Well, suppose that it were something mechanical. An ideal machine produces its effect either always or never; it does not just suddenly start to operate at some moment, unless someone gives it a kick. If a mechanical cause produced the universe at time T, there is no reason it should not have done so at time T minus 1. The argument can be repeated to T minus infinity: A mechanical cause would have either produced the universe from eternity or not at all. But the universe was created at one moment out of an infinity of other indistinguishable moments. This implies that the moment was freely chosen, and hence that the creator had a will, and to that extent a personal nature. And power.", "So did God cause the big bang? Overcome by metaphysical lassitude, I finally reach over to my bookshelf for The Devil's Bible . Turning to Genesis I read: \"In the beginning there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was still nothing, but now you could see it.\"", "Hawking's proposal is extremely popular with laymen who are hostile to the cosmological argument, judging from the mail I get. Apparently they enjoy being baffled by \"imaginary time,\" a theoretical fiction Hawking uses to redescribe the big bang so that there is no beginning. In real time there still is a beginning. Sometimes Hawking says that imaginary time is \"earlier\" than real time, which is a logical contradiction; sometimes he suggests it might be more real than real time, which is an absurdity.", "Since the '60s, scientists have been busy working out, and feuding over, the details of the big-bang cosmology. But God is not in the details--his existence is deducible from the mere fact that there is a world at all. So goes the cosmological argument , one of the three traditional arguments toward a Supreme Being. (Click to read the ontological argument and the teleological argument .) \n\n The reasoning starts off like this: \n\n 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. \n\n 2) The universe began to exist. \n\n 3) Therefore the universe has a cause of its existence. (Click to learn more about the surprising Islamic origins of this argument and what Ludwig Wittgenstein had to say about it.) \n\n There are many options for attacking the logic of this cosmological argument, and contemporary opponents of theism have tried them all.", "Just because the universe is temporally finite does not mean it had a beginning. Speaking of Hawking, this is his famous \"no boundary\" proposal. \"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator,\" Hawking wrote in A Brief History of Time . \"But if the universe is completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning or end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?\" In Hawking's quantum cosmology, the pointlike singularity of the big bang is replaced by a smooth hemisphere in which space and time are commingled. \"Time zero\" becomes an arbitrary point, not a true beginning; it is no more a boundary than the North Pole is.", "If everything needs a cause for its existence, then so does God. (More frequently heard in the form \"But Mummy, who made God?\") This objection fails because it gets Premise 1 wrong. The premise does not say that everything needs a cause but that everything that begins to exist does. God never began to exist--he is eternal. So he does not need a cause for his existence. \n\n Maybe the universe had a natural cause. But the big bang could not have been caused by prior physical processes. That is because it began with pointlike singularity , which, according to relativity theory, is not a \"thing\" but a boundary or an edge in time. Since no causal lines can be extended through it, the cause of the big bang must transcend the physical world.", "Yet the big-bang cosmology has one unwelcome consequence for theists. It seems to suggest that the Creator was a bungler. A singularity is inherently lawless. Anything at all can come out of one. It is exceedingly unlikely that a big-bang singularity should give rise to a universe whose conditions are precisely suitable for life, let alone the best of all possible worlds. As the American philosopher Quentin Smith has pointed out, \"If God created the universe with the aim of making it animate, it is illogical that he would have created as its first state something whose natural evolution would lead with high probability only to inanimate states .\" The only way God could have ensured the appearance of creatures in his own image was by repeatedly intervening and making adjustments to steer the evolution of the world away from lifeless disaster. But \"a competent Creator does not create things he immediately or subsequently needs to set aright,\" observes Smith. (Remember, we are talking about the universe's physical infrastructure, not sinners with free will.)", "vacuum,\" or a 3-D geometry of zero volume, or--in the case of Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University--literally nothing at all (this took Vilenkin four pages of math). So the universe is summoned out of the void by the laws of", "Even some believing scientists were troubled. The cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle simply felt that an explosion was an undignified way for the world to begin, rather like \"a party girl jumping out of a cake.\" In a BBC interview in the 1950s, Hoyle sardonically referred to the hypothesized origin as \"the big bang.\" The term stuck.", "Well, then, perhaps it had no cause at all. It is hard to think of a principle more amply confirmed by our experience than that things do not just pop into existence uncaused.", "Marxists, meanwhile, gnashed their teeth. Quite aside from its religious aura, the new theory contradicted their belief in the infinity and eternity of matter--one of the axioms of Lenin's dialectical materialism--and was accordingly dismissed as \"idealistic.\" The Marxist physicist David Bohm rebuked the developers of the theory as \"scientists who effectively turn traitor to science, and discard scientific facts to reach conclusions that are convenient to the Catholic Church.\" Atheists of a non-Marxist stripe were also recalcitrant. \"Some younger scientists were so upset by these theological trends that they resolved simply to block their cosmological source,\" commented the German astronomer Otto Heckmann, a prominent investigator of cosmic expansion. The dean of the profession, Sir Arthur Eddington, wrote, \"The notion of a beginning is repugnant to me ... I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang. ... The expanding Universe is preposterous ... incredible ... it leaves me cold .\"", "physics. But this can't be right. The laws of physics are just a set of equations, a mathematical pattern. They cannot cause the world to exist. As Stephen Hawking has written, \"A scientific theory ... exists only in our minds and", "No one can really pull a rabbit out of a hat. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Yet something of the sort does seem to happen in the quantum world, where, owing to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, tiny \"virtual particles\" spontaneously appear", "does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean).\"" ], [ "Einstein overcame his metaphysical scruples about the big bang not long before his death in 1955, referring to his earlier attempt to dodge it by an ad hoc theoretical device as \"the greatest blunder of my career.\" As for Hoyle and the rest of the skeptics, they were finally won over in 1965, when two scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey accidentally detected a pervasive microwave hiss that turned out to be the echo of the big bang (at first they thought it was caused by pigeon droppings on their antenna). If you turn on your television and tune it between stations, about 10 percent of that black-and-white-speckled static you see is caused by photons left over from the cosmogonic event. What greater proof of the reality of the big bang--you can watch it on television!", "The idea that only God could have caused the big bang is scarcely new. In fact, the big bang is probably the only idea in the history of science that was ever resisted because of its pro-God import. \n\n For much of the modern era, scientists followed Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton in believing the cosmos to be eternal and unchanging. But in 1917, when Albert Einstein applied his theory of relativity to space-time as a whole, his equations implied that the universe could not be static; it must be either expanding or contracting. This struck Einstein as grotesque, so he added to his theory a fiddle factor called the \"cosmological constant\" that eliminated the implication and held the universe still.", "It was an ordained priest who took relativity to its logical conclusion. In 1927, Georges Lemaître of the University of Louvain in Belgium worked out an expanding model of the universe. Reasoning backward, he proposed that at some definite point in the past it must have originated from a primeval atom of infinitely concentrated energy. Two years later, Lemaître's model was confirmed by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who had observed that the galaxies everywhere around us were receding. Both theory and empirical evidence pointed to the same verdict: The universe had an abrupt beginning in time. \n\n Churchmen rejoiced. Proof of the biblical account of creation had dropped into their laps. Pope Pius XII, opening a conference at the Vatican in 1951, declared that this scientific theory of cosmic origins bore witness \"to that primordial 'Fiat lux ' uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation. ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore there is a creator, therefore God exists!\"", "Marxists, meanwhile, gnashed their teeth. Quite aside from its religious aura, the new theory contradicted their belief in the infinity and eternity of matter--one of the axioms of Lenin's dialectical materialism--and was accordingly dismissed as \"idealistic.\" The Marxist physicist David Bohm rebuked the developers of the theory as \"scientists who effectively turn traitor to science, and discard scientific facts to reach conclusions that are convenient to the Catholic Church.\" Atheists of a non-Marxist stripe were also recalcitrant. \"Some younger scientists were so upset by these theological trends that they resolved simply to block their cosmological source,\" commented the German astronomer Otto Heckmann, a prominent investigator of cosmic expansion. The dean of the profession, Sir Arthur Eddington, wrote, \"The notion of a beginning is repugnant to me ... I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang. ... The expanding Universe is preposterous ... incredible ... it leaves me cold .\"", "Big-Bang Theology \n\n Did God cause the big bang? That is what half a dozen new books about science and religion--whose authors range from a Reagan-administration official to an Israeli physicist to an elementary-particle-theorist-turned-Anglican-priest--are saying. The fact that the universe abruptly exploded into existence out of apparent nothingness some 15 billion years ago, they submit, means it must have had a supernatural creator. A couple of months ago the same claim was enthusiastically aired at a Washington conference sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center under the rubric \"Beyond the Death of God,\" with eminent thinkers such as Fred Barnes, Mona Charen, and Elliott Abrams in attendance. And the idea received a sympathetic hearing on William F. Buckley's show Firing Line a few weeks ago .", "Even some believing scientists were troubled. The cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle simply felt that an explosion was an undignified way for the world to begin, rather like \"a party girl jumping out of a cake.\" In a BBC interview in the 1950s, Hoyle sardonically referred to the hypothesized origin as \"the big bang.\" The term stuck.", "Hawking's proposal is extremely popular with laymen who are hostile to the cosmological argument, judging from the mail I get. Apparently they enjoy being baffled by \"imaginary time,\" a theoretical fiction Hawking uses to redescribe the big bang so that there is no beginning. In real time there still is a beginning. Sometimes Hawking says that imaginary time is \"earlier\" than real time, which is a logical contradiction; sometimes he suggests it might be more real than real time, which is an absurdity.", "So did God cause the big bang? Overcome by metaphysical lassitude, I finally reach over to my bookshelf for The Devil's Bible . Turning to Genesis I read: \"In the beginning there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was still nothing, but now you could see it.\"", "Yet the big-bang cosmology has one unwelcome consequence for theists. It seems to suggest that the Creator was a bungler. A singularity is inherently lawless. Anything at all can come out of one. It is exceedingly unlikely that a big-bang singularity should give rise to a universe whose conditions are precisely suitable for life, let alone the best of all possible worlds. As the American philosopher Quentin Smith has pointed out, \"If God created the universe with the aim of making it animate, it is illogical that he would have created as its first state something whose natural evolution would lead with high probability only to inanimate states .\" The only way God could have ensured the appearance of creatures in his own image was by repeatedly intervening and making adjustments to steer the evolution of the world away from lifeless disaster. But \"a competent Creator does not create things he immediately or subsequently needs to set aright,\" observes Smith. (Remember, we are talking about the universe's physical infrastructure, not sinners with free will.)", "Just because the universe is temporally finite does not mean it had a beginning. Speaking of Hawking, this is his famous \"no boundary\" proposal. \"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator,\" Hawking wrote in A Brief History of Time . \"But if the universe is completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning or end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?\" In Hawking's quantum cosmology, the pointlike singularity of the big bang is replaced by a smooth hemisphere in which space and time are commingled. \"Time zero\" becomes an arbitrary point, not a true beginning; it is no more a boundary than the North Pole is.", "and disappear all the time. An entire universe could do the same, claim some cosmologists. Calling themselves \"nothing theorists,\" they have produced models showing how the cosmos could have burst into being all by itself out of a patch of \"false", "Since the '60s, scientists have been busy working out, and feuding over, the details of the big-bang cosmology. But God is not in the details--his existence is deducible from the mere fact that there is a world at all. So goes the cosmological argument , one of the three traditional arguments toward a Supreme Being. (Click to read the ontological argument and the teleological argument .) \n\n The reasoning starts off like this: \n\n 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. \n\n 2) The universe began to exist. \n\n 3) Therefore the universe has a cause of its existence. (Click to learn more about the surprising Islamic origins of this argument and what Ludwig Wittgenstein had to say about it.) \n\n There are many options for attacking the logic of this cosmological argument, and contemporary opponents of theism have tried them all.", "OK, so the universe had a beginning, and hence a First Cause, which is, moreover, transcendent. How does it follow that this cause is God, or even God-like? Now there is an acute question. Philosopher Thomas Nagel has suggested that something humanly inconceivable lies behind the big bang. What, if anything, can really be inferred about the First Cause? Well, suppose that it were something mechanical. An ideal machine produces its effect either always or never; it does not just suddenly start to operate at some moment, unless someone gives it a kick. If a mechanical cause produced the universe at time T, there is no reason it should not have done so at time T minus 1. The argument can be repeated to T minus infinity: A mechanical cause would have either produced the universe from eternity or not at all. But the universe was created at one moment out of an infinity of other indistinguishable moments. This implies that the moment was freely chosen, and hence that the creator had a will, and to that extent a personal nature. And power.", "If everything needs a cause for its existence, then so does God. (More frequently heard in the form \"But Mummy, who made God?\") This objection fails because it gets Premise 1 wrong. The premise does not say that everything needs a cause but that everything that begins to exist does. God never began to exist--he is eternal. So he does not need a cause for his existence. \n\n Maybe the universe had a natural cause. But the big bang could not have been caused by prior physical processes. That is because it began with pointlike singularity , which, according to relativity theory, is not a \"thing\" but a boundary or an edge in time. Since no causal lines can be extended through it, the cause of the big bang must transcend the physical world.", "vacuum,\" or a 3-D geometry of zero volume, or--in the case of Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University--literally nothing at all (this took Vilenkin four pages of math). So the universe is summoned out of the void by the laws of", "physics. But this can't be right. The laws of physics are just a set of equations, a mathematical pattern. They cannot cause the world to exist. As Stephen Hawking has written, \"A scientific theory ... exists only in our minds and", "Well, then, perhaps it had no cause at all. It is hard to think of a principle more amply confirmed by our experience than that things do not just pop into existence uncaused.", "No one can really pull a rabbit out of a hat. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Yet something of the sort does seem to happen in the quantum world, where, owing to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, tiny \"virtual particles\" spontaneously appear", "does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean).\"" ], [ "It was an ordained priest who took relativity to its logical conclusion. In 1927, Georges Lemaître of the University of Louvain in Belgium worked out an expanding model of the universe. Reasoning backward, he proposed that at some definite point in the past it must have originated from a primeval atom of infinitely concentrated energy. Two years later, Lemaître's model was confirmed by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who had observed that the galaxies everywhere around us were receding. Both theory and empirical evidence pointed to the same verdict: The universe had an abrupt beginning in time. \n\n Churchmen rejoiced. Proof of the biblical account of creation had dropped into their laps. Pope Pius XII, opening a conference at the Vatican in 1951, declared that this scientific theory of cosmic origins bore witness \"to that primordial 'Fiat lux ' uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation. ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore there is a creator, therefore God exists!\"", "Einstein overcame his metaphysical scruples about the big bang not long before his death in 1955, referring to his earlier attempt to dodge it by an ad hoc theoretical device as \"the greatest blunder of my career.\" As for Hoyle and the rest of the skeptics, they were finally won over in 1965, when two scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey accidentally detected a pervasive microwave hiss that turned out to be the echo of the big bang (at first they thought it was caused by pigeon droppings on their antenna). If you turn on your television and tune it between stations, about 10 percent of that black-and-white-speckled static you see is caused by photons left over from the cosmogonic event. What greater proof of the reality of the big bang--you can watch it on television!", "Marxists, meanwhile, gnashed their teeth. Quite aside from its religious aura, the new theory contradicted their belief in the infinity and eternity of matter--one of the axioms of Lenin's dialectical materialism--and was accordingly dismissed as \"idealistic.\" The Marxist physicist David Bohm rebuked the developers of the theory as \"scientists who effectively turn traitor to science, and discard scientific facts to reach conclusions that are convenient to the Catholic Church.\" Atheists of a non-Marxist stripe were also recalcitrant. \"Some younger scientists were so upset by these theological trends that they resolved simply to block their cosmological source,\" commented the German astronomer Otto Heckmann, a prominent investigator of cosmic expansion. The dean of the profession, Sir Arthur Eddington, wrote, \"The notion of a beginning is repugnant to me ... I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang. ... The expanding Universe is preposterous ... incredible ... it leaves me cold .\"", "Big-Bang Theology \n\n Did God cause the big bang? That is what half a dozen new books about science and religion--whose authors range from a Reagan-administration official to an Israeli physicist to an elementary-particle-theorist-turned-Anglican-priest--are saying. The fact that the universe abruptly exploded into existence out of apparent nothingness some 15 billion years ago, they submit, means it must have had a supernatural creator. A couple of months ago the same claim was enthusiastically aired at a Washington conference sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center under the rubric \"Beyond the Death of God,\" with eminent thinkers such as Fred Barnes, Mona Charen, and Elliott Abrams in attendance. And the idea received a sympathetic hearing on William F. Buckley's show Firing Line a few weeks ago .", "The idea that only God could have caused the big bang is scarcely new. In fact, the big bang is probably the only idea in the history of science that was ever resisted because of its pro-God import. \n\n For much of the modern era, scientists followed Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton in believing the cosmos to be eternal and unchanging. But in 1917, when Albert Einstein applied his theory of relativity to space-time as a whole, his equations implied that the universe could not be static; it must be either expanding or contracting. This struck Einstein as grotesque, so he added to his theory a fiddle factor called the \"cosmological constant\" that eliminated the implication and held the universe still.", "Even some believing scientists were troubled. The cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle simply felt that an explosion was an undignified way for the world to begin, rather like \"a party girl jumping out of a cake.\" In a BBC interview in the 1950s, Hoyle sardonically referred to the hypothesized origin as \"the big bang.\" The term stuck.", "Since the '60s, scientists have been busy working out, and feuding over, the details of the big-bang cosmology. But God is not in the details--his existence is deducible from the mere fact that there is a world at all. So goes the cosmological argument , one of the three traditional arguments toward a Supreme Being. (Click to read the ontological argument and the teleological argument .) \n\n The reasoning starts off like this: \n\n 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. \n\n 2) The universe began to exist. \n\n 3) Therefore the universe has a cause of its existence. (Click to learn more about the surprising Islamic origins of this argument and what Ludwig Wittgenstein had to say about it.) \n\n There are many options for attacking the logic of this cosmological argument, and contemporary opponents of theism have tried them all.", "So did God cause the big bang? Overcome by metaphysical lassitude, I finally reach over to my bookshelf for The Devil's Bible . Turning to Genesis I read: \"In the beginning there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was still nothing, but now you could see it.\"", "Yet the big-bang cosmology has one unwelcome consequence for theists. It seems to suggest that the Creator was a bungler. A singularity is inherently lawless. Anything at all can come out of one. It is exceedingly unlikely that a big-bang singularity should give rise to a universe whose conditions are precisely suitable for life, let alone the best of all possible worlds. As the American philosopher Quentin Smith has pointed out, \"If God created the universe with the aim of making it animate, it is illogical that he would have created as its first state something whose natural evolution would lead with high probability only to inanimate states .\" The only way God could have ensured the appearance of creatures in his own image was by repeatedly intervening and making adjustments to steer the evolution of the world away from lifeless disaster. But \"a competent Creator does not create things he immediately or subsequently needs to set aright,\" observes Smith. (Remember, we are talking about the universe's physical infrastructure, not sinners with free will.)", "Hawking's proposal is extremely popular with laymen who are hostile to the cosmological argument, judging from the mail I get. Apparently they enjoy being baffled by \"imaginary time,\" a theoretical fiction Hawking uses to redescribe the big bang so that there is no beginning. In real time there still is a beginning. Sometimes Hawking says that imaginary time is \"earlier\" than real time, which is a logical contradiction; sometimes he suggests it might be more real than real time, which is an absurdity.", "If everything needs a cause for its existence, then so does God. (More frequently heard in the form \"But Mummy, who made God?\") This objection fails because it gets Premise 1 wrong. The premise does not say that everything needs a cause but that everything that begins to exist does. God never began to exist--he is eternal. So he does not need a cause for his existence. \n\n Maybe the universe had a natural cause. But the big bang could not have been caused by prior physical processes. That is because it began with pointlike singularity , which, according to relativity theory, is not a \"thing\" but a boundary or an edge in time. Since no causal lines can be extended through it, the cause of the big bang must transcend the physical world.", "OK, so the universe had a beginning, and hence a First Cause, which is, moreover, transcendent. How does it follow that this cause is God, or even God-like? Now there is an acute question. Philosopher Thomas Nagel has suggested that something humanly inconceivable lies behind the big bang. What, if anything, can really be inferred about the First Cause? Well, suppose that it were something mechanical. An ideal machine produces its effect either always or never; it does not just suddenly start to operate at some moment, unless someone gives it a kick. If a mechanical cause produced the universe at time T, there is no reason it should not have done so at time T minus 1. The argument can be repeated to T minus infinity: A mechanical cause would have either produced the universe from eternity or not at all. But the universe was created at one moment out of an infinity of other indistinguishable moments. This implies that the moment was freely chosen, and hence that the creator had a will, and to that extent a personal nature. And power.", "and disappear all the time. An entire universe could do the same, claim some cosmologists. Calling themselves \"nothing theorists,\" they have produced models showing how the cosmos could have burst into being all by itself out of a patch of \"false", "Just because the universe is temporally finite does not mean it had a beginning. Speaking of Hawking, this is his famous \"no boundary\" proposal. \"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator,\" Hawking wrote in A Brief History of Time . \"But if the universe is completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning or end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?\" In Hawking's quantum cosmology, the pointlike singularity of the big bang is replaced by a smooth hemisphere in which space and time are commingled. \"Time zero\" becomes an arbitrary point, not a true beginning; it is no more a boundary than the North Pole is.", "vacuum,\" or a 3-D geometry of zero volume, or--in the case of Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University--literally nothing at all (this took Vilenkin four pages of math). So the universe is summoned out of the void by the laws of", "Well, then, perhaps it had no cause at all. It is hard to think of a principle more amply confirmed by our experience than that things do not just pop into existence uncaused.", "physics. But this can't be right. The laws of physics are just a set of equations, a mathematical pattern. They cannot cause the world to exist. As Stephen Hawking has written, \"A scientific theory ... exists only in our minds and", "No one can really pull a rabbit out of a hat. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Yet something of the sort does seem to happen in the quantum world, where, owing to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, tiny \"virtual particles\" spontaneously appear", "does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean).\"" ], [ "Since the '60s, scientists have been busy working out, and feuding over, the details of the big-bang cosmology. But God is not in the details--his existence is deducible from the mere fact that there is a world at all. So goes the cosmological argument , one of the three traditional arguments toward a Supreme Being. (Click to read the ontological argument and the teleological argument .) \n\n The reasoning starts off like this: \n\n 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. \n\n 2) The universe began to exist. \n\n 3) Therefore the universe has a cause of its existence. (Click to learn more about the surprising Islamic origins of this argument and what Ludwig Wittgenstein had to say about it.) \n\n There are many options for attacking the logic of this cosmological argument, and contemporary opponents of theism have tried them all.", "Big-Bang Theology \n\n Did God cause the big bang? That is what half a dozen new books about science and religion--whose authors range from a Reagan-administration official to an Israeli physicist to an elementary-particle-theorist-turned-Anglican-priest--are saying. The fact that the universe abruptly exploded into existence out of apparent nothingness some 15 billion years ago, they submit, means it must have had a supernatural creator. A couple of months ago the same claim was enthusiastically aired at a Washington conference sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center under the rubric \"Beyond the Death of God,\" with eminent thinkers such as Fred Barnes, Mona Charen, and Elliott Abrams in attendance. And the idea received a sympathetic hearing on William F. Buckley's show Firing Line a few weeks ago .", "The idea that only God could have caused the big bang is scarcely new. In fact, the big bang is probably the only idea in the history of science that was ever resisted because of its pro-God import. \n\n For much of the modern era, scientists followed Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton in believing the cosmos to be eternal and unchanging. But in 1917, when Albert Einstein applied his theory of relativity to space-time as a whole, his equations implied that the universe could not be static; it must be either expanding or contracting. This struck Einstein as grotesque, so he added to his theory a fiddle factor called the \"cosmological constant\" that eliminated the implication and held the universe still.", "Yet the big-bang cosmology has one unwelcome consequence for theists. It seems to suggest that the Creator was a bungler. A singularity is inherently lawless. Anything at all can come out of one. It is exceedingly unlikely that a big-bang singularity should give rise to a universe whose conditions are precisely suitable for life, let alone the best of all possible worlds. As the American philosopher Quentin Smith has pointed out, \"If God created the universe with the aim of making it animate, it is illogical that he would have created as its first state something whose natural evolution would lead with high probability only to inanimate states .\" The only way God could have ensured the appearance of creatures in his own image was by repeatedly intervening and making adjustments to steer the evolution of the world away from lifeless disaster. But \"a competent Creator does not create things he immediately or subsequently needs to set aright,\" observes Smith. (Remember, we are talking about the universe's physical infrastructure, not sinners with free will.)", "If everything needs a cause for its existence, then so does God. (More frequently heard in the form \"But Mummy, who made God?\") This objection fails because it gets Premise 1 wrong. The premise does not say that everything needs a cause but that everything that begins to exist does. God never began to exist--he is eternal. So he does not need a cause for his existence. \n\n Maybe the universe had a natural cause. But the big bang could not have been caused by prior physical processes. That is because it began with pointlike singularity , which, according to relativity theory, is not a \"thing\" but a boundary or an edge in time. Since no causal lines can be extended through it, the cause of the big bang must transcend the physical world.", "OK, so the universe had a beginning, and hence a First Cause, which is, moreover, transcendent. How does it follow that this cause is God, or even God-like? Now there is an acute question. Philosopher Thomas Nagel has suggested that something humanly inconceivable lies behind the big bang. What, if anything, can really be inferred about the First Cause? Well, suppose that it were something mechanical. An ideal machine produces its effect either always or never; it does not just suddenly start to operate at some moment, unless someone gives it a kick. If a mechanical cause produced the universe at time T, there is no reason it should not have done so at time T minus 1. The argument can be repeated to T minus infinity: A mechanical cause would have either produced the universe from eternity or not at all. But the universe was created at one moment out of an infinity of other indistinguishable moments. This implies that the moment was freely chosen, and hence that the creator had a will, and to that extent a personal nature. And power.", "It was an ordained priest who took relativity to its logical conclusion. In 1927, Georges Lemaître of the University of Louvain in Belgium worked out an expanding model of the universe. Reasoning backward, he proposed that at some definite point in the past it must have originated from a primeval atom of infinitely concentrated energy. Two years later, Lemaître's model was confirmed by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who had observed that the galaxies everywhere around us were receding. Both theory and empirical evidence pointed to the same verdict: The universe had an abrupt beginning in time. \n\n Churchmen rejoiced. Proof of the biblical account of creation had dropped into their laps. Pope Pius XII, opening a conference at the Vatican in 1951, declared that this scientific theory of cosmic origins bore witness \"to that primordial 'Fiat lux ' uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation. ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore there is a creator, therefore God exists!\"", "So did God cause the big bang? Overcome by metaphysical lassitude, I finally reach over to my bookshelf for The Devil's Bible . Turning to Genesis I read: \"In the beginning there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was still nothing, but now you could see it.\"", "Hawking's proposal is extremely popular with laymen who are hostile to the cosmological argument, judging from the mail I get. Apparently they enjoy being baffled by \"imaginary time,\" a theoretical fiction Hawking uses to redescribe the big bang so that there is no beginning. In real time there still is a beginning. Sometimes Hawking says that imaginary time is \"earlier\" than real time, which is a logical contradiction; sometimes he suggests it might be more real than real time, which is an absurdity.", "Just because the universe is temporally finite does not mean it had a beginning. Speaking of Hawking, this is his famous \"no boundary\" proposal. \"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator,\" Hawking wrote in A Brief History of Time . \"But if the universe is completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning or end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?\" In Hawking's quantum cosmology, the pointlike singularity of the big bang is replaced by a smooth hemisphere in which space and time are commingled. \"Time zero\" becomes an arbitrary point, not a true beginning; it is no more a boundary than the North Pole is.", "Marxists, meanwhile, gnashed their teeth. Quite aside from its religious aura, the new theory contradicted their belief in the infinity and eternity of matter--one of the axioms of Lenin's dialectical materialism--and was accordingly dismissed as \"idealistic.\" The Marxist physicist David Bohm rebuked the developers of the theory as \"scientists who effectively turn traitor to science, and discard scientific facts to reach conclusions that are convenient to the Catholic Church.\" Atheists of a non-Marxist stripe were also recalcitrant. \"Some younger scientists were so upset by these theological trends that they resolved simply to block their cosmological source,\" commented the German astronomer Otto Heckmann, a prominent investigator of cosmic expansion. The dean of the profession, Sir Arthur Eddington, wrote, \"The notion of a beginning is repugnant to me ... I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang. ... The expanding Universe is preposterous ... incredible ... it leaves me cold .\"", "and disappear all the time. An entire universe could do the same, claim some cosmologists. Calling themselves \"nothing theorists,\" they have produced models showing how the cosmos could have burst into being all by itself out of a patch of \"false", "Einstein overcame his metaphysical scruples about the big bang not long before his death in 1955, referring to his earlier attempt to dodge it by an ad hoc theoretical device as \"the greatest blunder of my career.\" As for Hoyle and the rest of the skeptics, they were finally won over in 1965, when two scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey accidentally detected a pervasive microwave hiss that turned out to be the echo of the big bang (at first they thought it was caused by pigeon droppings on their antenna). If you turn on your television and tune it between stations, about 10 percent of that black-and-white-speckled static you see is caused by photons left over from the cosmogonic event. What greater proof of the reality of the big bang--you can watch it on television!", "vacuum,\" or a 3-D geometry of zero volume, or--in the case of Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University--literally nothing at all (this took Vilenkin four pages of math). So the universe is summoned out of the void by the laws of", "physics. But this can't be right. The laws of physics are just a set of equations, a mathematical pattern. They cannot cause the world to exist. As Stephen Hawking has written, \"A scientific theory ... exists only in our minds and", "Well, then, perhaps it had no cause at all. It is hard to think of a principle more amply confirmed by our experience than that things do not just pop into existence uncaused.", "Even some believing scientists were troubled. The cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle simply felt that an explosion was an undignified way for the world to begin, rather like \"a party girl jumping out of a cake.\" In a BBC interview in the 1950s, Hoyle sardonically referred to the hypothesized origin as \"the big bang.\" The term stuck.", "No one can really pull a rabbit out of a hat. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Yet something of the sort does seem to happen in the quantum world, where, owing to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, tiny \"virtual particles\" spontaneously appear", "does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean).\"" ], [ "Hawking's proposal is extremely popular with laymen who are hostile to the cosmological argument, judging from the mail I get. Apparently they enjoy being baffled by \"imaginary time,\" a theoretical fiction Hawking uses to redescribe the big bang so that there is no beginning. In real time there still is a beginning. Sometimes Hawking says that imaginary time is \"earlier\" than real time, which is a logical contradiction; sometimes he suggests it might be more real than real time, which is an absurdity.", "Big-Bang Theology \n\n Did God cause the big bang? That is what half a dozen new books about science and religion--whose authors range from a Reagan-administration official to an Israeli physicist to an elementary-particle-theorist-turned-Anglican-priest--are saying. The fact that the universe abruptly exploded into existence out of apparent nothingness some 15 billion years ago, they submit, means it must have had a supernatural creator. A couple of months ago the same claim was enthusiastically aired at a Washington conference sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center under the rubric \"Beyond the Death of God,\" with eminent thinkers such as Fred Barnes, Mona Charen, and Elliott Abrams in attendance. And the idea received a sympathetic hearing on William F. Buckley's show Firing Line a few weeks ago .", "So did God cause the big bang? Overcome by metaphysical lassitude, I finally reach over to my bookshelf for The Devil's Bible . Turning to Genesis I read: \"In the beginning there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was still nothing, but now you could see it.\"", "Just because the universe is temporally finite does not mean it had a beginning. Speaking of Hawking, this is his famous \"no boundary\" proposal. \"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator,\" Hawking wrote in A Brief History of Time . \"But if the universe is completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning or end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?\" In Hawking's quantum cosmology, the pointlike singularity of the big bang is replaced by a smooth hemisphere in which space and time are commingled. \"Time zero\" becomes an arbitrary point, not a true beginning; it is no more a boundary than the North Pole is.", "physics. But this can't be right. The laws of physics are just a set of equations, a mathematical pattern. They cannot cause the world to exist. As Stephen Hawking has written, \"A scientific theory ... exists only in our minds and", "The idea that only God could have caused the big bang is scarcely new. In fact, the big bang is probably the only idea in the history of science that was ever resisted because of its pro-God import. \n\n For much of the modern era, scientists followed Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton in believing the cosmos to be eternal and unchanging. But in 1917, when Albert Einstein applied his theory of relativity to space-time as a whole, his equations implied that the universe could not be static; it must be either expanding or contracting. This struck Einstein as grotesque, so he added to his theory a fiddle factor called the \"cosmological constant\" that eliminated the implication and held the universe still.", "OK, so the universe had a beginning, and hence a First Cause, which is, moreover, transcendent. How does it follow that this cause is God, or even God-like? Now there is an acute question. Philosopher Thomas Nagel has suggested that something humanly inconceivable lies behind the big bang. What, if anything, can really be inferred about the First Cause? Well, suppose that it were something mechanical. An ideal machine produces its effect either always or never; it does not just suddenly start to operate at some moment, unless someone gives it a kick. If a mechanical cause produced the universe at time T, there is no reason it should not have done so at time T minus 1. The argument can be repeated to T minus infinity: A mechanical cause would have either produced the universe from eternity or not at all. But the universe was created at one moment out of an infinity of other indistinguishable moments. This implies that the moment was freely chosen, and hence that the creator had a will, and to that extent a personal nature. And power.", "If everything needs a cause for its existence, then so does God. (More frequently heard in the form \"But Mummy, who made God?\") This objection fails because it gets Premise 1 wrong. The premise does not say that everything needs a cause but that everything that begins to exist does. God never began to exist--he is eternal. So he does not need a cause for his existence. \n\n Maybe the universe had a natural cause. But the big bang could not have been caused by prior physical processes. That is because it began with pointlike singularity , which, according to relativity theory, is not a \"thing\" but a boundary or an edge in time. Since no causal lines can be extended through it, the cause of the big bang must transcend the physical world.", "It was an ordained priest who took relativity to its logical conclusion. In 1927, Georges Lemaître of the University of Louvain in Belgium worked out an expanding model of the universe. Reasoning backward, he proposed that at some definite point in the past it must have originated from a primeval atom of infinitely concentrated energy. Two years later, Lemaître's model was confirmed by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who had observed that the galaxies everywhere around us were receding. Both theory and empirical evidence pointed to the same verdict: The universe had an abrupt beginning in time. \n\n Churchmen rejoiced. Proof of the biblical account of creation had dropped into their laps. Pope Pius XII, opening a conference at the Vatican in 1951, declared that this scientific theory of cosmic origins bore witness \"to that primordial 'Fiat lux ' uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation. ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore there is a creator, therefore God exists!\"", "Yet the big-bang cosmology has one unwelcome consequence for theists. It seems to suggest that the Creator was a bungler. A singularity is inherently lawless. Anything at all can come out of one. It is exceedingly unlikely that a big-bang singularity should give rise to a universe whose conditions are precisely suitable for life, let alone the best of all possible worlds. As the American philosopher Quentin Smith has pointed out, \"If God created the universe with the aim of making it animate, it is illogical that he would have created as its first state something whose natural evolution would lead with high probability only to inanimate states .\" The only way God could have ensured the appearance of creatures in his own image was by repeatedly intervening and making adjustments to steer the evolution of the world away from lifeless disaster. But \"a competent Creator does not create things he immediately or subsequently needs to set aright,\" observes Smith. (Remember, we are talking about the universe's physical infrastructure, not sinners with free will.)", "Einstein overcame his metaphysical scruples about the big bang not long before his death in 1955, referring to his earlier attempt to dodge it by an ad hoc theoretical device as \"the greatest blunder of my career.\" As for Hoyle and the rest of the skeptics, they were finally won over in 1965, when two scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey accidentally detected a pervasive microwave hiss that turned out to be the echo of the big bang (at first they thought it was caused by pigeon droppings on their antenna). If you turn on your television and tune it between stations, about 10 percent of that black-and-white-speckled static you see is caused by photons left over from the cosmogonic event. What greater proof of the reality of the big bang--you can watch it on television!", "vacuum,\" or a 3-D geometry of zero volume, or--in the case of Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University--literally nothing at all (this took Vilenkin four pages of math). So the universe is summoned out of the void by the laws of", "Since the '60s, scientists have been busy working out, and feuding over, the details of the big-bang cosmology. But God is not in the details--his existence is deducible from the mere fact that there is a world at all. So goes the cosmological argument , one of the three traditional arguments toward a Supreme Being. (Click to read the ontological argument and the teleological argument .) \n\n The reasoning starts off like this: \n\n 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. \n\n 2) The universe began to exist. \n\n 3) Therefore the universe has a cause of its existence. (Click to learn more about the surprising Islamic origins of this argument and what Ludwig Wittgenstein had to say about it.) \n\n There are many options for attacking the logic of this cosmological argument, and contemporary opponents of theism have tried them all.", "and disappear all the time. An entire universe could do the same, claim some cosmologists. Calling themselves \"nothing theorists,\" they have produced models showing how the cosmos could have burst into being all by itself out of a patch of \"false", "Well, then, perhaps it had no cause at all. It is hard to think of a principle more amply confirmed by our experience than that things do not just pop into existence uncaused.", "Even some believing scientists were troubled. The cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle simply felt that an explosion was an undignified way for the world to begin, rather like \"a party girl jumping out of a cake.\" In a BBC interview in the 1950s, Hoyle sardonically referred to the hypothesized origin as \"the big bang.\" The term stuck.", "Marxists, meanwhile, gnashed their teeth. Quite aside from its religious aura, the new theory contradicted their belief in the infinity and eternity of matter--one of the axioms of Lenin's dialectical materialism--and was accordingly dismissed as \"idealistic.\" The Marxist physicist David Bohm rebuked the developers of the theory as \"scientists who effectively turn traitor to science, and discard scientific facts to reach conclusions that are convenient to the Catholic Church.\" Atheists of a non-Marxist stripe were also recalcitrant. \"Some younger scientists were so upset by these theological trends that they resolved simply to block their cosmological source,\" commented the German astronomer Otto Heckmann, a prominent investigator of cosmic expansion. The dean of the profession, Sir Arthur Eddington, wrote, \"The notion of a beginning is repugnant to me ... I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang. ... The expanding Universe is preposterous ... incredible ... it leaves me cold .\"", "No one can really pull a rabbit out of a hat. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Yet something of the sort does seem to happen in the quantum world, where, owing to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, tiny \"virtual particles\" spontaneously appear", "does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean).\"" ], [ "Big-Bang Theology \n\n Did God cause the big bang? That is what half a dozen new books about science and religion--whose authors range from a Reagan-administration official to an Israeli physicist to an elementary-particle-theorist-turned-Anglican-priest--are saying. The fact that the universe abruptly exploded into existence out of apparent nothingness some 15 billion years ago, they submit, means it must have had a supernatural creator. A couple of months ago the same claim was enthusiastically aired at a Washington conference sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center under the rubric \"Beyond the Death of God,\" with eminent thinkers such as Fred Barnes, Mona Charen, and Elliott Abrams in attendance. And the idea received a sympathetic hearing on William F. Buckley's show Firing Line a few weeks ago .", "So did God cause the big bang? Overcome by metaphysical lassitude, I finally reach over to my bookshelf for The Devil's Bible . Turning to Genesis I read: \"In the beginning there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was still nothing, but now you could see it.\"", "The idea that only God could have caused the big bang is scarcely new. In fact, the big bang is probably the only idea in the history of science that was ever resisted because of its pro-God import. \n\n For much of the modern era, scientists followed Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton in believing the cosmos to be eternal and unchanging. But in 1917, when Albert Einstein applied his theory of relativity to space-time as a whole, his equations implied that the universe could not be static; it must be either expanding or contracting. This struck Einstein as grotesque, so he added to his theory a fiddle factor called the \"cosmological constant\" that eliminated the implication and held the universe still.", "It was an ordained priest who took relativity to its logical conclusion. In 1927, Georges Lemaître of the University of Louvain in Belgium worked out an expanding model of the universe. Reasoning backward, he proposed that at some definite point in the past it must have originated from a primeval atom of infinitely concentrated energy. Two years later, Lemaître's model was confirmed by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who had observed that the galaxies everywhere around us were receding. Both theory and empirical evidence pointed to the same verdict: The universe had an abrupt beginning in time. \n\n Churchmen rejoiced. Proof of the biblical account of creation had dropped into their laps. Pope Pius XII, opening a conference at the Vatican in 1951, declared that this scientific theory of cosmic origins bore witness \"to that primordial 'Fiat lux ' uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation. ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore there is a creator, therefore God exists!\"", "Yet the big-bang cosmology has one unwelcome consequence for theists. It seems to suggest that the Creator was a bungler. A singularity is inherently lawless. Anything at all can come out of one. It is exceedingly unlikely that a big-bang singularity should give rise to a universe whose conditions are precisely suitable for life, let alone the best of all possible worlds. As the American philosopher Quentin Smith has pointed out, \"If God created the universe with the aim of making it animate, it is illogical that he would have created as its first state something whose natural evolution would lead with high probability only to inanimate states .\" The only way God could have ensured the appearance of creatures in his own image was by repeatedly intervening and making adjustments to steer the evolution of the world away from lifeless disaster. But \"a competent Creator does not create things he immediately or subsequently needs to set aright,\" observes Smith. (Remember, we are talking about the universe's physical infrastructure, not sinners with free will.)", "OK, so the universe had a beginning, and hence a First Cause, which is, moreover, transcendent. How does it follow that this cause is God, or even God-like? Now there is an acute question. Philosopher Thomas Nagel has suggested that something humanly inconceivable lies behind the big bang. What, if anything, can really be inferred about the First Cause? Well, suppose that it were something mechanical. An ideal machine produces its effect either always or never; it does not just suddenly start to operate at some moment, unless someone gives it a kick. If a mechanical cause produced the universe at time T, there is no reason it should not have done so at time T minus 1. The argument can be repeated to T minus infinity: A mechanical cause would have either produced the universe from eternity or not at all. But the universe was created at one moment out of an infinity of other indistinguishable moments. This implies that the moment was freely chosen, and hence that the creator had a will, and to that extent a personal nature. And power.", "Einstein overcame his metaphysical scruples about the big bang not long before his death in 1955, referring to his earlier attempt to dodge it by an ad hoc theoretical device as \"the greatest blunder of my career.\" As for Hoyle and the rest of the skeptics, they were finally won over in 1965, when two scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey accidentally detected a pervasive microwave hiss that turned out to be the echo of the big bang (at first they thought it was caused by pigeon droppings on their antenna). If you turn on your television and tune it between stations, about 10 percent of that black-and-white-speckled static you see is caused by photons left over from the cosmogonic event. What greater proof of the reality of the big bang--you can watch it on television!", "Since the '60s, scientists have been busy working out, and feuding over, the details of the big-bang cosmology. But God is not in the details--his existence is deducible from the mere fact that there is a world at all. So goes the cosmological argument , one of the three traditional arguments toward a Supreme Being. (Click to read the ontological argument and the teleological argument .) \n\n The reasoning starts off like this: \n\n 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. \n\n 2) The universe began to exist. \n\n 3) Therefore the universe has a cause of its existence. (Click to learn more about the surprising Islamic origins of this argument and what Ludwig Wittgenstein had to say about it.) \n\n There are many options for attacking the logic of this cosmological argument, and contemporary opponents of theism have tried them all.", "If everything needs a cause for its existence, then so does God. (More frequently heard in the form \"But Mummy, who made God?\") This objection fails because it gets Premise 1 wrong. The premise does not say that everything needs a cause but that everything that begins to exist does. God never began to exist--he is eternal. So he does not need a cause for his existence. \n\n Maybe the universe had a natural cause. But the big bang could not have been caused by prior physical processes. That is because it began with pointlike singularity , which, according to relativity theory, is not a \"thing\" but a boundary or an edge in time. Since no causal lines can be extended through it, the cause of the big bang must transcend the physical world.", "Hawking's proposal is extremely popular with laymen who are hostile to the cosmological argument, judging from the mail I get. Apparently they enjoy being baffled by \"imaginary time,\" a theoretical fiction Hawking uses to redescribe the big bang so that there is no beginning. In real time there still is a beginning. Sometimes Hawking says that imaginary time is \"earlier\" than real time, which is a logical contradiction; sometimes he suggests it might be more real than real time, which is an absurdity.", "Just because the universe is temporally finite does not mean it had a beginning. Speaking of Hawking, this is his famous \"no boundary\" proposal. \"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator,\" Hawking wrote in A Brief History of Time . \"But if the universe is completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning or end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?\" In Hawking's quantum cosmology, the pointlike singularity of the big bang is replaced by a smooth hemisphere in which space and time are commingled. \"Time zero\" becomes an arbitrary point, not a true beginning; it is no more a boundary than the North Pole is.", "Even some believing scientists were troubled. The cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle simply felt that an explosion was an undignified way for the world to begin, rather like \"a party girl jumping out of a cake.\" In a BBC interview in the 1950s, Hoyle sardonically referred to the hypothesized origin as \"the big bang.\" The term stuck.", "vacuum,\" or a 3-D geometry of zero volume, or--in the case of Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University--literally nothing at all (this took Vilenkin four pages of math). So the universe is summoned out of the void by the laws of", "Well, then, perhaps it had no cause at all. It is hard to think of a principle more amply confirmed by our experience than that things do not just pop into existence uncaused.", "and disappear all the time. An entire universe could do the same, claim some cosmologists. Calling themselves \"nothing theorists,\" they have produced models showing how the cosmos could have burst into being all by itself out of a patch of \"false", "Marxists, meanwhile, gnashed their teeth. Quite aside from its religious aura, the new theory contradicted their belief in the infinity and eternity of matter--one of the axioms of Lenin's dialectical materialism--and was accordingly dismissed as \"idealistic.\" The Marxist physicist David Bohm rebuked the developers of the theory as \"scientists who effectively turn traitor to science, and discard scientific facts to reach conclusions that are convenient to the Catholic Church.\" Atheists of a non-Marxist stripe were also recalcitrant. \"Some younger scientists were so upset by these theological trends that they resolved simply to block their cosmological source,\" commented the German astronomer Otto Heckmann, a prominent investigator of cosmic expansion. The dean of the profession, Sir Arthur Eddington, wrote, \"The notion of a beginning is repugnant to me ... I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang. ... The expanding Universe is preposterous ... incredible ... it leaves me cold .\"", "physics. But this can't be right. The laws of physics are just a set of equations, a mathematical pattern. They cannot cause the world to exist. As Stephen Hawking has written, \"A scientific theory ... exists only in our minds and", "No one can really pull a rabbit out of a hat. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Yet something of the sort does seem to happen in the quantum world, where, owing to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, tiny \"virtual particles\" spontaneously appear", "does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean).\"" ], [ "Yet the big-bang cosmology has one unwelcome consequence for theists. It seems to suggest that the Creator was a bungler. A singularity is inherently lawless. Anything at all can come out of one. It is exceedingly unlikely that a big-bang singularity should give rise to a universe whose conditions are precisely suitable for life, let alone the best of all possible worlds. As the American philosopher Quentin Smith has pointed out, \"If God created the universe with the aim of making it animate, it is illogical that he would have created as its first state something whose natural evolution would lead with high probability only to inanimate states .\" The only way God could have ensured the appearance of creatures in his own image was by repeatedly intervening and making adjustments to steer the evolution of the world away from lifeless disaster. But \"a competent Creator does not create things he immediately or subsequently needs to set aright,\" observes Smith. (Remember, we are talking about the universe's physical infrastructure, not sinners with free will.)", "Big-Bang Theology \n\n Did God cause the big bang? That is what half a dozen new books about science and religion--whose authors range from a Reagan-administration official to an Israeli physicist to an elementary-particle-theorist-turned-Anglican-priest--are saying. The fact that the universe abruptly exploded into existence out of apparent nothingness some 15 billion years ago, they submit, means it must have had a supernatural creator. A couple of months ago the same claim was enthusiastically aired at a Washington conference sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center under the rubric \"Beyond the Death of God,\" with eminent thinkers such as Fred Barnes, Mona Charen, and Elliott Abrams in attendance. And the idea received a sympathetic hearing on William F. Buckley's show Firing Line a few weeks ago .", "Since the '60s, scientists have been busy working out, and feuding over, the details of the big-bang cosmology. But God is not in the details--his existence is deducible from the mere fact that there is a world at all. So goes the cosmological argument , one of the three traditional arguments toward a Supreme Being. (Click to read the ontological argument and the teleological argument .) \n\n The reasoning starts off like this: \n\n 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. \n\n 2) The universe began to exist. \n\n 3) Therefore the universe has a cause of its existence. (Click to learn more about the surprising Islamic origins of this argument and what Ludwig Wittgenstein had to say about it.) \n\n There are many options for attacking the logic of this cosmological argument, and contemporary opponents of theism have tried them all.", "Hawking's proposal is extremely popular with laymen who are hostile to the cosmological argument, judging from the mail I get. Apparently they enjoy being baffled by \"imaginary time,\" a theoretical fiction Hawking uses to redescribe the big bang so that there is no beginning. In real time there still is a beginning. Sometimes Hawking says that imaginary time is \"earlier\" than real time, which is a logical contradiction; sometimes he suggests it might be more real than real time, which is an absurdity.", "vacuum,\" or a 3-D geometry of zero volume, or--in the case of Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University--literally nothing at all (this took Vilenkin four pages of math). So the universe is summoned out of the void by the laws of", "Just because the universe is temporally finite does not mean it had a beginning. Speaking of Hawking, this is his famous \"no boundary\" proposal. \"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator,\" Hawking wrote in A Brief History of Time . \"But if the universe is completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning or end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?\" In Hawking's quantum cosmology, the pointlike singularity of the big bang is replaced by a smooth hemisphere in which space and time are commingled. \"Time zero\" becomes an arbitrary point, not a true beginning; it is no more a boundary than the North Pole is.", "If everything needs a cause for its existence, then so does God. (More frequently heard in the form \"But Mummy, who made God?\") This objection fails because it gets Premise 1 wrong. The premise does not say that everything needs a cause but that everything that begins to exist does. God never began to exist--he is eternal. So he does not need a cause for his existence. \n\n Maybe the universe had a natural cause. But the big bang could not have been caused by prior physical processes. That is because it began with pointlike singularity , which, according to relativity theory, is not a \"thing\" but a boundary or an edge in time. Since no causal lines can be extended through it, the cause of the big bang must transcend the physical world.", "The idea that only God could have caused the big bang is scarcely new. In fact, the big bang is probably the only idea in the history of science that was ever resisted because of its pro-God import. \n\n For much of the modern era, scientists followed Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton in believing the cosmos to be eternal and unchanging. But in 1917, when Albert Einstein applied his theory of relativity to space-time as a whole, his equations implied that the universe could not be static; it must be either expanding or contracting. This struck Einstein as grotesque, so he added to his theory a fiddle factor called the \"cosmological constant\" that eliminated the implication and held the universe still.", "OK, so the universe had a beginning, and hence a First Cause, which is, moreover, transcendent. How does it follow that this cause is God, or even God-like? Now there is an acute question. Philosopher Thomas Nagel has suggested that something humanly inconceivable lies behind the big bang. What, if anything, can really be inferred about the First Cause? Well, suppose that it were something mechanical. An ideal machine produces its effect either always or never; it does not just suddenly start to operate at some moment, unless someone gives it a kick. If a mechanical cause produced the universe at time T, there is no reason it should not have done so at time T minus 1. The argument can be repeated to T minus infinity: A mechanical cause would have either produced the universe from eternity or not at all. But the universe was created at one moment out of an infinity of other indistinguishable moments. This implies that the moment was freely chosen, and hence that the creator had a will, and to that extent a personal nature. And power.", "So did God cause the big bang? Overcome by metaphysical lassitude, I finally reach over to my bookshelf for The Devil's Bible . Turning to Genesis I read: \"In the beginning there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was still nothing, but now you could see it.\"", "It was an ordained priest who took relativity to its logical conclusion. In 1927, Georges Lemaître of the University of Louvain in Belgium worked out an expanding model of the universe. Reasoning backward, he proposed that at some definite point in the past it must have originated from a primeval atom of infinitely concentrated energy. Two years later, Lemaître's model was confirmed by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who had observed that the galaxies everywhere around us were receding. Both theory and empirical evidence pointed to the same verdict: The universe had an abrupt beginning in time. \n\n Churchmen rejoiced. Proof of the biblical account of creation had dropped into their laps. Pope Pius XII, opening a conference at the Vatican in 1951, declared that this scientific theory of cosmic origins bore witness \"to that primordial 'Fiat lux ' uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation. ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore there is a creator, therefore God exists!\"", "Marxists, meanwhile, gnashed their teeth. Quite aside from its religious aura, the new theory contradicted their belief in the infinity and eternity of matter--one of the axioms of Lenin's dialectical materialism--and was accordingly dismissed as \"idealistic.\" The Marxist physicist David Bohm rebuked the developers of the theory as \"scientists who effectively turn traitor to science, and discard scientific facts to reach conclusions that are convenient to the Catholic Church.\" Atheists of a non-Marxist stripe were also recalcitrant. \"Some younger scientists were so upset by these theological trends that they resolved simply to block their cosmological source,\" commented the German astronomer Otto Heckmann, a prominent investigator of cosmic expansion. The dean of the profession, Sir Arthur Eddington, wrote, \"The notion of a beginning is repugnant to me ... I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang. ... The expanding Universe is preposterous ... incredible ... it leaves me cold .\"", "Einstein overcame his metaphysical scruples about the big bang not long before his death in 1955, referring to his earlier attempt to dodge it by an ad hoc theoretical device as \"the greatest blunder of my career.\" As for Hoyle and the rest of the skeptics, they were finally won over in 1965, when two scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey accidentally detected a pervasive microwave hiss that turned out to be the echo of the big bang (at first they thought it was caused by pigeon droppings on their antenna). If you turn on your television and tune it between stations, about 10 percent of that black-and-white-speckled static you see is caused by photons left over from the cosmogonic event. What greater proof of the reality of the big bang--you can watch it on television!", "and disappear all the time. An entire universe could do the same, claim some cosmologists. Calling themselves \"nothing theorists,\" they have produced models showing how the cosmos could have burst into being all by itself out of a patch of \"false", "physics. But this can't be right. The laws of physics are just a set of equations, a mathematical pattern. They cannot cause the world to exist. As Stephen Hawking has written, \"A scientific theory ... exists only in our minds and", "Even some believing scientists were troubled. The cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle simply felt that an explosion was an undignified way for the world to begin, rather like \"a party girl jumping out of a cake.\" In a BBC interview in the 1950s, Hoyle sardonically referred to the hypothesized origin as \"the big bang.\" The term stuck.", "Well, then, perhaps it had no cause at all. It is hard to think of a principle more amply confirmed by our experience than that things do not just pop into existence uncaused.", "No one can really pull a rabbit out of a hat. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Yet something of the sort does seem to happen in the quantum world, where, owing to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, tiny \"virtual particles\" spontaneously appear", "does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean).\"" ], [ "Marxists, meanwhile, gnashed their teeth. Quite aside from its religious aura, the new theory contradicted their belief in the infinity and eternity of matter--one of the axioms of Lenin's dialectical materialism--and was accordingly dismissed as \"idealistic.\" The Marxist physicist David Bohm rebuked the developers of the theory as \"scientists who effectively turn traitor to science, and discard scientific facts to reach conclusions that are convenient to the Catholic Church.\" Atheists of a non-Marxist stripe were also recalcitrant. \"Some younger scientists were so upset by these theological trends that they resolved simply to block their cosmological source,\" commented the German astronomer Otto Heckmann, a prominent investigator of cosmic expansion. The dean of the profession, Sir Arthur Eddington, wrote, \"The notion of a beginning is repugnant to me ... I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang. ... The expanding Universe is preposterous ... incredible ... it leaves me cold .\"", "It was an ordained priest who took relativity to its logical conclusion. In 1927, Georges Lemaître of the University of Louvain in Belgium worked out an expanding model of the universe. Reasoning backward, he proposed that at some definite point in the past it must have originated from a primeval atom of infinitely concentrated energy. Two years later, Lemaître's model was confirmed by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who had observed that the galaxies everywhere around us were receding. Both theory and empirical evidence pointed to the same verdict: The universe had an abrupt beginning in time. \n\n Churchmen rejoiced. Proof of the biblical account of creation had dropped into their laps. Pope Pius XII, opening a conference at the Vatican in 1951, declared that this scientific theory of cosmic origins bore witness \"to that primordial 'Fiat lux ' uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation. ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore there is a creator, therefore God exists!\"", "Einstein overcame his metaphysical scruples about the big bang not long before his death in 1955, referring to his earlier attempt to dodge it by an ad hoc theoretical device as \"the greatest blunder of my career.\" As for Hoyle and the rest of the skeptics, they were finally won over in 1965, when two scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey accidentally detected a pervasive microwave hiss that turned out to be the echo of the big bang (at first they thought it was caused by pigeon droppings on their antenna). If you turn on your television and tune it between stations, about 10 percent of that black-and-white-speckled static you see is caused by photons left over from the cosmogonic event. What greater proof of the reality of the big bang--you can watch it on television!", "Big-Bang Theology \n\n Did God cause the big bang? That is what half a dozen new books about science and religion--whose authors range from a Reagan-administration official to an Israeli physicist to an elementary-particle-theorist-turned-Anglican-priest--are saying. The fact that the universe abruptly exploded into existence out of apparent nothingness some 15 billion years ago, they submit, means it must have had a supernatural creator. A couple of months ago the same claim was enthusiastically aired at a Washington conference sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center under the rubric \"Beyond the Death of God,\" with eminent thinkers such as Fred Barnes, Mona Charen, and Elliott Abrams in attendance. And the idea received a sympathetic hearing on William F. Buckley's show Firing Line a few weeks ago .", "The idea that only God could have caused the big bang is scarcely new. In fact, the big bang is probably the only idea in the history of science that was ever resisted because of its pro-God import. \n\n For much of the modern era, scientists followed Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton in believing the cosmos to be eternal and unchanging. But in 1917, when Albert Einstein applied his theory of relativity to space-time as a whole, his equations implied that the universe could not be static; it must be either expanding or contracting. This struck Einstein as grotesque, so he added to his theory a fiddle factor called the \"cosmological constant\" that eliminated the implication and held the universe still.", "Even some believing scientists were troubled. The cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle simply felt that an explosion was an undignified way for the world to begin, rather like \"a party girl jumping out of a cake.\" In a BBC interview in the 1950s, Hoyle sardonically referred to the hypothesized origin as \"the big bang.\" The term stuck.", "So did God cause the big bang? Overcome by metaphysical lassitude, I finally reach over to my bookshelf for The Devil's Bible . Turning to Genesis I read: \"In the beginning there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was still nothing, but now you could see it.\"", "Hawking's proposal is extremely popular with laymen who are hostile to the cosmological argument, judging from the mail I get. Apparently they enjoy being baffled by \"imaginary time,\" a theoretical fiction Hawking uses to redescribe the big bang so that there is no beginning. In real time there still is a beginning. Sometimes Hawking says that imaginary time is \"earlier\" than real time, which is a logical contradiction; sometimes he suggests it might be more real than real time, which is an absurdity.", "Since the '60s, scientists have been busy working out, and feuding over, the details of the big-bang cosmology. But God is not in the details--his existence is deducible from the mere fact that there is a world at all. So goes the cosmological argument , one of the three traditional arguments toward a Supreme Being. (Click to read the ontological argument and the teleological argument .) \n\n The reasoning starts off like this: \n\n 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. \n\n 2) The universe began to exist. \n\n 3) Therefore the universe has a cause of its existence. (Click to learn more about the surprising Islamic origins of this argument and what Ludwig Wittgenstein had to say about it.) \n\n There are many options for attacking the logic of this cosmological argument, and contemporary opponents of theism have tried them all.", "Yet the big-bang cosmology has one unwelcome consequence for theists. It seems to suggest that the Creator was a bungler. A singularity is inherently lawless. Anything at all can come out of one. It is exceedingly unlikely that a big-bang singularity should give rise to a universe whose conditions are precisely suitable for life, let alone the best of all possible worlds. As the American philosopher Quentin Smith has pointed out, \"If God created the universe with the aim of making it animate, it is illogical that he would have created as its first state something whose natural evolution would lead with high probability only to inanimate states .\" The only way God could have ensured the appearance of creatures in his own image was by repeatedly intervening and making adjustments to steer the evolution of the world away from lifeless disaster. But \"a competent Creator does not create things he immediately or subsequently needs to set aright,\" observes Smith. (Remember, we are talking about the universe's physical infrastructure, not sinners with free will.)", "OK, so the universe had a beginning, and hence a First Cause, which is, moreover, transcendent. How does it follow that this cause is God, or even God-like? Now there is an acute question. Philosopher Thomas Nagel has suggested that something humanly inconceivable lies behind the big bang. What, if anything, can really be inferred about the First Cause? Well, suppose that it were something mechanical. An ideal machine produces its effect either always or never; it does not just suddenly start to operate at some moment, unless someone gives it a kick. If a mechanical cause produced the universe at time T, there is no reason it should not have done so at time T minus 1. The argument can be repeated to T minus infinity: A mechanical cause would have either produced the universe from eternity or not at all. But the universe was created at one moment out of an infinity of other indistinguishable moments. This implies that the moment was freely chosen, and hence that the creator had a will, and to that extent a personal nature. And power.", "and disappear all the time. An entire universe could do the same, claim some cosmologists. Calling themselves \"nothing theorists,\" they have produced models showing how the cosmos could have burst into being all by itself out of a patch of \"false", "If everything needs a cause for its existence, then so does God. (More frequently heard in the form \"But Mummy, who made God?\") This objection fails because it gets Premise 1 wrong. The premise does not say that everything needs a cause but that everything that begins to exist does. God never began to exist--he is eternal. So he does not need a cause for his existence. \n\n Maybe the universe had a natural cause. But the big bang could not have been caused by prior physical processes. That is because it began with pointlike singularity , which, according to relativity theory, is not a \"thing\" but a boundary or an edge in time. Since no causal lines can be extended through it, the cause of the big bang must transcend the physical world.", "Just because the universe is temporally finite does not mean it had a beginning. Speaking of Hawking, this is his famous \"no boundary\" proposal. \"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator,\" Hawking wrote in A Brief History of Time . \"But if the universe is completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning or end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?\" In Hawking's quantum cosmology, the pointlike singularity of the big bang is replaced by a smooth hemisphere in which space and time are commingled. \"Time zero\" becomes an arbitrary point, not a true beginning; it is no more a boundary than the North Pole is.", "vacuum,\" or a 3-D geometry of zero volume, or--in the case of Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University--literally nothing at all (this took Vilenkin four pages of math). So the universe is summoned out of the void by the laws of", "Well, then, perhaps it had no cause at all. It is hard to think of a principle more amply confirmed by our experience than that things do not just pop into existence uncaused.", "physics. But this can't be right. The laws of physics are just a set of equations, a mathematical pattern. They cannot cause the world to exist. As Stephen Hawking has written, \"A scientific theory ... exists only in our minds and", "No one can really pull a rabbit out of a hat. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Yet something of the sort does seem to happen in the quantum world, where, owing to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, tiny \"virtual particles\" spontaneously appear", "does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean).\"" ], [ "It was an ordained priest who took relativity to its logical conclusion. In 1927, Georges Lemaître of the University of Louvain in Belgium worked out an expanding model of the universe. Reasoning backward, he proposed that at some definite point in the past it must have originated from a primeval atom of infinitely concentrated energy. Two years later, Lemaître's model was confirmed by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who had observed that the galaxies everywhere around us were receding. Both theory and empirical evidence pointed to the same verdict: The universe had an abrupt beginning in time. \n\n Churchmen rejoiced. Proof of the biblical account of creation had dropped into their laps. Pope Pius XII, opening a conference at the Vatican in 1951, declared that this scientific theory of cosmic origins bore witness \"to that primordial 'Fiat lux ' uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation. ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore there is a creator, therefore God exists!\"", "Einstein overcame his metaphysical scruples about the big bang not long before his death in 1955, referring to his earlier attempt to dodge it by an ad hoc theoretical device as \"the greatest blunder of my career.\" As for Hoyle and the rest of the skeptics, they were finally won over in 1965, when two scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey accidentally detected a pervasive microwave hiss that turned out to be the echo of the big bang (at first they thought it was caused by pigeon droppings on their antenna). If you turn on your television and tune it between stations, about 10 percent of that black-and-white-speckled static you see is caused by photons left over from the cosmogonic event. What greater proof of the reality of the big bang--you can watch it on television!", "Big-Bang Theology \n\n Did God cause the big bang? That is what half a dozen new books about science and religion--whose authors range from a Reagan-administration official to an Israeli physicist to an elementary-particle-theorist-turned-Anglican-priest--are saying. The fact that the universe abruptly exploded into existence out of apparent nothingness some 15 billion years ago, they submit, means it must have had a supernatural creator. A couple of months ago the same claim was enthusiastically aired at a Washington conference sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center under the rubric \"Beyond the Death of God,\" with eminent thinkers such as Fred Barnes, Mona Charen, and Elliott Abrams in attendance. And the idea received a sympathetic hearing on William F. Buckley's show Firing Line a few weeks ago .", "The idea that only God could have caused the big bang is scarcely new. In fact, the big bang is probably the only idea in the history of science that was ever resisted because of its pro-God import. \n\n For much of the modern era, scientists followed Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton in believing the cosmos to be eternal and unchanging. But in 1917, when Albert Einstein applied his theory of relativity to space-time as a whole, his equations implied that the universe could not be static; it must be either expanding or contracting. This struck Einstein as grotesque, so he added to his theory a fiddle factor called the \"cosmological constant\" that eliminated the implication and held the universe still.", "Even some believing scientists were troubled. The cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle simply felt that an explosion was an undignified way for the world to begin, rather like \"a party girl jumping out of a cake.\" In a BBC interview in the 1950s, Hoyle sardonically referred to the hypothesized origin as \"the big bang.\" The term stuck.", "So did God cause the big bang? Overcome by metaphysical lassitude, I finally reach over to my bookshelf for The Devil's Bible . Turning to Genesis I read: \"In the beginning there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was still nothing, but now you could see it.\"", "Marxists, meanwhile, gnashed their teeth. Quite aside from its religious aura, the new theory contradicted their belief in the infinity and eternity of matter--one of the axioms of Lenin's dialectical materialism--and was accordingly dismissed as \"idealistic.\" The Marxist physicist David Bohm rebuked the developers of the theory as \"scientists who effectively turn traitor to science, and discard scientific facts to reach conclusions that are convenient to the Catholic Church.\" Atheists of a non-Marxist stripe were also recalcitrant. \"Some younger scientists were so upset by these theological trends that they resolved simply to block their cosmological source,\" commented the German astronomer Otto Heckmann, a prominent investigator of cosmic expansion. The dean of the profession, Sir Arthur Eddington, wrote, \"The notion of a beginning is repugnant to me ... I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang. ... The expanding Universe is preposterous ... incredible ... it leaves me cold .\"", "and disappear all the time. An entire universe could do the same, claim some cosmologists. Calling themselves \"nothing theorists,\" they have produced models showing how the cosmos could have burst into being all by itself out of a patch of \"false", "Hawking's proposal is extremely popular with laymen who are hostile to the cosmological argument, judging from the mail I get. Apparently they enjoy being baffled by \"imaginary time,\" a theoretical fiction Hawking uses to redescribe the big bang so that there is no beginning. In real time there still is a beginning. Sometimes Hawking says that imaginary time is \"earlier\" than real time, which is a logical contradiction; sometimes he suggests it might be more real than real time, which is an absurdity.", "Yet the big-bang cosmology has one unwelcome consequence for theists. It seems to suggest that the Creator was a bungler. A singularity is inherently lawless. Anything at all can come out of one. It is exceedingly unlikely that a big-bang singularity should give rise to a universe whose conditions are precisely suitable for life, let alone the best of all possible worlds. As the American philosopher Quentin Smith has pointed out, \"If God created the universe with the aim of making it animate, it is illogical that he would have created as its first state something whose natural evolution would lead with high probability only to inanimate states .\" The only way God could have ensured the appearance of creatures in his own image was by repeatedly intervening and making adjustments to steer the evolution of the world away from lifeless disaster. But \"a competent Creator does not create things he immediately or subsequently needs to set aright,\" observes Smith. (Remember, we are talking about the universe's physical infrastructure, not sinners with free will.)", "Since the '60s, scientists have been busy working out, and feuding over, the details of the big-bang cosmology. But God is not in the details--his existence is deducible from the mere fact that there is a world at all. So goes the cosmological argument , one of the three traditional arguments toward a Supreme Being. (Click to read the ontological argument and the teleological argument .) \n\n The reasoning starts off like this: \n\n 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. \n\n 2) The universe began to exist. \n\n 3) Therefore the universe has a cause of its existence. (Click to learn more about the surprising Islamic origins of this argument and what Ludwig Wittgenstein had to say about it.) \n\n There are many options for attacking the logic of this cosmological argument, and contemporary opponents of theism have tried them all.", "vacuum,\" or a 3-D geometry of zero volume, or--in the case of Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University--literally nothing at all (this took Vilenkin four pages of math). So the universe is summoned out of the void by the laws of", "OK, so the universe had a beginning, and hence a First Cause, which is, moreover, transcendent. How does it follow that this cause is God, or even God-like? Now there is an acute question. Philosopher Thomas Nagel has suggested that something humanly inconceivable lies behind the big bang. What, if anything, can really be inferred about the First Cause? Well, suppose that it were something mechanical. An ideal machine produces its effect either always or never; it does not just suddenly start to operate at some moment, unless someone gives it a kick. If a mechanical cause produced the universe at time T, there is no reason it should not have done so at time T minus 1. The argument can be repeated to T minus infinity: A mechanical cause would have either produced the universe from eternity or not at all. But the universe was created at one moment out of an infinity of other indistinguishable moments. This implies that the moment was freely chosen, and hence that the creator had a will, and to that extent a personal nature. And power.", "Just because the universe is temporally finite does not mean it had a beginning. Speaking of Hawking, this is his famous \"no boundary\" proposal. \"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator,\" Hawking wrote in A Brief History of Time . \"But if the universe is completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning or end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?\" In Hawking's quantum cosmology, the pointlike singularity of the big bang is replaced by a smooth hemisphere in which space and time are commingled. \"Time zero\" becomes an arbitrary point, not a true beginning; it is no more a boundary than the North Pole is.", "If everything needs a cause for its existence, then so does God. (More frequently heard in the form \"But Mummy, who made God?\") This objection fails because it gets Premise 1 wrong. The premise does not say that everything needs a cause but that everything that begins to exist does. God never began to exist--he is eternal. So he does not need a cause for his existence. \n\n Maybe the universe had a natural cause. But the big bang could not have been caused by prior physical processes. That is because it began with pointlike singularity , which, according to relativity theory, is not a \"thing\" but a boundary or an edge in time. Since no causal lines can be extended through it, the cause of the big bang must transcend the physical world.", "physics. But this can't be right. The laws of physics are just a set of equations, a mathematical pattern. They cannot cause the world to exist. As Stephen Hawking has written, \"A scientific theory ... exists only in our minds and", "Well, then, perhaps it had no cause at all. It is hard to think of a principle more amply confirmed by our experience than that things do not just pop into existence uncaused.", "No one can really pull a rabbit out of a hat. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Yet something of the sort does seem to happen in the quantum world, where, owing to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, tiny \"virtual particles\" spontaneously appear", "does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean).\"" ], [ "The idea that only God could have caused the big bang is scarcely new. In fact, the big bang is probably the only idea in the history of science that was ever resisted because of its pro-God import. \n\n For much of the modern era, scientists followed Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton in believing the cosmos to be eternal and unchanging. But in 1917, when Albert Einstein applied his theory of relativity to space-time as a whole, his equations implied that the universe could not be static; it must be either expanding or contracting. This struck Einstein as grotesque, so he added to his theory a fiddle factor called the \"cosmological constant\" that eliminated the implication and held the universe still.", "It was an ordained priest who took relativity to its logical conclusion. In 1927, Georges Lemaître of the University of Louvain in Belgium worked out an expanding model of the universe. Reasoning backward, he proposed that at some definite point in the past it must have originated from a primeval atom of infinitely concentrated energy. Two years later, Lemaître's model was confirmed by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who had observed that the galaxies everywhere around us were receding. Both theory and empirical evidence pointed to the same verdict: The universe had an abrupt beginning in time. \n\n Churchmen rejoiced. Proof of the biblical account of creation had dropped into their laps. Pope Pius XII, opening a conference at the Vatican in 1951, declared that this scientific theory of cosmic origins bore witness \"to that primordial 'Fiat lux ' uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation. ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore there is a creator, therefore God exists!\"", "Einstein overcame his metaphysical scruples about the big bang not long before his death in 1955, referring to his earlier attempt to dodge it by an ad hoc theoretical device as \"the greatest blunder of my career.\" As for Hoyle and the rest of the skeptics, they were finally won over in 1965, when two scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey accidentally detected a pervasive microwave hiss that turned out to be the echo of the big bang (at first they thought it was caused by pigeon droppings on their antenna). If you turn on your television and tune it between stations, about 10 percent of that black-and-white-speckled static you see is caused by photons left over from the cosmogonic event. What greater proof of the reality of the big bang--you can watch it on television!", "Even some believing scientists were troubled. The cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle simply felt that an explosion was an undignified way for the world to begin, rather like \"a party girl jumping out of a cake.\" In a BBC interview in the 1950s, Hoyle sardonically referred to the hypothesized origin as \"the big bang.\" The term stuck.", "Big-Bang Theology \n\n Did God cause the big bang? That is what half a dozen new books about science and religion--whose authors range from a Reagan-administration official to an Israeli physicist to an elementary-particle-theorist-turned-Anglican-priest--are saying. The fact that the universe abruptly exploded into existence out of apparent nothingness some 15 billion years ago, they submit, means it must have had a supernatural creator. A couple of months ago the same claim was enthusiastically aired at a Washington conference sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center under the rubric \"Beyond the Death of God,\" with eminent thinkers such as Fred Barnes, Mona Charen, and Elliott Abrams in attendance. And the idea received a sympathetic hearing on William F. Buckley's show Firing Line a few weeks ago .", "Marxists, meanwhile, gnashed their teeth. Quite aside from its religious aura, the new theory contradicted their belief in the infinity and eternity of matter--one of the axioms of Lenin's dialectical materialism--and was accordingly dismissed as \"idealistic.\" The Marxist physicist David Bohm rebuked the developers of the theory as \"scientists who effectively turn traitor to science, and discard scientific facts to reach conclusions that are convenient to the Catholic Church.\" Atheists of a non-Marxist stripe were also recalcitrant. \"Some younger scientists were so upset by these theological trends that they resolved simply to block their cosmological source,\" commented the German astronomer Otto Heckmann, a prominent investigator of cosmic expansion. The dean of the profession, Sir Arthur Eddington, wrote, \"The notion of a beginning is repugnant to me ... I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang. ... The expanding Universe is preposterous ... incredible ... it leaves me cold .\"", "So did God cause the big bang? Overcome by metaphysical lassitude, I finally reach over to my bookshelf for The Devil's Bible . Turning to Genesis I read: \"In the beginning there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was still nothing, but now you could see it.\"", "Hawking's proposal is extremely popular with laymen who are hostile to the cosmological argument, judging from the mail I get. Apparently they enjoy being baffled by \"imaginary time,\" a theoretical fiction Hawking uses to redescribe the big bang so that there is no beginning. In real time there still is a beginning. Sometimes Hawking says that imaginary time is \"earlier\" than real time, which is a logical contradiction; sometimes he suggests it might be more real than real time, which is an absurdity.", "Since the '60s, scientists have been busy working out, and feuding over, the details of the big-bang cosmology. But God is not in the details--his existence is deducible from the mere fact that there is a world at all. So goes the cosmological argument , one of the three traditional arguments toward a Supreme Being. (Click to read the ontological argument and the teleological argument .) \n\n The reasoning starts off like this: \n\n 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. \n\n 2) The universe began to exist. \n\n 3) Therefore the universe has a cause of its existence. (Click to learn more about the surprising Islamic origins of this argument and what Ludwig Wittgenstein had to say about it.) \n\n There are many options for attacking the logic of this cosmological argument, and contemporary opponents of theism have tried them all.", "Yet the big-bang cosmology has one unwelcome consequence for theists. It seems to suggest that the Creator was a bungler. A singularity is inherently lawless. Anything at all can come out of one. It is exceedingly unlikely that a big-bang singularity should give rise to a universe whose conditions are precisely suitable for life, let alone the best of all possible worlds. As the American philosopher Quentin Smith has pointed out, \"If God created the universe with the aim of making it animate, it is illogical that he would have created as its first state something whose natural evolution would lead with high probability only to inanimate states .\" The only way God could have ensured the appearance of creatures in his own image was by repeatedly intervening and making adjustments to steer the evolution of the world away from lifeless disaster. But \"a competent Creator does not create things he immediately or subsequently needs to set aright,\" observes Smith. (Remember, we are talking about the universe's physical infrastructure, not sinners with free will.)", "and disappear all the time. An entire universe could do the same, claim some cosmologists. Calling themselves \"nothing theorists,\" they have produced models showing how the cosmos could have burst into being all by itself out of a patch of \"false", "OK, so the universe had a beginning, and hence a First Cause, which is, moreover, transcendent. How does it follow that this cause is God, or even God-like? Now there is an acute question. Philosopher Thomas Nagel has suggested that something humanly inconceivable lies behind the big bang. What, if anything, can really be inferred about the First Cause? Well, suppose that it were something mechanical. An ideal machine produces its effect either always or never; it does not just suddenly start to operate at some moment, unless someone gives it a kick. If a mechanical cause produced the universe at time T, there is no reason it should not have done so at time T minus 1. The argument can be repeated to T minus infinity: A mechanical cause would have either produced the universe from eternity or not at all. But the universe was created at one moment out of an infinity of other indistinguishable moments. This implies that the moment was freely chosen, and hence that the creator had a will, and to that extent a personal nature. And power.", "Just because the universe is temporally finite does not mean it had a beginning. Speaking of Hawking, this is his famous \"no boundary\" proposal. \"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator,\" Hawking wrote in A Brief History of Time . \"But if the universe is completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning or end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?\" In Hawking's quantum cosmology, the pointlike singularity of the big bang is replaced by a smooth hemisphere in which space and time are commingled. \"Time zero\" becomes an arbitrary point, not a true beginning; it is no more a boundary than the North Pole is.", "If everything needs a cause for its existence, then so does God. (More frequently heard in the form \"But Mummy, who made God?\") This objection fails because it gets Premise 1 wrong. The premise does not say that everything needs a cause but that everything that begins to exist does. God never began to exist--he is eternal. So he does not need a cause for his existence. \n\n Maybe the universe had a natural cause. But the big bang could not have been caused by prior physical processes. That is because it began with pointlike singularity , which, according to relativity theory, is not a \"thing\" but a boundary or an edge in time. Since no causal lines can be extended through it, the cause of the big bang must transcend the physical world.", "vacuum,\" or a 3-D geometry of zero volume, or--in the case of Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University--literally nothing at all (this took Vilenkin four pages of math). So the universe is summoned out of the void by the laws of", "Well, then, perhaps it had no cause at all. It is hard to think of a principle more amply confirmed by our experience than that things do not just pop into existence uncaused.", "physics. But this can't be right. The laws of physics are just a set of equations, a mathematical pattern. They cannot cause the world to exist. As Stephen Hawking has written, \"A scientific theory ... exists only in our minds and", "No one can really pull a rabbit out of a hat. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Yet something of the sort does seem to happen in the quantum world, where, owing to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, tiny \"virtual particles\" spontaneously appear", "does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean).\"" ] ]
test	50802	[ "Why is the old man furious at the \"Earthgod?\"", "The old man tells Michaelson that something as simple _____ can cause irreparable changes for the spirits.", "Michaelson responds to the old man's pleas by", "In terms of discoveries, Michaelson believes that this city", "What does Michaelson want to do with the city?", "What is the last thing that Maota wants?", "Why did Maota cry when the book was lost?", "Why does Maota feel that the book was the perfect way to try and learn from the dead culture?", "Maota's ultimate fate it to" ]	[ [ "He has invaded sacred grounds, and now demons will be released on the planet.", "He has broken one of the rules of his people by using his hidden mechanism to teleport within the city.", "He has invaded sacred grounds, angering the spirits who might one day return.", "He has invaded sacred grounds, and he is planning to steal many of the artifacts and return to Earth with them." ], [ "Thinking aboutt entering the ancient area.", "His breath.", "Touching a book.", "Stepping off the path created in the area." ], [ "Wrecking the city.", "Throwing a book at the old man.", "Continuing to explore the city just as he intended.", "Doing as he is asked." ], [ "he is unsure at the moment. He needs to investigate further before he is able to accurately deduce the finding.", "makes all other discoveries pale in comparison.", "is a decent find, but he has discovered many, many famous places.", "pales in comparison to others he has seen." ], [ "He wants to open it up as a tourist attraction.", "He wants it to remain hidden from the population.", "He wants to preserve the items he finds and put them on display for all to see.", "He wants to become its next keeper like Maota." ], [ "He does not want Michaelson to be his successor.", "He does not want the ancient ones to return to see Michaelson's plan in place.", "He does not want to reveal to Michaelson all of the secrets he has been entrusted with.", "He does not want to die before the ancient ones return." ], [ "He knew the ancient ones would have revenge on him for the loss of the book.", "He is sad that such a book is now lost forever, never to be shared with others.", "He is crying tears of joy because Michaelson will never have possession of the book now.", "He thought that the book actually loved him for taking care of it all those years." ], [ "As a book of poetry, it shows how they thought and what they felt deeply about.", "It was a book of history. It clearly let them know what their civilization was all about.", "It was full of their math and scientific reason. It was perfect to compare to modern ideas.", "As a book of poetry, it gave insight into their language structure." ], [ "Live the remainder of his time with Michaelson preserving the city.", "Die at the hands of the ancient ones because of Michaelson.", "Leave his body and have the ability to exist anywhere, even on other planets.", "Die at the hands of Michaelson because he would not cooperate." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "Ignoring the native, Mr. Michaelson poked about among the ruins\n happily, exclaiming to himself about some particular artifact,\n marveling at its state of preservation, holding it this way and that to\n catch the late afternoon sun, smiling, clucking gleefully. He crawled\n over the rubble through old doorways half filled with the accumulation\n of ages. He dug experimentally in the sand with his hands, like a dog,\n under a roof that had weathered half a million years of rain and sun.\n Then he crawled out again, covered with dust and cobwebs.\nThe native stood in the street less than a hundred feet away, waving\n his arms madly. \"Mr. Earthgod,\" he cried. \"It is sacred ground where\n you are trespassing!\"", "When he could talk again, Maota said, \"I am sorry, Mr. Earthgod. I've\n disgraced myself.\"\n\n\n \"Don't be sorry.\" Michaelson helped him to his feet. \"We fight for some\n reasons, cry for others. A priceless book is a good reason for either.\"\n\n\n \"Not for that. For not winning. I should have killed you last night\n when I had the chance. The gods give us chances and if we don't take\n them we lose forever.\"\n\n\n \"I told you before! We are on the same side. Negotiate. Have you never\n heard of negotiation?\"\n\n\n \"You are a god,\" Maota said. \"One does not negotiate with gods. One\n either loves them, or kills them.\"\n\n\n \"That's another thing. I am not a god. Can't you understand?\"", "\"Look,\" he said. \"No spirits are ever coming back here. Don't you know\n that? And even if they did, spirits care nothing for old cities half\n covered with sand and dirt.\"\n\n\n He walked away from the old man, heading for another building. The\n sun had already gone below the horizon, coloring the high clouds. He\n glanced backward. The webfoot was following.\n\n\n \"Mr. Earthgod!\" the webfoot cried, so sharply that Michaelson stopped.\n \"You must not touch, not walk upon, not handle. Your step may destroy\n the home of some ancient spirit. Your breath may cause one iota of\n change and a spirit may lose his way in the darkness. Go quickly now,\n or be killed.\"\nHe turned and walked off, not looking back.", "\"Don't call me that. I'm not a god, and you know it.\"\n\n\n The old man shrugged. \"It is not an item worthy of dispute. Those names\n you mention, are they the names of gods?\"\n\n\n He chuckled. \"In a way, yes. What is your name?\"\n\n\n \"Maota.\"\n\n\n \"You must help me, Maota. These things must be preserved. We'll build\n a museum, right here in the street. No, over there on the hill just\n outside the city. We'll collect all the old writings and perhaps we may\n decipher them. Think of it, Maota! To read pages written so long ago\n and think their thoughts. We'll put everything under glass. Build and\n evacuate chambers to stop the decay. Catalogue, itemize....\"\n\n\n Michaelson was warming up to his subject, but Maota shook his head like\n a waving palm frond and stamped his feet.", "He thought about that for a moment, eyeing the weapon.\n\n\n It looked in good working order. Slim and shiny and innocent, it looked\n like a glorified African blowgun. But he was not deceived by its\n appearance. It was a deadly weapon.\n\"Well,\" he said, \"before you kill me, tell me about the book.\" He held\n it up for Maota to see.\n\n\n \"What about the book?\"\n\n\n \"What kind of book is it?\"\n\n\n \"What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what\nkind\nof book? You have seen it. It\n is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it\n talks.\"\n\n\n \"No, no. I mean, what's in it?\"\n\n\n \"Poetry.\"", "\"See?\" he said. \"The spirits read. They must have been great readers,\n these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how\n gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk.\"\n\n\n Michaelson laughed. \"You certainly have an imagination.\"\n\n\n \"What difference does it make?\" Maota cried, suddenly angry. \"You want\n to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no\n slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is,\n for spirits whose existence I cannot prove.\"\n\n\n The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly\n in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.", "\"You've been here a long time. You are intelligent, and you must be\n educated, the way you talk. That gadget looks like a time-piece of some\n sort. What is it? What does it measure?\"\n\n\n \"I insist that you go.\" The webfoot held something in his hand.\n\n\n \"No.\" Michaelson looked off down the street, trying to ignore the\n native, trying to feel the life of the city as it might have been.\n\"You are sensitive,\" the native said in his ear. \"It takes a sensitive\n god to feel the spirits moving in the houses and walking in these old\n streets.\"\n\n\n \"Say it any way you want to. This is the most fascinating thing\n I've ever seen. The Inca's treasure, the ruins of Pompeii, Egyptian\n tombs—none can hold a candle to this.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Earthgod....\"", "There was a hollow, whooshing sound. Both stopped still, realizing the\n total destruction they might have caused.\n\n\n \"It only hit the ground,\" Michaelson said.\n\n\n A black, charred hole, two feet in diameter and—they could not see how\n deep—stared at them.\n\n\n Maota let go and sprawled in the sand. \"The book!\" he cried. \"The book\n is gone!\"\n\n\n \"No! We probably covered it with sand while we fought.\"\nBoth men began scooping sand in their cupped hands, digging frantically\n for the book. Saliva dripped from Maota's mouth, but he didn't know or\n care.\n\n\n Finally they stopped, exhausted. They had covered a substantial area\n around the hole. They had covered the complete area where they had been.\n\n\n \"We killed it,\" the old man moaned.", "Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in\n the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair,\n familiar to Michaelson.\n\n\n Michaelson asked, \"Did you sleep well?\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry to hear that.\"\n\n\n \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\n \"Fine, but my head aches a little.\"\n\n\n \"Sorry,\" Maota said.\n\n\n \"For what?\"\n\n\n \"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you.\"\n\n\n Michaelson relaxed somewhat. \"What kind of man are you? First you try\n to break my skull, then you apologize.\"\n\n\n \"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright.\"", "Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand\n and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile,\n brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.\n\n\n \"Why not?\" Michaelson repeated.\n\n\n \"Why not what?\" Maota dragged his eyes back.\n\n\n \"Negotiate.\"\n\n\n \"No.\" Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not\n twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far\n away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.\n\n\n \"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just\n disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that.\"\n\n\n Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer\n toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.", "Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand\n against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed\n through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for\n a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle\n softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but\n his desire to hear the book was strong.\nOld Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the\n syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been\n a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley,\n Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.\n\n\n The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in\n sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.", "\"You?\" Michaelson laughed. Then, seeing how serious the native was,\n said, \"What makes you think a dead city needs a keeper?\"\n\n\n \"The spirits may return.\"\n\n\n Michaelson crawled out of the doorway and stood up. He brushed his\n trousers. He pointed. \"See that wall? Built of some metal, I'd say,\n some alloy impervious to rust and wear.\"\n\n\n \"The spirits are angry.\"\n\n\n \"Notice the inscriptions? Wind has blown sand against them for eons,\n and rain and sleet. But their story is there, once we decipher it.\"\n\n\n \"Leave!\"\n\n\n The native's lined, weathered old face was working around the mouth in\n anger. Michaelson was almost sorry he had mocked him. He was deadly\n serious.", "Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped\n behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of\n existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun\n him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an\n archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.\n\n\n He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to\n pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers,\n hung on and was pulled to his feet.\n\n\n They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking\n sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth,\n over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw\n impersonal shadows down where they fought.\n\n\n Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or\n hand—touched the firing stud.", "\"Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history?\n Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a\n subject worthy of a book.\"\n\n\n Maota shook his head. \"One does not study a dead culture to learn how\n they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must\n kill you now, so I can get some rest.\"\n\n\n The old man raised the gun.\n\"Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon.\" He pointed to the spot\n behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. \"I can move faster than\n you can fire the gun.\"\n\n\n Maota nodded. \"I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will\n kill you anyway.\"\n\n\n \"I suggest we negotiate.\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"", "\"It was just a book. Not alive, you know.\"\n\n\n \"How do you know?\" The old man's pale eyes were filled with tears. \"It\n talked and it sang. In a way, it had a soul. Sometimes on long nights I\n used to imagine it loved me, for taking care of it.\"\n\n\n \"There are other books. We'll get another.\"\n\n\n Maota shook his head. \"There are no more.\"\n\n\n \"But I've seen them. Down there in the square building.\"\n\n\n \"Not poetry. Books, yes, but not poetry. That was the only book with\n songs.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\n \"\nYou\nkilled it!\" Maota suddenly sprang for the weapon, lying\n forgotten in the sand. Michaelson put his foot on it and Maota was too\n weak to tear it loose. He could only weep out his rage.", "\"Why?\"\n\n\n \"Each machine is tailored for each person.\"\n\n\n The old man hung his head. He looked down into the black, charred\n hole. He walked all around the hole. He kicked at the sand, looking\n half-heartedly again for the book.\n\n\n \"Look,\" Michaelson said. \"I'm sure I've convinced you that I'm human.\n Why not have a try at negotiating our differences?\"\n\n\n He looked up. His expressive eyes, deep, resigned, studied Michaelson's\n face. Finally he shook his head sadly. \"When we first met I hoped we\n could think the ancient thoughts together. But our paths diverge. We\n have finished, you and I.\"\n\n\n He turned and started off, shoulders slumped dejectedly.\n\n\n Michaelson caught up to him. \"Are you leaving the city?\"\n\n\n \"No.\"", "The archeologist smiled, watching the man hurry closer. He was short,\n even for a native. Long gray hair hung to his shoulders, bobbing up\n and down as he walked. He wore no shoes. The toes of his webbed feet\n dragged in the sand, making a deep trail behind him. He was an old man.\n\n\n \"You never told us about this old dead city,\" Michaelson said,\n chidingly. \"Shame on you. But never mind. I've found it now. Isn't it\n beautiful?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, beautiful. You will leave now.\"\n\n\n \"Leave?\" Michaelson asked, acting surprised as if the man were a\n child. \"I just got here a few hours ago.\"\n\n\n \"You must go.\"\n\n\n \"Why? Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am keeper of the city.\"", "Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around.\n The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is\n this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing\n a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above\n the bed a \"clock\" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his\n fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.\n\n\n Maota pointed to it.\n\n\n \"You asked about this machine,\" he said. \"Now I will tell you.\" He laid\n his hand against it. \"Here is power to follow another direction.\"\nMichaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight,\n then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he\n forced a short laugh. \"Maota, you\nare\ncomplex. Why not stop all this\n mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I.\"", "The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages\n rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while\n Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient\n street.\nWhen he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in\n the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old\n Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed\n a more practical place now.\n\n\n The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short\n hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new\n determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool\n wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command,\n across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he\n remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked\n blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.", "At first he thought it didn't work. He got up and looked around, then\n it struck him.\nHe was standing up!\nThe cylinder. He knew it was the cylinder. That was the difference\n between himself and Maota. When he used the cylinder, that was where\n he went, the place where Maota was now. It was a door of some kind,\n leading to a path of some kind where distance was non-existent. But the\n \"clock\" was a mechanism to transport only the mind to that place.\n\n\n To be certain of it, he pressed the button again, with the same result\n as before. He saw his own body fall down. He felt Maota's presence.\n\n\n \"You devil!\" Maota's thought-scream was a sword of hate and anger,\n irrational suddenly, like a person who knows his loss is irrevocable.\n \"I said you were a god. I said you were a god.\nI said you were a\n god...!\n\"" ], [ "\"See?\" he said. \"The spirits read. They must have been great readers,\n these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how\n gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk.\"\n\n\n Michaelson laughed. \"You certainly have an imagination.\"\n\n\n \"What difference does it make?\" Maota cried, suddenly angry. \"You want\n to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no\n slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is,\n for spirits whose existence I cannot prove.\"\n\n\n The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly\n in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.", "\"Look,\" he said. \"No spirits are ever coming back here. Don't you know\n that? And even if they did, spirits care nothing for old cities half\n covered with sand and dirt.\"\n\n\n He walked away from the old man, heading for another building. The\n sun had already gone below the horizon, coloring the high clouds. He\n glanced backward. The webfoot was following.\n\n\n \"Mr. Earthgod!\" the webfoot cried, so sharply that Michaelson stopped.\n \"You must not touch, not walk upon, not handle. Your step may destroy\n the home of some ancient spirit. Your breath may cause one iota of\n change and a spirit may lose his way in the darkness. Go quickly now,\n or be killed.\"\nHe turned and walked off, not looking back.", "Michaelson whirled around at the sound of the native's voice. Then he\n relaxed. He said, \"You shouldn't sneak up on a man like that.\"\n\n\n \"You must leave, or I will be forced to kill you. I do not want to kill\n you, but if I must....\" He made a clucking sound deep in the throat.\n \"The spirits are angry.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense. Superstition! But never mind. You have been here longer\n than I. Tell me, what are those instruments in the rooms? It looks like\n a clock but I'm certain it had some other function.\"\n\n\n \"What rooms?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, come now. The small rooms back there. Look like they were\n bedrooms.\"\n\n\n \"I do not know.\" The webfoot drew closer. Michaelson decided he was\n sixty or seventy years old, at least.", "Michaelson felt a great sadness, seeing his body lying across the\n old, home made bed. He looked closer. He sensed a vibration or life\n force—he didn't stop to define it—in his body. Why was his dead body\n different from Old Maota's? Could it be that there was some thread\n stretching from the reality of his body to his present state?\n\n\n \"I don't like your thoughts,\" Maota said. \"No one can go back. I tried.\n I have discussed it with many who are not presently in communication\n with you. No one can go back.\"\n\n\n Michaelson decided he try.\n\"No!\" Maota's thought was prickled with fear and anger.\n\n\n Michaelson did not know how to try, but he remembered the cylinder and\n gathered all the force of his mind in spite of Maota's protests, and\n gave his most violent command.", "\"You?\" Michaelson laughed. Then, seeing how serious the native was,\n said, \"What makes you think a dead city needs a keeper?\"\n\n\n \"The spirits may return.\"\n\n\n Michaelson crawled out of the doorway and stood up. He brushed his\n trousers. He pointed. \"See that wall? Built of some metal, I'd say,\n some alloy impervious to rust and wear.\"\n\n\n \"The spirits are angry.\"\n\n\n \"Notice the inscriptions? Wind has blown sand against them for eons,\n and rain and sleet. But their story is there, once we decipher it.\"\n\n\n \"Leave!\"\n\n\n The native's lined, weathered old face was working around the mouth in\n anger. Michaelson was almost sorry he had mocked him. He was deadly\n serious.", "Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped\n behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of\n existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun\n him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an\n archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.\n\n\n He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to\n pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers,\n hung on and was pulled to his feet.\n\n\n They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking\n sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth,\n over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw\n impersonal shadows down where they fought.\n\n\n Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or\n hand—touched the firing stud.", "Ignoring the native, Mr. Michaelson poked about among the ruins\n happily, exclaiming to himself about some particular artifact,\n marveling at its state of preservation, holding it this way and that to\n catch the late afternoon sun, smiling, clucking gleefully. He crawled\n over the rubble through old doorways half filled with the accumulation\n of ages. He dug experimentally in the sand with his hands, like a dog,\n under a roof that had weathered half a million years of rain and sun.\n Then he crawled out again, covered with dust and cobwebs.\nThe native stood in the street less than a hundred feet away, waving\n his arms madly. \"Mr. Earthgod,\" he cried. \"It is sacred ground where\n you are trespassing!\"", "Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around.\n The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is\n this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing\n a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above\n the bed a \"clock\" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his\n fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.\n\n\n Maota pointed to it.\n\n\n \"You asked about this machine,\" he said. \"Now I will tell you.\" He laid\n his hand against it. \"Here is power to follow another direction.\"\nMichaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight,\n then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he\n forced a short laugh. \"Maota, you\nare\ncomplex. Why not stop all this\n mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I.\"", "But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that\n the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense\n more complete than death.\n\n\n In the days that followed he gave much thought to the \"clock.\" He came\n to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building\n with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination.\n Then he searched the books for information about the instrument.\n\n\n Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all\n evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He\n had to know if the machine would work for him.\n\n\n And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows\n over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old\n man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but\n determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the\n button.\n\n\n The high-pitched whine started.", "\"You've been here a long time. You are intelligent, and you must be\n educated, the way you talk. That gadget looks like a time-piece of some\n sort. What is it? What does it measure?\"\n\n\n \"I insist that you go.\" The webfoot held something in his hand.\n\n\n \"No.\" Michaelson looked off down the street, trying to ignore the\n native, trying to feel the life of the city as it might have been.\n\"You are sensitive,\" the native said in his ear. \"It takes a sensitive\n god to feel the spirits moving in the houses and walking in these old\n streets.\"\n\n\n \"Say it any way you want to. This is the most fascinating thing\n I've ever seen. The Inca's treasure, the ruins of Pompeii, Egyptian\n tombs—none can hold a candle to this.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Earthgod....\"", "Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand\n against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed\n through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for\n a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle\n softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but\n his desire to hear the book was strong.\nOld Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the\n syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been\n a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley,\n Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.\n\n\n The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in\n sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.", "There was a hollow, whooshing sound. Both stopped still, realizing the\n total destruction they might have caused.\n\n\n \"It only hit the ground,\" Michaelson said.\n\n\n A black, charred hole, two feet in diameter and—they could not see how\n deep—stared at them.\n\n\n Maota let go and sprawled in the sand. \"The book!\" he cried. \"The book\n is gone!\"\n\n\n \"No! We probably covered it with sand while we fought.\"\nBoth men began scooping sand in their cupped hands, digging frantically\n for the book. Saliva dripped from Maota's mouth, but he didn't know or\n care.\n\n\n Finally they stopped, exhausted. They had covered a substantial area\n around the hole. They had covered the complete area where they had been.\n\n\n \"We killed it,\" the old man moaned.", "The wind had turned cool. Michaelson shivered, wishing he had brought\n a coat. The city was absolutely still except for small gusts of wind\n sighing through the frail spires. The ancient book still lay in the\n sand beside the dark spot of blood. He stooped over and picked it up.\n\n\n It was light, much lighter than most Earth books. He ran a hand over\n the binding. Smooth it was, untouched by time or climate. He squinted\n at the pages, tilting the book to catch the bright moonlight, but the\n writing was alien. He touched the page, ran his forefinger over the\n writing.\n\n\n Suddenly he sprang back. The book fell from his hands.\n\n\n \"God in heaven!\" he exclaimed.", "The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages\n rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while\n Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient\n street.\nWhen he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in\n the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old\n Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed\n a more practical place now.\n\n\n The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short\n hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new\n determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool\n wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command,\n across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he\n remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked\n blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.", "Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in\n the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair,\n familiar to Michaelson.\n\n\n Michaelson asked, \"Did you sleep well?\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry to hear that.\"\n\n\n \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\n \"Fine, but my head aches a little.\"\n\n\n \"Sorry,\" Maota said.\n\n\n \"For what?\"\n\n\n \"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you.\"\n\n\n Michaelson relaxed somewhat. \"What kind of man are you? First you try\n to break my skull, then you apologize.\"\n\n\n \"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright.\"", "Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand\n and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile,\n brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.\n\n\n \"Why not?\" Michaelson repeated.\n\n\n \"Why not what?\" Maota dragged his eyes back.\n\n\n \"Negotiate.\"\n\n\n \"No.\" Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not\n twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far\n away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.\n\n\n \"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just\n disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that.\"\n\n\n Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer\n toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.", "When he could talk again, Maota said, \"I am sorry, Mr. Earthgod. I've\n disgraced myself.\"\n\n\n \"Don't be sorry.\" Michaelson helped him to his feet. \"We fight for some\n reasons, cry for others. A priceless book is a good reason for either.\"\n\n\n \"Not for that. For not winning. I should have killed you last night\n when I had the chance. The gods give us chances and if we don't take\n them we lose forever.\"\n\n\n \"I told you before! We are on the same side. Negotiate. Have you never\n heard of negotiation?\"\n\n\n \"You are a god,\" Maota said. \"One does not negotiate with gods. One\n either loves them, or kills them.\"\n\n\n \"That's another thing. I am not a god. Can't you understand?\"", "\"I don't know, exactly. But I have lived many years. I have walked the\n streets of this city and wondered, and wanted to press the button. Now\n I will do so.\"\n\n\n Quickly the old man, still smiling, pressed the button. A high-pitched\n whine filled the air, just within audio range. Steady for a moment, it\n then rose in pitch passing beyond hearing quickly.\n\n\n The old man's knees buckled. He sank down, fell over the bed, lay\n still. Michaelson touched him cautiously, then examined him more\n carefully. No question about it.\n\n\n The old man was dead.\nFeeling depressed and alone, Michaelson found a desert knoll outside\n the city overlooking the tall spires that shone in the sunlight and\n gleamed in the moonlight. He made a stretcher, rolled the old man's\n body on to it and dragged it down the long ancient street and up the\n knoll.\n\n\n Here he buried him.", "\"Don't call me that. I'm not a god, and you know it.\"\n\n\n The old man shrugged. \"It is not an item worthy of dispute. Those names\n you mention, are they the names of gods?\"\n\n\n He chuckled. \"In a way, yes. What is your name?\"\n\n\n \"Maota.\"\n\n\n \"You must help me, Maota. These things must be preserved. We'll build\n a museum, right here in the street. No, over there on the hill just\n outside the city. We'll collect all the old writings and perhaps we may\n decipher them. Think of it, Maota! To read pages written so long ago\n and think their thoughts. We'll put everything under glass. Build and\n evacuate chambers to stop the decay. Catalogue, itemize....\"\n\n\n Michaelson was warming up to his subject, but Maota shook his head like\n a waving palm frond and stamped his feet.", "\"Why?\"\n\n\n \"Each machine is tailored for each person.\"\n\n\n The old man hung his head. He looked down into the black, charred\n hole. He walked all around the hole. He kicked at the sand, looking\n half-heartedly again for the book.\n\n\n \"Look,\" Michaelson said. \"I'm sure I've convinced you that I'm human.\n Why not have a try at negotiating our differences?\"\n\n\n He looked up. His expressive eyes, deep, resigned, studied Michaelson's\n face. Finally he shook his head sadly. \"When we first met I hoped we\n could think the ancient thoughts together. But our paths diverge. We\n have finished, you and I.\"\n\n\n He turned and started off, shoulders slumped dejectedly.\n\n\n Michaelson caught up to him. \"Are you leaving the city?\"\n\n\n \"No.\"" ], [ "Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped\n behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of\n existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun\n him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an\n archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.\n\n\n He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to\n pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers,\n hung on and was pulled to his feet.\n\n\n They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking\n sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth,\n over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw\n impersonal shadows down where they fought.\n\n\n Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or\n hand—touched the firing stud.", "Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand\n against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed\n through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for\n a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle\n softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but\n his desire to hear the book was strong.\nOld Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the\n syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been\n a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley,\n Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.\n\n\n The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in\n sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.", "\"See?\" he said. \"The spirits read. They must have been great readers,\n these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how\n gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk.\"\n\n\n Michaelson laughed. \"You certainly have an imagination.\"\n\n\n \"What difference does it make?\" Maota cried, suddenly angry. \"You want\n to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no\n slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is,\n for spirits whose existence I cannot prove.\"\n\n\n The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly\n in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.", "Ignoring the native, Mr. Michaelson poked about among the ruins\n happily, exclaiming to himself about some particular artifact,\n marveling at its state of preservation, holding it this way and that to\n catch the late afternoon sun, smiling, clucking gleefully. He crawled\n over the rubble through old doorways half filled with the accumulation\n of ages. He dug experimentally in the sand with his hands, like a dog,\n under a roof that had weathered half a million years of rain and sun.\n Then he crawled out again, covered with dust and cobwebs.\nThe native stood in the street less than a hundred feet away, waving\n his arms madly. \"Mr. Earthgod,\" he cried. \"It is sacred ground where\n you are trespassing!\"", "Michaelson felt a great sadness, seeing his body lying across the\n old, home made bed. He looked closer. He sensed a vibration or life\n force—he didn't stop to define it—in his body. Why was his dead body\n different from Old Maota's? Could it be that there was some thread\n stretching from the reality of his body to his present state?\n\n\n \"I don't like your thoughts,\" Maota said. \"No one can go back. I tried.\n I have discussed it with many who are not presently in communication\n with you. No one can go back.\"\n\n\n Michaelson decided he try.\n\"No!\" Maota's thought was prickled with fear and anger.\n\n\n Michaelson did not know how to try, but he remembered the cylinder and\n gathered all the force of his mind in spite of Maota's protests, and\n gave his most violent command.", "Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around.\n The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is\n this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing\n a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above\n the bed a \"clock\" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his\n fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.\n\n\n Maota pointed to it.\n\n\n \"You asked about this machine,\" he said. \"Now I will tell you.\" He laid\n his hand against it. \"Here is power to follow another direction.\"\nMichaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight,\n then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he\n forced a short laugh. \"Maota, you\nare\ncomplex. Why not stop all this\n mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I.\"", "Michaelson whirled around at the sound of the native's voice. Then he\n relaxed. He said, \"You shouldn't sneak up on a man like that.\"\n\n\n \"You must leave, or I will be forced to kill you. I do not want to kill\n you, but if I must....\" He made a clucking sound deep in the throat.\n \"The spirits are angry.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense. Superstition! But never mind. You have been here longer\n than I. Tell me, what are those instruments in the rooms? It looks like\n a clock but I'm certain it had some other function.\"\n\n\n \"What rooms?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, come now. The small rooms back there. Look like they were\n bedrooms.\"\n\n\n \"I do not know.\" The webfoot drew closer. Michaelson decided he was\n sixty or seventy years old, at least.", "Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand\n and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile,\n brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.\n\n\n \"Why not?\" Michaelson repeated.\n\n\n \"Why not what?\" Maota dragged his eyes back.\n\n\n \"Negotiate.\"\n\n\n \"No.\" Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not\n twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far\n away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.\n\n\n \"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just\n disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that.\"\n\n\n Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer\n toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.", "\"Why?\"\n\n\n \"Each machine is tailored for each person.\"\n\n\n The old man hung his head. He looked down into the black, charred\n hole. He walked all around the hole. He kicked at the sand, looking\n half-heartedly again for the book.\n\n\n \"Look,\" Michaelson said. \"I'm sure I've convinced you that I'm human.\n Why not have a try at negotiating our differences?\"\n\n\n He looked up. His expressive eyes, deep, resigned, studied Michaelson's\n face. Finally he shook his head sadly. \"When we first met I hoped we\n could think the ancient thoughts together. But our paths diverge. We\n have finished, you and I.\"\n\n\n He turned and started off, shoulders slumped dejectedly.\n\n\n Michaelson caught up to him. \"Are you leaving the city?\"\n\n\n \"No.\"", "But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that\n the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense\n more complete than death.\n\n\n In the days that followed he gave much thought to the \"clock.\" He came\n to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building\n with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination.\n Then he searched the books for information about the instrument.\n\n\n Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all\n evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He\n had to know if the machine would work for him.\n\n\n And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows\n over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old\n man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but\n determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the\n button.\n\n\n The high-pitched whine started.", "\"Wait!\"\n\n\n \"Now what?\"\n\n\n \"At least read some of the book to me before I die, then.\"\n\n\n The gun wavered. \"I am not an unreasonable man,\" the webfoot said.\n\n\n Michaelson stepped forward, extending his arm with the book.\n\n\n \"No, stay where you are. Throw it.\"\n\n\n \"This book is priceless. You just don't go throwing such valuable items\n around.\"\n\n\n \"It won't break. Throw it.\"", "\"I don't know, exactly. But I have lived many years. I have walked the\n streets of this city and wondered, and wanted to press the button. Now\n I will do so.\"\n\n\n Quickly the old man, still smiling, pressed the button. A high-pitched\n whine filled the air, just within audio range. Steady for a moment, it\n then rose in pitch passing beyond hearing quickly.\n\n\n The old man's knees buckled. He sank down, fell over the bed, lay\n still. Michaelson touched him cautiously, then examined him more\n carefully. No question about it.\n\n\n The old man was dead.\nFeeling depressed and alone, Michaelson found a desert knoll outside\n the city overlooking the tall spires that shone in the sunlight and\n gleamed in the moonlight. He made a stretcher, rolled the old man's\n body on to it and dragged it down the long ancient street and up the\n knoll.\n\n\n Here he buried him.", "Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in\n the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair,\n familiar to Michaelson.\n\n\n Michaelson asked, \"Did you sleep well?\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry to hear that.\"\n\n\n \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\n \"Fine, but my head aches a little.\"\n\n\n \"Sorry,\" Maota said.\n\n\n \"For what?\"\n\n\n \"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you.\"\n\n\n Michaelson relaxed somewhat. \"What kind of man are you? First you try\n to break my skull, then you apologize.\"\n\n\n \"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright.\"", "Michaelson stood in the ancient street, tall, gaunt, feet planted wide,\n hands in pockets, watching the webfoot until he was out of sight beyond\n a huge circular building. There was a man to watch. There was one of\n the intelligent ones. One look into the alert old eyes had told him\n that.\n\n\n Michaelson shook his head, and went about satisfying his curiosity.\n He entered buildings without thought of roofs falling in, or decayed\n floors dropping from under his weight. He began to collect small items,\n making a pile of them in the street. An ancient bowl, metal untouched\n by the ages. A statue of a man, one foot high, correct to the minutest\n detail, showing how identical they had been to Earthmen. He found books\n still standing on ancient shelves but was afraid to touch them without\n tools.\n\n\n Darkness came swiftly and he was forced out into the street.", "\"You've been here a long time. You are intelligent, and you must be\n educated, the way you talk. That gadget looks like a time-piece of some\n sort. What is it? What does it measure?\"\n\n\n \"I insist that you go.\" The webfoot held something in his hand.\n\n\n \"No.\" Michaelson looked off down the street, trying to ignore the\n native, trying to feel the life of the city as it might have been.\n\"You are sensitive,\" the native said in his ear. \"It takes a sensitive\n god to feel the spirits moving in the houses and walking in these old\n streets.\"\n\n\n \"Say it any way you want to. This is the most fascinating thing\n I've ever seen. The Inca's treasure, the ruins of Pompeii, Egyptian\n tombs—none can hold a candle to this.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Earthgod....\"", "The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages\n rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while\n Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient\n street.\nWhen he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in\n the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old\n Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed\n a more practical place now.\n\n\n The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short\n hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new\n determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool\n wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command,\n across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he\n remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked\n blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.", "\"Don't call me that. I'm not a god, and you know it.\"\n\n\n The old man shrugged. \"It is not an item worthy of dispute. Those names\n you mention, are they the names of gods?\"\n\n\n He chuckled. \"In a way, yes. What is your name?\"\n\n\n \"Maota.\"\n\n\n \"You must help me, Maota. These things must be preserved. We'll build\n a museum, right here in the street. No, over there on the hill just\n outside the city. We'll collect all the old writings and perhaps we may\n decipher them. Think of it, Maota! To read pages written so long ago\n and think their thoughts. We'll put everything under glass. Build and\n evacuate chambers to stop the decay. Catalogue, itemize....\"\n\n\n Michaelson was warming up to his subject, but Maota shook his head like\n a waving palm frond and stamped his feet.", "\"You will leave now.\"\n\n\n \"Can't you see? Look at the decay. These things are priceless. They\n must be preserved. Future generations will thank us.\"\n\n\n \"Do you mean,\" the old man asked, aghast, \"that you want others to come\n here? You know the city abhors the sound of alien voices. Those who\n lived here may return one day! They must not find their city packaged\n and preserved and laid out on shelves for the curious to breathe their\n foul breaths upon. You will leave. Now!\"\n\n\n \"No.\" Michaelson was adamant. The rock of Gibraltar.\n\n\n Maota hit him, quickly, passionately, and dropped the weapon beside his\n body. He turned swiftly, making a swirling mark in the sand with his\n heel, and walked off toward the hills outside the city.", "\"You?\" Michaelson laughed. Then, seeing how serious the native was,\n said, \"What makes you think a dead city needs a keeper?\"\n\n\n \"The spirits may return.\"\n\n\n Michaelson crawled out of the doorway and stood up. He brushed his\n trousers. He pointed. \"See that wall? Built of some metal, I'd say,\n some alloy impervious to rust and wear.\"\n\n\n \"The spirits are angry.\"\n\n\n \"Notice the inscriptions? Wind has blown sand against them for eons,\n and rain and sleet. But their story is there, once we decipher it.\"\n\n\n \"Leave!\"\n\n\n The native's lined, weathered old face was working around the mouth in\n anger. Michaelson was almost sorry he had mocked him. He was deadly\n serious.", "The archeologist smiled, watching the man hurry closer. He was short,\n even for a native. Long gray hair hung to his shoulders, bobbing up\n and down as he walked. He wore no shoes. The toes of his webbed feet\n dragged in the sand, making a deep trail behind him. He was an old man.\n\n\n \"You never told us about this old dead city,\" Michaelson said,\n chidingly. \"Shame on you. But never mind. I've found it now. Isn't it\n beautiful?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, beautiful. You will leave now.\"\n\n\n \"Leave?\" Michaelson asked, acting surprised as if the man were a\n child. \"I just got here a few hours ago.\"\n\n\n \"You must go.\"\n\n\n \"Why? Who are you?\"\n\n\n \"I am keeper of the city.\"" ], [ "Ignoring the native, Mr. Michaelson poked about among the ruins\n happily, exclaiming to himself about some particular artifact,\n marveling at its state of preservation, holding it this way and that to\n catch the late afternoon sun, smiling, clucking gleefully. He crawled\n over the rubble through old doorways half filled with the accumulation\n of ages. He dug experimentally in the sand with his hands, like a dog,\n under a roof that had weathered half a million years of rain and sun.\n Then he crawled out again, covered with dust and cobwebs.\nThe native stood in the street less than a hundred feet away, waving\n his arms madly. \"Mr. Earthgod,\" he cried. \"It is sacred ground where\n you are trespassing!\"", "\"See?\" he said. \"The spirits read. They must have been great readers,\n these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how\n gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk.\"\n\n\n Michaelson laughed. \"You certainly have an imagination.\"\n\n\n \"What difference does it make?\" Maota cried, suddenly angry. \"You want\n to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no\n slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is,\n for spirits whose existence I cannot prove.\"\n\n\n The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly\n in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.", "A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS\nBy BILL DOEDE\n\n\n Illustrated by WEST\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Magazine October 1962.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe city was sacred, but not to its gods.\n \nMichaelson was a god—but far from sacred!\nCrouched in the ancient doorway like an animal peering out from his\n burrow, Mr. Michaelson saw the native.\n\n\n At first he was startled, thinking it might be someone else from the\n Earth settlement who had discovered the old city before him. Then he\n saw the glint of sun against the metallic skirt, and relaxed.", "\"You've been here a long time. You are intelligent, and you must be\n educated, the way you talk. That gadget looks like a time-piece of some\n sort. What is it? What does it measure?\"\n\n\n \"I insist that you go.\" The webfoot held something in his hand.\n\n\n \"No.\" Michaelson looked off down the street, trying to ignore the\n native, trying to feel the life of the city as it might have been.\n\"You are sensitive,\" the native said in his ear. \"It takes a sensitive\n god to feel the spirits moving in the houses and walking in these old\n streets.\"\n\n\n \"Say it any way you want to. This is the most fascinating thing\n I've ever seen. The Inca's treasure, the ruins of Pompeii, Egyptian\n tombs—none can hold a candle to this.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Earthgod....\"", "Michaelson stood in the ancient street, tall, gaunt, feet planted wide,\n hands in pockets, watching the webfoot until he was out of sight beyond\n a huge circular building. There was a man to watch. There was one of\n the intelligent ones. One look into the alert old eyes had told him\n that.\n\n\n Michaelson shook his head, and went about satisfying his curiosity.\n He entered buildings without thought of roofs falling in, or decayed\n floors dropping from under his weight. He began to collect small items,\n making a pile of them in the street. An ancient bowl, metal untouched\n by the ages. A statue of a man, one foot high, correct to the minutest\n detail, showing how identical they had been to Earthmen. He found books\n still standing on ancient shelves but was afraid to touch them without\n tools.\n\n\n Darkness came swiftly and he was forced out into the street.", "Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped\n behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of\n existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun\n him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an\n archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.\n\n\n He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to\n pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers,\n hung on and was pulled to his feet.\n\n\n They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking\n sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth,\n over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw\n impersonal shadows down where they fought.\n\n\n Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or\n hand—touched the firing stud.", "He touched it again, curiosity overwhelming his fear. It was warm. No\n mistake. And there was a faint vibration, a suggestion of power. He\n stood there in the darkness staring off into the darkness, trembling.\n Fear built up in him until it was a monstrous thing, drowning reason.\n He forgot the power of the cylinder behind his ear. He scrambled\n through the doorway. He got up and ran down the ancient sandy street\n until he came to the edge of the city. Here he stopped, gasping for\n air, feeling the pain throb in his head.\n\n\n Common sense said that he should go home, that nothing worthwhile could\n be accomplished at night, that he was tired, that he was weak from loss\n of blood and fright and running. But when Michaelson was on the trail\n of important discoveries he had no common sense.\n\n\n He sat down in the darkness, meaning to rest a moment.\nWhen he awoke dawn was red against thin clouds in the east.", "\"You?\" Michaelson laughed. Then, seeing how serious the native was,\n said, \"What makes you think a dead city needs a keeper?\"\n\n\n \"The spirits may return.\"\n\n\n Michaelson crawled out of the doorway and stood up. He brushed his\n trousers. He pointed. \"See that wall? Built of some metal, I'd say,\n some alloy impervious to rust and wear.\"\n\n\n \"The spirits are angry.\"\n\n\n \"Notice the inscriptions? Wind has blown sand against them for eons,\n and rain and sleet. But their story is there, once we decipher it.\"\n\n\n \"Leave!\"\n\n\n The native's lined, weathered old face was working around the mouth in\n anger. Michaelson was almost sorry he had mocked him. He was deadly\n serious.", "Complete, utter silence. Void. Darkness. Awareness and memory, yes;\n nothing else. Then Maota's chuckle came. No sound, an impression only\n like the voice from the ancient book. Where was he? There was no left\n or right, up or down. Maota was everywhere, nowhere.\n\n\n \"Look!\" Maota's thought was directed at him in this place of no\n direction. \"Think of the city and you will see it.\"\n\n\n Michaelson did, and he saw the city beyond, as if he were looking\n through a window. And yet he was in the city looking at his own body.\n\n\n Maota's chuckle again. \"The city will remain as it is. You did not win\n after all.\"\n\n\n \"Neither did you.\"\n\n\n \"But this existence has compensations,\" Maota said. \"You can be\n anywhere, see anywhere on this planet. Even on your Earth.\"", "\"Where are you going?\"\n\n\n \"Away. Far away.\" Maota looked off toward the hills, eyes distant.\n\n\n \"Don't be stupid, old man. How can you go far away and not leave the\n city?\"\n\n\n \"There are many directions. You would not understand.\"\n\n\n \"East. West. North. South. Up. Down.\"\n\n\n \"No, no. There is another direction. Come, if you must see.\"\n\n\n Michaelson followed him far down the street. They came to a section of\n the city he had not seen before. Buildings were smaller, spires dwarfed\n against larger structures. Here a path was packed in the sand, leading\n to a particular building.\n\n\n Michaelson said, \"This is where you live?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"", "\"You will leave now.\"\n\n\n \"Can't you see? Look at the decay. These things are priceless. They\n must be preserved. Future generations will thank us.\"\n\n\n \"Do you mean,\" the old man asked, aghast, \"that you want others to come\n here? You know the city abhors the sound of alien voices. Those who\n lived here may return one day! They must not find their city packaged\n and preserved and laid out on shelves for the curious to breathe their\n foul breaths upon. You will leave. Now!\"\n\n\n \"No.\" Michaelson was adamant. The rock of Gibraltar.\n\n\n Maota hit him, quickly, passionately, and dropped the weapon beside his\n body. He turned swiftly, making a swirling mark in the sand with his\n heel, and walked off toward the hills outside the city.", "Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around.\n The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is\n this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing\n a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above\n the bed a \"clock\" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his\n fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.\n\n\n Maota pointed to it.\n\n\n \"You asked about this machine,\" he said. \"Now I will tell you.\" He laid\n his hand against it. \"Here is power to follow another direction.\"\nMichaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight,\n then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he\n forced a short laugh. \"Maota, you\nare\ncomplex. Why not stop all this\n mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I.\"", "The wind had turned cool. Michaelson shivered, wishing he had brought\n a coat. The city was absolutely still except for small gusts of wind\n sighing through the frail spires. The ancient book still lay in the\n sand beside the dark spot of blood. He stooped over and picked it up.\n\n\n It was light, much lighter than most Earth books. He ran a hand over\n the binding. Smooth it was, untouched by time or climate. He squinted\n at the pages, tilting the book to catch the bright moonlight, but the\n writing was alien. He touched the page, ran his forefinger over the\n writing.\n\n\n Suddenly he sprang back. The book fell from his hands.\n\n\n \"God in heaven!\" he exclaimed.", "Michaelson whirled around at the sound of the native's voice. Then he\n relaxed. He said, \"You shouldn't sneak up on a man like that.\"\n\n\n \"You must leave, or I will be forced to kill you. I do not want to kill\n you, but if I must....\" He made a clucking sound deep in the throat.\n \"The spirits are angry.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense. Superstition! But never mind. You have been here longer\n than I. Tell me, what are those instruments in the rooms? It looks like\n a clock but I'm certain it had some other function.\"\n\n\n \"What rooms?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, come now. The small rooms back there. Look like they were\n bedrooms.\"\n\n\n \"I do not know.\" The webfoot drew closer. Michaelson decided he was\n sixty or seventy years old, at least.", "The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages\n rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while\n Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient\n street.\nWhen he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in\n the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old\n Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed\n a more practical place now.\n\n\n The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short\n hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new\n determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool\n wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command,\n across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he\n remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked\n blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.", "\"I don't know, exactly. But I have lived many years. I have walked the\n streets of this city and wondered, and wanted to press the button. Now\n I will do so.\"\n\n\n Quickly the old man, still smiling, pressed the button. A high-pitched\n whine filled the air, just within audio range. Steady for a moment, it\n then rose in pitch passing beyond hearing quickly.\n\n\n The old man's knees buckled. He sank down, fell over the bed, lay\n still. Michaelson touched him cautiously, then examined him more\n carefully. No question about it.\n\n\n The old man was dead.\nFeeling depressed and alone, Michaelson found a desert knoll outside\n the city overlooking the tall spires that shone in the sunlight and\n gleamed in the moonlight. He made a stretcher, rolled the old man's\n body on to it and dragged it down the long ancient street and up the\n knoll.\n\n\n Here he buried him.", "\"Why?\"\n\n\n \"Each machine is tailored for each person.\"\n\n\n The old man hung his head. He looked down into the black, charred\n hole. He walked all around the hole. He kicked at the sand, looking\n half-heartedly again for the book.\n\n\n \"Look,\" Michaelson said. \"I'm sure I've convinced you that I'm human.\n Why not have a try at negotiating our differences?\"\n\n\n He looked up. His expressive eyes, deep, resigned, studied Michaelson's\n face. Finally he shook his head sadly. \"When we first met I hoped we\n could think the ancient thoughts together. But our paths diverge. We\n have finished, you and I.\"\n\n\n He turned and started off, shoulders slumped dejectedly.\n\n\n Michaelson caught up to him. \"Are you leaving the city?\"\n\n\n \"No.\"", "But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that\n the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense\n more complete than death.\n\n\n In the days that followed he gave much thought to the \"clock.\" He came\n to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building\n with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination.\n Then he searched the books for information about the instrument.\n\n\n Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all\n evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He\n had to know if the machine would work for him.\n\n\n And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows\n over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old\n man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but\n determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the\n button.\n\n\n The high-pitched whine started.", "Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand\n against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed\n through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for\n a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle\n softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but\n his desire to hear the book was strong.\nOld Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the\n syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been\n a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley,\n Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.\n\n\n The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in\n sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.", "\"Look,\" he said. \"No spirits are ever coming back here. Don't you know\n that? And even if they did, spirits care nothing for old cities half\n covered with sand and dirt.\"\n\n\n He walked away from the old man, heading for another building. The\n sun had already gone below the horizon, coloring the high clouds. He\n glanced backward. The webfoot was following.\n\n\n \"Mr. Earthgod!\" the webfoot cried, so sharply that Michaelson stopped.\n \"You must not touch, not walk upon, not handle. Your step may destroy\n the home of some ancient spirit. Your breath may cause one iota of\n change and a spirit may lose his way in the darkness. Go quickly now,\n or be killed.\"\nHe turned and walked off, not looking back." ], [ "\"See?\" he said. \"The spirits read. They must have been great readers,\n these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how\n gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk.\"\n\n\n Michaelson laughed. \"You certainly have an imagination.\"\n\n\n \"What difference does it make?\" Maota cried, suddenly angry. \"You want\n to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no\n slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is,\n for spirits whose existence I cannot prove.\"\n\n\n The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly\n in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.", "\"You will leave now.\"\n\n\n \"Can't you see? Look at the decay. These things are priceless. They\n must be preserved. Future generations will thank us.\"\n\n\n \"Do you mean,\" the old man asked, aghast, \"that you want others to come\n here? You know the city abhors the sound of alien voices. Those who\n lived here may return one day! They must not find their city packaged\n and preserved and laid out on shelves for the curious to breathe their\n foul breaths upon. You will leave. Now!\"\n\n\n \"No.\" Michaelson was adamant. The rock of Gibraltar.\n\n\n Maota hit him, quickly, passionately, and dropped the weapon beside his\n body. He turned swiftly, making a swirling mark in the sand with his\n heel, and walked off toward the hills outside the city.", "Ignoring the native, Mr. Michaelson poked about among the ruins\n happily, exclaiming to himself about some particular artifact,\n marveling at its state of preservation, holding it this way and that to\n catch the late afternoon sun, smiling, clucking gleefully. He crawled\n over the rubble through old doorways half filled with the accumulation\n of ages. He dug experimentally in the sand with his hands, like a dog,\n under a roof that had weathered half a million years of rain and sun.\n Then he crawled out again, covered with dust and cobwebs.\nThe native stood in the street less than a hundred feet away, waving\n his arms madly. \"Mr. Earthgod,\" he cried. \"It is sacred ground where\n you are trespassing!\"", "\"You?\" Michaelson laughed. Then, seeing how serious the native was,\n said, \"What makes you think a dead city needs a keeper?\"\n\n\n \"The spirits may return.\"\n\n\n Michaelson crawled out of the doorway and stood up. He brushed his\n trousers. He pointed. \"See that wall? Built of some metal, I'd say,\n some alloy impervious to rust and wear.\"\n\n\n \"The spirits are angry.\"\n\n\n \"Notice the inscriptions? Wind has blown sand against them for eons,\n and rain and sleet. But their story is there, once we decipher it.\"\n\n\n \"Leave!\"\n\n\n The native's lined, weathered old face was working around the mouth in\n anger. Michaelson was almost sorry he had mocked him. He was deadly\n serious.", "Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped\n behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of\n existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun\n him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an\n archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.\n\n\n He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to\n pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers,\n hung on and was pulled to his feet.\n\n\n They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking\n sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth,\n over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw\n impersonal shadows down where they fought.\n\n\n Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or\n hand—touched the firing stud.", "Complete, utter silence. Void. Darkness. Awareness and memory, yes;\n nothing else. Then Maota's chuckle came. No sound, an impression only\n like the voice from the ancient book. Where was he? There was no left\n or right, up or down. Maota was everywhere, nowhere.\n\n\n \"Look!\" Maota's thought was directed at him in this place of no\n direction. \"Think of the city and you will see it.\"\n\n\n Michaelson did, and he saw the city beyond, as if he were looking\n through a window. And yet he was in the city looking at his own body.\n\n\n Maota's chuckle again. \"The city will remain as it is. You did not win\n after all.\"\n\n\n \"Neither did you.\"\n\n\n \"But this existence has compensations,\" Maota said. \"You can be\n anywhere, see anywhere on this planet. Even on your Earth.\"", "\"Why?\"\n\n\n \"Each machine is tailored for each person.\"\n\n\n The old man hung his head. He looked down into the black, charred\n hole. He walked all around the hole. He kicked at the sand, looking\n half-heartedly again for the book.\n\n\n \"Look,\" Michaelson said. \"I'm sure I've convinced you that I'm human.\n Why not have a try at negotiating our differences?\"\n\n\n He looked up. His expressive eyes, deep, resigned, studied Michaelson's\n face. Finally he shook his head sadly. \"When we first met I hoped we\n could think the ancient thoughts together. But our paths diverge. We\n have finished, you and I.\"\n\n\n He turned and started off, shoulders slumped dejectedly.\n\n\n Michaelson caught up to him. \"Are you leaving the city?\"\n\n\n \"No.\"", "The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages\n rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while\n Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient\n street.\nWhen he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in\n the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old\n Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed\n a more practical place now.\n\n\n The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short\n hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new\n determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool\n wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command,\n across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he\n remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked\n blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.", "\"Where are you going?\"\n\n\n \"Away. Far away.\" Maota looked off toward the hills, eyes distant.\n\n\n \"Don't be stupid, old man. How can you go far away and not leave the\n city?\"\n\n\n \"There are many directions. You would not understand.\"\n\n\n \"East. West. North. South. Up. Down.\"\n\n\n \"No, no. There is another direction. Come, if you must see.\"\n\n\n Michaelson followed him far down the street. They came to a section of\n the city he had not seen before. Buildings were smaller, spires dwarfed\n against larger structures. Here a path was packed in the sand, leading\n to a particular building.\n\n\n Michaelson said, \"This is where you live?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"", "Michaelson stood in the ancient street, tall, gaunt, feet planted wide,\n hands in pockets, watching the webfoot until he was out of sight beyond\n a huge circular building. There was a man to watch. There was one of\n the intelligent ones. One look into the alert old eyes had told him\n that.\n\n\n Michaelson shook his head, and went about satisfying his curiosity.\n He entered buildings without thought of roofs falling in, or decayed\n floors dropping from under his weight. He began to collect small items,\n making a pile of them in the street. An ancient bowl, metal untouched\n by the ages. A statue of a man, one foot high, correct to the minutest\n detail, showing how identical they had been to Earthmen. He found books\n still standing on ancient shelves but was afraid to touch them without\n tools.\n\n\n Darkness came swiftly and he was forced out into the street.", "A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS\nBy BILL DOEDE\n\n\n Illustrated by WEST\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Magazine October 1962.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe city was sacred, but not to its gods.\n \nMichaelson was a god—but far from sacred!\nCrouched in the ancient doorway like an animal peering out from his\n burrow, Mr. Michaelson saw the native.\n\n\n At first he was startled, thinking it might be someone else from the\n Earth settlement who had discovered the old city before him. Then he\n saw the glint of sun against the metallic skirt, and relaxed.", "\"You've been here a long time. You are intelligent, and you must be\n educated, the way you talk. That gadget looks like a time-piece of some\n sort. What is it? What does it measure?\"\n\n\n \"I insist that you go.\" The webfoot held something in his hand.\n\n\n \"No.\" Michaelson looked off down the street, trying to ignore the\n native, trying to feel the life of the city as it might have been.\n\"You are sensitive,\" the native said in his ear. \"It takes a sensitive\n god to feel the spirits moving in the houses and walking in these old\n streets.\"\n\n\n \"Say it any way you want to. This is the most fascinating thing\n I've ever seen. The Inca's treasure, the ruins of Pompeii, Egyptian\n tombs—none can hold a candle to this.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Earthgod....\"", "\"I don't know, exactly. But I have lived many years. I have walked the\n streets of this city and wondered, and wanted to press the button. Now\n I will do so.\"\n\n\n Quickly the old man, still smiling, pressed the button. A high-pitched\n whine filled the air, just within audio range. Steady for a moment, it\n then rose in pitch passing beyond hearing quickly.\n\n\n The old man's knees buckled. He sank down, fell over the bed, lay\n still. Michaelson touched him cautiously, then examined him more\n carefully. No question about it.\n\n\n The old man was dead.\nFeeling depressed and alone, Michaelson found a desert knoll outside\n the city overlooking the tall spires that shone in the sunlight and\n gleamed in the moonlight. He made a stretcher, rolled the old man's\n body on to it and dragged it down the long ancient street and up the\n knoll.\n\n\n Here he buried him.", "Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand\n against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed\n through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for\n a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle\n softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but\n his desire to hear the book was strong.\nOld Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the\n syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been\n a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley,\n Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.\n\n\n The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in\n sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.", "Michaelson felt a great sadness, seeing his body lying across the\n old, home made bed. He looked closer. He sensed a vibration or life\n force—he didn't stop to define it—in his body. Why was his dead body\n different from Old Maota's? Could it be that there was some thread\n stretching from the reality of his body to his present state?\n\n\n \"I don't like your thoughts,\" Maota said. \"No one can go back. I tried.\n I have discussed it with many who are not presently in communication\n with you. No one can go back.\"\n\n\n Michaelson decided he try.\n\"No!\" Maota's thought was prickled with fear and anger.\n\n\n Michaelson did not know how to try, but he remembered the cylinder and\n gathered all the force of his mind in spite of Maota's protests, and\n gave his most violent command.", "Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around.\n The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is\n this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing\n a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above\n the bed a \"clock\" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his\n fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.\n\n\n Maota pointed to it.\n\n\n \"You asked about this machine,\" he said. \"Now I will tell you.\" He laid\n his hand against it. \"Here is power to follow another direction.\"\nMichaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight,\n then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he\n forced a short laugh. \"Maota, you\nare\ncomplex. Why not stop all this\n mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I.\"", "He touched it again, curiosity overwhelming his fear. It was warm. No\n mistake. And there was a faint vibration, a suggestion of power. He\n stood there in the darkness staring off into the darkness, trembling.\n Fear built up in him until it was a monstrous thing, drowning reason.\n He forgot the power of the cylinder behind his ear. He scrambled\n through the doorway. He got up and ran down the ancient sandy street\n until he came to the edge of the city. Here he stopped, gasping for\n air, feeling the pain throb in his head.\n\n\n Common sense said that he should go home, that nothing worthwhile could\n be accomplished at night, that he was tired, that he was weak from loss\n of blood and fright and running. But when Michaelson was on the trail\n of important discoveries he had no common sense.\n\n\n He sat down in the darkness, meaning to rest a moment.\nWhen he awoke dawn was red against thin clouds in the east.", "Michaelson whirled around at the sound of the native's voice. Then he\n relaxed. He said, \"You shouldn't sneak up on a man like that.\"\n\n\n \"You must leave, or I will be forced to kill you. I do not want to kill\n you, but if I must....\" He made a clucking sound deep in the throat.\n \"The spirits are angry.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense. Superstition! But never mind. You have been here longer\n than I. Tell me, what are those instruments in the rooms? It looks like\n a clock but I'm certain it had some other function.\"\n\n\n \"What rooms?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, come now. The small rooms back there. Look like they were\n bedrooms.\"\n\n\n \"I do not know.\" The webfoot drew closer. Michaelson decided he was\n sixty or seventy years old, at least.", "But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that\n the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense\n more complete than death.\n\n\n In the days that followed he gave much thought to the \"clock.\" He came\n to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building\n with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination.\n Then he searched the books for information about the instrument.\n\n\n Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all\n evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He\n had to know if the machine would work for him.\n\n\n And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows\n over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old\n man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but\n determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the\n button.\n\n\n The high-pitched whine started.", "\"Look,\" he said. \"No spirits are ever coming back here. Don't you know\n that? And even if they did, spirits care nothing for old cities half\n covered with sand and dirt.\"\n\n\n He walked away from the old man, heading for another building. The\n sun had already gone below the horizon, coloring the high clouds. He\n glanced backward. The webfoot was following.\n\n\n \"Mr. Earthgod!\" the webfoot cried, so sharply that Michaelson stopped.\n \"You must not touch, not walk upon, not handle. Your step may destroy\n the home of some ancient spirit. Your breath may cause one iota of\n change and a spirit may lose his way in the darkness. Go quickly now,\n or be killed.\"\nHe turned and walked off, not looking back." ], [ "When he could talk again, Maota said, \"I am sorry, Mr. Earthgod. I've\n disgraced myself.\"\n\n\n \"Don't be sorry.\" Michaelson helped him to his feet. \"We fight for some\n reasons, cry for others. A priceless book is a good reason for either.\"\n\n\n \"Not for that. For not winning. I should have killed you last night\n when I had the chance. The gods give us chances and if we don't take\n them we lose forever.\"\n\n\n \"I told you before! We are on the same side. Negotiate. Have you never\n heard of negotiation?\"\n\n\n \"You are a god,\" Maota said. \"One does not negotiate with gods. One\n either loves them, or kills them.\"\n\n\n \"That's another thing. I am not a god. Can't you understand?\"", "Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around.\n The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is\n this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing\n a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above\n the bed a \"clock\" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his\n fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.\n\n\n Maota pointed to it.\n\n\n \"You asked about this machine,\" he said. \"Now I will tell you.\" He laid\n his hand against it. \"Here is power to follow another direction.\"\nMichaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight,\n then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he\n forced a short laugh. \"Maota, you\nare\ncomplex. Why not stop all this\n mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I.\"", "Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand\n and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile,\n brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.\n\n\n \"Why not?\" Michaelson repeated.\n\n\n \"Why not what?\" Maota dragged his eyes back.\n\n\n \"Negotiate.\"\n\n\n \"No.\" Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not\n twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far\n away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.\n\n\n \"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just\n disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that.\"\n\n\n Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer\n toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.", "He thought about that for a moment, eyeing the weapon.\n\n\n It looked in good working order. Slim and shiny and innocent, it looked\n like a glorified African blowgun. But he was not deceived by its\n appearance. It was a deadly weapon.\n\"Well,\" he said, \"before you kill me, tell me about the book.\" He held\n it up for Maota to see.\n\n\n \"What about the book?\"\n\n\n \"What kind of book is it?\"\n\n\n \"What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what\nkind\nof book? You have seen it. It\n is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it\n talks.\"\n\n\n \"No, no. I mean, what's in it?\"\n\n\n \"Poetry.\"", "Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in\n the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair,\n familiar to Michaelson.\n\n\n Michaelson asked, \"Did you sleep well?\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry to hear that.\"\n\n\n \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\n \"Fine, but my head aches a little.\"\n\n\n \"Sorry,\" Maota said.\n\n\n \"For what?\"\n\n\n \"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you.\"\n\n\n Michaelson relaxed somewhat. \"What kind of man are you? First you try\n to break my skull, then you apologize.\"\n\n\n \"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright.\"", "\"Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history?\n Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a\n subject worthy of a book.\"\n\n\n Maota shook his head. \"One does not study a dead culture to learn how\n they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must\n kill you now, so I can get some rest.\"\n\n\n The old man raised the gun.\n\"Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon.\" He pointed to the spot\n behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. \"I can move faster than\n you can fire the gun.\"\n\n\n Maota nodded. \"I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will\n kill you anyway.\"\n\n\n \"I suggest we negotiate.\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"", "\"See?\" he said. \"The spirits read. They must have been great readers,\n these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how\n gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk.\"\n\n\n Michaelson laughed. \"You certainly have an imagination.\"\n\n\n \"What difference does it make?\" Maota cried, suddenly angry. \"You want\n to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no\n slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is,\n for spirits whose existence I cannot prove.\"\n\n\n The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly\n in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.", "\"Where are you going?\"\n\n\n \"Away. Far away.\" Maota looked off toward the hills, eyes distant.\n\n\n \"Don't be stupid, old man. How can you go far away and not leave the\n city?\"\n\n\n \"There are many directions. You would not understand.\"\n\n\n \"East. West. North. South. Up. Down.\"\n\n\n \"No, no. There is another direction. Come, if you must see.\"\n\n\n Michaelson followed him far down the street. They came to a section of\n the city he had not seen before. Buildings were smaller, spires dwarfed\n against larger structures. Here a path was packed in the sand, leading\n to a particular building.\n\n\n Michaelson said, \"This is where you live?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"", "\"Of course you are.\" Maota looked up, very sure. \"Mortals cannot step\n from star to star like crossing a shallow brook.\"\n\n\n \"No, no. I don't step from one star to another. An invention does that.\n Just an invention. I carry it with me. It's a tiny thing. No one would\n ever guess it has such power. So you see, I'm human, just like you. Hit\n me and I hurt. Cut me and I bleed. I love. I hate. I was born. Some day\n I'll die. See? I'm human. Just a human with a machine. No more than\n that.\"\nMaota laughed, then sobered quickly. \"You lie.\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"If I had this machine, could I travel as you?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Then I'll kill you and take yours.\"\n\n\n \"It would not work for you.\"", "I must preserve it, he thought, whether Maota likes it or not. They\n say these people lived half a million years ago. A long time. Let's\n see, now. A man lives one hundred years on the average. Five thousand\n lifetimes.\n\n\n And all you do is touch a book, and a voice jumps across all those\n years!", "\"It was just a book. Not alive, you know.\"\n\n\n \"How do you know?\" The old man's pale eyes were filled with tears. \"It\n talked and it sang. In a way, it had a soul. Sometimes on long nights I\n used to imagine it loved me, for taking care of it.\"\n\n\n \"There are other books. We'll get another.\"\n\n\n Maota shook his head. \"There are no more.\"\n\n\n \"But I've seen them. Down there in the square building.\"\n\n\n \"Not poetry. Books, yes, but not poetry. That was the only book with\n songs.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\n \"\nYou\nkilled it!\" Maota suddenly sprang for the weapon, lying\n forgotten in the sand. Michaelson put his foot on it and Maota was too\n weak to tear it loose. He could only weep out his rage.", "Complete, utter silence. Void. Darkness. Awareness and memory, yes;\n nothing else. Then Maota's chuckle came. No sound, an impression only\n like the voice from the ancient book. Where was he? There was no left\n or right, up or down. Maota was everywhere, nowhere.\n\n\n \"Look!\" Maota's thought was directed at him in this place of no\n direction. \"Think of the city and you will see it.\"\n\n\n Michaelson did, and he saw the city beyond, as if he were looking\n through a window. And yet he was in the city looking at his own body.\n\n\n Maota's chuckle again. \"The city will remain as it is. You did not win\n after all.\"\n\n\n \"Neither did you.\"\n\n\n \"But this existence has compensations,\" Maota said. \"You can be\n anywhere, see anywhere on this planet. Even on your Earth.\"", "Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand\n against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed\n through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for\n a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle\n softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but\n his desire to hear the book was strong.\nOld Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the\n syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been\n a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley,\n Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.\n\n\n The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in\n sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.", "\"Don't call me that. I'm not a god, and you know it.\"\n\n\n The old man shrugged. \"It is not an item worthy of dispute. Those names\n you mention, are they the names of gods?\"\n\n\n He chuckled. \"In a way, yes. What is your name?\"\n\n\n \"Maota.\"\n\n\n \"You must help me, Maota. These things must be preserved. We'll build\n a museum, right here in the street. No, over there on the hill just\n outside the city. We'll collect all the old writings and perhaps we may\n decipher them. Think of it, Maota! To read pages written so long ago\n and think their thoughts. We'll put everything under glass. Build and\n evacuate chambers to stop the decay. Catalogue, itemize....\"\n\n\n Michaelson was warming up to his subject, but Maota shook his head like\n a waving palm frond and stamped his feet.", "\"Of course.\" Maota smiled a toothless, superior smile. \"What do you\n suppose happened to this race?\"\n\n\n \"You tell me.\"\n\n\n \"They took the unknown direction. The books speak of it. I don't know\n how the instrument works, but one thing is certain. The race did not\n die out, as a species becomes extinct.\"\n\n\n Michaelson was amused, but interested. \"Something like a fourth\n dimension?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know. I only know that with this instrument there is no death.\n I have read the books that speak of this race, this wonderful people\n who conquered all disease, who explored all the mysteries of science,\n who devised this machine to cheat death. See this button here on the\n face of the instrument? Press the button, and....\"\n\n\n \"And what?\"", "He had heard a voice. He looked around at the old buildings, down the\n length of the ancient street. Something strange about the voice. Not\n Maota. Not his tones. Not his words. Satisfied that no one was near, he\n stooped and picked up the book again.\n\n\n \"Good God!\" he said aloud. It was the book talking. His fingers had\n touched the writing again. It was not a voice, exactly, but a stirring\n in his mind, like a strange language heard for the first time.\n\n\n A talking book. What other surprises were in the city? Tall,\n fragile buildings laughing at time and weather. A clock measuring\n God-knows-what. If such wonders remained, what about those already\n destroyed? One could only guess at the machines, the gadgets, the\n artistry already decayed and blown away to mix forever with the sand.", "There was a hollow, whooshing sound. Both stopped still, realizing the\n total destruction they might have caused.\n\n\n \"It only hit the ground,\" Michaelson said.\n\n\n A black, charred hole, two feet in diameter and—they could not see how\n deep—stared at them.\n\n\n Maota let go and sprawled in the sand. \"The book!\" he cried. \"The book\n is gone!\"\n\n\n \"No! We probably covered it with sand while we fought.\"\nBoth men began scooping sand in their cupped hands, digging frantically\n for the book. Saliva dripped from Maota's mouth, but he didn't know or\n care.\n\n\n Finally they stopped, exhausted. They had covered a substantial area\n around the hole. They had covered the complete area where they had been.\n\n\n \"We killed it,\" the old man moaned.", "Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped\n behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of\n existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun\n him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an\n archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.\n\n\n He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to\n pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers,\n hung on and was pulled to his feet.\n\n\n They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking\n sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth,\n over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw\n impersonal shadows down where they fought.\n\n\n Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or\n hand—touched the firing stud.", "At first he thought it didn't work. He got up and looked around, then\n it struck him.\nHe was standing up!\nThe cylinder. He knew it was the cylinder. That was the difference\n between himself and Maota. When he used the cylinder, that was where\n he went, the place where Maota was now. It was a door of some kind,\n leading to a path of some kind where distance was non-existent. But the\n \"clock\" was a mechanism to transport only the mind to that place.\n\n\n To be certain of it, he pressed the button again, with the same result\n as before. He saw his own body fall down. He felt Maota's presence.\n\n\n \"You devil!\" Maota's thought-scream was a sword of hate and anger,\n irrational suddenly, like a person who knows his loss is irrevocable.\n \"I said you were a god. I said you were a god.\nI said you were a\n god...!\n\"", "But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that\n the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense\n more complete than death.\n\n\n In the days that followed he gave much thought to the \"clock.\" He came\n to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building\n with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination.\n Then he searched the books for information about the instrument.\n\n\n Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all\n evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He\n had to know if the machine would work for him.\n\n\n And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows\n over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old\n man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but\n determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the\n button.\n\n\n The high-pitched whine started." ], [ "When he could talk again, Maota said, \"I am sorry, Mr. Earthgod. I've\n disgraced myself.\"\n\n\n \"Don't be sorry.\" Michaelson helped him to his feet. \"We fight for some\n reasons, cry for others. A priceless book is a good reason for either.\"\n\n\n \"Not for that. For not winning. I should have killed you last night\n when I had the chance. The gods give us chances and if we don't take\n them we lose forever.\"\n\n\n \"I told you before! We are on the same side. Negotiate. Have you never\n heard of negotiation?\"\n\n\n \"You are a god,\" Maota said. \"One does not negotiate with gods. One\n either loves them, or kills them.\"\n\n\n \"That's another thing. I am not a god. Can't you understand?\"", "\"It was just a book. Not alive, you know.\"\n\n\n \"How do you know?\" The old man's pale eyes were filled with tears. \"It\n talked and it sang. In a way, it had a soul. Sometimes on long nights I\n used to imagine it loved me, for taking care of it.\"\n\n\n \"There are other books. We'll get another.\"\n\n\n Maota shook his head. \"There are no more.\"\n\n\n \"But I've seen them. Down there in the square building.\"\n\n\n \"Not poetry. Books, yes, but not poetry. That was the only book with\n songs.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\n \"\nYou\nkilled it!\" Maota suddenly sprang for the weapon, lying\n forgotten in the sand. Michaelson put his foot on it and Maota was too\n weak to tear it loose. He could only weep out his rage.", "He thought about that for a moment, eyeing the weapon.\n\n\n It looked in good working order. Slim and shiny and innocent, it looked\n like a glorified African blowgun. But he was not deceived by its\n appearance. It was a deadly weapon.\n\"Well,\" he said, \"before you kill me, tell me about the book.\" He held\n it up for Maota to see.\n\n\n \"What about the book?\"\n\n\n \"What kind of book is it?\"\n\n\n \"What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what\nkind\nof book? You have seen it. It\n is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it\n talks.\"\n\n\n \"No, no. I mean, what's in it?\"\n\n\n \"Poetry.\"", "There was a hollow, whooshing sound. Both stopped still, realizing the\n total destruction they might have caused.\n\n\n \"It only hit the ground,\" Michaelson said.\n\n\n A black, charred hole, two feet in diameter and—they could not see how\n deep—stared at them.\n\n\n Maota let go and sprawled in the sand. \"The book!\" he cried. \"The book\n is gone!\"\n\n\n \"No! We probably covered it with sand while we fought.\"\nBoth men began scooping sand in their cupped hands, digging frantically\n for the book. Saliva dripped from Maota's mouth, but he didn't know or\n care.\n\n\n Finally they stopped, exhausted. They had covered a substantial area\n around the hole. They had covered the complete area where they had been.\n\n\n \"We killed it,\" the old man moaned.", "He had heard a voice. He looked around at the old buildings, down the\n length of the ancient street. Something strange about the voice. Not\n Maota. Not his tones. Not his words. Satisfied that no one was near, he\n stooped and picked up the book again.\n\n\n \"Good God!\" he said aloud. It was the book talking. His fingers had\n touched the writing again. It was not a voice, exactly, but a stirring\n in his mind, like a strange language heard for the first time.\n\n\n A talking book. What other surprises were in the city? Tall,\n fragile buildings laughing at time and weather. A clock measuring\n God-knows-what. If such wonders remained, what about those already\n destroyed? One could only guess at the machines, the gadgets, the\n artistry already decayed and blown away to mix forever with the sand.", "Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around.\n The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is\n this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing\n a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above\n the bed a \"clock\" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his\n fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.\n\n\n Maota pointed to it.\n\n\n \"You asked about this machine,\" he said. \"Now I will tell you.\" He laid\n his hand against it. \"Here is power to follow another direction.\"\nMichaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight,\n then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he\n forced a short laugh. \"Maota, you\nare\ncomplex. Why not stop all this\n mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I.\"", "I must preserve it, he thought, whether Maota likes it or not. They\n say these people lived half a million years ago. A long time. Let's\n see, now. A man lives one hundred years on the average. Five thousand\n lifetimes.\n\n\n And all you do is touch a book, and a voice jumps across all those\n years!", "\"See?\" he said. \"The spirits read. They must have been great readers,\n these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how\n gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk.\"\n\n\n Michaelson laughed. \"You certainly have an imagination.\"\n\n\n \"What difference does it make?\" Maota cried, suddenly angry. \"You want\n to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no\n slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is,\n for spirits whose existence I cannot prove.\"\n\n\n The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly\n in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.", "Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand\n against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed\n through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for\n a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle\n softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but\n his desire to hear the book was strong.\nOld Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the\n syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been\n a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley,\n Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.\n\n\n The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in\n sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.", "At first he thought it didn't work. He got up and looked around, then\n it struck him.\nHe was standing up!\nThe cylinder. He knew it was the cylinder. That was the difference\n between himself and Maota. When he used the cylinder, that was where\n he went, the place where Maota was now. It was a door of some kind,\n leading to a path of some kind where distance was non-existent. But the\n \"clock\" was a mechanism to transport only the mind to that place.\n\n\n To be certain of it, he pressed the button again, with the same result\n as before. He saw his own body fall down. He felt Maota's presence.\n\n\n \"You devil!\" Maota's thought-scream was a sword of hate and anger,\n irrational suddenly, like a person who knows his loss is irrevocable.\n \"I said you were a god. I said you were a god.\nI said you were a\n god...!\n\"", "\"Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history?\n Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a\n subject worthy of a book.\"\n\n\n Maota shook his head. \"One does not study a dead culture to learn how\n they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must\n kill you now, so I can get some rest.\"\n\n\n The old man raised the gun.\n\"Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon.\" He pointed to the spot\n behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. \"I can move faster than\n you can fire the gun.\"\n\n\n Maota nodded. \"I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will\n kill you anyway.\"\n\n\n \"I suggest we negotiate.\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"", "\"Don't call me that. I'm not a god, and you know it.\"\n\n\n The old man shrugged. \"It is not an item worthy of dispute. Those names\n you mention, are they the names of gods?\"\n\n\n He chuckled. \"In a way, yes. What is your name?\"\n\n\n \"Maota.\"\n\n\n \"You must help me, Maota. These things must be preserved. We'll build\n a museum, right here in the street. No, over there on the hill just\n outside the city. We'll collect all the old writings and perhaps we may\n decipher them. Think of it, Maota! To read pages written so long ago\n and think their thoughts. We'll put everything under glass. Build and\n evacuate chambers to stop the decay. Catalogue, itemize....\"\n\n\n Michaelson was warming up to his subject, but Maota shook his head like\n a waving palm frond and stamped his feet.", "Complete, utter silence. Void. Darkness. Awareness and memory, yes;\n nothing else. Then Maota's chuckle came. No sound, an impression only\n like the voice from the ancient book. Where was he? There was no left\n or right, up or down. Maota was everywhere, nowhere.\n\n\n \"Look!\" Maota's thought was directed at him in this place of no\n direction. \"Think of the city and you will see it.\"\n\n\n Michaelson did, and he saw the city beyond, as if he were looking\n through a window. And yet he was in the city looking at his own body.\n\n\n Maota's chuckle again. \"The city will remain as it is. You did not win\n after all.\"\n\n\n \"Neither did you.\"\n\n\n \"But this existence has compensations,\" Maota said. \"You can be\n anywhere, see anywhere on this planet. Even on your Earth.\"", "The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages\n rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while\n Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient\n street.\nWhen he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in\n the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old\n Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed\n a more practical place now.\n\n\n The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short\n hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new\n determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool\n wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command,\n across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he\n remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked\n blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.", "Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in\n the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair,\n familiar to Michaelson.\n\n\n Michaelson asked, \"Did you sleep well?\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry to hear that.\"\n\n\n \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\n \"Fine, but my head aches a little.\"\n\n\n \"Sorry,\" Maota said.\n\n\n \"For what?\"\n\n\n \"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you.\"\n\n\n Michaelson relaxed somewhat. \"What kind of man are you? First you try\n to break my skull, then you apologize.\"\n\n\n \"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright.\"", "Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand\n and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile,\n brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.\n\n\n \"Why not?\" Michaelson repeated.\n\n\n \"Why not what?\" Maota dragged his eyes back.\n\n\n \"Negotiate.\"\n\n\n \"No.\" Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not\n twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far\n away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.\n\n\n \"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just\n disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that.\"\n\n\n Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer\n toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.", "\"Where are you going?\"\n\n\n \"Away. Far away.\" Maota looked off toward the hills, eyes distant.\n\n\n \"Don't be stupid, old man. How can you go far away and not leave the\n city?\"\n\n\n \"There are many directions. You would not understand.\"\n\n\n \"East. West. North. South. Up. Down.\"\n\n\n \"No, no. There is another direction. Come, if you must see.\"\n\n\n Michaelson followed him far down the street. They came to a section of\n the city he had not seen before. Buildings were smaller, spires dwarfed\n against larger structures. Here a path was packed in the sand, leading\n to a particular building.\n\n\n Michaelson said, \"This is where you live?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"", "Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped\n behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of\n existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun\n him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an\n archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.\n\n\n He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to\n pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers,\n hung on and was pulled to his feet.\n\n\n They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking\n sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth,\n over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw\n impersonal shadows down where they fought.\n\n\n Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or\n hand—touched the firing stud.", "\"Of course.\" Maota smiled a toothless, superior smile. \"What do you\n suppose happened to this race?\"\n\n\n \"You tell me.\"\n\n\n \"They took the unknown direction. The books speak of it. I don't know\n how the instrument works, but one thing is certain. The race did not\n die out, as a species becomes extinct.\"\n\n\n Michaelson was amused, but interested. \"Something like a fourth\n dimension?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know. I only know that with this instrument there is no death.\n I have read the books that speak of this race, this wonderful people\n who conquered all disease, who explored all the mysteries of science,\n who devised this machine to cheat death. See this button here on the\n face of the instrument? Press the button, and....\"\n\n\n \"And what?\"", "\"Of course you are.\" Maota looked up, very sure. \"Mortals cannot step\n from star to star like crossing a shallow brook.\"\n\n\n \"No, no. I don't step from one star to another. An invention does that.\n Just an invention. I carry it with me. It's a tiny thing. No one would\n ever guess it has such power. So you see, I'm human, just like you. Hit\n me and I hurt. Cut me and I bleed. I love. I hate. I was born. Some day\n I'll die. See? I'm human. Just a human with a machine. No more than\n that.\"\nMaota laughed, then sobered quickly. \"You lie.\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"If I had this machine, could I travel as you?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Then I'll kill you and take yours.\"\n\n\n \"It would not work for you.\"" ], [ "I must preserve it, he thought, whether Maota likes it or not. They\n say these people lived half a million years ago. A long time. Let's\n see, now. A man lives one hundred years on the average. Five thousand\n lifetimes.\n\n\n And all you do is touch a book, and a voice jumps across all those\n years!", "He thought about that for a moment, eyeing the weapon.\n\n\n It looked in good working order. Slim and shiny and innocent, it looked\n like a glorified African blowgun. But he was not deceived by its\n appearance. It was a deadly weapon.\n\"Well,\" he said, \"before you kill me, tell me about the book.\" He held\n it up for Maota to see.\n\n\n \"What about the book?\"\n\n\n \"What kind of book is it?\"\n\n\n \"What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what\nkind\nof book? You have seen it. It\n is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it\n talks.\"\n\n\n \"No, no. I mean, what's in it?\"\n\n\n \"Poetry.\"", "When he could talk again, Maota said, \"I am sorry, Mr. Earthgod. I've\n disgraced myself.\"\n\n\n \"Don't be sorry.\" Michaelson helped him to his feet. \"We fight for some\n reasons, cry for others. A priceless book is a good reason for either.\"\n\n\n \"Not for that. For not winning. I should have killed you last night\n when I had the chance. The gods give us chances and if we don't take\n them we lose forever.\"\n\n\n \"I told you before! We are on the same side. Negotiate. Have you never\n heard of negotiation?\"\n\n\n \"You are a god,\" Maota said. \"One does not negotiate with gods. One\n either loves them, or kills them.\"\n\n\n \"That's another thing. I am not a god. Can't you understand?\"", "He had heard a voice. He looked around at the old buildings, down the\n length of the ancient street. Something strange about the voice. Not\n Maota. Not his tones. Not his words. Satisfied that no one was near, he\n stooped and picked up the book again.\n\n\n \"Good God!\" he said aloud. It was the book talking. His fingers had\n touched the writing again. It was not a voice, exactly, but a stirring\n in his mind, like a strange language heard for the first time.\n\n\n A talking book. What other surprises were in the city? Tall,\n fragile buildings laughing at time and weather. A clock measuring\n God-knows-what. If such wonders remained, what about those already\n destroyed? One could only guess at the machines, the gadgets, the\n artistry already decayed and blown away to mix forever with the sand.", "Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around.\n The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is\n this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing\n a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above\n the bed a \"clock\" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his\n fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.\n\n\n Maota pointed to it.\n\n\n \"You asked about this machine,\" he said. \"Now I will tell you.\" He laid\n his hand against it. \"Here is power to follow another direction.\"\nMichaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight,\n then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he\n forced a short laugh. \"Maota, you\nare\ncomplex. Why not stop all this\n mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I.\"", "Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand\n against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed\n through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for\n a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle\n softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but\n his desire to hear the book was strong.\nOld Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the\n syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been\n a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley,\n Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.\n\n\n The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in\n sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.", "\"It was just a book. Not alive, you know.\"\n\n\n \"How do you know?\" The old man's pale eyes were filled with tears. \"It\n talked and it sang. In a way, it had a soul. Sometimes on long nights I\n used to imagine it loved me, for taking care of it.\"\n\n\n \"There are other books. We'll get another.\"\n\n\n Maota shook his head. \"There are no more.\"\n\n\n \"But I've seen them. Down there in the square building.\"\n\n\n \"Not poetry. Books, yes, but not poetry. That was the only book with\n songs.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\n \"\nYou\nkilled it!\" Maota suddenly sprang for the weapon, lying\n forgotten in the sand. Michaelson put his foot on it and Maota was too\n weak to tear it loose. He could only weep out his rage.", "\"Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history?\n Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a\n subject worthy of a book.\"\n\n\n Maota shook his head. \"One does not study a dead culture to learn how\n they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must\n kill you now, so I can get some rest.\"\n\n\n The old man raised the gun.\n\"Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon.\" He pointed to the spot\n behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. \"I can move faster than\n you can fire the gun.\"\n\n\n Maota nodded. \"I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will\n kill you anyway.\"\n\n\n \"I suggest we negotiate.\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"", "\"See?\" he said. \"The spirits read. They must have been great readers,\n these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how\n gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk.\"\n\n\n Michaelson laughed. \"You certainly have an imagination.\"\n\n\n \"What difference does it make?\" Maota cried, suddenly angry. \"You want\n to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no\n slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is,\n for spirits whose existence I cannot prove.\"\n\n\n The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly\n in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.", "But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that\n the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense\n more complete than death.\n\n\n In the days that followed he gave much thought to the \"clock.\" He came\n to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building\n with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination.\n Then he searched the books for information about the instrument.\n\n\n Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all\n evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He\n had to know if the machine would work for him.\n\n\n And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows\n over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old\n man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but\n determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the\n button.\n\n\n The high-pitched whine started.", "Michaelson felt a great sadness, seeing his body lying across the\n old, home made bed. He looked closer. He sensed a vibration or life\n force—he didn't stop to define it—in his body. Why was his dead body\n different from Old Maota's? Could it be that there was some thread\n stretching from the reality of his body to his present state?\n\n\n \"I don't like your thoughts,\" Maota said. \"No one can go back. I tried.\n I have discussed it with many who are not presently in communication\n with you. No one can go back.\"\n\n\n Michaelson decided he try.\n\"No!\" Maota's thought was prickled with fear and anger.\n\n\n Michaelson did not know how to try, but he remembered the cylinder and\n gathered all the force of his mind in spite of Maota's protests, and\n gave his most violent command.", "Complete, utter silence. Void. Darkness. Awareness and memory, yes;\n nothing else. Then Maota's chuckle came. No sound, an impression only\n like the voice from the ancient book. Where was he? There was no left\n or right, up or down. Maota was everywhere, nowhere.\n\n\n \"Look!\" Maota's thought was directed at him in this place of no\n direction. \"Think of the city and you will see it.\"\n\n\n Michaelson did, and he saw the city beyond, as if he were looking\n through a window. And yet he was in the city looking at his own body.\n\n\n Maota's chuckle again. \"The city will remain as it is. You did not win\n after all.\"\n\n\n \"Neither did you.\"\n\n\n \"But this existence has compensations,\" Maota said. \"You can be\n anywhere, see anywhere on this planet. Even on your Earth.\"", "\"Of course.\" Maota smiled a toothless, superior smile. \"What do you\n suppose happened to this race?\"\n\n\n \"You tell me.\"\n\n\n \"They took the unknown direction. The books speak of it. I don't know\n how the instrument works, but one thing is certain. The race did not\n die out, as a species becomes extinct.\"\n\n\n Michaelson was amused, but interested. \"Something like a fourth\n dimension?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know. I only know that with this instrument there is no death.\n I have read the books that speak of this race, this wonderful people\n who conquered all disease, who explored all the mysteries of science,\n who devised this machine to cheat death. See this button here on the\n face of the instrument? Press the button, and....\"\n\n\n \"And what?\"", "Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand\n and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile,\n brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.\n\n\n \"Why not?\" Michaelson repeated.\n\n\n \"Why not what?\" Maota dragged his eyes back.\n\n\n \"Negotiate.\"\n\n\n \"No.\" Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not\n twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far\n away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.\n\n\n \"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just\n disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that.\"\n\n\n Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer\n toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.", "The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages\n rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while\n Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient\n street.\nWhen he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in\n the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old\n Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed\n a more practical place now.\n\n\n The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short\n hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new\n determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool\n wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command,\n across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he\n remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked\n blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.", "\"Of course you are.\" Maota looked up, very sure. \"Mortals cannot step\n from star to star like crossing a shallow brook.\"\n\n\n \"No, no. I don't step from one star to another. An invention does that.\n Just an invention. I carry it with me. It's a tiny thing. No one would\n ever guess it has such power. So you see, I'm human, just like you. Hit\n me and I hurt. Cut me and I bleed. I love. I hate. I was born. Some day\n I'll die. See? I'm human. Just a human with a machine. No more than\n that.\"\nMaota laughed, then sobered quickly. \"You lie.\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"If I had this machine, could I travel as you?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Then I'll kill you and take yours.\"\n\n\n \"It would not work for you.\"", "There was a hollow, whooshing sound. Both stopped still, realizing the\n total destruction they might have caused.\n\n\n \"It only hit the ground,\" Michaelson said.\n\n\n A black, charred hole, two feet in diameter and—they could not see how\n deep—stared at them.\n\n\n Maota let go and sprawled in the sand. \"The book!\" he cried. \"The book\n is gone!\"\n\n\n \"No! We probably covered it with sand while we fought.\"\nBoth men began scooping sand in their cupped hands, digging frantically\n for the book. Saliva dripped from Maota's mouth, but he didn't know or\n care.\n\n\n Finally they stopped, exhausted. They had covered a substantial area\n around the hole. They had covered the complete area where they had been.\n\n\n \"We killed it,\" the old man moaned.", "At first he thought it didn't work. He got up and looked around, then\n it struck him.\nHe was standing up!\nThe cylinder. He knew it was the cylinder. That was the difference\n between himself and Maota. When he used the cylinder, that was where\n he went, the place where Maota was now. It was a door of some kind,\n leading to a path of some kind where distance was non-existent. But the\n \"clock\" was a mechanism to transport only the mind to that place.\n\n\n To be certain of it, he pressed the button again, with the same result\n as before. He saw his own body fall down. He felt Maota's presence.\n\n\n \"You devil!\" Maota's thought-scream was a sword of hate and anger,\n irrational suddenly, like a person who knows his loss is irrevocable.\n \"I said you were a god. I said you were a god.\nI said you were a\n god...!\n\"", "Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in\n the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair,\n familiar to Michaelson.\n\n\n Michaelson asked, \"Did you sleep well?\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry to hear that.\"\n\n\n \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\n \"Fine, but my head aches a little.\"\n\n\n \"Sorry,\" Maota said.\n\n\n \"For what?\"\n\n\n \"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you.\"\n\n\n Michaelson relaxed somewhat. \"What kind of man are you? First you try\n to break my skull, then you apologize.\"\n\n\n \"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright.\"", "\"Don't call me that. I'm not a god, and you know it.\"\n\n\n The old man shrugged. \"It is not an item worthy of dispute. Those names\n you mention, are they the names of gods?\"\n\n\n He chuckled. \"In a way, yes. What is your name?\"\n\n\n \"Maota.\"\n\n\n \"You must help me, Maota. These things must be preserved. We'll build\n a museum, right here in the street. No, over there on the hill just\n outside the city. We'll collect all the old writings and perhaps we may\n decipher them. Think of it, Maota! To read pages written so long ago\n and think their thoughts. We'll put everything under glass. Build and\n evacuate chambers to stop the decay. Catalogue, itemize....\"\n\n\n Michaelson was warming up to his subject, but Maota shook his head like\n a waving palm frond and stamped his feet." ], [ "When he could talk again, Maota said, \"I am sorry, Mr. Earthgod. I've\n disgraced myself.\"\n\n\n \"Don't be sorry.\" Michaelson helped him to his feet. \"We fight for some\n reasons, cry for others. A priceless book is a good reason for either.\"\n\n\n \"Not for that. For not winning. I should have killed you last night\n when I had the chance. The gods give us chances and if we don't take\n them we lose forever.\"\n\n\n \"I told you before! We are on the same side. Negotiate. Have you never\n heard of negotiation?\"\n\n\n \"You are a god,\" Maota said. \"One does not negotiate with gods. One\n either loves them, or kills them.\"\n\n\n \"That's another thing. I am not a god. Can't you understand?\"", "Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand\n and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile,\n brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.\n\n\n \"Why not?\" Michaelson repeated.\n\n\n \"Why not what?\" Maota dragged his eyes back.\n\n\n \"Negotiate.\"\n\n\n \"No.\" Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not\n twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far\n away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.\n\n\n \"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just\n disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that.\"\n\n\n Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer\n toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.", "Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around.\n The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is\n this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing\n a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above\n the bed a \"clock\" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his\n fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.\n\n\n Maota pointed to it.\n\n\n \"You asked about this machine,\" he said. \"Now I will tell you.\" He laid\n his hand against it. \"Here is power to follow another direction.\"\nMichaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight,\n then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he\n forced a short laugh. \"Maota, you\nare\ncomplex. Why not stop all this\n mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I.\"", "He thought about that for a moment, eyeing the weapon.\n\n\n It looked in good working order. Slim and shiny and innocent, it looked\n like a glorified African blowgun. But he was not deceived by its\n appearance. It was a deadly weapon.\n\"Well,\" he said, \"before you kill me, tell me about the book.\" He held\n it up for Maota to see.\n\n\n \"What about the book?\"\n\n\n \"What kind of book is it?\"\n\n\n \"What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what\nkind\nof book? You have seen it. It\n is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it\n talks.\"\n\n\n \"No, no. I mean, what's in it?\"\n\n\n \"Poetry.\"", "Complete, utter silence. Void. Darkness. Awareness and memory, yes;\n nothing else. Then Maota's chuckle came. No sound, an impression only\n like the voice from the ancient book. Where was he? There was no left\n or right, up or down. Maota was everywhere, nowhere.\n\n\n \"Look!\" Maota's thought was directed at him in this place of no\n direction. \"Think of the city and you will see it.\"\n\n\n Michaelson did, and he saw the city beyond, as if he were looking\n through a window. And yet he was in the city looking at his own body.\n\n\n Maota's chuckle again. \"The city will remain as it is. You did not win\n after all.\"\n\n\n \"Neither did you.\"\n\n\n \"But this existence has compensations,\" Maota said. \"You can be\n anywhere, see anywhere on this planet. Even on your Earth.\"", "\"Where are you going?\"\n\n\n \"Away. Far away.\" Maota looked off toward the hills, eyes distant.\n\n\n \"Don't be stupid, old man. How can you go far away and not leave the\n city?\"\n\n\n \"There are many directions. You would not understand.\"\n\n\n \"East. West. North. South. Up. Down.\"\n\n\n \"No, no. There is another direction. Come, if you must see.\"\n\n\n Michaelson followed him far down the street. They came to a section of\n the city he had not seen before. Buildings were smaller, spires dwarfed\n against larger structures. Here a path was packed in the sand, leading\n to a particular building.\n\n\n Michaelson said, \"This is where you live?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"", "Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in\n the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair,\n familiar to Michaelson.\n\n\n Michaelson asked, \"Did you sleep well?\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry to hear that.\"\n\n\n \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\n \"Fine, but my head aches a little.\"\n\n\n \"Sorry,\" Maota said.\n\n\n \"For what?\"\n\n\n \"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you.\"\n\n\n Michaelson relaxed somewhat. \"What kind of man are you? First you try\n to break my skull, then you apologize.\"\n\n\n \"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright.\"", "\"See?\" he said. \"The spirits read. They must have been great readers,\n these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how\n gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk.\"\n\n\n Michaelson laughed. \"You certainly have an imagination.\"\n\n\n \"What difference does it make?\" Maota cried, suddenly angry. \"You want\n to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no\n slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is,\n for spirits whose existence I cannot prove.\"\n\n\n The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly\n in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.", "\"Of course.\" Maota smiled a toothless, superior smile. \"What do you\n suppose happened to this race?\"\n\n\n \"You tell me.\"\n\n\n \"They took the unknown direction. The books speak of it. I don't know\n how the instrument works, but one thing is certain. The race did not\n die out, as a species becomes extinct.\"\n\n\n Michaelson was amused, but interested. \"Something like a fourth\n dimension?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know. I only know that with this instrument there is no death.\n I have read the books that speak of this race, this wonderful people\n who conquered all disease, who explored all the mysteries of science,\n who devised this machine to cheat death. See this button here on the\n face of the instrument? Press the button, and....\"\n\n\n \"And what?\"", "\"Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history?\n Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a\n subject worthy of a book.\"\n\n\n Maota shook his head. \"One does not study a dead culture to learn how\n they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must\n kill you now, so I can get some rest.\"\n\n\n The old man raised the gun.\n\"Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon.\" He pointed to the spot\n behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. \"I can move faster than\n you can fire the gun.\"\n\n\n Maota nodded. \"I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will\n kill you anyway.\"\n\n\n \"I suggest we negotiate.\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"", "There was a hollow, whooshing sound. Both stopped still, realizing the\n total destruction they might have caused.\n\n\n \"It only hit the ground,\" Michaelson said.\n\n\n A black, charred hole, two feet in diameter and—they could not see how\n deep—stared at them.\n\n\n Maota let go and sprawled in the sand. \"The book!\" he cried. \"The book\n is gone!\"\n\n\n \"No! We probably covered it with sand while we fought.\"\nBoth men began scooping sand in their cupped hands, digging frantically\n for the book. Saliva dripped from Maota's mouth, but he didn't know or\n care.\n\n\n Finally they stopped, exhausted. They had covered a substantial area\n around the hole. They had covered the complete area where they had been.\n\n\n \"We killed it,\" the old man moaned.", "But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that\n the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense\n more complete than death.\n\n\n In the days that followed he gave much thought to the \"clock.\" He came\n to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building\n with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination.\n Then he searched the books for information about the instrument.\n\n\n Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all\n evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He\n had to know if the machine would work for him.\n\n\n And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows\n over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old\n man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but\n determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the\n button.\n\n\n The high-pitched whine started.", "\"Of course you are.\" Maota looked up, very sure. \"Mortals cannot step\n from star to star like crossing a shallow brook.\"\n\n\n \"No, no. I don't step from one star to another. An invention does that.\n Just an invention. I carry it with me. It's a tiny thing. No one would\n ever guess it has such power. So you see, I'm human, just like you. Hit\n me and I hurt. Cut me and I bleed. I love. I hate. I was born. Some day\n I'll die. See? I'm human. Just a human with a machine. No more than\n that.\"\nMaota laughed, then sobered quickly. \"You lie.\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"If I had this machine, could I travel as you?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Then I'll kill you and take yours.\"\n\n\n \"It would not work for you.\"", "Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped\n behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of\n existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun\n him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an\n archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.\n\n\n He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to\n pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers,\n hung on and was pulled to his feet.\n\n\n They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking\n sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth,\n over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw\n impersonal shadows down where they fought.\n\n\n Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or\n hand—touched the firing stud.", "At first he thought it didn't work. He got up and looked around, then\n it struck him.\nHe was standing up!\nThe cylinder. He knew it was the cylinder. That was the difference\n between himself and Maota. When he used the cylinder, that was where\n he went, the place where Maota was now. It was a door of some kind,\n leading to a path of some kind where distance was non-existent. But the\n \"clock\" was a mechanism to transport only the mind to that place.\n\n\n To be certain of it, he pressed the button again, with the same result\n as before. He saw his own body fall down. He felt Maota's presence.\n\n\n \"You devil!\" Maota's thought-scream was a sword of hate and anger,\n irrational suddenly, like a person who knows his loss is irrevocable.\n \"I said you were a god. I said you were a god.\nI said you were a\n god...!\n\"", "\"It was just a book. Not alive, you know.\"\n\n\n \"How do you know?\" The old man's pale eyes were filled with tears. \"It\n talked and it sang. In a way, it had a soul. Sometimes on long nights I\n used to imagine it loved me, for taking care of it.\"\n\n\n \"There are other books. We'll get another.\"\n\n\n Maota shook his head. \"There are no more.\"\n\n\n \"But I've seen them. Down there in the square building.\"\n\n\n \"Not poetry. Books, yes, but not poetry. That was the only book with\n songs.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\n \"\nYou\nkilled it!\" Maota suddenly sprang for the weapon, lying\n forgotten in the sand. Michaelson put his foot on it and Maota was too\n weak to tear it loose. He could only weep out his rage.", "The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages\n rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while\n Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient\n street.\nWhen he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in\n the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old\n Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed\n a more practical place now.\n\n\n The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short\n hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new\n determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool\n wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command,\n across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he\n remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked\n blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.", "Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand\n against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed\n through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for\n a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle\n softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but\n his desire to hear the book was strong.\nOld Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the\n syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been\n a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley,\n Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.\n\n\n The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in\n sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.", "I must preserve it, he thought, whether Maota likes it or not. They\n say these people lived half a million years ago. A long time. Let's\n see, now. A man lives one hundred years on the average. Five thousand\n lifetimes.\n\n\n And all you do is touch a book, and a voice jumps across all those\n years!", "He had heard a voice. He looked around at the old buildings, down the\n length of the ancient street. Something strange about the voice. Not\n Maota. Not his tones. Not his words. Satisfied that no one was near, he\n stooped and picked up the book again.\n\n\n \"Good God!\" he said aloud. It was the book talking. His fingers had\n touched the writing again. It was not a voice, exactly, but a stirring\n in his mind, like a strange language heard for the first time.\n\n\n A talking book. What other surprises were in the city? Tall,\n fragile buildings laughing at time and weather. A clock measuring\n God-knows-what. If such wonders remained, what about those already\n destroyed? One could only guess at the machines, the gadgets, the\n artistry already decayed and blown away to mix forever with the sand." ] ]
test	24949	[ "Why did the Stryker not want to land on Alphard Six immediately ", "How was the ship’s ZIT drive damaged? ", "Why was Striker reluctant to contact the civilization on Alphard six?", "How was the crew sure that the life on Alphard Six was not a resurgent colony? ", "How was the crew sure that the attack from Alphard Six did not come from the Hymenops? ", "How was the society on Alphard Six generating power? ", "Why did the crew think that it was impossible that an ancient Terran crew had settled Alphard Six?", "Why did Gibson reassure Farrell that they were not in danger after his ship had crashed? ", "How were the Terrans able to reach and colonize Alphard Six? " ]	[ [ "He knew that there was a hostile Terran settlement on the planet ", "They were merely on a reconnaissance mission ", "The reclamation’s handbook stated not to do so ", "He knew that there were Hymenops on the planet " ], [ "In an attack by the Hymenops ", "By overuse because the crew had not landed for rest in too long of a time ", "In an attack by the hostile Terran colony ", "On accident when the Terran contact ship was destroyed" ], [ "He thought they were hostile enough to attack the ship ", "He thought they were a trap set by the Hymenops", "He thought they would want to remain undisturbed", "He received direct orders from Gibson not too " ], [ "The Hymenops has destroyed all life in the sector ", "The planet was not hospitable for life ", "It had never been colonized in the first place ", "They had been contacted and told that such was the case " ], [ "There were no signs of the Hymenops housing structures anywhere", "There had been no Hymenops in the sector for a long time ", "All of the other answers are correct ", "The type of weapon was too crude to be from the Hymenops " ], [ "By using old Hymenops technology ", "By using the energy from the nearby star", "By converting their crashed ship", "By building nuclear power generators" ], [ "The Hymenops had destroyed all of the ancient settlers ", "They were using technology too advanced to be ancient Terrans ", "All of the other answers are correct ", "None of the rocket propulsion ships had ever made it to a habitable planet before" ], [ "The crew of the Marco Four had subdued the local settlers ", "The attack had been by an unmanned ship ", "They had landed in a deserted portion of the planet ", "The local settlers were hospitable and altruistic " ], [ "The rocket propulsion ship had succeeded in its mission ", "They had been captured and dropped off by the Hymenops ", "They had just arrived within the past few hundred years from a neighboring colony ", "They were not Terrans, but a very similar extraterrestrial race" ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "When Farrell refused to be\n baited Stryker turned to Gibson,\n who was busily assessing the\n damage done to the ship's more\n fragile equipment, and to Xavier,\n who searched the planet's\n surface with the ship's magnoscanner.\n The\nMarco Four\n, Ringwave\n generators humming gently,\n hung at the moment just\n inside the orbit of Alphard Six's\n single dun-colored moon.\n\n\n Gibson put down a test meter\n with an air of finality.\n\n\n \"Nothing damaged but the\n Zero Interval Transfer computer.\n I can realign that in a couple\n of hours, but it'll have to be\n done before we hit Transfer\n again.\"\nStryker looked dubious.\n \"What if the issue is forced before\n the ZIT unit is repaired?\n Suppose they come up after us?\"", "\"Reconnaissance spiral first,\n Arthur,\" Stryker said firmly. He\n chuckled at Farrell's instant\n scowl, his little eyes twinkling\n and his naked paunch quaking\n over the belt of his shipboard\n shorts. \"Chapter One, Subsection\n Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven:\nNo planetfall on an unreclaimed\n world shall be deemed\n safe without proper—\n\"\n\n\n Farrell, as Stryker had expected,\n interrupted with characteristic\n impatience. \"Do you\nsleep\nwith that damned Reclamations\n Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six\n isn't an unreclaimed world—it\n was never colonized before the\n Hymenop invasion back in 3025,\n so why should it be inhabited\n now?\"\n\n\n Gibson, who for four hours\n had not looked up from his interminable\n chess game with\n Xavier, paused with a beleaguered\n knight in one blunt brown\n hand.", "Stryker vetoed his offer as\n promptly. \"No, the ZIT comes\n first. We may have to run for it,\n and we can't set up a Transfer\n jump without the computer. It's\n got to be me or Arthur.\"\n\n\n Farrell felt the familiar chill\n of uneasiness that inevitably\n preceded this moment of decision.\n He was not lacking in courage,\n else the circumstances under\n which he had worked for the\n past ten years—the sometimes\n perilous, sometimes downright\n charnel conditions left by the\n fleeing Hymenop conquerors—would\n have broken him long\n ago. But that same hard experience\n had honed rather than\n blunted the edge of his imagination,\n and the prospect of a close-quarters\n stalking of an unknown\n and patently hostile force was\n anything but attractive.", "\"You two did the field work\n on the last location,\" he said.\n \"It's high time I took my turn—and\n God knows I'd go mad if\n I had to stay inship and listen\n to Lee memorizing his Handbook\n subsections or to Gib practicing\n dead languages with Xavier.\"\n\n\n Stryker laughed for the first\n time since the explosion that\n had so nearly wrecked the\nMarco\n Four\n.\n\n\n \"Good enough. Though it\n wouldn't be more diverting to\n listen for hours to you improvising\n enharmonic variations on\n the\nLament for Old Terra\nwith\n your accordion.\"\n\n\n Gibson, characteristically, had\n a refinement to offer.\n\n\n \"They'll be alerted down there\n for a reconnaissance sally,\" he\n said. \"Why not let Xavier take\n the scouter down for overt diversion,\n and drop Arthur off in\n the helihopper for a low-level\n check?\"", "Stryker turned on him almost\n angrily. \"If they're not Hymenops\n or humans or aliens, then\n what in God's name\nare\nthey?\"\n\"Aye, there's the rub,\" Farrell\n said, quoting a passage\n whose aptness had somehow seen\n it through a dozen reorganizations\n of insular tongue and a\n final translation to universal\n Terran. \"If they're none of those\n three, we've only one conclusion\n left. There's no one down there\n at all—we're victims of the first\n joint hallucination in psychiatric\n history.\"\n\n\n Stryker threw up his hands in\n surrender. \"We can't identify\n them by theorizing, and that\n brings us down to the business\n of first-hand investigation.\n Who's going to bell the cat this\n time?\"\n\n\n \"I'd like to go,\" Gibson said\n at once. \"The ZIT computer can\n wait.\"", "Stryker looked at Farrell. \"All\n right, Arthur?\"\n\n\n \"Good enough,\" Farrell said.\n And to Xavier, who had not\n moved from his post at the magnoscanner:\n \"How does it look,\n Xav? Have you pinned down\n their base yet?\"\n\n\n The mechanical answered him\n in a voice as smooth and clear—and\n as inflectionless—as a 'cello\n note. \"The planet seems uninhabited\n except for a large island\n some three hundred miles in\n diameter. There are twenty-seven\n small agrarian hamlets surrounded\n by cultivated fields.\n There is one city of perhaps a\n thousand buildings with a central\n square. In the square rests\n a grounded spaceship of approximately\n ten times the bulk\n of the\nMarco Four\n.\"", "\"But this was never an unreclaimed\n world,\" Farrell said\n with the faint malice of one too\n recently caught in the wrong.\n \"Alphard Six was surveyed and\n seeded with Terran bacteria\n around the year 3000, but the\n Bees invaded before we could\n colonize. And that means we'll\n have to rule out any resurgent\n colonial group down there, because\n Six never had a colony in\n the beginning.\"\n\n\n \"The Bees have been gone for\n over a hundred years,\" Stryker\n said. \"Colonists might have migrated\n from another Terran-occupied\n planet.\"\n\n\n Gibson disagreed.", "\"Arthur's right,\" Stryker said\n reluctantly. \"An atomic-powered\n ship\ncouldn't\nhave made such a\n trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant\n project couldn't have\n lasted through forty generations,\n speculative fiction to the\n contrary—the later generations\n would have been too far removed\n in ideology and intent from\n their ancestors. They'd have\n adapted to shipboard life as the\n norm. They'd have atrophied\n physically, perhaps even have\n mutated—\"\n\n\n \"And they'd never have\n fought past the Bees during the\n Hymenop invasion and occupation,\"\n Farrell finished triumphantly.\n \"The Bees had better\n detection equipment than we\n had. They'd have picked this\n ship up long before it reached\n Alphard Six.\"", "Stryker's caution was justified\n on the instant. The speeding\n streamlined shape that had flashed\n up unobserved from below\n swerved sharply and exploded in\n a cataclysmic blaze of atomic\n fire that rocked the ship wildly\n and flung the three men to the\n floor in a jangling roar of\n alarms.\n\"So the Handbook tacticians\n knew what they were about,\"\n Stryker said minutes later. Deliberately\n he adopted the smug\n tone best calculated to sting Farrell\n out of his first self-reproach,\n and grinned when the navigator\n bristled defensively. \"Some of\n their enjoinders seem a little\n stuffy and obvious at times, but\n they're eminently sensible.\"", "He was so weak with strain\n and with the success of his coup\n that he all but fainted when\n Stryker, his scanty hair tousled\n and his fat face comical with bewilderment,\n stumbled out of his\n sleeping cubicle and bellowed at\n him.\n\n\n \"What the hell are you doing,\n Arthur? Take us down!\"\n\n\n Farrell gaped at him, speechless.\n\n\n Stryker lumbered past him\n and took the controls, spiraling\n the\nMarco Four\ndown. Men\n swarmed outside the ports when\n the Reclamations craft settled\n gently to the square again. Gibson\n and Xavier reached the ship\n first; Gibson came inside quickly,\n leaving the mechanical outside\n making patient explanations\n to an excited group of Alphardians.\n\n\n Gibson put a reassuring hand\n on Farrell's arm. \"It's all right,\n Arthur. There's no trouble.\"", "\"The obvious premise is that\n a Terran ship must have been\n built by Terrans. Question: Was\n it flown here, or built here?\"\n\n\n \"It couldn't have been built\n here,\" Stryker said. \"Alphard\n Six was surveyed just before the\n Bees took over in 3025, and there\n was nothing of the sort here\n then. It couldn't have been built\n during the two and a quarter\n centuries since; it's obviously\n much older than that. It was\n flown here.\"\n\n\n \"We progress,\" Farrell said\n dryly. \"Now if you'll tell us\nhow\n,\n we're ready to move.\"", "\"But I saw them,\" Stryker\n said. \"I fought them for the better\n part of the century they were\n here, and I learned there's no\n predicting nor understanding\n them. We never knew why they\n came nor why they gave up and\n left. How can we know whether\n they'd leave a rear-guard or\n booby trap here?\"\n\n\n He put a paternal hand on\n Farrell's shoulder, understanding\n the younger man's eagerness\n and knowing that their close-knit\n team would have been the\n more poorly balanced without it.", "\"We've touched at every inhabited\n world in this sector, Lee,\n and not one surviving colony has\n developed space travel on its\n own. The Hymenops had a hundred\n years to condition their human\n slaves to ignorance of\n everything beyond their immediate\n environment—the motives\n behind that conditioning usually\n escape us, but that's beside the\n point—and they did a thorough\n job of it. The colonists have had\n no more than a century of freedom\n since the Bees pulled out,\n and four generations simply\n isn't enough time for any subjugated\n culture to climb from\n slavery to interstellar flight.\"\n\n\n Stryker made a padding turn\n about the control room, tugging\n unhappily at the scanty fringe\n of hair the years had left him.", "\"I doubt that they can. Any\n installation crudely enough\n equipped to trust in guided missiles\n is hardly likely to have developed\n efficient space craft.\"\n\n\n Stryker was not reassured.\n\n\n \"That torpedo of theirs was\n deadly enough,\" he said. \"And\n its nature reflects the nature of\n the people who made it. Any race\n vicious enough to use atomic\n charges is too dangerous to\n trifle with.\" Worry made comical\n creases in his fat, good-humored\n face. \"We'll have to find\n out who they are and why\n they're here, you know.\"\n\n\n \"They can't be Hymenops,\"\n Gibson said promptly. \"First,\n because the Bees pinned their\n faith on Ringwave energy fields,\n as we did, rather than on missiles.\n Second, because there's no\n dome on Six.\"", "\"Logic or not-logic,\" Gibson\n said. \"If it's a Terran artifact,\n we can discover the reason for\n its presence. If not—\"\n\n\n \"\nAny problem posed by one\n group of human beings\n,\" Stryker\n quoted his Handbook, \"\ncan be\n resolved by any other group, regardless\n of ideology or conditioning,\n because the basic\n perceptive abilities of both must\n be the same through identical\n heredity\n.\"\n\n\n \"If it's an imitation, and this\n is another Hymenop experiment\n in condition ecology, then we're\n stumped to begin with,\" Gibson\n finished. \"Because we're not\n equipped to evaluate the psychology\n of alien motivation. We've\n got to determine first which case\n applies here.\"\nHe waited for Farrell's expected\n irony, and when the\n navigator forestalled him by remaining\n grimly quiet, continued.", "\"It wasn't a torpedo at all,\"\n Stryker put in. Understanding\n of the error under which Farrell\n had labored erased his\n earlier irritation, and he chuckled\n commiseratingly. \"They had\n one small boat left for emergency\n missions, and sent it up to\n contact us in the fear that we\n might overlook their settlement\n and move on. The boat was\n atomic powered, and our shield\n screens set off its engines.\"\n\n\n Farrell dropped into a chair at\n the chart table, limp with reaction.\n He was suddenly exhausted,\n and his head ached dully.\n\n\n \"We cracked the communications\n problem early last night,\"\n Gibson said. \"These people use\n an ancient system of electromagnetic\n wave propagation called\n frequency modulation, and once\n Lee and I rigged up a suitable\n transceiver the rest was simple.\n Both Xav and I recognized the\n old language; the natives reported\n your accident, and we came\n down at once.\"", "Farrell said dumbly, \"I don't\n understand. They didn't shoot\n you and Xav down too?\"\n\n\n It was Gibson's turn to stare.\n\n\n \"No one shot you down! These\n people are primitive enough to\n use metallic power lines to\n carry electricity to their hamlets,\n an anachronism you forgot\n last night. You piloted the helihopper\n into one of those lines,\n and the crash put you out for\n the rest of the night and most\n of today. These Alphardians are\n friendly, so desperately happy to\n be found again that it's really\n pathetic.\"\n\n\n \"\nFriendly?\nThat torpedo—\"", "\"Gib's right,\" he said. He\n nearly added\nas usual\n. \"We're on\n rest leave at the moment, yes,\n but our mission is still to find\n Terran colonies enslaved and\n abandoned by the Bees, not to\n risk our necks and a valuable\n Reorientations ship by landing\n blind on an unobserved planet.\n We're too close already. Cut in\n your shields and find a reconnaissance\n spiral, will you?\"\n\n\n Grumbling, Farrell punched\n coordinates on the Ringwave\n board that lifted the\nMarco Four\nout of her descent and restored\n the bluish enveloping haze of\n her repellors.", "Farrell followed him dumbly\n out of the infirmary and down\n a bare corridor whose metal\n floor rang coldly underfoot. An\n open port near the corridor's end\n relieved the blankness of wall\n and let in a flood of reddish Alphardian\n sunlight; Farrell slowed\n to look out, wondering how\n long he had lain unconscious,\n and felt panic knife at him\n when he saw Xavier's scouter lying,\n port open and undefended,\n on the square outside.\n\n\n The mechanical had been as\n easily taken as himself, then.\n Stryker and Gibson, for all their\n professional caution, would fare\n no better—they could not have\n overlooked the capture of Farrell\n and Xavier, and when they\n tried as a matter of course to\n rescue them the\nMarco\nwould be\n struck down in turn by the same\n weapon.", "Farrell threw up his hands in\n disgust. \"Next you'll say this is\n an ancient Terran expedition\n that actually succeeded! There's\n only one way to answer the\n questions we've raised, and\n that's to go down and see for\n ourselves. Ready, Xav?\"\nBut uncertainty nagged uneasily\n at him when Farrell found\n himself alone in the helihopper\n with the forest flowing beneath\n like a leafy river and Xavier's\n scouter disappearing bulletlike\n into the dusk ahead.\n\n\n We never found a colony so\n advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose\n this is a Hymenop experiment\n that really paid off? The\n Bees did some weird and wonderful\n things with human\n guinea pigs—what if they've\n created the ultimate booby trap\n here, and primed it with conditioned\n myrmidons in our own\n form?" ], [ "When Farrell refused to be\n baited Stryker turned to Gibson,\n who was busily assessing the\n damage done to the ship's more\n fragile equipment, and to Xavier,\n who searched the planet's\n surface with the ship's magnoscanner.\n The\nMarco Four\n, Ringwave\n generators humming gently,\n hung at the moment just\n inside the orbit of Alphard Six's\n single dun-colored moon.\n\n\n Gibson put down a test meter\n with an air of finality.\n\n\n \"Nothing damaged but the\n Zero Interval Transfer computer.\n I can realign that in a couple\n of hours, but it'll have to be\n done before we hit Transfer\n again.\"\nStryker looked dubious.\n \"What if the issue is forced before\n the ZIT unit is repaired?\n Suppose they come up after us?\"", "\"I think the ship was built on\n Terra during the Twenty-second\n Century,\" Gibson said calmly.\n \"The atomic wars during that\n period destroyed practically all\n historical records along with the\n technology of the time, but I've\n read well-authenticated reports\n of atomic-driven ships leaving\n Terra before then for the nearer\n stars. The human race climbed\n out of its pit again during the\n Twenty-third Century and developed\n the technology that gave\n us the Ringwave. Certainly no\n atomic-powered ships were built\n after the wars—our records are\n complete from that time.\"", "Without pausing in his stride\n he sprang out and through the\n port and down the steep plane\n of the ramp. The rough stone\n pavement of the square drummed\n underfoot; sore muscles\n tore at him, and weakness was\n like a weight about his neck. He\n expected momentarily to be\n blasted out of existence.\n\n\n He reached the\nMarco Four\nwith the startled shouts of his\n guide ringing unintelligibly in\n his ears. The port yawned; he\n plunged inside and stabbed at\n controls without waiting to seat\n himself. The ports swung shut.\n The ship darted up under his\n manipulation and arrowed into\n space with an acceleration that\n sprung his knees and made his\n vision swim blackly.", "\"It wasn't a torpedo at all,\"\n Stryker put in. Understanding\n of the error under which Farrell\n had labored erased his\n earlier irritation, and he chuckled\n commiseratingly. \"They had\n one small boat left for emergency\n missions, and sent it up to\n contact us in the fear that we\n might overlook their settlement\n and move on. The boat was\n atomic powered, and our shield\n screens set off its engines.\"\n\n\n Farrell dropped into a chair at\n the chart table, limp with reaction.\n He was suddenly exhausted,\n and his head ached dully.\n\n\n \"We cracked the communications\n problem early last night,\"\n Gibson said. \"These people use\n an ancient system of electromagnetic\n wave propagation called\n frequency modulation, and once\n Lee and I rigged up a suitable\n transceiver the rest was simple.\n Both Xav and I recognized the\n old language; the natives reported\n your accident, and we came\n down at once.\"", "Stryker's caution was justified\n on the instant. The speeding\n streamlined shape that had flashed\n up unobserved from below\n swerved sharply and exploded in\n a cataclysmic blaze of atomic\n fire that rocked the ship wildly\n and flung the three men to the\n floor in a jangling roar of\n alarms.\n\"So the Handbook tacticians\n knew what they were about,\"\n Stryker said minutes later. Deliberately\n he adopted the smug\n tone best calculated to sting Farrell\n out of his first self-reproach,\n and grinned when the navigator\n bristled defensively. \"Some of\n their enjoinders seem a little\n stuffy and obvious at times, but\n they're eminently sensible.\"", "Stryker vetoed his offer as\n promptly. \"No, the ZIT comes\n first. We may have to run for it,\n and we can't set up a Transfer\n jump without the computer. It's\n got to be me or Arthur.\"\n\n\n Farrell felt the familiar chill\n of uneasiness that inevitably\n preceded this moment of decision.\n He was not lacking in courage,\n else the circumstances under\n which he had worked for the\n past ten years—the sometimes\n perilous, sometimes downright\n charnel conditions left by the\n fleeing Hymenop conquerors—would\n have broken him long\n ago. But that same hard experience\n had honed rather than\n blunted the edge of his imagination,\n and the prospect of a close-quarters\n stalking of an unknown\n and patently hostile force was\n anything but attractive.", "Stryker turned on him almost\n angrily. \"If they're not Hymenops\n or humans or aliens, then\n what in God's name\nare\nthey?\"\n\"Aye, there's the rub,\" Farrell\n said, quoting a passage\n whose aptness had somehow seen\n it through a dozen reorganizations\n of insular tongue and a\n final translation to universal\n Terran. \"If they're none of those\n three, we've only one conclusion\n left. There's no one down there\n at all—we're victims of the first\n joint hallucination in psychiatric\n history.\"\n\n\n Stryker threw up his hands in\n surrender. \"We can't identify\n them by theorizing, and that\n brings us down to the business\n of first-hand investigation.\n Who's going to bell the cat this\n time?\"\n\n\n \"I'd like to go,\" Gibson said\n at once. \"The ZIT computer can\n wait.\"", "They crowded about the vision\n screen, jostling Xavier's jointed\n gray shape in their interest. The\n central city lay in minutest detail\n before them, the battered\n hulk of the grounded ship glinting\n rustily in the late afternoon\n sunlight. Streets radiated away\n from the square in orderly succession,\n the whole so clearly\n depicted that they could see the\n throngs of people surging up\n and down, tiny foreshortened\n faces turned toward the sky.\n\n\n \"At least they're human,\"\n Farrell said. Relief replaced in\n some measure his earlier uneasiness.\n \"Which means that they're\n Terran, and can be dealt with\n according to Reclamations routine.\n Is that hulk spaceworthy,\n Xav?\"\n\n\n Xavier's mellow drone assumed\n the convention vibrato that\n indicated stark puzzlement. \"Its\n breached hull makes the ship incapable\n of flight. Apparently it\n is used only to supply power to\n the outlying hamlets.\"", "He was so weak with strain\n and with the success of his coup\n that he all but fainted when\n Stryker, his scanty hair tousled\n and his fat face comical with bewilderment,\n stumbled out of his\n sleeping cubicle and bellowed at\n him.\n\n\n \"What the hell are you doing,\n Arthur? Take us down!\"\n\n\n Farrell gaped at him, speechless.\n\n\n Stryker lumbered past him\n and took the controls, spiraling\n the\nMarco Four\ndown. Men\n swarmed outside the ports when\n the Reclamations craft settled\n gently to the square again. Gibson\n and Xavier reached the ship\n first; Gibson came inside quickly,\n leaving the mechanical outside\n making patient explanations\n to an excited group of Alphardians.\n\n\n Gibson put a reassuring hand\n on Farrell's arm. \"It's all right,\n Arthur. There's no trouble.\"", "Catastrophe struck so suddenly\n that he was caught completely\n unprepared. The helihopper's\n flimsy carriage bucked and\n crumpled. There was a blinding\n flare of electric discharge, a\n pungent stink of ozone and a\n stunning shock that flung him\n headlong into darkness.\nHe awoke slowly with a brutal\n headache and a conviction of\n nightmare heightened by the\n outlandish tone of his surroundings.\n He lay on a narrow bed in\n a whitely antiseptic infirmary,\n an oblong metal cell cluttered\n with a grimly utilitarian array\n of tables and lockers and chests.\n The lighting was harsh and\n overbright and the air hung\n thick with pungent unfamiliar\n chemical odors. From somewhere,\n far off yet at the same\n time as near as the bulkhead\n above him, came the unceasing\n drone of machinery.", "\"From one of the first peripheral\n colonies conquered by the\n Bees,\" Gibson said patiently.\n \"The Hymenops were long-range\n planners, remember, and masters\n of hypnotic conditioning. They\n stocked the ship with a captive\n crew of Terrans conditioned to\n believe themselves descendants\n of the original crew, and\n grounded it here in disabled\n condition. They left for Alphard\n Five then, to watch developments.\n\n\n \"Succeeding generations of\n colonists grew up accepting the\n fact that their ship had missed\n Sirius and made planetfall here—they\n still don't know where\n they really are—by luck. They\n never knew about the Hymenops,\n and they've struggled along\n with an inadequate technology in\n the hope that a later expedition\n would find them. They found the\n truth hard to take, but they're\n eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran\n assimilation.\"", "Farrell shook his head at the\n inference. \"I've read any number\n of fanciful romances on the\n theme, Gib, but it won't stand\n up in practice. No shipboard society\n could last through a thousand-year\n space voyage. It's a\n physical and psychological impossibility.\n There's got to be\n some other explanation.\"\nGibson shrugged. \"We can\n only eliminate the least likely\n alternatives and accept the simplest\n one remaining.\"", "\"Arthur's right,\" Stryker said\n reluctantly. \"An atomic-powered\n ship\ncouldn't\nhave made such a\n trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant\n project couldn't have\n lasted through forty generations,\n speculative fiction to the\n contrary—the later generations\n would have been too far removed\n in ideology and intent from\n their ancestors. They'd have\n adapted to shipboard life as the\n norm. They'd have atrophied\n physically, perhaps even have\n mutated—\"\n\n\n \"And they'd never have\n fought past the Bees during the\n Hymenop invasion and occupation,\"\n Farrell finished triumphantly.\n \"The Bees had better\n detection equipment than we\n had. They'd have picked this\n ship up long before it reached\n Alphard Six.\"", "\"Gib's right,\" he said. He\n nearly added\nas usual\n. \"We're on\n rest leave at the moment, yes,\n but our mission is still to find\n Terran colonies enslaved and\n abandoned by the Bees, not to\n risk our necks and a valuable\n Reorientations ship by landing\n blind on an unobserved planet.\n We're too close already. Cut in\n your shields and find a reconnaissance\n spiral, will you?\"\n\n\n Grumbling, Farrell punched\n coordinates on the Ringwave\n board that lifted the\nMarco Four\nout of her descent and restored\n the bluish enveloping haze of\n her repellors.", "Farrell stared in blank disbelief\n at the anomalous craft on\n the screen. Primitive, as Stryker\n had said, was not the word\n for it: clumsily ovoid, studded\n with torpedo domes and turrets\n and bristling at either end with\n propulsion tubes, it lay at the\n center of its square like a rusted\n relic of a past largely destroyed\n and all but forgotten. What a\n magnificent disregard its builders\n must have had, he thought,\n for their lives and the genetic\n purity of their posterity! The\n sullen atomic fires banked in\n that oxidizing hulk—\n\n\n Stryker said plaintively, \"If\n you're right, Gib, then we're\n more in the dark than ever. How\n could a Terran-built ship eleven\n hundred years old get\nhere\n?\"\n\n\n Gibson, absorbed in his chess-player's\n contemplation of alternatives,\n seemed hardly to hear\n him.", "\"But the ship wasn't here in\n 3000,\" Gibson said, \"and it is\n now. Therefore it must have arrived\n at some time during the\n two hundred years of Hymenop\n occupation and evacuation.\"\n\n\n Farrell, tangled in contradictions,\n swore bitterly. \"But\n why should the Bees let them\n through? The three domes on\n Five are over two hundred years\n old, which means that the Bees\n were here before the ship came.\n Why didn't they blast it or enslave\n its crew?\"\n\n\n \"We haven't touched on all the\n possibilities,\" Gibson reminded\n him. \"We haven't even established\n yet that these people were\n never under Hymenop control.\n Precedent won't hold always, and\n there's no predicting nor evaluating\n the motives of an alien\n race. We never understood the\n Hymenops because there's no\n common ground of logic between\n us. Why try to interpret their\n intentions now?\"", "\"You two did the field work\n on the last location,\" he said.\n \"It's high time I took my turn—and\n God knows I'd go mad if\n I had to stay inship and listen\n to Lee memorizing his Handbook\n subsections or to Gib practicing\n dead languages with Xavier.\"\n\n\n Stryker laughed for the first\n time since the explosion that\n had so nearly wrecked the\nMarco\n Four\n.\n\n\n \"Good enough. Though it\n wouldn't be more diverting to\n listen for hours to you improvising\n enharmonic variations on\n the\nLament for Old Terra\nwith\n your accordion.\"\n\n\n Gibson, characteristically, had\n a refinement to offer.\n\n\n \"They'll be alerted down there\n for a reconnaissance sally,\" he\n said. \"Why not let Xavier take\n the scouter down for overt diversion,\n and drop Arthur off in\n the helihopper for a low-level\n check?\"", "Stryker looked at Farrell. \"All\n right, Arthur?\"\n\n\n \"Good enough,\" Farrell said.\n And to Xavier, who had not\n moved from his post at the magnoscanner:\n \"How does it look,\n Xav? Have you pinned down\n their base yet?\"\n\n\n The mechanical answered him\n in a voice as smooth and clear—and\n as inflectionless—as a 'cello\n note. \"The planet seems uninhabited\n except for a large island\n some three hundred miles in\n diameter. There are twenty-seven\n small agrarian hamlets surrounded\n by cultivated fields.\n There is one city of perhaps a\n thousand buildings with a central\n square. In the square rests\n a grounded spaceship of approximately\n ten times the bulk\n of the\nMarco Four\n.\"", "Suppose, he thought—and derided\n himself for thinking it—one\n of those suicidal old interstellar\n ventures\ndid\nsucceed?\n\n\n Xavier's voice, a mellow\n drone from the helihopper's\n Ringwave-powered visicom, cut\n sharply into his musing. \"The\n ship has discovered the scouter\n and is training an electronic\n beam upon it. My instruments\n record an electromagnetic vibration\n pattern of low power but\n rapidly varying frequency. The\n operation seems pointless.\"\n\n\n Stryker's voice followed, querulous\n with worry: \"I'd better\n pull Xav back. It may be something\n lethal.\"\n\n\n \"Don't,\" Gibson's baritone advised.\n Surprisingly, there was\n excitement in the engineer's\n voice. \"I think they're trying to\n communicate with us.\"", "\"They really came from Terra?\n They lived through a thousand\n years of flight?\"\n\n\n \"The ship left Terra for\n Sirius in 2171,\" Gibson said.\n \"But not with these people\n aboard, or their ancestors. That\n expedition perished after less\n than a light-year when its\n hydroponics system failed. The\n Hymenops found the ship derelict\n when they invaded us, and\n brought it to Alphard Six in\n what was probably their first experiment\n with human subjects.\n The ship's log shows clearly\n what happened to the original\n complement. The rest is deducible\n from the situation here.\"\n\n\n Farrell put his hands to his\n temples and groaned. \"The crash\n must have scrambled my wits.\n Gib, where\ndid\nthey come from?\"" ], [ "Stryker vetoed his offer as\n promptly. \"No, the ZIT comes\n first. We may have to run for it,\n and we can't set up a Transfer\n jump without the computer. It's\n got to be me or Arthur.\"\n\n\n Farrell felt the familiar chill\n of uneasiness that inevitably\n preceded this moment of decision.\n He was not lacking in courage,\n else the circumstances under\n which he had worked for the\n past ten years—the sometimes\n perilous, sometimes downright\n charnel conditions left by the\n fleeing Hymenop conquerors—would\n have broken him long\n ago. But that same hard experience\n had honed rather than\n blunted the edge of his imagination,\n and the prospect of a close-quarters\n stalking of an unknown\n and patently hostile force was\n anything but attractive.", "\"Arthur's right,\" Stryker said\n reluctantly. \"An atomic-powered\n ship\ncouldn't\nhave made such a\n trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant\n project couldn't have\n lasted through forty generations,\n speculative fiction to the\n contrary—the later generations\n would have been too far removed\n in ideology and intent from\n their ancestors. They'd have\n adapted to shipboard life as the\n norm. They'd have atrophied\n physically, perhaps even have\n mutated—\"\n\n\n \"And they'd never have\n fought past the Bees during the\n Hymenop invasion and occupation,\"\n Farrell finished triumphantly.\n \"The Bees had better\n detection equipment than we\n had. They'd have picked this\n ship up long before it reached\n Alphard Six.\"", "When Farrell refused to be\n baited Stryker turned to Gibson,\n who was busily assessing the\n damage done to the ship's more\n fragile equipment, and to Xavier,\n who searched the planet's\n surface with the ship's magnoscanner.\n The\nMarco Four\n, Ringwave\n generators humming gently,\n hung at the moment just\n inside the orbit of Alphard Six's\n single dun-colored moon.\n\n\n Gibson put down a test meter\n with an air of finality.\n\n\n \"Nothing damaged but the\n Zero Interval Transfer computer.\n I can realign that in a couple\n of hours, but it'll have to be\n done before we hit Transfer\n again.\"\nStryker looked dubious.\n \"What if the issue is forced before\n the ZIT unit is repaired?\n Suppose they come up after us?\"", "\"We've touched at every inhabited\n world in this sector, Lee,\n and not one surviving colony has\n developed space travel on its\n own. The Hymenops had a hundred\n years to condition their human\n slaves to ignorance of\n everything beyond their immediate\n environment—the motives\n behind that conditioning usually\n escape us, but that's beside the\n point—and they did a thorough\n job of it. The colonists have had\n no more than a century of freedom\n since the Bees pulled out,\n and four generations simply\n isn't enough time for any subjugated\n culture to climb from\n slavery to interstellar flight.\"\n\n\n Stryker made a padding turn\n about the control room, tugging\n unhappily at the scanty fringe\n of hair the years had left him.", "Suppose, he thought—and derided\n himself for thinking it—one\n of those suicidal old interstellar\n ventures\ndid\nsucceed?\n\n\n Xavier's voice, a mellow\n drone from the helihopper's\n Ringwave-powered visicom, cut\n sharply into his musing. \"The\n ship has discovered the scouter\n and is training an electronic\n beam upon it. My instruments\n record an electromagnetic vibration\n pattern of low power but\n rapidly varying frequency. The\n operation seems pointless.\"\n\n\n Stryker's voice followed, querulous\n with worry: \"I'd better\n pull Xav back. It may be something\n lethal.\"\n\n\n \"Don't,\" Gibson's baritone advised.\n Surprisingly, there was\n excitement in the engineer's\n voice. \"I think they're trying to\n communicate with us.\"", "Stryker turned on him almost\n angrily. \"If they're not Hymenops\n or humans or aliens, then\n what in God's name\nare\nthey?\"\n\"Aye, there's the rub,\" Farrell\n said, quoting a passage\n whose aptness had somehow seen\n it through a dozen reorganizations\n of insular tongue and a\n final translation to universal\n Terran. \"If they're none of those\n three, we've only one conclusion\n left. There's no one down there\n at all—we're victims of the first\n joint hallucination in psychiatric\n history.\"\n\n\n Stryker threw up his hands in\n surrender. \"We can't identify\n them by theorizing, and that\n brings us down to the business\n of first-hand investigation.\n Who's going to bell the cat this\n time?\"\n\n\n \"I'd like to go,\" Gibson said\n at once. \"The ZIT computer can\n wait.\"", "\"Reconnaissance spiral first,\n Arthur,\" Stryker said firmly. He\n chuckled at Farrell's instant\n scowl, his little eyes twinkling\n and his naked paunch quaking\n over the belt of his shipboard\n shorts. \"Chapter One, Subsection\n Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven:\nNo planetfall on an unreclaimed\n world shall be deemed\n safe without proper—\n\"\n\n\n Farrell, as Stryker had expected,\n interrupted with characteristic\n impatience. \"Do you\nsleep\nwith that damned Reclamations\n Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six\n isn't an unreclaimed world—it\n was never colonized before the\n Hymenop invasion back in 3025,\n so why should it be inhabited\n now?\"\n\n\n Gibson, who for four hours\n had not looked up from his interminable\n chess game with\n Xavier, paused with a beleaguered\n knight in one blunt brown\n hand.", "\"But this was never an unreclaimed\n world,\" Farrell said\n with the faint malice of one too\n recently caught in the wrong.\n \"Alphard Six was surveyed and\n seeded with Terran bacteria\n around the year 3000, but the\n Bees invaded before we could\n colonize. And that means we'll\n have to rule out any resurgent\n colonial group down there, because\n Six never had a colony in\n the beginning.\"\n\n\n \"The Bees have been gone for\n over a hundred years,\" Stryker\n said. \"Colonists might have migrated\n from another Terran-occupied\n planet.\"\n\n\n Gibson disagreed.", "\"I doubt that they can. Any\n installation crudely enough\n equipped to trust in guided missiles\n is hardly likely to have developed\n efficient space craft.\"\n\n\n Stryker was not reassured.\n\n\n \"That torpedo of theirs was\n deadly enough,\" he said. \"And\n its nature reflects the nature of\n the people who made it. Any race\n vicious enough to use atomic\n charges is too dangerous to\n trifle with.\" Worry made comical\n creases in his fat, good-humored\n face. \"We'll have to find\n out who they are and why\n they're here, you know.\"\n\n\n \"They can't be Hymenops,\"\n Gibson said promptly. \"First,\n because the Bees pinned their\n faith on Ringwave energy fields,\n as we did, rather than on missiles.\n Second, because there's no\n dome on Six.\"", "\"It wasn't a torpedo at all,\"\n Stryker put in. Understanding\n of the error under which Farrell\n had labored erased his\n earlier irritation, and he chuckled\n commiseratingly. \"They had\n one small boat left for emergency\n missions, and sent it up to\n contact us in the fear that we\n might overlook their settlement\n and move on. The boat was\n atomic powered, and our shield\n screens set off its engines.\"\n\n\n Farrell dropped into a chair at\n the chart table, limp with reaction.\n He was suddenly exhausted,\n and his head ached dully.\n\n\n \"We cracked the communications\n problem early last night,\"\n Gibson said. \"These people use\n an ancient system of electromagnetic\n wave propagation called\n frequency modulation, and once\n Lee and I rigged up a suitable\n transceiver the rest was simple.\n Both Xav and I recognized the\n old language; the natives reported\n your accident, and we came\n down at once.\"", "\"From one of the first peripheral\n colonies conquered by the\n Bees,\" Gibson said patiently.\n \"The Hymenops were long-range\n planners, remember, and masters\n of hypnotic conditioning. They\n stocked the ship with a captive\n crew of Terrans conditioned to\n believe themselves descendants\n of the original crew, and\n grounded it here in disabled\n condition. They left for Alphard\n Five then, to watch developments.\n\n\n \"Succeeding generations of\n colonists grew up accepting the\n fact that their ship had missed\n Sirius and made planetfall here—they\n still don't know where\n they really are—by luck. They\n never knew about the Hymenops,\n and they've struggled along\n with an inadequate technology in\n the hope that a later expedition\n would find them. They found the\n truth hard to take, but they're\n eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran\n assimilation.\"", "\"But I saw them,\" Stryker\n said. \"I fought them for the better\n part of the century they were\n here, and I learned there's no\n predicting nor understanding\n them. We never knew why they\n came nor why they gave up and\n left. How can we know whether\n they'd leave a rear-guard or\n booby trap here?\"\n\n\n He put a paternal hand on\n Farrell's shoulder, understanding\n the younger man's eagerness\n and knowing that their close-knit\n team would have been the\n more poorly balanced without it.", "He was so weak with strain\n and with the success of his coup\n that he all but fainted when\n Stryker, his scanty hair tousled\n and his fat face comical with bewilderment,\n stumbled out of his\n sleeping cubicle and bellowed at\n him.\n\n\n \"What the hell are you doing,\n Arthur? Take us down!\"\n\n\n Farrell gaped at him, speechless.\n\n\n Stryker lumbered past him\n and took the controls, spiraling\n the\nMarco Four\ndown. Men\n swarmed outside the ports when\n the Reclamations craft settled\n gently to the square again. Gibson\n and Xavier reached the ship\n first; Gibson came inside quickly,\n leaving the mechanical outside\n making patient explanations\n to an excited group of Alphardians.\n\n\n Gibson put a reassuring hand\n on Farrell's arm. \"It's all right,\n Arthur. There's no trouble.\"", "Farrell said dumbly, \"I don't\n understand. They didn't shoot\n you and Xav down too?\"\n\n\n It was Gibson's turn to stare.\n\n\n \"No one shot you down! These\n people are primitive enough to\n use metallic power lines to\n carry electricity to their hamlets,\n an anachronism you forgot\n last night. You piloted the helihopper\n into one of those lines,\n and the crash put you out for\n the rest of the night and most\n of today. These Alphardians are\n friendly, so desperately happy to\n be found again that it's really\n pathetic.\"\n\n\n \"\nFriendly?\nThat torpedo—\"", "\"You two did the field work\n on the last location,\" he said.\n \"It's high time I took my turn—and\n God knows I'd go mad if\n I had to stay inship and listen\n to Lee memorizing his Handbook\n subsections or to Gib practicing\n dead languages with Xavier.\"\n\n\n Stryker laughed for the first\n time since the explosion that\n had so nearly wrecked the\nMarco\n Four\n.\n\n\n \"Good enough. Though it\n wouldn't be more diverting to\n listen for hours to you improvising\n enharmonic variations on\n the\nLament for Old Terra\nwith\n your accordion.\"\n\n\n Gibson, characteristically, had\n a refinement to offer.\n\n\n \"They'll be alerted down there\n for a reconnaissance sally,\" he\n said. \"Why not let Xavier take\n the scouter down for overt diversion,\n and drop Arthur off in\n the helihopper for a low-level\n check?\"", "\"No point in taking chances,\"\n Gibson said in his neutral baritone.\n He shrugged thick bare\n shoulders, his humorless black-browed\n face unmoved, when\n Farrell included him in his\n scowl. \"We're two hundred twenty-six\n light-years from Sol, at\n the old limits of Terran expansion,\n and there's no knowing\n what we may turn up here. Alphard's\n was one of the first systems\n the Bees took over. It must\n have been one of the last to be\n abandoned when they pulled back\n to 70 Ophiuchi.\"\n\n\n \"And I think\nyou\nlive for the\n day,\" Farrell said acidly, \"when\n we'll stumble across a functioning\n dome of live, buzzing Hymenops.\n Damn it, Gib, the Bees\n pulled out a hundred years ago,\n before you and I were born—neither\n of us ever saw a Hymenop,\n and never will!\"", "Farrell threw up his hands in\n disgust. \"Next you'll say this is\n an ancient Terran expedition\n that actually succeeded! There's\n only one way to answer the\n questions we've raised, and\n that's to go down and see for\n ourselves. Ready, Xav?\"\nBut uncertainty nagged uneasily\n at him when Farrell found\n himself alone in the helihopper\n with the forest flowing beneath\n like a leafy river and Xavier's\n scouter disappearing bulletlike\n into the dusk ahead.\n\n\n We never found a colony so\n advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose\n this is a Hymenop experiment\n that really paid off? The\n Bees did some weird and wonderful\n things with human\n guinea pigs—what if they've\n created the ultimate booby trap\n here, and primed it with conditioned\n myrmidons in our own\n form?", "They crowded about the vision\n screen, jostling Xavier's jointed\n gray shape in their interest. The\n central city lay in minutest detail\n before them, the battered\n hulk of the grounded ship glinting\n rustily in the late afternoon\n sunlight. Streets radiated away\n from the square in orderly succession,\n the whole so clearly\n depicted that they could see the\n throngs of people surging up\n and down, tiny foreshortened\n faces turned toward the sky.\n\n\n \"At least they're human,\"\n Farrell said. Relief replaced in\n some measure his earlier uneasiness.\n \"Which means that they're\n Terran, and can be dealt with\n according to Reclamations routine.\n Is that hulk spaceworthy,\n Xav?\"\n\n\n Xavier's mellow drone assumed\n the convention vibrato that\n indicated stark puzzlement. \"Its\n breached hull makes the ship incapable\n of flight. Apparently it\n is used only to supply power to\n the outlying hamlets.\"", "Stryker's caution was justified\n on the instant. The speeding\n streamlined shape that had flashed\n up unobserved from below\n swerved sharply and exploded in\n a cataclysmic blaze of atomic\n fire that rocked the ship wildly\n and flung the three men to the\n floor in a jangling roar of\n alarms.\n\"So the Handbook tacticians\n knew what they were about,\"\n Stryker said minutes later. Deliberately\n he adopted the smug\n tone best calculated to sting Farrell\n out of his first self-reproach,\n and grinned when the navigator\n bristled defensively. \"Some of\n their enjoinders seem a little\n stuffy and obvious at times, but\n they're eminently sensible.\"", "\"Logic or not-logic,\" Gibson\n said. \"If it's a Terran artifact,\n we can discover the reason for\n its presence. If not—\"\n\n\n \"\nAny problem posed by one\n group of human beings\n,\" Stryker\n quoted his Handbook, \"\ncan be\n resolved by any other group, regardless\n of ideology or conditioning,\n because the basic\n perceptive abilities of both must\n be the same through identical\n heredity\n.\"\n\n\n \"If it's an imitation, and this\n is another Hymenop experiment\n in condition ecology, then we're\n stumped to begin with,\" Gibson\n finished. \"Because we're not\n equipped to evaluate the psychology\n of alien motivation. We've\n got to determine first which case\n applies here.\"\nHe waited for Farrell's expected\n irony, and when the\n navigator forestalled him by remaining\n grimly quiet, continued." ], [ "\"But this was never an unreclaimed\n world,\" Farrell said\n with the faint malice of one too\n recently caught in the wrong.\n \"Alphard Six was surveyed and\n seeded with Terran bacteria\n around the year 3000, but the\n Bees invaded before we could\n colonize. And that means we'll\n have to rule out any resurgent\n colonial group down there, because\n Six never had a colony in\n the beginning.\"\n\n\n \"The Bees have been gone for\n over a hundred years,\" Stryker\n said. \"Colonists might have migrated\n from another Terran-occupied\n planet.\"\n\n\n Gibson disagreed.", "\"From one of the first peripheral\n colonies conquered by the\n Bees,\" Gibson said patiently.\n \"The Hymenops were long-range\n planners, remember, and masters\n of hypnotic conditioning. They\n stocked the ship with a captive\n crew of Terrans conditioned to\n believe themselves descendants\n of the original crew, and\n grounded it here in disabled\n condition. They left for Alphard\n Five then, to watch developments.\n\n\n \"Succeeding generations of\n colonists grew up accepting the\n fact that their ship had missed\n Sirius and made planetfall here—they\n still don't know where\n they really are—by luck. They\n never knew about the Hymenops,\n and they've struggled along\n with an inadequate technology in\n the hope that a later expedition\n would find them. They found the\n truth hard to take, but they're\n eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran\n assimilation.\"", "\"Reconnaissance spiral first,\n Arthur,\" Stryker said firmly. He\n chuckled at Farrell's instant\n scowl, his little eyes twinkling\n and his naked paunch quaking\n over the belt of his shipboard\n shorts. \"Chapter One, Subsection\n Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven:\nNo planetfall on an unreclaimed\n world shall be deemed\n safe without proper—\n\"\n\n\n Farrell, as Stryker had expected,\n interrupted with characteristic\n impatience. \"Do you\nsleep\nwith that damned Reclamations\n Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six\n isn't an unreclaimed world—it\n was never colonized before the\n Hymenop invasion back in 3025,\n so why should it be inhabited\n now?\"\n\n\n Gibson, who for four hours\n had not looked up from his interminable\n chess game with\n Xavier, paused with a beleaguered\n knight in one blunt brown\n hand.", "\"Arthur's right,\" Stryker said\n reluctantly. \"An atomic-powered\n ship\ncouldn't\nhave made such a\n trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant\n project couldn't have\n lasted through forty generations,\n speculative fiction to the\n contrary—the later generations\n would have been too far removed\n in ideology and intent from\n their ancestors. They'd have\n adapted to shipboard life as the\n norm. They'd have atrophied\n physically, perhaps even have\n mutated—\"\n\n\n \"And they'd never have\n fought past the Bees during the\n Hymenop invasion and occupation,\"\n Farrell finished triumphantly.\n \"The Bees had better\n detection equipment than we\n had. They'd have picked this\n ship up long before it reached\n Alphard Six.\"", "\"They really came from Terra?\n They lived through a thousand\n years of flight?\"\n\n\n \"The ship left Terra for\n Sirius in 2171,\" Gibson said.\n \"But not with these people\n aboard, or their ancestors. That\n expedition perished after less\n than a light-year when its\n hydroponics system failed. The\n Hymenops found the ship derelict\n when they invaded us, and\n brought it to Alphard Six in\n what was probably their first experiment\n with human subjects.\n The ship's log shows clearly\n what happened to the original\n complement. The rest is deducible\n from the situation here.\"\n\n\n Farrell put his hands to his\n temples and groaned. \"The crash\n must have scrambled my wits.\n Gib, where\ndid\nthey come from?\"", "\"If they're neither Hymenops\n nor resurgent colonists,\" he said,\n \"then there's only one choice remaining—they're\n aliens from a\n system we haven't reached yet,\n beyond the old sphere of Terran\n exploration. We always assumed\n that we'd find other races out\n here someday, and that they'd\n be as different from us in form\n and motivation as the Hymenops.\n Why not now?\"\n\n\n Gibson said seriously, \"Not\n probable, Lee. The same objection\n that rules out the Bees applies\n to any trans-Alphardian\n culture—they'd have to be beyond\n the atomic fission stage,\n else they'd never have attempted\n interstellar flight. The Ringwave\n with its Zero Interval Transfer\n principle and instantaneous communications\n applications is the\n only answer to long-range travel,\n and if they'd had that they\n wouldn't have bothered with\n atomics.\"", "Farrell threw up his hands in\n disgust. \"Next you'll say this is\n an ancient Terran expedition\n that actually succeeded! There's\n only one way to answer the\n questions we've raised, and\n that's to go down and see for\n ourselves. Ready, Xav?\"\nBut uncertainty nagged uneasily\n at him when Farrell found\n himself alone in the helihopper\n with the forest flowing beneath\n like a leafy river and Xavier's\n scouter disappearing bulletlike\n into the dusk ahead.\n\n\n We never found a colony so\n advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose\n this is a Hymenop experiment\n that really paid off? The\n Bees did some weird and wonderful\n things with human\n guinea pigs—what if they've\n created the ultimate booby trap\n here, and primed it with conditioned\n myrmidons in our own\n form?", "\"No point in taking chances,\"\n Gibson said in his neutral baritone.\n He shrugged thick bare\n shoulders, his humorless black-browed\n face unmoved, when\n Farrell included him in his\n scowl. \"We're two hundred twenty-six\n light-years from Sol, at\n the old limits of Terran expansion,\n and there's no knowing\n what we may turn up here. Alphard's\n was one of the first systems\n the Bees took over. It must\n have been one of the last to be\n abandoned when they pulled back\n to 70 Ophiuchi.\"\n\n\n \"And I think\nyou\nlive for the\n day,\" Farrell said acidly, \"when\n we'll stumble across a functioning\n dome of live, buzzing Hymenops.\n Damn it, Gib, the Bees\n pulled out a hundred years ago,\n before you and I were born—neither\n of us ever saw a Hymenop,\n and never will!\"", "Farrell shook his head at the\n inference. \"I've read any number\n of fanciful romances on the\n theme, Gib, but it won't stand\n up in practice. No shipboard society\n could last through a thousand-year\n space voyage. It's a\n physical and psychological impossibility.\n There's got to be\n some other explanation.\"\nGibson shrugged. \"We can\n only eliminate the least likely\n alternatives and accept the simplest\n one remaining.\"", "\"Any problem posed by one group of\n human beings can be resolved by any\n other group.\" That's what the Handbook\n said. But did that include primitive\n humans? Or the Bees? Or a ...\nCONTROL GROUP\nBy ROGER DEE\nThe\n cool green disk of Alphard\n Six on the screen was\n infinitely welcome after the arid\n desolation and stinking swamplands\n of the inner planets, an\n airy jewel of a world that might\n have been designed specifically\n for the hard-earned month of\n rest ahead. Navigator Farrell,\n youngest and certainly most impulsive\n of the three-man Terran\n Reclamations crew, would have\n set the\nMarco Four\ndown at\n once but for the greater caution\n of Stryker, nominally captain of\n the group, and of Gibson, engineer,\n and linguist. Xavier, the\n ship's little mechanical, had—as\n was usual and proper—no voice\n in the matter.", "\"I doubt that they can. Any\n installation crudely enough\n equipped to trust in guided missiles\n is hardly likely to have developed\n efficient space craft.\"\n\n\n Stryker was not reassured.\n\n\n \"That torpedo of theirs was\n deadly enough,\" he said. \"And\n its nature reflects the nature of\n the people who made it. Any race\n vicious enough to use atomic\n charges is too dangerous to\n trifle with.\" Worry made comical\n creases in his fat, good-humored\n face. \"We'll have to find\n out who they are and why\n they're here, you know.\"\n\n\n \"They can't be Hymenops,\"\n Gibson said promptly. \"First,\n because the Bees pinned their\n faith on Ringwave energy fields,\n as we did, rather than on missiles.\n Second, because there's no\n dome on Six.\"", "\"Logic or not-logic,\" Gibson\n said. \"If it's a Terran artifact,\n we can discover the reason for\n its presence. If not—\"\n\n\n \"\nAny problem posed by one\n group of human beings\n,\" Stryker\n quoted his Handbook, \"\ncan be\n resolved by any other group, regardless\n of ideology or conditioning,\n because the basic\n perceptive abilities of both must\n be the same through identical\n heredity\n.\"\n\n\n \"If it's an imitation, and this\n is another Hymenop experiment\n in condition ecology, then we're\n stumped to begin with,\" Gibson\n finished. \"Because we're not\n equipped to evaluate the psychology\n of alien motivation. We've\n got to determine first which case\n applies here.\"\nHe waited for Farrell's expected\n irony, and when the\n navigator forestalled him by remaining\n grimly quiet, continued.", "Stryker turned on him almost\n angrily. \"If they're not Hymenops\n or humans or aliens, then\n what in God's name\nare\nthey?\"\n\"Aye, there's the rub,\" Farrell\n said, quoting a passage\n whose aptness had somehow seen\n it through a dozen reorganizations\n of insular tongue and a\n final translation to universal\n Terran. \"If they're none of those\n three, we've only one conclusion\n left. There's no one down there\n at all—we're victims of the first\n joint hallucination in psychiatric\n history.\"\n\n\n Stryker threw up his hands in\n surrender. \"We can't identify\n them by theorizing, and that\n brings us down to the business\n of first-hand investigation.\n Who's going to bell the cat this\n time?\"\n\n\n \"I'd like to go,\" Gibson said\n at once. \"The ZIT computer can\n wait.\"", "\"We've touched at every inhabited\n world in this sector, Lee,\n and not one surviving colony has\n developed space travel on its\n own. The Hymenops had a hundred\n years to condition their human\n slaves to ignorance of\n everything beyond their immediate\n environment—the motives\n behind that conditioning usually\n escape us, but that's beside the\n point—and they did a thorough\n job of it. The colonists have had\n no more than a century of freedom\n since the Bees pulled out,\n and four generations simply\n isn't enough time for any subjugated\n culture to climb from\n slavery to interstellar flight.\"\n\n\n Stryker made a padding turn\n about the control room, tugging\n unhappily at the scanty fringe\n of hair the years had left him.", "\"The obvious premise is that\n a Terran ship must have been\n built by Terrans. Question: Was\n it flown here, or built here?\"\n\n\n \"It couldn't have been built\n here,\" Stryker said. \"Alphard\n Six was surveyed just before the\n Bees took over in 3025, and there\n was nothing of the sort here\n then. It couldn't have been built\n during the two and a quarter\n centuries since; it's obviously\n much older than that. It was\n flown here.\"\n\n\n \"We progress,\" Farrell said\n dryly. \"Now if you'll tell us\nhow\n,\n we're ready to move.\"", "Stryker looked at Farrell. \"All\n right, Arthur?\"\n\n\n \"Good enough,\" Farrell said.\n And to Xavier, who had not\n moved from his post at the magnoscanner:\n \"How does it look,\n Xav? Have you pinned down\n their base yet?\"\n\n\n The mechanical answered him\n in a voice as smooth and clear—and\n as inflectionless—as a 'cello\n note. \"The planet seems uninhabited\n except for a large island\n some three hundred miles in\n diameter. There are twenty-seven\n small agrarian hamlets surrounded\n by cultivated fields.\n There is one city of perhaps a\n thousand buildings with a central\n square. In the square rests\n a grounded spaceship of approximately\n ten times the bulk\n of the\nMarco Four\n.\"", "\"Then we can eliminate this\n one now,\" Farrell said flatly. \"It\n entails a thousand-year voyage,\n which is an impossibility for any\n gross reaction drive; the application\n of suspended animation\n or longevity or a successive-generation\n program, and a final\n penetration of Hymenop-occupied\n space to set up a colony under\n the very antennae of the\n Bees. Longevity wasn't developed\n until around the year 3000—Lee\n here was one of the first to\n profit by it, if you remember—and\n suspended animation is still\n to come. So there's one theory\n you can forget.\"", "\"It wasn't a torpedo at all,\"\n Stryker put in. Understanding\n of the error under which Farrell\n had labored erased his\n earlier irritation, and he chuckled\n commiseratingly. \"They had\n one small boat left for emergency\n missions, and sent it up to\n contact us in the fear that we\n might overlook their settlement\n and move on. The boat was\n atomic powered, and our shield\n screens set off its engines.\"\n\n\n Farrell dropped into a chair at\n the chart table, limp with reaction.\n He was suddenly exhausted,\n and his head ached dully.\n\n\n \"We cracked the communications\n problem early last night,\"\n Gibson said. \"These people use\n an ancient system of electromagnetic\n wave propagation called\n frequency modulation, and once\n Lee and I rigged up a suitable\n transceiver the rest was simple.\n Both Xav and I recognized the\n old language; the natives reported\n your accident, and we came\n down at once.\"", "\"But the ship wasn't here in\n 3000,\" Gibson said, \"and it is\n now. Therefore it must have arrived\n at some time during the\n two hundred years of Hymenop\n occupation and evacuation.\"\n\n\n Farrell, tangled in contradictions,\n swore bitterly. \"But\n why should the Bees let them\n through? The three domes on\n Five are over two hundred years\n old, which means that the Bees\n were here before the ship came.\n Why didn't they blast it or enslave\n its crew?\"\n\n\n \"We haven't touched on all the\n possibilities,\" Gibson reminded\n him. \"We haven't even established\n yet that these people were\n never under Hymenop control.\n Precedent won't hold always, and\n there's no predicting nor evaluating\n the motives of an alien\n race. We never understood the\n Hymenops because there's no\n common ground of logic between\n us. Why try to interpret their\n intentions now?\"", "When Farrell refused to be\n baited Stryker turned to Gibson,\n who was busily assessing the\n damage done to the ship's more\n fragile equipment, and to Xavier,\n who searched the planet's\n surface with the ship's magnoscanner.\n The\nMarco Four\n, Ringwave\n generators humming gently,\n hung at the moment just\n inside the orbit of Alphard Six's\n single dun-colored moon.\n\n\n Gibson put down a test meter\n with an air of finality.\n\n\n \"Nothing damaged but the\n Zero Interval Transfer computer.\n I can realign that in a couple\n of hours, but it'll have to be\n done before we hit Transfer\n again.\"\nStryker looked dubious.\n \"What if the issue is forced before\n the ZIT unit is repaired?\n Suppose they come up after us?\"" ], [ "\"I doubt that they can. Any\n installation crudely enough\n equipped to trust in guided missiles\n is hardly likely to have developed\n efficient space craft.\"\n\n\n Stryker was not reassured.\n\n\n \"That torpedo of theirs was\n deadly enough,\" he said. \"And\n its nature reflects the nature of\n the people who made it. Any race\n vicious enough to use atomic\n charges is too dangerous to\n trifle with.\" Worry made comical\n creases in his fat, good-humored\n face. \"We'll have to find\n out who they are and why\n they're here, you know.\"\n\n\n \"They can't be Hymenops,\"\n Gibson said promptly. \"First,\n because the Bees pinned their\n faith on Ringwave energy fields,\n as we did, rather than on missiles.\n Second, because there's no\n dome on Six.\"", "\"They really came from Terra?\n They lived through a thousand\n years of flight?\"\n\n\n \"The ship left Terra for\n Sirius in 2171,\" Gibson said.\n \"But not with these people\n aboard, or their ancestors. That\n expedition perished after less\n than a light-year when its\n hydroponics system failed. The\n Hymenops found the ship derelict\n when they invaded us, and\n brought it to Alphard Six in\n what was probably their first experiment\n with human subjects.\n The ship's log shows clearly\n what happened to the original\n complement. The rest is deducible\n from the situation here.\"\n\n\n Farrell put his hands to his\n temples and groaned. \"The crash\n must have scrambled my wits.\n Gib, where\ndid\nthey come from?\"", "\"From one of the first peripheral\n colonies conquered by the\n Bees,\" Gibson said patiently.\n \"The Hymenops were long-range\n planners, remember, and masters\n of hypnotic conditioning. They\n stocked the ship with a captive\n crew of Terrans conditioned to\n believe themselves descendants\n of the original crew, and\n grounded it here in disabled\n condition. They left for Alphard\n Five then, to watch developments.\n\n\n \"Succeeding generations of\n colonists grew up accepting the\n fact that their ship had missed\n Sirius and made planetfall here—they\n still don't know where\n they really are—by luck. They\n never knew about the Hymenops,\n and they've struggled along\n with an inadequate technology in\n the hope that a later expedition\n would find them. They found the\n truth hard to take, but they're\n eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran\n assimilation.\"", "\"Arthur's right,\" Stryker said\n reluctantly. \"An atomic-powered\n ship\ncouldn't\nhave made such a\n trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant\n project couldn't have\n lasted through forty generations,\n speculative fiction to the\n contrary—the later generations\n would have been too far removed\n in ideology and intent from\n their ancestors. They'd have\n adapted to shipboard life as the\n norm. They'd have atrophied\n physically, perhaps even have\n mutated—\"\n\n\n \"And they'd never have\n fought past the Bees during the\n Hymenop invasion and occupation,\"\n Farrell finished triumphantly.\n \"The Bees had better\n detection equipment than we\n had. They'd have picked this\n ship up long before it reached\n Alphard Six.\"", "When Farrell refused to be\n baited Stryker turned to Gibson,\n who was busily assessing the\n damage done to the ship's more\n fragile equipment, and to Xavier,\n who searched the planet's\n surface with the ship's magnoscanner.\n The\nMarco Four\n, Ringwave\n generators humming gently,\n hung at the moment just\n inside the orbit of Alphard Six's\n single dun-colored moon.\n\n\n Gibson put down a test meter\n with an air of finality.\n\n\n \"Nothing damaged but the\n Zero Interval Transfer computer.\n I can realign that in a couple\n of hours, but it'll have to be\n done before we hit Transfer\n again.\"\nStryker looked dubious.\n \"What if the issue is forced before\n the ZIT unit is repaired?\n Suppose they come up after us?\"", "\"Reconnaissance spiral first,\n Arthur,\" Stryker said firmly. He\n chuckled at Farrell's instant\n scowl, his little eyes twinkling\n and his naked paunch quaking\n over the belt of his shipboard\n shorts. \"Chapter One, Subsection\n Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven:\nNo planetfall on an unreclaimed\n world shall be deemed\n safe without proper—\n\"\n\n\n Farrell, as Stryker had expected,\n interrupted with characteristic\n impatience. \"Do you\nsleep\nwith that damned Reclamations\n Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six\n isn't an unreclaimed world—it\n was never colonized before the\n Hymenop invasion back in 3025,\n so why should it be inhabited\n now?\"\n\n\n Gibson, who for four hours\n had not looked up from his interminable\n chess game with\n Xavier, paused with a beleaguered\n knight in one blunt brown\n hand.", "\"Logic or not-logic,\" Gibson\n said. \"If it's a Terran artifact,\n we can discover the reason for\n its presence. If not—\"\n\n\n \"\nAny problem posed by one\n group of human beings\n,\" Stryker\n quoted his Handbook, \"\ncan be\n resolved by any other group, regardless\n of ideology or conditioning,\n because the basic\n perceptive abilities of both must\n be the same through identical\n heredity\n.\"\n\n\n \"If it's an imitation, and this\n is another Hymenop experiment\n in condition ecology, then we're\n stumped to begin with,\" Gibson\n finished. \"Because we're not\n equipped to evaluate the psychology\n of alien motivation. We've\n got to determine first which case\n applies here.\"\nHe waited for Farrell's expected\n irony, and when the\n navigator forestalled him by remaining\n grimly quiet, continued.", "\"No point in taking chances,\"\n Gibson said in his neutral baritone.\n He shrugged thick bare\n shoulders, his humorless black-browed\n face unmoved, when\n Farrell included him in his\n scowl. \"We're two hundred twenty-six\n light-years from Sol, at\n the old limits of Terran expansion,\n and there's no knowing\n what we may turn up here. Alphard's\n was one of the first systems\n the Bees took over. It must\n have been one of the last to be\n abandoned when they pulled back\n to 70 Ophiuchi.\"\n\n\n \"And I think\nyou\nlive for the\n day,\" Farrell said acidly, \"when\n we'll stumble across a functioning\n dome of live, buzzing Hymenops.\n Damn it, Gib, the Bees\n pulled out a hundred years ago,\n before you and I were born—neither\n of us ever saw a Hymenop,\n and never will!\"", "\"But the ship wasn't here in\n 3000,\" Gibson said, \"and it is\n now. Therefore it must have arrived\n at some time during the\n two hundred years of Hymenop\n occupation and evacuation.\"\n\n\n Farrell, tangled in contradictions,\n swore bitterly. \"But\n why should the Bees let them\n through? The three domes on\n Five are over two hundred years\n old, which means that the Bees\n were here before the ship came.\n Why didn't they blast it or enslave\n its crew?\"\n\n\n \"We haven't touched on all the\n possibilities,\" Gibson reminded\n him. \"We haven't even established\n yet that these people were\n never under Hymenop control.\n Precedent won't hold always, and\n there's no predicting nor evaluating\n the motives of an alien\n race. We never understood the\n Hymenops because there's no\n common ground of logic between\n us. Why try to interpret their\n intentions now?\"", "\"If they're neither Hymenops\n nor resurgent colonists,\" he said,\n \"then there's only one choice remaining—they're\n aliens from a\n system we haven't reached yet,\n beyond the old sphere of Terran\n exploration. We always assumed\n that we'd find other races out\n here someday, and that they'd\n be as different from us in form\n and motivation as the Hymenops.\n Why not now?\"\n\n\n Gibson said seriously, \"Not\n probable, Lee. The same objection\n that rules out the Bees applies\n to any trans-Alphardian\n culture—they'd have to be beyond\n the atomic fission stage,\n else they'd never have attempted\n interstellar flight. The Ringwave\n with its Zero Interval Transfer\n principle and instantaneous communications\n applications is the\n only answer to long-range travel,\n and if they'd had that they\n wouldn't have bothered with\n atomics.\"", "Stryker's caution was justified\n on the instant. The speeding\n streamlined shape that had flashed\n up unobserved from below\n swerved sharply and exploded in\n a cataclysmic blaze of atomic\n fire that rocked the ship wildly\n and flung the three men to the\n floor in a jangling roar of\n alarms.\n\"So the Handbook tacticians\n knew what they were about,\"\n Stryker said minutes later. Deliberately\n he adopted the smug\n tone best calculated to sting Farrell\n out of his first self-reproach,\n and grinned when the navigator\n bristled defensively. \"Some of\n their enjoinders seem a little\n stuffy and obvious at times, but\n they're eminently sensible.\"", "\"But this was never an unreclaimed\n world,\" Farrell said\n with the faint malice of one too\n recently caught in the wrong.\n \"Alphard Six was surveyed and\n seeded with Terran bacteria\n around the year 3000, but the\n Bees invaded before we could\n colonize. And that means we'll\n have to rule out any resurgent\n colonial group down there, because\n Six never had a colony in\n the beginning.\"\n\n\n \"The Bees have been gone for\n over a hundred years,\" Stryker\n said. \"Colonists might have migrated\n from another Terran-occupied\n planet.\"\n\n\n Gibson disagreed.", "Stryker turned on him almost\n angrily. \"If they're not Hymenops\n or humans or aliens, then\n what in God's name\nare\nthey?\"\n\"Aye, there's the rub,\" Farrell\n said, quoting a passage\n whose aptness had somehow seen\n it through a dozen reorganizations\n of insular tongue and a\n final translation to universal\n Terran. \"If they're none of those\n three, we've only one conclusion\n left. There's no one down there\n at all—we're victims of the first\n joint hallucination in psychiatric\n history.\"\n\n\n Stryker threw up his hands in\n surrender. \"We can't identify\n them by theorizing, and that\n brings us down to the business\n of first-hand investigation.\n Who's going to bell the cat this\n time?\"\n\n\n \"I'd like to go,\" Gibson said\n at once. \"The ZIT computer can\n wait.\"", "Farrell threw up his hands in\n disgust. \"Next you'll say this is\n an ancient Terran expedition\n that actually succeeded! There's\n only one way to answer the\n questions we've raised, and\n that's to go down and see for\n ourselves. Ready, Xav?\"\nBut uncertainty nagged uneasily\n at him when Farrell found\n himself alone in the helihopper\n with the forest flowing beneath\n like a leafy river and Xavier's\n scouter disappearing bulletlike\n into the dusk ahead.\n\n\n We never found a colony so\n advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose\n this is a Hymenop experiment\n that really paid off? The\n Bees did some weird and wonderful\n things with human\n guinea pigs—what if they've\n created the ultimate booby trap\n here, and primed it with conditioned\n myrmidons in our own\n form?", "\"The obvious premise is that\n a Terran ship must have been\n built by Terrans. Question: Was\n it flown here, or built here?\"\n\n\n \"It couldn't have been built\n here,\" Stryker said. \"Alphard\n Six was surveyed just before the\n Bees took over in 3025, and there\n was nothing of the sort here\n then. It couldn't have been built\n during the two and a quarter\n centuries since; it's obviously\n much older than that. It was\n flown here.\"\n\n\n \"We progress,\" Farrell said\n dryly. \"Now if you'll tell us\nhow\n,\n we're ready to move.\"", "\"Then we can eliminate this\n one now,\" Farrell said flatly. \"It\n entails a thousand-year voyage,\n which is an impossibility for any\n gross reaction drive; the application\n of suspended animation\n or longevity or a successive-generation\n program, and a final\n penetration of Hymenop-occupied\n space to set up a colony under\n the very antennae of the\n Bees. Longevity wasn't developed\n until around the year 3000—Lee\n here was one of the first to\n profit by it, if you remember—and\n suspended animation is still\n to come. So there's one theory\n you can forget.\"", "Stryker vetoed his offer as\n promptly. \"No, the ZIT comes\n first. We may have to run for it,\n and we can't set up a Transfer\n jump without the computer. It's\n got to be me or Arthur.\"\n\n\n Farrell felt the familiar chill\n of uneasiness that inevitably\n preceded this moment of decision.\n He was not lacking in courage,\n else the circumstances under\n which he had worked for the\n past ten years—the sometimes\n perilous, sometimes downright\n charnel conditions left by the\n fleeing Hymenop conquerors—would\n have broken him long\n ago. But that same hard experience\n had honed rather than\n blunted the edge of his imagination,\n and the prospect of a close-quarters\n stalking of an unknown\n and patently hostile force was\n anything but attractive.", "Farrell said dumbly, \"I don't\n understand. They didn't shoot\n you and Xav down too?\"\n\n\n It was Gibson's turn to stare.\n\n\n \"No one shot you down! These\n people are primitive enough to\n use metallic power lines to\n carry electricity to their hamlets,\n an anachronism you forgot\n last night. You piloted the helihopper\n into one of those lines,\n and the crash put you out for\n the rest of the night and most\n of today. These Alphardians are\n friendly, so desperately happy to\n be found again that it's really\n pathetic.\"\n\n\n \"\nFriendly?\nThat torpedo—\"", "\"Gib's right,\" he said. He\n nearly added\nas usual\n. \"We're on\n rest leave at the moment, yes,\n but our mission is still to find\n Terran colonies enslaved and\n abandoned by the Bees, not to\n risk our necks and a valuable\n Reorientations ship by landing\n blind on an unobserved planet.\n We're too close already. Cut in\n your shields and find a reconnaissance\n spiral, will you?\"\n\n\n Grumbling, Farrell punched\n coordinates on the Ringwave\n board that lifted the\nMarco Four\nout of her descent and restored\n the bluish enveloping haze of\n her repellors.", "Farrell shook his head at the\n inference. \"I've read any number\n of fanciful romances on the\n theme, Gib, but it won't stand\n up in practice. No shipboard society\n could last through a thousand-year\n space voyage. It's a\n physical and psychological impossibility.\n There's got to be\n some other explanation.\"\nGibson shrugged. \"We can\n only eliminate the least likely\n alternatives and accept the simplest\n one remaining.\"" ], [ "\"Arthur's right,\" Stryker said\n reluctantly. \"An atomic-powered\n ship\ncouldn't\nhave made such a\n trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant\n project couldn't have\n lasted through forty generations,\n speculative fiction to the\n contrary—the later generations\n would have been too far removed\n in ideology and intent from\n their ancestors. They'd have\n adapted to shipboard life as the\n norm. They'd have atrophied\n physically, perhaps even have\n mutated—\"\n\n\n \"And they'd never have\n fought past the Bees during the\n Hymenop invasion and occupation,\"\n Farrell finished triumphantly.\n \"The Bees had better\n detection equipment than we\n had. They'd have picked this\n ship up long before it reached\n Alphard Six.\"", "Farrell said dumbly, \"I don't\n understand. They didn't shoot\n you and Xav down too?\"\n\n\n It was Gibson's turn to stare.\n\n\n \"No one shot you down! These\n people are primitive enough to\n use metallic power lines to\n carry electricity to their hamlets,\n an anachronism you forgot\n last night. You piloted the helihopper\n into one of those lines,\n and the crash put you out for\n the rest of the night and most\n of today. These Alphardians are\n friendly, so desperately happy to\n be found again that it's really\n pathetic.\"\n\n\n \"\nFriendly?\nThat torpedo—\"", "\"They really came from Terra?\n They lived through a thousand\n years of flight?\"\n\n\n \"The ship left Terra for\n Sirius in 2171,\" Gibson said.\n \"But not with these people\n aboard, or their ancestors. That\n expedition perished after less\n than a light-year when its\n hydroponics system failed. The\n Hymenops found the ship derelict\n when they invaded us, and\n brought it to Alphard Six in\n what was probably their first experiment\n with human subjects.\n The ship's log shows clearly\n what happened to the original\n complement. The rest is deducible\n from the situation here.\"\n\n\n Farrell put his hands to his\n temples and groaned. \"The crash\n must have scrambled my wits.\n Gib, where\ndid\nthey come from?\"", "\"From one of the first peripheral\n colonies conquered by the\n Bees,\" Gibson said patiently.\n \"The Hymenops were long-range\n planners, remember, and masters\n of hypnotic conditioning. They\n stocked the ship with a captive\n crew of Terrans conditioned to\n believe themselves descendants\n of the original crew, and\n grounded it here in disabled\n condition. They left for Alphard\n Five then, to watch developments.\n\n\n \"Succeeding generations of\n colonists grew up accepting the\n fact that their ship had missed\n Sirius and made planetfall here—they\n still don't know where\n they really are—by luck. They\n never knew about the Hymenops,\n and they've struggled along\n with an inadequate technology in\n the hope that a later expedition\n would find them. They found the\n truth hard to take, but they're\n eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran\n assimilation.\"", "They crowded about the vision\n screen, jostling Xavier's jointed\n gray shape in their interest. The\n central city lay in minutest detail\n before them, the battered\n hulk of the grounded ship glinting\n rustily in the late afternoon\n sunlight. Streets radiated away\n from the square in orderly succession,\n the whole so clearly\n depicted that they could see the\n throngs of people surging up\n and down, tiny foreshortened\n faces turned toward the sky.\n\n\n \"At least they're human,\"\n Farrell said. Relief replaced in\n some measure his earlier uneasiness.\n \"Which means that they're\n Terran, and can be dealt with\n according to Reclamations routine.\n Is that hulk spaceworthy,\n Xav?\"\n\n\n Xavier's mellow drone assumed\n the convention vibrato that\n indicated stark puzzlement. \"Its\n breached hull makes the ship incapable\n of flight. Apparently it\n is used only to supply power to\n the outlying hamlets.\"", "The mechanical put a flexible\n gray finger upon an indicator\n graph derived from a composite\n section of detector meters. \"The\n power transmitted seems to be\n gross electric current conveyed\n by metallic cables. It is generated\n through a crudely governed\n process of continuous atomic\n fission.\"\nFarrell, himself appalled by\n the information, still found himself\n able to chuckle at Stryker's\n bellow of consternation.\n\n\n \"\nContinuous fission?\nGood\n God, only madmen would deliberately\n run a risk like that!\"\n\n\n Farrell prodded him with\n cheerful malice. \"Why say mad\nmen\n? Maybe they're humanoid\n aliens who thrive on hard radiation\n and look on the danger of\n being blown to hell in the middle\n of the night as a satisfactory\n risk.\"", "Stryker looked at Farrell. \"All\n right, Arthur?\"\n\n\n \"Good enough,\" Farrell said.\n And to Xavier, who had not\n moved from his post at the magnoscanner:\n \"How does it look,\n Xav? Have you pinned down\n their base yet?\"\n\n\n The mechanical answered him\n in a voice as smooth and clear—and\n as inflectionless—as a 'cello\n note. \"The planet seems uninhabited\n except for a large island\n some three hundred miles in\n diameter. There are twenty-seven\n small agrarian hamlets surrounded\n by cultivated fields.\n There is one city of perhaps a\n thousand buildings with a central\n square. In the square rests\n a grounded spaceship of approximately\n ten times the bulk\n of the\nMarco Four\n.\"", "When Farrell refused to be\n baited Stryker turned to Gibson,\n who was busily assessing the\n damage done to the ship's more\n fragile equipment, and to Xavier,\n who searched the planet's\n surface with the ship's magnoscanner.\n The\nMarco Four\n, Ringwave\n generators humming gently,\n hung at the moment just\n inside the orbit of Alphard Six's\n single dun-colored moon.\n\n\n Gibson put down a test meter\n with an air of finality.\n\n\n \"Nothing damaged but the\n Zero Interval Transfer computer.\n I can realign that in a couple\n of hours, but it'll have to be\n done before we hit Transfer\n again.\"\nStryker looked dubious.\n \"What if the issue is forced before\n the ZIT unit is repaired?\n Suppose they come up after us?\"", "\"But this was never an unreclaimed\n world,\" Farrell said\n with the faint malice of one too\n recently caught in the wrong.\n \"Alphard Six was surveyed and\n seeded with Terran bacteria\n around the year 3000, but the\n Bees invaded before we could\n colonize. And that means we'll\n have to rule out any resurgent\n colonial group down there, because\n Six never had a colony in\n the beginning.\"\n\n\n \"The Bees have been gone for\n over a hundred years,\" Stryker\n said. \"Colonists might have migrated\n from another Terran-occupied\n planet.\"\n\n\n Gibson disagreed.", "Farrell shook his head at the\n inference. \"I've read any number\n of fanciful romances on the\n theme, Gib, but it won't stand\n up in practice. No shipboard society\n could last through a thousand-year\n space voyage. It's a\n physical and psychological impossibility.\n There's got to be\n some other explanation.\"\nGibson shrugged. \"We can\n only eliminate the least likely\n alternatives and accept the simplest\n one remaining.\"", "\"It wasn't a torpedo at all,\"\n Stryker put in. Understanding\n of the error under which Farrell\n had labored erased his\n earlier irritation, and he chuckled\n commiseratingly. \"They had\n one small boat left for emergency\n missions, and sent it up to\n contact us in the fear that we\n might overlook their settlement\n and move on. The boat was\n atomic powered, and our shield\n screens set off its engines.\"\n\n\n Farrell dropped into a chair at\n the chart table, limp with reaction.\n He was suddenly exhausted,\n and his head ached dully.\n\n\n \"We cracked the communications\n problem early last night,\"\n Gibson said. \"These people use\n an ancient system of electromagnetic\n wave propagation called\n frequency modulation, and once\n Lee and I rigged up a suitable\n transceiver the rest was simple.\n Both Xav and I recognized the\n old language; the natives reported\n your accident, and we came\n down at once.\"", "\"I think the ship was built on\n Terra during the Twenty-second\n Century,\" Gibson said calmly.\n \"The atomic wars during that\n period destroyed practically all\n historical records along with the\n technology of the time, but I've\n read well-authenticated reports\n of atomic-driven ships leaving\n Terra before then for the nearer\n stars. The human race climbed\n out of its pit again during the\n Twenty-third Century and developed\n the technology that gave\n us the Ringwave. Certainly no\n atomic-powered ships were built\n after the wars—our records are\n complete from that time.\"", "\"I doubt that they can. Any\n installation crudely enough\n equipped to trust in guided missiles\n is hardly likely to have developed\n efficient space craft.\"\n\n\n Stryker was not reassured.\n\n\n \"That torpedo of theirs was\n deadly enough,\" he said. \"And\n its nature reflects the nature of\n the people who made it. Any race\n vicious enough to use atomic\n charges is too dangerous to\n trifle with.\" Worry made comical\n creases in his fat, good-humored\n face. \"We'll have to find\n out who they are and why\n they're here, you know.\"\n\n\n \"They can't be Hymenops,\"\n Gibson said promptly. \"First,\n because the Bees pinned their\n faith on Ringwave energy fields,\n as we did, rather than on missiles.\n Second, because there's no\n dome on Six.\"", "\"Any problem posed by one group of\n human beings can be resolved by any\n other group.\" That's what the Handbook\n said. But did that include primitive\n humans? Or the Bees? Or a ...\nCONTROL GROUP\nBy ROGER DEE\nThe\n cool green disk of Alphard\n Six on the screen was\n infinitely welcome after the arid\n desolation and stinking swamplands\n of the inner planets, an\n airy jewel of a world that might\n have been designed specifically\n for the hard-earned month of\n rest ahead. Navigator Farrell,\n youngest and certainly most impulsive\n of the three-man Terran\n Reclamations crew, would have\n set the\nMarco Four\ndown at\n once but for the greater caution\n of Stryker, nominally captain of\n the group, and of Gibson, engineer,\n and linguist. Xavier, the\n ship's little mechanical, had—as\n was usual and proper—no voice\n in the matter.", "\"Reconnaissance spiral first,\n Arthur,\" Stryker said firmly. He\n chuckled at Farrell's instant\n scowl, his little eyes twinkling\n and his naked paunch quaking\n over the belt of his shipboard\n shorts. \"Chapter One, Subsection\n Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven:\nNo planetfall on an unreclaimed\n world shall be deemed\n safe without proper—\n\"\n\n\n Farrell, as Stryker had expected,\n interrupted with characteristic\n impatience. \"Do you\nsleep\nwith that damned Reclamations\n Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six\n isn't an unreclaimed world—it\n was never colonized before the\n Hymenop invasion back in 3025,\n so why should it be inhabited\n now?\"\n\n\n Gibson, who for four hours\n had not looked up from his interminable\n chess game with\n Xavier, paused with a beleaguered\n knight in one blunt brown\n hand.", "He was so weak with strain\n and with the success of his coup\n that he all but fainted when\n Stryker, his scanty hair tousled\n and his fat face comical with bewilderment,\n stumbled out of his\n sleeping cubicle and bellowed at\n him.\n\n\n \"What the hell are you doing,\n Arthur? Take us down!\"\n\n\n Farrell gaped at him, speechless.\n\n\n Stryker lumbered past him\n and took the controls, spiraling\n the\nMarco Four\ndown. Men\n swarmed outside the ports when\n the Reclamations craft settled\n gently to the square again. Gibson\n and Xavier reached the ship\n first; Gibson came inside quickly,\n leaving the mechanical outside\n making patient explanations\n to an excited group of Alphardians.\n\n\n Gibson put a reassuring hand\n on Farrell's arm. \"It's all right,\n Arthur. There's no trouble.\"", "\"They're not alien,\" Gibson\n said positively. \"Their architecture\n is Terran, and so is their\n ship. The ship is incredibly\n primitive, though; those batteries\n of tubes at either end—\"\n\n\n \"Are thrust reaction jets,\"\n Stryker finished in an awed\n voice. \"Primitive isn't the word,\n Gib—the thing is prehistoric!\n Rocket propulsion hasn't been\n used in spacecraft since—how\n long, Xav?\"\n\n\n Xavier supplied the information\n with mechanical infallibility.\n \"Since the year 2100 when\n the Ringwave propulsion-communication\n principle was discovered.\n That principle has served\n men since.\"", "\"No point in taking chances,\"\n Gibson said in his neutral baritone.\n He shrugged thick bare\n shoulders, his humorless black-browed\n face unmoved, when\n Farrell included him in his\n scowl. \"We're two hundred twenty-six\n light-years from Sol, at\n the old limits of Terran expansion,\n and there's no knowing\n what we may turn up here. Alphard's\n was one of the first systems\n the Bees took over. It must\n have been one of the last to be\n abandoned when they pulled back\n to 70 Ophiuchi.\"\n\n\n \"And I think\nyou\nlive for the\n day,\" Farrell said acidly, \"when\n we'll stumble across a functioning\n dome of live, buzzing Hymenops.\n Damn it, Gib, the Bees\n pulled out a hundred years ago,\n before you and I were born—neither\n of us ever saw a Hymenop,\n and never will!\"", "Suppose, he thought—and derided\n himself for thinking it—one\n of those suicidal old interstellar\n ventures\ndid\nsucceed?\n\n\n Xavier's voice, a mellow\n drone from the helihopper's\n Ringwave-powered visicom, cut\n sharply into his musing. \"The\n ship has discovered the scouter\n and is training an electronic\n beam upon it. My instruments\n record an electromagnetic vibration\n pattern of low power but\n rapidly varying frequency. The\n operation seems pointless.\"\n\n\n Stryker's voice followed, querulous\n with worry: \"I'd better\n pull Xav back. It may be something\n lethal.\"\n\n\n \"Don't,\" Gibson's baritone advised.\n Surprisingly, there was\n excitement in the engineer's\n voice. \"I think they're trying to\n communicate with us.\"", "Without pausing in his stride\n he sprang out and through the\n port and down the steep plane\n of the ramp. The rough stone\n pavement of the square drummed\n underfoot; sore muscles\n tore at him, and weakness was\n like a weight about his neck. He\n expected momentarily to be\n blasted out of existence.\n\n\n He reached the\nMarco Four\nwith the startled shouts of his\n guide ringing unintelligibly in\n his ears. The port yawned; he\n plunged inside and stabbed at\n controls without waiting to seat\n himself. The ports swung shut.\n The ship darted up under his\n manipulation and arrowed into\n space with an acceleration that\n sprung his knees and made his\n vision swim blackly." ], [ "Farrell shook his head at the\n inference. \"I've read any number\n of fanciful romances on the\n theme, Gib, but it won't stand\n up in practice. No shipboard society\n could last through a thousand-year\n space voyage. It's a\n physical and psychological impossibility.\n There's got to be\n some other explanation.\"\nGibson shrugged. \"We can\n only eliminate the least likely\n alternatives and accept the simplest\n one remaining.\"", "\"Arthur's right,\" Stryker said\n reluctantly. \"An atomic-powered\n ship\ncouldn't\nhave made such a\n trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant\n project couldn't have\n lasted through forty generations,\n speculative fiction to the\n contrary—the later generations\n would have been too far removed\n in ideology and intent from\n their ancestors. They'd have\n adapted to shipboard life as the\n norm. They'd have atrophied\n physically, perhaps even have\n mutated—\"\n\n\n \"And they'd never have\n fought past the Bees during the\n Hymenop invasion and occupation,\"\n Farrell finished triumphantly.\n \"The Bees had better\n detection equipment than we\n had. They'd have picked this\n ship up long before it reached\n Alphard Six.\"", "\"They really came from Terra?\n They lived through a thousand\n years of flight?\"\n\n\n \"The ship left Terra for\n Sirius in 2171,\" Gibson said.\n \"But not with these people\n aboard, or their ancestors. That\n expedition perished after less\n than a light-year when its\n hydroponics system failed. The\n Hymenops found the ship derelict\n when they invaded us, and\n brought it to Alphard Six in\n what was probably their first experiment\n with human subjects.\n The ship's log shows clearly\n what happened to the original\n complement. The rest is deducible\n from the situation here.\"\n\n\n Farrell put his hands to his\n temples and groaned. \"The crash\n must have scrambled my wits.\n Gib, where\ndid\nthey come from?\"", "\"The obvious premise is that\n a Terran ship must have been\n built by Terrans. Question: Was\n it flown here, or built here?\"\n\n\n \"It couldn't have been built\n here,\" Stryker said. \"Alphard\n Six was surveyed just before the\n Bees took over in 3025, and there\n was nothing of the sort here\n then. It couldn't have been built\n during the two and a quarter\n centuries since; it's obviously\n much older than that. It was\n flown here.\"\n\n\n \"We progress,\" Farrell said\n dryly. \"Now if you'll tell us\nhow\n,\n we're ready to move.\"", "\"But this was never an unreclaimed\n world,\" Farrell said\n with the faint malice of one too\n recently caught in the wrong.\n \"Alphard Six was surveyed and\n seeded with Terran bacteria\n around the year 3000, but the\n Bees invaded before we could\n colonize. And that means we'll\n have to rule out any resurgent\n colonial group down there, because\n Six never had a colony in\n the beginning.\"\n\n\n \"The Bees have been gone for\n over a hundred years,\" Stryker\n said. \"Colonists might have migrated\n from another Terran-occupied\n planet.\"\n\n\n Gibson disagreed.", "\"From one of the first peripheral\n colonies conquered by the\n Bees,\" Gibson said patiently.\n \"The Hymenops were long-range\n planners, remember, and masters\n of hypnotic conditioning. They\n stocked the ship with a captive\n crew of Terrans conditioned to\n believe themselves descendants\n of the original crew, and\n grounded it here in disabled\n condition. They left for Alphard\n Five then, to watch developments.\n\n\n \"Succeeding generations of\n colonists grew up accepting the\n fact that their ship had missed\n Sirius and made planetfall here—they\n still don't know where\n they really are—by luck. They\n never knew about the Hymenops,\n and they've struggled along\n with an inadequate technology in\n the hope that a later expedition\n would find them. They found the\n truth hard to take, but they're\n eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran\n assimilation.\"", "\"Logic or not-logic,\" Gibson\n said. \"If it's a Terran artifact,\n we can discover the reason for\n its presence. If not—\"\n\n\n \"\nAny problem posed by one\n group of human beings\n,\" Stryker\n quoted his Handbook, \"\ncan be\n resolved by any other group, regardless\n of ideology or conditioning,\n because the basic\n perceptive abilities of both must\n be the same through identical\n heredity\n.\"\n\n\n \"If it's an imitation, and this\n is another Hymenop experiment\n in condition ecology, then we're\n stumped to begin with,\" Gibson\n finished. \"Because we're not\n equipped to evaluate the psychology\n of alien motivation. We've\n got to determine first which case\n applies here.\"\nHe waited for Farrell's expected\n irony, and when the\n navigator forestalled him by remaining\n grimly quiet, continued.", "Farrell threw up his hands in\n disgust. \"Next you'll say this is\n an ancient Terran expedition\n that actually succeeded! There's\n only one way to answer the\n questions we've raised, and\n that's to go down and see for\n ourselves. Ready, Xav?\"\nBut uncertainty nagged uneasily\n at him when Farrell found\n himself alone in the helihopper\n with the forest flowing beneath\n like a leafy river and Xavier's\n scouter disappearing bulletlike\n into the dusk ahead.\n\n\n We never found a colony so\n advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose\n this is a Hymenop experiment\n that really paid off? The\n Bees did some weird and wonderful\n things with human\n guinea pigs—what if they've\n created the ultimate booby trap\n here, and primed it with conditioned\n myrmidons in our own\n form?", "\"Reconnaissance spiral first,\n Arthur,\" Stryker said firmly. He\n chuckled at Farrell's instant\n scowl, his little eyes twinkling\n and his naked paunch quaking\n over the belt of his shipboard\n shorts. \"Chapter One, Subsection\n Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven:\nNo planetfall on an unreclaimed\n world shall be deemed\n safe without proper—\n\"\n\n\n Farrell, as Stryker had expected,\n interrupted with characteristic\n impatience. \"Do you\nsleep\nwith that damned Reclamations\n Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six\n isn't an unreclaimed world—it\n was never colonized before the\n Hymenop invasion back in 3025,\n so why should it be inhabited\n now?\"\n\n\n Gibson, who for four hours\n had not looked up from his interminable\n chess game with\n Xavier, paused with a beleaguered\n knight in one blunt brown\n hand.", "\"But the ship wasn't here in\n 3000,\" Gibson said, \"and it is\n now. Therefore it must have arrived\n at some time during the\n two hundred years of Hymenop\n occupation and evacuation.\"\n\n\n Farrell, tangled in contradictions,\n swore bitterly. \"But\n why should the Bees let them\n through? The three domes on\n Five are over two hundred years\n old, which means that the Bees\n were here before the ship came.\n Why didn't they blast it or enslave\n its crew?\"\n\n\n \"We haven't touched on all the\n possibilities,\" Gibson reminded\n him. \"We haven't even established\n yet that these people were\n never under Hymenop control.\n Precedent won't hold always, and\n there's no predicting nor evaluating\n the motives of an alien\n race. We never understood the\n Hymenops because there's no\n common ground of logic between\n us. Why try to interpret their\n intentions now?\"", "\"No point in taking chances,\"\n Gibson said in his neutral baritone.\n He shrugged thick bare\n shoulders, his humorless black-browed\n face unmoved, when\n Farrell included him in his\n scowl. \"We're two hundred twenty-six\n light-years from Sol, at\n the old limits of Terran expansion,\n and there's no knowing\n what we may turn up here. Alphard's\n was one of the first systems\n the Bees took over. It must\n have been one of the last to be\n abandoned when they pulled back\n to 70 Ophiuchi.\"\n\n\n \"And I think\nyou\nlive for the\n day,\" Farrell said acidly, \"when\n we'll stumble across a functioning\n dome of live, buzzing Hymenops.\n Damn it, Gib, the Bees\n pulled out a hundred years ago,\n before you and I were born—neither\n of us ever saw a Hymenop,\n and never will!\"", "\"Any problem posed by one group of\n human beings can be resolved by any\n other group.\" That's what the Handbook\n said. But did that include primitive\n humans? Or the Bees? Or a ...\nCONTROL GROUP\nBy ROGER DEE\nThe\n cool green disk of Alphard\n Six on the screen was\n infinitely welcome after the arid\n desolation and stinking swamplands\n of the inner planets, an\n airy jewel of a world that might\n have been designed specifically\n for the hard-earned month of\n rest ahead. Navigator Farrell,\n youngest and certainly most impulsive\n of the three-man Terran\n Reclamations crew, would have\n set the\nMarco Four\ndown at\n once but for the greater caution\n of Stryker, nominally captain of\n the group, and of Gibson, engineer,\n and linguist. Xavier, the\n ship's little mechanical, had—as\n was usual and proper—no voice\n in the matter.", "Farrell stared in blank disbelief\n at the anomalous craft on\n the screen. Primitive, as Stryker\n had said, was not the word\n for it: clumsily ovoid, studded\n with torpedo domes and turrets\n and bristling at either end with\n propulsion tubes, it lay at the\n center of its square like a rusted\n relic of a past largely destroyed\n and all but forgotten. What a\n magnificent disregard its builders\n must have had, he thought,\n for their lives and the genetic\n purity of their posterity! The\n sullen atomic fires banked in\n that oxidizing hulk—\n\n\n Stryker said plaintively, \"If\n you're right, Gib, then we're\n more in the dark than ever. How\n could a Terran-built ship eleven\n hundred years old get\nhere\n?\"\n\n\n Gibson, absorbed in his chess-player's\n contemplation of alternatives,\n seemed hardly to hear\n him.", "\"Then we can eliminate this\n one now,\" Farrell said flatly. \"It\n entails a thousand-year voyage,\n which is an impossibility for any\n gross reaction drive; the application\n of suspended animation\n or longevity or a successive-generation\n program, and a final\n penetration of Hymenop-occupied\n space to set up a colony under\n the very antennae of the\n Bees. Longevity wasn't developed\n until around the year 3000—Lee\n here was one of the first to\n profit by it, if you remember—and\n suspended animation is still\n to come. So there's one theory\n you can forget.\"", "\"There were three empty\n domes on Five, which is a desert\n planet,\" Farrell pointed out.\n \"Why didn't they settle Six? It's\n a more habitable world.\"\n\n\n Gibson shrugged. \"I know the\n Bees always erected domes on\n every planet they colonized, Arthur,\n but precedent is a fallible\n tool. And it's even more firmly\n established that there's no possibility\n of our rationalizing the\n motivations of a culture as alien\n as the Hymenops'—we've been\n over that argument a hundred\n times on other reclaimed\n worlds.\"", "\"We've touched at every inhabited\n world in this sector, Lee,\n and not one surviving colony has\n developed space travel on its\n own. The Hymenops had a hundred\n years to condition their human\n slaves to ignorance of\n everything beyond their immediate\n environment—the motives\n behind that conditioning usually\n escape us, but that's beside the\n point—and they did a thorough\n job of it. The colonists have had\n no more than a century of freedom\n since the Bees pulled out,\n and four generations simply\n isn't enough time for any subjugated\n culture to climb from\n slavery to interstellar flight.\"\n\n\n Stryker made a padding turn\n about the control room, tugging\n unhappily at the scanty fringe\n of hair the years had left him.", "One of those old ventures\nhad\nsucceeded, he thought, and was\n awed by the daring of that thousand-year\n odyssey. The realization\n left him more alarmed than\n before—for what technical marvels\n might not an isolated group\n of such dogged specialists have\n developed during a millennium\n of application?\n\n\n Such a weapon as had brought\n down the helihopper and scouter\n was patently beyond reach of his\n own latter-day technology. Perhaps,\n he thought, its possession\n explained the presence of these\n people here in the first stronghold\n of the Hymenops; perhaps\n they had even fought and defeated\n the Bees on their own invaded\n ground.", "\"If they're neither Hymenops\n nor resurgent colonists,\" he said,\n \"then there's only one choice remaining—they're\n aliens from a\n system we haven't reached yet,\n beyond the old sphere of Terran\n exploration. We always assumed\n that we'd find other races out\n here someday, and that they'd\n be as different from us in form\n and motivation as the Hymenops.\n Why not now?\"\n\n\n Gibson said seriously, \"Not\n probable, Lee. The same objection\n that rules out the Bees applies\n to any trans-Alphardian\n culture—they'd have to be beyond\n the atomic fission stage,\n else they'd never have attempted\n interstellar flight. The Ringwave\n with its Zero Interval Transfer\n principle and instantaneous communications\n applications is the\n only answer to long-range travel,\n and if they'd had that they\n wouldn't have bothered with\n atomics.\"", "Stryker turned on him almost\n angrily. \"If they're not Hymenops\n or humans or aliens, then\n what in God's name\nare\nthey?\"\n\"Aye, there's the rub,\" Farrell\n said, quoting a passage\n whose aptness had somehow seen\n it through a dozen reorganizations\n of insular tongue and a\n final translation to universal\n Terran. \"If they're none of those\n three, we've only one conclusion\n left. There's no one down there\n at all—we're victims of the first\n joint hallucination in psychiatric\n history.\"\n\n\n Stryker threw up his hands in\n surrender. \"We can't identify\n them by theorizing, and that\n brings us down to the business\n of first-hand investigation.\n Who's going to bell the cat this\n time?\"\n\n\n \"I'd like to go,\" Gibson said\n at once. \"The ZIT computer can\n wait.\"", "\"I doubt that they can. Any\n installation crudely enough\n equipped to trust in guided missiles\n is hardly likely to have developed\n efficient space craft.\"\n\n\n Stryker was not reassured.\n\n\n \"That torpedo of theirs was\n deadly enough,\" he said. \"And\n its nature reflects the nature of\n the people who made it. Any race\n vicious enough to use atomic\n charges is too dangerous to\n trifle with.\" Worry made comical\n creases in his fat, good-humored\n face. \"We'll have to find\n out who they are and why\n they're here, you know.\"\n\n\n \"They can't be Hymenops,\"\n Gibson said promptly. \"First,\n because the Bees pinned their\n faith on Ringwave energy fields,\n as we did, rather than on missiles.\n Second, because there's no\n dome on Six.\"" ], [ "Farrell said dumbly, \"I don't\n understand. They didn't shoot\n you and Xav down too?\"\n\n\n It was Gibson's turn to stare.\n\n\n \"No one shot you down! These\n people are primitive enough to\n use metallic power lines to\n carry electricity to their hamlets,\n an anachronism you forgot\n last night. You piloted the helihopper\n into one of those lines,\n and the crash put you out for\n the rest of the night and most\n of today. These Alphardians are\n friendly, so desperately happy to\n be found again that it's really\n pathetic.\"\n\n\n \"\nFriendly?\nThat torpedo—\"", "Farrell shook his head at the\n inference. \"I've read any number\n of fanciful romances on the\n theme, Gib, but it won't stand\n up in practice. No shipboard society\n could last through a thousand-year\n space voyage. It's a\n physical and psychological impossibility.\n There's got to be\n some other explanation.\"\nGibson shrugged. \"We can\n only eliminate the least likely\n alternatives and accept the simplest\n one remaining.\"", "He was so weak with strain\n and with the success of his coup\n that he all but fainted when\n Stryker, his scanty hair tousled\n and his fat face comical with bewilderment,\n stumbled out of his\n sleeping cubicle and bellowed at\n him.\n\n\n \"What the hell are you doing,\n Arthur? Take us down!\"\n\n\n Farrell gaped at him, speechless.\n\n\n Stryker lumbered past him\n and took the controls, spiraling\n the\nMarco Four\ndown. Men\n swarmed outside the ports when\n the Reclamations craft settled\n gently to the square again. Gibson\n and Xavier reached the ship\n first; Gibson came inside quickly,\n leaving the mechanical outside\n making patient explanations\n to an excited group of Alphardians.\n\n\n Gibson put a reassuring hand\n on Farrell's arm. \"It's all right,\n Arthur. There's no trouble.\"", "\"Gib's right,\" he said. He\n nearly added\nas usual\n. \"We're on\n rest leave at the moment, yes,\n but our mission is still to find\n Terran colonies enslaved and\n abandoned by the Bees, not to\n risk our necks and a valuable\n Reorientations ship by landing\n blind on an unobserved planet.\n We're too close already. Cut in\n your shields and find a reconnaissance\n spiral, will you?\"\n\n\n Grumbling, Farrell punched\n coordinates on the Ringwave\n board that lifted the\nMarco Four\nout of her descent and restored\n the bluish enveloping haze of\n her repellors.", "When Farrell refused to be\n baited Stryker turned to Gibson,\n who was busily assessing the\n damage done to the ship's more\n fragile equipment, and to Xavier,\n who searched the planet's\n surface with the ship's magnoscanner.\n The\nMarco Four\n, Ringwave\n generators humming gently,\n hung at the moment just\n inside the orbit of Alphard Six's\n single dun-colored moon.\n\n\n Gibson put down a test meter\n with an air of finality.\n\n\n \"Nothing damaged but the\n Zero Interval Transfer computer.\n I can realign that in a couple\n of hours, but it'll have to be\n done before we hit Transfer\n again.\"\nStryker looked dubious.\n \"What if the issue is forced before\n the ZIT unit is repaired?\n Suppose they come up after us?\"", "\"No point in taking chances,\"\n Gibson said in his neutral baritone.\n He shrugged thick bare\n shoulders, his humorless black-browed\n face unmoved, when\n Farrell included him in his\n scowl. \"We're two hundred twenty-six\n light-years from Sol, at\n the old limits of Terran expansion,\n and there's no knowing\n what we may turn up here. Alphard's\n was one of the first systems\n the Bees took over. It must\n have been one of the last to be\n abandoned when they pulled back\n to 70 Ophiuchi.\"\n\n\n \"And I think\nyou\nlive for the\n day,\" Farrell said acidly, \"when\n we'll stumble across a functioning\n dome of live, buzzing Hymenops.\n Damn it, Gib, the Bees\n pulled out a hundred years ago,\n before you and I were born—neither\n of us ever saw a Hymenop,\n and never will!\"", "Farrell stared in blank disbelief\n at the anomalous craft on\n the screen. Primitive, as Stryker\n had said, was not the word\n for it: clumsily ovoid, studded\n with torpedo domes and turrets\n and bristling at either end with\n propulsion tubes, it lay at the\n center of its square like a rusted\n relic of a past largely destroyed\n and all but forgotten. What a\n magnificent disregard its builders\n must have had, he thought,\n for their lives and the genetic\n purity of their posterity! The\n sullen atomic fires banked in\n that oxidizing hulk—\n\n\n Stryker said plaintively, \"If\n you're right, Gib, then we're\n more in the dark than ever. How\n could a Terran-built ship eleven\n hundred years old get\nhere\n?\"\n\n\n Gibson, absorbed in his chess-player's\n contemplation of alternatives,\n seemed hardly to hear\n him.", "Stryker turned on him almost\n angrily. \"If they're not Hymenops\n or humans or aliens, then\n what in God's name\nare\nthey?\"\n\"Aye, there's the rub,\" Farrell\n said, quoting a passage\n whose aptness had somehow seen\n it through a dozen reorganizations\n of insular tongue and a\n final translation to universal\n Terran. \"If they're none of those\n three, we've only one conclusion\n left. There's no one down there\n at all—we're victims of the first\n joint hallucination in psychiatric\n history.\"\n\n\n Stryker threw up his hands in\n surrender. \"We can't identify\n them by theorizing, and that\n brings us down to the business\n of first-hand investigation.\n Who's going to bell the cat this\n time?\"\n\n\n \"I'd like to go,\" Gibson said\n at once. \"The ZIT computer can\n wait.\"", "\"It wasn't a torpedo at all,\"\n Stryker put in. Understanding\n of the error under which Farrell\n had labored erased his\n earlier irritation, and he chuckled\n commiseratingly. \"They had\n one small boat left for emergency\n missions, and sent it up to\n contact us in the fear that we\n might overlook their settlement\n and move on. The boat was\n atomic powered, and our shield\n screens set off its engines.\"\n\n\n Farrell dropped into a chair at\n the chart table, limp with reaction.\n He was suddenly exhausted,\n and his head ached dully.\n\n\n \"We cracked the communications\n problem early last night,\"\n Gibson said. \"These people use\n an ancient system of electromagnetic\n wave propagation called\n frequency modulation, and once\n Lee and I rigged up a suitable\n transceiver the rest was simple.\n Both Xav and I recognized the\n old language; the natives reported\n your accident, and we came\n down at once.\"", "\"Reconnaissance spiral first,\n Arthur,\" Stryker said firmly. He\n chuckled at Farrell's instant\n scowl, his little eyes twinkling\n and his naked paunch quaking\n over the belt of his shipboard\n shorts. \"Chapter One, Subsection\n Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven:\nNo planetfall on an unreclaimed\n world shall be deemed\n safe without proper—\n\"\n\n\n Farrell, as Stryker had expected,\n interrupted with characteristic\n impatience. \"Do you\nsleep\nwith that damned Reclamations\n Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six\n isn't an unreclaimed world—it\n was never colonized before the\n Hymenop invasion back in 3025,\n so why should it be inhabited\n now?\"\n\n\n Gibson, who for four hours\n had not looked up from his interminable\n chess game with\n Xavier, paused with a beleaguered\n knight in one blunt brown\n hand.", "He followed his white-smocked\n guide through a power room\n where great crude generators\n whirred ponderously, pouring\n out gross electric current into\n arm-thick cables. They were\n nearing the bow of the ship\n when they passed by another\n open port and Farrell, glancing\n out over the lowered rampway,\n saw that his fears for Stryker\n and Gibson had been well\n grounded.\n\n\n The\nMarco Four\n, ports open,\n lay grounded outside.\nFarrell could not have said,\n later, whether his next move\n was planned or reflexive. The\n whole desperate issue seemed to\n hang suspended for a breathless\n moment upon a hair-fine edge of\n decision, and in that instant he\n made his bid.", "\"Logic or not-logic,\" Gibson\n said. \"If it's a Terran artifact,\n we can discover the reason for\n its presence. If not—\"\n\n\n \"\nAny problem posed by one\n group of human beings\n,\" Stryker\n quoted his Handbook, \"\ncan be\n resolved by any other group, regardless\n of ideology or conditioning,\n because the basic\n perceptive abilities of both must\n be the same through identical\n heredity\n.\"\n\n\n \"If it's an imitation, and this\n is another Hymenop experiment\n in condition ecology, then we're\n stumped to begin with,\" Gibson\n finished. \"Because we're not\n equipped to evaluate the psychology\n of alien motivation. We've\n got to determine first which case\n applies here.\"\nHe waited for Farrell's expected\n irony, and when the\n navigator forestalled him by remaining\n grimly quiet, continued.", "Farrell sat up, groaning,\n when full consciousness made his\n position clear. He had been shot\n down by God knew what sort of\n devastating unorthodox weapon\n and was a prisoner in the\n grounded ship.\n\n\n At his rising, a white-smocked\n fat man with anachronistic spectacles\n and close-cropped gray\n hair came into the room, moving\n with the professional assurance\n of a medic. The man stopped\n short at Farrell's stare and\n spoke; his words were utterly\n unintelligible, but his gesture\n was unmistakable.", "Stryker's caution was justified\n on the instant. The speeding\n streamlined shape that had flashed\n up unobserved from below\n swerved sharply and exploded in\n a cataclysmic blaze of atomic\n fire that rocked the ship wildly\n and flung the three men to the\n floor in a jangling roar of\n alarms.\n\"So the Handbook tacticians\n knew what they were about,\"\n Stryker said minutes later. Deliberately\n he adopted the smug\n tone best calculated to sting Farrell\n out of his first self-reproach,\n and grinned when the navigator\n bristled defensively. \"Some of\n their enjoinders seem a little\n stuffy and obvious at times, but\n they're eminently sensible.\"", "\"But it does, for once,\" Gibson\n said. \"The Bees set up this\n colony as a control unit to study\n the species they were invading,\n and they had to give their\n specimens a normal—if obsolete—background\n in order to determine\n their capabilities. The fact\n that their experiment didn't tell\n them what they wanted to know\n may have had a direct bearing\n on their decision to pull out.\"\n\n\n Farrell shook his head. \"It's\n a reverse application, isn't it of\n the old saw about Terrans being\n incapable of understanding an\n alien culture?\"", "\"But the ship wasn't here in\n 3000,\" Gibson said, \"and it is\n now. Therefore it must have arrived\n at some time during the\n two hundred years of Hymenop\n occupation and evacuation.\"\n\n\n Farrell, tangled in contradictions,\n swore bitterly. \"But\n why should the Bees let them\n through? The three domes on\n Five are over two hundred years\n old, which means that the Bees\n were here before the ship came.\n Why didn't they blast it or enslave\n its crew?\"\n\n\n \"We haven't touched on all the\n possibilities,\" Gibson reminded\n him. \"We haven't even established\n yet that these people were\n never under Hymenop control.\n Precedent won't hold always, and\n there's no predicting nor evaluating\n the motives of an alien\n race. We never understood the\n Hymenops because there's no\n common ground of logic between\n us. Why try to interpret their\n intentions now?\"", "\"They really came from Terra?\n They lived through a thousand\n years of flight?\"\n\n\n \"The ship left Terra for\n Sirius in 2171,\" Gibson said.\n \"But not with these people\n aboard, or their ancestors. That\n expedition perished after less\n than a light-year when its\n hydroponics system failed. The\n Hymenops found the ship derelict\n when they invaded us, and\n brought it to Alphard Six in\n what was probably their first experiment\n with human subjects.\n The ship's log shows clearly\n what happened to the original\n complement. The rest is deducible\n from the situation here.\"\n\n\n Farrell put his hands to his\n temples and groaned. \"The crash\n must have scrambled my wits.\n Gib, where\ndid\nthey come from?\"", "\"You two did the field work\n on the last location,\" he said.\n \"It's high time I took my turn—and\n God knows I'd go mad if\n I had to stay inship and listen\n to Lee memorizing his Handbook\n subsections or to Gib practicing\n dead languages with Xavier.\"\n\n\n Stryker laughed for the first\n time since the explosion that\n had so nearly wrecked the\nMarco\n Four\n.\n\n\n \"Good enough. Though it\n wouldn't be more diverting to\n listen for hours to you improvising\n enharmonic variations on\n the\nLament for Old Terra\nwith\n your accordion.\"\n\n\n Gibson, characteristically, had\n a refinement to offer.\n\n\n \"They'll be alerted down there\n for a reconnaissance sally,\" he\n said. \"Why not let Xavier take\n the scouter down for overt diversion,\n and drop Arthur off in\n the helihopper for a low-level\n check?\"", "\"But I saw them,\" Stryker\n said. \"I fought them for the better\n part of the century they were\n here, and I learned there's no\n predicting nor understanding\n them. We never knew why they\n came nor why they gave up and\n left. How can we know whether\n they'd leave a rear-guard or\n booby trap here?\"\n\n\n He put a paternal hand on\n Farrell's shoulder, understanding\n the younger man's eagerness\n and knowing that their close-knit\n team would have been the\n more poorly balanced without it.", "\"From one of the first peripheral\n colonies conquered by the\n Bees,\" Gibson said patiently.\n \"The Hymenops were long-range\n planners, remember, and masters\n of hypnotic conditioning. They\n stocked the ship with a captive\n crew of Terrans conditioned to\n believe themselves descendants\n of the original crew, and\n grounded it here in disabled\n condition. They left for Alphard\n Five then, to watch developments.\n\n\n \"Succeeding generations of\n colonists grew up accepting the\n fact that their ship had missed\n Sirius and made planetfall here—they\n still don't know where\n they really are—by luck. They\n never knew about the Hymenops,\n and they've struggled along\n with an inadequate technology in\n the hope that a later expedition\n would find them. They found the\n truth hard to take, but they're\n eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran\n assimilation.\"" ], [ "\"They really came from Terra?\n They lived through a thousand\n years of flight?\"\n\n\n \"The ship left Terra for\n Sirius in 2171,\" Gibson said.\n \"But not with these people\n aboard, or their ancestors. That\n expedition perished after less\n than a light-year when its\n hydroponics system failed. The\n Hymenops found the ship derelict\n when they invaded us, and\n brought it to Alphard Six in\n what was probably their first experiment\n with human subjects.\n The ship's log shows clearly\n what happened to the original\n complement. The rest is deducible\n from the situation here.\"\n\n\n Farrell put his hands to his\n temples and groaned. \"The crash\n must have scrambled my wits.\n Gib, where\ndid\nthey come from?\"", "\"From one of the first peripheral\n colonies conquered by the\n Bees,\" Gibson said patiently.\n \"The Hymenops were long-range\n planners, remember, and masters\n of hypnotic conditioning. They\n stocked the ship with a captive\n crew of Terrans conditioned to\n believe themselves descendants\n of the original crew, and\n grounded it here in disabled\n condition. They left for Alphard\n Five then, to watch developments.\n\n\n \"Succeeding generations of\n colonists grew up accepting the\n fact that their ship had missed\n Sirius and made planetfall here—they\n still don't know where\n they really are—by luck. They\n never knew about the Hymenops,\n and they've struggled along\n with an inadequate technology in\n the hope that a later expedition\n would find them. They found the\n truth hard to take, but they're\n eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran\n assimilation.\"", "\"The obvious premise is that\n a Terran ship must have been\n built by Terrans. Question: Was\n it flown here, or built here?\"\n\n\n \"It couldn't have been built\n here,\" Stryker said. \"Alphard\n Six was surveyed just before the\n Bees took over in 3025, and there\n was nothing of the sort here\n then. It couldn't have been built\n during the two and a quarter\n centuries since; it's obviously\n much older than that. It was\n flown here.\"\n\n\n \"We progress,\" Farrell said\n dryly. \"Now if you'll tell us\nhow\n,\n we're ready to move.\"", "\"But this was never an unreclaimed\n world,\" Farrell said\n with the faint malice of one too\n recently caught in the wrong.\n \"Alphard Six was surveyed and\n seeded with Terran bacteria\n around the year 3000, but the\n Bees invaded before we could\n colonize. And that means we'll\n have to rule out any resurgent\n colonial group down there, because\n Six never had a colony in\n the beginning.\"\n\n\n \"The Bees have been gone for\n over a hundred years,\" Stryker\n said. \"Colonists might have migrated\n from another Terran-occupied\n planet.\"\n\n\n Gibson disagreed.", "\"Arthur's right,\" Stryker said\n reluctantly. \"An atomic-powered\n ship\ncouldn't\nhave made such a\n trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant\n project couldn't have\n lasted through forty generations,\n speculative fiction to the\n contrary—the later generations\n would have been too far removed\n in ideology and intent from\n their ancestors. They'd have\n adapted to shipboard life as the\n norm. They'd have atrophied\n physically, perhaps even have\n mutated—\"\n\n\n \"And they'd never have\n fought past the Bees during the\n Hymenop invasion and occupation,\"\n Farrell finished triumphantly.\n \"The Bees had better\n detection equipment than we\n had. They'd have picked this\n ship up long before it reached\n Alphard Six.\"", "\"If they're neither Hymenops\n nor resurgent colonists,\" he said,\n \"then there's only one choice remaining—they're\n aliens from a\n system we haven't reached yet,\n beyond the old sphere of Terran\n exploration. We always assumed\n that we'd find other races out\n here someday, and that they'd\n be as different from us in form\n and motivation as the Hymenops.\n Why not now?\"\n\n\n Gibson said seriously, \"Not\n probable, Lee. The same objection\n that rules out the Bees applies\n to any trans-Alphardian\n culture—they'd have to be beyond\n the atomic fission stage,\n else they'd never have attempted\n interstellar flight. The Ringwave\n with its Zero Interval Transfer\n principle and instantaneous communications\n applications is the\n only answer to long-range travel,\n and if they'd had that they\n wouldn't have bothered with\n atomics.\"", "\"Reconnaissance spiral first,\n Arthur,\" Stryker said firmly. He\n chuckled at Farrell's instant\n scowl, his little eyes twinkling\n and his naked paunch quaking\n over the belt of his shipboard\n shorts. \"Chapter One, Subsection\n Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven:\nNo planetfall on an unreclaimed\n world shall be deemed\n safe without proper—\n\"\n\n\n Farrell, as Stryker had expected,\n interrupted with characteristic\n impatience. \"Do you\nsleep\nwith that damned Reclamations\n Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six\n isn't an unreclaimed world—it\n was never colonized before the\n Hymenop invasion back in 3025,\n so why should it be inhabited\n now?\"\n\n\n Gibson, who for four hours\n had not looked up from his interminable\n chess game with\n Xavier, paused with a beleaguered\n knight in one blunt brown\n hand.", "\"I think the ship was built on\n Terra during the Twenty-second\n Century,\" Gibson said calmly.\n \"The atomic wars during that\n period destroyed practically all\n historical records along with the\n technology of the time, but I've\n read well-authenticated reports\n of atomic-driven ships leaving\n Terra before then for the nearer\n stars. The human race climbed\n out of its pit again during the\n Twenty-third Century and developed\n the technology that gave\n us the Ringwave. Certainly no\n atomic-powered ships were built\n after the wars—our records are\n complete from that time.\"", "\"We've touched at every inhabited\n world in this sector, Lee,\n and not one surviving colony has\n developed space travel on its\n own. The Hymenops had a hundred\n years to condition their human\n slaves to ignorance of\n everything beyond their immediate\n environment—the motives\n behind that conditioning usually\n escape us, but that's beside the\n point—and they did a thorough\n job of it. The colonists have had\n no more than a century of freedom\n since the Bees pulled out,\n and four generations simply\n isn't enough time for any subjugated\n culture to climb from\n slavery to interstellar flight.\"\n\n\n Stryker made a padding turn\n about the control room, tugging\n unhappily at the scanty fringe\n of hair the years had left him.", "\"No point in taking chances,\"\n Gibson said in his neutral baritone.\n He shrugged thick bare\n shoulders, his humorless black-browed\n face unmoved, when\n Farrell included him in his\n scowl. \"We're two hundred twenty-six\n light-years from Sol, at\n the old limits of Terran expansion,\n and there's no knowing\n what we may turn up here. Alphard's\n was one of the first systems\n the Bees took over. It must\n have been one of the last to be\n abandoned when they pulled back\n to 70 Ophiuchi.\"\n\n\n \"And I think\nyou\nlive for the\n day,\" Farrell said acidly, \"when\n we'll stumble across a functioning\n dome of live, buzzing Hymenops.\n Damn it, Gib, the Bees\n pulled out a hundred years ago,\n before you and I were born—neither\n of us ever saw a Hymenop,\n and never will!\"", "\"Then we can eliminate this\n one now,\" Farrell said flatly. \"It\n entails a thousand-year voyage,\n which is an impossibility for any\n gross reaction drive; the application\n of suspended animation\n or longevity or a successive-generation\n program, and a final\n penetration of Hymenop-occupied\n space to set up a colony under\n the very antennae of the\n Bees. Longevity wasn't developed\n until around the year 3000—Lee\n here was one of the first to\n profit by it, if you remember—and\n suspended animation is still\n to come. So there's one theory\n you can forget.\"", "\"Any problem posed by one group of\n human beings can be resolved by any\n other group.\" That's what the Handbook\n said. But did that include primitive\n humans? Or the Bees? Or a ...\nCONTROL GROUP\nBy ROGER DEE\nThe\n cool green disk of Alphard\n Six on the screen was\n infinitely welcome after the arid\n desolation and stinking swamplands\n of the inner planets, an\n airy jewel of a world that might\n have been designed specifically\n for the hard-earned month of\n rest ahead. Navigator Farrell,\n youngest and certainly most impulsive\n of the three-man Terran\n Reclamations crew, would have\n set the\nMarco Four\ndown at\n once but for the greater caution\n of Stryker, nominally captain of\n the group, and of Gibson, engineer,\n and linguist. Xavier, the\n ship's little mechanical, had—as\n was usual and proper—no voice\n in the matter.", "\"I doubt that they can. Any\n installation crudely enough\n equipped to trust in guided missiles\n is hardly likely to have developed\n efficient space craft.\"\n\n\n Stryker was not reassured.\n\n\n \"That torpedo of theirs was\n deadly enough,\" he said. \"And\n its nature reflects the nature of\n the people who made it. Any race\n vicious enough to use atomic\n charges is too dangerous to\n trifle with.\" Worry made comical\n creases in his fat, good-humored\n face. \"We'll have to find\n out who they are and why\n they're here, you know.\"\n\n\n \"They can't be Hymenops,\"\n Gibson said promptly. \"First,\n because the Bees pinned their\n faith on Ringwave energy fields,\n as we did, rather than on missiles.\n Second, because there's no\n dome on Six.\"", "\"They're not alien,\" Gibson\n said positively. \"Their architecture\n is Terran, and so is their\n ship. The ship is incredibly\n primitive, though; those batteries\n of tubes at either end—\"\n\n\n \"Are thrust reaction jets,\"\n Stryker finished in an awed\n voice. \"Primitive isn't the word,\n Gib—the thing is prehistoric!\n Rocket propulsion hasn't been\n used in spacecraft since—how\n long, Xav?\"\n\n\n Xavier supplied the information\n with mechanical infallibility.\n \"Since the year 2100 when\n the Ringwave propulsion-communication\n principle was discovered.\n That principle has served\n men since.\"", "They crowded about the vision\n screen, jostling Xavier's jointed\n gray shape in their interest. The\n central city lay in minutest detail\n before them, the battered\n hulk of the grounded ship glinting\n rustily in the late afternoon\n sunlight. Streets radiated away\n from the square in orderly succession,\n the whole so clearly\n depicted that they could see the\n throngs of people surging up\n and down, tiny foreshortened\n faces turned toward the sky.\n\n\n \"At least they're human,\"\n Farrell said. Relief replaced in\n some measure his earlier uneasiness.\n \"Which means that they're\n Terran, and can be dealt with\n according to Reclamations routine.\n Is that hulk spaceworthy,\n Xav?\"\n\n\n Xavier's mellow drone assumed\n the convention vibrato that\n indicated stark puzzlement. \"Its\n breached hull makes the ship incapable\n of flight. Apparently it\n is used only to supply power to\n the outlying hamlets.\"", "\"There were three empty\n domes on Five, which is a desert\n planet,\" Farrell pointed out.\n \"Why didn't they settle Six? It's\n a more habitable world.\"\n\n\n Gibson shrugged. \"I know the\n Bees always erected domes on\n every planet they colonized, Arthur,\n but precedent is a fallible\n tool. And it's even more firmly\n established that there's no possibility\n of our rationalizing the\n motivations of a culture as alien\n as the Hymenops'—we've been\n over that argument a hundred\n times on other reclaimed\n worlds.\"", "\"But the ship wasn't here in\n 3000,\" Gibson said, \"and it is\n now. Therefore it must have arrived\n at some time during the\n two hundred years of Hymenop\n occupation and evacuation.\"\n\n\n Farrell, tangled in contradictions,\n swore bitterly. \"But\n why should the Bees let them\n through? The three domes on\n Five are over two hundred years\n old, which means that the Bees\n were here before the ship came.\n Why didn't they blast it or enslave\n its crew?\"\n\n\n \"We haven't touched on all the\n possibilities,\" Gibson reminded\n him. \"We haven't even established\n yet that these people were\n never under Hymenop control.\n Precedent won't hold always, and\n there's no predicting nor evaluating\n the motives of an alien\n race. We never understood the\n Hymenops because there's no\n common ground of logic between\n us. Why try to interpret their\n intentions now?\"", "When Farrell refused to be\n baited Stryker turned to Gibson,\n who was busily assessing the\n damage done to the ship's more\n fragile equipment, and to Xavier,\n who searched the planet's\n surface with the ship's magnoscanner.\n The\nMarco Four\n, Ringwave\n generators humming gently,\n hung at the moment just\n inside the orbit of Alphard Six's\n single dun-colored moon.\n\n\n Gibson put down a test meter\n with an air of finality.\n\n\n \"Nothing damaged but the\n Zero Interval Transfer computer.\n I can realign that in a couple\n of hours, but it'll have to be\n done before we hit Transfer\n again.\"\nStryker looked dubious.\n \"What if the issue is forced before\n the ZIT unit is repaired?\n Suppose they come up after us?\"", "Farrell threw up his hands in\n disgust. \"Next you'll say this is\n an ancient Terran expedition\n that actually succeeded! There's\n only one way to answer the\n questions we've raised, and\n that's to go down and see for\n ourselves. Ready, Xav?\"\nBut uncertainty nagged uneasily\n at him when Farrell found\n himself alone in the helihopper\n with the forest flowing beneath\n like a leafy river and Xavier's\n scouter disappearing bulletlike\n into the dusk ahead.\n\n\n We never found a colony so\n advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose\n this is a Hymenop experiment\n that really paid off? The\n Bees did some weird and wonderful\n things with human\n guinea pigs—what if they've\n created the ultimate booby trap\n here, and primed it with conditioned\n myrmidons in our own\n form?", "Farrell shook his head at the\n inference. \"I've read any number\n of fanciful romances on the\n theme, Gib, but it won't stand\n up in practice. No shipboard society\n could last through a thousand-year\n space voyage. It's a\n physical and psychological impossibility.\n There's got to be\n some other explanation.\"\nGibson shrugged. \"We can\n only eliminate the least likely\n alternatives and accept the simplest\n one remaining.\"" ] ]
test	99925	[ "Who is the biggest adversary of OA?", "Why are there increasing cancelations of journal subscriptions?", "Who is making the most profit off of toll access journals?", "Who is burdened the most with the cost of big deal subscriptions?", "How do toll access journals hinder research?", "Why aren’t researchers advocating for OA?", "Which is NOT an argument the author makes?", "How can OA make knowledge nonrivalrous?", "Technology makes digital content more _______________ than print.", "What is the author’s main message? " ]	[ [ "Universities", "Publishers", "Editors", "Researchers " ], [ "The quality of work in the journals has decreased.", "The journals are no longer requiring peer review. ", "Researchers have realized that they can find the same information online for free.", "The price of subscriptions has become unaffordable." ], [ "publishers", "universities", "libraries", "editors" ], [ "editors ", "researchers", "libraries ", "publishers" ], [ "It creates access gaps. ", "Researchers need to get a study approved by a publisher before they can begin. ", "Publishers will only publish content they think will sell. ", "The peer review process is time consuming. " ], [ "Researchers are afraid of backlash from publishers.", "Most researchers don’t know that they have access gaps. ", "Researchers get paid by toll access journals for their articles.", "Most researchers are unaware of the high cost of journal subscriptions. " ], [ "Public money is often used to fund research, so the public should have access to the results of that research.", "The subscription model is financially unsustainable for universities.", "Toll access makes access gaps inevitable.", "Publishers use their profits to lobby for policies that favor their interests. " ], [ "Free digital content gives everyone equal access to it. ", "OA would ensure that only a few users would be able to access an article at a time. ", "OA would ensure that lay people would have time limits for access to academic articles. ", "Publishers will no longer compete with each other for new material. " ], [ "high-maintenance ", "cost-effective", "time consuming", "readable" ], [ "Lay people need access to academic journals just as much as researchers do. ", "Librarians and researchers should work together to advocate for OA. ", "Researchers and librarians are not being paid enough. ", "Commercial publishers charge more, but the quality tends to be better at non-profit publishers. " ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "We take advantage of this gift when we post valuable work online and permit free access and unrestricted use for every user with an internet connection. But if we charge for access, enforce exclusion, create artificial scarcity, or prohibit essential uses, then we treat the nonrivalrous digital file like a rivalrous physical object, dismiss the opportunity, and spurn the gift.\nWhen publishers argue that there is no access problem and that we shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken, there are two answers. First, they’re wrong. There are deep and serious access problems. Publishers who really don’t know this should talk to the libraries who subscribe to their journals, and even more to the libraries who don’t. But second, leaving that quarrel entirely to one side, there are good reasons to pursue OA anyway.", "Conventional publishers use a business model that depends on access barriers and creates artificial scarcity. All publishers (conventional and OA) need revenue to cover their costs, but OA publishers use business models that dispense with access barriers and avoid artificial scarcity. Toll-access publishers contend that the OA business models are inadequate. We can debate that, for example, in light of the evidence that more than 7,500 peer-reviewed OA journals are finding ways to pay their bills, the fact that a growing number of for-profit OA publishers are already showing profits, and the fact that most of the money needed to support OA journals is currently tied up supporting toll-access journals. (See chapter 7 on economics.)", "We seldom think about how metaphysically lucky we are that knowledge is nonrivalrous. We can all know the same ideas, stories, tunes, plans, directions, and words without my knowledge blocking yours or yours blocking mine. We’re equally fortunate that speech is nonrivalrous, since it allows us to articulate and share our knowledge without reducing it to a rivalrous commodity.\nBut for all of human history before the digital age, writing has been rivalrous. Written or recorded knowledge became a material object like stone, clay, skin, or paper, which was necessarily rivalrous. Even when we had the printing press and photocopying machine, allowing us to make many copies at comparatively low cost, each copy was a rivalrous material object. Despite its revolutionary impact, writing was hobbled from birth by this tragic limitation. We could only record nonrivalrous knowledge in a rivalrous form.", "At some point we should trust the math more than special-interest lobbies. Among the many who have done the math, the University of California concluded that the subscription model for research journals is “incontrovertibly unsustainable.”\n2.2 OA as Seizing Opportunities\nEven if we had no pressing problems to solve, we’d want to take full advantage of the unprecedented power of digital technology to share knowledge and accelerate research. But we have both problems and opportunities, and we should acknowledge that. Too much of the OA discussion is grim, utilitarian, and problem-oriented. We should complement it with discussion that is joyful, curious, and opportunity-oriented. Serious problems don’t rule out beautiful opportunities, and one of the most beautiful opportunities facing OA is that certain strategic actions will solve serious problems and seize beautiful opportunities at the same time.", "quality. And while researchers support OA roughly to the extent that they know about it, and have their own reasons to work for it, their general unawareness of the crisis for libraries adds one more difficulty to the job of recruiting", "Open Access: Motivation\n2.1 OA as Solving Problems\nThere are lamentably many problems for which OA is part of the solution. Here are fifteen ways in which the current system of disseminating peer-reviewed research is deeply dysfunctional for researchers and their institutions, even if highly profitable for the largest conventional publishers. I’ve limited the list to those for which OA offers some hope of relief.\nWe are in the midst of a pricing crisis for scholarly journals. For four decades, subscription prices have risen significantly faster than inflation and significantly faster than library budgets. Subscription prices have risen about twice as fast as the price of healthcare, for most people the very index of skyrocketing, unsustainable prices. We’re long past the era of damage control and into the era of damage.", "Even the wealthiest academic libraries in the world suffer serious access gaps. When the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted unanimously for a strong OA policy in February 2008, Professor Stuart Shieber explained that cumulative price increases had forced the Harvard library to undertake “serious cancellation efforts” for budgetary reasons.\nAccess gaps are worse at other affluent institutions, and worse still in the developing world. In 2008, Harvard subscribed to 98,900 serials and Yale to 73,900. The best-funded research library in India, at the Indian Institute of Science, subscribed to 10,600. Several sub-Saharan African university libraries subscribed to zero, offering their patrons access to no conventional journals except those donated by publishers.", "The fact that there are enough problems to motivate different stakeholders is a kind of good news. If the system were broken for buyers (librarians) but not for users (researchers), or vice versa, that would delay any fix even longer. Or it would create a pernicious trade-off in which any fix would help one group at the expense of the other. But the system is broken for both buyers and users, which makes them natural allies.", "reach of researchers and research institutions acting alone and needn’t wait for publishers, legislation, or markets. Authors, editors, and referees—the whole team that produces peer-reviewed research articles—can provide OA to peer-reviewed research literature and, if necessary, cut recalcitrant", "A less obvious but more fundamental opportunity is that knowledge is\nnonrivalrous\n(to use a term from the economics of property). We can share it without dividing it and consume it without diminishing it. My possession and use of some knowledge doesn’t exclude your possession and use of the same knowledge. Familiar physical goods like land, food, and machines are all\nrivalrous\n. To share them, we must take turns or settle for portions. Thomas Jefferson described this situation beautifully in an 1813 letter to Isaac McPherson:\nIf nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea. . . . Its peculiar character . . . is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening mine.", "All scholarly journals (toll access and OA) benefit from public subsidies. Most scientific research is funded by public agencies using public money, conducted and written up by researchers working at public institutions and paid with public money, and then peer-reviewed by faculty at public institutions and paid with public money. Even when researchers and peer reviewers work at private universities, their institutions are subsidized by publicly funded tax exemptions and tax-deductible donations. Most toll-access journal subscriptions are purchased by public institutions and paid with taxpayer money.\nLast and not least, publishers exercise their control over research articles through copyright, a temporary government-created monopoly.", "But in the end it doesn’t matter whether toll-access publishers are right or wrong to believe that their revenue requires access barriers. The deeper problem is that we donate time, labor, and public money to create new knowledge and then hand control over the results to businesses that believe, correctly or incorrectly, that their revenue and survival depend on limiting access to that knowledge. If toll-access publishers are right that they must erect access barriers to reimburse themselves, then the problem is that we allow them to be the only outlets for most peer-reviewed research. If they’re wrong about the need for access barriers, then the problem is that we tolerate their access barriers, even for publicly funded research and gifts from authors who write for impact and not for money.\nConventional publishers often criticize OA initiatives for “interfering with the market,” but scholarly publishing is permeated by state action, public subsidies, gift culture, and anticompetitive practices.", "When most peer-reviewed research journals are toll access, a pricing crisis entails an access crisis. Before the rise of OA, all peer-reviewed journals were toll access, and even today about three-quarters of peer-reviewed journals are toll access.\n \n When subscribers respond to skyrocketing prices by canceling subscriptions, access decreases. Cancellations mitigate one problem and aggravate another. A study by the Research Information Network in late 2009 found that 40 percent of surveyed researchers had trouble accessing journal literature at least once a week, and two-thirds at least once a month. About 60 percent said that access limitations hindered their research, and 18 percent said the hindrance was significant.", "While the damage grows, the largest journal publishers earn higher profit margins than the largest oil companies. In 2010, Elsevier’s journal division had a profit margin of 35.7 percent while ExxonMobil had only 28.1 percent.\nBy soaking up library budgets, big deals harm journals from small nonprofit publishers excluded from the bundles. This exacerbates the problem for researchers because journals from these smaller publishers tend to be higher in quality and impact than the journals protected by the big deals (more in #11 below).\nTo top it off, most big deals include confidentiality clauses preventing universities from disclosing the prices they pay. The effect is to reduce bargaining and price competition even further. In 2009, three academics launched the Big Deal Contract Project to use state open-record laws to force disclosure of big-deal contracts with public universities. Elsevier went to court to block the release of its contract with Washington State University and lost.", "Digital writing is the first kind of writing that does not reduce recorded knowledge to a rivalrous object. If we all have the right equipment, then we can all have copies of the same digital text without excluding one another, without multiplying our costs, and without depleting our resources.\nI’ve heard physicists refer to the prospect of room-temperature superconductivity as a “gift of nature.” Unfortunately, that is not quite within reach. But the nonrivalrous property of digital information is a gift of nature that we’ve already grasped and put to work. We only have to stand back a moment to appreciate it. To our ancestors, the prospect of recording knowledge in precise language, symbols, sounds, or images without reducing the record to a rivalrous object would have been magical. But we do it every day now, and it’s losing its magic.\nThe danger is not that we already take this property for granted but that we might stop short and fail to take full advantage of it. It can transform knowledge-sharing if we let it.", "publishers out of the loop. For researchers acting on their own, the goal of complete OA is even easier to attain than the goal of affordable journals.", "Conventional publishers acquire their key assets from academics without charge. Authors donate the texts of new articles and the rights to publish them. Editors and referees donate the peer-review judgments to improve and validate their quality.\n \n But then conventional publishers charge for access to the resulting articles, with no exception for authors, editors, referees, or their institutions. Publishers argue that they add value to the submitted manuscripts, which is true. But other players in the game, such as authors, editors, and referees, add far more value than publishers. For funded research, the funding agency is another critical player. It too must pay for access to the resulting articles even when the cost of a research project is hundreds of thousands of times greater than the cost of publication. Among these five value-adders—authors, editors, referees, funders, and publishers—publishers add the least value and generally demand the ownership rights.", "digital files supports forms of discovery and processing impossible for paper texts and for inaccessible or use-restricted digital texts. OA is already lawful and doesn’t require copyright reform. Now that the internet is at our fingertips, OA is within the", "copies of arbitrary files and distribute them to a worldwide audience at zero marginal cost. For 350 years, scholars have willingly, even eagerly, published journal articles without payment, freeing them to consent to OA without losing revenue. Unrestricted access to", "The largest publishers minimize cancellations by bundling hundreds or thousands of high-demand and low-demand journals into “big deals,” which reduce the bargaining power of libraries and the cost-cutting options available to them. On the plus side, big deals give universities access to more titles than they had before and reduce the average cost per title. But when libraries try to cancel individual titles that are low in quality or low in local usage, publishers raise the price on the remaining titles. Bundling gives libraries little room to save money with carefully targeted cancellations, and after a point forces them to cancel all or none.\nBy design, big deals are too big to cancel without pain, giving publishers leverage to raise prices out of proportion to journal costs, size, usage, impact, and quality. Without bundling, libraries would have responded to the pricing crisis with a devastating number of cancellations. With bundling, publishers protect even second-rate journals from cancellation, protect their own profits, and shift the devastation to library budgets." ], [ "When most peer-reviewed research journals are toll access, a pricing crisis entails an access crisis. Before the rise of OA, all peer-reviewed journals were toll access, and even today about three-quarters of peer-reviewed journals are toll access.\n \n When subscribers respond to skyrocketing prices by canceling subscriptions, access decreases. Cancellations mitigate one problem and aggravate another. A study by the Research Information Network in late 2009 found that 40 percent of surveyed researchers had trouble accessing journal literature at least once a week, and two-thirds at least once a month. About 60 percent said that access limitations hindered their research, and 18 percent said the hindrance was significant.", "The largest publishers minimize cancellations by bundling hundreds or thousands of high-demand and low-demand journals into “big deals,” which reduce the bargaining power of libraries and the cost-cutting options available to them. On the plus side, big deals give universities access to more titles than they had before and reduce the average cost per title. But when libraries try to cancel individual titles that are low in quality or low in local usage, publishers raise the price on the remaining titles. Bundling gives libraries little room to save money with carefully targeted cancellations, and after a point forces them to cancel all or none.\nBy design, big deals are too big to cancel without pain, giving publishers leverage to raise prices out of proportion to journal costs, size, usage, impact, and quality. Without bundling, libraries would have responded to the pricing crisis with a devastating number of cancellations. With bundling, publishers protect even second-rate journals from cancellation, protect their own profits, and shift the devastation to library budgets.", "Even the wealthiest academic libraries in the world suffer serious access gaps. When the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted unanimously for a strong OA policy in February 2008, Professor Stuart Shieber explained that cumulative price increases had forced the Harvard library to undertake “serious cancellation efforts” for budgetary reasons.\nAccess gaps are worse at other affluent institutions, and worse still in the developing world. In 2008, Harvard subscribed to 98,900 serials and Yale to 73,900. The best-funded research library in India, at the Indian Institute of Science, subscribed to 10,600. Several sub-Saharan African university libraries subscribed to zero, offering their patrons access to no conventional journals except those donated by publishers.", "During the decades in which journal prices have been rising faster than inflation and faster than library budgets, libraries have cut into their book budgets to pay for journals. According to James McPherson, “In 1986 [academic] libraries spent 44 percent of their budgets on books and 56 percent on journals; by 1997 the imbalance had grown to 28 percent for books and 72 percent for journals.” Because academic libraries now buy fewer books, academic book publishers now accept fewer manuscripts. One result is that the journal crisis, concentrated in the sciences, has precipitated a monograph crisis, concentrated in the humanities.\nNew restrictions on electronic journals add a permissions crisis on top of the pricing crisis. For publishers of online toll-access journals, there are business reasons to limit the freedom of users to copy and redistribute texts, even if that leaves users with fewer rights than they had with print journals. But these business reasons create pernicious consequences for libraries and their patrons.", "Among the results: When libraries pay for subscriptions to digital journals, they don’t buy or own their own digital copies but merely rent or license them for a period of time. If they cancel a subscription, they could lose access to", "Finally, even in the absence of perverse journal pricing practices, the subscription or toll-access business model would not scale with the growth of research or the growth of published knowledge. If prices were low today and guaranteed to remain low forever,", "Every scholarly journal is a natural mini-monopoly in the sense that no other journal publishes the same articles. There’s nothing improper about this natural mini-monopoly. It’s a side-effect of the desirable fact that journals don’t duplicate one another. But it means that toll-access journals compete for authors much more than they compete for subscribers. If you need an article published in a certain journal, then you need access to that journal. This is one reason why free and expensive journals can coexist in the same field, even at the same level of quality. The free journals don’t drive the expensive journals out of business or even drive down their prices. By weakening the competition for buyers, however, this natural monopoly weakens the market feedback that would otherwise punish declining quality, declining usage, and rising prices.", "everything I need.) On the other hand, librarians are acutely aware of library budget crises, high journal prices, hyperinflationary price increases, bundling constraints, publisher profit margins, and the disconnect between prices paid and journal costs, size, usage, impact, and", "off than any university in the real world. Let’s suppose that journal prices and the Croesus library budget increase at the same rate forever. For simplicity, let’s assume that rate is zero. They never grow at all, not even at the", "Laid on top of this natural monopoly are several layers of artificial monopoly. One kind of evidence is that large commercial publishers charge higher prices and raise their prices faster than small, nonprofit publishers. Yet, the scholarly consensus is that quality, impact, and prestige are generally higher at the nonprofit society journals.\nLarge conventional publishers spend some of the money they extract from libraries on marketing and “content protection” measures that benefit publishers far more than users. Indeed, the content protection measures don’t benefit users at all and make the texts less useful.\nConventional for-profit journals can increase their profit margins by decreasing their rejection rates. Reducing the rejection rate reduces the number of articles a journal must peer review for each article it publishes.", "I make this list library-centric rather than user-centric because the pricing crisis has nearly killed off individual subscriptions. Most subscribers to toll-access journals are libraries, and most authorized readers of toll-access journals are library patrons.\nIn short, conventional publishers regard easy online sharing as a problem while researchers and libraries regard it as a solution. The internet is widening the gap between the interests of conventional publishers and the interests of researchers and research institutions.\nConventional publishers are adapting to the digital age in some respects. They’re migrating most print journals to digital formats\n \n and even dropping their print editions. They’re incorporating hyperlinks, search engines, and alert services. A growing number are digitizing their backfiles and integrating texts with data. But the revolutionary power to share content without price or permission barriers, to solve the pricing and permission crises at a stroke and liberate research for the benefit of all, is the one innovation they fear most.", "Here’s a brace of those beautiful opportunities. The internet emerged just as journal subscription prices were reaching unbearable levels. The internet widens distribution and reduces costs at the same time. Digital computers connected to a global network let us make perfect", "We need a system of research dissemination that scales with the growth of research volume. The subscription or toll-access system scales negatively by shrinking the accessible percentage of research as research itself continues to grow.\nMoney would solve the access crisis if we had enough of it, and if the amount at our disposal grew in proportion to the growing volume and growing prices of the literature. But we don’t have nearly enough money, and the money we do have doesn’t grow nearly fast enough to keep pace with the volume or prices of the literature.\nToll-access publishers don’t benefit from access gaps and have their own reasons to want to close them. But they prefer the unscalable money solution, even if university budgets and national treasuries must be squeezed by law to find the funds. Crispin Davis, then-CEO of Elsevier, once argued that “the government needs to lay down guidelines on the proportion of university funds that should be set aside for the acquisition of books and journals, or even increase funding to ensure that universities can buy all the material they need.”", "Most faculty and researchers are aware of access gaps in their libraries but generally unaware of their causes and unaware that the problems are systemic and worsening. (A common response: My research is very specialized, so naturally my library won’t have", "While the damage grows, the largest journal publishers earn higher profit margins than the largest oil companies. In 2010, Elsevier’s journal division had a profit margin of 35.7 percent while ExxonMobil had only 28.1 percent.\nBy soaking up library budgets, big deals harm journals from small nonprofit publishers excluded from the bundles. This exacerbates the problem for researchers because journals from these smaller publishers tend to be higher in quality and impact than the journals protected by the big deals (more in #11 below).\nTo top it off, most big deals include confidentiality clauses preventing universities from disclosing the prices they pay. The effect is to reduce bargaining and price competition even further. In 2009, three academics launched the Big Deal Contract Project to use state open-record laws to force disclosure of big-deal contracts with public universities. Elsevier went to court to block the release of its contract with Washington State University and lost.", "All scholarly journals (toll access and OA) benefit from public subsidies. Most scientific research is funded by public agencies using public money, conducted and written up by researchers working at public institutions and paid with public money, and then peer-reviewed by faculty at public institutions and paid with public money. Even when researchers and peer reviewers work at private universities, their institutions are subsidized by publicly funded tax exemptions and tax-deductible donations. Most toll-access journal subscriptions are purchased by public institutions and paid with taxpayer money.\nLast and not least, publishers exercise their control over research articles through copyright, a temporary government-created monopoly.", "rate of inflation. Let’s assume that the growth of knowledge means that the journal literature grows by 5 percent a year, a common industry estimate. Croesus can afford full coverage today, but in twenty years it would have to spend 2.7", "Conventional publishers use a business model that depends on access barriers and creates artificial scarcity. All publishers (conventional and OA) need revenue to cover their costs, but OA publishers use business models that dispense with access barriers and avoid artificial scarcity. Toll-access publishers contend that the OA business models are inadequate. We can debate that, for example, in light of the evidence that more than 7,500 peer-reviewed OA journals are finding ways to pay their bills, the fact that a growing number of for-profit OA publishers are already showing profits, and the fact that most of the money needed to support OA journals is currently tied up supporting toll-access journals. (See chapter 7 on economics.)", "Open Access: Motivation\n2.1 OA as Solving Problems\nThere are lamentably many problems for which OA is part of the solution. Here are fifteen ways in which the current system of disseminating peer-reviewed research is deeply dysfunctional for researchers and their institutions, even if highly profitable for the largest conventional publishers. I’ve limited the list to those for which OA offers some hope of relief.\nWe are in the midst of a pricing crisis for scholarly journals. For four decades, subscription prices have risen significantly faster than inflation and significantly faster than library budgets. Subscription prices have risen about twice as fast as the price of healthcare, for most people the very index of skyrocketing, unsustainable prices. We’re long past the era of damage control and into the era of damage.", "At some point we should trust the math more than special-interest lobbies. Among the many who have done the math, the University of California concluded that the subscription model for research journals is “incontrovertibly unsustainable.”\n2.2 OA as Seizing Opportunities\nEven if we had no pressing problems to solve, we’d want to take full advantage of the unprecedented power of digital technology to share knowledge and accelerate research. But we have both problems and opportunities, and we should acknowledge that. Too much of the OA discussion is grim, utilitarian, and problem-oriented. We should complement it with discussion that is joyful, curious, and opportunity-oriented. Serious problems don’t rule out beautiful opportunities, and one of the most beautiful opportunities facing OA is that certain strategic actions will solve serious problems and seize beautiful opportunities at the same time." ], [ "Laid on top of this natural monopoly are several layers of artificial monopoly. One kind of evidence is that large commercial publishers charge higher prices and raise their prices faster than small, nonprofit publishers. Yet, the scholarly consensus is that quality, impact, and prestige are generally higher at the nonprofit society journals.\nLarge conventional publishers spend some of the money they extract from libraries on marketing and “content protection” measures that benefit publishers far more than users. Indeed, the content protection measures don’t benefit users at all and make the texts less useful.\nConventional for-profit journals can increase their profit margins by decreasing their rejection rates. Reducing the rejection rate reduces the number of articles a journal must peer review for each article it publishes.", "All scholarly journals (toll access and OA) benefit from public subsidies. Most scientific research is funded by public agencies using public money, conducted and written up by researchers working at public institutions and paid with public money, and then peer-reviewed by faculty at public institutions and paid with public money. Even when researchers and peer reviewers work at private universities, their institutions are subsidized by publicly funded tax exemptions and tax-deductible donations. Most toll-access journal subscriptions are purchased by public institutions and paid with taxpayer money.\nLast and not least, publishers exercise their control over research articles through copyright, a temporary government-created monopoly.", "But in the end it doesn’t matter whether toll-access publishers are right or wrong to believe that their revenue requires access barriers. The deeper problem is that we donate time, labor, and public money to create new knowledge and then hand control over the results to businesses that believe, correctly or incorrectly, that their revenue and survival depend on limiting access to that knowledge. If toll-access publishers are right that they must erect access barriers to reimburse themselves, then the problem is that we allow them to be the only outlets for most peer-reviewed research. If they’re wrong about the need for access barriers, then the problem is that we tolerate their access barriers, even for publicly funded research and gifts from authors who write for impact and not for money.\nConventional publishers often criticize OA initiatives for “interfering with the market,” but scholarly publishing is permeated by state action, public subsidies, gift culture, and anticompetitive practices.", "Conventional publishers use a business model that depends on access barriers and creates artificial scarcity. All publishers (conventional and OA) need revenue to cover their costs, but OA publishers use business models that dispense with access barriers and avoid artificial scarcity. Toll-access publishers contend that the OA business models are inadequate. We can debate that, for example, in light of the evidence that more than 7,500 peer-reviewed OA journals are finding ways to pay their bills, the fact that a growing number of for-profit OA publishers are already showing profits, and the fact that most of the money needed to support OA journals is currently tied up supporting toll-access journals. (See chapter 7 on economics.)", "When most peer-reviewed research journals are toll access, a pricing crisis entails an access crisis. Before the rise of OA, all peer-reviewed journals were toll access, and even today about three-quarters of peer-reviewed journals are toll access.\n \n When subscribers respond to skyrocketing prices by canceling subscriptions, access decreases. Cancellations mitigate one problem and aggravate another. A study by the Research Information Network in late 2009 found that 40 percent of surveyed researchers had trouble accessing journal literature at least once a week, and two-thirds at least once a month. About 60 percent said that access limitations hindered their research, and 18 percent said the hindrance was significant.", "Finally, even in the absence of perverse journal pricing practices, the subscription or toll-access business model would not scale with the growth of research or the growth of published knowledge. If prices were low today and guaranteed to remain low forever,", "Every scholarly journal is a natural mini-monopoly in the sense that no other journal publishes the same articles. There’s nothing improper about this natural mini-monopoly. It’s a side-effect of the desirable fact that journals don’t duplicate one another. But it means that toll-access journals compete for authors much more than they compete for subscribers. If you need an article published in a certain journal, then you need access to that journal. This is one reason why free and expensive journals can coexist in the same field, even at the same level of quality. The free journals don’t drive the expensive journals out of business or even drive down their prices. By weakening the competition for buyers, however, this natural monopoly weakens the market feedback that would otherwise punish declining quality, declining usage, and rising prices.", "We need a system of research dissemination that scales with the growth of research volume. The subscription or toll-access system scales negatively by shrinking the accessible percentage of research as research itself continues to grow.\nMoney would solve the access crisis if we had enough of it, and if the amount at our disposal grew in proportion to the growing volume and growing prices of the literature. But we don’t have nearly enough money, and the money we do have doesn’t grow nearly fast enough to keep pace with the volume or prices of the literature.\nToll-access publishers don’t benefit from access gaps and have their own reasons to want to close them. But they prefer the unscalable money solution, even if university budgets and national treasuries must be squeezed by law to find the funds. Crispin Davis, then-CEO of Elsevier, once argued that “the government needs to lay down guidelines on the proportion of university funds that should be set aside for the acquisition of books and journals, or even increase funding to ensure that universities can buy all the material they need.”", "I make this list library-centric rather than user-centric because the pricing crisis has nearly killed off individual subscriptions. Most subscribers to toll-access journals are libraries, and most authorized readers of toll-access journals are library patrons.\nIn short, conventional publishers regard easy online sharing as a problem while researchers and libraries regard it as a solution. The internet is widening the gap between the interests of conventional publishers and the interests of researchers and research institutions.\nConventional publishers are adapting to the digital age in some respects. They’re migrating most print journals to digital formats\n \n and even dropping their print editions. They’re incorporating hyperlinks, search engines, and alert services. A growing number are digitizing their backfiles and integrating texts with data. But the revolutionary power to share content without price or permission barriers, to solve the pricing and permission crises at a stroke and liberate research for the benefit of all, is the one innovation they fear most.", "While the damage grows, the largest journal publishers earn higher profit margins than the largest oil companies. In 2010, Elsevier’s journal division had a profit margin of 35.7 percent while ExxonMobil had only 28.1 percent.\nBy soaking up library budgets, big deals harm journals from small nonprofit publishers excluded from the bundles. This exacerbates the problem for researchers because journals from these smaller publishers tend to be higher in quality and impact than the journals protected by the big deals (more in #11 below).\nTo top it off, most big deals include confidentiality clauses preventing universities from disclosing the prices they pay. The effect is to reduce bargaining and price competition even further. In 2009, three academics launched the Big Deal Contract Project to use state open-record laws to force disclosure of big-deal contracts with public universities. Elsevier went to court to block the release of its contract with Washington State University and lost.", "Even the wealthiest academic libraries in the world suffer serious access gaps. When the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted unanimously for a strong OA policy in February 2008, Professor Stuart Shieber explained that cumulative price increases had forced the Harvard library to undertake “serious cancellation efforts” for budgetary reasons.\nAccess gaps are worse at other affluent institutions, and worse still in the developing world. In 2008, Harvard subscribed to 98,900 serials and Yale to 73,900. The best-funded research library in India, at the Indian Institute of Science, subscribed to 10,600. Several sub-Saharan African university libraries subscribed to zero, offering their patrons access to no conventional journals except those donated by publishers.", "Conventional publishers acquire their key assets from academics without charge. Authors donate the texts of new articles and the rights to publish them. Editors and referees donate the peer-review judgments to improve and validate their quality.\n \n But then conventional publishers charge for access to the resulting articles, with no exception for authors, editors, referees, or their institutions. Publishers argue that they add value to the submitted manuscripts, which is true. But other players in the game, such as authors, editors, and referees, add far more value than publishers. For funded research, the funding agency is another critical player. It too must pay for access to the resulting articles even when the cost of a research project is hundreds of thousands of times greater than the cost of publication. Among these five value-adders—authors, editors, referees, funders, and publishers—publishers add the least value and generally demand the ownership rights.", "The largest publishers minimize cancellations by bundling hundreds or thousands of high-demand and low-demand journals into “big deals,” which reduce the bargaining power of libraries and the cost-cutting options available to them. On the plus side, big deals give universities access to more titles than they had before and reduce the average cost per title. But when libraries try to cancel individual titles that are low in quality or low in local usage, publishers raise the price on the remaining titles. Bundling gives libraries little room to save money with carefully targeted cancellations, and after a point forces them to cancel all or none.\nBy design, big deals are too big to cancel without pain, giving publishers leverage to raise prices out of proportion to journal costs, size, usage, impact, and quality. Without bundling, libraries would have responded to the pricing crisis with a devastating number of cancellations. With bundling, publishers protect even second-rate journals from cancellation, protect their own profits, and shift the devastation to library budgets.", "everything I need.) On the other hand, librarians are acutely aware of library budget crises, high journal prices, hyperinflationary price increases, bundling constraints, publisher profit margins, and the disconnect between prices paid and journal costs, size, usage, impact, and", "During the decades in which journal prices have been rising faster than inflation and faster than library budgets, libraries have cut into their book budgets to pay for journals. According to James McPherson, “In 1986 [academic] libraries spent 44 percent of their budgets on books and 56 percent on journals; by 1997 the imbalance had grown to 28 percent for books and 72 percent for journals.” Because academic libraries now buy fewer books, academic book publishers now accept fewer manuscripts. One result is that the journal crisis, concentrated in the sciences, has precipitated a monograph crisis, concentrated in the humanities.\nNew restrictions on electronic journals add a permissions crisis on top of the pricing crisis. For publishers of online toll-access journals, there are business reasons to limit the freedom of users to copy and redistribute texts, even if that leaves users with fewer rights than they had with print journals. But these business reasons create pernicious consequences for libraries and their patrons.", "We take advantage of this gift when we post valuable work online and permit free access and unrestricted use for every user with an internet connection. But if we charge for access, enforce exclusion, create artificial scarcity, or prohibit essential uses, then we treat the nonrivalrous digital file like a rivalrous physical object, dismiss the opportunity, and spurn the gift.\nWhen publishers argue that there is no access problem and that we shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken, there are two answers. First, they’re wrong. There are deep and serious access problems. Publishers who really don’t know this should talk to the libraries who subscribe to their journals, and even more to the libraries who don’t. But second, leaving that quarrel entirely to one side, there are good reasons to pursue OA anyway.", "Open Access: Motivation\n2.1 OA as Solving Problems\nThere are lamentably many problems for which OA is part of the solution. Here are fifteen ways in which the current system of disseminating peer-reviewed research is deeply dysfunctional for researchers and their institutions, even if highly profitable for the largest conventional publishers. I’ve limited the list to those for which OA offers some hope of relief.\nWe are in the midst of a pricing crisis for scholarly journals. For four decades, subscription prices have risen significantly faster than inflation and significantly faster than library budgets. Subscription prices have risen about twice as fast as the price of healthcare, for most people the very index of skyrocketing, unsustainable prices. We’re long past the era of damage control and into the era of damage.", "Here’s a brace of those beautiful opportunities. The internet emerged just as journal subscription prices were reaching unbearable levels. The internet widens distribution and reduces costs at the same time. Digital computers connected to a global network let us make perfect", "off than any university in the real world. Let’s suppose that journal prices and the Croesus library budget increase at the same rate forever. For simplicity, let’s assume that rate is zero. They never grow at all, not even at the", "Most faculty and researchers are aware of access gaps in their libraries but generally unaware of their causes and unaware that the problems are systemic and worsening. (A common response: My research is very specialized, so naturally my library won’t have" ], [ "The largest publishers minimize cancellations by bundling hundreds or thousands of high-demand and low-demand journals into “big deals,” which reduce the bargaining power of libraries and the cost-cutting options available to them. On the plus side, big deals give universities access to more titles than they had before and reduce the average cost per title. But when libraries try to cancel individual titles that are low in quality or low in local usage, publishers raise the price on the remaining titles. Bundling gives libraries little room to save money with carefully targeted cancellations, and after a point forces them to cancel all or none.\nBy design, big deals are too big to cancel without pain, giving publishers leverage to raise prices out of proportion to journal costs, size, usage, impact, and quality. Without bundling, libraries would have responded to the pricing crisis with a devastating number of cancellations. With bundling, publishers protect even second-rate journals from cancellation, protect their own profits, and shift the devastation to library budgets.", "While the damage grows, the largest journal publishers earn higher profit margins than the largest oil companies. In 2010, Elsevier’s journal division had a profit margin of 35.7 percent while ExxonMobil had only 28.1 percent.\nBy soaking up library budgets, big deals harm journals from small nonprofit publishers excluded from the bundles. This exacerbates the problem for researchers because journals from these smaller publishers tend to be higher in quality and impact than the journals protected by the big deals (more in #11 below).\nTo top it off, most big deals include confidentiality clauses preventing universities from disclosing the prices they pay. The effect is to reduce bargaining and price competition even further. In 2009, three academics launched the Big Deal Contract Project to use state open-record laws to force disclosure of big-deal contracts with public universities. Elsevier went to court to block the release of its contract with Washington State University and lost.", "Even the wealthiest academic libraries in the world suffer serious access gaps. When the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted unanimously for a strong OA policy in February 2008, Professor Stuart Shieber explained that cumulative price increases had forced the Harvard library to undertake “serious cancellation efforts” for budgetary reasons.\nAccess gaps are worse at other affluent institutions, and worse still in the developing world. In 2008, Harvard subscribed to 98,900 serials and Yale to 73,900. The best-funded research library in India, at the Indian Institute of Science, subscribed to 10,600. Several sub-Saharan African university libraries subscribed to zero, offering their patrons access to no conventional journals except those donated by publishers.", "Finally, even in the absence of perverse journal pricing practices, the subscription or toll-access business model would not scale with the growth of research or the growth of published knowledge. If prices were low today and guaranteed to remain low forever,", "Here’s a brace of those beautiful opportunities. The internet emerged just as journal subscription prices were reaching unbearable levels. The internet widens distribution and reduces costs at the same time. Digital computers connected to a global network let us make perfect", "When most peer-reviewed research journals are toll access, a pricing crisis entails an access crisis. Before the rise of OA, all peer-reviewed journals were toll access, and even today about three-quarters of peer-reviewed journals are toll access.\n \n When subscribers respond to skyrocketing prices by canceling subscriptions, access decreases. Cancellations mitigate one problem and aggravate another. A study by the Research Information Network in late 2009 found that 40 percent of surveyed researchers had trouble accessing journal literature at least once a week, and two-thirds at least once a month. About 60 percent said that access limitations hindered their research, and 18 percent said the hindrance was significant.", "everything I need.) On the other hand, librarians are acutely aware of library budget crises, high journal prices, hyperinflationary price increases, bundling constraints, publisher profit margins, and the disconnect between prices paid and journal costs, size, usage, impact, and", "Laid on top of this natural monopoly are several layers of artificial monopoly. One kind of evidence is that large commercial publishers charge higher prices and raise their prices faster than small, nonprofit publishers. Yet, the scholarly consensus is that quality, impact, and prestige are generally higher at the nonprofit society journals.\nLarge conventional publishers spend some of the money they extract from libraries on marketing and “content protection” measures that benefit publishers far more than users. Indeed, the content protection measures don’t benefit users at all and make the texts less useful.\nConventional for-profit journals can increase their profit margins by decreasing their rejection rates. Reducing the rejection rate reduces the number of articles a journal must peer review for each article it publishes.", "purchasing. It creates a classic moral hazard in which researchers are shielded from the costs of their preferences and have little incentive to adjust their preferences accordingly. It subtracts one more market signal that might otherwise check high prices and declining", "Conventional publishers acquire their key assets from academics without charge. Authors donate the texts of new articles and the rights to publish them. Editors and referees donate the peer-review judgments to improve and validate their quality.\n \n But then conventional publishers charge for access to the resulting articles, with no exception for authors, editors, referees, or their institutions. Publishers argue that they add value to the submitted manuscripts, which is true. But other players in the game, such as authors, editors, and referees, add far more value than publishers. For funded research, the funding agency is another critical player. It too must pay for access to the resulting articles even when the cost of a research project is hundreds of thousands of times greater than the cost of publication. Among these five value-adders—authors, editors, referees, funders, and publishers—publishers add the least value and generally demand the ownership rights.", "Every scholarly journal is a natural mini-monopoly in the sense that no other journal publishes the same articles. There’s nothing improper about this natural mini-monopoly. It’s a side-effect of the desirable fact that journals don’t duplicate one another. But it means that toll-access journals compete for authors much more than they compete for subscribers. If you need an article published in a certain journal, then you need access to that journal. This is one reason why free and expensive journals can coexist in the same field, even at the same level of quality. The free journals don’t drive the expensive journals out of business or even drive down their prices. By weakening the competition for buyers, however, this natural monopoly weakens the market feedback that would otherwise punish declining quality, declining usage, and rising prices.", "I make this list library-centric rather than user-centric because the pricing crisis has nearly killed off individual subscriptions. Most subscribers to toll-access journals are libraries, and most authorized readers of toll-access journals are library patrons.\nIn short, conventional publishers regard easy online sharing as a problem while researchers and libraries regard it as a solution. The internet is widening the gap between the interests of conventional publishers and the interests of researchers and research institutions.\nConventional publishers are adapting to the digital age in some respects. They’re migrating most print journals to digital formats\n \n and even dropping their print editions. They’re incorporating hyperlinks, search engines, and alert services. A growing number are digitizing their backfiles and integrating texts with data. But the revolutionary power to share content without price or permission barriers, to solve the pricing and permission crises at a stroke and liberate research for the benefit of all, is the one innovation they fear most.", "We need a system of research dissemination that scales with the growth of research volume. The subscription or toll-access system scales negatively by shrinking the accessible percentage of research as research itself continues to grow.\nMoney would solve the access crisis if we had enough of it, and if the amount at our disposal grew in proportion to the growing volume and growing prices of the literature. But we don’t have nearly enough money, and the money we do have doesn’t grow nearly fast enough to keep pace with the volume or prices of the literature.\nToll-access publishers don’t benefit from access gaps and have their own reasons to want to close them. But they prefer the unscalable money solution, even if university budgets and national treasuries must be squeezed by law to find the funds. Crispin Davis, then-CEO of Elsevier, once argued that “the government needs to lay down guidelines on the proportion of university funds that should be set aside for the acquisition of books and journals, or even increase funding to ensure that universities can buy all the material they need.”", "The fact that there are enough problems to motivate different stakeholders is a kind of good news. If the system were broken for buyers (librarians) but not for users (researchers), or vice versa, that would delay any fix even longer. Or it would create a pernicious trade-off in which any fix would help one group at the expense of the other. But the system is broken for both buyers and users, which makes them natural allies.", "During the decades in which journal prices have been rising faster than inflation and faster than library budgets, libraries have cut into their book budgets to pay for journals. According to James McPherson, “In 1986 [academic] libraries spent 44 percent of their budgets on books and 56 percent on journals; by 1997 the imbalance had grown to 28 percent for books and 72 percent for journals.” Because academic libraries now buy fewer books, academic book publishers now accept fewer manuscripts. One result is that the journal crisis, concentrated in the sciences, has precipitated a monograph crisis, concentrated in the humanities.\nNew restrictions on electronic journals add a permissions crisis on top of the pricing crisis. For publishers of online toll-access journals, there are business reasons to limit the freedom of users to copy and redistribute texts, even if that leaves users with fewer rights than they had with print journals. But these business reasons create pernicious consequences for libraries and their patrons.", "All scholarly journals (toll access and OA) benefit from public subsidies. Most scientific research is funded by public agencies using public money, conducted and written up by researchers working at public institutions and paid with public money, and then peer-reviewed by faculty at public institutions and paid with public money. Even when researchers and peer reviewers work at private universities, their institutions are subsidized by publicly funded tax exemptions and tax-deductible donations. Most toll-access journal subscriptions are purchased by public institutions and paid with taxpayer money.\nLast and not least, publishers exercise their control over research articles through copyright, a temporary government-created monopoly.", "off than any university in the real world. Let’s suppose that journal prices and the Croesus library budget increase at the same rate forever. For simplicity, let’s assume that rate is zero. They never grow at all, not even at the", "Among the results: When libraries pay for subscriptions to digital journals, they don’t buy or own their own digital copies but merely rent or license them for a period of time. If they cancel a subscription, they could lose access to", "the total price for the total literature would still be heading toward exponential explosion. This is easiest to see at the mythical University of Croesus, which can afford 100 percent of the literature today. In that respect, Croesus is far better", "quality. Researcher oblivion to the problems facing libraries adds several new problems to the mix. It means that the players who are most aware of quality are generally unaware of prices, which Jan Velterop once called the “cat food” model of" ], [ "When most peer-reviewed research journals are toll access, a pricing crisis entails an access crisis. Before the rise of OA, all peer-reviewed journals were toll access, and even today about three-quarters of peer-reviewed journals are toll access.\n \n When subscribers respond to skyrocketing prices by canceling subscriptions, access decreases. Cancellations mitigate one problem and aggravate another. A study by the Research Information Network in late 2009 found that 40 percent of surveyed researchers had trouble accessing journal literature at least once a week, and two-thirds at least once a month. About 60 percent said that access limitations hindered their research, and 18 percent said the hindrance was significant.", "But in the end it doesn’t matter whether toll-access publishers are right or wrong to believe that their revenue requires access barriers. The deeper problem is that we donate time, labor, and public money to create new knowledge and then hand control over the results to businesses that believe, correctly or incorrectly, that their revenue and survival depend on limiting access to that knowledge. If toll-access publishers are right that they must erect access barriers to reimburse themselves, then the problem is that we allow them to be the only outlets for most peer-reviewed research. If they’re wrong about the need for access barriers, then the problem is that we tolerate their access barriers, even for publicly funded research and gifts from authors who write for impact and not for money.\nConventional publishers often criticize OA initiatives for “interfering with the market,” but scholarly publishing is permeated by state action, public subsidies, gift culture, and anticompetitive practices.", "Finally, even in the absence of perverse journal pricing practices, the subscription or toll-access business model would not scale with the growth of research or the growth of published knowledge. If prices were low today and guaranteed to remain low forever,", "We need a system of research dissemination that scales with the growth of research volume. The subscription or toll-access system scales negatively by shrinking the accessible percentage of research as research itself continues to grow.\nMoney would solve the access crisis if we had enough of it, and if the amount at our disposal grew in proportion to the growing volume and growing prices of the literature. But we don’t have nearly enough money, and the money we do have doesn’t grow nearly fast enough to keep pace with the volume or prices of the literature.\nToll-access publishers don’t benefit from access gaps and have their own reasons to want to close them. But they prefer the unscalable money solution, even if university budgets and national treasuries must be squeezed by law to find the funds. Crispin Davis, then-CEO of Elsevier, once argued that “the government needs to lay down guidelines on the proportion of university funds that should be set aside for the acquisition of books and journals, or even increase funding to ensure that universities can buy all the material they need.”", "All scholarly journals (toll access and OA) benefit from public subsidies. Most scientific research is funded by public agencies using public money, conducted and written up by researchers working at public institutions and paid with public money, and then peer-reviewed by faculty at public institutions and paid with public money. Even when researchers and peer reviewers work at private universities, their institutions are subsidized by publicly funded tax exemptions and tax-deductible donations. Most toll-access journal subscriptions are purchased by public institutions and paid with taxpayer money.\nLast and not least, publishers exercise their control over research articles through copyright, a temporary government-created monopoly.", "Conventional publishers use a business model that depends on access barriers and creates artificial scarcity. All publishers (conventional and OA) need revenue to cover their costs, but OA publishers use business models that dispense with access barriers and avoid artificial scarcity. Toll-access publishers contend that the OA business models are inadequate. We can debate that, for example, in light of the evidence that more than 7,500 peer-reviewed OA journals are finding ways to pay their bills, the fact that a growing number of for-profit OA publishers are already showing profits, and the fact that most of the money needed to support OA journals is currently tied up supporting toll-access journals. (See chapter 7 on economics.)", "Even the wealthiest academic libraries in the world suffer serious access gaps. When the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted unanimously for a strong OA policy in February 2008, Professor Stuart Shieber explained that cumulative price increases had forced the Harvard library to undertake “serious cancellation efforts” for budgetary reasons.\nAccess gaps are worse at other affluent institutions, and worse still in the developing world. In 2008, Harvard subscribed to 98,900 serials and Yale to 73,900. The best-funded research library in India, at the Indian Institute of Science, subscribed to 10,600. Several sub-Saharan African university libraries subscribed to zero, offering their patrons access to no conventional journals except those donated by publishers.", "Every scholarly journal is a natural mini-monopoly in the sense that no other journal publishes the same articles. There’s nothing improper about this natural mini-monopoly. It’s a side-effect of the desirable fact that journals don’t duplicate one another. But it means that toll-access journals compete for authors much more than they compete for subscribers. If you need an article published in a certain journal, then you need access to that journal. This is one reason why free and expensive journals can coexist in the same field, even at the same level of quality. The free journals don’t drive the expensive journals out of business or even drive down their prices. By weakening the competition for buyers, however, this natural monopoly weakens the market feedback that would otherwise punish declining quality, declining usage, and rising prices.", "I make this list library-centric rather than user-centric because the pricing crisis has nearly killed off individual subscriptions. Most subscribers to toll-access journals are libraries, and most authorized readers of toll-access journals are library patrons.\nIn short, conventional publishers regard easy online sharing as a problem while researchers and libraries regard it as a solution. The internet is widening the gap between the interests of conventional publishers and the interests of researchers and research institutions.\nConventional publishers are adapting to the digital age in some respects. They’re migrating most print journals to digital formats\n \n and even dropping their print editions. They’re incorporating hyperlinks, search engines, and alert services. A growing number are digitizing their backfiles and integrating texts with data. But the revolutionary power to share content without price or permission barriers, to solve the pricing and permission crises at a stroke and liberate research for the benefit of all, is the one innovation they fear most.", "Laid on top of this natural monopoly are several layers of artificial monopoly. One kind of evidence is that large commercial publishers charge higher prices and raise their prices faster than small, nonprofit publishers. Yet, the scholarly consensus is that quality, impact, and prestige are generally higher at the nonprofit society journals.\nLarge conventional publishers spend some of the money they extract from libraries on marketing and “content protection” measures that benefit publishers far more than users. Indeed, the content protection measures don’t benefit users at all and make the texts less useful.\nConventional for-profit journals can increase their profit margins by decreasing their rejection rates. Reducing the rejection rate reduces the number of articles a journal must peer review for each article it publishes.", "Most faculty and researchers are aware of access gaps in their libraries but generally unaware of their causes and unaware that the problems are systemic and worsening. (A common response: My research is very specialized, so naturally my library won’t have", "During the decades in which journal prices have been rising faster than inflation and faster than library budgets, libraries have cut into their book budgets to pay for journals. According to James McPherson, “In 1986 [academic] libraries spent 44 percent of their budgets on books and 56 percent on journals; by 1997 the imbalance had grown to 28 percent for books and 72 percent for journals.” Because academic libraries now buy fewer books, academic book publishers now accept fewer manuscripts. One result is that the journal crisis, concentrated in the sciences, has precipitated a monograph crisis, concentrated in the humanities.\nNew restrictions on electronic journals add a permissions crisis on top of the pricing crisis. For publishers of online toll-access journals, there are business reasons to limit the freedom of users to copy and redistribute texts, even if that leaves users with fewer rights than they had with print journals. But these business reasons create pernicious consequences for libraries and their patrons.", "We take advantage of this gift when we post valuable work online and permit free access and unrestricted use for every user with an internet connection. But if we charge for access, enforce exclusion, create artificial scarcity, or prohibit essential uses, then we treat the nonrivalrous digital file like a rivalrous physical object, dismiss the opportunity, and spurn the gift.\nWhen publishers argue that there is no access problem and that we shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken, there are two answers. First, they’re wrong. There are deep and serious access problems. Publishers who really don’t know this should talk to the libraries who subscribe to their journals, and even more to the libraries who don’t. But second, leaving that quarrel entirely to one side, there are good reasons to pursue OA anyway.", "Open Access: Motivation\n2.1 OA as Solving Problems\nThere are lamentably many problems for which OA is part of the solution. Here are fifteen ways in which the current system of disseminating peer-reviewed research is deeply dysfunctional for researchers and their institutions, even if highly profitable for the largest conventional publishers. I’ve limited the list to those for which OA offers some hope of relief.\nWe are in the midst of a pricing crisis for scholarly journals. For four decades, subscription prices have risen significantly faster than inflation and significantly faster than library budgets. Subscription prices have risen about twice as fast as the price of healthcare, for most people the very index of skyrocketing, unsustainable prices. We’re long past the era of damage control and into the era of damage.", "Among the results: When libraries pay for subscriptions to digital journals, they don’t buy or own their own digital copies but merely rent or license them for a period of time. If they cancel a subscription, they could lose access to", "Conventional publishers acquire their key assets from academics without charge. Authors donate the texts of new articles and the rights to publish them. Editors and referees donate the peer-review judgments to improve and validate their quality.\n \n But then conventional publishers charge for access to the resulting articles, with no exception for authors, editors, referees, or their institutions. Publishers argue that they add value to the submitted manuscripts, which is true. But other players in the game, such as authors, editors, and referees, add far more value than publishers. For funded research, the funding agency is another critical player. It too must pay for access to the resulting articles even when the cost of a research project is hundreds of thousands of times greater than the cost of publication. Among these five value-adders—authors, editors, referees, funders, and publishers—publishers add the least value and generally demand the ownership rights.", "Here’s a brace of those beautiful opportunities. The internet emerged just as journal subscription prices were reaching unbearable levels. The internet widens distribution and reduces costs at the same time. Digital computers connected to a global network let us make perfect", "At some point we should trust the math more than special-interest lobbies. Among the many who have done the math, the University of California concluded that the subscription model for research journals is “incontrovertibly unsustainable.”\n2.2 OA as Seizing Opportunities\nEven if we had no pressing problems to solve, we’d want to take full advantage of the unprecedented power of digital technology to share knowledge and accelerate research. But we have both problems and opportunities, and we should acknowledge that. Too much of the OA discussion is grim, utilitarian, and problem-oriented. We should complement it with discussion that is joyful, curious, and opportunity-oriented. Serious problems don’t rule out beautiful opportunities, and one of the most beautiful opportunities facing OA is that certain strategic actions will solve serious problems and seize beautiful opportunities at the same time.", "everything I need.) On the other hand, librarians are acutely aware of library budget crises, high journal prices, hyperinflationary price increases, bundling constraints, publisher profit margins, and the disconnect between prices paid and journal costs, size, usage, impact, and", "While the damage grows, the largest journal publishers earn higher profit margins than the largest oil companies. In 2010, Elsevier’s journal division had a profit margin of 35.7 percent while ExxonMobil had only 28.1 percent.\nBy soaking up library budgets, big deals harm journals from small nonprofit publishers excluded from the bundles. This exacerbates the problem for researchers because journals from these smaller publishers tend to be higher in quality and impact than the journals protected by the big deals (more in #11 below).\nTo top it off, most big deals include confidentiality clauses preventing universities from disclosing the prices they pay. The effect is to reduce bargaining and price competition even further. In 2009, three academics launched the Big Deal Contract Project to use state open-record laws to force disclosure of big-deal contracts with public universities. Elsevier went to court to block the release of its contract with Washington State University and lost." ], [ "quality. And while researchers support OA roughly to the extent that they know about it, and have their own reasons to work for it, their general unawareness of the crisis for libraries adds one more difficulty to the job of recruiting", "Open Access: Motivation\n2.1 OA as Solving Problems\nThere are lamentably many problems for which OA is part of the solution. Here are fifteen ways in which the current system of disseminating peer-reviewed research is deeply dysfunctional for researchers and their institutions, even if highly profitable for the largest conventional publishers. I’ve limited the list to those for which OA offers some hope of relief.\nWe are in the midst of a pricing crisis for scholarly journals. For four decades, subscription prices have risen significantly faster than inflation and significantly faster than library budgets. Subscription prices have risen about twice as fast as the price of healthcare, for most people the very index of skyrocketing, unsustainable prices. We’re long past the era of damage control and into the era of damage.", "publishers out of the loop. For researchers acting on their own, the goal of complete OA is even easier to attain than the goal of affordable journals.", "We take advantage of this gift when we post valuable work online and permit free access and unrestricted use for every user with an internet connection. But if we charge for access, enforce exclusion, create artificial scarcity, or prohibit essential uses, then we treat the nonrivalrous digital file like a rivalrous physical object, dismiss the opportunity, and spurn the gift.\nWhen publishers argue that there is no access problem and that we shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken, there are two answers. First, they’re wrong. There are deep and serious access problems. Publishers who really don’t know this should talk to the libraries who subscribe to their journals, and even more to the libraries who don’t. But second, leaving that quarrel entirely to one side, there are good reasons to pursue OA anyway.", "reach of researchers and research institutions acting alone and needn’t wait for publishers, legislation, or markets. Authors, editors, and referees—the whole team that produces peer-reviewed research articles—can provide OA to peer-reviewed research literature and, if necessary, cut recalcitrant", "But in the end it doesn’t matter whether toll-access publishers are right or wrong to believe that their revenue requires access barriers. The deeper problem is that we donate time, labor, and public money to create new knowledge and then hand control over the results to businesses that believe, correctly or incorrectly, that their revenue and survival depend on limiting access to that knowledge. If toll-access publishers are right that they must erect access barriers to reimburse themselves, then the problem is that we allow them to be the only outlets for most peer-reviewed research. If they’re wrong about the need for access barriers, then the problem is that we tolerate their access barriers, even for publicly funded research and gifts from authors who write for impact and not for money.\nConventional publishers often criticize OA initiatives for “interfering with the market,” but scholarly publishing is permeated by state action, public subsidies, gift culture, and anticompetitive practices.", "At some point we should trust the math more than special-interest lobbies. Among the many who have done the math, the University of California concluded that the subscription model for research journals is “incontrovertibly unsustainable.”\n2.2 OA as Seizing Opportunities\nEven if we had no pressing problems to solve, we’d want to take full advantage of the unprecedented power of digital technology to share knowledge and accelerate research. But we have both problems and opportunities, and we should acknowledge that. Too much of the OA discussion is grim, utilitarian, and problem-oriented. We should complement it with discussion that is joyful, curious, and opportunity-oriented. Serious problems don’t rule out beautiful opportunities, and one of the most beautiful opportunities facing OA is that certain strategic actions will solve serious problems and seize beautiful opportunities at the same time.", "We need a system of research dissemination that scales with the growth of research volume. The subscription or toll-access system scales negatively by shrinking the accessible percentage of research as research itself continues to grow.\nMoney would solve the access crisis if we had enough of it, and if the amount at our disposal grew in proportion to the growing volume and growing prices of the literature. But we don’t have nearly enough money, and the money we do have doesn’t grow nearly fast enough to keep pace with the volume or prices of the literature.\nToll-access publishers don’t benefit from access gaps and have their own reasons to want to close them. But they prefer the unscalable money solution, even if university budgets and national treasuries must be squeezed by law to find the funds. Crispin Davis, then-CEO of Elsevier, once argued that “the government needs to lay down guidelines on the proportion of university funds that should be set aside for the acquisition of books and journals, or even increase funding to ensure that universities can buy all the material they need.”", "When most peer-reviewed research journals are toll access, a pricing crisis entails an access crisis. Before the rise of OA, all peer-reviewed journals were toll access, and even today about three-quarters of peer-reviewed journals are toll access.\n \n When subscribers respond to skyrocketing prices by canceling subscriptions, access decreases. Cancellations mitigate one problem and aggravate another. A study by the Research Information Network in late 2009 found that 40 percent of surveyed researchers had trouble accessing journal literature at least once a week, and two-thirds at least once a month. About 60 percent said that access limitations hindered their research, and 18 percent said the hindrance was significant.", "Most faculty and researchers are aware of access gaps in their libraries but generally unaware of their causes and unaware that the problems are systemic and worsening. (A common response: My research is very specialized, so naturally my library won’t have", "I make this list library-centric rather than user-centric because the pricing crisis has nearly killed off individual subscriptions. Most subscribers to toll-access journals are libraries, and most authorized readers of toll-access journals are library patrons.\nIn short, conventional publishers regard easy online sharing as a problem while researchers and libraries regard it as a solution. The internet is widening the gap between the interests of conventional publishers and the interests of researchers and research institutions.\nConventional publishers are adapting to the digital age in some respects. They’re migrating most print journals to digital formats\n \n and even dropping their print editions. They’re incorporating hyperlinks, search engines, and alert services. A growing number are digitizing their backfiles and integrating texts with data. But the revolutionary power to share content without price or permission barriers, to solve the pricing and permission crises at a stroke and liberate research for the benefit of all, is the one innovation they fear most.", "The fact that there are enough problems to motivate different stakeholders is a kind of good news. If the system were broken for buyers (librarians) but not for users (researchers), or vice versa, that would delay any fix even longer. Or it would create a pernicious trade-off in which any fix would help one group at the expense of the other. But the system is broken for both buyers and users, which makes them natural allies.", "Conventional publishers use a business model that depends on access barriers and creates artificial scarcity. All publishers (conventional and OA) need revenue to cover their costs, but OA publishers use business models that dispense with access barriers and avoid artificial scarcity. Toll-access publishers contend that the OA business models are inadequate. We can debate that, for example, in light of the evidence that more than 7,500 peer-reviewed OA journals are finding ways to pay their bills, the fact that a growing number of for-profit OA publishers are already showing profits, and the fact that most of the money needed to support OA journals is currently tied up supporting toll-access journals. (See chapter 7 on economics.)", "All scholarly journals (toll access and OA) benefit from public subsidies. Most scientific research is funded by public agencies using public money, conducted and written up by researchers working at public institutions and paid with public money, and then peer-reviewed by faculty at public institutions and paid with public money. Even when researchers and peer reviewers work at private universities, their institutions are subsidized by publicly funded tax exemptions and tax-deductible donations. Most toll-access journal subscriptions are purchased by public institutions and paid with taxpayer money.\nLast and not least, publishers exercise their control over research articles through copyright, a temporary government-created monopoly.", "Even the wealthiest academic libraries in the world suffer serious access gaps. When the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted unanimously for a strong OA policy in February 2008, Professor Stuart Shieber explained that cumulative price increases had forced the Harvard library to undertake “serious cancellation efforts” for budgetary reasons.\nAccess gaps are worse at other affluent institutions, and worse still in the developing world. In 2008, Harvard subscribed to 98,900 serials and Yale to 73,900. The best-funded research library in India, at the Indian Institute of Science, subscribed to 10,600. Several sub-Saharan African university libraries subscribed to zero, offering their patrons access to no conventional journals except those donated by publishers.", "Conventional publishers acquire their key assets from academics without charge. Authors donate the texts of new articles and the rights to publish them. Editors and referees donate the peer-review judgments to improve and validate their quality.\n \n But then conventional publishers charge for access to the resulting articles, with no exception for authors, editors, referees, or their institutions. Publishers argue that they add value to the submitted manuscripts, which is true. But other players in the game, such as authors, editors, and referees, add far more value than publishers. For funded research, the funding agency is another critical player. It too must pay for access to the resulting articles even when the cost of a research project is hundreds of thousands of times greater than the cost of publication. Among these five value-adders—authors, editors, referees, funders, and publishers—publishers add the least value and generally demand the ownership rights.", "copies of arbitrary files and distribute them to a worldwide audience at zero marginal cost. For 350 years, scholars have willingly, even eagerly, published journal articles without payment, freeing them to consent to OA without losing revenue. Unrestricted access to", "Laid on top of this natural monopoly are several layers of artificial monopoly. One kind of evidence is that large commercial publishers charge higher prices and raise their prices faster than small, nonprofit publishers. Yet, the scholarly consensus is that quality, impact, and prestige are generally higher at the nonprofit society journals.\nLarge conventional publishers spend some of the money they extract from libraries on marketing and “content protection” measures that benefit publishers far more than users. Indeed, the content protection measures don’t benefit users at all and make the texts less useful.\nConventional for-profit journals can increase their profit margins by decreasing their rejection rates. Reducing the rejection rate reduces the number of articles a journal must peer review for each article it publishes.", "Finally, even in the absence of perverse journal pricing practices, the subscription or toll-access business model would not scale with the growth of research or the growth of published knowledge. If prices were low today and guaranteed to remain low forever,", "Every scholarly journal is a natural mini-monopoly in the sense that no other journal publishes the same articles. There’s nothing improper about this natural mini-monopoly. It’s a side-effect of the desirable fact that journals don’t duplicate one another. But it means that toll-access journals compete for authors much more than they compete for subscribers. If you need an article published in a certain journal, then you need access to that journal. This is one reason why free and expensive journals can coexist in the same field, even at the same level of quality. The free journals don’t drive the expensive journals out of business or even drive down their prices. By weakening the competition for buyers, however, this natural monopoly weakens the market feedback that would otherwise punish declining quality, declining usage, and rising prices." ], [ "We take advantage of this gift when we post valuable work online and permit free access and unrestricted use for every user with an internet connection. But if we charge for access, enforce exclusion, create artificial scarcity, or prohibit essential uses, then we treat the nonrivalrous digital file like a rivalrous physical object, dismiss the opportunity, and spurn the gift.\nWhen publishers argue that there is no access problem and that we shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken, there are two answers. First, they’re wrong. There are deep and serious access problems. Publishers who really don’t know this should talk to the libraries who subscribe to their journals, and even more to the libraries who don’t. But second, leaving that quarrel entirely to one side, there are good reasons to pursue OA anyway.", "A less obvious but more fundamental opportunity is that knowledge is\nnonrivalrous\n(to use a term from the economics of property). We can share it without dividing it and consume it without diminishing it. My possession and use of some knowledge doesn’t exclude your possession and use of the same knowledge. Familiar physical goods like land, food, and machines are all\nrivalrous\n. To share them, we must take turns or settle for portions. Thomas Jefferson described this situation beautifully in an 1813 letter to Isaac McPherson:\nIf nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea. . . . Its peculiar character . . . is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening mine.", "Digital writing is the first kind of writing that does not reduce recorded knowledge to a rivalrous object. If we all have the right equipment, then we can all have copies of the same digital text without excluding one another, without multiplying our costs, and without depleting our resources.\nI’ve heard physicists refer to the prospect of room-temperature superconductivity as a “gift of nature.” Unfortunately, that is not quite within reach. But the nonrivalrous property of digital information is a gift of nature that we’ve already grasped and put to work. We only have to stand back a moment to appreciate it. To our ancestors, the prospect of recording knowledge in precise language, symbols, sounds, or images without reducing the record to a rivalrous object would have been magical. But we do it every day now, and it’s losing its magic.\nThe danger is not that we already take this property for granted but that we might stop short and fail to take full advantage of it. It can transform knowledge-sharing if we let it.", "We seldom think about how metaphysically lucky we are that knowledge is nonrivalrous. We can all know the same ideas, stories, tunes, plans, directions, and words without my knowledge blocking yours or yours blocking mine. We’re equally fortunate that speech is nonrivalrous, since it allows us to articulate and share our knowledge without reducing it to a rivalrous commodity.\nBut for all of human history before the digital age, writing has been rivalrous. Written or recorded knowledge became a material object like stone, clay, skin, or paper, which was necessarily rivalrous. Even when we had the printing press and photocopying machine, allowing us to make many copies at comparatively low cost, each copy was a rivalrous material object. Despite its revolutionary impact, writing was hobbled from birth by this tragic limitation. We could only record nonrivalrous knowledge in a rivalrous form.", "Laid on top of this natural monopoly are several layers of artificial monopoly. One kind of evidence is that large commercial publishers charge higher prices and raise their prices faster than small, nonprofit publishers. Yet, the scholarly consensus is that quality, impact, and prestige are generally higher at the nonprofit society journals.\nLarge conventional publishers spend some of the money they extract from libraries on marketing and “content protection” measures that benefit publishers far more than users. Indeed, the content protection measures don’t benefit users at all and make the texts less useful.\nConventional for-profit journals can increase their profit margins by decreasing their rejection rates. Reducing the rejection rate reduces the number of articles a journal must peer review for each article it publishes.", "purchasing. It creates a classic moral hazard in which researchers are shielded from the costs of their preferences and have little incentive to adjust their preferences accordingly. It subtracts one more market signal that might otherwise check high prices and declining", "Here’s a brace of those beautiful opportunities. The internet emerged just as journal subscription prices were reaching unbearable levels. The internet widens distribution and reduces costs at the same time. Digital computers connected to a global network let us make perfect", "We need a system of research dissemination that scales with the growth of research volume. The subscription or toll-access system scales negatively by shrinking the accessible percentage of research as research itself continues to grow.\nMoney would solve the access crisis if we had enough of it, and if the amount at our disposal grew in proportion to the growing volume and growing prices of the literature. But we don’t have nearly enough money, and the money we do have doesn’t grow nearly fast enough to keep pace with the volume or prices of the literature.\nToll-access publishers don’t benefit from access gaps and have their own reasons to want to close them. But they prefer the unscalable money solution, even if university budgets and national treasuries must be squeezed by law to find the funds. Crispin Davis, then-CEO of Elsevier, once argued that “the government needs to lay down guidelines on the proportion of university funds that should be set aside for the acquisition of books and journals, or even increase funding to ensure that universities can buy all the material they need.”", "Conventional publishers acquire their key assets from academics without charge. Authors donate the texts of new articles and the rights to publish them. Editors and referees donate the peer-review judgments to improve and validate their quality.\n \n But then conventional publishers charge for access to the resulting articles, with no exception for authors, editors, referees, or their institutions. Publishers argue that they add value to the submitted manuscripts, which is true. But other players in the game, such as authors, editors, and referees, add far more value than publishers. For funded research, the funding agency is another critical player. It too must pay for access to the resulting articles even when the cost of a research project is hundreds of thousands of times greater than the cost of publication. Among these five value-adders—authors, editors, referees, funders, and publishers—publishers add the least value and generally demand the ownership rights.", "Every scholarly journal is a natural mini-monopoly in the sense that no other journal publishes the same articles. There’s nothing improper about this natural mini-monopoly. It’s a side-effect of the desirable fact that journals don’t duplicate one another. But it means that toll-access journals compete for authors much more than they compete for subscribers. If you need an article published in a certain journal, then you need access to that journal. This is one reason why free and expensive journals can coexist in the same field, even at the same level of quality. The free journals don’t drive the expensive journals out of business or even drive down their prices. By weakening the competition for buyers, however, this natural monopoly weakens the market feedback that would otherwise punish declining quality, declining usage, and rising prices.", "But in the end it doesn’t matter whether toll-access publishers are right or wrong to believe that their revenue requires access barriers. The deeper problem is that we donate time, labor, and public money to create new knowledge and then hand control over the results to businesses that believe, correctly or incorrectly, that their revenue and survival depend on limiting access to that knowledge. If toll-access publishers are right that they must erect access barriers to reimburse themselves, then the problem is that we allow them to be the only outlets for most peer-reviewed research. If they’re wrong about the need for access barriers, then the problem is that we tolerate their access barriers, even for publicly funded research and gifts from authors who write for impact and not for money.\nConventional publishers often criticize OA initiatives for “interfering with the market,” but scholarly publishing is permeated by state action, public subsidies, gift culture, and anticompetitive practices.", "times more than it spends today for full coverage, in sixty years 18.7 times more, and in a hundred years 131.5 times more. But since Croesus can’t spend more than it has, in twenty years the coverage it could afford", "At some point we should trust the math more than special-interest lobbies. Among the many who have done the math, the University of California concluded that the subscription model for research journals is “incontrovertibly unsustainable.”\n2.2 OA as Seizing Opportunities\nEven if we had no pressing problems to solve, we’d want to take full advantage of the unprecedented power of digital technology to share knowledge and accelerate research. But we have both problems and opportunities, and we should acknowledge that. Too much of the OA discussion is grim, utilitarian, and problem-oriented. We should complement it with discussion that is joyful, curious, and opportunity-oriented. Serious problems don’t rule out beautiful opportunities, and one of the most beautiful opportunities facing OA is that certain strategic actions will solve serious problems and seize beautiful opportunities at the same time.", "Conventional publishers use a business model that depends on access barriers and creates artificial scarcity. All publishers (conventional and OA) need revenue to cover their costs, but OA publishers use business models that dispense with access barriers and avoid artificial scarcity. Toll-access publishers contend that the OA business models are inadequate. We can debate that, for example, in light of the evidence that more than 7,500 peer-reviewed OA journals are finding ways to pay their bills, the fact that a growing number of for-profit OA publishers are already showing profits, and the fact that most of the money needed to support OA journals is currently tied up supporting toll-access journals. (See chapter 7 on economics.)", "All scholarly journals (toll access and OA) benefit from public subsidies. Most scientific research is funded by public agencies using public money, conducted and written up by researchers working at public institutions and paid with public money, and then peer-reviewed by faculty at public institutions and paid with public money. Even when researchers and peer reviewers work at private universities, their institutions are subsidized by publicly funded tax exemptions and tax-deductible donations. Most toll-access journal subscriptions are purchased by public institutions and paid with taxpayer money.\nLast and not least, publishers exercise their control over research articles through copyright, a temporary government-created monopoly.", "During the decades in which journal prices have been rising faster than inflation and faster than library budgets, libraries have cut into their book budgets to pay for journals. According to James McPherson, “In 1986 [academic] libraries spent 44 percent of their budgets on books and 56 percent on journals; by 1997 the imbalance had grown to 28 percent for books and 72 percent for journals.” Because academic libraries now buy fewer books, academic book publishers now accept fewer manuscripts. One result is that the journal crisis, concentrated in the sciences, has precipitated a monograph crisis, concentrated in the humanities.\nNew restrictions on electronic journals add a permissions crisis on top of the pricing crisis. For publishers of online toll-access journals, there are business reasons to limit the freedom of users to copy and redistribute texts, even if that leaves users with fewer rights than they had with print journals. But these business reasons create pernicious consequences for libraries and their patrons.", "The fact that there are enough problems to motivate different stakeholders is a kind of good news. If the system were broken for buyers (librarians) but not for users (researchers), or vice versa, that would delay any fix even longer. Or it would create a pernicious trade-off in which any fix would help one group at the expense of the other. But the system is broken for both buyers and users, which makes them natural allies.", "When most peer-reviewed research journals are toll access, a pricing crisis entails an access crisis. Before the rise of OA, all peer-reviewed journals were toll access, and even today about three-quarters of peer-reviewed journals are toll access.\n \n When subscribers respond to skyrocketing prices by canceling subscriptions, access decreases. Cancellations mitigate one problem and aggravate another. A study by the Research Information Network in late 2009 found that 40 percent of surveyed researchers had trouble accessing journal literature at least once a week, and two-thirds at least once a month. About 60 percent said that access limitations hindered their research, and 18 percent said the hindrance was significant.", "digital files supports forms of discovery and processing impossible for paper texts and for inaccessible or use-restricted digital texts. OA is already lawful and doesn’t require copyright reform. Now that the internet is at our fingertips, OA is within the", "I make this list library-centric rather than user-centric because the pricing crisis has nearly killed off individual subscriptions. Most subscribers to toll-access journals are libraries, and most authorized readers of toll-access journals are library patrons.\nIn short, conventional publishers regard easy online sharing as a problem while researchers and libraries regard it as a solution. The internet is widening the gap between the interests of conventional publishers and the interests of researchers and research institutions.\nConventional publishers are adapting to the digital age in some respects. They’re migrating most print journals to digital formats\n \n and even dropping their print editions. They’re incorporating hyperlinks, search engines, and alert services. A growing number are digitizing their backfiles and integrating texts with data. But the revolutionary power to share content without price or permission barriers, to solve the pricing and permission crises at a stroke and liberate research for the benefit of all, is the one innovation they fear most." ], [ "We take advantage of this gift when we post valuable work online and permit free access and unrestricted use for every user with an internet connection. But if we charge for access, enforce exclusion, create artificial scarcity, or prohibit essential uses, then we treat the nonrivalrous digital file like a rivalrous physical object, dismiss the opportunity, and spurn the gift.\nWhen publishers argue that there is no access problem and that we shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken, there are two answers. First, they’re wrong. There are deep and serious access problems. Publishers who really don’t know this should talk to the libraries who subscribe to their journals, and even more to the libraries who don’t. But second, leaving that quarrel entirely to one side, there are good reasons to pursue OA anyway.", "A less obvious but more fundamental opportunity is that knowledge is\nnonrivalrous\n(to use a term from the economics of property). We can share it without dividing it and consume it without diminishing it. My possession and use of some knowledge doesn’t exclude your possession and use of the same knowledge. Familiar physical goods like land, food, and machines are all\nrivalrous\n. To share them, we must take turns or settle for portions. Thomas Jefferson described this situation beautifully in an 1813 letter to Isaac McPherson:\nIf nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea. . . . Its peculiar character . . . is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening mine.", "We seldom think about how metaphysically lucky we are that knowledge is nonrivalrous. We can all know the same ideas, stories, tunes, plans, directions, and words without my knowledge blocking yours or yours blocking mine. We’re equally fortunate that speech is nonrivalrous, since it allows us to articulate and share our knowledge without reducing it to a rivalrous commodity.\nBut for all of human history before the digital age, writing has been rivalrous. Written or recorded knowledge became a material object like stone, clay, skin, or paper, which was necessarily rivalrous. Even when we had the printing press and photocopying machine, allowing us to make many copies at comparatively low cost, each copy was a rivalrous material object. Despite its revolutionary impact, writing was hobbled from birth by this tragic limitation. We could only record nonrivalrous knowledge in a rivalrous form.", "Digital writing is the first kind of writing that does not reduce recorded knowledge to a rivalrous object. If we all have the right equipment, then we can all have copies of the same digital text without excluding one another, without multiplying our costs, and without depleting our resources.\nI’ve heard physicists refer to the prospect of room-temperature superconductivity as a “gift of nature.” Unfortunately, that is not quite within reach. But the nonrivalrous property of digital information is a gift of nature that we’ve already grasped and put to work. We only have to stand back a moment to appreciate it. To our ancestors, the prospect of recording knowledge in precise language, symbols, sounds, or images without reducing the record to a rivalrous object would have been magical. But we do it every day now, and it’s losing its magic.\nThe danger is not that we already take this property for granted but that we might stop short and fail to take full advantage of it. It can transform knowledge-sharing if we let it.", "copies of arbitrary files and distribute them to a worldwide audience at zero marginal cost. For 350 years, scholars have willingly, even eagerly, published journal articles without payment, freeing them to consent to OA without losing revenue. Unrestricted access to", "Conventional publishers use a business model that depends on access barriers and creates artificial scarcity. All publishers (conventional and OA) need revenue to cover their costs, but OA publishers use business models that dispense with access barriers and avoid artificial scarcity. Toll-access publishers contend that the OA business models are inadequate. We can debate that, for example, in light of the evidence that more than 7,500 peer-reviewed OA journals are finding ways to pay their bills, the fact that a growing number of for-profit OA publishers are already showing profits, and the fact that most of the money needed to support OA journals is currently tied up supporting toll-access journals. (See chapter 7 on economics.)", "At some point we should trust the math more than special-interest lobbies. Among the many who have done the math, the University of California concluded that the subscription model for research journals is “incontrovertibly unsustainable.”\n2.2 OA as Seizing Opportunities\nEven if we had no pressing problems to solve, we’d want to take full advantage of the unprecedented power of digital technology to share knowledge and accelerate research. But we have both problems and opportunities, and we should acknowledge that. Too much of the OA discussion is grim, utilitarian, and problem-oriented. We should complement it with discussion that is joyful, curious, and opportunity-oriented. Serious problems don’t rule out beautiful opportunities, and one of the most beautiful opportunities facing OA is that certain strategic actions will solve serious problems and seize beautiful opportunities at the same time.", "But in the end it doesn’t matter whether toll-access publishers are right or wrong to believe that their revenue requires access barriers. The deeper problem is that we donate time, labor, and public money to create new knowledge and then hand control over the results to businesses that believe, correctly or incorrectly, that their revenue and survival depend on limiting access to that knowledge. If toll-access publishers are right that they must erect access barriers to reimburse themselves, then the problem is that we allow them to be the only outlets for most peer-reviewed research. If they’re wrong about the need for access barriers, then the problem is that we tolerate their access barriers, even for publicly funded research and gifts from authors who write for impact and not for money.\nConventional publishers often criticize OA initiatives for “interfering with the market,” but scholarly publishing is permeated by state action, public subsidies, gift culture, and anticompetitive practices.", "digital files supports forms of discovery and processing impossible for paper texts and for inaccessible or use-restricted digital texts. OA is already lawful and doesn’t require copyright reform. Now that the internet is at our fingertips, OA is within the", "reach of researchers and research institutions acting alone and needn’t wait for publishers, legislation, or markets. Authors, editors, and referees—the whole team that produces peer-reviewed research articles—can provide OA to peer-reviewed research literature and, if necessary, cut recalcitrant", "Open Access: Motivation\n2.1 OA as Solving Problems\nThere are lamentably many problems for which OA is part of the solution. Here are fifteen ways in which the current system of disseminating peer-reviewed research is deeply dysfunctional for researchers and their institutions, even if highly profitable for the largest conventional publishers. I’ve limited the list to those for which OA offers some hope of relief.\nWe are in the midst of a pricing crisis for scholarly journals. For four decades, subscription prices have risen significantly faster than inflation and significantly faster than library budgets. Subscription prices have risen about twice as fast as the price of healthcare, for most people the very index of skyrocketing, unsustainable prices. We’re long past the era of damage control and into the era of damage.", "All scholarly journals (toll access and OA) benefit from public subsidies. Most scientific research is funded by public agencies using public money, conducted and written up by researchers working at public institutions and paid with public money, and then peer-reviewed by faculty at public institutions and paid with public money. Even when researchers and peer reviewers work at private universities, their institutions are subsidized by publicly funded tax exemptions and tax-deductible donations. Most toll-access journal subscriptions are purchased by public institutions and paid with taxpayer money.\nLast and not least, publishers exercise their control over research articles through copyright, a temporary government-created monopoly.", "We need a system of research dissemination that scales with the growth of research volume. The subscription or toll-access system scales negatively by shrinking the accessible percentage of research as research itself continues to grow.\nMoney would solve the access crisis if we had enough of it, and if the amount at our disposal grew in proportion to the growing volume and growing prices of the literature. But we don’t have nearly enough money, and the money we do have doesn’t grow nearly fast enough to keep pace with the volume or prices of the literature.\nToll-access publishers don’t benefit from access gaps and have their own reasons to want to close them. But they prefer the unscalable money solution, even if university budgets and national treasuries must be squeezed by law to find the funds. Crispin Davis, then-CEO of Elsevier, once argued that “the government needs to lay down guidelines on the proportion of university funds that should be set aside for the acquisition of books and journals, or even increase funding to ensure that universities can buy all the material they need.”", "Conventional publishers acquire their key assets from academics without charge. Authors donate the texts of new articles and the rights to publish them. Editors and referees donate the peer-review judgments to improve and validate their quality.\n \n But then conventional publishers charge for access to the resulting articles, with no exception for authors, editors, referees, or their institutions. Publishers argue that they add value to the submitted manuscripts, which is true. But other players in the game, such as authors, editors, and referees, add far more value than publishers. For funded research, the funding agency is another critical player. It too must pay for access to the resulting articles even when the cost of a research project is hundreds of thousands of times greater than the cost of publication. Among these five value-adders—authors, editors, referees, funders, and publishers—publishers add the least value and generally demand the ownership rights.", "I make this list library-centric rather than user-centric because the pricing crisis has nearly killed off individual subscriptions. Most subscribers to toll-access journals are libraries, and most authorized readers of toll-access journals are library patrons.\nIn short, conventional publishers regard easy online sharing as a problem while researchers and libraries regard it as a solution. The internet is widening the gap between the interests of conventional publishers and the interests of researchers and research institutions.\nConventional publishers are adapting to the digital age in some respects. They’re migrating most print journals to digital formats\n \n and even dropping their print editions. They’re incorporating hyperlinks, search engines, and alert services. A growing number are digitizing their backfiles and integrating texts with data. But the revolutionary power to share content without price or permission barriers, to solve the pricing and permission crises at a stroke and liberate research for the benefit of all, is the one innovation they fear most.", "publishers out of the loop. For researchers acting on their own, the goal of complete OA is even easier to attain than the goal of affordable journals.", "Finally, even in the absence of perverse journal pricing practices, the subscription or toll-access business model would not scale with the growth of research or the growth of published knowledge. If prices were low today and guaranteed to remain low forever,", "Here’s a brace of those beautiful opportunities. The internet emerged just as journal subscription prices were reaching unbearable levels. The internet widens distribution and reduces costs at the same time. Digital computers connected to a global network let us make perfect", "quality. And while researchers support OA roughly to the extent that they know about it, and have their own reasons to work for it, their general unawareness of the crisis for libraries adds one more difficulty to the job of recruiting", "Even the wealthiest academic libraries in the world suffer serious access gaps. When the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted unanimously for a strong OA policy in February 2008, Professor Stuart Shieber explained that cumulative price increases had forced the Harvard library to undertake “serious cancellation efforts” for budgetary reasons.\nAccess gaps are worse at other affluent institutions, and worse still in the developing world. In 2008, Harvard subscribed to 98,900 serials and Yale to 73,900. The best-funded research library in India, at the Indian Institute of Science, subscribed to 10,600. Several sub-Saharan African university libraries subscribed to zero, offering their patrons access to no conventional journals except those donated by publishers." ], [ "We seldom think about how metaphysically lucky we are that knowledge is nonrivalrous. We can all know the same ideas, stories, tunes, plans, directions, and words without my knowledge blocking yours or yours blocking mine. We’re equally fortunate that speech is nonrivalrous, since it allows us to articulate and share our knowledge without reducing it to a rivalrous commodity.\nBut for all of human history before the digital age, writing has been rivalrous. Written or recorded knowledge became a material object like stone, clay, skin, or paper, which was necessarily rivalrous. Even when we had the printing press and photocopying machine, allowing us to make many copies at comparatively low cost, each copy was a rivalrous material object. Despite its revolutionary impact, writing was hobbled from birth by this tragic limitation. We could only record nonrivalrous knowledge in a rivalrous form.", "Digital writing is the first kind of writing that does not reduce recorded knowledge to a rivalrous object. If we all have the right equipment, then we can all have copies of the same digital text without excluding one another, without multiplying our costs, and without depleting our resources.\nI’ve heard physicists refer to the prospect of room-temperature superconductivity as a “gift of nature.” Unfortunately, that is not quite within reach. But the nonrivalrous property of digital information is a gift of nature that we’ve already grasped and put to work. We only have to stand back a moment to appreciate it. To our ancestors, the prospect of recording knowledge in precise language, symbols, sounds, or images without reducing the record to a rivalrous object would have been magical. But we do it every day now, and it’s losing its magic.\nThe danger is not that we already take this property for granted but that we might stop short and fail to take full advantage of it. It can transform knowledge-sharing if we let it.", "A less obvious but more fundamental opportunity is that knowledge is\nnonrivalrous\n(to use a term from the economics of property). We can share it without dividing it and consume it without diminishing it. My possession and use of some knowledge doesn’t exclude your possession and use of the same knowledge. Familiar physical goods like land, food, and machines are all\nrivalrous\n. To share them, we must take turns or settle for portions. Thomas Jefferson described this situation beautifully in an 1813 letter to Isaac McPherson:\nIf nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea. . . . Its peculiar character . . . is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening mine.", "digital files supports forms of discovery and processing impossible for paper texts and for inaccessible or use-restricted digital texts. OA is already lawful and doesn’t require copyright reform. Now that the internet is at our fingertips, OA is within the", "Here’s a brace of those beautiful opportunities. The internet emerged just as journal subscription prices were reaching unbearable levels. The internet widens distribution and reduces costs at the same time. Digital computers connected to a global network let us make perfect", "We take advantage of this gift when we post valuable work online and permit free access and unrestricted use for every user with an internet connection. But if we charge for access, enforce exclusion, create artificial scarcity, or prohibit essential uses, then we treat the nonrivalrous digital file like a rivalrous physical object, dismiss the opportunity, and spurn the gift.\nWhen publishers argue that there is no access problem and that we shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken, there are two answers. First, they’re wrong. There are deep and serious access problems. Publishers who really don’t know this should talk to the libraries who subscribe to their journals, and even more to the libraries who don’t. But second, leaving that quarrel entirely to one side, there are good reasons to pursue OA anyway.", "Some publishers don’t allow libraries to share digital texts by interlibrary loan and instead require them to make printouts, scan the printouts, and lend the scans. Libraries must negotiate for prices and licensing terms, often under nondisclosure agreements, and", "make preservation decisions with only future market potential in mind. Libraries can’t migrate older content, such as journal backfiles, to new media and formats to keep them readable as technology changes, at least not without special permission or risk of liability.", "Among the results: When libraries pay for subscriptions to digital journals, they don’t buy or own their own digital copies but merely rent or license them for a period of time. If they cancel a subscription, they could lose access to", "During the decades in which journal prices have been rising faster than inflation and faster than library budgets, libraries have cut into their book budgets to pay for journals. According to James McPherson, “In 1986 [academic] libraries spent 44 percent of their budgets on books and 56 percent on journals; by 1997 the imbalance had grown to 28 percent for books and 72 percent for journals.” Because academic libraries now buy fewer books, academic book publishers now accept fewer manuscripts. One result is that the journal crisis, concentrated in the sciences, has precipitated a monograph crisis, concentrated in the humanities.\nNew restrictions on electronic journals add a permissions crisis on top of the pricing crisis. For publishers of online toll-access journals, there are business reasons to limit the freedom of users to copy and redistribute texts, even if that leaves users with fewer rights than they had with print journals. But these business reasons create pernicious consequences for libraries and their patrons.", "copies of arbitrary files and distribute them to a worldwide audience at zero marginal cost. For 350 years, scholars have willingly, even eagerly, published journal articles without payment, freeing them to consent to OA without losing revenue. Unrestricted access to", "I make this list library-centric rather than user-centric because the pricing crisis has nearly killed off individual subscriptions. Most subscribers to toll-access journals are libraries, and most authorized readers of toll-access journals are library patrons.\nIn short, conventional publishers regard easy online sharing as a problem while researchers and libraries regard it as a solution. The internet is widening the gap between the interests of conventional publishers and the interests of researchers and research institutions.\nConventional publishers are adapting to the digital age in some respects. They’re migrating most print journals to digital formats\n \n and even dropping their print editions. They’re incorporating hyperlinks, search engines, and alert services. A growing number are digitizing their backfiles and integrating texts with data. But the revolutionary power to share content without price or permission barriers, to solve the pricing and permission crises at a stroke and liberate research for the benefit of all, is the one innovation they fear most.", "past issues. They could violate the publishers’ copyrights if they make or hold copies for long-term preservation without special permission or payment, shifting the task of preservation more and more to publishers who are not preservation experts and who tend to", "Laid on top of this natural monopoly are several layers of artificial monopoly. One kind of evidence is that large commercial publishers charge higher prices and raise their prices faster than small, nonprofit publishers. Yet, the scholarly consensus is that quality, impact, and prestige are generally higher at the nonprofit society journals.\nLarge conventional publishers spend some of the money they extract from libraries on marketing and “content protection” measures that benefit publishers far more than users. Indeed, the content protection measures don’t benefit users at all and make the texts less useful.\nConventional for-profit journals can increase their profit margins by decreasing their rejection rates. Reducing the rejection rate reduces the number of articles a journal must peer review for each article it publishes.", "retain and consult complex licensing agreements that differ from publisher to publisher and year to year. They must police or negotiate access for walk-in patrons, online users off campus, and visiting faculty. They must limit access and usage by password, internet-protocol", "(IP) address, usage hours, institutional affiliation, physical location, and caps on simultaneous users. They must implement authentication systems and administer proxy servers. They must make fair-use judgment calls, erring on the side of seeking permission or forgoing use. They must", "At some point we should trust the math more than special-interest lobbies. Among the many who have done the math, the University of California concluded that the subscription model for research journals is “incontrovertibly unsustainable.”\n2.2 OA as Seizing Opportunities\nEven if we had no pressing problems to solve, we’d want to take full advantage of the unprecedented power of digital technology to share knowledge and accelerate research. But we have both problems and opportunities, and we should acknowledge that. Too much of the OA discussion is grim, utilitarian, and problem-oriented. We should complement it with discussion that is joyful, curious, and opportunity-oriented. Serious problems don’t rule out beautiful opportunities, and one of the most beautiful opportunities facing OA is that certain strategic actions will solve serious problems and seize beautiful opportunities at the same time.", "Conventional publishers use a business model that depends on access barriers and creates artificial scarcity. All publishers (conventional and OA) need revenue to cover their costs, but OA publishers use business models that dispense with access barriers and avoid artificial scarcity. Toll-access publishers contend that the OA business models are inadequate. We can debate that, for example, in light of the evidence that more than 7,500 peer-reviewed OA journals are finding ways to pay their bills, the fact that a growing number of for-profit OA publishers are already showing profits, and the fact that most of the money needed to support OA journals is currently tied up supporting toll-access journals. (See chapter 7 on economics.)", "the total price for the total literature would still be heading toward exponential explosion. This is easiest to see at the mythical University of Croesus, which can afford 100 percent of the literature today. In that respect, Croesus is far better", "quality. Researcher oblivion to the problems facing libraries adds several new problems to the mix. It means that the players who are most aware of quality are generally unaware of prices, which Jan Velterop once called the “cat food” model of" ], [ "We seldom think about how metaphysically lucky we are that knowledge is nonrivalrous. We can all know the same ideas, stories, tunes, plans, directions, and words without my knowledge blocking yours or yours blocking mine. We’re equally fortunate that speech is nonrivalrous, since it allows us to articulate and share our knowledge without reducing it to a rivalrous commodity.\nBut for all of human history before the digital age, writing has been rivalrous. Written or recorded knowledge became a material object like stone, clay, skin, or paper, which was necessarily rivalrous. Even when we had the printing press and photocopying machine, allowing us to make many copies at comparatively low cost, each copy was a rivalrous material object. Despite its revolutionary impact, writing was hobbled from birth by this tragic limitation. We could only record nonrivalrous knowledge in a rivalrous form.", "Digital writing is the first kind of writing that does not reduce recorded knowledge to a rivalrous object. If we all have the right equipment, then we can all have copies of the same digital text without excluding one another, without multiplying our costs, and without depleting our resources.\nI’ve heard physicists refer to the prospect of room-temperature superconductivity as a “gift of nature.” Unfortunately, that is not quite within reach. But the nonrivalrous property of digital information is a gift of nature that we’ve already grasped and put to work. We only have to stand back a moment to appreciate it. To our ancestors, the prospect of recording knowledge in precise language, symbols, sounds, or images without reducing the record to a rivalrous object would have been magical. But we do it every day now, and it’s losing its magic.\nThe danger is not that we already take this property for granted but that we might stop short and fail to take full advantage of it. It can transform knowledge-sharing if we let it.", "A less obvious but more fundamental opportunity is that knowledge is\nnonrivalrous\n(to use a term from the economics of property). We can share it without dividing it and consume it without diminishing it. My possession and use of some knowledge doesn’t exclude your possession and use of the same knowledge. Familiar physical goods like land, food, and machines are all\nrivalrous\n. To share them, we must take turns or settle for portions. Thomas Jefferson described this situation beautifully in an 1813 letter to Isaac McPherson:\nIf nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea. . . . Its peculiar character . . . is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening mine.", "We take advantage of this gift when we post valuable work online and permit free access and unrestricted use for every user with an internet connection. But if we charge for access, enforce exclusion, create artificial scarcity, or prohibit essential uses, then we treat the nonrivalrous digital file like a rivalrous physical object, dismiss the opportunity, and spurn the gift.\nWhen publishers argue that there is no access problem and that we shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken, there are two answers. First, they’re wrong. There are deep and serious access problems. Publishers who really don’t know this should talk to the libraries who subscribe to their journals, and even more to the libraries who don’t. But second, leaving that quarrel entirely to one side, there are good reasons to pursue OA anyway.", "Here’s a brace of those beautiful opportunities. The internet emerged just as journal subscription prices were reaching unbearable levels. The internet widens distribution and reduces costs at the same time. Digital computers connected to a global network let us make perfect", "Laid on top of this natural monopoly are several layers of artificial monopoly. One kind of evidence is that large commercial publishers charge higher prices and raise their prices faster than small, nonprofit publishers. Yet, the scholarly consensus is that quality, impact, and prestige are generally higher at the nonprofit society journals.\nLarge conventional publishers spend some of the money they extract from libraries on marketing and “content protection” measures that benefit publishers far more than users. Indeed, the content protection measures don’t benefit users at all and make the texts less useful.\nConventional for-profit journals can increase their profit margins by decreasing their rejection rates. Reducing the rejection rate reduces the number of articles a journal must peer review for each article it publishes.", "At some point we should trust the math more than special-interest lobbies. Among the many who have done the math, the University of California concluded that the subscription model for research journals is “incontrovertibly unsustainable.”\n2.2 OA as Seizing Opportunities\nEven if we had no pressing problems to solve, we’d want to take full advantage of the unprecedented power of digital technology to share knowledge and accelerate research. But we have both problems and opportunities, and we should acknowledge that. Too much of the OA discussion is grim, utilitarian, and problem-oriented. We should complement it with discussion that is joyful, curious, and opportunity-oriented. Serious problems don’t rule out beautiful opportunities, and one of the most beautiful opportunities facing OA is that certain strategic actions will solve serious problems and seize beautiful opportunities at the same time.", "During the decades in which journal prices have been rising faster than inflation and faster than library budgets, libraries have cut into their book budgets to pay for journals. According to James McPherson, “In 1986 [academic] libraries spent 44 percent of their budgets on books and 56 percent on journals; by 1997 the imbalance had grown to 28 percent for books and 72 percent for journals.” Because academic libraries now buy fewer books, academic book publishers now accept fewer manuscripts. One result is that the journal crisis, concentrated in the sciences, has precipitated a monograph crisis, concentrated in the humanities.\nNew restrictions on electronic journals add a permissions crisis on top of the pricing crisis. For publishers of online toll-access journals, there are business reasons to limit the freedom of users to copy and redistribute texts, even if that leaves users with fewer rights than they had with print journals. But these business reasons create pernicious consequences for libraries and their patrons.", "Conventional publishers acquire their key assets from academics without charge. Authors donate the texts of new articles and the rights to publish them. Editors and referees donate the peer-review judgments to improve and validate their quality.\n \n But then conventional publishers charge for access to the resulting articles, with no exception for authors, editors, referees, or their institutions. Publishers argue that they add value to the submitted manuscripts, which is true. But other players in the game, such as authors, editors, and referees, add far more value than publishers. For funded research, the funding agency is another critical player. It too must pay for access to the resulting articles even when the cost of a research project is hundreds of thousands of times greater than the cost of publication. Among these five value-adders—authors, editors, referees, funders, and publishers—publishers add the least value and generally demand the ownership rights.", "But in the end it doesn’t matter whether toll-access publishers are right or wrong to believe that their revenue requires access barriers. The deeper problem is that we donate time, labor, and public money to create new knowledge and then hand control over the results to businesses that believe, correctly or incorrectly, that their revenue and survival depend on limiting access to that knowledge. If toll-access publishers are right that they must erect access barriers to reimburse themselves, then the problem is that we allow them to be the only outlets for most peer-reviewed research. If they’re wrong about the need for access barriers, then the problem is that we tolerate their access barriers, even for publicly funded research and gifts from authors who write for impact and not for money.\nConventional publishers often criticize OA initiatives for “interfering with the market,” but scholarly publishing is permeated by state action, public subsidies, gift culture, and anticompetitive practices.", "The fact that there are enough problems to motivate different stakeholders is a kind of good news. If the system were broken for buyers (librarians) but not for users (researchers), or vice versa, that would delay any fix even longer. Or it would create a pernicious trade-off in which any fix would help one group at the expense of the other. But the system is broken for both buyers and users, which makes them natural allies.", "We need a system of research dissemination that scales with the growth of research volume. The subscription or toll-access system scales negatively by shrinking the accessible percentage of research as research itself continues to grow.\nMoney would solve the access crisis if we had enough of it, and if the amount at our disposal grew in proportion to the growing volume and growing prices of the literature. But we don’t have nearly enough money, and the money we do have doesn’t grow nearly fast enough to keep pace with the volume or prices of the literature.\nToll-access publishers don’t benefit from access gaps and have their own reasons to want to close them. But they prefer the unscalable money solution, even if university budgets and national treasuries must be squeezed by law to find the funds. Crispin Davis, then-CEO of Elsevier, once argued that “the government needs to lay down guidelines on the proportion of university funds that should be set aside for the acquisition of books and journals, or even increase funding to ensure that universities can buy all the material they need.”", "times more than it spends today for full coverage, in sixty years 18.7 times more, and in a hundred years 131.5 times more. But since Croesus can’t spend more than it has, in twenty years the coverage it could afford", "Conventional publishers use a business model that depends on access barriers and creates artificial scarcity. All publishers (conventional and OA) need revenue to cover their costs, but OA publishers use business models that dispense with access barriers and avoid artificial scarcity. Toll-access publishers contend that the OA business models are inadequate. We can debate that, for example, in light of the evidence that more than 7,500 peer-reviewed OA journals are finding ways to pay their bills, the fact that a growing number of for-profit OA publishers are already showing profits, and the fact that most of the money needed to support OA journals is currently tied up supporting toll-access journals. (See chapter 7 on economics.)", "Even the wealthiest academic libraries in the world suffer serious access gaps. When the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted unanimously for a strong OA policy in February 2008, Professor Stuart Shieber explained that cumulative price increases had forced the Harvard library to undertake “serious cancellation efforts” for budgetary reasons.\nAccess gaps are worse at other affluent institutions, and worse still in the developing world. In 2008, Harvard subscribed to 98,900 serials and Yale to 73,900. The best-funded research library in India, at the Indian Institute of Science, subscribed to 10,600. Several sub-Saharan African university libraries subscribed to zero, offering their patrons access to no conventional journals except those donated by publishers.", "purchasing. It creates a classic moral hazard in which researchers are shielded from the costs of their preferences and have little incentive to adjust their preferences accordingly. It subtracts one more market signal that might otherwise check high prices and declining", "Every scholarly journal is a natural mini-monopoly in the sense that no other journal publishes the same articles. There’s nothing improper about this natural mini-monopoly. It’s a side-effect of the desirable fact that journals don’t duplicate one another. But it means that toll-access journals compete for authors much more than they compete for subscribers. If you need an article published in a certain journal, then you need access to that journal. This is one reason why free and expensive journals can coexist in the same field, even at the same level of quality. The free journals don’t drive the expensive journals out of business or even drive down their prices. By weakening the competition for buyers, however, this natural monopoly weakens the market feedback that would otherwise punish declining quality, declining usage, and rising prices.", "All scholarly journals (toll access and OA) benefit from public subsidies. Most scientific research is funded by public agencies using public money, conducted and written up by researchers working at public institutions and paid with public money, and then peer-reviewed by faculty at public institutions and paid with public money. Even when researchers and peer reviewers work at private universities, their institutions are subsidized by publicly funded tax exemptions and tax-deductible donations. Most toll-access journal subscriptions are purchased by public institutions and paid with taxpayer money.\nLast and not least, publishers exercise their control over research articles through copyright, a temporary government-created monopoly.", "I make this list library-centric rather than user-centric because the pricing crisis has nearly killed off individual subscriptions. Most subscribers to toll-access journals are libraries, and most authorized readers of toll-access journals are library patrons.\nIn short, conventional publishers regard easy online sharing as a problem while researchers and libraries regard it as a solution. The internet is widening the gap between the interests of conventional publishers and the interests of researchers and research institutions.\nConventional publishers are adapting to the digital age in some respects. They’re migrating most print journals to digital formats\n \n and even dropping their print editions. They’re incorporating hyperlinks, search engines, and alert services. A growing number are digitizing their backfiles and integrating texts with data. But the revolutionary power to share content without price or permission barriers, to solve the pricing and permission crises at a stroke and liberate research for the benefit of all, is the one innovation they fear most.", "Open Access: Motivation\n2.1 OA as Solving Problems\nThere are lamentably many problems for which OA is part of the solution. Here are fifteen ways in which the current system of disseminating peer-reviewed research is deeply dysfunctional for researchers and their institutions, even if highly profitable for the largest conventional publishers. I’ve limited the list to those for which OA offers some hope of relief.\nWe are in the midst of a pricing crisis for scholarly journals. For four decades, subscription prices have risen significantly faster than inflation and significantly faster than library budgets. Subscription prices have risen about twice as fast as the price of healthcare, for most people the very index of skyrocketing, unsustainable prices. We’re long past the era of damage control and into the era of damage." ] ]
train	62324	[ "What can be determined as a similarity between Harvey, Joe, and Johnson?", "Why did Harvey and Joe have such a large tab and the bar that was ran by Johnson?", "Despite the menu prices for the restaurant food being remarkably low, how were Harvey and Joe met with an outrageous bill of 328 buckos?", "Why did Harvey agree to pay the absurd price for the water that he and Joe consumed at the bar?", "How was Johnson convinced to buy the case astroid fever medication?", "What was so unique about Genius that made Joe and Harvey want to purchase him?", "Despite what they told Johnson, what can be determined as Harvey and Joe's true occupation?" ]	[ [ "They all have a tendency to want the best for one another to a personal fault. ", "They all have a tendency to think they are more advanced than one another", "They all have a tendency to spend too much time at the bar where Johnson works", "They all have a tendency to be greedy at any opportunity" ], [ "They were unaware of the cost of the water served by the bartender. ", "They had consumed multiple alcoholic beverages and lost track of how much they had ordered. ", "Their funds were unlimited and they ordered rounds of drinks for everyone in the bar, including Genius, who had more hands to hold more drinks. ", "Johnson had over-priced the alcoholic drinks they ordered once he knew they were drunk. " ], [ "They were charged for an insane amount of overhead. ", "They were charged for services and entertainment. ", "They didn't notice the additional zeros added on to the prices of the menu items", "They were not informed of the tax charged onto the meal." ], [ "The sheriff had threated them with his holstered weapon. ", "He knew they would be able to con Johnson right back.", "They were thirsty and too delirious to argue", "He didn't want to risk being arrested and trapped on Planetoid 42" ], [ "Proven statistics showing that it was the best antidote", "Joe's acting skills ", "He felt feverish and thought he may have contracted the illness", "A price too good that could not be turned down" ], [ "His impressive cooking", "His ability to haggle", "His useful mechanical skills", "His 6 arms" ], [ "Sales men", "space-side mechanics", "Traveling gamblers", "Con artists" ] ]	[ 4, 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 4 ]	[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "\"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen,\" Harvey\n whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the\n kitchen, attending to the next course. \"He would make any society\n hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum\n to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire.\"\n\n\n \"Think of a fast one fast,\" Joe agreed. \"You're right.\"\n\n\n \"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,\"\n complained Harvey. \"I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest\n merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate\n our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents.\"\n\n\n The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.\n\n\n \"It's been a great honor, gents,\" he said. \"Ain't often I have\n visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents.\"", "\"Medicine,\" Harvey propounded, \"should taste like medicine.\" To Joe he\n said: \"Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to\n which we have dedicated ourselves.\"\n\n\n With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the\n clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped\n his murderous silence and cried:\n\n\n \"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that\n snake oil?\"\n\n\n \"That was not poison,\" Harvey contradicted quietly. \"It was\nLa-anago\n Yergis\nextract, plus.\"\n\n\n \"Plus what—arsenic?\"", "Johnson sighed ponderously. \"I was afraid you'd act like that,\" he said\n with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on\n his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. \"Afraid I'll have to\n ask the sheriff to take over.\"\n\n\n Johnson, the \"sheriff,\" collected the money, and Johnson, the\n \"restaurateur,\" pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to\n remain calm.\n\n\n \"My friend,\" he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a\n schoolmasterish severity, \"your long absence from Earth has perhaps\n made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the\n folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly\n to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound\n foolish.'\"\n\n\n \"I don't get the connection,\" objected Johnson.", "\"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying,\" answered\n the mayor promptly. \"What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you\n can't get anywhere else for any price.\"\n\n\n Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw\n none.\n\n\n \"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe,\" he said guardedly.\n\n\n Johnson immediately fell into the role of \"mine host.\"\n\n\n \"Come right in, gents,\" he invited. \"Right into the dining room.\"\n\n\n He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or\n less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little\n chance of company.", "The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and\n unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....\n\n\n \"Joseph!\" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. \"Don't you\n feel well?\"\n\n\n Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were\n gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features\n drooping like a bloodhound's.\n\n\n \"Bring him in here!\" Johnson cried. \"I mean, get him away! He's coming\n down with asteroid fever!\"\n\n\n \"Of course,\" replied Harvey calmly. \"Any fool knows the first symptoms\n of the disease that once scourged the universe.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean,\nonce\n?\" demanded Johnson. \"I come down with it\n every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him\n out of here!\"", "Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand\n rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a\n few minutes, carrying a bottle.\nJoe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly\n crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,\n put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.\n When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner\n drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and\n waited for the inevitable result.\n\n\n Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several\n moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed\n to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features\n straightened out.\n\n\n \"Are—are you all right?\" asked the mayor anxiously.\n\n\n \"Much better,\" said Joe in a weak voice.", "\"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?\" said Harvey as he and Joe\n picked up buckets that hung on the tank. \"Johnson, as I saw instantly,\n is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly.\"\n\n\n \"Just the same,\" Joe griped, \"paying for water isn't something you can\n get used to in ten minutes.\"\n\n\n In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from\n the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,\n according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their\n buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.\nIt was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on\n a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign\n in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping\n a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to\n investigate.", "\"In good time. He can't be moved immediately.\"\n\n\n \"Then he'll be here for months!\"\n\n\n Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and\n his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe\n in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.\n\n\n \"You'll find everything you want in the back room,\" Johnson said\n frantically, \"sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction\n cups—\"\n\n\n \"Relics of the past,\" Harvey stated. \"One medication is all modern man\n requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\" asked the mayor without conviction.", "The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. \"What is it?\" he\n asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its\n worst and expects nothing better.\n\n\n \"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of\n the ship,\" Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: \"You must see\n the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner\n will soon have it here for your astonishment.\"\n\n\n Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. \"Aw, Harv,\" he\n protested, \"do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were\n getting the key!\"\n\n\n \"We must not be selfish, my boy,\" Harvey said nobly. \"We have had our\n chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might\n have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here.\"", "\"Naturally,\" Harvey agreed, mollified. \"I'm sorry I lost my temper.\n But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts\n emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be\n so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was\n communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired\n our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own\n hyper-scientific trimmings?\"\n\n\n \"Why, I don't know,\" Johnson said in confusion.\n\n\n \"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect\n the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed\n broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor\n failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could\n stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to\n solve the mystery caused him to take his own life.\"", "Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.\nOn a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity\n would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with\n questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For\n his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba\n until Joe came in, lugging a radio.\n\n\n \"Is that what you were talking about?\" the mayor snorted. \"What makes\n you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and\n political speech-makers.\"\n\n\n \"Do not jump to hasty conclusions,\" Harvey cautioned. \"Another word,\n and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,\n with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor\n of this absolutely awe-inspiring device.\"\n\n\n \"I ain't in the market for a radio,\" Johnson said stubbornly.", "As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and\n Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in\n a yelp of horror.\n\n\n \"What the devil is this?\" he shouted.—\"How do you arrive at this\n fantastic, idiotic figure—\nthree hundred and twenty-eight buckos\n!\"\nJohnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,\n not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty\n fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.\n\n\n Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with\n rage. The minute note read: \"Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80\n redsents.\"\n\n\n \"You can go to hell!\" Joe growled. \"We won't pay it!\"", "\"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture\n our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling\n yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,\n mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been\n swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have\n been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course.\"\n\n\n \"But why use it on me?\" Joe demanded furiously.\n\n\n Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. \"Did Johnson ask to\n taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce\n the same\nmedicine\nthat we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a\n guinea pig for a splendid cause.\"\n\n\n \"Okay, okay,\" Joe said. \"But you shoulda charged him more.\"", "But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and\n tasting it.\n\n\n \"Sweet!\" he snarled.\n\n\n They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.\n His mouth went wry. \"Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The\n only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's\n conscience.\"\n\n\n \"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on,\" said\n Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. \"Joseph, the good-natured artist in\n me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we\n have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this\n point hence.\"\n\n\n Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they\n stopped and their fists unclenched.", "\"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy,\" Harvey replied with dignity.\n \"It sells itself.\"\n\n\n \"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole\n case,\" said Johnson.\n\n\n \"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with\n the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves.\"\n\n\n \"How much?\" asked the mayor unhappily.\n\n\n \"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred\n buckos.\"\n\n\n Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of\n doing so. \"F-four hundred,\" he offered.\n\n\n \"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five,\" Harvey said flatly.\n\n\n \"Make it four fifty,\" quavered Johnson.\n\n\n \"I dislike haggling,\" said Harvey.", "Harvey nodded in relief. \"We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.\n He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our\n study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an\n enormous fortune.\"\n\n\n \"Well, that's no plating off our bow,\" Joe grunted. \"I'm glad he did\n turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole\n years.\"\n\n\n He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.\n\n\n \"Now, hold on!\" the mayor cried. \"I ain't\nsaying\nI'll buy, but what\n is it I'm turning down?\"\n\n\n Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face\n sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.", "\"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which\n that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he\n possesses. We could not be content with less.\"\n\n\n \"Well, we're starting all right,\" admitted Joe. \"How about that thing\n with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?\"\n\n\n Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.", "\"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would\n tempt you!\"\n\n\n \"Nope. But how much did you say?\"\n\n\n \"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!\"\n\n\n \"Well, I'll tell you something,\" said the mayor confidentially. \"When\n you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,\n it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,\n you can buy this and that and this and that and—\"\n\n\n \"This and that,\" concluded Joe. \"We'll give you five hundred buckos.\"\n\n\n \"Now, gents!\" Johnson remonstrated. \"Why, six hundred would hardly—\"\n\n\n \"You haven't left us much money,\" Harvey put in.", "\"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling\n your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official\n recorder, fire chief....\"\n\n\n \"And chief of police, no doubt,\" said Harvey jocosely.\n\n\n \"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just\n call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will\n you need?\"\n\n\n Joe estimated quickly. \"About seventy-five liters, if we go on half\n rations,\" he answered. He waited apprehensively.\n\n\n \"Let's say ten buckos a liter,\" the mayor said. \"On account of the\n quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me\n more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,\n that's all.\"", "The mayor frowned. \"All right, we'll split the difference. Make it\n five-fifty.\"\n\n\n Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he\n stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively\n acquired.\n\n\n \"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature,\" he said to\n Johnson. \"I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your\n filial mammoth to keep you company.\"\n\n\n \"I sure will,\" Johnson confessed glumly. \"I got pretty attached to\n Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful.\"\n\n\n Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off\n the table almost all at once.\n\n\n \"My friend,\" he said, \"we take your only solace, it is true, but in his\n place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive.\"" ], [ "\"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying,\" answered\n the mayor promptly. \"What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you\n can't get anywhere else for any price.\"\n\n\n Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw\n none.\n\n\n \"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe,\" he said guardedly.\n\n\n Johnson immediately fell into the role of \"mine host.\"\n\n\n \"Come right in, gents,\" he invited. \"Right into the dining room.\"\n\n\n He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or\n less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little\n chance of company.", "\"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen,\" Harvey\n whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the\n kitchen, attending to the next course. \"He would make any society\n hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum\n to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire.\"\n\n\n \"Think of a fast one fast,\" Joe agreed. \"You're right.\"\n\n\n \"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,\"\n complained Harvey. \"I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest\n merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate\n our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents.\"\n\n\n The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.\n\n\n \"It's been a great honor, gents,\" he said. \"Ain't often I have\n visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents.\"", "As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and\n Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in\n a yelp of horror.\n\n\n \"What the devil is this?\" he shouted.—\"How do you arrive at this\n fantastic, idiotic figure—\nthree hundred and twenty-eight buckos\n!\"\nJohnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,\n not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty\n fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.\n\n\n Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with\n rage. The minute note read: \"Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80\n redsents.\"\n\n\n \"You can go to hell!\" Joe growled. \"We won't pay it!\"", "Johnson sighed ponderously. \"I was afraid you'd act like that,\" he said\n with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on\n his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. \"Afraid I'll have to\n ask the sheriff to take over.\"\n\n\n Johnson, the \"sheriff,\" collected the money, and Johnson, the\n \"restaurateur,\" pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to\n remain calm.\n\n\n \"My friend,\" he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a\n schoolmasterish severity, \"your long absence from Earth has perhaps\n made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the\n folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly\n to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound\n foolish.'\"\n\n\n \"I don't get the connection,\" objected Johnson.", "\"Medicine,\" Harvey propounded, \"should taste like medicine.\" To Joe he\n said: \"Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to\n which we have dedicated ourselves.\"\n\n\n With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the\n clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped\n his murderous silence and cried:\n\n\n \"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that\n snake oil?\"\n\n\n \"That was not poison,\" Harvey contradicted quietly. \"It was\nLa-anago\n Yergis\nextract, plus.\"\n\n\n \"Plus what—arsenic?\"", "Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand\n rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a\n few minutes, carrying a bottle.\nJoe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly\n crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,\n put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.\n When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner\n drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and\n waited for the inevitable result.\n\n\n Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several\n moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed\n to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features\n straightened out.\n\n\n \"Are—are you all right?\" asked the mayor anxiously.\n\n\n \"Much better,\" said Joe in a weak voice.", "The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and\n fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: \"And we will include,\ngratis\n, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian\n handicraftsmanship.\"\n\n\n Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. \"No tricks now. I want a taste of\n that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me.\"\n\n\n Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The\n mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing\n minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which\n the man gradually won.\n\n\n \"There ain't no words for that taste,\" he gulped when it was safe to\n talk again.", "\"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?\" said Harvey as he and Joe\n picked up buckets that hung on the tank. \"Johnson, as I saw instantly,\n is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly.\"\n\n\n \"Just the same,\" Joe griped, \"paying for water isn't something you can\n get used to in ten minutes.\"\n\n\n In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from\n the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,\n according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their\n buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.\nIt was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on\n a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign\n in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping\n a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to\n investigate.", "\"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling\n your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official\n recorder, fire chief....\"\n\n\n \"And chief of police, no doubt,\" said Harvey jocosely.\n\n\n \"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just\n call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will\n you need?\"\n\n\n Joe estimated quickly. \"About seventy-five liters, if we go on half\n rations,\" he answered. He waited apprehensively.\n\n\n \"Let's say ten buckos a liter,\" the mayor said. \"On account of the\n quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me\n more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,\n that's all.\"", "Harvey nodded in relief. \"We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.\n He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our\n study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an\n enormous fortune.\"\n\n\n \"Well, that's no plating off our bow,\" Joe grunted. \"I'm glad he did\n turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole\n years.\"\n\n\n He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.\n\n\n \"Now, hold on!\" the mayor cried. \"I ain't\nsaying\nI'll buy, but what\n is it I'm turning down?\"\n\n\n Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face\n sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.", "\"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy,\" Harvey replied with dignity.\n \"It sells itself.\"\n\n\n \"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole\n case,\" said Johnson.\n\n\n \"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with\n the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves.\"\n\n\n \"How much?\" asked the mayor unhappily.\n\n\n \"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred\n buckos.\"\n\n\n Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of\n doing so. \"F-four hundred,\" he offered.\n\n\n \"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five,\" Harvey said flatly.\n\n\n \"Make it four fifty,\" quavered Johnson.\n\n\n \"I dislike haggling,\" said Harvey.", "\"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture\n our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling\n yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,\n mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been\n swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have\n been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course.\"\n\n\n \"But why use it on me?\" Joe demanded furiously.\n\n\n Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. \"Did Johnson ask to\n taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce\n the same\nmedicine\nthat we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a\n guinea pig for a splendid cause.\"\n\n\n \"Okay, okay,\" Joe said. \"But you shoulda charged him more.\"", "\"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em,\" he said,\n shaking his head. \"Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter\n as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with\n buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I\n was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge\n because I gotta.\"\n\n\n \"Friend,\" said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight\n five-bucko bills, \"here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you\n have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an\n unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's\n thirst.\"\n\n\n The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.", "\"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every\n chaser.\"\n\n\n Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. \"That—that's robbery!\" the lanky man\n managed to get out in a thin quaver.\n\n\n The barkeeper shrugged. \"When there ain't many customers, you gotta\n make more on each one. Besides—\"\n\n\n \"Besides nothing!\" Joe roared, finding his voice again. \"You dirty\n crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—\"\n\"You dirty crook!\" Joe roared. \"Robbing honest spacemen!\"\nHarvey nudged him warningly. \"Easy, my boy, easy.\" He turned to the\n bartender apologetically. \"Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are\n sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?\"\nThe round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.", "Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.\nOn a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity\n would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with\n questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For\n his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba\n until Joe came in, lugging a radio.\n\n\n \"Is that what you were talking about?\" the mayor snorted. \"What makes\n you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and\n political speech-makers.\"\n\n\n \"Do not jump to hasty conclusions,\" Harvey cautioned. \"Another word,\n and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,\n with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor\n of this absolutely awe-inspiring device.\"\n\n\n \"I ain't in the market for a radio,\" Johnson said stubbornly.", "\"That's the stuff, all right,\" he said, swallowing hard. He counted\n out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously\n balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain\n at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,\n and asked: \"You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now.\"\n\n\n Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about\n food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.\n\n\n \"It's only water we were short of,\" Harvey said apprehensively. \"We've\n got rations back at the ship.\"\n\n\n \"\nH-mph!\n\" the mayor grunted. \"Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.\n Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome\n to our hospitality.\"\n\n\n \"Your hospitality,\" said Harvey, \"depends on the prices you charge.\"", "\"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson,\" he said, \"Joseph and I were among\n the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before\n his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane.\" He\n banged his fist on the bar. \"I have said it before, and I repeat again,\n that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit\n his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!\"\n\n\n \"This what?\" Johnson blurted out.\n\n\n \"In simple terms,\" clarified Harvey, \"the ingenious doctor discovered\n that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by\n energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the\n inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than\n ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would\n find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!\"\n\n\n The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.", "Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out\n two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked\n for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender\n had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.\n\n\n Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so\n fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's\n impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.\n\n\n \"Strangers, eh?\" he asked at last.\n\n\n \"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend,\" Harvey answered in his usual\n lush manner. \"We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,\nLa-anago\n Yergis\n, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in\n the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in\n proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history\n of therapeutics.\"", "\"In good time. He can't be moved immediately.\"\n\n\n \"Then he'll be here for months!\"\n\n\n Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and\n his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe\n in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.\n\n\n \"You'll find everything you want in the back room,\" Johnson said\n frantically, \"sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction\n cups—\"\n\n\n \"Relics of the past,\" Harvey stated. \"One medication is all modern man\n requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\" asked the mayor without conviction.", "But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and\n tasting it.\n\n\n \"Sweet!\" he snarled.\n\n\n They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.\n His mouth went wry. \"Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The\n only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's\n conscience.\"\n\n\n \"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on,\" said\n Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. \"Joseph, the good-natured artist in\n me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we\n have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this\n point hence.\"\n\n\n Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they\n stopped and their fists unclenched." ], [ "As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and\n Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in\n a yelp of horror.\n\n\n \"What the devil is this?\" he shouted.—\"How do you arrive at this\n fantastic, idiotic figure—\nthree hundred and twenty-eight buckos\n!\"\nJohnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,\n not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty\n fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.\n\n\n Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with\n rage. The minute note read: \"Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80\n redsents.\"\n\n\n \"You can go to hell!\" Joe growled. \"We won't pay it!\"", "\"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying,\" answered\n the mayor promptly. \"What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you\n can't get anywhere else for any price.\"\n\n\n Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw\n none.\n\n\n \"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe,\" he said guardedly.\n\n\n Johnson immediately fell into the role of \"mine host.\"\n\n\n \"Come right in, gents,\" he invited. \"Right into the dining room.\"\n\n\n He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or\n less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little\n chance of company.", "\"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen,\" Harvey\n whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the\n kitchen, attending to the next course. \"He would make any society\n hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum\n to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire.\"\n\n\n \"Think of a fast one fast,\" Joe agreed. \"You're right.\"\n\n\n \"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,\"\n complained Harvey. \"I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest\n merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate\n our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents.\"\n\n\n The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.\n\n\n \"It's been a great honor, gents,\" he said. \"Ain't often I have\n visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents.\"", "\"That's the stuff, all right,\" he said, swallowing hard. He counted\n out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously\n balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain\n at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,\n and asked: \"You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now.\"\n\n\n Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about\n food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.\n\n\n \"It's only water we were short of,\" Harvey said apprehensively. \"We've\n got rations back at the ship.\"\n\n\n \"\nH-mph!\n\" the mayor grunted. \"Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.\n Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome\n to our hospitality.\"\n\n\n \"Your hospitality,\" said Harvey, \"depends on the prices you charge.\"", "\"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling\n your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official\n recorder, fire chief....\"\n\n\n \"And chief of police, no doubt,\" said Harvey jocosely.\n\n\n \"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just\n call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will\n you need?\"\n\n\n Joe estimated quickly. \"About seventy-five liters, if we go on half\n rations,\" he answered. He waited apprehensively.\n\n\n \"Let's say ten buckos a liter,\" the mayor said. \"On account of the\n quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me\n more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,\n that's all.\"", "\"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy,\" Harvey replied with dignity.\n \"It sells itself.\"\n\n\n \"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole\n case,\" said Johnson.\n\n\n \"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with\n the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves.\"\n\n\n \"How much?\" asked the mayor unhappily.\n\n\n \"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred\n buckos.\"\n\n\n Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of\n doing so. \"F-four hundred,\" he offered.\n\n\n \"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five,\" Harvey said flatly.\n\n\n \"Make it four fifty,\" quavered Johnson.\n\n\n \"I dislike haggling,\" said Harvey.", "\"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?\" said Harvey as he and Joe\n picked up buckets that hung on the tank. \"Johnson, as I saw instantly,\n is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly.\"\n\n\n \"Just the same,\" Joe griped, \"paying for water isn't something you can\n get used to in ten minutes.\"\n\n\n In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from\n the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,\n according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their\n buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.\nIt was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on\n a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign\n in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping\n a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to\n investigate.", "The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and\n fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: \"And we will include,\ngratis\n, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian\n handicraftsmanship.\"\n\n\n Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. \"No tricks now. I want a taste of\n that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me.\"\n\n\n Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The\n mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing\n minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which\n the man gradually won.\n\n\n \"There ain't no words for that taste,\" he gulped when it was safe to\n talk again.", "Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with\n two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,\n silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,\n which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.\n\n\n Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were\n phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he\n grinned, bowed and asked: \"Everything satisfactory, gents?\"\n\n\n \"Quite,\" said Harvey. \"We shall order.\"\n\n\n For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the\n culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service\n was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played\n deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian\nviotars\n, using his other two\n hands for waiting on the table.", "\"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em,\" he said,\n shaking his head. \"Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter\n as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with\n buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I\n was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge\n because I gotta.\"\n\n\n \"Friend,\" said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight\n five-bucko bills, \"here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you\n have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an\n unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's\n thirst.\"\n\n\n The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.", "Johnson sighed ponderously. \"I was afraid you'd act like that,\" he said\n with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on\n his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. \"Afraid I'll have to\n ask the sheriff to take over.\"\n\n\n Johnson, the \"sheriff,\" collected the money, and Johnson, the\n \"restaurateur,\" pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to\n remain calm.\n\n\n \"My friend,\" he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a\n schoolmasterish severity, \"your long absence from Earth has perhaps\n made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the\n folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly\n to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound\n foolish.'\"\n\n\n \"I don't get the connection,\" objected Johnson.", "\"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put\n out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial\n deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for\n the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the\n way you have—\"\n\n\n \"Who said I wanted to sell him?\" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his\n fingers together and asked disinterestedly: \"What were you going to\n offer, anyhow?\"\n\n\n \"It doesn't matter any longer,\" Harvey said with elaborate\n carelessness. \"Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway.\"\n\n\n \"That's right,\" Johnson came back emphatically. \"But what would your\n offer have been which I would have turned down?\"\n\n\n \"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?\"\n\n\n \"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to\n sell.\"", "\"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture\n our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling\n yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,\n mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been\n swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have\n been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course.\"\n\n\n \"But why use it on me?\" Joe demanded furiously.\n\n\n Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. \"Did Johnson ask to\n taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce\n the same\nmedicine\nthat we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a\n guinea pig for a splendid cause.\"\n\n\n \"Okay, okay,\" Joe said. \"But you shoulda charged him more.\"", "\"Medicine,\" Harvey propounded, \"should taste like medicine.\" To Joe he\n said: \"Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to\n which we have dedicated ourselves.\"\n\n\n With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the\n clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped\n his murderous silence and cried:\n\n\n \"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that\n snake oil?\"\n\n\n \"That was not poison,\" Harvey contradicted quietly. \"It was\nLa-anago\n Yergis\nextract, plus.\"\n\n\n \"Plus what—arsenic?\"", "\"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every\n chaser.\"\n\n\n Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. \"That—that's robbery!\" the lanky man\n managed to get out in a thin quaver.\n\n\n The barkeeper shrugged. \"When there ain't many customers, you gotta\n make more on each one. Besides—\"\n\n\n \"Besides nothing!\" Joe roared, finding his voice again. \"You dirty\n crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—\"\n\"You dirty crook!\" Joe roared. \"Robbing honest spacemen!\"\nHarvey nudged him warningly. \"Easy, my boy, easy.\" He turned to the\n bartender apologetically. \"Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are\n sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?\"\nThe round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.", "\"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.\n Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.\n At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our\n streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic\n suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the\n audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous\n figure to the zoo!\"\nJoe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried\n the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a\n place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it\n down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave\n him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at\n least as good as the first; he gagged.", "Harvey nodded in relief. \"We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.\n He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our\n study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an\n enormous fortune.\"\n\n\n \"Well, that's no plating off our bow,\" Joe grunted. \"I'm glad he did\n turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole\n years.\"\n\n\n He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.\n\n\n \"Now, hold on!\" the mayor cried. \"I ain't\nsaying\nI'll buy, but what\n is it I'm turning down?\"\n\n\n Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face\n sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.", "But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and\n tasting it.\n\n\n \"Sweet!\" he snarled.\n\n\n They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.\n His mouth went wry. \"Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The\n only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's\n conscience.\"\n\n\n \"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on,\" said\n Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. \"Joseph, the good-natured artist in\n me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we\n have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this\n point hence.\"\n\n\n Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they\n stopped and their fists unclenched.", "Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand\n rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a\n few minutes, carrying a bottle.\nJoe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly\n crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,\n put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.\n When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner\n drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and\n waited for the inevitable result.\n\n\n Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several\n moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed\n to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features\n straightened out.\n\n\n \"Are—are you all right?\" asked the mayor anxiously.\n\n\n \"Much better,\" said Joe in a weak voice.", "\"Maybe you need another dose,\" Harvey suggested.\n\n\n Joe recoiled. \"I'm fine now!\" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove\n it.\n\n\n Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,\n and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.\n\n\n \"Well, I'll be hanged!\" Johnson ejaculated.\n\n\n \"\nLa-anago Yergis\nnever fails, my friend,\" Harvey explained. \"By\n actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three\n minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught\n this one before it grew formidable.\"\n\n\n The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. \"If you\n don't charge too much,\" he said warily, \"I might think of buying some.\"" ], [ "\"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em,\" he said,\n shaking his head. \"Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter\n as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with\n buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I\n was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge\n because I gotta.\"\n\n\n \"Friend,\" said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight\n five-bucko bills, \"here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you\n have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an\n unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's\n thirst.\"\n\n\n The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.", "\"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?\" said Harvey as he and Joe\n picked up buckets that hung on the tank. \"Johnson, as I saw instantly,\n is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly.\"\n\n\n \"Just the same,\" Joe griped, \"paying for water isn't something you can\n get used to in ten minutes.\"\n\n\n In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from\n the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,\n according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their\n buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.\nIt was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on\n a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign\n in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping\n a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to\n investigate.", "\"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling\n your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official\n recorder, fire chief....\"\n\n\n \"And chief of police, no doubt,\" said Harvey jocosely.\n\n\n \"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just\n call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will\n you need?\"\n\n\n Joe estimated quickly. \"About seventy-five liters, if we go on half\n rations,\" he answered. He waited apprehensively.\n\n\n \"Let's say ten buckos a liter,\" the mayor said. \"On account of the\n quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me\n more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,\n that's all.\"", "\"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture\n our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling\n yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,\n mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been\n swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have\n been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course.\"\n\n\n \"But why use it on me?\" Joe demanded furiously.\n\n\n Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. \"Did Johnson ask to\n taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce\n the same\nmedicine\nthat we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a\n guinea pig for a splendid cause.\"\n\n\n \"Okay, okay,\" Joe said. \"But you shoulda charged him more.\"", "As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and\n Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in\n a yelp of horror.\n\n\n \"What the devil is this?\" he shouted.—\"How do you arrive at this\n fantastic, idiotic figure—\nthree hundred and twenty-eight buckos\n!\"\nJohnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,\n not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty\n fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.\n\n\n Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with\n rage. The minute note read: \"Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80\n redsents.\"\n\n\n \"You can go to hell!\" Joe growled. \"We won't pay it!\"", "\"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every\n chaser.\"\n\n\n Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. \"That—that's robbery!\" the lanky man\n managed to get out in a thin quaver.\n\n\n The barkeeper shrugged. \"When there ain't many customers, you gotta\n make more on each one. Besides—\"\n\n\n \"Besides nothing!\" Joe roared, finding his voice again. \"You dirty\n crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—\"\n\"You dirty crook!\" Joe roared. \"Robbing honest spacemen!\"\nHarvey nudged him warningly. \"Easy, my boy, easy.\" He turned to the\n bartender apologetically. \"Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are\n sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?\"\nThe round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.", "\"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy,\" Harvey replied with dignity.\n \"It sells itself.\"\n\n\n \"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole\n case,\" said Johnson.\n\n\n \"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with\n the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves.\"\n\n\n \"How much?\" asked the mayor unhappily.\n\n\n \"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred\n buckos.\"\n\n\n Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of\n doing so. \"F-four hundred,\" he offered.\n\n\n \"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five,\" Harvey said flatly.\n\n\n \"Make it four fifty,\" quavered Johnson.\n\n\n \"I dislike haggling,\" said Harvey.", "The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and\n fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: \"And we will include,\ngratis\n, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian\n handicraftsmanship.\"\n\n\n Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. \"No tricks now. I want a taste of\n that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me.\"\n\n\n Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The\n mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing\n minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which\n the man gradually won.\n\n\n \"There ain't no words for that taste,\" he gulped when it was safe to\n talk again.", "\"That's the stuff, all right,\" he said, swallowing hard. He counted\n out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously\n balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain\n at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,\n and asked: \"You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now.\"\n\n\n Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about\n food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.\n\n\n \"It's only water we were short of,\" Harvey said apprehensively. \"We've\n got rations back at the ship.\"\n\n\n \"\nH-mph!\n\" the mayor grunted. \"Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.\n Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome\n to our hospitality.\"\n\n\n \"Your hospitality,\" said Harvey, \"depends on the prices you charge.\"", "Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out\n two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked\n for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender\n had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.\n\n\n Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so\n fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's\n impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.\n\n\n \"Strangers, eh?\" he asked at last.\n\n\n \"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend,\" Harvey answered in his usual\n lush manner. \"We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,\nLa-anago\n Yergis\n, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in\n the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in\n proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history\n of therapeutics.\"", "Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand\n rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a\n few minutes, carrying a bottle.\nJoe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly\n crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,\n put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.\n When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner\n drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and\n waited for the inevitable result.\n\n\n Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several\n moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed\n to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features\n straightened out.\n\n\n \"Are—are you all right?\" asked the mayor anxiously.\n\n\n \"Much better,\" said Joe in a weak voice.", "\"Medicine,\" Harvey propounded, \"should taste like medicine.\" To Joe he\n said: \"Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to\n which we have dedicated ourselves.\"\n\n\n With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the\n clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped\n his murderous silence and cried:\n\n\n \"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that\n snake oil?\"\n\n\n \"That was not poison,\" Harvey contradicted quietly. \"It was\nLa-anago\n Yergis\nextract, plus.\"\n\n\n \"Plus what—arsenic?\"", "\"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen,\" Harvey\n whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the\n kitchen, attending to the next course. \"He would make any society\n hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum\n to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire.\"\n\n\n \"Think of a fast one fast,\" Joe agreed. \"You're right.\"\n\n\n \"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,\"\n complained Harvey. \"I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest\n merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate\n our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents.\"\n\n\n The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.\n\n\n \"It's been a great honor, gents,\" he said. \"Ain't often I have\n visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents.\"", "But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and\n tasting it.\n\n\n \"Sweet!\" he snarled.\n\n\n They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.\n His mouth went wry. \"Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The\n only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's\n conscience.\"\n\n\n \"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on,\" said\n Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. \"Joseph, the good-natured artist in\n me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we\n have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this\n point hence.\"\n\n\n Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they\n stopped and their fists unclenched.", "\"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying,\" answered\n the mayor promptly. \"What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you\n can't get anywhere else for any price.\"\n\n\n Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw\n none.\n\n\n \"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe,\" he said guardedly.\n\n\n Johnson immediately fell into the role of \"mine host.\"\n\n\n \"Come right in, gents,\" he invited. \"Right into the dining room.\"\n\n\n He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or\n less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little\n chance of company.", "\"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put\n out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial\n deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for\n the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the\n way you have—\"\n\n\n \"Who said I wanted to sell him?\" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his\n fingers together and asked disinterestedly: \"What were you going to\n offer, anyhow?\"\n\n\n \"It doesn't matter any longer,\" Harvey said with elaborate\n carelessness. \"Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway.\"\n\n\n \"That's right,\" Johnson came back emphatically. \"But what would your\n offer have been which I would have turned down?\"\n\n\n \"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?\"\n\n\n \"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to\n sell.\"", "Harvey nodded in relief. \"We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.\n He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our\n study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an\n enormous fortune.\"\n\n\n \"Well, that's no plating off our bow,\" Joe grunted. \"I'm glad he did\n turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole\n years.\"\n\n\n He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.\n\n\n \"Now, hold on!\" the mayor cried. \"I ain't\nsaying\nI'll buy, but what\n is it I'm turning down?\"\n\n\n Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face\n sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.", "Johnson sighed ponderously. \"I was afraid you'd act like that,\" he said\n with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on\n his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. \"Afraid I'll have to\n ask the sheriff to take over.\"\n\n\n Johnson, the \"sheriff,\" collected the money, and Johnson, the\n \"restaurateur,\" pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to\n remain calm.\n\n\n \"My friend,\" he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a\n schoolmasterish severity, \"your long absence from Earth has perhaps\n made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the\n folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly\n to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound\n foolish.'\"\n\n\n \"I don't get the connection,\" objected Johnson.", "\"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.\n Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.\n At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our\n streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic\n suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the\n audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous\n figure to the zoo!\"\nJoe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried\n the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a\n place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it\n down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave\n him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at\n least as good as the first; he gagged.", "\"Maybe you need another dose,\" Harvey suggested.\n\n\n Joe recoiled. \"I'm fine now!\" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove\n it.\n\n\n Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,\n and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.\n\n\n \"Well, I'll be hanged!\" Johnson ejaculated.\n\n\n \"\nLa-anago Yergis\nnever fails, my friend,\" Harvey explained. \"By\n actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three\n minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught\n this one before it grew formidable.\"\n\n\n The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. \"If you\n don't charge too much,\" he said warily, \"I might think of buying some.\"" ], [ "\"Maybe you need another dose,\" Harvey suggested.\n\n\n Joe recoiled. \"I'm fine now!\" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove\n it.\n\n\n Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,\n and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.\n\n\n \"Well, I'll be hanged!\" Johnson ejaculated.\n\n\n \"\nLa-anago Yergis\nnever fails, my friend,\" Harvey explained. \"By\n actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three\n minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught\n this one before it grew formidable.\"\n\n\n The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. \"If you\n don't charge too much,\" he said warily, \"I might think of buying some.\"", "\"In good time. He can't be moved immediately.\"\n\n\n \"Then he'll be here for months!\"\n\n\n Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and\n his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe\n in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.\n\n\n \"You'll find everything you want in the back room,\" Johnson said\n frantically, \"sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction\n cups—\"\n\n\n \"Relics of the past,\" Harvey stated. \"One medication is all modern man\n requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\" asked the mayor without conviction.", "\"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy,\" Harvey replied with dignity.\n \"It sells itself.\"\n\n\n \"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole\n case,\" said Johnson.\n\n\n \"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with\n the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves.\"\n\n\n \"How much?\" asked the mayor unhappily.\n\n\n \"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred\n buckos.\"\n\n\n Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of\n doing so. \"F-four hundred,\" he offered.\n\n\n \"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five,\" Harvey said flatly.\n\n\n \"Make it four fifty,\" quavered Johnson.\n\n\n \"I dislike haggling,\" said Harvey.", "\"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture\n our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling\n yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,\n mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been\n swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have\n been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course.\"\n\n\n \"But why use it on me?\" Joe demanded furiously.\n\n\n Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. \"Did Johnson ask to\n taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce\n the same\nmedicine\nthat we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a\n guinea pig for a splendid cause.\"\n\n\n \"Okay, okay,\" Joe said. \"But you shoulda charged him more.\"", "The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and\n unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....\n\n\n \"Joseph!\" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. \"Don't you\n feel well?\"\n\n\n Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were\n gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features\n drooping like a bloodhound's.\n\n\n \"Bring him in here!\" Johnson cried. \"I mean, get him away! He's coming\n down with asteroid fever!\"\n\n\n \"Of course,\" replied Harvey calmly. \"Any fool knows the first symptoms\n of the disease that once scourged the universe.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean,\nonce\n?\" demanded Johnson. \"I come down with it\n every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him\n out of here!\"", "\"That's the stuff, all right,\" he said, swallowing hard. He counted\n out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously\n balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain\n at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,\n and asked: \"You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now.\"\n\n\n Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about\n food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.\n\n\n \"It's only water we were short of,\" Harvey said apprehensively. \"We've\n got rations back at the ship.\"\n\n\n \"\nH-mph!\n\" the mayor grunted. \"Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.\n Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome\n to our hospitality.\"\n\n\n \"Your hospitality,\" said Harvey, \"depends on the prices you charge.\"", "The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and\n fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: \"And we will include,\ngratis\n, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian\n handicraftsmanship.\"\n\n\n Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. \"No tricks now. I want a taste of\n that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me.\"\n\n\n Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The\n mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing\n minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which\n the man gradually won.\n\n\n \"There ain't no words for that taste,\" he gulped when it was safe to\n talk again.", "\"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.\n Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.\n At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our\n streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic\n suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the\n audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous\n figure to the zoo!\"\nJoe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried\n the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a\n place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it\n down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave\n him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at\n least as good as the first; he gagged.", "Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand\n rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a\n few minutes, carrying a bottle.\nJoe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly\n crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,\n put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.\n When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner\n drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and\n waited for the inevitable result.\n\n\n Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several\n moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed\n to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features\n straightened out.\n\n\n \"Are—are you all right?\" asked the mayor anxiously.\n\n\n \"Much better,\" said Joe in a weak voice.", "Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out\n two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked\n for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender\n had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.\n\n\n Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so\n fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's\n impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.\n\n\n \"Strangers, eh?\" he asked at last.\n\n\n \"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend,\" Harvey answered in his usual\n lush manner. \"We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,\nLa-anago\n Yergis\n, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in\n the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in\n proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history\n of therapeutics.\"", "\"Medicine,\" Harvey propounded, \"should taste like medicine.\" To Joe he\n said: \"Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to\n which we have dedicated ourselves.\"\n\n\n With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the\n clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped\n his murderous silence and cried:\n\n\n \"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that\n snake oil?\"\n\n\n \"That was not poison,\" Harvey contradicted quietly. \"It was\nLa-anago\n Yergis\nextract, plus.\"\n\n\n \"Plus what—arsenic?\"", "Johnson sighed ponderously. \"I was afraid you'd act like that,\" he said\n with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on\n his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. \"Afraid I'll have to\n ask the sheriff to take over.\"\n\n\n Johnson, the \"sheriff,\" collected the money, and Johnson, the\n \"restaurateur,\" pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to\n remain calm.\n\n\n \"My friend,\" he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a\n schoolmasterish severity, \"your long absence from Earth has perhaps\n made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the\n folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly\n to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound\n foolish.'\"\n\n\n \"I don't get the connection,\" objected Johnson.", "\"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen,\" Harvey\n whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the\n kitchen, attending to the next course. \"He would make any society\n hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum\n to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire.\"\n\n\n \"Think of a fast one fast,\" Joe agreed. \"You're right.\"\n\n\n \"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,\"\n complained Harvey. \"I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest\n merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate\n our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents.\"\n\n\n The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.\n\n\n \"It's been a great honor, gents,\" he said. \"Ain't often I have\n visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents.\"", "\"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?\" said Harvey as he and Joe\n picked up buckets that hung on the tank. \"Johnson, as I saw instantly,\n is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly.\"\n\n\n \"Just the same,\" Joe griped, \"paying for water isn't something you can\n get used to in ten minutes.\"\n\n\n In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from\n the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,\n according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their\n buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.\nIt was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on\n a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign\n in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping\n a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to\n investigate.", "The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. \"What is it?\" he\n asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its\n worst and expects nothing better.\n\n\n \"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of\n the ship,\" Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: \"You must see\n the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner\n will soon have it here for your astonishment.\"\n\n\n Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. \"Aw, Harv,\" he\n protested, \"do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were\n getting the key!\"\n\n\n \"We must not be selfish, my boy,\" Harvey said nobly. \"We have had our\n chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might\n have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here.\"", "\"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would\n tempt you!\"\n\n\n \"Nope. But how much did you say?\"\n\n\n \"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!\"\n\n\n \"Well, I'll tell you something,\" said the mayor confidentially. \"When\n you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,\n it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,\n you can buy this and that and this and that and—\"\n\n\n \"This and that,\" concluded Joe. \"We'll give you five hundred buckos.\"\n\n\n \"Now, gents!\" Johnson remonstrated. \"Why, six hundred would hardly—\"\n\n\n \"You haven't left us much money,\" Harvey put in.", "But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and\n tasting it.\n\n\n \"Sweet!\" he snarled.\n\n\n They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.\n His mouth went wry. \"Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The\n only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's\n conscience.\"\n\n\n \"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on,\" said\n Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. \"Joseph, the good-natured artist in\n me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we\n have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this\n point hence.\"\n\n\n Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they\n stopped and their fists unclenched.", "Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.\nOn a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity\n would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with\n questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For\n his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba\n until Joe came in, lugging a radio.\n\n\n \"Is that what you were talking about?\" the mayor snorted. \"What makes\n you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and\n political speech-makers.\"\n\n\n \"Do not jump to hasty conclusions,\" Harvey cautioned. \"Another word,\n and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,\n with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor\n of this absolutely awe-inspiring device.\"\n\n\n \"I ain't in the market for a radio,\" Johnson said stubbornly.", "\"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying,\" answered\n the mayor promptly. \"What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you\n can't get anywhere else for any price.\"\n\n\n Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw\n none.\n\n\n \"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe,\" he said guardedly.\n\n\n Johnson immediately fell into the role of \"mine host.\"\n\n\n \"Come right in, gents,\" he invited. \"Right into the dining room.\"\n\n\n He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or\n less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little\n chance of company.", "Johnson winced. \"Is that what you want to unload on me?\"\n\n\n \"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be\n rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who\n could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a\n person with unusual patience.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah,\" the mayor said grudgingly, \"I ain't exactly flighty.\"\n\n\n \"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!\"\n\n\n Johnson asked skeptically: \"How about a sample first?\"" ], [ "\"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put\n out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial\n deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for\n the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the\n way you have—\"\n\n\n \"Who said I wanted to sell him?\" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his\n fingers together and asked disinterestedly: \"What were you going to\n offer, anyhow?\"\n\n\n \"It doesn't matter any longer,\" Harvey said with elaborate\n carelessness. \"Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway.\"\n\n\n \"That's right,\" Johnson came back emphatically. \"But what would your\n offer have been which I would have turned down?\"\n\n\n \"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?\"\n\n\n \"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to\n sell.\"", "The mayor frowned. \"All right, we'll split the difference. Make it\n five-fifty.\"\n\n\n Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he\n stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively\n acquired.\n\n\n \"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature,\" he said to\n Johnson. \"I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your\n filial mammoth to keep you company.\"\n\n\n \"I sure will,\" Johnson confessed glumly. \"I got pretty attached to\n Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful.\"\n\n\n Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off\n the table almost all at once.\n\n\n \"My friend,\" he said, \"we take your only solace, it is true, but in his\n place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive.\"", "\"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would\n tempt you!\"\n\n\n \"Nope. But how much did you say?\"\n\n\n \"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!\"\n\n\n \"Well, I'll tell you something,\" said the mayor confidentially. \"When\n you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,\n it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,\n you can buy this and that and this and that and—\"\n\n\n \"This and that,\" concluded Joe. \"We'll give you five hundred buckos.\"\n\n\n \"Now, gents!\" Johnson remonstrated. \"Why, six hundred would hardly—\"\n\n\n \"You haven't left us much money,\" Harvey put in.", "\"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen,\" Harvey\n whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the\n kitchen, attending to the next course. \"He would make any society\n hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum\n to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire.\"\n\n\n \"Think of a fast one fast,\" Joe agreed. \"You're right.\"\n\n\n \"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,\"\n complained Harvey. \"I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest\n merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate\n our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents.\"\n\n\n The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.\n\n\n \"It's been a great honor, gents,\" he said. \"Ain't often I have\n visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents.\"", "Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with\n two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,\n silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,\n which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.\n\n\n Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were\n phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he\n grinned, bowed and asked: \"Everything satisfactory, gents?\"\n\n\n \"Quite,\" said Harvey. \"We shall order.\"\n\n\n For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the\n culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service\n was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played\n deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian\nviotars\n, using his other two\n hands for waiting on the table.", "As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and\n Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in\n a yelp of horror.\n\n\n \"What the devil is this?\" he shouted.—\"How do you arrive at this\n fantastic, idiotic figure—\nthree hundred and twenty-eight buckos\n!\"\nJohnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,\n not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty\n fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.\n\n\n Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with\n rage. The minute note read: \"Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80\n redsents.\"\n\n\n \"You can go to hell!\" Joe growled. \"We won't pay it!\"", "The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. \"What is it?\" he\n asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its\n worst and expects nothing better.\n\n\n \"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of\n the ship,\" Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: \"You must see\n the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner\n will soon have it here for your astonishment.\"\n\n\n Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. \"Aw, Harv,\" he\n protested, \"do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were\n getting the key!\"\n\n\n \"We must not be selfish, my boy,\" Harvey said nobly. \"We have had our\n chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might\n have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here.\"", "\"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.\n Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.\n At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our\n streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic\n suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the\n audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous\n figure to the zoo!\"\nJoe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried\n the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a\n place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it\n down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave\n him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at\n least as good as the first; he gagged.", "\"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which\n that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he\n possesses. We could not be content with less.\"\n\n\n \"Well, we're starting all right,\" admitted Joe. \"How about that thing\n with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?\"\n\n\n Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.", "Harvey nodded in relief. \"We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.\n He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our\n study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an\n enormous fortune.\"\n\n\n \"Well, that's no plating off our bow,\" Joe grunted. \"I'm glad he did\n turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole\n years.\"\n\n\n He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.\n\n\n \"Now, hold on!\" the mayor cried. \"I ain't\nsaying\nI'll buy, but what\n is it I'm turning down?\"\n\n\n Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face\n sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.", "Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.\nOn a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity\n would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with\n questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For\n his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba\n until Joe came in, lugging a radio.\n\n\n \"Is that what you were talking about?\" the mayor snorted. \"What makes\n you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and\n political speech-makers.\"\n\n\n \"Do not jump to hasty conclusions,\" Harvey cautioned. \"Another word,\n and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,\n with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor\n of this absolutely awe-inspiring device.\"\n\n\n \"I ain't in the market for a radio,\" Johnson said stubbornly.", "\"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy,\" Harvey replied with dignity.\n \"It sells itself.\"\n\n\n \"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole\n case,\" said Johnson.\n\n\n \"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with\n the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves.\"\n\n\n \"How much?\" asked the mayor unhappily.\n\n\n \"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred\n buckos.\"\n\n\n Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of\n doing so. \"F-four hundred,\" he offered.\n\n\n \"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five,\" Harvey said flatly.\n\n\n \"Make it four fifty,\" quavered Johnson.\n\n\n \"I dislike haggling,\" said Harvey.", "Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand\n rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a\n few minutes, carrying a bottle.\nJoe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly\n crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,\n put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.\n When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner\n drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and\n waited for the inevitable result.\n\n\n Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several\n moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed\n to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features\n straightened out.\n\n\n \"Are—are you all right?\" asked the mayor anxiously.\n\n\n \"Much better,\" said Joe in a weak voice.", "\"Medicine,\" Harvey propounded, \"should taste like medicine.\" To Joe he\n said: \"Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to\n which we have dedicated ourselves.\"\n\n\n With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the\n clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped\n his murderous silence and cried:\n\n\n \"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that\n snake oil?\"\n\n\n \"That was not poison,\" Harvey contradicted quietly. \"It was\nLa-anago\n Yergis\nextract, plus.\"\n\n\n \"Plus what—arsenic?\"", "\"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?\" said Harvey as he and Joe\n picked up buckets that hung on the tank. \"Johnson, as I saw instantly,\n is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly.\"\n\n\n \"Just the same,\" Joe griped, \"paying for water isn't something you can\n get used to in ten minutes.\"\n\n\n In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from\n the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,\n according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their\n buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.\nIt was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on\n a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign\n in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping\n a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to\n investigate.", "The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and\n unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....\n\n\n \"Joseph!\" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. \"Don't you\n feel well?\"\n\n\n Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were\n gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features\n drooping like a bloodhound's.\n\n\n \"Bring him in here!\" Johnson cried. \"I mean, get him away! He's coming\n down with asteroid fever!\"\n\n\n \"Of course,\" replied Harvey calmly. \"Any fool knows the first symptoms\n of the disease that once scourged the universe.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean,\nonce\n?\" demanded Johnson. \"I come down with it\n every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him\n out of here!\"", "\"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture\n our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling\n yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,\n mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been\n swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have\n been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course.\"\n\n\n \"But why use it on me?\" Joe demanded furiously.\n\n\n Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. \"Did Johnson ask to\n taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce\n the same\nmedicine\nthat we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a\n guinea pig for a splendid cause.\"\n\n\n \"Okay, okay,\" Joe said. \"But you shoulda charged him more.\"", "\"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying,\" answered\n the mayor promptly. \"What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you\n can't get anywhere else for any price.\"\n\n\n Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw\n none.\n\n\n \"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe,\" he said guardedly.\n\n\n Johnson immediately fell into the role of \"mine host.\"\n\n\n \"Come right in, gents,\" he invited. \"Right into the dining room.\"\n\n\n He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or\n less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little\n chance of company.", "Johnson sighed ponderously. \"I was afraid you'd act like that,\" he said\n with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on\n his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. \"Afraid I'll have to\n ask the sheriff to take over.\"\n\n\n Johnson, the \"sheriff,\" collected the money, and Johnson, the\n \"restaurateur,\" pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to\n remain calm.\n\n\n \"My friend,\" he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a\n schoolmasterish severity, \"your long absence from Earth has perhaps\n made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the\n folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly\n to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound\n foolish.'\"\n\n\n \"I don't get the connection,\" objected Johnson.", "In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea\n purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had\n they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.\n\n\n Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two\n hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the\n remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish\n Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this\n impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit\n juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.\n\n\n \"Nonsense,\" Harvey croaked uncertainly. \"We have seen enough queer\n things to know there are always more.\"\n\n\n He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:\n \"Water—quick!\"" ], [ "\"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen,\" Harvey\n whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the\n kitchen, attending to the next course. \"He would make any society\n hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum\n to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire.\"\n\n\n \"Think of a fast one fast,\" Joe agreed. \"You're right.\"\n\n\n \"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,\"\n complained Harvey. \"I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest\n merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate\n our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents.\"\n\n\n The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.\n\n\n \"It's been a great honor, gents,\" he said. \"Ain't often I have\n visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents.\"", "\"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying,\" answered\n the mayor promptly. \"What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you\n can't get anywhere else for any price.\"\n\n\n Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw\n none.\n\n\n \"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe,\" he said guardedly.\n\n\n Johnson immediately fell into the role of \"mine host.\"\n\n\n \"Come right in, gents,\" he invited. \"Right into the dining room.\"\n\n\n He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or\n less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little\n chance of company.", "\"Medicine,\" Harvey propounded, \"should taste like medicine.\" To Joe he\n said: \"Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to\n which we have dedicated ourselves.\"\n\n\n With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the\n clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped\n his murderous silence and cried:\n\n\n \"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that\n snake oil?\"\n\n\n \"That was not poison,\" Harvey contradicted quietly. \"It was\nLa-anago\n Yergis\nextract, plus.\"\n\n\n \"Plus what—arsenic?\"", "Johnson sighed ponderously. \"I was afraid you'd act like that,\" he said\n with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on\n his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. \"Afraid I'll have to\n ask the sheriff to take over.\"\n\n\n Johnson, the \"sheriff,\" collected the money, and Johnson, the\n \"restaurateur,\" pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to\n remain calm.\n\n\n \"My friend,\" he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a\n schoolmasterish severity, \"your long absence from Earth has perhaps\n made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the\n folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly\n to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound\n foolish.'\"\n\n\n \"I don't get the connection,\" objected Johnson.", "\"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?\" said Harvey as he and Joe\n picked up buckets that hung on the tank. \"Johnson, as I saw instantly,\n is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly.\"\n\n\n \"Just the same,\" Joe griped, \"paying for water isn't something you can\n get used to in ten minutes.\"\n\n\n In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from\n the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,\n according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their\n buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.\nIt was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on\n a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign\n in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping\n a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to\n investigate.", "The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. \"What is it?\" he\n asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its\n worst and expects nothing better.\n\n\n \"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of\n the ship,\" Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: \"You must see\n the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner\n will soon have it here for your astonishment.\"\n\n\n Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. \"Aw, Harv,\" he\n protested, \"do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were\n getting the key!\"\n\n\n \"We must not be selfish, my boy,\" Harvey said nobly. \"We have had our\n chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might\n have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here.\"", "\"In good time. He can't be moved immediately.\"\n\n\n \"Then he'll be here for months!\"\n\n\n Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and\n his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe\n in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.\n\n\n \"You'll find everything you want in the back room,\" Johnson said\n frantically, \"sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction\n cups—\"\n\n\n \"Relics of the past,\" Harvey stated. \"One medication is all modern man\n requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever.\"\n\n\n \"What's that?\" asked the mayor without conviction.", "The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and\n unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....\n\n\n \"Joseph!\" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. \"Don't you\n feel well?\"\n\n\n Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were\n gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features\n drooping like a bloodhound's.\n\n\n \"Bring him in here!\" Johnson cried. \"I mean, get him away! He's coming\n down with asteroid fever!\"\n\n\n \"Of course,\" replied Harvey calmly. \"Any fool knows the first symptoms\n of the disease that once scourged the universe.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean,\nonce\n?\" demanded Johnson. \"I come down with it\n every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him\n out of here!\"", "Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand\n rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a\n few minutes, carrying a bottle.\nJoe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly\n crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,\n put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.\n When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner\n drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and\n waited for the inevitable result.\n\n\n Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several\n moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed\n to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features\n straightened out.\n\n\n \"Are—are you all right?\" asked the mayor anxiously.\n\n\n \"Much better,\" said Joe in a weak voice.", "But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and\n tasting it.\n\n\n \"Sweet!\" he snarled.\n\n\n They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.\n His mouth went wry. \"Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The\n only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's\n conscience.\"\n\n\n \"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on,\" said\n Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. \"Joseph, the good-natured artist in\n me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we\n have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this\n point hence.\"\n\n\n Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they\n stopped and their fists unclenched.", "Harvey nodded in relief. \"We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.\n He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our\n study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an\n enormous fortune.\"\n\n\n \"Well, that's no plating off our bow,\" Joe grunted. \"I'm glad he did\n turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole\n years.\"\n\n\n He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.\n\n\n \"Now, hold on!\" the mayor cried. \"I ain't\nsaying\nI'll buy, but what\n is it I'm turning down?\"\n\n\n Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face\n sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.", "\"Naturally,\" Harvey agreed, mollified. \"I'm sorry I lost my temper.\n But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts\n emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be\n so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was\n communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired\n our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own\n hyper-scientific trimmings?\"\n\n\n \"Why, I don't know,\" Johnson said in confusion.\n\n\n \"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect\n the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed\n broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor\n failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could\n stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to\n solve the mystery caused him to take his own life.\"", "\"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture\n our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling\n yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,\n mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been\n swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have\n been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course.\"\n\n\n \"But why use it on me?\" Joe demanded furiously.\n\n\n Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. \"Did Johnson ask to\n taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce\n the same\nmedicine\nthat we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a\n guinea pig for a splendid cause.\"\n\n\n \"Okay, okay,\" Joe said. \"But you shoulda charged him more.\"", "Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.\nOn a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity\n would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with\n questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For\n his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba\n until Joe came in, lugging a radio.\n\n\n \"Is that what you were talking about?\" the mayor snorted. \"What makes\n you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and\n political speech-makers.\"\n\n\n \"Do not jump to hasty conclusions,\" Harvey cautioned. \"Another word,\n and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,\n with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor\n of this absolutely awe-inspiring device.\"\n\n\n \"I ain't in the market for a radio,\" Johnson said stubbornly.", "Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out\n two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked\n for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender\n had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.\n\n\n Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so\n fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's\n impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.\n\n\n \"Strangers, eh?\" he asked at last.\n\n\n \"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend,\" Harvey answered in his usual\n lush manner. \"We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,\nLa-anago\n Yergis\n, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in\n the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in\n proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history\n of therapeutics.\"", "As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and\n Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in\n a yelp of horror.\n\n\n \"What the devil is this?\" he shouted.—\"How do you arrive at this\n fantastic, idiotic figure—\nthree hundred and twenty-eight buckos\n!\"\nJohnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,\n not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty\n fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.\n\n\n Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with\n rage. The minute note read: \"Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80\n redsents.\"\n\n\n \"You can go to hell!\" Joe growled. \"We won't pay it!\"", "Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound\n that was unmistakably a buried pipe.\n\n\n \"What's this doing here?\" Harvey asked, puzzled. \"I thought Johnson had\n to transport water in pails.\"\n\n\n \"Wonder where it leads to,\" Joe said uneasily.\n\n\n \"It leads\nto\nthe saloon,\" said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the\n pipe back toward the spaceport. \"What I am concerned with is where it\n leads\nfrom\n.\"\n\n\n Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of\n scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst\n into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.\n\n\n Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.\n\n\n \"I am growing suspicious,\" he said in a rigidly controlled voice.", "\"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.\n Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.\n At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our\n streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic\n suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the\n audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous\n figure to the zoo!\"\nJoe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried\n the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a\n place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it\n down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave\n him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at\n least as good as the first; he gagged.", "\"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which\n that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he\n possesses. We could not be content with less.\"\n\n\n \"Well, we're starting all right,\" admitted Joe. \"How about that thing\n with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?\"\n\n\n Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.", "\"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling\n your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official\n recorder, fire chief....\"\n\n\n \"And chief of police, no doubt,\" said Harvey jocosely.\n\n\n \"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just\n call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will\n you need?\"\n\n\n Joe estimated quickly. \"About seventy-five liters, if we go on half\n rations,\" he answered. He waited apprehensively.\n\n\n \"Let's say ten buckos a liter,\" the mayor said. \"On account of the\n quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me\n more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,\n that's all.\"" ] ]
train	63304	[ "What is one way the story’s setting, Venus, affects the characters and and sets up the plot? \n\n", "How long did it take for Venus’s conditions to mutate its human colonies? What is the purpose of these mutations? \n\n", "What is the name of the Officer of the Deck? \n\n", "How do Svan and his five fellow insurgents find out that the people of Earth no longer think of\n\nVenusians as human? ", "What two types of objects occupy the opaque glass bowl? \n\n", "What object is found by the guards, giving away the six Venusian conspirators? Who does it belong to? \n\n", "How does Ingra’s kiss affect Svan?\n\n", "What is the irony of Svan’s suspicion that his five fellow conspirators are cowards for not admitting who drew the double cross? \n", "What is Svan’s revenge plan? \n", "What is the double meaning of the story’s title? \n\n" ]	[ [ "The story takes place on Mars, not Venus. Over the last four or five generations, Mars’ conditions have caused its human colony to mutate in order to better survive. This causes a racial rift between humans from Earth and humans from Mars, which sets the story’s plot by imposing tension between the two groups. \n\n", "Over the last four or five generations, Venus’s conditions have caused its human colony to mutate in order to better survive. Differences in appearance cause a racial rift between humans from Earth and humans from Venus, which sets the story’s plot by imposing tension between the two groups. \n\n", "Over the last fifteen generations, Venus’s conditions have caused its human colony to mutate in order to better survive. This causes a racial rift between humans from Earth and humans from Venus, which sets the story’s plot by showing Venusians in a bad light. \n\n", "Over the last two or three generations, Venus’s conditions have caused its human colony to mutate into swamp people. This causes a holocaust of humans from Venus, which sets the story’s plot by imposing tension between the two groups. \n\n" ], [ "Three or four generations. Hunting. \n\n", "Four or five generations. Acclimation. \n\n", "Four or five generations. Bomb making. \n\n", "One or two generations. Revolution. \n\n" ], [ "Svan", "Lowry", "Larry", "Ingra" ], [ "They are informed by fellow Venusian rebels, who themselves heard from the council. \n", "They already know. Racism and prejudice runs rampant in all Venusian and Earth towns. \n\n", "They intercept a galactic transmission, which explains it all. \n", "They use a spy ray, which allows hem to listen in on a conversation happening on an official\n\n" ], [ "Venus-tobacco cigarettes and an Atomite bomb\n\n", "Cross slips and Venus-tobacco cigarettes \n\n", "Guns and Venus-tobacco cigarettes \n\n", "Atomite bomb and cross slips \n\n" ], [ "A spy ray. It belongs to the six insurgents who plan to blow up the Earth ship. \n\n", "A Venus-tobacco cigarette. It belongs to the Exec officer, who the six insurgents killed when breaking into the Earth ship. \n", "An atomite bomb. It belongs to the guard they killed just before breaking into where the Earth ship is kept. \n", "A rifle. It belongs to the guard they killed just before breaking into where the Earth ship is kept. \n" ], [ "Ingra’s kiss makes Svan think twice about his decision to destroy the Earth ship. It makes him feel his humanity, momentarily breaking his steadfast desire to go through with this plan. \n", "Ingra’s kiss does nothing to Svan. He continues with his plan, annoyed. \n\n", "Ingra’s kiss makes Svan think twice about his decision to sacrifice himself for the cause. It makes him feel something toward her, momentarily breaking his steadfast desire to go through with his plan. \n", "Ingra’s kiss makes Svan think twice about his decision to sacrifice Ingra in the name of his rebel cause. It makes him feel something toward her, momentarily breaking his steadfast desire to go through with his plan. \n\n" ], [ "It turns out that Svan planned to pull the double cross slip himself, so that he could blame his fellow conspirators and finally be rid of them. \n\n", "It turns out that Svan was the one who drew the double cross slip, suggesting that all of his virulent suspicions were entirely his fault. \n", "It turns out that Svan’s five friends made sure that Ingra, Svan’s love interest, didn’t pull the double cross slip. This causes Svan to pull it instead. \n", "It turns out that Svan’s five friends conspired to make sure he drew the double cross slip. \n" ], [ "Svan wants to blow up the Earth ship when it takes off next. He plans to do this by having his five insurgent friends distract the Earth ship guards by crashing their ground car into a swamp, while he sneaks around the back and plants a magnetic Atomite bomb on the ship, causing it to explode when it breaks out of Venus’s atmosphere. \n\n", "Svan wants to blow up the Council ship when it takes off for Earth. He plans to do this by having his five insurgent friends distract the Earth ship guards with fireworks, while he sneaks around the back and plants a magnetic Atomic bomb on the ship, causing it to explode when it breaks out of Venus’s atmosphere. \n", "Svan wants to blow up the Earth ship when it takes off. He plans to do this by having his five insurgent friends distract the human-looking guards by killing one of them, while he sneaks around the back and plants a magnetic hydrogen bomb on the ship, causing it to explode when it breaks out of Venus’s atmosphere. \n", "Svan wants to blow up the Earth ship when it takes off for Venus. He plans to do this by having his insurgent friends distract the Earth ship guards with bird calls, while he sneaks around the back and plants a grenade on the ship, causing it to explode when it breaks out of Earth’s atmosphere. \n" ], [ "“Doublecross” because Svan plans to double cross the council; and “Doublecross” because Svan was the one who pulled the slip with the double cross, meaning that he should have been driving in the end.\n", "“Doublecross” because Svan plans to double cross his friends; and “Doublecross” because it turns out that, ironically, Svan was who pulled the slip with the double cross, not his friends whom he suspected to have pulled it and not had the courage to admit it. ", "“Doublecross” because Svan plans to double cross the Earth; and “Doublecross” because it turns out that Ingra was who pulled the slip with the double cross, not his friends whom he suspected to have pulled and not had the courage to tell \n\n", "“Doublecross” because Svan plans to double cross Ingra, his girl friend; and “Doublecross” because it turns out that Svan knew he had the double cross slip all along. \n\n" ] ]	[ 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 4, 4, 2, 1, 2 ]	[ 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Svan strode back to the car. \"Hurry up,\" he gasped to the girl. \"Now\n there is danger for all of us, if they discover he is missing. And keep\n a watch for other guards.\"\nVenus has no moon, and no star can shine through its vast cloud layer.\n Ensign Lowry, staring anxiously out through the astro-dome in the bow\n of the Earth-ship, cursed the blackness.\n\n\n \"Can't see a thing,\" he complained to the Exec, steadily writing away\n at the computer's table. \"Look—are those lights over there?\"\n\n\n The Exec looked up wearily. He shrugged. \"Probably the guards. Of\n course, you can't tell. Might be a raiding party.\"\n\n\n Lowry, stung, looked to see if the Exec was smiling, but found no\n answer in his stolid face. \"Don't joke about it,\" he said. \"Suppose\n something happens to the delegation?\"", "\"No,\" she said slowly. \"I do not object.\"\n\n\n \"And the rest of us? Does any of us object?\"\n\n\n Svan eyed them, each in turn. There was a slow but unanimous gesture of\n assent.\n\n\n \"Good,\" said Svan. \"Then we must act. The Council has told us that we\n alone will decide our course of action. We have agreed that, if the\n Earth-ship returns, it means disaster for Venus. Therefore, it must not\n return.\"\n\n\n An old man shifted restlessly. \"But they are strong, Svan,\" he\n complained. \"They have weapons. We cannot force them to stay.\"\n\n\n Svan nodded. \"No. They will leave. But they will never get back to\n Earth.\"\n\n\n \"Never get back to Earth?\" the old man gasped. \"Has the Council\n authorized—murder?\"", "\"Acclimation,\" Lowry said scientifically. \"They had to acclimate\n themselves to Venus's climate. They're friendly enough.\"\n\n\n The Exec shrugged again. He stared at the wooden shacks that were the\n outskirts of the native city, dimly visible through the ever-present\n Venusian mist. The native guard of honor, posted a hundred yards from\n the Earth-ship, stood stolidly at attention with their old-fashioned\n proton-rifles slung over their backs. A few natives were gazing\n wonderingly at the great ship, but made no move to pass the line of\n guards.", "She looked at him, and he was surprised to find compassion in her\n eyes. Silently she nodded, advanced the fuel-handle so that the clumsy\n car jolted a trace more rapidly over the corduroy road. It was quite\n dark now. The car's driving light flared yellowishly in front of them,\n illuminating the narrow road and the pale, distorted vegetation of the\n jungle that surrounded them. Svan noticed it was raining a little. The\n present shower would deepen and intensify until midnight, then fall off\n again, to halt before morning. But before then they would be done.\n\n\n A proton-bolt lanced across the road in front of them. In the silence\n that followed its thunderous crash, a man's voice bellowed: \"Halt!\"\n\n\n The girl, Ingra, gasped something indistinguishable, slammed on the\n brakes. A Venusian in the trappings of the State Guard advanced on them\n from the side of the road, proton-rifle held ready to fire again.", "\"Of course,\" Lowry said suddenly, \"there's a minority who are afraid\n of us. I was in town yesterday, and I talked with some of the natives.\n They think there will be hordes of immigrants from Earth, now that we\n know Venus is habitable. And there's some sort of a paltry underground\n group that is spreading the word that the immigrants will drive the\n native Venusians—the descendants of the first expedition, that\n is—right down into the mud. Well—\" he laughed—\"maybe they will.\n After all, the fittest survive. That's a basic law of—\"\n\n\n The annunciator over the open lock clanged vigorously, and a metallic\n voice rasped: \"Officer of the Deck! Post Number One! Instruments\n reports a spy ray focused on the main lock!\"", "\"Everything shipshape, I take it!\" he commented.\n\n\n The OD nodded. \"I'll have a blank log if this keeps up,\" he said.\n \"Every man accounted for except the delegation, cargo stowed, drivers\n ready to lift as soon as they come back.\"\n\n\n The Exec tossed away his cigarette. \"\nIf\nthey come back.\"\n\n\n \"Is there any question?\"\n\n\n The Exec shrugged. \"I don't know, Lowry,\" he said. \"This is a funny\n place. I don't trust the natives.\"\n\n\n Lowry lifted his eyebrows. \"Oh? But after all, they're human beings,\n just like us—\"\n\n\n \"Not any more. Four or five generations ago they were. Lord, they don't\n even look human any more. Those white, flabby skins—I don't like them.\"", "DOUBLECROSS\nby JAMES Mac CREIGH\nRevolt was brewing on Venus, led by the\n\n descendant of the first Earthmen to\n\n land. Svan was the leader making the final\n\n plans—plotting them a bit too well.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Winter 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe Officer of the Deck was pleased as he returned to the main lock.\n There was no reason why everything shouldn't have been functioning\n perfectly, of course, but he was pleased to have it confirmed, all the\n same. The Executive Officer was moodily smoking a cigarette in the open\n lock, staring out over the dank Venusian terrain at the native town. He\n turned.", "There was an instant of doubt in his steel-shackled mind, then it was\n driven away. Perhaps she was loyal, yet certainly she was weak. And\n since he could not know which was the one who had received the marked\n slip, and feared to admit it, it was better they all should die.\n\n\n He advanced along the midnight road to where the ground rose and the\n jungle plants thinned out. Ahead, on an elevation, were the rain-dimmed\n lights of the Earth-ship, set down in the center of a clearing made by\n its own fierce rockets. Svan's mist-trained eyes spotted the circling\n figures of sentries, and knew that these would be the ship's own.\n They would not be as easily overcome as the natives, not with those\n slim-shafted blasters they carried. Only deceit could get him to the\n side of the ship.", "The younger of the two women sighed. She might have been beautiful, in\n spite of her dead-white skin, if there had been a scrap of hair on her\n head. \"Svan, I'm afraid,\" she said. \"Who are we to decide if this\n is a good thing? Our parents came from Earth. Perhaps there will be\n trouble at first, if colonists come, but we are of the same blood.\"\n\n\n Svan laughed harshly. \"\nThey\ndon't think so. You heard them. We are\n not human any more. The officer said it.\"\n\n\n The other woman spoke unexpectedly. \"The Council was right,\" she\n agreed. \"Svan, what must we do?\"\n\n\n Svan raised his hand, thoughtfully. \"One moment. Ingra, do you still\n object?\"\n\n\n The younger woman shrank back before the glare in his eyes. She looked\n around at the others, found them reluctant and uneasy, but visibly\n convinced by Svan.", "\"Where are you going?\" he growled.\n\n\n Svan spoke up. \"We want to look at the Earth-ship,\" he said. He opened\n the door beside him and stepped out, careless of the drizzle. \"We heard\n it was leaving tonight,\" he continued, \"and we have not seen it. Is\n that not permitted?\"\n\n\n The guard shook his head sourly. \"No one is allowed near the ship. The\n order was just issued. It is thought there is danger.\"\n\n\n Svan stepped closer, his teeth bared in what passed for a smile. \"It\n is urgent,\" he purred. His right hand flashed across his chest in a\n complicated gesture. \"Do you understand?\"", "Svan, too, had left his unopened. He sat at the table, facing them.\n \"This is the plan,\" he said. \"We will go, all six of us, in my ground\n car, to look at the Earth-ship. No one will suspect—the whole city\n has been to see it already. One will get out, at the best point we can\n find. It is almost dusk now. He can hide, surely, in the vegetation.\n The other five will start back. Something will go wrong with the\n car—perhaps it will run off the road, start to sink in the swamp. The\n guards will be called. There will be commotion—that is easy enough,\n after all; a hysterical woman, a few screams, that's all there is to\n it. And the sixth person will have his chance to steal to the side\n of the ship. The bomb is magnetic. It will not be noticed in the\n dark—they will take off before sunrise, because they must travel away\n from the sun to return—in forty hours the danger is removed.\"", "Silently the girl picked up an opaque glass bowl from the broad arm\n of her chair. It had held Venus-tobacco cigarettes; there were a few\n left. She shook them out and handed the bowl to Svan, who was rapidly\n creasing the six fatal slips. He dropped them in the bowl, stirred it\n with his hand, offered it to the girl. \"You first, Ingra,\" he said.\n\n\n She reached in mechanically, her eyes intent on his, took out a slip\n and held it without opening it. The bowl went the rounds, till Svan\n himself took the last. All eyes were on him. No one had looked at their\n slips.", "Svan settled himself at the side of the road, waiting for his chance.\n He had perhaps three minutes to wait; he reckoned. His fingers went\n absently to the pouch in his wide belt, closed on the slip of paper. He\n turned it over without looking at it, wondering who had drawn the first\n cross, and been a coward. Ingra? One of the men?\nHe became abruptly conscious of a commotion behind him. A ground car\n was racing along the road. He spun around and was caught in the glare\n of its blinding driving-light, as it bumped to a slithering stop.\n\n\n Paralyzed, he heard the girl's voice. \"Svan! They're coming! They found\n the guard's rifle, and they're looking for us! Thirty Earthmen, Svan,\n with those frightful guns. They fired at us, but we got away and came\n for you. We must flee!\"", "Svan shrugged. \"The Council did not know what we would face. The\n Councilmen could not come to the city and see what strength the\n Earth-ship has.\" He paused dangerously. \"Toller,\" he said, \"do you\n object?\"\n\n\n Like the girl, the old man retreated before his eyes. His voice was\n dull. \"What is your plan?\" he asked.\n\n\n Svan smiled, and it was like a dark flame. He reached to a box at his\n feet, held up a shiny metal globe. \"One of us will plant this in the\n ship. It will be set by means of this dial—\" he touched a spot on the\n surface of the globe with a pallid finger—\"to do nothing for forty\n hours. Then—it will explode. Atomite.\"", "Svan thought faster than ever before in his life. If there was a\n coward, it would do no good to unmask him. All were wavering, any might\n be the one who had drawn the fatal slip. He could insist on inspecting\n every one, but—suppose the coward, cornered, fought back? In fractions\n of a second, Svan had considered the evidence and reached his decision.\n Masked by the table, his hand, still holding the pencil, moved swiftly\n beneath the table, marked his own slip.\n\n\n In the palm of his hand, Svan held up the slip he had just marked in\n secret. His voice was very tired as he said, \"I will plant the bomb.\"\nThe six conspirators in Svan's old ground car moved slowly along the\n main street of the native town. Two Earth-ship sailors, unarmed except\n for deceptively flimsy-looking pistols at their hips, stood before the\n entrance to the town's Hall of Justice.", "There was comprehension in their eyes, Svan saw ... but still that\n uncertainty. Impatiently, he crackled: \"Look at the slips!\"\n\n\n Though he had willed his eyes away from it, his fingers had rebelled.\n Instinctively they had opened the slip, turned it over and over,\n striving to detect if it was the fatal one. They had felt nothing....\n\n\n And his eyes saw nothing. The slip was blank. He gave it but a second's\n glance, then looked up to see who had won the lethal game of chance.\n Almost he was disappointed.\n\n\n Each of the others had looked in that same second. And each was looking\n up now, around at his neighbors. Svan waited impatiently for the chosen\n one to announce it—a second, ten seconds....\n\n\n Then gray understanding came to him.\nA traitor!\nhis subconscious\n whispered.\nA coward!\nHe stared at them in a new light, saw their\n indecision magnified, became opposition.", "He grinned triumphantly, looking from face to face. The grin\n faded uncertainly as he saw what was in their eyes—uncertainty,\n irresolution. Abruptly he set the bomb down, savagely ripped six leaves\n off a writing tablet on the table next him. He took a pencil and made a\n mark on one of them, held it up.\n\n\n \"We will let chance decide who is to do the work,\" he said angrily. \"Is\n there anyone here who is afraid? There will be danger, I think....\"\n\n\n No answer. Svan jerked his head. \"Good,\" he said. \"Ingra, bring me that\n bowl.\"", "Abruptly he swallowed, reminded of the bomb that was silently counting\n off the seconds. \"Go ahead,\" he ordered. \"I will wait here.\"\n\n\n \"Svan.\" The girl, Ingra, leaned over to him. Impulsively she reached\n for him, kissed him. \"Good luck to you, Svan,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Good luck,\" repeated the others. Then silently the electric motor of\n the car took hold. Skilfully the girl backed it up, turned it around,\n sent it lumbering back down the road. Only after she had traveled a few\n hundred feet by the feel of the road did she turn the lights on again.\n\n\n Svan looked after them. The kiss had surprised him. What did it mean?\n Was it an error that the girl should die with the others?", "He stared unseeingly at the light. \"Go away!\" he croaked unbelievingly.\n Then his muscles jerked into action. The time was almost up—the bomb\n in the car—\n\n\n \"Go away!\" he shrieked, and turned to run. His fists clenched and\n swinging at his side, he made a dozen floundering steps before\n something immense pounded at him from behind. He felt himself lifted\n from the road, sailing, swooping, dropping with annihilating force\n onto the hard, charred earth of the clearing. Only then did he hear the\n sound of the explosion, and as the immense echoes died away he began to\n feel the pain seeping into him from his hideously racked body....\n\n\n The Flight Surgeon rose from beside him. \"He's still alive,\" he said\n callously to Lowry, who had just come up. \"It won't last long, though.\n What've you got there?\"", "Lowry, interrupted in the middle of a word, jerked his head back and\n stared unbelievingly at the tell-tale next to the annunciator. Sure\n enough, it was glowing red—might have been glowing for minutes. He\n snatched at the hand-phone dangling from the wall, shouted into it.\n \"Set up a screen! Notify the delegation! Alert a landing party!\" But\n even while he was giving orders, the warning light flickered suddenly\n and went out. Stricken, Lowry turned to the Exec.\n\n\n The Executive Officer nodded gloomily. He said, \"You see!\"\n\"You see?\"\n\n\n Svan clicked off the listening-machine and turned around. The five\n others in the room looked apprehensive. \"You see?\" Svan repeated. \"From\n their own mouths you have heard it. The Council was right.\"" ], [ "\"No,\" she said slowly. \"I do not object.\"\n\n\n \"And the rest of us? Does any of us object?\"\n\n\n Svan eyed them, each in turn. There was a slow but unanimous gesture of\n assent.\n\n\n \"Good,\" said Svan. \"Then we must act. The Council has told us that we\n alone will decide our course of action. We have agreed that, if the\n Earth-ship returns, it means disaster for Venus. Therefore, it must not\n return.\"\n\n\n An old man shifted restlessly. \"But they are strong, Svan,\" he\n complained. \"They have weapons. We cannot force them to stay.\"\n\n\n Svan nodded. \"No. They will leave. But they will never get back to\n Earth.\"\n\n\n \"Never get back to Earth?\" the old man gasped. \"Has the Council\n authorized—murder?\"", "The younger of the two women sighed. She might have been beautiful, in\n spite of her dead-white skin, if there had been a scrap of hair on her\n head. \"Svan, I'm afraid,\" she said. \"Who are we to decide if this\n is a good thing? Our parents came from Earth. Perhaps there will be\n trouble at first, if colonists come, but we are of the same blood.\"\n\n\n Svan laughed harshly. \"\nThey\ndon't think so. You heard them. We are\n not human any more. The officer said it.\"\n\n\n The other woman spoke unexpectedly. \"The Council was right,\" she\n agreed. \"Svan, what must we do?\"\n\n\n Svan raised his hand, thoughtfully. \"One moment. Ingra, do you still\n object?\"\n\n\n The younger woman shrank back before the glare in his eyes. She looked\n around at the others, found them reluctant and uneasy, but visibly\n convinced by Svan.", "\"Acclimation,\" Lowry said scientifically. \"They had to acclimate\n themselves to Venus's climate. They're friendly enough.\"\n\n\n The Exec shrugged again. He stared at the wooden shacks that were the\n outskirts of the native city, dimly visible through the ever-present\n Venusian mist. The native guard of honor, posted a hundred yards from\n the Earth-ship, stood stolidly at attention with their old-fashioned\n proton-rifles slung over their backs. A few natives were gazing\n wonderingly at the great ship, but made no move to pass the line of\n guards.", "\"Of course,\" Lowry said suddenly, \"there's a minority who are afraid\n of us. I was in town yesterday, and I talked with some of the natives.\n They think there will be hordes of immigrants from Earth, now that we\n know Venus is habitable. And there's some sort of a paltry underground\n group that is spreading the word that the immigrants will drive the\n native Venusians—the descendants of the first expedition, that\n is—right down into the mud. Well—\" he laughed—\"maybe they will.\n After all, the fittest survive. That's a basic law of—\"\n\n\n The annunciator over the open lock clanged vigorously, and a metallic\n voice rasped: \"Officer of the Deck! Post Number One! Instruments\n reports a spy ray focused on the main lock!\"", "Svan strode back to the car. \"Hurry up,\" he gasped to the girl. \"Now\n there is danger for all of us, if they discover he is missing. And keep\n a watch for other guards.\"\nVenus has no moon, and no star can shine through its vast cloud layer.\n Ensign Lowry, staring anxiously out through the astro-dome in the bow\n of the Earth-ship, cursed the blackness.\n\n\n \"Can't see a thing,\" he complained to the Exec, steadily writing away\n at the computer's table. \"Look—are those lights over there?\"\n\n\n The Exec looked up wearily. He shrugged. \"Probably the guards. Of\n course, you can't tell. Might be a raiding party.\"\n\n\n Lowry, stung, looked to see if the Exec was smiling, but found no\n answer in his stolid face. \"Don't joke about it,\" he said. \"Suppose\n something happens to the delegation?\"", "\"Everything shipshape, I take it!\" he commented.\n\n\n The OD nodded. \"I'll have a blank log if this keeps up,\" he said.\n \"Every man accounted for except the delegation, cargo stowed, drivers\n ready to lift as soon as they come back.\"\n\n\n The Exec tossed away his cigarette. \"\nIf\nthey come back.\"\n\n\n \"Is there any question?\"\n\n\n The Exec shrugged. \"I don't know, Lowry,\" he said. \"This is a funny\n place. I don't trust the natives.\"\n\n\n Lowry lifted his eyebrows. \"Oh? But after all, they're human beings,\n just like us—\"\n\n\n \"Not any more. Four or five generations ago they were. Lord, they don't\n even look human any more. Those white, flabby skins—I don't like them.\"", "She looked at him, and he was surprised to find compassion in her\n eyes. Silently she nodded, advanced the fuel-handle so that the clumsy\n car jolted a trace more rapidly over the corduroy road. It was quite\n dark now. The car's driving light flared yellowishly in front of them,\n illuminating the narrow road and the pale, distorted vegetation of the\n jungle that surrounded them. Svan noticed it was raining a little. The\n present shower would deepen and intensify until midnight, then fall off\n again, to halt before morning. But before then they would be done.\n\n\n A proton-bolt lanced across the road in front of them. In the silence\n that followed its thunderous crash, a man's voice bellowed: \"Halt!\"\n\n\n The girl, Ingra, gasped something indistinguishable, slammed on the\n brakes. A Venusian in the trappings of the State Guard advanced on them\n from the side of the road, proton-rifle held ready to fire again.", "There was an instant of doubt in his steel-shackled mind, then it was\n driven away. Perhaps she was loyal, yet certainly she was weak. And\n since he could not know which was the one who had received the marked\n slip, and feared to admit it, it was better they all should die.\n\n\n He advanced along the midnight road to where the ground rose and the\n jungle plants thinned out. Ahead, on an elevation, were the rain-dimmed\n lights of the Earth-ship, set down in the center of a clearing made by\n its own fierce rockets. Svan's mist-trained eyes spotted the circling\n figures of sentries, and knew that these would be the ship's own.\n They would not be as easily overcome as the natives, not with those\n slim-shafted blasters they carried. Only deceit could get him to the\n side of the ship.", "DOUBLECROSS\nby JAMES Mac CREIGH\nRevolt was brewing on Venus, led by the\n\n descendant of the first Earthmen to\n\n land. Svan was the leader making the final\n\n plans—plotting them a bit too well.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Winter 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe Officer of the Deck was pleased as he returned to the main lock.\n There was no reason why everything shouldn't have been functioning\n perfectly, of course, but he was pleased to have it confirmed, all the\n same. The Executive Officer was moodily smoking a cigarette in the open\n lock, staring out over the dank Venusian terrain at the native town. He\n turned.", "\"Where are you going?\" he growled.\n\n\n Svan spoke up. \"We want to look at the Earth-ship,\" he said. He opened\n the door beside him and stepped out, careless of the drizzle. \"We heard\n it was leaving tonight,\" he continued, \"and we have not seen it. Is\n that not permitted?\"\n\n\n The guard shook his head sourly. \"No one is allowed near the ship. The\n order was just issued. It is thought there is danger.\"\n\n\n Svan stepped closer, his teeth bared in what passed for a smile. \"It\n is urgent,\" he purred. His right hand flashed across his chest in a\n complicated gesture. \"Do you understand?\"", "Svan settled himself at the side of the road, waiting for his chance.\n He had perhaps three minutes to wait; he reckoned. His fingers went\n absently to the pouch in his wide belt, closed on the slip of paper. He\n turned it over without looking at it, wondering who had drawn the first\n cross, and been a coward. Ingra? One of the men?\nHe became abruptly conscious of a commotion behind him. A ground car\n was racing along the road. He spun around and was caught in the glare\n of its blinding driving-light, as it bumped to a slithering stop.\n\n\n Paralyzed, he heard the girl's voice. \"Svan! They're coming! They found\n the guard's rifle, and they're looking for us! Thirty Earthmen, Svan,\n with those frightful guns. They fired at us, but we got away and came\n for you. We must flee!\"", "Svan shrugged. \"The Council did not know what we would face. The\n Councilmen could not come to the city and see what strength the\n Earth-ship has.\" He paused dangerously. \"Toller,\" he said, \"do you\n object?\"\n\n\n Like the girl, the old man retreated before his eyes. His voice was\n dull. \"What is your plan?\" he asked.\n\n\n Svan smiled, and it was like a dark flame. He reached to a box at his\n feet, held up a shiny metal globe. \"One of us will plant this in the\n ship. It will be set by means of this dial—\" he touched a spot on the\n surface of the globe with a pallid finger—\"to do nothing for forty\n hours. Then—it will explode. Atomite.\"", "Svan, too, had left his unopened. He sat at the table, facing them.\n \"This is the plan,\" he said. \"We will go, all six of us, in my ground\n car, to look at the Earth-ship. No one will suspect—the whole city\n has been to see it already. One will get out, at the best point we can\n find. It is almost dusk now. He can hide, surely, in the vegetation.\n The other five will start back. Something will go wrong with the\n car—perhaps it will run off the road, start to sink in the swamp. The\n guards will be called. There will be commotion—that is easy enough,\n after all; a hysterical woman, a few screams, that's all there is to\n it. And the sixth person will have his chance to steal to the side\n of the ship. The bomb is magnetic. It will not be noticed in the\n dark—they will take off before sunrise, because they must travel away\n from the sun to return—in forty hours the danger is removed.\"", "Silently the girl picked up an opaque glass bowl from the broad arm\n of her chair. It had held Venus-tobacco cigarettes; there were a few\n left. She shook them out and handed the bowl to Svan, who was rapidly\n creasing the six fatal slips. He dropped them in the bowl, stirred it\n with his hand, offered it to the girl. \"You first, Ingra,\" he said.\n\n\n She reached in mechanically, her eyes intent on his, took out a slip\n and held it without opening it. The bowl went the rounds, till Svan\n himself took the last. All eyes were on him. No one had looked at their\n slips.", "Lowry, interrupted in the middle of a word, jerked his head back and\n stared unbelievingly at the tell-tale next to the annunciator. Sure\n enough, it was glowing red—might have been glowing for minutes. He\n snatched at the hand-phone dangling from the wall, shouted into it.\n \"Set up a screen! Notify the delegation! Alert a landing party!\" But\n even while he was giving orders, the warning light flickered suddenly\n and went out. Stricken, Lowry turned to the Exec.\n\n\n The Executive Officer nodded gloomily. He said, \"You see!\"\n\"You see?\"\n\n\n Svan clicked off the listening-machine and turned around. The five\n others in the room looked apprehensive. \"You see?\" Svan repeated. \"From\n their own mouths you have heard it. The Council was right.\"", "There was comprehension in their eyes, Svan saw ... but still that\n uncertainty. Impatiently, he crackled: \"Look at the slips!\"\n\n\n Though he had willed his eyes away from it, his fingers had rebelled.\n Instinctively they had opened the slip, turned it over and over,\n striving to detect if it was the fatal one. They had felt nothing....\n\n\n And his eyes saw nothing. The slip was blank. He gave it but a second's\n glance, then looked up to see who had won the lethal game of chance.\n Almost he was disappointed.\n\n\n Each of the others had looked in that same second. And each was looking\n up now, around at his neighbors. Svan waited impatiently for the chosen\n one to announce it—a second, ten seconds....\n\n\n Then gray understanding came to him.\nA traitor!\nhis subconscious\n whispered.\nA coward!\nHe stared at them in a new light, saw their\n indecision magnified, became opposition.", "Confusion furrowed the guard's hairless brows, then was replaced by\n a sudden flare of understanding—and fear. \"The Council!\" he roared.\n \"By heaven, yes, I understand! You are the swine that caused this—\"\n He strove instinctively to bring the clumsy rifle up, but Svan was\n faster. His gamble had failed; there was only one course remaining.\n He hurled his gross white bulk at the guard, bowled him over against\n the splintery logs of the road. The proton-rifle went flying, and Svan\n savagely tore at the throat of the guard. Knees, elbows and claw-like\n nails—Svan battered at the astonished man with every ounce of strength\n in his body. The guard was as big as Svan, but Svan had the initial", "Svan thought faster than ever before in his life. If there was a\n coward, it would do no good to unmask him. All were wavering, any might\n be the one who had drawn the fatal slip. He could insist on inspecting\n every one, but—suppose the coward, cornered, fought back? In fractions\n of a second, Svan had considered the evidence and reached his decision.\n Masked by the table, his hand, still holding the pencil, moved swiftly\n beneath the table, marked his own slip.\n\n\n In the palm of his hand, Svan held up the slip he had just marked in\n secret. His voice was very tired as he said, \"I will plant the bomb.\"\nThe six conspirators in Svan's old ground car moved slowly along the\n main street of the native town. Two Earth-ship sailors, unarmed except\n for deceptively flimsy-looking pistols at their hips, stood before the\n entrance to the town's Hall of Justice.", "Ingra nodded, while the others remained mute. \"We must circle back\n again,\" she parroted. \"We are to wait five minutes, then drive the car\n into the swamp. We will create a commotion, attract the guards.\"\n\n\n Svan, listening, thought:\nIt's not much of a plan. The guards would\n not be drawn away. I am glad I can't trust these five any more. If\n they must be destroyed, it is good that their destruction will serve a\n purpose.\nAloud, he said, \"You understand. If I get through, I will return to the\n city on foot. No one will suspect anything if I am not caught, because\n the bomb will not explode until the ship is far out in space. Remember,\n you are in no danger from the guards.\"\nFrom the guards\n, his mind echoed. He smiled. At least, they would\n feel no pain, never know what happened. With the amount of atomite in\n that bomb in the compartment, they would merely be obliterated in a\n ground-shaking crash.", "\"Then we're in the soup,\" the Exec said philosophically. \"I told you\n the natives were dangerous. Spy-rays! They've been prohibited for the\n last three hundred years.\"\n\n\n \"It isn't all the natives,\" Lowry said. \"Look how they've doubled the\n guard around us. The administration is co-operating every way they\n know how. You heard the delegation's report on the intercom. It's this\n secret group they call the Council.\"" ], [ "\"Everything shipshape, I take it!\" he commented.\n\n\n The OD nodded. \"I'll have a blank log if this keeps up,\" he said.\n \"Every man accounted for except the delegation, cargo stowed, drivers\n ready to lift as soon as they come back.\"\n\n\n The Exec tossed away his cigarette. \"\nIf\nthey come back.\"\n\n\n \"Is there any question?\"\n\n\n The Exec shrugged. \"I don't know, Lowry,\" he said. \"This is a funny\n place. I don't trust the natives.\"\n\n\n Lowry lifted his eyebrows. \"Oh? But after all, they're human beings,\n just like us—\"\n\n\n \"Not any more. Four or five generations ago they were. Lord, they don't\n even look human any more. Those white, flabby skins—I don't like them.\"", "There was an instant of doubt in his steel-shackled mind, then it was\n driven away. Perhaps she was loyal, yet certainly she was weak. And\n since he could not know which was the one who had received the marked\n slip, and feared to admit it, it was better they all should die.\n\n\n He advanced along the midnight road to where the ground rose and the\n jungle plants thinned out. Ahead, on an elevation, were the rain-dimmed\n lights of the Earth-ship, set down in the center of a clearing made by\n its own fierce rockets. Svan's mist-trained eyes spotted the circling\n figures of sentries, and knew that these would be the ship's own.\n They would not be as easily overcome as the natives, not with those\n slim-shafted blasters they carried. Only deceit could get him to the\n side of the ship.", "He stared unseeingly at the light. \"Go away!\" he croaked unbelievingly.\n Then his muscles jerked into action. The time was almost up—the bomb\n in the car—\n\n\n \"Go away!\" he shrieked, and turned to run. His fists clenched and\n swinging at his side, he made a dozen floundering steps before\n something immense pounded at him from behind. He felt himself lifted\n from the road, sailing, swooping, dropping with annihilating force\n onto the hard, charred earth of the clearing. Only then did he hear the\n sound of the explosion, and as the immense echoes died away he began to\n feel the pain seeping into him from his hideously racked body....\n\n\n The Flight Surgeon rose from beside him. \"He's still alive,\" he said\n callously to Lowry, who had just come up. \"It won't last long, though.\n What've you got there?\"", "DOUBLECROSS\nby JAMES Mac CREIGH\nRevolt was brewing on Venus, led by the\n\n descendant of the first Earthmen to\n\n land. Svan was the leader making the final\n\n plans—plotting them a bit too well.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Winter 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe Officer of the Deck was pleased as he returned to the main lock.\n There was no reason why everything shouldn't have been functioning\n perfectly, of course, but he was pleased to have it confirmed, all the\n same. The Executive Officer was moodily smoking a cigarette in the open\n lock, staring out over the dank Venusian terrain at the native town. He\n turned.", "Lowry, interrupted in the middle of a word, jerked his head back and\n stared unbelievingly at the tell-tale next to the annunciator. Sure\n enough, it was glowing red—might have been glowing for minutes. He\n snatched at the hand-phone dangling from the wall, shouted into it.\n \"Set up a screen! Notify the delegation! Alert a landing party!\" But\n even while he was giving orders, the warning light flickered suddenly\n and went out. Stricken, Lowry turned to the Exec.\n\n\n The Executive Officer nodded gloomily. He said, \"You see!\"\n\"You see?\"\n\n\n Svan clicked off the listening-machine and turned around. The five\n others in the room looked apprehensive. \"You see?\" Svan repeated. \"From\n their own mouths you have heard it. The Council was right.\"", "\"Where are you going?\" he growled.\n\n\n Svan spoke up. \"We want to look at the Earth-ship,\" he said. He opened\n the door beside him and stepped out, careless of the drizzle. \"We heard\n it was leaving tonight,\" he continued, \"and we have not seen it. Is\n that not permitted?\"\n\n\n The guard shook his head sourly. \"No one is allowed near the ship. The\n order was just issued. It is thought there is danger.\"\n\n\n Svan stepped closer, his teeth bared in what passed for a smile. \"It\n is urgent,\" he purred. His right hand flashed across his chest in a\n complicated gesture. \"Do you understand?\"", "Svan, too, had left his unopened. He sat at the table, facing them.\n \"This is the plan,\" he said. \"We will go, all six of us, in my ground\n car, to look at the Earth-ship. No one will suspect—the whole city\n has been to see it already. One will get out, at the best point we can\n find. It is almost dusk now. He can hide, surely, in the vegetation.\n The other five will start back. Something will go wrong with the\n car—perhaps it will run off the road, start to sink in the swamp. The\n guards will be called. There will be commotion—that is easy enough,\n after all; a hysterical woman, a few screams, that's all there is to\n it. And the sixth person will have his chance to steal to the side\n of the ship. The bomb is magnetic. It will not be noticed in the\n dark—they will take off before sunrise, because they must travel away\n from the sun to return—in forty hours the danger is removed.\"", "He grinned triumphantly, looking from face to face. The grin\n faded uncertainly as he saw what was in their eyes—uncertainty,\n irresolution. Abruptly he set the bomb down, savagely ripped six leaves\n off a writing tablet on the table next him. He took a pencil and made a\n mark on one of them, held it up.\n\n\n \"We will let chance decide who is to do the work,\" he said angrily. \"Is\n there anyone here who is afraid? There will be danger, I think....\"\n\n\n No answer. Svan jerked his head. \"Good,\" he said. \"Ingra, bring me that\n bowl.\"", "Svan thought faster than ever before in his life. If there was a\n coward, it would do no good to unmask him. All were wavering, any might\n be the one who had drawn the fatal slip. He could insist on inspecting\n every one, but—suppose the coward, cornered, fought back? In fractions\n of a second, Svan had considered the evidence and reached his decision.\n Masked by the table, his hand, still holding the pencil, moved swiftly\n beneath the table, marked his own slip.\n\n\n In the palm of his hand, Svan held up the slip he had just marked in\n secret. His voice was very tired as he said, \"I will plant the bomb.\"\nThe six conspirators in Svan's old ground car moved slowly along the\n main street of the native town. Two Earth-ship sailors, unarmed except\n for deceptively flimsy-looking pistols at their hips, stood before the\n entrance to the town's Hall of Justice.", "There was comprehension in their eyes, Svan saw ... but still that\n uncertainty. Impatiently, he crackled: \"Look at the slips!\"\n\n\n Though he had willed his eyes away from it, his fingers had rebelled.\n Instinctively they had opened the slip, turned it over and over,\n striving to detect if it was the fatal one. They had felt nothing....\n\n\n And his eyes saw nothing. The slip was blank. He gave it but a second's\n glance, then looked up to see who had won the lethal game of chance.\n Almost he was disappointed.\n\n\n Each of the others had looked in that same second. And each was looking\n up now, around at his neighbors. Svan waited impatiently for the chosen\n one to announce it—a second, ten seconds....\n\n\n Then gray understanding came to him.\nA traitor!\nhis subconscious\n whispered.\nA coward!\nHe stared at them in a new light, saw their\n indecision magnified, became opposition.", "\"Of course,\" Lowry said suddenly, \"there's a minority who are afraid\n of us. I was in town yesterday, and I talked with some of the natives.\n They think there will be hordes of immigrants from Earth, now that we\n know Venus is habitable. And there's some sort of a paltry underground\n group that is spreading the word that the immigrants will drive the\n native Venusians—the descendants of the first expedition, that\n is—right down into the mud. Well—\" he laughed—\"maybe they will.\n After all, the fittest survive. That's a basic law of—\"\n\n\n The annunciator over the open lock clanged vigorously, and a metallic\n voice rasped: \"Officer of the Deck! Post Number One! Instruments\n reports a spy ray focused on the main lock!\"", "Svan strode back to the car. \"Hurry up,\" he gasped to the girl. \"Now\n there is danger for all of us, if they discover he is missing. And keep\n a watch for other guards.\"\nVenus has no moon, and no star can shine through its vast cloud layer.\n Ensign Lowry, staring anxiously out through the astro-dome in the bow\n of the Earth-ship, cursed the blackness.\n\n\n \"Can't see a thing,\" he complained to the Exec, steadily writing away\n at the computer's table. \"Look—are those lights over there?\"\n\n\n The Exec looked up wearily. He shrugged. \"Probably the guards. Of\n course, you can't tell. Might be a raiding party.\"\n\n\n Lowry, stung, looked to see if the Exec was smiling, but found no\n answer in his stolid face. \"Don't joke about it,\" he said. \"Suppose\n something happens to the delegation?\"", "Silently the girl picked up an opaque glass bowl from the broad arm\n of her chair. It had held Venus-tobacco cigarettes; there were a few\n left. She shook them out and handed the bowl to Svan, who was rapidly\n creasing the six fatal slips. He dropped them in the bowl, stirred it\n with his hand, offered it to the girl. \"You first, Ingra,\" he said.\n\n\n She reached in mechanically, her eyes intent on his, took out a slip\n and held it without opening it. The bowl went the rounds, till Svan\n himself took the last. All eyes were on him. No one had looked at their\n slips.", "Svan settled himself at the side of the road, waiting for his chance.\n He had perhaps three minutes to wait; he reckoned. His fingers went\n absently to the pouch in his wide belt, closed on the slip of paper. He\n turned it over without looking at it, wondering who had drawn the first\n cross, and been a coward. Ingra? One of the men?\nHe became abruptly conscious of a commotion behind him. A ground car\n was racing along the road. He spun around and was caught in the glare\n of its blinding driving-light, as it bumped to a slithering stop.\n\n\n Paralyzed, he heard the girl's voice. \"Svan! They're coming! They found\n the guard's rifle, and they're looking for us! Thirty Earthmen, Svan,\n with those frightful guns. They fired at us, but we got away and came\n for you. We must flee!\"", "She looked at him, and he was surprised to find compassion in her\n eyes. Silently she nodded, advanced the fuel-handle so that the clumsy\n car jolted a trace more rapidly over the corduroy road. It was quite\n dark now. The car's driving light flared yellowishly in front of them,\n illuminating the narrow road and the pale, distorted vegetation of the\n jungle that surrounded them. Svan noticed it was raining a little. The\n present shower would deepen and intensify until midnight, then fall off\n again, to halt before morning. But before then they would be done.\n\n\n A proton-bolt lanced across the road in front of them. In the silence\n that followed its thunderous crash, a man's voice bellowed: \"Halt!\"\n\n\n The girl, Ingra, gasped something indistinguishable, slammed on the\n brakes. A Venusian in the trappings of the State Guard advanced on them\n from the side of the road, proton-rifle held ready to fire again.", "Svan shrugged. \"The Council did not know what we would face. The\n Councilmen could not come to the city and see what strength the\n Earth-ship has.\" He paused dangerously. \"Toller,\" he said, \"do you\n object?\"\n\n\n Like the girl, the old man retreated before his eyes. His voice was\n dull. \"What is your plan?\" he asked.\n\n\n Svan smiled, and it was like a dark flame. He reached to a box at his\n feet, held up a shiny metal globe. \"One of us will plant this in the\n ship. It will be set by means of this dial—\" he touched a spot on the\n surface of the globe with a pallid finger—\"to do nothing for forty\n hours. Then—it will explode. Atomite.\"", "\"Good,\" said Svan, observing them. \"The delegation is still here. We\n have ample time.\"\n\n\n He half turned in the broad front seat next to the driver, searching\n the faces of the others in the car. Which was the coward? he wondered.\n Ingra? Her aunt? One of the men?\n\n\n The right answer leaped up at him.\nThey all are\n, he thought.\nNot one\n of them understands what this means. They're afraid.\nHe clamped his lips. \"Go faster, Ingra,\" he ordered the girl who was\n driving. \"Let's get this done with.\"", "Abruptly he swallowed, reminded of the bomb that was silently counting\n off the seconds. \"Go ahead,\" he ordered. \"I will wait here.\"\n\n\n \"Svan.\" The girl, Ingra, leaned over to him. Impulsively she reached\n for him, kissed him. \"Good luck to you, Svan,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Good luck,\" repeated the others. Then silently the electric motor of\n the car took hold. Skilfully the girl backed it up, turned it around,\n sent it lumbering back down the road. Only after she had traveled a few\n hundred feet by the feel of the road did she turn the lights on again.\n\n\n Svan looked after them. The kiss had surprised him. What did it mean?\n Was it an error that the girl should die with the others?", "\"And how do you know the guards themselves don't belong to it?\" the\n Exec retorted. \"They're all the same to me.... Look, your light's gone\n out now. Must have been the guard. They're on the wrong side to be\n coming from the town, anyhow....\"\nSvan hesitated only a fraction of a second after the girl turned the\n lights out and stopped the car. Then he reached in the compartment\n under the seat. If he took a little longer than seemed necessary to get\n the atomite bomb out of the compartment, none of the others noticed.\n Certainly it did not occur to them that there had been\ntwo\nbombs in\n the compartment, though Svan's hand emerged with only one.\n\n\n He got out of the car, holding the sphere. \"This will do for me,\" he\n said. \"They won't be expecting anyone to come from behind the ship—we\n were wise to circle around. Now, you know what you must do?\"", "\"What's that?\" Lowry craned his neck. \"A piece of paper with a cross on\n it? What about it?\"\n\n\n The surgeon shrugged. \"He had it clenched in his hand,\" he said. \"Had\n the devil of a time getting it loose from him.\" He turned it over\n slowly, displayed the other side. \"Now what in the world would he be\n doing carrying a scrap of paper with a cross marked on both sides?\"" ], [ "Svan, too, had left his unopened. He sat at the table, facing them.\n \"This is the plan,\" he said. \"We will go, all six of us, in my ground\n car, to look at the Earth-ship. No one will suspect—the whole city\n has been to see it already. One will get out, at the best point we can\n find. It is almost dusk now. He can hide, surely, in the vegetation.\n The other five will start back. Something will go wrong with the\n car—perhaps it will run off the road, start to sink in the swamp. The\n guards will be called. There will be commotion—that is easy enough,\n after all; a hysterical woman, a few screams, that's all there is to\n it. And the sixth person will have his chance to steal to the side\n of the ship. The bomb is magnetic. It will not be noticed in the\n dark—they will take off before sunrise, because they must travel away\n from the sun to return—in forty hours the danger is removed.\"", "\"No,\" she said slowly. \"I do not object.\"\n\n\n \"And the rest of us? Does any of us object?\"\n\n\n Svan eyed them, each in turn. There was a slow but unanimous gesture of\n assent.\n\n\n \"Good,\" said Svan. \"Then we must act. The Council has told us that we\n alone will decide our course of action. We have agreed that, if the\n Earth-ship returns, it means disaster for Venus. Therefore, it must not\n return.\"\n\n\n An old man shifted restlessly. \"But they are strong, Svan,\" he\n complained. \"They have weapons. We cannot force them to stay.\"\n\n\n Svan nodded. \"No. They will leave. But they will never get back to\n Earth.\"\n\n\n \"Never get back to Earth?\" the old man gasped. \"Has the Council\n authorized—murder?\"", "Svan settled himself at the side of the road, waiting for his chance.\n He had perhaps three minutes to wait; he reckoned. His fingers went\n absently to the pouch in his wide belt, closed on the slip of paper. He\n turned it over without looking at it, wondering who had drawn the first\n cross, and been a coward. Ingra? One of the men?\nHe became abruptly conscious of a commotion behind him. A ground car\n was racing along the road. He spun around and was caught in the glare\n of its blinding driving-light, as it bumped to a slithering stop.\n\n\n Paralyzed, he heard the girl's voice. \"Svan! They're coming! They found\n the guard's rifle, and they're looking for us! Thirty Earthmen, Svan,\n with those frightful guns. They fired at us, but we got away and came\n for you. We must flee!\"", "Svan strode back to the car. \"Hurry up,\" he gasped to the girl. \"Now\n there is danger for all of us, if they discover he is missing. And keep\n a watch for other guards.\"\nVenus has no moon, and no star can shine through its vast cloud layer.\n Ensign Lowry, staring anxiously out through the astro-dome in the bow\n of the Earth-ship, cursed the blackness.\n\n\n \"Can't see a thing,\" he complained to the Exec, steadily writing away\n at the computer's table. \"Look—are those lights over there?\"\n\n\n The Exec looked up wearily. He shrugged. \"Probably the guards. Of\n course, you can't tell. Might be a raiding party.\"\n\n\n Lowry, stung, looked to see if the Exec was smiling, but found no\n answer in his stolid face. \"Don't joke about it,\" he said. \"Suppose\n something happens to the delegation?\"", "The younger of the two women sighed. She might have been beautiful, in\n spite of her dead-white skin, if there had been a scrap of hair on her\n head. \"Svan, I'm afraid,\" she said. \"Who are we to decide if this\n is a good thing? Our parents came from Earth. Perhaps there will be\n trouble at first, if colonists come, but we are of the same blood.\"\n\n\n Svan laughed harshly. \"\nThey\ndon't think so. You heard them. We are\n not human any more. The officer said it.\"\n\n\n The other woman spoke unexpectedly. \"The Council was right,\" she\n agreed. \"Svan, what must we do?\"\n\n\n Svan raised his hand, thoughtfully. \"One moment. Ingra, do you still\n object?\"\n\n\n The younger woman shrank back before the glare in his eyes. She looked\n around at the others, found them reluctant and uneasy, but visibly\n convinced by Svan.", "There was an instant of doubt in his steel-shackled mind, then it was\n driven away. Perhaps she was loyal, yet certainly she was weak. And\n since he could not know which was the one who had received the marked\n slip, and feared to admit it, it was better they all should die.\n\n\n He advanced along the midnight road to where the ground rose and the\n jungle plants thinned out. Ahead, on an elevation, were the rain-dimmed\n lights of the Earth-ship, set down in the center of a clearing made by\n its own fierce rockets. Svan's mist-trained eyes spotted the circling\n figures of sentries, and knew that these would be the ship's own.\n They would not be as easily overcome as the natives, not with those\n slim-shafted blasters they carried. Only deceit could get him to the\n side of the ship.", "Lowry, interrupted in the middle of a word, jerked his head back and\n stared unbelievingly at the tell-tale next to the annunciator. Sure\n enough, it was glowing red—might have been glowing for minutes. He\n snatched at the hand-phone dangling from the wall, shouted into it.\n \"Set up a screen! Notify the delegation! Alert a landing party!\" But\n even while he was giving orders, the warning light flickered suddenly\n and went out. Stricken, Lowry turned to the Exec.\n\n\n The Executive Officer nodded gloomily. He said, \"You see!\"\n\"You see?\"\n\n\n Svan clicked off the listening-machine and turned around. The five\n others in the room looked apprehensive. \"You see?\" Svan repeated. \"From\n their own mouths you have heard it. The Council was right.\"", "Svan shrugged. \"The Council did not know what we would face. The\n Councilmen could not come to the city and see what strength the\n Earth-ship has.\" He paused dangerously. \"Toller,\" he said, \"do you\n object?\"\n\n\n Like the girl, the old man retreated before his eyes. His voice was\n dull. \"What is your plan?\" he asked.\n\n\n Svan smiled, and it was like a dark flame. He reached to a box at his\n feet, held up a shiny metal globe. \"One of us will plant this in the\n ship. It will be set by means of this dial—\" he touched a spot on the\n surface of the globe with a pallid finger—\"to do nothing for forty\n hours. Then—it will explode. Atomite.\"", "Svan thought faster than ever before in his life. If there was a\n coward, it would do no good to unmask him. All were wavering, any might\n be the one who had drawn the fatal slip. He could insist on inspecting\n every one, but—suppose the coward, cornered, fought back? In fractions\n of a second, Svan had considered the evidence and reached his decision.\n Masked by the table, his hand, still holding the pencil, moved swiftly\n beneath the table, marked his own slip.\n\n\n In the palm of his hand, Svan held up the slip he had just marked in\n secret. His voice was very tired as he said, \"I will plant the bomb.\"\nThe six conspirators in Svan's old ground car moved slowly along the\n main street of the native town. Two Earth-ship sailors, unarmed except\n for deceptively flimsy-looking pistols at their hips, stood before the\n entrance to the town's Hall of Justice.", "\"Where are you going?\" he growled.\n\n\n Svan spoke up. \"We want to look at the Earth-ship,\" he said. He opened\n the door beside him and stepped out, careless of the drizzle. \"We heard\n it was leaving tonight,\" he continued, \"and we have not seen it. Is\n that not permitted?\"\n\n\n The guard shook his head sourly. \"No one is allowed near the ship. The\n order was just issued. It is thought there is danger.\"\n\n\n Svan stepped closer, his teeth bared in what passed for a smile. \"It\n is urgent,\" he purred. His right hand flashed across his chest in a\n complicated gesture. \"Do you understand?\"", "She looked at him, and he was surprised to find compassion in her\n eyes. Silently she nodded, advanced the fuel-handle so that the clumsy\n car jolted a trace more rapidly over the corduroy road. It was quite\n dark now. The car's driving light flared yellowishly in front of them,\n illuminating the narrow road and the pale, distorted vegetation of the\n jungle that surrounded them. Svan noticed it was raining a little. The\n present shower would deepen and intensify until midnight, then fall off\n again, to halt before morning. But before then they would be done.\n\n\n A proton-bolt lanced across the road in front of them. In the silence\n that followed its thunderous crash, a man's voice bellowed: \"Halt!\"\n\n\n The girl, Ingra, gasped something indistinguishable, slammed on the\n brakes. A Venusian in the trappings of the State Guard advanced on them\n from the side of the road, proton-rifle held ready to fire again.", "There was comprehension in their eyes, Svan saw ... but still that\n uncertainty. Impatiently, he crackled: \"Look at the slips!\"\n\n\n Though he had willed his eyes away from it, his fingers had rebelled.\n Instinctively they had opened the slip, turned it over and over,\n striving to detect if it was the fatal one. They had felt nothing....\n\n\n And his eyes saw nothing. The slip was blank. He gave it but a second's\n glance, then looked up to see who had won the lethal game of chance.\n Almost he was disappointed.\n\n\n Each of the others had looked in that same second. And each was looking\n up now, around at his neighbors. Svan waited impatiently for the chosen\n one to announce it—a second, ten seconds....\n\n\n Then gray understanding came to him.\nA traitor!\nhis subconscious\n whispered.\nA coward!\nHe stared at them in a new light, saw their\n indecision magnified, became opposition.", "\"Of course,\" Lowry said suddenly, \"there's a minority who are afraid\n of us. I was in town yesterday, and I talked with some of the natives.\n They think there will be hordes of immigrants from Earth, now that we\n know Venus is habitable. And there's some sort of a paltry underground\n group that is spreading the word that the immigrants will drive the\n native Venusians—the descendants of the first expedition, that\n is—right down into the mud. Well—\" he laughed—\"maybe they will.\n After all, the fittest survive. That's a basic law of—\"\n\n\n The annunciator over the open lock clanged vigorously, and a metallic\n voice rasped: \"Officer of the Deck! Post Number One! Instruments\n reports a spy ray focused on the main lock!\"", "\"Good,\" said Svan, observing them. \"The delegation is still here. We\n have ample time.\"\n\n\n He half turned in the broad front seat next to the driver, searching\n the faces of the others in the car. Which was the coward? he wondered.\n Ingra? Her aunt? One of the men?\n\n\n The right answer leaped up at him.\nThey all are\n, he thought.\nNot one\n of them understands what this means. They're afraid.\nHe clamped his lips. \"Go faster, Ingra,\" he ordered the girl who was\n driving. \"Let's get this done with.\"", "Confusion furrowed the guard's hairless brows, then was replaced by\n a sudden flare of understanding—and fear. \"The Council!\" he roared.\n \"By heaven, yes, I understand! You are the swine that caused this—\"\n He strove instinctively to bring the clumsy rifle up, but Svan was\n faster. His gamble had failed; there was only one course remaining.\n He hurled his gross white bulk at the guard, bowled him over against\n the splintery logs of the road. The proton-rifle went flying, and Svan\n savagely tore at the throat of the guard. Knees, elbows and claw-like\n nails—Svan battered at the astonished man with every ounce of strength\n in his body. The guard was as big as Svan, but Svan had the initial", "DOUBLECROSS\nby JAMES Mac CREIGH\nRevolt was brewing on Venus, led by the\n\n descendant of the first Earthmen to\n\n land. Svan was the leader making the final\n\n plans—plotting them a bit too well.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Winter 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe Officer of the Deck was pleased as he returned to the main lock.\n There was no reason why everything shouldn't have been functioning\n perfectly, of course, but he was pleased to have it confirmed, all the\n same. The Executive Officer was moodily smoking a cigarette in the open\n lock, staring out over the dank Venusian terrain at the native town. He\n turned.", "Ingra nodded, while the others remained mute. \"We must circle back\n again,\" she parroted. \"We are to wait five minutes, then drive the car\n into the swamp. We will create a commotion, attract the guards.\"\n\n\n Svan, listening, thought:\nIt's not much of a plan. The guards would\n not be drawn away. I am glad I can't trust these five any more. If\n they must be destroyed, it is good that their destruction will serve a\n purpose.\nAloud, he said, \"You understand. If I get through, I will return to the\n city on foot. No one will suspect anything if I am not caught, because\n the bomb will not explode until the ship is far out in space. Remember,\n you are in no danger from the guards.\"\nFrom the guards\n, his mind echoed. He smiled. At least, they would\n feel no pain, never know what happened. With the amount of atomite in\n that bomb in the compartment, they would merely be obliterated in a\n ground-shaking crash.", "\"Everything shipshape, I take it!\" he commented.\n\n\n The OD nodded. \"I'll have a blank log if this keeps up,\" he said.\n \"Every man accounted for except the delegation, cargo stowed, drivers\n ready to lift as soon as they come back.\"\n\n\n The Exec tossed away his cigarette. \"\nIf\nthey come back.\"\n\n\n \"Is there any question?\"\n\n\n The Exec shrugged. \"I don't know, Lowry,\" he said. \"This is a funny\n place. I don't trust the natives.\"\n\n\n Lowry lifted his eyebrows. \"Oh? But after all, they're human beings,\n just like us—\"\n\n\n \"Not any more. Four or five generations ago they were. Lord, they don't\n even look human any more. Those white, flabby skins—I don't like them.\"", "He grinned triumphantly, looking from face to face. The grin\n faded uncertainly as he saw what was in their eyes—uncertainty,\n irresolution. Abruptly he set the bomb down, savagely ripped six leaves\n off a writing tablet on the table next him. He took a pencil and made a\n mark on one of them, held it up.\n\n\n \"We will let chance decide who is to do the work,\" he said angrily. \"Is\n there anyone here who is afraid? There will be danger, I think....\"\n\n\n No answer. Svan jerked his head. \"Good,\" he said. \"Ingra, bring me that\n bowl.\"", "Abruptly he swallowed, reminded of the bomb that was silently counting\n off the seconds. \"Go ahead,\" he ordered. \"I will wait here.\"\n\n\n \"Svan.\" The girl, Ingra, leaned over to him. Impulsively she reached\n for him, kissed him. \"Good luck to you, Svan,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Good luck,\" repeated the others. Then silently the electric motor of\n the car took hold. Skilfully the girl backed it up, turned it around,\n sent it lumbering back down the road. Only after she had traveled a few\n hundred feet by the feel of the road did she turn the lights on again.\n\n\n Svan looked after them. The kiss had surprised him. What did it mean?\n Was it an error that the girl should die with the others?" ], [ "Silently the girl picked up an opaque glass bowl from the broad arm\n of her chair. It had held Venus-tobacco cigarettes; there were a few\n left. She shook them out and handed the bowl to Svan, who was rapidly\n creasing the six fatal slips. He dropped them in the bowl, stirred it\n with his hand, offered it to the girl. \"You first, Ingra,\" he said.\n\n\n She reached in mechanically, her eyes intent on his, took out a slip\n and held it without opening it. The bowl went the rounds, till Svan\n himself took the last. All eyes were on him. No one had looked at their\n slips.", "He grinned triumphantly, looking from face to face. The grin\n faded uncertainly as he saw what was in their eyes—uncertainty,\n irresolution. Abruptly he set the bomb down, savagely ripped six leaves\n off a writing tablet on the table next him. He took a pencil and made a\n mark on one of them, held it up.\n\n\n \"We will let chance decide who is to do the work,\" he said angrily. \"Is\n there anyone here who is afraid? There will be danger, I think....\"\n\n\n No answer. Svan jerked his head. \"Good,\" he said. \"Ingra, bring me that\n bowl.\"", "\"What's that?\" Lowry craned his neck. \"A piece of paper with a cross on\n it? What about it?\"\n\n\n The surgeon shrugged. \"He had it clenched in his hand,\" he said. \"Had\n the devil of a time getting it loose from him.\" He turned it over\n slowly, displayed the other side. \"Now what in the world would he be\n doing carrying a scrap of paper with a cross marked on both sides?\"", "There was comprehension in their eyes, Svan saw ... but still that\n uncertainty. Impatiently, he crackled: \"Look at the slips!\"\n\n\n Though he had willed his eyes away from it, his fingers had rebelled.\n Instinctively they had opened the slip, turned it over and over,\n striving to detect if it was the fatal one. They had felt nothing....\n\n\n And his eyes saw nothing. The slip was blank. He gave it but a second's\n glance, then looked up to see who had won the lethal game of chance.\n Almost he was disappointed.\n\n\n Each of the others had looked in that same second. And each was looking\n up now, around at his neighbors. Svan waited impatiently for the chosen\n one to announce it—a second, ten seconds....\n\n\n Then gray understanding came to him.\nA traitor!\nhis subconscious\n whispered.\nA coward!\nHe stared at them in a new light, saw their\n indecision magnified, became opposition.", "He stared unseeingly at the light. \"Go away!\" he croaked unbelievingly.\n Then his muscles jerked into action. The time was almost up—the bomb\n in the car—\n\n\n \"Go away!\" he shrieked, and turned to run. His fists clenched and\n swinging at his side, he made a dozen floundering steps before\n something immense pounded at him from behind. He felt himself lifted\n from the road, sailing, swooping, dropping with annihilating force\n onto the hard, charred earth of the clearing. Only then did he hear the\n sound of the explosion, and as the immense echoes died away he began to\n feel the pain seeping into him from his hideously racked body....\n\n\n The Flight Surgeon rose from beside him. \"He's still alive,\" he said\n callously to Lowry, who had just come up. \"It won't last long, though.\n What've you got there?\"", "She looked at him, and he was surprised to find compassion in her\n eyes. Silently she nodded, advanced the fuel-handle so that the clumsy\n car jolted a trace more rapidly over the corduroy road. It was quite\n dark now. The car's driving light flared yellowishly in front of them,\n illuminating the narrow road and the pale, distorted vegetation of the\n jungle that surrounded them. Svan noticed it was raining a little. The\n present shower would deepen and intensify until midnight, then fall off\n again, to halt before morning. But before then they would be done.\n\n\n A proton-bolt lanced across the road in front of them. In the silence\n that followed its thunderous crash, a man's voice bellowed: \"Halt!\"\n\n\n The girl, Ingra, gasped something indistinguishable, slammed on the\n brakes. A Venusian in the trappings of the State Guard advanced on them\n from the side of the road, proton-rifle held ready to fire again.", "Svan, too, had left his unopened. He sat at the table, facing them.\n \"This is the plan,\" he said. \"We will go, all six of us, in my ground\n car, to look at the Earth-ship. No one will suspect—the whole city\n has been to see it already. One will get out, at the best point we can\n find. It is almost dusk now. He can hide, surely, in the vegetation.\n The other five will start back. Something will go wrong with the\n car—perhaps it will run off the road, start to sink in the swamp. The\n guards will be called. There will be commotion—that is easy enough,\n after all; a hysterical woman, a few screams, that's all there is to\n it. And the sixth person will have his chance to steal to the side\n of the ship. The bomb is magnetic. It will not be noticed in the\n dark—they will take off before sunrise, because they must travel away\n from the sun to return—in forty hours the danger is removed.\"", "Svan shrugged. \"The Council did not know what we would face. The\n Councilmen could not come to the city and see what strength the\n Earth-ship has.\" He paused dangerously. \"Toller,\" he said, \"do you\n object?\"\n\n\n Like the girl, the old man retreated before his eyes. His voice was\n dull. \"What is your plan?\" he asked.\n\n\n Svan smiled, and it was like a dark flame. He reached to a box at his\n feet, held up a shiny metal globe. \"One of us will plant this in the\n ship. It will be set by means of this dial—\" he touched a spot on the\n surface of the globe with a pallid finger—\"to do nothing for forty\n hours. Then—it will explode. Atomite.\"", "There was an instant of doubt in his steel-shackled mind, then it was\n driven away. Perhaps she was loyal, yet certainly she was weak. And\n since he could not know which was the one who had received the marked\n slip, and feared to admit it, it was better they all should die.\n\n\n He advanced along the midnight road to where the ground rose and the\n jungle plants thinned out. Ahead, on an elevation, were the rain-dimmed\n lights of the Earth-ship, set down in the center of a clearing made by\n its own fierce rockets. Svan's mist-trained eyes spotted the circling\n figures of sentries, and knew that these would be the ship's own.\n They would not be as easily overcome as the natives, not with those\n slim-shafted blasters they carried. Only deceit could get him to the\n side of the ship.", "Svan thought faster than ever before in his life. If there was a\n coward, it would do no good to unmask him. All were wavering, any might\n be the one who had drawn the fatal slip. He could insist on inspecting\n every one, but—suppose the coward, cornered, fought back? In fractions\n of a second, Svan had considered the evidence and reached his decision.\n Masked by the table, his hand, still holding the pencil, moved swiftly\n beneath the table, marked his own slip.\n\n\n In the palm of his hand, Svan held up the slip he had just marked in\n secret. His voice was very tired as he said, \"I will plant the bomb.\"\nThe six conspirators in Svan's old ground car moved slowly along the\n main street of the native town. Two Earth-ship sailors, unarmed except\n for deceptively flimsy-looking pistols at their hips, stood before the\n entrance to the town's Hall of Justice.", "\"Where are you going?\" he growled.\n\n\n Svan spoke up. \"We want to look at the Earth-ship,\" he said. He opened\n the door beside him and stepped out, careless of the drizzle. \"We heard\n it was leaving tonight,\" he continued, \"and we have not seen it. Is\n that not permitted?\"\n\n\n The guard shook his head sourly. \"No one is allowed near the ship. The\n order was just issued. It is thought there is danger.\"\n\n\n Svan stepped closer, his teeth bared in what passed for a smile. \"It\n is urgent,\" he purred. His right hand flashed across his chest in a\n complicated gesture. \"Do you understand?\"", "\"Good,\" said Svan, observing them. \"The delegation is still here. We\n have ample time.\"\n\n\n He half turned in the broad front seat next to the driver, searching\n the faces of the others in the car. Which was the coward? he wondered.\n Ingra? Her aunt? One of the men?\n\n\n The right answer leaped up at him.\nThey all are\n, he thought.\nNot one\n of them understands what this means. They're afraid.\nHe clamped his lips. \"Go faster, Ingra,\" he ordered the girl who was\n driving. \"Let's get this done with.\"", "Svan settled himself at the side of the road, waiting for his chance.\n He had perhaps three minutes to wait; he reckoned. His fingers went\n absently to the pouch in his wide belt, closed on the slip of paper. He\n turned it over without looking at it, wondering who had drawn the first\n cross, and been a coward. Ingra? One of the men?\nHe became abruptly conscious of a commotion behind him. A ground car\n was racing along the road. He spun around and was caught in the glare\n of its blinding driving-light, as it bumped to a slithering stop.\n\n\n Paralyzed, he heard the girl's voice. \"Svan! They're coming! They found\n the guard's rifle, and they're looking for us! Thirty Earthmen, Svan,\n with those frightful guns. They fired at us, but we got away and came\n for you. We must flee!\"", "\"Then we're in the soup,\" the Exec said philosophically. \"I told you\n the natives were dangerous. Spy-rays! They've been prohibited for the\n last three hundred years.\"\n\n\n \"It isn't all the natives,\" Lowry said. \"Look how they've doubled the\n guard around us. The administration is co-operating every way they\n know how. You heard the delegation's report on the intercom. It's this\n secret group they call the Council.\"", "Confusion furrowed the guard's hairless brows, then was replaced by\n a sudden flare of understanding—and fear. \"The Council!\" he roared.\n \"By heaven, yes, I understand! You are the swine that caused this—\"\n He strove instinctively to bring the clumsy rifle up, but Svan was\n faster. His gamble had failed; there was only one course remaining.\n He hurled his gross white bulk at the guard, bowled him over against\n the splintery logs of the road. The proton-rifle went flying, and Svan\n savagely tore at the throat of the guard. Knees, elbows and claw-like\n nails—Svan battered at the astonished man with every ounce of strength\n in his body. The guard was as big as Svan, but Svan had the initial", "Svan strode back to the car. \"Hurry up,\" he gasped to the girl. \"Now\n there is danger for all of us, if they discover he is missing. And keep\n a watch for other guards.\"\nVenus has no moon, and no star can shine through its vast cloud layer.\n Ensign Lowry, staring anxiously out through the astro-dome in the bow\n of the Earth-ship, cursed the blackness.\n\n\n \"Can't see a thing,\" he complained to the Exec, steadily writing away\n at the computer's table. \"Look—are those lights over there?\"\n\n\n The Exec looked up wearily. He shrugged. \"Probably the guards. Of\n course, you can't tell. Might be a raiding party.\"\n\n\n Lowry, stung, looked to see if the Exec was smiling, but found no\n answer in his stolid face. \"Don't joke about it,\" he said. \"Suppose\n something happens to the delegation?\"", "Lowry, a bewildered expression on his beardless face, held out the two\n halves of a metallic sphere. Dangling ends of wires showed where a\n connection had been broken. \"He had a bomb,\" he said. \"A magnetic-type,\n delayed-action atomite bomb. There must have been another in the car,\n and it went off. They—they were planning to bomb us.\"\n\n\n \"Amazing,\" the surgeon said dryly. \"Well, they won't do any bombing\n now.\"\n\n\n Lowry was staring at the huddled, mutilated form of Svan. He shuddered.\n The surgeon, seeing the shudder, grasped his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Better them than us,\" he said. \"It's poetic justice if I ever saw it.\n They had it coming....\" He paused thoughtfully, staring at a piece of\n paper between his fingers. \"This is the only part I don't get,\" he said.", "Abruptly he swallowed, reminded of the bomb that was silently counting\n off the seconds. \"Go ahead,\" he ordered. \"I will wait here.\"\n\n\n \"Svan.\" The girl, Ingra, leaned over to him. Impulsively she reached\n for him, kissed him. \"Good luck to you, Svan,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Good luck,\" repeated the others. Then silently the electric motor of\n the car took hold. Skilfully the girl backed it up, turned it around,\n sent it lumbering back down the road. Only after she had traveled a few\n hundred feet by the feel of the road did she turn the lights on again.\n\n\n Svan looked after them. The kiss had surprised him. What did it mean?\n Was it an error that the girl should die with the others?", "\"Everything shipshape, I take it!\" he commented.\n\n\n The OD nodded. \"I'll have a blank log if this keeps up,\" he said.\n \"Every man accounted for except the delegation, cargo stowed, drivers\n ready to lift as soon as they come back.\"\n\n\n The Exec tossed away his cigarette. \"\nIf\nthey come back.\"\n\n\n \"Is there any question?\"\n\n\n The Exec shrugged. \"I don't know, Lowry,\" he said. \"This is a funny\n place. I don't trust the natives.\"\n\n\n Lowry lifted his eyebrows. \"Oh? But after all, they're human beings,\n just like us—\"\n\n\n \"Not any more. Four or five generations ago they were. Lord, they don't\n even look human any more. Those white, flabby skins—I don't like them.\"", "\"And how do you know the guards themselves don't belong to it?\" the\n Exec retorted. \"They're all the same to me.... Look, your light's gone\n out now. Must have been the guard. They're on the wrong side to be\n coming from the town, anyhow....\"\nSvan hesitated only a fraction of a second after the girl turned the\n lights out and stopped the car. Then he reached in the compartment\n under the seat. If he took a little longer than seemed necessary to get\n the atomite bomb out of the compartment, none of the others noticed.\n Certainly it did not occur to them that there had been\ntwo\nbombs in\n the compartment, though Svan's hand emerged with only one.\n\n\n He got out of the car, holding the sphere. \"This will do for me,\" he\n said. \"They won't be expecting anyone to come from behind the ship—we\n were wise to circle around. Now, you know what you must do?\"" ], [ "Svan strode back to the car. \"Hurry up,\" he gasped to the girl. \"Now\n there is danger for all of us, if they discover he is missing. And keep\n a watch for other guards.\"\nVenus has no moon, and no star can shine through its vast cloud layer.\n Ensign Lowry, staring anxiously out through the astro-dome in the bow\n of the Earth-ship, cursed the blackness.\n\n\n \"Can't see a thing,\" he complained to the Exec, steadily writing away\n at the computer's table. \"Look—are those lights over there?\"\n\n\n The Exec looked up wearily. He shrugged. \"Probably the guards. Of\n course, you can't tell. Might be a raiding party.\"\n\n\n Lowry, stung, looked to see if the Exec was smiling, but found no\n answer in his stolid face. \"Don't joke about it,\" he said. \"Suppose\n something happens to the delegation?\"", "Svan, too, had left his unopened. He sat at the table, facing them.\n \"This is the plan,\" he said. \"We will go, all six of us, in my ground\n car, to look at the Earth-ship. No one will suspect—the whole city\n has been to see it already. One will get out, at the best point we can\n find. It is almost dusk now. He can hide, surely, in the vegetation.\n The other five will start back. Something will go wrong with the\n car—perhaps it will run off the road, start to sink in the swamp. The\n guards will be called. There will be commotion—that is easy enough,\n after all; a hysterical woman, a few screams, that's all there is to\n it. And the sixth person will have his chance to steal to the side\n of the ship. The bomb is magnetic. It will not be noticed in the\n dark—they will take off before sunrise, because they must travel away\n from the sun to return—in forty hours the danger is removed.\"", "Svan thought faster than ever before in his life. If there was a\n coward, it would do no good to unmask him. All were wavering, any might\n be the one who had drawn the fatal slip. He could insist on inspecting\n every one, but—suppose the coward, cornered, fought back? In fractions\n of a second, Svan had considered the evidence and reached his decision.\n Masked by the table, his hand, still holding the pencil, moved swiftly\n beneath the table, marked his own slip.\n\n\n In the palm of his hand, Svan held up the slip he had just marked in\n secret. His voice was very tired as he said, \"I will plant the bomb.\"\nThe six conspirators in Svan's old ground car moved slowly along the\n main street of the native town. Two Earth-ship sailors, unarmed except\n for deceptively flimsy-looking pistols at their hips, stood before the\n entrance to the town's Hall of Justice.", "There was an instant of doubt in his steel-shackled mind, then it was\n driven away. Perhaps she was loyal, yet certainly she was weak. And\n since he could not know which was the one who had received the marked\n slip, and feared to admit it, it was better they all should die.\n\n\n He advanced along the midnight road to where the ground rose and the\n jungle plants thinned out. Ahead, on an elevation, were the rain-dimmed\n lights of the Earth-ship, set down in the center of a clearing made by\n its own fierce rockets. Svan's mist-trained eyes spotted the circling\n figures of sentries, and knew that these would be the ship's own.\n They would not be as easily overcome as the natives, not with those\n slim-shafted blasters they carried. Only deceit could get him to the\n side of the ship.", "\"And how do you know the guards themselves don't belong to it?\" the\n Exec retorted. \"They're all the same to me.... Look, your light's gone\n out now. Must have been the guard. They're on the wrong side to be\n coming from the town, anyhow....\"\nSvan hesitated only a fraction of a second after the girl turned the\n lights out and stopped the car. Then he reached in the compartment\n under the seat. If he took a little longer than seemed necessary to get\n the atomite bomb out of the compartment, none of the others noticed.\n Certainly it did not occur to them that there had been\ntwo\nbombs in\n the compartment, though Svan's hand emerged with only one.\n\n\n He got out of the car, holding the sphere. \"This will do for me,\" he\n said. \"They won't be expecting anyone to come from behind the ship—we\n were wise to circle around. Now, you know what you must do?\"", "Svan settled himself at the side of the road, waiting for his chance.\n He had perhaps three minutes to wait; he reckoned. His fingers went\n absently to the pouch in his wide belt, closed on the slip of paper. He\n turned it over without looking at it, wondering who had drawn the first\n cross, and been a coward. Ingra? One of the men?\nHe became abruptly conscious of a commotion behind him. A ground car\n was racing along the road. He spun around and was caught in the glare\n of its blinding driving-light, as it bumped to a slithering stop.\n\n\n Paralyzed, he heard the girl's voice. \"Svan! They're coming! They found\n the guard's rifle, and they're looking for us! Thirty Earthmen, Svan,\n with those frightful guns. They fired at us, but we got away and came\n for you. We must flee!\"", "\"No,\" she said slowly. \"I do not object.\"\n\n\n \"And the rest of us? Does any of us object?\"\n\n\n Svan eyed them, each in turn. There was a slow but unanimous gesture of\n assent.\n\n\n \"Good,\" said Svan. \"Then we must act. The Council has told us that we\n alone will decide our course of action. We have agreed that, if the\n Earth-ship returns, it means disaster for Venus. Therefore, it must not\n return.\"\n\n\n An old man shifted restlessly. \"But they are strong, Svan,\" he\n complained. \"They have weapons. We cannot force them to stay.\"\n\n\n Svan nodded. \"No. They will leave. But they will never get back to\n Earth.\"\n\n\n \"Never get back to Earth?\" the old man gasped. \"Has the Council\n authorized—murder?\"", "Silently the girl picked up an opaque glass bowl from the broad arm\n of her chair. It had held Venus-tobacco cigarettes; there were a few\n left. She shook them out and handed the bowl to Svan, who was rapidly\n creasing the six fatal slips. He dropped them in the bowl, stirred it\n with his hand, offered it to the girl. \"You first, Ingra,\" he said.\n\n\n She reached in mechanically, her eyes intent on his, took out a slip\n and held it without opening it. The bowl went the rounds, till Svan\n himself took the last. All eyes were on him. No one had looked at their\n slips.", "\"Where are you going?\" he growled.\n\n\n Svan spoke up. \"We want to look at the Earth-ship,\" he said. He opened\n the door beside him and stepped out, careless of the drizzle. \"We heard\n it was leaving tonight,\" he continued, \"and we have not seen it. Is\n that not permitted?\"\n\n\n The guard shook his head sourly. \"No one is allowed near the ship. The\n order was just issued. It is thought there is danger.\"\n\n\n Svan stepped closer, his teeth bared in what passed for a smile. \"It\n is urgent,\" he purred. His right hand flashed across his chest in a\n complicated gesture. \"Do you understand?\"", "Svan shrugged. \"The Council did not know what we would face. The\n Councilmen could not come to the city and see what strength the\n Earth-ship has.\" He paused dangerously. \"Toller,\" he said, \"do you\n object?\"\n\n\n Like the girl, the old man retreated before his eyes. His voice was\n dull. \"What is your plan?\" he asked.\n\n\n Svan smiled, and it was like a dark flame. He reached to a box at his\n feet, held up a shiny metal globe. \"One of us will plant this in the\n ship. It will be set by means of this dial—\" he touched a spot on the\n surface of the globe with a pallid finger—\"to do nothing for forty\n hours. Then—it will explode. Atomite.\"", "She looked at him, and he was surprised to find compassion in her\n eyes. Silently she nodded, advanced the fuel-handle so that the clumsy\n car jolted a trace more rapidly over the corduroy road. It was quite\n dark now. The car's driving light flared yellowishly in front of them,\n illuminating the narrow road and the pale, distorted vegetation of the\n jungle that surrounded them. Svan noticed it was raining a little. The\n present shower would deepen and intensify until midnight, then fall off\n again, to halt before morning. But before then they would be done.\n\n\n A proton-bolt lanced across the road in front of them. In the silence\n that followed its thunderous crash, a man's voice bellowed: \"Halt!\"\n\n\n The girl, Ingra, gasped something indistinguishable, slammed on the\n brakes. A Venusian in the trappings of the State Guard advanced on them\n from the side of the road, proton-rifle held ready to fire again.", "He grinned triumphantly, looking from face to face. The grin\n faded uncertainly as he saw what was in their eyes—uncertainty,\n irresolution. Abruptly he set the bomb down, savagely ripped six leaves\n off a writing tablet on the table next him. He took a pencil and made a\n mark on one of them, held it up.\n\n\n \"We will let chance decide who is to do the work,\" he said angrily. \"Is\n there anyone here who is afraid? There will be danger, I think....\"\n\n\n No answer. Svan jerked his head. \"Good,\" he said. \"Ingra, bring me that\n bowl.\"", "Ingra nodded, while the others remained mute. \"We must circle back\n again,\" she parroted. \"We are to wait five minutes, then drive the car\n into the swamp. We will create a commotion, attract the guards.\"\n\n\n Svan, listening, thought:\nIt's not much of a plan. The guards would\n not be drawn away. I am glad I can't trust these five any more. If\n they must be destroyed, it is good that their destruction will serve a\n purpose.\nAloud, he said, \"You understand. If I get through, I will return to the\n city on foot. No one will suspect anything if I am not caught, because\n the bomb will not explode until the ship is far out in space. Remember,\n you are in no danger from the guards.\"\nFrom the guards\n, his mind echoed. He smiled. At least, they would\n feel no pain, never know what happened. With the amount of atomite in\n that bomb in the compartment, they would merely be obliterated in a\n ground-shaking crash.", "Confusion furrowed the guard's hairless brows, then was replaced by\n a sudden flare of understanding—and fear. \"The Council!\" he roared.\n \"By heaven, yes, I understand! You are the swine that caused this—\"\n He strove instinctively to bring the clumsy rifle up, but Svan was\n faster. His gamble had failed; there was only one course remaining.\n He hurled his gross white bulk at the guard, bowled him over against\n the splintery logs of the road. The proton-rifle went flying, and Svan\n savagely tore at the throat of the guard. Knees, elbows and claw-like\n nails—Svan battered at the astonished man with every ounce of strength\n in his body. The guard was as big as Svan, but Svan had the initial", "There was comprehension in their eyes, Svan saw ... but still that\n uncertainty. Impatiently, he crackled: \"Look at the slips!\"\n\n\n Though he had willed his eyes away from it, his fingers had rebelled.\n Instinctively they had opened the slip, turned it over and over,\n striving to detect if it was the fatal one. They had felt nothing....\n\n\n And his eyes saw nothing. The slip was blank. He gave it but a second's\n glance, then looked up to see who had won the lethal game of chance.\n Almost he was disappointed.\n\n\n Each of the others had looked in that same second. And each was looking\n up now, around at his neighbors. Svan waited impatiently for the chosen\n one to announce it—a second, ten seconds....\n\n\n Then gray understanding came to him.\nA traitor!\nhis subconscious\n whispered.\nA coward!\nHe stared at them in a new light, saw their\n indecision magnified, became opposition.", "\"Of course,\" Lowry said suddenly, \"there's a minority who are afraid\n of us. I was in town yesterday, and I talked with some of the natives.\n They think there will be hordes of immigrants from Earth, now that we\n know Venus is habitable. And there's some sort of a paltry underground\n group that is spreading the word that the immigrants will drive the\n native Venusians—the descendants of the first expedition, that\n is—right down into the mud. Well—\" he laughed—\"maybe they will.\n After all, the fittest survive. That's a basic law of—\"\n\n\n The annunciator over the open lock clanged vigorously, and a metallic\n voice rasped: \"Officer of the Deck! Post Number One! Instruments\n reports a spy ray focused on the main lock!\"", "DOUBLECROSS\nby JAMES Mac CREIGH\nRevolt was brewing on Venus, led by the\n\n descendant of the first Earthmen to\n\n land. Svan was the leader making the final\n\n plans—plotting them a bit too well.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Winter 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe Officer of the Deck was pleased as he returned to the main lock.\n There was no reason why everything shouldn't have been functioning\n perfectly, of course, but he was pleased to have it confirmed, all the\n same. The Executive Officer was moodily smoking a cigarette in the open\n lock, staring out over the dank Venusian terrain at the native town. He\n turned.", "Lowry, interrupted in the middle of a word, jerked his head back and\n stared unbelievingly at the tell-tale next to the annunciator. Sure\n enough, it was glowing red—might have been glowing for minutes. He\n snatched at the hand-phone dangling from the wall, shouted into it.\n \"Set up a screen! Notify the delegation! Alert a landing party!\" But\n even while he was giving orders, the warning light flickered suddenly\n and went out. Stricken, Lowry turned to the Exec.\n\n\n The Executive Officer nodded gloomily. He said, \"You see!\"\n\"You see?\"\n\n\n Svan clicked off the listening-machine and turned around. The five\n others in the room looked apprehensive. \"You see?\" Svan repeated. \"From\n their own mouths you have heard it. The Council was right.\"", "\"Everything shipshape, I take it!\" he commented.\n\n\n The OD nodded. \"I'll have a blank log if this keeps up,\" he said.\n \"Every man accounted for except the delegation, cargo stowed, drivers\n ready to lift as soon as they come back.\"\n\n\n The Exec tossed away his cigarette. \"\nIf\nthey come back.\"\n\n\n \"Is there any question?\"\n\n\n The Exec shrugged. \"I don't know, Lowry,\" he said. \"This is a funny\n place. I don't trust the natives.\"\n\n\n Lowry lifted his eyebrows. \"Oh? But after all, they're human beings,\n just like us—\"\n\n\n \"Not any more. Four or five generations ago they were. Lord, they don't\n even look human any more. Those white, flabby skins—I don't like them.\"", "Lowry, a bewildered expression on his beardless face, held out the two\n halves of a metallic sphere. Dangling ends of wires showed where a\n connection had been broken. \"He had a bomb,\" he said. \"A magnetic-type,\n delayed-action atomite bomb. There must have been another in the car,\n and it went off. They—they were planning to bomb us.\"\n\n\n \"Amazing,\" the surgeon said dryly. \"Well, they won't do any bombing\n now.\"\n\n\n Lowry was staring at the huddled, mutilated form of Svan. He shuddered.\n The surgeon, seeing the shudder, grasped his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Better them than us,\" he said. \"It's poetic justice if I ever saw it.\n They had it coming....\" He paused thoughtfully, staring at a piece of\n paper between his fingers. \"This is the only part I don't get,\" he said." ], [ "Abruptly he swallowed, reminded of the bomb that was silently counting\n off the seconds. \"Go ahead,\" he ordered. \"I will wait here.\"\n\n\n \"Svan.\" The girl, Ingra, leaned over to him. Impulsively she reached\n for him, kissed him. \"Good luck to you, Svan,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Good luck,\" repeated the others. Then silently the electric motor of\n the car took hold. Skilfully the girl backed it up, turned it around,\n sent it lumbering back down the road. Only after she had traveled a few\n hundred feet by the feel of the road did she turn the lights on again.\n\n\n Svan looked after them. The kiss had surprised him. What did it mean?\n Was it an error that the girl should die with the others?", "\"Good,\" said Svan, observing them. \"The delegation is still here. We\n have ample time.\"\n\n\n He half turned in the broad front seat next to the driver, searching\n the faces of the others in the car. Which was the coward? he wondered.\n Ingra? Her aunt? One of the men?\n\n\n The right answer leaped up at him.\nThey all are\n, he thought.\nNot one\n of them understands what this means. They're afraid.\nHe clamped his lips. \"Go faster, Ingra,\" he ordered the girl who was\n driving. \"Let's get this done with.\"", "Svan settled himself at the side of the road, waiting for his chance.\n He had perhaps three minutes to wait; he reckoned. His fingers went\n absently to the pouch in his wide belt, closed on the slip of paper. He\n turned it over without looking at it, wondering who had drawn the first\n cross, and been a coward. Ingra? One of the men?\nHe became abruptly conscious of a commotion behind him. A ground car\n was racing along the road. He spun around and was caught in the glare\n of its blinding driving-light, as it bumped to a slithering stop.\n\n\n Paralyzed, he heard the girl's voice. \"Svan! They're coming! They found\n the guard's rifle, and they're looking for us! Thirty Earthmen, Svan,\n with those frightful guns. They fired at us, but we got away and came\n for you. We must flee!\"", "Ingra nodded, while the others remained mute. \"We must circle back\n again,\" she parroted. \"We are to wait five minutes, then drive the car\n into the swamp. We will create a commotion, attract the guards.\"\n\n\n Svan, listening, thought:\nIt's not much of a plan. The guards would\n not be drawn away. I am glad I can't trust these five any more. If\n they must be destroyed, it is good that their destruction will serve a\n purpose.\nAloud, he said, \"You understand. If I get through, I will return to the\n city on foot. No one will suspect anything if I am not caught, because\n the bomb will not explode until the ship is far out in space. Remember,\n you are in no danger from the guards.\"\nFrom the guards\n, his mind echoed. He smiled. At least, they would\n feel no pain, never know what happened. With the amount of atomite in\n that bomb in the compartment, they would merely be obliterated in a\n ground-shaking crash.", "She looked at him, and he was surprised to find compassion in her\n eyes. Silently she nodded, advanced the fuel-handle so that the clumsy\n car jolted a trace more rapidly over the corduroy road. It was quite\n dark now. The car's driving light flared yellowishly in front of them,\n illuminating the narrow road and the pale, distorted vegetation of the\n jungle that surrounded them. Svan noticed it was raining a little. The\n present shower would deepen and intensify until midnight, then fall off\n again, to halt before morning. But before then they would be done.\n\n\n A proton-bolt lanced across the road in front of them. In the silence\n that followed its thunderous crash, a man's voice bellowed: \"Halt!\"\n\n\n The girl, Ingra, gasped something indistinguishable, slammed on the\n brakes. A Venusian in the trappings of the State Guard advanced on them\n from the side of the road, proton-rifle held ready to fire again.", "Confusion furrowed the guard's hairless brows, then was replaced by\n a sudden flare of understanding—and fear. \"The Council!\" he roared.\n \"By heaven, yes, I understand! You are the swine that caused this—\"\n He strove instinctively to bring the clumsy rifle up, but Svan was\n faster. His gamble had failed; there was only one course remaining.\n He hurled his gross white bulk at the guard, bowled him over against\n the splintery logs of the road. The proton-rifle went flying, and Svan\n savagely tore at the throat of the guard. Knees, elbows and claw-like\n nails—Svan battered at the astonished man with every ounce of strength\n in his body. The guard was as big as Svan, but Svan had the initial", "Silently the girl picked up an opaque glass bowl from the broad arm\n of her chair. It had held Venus-tobacco cigarettes; there were a few\n left. She shook them out and handed the bowl to Svan, who was rapidly\n creasing the six fatal slips. He dropped them in the bowl, stirred it\n with his hand, offered it to the girl. \"You first, Ingra,\" he said.\n\n\n She reached in mechanically, her eyes intent on his, took out a slip\n and held it without opening it. The bowl went the rounds, till Svan\n himself took the last. All eyes were on him. No one had looked at their\n slips.", "He grinned triumphantly, looking from face to face. The grin\n faded uncertainly as he saw what was in their eyes—uncertainty,\n irresolution. Abruptly he set the bomb down, savagely ripped six leaves\n off a writing tablet on the table next him. He took a pencil and made a\n mark on one of them, held it up.\n\n\n \"We will let chance decide who is to do the work,\" he said angrily. \"Is\n there anyone here who is afraid? There will be danger, I think....\"\n\n\n No answer. Svan jerked his head. \"Good,\" he said. \"Ingra, bring me that\n bowl.\"", "The younger of the two women sighed. She might have been beautiful, in\n spite of her dead-white skin, if there had been a scrap of hair on her\n head. \"Svan, I'm afraid,\" she said. \"Who are we to decide if this\n is a good thing? Our parents came from Earth. Perhaps there will be\n trouble at first, if colonists come, but we are of the same blood.\"\n\n\n Svan laughed harshly. \"\nThey\ndon't think so. You heard them. We are\n not human any more. The officer said it.\"\n\n\n The other woman spoke unexpectedly. \"The Council was right,\" she\n agreed. \"Svan, what must we do?\"\n\n\n Svan raised his hand, thoughtfully. \"One moment. Ingra, do you still\n object?\"\n\n\n The younger woman shrank back before the glare in his eyes. She looked\n around at the others, found them reluctant and uneasy, but visibly\n convinced by Svan.", "Svan, too, had left his unopened. He sat at the table, facing them.\n \"This is the plan,\" he said. \"We will go, all six of us, in my ground\n car, to look at the Earth-ship. No one will suspect—the whole city\n has been to see it already. One will get out, at the best point we can\n find. It is almost dusk now. He can hide, surely, in the vegetation.\n The other five will start back. Something will go wrong with the\n car—perhaps it will run off the road, start to sink in the swamp. The\n guards will be called. There will be commotion—that is easy enough,\n after all; a hysterical woman, a few screams, that's all there is to\n it. And the sixth person will have his chance to steal to the side\n of the ship. The bomb is magnetic. It will not be noticed in the\n dark—they will take off before sunrise, because they must travel away\n from the sun to return—in forty hours the danger is removed.\"", "advantage ... and it was only a matter of seconds before the guard\n lay unconscious, his skull a mass of gore at the back where Svan had\n ruthlessly pounded it against the road.\nSvan grunted as his fingers constricted brutally.\nSvan rose, panting, stared around. No one else was in sight, save the\n petrified five and the ground car. Svan glared at them contemptuously,\n then reached down and heaved on the senseless body of the guard. Over\n the shoulder of the road the body went, onto the damp swampland of the\n jungle. Even while Svan watched the body began to sink. There would be\n no trace.", "There was an instant of doubt in his steel-shackled mind, then it was\n driven away. Perhaps she was loyal, yet certainly she was weak. And\n since he could not know which was the one who had received the marked\n slip, and feared to admit it, it was better they all should die.\n\n\n He advanced along the midnight road to where the ground rose and the\n jungle plants thinned out. Ahead, on an elevation, were the rain-dimmed\n lights of the Earth-ship, set down in the center of a clearing made by\n its own fierce rockets. Svan's mist-trained eyes spotted the circling\n figures of sentries, and knew that these would be the ship's own.\n They would not be as easily overcome as the natives, not with those\n slim-shafted blasters they carried. Only deceit could get him to the\n side of the ship.", "There was comprehension in their eyes, Svan saw ... but still that\n uncertainty. Impatiently, he crackled: \"Look at the slips!\"\n\n\n Though he had willed his eyes away from it, his fingers had rebelled.\n Instinctively they had opened the slip, turned it over and over,\n striving to detect if it was the fatal one. They had felt nothing....\n\n\n And his eyes saw nothing. The slip was blank. He gave it but a second's\n glance, then looked up to see who had won the lethal game of chance.\n Almost he was disappointed.\n\n\n Each of the others had looked in that same second. And each was looking\n up now, around at his neighbors. Svan waited impatiently for the chosen\n one to announce it—a second, ten seconds....\n\n\n Then gray understanding came to him.\nA traitor!\nhis subconscious\n whispered.\nA coward!\nHe stared at them in a new light, saw their\n indecision magnified, became opposition.", "\"Where are you going?\" he growled.\n\n\n Svan spoke up. \"We want to look at the Earth-ship,\" he said. He opened\n the door beside him and stepped out, careless of the drizzle. \"We heard\n it was leaving tonight,\" he continued, \"and we have not seen it. Is\n that not permitted?\"\n\n\n The guard shook his head sourly. \"No one is allowed near the ship. The\n order was just issued. It is thought there is danger.\"\n\n\n Svan stepped closer, his teeth bared in what passed for a smile. \"It\n is urgent,\" he purred. His right hand flashed across his chest in a\n complicated gesture. \"Do you understand?\"", "Svan thought faster than ever before in his life. If there was a\n coward, it would do no good to unmask him. All were wavering, any might\n be the one who had drawn the fatal slip. He could insist on inspecting\n every one, but—suppose the coward, cornered, fought back? In fractions\n of a second, Svan had considered the evidence and reached his decision.\n Masked by the table, his hand, still holding the pencil, moved swiftly\n beneath the table, marked his own slip.\n\n\n In the palm of his hand, Svan held up the slip he had just marked in\n secret. His voice was very tired as he said, \"I will plant the bomb.\"\nThe six conspirators in Svan's old ground car moved slowly along the\n main street of the native town. Two Earth-ship sailors, unarmed except\n for deceptively flimsy-looking pistols at their hips, stood before the\n entrance to the town's Hall of Justice.", "Svan shrugged. \"The Council did not know what we would face. The\n Councilmen could not come to the city and see what strength the\n Earth-ship has.\" He paused dangerously. \"Toller,\" he said, \"do you\n object?\"\n\n\n Like the girl, the old man retreated before his eyes. His voice was\n dull. \"What is your plan?\" he asked.\n\n\n Svan smiled, and it was like a dark flame. He reached to a box at his\n feet, held up a shiny metal globe. \"One of us will plant this in the\n ship. It will be set by means of this dial—\" he touched a spot on the\n surface of the globe with a pallid finger—\"to do nothing for forty\n hours. Then—it will explode. Atomite.\"", "\"And how do you know the guards themselves don't belong to it?\" the\n Exec retorted. \"They're all the same to me.... Look, your light's gone\n out now. Must have been the guard. They're on the wrong side to be\n coming from the town, anyhow....\"\nSvan hesitated only a fraction of a second after the girl turned the\n lights out and stopped the car. Then he reached in the compartment\n under the seat. If he took a little longer than seemed necessary to get\n the atomite bomb out of the compartment, none of the others noticed.\n Certainly it did not occur to them that there had been\ntwo\nbombs in\n the compartment, though Svan's hand emerged with only one.\n\n\n He got out of the car, holding the sphere. \"This will do for me,\" he\n said. \"They won't be expecting anyone to come from behind the ship—we\n were wise to circle around. Now, you know what you must do?\"", "Svan strode back to the car. \"Hurry up,\" he gasped to the girl. \"Now\n there is danger for all of us, if they discover he is missing. And keep\n a watch for other guards.\"\nVenus has no moon, and no star can shine through its vast cloud layer.\n Ensign Lowry, staring anxiously out through the astro-dome in the bow\n of the Earth-ship, cursed the blackness.\n\n\n \"Can't see a thing,\" he complained to the Exec, steadily writing away\n at the computer's table. \"Look—are those lights over there?\"\n\n\n The Exec looked up wearily. He shrugged. \"Probably the guards. Of\n course, you can't tell. Might be a raiding party.\"\n\n\n Lowry, stung, looked to see if the Exec was smiling, but found no\n answer in his stolid face. \"Don't joke about it,\" he said. \"Suppose\n something happens to the delegation?\"", "He stared unseeingly at the light. \"Go away!\" he croaked unbelievingly.\n Then his muscles jerked into action. The time was almost up—the bomb\n in the car—\n\n\n \"Go away!\" he shrieked, and turned to run. His fists clenched and\n swinging at his side, he made a dozen floundering steps before\n something immense pounded at him from behind. He felt himself lifted\n from the road, sailing, swooping, dropping with annihilating force\n onto the hard, charred earth of the clearing. Only then did he hear the\n sound of the explosion, and as the immense echoes died away he began to\n feel the pain seeping into him from his hideously racked body....\n\n\n The Flight Surgeon rose from beside him. \"He's still alive,\" he said\n callously to Lowry, who had just come up. \"It won't last long, though.\n What've you got there?\"", "\"No,\" she said slowly. \"I do not object.\"\n\n\n \"And the rest of us? Does any of us object?\"\n\n\n Svan eyed them, each in turn. There was a slow but unanimous gesture of\n assent.\n\n\n \"Good,\" said Svan. \"Then we must act. The Council has told us that we\n alone will decide our course of action. We have agreed that, if the\n Earth-ship returns, it means disaster for Venus. Therefore, it must not\n return.\"\n\n\n An old man shifted restlessly. \"But they are strong, Svan,\" he\n complained. \"They have weapons. We cannot force them to stay.\"\n\n\n Svan nodded. \"No. They will leave. But they will never get back to\n Earth.\"\n\n\n \"Never get back to Earth?\" the old man gasped. \"Has the Council\n authorized—murder?\"" ], [ "Svan thought faster than ever before in his life. If there was a\n coward, it would do no good to unmask him. All were wavering, any might\n be the one who had drawn the fatal slip. He could insist on inspecting\n every one, but—suppose the coward, cornered, fought back? In fractions\n of a second, Svan had considered the evidence and reached his decision.\n Masked by the table, his hand, still holding the pencil, moved swiftly\n beneath the table, marked his own slip.\n\n\n In the palm of his hand, Svan held up the slip he had just marked in\n secret. His voice was very tired as he said, \"I will plant the bomb.\"\nThe six conspirators in Svan's old ground car moved slowly along the\n main street of the native town. Two Earth-ship sailors, unarmed except\n for deceptively flimsy-looking pistols at their hips, stood before the\n entrance to the town's Hall of Justice.", "\"Good,\" said Svan, observing them. \"The delegation is still here. We\n have ample time.\"\n\n\n He half turned in the broad front seat next to the driver, searching\n the faces of the others in the car. Which was the coward? he wondered.\n Ingra? Her aunt? One of the men?\n\n\n The right answer leaped up at him.\nThey all are\n, he thought.\nNot one\n of them understands what this means. They're afraid.\nHe clamped his lips. \"Go faster, Ingra,\" he ordered the girl who was\n driving. \"Let's get this done with.\"", "There was comprehension in their eyes, Svan saw ... but still that\n uncertainty. Impatiently, he crackled: \"Look at the slips!\"\n\n\n Though he had willed his eyes away from it, his fingers had rebelled.\n Instinctively they had opened the slip, turned it over and over,\n striving to detect if it was the fatal one. They had felt nothing....\n\n\n And his eyes saw nothing. The slip was blank. He gave it but a second's\n glance, then looked up to see who had won the lethal game of chance.\n Almost he was disappointed.\n\n\n Each of the others had looked in that same second. And each was looking\n up now, around at his neighbors. Svan waited impatiently for the chosen\n one to announce it—a second, ten seconds....\n\n\n Then gray understanding came to him.\nA traitor!\nhis subconscious\n whispered.\nA coward!\nHe stared at them in a new light, saw their\n indecision magnified, became opposition.", "He grinned triumphantly, looking from face to face. The grin\n faded uncertainly as he saw what was in their eyes—uncertainty,\n irresolution. Abruptly he set the bomb down, savagely ripped six leaves\n off a writing tablet on the table next him. He took a pencil and made a\n mark on one of them, held it up.\n\n\n \"We will let chance decide who is to do the work,\" he said angrily. \"Is\n there anyone here who is afraid? There will be danger, I think....\"\n\n\n No answer. Svan jerked his head. \"Good,\" he said. \"Ingra, bring me that\n bowl.\"", "Svan settled himself at the side of the road, waiting for his chance.\n He had perhaps three minutes to wait; he reckoned. His fingers went\n absently to the pouch in his wide belt, closed on the slip of paper. He\n turned it over without looking at it, wondering who had drawn the first\n cross, and been a coward. Ingra? One of the men?\nHe became abruptly conscious of a commotion behind him. A ground car\n was racing along the road. He spun around and was caught in the glare\n of its blinding driving-light, as it bumped to a slithering stop.\n\n\n Paralyzed, he heard the girl's voice. \"Svan! They're coming! They found\n the guard's rifle, and they're looking for us! Thirty Earthmen, Svan,\n with those frightful guns. They fired at us, but we got away and came\n for you. We must flee!\"", "Svan, too, had left his unopened. He sat at the table, facing them.\n \"This is the plan,\" he said. \"We will go, all six of us, in my ground\n car, to look at the Earth-ship. No one will suspect—the whole city\n has been to see it already. One will get out, at the best point we can\n find. It is almost dusk now. He can hide, surely, in the vegetation.\n The other five will start back. Something will go wrong with the\n car—perhaps it will run off the road, start to sink in the swamp. The\n guards will be called. There will be commotion—that is easy enough,\n after all; a hysterical woman, a few screams, that's all there is to\n it. And the sixth person will have his chance to steal to the side\n of the ship. The bomb is magnetic. It will not be noticed in the\n dark—they will take off before sunrise, because they must travel away\n from the sun to return—in forty hours the danger is removed.\"", "Ingra nodded, while the others remained mute. \"We must circle back\n again,\" she parroted. \"We are to wait five minutes, then drive the car\n into the swamp. We will create a commotion, attract the guards.\"\n\n\n Svan, listening, thought:\nIt's not much of a plan. The guards would\n not be drawn away. I am glad I can't trust these five any more. If\n they must be destroyed, it is good that their destruction will serve a\n purpose.\nAloud, he said, \"You understand. If I get through, I will return to the\n city on foot. No one will suspect anything if I am not caught, because\n the bomb will not explode until the ship is far out in space. Remember,\n you are in no danger from the guards.\"\nFrom the guards\n, his mind echoed. He smiled. At least, they would\n feel no pain, never know what happened. With the amount of atomite in\n that bomb in the compartment, they would merely be obliterated in a\n ground-shaking crash.", "There was an instant of doubt in his steel-shackled mind, then it was\n driven away. Perhaps she was loyal, yet certainly she was weak. And\n since he could not know which was the one who had received the marked\n slip, and feared to admit it, it was better they all should die.\n\n\n He advanced along the midnight road to where the ground rose and the\n jungle plants thinned out. Ahead, on an elevation, were the rain-dimmed\n lights of the Earth-ship, set down in the center of a clearing made by\n its own fierce rockets. Svan's mist-trained eyes spotted the circling\n figures of sentries, and knew that these would be the ship's own.\n They would not be as easily overcome as the natives, not with those\n slim-shafted blasters they carried. Only deceit could get him to the\n side of the ship.", "Silently the girl picked up an opaque glass bowl from the broad arm\n of her chair. It had held Venus-tobacco cigarettes; there were a few\n left. She shook them out and handed the bowl to Svan, who was rapidly\n creasing the six fatal slips. He dropped them in the bowl, stirred it\n with his hand, offered it to the girl. \"You first, Ingra,\" he said.\n\n\n She reached in mechanically, her eyes intent on his, took out a slip\n and held it without opening it. The bowl went the rounds, till Svan\n himself took the last. All eyes were on him. No one had looked at their\n slips.", "Abruptly he swallowed, reminded of the bomb that was silently counting\n off the seconds. \"Go ahead,\" he ordered. \"I will wait here.\"\n\n\n \"Svan.\" The girl, Ingra, leaned over to him. Impulsively she reached\n for him, kissed him. \"Good luck to you, Svan,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Good luck,\" repeated the others. Then silently the electric motor of\n the car took hold. Skilfully the girl backed it up, turned it around,\n sent it lumbering back down the road. Only after she had traveled a few\n hundred feet by the feel of the road did she turn the lights on again.\n\n\n Svan looked after them. The kiss had surprised him. What did it mean?\n Was it an error that the girl should die with the others?", "Confusion furrowed the guard's hairless brows, then was replaced by\n a sudden flare of understanding—and fear. \"The Council!\" he roared.\n \"By heaven, yes, I understand! You are the swine that caused this—\"\n He strove instinctively to bring the clumsy rifle up, but Svan was\n faster. His gamble had failed; there was only one course remaining.\n He hurled his gross white bulk at the guard, bowled him over against\n the splintery logs of the road. The proton-rifle went flying, and Svan\n savagely tore at the throat of the guard. Knees, elbows and claw-like\n nails—Svan battered at the astonished man with every ounce of strength\n in his body. The guard was as big as Svan, but Svan had the initial", "advantage ... and it was only a matter of seconds before the guard\n lay unconscious, his skull a mass of gore at the back where Svan had\n ruthlessly pounded it against the road.\nSvan grunted as his fingers constricted brutally.\nSvan rose, panting, stared around. No one else was in sight, save the\n petrified five and the ground car. Svan glared at them contemptuously,\n then reached down and heaved on the senseless body of the guard. Over\n the shoulder of the road the body went, onto the damp swampland of the\n jungle. Even while Svan watched the body began to sink. There would be\n no trace.", "Svan shrugged. \"The Council did not know what we would face. The\n Councilmen could not come to the city and see what strength the\n Earth-ship has.\" He paused dangerously. \"Toller,\" he said, \"do you\n object?\"\n\n\n Like the girl, the old man retreated before his eyes. His voice was\n dull. \"What is your plan?\" he asked.\n\n\n Svan smiled, and it was like a dark flame. He reached to a box at his\n feet, held up a shiny metal globe. \"One of us will plant this in the\n ship. It will be set by means of this dial—\" he touched a spot on the\n surface of the globe with a pallid finger—\"to do nothing for forty\n hours. Then—it will explode. Atomite.\"", "Lowry, a bewildered expression on his beardless face, held out the two\n halves of a metallic sphere. Dangling ends of wires showed where a\n connection had been broken. \"He had a bomb,\" he said. \"A magnetic-type,\n delayed-action atomite bomb. There must have been another in the car,\n and it went off. They—they were planning to bomb us.\"\n\n\n \"Amazing,\" the surgeon said dryly. \"Well, they won't do any bombing\n now.\"\n\n\n Lowry was staring at the huddled, mutilated form of Svan. He shuddered.\n The surgeon, seeing the shudder, grasped his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Better them than us,\" he said. \"It's poetic justice if I ever saw it.\n They had it coming....\" He paused thoughtfully, staring at a piece of\n paper between his fingers. \"This is the only part I don't get,\" he said.", "\"And how do you know the guards themselves don't belong to it?\" the\n Exec retorted. \"They're all the same to me.... Look, your light's gone\n out now. Must have been the guard. They're on the wrong side to be\n coming from the town, anyhow....\"\nSvan hesitated only a fraction of a second after the girl turned the\n lights out and stopped the car. Then he reached in the compartment\n under the seat. If he took a little longer than seemed necessary to get\n the atomite bomb out of the compartment, none of the others noticed.\n Certainly it did not occur to them that there had been\ntwo\nbombs in\n the compartment, though Svan's hand emerged with only one.\n\n\n He got out of the car, holding the sphere. \"This will do for me,\" he\n said. \"They won't be expecting anyone to come from behind the ship—we\n were wise to circle around. Now, you know what you must do?\"", "DOUBLECROSS\nby JAMES Mac CREIGH\nRevolt was brewing on Venus, led by the\n\n descendant of the first Earthmen to\n\n land. Svan was the leader making the final\n\n plans—plotting them a bit too well.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Winter 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe Officer of the Deck was pleased as he returned to the main lock.\n There was no reason why everything shouldn't have been functioning\n perfectly, of course, but he was pleased to have it confirmed, all the\n same. The Executive Officer was moodily smoking a cigarette in the open\n lock, staring out over the dank Venusian terrain at the native town. He\n turned.", "Lowry, interrupted in the middle of a word, jerked his head back and\n stared unbelievingly at the tell-tale next to the annunciator. Sure\n enough, it was glowing red—might have been glowing for minutes. He\n snatched at the hand-phone dangling from the wall, shouted into it.\n \"Set up a screen! Notify the delegation! Alert a landing party!\" But\n even while he was giving orders, the warning light flickered suddenly\n and went out. Stricken, Lowry turned to the Exec.\n\n\n The Executive Officer nodded gloomily. He said, \"You see!\"\n\"You see?\"\n\n\n Svan clicked off the listening-machine and turned around. The five\n others in the room looked apprehensive. \"You see?\" Svan repeated. \"From\n their own mouths you have heard it. The Council was right.\"", "\"Where are you going?\" he growled.\n\n\n Svan spoke up. \"We want to look at the Earth-ship,\" he said. He opened\n the door beside him and stepped out, careless of the drizzle. \"We heard\n it was leaving tonight,\" he continued, \"and we have not seen it. Is\n that not permitted?\"\n\n\n The guard shook his head sourly. \"No one is allowed near the ship. The\n order was just issued. It is thought there is danger.\"\n\n\n Svan stepped closer, his teeth bared in what passed for a smile. \"It\n is urgent,\" he purred. His right hand flashed across his chest in a\n complicated gesture. \"Do you understand?\"", "Svan strode back to the car. \"Hurry up,\" he gasped to the girl. \"Now\n there is danger for all of us, if they discover he is missing. And keep\n a watch for other guards.\"\nVenus has no moon, and no star can shine through its vast cloud layer.\n Ensign Lowry, staring anxiously out through the astro-dome in the bow\n of the Earth-ship, cursed the blackness.\n\n\n \"Can't see a thing,\" he complained to the Exec, steadily writing away\n at the computer's table. \"Look—are those lights over there?\"\n\n\n The Exec looked up wearily. He shrugged. \"Probably the guards. Of\n course, you can't tell. Might be a raiding party.\"\n\n\n Lowry, stung, looked to see if the Exec was smiling, but found no\n answer in his stolid face. \"Don't joke about it,\" he said. \"Suppose\n something happens to the delegation?\"", "The younger of the two women sighed. She might have been beautiful, in\n spite of her dead-white skin, if there had been a scrap of hair on her\n head. \"Svan, I'm afraid,\" she said. \"Who are we to decide if this\n is a good thing? Our parents came from Earth. Perhaps there will be\n trouble at first, if colonists come, but we are of the same blood.\"\n\n\n Svan laughed harshly. \"\nThey\ndon't think so. You heard them. We are\n not human any more. The officer said it.\"\n\n\n The other woman spoke unexpectedly. \"The Council was right,\" she\n agreed. \"Svan, what must we do?\"\n\n\n Svan raised his hand, thoughtfully. \"One moment. Ingra, do you still\n object?\"\n\n\n The younger woman shrank back before the glare in his eyes. She looked\n around at the others, found them reluctant and uneasy, but visibly\n convinced by Svan." ], [ "Svan, too, had left his unopened. He sat at the table, facing them.\n \"This is the plan,\" he said. \"We will go, all six of us, in my ground\n car, to look at the Earth-ship. No one will suspect—the whole city\n has been to see it already. One will get out, at the best point we can\n find. It is almost dusk now. He can hide, surely, in the vegetation.\n The other five will start back. Something will go wrong with the\n car—perhaps it will run off the road, start to sink in the swamp. The\n guards will be called. There will be commotion—that is easy enough,\n after all; a hysterical woman, a few screams, that's all there is to\n it. And the sixth person will have his chance to steal to the side\n of the ship. The bomb is magnetic. It will not be noticed in the\n dark—they will take off before sunrise, because they must travel away\n from the sun to return—in forty hours the danger is removed.\"", "\"Good,\" said Svan, observing them. \"The delegation is still here. We\n have ample time.\"\n\n\n He half turned in the broad front seat next to the driver, searching\n the faces of the others in the car. Which was the coward? he wondered.\n Ingra? Her aunt? One of the men?\n\n\n The right answer leaped up at him.\nThey all are\n, he thought.\nNot one\n of them understands what this means. They're afraid.\nHe clamped his lips. \"Go faster, Ingra,\" he ordered the girl who was\n driving. \"Let's get this done with.\"", "Svan settled himself at the side of the road, waiting for his chance.\n He had perhaps three minutes to wait; he reckoned. His fingers went\n absently to the pouch in his wide belt, closed on the slip of paper. He\n turned it over without looking at it, wondering who had drawn the first\n cross, and been a coward. Ingra? One of the men?\nHe became abruptly conscious of a commotion behind him. A ground car\n was racing along the road. He spun around and was caught in the glare\n of its blinding driving-light, as it bumped to a slithering stop.\n\n\n Paralyzed, he heard the girl's voice. \"Svan! They're coming! They found\n the guard's rifle, and they're looking for us! Thirty Earthmen, Svan,\n with those frightful guns. They fired at us, but we got away and came\n for you. We must flee!\"", "Confusion furrowed the guard's hairless brows, then was replaced by\n a sudden flare of understanding—and fear. \"The Council!\" he roared.\n \"By heaven, yes, I understand! You are the swine that caused this—\"\n He strove instinctively to bring the clumsy rifle up, but Svan was\n faster. His gamble had failed; there was only one course remaining.\n He hurled his gross white bulk at the guard, bowled him over against\n the splintery logs of the road. The proton-rifle went flying, and Svan\n savagely tore at the throat of the guard. Knees, elbows and claw-like\n nails—Svan battered at the astonished man with every ounce of strength\n in his body. The guard was as big as Svan, but Svan had the initial", "There was an instant of doubt in his steel-shackled mind, then it was\n driven away. Perhaps she was loyal, yet certainly she was weak. And\n since he could not know which was the one who had received the marked\n slip, and feared to admit it, it was better they all should die.\n\n\n He advanced along the midnight road to where the ground rose and the\n jungle plants thinned out. Ahead, on an elevation, were the rain-dimmed\n lights of the Earth-ship, set down in the center of a clearing made by\n its own fierce rockets. Svan's mist-trained eyes spotted the circling\n figures of sentries, and knew that these would be the ship's own.\n They would not be as easily overcome as the natives, not with those\n slim-shafted blasters they carried. Only deceit could get him to the\n side of the ship.", "Svan shrugged. \"The Council did not know what we would face. The\n Councilmen could not come to the city and see what strength the\n Earth-ship has.\" He paused dangerously. \"Toller,\" he said, \"do you\n object?\"\n\n\n Like the girl, the old man retreated before his eyes. His voice was\n dull. \"What is your plan?\" he asked.\n\n\n Svan smiled, and it was like a dark flame. He reached to a box at his\n feet, held up a shiny metal globe. \"One of us will plant this in the\n ship. It will be set by means of this dial—\" he touched a spot on the\n surface of the globe with a pallid finger—\"to do nothing for forty\n hours. Then—it will explode. Atomite.\"", "Ingra nodded, while the others remained mute. \"We must circle back\n again,\" she parroted. \"We are to wait five minutes, then drive the car\n into the swamp. We will create a commotion, attract the guards.\"\n\n\n Svan, listening, thought:\nIt's not much of a plan. The guards would\n not be drawn away. I am glad I can't trust these five any more. If\n they must be destroyed, it is good that their destruction will serve a\n purpose.\nAloud, he said, \"You understand. If I get through, I will return to the\n city on foot. No one will suspect anything if I am not caught, because\n the bomb will not explode until the ship is far out in space. Remember,\n you are in no danger from the guards.\"\nFrom the guards\n, his mind echoed. He smiled. At least, they would\n feel no pain, never know what happened. With the amount of atomite in\n that bomb in the compartment, they would merely be obliterated in a\n ground-shaking crash.", "advantage ... and it was only a matter of seconds before the guard\n lay unconscious, his skull a mass of gore at the back where Svan had\n ruthlessly pounded it against the road.\nSvan grunted as his fingers constricted brutally.\nSvan rose, panting, stared around. No one else was in sight, save the\n petrified five and the ground car. Svan glared at them contemptuously,\n then reached down and heaved on the senseless body of the guard. Over\n the shoulder of the road the body went, onto the damp swampland of the\n jungle. Even while Svan watched the body began to sink. There would be\n no trace.", "Abruptly he swallowed, reminded of the bomb that was silently counting\n off the seconds. \"Go ahead,\" he ordered. \"I will wait here.\"\n\n\n \"Svan.\" The girl, Ingra, leaned over to him. Impulsively she reached\n for him, kissed him. \"Good luck to you, Svan,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Good luck,\" repeated the others. Then silently the electric motor of\n the car took hold. Skilfully the girl backed it up, turned it around,\n sent it lumbering back down the road. Only after she had traveled a few\n hundred feet by the feel of the road did she turn the lights on again.\n\n\n Svan looked after them. The kiss had surprised him. What did it mean?\n Was it an error that the girl should die with the others?", "Svan thought faster than ever before in his life. If there was a\n coward, it would do no good to unmask him. All were wavering, any might\n be the one who had drawn the fatal slip. He could insist on inspecting\n every one, but—suppose the coward, cornered, fought back? In fractions\n of a second, Svan had considered the evidence and reached his decision.\n Masked by the table, his hand, still holding the pencil, moved swiftly\n beneath the table, marked his own slip.\n\n\n In the palm of his hand, Svan held up the slip he had just marked in\n secret. His voice was very tired as he said, \"I will plant the bomb.\"\nThe six conspirators in Svan's old ground car moved slowly along the\n main street of the native town. Two Earth-ship sailors, unarmed except\n for deceptively flimsy-looking pistols at their hips, stood before the\n entrance to the town's Hall of Justice.", "There was comprehension in their eyes, Svan saw ... but still that\n uncertainty. Impatiently, he crackled: \"Look at the slips!\"\n\n\n Though he had willed his eyes away from it, his fingers had rebelled.\n Instinctively they had opened the slip, turned it over and over,\n striving to detect if it was the fatal one. They had felt nothing....\n\n\n And his eyes saw nothing. The slip was blank. He gave it but a second's\n glance, then looked up to see who had won the lethal game of chance.\n Almost he was disappointed.\n\n\n Each of the others had looked in that same second. And each was looking\n up now, around at his neighbors. Svan waited impatiently for the chosen\n one to announce it—a second, ten seconds....\n\n\n Then gray understanding came to him.\nA traitor!\nhis subconscious\n whispered.\nA coward!\nHe stared at them in a new light, saw their\n indecision magnified, became opposition.", "He grinned triumphantly, looking from face to face. The grin\n faded uncertainly as he saw what was in their eyes—uncertainty,\n irresolution. Abruptly he set the bomb down, savagely ripped six leaves\n off a writing tablet on the table next him. He took a pencil and made a\n mark on one of them, held it up.\n\n\n \"We will let chance decide who is to do the work,\" he said angrily. \"Is\n there anyone here who is afraid? There will be danger, I think....\"\n\n\n No answer. Svan jerked his head. \"Good,\" he said. \"Ingra, bring me that\n bowl.\"", "\"Where are you going?\" he growled.\n\n\n Svan spoke up. \"We want to look at the Earth-ship,\" he said. He opened\n the door beside him and stepped out, careless of the drizzle. \"We heard\n it was leaving tonight,\" he continued, \"and we have not seen it. Is\n that not permitted?\"\n\n\n The guard shook his head sourly. \"No one is allowed near the ship. The\n order was just issued. It is thought there is danger.\"\n\n\n Svan stepped closer, his teeth bared in what passed for a smile. \"It\n is urgent,\" he purred. His right hand flashed across his chest in a\n complicated gesture. \"Do you understand?\"", "\"And how do you know the guards themselves don't belong to it?\" the\n Exec retorted. \"They're all the same to me.... Look, your light's gone\n out now. Must have been the guard. They're on the wrong side to be\n coming from the town, anyhow....\"\nSvan hesitated only a fraction of a second after the girl turned the\n lights out and stopped the car. Then he reached in the compartment\n under the seat. If he took a little longer than seemed necessary to get\n the atomite bomb out of the compartment, none of the others noticed.\n Certainly it did not occur to them that there had been\ntwo\nbombs in\n the compartment, though Svan's hand emerged with only one.\n\n\n He got out of the car, holding the sphere. \"This will do for me,\" he\n said. \"They won't be expecting anyone to come from behind the ship—we\n were wise to circle around. Now, you know what you must do?\"", "\"No,\" she said slowly. \"I do not object.\"\n\n\n \"And the rest of us? Does any of us object?\"\n\n\n Svan eyed them, each in turn. There was a slow but unanimous gesture of\n assent.\n\n\n \"Good,\" said Svan. \"Then we must act. The Council has told us that we\n alone will decide our course of action. We have agreed that, if the\n Earth-ship returns, it means disaster for Venus. Therefore, it must not\n return.\"\n\n\n An old man shifted restlessly. \"But they are strong, Svan,\" he\n complained. \"They have weapons. We cannot force them to stay.\"\n\n\n Svan nodded. \"No. They will leave. But they will never get back to\n Earth.\"\n\n\n \"Never get back to Earth?\" the old man gasped. \"Has the Council\n authorized—murder?\"", "Silently the girl picked up an opaque glass bowl from the broad arm\n of her chair. It had held Venus-tobacco cigarettes; there were a few\n left. She shook them out and handed the bowl to Svan, who was rapidly\n creasing the six fatal slips. He dropped them in the bowl, stirred it\n with his hand, offered it to the girl. \"You first, Ingra,\" he said.\n\n\n She reached in mechanically, her eyes intent on his, took out a slip\n and held it without opening it. The bowl went the rounds, till Svan\n himself took the last. All eyes were on him. No one had looked at their\n slips.", "Lowry, a bewildered expression on his beardless face, held out the two\n halves of a metallic sphere. Dangling ends of wires showed where a\n connection had been broken. \"He had a bomb,\" he said. \"A magnetic-type,\n delayed-action atomite bomb. There must have been another in the car,\n and it went off. They—they were planning to bomb us.\"\n\n\n \"Amazing,\" the surgeon said dryly. \"Well, they won't do any bombing\n now.\"\n\n\n Lowry was staring at the huddled, mutilated form of Svan. He shuddered.\n The surgeon, seeing the shudder, grasped his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Better them than us,\" he said. \"It's poetic justice if I ever saw it.\n They had it coming....\" He paused thoughtfully, staring at a piece of\n paper between his fingers. \"This is the only part I don't get,\" he said.", "Svan strode back to the car. \"Hurry up,\" he gasped to the girl. \"Now\n there is danger for all of us, if they discover he is missing. And keep\n a watch for other guards.\"\nVenus has no moon, and no star can shine through its vast cloud layer.\n Ensign Lowry, staring anxiously out through the astro-dome in the bow\n of the Earth-ship, cursed the blackness.\n\n\n \"Can't see a thing,\" he complained to the Exec, steadily writing away\n at the computer's table. \"Look—are those lights over there?\"\n\n\n The Exec looked up wearily. He shrugged. \"Probably the guards. Of\n course, you can't tell. Might be a raiding party.\"\n\n\n Lowry, stung, looked to see if the Exec was smiling, but found no\n answer in his stolid face. \"Don't joke about it,\" he said. \"Suppose\n something happens to the delegation?\"", "DOUBLECROSS\nby JAMES Mac CREIGH\nRevolt was brewing on Venus, led by the\n\n descendant of the first Earthmen to\n\n land. Svan was the leader making the final\n\n plans—plotting them a bit too well.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Winter 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe Officer of the Deck was pleased as he returned to the main lock.\n There was no reason why everything shouldn't have been functioning\n perfectly, of course, but he was pleased to have it confirmed, all the\n same. The Executive Officer was moodily smoking a cigarette in the open\n lock, staring out over the dank Venusian terrain at the native town. He\n turned.", "She looked at him, and he was surprised to find compassion in her\n eyes. Silently she nodded, advanced the fuel-handle so that the clumsy\n car jolted a trace more rapidly over the corduroy road. It was quite\n dark now. The car's driving light flared yellowishly in front of them,\n illuminating the narrow road and the pale, distorted vegetation of the\n jungle that surrounded them. Svan noticed it was raining a little. The\n present shower would deepen and intensify until midnight, then fall off\n again, to halt before morning. But before then they would be done.\n\n\n A proton-bolt lanced across the road in front of them. In the silence\n that followed its thunderous crash, a man's voice bellowed: \"Halt!\"\n\n\n The girl, Ingra, gasped something indistinguishable, slammed on the\n brakes. A Venusian in the trappings of the State Guard advanced on them\n from the side of the road, proton-rifle held ready to fire again." ], [ "Silently the girl picked up an opaque glass bowl from the broad arm\n of her chair. It had held Venus-tobacco cigarettes; there were a few\n left. She shook them out and handed the bowl to Svan, who was rapidly\n creasing the six fatal slips. He dropped them in the bowl, stirred it\n with his hand, offered it to the girl. \"You first, Ingra,\" he said.\n\n\n She reached in mechanically, her eyes intent on his, took out a slip\n and held it without opening it. The bowl went the rounds, till Svan\n himself took the last. All eyes were on him. No one had looked at their\n slips.", "\"What's that?\" Lowry craned his neck. \"A piece of paper with a cross on\n it? What about it?\"\n\n\n The surgeon shrugged. \"He had it clenched in his hand,\" he said. \"Had\n the devil of a time getting it loose from him.\" He turned it over\n slowly, displayed the other side. \"Now what in the world would he be\n doing carrying a scrap of paper with a cross marked on both sides?\"", "He stared unseeingly at the light. \"Go away!\" he croaked unbelievingly.\n Then his muscles jerked into action. The time was almost up—the bomb\n in the car—\n\n\n \"Go away!\" he shrieked, and turned to run. His fists clenched and\n swinging at his side, he made a dozen floundering steps before\n something immense pounded at him from behind. He felt himself lifted\n from the road, sailing, swooping, dropping with annihilating force\n onto the hard, charred earth of the clearing. Only then did he hear the\n sound of the explosion, and as the immense echoes died away he began to\n feel the pain seeping into him from his hideously racked body....\n\n\n The Flight Surgeon rose from beside him. \"He's still alive,\" he said\n callously to Lowry, who had just come up. \"It won't last long, though.\n What've you got there?\"", "Abruptly he swallowed, reminded of the bomb that was silently counting\n off the seconds. \"Go ahead,\" he ordered. \"I will wait here.\"\n\n\n \"Svan.\" The girl, Ingra, leaned over to him. Impulsively she reached\n for him, kissed him. \"Good luck to you, Svan,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Good luck,\" repeated the others. Then silently the electric motor of\n the car took hold. Skilfully the girl backed it up, turned it around,\n sent it lumbering back down the road. Only after she had traveled a few\n hundred feet by the feel of the road did she turn the lights on again.\n\n\n Svan looked after them. The kiss had surprised him. What did it mean?\n Was it an error that the girl should die with the others?", "There was comprehension in their eyes, Svan saw ... but still that\n uncertainty. Impatiently, he crackled: \"Look at the slips!\"\n\n\n Though he had willed his eyes away from it, his fingers had rebelled.\n Instinctively they had opened the slip, turned it over and over,\n striving to detect if it was the fatal one. They had felt nothing....\n\n\n And his eyes saw nothing. The slip was blank. He gave it but a second's\n glance, then looked up to see who had won the lethal game of chance.\n Almost he was disappointed.\n\n\n Each of the others had looked in that same second. And each was looking\n up now, around at his neighbors. Svan waited impatiently for the chosen\n one to announce it—a second, ten seconds....\n\n\n Then gray understanding came to him.\nA traitor!\nhis subconscious\n whispered.\nA coward!\nHe stared at them in a new light, saw their\n indecision magnified, became opposition.", "Svan thought faster than ever before in his life. If there was a\n coward, it would do no good to unmask him. All were wavering, any might\n be the one who had drawn the fatal slip. He could insist on inspecting\n every one, but—suppose the coward, cornered, fought back? In fractions\n of a second, Svan had considered the evidence and reached his decision.\n Masked by the table, his hand, still holding the pencil, moved swiftly\n beneath the table, marked his own slip.\n\n\n In the palm of his hand, Svan held up the slip he had just marked in\n secret. His voice was very tired as he said, \"I will plant the bomb.\"\nThe six conspirators in Svan's old ground car moved slowly along the\n main street of the native town. Two Earth-ship sailors, unarmed except\n for deceptively flimsy-looking pistols at their hips, stood before the\n entrance to the town's Hall of Justice.", "There was an instant of doubt in his steel-shackled mind, then it was\n driven away. Perhaps she was loyal, yet certainly she was weak. And\n since he could not know which was the one who had received the marked\n slip, and feared to admit it, it was better they all should die.\n\n\n He advanced along the midnight road to where the ground rose and the\n jungle plants thinned out. Ahead, on an elevation, were the rain-dimmed\n lights of the Earth-ship, set down in the center of a clearing made by\n its own fierce rockets. Svan's mist-trained eyes spotted the circling\n figures of sentries, and knew that these would be the ship's own.\n They would not be as easily overcome as the natives, not with those\n slim-shafted blasters they carried. Only deceit could get him to the\n side of the ship.", "He grinned triumphantly, looking from face to face. The grin\n faded uncertainly as he saw what was in their eyes—uncertainty,\n irresolution. Abruptly he set the bomb down, savagely ripped six leaves\n off a writing tablet on the table next him. He took a pencil and made a\n mark on one of them, held it up.\n\n\n \"We will let chance decide who is to do the work,\" he said angrily. \"Is\n there anyone here who is afraid? There will be danger, I think....\"\n\n\n No answer. Svan jerked his head. \"Good,\" he said. \"Ingra, bring me that\n bowl.\"", "She looked at him, and he was surprised to find compassion in her\n eyes. Silently she nodded, advanced the fuel-handle so that the clumsy\n car jolted a trace more rapidly over the corduroy road. It was quite\n dark now. The car's driving light flared yellowishly in front of them,\n illuminating the narrow road and the pale, distorted vegetation of the\n jungle that surrounded them. Svan noticed it was raining a little. The\n present shower would deepen and intensify until midnight, then fall off\n again, to halt before morning. But before then they would be done.\n\n\n A proton-bolt lanced across the road in front of them. In the silence\n that followed its thunderous crash, a man's voice bellowed: \"Halt!\"\n\n\n The girl, Ingra, gasped something indistinguishable, slammed on the\n brakes. A Venusian in the trappings of the State Guard advanced on them\n from the side of the road, proton-rifle held ready to fire again.", "Lowry, a bewildered expression on his beardless face, held out the two\n halves of a metallic sphere. Dangling ends of wires showed where a\n connection had been broken. \"He had a bomb,\" he said. \"A magnetic-type,\n delayed-action atomite bomb. There must have been another in the car,\n and it went off. They—they were planning to bomb us.\"\n\n\n \"Amazing,\" the surgeon said dryly. \"Well, they won't do any bombing\n now.\"\n\n\n Lowry was staring at the huddled, mutilated form of Svan. He shuddered.\n The surgeon, seeing the shudder, grasped his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Better them than us,\" he said. \"It's poetic justice if I ever saw it.\n They had it coming....\" He paused thoughtfully, staring at a piece of\n paper between his fingers. \"This is the only part I don't get,\" he said.", "Svan, too, had left his unopened. He sat at the table, facing them.\n \"This is the plan,\" he said. \"We will go, all six of us, in my ground\n car, to look at the Earth-ship. No one will suspect—the whole city\n has been to see it already. One will get out, at the best point we can\n find. It is almost dusk now. He can hide, surely, in the vegetation.\n The other five will start back. Something will go wrong with the\n car—perhaps it will run off the road, start to sink in the swamp. The\n guards will be called. There will be commotion—that is easy enough,\n after all; a hysterical woman, a few screams, that's all there is to\n it. And the sixth person will have his chance to steal to the side\n of the ship. The bomb is magnetic. It will not be noticed in the\n dark—they will take off before sunrise, because they must travel away\n from the sun to return—in forty hours the danger is removed.\"", "DOUBLECROSS\nby JAMES Mac CREIGH\nRevolt was brewing on Venus, led by the\n\n descendant of the first Earthmen to\n\n land. Svan was the leader making the final\n\n plans—plotting them a bit too well.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Planet Stories Winter 1944.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe Officer of the Deck was pleased as he returned to the main lock.\n There was no reason why everything shouldn't have been functioning\n perfectly, of course, but he was pleased to have it confirmed, all the\n same. The Executive Officer was moodily smoking a cigarette in the open\n lock, staring out over the dank Venusian terrain at the native town. He\n turned.", "\"Good,\" said Svan, observing them. \"The delegation is still here. We\n have ample time.\"\n\n\n He half turned in the broad front seat next to the driver, searching\n the faces of the others in the car. Which was the coward? he wondered.\n Ingra? Her aunt? One of the men?\n\n\n The right answer leaped up at him.\nThey all are\n, he thought.\nNot one\n of them understands what this means. They're afraid.\nHe clamped his lips. \"Go faster, Ingra,\" he ordered the girl who was\n driving. \"Let's get this done with.\"", "Svan settled himself at the side of the road, waiting for his chance.\n He had perhaps three minutes to wait; he reckoned. His fingers went\n absently to the pouch in his wide belt, closed on the slip of paper. He\n turned it over without looking at it, wondering who had drawn the first\n cross, and been a coward. Ingra? One of the men?\nHe became abruptly conscious of a commotion behind him. A ground car\n was racing along the road. He spun around and was caught in the glare\n of its blinding driving-light, as it bumped to a slithering stop.\n\n\n Paralyzed, he heard the girl's voice. \"Svan! They're coming! They found\n the guard's rifle, and they're looking for us! Thirty Earthmen, Svan,\n with those frightful guns. They fired at us, but we got away and came\n for you. We must flee!\"", "\"Everything shipshape, I take it!\" he commented.\n\n\n The OD nodded. \"I'll have a blank log if this keeps up,\" he said.\n \"Every man accounted for except the delegation, cargo stowed, drivers\n ready to lift as soon as they come back.\"\n\n\n The Exec tossed away his cigarette. \"\nIf\nthey come back.\"\n\n\n \"Is there any question?\"\n\n\n The Exec shrugged. \"I don't know, Lowry,\" he said. \"This is a funny\n place. I don't trust the natives.\"\n\n\n Lowry lifted his eyebrows. \"Oh? But after all, they're human beings,\n just like us—\"\n\n\n \"Not any more. Four or five generations ago they were. Lord, they don't\n even look human any more. Those white, flabby skins—I don't like them.\"", "Svan strode back to the car. \"Hurry up,\" he gasped to the girl. \"Now\n there is danger for all of us, if they discover he is missing. And keep\n a watch for other guards.\"\nVenus has no moon, and no star can shine through its vast cloud layer.\n Ensign Lowry, staring anxiously out through the astro-dome in the bow\n of the Earth-ship, cursed the blackness.\n\n\n \"Can't see a thing,\" he complained to the Exec, steadily writing away\n at the computer's table. \"Look—are those lights over there?\"\n\n\n The Exec looked up wearily. He shrugged. \"Probably the guards. Of\n course, you can't tell. Might be a raiding party.\"\n\n\n Lowry, stung, looked to see if the Exec was smiling, but found no\n answer in his stolid face. \"Don't joke about it,\" he said. \"Suppose\n something happens to the delegation?\"", "Confusion furrowed the guard's hairless brows, then was replaced by\n a sudden flare of understanding—and fear. \"The Council!\" he roared.\n \"By heaven, yes, I understand! You are the swine that caused this—\"\n He strove instinctively to bring the clumsy rifle up, but Svan was\n faster. His gamble had failed; there was only one course remaining.\n He hurled his gross white bulk at the guard, bowled him over against\n the splintery logs of the road. The proton-rifle went flying, and Svan\n savagely tore at the throat of the guard. Knees, elbows and claw-like\n nails—Svan battered at the astonished man with every ounce of strength\n in his body. The guard was as big as Svan, but Svan had the initial", "\"Where are you going?\" he growled.\n\n\n Svan spoke up. \"We want to look at the Earth-ship,\" he said. He opened\n the door beside him and stepped out, careless of the drizzle. \"We heard\n it was leaving tonight,\" he continued, \"and we have not seen it. Is\n that not permitted?\"\n\n\n The guard shook his head sourly. \"No one is allowed near the ship. The\n order was just issued. It is thought there is danger.\"\n\n\n Svan stepped closer, his teeth bared in what passed for a smile. \"It\n is urgent,\" he purred. His right hand flashed across his chest in a\n complicated gesture. \"Do you understand?\"", "Ingra nodded, while the others remained mute. \"We must circle back\n again,\" she parroted. \"We are to wait five minutes, then drive the car\n into the swamp. We will create a commotion, attract the guards.\"\n\n\n Svan, listening, thought:\nIt's not much of a plan. The guards would\n not be drawn away. I am glad I can't trust these five any more. If\n they must be destroyed, it is good that their destruction will serve a\n purpose.\nAloud, he said, \"You understand. If I get through, I will return to the\n city on foot. No one will suspect anything if I am not caught, because\n the bomb will not explode until the ship is far out in space. Remember,\n you are in no danger from the guards.\"\nFrom the guards\n, his mind echoed. He smiled. At least, they would\n feel no pain, never know what happened. With the amount of atomite in\n that bomb in the compartment, they would merely be obliterated in a\n ground-shaking crash.", "The younger of the two women sighed. She might have been beautiful, in\n spite of her dead-white skin, if there had been a scrap of hair on her\n head. \"Svan, I'm afraid,\" she said. \"Who are we to decide if this\n is a good thing? Our parents came from Earth. Perhaps there will be\n trouble at first, if colonists come, but we are of the same blood.\"\n\n\n Svan laughed harshly. \"\nThey\ndon't think so. You heard them. We are\n not human any more. The officer said it.\"\n\n\n The other woman spoke unexpectedly. \"The Council was right,\" she\n agreed. \"Svan, what must we do?\"\n\n\n Svan raised his hand, thoughtfully. \"One moment. Ingra, do you still\n object?\"\n\n\n The younger woman shrank back before the glare in his eyes. She looked\n around at the others, found them reluctant and uneasy, but visibly\n convinced by Svan." ] ]
train	20001	[ "Why does the author say that the imposing the ban was a contradiction by whom it was imposed?", "Who placed the ban on funding for human cloning research?", "Why does the author say the pope does not respect freedom of other?", "From the passage, are we able to infer that the author is for or against cloning and why?", "What concern was raised in recent years that is similar to cloning?", "What does the auther say the fear of cloning is a form of?", "Who does the author believe would be most upsetting possibity to clone themselves?", "What would the world be like if people stopped having children naturally and started producing clones of themselves?", "Despite the federal ban on funding human cloning research, how much funding has been stopped?", "According to the author, if human cloning were allowed, how much of the population would be affected?" ]	[ [ "Because he has shown interest in cloning himself", "Because he lacked the means to ban cloning", "Because he is known for not resisting temptation of the flesh", "Because he was only banning the nonexistent to show power" ], [ "Congress", "President Bush ", "President Clinton", "The Federal Funding Agency " ], [ "He wants all people to follow his set of laws", "He expects all citizens to live by his standards", "He tried to extend his power beyond his jurisdiction", "His views are too far dated " ], [ "Against, because he says humans have no right to reproduce themselves", "Against, because he fears the cloned warriors", "For, because he says that humans have the right to reproduce how they see fit. ", "For, because he hopes for the cloned warriors" ], [ "Genetic engineering ", "Same DNA in identical twins", "Surfacing long-lost twins", "IVF" ], [ "Evolution ", "Racism", "Unpredictable reproduction", "Genetic engineering" ], [ "The rich with big egos", "The normal men", "The elderly who wanted to cheat death", "The normal women " ], [ "More dangerous than now", "Less individualistic", "The same as now. ", "More unique" ], [ "Less than half", "All funding", "Over half", "Almost none" ], [ "All of the population ", "None of the population", "Only a tiny fraction of the population", "Over half the population" ] ]	[ 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 2, 1, 3, 4, 3 ]	[ 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "The pope, unlike the president, is known for resisting temptation. He also openly claims the authority to decide how people reproduce. I respect the pope's freedom to lead his religion, and his followers' freedom to follow his dictate. But calling for secular governments to implement a ban, thus extending his power beyond those he can persuade, shows rather explicitly that the pope does not respect the freedom of others. The basic religious doctrine he follows was set down some two millennia ago. Sheep feature prominently in the Bible, but cloning does not. So the pope's views on cloning are 1 st century rules applied using 15 th century religious thinking to a 21 st century issue. \n\n If humans have a right to reproduce, what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproduction is done these days with medical help--at delivery, and often before. Truly natural human reproduction would mean 50 percent infant mortality and make pregnancy-related death the No. 1 killer of adult women.", "Start by asking whether human beings have a right to reproduce. I say \"yes.\" I have no moral right to tell other people they shouldn't be able to have children, and I don't see that Bill Clinton has that right either. When Clinton says, \"Let us resist the temptation to copy ourselves,\" it comes from a man not known for resisting other temptations of the flesh. And for a politician, making noise about cloning is pretty close to a fleshly temptation itself. It's an easy way to show sound-bite leadership on an issue that everybody is talking about, without much risk of bitter consequences. After all, how much federally funded research was stopped by this ban? Probably almost none, because Clinton has maintained Ronald Reagan's policy of minimizing federal grants for research in human reproduction. Besides, most researchers thought cloning humans was impossible--so, for the moment, there's unlikely to be a grant-request backlog. There is nothing like banning the nonexistent to show true leadership.", "Human Clones: Why Not? \n\n If you can clone a sheep, you can almost certainly clone a human being. Some of the most powerful people in the world have felt compelled to act against this threat. President Clinton swiftly imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Bills are in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning--a step urged on all governments by the pope himself. Cloning humans is taken to be either 1) a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped or, at the very least, 2) a complex ethical issue that needs legislation and regulation. But what, exactly, is so bad about it?", "True, some forms of medical help are more invasive than others. With in vitro fertilization, the sperm and egg are combined in the lab and surgically implanted in the womb. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involved in \"test-tube babies.\" To date, nearly 30,000 such babies have been born in the United States alone. Many would-be parents have been made happy. Who has been harmed? \n\n The cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. What law or principle--secular, humanist, or religious--says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is OK, but another is not? No matter how closely you study the 1 st century texts, I don't think you'll find the answer.", "Fear of clones is just another form of racism. We all agree it is wrong to discriminate against people based on a set of genetic characteristics known as \"race.\" Calls for a ban on cloning amount to discrimination against people based on another genetic trait--the fact that somebody already has an identical DNA sequence. The most extreme form of discrimination is genocide--seeking to eliminate that which is different. In this case, the genocide is pre-emptive--clones are so scary that we must eliminate them before they exist with a ban on their creation. \n\n What is so special about natural reproduction anyway? Cloning is the only predictable way to reproduce, because it creates the identical twin of a known adult. Sexual reproduction is a crap shoot by comparison--some random mix of mom and dad. In evolutionary theory, this combination is thought to help stir the gene pool, so to speak. However, evolution for humans is essentially over, because we use medical science to control the death rate.", "To some, the scientist laboring away to unlock the mysteries of life is a source of evil, never to be trusted. To others, including me, the scientist is the ray of light, illuminating the processes that make the universe work and making us better through that knowledge. Various arguments can be advanced toward either view, but one key statistic is squarely on my side. The vast majority of people, including those who rail against science, owe their very lives to previous medical discoveries. They embody the fruits of science. Don't let the forces of darkness, ignorance, and fear turn us back from research. Instead, let us raise--and yes, even clone--new generations of hapless ingrates, who can whine and rail against the discoveries of the next age.", "The \"deep ethical issues\" about cloning mainly boil down to jealousy. Economic jealousy is bad enough, and it is a factor here, but the thing that truly drives people crazy is sexual jealousy. Eons of evolution through sexual selection have made the average man or woman insanely jealous of any interloper who gains a reproductive advantage--say by diddling your spouse. Cloning is less personal than cuckoldry, but it strikes a similar chord: Someone has got the reproductive edge on you.", "One recurring image in anti-cloning propaganda is of some evil dictator raising an army of cloned warriors. Excuse me, but who is going to raise such an army (\"raise\" in the sense used by parents)? Clones start out life as babies . Armies are far easier to raise the old fashioned way--by recruiting or drafting naive young adults. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori has worked well enough to send countless young men to their deaths through the ages. Why mess with success?", "What if Saddam Hussein clones were to rule Iraq for another thousand years? Sounds bad, but Saddam's natural son Uday is reputed to make his father seem saintly by comparison. We have no more to fear from a clone of Saddam, or of Hitler, than we do from their natural-born kin--which is to say, we don't have much to fear: Dictators' kids rarely pose a problem. Stalin's daughter retired to Arizona, and Kim Jong Il of North Korea is laughable as Great Leader, Version 2.0. \n\n The notion of an 80-year-old man cloning himself to cheat death is quaint, but it is unrealistic. First, the baby wouldn't really be him. Second, is the old duffer really up to changing diapers? A persistent octogenarian might convince a younger couple to have his clone and raise it, but that is not much different from fathering a child via a surrogate mother.", "Suppose that Unsolved Mysteries called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people--like the lost identical twin, only younger than you. A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA.", "Even if people have the right to do it, is cloning a good idea? Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here. Hating a world of clones is hating the current populace. Never before was Pogo so right: We have met the enemy, and he is us !", "Once the fuss has died down and further animal research has paved the way, direct human cloning will be one more option among many specialized medical interventions in human reproduction, affecting only a tiny fraction of the population. Research into this area could bring far wider benefits. Clinton's knee-jerk policy changes nothing in the short run, but it is ultimately a giant step backward. In using an adult cell to create a clone, the \"cellular clock\" that determines the difference between an embryo and adult was somehow reset. Work in this area might help elucidate the process by which aging occurs and yield a way to reset the clocks in some of our own cells, allowing us to regenerate. Selfishly speaking, that would be more exciting to me than cloning, because it would help me . That's a lot more directly useful than letting me sire an identical twin 40 years my junior.", "Clones already exist. About one in every 1,000 births results in a pair of babies with the same DNA. We know them as identical twins. Scientific studies on such twins--reared together or apart--show that they share many characteristics. Just how many they share is a contentious topic in human biology. But genetic determinism is largely irrelevant to the cloning issue. Despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins--or other clones--have in common, they are different people in the most fundamental sense . They have their own identities, their own thoughts, and their own rights. Should you be confused on this point, just ask a twin.", "Whatever the temptations of cloning, the process of natural reproduction will always remain a lot more fun. An expensive and uncomfortable lab procedure will never offer any real competition for sex. The people most likely to clone will be those in special circumstances--infertile couples who must endure IVF anyway, for example. Even there, many will mix genetics to mimic nature. Another special case is where one member of a couple has a severe genetic disease. They might choose a clone of the healthy parent, rather than burden their child with a joint heritage that could be fatal. \n\n The most upsetting possibility in human cloning isn't superwarriors or dictators. It's that rich people with big egos will clone themselves. The common practice of giving a boy the same name as his father or choosing a family name for a child of either sex reflects our hunger for vicarious immortality. Clones may resonate with this instinct and cause some people to reproduce this way. So what? Rich and egotistic folks do all sorts of annoying things, and the law is hardly the means with which to try and stop them.", "Remember that cloning is not the same as genetic engineering. We don't get to make superman--we have to find him first. Maybe we could clone the superwarrior from Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Their bravery might--or might not--be genetically determined. But, suppose that it is. You might end up with such a brave battalion of heroes that when a grenade lands in their midst, there is a competition to see who gets to jump on it to save the others. Admirable perhaps, but not necessarily the way to win a war. And what about the supply sergeants? The army has a lot more of them than heroes. You could try to breed an expert for every job, including the petty bureaucrats, but what's the point? There's not exactly a shortage of them.", "Adifferent scare scenario is a world filled with copies of famous people only. We'll treat celebrity DNA like designer clothes, hankering for Michael Jordan's genes the way we covet his Nike sneakers today. But even celebrity infatuation has its limits. People are not more taken with celebrities than they are with themselves. Besides, such a trend would correct itself in a generation or two, because celebrity is closely linked to rarity. The world seems amused by one Howard Stern, but give us a hundred or a million of them, and they'll seem a lot less endearing.", "Twins aren't the only clones in everyday life. Think about seedless grapes or navel oranges--if there are no seeds, where did they come from? It's the plant equivalent of virgin birth--which is to say that they are all clones, propagated by cutting a shoot and planting it. Wine is almost entirely a cloned product. The grapes used for wine have seeds, but they've been cloned from shoots for more than a hundred years in the case of many vineyards. The same is true for many flowers. Go to a garden store, and you'll find products with delightful names like \"Olivia's Cloning Compound,\" a mix of hormones to dunk on the cut end of a shoot to help it take root." ], [ "Start by asking whether human beings have a right to reproduce. I say \"yes.\" I have no moral right to tell other people they shouldn't be able to have children, and I don't see that Bill Clinton has that right either. When Clinton says, \"Let us resist the temptation to copy ourselves,\" it comes from a man not known for resisting other temptations of the flesh. And for a politician, making noise about cloning is pretty close to a fleshly temptation itself. It's an easy way to show sound-bite leadership on an issue that everybody is talking about, without much risk of bitter consequences. After all, how much federally funded research was stopped by this ban? Probably almost none, because Clinton has maintained Ronald Reagan's policy of minimizing federal grants for research in human reproduction. Besides, most researchers thought cloning humans was impossible--so, for the moment, there's unlikely to be a grant-request backlog. There is nothing like banning the nonexistent to show true leadership.", "Human Clones: Why Not? \n\n If you can clone a sheep, you can almost certainly clone a human being. Some of the most powerful people in the world have felt compelled to act against this threat. President Clinton swiftly imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Bills are in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning--a step urged on all governments by the pope himself. Cloning humans is taken to be either 1) a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped or, at the very least, 2) a complex ethical issue that needs legislation and regulation. But what, exactly, is so bad about it?", "The pope, unlike the president, is known for resisting temptation. He also openly claims the authority to decide how people reproduce. I respect the pope's freedom to lead his religion, and his followers' freedom to follow his dictate. But calling for secular governments to implement a ban, thus extending his power beyond those he can persuade, shows rather explicitly that the pope does not respect the freedom of others. The basic religious doctrine he follows was set down some two millennia ago. Sheep feature prominently in the Bible, but cloning does not. So the pope's views on cloning are 1 st century rules applied using 15 th century religious thinking to a 21 st century issue. \n\n If humans have a right to reproduce, what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproduction is done these days with medical help--at delivery, and often before. Truly natural human reproduction would mean 50 percent infant mortality and make pregnancy-related death the No. 1 killer of adult women.", "Once the fuss has died down and further animal research has paved the way, direct human cloning will be one more option among many specialized medical interventions in human reproduction, affecting only a tiny fraction of the population. Research into this area could bring far wider benefits. Clinton's knee-jerk policy changes nothing in the short run, but it is ultimately a giant step backward. In using an adult cell to create a clone, the \"cellular clock\" that determines the difference between an embryo and adult was somehow reset. Work in this area might help elucidate the process by which aging occurs and yield a way to reset the clocks in some of our own cells, allowing us to regenerate. Selfishly speaking, that would be more exciting to me than cloning, because it would help me . That's a lot more directly useful than letting me sire an identical twin 40 years my junior.", "True, some forms of medical help are more invasive than others. With in vitro fertilization, the sperm and egg are combined in the lab and surgically implanted in the womb. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involved in \"test-tube babies.\" To date, nearly 30,000 such babies have been born in the United States alone. Many would-be parents have been made happy. Who has been harmed? \n\n The cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. What law or principle--secular, humanist, or religious--says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is OK, but another is not? No matter how closely you study the 1 st century texts, I don't think you'll find the answer.", "Fear of clones is just another form of racism. We all agree it is wrong to discriminate against people based on a set of genetic characteristics known as \"race.\" Calls for a ban on cloning amount to discrimination against people based on another genetic trait--the fact that somebody already has an identical DNA sequence. The most extreme form of discrimination is genocide--seeking to eliminate that which is different. In this case, the genocide is pre-emptive--clones are so scary that we must eliminate them before they exist with a ban on their creation. \n\n What is so special about natural reproduction anyway? Cloning is the only predictable way to reproduce, because it creates the identical twin of a known adult. Sexual reproduction is a crap shoot by comparison--some random mix of mom and dad. In evolutionary theory, this combination is thought to help stir the gene pool, so to speak. However, evolution for humans is essentially over, because we use medical science to control the death rate.", "Clones already exist. About one in every 1,000 births results in a pair of babies with the same DNA. We know them as identical twins. Scientific studies on such twins--reared together or apart--show that they share many characteristics. Just how many they share is a contentious topic in human biology. But genetic determinism is largely irrelevant to the cloning issue. Despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins--or other clones--have in common, they are different people in the most fundamental sense . They have their own identities, their own thoughts, and their own rights. Should you be confused on this point, just ask a twin.", "What if Saddam Hussein clones were to rule Iraq for another thousand years? Sounds bad, but Saddam's natural son Uday is reputed to make his father seem saintly by comparison. We have no more to fear from a clone of Saddam, or of Hitler, than we do from their natural-born kin--which is to say, we don't have much to fear: Dictators' kids rarely pose a problem. Stalin's daughter retired to Arizona, and Kim Jong Il of North Korea is laughable as Great Leader, Version 2.0. \n\n The notion of an 80-year-old man cloning himself to cheat death is quaint, but it is unrealistic. First, the baby wouldn't really be him. Second, is the old duffer really up to changing diapers? A persistent octogenarian might convince a younger couple to have his clone and raise it, but that is not much different from fathering a child via a surrogate mother.", "The \"deep ethical issues\" about cloning mainly boil down to jealousy. Economic jealousy is bad enough, and it is a factor here, but the thing that truly drives people crazy is sexual jealousy. Eons of evolution through sexual selection have made the average man or woman insanely jealous of any interloper who gains a reproductive advantage--say by diddling your spouse. Cloning is less personal than cuckoldry, but it strikes a similar chord: Someone has got the reproductive edge on you.", "To some, the scientist laboring away to unlock the mysteries of life is a source of evil, never to be trusted. To others, including me, the scientist is the ray of light, illuminating the processes that make the universe work and making us better through that knowledge. Various arguments can be advanced toward either view, but one key statistic is squarely on my side. The vast majority of people, including those who rail against science, owe their very lives to previous medical discoveries. They embody the fruits of science. Don't let the forces of darkness, ignorance, and fear turn us back from research. Instead, let us raise--and yes, even clone--new generations of hapless ingrates, who can whine and rail against the discoveries of the next age.", "Suppose that Unsolved Mysteries called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people--like the lost identical twin, only younger than you. A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA.", "Even if people have the right to do it, is cloning a good idea? Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here. Hating a world of clones is hating the current populace. Never before was Pogo so right: We have met the enemy, and he is us !", "Whatever the temptations of cloning, the process of natural reproduction will always remain a lot more fun. An expensive and uncomfortable lab procedure will never offer any real competition for sex. The people most likely to clone will be those in special circumstances--infertile couples who must endure IVF anyway, for example. Even there, many will mix genetics to mimic nature. Another special case is where one member of a couple has a severe genetic disease. They might choose a clone of the healthy parent, rather than burden their child with a joint heritage that could be fatal. \n\n The most upsetting possibility in human cloning isn't superwarriors or dictators. It's that rich people with big egos will clone themselves. The common practice of giving a boy the same name as his father or choosing a family name for a child of either sex reflects our hunger for vicarious immortality. Clones may resonate with this instinct and cause some people to reproduce this way. So what? Rich and egotistic folks do all sorts of annoying things, and the law is hardly the means with which to try and stop them.", "One recurring image in anti-cloning propaganda is of some evil dictator raising an army of cloned warriors. Excuse me, but who is going to raise such an army (\"raise\" in the sense used by parents)? Clones start out life as babies . Armies are far easier to raise the old fashioned way--by recruiting or drafting naive young adults. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori has worked well enough to send countless young men to their deaths through the ages. Why mess with success?", "Remember that cloning is not the same as genetic engineering. We don't get to make superman--we have to find him first. Maybe we could clone the superwarrior from Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Their bravery might--or might not--be genetically determined. But, suppose that it is. You might end up with such a brave battalion of heroes that when a grenade lands in their midst, there is a competition to see who gets to jump on it to save the others. Admirable perhaps, but not necessarily the way to win a war. And what about the supply sergeants? The army has a lot more of them than heroes. You could try to breed an expert for every job, including the petty bureaucrats, but what's the point? There's not exactly a shortage of them.", "Twins aren't the only clones in everyday life. Think about seedless grapes or navel oranges--if there are no seeds, where did they come from? It's the plant equivalent of virgin birth--which is to say that they are all clones, propagated by cutting a shoot and planting it. Wine is almost entirely a cloned product. The grapes used for wine have seeds, but they've been cloned from shoots for more than a hundred years in the case of many vineyards. The same is true for many flowers. Go to a garden store, and you'll find products with delightful names like \"Olivia's Cloning Compound,\" a mix of hormones to dunk on the cut end of a shoot to help it take root.", "Adifferent scare scenario is a world filled with copies of famous people only. We'll treat celebrity DNA like designer clothes, hankering for Michael Jordan's genes the way we covet his Nike sneakers today. But even celebrity infatuation has its limits. People are not more taken with celebrities than they are with themselves. Besides, such a trend would correct itself in a generation or two, because celebrity is closely linked to rarity. The world seems amused by one Howard Stern, but give us a hundred or a million of them, and they'll seem a lot less endearing." ], [ "The pope, unlike the president, is known for resisting temptation. He also openly claims the authority to decide how people reproduce. I respect the pope's freedom to lead his religion, and his followers' freedom to follow his dictate. But calling for secular governments to implement a ban, thus extending his power beyond those he can persuade, shows rather explicitly that the pope does not respect the freedom of others. The basic religious doctrine he follows was set down some two millennia ago. Sheep feature prominently in the Bible, but cloning does not. So the pope's views on cloning are 1 st century rules applied using 15 th century religious thinking to a 21 st century issue. \n\n If humans have a right to reproduce, what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproduction is done these days with medical help--at delivery, and often before. Truly natural human reproduction would mean 50 percent infant mortality and make pregnancy-related death the No. 1 killer of adult women.", "To some, the scientist laboring away to unlock the mysteries of life is a source of evil, never to be trusted. To others, including me, the scientist is the ray of light, illuminating the processes that make the universe work and making us better through that knowledge. Various arguments can be advanced toward either view, but one key statistic is squarely on my side. The vast majority of people, including those who rail against science, owe their very lives to previous medical discoveries. They embody the fruits of science. Don't let the forces of darkness, ignorance, and fear turn us back from research. Instead, let us raise--and yes, even clone--new generations of hapless ingrates, who can whine and rail against the discoveries of the next age.", "Start by asking whether human beings have a right to reproduce. I say \"yes.\" I have no moral right to tell other people they shouldn't be able to have children, and I don't see that Bill Clinton has that right either. When Clinton says, \"Let us resist the temptation to copy ourselves,\" it comes from a man not known for resisting other temptations of the flesh. And for a politician, making noise about cloning is pretty close to a fleshly temptation itself. It's an easy way to show sound-bite leadership on an issue that everybody is talking about, without much risk of bitter consequences. After all, how much federally funded research was stopped by this ban? Probably almost none, because Clinton has maintained Ronald Reagan's policy of minimizing federal grants for research in human reproduction. Besides, most researchers thought cloning humans was impossible--so, for the moment, there's unlikely to be a grant-request backlog. There is nothing like banning the nonexistent to show true leadership.", "Human Clones: Why Not? \n\n If you can clone a sheep, you can almost certainly clone a human being. Some of the most powerful people in the world have felt compelled to act against this threat. President Clinton swiftly imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Bills are in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning--a step urged on all governments by the pope himself. Cloning humans is taken to be either 1) a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped or, at the very least, 2) a complex ethical issue that needs legislation and regulation. But what, exactly, is so bad about it?", "Even if people have the right to do it, is cloning a good idea? Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here. Hating a world of clones is hating the current populace. Never before was Pogo so right: We have met the enemy, and he is us !", "True, some forms of medical help are more invasive than others. With in vitro fertilization, the sperm and egg are combined in the lab and surgically implanted in the womb. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involved in \"test-tube babies.\" To date, nearly 30,000 such babies have been born in the United States alone. Many would-be parents have been made happy. Who has been harmed? \n\n The cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. What law or principle--secular, humanist, or religious--says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is OK, but another is not? No matter how closely you study the 1 st century texts, I don't think you'll find the answer.", "Suppose that Unsolved Mysteries called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people--like the lost identical twin, only younger than you. A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA.", "What if Saddam Hussein clones were to rule Iraq for another thousand years? Sounds bad, but Saddam's natural son Uday is reputed to make his father seem saintly by comparison. We have no more to fear from a clone of Saddam, or of Hitler, than we do from their natural-born kin--which is to say, we don't have much to fear: Dictators' kids rarely pose a problem. Stalin's daughter retired to Arizona, and Kim Jong Il of North Korea is laughable as Great Leader, Version 2.0. \n\n The notion of an 80-year-old man cloning himself to cheat death is quaint, but it is unrealistic. First, the baby wouldn't really be him. Second, is the old duffer really up to changing diapers? A persistent octogenarian might convince a younger couple to have his clone and raise it, but that is not much different from fathering a child via a surrogate mother.", "One recurring image in anti-cloning propaganda is of some evil dictator raising an army of cloned warriors. Excuse me, but who is going to raise such an army (\"raise\" in the sense used by parents)? Clones start out life as babies . Armies are far easier to raise the old fashioned way--by recruiting or drafting naive young adults. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori has worked well enough to send countless young men to their deaths through the ages. Why mess with success?", "The \"deep ethical issues\" about cloning mainly boil down to jealousy. Economic jealousy is bad enough, and it is a factor here, but the thing that truly drives people crazy is sexual jealousy. Eons of evolution through sexual selection have made the average man or woman insanely jealous of any interloper who gains a reproductive advantage--say by diddling your spouse. Cloning is less personal than cuckoldry, but it strikes a similar chord: Someone has got the reproductive edge on you.", "Adifferent scare scenario is a world filled with copies of famous people only. We'll treat celebrity DNA like designer clothes, hankering for Michael Jordan's genes the way we covet his Nike sneakers today. But even celebrity infatuation has its limits. People are not more taken with celebrities than they are with themselves. Besides, such a trend would correct itself in a generation or two, because celebrity is closely linked to rarity. The world seems amused by one Howard Stern, but give us a hundred or a million of them, and they'll seem a lot less endearing.", "Clones already exist. About one in every 1,000 births results in a pair of babies with the same DNA. We know them as identical twins. Scientific studies on such twins--reared together or apart--show that they share many characteristics. Just how many they share is a contentious topic in human biology. But genetic determinism is largely irrelevant to the cloning issue. Despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins--or other clones--have in common, they are different people in the most fundamental sense . They have their own identities, their own thoughts, and their own rights. Should you be confused on this point, just ask a twin.", "Fear of clones is just another form of racism. We all agree it is wrong to discriminate against people based on a set of genetic characteristics known as \"race.\" Calls for a ban on cloning amount to discrimination against people based on another genetic trait--the fact that somebody already has an identical DNA sequence. The most extreme form of discrimination is genocide--seeking to eliminate that which is different. In this case, the genocide is pre-emptive--clones are so scary that we must eliminate them before they exist with a ban on their creation. \n\n What is so special about natural reproduction anyway? Cloning is the only predictable way to reproduce, because it creates the identical twin of a known adult. Sexual reproduction is a crap shoot by comparison--some random mix of mom and dad. In evolutionary theory, this combination is thought to help stir the gene pool, so to speak. However, evolution for humans is essentially over, because we use medical science to control the death rate.", "Once the fuss has died down and further animal research has paved the way, direct human cloning will be one more option among many specialized medical interventions in human reproduction, affecting only a tiny fraction of the population. Research into this area could bring far wider benefits. Clinton's knee-jerk policy changes nothing in the short run, but it is ultimately a giant step backward. In using an adult cell to create a clone, the \"cellular clock\" that determines the difference between an embryo and adult was somehow reset. Work in this area might help elucidate the process by which aging occurs and yield a way to reset the clocks in some of our own cells, allowing us to regenerate. Selfishly speaking, that would be more exciting to me than cloning, because it would help me . That's a lot more directly useful than letting me sire an identical twin 40 years my junior.", "Whatever the temptations of cloning, the process of natural reproduction will always remain a lot more fun. An expensive and uncomfortable lab procedure will never offer any real competition for sex. The people most likely to clone will be those in special circumstances--infertile couples who must endure IVF anyway, for example. Even there, many will mix genetics to mimic nature. Another special case is where one member of a couple has a severe genetic disease. They might choose a clone of the healthy parent, rather than burden their child with a joint heritage that could be fatal. \n\n The most upsetting possibility in human cloning isn't superwarriors or dictators. It's that rich people with big egos will clone themselves. The common practice of giving a boy the same name as his father or choosing a family name for a child of either sex reflects our hunger for vicarious immortality. Clones may resonate with this instinct and cause some people to reproduce this way. So what? Rich and egotistic folks do all sorts of annoying things, and the law is hardly the means with which to try and stop them.", "Remember that cloning is not the same as genetic engineering. We don't get to make superman--we have to find him first. Maybe we could clone the superwarrior from Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Their bravery might--or might not--be genetically determined. But, suppose that it is. You might end up with such a brave battalion of heroes that when a grenade lands in their midst, there is a competition to see who gets to jump on it to save the others. Admirable perhaps, but not necessarily the way to win a war. And what about the supply sergeants? The army has a lot more of them than heroes. You could try to breed an expert for every job, including the petty bureaucrats, but what's the point? There's not exactly a shortage of them.", "Twins aren't the only clones in everyday life. Think about seedless grapes or navel oranges--if there are no seeds, where did they come from? It's the plant equivalent of virgin birth--which is to say that they are all clones, propagated by cutting a shoot and planting it. Wine is almost entirely a cloned product. The grapes used for wine have seeds, but they've been cloned from shoots for more than a hundred years in the case of many vineyards. The same is true for many flowers. Go to a garden store, and you'll find products with delightful names like \"Olivia's Cloning Compound,\" a mix of hormones to dunk on the cut end of a shoot to help it take root." ], [ "Clones already exist. About one in every 1,000 births results in a pair of babies with the same DNA. We know them as identical twins. Scientific studies on such twins--reared together or apart--show that they share many characteristics. Just how many they share is a contentious topic in human biology. But genetic determinism is largely irrelevant to the cloning issue. Despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins--or other clones--have in common, they are different people in the most fundamental sense . They have their own identities, their own thoughts, and their own rights. Should you be confused on this point, just ask a twin.", "True, some forms of medical help are more invasive than others. With in vitro fertilization, the sperm and egg are combined in the lab and surgically implanted in the womb. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involved in \"test-tube babies.\" To date, nearly 30,000 such babies have been born in the United States alone. Many would-be parents have been made happy. Who has been harmed? \n\n The cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. What law or principle--secular, humanist, or religious--says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is OK, but another is not? No matter how closely you study the 1 st century texts, I don't think you'll find the answer.", "Start by asking whether human beings have a right to reproduce. I say \"yes.\" I have no moral right to tell other people they shouldn't be able to have children, and I don't see that Bill Clinton has that right either. When Clinton says, \"Let us resist the temptation to copy ourselves,\" it comes from a man not known for resisting other temptations of the flesh. And for a politician, making noise about cloning is pretty close to a fleshly temptation itself. It's an easy way to show sound-bite leadership on an issue that everybody is talking about, without much risk of bitter consequences. After all, how much federally funded research was stopped by this ban? Probably almost none, because Clinton has maintained Ronald Reagan's policy of minimizing federal grants for research in human reproduction. Besides, most researchers thought cloning humans was impossible--so, for the moment, there's unlikely to be a grant-request backlog. There is nothing like banning the nonexistent to show true leadership.", "Human Clones: Why Not? \n\n If you can clone a sheep, you can almost certainly clone a human being. Some of the most powerful people in the world have felt compelled to act against this threat. President Clinton swiftly imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Bills are in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning--a step urged on all governments by the pope himself. Cloning humans is taken to be either 1) a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped or, at the very least, 2) a complex ethical issue that needs legislation and regulation. But what, exactly, is so bad about it?", "Even if people have the right to do it, is cloning a good idea? Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here. Hating a world of clones is hating the current populace. Never before was Pogo so right: We have met the enemy, and he is us !", "The pope, unlike the president, is known for resisting temptation. He also openly claims the authority to decide how people reproduce. I respect the pope's freedom to lead his religion, and his followers' freedom to follow his dictate. But calling for secular governments to implement a ban, thus extending his power beyond those he can persuade, shows rather explicitly that the pope does not respect the freedom of others. The basic religious doctrine he follows was set down some two millennia ago. Sheep feature prominently in the Bible, but cloning does not. So the pope's views on cloning are 1 st century rules applied using 15 th century religious thinking to a 21 st century issue. \n\n If humans have a right to reproduce, what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproduction is done these days with medical help--at delivery, and often before. Truly natural human reproduction would mean 50 percent infant mortality and make pregnancy-related death the No. 1 killer of adult women.", "The \"deep ethical issues\" about cloning mainly boil down to jealousy. Economic jealousy is bad enough, and it is a factor here, but the thing that truly drives people crazy is sexual jealousy. Eons of evolution through sexual selection have made the average man or woman insanely jealous of any interloper who gains a reproductive advantage--say by diddling your spouse. Cloning is less personal than cuckoldry, but it strikes a similar chord: Someone has got the reproductive edge on you.", "Fear of clones is just another form of racism. We all agree it is wrong to discriminate against people based on a set of genetic characteristics known as \"race.\" Calls for a ban on cloning amount to discrimination against people based on another genetic trait--the fact that somebody already has an identical DNA sequence. The most extreme form of discrimination is genocide--seeking to eliminate that which is different. In this case, the genocide is pre-emptive--clones are so scary that we must eliminate them before they exist with a ban on their creation. \n\n What is so special about natural reproduction anyway? Cloning is the only predictable way to reproduce, because it creates the identical twin of a known adult. Sexual reproduction is a crap shoot by comparison--some random mix of mom and dad. In evolutionary theory, this combination is thought to help stir the gene pool, so to speak. However, evolution for humans is essentially over, because we use medical science to control the death rate.", "Suppose that Unsolved Mysteries called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people--like the lost identical twin, only younger than you. A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA.", "To some, the scientist laboring away to unlock the mysteries of life is a source of evil, never to be trusted. To others, including me, the scientist is the ray of light, illuminating the processes that make the universe work and making us better through that knowledge. Various arguments can be advanced toward either view, but one key statistic is squarely on my side. The vast majority of people, including those who rail against science, owe their very lives to previous medical discoveries. They embody the fruits of science. Don't let the forces of darkness, ignorance, and fear turn us back from research. Instead, let us raise--and yes, even clone--new generations of hapless ingrates, who can whine and rail against the discoveries of the next age.", "Once the fuss has died down and further animal research has paved the way, direct human cloning will be one more option among many specialized medical interventions in human reproduction, affecting only a tiny fraction of the population. Research into this area could bring far wider benefits. Clinton's knee-jerk policy changes nothing in the short run, but it is ultimately a giant step backward. In using an adult cell to create a clone, the \"cellular clock\" that determines the difference between an embryo and adult was somehow reset. Work in this area might help elucidate the process by which aging occurs and yield a way to reset the clocks in some of our own cells, allowing us to regenerate. Selfishly speaking, that would be more exciting to me than cloning, because it would help me . That's a lot more directly useful than letting me sire an identical twin 40 years my junior.", "What if Saddam Hussein clones were to rule Iraq for another thousand years? Sounds bad, but Saddam's natural son Uday is reputed to make his father seem saintly by comparison. We have no more to fear from a clone of Saddam, or of Hitler, than we do from their natural-born kin--which is to say, we don't have much to fear: Dictators' kids rarely pose a problem. Stalin's daughter retired to Arizona, and Kim Jong Il of North Korea is laughable as Great Leader, Version 2.0. \n\n The notion of an 80-year-old man cloning himself to cheat death is quaint, but it is unrealistic. First, the baby wouldn't really be him. Second, is the old duffer really up to changing diapers? A persistent octogenarian might convince a younger couple to have his clone and raise it, but that is not much different from fathering a child via a surrogate mother.", "One recurring image in anti-cloning propaganda is of some evil dictator raising an army of cloned warriors. Excuse me, but who is going to raise such an army (\"raise\" in the sense used by parents)? Clones start out life as babies . Armies are far easier to raise the old fashioned way--by recruiting or drafting naive young adults. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori has worked well enough to send countless young men to their deaths through the ages. Why mess with success?", "Whatever the temptations of cloning, the process of natural reproduction will always remain a lot more fun. An expensive and uncomfortable lab procedure will never offer any real competition for sex. The people most likely to clone will be those in special circumstances--infertile couples who must endure IVF anyway, for example. Even there, many will mix genetics to mimic nature. Another special case is where one member of a couple has a severe genetic disease. They might choose a clone of the healthy parent, rather than burden their child with a joint heritage that could be fatal. \n\n The most upsetting possibility in human cloning isn't superwarriors or dictators. It's that rich people with big egos will clone themselves. The common practice of giving a boy the same name as his father or choosing a family name for a child of either sex reflects our hunger for vicarious immortality. Clones may resonate with this instinct and cause some people to reproduce this way. So what? Rich and egotistic folks do all sorts of annoying things, and the law is hardly the means with which to try and stop them.", "Remember that cloning is not the same as genetic engineering. We don't get to make superman--we have to find him first. Maybe we could clone the superwarrior from Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Their bravery might--or might not--be genetically determined. But, suppose that it is. You might end up with such a brave battalion of heroes that when a grenade lands in their midst, there is a competition to see who gets to jump on it to save the others. Admirable perhaps, but not necessarily the way to win a war. And what about the supply sergeants? The army has a lot more of them than heroes. You could try to breed an expert for every job, including the petty bureaucrats, but what's the point? There's not exactly a shortage of them.", "Adifferent scare scenario is a world filled with copies of famous people only. We'll treat celebrity DNA like designer clothes, hankering for Michael Jordan's genes the way we covet his Nike sneakers today. But even celebrity infatuation has its limits. People are not more taken with celebrities than they are with themselves. Besides, such a trend would correct itself in a generation or two, because celebrity is closely linked to rarity. The world seems amused by one Howard Stern, but give us a hundred or a million of them, and they'll seem a lot less endearing.", "Twins aren't the only clones in everyday life. Think about seedless grapes or navel oranges--if there are no seeds, where did they come from? It's the plant equivalent of virgin birth--which is to say that they are all clones, propagated by cutting a shoot and planting it. Wine is almost entirely a cloned product. The grapes used for wine have seeds, but they've been cloned from shoots for more than a hundred years in the case of many vineyards. The same is true for many flowers. Go to a garden store, and you'll find products with delightful names like \"Olivia's Cloning Compound,\" a mix of hormones to dunk on the cut end of a shoot to help it take root." ], [ "The \"deep ethical issues\" about cloning mainly boil down to jealousy. Economic jealousy is bad enough, and it is a factor here, but the thing that truly drives people crazy is sexual jealousy. Eons of evolution through sexual selection have made the average man or woman insanely jealous of any interloper who gains a reproductive advantage--say by diddling your spouse. Cloning is less personal than cuckoldry, but it strikes a similar chord: Someone has got the reproductive edge on you.", "Clones already exist. About one in every 1,000 births results in a pair of babies with the same DNA. We know them as identical twins. Scientific studies on such twins--reared together or apart--show that they share many characteristics. Just how many they share is a contentious topic in human biology. But genetic determinism is largely irrelevant to the cloning issue. Despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins--or other clones--have in common, they are different people in the most fundamental sense . They have their own identities, their own thoughts, and their own rights. Should you be confused on this point, just ask a twin.", "True, some forms of medical help are more invasive than others. With in vitro fertilization, the sperm and egg are combined in the lab and surgically implanted in the womb. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involved in \"test-tube babies.\" To date, nearly 30,000 such babies have been born in the United States alone. Many would-be parents have been made happy. Who has been harmed? \n\n The cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. What law or principle--secular, humanist, or religious--says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is OK, but another is not? No matter how closely you study the 1 st century texts, I don't think you'll find the answer.", "Even if people have the right to do it, is cloning a good idea? Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here. Hating a world of clones is hating the current populace. Never before was Pogo so right: We have met the enemy, and he is us !", "What if Saddam Hussein clones were to rule Iraq for another thousand years? Sounds bad, but Saddam's natural son Uday is reputed to make his father seem saintly by comparison. We have no more to fear from a clone of Saddam, or of Hitler, than we do from their natural-born kin--which is to say, we don't have much to fear: Dictators' kids rarely pose a problem. Stalin's daughter retired to Arizona, and Kim Jong Il of North Korea is laughable as Great Leader, Version 2.0. \n\n The notion of an 80-year-old man cloning himself to cheat death is quaint, but it is unrealistic. First, the baby wouldn't really be him. Second, is the old duffer really up to changing diapers? A persistent octogenarian might convince a younger couple to have his clone and raise it, but that is not much different from fathering a child via a surrogate mother.", "Suppose that Unsolved Mysteries called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people--like the lost identical twin, only younger than you. A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA.", "Fear of clones is just another form of racism. We all agree it is wrong to discriminate against people based on a set of genetic characteristics known as \"race.\" Calls for a ban on cloning amount to discrimination against people based on another genetic trait--the fact that somebody already has an identical DNA sequence. The most extreme form of discrimination is genocide--seeking to eliminate that which is different. In this case, the genocide is pre-emptive--clones are so scary that we must eliminate them before they exist with a ban on their creation. \n\n What is so special about natural reproduction anyway? Cloning is the only predictable way to reproduce, because it creates the identical twin of a known adult. Sexual reproduction is a crap shoot by comparison--some random mix of mom and dad. In evolutionary theory, this combination is thought to help stir the gene pool, so to speak. However, evolution for humans is essentially over, because we use medical science to control the death rate.", "Once the fuss has died down and further animal research has paved the way, direct human cloning will be one more option among many specialized medical interventions in human reproduction, affecting only a tiny fraction of the population. Research into this area could bring far wider benefits. Clinton's knee-jerk policy changes nothing in the short run, but it is ultimately a giant step backward. In using an adult cell to create a clone, the \"cellular clock\" that determines the difference between an embryo and adult was somehow reset. Work in this area might help elucidate the process by which aging occurs and yield a way to reset the clocks in some of our own cells, allowing us to regenerate. Selfishly speaking, that would be more exciting to me than cloning, because it would help me . That's a lot more directly useful than letting me sire an identical twin 40 years my junior.", "Human Clones: Why Not? \n\n If you can clone a sheep, you can almost certainly clone a human being. Some of the most powerful people in the world have felt compelled to act against this threat. President Clinton swiftly imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Bills are in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning--a step urged on all governments by the pope himself. Cloning humans is taken to be either 1) a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped or, at the very least, 2) a complex ethical issue that needs legislation and regulation. But what, exactly, is so bad about it?", "Start by asking whether human beings have a right to reproduce. I say \"yes.\" I have no moral right to tell other people they shouldn't be able to have children, and I don't see that Bill Clinton has that right either. When Clinton says, \"Let us resist the temptation to copy ourselves,\" it comes from a man not known for resisting other temptations of the flesh. And for a politician, making noise about cloning is pretty close to a fleshly temptation itself. It's an easy way to show sound-bite leadership on an issue that everybody is talking about, without much risk of bitter consequences. After all, how much federally funded research was stopped by this ban? Probably almost none, because Clinton has maintained Ronald Reagan's policy of minimizing federal grants for research in human reproduction. Besides, most researchers thought cloning humans was impossible--so, for the moment, there's unlikely to be a grant-request backlog. There is nothing like banning the nonexistent to show true leadership.", "One recurring image in anti-cloning propaganda is of some evil dictator raising an army of cloned warriors. Excuse me, but who is going to raise such an army (\"raise\" in the sense used by parents)? Clones start out life as babies . Armies are far easier to raise the old fashioned way--by recruiting or drafting naive young adults. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori has worked well enough to send countless young men to their deaths through the ages. Why mess with success?", "Adifferent scare scenario is a world filled with copies of famous people only. We'll treat celebrity DNA like designer clothes, hankering for Michael Jordan's genes the way we covet his Nike sneakers today. But even celebrity infatuation has its limits. People are not more taken with celebrities than they are with themselves. Besides, such a trend would correct itself in a generation or two, because celebrity is closely linked to rarity. The world seems amused by one Howard Stern, but give us a hundred or a million of them, and they'll seem a lot less endearing.", "The pope, unlike the president, is known for resisting temptation. He also openly claims the authority to decide how people reproduce. I respect the pope's freedom to lead his religion, and his followers' freedom to follow his dictate. But calling for secular governments to implement a ban, thus extending his power beyond those he can persuade, shows rather explicitly that the pope does not respect the freedom of others. The basic religious doctrine he follows was set down some two millennia ago. Sheep feature prominently in the Bible, but cloning does not. So the pope's views on cloning are 1 st century rules applied using 15 th century religious thinking to a 21 st century issue. \n\n If humans have a right to reproduce, what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproduction is done these days with medical help--at delivery, and often before. Truly natural human reproduction would mean 50 percent infant mortality and make pregnancy-related death the No. 1 killer of adult women.", "Whatever the temptations of cloning, the process of natural reproduction will always remain a lot more fun. An expensive and uncomfortable lab procedure will never offer any real competition for sex. The people most likely to clone will be those in special circumstances--infertile couples who must endure IVF anyway, for example. Even there, many will mix genetics to mimic nature. Another special case is where one member of a couple has a severe genetic disease. They might choose a clone of the healthy parent, rather than burden their child with a joint heritage that could be fatal. \n\n The most upsetting possibility in human cloning isn't superwarriors or dictators. It's that rich people with big egos will clone themselves. The common practice of giving a boy the same name as his father or choosing a family name for a child of either sex reflects our hunger for vicarious immortality. Clones may resonate with this instinct and cause some people to reproduce this way. So what? Rich and egotistic folks do all sorts of annoying things, and the law is hardly the means with which to try and stop them.", "Twins aren't the only clones in everyday life. Think about seedless grapes or navel oranges--if there are no seeds, where did they come from? It's the plant equivalent of virgin birth--which is to say that they are all clones, propagated by cutting a shoot and planting it. Wine is almost entirely a cloned product. The grapes used for wine have seeds, but they've been cloned from shoots for more than a hundred years in the case of many vineyards. The same is true for many flowers. Go to a garden store, and you'll find products with delightful names like \"Olivia's Cloning Compound,\" a mix of hormones to dunk on the cut end of a shoot to help it take root.", "To some, the scientist laboring away to unlock the mysteries of life is a source of evil, never to be trusted. To others, including me, the scientist is the ray of light, illuminating the processes that make the universe work and making us better through that knowledge. Various arguments can be advanced toward either view, but one key statistic is squarely on my side. The vast majority of people, including those who rail against science, owe their very lives to previous medical discoveries. They embody the fruits of science. Don't let the forces of darkness, ignorance, and fear turn us back from research. Instead, let us raise--and yes, even clone--new generations of hapless ingrates, who can whine and rail against the discoveries of the next age.", "Remember that cloning is not the same as genetic engineering. We don't get to make superman--we have to find him first. Maybe we could clone the superwarrior from Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Their bravery might--or might not--be genetically determined. But, suppose that it is. You might end up with such a brave battalion of heroes that when a grenade lands in their midst, there is a competition to see who gets to jump on it to save the others. Admirable perhaps, but not necessarily the way to win a war. And what about the supply sergeants? The army has a lot more of them than heroes. You could try to breed an expert for every job, including the petty bureaucrats, but what's the point? There's not exactly a shortage of them." ], [ "Fear of clones is just another form of racism. We all agree it is wrong to discriminate against people based on a set of genetic characteristics known as \"race.\" Calls for a ban on cloning amount to discrimination against people based on another genetic trait--the fact that somebody already has an identical DNA sequence. The most extreme form of discrimination is genocide--seeking to eliminate that which is different. In this case, the genocide is pre-emptive--clones are so scary that we must eliminate them before they exist with a ban on their creation. \n\n What is so special about natural reproduction anyway? Cloning is the only predictable way to reproduce, because it creates the identical twin of a known adult. Sexual reproduction is a crap shoot by comparison--some random mix of mom and dad. In evolutionary theory, this combination is thought to help stir the gene pool, so to speak. However, evolution for humans is essentially over, because we use medical science to control the death rate.", "The \"deep ethical issues\" about cloning mainly boil down to jealousy. Economic jealousy is bad enough, and it is a factor here, but the thing that truly drives people crazy is sexual jealousy. Eons of evolution through sexual selection have made the average man or woman insanely jealous of any interloper who gains a reproductive advantage--say by diddling your spouse. Cloning is less personal than cuckoldry, but it strikes a similar chord: Someone has got the reproductive edge on you.", "What if Saddam Hussein clones were to rule Iraq for another thousand years? Sounds bad, but Saddam's natural son Uday is reputed to make his father seem saintly by comparison. We have no more to fear from a clone of Saddam, or of Hitler, than we do from their natural-born kin--which is to say, we don't have much to fear: Dictators' kids rarely pose a problem. Stalin's daughter retired to Arizona, and Kim Jong Il of North Korea is laughable as Great Leader, Version 2.0. \n\n The notion of an 80-year-old man cloning himself to cheat death is quaint, but it is unrealistic. First, the baby wouldn't really be him. Second, is the old duffer really up to changing diapers? A persistent octogenarian might convince a younger couple to have his clone and raise it, but that is not much different from fathering a child via a surrogate mother.", "Even if people have the right to do it, is cloning a good idea? Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here. Hating a world of clones is hating the current populace. Never before was Pogo so right: We have met the enemy, and he is us !", "Clones already exist. About one in every 1,000 births results in a pair of babies with the same DNA. We know them as identical twins. Scientific studies on such twins--reared together or apart--show that they share many characteristics. Just how many they share is a contentious topic in human biology. But genetic determinism is largely irrelevant to the cloning issue. Despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins--or other clones--have in common, they are different people in the most fundamental sense . They have their own identities, their own thoughts, and their own rights. Should you be confused on this point, just ask a twin.", "Human Clones: Why Not? \n\n If you can clone a sheep, you can almost certainly clone a human being. Some of the most powerful people in the world have felt compelled to act against this threat. President Clinton swiftly imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Bills are in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning--a step urged on all governments by the pope himself. Cloning humans is taken to be either 1) a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped or, at the very least, 2) a complex ethical issue that needs legislation and regulation. But what, exactly, is so bad about it?", "Suppose that Unsolved Mysteries called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people--like the lost identical twin, only younger than you. A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA.", "True, some forms of medical help are more invasive than others. With in vitro fertilization, the sperm and egg are combined in the lab and surgically implanted in the womb. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involved in \"test-tube babies.\" To date, nearly 30,000 such babies have been born in the United States alone. Many would-be parents have been made happy. Who has been harmed? \n\n The cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. What law or principle--secular, humanist, or religious--says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is OK, but another is not? No matter how closely you study the 1 st century texts, I don't think you'll find the answer.", "One recurring image in anti-cloning propaganda is of some evil dictator raising an army of cloned warriors. Excuse me, but who is going to raise such an army (\"raise\" in the sense used by parents)? Clones start out life as babies . Armies are far easier to raise the old fashioned way--by recruiting or drafting naive young adults. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori has worked well enough to send countless young men to their deaths through the ages. Why mess with success?", "Start by asking whether human beings have a right to reproduce. I say \"yes.\" I have no moral right to tell other people they shouldn't be able to have children, and I don't see that Bill Clinton has that right either. When Clinton says, \"Let us resist the temptation to copy ourselves,\" it comes from a man not known for resisting other temptations of the flesh. And for a politician, making noise about cloning is pretty close to a fleshly temptation itself. It's an easy way to show sound-bite leadership on an issue that everybody is talking about, without much risk of bitter consequences. After all, how much federally funded research was stopped by this ban? Probably almost none, because Clinton has maintained Ronald Reagan's policy of minimizing federal grants for research in human reproduction. Besides, most researchers thought cloning humans was impossible--so, for the moment, there's unlikely to be a grant-request backlog. There is nothing like banning the nonexistent to show true leadership.", "Once the fuss has died down and further animal research has paved the way, direct human cloning will be one more option among many specialized medical interventions in human reproduction, affecting only a tiny fraction of the population. Research into this area could bring far wider benefits. Clinton's knee-jerk policy changes nothing in the short run, but it is ultimately a giant step backward. In using an adult cell to create a clone, the \"cellular clock\" that determines the difference between an embryo and adult was somehow reset. Work in this area might help elucidate the process by which aging occurs and yield a way to reset the clocks in some of our own cells, allowing us to regenerate. Selfishly speaking, that would be more exciting to me than cloning, because it would help me . That's a lot more directly useful than letting me sire an identical twin 40 years my junior.", "The pope, unlike the president, is known for resisting temptation. He also openly claims the authority to decide how people reproduce. I respect the pope's freedom to lead his religion, and his followers' freedom to follow his dictate. But calling for secular governments to implement a ban, thus extending his power beyond those he can persuade, shows rather explicitly that the pope does not respect the freedom of others. The basic religious doctrine he follows was set down some two millennia ago. Sheep feature prominently in the Bible, but cloning does not. So the pope's views on cloning are 1 st century rules applied using 15 th century religious thinking to a 21 st century issue. \n\n If humans have a right to reproduce, what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproduction is done these days with medical help--at delivery, and often before. Truly natural human reproduction would mean 50 percent infant mortality and make pregnancy-related death the No. 1 killer of adult women.", "Adifferent scare scenario is a world filled with copies of famous people only. We'll treat celebrity DNA like designer clothes, hankering for Michael Jordan's genes the way we covet his Nike sneakers today. But even celebrity infatuation has its limits. People are not more taken with celebrities than they are with themselves. Besides, such a trend would correct itself in a generation or two, because celebrity is closely linked to rarity. The world seems amused by one Howard Stern, but give us a hundred or a million of them, and they'll seem a lot less endearing.", "Whatever the temptations of cloning, the process of natural reproduction will always remain a lot more fun. An expensive and uncomfortable lab procedure will never offer any real competition for sex. The people most likely to clone will be those in special circumstances--infertile couples who must endure IVF anyway, for example. Even there, many will mix genetics to mimic nature. Another special case is where one member of a couple has a severe genetic disease. They might choose a clone of the healthy parent, rather than burden their child with a joint heritage that could be fatal. \n\n The most upsetting possibility in human cloning isn't superwarriors or dictators. It's that rich people with big egos will clone themselves. The common practice of giving a boy the same name as his father or choosing a family name for a child of either sex reflects our hunger for vicarious immortality. Clones may resonate with this instinct and cause some people to reproduce this way. So what? Rich and egotistic folks do all sorts of annoying things, and the law is hardly the means with which to try and stop them.", "To some, the scientist laboring away to unlock the mysteries of life is a source of evil, never to be trusted. To others, including me, the scientist is the ray of light, illuminating the processes that make the universe work and making us better through that knowledge. Various arguments can be advanced toward either view, but one key statistic is squarely on my side. The vast majority of people, including those who rail against science, owe their very lives to previous medical discoveries. They embody the fruits of science. Don't let the forces of darkness, ignorance, and fear turn us back from research. Instead, let us raise--and yes, even clone--new generations of hapless ingrates, who can whine and rail against the discoveries of the next age.", "Twins aren't the only clones in everyday life. Think about seedless grapes or navel oranges--if there are no seeds, where did they come from? It's the plant equivalent of virgin birth--which is to say that they are all clones, propagated by cutting a shoot and planting it. Wine is almost entirely a cloned product. The grapes used for wine have seeds, but they've been cloned from shoots for more than a hundred years in the case of many vineyards. The same is true for many flowers. Go to a garden store, and you'll find products with delightful names like \"Olivia's Cloning Compound,\" a mix of hormones to dunk on the cut end of a shoot to help it take root.", "Remember that cloning is not the same as genetic engineering. We don't get to make superman--we have to find him first. Maybe we could clone the superwarrior from Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Their bravery might--or might not--be genetically determined. But, suppose that it is. You might end up with such a brave battalion of heroes that when a grenade lands in their midst, there is a competition to see who gets to jump on it to save the others. Admirable perhaps, but not necessarily the way to win a war. And what about the supply sergeants? The army has a lot more of them than heroes. You could try to breed an expert for every job, including the petty bureaucrats, but what's the point? There's not exactly a shortage of them." ], [ "What if Saddam Hussein clones were to rule Iraq for another thousand years? Sounds bad, but Saddam's natural son Uday is reputed to make his father seem saintly by comparison. We have no more to fear from a clone of Saddam, or of Hitler, than we do from their natural-born kin--which is to say, we don't have much to fear: Dictators' kids rarely pose a problem. Stalin's daughter retired to Arizona, and Kim Jong Il of North Korea is laughable as Great Leader, Version 2.0. \n\n The notion of an 80-year-old man cloning himself to cheat death is quaint, but it is unrealistic. First, the baby wouldn't really be him. Second, is the old duffer really up to changing diapers? A persistent octogenarian might convince a younger couple to have his clone and raise it, but that is not much different from fathering a child via a surrogate mother.", "Even if people have the right to do it, is cloning a good idea? Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here. Hating a world of clones is hating the current populace. Never before was Pogo so right: We have met the enemy, and he is us !", "The \"deep ethical issues\" about cloning mainly boil down to jealousy. Economic jealousy is bad enough, and it is a factor here, but the thing that truly drives people crazy is sexual jealousy. Eons of evolution through sexual selection have made the average man or woman insanely jealous of any interloper who gains a reproductive advantage--say by diddling your spouse. Cloning is less personal than cuckoldry, but it strikes a similar chord: Someone has got the reproductive edge on you.", "Suppose that Unsolved Mysteries called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people--like the lost identical twin, only younger than you. A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA.", "Whatever the temptations of cloning, the process of natural reproduction will always remain a lot more fun. An expensive and uncomfortable lab procedure will never offer any real competition for sex. The people most likely to clone will be those in special circumstances--infertile couples who must endure IVF anyway, for example. Even there, many will mix genetics to mimic nature. Another special case is where one member of a couple has a severe genetic disease. They might choose a clone of the healthy parent, rather than burden their child with a joint heritage that could be fatal. \n\n The most upsetting possibility in human cloning isn't superwarriors or dictators. It's that rich people with big egos will clone themselves. The common practice of giving a boy the same name as his father or choosing a family name for a child of either sex reflects our hunger for vicarious immortality. Clones may resonate with this instinct and cause some people to reproduce this way. So what? Rich and egotistic folks do all sorts of annoying things, and the law is hardly the means with which to try and stop them.", "Adifferent scare scenario is a world filled with copies of famous people only. We'll treat celebrity DNA like designer clothes, hankering for Michael Jordan's genes the way we covet his Nike sneakers today. But even celebrity infatuation has its limits. People are not more taken with celebrities than they are with themselves. Besides, such a trend would correct itself in a generation or two, because celebrity is closely linked to rarity. The world seems amused by one Howard Stern, but give us a hundred or a million of them, and they'll seem a lot less endearing.", "Clones already exist. About one in every 1,000 births results in a pair of babies with the same DNA. We know them as identical twins. Scientific studies on such twins--reared together or apart--show that they share many characteristics. Just how many they share is a contentious topic in human biology. But genetic determinism is largely irrelevant to the cloning issue. Despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins--or other clones--have in common, they are different people in the most fundamental sense . They have their own identities, their own thoughts, and their own rights. Should you be confused on this point, just ask a twin.", "Human Clones: Why Not? \n\n If you can clone a sheep, you can almost certainly clone a human being. Some of the most powerful people in the world have felt compelled to act against this threat. President Clinton swiftly imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Bills are in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning--a step urged on all governments by the pope himself. Cloning humans is taken to be either 1) a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped or, at the very least, 2) a complex ethical issue that needs legislation and regulation. But what, exactly, is so bad about it?", "Fear of clones is just another form of racism. We all agree it is wrong to discriminate against people based on a set of genetic characteristics known as \"race.\" Calls for a ban on cloning amount to discrimination against people based on another genetic trait--the fact that somebody already has an identical DNA sequence. The most extreme form of discrimination is genocide--seeking to eliminate that which is different. In this case, the genocide is pre-emptive--clones are so scary that we must eliminate them before they exist with a ban on their creation. \n\n What is so special about natural reproduction anyway? Cloning is the only predictable way to reproduce, because it creates the identical twin of a known adult. Sexual reproduction is a crap shoot by comparison--some random mix of mom and dad. In evolutionary theory, this combination is thought to help stir the gene pool, so to speak. However, evolution for humans is essentially over, because we use medical science to control the death rate.", "Once the fuss has died down and further animal research has paved the way, direct human cloning will be one more option among many specialized medical interventions in human reproduction, affecting only a tiny fraction of the population. Research into this area could bring far wider benefits. Clinton's knee-jerk policy changes nothing in the short run, but it is ultimately a giant step backward. In using an adult cell to create a clone, the \"cellular clock\" that determines the difference between an embryo and adult was somehow reset. Work in this area might help elucidate the process by which aging occurs and yield a way to reset the clocks in some of our own cells, allowing us to regenerate. Selfishly speaking, that would be more exciting to me than cloning, because it would help me . That's a lot more directly useful than letting me sire an identical twin 40 years my junior.", "One recurring image in anti-cloning propaganda is of some evil dictator raising an army of cloned warriors. Excuse me, but who is going to raise such an army (\"raise\" in the sense used by parents)? Clones start out life as babies . Armies are far easier to raise the old fashioned way--by recruiting or drafting naive young adults. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori has worked well enough to send countless young men to their deaths through the ages. Why mess with success?", "Start by asking whether human beings have a right to reproduce. I say \"yes.\" I have no moral right to tell other people they shouldn't be able to have children, and I don't see that Bill Clinton has that right either. When Clinton says, \"Let us resist the temptation to copy ourselves,\" it comes from a man not known for resisting other temptations of the flesh. And for a politician, making noise about cloning is pretty close to a fleshly temptation itself. It's an easy way to show sound-bite leadership on an issue that everybody is talking about, without much risk of bitter consequences. After all, how much federally funded research was stopped by this ban? Probably almost none, because Clinton has maintained Ronald Reagan's policy of minimizing federal grants for research in human reproduction. Besides, most researchers thought cloning humans was impossible--so, for the moment, there's unlikely to be a grant-request backlog. There is nothing like banning the nonexistent to show true leadership.", "The pope, unlike the president, is known for resisting temptation. He also openly claims the authority to decide how people reproduce. I respect the pope's freedom to lead his religion, and his followers' freedom to follow his dictate. But calling for secular governments to implement a ban, thus extending his power beyond those he can persuade, shows rather explicitly that the pope does not respect the freedom of others. The basic religious doctrine he follows was set down some two millennia ago. Sheep feature prominently in the Bible, but cloning does not. So the pope's views on cloning are 1 st century rules applied using 15 th century religious thinking to a 21 st century issue. \n\n If humans have a right to reproduce, what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproduction is done these days with medical help--at delivery, and often before. Truly natural human reproduction would mean 50 percent infant mortality and make pregnancy-related death the No. 1 killer of adult women.", "Remember that cloning is not the same as genetic engineering. We don't get to make superman--we have to find him first. Maybe we could clone the superwarrior from Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Their bravery might--or might not--be genetically determined. But, suppose that it is. You might end up with such a brave battalion of heroes that when a grenade lands in their midst, there is a competition to see who gets to jump on it to save the others. Admirable perhaps, but not necessarily the way to win a war. And what about the supply sergeants? The army has a lot more of them than heroes. You could try to breed an expert for every job, including the petty bureaucrats, but what's the point? There's not exactly a shortage of them.", "True, some forms of medical help are more invasive than others. With in vitro fertilization, the sperm and egg are combined in the lab and surgically implanted in the womb. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involved in \"test-tube babies.\" To date, nearly 30,000 such babies have been born in the United States alone. Many would-be parents have been made happy. Who has been harmed? \n\n The cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. What law or principle--secular, humanist, or religious--says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is OK, but another is not? No matter how closely you study the 1 st century texts, I don't think you'll find the answer.", "To some, the scientist laboring away to unlock the mysteries of life is a source of evil, never to be trusted. To others, including me, the scientist is the ray of light, illuminating the processes that make the universe work and making us better through that knowledge. Various arguments can be advanced toward either view, but one key statistic is squarely on my side. The vast majority of people, including those who rail against science, owe their very lives to previous medical discoveries. They embody the fruits of science. Don't let the forces of darkness, ignorance, and fear turn us back from research. Instead, let us raise--and yes, even clone--new generations of hapless ingrates, who can whine and rail against the discoveries of the next age.", "Twins aren't the only clones in everyday life. Think about seedless grapes or navel oranges--if there are no seeds, where did they come from? It's the plant equivalent of virgin birth--which is to say that they are all clones, propagated by cutting a shoot and planting it. Wine is almost entirely a cloned product. The grapes used for wine have seeds, but they've been cloned from shoots for more than a hundred years in the case of many vineyards. The same is true for many flowers. Go to a garden store, and you'll find products with delightful names like \"Olivia's Cloning Compound,\" a mix of hormones to dunk on the cut end of a shoot to help it take root." ], [ "Even if people have the right to do it, is cloning a good idea? Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here. Hating a world of clones is hating the current populace. Never before was Pogo so right: We have met the enemy, and he is us !", "What if Saddam Hussein clones were to rule Iraq for another thousand years? Sounds bad, but Saddam's natural son Uday is reputed to make his father seem saintly by comparison. We have no more to fear from a clone of Saddam, or of Hitler, than we do from their natural-born kin--which is to say, we don't have much to fear: Dictators' kids rarely pose a problem. Stalin's daughter retired to Arizona, and Kim Jong Il of North Korea is laughable as Great Leader, Version 2.0. \n\n The notion of an 80-year-old man cloning himself to cheat death is quaint, but it is unrealistic. First, the baby wouldn't really be him. Second, is the old duffer really up to changing diapers? A persistent octogenarian might convince a younger couple to have his clone and raise it, but that is not much different from fathering a child via a surrogate mother.", "Clones already exist. About one in every 1,000 births results in a pair of babies with the same DNA. We know them as identical twins. Scientific studies on such twins--reared together or apart--show that they share many characteristics. Just how many they share is a contentious topic in human biology. But genetic determinism is largely irrelevant to the cloning issue. Despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins--or other clones--have in common, they are different people in the most fundamental sense . They have their own identities, their own thoughts, and their own rights. Should you be confused on this point, just ask a twin.", "Fear of clones is just another form of racism. We all agree it is wrong to discriminate against people based on a set of genetic characteristics known as \"race.\" Calls for a ban on cloning amount to discrimination against people based on another genetic trait--the fact that somebody already has an identical DNA sequence. The most extreme form of discrimination is genocide--seeking to eliminate that which is different. In this case, the genocide is pre-emptive--clones are so scary that we must eliminate them before they exist with a ban on their creation. \n\n What is so special about natural reproduction anyway? Cloning is the only predictable way to reproduce, because it creates the identical twin of a known adult. Sexual reproduction is a crap shoot by comparison--some random mix of mom and dad. In evolutionary theory, this combination is thought to help stir the gene pool, so to speak. However, evolution for humans is essentially over, because we use medical science to control the death rate.", "Adifferent scare scenario is a world filled with copies of famous people only. We'll treat celebrity DNA like designer clothes, hankering for Michael Jordan's genes the way we covet his Nike sneakers today. But even celebrity infatuation has its limits. People are not more taken with celebrities than they are with themselves. Besides, such a trend would correct itself in a generation or two, because celebrity is closely linked to rarity. The world seems amused by one Howard Stern, but give us a hundred or a million of them, and they'll seem a lot less endearing.", "Whatever the temptations of cloning, the process of natural reproduction will always remain a lot more fun. An expensive and uncomfortable lab procedure will never offer any real competition for sex. The people most likely to clone will be those in special circumstances--infertile couples who must endure IVF anyway, for example. Even there, many will mix genetics to mimic nature. Another special case is where one member of a couple has a severe genetic disease. They might choose a clone of the healthy parent, rather than burden their child with a joint heritage that could be fatal. \n\n The most upsetting possibility in human cloning isn't superwarriors or dictators. It's that rich people with big egos will clone themselves. The common practice of giving a boy the same name as his father or choosing a family name for a child of either sex reflects our hunger for vicarious immortality. Clones may resonate with this instinct and cause some people to reproduce this way. So what? Rich and egotistic folks do all sorts of annoying things, and the law is hardly the means with which to try and stop them.", "Suppose that Unsolved Mysteries called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people--like the lost identical twin, only younger than you. A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA.", "Human Clones: Why Not? \n\n If you can clone a sheep, you can almost certainly clone a human being. Some of the most powerful people in the world have felt compelled to act against this threat. President Clinton swiftly imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Bills are in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning--a step urged on all governments by the pope himself. Cloning humans is taken to be either 1) a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped or, at the very least, 2) a complex ethical issue that needs legislation and regulation. But what, exactly, is so bad about it?", "One recurring image in anti-cloning propaganda is of some evil dictator raising an army of cloned warriors. Excuse me, but who is going to raise such an army (\"raise\" in the sense used by parents)? Clones start out life as babies . Armies are far easier to raise the old fashioned way--by recruiting or drafting naive young adults. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori has worked well enough to send countless young men to their deaths through the ages. Why mess with success?", "The \"deep ethical issues\" about cloning mainly boil down to jealousy. Economic jealousy is bad enough, and it is a factor here, but the thing that truly drives people crazy is sexual jealousy. Eons of evolution through sexual selection have made the average man or woman insanely jealous of any interloper who gains a reproductive advantage--say by diddling your spouse. Cloning is less personal than cuckoldry, but it strikes a similar chord: Someone has got the reproductive edge on you.", "Twins aren't the only clones in everyday life. Think about seedless grapes or navel oranges--if there are no seeds, where did they come from? It's the plant equivalent of virgin birth--which is to say that they are all clones, propagated by cutting a shoot and planting it. Wine is almost entirely a cloned product. The grapes used for wine have seeds, but they've been cloned from shoots for more than a hundred years in the case of many vineyards. The same is true for many flowers. Go to a garden store, and you'll find products with delightful names like \"Olivia's Cloning Compound,\" a mix of hormones to dunk on the cut end of a shoot to help it take root.", "Start by asking whether human beings have a right to reproduce. I say \"yes.\" I have no moral right to tell other people they shouldn't be able to have children, and I don't see that Bill Clinton has that right either. When Clinton says, \"Let us resist the temptation to copy ourselves,\" it comes from a man not known for resisting other temptations of the flesh. And for a politician, making noise about cloning is pretty close to a fleshly temptation itself. It's an easy way to show sound-bite leadership on an issue that everybody is talking about, without much risk of bitter consequences. After all, how much federally funded research was stopped by this ban? Probably almost none, because Clinton has maintained Ronald Reagan's policy of minimizing federal grants for research in human reproduction. Besides, most researchers thought cloning humans was impossible--so, for the moment, there's unlikely to be a grant-request backlog. There is nothing like banning the nonexistent to show true leadership.", "Once the fuss has died down and further animal research has paved the way, direct human cloning will be one more option among many specialized medical interventions in human reproduction, affecting only a tiny fraction of the population. Research into this area could bring far wider benefits. Clinton's knee-jerk policy changes nothing in the short run, but it is ultimately a giant step backward. In using an adult cell to create a clone, the \"cellular clock\" that determines the difference between an embryo and adult was somehow reset. Work in this area might help elucidate the process by which aging occurs and yield a way to reset the clocks in some of our own cells, allowing us to regenerate. Selfishly speaking, that would be more exciting to me than cloning, because it would help me . That's a lot more directly useful than letting me sire an identical twin 40 years my junior.", "The pope, unlike the president, is known for resisting temptation. He also openly claims the authority to decide how people reproduce. I respect the pope's freedom to lead his religion, and his followers' freedom to follow his dictate. But calling for secular governments to implement a ban, thus extending his power beyond those he can persuade, shows rather explicitly that the pope does not respect the freedom of others. The basic religious doctrine he follows was set down some two millennia ago. Sheep feature prominently in the Bible, but cloning does not. So the pope's views on cloning are 1 st century rules applied using 15 th century religious thinking to a 21 st century issue. \n\n If humans have a right to reproduce, what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproduction is done these days with medical help--at delivery, and often before. Truly natural human reproduction would mean 50 percent infant mortality and make pregnancy-related death the No. 1 killer of adult women.", "Remember that cloning is not the same as genetic engineering. We don't get to make superman--we have to find him first. Maybe we could clone the superwarrior from Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Their bravery might--or might not--be genetically determined. But, suppose that it is. You might end up with such a brave battalion of heroes that when a grenade lands in their midst, there is a competition to see who gets to jump on it to save the others. Admirable perhaps, but not necessarily the way to win a war. And what about the supply sergeants? The army has a lot more of them than heroes. You could try to breed an expert for every job, including the petty bureaucrats, but what's the point? There's not exactly a shortage of them.", "True, some forms of medical help are more invasive than others. With in vitro fertilization, the sperm and egg are combined in the lab and surgically implanted in the womb. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involved in \"test-tube babies.\" To date, nearly 30,000 such babies have been born in the United States alone. Many would-be parents have been made happy. Who has been harmed? \n\n The cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. What law or principle--secular, humanist, or religious--says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is OK, but another is not? No matter how closely you study the 1 st century texts, I don't think you'll find the answer.", "To some, the scientist laboring away to unlock the mysteries of life is a source of evil, never to be trusted. To others, including me, the scientist is the ray of light, illuminating the processes that make the universe work and making us better through that knowledge. Various arguments can be advanced toward either view, but one key statistic is squarely on my side. The vast majority of people, including those who rail against science, owe their very lives to previous medical discoveries. They embody the fruits of science. Don't let the forces of darkness, ignorance, and fear turn us back from research. Instead, let us raise--and yes, even clone--new generations of hapless ingrates, who can whine and rail against the discoveries of the next age." ], [ "Start by asking whether human beings have a right to reproduce. I say \"yes.\" I have no moral right to tell other people they shouldn't be able to have children, and I don't see that Bill Clinton has that right either. When Clinton says, \"Let us resist the temptation to copy ourselves,\" it comes from a man not known for resisting other temptations of the flesh. And for a politician, making noise about cloning is pretty close to a fleshly temptation itself. It's an easy way to show sound-bite leadership on an issue that everybody is talking about, without much risk of bitter consequences. After all, how much federally funded research was stopped by this ban? Probably almost none, because Clinton has maintained Ronald Reagan's policy of minimizing federal grants for research in human reproduction. Besides, most researchers thought cloning humans was impossible--so, for the moment, there's unlikely to be a grant-request backlog. There is nothing like banning the nonexistent to show true leadership.", "Human Clones: Why Not? \n\n If you can clone a sheep, you can almost certainly clone a human being. Some of the most powerful people in the world have felt compelled to act against this threat. President Clinton swiftly imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Bills are in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning--a step urged on all governments by the pope himself. Cloning humans is taken to be either 1) a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped or, at the very least, 2) a complex ethical issue that needs legislation and regulation. But what, exactly, is so bad about it?", "Once the fuss has died down and further animal research has paved the way, direct human cloning will be one more option among many specialized medical interventions in human reproduction, affecting only a tiny fraction of the population. Research into this area could bring far wider benefits. Clinton's knee-jerk policy changes nothing in the short run, but it is ultimately a giant step backward. In using an adult cell to create a clone, the \"cellular clock\" that determines the difference between an embryo and adult was somehow reset. Work in this area might help elucidate the process by which aging occurs and yield a way to reset the clocks in some of our own cells, allowing us to regenerate. Selfishly speaking, that would be more exciting to me than cloning, because it would help me . That's a lot more directly useful than letting me sire an identical twin 40 years my junior.", "The pope, unlike the president, is known for resisting temptation. He also openly claims the authority to decide how people reproduce. I respect the pope's freedom to lead his religion, and his followers' freedom to follow his dictate. But calling for secular governments to implement a ban, thus extending his power beyond those he can persuade, shows rather explicitly that the pope does not respect the freedom of others. The basic religious doctrine he follows was set down some two millennia ago. Sheep feature prominently in the Bible, but cloning does not. So the pope's views on cloning are 1 st century rules applied using 15 th century religious thinking to a 21 st century issue. \n\n If humans have a right to reproduce, what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproduction is done these days with medical help--at delivery, and often before. Truly natural human reproduction would mean 50 percent infant mortality and make pregnancy-related death the No. 1 killer of adult women.", "Clones already exist. About one in every 1,000 births results in a pair of babies with the same DNA. We know them as identical twins. Scientific studies on such twins--reared together or apart--show that they share many characteristics. Just how many they share is a contentious topic in human biology. But genetic determinism is largely irrelevant to the cloning issue. Despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins--or other clones--have in common, they are different people in the most fundamental sense . They have their own identities, their own thoughts, and their own rights. Should you be confused on this point, just ask a twin.", "True, some forms of medical help are more invasive than others. With in vitro fertilization, the sperm and egg are combined in the lab and surgically implanted in the womb. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involved in \"test-tube babies.\" To date, nearly 30,000 such babies have been born in the United States alone. Many would-be parents have been made happy. Who has been harmed? \n\n The cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. What law or principle--secular, humanist, or religious--says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is OK, but another is not? No matter how closely you study the 1 st century texts, I don't think you'll find the answer.", "What if Saddam Hussein clones were to rule Iraq for another thousand years? Sounds bad, but Saddam's natural son Uday is reputed to make his father seem saintly by comparison. We have no more to fear from a clone of Saddam, or of Hitler, than we do from their natural-born kin--which is to say, we don't have much to fear: Dictators' kids rarely pose a problem. Stalin's daughter retired to Arizona, and Kim Jong Il of North Korea is laughable as Great Leader, Version 2.0. \n\n The notion of an 80-year-old man cloning himself to cheat death is quaint, but it is unrealistic. First, the baby wouldn't really be him. Second, is the old duffer really up to changing diapers? A persistent octogenarian might convince a younger couple to have his clone and raise it, but that is not much different from fathering a child via a surrogate mother.", "Fear of clones is just another form of racism. We all agree it is wrong to discriminate against people based on a set of genetic characteristics known as \"race.\" Calls for a ban on cloning amount to discrimination against people based on another genetic trait--the fact that somebody already has an identical DNA sequence. The most extreme form of discrimination is genocide--seeking to eliminate that which is different. In this case, the genocide is pre-emptive--clones are so scary that we must eliminate them before they exist with a ban on their creation. \n\n What is so special about natural reproduction anyway? Cloning is the only predictable way to reproduce, because it creates the identical twin of a known adult. Sexual reproduction is a crap shoot by comparison--some random mix of mom and dad. In evolutionary theory, this combination is thought to help stir the gene pool, so to speak. However, evolution for humans is essentially over, because we use medical science to control the death rate.", "The \"deep ethical issues\" about cloning mainly boil down to jealousy. Economic jealousy is bad enough, and it is a factor here, but the thing that truly drives people crazy is sexual jealousy. Eons of evolution through sexual selection have made the average man or woman insanely jealous of any interloper who gains a reproductive advantage--say by diddling your spouse. Cloning is less personal than cuckoldry, but it strikes a similar chord: Someone has got the reproductive edge on you.", "Whatever the temptations of cloning, the process of natural reproduction will always remain a lot more fun. An expensive and uncomfortable lab procedure will never offer any real competition for sex. The people most likely to clone will be those in special circumstances--infertile couples who must endure IVF anyway, for example. Even there, many will mix genetics to mimic nature. Another special case is where one member of a couple has a severe genetic disease. They might choose a clone of the healthy parent, rather than burden their child with a joint heritage that could be fatal. \n\n The most upsetting possibility in human cloning isn't superwarriors or dictators. It's that rich people with big egos will clone themselves. The common practice of giving a boy the same name as his father or choosing a family name for a child of either sex reflects our hunger for vicarious immortality. Clones may resonate with this instinct and cause some people to reproduce this way. So what? Rich and egotistic folks do all sorts of annoying things, and the law is hardly the means with which to try and stop them.", "Even if people have the right to do it, is cloning a good idea? Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here. Hating a world of clones is hating the current populace. Never before was Pogo so right: We have met the enemy, and he is us !", "Suppose that Unsolved Mysteries called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people--like the lost identical twin, only younger than you. A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA.", "To some, the scientist laboring away to unlock the mysteries of life is a source of evil, never to be trusted. To others, including me, the scientist is the ray of light, illuminating the processes that make the universe work and making us better through that knowledge. Various arguments can be advanced toward either view, but one key statistic is squarely on my side. The vast majority of people, including those who rail against science, owe their very lives to previous medical discoveries. They embody the fruits of science. Don't let the forces of darkness, ignorance, and fear turn us back from research. Instead, let us raise--and yes, even clone--new generations of hapless ingrates, who can whine and rail against the discoveries of the next age.", "One recurring image in anti-cloning propaganda is of some evil dictator raising an army of cloned warriors. Excuse me, but who is going to raise such an army (\"raise\" in the sense used by parents)? Clones start out life as babies . Armies are far easier to raise the old fashioned way--by recruiting or drafting naive young adults. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori has worked well enough to send countless young men to their deaths through the ages. Why mess with success?", "Remember that cloning is not the same as genetic engineering. We don't get to make superman--we have to find him first. Maybe we could clone the superwarrior from Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Their bravery might--or might not--be genetically determined. But, suppose that it is. You might end up with such a brave battalion of heroes that when a grenade lands in their midst, there is a competition to see who gets to jump on it to save the others. Admirable perhaps, but not necessarily the way to win a war. And what about the supply sergeants? The army has a lot more of them than heroes. You could try to breed an expert for every job, including the petty bureaucrats, but what's the point? There's not exactly a shortage of them.", "Twins aren't the only clones in everyday life. Think about seedless grapes or navel oranges--if there are no seeds, where did they come from? It's the plant equivalent of virgin birth--which is to say that they are all clones, propagated by cutting a shoot and planting it. Wine is almost entirely a cloned product. The grapes used for wine have seeds, but they've been cloned from shoots for more than a hundred years in the case of many vineyards. The same is true for many flowers. Go to a garden store, and you'll find products with delightful names like \"Olivia's Cloning Compound,\" a mix of hormones to dunk on the cut end of a shoot to help it take root.", "Adifferent scare scenario is a world filled with copies of famous people only. We'll treat celebrity DNA like designer clothes, hankering for Michael Jordan's genes the way we covet his Nike sneakers today. But even celebrity infatuation has its limits. People are not more taken with celebrities than they are with themselves. Besides, such a trend would correct itself in a generation or two, because celebrity is closely linked to rarity. The world seems amused by one Howard Stern, but give us a hundred or a million of them, and they'll seem a lot less endearing." ], [ "Even if people have the right to do it, is cloning a good idea? Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here. Hating a world of clones is hating the current populace. Never before was Pogo so right: We have met the enemy, and he is us !", "Clones already exist. About one in every 1,000 births results in a pair of babies with the same DNA. We know them as identical twins. Scientific studies on such twins--reared together or apart--show that they share many characteristics. Just how many they share is a contentious topic in human biology. But genetic determinism is largely irrelevant to the cloning issue. Despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins--or other clones--have in common, they are different people in the most fundamental sense . They have their own identities, their own thoughts, and their own rights. Should you be confused on this point, just ask a twin.", "Human Clones: Why Not? \n\n If you can clone a sheep, you can almost certainly clone a human being. Some of the most powerful people in the world have felt compelled to act against this threat. President Clinton swiftly imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Bills are in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning--a step urged on all governments by the pope himself. Cloning humans is taken to be either 1) a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped or, at the very least, 2) a complex ethical issue that needs legislation and regulation. But what, exactly, is so bad about it?", "Once the fuss has died down and further animal research has paved the way, direct human cloning will be one more option among many specialized medical interventions in human reproduction, affecting only a tiny fraction of the population. Research into this area could bring far wider benefits. Clinton's knee-jerk policy changes nothing in the short run, but it is ultimately a giant step backward. In using an adult cell to create a clone, the \"cellular clock\" that determines the difference between an embryo and adult was somehow reset. Work in this area might help elucidate the process by which aging occurs and yield a way to reset the clocks in some of our own cells, allowing us to regenerate. Selfishly speaking, that would be more exciting to me than cloning, because it would help me . That's a lot more directly useful than letting me sire an identical twin 40 years my junior.", "Start by asking whether human beings have a right to reproduce. I say \"yes.\" I have no moral right to tell other people they shouldn't be able to have children, and I don't see that Bill Clinton has that right either. When Clinton says, \"Let us resist the temptation to copy ourselves,\" it comes from a man not known for resisting other temptations of the flesh. And for a politician, making noise about cloning is pretty close to a fleshly temptation itself. It's an easy way to show sound-bite leadership on an issue that everybody is talking about, without much risk of bitter consequences. After all, how much federally funded research was stopped by this ban? Probably almost none, because Clinton has maintained Ronald Reagan's policy of minimizing federal grants for research in human reproduction. Besides, most researchers thought cloning humans was impossible--so, for the moment, there's unlikely to be a grant-request backlog. There is nothing like banning the nonexistent to show true leadership.", "Fear of clones is just another form of racism. We all agree it is wrong to discriminate against people based on a set of genetic characteristics known as \"race.\" Calls for a ban on cloning amount to discrimination against people based on another genetic trait--the fact that somebody already has an identical DNA sequence. The most extreme form of discrimination is genocide--seeking to eliminate that which is different. In this case, the genocide is pre-emptive--clones are so scary that we must eliminate them before they exist with a ban on their creation. \n\n What is so special about natural reproduction anyway? Cloning is the only predictable way to reproduce, because it creates the identical twin of a known adult. Sexual reproduction is a crap shoot by comparison--some random mix of mom and dad. In evolutionary theory, this combination is thought to help stir the gene pool, so to speak. However, evolution for humans is essentially over, because we use medical science to control the death rate.", "What if Saddam Hussein clones were to rule Iraq for another thousand years? Sounds bad, but Saddam's natural son Uday is reputed to make his father seem saintly by comparison. We have no more to fear from a clone of Saddam, or of Hitler, than we do from their natural-born kin--which is to say, we don't have much to fear: Dictators' kids rarely pose a problem. Stalin's daughter retired to Arizona, and Kim Jong Il of North Korea is laughable as Great Leader, Version 2.0. \n\n The notion of an 80-year-old man cloning himself to cheat death is quaint, but it is unrealistic. First, the baby wouldn't really be him. Second, is the old duffer really up to changing diapers? A persistent octogenarian might convince a younger couple to have his clone and raise it, but that is not much different from fathering a child via a surrogate mother.", "Suppose that Unsolved Mysteries called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people--like the lost identical twin, only younger than you. A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA.", "Whatever the temptations of cloning, the process of natural reproduction will always remain a lot more fun. An expensive and uncomfortable lab procedure will never offer any real competition for sex. The people most likely to clone will be those in special circumstances--infertile couples who must endure IVF anyway, for example. Even there, many will mix genetics to mimic nature. Another special case is where one member of a couple has a severe genetic disease. They might choose a clone of the healthy parent, rather than burden their child with a joint heritage that could be fatal. \n\n The most upsetting possibility in human cloning isn't superwarriors or dictators. It's that rich people with big egos will clone themselves. The common practice of giving a boy the same name as his father or choosing a family name for a child of either sex reflects our hunger for vicarious immortality. Clones may resonate with this instinct and cause some people to reproduce this way. So what? Rich and egotistic folks do all sorts of annoying things, and the law is hardly the means with which to try and stop them.", "True, some forms of medical help are more invasive than others. With in vitro fertilization, the sperm and egg are combined in the lab and surgically implanted in the womb. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involved in \"test-tube babies.\" To date, nearly 30,000 such babies have been born in the United States alone. Many would-be parents have been made happy. Who has been harmed? \n\n The cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. What law or principle--secular, humanist, or religious--says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is OK, but another is not? No matter how closely you study the 1 st century texts, I don't think you'll find the answer.", "The pope, unlike the president, is known for resisting temptation. He also openly claims the authority to decide how people reproduce. I respect the pope's freedom to lead his religion, and his followers' freedom to follow his dictate. But calling for secular governments to implement a ban, thus extending his power beyond those he can persuade, shows rather explicitly that the pope does not respect the freedom of others. The basic religious doctrine he follows was set down some two millennia ago. Sheep feature prominently in the Bible, but cloning does not. So the pope's views on cloning are 1 st century rules applied using 15 th century religious thinking to a 21 st century issue. \n\n If humans have a right to reproduce, what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproduction is done these days with medical help--at delivery, and often before. Truly natural human reproduction would mean 50 percent infant mortality and make pregnancy-related death the No. 1 killer of adult women.", "Adifferent scare scenario is a world filled with copies of famous people only. We'll treat celebrity DNA like designer clothes, hankering for Michael Jordan's genes the way we covet his Nike sneakers today. But even celebrity infatuation has its limits. People are not more taken with celebrities than they are with themselves. Besides, such a trend would correct itself in a generation or two, because celebrity is closely linked to rarity. The world seems amused by one Howard Stern, but give us a hundred or a million of them, and they'll seem a lot less endearing.", "The \"deep ethical issues\" about cloning mainly boil down to jealousy. Economic jealousy is bad enough, and it is a factor here, but the thing that truly drives people crazy is sexual jealousy. Eons of evolution through sexual selection have made the average man or woman insanely jealous of any interloper who gains a reproductive advantage--say by diddling your spouse. Cloning is less personal than cuckoldry, but it strikes a similar chord: Someone has got the reproductive edge on you.", "One recurring image in anti-cloning propaganda is of some evil dictator raising an army of cloned warriors. Excuse me, but who is going to raise such an army (\"raise\" in the sense used by parents)? Clones start out life as babies . Armies are far easier to raise the old fashioned way--by recruiting or drafting naive young adults. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori has worked well enough to send countless young men to their deaths through the ages. Why mess with success?", "To some, the scientist laboring away to unlock the mysteries of life is a source of evil, never to be trusted. To others, including me, the scientist is the ray of light, illuminating the processes that make the universe work and making us better through that knowledge. Various arguments can be advanced toward either view, but one key statistic is squarely on my side. The vast majority of people, including those who rail against science, owe their very lives to previous medical discoveries. They embody the fruits of science. Don't let the forces of darkness, ignorance, and fear turn us back from research. Instead, let us raise--and yes, even clone--new generations of hapless ingrates, who can whine and rail against the discoveries of the next age.", "Twins aren't the only clones in everyday life. Think about seedless grapes or navel oranges--if there are no seeds, where did they come from? It's the plant equivalent of virgin birth--which is to say that they are all clones, propagated by cutting a shoot and planting it. Wine is almost entirely a cloned product. The grapes used for wine have seeds, but they've been cloned from shoots for more than a hundred years in the case of many vineyards. The same is true for many flowers. Go to a garden store, and you'll find products with delightful names like \"Olivia's Cloning Compound,\" a mix of hormones to dunk on the cut end of a shoot to help it take root.", "Remember that cloning is not the same as genetic engineering. We don't get to make superman--we have to find him first. Maybe we could clone the superwarrior from Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Their bravery might--or might not--be genetically determined. But, suppose that it is. You might end up with such a brave battalion of heroes that when a grenade lands in their midst, there is a competition to see who gets to jump on it to save the others. Admirable perhaps, but not necessarily the way to win a war. And what about the supply sergeants? The army has a lot more of them than heroes. You could try to breed an expert for every job, including the petty bureaucrats, but what's the point? There's not exactly a shortage of them." ] ]
train	61263	[ "What is the significance of Lovenbroy’s seasons?\n", "How often do Bachus vines mature and what is the significance of that timeline?\n", "What is a vintage? \n", "Who is the bucolic person and what do they want from MUDDLE?\n", "How is Croanie going to affect Lovenbroy? \n", "What is Hank’s relationship to Retief?\n", "Where are the two thousand students being shipped to? \n", "Who wanted to mine Lovenbroy’s minerals? \n", "During the duration of the story, what is Retief’s function in MUDDLE? \n" ]	[ [ "Each season’s weather brings a new set of cultural recreation and work. \n", "Each season calls for a new way to tend the Bacchus vine.\n", "Each season requires a new cultural shift in line with the needs of the young people.\n", "Each season’s weather brings a new approach to how the community thinks about its relationship to wine.\n" ], [ "Every 18 years a vintage is held, which is a kind of celebration of art. \n", "Every 12 years a vintage is held, which also serves as a cultural festival that encourage young people to procreate. \n", "Every 18 years a vintage is held, which serves as a kind of celebration of life for both young and old people.\n", "Every 12 years a vintage is held, wherein the young people are made to harvest all the grapes. \n" ], [ "The anniversary of Lovenbroy’s independence.\n", "The time of year that Lovenbroy switches to making music as their primary occupation.\n", "The time of year that wine grapes are harvested. \n", "The time of year that children are born.\n" ], [ "Hank Arapoulous. He wants Magnan to help him find men to pick his crops in time to pay back Croanie. \n", "Hank Arapoulous. He wants Retief to help him find men to fight the Croanie invasion. \n", "Hank Arapoulous. He wants Retief to help him find men to pick his crops in time to pay back Croanie. \n", "Hank Arapoulous. He wants Retief to help him find able bodied college students to help out on Lovenbroy.\n" ], [ "They are going to steal its students. \n", "They are going to help Lovenbroy pick it’s crop.\n", "They are going to steal all its wine.\n", "They are going to invade it. \n" ], [ "Hank is a farmer from Lovenbroy requesting that Retief’s division, Libraries and Education, help him solve his labor problem. \n", "He is a farmer from Lovenbroy requesting that Retief’s division, Commercial Markets, help him solve his labor problem. \n", "Hank is a farmer from Lovenbroy requesting that Retief’s division, MUDDLE, help him solve his wine drought.\n", "Hank is a musician from Lovenbroy requesting that Retief’s division, Libraries and Education, to help him solve his labor problem. \n" ], [ "MUDDLE\n", "Earth \n", "Boge", "Croanie \n" ], [ "Croanie\n", "MUDDEL\n", "Boge\n", "Lovenbroy neighbors \n" ], [ "He is taking a few weeks off and leaving his responsibility to Miss Furkle. \n", "He is in total control of MUDDLE while Magnan is away. \n", "He plays a rubber stamp function for the Libraries and Education division while Magnan is away. \n", "He is put in charge of investigating the Croanie-Boge conspiracy.\n" ] ]	[ 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 1, 4, 3, 3 ]	[ 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "\"Sounds very pleasant,\" Retief said. \"Where does the Libraries and\n Education Division come in?\"\n\n\n Arapoulous leaned forward. \"We go in pretty heavy for the arts. Folks\n can't spend all their time hybridizing plants. We've turned all the\n land area we've got into parks and farms. Course, we left some sizable\n forest areas for hunting and such. Lovenbroy's a nice place, Mr.\n Retief.\"\n\n\n \"It sounds like it, Mr. Arapoulous. Just what—\"\n\n\n \"Call me Hank. We've got long seasons back home. Five of 'em. Our\n year's about eighteen Terry months. Cold as hell in winter; eccentric\n orbit, you know. Blue-black sky, stars visible all day. We do mostly\n painting and sculpture in the winter. Then Spring; still plenty cold.\n Lots of skiing, bob-sledding, ice skating; and it's the season for\n woodworkers. Our furniture—\"", "\"Well, the loan's due. The wine crop would put us in the clear. But\n we need harvest hands. Picking Bacchus grapes isn't a job you can\n turn over to machinery—and anyway we wouldn't if we could. Vintage\n season is the high point of living on Lovenbroy. Everybody joins in.\n First, there's the picking in the fields. Miles and miles of vineyards\n covering the mountain sides, and crowding the river banks, with gardens\n here and there. Big vines, eight feet high, loaded with fruit, and deep\n grass growing between. The wine-carriers keep on the run, bringing wine\n to the pickers. There's prizes for the biggest day's output, bets on\n who can fill the most baskets in an hour.... The sun's high and bright,", "\"I've seen some of your furniture,\" Retief said. \"Beautiful work.\"\n\n\n Arapoulous nodded. \"All local timbers too. Lots of metals in our soil\n and those sulphates give the woods some color, I'll tell you. Then\n comes the Monsoon. Rain—it comes down in sheets. But the sun's getting\n closer. Shines all the time. Ever seen it pouring rain in the sunshine?\n That's the music-writing season. Then summer. Summer's hot. We stay\n inside in the daytime and have beach parties all night. Lots of beach\n on Lovenbroy; we're mostly islands. That's the drama and symphony time.\n The theatres are set up on the sand, or anchored off-shore. You have\n the music and the surf and the bonfires and stars—we're close to the\n center of a globular cluster, you know....\"\n\n\n \"You say it's time now for the wine crop?\"", "\"Then the wine-making. We still tramp out the vintage. That's mostly\n for the young folks but anybody's welcome. That's when things start to\n get loosened up. Matter of fact, pretty near half our young-uns are\n born after a vintage. All bets are off then. It keeps a fellow on his\n toes though. Ever tried to hold onto a gal wearing nothing but a layer\n of grape juice?\"\n\"Never did,\" Retief said. \"You say most of the children are born after\n a vintage. That would make them only twelve years old by the time—\"\n\n\n \"Oh, that's Lovenbroy years; they'd be eighteen, Terry reckoning.\"\n\n\n \"I was thinking you looked a little mature for twenty-eight,\" Retief\n said.", "and it's just cool enough to give you plenty of energy. Come nightfall,\n the tables are set up in the garden plots, and the feast is laid on:\n roast turkeys, beef, hams, all kinds of fowl. Big salads. Plenty of\n fruit. Fresh-baked bread ... and wine, plenty of wine. The cooking's\n done by a different crew each night in each garden, and there's prizes\n for the best crews.", "\"I understand you hold a mortgage on the best land on Lovenbroy,\"\n Retief said. \"Any connection?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... no. Of course not, ha ha.\"\n\n\n \"Who gets the tractors eventually?\"\n\n\n \"Retief, this is unwarranted interference!\"\n\n\n \"Who gets them?\"\n\n\n \"They happen to be going to Lovenbroy. But I scarcely see—\"\n\n\n \"And who's the friend you're helping out with an unauthorized\n transshipment of grant material?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... I've been working with a Mr. Gulver, a Bogan\n representative.\"\n\n\n \"And when will they be shipped?\"\n\n\n \"Why, they went out a week ago. They'll be half way there by now. But\n look here, Retief, this isn't what you're thinking!\"", "\"We've got plenty of minerals on Lovenbroy,\" Arapoulous said,\n swallowing wine. \"But we don't plan to wreck the landscape mining 'em.\n We like to farm. About ten years back some neighbors of ours landed a\n force. They figured they knew better what to do with our minerals than\n we did. Wanted to strip-mine, smelt ore. We convinced 'em otherwise.\n But it took a year, and we lost a lot of men.\"\n\n\n \"That's too bad,\" Retief said. \"I'd say this one tastes more like roast\n beef and popcorn over a Riesling base.\"\n\n\n \"It put us in a bad spot,\" Arapoulous went on. \"We had to borrow\n money from a world called Croanie. Mortgaged our crops. Had to start\n exporting art work too. Plenty of buyers, but it's not the same when\n you're doing it for strangers.\"", "\"You work for this Culture bunch, do you? Funny. I thought they were\n all ribbon-counter boys. Never mind. I'm Hank Arapoulous. I'm a farmer.\n What I wanted to see you about was—\" He shifted in his chair. \"Well,\n out on Lovenbroy we've got a serious problem. The wine crop is just\n about ready. We start picking in another two, three months. Now I don't\n know if you're familiar with the Bacchus vines we grow...?\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Retief said. \"Have a cigar?\" He pushed a box across the desk.\n Arapoulous took one. \"Bacchus vines are an unusual crop,\" he said,\n puffing the cigar alight. \"Only mature every twelve years. In between,\n the vines don't need a lot of attention, so our time's mostly our own.\n We like to farm, though. Spend a lot of time developing new forms.\n Apples the size of a melon—and sweet—\"", "\"That's right. Autumn's our harvest season. Most years we have just the\n ordinary crops. Fruit, grain, that kind of thing; getting it in doesn't\n take long. We spend most of the time on architecture, getting new\n places ready for the winter or remodeling the older ones. We spend a\n lot of time in our houses. We like to have them comfortable. But this\n year's different. This is Wine Year.\"\nArapoulous puffed on his cigar, looked worriedly at Retief. \"Our wine\n crop is our big money crop,\" he said. \"We make enough to keep us going.\n But this year....\"\n\n\n \"The crop isn't panning out?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, the crop's fine. One of the best I can remember. Course, I'm only\n twenty-eight; I can't remember but two other harvests. The problem's\n not the crop.\"\n\n\n \"Have you lost your markets? That sounds like a matter for the\n Commercial—\"", "\"Academic details are the affair of the students and their professors,\"\n Magnan said. \"Our function is merely to bring them together. See\n that you don't antagonize the Bogan representative. This will\n be an excellent opportunity for you to practice your diplomatic\n restraint—not your strong point, I'm sure you'll agree.\"\n\n\n A buzzer sounded. Retief punched a button. \"What is it, Miss Furkle?\"\n\n\n \"That—bucolic person from Lovenbroy is here again.\" On the small desk\n screen, Miss Furkle's meaty features were compressed in disapproval.\n\n\n \"This fellow's a confounded pest. I'll leave him to you, Retief,\"\n Magnan said. \"Tell him something. Get rid of him. And remember: here\n at Corps HQ, all eyes are upon you.\"\n\n\n \"If I'd thought of that, I'd have worn my other suit,\" Retief said.", "\"Great. Thanks.\" It was half a minute before a thick-necked red-faced\n man in a tight hat walked in. He wore an old-fashioned suit, a drab\n shirt, shiny shoes with round toes and an ill-tempered expression.\n\"What is it you wish?\" he barked. \"I understood in my discussions with\n the other ... ah ... civilian there'd be no further need for these\n irritating conferences.\"\n\n\n \"I've just learned you're placing more students abroad, Mr. Gulver. How\n many this time?\"\n\n\n \"Two thousand.\"\n\n\n \"And where will they be going?\"\n\n\n \"Croanie. It's all in the application form I've handed in. Your job is\n to provide transportation.\"\n\n\n \"Will there be any other students embarking this season?\"", "\"Forty-two, Terry years,\" Arapoulous said. \"But this year it looks bad.\n We've got a bumper crop—and we're short-handed. If we don't get a big\n vintage, Croanie steps in. Lord knows what they'll do to the land. Then\n next vintage time, with them holding half our grape acreage—\"\n\n\n \"You hocked the vineyards?\"\n\n\n \"Yep. Pretty dumb, huh? But we figured twelve years was a long time.\"\n\n\n \"On the whole,\" Retief said, \"I think I prefer the black. But the red\n is hard to beat....\"\n\n\n \"What we figured was, maybe you Culture boys could help us out. A loan\n to see us through the vintage, enough to hire extra hands. Then we'd\n repay it in sculpture, painting, furniture—\"", "\"For the present. Miss Furkle, Mr. Magnan is vacationing. That leaves\n me with the question of two thousand young male students headed for\n a world with no classrooms for them ... a world in need of tractors.\n But the tractors are on their way to Croanie, a world under obligation\n to Boge. And Croanie holds a mortgage on the best grape acreage on\n Lovenbroy.\"\n\n\n \"Well!\" Miss Furkle snapped, small eyes glaring under unplucked brows.\n \"I hope you're not questioning Mr. Magnan's wisdom!\"\n\n\n \"About Mr. Magnan's wisdom there can be no question,\" Retief said. \"But\n never mind. I'd like you to look up an item for me. How many tractors\n will Croanie be getting under the MEDDLE program?\"\n\n\n \"Why, that's entirely MEDDLE business,\" Miss Furkle said. \"Mr. Magnan\n always—\"", "\"Don't try to describe it, Mr. Retief,\" Arapoulous said. He took a\n mouthful of wine, swished it around his teeth, swallowed. \"It's Bacchus\n wine, that's all. Nothing like it in the Galaxy.\" He pushed the second\n bottle toward Retief. \"The custom back home is to alternate red wine\n and black.\"\nRetief put aside his cigar, pulled the wires loose, nudged the cork,\n caught it as it popped up.\n\n\n \"Bad luck if you miss the cork,\" Arapoulous said, nodding. \"You\n probably never heard about the trouble we had on Lovenbroy a few years\n back?\"\n\n\n \"Can't say that I did, Hank.\" Retief poured the black wine into two\n fresh glasses. \"Here's to the harvest.\"", "Miss Furkle's chins quivered. \"Well! If you feel I'm incompetent—\"\n\n\n \"Just questioning the possibility of a mistake, Miss Furkle. Five\n hundred tractors is a lot of equipment.\"\n\n\n \"Was there anything further?\" Miss Furkle inquired frigidly.\n\n\n \"I sincerely hope not,\" Retief said.\nIII\n\n\n Leaning back in Magnan's padded chair with power swivel and\n hip-u-matic concontour, Retief leafed through a folder labelled \"CERP\n 7-602-Ba; CROANIE (general).\" He paused at a page headed Industry.\n\n\n Still reading, he opened the desk drawer, took out the two bottles of\n Bacchus wine and two glasses. He poured an inch of wine into each and\n sipped the black wine meditatively.", "Magnan snorted and passed from view. Retief punched Miss Furkle's\n button.\n\n\n \"Send the bucolic person in.\"\nA tall broad man with bronze skin and gray hair, wearing tight trousers\n of heavy cloth, a loose shirt open at the neck and a short jacket,\n stepped into the room. He had a bundle under his arm. He paused at\n sight of Retief, looked him over momentarily, then advanced and held\n out his hand. Retief took it. For a moment the two big men stood, face\n to face. The newcomer's jaw muscles knotted. Then he winced.\n\n\n Retief dropped his hand and motioned to a chair.\n\n\n \"That's nice knuckle work, mister,\" the stranger said, massaging his\n hand. \"First time anybody ever did that to me. My fault though. I\n started it, I guess.\" He grinned and sat down.\n\n\n \"What can I do for you?\" Retief said.", "\"A hundred would help,\" he said. \"A thousand would be better. Cheers.\"\n\n\n \"What would you say to two thousand?\"\n\n\n \"Two thousand? Retief, you're not fooling?\"\n\n\n \"I hope not.\" He picked up the phone, called the Port Authority, asked\n for the dispatch clerk.\n\n\n \"Hello, Jim. Say, I have a favor to ask of you. You know that\n contingent of Bogan students. They're traveling aboard the two CDT\n transports. I'm interested in the baggage that goes with the students.\n Has it arrived yet? Okay, I'll wait.\"\n\n\n Jim came back to the phone. \"Yeah, Retief, it's here. Just arrived.\n But there's a funny thing. It's not consigned to d'Land. It's ticketed\n clear through to Lovenbroy.\"", "\"This isn't\ndrinking\n. It's just wine.\" Arapoulous pulled the wire\n retainer loose, thumbed the cork. It rose slowly, then popped in the\n air. Arapoulous caught it. Aromatic fumes wafted from the bottle.\n \"Besides, my feelings would be hurt if you didn't join me.\" He winked.\n\n\n Retief took two thin-walled glasses from a table beside the desk. \"Come\n to think of it, we also have to be careful about violating quaint\n native customs.\"\n\n\n Arapoulous filled the glasses. Retief picked one up, sniffed the deep\n rust-colored fluid, tasted it, then took a healthy swallow. He looked\n at Arapoulous thoughtfully.\n\n\n \"Hmmm. It tastes like salted pecans, with an undercurrent of crusted\n port.\"", "\"Didn't I tell you? Boge was the bunch that tried to take us over here\n a dozen years back. They'd've made it too, if they hadn't had a lot of\n bad luck. Their armor went in the drink, and without armor they're easy\n game.\"\n\n\n Miss Furkle buzzed. \"I have your lists,\" she said shortly.\n\n\n \"Bring them in, please.\"\nThe secretary placed the papers on the desk. Arapoulous caught her eye\n and grinned. She sniffed and marched from the room.\n\n\n \"What that gal needs is a slippery time in the grape mash,\" Arapoulous\n observed. Retief thumbed through the papers, pausing to read from time\n to time. He finished and looked at Arapoulous.\n\n\n \"How many men do you need for the harvest, Hank?\" Retief inquired.\n\n\n Arapoulous sniffed his wine glass and looked thoughtful.", "\"You said it.\" He gulped half his beer. \"My name's Karsh. Mr. Karsh.\n Yep, Mr. Karsh. Boy, this is a drag, sitting around this place\n waiting....\"\n\n\n \"You meeting somebody?\"\n\n\n \"Yeah. Bunch of babies. Kids. How they expect—Never mind. Have one on\n me.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks. You a Scoutmaster?\"\n\n\n \"I'll tell you what I am. I'm a cradle-robber. You know—\" he turned\n to Retief—\"not one of those kids is over eighteen.\" He hiccupped.\n \"Students, you know. Never saw a student with a beard, did you?\"\n\n\n \"Lots of times. You're meeting the students, are you?\"\n\n\n The young fellow blinked at Retief. \"Oh, you know about it, huh?\"" ], [ "\"Then the wine-making. We still tramp out the vintage. That's mostly\n for the young folks but anybody's welcome. That's when things start to\n get loosened up. Matter of fact, pretty near half our young-uns are\n born after a vintage. All bets are off then. It keeps a fellow on his\n toes though. Ever tried to hold onto a gal wearing nothing but a layer\n of grape juice?\"\n\"Never did,\" Retief said. \"You say most of the children are born after\n a vintage. That would make them only twelve years old by the time—\"\n\n\n \"Oh, that's Lovenbroy years; they'd be eighteen, Terry reckoning.\"\n\n\n \"I was thinking you looked a little mature for twenty-eight,\" Retief\n said.", "\"Well, the loan's due. The wine crop would put us in the clear. But\n we need harvest hands. Picking Bacchus grapes isn't a job you can\n turn over to machinery—and anyway we wouldn't if we could. Vintage\n season is the high point of living on Lovenbroy. Everybody joins in.\n First, there's the picking in the fields. Miles and miles of vineyards\n covering the mountain sides, and crowding the river banks, with gardens\n here and there. Big vines, eight feet high, loaded with fruit, and deep\n grass growing between. The wine-carriers keep on the run, bringing wine\n to the pickers. There's prizes for the biggest day's output, bets on\n who can fill the most baskets in an hour.... The sun's high and bright,", "\"You work for this Culture bunch, do you? Funny. I thought they were\n all ribbon-counter boys. Never mind. I'm Hank Arapoulous. I'm a farmer.\n What I wanted to see you about was—\" He shifted in his chair. \"Well,\n out on Lovenbroy we've got a serious problem. The wine crop is just\n about ready. We start picking in another two, three months. Now I don't\n know if you're familiar with the Bacchus vines we grow...?\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Retief said. \"Have a cigar?\" He pushed a box across the desk.\n Arapoulous took one. \"Bacchus vines are an unusual crop,\" he said,\n puffing the cigar alight. \"Only mature every twelve years. In between,\n the vines don't need a lot of attention, so our time's mostly our own.\n We like to farm, though. Spend a lot of time developing new forms.\n Apples the size of a melon—and sweet—\"", "and it's just cool enough to give you plenty of energy. Come nightfall,\n the tables are set up in the garden plots, and the feast is laid on:\n roast turkeys, beef, hams, all kinds of fowl. Big salads. Plenty of\n fruit. Fresh-baked bread ... and wine, plenty of wine. The cooking's\n done by a different crew each night in each garden, and there's prizes\n for the best crews.", "\"That's right. Autumn's our harvest season. Most years we have just the\n ordinary crops. Fruit, grain, that kind of thing; getting it in doesn't\n take long. We spend most of the time on architecture, getting new\n places ready for the winter or remodeling the older ones. We spend a\n lot of time in our houses. We like to have them comfortable. But this\n year's different. This is Wine Year.\"\nArapoulous puffed on his cigar, looked worriedly at Retief. \"Our wine\n crop is our big money crop,\" he said. \"We make enough to keep us going.\n But this year....\"\n\n\n \"The crop isn't panning out?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, the crop's fine. One of the best I can remember. Course, I'm only\n twenty-eight; I can't remember but two other harvests. The problem's\n not the crop.\"\n\n\n \"Have you lost your markets? That sounds like a matter for the\n Commercial—\"", "\"Forty-two, Terry years,\" Arapoulous said. \"But this year it looks bad.\n We've got a bumper crop—and we're short-handed. If we don't get a big\n vintage, Croanie steps in. Lord knows what they'll do to the land. Then\n next vintage time, with them holding half our grape acreage—\"\n\n\n \"You hocked the vineyards?\"\n\n\n \"Yep. Pretty dumb, huh? But we figured twelve years was a long time.\"\n\n\n \"On the whole,\" Retief said, \"I think I prefer the black. But the red\n is hard to beat....\"\n\n\n \"What we figured was, maybe you Culture boys could help us out. A loan\n to see us through the vintage, enough to hire extra hands. Then we'd\n repay it in sculpture, painting, furniture—\"", "\"I've seen some of your furniture,\" Retief said. \"Beautiful work.\"\n\n\n Arapoulous nodded. \"All local timbers too. Lots of metals in our soil\n and those sulphates give the woods some color, I'll tell you. Then\n comes the Monsoon. Rain—it comes down in sheets. But the sun's getting\n closer. Shines all the time. Ever seen it pouring rain in the sunshine?\n That's the music-writing season. Then summer. Summer's hot. We stay\n inside in the daytime and have beach parties all night. Lots of beach\n on Lovenbroy; we're mostly islands. That's the drama and symphony time.\n The theatres are set up on the sand, or anchored off-shore. You have\n the music and the surf and the bonfires and stars—we're close to the\n center of a globular cluster, you know....\"\n\n\n \"You say it's time now for the wine crop?\"", "\"Don't try to describe it, Mr. Retief,\" Arapoulous said. He took a\n mouthful of wine, swished it around his teeth, swallowed. \"It's Bacchus\n wine, that's all. Nothing like it in the Galaxy.\" He pushed the second\n bottle toward Retief. \"The custom back home is to alternate red wine\n and black.\"\nRetief put aside his cigar, pulled the wires loose, nudged the cork,\n caught it as it popped up.\n\n\n \"Bad luck if you miss the cork,\" Arapoulous said, nodding. \"You\n probably never heard about the trouble we had on Lovenbroy a few years\n back?\"\n\n\n \"Can't say that I did, Hank.\" Retief poured the black wine into two\n fresh glasses. \"Here's to the harvest.\"", "\"Didn't I tell you? Boge was the bunch that tried to take us over here\n a dozen years back. They'd've made it too, if they hadn't had a lot of\n bad luck. Their armor went in the drink, and without armor they're easy\n game.\"\n\n\n Miss Furkle buzzed. \"I have your lists,\" she said shortly.\n\n\n \"Bring them in, please.\"\nThe secretary placed the papers on the desk. Arapoulous caught her eye\n and grinned. She sniffed and marched from the room.\n\n\n \"What that gal needs is a slippery time in the grape mash,\" Arapoulous\n observed. Retief thumbed through the papers, pausing to read from time\n to time. He finished and looked at Arapoulous.\n\n\n \"How many men do you need for the harvest, Hank?\" Retief inquired.\n\n\n Arapoulous sniffed his wine glass and looked thoughtful.", "\"This isn't\ndrinking\n. It's just wine.\" Arapoulous pulled the wire\n retainer loose, thumbed the cork. It rose slowly, then popped in the\n air. Arapoulous caught it. Aromatic fumes wafted from the bottle.\n \"Besides, my feelings would be hurt if you didn't join me.\" He winked.\n\n\n Retief took two thin-walled glasses from a table beside the desk. \"Come\n to think of it, we also have to be careful about violating quaint\n native customs.\"\n\n\n Arapoulous filled the glasses. Retief picked one up, sniffed the deep\n rust-colored fluid, tasted it, then took a healthy swallow. He looked\n at Arapoulous thoughtfully.\n\n\n \"Hmmm. It tastes like salted pecans, with an undercurrent of crusted\n port.\"", "Miss Furkle's chins quivered. \"Well! If you feel I'm incompetent—\"\n\n\n \"Just questioning the possibility of a mistake, Miss Furkle. Five\n hundred tractors is a lot of equipment.\"\n\n\n \"Was there anything further?\" Miss Furkle inquired frigidly.\n\n\n \"I sincerely hope not,\" Retief said.\nIII\n\n\n Leaning back in Magnan's padded chair with power swivel and\n hip-u-matic concontour, Retief leafed through a folder labelled \"CERP\n 7-602-Ba; CROANIE (general).\" He paused at a page headed Industry.\n\n\n Still reading, he opened the desk drawer, took out the two bottles of\n Bacchus wine and two glasses. He poured an inch of wine into each and\n sipped the black wine meditatively.", "It would be a pity, he reflected, if anything should interfere with the\n production of such vintages....\n\n\n Half an hour later he laid the folder aside, keyed the phone and put\n through a call to the Croanie Legation. He asked for the Commercial\n Attache.\n\n\n \"Retief here, Corps HQ,\" he said airily. \"About the MEDDLE shipment,\n the tractors. I'm wondering if there's been a slip up. My records show\n we're shipping five hundred units....\"\n\n\n \"That's correct. Five hundred.\"\n\n\n Retief waited.\n\n\n \"Ah ... are you there, Retief?\"\n\n\n \"I'm still here. And I'm still wondering about the five hundred\n tractors.\"\n\n\n \"It's perfectly in order. I thought it was all settled. Mr. Whaffle—\"", "\"Lost our markets? Mister, nobody that ever tasted our wines ever\n settled for anything else!\"\n\n\n \"It sounds like I've been missing something,\" said Retief. \"I'll have\n to try them some time.\"\n\n\n Arapoulous put his bundle on the desk, pulled off the wrappings. \"No\n time like the present,\" he said.\n\n\n Retief looked at the two squat bottles, one green, one amber, both\n dusty, with faded labels, and blackened corks secured by wire.\n\n\n \"Drinking on duty is frowned on in the Corps, Mr. Arapoulous,\" he said.", "\"Sorry, Hank. All we do here is work out itineraries for traveling\n side-shows, that kind of thing. Now, if you needed a troop of Groaci\n nose-flute players—\"\n\n\n \"Can they pick grapes?\"\n\n\n \"Nope. Anyway, they can't stand the daylight. Have you talked this over\n with the Labor Office?\"\n\n\n \"Sure did. They said they'd fix us up with all the electronics\n specialists and computer programmers we wanted—but no field hands.\n Said it was what they classified as menial drudgery; you'd have thought\n I was trying to buy slaves.\"\n\n\n The buzzer sounded. Miss Furkle's features appeared on the desk screen.\n\n\n \"You're due at the Intergroup Council in five minutes,\" she said. \"Then\n afterwards, there are the Bogan students to meet.\"", "\"Sounds very pleasant,\" Retief said. \"Where does the Libraries and\n Education Division come in?\"\n\n\n Arapoulous leaned forward. \"We go in pretty heavy for the arts. Folks\n can't spend all their time hybridizing plants. We've turned all the\n land area we've got into parks and farms. Course, we left some sizable\n forest areas for hunting and such. Lovenbroy's a nice place, Mr.\n Retief.\"\n\n\n \"It sounds like it, Mr. Arapoulous. Just what—\"\n\n\n \"Call me Hank. We've got long seasons back home. Five of 'em. Our\n year's about eighteen Terry months. Cold as hell in winter; eccentric\n orbit, you know. Blue-black sky, stars visible all day. We do mostly\n painting and sculpture in the winter. Then Spring; still plenty cold.\n Lots of skiing, bob-sledding, ice skating; and it's the season for\n woodworkers. Our furniture—\"", "\"For the present. Miss Furkle, Mr. Magnan is vacationing. That leaves\n me with the question of two thousand young male students headed for\n a world with no classrooms for them ... a world in need of tractors.\n But the tractors are on their way to Croanie, a world under obligation\n to Boge. And Croanie holds a mortgage on the best grape acreage on\n Lovenbroy.\"\n\n\n \"Well!\" Miss Furkle snapped, small eyes glaring under unplucked brows.\n \"I hope you're not questioning Mr. Magnan's wisdom!\"\n\n\n \"About Mr. Magnan's wisdom there can be no question,\" Retief said. \"But\n never mind. I'd like you to look up an item for me. How many tractors\n will Croanie be getting under the MEDDLE program?\"\n\n\n \"Why, that's entirely MEDDLE business,\" Miss Furkle said. \"Mr. Magnan\n always—\"", "\"Great. Thanks.\" It was half a minute before a thick-necked red-faced\n man in a tight hat walked in. He wore an old-fashioned suit, a drab\n shirt, shiny shoes with round toes and an ill-tempered expression.\n\"What is it you wish?\" he barked. \"I understood in my discussions with\n the other ... ah ... civilian there'd be no further need for these\n irritating conferences.\"\n\n\n \"I've just learned you're placing more students abroad, Mr. Gulver. How\n many this time?\"\n\n\n \"Two thousand.\"\n\n\n \"And where will they be going?\"\n\n\n \"Croanie. It's all in the application form I've handed in. Your job is\n to provide transportation.\"\n\n\n \"Will there be any other students embarking this season?\"", "\"I understand you hold a mortgage on the best land on Lovenbroy,\"\n Retief said. \"Any connection?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... no. Of course not, ha ha.\"\n\n\n \"Who gets the tractors eventually?\"\n\n\n \"Retief, this is unwarranted interference!\"\n\n\n \"Who gets them?\"\n\n\n \"They happen to be going to Lovenbroy. But I scarcely see—\"\n\n\n \"And who's the friend you're helping out with an unauthorized\n transshipment of grant material?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... I've been working with a Mr. Gulver, a Bogan\n representative.\"\n\n\n \"And when will they be shipped?\"\n\n\n \"Why, they went out a week ago. They'll be half way there by now. But\n look here, Retief, this isn't what you're thinking!\"", "\"We've got plenty of minerals on Lovenbroy,\" Arapoulous said,\n swallowing wine. \"But we don't plan to wreck the landscape mining 'em.\n We like to farm. About ten years back some neighbors of ours landed a\n force. They figured they knew better what to do with our minerals than\n we did. Wanted to strip-mine, smelt ore. We convinced 'em otherwise.\n But it took a year, and we lost a lot of men.\"\n\n\n \"That's too bad,\" Retief said. \"I'd say this one tastes more like roast\n beef and popcorn over a Riesling base.\"\n\n\n \"It put us in a bad spot,\" Arapoulous went on. \"We had to borrow\n money from a world called Croanie. Mortgaged our crops. Had to start\n exporting art work too. Plenty of buyers, but it's not the same when\n you're doing it for strangers.\"", "\"Heck, no,\" he said. \"Say, uh, Mr. Karsh, are we gonna get to go to\n town? We fellas were thinking—\"\n\n\n \"You were, hah? You act like a bunch of school kids! I mean ... no! Now\n line up!\"\n\n\n \"We have quarters ready for the students,\" Retief said. \"If you'd like\n to bring them around to the west side, I have a couple of copters laid\n on.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" said Karsh. \"They'll stay here until take-off time. Can't\n have the little dears wandering around loose. Might get ideas about\n going over the hill.\" He hiccupped. \"I mean they might play hookey.\"\n\n\n \"We've scheduled your re-embarkation for noon tomorrow. That's a long\n wait. MUDDLE's arranged theater tickets and a dinner.\"" ], [ "\"Then the wine-making. We still tramp out the vintage. That's mostly\n for the young folks but anybody's welcome. That's when things start to\n get loosened up. Matter of fact, pretty near half our young-uns are\n born after a vintage. All bets are off then. It keeps a fellow on his\n toes though. Ever tried to hold onto a gal wearing nothing but a layer\n of grape juice?\"\n\"Never did,\" Retief said. \"You say most of the children are born after\n a vintage. That would make them only twelve years old by the time—\"\n\n\n \"Oh, that's Lovenbroy years; they'd be eighteen, Terry reckoning.\"\n\n\n \"I was thinking you looked a little mature for twenty-eight,\" Retief\n said.", "\"Well, the loan's due. The wine crop would put us in the clear. But\n we need harvest hands. Picking Bacchus grapes isn't a job you can\n turn over to machinery—and anyway we wouldn't if we could. Vintage\n season is the high point of living on Lovenbroy. Everybody joins in.\n First, there's the picking in the fields. Miles and miles of vineyards\n covering the mountain sides, and crowding the river banks, with gardens\n here and there. Big vines, eight feet high, loaded with fruit, and deep\n grass growing between. The wine-carriers keep on the run, bringing wine\n to the pickers. There's prizes for the biggest day's output, bets on\n who can fill the most baskets in an hour.... The sun's high and bright,", "\"Forty-two, Terry years,\" Arapoulous said. \"But this year it looks bad.\n We've got a bumper crop—and we're short-handed. If we don't get a big\n vintage, Croanie steps in. Lord knows what they'll do to the land. Then\n next vintage time, with them holding half our grape acreage—\"\n\n\n \"You hocked the vineyards?\"\n\n\n \"Yep. Pretty dumb, huh? But we figured twelve years was a long time.\"\n\n\n \"On the whole,\" Retief said, \"I think I prefer the black. But the red\n is hard to beat....\"\n\n\n \"What we figured was, maybe you Culture boys could help us out. A loan\n to see us through the vintage, enough to hire extra hands. Then we'd\n repay it in sculpture, painting, furniture—\"", "\"That's right. Autumn's our harvest season. Most years we have just the\n ordinary crops. Fruit, grain, that kind of thing; getting it in doesn't\n take long. We spend most of the time on architecture, getting new\n places ready for the winter or remodeling the older ones. We spend a\n lot of time in our houses. We like to have them comfortable. But this\n year's different. This is Wine Year.\"\nArapoulous puffed on his cigar, looked worriedly at Retief. \"Our wine\n crop is our big money crop,\" he said. \"We make enough to keep us going.\n But this year....\"\n\n\n \"The crop isn't panning out?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, the crop's fine. One of the best I can remember. Course, I'm only\n twenty-eight; I can't remember but two other harvests. The problem's\n not the crop.\"\n\n\n \"Have you lost your markets? That sounds like a matter for the\n Commercial—\"", "\"You work for this Culture bunch, do you? Funny. I thought they were\n all ribbon-counter boys. Never mind. I'm Hank Arapoulous. I'm a farmer.\n What I wanted to see you about was—\" He shifted in his chair. \"Well,\n out on Lovenbroy we've got a serious problem. The wine crop is just\n about ready. We start picking in another two, three months. Now I don't\n know if you're familiar with the Bacchus vines we grow...?\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Retief said. \"Have a cigar?\" He pushed a box across the desk.\n Arapoulous took one. \"Bacchus vines are an unusual crop,\" he said,\n puffing the cigar alight. \"Only mature every twelve years. In between,\n the vines don't need a lot of attention, so our time's mostly our own.\n We like to farm, though. Spend a lot of time developing new forms.\n Apples the size of a melon—and sweet—\"", "\"Lost our markets? Mister, nobody that ever tasted our wines ever\n settled for anything else!\"\n\n\n \"It sounds like I've been missing something,\" said Retief. \"I'll have\n to try them some time.\"\n\n\n Arapoulous put his bundle on the desk, pulled off the wrappings. \"No\n time like the present,\" he said.\n\n\n Retief looked at the two squat bottles, one green, one amber, both\n dusty, with faded labels, and blackened corks secured by wire.\n\n\n \"Drinking on duty is frowned on in the Corps, Mr. Arapoulous,\" he said.", "\"This isn't\ndrinking\n. It's just wine.\" Arapoulous pulled the wire\n retainer loose, thumbed the cork. It rose slowly, then popped in the\n air. Arapoulous caught it. Aromatic fumes wafted from the bottle.\n \"Besides, my feelings would be hurt if you didn't join me.\" He winked.\n\n\n Retief took two thin-walled glasses from a table beside the desk. \"Come\n to think of it, we also have to be careful about violating quaint\n native customs.\"\n\n\n Arapoulous filled the glasses. Retief picked one up, sniffed the deep\n rust-colored fluid, tasted it, then took a healthy swallow. He looked\n at Arapoulous thoughtfully.\n\n\n \"Hmmm. It tastes like salted pecans, with an undercurrent of crusted\n port.\"", "It would be a pity, he reflected, if anything should interfere with the\n production of such vintages....\n\n\n Half an hour later he laid the folder aside, keyed the phone and put\n through a call to the Croanie Legation. He asked for the Commercial\n Attache.\n\n\n \"Retief here, Corps HQ,\" he said airily. \"About the MEDDLE shipment,\n the tractors. I'm wondering if there's been a slip up. My records show\n we're shipping five hundred units....\"\n\n\n \"That's correct. Five hundred.\"\n\n\n Retief waited.\n\n\n \"Ah ... are you there, Retief?\"\n\n\n \"I'm still here. And I'm still wondering about the five hundred\n tractors.\"\n\n\n \"It's perfectly in order. I thought it was all settled. Mr. Whaffle—\"", "\"Don't try to describe it, Mr. Retief,\" Arapoulous said. He took a\n mouthful of wine, swished it around his teeth, swallowed. \"It's Bacchus\n wine, that's all. Nothing like it in the Galaxy.\" He pushed the second\n bottle toward Retief. \"The custom back home is to alternate red wine\n and black.\"\nRetief put aside his cigar, pulled the wires loose, nudged the cork,\n caught it as it popped up.\n\n\n \"Bad luck if you miss the cork,\" Arapoulous said, nodding. \"You\n probably never heard about the trouble we had on Lovenbroy a few years\n back?\"\n\n\n \"Can't say that I did, Hank.\" Retief poured the black wine into two\n fresh glasses. \"Here's to the harvest.\"", "\"Didn't I tell you? Boge was the bunch that tried to take us over here\n a dozen years back. They'd've made it too, if they hadn't had a lot of\n bad luck. Their armor went in the drink, and without armor they're easy\n game.\"\n\n\n Miss Furkle buzzed. \"I have your lists,\" she said shortly.\n\n\n \"Bring them in, please.\"\nThe secretary placed the papers on the desk. Arapoulous caught her eye\n and grinned. She sniffed and marched from the room.\n\n\n \"What that gal needs is a slippery time in the grape mash,\" Arapoulous\n observed. Retief thumbed through the papers, pausing to read from time\n to time. He finished and looked at Arapoulous.\n\n\n \"How many men do you need for the harvest, Hank?\" Retief inquired.\n\n\n Arapoulous sniffed his wine glass and looked thoughtful.", "\"I've seen some of your furniture,\" Retief said. \"Beautiful work.\"\n\n\n Arapoulous nodded. \"All local timbers too. Lots of metals in our soil\n and those sulphates give the woods some color, I'll tell you. Then\n comes the Monsoon. Rain—it comes down in sheets. But the sun's getting\n closer. Shines all the time. Ever seen it pouring rain in the sunshine?\n That's the music-writing season. Then summer. Summer's hot. We stay\n inside in the daytime and have beach parties all night. Lots of beach\n on Lovenbroy; we're mostly islands. That's the drama and symphony time.\n The theatres are set up on the sand, or anchored off-shore. You have\n the music and the surf and the bonfires and stars—we're close to the\n center of a globular cluster, you know....\"\n\n\n \"You say it's time now for the wine crop?\"", "Miss Furkle's chins quivered. \"Well! If you feel I'm incompetent—\"\n\n\n \"Just questioning the possibility of a mistake, Miss Furkle. Five\n hundred tractors is a lot of equipment.\"\n\n\n \"Was there anything further?\" Miss Furkle inquired frigidly.\n\n\n \"I sincerely hope not,\" Retief said.\nIII\n\n\n Leaning back in Magnan's padded chair with power swivel and\n hip-u-matic concontour, Retief leafed through a folder labelled \"CERP\n 7-602-Ba; CROANIE (general).\" He paused at a page headed Industry.\n\n\n Still reading, he opened the desk drawer, took out the two bottles of\n Bacchus wine and two glasses. He poured an inch of wine into each and\n sipped the black wine meditatively.", "\"That's the model WV,\" she said. \"It's what is known as a continental\n siege unit. It carries four men, with a half-megaton/second firepower.\"\n\n\n \"There must be an error somewhere,\" Retief said. \"The Bolo model I want\n is a tractor. Model WV M-1—\"\n\"Oh, the modification was the addition of a bulldozer blade for\n demolition work. That must be what confused you.\"\n\n\n \"Probably—among other things. Thank you.\"\n\n\n Miss Furkle was waiting at the office. \"I have the information you\n wanted,\" she said. \"I've had it for over ten minutes. I was under the\n impression you needed it urgently, and I went to great lengths—\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" Retief said. \"Shoot. How many tractors?\"\n\n\n \"Five hundred.\"\n\n\n \"Are you sure?\"", "\"For the present. Miss Furkle, Mr. Magnan is vacationing. That leaves\n me with the question of two thousand young male students headed for\n a world with no classrooms for them ... a world in need of tractors.\n But the tractors are on their way to Croanie, a world under obligation\n to Boge. And Croanie holds a mortgage on the best grape acreage on\n Lovenbroy.\"\n\n\n \"Well!\" Miss Furkle snapped, small eyes glaring under unplucked brows.\n \"I hope you're not questioning Mr. Magnan's wisdom!\"\n\n\n \"About Mr. Magnan's wisdom there can be no question,\" Retief said. \"But\n never mind. I'd like you to look up an item for me. How many tractors\n will Croanie be getting under the MEDDLE program?\"\n\n\n \"Why, that's entirely MEDDLE business,\" Miss Furkle said. \"Mr. Magnan\n always—\"", "\"Say, this business of alternating drinks is the real McCoy,\" Retief\n said. \"What's the problem? Croanie about to foreclose?\"", "\"We've got plenty of minerals on Lovenbroy,\" Arapoulous said,\n swallowing wine. \"But we don't plan to wreck the landscape mining 'em.\n We like to farm. About ten years back some neighbors of ours landed a\n force. They figured they knew better what to do with our minerals than\n we did. Wanted to strip-mine, smelt ore. We convinced 'em otherwise.\n But it took a year, and we lost a lot of men.\"\n\n\n \"That's too bad,\" Retief said. \"I'd say this one tastes more like roast\n beef and popcorn over a Riesling base.\"\n\n\n \"It put us in a bad spot,\" Arapoulous went on. \"We had to borrow\n money from a world called Croanie. Mortgaged our crops. Had to start\n exporting art work too. Plenty of buyers, but it's not the same when\n you're doing it for strangers.\"", "and it's just cool enough to give you plenty of energy. Come nightfall,\n the tables are set up in the garden plots, and the feast is laid on:\n roast turkeys, beef, hams, all kinds of fowl. Big salads. Plenty of\n fruit. Fresh-baked bread ... and wine, plenty of wine. The cooking's\n done by a different crew each night in each garden, and there's prizes\n for the best crews.", "\"You said it.\" He gulped half his beer. \"My name's Karsh. Mr. Karsh.\n Yep, Mr. Karsh. Boy, this is a drag, sitting around this place\n waiting....\"\n\n\n \"You meeting somebody?\"\n\n\n \"Yeah. Bunch of babies. Kids. How they expect—Never mind. Have one on\n me.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks. You a Scoutmaster?\"\n\n\n \"I'll tell you what I am. I'm a cradle-robber. You know—\" he turned\n to Retief—\"not one of those kids is over eighteen.\" He hiccupped.\n \"Students, you know. Never saw a student with a beard, did you?\"\n\n\n \"Lots of times. You're meeting the students, are you?\"\n\n\n The young fellow blinked at Retief. \"Oh, you know about it, huh?\"", "\"One unit would require a good-sized plant to handle its output,\"\n Retief said. \"Now Croanie subsists on her fisheries. She has perhaps\n half a dozen pint-sized processing plants. Maybe, in a bind, they\n could handle the ore ten WV's could scrape up ... if Croanie had any\n ore. It doesn't. By the way, isn't a WV a poor choice as a mining\n outfit? I should think—\"\n\n\n \"See here, Retief! Why all this interest in a few surplus tractors?\n And in any event, what business is it of yours how we plan to use the\n equipment? That's an internal affair of my government. Mr. Whaffle—\"\n\n\n \"I'm not Mr. Whaffle. What are you going to do with the other four\n hundred and ninety tractors?\"\n\n\n \"I understood the grant was to be with no strings attached!\"", "\"I know it's bad manners to ask questions. It's an old diplomatic\n tradition that any time you can get anybody to accept anything as a\n gift, you've scored points in the game. But if Croanie has some scheme\n cooking—\"\n\"Nothing like that, Retief. It's a mere business transaction.\"\n\n\n \"What kind of business do you do with a Bolo WV? With or without a\n blade attached, it's what's known as a continental siege unit.\"\n\n\n \"Great Heavens, Retief! Don't jump to conclusions! Would you have us\n branded as warmongers? Frankly—is this a closed line?\"\n\n\n \"Certainly. You may speak freely.\"\n\n\n \"The tractors are for transshipment. We've gotten ourselves into a\n difficult situation, balance-of-payments-wise. This is an accommodation\n to a group with which we have rather strong business ties.\"" ], [ "\"I represent MUDDLE.\"\n\n\n Karsh finished his beer, ordered another. \"I came on ahead. Sort of\n an advance guard for the kids. I trained 'em myself. Treated it like\n a game, but they can handle a CSU. Don't know how they'll act under\n pressure. If I had my old platoon—\"\n\n\n He looked at his beer glass, pushed it back. \"Had enough,\" he said. \"So\n long, friend. Or are you coming along?\"\n\n\n Retief nodded. \"Might as well.\"\nAt the exit to the Customs enclosure, Retief watched as the first of\n the Bogan students came through, caught sight of Karsh and snapped to\n attention, his chest out.\n\n\n \"Drop that, mister,\" Karsh snapped. \"Is that any way for a student to\n act?\"\n\n\n The youth, a round-faced lad with broad shoulders, grinned.", "\"Academic details are the affair of the students and their professors,\"\n Magnan said. \"Our function is merely to bring them together. See\n that you don't antagonize the Bogan representative. This will\n be an excellent opportunity for you to practice your diplomatic\n restraint—not your strong point, I'm sure you'll agree.\"\n\n\n A buzzer sounded. Retief punched a button. \"What is it, Miss Furkle?\"\n\n\n \"That—bucolic person from Lovenbroy is here again.\" On the small desk\n screen, Miss Furkle's meaty features were compressed in disapproval.\n\n\n \"This fellow's a confounded pest. I'll leave him to you, Retief,\"\n Magnan said. \"Tell him something. Get rid of him. And remember: here\n at Corps HQ, all eyes are upon you.\"\n\n\n \"If I'd thought of that, I'd have worn my other suit,\" Retief said.", "\"I don't appreciate frivolity with reference to this Division,\" Magnan\n said testily. \"When I first came here, the Manpower Utilization\n Directorate, Division of Libraries and Education was a shambles. I\n fancy I've made MUDDLE what it is today. Frankly, I question the\n wisdom of placing you in charge of such a sensitive desk, even for two\n weeks. But remember. Yours is purely a rubber-stamp function.\"\n\n\n \"In that case, let's leave it to Miss Furkle. I'll take a couple of\n weeks off myself. With her poundage, she could bring plenty of pressure\n to bear.\"\n\n\n \"I assume you jest, Retief,\" Magnan said sadly. \"I should expect even\n you to appreciate that Bogan participation in the Exchange Program may\n be the first step toward sublimation of their aggressions into more\n cultivated channels.\"", "Back at the MUDDLE office, Retief buzzed Miss Furkle.\n\n\n \"Do you know the name of the institution these Bogan students are bound\n for?\"\n\n\n \"Why, the University at d'Land, of course.\"\n\n\n \"Would that be the Technical College?\"\n\n\n Miss Furkle's mouth puckered. \"I'm sure I've never pried into these\n details.\"\n\n\n \"Where does doing your job stop and prying begin, Miss Furkle?\" Retief\n said. \"Personally, I'm curious as to just what it is these students are\n travelling so far to study—at Corps expense.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Magnan never—\"", "Magnan snorted and passed from view. Retief punched Miss Furkle's\n button.\n\n\n \"Send the bucolic person in.\"\nA tall broad man with bronze skin and gray hair, wearing tight trousers\n of heavy cloth, a loose shirt open at the neck and a short jacket,\n stepped into the room. He had a bundle under his arm. He paused at\n sight of Retief, looked him over momentarily, then advanced and held\n out his hand. Retief took it. For a moment the two big men stood, face\n to face. The newcomer's jaw muscles knotted. Then he winced.\n\n\n Retief dropped his hand and motioned to a chair.\n\n\n \"That's nice knuckle work, mister,\" the stranger said, massaging his\n hand. \"First time anybody ever did that to me. My fault though. I\n started it, I guess.\" He grinned and sat down.\n\n\n \"What can I do for you?\" Retief said.", "\"For the present. Miss Furkle, Mr. Magnan is vacationing. That leaves\n me with the question of two thousand young male students headed for\n a world with no classrooms for them ... a world in need of tractors.\n But the tractors are on their way to Croanie, a world under obligation\n to Boge. And Croanie holds a mortgage on the best grape acreage on\n Lovenbroy.\"\n\n\n \"Well!\" Miss Furkle snapped, small eyes glaring under unplucked brows.\n \"I hope you're not questioning Mr. Magnan's wisdom!\"\n\n\n \"About Mr. Magnan's wisdom there can be no question,\" Retief said. \"But\n never mind. I'd like you to look up an item for me. How many tractors\n will Croanie be getting under the MEDDLE program?\"\n\n\n \"Why, that's entirely MEDDLE business,\" Miss Furkle said. \"Mr. Magnan\n always—\"", "Miss Furkle compressed her lips. \"If Mr. Magnan were here, I'm sure\n he wouldn't dream of interfering in the work of other departments.\n I ... overheard your conversation with the gentleman from the Croanie\n Legation—\"\n\n\n \"The lists, Miss Furkle.\"\n\n\n \"I'm not accustomed,\" Miss Furkle said, \"to intruding in matters\n outside our interest cluster.\"\n\n\n \"That's worse than listening in on phone conversations, eh? But never\n mind. I need the information, Miss Furkle.\"\n\n\n \"Loyalty to my Chief—\"\n\n\n \"Loyalty to your pay-check should send you scuttling for the material\n I've asked for,\" Retief said. \"I'm taking full responsibility. Now\n scat.\"\n\n\n The buzzer sounded. Retief flipped a key. \"MUDDLE, Retief speaking....\"", "\"Strip mining gear.\" Whaffle took a slip of paper from a breast pocket,\n blinked at it. \"Bolo Model WV/1 tractors, to be specific. Why is MUDDLE\n interested in MEDDLE's activities?\"\n\n\n \"Forgive my curiosity, Mr. Whaffle. It's just that Croanie cropped up\n earlier today. It seems she holds a mortgage on some vineyards over\n on—\"\n\n\n \"That's not MEDDLE's affair, sir,\" Whaffle cut in. \"I have sufficient\n problems as Chief of MEDDLE without probing into MUDDLE'S business.\"\n\n\n \"Speaking of tractors,\" another man put in, \"we over at the Special\n Committee for Rehabilitation and Overhaul of Under-developed Nations'\n General Economies have been trying for months to get a request for\n mining equipment for d'Land through MEDDLE—\"", "\"Sorry, Hank. All we do here is work out itineraries for traveling\n side-shows, that kind of thing. Now, if you needed a troop of Groaci\n nose-flute players—\"\n\n\n \"Can they pick grapes?\"\n\n\n \"Nope. Anyway, they can't stand the daylight. Have you talked this over\n with the Labor Office?\"\n\n\n \"Sure did. They said they'd fix us up with all the electronics\n specialists and computer programmers we wanted—but no field hands.\n Said it was what they classified as menial drudgery; you'd have thought\n I was trying to buy slaves.\"\n\n\n The buzzer sounded. Miss Furkle's features appeared on the desk screen.\n\n\n \"You're due at the Intergroup Council in five minutes,\" she said. \"Then\n afterwards, there are the Bogan students to meet.\"", "\"Didn't I tell you? Boge was the bunch that tried to take us over here\n a dozen years back. They'd've made it too, if they hadn't had a lot of\n bad luck. Their armor went in the drink, and without armor they're easy\n game.\"\n\n\n Miss Furkle buzzed. \"I have your lists,\" she said shortly.\n\n\n \"Bring them in, please.\"\nThe secretary placed the papers on the desk. Arapoulous caught her eye\n and grinned. She sniffed and marched from the room.\n\n\n \"What that gal needs is a slippery time in the grape mash,\" Arapoulous\n observed. Retief thumbed through the papers, pausing to read from time\n to time. He finished and looked at Arapoulous.\n\n\n \"How many men do you need for the harvest, Hank?\" Retief inquired.\n\n\n Arapoulous sniffed his wine glass and looked thoughtful.", "\"Well, the loan's due. The wine crop would put us in the clear. But\n we need harvest hands. Picking Bacchus grapes isn't a job you can\n turn over to machinery—and anyway we wouldn't if we could. Vintage\n season is the high point of living on Lovenbroy. Everybody joins in.\n First, there's the picking in the fields. Miles and miles of vineyards\n covering the mountain sides, and crowding the river banks, with gardens\n here and there. Big vines, eight feet high, loaded with fruit, and deep\n grass growing between. The wine-carriers keep on the run, bringing wine\n to the pickers. There's prizes for the biggest day's output, bets on\n who can fill the most baskets in an hour.... The sun's high and bright,", "\"How do you know what I'm thinking? I don't know myself.\" Retief rang\n off, buzzed the secretary.\n\n\n \"Miss Furkle, I'd like to be notified immediately of any new\n applications that might come in from the Bogan Consulate for placement\n of students.\"\n\n\n \"Well, it happens, by coincidence, that I have an application here now.\n Mr. Gulver of the Consulate brought it in.\"\n\n\n \"Is Mr. Gulver in the office? I'd like to see him.\"\n\n\n \"I'll ask him if he has time.\"", "\"Heck, no,\" he said. \"Say, uh, Mr. Karsh, are we gonna get to go to\n town? We fellas were thinking—\"\n\n\n \"You were, hah? You act like a bunch of school kids! I mean ... no! Now\n line up!\"\n\n\n \"We have quarters ready for the students,\" Retief said. \"If you'd like\n to bring them around to the west side, I have a couple of copters laid\n on.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" said Karsh. \"They'll stay here until take-off time. Can't\n have the little dears wandering around loose. Might get ideas about\n going over the hill.\" He hiccupped. \"I mean they might play hookey.\"\n\n\n \"We've scheduled your re-embarkation for noon tomorrow. That's a long\n wait. MUDDLE's arranged theater tickets and a dinner.\"", "\"I understand you hold a mortgage on the best land on Lovenbroy,\"\n Retief said. \"Any connection?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... no. Of course not, ha ha.\"\n\n\n \"Who gets the tractors eventually?\"\n\n\n \"Retief, this is unwarranted interference!\"\n\n\n \"Who gets them?\"\n\n\n \"They happen to be going to Lovenbroy. But I scarcely see—\"\n\n\n \"And who's the friend you're helping out with an unauthorized\n transshipment of grant material?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... I've been working with a Mr. Gulver, a Bogan\n representative.\"\n\n\n \"And when will they be shipped?\"\n\n\n \"Why, they went out a week ago. They'll be half way there by now. But\n look here, Retief, this isn't what you're thinking!\"", "Miss Furkle's chins quivered. \"Well! If you feel I'm incompetent—\"\n\n\n \"Just questioning the possibility of a mistake, Miss Furkle. Five\n hundred tractors is a lot of equipment.\"\n\n\n \"Was there anything further?\" Miss Furkle inquired frigidly.\n\n\n \"I sincerely hope not,\" Retief said.\nIII\n\n\n Leaning back in Magnan's padded chair with power swivel and\n hip-u-matic concontour, Retief leafed through a folder labelled \"CERP\n 7-602-Ba; CROANIE (general).\" He paused at a page headed Industry.\n\n\n Still reading, he opened the desk drawer, took out the two bottles of\n Bacchus wine and two glasses. He poured an inch of wine into each and\n sipped the black wine meditatively.", "\"SCROUNGE was late on the scene,\" Whaffle said. \"First come, first\n served. That's our policy at MEDDLE. Good day, gentlemen.\" He strode\n off, briefcase under his arm.\n\n\n \"That's the trouble with peaceful worlds,\" the SCROUNGE committeeman\n said. \"Boge is a troublemaker, so every agency in the Corps is out\n to pacify her. While my chance to make a record—that is, assist\n peace-loving d'Land—comes to naught.\" He shook his head.\n\n\n \"What kind of university do they have on d'Land?\" asked Retief. \"We're\n sending them two thousand exchange students. It must be quite an\n institution.\"\n\n\n \"University? D'Land has one under-endowed technical college.\"\n\n\n \"Will all the exchange students be studying at the Technical College?\"", "\"Thanks.\" Retief finished his glass, stood. \"I have to run, Hank,\" he\n said. \"Let me think this over. Maybe I can come up with something.\n Check with me day after tomorrow. And you'd better leave the bottles\n here. Cultural exhibits, you know.\"\nII\n\n\n As the council meeting broke up, Retief caught the eye of a colleague\n across the table.\n\n\n \"Mr. Whaffle, you mentioned a shipment going to a place called Croanie.\n What are they getting?\"\n\n\n Whaffle blinked. \"You're the fellow who's filling in for Magnan, over\n at MUDDLE,\" he said. \"Properly speaking, equipment grants are the\n sole concern of the Motorized Equipment Depot, Division of Loans and\n Exchanges.\" He pursed his lips. \"However, I suppose there's no harm in\n telling you. They'll be receiving heavy mining equipment.\"\n\n\n \"Drill rigs, that sort of thing?\"", "It would be a pity, he reflected, if anything should interfere with the\n production of such vintages....\n\n\n Half an hour later he laid the folder aside, keyed the phone and put\n through a call to the Croanie Legation. He asked for the Commercial\n Attache.\n\n\n \"Retief here, Corps HQ,\" he said airily. \"About the MEDDLE shipment,\n the tractors. I'm wondering if there's been a slip up. My records show\n we're shipping five hundred units....\"\n\n\n \"That's correct. Five hundred.\"\n\n\n Retief waited.\n\n\n \"Ah ... are you there, Retief?\"\n\n\n \"I'm still here. And I'm still wondering about the five hundred\n tractors.\"\n\n\n \"It's perfectly in order. I thought it was all settled. Mr. Whaffle—\"", "\"You work for this Culture bunch, do you? Funny. I thought they were\n all ribbon-counter boys. Never mind. I'm Hank Arapoulous. I'm a farmer.\n What I wanted to see you about was—\" He shifted in his chair. \"Well,\n out on Lovenbroy we've got a serious problem. The wine crop is just\n about ready. We start picking in another two, three months. Now I don't\n know if you're familiar with the Bacchus vines we grow...?\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Retief said. \"Have a cigar?\" He pushed a box across the desk.\n Arapoulous took one. \"Bacchus vines are an unusual crop,\" he said,\n puffing the cigar alight. \"Only mature every twelve years. In between,\n the vines don't need a lot of attention, so our time's mostly our own.\n We like to farm, though. Spend a lot of time developing new forms.\n Apples the size of a melon—and sweet—\"", "\"Forty-two, Terry years,\" Arapoulous said. \"But this year it looks bad.\n We've got a bumper crop—and we're short-handed. If we don't get a big\n vintage, Croanie steps in. Lord knows what they'll do to the land. Then\n next vintage time, with them holding half our grape acreage—\"\n\n\n \"You hocked the vineyards?\"\n\n\n \"Yep. Pretty dumb, huh? But we figured twelve years was a long time.\"\n\n\n \"On the whole,\" Retief said, \"I think I prefer the black. But the red\n is hard to beat....\"\n\n\n \"What we figured was, maybe you Culture boys could help us out. A loan\n to see us through the vintage, enough to hire extra hands. Then we'd\n repay it in sculpture, painting, furniture—\"" ], [ "\"I understand you hold a mortgage on the best land on Lovenbroy,\"\n Retief said. \"Any connection?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... no. Of course not, ha ha.\"\n\n\n \"Who gets the tractors eventually?\"\n\n\n \"Retief, this is unwarranted interference!\"\n\n\n \"Who gets them?\"\n\n\n \"They happen to be going to Lovenbroy. But I scarcely see—\"\n\n\n \"And who's the friend you're helping out with an unauthorized\n transshipment of grant material?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... I've been working with a Mr. Gulver, a Bogan\n representative.\"\n\n\n \"And when will they be shipped?\"\n\n\n \"Why, they went out a week ago. They'll be half way there by now. But\n look here, Retief, this isn't what you're thinking!\"", "\"Thanks.\" Retief finished his glass, stood. \"I have to run, Hank,\" he\n said. \"Let me think this over. Maybe I can come up with something.\n Check with me day after tomorrow. And you'd better leave the bottles\n here. Cultural exhibits, you know.\"\nII\n\n\n As the council meeting broke up, Retief caught the eye of a colleague\n across the table.\n\n\n \"Mr. Whaffle, you mentioned a shipment going to a place called Croanie.\n What are they getting?\"\n\n\n Whaffle blinked. \"You're the fellow who's filling in for Magnan, over\n at MUDDLE,\" he said. \"Properly speaking, equipment grants are the\n sole concern of the Motorized Equipment Depot, Division of Loans and\n Exchanges.\" He pursed his lips. \"However, I suppose there's no harm in\n telling you. They'll be receiving heavy mining equipment.\"\n\n\n \"Drill rigs, that sort of thing?\"", "\"Well, the loan's due. The wine crop would put us in the clear. But\n we need harvest hands. Picking Bacchus grapes isn't a job you can\n turn over to machinery—and anyway we wouldn't if we could. Vintage\n season is the high point of living on Lovenbroy. Everybody joins in.\n First, there's the picking in the fields. Miles and miles of vineyards\n covering the mountain sides, and crowding the river banks, with gardens\n here and there. Big vines, eight feet high, loaded with fruit, and deep\n grass growing between. The wine-carriers keep on the run, bringing wine\n to the pickers. There's prizes for the biggest day's output, bets on\n who can fill the most baskets in an hour.... The sun's high and bright,", "\"Great. Thanks.\" It was half a minute before a thick-necked red-faced\n man in a tight hat walked in. He wore an old-fashioned suit, a drab\n shirt, shiny shoes with round toes and an ill-tempered expression.\n\"What is it you wish?\" he barked. \"I understood in my discussions with\n the other ... ah ... civilian there'd be no further need for these\n irritating conferences.\"\n\n\n \"I've just learned you're placing more students abroad, Mr. Gulver. How\n many this time?\"\n\n\n \"Two thousand.\"\n\n\n \"And where will they be going?\"\n\n\n \"Croanie. It's all in the application form I've handed in. Your job is\n to provide transportation.\"\n\n\n \"Will there be any other students embarking this season?\"", "\"We've got plenty of minerals on Lovenbroy,\" Arapoulous said,\n swallowing wine. \"But we don't plan to wreck the landscape mining 'em.\n We like to farm. About ten years back some neighbors of ours landed a\n force. They figured they knew better what to do with our minerals than\n we did. Wanted to strip-mine, smelt ore. We convinced 'em otherwise.\n But it took a year, and we lost a lot of men.\"\n\n\n \"That's too bad,\" Retief said. \"I'd say this one tastes more like roast\n beef and popcorn over a Riesling base.\"\n\n\n \"It put us in a bad spot,\" Arapoulous went on. \"We had to borrow\n money from a world called Croanie. Mortgaged our crops. Had to start\n exporting art work too. Plenty of buyers, but it's not the same when\n you're doing it for strangers.\"", "\"For the present. Miss Furkle, Mr. Magnan is vacationing. That leaves\n me with the question of two thousand young male students headed for\n a world with no classrooms for them ... a world in need of tractors.\n But the tractors are on their way to Croanie, a world under obligation\n to Boge. And Croanie holds a mortgage on the best grape acreage on\n Lovenbroy.\"\n\n\n \"Well!\" Miss Furkle snapped, small eyes glaring under unplucked brows.\n \"I hope you're not questioning Mr. Magnan's wisdom!\"\n\n\n \"About Mr. Magnan's wisdom there can be no question,\" Retief said. \"But\n never mind. I'd like you to look up an item for me. How many tractors\n will Croanie be getting under the MEDDLE program?\"\n\n\n \"Why, that's entirely MEDDLE business,\" Miss Furkle said. \"Mr. Magnan\n always—\"", "\"Academic details are the affair of the students and their professors,\"\n Magnan said. \"Our function is merely to bring them together. See\n that you don't antagonize the Bogan representative. This will\n be an excellent opportunity for you to practice your diplomatic\n restraint—not your strong point, I'm sure you'll agree.\"\n\n\n A buzzer sounded. Retief punched a button. \"What is it, Miss Furkle?\"\n\n\n \"That—bucolic person from Lovenbroy is here again.\" On the small desk\n screen, Miss Furkle's meaty features were compressed in disapproval.\n\n\n \"This fellow's a confounded pest. I'll leave him to you, Retief,\"\n Magnan said. \"Tell him something. Get rid of him. And remember: here\n at Corps HQ, all eyes are upon you.\"\n\n\n \"If I'd thought of that, I'd have worn my other suit,\" Retief said.", "Arapoulous's brown face appeared on the desk screen.\n\n\n \"How-do, Retief. Okay if I come up?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, Hank. I want to talk to you.\"\n\n\n In the office, Arapoulous took a chair. \"Sorry if I'm rushing you,\n Retief,\" he said. \"But have you got anything for me?\"\n\n\n Retief waved at the wine bottles. \"What do you know about Croanie?\"\n\n\n \"Croanie? Not much of a place. Mostly ocean. All right if you like\n fish, I guess. We import our seafood from there. Nice prawns in monsoon\n time. Over a foot long.\"\n\n\n \"You on good terms with them?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, I guess so. Course, they're pretty thick with Boge.\"\n\n\n \"So?\"", "\"Forty-two, Terry years,\" Arapoulous said. \"But this year it looks bad.\n We've got a bumper crop—and we're short-handed. If we don't get a big\n vintage, Croanie steps in. Lord knows what they'll do to the land. Then\n next vintage time, with them holding half our grape acreage—\"\n\n\n \"You hocked the vineyards?\"\n\n\n \"Yep. Pretty dumb, huh? But we figured twelve years was a long time.\"\n\n\n \"On the whole,\" Retief said, \"I think I prefer the black. But the red\n is hard to beat....\"\n\n\n \"What we figured was, maybe you Culture boys could help us out. A loan\n to see us through the vintage, enough to hire extra hands. Then we'd\n repay it in sculpture, painting, furniture—\"", "\"Then the wine-making. We still tramp out the vintage. That's mostly\n for the young folks but anybody's welcome. That's when things start to\n get loosened up. Matter of fact, pretty near half our young-uns are\n born after a vintage. All bets are off then. It keeps a fellow on his\n toes though. Ever tried to hold onto a gal wearing nothing but a layer\n of grape juice?\"\n\"Never did,\" Retief said. \"You say most of the children are born after\n a vintage. That would make them only twelve years old by the time—\"\n\n\n \"Oh, that's Lovenbroy years; they'd be eighteen, Terry reckoning.\"\n\n\n \"I was thinking you looked a little mature for twenty-eight,\" Retief\n said.", "\"Say, this business of alternating drinks is the real McCoy,\" Retief\n said. \"What's the problem? Croanie about to foreclose?\"", "\"I've seen some of your furniture,\" Retief said. \"Beautiful work.\"\n\n\n Arapoulous nodded. \"All local timbers too. Lots of metals in our soil\n and those sulphates give the woods some color, I'll tell you. Then\n comes the Monsoon. Rain—it comes down in sheets. But the sun's getting\n closer. Shines all the time. Ever seen it pouring rain in the sunshine?\n That's the music-writing season. Then summer. Summer's hot. We stay\n inside in the daytime and have beach parties all night. Lots of beach\n on Lovenbroy; we're mostly islands. That's the drama and symphony time.\n The theatres are set up on the sand, or anchored off-shore. You have\n the music and the surf and the bonfires and stars—we're close to the\n center of a globular cluster, you know....\"\n\n\n \"You say it's time now for the wine crop?\"", "\"Sounds very pleasant,\" Retief said. \"Where does the Libraries and\n Education Division come in?\"\n\n\n Arapoulous leaned forward. \"We go in pretty heavy for the arts. Folks\n can't spend all their time hybridizing plants. We've turned all the\n land area we've got into parks and farms. Course, we left some sizable\n forest areas for hunting and such. Lovenbroy's a nice place, Mr.\n Retief.\"\n\n\n \"It sounds like it, Mr. Arapoulous. Just what—\"\n\n\n \"Call me Hank. We've got long seasons back home. Five of 'em. Our\n year's about eighteen Terry months. Cold as hell in winter; eccentric\n orbit, you know. Blue-black sky, stars visible all day. We do mostly\n painting and sculpture in the winter. Then Spring; still plenty cold.\n Lots of skiing, bob-sledding, ice skating; and it's the season for\n woodworkers. Our furniture—\"", "\"Sorry,\" Karsh said. \"As soon as the baggage gets here, we're off.\" He\n hiccupped again. \"Can't travel without our baggage, y'know.\"\n\n\n \"Suit yourself,\" Retief said. \"Where's the baggage now?\"\n\n\n \"Coming in aboard a Croanie lighter.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe you'd like to arrange for a meal for the students here.\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" Karsh said. \"That's a good idea. Why don't you join us?\" Karsh\n winked. \"And bring a few beers.\"\n\n\n \"Not this time,\" Retief said. He watched the students, still emerging\n from Customs. \"They seem to be all boys,\" he commented. \"No female\n students?\"\n\n\n \"Maybe later,\" Karsh said. \"You know, after we see how the first bunch\n is received.\"", "\"One unit would require a good-sized plant to handle its output,\"\n Retief said. \"Now Croanie subsists on her fisheries. She has perhaps\n half a dozen pint-sized processing plants. Maybe, in a bind, they\n could handle the ore ten WV's could scrape up ... if Croanie had any\n ore. It doesn't. By the way, isn't a WV a poor choice as a mining\n outfit? I should think—\"\n\n\n \"See here, Retief! Why all this interest in a few surplus tractors?\n And in any event, what business is it of yours how we plan to use the\n equipment? That's an internal affair of my government. Mr. Whaffle—\"\n\n\n \"I'm not Mr. Whaffle. What are you going to do with the other four\n hundred and ninety tractors?\"\n\n\n \"I understood the grant was to be with no strings attached!\"", "Miss Furkle's chins quivered. \"Well! If you feel I'm incompetent—\"\n\n\n \"Just questioning the possibility of a mistake, Miss Furkle. Five\n hundred tractors is a lot of equipment.\"\n\n\n \"Was there anything further?\" Miss Furkle inquired frigidly.\n\n\n \"I sincerely hope not,\" Retief said.\nIII\n\n\n Leaning back in Magnan's padded chair with power swivel and\n hip-u-matic concontour, Retief leafed through a folder labelled \"CERP\n 7-602-Ba; CROANIE (general).\" He paused at a page headed Industry.\n\n\n Still reading, he opened the desk drawer, took out the two bottles of\n Bacchus wine and two glasses. He poured an inch of wine into each and\n sipped the black wine meditatively.", "It would be a pity, he reflected, if anything should interfere with the\n production of such vintages....\n\n\n Half an hour later he laid the folder aside, keyed the phone and put\n through a call to the Croanie Legation. He asked for the Commercial\n Attache.\n\n\n \"Retief here, Corps HQ,\" he said airily. \"About the MEDDLE shipment,\n the tractors. I'm wondering if there's been a slip up. My records show\n we're shipping five hundred units....\"\n\n\n \"That's correct. Five hundred.\"\n\n\n Retief waited.\n\n\n \"Ah ... are you there, Retief?\"\n\n\n \"I'm still here. And I'm still wondering about the five hundred\n tractors.\"\n\n\n \"It's perfectly in order. I thought it was all settled. Mr. Whaffle—\"", "\"You work for this Culture bunch, do you? Funny. I thought they were\n all ribbon-counter boys. Never mind. I'm Hank Arapoulous. I'm a farmer.\n What I wanted to see you about was—\" He shifted in his chair. \"Well,\n out on Lovenbroy we've got a serious problem. The wine crop is just\n about ready. We start picking in another two, three months. Now I don't\n know if you're familiar with the Bacchus vines we grow...?\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Retief said. \"Have a cigar?\" He pushed a box across the desk.\n Arapoulous took one. \"Bacchus vines are an unusual crop,\" he said,\n puffing the cigar alight. \"Only mature every twelve years. In between,\n the vines don't need a lot of attention, so our time's mostly our own.\n We like to farm, though. Spend a lot of time developing new forms.\n Apples the size of a melon—and sweet—\"", "Magnan snorted and passed from view. Retief punched Miss Furkle's\n button.\n\n\n \"Send the bucolic person in.\"\nA tall broad man with bronze skin and gray hair, wearing tight trousers\n of heavy cloth, a loose shirt open at the neck and a short jacket,\n stepped into the room. He had a bundle under his arm. He paused at\n sight of Retief, looked him over momentarily, then advanced and held\n out his hand. Retief took it. For a moment the two big men stood, face\n to face. The newcomer's jaw muscles knotted. Then he winced.\n\n\n Retief dropped his hand and motioned to a chair.\n\n\n \"That's nice knuckle work, mister,\" the stranger said, massaging his\n hand. \"First time anybody ever did that to me. My fault though. I\n started it, I guess.\" He grinned and sat down.\n\n\n \"What can I do for you?\" Retief said.", "\"I know it's bad manners to ask questions. It's an old diplomatic\n tradition that any time you can get anybody to accept anything as a\n gift, you've scored points in the game. But if Croanie has some scheme\n cooking—\"\n\"Nothing like that, Retief. It's a mere business transaction.\"\n\n\n \"What kind of business do you do with a Bolo WV? With or without a\n blade attached, it's what's known as a continental siege unit.\"\n\n\n \"Great Heavens, Retief! Don't jump to conclusions! Would you have us\n branded as warmongers? Frankly—is this a closed line?\"\n\n\n \"Certainly. You may speak freely.\"\n\n\n \"The tractors are for transshipment. We've gotten ourselves into a\n difficult situation, balance-of-payments-wise. This is an accommodation\n to a group with which we have rather strong business ties.\"" ], [ "\"Thanks.\" Retief finished his glass, stood. \"I have to run, Hank,\" he\n said. \"Let me think this over. Maybe I can come up with something.\n Check with me day after tomorrow. And you'd better leave the bottles\n here. Cultural exhibits, you know.\"\nII\n\n\n As the council meeting broke up, Retief caught the eye of a colleague\n across the table.\n\n\n \"Mr. Whaffle, you mentioned a shipment going to a place called Croanie.\n What are they getting?\"\n\n\n Whaffle blinked. \"You're the fellow who's filling in for Magnan, over\n at MUDDLE,\" he said. \"Properly speaking, equipment grants are the\n sole concern of the Motorized Equipment Depot, Division of Loans and\n Exchanges.\" He pursed his lips. \"However, I suppose there's no harm in\n telling you. They'll be receiving heavy mining equipment.\"\n\n\n \"Drill rigs, that sort of thing?\"", "\"I understand you hold a mortgage on the best land on Lovenbroy,\"\n Retief said. \"Any connection?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... no. Of course not, ha ha.\"\n\n\n \"Who gets the tractors eventually?\"\n\n\n \"Retief, this is unwarranted interference!\"\n\n\n \"Who gets them?\"\n\n\n \"They happen to be going to Lovenbroy. But I scarcely see—\"\n\n\n \"And who's the friend you're helping out with an unauthorized\n transshipment of grant material?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... I've been working with a Mr. Gulver, a Bogan\n representative.\"\n\n\n \"And when will they be shipped?\"\n\n\n \"Why, they went out a week ago. They'll be half way there by now. But\n look here, Retief, this isn't what you're thinking!\"", "Arapoulous's brown face appeared on the desk screen.\n\n\n \"How-do, Retief. Okay if I come up?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, Hank. I want to talk to you.\"\n\n\n In the office, Arapoulous took a chair. \"Sorry if I'm rushing you,\n Retief,\" he said. \"But have you got anything for me?\"\n\n\n Retief waved at the wine bottles. \"What do you know about Croanie?\"\n\n\n \"Croanie? Not much of a place. Mostly ocean. All right if you like\n fish, I guess. We import our seafood from there. Nice prawns in monsoon\n time. Over a foot long.\"\n\n\n \"You on good terms with them?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, I guess so. Course, they're pretty thick with Boge.\"\n\n\n \"So?\"", "\"You said it.\" He gulped half his beer. \"My name's Karsh. Mr. Karsh.\n Yep, Mr. Karsh. Boy, this is a drag, sitting around this place\n waiting....\"\n\n\n \"You meeting somebody?\"\n\n\n \"Yeah. Bunch of babies. Kids. How they expect—Never mind. Have one on\n me.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks. You a Scoutmaster?\"\n\n\n \"I'll tell you what I am. I'm a cradle-robber. You know—\" he turned\n to Retief—\"not one of those kids is over eighteen.\" He hiccupped.\n \"Students, you know. Never saw a student with a beard, did you?\"\n\n\n \"Lots of times. You're meeting the students, are you?\"\n\n\n The young fellow blinked at Retief. \"Oh, you know about it, huh?\"", "\"You work for this Culture bunch, do you? Funny. I thought they were\n all ribbon-counter boys. Never mind. I'm Hank Arapoulous. I'm a farmer.\n What I wanted to see you about was—\" He shifted in his chair. \"Well,\n out on Lovenbroy we've got a serious problem. The wine crop is just\n about ready. We start picking in another two, three months. Now I don't\n know if you're familiar with the Bacchus vines we grow...?\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Retief said. \"Have a cigar?\" He pushed a box across the desk.\n Arapoulous took one. \"Bacchus vines are an unusual crop,\" he said,\n puffing the cigar alight. \"Only mature every twelve years. In between,\n the vines don't need a lot of attention, so our time's mostly our own.\n We like to farm, though. Spend a lot of time developing new forms.\n Apples the size of a melon—and sweet—\"", "\"How do you know what I'm thinking? I don't know myself.\" Retief rang\n off, buzzed the secretary.\n\n\n \"Miss Furkle, I'd like to be notified immediately of any new\n applications that might come in from the Bogan Consulate for placement\n of students.\"\n\n\n \"Well, it happens, by coincidence, that I have an application here now.\n Mr. Gulver of the Consulate brought it in.\"\n\n\n \"Is Mr. Gulver in the office? I'd like to see him.\"\n\n\n \"I'll ask him if he has time.\"", "\"This isn't\ndrinking\n. It's just wine.\" Arapoulous pulled the wire\n retainer loose, thumbed the cork. It rose slowly, then popped in the\n air. Arapoulous caught it. Aromatic fumes wafted from the bottle.\n \"Besides, my feelings would be hurt if you didn't join me.\" He winked.\n\n\n Retief took two thin-walled glasses from a table beside the desk. \"Come\n to think of it, we also have to be careful about violating quaint\n native customs.\"\n\n\n Arapoulous filled the glasses. Retief picked one up, sniffed the deep\n rust-colored fluid, tasted it, then took a healthy swallow. He looked\n at Arapoulous thoughtfully.\n\n\n \"Hmmm. It tastes like salted pecans, with an undercurrent of crusted\n port.\"", "\"Academic details are the affair of the students and their professors,\"\n Magnan said. \"Our function is merely to bring them together. See\n that you don't antagonize the Bogan representative. This will\n be an excellent opportunity for you to practice your diplomatic\n restraint—not your strong point, I'm sure you'll agree.\"\n\n\n A buzzer sounded. Retief punched a button. \"What is it, Miss Furkle?\"\n\n\n \"That—bucolic person from Lovenbroy is here again.\" On the small desk\n screen, Miss Furkle's meaty features were compressed in disapproval.\n\n\n \"This fellow's a confounded pest. I'll leave him to you, Retief,\"\n Magnan said. \"Tell him something. Get rid of him. And remember: here\n at Corps HQ, all eyes are upon you.\"\n\n\n \"If I'd thought of that, I'd have worn my other suit,\" Retief said.", "It would be a pity, he reflected, if anything should interfere with the\n production of such vintages....\n\n\n Half an hour later he laid the folder aside, keyed the phone and put\n through a call to the Croanie Legation. He asked for the Commercial\n Attache.\n\n\n \"Retief here, Corps HQ,\" he said airily. \"About the MEDDLE shipment,\n the tractors. I'm wondering if there's been a slip up. My records show\n we're shipping five hundred units....\"\n\n\n \"That's correct. Five hundred.\"\n\n\n Retief waited.\n\n\n \"Ah ... are you there, Retief?\"\n\n\n \"I'm still here. And I'm still wondering about the five hundred\n tractors.\"\n\n\n \"It's perfectly in order. I thought it was all settled. Mr. Whaffle—\"", "Magnan snorted and passed from view. Retief punched Miss Furkle's\n button.\n\n\n \"Send the bucolic person in.\"\nA tall broad man with bronze skin and gray hair, wearing tight trousers\n of heavy cloth, a loose shirt open at the neck and a short jacket,\n stepped into the room. He had a bundle under his arm. He paused at\n sight of Retief, looked him over momentarily, then advanced and held\n out his hand. Retief took it. For a moment the two big men stood, face\n to face. The newcomer's jaw muscles knotted. Then he winced.\n\n\n Retief dropped his hand and motioned to a chair.\n\n\n \"That's nice knuckle work, mister,\" the stranger said, massaging his\n hand. \"First time anybody ever did that to me. My fault though. I\n started it, I guess.\" He grinned and sat down.\n\n\n \"What can I do for you?\" Retief said.", "\"Don't try to describe it, Mr. Retief,\" Arapoulous said. He took a\n mouthful of wine, swished it around his teeth, swallowed. \"It's Bacchus\n wine, that's all. Nothing like it in the Galaxy.\" He pushed the second\n bottle toward Retief. \"The custom back home is to alternate red wine\n and black.\"\nRetief put aside his cigar, pulled the wires loose, nudged the cork,\n caught it as it popped up.\n\n\n \"Bad luck if you miss the cork,\" Arapoulous said, nodding. \"You\n probably never heard about the trouble we had on Lovenbroy a few years\n back?\"\n\n\n \"Can't say that I did, Hank.\" Retief poured the black wine into two\n fresh glasses. \"Here's to the harvest.\"", "Retief gave instructions, then rang off and turned to Arapoulous.\n\n\n \"As soon as I get off a couple of TWX's, I think we'd better get down\n to the port, Hank. I think I'd like to see the students off personally.\"", "Miss Furkle's chins quivered. \"Well! If you feel I'm incompetent—\"\n\n\n \"Just questioning the possibility of a mistake, Miss Furkle. Five\n hundred tractors is a lot of equipment.\"\n\n\n \"Was there anything further?\" Miss Furkle inquired frigidly.\n\n\n \"I sincerely hope not,\" Retief said.\nIII\n\n\n Leaning back in Magnan's padded chair with power swivel and\n hip-u-matic concontour, Retief leafed through a folder labelled \"CERP\n 7-602-Ba; CROANIE (general).\" He paused at a page headed Industry.\n\n\n Still reading, he opened the desk drawer, took out the two bottles of\n Bacchus wine and two glasses. He poured an inch of wine into each and\n sipped the black wine meditatively.", "\"Sorry,\" Karsh said. \"As soon as the baggage gets here, we're off.\" He\n hiccupped again. \"Can't travel without our baggage, y'know.\"\n\n\n \"Suit yourself,\" Retief said. \"Where's the baggage now?\"\n\n\n \"Coming in aboard a Croanie lighter.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe you'd like to arrange for a meal for the students here.\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" Karsh said. \"That's a good idea. Why don't you join us?\" Karsh\n winked. \"And bring a few beers.\"\n\n\n \"Not this time,\" Retief said. He watched the students, still emerging\n from Customs. \"They seem to be all boys,\" he commented. \"No female\n students?\"\n\n\n \"Maybe later,\" Karsh said. \"You know, after we see how the first bunch\n is received.\"", "\"Didn't I tell you? Boge was the bunch that tried to take us over here\n a dozen years back. They'd've made it too, if they hadn't had a lot of\n bad luck. Their armor went in the drink, and without armor they're easy\n game.\"\n\n\n Miss Furkle buzzed. \"I have your lists,\" she said shortly.\n\n\n \"Bring them in, please.\"\nThe secretary placed the papers on the desk. Arapoulous caught her eye\n and grinned. She sniffed and marched from the room.\n\n\n \"What that gal needs is a slippery time in the grape mash,\" Arapoulous\n observed. Retief thumbed through the papers, pausing to read from time\n to time. He finished and looked at Arapoulous.\n\n\n \"How many men do you need for the harvest, Hank?\" Retief inquired.\n\n\n Arapoulous sniffed his wine glass and looked thoughtful.", "\"Say, this business of alternating drinks is the real McCoy,\" Retief\n said. \"What's the problem? Croanie about to foreclose?\"", "\"I know it's bad manners to ask questions. It's an old diplomatic\n tradition that any time you can get anybody to accept anything as a\n gift, you've scored points in the game. But if Croanie has some scheme\n cooking—\"\n\"Nothing like that, Retief. It's a mere business transaction.\"\n\n\n \"What kind of business do you do with a Bolo WV? With or without a\n blade attached, it's what's known as a continental siege unit.\"\n\n\n \"Great Heavens, Retief! Don't jump to conclusions! Would you have us\n branded as warmongers? Frankly—is this a closed line?\"\n\n\n \"Certainly. You may speak freely.\"\n\n\n \"The tractors are for transshipment. We've gotten ourselves into a\n difficult situation, balance-of-payments-wise. This is an accommodation\n to a group with which we have rather strong business ties.\"", "\"Listen, Jim,\" Retief said. \"I want you to go over to the warehouse and\n take a look at that baggage for me.\"\n\n\n Retief waited while the dispatch clerk carried out the errand. The\n level in the two bottles had gone down an inch when Jim returned to\n the phone.\n\n\n \"Hey, I took a look at that baggage, Retief. Something funny going on.\n Guns. 2mm needlers, Mark XII hand blasters, power pistols—\"\n\n\n \"It's okay, Jim. Nothing to worry about. Just a mix-up. Now, Jim,\n I'm going to ask you to do something more for me. I'm covering for a\n friend. It seems he slipped up. I wouldn't want word to get out, you\n understand. I'll send along a written change order in the morning that\n will cover you officially. Meanwhile, here's what I want you to do....\"", "\"For the present. Miss Furkle, Mr. Magnan is vacationing. That leaves\n me with the question of two thousand young male students headed for\n a world with no classrooms for them ... a world in need of tractors.\n But the tractors are on their way to Croanie, a world under obligation\n to Boge. And Croanie holds a mortgage on the best grape acreage on\n Lovenbroy.\"\n\n\n \"Well!\" Miss Furkle snapped, small eyes glaring under unplucked brows.\n \"I hope you're not questioning Mr. Magnan's wisdom!\"\n\n\n \"About Mr. Magnan's wisdom there can be no question,\" Retief said. \"But\n never mind. I'd like you to look up an item for me. How many tractors\n will Croanie be getting under the MEDDLE program?\"\n\n\n \"Why, that's entirely MEDDLE business,\" Miss Furkle said. \"Mr. Magnan\n always—\"", "\"A hundred would help,\" he said. \"A thousand would be better. Cheers.\"\n\n\n \"What would you say to two thousand?\"\n\n\n \"Two thousand? Retief, you're not fooling?\"\n\n\n \"I hope not.\" He picked up the phone, called the Port Authority, asked\n for the dispatch clerk.\n\n\n \"Hello, Jim. Say, I have a favor to ask of you. You know that\n contingent of Bogan students. They're traveling aboard the two CDT\n transports. I'm interested in the baggage that goes with the students.\n Has it arrived yet? Okay, I'll wait.\"\n\n\n Jim came back to the phone. \"Yeah, Retief, it's here. Just arrived.\n But there's a funny thing. It's not consigned to d'Land. It's ticketed\n clear through to Lovenbroy.\"" ], [ "\"Great. Thanks.\" It was half a minute before a thick-necked red-faced\n man in a tight hat walked in. He wore an old-fashioned suit, a drab\n shirt, shiny shoes with round toes and an ill-tempered expression.\n\"What is it you wish?\" he barked. \"I understood in my discussions with\n the other ... ah ... civilian there'd be no further need for these\n irritating conferences.\"\n\n\n \"I've just learned you're placing more students abroad, Mr. Gulver. How\n many this time?\"\n\n\n \"Two thousand.\"\n\n\n \"And where will they be going?\"\n\n\n \"Croanie. It's all in the application form I've handed in. Your job is\n to provide transportation.\"\n\n\n \"Will there be any other students embarking this season?\"", "\"Two thousand students? Hah! Two\nhundred\nstudents would overtax the\n facilities of the college.\"\n\n\n \"I wonder if the Bogans know that?\"\n\n\n \"The Bogans? Why, most of d'Land's difficulties are due to the unwise\n trade agreement she entered into with Boge. Two thousand students\n indeed!\" He snorted and walked away.\nRetief stopped by the office to pick up a short cape, then rode the\n elevator to the roof of the 230-story Corps HQ building and hailed a\n cab to the port. The Bogan students had arrived early. Retief saw them\n lined up on the ramp waiting to go through customs. It would be half\n an hour before they were cleared through. He turned into the bar and\n ordered a beer.\n\n\n A tall young fellow on the next stool raised his glass.\n\n\n \"Happy days,\" he said.\n\n\n \"And nights to match.\"", "\"I see they're sending two thousand students to d'Land,\" Retief said,\n glancing at the Memo for Record. \"That's a sizable sublimation.\"\n\n\n Magnan nodded. \"The Bogans have launched no less than four military\n campaigns in the last two decades. They're known as the Hoodlums of\n the Nicodemean Cluster. Now, perhaps, we shall see them breaking that\n precedent and entering into the cultural life of the Galaxy.\"\n\n\n \"Breaking and entering,\" Retief said. \"You may have something there.\n But I'm wondering what they'll study on d'Land. That's an industrial\n world of the poor but honest variety.\"", "\"Heck, no,\" he said. \"Say, uh, Mr. Karsh, are we gonna get to go to\n town? We fellas were thinking—\"\n\n\n \"You were, hah? You act like a bunch of school kids! I mean ... no! Now\n line up!\"\n\n\n \"We have quarters ready for the students,\" Retief said. \"If you'd like\n to bring them around to the west side, I have a couple of copters laid\n on.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" said Karsh. \"They'll stay here until take-off time. Can't\n have the little dears wandering around loose. Might get ideas about\n going over the hill.\" He hiccupped. \"I mean they might play hookey.\"\n\n\n \"We've scheduled your re-embarkation for noon tomorrow. That's a long\n wait. MUDDLE's arranged theater tickets and a dinner.\"", "\"Why ... perhaps. That's Boge's business.\" Gulver looked at Retief with\n pursed lips. \"As a matter of fact, we had in mind dispatching another\n two thousand to Featherweight.\"\n\n\n \"Another under-populated world—and in the same cluster, I believe,\"\n Retief said. \"Your people must be unusually interested in that region\n of space.\"\n\n\n \"If that's all you wanted to know, I'll be on my way. I have matters of\n importance to see to.\"\n\n\n After Gulver left, Retief called Miss Furkle in. \"I'd like to have a\n break-out of all the student movements that have been planned under the\n present program,\" he said. \"And see if you can get a summary of what\n MEDDLE has been shipping lately.\"", "Retief gave instructions, then rang off and turned to Arapoulous.\n\n\n \"As soon as I get off a couple of TWX's, I think we'd better get down\n to the port, Hank. I think I'd like to see the students off personally.\"", "Back at the MUDDLE office, Retief buzzed Miss Furkle.\n\n\n \"Do you know the name of the institution these Bogan students are bound\n for?\"\n\n\n \"Why, the University at d'Land, of course.\"\n\n\n \"Would that be the Technical College?\"\n\n\n Miss Furkle's mouth puckered. \"I'm sure I've never pried into these\n details.\"\n\n\n \"Where does doing your job stop and prying begin, Miss Furkle?\" Retief\n said. \"Personally, I'm curious as to just what it is these students are\n travelling so far to study—at Corps expense.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Magnan never—\"", "\"Sorry,\" Karsh said. \"As soon as the baggage gets here, we're off.\" He\n hiccupped again. \"Can't travel without our baggage, y'know.\"\n\n\n \"Suit yourself,\" Retief said. \"Where's the baggage now?\"\n\n\n \"Coming in aboard a Croanie lighter.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe you'd like to arrange for a meal for the students here.\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" Karsh said. \"That's a good idea. Why don't you join us?\" Karsh\n winked. \"And bring a few beers.\"\n\n\n \"Not this time,\" Retief said. He watched the students, still emerging\n from Customs. \"They seem to be all boys,\" he commented. \"No female\n students?\"\n\n\n \"Maybe later,\" Karsh said. \"You know, after we see how the first bunch\n is received.\"", "\"A hundred would help,\" he said. \"A thousand would be better. Cheers.\"\n\n\n \"What would you say to two thousand?\"\n\n\n \"Two thousand? Retief, you're not fooling?\"\n\n\n \"I hope not.\" He picked up the phone, called the Port Authority, asked\n for the dispatch clerk.\n\n\n \"Hello, Jim. Say, I have a favor to ask of you. You know that\n contingent of Bogan students. They're traveling aboard the two CDT\n transports. I'm interested in the baggage that goes with the students.\n Has it arrived yet? Okay, I'll wait.\"\n\n\n Jim came back to the phone. \"Yeah, Retief, it's here. Just arrived.\n But there's a funny thing. It's not consigned to d'Land. It's ticketed\n clear through to Lovenbroy.\"", "\"Sorry, Hank. All we do here is work out itineraries for traveling\n side-shows, that kind of thing. Now, if you needed a troop of Groaci\n nose-flute players—\"\n\n\n \"Can they pick grapes?\"\n\n\n \"Nope. Anyway, they can't stand the daylight. Have you talked this over\n with the Labor Office?\"\n\n\n \"Sure did. They said they'd fix us up with all the electronics\n specialists and computer programmers we wanted—but no field hands.\n Said it was what they classified as menial drudgery; you'd have thought\n I was trying to buy slaves.\"\n\n\n The buzzer sounded. Miss Furkle's features appeared on the desk screen.\n\n\n \"You're due at the Intergroup Council in five minutes,\" she said. \"Then\n afterwards, there are the Bogan students to meet.\"", "\"SCROUNGE was late on the scene,\" Whaffle said. \"First come, first\n served. That's our policy at MEDDLE. Good day, gentlemen.\" He strode\n off, briefcase under his arm.\n\n\n \"That's the trouble with peaceful worlds,\" the SCROUNGE committeeman\n said. \"Boge is a troublemaker, so every agency in the Corps is out\n to pacify her. While my chance to make a record—that is, assist\n peace-loving d'Land—comes to naught.\" He shook his head.\n\n\n \"What kind of university do they have on d'Land?\" asked Retief. \"We're\n sending them two thousand exchange students. It must be quite an\n institution.\"\n\n\n \"University? D'Land has one under-endowed technical college.\"\n\n\n \"Will all the exchange students be studying at the Technical College?\"", "\"I represent MUDDLE.\"\n\n\n Karsh finished his beer, ordered another. \"I came on ahead. Sort of\n an advance guard for the kids. I trained 'em myself. Treated it like\n a game, but they can handle a CSU. Don't know how they'll act under\n pressure. If I had my old platoon—\"\n\n\n He looked at his beer glass, pushed it back. \"Had enough,\" he said. \"So\n long, friend. Or are you coming along?\"\n\n\n Retief nodded. \"Might as well.\"\nAt the exit to the Customs enclosure, Retief watched as the first of\n the Bogan students came through, caught sight of Karsh and snapped to\n attention, his chest out.\n\n\n \"Drop that, mister,\" Karsh snapped. \"Is that any way for a student to\n act?\"\n\n\n The youth, a round-faced lad with broad shoulders, grinned.", "\"For the present. Miss Furkle, Mr. Magnan is vacationing. That leaves\n me with the question of two thousand young male students headed for\n a world with no classrooms for them ... a world in need of tractors.\n But the tractors are on their way to Croanie, a world under obligation\n to Boge. And Croanie holds a mortgage on the best grape acreage on\n Lovenbroy.\"\n\n\n \"Well!\" Miss Furkle snapped, small eyes glaring under unplucked brows.\n \"I hope you're not questioning Mr. Magnan's wisdom!\"\n\n\n \"About Mr. Magnan's wisdom there can be no question,\" Retief said. \"But\n never mind. I'd like you to look up an item for me. How many tractors\n will Croanie be getting under the MEDDLE program?\"\n\n\n \"Why, that's entirely MEDDLE business,\" Miss Furkle said. \"Mr. Magnan\n always—\"", "\"Academic details are the affair of the students and their professors,\"\n Magnan said. \"Our function is merely to bring them together. See\n that you don't antagonize the Bogan representative. This will\n be an excellent opportunity for you to practice your diplomatic\n restraint—not your strong point, I'm sure you'll agree.\"\n\n\n A buzzer sounded. Retief punched a button. \"What is it, Miss Furkle?\"\n\n\n \"That—bucolic person from Lovenbroy is here again.\" On the small desk\n screen, Miss Furkle's meaty features were compressed in disapproval.\n\n\n \"This fellow's a confounded pest. I'll leave him to you, Retief,\"\n Magnan said. \"Tell him something. Get rid of him. And remember: here\n at Corps HQ, all eyes are upon you.\"\n\n\n \"If I'd thought of that, I'd have worn my other suit,\" Retief said.", "\"You said it.\" He gulped half his beer. \"My name's Karsh. Mr. Karsh.\n Yep, Mr. Karsh. Boy, this is a drag, sitting around this place\n waiting....\"\n\n\n \"You meeting somebody?\"\n\n\n \"Yeah. Bunch of babies. Kids. How they expect—Never mind. Have one on\n me.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks. You a Scoutmaster?\"\n\n\n \"I'll tell you what I am. I'm a cradle-robber. You know—\" he turned\n to Retief—\"not one of those kids is over eighteen.\" He hiccupped.\n \"Students, you know. Never saw a student with a beard, did you?\"\n\n\n \"Lots of times. You're meeting the students, are you?\"\n\n\n The young fellow blinked at Retief. \"Oh, you know about it, huh?\"", "\"Thanks.\" Retief finished his glass, stood. \"I have to run, Hank,\" he\n said. \"Let me think this over. Maybe I can come up with something.\n Check with me day after tomorrow. And you'd better leave the bottles\n here. Cultural exhibits, you know.\"\nII\n\n\n As the council meeting broke up, Retief caught the eye of a colleague\n across the table.\n\n\n \"Mr. Whaffle, you mentioned a shipment going to a place called Croanie.\n What are they getting?\"\n\n\n Whaffle blinked. \"You're the fellow who's filling in for Magnan, over\n at MUDDLE,\" he said. \"Properly speaking, equipment grants are the\n sole concern of the Motorized Equipment Depot, Division of Loans and\n Exchanges.\" He pursed his lips. \"However, I suppose there's no harm in\n telling you. They'll be receiving heavy mining equipment.\"\n\n\n \"Drill rigs, that sort of thing?\"", "\"How do you know what I'm thinking? I don't know myself.\" Retief rang\n off, buzzed the secretary.\n\n\n \"Miss Furkle, I'd like to be notified immediately of any new\n applications that might come in from the Bogan Consulate for placement\n of students.\"\n\n\n \"Well, it happens, by coincidence, that I have an application here now.\n Mr. Gulver of the Consulate brought it in.\"\n\n\n \"Is Mr. Gulver in the office? I'd like to see him.\"\n\n\n \"I'll ask him if he has time.\"", "\"Didn't I tell you? Boge was the bunch that tried to take us over here\n a dozen years back. They'd've made it too, if they hadn't had a lot of\n bad luck. Their armor went in the drink, and without armor they're easy\n game.\"\n\n\n Miss Furkle buzzed. \"I have your lists,\" she said shortly.\n\n\n \"Bring them in, please.\"\nThe secretary placed the papers on the desk. Arapoulous caught her eye\n and grinned. She sniffed and marched from the room.\n\n\n \"What that gal needs is a slippery time in the grape mash,\" Arapoulous\n observed. Retief thumbed through the papers, pausing to read from time\n to time. He finished and looked at Arapoulous.\n\n\n \"How many men do you need for the harvest, Hank?\" Retief inquired.\n\n\n Arapoulous sniffed his wine glass and looked thoughtful.", "\"Sounds very pleasant,\" Retief said. \"Where does the Libraries and\n Education Division come in?\"\n\n\n Arapoulous leaned forward. \"We go in pretty heavy for the arts. Folks\n can't spend all their time hybridizing plants. We've turned all the\n land area we've got into parks and farms. Course, we left some sizable\n forest areas for hunting and such. Lovenbroy's a nice place, Mr.\n Retief.\"\n\n\n \"It sounds like it, Mr. Arapoulous. Just what—\"\n\n\n \"Call me Hank. We've got long seasons back home. Five of 'em. Our\n year's about eighteen Terry months. Cold as hell in winter; eccentric\n orbit, you know. Blue-black sky, stars visible all day. We do mostly\n painting and sculpture in the winter. Then Spring; still plenty cold.\n Lots of skiing, bob-sledding, ice skating; and it's the season for\n woodworkers. Our furniture—\"", "\"I understand you hold a mortgage on the best land on Lovenbroy,\"\n Retief said. \"Any connection?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... no. Of course not, ha ha.\"\n\n\n \"Who gets the tractors eventually?\"\n\n\n \"Retief, this is unwarranted interference!\"\n\n\n \"Who gets them?\"\n\n\n \"They happen to be going to Lovenbroy. But I scarcely see—\"\n\n\n \"And who's the friend you're helping out with an unauthorized\n transshipment of grant material?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... I've been working with a Mr. Gulver, a Bogan\n representative.\"\n\n\n \"And when will they be shipped?\"\n\n\n \"Why, they went out a week ago. They'll be half way there by now. But\n look here, Retief, this isn't what you're thinking!\"" ], [ "\"We've got plenty of minerals on Lovenbroy,\" Arapoulous said,\n swallowing wine. \"But we don't plan to wreck the landscape mining 'em.\n We like to farm. About ten years back some neighbors of ours landed a\n force. They figured they knew better what to do with our minerals than\n we did. Wanted to strip-mine, smelt ore. We convinced 'em otherwise.\n But it took a year, and we lost a lot of men.\"\n\n\n \"That's too bad,\" Retief said. \"I'd say this one tastes more like roast\n beef and popcorn over a Riesling base.\"\n\n\n \"It put us in a bad spot,\" Arapoulous went on. \"We had to borrow\n money from a world called Croanie. Mortgaged our crops. Had to start\n exporting art work too. Plenty of buyers, but it's not the same when\n you're doing it for strangers.\"", "\"I understand you hold a mortgage on the best land on Lovenbroy,\"\n Retief said. \"Any connection?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... no. Of course not, ha ha.\"\n\n\n \"Who gets the tractors eventually?\"\n\n\n \"Retief, this is unwarranted interference!\"\n\n\n \"Who gets them?\"\n\n\n \"They happen to be going to Lovenbroy. But I scarcely see—\"\n\n\n \"And who's the friend you're helping out with an unauthorized\n transshipment of grant material?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... I've been working with a Mr. Gulver, a Bogan\n representative.\"\n\n\n \"And when will they be shipped?\"\n\n\n \"Why, they went out a week ago. They'll be half way there by now. But\n look here, Retief, this isn't what you're thinking!\"", "\"Thanks.\" Retief finished his glass, stood. \"I have to run, Hank,\" he\n said. \"Let me think this over. Maybe I can come up with something.\n Check with me day after tomorrow. And you'd better leave the bottles\n here. Cultural exhibits, you know.\"\nII\n\n\n As the council meeting broke up, Retief caught the eye of a colleague\n across the table.\n\n\n \"Mr. Whaffle, you mentioned a shipment going to a place called Croanie.\n What are they getting?\"\n\n\n Whaffle blinked. \"You're the fellow who's filling in for Magnan, over\n at MUDDLE,\" he said. \"Properly speaking, equipment grants are the\n sole concern of the Motorized Equipment Depot, Division of Loans and\n Exchanges.\" He pursed his lips. \"However, I suppose there's no harm in\n telling you. They'll be receiving heavy mining equipment.\"\n\n\n \"Drill rigs, that sort of thing?\"", "\"Well, the loan's due. The wine crop would put us in the clear. But\n we need harvest hands. Picking Bacchus grapes isn't a job you can\n turn over to machinery—and anyway we wouldn't if we could. Vintage\n season is the high point of living on Lovenbroy. Everybody joins in.\n First, there's the picking in the fields. Miles and miles of vineyards\n covering the mountain sides, and crowding the river banks, with gardens\n here and there. Big vines, eight feet high, loaded with fruit, and deep\n grass growing between. The wine-carriers keep on the run, bringing wine\n to the pickers. There's prizes for the biggest day's output, bets on\n who can fill the most baskets in an hour.... The sun's high and bright,", "\"One unit would require a good-sized plant to handle its output,\"\n Retief said. \"Now Croanie subsists on her fisheries. She has perhaps\n half a dozen pint-sized processing plants. Maybe, in a bind, they\n could handle the ore ten WV's could scrape up ... if Croanie had any\n ore. It doesn't. By the way, isn't a WV a poor choice as a mining\n outfit? I should think—\"\n\n\n \"See here, Retief! Why all this interest in a few surplus tractors?\n And in any event, what business is it of yours how we plan to use the\n equipment? That's an internal affair of my government. Mr. Whaffle—\"\n\n\n \"I'm not Mr. Whaffle. What are you going to do with the other four\n hundred and ninety tractors?\"\n\n\n \"I understood the grant was to be with no strings attached!\"", "\"Strip mining gear.\" Whaffle took a slip of paper from a breast pocket,\n blinked at it. \"Bolo Model WV/1 tractors, to be specific. Why is MUDDLE\n interested in MEDDLE's activities?\"\n\n\n \"Forgive my curiosity, Mr. Whaffle. It's just that Croanie cropped up\n earlier today. It seems she holds a mortgage on some vineyards over\n on—\"\n\n\n \"That's not MEDDLE's affair, sir,\" Whaffle cut in. \"I have sufficient\n problems as Chief of MEDDLE without probing into MUDDLE'S business.\"\n\n\n \"Speaking of tractors,\" another man put in, \"we over at the Special\n Committee for Rehabilitation and Overhaul of Under-developed Nations'\n General Economies have been trying for months to get a request for\n mining equipment for d'Land through MEDDLE—\"", "\"Sounds very pleasant,\" Retief said. \"Where does the Libraries and\n Education Division come in?\"\n\n\n Arapoulous leaned forward. \"We go in pretty heavy for the arts. Folks\n can't spend all their time hybridizing plants. We've turned all the\n land area we've got into parks and farms. Course, we left some sizable\n forest areas for hunting and such. Lovenbroy's a nice place, Mr.\n Retief.\"\n\n\n \"It sounds like it, Mr. Arapoulous. Just what—\"\n\n\n \"Call me Hank. We've got long seasons back home. Five of 'em. Our\n year's about eighteen Terry months. Cold as hell in winter; eccentric\n orbit, you know. Blue-black sky, stars visible all day. We do mostly\n painting and sculpture in the winter. Then Spring; still plenty cold.\n Lots of skiing, bob-sledding, ice skating; and it's the season for\n woodworkers. Our furniture—\"", "\"Academic details are the affair of the students and their professors,\"\n Magnan said. \"Our function is merely to bring them together. See\n that you don't antagonize the Bogan representative. This will\n be an excellent opportunity for you to practice your diplomatic\n restraint—not your strong point, I'm sure you'll agree.\"\n\n\n A buzzer sounded. Retief punched a button. \"What is it, Miss Furkle?\"\n\n\n \"That—bucolic person from Lovenbroy is here again.\" On the small desk\n screen, Miss Furkle's meaty features were compressed in disapproval.\n\n\n \"This fellow's a confounded pest. I'll leave him to you, Retief,\"\n Magnan said. \"Tell him something. Get rid of him. And remember: here\n at Corps HQ, all eyes are upon you.\"\n\n\n \"If I'd thought of that, I'd have worn my other suit,\" Retief said.", "\"I've seen some of your furniture,\" Retief said. \"Beautiful work.\"\n\n\n Arapoulous nodded. \"All local timbers too. Lots of metals in our soil\n and those sulphates give the woods some color, I'll tell you. Then\n comes the Monsoon. Rain—it comes down in sheets. But the sun's getting\n closer. Shines all the time. Ever seen it pouring rain in the sunshine?\n That's the music-writing season. Then summer. Summer's hot. We stay\n inside in the daytime and have beach parties all night. Lots of beach\n on Lovenbroy; we're mostly islands. That's the drama and symphony time.\n The theatres are set up on the sand, or anchored off-shore. You have\n the music and the surf and the bonfires and stars—we're close to the\n center of a globular cluster, you know....\"\n\n\n \"You say it's time now for the wine crop?\"", "\"You work for this Culture bunch, do you? Funny. I thought they were\n all ribbon-counter boys. Never mind. I'm Hank Arapoulous. I'm a farmer.\n What I wanted to see you about was—\" He shifted in his chair. \"Well,\n out on Lovenbroy we've got a serious problem. The wine crop is just\n about ready. We start picking in another two, three months. Now I don't\n know if you're familiar with the Bacchus vines we grow...?\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Retief said. \"Have a cigar?\" He pushed a box across the desk.\n Arapoulous took one. \"Bacchus vines are an unusual crop,\" he said,\n puffing the cigar alight. \"Only mature every twelve years. In between,\n the vines don't need a lot of attention, so our time's mostly our own.\n We like to farm, though. Spend a lot of time developing new forms.\n Apples the size of a melon—and sweet—\"", "\"Great. Thanks.\" It was half a minute before a thick-necked red-faced\n man in a tight hat walked in. He wore an old-fashioned suit, a drab\n shirt, shiny shoes with round toes and an ill-tempered expression.\n\"What is it you wish?\" he barked. \"I understood in my discussions with\n the other ... ah ... civilian there'd be no further need for these\n irritating conferences.\"\n\n\n \"I've just learned you're placing more students abroad, Mr. Gulver. How\n many this time?\"\n\n\n \"Two thousand.\"\n\n\n \"And where will they be going?\"\n\n\n \"Croanie. It's all in the application form I've handed in. Your job is\n to provide transportation.\"\n\n\n \"Will there be any other students embarking this season?\"", "\"For the present. Miss Furkle, Mr. Magnan is vacationing. That leaves\n me with the question of two thousand young male students headed for\n a world with no classrooms for them ... a world in need of tractors.\n But the tractors are on their way to Croanie, a world under obligation\n to Boge. And Croanie holds a mortgage on the best grape acreage on\n Lovenbroy.\"\n\n\n \"Well!\" Miss Furkle snapped, small eyes glaring under unplucked brows.\n \"I hope you're not questioning Mr. Magnan's wisdom!\"\n\n\n \"About Mr. Magnan's wisdom there can be no question,\" Retief said. \"But\n never mind. I'd like you to look up an item for me. How many tractors\n will Croanie be getting under the MEDDLE program?\"\n\n\n \"Why, that's entirely MEDDLE business,\" Miss Furkle said. \"Mr. Magnan\n always—\"", "\"Didn't I tell you? Boge was the bunch that tried to take us over here\n a dozen years back. They'd've made it too, if they hadn't had a lot of\n bad luck. Their armor went in the drink, and without armor they're easy\n game.\"\n\n\n Miss Furkle buzzed. \"I have your lists,\" she said shortly.\n\n\n \"Bring them in, please.\"\nThe secretary placed the papers on the desk. Arapoulous caught her eye\n and grinned. She sniffed and marched from the room.\n\n\n \"What that gal needs is a slippery time in the grape mash,\" Arapoulous\n observed. Retief thumbed through the papers, pausing to read from time\n to time. He finished and looked at Arapoulous.\n\n\n \"How many men do you need for the harvest, Hank?\" Retief inquired.\n\n\n Arapoulous sniffed his wine glass and looked thoughtful.", "\"Then the wine-making. We still tramp out the vintage. That's mostly\n for the young folks but anybody's welcome. That's when things start to\n get loosened up. Matter of fact, pretty near half our young-uns are\n born after a vintage. All bets are off then. It keeps a fellow on his\n toes though. Ever tried to hold onto a gal wearing nothing but a layer\n of grape juice?\"\n\"Never did,\" Retief said. \"You say most of the children are born after\n a vintage. That would make them only twelve years old by the time—\"\n\n\n \"Oh, that's Lovenbroy years; they'd be eighteen, Terry reckoning.\"\n\n\n \"I was thinking you looked a little mature for twenty-eight,\" Retief\n said.", "\"A hundred would help,\" he said. \"A thousand would be better. Cheers.\"\n\n\n \"What would you say to two thousand?\"\n\n\n \"Two thousand? Retief, you're not fooling?\"\n\n\n \"I hope not.\" He picked up the phone, called the Port Authority, asked\n for the dispatch clerk.\n\n\n \"Hello, Jim. Say, I have a favor to ask of you. You know that\n contingent of Bogan students. They're traveling aboard the two CDT\n transports. I'm interested in the baggage that goes with the students.\n Has it arrived yet? Okay, I'll wait.\"\n\n\n Jim came back to the phone. \"Yeah, Retief, it's here. Just arrived.\n But there's a funny thing. It's not consigned to d'Land. It's ticketed\n clear through to Lovenbroy.\"", "\"Forty-two, Terry years,\" Arapoulous said. \"But this year it looks bad.\n We've got a bumper crop—and we're short-handed. If we don't get a big\n vintage, Croanie steps in. Lord knows what they'll do to the land. Then\n next vintage time, with them holding half our grape acreage—\"\n\n\n \"You hocked the vineyards?\"\n\n\n \"Yep. Pretty dumb, huh? But we figured twelve years was a long time.\"\n\n\n \"On the whole,\" Retief said, \"I think I prefer the black. But the red\n is hard to beat....\"\n\n\n \"What we figured was, maybe you Culture boys could help us out. A loan\n to see us through the vintage, enough to hire extra hands. Then we'd\n repay it in sculpture, painting, furniture—\"", "\"I'm sure he did. Let me know about the tractors as soon as you can.\"\nMiss Furkle sniffed and disappeared from the screen. Retief left the\n office, descended forty-one stories, followed a corridor to the Corps\n Library. In the stacks he thumbed through catalogues, pored over\n indices.\n\n\n \"Can I help you?\" someone chirped. A tiny librarian stood at his elbow.\n\n\n \"Thank you, ma'am,\" Retief said. \"I'm looking for information on a\n mining rig. A Bolo model WV tractor.\"\n\n\n \"You won't find it in the industrial section,\" the librarian said.\n \"Come along.\" Retief followed her along the stacks to a well-lit\n section lettered ARMAMENTS. She took a tape from the shelf, plugged\n it into the viewer, flipped through and stopped at a squat armored\n vehicle.", "Magnan snorted and passed from view. Retief punched Miss Furkle's\n button.\n\n\n \"Send the bucolic person in.\"\nA tall broad man with bronze skin and gray hair, wearing tight trousers\n of heavy cloth, a loose shirt open at the neck and a short jacket,\n stepped into the room. He had a bundle under his arm. He paused at\n sight of Retief, looked him over momentarily, then advanced and held\n out his hand. Retief took it. For a moment the two big men stood, face\n to face. The newcomer's jaw muscles knotted. Then he winced.\n\n\n Retief dropped his hand and motioned to a chair.\n\n\n \"That's nice knuckle work, mister,\" the stranger said, massaging his\n hand. \"First time anybody ever did that to me. My fault though. I\n started it, I guess.\" He grinned and sat down.\n\n\n \"What can I do for you?\" Retief said.", "Miss Furkle's chins quivered. \"Well! If you feel I'm incompetent—\"\n\n\n \"Just questioning the possibility of a mistake, Miss Furkle. Five\n hundred tractors is a lot of equipment.\"\n\n\n \"Was there anything further?\" Miss Furkle inquired frigidly.\n\n\n \"I sincerely hope not,\" Retief said.\nIII\n\n\n Leaning back in Magnan's padded chair with power swivel and\n hip-u-matic concontour, Retief leafed through a folder labelled \"CERP\n 7-602-Ba; CROANIE (general).\" He paused at a page headed Industry.\n\n\n Still reading, he opened the desk drawer, took out the two bottles of\n Bacchus wine and two glasses. He poured an inch of wine into each and\n sipped the black wine meditatively.", "It would be a pity, he reflected, if anything should interfere with the\n production of such vintages....\n\n\n Half an hour later he laid the folder aside, keyed the phone and put\n through a call to the Croanie Legation. He asked for the Commercial\n Attache.\n\n\n \"Retief here, Corps HQ,\" he said airily. \"About the MEDDLE shipment,\n the tractors. I'm wondering if there's been a slip up. My records show\n we're shipping five hundred units....\"\n\n\n \"That's correct. Five hundred.\"\n\n\n Retief waited.\n\n\n \"Ah ... are you there, Retief?\"\n\n\n \"I'm still here. And I'm still wondering about the five hundred\n tractors.\"\n\n\n \"It's perfectly in order. I thought it was all settled. Mr. Whaffle—\"" ], [ "\"I understand you hold a mortgage on the best land on Lovenbroy,\"\n Retief said. \"Any connection?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... no. Of course not, ha ha.\"\n\n\n \"Who gets the tractors eventually?\"\n\n\n \"Retief, this is unwarranted interference!\"\n\n\n \"Who gets them?\"\n\n\n \"They happen to be going to Lovenbroy. But I scarcely see—\"\n\n\n \"And who's the friend you're helping out with an unauthorized\n transshipment of grant material?\"\n\n\n \"Why ... ah ... I've been working with a Mr. Gulver, a Bogan\n representative.\"\n\n\n \"And when will they be shipped?\"\n\n\n \"Why, they went out a week ago. They'll be half way there by now. But\n look here, Retief, this isn't what you're thinking!\"", "\"I represent MUDDLE.\"\n\n\n Karsh finished his beer, ordered another. \"I came on ahead. Sort of\n an advance guard for the kids. I trained 'em myself. Treated it like\n a game, but they can handle a CSU. Don't know how they'll act under\n pressure. If I had my old platoon—\"\n\n\n He looked at his beer glass, pushed it back. \"Had enough,\" he said. \"So\n long, friend. Or are you coming along?\"\n\n\n Retief nodded. \"Might as well.\"\nAt the exit to the Customs enclosure, Retief watched as the first of\n the Bogan students came through, caught sight of Karsh and snapped to\n attention, his chest out.\n\n\n \"Drop that, mister,\" Karsh snapped. \"Is that any way for a student to\n act?\"\n\n\n The youth, a round-faced lad with broad shoulders, grinned.", "It would be a pity, he reflected, if anything should interfere with the\n production of such vintages....\n\n\n Half an hour later he laid the folder aside, keyed the phone and put\n through a call to the Croanie Legation. He asked for the Commercial\n Attache.\n\n\n \"Retief here, Corps HQ,\" he said airily. \"About the MEDDLE shipment,\n the tractors. I'm wondering if there's been a slip up. My records show\n we're shipping five hundred units....\"\n\n\n \"That's correct. Five hundred.\"\n\n\n Retief waited.\n\n\n \"Ah ... are you there, Retief?\"\n\n\n \"I'm still here. And I'm still wondering about the five hundred\n tractors.\"\n\n\n \"It's perfectly in order. I thought it was all settled. Mr. Whaffle—\"", "\"You said it.\" He gulped half his beer. \"My name's Karsh. Mr. Karsh.\n Yep, Mr. Karsh. Boy, this is a drag, sitting around this place\n waiting....\"\n\n\n \"You meeting somebody?\"\n\n\n \"Yeah. Bunch of babies. Kids. How they expect—Never mind. Have one on\n me.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks. You a Scoutmaster?\"\n\n\n \"I'll tell you what I am. I'm a cradle-robber. You know—\" he turned\n to Retief—\"not one of those kids is over eighteen.\" He hiccupped.\n \"Students, you know. Never saw a student with a beard, did you?\"\n\n\n \"Lots of times. You're meeting the students, are you?\"\n\n\n The young fellow blinked at Retief. \"Oh, you know about it, huh?\"", "\"I don't appreciate frivolity with reference to this Division,\" Magnan\n said testily. \"When I first came here, the Manpower Utilization\n Directorate, Division of Libraries and Education was a shambles. I\n fancy I've made MUDDLE what it is today. Frankly, I question the\n wisdom of placing you in charge of such a sensitive desk, even for two\n weeks. But remember. Yours is purely a rubber-stamp function.\"\n\n\n \"In that case, let's leave it to Miss Furkle. I'll take a couple of\n weeks off myself. With her poundage, she could bring plenty of pressure\n to bear.\"\n\n\n \"I assume you jest, Retief,\" Magnan said sadly. \"I should expect even\n you to appreciate that Bogan participation in the Exchange Program may\n be the first step toward sublimation of their aggressions into more\n cultivated channels.\"", "\"Academic details are the affair of the students and their professors,\"\n Magnan said. \"Our function is merely to bring them together. See\n that you don't antagonize the Bogan representative. This will\n be an excellent opportunity for you to practice your diplomatic\n restraint—not your strong point, I'm sure you'll agree.\"\n\n\n A buzzer sounded. Retief punched a button. \"What is it, Miss Furkle?\"\n\n\n \"That—bucolic person from Lovenbroy is here again.\" On the small desk\n screen, Miss Furkle's meaty features were compressed in disapproval.\n\n\n \"This fellow's a confounded pest. I'll leave him to you, Retief,\"\n Magnan said. \"Tell him something. Get rid of him. And remember: here\n at Corps HQ, all eyes are upon you.\"\n\n\n \"If I'd thought of that, I'd have worn my other suit,\" Retief said.", "Back at the MUDDLE office, Retief buzzed Miss Furkle.\n\n\n \"Do you know the name of the institution these Bogan students are bound\n for?\"\n\n\n \"Why, the University at d'Land, of course.\"\n\n\n \"Would that be the Technical College?\"\n\n\n Miss Furkle's mouth puckered. \"I'm sure I've never pried into these\n details.\"\n\n\n \"Where does doing your job stop and prying begin, Miss Furkle?\" Retief\n said. \"Personally, I'm curious as to just what it is these students are\n travelling so far to study—at Corps expense.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Magnan never—\"", "\"For the present. Miss Furkle, Mr. Magnan is vacationing. That leaves\n me with the question of two thousand young male students headed for\n a world with no classrooms for them ... a world in need of tractors.\n But the tractors are on their way to Croanie, a world under obligation\n to Boge. And Croanie holds a mortgage on the best grape acreage on\n Lovenbroy.\"\n\n\n \"Well!\" Miss Furkle snapped, small eyes glaring under unplucked brows.\n \"I hope you're not questioning Mr. Magnan's wisdom!\"\n\n\n \"About Mr. Magnan's wisdom there can be no question,\" Retief said. \"But\n never mind. I'd like you to look up an item for me. How many tractors\n will Croanie be getting under the MEDDLE program?\"\n\n\n \"Why, that's entirely MEDDLE business,\" Miss Furkle said. \"Mr. Magnan\n always—\"", "\"Thanks.\" Retief finished his glass, stood. \"I have to run, Hank,\" he\n said. \"Let me think this over. Maybe I can come up with something.\n Check with me day after tomorrow. And you'd better leave the bottles\n here. Cultural exhibits, you know.\"\nII\n\n\n As the council meeting broke up, Retief caught the eye of a colleague\n across the table.\n\n\n \"Mr. Whaffle, you mentioned a shipment going to a place called Croanie.\n What are they getting?\"\n\n\n Whaffle blinked. \"You're the fellow who's filling in for Magnan, over\n at MUDDLE,\" he said. \"Properly speaking, equipment grants are the\n sole concern of the Motorized Equipment Depot, Division of Loans and\n Exchanges.\" He pursed his lips. \"However, I suppose there's no harm in\n telling you. They'll be receiving heavy mining equipment.\"\n\n\n \"Drill rigs, that sort of thing?\"", "\"How do you know what I'm thinking? I don't know myself.\" Retief rang\n off, buzzed the secretary.\n\n\n \"Miss Furkle, I'd like to be notified immediately of any new\n applications that might come in from the Bogan Consulate for placement\n of students.\"\n\n\n \"Well, it happens, by coincidence, that I have an application here now.\n Mr. Gulver of the Consulate brought it in.\"\n\n\n \"Is Mr. Gulver in the office? I'd like to see him.\"\n\n\n \"I'll ask him if he has time.\"", "Miss Furkle's chins quivered. \"Well! If you feel I'm incompetent—\"\n\n\n \"Just questioning the possibility of a mistake, Miss Furkle. Five\n hundred tractors is a lot of equipment.\"\n\n\n \"Was there anything further?\" Miss Furkle inquired frigidly.\n\n\n \"I sincerely hope not,\" Retief said.\nIII\n\n\n Leaning back in Magnan's padded chair with power swivel and\n hip-u-matic concontour, Retief leafed through a folder labelled \"CERP\n 7-602-Ba; CROANIE (general).\" He paused at a page headed Industry.\n\n\n Still reading, he opened the desk drawer, took out the two bottles of\n Bacchus wine and two glasses. He poured an inch of wine into each and\n sipped the black wine meditatively.", "Miss Furkle compressed her lips. \"If Mr. Magnan were here, I'm sure\n he wouldn't dream of interfering in the work of other departments.\n I ... overheard your conversation with the gentleman from the Croanie\n Legation—\"\n\n\n \"The lists, Miss Furkle.\"\n\n\n \"I'm not accustomed,\" Miss Furkle said, \"to intruding in matters\n outside our interest cluster.\"\n\n\n \"That's worse than listening in on phone conversations, eh? But never\n mind. I need the information, Miss Furkle.\"\n\n\n \"Loyalty to my Chief—\"\n\n\n \"Loyalty to your pay-check should send you scuttling for the material\n I've asked for,\" Retief said. \"I'm taking full responsibility. Now\n scat.\"\n\n\n The buzzer sounded. Retief flipped a key. \"MUDDLE, Retief speaking....\"", "\"Sorry,\" Karsh said. \"As soon as the baggage gets here, we're off.\" He\n hiccupped again. \"Can't travel without our baggage, y'know.\"\n\n\n \"Suit yourself,\" Retief said. \"Where's the baggage now?\"\n\n\n \"Coming in aboard a Croanie lighter.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe you'd like to arrange for a meal for the students here.\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" Karsh said. \"That's a good idea. Why don't you join us?\" Karsh\n winked. \"And bring a few beers.\"\n\n\n \"Not this time,\" Retief said. He watched the students, still emerging\n from Customs. \"They seem to be all boys,\" he commented. \"No female\n students?\"\n\n\n \"Maybe later,\" Karsh said. \"You know, after we see how the first bunch\n is received.\"", "\"Heck, no,\" he said. \"Say, uh, Mr. Karsh, are we gonna get to go to\n town? We fellas were thinking—\"\n\n\n \"You were, hah? You act like a bunch of school kids! I mean ... no! Now\n line up!\"\n\n\n \"We have quarters ready for the students,\" Retief said. \"If you'd like\n to bring them around to the west side, I have a couple of copters laid\n on.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" said Karsh. \"They'll stay here until take-off time. Can't\n have the little dears wandering around loose. Might get ideas about\n going over the hill.\" He hiccupped. \"I mean they might play hookey.\"\n\n\n \"We've scheduled your re-embarkation for noon tomorrow. That's a long\n wait. MUDDLE's arranged theater tickets and a dinner.\"", "\"Listen, Jim,\" Retief said. \"I want you to go over to the warehouse and\n take a look at that baggage for me.\"\n\n\n Retief waited while the dispatch clerk carried out the errand. The\n level in the two bottles had gone down an inch when Jim returned to\n the phone.\n\n\n \"Hey, I took a look at that baggage, Retief. Something funny going on.\n Guns. 2mm needlers, Mark XII hand blasters, power pistols—\"\n\n\n \"It's okay, Jim. Nothing to worry about. Just a mix-up. Now, Jim,\n I'm going to ask you to do something more for me. I'm covering for a\n friend. It seems he slipped up. I wouldn't want word to get out, you\n understand. I'll send along a written change order in the morning that\n will cover you officially. Meanwhile, here's what I want you to do....\"", "\"You work for this Culture bunch, do you? Funny. I thought they were\n all ribbon-counter boys. Never mind. I'm Hank Arapoulous. I'm a farmer.\n What I wanted to see you about was—\" He shifted in his chair. \"Well,\n out on Lovenbroy we've got a serious problem. The wine crop is just\n about ready. We start picking in another two, three months. Now I don't\n know if you're familiar with the Bacchus vines we grow...?\"\n\n\n \"No,\" Retief said. \"Have a cigar?\" He pushed a box across the desk.\n Arapoulous took one. \"Bacchus vines are an unusual crop,\" he said,\n puffing the cigar alight. \"Only mature every twelve years. In between,\n the vines don't need a lot of attention, so our time's mostly our own.\n We like to farm, though. Spend a lot of time developing new forms.\n Apples the size of a melon—and sweet—\"", "Arapoulous's brown face appeared on the desk screen.\n\n\n \"How-do, Retief. Okay if I come up?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, Hank. I want to talk to you.\"\n\n\n In the office, Arapoulous took a chair. \"Sorry if I'm rushing you,\n Retief,\" he said. \"But have you got anything for me?\"\n\n\n Retief waved at the wine bottles. \"What do you know about Croanie?\"\n\n\n \"Croanie? Not much of a place. Mostly ocean. All right if you like\n fish, I guess. We import our seafood from there. Nice prawns in monsoon\n time. Over a foot long.\"\n\n\n \"You on good terms with them?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, I guess so. Course, they're pretty thick with Boge.\"\n\n\n \"So?\"", "Magnan snorted and passed from view. Retief punched Miss Furkle's\n button.\n\n\n \"Send the bucolic person in.\"\nA tall broad man with bronze skin and gray hair, wearing tight trousers\n of heavy cloth, a loose shirt open at the neck and a short jacket,\n stepped into the room. He had a bundle under his arm. He paused at\n sight of Retief, looked him over momentarily, then advanced and held\n out his hand. Retief took it. For a moment the two big men stood, face\n to face. The newcomer's jaw muscles knotted. Then he winced.\n\n\n Retief dropped his hand and motioned to a chair.\n\n\n \"That's nice knuckle work, mister,\" the stranger said, massaging his\n hand. \"First time anybody ever did that to me. My fault though. I\n started it, I guess.\" He grinned and sat down.\n\n\n \"What can I do for you?\" Retief said.", "\"This isn't\ndrinking\n. It's just wine.\" Arapoulous pulled the wire\n retainer loose, thumbed the cork. It rose slowly, then popped in the\n air. Arapoulous caught it. Aromatic fumes wafted from the bottle.\n \"Besides, my feelings would be hurt if you didn't join me.\" He winked.\n\n\n Retief took two thin-walled glasses from a table beside the desk. \"Come\n to think of it, we also have to be careful about violating quaint\n native customs.\"\n\n\n Arapoulous filled the glasses. Retief picked one up, sniffed the deep\n rust-colored fluid, tasted it, then took a healthy swallow. He looked\n at Arapoulous thoughtfully.\n\n\n \"Hmmm. It tastes like salted pecans, with an undercurrent of crusted\n port.\"", "\"I know it's bad manners to ask questions. It's an old diplomatic\n tradition that any time you can get anybody to accept anything as a\n gift, you've scored points in the game. But if Croanie has some scheme\n cooking—\"\n\"Nothing like that, Retief. It's a mere business transaction.\"\n\n\n \"What kind of business do you do with a Bolo WV? With or without a\n blade attached, it's what's known as a continental siege unit.\"\n\n\n \"Great Heavens, Retief! Don't jump to conclusions! Would you have us\n branded as warmongers? Frankly—is this a closed line?\"\n\n\n \"Certainly. You may speak freely.\"\n\n\n \"The tractors are for transshipment. We've gotten ourselves into a\n difficult situation, balance-of-payments-wise. This is an accommodation\n to a group with which we have rather strong business ties.\"" ] ]
train	51609	[ "Why is it so easy to steal from Fownes?", "Why have so many people resorted to pick-pocketing?", "What does the falling glass symbolize?", "Why are the police studying Frownes so intently?", "What is Lanfierre's profession?", "Lanfierre has all of the following beliefs about humanity EXCEPT: ", "The Movement believes all of the following EXCEPT: Questioning the failings of the old society, failings have put them in the dome; failure of foreign policy (self-containment)", "What is ironic about the Movement's refusal to attempt to escape the Dome?", "What theme can be understood from the behaviors of members of the Movement?" ]	[ [ "He is distracted by his thoughts", "He is unable to defend himself", "He is unaware of his possessions' value", "He is physically feeble" ], [ "Resources are scarce in the Dome, so people have to resort to desperate measures", "The pickpocketers are trying to acquire information about Fownes", "All possessions are shared in the Dome under a new form of communism", "There are no laws in the Dome, and people do whatever they please" ], [ "The importance of bucking authority and tradition in order to identify solutions for problems that plague communities all over the globe", "The delicate balance that countries -- large and small, developed and developing -- must strike if they are to preserve Earth's natural resources", "The deterioration of boundaries between members of different races, genders, social classes, and religious factions", "The cracking of an illusion of safety and optimal conditions in a chaotic world inhabited by humans bent on self-destruction" ], [ "They are threatened by his knowledge of and curiosity about the ancients", "They are suspicious of the odd behavior occurring within and around his home", "They believe he is responsible for the increased frequency of falling glass", "They believe he is an informant to enemy forces outside of the Dome" ], [ "He ensnares and imprisons rogue citizens in the Dome", "He has no job -- he is a criminal from the Movement", "He reports instances of divergence from Dome policy", "He trafficks humans from the outside world into the Dome" ], [ "They are oblivious", "They are self-absorbed", "They are untrustworthy", "They are vapid" ], [ "The 'old society' failed in major ways", "The 'old society's' failings led to the creation of the Dome", "The best way to fight those controlling the Dome is collectively, versus individually", "They cannot escape the dome without a strong foreign policy" ], [ "They are actually content living inside the Dome and are part of a group designed to frame Fownes", "They fear they will not survive the elements outside of the Dome, but outside of the Dome is a peaceful place", "They like to think of themselves as being valiant and insubordinate, but they are actually afraid and conformist", "They claim that they are waiting for a sound foreign policy, but they are already living within the government's choice for one" ], [ "Too many group members vying for power often sabotages the group's progress", "People who say they want progress are mostly virtue signaling, and their actual behaviors contradict their stated beliefs", "People are too easily convinced by media propaganda", "Social activism generally fails because it is all talk and no action" ] ]	[ 1, 2, 4, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4 ]	[ 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "It should have been difficult. Under the circumstances it was a\n masterpiece of pocket picking. What made it possible was Humphrey\n Fownes' abstraction; he was an uncommonly preoccupied individual. He\n was strolling along a quiet residential avenue: small private houses,\n one after another, a place of little traffic and minimum distractions.\n But he was thinking about weather, which was an unusual subject to\n begin with for a person living in a domed city. He was thinking so\n deeply about it that it never occurred to him that entirely too many\n people were bumping into him. He was thinking about Optimum Dome\n Conditions (a crisp 59 degrees, a mildly dessicated 47%) when a bogus\n postman, who pretended to be reading a postal card, jostled him. In the", "confusion of spilled letters and apologies from both sides, the postman\n rifled Fownes's handkerchief and inside jacket pockets.\nHe was still thinking about temperature and humidity when a pretty girl\n happened along with something in her eye. They collided. She got his\n right and left jacket pockets. It was much too much for coincidence.\n The sidewalk was wide enough to allow four people to pass at one time.\n He should surely have become suspicious when two men engaged in a\n heated argument came along. In the ensuing contretemps they emptied his\n rear pants pockets, got his wristwatch and restored the contents of the\nhandkerchief pocket. It all went off very smoothly, like a game of put\n and take—the sole difference being that Humphrey Fownes had no idea he\n was playing.", "He could hear her moving about and then felt her hands on his\n shoulders. \"And what about those\nvery\nelaborate plans you've been\n making to seduce me?\"\n\n\n Fownes froze with three asparagus hanging from his fork.\n\n\n \"Don't you think\nthey'll\nfind out?\nI\nfound out and you can bet\nthey\nwill. It's my fault, I guess. I talk too much. And I don't\n always tell the truth. To be completely honest with you, Mr. Fownes, it\n wasn't the old customs at all standing between us, it was air. I can't\n have another man die on me, it's bad for my self-esteem. And now you've\n gone and done something good and criminal, something peculiar.\"\nFownes put his fork down. \"Dear Mrs. Deshazaway,\" he started to say.", "From a prone position on his miniscule front lawn, Fownes watched as\n his favorite easy chair sailed out of the living room on a blast of\n cold air and went pinwheeling down the avenue in the bright sunshine. A\n wild wind and a thick fog poured out of the house. It brought chairs,\n suits, small tables, lamps trailing their cords, ashtrays, sofa\n cushions. The house was emptying itself fiercely, as if disgorging an\n old, spoiled meal. From deep inside he could hear the rumble of his\n ancient upright piano as it rolled ponderously from room to room.\n\n\n He stood up; a wet wind swept over him, whipping at his face, toying\n with his hair. It was a whistling in his ears, and a tingle on his\n cheeks. He got hit by a shoe.\n\n\n As he forced his way back to the doorway needles of rain played over\n his face and he heard a voice cry out from somewhere in the living room.", "Humphrey Fownes' preoccupation finally came to an end when he was one\n block away from his house. It was then that he realized something\n unusual must have occurred. An orange patrol car of the security police\n was parked at his front door. And something else was happening too.\n\n\n His house was dancing.\n\n\n It was disconcerting, and at the same time enchanting, to watch one's\n residence frisking about on its foundation. It was such a strange sight\n that for the moment he didn't give a thought to what might be causing\n it. But when he stepped gingerly onto the porch, which was doing its\n own independent gavotte, he reached for the doorknob with an immense\n curiosity.\n\n\n The door flung itself open and knocked him back off the porch.", "A FALL OF GLASS\nBy STANLEY R. LEE\n\n\n Illustrated by DILLON\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Magazine October 1960.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe weatherman was always right:\n \nTemperature, 59; humidity, 47%;\n \noccasional light showers—but of what?\nThe pockets of Mr. Humphrey Fownes were being picked outrageously.\n\n\n It was a splendid day. The temperature was a crisp 59 degrees, the\n humidity a mildly dessicated 47%. The sun was a flaming orange ball in\n a cloudless blue sky.\n\n\n His pockets were picked eleven times.", "\"And of course when they do find out and they ask you why, Mr. Fownes,\n you'll tell them. No, no heroics, please! When they ask a man a\n question he always answers and you will too. You'll tell them I wanted\n to be courted and when they hear that they'll be around to ask\nme\na\n few questions. You see, we're both a bit queer.\"\n\n\n \"I hadn't thought of that,\" Fownes said quietly.\n\n\n \"Oh, it doesn't really matter. I'll join Andrew, Curt, Norman—\"\n\n\n \"That won't be necessary,\" Fownes said with unusual force. \"With all\n due respect to Andrew, Curt, Norman and Alphonse, I might as well state\n here and now I have other plans for you, Mrs. Deshazaway.\"\n\n\n \"But my dear Mr. Fownes,\" she said, leaning across the table. \"We're\n lost, you and I.\"", "They sat there smoking in silence and every now and then their eyes\n widened as the house danced a new step.\nFownes stopped on the porch to brush the plaster of paris off his\n shoes. He hadn't seen the patrol car and this intense preoccupation\n of his was also responsible for the dancing house—he simply hadn't\n noticed. There was a certain amount of vibration, of course. He\n had a bootleg pipe connected into the dome blower system, and the\n high-pressure air caused some buffeting against the thin walls of the\n house. At least, he called it buffeting; he'd never thought to watch\n from outside.\n\n\n He went in and threw his jacket on the sofa, there being no room\n left in the closets. Crossing the living room he stopped to twist a\n draw-pull.\n\n\n Every window slammed shut.", "Humphrey Fownes strode through the puffs of falling glass still\n intrigued by a temperature that was always 59 degrees, by a humidity\n that was always 47%, by weather that was always Optimum. It was this\n rather than skill that enabled the police to maintain such a tight\n surveillance on him, a surveillance that went to the extent of getting\n his fingerprints off the postman's bag, and which photographed, X-rayed\n and chemically analyzed the contents of his pockets before returning\n them. Two blocks away from his home a careless housewife spilled a\n five-pound bag of flour as he was passing. It was really plaster of\n Paris. He left his shoe prints, stride measurement, height, weight and\n handedness behind.\n\n\n By the time Fownes reached his front door an entire dossier complete\n with photographs had been prepared and was being read by two men in an\n orange patrol car parked down the street.\nLanfierre had undoubtedly been affected by his job.", "Fownes smiled weakly and looked again at the dust jacket. The twister\n was unquestionably a meteorological phenomenon. It spun ominously, like\n a malevolent top, and coursed the countryside destructively, carrying\n a Dorothy to an Oz. He couldn't help wondering if twisters did anything\n to feminine pulses, if they could possibly be a part of a moonlit\n night, with cocktails and roses. He absently stuffed the dust jacket\n in his pocket and went on into the other rooms, the librarian mumbling\n after him: \"Edna Murdoch Featherstone, April 21, 1991,\" as though\n reading inscriptions on a tombstone.\nThe Movement met in what had been the children's room, where unpaid\n ladies of the afternoon had once upon a time read stories to other\n people's offspring. The members sat around at the miniature tables\n looking oddly like giants fled from their fairy tales, protesting.", "Sitting behind the wheel of the orange car, he watched Humphrey Fownes\n approach with a distinct feeling of admiration, although it was an\n odd, objective kind of admiration, clinical in nature. It was similar\n to that of a pathologist observing for the first time a new and\n particularly virulent strain of pneumococcus under his microscope.\n\n\n Lanfierre's job was to ferret out aberration. It couldn't be tolerated\n within the confines of a dome. Conformity had become more than a social\n force; it was a physical necessity. And, after years of working at it,\n Lanfierre had become an admirer of eccentricity. He came to see that\n genuine quirks were rare and, as time went on, due partly to his own\n small efforts, rarer.\n\n\n Fownes was a masterpiece of queerness. He was utterly inexplicable.\n Lanfierre was almost proud of Humphrey Fownes.", "\"I see.\"\n\n\n \"\nAnd\n,\" Mr. Fownes added, his voice a honeyed whisper, \"they say\n that somewhere out in the space and the roses and the moonlight,\n the sleeping equinox yawns and rises because on a certain day it's\nvernal\nand that's when it roams the Open Country where geigers no\n longer scintillate.\"", "When he heard this Fownes plunged into the house and fought his way\n up the stairs. He found Lanfierre standing outside the bedroom with a\n wheel in his hand.\n\"What have I done?\" Lanfierre asked in the monotone of shock.\n\n\n Fownes took the wheel. It was off a 1995 Studebaker.\n\n\n \"I'm not sure what's going to come of this,\" he said to Lanfierre with\n an astonishing amount of objectivity, \"but the entire dome air supply\n is now coming through my bedroom.\"\n\n\n The wind screamed.\n\n\n \"Is there something I can turn?\" Lanfierre asked.\n\n\n \"Not any more there isn't.\"\n\n\n They started down the stairs carefully, but the wind caught them and\n they quickly reached the bottom in a wet heap.", "Lanfierre sat stiffly behind the wheel, affronted. The cynical MacBride\n couldn't really appreciate fine aberrations. In some ways MacBride\n was a barbarian. Lanfierre had held out on Fownes for months. He\n had even contrived to engage him in conversation once, a pleasantly\n absurd, irrational little chat that titillated him for weeks. It was\n only with the greatest reluctance that he finally mentioned Fownes\n to MacBride. After years of searching for differences Lanfierre had\n seen how extraordinarily repetitious people were, echoes really, dimly\n resounding echoes, each believing itself whole and separate. They spoke\n in an incessant chatter of cliches, and their actions were unbelievably\n trite.\n\n\n Then a fine robust freak came along and the others—the echoes—refused\n to believe it. The lieutenant was probably on the point of suggesting a\n vacation.\n\n\n \"Why don't you take a vacation?\" Lieutenant MacBride suggested.", "Pinning his hopes on the Movement, Fownes went straight to the\n library several blocks away, a shattered depressing place given over\n to government publications and censored old books with holes in\n them. It was used so infrequently that the Movement was able to meet\n there undisturbed. The librarian was a yellowed, dog-eared woman of\n eighty. She spent her days reading ancient library cards and, like the\n books around her, had been rendered by time's own censor into near\n unintelligibility.\n\n\n \"Here's one,\" she said to him as he entered. \"\nGulliver's Travels.\nLoaned to John Wesley Davidson on March 14, 1979 for\nfive\ndays. What\n do you make of it?\"\n\n\n In the litter of books and cards and dried out ink pads that surrounded\n the librarian, Fownes noticed a torn dust jacket with a curious\n illustration. \"What's that?\" he said.", "\"Then you\nhave\ndiscussed preparations, the practical necessities of\n life in the Open Country. Food, clothing, a weapon perhaps? What else?\n Have I left anything out?\"\n\n\n The leader sighed. \"The gentleman wants to know if he's left anything\n out,\" he said to the group.\n\n\n Fownes looked around at them, at some dozen pained expressions.\n\n\n \"Tell the man what he's forgotten,\" the leader said, walking to the far\n window and turning his back quite pointedly on them.\n\n\n Everyone spoke at the same moment. \"\nA sound foreign policy\n,\" they all\n said, it being almost too obvious for words.\nOn his way out the librarian shouted at him: \"\nA Tale of a Tub\n,\n thirty-five years overdue!\" She was calculating the fine as he closed\n the door.", "\"He'll be coming out soon,\" Lanfierre said. \"He eats supper next door\n with a widow. Then he goes to the library. Always the same. Supper at\n the widow's next door and then the library.\"\n\n\n MacBride's eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. \"The library?\" he\n said. \"Is he in with that bunch?\"\n\n\n Lanfierre nodded.\n\n\n \"Should be very interesting,\" MacBride said slowly.\n\n\n \"I can't wait to see what he's got in there,\" Lanfierre murmured,\n watching the house with a consuming interest.", "Recruiting Lieutenant MacBride from behind his sofa, the men carefully\n edged out of the house and forced the front door shut.\n\n\n The wind died. The fog dispersed. They stood dripping in the Optimum\n Dome Conditions of the bright avenue.\n\n\n \"I never figured on\nthis\n,\" Lanfierre said, shaking his head.\n\n\n With the front door closed the wind quickly built up inside the house.\n They could see the furnishing whirl past the windows. The house did a\n wild, elated jig.\n\n\n \"What kind of a place\nis\nthis?\" MacBride said, his courage beginning\n to return. He took out his notebook but it was a soggy mess. He tossed\n it away.\n\n\n \"Sure, he was\ndifferent\n,\" Lanfierre murmured. \"I knew that much.\"", "The widow was a passionate woman. She did everything\n passionately—talking, cooking, dressing. Her beets were passionately\n red. Her clothes rustled and her high heels clicked and her jewelry\n tinkled. She was possessed by an uncontrollable dynamism. Fownes had\n never known anyone like her. \"You forgot to put salt on the potatoes,\"\n she said passionately, then went on as calmly as it was possible for\n her to be, to explain why she couldn't marry him. \"Do you have any\n idea what people are saying? They're all saying I'm a cannibal! I rob\n my husbands of their life force and when they're empty I carry their\n bodies outside on my way to the justice of the peace.\"\n\n\n \"As long as there are people,\" he said philosophically, \"there'll be\n talk.\"", "\"And the\nwater\n,\" Lanfierre said. \"The\nwater\nhe uses! He could be\n the thirstiest and cleanest man in the city. He could have a whole\n family of thirsty and clean kids, and he\nstill\nwouldn't need all that\n water.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant had picked up the dossier. He thumbed through the pages\n now in amazement. \"Where do you get a guy like this?\" he asked. \"Did\n you see what he carries in his pockets?\"\n\n\n \"And compasses won't work on this street.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant lit a cigarette and sighed.\n\n\n He usually sighed when making the decision to raid a dwelling. It\n expressed his weariness and distaste for people who went off and got\n neurotic when they could be enjoying a happy, normal existence. There\n was something implacable about his sighs." ], [ "It should have been difficult. Under the circumstances it was a\n masterpiece of pocket picking. What made it possible was Humphrey\n Fownes' abstraction; he was an uncommonly preoccupied individual. He\n was strolling along a quiet residential avenue: small private houses,\n one after another, a place of little traffic and minimum distractions.\n But he was thinking about weather, which was an unusual subject to\n begin with for a person living in a domed city. He was thinking so\n deeply about it that it never occurred to him that entirely too many\n people were bumping into him. He was thinking about Optimum Dome\n Conditions (a crisp 59 degrees, a mildly dessicated 47%) when a bogus\n postman, who pretended to be reading a postal card, jostled him. In the", "confusion of spilled letters and apologies from both sides, the postman\n rifled Fownes's handkerchief and inside jacket pockets.\nHe was still thinking about temperature and humidity when a pretty girl\n happened along with something in her eye. They collided. She got his\n right and left jacket pockets. It was much too much for coincidence.\n The sidewalk was wide enough to allow four people to pass at one time.\n He should surely have become suspicious when two men engaged in a\n heated argument came along. In the ensuing contretemps they emptied his\n rear pants pockets, got his wristwatch and restored the contents of the\nhandkerchief pocket. It all went off very smoothly, like a game of put\n and take—the sole difference being that Humphrey Fownes had no idea he\n was playing.", "A FALL OF GLASS\nBy STANLEY R. LEE\n\n\n Illustrated by DILLON\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Magazine October 1960.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe weatherman was always right:\n \nTemperature, 59; humidity, 47%;\n \noccasional light showers—but of what?\nThe pockets of Mr. Humphrey Fownes were being picked outrageously.\n\n\n It was a splendid day. The temperature was a crisp 59 degrees, the\n humidity a mildly dessicated 47%. The sun was a flaming orange ball in\n a cloudless blue sky.\n\n\n His pockets were picked eleven times.", "\"And the\nwater\n,\" Lanfierre said. \"The\nwater\nhe uses! He could be\n the thirstiest and cleanest man in the city. He could have a whole\n family of thirsty and clean kids, and he\nstill\nwouldn't need all that\n water.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant had picked up the dossier. He thumbed through the pages\n now in amazement. \"Where do you get a guy like this?\" he asked. \"Did\n you see what he carries in his pockets?\"\n\n\n \"And compasses won't work on this street.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant lit a cigarette and sighed.\n\n\n He usually sighed when making the decision to raid a dwelling. It\n expressed his weariness and distaste for people who went off and got\n neurotic when they could be enjoying a happy, normal existence. There\n was something implacable about his sighs.", "\"Then you\nhave\ndiscussed preparations, the practical necessities of\n life in the Open Country. Food, clothing, a weapon perhaps? What else?\n Have I left anything out?\"\n\n\n The leader sighed. \"The gentleman wants to know if he's left anything\n out,\" he said to the group.\n\n\n Fownes looked around at them, at some dozen pained expressions.\n\n\n \"Tell the man what he's forgotten,\" the leader said, walking to the far\n window and turning his back quite pointedly on them.\n\n\n Everyone spoke at the same moment. \"\nA sound foreign policy\n,\" they all\n said, it being almost too obvious for words.\nOn his way out the librarian shouted at him: \"\nA Tale of a Tub\n,\n thirty-five years overdue!\" She was calculating the fine as he closed\n the door.", "The widow was a passionate woman. She did everything\n passionately—talking, cooking, dressing. Her beets were passionately\n red. Her clothes rustled and her high heels clicked and her jewelry\n tinkled. She was possessed by an uncontrollable dynamism. Fownes had\n never known anyone like her. \"You forgot to put salt on the potatoes,\"\n she said passionately, then went on as calmly as it was possible for\n her to be, to explain why she couldn't marry him. \"Do you have any\n idea what people are saying? They're all saying I'm a cannibal! I rob\n my husbands of their life force and when they're empty I carry their\n bodies outside on my way to the justice of the peace.\"\n\n\n \"As long as there are people,\" he said philosophically, \"there'll be\n talk.\"", "Pinning his hopes on the Movement, Fownes went straight to the\n library several blocks away, a shattered depressing place given over\n to government publications and censored old books with holes in\n them. It was used so infrequently that the Movement was able to meet\n there undisturbed. The librarian was a yellowed, dog-eared woman of\n eighty. She spent her days reading ancient library cards and, like the\n books around her, had been rendered by time's own censor into near\n unintelligibility.\n\n\n \"Here's one,\" she said to him as he entered. \"\nGulliver's Travels.\nLoaned to John Wesley Davidson on March 14, 1979 for\nfive\ndays. What\n do you make of it?\"\n\n\n In the litter of books and cards and dried out ink pads that surrounded\n the librarian, Fownes noticed a torn dust jacket with a curious\n illustration. \"What's that?\" he said.", "Lanfierre sat stiffly behind the wheel, affronted. The cynical MacBride\n couldn't really appreciate fine aberrations. In some ways MacBride\n was a barbarian. Lanfierre had held out on Fownes for months. He\n had even contrived to engage him in conversation once, a pleasantly\n absurd, irrational little chat that titillated him for weeks. It was\n only with the greatest reluctance that he finally mentioned Fownes\n to MacBride. After years of searching for differences Lanfierre had\n seen how extraordinarily repetitious people were, echoes really, dimly\n resounding echoes, each believing itself whole and separate. They spoke\n in an incessant chatter of cliches, and their actions were unbelievably\n trite.\n\n\n Then a fine robust freak came along and the others—the echoes—refused\n to believe it. The lieutenant was probably on the point of suggesting a\n vacation.\n\n\n \"Why don't you take a vacation?\" Lieutenant MacBride suggested.", "Humphrey Fownes strode through the puffs of falling glass still\n intrigued by a temperature that was always 59 degrees, by a humidity\n that was always 47%, by weather that was always Optimum. It was this\n rather than skill that enabled the police to maintain such a tight\n surveillance on him, a surveillance that went to the extent of getting\n his fingerprints off the postman's bag, and which photographed, X-rayed\n and chemically analyzed the contents of his pockets before returning\n them. Two blocks away from his home a careless housewife spilled a\n five-pound bag of flour as he was passing. It was really plaster of\n Paris. He left his shoe prints, stride measurement, height, weight and\n handedness behind.\n\n\n By the time Fownes reached his front door an entire dossier complete\n with photographs had been prepared and was being read by two men in an\n orange patrol car parked down the street.\nLanfierre had undoubtedly been affected by his job.", "\"And of course when they do find out and they ask you why, Mr. Fownes,\n you'll tell them. No, no heroics, please! When they ask a man a\n question he always answers and you will too. You'll tell them I wanted\n to be courted and when they hear that they'll be around to ask\nme\na\n few questions. You see, we're both a bit queer.\"\n\n\n \"I hadn't thought of that,\" Fownes said quietly.\n\n\n \"Oh, it doesn't really matter. I'll join Andrew, Curt, Norman—\"\n\n\n \"That won't be necessary,\" Fownes said with unusual force. \"With all\n due respect to Andrew, Curt, Norman and Alphonse, I might as well state\n here and now I have other plans for you, Mrs. Deshazaway.\"\n\n\n \"But my dear Mr. Fownes,\" she said, leaning across the table. \"We're\n lost, you and I.\"", "\"Tight as a kite,\" he thought, satisfied. He continued on toward the\n closet at the foot of the stairs and then stopped again. Was that\n right? No,\nsnug as a hug in a rug\n. He went on, thinking:\nThe old\n devils.\nThe downstairs closet was like a great watch case, a profusion of\n wheels surrounding the Master Mechanism, which was a miniature see-saw\n that went back and forth 365-1/4 times an hour. The wheels had a\n curious stateliness about them. They were all quite old, salvaged from\n grandfather's clocks and music boxes and they went around in graceful\n circles at the rate of 30 and 31 times an hour ... although there\n was one slightly eccentric cam that vacillated between 28 and 29. He\n watched as they spun and flashed in the darkness, and then set them for\n seven o'clock in the evening, April seventh, any year.\n\n\n Outside, the domed city vanished.", "\"I'll tell you something else,\" Lanfierre went on. \"The\nwindows\nall\n close at the same time. You'll be watching and all of a sudden every\n single window in the place will drop to its sill.\" Lanfierre leaned\n back in the seat, his eyes still on the house. \"Sometimes I think\n there's a whole crowd of people in there waiting for a signal—as if\n they all had something important to say but had to close the windows\n first so no one could hear. Why else close the windows in a domed city?\n And then as soon as the place is buttoned up they all explode into\n conversation—and that's why the house shakes.\"\n\n\n MacBride whistled.\n\n\n \"No, I don't need a vacation.\"\n\n\n A falling piece of glass dissolved into a puff of gossamer against the\n windshield. Lanfierre started and bumped his knee on the steering wheel.", "Dialectically out in left field, Humphrey Fownes waited for a lull\n in the ensuing discussion and then politely inquired how it might be\n arranged for him to get out.\n\n\n \"Out?\" the leader said, frowning. \"Out? Out where?\"\n\n\n \"Outside the dome.\"\n\n\n \"Oh. All in good time, my friend. One day we shall all pick up and\n leave.\"\n\n\n \"And that day I'll await impatiently,\" Fownes replied with marvelous\n tact, \"because it will be lonely out there for the two of us. My future\n wife and I have to leave\nnow\n.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense. Ridiculous! You have to be prepared for the Open Country.\n You can't just up and leave, it would be suicide, Fownes. And\n dialectically very poor.\"", "Fownes smiled weakly and looked again at the dust jacket. The twister\n was unquestionably a meteorological phenomenon. It spun ominously, like\n a malevolent top, and coursed the countryside destructively, carrying\n a Dorothy to an Oz. He couldn't help wondering if twisters did anything\n to feminine pulses, if they could possibly be a part of a moonlit\n night, with cocktails and roses. He absently stuffed the dust jacket\n in his pocket and went on into the other rooms, the librarian mumbling\n after him: \"Edna Murdoch Featherstone, April 21, 1991,\" as though\n reading inscriptions on a tombstone.\nThe Movement met in what had been the children's room, where unpaid\n ladies of the afternoon had once upon a time read stories to other\n people's offspring. The members sat around at the miniature tables\n looking oddly like giants fled from their fairy tales, protesting.", "He could hear her moving about and then felt her hands on his\n shoulders. \"And what about those\nvery\nelaborate plans you've been\n making to seduce me?\"\n\n\n Fownes froze with three asparagus hanging from his fork.\n\n\n \"Don't you think\nthey'll\nfind out?\nI\nfound out and you can bet\nthey\nwill. It's my fault, I guess. I talk too much. And I don't\n always tell the truth. To be completely honest with you, Mr. Fownes, it\n wasn't the old customs at all standing between us, it was air. I can't\n have another man die on me, it's bad for my self-esteem. And now you've\n gone and done something good and criminal, something peculiar.\"\nFownes put his fork down. \"Dear Mrs. Deshazaway,\" he started to say.", "Sitting behind the wheel of the orange car, he watched Humphrey Fownes\n approach with a distinct feeling of admiration, although it was an\n odd, objective kind of admiration, clinical in nature. It was similar\n to that of a pathologist observing for the first time a new and\n particularly virulent strain of pneumococcus under his microscope.\n\n\n Lanfierre's job was to ferret out aberration. It couldn't be tolerated\n within the confines of a dome. Conformity had become more than a social\n force; it was a physical necessity. And, after years of working at it,\n Lanfierre had become an admirer of eccentricity. He came to see that\n genuine quirks were rare and, as time went on, due partly to his own\n small efforts, rarer.\n\n\n Fownes was a masterpiece of queerness. He was utterly inexplicable.\n Lanfierre was almost proud of Humphrey Fownes.", "Humphrey Fownes' preoccupation finally came to an end when he was one\n block away from his house. It was then that he realized something\n unusual must have occurred. An orange patrol car of the security police\n was parked at his front door. And something else was happening too.\n\n\n His house was dancing.\n\n\n It was disconcerting, and at the same time enchanting, to watch one's\n residence frisking about on its foundation. It was such a strange sight\n that for the moment he didn't give a thought to what might be causing\n it. But when he stepped gingerly onto the porch, which was doing its\n own independent gavotte, he reached for the doorknob with an immense\n curiosity.\n\n\n The door flung itself open and knocked him back off the porch.", "They sat there smoking in silence and every now and then their eyes\n widened as the house danced a new step.\nFownes stopped on the porch to brush the plaster of paris off his\n shoes. He hadn't seen the patrol car and this intense preoccupation\n of his was also responsible for the dancing house—he simply hadn't\n noticed. There was a certain amount of vibration, of course. He\n had a bootleg pipe connected into the dome blower system, and the\n high-pressure air caused some buffeting against the thin walls of the\n house. At least, he called it buffeting; he'd never thought to watch\n from outside.\n\n\n He went in and threw his jacket on the sofa, there being no room\n left in the closets. Crossing the living room he stopped to twist a\n draw-pull.\n\n\n Every window slammed shut.", "\"But it's the air! Why don't they talk about that? The air is stale,\n I'm positive. It's not nourishing. The air is stale and Andrew, Curt,\n Norman and Alphonse couldn't stand it. Poor Alphonse. He was never so\n healthy as on the day he was born. From then on things got steadily\n worse for him.\"\n\n\n \"I don't seem to mind the air.\"\n\n\n She threw up her hands. \"You'd be the worst of the lot!\" She left the\n table, rustling and tinkling about the room. \"I can just hear them. Try\n some of the asparagus.\nFive.\nThat's what they'd say. That woman did\n it again. And the plain fact is I don't want you on my record.\"\n\n\n \"Really,\" Fownes protested. \"I feel splendid. Never better.\"", "Recruiting Lieutenant MacBride from behind his sofa, the men carefully\n edged out of the house and forced the front door shut.\n\n\n The wind died. The fog dispersed. They stood dripping in the Optimum\n Dome Conditions of the bright avenue.\n\n\n \"I never figured on\nthis\n,\" Lanfierre said, shaking his head.\n\n\n With the front door closed the wind quickly built up inside the house.\n They could see the furnishing whirl past the windows. The house did a\n wild, elated jig.\n\n\n \"What kind of a place\nis\nthis?\" MacBride said, his courage beginning\n to return. He took out his notebook but it was a soggy mess. He tossed\n it away.\n\n\n \"Sure, he was\ndifferent\n,\" Lanfierre murmured. \"I knew that much.\"" ], [ "There was an occasional tinkle of falling glass.\n\n\n It fell on the streets and houses, making small geysers of shiny mist,\n hitting with a gentle musical sound, like the ephemeral droppings of\n a celesta. It was precipitation peculiar to a dome: feather-light\n fragments showering harmlessly on the city from time to time. Dome\n weevils, their metal arms reaching out with molten glass, roamed the\n huge casserole, ceaselessly patching and repairing.", "The dome weevils were going berserk trying to keep up with the\n precipitation. They whirred back and forth at frightful speed, then,\n emptied of molten glass, rushed to the Trough which they quickly\n emptied and then rushed about empty-handed. \"Yoo-hoo!\" he yelled,\n running. The artificial sun vanished behind the mushrooming twister.\n Optimum temperature collapsed. \"Mrs. Deshazaway!\nAgnes\n, will you\n marry me? Yoo-hoo!\"\n\n\n Lanfierre and Lieutenant MacBride leaned against their car and waited,\n dazed.\n\n\n There was quite a large fall of glass.", "\"I'll tell you something else,\" Lanfierre went on. \"The\nwindows\nall\n close at the same time. You'll be watching and all of a sudden every\n single window in the place will drop to its sill.\" Lanfierre leaned\n back in the seat, his eyes still on the house. \"Sometimes I think\n there's a whole crowd of people in there waiting for a signal—as if\n they all had something important to say but had to close the windows\n first so no one could hear. Why else close the windows in a domed city?\n And then as soon as the place is buttoned up they all explode into\n conversation—and that's why the house shakes.\"\n\n\n MacBride whistled.\n\n\n \"No, I don't need a vacation.\"\n\n\n A falling piece of glass dissolved into a puff of gossamer against the\n windshield. Lanfierre started and bumped his knee on the steering wheel.", "A FALL OF GLASS\nBy STANLEY R. LEE\n\n\n Illustrated by DILLON\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Magazine October 1960.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe weatherman was always right:\n \nTemperature, 59; humidity, 47%;\n \noccasional light showers—but of what?\nThe pockets of Mr. Humphrey Fownes were being picked outrageously.\n\n\n It was a splendid day. The temperature was a crisp 59 degrees, the\n humidity a mildly dessicated 47%. The sun was a flaming orange ball in\n a cloudless blue sky.\n\n\n His pockets were picked eleven times.", "He went downstairs to watch out the living room window. This was\n important; the window had a really fixed attitude about air currents.\n The neon roses bent and tinkled against each other as the wind rose and\n the moon shook a trifle as it whispered\nCuddle Up a Little Closer\n.", "\"It's like this, MacBride. Do you know what a wind is? A breeze? A\n zephyr?\"\n\n\n \"I've heard some.\"\n\n\n \"They say there are mountain-tops where winds blow all the time. Strong\n winds, MacBride. Winds like you and I can't imagine. And if there was\n a house sitting on such a mountain and if winds\ndid\nblow, it would\n shake exactly the way that one does. Sometimes I get the feeling the\n whole place is going to slide off its foundation and go sailing down\n the avenue.\"\nLieutenant MacBride pursed his lips.", "When he heard this Fownes plunged into the house and fought his way\n up the stairs. He found Lanfierre standing outside the bedroom with a\n wheel in his hand.\n\"What have I done?\" Lanfierre asked in the monotone of shock.\n\n\n Fownes took the wheel. It was off a 1995 Studebaker.\n\n\n \"I'm not sure what's going to come of this,\" he said to Lanfierre with\n an astonishing amount of objectivity, \"but the entire dome air supply\n is now coming through my bedroom.\"\n\n\n The wind screamed.\n\n\n \"Is there something I can turn?\" Lanfierre asked.\n\n\n \"Not any more there isn't.\"\n\n\n They started down the stairs carefully, but the wind caught them and\n they quickly reached the bottom in a wet heap.", "They sat there smoking in silence and every now and then their eyes\n widened as the house danced a new step.\nFownes stopped on the porch to brush the plaster of paris off his\n shoes. He hadn't seen the patrol car and this intense preoccupation\n of his was also responsible for the dancing house—he simply hadn't\n noticed. There was a certain amount of vibration, of course. He\n had a bootleg pipe connected into the dome blower system, and the\n high-pressure air caused some buffeting against the thin walls of the\n house. At least, he called it buffeting; he'd never thought to watch\n from outside.\n\n\n He went in and threw his jacket on the sofa, there being no room\n left in the closets. Crossing the living room he stopped to twist a\n draw-pull.\n\n\n Every window slammed shut.", "\"But it's the air! Why don't they talk about that? The air is stale,\n I'm positive. It's not nourishing. The air is stale and Andrew, Curt,\n Norman and Alphonse couldn't stand it. Poor Alphonse. He was never so\n healthy as on the day he was born. From then on things got steadily\n worse for him.\"\n\n\n \"I don't seem to mind the air.\"\n\n\n She threw up her hands. \"You'd be the worst of the lot!\" She left the\n table, rustling and tinkling about the room. \"I can just hear them. Try\n some of the asparagus.\nFive.\nThat's what they'd say. That woman did\n it again. And the plain fact is I don't want you on my record.\"\n\n\n \"Really,\" Fownes protested. \"I feel splendid. Never better.\"", "Moonlight, he thought, and roses. Satisfactory.\nAnd cocktails for\n two.\nBlast, he'd never be able to figure that one out! He watched as\n the moon played,\nOh, You Beautiful Doll\nand the neon roses flashed\n slowly from red to violet, then went back to the closet and turned on\n the scent. The house began to smell like an immensely concentrated rose\n as the moon shifted to\nPeople Will Say We're In Love\n.\nHe rubbed his chin critically. It\nseemed\nall right. A dreamy sunset,\n an enchanted moon, flowers, scent.", "He watched with folded arms, considering how he would start.\nMy dear\n Mrs. Deshazaway.\nToo formal. They'd be looking out at the romantic\n garden; time to be a bit forward.\nMy very dear Mrs. Deshazaway.\nNo.\n Contrived. How about a simple,\nDear Mrs. Deshazaway\n. That might be\n it.\nI was wondering, seeing as how it's so late, if you wouldn't\n rather stay over instead of going home....\nPreoccupied, he hadn't noticed the winds building up, didn't hear the\n shaking and rattling of the pipes. There were attic pipes connected\n to wall pipes and wall pipes connected to cellar pipes, and they made\n one gigantic skeleton that began to rattle its bones and dance as\n high-pressure air from the dome blower rushed in, slowly opening the\n Studebaker valve wider and wider....", "\"Tight as a kite,\" he thought, satisfied. He continued on toward the\n closet at the foot of the stairs and then stopped again. Was that\n right? No,\nsnug as a hug in a rug\n. He went on, thinking:\nThe old\n devils.\nThe downstairs closet was like a great watch case, a profusion of\n wheels surrounding the Master Mechanism, which was a miniature see-saw\n that went back and forth 365-1/4 times an hour. The wheels had a\n curious stateliness about them. They were all quite old, salvaged from\n grandfather's clocks and music boxes and they went around in graceful\n circles at the rate of 30 and 31 times an hour ... although there\n was one slightly eccentric cam that vacillated between 28 and 29. He\n watched as they spun and flashed in the darkness, and then set them for\n seven o'clock in the evening, April seventh, any year.\n\n\n Outside, the domed city vanished.", "\"No, you don't need a rest,\" MacBride said. \"You're starting to see\n flying houses, hear loud babbling voices. You've got winds in your\n brain, Lanfierre, breezes of fatigue, zephyrs of irrationality—\"\n\n\n At that moment, all at once, every last window in the house slammed\n shut.\n\n\n The street was deserted and quiet, not a movement, not a sound.\n MacBride and Lanfierre both leaned forward, as if waiting for the\n ghostly babble of voices to commence.\n\n\n The house began to shake.\n\n\n It rocked from side to side, it pitched forward and back, it yawed and\n dipped and twisted, straining at the mooring of its foundation. The\n house could have been preparing to take off and sail down the....\n\n\n MacBride looked at Lanfierre and Lanfierre looked at MacBride and then\n they both looked back at the dancing house.", "\"Help!\" Lieutenant MacBride called.\n\n\n Standing in the doorway with his wet hair plastered down on his\n dripping scalp, the wind roaring about him, the piano rumbling in the\n distance like thunder, Humphrey Fownes suddenly saw it all very clearly.\n\n\n \"\nWinds\n,\" he said in a whisper.\n\n\n \"What's happening?\" MacBride yelled, crouching behind the sofa.\n\n\n \"\nMarch\nwinds,\" he said.\n\n\n \"What?!\"\n\n\n \"April showers!\"", "The twister roared and moved out of the bedroom, out over the rear of\n the house toward the side of the dome. \"It says here,\" Fownes shouted\n over the roaring, \"that Dorothy traveled from Kansas to Oz in a twister\n and that ... and that Oz is a wonderful and mysterious land\nbeyond the\n confines of everyday living\n.\"\n\n\n MacBride's eyes and mouth were great zeros.\n\n\n \"Is there something I can turn?\" Lanfierre asked.\n\n\n Huge chunks of glass began to fall around them.\n\n\n \"Fownes!\" MacBride shouted. \"This is a direct order! Make it go back!\"\n\n\n But Fownes had already begun to run on toward the next house, dodging\n mountainous puffs of glass as he went. \"Mrs. Deshazaway!\" he shouted.\n \"Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Deshazaway!\"", "The neon roses thrashed about, extinguishing each other. The red sun\n shot off a mass of sparks and then quickly sank out of sight. The moon\n fell on the garden and rolled ponderously along, crooning\nWhen the\n Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day\n.\n\n\n The shaking house finally woke him up. He scrambled upstairs to the\n Studebaker wheel and shut it off.\n\n\n At the window again, he sighed. Repairs were in order. And it wasn't\n the first time the winds got out of line.\n\n\n Why didn't she marry him and save all this bother? He shut it all down\n and went out the front door, wondering about the rhyme of the months,\n about stately August and eccentric February and romantic April. April.\n Its days were thirty and it followed September.\nAnd all the rest have\n thirty-one.\nWhat a strange people, the ancients!", "He went up the stairs to the bedroom closet and tried the rain-maker,\n thinking roguishly:\nThou shalt not inundate.\nThe risks he was taking!\n A shower fell gently on the garden and a male chorus began to chant\nSinging in the Rain\n. Undiminished, the yellow moon and the red sun\n continued to be brilliant, although the sun occasionally arced over and\n demolished several of the neon roses.\n\n\n The last wheel in the bedroom closet was a rather elegant steering\n wheel from an old 1995 Studebaker. This was on the bootleg pipe; he\n gingerly turned it.\n\n\n Far below in the cellar there was a rumble and then the soft whistle of\n winds came to him.", "It was replaced by an illusion. Or, as Fownes hoped it might appear,\n the illusion of the domed city vanished and was replaced by a more\n satisfactory, and, for his specific purpose, more functional, illusion.\n Looking through the window he saw only a garden.\n\n\n Instead of an orange sun at perpetual high noon, there was a red sun\n setting brilliantly, marred only by an occasional arcover which left\n the smell of ozone in the air. There was also a gigantic moon. It hid a\n huge area of sky, and it sang. The sun and moon both looked down upon a\n garden that was itself scintillant, composed largely of neon roses.", "\"I see.\"\n\n\n \"\nAnd\n,\" Mr. Fownes added, his voice a honeyed whisper, \"they say\n that somewhere out in the space and the roses and the moonlight,\n the sleeping equinox yawns and rises because on a certain day it's\nvernal\nand that's when it roams the Open Country where geigers no\n longer scintillate.\"", "From a prone position on his miniscule front lawn, Fownes watched as\n his favorite easy chair sailed out of the living room on a blast of\n cold air and went pinwheeling down the avenue in the bright sunshine. A\n wild wind and a thick fog poured out of the house. It brought chairs,\n suits, small tables, lamps trailing their cords, ashtrays, sofa\n cushions. The house was emptying itself fiercely, as if disgorging an\n old, spoiled meal. From deep inside he could hear the rumble of his\n ancient upright piano as it rolled ponderously from room to room.\n\n\n He stood up; a wet wind swept over him, whipping at his face, toying\n with his hair. It was a whistling in his ears, and a tingle on his\n cheeks. He got hit by a shoe.\n\n\n As he forced his way back to the doorway needles of rain played over\n his face and he heard a voice cry out from somewhere in the living room." ], [ "Humphrey Fownes strode through the puffs of falling glass still\n intrigued by a temperature that was always 59 degrees, by a humidity\n that was always 47%, by weather that was always Optimum. It was this\n rather than skill that enabled the police to maintain such a tight\n surveillance on him, a surveillance that went to the extent of getting\n his fingerprints off the postman's bag, and which photographed, X-rayed\n and chemically analyzed the contents of his pockets before returning\n them. Two blocks away from his home a careless housewife spilled a\n five-pound bag of flour as he was passing. It was really plaster of\n Paris. He left his shoe prints, stride measurement, height, weight and\n handedness behind.\n\n\n By the time Fownes reached his front door an entire dossier complete\n with photographs had been prepared and was being read by two men in an\n orange patrol car parked down the street.\nLanfierre had undoubtedly been affected by his job.", "Humphrey Fownes' preoccupation finally came to an end when he was one\n block away from his house. It was then that he realized something\n unusual must have occurred. An orange patrol car of the security police\n was parked at his front door. And something else was happening too.\n\n\n His house was dancing.\n\n\n It was disconcerting, and at the same time enchanting, to watch one's\n residence frisking about on its foundation. It was such a strange sight\n that for the moment he didn't give a thought to what might be causing\n it. But when he stepped gingerly onto the porch, which was doing its\n own independent gavotte, he reached for the doorknob with an immense\n curiosity.\n\n\n The door flung itself open and knocked him back off the porch.", "\"He'll be coming out soon,\" Lanfierre said. \"He eats supper next door\n with a widow. Then he goes to the library. Always the same. Supper at\n the widow's next door and then the library.\"\n\n\n MacBride's eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. \"The library?\" he\n said. \"Is he in with that bunch?\"\n\n\n Lanfierre nodded.\n\n\n \"Should be very interesting,\" MacBride said slowly.\n\n\n \"I can't wait to see what he's got in there,\" Lanfierre murmured,\n watching the house with a consuming interest.", "They sat there smoking in silence and every now and then their eyes\n widened as the house danced a new step.\nFownes stopped on the porch to brush the plaster of paris off his\n shoes. He hadn't seen the patrol car and this intense preoccupation\n of his was also responsible for the dancing house—he simply hadn't\n noticed. There was a certain amount of vibration, of course. He\n had a bootleg pipe connected into the dome blower system, and the\n high-pressure air caused some buffeting against the thin walls of the\n house. At least, he called it buffeting; he'd never thought to watch\n from outside.\n\n\n He went in and threw his jacket on the sofa, there being no room\n left in the closets. Crossing the living room he stopped to twist a\n draw-pull.\n\n\n Every window slammed shut.", "Lanfierre sat stiffly behind the wheel, affronted. The cynical MacBride\n couldn't really appreciate fine aberrations. In some ways MacBride\n was a barbarian. Lanfierre had held out on Fownes for months. He\n had even contrived to engage him in conversation once, a pleasantly\n absurd, irrational little chat that titillated him for weeks. It was\n only with the greatest reluctance that he finally mentioned Fownes\n to MacBride. After years of searching for differences Lanfierre had\n seen how extraordinarily repetitious people were, echoes really, dimly\n resounding echoes, each believing itself whole and separate. They spoke\n in an incessant chatter of cliches, and their actions were unbelievably\n trite.\n\n\n Then a fine robust freak came along and the others—the echoes—refused\n to believe it. The lieutenant was probably on the point of suggesting a\n vacation.\n\n\n \"Why don't you take a vacation?\" Lieutenant MacBride suggested.", "Sitting behind the wheel of the orange car, he watched Humphrey Fownes\n approach with a distinct feeling of admiration, although it was an\n odd, objective kind of admiration, clinical in nature. It was similar\n to that of a pathologist observing for the first time a new and\n particularly virulent strain of pneumococcus under his microscope.\n\n\n Lanfierre's job was to ferret out aberration. It couldn't be tolerated\n within the confines of a dome. Conformity had become more than a social\n force; it was a physical necessity. And, after years of working at it,\n Lanfierre had become an admirer of eccentricity. He came to see that\n genuine quirks were rare and, as time went on, due partly to his own\n small efforts, rarer.\n\n\n Fownes was a masterpiece of queerness. He was utterly inexplicable.\n Lanfierre was almost proud of Humphrey Fownes.", "\"And of course when they do find out and they ask you why, Mr. Fownes,\n you'll tell them. No, no heroics, please! When they ask a man a\n question he always answers and you will too. You'll tell them I wanted\n to be courted and when they hear that they'll be around to ask\nme\na\n few questions. You see, we're both a bit queer.\"\n\n\n \"I hadn't thought of that,\" Fownes said quietly.\n\n\n \"Oh, it doesn't really matter. I'll join Andrew, Curt, Norman—\"\n\n\n \"That won't be necessary,\" Fownes said with unusual force. \"With all\n due respect to Andrew, Curt, Norman and Alphonse, I might as well state\n here and now I have other plans for you, Mrs. Deshazaway.\"\n\n\n \"But my dear Mr. Fownes,\" she said, leaning across the table. \"We're\n lost, you and I.\"", "\"And the\nwater\n,\" Lanfierre said. \"The\nwater\nhe uses! He could be\n the thirstiest and cleanest man in the city. He could have a whole\n family of thirsty and clean kids, and he\nstill\nwouldn't need all that\n water.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant had picked up the dossier. He thumbed through the pages\n now in amazement. \"Where do you get a guy like this?\" he asked. \"Did\n you see what he carries in his pockets?\"\n\n\n \"And compasses won't work on this street.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant lit a cigarette and sighed.\n\n\n He usually sighed when making the decision to raid a dwelling. It\n expressed his weariness and distaste for people who went off and got\n neurotic when they could be enjoying a happy, normal existence. There\n was something implacable about his sighs.", "It should have been difficult. Under the circumstances it was a\n masterpiece of pocket picking. What made it possible was Humphrey\n Fownes' abstraction; he was an uncommonly preoccupied individual. He\n was strolling along a quiet residential avenue: small private houses,\n one after another, a place of little traffic and minimum distractions.\n But he was thinking about weather, which was an unusual subject to\n begin with for a person living in a domed city. He was thinking so\n deeply about it that it never occurred to him that entirely too many\n people were bumping into him. He was thinking about Optimum Dome\n Conditions (a crisp 59 degrees, a mildly dessicated 47%) when a bogus\n postman, who pretended to be reading a postal card, jostled him. In the", "confusion of spilled letters and apologies from both sides, the postman\n rifled Fownes's handkerchief and inside jacket pockets.\nHe was still thinking about temperature and humidity when a pretty girl\n happened along with something in her eye. They collided. She got his\n right and left jacket pockets. It was much too much for coincidence.\n The sidewalk was wide enough to allow four people to pass at one time.\n He should surely have become suspicious when two men engaged in a\n heated argument came along. In the ensuing contretemps they emptied his\n rear pants pockets, got his wristwatch and restored the contents of the\nhandkerchief pocket. It all went off very smoothly, like a game of put\n and take—the sole difference being that Humphrey Fownes had no idea he\n was playing.", "Fownes smiled weakly and looked again at the dust jacket. The twister\n was unquestionably a meteorological phenomenon. It spun ominously, like\n a malevolent top, and coursed the countryside destructively, carrying\n a Dorothy to an Oz. He couldn't help wondering if twisters did anything\n to feminine pulses, if they could possibly be a part of a moonlit\n night, with cocktails and roses. He absently stuffed the dust jacket\n in his pocket and went on into the other rooms, the librarian mumbling\n after him: \"Edna Murdoch Featherstone, April 21, 1991,\" as though\n reading inscriptions on a tombstone.\nThe Movement met in what had been the children's room, where unpaid\n ladies of the afternoon had once upon a time read stories to other\n people's offspring. The members sat around at the miniature tables\n looking oddly like giants fled from their fairy tales, protesting.", "He could hear her moving about and then felt her hands on his\n shoulders. \"And what about those\nvery\nelaborate plans you've been\n making to seduce me?\"\n\n\n Fownes froze with three asparagus hanging from his fork.\n\n\n \"Don't you think\nthey'll\nfind out?\nI\nfound out and you can bet\nthey\nwill. It's my fault, I guess. I talk too much. And I don't\n always tell the truth. To be completely honest with you, Mr. Fownes, it\n wasn't the old customs at all standing between us, it was air. I can't\n have another man die on me, it's bad for my self-esteem. And now you've\n gone and done something good and criminal, something peculiar.\"\nFownes put his fork down. \"Dear Mrs. Deshazaway,\" he started to say.", "\"I see.\"\n\n\n \"\nAnd\n,\" Mr. Fownes added, his voice a honeyed whisper, \"they say\n that somewhere out in the space and the roses and the moonlight,\n the sleeping equinox yawns and rises because on a certain day it's\nvernal\nand that's when it roams the Open Country where geigers no\n longer scintillate.\"", "\"Sometimes his house\nshakes\n,\" Lanfierre said.\n\n\n \"House shakes,\" Lieutenant MacBride wrote in his notebook. Then he\n stopped and frowned. He reread what he'd just written.\n\n\n \"You heard right. The house\nshakes\n,\" Lanfierre said, savoring it.\n\n\n MacBride looked at the Fownes house through the magnifying glass of\n the windshield. \"Like from ...\nside to side\n?\" he asked in a somewhat\n patronizing tone of voice.\n\n\n \"And up and down.\"\n\n\n MacBride returned the notebook to the breast pocket of his orange\n uniform. \"Go on,\" he said, amused. \"It sounds interesting.\" He tossed\n the dossier carelessly on the back seat.", "\"But it's the air! Why don't they talk about that? The air is stale,\n I'm positive. It's not nourishing. The air is stale and Andrew, Curt,\n Norman and Alphonse couldn't stand it. Poor Alphonse. He was never so\n healthy as on the day he was born. From then on things got steadily\n worse for him.\"\n\n\n \"I don't seem to mind the air.\"\n\n\n She threw up her hands. \"You'd be the worst of the lot!\" She left the\n table, rustling and tinkling about the room. \"I can just hear them. Try\n some of the asparagus.\nFive.\nThat's what they'd say. That woman did\n it again. And the plain fact is I don't want you on my record.\"\n\n\n \"Really,\" Fownes protested. \"I feel splendid. Never better.\"", "\"Help!\" Lieutenant MacBride called.\n\n\n Standing in the doorway with his wet hair plastered down on his\n dripping scalp, the wind roaring about him, the piano rumbling in the\n distance like thunder, Humphrey Fownes suddenly saw it all very clearly.\n\n\n \"\nWinds\n,\" he said in a whisper.\n\n\n \"What's happening?\" MacBride yelled, crouching behind the sofa.\n\n\n \"\nMarch\nwinds,\" he said.\n\n\n \"What?!\"\n\n\n \"April showers!\"", "Pinning his hopes on the Movement, Fownes went straight to the\n library several blocks away, a shattered depressing place given over\n to government publications and censored old books with holes in\n them. It was used so infrequently that the Movement was able to meet\n there undisturbed. The librarian was a yellowed, dog-eared woman of\n eighty. She spent her days reading ancient library cards and, like the\n books around her, had been rendered by time's own censor into near\n unintelligibility.\n\n\n \"Here's one,\" she said to him as he entered. \"\nGulliver's Travels.\nLoaned to John Wesley Davidson on March 14, 1979 for\nfive\ndays. What\n do you make of it?\"\n\n\n In the litter of books and cards and dried out ink pads that surrounded\n the librarian, Fownes noticed a torn dust jacket with a curious\n illustration. \"What's that?\" he said.", "\"\nMy.\n\" Mrs. Deshazaway rose, paced slowly to the window and then came\n back to the table, standing directly over Fownes. \"If you can get us\n outside the dome,\" she said, \"out where a man stays\nwarm\nlong enough\n for his wife to get to know him ... if you can do that, Mr. Fownes ...\n you may call me Agnes.\"\nWhen Humphrey Fownes stepped out of the widow's house, there was a\n look of such intense abstraction on his features that Lanfierre felt a\n wistful desire to get out of the car and walk along with the man. It\n would be such a\ndeliciously\ninsane experience. (\"April has thirty\n days,\" Fownes mumbled, passing them, \"because thirty is the largest\n number such that all smaller numbers not having a common divisor\n with it are\nprimes\n.\" MacBride frowned and added it to the dossier.\n Lanfierre sighed.)", "\"A twister,\" she replied quickly. \"Now listen to\nthis\n. Seven years\n later on March 21, 1986, Ella Marshall Davidson took out the same book.\n What do you make of\nthat\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'd say,\" Humphrey Fownes said, \"that he ... that he recommended it\n to her, that one day they met in the street and he told her about\n this book and then they ... they went to the library together and she\n borrowed it and eventually, why eventually they got married.\"\n\n\n \"Hah! They were brother and sister!\" the librarian shouted in her\n parched voice, her old buckram eyes laughing with cunning.", "Recruiting Lieutenant MacBride from behind his sofa, the men carefully\n edged out of the house and forced the front door shut.\n\n\n The wind died. The fog dispersed. They stood dripping in the Optimum\n Dome Conditions of the bright avenue.\n\n\n \"I never figured on\nthis\n,\" Lanfierre said, shaking his head.\n\n\n With the front door closed the wind quickly built up inside the house.\n They could see the furnishing whirl past the windows. The house did a\n wild, elated jig.\n\n\n \"What kind of a place\nis\nthis?\" MacBride said, his courage beginning\n to return. He took out his notebook but it was a soggy mess. He tossed\n it away.\n\n\n \"Sure, he was\ndifferent\n,\" Lanfierre murmured. \"I knew that much.\"" ], [ "Lanfierre sat stiffly behind the wheel, affronted. The cynical MacBride\n couldn't really appreciate fine aberrations. In some ways MacBride\n was a barbarian. Lanfierre had held out on Fownes for months. He\n had even contrived to engage him in conversation once, a pleasantly\n absurd, irrational little chat that titillated him for weeks. It was\n only with the greatest reluctance that he finally mentioned Fownes\n to MacBride. After years of searching for differences Lanfierre had\n seen how extraordinarily repetitious people were, echoes really, dimly\n resounding echoes, each believing itself whole and separate. They spoke\n in an incessant chatter of cliches, and their actions were unbelievably\n trite.\n\n\n Then a fine robust freak came along and the others—the echoes—refused\n to believe it. The lieutenant was probably on the point of suggesting a\n vacation.\n\n\n \"Why don't you take a vacation?\" Lieutenant MacBride suggested.", "Humphrey Fownes strode through the puffs of falling glass still\n intrigued by a temperature that was always 59 degrees, by a humidity\n that was always 47%, by weather that was always Optimum. It was this\n rather than skill that enabled the police to maintain such a tight\n surveillance on him, a surveillance that went to the extent of getting\n his fingerprints off the postman's bag, and which photographed, X-rayed\n and chemically analyzed the contents of his pockets before returning\n them. Two blocks away from his home a careless housewife spilled a\n five-pound bag of flour as he was passing. It was really plaster of\n Paris. He left his shoe prints, stride measurement, height, weight and\n handedness behind.\n\n\n By the time Fownes reached his front door an entire dossier complete\n with photographs had been prepared and was being read by two men in an\n orange patrol car parked down the street.\nLanfierre had undoubtedly been affected by his job.", "\"He'll be coming out soon,\" Lanfierre said. \"He eats supper next door\n with a widow. Then he goes to the library. Always the same. Supper at\n the widow's next door and then the library.\"\n\n\n MacBride's eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. \"The library?\" he\n said. \"Is he in with that bunch?\"\n\n\n Lanfierre nodded.\n\n\n \"Should be very interesting,\" MacBride said slowly.\n\n\n \"I can't wait to see what he's got in there,\" Lanfierre murmured,\n watching the house with a consuming interest.", "Sitting behind the wheel of the orange car, he watched Humphrey Fownes\n approach with a distinct feeling of admiration, although it was an\n odd, objective kind of admiration, clinical in nature. It was similar\n to that of a pathologist observing for the first time a new and\n particularly virulent strain of pneumococcus under his microscope.\n\n\n Lanfierre's job was to ferret out aberration. It couldn't be tolerated\n within the confines of a dome. Conformity had become more than a social\n force; it was a physical necessity. And, after years of working at it,\n Lanfierre had become an admirer of eccentricity. He came to see that\n genuine quirks were rare and, as time went on, due partly to his own\n small efforts, rarer.\n\n\n Fownes was a masterpiece of queerness. He was utterly inexplicable.\n Lanfierre was almost proud of Humphrey Fownes.", "\"And the\nwater\n,\" Lanfierre said. \"The\nwater\nhe uses! He could be\n the thirstiest and cleanest man in the city. He could have a whole\n family of thirsty and clean kids, and he\nstill\nwouldn't need all that\n water.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant had picked up the dossier. He thumbed through the pages\n now in amazement. \"Where do you get a guy like this?\" he asked. \"Did\n you see what he carries in his pockets?\"\n\n\n \"And compasses won't work on this street.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant lit a cigarette and sighed.\n\n\n He usually sighed when making the decision to raid a dwelling. It\n expressed his weariness and distaste for people who went off and got\n neurotic when they could be enjoying a happy, normal existence. There\n was something implacable about his sighs.", "\"I'll tell you something else,\" Lanfierre went on. \"The\nwindows\nall\n close at the same time. You'll be watching and all of a sudden every\n single window in the place will drop to its sill.\" Lanfierre leaned\n back in the seat, his eyes still on the house. \"Sometimes I think\n there's a whole crowd of people in there waiting for a signal—as if\n they all had something important to say but had to close the windows\n first so no one could hear. Why else close the windows in a domed city?\n And then as soon as the place is buttoned up they all explode into\n conversation—and that's why the house shakes.\"\n\n\n MacBride whistled.\n\n\n \"No, I don't need a vacation.\"\n\n\n A falling piece of glass dissolved into a puff of gossamer against the\n windshield. Lanfierre started and bumped his knee on the steering wheel.", "When he heard this Fownes plunged into the house and fought his way\n up the stairs. He found Lanfierre standing outside the bedroom with a\n wheel in his hand.\n\"What have I done?\" Lanfierre asked in the monotone of shock.\n\n\n Fownes took the wheel. It was off a 1995 Studebaker.\n\n\n \"I'm not sure what's going to come of this,\" he said to Lanfierre with\n an astonishing amount of objectivity, \"but the entire dome air supply\n is now coming through my bedroom.\"\n\n\n The wind screamed.\n\n\n \"Is there something I can turn?\" Lanfierre asked.\n\n\n \"Not any more there isn't.\"\n\n\n They started down the stairs carefully, but the wind caught them and\n they quickly reached the bottom in a wet heap.", "\"Sometimes his house\nshakes\n,\" Lanfierre said.\n\n\n \"House shakes,\" Lieutenant MacBride wrote in his notebook. Then he\n stopped and frowned. He reread what he'd just written.\n\n\n \"You heard right. The house\nshakes\n,\" Lanfierre said, savoring it.\n\n\n MacBride looked at the Fownes house through the magnifying glass of\n the windshield. \"Like from ...\nside to side\n?\" he asked in a somewhat\n patronizing tone of voice.\n\n\n \"And up and down.\"\n\n\n MacBride returned the notebook to the breast pocket of his orange\n uniform. \"Go on,\" he said, amused. \"It sounds interesting.\" He tossed\n the dossier carelessly on the back seat.", "Recruiting Lieutenant MacBride from behind his sofa, the men carefully\n edged out of the house and forced the front door shut.\n\n\n The wind died. The fog dispersed. They stood dripping in the Optimum\n Dome Conditions of the bright avenue.\n\n\n \"I never figured on\nthis\n,\" Lanfierre said, shaking his head.\n\n\n With the front door closed the wind quickly built up inside the house.\n They could see the furnishing whirl past the windows. The house did a\n wild, elated jig.\n\n\n \"What kind of a place\nis\nthis?\" MacBride said, his courage beginning\n to return. He took out his notebook but it was a soggy mess. He tossed\n it away.\n\n\n \"Sure, he was\ndifferent\n,\" Lanfierre murmured. \"I knew that much.\"", "\"\nMy.\n\" Mrs. Deshazaway rose, paced slowly to the window and then came\n back to the table, standing directly over Fownes. \"If you can get us\n outside the dome,\" she said, \"out where a man stays\nwarm\nlong enough\n for his wife to get to know him ... if you can do that, Mr. Fownes ...\n you may call me Agnes.\"\nWhen Humphrey Fownes stepped out of the widow's house, there was a\n look of such intense abstraction on his features that Lanfierre felt a\n wistful desire to get out of the car and walk along with the man. It\n would be such a\ndeliciously\ninsane experience. (\"April has thirty\n days,\" Fownes mumbled, passing them, \"because thirty is the largest\n number such that all smaller numbers not having a common divisor\n with it are\nprimes\n.\" MacBride frowned and added it to the dossier.\n Lanfierre sighed.)", "\"No, you don't need a rest,\" MacBride said. \"You're starting to see\n flying houses, hear loud babbling voices. You've got winds in your\n brain, Lanfierre, breezes of fatigue, zephyrs of irrationality—\"\n\n\n At that moment, all at once, every last window in the house slammed\n shut.\n\n\n The street was deserted and quiet, not a movement, not a sound.\n MacBride and Lanfierre both leaned forward, as if waiting for the\n ghostly babble of voices to commence.\n\n\n The house began to shake.\n\n\n It rocked from side to side, it pitched forward and back, it yawed and\n dipped and twisted, straining at the mooring of its foundation. The\n house could have been preparing to take off and sail down the....\n\n\n MacBride looked at Lanfierre and Lanfierre looked at MacBride and then\n they both looked back at the dancing house.", "\"And of course when they do find out and they ask you why, Mr. Fownes,\n you'll tell them. No, no heroics, please! When they ask a man a\n question he always answers and you will too. You'll tell them I wanted\n to be courted and when they hear that they'll be around to ask\nme\na\n few questions. You see, we're both a bit queer.\"\n\n\n \"I hadn't thought of that,\" Fownes said quietly.\n\n\n \"Oh, it doesn't really matter. I'll join Andrew, Curt, Norman—\"\n\n\n \"That won't be necessary,\" Fownes said with unusual force. \"With all\n due respect to Andrew, Curt, Norman and Alphonse, I might as well state\n here and now I have other plans for you, Mrs. Deshazaway.\"\n\n\n \"But my dear Mr. Fownes,\" she said, leaning across the table. \"We're\n lost, you and I.\"", "They sat there smoking in silence and every now and then their eyes\n widened as the house danced a new step.\nFownes stopped on the porch to brush the plaster of paris off his\n shoes. He hadn't seen the patrol car and this intense preoccupation\n of his was also responsible for the dancing house—he simply hadn't\n noticed. There was a certain amount of vibration, of course. He\n had a bootleg pipe connected into the dome blower system, and the\n high-pressure air caused some buffeting against the thin walls of the\n house. At least, he called it buffeting; he'd never thought to watch\n from outside.\n\n\n He went in and threw his jacket on the sofa, there being no room\n left in the closets. Crossing the living room he stopped to twist a\n draw-pull.\n\n\n Every window slammed shut.", "\"It's like this, MacBride. Do you know what a wind is? A breeze? A\n zephyr?\"\n\n\n \"I've heard some.\"\n\n\n \"They say there are mountain-tops where winds blow all the time. Strong\n winds, MacBride. Winds like you and I can't imagine. And if there was\n a house sitting on such a mountain and if winds\ndid\nblow, it would\n shake exactly the way that one does. Sometimes I get the feeling the\n whole place is going to slide off its foundation and go sailing down\n the avenue.\"\nLieutenant MacBride pursed his lips.", "From a prone position on his miniscule front lawn, Fownes watched as\n his favorite easy chair sailed out of the living room on a blast of\n cold air and went pinwheeling down the avenue in the bright sunshine. A\n wild wind and a thick fog poured out of the house. It brought chairs,\n suits, small tables, lamps trailing their cords, ashtrays, sofa\n cushions. The house was emptying itself fiercely, as if disgorging an\n old, spoiled meal. From deep inside he could hear the rumble of his\n ancient upright piano as it rolled ponderously from room to room.\n\n\n He stood up; a wet wind swept over him, whipping at his face, toying\n with his hair. It was a whistling in his ears, and a tingle on his\n cheeks. He got hit by a shoe.\n\n\n As he forced his way back to the doorway needles of rain played over\n his face and he heard a voice cry out from somewhere in the living room.", "The widow was a passionate woman. She did everything\n passionately—talking, cooking, dressing. Her beets were passionately\n red. Her clothes rustled and her high heels clicked and her jewelry\n tinkled. She was possessed by an uncontrollable dynamism. Fownes had\n never known anyone like her. \"You forgot to put salt on the potatoes,\"\n she said passionately, then went on as calmly as it was possible for\n her to be, to explain why she couldn't marry him. \"Do you have any\n idea what people are saying? They're all saying I'm a cannibal! I rob\n my husbands of their life force and when they're empty I carry their\n bodies outside on my way to the justice of the peace.\"\n\n\n \"As long as there are people,\" he said philosophically, \"there'll be\n talk.\"", "He watched with folded arms, considering how he would start.\nMy dear\n Mrs. Deshazaway.\nToo formal. They'd be looking out at the romantic\n garden; time to be a bit forward.\nMy very dear Mrs. Deshazaway.\nNo.\n Contrived. How about a simple,\nDear Mrs. Deshazaway\n. That might be\n it.\nI was wondering, seeing as how it's so late, if you wouldn't\n rather stay over instead of going home....\nPreoccupied, he hadn't noticed the winds building up, didn't hear the\n shaking and rattling of the pipes. There were attic pipes connected\n to wall pipes and wall pipes connected to cellar pipes, and they made\n one gigantic skeleton that began to rattle its bones and dance as\n high-pressure air from the dome blower rushed in, slowly opening the\n Studebaker valve wider and wider....", "He could hear her moving about and then felt her hands on his\n shoulders. \"And what about those\nvery\nelaborate plans you've been\n making to seduce me?\"\n\n\n Fownes froze with three asparagus hanging from his fork.\n\n\n \"Don't you think\nthey'll\nfind out?\nI\nfound out and you can bet\nthey\nwill. It's my fault, I guess. I talk too much. And I don't\n always tell the truth. To be completely honest with you, Mr. Fownes, it\n wasn't the old customs at all standing between us, it was air. I can't\n have another man die on me, it's bad for my self-esteem. And now you've\n gone and done something good and criminal, something peculiar.\"\nFownes put his fork down. \"Dear Mrs. Deshazaway,\" he started to say.", "He still didn't see the orange car parked down the street.\n\"Men are too perishable,\" Mrs. Deshazaway said over dinner. \"For all\n practical purposes I'm never going to marry again. All my husbands die.\"\n\n\n \"Would you pass the beets, please?\" Humphrey Fownes said.\n\n\n She handed him a platter of steaming red beets. \"And don't look at me\n that way,\" she said. \"I'm\nnot\ngoing to marry you and if you want\n reasons I'll give you four of them. Andrew. Curt. Norman. And Alphonse.\"", "\"But it's the air! Why don't they talk about that? The air is stale,\n I'm positive. It's not nourishing. The air is stale and Andrew, Curt,\n Norman and Alphonse couldn't stand it. Poor Alphonse. He was never so\n healthy as on the day he was born. From then on things got steadily\n worse for him.\"\n\n\n \"I don't seem to mind the air.\"\n\n\n She threw up her hands. \"You'd be the worst of the lot!\" She left the\n table, rustling and tinkling about the room. \"I can just hear them. Try\n some of the asparagus.\nFive.\nThat's what they'd say. That woman did\n it again. And the plain fact is I don't want you on my record.\"\n\n\n \"Really,\" Fownes protested. \"I feel splendid. Never better.\"" ], [ "Lanfierre sat stiffly behind the wheel, affronted. The cynical MacBride\n couldn't really appreciate fine aberrations. In some ways MacBride\n was a barbarian. Lanfierre had held out on Fownes for months. He\n had even contrived to engage him in conversation once, a pleasantly\n absurd, irrational little chat that titillated him for weeks. It was\n only with the greatest reluctance that he finally mentioned Fownes\n to MacBride. After years of searching for differences Lanfierre had\n seen how extraordinarily repetitious people were, echoes really, dimly\n resounding echoes, each believing itself whole and separate. They spoke\n in an incessant chatter of cliches, and their actions were unbelievably\n trite.\n\n\n Then a fine robust freak came along and the others—the echoes—refused\n to believe it. The lieutenant was probably on the point of suggesting a\n vacation.\n\n\n \"Why don't you take a vacation?\" Lieutenant MacBride suggested.", "Sitting behind the wheel of the orange car, he watched Humphrey Fownes\n approach with a distinct feeling of admiration, although it was an\n odd, objective kind of admiration, clinical in nature. It was similar\n to that of a pathologist observing for the first time a new and\n particularly virulent strain of pneumococcus under his microscope.\n\n\n Lanfierre's job was to ferret out aberration. It couldn't be tolerated\n within the confines of a dome. Conformity had become more than a social\n force; it was a physical necessity. And, after years of working at it,\n Lanfierre had become an admirer of eccentricity. He came to see that\n genuine quirks were rare and, as time went on, due partly to his own\n small efforts, rarer.\n\n\n Fownes was a masterpiece of queerness. He was utterly inexplicable.\n Lanfierre was almost proud of Humphrey Fownes.", "Humphrey Fownes strode through the puffs of falling glass still\n intrigued by a temperature that was always 59 degrees, by a humidity\n that was always 47%, by weather that was always Optimum. It was this\n rather than skill that enabled the police to maintain such a tight\n surveillance on him, a surveillance that went to the extent of getting\n his fingerprints off the postman's bag, and which photographed, X-rayed\n and chemically analyzed the contents of his pockets before returning\n them. Two blocks away from his home a careless housewife spilled a\n five-pound bag of flour as he was passing. It was really plaster of\n Paris. He left his shoe prints, stride measurement, height, weight and\n handedness behind.\n\n\n By the time Fownes reached his front door an entire dossier complete\n with photographs had been prepared and was being read by two men in an\n orange patrol car parked down the street.\nLanfierre had undoubtedly been affected by his job.", "\"And the\nwater\n,\" Lanfierre said. \"The\nwater\nhe uses! He could be\n the thirstiest and cleanest man in the city. He could have a whole\n family of thirsty and clean kids, and he\nstill\nwouldn't need all that\n water.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant had picked up the dossier. He thumbed through the pages\n now in amazement. \"Where do you get a guy like this?\" he asked. \"Did\n you see what he carries in his pockets?\"\n\n\n \"And compasses won't work on this street.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant lit a cigarette and sighed.\n\n\n He usually sighed when making the decision to raid a dwelling. It\n expressed his weariness and distaste for people who went off and got\n neurotic when they could be enjoying a happy, normal existence. There\n was something implacable about his sighs.", "\"He'll be coming out soon,\" Lanfierre said. \"He eats supper next door\n with a widow. Then he goes to the library. Always the same. Supper at\n the widow's next door and then the library.\"\n\n\n MacBride's eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. \"The library?\" he\n said. \"Is he in with that bunch?\"\n\n\n Lanfierre nodded.\n\n\n \"Should be very interesting,\" MacBride said slowly.\n\n\n \"I can't wait to see what he's got in there,\" Lanfierre murmured,\n watching the house with a consuming interest.", "\"I'll tell you something else,\" Lanfierre went on. \"The\nwindows\nall\n close at the same time. You'll be watching and all of a sudden every\n single window in the place will drop to its sill.\" Lanfierre leaned\n back in the seat, his eyes still on the house. \"Sometimes I think\n there's a whole crowd of people in there waiting for a signal—as if\n they all had something important to say but had to close the windows\n first so no one could hear. Why else close the windows in a domed city?\n And then as soon as the place is buttoned up they all explode into\n conversation—and that's why the house shakes.\"\n\n\n MacBride whistled.\n\n\n \"No, I don't need a vacation.\"\n\n\n A falling piece of glass dissolved into a puff of gossamer against the\n windshield. Lanfierre started and bumped his knee on the steering wheel.", "\"\nMy.\n\" Mrs. Deshazaway rose, paced slowly to the window and then came\n back to the table, standing directly over Fownes. \"If you can get us\n outside the dome,\" she said, \"out where a man stays\nwarm\nlong enough\n for his wife to get to know him ... if you can do that, Mr. Fownes ...\n you may call me Agnes.\"\nWhen Humphrey Fownes stepped out of the widow's house, there was a\n look of such intense abstraction on his features that Lanfierre felt a\n wistful desire to get out of the car and walk along with the man. It\n would be such a\ndeliciously\ninsane experience. (\"April has thirty\n days,\" Fownes mumbled, passing them, \"because thirty is the largest\n number such that all smaller numbers not having a common divisor\n with it are\nprimes\n.\" MacBride frowned and added it to the dossier.\n Lanfierre sighed.)", "When he heard this Fownes plunged into the house and fought his way\n up the stairs. He found Lanfierre standing outside the bedroom with a\n wheel in his hand.\n\"What have I done?\" Lanfierre asked in the monotone of shock.\n\n\n Fownes took the wheel. It was off a 1995 Studebaker.\n\n\n \"I'm not sure what's going to come of this,\" he said to Lanfierre with\n an astonishing amount of objectivity, \"but the entire dome air supply\n is now coming through my bedroom.\"\n\n\n The wind screamed.\n\n\n \"Is there something I can turn?\" Lanfierre asked.\n\n\n \"Not any more there isn't.\"\n\n\n They started down the stairs carefully, but the wind caught them and\n they quickly reached the bottom in a wet heap.", "\"Sometimes his house\nshakes\n,\" Lanfierre said.\n\n\n \"House shakes,\" Lieutenant MacBride wrote in his notebook. Then he\n stopped and frowned. He reread what he'd just written.\n\n\n \"You heard right. The house\nshakes\n,\" Lanfierre said, savoring it.\n\n\n MacBride looked at the Fownes house through the magnifying glass of\n the windshield. \"Like from ...\nside to side\n?\" he asked in a somewhat\n patronizing tone of voice.\n\n\n \"And up and down.\"\n\n\n MacBride returned the notebook to the breast pocket of his orange\n uniform. \"Go on,\" he said, amused. \"It sounds interesting.\" He tossed\n the dossier carelessly on the back seat.", "Recruiting Lieutenant MacBride from behind his sofa, the men carefully\n edged out of the house and forced the front door shut.\n\n\n The wind died. The fog dispersed. They stood dripping in the Optimum\n Dome Conditions of the bright avenue.\n\n\n \"I never figured on\nthis\n,\" Lanfierre said, shaking his head.\n\n\n With the front door closed the wind quickly built up inside the house.\n They could see the furnishing whirl past the windows. The house did a\n wild, elated jig.\n\n\n \"What kind of a place\nis\nthis?\" MacBride said, his courage beginning\n to return. He took out his notebook but it was a soggy mess. He tossed\n it away.\n\n\n \"Sure, he was\ndifferent\n,\" Lanfierre murmured. \"I knew that much.\"", "Dialectically out in left field, Humphrey Fownes waited for a lull\n in the ensuing discussion and then politely inquired how it might be\n arranged for him to get out.\n\n\n \"Out?\" the leader said, frowning. \"Out? Out where?\"\n\n\n \"Outside the dome.\"\n\n\n \"Oh. All in good time, my friend. One day we shall all pick up and\n leave.\"\n\n\n \"And that day I'll await impatiently,\" Fownes replied with marvelous\n tact, \"because it will be lonely out there for the two of us. My future\n wife and I have to leave\nnow\n.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense. Ridiculous! You have to be prepared for the Open Country.\n You can't just up and leave, it would be suicide, Fownes. And\n dialectically very poor.\"", "The widow was a passionate woman. She did everything\n passionately—talking, cooking, dressing. Her beets were passionately\n red. Her clothes rustled and her high heels clicked and her jewelry\n tinkled. She was possessed by an uncontrollable dynamism. Fownes had\n never known anyone like her. \"You forgot to put salt on the potatoes,\"\n she said passionately, then went on as calmly as it was possible for\n her to be, to explain why she couldn't marry him. \"Do you have any\n idea what people are saying? They're all saying I'm a cannibal! I rob\n my husbands of their life force and when they're empty I carry their\n bodies outside on my way to the justice of the peace.\"\n\n\n \"As long as there are people,\" he said philosophically, \"there'll be\n talk.\"", "\"No, you don't need a rest,\" MacBride said. \"You're starting to see\n flying houses, hear loud babbling voices. You've got winds in your\n brain, Lanfierre, breezes of fatigue, zephyrs of irrationality—\"\n\n\n At that moment, all at once, every last window in the house slammed\n shut.\n\n\n The street was deserted and quiet, not a movement, not a sound.\n MacBride and Lanfierre both leaned forward, as if waiting for the\n ghostly babble of voices to commence.\n\n\n The house began to shake.\n\n\n It rocked from side to side, it pitched forward and back, it yawed and\n dipped and twisted, straining at the mooring of its foundation. The\n house could have been preparing to take off and sail down the....\n\n\n MacBride looked at Lanfierre and Lanfierre looked at MacBride and then\n they both looked back at the dancing house.", "\"Then you\nhave\ndiscussed preparations, the practical necessities of\n life in the Open Country. Food, clothing, a weapon perhaps? What else?\n Have I left anything out?\"\n\n\n The leader sighed. \"The gentleman wants to know if he's left anything\n out,\" he said to the group.\n\n\n Fownes looked around at them, at some dozen pained expressions.\n\n\n \"Tell the man what he's forgotten,\" the leader said, walking to the far\n window and turning his back quite pointedly on them.\n\n\n Everyone spoke at the same moment. \"\nA sound foreign policy\n,\" they all\n said, it being almost too obvious for words.\nOn his way out the librarian shouted at him: \"\nA Tale of a Tub\n,\n thirty-five years overdue!\" She was calculating the fine as he closed\n the door.", "He still didn't see the orange car parked down the street.\n\"Men are too perishable,\" Mrs. Deshazaway said over dinner. \"For all\n practical purposes I'm never going to marry again. All my husbands die.\"\n\n\n \"Would you pass the beets, please?\" Humphrey Fownes said.\n\n\n She handed him a platter of steaming red beets. \"And don't look at me\n that way,\" she said. \"I'm\nnot\ngoing to marry you and if you want\n reasons I'll give you four of them. Andrew. Curt. Norman. And Alphonse.\"", "It should have been difficult. Under the circumstances it was a\n masterpiece of pocket picking. What made it possible was Humphrey\n Fownes' abstraction; he was an uncommonly preoccupied individual. He\n was strolling along a quiet residential avenue: small private houses,\n one after another, a place of little traffic and minimum distractions.\n But he was thinking about weather, which was an unusual subject to\n begin with for a person living in a domed city. He was thinking so\n deeply about it that it never occurred to him that entirely too many\n people were bumping into him. He was thinking about Optimum Dome\n Conditions (a crisp 59 degrees, a mildly dessicated 47%) when a bogus\n postman, who pretended to be reading a postal card, jostled him. In the", "\"And of course when they do find out and they ask you why, Mr. Fownes,\n you'll tell them. No, no heroics, please! When they ask a man a\n question he always answers and you will too. You'll tell them I wanted\n to be courted and when they hear that they'll be around to ask\nme\na\n few questions. You see, we're both a bit queer.\"\n\n\n \"I hadn't thought of that,\" Fownes said quietly.\n\n\n \"Oh, it doesn't really matter. I'll join Andrew, Curt, Norman—\"\n\n\n \"That won't be necessary,\" Fownes said with unusual force. \"With all\n due respect to Andrew, Curt, Norman and Alphonse, I might as well state\n here and now I have other plans for you, Mrs. Deshazaway.\"\n\n\n \"But my dear Mr. Fownes,\" she said, leaning across the table. \"We're\n lost, you and I.\"", "\"But it's the air! Why don't they talk about that? The air is stale,\n I'm positive. It's not nourishing. The air is stale and Andrew, Curt,\n Norman and Alphonse couldn't stand it. Poor Alphonse. He was never so\n healthy as on the day he was born. From then on things got steadily\n worse for him.\"\n\n\n \"I don't seem to mind the air.\"\n\n\n She threw up her hands. \"You'd be the worst of the lot!\" She left the\n table, rustling and tinkling about the room. \"I can just hear them. Try\n some of the asparagus.\nFive.\nThat's what they'd say. That woman did\n it again. And the plain fact is I don't want you on my record.\"\n\n\n \"Really,\" Fownes protested. \"I feel splendid. Never better.\"", "\"Where did the old society fail?\" the leader was demanding of them. He\n stood in the center of the room, leaning on a heavy knobbed cane. He\n glanced around at the group almost complacently, and waited as Humphrey\n Fownes squeezed into an empty chair. \"We live in a dome,\" the leader\n said, \"for lack of something. An invention! What is the one thing\n that the great technological societies before ours could not invent,\n notwithstanding their various giant brains, electronic and otherwise?\"\n\n\n Fownes was the kind of man who never answered a rhetorical question. He\n waited, uncomfortable in the tight chair, while the others struggled\n with this problem in revolutionary dialectics.\n\n\n \"\nA sound foreign policy\n,\" the leader said, aware that no one else had\n obtained the insight. \"If a sound foreign policy can't be created the\n only alternative is not to have any foreign policy at all. Thus the\n movement into domes began—\nby common consent of the governments\n. This\n is known as self-containment.\"", "confusion of spilled letters and apologies from both sides, the postman\n rifled Fownes's handkerchief and inside jacket pockets.\nHe was still thinking about temperature and humidity when a pretty girl\n happened along with something in her eye. They collided. She got his\n right and left jacket pockets. It was much too much for coincidence.\n The sidewalk was wide enough to allow four people to pass at one time.\n He should surely have become suspicious when two men engaged in a\n heated argument came along. In the ensuing contretemps they emptied his\n rear pants pockets, got his wristwatch and restored the contents of the\nhandkerchief pocket. It all went off very smoothly, like a game of put\n and take—the sole difference being that Humphrey Fownes had no idea he\n was playing." ], [ "\"Where did the old society fail?\" the leader was demanding of them. He\n stood in the center of the room, leaning on a heavy knobbed cane. He\n glanced around at the group almost complacently, and waited as Humphrey\n Fownes squeezed into an empty chair. \"We live in a dome,\" the leader\n said, \"for lack of something. An invention! What is the one thing\n that the great technological societies before ours could not invent,\n notwithstanding their various giant brains, electronic and otherwise?\"\n\n\n Fownes was the kind of man who never answered a rhetorical question. He\n waited, uncomfortable in the tight chair, while the others struggled\n with this problem in revolutionary dialectics.\n\n\n \"\nA sound foreign policy\n,\" the leader said, aware that no one else had\n obtained the insight. \"If a sound foreign policy can't be created the\n only alternative is not to have any foreign policy at all. Thus the\n movement into domes began—\nby common consent of the governments\n. This\n is known as self-containment.\"", "Dialectically out in left field, Humphrey Fownes waited for a lull\n in the ensuing discussion and then politely inquired how it might be\n arranged for him to get out.\n\n\n \"Out?\" the leader said, frowning. \"Out? Out where?\"\n\n\n \"Outside the dome.\"\n\n\n \"Oh. All in good time, my friend. One day we shall all pick up and\n leave.\"\n\n\n \"And that day I'll await impatiently,\" Fownes replied with marvelous\n tact, \"because it will be lonely out there for the two of us. My future\n wife and I have to leave\nnow\n.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense. Ridiculous! You have to be prepared for the Open Country.\n You can't just up and leave, it would be suicide, Fownes. And\n dialectically very poor.\"", "\"Not if we could leave the dome,\" Fownes said quietly.\n\n\n \"That's impossible! How?\"\n\n\n In no hurry, now that he had the widow's complete attention, Fownes\n leaned across the table and whispered: \"Fresh air, Mrs. Deshazaway?\n Space? Miles and miles of space where the real-estate monopoly has\n no control whatever? Where the\nwind\nblows across\nprairies\n; or is\n it the other way around? No matter. How would you like\nthat\n, Mrs.\n Deshazaway?\"\n\n\n Breathing somewhat faster than usual, the widow rested her chin on her\n two hands. \"Pray continue,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Endless vistas of moonlight and roses? April showers, Mrs. Deshazaway.\n And June, which as you may know follows directly upon April and is\n supposed to be the month of brides, of marrying. June also lies beyond\n the dome.\"", "Sitting behind the wheel of the orange car, he watched Humphrey Fownes\n approach with a distinct feeling of admiration, although it was an\n odd, objective kind of admiration, clinical in nature. It was similar\n to that of a pathologist observing for the first time a new and\n particularly virulent strain of pneumococcus under his microscope.\n\n\n Lanfierre's job was to ferret out aberration. It couldn't be tolerated\n within the confines of a dome. Conformity had become more than a social\n force; it was a physical necessity. And, after years of working at it,\n Lanfierre had become an admirer of eccentricity. He came to see that\n genuine quirks were rare and, as time went on, due partly to his own\n small efforts, rarer.\n\n\n Fownes was a masterpiece of queerness. He was utterly inexplicable.\n Lanfierre was almost proud of Humphrey Fownes.", "Pinning his hopes on the Movement, Fownes went straight to the\n library several blocks away, a shattered depressing place given over\n to government publications and censored old books with holes in\n them. It was used so infrequently that the Movement was able to meet\n there undisturbed. The librarian was a yellowed, dog-eared woman of\n eighty. She spent her days reading ancient library cards and, like the\n books around her, had been rendered by time's own censor into near\n unintelligibility.\n\n\n \"Here's one,\" she said to him as he entered. \"\nGulliver's Travels.\nLoaned to John Wesley Davidson on March 14, 1979 for\nfive\ndays. What\n do you make of it?\"\n\n\n In the litter of books and cards and dried out ink pads that surrounded\n the librarian, Fownes noticed a torn dust jacket with a curious\n illustration. \"What's that?\" he said.", "\"Then you\nhave\ndiscussed preparations, the practical necessities of\n life in the Open Country. Food, clothing, a weapon perhaps? What else?\n Have I left anything out?\"\n\n\n The leader sighed. \"The gentleman wants to know if he's left anything\n out,\" he said to the group.\n\n\n Fownes looked around at them, at some dozen pained expressions.\n\n\n \"Tell the man what he's forgotten,\" the leader said, walking to the far\n window and turning his back quite pointedly on them.\n\n\n Everyone spoke at the same moment. \"\nA sound foreign policy\n,\" they all\n said, it being almost too obvious for words.\nOn his way out the librarian shouted at him: \"\nA Tale of a Tub\n,\n thirty-five years overdue!\" She was calculating the fine as he closed\n the door.", "\"\nMy.\n\" Mrs. Deshazaway rose, paced slowly to the window and then came\n back to the table, standing directly over Fownes. \"If you can get us\n outside the dome,\" she said, \"out where a man stays\nwarm\nlong enough\n for his wife to get to know him ... if you can do that, Mr. Fownes ...\n you may call me Agnes.\"\nWhen Humphrey Fownes stepped out of the widow's house, there was a\n look of such intense abstraction on his features that Lanfierre felt a\n wistful desire to get out of the car and walk along with the man. It\n would be such a\ndeliciously\ninsane experience. (\"April has thirty\n days,\" Fownes mumbled, passing them, \"because thirty is the largest\n number such that all smaller numbers not having a common divisor\n with it are\nprimes\n.\" MacBride frowned and added it to the dossier.\n Lanfierre sighed.)", "It should have been difficult. Under the circumstances it was a\n masterpiece of pocket picking. What made it possible was Humphrey\n Fownes' abstraction; he was an uncommonly preoccupied individual. He\n was strolling along a quiet residential avenue: small private houses,\n one after another, a place of little traffic and minimum distractions.\n But he was thinking about weather, which was an unusual subject to\n begin with for a person living in a domed city. He was thinking so\n deeply about it that it never occurred to him that entirely too many\n people were bumping into him. He was thinking about Optimum Dome\n Conditions (a crisp 59 degrees, a mildly dessicated 47%) when a bogus\n postman, who pretended to be reading a postal card, jostled him. In the", "\"I'll tell you something else,\" Lanfierre went on. \"The\nwindows\nall\n close at the same time. You'll be watching and all of a sudden every\n single window in the place will drop to its sill.\" Lanfierre leaned\n back in the seat, his eyes still on the house. \"Sometimes I think\n there's a whole crowd of people in there waiting for a signal—as if\n they all had something important to say but had to close the windows\n first so no one could hear. Why else close the windows in a domed city?\n And then as soon as the place is buttoned up they all explode into\n conversation—and that's why the house shakes.\"\n\n\n MacBride whistled.\n\n\n \"No, I don't need a vacation.\"\n\n\n A falling piece of glass dissolved into a puff of gossamer against the\n windshield. Lanfierre started and bumped his knee on the steering wheel.", "When he heard this Fownes plunged into the house and fought his way\n up the stairs. He found Lanfierre standing outside the bedroom with a\n wheel in his hand.\n\"What have I done?\" Lanfierre asked in the monotone of shock.\n\n\n Fownes took the wheel. It was off a 1995 Studebaker.\n\n\n \"I'm not sure what's going to come of this,\" he said to Lanfierre with\n an astonishing amount of objectivity, \"but the entire dome air supply\n is now coming through my bedroom.\"\n\n\n The wind screamed.\n\n\n \"Is there something I can turn?\" Lanfierre asked.\n\n\n \"Not any more there isn't.\"\n\n\n They started down the stairs carefully, but the wind caught them and\n they quickly reached the bottom in a wet heap.", "\"But it's the air! Why don't they talk about that? The air is stale,\n I'm positive. It's not nourishing. The air is stale and Andrew, Curt,\n Norman and Alphonse couldn't stand it. Poor Alphonse. He was never so\n healthy as on the day he was born. From then on things got steadily\n worse for him.\"\n\n\n \"I don't seem to mind the air.\"\n\n\n She threw up her hands. \"You'd be the worst of the lot!\" She left the\n table, rustling and tinkling about the room. \"I can just hear them. Try\n some of the asparagus.\nFive.\nThat's what they'd say. That woman did\n it again. And the plain fact is I don't want you on my record.\"\n\n\n \"Really,\" Fownes protested. \"I feel splendid. Never better.\"", "They sat there smoking in silence and every now and then their eyes\n widened as the house danced a new step.\nFownes stopped on the porch to brush the plaster of paris off his\n shoes. He hadn't seen the patrol car and this intense preoccupation\n of his was also responsible for the dancing house—he simply hadn't\n noticed. There was a certain amount of vibration, of course. He\n had a bootleg pipe connected into the dome blower system, and the\n high-pressure air caused some buffeting against the thin walls of the\n house. At least, he called it buffeting; he'd never thought to watch\n from outside.\n\n\n He went in and threw his jacket on the sofa, there being no room\n left in the closets. Crossing the living room he stopped to twist a\n draw-pull.\n\n\n Every window slammed shut.", "Fownes smiled weakly and looked again at the dust jacket. The twister\n was unquestionably a meteorological phenomenon. It spun ominously, like\n a malevolent top, and coursed the countryside destructively, carrying\n a Dorothy to an Oz. He couldn't help wondering if twisters did anything\n to feminine pulses, if they could possibly be a part of a moonlit\n night, with cocktails and roses. He absently stuffed the dust jacket\n in his pocket and went on into the other rooms, the librarian mumbling\n after him: \"Edna Murdoch Featherstone, April 21, 1991,\" as though\n reading inscriptions on a tombstone.\nThe Movement met in what had been the children's room, where unpaid\n ladies of the afternoon had once upon a time read stories to other\n people's offspring. The members sat around at the miniature tables\n looking oddly like giants fled from their fairy tales, protesting.", "There was an occasional tinkle of falling glass.\n\n\n It fell on the streets and houses, making small geysers of shiny mist,\n hitting with a gentle musical sound, like the ephemeral droppings of\n a celesta. It was precipitation peculiar to a dome: feather-light\n fragments showering harmlessly on the city from time to time. Dome\n weevils, their metal arms reaching out with molten glass, roamed the\n huge casserole, ceaselessly patching and repairing.", "\"Tight as a kite,\" he thought, satisfied. He continued on toward the\n closet at the foot of the stairs and then stopped again. Was that\n right? No,\nsnug as a hug in a rug\n. He went on, thinking:\nThe old\n devils.\nThe downstairs closet was like a great watch case, a profusion of\n wheels surrounding the Master Mechanism, which was a miniature see-saw\n that went back and forth 365-1/4 times an hour. The wheels had a\n curious stateliness about them. They were all quite old, salvaged from\n grandfather's clocks and music boxes and they went around in graceful\n circles at the rate of 30 and 31 times an hour ... although there\n was one slightly eccentric cam that vacillated between 28 and 29. He\n watched as they spun and flashed in the darkness, and then set them for\n seven o'clock in the evening, April seventh, any year.\n\n\n Outside, the domed city vanished.", "\"And the\nwater\n,\" Lanfierre said. \"The\nwater\nhe uses! He could be\n the thirstiest and cleanest man in the city. He could have a whole\n family of thirsty and clean kids, and he\nstill\nwouldn't need all that\n water.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant had picked up the dossier. He thumbed through the pages\n now in amazement. \"Where do you get a guy like this?\" he asked. \"Did\n you see what he carries in his pockets?\"\n\n\n \"And compasses won't work on this street.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant lit a cigarette and sighed.\n\n\n He usually sighed when making the decision to raid a dwelling. It\n expressed his weariness and distaste for people who went off and got\n neurotic when they could be enjoying a happy, normal existence. There\n was something implacable about his sighs.", "Recruiting Lieutenant MacBride from behind his sofa, the men carefully\n edged out of the house and forced the front door shut.\n\n\n The wind died. The fog dispersed. They stood dripping in the Optimum\n Dome Conditions of the bright avenue.\n\n\n \"I never figured on\nthis\n,\" Lanfierre said, shaking his head.\n\n\n With the front door closed the wind quickly built up inside the house.\n They could see the furnishing whirl past the windows. The house did a\n wild, elated jig.\n\n\n \"What kind of a place\nis\nthis?\" MacBride said, his courage beginning\n to return. He took out his notebook but it was a soggy mess. He tossed\n it away.\n\n\n \"Sure, he was\ndifferent\n,\" Lanfierre murmured. \"I knew that much.\"", "It was replaced by an illusion. Or, as Fownes hoped it might appear,\n the illusion of the domed city vanished and was replaced by a more\n satisfactory, and, for his specific purpose, more functional, illusion.\n Looking through the window he saw only a garden.\n\n\n Instead of an orange sun at perpetual high noon, there was a red sun\n setting brilliantly, marred only by an occasional arcover which left\n the smell of ozone in the air. There was also a gigantic moon. It hid a\n huge area of sky, and it sang. The sun and moon both looked down upon a\n garden that was itself scintillant, composed largely of neon roses.", "The twister roared and moved out of the bedroom, out over the rear of\n the house toward the side of the dome. \"It says here,\" Fownes shouted\n over the roaring, \"that Dorothy traveled from Kansas to Oz in a twister\n and that ... and that Oz is a wonderful and mysterious land\nbeyond the\n confines of everyday living\n.\"\n\n\n MacBride's eyes and mouth were great zeros.\n\n\n \"Is there something I can turn?\" Lanfierre asked.\n\n\n Huge chunks of glass began to fall around them.\n\n\n \"Fownes!\" MacBride shouted. \"This is a direct order! Make it go back!\"\n\n\n But Fownes had already begun to run on toward the next house, dodging\n mountainous puffs of glass as he went. \"Mrs. Deshazaway!\" he shouted.\n \"Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Deshazaway!\"", "Humphrey Fownes' preoccupation finally came to an end when he was one\n block away from his house. It was then that he realized something\n unusual must have occurred. An orange patrol car of the security police\n was parked at his front door. And something else was happening too.\n\n\n His house was dancing.\n\n\n It was disconcerting, and at the same time enchanting, to watch one's\n residence frisking about on its foundation. It was such a strange sight\n that for the moment he didn't give a thought to what might be causing\n it. But when he stepped gingerly onto the porch, which was doing its\n own independent gavotte, he reached for the doorknob with an immense\n curiosity.\n\n\n The door flung itself open and knocked him back off the porch." ], [ "Dialectically out in left field, Humphrey Fownes waited for a lull\n in the ensuing discussion and then politely inquired how it might be\n arranged for him to get out.\n\n\n \"Out?\" the leader said, frowning. \"Out? Out where?\"\n\n\n \"Outside the dome.\"\n\n\n \"Oh. All in good time, my friend. One day we shall all pick up and\n leave.\"\n\n\n \"And that day I'll await impatiently,\" Fownes replied with marvelous\n tact, \"because it will be lonely out there for the two of us. My future\n wife and I have to leave\nnow\n.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense. Ridiculous! You have to be prepared for the Open Country.\n You can't just up and leave, it would be suicide, Fownes. And\n dialectically very poor.\"", "\"Where did the old society fail?\" the leader was demanding of them. He\n stood in the center of the room, leaning on a heavy knobbed cane. He\n glanced around at the group almost complacently, and waited as Humphrey\n Fownes squeezed into an empty chair. \"We live in a dome,\" the leader\n said, \"for lack of something. An invention! What is the one thing\n that the great technological societies before ours could not invent,\n notwithstanding their various giant brains, electronic and otherwise?\"\n\n\n Fownes was the kind of man who never answered a rhetorical question. He\n waited, uncomfortable in the tight chair, while the others struggled\n with this problem in revolutionary dialectics.\n\n\n \"\nA sound foreign policy\n,\" the leader said, aware that no one else had\n obtained the insight. \"If a sound foreign policy can't be created the\n only alternative is not to have any foreign policy at all. Thus the\n movement into domes began—\nby common consent of the governments\n. This\n is known as self-containment.\"", "\"Not if we could leave the dome,\" Fownes said quietly.\n\n\n \"That's impossible! How?\"\n\n\n In no hurry, now that he had the widow's complete attention, Fownes\n leaned across the table and whispered: \"Fresh air, Mrs. Deshazaway?\n Space? Miles and miles of space where the real-estate monopoly has\n no control whatever? Where the\nwind\nblows across\nprairies\n; or is\n it the other way around? No matter. How would you like\nthat\n, Mrs.\n Deshazaway?\"\n\n\n Breathing somewhat faster than usual, the widow rested her chin on her\n two hands. \"Pray continue,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Endless vistas of moonlight and roses? April showers, Mrs. Deshazaway.\n And June, which as you may know follows directly upon April and is\n supposed to be the month of brides, of marrying. June also lies beyond\n the dome.\"", "Sitting behind the wheel of the orange car, he watched Humphrey Fownes\n approach with a distinct feeling of admiration, although it was an\n odd, objective kind of admiration, clinical in nature. It was similar\n to that of a pathologist observing for the first time a new and\n particularly virulent strain of pneumococcus under his microscope.\n\n\n Lanfierre's job was to ferret out aberration. It couldn't be tolerated\n within the confines of a dome. Conformity had become more than a social\n force; it was a physical necessity. And, after years of working at it,\n Lanfierre had become an admirer of eccentricity. He came to see that\n genuine quirks were rare and, as time went on, due partly to his own\n small efforts, rarer.\n\n\n Fownes was a masterpiece of queerness. He was utterly inexplicable.\n Lanfierre was almost proud of Humphrey Fownes.", "When he heard this Fownes plunged into the house and fought his way\n up the stairs. He found Lanfierre standing outside the bedroom with a\n wheel in his hand.\n\"What have I done?\" Lanfierre asked in the monotone of shock.\n\n\n Fownes took the wheel. It was off a 1995 Studebaker.\n\n\n \"I'm not sure what's going to come of this,\" he said to Lanfierre with\n an astonishing amount of objectivity, \"but the entire dome air supply\n is now coming through my bedroom.\"\n\n\n The wind screamed.\n\n\n \"Is there something I can turn?\" Lanfierre asked.\n\n\n \"Not any more there isn't.\"\n\n\n They started down the stairs carefully, but the wind caught them and\n they quickly reached the bottom in a wet heap.", "\"\nMy.\n\" Mrs. Deshazaway rose, paced slowly to the window and then came\n back to the table, standing directly over Fownes. \"If you can get us\n outside the dome,\" she said, \"out where a man stays\nwarm\nlong enough\n for his wife to get to know him ... if you can do that, Mr. Fownes ...\n you may call me Agnes.\"\nWhen Humphrey Fownes stepped out of the widow's house, there was a\n look of such intense abstraction on his features that Lanfierre felt a\n wistful desire to get out of the car and walk along with the man. It\n would be such a\ndeliciously\ninsane experience. (\"April has thirty\n days,\" Fownes mumbled, passing them, \"because thirty is the largest\n number such that all smaller numbers not having a common divisor\n with it are\nprimes\n.\" MacBride frowned and added it to the dossier.\n Lanfierre sighed.)", "\"I'll tell you something else,\" Lanfierre went on. \"The\nwindows\nall\n close at the same time. You'll be watching and all of a sudden every\n single window in the place will drop to its sill.\" Lanfierre leaned\n back in the seat, his eyes still on the house. \"Sometimes I think\n there's a whole crowd of people in there waiting for a signal—as if\n they all had something important to say but had to close the windows\n first so no one could hear. Why else close the windows in a domed city?\n And then as soon as the place is buttoned up they all explode into\n conversation—and that's why the house shakes.\"\n\n\n MacBride whistled.\n\n\n \"No, I don't need a vacation.\"\n\n\n A falling piece of glass dissolved into a puff of gossamer against the\n windshield. Lanfierre started and bumped his knee on the steering wheel.", "Pinning his hopes on the Movement, Fownes went straight to the\n library several blocks away, a shattered depressing place given over\n to government publications and censored old books with holes in\n them. It was used so infrequently that the Movement was able to meet\n there undisturbed. The librarian was a yellowed, dog-eared woman of\n eighty. She spent her days reading ancient library cards and, like the\n books around her, had been rendered by time's own censor into near\n unintelligibility.\n\n\n \"Here's one,\" she said to him as he entered. \"\nGulliver's Travels.\nLoaned to John Wesley Davidson on March 14, 1979 for\nfive\ndays. What\n do you make of it?\"\n\n\n In the litter of books and cards and dried out ink pads that surrounded\n the librarian, Fownes noticed a torn dust jacket with a curious\n illustration. \"What's that?\" he said.", "Fownes smiled weakly and looked again at the dust jacket. The twister\n was unquestionably a meteorological phenomenon. It spun ominously, like\n a malevolent top, and coursed the countryside destructively, carrying\n a Dorothy to an Oz. He couldn't help wondering if twisters did anything\n to feminine pulses, if they could possibly be a part of a moonlit\n night, with cocktails and roses. He absently stuffed the dust jacket\n in his pocket and went on into the other rooms, the librarian mumbling\n after him: \"Edna Murdoch Featherstone, April 21, 1991,\" as though\n reading inscriptions on a tombstone.\nThe Movement met in what had been the children's room, where unpaid\n ladies of the afternoon had once upon a time read stories to other\n people's offspring. The members sat around at the miniature tables\n looking oddly like giants fled from their fairy tales, protesting.", "There was an occasional tinkle of falling glass.\n\n\n It fell on the streets and houses, making small geysers of shiny mist,\n hitting with a gentle musical sound, like the ephemeral droppings of\n a celesta. It was precipitation peculiar to a dome: feather-light\n fragments showering harmlessly on the city from time to time. Dome\n weevils, their metal arms reaching out with molten glass, roamed the\n huge casserole, ceaselessly patching and repairing.", "The dome weevils were going berserk trying to keep up with the\n precipitation. They whirred back and forth at frightful speed, then,\n emptied of molten glass, rushed to the Trough which they quickly\n emptied and then rushed about empty-handed. \"Yoo-hoo!\" he yelled,\n running. The artificial sun vanished behind the mushrooming twister.\n Optimum temperature collapsed. \"Mrs. Deshazaway!\nAgnes\n, will you\n marry me? Yoo-hoo!\"\n\n\n Lanfierre and Lieutenant MacBride leaned against their car and waited,\n dazed.\n\n\n There was quite a large fall of glass.", "Recruiting Lieutenant MacBride from behind his sofa, the men carefully\n edged out of the house and forced the front door shut.\n\n\n The wind died. The fog dispersed. They stood dripping in the Optimum\n Dome Conditions of the bright avenue.\n\n\n \"I never figured on\nthis\n,\" Lanfierre said, shaking his head.\n\n\n With the front door closed the wind quickly built up inside the house.\n They could see the furnishing whirl past the windows. The house did a\n wild, elated jig.\n\n\n \"What kind of a place\nis\nthis?\" MacBride said, his courage beginning\n to return. He took out his notebook but it was a soggy mess. He tossed\n it away.\n\n\n \"Sure, he was\ndifferent\n,\" Lanfierre murmured. \"I knew that much.\"", "\"Tight as a kite,\" he thought, satisfied. He continued on toward the\n closet at the foot of the stairs and then stopped again. Was that\n right? No,\nsnug as a hug in a rug\n. He went on, thinking:\nThe old\n devils.\nThe downstairs closet was like a great watch case, a profusion of\n wheels surrounding the Master Mechanism, which was a miniature see-saw\n that went back and forth 365-1/4 times an hour. The wheels had a\n curious stateliness about them. They were all quite old, salvaged from\n grandfather's clocks and music boxes and they went around in graceful\n circles at the rate of 30 and 31 times an hour ... although there\n was one slightly eccentric cam that vacillated between 28 and 29. He\n watched as they spun and flashed in the darkness, and then set them for\n seven o'clock in the evening, April seventh, any year.\n\n\n Outside, the domed city vanished.", "They sat there smoking in silence and every now and then their eyes\n widened as the house danced a new step.\nFownes stopped on the porch to brush the plaster of paris off his\n shoes. He hadn't seen the patrol car and this intense preoccupation\n of his was also responsible for the dancing house—he simply hadn't\n noticed. There was a certain amount of vibration, of course. He\n had a bootleg pipe connected into the dome blower system, and the\n high-pressure air caused some buffeting against the thin walls of the\n house. At least, he called it buffeting; he'd never thought to watch\n from outside.\n\n\n He went in and threw his jacket on the sofa, there being no room\n left in the closets. Crossing the living room he stopped to twist a\n draw-pull.\n\n\n Every window slammed shut.", "The twister roared and moved out of the bedroom, out over the rear of\n the house toward the side of the dome. \"It says here,\" Fownes shouted\n over the roaring, \"that Dorothy traveled from Kansas to Oz in a twister\n and that ... and that Oz is a wonderful and mysterious land\nbeyond the\n confines of everyday living\n.\"\n\n\n MacBride's eyes and mouth were great zeros.\n\n\n \"Is there something I can turn?\" Lanfierre asked.\n\n\n Huge chunks of glass began to fall around them.\n\n\n \"Fownes!\" MacBride shouted. \"This is a direct order! Make it go back!\"\n\n\n But Fownes had already begun to run on toward the next house, dodging\n mountainous puffs of glass as he went. \"Mrs. Deshazaway!\" he shouted.\n \"Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Deshazaway!\"", "It should have been difficult. Under the circumstances it was a\n masterpiece of pocket picking. What made it possible was Humphrey\n Fownes' abstraction; he was an uncommonly preoccupied individual. He\n was strolling along a quiet residential avenue: small private houses,\n one after another, a place of little traffic and minimum distractions.\n But he was thinking about weather, which was an unusual subject to\n begin with for a person living in a domed city. He was thinking so\n deeply about it that it never occurred to him that entirely too many\n people were bumping into him. He was thinking about Optimum Dome\n Conditions (a crisp 59 degrees, a mildly dessicated 47%) when a bogus\n postman, who pretended to be reading a postal card, jostled him. In the", "\"But it's the air! Why don't they talk about that? The air is stale,\n I'm positive. It's not nourishing. The air is stale and Andrew, Curt,\n Norman and Alphonse couldn't stand it. Poor Alphonse. He was never so\n healthy as on the day he was born. From then on things got steadily\n worse for him.\"\n\n\n \"I don't seem to mind the air.\"\n\n\n She threw up her hands. \"You'd be the worst of the lot!\" She left the\n table, rustling and tinkling about the room. \"I can just hear them. Try\n some of the asparagus.\nFive.\nThat's what they'd say. That woman did\n it again. And the plain fact is I don't want you on my record.\"\n\n\n \"Really,\" Fownes protested. \"I feel splendid. Never better.\"", "It was replaced by an illusion. Or, as Fownes hoped it might appear,\n the illusion of the domed city vanished and was replaced by a more\n satisfactory, and, for his specific purpose, more functional, illusion.\n Looking through the window he saw only a garden.\n\n\n Instead of an orange sun at perpetual high noon, there was a red sun\n setting brilliantly, marred only by an occasional arcover which left\n the smell of ozone in the air. There was also a gigantic moon. It hid a\n huge area of sky, and it sang. The sun and moon both looked down upon a\n garden that was itself scintillant, composed largely of neon roses.", "\"And the\nwater\n,\" Lanfierre said. \"The\nwater\nhe uses! He could be\n the thirstiest and cleanest man in the city. He could have a whole\n family of thirsty and clean kids, and he\nstill\nwouldn't need all that\n water.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant had picked up the dossier. He thumbed through the pages\n now in amazement. \"Where do you get a guy like this?\" he asked. \"Did\n you see what he carries in his pockets?\"\n\n\n \"And compasses won't work on this street.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant lit a cigarette and sighed.\n\n\n He usually sighed when making the decision to raid a dwelling. It\n expressed his weariness and distaste for people who went off and got\n neurotic when they could be enjoying a happy, normal existence. There\n was something implacable about his sighs.", "Lanfierre sat stiffly behind the wheel, affronted. The cynical MacBride\n couldn't really appreciate fine aberrations. In some ways MacBride\n was a barbarian. Lanfierre had held out on Fownes for months. He\n had even contrived to engage him in conversation once, a pleasantly\n absurd, irrational little chat that titillated him for weeks. It was\n only with the greatest reluctance that he finally mentioned Fownes\n to MacBride. After years of searching for differences Lanfierre had\n seen how extraordinarily repetitious people were, echoes really, dimly\n resounding echoes, each believing itself whole and separate. They spoke\n in an incessant chatter of cliches, and their actions were unbelievably\n trite.\n\n\n Then a fine robust freak came along and the others—the echoes—refused\n to believe it. The lieutenant was probably on the point of suggesting a\n vacation.\n\n\n \"Why don't you take a vacation?\" Lieutenant MacBride suggested." ], [ "Fownes smiled weakly and looked again at the dust jacket. The twister\n was unquestionably a meteorological phenomenon. It spun ominously, like\n a malevolent top, and coursed the countryside destructively, carrying\n a Dorothy to an Oz. He couldn't help wondering if twisters did anything\n to feminine pulses, if they could possibly be a part of a moonlit\n night, with cocktails and roses. He absently stuffed the dust jacket\n in his pocket and went on into the other rooms, the librarian mumbling\n after him: \"Edna Murdoch Featherstone, April 21, 1991,\" as though\n reading inscriptions on a tombstone.\nThe Movement met in what had been the children's room, where unpaid\n ladies of the afternoon had once upon a time read stories to other\n people's offspring. The members sat around at the miniature tables\n looking oddly like giants fled from their fairy tales, protesting.", "Pinning his hopes on the Movement, Fownes went straight to the\n library several blocks away, a shattered depressing place given over\n to government publications and censored old books with holes in\n them. It was used so infrequently that the Movement was able to meet\n there undisturbed. The librarian was a yellowed, dog-eared woman of\n eighty. She spent her days reading ancient library cards and, like the\n books around her, had been rendered by time's own censor into near\n unintelligibility.\n\n\n \"Here's one,\" she said to him as he entered. \"\nGulliver's Travels.\nLoaned to John Wesley Davidson on March 14, 1979 for\nfive\ndays. What\n do you make of it?\"\n\n\n In the litter of books and cards and dried out ink pads that surrounded\n the librarian, Fownes noticed a torn dust jacket with a curious\n illustration. \"What's that?\" he said.", "Sitting behind the wheel of the orange car, he watched Humphrey Fownes\n approach with a distinct feeling of admiration, although it was an\n odd, objective kind of admiration, clinical in nature. It was similar\n to that of a pathologist observing for the first time a new and\n particularly virulent strain of pneumococcus under his microscope.\n\n\n Lanfierre's job was to ferret out aberration. It couldn't be tolerated\n within the confines of a dome. Conformity had become more than a social\n force; it was a physical necessity. And, after years of working at it,\n Lanfierre had become an admirer of eccentricity. He came to see that\n genuine quirks were rare and, as time went on, due partly to his own\n small efforts, rarer.\n\n\n Fownes was a masterpiece of queerness. He was utterly inexplicable.\n Lanfierre was almost proud of Humphrey Fownes.", "Lanfierre sat stiffly behind the wheel, affronted. The cynical MacBride\n couldn't really appreciate fine aberrations. In some ways MacBride\n was a barbarian. Lanfierre had held out on Fownes for months. He\n had even contrived to engage him in conversation once, a pleasantly\n absurd, irrational little chat that titillated him for weeks. It was\n only with the greatest reluctance that he finally mentioned Fownes\n to MacBride. After years of searching for differences Lanfierre had\n seen how extraordinarily repetitious people were, echoes really, dimly\n resounding echoes, each believing itself whole and separate. They spoke\n in an incessant chatter of cliches, and their actions were unbelievably\n trite.\n\n\n Then a fine robust freak came along and the others—the echoes—refused\n to believe it. The lieutenant was probably on the point of suggesting a\n vacation.\n\n\n \"Why don't you take a vacation?\" Lieutenant MacBride suggested.", "The widow was a passionate woman. She did everything\n passionately—talking, cooking, dressing. Her beets were passionately\n red. Her clothes rustled and her high heels clicked and her jewelry\n tinkled. She was possessed by an uncontrollable dynamism. Fownes had\n never known anyone like her. \"You forgot to put salt on the potatoes,\"\n she said passionately, then went on as calmly as it was possible for\n her to be, to explain why she couldn't marry him. \"Do you have any\n idea what people are saying? They're all saying I'm a cannibal! I rob\n my husbands of their life force and when they're empty I carry their\n bodies outside on my way to the justice of the peace.\"\n\n\n \"As long as there are people,\" he said philosophically, \"there'll be\n talk.\"", "\"But it's the air! Why don't they talk about that? The air is stale,\n I'm positive. It's not nourishing. The air is stale and Andrew, Curt,\n Norman and Alphonse couldn't stand it. Poor Alphonse. He was never so\n healthy as on the day he was born. From then on things got steadily\n worse for him.\"\n\n\n \"I don't seem to mind the air.\"\n\n\n She threw up her hands. \"You'd be the worst of the lot!\" She left the\n table, rustling and tinkling about the room. \"I can just hear them. Try\n some of the asparagus.\nFive.\nThat's what they'd say. That woman did\n it again. And the plain fact is I don't want you on my record.\"\n\n\n \"Really,\" Fownes protested. \"I feel splendid. Never better.\"", "Dialectically out in left field, Humphrey Fownes waited for a lull\n in the ensuing discussion and then politely inquired how it might be\n arranged for him to get out.\n\n\n \"Out?\" the leader said, frowning. \"Out? Out where?\"\n\n\n \"Outside the dome.\"\n\n\n \"Oh. All in good time, my friend. One day we shall all pick up and\n leave.\"\n\n\n \"And that day I'll await impatiently,\" Fownes replied with marvelous\n tact, \"because it will be lonely out there for the two of us. My future\n wife and I have to leave\nnow\n.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense. Ridiculous! You have to be prepared for the Open Country.\n You can't just up and leave, it would be suicide, Fownes. And\n dialectically very poor.\"", "\"It's like this, MacBride. Do you know what a wind is? A breeze? A\n zephyr?\"\n\n\n \"I've heard some.\"\n\n\n \"They say there are mountain-tops where winds blow all the time. Strong\n winds, MacBride. Winds like you and I can't imagine. And if there was\n a house sitting on such a mountain and if winds\ndid\nblow, it would\n shake exactly the way that one does. Sometimes I get the feeling the\n whole place is going to slide off its foundation and go sailing down\n the avenue.\"\nLieutenant MacBride pursed his lips.", "\"And the\nwater\n,\" Lanfierre said. \"The\nwater\nhe uses! He could be\n the thirstiest and cleanest man in the city. He could have a whole\n family of thirsty and clean kids, and he\nstill\nwouldn't need all that\n water.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant had picked up the dossier. He thumbed through the pages\n now in amazement. \"Where do you get a guy like this?\" he asked. \"Did\n you see what he carries in his pockets?\"\n\n\n \"And compasses won't work on this street.\"\n\n\n The lieutenant lit a cigarette and sighed.\n\n\n He usually sighed when making the decision to raid a dwelling. It\n expressed his weariness and distaste for people who went off and got\n neurotic when they could be enjoying a happy, normal existence. There\n was something implacable about his sighs.", "They sat there smoking in silence and every now and then their eyes\n widened as the house danced a new step.\nFownes stopped on the porch to brush the plaster of paris off his\n shoes. He hadn't seen the patrol car and this intense preoccupation\n of his was also responsible for the dancing house—he simply hadn't\n noticed. There was a certain amount of vibration, of course. He\n had a bootleg pipe connected into the dome blower system, and the\n high-pressure air caused some buffeting against the thin walls of the\n house. At least, he called it buffeting; he'd never thought to watch\n from outside.\n\n\n He went in and threw his jacket on the sofa, there being no room\n left in the closets. Crossing the living room he stopped to twist a\n draw-pull.\n\n\n Every window slammed shut.", "\"Where did the old society fail?\" the leader was demanding of them. He\n stood in the center of the room, leaning on a heavy knobbed cane. He\n glanced around at the group almost complacently, and waited as Humphrey\n Fownes squeezed into an empty chair. \"We live in a dome,\" the leader\n said, \"for lack of something. An invention! What is the one thing\n that the great technological societies before ours could not invent,\n notwithstanding their various giant brains, electronic and otherwise?\"\n\n\n Fownes was the kind of man who never answered a rhetorical question. He\n waited, uncomfortable in the tight chair, while the others struggled\n with this problem in revolutionary dialectics.\n\n\n \"\nA sound foreign policy\n,\" the leader said, aware that no one else had\n obtained the insight. \"If a sound foreign policy can't be created the\n only alternative is not to have any foreign policy at all. Thus the\n movement into domes began—\nby common consent of the governments\n. This\n is known as self-containment.\"", "\"I'll tell you something else,\" Lanfierre went on. \"The\nwindows\nall\n close at the same time. You'll be watching and all of a sudden every\n single window in the place will drop to its sill.\" Lanfierre leaned\n back in the seat, his eyes still on the house. \"Sometimes I think\n there's a whole crowd of people in there waiting for a signal—as if\n they all had something important to say but had to close the windows\n first so no one could hear. Why else close the windows in a domed city?\n And then as soon as the place is buttoned up they all explode into\n conversation—and that's why the house shakes.\"\n\n\n MacBride whistled.\n\n\n \"No, I don't need a vacation.\"\n\n\n A falling piece of glass dissolved into a puff of gossamer against the\n windshield. Lanfierre started and bumped his knee on the steering wheel.", "He went downstairs to watch out the living room window. This was\n important; the window had a really fixed attitude about air currents.\n The neon roses bent and tinkled against each other as the wind rose and\n the moon shook a trifle as it whispered\nCuddle Up a Little Closer\n.", "\"And of course when they do find out and they ask you why, Mr. Fownes,\n you'll tell them. No, no heroics, please! When they ask a man a\n question he always answers and you will too. You'll tell them I wanted\n to be courted and when they hear that they'll be around to ask\nme\na\n few questions. You see, we're both a bit queer.\"\n\n\n \"I hadn't thought of that,\" Fownes said quietly.\n\n\n \"Oh, it doesn't really matter. I'll join Andrew, Curt, Norman—\"\n\n\n \"That won't be necessary,\" Fownes said with unusual force. \"With all\n due respect to Andrew, Curt, Norman and Alphonse, I might as well state\n here and now I have other plans for you, Mrs. Deshazaway.\"\n\n\n \"But my dear Mr. Fownes,\" she said, leaning across the table. \"We're\n lost, you and I.\"", "\"Then you\nhave\ndiscussed preparations, the practical necessities of\n life in the Open Country. Food, clothing, a weapon perhaps? What else?\n Have I left anything out?\"\n\n\n The leader sighed. \"The gentleman wants to know if he's left anything\n out,\" he said to the group.\n\n\n Fownes looked around at them, at some dozen pained expressions.\n\n\n \"Tell the man what he's forgotten,\" the leader said, walking to the far\n window and turning his back quite pointedly on them.\n\n\n Everyone spoke at the same moment. \"\nA sound foreign policy\n,\" they all\n said, it being almost too obvious for words.\nOn his way out the librarian shouted at him: \"\nA Tale of a Tub\n,\n thirty-five years overdue!\" She was calculating the fine as he closed\n the door.", "\"He'll be coming out soon,\" Lanfierre said. \"He eats supper next door\n with a widow. Then he goes to the library. Always the same. Supper at\n the widow's next door and then the library.\"\n\n\n MacBride's eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. \"The library?\" he\n said. \"Is he in with that bunch?\"\n\n\n Lanfierre nodded.\n\n\n \"Should be very interesting,\" MacBride said slowly.\n\n\n \"I can't wait to see what he's got in there,\" Lanfierre murmured,\n watching the house with a consuming interest.", "\"\nMy.\n\" Mrs. Deshazaway rose, paced slowly to the window and then came\n back to the table, standing directly over Fownes. \"If you can get us\n outside the dome,\" she said, \"out where a man stays\nwarm\nlong enough\n for his wife to get to know him ... if you can do that, Mr. Fownes ...\n you may call me Agnes.\"\nWhen Humphrey Fownes stepped out of the widow's house, there was a\n look of such intense abstraction on his features that Lanfierre felt a\n wistful desire to get out of the car and walk along with the man. It\n would be such a\ndeliciously\ninsane experience. (\"April has thirty\n days,\" Fownes mumbled, passing them, \"because thirty is the largest\n number such that all smaller numbers not having a common divisor\n with it are\nprimes\n.\" MacBride frowned and added it to the dossier.\n Lanfierre sighed.)", "The neon roses thrashed about, extinguishing each other. The red sun\n shot off a mass of sparks and then quickly sank out of sight. The moon\n fell on the garden and rolled ponderously along, crooning\nWhen the\n Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day\n.\n\n\n The shaking house finally woke him up. He scrambled upstairs to the\n Studebaker wheel and shut it off.\n\n\n At the window again, he sighed. Repairs were in order. And it wasn't\n the first time the winds got out of line.\n\n\n Why didn't she marry him and save all this bother? He shut it all down\n and went out the front door, wondering about the rhyme of the months,\n about stately August and eccentric February and romantic April. April.\n Its days were thirty and it followed September.\nAnd all the rest have\n thirty-one.\nWhat a strange people, the ancients!", "It should have been difficult. Under the circumstances it was a\n masterpiece of pocket picking. What made it possible was Humphrey\n Fownes' abstraction; he was an uncommonly preoccupied individual. He\n was strolling along a quiet residential avenue: small private houses,\n one after another, a place of little traffic and minimum distractions.\n But he was thinking about weather, which was an unusual subject to\n begin with for a person living in a domed city. He was thinking so\n deeply about it that it never occurred to him that entirely too many\n people were bumping into him. He was thinking about Optimum Dome\n Conditions (a crisp 59 degrees, a mildly dessicated 47%) when a bogus\n postman, who pretended to be reading a postal card, jostled him. In the", "\"Tight as a kite,\" he thought, satisfied. He continued on toward the\n closet at the foot of the stairs and then stopped again. Was that\n right? No,\nsnug as a hug in a rug\n. He went on, thinking:\nThe old\n devils.\nThe downstairs closet was like a great watch case, a profusion of\n wheels surrounding the Master Mechanism, which was a miniature see-saw\n that went back and forth 365-1/4 times an hour. The wheels had a\n curious stateliness about them. They were all quite old, salvaged from\n grandfather's clocks and music boxes and they went around in graceful\n circles at the rate of 30 and 31 times an hour ... although there\n was one slightly eccentric cam that vacillated between 28 and 29. He\n watched as they spun and flashed in the darkness, and then set them for\n seven o'clock in the evening, April seventh, any year.\n\n\n Outside, the domed city vanished." ] ]
train	20032	[ "What is main the flaw in Harris' plan to sell the eggs of fashion models?", "What does the author think may happen if a child doesn't look the way the egg buyer expects?", "What could a buyer do if they didn't get the eggs they paid for?", "What is the main concern about egg auctions?", "What does the author think about women who sell their eggs?", "What kind of person would buy eggs at an auction such as Harris'?", "Why are the children produced by the egg auction likely to be the offspring of liars and fools?", "Does the author think Harris is serious about selling eggs?", "Who is an example of someone whose good looks attracted the wrong kind of attention?" ]	[ [ "He doesn't take into account the IQ of the donors.", "He doesn't take into account recessive genes.", "He doesn't screen the eggs for genetic problems.", "He doesn't take the medical history of the donors." ], [ "The buyer may shun the child.", "The buyer may try to sell the child.", "The buyer may kill the child.", "The buyer may sue Harris' company." ], [ "There is not much a buyer could do to verify the eggs came from the expected donors.", "They could sue the egg donor.", "They could sue Harris for everything he's worth.", "They could pick out a new donor to receive eggs from." ], [ "Egg auctions will steer the future of human breeding toward genetic engineering.", "Egg auctions will steer the future of human breeding toward cloning.", "Egg auctions will produce designer babies.", "Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies." ], [ "They are depressed.", "They have a few screws loose.", "They are just trying to get by financially.", "They are liars and fools." ], [ "A wealthy person who is desperate to have a child.", "A wealthy, superficial, and naive person trying to ensure their child will be beautiful, healthy, and intelligent.", "A wealthy, superficial person who wants to ensure they have a physically pleasing child. This person, however, is not intelligent enough to see the flaws of the plan.", "A wealthy person who wants to manipulate their child's physical appearance." ], [ "Harris didn't verify the medical histories of the models. They could have lied on their donation forms. Only fools would buy human eggs from a man such as Harris.", "Most models have had cosmetic surgery. Only fools would buy eggs based on internet photos.", "Harris advertised that the eggs came from intelligent women, but he didn't verify their IQs. Only fools would buy human eggs from a man who sells pornography.", "Some models lied about their ages. Only fools would buy eggs" ], [ "Not at all, selling eggs is a PR stunt, to drive traffic to Harris' pornography website.", "Absolutely, designer babies are big money.", "Yes, however, he is not intelligent enough to see the many flaws in his plan.", "Yes, Harris is already in talks with geneticists. He'll be able to charge extra for certain features." ], [ "Taylor Swift", "Justin Bieber", "Britney Spears", "Marilyn Monroe" ] ]	[ 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 4 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' \"angels\" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? \"There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth,\" he says. Annas concludes that since there's \"no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise,\" only a \"naive\" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. \"You don't want to see the models,\" he points out. \"You want to see pictures of their parents.\" On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.", "11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at \"adolescent boys.\"", "10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as \"struggling actresses,\" reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, \"I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse .\" Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was \"better than prostitution.\"", "1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, \"We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?\" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris \"can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs,\" predict that his success will steer \"the future of human breeding\" toward \"genetic engineering.\"", "4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with \"substantial financial resources\" are fit to give his models' offspring \"a financially secure and stable life.\" But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, \"Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up.\"", "3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once \"beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them,\" the rich will transform themselves into a \"super-race\" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, \"It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder.\" But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into \"genetic haves and have nots.\"", "Harris constantly refers to the donors as his \"girls\" and describes them like cattle--\"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls.\" He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. \"We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items,\" he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to \"find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web.\" To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.", "9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's \"unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money\" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of \"taking advantage of couples trying to conceive\" and exploiting \"desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell.\" USA Today laments, \"This is about human need. And human greed.\"", "eBabe \n\n This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to \"bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women.\" Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are \"looking into\" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.", "2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. \"Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture,\" observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries \"recessive\" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.", "This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former? \n\n Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. \"Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state,\" he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.", "14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, \"That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.\") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.", "8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to \"success,\" since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over \"character,\" critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are \"beautiful, healthy and intelligent,\" he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions \"Bimbo births.\" A fertility expert shrugs, \"If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them.\"", "7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is \"superficial\" and conveys a \"harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character.\" This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.", "15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that \"having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation.\" But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: \"our genes.\" \"The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site,\" Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.", "6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty \"shows healthiness and longevity.\" On his site, he writes, \" 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful.\" Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much \"medical screening\" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, \"None.\"", "13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. \"When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud,\" a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that \"there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected,\" and \"the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from.\"", "12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. \"Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs,\" one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction \"just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?\"", "16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole \"prejudice\" in favor of beauty. \"The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts,\" says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, \"we should think about\" whether to \"accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them\" or to transcend those prejudices." ], [ "14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, \"That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.\") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.", "2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. \"Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture,\" observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries \"recessive\" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.", "3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once \"beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them,\" the rich will transform themselves into a \"super-race\" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, \"It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder.\" But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into \"genetic haves and have nots.\"", "4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with \"substantial financial resources\" are fit to give his models' offspring \"a financially secure and stable life.\" But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, \"Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up.\"", "5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' \"angels\" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? \"There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth,\" he says. Annas concludes that since there's \"no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise,\" only a \"naive\" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. \"You don't want to see the models,\" he points out. \"You want to see pictures of their parents.\" On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.", "1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, \"We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?\" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris \"can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs,\" predict that his success will steer \"the future of human breeding\" toward \"genetic engineering.\"", "This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former? \n\n Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. \"Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state,\" he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.", "16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole \"prejudice\" in favor of beauty. \"The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts,\" says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, \"we should think about\" whether to \"accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them\" or to transcend those prejudices.", "6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty \"shows healthiness and longevity.\" On his site, he writes, \" 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful.\" Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much \"medical screening\" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, \"None.\"", "11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at \"adolescent boys.\"", "7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is \"superficial\" and conveys a \"harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character.\" This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.", "15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that \"having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation.\" But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: \"our genes.\" \"The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site,\" Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.", "13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. \"When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud,\" a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that \"there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected,\" and \"the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from.\"", "8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to \"success,\" since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over \"character,\" critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are \"beautiful, healthy and intelligent,\" he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions \"Bimbo births.\" A fertility expert shrugs, \"If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them.\"", "9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's \"unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money\" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of \"taking advantage of couples trying to conceive\" and exploiting \"desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell.\" USA Today laments, \"This is about human need. And human greed.\"", "10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as \"struggling actresses,\" reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, \"I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse .\" Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was \"better than prostitution.\"", "12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. \"Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs,\" one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction \"just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?\"", "eBabe \n\n This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to \"bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women.\" Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are \"looking into\" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.", "Harris constantly refers to the donors as his \"girls\" and describes them like cattle--\"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls.\" He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. \"We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items,\" he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to \"find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web.\" To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit." ], [ "13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. \"When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud,\" a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that \"there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected,\" and \"the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from.\"", "10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as \"struggling actresses,\" reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, \"I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse .\" Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was \"better than prostitution.\"", "1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, \"We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?\" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris \"can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs,\" predict that his success will steer \"the future of human breeding\" toward \"genetic engineering.\"", "Harris constantly refers to the donors as his \"girls\" and describes them like cattle--\"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls.\" He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. \"We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items,\" he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to \"find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web.\" To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.", "3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once \"beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them,\" the rich will transform themselves into a \"super-race\" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, \"It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder.\" But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into \"genetic haves and have nots.\"", "11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at \"adolescent boys.\"", "4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with \"substantial financial resources\" are fit to give his models' offspring \"a financially secure and stable life.\" But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, \"Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up.\"", "14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, \"That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.\") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.", "9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's \"unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money\" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of \"taking advantage of couples trying to conceive\" and exploiting \"desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell.\" USA Today laments, \"This is about human need. And human greed.\"", "5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' \"angels\" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? \"There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth,\" he says. Annas concludes that since there's \"no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise,\" only a \"naive\" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. \"You don't want to see the models,\" he points out. \"You want to see pictures of their parents.\" On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.", "12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. \"Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs,\" one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction \"just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?\"", "15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that \"having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation.\" But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: \"our genes.\" \"The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site,\" Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.", "2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. \"Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture,\" observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries \"recessive\" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.", "eBabe \n\n This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to \"bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women.\" Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are \"looking into\" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.", "This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former? \n\n Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. \"Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state,\" he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.", "8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to \"success,\" since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over \"character,\" critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are \"beautiful, healthy and intelligent,\" he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions \"Bimbo births.\" A fertility expert shrugs, \"If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them.\"", "6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty \"shows healthiness and longevity.\" On his site, he writes, \" 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful.\" Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much \"medical screening\" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, \"None.\"", "7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is \"superficial\" and conveys a \"harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character.\" This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.", "16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole \"prejudice\" in favor of beauty. \"The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts,\" says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, \"we should think about\" whether to \"accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them\" or to transcend those prejudices." ], [ "3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once \"beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them,\" the rich will transform themselves into a \"super-race\" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, \"It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder.\" But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into \"genetic haves and have nots.\"", "1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, \"We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?\" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris \"can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs,\" predict that his success will steer \"the future of human breeding\" toward \"genetic engineering.\"", "11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at \"adolescent boys.\"", "4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with \"substantial financial resources\" are fit to give his models' offspring \"a financially secure and stable life.\" But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, \"Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up.\"", "9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's \"unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money\" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of \"taking advantage of couples trying to conceive\" and exploiting \"desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell.\" USA Today laments, \"This is about human need. And human greed.\"", "5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' \"angels\" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? \"There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth,\" he says. Annas concludes that since there's \"no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise,\" only a \"naive\" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. \"You don't want to see the models,\" he points out. \"You want to see pictures of their parents.\" On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.", "10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as \"struggling actresses,\" reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, \"I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse .\" Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was \"better than prostitution.\"", "12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. \"Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs,\" one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction \"just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?\"", "2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. \"Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture,\" observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries \"recessive\" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.", "eBabe \n\n This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to \"bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women.\" Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are \"looking into\" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.", "14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, \"That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.\") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.", "Harris constantly refers to the donors as his \"girls\" and describes them like cattle--\"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls.\" He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. \"We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items,\" he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to \"find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web.\" To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.", "15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that \"having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation.\" But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: \"our genes.\" \"The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site,\" Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.", "13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. \"When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud,\" a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that \"there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected,\" and \"the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from.\"", "This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former? \n\n Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. \"Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state,\" he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.", "8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to \"success,\" since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over \"character,\" critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are \"beautiful, healthy and intelligent,\" he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions \"Bimbo births.\" A fertility expert shrugs, \"If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them.\"", "7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is \"superficial\" and conveys a \"harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character.\" This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.", "6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty \"shows healthiness and longevity.\" On his site, he writes, \" 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful.\" Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much \"medical screening\" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, \"None.\"", "16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole \"prejudice\" in favor of beauty. \"The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts,\" says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, \"we should think about\" whether to \"accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them\" or to transcend those prejudices." ], [ "10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as \"struggling actresses,\" reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, \"I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse .\" Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was \"better than prostitution.\"", "9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's \"unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money\" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of \"taking advantage of couples trying to conceive\" and exploiting \"desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell.\" USA Today laments, \"This is about human need. And human greed.\"", "4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with \"substantial financial resources\" are fit to give his models' offspring \"a financially secure and stable life.\" But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, \"Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up.\"", "1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, \"We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?\" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris \"can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs,\" predict that his success will steer \"the future of human breeding\" toward \"genetic engineering.\"", "11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at \"adolescent boys.\"", "12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. \"Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs,\" one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction \"just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?\"", "eBabe \n\n This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to \"bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women.\" Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are \"looking into\" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.", "15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that \"having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation.\" But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: \"our genes.\" \"The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site,\" Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.", "13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. \"When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud,\" a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that \"there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected,\" and \"the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from.\"", "5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' \"angels\" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? \"There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth,\" he says. Annas concludes that since there's \"no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise,\" only a \"naive\" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. \"You don't want to see the models,\" he points out. \"You want to see pictures of their parents.\" On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.", "This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former? \n\n Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. \"Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state,\" he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.", "8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to \"success,\" since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over \"character,\" critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are \"beautiful, healthy and intelligent,\" he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions \"Bimbo births.\" A fertility expert shrugs, \"If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them.\"", "Harris constantly refers to the donors as his \"girls\" and describes them like cattle--\"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls.\" He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. \"We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items,\" he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to \"find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web.\" To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.", "3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once \"beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them,\" the rich will transform themselves into a \"super-race\" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, \"It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder.\" But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into \"genetic haves and have nots.\"", "6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty \"shows healthiness and longevity.\" On his site, he writes, \" 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful.\" Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much \"medical screening\" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, \"None.\"", "2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. \"Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture,\" observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries \"recessive\" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.", "7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is \"superficial\" and conveys a \"harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character.\" This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.", "14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, \"That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.\") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.", "16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole \"prejudice\" in favor of beauty. \"The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts,\" says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, \"we should think about\" whether to \"accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them\" or to transcend those prejudices." ], [ "11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at \"adolescent boys.\"", "1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, \"We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?\" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris \"can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs,\" predict that his success will steer \"the future of human breeding\" toward \"genetic engineering.\"", "Harris constantly refers to the donors as his \"girls\" and describes them like cattle--\"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls.\" He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. \"We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items,\" he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to \"find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web.\" To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.", "10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as \"struggling actresses,\" reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, \"I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse .\" Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was \"better than prostitution.\"", "3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once \"beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them,\" the rich will transform themselves into a \"super-race\" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, \"It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder.\" But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into \"genetic haves and have nots.\"", "4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with \"substantial financial resources\" are fit to give his models' offspring \"a financially secure and stable life.\" But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, \"Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up.\"", "9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's \"unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money\" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of \"taking advantage of couples trying to conceive\" and exploiting \"desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell.\" USA Today laments, \"This is about human need. And human greed.\"", "5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' \"angels\" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? \"There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth,\" he says. Annas concludes that since there's \"no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise,\" only a \"naive\" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. \"You don't want to see the models,\" he points out. \"You want to see pictures of their parents.\" On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.", "eBabe \n\n This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to \"bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women.\" Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are \"looking into\" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.", "15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that \"having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation.\" But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: \"our genes.\" \"The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site,\" Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.", "14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, \"That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.\") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.", "12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. \"Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs,\" one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction \"just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?\"", "2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. \"Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture,\" observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries \"recessive\" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.", "8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to \"success,\" since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over \"character,\" critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are \"beautiful, healthy and intelligent,\" he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions \"Bimbo births.\" A fertility expert shrugs, \"If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them.\"", "This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former? \n\n Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. \"Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state,\" he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.", "7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is \"superficial\" and conveys a \"harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character.\" This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.", "13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. \"When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud,\" a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that \"there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected,\" and \"the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from.\"", "6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty \"shows healthiness and longevity.\" On his site, he writes, \" 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful.\" Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much \"medical screening\" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, \"None.\"", "16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole \"prejudice\" in favor of beauty. \"The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts,\" says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, \"we should think about\" whether to \"accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them\" or to transcend those prejudices." ], [ "5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' \"angels\" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? \"There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth,\" he says. Annas concludes that since there's \"no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise,\" only a \"naive\" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. \"You don't want to see the models,\" he points out. \"You want to see pictures of their parents.\" On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.", "4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with \"substantial financial resources\" are fit to give his models' offspring \"a financially secure and stable life.\" But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, \"Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up.\"", "3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once \"beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them,\" the rich will transform themselves into a \"super-race\" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, \"It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder.\" But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into \"genetic haves and have nots.\"", "1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, \"We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?\" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris \"can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs,\" predict that his success will steer \"the future of human breeding\" toward \"genetic engineering.\"", "2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. \"Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture,\" observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries \"recessive\" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.", "14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, \"That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.\") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.", "11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at \"adolescent boys.\"", "15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that \"having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation.\" But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: \"our genes.\" \"The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site,\" Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.", "9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's \"unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money\" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of \"taking advantage of couples trying to conceive\" and exploiting \"desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell.\" USA Today laments, \"This is about human need. And human greed.\"", "10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as \"struggling actresses,\" reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, \"I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse .\" Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was \"better than prostitution.\"", "This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former? \n\n Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. \"Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state,\" he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.", "eBabe \n\n This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to \"bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women.\" Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are \"looking into\" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.", "13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. \"When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud,\" a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that \"there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected,\" and \"the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from.\"", "Harris constantly refers to the donors as his \"girls\" and describes them like cattle--\"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls.\" He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. \"We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items,\" he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to \"find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web.\" To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.", "8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to \"success,\" since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over \"character,\" critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are \"beautiful, healthy and intelligent,\" he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions \"Bimbo births.\" A fertility expert shrugs, \"If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them.\"", "12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. \"Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs,\" one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction \"just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?\"", "7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is \"superficial\" and conveys a \"harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character.\" This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.", "6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty \"shows healthiness and longevity.\" On his site, he writes, \" 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful.\" Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much \"medical screening\" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, \"None.\"", "16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole \"prejudice\" in favor of beauty. \"The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts,\" says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, \"we should think about\" whether to \"accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them\" or to transcend those prejudices." ], [ "11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at \"adolescent boys.\"", "Harris constantly refers to the donors as his \"girls\" and describes them like cattle--\"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls.\" He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. \"We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items,\" he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to \"find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web.\" To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.", "1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, \"We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?\" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris \"can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs,\" predict that his success will steer \"the future of human breeding\" toward \"genetic engineering.\"", "10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as \"struggling actresses,\" reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, \"I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse .\" Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was \"better than prostitution.\"", "9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's \"unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money\" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of \"taking advantage of couples trying to conceive\" and exploiting \"desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell.\" USA Today laments, \"This is about human need. And human greed.\"", "4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with \"substantial financial resources\" are fit to give his models' offspring \"a financially secure and stable life.\" But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, \"Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up.\"", "3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once \"beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them,\" the rich will transform themselves into a \"super-race\" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, \"It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder.\" But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into \"genetic haves and have nots.\"", "5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' \"angels\" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? \"There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth,\" he says. Annas concludes that since there's \"no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise,\" only a \"naive\" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. \"You don't want to see the models,\" he points out. \"You want to see pictures of their parents.\" On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.", "This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former? \n\n Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. \"Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state,\" he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.", "eBabe \n\n This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to \"bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women.\" Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are \"looking into\" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.", "15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that \"having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation.\" But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: \"our genes.\" \"The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site,\" Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.", "7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is \"superficial\" and conveys a \"harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character.\" This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.", "14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, \"That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.\") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.", "8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to \"success,\" since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over \"character,\" critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are \"beautiful, healthy and intelligent,\" he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions \"Bimbo births.\" A fertility expert shrugs, \"If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them.\"", "12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. \"Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs,\" one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction \"just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?\"", "6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty \"shows healthiness and longevity.\" On his site, he writes, \" 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful.\" Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much \"medical screening\" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, \"None.\"", "2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. \"Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture,\" observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries \"recessive\" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.", "13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. \"When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud,\" a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that \"there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected,\" and \"the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from.\"", "16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole \"prejudice\" in favor of beauty. \"The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts,\" says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, \"we should think about\" whether to \"accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them\" or to transcend those prejudices." ], [ "7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is \"superficial\" and conveys a \"harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character.\" This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.", "14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, \"That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.\") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.", "16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole \"prejudice\" in favor of beauty. \"The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts,\" says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, \"we should think about\" whether to \"accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them\" or to transcend those prejudices.", "Harris constantly refers to the donors as his \"girls\" and describes them like cattle--\"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls.\" He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. \"We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items,\" he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to \"find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web.\" To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.", "8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to \"success,\" since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over \"character,\" critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are \"beautiful, healthy and intelligent,\" he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions \"Bimbo births.\" A fertility expert shrugs, \"If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them.\"", "5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' \"angels\" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? \"There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth,\" he says. Annas concludes that since there's \"no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise,\" only a \"naive\" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. \"You don't want to see the models,\" he points out. \"You want to see pictures of their parents.\" On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.", "6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty \"shows healthiness and longevity.\" On his site, he writes, \" 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful.\" Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much \"medical screening\" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, \"None.\"", "2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. \"Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture,\" observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries \"recessive\" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.", "4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with \"substantial financial resources\" are fit to give his models' offspring \"a financially secure and stable life.\" But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, \"Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up.\"", "This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former? \n\n Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. \"Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state,\" he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.", "3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once \"beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them,\" the rich will transform themselves into a \"super-race\" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, \"It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder.\" But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into \"genetic haves and have nots.\"", "11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at \"adolescent boys.\"", "10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as \"struggling actresses,\" reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, \"I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse .\" Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was \"better than prostitution.\"", "eBabe \n\n This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to \"bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women.\" Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are \"looking into\" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.", "12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. \"Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs,\" one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction \"just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?\"", "9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's \"unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money\" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of \"taking advantage of couples trying to conceive\" and exploiting \"desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell.\" USA Today laments, \"This is about human need. And human greed.\"", "15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that \"having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation.\" But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: \"our genes.\" \"The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site,\" Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.", "1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, \"We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?\" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris \"can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs,\" predict that his success will steer \"the future of human breeding\" toward \"genetic engineering.\"", "13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. \"When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud,\" a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that \"there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected,\" and \"the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from.\"" ] ]
train	20017	[ "What wouldn't the author say about Unmade Beds?", "What isn't something Unmade Beds showed its audience?", "How did the author feel about Unmade Beds?", "What does the author think would have improved The Slums of Beverly Hills?", "How are Unmade Beds and The Slums of Beverly Hills similar?", "How does the author feel about Don MacPherson?", "What is the author's purpose for writing this?", "What would the author likely say about himself?" ]	[ [ "it is a new genre of film", "the film is dishonest and scripted", "the characters aren't likable ", "this film will inspire many more like it to be created" ], [ "how desperate people are in Manhattan", "a person's size can sometimes affect their happiness", "people are all inherently judging others", "the reality of dating in New York" ], [ "the movie didn't show the real truth about its characters", "it displayed many hidden truths about people", "it was uncomfortable to watch but worth watching", "Barker created something that people will be talking about for a long time" ], [ "a more realistic plot", "more episodes to explain the situation", "a more experienced director", "more attractive actors" ], [ "they both have an eye-opening message", "they both have first-time directors", "they both mix genres to make a unique film", "they're both meant to be a documentary" ], [ "many famous actors what to work with him", "his movie lacked the quality that the original did", "he's made some good and some bad movies", "he's a better critic than a screenwriter" ], [ "to inform people that documentaries aren't always accurate", "to persuade people to be critical of movies they watch", "to explain different films he's seen recently", "to inform the audience of the changes in cinema" ], [ "he only likes certain film genres", "he's an expert at critiquing films", "his opinion is different from most peoples' ", "his films are better than most that he's seen" ] ]	[ 4, 4, 1, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2 ]	[ 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary (\"I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it\"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of \"difficult\" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind; it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of \"larger dramatic truths.\"", "Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people.", "Dirty Laundry \n\n Now and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture? \n\n Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's \" 'real life' feature film,\" has proudly worn its mongrel status as a \"directed\" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside.", "So what are Barker's \"larger dramatic truths\"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian.", "Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, \"In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action.\"", "This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film \"an exercise in mendacity,\" Barker goes on, \"I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths.\"", "The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks (\"I'm up to two dicks a day\"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up.", "Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males.", "no reason. Jenkins hasn't quite figured out how to shape her narrative, which is full of episodes that are there because they actually happened but that don't have a payoff. I almost wish she'd included more voice-over narration, more commentary", "Call me square, but I find this antithetical to the documentary spirit. An Englishman who trained as an anthropologist before going to work for BBC Television, Barker clearly made up his mind about his material before his cameras began to roll--so it's no surprise that it feels prechewed and predigested. When reality interfered (Brenda apparently did not go through with a marriage to an immigrant in search of a green card for $10,000, as she does on-screen), Barker brushed the truth aside as immaterial, following her up the steps of City Hall in her wedding dress because it was \"true to her character.\" But what separates documentary from fiction is that real people are often more complicated, and more conflicted, than finished characters--as Brenda proved to be more (or, at least, other) than the sum of her parts. That's the kind of truth that reveals itself to documentary filmmakers after the fact, when they go over footage and discover unexpected patterns, dissonances, glimmers of a universe that's richer and messier than the one they set out to portray.", "absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code,", "all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. (\"Furniture's temporary; education is permanent.\") It's a major omission, then, that we never see those schools or the kids' interaction with their", "The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for", "The Slums of Beverly Hills never gels, but it has a likable spirit, and it's exceedingly easy on the eye, with lots of pretty girls and wry evocations of '70s fashions and decor. The father, to obtain financial support from his wealthy brother (Carl Reiner), volunteers to take in his vaguely schizzy, dipsomaniacal niece (Marisa Tomei). She and her cousin compare breasts, play with vibrators, and talk in pig Latinish gibberish, but Jenkins never lets the proceedings get too sentimental: The whimsy is always cut with an acidic awareness of the family's desperation. \"Are we middle-class now?\" ask the children, hopefully, before another crisis sends them back into their van, cruising past the movie stars' mansions, in the mean streets of Beverly Hills.", "Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are \"mutts.\" Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt.", "on the things that, as a filmmaker, she hasn't learned to bring out.", "I don't know who the credited screenwriter, Don MacPherson, is, but it's unlikely that he has ever seen an episode of the old Avengers , let alone sussed out the source of its appeal. Opening with a slapstick sequence of agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) doing kung fu, the film shifts to a scene in which he meets Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) while sitting naked in a sauna with only a newspaper to cover his private parts. The series was erotic in a way only prim English humor can be: The Old Boy Steed was capable of throwing a punch and bonking someone with his bowler, but he left the karate kicking to his liberated, leather-suited distaff associate. Here their roles have been witlessly muddled, and MacPherson's idea of banter is to have the pair complete each other's clichés.", "stable, well-to-do Beverly Hills counterparts. We can't tell if the father is, on some weird level, justified in his fervor, or whether he's screwing up his children--subjecting them to humiliation and robbing them of a sense of permanence--for", "Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's \"OK with it,\" and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? \"Or,\" the viewer thinks, \"if you're 225 pounds?\"", "Grading on the steep curve established by summer blockbuster seasons past, these have turned out to be a pretty good few months at the movies. Even the commercial swill ( Deep Impact , Armageddon , The Mask of Zorro , Small Soldiers , Snake Eyes , Halloween: H20 ) has been of a high grade, and Saving Private Ryan and Return to Paradise were Vitalis slaps in the kisser for people woozy from all the warm weather escapism. Out of Sight was tender and charming, as was, in its gross-out way, There's Something About Mary . And, on the indie front, The Opposite of Sex , Buffalo 66 , and Pi have proved that there's still commercial life after Sundance. Sure, we had stinkers, but even Godzilla was fun to jeer at. And there's something reassuring about the fact that The Avengers is so rotten: proof yet again that people with piles of money can hire wizard production designers but can't fake class." ], [ "Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary (\"I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it\"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of \"difficult\" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind; it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of \"larger dramatic truths.\"", "Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people.", "Dirty Laundry \n\n Now and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture? \n\n Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's \" 'real life' feature film,\" has proudly worn its mongrel status as a \"directed\" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside.", "The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks (\"I'm up to two dicks a day\"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up.", "So what are Barker's \"larger dramatic truths\"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian.", "Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, \"In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action.\"", "This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film \"an exercise in mendacity,\" Barker goes on, \"I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths.\"", "Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males.", "Call me square, but I find this antithetical to the documentary spirit. An Englishman who trained as an anthropologist before going to work for BBC Television, Barker clearly made up his mind about his material before his cameras began to roll--so it's no surprise that it feels prechewed and predigested. When reality interfered (Brenda apparently did not go through with a marriage to an immigrant in search of a green card for $10,000, as she does on-screen), Barker brushed the truth aside as immaterial, following her up the steps of City Hall in her wedding dress because it was \"true to her character.\" But what separates documentary from fiction is that real people are often more complicated, and more conflicted, than finished characters--as Brenda proved to be more (or, at least, other) than the sum of her parts. That's the kind of truth that reveals itself to documentary filmmakers after the fact, when they go over footage and discover unexpected patterns, dissonances, glimmers of a universe that's richer and messier than the one they set out to portray.", "on the things that, as a filmmaker, she hasn't learned to bring out.", "all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. (\"Furniture's temporary; education is permanent.\") It's a major omission, then, that we never see those schools or the kids' interaction with their", "no reason. Jenkins hasn't quite figured out how to shape her narrative, which is full of episodes that are there because they actually happened but that don't have a payoff. I almost wish she'd included more voice-over narration, more commentary", "absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code,", "Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are \"mutts.\" Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt.", "The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for", "I don't know who the credited screenwriter, Don MacPherson, is, but it's unlikely that he has ever seen an episode of the old Avengers , let alone sussed out the source of its appeal. Opening with a slapstick sequence of agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) doing kung fu, the film shifts to a scene in which he meets Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) while sitting naked in a sauna with only a newspaper to cover his private parts. The series was erotic in a way only prim English humor can be: The Old Boy Steed was capable of throwing a punch and bonking someone with his bowler, but he left the karate kicking to his liberated, leather-suited distaff associate. Here their roles have been witlessly muddled, and MacPherson's idea of banter is to have the pair complete each other's clichés.", "The Slums of Beverly Hills never gels, but it has a likable spirit, and it's exceedingly easy on the eye, with lots of pretty girls and wry evocations of '70s fashions and decor. The father, to obtain financial support from his wealthy brother (Carl Reiner), volunteers to take in his vaguely schizzy, dipsomaniacal niece (Marisa Tomei). She and her cousin compare breasts, play with vibrators, and talk in pig Latinish gibberish, but Jenkins never lets the proceedings get too sentimental: The whimsy is always cut with an acidic awareness of the family's desperation. \"Are we middle-class now?\" ask the children, hopefully, before another crisis sends them back into their van, cruising past the movie stars' mansions, in the mean streets of Beverly Hills.", "Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's \"OK with it,\" and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? \"Or,\" the viewer thinks, \"if you're 225 pounds?\"", "stable, well-to-do Beverly Hills counterparts. We can't tell if the father is, on some weird level, justified in his fervor, or whether he's screwing up his children--subjecting them to humiliation and robbing them of a sense of permanence--for", "Grading on the steep curve established by summer blockbuster seasons past, these have turned out to be a pretty good few months at the movies. Even the commercial swill ( Deep Impact , Armageddon , The Mask of Zorro , Small Soldiers , Snake Eyes , Halloween: H20 ) has been of a high grade, and Saving Private Ryan and Return to Paradise were Vitalis slaps in the kisser for people woozy from all the warm weather escapism. Out of Sight was tender and charming, as was, in its gross-out way, There's Something About Mary . And, on the indie front, The Opposite of Sex , Buffalo 66 , and Pi have proved that there's still commercial life after Sundance. Sure, we had stinkers, but even Godzilla was fun to jeer at. And there's something reassuring about the fact that The Avengers is so rotten: proof yet again that people with piles of money can hire wizard production designers but can't fake class." ], [ "Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary (\"I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it\"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of \"difficult\" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind; it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of \"larger dramatic truths.\"", "Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people.", "Dirty Laundry \n\n Now and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture? \n\n Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's \" 'real life' feature film,\" has proudly worn its mongrel status as a \"directed\" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside.", "Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, \"In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action.\"", "Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males.", "So what are Barker's \"larger dramatic truths\"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian.", "The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks (\"I'm up to two dicks a day\"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up.", "no reason. Jenkins hasn't quite figured out how to shape her narrative, which is full of episodes that are there because they actually happened but that don't have a payoff. I almost wish she'd included more voice-over narration, more commentary", "This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film \"an exercise in mendacity,\" Barker goes on, \"I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths.\"", "Call me square, but I find this antithetical to the documentary spirit. An Englishman who trained as an anthropologist before going to work for BBC Television, Barker clearly made up his mind about his material before his cameras began to roll--so it's no surprise that it feels prechewed and predigested. When reality interfered (Brenda apparently did not go through with a marriage to an immigrant in search of a green card for $10,000, as she does on-screen), Barker brushed the truth aside as immaterial, following her up the steps of City Hall in her wedding dress because it was \"true to her character.\" But what separates documentary from fiction is that real people are often more complicated, and more conflicted, than finished characters--as Brenda proved to be more (or, at least, other) than the sum of her parts. That's the kind of truth that reveals itself to documentary filmmakers after the fact, when they go over footage and discover unexpected patterns, dissonances, glimmers of a universe that's richer and messier than the one they set out to portray.", "absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code,", "Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are \"mutts.\" Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt.", "The Slums of Beverly Hills never gels, but it has a likable spirit, and it's exceedingly easy on the eye, with lots of pretty girls and wry evocations of '70s fashions and decor. The father, to obtain financial support from his wealthy brother (Carl Reiner), volunteers to take in his vaguely schizzy, dipsomaniacal niece (Marisa Tomei). She and her cousin compare breasts, play with vibrators, and talk in pig Latinish gibberish, but Jenkins never lets the proceedings get too sentimental: The whimsy is always cut with an acidic awareness of the family's desperation. \"Are we middle-class now?\" ask the children, hopefully, before another crisis sends them back into their van, cruising past the movie stars' mansions, in the mean streets of Beverly Hills.", "stable, well-to-do Beverly Hills counterparts. We can't tell if the father is, on some weird level, justified in his fervor, or whether he's screwing up his children--subjecting them to humiliation and robbing them of a sense of permanence--for", "The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for", "I don't know who the credited screenwriter, Don MacPherson, is, but it's unlikely that he has ever seen an episode of the old Avengers , let alone sussed out the source of its appeal. Opening with a slapstick sequence of agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) doing kung fu, the film shifts to a scene in which he meets Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) while sitting naked in a sauna with only a newspaper to cover his private parts. The series was erotic in a way only prim English humor can be: The Old Boy Steed was capable of throwing a punch and bonking someone with his bowler, but he left the karate kicking to his liberated, leather-suited distaff associate. Here their roles have been witlessly muddled, and MacPherson's idea of banter is to have the pair complete each other's clichés.", "all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. (\"Furniture's temporary; education is permanent.\") It's a major omission, then, that we never see those schools or the kids' interaction with their", "Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's \"OK with it,\" and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? \"Or,\" the viewer thinks, \"if you're 225 pounds?\"", "Grading on the steep curve established by summer blockbuster seasons past, these have turned out to be a pretty good few months at the movies. Even the commercial swill ( Deep Impact , Armageddon , The Mask of Zorro , Small Soldiers , Snake Eyes , Halloween: H20 ) has been of a high grade, and Saving Private Ryan and Return to Paradise were Vitalis slaps in the kisser for people woozy from all the warm weather escapism. Out of Sight was tender and charming, as was, in its gross-out way, There's Something About Mary . And, on the indie front, The Opposite of Sex , Buffalo 66 , and Pi have proved that there's still commercial life after Sundance. Sure, we had stinkers, but even Godzilla was fun to jeer at. And there's something reassuring about the fact that The Avengers is so rotten: proof yet again that people with piles of money can hire wizard production designers but can't fake class.", "on the things that, as a filmmaker, she hasn't learned to bring out." ], [ "The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for", "The Slums of Beverly Hills never gels, but it has a likable spirit, and it's exceedingly easy on the eye, with lots of pretty girls and wry evocations of '70s fashions and decor. The father, to obtain financial support from his wealthy brother (Carl Reiner), volunteers to take in his vaguely schizzy, dipsomaniacal niece (Marisa Tomei). She and her cousin compare breasts, play with vibrators, and talk in pig Latinish gibberish, but Jenkins never lets the proceedings get too sentimental: The whimsy is always cut with an acidic awareness of the family's desperation. \"Are we middle-class now?\" ask the children, hopefully, before another crisis sends them back into their van, cruising past the movie stars' mansions, in the mean streets of Beverly Hills.", "absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code,", "Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, \"In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action.\"", "no reason. Jenkins hasn't quite figured out how to shape her narrative, which is full of episodes that are there because they actually happened but that don't have a payoff. I almost wish she'd included more voice-over narration, more commentary", "stable, well-to-do Beverly Hills counterparts. We can't tell if the father is, on some weird level, justified in his fervor, or whether he's screwing up his children--subjecting them to humiliation and robbing them of a sense of permanence--for", "Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males.", "The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks (\"I'm up to two dicks a day\"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up.", "Call me square, but I find this antithetical to the documentary spirit. An Englishman who trained as an anthropologist before going to work for BBC Television, Barker clearly made up his mind about his material before his cameras began to roll--so it's no surprise that it feels prechewed and predigested. When reality interfered (Brenda apparently did not go through with a marriage to an immigrant in search of a green card for $10,000, as she does on-screen), Barker brushed the truth aside as immaterial, following her up the steps of City Hall in her wedding dress because it was \"true to her character.\" But what separates documentary from fiction is that real people are often more complicated, and more conflicted, than finished characters--as Brenda proved to be more (or, at least, other) than the sum of her parts. That's the kind of truth that reveals itself to documentary filmmakers after the fact, when they go over footage and discover unexpected patterns, dissonances, glimmers of a universe that's richer and messier than the one they set out to portray.", "So what are Barker's \"larger dramatic truths\"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian.", "all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. (\"Furniture's temporary; education is permanent.\") It's a major omission, then, that we never see those schools or the kids' interaction with their", "Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary (\"I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it\"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of \"difficult\" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind; it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of \"larger dramatic truths.\"", "Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are \"mutts.\" Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt.", "Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people.", "This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film \"an exercise in mendacity,\" Barker goes on, \"I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths.\"", "Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's \"OK with it,\" and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? \"Or,\" the viewer thinks, \"if you're 225 pounds?\"", "Dirty Laundry \n\n Now and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture? \n\n Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's \" 'real life' feature film,\" has proudly worn its mongrel status as a \"directed\" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside.", "Grading on the steep curve established by summer blockbuster seasons past, these have turned out to be a pretty good few months at the movies. Even the commercial swill ( Deep Impact , Armageddon , The Mask of Zorro , Small Soldiers , Snake Eyes , Halloween: H20 ) has been of a high grade, and Saving Private Ryan and Return to Paradise were Vitalis slaps in the kisser for people woozy from all the warm weather escapism. Out of Sight was tender and charming, as was, in its gross-out way, There's Something About Mary . And, on the indie front, The Opposite of Sex , Buffalo 66 , and Pi have proved that there's still commercial life after Sundance. Sure, we had stinkers, but even Godzilla was fun to jeer at. And there's something reassuring about the fact that The Avengers is so rotten: proof yet again that people with piles of money can hire wizard production designers but can't fake class.", "I don't know who the credited screenwriter, Don MacPherson, is, but it's unlikely that he has ever seen an episode of the old Avengers , let alone sussed out the source of its appeal. Opening with a slapstick sequence of agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) doing kung fu, the film shifts to a scene in which he meets Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) while sitting naked in a sauna with only a newspaper to cover his private parts. The series was erotic in a way only prim English humor can be: The Old Boy Steed was capable of throwing a punch and bonking someone with his bowler, but he left the karate kicking to his liberated, leather-suited distaff associate. Here their roles have been witlessly muddled, and MacPherson's idea of banter is to have the pair complete each other's clichés.", "on the things that, as a filmmaker, she hasn't learned to bring out." ], [ "The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for", "The Slums of Beverly Hills never gels, but it has a likable spirit, and it's exceedingly easy on the eye, with lots of pretty girls and wry evocations of '70s fashions and decor. The father, to obtain financial support from his wealthy brother (Carl Reiner), volunteers to take in his vaguely schizzy, dipsomaniacal niece (Marisa Tomei). She and her cousin compare breasts, play with vibrators, and talk in pig Latinish gibberish, but Jenkins never lets the proceedings get too sentimental: The whimsy is always cut with an acidic awareness of the family's desperation. \"Are we middle-class now?\" ask the children, hopefully, before another crisis sends them back into their van, cruising past the movie stars' mansions, in the mean streets of Beverly Hills.", "Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people.", "Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary (\"I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it\"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of \"difficult\" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind; it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of \"larger dramatic truths.\"", "Dirty Laundry \n\n Now and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture? \n\n Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's \" 'real life' feature film,\" has proudly worn its mongrel status as a \"directed\" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside.", "absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code,", "stable, well-to-do Beverly Hills counterparts. We can't tell if the father is, on some weird level, justified in his fervor, or whether he's screwing up his children--subjecting them to humiliation and robbing them of a sense of permanence--for", "The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks (\"I'm up to two dicks a day\"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up.", "Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are \"mutts.\" Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt.", "Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males.", "Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, \"In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action.\"", "all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. (\"Furniture's temporary; education is permanent.\") It's a major omission, then, that we never see those schools or the kids' interaction with their", "So what are Barker's \"larger dramatic truths\"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian.", "This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film \"an exercise in mendacity,\" Barker goes on, \"I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths.\"", "Call me square, but I find this antithetical to the documentary spirit. An Englishman who trained as an anthropologist before going to work for BBC Television, Barker clearly made up his mind about his material before his cameras began to roll--so it's no surprise that it feels prechewed and predigested. When reality interfered (Brenda apparently did not go through with a marriage to an immigrant in search of a green card for $10,000, as she does on-screen), Barker brushed the truth aside as immaterial, following her up the steps of City Hall in her wedding dress because it was \"true to her character.\" But what separates documentary from fiction is that real people are often more complicated, and more conflicted, than finished characters--as Brenda proved to be more (or, at least, other) than the sum of her parts. That's the kind of truth that reveals itself to documentary filmmakers after the fact, when they go over footage and discover unexpected patterns, dissonances, glimmers of a universe that's richer and messier than the one they set out to portray.", "no reason. Jenkins hasn't quite figured out how to shape her narrative, which is full of episodes that are there because they actually happened but that don't have a payoff. I almost wish she'd included more voice-over narration, more commentary", "Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's \"OK with it,\" and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? \"Or,\" the viewer thinks, \"if you're 225 pounds?\"", "Grading on the steep curve established by summer blockbuster seasons past, these have turned out to be a pretty good few months at the movies. Even the commercial swill ( Deep Impact , Armageddon , The Mask of Zorro , Small Soldiers , Snake Eyes , Halloween: H20 ) has been of a high grade, and Saving Private Ryan and Return to Paradise were Vitalis slaps in the kisser for people woozy from all the warm weather escapism. Out of Sight was tender and charming, as was, in its gross-out way, There's Something About Mary . And, on the indie front, The Opposite of Sex , Buffalo 66 , and Pi have proved that there's still commercial life after Sundance. Sure, we had stinkers, but even Godzilla was fun to jeer at. And there's something reassuring about the fact that The Avengers is so rotten: proof yet again that people with piles of money can hire wizard production designers but can't fake class.", "I don't know who the credited screenwriter, Don MacPherson, is, but it's unlikely that he has ever seen an episode of the old Avengers , let alone sussed out the source of its appeal. Opening with a slapstick sequence of agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) doing kung fu, the film shifts to a scene in which he meets Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) while sitting naked in a sauna with only a newspaper to cover his private parts. The series was erotic in a way only prim English humor can be: The Old Boy Steed was capable of throwing a punch and bonking someone with his bowler, but he left the karate kicking to his liberated, leather-suited distaff associate. Here their roles have been witlessly muddled, and MacPherson's idea of banter is to have the pair complete each other's clichés.", "on the things that, as a filmmaker, she hasn't learned to bring out." ], [ "Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are \"mutts.\" Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt.", "I don't know who the credited screenwriter, Don MacPherson, is, but it's unlikely that he has ever seen an episode of the old Avengers , let alone sussed out the source of its appeal. Opening with a slapstick sequence of agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) doing kung fu, the film shifts to a scene in which he meets Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) while sitting naked in a sauna with only a newspaper to cover his private parts. The series was erotic in a way only prim English humor can be: The Old Boy Steed was capable of throwing a punch and bonking someone with his bowler, but he left the karate kicking to his liberated, leather-suited distaff associate. Here their roles have been witlessly muddled, and MacPherson's idea of banter is to have the pair complete each other's clichés.", "Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males.", "Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, \"In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action.\"", "So what are Barker's \"larger dramatic truths\"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian.", "The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks (\"I'm up to two dicks a day\"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up.", "Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary (\"I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it\"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of \"difficult\" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind; it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of \"larger dramatic truths.\"", "stable, well-to-do Beverly Hills counterparts. We can't tell if the father is, on some weird level, justified in his fervor, or whether he's screwing up his children--subjecting them to humiliation and robbing them of a sense of permanence--for", "Call me square, but I find this antithetical to the documentary spirit. An Englishman who trained as an anthropologist before going to work for BBC Television, Barker clearly made up his mind about his material before his cameras began to roll--so it's no surprise that it feels prechewed and predigested. When reality interfered (Brenda apparently did not go through with a marriage to an immigrant in search of a green card for $10,000, as she does on-screen), Barker brushed the truth aside as immaterial, following her up the steps of City Hall in her wedding dress because it was \"true to her character.\" But what separates documentary from fiction is that real people are often more complicated, and more conflicted, than finished characters--as Brenda proved to be more (or, at least, other) than the sum of her parts. That's the kind of truth that reveals itself to documentary filmmakers after the fact, when they go over footage and discover unexpected patterns, dissonances, glimmers of a universe that's richer and messier than the one they set out to portray.", "no reason. Jenkins hasn't quite figured out how to shape her narrative, which is full of episodes that are there because they actually happened but that don't have a payoff. I almost wish she'd included more voice-over narration, more commentary", "Whereas the original Steed, Patrick Macnee, was to the English Men's Club born, Fiennes is an eternal caddie. The willowy Thurman looks great in her outfits, but it's ever more apparent that she isn't much of an actress--at least, not a trained one--and her attempts at insouciance are embarrassingly arch. As the eccentric master villain who controls the weather, even Sean Connery is flat-out terrible, acting high on the hog. To think Connery once found the Bond films so far beneath him! When he sputters lines like \"Time to die!\" one imagines Dr. No, Goldfinger, and Blofeld snickering in the wings.", "This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film \"an exercise in mendacity,\" Barker goes on, \"I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths.\"", "all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. (\"Furniture's temporary; education is permanent.\") It's a major omission, then, that we never see those schools or the kids' interaction with their", "The Slums of Beverly Hills never gels, but it has a likable spirit, and it's exceedingly easy on the eye, with lots of pretty girls and wry evocations of '70s fashions and decor. The father, to obtain financial support from his wealthy brother (Carl Reiner), volunteers to take in his vaguely schizzy, dipsomaniacal niece (Marisa Tomei). She and her cousin compare breasts, play with vibrators, and talk in pig Latinish gibberish, but Jenkins never lets the proceedings get too sentimental: The whimsy is always cut with an acidic awareness of the family's desperation. \"Are we middle-class now?\" ask the children, hopefully, before another crisis sends them back into their van, cruising past the movie stars' mansions, in the mean streets of Beverly Hills.", "Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's \"OK with it,\" and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? \"Or,\" the viewer thinks, \"if you're 225 pounds?\"", "absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code,", "Grading on the steep curve established by summer blockbuster seasons past, these have turned out to be a pretty good few months at the movies. Even the commercial swill ( Deep Impact , Armageddon , The Mask of Zorro , Small Soldiers , Snake Eyes , Halloween: H20 ) has been of a high grade, and Saving Private Ryan and Return to Paradise were Vitalis slaps in the kisser for people woozy from all the warm weather escapism. Out of Sight was tender and charming, as was, in its gross-out way, There's Something About Mary . And, on the indie front, The Opposite of Sex , Buffalo 66 , and Pi have proved that there's still commercial life after Sundance. Sure, we had stinkers, but even Godzilla was fun to jeer at. And there's something reassuring about the fact that The Avengers is so rotten: proof yet again that people with piles of money can hire wizard production designers but can't fake class.", "Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people.", "Dirty Laundry \n\n Now and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture? \n\n Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's \" 'real life' feature film,\" has proudly worn its mongrel status as a \"directed\" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside.", "The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for" ], [ "no reason. Jenkins hasn't quite figured out how to shape her narrative, which is full of episodes that are there because they actually happened but that don't have a payoff. I almost wish she'd included more voice-over narration, more commentary", "Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males.", "Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, \"In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action.\"", "This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film \"an exercise in mendacity,\" Barker goes on, \"I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths.\"", "So what are Barker's \"larger dramatic truths\"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian.", "stable, well-to-do Beverly Hills counterparts. We can't tell if the father is, on some weird level, justified in his fervor, or whether he's screwing up his children--subjecting them to humiliation and robbing them of a sense of permanence--for", "absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code,", "Call me square, but I find this antithetical to the documentary spirit. An Englishman who trained as an anthropologist before going to work for BBC Television, Barker clearly made up his mind about his material before his cameras began to roll--so it's no surprise that it feels prechewed and predigested. When reality interfered (Brenda apparently did not go through with a marriage to an immigrant in search of a green card for $10,000, as she does on-screen), Barker brushed the truth aside as immaterial, following her up the steps of City Hall in her wedding dress because it was \"true to her character.\" But what separates documentary from fiction is that real people are often more complicated, and more conflicted, than finished characters--as Brenda proved to be more (or, at least, other) than the sum of her parts. That's the kind of truth that reveals itself to documentary filmmakers after the fact, when they go over footage and discover unexpected patterns, dissonances, glimmers of a universe that's richer and messier than the one they set out to portray.", "The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks (\"I'm up to two dicks a day\"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up.", "Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are \"mutts.\" Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt.", "Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary (\"I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it\"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of \"difficult\" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind; it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of \"larger dramatic truths.\"", "The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for", "all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. (\"Furniture's temporary; education is permanent.\") It's a major omission, then, that we never see those schools or the kids' interaction with their", "Dirty Laundry \n\n Now and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture? \n\n Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's \" 'real life' feature film,\" has proudly worn its mongrel status as a \"directed\" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside.", "Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's \"OK with it,\" and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? \"Or,\" the viewer thinks, \"if you're 225 pounds?\"", "The Slums of Beverly Hills never gels, but it has a likable spirit, and it's exceedingly easy on the eye, with lots of pretty girls and wry evocations of '70s fashions and decor. The father, to obtain financial support from his wealthy brother (Carl Reiner), volunteers to take in his vaguely schizzy, dipsomaniacal niece (Marisa Tomei). She and her cousin compare breasts, play with vibrators, and talk in pig Latinish gibberish, but Jenkins never lets the proceedings get too sentimental: The whimsy is always cut with an acidic awareness of the family's desperation. \"Are we middle-class now?\" ask the children, hopefully, before another crisis sends them back into their van, cruising past the movie stars' mansions, in the mean streets of Beverly Hills.", "I don't know who the credited screenwriter, Don MacPherson, is, but it's unlikely that he has ever seen an episode of the old Avengers , let alone sussed out the source of its appeal. Opening with a slapstick sequence of agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) doing kung fu, the film shifts to a scene in which he meets Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) while sitting naked in a sauna with only a newspaper to cover his private parts. The series was erotic in a way only prim English humor can be: The Old Boy Steed was capable of throwing a punch and bonking someone with his bowler, but he left the karate kicking to his liberated, leather-suited distaff associate. Here their roles have been witlessly muddled, and MacPherson's idea of banter is to have the pair complete each other's clichés.", "Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people.", "Grading on the steep curve established by summer blockbuster seasons past, these have turned out to be a pretty good few months at the movies. Even the commercial swill ( Deep Impact , Armageddon , The Mask of Zorro , Small Soldiers , Snake Eyes , Halloween: H20 ) has been of a high grade, and Saving Private Ryan and Return to Paradise were Vitalis slaps in the kisser for people woozy from all the warm weather escapism. Out of Sight was tender and charming, as was, in its gross-out way, There's Something About Mary . And, on the indie front, The Opposite of Sex , Buffalo 66 , and Pi have proved that there's still commercial life after Sundance. Sure, we had stinkers, but even Godzilla was fun to jeer at. And there's something reassuring about the fact that The Avengers is so rotten: proof yet again that people with piles of money can hire wizard production designers but can't fake class.", "Whereas the original Steed, Patrick Macnee, was to the English Men's Club born, Fiennes is an eternal caddie. The willowy Thurman looks great in her outfits, but it's ever more apparent that she isn't much of an actress--at least, not a trained one--and her attempts at insouciance are embarrassingly arch. As the eccentric master villain who controls the weather, even Sean Connery is flat-out terrible, acting high on the hog. To think Connery once found the Bond films so far beneath him! When he sputters lines like \"Time to die!\" one imagines Dr. No, Goldfinger, and Blofeld snickering in the wings." ], [ "Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males.", "This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film \"an exercise in mendacity,\" Barker goes on, \"I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths.\"", "Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, \"In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action.\"", "So what are Barker's \"larger dramatic truths\"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian.", "Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are \"mutts.\" Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt.", "The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks (\"I'm up to two dicks a day\"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up.", "no reason. Jenkins hasn't quite figured out how to shape her narrative, which is full of episodes that are there because they actually happened but that don't have a payoff. I almost wish she'd included more voice-over narration, more commentary", "Call me square, but I find this antithetical to the documentary spirit. An Englishman who trained as an anthropologist before going to work for BBC Television, Barker clearly made up his mind about his material before his cameras began to roll--so it's no surprise that it feels prechewed and predigested. When reality interfered (Brenda apparently did not go through with a marriage to an immigrant in search of a green card for $10,000, as she does on-screen), Barker brushed the truth aside as immaterial, following her up the steps of City Hall in her wedding dress because it was \"true to her character.\" But what separates documentary from fiction is that real people are often more complicated, and more conflicted, than finished characters--as Brenda proved to be more (or, at least, other) than the sum of her parts. That's the kind of truth that reveals itself to documentary filmmakers after the fact, when they go over footage and discover unexpected patterns, dissonances, glimmers of a universe that's richer and messier than the one they set out to portray.", "stable, well-to-do Beverly Hills counterparts. We can't tell if the father is, on some weird level, justified in his fervor, or whether he's screwing up his children--subjecting them to humiliation and robbing them of a sense of permanence--for", "Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary (\"I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it\"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of \"difficult\" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind; it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of \"larger dramatic truths.\"", "The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for", "absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code,", "Dirty Laundry \n\n Now and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture? \n\n Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's \" 'real life' feature film,\" has proudly worn its mongrel status as a \"directed\" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside.", "Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's \"OK with it,\" and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? \"Or,\" the viewer thinks, \"if you're 225 pounds?\"", "The Slums of Beverly Hills never gels, but it has a likable spirit, and it's exceedingly easy on the eye, with lots of pretty girls and wry evocations of '70s fashions and decor. The father, to obtain financial support from his wealthy brother (Carl Reiner), volunteers to take in his vaguely schizzy, dipsomaniacal niece (Marisa Tomei). She and her cousin compare breasts, play with vibrators, and talk in pig Latinish gibberish, but Jenkins never lets the proceedings get too sentimental: The whimsy is always cut with an acidic awareness of the family's desperation. \"Are we middle-class now?\" ask the children, hopefully, before another crisis sends them back into their van, cruising past the movie stars' mansions, in the mean streets of Beverly Hills.", "Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people.", "all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. (\"Furniture's temporary; education is permanent.\") It's a major omission, then, that we never see those schools or the kids' interaction with their", "I don't know who the credited screenwriter, Don MacPherson, is, but it's unlikely that he has ever seen an episode of the old Avengers , let alone sussed out the source of its appeal. Opening with a slapstick sequence of agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) doing kung fu, the film shifts to a scene in which he meets Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) while sitting naked in a sauna with only a newspaper to cover his private parts. The series was erotic in a way only prim English humor can be: The Old Boy Steed was capable of throwing a punch and bonking someone with his bowler, but he left the karate kicking to his liberated, leather-suited distaff associate. Here their roles have been witlessly muddled, and MacPherson's idea of banter is to have the pair complete each other's clichés.", "on the things that, as a filmmaker, she hasn't learned to bring out.", "Grading on the steep curve established by summer blockbuster seasons past, these have turned out to be a pretty good few months at the movies. Even the commercial swill ( Deep Impact , Armageddon , The Mask of Zorro , Small Soldiers , Snake Eyes , Halloween: H20 ) has been of a high grade, and Saving Private Ryan and Return to Paradise were Vitalis slaps in the kisser for people woozy from all the warm weather escapism. Out of Sight was tender and charming, as was, in its gross-out way, There's Something About Mary . And, on the indie front, The Opposite of Sex , Buffalo 66 , and Pi have proved that there's still commercial life after Sundance. Sure, we had stinkers, but even Godzilla was fun to jeer at. And there's something reassuring about the fact that The Avengers is so rotten: proof yet again that people with piles of money can hire wizard production designers but can't fake class." ] ]
train	20067	[ "What is the goal of this column?", "What does the author think is special about Southwest?", "What is the primary goal of Shopping Avenger?", "What is one of the general takeaways of good assistance that is discussed in the article?", "What do Circuit City and Southwest have in common?", "What is the best description of the tone of this passage?", "What is the point of the story about the Dalai Lama?", "Why was the Southwest customer upset?", "Which of these do the Circuit City and UHaul stories have most in common?" ]	[ [ "To call out UHaul's reservation policies", "To highlight issues in customer service brought up by readers", "To discuss some alternative superheroes the world needs", "To make fun of people who complain about consumerism" ], [ "They give out better rewards for loyal customers when things go wrong", "They tend to have more highly rated customer service", "The company that processes complaints is the same as UHaul's", "They replace suitcases when they are damaged on a flight" ], [ "To connect people with companies that can repair electronics", "To keep an eye on the quality of customer service for various airlines", "To stand up for average consumers who have been wronged by companies", "To warn people about unfair reservation and booking policies" ], [ "The customer is in fact always right, and this should be taken seriously", "The easiest way to get rid of a problem is to pretend the issue never happened", "Customers can be wrong, but you can usually bribe them to feel okay in the end", "It can be okay if something goes awry as long as someone takes responsibility, otherwise it gets worse" ], [ "They think they have reputations for being better than their competitors", "They deal with high volumes of cusomer calls", "They are headquartered in the same major city", "A lot of their issues surround glitchy electronics, albeit in different ways" ], [ "Incredulous that these situations are being reported with these companies in particular", "Frustrated with the issues that the consumers are reporting", "Lighthearted while maintaining focus on the issues at hand", "Joking, making light of the issues that are discussed" ], [ "To make a joke about UHaul's policies", "To show that religious leaders are not immune to bad customer service", "To prove a point with a story about a public figure", "To make a point about reservation policies in various countries" ], [ "The Shopping Avenger was not able to help with her case", "She was not able to win the case in court", "She didn't get replacements for her belongings quickly enough", "There was an endless string of confusing communication about policy which seemed to miss the point" ], [ "The type of customer reporting the story", "The Shopping Avenger's response to these cases", "The types of issues customers were having in each case", "The tone around the companies' attitudes about their policies" ] ]	[ 2, 2, 3, 4, 1, 3, 1, 4, 4 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "An explanation: Last week, the magazine you are currently reading forced the Shopping Avenger at gunpoint to read a series of treacle-filled self-help books, and then to . The Shopping Avenger, who can withstand radiation, extreme heat and cold, hail, bear attacks, and Eyes Wide Shut , almost succumbed to terminal jejuneness after reading these books. Except for one thing: One of the books, The Art of Happiness , which collects and simplifies the Dalai Lama's philosophy, got the Shopping Avenger to thinking. This, in a way, is the Shopping Avenger's Achilles' heel: thinking. Perhaps it is wrong, the Shopping Avenger thought, to complain about the petty insults and inconveniences of life in the materialistic '90s. The Shopping Avenger felt that perhaps he should counsel those who write seeking help to meditate, to accept bad service the way one accepts the change of seasons, and to extend a compassionate hand of forgiveness to those who provide poor customer care.", "But then the Shopping Avenger sat down, and the feeling passed. \n\n The Shopping Avenger does not make light of the Dalai Lama or of the notion that there is more to life than the impatient acquisition of material goods. If the Shopping Avenger were not, for a superhero, extremely nonjudgmental--as opposed to his alter ego, who is considered insufferably judgmental by his alter ego's wife--the Shopping Avenger would tell the occasional correspondent to let go of his petty grievance and get a life. \n\n But the Shopping Avenger also believes that the Dalai Lama has never tried to rent a truck from U-Haul. If he had tried to rent from U-Haul, he never would have escaped from Tibet. (For the complete back story, see \"Shopping Avenger\" column and one.)", "Before we begin, though, the Shopping Avenger nearly forgot to announce the winner of last month's contest, in which readers were asked to answer the question, \"What's the difference between pests and airlines?\" \n\n The winner is one Tom Morgan, who wrote, \"You can hire someone to kill pests.\" Tom is the winner of a year's supply of Turtle Wax, and he will receive his prize just as soon as the Shopping Avenger figures out how much Turtle Wax actually constitutes a year's supply. The new contest question: How much Turtle Wax comprises a year's supply of Turtle Wax?", "It's Time To Keelhaul U-Haul! \n\n Like all superheroes worthy of the title, the Shopping Avenger has an Achilles' heel. In the case of the Shopping Avenger, his Achilles' heel is not animal, vegetable, or mineral but something less tangible.", "B.R. and his chastened brother--the Shopping Avenger is resisting the urge to gloat--went to Ryder. \"Ryder had a truck available for us. The gentleman who helped us at Ryder said Ryder prides itself on being everything U-Haul is not.\" \n\n The Shopping Avenger has still not received a call from U-Haul spokeswoman Johna Burke explaining why U-Haul refuses to provide trucks to people who reserve trucks, but the Shopping Avenger is pleased to note that several correspondents have written in over the past month saying that, based on what they have read in this column, they will be taking their business to Ryder or Budget or elsewhere. \n\n The Shopping Avenger will undoubtedly return to the sorry state of affairs at U-Haul in the next episode, but now on to this month's airline debacle.", "Southwest's response actually served to anger M. more than the original problem. \"Before, they had a mildly annoyed but loyal customer (who would have been placated by an apology and thrilled with some modest token of their regret). Now they have a pissed-off customer.\" \n\n Things do look bad for Southwest, don't they? The Shopping Avenger sent M.'s response to Rutherford, who e-mailed back saying she thought the Shopping Avenger was asking for \"policy information.\" The Shopping Avenger e-mailed back again, stressing to Rutherford that the Great Court of Consumer Justice would, if this case were brought to trial, undoubtedly find for the plaintiff (the Shopping Avenger serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the Great Court of Consumer Justice--defendants are represented by the president of U-Haul), and that Southwest was precipitously close to feeling the sword of retribution at its neck.", "This month's airline in the spotlight is Southwest. Loyal readers will recall that last month the Shopping Avenger praised Southwest Airlines for its \"sterling\" customer service. This brought forth a small number of articulate dissensions. The most articulate, and the most troubling, came from M., who wrote, \"Last year, flying from Baltimore to Chicago with my entire family (two really little kids included), we set down at Midway in a rainstorm. And waited for our bags. And waited for bags. And waited for bags.\" \n\n An hour later, M. says, the bags showed up, \"soaked through. We took them to baggage services at SW and were faced with the most complicated, unclear, and confusing mechanism for filing a claim we experienced flyers have ever seen.\"", "Take the case of K., who found himself waiting in vain for Circuit City to repair his television. Televisions break, even 1-year-old televisions, as is the case with K's. But Circuit City, where he bought the television, gave him a terrible runaround. The Shopping Avenger dispatched his sidekick, Tad the Deputy Avenger, to get to the bottom of K.'s story. This is what he found: K. grew concerned, Tad the Deputy Avenger reports, after his television had been in the Circuit City shop for a week. When he called, he was told to \"check back next week.\" When he asked if someone from the store could call him with more information, he was refused. Weeks went by. When K. told one Circuit City employee that he really would like to get his television back, the employee, K. says, asked him, \"Don't you have another television in your house?\" \n\n More than a month later--after hours and hours and hours of telephone calls and days missed at work--K. received his television back.", "But then she came through, provisionally, \"Yep, you can be sure if [M.] will call me we will get everything squared away. I'm sorry it's taken this long for her to get someone who can help, but we will take care of it from here.\" \n\n Stay tuned, shoppers, to hear whether Southwest makes good it promise to compensate M. and apologize to her for her troubles. \n\n The story of M. reminds the Shopping Avenger of a central truth of consumer service: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.", "Mistakes happen, but not, Tad the Deputy Avenger found out, at Circuit City. The case, K. was told by a Circuit City official, was \"handled perfectly.\" Another official, Morgan Stewart in public relations, assured Deputy Avenger Tad that \"We got to be a big and successful company by treating customers better than the other guy.\" The Shopping Avenger and his loyal sidekick would like to hear from other Circuit City customers: Does Circuit City, in fact, treat its customers better than the other guy? \n\n Stay tuned for answers. And next month, a Shopping Avenger clergy special: TWA screws with a Hasidic rabbi's travel plans, leaving the rabbi's wife crying at the airport. Find out if the Shopping Avenger can save TWA from certain heavenly punishment, in the next episode. \n\n Got a consumer score you want settled? Send e-mail to shoppingavenger@slate.com.", "The complaints about U-Haul's nonreservation reservation policy continue to pour in through the electronic mail. One correspondent, B.R., wrote in with this cautionary tale: \"Last weekend, I went to San Francisco to help my brother and his family move into their first house. My brother had reserved a moving truck with U-Haul for the big day. I warned my brother about U-Haul's 'not really a reservation per se' policy that I learned from the Shopping Avenger. He didn't believe such a thing would happen to him, so he didn't act on my warning.\" \n\n B.R. continues--as if you don't know what happened already--\"I went to U-Haul with my brother to get our 'reserved' truck. The store had many customers standing around looking frustrated. When we got to the front of the line, the clerk informed us that our 'reserved' truck had not yet been returned. We asked if we could rent one of the many trucks sitting idle in the parking lot. The clerk laughed and said the keys to those trucks were lost.\"", "When they arrived at their destination, M. and her family made a terrible discovery, \"We discovered that our clothes were soaked through--the top clothes were so wet that the dye had bled through down to the lower levels, destroying lots of other clothes. Obviously, our bags had just been sitting out on the runway in the rain. To this day, I've never heard a thing from SW, despite calls and letters.\" \n\n This, of course, is where Shopping Avenger steps in. Shopping Avenger knows that Southwest is different from the average airline, in that it doesn't go out of its way to infuriate its paying customers (see: ), so I expected a quick and generous resolution to M.'s problem. \n\n What I got at first, though, was a load of corporate hoo-ha.", "\"Wow. Well, of course I didn't file it at the airport on the 9 th because I didn't know the clothes were ruined at the airport. I didn't know until I opened the baggage at my hotel and saw the ruined stuff. (And it's worth noting that we had already waited for about an hour for our luggage with two little kids and impatient in-laws nipping at our heels.)\" \n\n She goes on, \"I did call that evening ... and was told that that sufficed. This is the first time I've been told that I had to file a complaint in person within four hours. ... When I filed on the 12 th , I was never told that I needed any receipts or photos or other type of documentation. The baggage folks seemed pretty uninterested in all of this. ... They know that the type of 'evidence' they want is impossible to obtain. They also know that on April 9 they screwed up the luggage retrieval and left bags out in the rain a long time.\"", "\"The airline's policy, which is consistent with all contracts of carriage at all airlines, requires that passengers file a report in person for lost or damaged luggage within four hours of arrival at their destination,\" a Southwest spokeswoman, Linda Rutherford, e-mailed me. \"[M.] indicates she called for a few days, but did not file a report in person until April 12--three days later. Southwest, as a courtesy, took her report anyway and asked for follow up information and written inventory of the damage.\" Rutherford said that M. should have submitted detailed receipts and photographs of the damage in order to make a claim. \n\n Harrumph, the Shopping Avenger says. It is a bad hair day at Southwest when its officials defend themselves by comparing their airline to other airlines. I forwarded this message to M., who replied:" ], [ "Southwest's response actually served to anger M. more than the original problem. \"Before, they had a mildly annoyed but loyal customer (who would have been placated by an apology and thrilled with some modest token of their regret). Now they have a pissed-off customer.\" \n\n Things do look bad for Southwest, don't they? The Shopping Avenger sent M.'s response to Rutherford, who e-mailed back saying she thought the Shopping Avenger was asking for \"policy information.\" The Shopping Avenger e-mailed back again, stressing to Rutherford that the Great Court of Consumer Justice would, if this case were brought to trial, undoubtedly find for the plaintiff (the Shopping Avenger serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the Great Court of Consumer Justice--defendants are represented by the president of U-Haul), and that Southwest was precipitously close to feeling the sword of retribution at its neck.", "This month's airline in the spotlight is Southwest. Loyal readers will recall that last month the Shopping Avenger praised Southwest Airlines for its \"sterling\" customer service. This brought forth a small number of articulate dissensions. The most articulate, and the most troubling, came from M., who wrote, \"Last year, flying from Baltimore to Chicago with my entire family (two really little kids included), we set down at Midway in a rainstorm. And waited for our bags. And waited for bags. And waited for bags.\" \n\n An hour later, M. says, the bags showed up, \"soaked through. We took them to baggage services at SW and were faced with the most complicated, unclear, and confusing mechanism for filing a claim we experienced flyers have ever seen.\"", "But then she came through, provisionally, \"Yep, you can be sure if [M.] will call me we will get everything squared away. I'm sorry it's taken this long for her to get someone who can help, but we will take care of it from here.\" \n\n Stay tuned, shoppers, to hear whether Southwest makes good it promise to compensate M. and apologize to her for her troubles. \n\n The story of M. reminds the Shopping Avenger of a central truth of consumer service: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.", "When they arrived at their destination, M. and her family made a terrible discovery, \"We discovered that our clothes were soaked through--the top clothes were so wet that the dye had bled through down to the lower levels, destroying lots of other clothes. Obviously, our bags had just been sitting out on the runway in the rain. To this day, I've never heard a thing from SW, despite calls and letters.\" \n\n This, of course, is where Shopping Avenger steps in. Shopping Avenger knows that Southwest is different from the average airline, in that it doesn't go out of its way to infuriate its paying customers (see: ), so I expected a quick and generous resolution to M.'s problem. \n\n What I got at first, though, was a load of corporate hoo-ha.", "But then the Shopping Avenger sat down, and the feeling passed. \n\n The Shopping Avenger does not make light of the Dalai Lama or of the notion that there is more to life than the impatient acquisition of material goods. If the Shopping Avenger were not, for a superhero, extremely nonjudgmental--as opposed to his alter ego, who is considered insufferably judgmental by his alter ego's wife--the Shopping Avenger would tell the occasional correspondent to let go of his petty grievance and get a life. \n\n But the Shopping Avenger also believes that the Dalai Lama has never tried to rent a truck from U-Haul. If he had tried to rent from U-Haul, he never would have escaped from Tibet. (For the complete back story, see \"Shopping Avenger\" column and one.)", "\"The airline's policy, which is consistent with all contracts of carriage at all airlines, requires that passengers file a report in person for lost or damaged luggage within four hours of arrival at their destination,\" a Southwest spokeswoman, Linda Rutherford, e-mailed me. \"[M.] indicates she called for a few days, but did not file a report in person until April 12--three days later. Southwest, as a courtesy, took her report anyway and asked for follow up information and written inventory of the damage.\" Rutherford said that M. should have submitted detailed receipts and photographs of the damage in order to make a claim. \n\n Harrumph, the Shopping Avenger says. It is a bad hair day at Southwest when its officials defend themselves by comparing their airline to other airlines. I forwarded this message to M., who replied:", "An explanation: Last week, the magazine you are currently reading forced the Shopping Avenger at gunpoint to read a series of treacle-filled self-help books, and then to . The Shopping Avenger, who can withstand radiation, extreme heat and cold, hail, bear attacks, and Eyes Wide Shut , almost succumbed to terminal jejuneness after reading these books. Except for one thing: One of the books, The Art of Happiness , which collects and simplifies the Dalai Lama's philosophy, got the Shopping Avenger to thinking. This, in a way, is the Shopping Avenger's Achilles' heel: thinking. Perhaps it is wrong, the Shopping Avenger thought, to complain about the petty insults and inconveniences of life in the materialistic '90s. The Shopping Avenger felt that perhaps he should counsel those who write seeking help to meditate, to accept bad service the way one accepts the change of seasons, and to extend a compassionate hand of forgiveness to those who provide poor customer care.", "Before we begin, though, the Shopping Avenger nearly forgot to announce the winner of last month's contest, in which readers were asked to answer the question, \"What's the difference between pests and airlines?\" \n\n The winner is one Tom Morgan, who wrote, \"You can hire someone to kill pests.\" Tom is the winner of a year's supply of Turtle Wax, and he will receive his prize just as soon as the Shopping Avenger figures out how much Turtle Wax actually constitutes a year's supply. The new contest question: How much Turtle Wax comprises a year's supply of Turtle Wax?", "It's Time To Keelhaul U-Haul! \n\n Like all superheroes worthy of the title, the Shopping Avenger has an Achilles' heel. In the case of the Shopping Avenger, his Achilles' heel is not animal, vegetable, or mineral but something less tangible.", "B.R. and his chastened brother--the Shopping Avenger is resisting the urge to gloat--went to Ryder. \"Ryder had a truck available for us. The gentleman who helped us at Ryder said Ryder prides itself on being everything U-Haul is not.\" \n\n The Shopping Avenger has still not received a call from U-Haul spokeswoman Johna Burke explaining why U-Haul refuses to provide trucks to people who reserve trucks, but the Shopping Avenger is pleased to note that several correspondents have written in over the past month saying that, based on what they have read in this column, they will be taking their business to Ryder or Budget or elsewhere. \n\n The Shopping Avenger will undoubtedly return to the sorry state of affairs at U-Haul in the next episode, but now on to this month's airline debacle.", "Mistakes happen, but not, Tad the Deputy Avenger found out, at Circuit City. The case, K. was told by a Circuit City official, was \"handled perfectly.\" Another official, Morgan Stewart in public relations, assured Deputy Avenger Tad that \"We got to be a big and successful company by treating customers better than the other guy.\" The Shopping Avenger and his loyal sidekick would like to hear from other Circuit City customers: Does Circuit City, in fact, treat its customers better than the other guy? \n\n Stay tuned for answers. And next month, a Shopping Avenger clergy special: TWA screws with a Hasidic rabbi's travel plans, leaving the rabbi's wife crying at the airport. Find out if the Shopping Avenger can save TWA from certain heavenly punishment, in the next episode. \n\n Got a consumer score you want settled? Send e-mail to shoppingavenger@slate.com.", "Take the case of K., who found himself waiting in vain for Circuit City to repair his television. Televisions break, even 1-year-old televisions, as is the case with K's. But Circuit City, where he bought the television, gave him a terrible runaround. The Shopping Avenger dispatched his sidekick, Tad the Deputy Avenger, to get to the bottom of K.'s story. This is what he found: K. grew concerned, Tad the Deputy Avenger reports, after his television had been in the Circuit City shop for a week. When he called, he was told to \"check back next week.\" When he asked if someone from the store could call him with more information, he was refused. Weeks went by. When K. told one Circuit City employee that he really would like to get his television back, the employee, K. says, asked him, \"Don't you have another television in your house?\" \n\n More than a month later--after hours and hours and hours of telephone calls and days missed at work--K. received his television back.", "The complaints about U-Haul's nonreservation reservation policy continue to pour in through the electronic mail. One correspondent, B.R., wrote in with this cautionary tale: \"Last weekend, I went to San Francisco to help my brother and his family move into their first house. My brother had reserved a moving truck with U-Haul for the big day. I warned my brother about U-Haul's 'not really a reservation per se' policy that I learned from the Shopping Avenger. He didn't believe such a thing would happen to him, so he didn't act on my warning.\" \n\n B.R. continues--as if you don't know what happened already--\"I went to U-Haul with my brother to get our 'reserved' truck. The store had many customers standing around looking frustrated. When we got to the front of the line, the clerk informed us that our 'reserved' truck had not yet been returned. We asked if we could rent one of the many trucks sitting idle in the parking lot. The clerk laughed and said the keys to those trucks were lost.\"", "\"Wow. Well, of course I didn't file it at the airport on the 9 th because I didn't know the clothes were ruined at the airport. I didn't know until I opened the baggage at my hotel and saw the ruined stuff. (And it's worth noting that we had already waited for about an hour for our luggage with two little kids and impatient in-laws nipping at our heels.)\" \n\n She goes on, \"I did call that evening ... and was told that that sufficed. This is the first time I've been told that I had to file a complaint in person within four hours. ... When I filed on the 12 th , I was never told that I needed any receipts or photos or other type of documentation. The baggage folks seemed pretty uninterested in all of this. ... They know that the type of 'evidence' they want is impossible to obtain. They also know that on April 9 they screwed up the luggage retrieval and left bags out in the rain a long time.\"" ], [ "An explanation: Last week, the magazine you are currently reading forced the Shopping Avenger at gunpoint to read a series of treacle-filled self-help books, and then to . The Shopping Avenger, who can withstand radiation, extreme heat and cold, hail, bear attacks, and Eyes Wide Shut , almost succumbed to terminal jejuneness after reading these books. Except for one thing: One of the books, The Art of Happiness , which collects and simplifies the Dalai Lama's philosophy, got the Shopping Avenger to thinking. This, in a way, is the Shopping Avenger's Achilles' heel: thinking. Perhaps it is wrong, the Shopping Avenger thought, to complain about the petty insults and inconveniences of life in the materialistic '90s. The Shopping Avenger felt that perhaps he should counsel those who write seeking help to meditate, to accept bad service the way one accepts the change of seasons, and to extend a compassionate hand of forgiveness to those who provide poor customer care.", "But then the Shopping Avenger sat down, and the feeling passed. \n\n The Shopping Avenger does not make light of the Dalai Lama or of the notion that there is more to life than the impatient acquisition of material goods. If the Shopping Avenger were not, for a superhero, extremely nonjudgmental--as opposed to his alter ego, who is considered insufferably judgmental by his alter ego's wife--the Shopping Avenger would tell the occasional correspondent to let go of his petty grievance and get a life. \n\n But the Shopping Avenger also believes that the Dalai Lama has never tried to rent a truck from U-Haul. If he had tried to rent from U-Haul, he never would have escaped from Tibet. (For the complete back story, see \"Shopping Avenger\" column and one.)", "It's Time To Keelhaul U-Haul! \n\n Like all superheroes worthy of the title, the Shopping Avenger has an Achilles' heel. In the case of the Shopping Avenger, his Achilles' heel is not animal, vegetable, or mineral but something less tangible.", "Before we begin, though, the Shopping Avenger nearly forgot to announce the winner of last month's contest, in which readers were asked to answer the question, \"What's the difference between pests and airlines?\" \n\n The winner is one Tom Morgan, who wrote, \"You can hire someone to kill pests.\" Tom is the winner of a year's supply of Turtle Wax, and he will receive his prize just as soon as the Shopping Avenger figures out how much Turtle Wax actually constitutes a year's supply. The new contest question: How much Turtle Wax comprises a year's supply of Turtle Wax?", "Southwest's response actually served to anger M. more than the original problem. \"Before, they had a mildly annoyed but loyal customer (who would have been placated by an apology and thrilled with some modest token of their regret). Now they have a pissed-off customer.\" \n\n Things do look bad for Southwest, don't they? The Shopping Avenger sent M.'s response to Rutherford, who e-mailed back saying she thought the Shopping Avenger was asking for \"policy information.\" The Shopping Avenger e-mailed back again, stressing to Rutherford that the Great Court of Consumer Justice would, if this case were brought to trial, undoubtedly find for the plaintiff (the Shopping Avenger serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the Great Court of Consumer Justice--defendants are represented by the president of U-Haul), and that Southwest was precipitously close to feeling the sword of retribution at its neck.", "Take the case of K., who found himself waiting in vain for Circuit City to repair his television. Televisions break, even 1-year-old televisions, as is the case with K's. But Circuit City, where he bought the television, gave him a terrible runaround. The Shopping Avenger dispatched his sidekick, Tad the Deputy Avenger, to get to the bottom of K.'s story. This is what he found: K. grew concerned, Tad the Deputy Avenger reports, after his television had been in the Circuit City shop for a week. When he called, he was told to \"check back next week.\" When he asked if someone from the store could call him with more information, he was refused. Weeks went by. When K. told one Circuit City employee that he really would like to get his television back, the employee, K. says, asked him, \"Don't you have another television in your house?\" \n\n More than a month later--after hours and hours and hours of telephone calls and days missed at work--K. received his television back.", "B.R. and his chastened brother--the Shopping Avenger is resisting the urge to gloat--went to Ryder. \"Ryder had a truck available for us. The gentleman who helped us at Ryder said Ryder prides itself on being everything U-Haul is not.\" \n\n The Shopping Avenger has still not received a call from U-Haul spokeswoman Johna Burke explaining why U-Haul refuses to provide trucks to people who reserve trucks, but the Shopping Avenger is pleased to note that several correspondents have written in over the past month saying that, based on what they have read in this column, they will be taking their business to Ryder or Budget or elsewhere. \n\n The Shopping Avenger will undoubtedly return to the sorry state of affairs at U-Haul in the next episode, but now on to this month's airline debacle.", "When they arrived at their destination, M. and her family made a terrible discovery, \"We discovered that our clothes were soaked through--the top clothes were so wet that the dye had bled through down to the lower levels, destroying lots of other clothes. Obviously, our bags had just been sitting out on the runway in the rain. To this day, I've never heard a thing from SW, despite calls and letters.\" \n\n This, of course, is where Shopping Avenger steps in. Shopping Avenger knows that Southwest is different from the average airline, in that it doesn't go out of its way to infuriate its paying customers (see: ), so I expected a quick and generous resolution to M.'s problem. \n\n What I got at first, though, was a load of corporate hoo-ha.", "But then she came through, provisionally, \"Yep, you can be sure if [M.] will call me we will get everything squared away. I'm sorry it's taken this long for her to get someone who can help, but we will take care of it from here.\" \n\n Stay tuned, shoppers, to hear whether Southwest makes good it promise to compensate M. and apologize to her for her troubles. \n\n The story of M. reminds the Shopping Avenger of a central truth of consumer service: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.", "Mistakes happen, but not, Tad the Deputy Avenger found out, at Circuit City. The case, K. was told by a Circuit City official, was \"handled perfectly.\" Another official, Morgan Stewart in public relations, assured Deputy Avenger Tad that \"We got to be a big and successful company by treating customers better than the other guy.\" The Shopping Avenger and his loyal sidekick would like to hear from other Circuit City customers: Does Circuit City, in fact, treat its customers better than the other guy? \n\n Stay tuned for answers. And next month, a Shopping Avenger clergy special: TWA screws with a Hasidic rabbi's travel plans, leaving the rabbi's wife crying at the airport. Find out if the Shopping Avenger can save TWA from certain heavenly punishment, in the next episode. \n\n Got a consumer score you want settled? Send e-mail to shoppingavenger@slate.com.", "This month's airline in the spotlight is Southwest. Loyal readers will recall that last month the Shopping Avenger praised Southwest Airlines for its \"sterling\" customer service. This brought forth a small number of articulate dissensions. The most articulate, and the most troubling, came from M., who wrote, \"Last year, flying from Baltimore to Chicago with my entire family (two really little kids included), we set down at Midway in a rainstorm. And waited for our bags. And waited for bags. And waited for bags.\" \n\n An hour later, M. says, the bags showed up, \"soaked through. We took them to baggage services at SW and were faced with the most complicated, unclear, and confusing mechanism for filing a claim we experienced flyers have ever seen.\"", "The complaints about U-Haul's nonreservation reservation policy continue to pour in through the electronic mail. One correspondent, B.R., wrote in with this cautionary tale: \"Last weekend, I went to San Francisco to help my brother and his family move into their first house. My brother had reserved a moving truck with U-Haul for the big day. I warned my brother about U-Haul's 'not really a reservation per se' policy that I learned from the Shopping Avenger. He didn't believe such a thing would happen to him, so he didn't act on my warning.\" \n\n B.R. continues--as if you don't know what happened already--\"I went to U-Haul with my brother to get our 'reserved' truck. The store had many customers standing around looking frustrated. When we got to the front of the line, the clerk informed us that our 'reserved' truck had not yet been returned. We asked if we could rent one of the many trucks sitting idle in the parking lot. The clerk laughed and said the keys to those trucks were lost.\"", "\"The airline's policy, which is consistent with all contracts of carriage at all airlines, requires that passengers file a report in person for lost or damaged luggage within four hours of arrival at their destination,\" a Southwest spokeswoman, Linda Rutherford, e-mailed me. \"[M.] indicates she called for a few days, but did not file a report in person until April 12--three days later. Southwest, as a courtesy, took her report anyway and asked for follow up information and written inventory of the damage.\" Rutherford said that M. should have submitted detailed receipts and photographs of the damage in order to make a claim. \n\n Harrumph, the Shopping Avenger says. It is a bad hair day at Southwest when its officials defend themselves by comparing their airline to other airlines. I forwarded this message to M., who replied:", "\"Wow. Well, of course I didn't file it at the airport on the 9 th because I didn't know the clothes were ruined at the airport. I didn't know until I opened the baggage at my hotel and saw the ruined stuff. (And it's worth noting that we had already waited for about an hour for our luggage with two little kids and impatient in-laws nipping at our heels.)\" \n\n She goes on, \"I did call that evening ... and was told that that sufficed. This is the first time I've been told that I had to file a complaint in person within four hours. ... When I filed on the 12 th , I was never told that I needed any receipts or photos or other type of documentation. The baggage folks seemed pretty uninterested in all of this. ... They know that the type of 'evidence' they want is impossible to obtain. They also know that on April 9 they screwed up the luggage retrieval and left bags out in the rain a long time.\"" ], [ "An explanation: Last week, the magazine you are currently reading forced the Shopping Avenger at gunpoint to read a series of treacle-filled self-help books, and then to . The Shopping Avenger, who can withstand radiation, extreme heat and cold, hail, bear attacks, and Eyes Wide Shut , almost succumbed to terminal jejuneness after reading these books. Except for one thing: One of the books, The Art of Happiness , which collects and simplifies the Dalai Lama's philosophy, got the Shopping Avenger to thinking. This, in a way, is the Shopping Avenger's Achilles' heel: thinking. Perhaps it is wrong, the Shopping Avenger thought, to complain about the petty insults and inconveniences of life in the materialistic '90s. The Shopping Avenger felt that perhaps he should counsel those who write seeking help to meditate, to accept bad service the way one accepts the change of seasons, and to extend a compassionate hand of forgiveness to those who provide poor customer care.", "But then the Shopping Avenger sat down, and the feeling passed. \n\n The Shopping Avenger does not make light of the Dalai Lama or of the notion that there is more to life than the impatient acquisition of material goods. If the Shopping Avenger were not, for a superhero, extremely nonjudgmental--as opposed to his alter ego, who is considered insufferably judgmental by his alter ego's wife--the Shopping Avenger would tell the occasional correspondent to let go of his petty grievance and get a life. \n\n But the Shopping Avenger also believes that the Dalai Lama has never tried to rent a truck from U-Haul. If he had tried to rent from U-Haul, he never would have escaped from Tibet. (For the complete back story, see \"Shopping Avenger\" column and one.)", "But then she came through, provisionally, \"Yep, you can be sure if [M.] will call me we will get everything squared away. I'm sorry it's taken this long for her to get someone who can help, but we will take care of it from here.\" \n\n Stay tuned, shoppers, to hear whether Southwest makes good it promise to compensate M. and apologize to her for her troubles. \n\n The story of M. reminds the Shopping Avenger of a central truth of consumer service: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.", "Take the case of K., who found himself waiting in vain for Circuit City to repair his television. Televisions break, even 1-year-old televisions, as is the case with K's. But Circuit City, where he bought the television, gave him a terrible runaround. The Shopping Avenger dispatched his sidekick, Tad the Deputy Avenger, to get to the bottom of K.'s story. This is what he found: K. grew concerned, Tad the Deputy Avenger reports, after his television had been in the Circuit City shop for a week. When he called, he was told to \"check back next week.\" When he asked if someone from the store could call him with more information, he was refused. Weeks went by. When K. told one Circuit City employee that he really would like to get his television back, the employee, K. says, asked him, \"Don't you have another television in your house?\" \n\n More than a month later--after hours and hours and hours of telephone calls and days missed at work--K. received his television back.", "Southwest's response actually served to anger M. more than the original problem. \"Before, they had a mildly annoyed but loyal customer (who would have been placated by an apology and thrilled with some modest token of their regret). Now they have a pissed-off customer.\" \n\n Things do look bad for Southwest, don't they? The Shopping Avenger sent M.'s response to Rutherford, who e-mailed back saying she thought the Shopping Avenger was asking for \"policy information.\" The Shopping Avenger e-mailed back again, stressing to Rutherford that the Great Court of Consumer Justice would, if this case were brought to trial, undoubtedly find for the plaintiff (the Shopping Avenger serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the Great Court of Consumer Justice--defendants are represented by the president of U-Haul), and that Southwest was precipitously close to feeling the sword of retribution at its neck.", "It's Time To Keelhaul U-Haul! \n\n Like all superheroes worthy of the title, the Shopping Avenger has an Achilles' heel. In the case of the Shopping Avenger, his Achilles' heel is not animal, vegetable, or mineral but something less tangible.", "Before we begin, though, the Shopping Avenger nearly forgot to announce the winner of last month's contest, in which readers were asked to answer the question, \"What's the difference between pests and airlines?\" \n\n The winner is one Tom Morgan, who wrote, \"You can hire someone to kill pests.\" Tom is the winner of a year's supply of Turtle Wax, and he will receive his prize just as soon as the Shopping Avenger figures out how much Turtle Wax actually constitutes a year's supply. The new contest question: How much Turtle Wax comprises a year's supply of Turtle Wax?", "B.R. and his chastened brother--the Shopping Avenger is resisting the urge to gloat--went to Ryder. \"Ryder had a truck available for us. The gentleman who helped us at Ryder said Ryder prides itself on being everything U-Haul is not.\" \n\n The Shopping Avenger has still not received a call from U-Haul spokeswoman Johna Burke explaining why U-Haul refuses to provide trucks to people who reserve trucks, but the Shopping Avenger is pleased to note that several correspondents have written in over the past month saying that, based on what they have read in this column, they will be taking their business to Ryder or Budget or elsewhere. \n\n The Shopping Avenger will undoubtedly return to the sorry state of affairs at U-Haul in the next episode, but now on to this month's airline debacle.", "This month's airline in the spotlight is Southwest. Loyal readers will recall that last month the Shopping Avenger praised Southwest Airlines for its \"sterling\" customer service. This brought forth a small number of articulate dissensions. The most articulate, and the most troubling, came from M., who wrote, \"Last year, flying from Baltimore to Chicago with my entire family (two really little kids included), we set down at Midway in a rainstorm. And waited for our bags. And waited for bags. And waited for bags.\" \n\n An hour later, M. says, the bags showed up, \"soaked through. We took them to baggage services at SW and were faced with the most complicated, unclear, and confusing mechanism for filing a claim we experienced flyers have ever seen.\"", "Mistakes happen, but not, Tad the Deputy Avenger found out, at Circuit City. The case, K. was told by a Circuit City official, was \"handled perfectly.\" Another official, Morgan Stewart in public relations, assured Deputy Avenger Tad that \"We got to be a big and successful company by treating customers better than the other guy.\" The Shopping Avenger and his loyal sidekick would like to hear from other Circuit City customers: Does Circuit City, in fact, treat its customers better than the other guy? \n\n Stay tuned for answers. And next month, a Shopping Avenger clergy special: TWA screws with a Hasidic rabbi's travel plans, leaving the rabbi's wife crying at the airport. Find out if the Shopping Avenger can save TWA from certain heavenly punishment, in the next episode. \n\n Got a consumer score you want settled? Send e-mail to shoppingavenger@slate.com.", "\"Wow. Well, of course I didn't file it at the airport on the 9 th because I didn't know the clothes were ruined at the airport. I didn't know until I opened the baggage at my hotel and saw the ruined stuff. (And it's worth noting that we had already waited for about an hour for our luggage with two little kids and impatient in-laws nipping at our heels.)\" \n\n She goes on, \"I did call that evening ... and was told that that sufficed. This is the first time I've been told that I had to file a complaint in person within four hours. ... When I filed on the 12 th , I was never told that I needed any receipts or photos or other type of documentation. The baggage folks seemed pretty uninterested in all of this. ... They know that the type of 'evidence' they want is impossible to obtain. They also know that on April 9 they screwed up the luggage retrieval and left bags out in the rain a long time.\"", "\"The airline's policy, which is consistent with all contracts of carriage at all airlines, requires that passengers file a report in person for lost or damaged luggage within four hours of arrival at their destination,\" a Southwest spokeswoman, Linda Rutherford, e-mailed me. \"[M.] indicates she called for a few days, but did not file a report in person until April 12--three days later. Southwest, as a courtesy, took her report anyway and asked for follow up information and written inventory of the damage.\" Rutherford said that M. should have submitted detailed receipts and photographs of the damage in order to make a claim. \n\n Harrumph, the Shopping Avenger says. It is a bad hair day at Southwest when its officials defend themselves by comparing their airline to other airlines. I forwarded this message to M., who replied:", "The complaints about U-Haul's nonreservation reservation policy continue to pour in through the electronic mail. One correspondent, B.R., wrote in with this cautionary tale: \"Last weekend, I went to San Francisco to help my brother and his family move into their first house. My brother had reserved a moving truck with U-Haul for the big day. I warned my brother about U-Haul's 'not really a reservation per se' policy that I learned from the Shopping Avenger. He didn't believe such a thing would happen to him, so he didn't act on my warning.\" \n\n B.R. continues--as if you don't know what happened already--\"I went to U-Haul with my brother to get our 'reserved' truck. The store had many customers standing around looking frustrated. When we got to the front of the line, the clerk informed us that our 'reserved' truck had not yet been returned. We asked if we could rent one of the many trucks sitting idle in the parking lot. The clerk laughed and said the keys to those trucks were lost.\"", "When they arrived at their destination, M. and her family made a terrible discovery, \"We discovered that our clothes were soaked through--the top clothes were so wet that the dye had bled through down to the lower levels, destroying lots of other clothes. Obviously, our bags had just been sitting out on the runway in the rain. To this day, I've never heard a thing from SW, despite calls and letters.\" \n\n This, of course, is where Shopping Avenger steps in. Shopping Avenger knows that Southwest is different from the average airline, in that it doesn't go out of its way to infuriate its paying customers (see: ), so I expected a quick and generous resolution to M.'s problem. \n\n What I got at first, though, was a load of corporate hoo-ha." ], [ "Southwest's response actually served to anger M. more than the original problem. \"Before, they had a mildly annoyed but loyal customer (who would have been placated by an apology and thrilled with some modest token of their regret). Now they have a pissed-off customer.\" \n\n Things do look bad for Southwest, don't they? The Shopping Avenger sent M.'s response to Rutherford, who e-mailed back saying she thought the Shopping Avenger was asking for \"policy information.\" The Shopping Avenger e-mailed back again, stressing to Rutherford that the Great Court of Consumer Justice would, if this case were brought to trial, undoubtedly find for the plaintiff (the Shopping Avenger serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the Great Court of Consumer Justice--defendants are represented by the president of U-Haul), and that Southwest was precipitously close to feeling the sword of retribution at its neck.", "Mistakes happen, but not, Tad the Deputy Avenger found out, at Circuit City. The case, K. was told by a Circuit City official, was \"handled perfectly.\" Another official, Morgan Stewart in public relations, assured Deputy Avenger Tad that \"We got to be a big and successful company by treating customers better than the other guy.\" The Shopping Avenger and his loyal sidekick would like to hear from other Circuit City customers: Does Circuit City, in fact, treat its customers better than the other guy? \n\n Stay tuned for answers. And next month, a Shopping Avenger clergy special: TWA screws with a Hasidic rabbi's travel plans, leaving the rabbi's wife crying at the airport. Find out if the Shopping Avenger can save TWA from certain heavenly punishment, in the next episode. \n\n Got a consumer score you want settled? Send e-mail to shoppingavenger@slate.com.", "This month's airline in the spotlight is Southwest. Loyal readers will recall that last month the Shopping Avenger praised Southwest Airlines for its \"sterling\" customer service. This brought forth a small number of articulate dissensions. The most articulate, and the most troubling, came from M., who wrote, \"Last year, flying from Baltimore to Chicago with my entire family (two really little kids included), we set down at Midway in a rainstorm. And waited for our bags. And waited for bags. And waited for bags.\" \n\n An hour later, M. says, the bags showed up, \"soaked through. We took them to baggage services at SW and were faced with the most complicated, unclear, and confusing mechanism for filing a claim we experienced flyers have ever seen.\"", "Take the case of K., who found himself waiting in vain for Circuit City to repair his television. Televisions break, even 1-year-old televisions, as is the case with K's. But Circuit City, where he bought the television, gave him a terrible runaround. The Shopping Avenger dispatched his sidekick, Tad the Deputy Avenger, to get to the bottom of K.'s story. This is what he found: K. grew concerned, Tad the Deputy Avenger reports, after his television had been in the Circuit City shop for a week. When he called, he was told to \"check back next week.\" When he asked if someone from the store could call him with more information, he was refused. Weeks went by. When K. told one Circuit City employee that he really would like to get his television back, the employee, K. says, asked him, \"Don't you have another television in your house?\" \n\n More than a month later--after hours and hours and hours of telephone calls and days missed at work--K. received his television back.", "But then she came through, provisionally, \"Yep, you can be sure if [M.] will call me we will get everything squared away. I'm sorry it's taken this long for her to get someone who can help, but we will take care of it from here.\" \n\n Stay tuned, shoppers, to hear whether Southwest makes good it promise to compensate M. and apologize to her for her troubles. \n\n The story of M. reminds the Shopping Avenger of a central truth of consumer service: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.", "Before we begin, though, the Shopping Avenger nearly forgot to announce the winner of last month's contest, in which readers were asked to answer the question, \"What's the difference between pests and airlines?\" \n\n The winner is one Tom Morgan, who wrote, \"You can hire someone to kill pests.\" Tom is the winner of a year's supply of Turtle Wax, and he will receive his prize just as soon as the Shopping Avenger figures out how much Turtle Wax actually constitutes a year's supply. The new contest question: How much Turtle Wax comprises a year's supply of Turtle Wax?", "When they arrived at their destination, M. and her family made a terrible discovery, \"We discovered that our clothes were soaked through--the top clothes were so wet that the dye had bled through down to the lower levels, destroying lots of other clothes. Obviously, our bags had just been sitting out on the runway in the rain. To this day, I've never heard a thing from SW, despite calls and letters.\" \n\n This, of course, is where Shopping Avenger steps in. Shopping Avenger knows that Southwest is different from the average airline, in that it doesn't go out of its way to infuriate its paying customers (see: ), so I expected a quick and generous resolution to M.'s problem. \n\n What I got at first, though, was a load of corporate hoo-ha.", "But then the Shopping Avenger sat down, and the feeling passed. \n\n The Shopping Avenger does not make light of the Dalai Lama or of the notion that there is more to life than the impatient acquisition of material goods. If the Shopping Avenger were not, for a superhero, extremely nonjudgmental--as opposed to his alter ego, who is considered insufferably judgmental by his alter ego's wife--the Shopping Avenger would tell the occasional correspondent to let go of his petty grievance and get a life. \n\n But the Shopping Avenger also believes that the Dalai Lama has never tried to rent a truck from U-Haul. If he had tried to rent from U-Haul, he never would have escaped from Tibet. (For the complete back story, see \"Shopping Avenger\" column and one.)", "B.R. and his chastened brother--the Shopping Avenger is resisting the urge to gloat--went to Ryder. \"Ryder had a truck available for us. The gentleman who helped us at Ryder said Ryder prides itself on being everything U-Haul is not.\" \n\n The Shopping Avenger has still not received a call from U-Haul spokeswoman Johna Burke explaining why U-Haul refuses to provide trucks to people who reserve trucks, but the Shopping Avenger is pleased to note that several correspondents have written in over the past month saying that, based on what they have read in this column, they will be taking their business to Ryder or Budget or elsewhere. \n\n The Shopping Avenger will undoubtedly return to the sorry state of affairs at U-Haul in the next episode, but now on to this month's airline debacle.", "\"The airline's policy, which is consistent with all contracts of carriage at all airlines, requires that passengers file a report in person for lost or damaged luggage within four hours of arrival at their destination,\" a Southwest spokeswoman, Linda Rutherford, e-mailed me. \"[M.] indicates she called for a few days, but did not file a report in person until April 12--three days later. Southwest, as a courtesy, took her report anyway and asked for follow up information and written inventory of the damage.\" Rutherford said that M. should have submitted detailed receipts and photographs of the damage in order to make a claim. \n\n Harrumph, the Shopping Avenger says. It is a bad hair day at Southwest when its officials defend themselves by comparing their airline to other airlines. I forwarded this message to M., who replied:", "An explanation: Last week, the magazine you are currently reading forced the Shopping Avenger at gunpoint to read a series of treacle-filled self-help books, and then to . The Shopping Avenger, who can withstand radiation, extreme heat and cold, hail, bear attacks, and Eyes Wide Shut , almost succumbed to terminal jejuneness after reading these books. Except for one thing: One of the books, The Art of Happiness , which collects and simplifies the Dalai Lama's philosophy, got the Shopping Avenger to thinking. This, in a way, is the Shopping Avenger's Achilles' heel: thinking. Perhaps it is wrong, the Shopping Avenger thought, to complain about the petty insults and inconveniences of life in the materialistic '90s. The Shopping Avenger felt that perhaps he should counsel those who write seeking help to meditate, to accept bad service the way one accepts the change of seasons, and to extend a compassionate hand of forgiveness to those who provide poor customer care.", "It's Time To Keelhaul U-Haul! \n\n Like all superheroes worthy of the title, the Shopping Avenger has an Achilles' heel. In the case of the Shopping Avenger, his Achilles' heel is not animal, vegetable, or mineral but something less tangible.", "The complaints about U-Haul's nonreservation reservation policy continue to pour in through the electronic mail. One correspondent, B.R., wrote in with this cautionary tale: \"Last weekend, I went to San Francisco to help my brother and his family move into their first house. My brother had reserved a moving truck with U-Haul for the big day. I warned my brother about U-Haul's 'not really a reservation per se' policy that I learned from the Shopping Avenger. He didn't believe such a thing would happen to him, so he didn't act on my warning.\" \n\n B.R. continues--as if you don't know what happened already--\"I went to U-Haul with my brother to get our 'reserved' truck. The store had many customers standing around looking frustrated. When we got to the front of the line, the clerk informed us that our 'reserved' truck had not yet been returned. We asked if we could rent one of the many trucks sitting idle in the parking lot. The clerk laughed and said the keys to those trucks were lost.\"", "\"Wow. Well, of course I didn't file it at the airport on the 9 th because I didn't know the clothes were ruined at the airport. I didn't know until I opened the baggage at my hotel and saw the ruined stuff. (And it's worth noting that we had already waited for about an hour for our luggage with two little kids and impatient in-laws nipping at our heels.)\" \n\n She goes on, \"I did call that evening ... and was told that that sufficed. This is the first time I've been told that I had to file a complaint in person within four hours. ... When I filed on the 12 th , I was never told that I needed any receipts or photos or other type of documentation. The baggage folks seemed pretty uninterested in all of this. ... They know that the type of 'evidence' they want is impossible to obtain. They also know that on April 9 they screwed up the luggage retrieval and left bags out in the rain a long time.\"" ], [ "But then the Shopping Avenger sat down, and the feeling passed. \n\n The Shopping Avenger does not make light of the Dalai Lama or of the notion that there is more to life than the impatient acquisition of material goods. If the Shopping Avenger were not, for a superhero, extremely nonjudgmental--as opposed to his alter ego, who is considered insufferably judgmental by his alter ego's wife--the Shopping Avenger would tell the occasional correspondent to let go of his petty grievance and get a life. \n\n But the Shopping Avenger also believes that the Dalai Lama has never tried to rent a truck from U-Haul. If he had tried to rent from U-Haul, he never would have escaped from Tibet. (For the complete back story, see \"Shopping Avenger\" column and one.)", "An explanation: Last week, the magazine you are currently reading forced the Shopping Avenger at gunpoint to read a series of treacle-filled self-help books, and then to . The Shopping Avenger, who can withstand radiation, extreme heat and cold, hail, bear attacks, and Eyes Wide Shut , almost succumbed to terminal jejuneness after reading these books. Except for one thing: One of the books, The Art of Happiness , which collects and simplifies the Dalai Lama's philosophy, got the Shopping Avenger to thinking. This, in a way, is the Shopping Avenger's Achilles' heel: thinking. Perhaps it is wrong, the Shopping Avenger thought, to complain about the petty insults and inconveniences of life in the materialistic '90s. The Shopping Avenger felt that perhaps he should counsel those who write seeking help to meditate, to accept bad service the way one accepts the change of seasons, and to extend a compassionate hand of forgiveness to those who provide poor customer care.", "It's Time To Keelhaul U-Haul! \n\n Like all superheroes worthy of the title, the Shopping Avenger has an Achilles' heel. In the case of the Shopping Avenger, his Achilles' heel is not animal, vegetable, or mineral but something less tangible.", "Southwest's response actually served to anger M. more than the original problem. \"Before, they had a mildly annoyed but loyal customer (who would have been placated by an apology and thrilled with some modest token of their regret). Now they have a pissed-off customer.\" \n\n Things do look bad for Southwest, don't they? The Shopping Avenger sent M.'s response to Rutherford, who e-mailed back saying she thought the Shopping Avenger was asking for \"policy information.\" The Shopping Avenger e-mailed back again, stressing to Rutherford that the Great Court of Consumer Justice would, if this case were brought to trial, undoubtedly find for the plaintiff (the Shopping Avenger serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the Great Court of Consumer Justice--defendants are represented by the president of U-Haul), and that Southwest was precipitously close to feeling the sword of retribution at its neck.", "Before we begin, though, the Shopping Avenger nearly forgot to announce the winner of last month's contest, in which readers were asked to answer the question, \"What's the difference between pests and airlines?\" \n\n The winner is one Tom Morgan, who wrote, \"You can hire someone to kill pests.\" Tom is the winner of a year's supply of Turtle Wax, and he will receive his prize just as soon as the Shopping Avenger figures out how much Turtle Wax actually constitutes a year's supply. The new contest question: How much Turtle Wax comprises a year's supply of Turtle Wax?", "B.R. and his chastened brother--the Shopping Avenger is resisting the urge to gloat--went to Ryder. \"Ryder had a truck available for us. The gentleman who helped us at Ryder said Ryder prides itself on being everything U-Haul is not.\" \n\n The Shopping Avenger has still not received a call from U-Haul spokeswoman Johna Burke explaining why U-Haul refuses to provide trucks to people who reserve trucks, but the Shopping Avenger is pleased to note that several correspondents have written in over the past month saying that, based on what they have read in this column, they will be taking their business to Ryder or Budget or elsewhere. \n\n The Shopping Avenger will undoubtedly return to the sorry state of affairs at U-Haul in the next episode, but now on to this month's airline debacle.", "This month's airline in the spotlight is Southwest. Loyal readers will recall that last month the Shopping Avenger praised Southwest Airlines for its \"sterling\" customer service. This brought forth a small number of articulate dissensions. The most articulate, and the most troubling, came from M., who wrote, \"Last year, flying from Baltimore to Chicago with my entire family (two really little kids included), we set down at Midway in a rainstorm. And waited for our bags. And waited for bags. And waited for bags.\" \n\n An hour later, M. says, the bags showed up, \"soaked through. We took them to baggage services at SW and were faced with the most complicated, unclear, and confusing mechanism for filing a claim we experienced flyers have ever seen.\"", "But then she came through, provisionally, \"Yep, you can be sure if [M.] will call me we will get everything squared away. I'm sorry it's taken this long for her to get someone who can help, but we will take care of it from here.\" \n\n Stay tuned, shoppers, to hear whether Southwest makes good it promise to compensate M. and apologize to her for her troubles. \n\n The story of M. reminds the Shopping Avenger of a central truth of consumer service: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.", "The complaints about U-Haul's nonreservation reservation policy continue to pour in through the electronic mail. One correspondent, B.R., wrote in with this cautionary tale: \"Last weekend, I went to San Francisco to help my brother and his family move into their first house. My brother had reserved a moving truck with U-Haul for the big day. I warned my brother about U-Haul's 'not really a reservation per se' policy that I learned from the Shopping Avenger. He didn't believe such a thing would happen to him, so he didn't act on my warning.\" \n\n B.R. continues--as if you don't know what happened already--\"I went to U-Haul with my brother to get our 'reserved' truck. The store had many customers standing around looking frustrated. When we got to the front of the line, the clerk informed us that our 'reserved' truck had not yet been returned. We asked if we could rent one of the many trucks sitting idle in the parking lot. The clerk laughed and said the keys to those trucks were lost.\"", "Mistakes happen, but not, Tad the Deputy Avenger found out, at Circuit City. The case, K. was told by a Circuit City official, was \"handled perfectly.\" Another official, Morgan Stewart in public relations, assured Deputy Avenger Tad that \"We got to be a big and successful company by treating customers better than the other guy.\" The Shopping Avenger and his loyal sidekick would like to hear from other Circuit City customers: Does Circuit City, in fact, treat its customers better than the other guy? \n\n Stay tuned for answers. And next month, a Shopping Avenger clergy special: TWA screws with a Hasidic rabbi's travel plans, leaving the rabbi's wife crying at the airport. Find out if the Shopping Avenger can save TWA from certain heavenly punishment, in the next episode. \n\n Got a consumer score you want settled? Send e-mail to shoppingavenger@slate.com.", "Take the case of K., who found himself waiting in vain for Circuit City to repair his television. Televisions break, even 1-year-old televisions, as is the case with K's. But Circuit City, where he bought the television, gave him a terrible runaround. The Shopping Avenger dispatched his sidekick, Tad the Deputy Avenger, to get to the bottom of K.'s story. This is what he found: K. grew concerned, Tad the Deputy Avenger reports, after his television had been in the Circuit City shop for a week. When he called, he was told to \"check back next week.\" When he asked if someone from the store could call him with more information, he was refused. Weeks went by. When K. told one Circuit City employee that he really would like to get his television back, the employee, K. says, asked him, \"Don't you have another television in your house?\" \n\n More than a month later--after hours and hours and hours of telephone calls and days missed at work--K. received his television back.", "\"Wow. Well, of course I didn't file it at the airport on the 9 th because I didn't know the clothes were ruined at the airport. I didn't know until I opened the baggage at my hotel and saw the ruined stuff. (And it's worth noting that we had already waited for about an hour for our luggage with two little kids and impatient in-laws nipping at our heels.)\" \n\n She goes on, \"I did call that evening ... and was told that that sufficed. This is the first time I've been told that I had to file a complaint in person within four hours. ... When I filed on the 12 th , I was never told that I needed any receipts or photos or other type of documentation. The baggage folks seemed pretty uninterested in all of this. ... They know that the type of 'evidence' they want is impossible to obtain. They also know that on April 9 they screwed up the luggage retrieval and left bags out in the rain a long time.\"", "When they arrived at their destination, M. and her family made a terrible discovery, \"We discovered that our clothes were soaked through--the top clothes were so wet that the dye had bled through down to the lower levels, destroying lots of other clothes. Obviously, our bags had just been sitting out on the runway in the rain. To this day, I've never heard a thing from SW, despite calls and letters.\" \n\n This, of course, is where Shopping Avenger steps in. Shopping Avenger knows that Southwest is different from the average airline, in that it doesn't go out of its way to infuriate its paying customers (see: ), so I expected a quick and generous resolution to M.'s problem. \n\n What I got at first, though, was a load of corporate hoo-ha.", "\"The airline's policy, which is consistent with all contracts of carriage at all airlines, requires that passengers file a report in person for lost or damaged luggage within four hours of arrival at their destination,\" a Southwest spokeswoman, Linda Rutherford, e-mailed me. \"[M.] indicates she called for a few days, but did not file a report in person until April 12--three days later. Southwest, as a courtesy, took her report anyway and asked for follow up information and written inventory of the damage.\" Rutherford said that M. should have submitted detailed receipts and photographs of the damage in order to make a claim. \n\n Harrumph, the Shopping Avenger says. It is a bad hair day at Southwest when its officials defend themselves by comparing their airline to other airlines. I forwarded this message to M., who replied:" ], [ "An explanation: Last week, the magazine you are currently reading forced the Shopping Avenger at gunpoint to read a series of treacle-filled self-help books, and then to . The Shopping Avenger, who can withstand radiation, extreme heat and cold, hail, bear attacks, and Eyes Wide Shut , almost succumbed to terminal jejuneness after reading these books. Except for one thing: One of the books, The Art of Happiness , which collects and simplifies the Dalai Lama's philosophy, got the Shopping Avenger to thinking. This, in a way, is the Shopping Avenger's Achilles' heel: thinking. Perhaps it is wrong, the Shopping Avenger thought, to complain about the petty insults and inconveniences of life in the materialistic '90s. The Shopping Avenger felt that perhaps he should counsel those who write seeking help to meditate, to accept bad service the way one accepts the change of seasons, and to extend a compassionate hand of forgiveness to those who provide poor customer care.", "But then the Shopping Avenger sat down, and the feeling passed. \n\n The Shopping Avenger does not make light of the Dalai Lama or of the notion that there is more to life than the impatient acquisition of material goods. If the Shopping Avenger were not, for a superhero, extremely nonjudgmental--as opposed to his alter ego, who is considered insufferably judgmental by his alter ego's wife--the Shopping Avenger would tell the occasional correspondent to let go of his petty grievance and get a life. \n\n But the Shopping Avenger also believes that the Dalai Lama has never tried to rent a truck from U-Haul. If he had tried to rent from U-Haul, he never would have escaped from Tibet. (For the complete back story, see \"Shopping Avenger\" column and one.)", "It's Time To Keelhaul U-Haul! \n\n Like all superheroes worthy of the title, the Shopping Avenger has an Achilles' heel. In the case of the Shopping Avenger, his Achilles' heel is not animal, vegetable, or mineral but something less tangible.", "Southwest's response actually served to anger M. more than the original problem. \"Before, they had a mildly annoyed but loyal customer (who would have been placated by an apology and thrilled with some modest token of their regret). Now they have a pissed-off customer.\" \n\n Things do look bad for Southwest, don't they? The Shopping Avenger sent M.'s response to Rutherford, who e-mailed back saying she thought the Shopping Avenger was asking for \"policy information.\" The Shopping Avenger e-mailed back again, stressing to Rutherford that the Great Court of Consumer Justice would, if this case were brought to trial, undoubtedly find for the plaintiff (the Shopping Avenger serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the Great Court of Consumer Justice--defendants are represented by the president of U-Haul), and that Southwest was precipitously close to feeling the sword of retribution at its neck.", "But then she came through, provisionally, \"Yep, you can be sure if [M.] will call me we will get everything squared away. I'm sorry it's taken this long for her to get someone who can help, but we will take care of it from here.\" \n\n Stay tuned, shoppers, to hear whether Southwest makes good it promise to compensate M. and apologize to her for her troubles. \n\n The story of M. reminds the Shopping Avenger of a central truth of consumer service: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.", "Before we begin, though, the Shopping Avenger nearly forgot to announce the winner of last month's contest, in which readers were asked to answer the question, \"What's the difference between pests and airlines?\" \n\n The winner is one Tom Morgan, who wrote, \"You can hire someone to kill pests.\" Tom is the winner of a year's supply of Turtle Wax, and he will receive his prize just as soon as the Shopping Avenger figures out how much Turtle Wax actually constitutes a year's supply. The new contest question: How much Turtle Wax comprises a year's supply of Turtle Wax?", "B.R. and his chastened brother--the Shopping Avenger is resisting the urge to gloat--went to Ryder. \"Ryder had a truck available for us. The gentleman who helped us at Ryder said Ryder prides itself on being everything U-Haul is not.\" \n\n The Shopping Avenger has still not received a call from U-Haul spokeswoman Johna Burke explaining why U-Haul refuses to provide trucks to people who reserve trucks, but the Shopping Avenger is pleased to note that several correspondents have written in over the past month saying that, based on what they have read in this column, they will be taking their business to Ryder or Budget or elsewhere. \n\n The Shopping Avenger will undoubtedly return to the sorry state of affairs at U-Haul in the next episode, but now on to this month's airline debacle.", "This month's airline in the spotlight is Southwest. Loyal readers will recall that last month the Shopping Avenger praised Southwest Airlines for its \"sterling\" customer service. This brought forth a small number of articulate dissensions. The most articulate, and the most troubling, came from M., who wrote, \"Last year, flying from Baltimore to Chicago with my entire family (two really little kids included), we set down at Midway in a rainstorm. And waited for our bags. And waited for bags. And waited for bags.\" \n\n An hour later, M. says, the bags showed up, \"soaked through. We took them to baggage services at SW and were faced with the most complicated, unclear, and confusing mechanism for filing a claim we experienced flyers have ever seen.\"", "Take the case of K., who found himself waiting in vain for Circuit City to repair his television. Televisions break, even 1-year-old televisions, as is the case with K's. But Circuit City, where he bought the television, gave him a terrible runaround. The Shopping Avenger dispatched his sidekick, Tad the Deputy Avenger, to get to the bottom of K.'s story. This is what he found: K. grew concerned, Tad the Deputy Avenger reports, after his television had been in the Circuit City shop for a week. When he called, he was told to \"check back next week.\" When he asked if someone from the store could call him with more information, he was refused. Weeks went by. When K. told one Circuit City employee that he really would like to get his television back, the employee, K. says, asked him, \"Don't you have another television in your house?\" \n\n More than a month later--after hours and hours and hours of telephone calls and days missed at work--K. received his television back.", "When they arrived at their destination, M. and her family made a terrible discovery, \"We discovered that our clothes were soaked through--the top clothes were so wet that the dye had bled through down to the lower levels, destroying lots of other clothes. Obviously, our bags had just been sitting out on the runway in the rain. To this day, I've never heard a thing from SW, despite calls and letters.\" \n\n This, of course, is where Shopping Avenger steps in. Shopping Avenger knows that Southwest is different from the average airline, in that it doesn't go out of its way to infuriate its paying customers (see: ), so I expected a quick and generous resolution to M.'s problem. \n\n What I got at first, though, was a load of corporate hoo-ha.", "\"Wow. Well, of course I didn't file it at the airport on the 9 th because I didn't know the clothes were ruined at the airport. I didn't know until I opened the baggage at my hotel and saw the ruined stuff. (And it's worth noting that we had already waited for about an hour for our luggage with two little kids and impatient in-laws nipping at our heels.)\" \n\n She goes on, \"I did call that evening ... and was told that that sufficed. This is the first time I've been told that I had to file a complaint in person within four hours. ... When I filed on the 12 th , I was never told that I needed any receipts or photos or other type of documentation. The baggage folks seemed pretty uninterested in all of this. ... They know that the type of 'evidence' they want is impossible to obtain. They also know that on April 9 they screwed up the luggage retrieval and left bags out in the rain a long time.\"", "Mistakes happen, but not, Tad the Deputy Avenger found out, at Circuit City. The case, K. was told by a Circuit City official, was \"handled perfectly.\" Another official, Morgan Stewart in public relations, assured Deputy Avenger Tad that \"We got to be a big and successful company by treating customers better than the other guy.\" The Shopping Avenger and his loyal sidekick would like to hear from other Circuit City customers: Does Circuit City, in fact, treat its customers better than the other guy? \n\n Stay tuned for answers. And next month, a Shopping Avenger clergy special: TWA screws with a Hasidic rabbi's travel plans, leaving the rabbi's wife crying at the airport. Find out if the Shopping Avenger can save TWA from certain heavenly punishment, in the next episode. \n\n Got a consumer score you want settled? Send e-mail to shoppingavenger@slate.com.", "The complaints about U-Haul's nonreservation reservation policy continue to pour in through the electronic mail. One correspondent, B.R., wrote in with this cautionary tale: \"Last weekend, I went to San Francisco to help my brother and his family move into their first house. My brother had reserved a moving truck with U-Haul for the big day. I warned my brother about U-Haul's 'not really a reservation per se' policy that I learned from the Shopping Avenger. He didn't believe such a thing would happen to him, so he didn't act on my warning.\" \n\n B.R. continues--as if you don't know what happened already--\"I went to U-Haul with my brother to get our 'reserved' truck. The store had many customers standing around looking frustrated. When we got to the front of the line, the clerk informed us that our 'reserved' truck had not yet been returned. We asked if we could rent one of the many trucks sitting idle in the parking lot. The clerk laughed and said the keys to those trucks were lost.\"", "\"The airline's policy, which is consistent with all contracts of carriage at all airlines, requires that passengers file a report in person for lost or damaged luggage within four hours of arrival at their destination,\" a Southwest spokeswoman, Linda Rutherford, e-mailed me. \"[M.] indicates she called for a few days, but did not file a report in person until April 12--three days later. Southwest, as a courtesy, took her report anyway and asked for follow up information and written inventory of the damage.\" Rutherford said that M. should have submitted detailed receipts and photographs of the damage in order to make a claim. \n\n Harrumph, the Shopping Avenger says. It is a bad hair day at Southwest when its officials defend themselves by comparing their airline to other airlines. I forwarded this message to M., who replied:" ], [ "Southwest's response actually served to anger M. more than the original problem. \"Before, they had a mildly annoyed but loyal customer (who would have been placated by an apology and thrilled with some modest token of their regret). Now they have a pissed-off customer.\" \n\n Things do look bad for Southwest, don't they? The Shopping Avenger sent M.'s response to Rutherford, who e-mailed back saying she thought the Shopping Avenger was asking for \"policy information.\" The Shopping Avenger e-mailed back again, stressing to Rutherford that the Great Court of Consumer Justice would, if this case were brought to trial, undoubtedly find for the plaintiff (the Shopping Avenger serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the Great Court of Consumer Justice--defendants are represented by the president of U-Haul), and that Southwest was precipitously close to feeling the sword of retribution at its neck.", "But then she came through, provisionally, \"Yep, you can be sure if [M.] will call me we will get everything squared away. I'm sorry it's taken this long for her to get someone who can help, but we will take care of it from here.\" \n\n Stay tuned, shoppers, to hear whether Southwest makes good it promise to compensate M. and apologize to her for her troubles. \n\n The story of M. reminds the Shopping Avenger of a central truth of consumer service: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.", "When they arrived at their destination, M. and her family made a terrible discovery, \"We discovered that our clothes were soaked through--the top clothes were so wet that the dye had bled through down to the lower levels, destroying lots of other clothes. Obviously, our bags had just been sitting out on the runway in the rain. To this day, I've never heard a thing from SW, despite calls and letters.\" \n\n This, of course, is where Shopping Avenger steps in. Shopping Avenger knows that Southwest is different from the average airline, in that it doesn't go out of its way to infuriate its paying customers (see: ), so I expected a quick and generous resolution to M.'s problem. \n\n What I got at first, though, was a load of corporate hoo-ha.", "This month's airline in the spotlight is Southwest. Loyal readers will recall that last month the Shopping Avenger praised Southwest Airlines for its \"sterling\" customer service. This brought forth a small number of articulate dissensions. The most articulate, and the most troubling, came from M., who wrote, \"Last year, flying from Baltimore to Chicago with my entire family (two really little kids included), we set down at Midway in a rainstorm. And waited for our bags. And waited for bags. And waited for bags.\" \n\n An hour later, M. says, the bags showed up, \"soaked through. We took them to baggage services at SW and were faced with the most complicated, unclear, and confusing mechanism for filing a claim we experienced flyers have ever seen.\"", "\"The airline's policy, which is consistent with all contracts of carriage at all airlines, requires that passengers file a report in person for lost or damaged luggage within four hours of arrival at their destination,\" a Southwest spokeswoman, Linda Rutherford, e-mailed me. \"[M.] indicates she called for a few days, but did not file a report in person until April 12--three days later. Southwest, as a courtesy, took her report anyway and asked for follow up information and written inventory of the damage.\" Rutherford said that M. should have submitted detailed receipts and photographs of the damage in order to make a claim. \n\n Harrumph, the Shopping Avenger says. It is a bad hair day at Southwest when its officials defend themselves by comparing their airline to other airlines. I forwarded this message to M., who replied:", "But then the Shopping Avenger sat down, and the feeling passed. \n\n The Shopping Avenger does not make light of the Dalai Lama or of the notion that there is more to life than the impatient acquisition of material goods. If the Shopping Avenger were not, for a superhero, extremely nonjudgmental--as opposed to his alter ego, who is considered insufferably judgmental by his alter ego's wife--the Shopping Avenger would tell the occasional correspondent to let go of his petty grievance and get a life. \n\n But the Shopping Avenger also believes that the Dalai Lama has never tried to rent a truck from U-Haul. If he had tried to rent from U-Haul, he never would have escaped from Tibet. (For the complete back story, see \"Shopping Avenger\" column and one.)", "B.R. and his chastened brother--the Shopping Avenger is resisting the urge to gloat--went to Ryder. \"Ryder had a truck available for us. The gentleman who helped us at Ryder said Ryder prides itself on being everything U-Haul is not.\" \n\n The Shopping Avenger has still not received a call from U-Haul spokeswoman Johna Burke explaining why U-Haul refuses to provide trucks to people who reserve trucks, but the Shopping Avenger is pleased to note that several correspondents have written in over the past month saying that, based on what they have read in this column, they will be taking their business to Ryder or Budget or elsewhere. \n\n The Shopping Avenger will undoubtedly return to the sorry state of affairs at U-Haul in the next episode, but now on to this month's airline debacle.", "An explanation: Last week, the magazine you are currently reading forced the Shopping Avenger at gunpoint to read a series of treacle-filled self-help books, and then to . The Shopping Avenger, who can withstand radiation, extreme heat and cold, hail, bear attacks, and Eyes Wide Shut , almost succumbed to terminal jejuneness after reading these books. Except for one thing: One of the books, The Art of Happiness , which collects and simplifies the Dalai Lama's philosophy, got the Shopping Avenger to thinking. This, in a way, is the Shopping Avenger's Achilles' heel: thinking. Perhaps it is wrong, the Shopping Avenger thought, to complain about the petty insults and inconveniences of life in the materialistic '90s. The Shopping Avenger felt that perhaps he should counsel those who write seeking help to meditate, to accept bad service the way one accepts the change of seasons, and to extend a compassionate hand of forgiveness to those who provide poor customer care.", "Before we begin, though, the Shopping Avenger nearly forgot to announce the winner of last month's contest, in which readers were asked to answer the question, \"What's the difference between pests and airlines?\" \n\n The winner is one Tom Morgan, who wrote, \"You can hire someone to kill pests.\" Tom is the winner of a year's supply of Turtle Wax, and he will receive his prize just as soon as the Shopping Avenger figures out how much Turtle Wax actually constitutes a year's supply. The new contest question: How much Turtle Wax comprises a year's supply of Turtle Wax?", "Take the case of K., who found himself waiting in vain for Circuit City to repair his television. Televisions break, even 1-year-old televisions, as is the case with K's. But Circuit City, where he bought the television, gave him a terrible runaround. The Shopping Avenger dispatched his sidekick, Tad the Deputy Avenger, to get to the bottom of K.'s story. This is what he found: K. grew concerned, Tad the Deputy Avenger reports, after his television had been in the Circuit City shop for a week. When he called, he was told to \"check back next week.\" When he asked if someone from the store could call him with more information, he was refused. Weeks went by. When K. told one Circuit City employee that he really would like to get his television back, the employee, K. says, asked him, \"Don't you have another television in your house?\" \n\n More than a month later--after hours and hours and hours of telephone calls and days missed at work--K. received his television back.", "\"Wow. Well, of course I didn't file it at the airport on the 9 th because I didn't know the clothes were ruined at the airport. I didn't know until I opened the baggage at my hotel and saw the ruined stuff. (And it's worth noting that we had already waited for about an hour for our luggage with two little kids and impatient in-laws nipping at our heels.)\" \n\n She goes on, \"I did call that evening ... and was told that that sufficed. This is the first time I've been told that I had to file a complaint in person within four hours. ... When I filed on the 12 th , I was never told that I needed any receipts or photos or other type of documentation. The baggage folks seemed pretty uninterested in all of this. ... They know that the type of 'evidence' they want is impossible to obtain. They also know that on April 9 they screwed up the luggage retrieval and left bags out in the rain a long time.\"", "Mistakes happen, but not, Tad the Deputy Avenger found out, at Circuit City. The case, K. was told by a Circuit City official, was \"handled perfectly.\" Another official, Morgan Stewart in public relations, assured Deputy Avenger Tad that \"We got to be a big and successful company by treating customers better than the other guy.\" The Shopping Avenger and his loyal sidekick would like to hear from other Circuit City customers: Does Circuit City, in fact, treat its customers better than the other guy? \n\n Stay tuned for answers. And next month, a Shopping Avenger clergy special: TWA screws with a Hasidic rabbi's travel plans, leaving the rabbi's wife crying at the airport. Find out if the Shopping Avenger can save TWA from certain heavenly punishment, in the next episode. \n\n Got a consumer score you want settled? Send e-mail to shoppingavenger@slate.com.", "The complaints about U-Haul's nonreservation reservation policy continue to pour in through the electronic mail. One correspondent, B.R., wrote in with this cautionary tale: \"Last weekend, I went to San Francisco to help my brother and his family move into their first house. My brother had reserved a moving truck with U-Haul for the big day. I warned my brother about U-Haul's 'not really a reservation per se' policy that I learned from the Shopping Avenger. He didn't believe such a thing would happen to him, so he didn't act on my warning.\" \n\n B.R. continues--as if you don't know what happened already--\"I went to U-Haul with my brother to get our 'reserved' truck. The store had many customers standing around looking frustrated. When we got to the front of the line, the clerk informed us that our 'reserved' truck had not yet been returned. We asked if we could rent one of the many trucks sitting idle in the parking lot. The clerk laughed and said the keys to those trucks were lost.\"", "It's Time To Keelhaul U-Haul! \n\n Like all superheroes worthy of the title, the Shopping Avenger has an Achilles' heel. In the case of the Shopping Avenger, his Achilles' heel is not animal, vegetable, or mineral but something less tangible." ], [ "It's Time To Keelhaul U-Haul! \n\n Like all superheroes worthy of the title, the Shopping Avenger has an Achilles' heel. In the case of the Shopping Avenger, his Achilles' heel is not animal, vegetable, or mineral but something less tangible.", "But then the Shopping Avenger sat down, and the feeling passed. \n\n The Shopping Avenger does not make light of the Dalai Lama or of the notion that there is more to life than the impatient acquisition of material goods. If the Shopping Avenger were not, for a superhero, extremely nonjudgmental--as opposed to his alter ego, who is considered insufferably judgmental by his alter ego's wife--the Shopping Avenger would tell the occasional correspondent to let go of his petty grievance and get a life. \n\n But the Shopping Avenger also believes that the Dalai Lama has never tried to rent a truck from U-Haul. If he had tried to rent from U-Haul, he never would have escaped from Tibet. (For the complete back story, see \"Shopping Avenger\" column and one.)", "The complaints about U-Haul's nonreservation reservation policy continue to pour in through the electronic mail. One correspondent, B.R., wrote in with this cautionary tale: \"Last weekend, I went to San Francisco to help my brother and his family move into their first house. My brother had reserved a moving truck with U-Haul for the big day. I warned my brother about U-Haul's 'not really a reservation per se' policy that I learned from the Shopping Avenger. He didn't believe such a thing would happen to him, so he didn't act on my warning.\" \n\n B.R. continues--as if you don't know what happened already--\"I went to U-Haul with my brother to get our 'reserved' truck. The store had many customers standing around looking frustrated. When we got to the front of the line, the clerk informed us that our 'reserved' truck had not yet been returned. We asked if we could rent one of the many trucks sitting idle in the parking lot. The clerk laughed and said the keys to those trucks were lost.\"", "B.R. and his chastened brother--the Shopping Avenger is resisting the urge to gloat--went to Ryder. \"Ryder had a truck available for us. The gentleman who helped us at Ryder said Ryder prides itself on being everything U-Haul is not.\" \n\n The Shopping Avenger has still not received a call from U-Haul spokeswoman Johna Burke explaining why U-Haul refuses to provide trucks to people who reserve trucks, but the Shopping Avenger is pleased to note that several correspondents have written in over the past month saying that, based on what they have read in this column, they will be taking their business to Ryder or Budget or elsewhere. \n\n The Shopping Avenger will undoubtedly return to the sorry state of affairs at U-Haul in the next episode, but now on to this month's airline debacle.", "Take the case of K., who found himself waiting in vain for Circuit City to repair his television. Televisions break, even 1-year-old televisions, as is the case with K's. But Circuit City, where he bought the television, gave him a terrible runaround. The Shopping Avenger dispatched his sidekick, Tad the Deputy Avenger, to get to the bottom of K.'s story. This is what he found: K. grew concerned, Tad the Deputy Avenger reports, after his television had been in the Circuit City shop for a week. When he called, he was told to \"check back next week.\" When he asked if someone from the store could call him with more information, he was refused. Weeks went by. When K. told one Circuit City employee that he really would like to get his television back, the employee, K. says, asked him, \"Don't you have another television in your house?\" \n\n More than a month later--after hours and hours and hours of telephone calls and days missed at work--K. received his television back.", "Mistakes happen, but not, Tad the Deputy Avenger found out, at Circuit City. The case, K. was told by a Circuit City official, was \"handled perfectly.\" Another official, Morgan Stewart in public relations, assured Deputy Avenger Tad that \"We got to be a big and successful company by treating customers better than the other guy.\" The Shopping Avenger and his loyal sidekick would like to hear from other Circuit City customers: Does Circuit City, in fact, treat its customers better than the other guy? \n\n Stay tuned for answers. And next month, a Shopping Avenger clergy special: TWA screws with a Hasidic rabbi's travel plans, leaving the rabbi's wife crying at the airport. Find out if the Shopping Avenger can save TWA from certain heavenly punishment, in the next episode. \n\n Got a consumer score you want settled? Send e-mail to shoppingavenger@slate.com.", "Before we begin, though, the Shopping Avenger nearly forgot to announce the winner of last month's contest, in which readers were asked to answer the question, \"What's the difference between pests and airlines?\" \n\n The winner is one Tom Morgan, who wrote, \"You can hire someone to kill pests.\" Tom is the winner of a year's supply of Turtle Wax, and he will receive his prize just as soon as the Shopping Avenger figures out how much Turtle Wax actually constitutes a year's supply. The new contest question: How much Turtle Wax comprises a year's supply of Turtle Wax?", "An explanation: Last week, the magazine you are currently reading forced the Shopping Avenger at gunpoint to read a series of treacle-filled self-help books, and then to . The Shopping Avenger, who can withstand radiation, extreme heat and cold, hail, bear attacks, and Eyes Wide Shut , almost succumbed to terminal jejuneness after reading these books. Except for one thing: One of the books, The Art of Happiness , which collects and simplifies the Dalai Lama's philosophy, got the Shopping Avenger to thinking. This, in a way, is the Shopping Avenger's Achilles' heel: thinking. Perhaps it is wrong, the Shopping Avenger thought, to complain about the petty insults and inconveniences of life in the materialistic '90s. The Shopping Avenger felt that perhaps he should counsel those who write seeking help to meditate, to accept bad service the way one accepts the change of seasons, and to extend a compassionate hand of forgiveness to those who provide poor customer care.", "Southwest's response actually served to anger M. more than the original problem. \"Before, they had a mildly annoyed but loyal customer (who would have been placated by an apology and thrilled with some modest token of their regret). Now they have a pissed-off customer.\" \n\n Things do look bad for Southwest, don't they? The Shopping Avenger sent M.'s response to Rutherford, who e-mailed back saying she thought the Shopping Avenger was asking for \"policy information.\" The Shopping Avenger e-mailed back again, stressing to Rutherford that the Great Court of Consumer Justice would, if this case were brought to trial, undoubtedly find for the plaintiff (the Shopping Avenger serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the Great Court of Consumer Justice--defendants are represented by the president of U-Haul), and that Southwest was precipitously close to feeling the sword of retribution at its neck.", "This month's airline in the spotlight is Southwest. Loyal readers will recall that last month the Shopping Avenger praised Southwest Airlines for its \"sterling\" customer service. This brought forth a small number of articulate dissensions. The most articulate, and the most troubling, came from M., who wrote, \"Last year, flying from Baltimore to Chicago with my entire family (two really little kids included), we set down at Midway in a rainstorm. And waited for our bags. And waited for bags. And waited for bags.\" \n\n An hour later, M. says, the bags showed up, \"soaked through. We took them to baggage services at SW and were faced with the most complicated, unclear, and confusing mechanism for filing a claim we experienced flyers have ever seen.\"", "But then she came through, provisionally, \"Yep, you can be sure if [M.] will call me we will get everything squared away. I'm sorry it's taken this long for her to get someone who can help, but we will take care of it from here.\" \n\n Stay tuned, shoppers, to hear whether Southwest makes good it promise to compensate M. and apologize to her for her troubles. \n\n The story of M. reminds the Shopping Avenger of a central truth of consumer service: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.", "When they arrived at their destination, M. and her family made a terrible discovery, \"We discovered that our clothes were soaked through--the top clothes were so wet that the dye had bled through down to the lower levels, destroying lots of other clothes. Obviously, our bags had just been sitting out on the runway in the rain. To this day, I've never heard a thing from SW, despite calls and letters.\" \n\n This, of course, is where Shopping Avenger steps in. Shopping Avenger knows that Southwest is different from the average airline, in that it doesn't go out of its way to infuriate its paying customers (see: ), so I expected a quick and generous resolution to M.'s problem. \n\n What I got at first, though, was a load of corporate hoo-ha.", "\"Wow. Well, of course I didn't file it at the airport on the 9 th because I didn't know the clothes were ruined at the airport. I didn't know until I opened the baggage at my hotel and saw the ruined stuff. (And it's worth noting that we had already waited for about an hour for our luggage with two little kids and impatient in-laws nipping at our heels.)\" \n\n She goes on, \"I did call that evening ... and was told that that sufficed. This is the first time I've been told that I had to file a complaint in person within four hours. ... When I filed on the 12 th , I was never told that I needed any receipts or photos or other type of documentation. The baggage folks seemed pretty uninterested in all of this. ... They know that the type of 'evidence' they want is impossible to obtain. They also know that on April 9 they screwed up the luggage retrieval and left bags out in the rain a long time.\"", "\"The airline's policy, which is consistent with all contracts of carriage at all airlines, requires that passengers file a report in person for lost or damaged luggage within four hours of arrival at their destination,\" a Southwest spokeswoman, Linda Rutherford, e-mailed me. \"[M.] indicates she called for a few days, but did not file a report in person until April 12--three days later. Southwest, as a courtesy, took her report anyway and asked for follow up information and written inventory of the damage.\" Rutherford said that M. should have submitted detailed receipts and photographs of the damage in order to make a claim. \n\n Harrumph, the Shopping Avenger says. It is a bad hair day at Southwest when its officials defend themselves by comparing their airline to other airlines. I forwarded this message to M., who replied:" ] ]
train	24150	[ "Which of these is an irony represented as a main point in the story?", "What would have happened if Drs. Niemand and Hillyard had not visited Henry Middletown?", "What would Dr. Niemand think was the real benefit of visiting Henry Middletown?", "What is the significance of the twenty-seven day cycle", "Which of these is the most important reason Dr. Niemand contacted Dr. Hillyard specifically?", "Which of these does Dr. Niemand believe to be true about the timing of the attacks?", "Which of these does Dr. Niemand believe to be true about the cause of the attacks?", "Which of these is not a reason for the researchers to travel to Arizona?", "What is the role of sunspots in this phenomenon?", "What is the main point of this interview?" ]	[ [ "Men are more affected by the 27-day cycle than women are", "Astronomers never talk to each other but only make progress when they do", "The moon controls the tides but the sun controls emotions", "Evil will haunt mankind as long as there is light from the Sun" ], [ "They would have traveled to Australia to talk to a specialist", "They would have totally given up on their research", "They would have been missing a key point of connection that allowed them to move their work forward", "They would have talked to a radio astronomer at a different observatory" ], [ "Access to specialized graph paper to make sense of their data", "Access to calendar records to find a pattern with", "To establish the randomness of the solar flares", "To provide a perspective from another field" ], [ "This restructured the data from the reports in a way that fit the sun's rotation", "It explains why women are more succeptible to the effects of the radiation", "It shows how arbitrary the cycle is", "It explains why the symptoms of a flare are so similar to PMS symptoms" ], [ "Dr. Hillyard is located on the east coast", "Dr. Niemand wanted to see if this was happening in other parts of California", "They were old roommates, so Dr. Niemand could trust him with his theory", "They were friends from medical school" ], [ "They are related to sunspots and the speed of the Earth's rotation", "Overcast weather throws off the timing of paired attacks in different areas", "The timing of the events depends on the movement of the moon, like tides of oceans", "They are related to the sun's cycle and the speed at which S-Regions travel" ], [ "The second world war brought out violent tendancies which caused a spread of emotional effects", "It is the humans' development & use of radio technology that is causing the solar events", "It is the innate evil of humankind that is causing the emotional disruptions", "Is it an event on the Sun that causes the attacks" ], [ "It is not on the coastlines, allowing to look at data away from either coast", "Mountain ranges are expected to have unique effects on the symptoms ", "There is an observatory with equipment that can be used for research", "A potentially useful research partner is there" ], [ "Sunspots are what we are able to see, but serve only as an approximation of S-Regions, the true cause", "Sunspots were the key for Henry Middletown's breakthrough in the study", "Sunspots were what inspired Dr. Niemand to do research on the Sun in the first place", "Sunspots are the underlying cause of the issue, which are trackable by S-regions" ], [ "To complain that the conference paper was underattended and underappreciated", "To discuss the effects of hidden areas on the sun on people's behavior", "To argue that multidisciplinary science is the best kind of science", "To warn people of the dangers of the sun on their minds and bodies" ] ]	[ 4, 3, 4, 1, 1, 4, 4, 2, 1, 2 ]	[ 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "NIEMAND. Well, they're common enough, goodness knows. As old as the\n world, in fact. Yet strangely enough it's hard to describe them in exact\n terms.\n\n\n LATHAM. Can you give us a general idea?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'll try. Let's see ... remember that speech from \"Julius\n Caesar\" where Cassius is bewailing the evil times that beset ancient\n Rome? I believe it went like this: \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.\"\n\n\n LATHAM. I'm afraid I don't see—\n\n\n NIEMAND. Well, Shakespeare would have been nearer the truth if he had\n put it the other way around. \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n ourselves but in our stars\" or better \"in the Sun.\"\nLATHAM. In the Sun?", "their attack was invariably sudden and with scarcely any warning. They\n would be going about their work feeling perfectly all right. Then in a\n minute the whole world was like some scene from a nightmare. A week or\n ten days later the attack would cease as mysteriously as it had come and\n they would be their old self again.", "NIEMAND. What reasons?\n\n\n LATHAM. Well, disputes over boundaries ... economic rivalry ... border\n incidents....\n\n\n NIEMAND. Nonsense. Men always make some flimsy excuse for going to war.\n The truth of the matter is that men go to war because they want to go\n to war. They can't help themselves. They are impelled by forces over\n which they have no control. By forces outside of themselves.\n\n\n LATHAM. Those are broad, sweeping statements. Can't you be more\n specific?", "NIEMAND. It was the beginning. In most instances patients reported the\n attack struck with almost the impact of a physical blow. The prodromal\n symptoms were usually slight ... a sudden feeling of uneasiness and\n guilt ... hot and cold flashes ... dizziness ... double vision. Then\n this ghastly sense of depression coupled with a blind insensate rage at\n life. One man said he felt as if the world were closing in on him.\n Another that he felt the people around him were plotting his\n destruction. One housewife made her husband lock her in her room for\n fear she would injure the children. I pored over these case histories\n for a long time getting absolutely nowhere. Then finally a pattern began\n to emerge.\nLATHAM. What sort of pattern?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The first thing that struck me was that the attacks all\n occurred during the daytime, between the hours of about seven in the\n morning and five in the evening. Then there were these coincidences—\n\n\n LATHAM. Coincidences?", "LATHAM. Aren't such attacks characteristic of the stress and strain of\n modern life?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'm afraid that old stress-and-strain theory has been badly\n overworked. Been hearing about it ever since I was a pre-med student at\n ucla\n . Even as a boy I can remember my grandfather deploring the stress\n and strain of modern life when he was a country doctor practicing in\n Indiana. In my opinion one of the most valuable contributions\n anthropologists have made in recent years is the discovery that\n primitive man is afflicted with essentially the same neurotic conditions\n as those of us who live a so-called civilized life. They have found\n savages displaying every symptom of a nervous breakdown among the\n mountain tribes of the Elgonyi and the Aruntas of Australia. No, Mr.\n Latham, it's time the stress-and-strain theory was relegated to the junk\n pile along with demoniac possession and blood letting.", "NIEMAND. It was the old case of workers in one field of science being\n completely ignorant of what was going on in another field. Someday we\n will have to establish a clearing house in science instead of keeping it\n in tight little compartments as we do at present. Well, Hillyard and I\n packed up for Arizona with considerable misgivings. We were afraid\n Middletown wouldn't take our findings seriously but somewhat to our\n surprise he heard our story with the closest attention. I guess\n astronomers have gotten so used to hearing from flying saucer\n enthusiasts and science-fiction addicts that nothing surprises them any\n more. When we had finished he asked to see our records. Hillyard had\n them all set down for easy numerical tabulation. Middletown went to work\n with scarcely a word. Within an hour he had produced a chart that was\n simply astounding.\nLATHAM. Can you describe this chart for us?", "NIEMAND. In every case of a simultaneous attack the Sun was shining at\n both New York and California.\n\n\n LATHAM. You mean if it was cloudy—\n\n\n NIEMAND. No, no. The weather had nothing to do with it. I mean the Sun\n had to be above the horizon at both places. A person might undergo an\n attack soon after sunrise in New York but there would be no\n corresponding record of an attack in California where it was still dark.\n Conversely, a person might be stricken late in the afternoon in\n California without a corresponding attack in New York where the Sun had\n set. Dr. Hillyard and I had been searching desperately for a clue. We\n had both noticed that the attacks occurred only during the daylight\n hours but this had not seemed especially significant. Here we had\n evidence pointing directly to the source of trouble. It must have some\n connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. That must have had you badly puzzled at first.", "NIEMAND. I was afraid the result would be that my old roommate would\n think I had gone completely crazy. Imagine my surprise and gratification\n on receiving an answer by return mail to the effect that he also had\n been getting an increasing number of patients suffering with the same\n identical symptoms as my own. Furthermore, upon exchanging records we\ndid\nfind that in many cases patients three thousand miles apart had\n been stricken simultaneously—\n\n\n LATHAM. Just a minute. I would like to know how you define\n \"simultaneous.\"\n\n\n NIEMAND. We say an attack is simultaneous when one occurred on the east\n coast, for example, not earlier or later than five minutes of an attack\n on the west coast. That is about as close as you can hope to time a\n subjective effect of this nature. And now another fact emerged which\n gave us another clue.\n\n\n LATHAM. Which was?", "NIEMAND. If you have a feeling of restlessness and anxiety, if you are\n unable to concentrate, if you feel suddenly depressed and discouraged\n about yourself, or are filled with resentment toward the world, then you\n may be pretty sure that an S-Region is passing across the face of the\n Sun. Keep a tight rein on yourself. For it seems that evil will always\n be with us ... as long as the Sun shall continue to shine upon this\n little world.\nTHE END\n[A]\n Middletown believes that the Intense radiation recently\n discovered from information derived from Explorer I and III has no\n connection with the corpuscular S-radiation.", "LATHAM. You must have done something for your patients—\n\n\n NIEMAND. A doctor must always do something for the patients who come to\n his office seeking help. First I gave them a thorough physical\n examination. I turned up some minor ailments—a slight heart murmur or a\n trace of albumin in the urine—but nothing of any significance. On the\n whole they were a remarkably healthy bunch of individuals, much more so\n than an average sample of the population. Then I made a searching\n inquiry into their personal life. Here again I drew a blank. They had no\n particular financial worries. Their sex life was generally satisfactory.\n There was no history of mental illness in the family. In fact, the only\n thing that seemed to be the matter with them was that there were times\n when they felt like hell.\n\n\n LATHAM. I suppose you tried tranquilizers?", "NIEMAND. I suppose you might say my main job today is to find out all I\n can between activity on the Sun and various forms of activity on the\n Earth.\n\n\n LATHAM. What do you mean by activity on the Sun?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Well, a sunspot is a form of solar activity.\n\n\n LATHAM. Just what is a sunspot?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'm afraid I can't say just what a sunspot is. I can only\n describe it. A sunspot is a region on the Sun that is cooler than its\n surroundings. That's why it looks dark. It isn't so hot. Therefore not\n so bright.\n\n\n LATHAM. Isn't it true that the number of spots on the Sun rises and\n falls in a cycle of eleven years?", "Association for the Advancement of Science in New York, Dr. Niemand\n delivered a paper entitled simply, \"On the Nature of the Solar\n S-Regions.\" Owing to its unassuming title the startling implications\n contained in the paper were completely overlooked by the press. These\n implications are discussed here in an exclusive interview with Dr.\n Niemand by Philip Latham.\nLATHAM. Dr. Niemand, what would you say is your main job?", "NIEMAND. It certainly did. It looked as if we were headed back to the\n Middle Ages when astrology and medicine went hand in hand. But since it\n was our only lead we had no other choice but to follow it regardless of\n the consequences. Here luck played somewhat of a part, for Hillyard\n happened to have a contact that proved invaluable to us. Several years\n before Hillyard had gotten to know a young astrophysicist, Henry\n Middletown, who had come to him suffering from a severe case of myositis\n in the arms and shoulders. Hillyard had been able to effect a complete\n cure for which the boy was very grateful, and they had kept up a\n desultory correspondence. Middletown was now specializing in radio\n astronomy at the government's new solar observatory on Turtle Back\n Mountain in Arizona. If it had not been for Middletown's help I'm afraid\n our investigation would never have gotten past the clinical stage.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way was Middletown of assistance?", "LATHAM. And so you believe that the S-Regions are the cause of most of\n the present trouble in the world. That it is not ourselves but something\n outside ourselves—\n\n\n NIEMAND. That is the logical outcome of our investigation. We are\n controlled and swayed by forces which in many cases we are powerless to\n resist.\n\n\n LATHAM. Could we not be warned of the presence of an S-Region?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The trouble is they seem to develop at random on the Sun. I'm\n afraid any warning system would be worse than useless. We would be\n crying WOLF! all the time.\n\n\n LATHAM. How may a person who is not particularly susceptible to this\n malignant radiation know that one of these regions is active?", "NIEMAND. The S-Regions are invisible to the eye through an\noptical\ntelescope, but are detected with ease by a\nradio\ntelescope. Middletown\n had discovered them when he was a graduate student working on radio\n astronomy in Australia, and he had followed up his researches with the\n more powerful equipment at Turtle Back Mountain. The formation of an\n S-Region is heralded by a long series of bursts of a few seconds\n duration, when the radiation may increase up to several thousand times\n that of the background intensity. These noise storms have been recorded\n simultaneously on wavelengths of from one to fifteen meters, which so\n far is the upper limit of the observations. In a few instances, however,\n intense bursts have also been detected down to fifty cm.\n\n\n LATHAM. I believe you said the periods of mental disturbance last for\n about ten or twelve days. How does that tie-in with the S-Regions?", "NIEMAND. I said that the lines drawn down through the days of greatest\n mental disturbance slanted slightly. On this second chart the squares\n were dated under one another not at intervals of twenty-seven days, but\n at intervals of twenty-seven point three days.\n\n\n LATHAM. Why is that so important?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Because the average period of solar rotation in the sunspot\n zone is not twenty-seven days but twenty-seven point three days. And on\n this chart the lines did not slant but went vertically downward. The\n correlation with the synodic rotation of the Sun was practically\n perfect.\n\n\n LATHAM. But how did you get onto the S-Regions?", "DISTURBING SUN\nBy PHILIP LATHAM\nIllustrated by Freas\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science\n Fiction May 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThis, be it understood, is fiction—nothing but fiction—and not,\n under any circumstances, to be considered as having any truth\n whatever to it. It's obviously utterly impossible ... isn't it?\nAn interview with Dr. I. M. Niemand, Director of the Psychophysical\n Institute of Solar and Terrestrial Relations, Camarillo, California.\nIn the closing days of December, 1957, at the meeting of the American", "NIEMAND. Perhaps I'd better go back to the beginning. Let me see.... It\n all started back in March, 1955, when I started getting patients\n suffering from a complex of symptoms, such as profound mental\n depression, anxiety, insomnia, alternating with fits of violent rage and\n resentment against life and the world in general. These people were\n deeply disturbed. No doubt about that. Yet they were not psychotic and\n hardly more than mildly neurotic. Now every doctor gets a good many\n patients of this type. Such a syndrome is characteristic of menopausal\n women and some men during the climacteric, but these people failed to\n fit into this picture. They were married and single persons of both\n sexes and of all ages. They came from all walks of life. The onset of", "NIEMAND. A few. There is unquestionably a correlation between\n sunspots and disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field ... radio\n fade-outs ... auroras ... things like that.\n\n\n LATHAM. Now, Dr. Niemand, I understand that you have been investigating\n solar and terrestrial relationships along rather unorthodox lines.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Yes, I suppose some people would say so.\n\n\n LATHAM. You have broken new ground?\n\n\n NIEMAND. That's true.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way have your investigations differed from those of\n others?", "NIEMAND. Middletown was immediately struck by the resemblance between\n the chart of mental disturbance and one he had been plotting over the\n years from his radio observations. Now when he compared the two charts\n the resemblance between the two was unmistakable. The pattern shown by\n the chart of mental disturbance corresponded in a striking way with the\n solar chart but with this difference. The disturbances on the Earth\n started two days later on the average than the disturbances due to the\n S-Regions on the Sun. In other words, there was a lag of about\n forty-eight hours between the two. But otherwise they were almost\n identical.\n\n\n LATHAM. But if these S-Regions of Middletown's are invisible how could\n he detect them?" ], [ "NIEMAND. It certainly did. It looked as if we were headed back to the\n Middle Ages when astrology and medicine went hand in hand. But since it\n was our only lead we had no other choice but to follow it regardless of\n the consequences. Here luck played somewhat of a part, for Hillyard\n happened to have a contact that proved invaluable to us. Several years\n before Hillyard had gotten to know a young astrophysicist, Henry\n Middletown, who had come to him suffering from a severe case of myositis\n in the arms and shoulders. Hillyard had been able to effect a complete\n cure for which the boy was very grateful, and they had kept up a\n desultory correspondence. Middletown was now specializing in radio\n astronomy at the government's new solar observatory on Turtle Back\n Mountain in Arizona. If it had not been for Middletown's help I'm afraid\n our investigation would never have gotten past the clinical stage.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way was Middletown of assistance?", "NIEMAND. Naturally I said nothing of this to my patients. I did,\n however, take pains to impress upon them the necessity of keeping an\n exact record of the onset of an attack. The better records they kept the\n more conclusive was the evidence. Men and women were experiencing nearly\n simultaneous attacks of rage and depression all over southern\n California, which was as far as my practice extended. One day it\n occurred to me: if people a few miles apart could be stricken\n simultaneously, why not people hundreds or thousands of miles apart? It\n was this idea that prompted me to get in touch with an old colleague of\n mine I had known at UC medical school, Dr. Max Hillyard, who was in\n practice in Utica, New York.\n\n\n LATHAM. With what result?", "NIEMAND. It was the old case of workers in one field of science being\n completely ignorant of what was going on in another field. Someday we\n will have to establish a clearing house in science instead of keeping it\n in tight little compartments as we do at present. Well, Hillyard and I\n packed up for Arizona with considerable misgivings. We were afraid\n Middletown wouldn't take our findings seriously but somewhat to our\n surprise he heard our story with the closest attention. I guess\n astronomers have gotten so used to hearing from flying saucer\n enthusiasts and science-fiction addicts that nothing surprises them any\n more. When we had finished he asked to see our records. Hillyard had\n them all set down for easy numerical tabulation. Middletown went to work\n with scarcely a word. Within an hour he had produced a chart that was\n simply astounding.\nLATHAM. Can you describe this chart for us?", "LATHAM. You must have done something for your patients—\n\n\n NIEMAND. A doctor must always do something for the patients who come to\n his office seeking help. First I gave them a thorough physical\n examination. I turned up some minor ailments—a slight heart murmur or a\n trace of albumin in the urine—but nothing of any significance. On the\n whole they were a remarkably healthy bunch of individuals, much more so\n than an average sample of the population. Then I made a searching\n inquiry into their personal life. Here again I drew a blank. They had no\n particular financial worries. Their sex life was generally satisfactory.\n There was no history of mental illness in the family. In fact, the only\n thing that seemed to be the matter with them was that there were times\n when they felt like hell.\n\n\n LATHAM. I suppose you tried tranquilizers?", "NIEMAND. In every case of a simultaneous attack the Sun was shining at\n both New York and California.\n\n\n LATHAM. You mean if it was cloudy—\n\n\n NIEMAND. No, no. The weather had nothing to do with it. I mean the Sun\n had to be above the horizon at both places. A person might undergo an\n attack soon after sunrise in New York but there would be no\n corresponding record of an attack in California where it was still dark.\n Conversely, a person might be stricken late in the afternoon in\n California without a corresponding attack in New York where the Sun had\n set. Dr. Hillyard and I had been searching desperately for a clue. We\n had both noticed that the attacks occurred only during the daylight\n hours but this had not seemed especially significant. Here we had\n evidence pointing directly to the source of trouble. It must have some\n connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. That must have had you badly puzzled at first.", "NIEMAND. It was the beginning. In most instances patients reported the\n attack struck with almost the impact of a physical blow. The prodromal\n symptoms were usually slight ... a sudden feeling of uneasiness and\n guilt ... hot and cold flashes ... dizziness ... double vision. Then\n this ghastly sense of depression coupled with a blind insensate rage at\n life. One man said he felt as if the world were closing in on him.\n Another that he felt the people around him were plotting his\n destruction. One housewife made her husband lock her in her room for\n fear she would injure the children. I pored over these case histories\n for a long time getting absolutely nowhere. Then finally a pattern began\n to emerge.\nLATHAM. What sort of pattern?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The first thing that struck me was that the attacks all\n occurred during the daytime, between the hours of about seven in the\n morning and five in the evening. Then there were these coincidences—\n\n\n LATHAM. Coincidences?", "NIEMAND. I was afraid the result would be that my old roommate would\n think I had gone completely crazy. Imagine my surprise and gratification\n on receiving an answer by return mail to the effect that he also had\n been getting an increasing number of patients suffering with the same\n identical symptoms as my own. Furthermore, upon exchanging records we\ndid\nfind that in many cases patients three thousand miles apart had\n been stricken simultaneously—\n\n\n LATHAM. Just a minute. I would like to know how you define\n \"simultaneous.\"\n\n\n NIEMAND. We say an attack is simultaneous when one occurred on the east\n coast, for example, not earlier or later than five minutes of an attack\n on the west coast. That is about as close as you can hope to time a\n subjective effect of this nature. And now another fact emerged which\n gave us another clue.\n\n\n LATHAM. Which was?", "NIEMAND. Middletown was immediately struck by the resemblance between\n the chart of mental disturbance and one he had been plotting over the\n years from his radio observations. Now when he compared the two charts\n the resemblance between the two was unmistakable. The pattern shown by\n the chart of mental disturbance corresponded in a striking way with the\n solar chart but with this difference. The disturbances on the Earth\n started two days later on the average than the disturbances due to the\n S-Regions on the Sun. In other words, there was a lag of about\n forty-eight hours between the two. But otherwise they were almost\n identical.\n\n\n LATHAM. But if these S-Regions of Middletown's are invisible how could\n he detect them?", "NIEMAND. If you have a feeling of restlessness and anxiety, if you are\n unable to concentrate, if you feel suddenly depressed and discouraged\n about yourself, or are filled with resentment toward the world, then you\n may be pretty sure that an S-Region is passing across the face of the\n Sun. Keep a tight rein on yourself. For it seems that evil will always\n be with us ... as long as the Sun shall continue to shine upon this\n little world.\nTHE END\n[A]\n Middletown believes that the Intense radiation recently\n discovered from information derived from Explorer I and III has no\n connection with the corpuscular S-radiation.", "NIEMAND. We doubt it. As I said before, the charts show a lag of about\n forty-eight hours between the development of an S-Region and the onset\n of mental disturbance. This indicates that the malignant energy\n emanating from an S-Region consists of some highly penetrating form of\n corpuscular radiation, as yet unidentified.\n [A]\n\n\n LATHAM. A question that puzzles me is why some people are affected by\n the S-Regions while others are not.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Our latest results indicate that probably\nno one\nis\n completely immune. All are affected in\nsome\ndegree. Just why some\n should be affected so much more than others is still a matter of\n speculation.\n\n\n LATHAM. How long does an S-Region last?", "LATHAM. Aren't such attacks characteristic of the stress and strain of\n modern life?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'm afraid that old stress-and-strain theory has been badly\n overworked. Been hearing about it ever since I was a pre-med student at\n ucla\n . Even as a boy I can remember my grandfather deploring the stress\n and strain of modern life when he was a country doctor practicing in\n Indiana. In my opinion one of the most valuable contributions\n anthropologists have made in recent years is the discovery that\n primitive man is afflicted with essentially the same neurotic conditions\n as those of us who live a so-called civilized life. They have found\n savages displaying every symptom of a nervous breakdown among the\n mountain tribes of the Elgonyi and the Aruntas of Australia. No, Mr.\n Latham, it's time the stress-and-strain theory was relegated to the junk\n pile along with demoniac possession and blood letting.", "NIEMAND. The S-Regions are invisible to the eye through an\noptical\ntelescope, but are detected with ease by a\nradio\ntelescope. Middletown\n had discovered them when he was a graduate student working on radio\n astronomy in Australia, and he had followed up his researches with the\n more powerful equipment at Turtle Back Mountain. The formation of an\n S-Region is heralded by a long series of bursts of a few seconds\n duration, when the radiation may increase up to several thousand times\n that of the background intensity. These noise storms have been recorded\n simultaneously on wavelengths of from one to fifteen meters, which so\n far is the upper limit of the observations. In a few instances, however,\n intense bursts have also been detected down to fifty cm.\n\n\n LATHAM. I believe you said the periods of mental disturbance last for\n about ten or twelve days. How does that tie-in with the S-Regions?", "NIEMAND. It was really quite simple. But if it had not been for\n Middletown's experience in charting other solar phenomena it would never\n have occurred to us to do it. First, he laid out a series of about\n thirty squares horizontally across a sheet of graph paper. He dated\n these beginning March 1, 1955, when our records began. In each square he\n put a number from 1 to 10 that was a rough index of the number and\n intensity of the attacks reported on that day. Then he laid out another\n horizontal row below the first one dated twenty-seven days later. That\n is, the square under March 1st in the top row was dated March 28th in\n the row below it. He filled in the chart until he had an array of dozens\n of rows that included all our data down to May, 1958.", "NIEMAND. Perhaps I'd better go back to the beginning. Let me see.... It\n all started back in March, 1955, when I started getting patients\n suffering from a complex of symptoms, such as profound mental\n depression, anxiety, insomnia, alternating with fits of violent rage and\n resentment against life and the world in general. These people were\n deeply disturbed. No doubt about that. Yet they were not psychotic and\n hardly more than mildly neurotic. Now every doctor gets a good many\n patients of this type. Such a syndrome is characteristic of menopausal\n women and some men during the climacteric, but these people failed to\n fit into this picture. They were married and single persons of both\n sexes and of all ages. They came from all walks of life. The onset of", "NIEMAND. Total strangers miles apart were stricken at almost the same\n moment. At first I thought nothing of it but as my records accumulated I\n became convinced it could not be attributed to chance. A mathematical\n analysis showed the number of coincidences followed a Poisson\n distribution very closely. I couldn't possibly see what daylight had to\n do with it. There is some evidence that mental patients are most\n disturbed around the time of full moon, but a search of medical\n literature failed to reveal any connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. What did you do?", "LATHAM. And so you believe that the S-Regions are the cause of most of\n the present trouble in the world. That it is not ourselves but something\n outside ourselves—\n\n\n NIEMAND. That is the logical outcome of our investigation. We are\n controlled and swayed by forces which in many cases we are powerless to\n resist.\n\n\n LATHAM. Could we not be warned of the presence of an S-Region?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The trouble is they seem to develop at random on the Sun. I'm\n afraid any warning system would be worse than useless. We would be\n crying WOLF! all the time.\n\n\n LATHAM. How may a person who is not particularly susceptible to this\n malignant radiation know that one of these regions is active?", "their attack was invariably sudden and with scarcely any warning. They\n would be going about their work feeling perfectly all right. Then in a\n minute the whole world was like some scene from a nightmare. A week or\n ten days later the attack would cease as mysteriously as it had come and\n they would be their old self again.", "NIEMAND. A few. There is unquestionably a correlation between\n sunspots and disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field ... radio\n fade-outs ... auroras ... things like that.\n\n\n LATHAM. Now, Dr. Niemand, I understand that you have been investigating\n solar and terrestrial relationships along rather unorthodox lines.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Yes, I suppose some people would say so.\n\n\n LATHAM. You have broken new ground?\n\n\n NIEMAND. That's true.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way have your investigations differed from those of\n others?", "NIEMAND. Well, they're common enough, goodness knows. As old as the\n world, in fact. Yet strangely enough it's hard to describe them in exact\n terms.\n\n\n LATHAM. Can you give us a general idea?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'll try. Let's see ... remember that speech from \"Julius\n Caesar\" where Cassius is bewailing the evil times that beset ancient\n Rome? I believe it went like this: \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.\"\n\n\n LATHAM. I'm afraid I don't see—\n\n\n NIEMAND. Well, Shakespeare would have been nearer the truth if he had\n put it the other way around. \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n ourselves but in our stars\" or better \"in the Sun.\"\nLATHAM. In the Sun?", "NIEMAND. Oh, yes. In a few cases in which I tried tranquilizing pills of\n the meprobamate type there was some slight improvement. I want to\n emphasize, however, that I do not believe in prescribing shotgun\n remedies for a patient. To my way of thinking it is a lazy slipshod way\n of carrying on the practice of medicine. The only thing for which I do\n give myself credit was that I asked my patients to keep a detailed\n record of their symptoms taking special care to note the time of\n exacerbation—increase in the severity of the symptoms—as accurately as\n possible.\n\n\n LATHAM. And this gave you a clue?" ], [ "NIEMAND. It certainly did. It looked as if we were headed back to the\n Middle Ages when astrology and medicine went hand in hand. But since it\n was our only lead we had no other choice but to follow it regardless of\n the consequences. Here luck played somewhat of a part, for Hillyard\n happened to have a contact that proved invaluable to us. Several years\n before Hillyard had gotten to know a young astrophysicist, Henry\n Middletown, who had come to him suffering from a severe case of myositis\n in the arms and shoulders. Hillyard had been able to effect a complete\n cure for which the boy was very grateful, and they had kept up a\n desultory correspondence. Middletown was now specializing in radio\n astronomy at the government's new solar observatory on Turtle Back\n Mountain in Arizona. If it had not been for Middletown's help I'm afraid\n our investigation would never have gotten past the clinical stage.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way was Middletown of assistance?", "NIEMAND. Naturally I said nothing of this to my patients. I did,\n however, take pains to impress upon them the necessity of keeping an\n exact record of the onset of an attack. The better records they kept the\n more conclusive was the evidence. Men and women were experiencing nearly\n simultaneous attacks of rage and depression all over southern\n California, which was as far as my practice extended. One day it\n occurred to me: if people a few miles apart could be stricken\n simultaneously, why not people hundreds or thousands of miles apart? It\n was this idea that prompted me to get in touch with an old colleague of\n mine I had known at UC medical school, Dr. Max Hillyard, who was in\n practice in Utica, New York.\n\n\n LATHAM. With what result?", "NIEMAND. It was the old case of workers in one field of science being\n completely ignorant of what was going on in another field. Someday we\n will have to establish a clearing house in science instead of keeping it\n in tight little compartments as we do at present. Well, Hillyard and I\n packed up for Arizona with considerable misgivings. We were afraid\n Middletown wouldn't take our findings seriously but somewhat to our\n surprise he heard our story with the closest attention. I guess\n astronomers have gotten so used to hearing from flying saucer\n enthusiasts and science-fiction addicts that nothing surprises them any\n more. When we had finished he asked to see our records. Hillyard had\n them all set down for easy numerical tabulation. Middletown went to work\n with scarcely a word. Within an hour he had produced a chart that was\n simply astounding.\nLATHAM. Can you describe this chart for us?", "NIEMAND. Middletown was immediately struck by the resemblance between\n the chart of mental disturbance and one he had been plotting over the\n years from his radio observations. Now when he compared the two charts\n the resemblance between the two was unmistakable. The pattern shown by\n the chart of mental disturbance corresponded in a striking way with the\n solar chart but with this difference. The disturbances on the Earth\n started two days later on the average than the disturbances due to the\n S-Regions on the Sun. In other words, there was a lag of about\n forty-eight hours between the two. But otherwise they were almost\n identical.\n\n\n LATHAM. But if these S-Regions of Middletown's are invisible how could\n he detect them?", "NIEMAND. It was the beginning. In most instances patients reported the\n attack struck with almost the impact of a physical blow. The prodromal\n symptoms were usually slight ... a sudden feeling of uneasiness and\n guilt ... hot and cold flashes ... dizziness ... double vision. Then\n this ghastly sense of depression coupled with a blind insensate rage at\n life. One man said he felt as if the world were closing in on him.\n Another that he felt the people around him were plotting his\n destruction. One housewife made her husband lock her in her room for\n fear she would injure the children. I pored over these case histories\n for a long time getting absolutely nowhere. Then finally a pattern began\n to emerge.\nLATHAM. What sort of pattern?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The first thing that struck me was that the attacks all\n occurred during the daytime, between the hours of about seven in the\n morning and five in the evening. Then there were these coincidences—\n\n\n LATHAM. Coincidences?", "LATHAM. You must have done something for your patients—\n\n\n NIEMAND. A doctor must always do something for the patients who come to\n his office seeking help. First I gave them a thorough physical\n examination. I turned up some minor ailments—a slight heart murmur or a\n trace of albumin in the urine—but nothing of any significance. On the\n whole they were a remarkably healthy bunch of individuals, much more so\n than an average sample of the population. Then I made a searching\n inquiry into their personal life. Here again I drew a blank. They had no\n particular financial worries. Their sex life was generally satisfactory.\n There was no history of mental illness in the family. In fact, the only\n thing that seemed to be the matter with them was that there were times\n when they felt like hell.\n\n\n LATHAM. I suppose you tried tranquilizers?", "LATHAM. Aren't such attacks characteristic of the stress and strain of\n modern life?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'm afraid that old stress-and-strain theory has been badly\n overworked. Been hearing about it ever since I was a pre-med student at\n ucla\n . Even as a boy I can remember my grandfather deploring the stress\n and strain of modern life when he was a country doctor practicing in\n Indiana. In my opinion one of the most valuable contributions\n anthropologists have made in recent years is the discovery that\n primitive man is afflicted with essentially the same neurotic conditions\n as those of us who live a so-called civilized life. They have found\n savages displaying every symptom of a nervous breakdown among the\n mountain tribes of the Elgonyi and the Aruntas of Australia. No, Mr.\n Latham, it's time the stress-and-strain theory was relegated to the junk\n pile along with demoniac possession and blood letting.", "NIEMAND. I was afraid the result would be that my old roommate would\n think I had gone completely crazy. Imagine my surprise and gratification\n on receiving an answer by return mail to the effect that he also had\n been getting an increasing number of patients suffering with the same\n identical symptoms as my own. Furthermore, upon exchanging records we\ndid\nfind that in many cases patients three thousand miles apart had\n been stricken simultaneously—\n\n\n LATHAM. Just a minute. I would like to know how you define\n \"simultaneous.\"\n\n\n NIEMAND. We say an attack is simultaneous when one occurred on the east\n coast, for example, not earlier or later than five minutes of an attack\n on the west coast. That is about as close as you can hope to time a\n subjective effect of this nature. And now another fact emerged which\n gave us another clue.\n\n\n LATHAM. Which was?", "NIEMAND. If you have a feeling of restlessness and anxiety, if you are\n unable to concentrate, if you feel suddenly depressed and discouraged\n about yourself, or are filled with resentment toward the world, then you\n may be pretty sure that an S-Region is passing across the face of the\n Sun. Keep a tight rein on yourself. For it seems that evil will always\n be with us ... as long as the Sun shall continue to shine upon this\n little world.\nTHE END\n[A]\n Middletown believes that the Intense radiation recently\n discovered from information derived from Explorer I and III has no\n connection with the corpuscular S-radiation.", "NIEMAND. The S-Regions are invisible to the eye through an\noptical\ntelescope, but are detected with ease by a\nradio\ntelescope. Middletown\n had discovered them when he was a graduate student working on radio\n astronomy in Australia, and he had followed up his researches with the\n more powerful equipment at Turtle Back Mountain. The formation of an\n S-Region is heralded by a long series of bursts of a few seconds\n duration, when the radiation may increase up to several thousand times\n that of the background intensity. These noise storms have been recorded\n simultaneously on wavelengths of from one to fifteen meters, which so\n far is the upper limit of the observations. In a few instances, however,\n intense bursts have also been detected down to fifty cm.\n\n\n LATHAM. I believe you said the periods of mental disturbance last for\n about ten or twelve days. How does that tie-in with the S-Regions?", "NIEMAND. It was really quite simple. But if it had not been for\n Middletown's experience in charting other solar phenomena it would never\n have occurred to us to do it. First, he laid out a series of about\n thirty squares horizontally across a sheet of graph paper. He dated\n these beginning March 1, 1955, when our records began. In each square he\n put a number from 1 to 10 that was a rough index of the number and\n intensity of the attacks reported on that day. Then he laid out another\n horizontal row below the first one dated twenty-seven days later. That\n is, the square under March 1st in the top row was dated March 28th in\n the row below it. He filled in the chart until he had an array of dozens\n of rows that included all our data down to May, 1958.", "NIEMAND. In every case of a simultaneous attack the Sun was shining at\n both New York and California.\n\n\n LATHAM. You mean if it was cloudy—\n\n\n NIEMAND. No, no. The weather had nothing to do with it. I mean the Sun\n had to be above the horizon at both places. A person might undergo an\n attack soon after sunrise in New York but there would be no\n corresponding record of an attack in California where it was still dark.\n Conversely, a person might be stricken late in the afternoon in\n California without a corresponding attack in New York where the Sun had\n set. Dr. Hillyard and I had been searching desperately for a clue. We\n had both noticed that the attacks occurred only during the daylight\n hours but this had not seemed especially significant. Here we had\n evidence pointing directly to the source of trouble. It must have some\n connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. That must have had you badly puzzled at first.", "NIEMAND. What reasons?\n\n\n LATHAM. Well, disputes over boundaries ... economic rivalry ... border\n incidents....\n\n\n NIEMAND. Nonsense. Men always make some flimsy excuse for going to war.\n The truth of the matter is that men go to war because they want to go\n to war. They can't help themselves. They are impelled by forces over\n which they have no control. By forces outside of themselves.\n\n\n LATHAM. Those are broad, sweeping statements. Can't you be more\n specific?", "NIEMAND. Well, they're common enough, goodness knows. As old as the\n world, in fact. Yet strangely enough it's hard to describe them in exact\n terms.\n\n\n LATHAM. Can you give us a general idea?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'll try. Let's see ... remember that speech from \"Julius\n Caesar\" where Cassius is bewailing the evil times that beset ancient\n Rome? I believe it went like this: \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.\"\n\n\n LATHAM. I'm afraid I don't see—\n\n\n NIEMAND. Well, Shakespeare would have been nearer the truth if he had\n put it the other way around. \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n ourselves but in our stars\" or better \"in the Sun.\"\nLATHAM. In the Sun?", "NIEMAND. Perhaps I'd better go back to the beginning. Let me see.... It\n all started back in March, 1955, when I started getting patients\n suffering from a complex of symptoms, such as profound mental\n depression, anxiety, insomnia, alternating with fits of violent rage and\n resentment against life and the world in general. These people were\n deeply disturbed. No doubt about that. Yet they were not psychotic and\n hardly more than mildly neurotic. Now every doctor gets a good many\n patients of this type. Such a syndrome is characteristic of menopausal\n women and some men during the climacteric, but these people failed to\n fit into this picture. They were married and single persons of both\n sexes and of all ages. They came from all walks of life. The onset of", "NIEMAND. We doubt it. As I said before, the charts show a lag of about\n forty-eight hours between the development of an S-Region and the onset\n of mental disturbance. This indicates that the malignant energy\n emanating from an S-Region consists of some highly penetrating form of\n corpuscular radiation, as yet unidentified.\n [A]\n\n\n LATHAM. A question that puzzles me is why some people are affected by\n the S-Regions while others are not.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Our latest results indicate that probably\nno one\nis\n completely immune. All are affected in\nsome\ndegree. Just why some\n should be affected so much more than others is still a matter of\n speculation.\n\n\n LATHAM. How long does an S-Region last?", "NIEMAND. Total strangers miles apart were stricken at almost the same\n moment. At first I thought nothing of it but as my records accumulated I\n became convinced it could not be attributed to chance. A mathematical\n analysis showed the number of coincidences followed a Poisson\n distribution very closely. I couldn't possibly see what daylight had to\n do with it. There is some evidence that mental patients are most\n disturbed around the time of full moon, but a search of medical\n literature failed to reveal any connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. What did you do?", "NIEMAND. A few. There is unquestionably a correlation between\n sunspots and disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field ... radio\n fade-outs ... auroras ... things like that.\n\n\n LATHAM. Now, Dr. Niemand, I understand that you have been investigating\n solar and terrestrial relationships along rather unorthodox lines.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Yes, I suppose some people would say so.\n\n\n LATHAM. You have broken new ground?\n\n\n NIEMAND. That's true.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way have your investigations differed from those of\n others?", "Association for the Advancement of Science in New York, Dr. Niemand\n delivered a paper entitled simply, \"On the Nature of the Solar\n S-Regions.\" Owing to its unassuming title the startling implications\n contained in the paper were completely overlooked by the press. These\n implications are discussed here in an exclusive interview with Dr.\n Niemand by Philip Latham.\nLATHAM. Dr. Niemand, what would you say is your main job?", "NIEMAND. That's right, in the Sun. I suppose the oldest problem in the\n world is the origin of human evil. Philosophers have wrestled with it\n ever since the days of Job. And like Job they have usually given up in\n despair, convinced that the origin of evil is too deep for the human\n mind to solve. Generally they have concluded that man is inherently\n wicked and sinful and that is the end of it. Now for the first time\n science has thrown new light on this subject.\n\n\n LATHAM. How is that?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Consider the record of history. There are occasional periods\n when conditions are fairly calm and peaceful. Art and industry\n flourished. Man at last seemed to be making progress toward some higher\n goal. Then suddenly—\nfor no detectable reason\n—conditions are\n reversed. Wars rage. People go mad. The world is plunged into an orgy of\n bloodshed and misery.\n\n\n LATHAM. But weren't there reasons?" ], [ "NIEMAND. I said that the lines drawn down through the days of greatest\n mental disturbance slanted slightly. On this second chart the squares\n were dated under one another not at intervals of twenty-seven days, but\n at intervals of twenty-seven point three days.\n\n\n LATHAM. Why is that so important?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Because the average period of solar rotation in the sunspot\n zone is not twenty-seven days but twenty-seven point three days. And on\n this chart the lines did not slant but went vertically downward. The\n correlation with the synodic rotation of the Sun was practically\n perfect.\n\n\n LATHAM. But how did you get onto the S-Regions?", "NIEMAND. It was really quite simple. But if it had not been for\n Middletown's experience in charting other solar phenomena it would never\n have occurred to us to do it. First, he laid out a series of about\n thirty squares horizontally across a sheet of graph paper. He dated\n these beginning March 1, 1955, when our records began. In each square he\n put a number from 1 to 10 that was a rough index of the number and\n intensity of the attacks reported on that day. Then he laid out another\n horizontal row below the first one dated twenty-seven days later. That\n is, the square under March 1st in the top row was dated March 28th in\n the row below it. He filled in the chart until he had an array of dozens\n of rows that included all our data down to May, 1958.", "When Middletown had finished it was easy to see that the squares of\n highest index number did not fall at random on the chart. Instead they\n fell in slightly slanting parallel series so that you could draw\n straight lines down through them. The connection with the Sun was\n obvious.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Why, because twenty-seven days is about the synodic period of\n solar rotation. That is, if you see a large spot at the center of the\n Sun's disk today, there is a good chance if it survives that you will\n see it at the same place twenty-seven days later. But that night\n Middletown produced another chart that showed the connection with the\n Sun in a way that was even more convincing.\n\n\n LATHAM. How was that?", "NIEMAND. It was the beginning. In most instances patients reported the\n attack struck with almost the impact of a physical blow. The prodromal\n symptoms were usually slight ... a sudden feeling of uneasiness and\n guilt ... hot and cold flashes ... dizziness ... double vision. Then\n this ghastly sense of depression coupled with a blind insensate rage at\n life. One man said he felt as if the world were closing in on him.\n Another that he felt the people around him were plotting his\n destruction. One housewife made her husband lock her in her room for\n fear she would injure the children. I pored over these case histories\n for a long time getting absolutely nowhere. Then finally a pattern began\n to emerge.\nLATHAM. What sort of pattern?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The first thing that struck me was that the attacks all\n occurred during the daytime, between the hours of about seven in the\n morning and five in the evening. Then there were these coincidences—\n\n\n LATHAM. Coincidences?", "NIEMAND. The S-Regions are invisible to the eye through an\noptical\ntelescope, but are detected with ease by a\nradio\ntelescope. Middletown\n had discovered them when he was a graduate student working on radio\n astronomy in Australia, and he had followed up his researches with the\n more powerful equipment at Turtle Back Mountain. The formation of an\n S-Region is heralded by a long series of bursts of a few seconds\n duration, when the radiation may increase up to several thousand times\n that of the background intensity. These noise storms have been recorded\n simultaneously on wavelengths of from one to fifteen meters, which so\n far is the upper limit of the observations. In a few instances, however,\n intense bursts have also been detected down to fifty cm.\n\n\n LATHAM. I believe you said the periods of mental disturbance last for\n about ten or twelve days. How does that tie-in with the S-Regions?", "NIEMAND. Well, they're common enough, goodness knows. As old as the\n world, in fact. Yet strangely enough it's hard to describe them in exact\n terms.\n\n\n LATHAM. Can you give us a general idea?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'll try. Let's see ... remember that speech from \"Julius\n Caesar\" where Cassius is bewailing the evil times that beset ancient\n Rome? I believe it went like this: \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.\"\n\n\n LATHAM. I'm afraid I don't see—\n\n\n NIEMAND. Well, Shakespeare would have been nearer the truth if he had\n put it the other way around. \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n ourselves but in our stars\" or better \"in the Sun.\"\nLATHAM. In the Sun?", "NIEMAND. In every case of a simultaneous attack the Sun was shining at\n both New York and California.\n\n\n LATHAM. You mean if it was cloudy—\n\n\n NIEMAND. No, no. The weather had nothing to do with it. I mean the Sun\n had to be above the horizon at both places. A person might undergo an\n attack soon after sunrise in New York but there would be no\n corresponding record of an attack in California where it was still dark.\n Conversely, a person might be stricken late in the afternoon in\n California without a corresponding attack in New York where the Sun had\n set. Dr. Hillyard and I had been searching desperately for a clue. We\n had both noticed that the attacks occurred only during the daylight\n hours but this had not seemed especially significant. Here we had\n evidence pointing directly to the source of trouble. It must have some\n connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. That must have had you badly puzzled at first.", "NIEMAND. The number of spots on the Sun rises and falls in a cycle of\nabout\neleven years. That word\nabout\nmakes quite a difference.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way?\n\n\n NIEMAND. It means you can only approximately predict the future course\n of sunspot activity. Sunspots are mighty treacherous things.\n\n\n LATHAM. Haven't there been a great many correlations announced between\n sunspots and various effects on the Earth?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Scores of them.\n\n\n LATHAM. What is your opinion of these correlations?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Pure bosh in most cases.\n\n\n LATHAM. But some are valid?", "NIEMAND. I suppose you might say my main job today is to find out all I\n can between activity on the Sun and various forms of activity on the\n Earth.\n\n\n LATHAM. What do you mean by activity on the Sun?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Well, a sunspot is a form of solar activity.\n\n\n LATHAM. Just what is a sunspot?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'm afraid I can't say just what a sunspot is. I can only\n describe it. A sunspot is a region on the Sun that is cooler than its\n surroundings. That's why it looks dark. It isn't so hot. Therefore not\n so bright.\n\n\n LATHAM. Isn't it true that the number of spots on the Sun rises and\n falls in a cycle of eleven years?", "NIEMAND. Total strangers miles apart were stricken at almost the same\n moment. At first I thought nothing of it but as my records accumulated I\n became convinced it could not be attributed to chance. A mathematical\n analysis showed the number of coincidences followed a Poisson\n distribution very closely. I couldn't possibly see what daylight had to\n do with it. There is some evidence that mental patients are most\n disturbed around the time of full moon, but a search of medical\n literature failed to reveal any connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. What did you do?", "NIEMAND. Very closely. You see it takes about twelve days for an\n S-Region to pass across the face of the Sun, since the synodic rotation\n is twenty-seven point three days.\n\n\n LATHAM. I should think it would be nearer thirteen or fourteen days.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Apparently an S-Region is not particularly effective when it is\n just coming on or just going off the disk of the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. Are the S-Regions associated with sunspots?\n\n\n NIEMAND. They are connected in this way: that sunspot activity and\n S-Region activity certainly go together. The more sunspots the more\n violent and intense is the S-Region activity. But there is not a\n one-to-one correspondence between sunspots and S-Regions. That is, you\n cannot connect a particular sunspot group with a particular S-Region.\n The same thing is true of sunspots and magnetic storms.", "their attack was invariably sudden and with scarcely any warning. They\n would be going about their work feeling perfectly all right. Then in a\n minute the whole world was like some scene from a nightmare. A week or\n ten days later the attack would cease as mysteriously as it had come and\n they would be their old self again.", "NIEMAND. We doubt it. As I said before, the charts show a lag of about\n forty-eight hours between the development of an S-Region and the onset\n of mental disturbance. This indicates that the malignant energy\n emanating from an S-Region consists of some highly penetrating form of\n corpuscular radiation, as yet unidentified.\n [A]\n\n\n LATHAM. A question that puzzles me is why some people are affected by\n the S-Regions while others are not.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Our latest results indicate that probably\nno one\nis\n completely immune. All are affected in\nsome\ndegree. Just why some\n should be affected so much more than others is still a matter of\n speculation.\n\n\n LATHAM. How long does an S-Region last?", "NIEMAND. Middletown was immediately struck by the resemblance between\n the chart of mental disturbance and one he had been plotting over the\n years from his radio observations. Now when he compared the two charts\n the resemblance between the two was unmistakable. The pattern shown by\n the chart of mental disturbance corresponded in a striking way with the\n solar chart but with this difference. The disturbances on the Earth\n started two days later on the average than the disturbances due to the\n S-Regions on the Sun. In other words, there was a lag of about\n forty-eight hours between the two. But otherwise they were almost\n identical.\n\n\n LATHAM. But if these S-Regions of Middletown's are invisible how could\n he detect them?", "NIEMAND. I was afraid the result would be that my old roommate would\n think I had gone completely crazy. Imagine my surprise and gratification\n on receiving an answer by return mail to the effect that he also had\n been getting an increasing number of patients suffering with the same\n identical symptoms as my own. Furthermore, upon exchanging records we\ndid\nfind that in many cases patients three thousand miles apart had\n been stricken simultaneously—\n\n\n LATHAM. Just a minute. I would like to know how you define\n \"simultaneous.\"\n\n\n NIEMAND. We say an attack is simultaneous when one occurred on the east\n coast, for example, not earlier or later than five minutes of an attack\n on the west coast. That is about as close as you can hope to time a\n subjective effect of this nature. And now another fact emerged which\n gave us another clue.\n\n\n LATHAM. Which was?", "LATHAM. And so you believe that the S-Regions are the cause of most of\n the present trouble in the world. That it is not ourselves but something\n outside ourselves—\n\n\n NIEMAND. That is the logical outcome of our investigation. We are\n controlled and swayed by forces which in many cases we are powerless to\n resist.\n\n\n LATHAM. Could we not be warned of the presence of an S-Region?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The trouble is they seem to develop at random on the Sun. I'm\n afraid any warning system would be worse than useless. We would be\n crying WOLF! all the time.\n\n\n LATHAM. How may a person who is not particularly susceptible to this\n malignant radiation know that one of these regions is active?", "NIEMAND. It certainly did. It looked as if we were headed back to the\n Middle Ages when astrology and medicine went hand in hand. But since it\n was our only lead we had no other choice but to follow it regardless of\n the consequences. Here luck played somewhat of a part, for Hillyard\n happened to have a contact that proved invaluable to us. Several years\n before Hillyard had gotten to know a young astrophysicist, Henry\n Middletown, who had come to him suffering from a severe case of myositis\n in the arms and shoulders. Hillyard had been able to effect a complete\n cure for which the boy was very grateful, and they had kept up a\n desultory correspondence. Middletown was now specializing in radio\n astronomy at the government's new solar observatory on Turtle Back\n Mountain in Arizona. If it had not been for Middletown's help I'm afraid\n our investigation would never have gotten past the clinical stage.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way was Middletown of assistance?", "NIEMAND. A few. There is unquestionably a correlation between\n sunspots and disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field ... radio\n fade-outs ... auroras ... things like that.\n\n\n LATHAM. Now, Dr. Niemand, I understand that you have been investigating\n solar and terrestrial relationships along rather unorthodox lines.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Yes, I suppose some people would say so.\n\n\n LATHAM. You have broken new ground?\n\n\n NIEMAND. That's true.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way have your investigations differed from those of\n others?", "NIEMAND. An S-Region may have a lifetime of from three to perhaps a\n dozen solar rotations. Then it dies out and for a time we are free from\n this malignant radiation. Then a new region develops in perhaps an\n entirely different region of the Sun. Sometimes there may be several\n different S-Regions all going at once.\n\n\n LATHAM. Why were not the S-Regions discovered long ago?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Because the radio exploration of the Sun only began since the\n end of World War II.\n\n\n LATHAM. How does it happen that you only got patients suffering from\n S-radiation since about 1955?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I think we did get such patients previously but not in large\n enough numbers to attract attention. Also the present sunspot cycle\n started its rise to maximum about 1954.\n\n\n LATHAM. Is there no way of escaping the S-radiation?", "NIEMAND. Naturally I said nothing of this to my patients. I did,\n however, take pains to impress upon them the necessity of keeping an\n exact record of the onset of an attack. The better records they kept the\n more conclusive was the evidence. Men and women were experiencing nearly\n simultaneous attacks of rage and depression all over southern\n California, which was as far as my practice extended. One day it\n occurred to me: if people a few miles apart could be stricken\n simultaneously, why not people hundreds or thousands of miles apart? It\n was this idea that prompted me to get in touch with an old colleague of\n mine I had known at UC medical school, Dr. Max Hillyard, who was in\n practice in Utica, New York.\n\n\n LATHAM. With what result?" ], [ "NIEMAND. Naturally I said nothing of this to my patients. I did,\n however, take pains to impress upon them the necessity of keeping an\n exact record of the onset of an attack. The better records they kept the\n more conclusive was the evidence. Men and women were experiencing nearly\n simultaneous attacks of rage and depression all over southern\n California, which was as far as my practice extended. One day it\n occurred to me: if people a few miles apart could be stricken\n simultaneously, why not people hundreds or thousands of miles apart? It\n was this idea that prompted me to get in touch with an old colleague of\n mine I had known at UC medical school, Dr. Max Hillyard, who was in\n practice in Utica, New York.\n\n\n LATHAM. With what result?", "NIEMAND. It certainly did. It looked as if we were headed back to the\n Middle Ages when astrology and medicine went hand in hand. But since it\n was our only lead we had no other choice but to follow it regardless of\n the consequences. Here luck played somewhat of a part, for Hillyard\n happened to have a contact that proved invaluable to us. Several years\n before Hillyard had gotten to know a young astrophysicist, Henry\n Middletown, who had come to him suffering from a severe case of myositis\n in the arms and shoulders. Hillyard had been able to effect a complete\n cure for which the boy was very grateful, and they had kept up a\n desultory correspondence. Middletown was now specializing in radio\n astronomy at the government's new solar observatory on Turtle Back\n Mountain in Arizona. If it had not been for Middletown's help I'm afraid\n our investigation would never have gotten past the clinical stage.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way was Middletown of assistance?", "NIEMAND. It was the old case of workers in one field of science being\n completely ignorant of what was going on in another field. Someday we\n will have to establish a clearing house in science instead of keeping it\n in tight little compartments as we do at present. Well, Hillyard and I\n packed up for Arizona with considerable misgivings. We were afraid\n Middletown wouldn't take our findings seriously but somewhat to our\n surprise he heard our story with the closest attention. I guess\n astronomers have gotten so used to hearing from flying saucer\n enthusiasts and science-fiction addicts that nothing surprises them any\n more. When we had finished he asked to see our records. Hillyard had\n them all set down for easy numerical tabulation. Middletown went to work\n with scarcely a word. Within an hour he had produced a chart that was\n simply astounding.\nLATHAM. Can you describe this chart for us?", "NIEMAND. In every case of a simultaneous attack the Sun was shining at\n both New York and California.\n\n\n LATHAM. You mean if it was cloudy—\n\n\n NIEMAND. No, no. The weather had nothing to do with it. I mean the Sun\n had to be above the horizon at both places. A person might undergo an\n attack soon after sunrise in New York but there would be no\n corresponding record of an attack in California where it was still dark.\n Conversely, a person might be stricken late in the afternoon in\n California without a corresponding attack in New York where the Sun had\n set. Dr. Hillyard and I had been searching desperately for a clue. We\n had both noticed that the attacks occurred only during the daylight\n hours but this had not seemed especially significant. Here we had\n evidence pointing directly to the source of trouble. It must have some\n connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. That must have had you badly puzzled at first.", "NIEMAND. It was the beginning. In most instances patients reported the\n attack struck with almost the impact of a physical blow. The prodromal\n symptoms were usually slight ... a sudden feeling of uneasiness and\n guilt ... hot and cold flashes ... dizziness ... double vision. Then\n this ghastly sense of depression coupled with a blind insensate rage at\n life. One man said he felt as if the world were closing in on him.\n Another that he felt the people around him were plotting his\n destruction. One housewife made her husband lock her in her room for\n fear she would injure the children. I pored over these case histories\n for a long time getting absolutely nowhere. Then finally a pattern began\n to emerge.\nLATHAM. What sort of pattern?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The first thing that struck me was that the attacks all\n occurred during the daytime, between the hours of about seven in the\n morning and five in the evening. Then there were these coincidences—\n\n\n LATHAM. Coincidences?", "NIEMAND. I was afraid the result would be that my old roommate would\n think I had gone completely crazy. Imagine my surprise and gratification\n on receiving an answer by return mail to the effect that he also had\n been getting an increasing number of patients suffering with the same\n identical symptoms as my own. Furthermore, upon exchanging records we\ndid\nfind that in many cases patients three thousand miles apart had\n been stricken simultaneously—\n\n\n LATHAM. Just a minute. I would like to know how you define\n \"simultaneous.\"\n\n\n NIEMAND. We say an attack is simultaneous when one occurred on the east\n coast, for example, not earlier or later than five minutes of an attack\n on the west coast. That is about as close as you can hope to time a\n subjective effect of this nature. And now another fact emerged which\n gave us another clue.\n\n\n LATHAM. Which was?", "NIEMAND. What reasons?\n\n\n LATHAM. Well, disputes over boundaries ... economic rivalry ... border\n incidents....\n\n\n NIEMAND. Nonsense. Men always make some flimsy excuse for going to war.\n The truth of the matter is that men go to war because they want to go\n to war. They can't help themselves. They are impelled by forces over\n which they have no control. By forces outside of themselves.\n\n\n LATHAM. Those are broad, sweeping statements. Can't you be more\n specific?", "NIEMAND. A few. There is unquestionably a correlation between\n sunspots and disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field ... radio\n fade-outs ... auroras ... things like that.\n\n\n LATHAM. Now, Dr. Niemand, I understand that you have been investigating\n solar and terrestrial relationships along rather unorthodox lines.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Yes, I suppose some people would say so.\n\n\n LATHAM. You have broken new ground?\n\n\n NIEMAND. That's true.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way have your investigations differed from those of\n others?", "LATHAM. You must have done something for your patients—\n\n\n NIEMAND. A doctor must always do something for the patients who come to\n his office seeking help. First I gave them a thorough physical\n examination. I turned up some minor ailments—a slight heart murmur or a\n trace of albumin in the urine—but nothing of any significance. On the\n whole they were a remarkably healthy bunch of individuals, much more so\n than an average sample of the population. Then I made a searching\n inquiry into their personal life. Here again I drew a blank. They had no\n particular financial worries. Their sex life was generally satisfactory.\n There was no history of mental illness in the family. In fact, the only\n thing that seemed to be the matter with them was that there were times\n when they felt like hell.\n\n\n LATHAM. I suppose you tried tranquilizers?", "Association for the Advancement of Science in New York, Dr. Niemand\n delivered a paper entitled simply, \"On the Nature of the Solar\n S-Regions.\" Owing to its unassuming title the startling implications\n contained in the paper were completely overlooked by the press. These\n implications are discussed here in an exclusive interview with Dr.\n Niemand by Philip Latham.\nLATHAM. Dr. Niemand, what would you say is your main job?", "LATHAM. Aren't such attacks characteristic of the stress and strain of\n modern life?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'm afraid that old stress-and-strain theory has been badly\n overworked. Been hearing about it ever since I was a pre-med student at\n ucla\n . Even as a boy I can remember my grandfather deploring the stress\n and strain of modern life when he was a country doctor practicing in\n Indiana. In my opinion one of the most valuable contributions\n anthropologists have made in recent years is the discovery that\n primitive man is afflicted with essentially the same neurotic conditions\n as those of us who live a so-called civilized life. They have found\n savages displaying every symptom of a nervous breakdown among the\n mountain tribes of the Elgonyi and the Aruntas of Australia. No, Mr.\n Latham, it's time the stress-and-strain theory was relegated to the junk\n pile along with demoniac possession and blood letting.", "NIEMAND. Total strangers miles apart were stricken at almost the same\n moment. At first I thought nothing of it but as my records accumulated I\n became convinced it could not be attributed to chance. A mathematical\n analysis showed the number of coincidences followed a Poisson\n distribution very closely. I couldn't possibly see what daylight had to\n do with it. There is some evidence that mental patients are most\n disturbed around the time of full moon, but a search of medical\n literature failed to reveal any connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. What did you do?", "NIEMAND. The S-Regions are invisible to the eye through an\noptical\ntelescope, but are detected with ease by a\nradio\ntelescope. Middletown\n had discovered them when he was a graduate student working on radio\n astronomy in Australia, and he had followed up his researches with the\n more powerful equipment at Turtle Back Mountain. The formation of an\n S-Region is heralded by a long series of bursts of a few seconds\n duration, when the radiation may increase up to several thousand times\n that of the background intensity. These noise storms have been recorded\n simultaneously on wavelengths of from one to fifteen meters, which so\n far is the upper limit of the observations. In a few instances, however,\n intense bursts have also been detected down to fifty cm.\n\n\n LATHAM. I believe you said the periods of mental disturbance last for\n about ten or twelve days. How does that tie-in with the S-Regions?", "NIEMAND. Well, they're common enough, goodness knows. As old as the\n world, in fact. Yet strangely enough it's hard to describe them in exact\n terms.\n\n\n LATHAM. Can you give us a general idea?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'll try. Let's see ... remember that speech from \"Julius\n Caesar\" where Cassius is bewailing the evil times that beset ancient\n Rome? I believe it went like this: \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.\"\n\n\n LATHAM. I'm afraid I don't see—\n\n\n NIEMAND. Well, Shakespeare would have been nearer the truth if he had\n put it the other way around. \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n ourselves but in our stars\" or better \"in the Sun.\"\nLATHAM. In the Sun?", "NIEMAND. Perhaps I'd better go back to the beginning. Let me see.... It\n all started back in March, 1955, when I started getting patients\n suffering from a complex of symptoms, such as profound mental\n depression, anxiety, insomnia, alternating with fits of violent rage and\n resentment against life and the world in general. These people were\n deeply disturbed. No doubt about that. Yet they were not psychotic and\n hardly more than mildly neurotic. Now every doctor gets a good many\n patients of this type. Such a syndrome is characteristic of menopausal\n women and some men during the climacteric, but these people failed to\n fit into this picture. They were married and single persons of both\n sexes and of all ages. They came from all walks of life. The onset of", "NIEMAND. That's right, in the Sun. I suppose the oldest problem in the\n world is the origin of human evil. Philosophers have wrestled with it\n ever since the days of Job. And like Job they have usually given up in\n despair, convinced that the origin of evil is too deep for the human\n mind to solve. Generally they have concluded that man is inherently\n wicked and sinful and that is the end of it. Now for the first time\n science has thrown new light on this subject.\n\n\n LATHAM. How is that?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Consider the record of history. There are occasional periods\n when conditions are fairly calm and peaceful. Art and industry\n flourished. Man at last seemed to be making progress toward some higher\n goal. Then suddenly—\nfor no detectable reason\n—conditions are\n reversed. Wars rage. People go mad. The world is plunged into an orgy of\n bloodshed and misery.\n\n\n LATHAM. But weren't there reasons?", "NIEMAND. Middletown was immediately struck by the resemblance between\n the chart of mental disturbance and one he had been plotting over the\n years from his radio observations. Now when he compared the two charts\n the resemblance between the two was unmistakable. The pattern shown by\n the chart of mental disturbance corresponded in a striking way with the\n solar chart but with this difference. The disturbances on the Earth\n started two days later on the average than the disturbances due to the\n S-Regions on the Sun. In other words, there was a lag of about\n forty-eight hours between the two. But otherwise they were almost\n identical.\n\n\n LATHAM. But if these S-Regions of Middletown's are invisible how could\n he detect them?", "NIEMAND. I said that the lines drawn down through the days of greatest\n mental disturbance slanted slightly. On this second chart the squares\n were dated under one another not at intervals of twenty-seven days, but\n at intervals of twenty-seven point three days.\n\n\n LATHAM. Why is that so important?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Because the average period of solar rotation in the sunspot\n zone is not twenty-seven days but twenty-seven point three days. And on\n this chart the lines did not slant but went vertically downward. The\n correlation with the synodic rotation of the Sun was practically\n perfect.\n\n\n LATHAM. But how did you get onto the S-Regions?", "NIEMAND. Oh, yes. In a few cases in which I tried tranquilizing pills of\n the meprobamate type there was some slight improvement. I want to\n emphasize, however, that I do not believe in prescribing shotgun\n remedies for a patient. To my way of thinking it is a lazy slipshod way\n of carrying on the practice of medicine. The only thing for which I do\n give myself credit was that I asked my patients to keep a detailed\n record of their symptoms taking special care to note the time of\n exacerbation—increase in the severity of the symptoms—as accurately as\n possible.\n\n\n LATHAM. And this gave you a clue?", "NIEMAND. If you have a feeling of restlessness and anxiety, if you are\n unable to concentrate, if you feel suddenly depressed and discouraged\n about yourself, or are filled with resentment toward the world, then you\n may be pretty sure that an S-Region is passing across the face of the\n Sun. Keep a tight rein on yourself. For it seems that evil will always\n be with us ... as long as the Sun shall continue to shine upon this\n little world.\nTHE END\n[A]\n Middletown believes that the Intense radiation recently\n discovered from information derived from Explorer I and III has no\n connection with the corpuscular S-radiation." ], [ "NIEMAND. It was the beginning. In most instances patients reported the\n attack struck with almost the impact of a physical blow. The prodromal\n symptoms were usually slight ... a sudden feeling of uneasiness and\n guilt ... hot and cold flashes ... dizziness ... double vision. Then\n this ghastly sense of depression coupled with a blind insensate rage at\n life. One man said he felt as if the world were closing in on him.\n Another that he felt the people around him were plotting his\n destruction. One housewife made her husband lock her in her room for\n fear she would injure the children. I pored over these case histories\n for a long time getting absolutely nowhere. Then finally a pattern began\n to emerge.\nLATHAM. What sort of pattern?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The first thing that struck me was that the attacks all\n occurred during the daytime, between the hours of about seven in the\n morning and five in the evening. Then there were these coincidences—\n\n\n LATHAM. Coincidences?", "NIEMAND. In every case of a simultaneous attack the Sun was shining at\n both New York and California.\n\n\n LATHAM. You mean if it was cloudy—\n\n\n NIEMAND. No, no. The weather had nothing to do with it. I mean the Sun\n had to be above the horizon at both places. A person might undergo an\n attack soon after sunrise in New York but there would be no\n corresponding record of an attack in California where it was still dark.\n Conversely, a person might be stricken late in the afternoon in\n California without a corresponding attack in New York where the Sun had\n set. Dr. Hillyard and I had been searching desperately for a clue. We\n had both noticed that the attacks occurred only during the daylight\n hours but this had not seemed especially significant. Here we had\n evidence pointing directly to the source of trouble. It must have some\n connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. That must have had you badly puzzled at first.", "NIEMAND. I was afraid the result would be that my old roommate would\n think I had gone completely crazy. Imagine my surprise and gratification\n on receiving an answer by return mail to the effect that he also had\n been getting an increasing number of patients suffering with the same\n identical symptoms as my own. Furthermore, upon exchanging records we\ndid\nfind that in many cases patients three thousand miles apart had\n been stricken simultaneously—\n\n\n LATHAM. Just a minute. I would like to know how you define\n \"simultaneous.\"\n\n\n NIEMAND. We say an attack is simultaneous when one occurred on the east\n coast, for example, not earlier or later than five minutes of an attack\n on the west coast. That is about as close as you can hope to time a\n subjective effect of this nature. And now another fact emerged which\n gave us another clue.\n\n\n LATHAM. Which was?", "NIEMAND. It was really quite simple. But if it had not been for\n Middletown's experience in charting other solar phenomena it would never\n have occurred to us to do it. First, he laid out a series of about\n thirty squares horizontally across a sheet of graph paper. He dated\n these beginning March 1, 1955, when our records began. In each square he\n put a number from 1 to 10 that was a rough index of the number and\n intensity of the attacks reported on that day. Then he laid out another\n horizontal row below the first one dated twenty-seven days later. That\n is, the square under March 1st in the top row was dated March 28th in\n the row below it. He filled in the chart until he had an array of dozens\n of rows that included all our data down to May, 1958.", "NIEMAND. Naturally I said nothing of this to my patients. I did,\n however, take pains to impress upon them the necessity of keeping an\n exact record of the onset of an attack. The better records they kept the\n more conclusive was the evidence. Men and women were experiencing nearly\n simultaneous attacks of rage and depression all over southern\n California, which was as far as my practice extended. One day it\n occurred to me: if people a few miles apart could be stricken\n simultaneously, why not people hundreds or thousands of miles apart? It\n was this idea that prompted me to get in touch with an old colleague of\n mine I had known at UC medical school, Dr. Max Hillyard, who was in\n practice in Utica, New York.\n\n\n LATHAM. With what result?", "NIEMAND. Total strangers miles apart were stricken at almost the same\n moment. At first I thought nothing of it but as my records accumulated I\n became convinced it could not be attributed to chance. A mathematical\n analysis showed the number of coincidences followed a Poisson\n distribution very closely. I couldn't possibly see what daylight had to\n do with it. There is some evidence that mental patients are most\n disturbed around the time of full moon, but a search of medical\n literature failed to reveal any connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. What did you do?", "LATHAM. Aren't such attacks characteristic of the stress and strain of\n modern life?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'm afraid that old stress-and-strain theory has been badly\n overworked. Been hearing about it ever since I was a pre-med student at\n ucla\n . Even as a boy I can remember my grandfather deploring the stress\n and strain of modern life when he was a country doctor practicing in\n Indiana. In my opinion one of the most valuable contributions\n anthropologists have made in recent years is the discovery that\n primitive man is afflicted with essentially the same neurotic conditions\n as those of us who live a so-called civilized life. They have found\n savages displaying every symptom of a nervous breakdown among the\n mountain tribes of the Elgonyi and the Aruntas of Australia. No, Mr.\n Latham, it's time the stress-and-strain theory was relegated to the junk\n pile along with demoniac possession and blood letting.", "NIEMAND. What reasons?\n\n\n LATHAM. Well, disputes over boundaries ... economic rivalry ... border\n incidents....\n\n\n NIEMAND. Nonsense. Men always make some flimsy excuse for going to war.\n The truth of the matter is that men go to war because they want to go\n to war. They can't help themselves. They are impelled by forces over\n which they have no control. By forces outside of themselves.\n\n\n LATHAM. Those are broad, sweeping statements. Can't you be more\n specific?", "NIEMAND. Well, they're common enough, goodness knows. As old as the\n world, in fact. Yet strangely enough it's hard to describe them in exact\n terms.\n\n\n LATHAM. Can you give us a general idea?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'll try. Let's see ... remember that speech from \"Julius\n Caesar\" where Cassius is bewailing the evil times that beset ancient\n Rome? I believe it went like this: \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.\"\n\n\n LATHAM. I'm afraid I don't see—\n\n\n NIEMAND. Well, Shakespeare would have been nearer the truth if he had\n put it the other way around. \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n ourselves but in our stars\" or better \"in the Sun.\"\nLATHAM. In the Sun?", "NIEMAND. It was the old case of workers in one field of science being\n completely ignorant of what was going on in another field. Someday we\n will have to establish a clearing house in science instead of keeping it\n in tight little compartments as we do at present. Well, Hillyard and I\n packed up for Arizona with considerable misgivings. We were afraid\n Middletown wouldn't take our findings seriously but somewhat to our\n surprise he heard our story with the closest attention. I guess\n astronomers have gotten so used to hearing from flying saucer\n enthusiasts and science-fiction addicts that nothing surprises them any\n more. When we had finished he asked to see our records. Hillyard had\n them all set down for easy numerical tabulation. Middletown went to work\n with scarcely a word. Within an hour he had produced a chart that was\n simply astounding.\nLATHAM. Can you describe this chart for us?", "NIEMAND. Oh, yes. In a few cases in which I tried tranquilizing pills of\n the meprobamate type there was some slight improvement. I want to\n emphasize, however, that I do not believe in prescribing shotgun\n remedies for a patient. To my way of thinking it is a lazy slipshod way\n of carrying on the practice of medicine. The only thing for which I do\n give myself credit was that I asked my patients to keep a detailed\n record of their symptoms taking special care to note the time of\n exacerbation—increase in the severity of the symptoms—as accurately as\n possible.\n\n\n LATHAM. And this gave you a clue?", "NIEMAND. A few. There is unquestionably a correlation between\n sunspots and disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field ... radio\n fade-outs ... auroras ... things like that.\n\n\n LATHAM. Now, Dr. Niemand, I understand that you have been investigating\n solar and terrestrial relationships along rather unorthodox lines.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Yes, I suppose some people would say so.\n\n\n LATHAM. You have broken new ground?\n\n\n NIEMAND. That's true.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way have your investigations differed from those of\n others?", "NIEMAND. We doubt it. As I said before, the charts show a lag of about\n forty-eight hours between the development of an S-Region and the onset\n of mental disturbance. This indicates that the malignant energy\n emanating from an S-Region consists of some highly penetrating form of\n corpuscular radiation, as yet unidentified.\n [A]\n\n\n LATHAM. A question that puzzles me is why some people are affected by\n the S-Regions while others are not.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Our latest results indicate that probably\nno one\nis\n completely immune. All are affected in\nsome\ndegree. Just why some\n should be affected so much more than others is still a matter of\n speculation.\n\n\n LATHAM. How long does an S-Region last?", "NIEMAND. The S-Regions are invisible to the eye through an\noptical\ntelescope, but are detected with ease by a\nradio\ntelescope. Middletown\n had discovered them when he was a graduate student working on radio\n astronomy in Australia, and he had followed up his researches with the\n more powerful equipment at Turtle Back Mountain. The formation of an\n S-Region is heralded by a long series of bursts of a few seconds\n duration, when the radiation may increase up to several thousand times\n that of the background intensity. These noise storms have been recorded\n simultaneously on wavelengths of from one to fifteen meters, which so\n far is the upper limit of the observations. In a few instances, however,\n intense bursts have also been detected down to fifty cm.\n\n\n LATHAM. I believe you said the periods of mental disturbance last for\n about ten or twelve days. How does that tie-in with the S-Regions?", "NIEMAND. That's right, in the Sun. I suppose the oldest problem in the\n world is the origin of human evil. Philosophers have wrestled with it\n ever since the days of Job. And like Job they have usually given up in\n despair, convinced that the origin of evil is too deep for the human\n mind to solve. Generally they have concluded that man is inherently\n wicked and sinful and that is the end of it. Now for the first time\n science has thrown new light on this subject.\n\n\n LATHAM. How is that?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Consider the record of history. There are occasional periods\n when conditions are fairly calm and peaceful. Art and industry\n flourished. Man at last seemed to be making progress toward some higher\n goal. Then suddenly—\nfor no detectable reason\n—conditions are\n reversed. Wars rage. People go mad. The world is plunged into an orgy of\n bloodshed and misery.\n\n\n LATHAM. But weren't there reasons?", "NIEMAND. Middletown was immediately struck by the resemblance between\n the chart of mental disturbance and one he had been plotting over the\n years from his radio observations. Now when he compared the two charts\n the resemblance between the two was unmistakable. The pattern shown by\n the chart of mental disturbance corresponded in a striking way with the\n solar chart but with this difference. The disturbances on the Earth\n started two days later on the average than the disturbances due to the\n S-Regions on the Sun. In other words, there was a lag of about\n forty-eight hours between the two. But otherwise they were almost\n identical.\n\n\n LATHAM. But if these S-Regions of Middletown's are invisible how could\n he detect them?", "their attack was invariably sudden and with scarcely any warning. They\n would be going about their work feeling perfectly all right. Then in a\n minute the whole world was like some scene from a nightmare. A week or\n ten days later the attack would cease as mysteriously as it had come and\n they would be their old self again.", "NIEMAND. If you have a feeling of restlessness and anxiety, if you are\n unable to concentrate, if you feel suddenly depressed and discouraged\n about yourself, or are filled with resentment toward the world, then you\n may be pretty sure that an S-Region is passing across the face of the\n Sun. Keep a tight rein on yourself. For it seems that evil will always\n be with us ... as long as the Sun shall continue to shine upon this\n little world.\nTHE END\n[A]\n Middletown believes that the Intense radiation recently\n discovered from information derived from Explorer I and III has no\n connection with the corpuscular S-radiation.", "NIEMAND. I said that the lines drawn down through the days of greatest\n mental disturbance slanted slightly. On this second chart the squares\n were dated under one another not at intervals of twenty-seven days, but\n at intervals of twenty-seven point three days.\n\n\n LATHAM. Why is that so important?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Because the average period of solar rotation in the sunspot\n zone is not twenty-seven days but twenty-seven point three days. And on\n this chart the lines did not slant but went vertically downward. The\n correlation with the synodic rotation of the Sun was practically\n perfect.\n\n\n LATHAM. But how did you get onto the S-Regions?", "NIEMAND. It certainly did. It looked as if we were headed back to the\n Middle Ages when astrology and medicine went hand in hand. But since it\n was our only lead we had no other choice but to follow it regardless of\n the consequences. Here luck played somewhat of a part, for Hillyard\n happened to have a contact that proved invaluable to us. Several years\n before Hillyard had gotten to know a young astrophysicist, Henry\n Middletown, who had come to him suffering from a severe case of myositis\n in the arms and shoulders. Hillyard had been able to effect a complete\n cure for which the boy was very grateful, and they had kept up a\n desultory correspondence. Middletown was now specializing in radio\n astronomy at the government's new solar observatory on Turtle Back\n Mountain in Arizona. If it had not been for Middletown's help I'm afraid\n our investigation would never have gotten past the clinical stage.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way was Middletown of assistance?" ], [ "NIEMAND. It was the beginning. In most instances patients reported the\n attack struck with almost the impact of a physical blow. The prodromal\n symptoms were usually slight ... a sudden feeling of uneasiness and\n guilt ... hot and cold flashes ... dizziness ... double vision. Then\n this ghastly sense of depression coupled with a blind insensate rage at\n life. One man said he felt as if the world were closing in on him.\n Another that he felt the people around him were plotting his\n destruction. One housewife made her husband lock her in her room for\n fear she would injure the children. I pored over these case histories\n for a long time getting absolutely nowhere. Then finally a pattern began\n to emerge.\nLATHAM. What sort of pattern?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The first thing that struck me was that the attacks all\n occurred during the daytime, between the hours of about seven in the\n morning and five in the evening. Then there were these coincidences—\n\n\n LATHAM. Coincidences?", "LATHAM. Aren't such attacks characteristic of the stress and strain of\n modern life?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'm afraid that old stress-and-strain theory has been badly\n overworked. Been hearing about it ever since I was a pre-med student at\n ucla\n . Even as a boy I can remember my grandfather deploring the stress\n and strain of modern life when he was a country doctor practicing in\n Indiana. In my opinion one of the most valuable contributions\n anthropologists have made in recent years is the discovery that\n primitive man is afflicted with essentially the same neurotic conditions\n as those of us who live a so-called civilized life. They have found\n savages displaying every symptom of a nervous breakdown among the\n mountain tribes of the Elgonyi and the Aruntas of Australia. No, Mr.\n Latham, it's time the stress-and-strain theory was relegated to the junk\n pile along with demoniac possession and blood letting.", "NIEMAND. In every case of a simultaneous attack the Sun was shining at\n both New York and California.\n\n\n LATHAM. You mean if it was cloudy—\n\n\n NIEMAND. No, no. The weather had nothing to do with it. I mean the Sun\n had to be above the horizon at both places. A person might undergo an\n attack soon after sunrise in New York but there would be no\n corresponding record of an attack in California where it was still dark.\n Conversely, a person might be stricken late in the afternoon in\n California without a corresponding attack in New York where the Sun had\n set. Dr. Hillyard and I had been searching desperately for a clue. We\n had both noticed that the attacks occurred only during the daylight\n hours but this had not seemed especially significant. Here we had\n evidence pointing directly to the source of trouble. It must have some\n connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. That must have had you badly puzzled at first.", "NIEMAND. I was afraid the result would be that my old roommate would\n think I had gone completely crazy. Imagine my surprise and gratification\n on receiving an answer by return mail to the effect that he also had\n been getting an increasing number of patients suffering with the same\n identical symptoms as my own. Furthermore, upon exchanging records we\ndid\nfind that in many cases patients three thousand miles apart had\n been stricken simultaneously—\n\n\n LATHAM. Just a minute. I would like to know how you define\n \"simultaneous.\"\n\n\n NIEMAND. We say an attack is simultaneous when one occurred on the east\n coast, for example, not earlier or later than five minutes of an attack\n on the west coast. That is about as close as you can hope to time a\n subjective effect of this nature. And now another fact emerged which\n gave us another clue.\n\n\n LATHAM. Which was?", "NIEMAND. Naturally I said nothing of this to my patients. I did,\n however, take pains to impress upon them the necessity of keeping an\n exact record of the onset of an attack. The better records they kept the\n more conclusive was the evidence. Men and women were experiencing nearly\n simultaneous attacks of rage and depression all over southern\n California, which was as far as my practice extended. One day it\n occurred to me: if people a few miles apart could be stricken\n simultaneously, why not people hundreds or thousands of miles apart? It\n was this idea that prompted me to get in touch with an old colleague of\n mine I had known at UC medical school, Dr. Max Hillyard, who was in\n practice in Utica, New York.\n\n\n LATHAM. With what result?", "NIEMAND. What reasons?\n\n\n LATHAM. Well, disputes over boundaries ... economic rivalry ... border\n incidents....\n\n\n NIEMAND. Nonsense. Men always make some flimsy excuse for going to war.\n The truth of the matter is that men go to war because they want to go\n to war. They can't help themselves. They are impelled by forces over\n which they have no control. By forces outside of themselves.\n\n\n LATHAM. Those are broad, sweeping statements. Can't you be more\n specific?", "NIEMAND. It was really quite simple. But if it had not been for\n Middletown's experience in charting other solar phenomena it would never\n have occurred to us to do it. First, he laid out a series of about\n thirty squares horizontally across a sheet of graph paper. He dated\n these beginning March 1, 1955, when our records began. In each square he\n put a number from 1 to 10 that was a rough index of the number and\n intensity of the attacks reported on that day. Then he laid out another\n horizontal row below the first one dated twenty-seven days later. That\n is, the square under March 1st in the top row was dated March 28th in\n the row below it. He filled in the chart until he had an array of dozens\n of rows that included all our data down to May, 1958.", "NIEMAND. That's right, in the Sun. I suppose the oldest problem in the\n world is the origin of human evil. Philosophers have wrestled with it\n ever since the days of Job. And like Job they have usually given up in\n despair, convinced that the origin of evil is too deep for the human\n mind to solve. Generally they have concluded that man is inherently\n wicked and sinful and that is the end of it. Now for the first time\n science has thrown new light on this subject.\n\n\n LATHAM. How is that?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Consider the record of history. There are occasional periods\n when conditions are fairly calm and peaceful. Art and industry\n flourished. Man at last seemed to be making progress toward some higher\n goal. Then suddenly—\nfor no detectable reason\n—conditions are\n reversed. Wars rage. People go mad. The world is plunged into an orgy of\n bloodshed and misery.\n\n\n LATHAM. But weren't there reasons?", "NIEMAND. Well, they're common enough, goodness knows. As old as the\n world, in fact. Yet strangely enough it's hard to describe them in exact\n terms.\n\n\n LATHAM. Can you give us a general idea?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'll try. Let's see ... remember that speech from \"Julius\n Caesar\" where Cassius is bewailing the evil times that beset ancient\n Rome? I believe it went like this: \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.\"\n\n\n LATHAM. I'm afraid I don't see—\n\n\n NIEMAND. Well, Shakespeare would have been nearer the truth if he had\n put it the other way around. \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n ourselves but in our stars\" or better \"in the Sun.\"\nLATHAM. In the Sun?", "NIEMAND. A few. There is unquestionably a correlation between\n sunspots and disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field ... radio\n fade-outs ... auroras ... things like that.\n\n\n LATHAM. Now, Dr. Niemand, I understand that you have been investigating\n solar and terrestrial relationships along rather unorthodox lines.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Yes, I suppose some people would say so.\n\n\n LATHAM. You have broken new ground?\n\n\n NIEMAND. That's true.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way have your investigations differed from those of\n others?", "NIEMAND. Total strangers miles apart were stricken at almost the same\n moment. At first I thought nothing of it but as my records accumulated I\n became convinced it could not be attributed to chance. A mathematical\n analysis showed the number of coincidences followed a Poisson\n distribution very closely. I couldn't possibly see what daylight had to\n do with it. There is some evidence that mental patients are most\n disturbed around the time of full moon, but a search of medical\n literature failed to reveal any connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. What did you do?", "NIEMAND. Perhaps I'd better go back to the beginning. Let me see.... It\n all started back in March, 1955, when I started getting patients\n suffering from a complex of symptoms, such as profound mental\n depression, anxiety, insomnia, alternating with fits of violent rage and\n resentment against life and the world in general. These people were\n deeply disturbed. No doubt about that. Yet they were not psychotic and\n hardly more than mildly neurotic. Now every doctor gets a good many\n patients of this type. Such a syndrome is characteristic of menopausal\n women and some men during the climacteric, but these people failed to\n fit into this picture. They were married and single persons of both\n sexes and of all ages. They came from all walks of life. The onset of", "NIEMAND. If you have a feeling of restlessness and anxiety, if you are\n unable to concentrate, if you feel suddenly depressed and discouraged\n about yourself, or are filled with resentment toward the world, then you\n may be pretty sure that an S-Region is passing across the face of the\n Sun. Keep a tight rein on yourself. For it seems that evil will always\n be with us ... as long as the Sun shall continue to shine upon this\n little world.\nTHE END\n[A]\n Middletown believes that the Intense radiation recently\n discovered from information derived from Explorer I and III has no\n connection with the corpuscular S-radiation.", "LATHAM. You must have done something for your patients—\n\n\n NIEMAND. A doctor must always do something for the patients who come to\n his office seeking help. First I gave them a thorough physical\n examination. I turned up some minor ailments—a slight heart murmur or a\n trace of albumin in the urine—but nothing of any significance. On the\n whole they were a remarkably healthy bunch of individuals, much more so\n than an average sample of the population. Then I made a searching\n inquiry into their personal life. Here again I drew a blank. They had no\n particular financial worries. Their sex life was generally satisfactory.\n There was no history of mental illness in the family. In fact, the only\n thing that seemed to be the matter with them was that there were times\n when they felt like hell.\n\n\n LATHAM. I suppose you tried tranquilizers?", "NIEMAND. We doubt it. As I said before, the charts show a lag of about\n forty-eight hours between the development of an S-Region and the onset\n of mental disturbance. This indicates that the malignant energy\n emanating from an S-Region consists of some highly penetrating form of\n corpuscular radiation, as yet unidentified.\n [A]\n\n\n LATHAM. A question that puzzles me is why some people are affected by\n the S-Regions while others are not.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Our latest results indicate that probably\nno one\nis\n completely immune. All are affected in\nsome\ndegree. Just why some\n should be affected so much more than others is still a matter of\n speculation.\n\n\n LATHAM. How long does an S-Region last?", "NIEMAND. It was the old case of workers in one field of science being\n completely ignorant of what was going on in another field. Someday we\n will have to establish a clearing house in science instead of keeping it\n in tight little compartments as we do at present. Well, Hillyard and I\n packed up for Arizona with considerable misgivings. We were afraid\n Middletown wouldn't take our findings seriously but somewhat to our\n surprise he heard our story with the closest attention. I guess\n astronomers have gotten so used to hearing from flying saucer\n enthusiasts and science-fiction addicts that nothing surprises them any\n more. When we had finished he asked to see our records. Hillyard had\n them all set down for easy numerical tabulation. Middletown went to work\n with scarcely a word. Within an hour he had produced a chart that was\n simply astounding.\nLATHAM. Can you describe this chart for us?", "LATHAM. And so you believe that the S-Regions are the cause of most of\n the present trouble in the world. That it is not ourselves but something\n outside ourselves—\n\n\n NIEMAND. That is the logical outcome of our investigation. We are\n controlled and swayed by forces which in many cases we are powerless to\n resist.\n\n\n LATHAM. Could we not be warned of the presence of an S-Region?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The trouble is they seem to develop at random on the Sun. I'm\n afraid any warning system would be worse than useless. We would be\n crying WOLF! all the time.\n\n\n LATHAM. How may a person who is not particularly susceptible to this\n malignant radiation know that one of these regions is active?", "NIEMAND. I think our biggest advance was the discovery that sunspots\n themselves are not the direct cause of the disturbances we have been\n studying on the Earth. It's something like the eruptions in rubeola.\n Attention is concentrated on the bright red papules because they're such\n a conspicuous symptom of the disease. Whereas the real cause is an\n invisible filterable virus. In the solar case it turned out to be these\n S-Regions.\n\n\n LATHAM. Why S-Regions?\n\n\n NIEMAND. We had to call them something. Named after the Sun, I suppose.\n\n\n LATHAM. You say an S-Region is invisible?\n\n\n NIEMAND. It is quite invisible to the eye but readily detected by\n suitable instrumental methods. It is extremely doubtful, however, if the\n radiation we detect is the actual cause of the disturbing effects\n observed.\n\n\n LATHAM. Just what are these effects?", "NIEMAND. Oh, yes. In a few cases in which I tried tranquilizing pills of\n the meprobamate type there was some slight improvement. I want to\n emphasize, however, that I do not believe in prescribing shotgun\n remedies for a patient. To my way of thinking it is a lazy slipshod way\n of carrying on the practice of medicine. The only thing for which I do\n give myself credit was that I asked my patients to keep a detailed\n record of their symptoms taking special care to note the time of\n exacerbation—increase in the severity of the symptoms—as accurately as\n possible.\n\n\n LATHAM. And this gave you a clue?", "their attack was invariably sudden and with scarcely any warning. They\n would be going about their work feeling perfectly all right. Then in a\n minute the whole world was like some scene from a nightmare. A week or\n ten days later the attack would cease as mysteriously as it had come and\n they would be their old self again." ], [ "NIEMAND. It was the old case of workers in one field of science being\n completely ignorant of what was going on in another field. Someday we\n will have to establish a clearing house in science instead of keeping it\n in tight little compartments as we do at present. Well, Hillyard and I\n packed up for Arizona with considerable misgivings. We were afraid\n Middletown wouldn't take our findings seriously but somewhat to our\n surprise he heard our story with the closest attention. I guess\n astronomers have gotten so used to hearing from flying saucer\n enthusiasts and science-fiction addicts that nothing surprises them any\n more. When we had finished he asked to see our records. Hillyard had\n them all set down for easy numerical tabulation. Middletown went to work\n with scarcely a word. Within an hour he had produced a chart that was\n simply astounding.\nLATHAM. Can you describe this chart for us?", "NIEMAND. It certainly did. It looked as if we were headed back to the\n Middle Ages when astrology and medicine went hand in hand. But since it\n was our only lead we had no other choice but to follow it regardless of\n the consequences. Here luck played somewhat of a part, for Hillyard\n happened to have a contact that proved invaluable to us. Several years\n before Hillyard had gotten to know a young astrophysicist, Henry\n Middletown, who had come to him suffering from a severe case of myositis\n in the arms and shoulders. Hillyard had been able to effect a complete\n cure for which the boy was very grateful, and they had kept up a\n desultory correspondence. Middletown was now specializing in radio\n astronomy at the government's new solar observatory on Turtle Back\n Mountain in Arizona. If it had not been for Middletown's help I'm afraid\n our investigation would never have gotten past the clinical stage.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way was Middletown of assistance?", "NIEMAND. What reasons?\n\n\n LATHAM. Well, disputes over boundaries ... economic rivalry ... border\n incidents....\n\n\n NIEMAND. Nonsense. Men always make some flimsy excuse for going to war.\n The truth of the matter is that men go to war because they want to go\n to war. They can't help themselves. They are impelled by forces over\n which they have no control. By forces outside of themselves.\n\n\n LATHAM. Those are broad, sweeping statements. Can't you be more\n specific?", "NIEMAND. In every case of a simultaneous attack the Sun was shining at\n both New York and California.\n\n\n LATHAM. You mean if it was cloudy—\n\n\n NIEMAND. No, no. The weather had nothing to do with it. I mean the Sun\n had to be above the horizon at both places. A person might undergo an\n attack soon after sunrise in New York but there would be no\n corresponding record of an attack in California where it was still dark.\n Conversely, a person might be stricken late in the afternoon in\n California without a corresponding attack in New York where the Sun had\n set. Dr. Hillyard and I had been searching desperately for a clue. We\n had both noticed that the attacks occurred only during the daylight\n hours but this had not seemed especially significant. Here we had\n evidence pointing directly to the source of trouble. It must have some\n connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. That must have had you badly puzzled at first.", "NIEMAND. I was afraid the result would be that my old roommate would\n think I had gone completely crazy. Imagine my surprise and gratification\n on receiving an answer by return mail to the effect that he also had\n been getting an increasing number of patients suffering with the same\n identical symptoms as my own. Furthermore, upon exchanging records we\ndid\nfind that in many cases patients three thousand miles apart had\n been stricken simultaneously—\n\n\n LATHAM. Just a minute. I would like to know how you define\n \"simultaneous.\"\n\n\n NIEMAND. We say an attack is simultaneous when one occurred on the east\n coast, for example, not earlier or later than five minutes of an attack\n on the west coast. That is about as close as you can hope to time a\n subjective effect of this nature. And now another fact emerged which\n gave us another clue.\n\n\n LATHAM. Which was?", "NIEMAND. A few. There is unquestionably a correlation between\n sunspots and disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field ... radio\n fade-outs ... auroras ... things like that.\n\n\n LATHAM. Now, Dr. Niemand, I understand that you have been investigating\n solar and terrestrial relationships along rather unorthodox lines.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Yes, I suppose some people would say so.\n\n\n LATHAM. You have broken new ground?\n\n\n NIEMAND. That's true.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way have your investigations differed from those of\n others?", "NIEMAND. Naturally I said nothing of this to my patients. I did,\n however, take pains to impress upon them the necessity of keeping an\n exact record of the onset of an attack. The better records they kept the\n more conclusive was the evidence. Men and women were experiencing nearly\n simultaneous attacks of rage and depression all over southern\n California, which was as far as my practice extended. One day it\n occurred to me: if people a few miles apart could be stricken\n simultaneously, why not people hundreds or thousands of miles apart? It\n was this idea that prompted me to get in touch with an old colleague of\n mine I had known at UC medical school, Dr. Max Hillyard, who was in\n practice in Utica, New York.\n\n\n LATHAM. With what result?", "NIEMAND. That's right, in the Sun. I suppose the oldest problem in the\n world is the origin of human evil. Philosophers have wrestled with it\n ever since the days of Job. And like Job they have usually given up in\n despair, convinced that the origin of evil is too deep for the human\n mind to solve. Generally they have concluded that man is inherently\n wicked and sinful and that is the end of it. Now for the first time\n science has thrown new light on this subject.\n\n\n LATHAM. How is that?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Consider the record of history. There are occasional periods\n when conditions are fairly calm and peaceful. Art and industry\n flourished. Man at last seemed to be making progress toward some higher\n goal. Then suddenly—\nfor no detectable reason\n—conditions are\n reversed. Wars rage. People go mad. The world is plunged into an orgy of\n bloodshed and misery.\n\n\n LATHAM. But weren't there reasons?", "NIEMAND. We doubt it. As I said before, the charts show a lag of about\n forty-eight hours between the development of an S-Region and the onset\n of mental disturbance. This indicates that the malignant energy\n emanating from an S-Region consists of some highly penetrating form of\n corpuscular radiation, as yet unidentified.\n [A]\n\n\n LATHAM. A question that puzzles me is why some people are affected by\n the S-Regions while others are not.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Our latest results indicate that probably\nno one\nis\n completely immune. All are affected in\nsome\ndegree. Just why some\n should be affected so much more than others is still a matter of\n speculation.\n\n\n LATHAM. How long does an S-Region last?", "LATHAM. Aren't such attacks characteristic of the stress and strain of\n modern life?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'm afraid that old stress-and-strain theory has been badly\n overworked. Been hearing about it ever since I was a pre-med student at\n ucla\n . Even as a boy I can remember my grandfather deploring the stress\n and strain of modern life when he was a country doctor practicing in\n Indiana. In my opinion one of the most valuable contributions\n anthropologists have made in recent years is the discovery that\n primitive man is afflicted with essentially the same neurotic conditions\n as those of us who live a so-called civilized life. They have found\n savages displaying every symptom of a nervous breakdown among the\n mountain tribes of the Elgonyi and the Aruntas of Australia. No, Mr.\n Latham, it's time the stress-and-strain theory was relegated to the junk\n pile along with demoniac possession and blood letting.", "NIEMAND. It was the beginning. In most instances patients reported the\n attack struck with almost the impact of a physical blow. The prodromal\n symptoms were usually slight ... a sudden feeling of uneasiness and\n guilt ... hot and cold flashes ... dizziness ... double vision. Then\n this ghastly sense of depression coupled with a blind insensate rage at\n life. One man said he felt as if the world were closing in on him.\n Another that he felt the people around him were plotting his\n destruction. One housewife made her husband lock her in her room for\n fear she would injure the children. I pored over these case histories\n for a long time getting absolutely nowhere. Then finally a pattern began\n to emerge.\nLATHAM. What sort of pattern?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The first thing that struck me was that the attacks all\n occurred during the daytime, between the hours of about seven in the\n morning and five in the evening. Then there were these coincidences—\n\n\n LATHAM. Coincidences?", "Association for the Advancement of Science in New York, Dr. Niemand\n delivered a paper entitled simply, \"On the Nature of the Solar\n S-Regions.\" Owing to its unassuming title the startling implications\n contained in the paper were completely overlooked by the press. These\n implications are discussed here in an exclusive interview with Dr.\n Niemand by Philip Latham.\nLATHAM. Dr. Niemand, what would you say is your main job?", "NIEMAND. The S-Regions are invisible to the eye through an\noptical\ntelescope, but are detected with ease by a\nradio\ntelescope. Middletown\n had discovered them when he was a graduate student working on radio\n astronomy in Australia, and he had followed up his researches with the\n more powerful equipment at Turtle Back Mountain. The formation of an\n S-Region is heralded by a long series of bursts of a few seconds\n duration, when the radiation may increase up to several thousand times\n that of the background intensity. These noise storms have been recorded\n simultaneously on wavelengths of from one to fifteen meters, which so\n far is the upper limit of the observations. In a few instances, however,\n intense bursts have also been detected down to fifty cm.\n\n\n LATHAM. I believe you said the periods of mental disturbance last for\n about ten or twelve days. How does that tie-in with the S-Regions?", "LATHAM. And so you believe that the S-Regions are the cause of most of\n the present trouble in the world. That it is not ourselves but something\n outside ourselves—\n\n\n NIEMAND. That is the logical outcome of our investigation. We are\n controlled and swayed by forces which in many cases we are powerless to\n resist.\n\n\n LATHAM. Could we not be warned of the presence of an S-Region?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The trouble is they seem to develop at random on the Sun. I'm\n afraid any warning system would be worse than useless. We would be\n crying WOLF! all the time.\n\n\n LATHAM. How may a person who is not particularly susceptible to this\n malignant radiation know that one of these regions is active?", "their attack was invariably sudden and with scarcely any warning. They\n would be going about their work feeling perfectly all right. Then in a\n minute the whole world was like some scene from a nightmare. A week or\n ten days later the attack would cease as mysteriously as it had come and\n they would be their old self again.", "NIEMAND. Well, they're common enough, goodness knows. As old as the\n world, in fact. Yet strangely enough it's hard to describe them in exact\n terms.\n\n\n LATHAM. Can you give us a general idea?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'll try. Let's see ... remember that speech from \"Julius\n Caesar\" where Cassius is bewailing the evil times that beset ancient\n Rome? I believe it went like this: \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.\"\n\n\n LATHAM. I'm afraid I don't see—\n\n\n NIEMAND. Well, Shakespeare would have been nearer the truth if he had\n put it the other way around. \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n ourselves but in our stars\" or better \"in the Sun.\"\nLATHAM. In the Sun?", "NIEMAND. Total strangers miles apart were stricken at almost the same\n moment. At first I thought nothing of it but as my records accumulated I\n became convinced it could not be attributed to chance. A mathematical\n analysis showed the number of coincidences followed a Poisson\n distribution very closely. I couldn't possibly see what daylight had to\n do with it. There is some evidence that mental patients are most\n disturbed around the time of full moon, but a search of medical\n literature failed to reveal any connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. What did you do?", "NIEMAND. If you have a feeling of restlessness and anxiety, if you are\n unable to concentrate, if you feel suddenly depressed and discouraged\n about yourself, or are filled with resentment toward the world, then you\n may be pretty sure that an S-Region is passing across the face of the\n Sun. Keep a tight rein on yourself. For it seems that evil will always\n be with us ... as long as the Sun shall continue to shine upon this\n little world.\nTHE END\n[A]\n Middletown believes that the Intense radiation recently\n discovered from information derived from Explorer I and III has no\n connection with the corpuscular S-radiation.", "NIEMAND. I said that the lines drawn down through the days of greatest\n mental disturbance slanted slightly. On this second chart the squares\n were dated under one another not at intervals of twenty-seven days, but\n at intervals of twenty-seven point three days.\n\n\n LATHAM. Why is that so important?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Because the average period of solar rotation in the sunspot\n zone is not twenty-seven days but twenty-seven point three days. And on\n this chart the lines did not slant but went vertically downward. The\n correlation with the synodic rotation of the Sun was practically\n perfect.\n\n\n LATHAM. But how did you get onto the S-Regions?", "LATHAM. How do you account for this?\n\n\n NIEMAND. We don't account for it.\nLATHAM. What other properties of the S-Regions have you discovered?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Middletown says that the radio waves emanating from them are\n strongly circularly polarized. Moreover, the sense of rotation remains\n constant while one is passing across the Sun. If the magnetic field\n associated with an S-Region extends into the high solar corona through\n which the rays pass, then the sense of rotation corresponds to the\n ordinary ray of the magneto-ionic theory.\n\n\n LATHAM. Does this mean that the mental disturbances arise from some form\n of electromagnetic radiation?" ], [ "NIEMAND. The number of spots on the Sun rises and falls in a cycle of\nabout\neleven years. That word\nabout\nmakes quite a difference.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way?\n\n\n NIEMAND. It means you can only approximately predict the future course\n of sunspot activity. Sunspots are mighty treacherous things.\n\n\n LATHAM. Haven't there been a great many correlations announced between\n sunspots and various effects on the Earth?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Scores of them.\n\n\n LATHAM. What is your opinion of these correlations?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Pure bosh in most cases.\n\n\n LATHAM. But some are valid?", "NIEMAND. I suppose you might say my main job today is to find out all I\n can between activity on the Sun and various forms of activity on the\n Earth.\n\n\n LATHAM. What do you mean by activity on the Sun?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Well, a sunspot is a form of solar activity.\n\n\n LATHAM. Just what is a sunspot?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'm afraid I can't say just what a sunspot is. I can only\n describe it. A sunspot is a region on the Sun that is cooler than its\n surroundings. That's why it looks dark. It isn't so hot. Therefore not\n so bright.\n\n\n LATHAM. Isn't it true that the number of spots on the Sun rises and\n falls in a cycle of eleven years?", "When Middletown had finished it was easy to see that the squares of\n highest index number did not fall at random on the chart. Instead they\n fell in slightly slanting parallel series so that you could draw\n straight lines down through them. The connection with the Sun was\n obvious.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Why, because twenty-seven days is about the synodic period of\n solar rotation. That is, if you see a large spot at the center of the\n Sun's disk today, there is a good chance if it survives that you will\n see it at the same place twenty-seven days later. But that night\n Middletown produced another chart that showed the connection with the\n Sun in a way that was even more convincing.\n\n\n LATHAM. How was that?", "NIEMAND. Well, they're common enough, goodness knows. As old as the\n world, in fact. Yet strangely enough it's hard to describe them in exact\n terms.\n\n\n LATHAM. Can you give us a general idea?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'll try. Let's see ... remember that speech from \"Julius\n Caesar\" where Cassius is bewailing the evil times that beset ancient\n Rome? I believe it went like this: \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.\"\n\n\n LATHAM. I'm afraid I don't see—\n\n\n NIEMAND. Well, Shakespeare would have been nearer the truth if he had\n put it the other way around. \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n ourselves but in our stars\" or better \"in the Sun.\"\nLATHAM. In the Sun?", "NIEMAND. A few. There is unquestionably a correlation between\n sunspots and disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field ... radio\n fade-outs ... auroras ... things like that.\n\n\n LATHAM. Now, Dr. Niemand, I understand that you have been investigating\n solar and terrestrial relationships along rather unorthodox lines.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Yes, I suppose some people would say so.\n\n\n LATHAM. You have broken new ground?\n\n\n NIEMAND. That's true.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way have your investigations differed from those of\n others?", "NIEMAND. I said that the lines drawn down through the days of greatest\n mental disturbance slanted slightly. On this second chart the squares\n were dated under one another not at intervals of twenty-seven days, but\n at intervals of twenty-seven point three days.\n\n\n LATHAM. Why is that so important?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Because the average period of solar rotation in the sunspot\n zone is not twenty-seven days but twenty-seven point three days. And on\n this chart the lines did not slant but went vertically downward. The\n correlation with the synodic rotation of the Sun was practically\n perfect.\n\n\n LATHAM. But how did you get onto the S-Regions?", "NIEMAND. I think our biggest advance was the discovery that sunspots\n themselves are not the direct cause of the disturbances we have been\n studying on the Earth. It's something like the eruptions in rubeola.\n Attention is concentrated on the bright red papules because they're such\n a conspicuous symptom of the disease. Whereas the real cause is an\n invisible filterable virus. In the solar case it turned out to be these\n S-Regions.\n\n\n LATHAM. Why S-Regions?\n\n\n NIEMAND. We had to call them something. Named after the Sun, I suppose.\n\n\n LATHAM. You say an S-Region is invisible?\n\n\n NIEMAND. It is quite invisible to the eye but readily detected by\n suitable instrumental methods. It is extremely doubtful, however, if the\n radiation we detect is the actual cause of the disturbing effects\n observed.\n\n\n LATHAM. Just what are these effects?", "NIEMAND. In every case of a simultaneous attack the Sun was shining at\n both New York and California.\n\n\n LATHAM. You mean if it was cloudy—\n\n\n NIEMAND. No, no. The weather had nothing to do with it. I mean the Sun\n had to be above the horizon at both places. A person might undergo an\n attack soon after sunrise in New York but there would be no\n corresponding record of an attack in California where it was still dark.\n Conversely, a person might be stricken late in the afternoon in\n California without a corresponding attack in New York where the Sun had\n set. Dr. Hillyard and I had been searching desperately for a clue. We\n had both noticed that the attacks occurred only during the daylight\n hours but this had not seemed especially significant. Here we had\n evidence pointing directly to the source of trouble. It must have some\n connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. That must have had you badly puzzled at first.", "NIEMAND. Very closely. You see it takes about twelve days for an\n S-Region to pass across the face of the Sun, since the synodic rotation\n is twenty-seven point three days.\n\n\n LATHAM. I should think it would be nearer thirteen or fourteen days.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Apparently an S-Region is not particularly effective when it is\n just coming on or just going off the disk of the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. Are the S-Regions associated with sunspots?\n\n\n NIEMAND. They are connected in this way: that sunspot activity and\n S-Region activity certainly go together. The more sunspots the more\n violent and intense is the S-Region activity. But there is not a\n one-to-one correspondence between sunspots and S-Regions. That is, you\n cannot connect a particular sunspot group with a particular S-Region.\n The same thing is true of sunspots and magnetic storms.", "NIEMAND. An S-Region may have a lifetime of from three to perhaps a\n dozen solar rotations. Then it dies out and for a time we are free from\n this malignant radiation. Then a new region develops in perhaps an\n entirely different region of the Sun. Sometimes there may be several\n different S-Regions all going at once.\n\n\n LATHAM. Why were not the S-Regions discovered long ago?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Because the radio exploration of the Sun only began since the\n end of World War II.\n\n\n LATHAM. How does it happen that you only got patients suffering from\n S-radiation since about 1955?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I think we did get such patients previously but not in large\n enough numbers to attract attention. Also the present sunspot cycle\n started its rise to maximum about 1954.\n\n\n LATHAM. Is there no way of escaping the S-radiation?", "NIEMAND. It was really quite simple. But if it had not been for\n Middletown's experience in charting other solar phenomena it would never\n have occurred to us to do it. First, he laid out a series of about\n thirty squares horizontally across a sheet of graph paper. He dated\n these beginning March 1, 1955, when our records began. In each square he\n put a number from 1 to 10 that was a rough index of the number and\n intensity of the attacks reported on that day. Then he laid out another\n horizontal row below the first one dated twenty-seven days later. That\n is, the square under March 1st in the top row was dated March 28th in\n the row below it. He filled in the chart until he had an array of dozens\n of rows that included all our data down to May, 1958.", "NIEMAND. Middletown was immediately struck by the resemblance between\n the chart of mental disturbance and one he had been plotting over the\n years from his radio observations. Now when he compared the two charts\n the resemblance between the two was unmistakable. The pattern shown by\n the chart of mental disturbance corresponded in a striking way with the\n solar chart but with this difference. The disturbances on the Earth\n started two days later on the average than the disturbances due to the\n S-Regions on the Sun. In other words, there was a lag of about\n forty-eight hours between the two. But otherwise they were almost\n identical.\n\n\n LATHAM. But if these S-Regions of Middletown's are invisible how could\n he detect them?", "LATHAM. How do you account for this?\n\n\n NIEMAND. We don't account for it.\nLATHAM. What other properties of the S-Regions have you discovered?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Middletown says that the radio waves emanating from them are\n strongly circularly polarized. Moreover, the sense of rotation remains\n constant while one is passing across the Sun. If the magnetic field\n associated with an S-Region extends into the high solar corona through\n which the rays pass, then the sense of rotation corresponds to the\n ordinary ray of the magneto-ionic theory.\n\n\n LATHAM. Does this mean that the mental disturbances arise from some form\n of electromagnetic radiation?", "NIEMAND. Total strangers miles apart were stricken at almost the same\n moment. At first I thought nothing of it but as my records accumulated I\n became convinced it could not be attributed to chance. A mathematical\n analysis showed the number of coincidences followed a Poisson\n distribution very closely. I couldn't possibly see what daylight had to\n do with it. There is some evidence that mental patients are most\n disturbed around the time of full moon, but a search of medical\n literature failed to reveal any connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. What did you do?", "LATHAM. And so you believe that the S-Regions are the cause of most of\n the present trouble in the world. That it is not ourselves but something\n outside ourselves—\n\n\n NIEMAND. That is the logical outcome of our investigation. We are\n controlled and swayed by forces which in many cases we are powerless to\n resist.\n\n\n LATHAM. Could we not be warned of the presence of an S-Region?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The trouble is they seem to develop at random on the Sun. I'm\n afraid any warning system would be worse than useless. We would be\n crying WOLF! all the time.\n\n\n LATHAM. How may a person who is not particularly susceptible to this\n malignant radiation know that one of these regions is active?", "NIEMAND. If you have a feeling of restlessness and anxiety, if you are\n unable to concentrate, if you feel suddenly depressed and discouraged\n about yourself, or are filled with resentment toward the world, then you\n may be pretty sure that an S-Region is passing across the face of the\n Sun. Keep a tight rein on yourself. For it seems that evil will always\n be with us ... as long as the Sun shall continue to shine upon this\n little world.\nTHE END\n[A]\n Middletown believes that the Intense radiation recently\n discovered from information derived from Explorer I and III has no\n connection with the corpuscular S-radiation.", "NIEMAND. I'm afraid the only sure way is to keep on the unilluminated\n side of the Earth which is rather difficult to do. Apparently the\n corpuscular beam from an S-Region is several degrees wide and not very\n sharply defined, since its effects are felt simultaneously over the\n entire continent. Hillyard and Middletown are working on some form of\n shielding device but so far without success.\n\n\n LATHAM. What is the present state of S-Region activity?\n\n\n NIEMAND. At the present moment there happens to be no S-Region activity\n on the Sun. But a new one may develop at any time. Also, the outlook for\n a decrease in activity is not very favorable. Sunspot activity continues\n at a high level and is steadily mounting in violence. The last sunspot\n cycle had the highest maximum of any since 1780, but the present cycle\n bids fair to set an all time record.", "NIEMAND. The S-Regions are invisible to the eye through an\noptical\ntelescope, but are detected with ease by a\nradio\ntelescope. Middletown\n had discovered them when he was a graduate student working on radio\n astronomy in Australia, and he had followed up his researches with the\n more powerful equipment at Turtle Back Mountain. The formation of an\n S-Region is heralded by a long series of bursts of a few seconds\n duration, when the radiation may increase up to several thousand times\n that of the background intensity. These noise storms have been recorded\n simultaneously on wavelengths of from one to fifteen meters, which so\n far is the upper limit of the observations. In a few instances, however,\n intense bursts have also been detected down to fifty cm.\n\n\n LATHAM. I believe you said the periods of mental disturbance last for\n about ten or twelve days. How does that tie-in with the S-Regions?", "NIEMAND. That's right, in the Sun. I suppose the oldest problem in the\n world is the origin of human evil. Philosophers have wrestled with it\n ever since the days of Job. And like Job they have usually given up in\n despair, convinced that the origin of evil is too deep for the human\n mind to solve. Generally they have concluded that man is inherently\n wicked and sinful and that is the end of it. Now for the first time\n science has thrown new light on this subject.\n\n\n LATHAM. How is that?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Consider the record of history. There are occasional periods\n when conditions are fairly calm and peaceful. Art and industry\n flourished. Man at last seemed to be making progress toward some higher\n goal. Then suddenly—\nfor no detectable reason\n—conditions are\n reversed. Wars rage. People go mad. The world is plunged into an orgy of\n bloodshed and misery.\n\n\n LATHAM. But weren't there reasons?", "DISTURBING SUN\nBy PHILIP LATHAM\nIllustrated by Freas\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science\n Fiction May 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThis, be it understood, is fiction—nothing but fiction—and not,\n under any circumstances, to be considered as having any truth\n whatever to it. It's obviously utterly impossible ... isn't it?\nAn interview with Dr. I. M. Niemand, Director of the Psychophysical\n Institute of Solar and Terrestrial Relations, Camarillo, California.\nIn the closing days of December, 1957, at the meeting of the American" ], [ "Association for the Advancement of Science in New York, Dr. Niemand\n delivered a paper entitled simply, \"On the Nature of the Solar\n S-Regions.\" Owing to its unassuming title the startling implications\n contained in the paper were completely overlooked by the press. These\n implications are discussed here in an exclusive interview with Dr.\n Niemand by Philip Latham.\nLATHAM. Dr. Niemand, what would you say is your main job?", "NIEMAND. What reasons?\n\n\n LATHAM. Well, disputes over boundaries ... economic rivalry ... border\n incidents....\n\n\n NIEMAND. Nonsense. Men always make some flimsy excuse for going to war.\n The truth of the matter is that men go to war because they want to go\n to war. They can't help themselves. They are impelled by forces over\n which they have no control. By forces outside of themselves.\n\n\n LATHAM. Those are broad, sweeping statements. Can't you be more\n specific?", "NIEMAND. It was the beginning. In most instances patients reported the\n attack struck with almost the impact of a physical blow. The prodromal\n symptoms were usually slight ... a sudden feeling of uneasiness and\n guilt ... hot and cold flashes ... dizziness ... double vision. Then\n this ghastly sense of depression coupled with a blind insensate rage at\n life. One man said he felt as if the world were closing in on him.\n Another that he felt the people around him were plotting his\n destruction. One housewife made her husband lock her in her room for\n fear she would injure the children. I pored over these case histories\n for a long time getting absolutely nowhere. Then finally a pattern began\n to emerge.\nLATHAM. What sort of pattern?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The first thing that struck me was that the attacks all\n occurred during the daytime, between the hours of about seven in the\n morning and five in the evening. Then there were these coincidences—\n\n\n LATHAM. Coincidences?", "NIEMAND. I was afraid the result would be that my old roommate would\n think I had gone completely crazy. Imagine my surprise and gratification\n on receiving an answer by return mail to the effect that he also had\n been getting an increasing number of patients suffering with the same\n identical symptoms as my own. Furthermore, upon exchanging records we\ndid\nfind that in many cases patients three thousand miles apart had\n been stricken simultaneously—\n\n\n LATHAM. Just a minute. I would like to know how you define\n \"simultaneous.\"\n\n\n NIEMAND. We say an attack is simultaneous when one occurred on the east\n coast, for example, not earlier or later than five minutes of an attack\n on the west coast. That is about as close as you can hope to time a\n subjective effect of this nature. And now another fact emerged which\n gave us another clue.\n\n\n LATHAM. Which was?", "NIEMAND. Naturally I said nothing of this to my patients. I did,\n however, take pains to impress upon them the necessity of keeping an\n exact record of the onset of an attack. The better records they kept the\n more conclusive was the evidence. Men and women were experiencing nearly\n simultaneous attacks of rage and depression all over southern\n California, which was as far as my practice extended. One day it\n occurred to me: if people a few miles apart could be stricken\n simultaneously, why not people hundreds or thousands of miles apart? It\n was this idea that prompted me to get in touch with an old colleague of\n mine I had known at UC medical school, Dr. Max Hillyard, who was in\n practice in Utica, New York.\n\n\n LATHAM. With what result?", "NIEMAND. I said that the lines drawn down through the days of greatest\n mental disturbance slanted slightly. On this second chart the squares\n were dated under one another not at intervals of twenty-seven days, but\n at intervals of twenty-seven point three days.\n\n\n LATHAM. Why is that so important?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Because the average period of solar rotation in the sunspot\n zone is not twenty-seven days but twenty-seven point three days. And on\n this chart the lines did not slant but went vertically downward. The\n correlation with the synodic rotation of the Sun was practically\n perfect.\n\n\n LATHAM. But how did you get onto the S-Regions?", "LATHAM. Aren't such attacks characteristic of the stress and strain of\n modern life?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'm afraid that old stress-and-strain theory has been badly\n overworked. Been hearing about it ever since I was a pre-med student at\n ucla\n . Even as a boy I can remember my grandfather deploring the stress\n and strain of modern life when he was a country doctor practicing in\n Indiana. In my opinion one of the most valuable contributions\n anthropologists have made in recent years is the discovery that\n primitive man is afflicted with essentially the same neurotic conditions\n as those of us who live a so-called civilized life. They have found\n savages displaying every symptom of a nervous breakdown among the\n mountain tribes of the Elgonyi and the Aruntas of Australia. No, Mr.\n Latham, it's time the stress-and-strain theory was relegated to the junk\n pile along with demoniac possession and blood letting.", "NIEMAND. In every case of a simultaneous attack the Sun was shining at\n both New York and California.\n\n\n LATHAM. You mean if it was cloudy—\n\n\n NIEMAND. No, no. The weather had nothing to do with it. I mean the Sun\n had to be above the horizon at both places. A person might undergo an\n attack soon after sunrise in New York but there would be no\n corresponding record of an attack in California where it was still dark.\n Conversely, a person might be stricken late in the afternoon in\n California without a corresponding attack in New York where the Sun had\n set. Dr. Hillyard and I had been searching desperately for a clue. We\n had both noticed that the attacks occurred only during the daylight\n hours but this had not seemed especially significant. Here we had\n evidence pointing directly to the source of trouble. It must have some\n connection with the Sun.\n\n\n LATHAM. That must have had you badly puzzled at first.", "NIEMAND. I suppose you might say my main job today is to find out all I\n can between activity on the Sun and various forms of activity on the\n Earth.\n\n\n LATHAM. What do you mean by activity on the Sun?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Well, a sunspot is a form of solar activity.\n\n\n LATHAM. Just what is a sunspot?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'm afraid I can't say just what a sunspot is. I can only\n describe it. A sunspot is a region on the Sun that is cooler than its\n surroundings. That's why it looks dark. It isn't so hot. Therefore not\n so bright.\n\n\n LATHAM. Isn't it true that the number of spots on the Sun rises and\n falls in a cycle of eleven years?", "NIEMAND. A few. There is unquestionably a correlation between\n sunspots and disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field ... radio\n fade-outs ... auroras ... things like that.\n\n\n LATHAM. Now, Dr. Niemand, I understand that you have been investigating\n solar and terrestrial relationships along rather unorthodox lines.\n\n\n NIEMAND. Yes, I suppose some people would say so.\n\n\n LATHAM. You have broken new ground?\n\n\n NIEMAND. That's true.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way have your investigations differed from those of\n others?", "LATHAM. You must have done something for your patients—\n\n\n NIEMAND. A doctor must always do something for the patients who come to\n his office seeking help. First I gave them a thorough physical\n examination. I turned up some minor ailments—a slight heart murmur or a\n trace of albumin in the urine—but nothing of any significance. On the\n whole they were a remarkably healthy bunch of individuals, much more so\n than an average sample of the population. Then I made a searching\n inquiry into their personal life. Here again I drew a blank. They had no\n particular financial worries. Their sex life was generally satisfactory.\n There was no history of mental illness in the family. In fact, the only\n thing that seemed to be the matter with them was that there were times\n when they felt like hell.\n\n\n LATHAM. I suppose you tried tranquilizers?", "their attack was invariably sudden and with scarcely any warning. They\n would be going about their work feeling perfectly all right. Then in a\n minute the whole world was like some scene from a nightmare. A week or\n ten days later the attack would cease as mysteriously as it had come and\n they would be their old self again.", "NIEMAND. Well, they're common enough, goodness knows. As old as the\n world, in fact. Yet strangely enough it's hard to describe them in exact\n terms.\n\n\n LATHAM. Can you give us a general idea?\n\n\n NIEMAND. I'll try. Let's see ... remember that speech from \"Julius\n Caesar\" where Cassius is bewailing the evil times that beset ancient\n Rome? I believe it went like this: \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.\"\n\n\n LATHAM. I'm afraid I don't see—\n\n\n NIEMAND. Well, Shakespeare would have been nearer the truth if he had\n put it the other way around. \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in\n ourselves but in our stars\" or better \"in the Sun.\"\nLATHAM. In the Sun?", "NIEMAND. It certainly did. It looked as if we were headed back to the\n Middle Ages when astrology and medicine went hand in hand. But since it\n was our only lead we had no other choice but to follow it regardless of\n the consequences. Here luck played somewhat of a part, for Hillyard\n happened to have a contact that proved invaluable to us. Several years\n before Hillyard had gotten to know a young astrophysicist, Henry\n Middletown, who had come to him suffering from a severe case of myositis\n in the arms and shoulders. Hillyard had been able to effect a complete\n cure for which the boy was very grateful, and they had kept up a\n desultory correspondence. Middletown was now specializing in radio\n astronomy at the government's new solar observatory on Turtle Back\n Mountain in Arizona. If it had not been for Middletown's help I'm afraid\n our investigation would never have gotten past the clinical stage.\n\n\n LATHAM. In what way was Middletown of assistance?", "NIEMAND. That's right, in the Sun. I suppose the oldest problem in the\n world is the origin of human evil. Philosophers have wrestled with it\n ever since the days of Job. And like Job they have usually given up in\n despair, convinced that the origin of evil is too deep for the human\n mind to solve. Generally they have concluded that man is inherently\n wicked and sinful and that is the end of it. Now for the first time\n science has thrown new light on this subject.\n\n\n LATHAM. How is that?\n\n\n NIEMAND. Consider the record of history. There are occasional periods\n when conditions are fairly calm and peaceful. Art and industry\n flourished. Man at last seemed to be making progress toward some higher\n goal. Then suddenly—\nfor no detectable reason\n—conditions are\n reversed. Wars rage. People go mad. The world is plunged into an orgy of\n bloodshed and misery.\n\n\n LATHAM. But weren't there reasons?", "NIEMAND. It was the old case of workers in one field of science being\n completely ignorant of what was going on in another field. Someday we\n will have to establish a clearing house in science instead of keeping it\n in tight little compartments as we do at present. Well, Hillyard and I\n packed up for Arizona with considerable misgivings. We were afraid\n Middletown wouldn't take our findings seriously but somewhat to our\n surprise he heard our story with the closest attention. I guess\n astronomers have gotten so used to hearing from flying saucer\n enthusiasts and science-fiction addicts that nothing surprises them any\n more. When we had finished he asked to see our records. Hillyard had\n them all set down for easy numerical tabulation. Middletown went to work\n with scarcely a word. Within an hour he had produced a chart that was\n simply astounding.\nLATHAM. Can you describe this chart for us?", "DISTURBING SUN\nBy PHILIP LATHAM\nIllustrated by Freas\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science\n Fiction May 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThis, be it understood, is fiction—nothing but fiction—and not,\n under any circumstances, to be considered as having any truth\n whatever to it. It's obviously utterly impossible ... isn't it?\nAn interview with Dr. I. M. Niemand, Director of the Psychophysical\n Institute of Solar and Terrestrial Relations, Camarillo, California.\nIn the closing days of December, 1957, at the meeting of the American", "NIEMAND. The S-Regions are invisible to the eye through an\noptical\ntelescope, but are detected with ease by a\nradio\ntelescope. Middletown\n had discovered them when he was a graduate student working on radio\n astronomy in Australia, and he had followed up his researches with the\n more powerful equipment at Turtle Back Mountain. The formation of an\n S-Region is heralded by a long series of bursts of a few seconds\n duration, when the radiation may increase up to several thousand times\n that of the background intensity. These noise storms have been recorded\n simultaneously on wavelengths of from one to fifteen meters, which so\n far is the upper limit of the observations. In a few instances, however,\n intense bursts have also been detected down to fifty cm.\n\n\n LATHAM. I believe you said the periods of mental disturbance last for\n about ten or twelve days. How does that tie-in with the S-Regions?", "NIEMAND. I think our biggest advance was the discovery that sunspots\n themselves are not the direct cause of the disturbances we have been\n studying on the Earth. It's something like the eruptions in rubeola.\n Attention is concentrated on the bright red papules because they're such\n a conspicuous symptom of the disease. Whereas the real cause is an\n invisible filterable virus. In the solar case it turned out to be these\n S-Regions.\n\n\n LATHAM. Why S-Regions?\n\n\n NIEMAND. We had to call them something. Named after the Sun, I suppose.\n\n\n LATHAM. You say an S-Region is invisible?\n\n\n NIEMAND. It is quite invisible to the eye but readily detected by\n suitable instrumental methods. It is extremely doubtful, however, if the\n radiation we detect is the actual cause of the disturbing effects\n observed.\n\n\n LATHAM. Just what are these effects?", "LATHAM. And so you believe that the S-Regions are the cause of most of\n the present trouble in the world. That it is not ourselves but something\n outside ourselves—\n\n\n NIEMAND. That is the logical outcome of our investigation. We are\n controlled and swayed by forces which in many cases we are powerless to\n resist.\n\n\n LATHAM. Could we not be warned of the presence of an S-Region?\n\n\n NIEMAND. The trouble is they seem to develop at random on the Sun. I'm\n afraid any warning system would be worse than useless. We would be\n crying WOLF! all the time.\n\n\n LATHAM. How may a person who is not particularly susceptible to this\n malignant radiation know that one of these regions is active?" ] ]
train	23592	[ "Which two terms, respectively, most accurately describe Phil's and Mary's sentiments about Phil becoming a space pilot?", "How might the story's conclusion have differed if Phil, in the beginning of the story, had agreed to Mary's wish?", "What term best describes Phil's personality change from the introduction of the story to the conclusion?", "How does the author characterize the mood of the pre-launch location, prior to Phil's arrival?", "How does Phil respond to Mary's concerns regarding the space mission?", "What is most ironic about the conclusion of the story?", "What is the general's primary concern regarding the leader of the mission?", "Which of the following best serves as a metaphor for Phil and Mary's relationship, by the end of the story?", "What best represents the theme of the story?" ]	[ [ "Adamant; ambivalent", "Open-minded; resentful", "Content; reluctant", "Enthusiastic; resistant" ], [ "The conclusion would likely not have differed -- Phil would lose his sense of purpose and thus his vitality in a relationship", "Phil would have agreed to Mary's wishes, but left to go on the mission without telling here", "Phil would eventually come to accept Mary's fear and let go of his dream to go to the moon", "Phil would have tried to keep a positive attitude and wait his turn for the next mission" ], [ "Distressed", "Delirious", "Despondent", "Deflated" ], [ "Apprehensive", "Monotonous", "Frightening", "Energized" ], [ "He strives to communicate that he should not have to choose between his relationship and his lifelong passion", "He lovingly teases her about her emotions, but ultimately them as unfounded and hyperbolic", "He tries to present reassuring evidence and be honest about his fears if he is not allowed to fulfill the mission", "He insists that she trusts in his competency and readiness for the mission at hand" ], [ "While Sammy is the least qualified to go into space, he was the only replacement for Phil", "Everything that used to give Phil joy will now represent pain and suffering", "Mary's fear of losing Phil became a self-fulfilling prophecy", "Phil trained all of his life for one moment, and gave it all up within the period of one day" ], [ "Exceptional leadership skills", "Strongest intellectual quotient", "Peak body and brain function", "Unwavering belief in the mission" ], [ "Mary's cigarette burned down too far", "The new, government-built town", "The barbed wire fence", "The broken zipper on Phil's space suit" ], [ "Compromise is essential to long-lasting, happy successful relationships", "It is better to be honest about something bothering you than to withhold it and possibly cause a shared goal to fail", "Keeping one's family happy and intact is ultimately more important than any personal or professional goal", "Rigid thinking and ultimatums in relationships rarely result in desired outcomes" ] ]	[ 4, 1, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 2, 4 ]	[ 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "\"Yes, you did. I told you how I felt. I told you I could never be the\n wife of a space pilot. But I don't think I ever really believed it was\n possible—not until this morning when you said tonight was the take-off.\n It's so stupid to jeopardize everything we've got for a ridiculous\n dream!\"\n\n\n He sat down on the edge of the couch and took her hands between his.\n \"Mary, listen to me,\" he said. \"It isn't a dream. It's real. There's\n nothing means anything more to me than you do—you know that. But no\n man ever had the chance to do what I'm going to do tonight—no man ever.\n If I backed out now for any reason, I'd never be able to look at the sky\n again. I'd be through.\"\n\n\n She looked at him without seeing him, and there was nothing at all in\n her eyes.", "\"Yes, I'll come to say good-by.\" She paused and dropped her eyes. \"Phil,\n if you go, I won't be here when you get back—if you get back. I won't\n be here because I won't be the wife of a space pilot for the rest of my\n life. It isn't the kind of life I bargained for. No matter how much I\n love you, I just couldn't take that, Phil. I'm sorry. I guess I'm not\n the noble sort of wife.\"\n\n\n She finished and took another cigarette from the pack on the coffee\n table and put it to her lips. Her hand was trembling as she touched the\n lighter to the end of the cigarette and drew deeply. Phil stood watching\n her, the excitement completely gone from his eyes.\n\n\n \"I wish you had told me this a long time ago, Mary,\" Phil said. His\n voice was dry and low. \"I didn't know you felt this way about it.\"", "The general took Phil's arm and they walked to the briefing room. There\n were chairs set up for the scientists and Air Force officers directly\n connected with the take-off. They were seated now in a semicircle in\n front of a huge chart of the solar system. Phil took his seat, and the\n last minute briefing began. It was a routine he knew by heart. He had\n gone over and over it a thousand times, and he only half listened now.\n He kept thinking of Mary outside, alone by the fence.\n\n\n The voice of the briefing officer was a dull hum in his ears.\n\n\n \"... And orbit at 18,000-mph. You will then accelerate for the breakaway\n to 24,900-mph for five minutes and then free-coast for 116 hours\n until—\"", "\"Thanks, sergeant. I'll be seeing you next week,\" Phil said, and smiled.\n They drove between the rows of wooden buildings that lined the field,\n and he parked near the low barbed fence ringing the take-off zone. He\n turned off the ignition, and sat quietly for a moment before lighting a\n cigarette. Then he looked at his wife. She was staring through the\n windshield at the rocket two hundred yards away. Its smooth polished\n surface gleamed in the spotlight glare, and it sloped up and up until\n the eye lost the tip against the stars.\n\n\n \"She's beautiful, Mary. You've never seen her before, have you?\"\n\n\n \"No, I've never seen her before,\" she said. \"Hadn't you better go?\" Her\n voice was strained and she held her hands closed tightly in her lap.\n \"Please go now, Phil,\" she said.", "He leaned toward her and touched her cheek. Then she was in his arms,\n her head buried against his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Good-by, darling,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Wish me luck, Mary?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Yes, good luck, Phil,\" she said. He opened the car door and got out.\n The noise of men and machines scurrying around the ship broke the spell\n of the rocket waiting silently for flight.\n\n\n \"Mary, I—\" he began, and then turned and strode toward the\n administration building without looking back.\nInside the building it was like a locker room before the big game. The\n tension stood alone, and each man had the same happy, excited look that\n Phil had worn earlier. When he came into the room, the noise and bustle\n stopped. They turned as one man toward him, and General Small came up to\n him and took his hand.", "\"Mary, you know I can't back out now. How could I? It's been three\n years. You know how much I've wanted to be the first man to go. Nothing\n would ever be right with me again if I didn't go. Please don't make it\n hard.\" He stopped talking and held her to him and stroked the back of\n her head. He could feel her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. He\n released her and stood up.\n\n\n \"I've got to get started, Mary. Will you come to the field with me?\"", "\"Phil, if there is anything—anything at all—you know what it might\n mean. You've got to be in the best mental and physical condition of your\n life tonight. You know better than any man here what that means to our\n success. I think there is something more than just natural apprehension\n wrong with you. Want to tell me?\"\nOutside, the take-off zone crawled with men and machines at the base of\n the rocket. For ten hours, the final check-outs had been in progress;\n and now the men were checking again, on their own time. The thing they\n had worked toward for six years was ready to happen, and each one felt\n that he was sending just a little bit of himself into the sky. Beyond\n the ring of lights and moving men, on the edge of the field, Mary stood.\n Her hands moved slowly over the top of the fence, twisting the barbs of\n wire. But her eyes were on the ship.", "\"Honey, look at me,\" he said. \"It isn't going to be bad. Honestly it\n isn't. We know exactly how it will be. If anything could go wrong, they\n wouldn't be sending me; you know that. I told you that we've sent five\n un-manned ships up and everyone came back without a hitch.\"\n\n\n She turned, facing him. There were tears starting in the corners of her\n wide, brown eyes, and she brushed them away with her hand.\n\n\n \"Phil, don't go. Please don't. They can send Sammy. Sammy doesn't have a\n wife. Can't he go? They'd understand, Phil. Please!\" She was holding his\n arms tightly with her hands, and the color had drained from her cheeks.", "The small group at the base of the ship turned and walked back to the\n fence. And for an eternity the great ship stood alone, waiting. Then,\n from deep inside, a rumble came, increasing in volume to a gigantic roar\n that shook the earth and tore at the ears. Slowly, the first manned\n rocket to the Moon lifted up and up to the sky.\nFor a long time after the rocket had become a tiny speck of light in the\n heavens, she stood holding her face in her hands and crying softly to\n herself. And then she felt the touch of a hand on her arm. She turned.\n\n\n \"Phil! Oh, Phil.\" She held tightly to him and repeated his name over and\n over.\n\n\n \"They wouldn't let me go, Mary,\" he said finally. \"The general would not\n let me go.\"", "\"On the contrary, colonel. I'm very proud to meet you. I've been looking\n at that ship out there and wondering. I almost wish I were a young man\n again. I'd like to be going. It's a thrilling thought—man's first\n adventure into the universe. You're lighting a new dawn of history,\n colonel. It's a privilege few men have ever had; and those who have had\n it didn't realize it at the time. Good luck, and God be with you.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, sir. I'm aware of all you say. It frightens me a little.\"", "Phil asked a few questions about weather and solar conditions. And then\n the session was done. They rose and looked at each other, the same\n unanswered questions on each man's face. There were forced smiles and\n handshakes. They were ready now.\n\n\n \"Phil,\" the general said, and took him aside.\n\n\n \"Sir?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, you're ... you feel all right, don't you, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I feel fine. Why?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, I've spent nearly every day with you for three years. I know you\n better than I know myself in many ways. And I've studied the\n psychologist's reports on you carefully. Maybe it's just nervousness,\n Phil, but I think there's something wrong. Is there?\"\n\n\n \"No, sir. There's nothing wrong,\" Phil said, but his voice didn't carry\n conviction. He reached for a cigarette.", "\"Hello, Phil. We were beginning to think you weren't coming. You all\n set, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, I'm all set, I guess,\" Phil said.\n\n\n \"I'd like you to meet the Secretary of Defense, Phil. He's over here by\n the radar.\"\n\n\n As they crossed the room, familiar faces smiled, and each man shook his\n hand or touched his arm. He saw Sammy, alone, by the coffee urn. Sammy\n waved to him, but he didn't smile. Phil wanted to talk to him, to say\n something; but there was nothing to be said now. Sammy's turn would come\n later.\n\n\n \"Mr. Secretary,\" the general said, \"this is Colonel Conover. He'll be\n the first man in history to see the other side of the Moon. Colonel—the\n Secretary of Defense.\"\n\n\n \"How do you do, sir. I'm very proud to meet you,\" Phil said.", "And then they were ready. A small group of excited men came out from the\n administration building and moved forward. The check-out crews climbed\n into their machines and drove back outside the take-off zone. And,\n alone, one man climbed the steel ladder up the side of the\n rocket—ninety feet into the air. At the top he waved to the men on the\n ground and then disappeared through a small port.\n\n\n Mary waved to him. \"Good-by,\" she said to herself, but the words stuck\n tight in her throat.", "Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science\n Fiction December 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence\n that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.\nBREAKAWAY\nBY STANLEY GIMBLE\nIllustrated by Freas\nShe surely got her wish ... but there was some question about getting\n what she wanted.\nPhil Conover pulled the zipper of his flight suit up the front of his\n long, thin body and came into the living room. His face, usually serious\n and quietly handsome, had an alive, excited look. And the faint lines\n around his dark, deep-set eyes were accentuated when he smiled at his\n wife.\n\n\n \"All set, honey. How do I look in my monkey suit?\"", "Phil turned the car off the highway onto the rutted dirt road that led\n across the sand to the field where the ship waited. In the distance they\n could see the beams of the searchlights as they played across the\n take-off zone and swept along the top of the high wire fence stretching\n out of sight to right and left. At the gate they were stopped by the\n guard. He read Phil's pass, shined his flashlight in their faces, and\n then saluted. \"Good luck, colonel,\" he said, and shook Phil's hand.", "\"Let's go, if you're still going,\" she finally said.\nThey drove through the streets of the small town with its small\n bungalows, each alike. There were no trees and very little grass. It was\n a new town, a government built town, and it had no personality yet. It\n existed only because of the huge ship standing poised in the take-off\n zone five miles away in the desert. Its future as a town rested with the\n ship, and the town seemed to feel the uncertainty of its future, seemed\n ready to stop existing as a town and to give itself back to the desert,\n if such was its destiny.", "His wife was sitting stiffly on the flowered couch that was still not\n theirs completely. In her fingers she held a cigarette burned down too\n far. She said, \"You look fine, Phil. You look just right.\" She managed a\n smile. Then she leaned forward and crushed the cigarette in the ash\n tray on the maple coffee table and took another from the pack.\n\n\n He came to her and touched his hands to her soft blond hair, raising her\n face until she was looking into his eyes. \"You're the most beautiful\n girl I know. Did I ever tell you that?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I think so. Yes, I'm sure you did,\" she said, finishing the\n ritual; but her voice broke, and she turned her head away. Phil sat\n beside her and put his arm around her small shoulders. He had stopped\n smiling.", "She looked at him. His face was drawn tight, and there were tears on his\n cheeks. \"Thank, God,\" she said. \"It doesn't matter, darling. The only\n thing that matters is you didn't go.\"\n\n\n \"You're right, Mary,\" he said. His voice was low—so low she could\n hardly hear him. \"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.\" He stood with\n his hands at his sides, watching her. And then turned away and walked\n toward the car.\nTHE END" ], [ "She looked at him. His face was drawn tight, and there were tears on his\n cheeks. \"Thank, God,\" she said. \"It doesn't matter, darling. The only\n thing that matters is you didn't go.\"\n\n\n \"You're right, Mary,\" he said. His voice was low—so low she could\n hardly hear him. \"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.\" He stood with\n his hands at his sides, watching her. And then turned away and walked\n toward the car.\nTHE END", "\"Yes, I'll come to say good-by.\" She paused and dropped her eyes. \"Phil,\n if you go, I won't be here when you get back—if you get back. I won't\n be here because I won't be the wife of a space pilot for the rest of my\n life. It isn't the kind of life I bargained for. No matter how much I\n love you, I just couldn't take that, Phil. I'm sorry. I guess I'm not\n the noble sort of wife.\"\n\n\n She finished and took another cigarette from the pack on the coffee\n table and put it to her lips. Her hand was trembling as she touched the\n lighter to the end of the cigarette and drew deeply. Phil stood watching\n her, the excitement completely gone from his eyes.\n\n\n \"I wish you had told me this a long time ago, Mary,\" Phil said. His\n voice was dry and low. \"I didn't know you felt this way about it.\"", "\"Phil, if there is anything—anything at all—you know what it might\n mean. You've got to be in the best mental and physical condition of your\n life tonight. You know better than any man here what that means to our\n success. I think there is something more than just natural apprehension\n wrong with you. Want to tell me?\"\nOutside, the take-off zone crawled with men and machines at the base of\n the rocket. For ten hours, the final check-outs had been in progress;\n and now the men were checking again, on their own time. The thing they\n had worked toward for six years was ready to happen, and each one felt\n that he was sending just a little bit of himself into the sky. Beyond\n the ring of lights and moving men, on the edge of the field, Mary stood.\n Her hands moved slowly over the top of the fence, twisting the barbs of\n wire. But her eyes were on the ship.", "\"Yes, you did. I told you how I felt. I told you I could never be the\n wife of a space pilot. But I don't think I ever really believed it was\n possible—not until this morning when you said tonight was the take-off.\n It's so stupid to jeopardize everything we've got for a ridiculous\n dream!\"\n\n\n He sat down on the edge of the couch and took her hands between his.\n \"Mary, listen to me,\" he said. \"It isn't a dream. It's real. There's\n nothing means anything more to me than you do—you know that. But no\n man ever had the chance to do what I'm going to do tonight—no man ever.\n If I backed out now for any reason, I'd never be able to look at the sky\n again. I'd be through.\"\n\n\n She looked at him without seeing him, and there was nothing at all in\n her eyes.", "His wife was sitting stiffly on the flowered couch that was still not\n theirs completely. In her fingers she held a cigarette burned down too\n far. She said, \"You look fine, Phil. You look just right.\" She managed a\n smile. Then she leaned forward and crushed the cigarette in the ash\n tray on the maple coffee table and took another from the pack.\n\n\n He came to her and touched his hands to her soft blond hair, raising her\n face until she was looking into his eyes. \"You're the most beautiful\n girl I know. Did I ever tell you that?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I think so. Yes, I'm sure you did,\" she said, finishing the\n ritual; but her voice broke, and she turned her head away. Phil sat\n beside her and put his arm around her small shoulders. He had stopped\n smiling.", "He leaned toward her and touched her cheek. Then she was in his arms,\n her head buried against his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Good-by, darling,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Wish me luck, Mary?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Yes, good luck, Phil,\" she said. He opened the car door and got out.\n The noise of men and machines scurrying around the ship broke the spell\n of the rocket waiting silently for flight.\n\n\n \"Mary, I—\" he began, and then turned and strode toward the\n administration building without looking back.\nInside the building it was like a locker room before the big game. The\n tension stood alone, and each man had the same happy, excited look that\n Phil had worn earlier. When he came into the room, the noise and bustle\n stopped. They turned as one man toward him, and General Small came up to\n him and took his hand.", "\"Thanks, sergeant. I'll be seeing you next week,\" Phil said, and smiled.\n They drove between the rows of wooden buildings that lined the field,\n and he parked near the low barbed fence ringing the take-off zone. He\n turned off the ignition, and sat quietly for a moment before lighting a\n cigarette. Then he looked at his wife. She was staring through the\n windshield at the rocket two hundred yards away. Its smooth polished\n surface gleamed in the spotlight glare, and it sloped up and up until\n the eye lost the tip against the stars.\n\n\n \"She's beautiful, Mary. You've never seen her before, have you?\"\n\n\n \"No, I've never seen her before,\" she said. \"Hadn't you better go?\" Her\n voice was strained and she held her hands closed tightly in her lap.\n \"Please go now, Phil,\" she said.", "Phil asked a few questions about weather and solar conditions. And then\n the session was done. They rose and looked at each other, the same\n unanswered questions on each man's face. There were forced smiles and\n handshakes. They were ready now.\n\n\n \"Phil,\" the general said, and took him aside.\n\n\n \"Sir?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, you're ... you feel all right, don't you, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I feel fine. Why?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, I've spent nearly every day with you for three years. I know you\n better than I know myself in many ways. And I've studied the\n psychologist's reports on you carefully. Maybe it's just nervousness,\n Phil, but I think there's something wrong. Is there?\"\n\n\n \"No, sir. There's nothing wrong,\" Phil said, but his voice didn't carry\n conviction. He reached for a cigarette.", "The small group at the base of the ship turned and walked back to the\n fence. And for an eternity the great ship stood alone, waiting. Then,\n from deep inside, a rumble came, increasing in volume to a gigantic roar\n that shook the earth and tore at the ears. Slowly, the first manned\n rocket to the Moon lifted up and up to the sky.\nFor a long time after the rocket had become a tiny speck of light in the\n heavens, she stood holding her face in her hands and crying softly to\n herself. And then she felt the touch of a hand on her arm. She turned.\n\n\n \"Phil! Oh, Phil.\" She held tightly to him and repeated his name over and\n over.\n\n\n \"They wouldn't let me go, Mary,\" he said finally. \"The general would not\n let me go.\"", "\"Hello, Phil. We were beginning to think you weren't coming. You all\n set, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, I'm all set, I guess,\" Phil said.\n\n\n \"I'd like you to meet the Secretary of Defense, Phil. He's over here by\n the radar.\"\n\n\n As they crossed the room, familiar faces smiled, and each man shook his\n hand or touched his arm. He saw Sammy, alone, by the coffee urn. Sammy\n waved to him, but he didn't smile. Phil wanted to talk to him, to say\n something; but there was nothing to be said now. Sammy's turn would come\n later.\n\n\n \"Mr. Secretary,\" the general said, \"this is Colonel Conover. He'll be\n the first man in history to see the other side of the Moon. Colonel—the\n Secretary of Defense.\"\n\n\n \"How do you do, sir. I'm very proud to meet you,\" Phil said.", "\"Mary, you know I can't back out now. How could I? It's been three\n years. You know how much I've wanted to be the first man to go. Nothing\n would ever be right with me again if I didn't go. Please don't make it\n hard.\" He stopped talking and held her to him and stroked the back of\n her head. He could feel her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. He\n released her and stood up.\n\n\n \"I've got to get started, Mary. Will you come to the field with me?\"", "\"Honey, look at me,\" he said. \"It isn't going to be bad. Honestly it\n isn't. We know exactly how it will be. If anything could go wrong, they\n wouldn't be sending me; you know that. I told you that we've sent five\n un-manned ships up and everyone came back without a hitch.\"\n\n\n She turned, facing him. There were tears starting in the corners of her\n wide, brown eyes, and she brushed them away with her hand.\n\n\n \"Phil, don't go. Please don't. They can send Sammy. Sammy doesn't have a\n wife. Can't he go? They'd understand, Phil. Please!\" She was holding his\n arms tightly with her hands, and the color had drained from her cheeks.", "The general took Phil's arm and they walked to the briefing room. There\n were chairs set up for the scientists and Air Force officers directly\n connected with the take-off. They were seated now in a semicircle in\n front of a huge chart of the solar system. Phil took his seat, and the\n last minute briefing began. It was a routine he knew by heart. He had\n gone over and over it a thousand times, and he only half listened now.\n He kept thinking of Mary outside, alone by the fence.\n\n\n The voice of the briefing officer was a dull hum in his ears.\n\n\n \"... And orbit at 18,000-mph. You will then accelerate for the breakaway\n to 24,900-mph for five minutes and then free-coast for 116 hours\n until—\"", "\"Let's go, if you're still going,\" she finally said.\nThey drove through the streets of the small town with its small\n bungalows, each alike. There were no trees and very little grass. It was\n a new town, a government built town, and it had no personality yet. It\n existed only because of the huge ship standing poised in the take-off\n zone five miles away in the desert. Its future as a town rested with the\n ship, and the town seemed to feel the uncertainty of its future, seemed\n ready to stop existing as a town and to give itself back to the desert,\n if such was its destiny.", "Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science\n Fiction December 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence\n that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.\nBREAKAWAY\nBY STANLEY GIMBLE\nIllustrated by Freas\nShe surely got her wish ... but there was some question about getting\n what she wanted.\nPhil Conover pulled the zipper of his flight suit up the front of his\n long, thin body and came into the living room. His face, usually serious\n and quietly handsome, had an alive, excited look. And the faint lines\n around his dark, deep-set eyes were accentuated when he smiled at his\n wife.\n\n\n \"All set, honey. How do I look in my monkey suit?\"", "\"On the contrary, colonel. I'm very proud to meet you. I've been looking\n at that ship out there and wondering. I almost wish I were a young man\n again. I'd like to be going. It's a thrilling thought—man's first\n adventure into the universe. You're lighting a new dawn of history,\n colonel. It's a privilege few men have ever had; and those who have had\n it didn't realize it at the time. Good luck, and God be with you.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, sir. I'm aware of all you say. It frightens me a little.\"", "And then they were ready. A small group of excited men came out from the\n administration building and moved forward. The check-out crews climbed\n into their machines and drove back outside the take-off zone. And,\n alone, one man climbed the steel ladder up the side of the\n rocket—ninety feet into the air. At the top he waved to the men on the\n ground and then disappeared through a small port.\n\n\n Mary waved to him. \"Good-by,\" she said to herself, but the words stuck\n tight in her throat.", "Phil turned the car off the highway onto the rutted dirt road that led\n across the sand to the field where the ship waited. In the distance they\n could see the beams of the searchlights as they played across the\n take-off zone and swept along the top of the high wire fence stretching\n out of sight to right and left. At the gate they were stopped by the\n guard. He read Phil's pass, shined his flashlight in their faces, and\n then saluted. \"Good luck, colonel,\" he said, and shook Phil's hand." ], [ "His wife was sitting stiffly on the flowered couch that was still not\n theirs completely. In her fingers she held a cigarette burned down too\n far. She said, \"You look fine, Phil. You look just right.\" She managed a\n smile. Then she leaned forward and crushed the cigarette in the ash\n tray on the maple coffee table and took another from the pack.\n\n\n He came to her and touched his hands to her soft blond hair, raising her\n face until she was looking into his eyes. \"You're the most beautiful\n girl I know. Did I ever tell you that?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I think so. Yes, I'm sure you did,\" she said, finishing the\n ritual; but her voice broke, and she turned her head away. Phil sat\n beside her and put his arm around her small shoulders. He had stopped\n smiling.", "\"Phil, if there is anything—anything at all—you know what it might\n mean. You've got to be in the best mental and physical condition of your\n life tonight. You know better than any man here what that means to our\n success. I think there is something more than just natural apprehension\n wrong with you. Want to tell me?\"\nOutside, the take-off zone crawled with men and machines at the base of\n the rocket. For ten hours, the final check-outs had been in progress;\n and now the men were checking again, on their own time. The thing they\n had worked toward for six years was ready to happen, and each one felt\n that he was sending just a little bit of himself into the sky. Beyond\n the ring of lights and moving men, on the edge of the field, Mary stood.\n Her hands moved slowly over the top of the fence, twisting the barbs of\n wire. But her eyes were on the ship.", "Phil asked a few questions about weather and solar conditions. And then\n the session was done. They rose and looked at each other, the same\n unanswered questions on each man's face. There were forced smiles and\n handshakes. They were ready now.\n\n\n \"Phil,\" the general said, and took him aside.\n\n\n \"Sir?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, you're ... you feel all right, don't you, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I feel fine. Why?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, I've spent nearly every day with you for three years. I know you\n better than I know myself in many ways. And I've studied the\n psychologist's reports on you carefully. Maybe it's just nervousness,\n Phil, but I think there's something wrong. Is there?\"\n\n\n \"No, sir. There's nothing wrong,\" Phil said, but his voice didn't carry\n conviction. He reached for a cigarette.", "\"Hello, Phil. We were beginning to think you weren't coming. You all\n set, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, I'm all set, I guess,\" Phil said.\n\n\n \"I'd like you to meet the Secretary of Defense, Phil. He's over here by\n the radar.\"\n\n\n As they crossed the room, familiar faces smiled, and each man shook his\n hand or touched his arm. He saw Sammy, alone, by the coffee urn. Sammy\n waved to him, but he didn't smile. Phil wanted to talk to him, to say\n something; but there was nothing to be said now. Sammy's turn would come\n later.\n\n\n \"Mr. Secretary,\" the general said, \"this is Colonel Conover. He'll be\n the first man in history to see the other side of the Moon. Colonel—the\n Secretary of Defense.\"\n\n\n \"How do you do, sir. I'm very proud to meet you,\" Phil said.", "She looked at him. His face was drawn tight, and there were tears on his\n cheeks. \"Thank, God,\" she said. \"It doesn't matter, darling. The only\n thing that matters is you didn't go.\"\n\n\n \"You're right, Mary,\" he said. His voice was low—so low she could\n hardly hear him. \"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.\" He stood with\n his hands at his sides, watching her. And then turned away and walked\n toward the car.\nTHE END", "He leaned toward her and touched her cheek. Then she was in his arms,\n her head buried against his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Good-by, darling,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Wish me luck, Mary?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Yes, good luck, Phil,\" she said. He opened the car door and got out.\n The noise of men and machines scurrying around the ship broke the spell\n of the rocket waiting silently for flight.\n\n\n \"Mary, I—\" he began, and then turned and strode toward the\n administration building without looking back.\nInside the building it was like a locker room before the big game. The\n tension stood alone, and each man had the same happy, excited look that\n Phil had worn earlier. When he came into the room, the noise and bustle\n stopped. They turned as one man toward him, and General Small came up to\n him and took his hand.", "\"Thanks, sergeant. I'll be seeing you next week,\" Phil said, and smiled.\n They drove between the rows of wooden buildings that lined the field,\n and he parked near the low barbed fence ringing the take-off zone. He\n turned off the ignition, and sat quietly for a moment before lighting a\n cigarette. Then he looked at his wife. She was staring through the\n windshield at the rocket two hundred yards away. Its smooth polished\n surface gleamed in the spotlight glare, and it sloped up and up until\n the eye lost the tip against the stars.\n\n\n \"She's beautiful, Mary. You've never seen her before, have you?\"\n\n\n \"No, I've never seen her before,\" she said. \"Hadn't you better go?\" Her\n voice was strained and she held her hands closed tightly in her lap.\n \"Please go now, Phil,\" she said.", "\"Yes, I'll come to say good-by.\" She paused and dropped her eyes. \"Phil,\n if you go, I won't be here when you get back—if you get back. I won't\n be here because I won't be the wife of a space pilot for the rest of my\n life. It isn't the kind of life I bargained for. No matter how much I\n love you, I just couldn't take that, Phil. I'm sorry. I guess I'm not\n the noble sort of wife.\"\n\n\n She finished and took another cigarette from the pack on the coffee\n table and put it to her lips. Her hand was trembling as she touched the\n lighter to the end of the cigarette and drew deeply. Phil stood watching\n her, the excitement completely gone from his eyes.\n\n\n \"I wish you had told me this a long time ago, Mary,\" Phil said. His\n voice was dry and low. \"I didn't know you felt this way about it.\"", "\"Honey, look at me,\" he said. \"It isn't going to be bad. Honestly it\n isn't. We know exactly how it will be. If anything could go wrong, they\n wouldn't be sending me; you know that. I told you that we've sent five\n un-manned ships up and everyone came back without a hitch.\"\n\n\n She turned, facing him. There were tears starting in the corners of her\n wide, brown eyes, and she brushed them away with her hand.\n\n\n \"Phil, don't go. Please don't. They can send Sammy. Sammy doesn't have a\n wife. Can't he go? They'd understand, Phil. Please!\" She was holding his\n arms tightly with her hands, and the color had drained from her cheeks.", "The general took Phil's arm and they walked to the briefing room. There\n were chairs set up for the scientists and Air Force officers directly\n connected with the take-off. They were seated now in a semicircle in\n front of a huge chart of the solar system. Phil took his seat, and the\n last minute briefing began. It was a routine he knew by heart. He had\n gone over and over it a thousand times, and he only half listened now.\n He kept thinking of Mary outside, alone by the fence.\n\n\n The voice of the briefing officer was a dull hum in his ears.\n\n\n \"... And orbit at 18,000-mph. You will then accelerate for the breakaway\n to 24,900-mph for five minutes and then free-coast for 116 hours\n until—\"", "The small group at the base of the ship turned and walked back to the\n fence. And for an eternity the great ship stood alone, waiting. Then,\n from deep inside, a rumble came, increasing in volume to a gigantic roar\n that shook the earth and tore at the ears. Slowly, the first manned\n rocket to the Moon lifted up and up to the sky.\nFor a long time after the rocket had become a tiny speck of light in the\n heavens, she stood holding her face in her hands and crying softly to\n herself. And then she felt the touch of a hand on her arm. She turned.\n\n\n \"Phil! Oh, Phil.\" She held tightly to him and repeated his name over and\n over.\n\n\n \"They wouldn't let me go, Mary,\" he said finally. \"The general would not\n let me go.\"", "\"Let's go, if you're still going,\" she finally said.\nThey drove through the streets of the small town with its small\n bungalows, each alike. There were no trees and very little grass. It was\n a new town, a government built town, and it had no personality yet. It\n existed only because of the huge ship standing poised in the take-off\n zone five miles away in the desert. Its future as a town rested with the\n ship, and the town seemed to feel the uncertainty of its future, seemed\n ready to stop existing as a town and to give itself back to the desert,\n if such was its destiny.", "Phil turned the car off the highway onto the rutted dirt road that led\n across the sand to the field where the ship waited. In the distance they\n could see the beams of the searchlights as they played across the\n take-off zone and swept along the top of the high wire fence stretching\n out of sight to right and left. At the gate they were stopped by the\n guard. He read Phil's pass, shined his flashlight in their faces, and\n then saluted. \"Good luck, colonel,\" he said, and shook Phil's hand.", "Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science\n Fiction December 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence\n that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.\nBREAKAWAY\nBY STANLEY GIMBLE\nIllustrated by Freas\nShe surely got her wish ... but there was some question about getting\n what she wanted.\nPhil Conover pulled the zipper of his flight suit up the front of his\n long, thin body and came into the living room. His face, usually serious\n and quietly handsome, had an alive, excited look. And the faint lines\n around his dark, deep-set eyes were accentuated when he smiled at his\n wife.\n\n\n \"All set, honey. How do I look in my monkey suit?\"", "\"Mary, you know I can't back out now. How could I? It's been three\n years. You know how much I've wanted to be the first man to go. Nothing\n would ever be right with me again if I didn't go. Please don't make it\n hard.\" He stopped talking and held her to him and stroked the back of\n her head. He could feel her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. He\n released her and stood up.\n\n\n \"I've got to get started, Mary. Will you come to the field with me?\"", "\"On the contrary, colonel. I'm very proud to meet you. I've been looking\n at that ship out there and wondering. I almost wish I were a young man\n again. I'd like to be going. It's a thrilling thought—man's first\n adventure into the universe. You're lighting a new dawn of history,\n colonel. It's a privilege few men have ever had; and those who have had\n it didn't realize it at the time. Good luck, and God be with you.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, sir. I'm aware of all you say. It frightens me a little.\"", "\"Yes, you did. I told you how I felt. I told you I could never be the\n wife of a space pilot. But I don't think I ever really believed it was\n possible—not until this morning when you said tonight was the take-off.\n It's so stupid to jeopardize everything we've got for a ridiculous\n dream!\"\n\n\n He sat down on the edge of the couch and took her hands between his.\n \"Mary, listen to me,\" he said. \"It isn't a dream. It's real. There's\n nothing means anything more to me than you do—you know that. But no\n man ever had the chance to do what I'm going to do tonight—no man ever.\n If I backed out now for any reason, I'd never be able to look at the sky\n again. I'd be through.\"\n\n\n She looked at him without seeing him, and there was nothing at all in\n her eyes.", "And then they were ready. A small group of excited men came out from the\n administration building and moved forward. The check-out crews climbed\n into their machines and drove back outside the take-off zone. And,\n alone, one man climbed the steel ladder up the side of the\n rocket—ninety feet into the air. At the top he waved to the men on the\n ground and then disappeared through a small port.\n\n\n Mary waved to him. \"Good-by,\" she said to herself, but the words stuck\n tight in her throat." ], [ "\"Thanks, sergeant. I'll be seeing you next week,\" Phil said, and smiled.\n They drove between the rows of wooden buildings that lined the field,\n and he parked near the low barbed fence ringing the take-off zone. He\n turned off the ignition, and sat quietly for a moment before lighting a\n cigarette. Then he looked at his wife. She was staring through the\n windshield at the rocket two hundred yards away. Its smooth polished\n surface gleamed in the spotlight glare, and it sloped up and up until\n the eye lost the tip against the stars.\n\n\n \"She's beautiful, Mary. You've never seen her before, have you?\"\n\n\n \"No, I've never seen her before,\" she said. \"Hadn't you better go?\" Her\n voice was strained and she held her hands closed tightly in her lap.\n \"Please go now, Phil,\" she said.", "Phil turned the car off the highway onto the rutted dirt road that led\n across the sand to the field where the ship waited. In the distance they\n could see the beams of the searchlights as they played across the\n take-off zone and swept along the top of the high wire fence stretching\n out of sight to right and left. At the gate they were stopped by the\n guard. He read Phil's pass, shined his flashlight in their faces, and\n then saluted. \"Good luck, colonel,\" he said, and shook Phil's hand.", "The general took Phil's arm and they walked to the briefing room. There\n were chairs set up for the scientists and Air Force officers directly\n connected with the take-off. They were seated now in a semicircle in\n front of a huge chart of the solar system. Phil took his seat, and the\n last minute briefing began. It was a routine he knew by heart. He had\n gone over and over it a thousand times, and he only half listened now.\n He kept thinking of Mary outside, alone by the fence.\n\n\n The voice of the briefing officer was a dull hum in his ears.\n\n\n \"... And orbit at 18,000-mph. You will then accelerate for the breakaway\n to 24,900-mph for five minutes and then free-coast for 116 hours\n until—\"", "Phil asked a few questions about weather and solar conditions. And then\n the session was done. They rose and looked at each other, the same\n unanswered questions on each man's face. There were forced smiles and\n handshakes. They were ready now.\n\n\n \"Phil,\" the general said, and took him aside.\n\n\n \"Sir?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, you're ... you feel all right, don't you, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I feel fine. Why?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, I've spent nearly every day with you for three years. I know you\n better than I know myself in many ways. And I've studied the\n psychologist's reports on you carefully. Maybe it's just nervousness,\n Phil, but I think there's something wrong. Is there?\"\n\n\n \"No, sir. There's nothing wrong,\" Phil said, but his voice didn't carry\n conviction. He reached for a cigarette.", "\"Phil, if there is anything—anything at all—you know what it might\n mean. You've got to be in the best mental and physical condition of your\n life tonight. You know better than any man here what that means to our\n success. I think there is something more than just natural apprehension\n wrong with you. Want to tell me?\"\nOutside, the take-off zone crawled with men and machines at the base of\n the rocket. For ten hours, the final check-outs had been in progress;\n and now the men were checking again, on their own time. The thing they\n had worked toward for six years was ready to happen, and each one felt\n that he was sending just a little bit of himself into the sky. Beyond\n the ring of lights and moving men, on the edge of the field, Mary stood.\n Her hands moved slowly over the top of the fence, twisting the barbs of\n wire. But her eyes were on the ship.", "He leaned toward her and touched her cheek. Then she was in his arms,\n her head buried against his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Good-by, darling,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Wish me luck, Mary?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Yes, good luck, Phil,\" she said. He opened the car door and got out.\n The noise of men and machines scurrying around the ship broke the spell\n of the rocket waiting silently for flight.\n\n\n \"Mary, I—\" he began, and then turned and strode toward the\n administration building without looking back.\nInside the building it was like a locker room before the big game. The\n tension stood alone, and each man had the same happy, excited look that\n Phil had worn earlier. When he came into the room, the noise and bustle\n stopped. They turned as one man toward him, and General Small came up to\n him and took his hand.", "\"Let's go, if you're still going,\" she finally said.\nThey drove through the streets of the small town with its small\n bungalows, each alike. There were no trees and very little grass. It was\n a new town, a government built town, and it had no personality yet. It\n existed only because of the huge ship standing poised in the take-off\n zone five miles away in the desert. Its future as a town rested with the\n ship, and the town seemed to feel the uncertainty of its future, seemed\n ready to stop existing as a town and to give itself back to the desert,\n if such was its destiny.", "And then they were ready. A small group of excited men came out from the\n administration building and moved forward. The check-out crews climbed\n into their machines and drove back outside the take-off zone. And,\n alone, one man climbed the steel ladder up the side of the\n rocket—ninety feet into the air. At the top he waved to the men on the\n ground and then disappeared through a small port.\n\n\n Mary waved to him. \"Good-by,\" she said to herself, but the words stuck\n tight in her throat.", "\"Hello, Phil. We were beginning to think you weren't coming. You all\n set, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, I'm all set, I guess,\" Phil said.\n\n\n \"I'd like you to meet the Secretary of Defense, Phil. He's over here by\n the radar.\"\n\n\n As they crossed the room, familiar faces smiled, and each man shook his\n hand or touched his arm. He saw Sammy, alone, by the coffee urn. Sammy\n waved to him, but he didn't smile. Phil wanted to talk to him, to say\n something; but there was nothing to be said now. Sammy's turn would come\n later.\n\n\n \"Mr. Secretary,\" the general said, \"this is Colonel Conover. He'll be\n the first man in history to see the other side of the Moon. Colonel—the\n Secretary of Defense.\"\n\n\n \"How do you do, sir. I'm very proud to meet you,\" Phil said.", "The small group at the base of the ship turned and walked back to the\n fence. And for an eternity the great ship stood alone, waiting. Then,\n from deep inside, a rumble came, increasing in volume to a gigantic roar\n that shook the earth and tore at the ears. Slowly, the first manned\n rocket to the Moon lifted up and up to the sky.\nFor a long time after the rocket had become a tiny speck of light in the\n heavens, she stood holding her face in her hands and crying softly to\n herself. And then she felt the touch of a hand on her arm. She turned.\n\n\n \"Phil! Oh, Phil.\" She held tightly to him and repeated his name over and\n over.\n\n\n \"They wouldn't let me go, Mary,\" he said finally. \"The general would not\n let me go.\"", "His wife was sitting stiffly on the flowered couch that was still not\n theirs completely. In her fingers she held a cigarette burned down too\n far. She said, \"You look fine, Phil. You look just right.\" She managed a\n smile. Then she leaned forward and crushed the cigarette in the ash\n tray on the maple coffee table and took another from the pack.\n\n\n He came to her and touched his hands to her soft blond hair, raising her\n face until she was looking into his eyes. \"You're the most beautiful\n girl I know. Did I ever tell you that?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I think so. Yes, I'm sure you did,\" she said, finishing the\n ritual; but her voice broke, and she turned her head away. Phil sat\n beside her and put his arm around her small shoulders. He had stopped\n smiling.", "\"On the contrary, colonel. I'm very proud to meet you. I've been looking\n at that ship out there and wondering. I almost wish I were a young man\n again. I'd like to be going. It's a thrilling thought—man's first\n adventure into the universe. You're lighting a new dawn of history,\n colonel. It's a privilege few men have ever had; and those who have had\n it didn't realize it at the time. Good luck, and God be with you.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, sir. I'm aware of all you say. It frightens me a little.\"", "\"Mary, you know I can't back out now. How could I? It's been three\n years. You know how much I've wanted to be the first man to go. Nothing\n would ever be right with me again if I didn't go. Please don't make it\n hard.\" He stopped talking and held her to him and stroked the back of\n her head. He could feel her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. He\n released her and stood up.\n\n\n \"I've got to get started, Mary. Will you come to the field with me?\"", "\"Honey, look at me,\" he said. \"It isn't going to be bad. Honestly it\n isn't. We know exactly how it will be. If anything could go wrong, they\n wouldn't be sending me; you know that. I told you that we've sent five\n un-manned ships up and everyone came back without a hitch.\"\n\n\n She turned, facing him. There were tears starting in the corners of her\n wide, brown eyes, and she brushed them away with her hand.\n\n\n \"Phil, don't go. Please don't. They can send Sammy. Sammy doesn't have a\n wife. Can't he go? They'd understand, Phil. Please!\" She was holding his\n arms tightly with her hands, and the color had drained from her cheeks.", "\"Yes, I'll come to say good-by.\" She paused and dropped her eyes. \"Phil,\n if you go, I won't be here when you get back—if you get back. I won't\n be here because I won't be the wife of a space pilot for the rest of my\n life. It isn't the kind of life I bargained for. No matter how much I\n love you, I just couldn't take that, Phil. I'm sorry. I guess I'm not\n the noble sort of wife.\"\n\n\n She finished and took another cigarette from the pack on the coffee\n table and put it to her lips. Her hand was trembling as she touched the\n lighter to the end of the cigarette and drew deeply. Phil stood watching\n her, the excitement completely gone from his eyes.\n\n\n \"I wish you had told me this a long time ago, Mary,\" Phil said. His\n voice was dry and low. \"I didn't know you felt this way about it.\"", "\"Yes, you did. I told you how I felt. I told you I could never be the\n wife of a space pilot. But I don't think I ever really believed it was\n possible—not until this morning when you said tonight was the take-off.\n It's so stupid to jeopardize everything we've got for a ridiculous\n dream!\"\n\n\n He sat down on the edge of the couch and took her hands between his.\n \"Mary, listen to me,\" he said. \"It isn't a dream. It's real. There's\n nothing means anything more to me than you do—you know that. But no\n man ever had the chance to do what I'm going to do tonight—no man ever.\n If I backed out now for any reason, I'd never be able to look at the sky\n again. I'd be through.\"\n\n\n She looked at him without seeing him, and there was nothing at all in\n her eyes.", "Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science\n Fiction December 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence\n that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.\nBREAKAWAY\nBY STANLEY GIMBLE\nIllustrated by Freas\nShe surely got her wish ... but there was some question about getting\n what she wanted.\nPhil Conover pulled the zipper of his flight suit up the front of his\n long, thin body and came into the living room. His face, usually serious\n and quietly handsome, had an alive, excited look. And the faint lines\n around his dark, deep-set eyes were accentuated when he smiled at his\n wife.\n\n\n \"All set, honey. How do I look in my monkey suit?\"", "She looked at him. His face was drawn tight, and there were tears on his\n cheeks. \"Thank, God,\" she said. \"It doesn't matter, darling. The only\n thing that matters is you didn't go.\"\n\n\n \"You're right, Mary,\" he said. His voice was low—so low she could\n hardly hear him. \"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.\" He stood with\n his hands at his sides, watching her. And then turned away and walked\n toward the car.\nTHE END" ], [ "The general took Phil's arm and they walked to the briefing room. There\n were chairs set up for the scientists and Air Force officers directly\n connected with the take-off. They were seated now in a semicircle in\n front of a huge chart of the solar system. Phil took his seat, and the\n last minute briefing began. It was a routine he knew by heart. He had\n gone over and over it a thousand times, and he only half listened now.\n He kept thinking of Mary outside, alone by the fence.\n\n\n The voice of the briefing officer was a dull hum in his ears.\n\n\n \"... And orbit at 18,000-mph. You will then accelerate for the breakaway\n to 24,900-mph for five minutes and then free-coast for 116 hours\n until—\"", "\"Mary, you know I can't back out now. How could I? It's been three\n years. You know how much I've wanted to be the first man to go. Nothing\n would ever be right with me again if I didn't go. Please don't make it\n hard.\" He stopped talking and held her to him and stroked the back of\n her head. He could feel her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. He\n released her and stood up.\n\n\n \"I've got to get started, Mary. Will you come to the field with me?\"", "\"Thanks, sergeant. I'll be seeing you next week,\" Phil said, and smiled.\n They drove between the rows of wooden buildings that lined the field,\n and he parked near the low barbed fence ringing the take-off zone. He\n turned off the ignition, and sat quietly for a moment before lighting a\n cigarette. Then he looked at his wife. She was staring through the\n windshield at the rocket two hundred yards away. Its smooth polished\n surface gleamed in the spotlight glare, and it sloped up and up until\n the eye lost the tip against the stars.\n\n\n \"She's beautiful, Mary. You've never seen her before, have you?\"\n\n\n \"No, I've never seen her before,\" she said. \"Hadn't you better go?\" Her\n voice was strained and she held her hands closed tightly in her lap.\n \"Please go now, Phil,\" she said.", "\"Phil, if there is anything—anything at all—you know what it might\n mean. You've got to be in the best mental and physical condition of your\n life tonight. You know better than any man here what that means to our\n success. I think there is something more than just natural apprehension\n wrong with you. Want to tell me?\"\nOutside, the take-off zone crawled with men and machines at the base of\n the rocket. For ten hours, the final check-outs had been in progress;\n and now the men were checking again, on their own time. The thing they\n had worked toward for six years was ready to happen, and each one felt\n that he was sending just a little bit of himself into the sky. Beyond\n the ring of lights and moving men, on the edge of the field, Mary stood.\n Her hands moved slowly over the top of the fence, twisting the barbs of\n wire. But her eyes were on the ship.", "\"Yes, I'll come to say good-by.\" She paused and dropped her eyes. \"Phil,\n if you go, I won't be here when you get back—if you get back. I won't\n be here because I won't be the wife of a space pilot for the rest of my\n life. It isn't the kind of life I bargained for. No matter how much I\n love you, I just couldn't take that, Phil. I'm sorry. I guess I'm not\n the noble sort of wife.\"\n\n\n She finished and took another cigarette from the pack on the coffee\n table and put it to her lips. Her hand was trembling as she touched the\n lighter to the end of the cigarette and drew deeply. Phil stood watching\n her, the excitement completely gone from his eyes.\n\n\n \"I wish you had told me this a long time ago, Mary,\" Phil said. His\n voice was dry and low. \"I didn't know you felt this way about it.\"", "He leaned toward her and touched her cheek. Then she was in his arms,\n her head buried against his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Good-by, darling,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Wish me luck, Mary?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Yes, good luck, Phil,\" she said. He opened the car door and got out.\n The noise of men and machines scurrying around the ship broke the spell\n of the rocket waiting silently for flight.\n\n\n \"Mary, I—\" he began, and then turned and strode toward the\n administration building without looking back.\nInside the building it was like a locker room before the big game. The\n tension stood alone, and each man had the same happy, excited look that\n Phil had worn earlier. When he came into the room, the noise and bustle\n stopped. They turned as one man toward him, and General Small came up to\n him and took his hand.", "\"Yes, you did. I told you how I felt. I told you I could never be the\n wife of a space pilot. But I don't think I ever really believed it was\n possible—not until this morning when you said tonight was the take-off.\n It's so stupid to jeopardize everything we've got for a ridiculous\n dream!\"\n\n\n He sat down on the edge of the couch and took her hands between his.\n \"Mary, listen to me,\" he said. \"It isn't a dream. It's real. There's\n nothing means anything more to me than you do—you know that. But no\n man ever had the chance to do what I'm going to do tonight—no man ever.\n If I backed out now for any reason, I'd never be able to look at the sky\n again. I'd be through.\"\n\n\n She looked at him without seeing him, and there was nothing at all in\n her eyes.", "\"Honey, look at me,\" he said. \"It isn't going to be bad. Honestly it\n isn't. We know exactly how it will be. If anything could go wrong, they\n wouldn't be sending me; you know that. I told you that we've sent five\n un-manned ships up and everyone came back without a hitch.\"\n\n\n She turned, facing him. There were tears starting in the corners of her\n wide, brown eyes, and she brushed them away with her hand.\n\n\n \"Phil, don't go. Please don't. They can send Sammy. Sammy doesn't have a\n wife. Can't he go? They'd understand, Phil. Please!\" She was holding his\n arms tightly with her hands, and the color had drained from her cheeks.", "Phil asked a few questions about weather and solar conditions. And then\n the session was done. They rose and looked at each other, the same\n unanswered questions on each man's face. There were forced smiles and\n handshakes. They were ready now.\n\n\n \"Phil,\" the general said, and took him aside.\n\n\n \"Sir?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, you're ... you feel all right, don't you, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I feel fine. Why?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, I've spent nearly every day with you for three years. I know you\n better than I know myself in many ways. And I've studied the\n psychologist's reports on you carefully. Maybe it's just nervousness,\n Phil, but I think there's something wrong. Is there?\"\n\n\n \"No, sir. There's nothing wrong,\" Phil said, but his voice didn't carry\n conviction. He reached for a cigarette.", "The small group at the base of the ship turned and walked back to the\n fence. And for an eternity the great ship stood alone, waiting. Then,\n from deep inside, a rumble came, increasing in volume to a gigantic roar\n that shook the earth and tore at the ears. Slowly, the first manned\n rocket to the Moon lifted up and up to the sky.\nFor a long time after the rocket had become a tiny speck of light in the\n heavens, she stood holding her face in her hands and crying softly to\n herself. And then she felt the touch of a hand on her arm. She turned.\n\n\n \"Phil! Oh, Phil.\" She held tightly to him and repeated his name over and\n over.\n\n\n \"They wouldn't let me go, Mary,\" he said finally. \"The general would not\n let me go.\"", "\"Hello, Phil. We were beginning to think you weren't coming. You all\n set, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, I'm all set, I guess,\" Phil said.\n\n\n \"I'd like you to meet the Secretary of Defense, Phil. He's over here by\n the radar.\"\n\n\n As they crossed the room, familiar faces smiled, and each man shook his\n hand or touched his arm. He saw Sammy, alone, by the coffee urn. Sammy\n waved to him, but he didn't smile. Phil wanted to talk to him, to say\n something; but there was nothing to be said now. Sammy's turn would come\n later.\n\n\n \"Mr. Secretary,\" the general said, \"this is Colonel Conover. He'll be\n the first man in history to see the other side of the Moon. Colonel—the\n Secretary of Defense.\"\n\n\n \"How do you do, sir. I'm very proud to meet you,\" Phil said.", "\"On the contrary, colonel. I'm very proud to meet you. I've been looking\n at that ship out there and wondering. I almost wish I were a young man\n again. I'd like to be going. It's a thrilling thought—man's first\n adventure into the universe. You're lighting a new dawn of history,\n colonel. It's a privilege few men have ever had; and those who have had\n it didn't realize it at the time. Good luck, and God be with you.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, sir. I'm aware of all you say. It frightens me a little.\"", "And then they were ready. A small group of excited men came out from the\n administration building and moved forward. The check-out crews climbed\n into their machines and drove back outside the take-off zone. And,\n alone, one man climbed the steel ladder up the side of the\n rocket—ninety feet into the air. At the top he waved to the men on the\n ground and then disappeared through a small port.\n\n\n Mary waved to him. \"Good-by,\" she said to herself, but the words stuck\n tight in her throat.", "Phil turned the car off the highway onto the rutted dirt road that led\n across the sand to the field where the ship waited. In the distance they\n could see the beams of the searchlights as they played across the\n take-off zone and swept along the top of the high wire fence stretching\n out of sight to right and left. At the gate they were stopped by the\n guard. He read Phil's pass, shined his flashlight in their faces, and\n then saluted. \"Good luck, colonel,\" he said, and shook Phil's hand.", "Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science\n Fiction December 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence\n that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.\nBREAKAWAY\nBY STANLEY GIMBLE\nIllustrated by Freas\nShe surely got her wish ... but there was some question about getting\n what she wanted.\nPhil Conover pulled the zipper of his flight suit up the front of his\n long, thin body and came into the living room. His face, usually serious\n and quietly handsome, had an alive, excited look. And the faint lines\n around his dark, deep-set eyes were accentuated when he smiled at his\n wife.\n\n\n \"All set, honey. How do I look in my monkey suit?\"", "His wife was sitting stiffly on the flowered couch that was still not\n theirs completely. In her fingers she held a cigarette burned down too\n far. She said, \"You look fine, Phil. You look just right.\" She managed a\n smile. Then she leaned forward and crushed the cigarette in the ash\n tray on the maple coffee table and took another from the pack.\n\n\n He came to her and touched his hands to her soft blond hair, raising her\n face until she was looking into his eyes. \"You're the most beautiful\n girl I know. Did I ever tell you that?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I think so. Yes, I'm sure you did,\" she said, finishing the\n ritual; but her voice broke, and she turned her head away. Phil sat\n beside her and put his arm around her small shoulders. He had stopped\n smiling.", "She looked at him. His face was drawn tight, and there were tears on his\n cheeks. \"Thank, God,\" she said. \"It doesn't matter, darling. The only\n thing that matters is you didn't go.\"\n\n\n \"You're right, Mary,\" he said. His voice was low—so low she could\n hardly hear him. \"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.\" He stood with\n his hands at his sides, watching her. And then turned away and walked\n toward the car.\nTHE END", "\"Let's go, if you're still going,\" she finally said.\nThey drove through the streets of the small town with its small\n bungalows, each alike. There were no trees and very little grass. It was\n a new town, a government built town, and it had no personality yet. It\n existed only because of the huge ship standing poised in the take-off\n zone five miles away in the desert. Its future as a town rested with the\n ship, and the town seemed to feel the uncertainty of its future, seemed\n ready to stop existing as a town and to give itself back to the desert,\n if such was its destiny." ], [ "She looked at him. His face was drawn tight, and there were tears on his\n cheeks. \"Thank, God,\" she said. \"It doesn't matter, darling. The only\n thing that matters is you didn't go.\"\n\n\n \"You're right, Mary,\" he said. His voice was low—so low she could\n hardly hear him. \"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.\" He stood with\n his hands at his sides, watching her. And then turned away and walked\n toward the car.\nTHE END", "His wife was sitting stiffly on the flowered couch that was still not\n theirs completely. In her fingers she held a cigarette burned down too\n far. She said, \"You look fine, Phil. You look just right.\" She managed a\n smile. Then she leaned forward and crushed the cigarette in the ash\n tray on the maple coffee table and took another from the pack.\n\n\n He came to her and touched his hands to her soft blond hair, raising her\n face until she was looking into his eyes. \"You're the most beautiful\n girl I know. Did I ever tell you that?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I think so. Yes, I'm sure you did,\" she said, finishing the\n ritual; but her voice broke, and she turned her head away. Phil sat\n beside her and put his arm around her small shoulders. He had stopped\n smiling.", "\"Let's go, if you're still going,\" she finally said.\nThey drove through the streets of the small town with its small\n bungalows, each alike. There were no trees and very little grass. It was\n a new town, a government built town, and it had no personality yet. It\n existed only because of the huge ship standing poised in the take-off\n zone five miles away in the desert. Its future as a town rested with the\n ship, and the town seemed to feel the uncertainty of its future, seemed\n ready to stop existing as a town and to give itself back to the desert,\n if such was its destiny.", "He leaned toward her and touched her cheek. Then she was in his arms,\n her head buried against his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Good-by, darling,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Wish me luck, Mary?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Yes, good luck, Phil,\" she said. He opened the car door and got out.\n The noise of men and machines scurrying around the ship broke the spell\n of the rocket waiting silently for flight.\n\n\n \"Mary, I—\" he began, and then turned and strode toward the\n administration building without looking back.\nInside the building it was like a locker room before the big game. The\n tension stood alone, and each man had the same happy, excited look that\n Phil had worn earlier. When he came into the room, the noise and bustle\n stopped. They turned as one man toward him, and General Small came up to\n him and took his hand.", "\"Thanks, sergeant. I'll be seeing you next week,\" Phil said, and smiled.\n They drove between the rows of wooden buildings that lined the field,\n and he parked near the low barbed fence ringing the take-off zone. He\n turned off the ignition, and sat quietly for a moment before lighting a\n cigarette. Then he looked at his wife. She was staring through the\n windshield at the rocket two hundred yards away. Its smooth polished\n surface gleamed in the spotlight glare, and it sloped up and up until\n the eye lost the tip against the stars.\n\n\n \"She's beautiful, Mary. You've never seen her before, have you?\"\n\n\n \"No, I've never seen her before,\" she said. \"Hadn't you better go?\" Her\n voice was strained and she held her hands closed tightly in her lap.\n \"Please go now, Phil,\" she said.", "\"Phil, if there is anything—anything at all—you know what it might\n mean. You've got to be in the best mental and physical condition of your\n life tonight. You know better than any man here what that means to our\n success. I think there is something more than just natural apprehension\n wrong with you. Want to tell me?\"\nOutside, the take-off zone crawled with men and machines at the base of\n the rocket. For ten hours, the final check-outs had been in progress;\n and now the men were checking again, on their own time. The thing they\n had worked toward for six years was ready to happen, and each one felt\n that he was sending just a little bit of himself into the sky. Beyond\n the ring of lights and moving men, on the edge of the field, Mary stood.\n Her hands moved slowly over the top of the fence, twisting the barbs of\n wire. But her eyes were on the ship.", "Phil asked a few questions about weather and solar conditions. And then\n the session was done. They rose and looked at each other, the same\n unanswered questions on each man's face. There were forced smiles and\n handshakes. They were ready now.\n\n\n \"Phil,\" the general said, and took him aside.\n\n\n \"Sir?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, you're ... you feel all right, don't you, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I feel fine. Why?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, I've spent nearly every day with you for three years. I know you\n better than I know myself in many ways. And I've studied the\n psychologist's reports on you carefully. Maybe it's just nervousness,\n Phil, but I think there's something wrong. Is there?\"\n\n\n \"No, sir. There's nothing wrong,\" Phil said, but his voice didn't carry\n conviction. He reached for a cigarette.", "\"Hello, Phil. We were beginning to think you weren't coming. You all\n set, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, I'm all set, I guess,\" Phil said.\n\n\n \"I'd like you to meet the Secretary of Defense, Phil. He's over here by\n the radar.\"\n\n\n As they crossed the room, familiar faces smiled, and each man shook his\n hand or touched his arm. He saw Sammy, alone, by the coffee urn. Sammy\n waved to him, but he didn't smile. Phil wanted to talk to him, to say\n something; but there was nothing to be said now. Sammy's turn would come\n later.\n\n\n \"Mr. Secretary,\" the general said, \"this is Colonel Conover. He'll be\n the first man in history to see the other side of the Moon. Colonel—the\n Secretary of Defense.\"\n\n\n \"How do you do, sir. I'm very proud to meet you,\" Phil said.", "The small group at the base of the ship turned and walked back to the\n fence. And for an eternity the great ship stood alone, waiting. Then,\n from deep inside, a rumble came, increasing in volume to a gigantic roar\n that shook the earth and tore at the ears. Slowly, the first manned\n rocket to the Moon lifted up and up to the sky.\nFor a long time after the rocket had become a tiny speck of light in the\n heavens, she stood holding her face in her hands and crying softly to\n herself. And then she felt the touch of a hand on her arm. She turned.\n\n\n \"Phil! Oh, Phil.\" She held tightly to him and repeated his name over and\n over.\n\n\n \"They wouldn't let me go, Mary,\" he said finally. \"The general would not\n let me go.\"", "\"Yes, you did. I told you how I felt. I told you I could never be the\n wife of a space pilot. But I don't think I ever really believed it was\n possible—not until this morning when you said tonight was the take-off.\n It's so stupid to jeopardize everything we've got for a ridiculous\n dream!\"\n\n\n He sat down on the edge of the couch and took her hands between his.\n \"Mary, listen to me,\" he said. \"It isn't a dream. It's real. There's\n nothing means anything more to me than you do—you know that. But no\n man ever had the chance to do what I'm going to do tonight—no man ever.\n If I backed out now for any reason, I'd never be able to look at the sky\n again. I'd be through.\"\n\n\n She looked at him without seeing him, and there was nothing at all in\n her eyes.", "\"Mary, you know I can't back out now. How could I? It's been three\n years. You know how much I've wanted to be the first man to go. Nothing\n would ever be right with me again if I didn't go. Please don't make it\n hard.\" He stopped talking and held her to him and stroked the back of\n her head. He could feel her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. He\n released her and stood up.\n\n\n \"I've got to get started, Mary. Will you come to the field with me?\"", "\"Yes, I'll come to say good-by.\" She paused and dropped her eyes. \"Phil,\n if you go, I won't be here when you get back—if you get back. I won't\n be here because I won't be the wife of a space pilot for the rest of my\n life. It isn't the kind of life I bargained for. No matter how much I\n love you, I just couldn't take that, Phil. I'm sorry. I guess I'm not\n the noble sort of wife.\"\n\n\n She finished and took another cigarette from the pack on the coffee\n table and put it to her lips. Her hand was trembling as she touched the\n lighter to the end of the cigarette and drew deeply. Phil stood watching\n her, the excitement completely gone from his eyes.\n\n\n \"I wish you had told me this a long time ago, Mary,\" Phil said. His\n voice was dry and low. \"I didn't know you felt this way about it.\"", "\"On the contrary, colonel. I'm very proud to meet you. I've been looking\n at that ship out there and wondering. I almost wish I were a young man\n again. I'd like to be going. It's a thrilling thought—man's first\n adventure into the universe. You're lighting a new dawn of history,\n colonel. It's a privilege few men have ever had; and those who have had\n it didn't realize it at the time. Good luck, and God be with you.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, sir. I'm aware of all you say. It frightens me a little.\"", "And then they were ready. A small group of excited men came out from the\n administration building and moved forward. The check-out crews climbed\n into their machines and drove back outside the take-off zone. And,\n alone, one man climbed the steel ladder up the side of the\n rocket—ninety feet into the air. At the top he waved to the men on the\n ground and then disappeared through a small port.\n\n\n Mary waved to him. \"Good-by,\" she said to herself, but the words stuck\n tight in her throat.", "Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science\n Fiction December 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence\n that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.\nBREAKAWAY\nBY STANLEY GIMBLE\nIllustrated by Freas\nShe surely got her wish ... but there was some question about getting\n what she wanted.\nPhil Conover pulled the zipper of his flight suit up the front of his\n long, thin body and came into the living room. His face, usually serious\n and quietly handsome, had an alive, excited look. And the faint lines\n around his dark, deep-set eyes were accentuated when he smiled at his\n wife.\n\n\n \"All set, honey. How do I look in my monkey suit?\"", "The general took Phil's arm and they walked to the briefing room. There\n were chairs set up for the scientists and Air Force officers directly\n connected with the take-off. They were seated now in a semicircle in\n front of a huge chart of the solar system. Phil took his seat, and the\n last minute briefing began. It was a routine he knew by heart. He had\n gone over and over it a thousand times, and he only half listened now.\n He kept thinking of Mary outside, alone by the fence.\n\n\n The voice of the briefing officer was a dull hum in his ears.\n\n\n \"... And orbit at 18,000-mph. You will then accelerate for the breakaway\n to 24,900-mph for five minutes and then free-coast for 116 hours\n until—\"", "Phil turned the car off the highway onto the rutted dirt road that led\n across the sand to the field where the ship waited. In the distance they\n could see the beams of the searchlights as they played across the\n take-off zone and swept along the top of the high wire fence stretching\n out of sight to right and left. At the gate they were stopped by the\n guard. He read Phil's pass, shined his flashlight in their faces, and\n then saluted. \"Good luck, colonel,\" he said, and shook Phil's hand.", "\"Honey, look at me,\" he said. \"It isn't going to be bad. Honestly it\n isn't. We know exactly how it will be. If anything could go wrong, they\n wouldn't be sending me; you know that. I told you that we've sent five\n un-manned ships up and everyone came back without a hitch.\"\n\n\n She turned, facing him. There were tears starting in the corners of her\n wide, brown eyes, and she brushed them away with her hand.\n\n\n \"Phil, don't go. Please don't. They can send Sammy. Sammy doesn't have a\n wife. Can't he go? They'd understand, Phil. Please!\" She was holding his\n arms tightly with her hands, and the color had drained from her cheeks." ], [ "Phil asked a few questions about weather and solar conditions. And then\n the session was done. They rose and looked at each other, the same\n unanswered questions on each man's face. There were forced smiles and\n handshakes. They were ready now.\n\n\n \"Phil,\" the general said, and took him aside.\n\n\n \"Sir?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, you're ... you feel all right, don't you, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I feel fine. Why?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, I've spent nearly every day with you for three years. I know you\n better than I know myself in many ways. And I've studied the\n psychologist's reports on you carefully. Maybe it's just nervousness,\n Phil, but I think there's something wrong. Is there?\"\n\n\n \"No, sir. There's nothing wrong,\" Phil said, but his voice didn't carry\n conviction. He reached for a cigarette.", "The general took Phil's arm and they walked to the briefing room. There\n were chairs set up for the scientists and Air Force officers directly\n connected with the take-off. They were seated now in a semicircle in\n front of a huge chart of the solar system. Phil took his seat, and the\n last minute briefing began. It was a routine he knew by heart. He had\n gone over and over it a thousand times, and he only half listened now.\n He kept thinking of Mary outside, alone by the fence.\n\n\n The voice of the briefing officer was a dull hum in his ears.\n\n\n \"... And orbit at 18,000-mph. You will then accelerate for the breakaway\n to 24,900-mph for five minutes and then free-coast for 116 hours\n until—\"", "\"On the contrary, colonel. I'm very proud to meet you. I've been looking\n at that ship out there and wondering. I almost wish I were a young man\n again. I'd like to be going. It's a thrilling thought—man's first\n adventure into the universe. You're lighting a new dawn of history,\n colonel. It's a privilege few men have ever had; and those who have had\n it didn't realize it at the time. Good luck, and God be with you.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, sir. I'm aware of all you say. It frightens me a little.\"", "\"Hello, Phil. We were beginning to think you weren't coming. You all\n set, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, I'm all set, I guess,\" Phil said.\n\n\n \"I'd like you to meet the Secretary of Defense, Phil. He's over here by\n the radar.\"\n\n\n As they crossed the room, familiar faces smiled, and each man shook his\n hand or touched his arm. He saw Sammy, alone, by the coffee urn. Sammy\n waved to him, but he didn't smile. Phil wanted to talk to him, to say\n something; but there was nothing to be said now. Sammy's turn would come\n later.\n\n\n \"Mr. Secretary,\" the general said, \"this is Colonel Conover. He'll be\n the first man in history to see the other side of the Moon. Colonel—the\n Secretary of Defense.\"\n\n\n \"How do you do, sir. I'm very proud to meet you,\" Phil said.", "He leaned toward her and touched her cheek. Then she was in his arms,\n her head buried against his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Good-by, darling,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Wish me luck, Mary?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Yes, good luck, Phil,\" she said. He opened the car door and got out.\n The noise of men and machines scurrying around the ship broke the spell\n of the rocket waiting silently for flight.\n\n\n \"Mary, I—\" he began, and then turned and strode toward the\n administration building without looking back.\nInside the building it was like a locker room before the big game. The\n tension stood alone, and each man had the same happy, excited look that\n Phil had worn earlier. When he came into the room, the noise and bustle\n stopped. They turned as one man toward him, and General Small came up to\n him and took his hand.", "\"Mary, you know I can't back out now. How could I? It's been three\n years. You know how much I've wanted to be the first man to go. Nothing\n would ever be right with me again if I didn't go. Please don't make it\n hard.\" He stopped talking and held her to him and stroked the back of\n her head. He could feel her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. He\n released her and stood up.\n\n\n \"I've got to get started, Mary. Will you come to the field with me?\"", "The small group at the base of the ship turned and walked back to the\n fence. And for an eternity the great ship stood alone, waiting. Then,\n from deep inside, a rumble came, increasing in volume to a gigantic roar\n that shook the earth and tore at the ears. Slowly, the first manned\n rocket to the Moon lifted up and up to the sky.\nFor a long time after the rocket had become a tiny speck of light in the\n heavens, she stood holding her face in her hands and crying softly to\n herself. And then she felt the touch of a hand on her arm. She turned.\n\n\n \"Phil! Oh, Phil.\" She held tightly to him and repeated his name over and\n over.\n\n\n \"They wouldn't let me go, Mary,\" he said finally. \"The general would not\n let me go.\"", "\"Phil, if there is anything—anything at all—you know what it might\n mean. You've got to be in the best mental and physical condition of your\n life tonight. You know better than any man here what that means to our\n success. I think there is something more than just natural apprehension\n wrong with you. Want to tell me?\"\nOutside, the take-off zone crawled with men and machines at the base of\n the rocket. For ten hours, the final check-outs had been in progress;\n and now the men were checking again, on their own time. The thing they\n had worked toward for six years was ready to happen, and each one felt\n that he was sending just a little bit of himself into the sky. Beyond\n the ring of lights and moving men, on the edge of the field, Mary stood.\n Her hands moved slowly over the top of the fence, twisting the barbs of\n wire. But her eyes were on the ship.", "\"Thanks, sergeant. I'll be seeing you next week,\" Phil said, and smiled.\n They drove between the rows of wooden buildings that lined the field,\n and he parked near the low barbed fence ringing the take-off zone. He\n turned off the ignition, and sat quietly for a moment before lighting a\n cigarette. Then he looked at his wife. She was staring through the\n windshield at the rocket two hundred yards away. Its smooth polished\n surface gleamed in the spotlight glare, and it sloped up and up until\n the eye lost the tip against the stars.\n\n\n \"She's beautiful, Mary. You've never seen her before, have you?\"\n\n\n \"No, I've never seen her before,\" she said. \"Hadn't you better go?\" Her\n voice was strained and she held her hands closed tightly in her lap.\n \"Please go now, Phil,\" she said.", "\"Let's go, if you're still going,\" she finally said.\nThey drove through the streets of the small town with its small\n bungalows, each alike. There were no trees and very little grass. It was\n a new town, a government built town, and it had no personality yet. It\n existed only because of the huge ship standing poised in the take-off\n zone five miles away in the desert. Its future as a town rested with the\n ship, and the town seemed to feel the uncertainty of its future, seemed\n ready to stop existing as a town and to give itself back to the desert,\n if such was its destiny.", "Phil turned the car off the highway onto the rutted dirt road that led\n across the sand to the field where the ship waited. In the distance they\n could see the beams of the searchlights as they played across the\n take-off zone and swept along the top of the high wire fence stretching\n out of sight to right and left. At the gate they were stopped by the\n guard. He read Phil's pass, shined his flashlight in their faces, and\n then saluted. \"Good luck, colonel,\" he said, and shook Phil's hand.", "And then they were ready. A small group of excited men came out from the\n administration building and moved forward. The check-out crews climbed\n into their machines and drove back outside the take-off zone. And,\n alone, one man climbed the steel ladder up the side of the\n rocket—ninety feet into the air. At the top he waved to the men on the\n ground and then disappeared through a small port.\n\n\n Mary waved to him. \"Good-by,\" she said to herself, but the words stuck\n tight in her throat.", "\"Honey, look at me,\" he said. \"It isn't going to be bad. Honestly it\n isn't. We know exactly how it will be. If anything could go wrong, they\n wouldn't be sending me; you know that. I told you that we've sent five\n un-manned ships up and everyone came back without a hitch.\"\n\n\n She turned, facing him. There were tears starting in the corners of her\n wide, brown eyes, and she brushed them away with her hand.\n\n\n \"Phil, don't go. Please don't. They can send Sammy. Sammy doesn't have a\n wife. Can't he go? They'd understand, Phil. Please!\" She was holding his\n arms tightly with her hands, and the color had drained from her cheeks.", "She looked at him. His face was drawn tight, and there were tears on his\n cheeks. \"Thank, God,\" she said. \"It doesn't matter, darling. The only\n thing that matters is you didn't go.\"\n\n\n \"You're right, Mary,\" he said. His voice was low—so low she could\n hardly hear him. \"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.\" He stood with\n his hands at his sides, watching her. And then turned away and walked\n toward the car.\nTHE END", "\"Yes, you did. I told you how I felt. I told you I could never be the\n wife of a space pilot. But I don't think I ever really believed it was\n possible—not until this morning when you said tonight was the take-off.\n It's so stupid to jeopardize everything we've got for a ridiculous\n dream!\"\n\n\n He sat down on the edge of the couch and took her hands between his.\n \"Mary, listen to me,\" he said. \"It isn't a dream. It's real. There's\n nothing means anything more to me than you do—you know that. But no\n man ever had the chance to do what I'm going to do tonight—no man ever.\n If I backed out now for any reason, I'd never be able to look at the sky\n again. I'd be through.\"\n\n\n She looked at him without seeing him, and there was nothing at all in\n her eyes.", "Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science\n Fiction December 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence\n that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.\nBREAKAWAY\nBY STANLEY GIMBLE\nIllustrated by Freas\nShe surely got her wish ... but there was some question about getting\n what she wanted.\nPhil Conover pulled the zipper of his flight suit up the front of his\n long, thin body and came into the living room. His face, usually serious\n and quietly handsome, had an alive, excited look. And the faint lines\n around his dark, deep-set eyes were accentuated when he smiled at his\n wife.\n\n\n \"All set, honey. How do I look in my monkey suit?\"", "\"Yes, I'll come to say good-by.\" She paused and dropped her eyes. \"Phil,\n if you go, I won't be here when you get back—if you get back. I won't\n be here because I won't be the wife of a space pilot for the rest of my\n life. It isn't the kind of life I bargained for. No matter how much I\n love you, I just couldn't take that, Phil. I'm sorry. I guess I'm not\n the noble sort of wife.\"\n\n\n She finished and took another cigarette from the pack on the coffee\n table and put it to her lips. Her hand was trembling as she touched the\n lighter to the end of the cigarette and drew deeply. Phil stood watching\n her, the excitement completely gone from his eyes.\n\n\n \"I wish you had told me this a long time ago, Mary,\" Phil said. His\n voice was dry and low. \"I didn't know you felt this way about it.\"", "His wife was sitting stiffly on the flowered couch that was still not\n theirs completely. In her fingers she held a cigarette burned down too\n far. She said, \"You look fine, Phil. You look just right.\" She managed a\n smile. Then she leaned forward and crushed the cigarette in the ash\n tray on the maple coffee table and took another from the pack.\n\n\n He came to her and touched his hands to her soft blond hair, raising her\n face until she was looking into his eyes. \"You're the most beautiful\n girl I know. Did I ever tell you that?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I think so. Yes, I'm sure you did,\" she said, finishing the\n ritual; but her voice broke, and she turned her head away. Phil sat\n beside her and put his arm around her small shoulders. He had stopped\n smiling." ], [ "His wife was sitting stiffly on the flowered couch that was still not\n theirs completely. In her fingers she held a cigarette burned down too\n far. She said, \"You look fine, Phil. You look just right.\" She managed a\n smile. Then she leaned forward and crushed the cigarette in the ash\n tray on the maple coffee table and took another from the pack.\n\n\n He came to her and touched his hands to her soft blond hair, raising her\n face until she was looking into his eyes. \"You're the most beautiful\n girl I know. Did I ever tell you that?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I think so. Yes, I'm sure you did,\" she said, finishing the\n ritual; but her voice broke, and she turned her head away. Phil sat\n beside her and put his arm around her small shoulders. He had stopped\n smiling.", "\"Phil, if there is anything—anything at all—you know what it might\n mean. You've got to be in the best mental and physical condition of your\n life tonight. You know better than any man here what that means to our\n success. I think there is something more than just natural apprehension\n wrong with you. Want to tell me?\"\nOutside, the take-off zone crawled with men and machines at the base of\n the rocket. For ten hours, the final check-outs had been in progress;\n and now the men were checking again, on their own time. The thing they\n had worked toward for six years was ready to happen, and each one felt\n that he was sending just a little bit of himself into the sky. Beyond\n the ring of lights and moving men, on the edge of the field, Mary stood.\n Her hands moved slowly over the top of the fence, twisting the barbs of\n wire. But her eyes were on the ship.", "She looked at him. His face was drawn tight, and there were tears on his\n cheeks. \"Thank, God,\" she said. \"It doesn't matter, darling. The only\n thing that matters is you didn't go.\"\n\n\n \"You're right, Mary,\" he said. His voice was low—so low she could\n hardly hear him. \"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.\" He stood with\n his hands at his sides, watching her. And then turned away and walked\n toward the car.\nTHE END", "He leaned toward her and touched her cheek. Then she was in his arms,\n her head buried against his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Good-by, darling,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Wish me luck, Mary?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Yes, good luck, Phil,\" she said. He opened the car door and got out.\n The noise of men and machines scurrying around the ship broke the spell\n of the rocket waiting silently for flight.\n\n\n \"Mary, I—\" he began, and then turned and strode toward the\n administration building without looking back.\nInside the building it was like a locker room before the big game. The\n tension stood alone, and each man had the same happy, excited look that\n Phil had worn earlier. When he came into the room, the noise and bustle\n stopped. They turned as one man toward him, and General Small came up to\n him and took his hand.", "\"Thanks, sergeant. I'll be seeing you next week,\" Phil said, and smiled.\n They drove between the rows of wooden buildings that lined the field,\n and he parked near the low barbed fence ringing the take-off zone. He\n turned off the ignition, and sat quietly for a moment before lighting a\n cigarette. Then he looked at his wife. She was staring through the\n windshield at the rocket two hundred yards away. Its smooth polished\n surface gleamed in the spotlight glare, and it sloped up and up until\n the eye lost the tip against the stars.\n\n\n \"She's beautiful, Mary. You've never seen her before, have you?\"\n\n\n \"No, I've never seen her before,\" she said. \"Hadn't you better go?\" Her\n voice was strained and she held her hands closed tightly in her lap.\n \"Please go now, Phil,\" she said.", "\"Yes, I'll come to say good-by.\" She paused and dropped her eyes. \"Phil,\n if you go, I won't be here when you get back—if you get back. I won't\n be here because I won't be the wife of a space pilot for the rest of my\n life. It isn't the kind of life I bargained for. No matter how much I\n love you, I just couldn't take that, Phil. I'm sorry. I guess I'm not\n the noble sort of wife.\"\n\n\n She finished and took another cigarette from the pack on the coffee\n table and put it to her lips. Her hand was trembling as she touched the\n lighter to the end of the cigarette and drew deeply. Phil stood watching\n her, the excitement completely gone from his eyes.\n\n\n \"I wish you had told me this a long time ago, Mary,\" Phil said. His\n voice was dry and low. \"I didn't know you felt this way about it.\"", "The small group at the base of the ship turned and walked back to the\n fence. And for an eternity the great ship stood alone, waiting. Then,\n from deep inside, a rumble came, increasing in volume to a gigantic roar\n that shook the earth and tore at the ears. Slowly, the first manned\n rocket to the Moon lifted up and up to the sky.\nFor a long time after the rocket had become a tiny speck of light in the\n heavens, she stood holding her face in her hands and crying softly to\n herself. And then she felt the touch of a hand on her arm. She turned.\n\n\n \"Phil! Oh, Phil.\" She held tightly to him and repeated his name over and\n over.\n\n\n \"They wouldn't let me go, Mary,\" he said finally. \"The general would not\n let me go.\"", "The general took Phil's arm and they walked to the briefing room. There\n were chairs set up for the scientists and Air Force officers directly\n connected with the take-off. They were seated now in a semicircle in\n front of a huge chart of the solar system. Phil took his seat, and the\n last minute briefing began. It was a routine he knew by heart. He had\n gone over and over it a thousand times, and he only half listened now.\n He kept thinking of Mary outside, alone by the fence.\n\n\n The voice of the briefing officer was a dull hum in his ears.\n\n\n \"... And orbit at 18,000-mph. You will then accelerate for the breakaway\n to 24,900-mph for five minutes and then free-coast for 116 hours\n until—\"", "\"Mary, you know I can't back out now. How could I? It's been three\n years. You know how much I've wanted to be the first man to go. Nothing\n would ever be right with me again if I didn't go. Please don't make it\n hard.\" He stopped talking and held her to him and stroked the back of\n her head. He could feel her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. He\n released her and stood up.\n\n\n \"I've got to get started, Mary. Will you come to the field with me?\"", "\"Yes, you did. I told you how I felt. I told you I could never be the\n wife of a space pilot. But I don't think I ever really believed it was\n possible—not until this morning when you said tonight was the take-off.\n It's so stupid to jeopardize everything we've got for a ridiculous\n dream!\"\n\n\n He sat down on the edge of the couch and took her hands between his.\n \"Mary, listen to me,\" he said. \"It isn't a dream. It's real. There's\n nothing means anything more to me than you do—you know that. But no\n man ever had the chance to do what I'm going to do tonight—no man ever.\n If I backed out now for any reason, I'd never be able to look at the sky\n again. I'd be through.\"\n\n\n She looked at him without seeing him, and there was nothing at all in\n her eyes.", "\"Let's go, if you're still going,\" she finally said.\nThey drove through the streets of the small town with its small\n bungalows, each alike. There were no trees and very little grass. It was\n a new town, a government built town, and it had no personality yet. It\n existed only because of the huge ship standing poised in the take-off\n zone five miles away in the desert. Its future as a town rested with the\n ship, and the town seemed to feel the uncertainty of its future, seemed\n ready to stop existing as a town and to give itself back to the desert,\n if such was its destiny.", "\"Honey, look at me,\" he said. \"It isn't going to be bad. Honestly it\n isn't. We know exactly how it will be. If anything could go wrong, they\n wouldn't be sending me; you know that. I told you that we've sent five\n un-manned ships up and everyone came back without a hitch.\"\n\n\n She turned, facing him. There were tears starting in the corners of her\n wide, brown eyes, and she brushed them away with her hand.\n\n\n \"Phil, don't go. Please don't. They can send Sammy. Sammy doesn't have a\n wife. Can't he go? They'd understand, Phil. Please!\" She was holding his\n arms tightly with her hands, and the color had drained from her cheeks.", "Phil asked a few questions about weather and solar conditions. And then\n the session was done. They rose and looked at each other, the same\n unanswered questions on each man's face. There were forced smiles and\n handshakes. They were ready now.\n\n\n \"Phil,\" the general said, and took him aside.\n\n\n \"Sir?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, you're ... you feel all right, don't you, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I feel fine. Why?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, I've spent nearly every day with you for three years. I know you\n better than I know myself in many ways. And I've studied the\n psychologist's reports on you carefully. Maybe it's just nervousness,\n Phil, but I think there's something wrong. Is there?\"\n\n\n \"No, sir. There's nothing wrong,\" Phil said, but his voice didn't carry\n conviction. He reached for a cigarette.", "\"Hello, Phil. We were beginning to think you weren't coming. You all\n set, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, I'm all set, I guess,\" Phil said.\n\n\n \"I'd like you to meet the Secretary of Defense, Phil. He's over here by\n the radar.\"\n\n\n As they crossed the room, familiar faces smiled, and each man shook his\n hand or touched his arm. He saw Sammy, alone, by the coffee urn. Sammy\n waved to him, but he didn't smile. Phil wanted to talk to him, to say\n something; but there was nothing to be said now. Sammy's turn would come\n later.\n\n\n \"Mr. Secretary,\" the general said, \"this is Colonel Conover. He'll be\n the first man in history to see the other side of the Moon. Colonel—the\n Secretary of Defense.\"\n\n\n \"How do you do, sir. I'm very proud to meet you,\" Phil said.", "Phil turned the car off the highway onto the rutted dirt road that led\n across the sand to the field where the ship waited. In the distance they\n could see the beams of the searchlights as they played across the\n take-off zone and swept along the top of the high wire fence stretching\n out of sight to right and left. At the gate they were stopped by the\n guard. He read Phil's pass, shined his flashlight in their faces, and\n then saluted. \"Good luck, colonel,\" he said, and shook Phil's hand.", "Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science\n Fiction December 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence\n that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.\nBREAKAWAY\nBY STANLEY GIMBLE\nIllustrated by Freas\nShe surely got her wish ... but there was some question about getting\n what she wanted.\nPhil Conover pulled the zipper of his flight suit up the front of his\n long, thin body and came into the living room. His face, usually serious\n and quietly handsome, had an alive, excited look. And the faint lines\n around his dark, deep-set eyes were accentuated when he smiled at his\n wife.\n\n\n \"All set, honey. How do I look in my monkey suit?\"", "And then they were ready. A small group of excited men came out from the\n administration building and moved forward. The check-out crews climbed\n into their machines and drove back outside the take-off zone. And,\n alone, one man climbed the steel ladder up the side of the\n rocket—ninety feet into the air. At the top he waved to the men on the\n ground and then disappeared through a small port.\n\n\n Mary waved to him. \"Good-by,\" she said to herself, but the words stuck\n tight in her throat.", "\"On the contrary, colonel. I'm very proud to meet you. I've been looking\n at that ship out there and wondering. I almost wish I were a young man\n again. I'd like to be going. It's a thrilling thought—man's first\n adventure into the universe. You're lighting a new dawn of history,\n colonel. It's a privilege few men have ever had; and those who have had\n it didn't realize it at the time. Good luck, and God be with you.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, sir. I'm aware of all you say. It frightens me a little.\"" ], [ "She looked at him. His face was drawn tight, and there were tears on his\n cheeks. \"Thank, God,\" she said. \"It doesn't matter, darling. The only\n thing that matters is you didn't go.\"\n\n\n \"You're right, Mary,\" he said. His voice was low—so low she could\n hardly hear him. \"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.\" He stood with\n his hands at his sides, watching her. And then turned away and walked\n toward the car.\nTHE END", "His wife was sitting stiffly on the flowered couch that was still not\n theirs completely. In her fingers she held a cigarette burned down too\n far. She said, \"You look fine, Phil. You look just right.\" She managed a\n smile. Then she leaned forward and crushed the cigarette in the ash\n tray on the maple coffee table and took another from the pack.\n\n\n He came to her and touched his hands to her soft blond hair, raising her\n face until she was looking into his eyes. \"You're the most beautiful\n girl I know. Did I ever tell you that?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I think so. Yes, I'm sure you did,\" she said, finishing the\n ritual; but her voice broke, and she turned her head away. Phil sat\n beside her and put his arm around her small shoulders. He had stopped\n smiling.", "\"Let's go, if you're still going,\" she finally said.\nThey drove through the streets of the small town with its small\n bungalows, each alike. There were no trees and very little grass. It was\n a new town, a government built town, and it had no personality yet. It\n existed only because of the huge ship standing poised in the take-off\n zone five miles away in the desert. Its future as a town rested with the\n ship, and the town seemed to feel the uncertainty of its future, seemed\n ready to stop existing as a town and to give itself back to the desert,\n if such was its destiny.", "\"Phil, if there is anything—anything at all—you know what it might\n mean. You've got to be in the best mental and physical condition of your\n life tonight. You know better than any man here what that means to our\n success. I think there is something more than just natural apprehension\n wrong with you. Want to tell me?\"\nOutside, the take-off zone crawled with men and machines at the base of\n the rocket. For ten hours, the final check-outs had been in progress;\n and now the men were checking again, on their own time. The thing they\n had worked toward for six years was ready to happen, and each one felt\n that he was sending just a little bit of himself into the sky. Beyond\n the ring of lights and moving men, on the edge of the field, Mary stood.\n Her hands moved slowly over the top of the fence, twisting the barbs of\n wire. But her eyes were on the ship.", "He leaned toward her and touched her cheek. Then she was in his arms,\n her head buried against his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Good-by, darling,\" she said.\n\n\n \"Wish me luck, Mary?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Yes, good luck, Phil,\" she said. He opened the car door and got out.\n The noise of men and machines scurrying around the ship broke the spell\n of the rocket waiting silently for flight.\n\n\n \"Mary, I—\" he began, and then turned and strode toward the\n administration building without looking back.\nInside the building it was like a locker room before the big game. The\n tension stood alone, and each man had the same happy, excited look that\n Phil had worn earlier. When he came into the room, the noise and bustle\n stopped. They turned as one man toward him, and General Small came up to\n him and took his hand.", "\"Thanks, sergeant. I'll be seeing you next week,\" Phil said, and smiled.\n They drove between the rows of wooden buildings that lined the field,\n and he parked near the low barbed fence ringing the take-off zone. He\n turned off the ignition, and sat quietly for a moment before lighting a\n cigarette. Then he looked at his wife. She was staring through the\n windshield at the rocket two hundred yards away. Its smooth polished\n surface gleamed in the spotlight glare, and it sloped up and up until\n the eye lost the tip against the stars.\n\n\n \"She's beautiful, Mary. You've never seen her before, have you?\"\n\n\n \"No, I've never seen her before,\" she said. \"Hadn't you better go?\" Her\n voice was strained and she held her hands closed tightly in her lap.\n \"Please go now, Phil,\" she said.", "The small group at the base of the ship turned and walked back to the\n fence. And for an eternity the great ship stood alone, waiting. Then,\n from deep inside, a rumble came, increasing in volume to a gigantic roar\n that shook the earth and tore at the ears. Slowly, the first manned\n rocket to the Moon lifted up and up to the sky.\nFor a long time after the rocket had become a tiny speck of light in the\n heavens, she stood holding her face in her hands and crying softly to\n herself. And then she felt the touch of a hand on her arm. She turned.\n\n\n \"Phil! Oh, Phil.\" She held tightly to him and repeated his name over and\n over.\n\n\n \"They wouldn't let me go, Mary,\" he said finally. \"The general would not\n let me go.\"", "\"Yes, you did. I told you how I felt. I told you I could never be the\n wife of a space pilot. But I don't think I ever really believed it was\n possible—not until this morning when you said tonight was the take-off.\n It's so stupid to jeopardize everything we've got for a ridiculous\n dream!\"\n\n\n He sat down on the edge of the couch and took her hands between his.\n \"Mary, listen to me,\" he said. \"It isn't a dream. It's real. There's\n nothing means anything more to me than you do—you know that. But no\n man ever had the chance to do what I'm going to do tonight—no man ever.\n If I backed out now for any reason, I'd never be able to look at the sky\n again. I'd be through.\"\n\n\n She looked at him without seeing him, and there was nothing at all in\n her eyes.", "\"On the contrary, colonel. I'm very proud to meet you. I've been looking\n at that ship out there and wondering. I almost wish I were a young man\n again. I'd like to be going. It's a thrilling thought—man's first\n adventure into the universe. You're lighting a new dawn of history,\n colonel. It's a privilege few men have ever had; and those who have had\n it didn't realize it at the time. Good luck, and God be with you.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, sir. I'm aware of all you say. It frightens me a little.\"", "And then they were ready. A small group of excited men came out from the\n administration building and moved forward. The check-out crews climbed\n into their machines and drove back outside the take-off zone. And,\n alone, one man climbed the steel ladder up the side of the\n rocket—ninety feet into the air. At the top he waved to the men on the\n ground and then disappeared through a small port.\n\n\n Mary waved to him. \"Good-by,\" she said to herself, but the words stuck\n tight in her throat.", "\"Honey, look at me,\" he said. \"It isn't going to be bad. Honestly it\n isn't. We know exactly how it will be. If anything could go wrong, they\n wouldn't be sending me; you know that. I told you that we've sent five\n un-manned ships up and everyone came back without a hitch.\"\n\n\n She turned, facing him. There were tears starting in the corners of her\n wide, brown eyes, and she brushed them away with her hand.\n\n\n \"Phil, don't go. Please don't. They can send Sammy. Sammy doesn't have a\n wife. Can't he go? They'd understand, Phil. Please!\" She was holding his\n arms tightly with her hands, and the color had drained from her cheeks.", "The general took Phil's arm and they walked to the briefing room. There\n were chairs set up for the scientists and Air Force officers directly\n connected with the take-off. They were seated now in a semicircle in\n front of a huge chart of the solar system. Phil took his seat, and the\n last minute briefing began. It was a routine he knew by heart. He had\n gone over and over it a thousand times, and he only half listened now.\n He kept thinking of Mary outside, alone by the fence.\n\n\n The voice of the briefing officer was a dull hum in his ears.\n\n\n \"... And orbit at 18,000-mph. You will then accelerate for the breakaway\n to 24,900-mph for five minutes and then free-coast for 116 hours\n until—\"", "\"Hello, Phil. We were beginning to think you weren't coming. You all\n set, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, I'm all set, I guess,\" Phil said.\n\n\n \"I'd like you to meet the Secretary of Defense, Phil. He's over here by\n the radar.\"\n\n\n As they crossed the room, familiar faces smiled, and each man shook his\n hand or touched his arm. He saw Sammy, alone, by the coffee urn. Sammy\n waved to him, but he didn't smile. Phil wanted to talk to him, to say\n something; but there was nothing to be said now. Sammy's turn would come\n later.\n\n\n \"Mr. Secretary,\" the general said, \"this is Colonel Conover. He'll be\n the first man in history to see the other side of the Moon. Colonel—the\n Secretary of Defense.\"\n\n\n \"How do you do, sir. I'm very proud to meet you,\" Phil said.", "\"Mary, you know I can't back out now. How could I? It's been three\n years. You know how much I've wanted to be the first man to go. Nothing\n would ever be right with me again if I didn't go. Please don't make it\n hard.\" He stopped talking and held her to him and stroked the back of\n her head. He could feel her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. He\n released her and stood up.\n\n\n \"I've got to get started, Mary. Will you come to the field with me?\"", "Phil asked a few questions about weather and solar conditions. And then\n the session was done. They rose and looked at each other, the same\n unanswered questions on each man's face. There were forced smiles and\n handshakes. They were ready now.\n\n\n \"Phil,\" the general said, and took him aside.\n\n\n \"Sir?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, you're ... you feel all right, don't you, son?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. I feel fine. Why?\"\n\n\n \"Phil, I've spent nearly every day with you for three years. I know you\n better than I know myself in many ways. And I've studied the\n psychologist's reports on you carefully. Maybe it's just nervousness,\n Phil, but I think there's something wrong. Is there?\"\n\n\n \"No, sir. There's nothing wrong,\" Phil said, but his voice didn't carry\n conviction. He reached for a cigarette.", "Phil turned the car off the highway onto the rutted dirt road that led\n across the sand to the field where the ship waited. In the distance they\n could see the beams of the searchlights as they played across the\n take-off zone and swept along the top of the high wire fence stretching\n out of sight to right and left. At the gate they were stopped by the\n guard. He read Phil's pass, shined his flashlight in their faces, and\n then saluted. \"Good luck, colonel,\" he said, and shook Phil's hand.", "\"Yes, I'll come to say good-by.\" She paused and dropped her eyes. \"Phil,\n if you go, I won't be here when you get back—if you get back. I won't\n be here because I won't be the wife of a space pilot for the rest of my\n life. It isn't the kind of life I bargained for. No matter how much I\n love you, I just couldn't take that, Phil. I'm sorry. I guess I'm not\n the noble sort of wife.\"\n\n\n She finished and took another cigarette from the pack on the coffee\n table and put it to her lips. Her hand was trembling as she touched the\n lighter to the end of the cigarette and drew deeply. Phil stood watching\n her, the excitement completely gone from his eyes.\n\n\n \"I wish you had told me this a long time ago, Mary,\" Phil said. His\n voice was dry and low. \"I didn't know you felt this way about it.\"", "Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science\n Fiction December 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence\n that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.\nBREAKAWAY\nBY STANLEY GIMBLE\nIllustrated by Freas\nShe surely got her wish ... but there was some question about getting\n what she wanted.\nPhil Conover pulled the zipper of his flight suit up the front of his\n long, thin body and came into the living room. His face, usually serious\n and quietly handsome, had an alive, excited look. And the faint lines\n around his dark, deep-set eyes were accentuated when he smiled at his\n wife.\n\n\n \"All set, honey. How do I look in my monkey suit?\"" ] ]
train	60747	[ "How does the narrator feel about his special ability?", "Which is not a reason the narrator did not tell anyone about the bomb when he discovered it?", "Which is the best description of how Julia reacted to the narrator trying to take her bag?", "What is Julia's role in the existence of the bomb?", "What is the role of the stewardess in the bomb situation?", "Which is the best description of why Julia and the narrator decide not to report their bags stolen?", "Which is likely true about Julia's sister given the information in the story?", "What likely happens to the narrator after the story ends?", "Why did the dumpy man not start running when he picked up the suitcases?" ]	[ [ "He doesn't find it that useful most of the time but he does consistently use it in specific situations", "He finds it to be his greatest source of amusement, and enjoys keeping secrets of what others carry", "He is glad he has this ability instead of a different more dangerous one", "He is disappointed he cannot tell anyone about it because he wants to show it off" ], [ "He did not want to have to explain how he knew it was there", "He figured it was futile, if there were no specialists to disarm it on board", "He thought he might be able to keep it from becoming dangerous if he tried hard enough", "He did not want to be asked to diffuse it because he did not know how" ], [ "She was surprised enough by the request that she wasn't quite sure how to react", "She was unsettled because a strange man had approached her trying to take her things", "She was nervous because she thought the narrator had figured out her plan and the existence of the bomb", "She was frustrated with him for further delaying her already postponed trip" ], [ "She tried to off her husband which made him angry and he tried to retaliate", "She is part of a scheme run by a terrorist organization", "She and her sister devised a plan to blow up the ship", "She was likely a target but possibly a co-conspirator" ], [ "She is able to interact with the narrator consistently to keep him calm", "She likely never becomes aware of the situation at all", "She is the first person the narrator confides in about the bomb", "She keeps the passengers calm when she is aware there is a threat" ], [ "They are worried that the bags will be traced back to them and they'll get caught", "They don't want to get mixed up in the investigation of the explosives", "It is the cleanest way to enact their plan and they don't need to be involved anymore", "They don't want to be tied to the death of a known thief, as the police might think they retaliated" ], [ "She and Julia have a very close bond ", "She has enough money that she is comfortable calling taxis instead of driving with visitors are in town", "She was in on the plan with Julia's husband", "She is flaky and can't be trusted when it comes to travel plans" ], [ "He eventually makes his meeting but is too shaken up to successfully close the sale", "He and Julia get together after Julia's divorce", "The narrator stays with Julia's sister on his trip and misses his meeting", "He probably returns to his unsatisfying life negotiating printing orders" ], [ "He knew there was a bomb and didn't want to jostle it before he retrieved the other contents", "He didn't know there was a bomb so he had no reason to rush", "He didn't want to arouse suspicion unless he was spotted", "He was too big to be able to move quickly" ] ]	[ 1, 4, 1, 4, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3 ]	[ 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "It started when I was a kid, this business of being able to explore\n the insides of things like purses and sealed boxes and locked drawers\n and—well, human beings. But human beings aren't worth the trouble.\n It's like swimming through spaghetti. And I've got to stay away from\n electric wires. They hurt. Now don't ask me\nhow\nthey hurt.\n\n\n Maybe you think it's fun. For the most part, it really isn't. I always\n knew what was in Christmas presents before I unwrapped them, and\n therefore Christmas was always spoiled for me as a kid. I can't feel\n the color of anything, just its consistency. An apple senses about the\n same as a potato, except for the core and the stem. I can't even tell\n if there's writing on a piece of paper. So you see it isn't much. Just\n the feel of shapes, the hardnesses and softnesses. But I've learned to\n become pretty good at guessing.", "Class had hardly resumed when she started looking around the desk for\n her favorite mechanical pencil, asking if any of us had seen it, and\n looking straight at me. I didn't want her to think I had taken it while\n she was out of the room, so I probed the contents of her purse, which\n she always kept in the upper right drawer of her desk.\n\n\n \"It's in your purse,\" I blurted out.\n\n\n I was sent home with a stinging note.\n\n\n Since then I've kept quiet. At one time I assumed everybody was able\n to sense. I've known better for years. Still, I wonder how many other\n people are as close-mouthed about their special gift as I am about mine.\n\n\n I used to think that some day I'd make a lot of money out of it, but\n how? I can't read thoughts. I can't even be sure what some of the\n things I sense in probing really are.", "I lit a cigarette, reached out. Inside were a woman's things and—a\n clock. The escapement was clicking vigorously.\n\n\n I didn't moan this time. I just closed my eyes, stretched toward\n and grabbed the balance wheel I was getting to know like my own. I\n entered into a union with it so strong that after I had reduced it to\n immobility, it was like waking when I opened my eyes.\nThe baggage claim attendant was staring at me. For only a moment I\n stared back. Then I quickly reached for my baggage check and presented\n it to him. His hand hovered over the handle of the little red bag and I\n was ready to yell at him. But then, matching numbers on the tags with\n his eyes, his hand grasped the handle of my own suitcase and pushed it\n toward me.\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" I said, taking it. I glanced ever so casually toward the\n remaining bag. \"One left over, eh?\"", "Over coffee I explained it all to her, how I had this extrasensory\n ability, how she was the first person I had ever revealed it to, and\n how I had discovered what was in her overnight bag.\n\n\n During the telling, her untouched coffee grew a skin, her face grew\n pale, her eyes grew less curious and more troubled. There were tears\n there when I finished. I asked her who put the bomb in her bag.\n\n\n \"Joe did,\" she said in a toneless voice, not looking at me any more but\n staring vacantly across the room. \"Joe put it there.\" Behind her eyes\n she was reliving some recent scene.\n\n\n \"Who is Joe?\"", "But I've learned to move things. Ever so little. A piece of paper. A\n feather. Once I stopped one of those little glass-enclosed light or\n heat-powered devices with vanes you see now and then in a jeweler's\n window. And I can stop clocks.\n\n\n Take this morning, for example. I had set my alarm for five-thirty\n because I had to catch the seven o'clock plane at San Francisco\n International Airport. This being earlier than I usually get up, it\n seems all I did during the night was feel my way past the escapement\n and balance wheel to see where the notch for the alarm was. The last\n time I did it there was just the merest fraction of an inch between the\n pawl and the notch. So I sighed and moved to the balance wheel and its\n delicate ribbon of spiraling steel. I hung onto the wheel, exerting\n influence to decrease the restoring torque.", "\"Must have been dreaming,\" I said as I rang for the stewardess. When\n she came I told her I'd take some of that coffee now. No, nothing else,\n just coffee. I didn't tell her how much I needed it. I sat there clammy\n with sweat until she returned. Coffee never tasted so good.\nAll right, so I had stopped the bomb's timer. My mind raced ahead to\n the landing. When they unloaded the luggage, the balance wheel would\n start again. I wouldn't be able to stay with it, keeping it still.\n I considered telling the authorities as soon as we landed, or maybe\n calling in ahead, but wouldn't that just bring suspicion, questions.\n Maybe I could convince them I could stop a clock—but not before the\n bomb exploded. And then what? My secret would be out and my life would\n be changed. I'd be a man not to be trusted, a prying man, a man\n literally with gimlet eyes.", "She gave me a speculative look.\n\n\n I must not have seemed a complete idiot because she said, \"All right,\n but—\"\n\n\n I didn't listen for the rest. I went into the booth, closed the door,\n pretended to drop a coin and dial a number. But all the time I was in\n there, I was reaching out through the glass for the clock. At this\n range it wasn't difficult to stop the balance wheel.\n\n\n Just the same, when I came out I was wringing wet.\n\n\n \"Now will you please tell me what this is all about?\" she said stiffly.\n\n\n \"Gladly. Let me buy you a cup of coffee and I'll explain.\"\n\n\n She glanced at the bags. I told her they'd be all right. We followed\n the short, fat man into the coffee shop.", "I closed my eyes, forced my mind back to the luggage compartment, spent\n a frantic moment before I found the bag again. I had to stop that\n balance wheel, just as I stopped my alarm clock every morning. I tried\n to close everything off—the throb of engines, the rush of air, the\n woman sipping coffee noisily beside me—and I went into the clock and\n surrounded the seesawing wheel. When it went forward, I pulled it back;\n when it went back, I pulled it forward. I struggled with it, and it was\n like trying to work with greasy hands, and I was afraid I wasn't going\n to be able to stop it.\n\n\n Then, little by little, it started to slow its beat. But I could not\n afford to relax. I pushed and pulled and didn't dare release my hold\n until it came to a dead stop.\n\n\n \"Anything the matter?\"", "Mountain crags jutted through the clouds. We were in the range north of\n the city. Here and there were clear spots and I could see roads below,\n but there were also clouds far above us. It was very beautiful, but it\n was also very bumpy, and we started to slip and slide.\n\n\n To my horror I found that the balance wheel was rocking again. Closing\n my eyes and gritting my teeth, I forced my senses to the wheel, tugging\n and pulling and shoving and pushing until it finally stopped.\n\n\n A jab in the shoulder. I jumped, startled.\n\n\n \"Your cup,\" my seat partner said, pointing.\n\n\n I looked down at the coffee cup I had crushed in my hands. Then I\n looked up into the eyes of the stewardess. I handed it to her. She took\n it without a word and went away.\n\n\n \"Were you really asleep that time?\"", "The clerk took it, nodded, and in a moment brought out the overnight\n case and set it on the scales. The girl thanked him, picked it up,\n glanced at me indifferently, and then started for the entrance with it.\n\n\n \"Just a moment,\" I found myself saying, grabbing my bag and hurrying\n after her.\nAt her side and a little ahead of her, I said, \"Listen to me.\"\n\n\n She looked annoyed and increased her stride toward the door.\n\n\n \"It's a matter of life or death,\" I said. I wanted to wrest the bag\n from her and hurl it out through the doorway into the street, but I\n restrained myself.\n\n\n She stopped and stared. I noticed a short, fat man in a rumpled\n suitcoat and unpressed pants staring, too. Ignoring him, I said,\n \"Please put the bag down. Over there.\" I indicated a spot beside a\n telephone booth where it would be out of the way.", "\"My husband.\" I thought she was going to really bawl, but she got\n control again. \"This trip was his idea, my coming down here to visit my\n sister.\" Her smile was bleak. \"I see now why he wanted to put in those\n books. I'd finished packing and was in the bathroom. He said he'd put\n in some books we'd both finished reading—for my sister. That's when he\n must have put the—put it in there.\"\n\n\n I said gently, \"Why would he want to do a thing like that?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\" She shook her head. \"I just don't know.\" And she was\n close to bawling again. Then she recovered and said, \"I'm not sure I\n want to know.\" I admired her for saying it. Joe must have been crazy.\n\n\n \"It's all right now?\" she asked.\n\n\n I nodded. \"As long as we don't move it.\"", "I should not have been there, that much I knew; I should be with a\n man named Amos Magaffey on Sixth Street at ten o'clock, discussing\n something very mundane, the matter of a printing order. But what could\n I do? If I left the airport, the attendant would eventually take the\n bag inside and there would be an explosion, and I wouldn't be able to\n live with myself.\n\n\n No. I had to stay to keep the balance wheel stationary until—until\n what?\n\n\n A man in tan gabardine, wearing a police cap and badge, walked out of\n the entrance to stand on the stone steps beside me while he put on a\n pair of dark glasses. A member of the airport police detail. I could\n tell him. I could take him down to the little red bag and explain the\n whole thing. Then it would be his baby and I would be off on my own\n business.", "I had seen her in the concourse and at the gate, a shapely thing. Now\n she had crossed her legs and I was privileged to view a trim ankle and\n calf, and her profile as she stared moodily across the aisle and out a\n window where there was nothing to see.\n\n\n I slid my eyes past her to others. A crossword-puzzle worker, a\n togetherness-type-magazine reader.\n\n\n Inventory completed, I went back to looking at the clouds, knowing I\n should be thinking about the printing order I was going to Los Angeles\n for, and not wanting to.\n\n\n So I started going through the purse of the woman next to me. Perhaps\n that sounds bad. It wasn't. I'd been doing it for years and nobody ever\n complained.", "I never did find my suitcase because I found the bomb first.\nThe bomb was in a small bag—a woman's bag judging by the soft,\n flimsy things you'd never find in a man's—and I didn't know it was a\n bomb right away. I thought it was just a clock, one of those small,\n quiet alarms. I was going to pass it by and go on, but what held me\n was that something was taped to it. By the feel, I knew it must be\n electrician's tape. Interested and curious, I explored the clock more\n closely, found two wires. One went to a battery and the other to hard\n round cylinders taped together. The hairs stood up at the base of my\n neck when I suddenly realized what it was.\n\n\n The clock's balance wheel was rocking merrily. Quickly I went up past\n the train of gears to the alarm wheel. If this was anything like my own\n alarm clock, this one had something like ten minutes to go.", "Nuts to wild talents! Mine was no\n \nsatisfaction, never earned me a penny—and\n \nnow it had me fighting for my life in\n...\nTHE LITTLE RED BAG\nBy JERRY SOHL\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1960.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nAbout an hour out of San Francisco on the flight to Los Angeles, I made\n the discovery. I had finished reading the\nChronicle\n, folded and put\n it beside me, turned and looked out the window, expecting to see the\n San Joaquin Valley but finding only a sea of clouds instead. So I\n returned my attention to the inside of the plane, to the overstuffed\n gray-haired woman asleep beside me, to the backs of heads in seats\n before me, across the aisle to other heads, and down to the blonde.", "I could visualize the balance wheel once again rocking like crazy. How\n many minutes—or seconds—were left? I was sweating when I moved to the\n counter, and it wasn't because of the sunshine I'd been soaking in. I\n had to get as close to the bag as I could if I was going to stop the\n clock again.\n\n\n \"Can I help you?\" the clerk asked.\n\n\n \"No. I'm waiting for someone.\"\n\n\n I turned my back to him, put down my suitcase, leaned against the\n counter and reached out for the wheel. I found I could reach the\n device, but it was far away. When I tried to dampen it, the wheel\n escaped my grasp.\n\n\n \"Do you have my suitcase?\"\n\n\n I blinked my eyes open and looked around. The blonde in the plane stood\n there looking very fresh and bright and unconcerned. In her right hand\n she had a green baggage claim check.", "The wheel slowed down until there was no more ticking. It took quite\n a bit of effort, as it always does, but I did it, as I usually do. I\n can't stand the alarm.\n\n\n When I first learned to do this, I thought I had it made. I even went\n to Las Vegas to try my hand, so to speak, with the ratchets and pawls\n and cams and springs on the slot machines. But there's nothing delicate\n about a slot machine, and the spring tensions are too strong. I dropped\n quite a lot of nickels before I finally gave up.\n\n\n So I'm stuck with a talent I've found little real use for. Except that\n it amuses me. Sometimes. Not like this time on the plane.", "The policeman was sympathetic and concerned. He said, \"We'd better get\n over to the office.\"\n\n\n But we never left the spot because an explosion some blocks distant\n shattered the air. Julia's hand grasped my arm. Hard.\n\n\n \"Jets,\" the redcap said, eying the sky.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" the policeman said. \"Didn't sound much like a jet to\n me.\"\n\n\n We stood there. I could visualize the wreckage of an old gray coupe\n in the middle of a street, but I couldn't visualize the driver. That\n was all right. I didn't want to see him. I didn't know what Julia was\n thinking.\n\n\n She said, \"About those bags,\" and looked at me.\n\n\n The officer said, \"Yes, miss?\"", "The woman beside me stirred, sat up suddenly and looked across me out\n the window. \"Where are we?\" she asked in a surprised voice. I told her\n we were probably a little north of Bakersfield. She said, \"Oh,\" glanced\n at her wristwatch and sank back again.\n\n\n Soon the stewardesses would bring coffee and doughnuts around, so I\n contented myself with looking at the clouds and trying to think about\n Amos Magaffey, who was purchasing agent for a Los Angeles amusement\n chain, and how I was going to convince him our printing prices were\n maybe a little higher but the quality and service were better. My mind\n wandered below where I was sitting, idly moving from one piece of\n luggage to another, looking for my beat-up suitcase. I went through\n slips and slippers, lingerie and laundry, a jig saw puzzle and a\n ukulele.", "\"I—I don't care about mine. I didn't have much of anything in it.\"\n\n\n \"I feel the same way,\" I said. \"Would it be all right if we didn't\n bother to report it?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" the policeman said, \"I can't\nmake\nyou report it.\"\n\n\n \"I'd rather not then,\" Julia said. She turned to me. \"I'd like some\n air. Can't we walk a little?\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" I said.\n\n\n We started down the street, her arm in mine, as the air began to fill\n with the distant sounds of sirens." ], [ "I never did find my suitcase because I found the bomb first.\nThe bomb was in a small bag—a woman's bag judging by the soft,\n flimsy things you'd never find in a man's—and I didn't know it was a\n bomb right away. I thought it was just a clock, one of those small,\n quiet alarms. I was going to pass it by and go on, but what held me\n was that something was taped to it. By the feel, I knew it must be\n electrician's tape. Interested and curious, I explored the clock more\n closely, found two wires. One went to a battery and the other to hard\n round cylinders taped together. The hairs stood up at the base of my\n neck when I suddenly realized what it was.\n\n\n The clock's balance wheel was rocking merrily. Quickly I went up past\n the train of gears to the alarm wheel. If this was anything like my own\n alarm clock, this one had something like ten minutes to go.", "I told her I didn't know how much more time there was, that I'd been\n thinking it over and that the only way out seemed to be to tell the\n airport policeman. After I explained it to her, the girl—she said her\n name was Julia Claremont—agreed to tell him she thought there was a\n bomb in her bag, that she had noticed a ticking and had become worried\n because she knew she hadn't packed a clock. It wasn't good, but it\n would have to do.\n\n\n \"We've got to get it deactivated,\" I said, watching the fat man pay for\n his coffee and leave. \"The sooner the better.\"\nI finished my coffee in one gulp and went to pay the bill with her.\n I asked her why she didn't claim the bag at the same time the other\n people had. She said she had called her sister and the phone was busy\n for a long while.", "It was forty minutes to Burbank and Lockheed Air Terminal.\n\n\n My mind was churning when I turned from the window to look around\n at the unconcerned passengers, the woman at my side asleep again. I\n thought: Which one of these.... No, none of them would know it was\n there. I glanced out the window again; clouds were still in the way.\n We'd be leaving the valley for the mountain range north of Los Angeles\n soon, if we hadn't left it already. No place to land the plane there.\n\n\n But of course that had been the plan!\n\n\n My heart was beating in jackhammer rhythm; my mouth was dry and my mind\n was numb. Tell somebody about the bomb before it's too late! No, they'd\n think I put it there. Besides, what good would it do? There would be\n panic and they'd never get the plane down in time—if they believed me.", "But he moved on down the steps, nodded at the redcap, and started\n across the street to the parking area. I could have called to him,\n \"Hey, officer, let me tell you about a bomb in a little red bag.\" But\n I didn't. I didn't because I caught a movement at the baggage claim\n counter out of the side of my eye.\n\n\n The attendant had picked up the bag and was walking with it up the ramp\n to the rear of the air terminal. Picking up my own suitcase, I went\n inside in time to see him enter through a side door and deposit the bag\n on the scales at the airline desk and say something to the clerk. The\n clerk nodded and moved the bag to the rear room.", "\"Yeah.\" He was so bored I was tempted to tell him what was in it. But\n he was eying me with a \"well-why-don't-you-get-along?\" look.\n\n\n I said, \"What happens if nobody claims it?\"\n\n\n \"Take it inside. Why?\"\n\n\n He was getting too curious. \"Oh, I just wondered, that's all.\"\n\n\n I stepped on my cigarette and walked toward the air terminal entrance\n and put my suitcase on the stone steps there. A redcap came hurrying\n over.\n\n\n \"Cab?\"\n\n\n I shook my head. \"Just waiting.\"\n\n\n Just waiting for somebody to pick up a bomb.\n\n\n I lit another cigarette and glanced now and then toward the baggage\n claim area. The red bag was still there. All sorts of theories ran\n through my head as to why it should still be there, and none satisfied\n me.", "\"Not really,\" I said. I was tempted to tell the woman I was subject to\n fits, but I didn't.\n\n\n It was only a few minutes to landing, but they became the longest\n minutes of my life as time after time I stopped the rocking wheel when\n the plane dipped and bumped to a landing.\n\n\n Leaving the apron with the other passengers, I tried to walk as\n unconcernedly as they through the exit gate. I would have liked walking\n through the terminal and out the entrance and away, but I could not. I\n had my suitcase to get, for one thing. The damned bomb was the other.\n So I strolled out into the concourse again to look at the plane and\n watch the baggagemen at work, transferring the luggage to two airfield\n carts. They weren't as careful as I would have been.", "It was impossible to tell from this distance just which bag contained\n the bomb; I could hardly identify my own scarred suitcase. The\n assortment of bags—a strange conglomeration of sizes and colors—was\n packed in some places six deep, and it rolled toward the gate where\n I was standing. I didn't know whether to stay or run, imagining the\n balance wheel now happily rocking again. The load went past me down a\n ramp to the front of the air terminal where the luggage was unloaded\n and placed in a long rack. I went with it.\n\n\n There was a flurry of ticket matching, hands grabbing for suitcases,\n and a general exodus on the part of my fellow passengers, too fast to\n determine who had got the one with the bomb. Now all that was left was\n the attendant and I had two bags—my own battered veteran of years, and\n a fine new red overnight case, small enough to be the one.", "I should not have been there, that much I knew; I should be with a\n man named Amos Magaffey on Sixth Street at ten o'clock, discussing\n something very mundane, the matter of a printing order. But what could\n I do? If I left the airport, the attendant would eventually take the\n bag inside and there would be an explosion, and I wouldn't be able to\n live with myself.\n\n\n No. I had to stay to keep the balance wheel stationary until—until\n what?\n\n\n A man in tan gabardine, wearing a police cap and badge, walked out of\n the entrance to stand on the stone steps beside me while he put on a\n pair of dark glasses. A member of the airport police detail. I could\n tell him. I could take him down to the little red bag and explain the\n whole thing. Then it would be his baby and I would be off on my own\n business.", "\"Must have been dreaming,\" I said as I rang for the stewardess. When\n she came I told her I'd take some of that coffee now. No, nothing else,\n just coffee. I didn't tell her how much I needed it. I sat there clammy\n with sweat until she returned. Coffee never tasted so good.\nAll right, so I had stopped the bomb's timer. My mind raced ahead to\n the landing. When they unloaded the luggage, the balance wheel would\n start again. I wouldn't be able to stay with it, keeping it still.\n I considered telling the authorities as soon as we landed, or maybe\n calling in ahead, but wouldn't that just bring suspicion, questions.\n Maybe I could convince them I could stop a clock—but not before the\n bomb exploded. And then what? My secret would be out and my life would\n be changed. I'd be a man not to be trusted, a prying man, a man\n literally with gimlet eyes.", "She didn't move. She just said, \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"For God's sake!\" I took the case. She offered no resistance. I put her\n bag and mine next to the booth. When I turned around she was standing\n there looking at me as if I had gone out of my mind. Her eyes were blue\n and brown-flecked, very pretty eyes, and my thought at the moment was,\n I'm glad the bomb didn't go off; these eyes wouldn't be looking at me\n or anything else right now if it had.\n\n\n \"I've got to talk to you. It's very important.\"\n\n\n The girl said, \"Why?\" I was beginning to think it was the only word she\n knew. At the same time I was wondering why anyone would want to kill\n someone so lovely.\n\n\n \"I'll explain in a moment. Please stand right here while I make a\n telephone call.\" I moved toward the phone booth, paused and said, \"And\n don't ask me why.\"", "Over coffee I explained it all to her, how I had this extrasensory\n ability, how she was the first person I had ever revealed it to, and\n how I had discovered what was in her overnight bag.\n\n\n During the telling, her untouched coffee grew a skin, her face grew\n pale, her eyes grew less curious and more troubled. There were tears\n there when I finished. I asked her who put the bomb in her bag.\n\n\n \"Joe did,\" she said in a toneless voice, not looking at me any more but\n staring vacantly across the room. \"Joe put it there.\" Behind her eyes\n she was reliving some recent scene.\n\n\n \"Who is Joe?\"", "\"My husband.\" I thought she was going to really bawl, but she got\n control again. \"This trip was his idea, my coming down here to visit my\n sister.\" Her smile was bleak. \"I see now why he wanted to put in those\n books. I'd finished packing and was in the bathroom. He said he'd put\n in some books we'd both finished reading—for my sister. That's when he\n must have put the—put it in there.\"\n\n\n I said gently, \"Why would he want to do a thing like that?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\" She shook her head. \"I just don't know.\" And she was\n close to bawling again. Then she recovered and said, \"I'm not sure I\n want to know.\" I admired her for saying it. Joe must have been crazy.\n\n\n \"It's all right now?\" she asked.\n\n\n I nodded. \"As long as we don't move it.\"", "\"I—I don't care about mine. I didn't have much of anything in it.\"\n\n\n \"I feel the same way,\" I said. \"Would it be all right if we didn't\n bother to report it?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" the policeman said, \"I can't\nmake\nyou report it.\"\n\n\n \"I'd rather not then,\" Julia said. She turned to me. \"I'd like some\n air. Can't we walk a little?\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" I said.\n\n\n We started down the street, her arm in mine, as the air began to fill\n with the distant sounds of sirens.", "The policeman was sympathetic and concerned. He said, \"We'd better get\n over to the office.\"\n\n\n But we never left the spot because an explosion some blocks distant\n shattered the air. Julia's hand grasped my arm. Hard.\n\n\n \"Jets,\" the redcap said, eying the sky.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" the policeman said. \"Didn't sound much like a jet to\n me.\"\n\n\n We stood there. I could visualize the wreckage of an old gray coupe\n in the middle of a street, but I couldn't visualize the driver. That\n was all right. I didn't want to see him. I didn't know what Julia was\n thinking.\n\n\n She said, \"About those bags,\" and looked at me.\n\n\n The officer said, \"Yes, miss?\"", "The clerk took it, nodded, and in a moment brought out the overnight\n case and set it on the scales. The girl thanked him, picked it up,\n glanced at me indifferently, and then started for the entrance with it.\n\n\n \"Just a moment,\" I found myself saying, grabbing my bag and hurrying\n after her.\nAt her side and a little ahead of her, I said, \"Listen to me.\"\n\n\n She looked annoyed and increased her stride toward the door.\n\n\n \"It's a matter of life or death,\" I said. I wanted to wrest the bag\n from her and hurl it out through the doorway into the street, but I\n restrained myself.\n\n\n She stopped and stared. I noticed a short, fat man in a rumpled\n suitcoat and unpressed pants staring, too. Ignoring him, I said,\n \"Please put the bag down. Over there.\" I indicated a spot beside a\n telephone booth where it would be out of the way.", "I could visualize the balance wheel once again rocking like crazy. How\n many minutes—or seconds—were left? I was sweating when I moved to the\n counter, and it wasn't because of the sunshine I'd been soaking in. I\n had to get as close to the bag as I could if I was going to stop the\n clock again.\n\n\n \"Can I help you?\" the clerk asked.\n\n\n \"No. I'm waiting for someone.\"\n\n\n I turned my back to him, put down my suitcase, leaned against the\n counter and reached out for the wheel. I found I could reach the\n device, but it was far away. When I tried to dampen it, the wheel\n escaped my grasp.\n\n\n \"Do you have my suitcase?\"\n\n\n I blinked my eyes open and looked around. The blonde in the plane stood\n there looking very fresh and bright and unconcerned. In her right hand\n she had a green baggage claim check.", "I closed my eyes, forced my mind back to the luggage compartment, spent\n a frantic moment before I found the bag again. I had to stop that\n balance wheel, just as I stopped my alarm clock every morning. I tried\n to close everything off—the throb of engines, the rush of air, the\n woman sipping coffee noisily beside me—and I went into the clock and\n surrounded the seesawing wheel. When it went forward, I pulled it back;\n when it went back, I pulled it forward. I struggled with it, and it was\n like trying to work with greasy hands, and I was afraid I wasn't going\n to be able to stop it.\n\n\n Then, little by little, it started to slow its beat. But I could not\n afford to relax. I pushed and pulled and didn't dare release my hold\n until it came to a dead stop.\n\n\n \"Anything the matter?\"", "She gave me a speculative look.\n\n\n I must not have seemed a complete idiot because she said, \"All right,\n but—\"\n\n\n I didn't listen for the rest. I went into the booth, closed the door,\n pretended to drop a coin and dial a number. But all the time I was in\n there, I was reaching out through the glass for the clock. At this\n range it wasn't difficult to stop the balance wheel.\n\n\n Just the same, when I came out I was wringing wet.\n\n\n \"Now will you please tell me what this is all about?\" she said stiffly.\n\n\n \"Gladly. Let me buy you a cup of coffee and I'll explain.\"\n\n\n She glanced at the bags. I told her they'd be all right. We followed\n the short, fat man into the coffee shop.", "I lit a cigarette, reached out. Inside were a woman's things and—a\n clock. The escapement was clicking vigorously.\n\n\n I didn't moan this time. I just closed my eyes, stretched toward\n and grabbed the balance wheel I was getting to know like my own. I\n entered into a union with it so strong that after I had reduced it to\n immobility, it was like waking when I opened my eyes.\nThe baggage claim attendant was staring at me. For only a moment I\n stared back. Then I quickly reached for my baggage check and presented\n it to him. His hand hovered over the handle of the little red bag and I\n was ready to yell at him. But then, matching numbers on the tags with\n his eyes, his hand grasped the handle of my own suitcase and pushed it\n toward me.\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" I said, taking it. I glanced ever so casually toward the\n remaining bag. \"One left over, eh?\"", "Class had hardly resumed when she started looking around the desk for\n her favorite mechanical pencil, asking if any of us had seen it, and\n looking straight at me. I didn't want her to think I had taken it while\n she was out of the room, so I probed the contents of her purse, which\n she always kept in the upper right drawer of her desk.\n\n\n \"It's in your purse,\" I blurted out.\n\n\n I was sent home with a stinging note.\n\n\n Since then I've kept quiet. At one time I assumed everybody was able\n to sense. I've known better for years. Still, I wonder how many other\n people are as close-mouthed about their special gift as I am about mine.\n\n\n I used to think that some day I'd make a lot of money out of it, but\n how? I can't read thoughts. I can't even be sure what some of the\n things I sense in probing really are." ], [ "The clerk took it, nodded, and in a moment brought out the overnight\n case and set it on the scales. The girl thanked him, picked it up,\n glanced at me indifferently, and then started for the entrance with it.\n\n\n \"Just a moment,\" I found myself saying, grabbing my bag and hurrying\n after her.\nAt her side and a little ahead of her, I said, \"Listen to me.\"\n\n\n She looked annoyed and increased her stride toward the door.\n\n\n \"It's a matter of life or death,\" I said. I wanted to wrest the bag\n from her and hurl it out through the doorway into the street, but I\n restrained myself.\n\n\n She stopped and stared. I noticed a short, fat man in a rumpled\n suitcoat and unpressed pants staring, too. Ignoring him, I said,\n \"Please put the bag down. Over there.\" I indicated a spot beside a\n telephone booth where it would be out of the way.", "The dumpy man I'd seen was walking off; Julia's bag in his right hand,\n mine in his left. He seemed in no hurry.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" I shouted, starting toward him.\n\n\n The man turned, took one look at me, and started to run. He came\n abreast an old gray, mud-spattered coupe, ran around, opened the door\n and threw both bags into the rear seat as he got in.\n\n\n The car was a hundred feet away and gathering speed by the time I\n reached where it had been parked. I watched it for a moment, then\n walked back to the entranceway where Julia was standing with the\n redcap, who said, \"That man steal them suitcases?\"\n\n\n \"That he did,\" I said.\n\n\n Just then the airport policeman started across the street from the\n parking lot. Redcap said, \"Better tell him about it.\"", "The policeman was sympathetic and concerned. He said, \"We'd better get\n over to the office.\"\n\n\n But we never left the spot because an explosion some blocks distant\n shattered the air. Julia's hand grasped my arm. Hard.\n\n\n \"Jets,\" the redcap said, eying the sky.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" the policeman said. \"Didn't sound much like a jet to\n me.\"\n\n\n We stood there. I could visualize the wreckage of an old gray coupe\n in the middle of a street, but I couldn't visualize the driver. That\n was all right. I didn't want to see him. I didn't know what Julia was\n thinking.\n\n\n She said, \"About those bags,\" and looked at me.\n\n\n The officer said, \"Yes, miss?\"", "I told her I didn't know how much more time there was, that I'd been\n thinking it over and that the only way out seemed to be to tell the\n airport policeman. After I explained it to her, the girl—she said her\n name was Julia Claremont—agreed to tell him she thought there was a\n bomb in her bag, that she had noticed a ticking and had become worried\n because she knew she hadn't packed a clock. It wasn't good, but it\n would have to do.\n\n\n \"We've got to get it deactivated,\" I said, watching the fat man pay for\n his coffee and leave. \"The sooner the better.\"\nI finished my coffee in one gulp and went to pay the bill with her.\n I asked her why she didn't claim the bag at the same time the other\n people had. She said she had called her sister and the phone was busy\n for a long while.", "\"I—I don't care about mine. I didn't have much of anything in it.\"\n\n\n \"I feel the same way,\" I said. \"Would it be all right if we didn't\n bother to report it?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" the policeman said, \"I can't\nmake\nyou report it.\"\n\n\n \"I'd rather not then,\" Julia said. She turned to me. \"I'd like some\n air. Can't we walk a little?\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" I said.\n\n\n We started down the street, her arm in mine, as the air began to fill\n with the distant sounds of sirens.", "\"She was supposed to meet me, and when she wasn't here, I got worried.\n She said she isn't feeling well and asked me to take a cab.\" She smiled\n a little. It was a bright, cheery thing. I had the feeling it was all\n for me. \"That's where I was going when you caught up with me.\"\n\n\n It had become a very nice day. But the bottom dropped out of it again\n when we reached the lobby.\n\n\n The two bags weren't there.\n\n\n I ran to the entrance and nearly collided with the redcap.\n\n\n \"See anybody go out of here with a little red bag and an old battered\n suitcase?\"\n\n\n \"Bag? Suitcase?\" he mumbled. Then he became excited. \"Why, a man just\n stepped out of here—\" He turned to look down the street. \"That's him.\"", "I lit a cigarette, reached out. Inside were a woman's things and—a\n clock. The escapement was clicking vigorously.\n\n\n I didn't moan this time. I just closed my eyes, stretched toward\n and grabbed the balance wheel I was getting to know like my own. I\n entered into a union with it so strong that after I had reduced it to\n immobility, it was like waking when I opened my eyes.\nThe baggage claim attendant was staring at me. For only a moment I\n stared back. Then I quickly reached for my baggage check and presented\n it to him. His hand hovered over the handle of the little red bag and I\n was ready to yell at him. But then, matching numbers on the tags with\n his eyes, his hand grasped the handle of my own suitcase and pushed it\n toward me.\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" I said, taking it. I glanced ever so casually toward the\n remaining bag. \"One left over, eh?\"", "She didn't move. She just said, \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"For God's sake!\" I took the case. She offered no resistance. I put her\n bag and mine next to the booth. When I turned around she was standing\n there looking at me as if I had gone out of my mind. Her eyes were blue\n and brown-flecked, very pretty eyes, and my thought at the moment was,\n I'm glad the bomb didn't go off; these eyes wouldn't be looking at me\n or anything else right now if it had.\n\n\n \"I've got to talk to you. It's very important.\"\n\n\n The girl said, \"Why?\" I was beginning to think it was the only word she\n knew. At the same time I was wondering why anyone would want to kill\n someone so lovely.\n\n\n \"I'll explain in a moment. Please stand right here while I make a\n telephone call.\" I moved toward the phone booth, paused and said, \"And\n don't ask me why.\"", "I could visualize the balance wheel once again rocking like crazy. How\n many minutes—or seconds—were left? I was sweating when I moved to the\n counter, and it wasn't because of the sunshine I'd been soaking in. I\n had to get as close to the bag as I could if I was going to stop the\n clock again.\n\n\n \"Can I help you?\" the clerk asked.\n\n\n \"No. I'm waiting for someone.\"\n\n\n I turned my back to him, put down my suitcase, leaned against the\n counter and reached out for the wheel. I found I could reach the\n device, but it was far away. When I tried to dampen it, the wheel\n escaped my grasp.\n\n\n \"Do you have my suitcase?\"\n\n\n I blinked my eyes open and looked around. The blonde in the plane stood\n there looking very fresh and bright and unconcerned. In her right hand\n she had a green baggage claim check.", "She gave me a speculative look.\n\n\n I must not have seemed a complete idiot because she said, \"All right,\n but—\"\n\n\n I didn't listen for the rest. I went into the booth, closed the door,\n pretended to drop a coin and dial a number. But all the time I was in\n there, I was reaching out through the glass for the clock. At this\n range it wasn't difficult to stop the balance wheel.\n\n\n Just the same, when I came out I was wringing wet.\n\n\n \"Now will you please tell me what this is all about?\" she said stiffly.\n\n\n \"Gladly. Let me buy you a cup of coffee and I'll explain.\"\n\n\n She glanced at the bags. I told her they'd be all right. We followed\n the short, fat man into the coffee shop.", "It was impossible to tell from this distance just which bag contained\n the bomb; I could hardly identify my own scarred suitcase. The\n assortment of bags—a strange conglomeration of sizes and colors—was\n packed in some places six deep, and it rolled toward the gate where\n I was standing. I didn't know whether to stay or run, imagining the\n balance wheel now happily rocking again. The load went past me down a\n ramp to the front of the air terminal where the luggage was unloaded\n and placed in a long rack. I went with it.\n\n\n There was a flurry of ticket matching, hands grabbing for suitcases,\n and a general exodus on the part of my fellow passengers, too fast to\n determine who had got the one with the bomb. Now all that was left was\n the attendant and I had two bags—my own battered veteran of years, and\n a fine new red overnight case, small enough to be the one.", "\"Yeah.\" He was so bored I was tempted to tell him what was in it. But\n he was eying me with a \"well-why-don't-you-get-along?\" look.\n\n\n I said, \"What happens if nobody claims it?\"\n\n\n \"Take it inside. Why?\"\n\n\n He was getting too curious. \"Oh, I just wondered, that's all.\"\n\n\n I stepped on my cigarette and walked toward the air terminal entrance\n and put my suitcase on the stone steps there. A redcap came hurrying\n over.\n\n\n \"Cab?\"\n\n\n I shook my head. \"Just waiting.\"\n\n\n Just waiting for somebody to pick up a bomb.\n\n\n I lit another cigarette and glanced now and then toward the baggage\n claim area. The red bag was still there. All sorts of theories ran\n through my head as to why it should still be there, and none satisfied\n me.", "But he moved on down the steps, nodded at the redcap, and started\n across the street to the parking area. I could have called to him,\n \"Hey, officer, let me tell you about a bomb in a little red bag.\" But\n I didn't. I didn't because I caught a movement at the baggage claim\n counter out of the side of my eye.\n\n\n The attendant had picked up the bag and was walking with it up the ramp\n to the rear of the air terminal. Picking up my own suitcase, I went\n inside in time to see him enter through a side door and deposit the bag\n on the scales at the airline desk and say something to the clerk. The\n clerk nodded and moved the bag to the rear room.", "I closed my eyes, forced my mind back to the luggage compartment, spent\n a frantic moment before I found the bag again. I had to stop that\n balance wheel, just as I stopped my alarm clock every morning. I tried\n to close everything off—the throb of engines, the rush of air, the\n woman sipping coffee noisily beside me—and I went into the clock and\n surrounded the seesawing wheel. When it went forward, I pulled it back;\n when it went back, I pulled it forward. I struggled with it, and it was\n like trying to work with greasy hands, and I was afraid I wasn't going\n to be able to stop it.\n\n\n Then, little by little, it started to slow its beat. But I could not\n afford to relax. I pushed and pulled and didn't dare release my hold\n until it came to a dead stop.\n\n\n \"Anything the matter?\"", "Over coffee I explained it all to her, how I had this extrasensory\n ability, how she was the first person I had ever revealed it to, and\n how I had discovered what was in her overnight bag.\n\n\n During the telling, her untouched coffee grew a skin, her face grew\n pale, her eyes grew less curious and more troubled. There were tears\n there when I finished. I asked her who put the bomb in her bag.\n\n\n \"Joe did,\" she said in a toneless voice, not looking at me any more but\n staring vacantly across the room. \"Joe put it there.\" Behind her eyes\n she was reliving some recent scene.\n\n\n \"Who is Joe?\"", "I never did find my suitcase because I found the bomb first.\nThe bomb was in a small bag—a woman's bag judging by the soft,\n flimsy things you'd never find in a man's—and I didn't know it was a\n bomb right away. I thought it was just a clock, one of those small,\n quiet alarms. I was going to pass it by and go on, but what held me\n was that something was taped to it. By the feel, I knew it must be\n electrician's tape. Interested and curious, I explored the clock more\n closely, found two wires. One went to a battery and the other to hard\n round cylinders taped together. The hairs stood up at the base of my\n neck when I suddenly realized what it was.\n\n\n The clock's balance wheel was rocking merrily. Quickly I went up past\n the train of gears to the alarm wheel. If this was anything like my own\n alarm clock, this one had something like ten minutes to go.", "I had seen her in the concourse and at the gate, a shapely thing. Now\n she had crossed her legs and I was privileged to view a trim ankle and\n calf, and her profile as she stared moodily across the aisle and out a\n window where there was nothing to see.\n\n\n I slid my eyes past her to others. A crossword-puzzle worker, a\n togetherness-type-magazine reader.\n\n\n Inventory completed, I went back to looking at the clouds, knowing I\n should be thinking about the printing order I was going to Los Angeles\n for, and not wanting to.\n\n\n So I started going through the purse of the woman next to me. Perhaps\n that sounds bad. It wasn't. I'd been doing it for years and nobody ever\n complained.", "The woman beside me stirred, sat up suddenly and looked across me out\n the window. \"Where are we?\" she asked in a surprised voice. I told her\n we were probably a little north of Bakersfield. She said, \"Oh,\" glanced\n at her wristwatch and sank back again.\n\n\n Soon the stewardesses would bring coffee and doughnuts around, so I\n contented myself with looking at the clouds and trying to think about\n Amos Magaffey, who was purchasing agent for a Los Angeles amusement\n chain, and how I was going to convince him our printing prices were\n maybe a little higher but the quality and service were better. My mind\n wandered below where I was sitting, idly moving from one piece of\n luggage to another, looking for my beat-up suitcase. I went through\n slips and slippers, lingerie and laundry, a jig saw puzzle and a\n ukulele.", "\"My husband.\" I thought she was going to really bawl, but she got\n control again. \"This trip was his idea, my coming down here to visit my\n sister.\" Her smile was bleak. \"I see now why he wanted to put in those\n books. I'd finished packing and was in the bathroom. He said he'd put\n in some books we'd both finished reading—for my sister. That's when he\n must have put the—put it in there.\"\n\n\n I said gently, \"Why would he want to do a thing like that?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\" She shook her head. \"I just don't know.\" And she was\n close to bawling again. Then she recovered and said, \"I'm not sure I\n want to know.\" I admired her for saying it. Joe must have been crazy.\n\n\n \"It's all right now?\" she asked.\n\n\n I nodded. \"As long as we don't move it.\"", "I should not have been there, that much I knew; I should be with a\n man named Amos Magaffey on Sixth Street at ten o'clock, discussing\n something very mundane, the matter of a printing order. But what could\n I do? If I left the airport, the attendant would eventually take the\n bag inside and there would be an explosion, and I wouldn't be able to\n live with myself.\n\n\n No. I had to stay to keep the balance wheel stationary until—until\n what?\n\n\n A man in tan gabardine, wearing a police cap and badge, walked out of\n the entrance to stand on the stone steps beside me while he put on a\n pair of dark glasses. A member of the airport police detail. I could\n tell him. I could take him down to the little red bag and explain the\n whole thing. Then it would be his baby and I would be off on my own\n business." ], [ "I told her I didn't know how much more time there was, that I'd been\n thinking it over and that the only way out seemed to be to tell the\n airport policeman. After I explained it to her, the girl—she said her\n name was Julia Claremont—agreed to tell him she thought there was a\n bomb in her bag, that she had noticed a ticking and had become worried\n because she knew she hadn't packed a clock. It wasn't good, but it\n would have to do.\n\n\n \"We've got to get it deactivated,\" I said, watching the fat man pay for\n his coffee and leave. \"The sooner the better.\"\nI finished my coffee in one gulp and went to pay the bill with her.\n I asked her why she didn't claim the bag at the same time the other\n people had. She said she had called her sister and the phone was busy\n for a long while.", "The policeman was sympathetic and concerned. He said, \"We'd better get\n over to the office.\"\n\n\n But we never left the spot because an explosion some blocks distant\n shattered the air. Julia's hand grasped my arm. Hard.\n\n\n \"Jets,\" the redcap said, eying the sky.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" the policeman said. \"Didn't sound much like a jet to\n me.\"\n\n\n We stood there. I could visualize the wreckage of an old gray coupe\n in the middle of a street, but I couldn't visualize the driver. That\n was all right. I didn't want to see him. I didn't know what Julia was\n thinking.\n\n\n She said, \"About those bags,\" and looked at me.\n\n\n The officer said, \"Yes, miss?\"", "She didn't move. She just said, \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"For God's sake!\" I took the case. She offered no resistance. I put her\n bag and mine next to the booth. When I turned around she was standing\n there looking at me as if I had gone out of my mind. Her eyes were blue\n and brown-flecked, very pretty eyes, and my thought at the moment was,\n I'm glad the bomb didn't go off; these eyes wouldn't be looking at me\n or anything else right now if it had.\n\n\n \"I've got to talk to you. It's very important.\"\n\n\n The girl said, \"Why?\" I was beginning to think it was the only word she\n knew. At the same time I was wondering why anyone would want to kill\n someone so lovely.\n\n\n \"I'll explain in a moment. Please stand right here while I make a\n telephone call.\" I moved toward the phone booth, paused and said, \"And\n don't ask me why.\"", "\"I—I don't care about mine. I didn't have much of anything in it.\"\n\n\n \"I feel the same way,\" I said. \"Would it be all right if we didn't\n bother to report it?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" the policeman said, \"I can't\nmake\nyou report it.\"\n\n\n \"I'd rather not then,\" Julia said. She turned to me. \"I'd like some\n air. Can't we walk a little?\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" I said.\n\n\n We started down the street, her arm in mine, as the air began to fill\n with the distant sounds of sirens.", "I never did find my suitcase because I found the bomb first.\nThe bomb was in a small bag—a woman's bag judging by the soft,\n flimsy things you'd never find in a man's—and I didn't know it was a\n bomb right away. I thought it was just a clock, one of those small,\n quiet alarms. I was going to pass it by and go on, but what held me\n was that something was taped to it. By the feel, I knew it must be\n electrician's tape. Interested and curious, I explored the clock more\n closely, found two wires. One went to a battery and the other to hard\n round cylinders taped together. The hairs stood up at the base of my\n neck when I suddenly realized what it was.\n\n\n The clock's balance wheel was rocking merrily. Quickly I went up past\n the train of gears to the alarm wheel. If this was anything like my own\n alarm clock, this one had something like ten minutes to go.", "It was forty minutes to Burbank and Lockheed Air Terminal.\n\n\n My mind was churning when I turned from the window to look around\n at the unconcerned passengers, the woman at my side asleep again. I\n thought: Which one of these.... No, none of them would know it was\n there. I glanced out the window again; clouds were still in the way.\n We'd be leaving the valley for the mountain range north of Los Angeles\n soon, if we hadn't left it already. No place to land the plane there.\n\n\n But of course that had been the plan!\n\n\n My heart was beating in jackhammer rhythm; my mouth was dry and my mind\n was numb. Tell somebody about the bomb before it's too late! No, they'd\n think I put it there. Besides, what good would it do? There would be\n panic and they'd never get the plane down in time—if they believed me.", "But he moved on down the steps, nodded at the redcap, and started\n across the street to the parking area. I could have called to him,\n \"Hey, officer, let me tell you about a bomb in a little red bag.\" But\n I didn't. I didn't because I caught a movement at the baggage claim\n counter out of the side of my eye.\n\n\n The attendant had picked up the bag and was walking with it up the ramp\n to the rear of the air terminal. Picking up my own suitcase, I went\n inside in time to see him enter through a side door and deposit the bag\n on the scales at the airline desk and say something to the clerk. The\n clerk nodded and moved the bag to the rear room.", "It was impossible to tell from this distance just which bag contained\n the bomb; I could hardly identify my own scarred suitcase. The\n assortment of bags—a strange conglomeration of sizes and colors—was\n packed in some places six deep, and it rolled toward the gate where\n I was standing. I didn't know whether to stay or run, imagining the\n balance wheel now happily rocking again. The load went past me down a\n ramp to the front of the air terminal where the luggage was unloaded\n and placed in a long rack. I went with it.\n\n\n There was a flurry of ticket matching, hands grabbing for suitcases,\n and a general exodus on the part of my fellow passengers, too fast to\n determine who had got the one with the bomb. Now all that was left was\n the attendant and I had two bags—my own battered veteran of years, and\n a fine new red overnight case, small enough to be the one.", "Over coffee I explained it all to her, how I had this extrasensory\n ability, how she was the first person I had ever revealed it to, and\n how I had discovered what was in her overnight bag.\n\n\n During the telling, her untouched coffee grew a skin, her face grew\n pale, her eyes grew less curious and more troubled. There were tears\n there when I finished. I asked her who put the bomb in her bag.\n\n\n \"Joe did,\" she said in a toneless voice, not looking at me any more but\n staring vacantly across the room. \"Joe put it there.\" Behind her eyes\n she was reliving some recent scene.\n\n\n \"Who is Joe?\"", "I could visualize the balance wheel once again rocking like crazy. How\n many minutes—or seconds—were left? I was sweating when I moved to the\n counter, and it wasn't because of the sunshine I'd been soaking in. I\n had to get as close to the bag as I could if I was going to stop the\n clock again.\n\n\n \"Can I help you?\" the clerk asked.\n\n\n \"No. I'm waiting for someone.\"\n\n\n I turned my back to him, put down my suitcase, leaned against the\n counter and reached out for the wheel. I found I could reach the\n device, but it was far away. When I tried to dampen it, the wheel\n escaped my grasp.\n\n\n \"Do you have my suitcase?\"\n\n\n I blinked my eyes open and looked around. The blonde in the plane stood\n there looking very fresh and bright and unconcerned. In her right hand\n she had a green baggage claim check.", "\"Must have been dreaming,\" I said as I rang for the stewardess. When\n she came I told her I'd take some of that coffee now. No, nothing else,\n just coffee. I didn't tell her how much I needed it. I sat there clammy\n with sweat until she returned. Coffee never tasted so good.\nAll right, so I had stopped the bomb's timer. My mind raced ahead to\n the landing. When they unloaded the luggage, the balance wheel would\n start again. I wouldn't be able to stay with it, keeping it still.\n I considered telling the authorities as soon as we landed, or maybe\n calling in ahead, but wouldn't that just bring suspicion, questions.\n Maybe I could convince them I could stop a clock—but not before the\n bomb exploded. And then what? My secret would be out and my life would\n be changed. I'd be a man not to be trusted, a prying man, a man\n literally with gimlet eyes.", "\"Not really,\" I said. I was tempted to tell the woman I was subject to\n fits, but I didn't.\n\n\n It was only a few minutes to landing, but they became the longest\n minutes of my life as time after time I stopped the rocking wheel when\n the plane dipped and bumped to a landing.\n\n\n Leaving the apron with the other passengers, I tried to walk as\n unconcernedly as they through the exit gate. I would have liked walking\n through the terminal and out the entrance and away, but I could not. I\n had my suitcase to get, for one thing. The damned bomb was the other.\n So I strolled out into the concourse again to look at the plane and\n watch the baggagemen at work, transferring the luggage to two airfield\n carts. They weren't as careful as I would have been.", "\"Yeah.\" He was so bored I was tempted to tell him what was in it. But\n he was eying me with a \"well-why-don't-you-get-along?\" look.\n\n\n I said, \"What happens if nobody claims it?\"\n\n\n \"Take it inside. Why?\"\n\n\n He was getting too curious. \"Oh, I just wondered, that's all.\"\n\n\n I stepped on my cigarette and walked toward the air terminal entrance\n and put my suitcase on the stone steps there. A redcap came hurrying\n over.\n\n\n \"Cab?\"\n\n\n I shook my head. \"Just waiting.\"\n\n\n Just waiting for somebody to pick up a bomb.\n\n\n I lit another cigarette and glanced now and then toward the baggage\n claim area. The red bag was still there. All sorts of theories ran\n through my head as to why it should still be there, and none satisfied\n me.", "The clerk took it, nodded, and in a moment brought out the overnight\n case and set it on the scales. The girl thanked him, picked it up,\n glanced at me indifferently, and then started for the entrance with it.\n\n\n \"Just a moment,\" I found myself saying, grabbing my bag and hurrying\n after her.\nAt her side and a little ahead of her, I said, \"Listen to me.\"\n\n\n She looked annoyed and increased her stride toward the door.\n\n\n \"It's a matter of life or death,\" I said. I wanted to wrest the bag\n from her and hurl it out through the doorway into the street, but I\n restrained myself.\n\n\n She stopped and stared. I noticed a short, fat man in a rumpled\n suitcoat and unpressed pants staring, too. Ignoring him, I said,\n \"Please put the bag down. Over there.\" I indicated a spot beside a\n telephone booth where it would be out of the way.", "I should not have been there, that much I knew; I should be with a\n man named Amos Magaffey on Sixth Street at ten o'clock, discussing\n something very mundane, the matter of a printing order. But what could\n I do? If I left the airport, the attendant would eventually take the\n bag inside and there would be an explosion, and I wouldn't be able to\n live with myself.\n\n\n No. I had to stay to keep the balance wheel stationary until—until\n what?\n\n\n A man in tan gabardine, wearing a police cap and badge, walked out of\n the entrance to stand on the stone steps beside me while he put on a\n pair of dark glasses. A member of the airport police detail. I could\n tell him. I could take him down to the little red bag and explain the\n whole thing. Then it would be his baby and I would be off on my own\n business.", "She gave me a speculative look.\n\n\n I must not have seemed a complete idiot because she said, \"All right,\n but—\"\n\n\n I didn't listen for the rest. I went into the booth, closed the door,\n pretended to drop a coin and dial a number. But all the time I was in\n there, I was reaching out through the glass for the clock. At this\n range it wasn't difficult to stop the balance wheel.\n\n\n Just the same, when I came out I was wringing wet.\n\n\n \"Now will you please tell me what this is all about?\" she said stiffly.\n\n\n \"Gladly. Let me buy you a cup of coffee and I'll explain.\"\n\n\n She glanced at the bags. I told her they'd be all right. We followed\n the short, fat man into the coffee shop.", "\"My husband.\" I thought she was going to really bawl, but she got\n control again. \"This trip was his idea, my coming down here to visit my\n sister.\" Her smile was bleak. \"I see now why he wanted to put in those\n books. I'd finished packing and was in the bathroom. He said he'd put\n in some books we'd both finished reading—for my sister. That's when he\n must have put the—put it in there.\"\n\n\n I said gently, \"Why would he want to do a thing like that?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\" She shook her head. \"I just don't know.\" And she was\n close to bawling again. Then she recovered and said, \"I'm not sure I\n want to know.\" I admired her for saying it. Joe must have been crazy.\n\n\n \"It's all right now?\" she asked.\n\n\n I nodded. \"As long as we don't move it.\"", "The dumpy man I'd seen was walking off; Julia's bag in his right hand,\n mine in his left. He seemed in no hurry.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" I shouted, starting toward him.\n\n\n The man turned, took one look at me, and started to run. He came\n abreast an old gray, mud-spattered coupe, ran around, opened the door\n and threw both bags into the rear seat as he got in.\n\n\n The car was a hundred feet away and gathering speed by the time I\n reached where it had been parked. I watched it for a moment, then\n walked back to the entranceway where Julia was standing with the\n redcap, who said, \"That man steal them suitcases?\"\n\n\n \"That he did,\" I said.\n\n\n Just then the airport policeman started across the street from the\n parking lot. Redcap said, \"Better tell him about it.\"", "I closed my eyes, forced my mind back to the luggage compartment, spent\n a frantic moment before I found the bag again. I had to stop that\n balance wheel, just as I stopped my alarm clock every morning. I tried\n to close everything off—the throb of engines, the rush of air, the\n woman sipping coffee noisily beside me—and I went into the clock and\n surrounded the seesawing wheel. When it went forward, I pulled it back;\n when it went back, I pulled it forward. I struggled with it, and it was\n like trying to work with greasy hands, and I was afraid I wasn't going\n to be able to stop it.\n\n\n Then, little by little, it started to slow its beat. But I could not\n afford to relax. I pushed and pulled and didn't dare release my hold\n until it came to a dead stop.\n\n\n \"Anything the matter?\"", "I lit a cigarette, reached out. Inside were a woman's things and—a\n clock. The escapement was clicking vigorously.\n\n\n I didn't moan this time. I just closed my eyes, stretched toward\n and grabbed the balance wheel I was getting to know like my own. I\n entered into a union with it so strong that after I had reduced it to\n immobility, it was like waking when I opened my eyes.\nThe baggage claim attendant was staring at me. For only a moment I\n stared back. Then I quickly reached for my baggage check and presented\n it to him. His hand hovered over the handle of the little red bag and I\n was ready to yell at him. But then, matching numbers on the tags with\n his eyes, his hand grasped the handle of my own suitcase and pushed it\n toward me.\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" I said, taking it. I glanced ever so casually toward the\n remaining bag. \"One left over, eh?\"" ], [ "It was forty minutes to Burbank and Lockheed Air Terminal.\n\n\n My mind was churning when I turned from the window to look around\n at the unconcerned passengers, the woman at my side asleep again. I\n thought: Which one of these.... No, none of them would know it was\n there. I glanced out the window again; clouds were still in the way.\n We'd be leaving the valley for the mountain range north of Los Angeles\n soon, if we hadn't left it already. No place to land the plane there.\n\n\n But of course that had been the plan!\n\n\n My heart was beating in jackhammer rhythm; my mouth was dry and my mind\n was numb. Tell somebody about the bomb before it's too late! No, they'd\n think I put it there. Besides, what good would it do? There would be\n panic and they'd never get the plane down in time—if they believed me.", "\"Must have been dreaming,\" I said as I rang for the stewardess. When\n she came I told her I'd take some of that coffee now. No, nothing else,\n just coffee. I didn't tell her how much I needed it. I sat there clammy\n with sweat until she returned. Coffee never tasted so good.\nAll right, so I had stopped the bomb's timer. My mind raced ahead to\n the landing. When they unloaded the luggage, the balance wheel would\n start again. I wouldn't be able to stay with it, keeping it still.\n I considered telling the authorities as soon as we landed, or maybe\n calling in ahead, but wouldn't that just bring suspicion, questions.\n Maybe I could convince them I could stop a clock—but not before the\n bomb exploded. And then what? My secret would be out and my life would\n be changed. I'd be a man not to be trusted, a prying man, a man\n literally with gimlet eyes.", "I told her I didn't know how much more time there was, that I'd been\n thinking it over and that the only way out seemed to be to tell the\n airport policeman. After I explained it to her, the girl—she said her\n name was Julia Claremont—agreed to tell him she thought there was a\n bomb in her bag, that she had noticed a ticking and had become worried\n because she knew she hadn't packed a clock. It wasn't good, but it\n would have to do.\n\n\n \"We've got to get it deactivated,\" I said, watching the fat man pay for\n his coffee and leave. \"The sooner the better.\"\nI finished my coffee in one gulp and went to pay the bill with her.\n I asked her why she didn't claim the bag at the same time the other\n people had. She said she had called her sister and the phone was busy\n for a long while.", "\"Not really,\" I said. I was tempted to tell the woman I was subject to\n fits, but I didn't.\n\n\n It was only a few minutes to landing, but they became the longest\n minutes of my life as time after time I stopped the rocking wheel when\n the plane dipped and bumped to a landing.\n\n\n Leaving the apron with the other passengers, I tried to walk as\n unconcernedly as they through the exit gate. I would have liked walking\n through the terminal and out the entrance and away, but I could not. I\n had my suitcase to get, for one thing. The damned bomb was the other.\n So I strolled out into the concourse again to look at the plane and\n watch the baggagemen at work, transferring the luggage to two airfield\n carts. They weren't as careful as I would have been.", "It was impossible to tell from this distance just which bag contained\n the bomb; I could hardly identify my own scarred suitcase. The\n assortment of bags—a strange conglomeration of sizes and colors—was\n packed in some places six deep, and it rolled toward the gate where\n I was standing. I didn't know whether to stay or run, imagining the\n balance wheel now happily rocking again. The load went past me down a\n ramp to the front of the air terminal where the luggage was unloaded\n and placed in a long rack. I went with it.\n\n\n There was a flurry of ticket matching, hands grabbing for suitcases,\n and a general exodus on the part of my fellow passengers, too fast to\n determine who had got the one with the bomb. Now all that was left was\n the attendant and I had two bags—my own battered veteran of years, and\n a fine new red overnight case, small enough to be the one.", "But he moved on down the steps, nodded at the redcap, and started\n across the street to the parking area. I could have called to him,\n \"Hey, officer, let me tell you about a bomb in a little red bag.\" But\n I didn't. I didn't because I caught a movement at the baggage claim\n counter out of the side of my eye.\n\n\n The attendant had picked up the bag and was walking with it up the ramp\n to the rear of the air terminal. Picking up my own suitcase, I went\n inside in time to see him enter through a side door and deposit the bag\n on the scales at the airline desk and say something to the clerk. The\n clerk nodded and moved the bag to the rear room.", "She didn't move. She just said, \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"For God's sake!\" I took the case. She offered no resistance. I put her\n bag and mine next to the booth. When I turned around she was standing\n there looking at me as if I had gone out of my mind. Her eyes were blue\n and brown-flecked, very pretty eyes, and my thought at the moment was,\n I'm glad the bomb didn't go off; these eyes wouldn't be looking at me\n or anything else right now if it had.\n\n\n \"I've got to talk to you. It's very important.\"\n\n\n The girl said, \"Why?\" I was beginning to think it was the only word she\n knew. At the same time I was wondering why anyone would want to kill\n someone so lovely.\n\n\n \"I'll explain in a moment. Please stand right here while I make a\n telephone call.\" I moved toward the phone booth, paused and said, \"And\n don't ask me why.\"", "I should not have been there, that much I knew; I should be with a\n man named Amos Magaffey on Sixth Street at ten o'clock, discussing\n something very mundane, the matter of a printing order. But what could\n I do? If I left the airport, the attendant would eventually take the\n bag inside and there would be an explosion, and I wouldn't be able to\n live with myself.\n\n\n No. I had to stay to keep the balance wheel stationary until—until\n what?\n\n\n A man in tan gabardine, wearing a police cap and badge, walked out of\n the entrance to stand on the stone steps beside me while he put on a\n pair of dark glasses. A member of the airport police detail. I could\n tell him. I could take him down to the little red bag and explain the\n whole thing. Then it would be his baby and I would be off on my own\n business.", "I never did find my suitcase because I found the bomb first.\nThe bomb was in a small bag—a woman's bag judging by the soft,\n flimsy things you'd never find in a man's—and I didn't know it was a\n bomb right away. I thought it was just a clock, one of those small,\n quiet alarms. I was going to pass it by and go on, but what held me\n was that something was taped to it. By the feel, I knew it must be\n electrician's tape. Interested and curious, I explored the clock more\n closely, found two wires. One went to a battery and the other to hard\n round cylinders taped together. The hairs stood up at the base of my\n neck when I suddenly realized what it was.\n\n\n The clock's balance wheel was rocking merrily. Quickly I went up past\n the train of gears to the alarm wheel. If this was anything like my own\n alarm clock, this one had something like ten minutes to go.", "\"Sir.\" My head jerked around. The stewardess stood in the aisle,\n smiling, extending a tray to me, a brown plastic tray bearing a small\n paper cup of tomato juice, a cup of coffee, a cellophane-wrapped\n doughnut, paper spoon, sugar and dehydrated cream envelopes, and a\n napkin.\n\n\n I goggled at her, managed to croak, \"No, thanks.\" She gave me an odd\n look and moved along. My seatmate had accepted hers and was tearing at\n the cellophane. I couldn't bear to watch her.", "I could visualize the balance wheel once again rocking like crazy. How\n many minutes—or seconds—were left? I was sweating when I moved to the\n counter, and it wasn't because of the sunshine I'd been soaking in. I\n had to get as close to the bag as I could if I was going to stop the\n clock again.\n\n\n \"Can I help you?\" the clerk asked.\n\n\n \"No. I'm waiting for someone.\"\n\n\n I turned my back to him, put down my suitcase, leaned against the\n counter and reached out for the wheel. I found I could reach the\n device, but it was far away. When I tried to dampen it, the wheel\n escaped my grasp.\n\n\n \"Do you have my suitcase?\"\n\n\n I blinked my eyes open and looked around. The blonde in the plane stood\n there looking very fresh and bright and unconcerned. In her right hand\n she had a green baggage claim check.", "I closed my eyes, forced my mind back to the luggage compartment, spent\n a frantic moment before I found the bag again. I had to stop that\n balance wheel, just as I stopped my alarm clock every morning. I tried\n to close everything off—the throb of engines, the rush of air, the\n woman sipping coffee noisily beside me—and I went into the clock and\n surrounded the seesawing wheel. When it went forward, I pulled it back;\n when it went back, I pulled it forward. I struggled with it, and it was\n like trying to work with greasy hands, and I was afraid I wasn't going\n to be able to stop it.\n\n\n Then, little by little, it started to slow its beat. But I could not\n afford to relax. I pushed and pulled and didn't dare release my hold\n until it came to a dead stop.\n\n\n \"Anything the matter?\"", "\"Yeah.\" He was so bored I was tempted to tell him what was in it. But\n he was eying me with a \"well-why-don't-you-get-along?\" look.\n\n\n I said, \"What happens if nobody claims it?\"\n\n\n \"Take it inside. Why?\"\n\n\n He was getting too curious. \"Oh, I just wondered, that's all.\"\n\n\n I stepped on my cigarette and walked toward the air terminal entrance\n and put my suitcase on the stone steps there. A redcap came hurrying\n over.\n\n\n \"Cab?\"\n\n\n I shook my head. \"Just waiting.\"\n\n\n Just waiting for somebody to pick up a bomb.\n\n\n I lit another cigarette and glanced now and then toward the baggage\n claim area. The red bag was still there. All sorts of theories ran\n through my head as to why it should still be there, and none satisfied\n me.", "I had seen her in the concourse and at the gate, a shapely thing. Now\n she had crossed her legs and I was privileged to view a trim ankle and\n calf, and her profile as she stared moodily across the aisle and out a\n window where there was nothing to see.\n\n\n I slid my eyes past her to others. A crossword-puzzle worker, a\n togetherness-type-magazine reader.\n\n\n Inventory completed, I went back to looking at the clouds, knowing I\n should be thinking about the printing order I was going to Los Angeles\n for, and not wanting to.\n\n\n So I started going through the purse of the woman next to me. Perhaps\n that sounds bad. It wasn't. I'd been doing it for years and nobody ever\n complained.", "The clerk took it, nodded, and in a moment brought out the overnight\n case and set it on the scales. The girl thanked him, picked it up,\n glanced at me indifferently, and then started for the entrance with it.\n\n\n \"Just a moment,\" I found myself saying, grabbing my bag and hurrying\n after her.\nAt her side and a little ahead of her, I said, \"Listen to me.\"\n\n\n She looked annoyed and increased her stride toward the door.\n\n\n \"It's a matter of life or death,\" I said. I wanted to wrest the bag\n from her and hurl it out through the doorway into the street, but I\n restrained myself.\n\n\n She stopped and stared. I noticed a short, fat man in a rumpled\n suitcoat and unpressed pants staring, too. Ignoring him, I said,\n \"Please put the bag down. Over there.\" I indicated a spot beside a\n telephone booth where it would be out of the way.", "The woman beside me stirred, sat up suddenly and looked across me out\n the window. \"Where are we?\" she asked in a surprised voice. I told her\n we were probably a little north of Bakersfield. She said, \"Oh,\" glanced\n at her wristwatch and sank back again.\n\n\n Soon the stewardesses would bring coffee and doughnuts around, so I\n contented myself with looking at the clouds and trying to think about\n Amos Magaffey, who was purchasing agent for a Los Angeles amusement\n chain, and how I was going to convince him our printing prices were\n maybe a little higher but the quality and service were better. My mind\n wandered below where I was sitting, idly moving from one piece of\n luggage to another, looking for my beat-up suitcase. I went through\n slips and slippers, lingerie and laundry, a jig saw puzzle and a\n ukulele.", "The policeman was sympathetic and concerned. He said, \"We'd better get\n over to the office.\"\n\n\n But we never left the spot because an explosion some blocks distant\n shattered the air. Julia's hand grasped my arm. Hard.\n\n\n \"Jets,\" the redcap said, eying the sky.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" the policeman said. \"Didn't sound much like a jet to\n me.\"\n\n\n We stood there. I could visualize the wreckage of an old gray coupe\n in the middle of a street, but I couldn't visualize the driver. That\n was all right. I didn't want to see him. I didn't know what Julia was\n thinking.\n\n\n She said, \"About those bags,\" and looked at me.\n\n\n The officer said, \"Yes, miss?\"", "She gave me a speculative look.\n\n\n I must not have seemed a complete idiot because she said, \"All right,\n but—\"\n\n\n I didn't listen for the rest. I went into the booth, closed the door,\n pretended to drop a coin and dial a number. But all the time I was in\n there, I was reaching out through the glass for the clock. At this\n range it wasn't difficult to stop the balance wheel.\n\n\n Just the same, when I came out I was wringing wet.\n\n\n \"Now will you please tell me what this is all about?\" she said stiffly.\n\n\n \"Gladly. Let me buy you a cup of coffee and I'll explain.\"\n\n\n She glanced at the bags. I told her they'd be all right. We followed\n the short, fat man into the coffee shop.", "Mountain crags jutted through the clouds. We were in the range north of\n the city. Here and there were clear spots and I could see roads below,\n but there were also clouds far above us. It was very beautiful, but it\n was also very bumpy, and we started to slip and slide.\n\n\n To my horror I found that the balance wheel was rocking again. Closing\n my eyes and gritting my teeth, I forced my senses to the wheel, tugging\n and pulling and shoving and pushing until it finally stopped.\n\n\n A jab in the shoulder. I jumped, startled.\n\n\n \"Your cup,\" my seat partner said, pointing.\n\n\n I looked down at the coffee cup I had crushed in my hands. Then I\n looked up into the eyes of the stewardess. I handed it to her. She took\n it without a word and went away.\n\n\n \"Were you really asleep that time?\"", "I lit a cigarette, reached out. Inside were a woman's things and—a\n clock. The escapement was clicking vigorously.\n\n\n I didn't moan this time. I just closed my eyes, stretched toward\n and grabbed the balance wheel I was getting to know like my own. I\n entered into a union with it so strong that after I had reduced it to\n immobility, it was like waking when I opened my eyes.\nThe baggage claim attendant was staring at me. For only a moment I\n stared back. Then I quickly reached for my baggage check and presented\n it to him. His hand hovered over the handle of the little red bag and I\n was ready to yell at him. But then, matching numbers on the tags with\n his eyes, his hand grasped the handle of my own suitcase and pushed it\n toward me.\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" I said, taking it. I glanced ever so casually toward the\n remaining bag. \"One left over, eh?\"" ], [ "\"I—I don't care about mine. I didn't have much of anything in it.\"\n\n\n \"I feel the same way,\" I said. \"Would it be all right if we didn't\n bother to report it?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" the policeman said, \"I can't\nmake\nyou report it.\"\n\n\n \"I'd rather not then,\" Julia said. She turned to me. \"I'd like some\n air. Can't we walk a little?\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" I said.\n\n\n We started down the street, her arm in mine, as the air began to fill\n with the distant sounds of sirens.", "The policeman was sympathetic and concerned. He said, \"We'd better get\n over to the office.\"\n\n\n But we never left the spot because an explosion some blocks distant\n shattered the air. Julia's hand grasped my arm. Hard.\n\n\n \"Jets,\" the redcap said, eying the sky.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" the policeman said. \"Didn't sound much like a jet to\n me.\"\n\n\n We stood there. I could visualize the wreckage of an old gray coupe\n in the middle of a street, but I couldn't visualize the driver. That\n was all right. I didn't want to see him. I didn't know what Julia was\n thinking.\n\n\n She said, \"About those bags,\" and looked at me.\n\n\n The officer said, \"Yes, miss?\"", "The dumpy man I'd seen was walking off; Julia's bag in his right hand,\n mine in his left. He seemed in no hurry.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" I shouted, starting toward him.\n\n\n The man turned, took one look at me, and started to run. He came\n abreast an old gray, mud-spattered coupe, ran around, opened the door\n and threw both bags into the rear seat as he got in.\n\n\n The car was a hundred feet away and gathering speed by the time I\n reached where it had been parked. I watched it for a moment, then\n walked back to the entranceway where Julia was standing with the\n redcap, who said, \"That man steal them suitcases?\"\n\n\n \"That he did,\" I said.\n\n\n Just then the airport policeman started across the street from the\n parking lot. Redcap said, \"Better tell him about it.\"", "I told her I didn't know how much more time there was, that I'd been\n thinking it over and that the only way out seemed to be to tell the\n airport policeman. After I explained it to her, the girl—she said her\n name was Julia Claremont—agreed to tell him she thought there was a\n bomb in her bag, that she had noticed a ticking and had become worried\n because she knew she hadn't packed a clock. It wasn't good, but it\n would have to do.\n\n\n \"We've got to get it deactivated,\" I said, watching the fat man pay for\n his coffee and leave. \"The sooner the better.\"\nI finished my coffee in one gulp and went to pay the bill with her.\n I asked her why she didn't claim the bag at the same time the other\n people had. She said she had called her sister and the phone was busy\n for a long while.", "The clerk took it, nodded, and in a moment brought out the overnight\n case and set it on the scales. The girl thanked him, picked it up,\n glanced at me indifferently, and then started for the entrance with it.\n\n\n \"Just a moment,\" I found myself saying, grabbing my bag and hurrying\n after her.\nAt her side and a little ahead of her, I said, \"Listen to me.\"\n\n\n She looked annoyed and increased her stride toward the door.\n\n\n \"It's a matter of life or death,\" I said. I wanted to wrest the bag\n from her and hurl it out through the doorway into the street, but I\n restrained myself.\n\n\n She stopped and stared. I noticed a short, fat man in a rumpled\n suitcoat and unpressed pants staring, too. Ignoring him, I said,\n \"Please put the bag down. Over there.\" I indicated a spot beside a\n telephone booth where it would be out of the way.", "\"She was supposed to meet me, and when she wasn't here, I got worried.\n She said she isn't feeling well and asked me to take a cab.\" She smiled\n a little. It was a bright, cheery thing. I had the feeling it was all\n for me. \"That's where I was going when you caught up with me.\"\n\n\n It had become a very nice day. But the bottom dropped out of it again\n when we reached the lobby.\n\n\n The two bags weren't there.\n\n\n I ran to the entrance and nearly collided with the redcap.\n\n\n \"See anybody go out of here with a little red bag and an old battered\n suitcase?\"\n\n\n \"Bag? Suitcase?\" he mumbled. Then he became excited. \"Why, a man just\n stepped out of here—\" He turned to look down the street. \"That's him.\"", "\"Yeah.\" He was so bored I was tempted to tell him what was in it. But\n he was eying me with a \"well-why-don't-you-get-along?\" look.\n\n\n I said, \"What happens if nobody claims it?\"\n\n\n \"Take it inside. Why?\"\n\n\n He was getting too curious. \"Oh, I just wondered, that's all.\"\n\n\n I stepped on my cigarette and walked toward the air terminal entrance\n and put my suitcase on the stone steps there. A redcap came hurrying\n over.\n\n\n \"Cab?\"\n\n\n I shook my head. \"Just waiting.\"\n\n\n Just waiting for somebody to pick up a bomb.\n\n\n I lit another cigarette and glanced now and then toward the baggage\n claim area. The red bag was still there. All sorts of theories ran\n through my head as to why it should still be there, and none satisfied\n me.", "But he moved on down the steps, nodded at the redcap, and started\n across the street to the parking area. I could have called to him,\n \"Hey, officer, let me tell you about a bomb in a little red bag.\" But\n I didn't. I didn't because I caught a movement at the baggage claim\n counter out of the side of my eye.\n\n\n The attendant had picked up the bag and was walking with it up the ramp\n to the rear of the air terminal. Picking up my own suitcase, I went\n inside in time to see him enter through a side door and deposit the bag\n on the scales at the airline desk and say something to the clerk. The\n clerk nodded and moved the bag to the rear room.", "It was impossible to tell from this distance just which bag contained\n the bomb; I could hardly identify my own scarred suitcase. The\n assortment of bags—a strange conglomeration of sizes and colors—was\n packed in some places six deep, and it rolled toward the gate where\n I was standing. I didn't know whether to stay or run, imagining the\n balance wheel now happily rocking again. The load went past me down a\n ramp to the front of the air terminal where the luggage was unloaded\n and placed in a long rack. I went with it.\n\n\n There was a flurry of ticket matching, hands grabbing for suitcases,\n and a general exodus on the part of my fellow passengers, too fast to\n determine who had got the one with the bomb. Now all that was left was\n the attendant and I had two bags—my own battered veteran of years, and\n a fine new red overnight case, small enough to be the one.", "She didn't move. She just said, \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"For God's sake!\" I took the case. She offered no resistance. I put her\n bag and mine next to the booth. When I turned around she was standing\n there looking at me as if I had gone out of my mind. Her eyes were blue\n and brown-flecked, very pretty eyes, and my thought at the moment was,\n I'm glad the bomb didn't go off; these eyes wouldn't be looking at me\n or anything else right now if it had.\n\n\n \"I've got to talk to you. It's very important.\"\n\n\n The girl said, \"Why?\" I was beginning to think it was the only word she\n knew. At the same time I was wondering why anyone would want to kill\n someone so lovely.\n\n\n \"I'll explain in a moment. Please stand right here while I make a\n telephone call.\" I moved toward the phone booth, paused and said, \"And\n don't ask me why.\"", "I should not have been there, that much I knew; I should be with a\n man named Amos Magaffey on Sixth Street at ten o'clock, discussing\n something very mundane, the matter of a printing order. But what could\n I do? If I left the airport, the attendant would eventually take the\n bag inside and there would be an explosion, and I wouldn't be able to\n live with myself.\n\n\n No. I had to stay to keep the balance wheel stationary until—until\n what?\n\n\n A man in tan gabardine, wearing a police cap and badge, walked out of\n the entrance to stand on the stone steps beside me while he put on a\n pair of dark glasses. A member of the airport police detail. I could\n tell him. I could take him down to the little red bag and explain the\n whole thing. Then it would be his baby and I would be off on my own\n business.", "She gave me a speculative look.\n\n\n I must not have seemed a complete idiot because she said, \"All right,\n but—\"\n\n\n I didn't listen for the rest. I went into the booth, closed the door,\n pretended to drop a coin and dial a number. But all the time I was in\n there, I was reaching out through the glass for the clock. At this\n range it wasn't difficult to stop the balance wheel.\n\n\n Just the same, when I came out I was wringing wet.\n\n\n \"Now will you please tell me what this is all about?\" she said stiffly.\n\n\n \"Gladly. Let me buy you a cup of coffee and I'll explain.\"\n\n\n She glanced at the bags. I told her they'd be all right. We followed\n the short, fat man into the coffee shop.", "I lit a cigarette, reached out. Inside were a woman's things and—a\n clock. The escapement was clicking vigorously.\n\n\n I didn't moan this time. I just closed my eyes, stretched toward\n and grabbed the balance wheel I was getting to know like my own. I\n entered into a union with it so strong that after I had reduced it to\n immobility, it was like waking when I opened my eyes.\nThe baggage claim attendant was staring at me. For only a moment I\n stared back. Then I quickly reached for my baggage check and presented\n it to him. His hand hovered over the handle of the little red bag and I\n was ready to yell at him. But then, matching numbers on the tags with\n his eyes, his hand grasped the handle of my own suitcase and pushed it\n toward me.\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" I said, taking it. I glanced ever so casually toward the\n remaining bag. \"One left over, eh?\"", "\"My husband.\" I thought she was going to really bawl, but she got\n control again. \"This trip was his idea, my coming down here to visit my\n sister.\" Her smile was bleak. \"I see now why he wanted to put in those\n books. I'd finished packing and was in the bathroom. He said he'd put\n in some books we'd both finished reading—for my sister. That's when he\n must have put the—put it in there.\"\n\n\n I said gently, \"Why would he want to do a thing like that?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\" She shook her head. \"I just don't know.\" And she was\n close to bawling again. Then she recovered and said, \"I'm not sure I\n want to know.\" I admired her for saying it. Joe must have been crazy.\n\n\n \"It's all right now?\" she asked.\n\n\n I nodded. \"As long as we don't move it.\"", "I never did find my suitcase because I found the bomb first.\nThe bomb was in a small bag—a woman's bag judging by the soft,\n flimsy things you'd never find in a man's—and I didn't know it was a\n bomb right away. I thought it was just a clock, one of those small,\n quiet alarms. I was going to pass it by and go on, but what held me\n was that something was taped to it. By the feel, I knew it must be\n electrician's tape. Interested and curious, I explored the clock more\n closely, found two wires. One went to a battery and the other to hard\n round cylinders taped together. The hairs stood up at the base of my\n neck when I suddenly realized what it was.\n\n\n The clock's balance wheel was rocking merrily. Quickly I went up past\n the train of gears to the alarm wheel. If this was anything like my own\n alarm clock, this one had something like ten minutes to go.", "The woman beside me stirred, sat up suddenly and looked across me out\n the window. \"Where are we?\" she asked in a surprised voice. I told her\n we were probably a little north of Bakersfield. She said, \"Oh,\" glanced\n at her wristwatch and sank back again.\n\n\n Soon the stewardesses would bring coffee and doughnuts around, so I\n contented myself with looking at the clouds and trying to think about\n Amos Magaffey, who was purchasing agent for a Los Angeles amusement\n chain, and how I was going to convince him our printing prices were\n maybe a little higher but the quality and service were better. My mind\n wandered below where I was sitting, idly moving from one piece of\n luggage to another, looking for my beat-up suitcase. I went through\n slips and slippers, lingerie and laundry, a jig saw puzzle and a\n ukulele.", "I could visualize the balance wheel once again rocking like crazy. How\n many minutes—or seconds—were left? I was sweating when I moved to the\n counter, and it wasn't because of the sunshine I'd been soaking in. I\n had to get as close to the bag as I could if I was going to stop the\n clock again.\n\n\n \"Can I help you?\" the clerk asked.\n\n\n \"No. I'm waiting for someone.\"\n\n\n I turned my back to him, put down my suitcase, leaned against the\n counter and reached out for the wheel. I found I could reach the\n device, but it was far away. When I tried to dampen it, the wheel\n escaped my grasp.\n\n\n \"Do you have my suitcase?\"\n\n\n I blinked my eyes open and looked around. The blonde in the plane stood\n there looking very fresh and bright and unconcerned. In her right hand\n she had a green baggage claim check.", "I closed my eyes, forced my mind back to the luggage compartment, spent\n a frantic moment before I found the bag again. I had to stop that\n balance wheel, just as I stopped my alarm clock every morning. I tried\n to close everything off—the throb of engines, the rush of air, the\n woman sipping coffee noisily beside me—and I went into the clock and\n surrounded the seesawing wheel. When it went forward, I pulled it back;\n when it went back, I pulled it forward. I struggled with it, and it was\n like trying to work with greasy hands, and I was afraid I wasn't going\n to be able to stop it.\n\n\n Then, little by little, it started to slow its beat. But I could not\n afford to relax. I pushed and pulled and didn't dare release my hold\n until it came to a dead stop.\n\n\n \"Anything the matter?\"", "It was forty minutes to Burbank and Lockheed Air Terminal.\n\n\n My mind was churning when I turned from the window to look around\n at the unconcerned passengers, the woman at my side asleep again. I\n thought: Which one of these.... No, none of them would know it was\n there. I glanced out the window again; clouds were still in the way.\n We'd be leaving the valley for the mountain range north of Los Angeles\n soon, if we hadn't left it already. No place to land the plane there.\n\n\n But of course that had been the plan!\n\n\n My heart was beating in jackhammer rhythm; my mouth was dry and my mind\n was numb. Tell somebody about the bomb before it's too late! No, they'd\n think I put it there. Besides, what good would it do? There would be\n panic and they'd never get the plane down in time—if they believed me.", "I had seen her in the concourse and at the gate, a shapely thing. Now\n she had crossed her legs and I was privileged to view a trim ankle and\n calf, and her profile as she stared moodily across the aisle and out a\n window where there was nothing to see.\n\n\n I slid my eyes past her to others. A crossword-puzzle worker, a\n togetherness-type-magazine reader.\n\n\n Inventory completed, I went back to looking at the clouds, knowing I\n should be thinking about the printing order I was going to Los Angeles\n for, and not wanting to.\n\n\n So I started going through the purse of the woman next to me. Perhaps\n that sounds bad. It wasn't. I'd been doing it for years and nobody ever\n complained." ], [ "I told her I didn't know how much more time there was, that I'd been\n thinking it over and that the only way out seemed to be to tell the\n airport policeman. After I explained it to her, the girl—she said her\n name was Julia Claremont—agreed to tell him she thought there was a\n bomb in her bag, that she had noticed a ticking and had become worried\n because she knew she hadn't packed a clock. It wasn't good, but it\n would have to do.\n\n\n \"We've got to get it deactivated,\" I said, watching the fat man pay for\n his coffee and leave. \"The sooner the better.\"\nI finished my coffee in one gulp and went to pay the bill with her.\n I asked her why she didn't claim the bag at the same time the other\n people had. She said she had called her sister and the phone was busy\n for a long while.", "\"I—I don't care about mine. I didn't have much of anything in it.\"\n\n\n \"I feel the same way,\" I said. \"Would it be all right if we didn't\n bother to report it?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" the policeman said, \"I can't\nmake\nyou report it.\"\n\n\n \"I'd rather not then,\" Julia said. She turned to me. \"I'd like some\n air. Can't we walk a little?\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" I said.\n\n\n We started down the street, her arm in mine, as the air began to fill\n with the distant sounds of sirens.", "The policeman was sympathetic and concerned. He said, \"We'd better get\n over to the office.\"\n\n\n But we never left the spot because an explosion some blocks distant\n shattered the air. Julia's hand grasped my arm. Hard.\n\n\n \"Jets,\" the redcap said, eying the sky.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" the policeman said. \"Didn't sound much like a jet to\n me.\"\n\n\n We stood there. I could visualize the wreckage of an old gray coupe\n in the middle of a street, but I couldn't visualize the driver. That\n was all right. I didn't want to see him. I didn't know what Julia was\n thinking.\n\n\n She said, \"About those bags,\" and looked at me.\n\n\n The officer said, \"Yes, miss?\"", "\"My husband.\" I thought she was going to really bawl, but she got\n control again. \"This trip was his idea, my coming down here to visit my\n sister.\" Her smile was bleak. \"I see now why he wanted to put in those\n books. I'd finished packing and was in the bathroom. He said he'd put\n in some books we'd both finished reading—for my sister. That's when he\n must have put the—put it in there.\"\n\n\n I said gently, \"Why would he want to do a thing like that?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\" She shook her head. \"I just don't know.\" And she was\n close to bawling again. Then she recovered and said, \"I'm not sure I\n want to know.\" I admired her for saying it. Joe must have been crazy.\n\n\n \"It's all right now?\" she asked.\n\n\n I nodded. \"As long as we don't move it.\"", "The clerk took it, nodded, and in a moment brought out the overnight\n case and set it on the scales. The girl thanked him, picked it up,\n glanced at me indifferently, and then started for the entrance with it.\n\n\n \"Just a moment,\" I found myself saying, grabbing my bag and hurrying\n after her.\nAt her side and a little ahead of her, I said, \"Listen to me.\"\n\n\n She looked annoyed and increased her stride toward the door.\n\n\n \"It's a matter of life or death,\" I said. I wanted to wrest the bag\n from her and hurl it out through the doorway into the street, but I\n restrained myself.\n\n\n She stopped and stared. I noticed a short, fat man in a rumpled\n suitcoat and unpressed pants staring, too. Ignoring him, I said,\n \"Please put the bag down. Over there.\" I indicated a spot beside a\n telephone booth where it would be out of the way.", "Over coffee I explained it all to her, how I had this extrasensory\n ability, how she was the first person I had ever revealed it to, and\n how I had discovered what was in her overnight bag.\n\n\n During the telling, her untouched coffee grew a skin, her face grew\n pale, her eyes grew less curious and more troubled. There were tears\n there when I finished. I asked her who put the bomb in her bag.\n\n\n \"Joe did,\" she said in a toneless voice, not looking at me any more but\n staring vacantly across the room. \"Joe put it there.\" Behind her eyes\n she was reliving some recent scene.\n\n\n \"Who is Joe?\"", "She didn't move. She just said, \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"For God's sake!\" I took the case. She offered no resistance. I put her\n bag and mine next to the booth. When I turned around she was standing\n there looking at me as if I had gone out of my mind. Her eyes were blue\n and brown-flecked, very pretty eyes, and my thought at the moment was,\n I'm glad the bomb didn't go off; these eyes wouldn't be looking at me\n or anything else right now if it had.\n\n\n \"I've got to talk to you. It's very important.\"\n\n\n The girl said, \"Why?\" I was beginning to think it was the only word she\n knew. At the same time I was wondering why anyone would want to kill\n someone so lovely.\n\n\n \"I'll explain in a moment. Please stand right here while I make a\n telephone call.\" I moved toward the phone booth, paused and said, \"And\n don't ask me why.\"", "The dumpy man I'd seen was walking off; Julia's bag in his right hand,\n mine in his left. He seemed in no hurry.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" I shouted, starting toward him.\n\n\n The man turned, took one look at me, and started to run. He came\n abreast an old gray, mud-spattered coupe, ran around, opened the door\n and threw both bags into the rear seat as he got in.\n\n\n The car was a hundred feet away and gathering speed by the time I\n reached where it had been parked. I watched it for a moment, then\n walked back to the entranceway where Julia was standing with the\n redcap, who said, \"That man steal them suitcases?\"\n\n\n \"That he did,\" I said.\n\n\n Just then the airport policeman started across the street from the\n parking lot. Redcap said, \"Better tell him about it.\"", "The woman beside me stirred, sat up suddenly and looked across me out\n the window. \"Where are we?\" she asked in a surprised voice. I told her\n we were probably a little north of Bakersfield. She said, \"Oh,\" glanced\n at her wristwatch and sank back again.\n\n\n Soon the stewardesses would bring coffee and doughnuts around, so I\n contented myself with looking at the clouds and trying to think about\n Amos Magaffey, who was purchasing agent for a Los Angeles amusement\n chain, and how I was going to convince him our printing prices were\n maybe a little higher but the quality and service were better. My mind\n wandered below where I was sitting, idly moving from one piece of\n luggage to another, looking for my beat-up suitcase. I went through\n slips and slippers, lingerie and laundry, a jig saw puzzle and a\n ukulele.", "I lit a cigarette, reached out. Inside were a woman's things and—a\n clock. The escapement was clicking vigorously.\n\n\n I didn't moan this time. I just closed my eyes, stretched toward\n and grabbed the balance wheel I was getting to know like my own. I\n entered into a union with it so strong that after I had reduced it to\n immobility, it was like waking when I opened my eyes.\nThe baggage claim attendant was staring at me. For only a moment I\n stared back. Then I quickly reached for my baggage check and presented\n it to him. His hand hovered over the handle of the little red bag and I\n was ready to yell at him. But then, matching numbers on the tags with\n his eyes, his hand grasped the handle of my own suitcase and pushed it\n toward me.\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" I said, taking it. I glanced ever so casually toward the\n remaining bag. \"One left over, eh?\"", "She gave me a speculative look.\n\n\n I must not have seemed a complete idiot because she said, \"All right,\n but—\"\n\n\n I didn't listen for the rest. I went into the booth, closed the door,\n pretended to drop a coin and dial a number. But all the time I was in\n there, I was reaching out through the glass for the clock. At this\n range it wasn't difficult to stop the balance wheel.\n\n\n Just the same, when I came out I was wringing wet.\n\n\n \"Now will you please tell me what this is all about?\" she said stiffly.\n\n\n \"Gladly. Let me buy you a cup of coffee and I'll explain.\"\n\n\n She glanced at the bags. I told her they'd be all right. We followed\n the short, fat man into the coffee shop.", "My eyelids flew open and I looked into the eyes of the woman next to\n me. There was sugar from the doughnut around her mouth and she was\n still chewing.\n\n\n \"No,\" I said, letting out my breath. \"I'm all right.\"\n\n\n \"You were moaning, it sounded like. And you kept moving your head back\n and forth.\"", "\"She was supposed to meet me, and when she wasn't here, I got worried.\n She said she isn't feeling well and asked me to take a cab.\" She smiled\n a little. It was a bright, cheery thing. I had the feeling it was all\n for me. \"That's where I was going when you caught up with me.\"\n\n\n It had become a very nice day. But the bottom dropped out of it again\n when we reached the lobby.\n\n\n The two bags weren't there.\n\n\n I ran to the entrance and nearly collided with the redcap.\n\n\n \"See anybody go out of here with a little red bag and an old battered\n suitcase?\"\n\n\n \"Bag? Suitcase?\" he mumbled. Then he became excited. \"Why, a man just\n stepped out of here—\" He turned to look down the street. \"That's him.\"", "Class had hardly resumed when she started looking around the desk for\n her favorite mechanical pencil, asking if any of us had seen it, and\n looking straight at me. I didn't want her to think I had taken it while\n she was out of the room, so I probed the contents of her purse, which\n she always kept in the upper right drawer of her desk.\n\n\n \"It's in your purse,\" I blurted out.\n\n\n I was sent home with a stinging note.\n\n\n Since then I've kept quiet. At one time I assumed everybody was able\n to sense. I've known better for years. Still, I wonder how many other\n people are as close-mouthed about their special gift as I am about mine.\n\n\n I used to think that some day I'd make a lot of money out of it, but\n how? I can't read thoughts. I can't even be sure what some of the\n things I sense in probing really are.", "It was impossible to tell from this distance just which bag contained\n the bomb; I could hardly identify my own scarred suitcase. The\n assortment of bags—a strange conglomeration of sizes and colors—was\n packed in some places six deep, and it rolled toward the gate where\n I was standing. I didn't know whether to stay or run, imagining the\n balance wheel now happily rocking again. The load went past me down a\n ramp to the front of the air terminal where the luggage was unloaded\n and placed in a long rack. I went with it.\n\n\n There was a flurry of ticket matching, hands grabbing for suitcases,\n and a general exodus on the part of my fellow passengers, too fast to\n determine who had got the one with the bomb. Now all that was left was\n the attendant and I had two bags—my own battered veteran of years, and\n a fine new red overnight case, small enough to be the one.", "\"Yeah.\" He was so bored I was tempted to tell him what was in it. But\n he was eying me with a \"well-why-don't-you-get-along?\" look.\n\n\n I said, \"What happens if nobody claims it?\"\n\n\n \"Take it inside. Why?\"\n\n\n He was getting too curious. \"Oh, I just wondered, that's all.\"\n\n\n I stepped on my cigarette and walked toward the air terminal entrance\n and put my suitcase on the stone steps there. A redcap came hurrying\n over.\n\n\n \"Cab?\"\n\n\n I shook my head. \"Just waiting.\"\n\n\n Just waiting for somebody to pick up a bomb.\n\n\n I lit another cigarette and glanced now and then toward the baggage\n claim area. The red bag was still there. All sorts of theories ran\n through my head as to why it should still be there, and none satisfied\n me.", "Like this woman next to me. She had a short, cylindrical metal object\n in her purse with waxlike stuff inside it—a lipstick. A round, hard\n object with dust inside—a compact. Handkerchief, chewing gum, a small\n book, probably an address book, money in a change purse—a few bills\n and coins. Not much else.\n\n\n I was a little disappointed. I've run across a gun or two in my time.\n But I never say anything.\nI learned the wisdom of keeping my mouth shut in the fourth grade when\n Miss Winters, a stern, white-haired disciplinarian, ordered me to eat\n my sack lunch in the classroom with her instead of outside with some\n of the other kids. This was the punishment for some minor infraction.\n Lunchtime was nearly over and we'd both finished eating; she said she'd\n be gone for a few moments and that I was to erase the blackboard during\n her absence, which I dutifully did.", "I had seen her in the concourse and at the gate, a shapely thing. Now\n she had crossed her legs and I was privileged to view a trim ankle and\n calf, and her profile as she stared moodily across the aisle and out a\n window where there was nothing to see.\n\n\n I slid my eyes past her to others. A crossword-puzzle worker, a\n togetherness-type-magazine reader.\n\n\n Inventory completed, I went back to looking at the clouds, knowing I\n should be thinking about the printing order I was going to Los Angeles\n for, and not wanting to.\n\n\n So I started going through the purse of the woman next to me. Perhaps\n that sounds bad. It wasn't. I'd been doing it for years and nobody ever\n complained.", "\"Sir.\" My head jerked around. The stewardess stood in the aisle,\n smiling, extending a tray to me, a brown plastic tray bearing a small\n paper cup of tomato juice, a cup of coffee, a cellophane-wrapped\n doughnut, paper spoon, sugar and dehydrated cream envelopes, and a\n napkin.\n\n\n I goggled at her, managed to croak, \"No, thanks.\" She gave me an odd\n look and moved along. My seatmate had accepted hers and was tearing at\n the cellophane. I couldn't bear to watch her.", "\"Not really,\" I said. I was tempted to tell the woman I was subject to\n fits, but I didn't.\n\n\n It was only a few minutes to landing, but they became the longest\n minutes of my life as time after time I stopped the rocking wheel when\n the plane dipped and bumped to a landing.\n\n\n Leaving the apron with the other passengers, I tried to walk as\n unconcernedly as they through the exit gate. I would have liked walking\n through the terminal and out the entrance and away, but I could not. I\n had my suitcase to get, for one thing. The damned bomb was the other.\n So I strolled out into the concourse again to look at the plane and\n watch the baggagemen at work, transferring the luggage to two airfield\n carts. They weren't as careful as I would have been." ], [ "\"My husband.\" I thought she was going to really bawl, but she got\n control again. \"This trip was his idea, my coming down here to visit my\n sister.\" Her smile was bleak. \"I see now why he wanted to put in those\n books. I'd finished packing and was in the bathroom. He said he'd put\n in some books we'd both finished reading—for my sister. That's when he\n must have put the—put it in there.\"\n\n\n I said gently, \"Why would he want to do a thing like that?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\" She shook her head. \"I just don't know.\" And she was\n close to bawling again. Then she recovered and said, \"I'm not sure I\n want to know.\" I admired her for saying it. Joe must have been crazy.\n\n\n \"It's all right now?\" she asked.\n\n\n I nodded. \"As long as we don't move it.\"", "The clerk took it, nodded, and in a moment brought out the overnight\n case and set it on the scales. The girl thanked him, picked it up,\n glanced at me indifferently, and then started for the entrance with it.\n\n\n \"Just a moment,\" I found myself saying, grabbing my bag and hurrying\n after her.\nAt her side and a little ahead of her, I said, \"Listen to me.\"\n\n\n She looked annoyed and increased her stride toward the door.\n\n\n \"It's a matter of life or death,\" I said. I wanted to wrest the bag\n from her and hurl it out through the doorway into the street, but I\n restrained myself.\n\n\n She stopped and stared. I noticed a short, fat man in a rumpled\n suitcoat and unpressed pants staring, too. Ignoring him, I said,\n \"Please put the bag down. Over there.\" I indicated a spot beside a\n telephone booth where it would be out of the way.", "The policeman was sympathetic and concerned. He said, \"We'd better get\n over to the office.\"\n\n\n But we never left the spot because an explosion some blocks distant\n shattered the air. Julia's hand grasped my arm. Hard.\n\n\n \"Jets,\" the redcap said, eying the sky.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" the policeman said. \"Didn't sound much like a jet to\n me.\"\n\n\n We stood there. I could visualize the wreckage of an old gray coupe\n in the middle of a street, but I couldn't visualize the driver. That\n was all right. I didn't want to see him. I didn't know what Julia was\n thinking.\n\n\n She said, \"About those bags,\" and looked at me.\n\n\n The officer said, \"Yes, miss?\"", "I lit a cigarette, reached out. Inside were a woman's things and—a\n clock. The escapement was clicking vigorously.\n\n\n I didn't moan this time. I just closed my eyes, stretched toward\n and grabbed the balance wheel I was getting to know like my own. I\n entered into a union with it so strong that after I had reduced it to\n immobility, it was like waking when I opened my eyes.\nThe baggage claim attendant was staring at me. For only a moment I\n stared back. Then I quickly reached for my baggage check and presented\n it to him. His hand hovered over the handle of the little red bag and I\n was ready to yell at him. But then, matching numbers on the tags with\n his eyes, his hand grasped the handle of my own suitcase and pushed it\n toward me.\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" I said, taking it. I glanced ever so casually toward the\n remaining bag. \"One left over, eh?\"", "\"She was supposed to meet me, and when she wasn't here, I got worried.\n She said she isn't feeling well and asked me to take a cab.\" She smiled\n a little. It was a bright, cheery thing. I had the feeling it was all\n for me. \"That's where I was going when you caught up with me.\"\n\n\n It had become a very nice day. But the bottom dropped out of it again\n when we reached the lobby.\n\n\n The two bags weren't there.\n\n\n I ran to the entrance and nearly collided with the redcap.\n\n\n \"See anybody go out of here with a little red bag and an old battered\n suitcase?\"\n\n\n \"Bag? Suitcase?\" he mumbled. Then he became excited. \"Why, a man just\n stepped out of here—\" He turned to look down the street. \"That's him.\"", "\"Yeah.\" He was so bored I was tempted to tell him what was in it. But\n he was eying me with a \"well-why-don't-you-get-along?\" look.\n\n\n I said, \"What happens if nobody claims it?\"\n\n\n \"Take it inside. Why?\"\n\n\n He was getting too curious. \"Oh, I just wondered, that's all.\"\n\n\n I stepped on my cigarette and walked toward the air terminal entrance\n and put my suitcase on the stone steps there. A redcap came hurrying\n over.\n\n\n \"Cab?\"\n\n\n I shook my head. \"Just waiting.\"\n\n\n Just waiting for somebody to pick up a bomb.\n\n\n I lit another cigarette and glanced now and then toward the baggage\n claim area. The red bag was still there. All sorts of theories ran\n through my head as to why it should still be there, and none satisfied\n me.", "It was impossible to tell from this distance just which bag contained\n the bomb; I could hardly identify my own scarred suitcase. The\n assortment of bags—a strange conglomeration of sizes and colors—was\n packed in some places six deep, and it rolled toward the gate where\n I was standing. I didn't know whether to stay or run, imagining the\n balance wheel now happily rocking again. The load went past me down a\n ramp to the front of the air terminal where the luggage was unloaded\n and placed in a long rack. I went with it.\n\n\n There was a flurry of ticket matching, hands grabbing for suitcases,\n and a general exodus on the part of my fellow passengers, too fast to\n determine who had got the one with the bomb. Now all that was left was\n the attendant and I had two bags—my own battered veteran of years, and\n a fine new red overnight case, small enough to be the one.", "\"I—I don't care about mine. I didn't have much of anything in it.\"\n\n\n \"I feel the same way,\" I said. \"Would it be all right if we didn't\n bother to report it?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" the policeman said, \"I can't\nmake\nyou report it.\"\n\n\n \"I'd rather not then,\" Julia said. She turned to me. \"I'd like some\n air. Can't we walk a little?\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" I said.\n\n\n We started down the street, her arm in mine, as the air began to fill\n with the distant sounds of sirens.", "\"Must have been dreaming,\" I said as I rang for the stewardess. When\n she came I told her I'd take some of that coffee now. No, nothing else,\n just coffee. I didn't tell her how much I needed it. I sat there clammy\n with sweat until she returned. Coffee never tasted so good.\nAll right, so I had stopped the bomb's timer. My mind raced ahead to\n the landing. When they unloaded the luggage, the balance wheel would\n start again. I wouldn't be able to stay with it, keeping it still.\n I considered telling the authorities as soon as we landed, or maybe\n calling in ahead, but wouldn't that just bring suspicion, questions.\n Maybe I could convince them I could stop a clock—but not before the\n bomb exploded. And then what? My secret would be out and my life would\n be changed. I'd be a man not to be trusted, a prying man, a man\n literally with gimlet eyes.", "But he moved on down the steps, nodded at the redcap, and started\n across the street to the parking area. I could have called to him,\n \"Hey, officer, let me tell you about a bomb in a little red bag.\" But\n I didn't. I didn't because I caught a movement at the baggage claim\n counter out of the side of my eye.\n\n\n The attendant had picked up the bag and was walking with it up the ramp\n to the rear of the air terminal. Picking up my own suitcase, I went\n inside in time to see him enter through a side door and deposit the bag\n on the scales at the airline desk and say something to the clerk. The\n clerk nodded and moved the bag to the rear room.", "I should not have been there, that much I knew; I should be with a\n man named Amos Magaffey on Sixth Street at ten o'clock, discussing\n something very mundane, the matter of a printing order. But what could\n I do? If I left the airport, the attendant would eventually take the\n bag inside and there would be an explosion, and I wouldn't be able to\n live with myself.\n\n\n No. I had to stay to keep the balance wheel stationary until—until\n what?\n\n\n A man in tan gabardine, wearing a police cap and badge, walked out of\n the entrance to stand on the stone steps beside me while he put on a\n pair of dark glasses. A member of the airport police detail. I could\n tell him. I could take him down to the little red bag and explain the\n whole thing. Then it would be his baby and I would be off on my own\n business.", "She gave me a speculative look.\n\n\n I must not have seemed a complete idiot because she said, \"All right,\n but—\"\n\n\n I didn't listen for the rest. I went into the booth, closed the door,\n pretended to drop a coin and dial a number. But all the time I was in\n there, I was reaching out through the glass for the clock. At this\n range it wasn't difficult to stop the balance wheel.\n\n\n Just the same, when I came out I was wringing wet.\n\n\n \"Now will you please tell me what this is all about?\" she said stiffly.\n\n\n \"Gladly. Let me buy you a cup of coffee and I'll explain.\"\n\n\n She glanced at the bags. I told her they'd be all right. We followed\n the short, fat man into the coffee shop.", "The woman beside me stirred, sat up suddenly and looked across me out\n the window. \"Where are we?\" she asked in a surprised voice. I told her\n we were probably a little north of Bakersfield. She said, \"Oh,\" glanced\n at her wristwatch and sank back again.\n\n\n Soon the stewardesses would bring coffee and doughnuts around, so I\n contented myself with looking at the clouds and trying to think about\n Amos Magaffey, who was purchasing agent for a Los Angeles amusement\n chain, and how I was going to convince him our printing prices were\n maybe a little higher but the quality and service were better. My mind\n wandered below where I was sitting, idly moving from one piece of\n luggage to another, looking for my beat-up suitcase. I went through\n slips and slippers, lingerie and laundry, a jig saw puzzle and a\n ukulele.", "I could visualize the balance wheel once again rocking like crazy. How\n many minutes—or seconds—were left? I was sweating when I moved to the\n counter, and it wasn't because of the sunshine I'd been soaking in. I\n had to get as close to the bag as I could if I was going to stop the\n clock again.\n\n\n \"Can I help you?\" the clerk asked.\n\n\n \"No. I'm waiting for someone.\"\n\n\n I turned my back to him, put down my suitcase, leaned against the\n counter and reached out for the wheel. I found I could reach the\n device, but it was far away. When I tried to dampen it, the wheel\n escaped my grasp.\n\n\n \"Do you have my suitcase?\"\n\n\n I blinked my eyes open and looked around. The blonde in the plane stood\n there looking very fresh and bright and unconcerned. In her right hand\n she had a green baggage claim check.", "It was forty minutes to Burbank and Lockheed Air Terminal.\n\n\n My mind was churning when I turned from the window to look around\n at the unconcerned passengers, the woman at my side asleep again. I\n thought: Which one of these.... No, none of them would know it was\n there. I glanced out the window again; clouds were still in the way.\n We'd be leaving the valley for the mountain range north of Los Angeles\n soon, if we hadn't left it already. No place to land the plane there.\n\n\n But of course that had been the plan!\n\n\n My heart was beating in jackhammer rhythm; my mouth was dry and my mind\n was numb. Tell somebody about the bomb before it's too late! No, they'd\n think I put it there. Besides, what good would it do? There would be\n panic and they'd never get the plane down in time—if they believed me.", "I closed my eyes, forced my mind back to the luggage compartment, spent\n a frantic moment before I found the bag again. I had to stop that\n balance wheel, just as I stopped my alarm clock every morning. I tried\n to close everything off—the throb of engines, the rush of air, the\n woman sipping coffee noisily beside me—and I went into the clock and\n surrounded the seesawing wheel. When it went forward, I pulled it back;\n when it went back, I pulled it forward. I struggled with it, and it was\n like trying to work with greasy hands, and I was afraid I wasn't going\n to be able to stop it.\n\n\n Then, little by little, it started to slow its beat. But I could not\n afford to relax. I pushed and pulled and didn't dare release my hold\n until it came to a dead stop.\n\n\n \"Anything the matter?\"", "\"Not really,\" I said. I was tempted to tell the woman I was subject to\n fits, but I didn't.\n\n\n It was only a few minutes to landing, but they became the longest\n minutes of my life as time after time I stopped the rocking wheel when\n the plane dipped and bumped to a landing.\n\n\n Leaving the apron with the other passengers, I tried to walk as\n unconcernedly as they through the exit gate. I would have liked walking\n through the terminal and out the entrance and away, but I could not. I\n had my suitcase to get, for one thing. The damned bomb was the other.\n So I strolled out into the concourse again to look at the plane and\n watch the baggagemen at work, transferring the luggage to two airfield\n carts. They weren't as careful as I would have been.", "I told her I didn't know how much more time there was, that I'd been\n thinking it over and that the only way out seemed to be to tell the\n airport policeman. After I explained it to her, the girl—she said her\n name was Julia Claremont—agreed to tell him she thought there was a\n bomb in her bag, that she had noticed a ticking and had become worried\n because she knew she hadn't packed a clock. It wasn't good, but it\n would have to do.\n\n\n \"We've got to get it deactivated,\" I said, watching the fat man pay for\n his coffee and leave. \"The sooner the better.\"\nI finished my coffee in one gulp and went to pay the bill with her.\n I asked her why she didn't claim the bag at the same time the other\n people had. She said she had called her sister and the phone was busy\n for a long while.", "Over coffee I explained it all to her, how I had this extrasensory\n ability, how she was the first person I had ever revealed it to, and\n how I had discovered what was in her overnight bag.\n\n\n During the telling, her untouched coffee grew a skin, her face grew\n pale, her eyes grew less curious and more troubled. There were tears\n there when I finished. I asked her who put the bomb in her bag.\n\n\n \"Joe did,\" she said in a toneless voice, not looking at me any more but\n staring vacantly across the room. \"Joe put it there.\" Behind her eyes\n she was reliving some recent scene.\n\n\n \"Who is Joe?\"", "She didn't move. She just said, \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"For God's sake!\" I took the case. She offered no resistance. I put her\n bag and mine next to the booth. When I turned around she was standing\n there looking at me as if I had gone out of my mind. Her eyes were blue\n and brown-flecked, very pretty eyes, and my thought at the moment was,\n I'm glad the bomb didn't go off; these eyes wouldn't be looking at me\n or anything else right now if it had.\n\n\n \"I've got to talk to you. It's very important.\"\n\n\n The girl said, \"Why?\" I was beginning to think it was the only word she\n knew. At the same time I was wondering why anyone would want to kill\n someone so lovely.\n\n\n \"I'll explain in a moment. Please stand right here while I make a\n telephone call.\" I moved toward the phone booth, paused and said, \"And\n don't ask me why.\"" ], [ "The dumpy man I'd seen was walking off; Julia's bag in his right hand,\n mine in his left. He seemed in no hurry.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" I shouted, starting toward him.\n\n\n The man turned, took one look at me, and started to run. He came\n abreast an old gray, mud-spattered coupe, ran around, opened the door\n and threw both bags into the rear seat as he got in.\n\n\n The car was a hundred feet away and gathering speed by the time I\n reached where it had been parked. I watched it for a moment, then\n walked back to the entranceway where Julia was standing with the\n redcap, who said, \"That man steal them suitcases?\"\n\n\n \"That he did,\" I said.\n\n\n Just then the airport policeman started across the street from the\n parking lot. Redcap said, \"Better tell him about it.\"", "The clerk took it, nodded, and in a moment brought out the overnight\n case and set it on the scales. The girl thanked him, picked it up,\n glanced at me indifferently, and then started for the entrance with it.\n\n\n \"Just a moment,\" I found myself saying, grabbing my bag and hurrying\n after her.\nAt her side and a little ahead of her, I said, \"Listen to me.\"\n\n\n She looked annoyed and increased her stride toward the door.\n\n\n \"It's a matter of life or death,\" I said. I wanted to wrest the bag\n from her and hurl it out through the doorway into the street, but I\n restrained myself.\n\n\n She stopped and stared. I noticed a short, fat man in a rumpled\n suitcoat and unpressed pants staring, too. Ignoring him, I said,\n \"Please put the bag down. Over there.\" I indicated a spot beside a\n telephone booth where it would be out of the way.", "But he moved on down the steps, nodded at the redcap, and started\n across the street to the parking area. I could have called to him,\n \"Hey, officer, let me tell you about a bomb in a little red bag.\" But\n I didn't. I didn't because I caught a movement at the baggage claim\n counter out of the side of my eye.\n\n\n The attendant had picked up the bag and was walking with it up the ramp\n to the rear of the air terminal. Picking up my own suitcase, I went\n inside in time to see him enter through a side door and deposit the bag\n on the scales at the airline desk and say something to the clerk. The\n clerk nodded and moved the bag to the rear room.", "I never did find my suitcase because I found the bomb first.\nThe bomb was in a small bag—a woman's bag judging by the soft,\n flimsy things you'd never find in a man's—and I didn't know it was a\n bomb right away. I thought it was just a clock, one of those small,\n quiet alarms. I was going to pass it by and go on, but what held me\n was that something was taped to it. By the feel, I knew it must be\n electrician's tape. Interested and curious, I explored the clock more\n closely, found two wires. One went to a battery and the other to hard\n round cylinders taped together. The hairs stood up at the base of my\n neck when I suddenly realized what it was.\n\n\n The clock's balance wheel was rocking merrily. Quickly I went up past\n the train of gears to the alarm wheel. If this was anything like my own\n alarm clock, this one had something like ten minutes to go.", "It was impossible to tell from this distance just which bag contained\n the bomb; I could hardly identify my own scarred suitcase. The\n assortment of bags—a strange conglomeration of sizes and colors—was\n packed in some places six deep, and it rolled toward the gate where\n I was standing. I didn't know whether to stay or run, imagining the\n balance wheel now happily rocking again. The load went past me down a\n ramp to the front of the air terminal where the luggage was unloaded\n and placed in a long rack. I went with it.\n\n\n There was a flurry of ticket matching, hands grabbing for suitcases,\n and a general exodus on the part of my fellow passengers, too fast to\n determine who had got the one with the bomb. Now all that was left was\n the attendant and I had two bags—my own battered veteran of years, and\n a fine new red overnight case, small enough to be the one.", "\"Yeah.\" He was so bored I was tempted to tell him what was in it. But\n he was eying me with a \"well-why-don't-you-get-along?\" look.\n\n\n I said, \"What happens if nobody claims it?\"\n\n\n \"Take it inside. Why?\"\n\n\n He was getting too curious. \"Oh, I just wondered, that's all.\"\n\n\n I stepped on my cigarette and walked toward the air terminal entrance\n and put my suitcase on the stone steps there. A redcap came hurrying\n over.\n\n\n \"Cab?\"\n\n\n I shook my head. \"Just waiting.\"\n\n\n Just waiting for somebody to pick up a bomb.\n\n\n I lit another cigarette and glanced now and then toward the baggage\n claim area. The red bag was still there. All sorts of theories ran\n through my head as to why it should still be there, and none satisfied\n me.", "\"She was supposed to meet me, and when she wasn't here, I got worried.\n She said she isn't feeling well and asked me to take a cab.\" She smiled\n a little. It was a bright, cheery thing. I had the feeling it was all\n for me. \"That's where I was going when you caught up with me.\"\n\n\n It had become a very nice day. But the bottom dropped out of it again\n when we reached the lobby.\n\n\n The two bags weren't there.\n\n\n I ran to the entrance and nearly collided with the redcap.\n\n\n \"See anybody go out of here with a little red bag and an old battered\n suitcase?\"\n\n\n \"Bag? Suitcase?\" he mumbled. Then he became excited. \"Why, a man just\n stepped out of here—\" He turned to look down the street. \"That's him.\"", "I could visualize the balance wheel once again rocking like crazy. How\n many minutes—or seconds—were left? I was sweating when I moved to the\n counter, and it wasn't because of the sunshine I'd been soaking in. I\n had to get as close to the bag as I could if I was going to stop the\n clock again.\n\n\n \"Can I help you?\" the clerk asked.\n\n\n \"No. I'm waiting for someone.\"\n\n\n I turned my back to him, put down my suitcase, leaned against the\n counter and reached out for the wheel. I found I could reach the\n device, but it was far away. When I tried to dampen it, the wheel\n escaped my grasp.\n\n\n \"Do you have my suitcase?\"\n\n\n I blinked my eyes open and looked around. The blonde in the plane stood\n there looking very fresh and bright and unconcerned. In her right hand\n she had a green baggage claim check.", "The policeman was sympathetic and concerned. He said, \"We'd better get\n over to the office.\"\n\n\n But we never left the spot because an explosion some blocks distant\n shattered the air. Julia's hand grasped my arm. Hard.\n\n\n \"Jets,\" the redcap said, eying the sky.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" the policeman said. \"Didn't sound much like a jet to\n me.\"\n\n\n We stood there. I could visualize the wreckage of an old gray coupe\n in the middle of a street, but I couldn't visualize the driver. That\n was all right. I didn't want to see him. I didn't know what Julia was\n thinking.\n\n\n She said, \"About those bags,\" and looked at me.\n\n\n The officer said, \"Yes, miss?\"", "I lit a cigarette, reached out. Inside were a woman's things and—a\n clock. The escapement was clicking vigorously.\n\n\n I didn't moan this time. I just closed my eyes, stretched toward\n and grabbed the balance wheel I was getting to know like my own. I\n entered into a union with it so strong that after I had reduced it to\n immobility, it was like waking when I opened my eyes.\nThe baggage claim attendant was staring at me. For only a moment I\n stared back. Then I quickly reached for my baggage check and presented\n it to him. His hand hovered over the handle of the little red bag and I\n was ready to yell at him. But then, matching numbers on the tags with\n his eyes, his hand grasped the handle of my own suitcase and pushed it\n toward me.\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" I said, taking it. I glanced ever so casually toward the\n remaining bag. \"One left over, eh?\"", "I should not have been there, that much I knew; I should be with a\n man named Amos Magaffey on Sixth Street at ten o'clock, discussing\n something very mundane, the matter of a printing order. But what could\n I do? If I left the airport, the attendant would eventually take the\n bag inside and there would be an explosion, and I wouldn't be able to\n live with myself.\n\n\n No. I had to stay to keep the balance wheel stationary until—until\n what?\n\n\n A man in tan gabardine, wearing a police cap and badge, walked out of\n the entrance to stand on the stone steps beside me while he put on a\n pair of dark glasses. A member of the airport police detail. I could\n tell him. I could take him down to the little red bag and explain the\n whole thing. Then it would be his baby and I would be off on my own\n business.", "She gave me a speculative look.\n\n\n I must not have seemed a complete idiot because she said, \"All right,\n but—\"\n\n\n I didn't listen for the rest. I went into the booth, closed the door,\n pretended to drop a coin and dial a number. But all the time I was in\n there, I was reaching out through the glass for the clock. At this\n range it wasn't difficult to stop the balance wheel.\n\n\n Just the same, when I came out I was wringing wet.\n\n\n \"Now will you please tell me what this is all about?\" she said stiffly.\n\n\n \"Gladly. Let me buy you a cup of coffee and I'll explain.\"\n\n\n She glanced at the bags. I told her they'd be all right. We followed\n the short, fat man into the coffee shop.", "She didn't move. She just said, \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"For God's sake!\" I took the case. She offered no resistance. I put her\n bag and mine next to the booth. When I turned around she was standing\n there looking at me as if I had gone out of my mind. Her eyes were blue\n and brown-flecked, very pretty eyes, and my thought at the moment was,\n I'm glad the bomb didn't go off; these eyes wouldn't be looking at me\n or anything else right now if it had.\n\n\n \"I've got to talk to you. It's very important.\"\n\n\n The girl said, \"Why?\" I was beginning to think it was the only word she\n knew. At the same time I was wondering why anyone would want to kill\n someone so lovely.\n\n\n \"I'll explain in a moment. Please stand right here while I make a\n telephone call.\" I moved toward the phone booth, paused and said, \"And\n don't ask me why.\"", "\"Not really,\" I said. I was tempted to tell the woman I was subject to\n fits, but I didn't.\n\n\n It was only a few minutes to landing, but they became the longest\n minutes of my life as time after time I stopped the rocking wheel when\n the plane dipped and bumped to a landing.\n\n\n Leaving the apron with the other passengers, I tried to walk as\n unconcernedly as they through the exit gate. I would have liked walking\n through the terminal and out the entrance and away, but I could not. I\n had my suitcase to get, for one thing. The damned bomb was the other.\n So I strolled out into the concourse again to look at the plane and\n watch the baggagemen at work, transferring the luggage to two airfield\n carts. They weren't as careful as I would have been.", "I told her I didn't know how much more time there was, that I'd been\n thinking it over and that the only way out seemed to be to tell the\n airport policeman. After I explained it to her, the girl—she said her\n name was Julia Claremont—agreed to tell him she thought there was a\n bomb in her bag, that she had noticed a ticking and had become worried\n because she knew she hadn't packed a clock. It wasn't good, but it\n would have to do.\n\n\n \"We've got to get it deactivated,\" I said, watching the fat man pay for\n his coffee and leave. \"The sooner the better.\"\nI finished my coffee in one gulp and went to pay the bill with her.\n I asked her why she didn't claim the bag at the same time the other\n people had. She said she had called her sister and the phone was busy\n for a long while.", "The woman beside me stirred, sat up suddenly and looked across me out\n the window. \"Where are we?\" she asked in a surprised voice. I told her\n we were probably a little north of Bakersfield. She said, \"Oh,\" glanced\n at her wristwatch and sank back again.\n\n\n Soon the stewardesses would bring coffee and doughnuts around, so I\n contented myself with looking at the clouds and trying to think about\n Amos Magaffey, who was purchasing agent for a Los Angeles amusement\n chain, and how I was going to convince him our printing prices were\n maybe a little higher but the quality and service were better. My mind\n wandered below where I was sitting, idly moving from one piece of\n luggage to another, looking for my beat-up suitcase. I went through\n slips and slippers, lingerie and laundry, a jig saw puzzle and a\n ukulele.", "\"Must have been dreaming,\" I said as I rang for the stewardess. When\n she came I told her I'd take some of that coffee now. No, nothing else,\n just coffee. I didn't tell her how much I needed it. I sat there clammy\n with sweat until she returned. Coffee never tasted so good.\nAll right, so I had stopped the bomb's timer. My mind raced ahead to\n the landing. When they unloaded the luggage, the balance wheel would\n start again. I wouldn't be able to stay with it, keeping it still.\n I considered telling the authorities as soon as we landed, or maybe\n calling in ahead, but wouldn't that just bring suspicion, questions.\n Maybe I could convince them I could stop a clock—but not before the\n bomb exploded. And then what? My secret would be out and my life would\n be changed. I'd be a man not to be trusted, a prying man, a man\n literally with gimlet eyes.", "It was forty minutes to Burbank and Lockheed Air Terminal.\n\n\n My mind was churning when I turned from the window to look around\n at the unconcerned passengers, the woman at my side asleep again. I\n thought: Which one of these.... No, none of them would know it was\n there. I glanced out the window again; clouds were still in the way.\n We'd be leaving the valley for the mountain range north of Los Angeles\n soon, if we hadn't left it already. No place to land the plane there.\n\n\n But of course that had been the plan!\n\n\n My heart was beating in jackhammer rhythm; my mouth was dry and my mind\n was numb. Tell somebody about the bomb before it's too late! No, they'd\n think I put it there. Besides, what good would it do? There would be\n panic and they'd never get the plane down in time—if they believed me.", "\"My husband.\" I thought she was going to really bawl, but she got\n control again. \"This trip was his idea, my coming down here to visit my\n sister.\" Her smile was bleak. \"I see now why he wanted to put in those\n books. I'd finished packing and was in the bathroom. He said he'd put\n in some books we'd both finished reading—for my sister. That's when he\n must have put the—put it in there.\"\n\n\n I said gently, \"Why would he want to do a thing like that?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know.\" She shook her head. \"I just don't know.\" And she was\n close to bawling again. Then she recovered and said, \"I'm not sure I\n want to know.\" I admired her for saying it. Joe must have been crazy.\n\n\n \"It's all right now?\" she asked.\n\n\n I nodded. \"As long as we don't move it.\"", "I closed my eyes, forced my mind back to the luggage compartment, spent\n a frantic moment before I found the bag again. I had to stop that\n balance wheel, just as I stopped my alarm clock every morning. I tried\n to close everything off—the throb of engines, the rush of air, the\n woman sipping coffee noisily beside me—and I went into the clock and\n surrounded the seesawing wheel. When it went forward, I pulled it back;\n when it went back, I pulled it forward. I struggled with it, and it was\n like trying to work with greasy hands, and I was afraid I wasn't going\n to be able to stop it.\n\n\n Then, little by little, it started to slow its beat. But I could not\n afford to relax. I pushed and pulled and didn't dare release my hold\n until it came to a dead stop.\n\n\n \"Anything the matter?\"" ] ]
train	60291	[ "What is the Farm?", "Why will adult psi contact hurt the children?", "Why doesn't Tommy want to go back to the Farm?", "Where is the Hoffman Medical Center?", "Where is the Farm?", "Where is the conference next month?", "Why are the grey helmets necessary?", "Why is Melrose so opposed to Lessing publishing his book?", "How did the children come to be at the Farm?", "Why does the block tower fall down?" ]	[ [ "The Farm is Dr. Lessing's home in the country.", "The Farm is a compound where they research the psionic abilities of children.", "The Farm is where they train CIA agents with telekinetic abilities.", "The Farm is where they do genetic testing on children to give them psychic abilities." ], [ "Adult psi contact increases a child's psionic ability so much it can cause a psychotic break.", "Adult psi contact overwhelms the children's brains. It gives them migraines.", "Adult psi contact overwhelms the children's nervous systems. It gives them nose bleeds.", "Adult psi contact dampens the children's natural psionic abilities. Eventually, adult psi contact will snuff out a child's abilities altogether." ], [ "Tommy misses his family and he wants to go home.", "Tommy is tired of being experimented on.", "Tommy is slowly going insane at the farm. ", "He doesn't feel good at the farm. " ], [ "Newark", "Westchester", "Philadelphia", "Trenton" ], [ "New Jersey", "Illinois", "Pennsylvania", "Connecticut" ], [ "Illinois", "New Jersey", "Connecticut", "Pennsylvania" ], [ "The helmets block external psionic forces.", "The helmets improve the reception of external psionic forces.", "The helmets are for safety, as the children are heavily medicated and at high risk for falling.", "The helmets amplify the childrens' psychic abilities." ], [ "The field of psionics is new. If Lessing turns out to be wrong, the whole field of study could be discredited.", "Lessing is Melrose's closest friend. He doesn't want to see Lessing embarrassed if his theory is proved wrong.", "Melrose runs a task force against the publishing of junk science. ", "Melrose is also studying psionics and wants to delay Lessing by any means so that he can publish first." ], [ "Dr. Lessing bought them from their parents.", "Some children are sent to the Farm by their parents for boarding school. Others are orphans and runaways.", "The children come from migrant and refugee camps.", "Dr. Lessing bought them from human traffickers." ], [ "Lessing removed his helmet.", "The children used their psi powers to influence Lessing into removing his helmet.", "The children removed their helmets.", "Unknown. It is too early in the field of psi research to accurately determine the answer." ] ]	[ 2, 4, 4, 3, 4, 1, 1, 1, 2, 4 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "\"This kid is driving me nuts,\" said Dorffman through clenched teeth.\n \"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him\n for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's\n leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but\n tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period.\"\n\n\n \"So you bring him down here,\" said Lessing sourly. \"The worst place he\n could be, if something's really wrong.\" He looked across at the boy.\n \"Tommy? Come over and sit down.\"", "\"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got\n us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong.\"\n Melrose grinned unpleasantly. \"We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We\n just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is.\"\n\n\n Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. \"Have you got the\n day to take a trip?\"\n\n\n \"I've got 'til New Year.\"\n\n\n Lessing shouted for his girl. \"Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the\n Farm this afternoon.\"\n\n\n The girl nodded, then hesitated. \"But what about your lunch?\"", "\"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?\"\n\n\n \"No. Oh, no!\"\n\n\n \"Then what?\"\n\n\n Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none\n came. Finally he said, \"If I could only take this off—\" He fingered\n the grey plastic helmet.\n\n\n \"You think\nthat\nwould make you feel better?\"\n\n\n \"It would, I know it would.\"\n\n\n Lessing shook his head. \"I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the\n monitor is for, don't you?\"\n\n\n \"It stops things from going out.\"\n\n\n \"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.\n You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,\n away from the Farm.\"", "There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,\n with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal\n eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward\n grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute\n appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and\n blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.\n\n\n The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.\n\n\n Lessing sat back slowly. \"Tell me about it, Tommy,\" he said gently.\n\n\n \"I don't want to go back to the Farm,\" said the boy.\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"I just don't. I hate it there.\"\n\n\n \"Are you frightened?\"\n\n\n The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.", "\"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the\n Farm.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I know.\" Lessing's voice was weary. \"But first I think we'd\n better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—\"\n\n\n A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. \"We called\n you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—\" She broke off\n helplessly. \"He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined.\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it.\"\n She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large\n children's playroom. \"See what you think.\"", "\"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of\n 'Theory',\" Melrose said. \"I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in\n Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental\n controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want\n to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an\n Authority about.\" There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.\n\n\n \"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,\"\n snapped Lessing.\n\n\n The other man grinned. \"Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,\n but you didn't seem to get the idea.\"\n\n\n \"Last year was different.\" Lessing scowled. \"As for our 'fairy tale',\n we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's\n true.\"", "Lessing glared at him. \"When we began studying this psi-potential, we\n found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely\n more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.\n Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We\n don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually\n withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and\n farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper\n and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any\n more.\" Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. \"That's why we\n have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential\n underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get\n at it any more?\"\n\n\n \"And you think you have an answer,\" said Melrose.\n\n\n \"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains\n the available data.\"", "\"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,\n had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on\n the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at\n thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate\n somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale.\"\n Lessing smiled. \"This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for\n any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to\n place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our\n workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't\n right. It wasn't the instruments, of course.\"\n\n\n Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. \"Now, I\n want you to watch this very closely.\"", "The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.\n Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through\n the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a\n long, low building.\n\n\n \"All right, young man—come along,\" said Lessing. \"I think we can show\n you our answer.\"\nIn the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic\n monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a\n hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the\n substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.\n\n\n \"The major problem,\" Lessing said, \"has been to shield the children\n from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose\n them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The\n monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen.\"\n\n\n \"It blocks off all types of psi activity?\" asked Melrose.", "\"Of course,\" said Lessing. \"According to the theory. The theory says\n that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers\n their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.\n We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes\n according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was\n drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the\n balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he\n bloomed.\" Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. \"What are we going to\n do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?\"\n\n\n \"Of course not,\" said Dorffman. \"The instruments were wrong. Somehow we\n misread the data—\"", "They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.\n \"Some of our children are here only briefly,\" Lessing explained as\n they walked along, \"and some have been here for years. We maintain a\n top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't\n so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center\n funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from\n broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they\n stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as\n psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We\n are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions\n where they can develope what potential they have—\nwithout\nthe\n presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject\n to. The results have been remarkable.\"", "The boy fought back tears. \"But I don't want to go back there—\" The\n fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. \"I don't feel good there. I\n never want to go back.\"\n\n\n \"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while.\" Lessing nodded at\n Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. \"You say this has\n been going on for\nthree weeks\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so\n much of that up there.\"", "\"I know, I know.\" Lessing chewed his lip. \"I don't like it. We'd better\n set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid\n you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to\n deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole\n Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.\n I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up.\" Lessing\n ran a hand through sparse grey hair. \"See what you can do for the boy\n downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Full psi precautions?\" asked Dorffman.", "\"I—can't get it—off,\" the boy said.\nThe monitor\n, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone\n horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the\n trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He\n knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's\n mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he\n had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent\n physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and\n repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors\n of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A\n healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But\n this youngster was sick—\n\n\n And yet\nan animal instinctively seeks its own protection\n. With\n trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the\n monitor. \"Take it off, Tommy,\" he whispered.", "Lessing ground his teeth. \"I should be running him now instead of\n beating the bushes with this—\" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.\n\n\n Melrose grinned. \"I've heard you have quite a place up here.\"\n\n\n \"It's—unconventional, at any rate,\" Lessing snapped.\n\n\n \"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day\n school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even\n used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here.\"\n\n\n \"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying\n to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, you're sure you were measuring\nsomething\n.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes. We certainly were.\"\n\n\n \"Yet you said that you didn't know what.\"", "He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing\n a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the\n grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing\n in a large room.\n\n\n \"They're perfectly insulated from us,\" said Lessing. \"A variety of\n recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,\n they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any\n engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what\n makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like\n that one, for instance—\"", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThere was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;\nHe jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.\nAnd when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main\nHe jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.\nMOTHER GOOSE\nDr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office\n when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as\n though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his\n eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing\n glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk\n with a sigh. \"All right, Jack—what's wrong?\"", "\"As far as we can measure, yes.\"\n\n\n \"Which may not be very far.\"\n\n\n Jack Dorffman burst in: \"What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem\n effective for our purposes.\"\n\n\n \"But you don't know why,\" added Melrose.\n\n\n \"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen\n works—why blame us?\" They were walking down the main corridor and out\n through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A\n baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group\n of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in\n heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a\n fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;\n one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.", "He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The\n fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.\n He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to\n talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.\n The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he\n was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in\n the tower with his thumb.\n\n\n The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the\n tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of\n place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children\n watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out\n of place....\nThen, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children\n continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent\n bursts of green fire and went dark.\n\n\n The block tower fell with a crash.", "\"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be\nsure\nof it. If Tommy's in the\n trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact\n now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands.\"\nTwo letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was\n from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,\n and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.\n Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical\n Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck\n up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he\n hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book\n approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really\n get back to work again.\n\n\n The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the\n International Psionics Conference:\n\n\n Dear Dr. Lessing:" ], [ "\"Of course,\" said Lessing. \"According to the theory. The theory says\n that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers\n their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.\n We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes\n according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was\n drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the\n balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he\n bloomed.\" Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. \"What are we going to\n do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?\"\n\n\n \"Of course not,\" said Dorffman. \"The instruments were wrong. Somehow we\n misread the data—\"", "Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the\n children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little\n smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. \"Perhaps you're beginning\n to see what I'm driving at,\" he said slowly.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" said Melrose. \"I think I'm beginning to see.\" He scratched his\n jaw. \"You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's\n potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a\n sort of colossal candle-snuffer.\"\n\n\n \"That's what I think,\" said Lessing.\n\n\n \"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?\"\n\n\n Lessing blinked. \"Why should they?\"\n\n\n \"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down.\"\n\n\n \"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall\n down.\"", "\"I—can't get it—off,\" the boy said.\nThe monitor\n, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone\n horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the\n trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He\n knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's\n mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he\n had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent\n physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and\n repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors\n of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A\n healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But\n this youngster was sick—\n\n\n And yet\nan animal instinctively seeks its own protection\n. With\n trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the\n monitor. \"Take it off, Tommy,\" he whispered.", "Lessing glared at him. \"When we began studying this psi-potential, we\n found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely\n more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.\n Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We\n don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually\n withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and\n farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper\n and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any\n more.\" Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. \"That's why we\n have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential\n underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get\n at it any more?\"\n\n\n \"And you think you have an answer,\" said Melrose.\n\n\n \"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains\n the available data.\"", "\"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,\n had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on\n the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at\n thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate\n somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale.\"\n Lessing smiled. \"This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for\n any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to\n place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our\n workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't\n right. It wasn't the instruments, of course.\"\n\n\n Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. \"Now, I\n want you to watch this very closely.\"", "\"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be\nsure\nof it. If Tommy's in the\n trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact\n now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands.\"\nTwo letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was\n from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,\n and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.\n Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical\n Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck\n up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he\n hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book\n approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really\n get back to work again.\n\n\n The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the\n International Psionics Conference:\n\n\n Dear Dr. Lessing:", "The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.\n Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through\n the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a\n long, low building.\n\n\n \"All right, young man—come along,\" said Lessing. \"I think we can show\n you our answer.\"\nIn the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic\n monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a\n hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the\n substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.\n\n\n \"The major problem,\" Lessing said, \"has been to shield the children\n from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose\n them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The\n monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen.\"\n\n\n \"It blocks off all types of psi activity?\" asked Melrose.", "\"I know, I know.\" Lessing chewed his lip. \"I don't like it. We'd better\n set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid\n you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to\n deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole\n Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.\n I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up.\" Lessing\n ran a hand through sparse grey hair. \"See what you can do for the boy\n downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Full psi precautions?\" asked Dorffman.", "\"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?\"\n\n\n \"No. Oh, no!\"\n\n\n \"Then what?\"\n\n\n Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none\n came. Finally he said, \"If I could only take this off—\" He fingered\n the grey plastic helmet.\n\n\n \"You think\nthat\nwould make you feel better?\"\n\n\n \"It would, I know it would.\"\n\n\n Lessing shook his head. \"I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the\n monitor is for, don't you?\"\n\n\n \"It stops things from going out.\"\n\n\n \"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.\n You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,\n away from the Farm.\"", "In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic\n behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle\n speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in\n discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—\n\n\n They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the\n scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His\n earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the\n book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. \"A\n Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development.\" A good\n title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.\n And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a\n guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and\n baffling new science.", "There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,\n with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal\n eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward\n grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute\n appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and\n blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.\n\n\n The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.\n\n\n Lessing sat back slowly. \"Tell me about it, Tommy,\" he said gently.\n\n\n \"I don't want to go back to the Farm,\" said the boy.\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"I just don't. I hate it there.\"\n\n\n \"Are you frightened?\"\n\n\n The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.", "They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.\n \"Some of our children are here only briefly,\" Lessing explained as\n they walked along, \"and some have been here for years. We maintain a\n top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't\n so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center\n funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from\n broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they\n stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as\n psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We\n are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions\n where they can develope what potential they have—\nwithout\nthe\n presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject\n to. The results have been remarkable.\"", "\"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every\n human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not\n just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating\n quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a\n crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality.\"\n\n\n \"Fine,\" said Melrose. \"Great. We can't\nprove\nthat, of course, but\n I'll play along.\"", "He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing\n a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the\n grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing\n in a large room.\n\n\n \"They're perfectly insulated from us,\" said Lessing. \"A variety of\n recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,\n they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any\n engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what\n makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like\n that one, for instance—\"", "\"As far as we can measure, yes.\"\n\n\n \"Which may not be very far.\"\n\n\n Jack Dorffman burst in: \"What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem\n effective for our purposes.\"\n\n\n \"But you don't know why,\" added Melrose.\n\n\n \"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen\n works—why blame us?\" They were walking down the main corridor and out\n through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A\n baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group\n of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in\n heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a\n fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;\n one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.", "The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.\n Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the\n boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill\n of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A\n sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear\n faded from the boy's face.\n\n\n The fire engine clattered to the floor.\nThey analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest\n care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and\n classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night\n when they had the report back in their hands.\n\n\n Dorffman stared at it angrily. \"It's obviously wrong,\" he grated. \"It\n doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with\nanything\nwe've observed\n before. There must be an error.\"", "\"This kid is driving me nuts,\" said Dorffman through clenched teeth.\n \"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him\n for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's\n leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but\n tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period.\"\n\n\n \"So you bring him down here,\" said Lessing sourly. \"The worst place he\n could be, if something's really wrong.\" He looked across at the boy.\n \"Tommy? Come over and sit down.\"", "\"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns,\" said Melrose\n slowly, \"you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us\n professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold.\" The\n tall man turned on him fiercely. \"Are you blind, man? Can't you see\n what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become\n an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could\n possibly happen would be—\nthe appearance of an Authority\n.\"\nLessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.\n At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape\n recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had\n gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to\n see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man\n firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.", "\"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of\n 'Theory',\" Melrose said. \"I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in\n Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental\n controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want\n to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an\n Authority about.\" There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.\n\n\n \"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,\"\n snapped Lessing.\n\n\n The other man grinned. \"Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,\n but you didn't seem to get the idea.\"\n\n\n \"Last year was different.\" Lessing scowled. \"As for our 'fairy tale',\n we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's\n true.\"", "The boy fought back tears. \"But I don't want to go back there—\" The\n fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. \"I don't feel good there. I\n never want to go back.\"\n\n\n \"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while.\" Lessing nodded at\n Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. \"You say this has\n been going on for\nthree weeks\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so\n much of that up there.\"" ], [ "\"This kid is driving me nuts,\" said Dorffman through clenched teeth.\n \"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him\n for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's\n leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but\n tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period.\"\n\n\n \"So you bring him down here,\" said Lessing sourly. \"The worst place he\n could be, if something's really wrong.\" He looked across at the boy.\n \"Tommy? Come over and sit down.\"", "There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,\n with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal\n eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward\n grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute\n appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and\n blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.\n\n\n The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.\n\n\n Lessing sat back slowly. \"Tell me about it, Tommy,\" he said gently.\n\n\n \"I don't want to go back to the Farm,\" said the boy.\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"I just don't. I hate it there.\"\n\n\n \"Are you frightened?\"\n\n\n The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.", "\"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?\"\n\n\n \"No. Oh, no!\"\n\n\n \"Then what?\"\n\n\n Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none\n came. Finally he said, \"If I could only take this off—\" He fingered\n the grey plastic helmet.\n\n\n \"You think\nthat\nwould make you feel better?\"\n\n\n \"It would, I know it would.\"\n\n\n Lessing shook his head. \"I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the\n monitor is for, don't you?\"\n\n\n \"It stops things from going out.\"\n\n\n \"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.\n You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,\n away from the Farm.\"", "\"Do you know who I am?\"\n\n\n Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. \"Go away.\"\n\n\n \"Why are you afraid, Tommy?\"\n\n\n \"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away.\"\n\n\n \"Why do you hurt?\"", "The boy fought back tears. \"But I don't want to go back there—\" The\n fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. \"I don't feel good there. I\n never want to go back.\"\n\n\n \"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while.\" Lessing nodded at\n Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. \"You say this has\n been going on for\nthree weeks\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so\n much of that up there.\"", "\"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the\n Farm.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I know.\" Lessing's voice was weary. \"But first I think we'd\n better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—\"\n\n\n A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. \"We called\n you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—\" She broke off\n helplessly. \"He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined.\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it.\"\n She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large\n children's playroom. \"See what you think.\"", "\"Of course,\" said Lessing. \"According to the theory. The theory says\n that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers\n their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.\n We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes\n according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was\n drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the\n balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he\n bloomed.\" Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. \"What are we going to\n do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?\"\n\n\n \"Of course not,\" said Dorffman. \"The instruments were wrong. Somehow we\n misread the data—\"", "The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they\n came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his\n pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,\n gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.\n\n\n Lessing crossed the room swiftly. \"Tommy,\" he said.\n\n\n The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.\n\n\n \"Tommy!\" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,\n clutching it to his chest. \"Go away,\" he choked. \"Go away, go away—\"\n When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on\n the hand.\n\n\n Lessing sat down on the table. \"Tommy, listen to me.\" His voice was\n gentle. \"I won't try to take it again. I promise.\"\n\n\n \"Go away.\"", "\"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be\nsure\nof it. If Tommy's in the\n trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact\n now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands.\"\nTwo letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was\n from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,\n and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.\n Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical\n Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck\n up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he\n hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book\n approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really\n get back to work again.\n\n\n The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the\n International Psionics Conference:\n\n\n Dear Dr. Lessing:", "\"Bother lunch.\" He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. \"We've got a guest\n here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us....\"\nTen minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels\n and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the\n Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the\n rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in\n the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing\n briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the\n long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less\n than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed\n north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.\n\n\n \"What about Tommy?\" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along\n through the afternoon sun.\n\n\n \"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating.\"", "\"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got\n us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong.\"\n Melrose grinned unpleasantly. \"We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We\n just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is.\"\n\n\n Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. \"Have you got the\n day to take a trip?\"\n\n\n \"I've got 'til New Year.\"\n\n\n Lessing shouted for his girl. \"Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the\n Farm this afternoon.\"\n\n\n The girl nodded, then hesitated. \"But what about your lunch?\"", "Lessing glared at him. \"When we began studying this psi-potential, we\n found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely\n more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.\n Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We\n don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually\n withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and\n farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper\n and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any\n more.\" Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. \"That's why we\n have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential\n underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get\n at it any more?\"\n\n\n \"And you think you have an answer,\" said Melrose.\n\n\n \"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains\n the available data.\"", "\"I—can't get it—off,\" the boy said.\nThe monitor\n, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone\n horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the\n trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He\n knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's\n mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he\n had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent\n physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and\n repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors\n of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A\n healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But\n this youngster was sick—\n\n\n And yet\nan animal instinctively seeks its own protection\n. With\n trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the\n monitor. \"Take it off, Tommy,\" he whispered.", "\"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of\n 'Theory',\" Melrose said. \"I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in\n Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental\n controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want\n to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an\n Authority about.\" There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.\n\n\n \"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,\"\n snapped Lessing.\n\n\n The other man grinned. \"Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,\n but you didn't seem to get the idea.\"\n\n\n \"Last year was different.\" Lessing scowled. \"As for our 'fairy tale',\n we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's\n true.\"", "\"I know, I know.\" Lessing chewed his lip. \"I don't like it. We'd better\n set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid\n you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to\n deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole\n Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.\n I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up.\" Lessing\n ran a hand through sparse grey hair. \"See what you can do for the boy\n downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Full psi precautions?\" asked Dorffman.", "The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.\n Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through\n the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a\n long, low building.\n\n\n \"All right, young man—come along,\" said Lessing. \"I think we can show\n you our answer.\"\nIn the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic\n monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a\n hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the\n substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.\n\n\n \"The major problem,\" Lessing said, \"has been to shield the children\n from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose\n them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The\n monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen.\"\n\n\n \"It blocks off all types of psi activity?\" asked Melrose.", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThere was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;\nHe jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.\nAnd when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main\nHe jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.\nMOTHER GOOSE\nDr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office\n when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as\n though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his\n eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing\n glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk\n with a sigh. \"All right, Jack—what's wrong?\"", "\"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,\n had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on\n the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at\n thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate\n somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale.\"\n Lessing smiled. \"This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for\n any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to\n place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our\n workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't\n right. It wasn't the instruments, of course.\"\n\n\n Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. \"Now, I\n want you to watch this very closely.\"", "\"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns,\" said Melrose\n slowly, \"you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us\n professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold.\" The\n tall man turned on him fiercely. \"Are you blind, man? Can't you see\n what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become\n an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could\n possibly happen would be—\nthe appearance of an Authority\n.\"\nLessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.\n At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape\n recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had\n gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to\n see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man\n firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.", "\"Didn't you see his\nface\n?\" Lessing burst out. \"Didn't you see how he\nacted\n? What do you want with an instrument reading?\" He shook his\n head. \"It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something\n we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow\n for.\"\n\n\n They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: \"What are you going\n to do?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Lessing. \"Maybe when we fell into this bramble\n bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything\n up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed\n the path altogether.\"\n\n\n \"But the book is due! The Conference speech—\"" ], [ "They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.\n \"Some of our children are here only briefly,\" Lessing explained as\n they walked along, \"and some have been here for years. We maintain a\n top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't\n so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center\n funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from\n broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they\n stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as\n psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We\n are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions\n where they can develope what potential they have—\nwithout\nthe\n presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject\n to. The results have been remarkable.\"", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThere was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;\nHe jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.\nAnd when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main\nHe jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.\nMOTHER GOOSE\nDr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office\n when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as\n though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his\n eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing\n glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk\n with a sigh. \"All right, Jack—what's wrong?\"", "\"This kid is driving me nuts,\" said Dorffman through clenched teeth.\n \"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him\n for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's\n leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but\n tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period.\"\n\n\n \"So you bring him down here,\" said Lessing sourly. \"The worst place he\n could be, if something's really wrong.\" He looked across at the boy.\n \"Tommy? Come over and sit down.\"", "\"Bother lunch.\" He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. \"We've got a guest\n here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us....\"\nTen minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels\n and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the\n Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the\n rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in\n the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing\n briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the\n long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less\n than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed\n north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.\n\n\n \"What about Tommy?\" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along\n through the afternoon sun.\n\n\n \"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating.\"", "\"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the\n Farm.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I know.\" Lessing's voice was weary. \"But first I think we'd\n better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—\"\n\n\n A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. \"We called\n you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—\" She broke off\n helplessly. \"He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined.\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it.\"\n She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large\n children's playroom. \"See what you think.\"", "The boy fought back tears. \"But I don't want to go back there—\" The\n fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. \"I don't feel good there. I\n never want to go back.\"\n\n\n \"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while.\" Lessing nodded at\n Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. \"You say this has\n been going on for\nthree weeks\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so\n much of that up there.\"", "\"As far as we can measure, yes.\"\n\n\n \"Which may not be very far.\"\n\n\n Jack Dorffman burst in: \"What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem\n effective for our purposes.\"\n\n\n \"But you don't know why,\" added Melrose.\n\n\n \"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen\n works—why blame us?\" They were walking down the main corridor and out\n through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A\n baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group\n of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in\n heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a\n fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;\n one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.", "\"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be\nsure\nof it. If Tommy's in the\n trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact\n now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands.\"\nTwo letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was\n from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,\n and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.\n Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical\n Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck\n up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he\n hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book\n approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really\n get back to work again.\n\n\n The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the\n International Psionics Conference:\n\n\n Dear Dr. Lessing:", "\"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?\"\n\n\n \"No. Oh, no!\"\n\n\n \"Then what?\"\n\n\n Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none\n came. Finally he said, \"If I could only take this off—\" He fingered\n the grey plastic helmet.\n\n\n \"You think\nthat\nwould make you feel better?\"\n\n\n \"It would, I know it would.\"\n\n\n Lessing shook his head. \"I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the\n monitor is for, don't you?\"\n\n\n \"It stops things from going out.\"\n\n\n \"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.\n You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,\n away from the Farm.\"", "\"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns,\" said Melrose\n slowly, \"you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us\n professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold.\" The\n tall man turned on him fiercely. \"Are you blind, man? Can't you see\n what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become\n an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could\n possibly happen would be—\nthe appearance of an Authority\n.\"\nLessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.\n At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape\n recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had\n gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to\n see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man\n firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.", "\"I know, I know.\" Lessing chewed his lip. \"I don't like it. We'd better\n set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid\n you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to\n deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole\n Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.\n I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up.\" Lessing\n ran a hand through sparse grey hair. \"See what you can do for the boy\n downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Full psi precautions?\" asked Dorffman.", "At his elbow the intercom buzzed. \"A gentleman to see you,\" the girl\n said. \"A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir.\"\n\n\n He shut off the scanner and said, \"Send him in, please.\"\nDr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark\n mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered\n Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about\n the office in awe.\n\n\n \"I'm really overwhelmed,\" he said after a moment. \"Within the\n stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the\n Master in the trembling flesh!\"\n\n\n Lessing frowned. \"Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—\"", "Lessing ground his teeth. \"I should be running him now instead of\n beating the bushes with this—\" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.\n\n\n Melrose grinned. \"I've heard you have quite a place up here.\"\n\n\n \"It's—unconventional, at any rate,\" Lessing snapped.\n\n\n \"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day\n school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even\n used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here.\"\n\n\n \"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying\n to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, you're sure you were measuring\nsomething\n.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes. We certainly were.\"\n\n\n \"Yet you said that you didn't know what.\"", "He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing\n a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the\n grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing\n in a large room.\n\n\n \"They're perfectly insulated from us,\" said Lessing. \"A variety of\n recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,\n they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any\n engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what\n makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like\n that one, for instance—\"", "The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.\n Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through\n the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a\n long, low building.\n\n\n \"All right, young man—come along,\" said Lessing. \"I think we can show\n you our answer.\"\nIn the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic\n monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a\n hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the\n substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.\n\n\n \"The major problem,\" Lessing said, \"has been to shield the children\n from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose\n them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The\n monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen.\"\n\n\n \"It blocks off all types of psi activity?\" asked Melrose.", "He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The\n fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.\n He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to\n talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.\n The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he\n was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in\n the tower with his thumb.\n\n\n The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the\n tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of\n place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children\n watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out\n of place....\nThen, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children\n continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent\n bursts of green fire and went dark.\n\n\n The block tower fell with a crash.", "The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they\n came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his\n pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,\n gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.\n\n\n Lessing crossed the room swiftly. \"Tommy,\" he said.\n\n\n The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.\n\n\n \"Tommy!\" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,\n clutching it to his chest. \"Go away,\" he choked. \"Go away, go away—\"\n When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on\n the hand.\n\n\n Lessing sat down on the table. \"Tommy, listen to me.\" His voice was\n gentle. \"I won't try to take it again. I promise.\"\n\n\n \"Go away.\"", "There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,\n with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal\n eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward\n grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute\n appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and\n blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.\n\n\n The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.\n\n\n Lessing sat back slowly. \"Tell me about it, Tommy,\" he said gently.\n\n\n \"I don't want to go back to the Farm,\" said the boy.\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"I just don't. I hate it there.\"\n\n\n \"Are you frightened?\"\n\n\n The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.", "In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green\n fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which\n penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,\n nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.\n Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of\n activity.\n\n\n \"What are they doing?\" Melrose asked after watching the children a few\n moments.", "\"Of course,\" said Lessing. \"According to the theory. The theory says\n that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers\n their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.\n We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes\n according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was\n drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the\n balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he\n bloomed.\" Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. \"What are we going to\n do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?\"\n\n\n \"Of course not,\" said Dorffman. \"The instruments were wrong. Somehow we\n misread the data—\"" ], [ "\"This kid is driving me nuts,\" said Dorffman through clenched teeth.\n \"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him\n for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's\n leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but\n tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period.\"\n\n\n \"So you bring him down here,\" said Lessing sourly. \"The worst place he\n could be, if something's really wrong.\" He looked across at the boy.\n \"Tommy? Come over and sit down.\"", "\"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got\n us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong.\"\n Melrose grinned unpleasantly. \"We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We\n just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is.\"\n\n\n Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. \"Have you got the\n day to take a trip?\"\n\n\n \"I've got 'til New Year.\"\n\n\n Lessing shouted for his girl. \"Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the\n Farm this afternoon.\"\n\n\n The girl nodded, then hesitated. \"But what about your lunch?\"", "\"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the\n Farm.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I know.\" Lessing's voice was weary. \"But first I think we'd\n better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—\"\n\n\n A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. \"We called\n you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—\" She broke off\n helplessly. \"He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined.\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it.\"\n She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large\n children's playroom. \"See what you think.\"", "\"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?\"\n\n\n \"No. Oh, no!\"\n\n\n \"Then what?\"\n\n\n Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none\n came. Finally he said, \"If I could only take this off—\" He fingered\n the grey plastic helmet.\n\n\n \"You think\nthat\nwould make you feel better?\"\n\n\n \"It would, I know it would.\"\n\n\n Lessing shook his head. \"I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the\n monitor is for, don't you?\"\n\n\n \"It stops things from going out.\"\n\n\n \"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.\n You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,\n away from the Farm.\"", "There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,\n with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal\n eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward\n grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute\n appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and\n blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.\n\n\n The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.\n\n\n Lessing sat back slowly. \"Tell me about it, Tommy,\" he said gently.\n\n\n \"I don't want to go back to the Farm,\" said the boy.\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"I just don't. I hate it there.\"\n\n\n \"Are you frightened?\"\n\n\n The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.", "The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.\n Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through\n the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a\n long, low building.\n\n\n \"All right, young man—come along,\" said Lessing. \"I think we can show\n you our answer.\"\nIn the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic\n monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a\n hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the\n substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.\n\n\n \"The major problem,\" Lessing said, \"has been to shield the children\n from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose\n them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The\n monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen.\"\n\n\n \"It blocks off all types of psi activity?\" asked Melrose.", "\"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of\n 'Theory',\" Melrose said. \"I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in\n Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental\n controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want\n to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an\n Authority about.\" There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.\n\n\n \"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,\"\n snapped Lessing.\n\n\n The other man grinned. \"Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,\n but you didn't seem to get the idea.\"\n\n\n \"Last year was different.\" Lessing scowled. \"As for our 'fairy tale',\n we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's\n true.\"", "Lessing glared at him. \"When we began studying this psi-potential, we\n found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely\n more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.\n Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We\n don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually\n withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and\n farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper\n and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any\n more.\" Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. \"That's why we\n have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential\n underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get\n at it any more?\"\n\n\n \"And you think you have an answer,\" said Melrose.\n\n\n \"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains\n the available data.\"", "\"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,\n had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on\n the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at\n thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate\n somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale.\"\n Lessing smiled. \"This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for\n any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to\n place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our\n workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't\n right. It wasn't the instruments, of course.\"\n\n\n Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. \"Now, I\n want you to watch this very closely.\"", "The boy fought back tears. \"But I don't want to go back there—\" The\n fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. \"I don't feel good there. I\n never want to go back.\"\n\n\n \"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while.\" Lessing nodded at\n Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. \"You say this has\n been going on for\nthree weeks\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so\n much of that up there.\"", "\"Of course,\" said Lessing. \"According to the theory. The theory says\n that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers\n their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.\n We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes\n according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was\n drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the\n balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he\n bloomed.\" Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. \"What are we going to\n do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?\"\n\n\n \"Of course not,\" said Dorffman. \"The instruments were wrong. Somehow we\n misread the data—\"", "They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.\n \"Some of our children are here only briefly,\" Lessing explained as\n they walked along, \"and some have been here for years. We maintain a\n top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't\n so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center\n funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from\n broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they\n stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as\n psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We\n are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions\n where they can develope what potential they have—\nwithout\nthe\n presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject\n to. The results have been remarkable.\"", "Lessing ground his teeth. \"I should be running him now instead of\n beating the bushes with this—\" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.\n\n\n Melrose grinned. \"I've heard you have quite a place up here.\"\n\n\n \"It's—unconventional, at any rate,\" Lessing snapped.\n\n\n \"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day\n school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even\n used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here.\"\n\n\n \"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying\n to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, you're sure you were measuring\nsomething\n.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes. We certainly were.\"\n\n\n \"Yet you said that you didn't know what.\"", "\"I know, I know.\" Lessing chewed his lip. \"I don't like it. We'd better\n set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid\n you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to\n deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole\n Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.\n I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up.\" Lessing\n ran a hand through sparse grey hair. \"See what you can do for the boy\n downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Full psi precautions?\" asked Dorffman.", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThere was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;\nHe jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.\nAnd when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main\nHe jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.\nMOTHER GOOSE\nDr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office\n when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as\n though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his\n eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing\n glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk\n with a sigh. \"All right, Jack—what's wrong?\"", "\"I—can't get it—off,\" the boy said.\nThe monitor\n, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone\n horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the\n trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He\n knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's\n mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he\n had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent\n physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and\n repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors\n of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A\n healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But\n this youngster was sick—\n\n\n And yet\nan animal instinctively seeks its own protection\n. With\n trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the\n monitor. \"Take it off, Tommy,\" he whispered.", "\"Bother lunch.\" He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. \"We've got a guest\n here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us....\"\nTen minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels\n and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the\n Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the\n rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in\n the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing\n briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the\n long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less\n than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed\n north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.\n\n\n \"What about Tommy?\" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along\n through the afternoon sun.\n\n\n \"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating.\"", "He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing\n a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the\n grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing\n in a large room.\n\n\n \"They're perfectly insulated from us,\" said Lessing. \"A variety of\n recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,\n they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any\n engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what\n makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like\n that one, for instance—\"", "\"As far as we can measure, yes.\"\n\n\n \"Which may not be very far.\"\n\n\n Jack Dorffman burst in: \"What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem\n effective for our purposes.\"\n\n\n \"But you don't know why,\" added Melrose.\n\n\n \"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen\n works—why blame us?\" They were walking down the main corridor and out\n through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A\n baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group\n of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in\n heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a\n fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;\n one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.", "\"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be\nsure\nof it. If Tommy's in the\n trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact\n now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands.\"\nTwo letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was\n from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,\n and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.\n Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical\n Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck\n up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he\n hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book\n approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really\n get back to work again.\n\n\n The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the\n International Psionics Conference:\n\n\n Dear Dr. Lessing:" ], [ "In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic\n behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle\n speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in\n discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—\n\n\n They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the\n scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His\n earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the\n book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. \"A\n Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development.\" A good\n title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.\n And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a\n guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and\n baffling new science.", "\"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed,\" the young man said airily. \"Of\n course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before\n a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!\"\n He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. \"I bow before the\n Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!\"\n\n\n \"If you've come here to be insulting,\" Lessing said coldly, \"you're\n just wasting time.\" He reached for the intercom switch.\n\n\n \"I think you'd better wait before you do that,\" Melrose said sharply,\n \"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month\n unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you\n don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping.\"\n\n\n Lessing sat back slowly. \"Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?\"", "\"I know, I know.\" Lessing chewed his lip. \"I don't like it. We'd better\n set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid\n you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to\n deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole\n Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.\n I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up.\" Lessing\n ran a hand through sparse grey hair. \"See what you can do for the boy\n downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Full psi precautions?\" asked Dorffman.", "\"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be\nsure\nof it. If Tommy's in the\n trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact\n now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands.\"\nTwo letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was\n from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,\n and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.\n Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical\n Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck\n up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he\n hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book\n approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really\n get back to work again.\n\n\n The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the\n International Psionics Conference:\n\n\n Dear Dr. Lessing:", "\"Didn't you see his\nface\n?\" Lessing burst out. \"Didn't you see how he\nacted\n? What do you want with an instrument reading?\" He shook his\n head. \"It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something\n we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow\n for.\"\n\n\n They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: \"What are you going\n to do?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Lessing. \"Maybe when we fell into this bramble\n bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything\n up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed\n the path altogether.\"\n\n\n \"But the book is due! The Conference speech—\"", "\"This kid is driving me nuts,\" said Dorffman through clenched teeth.\n \"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him\n for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's\n leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but\n tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period.\"\n\n\n \"So you bring him down here,\" said Lessing sourly. \"The worst place he\n could be, if something's really wrong.\" He looked across at the boy.\n \"Tommy? Come over and sit down.\"", "\"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of\n 'Theory',\" Melrose said. \"I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in\n Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental\n controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want\n to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an\n Authority about.\" There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.\n\n\n \"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,\"\n snapped Lessing.\n\n\n The other man grinned. \"Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,\n but you didn't seem to get the idea.\"\n\n\n \"Last year was different.\" Lessing scowled. \"As for our 'fairy tale',\n we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's\n true.\"", "\"Bother lunch.\" He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. \"We've got a guest\n here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us....\"\nTen minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels\n and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the\n Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the\n rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in\n the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing\n briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the\n long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less\n than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed\n north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.\n\n\n \"What about Tommy?\" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along\n through the afternoon sun.\n\n\n \"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating.\"", "They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.\n \"Some of our children are here only briefly,\" Lessing explained as\n they walked along, \"and some have been here for years. We maintain a\n top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't\n so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center\n funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from\n broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they\n stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as\n psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We\n are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions\n where they can develope what potential they have—\nwithout\nthe\n presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject\n to. The results have been remarkable.\"", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThere was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;\nHe jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.\nAnd when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main\nHe jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.\nMOTHER GOOSE\nDr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office\n when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as\n though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his\n eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing\n glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk\n with a sigh. \"All right, Jack—what's wrong?\"", "Lessing ground his teeth. \"I should be running him now instead of\n beating the bushes with this—\" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.\n\n\n Melrose grinned. \"I've heard you have quite a place up here.\"\n\n\n \"It's—unconventional, at any rate,\" Lessing snapped.\n\n\n \"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day\n school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even\n used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here.\"\n\n\n \"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying\n to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, you're sure you were measuring\nsomething\n.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes. We certainly were.\"\n\n\n \"Yet you said that you didn't know what.\"", "The boy fought back tears. \"But I don't want to go back there—\" The\n fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. \"I don't feel good there. I\n never want to go back.\"\n\n\n \"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while.\" Lessing nodded at\n Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. \"You say this has\n been going on for\nthree weeks\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so\n much of that up there.\"", "\"As far as we can measure, yes.\"\n\n\n \"Which may not be very far.\"\n\n\n Jack Dorffman burst in: \"What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem\n effective for our purposes.\"\n\n\n \"But you don't know why,\" added Melrose.\n\n\n \"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen\n works—why blame us?\" They were walking down the main corridor and out\n through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A\n baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group\n of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in\n heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a\n fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;\n one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.", "At his elbow the intercom buzzed. \"A gentleman to see you,\" the girl\n said. \"A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir.\"\n\n\n He shut off the scanner and said, \"Send him in, please.\"\nDr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark\n mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered\n Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about\n the office in awe.\n\n\n \"I'm really overwhelmed,\" he said after a moment. \"Within the\n stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the\n Master in the trembling flesh!\"\n\n\n Lessing frowned. \"Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—\"", "He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing\n a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the\n grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing\n in a large room.\n\n\n \"They're perfectly insulated from us,\" said Lessing. \"A variety of\n recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,\n they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any\n engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what\n makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like\n that one, for instance—\"", "\"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got\n us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong.\"\n Melrose grinned unpleasantly. \"We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We\n just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is.\"\n\n\n Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. \"Have you got the\n day to take a trip?\"\n\n\n \"I've got 'til New Year.\"\n\n\n Lessing shouted for his girl. \"Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the\n Farm this afternoon.\"\n\n\n The girl nodded, then hesitated. \"But what about your lunch?\"", "He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The\n fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.\n He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to\n talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.\n The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he\n was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in\n the tower with his thumb.\n\n\n The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the\n tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of\n place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children\n watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out\n of place....\nThen, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children\n continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent\n bursts of green fire and went dark.\n\n\n The block tower fell with a crash.", "\"I think we'll make some changes in the book,\" Lessing said slowly.\n \"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical\n presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.\n But a few revisions could change all that—\" He rubbed his hands\n together thoughtfully. \"How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to\n be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making\n silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be\n laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for\n a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's\nreally\nsniffing out\n the trail will get somebody to listen to him!\n\n\n \"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I\n think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade\n that puppy out there to come here and work for me—\"", "Melrose paced down the narrow room. \"This is very good,\" he said\n suddenly, his voice earnest. \"You have fine facilities here, good\n workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never\n imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a\n careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect\n faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told\n me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What\n would you say to that?\"\n\n\n \"I'd say you were wrong,\" said Lessing. \"You couldn't have such data.\n According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is\n sheer nonsense.\"\n\n\n \"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?\"\n\n\n \"I would.\"", "\"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the\n Farm.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I know.\" Lessing's voice was weary. \"But first I think we'd\n better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—\"\n\n\n A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. \"We called\n you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—\" She broke off\n helplessly. \"He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined.\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it.\"\n She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large\n children's playroom. \"See what you think.\"" ], [ "\"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?\"\n\n\n \"No. Oh, no!\"\n\n\n \"Then what?\"\n\n\n Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none\n came. Finally he said, \"If I could only take this off—\" He fingered\n the grey plastic helmet.\n\n\n \"You think\nthat\nwould make you feel better?\"\n\n\n \"It would, I know it would.\"\n\n\n Lessing shook his head. \"I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the\n monitor is for, don't you?\"\n\n\n \"It stops things from going out.\"\n\n\n \"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.\n You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,\n away from the Farm.\"", "The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.\n Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the\n boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill\n of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A\n sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear\n faded from the boy's face.\n\n\n The fire engine clattered to the floor.\nThey analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest\n care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and\n classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night\n when they had the report back in their hands.\n\n\n Dorffman stared at it angrily. \"It's obviously wrong,\" he grated. \"It\n doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with\nanything\nwe've observed\n before. There must be an error.\"", "He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing\n a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the\n grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing\n in a large room.\n\n\n \"They're perfectly insulated from us,\" said Lessing. \"A variety of\n recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,\n they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any\n engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what\n makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like\n that one, for instance—\"", "\"As far as we can measure, yes.\"\n\n\n \"Which may not be very far.\"\n\n\n Jack Dorffman burst in: \"What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem\n effective for our purposes.\"\n\n\n \"But you don't know why,\" added Melrose.\n\n\n \"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen\n works—why blame us?\" They were walking down the main corridor and out\n through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A\n baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group\n of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in\n heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a\n fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;\n one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.", "The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they\n came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his\n pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,\n gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.\n\n\n Lessing crossed the room swiftly. \"Tommy,\" he said.\n\n\n The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.\n\n\n \"Tommy!\" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,\n clutching it to his chest. \"Go away,\" he choked. \"Go away, go away—\"\n When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on\n the hand.\n\n\n Lessing sat down on the table. \"Tommy, listen to me.\" His voice was\n gentle. \"I won't try to take it again. I promise.\"\n\n\n \"Go away.\"", "\"I know, I know.\" Lessing chewed his lip. \"I don't like it. We'd better\n set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid\n you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to\n deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole\n Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.\n I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up.\" Lessing\n ran a hand through sparse grey hair. \"See what you can do for the boy\n downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Full psi precautions?\" asked Dorffman.", "There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,\n with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal\n eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward\n grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute\n appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and\n blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.\n\n\n The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.\n\n\n Lessing sat back slowly. \"Tell me about it, Tommy,\" he said gently.\n\n\n \"I don't want to go back to the Farm,\" said the boy.\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"I just don't. I hate it there.\"\n\n\n \"Are you frightened?\"\n\n\n The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.", "\"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got\n us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong.\"\n Melrose grinned unpleasantly. \"We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We\n just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is.\"\n\n\n Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. \"Have you got the\n day to take a trip?\"\n\n\n \"I've got 'til New Year.\"\n\n\n Lessing shouted for his girl. \"Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the\n Farm this afternoon.\"\n\n\n The girl nodded, then hesitated. \"But what about your lunch?\"", "He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The\n fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.\n He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to\n talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.\n The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he\n was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in\n the tower with his thumb.\n\n\n The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the\n tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of\n place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children\n watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out\n of place....\nThen, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children\n continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent\n bursts of green fire and went dark.\n\n\n The block tower fell with a crash.", "\"We're not digging any pit,\" Lessing exploded angrily. \"We're\n exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way\n or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by\n the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that\n it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How\n can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't\n work in the dark forever—we've\ngot\nto have a working hypothesis to\n guide us.\"\n\n\n \"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea,\" said Melrose sourly.", "\"This kid is driving me nuts,\" said Dorffman through clenched teeth.\n \"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him\n for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's\n leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but\n tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period.\"\n\n\n \"So you bring him down here,\" said Lessing sourly. \"The worst place he\n could be, if something's really wrong.\" He looked across at the boy.\n \"Tommy? Come over and sit down.\"", "\"Didn't you see his\nface\n?\" Lessing burst out. \"Didn't you see how he\nacted\n? What do you want with an instrument reading?\" He shook his\n head. \"It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something\n we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow\n for.\"\n\n\n They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: \"What are you going\n to do?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Lessing. \"Maybe when we fell into this bramble\n bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything\n up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed\n the path altogether.\"\n\n\n \"But the book is due! The Conference speech—\"", "The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.\n Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through\n the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a\n long, low building.\n\n\n \"All right, young man—come along,\" said Lessing. \"I think we can show\n you our answer.\"\nIn the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic\n monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a\n hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the\n substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.\n\n\n \"The major problem,\" Lessing said, \"has been to shield the children\n from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose\n them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The\n monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen.\"\n\n\n \"It blocks off all types of psi activity?\" asked Melrose.", "Lessing ground his teeth. \"I should be running him now instead of\n beating the bushes with this—\" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.\n\n\n Melrose grinned. \"I've heard you have quite a place up here.\"\n\n\n \"It's—unconventional, at any rate,\" Lessing snapped.\n\n\n \"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day\n school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even\n used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here.\"\n\n\n \"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying\n to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, you're sure you were measuring\nsomething\n.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes. We certainly were.\"\n\n\n \"Yet you said that you didn't know what.\"", "In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green\n fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which\n penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,\n nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.\n Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of\n activity.\n\n\n \"What are they doing?\" Melrose asked after watching the children a few\n moments.", "For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize\n that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,\n with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had\n plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening\n bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and\n everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which\n made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came\n crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched\n things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never\n been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The\n old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the\n more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush\n became—\n\n\n But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a\n theory to work by—", "At his elbow the intercom buzzed. \"A gentleman to see you,\" the girl\n said. \"A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir.\"\n\n\n He shut off the scanner and said, \"Send him in, please.\"\nDr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark\n mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered\n Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about\n the office in awe.\n\n\n \"I'm really overwhelmed,\" he said after a moment. \"Within the\n stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the\n Master in the trembling flesh!\"\n\n\n Lessing frowned. \"Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—\"", "\"Do you know who I am?\"\n\n\n Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. \"Go away.\"\n\n\n \"Why are you afraid, Tommy?\"\n\n\n \"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away.\"\n\n\n \"Why do you hurt?\"", "\"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,\n had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on\n the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at\n thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate\n somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale.\"\n Lessing smiled. \"This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for\n any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to\n place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our\n workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't\n right. It wasn't the instruments, of course.\"\n\n\n Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. \"Now, I\n want you to watch this very closely.\"", "\"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the\n Farm.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I know.\" Lessing's voice was weary. \"But first I think we'd\n better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—\"\n\n\n A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. \"We called\n you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—\" She broke off\n helplessly. \"He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined.\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it.\"\n She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large\n children's playroom. \"See what you think.\"" ], [ "\"Stop worrying about it,\" Dorffman urged. \"He's a crackpot. He's\n crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to\n cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours.\" Dorffman's\n face was intense. \"Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every\n great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have\n to throw them off and keep going.\"\n\n\n Lessing shook his head. \"Maybe. But this field of work is different\n from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific\n grounds aren't right at all, in this case.\"\n\n\n Dorffman snorted. \"Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—\"\n\n\n \"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after\n the theory.\"\n\n\n \"So it seems. But why?\"", "\"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns,\" said Melrose\n slowly, \"you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us\n professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold.\" The\n tall man turned on him fiercely. \"Are you blind, man? Can't you see\n what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become\n an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could\n possibly happen would be—\nthe appearance of an Authority\n.\"\nLessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.\n At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape\n recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had\n gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to\n see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man\n firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.", "Lessing ground his teeth. \"I should be running him now instead of\n beating the bushes with this—\" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.\n\n\n Melrose grinned. \"I've heard you have quite a place up here.\"\n\n\n \"It's—unconventional, at any rate,\" Lessing snapped.\n\n\n \"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day\n school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even\n used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here.\"\n\n\n \"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying\n to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, you're sure you were measuring\nsomething\n.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes. We certainly were.\"\n\n\n \"Yet you said that you didn't know what.\"", "\"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of\n 'Theory',\" Melrose said. \"I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in\n Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental\n controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want\n to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an\n Authority about.\" There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.\n\n\n \"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,\"\n snapped Lessing.\n\n\n The other man grinned. \"Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,\n but you didn't seem to get the idea.\"\n\n\n \"Last year was different.\" Lessing scowled. \"As for our 'fairy tale',\n we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's\n true.\"", "\"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got\n us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong.\"\n Melrose grinned unpleasantly. \"We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We\n just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is.\"\n\n\n Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. \"Have you got the\n day to take a trip?\"\n\n\n \"I've got 'til New Year.\"\n\n\n Lessing shouted for his girl. \"Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the\n Farm this afternoon.\"\n\n\n The girl nodded, then hesitated. \"But what about your lunch?\"", "Melrose paced down the narrow room. \"This is very good,\" he said\n suddenly, his voice earnest. \"You have fine facilities here, good\n workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never\n imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a\n careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect\n faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told\n me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What\n would you say to that?\"\n\n\n \"I'd say you were wrong,\" said Lessing. \"You couldn't have such data.\n According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is\n sheer nonsense.\"\n\n\n \"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?\"\n\n\n \"I would.\"", "At his elbow the intercom buzzed. \"A gentleman to see you,\" the girl\n said. \"A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir.\"\n\n\n He shut off the scanner and said, \"Send him in, please.\"\nDr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark\n mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered\n Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about\n the office in awe.\n\n\n \"I'm really overwhelmed,\" he said after a moment. \"Within the\n stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the\n Master in the trembling flesh!\"\n\n\n Lessing frowned. \"Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—\"", "\"I know, I know.\" Lessing chewed his lip. \"I don't like it. We'd better\n set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid\n you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to\n deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole\n Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.\n I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up.\" Lessing\n ran a hand through sparse grey hair. \"See what you can do for the boy\n downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Full psi precautions?\" asked Dorffman.", "\"We're not digging any pit,\" Lessing exploded angrily. \"We're\n exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way\n or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by\n the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that\n it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How\n can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't\n work in the dark forever—we've\ngot\nto have a working hypothesis to\n guide us.\"\n\n\n \"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea,\" said Melrose sourly.", "\"Why not?\" Lessing growled. \"It wouldn't be the first time the tail\n wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their\n rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new\n drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took\n the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, wasn't it,\" mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. \"Only took\n them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.\n I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're\n digging for it?\"", "\"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed,\" the young man said airily. \"Of\n course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before\n a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!\"\n He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. \"I bow before the\n Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!\"\n\n\n \"If you've come here to be insulting,\" Lessing said coldly, \"you're\n just wasting time.\" He reached for the intercom switch.\n\n\n \"I think you'd better wait before you do that,\" Melrose said sharply,\n \"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month\n unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you\n don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping.\"\n\n\n Lessing sat back slowly. \"Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?\"", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThere was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;\nHe jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.\nAnd when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main\nHe jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.\nMOTHER GOOSE\nDr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office\n when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as\n though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his\n eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing\n glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk\n with a sigh. \"All right, Jack—what's wrong?\"", "Lessing glared at him. \"When we began studying this psi-potential, we\n found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely\n more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.\n Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We\n don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually\n withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and\n farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper\n and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any\n more.\" Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. \"That's why we\n have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential\n underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get\n at it any more?\"\n\n\n \"And you think you have an answer,\" said Melrose.\n\n\n \"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains\n the available data.\"", "\"This kid is driving me nuts,\" said Dorffman through clenched teeth.\n \"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him\n for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's\n leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but\n tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period.\"\n\n\n \"So you bring him down here,\" said Lessing sourly. \"The worst place he\n could be, if something's really wrong.\" He looked across at the boy.\n \"Tommy? Come over and sit down.\"", "\"Bother lunch.\" He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. \"We've got a guest\n here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us....\"\nTen minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels\n and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the\n Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the\n rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in\n the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing\n briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the\n long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less\n than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed\n north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.\n\n\n \"What about Tommy?\" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along\n through the afternoon sun.\n\n\n \"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating.\"", "\"Do you know who I am?\"\n\n\n Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. \"Go away.\"\n\n\n \"Why are you afraid, Tommy?\"\n\n\n \"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away.\"\n\n\n \"Why do you hurt?\"", "Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the\n children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little\n smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. \"Perhaps you're beginning\n to see what I'm driving at,\" he said slowly.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" said Melrose. \"I think I'm beginning to see.\" He scratched his\n jaw. \"You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's\n potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a\n sort of colossal candle-snuffer.\"\n\n\n \"That's what I think,\" said Lessing.\n\n\n \"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?\"\n\n\n Lessing blinked. \"Why should they?\"\n\n\n \"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down.\"\n\n\n \"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall\n down.\"", "\"Didn't you see his\nface\n?\" Lessing burst out. \"Didn't you see how he\nacted\n? What do you want with an instrument reading?\" He shook his\n head. \"It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something\n we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow\n for.\"\n\n\n They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: \"What are you going\n to do?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Lessing. \"Maybe when we fell into this bramble\n bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything\n up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed\n the path altogether.\"\n\n\n \"But the book is due! The Conference speech—\"", "\"I think we'll make some changes in the book,\" Lessing said slowly.\n \"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical\n presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.\n But a few revisions could change all that—\" He rubbed his hands\n together thoughtfully. \"How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to\n be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making\n silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be\n laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for\n a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's\nreally\nsniffing out\n the trail will get somebody to listen to him!\n\n\n \"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I\n think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade\n that puppy out there to come here and work for me—\"", "The boy fought back tears. \"But I don't want to go back there—\" The\n fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. \"I don't feel good there. I\n never want to go back.\"\n\n\n \"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while.\" Lessing nodded at\n Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. \"You say this has\n been going on for\nthree weeks\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so\n much of that up there.\"" ], [ "\"This kid is driving me nuts,\" said Dorffman through clenched teeth.\n \"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him\n for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's\n leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but\n tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period.\"\n\n\n \"So you bring him down here,\" said Lessing sourly. \"The worst place he\n could be, if something's really wrong.\" He looked across at the boy.\n \"Tommy? Come over and sit down.\"", "They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.\n \"Some of our children are here only briefly,\" Lessing explained as\n they walked along, \"and some have been here for years. We maintain a\n top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't\n so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center\n funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from\n broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they\n stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as\n psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We\n are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions\n where they can develope what potential they have—\nwithout\nthe\n presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject\n to. The results have been remarkable.\"", "There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,\n with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal\n eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward\n grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute\n appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and\n blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.\n\n\n The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.\n\n\n Lessing sat back slowly. \"Tell me about it, Tommy,\" he said gently.\n\n\n \"I don't want to go back to the Farm,\" said the boy.\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"I just don't. I hate it there.\"\n\n\n \"Are you frightened?\"\n\n\n The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.", "\"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,\n had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on\n the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at\n thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate\n somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale.\"\n Lessing smiled. \"This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for\n any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to\n place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our\n workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't\n right. It wasn't the instruments, of course.\"\n\n\n Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. \"Now, I\n want you to watch this very closely.\"", "\"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the\n Farm.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I know.\" Lessing's voice was weary. \"But first I think we'd\n better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—\"\n\n\n A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. \"We called\n you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—\" She broke off\n helplessly. \"He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined.\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it.\"\n She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large\n children's playroom. \"See what you think.\"", "\"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?\"\n\n\n \"No. Oh, no!\"\n\n\n \"Then what?\"\n\n\n Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none\n came. Finally he said, \"If I could only take this off—\" He fingered\n the grey plastic helmet.\n\n\n \"You think\nthat\nwould make you feel better?\"\n\n\n \"It would, I know it would.\"\n\n\n Lessing shook his head. \"I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the\n monitor is for, don't you?\"\n\n\n \"It stops things from going out.\"\n\n\n \"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.\n You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,\n away from the Farm.\"", "\"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got\n us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong.\"\n Melrose grinned unpleasantly. \"We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We\n just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is.\"\n\n\n Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. \"Have you got the\n day to take a trip?\"\n\n\n \"I've got 'til New Year.\"\n\n\n Lessing shouted for his girl. \"Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the\n Farm this afternoon.\"\n\n\n The girl nodded, then hesitated. \"But what about your lunch?\"", "Lessing glared at him. \"When we began studying this psi-potential, we\n found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely\n more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.\n Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We\n don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually\n withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and\n farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper\n and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any\n more.\" Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. \"That's why we\n have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential\n underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get\n at it any more?\"\n\n\n \"And you think you have an answer,\" said Melrose.\n\n\n \"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains\n the available data.\"", "The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.\n Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through\n the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a\n long, low building.\n\n\n \"All right, young man—come along,\" said Lessing. \"I think we can show\n you our answer.\"\nIn the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic\n monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a\n hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the\n substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.\n\n\n \"The major problem,\" Lessing said, \"has been to shield the children\n from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose\n them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The\n monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen.\"\n\n\n \"It blocks off all types of psi activity?\" asked Melrose.", "The boy fought back tears. \"But I don't want to go back there—\" The\n fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. \"I don't feel good there. I\n never want to go back.\"\n\n\n \"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while.\" Lessing nodded at\n Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. \"You say this has\n been going on for\nthree weeks\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so\n much of that up there.\"", "He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing\n a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the\n grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing\n in a large room.\n\n\n \"They're perfectly insulated from us,\" said Lessing. \"A variety of\n recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,\n they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any\n engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what\n makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like\n that one, for instance—\"", "\"Of course,\" said Lessing. \"According to the theory. The theory says\n that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers\n their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.\n We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes\n according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was\n drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the\n balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he\n bloomed.\" Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. \"What are we going to\n do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?\"\n\n\n \"Of course not,\" said Dorffman. \"The instruments were wrong. Somehow we\n misread the data—\"", "In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green\n fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which\n penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,\n nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.\n Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of\n activity.\n\n\n \"What are they doing?\" Melrose asked after watching the children a few\n moments.", "He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The\n fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.\n He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to\n talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.\n The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he\n was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in\n the tower with his thumb.\n\n\n The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the\n tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of\n place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children\n watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out\n of place....\nThen, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children\n continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent\n bursts of green fire and went dark.\n\n\n The block tower fell with a crash.", "\"I—can't get it—off,\" the boy said.\nThe monitor\n, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone\n horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the\n trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He\n knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's\n mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he\n had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent\n physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and\n repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors\n of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A\n healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But\n this youngster was sick—\n\n\n And yet\nan animal instinctively seeks its own protection\n. With\n trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the\n monitor. \"Take it off, Tommy,\" he whispered.", "\"I know, I know.\" Lessing chewed his lip. \"I don't like it. We'd better\n set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid\n you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to\n deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole\n Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.\n I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up.\" Lessing\n ran a hand through sparse grey hair. \"See what you can do for the boy\n downstairs.\"\n\n\n \"Full psi precautions?\" asked Dorffman.", "Lessing ground his teeth. \"I should be running him now instead of\n beating the bushes with this—\" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.\n\n\n Melrose grinned. \"I've heard you have quite a place up here.\"\n\n\n \"It's—unconventional, at any rate,\" Lessing snapped.\n\n\n \"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day\n school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even\n used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here.\"\n\n\n \"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying\n to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, you're sure you were measuring\nsomething\n.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes. We certainly were.\"\n\n\n \"Yet you said that you didn't know what.\"", "\"As far as we can measure, yes.\"\n\n\n \"Which may not be very far.\"\n\n\n Jack Dorffman burst in: \"What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem\n effective for our purposes.\"\n\n\n \"But you don't know why,\" added Melrose.\n\n\n \"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen\n works—why blame us?\" They were walking down the main corridor and out\n through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A\n baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group\n of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in\n heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a\n fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;\n one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.", "\"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be\nsure\nof it. If Tommy's in the\n trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact\n now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands.\"\nTwo letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was\n from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,\n and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.\n Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical\n Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck\n up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he\n hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book\n approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really\n get back to work again.\n\n\n The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the\n International Psionics Conference:\n\n\n Dear Dr. Lessing:", "\"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of\n 'Theory',\" Melrose said. \"I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in\n Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental\n controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want\n to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an\n Authority about.\" There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.\n\n\n \"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,\"\n snapped Lessing.\n\n\n The other man grinned. \"Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,\n but you didn't seem to get the idea.\"\n\n\n \"Last year was different.\" Lessing scowled. \"As for our 'fairy tale',\n we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's\n true.\"" ], [ "He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The\n fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.\n He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to\n talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.\n The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he\n was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in\n the tower with his thumb.\n\n\n The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the\n tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of\n place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children\n watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out\n of place....\nThen, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children\n continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent\n bursts of green fire and went dark.\n\n\n The block tower fell with a crash.", "Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the\n children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little\n smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. \"Perhaps you're beginning\n to see what I'm driving at,\" he said slowly.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" said Melrose. \"I think I'm beginning to see.\" He scratched his\n jaw. \"You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's\n potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a\n sort of colossal candle-snuffer.\"\n\n\n \"That's what I think,\" said Lessing.\n\n\n \"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?\"\n\n\n Lessing blinked. \"Why should they?\"\n\n\n \"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down.\"\n\n\n \"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall\n down.\"", "\"As far as we can measure, yes.\"\n\n\n \"Which may not be very far.\"\n\n\n Jack Dorffman burst in: \"What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem\n effective for our purposes.\"\n\n\n \"But you don't know why,\" added Melrose.\n\n\n \"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen\n works—why blame us?\" They were walking down the main corridor and out\n through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A\n baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group\n of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in\n heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a\n fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;\n one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.", "\"That's right,\" said Lessing. \"We don't.\"\n\n\n \"And you don't know\nwhy\nyour instruments measure whatever they're\n measuring.\" The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. \"In fact, you can't\n really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at\n all. It's not inconceivable that the\nchildren\nmight be measuring the\ninstruments\n, eh?\"\n\n\n Lessing blinked. \"It's conceivable.\"\n\n\n \"Mmmm,\" said Melrose. \"Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a\n theory on.\"", "He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing\n a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the\n grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing\n in a large room.\n\n\n \"They're perfectly insulated from us,\" said Lessing. \"A variety of\n recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,\n they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any\n engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what\n makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like\n that one, for instance—\"", "\"Didn't you see his\nface\n?\" Lessing burst out. \"Didn't you see how he\nacted\n? What do you want with an instrument reading?\" He shook his\n head. \"It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something\n we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow\n for.\"\n\n\n They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: \"What are you going\n to do?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Lessing. \"Maybe when we fell into this bramble\n bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything\n up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed\n the path altogether.\"\n\n\n \"But the book is due! The Conference speech—\"", "\"This kid is driving me nuts,\" said Dorffman through clenched teeth.\n \"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him\n for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's\n leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but\n tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period.\"\n\n\n \"So you bring him down here,\" said Lessing sourly. \"The worst place he\n could be, if something's really wrong.\" He looked across at the boy.\n \"Tommy? Come over and sit down.\"", "\"Stop worrying about it,\" Dorffman urged. \"He's a crackpot. He's\n crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to\n cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours.\" Dorffman's\n face was intense. \"Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every\n great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have\n to throw them off and keep going.\"\n\n\n Lessing shook his head. \"Maybe. But this field of work is different\n from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific\n grounds aren't right at all, in this case.\"\n\n\n Dorffman snorted. \"Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—\"\n\n\n \"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after\n the theory.\"\n\n\n \"So it seems. But why?\"", "\"Of course,\" said Lessing. \"According to the theory. The theory says\n that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers\n their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.\n We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes\n according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was\n drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the\n balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he\n bloomed.\" Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. \"What are we going to\n do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?\"\n\n\n \"Of course not,\" said Dorffman. \"The instruments were wrong. Somehow we\n misread the data—\"", "Lessing ground his teeth. \"I should be running him now instead of\n beating the bushes with this—\" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.\n\n\n Melrose grinned. \"I've heard you have quite a place up here.\"\n\n\n \"It's—unconventional, at any rate,\" Lessing snapped.\n\n\n \"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day\n school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even\n used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here.\"\n\n\n \"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying\n to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, you're sure you were measuring\nsomething\n.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, yes. We certainly were.\"\n\n\n \"Yet you said that you didn't know what.\"", "For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize\n that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,\n with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had\n plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening\n bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and\n everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which\n made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came\n crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched\n things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never\n been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The\n old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the\n more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush\n became—\n\n\n But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a\n theory to work by—", "In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green\n fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which\n penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,\n nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.\n Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of\n activity.\n\n\n \"What are they doing?\" Melrose asked after watching the children a few\n moments.", "The boy fought back tears. \"But I don't want to go back there—\" The\n fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. \"I don't feel good there. I\n never want to go back.\"\n\n\n \"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while.\" Lessing nodded at\n Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. \"You say this has\n been going on for\nthree weeks\n?\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so\n much of that up there.\"", "The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.\n Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the\n boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill\n of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A\n sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear\n faded from the boy's face.\n\n\n The fire engine clattered to the floor.\nThey analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest\n care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and\n classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night\n when they had the report back in their hands.\n\n\n Dorffman stared at it angrily. \"It's obviously wrong,\" he grated. \"It\n doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with\nanything\nwe've observed\n before. There must be an error.\"", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThere was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;\nHe jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.\nAnd when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main\nHe jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.\nMOTHER GOOSE\nDr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office\n when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as\n though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his\n eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing\n glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk\n with a sigh. \"All right, Jack—what's wrong?\"", "\"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of\n 'Theory',\" Melrose said. \"I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in\n Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental\n controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want\n to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an\n Authority about.\" There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.\n\n\n \"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,\"\n snapped Lessing.\n\n\n The other man grinned. \"Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,\n but you didn't seem to get the idea.\"\n\n\n \"Last year was different.\" Lessing scowled. \"As for our 'fairy tale',\n we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's\n true.\"", "The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they\n came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his\n pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,\n gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.\n\n\n Lessing crossed the room swiftly. \"Tommy,\" he said.\n\n\n The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.\n\n\n \"Tommy!\" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,\n clutching it to his chest. \"Go away,\" he choked. \"Go away, go away—\"\n When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on\n the hand.\n\n\n Lessing sat down on the table. \"Tommy, listen to me.\" His voice was\n gentle. \"I won't try to take it again. I promise.\"\n\n\n \"Go away.\"", "\"We're not digging any pit,\" Lessing exploded angrily. \"We're\n exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way\n or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by\n the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that\n it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How\n can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't\n work in the dark forever—we've\ngot\nto have a working hypothesis to\n guide us.\"\n\n\n \"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea,\" said Melrose sourly.", "\"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?\"\n\n\n \"He knows more about his field than anybody else does.\"\n\n\n \"He\nseems\nto, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it\n carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow\n his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then\ndefends\n them for all he's worth\n.\"\n\n\n \"But why shouldn't he?\"\n\n\n \"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep\n his objectivity,\" said Lessing. \"And what if he just happens to be\n wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's\n wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's\nwhat he says\nthat counts.\"\n\n\n \"But we\nknow\nyou're right,\" Dorffman protested.\n\n\n \"Do we?\"", "\"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the\n Farm.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, I know.\" Lessing's voice was weary. \"But first I think we'd\n better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—\"\n\n\n A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. \"We called\n you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—\" She broke off\n helplessly. \"He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined.\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\"\n\n\n \"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it.\"\n She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large\n children's playroom. \"See what you think.\"" ] ]
train	99923	[ "How is Sharism justified?", "By explaining neural activity in the brain, what does the author of the article imply?", "According to the author, why do people stop themselves from sharing as much as they could?", "What do certain corporations lose by remaining closed off to sharing?", "How does the author contradict their promises that sharing will produce a more equitable society?", "The author promises all of the following returns from investing in Sharism EXCEPT for:", "How does the author appeal to readers to convince them to align themselves with Sharism?" ]	[ [ "sharing is the only way to eliminate economic and social disparities among neighboring countries", "if humans do not adopt sharism as a culture, major corporations will adopt it to gain more power", "the disparity between the wealthy and those living in poverty has become too wide", "sharing is embedded within human deoxyribonucleic acid and a hardwired feature of the brain" ], [ "If humans want to avoid the major illnesses like dementia and Alzheimers, they can do so by sharing more content as they grow older", "If humans do not use their neurons, they will lose them (and their potential) forever", "If humans can quickly acclimate to a Sharist ideology, there is a better chance that they can survive global threats", "If humans are not constantly sharing, they will deteriorate and become unproductive" ], [ "They are distrustful and apprehensive of a negative social response", "They are unsure of the best venue for sharing their content", "They believe that people who share on a frequent basis are desperate for attention", "They generally feel that the cost of their content is not as high as the value" ], [ "Collective bargaining", "Reputational power", "Lucrative ideas", "Stock market gains" ], [ "By allowing anyone from anywhere to publish anything, a lack of credibility and accuracy in content means that people living in poverty are more likely to be taken advantage of", "By equating sharing with equity, those who do not share will inevitably be denied access to certain benefits", "By connecting creativity to cultural capital, those who are more logical and scientific thinkers will be marginalized", "By comparing sharing to human neural activity, the author implies that humans who have a preference not to share are 'less than' and will be treated differently" ], [ "access to cultural capital", "amplified networks", "social validation", "exclusive copyright privileges" ], [ "Promising a more equitable future for all", "Discussing how prior failed inventions could have been successful if more collaborators participated", "Refuting the argument that greedy corporations could manipulate the Sharist system", "Associating sharing with bravery and leadership" ] ]	[ 4, 4, 1, 3, 2, 4, 1 ]	[ 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "Sharism: A Mind Revolution\nWith the People of the World Wide Web communicating more fully and\n freely in Social Media while rallying a Web 2.0 content boom, the inner\n dynamics of such a creative explosion must be studied more closely. What\n motivates those who join this movement and what future will they create?\n A key fact is that a superabundance of community respect and social\n capital are being accumulated by those who share. The key motivator of\n Social Media and the core spirit of Web 2.0 is a mind switch called\n Sharism. Sharism suggests a re-orientation of personal values. We see it\n in User Generated Content. It is the pledge of Creative Commons. It is\n in the plans of future-oriented cultural initiatives. Sharism is also a\n mental practice that anyone can try, a social-psychological attitude to", "property. Under Sharism, you can keep ownership, if you want. But I like\n to share. And this is how I choose to spread ideas, and prosperity\nSharism is totally based on your own consensus. It’s not a very hard\n concept to understand, especially since copyleft movements like the Free\n Software Foundation and Creative Commons have been around for years.\n These movements are redefining a more flexible spectrum of licenses for\n both developers and end-users to tag their works. Because the new\n licenses can be recognized by either humans or machines, it’s becoming\n easier to re-share those works in new online ecosystems.\nThe Spirit of the Web, a Social Brain\nSharism is the Spirit of the Age of Web 2.0. It has the consistency of a\n naturalized Epistemology and modernized Axiology, but also promises the", "the majority. Since Sharism can improve communication, collaboration and\n mutual understanding, I believe it has a place within the educational\n system. Sharism can be applied to any cultural discourse, CoP (Community\n of Practice) or problem-solving context. It is also an antidote to\n social depression, since sharelessness is just dragging our society\n down. In present or formerly totalitarian countries, this downward cycle\n is even more apparent. The future world will be a hybrid of human and\n machine that will generate better and faster decisions anytime,\n anywhere. The flow of information between minds will become more\n flexible and more productive. These vast networks of sharing will create\n a new social order−A Mind Revolution!", "also be the gatekeepers of your rights. Even if you are a traditional\n copyright holder, this sounds ideal.\nFurthermore, by realizing all the immediate and emergent rewards that\n can be had by sharing, you may eventually find that copyright and “All\n Rights Reserved” are far from your mind. You will enjoy sharing too much\n to worry about who is keeping a copy. The new economic formula is, the\n more people remix your works, the higher the return.\nI want to point out that Sharism is not Communism, nor Socialism. As for\n those die- hard Communists we know, they have often abused people’s\n sharing nature and forced them to give up their rights, and their\n property. Socialism, that tender Communism, in our experience also\n lacked respect for these rights. Under these systems, the state owns all", "These mind-switches are too subtle to be felt. But since the brain, and\n society, is a connected system, the accumulation of these\n micro-attitudes, from neuron to neuron and person to person, can result\n in observable behavior. It is easy to tell if a person, a group, a\n company, a nation is oriented toward Sharism or not. For those who are\n not, what they defend as “cultural goods” and “intellectual property”\n are just excuses for the status quo of keeping a community closed. Much\n of their “culture” will be protected, but the net result is the direct\n loss of many other precious ideas, and the subsequent loss of all the\n potential gains of sharing. This lost knowledge is a black hole in our\n life, which may start to swallow other values as well.", "power of a new Internet philosophy. Sharism will transform the world\n into an emergent Social Brain: a networked hybrid of people and\n software. We are Networked Neurons connected by the synapses of Social\n Software.\nThis is an evolutionary leap, a small step for us and a giant one for\n human society. With new “hairy” emergent technologies sprouting all\n around us, we can generate higher connectivities and increase the\n throughput of our social links. The more open and strongly connected we\n social neurons are, the better the sharing environment will be for all\n people. The more collective our intelligence, the wiser our actions will\n be. People have always found better solutions through conversations. Now\n we can put it all online.\nSharism will be the politics of the next global superpower. It will not", "choices, beyond the binary options of “Yes” or “No” referenda.\n Representative democracy will become more timely and diligent, because\n we will represent ourselves within the system.\nSharism will result in better social justice. In a healthy sharing\n environment, any evidence of injustice can get amplified to get the\n public’s attention. Anyone who has been abused can get real and instant\n support from her peers and her peers’ peers. Appeals to justice will\n take the form of petitions through multiple, interconnected channels.\n Using these tools, anyone can create a large social impact. With\n multiple devices and many social applications, each of us can become\n more sociable, and society more individual. We no longer have to act\n alone.\nEmergent democracy will only happen when Sharism becomes the literacy of", "one choice could easily snowball into more creations along the sharing\n path, from people at key nodes in the network who are all as passionate\n about creating and sharing as you are. After many iterative rounds of\n development, a large creative work may spring from your choice to share.\n Of course, you will get the credit that you asked for, and deserve. And\n it’s okay to seek financial rewards. But you will in every case get\n something just as substantial: Happiness.\nThe more people who create in the spirit of Sharism, the easier it will\n be to attain well- balanced and equitable Social Media that is woven by\n people themselves. Media won’t be controlled by any single person but\n will rely on the even distribution of social networking. These “Shaeros”\n (Sharing Heroes) will naturally become the opinion leaders in the first", "transform a wide and isolated world into a super-smart Social Brain.\nThe Neuron Doctrine\nSharism is encoded in the Human Genome. Although eclipsed by the many\n pragmatisms of daily life, the theory of Sharism finds basis in\n neuroscience and its study of the working model of the human brain.\n Although we can’t entirely say how the brain works as a whole, we do\n have a model of the functional mechanism of the nervous system and its\n neurons. A neuron is not a simple organic cell, but a very powerful,\n electrically excitable biological processor. Groups of neurons form\n vastly interconnected networks, which, by changing the strength of the\n synapses between cells, can process information, and learn. A neuron, by\n sharing chemical signals with its neighbors, can be integrated into more", "wave of Social Media. However, these media rights will belong to\n everyone. You yourself can be both producer and consumer in such a\n system.\nSharism Safeguards Your Rights\nStill, many questions will be raised about Sharism as an initiative in\n new age. The main one is copyright. One concern is that any loss of\n control over copyrighted content will lead to noticeable deficits in\n personal wealth, or just loss of control. 5 years ago, I would have said\n that this was a possibility. But things are changing today. The sharing\n environment is more protected than you might think. Many new social\n applications make it easy to set terms-of-use along your sharing path.\n Any infringement of those terms will be challenged not just by the law,\n but by your community. Your audience, who benefit form your sharing, can", "result, such a Micro-pipeline system is making Social Media a true\n alternative to broadcast media. These new technologies are reviving\n Sharism in our closed culture.\nLocal Practice, Global Gain\nIf you happened to lose your Sharism in a bad educational or cultural\n setting, it’s hard to get it back. But it’s not impossible. A\n persistence of practice can lead to a full recovery. You can think of\n Sharism as a spiritual practice. But you must practice everyday.\n Otherwise, you might lose the power of sharing. Permanently.\nYou might need something to spur you on, to keep you from quitting and\n returning to a closed mindset. Here’s an idea: put a sticky note on your\n desk that says, “What do you want to share today?” I’m not kidding.", "Then, if anything interesting comes your way: Share It! The easiest way\n to both start and keep sharing is by using different kinds of social\n software applications. Your first meme you want to share may be small,\n but you can amplify it with new technologies. Enlist some people from\n your network and invite them into a new social application. At first it\n might be hard to feel the gains of Sharism. The true test then is to see\n if you can keep track of the feedback that you get from sharing. You\n will realize that almost all sharing activities will generate positive\n results. The happiness that this will obtain is only the most immediate\n reward. But there are others.\nThe first type of reward that you will get comes in the form of\n comments. Then you know you’ve provoked interest, appreciation,\n excitement. The second reward is access to all the other stuff being", "you can engineer a feedback loop of happiness, which will help you\n generate even more ideas in return. It’s a kind of butterfly- effect, as\n the small creative energy you spend will eventually return to make you,\n and the world, more creative.\nHowever, daily decisions for most adults are quite low in creative\n productivity, if only because they’ve switched off their sharing paths.\n People generally like to share what they create, but in a culture that\n tells them to be protective of their ideas, people start to believe in\n the danger of sharing. Then Sharism will be degraded in their mind and\n not encouraged in their society. But if we can encourage someone to\n share, her sharing paths will stay open. Sharism will be kept in her\n mind as a memory and an instinct. If in the future she faces a creative\n choice, her choice will be, “Share.”", "Non-sharing culture misleads us with its absolute separation of Private\n and Public space. It makes creative action a binary choice between\n public and private, open and closed. This creates a gap in the spectrum\n of knowledge. Although this gap has the potential to become a valuable\n creative space, concerns about privacy make this gap hard to fill. We\n shouldn’t be surprised that, to be safe, most people keep their sharing\n private and stay “closed.” They may fear the Internet creates a\n potential for abuse that they can’t fight alone. However, the paradox\n is: The less you share, the less power you have.\nNew Technologies and the Rise of Sharism\nLet’s track back to 1999, when there were only a few hundred pioneer\n bloggers around the world, and no more than ten times that many readers", "can have better control over a wide spectrum of relationships. Like how\n Flickr allows people to share their photos widely, but safely. The\n checkbox-based privacy of Flickr may seem unfamiliar to a new user, but\n you can use it to toy with the mind-switches of Sharism. By checking a\n box we can choose to share or not to share. From my observations, I have\n seen photographers on Flickr become more open to sharing, while\n retaining flexible choices.\nThe rapid emergence of Social Applications that can communicate and\n cooperate, by allowing people to output content from one service to\n another, is letting users pump their memes into a pipeline-like\n ecosystem. This interconnectedness allows memes to travel along multiple\n online social networks, and potentially reach a huge audience. As a", "shared by friends in your network. Since you know and trust them, you\n will be that much more interested in what they have to share. Already,\n the return is a multiple of the small meme you first shared. But the\n third type of return is more dramatic still. Anything you share can be\n forwarded, circulated and republished via other people’s networks. This\n cascade effect can spread your work to the networked masses.\nImprovements in social software are making the speed of dissemination as\n fast as a mouse-click. You should get to know the Sharism-You. You’re\n about to become popular, and fast\nThis brings us to the fourth and final type of return. It has a meaning\n not only for you, but for the whole of society. If you so choose, you\n may allow others to create derivative works from what you share. This", "small site, it’s hard to stop. We can’t explain this fact with a theory\n of addiction. It’s an impulse to share. It’s the energy of the memes\n that want to be passed from mouth to mouth and mind to mind. It’s more\n than just E-mail. It’s Sharism.\nBloggers are always keen to keep the social context of their posts in\n mind, by asking themselves, “Who is going to see this?” Bloggers are\n agile in adjusting their tone−and privacy settings−to advance ideas and\n stay out of trouble. It’s not self-censorship, but a sense of smart\n expression. But once blogs reached the tipping point, they expanded into\n the blogosphere. This required a more delicate social networking system\n and content- sharing architecture. But people now understand that they", "meaningful patterns that keep the neuron active and alive. Moreover,\n such a simple logic can be iterated and amplified, since all neurons\n work on a similar principle of connecting and sharing. Originally, the\n brain is quite open. A neural network exists to share activity and\n information, and I believe this model of the brain should inspire ideas\n and decisions about human networks.\nThus, our brain supports sharing in its very system-nature. This has\n profound implications for the creative process. Whenever you have an\n intention to create, you will find it easier to generate more creative\n ideas if you keep the sharing process firmly in mind. The\n idea-forming-process is not linear, but more like an avalanche of\n amplifications along the thinking path. It moves with the momentum of a\n creative snowball. If your internal cognitive system encourages sharing,", "be a country, but a new human network joined by Social Software. This\n may remain a distant dream, and even a well-defined public sharing\n policy might not be close at hand. But the ideas that I’m discussing can\n improve governments today. We can integrate our current and emerging\n democratic systems with new folksonomies (based on the collaborative,\n social indexing of information) to enable people to make queries, share\n data and remix information for public use. The collective intelligence\n of a vast and equitable sharing environment can be the gatekeeper of our\n rights, and a government watchdog. In the future, policymaking can be\n made more nuanced with the micro-involvement of the sharing community.\n This “Emergent Democracy” is more real-time than periodical\n parliamentary sessions. It will also increase the spectrum of our", "following each blog. Human history is always so: something important was\n happening, but the rest of the world hadn’t yet realized it. The shift\n toward easy-to-use online publishing triggered a soft revolution in just\n five years. People made a quick and easy transition from reading blogs,\n to leaving comments and taking part in online conversations, and then to\n the sudden realization that they should become bloggers themselves. More\n bloggers created more readers, and more readers made more blogs. The\n revolution was viral.\nBloggers generate lively and timely information on the Internet, and\n connect to each other with RSS, hyperlinks, comments, trackbacks and\n quotes. The small-scale granularity of the content can fill discrete\n gaps in experience and thus record a new human history. Once you become\n a blogger, once you have accumulated so much social capital in such a" ], [ "meaningful patterns that keep the neuron active and alive. Moreover,\n such a simple logic can be iterated and amplified, since all neurons\n work on a similar principle of connecting and sharing. Originally, the\n brain is quite open. A neural network exists to share activity and\n information, and I believe this model of the brain should inspire ideas\n and decisions about human networks.\nThus, our brain supports sharing in its very system-nature. This has\n profound implications for the creative process. Whenever you have an\n intention to create, you will find it easier to generate more creative\n ideas if you keep the sharing process firmly in mind. The\n idea-forming-process is not linear, but more like an avalanche of\n amplifications along the thinking path. It moves with the momentum of a\n creative snowball. If your internal cognitive system encourages sharing,", "transform a wide and isolated world into a super-smart Social Brain.\nThe Neuron Doctrine\nSharism is encoded in the Human Genome. Although eclipsed by the many\n pragmatisms of daily life, the theory of Sharism finds basis in\n neuroscience and its study of the working model of the human brain.\n Although we can’t entirely say how the brain works as a whole, we do\n have a model of the functional mechanism of the nervous system and its\n neurons. A neuron is not a simple organic cell, but a very powerful,\n electrically excitable biological processor. Groups of neurons form\n vastly interconnected networks, which, by changing the strength of the\n synapses between cells, can process information, and learn. A neuron, by\n sharing chemical signals with its neighbors, can be integrated into more", "These mind-switches are too subtle to be felt. But since the brain, and\n society, is a connected system, the accumulation of these\n micro-attitudes, from neuron to neuron and person to person, can result\n in observable behavior. It is easy to tell if a person, a group, a\n company, a nation is oriented toward Sharism or not. For those who are\n not, what they defend as “cultural goods” and “intellectual property”\n are just excuses for the status quo of keeping a community closed. Much\n of their “culture” will be protected, but the net result is the direct\n loss of many other precious ideas, and the subsequent loss of all the\n potential gains of sharing. This lost knowledge is a black hole in our\n life, which may start to swallow other values as well.", "small site, it’s hard to stop. We can’t explain this fact with a theory\n of addiction. It’s an impulse to share. It’s the energy of the memes\n that want to be passed from mouth to mouth and mind to mind. It’s more\n than just E-mail. It’s Sharism.\nBloggers are always keen to keep the social context of their posts in\n mind, by asking themselves, “Who is going to see this?” Bloggers are\n agile in adjusting their tone−and privacy settings−to advance ideas and\n stay out of trouble. It’s not self-censorship, but a sense of smart\n expression. But once blogs reached the tipping point, they expanded into\n the blogosphere. This required a more delicate social networking system\n and content- sharing architecture. But people now understand that they", "power of a new Internet philosophy. Sharism will transform the world\n into an emergent Social Brain: a networked hybrid of people and\n software. We are Networked Neurons connected by the synapses of Social\n Software.\nThis is an evolutionary leap, a small step for us and a giant one for\n human society. With new “hairy” emergent technologies sprouting all\n around us, we can generate higher connectivities and increase the\n throughput of our social links. The more open and strongly connected we\n social neurons are, the better the sharing environment will be for all\n people. The more collective our intelligence, the wiser our actions will\n be. People have always found better solutions through conversations. Now\n we can put it all online.\nSharism will be the politics of the next global superpower. It will not", "Sharism: A Mind Revolution\nWith the People of the World Wide Web communicating more fully and\n freely in Social Media while rallying a Web 2.0 content boom, the inner\n dynamics of such a creative explosion must be studied more closely. What\n motivates those who join this movement and what future will they create?\n A key fact is that a superabundance of community respect and social\n capital are being accumulated by those who share. The key motivator of\n Social Media and the core spirit of Web 2.0 is a mind switch called\n Sharism. Sharism suggests a re-orientation of personal values. We see it\n in User Generated Content. It is the pledge of Creative Commons. It is\n in the plans of future-oriented cultural initiatives. Sharism is also a\n mental practice that anyone can try, a social-psychological attitude to", "you can engineer a feedback loop of happiness, which will help you\n generate even more ideas in return. It’s a kind of butterfly- effect, as\n the small creative energy you spend will eventually return to make you,\n and the world, more creative.\nHowever, daily decisions for most adults are quite low in creative\n productivity, if only because they’ve switched off their sharing paths.\n People generally like to share what they create, but in a culture that\n tells them to be protective of their ideas, people start to believe in\n the danger of sharing. Then Sharism will be degraded in their mind and\n not encouraged in their society. But if we can encourage someone to\n share, her sharing paths will stay open. Sharism will be kept in her\n mind as a memory and an instinct. If in the future she faces a creative\n choice, her choice will be, “Share.”", "the majority. Since Sharism can improve communication, collaboration and\n mutual understanding, I believe it has a place within the educational\n system. Sharism can be applied to any cultural discourse, CoP (Community\n of Practice) or problem-solving context. It is also an antidote to\n social depression, since sharelessness is just dragging our society\n down. In present or formerly totalitarian countries, this downward cycle\n is even more apparent. The future world will be a hybrid of human and\n machine that will generate better and faster decisions anytime,\n anywhere. The flow of information between minds will become more\n flexible and more productive. These vast networks of sharing will create\n a new social order−A Mind Revolution!", "following each blog. Human history is always so: something important was\n happening, but the rest of the world hadn’t yet realized it. The shift\n toward easy-to-use online publishing triggered a soft revolution in just\n five years. People made a quick and easy transition from reading blogs,\n to leaving comments and taking part in online conversations, and then to\n the sudden realization that they should become bloggers themselves. More\n bloggers created more readers, and more readers made more blogs. The\n revolution was viral.\nBloggers generate lively and timely information on the Internet, and\n connect to each other with RSS, hyperlinks, comments, trackbacks and\n quotes. The small-scale granularity of the content can fill discrete\n gaps in experience and thus record a new human history. Once you become\n a blogger, once you have accumulated so much social capital in such a", "Then, if anything interesting comes your way: Share It! The easiest way\n to both start and keep sharing is by using different kinds of social\n software applications. Your first meme you want to share may be small,\n but you can amplify it with new technologies. Enlist some people from\n your network and invite them into a new social application. At first it\n might be hard to feel the gains of Sharism. The true test then is to see\n if you can keep track of the feedback that you get from sharing. You\n will realize that almost all sharing activities will generate positive\n results. The happiness that this will obtain is only the most immediate\n reward. But there are others.\nThe first type of reward that you will get comes in the form of\n comments. Then you know you’ve provoked interest, appreciation,\n excitement. The second reward is access to all the other stuff being", "can have better control over a wide spectrum of relationships. Like how\n Flickr allows people to share their photos widely, but safely. The\n checkbox-based privacy of Flickr may seem unfamiliar to a new user, but\n you can use it to toy with the mind-switches of Sharism. By checking a\n box we can choose to share or not to share. From my observations, I have\n seen photographers on Flickr become more open to sharing, while\n retaining flexible choices.\nThe rapid emergence of Social Applications that can communicate and\n cooperate, by allowing people to output content from one service to\n another, is letting users pump their memes into a pipeline-like\n ecosystem. This interconnectedness allows memes to travel along multiple\n online social networks, and potentially reach a huge audience. As a", "result, such a Micro-pipeline system is making Social Media a true\n alternative to broadcast media. These new technologies are reviving\n Sharism in our closed culture.\nLocal Practice, Global Gain\nIf you happened to lose your Sharism in a bad educational or cultural\n setting, it’s hard to get it back. But it’s not impossible. A\n persistence of practice can lead to a full recovery. You can think of\n Sharism as a spiritual practice. But you must practice everyday.\n Otherwise, you might lose the power of sharing. Permanently.\nYou might need something to spur you on, to keep you from quitting and\n returning to a closed mindset. Here’s an idea: put a sticky note on your\n desk that says, “What do you want to share today?” I’m not kidding.", "shared by friends in your network. Since you know and trust them, you\n will be that much more interested in what they have to share. Already,\n the return is a multiple of the small meme you first shared. But the\n third type of return is more dramatic still. Anything you share can be\n forwarded, circulated and republished via other people’s networks. This\n cascade effect can spread your work to the networked masses.\nImprovements in social software are making the speed of dissemination as\n fast as a mouse-click. You should get to know the Sharism-You. You’re\n about to become popular, and fast\nThis brings us to the fourth and final type of return. It has a meaning\n not only for you, but for the whole of society. If you so choose, you\n may allow others to create derivative works from what you share. This", "property. Under Sharism, you can keep ownership, if you want. But I like\n to share. And this is how I choose to spread ideas, and prosperity\nSharism is totally based on your own consensus. It’s not a very hard\n concept to understand, especially since copyleft movements like the Free\n Software Foundation and Creative Commons have been around for years.\n These movements are redefining a more flexible spectrum of licenses for\n both developers and end-users to tag their works. Because the new\n licenses can be recognized by either humans or machines, it’s becoming\n easier to re-share those works in new online ecosystems.\nThe Spirit of the Web, a Social Brain\nSharism is the Spirit of the Age of Web 2.0. It has the consistency of a\n naturalized Epistemology and modernized Axiology, but also promises the", "one choice could easily snowball into more creations along the sharing\n path, from people at key nodes in the network who are all as passionate\n about creating and sharing as you are. After many iterative rounds of\n development, a large creative work may spring from your choice to share.\n Of course, you will get the credit that you asked for, and deserve. And\n it’s okay to seek financial rewards. But you will in every case get\n something just as substantial: Happiness.\nThe more people who create in the spirit of Sharism, the easier it will\n be to attain well- balanced and equitable Social Media that is woven by\n people themselves. Media won’t be controlled by any single person but\n will rely on the even distribution of social networking. These “Shaeros”\n (Sharing Heroes) will naturally become the opinion leaders in the first", "choices, beyond the binary options of “Yes” or “No” referenda.\n Representative democracy will become more timely and diligent, because\n we will represent ourselves within the system.\nSharism will result in better social justice. In a healthy sharing\n environment, any evidence of injustice can get amplified to get the\n public’s attention. Anyone who has been abused can get real and instant\n support from her peers and her peers’ peers. Appeals to justice will\n take the form of petitions through multiple, interconnected channels.\n Using these tools, anyone can create a large social impact. With\n multiple devices and many social applications, each of us can become\n more sociable, and society more individual. We no longer have to act\n alone.\nEmergent democracy will only happen when Sharism becomes the literacy of", "also be the gatekeepers of your rights. Even if you are a traditional\n copyright holder, this sounds ideal.\nFurthermore, by realizing all the immediate and emergent rewards that\n can be had by sharing, you may eventually find that copyright and “All\n Rights Reserved” are far from your mind. You will enjoy sharing too much\n to worry about who is keeping a copy. The new economic formula is, the\n more people remix your works, the higher the return.\nI want to point out that Sharism is not Communism, nor Socialism. As for\n those die- hard Communists we know, they have often abused people’s\n sharing nature and forced them to give up their rights, and their\n property. Socialism, that tender Communism, in our experience also\n lacked respect for these rights. Under these systems, the state owns all", "wave of Social Media. However, these media rights will belong to\n everyone. You yourself can be both producer and consumer in such a\n system.\nSharism Safeguards Your Rights\nStill, many questions will be raised about Sharism as an initiative in\n new age. The main one is copyright. One concern is that any loss of\n control over copyrighted content will lead to noticeable deficits in\n personal wealth, or just loss of control. 5 years ago, I would have said\n that this was a possibility. But things are changing today. The sharing\n environment is more protected than you might think. Many new social\n applications make it easy to set terms-of-use along your sharing path.\n Any infringement of those terms will be challenged not just by the law,\n but by your community. Your audience, who benefit form your sharing, can", "Non-sharing culture misleads us with its absolute separation of Private\n and Public space. It makes creative action a binary choice between\n public and private, open and closed. This creates a gap in the spectrum\n of knowledge. Although this gap has the potential to become a valuable\n creative space, concerns about privacy make this gap hard to fill. We\n shouldn’t be surprised that, to be safe, most people keep their sharing\n private and stay “closed.” They may fear the Internet creates a\n potential for abuse that they can’t fight alone. However, the paradox\n is: The less you share, the less power you have.\nNew Technologies and the Rise of Sharism\nLet’s track back to 1999, when there were only a few hundred pioneer\n bloggers around the world, and no more than ten times that many readers", "be a country, but a new human network joined by Social Software. This\n may remain a distant dream, and even a well-defined public sharing\n policy might not be close at hand. But the ideas that I’m discussing can\n improve governments today. We can integrate our current and emerging\n democratic systems with new folksonomies (based on the collaborative,\n social indexing of information) to enable people to make queries, share\n data and remix information for public use. The collective intelligence\n of a vast and equitable sharing environment can be the gatekeeper of our\n rights, and a government watchdog. In the future, policymaking can be\n made more nuanced with the micro-involvement of the sharing community.\n This “Emergent Democracy” is more real-time than periodical\n parliamentary sessions. It will also increase the spectrum of our" ], [ "These mind-switches are too subtle to be felt. But since the brain, and\n society, is a connected system, the accumulation of these\n micro-attitudes, from neuron to neuron and person to person, can result\n in observable behavior. It is easy to tell if a person, a group, a\n company, a nation is oriented toward Sharism or not. For those who are\n not, what they defend as “cultural goods” and “intellectual property”\n are just excuses for the status quo of keeping a community closed. Much\n of their “culture” will be protected, but the net result is the direct\n loss of many other precious ideas, and the subsequent loss of all the\n potential gains of sharing. This lost knowledge is a black hole in our\n life, which may start to swallow other values as well.", "you can engineer a feedback loop of happiness, which will help you\n generate even more ideas in return. It’s a kind of butterfly- effect, as\n the small creative energy you spend will eventually return to make you,\n and the world, more creative.\nHowever, daily decisions for most adults are quite low in creative\n productivity, if only because they’ve switched off their sharing paths.\n People generally like to share what they create, but in a culture that\n tells them to be protective of their ideas, people start to believe in\n the danger of sharing. Then Sharism will be degraded in their mind and\n not encouraged in their society. But if we can encourage someone to\n share, her sharing paths will stay open. Sharism will be kept in her\n mind as a memory and an instinct. If in the future she faces a creative\n choice, her choice will be, “Share.”", "result, such a Micro-pipeline system is making Social Media a true\n alternative to broadcast media. These new technologies are reviving\n Sharism in our closed culture.\nLocal Practice, Global Gain\nIf you happened to lose your Sharism in a bad educational or cultural\n setting, it’s hard to get it back. But it’s not impossible. A\n persistence of practice can lead to a full recovery. You can think of\n Sharism as a spiritual practice. But you must practice everyday.\n Otherwise, you might lose the power of sharing. Permanently.\nYou might need something to spur you on, to keep you from quitting and\n returning to a closed mindset. Here’s an idea: put a sticky note on your\n desk that says, “What do you want to share today?” I’m not kidding.", "small site, it’s hard to stop. We can’t explain this fact with a theory\n of addiction. It’s an impulse to share. It’s the energy of the memes\n that want to be passed from mouth to mouth and mind to mind. It’s more\n than just E-mail. It’s Sharism.\nBloggers are always keen to keep the social context of their posts in\n mind, by asking themselves, “Who is going to see this?” Bloggers are\n agile in adjusting their tone−and privacy settings−to advance ideas and\n stay out of trouble. It’s not self-censorship, but a sense of smart\n expression. But once blogs reached the tipping point, they expanded into\n the blogosphere. This required a more delicate social networking system\n and content- sharing architecture. But people now understand that they", "Non-sharing culture misleads us with its absolute separation of Private\n and Public space. It makes creative action a binary choice between\n public and private, open and closed. This creates a gap in the spectrum\n of knowledge. Although this gap has the potential to become a valuable\n creative space, concerns about privacy make this gap hard to fill. We\n shouldn’t be surprised that, to be safe, most people keep their sharing\n private and stay “closed.” They may fear the Internet creates a\n potential for abuse that they can’t fight alone. However, the paradox\n is: The less you share, the less power you have.\nNew Technologies and the Rise of Sharism\nLet’s track back to 1999, when there were only a few hundred pioneer\n bloggers around the world, and no more than ten times that many readers", "one choice could easily snowball into more creations along the sharing\n path, from people at key nodes in the network who are all as passionate\n about creating and sharing as you are. After many iterative rounds of\n development, a large creative work may spring from your choice to share.\n Of course, you will get the credit that you asked for, and deserve. And\n it’s okay to seek financial rewards. But you will in every case get\n something just as substantial: Happiness.\nThe more people who create in the spirit of Sharism, the easier it will\n be to attain well- balanced and equitable Social Media that is woven by\n people themselves. Media won’t be controlled by any single person but\n will rely on the even distribution of social networking. These “Shaeros”\n (Sharing Heroes) will naturally become the opinion leaders in the first", "Then, if anything interesting comes your way: Share It! The easiest way\n to both start and keep sharing is by using different kinds of social\n software applications. Your first meme you want to share may be small,\n but you can amplify it with new technologies. Enlist some people from\n your network and invite them into a new social application. At first it\n might be hard to feel the gains of Sharism. The true test then is to see\n if you can keep track of the feedback that you get from sharing. You\n will realize that almost all sharing activities will generate positive\n results. The happiness that this will obtain is only the most immediate\n reward. But there are others.\nThe first type of reward that you will get comes in the form of\n comments. Then you know you’ve provoked interest, appreciation,\n excitement. The second reward is access to all the other stuff being", "also be the gatekeepers of your rights. Even if you are a traditional\n copyright holder, this sounds ideal.\nFurthermore, by realizing all the immediate and emergent rewards that\n can be had by sharing, you may eventually find that copyright and “All\n Rights Reserved” are far from your mind. You will enjoy sharing too much\n to worry about who is keeping a copy. The new economic formula is, the\n more people remix your works, the higher the return.\nI want to point out that Sharism is not Communism, nor Socialism. As for\n those die- hard Communists we know, they have often abused people’s\n sharing nature and forced them to give up their rights, and their\n property. Socialism, that tender Communism, in our experience also\n lacked respect for these rights. Under these systems, the state owns all", "Sharism: A Mind Revolution\nWith the People of the World Wide Web communicating more fully and\n freely in Social Media while rallying a Web 2.0 content boom, the inner\n dynamics of such a creative explosion must be studied more closely. What\n motivates those who join this movement and what future will they create?\n A key fact is that a superabundance of community respect and social\n capital are being accumulated by those who share. The key motivator of\n Social Media and the core spirit of Web 2.0 is a mind switch called\n Sharism. Sharism suggests a re-orientation of personal values. We see it\n in User Generated Content. It is the pledge of Creative Commons. It is\n in the plans of future-oriented cultural initiatives. Sharism is also a\n mental practice that anyone can try, a social-psychological attitude to", "the majority. Since Sharism can improve communication, collaboration and\n mutual understanding, I believe it has a place within the educational\n system. Sharism can be applied to any cultural discourse, CoP (Community\n of Practice) or problem-solving context. It is also an antidote to\n social depression, since sharelessness is just dragging our society\n down. In present or formerly totalitarian countries, this downward cycle\n is even more apparent. The future world will be a hybrid of human and\n machine that will generate better and faster decisions anytime,\n anywhere. The flow of information between minds will become more\n flexible and more productive. These vast networks of sharing will create\n a new social order−A Mind Revolution!", "meaningful patterns that keep the neuron active and alive. Moreover,\n such a simple logic can be iterated and amplified, since all neurons\n work on a similar principle of connecting and sharing. Originally, the\n brain is quite open. A neural network exists to share activity and\n information, and I believe this model of the brain should inspire ideas\n and decisions about human networks.\nThus, our brain supports sharing in its very system-nature. This has\n profound implications for the creative process. Whenever you have an\n intention to create, you will find it easier to generate more creative\n ideas if you keep the sharing process firmly in mind. The\n idea-forming-process is not linear, but more like an avalanche of\n amplifications along the thinking path. It moves with the momentum of a\n creative snowball. If your internal cognitive system encourages sharing,", "can have better control over a wide spectrum of relationships. Like how\n Flickr allows people to share their photos widely, but safely. The\n checkbox-based privacy of Flickr may seem unfamiliar to a new user, but\n you can use it to toy with the mind-switches of Sharism. By checking a\n box we can choose to share or not to share. From my observations, I have\n seen photographers on Flickr become more open to sharing, while\n retaining flexible choices.\nThe rapid emergence of Social Applications that can communicate and\n cooperate, by allowing people to output content from one service to\n another, is letting users pump their memes into a pipeline-like\n ecosystem. This interconnectedness allows memes to travel along multiple\n online social networks, and potentially reach a huge audience. As a", "choices, beyond the binary options of “Yes” or “No” referenda.\n Representative democracy will become more timely and diligent, because\n we will represent ourselves within the system.\nSharism will result in better social justice. In a healthy sharing\n environment, any evidence of injustice can get amplified to get the\n public’s attention. Anyone who has been abused can get real and instant\n support from her peers and her peers’ peers. Appeals to justice will\n take the form of petitions through multiple, interconnected channels.\n Using these tools, anyone can create a large social impact. With\n multiple devices and many social applications, each of us can become\n more sociable, and society more individual. We no longer have to act\n alone.\nEmergent democracy will only happen when Sharism becomes the literacy of", "power of a new Internet philosophy. Sharism will transform the world\n into an emergent Social Brain: a networked hybrid of people and\n software. We are Networked Neurons connected by the synapses of Social\n Software.\nThis is an evolutionary leap, a small step for us and a giant one for\n human society. With new “hairy” emergent technologies sprouting all\n around us, we can generate higher connectivities and increase the\n throughput of our social links. The more open and strongly connected we\n social neurons are, the better the sharing environment will be for all\n people. The more collective our intelligence, the wiser our actions will\n be. People have always found better solutions through conversations. Now\n we can put it all online.\nSharism will be the politics of the next global superpower. It will not", "transform a wide and isolated world into a super-smart Social Brain.\nThe Neuron Doctrine\nSharism is encoded in the Human Genome. Although eclipsed by the many\n pragmatisms of daily life, the theory of Sharism finds basis in\n neuroscience and its study of the working model of the human brain.\n Although we can’t entirely say how the brain works as a whole, we do\n have a model of the functional mechanism of the nervous system and its\n neurons. A neuron is not a simple organic cell, but a very powerful,\n electrically excitable biological processor. Groups of neurons form\n vastly interconnected networks, which, by changing the strength of the\n synapses between cells, can process information, and learn. A neuron, by\n sharing chemical signals with its neighbors, can be integrated into more", "shared by friends in your network. Since you know and trust them, you\n will be that much more interested in what they have to share. Already,\n the return is a multiple of the small meme you first shared. But the\n third type of return is more dramatic still. Anything you share can be\n forwarded, circulated and republished via other people’s networks. This\n cascade effect can spread your work to the networked masses.\nImprovements in social software are making the speed of dissemination as\n fast as a mouse-click. You should get to know the Sharism-You. You’re\n about to become popular, and fast\nThis brings us to the fourth and final type of return. It has a meaning\n not only for you, but for the whole of society. If you so choose, you\n may allow others to create derivative works from what you share. This", "wave of Social Media. However, these media rights will belong to\n everyone. You yourself can be both producer and consumer in such a\n system.\nSharism Safeguards Your Rights\nStill, many questions will be raised about Sharism as an initiative in\n new age. The main one is copyright. One concern is that any loss of\n control over copyrighted content will lead to noticeable deficits in\n personal wealth, or just loss of control. 5 years ago, I would have said\n that this was a possibility. But things are changing today. The sharing\n environment is more protected than you might think. Many new social\n applications make it easy to set terms-of-use along your sharing path.\n Any infringement of those terms will be challenged not just by the law,\n but by your community. Your audience, who benefit form your sharing, can", "property. Under Sharism, you can keep ownership, if you want. But I like\n to share. And this is how I choose to spread ideas, and prosperity\nSharism is totally based on your own consensus. It’s not a very hard\n concept to understand, especially since copyleft movements like the Free\n Software Foundation and Creative Commons have been around for years.\n These movements are redefining a more flexible spectrum of licenses for\n both developers and end-users to tag their works. Because the new\n licenses can be recognized by either humans or machines, it’s becoming\n easier to re-share those works in new online ecosystems.\nThe Spirit of the Web, a Social Brain\nSharism is the Spirit of the Age of Web 2.0. It has the consistency of a\n naturalized Epistemology and modernized Axiology, but also promises the", "following each blog. Human history is always so: something important was\n happening, but the rest of the world hadn’t yet realized it. The shift\n toward easy-to-use online publishing triggered a soft revolution in just\n five years. People made a quick and easy transition from reading blogs,\n to leaving comments and taking part in online conversations, and then to\n the sudden realization that they should become bloggers themselves. More\n bloggers created more readers, and more readers made more blogs. The\n revolution was viral.\nBloggers generate lively and timely information on the Internet, and\n connect to each other with RSS, hyperlinks, comments, trackbacks and\n quotes. The small-scale granularity of the content can fill discrete\n gaps in experience and thus record a new human history. Once you become\n a blogger, once you have accumulated so much social capital in such a", "be a country, but a new human network joined by Social Software. This\n may remain a distant dream, and even a well-defined public sharing\n policy might not be close at hand. But the ideas that I’m discussing can\n improve governments today. We can integrate our current and emerging\n democratic systems with new folksonomies (based on the collaborative,\n social indexing of information) to enable people to make queries, share\n data and remix information for public use. The collective intelligence\n of a vast and equitable sharing environment can be the gatekeeper of our\n rights, and a government watchdog. In the future, policymaking can be\n made more nuanced with the micro-involvement of the sharing community.\n This “Emergent Democracy” is more real-time than periodical\n parliamentary sessions. It will also increase the spectrum of our" ], [ "These mind-switches are too subtle to be felt. But since the brain, and\n society, is a connected system, the accumulation of these\n micro-attitudes, from neuron to neuron and person to person, can result\n in observable behavior. It is easy to tell if a person, a group, a\n company, a nation is oriented toward Sharism or not. For those who are\n not, what they defend as “cultural goods” and “intellectual property”\n are just excuses for the status quo of keeping a community closed. Much\n of their “culture” will be protected, but the net result is the direct\n loss of many other precious ideas, and the subsequent loss of all the\n potential gains of sharing. This lost knowledge is a black hole in our\n life, which may start to swallow other values as well.", "result, such a Micro-pipeline system is making Social Media a true\n alternative to broadcast media. These new technologies are reviving\n Sharism in our closed culture.\nLocal Practice, Global Gain\nIf you happened to lose your Sharism in a bad educational or cultural\n setting, it’s hard to get it back. But it’s not impossible. A\n persistence of practice can lead to a full recovery. You can think of\n Sharism as a spiritual practice. But you must practice everyday.\n Otherwise, you might lose the power of sharing. Permanently.\nYou might need something to spur you on, to keep you from quitting and\n returning to a closed mindset. Here’s an idea: put a sticky note on your\n desk that says, “What do you want to share today?” I’m not kidding.", "Non-sharing culture misleads us with its absolute separation of Private\n and Public space. It makes creative action a binary choice between\n public and private, open and closed. This creates a gap in the spectrum\n of knowledge. Although this gap has the potential to become a valuable\n creative space, concerns about privacy make this gap hard to fill. We\n shouldn’t be surprised that, to be safe, most people keep their sharing\n private and stay “closed.” They may fear the Internet creates a\n potential for abuse that they can’t fight alone. However, the paradox\n is: The less you share, the less power you have.\nNew Technologies and the Rise of Sharism\nLet’s track back to 1999, when there were only a few hundred pioneer\n bloggers around the world, and no more than ten times that many readers", "you can engineer a feedback loop of happiness, which will help you\n generate even more ideas in return. It’s a kind of butterfly- effect, as\n the small creative energy you spend will eventually return to make you,\n and the world, more creative.\nHowever, daily decisions for most adults are quite low in creative\n productivity, if only because they’ve switched off their sharing paths.\n People generally like to share what they create, but in a culture that\n tells them to be protective of their ideas, people start to believe in\n the danger of sharing. Then Sharism will be degraded in their mind and\n not encouraged in their society. But if we can encourage someone to\n share, her sharing paths will stay open. Sharism will be kept in her\n mind as a memory and an instinct. If in the future she faces a creative\n choice, her choice will be, “Share.”", "the majority. Since Sharism can improve communication, collaboration and\n mutual understanding, I believe it has a place within the educational\n system. Sharism can be applied to any cultural discourse, CoP (Community\n of Practice) or problem-solving context. It is also an antidote to\n social depression, since sharelessness is just dragging our society\n down. In present or formerly totalitarian countries, this downward cycle\n is even more apparent. The future world will be a hybrid of human and\n machine that will generate better and faster decisions anytime,\n anywhere. The flow of information between minds will become more\n flexible and more productive. These vast networks of sharing will create\n a new social order−A Mind Revolution!", "one choice could easily snowball into more creations along the sharing\n path, from people at key nodes in the network who are all as passionate\n about creating and sharing as you are. After many iterative rounds of\n development, a large creative work may spring from your choice to share.\n Of course, you will get the credit that you asked for, and deserve. And\n it’s okay to seek financial rewards. But you will in every case get\n something just as substantial: Happiness.\nThe more people who create in the spirit of Sharism, the easier it will\n be to attain well- balanced and equitable Social Media that is woven by\n people themselves. Media won’t be controlled by any single person but\n will rely on the even distribution of social networking. These “Shaeros”\n (Sharing Heroes) will naturally become the opinion leaders in the first", "meaningful patterns that keep the neuron active and alive. Moreover,\n such a simple logic can be iterated and amplified, since all neurons\n work on a similar principle of connecting and sharing. Originally, the\n brain is quite open. A neural network exists to share activity and\n information, and I believe this model of the brain should inspire ideas\n and decisions about human networks.\nThus, our brain supports sharing in its very system-nature. This has\n profound implications for the creative process. Whenever you have an\n intention to create, you will find it easier to generate more creative\n ideas if you keep the sharing process firmly in mind. The\n idea-forming-process is not linear, but more like an avalanche of\n amplifications along the thinking path. It moves with the momentum of a\n creative snowball. If your internal cognitive system encourages sharing,", "also be the gatekeepers of your rights. Even if you are a traditional\n copyright holder, this sounds ideal.\nFurthermore, by realizing all the immediate and emergent rewards that\n can be had by sharing, you may eventually find that copyright and “All\n Rights Reserved” are far from your mind. You will enjoy sharing too much\n to worry about who is keeping a copy. The new economic formula is, the\n more people remix your works, the higher the return.\nI want to point out that Sharism is not Communism, nor Socialism. As for\n those die- hard Communists we know, they have often abused people’s\n sharing nature and forced them to give up their rights, and their\n property. Socialism, that tender Communism, in our experience also\n lacked respect for these rights. Under these systems, the state owns all", "power of a new Internet philosophy. Sharism will transform the world\n into an emergent Social Brain: a networked hybrid of people and\n software. We are Networked Neurons connected by the synapses of Social\n Software.\nThis is an evolutionary leap, a small step for us and a giant one for\n human society. With new “hairy” emergent technologies sprouting all\n around us, we can generate higher connectivities and increase the\n throughput of our social links. The more open and strongly connected we\n social neurons are, the better the sharing environment will be for all\n people. The more collective our intelligence, the wiser our actions will\n be. People have always found better solutions through conversations. Now\n we can put it all online.\nSharism will be the politics of the next global superpower. It will not", "Then, if anything interesting comes your way: Share It! The easiest way\n to both start and keep sharing is by using different kinds of social\n software applications. Your first meme you want to share may be small,\n but you can amplify it with new technologies. Enlist some people from\n your network and invite them into a new social application. At first it\n might be hard to feel the gains of Sharism. The true test then is to see\n if you can keep track of the feedback that you get from sharing. You\n will realize that almost all sharing activities will generate positive\n results. The happiness that this will obtain is only the most immediate\n reward. But there are others.\nThe first type of reward that you will get comes in the form of\n comments. Then you know you’ve provoked interest, appreciation,\n excitement. The second reward is access to all the other stuff being", "transform a wide and isolated world into a super-smart Social Brain.\nThe Neuron Doctrine\nSharism is encoded in the Human Genome. Although eclipsed by the many\n pragmatisms of daily life, the theory of Sharism finds basis in\n neuroscience and its study of the working model of the human brain.\n Although we can’t entirely say how the brain works as a whole, we do\n have a model of the functional mechanism of the nervous system and its\n neurons. A neuron is not a simple organic cell, but a very powerful,\n electrically excitable biological processor. Groups of neurons form\n vastly interconnected networks, which, by changing the strength of the\n synapses between cells, can process information, and learn. A neuron, by\n sharing chemical signals with its neighbors, can be integrated into more", "can have better control over a wide spectrum of relationships. Like how\n Flickr allows people to share their photos widely, but safely. The\n checkbox-based privacy of Flickr may seem unfamiliar to a new user, but\n you can use it to toy with the mind-switches of Sharism. By checking a\n box we can choose to share or not to share. From my observations, I have\n seen photographers on Flickr become more open to sharing, while\n retaining flexible choices.\nThe rapid emergence of Social Applications that can communicate and\n cooperate, by allowing people to output content from one service to\n another, is letting users pump their memes into a pipeline-like\n ecosystem. This interconnectedness allows memes to travel along multiple\n online social networks, and potentially reach a huge audience. As a", "Sharism: A Mind Revolution\nWith the People of the World Wide Web communicating more fully and\n freely in Social Media while rallying a Web 2.0 content boom, the inner\n dynamics of such a creative explosion must be studied more closely. What\n motivates those who join this movement and what future will they create?\n A key fact is that a superabundance of community respect and social\n capital are being accumulated by those who share. The key motivator of\n Social Media and the core spirit of Web 2.0 is a mind switch called\n Sharism. Sharism suggests a re-orientation of personal values. We see it\n in User Generated Content. It is the pledge of Creative Commons. It is\n in the plans of future-oriented cultural initiatives. Sharism is also a\n mental practice that anyone can try, a social-psychological attitude to", "shared by friends in your network. Since you know and trust them, you\n will be that much more interested in what they have to share. Already,\n the return is a multiple of the small meme you first shared. But the\n third type of return is more dramatic still. Anything you share can be\n forwarded, circulated and republished via other people’s networks. This\n cascade effect can spread your work to the networked masses.\nImprovements in social software are making the speed of dissemination as\n fast as a mouse-click. You should get to know the Sharism-You. You’re\n about to become popular, and fast\nThis brings us to the fourth and final type of return. It has a meaning\n not only for you, but for the whole of society. If you so choose, you\n may allow others to create derivative works from what you share. This", "small site, it’s hard to stop. We can’t explain this fact with a theory\n of addiction. It’s an impulse to share. It’s the energy of the memes\n that want to be passed from mouth to mouth and mind to mind. It’s more\n than just E-mail. It’s Sharism.\nBloggers are always keen to keep the social context of their posts in\n mind, by asking themselves, “Who is going to see this?” Bloggers are\n agile in adjusting their tone−and privacy settings−to advance ideas and\n stay out of trouble. It’s not self-censorship, but a sense of smart\n expression. But once blogs reached the tipping point, they expanded into\n the blogosphere. This required a more delicate social networking system\n and content- sharing architecture. But people now understand that they", "wave of Social Media. However, these media rights will belong to\n everyone. You yourself can be both producer and consumer in such a\n system.\nSharism Safeguards Your Rights\nStill, many questions will be raised about Sharism as an initiative in\n new age. The main one is copyright. One concern is that any loss of\n control over copyrighted content will lead to noticeable deficits in\n personal wealth, or just loss of control. 5 years ago, I would have said\n that this was a possibility. But things are changing today. The sharing\n environment is more protected than you might think. Many new social\n applications make it easy to set terms-of-use along your sharing path.\n Any infringement of those terms will be challenged not just by the law,\n but by your community. Your audience, who benefit form your sharing, can", "choices, beyond the binary options of “Yes” or “No” referenda.\n Representative democracy will become more timely and diligent, because\n we will represent ourselves within the system.\nSharism will result in better social justice. In a healthy sharing\n environment, any evidence of injustice can get amplified to get the\n public’s attention. Anyone who has been abused can get real and instant\n support from her peers and her peers’ peers. Appeals to justice will\n take the form of petitions through multiple, interconnected channels.\n Using these tools, anyone can create a large social impact. With\n multiple devices and many social applications, each of us can become\n more sociable, and society more individual. We no longer have to act\n alone.\nEmergent democracy will only happen when Sharism becomes the literacy of", "property. Under Sharism, you can keep ownership, if you want. But I like\n to share. And this is how I choose to spread ideas, and prosperity\nSharism is totally based on your own consensus. It’s not a very hard\n concept to understand, especially since copyleft movements like the Free\n Software Foundation and Creative Commons have been around for years.\n These movements are redefining a more flexible spectrum of licenses for\n both developers and end-users to tag their works. Because the new\n licenses can be recognized by either humans or machines, it’s becoming\n easier to re-share those works in new online ecosystems.\nThe Spirit of the Web, a Social Brain\nSharism is the Spirit of the Age of Web 2.0. It has the consistency of a\n naturalized Epistemology and modernized Axiology, but also promises the", "be a country, but a new human network joined by Social Software. This\n may remain a distant dream, and even a well-defined public sharing\n policy might not be close at hand. But the ideas that I’m discussing can\n improve governments today. We can integrate our current and emerging\n democratic systems with new folksonomies (based on the collaborative,\n social indexing of information) to enable people to make queries, share\n data and remix information for public use. The collective intelligence\n of a vast and equitable sharing environment can be the gatekeeper of our\n rights, and a government watchdog. In the future, policymaking can be\n made more nuanced with the micro-involvement of the sharing community.\n This “Emergent Democracy” is more real-time than periodical\n parliamentary sessions. It will also increase the spectrum of our", "following each blog. Human history is always so: something important was\n happening, but the rest of the world hadn’t yet realized it. The shift\n toward easy-to-use online publishing triggered a soft revolution in just\n five years. People made a quick and easy transition from reading blogs,\n to leaving comments and taking part in online conversations, and then to\n the sudden realization that they should become bloggers themselves. More\n bloggers created more readers, and more readers made more blogs. The\n revolution was viral.\nBloggers generate lively and timely information on the Internet, and\n connect to each other with RSS, hyperlinks, comments, trackbacks and\n quotes. The small-scale granularity of the content can fill discrete\n gaps in experience and thus record a new human history. Once you become\n a blogger, once you have accumulated so much social capital in such a" ], [ "one choice could easily snowball into more creations along the sharing\n path, from people at key nodes in the network who are all as passionate\n about creating and sharing as you are. After many iterative rounds of\n development, a large creative work may spring from your choice to share.\n Of course, you will get the credit that you asked for, and deserve. And\n it’s okay to seek financial rewards. But you will in every case get\n something just as substantial: Happiness.\nThe more people who create in the spirit of Sharism, the easier it will\n be to attain well- balanced and equitable Social Media that is woven by\n people themselves. Media won’t be controlled by any single person but\n will rely on the even distribution of social networking. These “Shaeros”\n (Sharing Heroes) will naturally become the opinion leaders in the first", "also be the gatekeepers of your rights. Even if you are a traditional\n copyright holder, this sounds ideal.\nFurthermore, by realizing all the immediate and emergent rewards that\n can be had by sharing, you may eventually find that copyright and “All\n Rights Reserved” are far from your mind. You will enjoy sharing too much\n to worry about who is keeping a copy. The new economic formula is, the\n more people remix your works, the higher the return.\nI want to point out that Sharism is not Communism, nor Socialism. As for\n those die- hard Communists we know, they have often abused people’s\n sharing nature and forced them to give up their rights, and their\n property. Socialism, that tender Communism, in our experience also\n lacked respect for these rights. Under these systems, the state owns all", "choices, beyond the binary options of “Yes” or “No” referenda.\n Representative democracy will become more timely and diligent, because\n we will represent ourselves within the system.\nSharism will result in better social justice. In a healthy sharing\n environment, any evidence of injustice can get amplified to get the\n public’s attention. Anyone who has been abused can get real and instant\n support from her peers and her peers’ peers. Appeals to justice will\n take the form of petitions through multiple, interconnected channels.\n Using these tools, anyone can create a large social impact. With\n multiple devices and many social applications, each of us can become\n more sociable, and society more individual. We no longer have to act\n alone.\nEmergent democracy will only happen when Sharism becomes the literacy of", "These mind-switches are too subtle to be felt. But since the brain, and\n society, is a connected system, the accumulation of these\n micro-attitudes, from neuron to neuron and person to person, can result\n in observable behavior. It is easy to tell if a person, a group, a\n company, a nation is oriented toward Sharism or not. For those who are\n not, what they defend as “cultural goods” and “intellectual property”\n are just excuses for the status quo of keeping a community closed. Much\n of their “culture” will be protected, but the net result is the direct\n loss of many other precious ideas, and the subsequent loss of all the\n potential gains of sharing. This lost knowledge is a black hole in our\n life, which may start to swallow other values as well.", "result, such a Micro-pipeline system is making Social Media a true\n alternative to broadcast media. These new technologies are reviving\n Sharism in our closed culture.\nLocal Practice, Global Gain\nIf you happened to lose your Sharism in a bad educational or cultural\n setting, it’s hard to get it back. But it’s not impossible. A\n persistence of practice can lead to a full recovery. You can think of\n Sharism as a spiritual practice. But you must practice everyday.\n Otherwise, you might lose the power of sharing. Permanently.\nYou might need something to spur you on, to keep you from quitting and\n returning to a closed mindset. Here’s an idea: put a sticky note on your\n desk that says, “What do you want to share today?” I’m not kidding.", "Then, if anything interesting comes your way: Share It! The easiest way\n to both start and keep sharing is by using different kinds of social\n software applications. Your first meme you want to share may be small,\n but you can amplify it with new technologies. Enlist some people from\n your network and invite them into a new social application. At first it\n might be hard to feel the gains of Sharism. The true test then is to see\n if you can keep track of the feedback that you get from sharing. You\n will realize that almost all sharing activities will generate positive\n results. The happiness that this will obtain is only the most immediate\n reward. But there are others.\nThe first type of reward that you will get comes in the form of\n comments. Then you know you’ve provoked interest, appreciation,\n excitement. The second reward is access to all the other stuff being", "Non-sharing culture misleads us with its absolute separation of Private\n and Public space. It makes creative action a binary choice between\n public and private, open and closed. This creates a gap in the spectrum\n of knowledge. Although this gap has the potential to become a valuable\n creative space, concerns about privacy make this gap hard to fill. We\n shouldn’t be surprised that, to be safe, most people keep their sharing\n private and stay “closed.” They may fear the Internet creates a\n potential for abuse that they can’t fight alone. However, the paradox\n is: The less you share, the less power you have.\nNew Technologies and the Rise of Sharism\nLet’s track back to 1999, when there were only a few hundred pioneer\n bloggers around the world, and no more than ten times that many readers", "wave of Social Media. However, these media rights will belong to\n everyone. You yourself can be both producer and consumer in such a\n system.\nSharism Safeguards Your Rights\nStill, many questions will be raised about Sharism as an initiative in\n new age. The main one is copyright. One concern is that any loss of\n control over copyrighted content will lead to noticeable deficits in\n personal wealth, or just loss of control. 5 years ago, I would have said\n that this was a possibility. But things are changing today. The sharing\n environment is more protected than you might think. Many new social\n applications make it easy to set terms-of-use along your sharing path.\n Any infringement of those terms will be challenged not just by the law,\n but by your community. Your audience, who benefit form your sharing, can", "you can engineer a feedback loop of happiness, which will help you\n generate even more ideas in return. It’s a kind of butterfly- effect, as\n the small creative energy you spend will eventually return to make you,\n and the world, more creative.\nHowever, daily decisions for most adults are quite low in creative\n productivity, if only because they’ve switched off their sharing paths.\n People generally like to share what they create, but in a culture that\n tells them to be protective of their ideas, people start to believe in\n the danger of sharing. Then Sharism will be degraded in their mind and\n not encouraged in their society. But if we can encourage someone to\n share, her sharing paths will stay open. Sharism will be kept in her\n mind as a memory and an instinct. If in the future she faces a creative\n choice, her choice will be, “Share.”", "the majority. Since Sharism can improve communication, collaboration and\n mutual understanding, I believe it has a place within the educational\n system. Sharism can be applied to any cultural discourse, CoP (Community\n of Practice) or problem-solving context. It is also an antidote to\n social depression, since sharelessness is just dragging our society\n down. In present or formerly totalitarian countries, this downward cycle\n is even more apparent. The future world will be a hybrid of human and\n machine that will generate better and faster decisions anytime,\n anywhere. The flow of information between minds will become more\n flexible and more productive. These vast networks of sharing will create\n a new social order−A Mind Revolution!", "power of a new Internet philosophy. Sharism will transform the world\n into an emergent Social Brain: a networked hybrid of people and\n software. We are Networked Neurons connected by the synapses of Social\n Software.\nThis is an evolutionary leap, a small step for us and a giant one for\n human society. With new “hairy” emergent technologies sprouting all\n around us, we can generate higher connectivities and increase the\n throughput of our social links. The more open and strongly connected we\n social neurons are, the better the sharing environment will be for all\n people. The more collective our intelligence, the wiser our actions will\n be. People have always found better solutions through conversations. Now\n we can put it all online.\nSharism will be the politics of the next global superpower. It will not", "Sharism: A Mind Revolution\nWith the People of the World Wide Web communicating more fully and\n freely in Social Media while rallying a Web 2.0 content boom, the inner\n dynamics of such a creative explosion must be studied more closely. What\n motivates those who join this movement and what future will they create?\n A key fact is that a superabundance of community respect and social\n capital are being accumulated by those who share. The key motivator of\n Social Media and the core spirit of Web 2.0 is a mind switch called\n Sharism. Sharism suggests a re-orientation of personal values. We see it\n in User Generated Content. It is the pledge of Creative Commons. It is\n in the plans of future-oriented cultural initiatives. Sharism is also a\n mental practice that anyone can try, a social-psychological attitude to", "property. Under Sharism, you can keep ownership, if you want. But I like\n to share. And this is how I choose to spread ideas, and prosperity\nSharism is totally based on your own consensus. It’s not a very hard\n concept to understand, especially since copyleft movements like the Free\n Software Foundation and Creative Commons have been around for years.\n These movements are redefining a more flexible spectrum of licenses for\n both developers and end-users to tag their works. Because the new\n licenses can be recognized by either humans or machines, it’s becoming\n easier to re-share those works in new online ecosystems.\nThe Spirit of the Web, a Social Brain\nSharism is the Spirit of the Age of Web 2.0. It has the consistency of a\n naturalized Epistemology and modernized Axiology, but also promises the", "small site, it’s hard to stop. We can’t explain this fact with a theory\n of addiction. It’s an impulse to share. It’s the energy of the memes\n that want to be passed from mouth to mouth and mind to mind. It’s more\n than just E-mail. It’s Sharism.\nBloggers are always keen to keep the social context of their posts in\n mind, by asking themselves, “Who is going to see this?” Bloggers are\n agile in adjusting their tone−and privacy settings−to advance ideas and\n stay out of trouble. It’s not self-censorship, but a sense of smart\n expression. But once blogs reached the tipping point, they expanded into\n the blogosphere. This required a more delicate social networking system\n and content- sharing architecture. But people now understand that they", "can have better control over a wide spectrum of relationships. Like how\n Flickr allows people to share their photos widely, but safely. The\n checkbox-based privacy of Flickr may seem unfamiliar to a new user, but\n you can use it to toy with the mind-switches of Sharism. By checking a\n box we can choose to share or not to share. From my observations, I have\n seen photographers on Flickr become more open to sharing, while\n retaining flexible choices.\nThe rapid emergence of Social Applications that can communicate and\n cooperate, by allowing people to output content from one service to\n another, is letting users pump their memes into a pipeline-like\n ecosystem. This interconnectedness allows memes to travel along multiple\n online social networks, and potentially reach a huge audience. As a", "shared by friends in your network. Since you know and trust them, you\n will be that much more interested in what they have to share. Already,\n the return is a multiple of the small meme you first shared. But the\n third type of return is more dramatic still. Anything you share can be\n forwarded, circulated and republished via other people’s networks. This\n cascade effect can spread your work to the networked masses.\nImprovements in social software are making the speed of dissemination as\n fast as a mouse-click. You should get to know the Sharism-You. You’re\n about to become popular, and fast\nThis brings us to the fourth and final type of return. It has a meaning\n not only for you, but for the whole of society. If you so choose, you\n may allow others to create derivative works from what you share. This", "transform a wide and isolated world into a super-smart Social Brain.\nThe Neuron Doctrine\nSharism is encoded in the Human Genome. Although eclipsed by the many\n pragmatisms of daily life, the theory of Sharism finds basis in\n neuroscience and its study of the working model of the human brain.\n Although we can’t entirely say how the brain works as a whole, we do\n have a model of the functional mechanism of the nervous system and its\n neurons. A neuron is not a simple organic cell, but a very powerful,\n electrically excitable biological processor. Groups of neurons form\n vastly interconnected networks, which, by changing the strength of the\n synapses between cells, can process information, and learn. A neuron, by\n sharing chemical signals with its neighbors, can be integrated into more", "meaningful patterns that keep the neuron active and alive. Moreover,\n such a simple logic can be iterated and amplified, since all neurons\n work on a similar principle of connecting and sharing. Originally, the\n brain is quite open. A neural network exists to share activity and\n information, and I believe this model of the brain should inspire ideas\n and decisions about human networks.\nThus, our brain supports sharing in its very system-nature. This has\n profound implications for the creative process. Whenever you have an\n intention to create, you will find it easier to generate more creative\n ideas if you keep the sharing process firmly in mind. The\n idea-forming-process is not linear, but more like an avalanche of\n amplifications along the thinking path. It moves with the momentum of a\n creative snowball. If your internal cognitive system encourages sharing,", "be a country, but a new human network joined by Social Software. This\n may remain a distant dream, and even a well-defined public sharing\n policy might not be close at hand. But the ideas that I’m discussing can\n improve governments today. We can integrate our current and emerging\n democratic systems with new folksonomies (based on the collaborative,\n social indexing of information) to enable people to make queries, share\n data and remix information for public use. The collective intelligence\n of a vast and equitable sharing environment can be the gatekeeper of our\n rights, and a government watchdog. In the future, policymaking can be\n made more nuanced with the micro-involvement of the sharing community.\n This “Emergent Democracy” is more real-time than periodical\n parliamentary sessions. It will also increase the spectrum of our", "following each blog. Human history is always so: something important was\n happening, but the rest of the world hadn’t yet realized it. The shift\n toward easy-to-use online publishing triggered a soft revolution in just\n five years. People made a quick and easy transition from reading blogs,\n to leaving comments and taking part in online conversations, and then to\n the sudden realization that they should become bloggers themselves. More\n bloggers created more readers, and more readers made more blogs. The\n revolution was viral.\nBloggers generate lively and timely information on the Internet, and\n connect to each other with RSS, hyperlinks, comments, trackbacks and\n quotes. The small-scale granularity of the content can fill discrete\n gaps in experience and thus record a new human history. Once you become\n a blogger, once you have accumulated so much social capital in such a" ], [ "Sharism: A Mind Revolution\nWith the People of the World Wide Web communicating more fully and\n freely in Social Media while rallying a Web 2.0 content boom, the inner\n dynamics of such a creative explosion must be studied more closely. What\n motivates those who join this movement and what future will they create?\n A key fact is that a superabundance of community respect and social\n capital are being accumulated by those who share. The key motivator of\n Social Media and the core spirit of Web 2.0 is a mind switch called\n Sharism. Sharism suggests a re-orientation of personal values. We see it\n in User Generated Content. It is the pledge of Creative Commons. It is\n in the plans of future-oriented cultural initiatives. Sharism is also a\n mental practice that anyone can try, a social-psychological attitude to", "also be the gatekeepers of your rights. Even if you are a traditional\n copyright holder, this sounds ideal.\nFurthermore, by realizing all the immediate and emergent rewards that\n can be had by sharing, you may eventually find that copyright and “All\n Rights Reserved” are far from your mind. You will enjoy sharing too much\n to worry about who is keeping a copy. The new economic formula is, the\n more people remix your works, the higher the return.\nI want to point out that Sharism is not Communism, nor Socialism. As for\n those die- hard Communists we know, they have often abused people’s\n sharing nature and forced them to give up their rights, and their\n property. Socialism, that tender Communism, in our experience also\n lacked respect for these rights. Under these systems, the state owns all", "choices, beyond the binary options of “Yes” or “No” referenda.\n Representative democracy will become more timely and diligent, because\n we will represent ourselves within the system.\nSharism will result in better social justice. In a healthy sharing\n environment, any evidence of injustice can get amplified to get the\n public’s attention. Anyone who has been abused can get real and instant\n support from her peers and her peers’ peers. Appeals to justice will\n take the form of petitions through multiple, interconnected channels.\n Using these tools, anyone can create a large social impact. With\n multiple devices and many social applications, each of us can become\n more sociable, and society more individual. We no longer have to act\n alone.\nEmergent democracy will only happen when Sharism becomes the literacy of", "wave of Social Media. However, these media rights will belong to\n everyone. You yourself can be both producer and consumer in such a\n system.\nSharism Safeguards Your Rights\nStill, many questions will be raised about Sharism as an initiative in\n new age. The main one is copyright. One concern is that any loss of\n control over copyrighted content will lead to noticeable deficits in\n personal wealth, or just loss of control. 5 years ago, I would have said\n that this was a possibility. But things are changing today. The sharing\n environment is more protected than you might think. Many new social\n applications make it easy to set terms-of-use along your sharing path.\n Any infringement of those terms will be challenged not just by the law,\n but by your community. Your audience, who benefit form your sharing, can", "one choice could easily snowball into more creations along the sharing\n path, from people at key nodes in the network who are all as passionate\n about creating and sharing as you are. After many iterative rounds of\n development, a large creative work may spring from your choice to share.\n Of course, you will get the credit that you asked for, and deserve. And\n it’s okay to seek financial rewards. But you will in every case get\n something just as substantial: Happiness.\nThe more people who create in the spirit of Sharism, the easier it will\n be to attain well- balanced and equitable Social Media that is woven by\n people themselves. Media won’t be controlled by any single person but\n will rely on the even distribution of social networking. These “Shaeros”\n (Sharing Heroes) will naturally become the opinion leaders in the first", "Then, if anything interesting comes your way: Share It! The easiest way\n to both start and keep sharing is by using different kinds of social\n software applications. Your first meme you want to share may be small,\n but you can amplify it with new technologies. Enlist some people from\n your network and invite them into a new social application. At first it\n might be hard to feel the gains of Sharism. The true test then is to see\n if you can keep track of the feedback that you get from sharing. You\n will realize that almost all sharing activities will generate positive\n results. The happiness that this will obtain is only the most immediate\n reward. But there are others.\nThe first type of reward that you will get comes in the form of\n comments. Then you know you’ve provoked interest, appreciation,\n excitement. The second reward is access to all the other stuff being", "property. Under Sharism, you can keep ownership, if you want. But I like\n to share. And this is how I choose to spread ideas, and prosperity\nSharism is totally based on your own consensus. It’s not a very hard\n concept to understand, especially since copyleft movements like the Free\n Software Foundation and Creative Commons have been around for years.\n These movements are redefining a more flexible spectrum of licenses for\n both developers and end-users to tag their works. Because the new\n licenses can be recognized by either humans or machines, it’s becoming\n easier to re-share those works in new online ecosystems.\nThe Spirit of the Web, a Social Brain\nSharism is the Spirit of the Age of Web 2.0. It has the consistency of a\n naturalized Epistemology and modernized Axiology, but also promises the", "result, such a Micro-pipeline system is making Social Media a true\n alternative to broadcast media. These new technologies are reviving\n Sharism in our closed culture.\nLocal Practice, Global Gain\nIf you happened to lose your Sharism in a bad educational or cultural\n setting, it’s hard to get it back. But it’s not impossible. A\n persistence of practice can lead to a full recovery. You can think of\n Sharism as a spiritual practice. But you must practice everyday.\n Otherwise, you might lose the power of sharing. Permanently.\nYou might need something to spur you on, to keep you from quitting and\n returning to a closed mindset. Here’s an idea: put a sticky note on your\n desk that says, “What do you want to share today?” I’m not kidding.", "power of a new Internet philosophy. Sharism will transform the world\n into an emergent Social Brain: a networked hybrid of people and\n software. We are Networked Neurons connected by the synapses of Social\n Software.\nThis is an evolutionary leap, a small step for us and a giant one for\n human society. With new “hairy” emergent technologies sprouting all\n around us, we can generate higher connectivities and increase the\n throughput of our social links. The more open and strongly connected we\n social neurons are, the better the sharing environment will be for all\n people. The more collective our intelligence, the wiser our actions will\n be. People have always found better solutions through conversations. Now\n we can put it all online.\nSharism will be the politics of the next global superpower. It will not", "the majority. Since Sharism can improve communication, collaboration and\n mutual understanding, I believe it has a place within the educational\n system. Sharism can be applied to any cultural discourse, CoP (Community\n of Practice) or problem-solving context. It is also an antidote to\n social depression, since sharelessness is just dragging our society\n down. In present or formerly totalitarian countries, this downward cycle\n is even more apparent. The future world will be a hybrid of human and\n machine that will generate better and faster decisions anytime,\n anywhere. The flow of information between minds will become more\n flexible and more productive. These vast networks of sharing will create\n a new social order−A Mind Revolution!", "These mind-switches are too subtle to be felt. But since the brain, and\n society, is a connected system, the accumulation of these\n micro-attitudes, from neuron to neuron and person to person, can result\n in observable behavior. It is easy to tell if a person, a group, a\n company, a nation is oriented toward Sharism or not. For those who are\n not, what they defend as “cultural goods” and “intellectual property”\n are just excuses for the status quo of keeping a community closed. Much\n of their “culture” will be protected, but the net result is the direct\n loss of many other precious ideas, and the subsequent loss of all the\n potential gains of sharing. This lost knowledge is a black hole in our\n life, which may start to swallow other values as well.", "shared by friends in your network. Since you know and trust them, you\n will be that much more interested in what they have to share. Already,\n the return is a multiple of the small meme you first shared. But the\n third type of return is more dramatic still. Anything you share can be\n forwarded, circulated and republished via other people’s networks. This\n cascade effect can spread your work to the networked masses.\nImprovements in social software are making the speed of dissemination as\n fast as a mouse-click. You should get to know the Sharism-You. You’re\n about to become popular, and fast\nThis brings us to the fourth and final type of return. It has a meaning\n not only for you, but for the whole of society. If you so choose, you\n may allow others to create derivative works from what you share. This", "you can engineer a feedback loop of happiness, which will help you\n generate even more ideas in return. It’s a kind of butterfly- effect, as\n the small creative energy you spend will eventually return to make you,\n and the world, more creative.\nHowever, daily decisions for most adults are quite low in creative\n productivity, if only because they’ve switched off their sharing paths.\n People generally like to share what they create, but in a culture that\n tells them to be protective of their ideas, people start to believe in\n the danger of sharing. Then Sharism will be degraded in their mind and\n not encouraged in their society. But if we can encourage someone to\n share, her sharing paths will stay open. Sharism will be kept in her\n mind as a memory and an instinct. If in the future she faces a creative\n choice, her choice will be, “Share.”", "transform a wide and isolated world into a super-smart Social Brain.\nThe Neuron Doctrine\nSharism is encoded in the Human Genome. Although eclipsed by the many\n pragmatisms of daily life, the theory of Sharism finds basis in\n neuroscience and its study of the working model of the human brain.\n Although we can’t entirely say how the brain works as a whole, we do\n have a model of the functional mechanism of the nervous system and its\n neurons. A neuron is not a simple organic cell, but a very powerful,\n electrically excitable biological processor. Groups of neurons form\n vastly interconnected networks, which, by changing the strength of the\n synapses between cells, can process information, and learn. A neuron, by\n sharing chemical signals with its neighbors, can be integrated into more", "Non-sharing culture misleads us with its absolute separation of Private\n and Public space. It makes creative action a binary choice between\n public and private, open and closed. This creates a gap in the spectrum\n of knowledge. Although this gap has the potential to become a valuable\n creative space, concerns about privacy make this gap hard to fill. We\n shouldn’t be surprised that, to be safe, most people keep their sharing\n private and stay “closed.” They may fear the Internet creates a\n potential for abuse that they can’t fight alone. However, the paradox\n is: The less you share, the less power you have.\nNew Technologies and the Rise of Sharism\nLet’s track back to 1999, when there were only a few hundred pioneer\n bloggers around the world, and no more than ten times that many readers", "can have better control over a wide spectrum of relationships. Like how\n Flickr allows people to share their photos widely, but safely. The\n checkbox-based privacy of Flickr may seem unfamiliar to a new user, but\n you can use it to toy with the mind-switches of Sharism. By checking a\n box we can choose to share or not to share. From my observations, I have\n seen photographers on Flickr become more open to sharing, while\n retaining flexible choices.\nThe rapid emergence of Social Applications that can communicate and\n cooperate, by allowing people to output content from one service to\n another, is letting users pump their memes into a pipeline-like\n ecosystem. This interconnectedness allows memes to travel along multiple\n online social networks, and potentially reach a huge audience. As a", "small site, it’s hard to stop. We can’t explain this fact with a theory\n of addiction. It’s an impulse to share. It’s the energy of the memes\n that want to be passed from mouth to mouth and mind to mind. It’s more\n than just E-mail. It’s Sharism.\nBloggers are always keen to keep the social context of their posts in\n mind, by asking themselves, “Who is going to see this?” Bloggers are\n agile in adjusting their tone−and privacy settings−to advance ideas and\n stay out of trouble. It’s not self-censorship, but a sense of smart\n expression. But once blogs reached the tipping point, they expanded into\n the blogosphere. This required a more delicate social networking system\n and content- sharing architecture. But people now understand that they", "meaningful patterns that keep the neuron active and alive. Moreover,\n such a simple logic can be iterated and amplified, since all neurons\n work on a similar principle of connecting and sharing. Originally, the\n brain is quite open. A neural network exists to share activity and\n information, and I believe this model of the brain should inspire ideas\n and decisions about human networks.\nThus, our brain supports sharing in its very system-nature. This has\n profound implications for the creative process. Whenever you have an\n intention to create, you will find it easier to generate more creative\n ideas if you keep the sharing process firmly in mind. The\n idea-forming-process is not linear, but more like an avalanche of\n amplifications along the thinking path. It moves with the momentum of a\n creative snowball. If your internal cognitive system encourages sharing,", "following each blog. Human history is always so: something important was\n happening, but the rest of the world hadn’t yet realized it. The shift\n toward easy-to-use online publishing triggered a soft revolution in just\n five years. People made a quick and easy transition from reading blogs,\n to leaving comments and taking part in online conversations, and then to\n the sudden realization that they should become bloggers themselves. More\n bloggers created more readers, and more readers made more blogs. The\n revolution was viral.\nBloggers generate lively and timely information on the Internet, and\n connect to each other with RSS, hyperlinks, comments, trackbacks and\n quotes. The small-scale granularity of the content can fill discrete\n gaps in experience and thus record a new human history. Once you become\n a blogger, once you have accumulated so much social capital in such a", "be a country, but a new human network joined by Social Software. This\n may remain a distant dream, and even a well-defined public sharing\n policy might not be close at hand. But the ideas that I’m discussing can\n improve governments today. We can integrate our current and emerging\n democratic systems with new folksonomies (based on the collaborative,\n social indexing of information) to enable people to make queries, share\n data and remix information for public use. The collective intelligence\n of a vast and equitable sharing environment can be the gatekeeper of our\n rights, and a government watchdog. In the future, policymaking can be\n made more nuanced with the micro-involvement of the sharing community.\n This “Emergent Democracy” is more real-time than periodical\n parliamentary sessions. It will also increase the spectrum of our" ], [ "Sharism: A Mind Revolution\nWith the People of the World Wide Web communicating more fully and\n freely in Social Media while rallying a Web 2.0 content boom, the inner\n dynamics of such a creative explosion must be studied more closely. What\n motivates those who join this movement and what future will they create?\n A key fact is that a superabundance of community respect and social\n capital are being accumulated by those who share. The key motivator of\n Social Media and the core spirit of Web 2.0 is a mind switch called\n Sharism. Sharism suggests a re-orientation of personal values. We see it\n in User Generated Content. It is the pledge of Creative Commons. It is\n in the plans of future-oriented cultural initiatives. Sharism is also a\n mental practice that anyone can try, a social-psychological attitude to", "choices, beyond the binary options of “Yes” or “No” referenda.\n Representative democracy will become more timely and diligent, because\n we will represent ourselves within the system.\nSharism will result in better social justice. In a healthy sharing\n environment, any evidence of injustice can get amplified to get the\n public’s attention. Anyone who has been abused can get real and instant\n support from her peers and her peers’ peers. Appeals to justice will\n take the form of petitions through multiple, interconnected channels.\n Using these tools, anyone can create a large social impact. With\n multiple devices and many social applications, each of us can become\n more sociable, and society more individual. We no longer have to act\n alone.\nEmergent democracy will only happen when Sharism becomes the literacy of", "the majority. Since Sharism can improve communication, collaboration and\n mutual understanding, I believe it has a place within the educational\n system. Sharism can be applied to any cultural discourse, CoP (Community\n of Practice) or problem-solving context. It is also an antidote to\n social depression, since sharelessness is just dragging our society\n down. In present or formerly totalitarian countries, this downward cycle\n is even more apparent. The future world will be a hybrid of human and\n machine that will generate better and faster decisions anytime,\n anywhere. The flow of information between minds will become more\n flexible and more productive. These vast networks of sharing will create\n a new social order−A Mind Revolution!", "also be the gatekeepers of your rights. Even if you are a traditional\n copyright holder, this sounds ideal.\nFurthermore, by realizing all the immediate and emergent rewards that\n can be had by sharing, you may eventually find that copyright and “All\n Rights Reserved” are far from your mind. You will enjoy sharing too much\n to worry about who is keeping a copy. The new economic formula is, the\n more people remix your works, the higher the return.\nI want to point out that Sharism is not Communism, nor Socialism. As for\n those die- hard Communists we know, they have often abused people’s\n sharing nature and forced them to give up their rights, and their\n property. Socialism, that tender Communism, in our experience also\n lacked respect for these rights. Under these systems, the state owns all", "These mind-switches are too subtle to be felt. But since the brain, and\n society, is a connected system, the accumulation of these\n micro-attitudes, from neuron to neuron and person to person, can result\n in observable behavior. It is easy to tell if a person, a group, a\n company, a nation is oriented toward Sharism or not. For those who are\n not, what they defend as “cultural goods” and “intellectual property”\n are just excuses for the status quo of keeping a community closed. Much\n of their “culture” will be protected, but the net result is the direct\n loss of many other precious ideas, and the subsequent loss of all the\n potential gains of sharing. This lost knowledge is a black hole in our\n life, which may start to swallow other values as well.", "power of a new Internet philosophy. Sharism will transform the world\n into an emergent Social Brain: a networked hybrid of people and\n software. We are Networked Neurons connected by the synapses of Social\n Software.\nThis is an evolutionary leap, a small step for us and a giant one for\n human society. With new “hairy” emergent technologies sprouting all\n around us, we can generate higher connectivities and increase the\n throughput of our social links. The more open and strongly connected we\n social neurons are, the better the sharing environment will be for all\n people. The more collective our intelligence, the wiser our actions will\n be. People have always found better solutions through conversations. Now\n we can put it all online.\nSharism will be the politics of the next global superpower. It will not", "property. Under Sharism, you can keep ownership, if you want. But I like\n to share. And this is how I choose to spread ideas, and prosperity\nSharism is totally based on your own consensus. It’s not a very hard\n concept to understand, especially since copyleft movements like the Free\n Software Foundation and Creative Commons have been around for years.\n These movements are redefining a more flexible spectrum of licenses for\n both developers and end-users to tag their works. Because the new\n licenses can be recognized by either humans or machines, it’s becoming\n easier to re-share those works in new online ecosystems.\nThe Spirit of the Web, a Social Brain\nSharism is the Spirit of the Age of Web 2.0. It has the consistency of a\n naturalized Epistemology and modernized Axiology, but also promises the", "result, such a Micro-pipeline system is making Social Media a true\n alternative to broadcast media. These new technologies are reviving\n Sharism in our closed culture.\nLocal Practice, Global Gain\nIf you happened to lose your Sharism in a bad educational or cultural\n setting, it’s hard to get it back. But it’s not impossible. A\n persistence of practice can lead to a full recovery. You can think of\n Sharism as a spiritual practice. But you must practice everyday.\n Otherwise, you might lose the power of sharing. Permanently.\nYou might need something to spur you on, to keep you from quitting and\n returning to a closed mindset. Here’s an idea: put a sticky note on your\n desk that says, “What do you want to share today?” I’m not kidding.", "one choice could easily snowball into more creations along the sharing\n path, from people at key nodes in the network who are all as passionate\n about creating and sharing as you are. After many iterative rounds of\n development, a large creative work may spring from your choice to share.\n Of course, you will get the credit that you asked for, and deserve. And\n it’s okay to seek financial rewards. But you will in every case get\n something just as substantial: Happiness.\nThe more people who create in the spirit of Sharism, the easier it will\n be to attain well- balanced and equitable Social Media that is woven by\n people themselves. Media won’t be controlled by any single person but\n will rely on the even distribution of social networking. These “Shaeros”\n (Sharing Heroes) will naturally become the opinion leaders in the first", "transform a wide and isolated world into a super-smart Social Brain.\nThe Neuron Doctrine\nSharism is encoded in the Human Genome. Although eclipsed by the many\n pragmatisms of daily life, the theory of Sharism finds basis in\n neuroscience and its study of the working model of the human brain.\n Although we can’t entirely say how the brain works as a whole, we do\n have a model of the functional mechanism of the nervous system and its\n neurons. A neuron is not a simple organic cell, but a very powerful,\n electrically excitable biological processor. Groups of neurons form\n vastly interconnected networks, which, by changing the strength of the\n synapses between cells, can process information, and learn. A neuron, by\n sharing chemical signals with its neighbors, can be integrated into more", "Then, if anything interesting comes your way: Share It! The easiest way\n to both start and keep sharing is by using different kinds of social\n software applications. Your first meme you want to share may be small,\n but you can amplify it with new technologies. Enlist some people from\n your network and invite them into a new social application. At first it\n might be hard to feel the gains of Sharism. The true test then is to see\n if you can keep track of the feedback that you get from sharing. You\n will realize that almost all sharing activities will generate positive\n results. The happiness that this will obtain is only the most immediate\n reward. But there are others.\nThe first type of reward that you will get comes in the form of\n comments. Then you know you’ve provoked interest, appreciation,\n excitement. The second reward is access to all the other stuff being", "wave of Social Media. However, these media rights will belong to\n everyone. You yourself can be both producer and consumer in such a\n system.\nSharism Safeguards Your Rights\nStill, many questions will be raised about Sharism as an initiative in\n new age. The main one is copyright. One concern is that any loss of\n control over copyrighted content will lead to noticeable deficits in\n personal wealth, or just loss of control. 5 years ago, I would have said\n that this was a possibility. But things are changing today. The sharing\n environment is more protected than you might think. Many new social\n applications make it easy to set terms-of-use along your sharing path.\n Any infringement of those terms will be challenged not just by the law,\n but by your community. Your audience, who benefit form your sharing, can", "you can engineer a feedback loop of happiness, which will help you\n generate even more ideas in return. It’s a kind of butterfly- effect, as\n the small creative energy you spend will eventually return to make you,\n and the world, more creative.\nHowever, daily decisions for most adults are quite low in creative\n productivity, if only because they’ve switched off their sharing paths.\n People generally like to share what they create, but in a culture that\n tells them to be protective of their ideas, people start to believe in\n the danger of sharing. Then Sharism will be degraded in their mind and\n not encouraged in their society. But if we can encourage someone to\n share, her sharing paths will stay open. Sharism will be kept in her\n mind as a memory and an instinct. If in the future she faces a creative\n choice, her choice will be, “Share.”", "Non-sharing culture misleads us with its absolute separation of Private\n and Public space. It makes creative action a binary choice between\n public and private, open and closed. This creates a gap in the spectrum\n of knowledge. Although this gap has the potential to become a valuable\n creative space, concerns about privacy make this gap hard to fill. We\n shouldn’t be surprised that, to be safe, most people keep their sharing\n private and stay “closed.” They may fear the Internet creates a\n potential for abuse that they can’t fight alone. However, the paradox\n is: The less you share, the less power you have.\nNew Technologies and the Rise of Sharism\nLet’s track back to 1999, when there were only a few hundred pioneer\n bloggers around the world, and no more than ten times that many readers", "can have better control over a wide spectrum of relationships. Like how\n Flickr allows people to share their photos widely, but safely. The\n checkbox-based privacy of Flickr may seem unfamiliar to a new user, but\n you can use it to toy with the mind-switches of Sharism. By checking a\n box we can choose to share or not to share. From my observations, I have\n seen photographers on Flickr become more open to sharing, while\n retaining flexible choices.\nThe rapid emergence of Social Applications that can communicate and\n cooperate, by allowing people to output content from one service to\n another, is letting users pump their memes into a pipeline-like\n ecosystem. This interconnectedness allows memes to travel along multiple\n online social networks, and potentially reach a huge audience. As a", "small site, it’s hard to stop. We can’t explain this fact with a theory\n of addiction. It’s an impulse to share. It’s the energy of the memes\n that want to be passed from mouth to mouth and mind to mind. It’s more\n than just E-mail. It’s Sharism.\nBloggers are always keen to keep the social context of their posts in\n mind, by asking themselves, “Who is going to see this?” Bloggers are\n agile in adjusting their tone−and privacy settings−to advance ideas and\n stay out of trouble. It’s not self-censorship, but a sense of smart\n expression. But once blogs reached the tipping point, they expanded into\n the blogosphere. This required a more delicate social networking system\n and content- sharing architecture. But people now understand that they", "shared by friends in your network. Since you know and trust them, you\n will be that much more interested in what they have to share. Already,\n the return is a multiple of the small meme you first shared. But the\n third type of return is more dramatic still. Anything you share can be\n forwarded, circulated and republished via other people’s networks. This\n cascade effect can spread your work to the networked masses.\nImprovements in social software are making the speed of dissemination as\n fast as a mouse-click. You should get to know the Sharism-You. You’re\n about to become popular, and fast\nThis brings us to the fourth and final type of return. It has a meaning\n not only for you, but for the whole of society. If you so choose, you\n may allow others to create derivative works from what you share. This", "meaningful patterns that keep the neuron active and alive. Moreover,\n such a simple logic can be iterated and amplified, since all neurons\n work on a similar principle of connecting and sharing. Originally, the\n brain is quite open. A neural network exists to share activity and\n information, and I believe this model of the brain should inspire ideas\n and decisions about human networks.\nThus, our brain supports sharing in its very system-nature. This has\n profound implications for the creative process. Whenever you have an\n intention to create, you will find it easier to generate more creative\n ideas if you keep the sharing process firmly in mind. The\n idea-forming-process is not linear, but more like an avalanche of\n amplifications along the thinking path. It moves with the momentum of a\n creative snowball. If your internal cognitive system encourages sharing,", "following each blog. Human history is always so: something important was\n happening, but the rest of the world hadn’t yet realized it. The shift\n toward easy-to-use online publishing triggered a soft revolution in just\n five years. People made a quick and easy transition from reading blogs,\n to leaving comments and taking part in online conversations, and then to\n the sudden realization that they should become bloggers themselves. More\n bloggers created more readers, and more readers made more blogs. The\n revolution was viral.\nBloggers generate lively and timely information on the Internet, and\n connect to each other with RSS, hyperlinks, comments, trackbacks and\n quotes. The small-scale granularity of the content can fill discrete\n gaps in experience and thus record a new human history. Once you become\n a blogger, once you have accumulated so much social capital in such a", "be a country, but a new human network joined by Social Software. This\n may remain a distant dream, and even a well-defined public sharing\n policy might not be close at hand. But the ideas that I’m discussing can\n improve governments today. We can integrate our current and emerging\n democratic systems with new folksonomies (based on the collaborative,\n social indexing of information) to enable people to make queries, share\n data and remix information for public use. The collective intelligence\n of a vast and equitable sharing environment can be the gatekeeper of our\n rights, and a government watchdog. In the future, policymaking can be\n made more nuanced with the micro-involvement of the sharing community.\n This “Emergent Democracy” is more real-time than periodical\n parliamentary sessions. It will also increase the spectrum of our" ] ]
valid	61430	[ "What is Jorgenson's internal conflict at the beginning of the story?", "Why is the Grand Panjandrum called the Never-Mistaken?", "Why does Jorgenson contradict the Grand Panajandrum?", "How do the Thrid view their leader?", "What is the best adjective to describe Thriddar's society?", "Why does Ganti allow the governor to steal his wife?", "How does the Grand Panjandrum punish Jorgenson?", "Why is Jorgenson allowed to speak to Ganti?", "What is the most important value in Thrid culture?", "What will happen if Jorgenson and Ganti's plan fails?" ]	[ [ "He wants to leave Thriddar, but his business is too lucrative for him to abandon", "He wants to give his trading post to the Grand Pajandrum, but if he does he risks losing his friendship with Ganti", "He wants to make money from the Thrid, but doing so means he must condemn his friend Ganti", "He wants to act like a rational businessman but he feels angry at the injustices of Thriddar's society" ], [ "He is never mistaken because he is a totalitarian ruler who uses force to get what he wants", "He is never mistaken because he refuses to speak, so he can never utter something untrue", "The title Never-Mistaken is just a formality to show how much wisdom the leader has", "He is never mistaken because he has supernatural powers that allow him to see into the future" ], [ "He contradicts him because he thinks the Grand Panjandrum is just joking around", "He contradicts him by accident because he does not know Thrid's culture well", "He contradicts him because he simply can't abide the injustice of the situation, despite knowing that he will face negative consequences", "He contradicts him because he is already scheduled to leave the planet that day so it doesn't matter if he angers the Thrid's leader" ], [ "They view their leader as flawed, but competent ruler", "They view their leader is infallible", "They view their leader as an unjust tyrant", "They view their leader as a fool" ], [ "Libertarian", "Feudal", "Authoritarian", "Democratic" ], [ "He doesn't really care much about his wife", "He thinks that the governor will give him a promotion", "He thinks that his wife will be happier with the governor", "He thinks that the governor cannot be wrong" ], [ "He banishes him to a deserted island with no other inhabitants", "He kills him with a ceremonial spear", "He exiles him to a deserted island with one other prisoner", "He sends him to an overcrowded prison" ], [ "Ganti is his court-designated lawyer", "Ganti is a theologian, so he is supposed to re-educate Jorgenson to believe in the Thrid's religion", "Ganti has also disobeyed orders, so he is not considered a rational creature", "Ganti has lost his mind on the island, so he is not considered a rational creature" ], [ "Obedience", "Honesty", "Kindness", "Courage" ], [ "They will commit suicide together", "They will fight each other to the death ", "They will beg for forgiveness and be accepted back into Thrid's society", "They will starve to death from a lack of supplies" ] ]	[ 4, 1, 3, 2, 3, 4, 3, 3, 1, 4 ]	[ 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "The real trouble was that Jorgenson saw things as a business man does.\n But also, and contradictorily, he saw them as right and just, or as\n wrong and intolerable. As a business man, he should have kept his mind\n on business and never bothered about Ganti. As a believer in right and\n wrong, it would have been wiser for him to have stayed off the planet\n Thriddar altogether. Thriddar was no place for him, anyhow you look at\n it. On this particular morning it was especially the wrong place for\n him to be trying to live and do business.\n\n\n He woke up thinking of Ganti, and in consequence he was in a bad mood\n right away. Most humans couldn't take the sort of thing that went on on\n Thriddar. Most of them wanted to use missile weapons—which the Thrid\n did not use—to change the local social system. Most humans got off\n Thriddar—fast! And boiling mad.", "Jorgenson reflected sourly that the governors and the rulers of the\n universe were whoever happened to be within hearing of the Grand\n Panjandrum. They were not imposing. They were scared. Everybody is\n always scared under an absolute ruler, but the Grand Panjandrum was\n worse than that. He couldn't make a mistake. Whatever he said had to\n be true, because he said it, and sometimes it had drastic results. But\n past Grand Panjandrums had spoken highly of the trading post. Jorgenson\n shouldn't have much to worry about. He waited. He thought of Ganti. He\n scowled.", "Jorgenson had stood it longer than most because in spite of their\n convictions he liked the Thrid. Their minds did do outside loops, and\n come up with intolerable convictions. But they were intelligent enough.\n They had steam-power and even steam-driven atmosphere fliers, but they\n didn't have missile weapons and they did have a social system that\n humans simply couldn't accept—even though it applied only to Thrid.\n The ordinary Thrid, with whom Jorgenson did business, weren't bad\n people. It was the officials who made him grind his teeth. And though\n it was his business only to run the trading post of the Rim Stars\n Trading Corporation, sometimes he got fed up.", "It would be a nice situation for Glen-U. He'd have to do something\n about it, and there was nothing he could do. He'd blundered, and it\n would soon be public knowledge.\n\n\n Jorgenson dozed lightly. Then more heavily. Then more heavily still.\n The night was not two hours old when the warning sirens made a terrific\n uproar. The Thrid for miles around heard the wailing, ullulating sound\n of the sirens that should have awakened Jorgenson.\n\n\n But they didn't wake him. He slept on.\nWhen he woke, he knew that he was cold. His muscles were cramped. Half\n awake, he tried to move and could not.", "Jorgenson swore impartially at all of them and turned the shocker-field\n back on. He plugged in a capacity circuit which would turn on warning\n sirens if anything like a steam-driven copter passed or hovered over\n the trading-post. He put blasters in handy positions. The Thrid used\n only spears, knives and scimitars. Blasters would defend the post\n against a multitude.\n\n\n As a business man, he'd acted very foolishly. But he'd acted even less\n sensibly as a human being. He'd gotten fed up with a social system\n and a—call it—theology it wasn't his business to change. True, the\n Thrid way of life was appalling, and what had happened to Ganti was\n probably typical. But it wasn't Jorgenson's affair. He'd been unwise to\n let it disturb him. If the Thrid wanted things this way, it was their\n privilege.", "Jorgenson laid the matter indignantly before him, repeating the exact\n phrases that said the trading company wanted—wanted!—practically to\n give itself to the Never-Mistaken Glen-U, who was the Grand Panjandrum\n of Thriddar. He waited to be told that it couldn't have happened; that\n anyhow it couldn't be intended. But the theologian's Thriddish ears\n went limp, which amounted to the same thing as a man's face turning\n pale. He stammered agitatedly that if the Grand Panjandrum said it, it\n was true. It couldn't be otherwise! If the trading company wanted to\n give itself to him, there was nothing to be done. It wanted to! The\n Grand Panjandrum had said so!\n\n\n \"He also said,\" said Jorgenson irritably, \"that I'm to vanish and\n nevermore be seen face to face by any rational being. How does that\n happen? Do I get speared?\"", "But the local Thrid governor had spoken and said and observed that\n Ganti's wife wanted to enter his household. He added that Ganti wanted\n to yield her to him.\n\n\n Jorgenson had fumed—but not as a business man—when the transfer took\n place. But Ganti had been conditioned to believe that when a governor\n said he wanted to do something, he did. He couldn't quite grasp the\n contrary idea. But he moped horribly, and Jorgenson talked sardonically\n to him, and he almost doubted that an official was necessarily right.\n When his former wife died of grief, his disbelief became positive. And\n immediately afterward he disappeared.\n\n\n Jorgenson couldn't find out what had become of him. Dour reflection on\n the happening had put him in the bad mood which had started things,\n this morning.", "The high official rolled up the scroll, while Jorgenson exploded inside.\nA part of this was reaction as a business man. A part was recognition\n of all the intolerable things that the Thrid took as a matter of\n course. If Jorgenson had reacted solely as a business man he'd have\n swallowed it, departed on the next Rim Stars trading-ship—which would\n not have left any trade-goods behind—and left the Grand Panjandrum to\n realize what he had lost when no off-planet goods arrived on Thriddar.\n In time he'd speak and say and observe that he, out of his generosity,\n gave the loot back. Then the trading could resume. But Jorgenson didn't\n feel only like a business man this morning. He thought of Ganti, who\n was a particular case of everything he disliked on Thriddar.", "Jorgenson found that a fish-fillet, strongly squeezed and wrung like a\n wet cloth, would yield a drinkable liquid which was not salt and would\n substitute for water. And this was a reason to make a string bag in\n which caught fish could be let back into the sea so they were there\n when wanted but could not escape.\n\n\n They had used it for weeks when he saw Ganti, carrying it to place it\n where they left it overboard, swinging it idly back and forth as he\n walked.\nIf Jorgenson had been only a businessman, it would have had no\n particular meaning. But he was also a person, filled with hatred of\n the Thrid who had condemned him for life to this small island. He saw\n the swinging of the fish. It gave him an idea.\n\n\n He did not speak at all during all the rest of that day. He was\n thinking. The matter needed much thought. Ganti left him alone.", "Now it was evidently to be arranged that he would never again be seen\n face to face by a rational being. The Grand Panjandrum had won the\n argument. Within a few months a Rim Stars trading ship would land, and\n Jorgenson would be gone and the trading post confiscated. It would be\n hopeless to ask questions, and worse than hopeless to try to trade. So\n the ship would lift off and there'd be no more ships for at least a\n generation. Then there might—there might!—be another.\n\n\n Jorgenson swore fluently and with passion.\n\n\n \"It will not be long,\" said a tranquil voice.\n\n\n Jorgenson changed from human-speech profanity to Thrid. He directed\n his words to the unseen creature who'd spoken. That Thrid listened,\n apparently without emotion. When Jorgenson ran out of breath, the voice\n said severely:", "\"Somebody dug it out,\" said Ganti without resentment. \"To keep busy.\n Maybe one prisoner only began it. A later one saw it started and worked\n on it to keep busy. Then others in their turn. It took a good many\n lives to make this cave.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson ground his teeth a second time.\n\n\n \"And just because they'd contradicted somebody who couldn't be wrong!\n Or because they had a business an official wanted!\"\n\n\n \"Or a wife,\" agreed Ganti. \"Here!\"\n\n\n He offered food. Jorgenson ate, scowling. Afterward, near sundown, he\n went over the island.", "The Thrid was Ganti, of whom Jorgenson had once had hopes as a business\n man, and for whose disaster he had felt indignation as something else.\n He loosened the last of Jorgenson's bonds and helped him sit up.\n\n\n Jorgenson glared around. The island was roughly one hundred feet by\n two. It was twisted, curdled yellow stone from one end to the other.\n There were stone hillocks and a miniature stony peak, and a narrow\n valley between two patches of higher rock. Huge seas boomed against\n the windward shore, throwing spray higher than the island's topmost\n point. There were some places where sand had gathered. There was one\n spot—perhaps a square yard of it—where sand had been made fertile by\n the droppings of flying things and where two or three starveling plants\n showed foliage of sorts. That was all. Jorgenson ground his teeth.\n\n\n \"Go ahead,\" said Ganti grimly, \"but it may be even worse than you\n think.\"", "\"Is mistaken!\" said Jorgenson bitingly. \"He's wrong! The Rim Stars\n Trading Corporation does\nnot\nwant to give him anything! What he has\n said is not true!\" This was the equivalent of treason, blasphemy and\n the ultimate of indecorous behavior toward a virgin Pelean princess. \"I\n won't give him anything! I'm not even vanishing from sight! Glen-U is\n wrong about that, too! Now—git!\"\n\n\n He jerked out his blaster and pulled the trigger.\n\n\n There was an explosive burst of flame from the ground between the\n official and himself. The official fled. With him fled all the\n Witnesses, some even losing their headgear in their haste to get away.\nJorgenson stamped into the trading-post building. His eyes were stormy\n and his jaw was set.", "\"You declared the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U mistaken. This could\n not be. It proved you either a criminal or insane, because no rational\n creature could believe him mistaken. He declared you insane, and he\n cannot be wrong. So soon you will arrive where you are to be confined\n and no rational being will ever see you face to face.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson switched back to human swearing. Then he blended both\n languages, using all the applicable words he knew both in human speech\n and Thrid. He knew a great many. The soft throbbing of the steam-driven\n rotors went on, and Jorgenson swore both as a business man and a\n humanitarian. Both were frustrated.", "It was not wise to be moved by such sympathetic feelings. The Grand\n Panjandrum could not be mistaken. It was definitely unwise to\n contradict him. It could even be dangerous. Jorgenson was in a nasty\n spot.\n\n\n The Witnesses murmured reverently:\n\n\n \"We hear the words of the Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n The high official tucked away the scroll and said blandly:\n\n\n \"I will receive the moneys, goods, and benefactions it is the desire\n of the Rim Stars Trading Corporation to present to the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson, boiling inside, nevertheless knew what he was doing. He said\n succinctly:\n\n\n \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n There was an idiom in Thrid speech that had exactly the meaning of the\n human phrase. Jorgenson used it.", "It was rock, nothing else. There was a pile of small broken stones from\n the excavation of the cave. There were the few starveling plants. There\n was the cordage with which Jorgenson had been lowered. There was the\n parcel containing food and water. Ganti observed that the plastic went\n to pieces in a week or so, so it couldn't be used for anything. There\n was nothing to escape with. Nothing to make anything to escape with.\n\n\n Even the dried seaweed bed was not comfortable. Jorgenson slept badly\n and waked with aching muscles. Ganti assured him unemotionally that\n he'd get used to it.\n\n\n He did. By the time the copter came to drop food and water again,\n Jorgenson was physically adjusted to the island. But neither as a\n business man or as a person could he adjust to hopelessness.", "Ganti looked skeptical. Jorgenson explained. He had to demonstrate\n crudely. The whole idea was novel to Ganti, but the Thrid were smart.\n Presently he grasped it. He said:\n\n\n \"I see the theory. If we can make it work, all right. But how do we\n make the copter land?\"\n\n\n Jorgenson realized that they talked oddly. They spoke with leisurely\n lack of haste, with the lack of hope normal to prisoners to whom escape\n is impossible, even when they talk about escape. They could have been\n discussing a matter that would not affect either of them. But Jorgenson\n quivered inside. He hoped.\n\n\n \"We'll try it,\" said Ganti detachedly, when he'd explained again. \"If\n it fails, they'll only stop giving us food and water.\"\n\n\n That, of course, did not seem either to him or Jorgenson a reason to\n hesitate to try what Jorgenson had planned.", "He fumed because creatures intelligent enough to build steam fliers\n weren't intelligent enough to see what a racket their government was.\n Now that the new Grand Panjandrum had moved against him, Jorgenson made\n an angry, dogged resolution to do something permanent to make matters\n better. For the Thrid themselves. Here he thought not as a business\n man only, but as a humanitarian. As both. When a whim of the Grand\n Panjandrum could ruin a business, something should be done. And when\n Ganti and countless others had been victims of capricious tyranny....\n And Jorgenson was slated to vanish from sight and never again be\n seen.... It definitely called for strong measures!\n\n\n He reflected with grim pleasure that the Grand Panjandrum would soon\n be in the position of a Thrid whom everybody knew was mistaken. With\n the trading-post denied him and Jorgenson still visible, he'd be\n notoriously wrong. And he couldn't be, and still be Grand Panjandrum!", "Presently the motion of the copter changed. He knew the ship was\n descending. There were more violent swayings, as if from wind gusts\n deflected by something large and solid. Jorgenson even heard deep-bass\n rumblings like sea upon a rocky coast. Then there were movements near\n him, a rope went around his waist, a loading-bay opened and he found\n himself lifted and lowered through it.\nHe dangled in midair, a couple of hundred feet above an utterly barren\n island on which huge ocean swells beat. The downdraft from the copter\n made him sway wildly, and once it had him spinning dizzily. The horizon\n was empty. He was being lowered swiftly to the island. And his hands\n and feet were still securely tied.", "Then he saw a figure on the island. It was a Thrid stripped of all\n clothing like Jorgenson and darkened by the sun. That figure came\n agilely toward where he was let down. It caught him. It checked his\n wild swingings, which could have broken bones. The rope slackened. The\n Thrid laid Jorgenson down.\n\n\n He did not cast off the rope. He seemed to essay to climb it.\n\n\n It was cut at the steam-copter and came tumbling down all over both of\n them. The Thrid waved his arms wildly and seemed to screech gibberish\n at the sky. There was an impact nearby, of something dropped. Jorgenson\n heard the throbbing sound of the copter as it lifted and swept away.\n\n\n Then he felt the bounds about his arms and legs being removed. Then a\n Thrid voice—amazingly, a familiar Thrid voice—said:\n\n\n \"This is not good, Jorgenson. Who did you contradict?\"" ], [ "Jorgenson laid the matter indignantly before him, repeating the exact\n phrases that said the trading company wanted—wanted!—practically to\n give itself to the Never-Mistaken Glen-U, who was the Grand Panjandrum\n of Thriddar. He waited to be told that it couldn't have happened; that\n anyhow it couldn't be intended. But the theologian's Thriddish ears\n went limp, which amounted to the same thing as a man's face turning\n pale. He stammered agitatedly that if the Grand Panjandrum said it, it\n was true. It couldn't be otherwise! If the trading company wanted to\n give itself to him, there was nothing to be done. It wanted to! The\n Grand Panjandrum had said so!\n\n\n \"He also said,\" said Jorgenson irritably, \"that I'm to vanish and\n nevermore be seen face to face by any rational being. How does that\n happen? Do I get speared?\"", "Jorgenson reflected sourly that the governors and the rulers of the\n universe were whoever happened to be within hearing of the Grand\n Panjandrum. They were not imposing. They were scared. Everybody is\n always scared under an absolute ruler, but the Grand Panjandrum was\n worse than that. He couldn't make a mistake. Whatever he said had to\n be true, because he said it, and sometimes it had drastic results. But\n past Grand Panjandrums had spoken highly of the trading post. Jorgenson\n shouldn't have much to worry about. He waited. He thought of Ganti. He\n scowled.", "He fumed because creatures intelligent enough to build steam fliers\n weren't intelligent enough to see what a racket their government was.\n Now that the new Grand Panjandrum had moved against him, Jorgenson made\n an angry, dogged resolution to do something permanent to make matters\n better. For the Thrid themselves. Here he thought not as a business\n man only, but as a humanitarian. As both. When a whim of the Grand\n Panjandrum could ruin a business, something should be done. And when\n Ganti and countless others had been victims of capricious tyranny....\n And Jorgenson was slated to vanish from sight and never again be\n seen.... It definitely called for strong measures!\n\n\n He reflected with grim pleasure that the Grand Panjandrum would soon\n be in the position of a Thrid whom everybody knew was mistaken. With\n the trading-post denied him and Jorgenson still visible, he'd be\n notoriously wrong. And he couldn't be, and still be Grand Panjandrum!", "The trading-post theologian quivered. Jorgenson made things much worse.\n\n\n \"This,\" he raged, \"this is crazy! The Grand Panjandrum's an ordinary\n Thrid just like you are! Of course he can make a mistake! There's\n nobody who can't be wrong!\"\n\n\n The theologian put up feebly protesting, human-like hands. He begged\n hysterically to be allowed to go home before Jorgenson vanished, with\n unknown consequences for any Thrid who might be nearby.\n\n\n When Jorgenson opened a door to kick him out of it, the whole staff of\n the trading-post plunged after him. They'd been eavesdropping and they\n fled in pure horror.", "It was not wise to be moved by such sympathetic feelings. The Grand\n Panjandrum could not be mistaken. It was definitely unwise to\n contradict him. It could even be dangerous. Jorgenson was in a nasty\n spot.\n\n\n The Witnesses murmured reverently:\n\n\n \"We hear the words of the Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n The high official tucked away the scroll and said blandly:\n\n\n \"I will receive the moneys, goods, and benefactions it is the desire\n of the Rim Stars Trading Corporation to present to the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson, boiling inside, nevertheless knew what he was doing. He said\n succinctly:\n\n\n \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n There was an idiom in Thrid speech that had exactly the meaning of the\n human phrase. Jorgenson used it.", "The high official looked at him in utter stupefaction. Nobody\n contradicted the Grand Panjandrum! Nobody! The Thrid had noticed long\n ago that they were the most intelligent race in the universe. Since\n that was so, obviously they must have the most perfect government.\n But no government could be perfect if its officials made mistakes. So\n no Thrid official ever made a mistake. In particular the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U could not conceivably blunder! When he said a\n thing, it was true! It had to be! He'd said it! And this was the\n fundamental fact in the culture of the Thrid.\n\n\n \"Like hell you'll receive moneys and goods and such!\" snapped\n Jorgenson. \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n The high official literally couldn't believe his ears.\n\n\n \"But—but the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U—\"", "The high official unrolled the scroll. The Thrid around him, wearing\n Witness hats, became utterly silent. The high official made a sound\n equivalent to clearing his throat. The stillness became death-like.\n\n\n \"On this day,\" intoned the high official, while the Witnesses\n listened reverently, \"on this day did Glen-U the Never-Mistaken, as\n have been his predecessors throughout the ages;—on this day did the\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U speak and say and observe a truth in the presence\n of the governors and the rulers of the universe.\"", "Then he tried to waken fully, and he couldn't do that either. He stayed\n in a dream-like, frustrated state which was partly like a nightmare,\n while very gradually new sensations came to him. He felt a cushioned\n throbbing against his chest, in the very hard surface on which he lay\n face down. That surface swayed and rocked slightly. He tried again to\n move, and realized that his hands and feet were bound. He found that he\n shivered, and realized that his clothing had been taken from him.\n\n\n He was completely helpless and lying on his stomach in the cargo-space\n of a steam helicopter: now he could hear the sound of its machinery.\n\n\n Then he knew what had happened. He'd committed The unthinkable\n crime—or lunacy—of declaring the Grand Panjandrum mistaken. So by the\n operation of truth, which was really an anesthetic gas cloud drifted\n over the trading post, he had vanished from sight.", "\"The great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U,\" intoned the official again,\n \"in the presence of the governors and the rulers of the universe, did\n speak and say and observe that it is the desire of the Rim Star Trading\n Corporation to present to him, the great and never-mistaken Glen-U, all\n of the present possessions of the said Rim Stars Trading Corporation,\n and thereafter to remit to him all moneys, goods, and benefactions\n to and of the said Rim Stars Trading Corporation as they shall be\n received. The great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U did further speak and say\n and observe that anyone hindering this loyal and admirable gift must,\n by the operation of truth, vanish from sight and nevermore be seen face\n to face by any rational being.\"", "Now it was evidently to be arranged that he would never again be seen\n face to face by a rational being. The Grand Panjandrum had won the\n argument. Within a few months a Rim Stars trading ship would land, and\n Jorgenson would be gone and the trading post confiscated. It would be\n hopeless to ask questions, and worse than hopeless to try to trade. So\n the ship would lift off and there'd be no more ships for at least a\n generation. Then there might—there might!—be another.\n\n\n Jorgenson swore fluently and with passion.\n\n\n \"It will not be long,\" said a tranquil voice.\n\n\n Jorgenson changed from human-speech profanity to Thrid. He directed\n his words to the unseen creature who'd spoken. That Thrid listened,\n apparently without emotion. When Jorgenson ran out of breath, the voice\n said severely:", "\"You declared the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U mistaken. This could\n not be. It proved you either a criminal or insane, because no rational\n creature could believe him mistaken. He declared you insane, and he\n cannot be wrong. So soon you will arrive where you are to be confined\n and no rational being will ever see you face to face.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson switched back to human swearing. Then he blended both\n languages, using all the applicable words he knew both in human speech\n and Thrid. He knew a great many. The soft throbbing of the steam-driven\n rotors went on, and Jorgenson swore both as a business man and a\n humanitarian. Both were frustrated.", "This morning was especially beyond the limit. There was a new Grand\n Panjandrum—the term was Jorgenson's own for the supreme ruler over\n all the Thrid—and when Jorgenson finished his breakfast a high Thrid\n official waited in the trading-post compound. Around him clustered\n other Thrid, wearing the formal headgear that said they were Witnesses\n to an official act.\n\n\n Jorgenson went out, scowling, and exchanged the customary ceremonial\n greetings. Then the high official beamed at him and extracted a scroll\n from his voluminous garments. Jorgenson saw the glint of gold and was\n suspicious at once. The words of a current Grand Panjandrum were always\n written in gold. If they didn't get written in gold they didn't get\n written at all; but it was too bad if anybody ignored any of them.", "\"Is mistaken!\" said Jorgenson bitingly. \"He's wrong! The Rim Stars\n Trading Corporation does\nnot\nwant to give him anything! What he has\n said is not true!\" This was the equivalent of treason, blasphemy and\n the ultimate of indecorous behavior toward a virgin Pelean princess. \"I\n won't give him anything! I'm not even vanishing from sight! Glen-U is\n wrong about that, too! Now—git!\"\n\n\n He jerked out his blaster and pulled the trigger.\n\n\n There was an explosive burst of flame from the ground between the\n official and himself. The official fled. With him fled all the\n Witnesses, some even losing their headgear in their haste to get away.\nJorgenson stamped into the trading-post building. His eyes were stormy\n and his jaw was set.", "He scrambled over the twisted stone of the island. He came back,\n carrying something.\n\n\n \"It isn't worse,\" he said. \"It's only as bad. They did drop food and\n water for both of us. I wasn't sure they would.\"\nHis calmness sobered Jorgenson. As a business man, he was moved to make\n his situation clear. He told Ganti of the Grand Panjandrum's move to\n take over the Rim Stars trading post, which was bad business. He told\n of his own reaction, which was not a business-like one at all. Then he\n said dourly:\n\n\n \"But he's still wrong. No rational being is supposed ever to see me\n face to face. But you do.\"", "In theory, no Thrid should ever make a mistake, because he belonged\n to the most intelligent race in the universe. But a local governor\n was even more intelligent. If an ordinary Thrid challenged a local\n governor's least and lightest remark—why—he must be either a criminal\n or insane. The local governor decided—correctly, of course—which\n he was. If he was a criminal, he spent the rest of his life in a gang\n of criminals chained together and doing the most exhausting labor the\n Thrid could contrive. If he was mad, he was confined for life.\nThere'd been Ganti, a Thrid of whom Jorgenson had had much hope. He\n believed that Ganti could learn to run the trading post without human\n supervision. If he could, the trading company could simply bring trade\n goods to Thriddar and take away other trade goods. The cost of doing\n business would be decreased. There could be no human-Thrid friction.\n Jorgenson had been training Ganti for this work.", "The high official rolled up the scroll, while Jorgenson exploded inside.\nA part of this was reaction as a business man. A part was recognition\n of all the intolerable things that the Thrid took as a matter of\n course. If Jorgenson had reacted solely as a business man he'd have\n swallowed it, departed on the next Rim Stars trading-ship—which would\n not have left any trade-goods behind—and left the Grand Panjandrum to\n realize what he had lost when no off-planet goods arrived on Thriddar.\n In time he'd speak and say and observe that he, out of his generosity,\n gave the loot back. Then the trading could resume. But Jorgenson didn't\n feel only like a business man this morning. He thought of Ganti, who\n was a particular case of everything he disliked on Thriddar.", "There were other incidents, of course. The dried seaweed they slept on\n turned to powdery trash. They got more seaweed hauling long kelp-like\n strands of it ashore from where it clung to the island's submerged\n rocks. Ganti mentioned that they must do it right after the copter\n came, so there would be no sign of enterprise to be seen from aloft.\n The seaweed had long, flexible stems of which no use whatever could be\n made. When it dried, it became stiff and brittle but without strength.\n\n\n Once Ganti abruptly began to talk of his youth. As if he were examining\n something he'd never noticed before, he told of the incredible\n conditioning-education of the young members of his race. They learned\n that they must never make a mistake. Never! It did not matter if they\n were unskilled or inefficient. It did not matter if they accomplished\n nothing. There was no penalty for anything but making mistakes or\n differing from officials who could not make mistakes.", "Time passed. He had the trading-post in a position of defense. He\n prepared his lunch, and glowered. More time passed. He cooked his\n dinner, and ate. Afterward he went up on the trading-post roof to smoke\n and to coddle his anger. He observed the sunset. There was always some\n haze in the air on Thriddar, and the colorings were very beautiful. He\n could see the towers of the capital city of the Thrid. He could see a\n cumbersome but still graceful steam-driven aircraft descend heavily to\n the field at the city's edge. Later he saw another steam-plane rise\n slowly but reliably and head away somewhere else. He saw the steam\n helicopters go skittering above the city's buildings.", "But the local Thrid governor had spoken and said and observed that\n Ganti's wife wanted to enter his household. He added that Ganti wanted\n to yield her to him.\n\n\n Jorgenson had fumed—but not as a business man—when the transfer took\n place. But Ganti had been conditioned to believe that when a governor\n said he wanted to do something, he did. He couldn't quite grasp the\n contrary idea. But he moped horribly, and Jorgenson talked sardonically\n to him, and he almost doubted that an official was necessarily right.\n When his former wife died of grief, his disbelief became positive. And\n immediately afterward he disappeared.\n\n\n Jorgenson couldn't find out what had become of him. Dour reflection on\n the happening had put him in the bad mood which had started things,\n this morning.", "Then he saw a figure on the island. It was a Thrid stripped of all\n clothing like Jorgenson and darkened by the sun. That figure came\n agilely toward where he was let down. It caught him. It checked his\n wild swingings, which could have broken bones. The rope slackened. The\n Thrid laid Jorgenson down.\n\n\n He did not cast off the rope. He seemed to essay to climb it.\n\n\n It was cut at the steam-copter and came tumbling down all over both of\n them. The Thrid waved his arms wildly and seemed to screech gibberish\n at the sky. There was an impact nearby, of something dropped. Jorgenson\n heard the throbbing sound of the copter as it lifted and swept away.\n\n\n Then he felt the bounds about his arms and legs being removed. Then a\n Thrid voice—amazingly, a familiar Thrid voice—said:\n\n\n \"This is not good, Jorgenson. Who did you contradict?\"" ], [ "Jorgenson reflected sourly that the governors and the rulers of the\n universe were whoever happened to be within hearing of the Grand\n Panjandrum. They were not imposing. They were scared. Everybody is\n always scared under an absolute ruler, but the Grand Panjandrum was\n worse than that. He couldn't make a mistake. Whatever he said had to\n be true, because he said it, and sometimes it had drastic results. But\n past Grand Panjandrums had spoken highly of the trading post. Jorgenson\n shouldn't have much to worry about. He waited. He thought of Ganti. He\n scowled.", "Jorgenson laid the matter indignantly before him, repeating the exact\n phrases that said the trading company wanted—wanted!—practically to\n give itself to the Never-Mistaken Glen-U, who was the Grand Panjandrum\n of Thriddar. He waited to be told that it couldn't have happened; that\n anyhow it couldn't be intended. But the theologian's Thriddish ears\n went limp, which amounted to the same thing as a man's face turning\n pale. He stammered agitatedly that if the Grand Panjandrum said it, it\n was true. It couldn't be otherwise! If the trading company wanted to\n give itself to him, there was nothing to be done. It wanted to! The\n Grand Panjandrum had said so!\n\n\n \"He also said,\" said Jorgenson irritably, \"that I'm to vanish and\n nevermore be seen face to face by any rational being. How does that\n happen? Do I get speared?\"", "The trading-post theologian quivered. Jorgenson made things much worse.\n\n\n \"This,\" he raged, \"this is crazy! The Grand Panjandrum's an ordinary\n Thrid just like you are! Of course he can make a mistake! There's\n nobody who can't be wrong!\"\n\n\n The theologian put up feebly protesting, human-like hands. He begged\n hysterically to be allowed to go home before Jorgenson vanished, with\n unknown consequences for any Thrid who might be nearby.\n\n\n When Jorgenson opened a door to kick him out of it, the whole staff of\n the trading-post plunged after him. They'd been eavesdropping and they\n fled in pure horror.", "He fumed because creatures intelligent enough to build steam fliers\n weren't intelligent enough to see what a racket their government was.\n Now that the new Grand Panjandrum had moved against him, Jorgenson made\n an angry, dogged resolution to do something permanent to make matters\n better. For the Thrid themselves. Here he thought not as a business\n man only, but as a humanitarian. As both. When a whim of the Grand\n Panjandrum could ruin a business, something should be done. And when\n Ganti and countless others had been victims of capricious tyranny....\n And Jorgenson was slated to vanish from sight and never again be\n seen.... It definitely called for strong measures!\n\n\n He reflected with grim pleasure that the Grand Panjandrum would soon\n be in the position of a Thrid whom everybody knew was mistaken. With\n the trading-post denied him and Jorgenson still visible, he'd be\n notoriously wrong. And he couldn't be, and still be Grand Panjandrum!", "It was not wise to be moved by such sympathetic feelings. The Grand\n Panjandrum could not be mistaken. It was definitely unwise to\n contradict him. It could even be dangerous. Jorgenson was in a nasty\n spot.\n\n\n The Witnesses murmured reverently:\n\n\n \"We hear the words of the Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n The high official tucked away the scroll and said blandly:\n\n\n \"I will receive the moneys, goods, and benefactions it is the desire\n of the Rim Stars Trading Corporation to present to the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson, boiling inside, nevertheless knew what he was doing. He said\n succinctly:\n\n\n \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n There was an idiom in Thrid speech that had exactly the meaning of the\n human phrase. Jorgenson used it.", "The high official looked at him in utter stupefaction. Nobody\n contradicted the Grand Panjandrum! Nobody! The Thrid had noticed long\n ago that they were the most intelligent race in the universe. Since\n that was so, obviously they must have the most perfect government.\n But no government could be perfect if its officials made mistakes. So\n no Thrid official ever made a mistake. In particular the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U could not conceivably blunder! When he said a\n thing, it was true! It had to be! He'd said it! And this was the\n fundamental fact in the culture of the Thrid.\n\n\n \"Like hell you'll receive moneys and goods and such!\" snapped\n Jorgenson. \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n The high official literally couldn't believe his ears.\n\n\n \"But—but the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U—\"", "Now it was evidently to be arranged that he would never again be seen\n face to face by a rational being. The Grand Panjandrum had won the\n argument. Within a few months a Rim Stars trading ship would land, and\n Jorgenson would be gone and the trading post confiscated. It would be\n hopeless to ask questions, and worse than hopeless to try to trade. So\n the ship would lift off and there'd be no more ships for at least a\n generation. Then there might—there might!—be another.\n\n\n Jorgenson swore fluently and with passion.\n\n\n \"It will not be long,\" said a tranquil voice.\n\n\n Jorgenson changed from human-speech profanity to Thrid. He directed\n his words to the unseen creature who'd spoken. That Thrid listened,\n apparently without emotion. When Jorgenson ran out of breath, the voice\n said severely:", "This morning was especially beyond the limit. There was a new Grand\n Panjandrum—the term was Jorgenson's own for the supreme ruler over\n all the Thrid—and when Jorgenson finished his breakfast a high Thrid\n official waited in the trading-post compound. Around him clustered\n other Thrid, wearing the formal headgear that said they were Witnesses\n to an official act.\n\n\n Jorgenson went out, scowling, and exchanged the customary ceremonial\n greetings. Then the high official beamed at him and extracted a scroll\n from his voluminous garments. Jorgenson saw the glint of gold and was\n suspicious at once. The words of a current Grand Panjandrum were always\n written in gold. If they didn't get written in gold they didn't get\n written at all; but it was too bad if anybody ignored any of them.", "The high official rolled up the scroll, while Jorgenson exploded inside.\nA part of this was reaction as a business man. A part was recognition\n of all the intolerable things that the Thrid took as a matter of\n course. If Jorgenson had reacted solely as a business man he'd have\n swallowed it, departed on the next Rim Stars trading-ship—which would\n not have left any trade-goods behind—and left the Grand Panjandrum to\n realize what he had lost when no off-planet goods arrived on Thriddar.\n In time he'd speak and say and observe that he, out of his generosity,\n gave the loot back. Then the trading could resume. But Jorgenson didn't\n feel only like a business man this morning. He thought of Ganti, who\n was a particular case of everything he disliked on Thriddar.", "\"Is mistaken!\" said Jorgenson bitingly. \"He's wrong! The Rim Stars\n Trading Corporation does\nnot\nwant to give him anything! What he has\n said is not true!\" This was the equivalent of treason, blasphemy and\n the ultimate of indecorous behavior toward a virgin Pelean princess. \"I\n won't give him anything! I'm not even vanishing from sight! Glen-U is\n wrong about that, too! Now—git!\"\n\n\n He jerked out his blaster and pulled the trigger.\n\n\n There was an explosive burst of flame from the ground between the\n official and himself. The official fled. With him fled all the\n Witnesses, some even losing their headgear in their haste to get away.\nJorgenson stamped into the trading-post building. His eyes were stormy\n and his jaw was set.", "He scrambled over the twisted stone of the island. He came back,\n carrying something.\n\n\n \"It isn't worse,\" he said. \"It's only as bad. They did drop food and\n water for both of us. I wasn't sure they would.\"\nHis calmness sobered Jorgenson. As a business man, he was moved to make\n his situation clear. He told Ganti of the Grand Panjandrum's move to\n take over the Rim Stars trading post, which was bad business. He told\n of his own reaction, which was not a business-like one at all. Then he\n said dourly:\n\n\n \"But he's still wrong. No rational being is supposed ever to see me\n face to face. But you do.\"", "Then he tried to waken fully, and he couldn't do that either. He stayed\n in a dream-like, frustrated state which was partly like a nightmare,\n while very gradually new sensations came to him. He felt a cushioned\n throbbing against his chest, in the very hard surface on which he lay\n face down. That surface swayed and rocked slightly. He tried again to\n move, and realized that his hands and feet were bound. He found that he\n shivered, and realized that his clothing had been taken from him.\n\n\n He was completely helpless and lying on his stomach in the cargo-space\n of a steam helicopter: now he could hear the sound of its machinery.\n\n\n Then he knew what had happened. He'd committed The unthinkable\n crime—or lunacy—of declaring the Grand Panjandrum mistaken. So by the\n operation of truth, which was really an anesthetic gas cloud drifted\n over the trading post, he had vanished from sight.", "Then he saw a figure on the island. It was a Thrid stripped of all\n clothing like Jorgenson and darkened by the sun. That figure came\n agilely toward where he was let down. It caught him. It checked his\n wild swingings, which could have broken bones. The rope slackened. The\n Thrid laid Jorgenson down.\n\n\n He did not cast off the rope. He seemed to essay to climb it.\n\n\n It was cut at the steam-copter and came tumbling down all over both of\n them. The Thrid waved his arms wildly and seemed to screech gibberish\n at the sky. There was an impact nearby, of something dropped. Jorgenson\n heard the throbbing sound of the copter as it lifted and swept away.\n\n\n Then he felt the bounds about his arms and legs being removed. Then a\n Thrid voice—amazingly, a familiar Thrid voice—said:\n\n\n \"This is not good, Jorgenson. Who did you contradict?\"", "\"You declared the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U mistaken. This could\n not be. It proved you either a criminal or insane, because no rational\n creature could believe him mistaken. He declared you insane, and he\n cannot be wrong. So soon you will arrive where you are to be confined\n and no rational being will ever see you face to face.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson switched back to human swearing. Then he blended both\n languages, using all the applicable words he knew both in human speech\n and Thrid. He knew a great many. The soft throbbing of the steam-driven\n rotors went on, and Jorgenson swore both as a business man and a\n humanitarian. Both were frustrated.", "\"Somebody dug it out,\" said Ganti without resentment. \"To keep busy.\n Maybe one prisoner only began it. A later one saw it started and worked\n on it to keep busy. Then others in their turn. It took a good many\n lives to make this cave.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson ground his teeth a second time.\n\n\n \"And just because they'd contradicted somebody who couldn't be wrong!\n Or because they had a business an official wanted!\"\n\n\n \"Or a wife,\" agreed Ganti. \"Here!\"\n\n\n He offered food. Jorgenson ate, scowling. Afterward, near sundown, he\n went over the island.", "But the local Thrid governor had spoken and said and observed that\n Ganti's wife wanted to enter his household. He added that Ganti wanted\n to yield her to him.\n\n\n Jorgenson had fumed—but not as a business man—when the transfer took\n place. But Ganti had been conditioned to believe that when a governor\n said he wanted to do something, he did. He couldn't quite grasp the\n contrary idea. But he moped horribly, and Jorgenson talked sardonically\n to him, and he almost doubted that an official was necessarily right.\n When his former wife died of grief, his disbelief became positive. And\n immediately afterward he disappeared.\n\n\n Jorgenson couldn't find out what had become of him. Dour reflection on\n the happening had put him in the bad mood which had started things,\n this morning.", "The real trouble was that Jorgenson saw things as a business man does.\n But also, and contradictorily, he saw them as right and just, or as\n wrong and intolerable. As a business man, he should have kept his mind\n on business and never bothered about Ganti. As a believer in right and\n wrong, it would have been wiser for him to have stayed off the planet\n Thriddar altogether. Thriddar was no place for him, anyhow you look at\n it. On this particular morning it was especially the wrong place for\n him to be trying to live and do business.\n\n\n He woke up thinking of Ganti, and in consequence he was in a bad mood\n right away. Most humans couldn't take the sort of thing that went on on\n Thriddar. Most of them wanted to use missile weapons—which the Thrid\n did not use—to change the local social system. Most humans got off\n Thriddar—fast! And boiling mad.", "Jorgenson had stood it longer than most because in spite of their\n convictions he liked the Thrid. Their minds did do outside loops, and\n come up with intolerable convictions. But they were intelligent enough.\n They had steam-power and even steam-driven atmosphere fliers, but they\n didn't have missile weapons and they did have a social system that\n humans simply couldn't accept—even though it applied only to Thrid.\n The ordinary Thrid, with whom Jorgenson did business, weren't bad\n people. It was the officials who made him grind his teeth. And though\n it was his business only to run the trading post of the Rim Stars\n Trading Corporation, sometimes he got fed up.", "The Thrid was Ganti, of whom Jorgenson had once had hopes as a business\n man, and for whose disaster he had felt indignation as something else.\n He loosened the last of Jorgenson's bonds and helped him sit up.\n\n\n Jorgenson glared around. The island was roughly one hundred feet by\n two. It was twisted, curdled yellow stone from one end to the other.\n There were stone hillocks and a miniature stony peak, and a narrow\n valley between two patches of higher rock. Huge seas boomed against\n the windward shore, throwing spray higher than the island's topmost\n point. There were some places where sand had gathered. There was one\n spot—perhaps a square yard of it—where sand had been made fertile by\n the droppings of flying things and where two or three starveling plants\n showed foliage of sorts. That was all. Jorgenson ground his teeth.\n\n\n \"Go ahead,\" said Ganti grimly, \"but it may be even worse than you\n think.\"", "\"This is a prison,\" Ganti explained matter-of-factly. \"They let me\n down here and dropped food and water for a week. They went away. I\n found there'd been another prisoner here before me. His skeleton was in\n this cave. I reasoned it out. There must have been others before him.\n When there is a prisoner here, every so often a copter drops food and\n water. When the prisoner doesn't pick it up, they stop coming. When,\n presently, they have another prisoner they drop him off, like me, and\n he finds the skeleton of the previous prisoner, like me, and he dumps\n it overboard as I did. They'll drop food and water for me until I stop\n picking it up. And presently they'll do the same thing all over again.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson glowered. That was his reaction as a person. Then he gestured\n to the cave around him. There was a pile of dried-out seaweed for\n sleeping purposes.\n\n\n \"And this?\"" ], [ "He snapped orders. The hired Thrid of the trading-post staff had not\n quite grasped the situation. They couldn't believe it. Automatically,\n as he commanded the iron doors and shutters of the trading post closed,\n they obeyed. They saw him turn on the shocker-field so that nobody\n could cross the compound without getting an electric shock that would\n discourage him. They began to believe.\n\n\n Then he sent for the trading-post Thrid consultant. On Earth he'd have\n called for a lawyer. On a hostile world there'd have been a soldier to\n advise him. On Thrid the specialist to be consulted wasn't exactly a\n theologian, but he was nearer that than anything else.", "\"But I'm crazy,\" said Ganti calmly. \"I tried to kill the governor\n who'd taken my wife. So he said I was crazy and that made it true. So\n I wasn't put in a chained group of laborers. Somebody might have seen\n me and thought about it. But, sent here, it's worse for me and I'm\n probably forgotten by now.\"\n\n\n He was calm about it. Only a Thrid would have been so calm. But they've\n had at least hundreds of generations in which to get used to injustice.\n He accepted it. But Jorgenson frowned.\n\n\n \"You've got brains, Ganti. What's the chance of escape?\"\n\n\n \"None,\" said Ganti unemotionally. \"You'd better get out of the sun.\n It'll burn you badly. Come along.\"", "The trading-post theologian quivered. Jorgenson made things much worse.\n\n\n \"This,\" he raged, \"this is crazy! The Grand Panjandrum's an ordinary\n Thrid just like you are! Of course he can make a mistake! There's\n nobody who can't be wrong!\"\n\n\n The theologian put up feebly protesting, human-like hands. He begged\n hysterically to be allowed to go home before Jorgenson vanished, with\n unknown consequences for any Thrid who might be nearby.\n\n\n When Jorgenson opened a door to kick him out of it, the whole staff of\n the trading-post plunged after him. They'd been eavesdropping and they\n fled in pure horror.", "The high official unrolled the scroll. The Thrid around him, wearing\n Witness hats, became utterly silent. The high official made a sound\n equivalent to clearing his throat. The stillness became death-like.\n\n\n \"On this day,\" intoned the high official, while the Witnesses\n listened reverently, \"on this day did Glen-U the Never-Mistaken, as\n have been his predecessors throughout the ages;—on this day did the\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U speak and say and observe a truth in the presence\n of the governors and the rulers of the universe.\"", "He fumed because creatures intelligent enough to build steam fliers\n weren't intelligent enough to see what a racket their government was.\n Now that the new Grand Panjandrum had moved against him, Jorgenson made\n an angry, dogged resolution to do something permanent to make matters\n better. For the Thrid themselves. Here he thought not as a business\n man only, but as a humanitarian. As both. When a whim of the Grand\n Panjandrum could ruin a business, something should be done. And when\n Ganti and countless others had been victims of capricious tyranny....\n And Jorgenson was slated to vanish from sight and never again be\n seen.... It definitely called for strong measures!\n\n\n He reflected with grim pleasure that the Grand Panjandrum would soon\n be in the position of a Thrid whom everybody knew was mistaken. With\n the trading-post denied him and Jorgenson still visible, he'd be\n notoriously wrong. And he couldn't be, and still be Grand Panjandrum!", "It was not wise to be moved by such sympathetic feelings. The Grand\n Panjandrum could not be mistaken. It was definitely unwise to\n contradict him. It could even be dangerous. Jorgenson was in a nasty\n spot.\n\n\n The Witnesses murmured reverently:\n\n\n \"We hear the words of the Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n The high official tucked away the scroll and said blandly:\n\n\n \"I will receive the moneys, goods, and benefactions it is the desire\n of the Rim Stars Trading Corporation to present to the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson, boiling inside, nevertheless knew what he was doing. He said\n succinctly:\n\n\n \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n There was an idiom in Thrid speech that had exactly the meaning of the\n human phrase. Jorgenson used it.", "But the local Thrid governor had spoken and said and observed that\n Ganti's wife wanted to enter his household. He added that Ganti wanted\n to yield her to him.\n\n\n Jorgenson had fumed—but not as a business man—when the transfer took\n place. But Ganti had been conditioned to believe that when a governor\n said he wanted to do something, he did. He couldn't quite grasp the\n contrary idea. But he moped horribly, and Jorgenson talked sardonically\n to him, and he almost doubted that an official was necessarily right.\n When his former wife died of grief, his disbelief became positive. And\n immediately afterward he disappeared.\n\n\n Jorgenson couldn't find out what had become of him. Dour reflection on\n the happening had put him in the bad mood which had started things,\n this morning.", "In theory, no Thrid should ever make a mistake, because he belonged\n to the most intelligent race in the universe. But a local governor\n was even more intelligent. If an ordinary Thrid challenged a local\n governor's least and lightest remark—why—he must be either a criminal\n or insane. The local governor decided—correctly, of course—which\n he was. If he was a criminal, he spent the rest of his life in a gang\n of criminals chained together and doing the most exhausting labor the\n Thrid could contrive. If he was mad, he was confined for life.\nThere'd been Ganti, a Thrid of whom Jorgenson had had much hope. He\n believed that Ganti could learn to run the trading post without human\n supervision. If he could, the trading company could simply bring trade\n goods to Thriddar and take away other trade goods. The cost of doing\n business would be decreased. There could be no human-Thrid friction.\n Jorgenson had been training Ganti for this work.", "Jorgenson laid the matter indignantly before him, repeating the exact\n phrases that said the trading company wanted—wanted!—practically to\n give itself to the Never-Mistaken Glen-U, who was the Grand Panjandrum\n of Thriddar. He waited to be told that it couldn't have happened; that\n anyhow it couldn't be intended. But the theologian's Thriddish ears\n went limp, which amounted to the same thing as a man's face turning\n pale. He stammered agitatedly that if the Grand Panjandrum said it, it\n was true. It couldn't be otherwise! If the trading company wanted to\n give itself to him, there was nothing to be done. It wanted to! The\n Grand Panjandrum had said so!\n\n\n \"He also said,\" said Jorgenson irritably, \"that I'm to vanish and\n nevermore be seen face to face by any rational being. How does that\n happen? Do I get speared?\"", "Jorgenson had stood it longer than most because in spite of their\n convictions he liked the Thrid. Their minds did do outside loops, and\n come up with intolerable convictions. But they were intelligent enough.\n They had steam-power and even steam-driven atmosphere fliers, but they\n didn't have missile weapons and they did have a social system that\n humans simply couldn't accept—even though it applied only to Thrid.\n The ordinary Thrid, with whom Jorgenson did business, weren't bad\n people. It was the officials who made him grind his teeth. And though\n it was his business only to run the trading post of the Rim Stars\n Trading Corporation, sometimes he got fed up.", "MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE THRID\nBY MURRAY LEINSTER\nThe Thrid were the wisest creatures in\n\n space—they even said so themselves!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1963.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI", "Then he saw a figure on the island. It was a Thrid stripped of all\n clothing like Jorgenson and darkened by the sun. That figure came\n agilely toward where he was let down. It caught him. It checked his\n wild swingings, which could have broken bones. The rope slackened. The\n Thrid laid Jorgenson down.\n\n\n He did not cast off the rope. He seemed to essay to climb it.\n\n\n It was cut at the steam-copter and came tumbling down all over both of\n them. The Thrid waved his arms wildly and seemed to screech gibberish\n at the sky. There was an impact nearby, of something dropped. Jorgenson\n heard the throbbing sound of the copter as it lifted and swept away.\n\n\n Then he felt the bounds about his arms and legs being removed. Then a\n Thrid voice—amazingly, a familiar Thrid voice—said:\n\n\n \"This is not good, Jorgenson. Who did you contradict?\"", "The high official looked at him in utter stupefaction. Nobody\n contradicted the Grand Panjandrum! Nobody! The Thrid had noticed long\n ago that they were the most intelligent race in the universe. Since\n that was so, obviously they must have the most perfect government.\n But no government could be perfect if its officials made mistakes. So\n no Thrid official ever made a mistake. In particular the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U could not conceivably blunder! When he said a\n thing, it was true! It had to be! He'd said it! And this was the\n fundamental fact in the culture of the Thrid.\n\n\n \"Like hell you'll receive moneys and goods and such!\" snapped\n Jorgenson. \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n The high official literally couldn't believe his ears.\n\n\n \"But—but the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U—\"", "This morning was especially beyond the limit. There was a new Grand\n Panjandrum—the term was Jorgenson's own for the supreme ruler over\n all the Thrid—and when Jorgenson finished his breakfast a high Thrid\n official waited in the trading-post compound. Around him clustered\n other Thrid, wearing the formal headgear that said they were Witnesses\n to an official act.\n\n\n Jorgenson went out, scowling, and exchanged the customary ceremonial\n greetings. Then the high official beamed at him and extracted a scroll\n from his voluminous garments. Jorgenson saw the glint of gold and was\n suspicious at once. The words of a current Grand Panjandrum were always\n written in gold. If they didn't get written in gold they didn't get\n written at all; but it was too bad if anybody ignored any of them.", "The Thrid was Ganti, of whom Jorgenson had once had hopes as a business\n man, and for whose disaster he had felt indignation as something else.\n He loosened the last of Jorgenson's bonds and helped him sit up.\n\n\n Jorgenson glared around. The island was roughly one hundred feet by\n two. It was twisted, curdled yellow stone from one end to the other.\n There were stone hillocks and a miniature stony peak, and a narrow\n valley between two patches of higher rock. Huge seas boomed against\n the windward shore, throwing spray higher than the island's topmost\n point. There were some places where sand had gathered. There was one\n spot—perhaps a square yard of it—where sand had been made fertile by\n the droppings of flying things and where two or three starveling plants\n showed foliage of sorts. That was all. Jorgenson ground his teeth.\n\n\n \"Go ahead,\" said Ganti grimly, \"but it may be even worse than you\n think.\"", "Jorgenson reflected sourly that the governors and the rulers of the\n universe were whoever happened to be within hearing of the Grand\n Panjandrum. They were not imposing. They were scared. Everybody is\n always scared under an absolute ruler, but the Grand Panjandrum was\n worse than that. He couldn't make a mistake. Whatever he said had to\n be true, because he said it, and sometimes it had drastic results. But\n past Grand Panjandrums had spoken highly of the trading post. Jorgenson\n shouldn't have much to worry about. He waited. He thought of Ganti. He\n scowled.", "Ganti looked skeptical. Jorgenson explained. He had to demonstrate\n crudely. The whole idea was novel to Ganti, but the Thrid were smart.\n Presently he grasped it. He said:\n\n\n \"I see the theory. If we can make it work, all right. But how do we\n make the copter land?\"\n\n\n Jorgenson realized that they talked oddly. They spoke with leisurely\n lack of haste, with the lack of hope normal to prisoners to whom escape\n is impossible, even when they talk about escape. They could have been\n discussing a matter that would not affect either of them. But Jorgenson\n quivered inside. He hoped.\n\n\n \"We'll try it,\" said Ganti detachedly, when he'd explained again. \"If\n it fails, they'll only stop giving us food and water.\"\n\n\n That, of course, did not seem either to him or Jorgenson a reason to\n hesitate to try what Jorgenson had planned.", "The high official rolled up the scroll, while Jorgenson exploded inside.\nA part of this was reaction as a business man. A part was recognition\n of all the intolerable things that the Thrid took as a matter of\n course. If Jorgenson had reacted solely as a business man he'd have\n swallowed it, departed on the next Rim Stars trading-ship—which would\n not have left any trade-goods behind—and left the Grand Panjandrum to\n realize what he had lost when no off-planet goods arrived on Thriddar.\n In time he'd speak and say and observe that he, out of his generosity,\n gave the loot back. Then the trading could resume. But Jorgenson didn't\n feel only like a business man this morning. He thought of Ganti, who\n was a particular case of everything he disliked on Thriddar.", "So Thrid younglings were trained not to think; not to have any opinion\n about anything; only to repeat what nobody questioned; only to do what\n they were told by authority. It occurred to Jorgenson that on a planet\n with such a population, a skeptic could make a great deal of confusion.\n\n\n Then, another time, Jorgenson decided to make use of the weathering\n cord which had been cut from the copter when he was landed. He cut\n off a part of it with a sharp-edged fragment of stone from the pile\n some former prisoner on the island had made. He unravelled the twisted\n fibers. Then he ground fishhooks from shells attached to the island's\n rocky walls just below water-line. After that they fished. Sometimes\n they even caught something to eat. But they never fished when the\n copter was due.", "The real trouble was that Jorgenson saw things as a business man does.\n But also, and contradictorily, he saw them as right and just, or as\n wrong and intolerable. As a business man, he should have kept his mind\n on business and never bothered about Ganti. As a believer in right and\n wrong, it would have been wiser for him to have stayed off the planet\n Thriddar altogether. Thriddar was no place for him, anyhow you look at\n it. On this particular morning it was especially the wrong place for\n him to be trying to live and do business.\n\n\n He woke up thinking of Ganti, and in consequence he was in a bad mood\n right away. Most humans couldn't take the sort of thing that went on on\n Thriddar. Most of them wanted to use missile weapons—which the Thrid\n did not use—to change the local social system. Most humans got off\n Thriddar—fast! And boiling mad." ], [ "The real trouble was that Jorgenson saw things as a business man does.\n But also, and contradictorily, he saw them as right and just, or as\n wrong and intolerable. As a business man, he should have kept his mind\n on business and never bothered about Ganti. As a believer in right and\n wrong, it would have been wiser for him to have stayed off the planet\n Thriddar altogether. Thriddar was no place for him, anyhow you look at\n it. On this particular morning it was especially the wrong place for\n him to be trying to live and do business.\n\n\n He woke up thinking of Ganti, and in consequence he was in a bad mood\n right away. Most humans couldn't take the sort of thing that went on on\n Thriddar. Most of them wanted to use missile weapons—which the Thrid\n did not use—to change the local social system. Most humans got off\n Thriddar—fast! And boiling mad.", "MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE THRID\nBY MURRAY LEINSTER\nThe Thrid were the wisest creatures in\n\n space—they even said so themselves!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1963.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI", "He snapped orders. The hired Thrid of the trading-post staff had not\n quite grasped the situation. They couldn't believe it. Automatically,\n as he commanded the iron doors and shutters of the trading post closed,\n they obeyed. They saw him turn on the shocker-field so that nobody\n could cross the compound without getting an electric shock that would\n discourage him. They began to believe.\n\n\n Then he sent for the trading-post Thrid consultant. On Earth he'd have\n called for a lawyer. On a hostile world there'd have been a soldier to\n advise him. On Thrid the specialist to be consulted wasn't exactly a\n theologian, but he was nearer that than anything else.", "Time passed. He had the trading-post in a position of defense. He\n prepared his lunch, and glowered. More time passed. He cooked his\n dinner, and ate. Afterward he went up on the trading-post roof to smoke\n and to coddle his anger. He observed the sunset. There was always some\n haze in the air on Thriddar, and the colorings were very beautiful. He\n could see the towers of the capital city of the Thrid. He could see a\n cumbersome but still graceful steam-driven aircraft descend heavily to\n the field at the city's edge. Later he saw another steam-plane rise\n slowly but reliably and head away somewhere else. He saw the steam\n helicopters go skittering above the city's buildings.", "The Thrid was Ganti, of whom Jorgenson had once had hopes as a business\n man, and for whose disaster he had felt indignation as something else.\n He loosened the last of Jorgenson's bonds and helped him sit up.\n\n\n Jorgenson glared around. The island was roughly one hundred feet by\n two. It was twisted, curdled yellow stone from one end to the other.\n There were stone hillocks and a miniature stony peak, and a narrow\n valley between two patches of higher rock. Huge seas boomed against\n the windward shore, throwing spray higher than the island's topmost\n point. There were some places where sand had gathered. There was one\n spot—perhaps a square yard of it—where sand had been made fertile by\n the droppings of flying things and where two or three starveling plants\n showed foliage of sorts. That was all. Jorgenson ground his teeth.\n\n\n \"Go ahead,\" said Ganti grimly, \"but it may be even worse than you\n think.\"", "Then he saw a figure on the island. It was a Thrid stripped of all\n clothing like Jorgenson and darkened by the sun. That figure came\n agilely toward where he was let down. It caught him. It checked his\n wild swingings, which could have broken bones. The rope slackened. The\n Thrid laid Jorgenson down.\n\n\n He did not cast off the rope. He seemed to essay to climb it.\n\n\n It was cut at the steam-copter and came tumbling down all over both of\n them. The Thrid waved his arms wildly and seemed to screech gibberish\n at the sky. There was an impact nearby, of something dropped. Jorgenson\n heard the throbbing sound of the copter as it lifted and swept away.\n\n\n Then he felt the bounds about his arms and legs being removed. Then a\n Thrid voice—amazingly, a familiar Thrid voice—said:\n\n\n \"This is not good, Jorgenson. Who did you contradict?\"", "Jorgenson swore impartially at all of them and turned the shocker-field\n back on. He plugged in a capacity circuit which would turn on warning\n sirens if anything like a steam-driven copter passed or hovered over\n the trading-post. He put blasters in handy positions. The Thrid used\n only spears, knives and scimitars. Blasters would defend the post\n against a multitude.\n\n\n As a business man, he'd acted very foolishly. But he'd acted even less\n sensibly as a human being. He'd gotten fed up with a social system\n and a—call it—theology it wasn't his business to change. True, the\n Thrid way of life was appalling, and what had happened to Ganti was\n probably typical. But it wasn't Jorgenson's affair. He'd been unwise to\n let it disturb him. If the Thrid wanted things this way, it was their\n privilege.", "In theory, no Thrid should ever make a mistake, because he belonged\n to the most intelligent race in the universe. But a local governor\n was even more intelligent. If an ordinary Thrid challenged a local\n governor's least and lightest remark—why—he must be either a criminal\n or insane. The local governor decided—correctly, of course—which\n he was. If he was a criminal, he spent the rest of his life in a gang\n of criminals chained together and doing the most exhausting labor the\n Thrid could contrive. If he was mad, he was confined for life.\nThere'd been Ganti, a Thrid of whom Jorgenson had had much hope. He\n believed that Ganti could learn to run the trading post without human\n supervision. If he could, the trading company could simply bring trade\n goods to Thriddar and take away other trade goods. The cost of doing\n business would be decreased. There could be no human-Thrid friction.\n Jorgenson had been training Ganti for this work.", "Jorgenson had stood it longer than most because in spite of their\n convictions he liked the Thrid. Their minds did do outside loops, and\n come up with intolerable convictions. But they were intelligent enough.\n They had steam-power and even steam-driven atmosphere fliers, but they\n didn't have missile weapons and they did have a social system that\n humans simply couldn't accept—even though it applied only to Thrid.\n The ordinary Thrid, with whom Jorgenson did business, weren't bad\n people. It was the officials who made him grind his teeth. And though\n it was his business only to run the trading post of the Rim Stars\n Trading Corporation, sometimes he got fed up.", "\"But I'm crazy,\" said Ganti calmly. \"I tried to kill the governor\n who'd taken my wife. So he said I was crazy and that made it true. So\n I wasn't put in a chained group of laborers. Somebody might have seen\n me and thought about it. But, sent here, it's worse for me and I'm\n probably forgotten by now.\"\n\n\n He was calm about it. Only a Thrid would have been so calm. But they've\n had at least hundreds of generations in which to get used to injustice.\n He accepted it. But Jorgenson frowned.\n\n\n \"You've got brains, Ganti. What's the chance of escape?\"\n\n\n \"None,\" said Ganti unemotionally. \"You'd better get out of the sun.\n It'll burn you badly. Come along.\"", "\"You declared the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U mistaken. This could\n not be. It proved you either a criminal or insane, because no rational\n creature could believe him mistaken. He declared you insane, and he\n cannot be wrong. So soon you will arrive where you are to be confined\n and no rational being will ever see you face to face.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson switched back to human swearing. Then he blended both\n languages, using all the applicable words he knew both in human speech\n and Thrid. He knew a great many. The soft throbbing of the steam-driven\n rotors went on, and Jorgenson swore both as a business man and a\n humanitarian. Both were frustrated.", "He racked his brains for the most preposterous or faintest hope of\n deliverance. There were times when as a business man he reproached\n himself for staying on Thriddar after he became indignant with the way\n the planet was governed. It was very foolish. But much more often he\n felt such hatred of the manners and customs of the Thrid—which had\n put him here—that it seemed that something must somehow be possible if\n only so he could take revenge.\nIII\n\n\n The copter came, it dropped food and water, and it went away. It came,\n dropped food and water, and went away. Once a water-bag burst when\n dropped. They lost nearly half a week's water supply. Before the copter\n came again they'd gone two days without drinking.", "Now it was evidently to be arranged that he would never again be seen\n face to face by a rational being. The Grand Panjandrum had won the\n argument. Within a few months a Rim Stars trading ship would land, and\n Jorgenson would be gone and the trading post confiscated. It would be\n hopeless to ask questions, and worse than hopeless to try to trade. So\n the ship would lift off and there'd be no more ships for at least a\n generation. Then there might—there might!—be another.\n\n\n Jorgenson swore fluently and with passion.\n\n\n \"It will not be long,\" said a tranquil voice.\n\n\n Jorgenson changed from human-speech profanity to Thrid. He directed\n his words to the unseen creature who'd spoken. That Thrid listened,\n apparently without emotion. When Jorgenson ran out of breath, the voice\n said severely:", "Jorgenson laid the matter indignantly before him, repeating the exact\n phrases that said the trading company wanted—wanted!—practically to\n give itself to the Never-Mistaken Glen-U, who was the Grand Panjandrum\n of Thriddar. He waited to be told that it couldn't have happened; that\n anyhow it couldn't be intended. But the theologian's Thriddish ears\n went limp, which amounted to the same thing as a man's face turning\n pale. He stammered agitatedly that if the Grand Panjandrum said it, it\n was true. It couldn't be otherwise! If the trading company wanted to\n give itself to him, there was nothing to be done. It wanted to! The\n Grand Panjandrum had said so!\n\n\n \"He also said,\" said Jorgenson irritably, \"that I'm to vanish and\n nevermore be seen face to face by any rational being. How does that\n happen? Do I get speared?\"", "So Thrid younglings were trained not to think; not to have any opinion\n about anything; only to repeat what nobody questioned; only to do what\n they were told by authority. It occurred to Jorgenson that on a planet\n with such a population, a skeptic could make a great deal of confusion.\n\n\n Then, another time, Jorgenson decided to make use of the weathering\n cord which had been cut from the copter when he was landed. He cut\n off a part of it with a sharp-edged fragment of stone from the pile\n some former prisoner on the island had made. He unravelled the twisted\n fibers. Then he ground fishhooks from shells attached to the island's\n rocky walls just below water-line. After that they fished. Sometimes\n they even caught something to eat. But they never fished when the\n copter was due.", "It was not wise to be moved by such sympathetic feelings. The Grand\n Panjandrum could not be mistaken. It was definitely unwise to\n contradict him. It could even be dangerous. Jorgenson was in a nasty\n spot.\n\n\n The Witnesses murmured reverently:\n\n\n \"We hear the words of the Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n The high official tucked away the scroll and said blandly:\n\n\n \"I will receive the moneys, goods, and benefactions it is the desire\n of the Rim Stars Trading Corporation to present to the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson, boiling inside, nevertheless knew what he was doing. He said\n succinctly:\n\n\n \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n There was an idiom in Thrid speech that had exactly the meaning of the\n human phrase. Jorgenson used it.", "The trading-post theologian quivered. Jorgenson made things much worse.\n\n\n \"This,\" he raged, \"this is crazy! The Grand Panjandrum's an ordinary\n Thrid just like you are! Of course he can make a mistake! There's\n nobody who can't be wrong!\"\n\n\n The theologian put up feebly protesting, human-like hands. He begged\n hysterically to be allowed to go home before Jorgenson vanished, with\n unknown consequences for any Thrid who might be nearby.\n\n\n When Jorgenson opened a door to kick him out of it, the whole staff of\n the trading-post plunged after him. They'd been eavesdropping and they\n fled in pure horror.", "The high official unrolled the scroll. The Thrid around him, wearing\n Witness hats, became utterly silent. The high official made a sound\n equivalent to clearing his throat. The stillness became death-like.\n\n\n \"On this day,\" intoned the high official, while the Witnesses\n listened reverently, \"on this day did Glen-U the Never-Mistaken, as\n have been his predecessors throughout the ages;—on this day did the\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U speak and say and observe a truth in the presence\n of the governors and the rulers of the universe.\"", "The copter came and dropped food and water. When it left, they\n practiced. When it came again they were not practicing, but when it\n went away they practiced. They were a naked man and a naked Thrid,\n left upon a morsel of rock in a boundless sea, rehearsing themselves\n in an art so long-forgotten that they had to reinvent the finer parts\n of the technique. They experimented. They tried this. They tried that.\n When the copter appeared, they showed themselves. They rushed upon the\n dropped bag containing food and water as if fiercely trying to deny\n each other a full share. Once they seemed to fight over the dropped\n bag. The copter hovered to watch. The fight seemed furious and deadly,\n but inconclusive.\n\n\n When the copter went away Jorgenson and Ganti went briskly back to\n their practicing.", "But by sunset he'd worked it out. While they watched Thrid's red sun\n sink below the horizon, Jorgenson said thoughtfully:\n\n\n \"There is a way to escape, Ganti.\"\n\n\n \"On what? In what?\" demanded Ganti.\n\n\n \"In the helicopter that feeds us,\" said Jorgenson.\n\n\n \"It never lands,\" said Ganti practically.\n\n\n \"We can make it land,\" said Jorgenson. Thrid weren't allowed to make\n mistakes; he could make it a mistake not to land.\n\n\n \"The crew is armed,\" said Ganti. \"There are three of them.\"\n\n\n \"They've only knives and scimitars,\" said Jorgenson. \"They don't count.\n We can make better weapons than they have.\"" ], [ "But the local Thrid governor had spoken and said and observed that\n Ganti's wife wanted to enter his household. He added that Ganti wanted\n to yield her to him.\n\n\n Jorgenson had fumed—but not as a business man—when the transfer took\n place. But Ganti had been conditioned to believe that when a governor\n said he wanted to do something, he did. He couldn't quite grasp the\n contrary idea. But he moped horribly, and Jorgenson talked sardonically\n to him, and he almost doubted that an official was necessarily right.\n When his former wife died of grief, his disbelief became positive. And\n immediately afterward he disappeared.\n\n\n Jorgenson couldn't find out what had become of him. Dour reflection on\n the happening had put him in the bad mood which had started things,\n this morning.", "Jorgenson reflected sourly that the governors and the rulers of the\n universe were whoever happened to be within hearing of the Grand\n Panjandrum. They were not imposing. They were scared. Everybody is\n always scared under an absolute ruler, but the Grand Panjandrum was\n worse than that. He couldn't make a mistake. Whatever he said had to\n be true, because he said it, and sometimes it had drastic results. But\n past Grand Panjandrums had spoken highly of the trading post. Jorgenson\n shouldn't have much to worry about. He waited. He thought of Ganti. He\n scowled.", "\"But I'm crazy,\" said Ganti calmly. \"I tried to kill the governor\n who'd taken my wife. So he said I was crazy and that made it true. So\n I wasn't put in a chained group of laborers. Somebody might have seen\n me and thought about it. But, sent here, it's worse for me and I'm\n probably forgotten by now.\"\n\n\n He was calm about it. Only a Thrid would have been so calm. But they've\n had at least hundreds of generations in which to get used to injustice.\n He accepted it. But Jorgenson frowned.\n\n\n \"You've got brains, Ganti. What's the chance of escape?\"\n\n\n \"None,\" said Ganti unemotionally. \"You'd better get out of the sun.\n It'll burn you badly. Come along.\"", "The high official rolled up the scroll, while Jorgenson exploded inside.\nA part of this was reaction as a business man. A part was recognition\n of all the intolerable things that the Thrid took as a matter of\n course. If Jorgenson had reacted solely as a business man he'd have\n swallowed it, departed on the next Rim Stars trading-ship—which would\n not have left any trade-goods behind—and left the Grand Panjandrum to\n realize what he had lost when no off-planet goods arrived on Thriddar.\n In time he'd speak and say and observe that he, out of his generosity,\n gave the loot back. Then the trading could resume. But Jorgenson didn't\n feel only like a business man this morning. He thought of Ganti, who\n was a particular case of everything he disliked on Thriddar.", "\"The great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U,\" intoned the official again,\n \"in the presence of the governors and the rulers of the universe, did\n speak and say and observe that it is the desire of the Rim Star Trading\n Corporation to present to him, the great and never-mistaken Glen-U, all\n of the present possessions of the said Rim Stars Trading Corporation,\n and thereafter to remit to him all moneys, goods, and benefactions\n to and of the said Rim Stars Trading Corporation as they shall be\n received. The great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U did further speak and say\n and observe that anyone hindering this loyal and admirable gift must,\n by the operation of truth, vanish from sight and nevermore be seen face\n to face by any rational being.\"", "He fumed because creatures intelligent enough to build steam fliers\n weren't intelligent enough to see what a racket their government was.\n Now that the new Grand Panjandrum had moved against him, Jorgenson made\n an angry, dogged resolution to do something permanent to make matters\n better. For the Thrid themselves. Here he thought not as a business\n man only, but as a humanitarian. As both. When a whim of the Grand\n Panjandrum could ruin a business, something should be done. And when\n Ganti and countless others had been victims of capricious tyranny....\n And Jorgenson was slated to vanish from sight and never again be\n seen.... It definitely called for strong measures!\n\n\n He reflected with grim pleasure that the Grand Panjandrum would soon\n be in the position of a Thrid whom everybody knew was mistaken. With\n the trading-post denied him and Jorgenson still visible, he'd be\n notoriously wrong. And he couldn't be, and still be Grand Panjandrum!", "Jorgenson laid the matter indignantly before him, repeating the exact\n phrases that said the trading company wanted—wanted!—practically to\n give itself to the Never-Mistaken Glen-U, who was the Grand Panjandrum\n of Thriddar. He waited to be told that it couldn't have happened; that\n anyhow it couldn't be intended. But the theologian's Thriddish ears\n went limp, which amounted to the same thing as a man's face turning\n pale. He stammered agitatedly that if the Grand Panjandrum said it, it\n was true. It couldn't be otherwise! If the trading company wanted to\n give itself to him, there was nothing to be done. It wanted to! The\n Grand Panjandrum had said so!\n\n\n \"He also said,\" said Jorgenson irritably, \"that I'm to vanish and\n nevermore be seen face to face by any rational being. How does that\n happen? Do I get speared?\"", "In theory, no Thrid should ever make a mistake, because he belonged\n to the most intelligent race in the universe. But a local governor\n was even more intelligent. If an ordinary Thrid challenged a local\n governor's least and lightest remark—why—he must be either a criminal\n or insane. The local governor decided—correctly, of course—which\n he was. If he was a criminal, he spent the rest of his life in a gang\n of criminals chained together and doing the most exhausting labor the\n Thrid could contrive. If he was mad, he was confined for life.\nThere'd been Ganti, a Thrid of whom Jorgenson had had much hope. He\n believed that Ganti could learn to run the trading post without human\n supervision. If he could, the trading company could simply bring trade\n goods to Thriddar and take away other trade goods. The cost of doing\n business would be decreased. There could be no human-Thrid friction.\n Jorgenson had been training Ganti for this work.", "\"Somebody dug it out,\" said Ganti without resentment. \"To keep busy.\n Maybe one prisoner only began it. A later one saw it started and worked\n on it to keep busy. Then others in their turn. It took a good many\n lives to make this cave.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson ground his teeth a second time.\n\n\n \"And just because they'd contradicted somebody who couldn't be wrong!\n Or because they had a business an official wanted!\"\n\n\n \"Or a wife,\" agreed Ganti. \"Here!\"\n\n\n He offered food. Jorgenson ate, scowling. Afterward, near sundown, he\n went over the island.", "Then he tried to waken fully, and he couldn't do that either. He stayed\n in a dream-like, frustrated state which was partly like a nightmare,\n while very gradually new sensations came to him. He felt a cushioned\n throbbing against his chest, in the very hard surface on which he lay\n face down. That surface swayed and rocked slightly. He tried again to\n move, and realized that his hands and feet were bound. He found that he\n shivered, and realized that his clothing had been taken from him.\n\n\n He was completely helpless and lying on his stomach in the cargo-space\n of a steam helicopter: now he could hear the sound of its machinery.\n\n\n Then he knew what had happened. He'd committed The unthinkable\n crime—or lunacy—of declaring the Grand Panjandrum mistaken. So by the\n operation of truth, which was really an anesthetic gas cloud drifted\n over the trading post, he had vanished from sight.", "It was not wise to be moved by such sympathetic feelings. The Grand\n Panjandrum could not be mistaken. It was definitely unwise to\n contradict him. It could even be dangerous. Jorgenson was in a nasty\n spot.\n\n\n The Witnesses murmured reverently:\n\n\n \"We hear the words of the Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n The high official tucked away the scroll and said blandly:\n\n\n \"I will receive the moneys, goods, and benefactions it is the desire\n of the Rim Stars Trading Corporation to present to the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson, boiling inside, nevertheless knew what he was doing. He said\n succinctly:\n\n\n \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n There was an idiom in Thrid speech that had exactly the meaning of the\n human phrase. Jorgenson used it.", "Jorgenson swore impartially at all of them and turned the shocker-field\n back on. He plugged in a capacity circuit which would turn on warning\n sirens if anything like a steam-driven copter passed or hovered over\n the trading-post. He put blasters in handy positions. The Thrid used\n only spears, knives and scimitars. Blasters would defend the post\n against a multitude.\n\n\n As a business man, he'd acted very foolishly. But he'd acted even less\n sensibly as a human being. He'd gotten fed up with a social system\n and a—call it—theology it wasn't his business to change. True, the\n Thrid way of life was appalling, and what had happened to Ganti was\n probably typical. But it wasn't Jorgenson's affair. He'd been unwise to\n let it disturb him. If the Thrid wanted things this way, it was their\n privilege.", "Ganti looked skeptical. Jorgenson explained. He had to demonstrate\n crudely. The whole idea was novel to Ganti, but the Thrid were smart.\n Presently he grasped it. He said:\n\n\n \"I see the theory. If we can make it work, all right. But how do we\n make the copter land?\"\n\n\n Jorgenson realized that they talked oddly. They spoke with leisurely\n lack of haste, with the lack of hope normal to prisoners to whom escape\n is impossible, even when they talk about escape. They could have been\n discussing a matter that would not affect either of them. But Jorgenson\n quivered inside. He hoped.\n\n\n \"We'll try it,\" said Ganti detachedly, when he'd explained again. \"If\n it fails, they'll only stop giving us food and water.\"\n\n\n That, of course, did not seem either to him or Jorgenson a reason to\n hesitate to try what Jorgenson had planned.", "\"This is a prison,\" Ganti explained matter-of-factly. \"They let me\n down here and dropped food and water for a week. They went away. I\n found there'd been another prisoner here before me. His skeleton was in\n this cave. I reasoned it out. There must have been others before him.\n When there is a prisoner here, every so often a copter drops food and\n water. When the prisoner doesn't pick it up, they stop coming. When,\n presently, they have another prisoner they drop him off, like me, and\n he finds the skeleton of the previous prisoner, like me, and he dumps\n it overboard as I did. They'll drop food and water for me until I stop\n picking it up. And presently they'll do the same thing all over again.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson glowered. That was his reaction as a person. Then he gestured\n to the cave around him. There was a pile of dried-out seaweed for\n sleeping purposes.\n\n\n \"And this?\"", "The Thrid was Ganti, of whom Jorgenson had once had hopes as a business\n man, and for whose disaster he had felt indignation as something else.\n He loosened the last of Jorgenson's bonds and helped him sit up.\n\n\n Jorgenson glared around. The island was roughly one hundred feet by\n two. It was twisted, curdled yellow stone from one end to the other.\n There were stone hillocks and a miniature stony peak, and a narrow\n valley between two patches of higher rock. Huge seas boomed against\n the windward shore, throwing spray higher than the island's topmost\n point. There were some places where sand had gathered. There was one\n spot—perhaps a square yard of it—where sand had been made fertile by\n the droppings of flying things and where two or three starveling plants\n showed foliage of sorts. That was all. Jorgenson ground his teeth.\n\n\n \"Go ahead,\" said Ganti grimly, \"but it may be even worse than you\n think.\"", "The real trouble was that Jorgenson saw things as a business man does.\n But also, and contradictorily, he saw them as right and just, or as\n wrong and intolerable. As a business man, he should have kept his mind\n on business and never bothered about Ganti. As a believer in right and\n wrong, it would have been wiser for him to have stayed off the planet\n Thriddar altogether. Thriddar was no place for him, anyhow you look at\n it. On this particular morning it was especially the wrong place for\n him to be trying to live and do business.\n\n\n He woke up thinking of Ganti, and in consequence he was in a bad mood\n right away. Most humans couldn't take the sort of thing that went on on\n Thriddar. Most of them wanted to use missile weapons—which the Thrid\n did not use—to change the local social system. Most humans got off\n Thriddar—fast! And boiling mad.", "There were other incidents, of course. The dried seaweed they slept on\n turned to powdery trash. They got more seaweed hauling long kelp-like\n strands of it ashore from where it clung to the island's submerged\n rocks. Ganti mentioned that they must do it right after the copter\n came, so there would be no sign of enterprise to be seen from aloft.\n The seaweed had long, flexible stems of which no use whatever could be\n made. When it dried, it became stiff and brittle but without strength.\n\n\n Once Ganti abruptly began to talk of his youth. As if he were examining\n something he'd never noticed before, he told of the incredible\n conditioning-education of the young members of his race. They learned\n that they must never make a mistake. Never! It did not matter if they\n were unskilled or inefficient. It did not matter if they accomplished\n nothing. There was no penalty for anything but making mistakes or\n differing from officials who could not make mistakes.", "\"Is mistaken!\" said Jorgenson bitingly. \"He's wrong! The Rim Stars\n Trading Corporation does\nnot\nwant to give him anything! What he has\n said is not true!\" This was the equivalent of treason, blasphemy and\n the ultimate of indecorous behavior toward a virgin Pelean princess. \"I\n won't give him anything! I'm not even vanishing from sight! Glen-U is\n wrong about that, too! Now—git!\"\n\n\n He jerked out his blaster and pulled the trigger.\n\n\n There was an explosive burst of flame from the ground between the\n official and himself. The official fled. With him fled all the\n Witnesses, some even losing their headgear in their haste to get away.\nJorgenson stamped into the trading-post building. His eyes were stormy\n and his jaw was set.", "He scrambled over the twisted stone of the island. He came back,\n carrying something.\n\n\n \"It isn't worse,\" he said. \"It's only as bad. They did drop food and\n water for both of us. I wasn't sure they would.\"\nHis calmness sobered Jorgenson. As a business man, he was moved to make\n his situation clear. He told Ganti of the Grand Panjandrum's move to\n take over the Rim Stars trading post, which was bad business. He told\n of his own reaction, which was not a business-like one at all. Then he\n said dourly:\n\n\n \"But he's still wrong. No rational being is supposed ever to see me\n face to face. But you do.\"", "The high official looked at him in utter stupefaction. Nobody\n contradicted the Grand Panjandrum! Nobody! The Thrid had noticed long\n ago that they were the most intelligent race in the universe. Since\n that was so, obviously they must have the most perfect government.\n But no government could be perfect if its officials made mistakes. So\n no Thrid official ever made a mistake. In particular the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U could not conceivably blunder! When he said a\n thing, it was true! It had to be! He'd said it! And this was the\n fundamental fact in the culture of the Thrid.\n\n\n \"Like hell you'll receive moneys and goods and such!\" snapped\n Jorgenson. \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n The high official literally couldn't believe his ears.\n\n\n \"But—but the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U—\"" ], [ "Jorgenson reflected sourly that the governors and the rulers of the\n universe were whoever happened to be within hearing of the Grand\n Panjandrum. They were not imposing. They were scared. Everybody is\n always scared under an absolute ruler, but the Grand Panjandrum was\n worse than that. He couldn't make a mistake. Whatever he said had to\n be true, because he said it, and sometimes it had drastic results. But\n past Grand Panjandrums had spoken highly of the trading post. Jorgenson\n shouldn't have much to worry about. He waited. He thought of Ganti. He\n scowled.", "Jorgenson laid the matter indignantly before him, repeating the exact\n phrases that said the trading company wanted—wanted!—practically to\n give itself to the Never-Mistaken Glen-U, who was the Grand Panjandrum\n of Thriddar. He waited to be told that it couldn't have happened; that\n anyhow it couldn't be intended. But the theologian's Thriddish ears\n went limp, which amounted to the same thing as a man's face turning\n pale. He stammered agitatedly that if the Grand Panjandrum said it, it\n was true. It couldn't be otherwise! If the trading company wanted to\n give itself to him, there was nothing to be done. It wanted to! The\n Grand Panjandrum had said so!\n\n\n \"He also said,\" said Jorgenson irritably, \"that I'm to vanish and\n nevermore be seen face to face by any rational being. How does that\n happen? Do I get speared?\"", "He fumed because creatures intelligent enough to build steam fliers\n weren't intelligent enough to see what a racket their government was.\n Now that the new Grand Panjandrum had moved against him, Jorgenson made\n an angry, dogged resolution to do something permanent to make matters\n better. For the Thrid themselves. Here he thought not as a business\n man only, but as a humanitarian. As both. When a whim of the Grand\n Panjandrum could ruin a business, something should be done. And when\n Ganti and countless others had been victims of capricious tyranny....\n And Jorgenson was slated to vanish from sight and never again be\n seen.... It definitely called for strong measures!\n\n\n He reflected with grim pleasure that the Grand Panjandrum would soon\n be in the position of a Thrid whom everybody knew was mistaken. With\n the trading-post denied him and Jorgenson still visible, he'd be\n notoriously wrong. And he couldn't be, and still be Grand Panjandrum!", "The trading-post theologian quivered. Jorgenson made things much worse.\n\n\n \"This,\" he raged, \"this is crazy! The Grand Panjandrum's an ordinary\n Thrid just like you are! Of course he can make a mistake! There's\n nobody who can't be wrong!\"\n\n\n The theologian put up feebly protesting, human-like hands. He begged\n hysterically to be allowed to go home before Jorgenson vanished, with\n unknown consequences for any Thrid who might be nearby.\n\n\n When Jorgenson opened a door to kick him out of it, the whole staff of\n the trading-post plunged after him. They'd been eavesdropping and they\n fled in pure horror.", "It was not wise to be moved by such sympathetic feelings. The Grand\n Panjandrum could not be mistaken. It was definitely unwise to\n contradict him. It could even be dangerous. Jorgenson was in a nasty\n spot.\n\n\n The Witnesses murmured reverently:\n\n\n \"We hear the words of the Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n The high official tucked away the scroll and said blandly:\n\n\n \"I will receive the moneys, goods, and benefactions it is the desire\n of the Rim Stars Trading Corporation to present to the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson, boiling inside, nevertheless knew what he was doing. He said\n succinctly:\n\n\n \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n There was an idiom in Thrid speech that had exactly the meaning of the\n human phrase. Jorgenson used it.", "Now it was evidently to be arranged that he would never again be seen\n face to face by a rational being. The Grand Panjandrum had won the\n argument. Within a few months a Rim Stars trading ship would land, and\n Jorgenson would be gone and the trading post confiscated. It would be\n hopeless to ask questions, and worse than hopeless to try to trade. So\n the ship would lift off and there'd be no more ships for at least a\n generation. Then there might—there might!—be another.\n\n\n Jorgenson swore fluently and with passion.\n\n\n \"It will not be long,\" said a tranquil voice.\n\n\n Jorgenson changed from human-speech profanity to Thrid. He directed\n his words to the unseen creature who'd spoken. That Thrid listened,\n apparently without emotion. When Jorgenson ran out of breath, the voice\n said severely:", "Then he tried to waken fully, and he couldn't do that either. He stayed\n in a dream-like, frustrated state which was partly like a nightmare,\n while very gradually new sensations came to him. He felt a cushioned\n throbbing against his chest, in the very hard surface on which he lay\n face down. That surface swayed and rocked slightly. He tried again to\n move, and realized that his hands and feet were bound. He found that he\n shivered, and realized that his clothing had been taken from him.\n\n\n He was completely helpless and lying on his stomach in the cargo-space\n of a steam helicopter: now he could hear the sound of its machinery.\n\n\n Then he knew what had happened. He'd committed The unthinkable\n crime—or lunacy—of declaring the Grand Panjandrum mistaken. So by the\n operation of truth, which was really an anesthetic gas cloud drifted\n over the trading post, he had vanished from sight.", "The high official rolled up the scroll, while Jorgenson exploded inside.\nA part of this was reaction as a business man. A part was recognition\n of all the intolerable things that the Thrid took as a matter of\n course. If Jorgenson had reacted solely as a business man he'd have\n swallowed it, departed on the next Rim Stars trading-ship—which would\n not have left any trade-goods behind—and left the Grand Panjandrum to\n realize what he had lost when no off-planet goods arrived on Thriddar.\n In time he'd speak and say and observe that he, out of his generosity,\n gave the loot back. Then the trading could resume. But Jorgenson didn't\n feel only like a business man this morning. He thought of Ganti, who\n was a particular case of everything he disliked on Thriddar.", "This morning was especially beyond the limit. There was a new Grand\n Panjandrum—the term was Jorgenson's own for the supreme ruler over\n all the Thrid—and when Jorgenson finished his breakfast a high Thrid\n official waited in the trading-post compound. Around him clustered\n other Thrid, wearing the formal headgear that said they were Witnesses\n to an official act.\n\n\n Jorgenson went out, scowling, and exchanged the customary ceremonial\n greetings. Then the high official beamed at him and extracted a scroll\n from his voluminous garments. Jorgenson saw the glint of gold and was\n suspicious at once. The words of a current Grand Panjandrum were always\n written in gold. If they didn't get written in gold they didn't get\n written at all; but it was too bad if anybody ignored any of them.", "The high official looked at him in utter stupefaction. Nobody\n contradicted the Grand Panjandrum! Nobody! The Thrid had noticed long\n ago that they were the most intelligent race in the universe. Since\n that was so, obviously they must have the most perfect government.\n But no government could be perfect if its officials made mistakes. So\n no Thrid official ever made a mistake. In particular the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U could not conceivably blunder! When he said a\n thing, it was true! It had to be! He'd said it! And this was the\n fundamental fact in the culture of the Thrid.\n\n\n \"Like hell you'll receive moneys and goods and such!\" snapped\n Jorgenson. \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n The high official literally couldn't believe his ears.\n\n\n \"But—but the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U—\"", "\"Is mistaken!\" said Jorgenson bitingly. \"He's wrong! The Rim Stars\n Trading Corporation does\nnot\nwant to give him anything! What he has\n said is not true!\" This was the equivalent of treason, blasphemy and\n the ultimate of indecorous behavior toward a virgin Pelean princess. \"I\n won't give him anything! I'm not even vanishing from sight! Glen-U is\n wrong about that, too! Now—git!\"\n\n\n He jerked out his blaster and pulled the trigger.\n\n\n There was an explosive burst of flame from the ground between the\n official and himself. The official fled. With him fled all the\n Witnesses, some even losing their headgear in their haste to get away.\nJorgenson stamped into the trading-post building. His eyes were stormy\n and his jaw was set.", "Then he saw a figure on the island. It was a Thrid stripped of all\n clothing like Jorgenson and darkened by the sun. That figure came\n agilely toward where he was let down. It caught him. It checked his\n wild swingings, which could have broken bones. The rope slackened. The\n Thrid laid Jorgenson down.\n\n\n He did not cast off the rope. He seemed to essay to climb it.\n\n\n It was cut at the steam-copter and came tumbling down all over both of\n them. The Thrid waved his arms wildly and seemed to screech gibberish\n at the sky. There was an impact nearby, of something dropped. Jorgenson\n heard the throbbing sound of the copter as it lifted and swept away.\n\n\n Then he felt the bounds about his arms and legs being removed. Then a\n Thrid voice—amazingly, a familiar Thrid voice—said:\n\n\n \"This is not good, Jorgenson. Who did you contradict?\"", "\"You declared the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U mistaken. This could\n not be. It proved you either a criminal or insane, because no rational\n creature could believe him mistaken. He declared you insane, and he\n cannot be wrong. So soon you will arrive where you are to be confined\n and no rational being will ever see you face to face.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson switched back to human swearing. Then he blended both\n languages, using all the applicable words he knew both in human speech\n and Thrid. He knew a great many. The soft throbbing of the steam-driven\n rotors went on, and Jorgenson swore both as a business man and a\n humanitarian. Both were frustrated.", "The Thrid was Ganti, of whom Jorgenson had once had hopes as a business\n man, and for whose disaster he had felt indignation as something else.\n He loosened the last of Jorgenson's bonds and helped him sit up.\n\n\n Jorgenson glared around. The island was roughly one hundred feet by\n two. It was twisted, curdled yellow stone from one end to the other.\n There were stone hillocks and a miniature stony peak, and a narrow\n valley between two patches of higher rock. Huge seas boomed against\n the windward shore, throwing spray higher than the island's topmost\n point. There were some places where sand had gathered. There was one\n spot—perhaps a square yard of it—where sand had been made fertile by\n the droppings of flying things and where two or three starveling plants\n showed foliage of sorts. That was all. Jorgenson ground his teeth.\n\n\n \"Go ahead,\" said Ganti grimly, \"but it may be even worse than you\n think.\"", "He scrambled over the twisted stone of the island. He came back,\n carrying something.\n\n\n \"It isn't worse,\" he said. \"It's only as bad. They did drop food and\n water for both of us. I wasn't sure they would.\"\nHis calmness sobered Jorgenson. As a business man, he was moved to make\n his situation clear. He told Ganti of the Grand Panjandrum's move to\n take over the Rim Stars trading post, which was bad business. He told\n of his own reaction, which was not a business-like one at all. Then he\n said dourly:\n\n\n \"But he's still wrong. No rational being is supposed ever to see me\n face to face. But you do.\"", "Jorgenson had stood it longer than most because in spite of their\n convictions he liked the Thrid. Their minds did do outside loops, and\n come up with intolerable convictions. But they were intelligent enough.\n They had steam-power and even steam-driven atmosphere fliers, but they\n didn't have missile weapons and they did have a social system that\n humans simply couldn't accept—even though it applied only to Thrid.\n The ordinary Thrid, with whom Jorgenson did business, weren't bad\n people. It was the officials who made him grind his teeth. And though\n it was his business only to run the trading post of the Rim Stars\n Trading Corporation, sometimes he got fed up.", "It would be a nice situation for Glen-U. He'd have to do something\n about it, and there was nothing he could do. He'd blundered, and it\n would soon be public knowledge.\n\n\n Jorgenson dozed lightly. Then more heavily. Then more heavily still.\n The night was not two hours old when the warning sirens made a terrific\n uproar. The Thrid for miles around heard the wailing, ullulating sound\n of the sirens that should have awakened Jorgenson.\n\n\n But they didn't wake him. He slept on.\nWhen he woke, he knew that he was cold. His muscles were cramped. Half\n awake, he tried to move and could not.", "\"Somebody dug it out,\" said Ganti without resentment. \"To keep busy.\n Maybe one prisoner only began it. A later one saw it started and worked\n on it to keep busy. Then others in their turn. It took a good many\n lives to make this cave.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson ground his teeth a second time.\n\n\n \"And just because they'd contradicted somebody who couldn't be wrong!\n Or because they had a business an official wanted!\"\n\n\n \"Or a wife,\" agreed Ganti. \"Here!\"\n\n\n He offered food. Jorgenson ate, scowling. Afterward, near sundown, he\n went over the island.", "But the local Thrid governor had spoken and said and observed that\n Ganti's wife wanted to enter his household. He added that Ganti wanted\n to yield her to him.\n\n\n Jorgenson had fumed—but not as a business man—when the transfer took\n place. But Ganti had been conditioned to believe that when a governor\n said he wanted to do something, he did. He couldn't quite grasp the\n contrary idea. But he moped horribly, and Jorgenson talked sardonically\n to him, and he almost doubted that an official was necessarily right.\n When his former wife died of grief, his disbelief became positive. And\n immediately afterward he disappeared.\n\n\n Jorgenson couldn't find out what had become of him. Dour reflection on\n the happening had put him in the bad mood which had started things,\n this morning.", "Jorgenson swore impartially at all of them and turned the shocker-field\n back on. He plugged in a capacity circuit which would turn on warning\n sirens if anything like a steam-driven copter passed or hovered over\n the trading-post. He put blasters in handy positions. The Thrid used\n only spears, knives and scimitars. Blasters would defend the post\n against a multitude.\n\n\n As a business man, he'd acted very foolishly. But he'd acted even less\n sensibly as a human being. He'd gotten fed up with a social system\n and a—call it—theology it wasn't his business to change. True, the\n Thrid way of life was appalling, and what had happened to Ganti was\n probably typical. But it wasn't Jorgenson's affair. He'd been unwise to\n let it disturb him. If the Thrid wanted things this way, it was their\n privilege." ], [ "Jorgenson reflected sourly that the governors and the rulers of the\n universe were whoever happened to be within hearing of the Grand\n Panjandrum. They were not imposing. They were scared. Everybody is\n always scared under an absolute ruler, but the Grand Panjandrum was\n worse than that. He couldn't make a mistake. Whatever he said had to\n be true, because he said it, and sometimes it had drastic results. But\n past Grand Panjandrums had spoken highly of the trading post. Jorgenson\n shouldn't have much to worry about. He waited. He thought of Ganti. He\n scowled.", "\"This is a prison,\" Ganti explained matter-of-factly. \"They let me\n down here and dropped food and water for a week. They went away. I\n found there'd been another prisoner here before me. His skeleton was in\n this cave. I reasoned it out. There must have been others before him.\n When there is a prisoner here, every so often a copter drops food and\n water. When the prisoner doesn't pick it up, they stop coming. When,\n presently, they have another prisoner they drop him off, like me, and\n he finds the skeleton of the previous prisoner, like me, and he dumps\n it overboard as I did. They'll drop food and water for me until I stop\n picking it up. And presently they'll do the same thing all over again.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson glowered. That was his reaction as a person. Then he gestured\n to the cave around him. There was a pile of dried-out seaweed for\n sleeping purposes.\n\n\n \"And this?\"", "Jorgenson laid the matter indignantly before him, repeating the exact\n phrases that said the trading company wanted—wanted!—practically to\n give itself to the Never-Mistaken Glen-U, who was the Grand Panjandrum\n of Thriddar. He waited to be told that it couldn't have happened; that\n anyhow it couldn't be intended. But the theologian's Thriddish ears\n went limp, which amounted to the same thing as a man's face turning\n pale. He stammered agitatedly that if the Grand Panjandrum said it, it\n was true. It couldn't be otherwise! If the trading company wanted to\n give itself to him, there was nothing to be done. It wanted to! The\n Grand Panjandrum had said so!\n\n\n \"He also said,\" said Jorgenson irritably, \"that I'm to vanish and\n nevermore be seen face to face by any rational being. How does that\n happen? Do I get speared?\"", "\"Somebody dug it out,\" said Ganti without resentment. \"To keep busy.\n Maybe one prisoner only began it. A later one saw it started and worked\n on it to keep busy. Then others in their turn. It took a good many\n lives to make this cave.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson ground his teeth a second time.\n\n\n \"And just because they'd contradicted somebody who couldn't be wrong!\n Or because they had a business an official wanted!\"\n\n\n \"Or a wife,\" agreed Ganti. \"Here!\"\n\n\n He offered food. Jorgenson ate, scowling. Afterward, near sundown, he\n went over the island.", "Ganti looked skeptical. Jorgenson explained. He had to demonstrate\n crudely. The whole idea was novel to Ganti, but the Thrid were smart.\n Presently he grasped it. He said:\n\n\n \"I see the theory. If we can make it work, all right. But how do we\n make the copter land?\"\n\n\n Jorgenson realized that they talked oddly. They spoke with leisurely\n lack of haste, with the lack of hope normal to prisoners to whom escape\n is impossible, even when they talk about escape. They could have been\n discussing a matter that would not affect either of them. But Jorgenson\n quivered inside. He hoped.\n\n\n \"We'll try it,\" said Ganti detachedly, when he'd explained again. \"If\n it fails, they'll only stop giving us food and water.\"\n\n\n That, of course, did not seem either to him or Jorgenson a reason to\n hesitate to try what Jorgenson had planned.", "The Thrid was Ganti, of whom Jorgenson had once had hopes as a business\n man, and for whose disaster he had felt indignation as something else.\n He loosened the last of Jorgenson's bonds and helped him sit up.\n\n\n Jorgenson glared around. The island was roughly one hundred feet by\n two. It was twisted, curdled yellow stone from one end to the other.\n There were stone hillocks and a miniature stony peak, and a narrow\n valley between two patches of higher rock. Huge seas boomed against\n the windward shore, throwing spray higher than the island's topmost\n point. There were some places where sand had gathered. There was one\n spot—perhaps a square yard of it—where sand had been made fertile by\n the droppings of flying things and where two or three starveling plants\n showed foliage of sorts. That was all. Jorgenson ground his teeth.\n\n\n \"Go ahead,\" said Ganti grimly, \"but it may be even worse than you\n think.\"", "But the local Thrid governor had spoken and said and observed that\n Ganti's wife wanted to enter his household. He added that Ganti wanted\n to yield her to him.\n\n\n Jorgenson had fumed—but not as a business man—when the transfer took\n place. But Ganti had been conditioned to believe that when a governor\n said he wanted to do something, he did. He couldn't quite grasp the\n contrary idea. But he moped horribly, and Jorgenson talked sardonically\n to him, and he almost doubted that an official was necessarily right.\n When his former wife died of grief, his disbelief became positive. And\n immediately afterward he disappeared.\n\n\n Jorgenson couldn't find out what had become of him. Dour reflection on\n the happening had put him in the bad mood which had started things,\n this morning.", "\"But I'm crazy,\" said Ganti calmly. \"I tried to kill the governor\n who'd taken my wife. So he said I was crazy and that made it true. So\n I wasn't put in a chained group of laborers. Somebody might have seen\n me and thought about it. But, sent here, it's worse for me and I'm\n probably forgotten by now.\"\n\n\n He was calm about it. Only a Thrid would have been so calm. But they've\n had at least hundreds of generations in which to get used to injustice.\n He accepted it. But Jorgenson frowned.\n\n\n \"You've got brains, Ganti. What's the chance of escape?\"\n\n\n \"None,\" said Ganti unemotionally. \"You'd better get out of the sun.\n It'll burn you badly. Come along.\"", "The high official rolled up the scroll, while Jorgenson exploded inside.\nA part of this was reaction as a business man. A part was recognition\n of all the intolerable things that the Thrid took as a matter of\n course. If Jorgenson had reacted solely as a business man he'd have\n swallowed it, departed on the next Rim Stars trading-ship—which would\n not have left any trade-goods behind—and left the Grand Panjandrum to\n realize what he had lost when no off-planet goods arrived on Thriddar.\n In time he'd speak and say and observe that he, out of his generosity,\n gave the loot back. Then the trading could resume. But Jorgenson didn't\n feel only like a business man this morning. He thought of Ganti, who\n was a particular case of everything he disliked on Thriddar.", "It was not wise to be moved by such sympathetic feelings. The Grand\n Panjandrum could not be mistaken. It was definitely unwise to\n contradict him. It could even be dangerous. Jorgenson was in a nasty\n spot.\n\n\n The Witnesses murmured reverently:\n\n\n \"We hear the words of the Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n The high official tucked away the scroll and said blandly:\n\n\n \"I will receive the moneys, goods, and benefactions it is the desire\n of the Rim Stars Trading Corporation to present to the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson, boiling inside, nevertheless knew what he was doing. He said\n succinctly:\n\n\n \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n There was an idiom in Thrid speech that had exactly the meaning of the\n human phrase. Jorgenson used it.", "Jorgenson swore impartially at all of them and turned the shocker-field\n back on. He plugged in a capacity circuit which would turn on warning\n sirens if anything like a steam-driven copter passed or hovered over\n the trading-post. He put blasters in handy positions. The Thrid used\n only spears, knives and scimitars. Blasters would defend the post\n against a multitude.\n\n\n As a business man, he'd acted very foolishly. But he'd acted even less\n sensibly as a human being. He'd gotten fed up with a social system\n and a—call it—theology it wasn't his business to change. True, the\n Thrid way of life was appalling, and what had happened to Ganti was\n probably typical. But it wasn't Jorgenson's affair. He'd been unwise to\n let it disturb him. If the Thrid wanted things this way, it was their\n privilege.", "He scrambled over the twisted stone of the island. He came back,\n carrying something.\n\n\n \"It isn't worse,\" he said. \"It's only as bad. They did drop food and\n water for both of us. I wasn't sure they would.\"\nHis calmness sobered Jorgenson. As a business man, he was moved to make\n his situation clear. He told Ganti of the Grand Panjandrum's move to\n take over the Rim Stars trading post, which was bad business. He told\n of his own reaction, which was not a business-like one at all. Then he\n said dourly:\n\n\n \"But he's still wrong. No rational being is supposed ever to see me\n face to face. But you do.\"", "Jorgenson found that a fish-fillet, strongly squeezed and wrung like a\n wet cloth, would yield a drinkable liquid which was not salt and would\n substitute for water. And this was a reason to make a string bag in\n which caught fish could be let back into the sea so they were there\n when wanted but could not escape.\n\n\n They had used it for weeks when he saw Ganti, carrying it to place it\n where they left it overboard, swinging it idly back and forth as he\n walked.\nIf Jorgenson had been only a businessman, it would have had no\n particular meaning. But he was also a person, filled with hatred of\n the Thrid who had condemned him for life to this small island. He saw\n the swinging of the fish. It gave him an idea.\n\n\n He did not speak at all during all the rest of that day. He was\n thinking. The matter needed much thought. Ganti left him alone.", "Now it was evidently to be arranged that he would never again be seen\n face to face by a rational being. The Grand Panjandrum had won the\n argument. Within a few months a Rim Stars trading ship would land, and\n Jorgenson would be gone and the trading post confiscated. It would be\n hopeless to ask questions, and worse than hopeless to try to trade. So\n the ship would lift off and there'd be no more ships for at least a\n generation. Then there might—there might!—be another.\n\n\n Jorgenson swore fluently and with passion.\n\n\n \"It will not be long,\" said a tranquil voice.\n\n\n Jorgenson changed from human-speech profanity to Thrid. He directed\n his words to the unseen creature who'd spoken. That Thrid listened,\n apparently without emotion. When Jorgenson ran out of breath, the voice\n said severely:", "The real trouble was that Jorgenson saw things as a business man does.\n But also, and contradictorily, he saw them as right and just, or as\n wrong and intolerable. As a business man, he should have kept his mind\n on business and never bothered about Ganti. As a believer in right and\n wrong, it would have been wiser for him to have stayed off the planet\n Thriddar altogether. Thriddar was no place for him, anyhow you look at\n it. On this particular morning it was especially the wrong place for\n him to be trying to live and do business.\n\n\n He woke up thinking of Ganti, and in consequence he was in a bad mood\n right away. Most humans couldn't take the sort of thing that went on on\n Thriddar. Most of them wanted to use missile weapons—which the Thrid\n did not use—to change the local social system. Most humans got off\n Thriddar—fast! And boiling mad.", "\"You declared the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U mistaken. This could\n not be. It proved you either a criminal or insane, because no rational\n creature could believe him mistaken. He declared you insane, and he\n cannot be wrong. So soon you will arrive where you are to be confined\n and no rational being will ever see you face to face.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson switched back to human swearing. Then he blended both\n languages, using all the applicable words he knew both in human speech\n and Thrid. He knew a great many. The soft throbbing of the steam-driven\n rotors went on, and Jorgenson swore both as a business man and a\n humanitarian. Both were frustrated.", "In theory, no Thrid should ever make a mistake, because he belonged\n to the most intelligent race in the universe. But a local governor\n was even more intelligent. If an ordinary Thrid challenged a local\n governor's least and lightest remark—why—he must be either a criminal\n or insane. The local governor decided—correctly, of course—which\n he was. If he was a criminal, he spent the rest of his life in a gang\n of criminals chained together and doing the most exhausting labor the\n Thrid could contrive. If he was mad, he was confined for life.\nThere'd been Ganti, a Thrid of whom Jorgenson had had much hope. He\n believed that Ganti could learn to run the trading post without human\n supervision. If he could, the trading company could simply bring trade\n goods to Thriddar and take away other trade goods. The cost of doing\n business would be decreased. There could be no human-Thrid friction.\n Jorgenson had been training Ganti for this work.", "\"Is mistaken!\" said Jorgenson bitingly. \"He's wrong! The Rim Stars\n Trading Corporation does\nnot\nwant to give him anything! What he has\n said is not true!\" This was the equivalent of treason, blasphemy and\n the ultimate of indecorous behavior toward a virgin Pelean princess. \"I\n won't give him anything! I'm not even vanishing from sight! Glen-U is\n wrong about that, too! Now—git!\"\n\n\n He jerked out his blaster and pulled the trigger.\n\n\n There was an explosive burst of flame from the ground between the\n official and himself. The official fled. With him fled all the\n Witnesses, some even losing their headgear in their haste to get away.\nJorgenson stamped into the trading-post building. His eyes were stormy\n and his jaw was set.", "Jorgenson had stood it longer than most because in spite of their\n convictions he liked the Thrid. Their minds did do outside loops, and\n come up with intolerable convictions. But they were intelligent enough.\n They had steam-power and even steam-driven atmosphere fliers, but they\n didn't have missile weapons and they did have a social system that\n humans simply couldn't accept—even though it applied only to Thrid.\n The ordinary Thrid, with whom Jorgenson did business, weren't bad\n people. It was the officials who made him grind his teeth. And though\n it was his business only to run the trading post of the Rim Stars\n Trading Corporation, sometimes he got fed up.", "The high official looked at him in utter stupefaction. Nobody\n contradicted the Grand Panjandrum! Nobody! The Thrid had noticed long\n ago that they were the most intelligent race in the universe. Since\n that was so, obviously they must have the most perfect government.\n But no government could be perfect if its officials made mistakes. So\n no Thrid official ever made a mistake. In particular the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U could not conceivably blunder! When he said a\n thing, it was true! It had to be! He'd said it! And this was the\n fundamental fact in the culture of the Thrid.\n\n\n \"Like hell you'll receive moneys and goods and such!\" snapped\n Jorgenson. \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n The high official literally couldn't believe his ears.\n\n\n \"But—but the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U—\"" ], [ "The high official looked at him in utter stupefaction. Nobody\n contradicted the Grand Panjandrum! Nobody! The Thrid had noticed long\n ago that they were the most intelligent race in the universe. Since\n that was so, obviously they must have the most perfect government.\n But no government could be perfect if its officials made mistakes. So\n no Thrid official ever made a mistake. In particular the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U could not conceivably blunder! When he said a\n thing, it was true! It had to be! He'd said it! And this was the\n fundamental fact in the culture of the Thrid.\n\n\n \"Like hell you'll receive moneys and goods and such!\" snapped\n Jorgenson. \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n The high official literally couldn't believe his ears.\n\n\n \"But—but the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U—\"", "In theory, no Thrid should ever make a mistake, because he belonged\n to the most intelligent race in the universe. But a local governor\n was even more intelligent. If an ordinary Thrid challenged a local\n governor's least and lightest remark—why—he must be either a criminal\n or insane. The local governor decided—correctly, of course—which\n he was. If he was a criminal, he spent the rest of his life in a gang\n of criminals chained together and doing the most exhausting labor the\n Thrid could contrive. If he was mad, he was confined for life.\nThere'd been Ganti, a Thrid of whom Jorgenson had had much hope. He\n believed that Ganti could learn to run the trading post without human\n supervision. If he could, the trading company could simply bring trade\n goods to Thriddar and take away other trade goods. The cost of doing\n business would be decreased. There could be no human-Thrid friction.\n Jorgenson had been training Ganti for this work.", "He snapped orders. The hired Thrid of the trading-post staff had not\n quite grasped the situation. They couldn't believe it. Automatically,\n as he commanded the iron doors and shutters of the trading post closed,\n they obeyed. They saw him turn on the shocker-field so that nobody\n could cross the compound without getting an electric shock that would\n discourage him. They began to believe.\n\n\n Then he sent for the trading-post Thrid consultant. On Earth he'd have\n called for a lawyer. On a hostile world there'd have been a soldier to\n advise him. On Thrid the specialist to be consulted wasn't exactly a\n theologian, but he was nearer that than anything else.", "MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE THRID\nBY MURRAY LEINSTER\nThe Thrid were the wisest creatures in\n\n space—they even said so themselves!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1963.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI", "Jorgenson had stood it longer than most because in spite of their\n convictions he liked the Thrid. Their minds did do outside loops, and\n come up with intolerable convictions. But they were intelligent enough.\n They had steam-power and even steam-driven atmosphere fliers, but they\n didn't have missile weapons and they did have a social system that\n humans simply couldn't accept—even though it applied only to Thrid.\n The ordinary Thrid, with whom Jorgenson did business, weren't bad\n people. It was the officials who made him grind his teeth. And though\n it was his business only to run the trading post of the Rim Stars\n Trading Corporation, sometimes he got fed up.", "The high official unrolled the scroll. The Thrid around him, wearing\n Witness hats, became utterly silent. The high official made a sound\n equivalent to clearing his throat. The stillness became death-like.\n\n\n \"On this day,\" intoned the high official, while the Witnesses\n listened reverently, \"on this day did Glen-U the Never-Mistaken, as\n have been his predecessors throughout the ages;—on this day did the\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U speak and say and observe a truth in the presence\n of the governors and the rulers of the universe.\"", "Jorgenson swore impartially at all of them and turned the shocker-field\n back on. He plugged in a capacity circuit which would turn on warning\n sirens if anything like a steam-driven copter passed or hovered over\n the trading-post. He put blasters in handy positions. The Thrid used\n only spears, knives and scimitars. Blasters would defend the post\n against a multitude.\n\n\n As a business man, he'd acted very foolishly. But he'd acted even less\n sensibly as a human being. He'd gotten fed up with a social system\n and a—call it—theology it wasn't his business to change. True, the\n Thrid way of life was appalling, and what had happened to Ganti was\n probably typical. But it wasn't Jorgenson's affair. He'd been unwise to\n let it disturb him. If the Thrid wanted things this way, it was their\n privilege.", "The real trouble was that Jorgenson saw things as a business man does.\n But also, and contradictorily, he saw them as right and just, or as\n wrong and intolerable. As a business man, he should have kept his mind\n on business and never bothered about Ganti. As a believer in right and\n wrong, it would have been wiser for him to have stayed off the planet\n Thriddar altogether. Thriddar was no place for him, anyhow you look at\n it. On this particular morning it was especially the wrong place for\n him to be trying to live and do business.\n\n\n He woke up thinking of Ganti, and in consequence he was in a bad mood\n right away. Most humans couldn't take the sort of thing that went on on\n Thriddar. Most of them wanted to use missile weapons—which the Thrid\n did not use—to change the local social system. Most humans got off\n Thriddar—fast! And boiling mad.", "It was not wise to be moved by such sympathetic feelings. The Grand\n Panjandrum could not be mistaken. It was definitely unwise to\n contradict him. It could even be dangerous. Jorgenson was in a nasty\n spot.\n\n\n The Witnesses murmured reverently:\n\n\n \"We hear the words of the Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n The high official tucked away the scroll and said blandly:\n\n\n \"I will receive the moneys, goods, and benefactions it is the desire\n of the Rim Stars Trading Corporation to present to the great and\n Never-Mistaken Glen-U.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson, boiling inside, nevertheless knew what he was doing. He said\n succinctly:\n\n\n \"Like hell you will!\"\n\n\n There was an idiom in Thrid speech that had exactly the meaning of the\n human phrase. Jorgenson used it.", "The trading-post theologian quivered. Jorgenson made things much worse.\n\n\n \"This,\" he raged, \"this is crazy! The Grand Panjandrum's an ordinary\n Thrid just like you are! Of course he can make a mistake! There's\n nobody who can't be wrong!\"\n\n\n The theologian put up feebly protesting, human-like hands. He begged\n hysterically to be allowed to go home before Jorgenson vanished, with\n unknown consequences for any Thrid who might be nearby.\n\n\n When Jorgenson opened a door to kick him out of it, the whole staff of\n the trading-post plunged after him. They'd been eavesdropping and they\n fled in pure horror.", "\"But I'm crazy,\" said Ganti calmly. \"I tried to kill the governor\n who'd taken my wife. So he said I was crazy and that made it true. So\n I wasn't put in a chained group of laborers. Somebody might have seen\n me and thought about it. But, sent here, it's worse for me and I'm\n probably forgotten by now.\"\n\n\n He was calm about it. Only a Thrid would have been so calm. But they've\n had at least hundreds of generations in which to get used to injustice.\n He accepted it. But Jorgenson frowned.\n\n\n \"You've got brains, Ganti. What's the chance of escape?\"\n\n\n \"None,\" said Ganti unemotionally. \"You'd better get out of the sun.\n It'll burn you badly. Come along.\"", "This morning was especially beyond the limit. There was a new Grand\n Panjandrum—the term was Jorgenson's own for the supreme ruler over\n all the Thrid—and when Jorgenson finished his breakfast a high Thrid\n official waited in the trading-post compound. Around him clustered\n other Thrid, wearing the formal headgear that said they were Witnesses\n to an official act.\n\n\n Jorgenson went out, scowling, and exchanged the customary ceremonial\n greetings. Then the high official beamed at him and extracted a scroll\n from his voluminous garments. Jorgenson saw the glint of gold and was\n suspicious at once. The words of a current Grand Panjandrum were always\n written in gold. If they didn't get written in gold they didn't get\n written at all; but it was too bad if anybody ignored any of them.", "Now it was evidently to be arranged that he would never again be seen\n face to face by a rational being. The Grand Panjandrum had won the\n argument. Within a few months a Rim Stars trading ship would land, and\n Jorgenson would be gone and the trading post confiscated. It would be\n hopeless to ask questions, and worse than hopeless to try to trade. So\n the ship would lift off and there'd be no more ships for at least a\n generation. Then there might—there might!—be another.\n\n\n Jorgenson swore fluently and with passion.\n\n\n \"It will not be long,\" said a tranquil voice.\n\n\n Jorgenson changed from human-speech profanity to Thrid. He directed\n his words to the unseen creature who'd spoken. That Thrid listened,\n apparently without emotion. When Jorgenson ran out of breath, the voice\n said severely:", "Then he saw a figure on the island. It was a Thrid stripped of all\n clothing like Jorgenson and darkened by the sun. That figure came\n agilely toward where he was let down. It caught him. It checked his\n wild swingings, which could have broken bones. The rope slackened. The\n Thrid laid Jorgenson down.\n\n\n He did not cast off the rope. He seemed to essay to climb it.\n\n\n It was cut at the steam-copter and came tumbling down all over both of\n them. The Thrid waved his arms wildly and seemed to screech gibberish\n at the sky. There was an impact nearby, of something dropped. Jorgenson\n heard the throbbing sound of the copter as it lifted and swept away.\n\n\n Then he felt the bounds about his arms and legs being removed. Then a\n Thrid voice—amazingly, a familiar Thrid voice—said:\n\n\n \"This is not good, Jorgenson. Who did you contradict?\"", "But the local Thrid governor had spoken and said and observed that\n Ganti's wife wanted to enter his household. He added that Ganti wanted\n to yield her to him.\n\n\n Jorgenson had fumed—but not as a business man—when the transfer took\n place. But Ganti had been conditioned to believe that when a governor\n said he wanted to do something, he did. He couldn't quite grasp the\n contrary idea. But he moped horribly, and Jorgenson talked sardonically\n to him, and he almost doubted that an official was necessarily right.\n When his former wife died of grief, his disbelief became positive. And\n immediately afterward he disappeared.\n\n\n Jorgenson couldn't find out what had become of him. Dour reflection on\n the happening had put him in the bad mood which had started things,\n this morning.", "The high official rolled up the scroll, while Jorgenson exploded inside.\nA part of this was reaction as a business man. A part was recognition\n of all the intolerable things that the Thrid took as a matter of\n course. If Jorgenson had reacted solely as a business man he'd have\n swallowed it, departed on the next Rim Stars trading-ship—which would\n not have left any trade-goods behind—and left the Grand Panjandrum to\n realize what he had lost when no off-planet goods arrived on Thriddar.\n In time he'd speak and say and observe that he, out of his generosity,\n gave the loot back. Then the trading could resume. But Jorgenson didn't\n feel only like a business man this morning. He thought of Ganti, who\n was a particular case of everything he disliked on Thriddar.", "\"You declared the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U mistaken. This could\n not be. It proved you either a criminal or insane, because no rational\n creature could believe him mistaken. He declared you insane, and he\n cannot be wrong. So soon you will arrive where you are to be confined\n and no rational being will ever see you face to face.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson switched back to human swearing. Then he blended both\n languages, using all the applicable words he knew both in human speech\n and Thrid. He knew a great many. The soft throbbing of the steam-driven\n rotors went on, and Jorgenson swore both as a business man and a\n humanitarian. Both were frustrated.", "Jorgenson laid the matter indignantly before him, repeating the exact\n phrases that said the trading company wanted—wanted!—practically to\n give itself to the Never-Mistaken Glen-U, who was the Grand Panjandrum\n of Thriddar. He waited to be told that it couldn't have happened; that\n anyhow it couldn't be intended. But the theologian's Thriddish ears\n went limp, which amounted to the same thing as a man's face turning\n pale. He stammered agitatedly that if the Grand Panjandrum said it, it\n was true. It couldn't be otherwise! If the trading company wanted to\n give itself to him, there was nothing to be done. It wanted to! The\n Grand Panjandrum had said so!\n\n\n \"He also said,\" said Jorgenson irritably, \"that I'm to vanish and\n nevermore be seen face to face by any rational being. How does that\n happen? Do I get speared?\"", "He fumed because creatures intelligent enough to build steam fliers\n weren't intelligent enough to see what a racket their government was.\n Now that the new Grand Panjandrum had moved against him, Jorgenson made\n an angry, dogged resolution to do something permanent to make matters\n better. For the Thrid themselves. Here he thought not as a business\n man only, but as a humanitarian. As both. When a whim of the Grand\n Panjandrum could ruin a business, something should be done. And when\n Ganti and countless others had been victims of capricious tyranny....\n And Jorgenson was slated to vanish from sight and never again be\n seen.... It definitely called for strong measures!\n\n\n He reflected with grim pleasure that the Grand Panjandrum would soon\n be in the position of a Thrid whom everybody knew was mistaken. With\n the trading-post denied him and Jorgenson still visible, he'd be\n notoriously wrong. And he couldn't be, and still be Grand Panjandrum!", "He racked his brains for the most preposterous or faintest hope of\n deliverance. There were times when as a business man he reproached\n himself for staying on Thriddar after he became indignant with the way\n the planet was governed. It was very foolish. But much more often he\n felt such hatred of the manners and customs of the Thrid—which had\n put him here—that it seemed that something must somehow be possible if\n only so he could take revenge.\nIII\n\n\n The copter came, it dropped food and water, and it went away. It came,\n dropped food and water, and went away. Once a water-bag burst when\n dropped. They lost nearly half a week's water supply. Before the copter\n came again they'd gone two days without drinking." ], [ "Ganti looked skeptical. Jorgenson explained. He had to demonstrate\n crudely. The whole idea was novel to Ganti, but the Thrid were smart.\n Presently he grasped it. He said:\n\n\n \"I see the theory. If we can make it work, all right. But how do we\n make the copter land?\"\n\n\n Jorgenson realized that they talked oddly. They spoke with leisurely\n lack of haste, with the lack of hope normal to prisoners to whom escape\n is impossible, even when they talk about escape. They could have been\n discussing a matter that would not affect either of them. But Jorgenson\n quivered inside. He hoped.\n\n\n \"We'll try it,\" said Ganti detachedly, when he'd explained again. \"If\n it fails, they'll only stop giving us food and water.\"\n\n\n That, of course, did not seem either to him or Jorgenson a reason to\n hesitate to try what Jorgenson had planned.", "The Thrid was Ganti, of whom Jorgenson had once had hopes as a business\n man, and for whose disaster he had felt indignation as something else.\n He loosened the last of Jorgenson's bonds and helped him sit up.\n\n\n Jorgenson glared around. The island was roughly one hundred feet by\n two. It was twisted, curdled yellow stone from one end to the other.\n There were stone hillocks and a miniature stony peak, and a narrow\n valley between two patches of higher rock. Huge seas boomed against\n the windward shore, throwing spray higher than the island's topmost\n point. There were some places where sand had gathered. There was one\n spot—perhaps a square yard of it—where sand had been made fertile by\n the droppings of flying things and where two or three starveling plants\n showed foliage of sorts. That was all. Jorgenson ground his teeth.\n\n\n \"Go ahead,\" said Ganti grimly, \"but it may be even worse than you\n think.\"", "Jorgenson reflected sourly that the governors and the rulers of the\n universe were whoever happened to be within hearing of the Grand\n Panjandrum. They were not imposing. They were scared. Everybody is\n always scared under an absolute ruler, but the Grand Panjandrum was\n worse than that. He couldn't make a mistake. Whatever he said had to\n be true, because he said it, and sometimes it had drastic results. But\n past Grand Panjandrums had spoken highly of the trading post. Jorgenson\n shouldn't have much to worry about. He waited. He thought of Ganti. He\n scowled.", "\"But I'm crazy,\" said Ganti calmly. \"I tried to kill the governor\n who'd taken my wife. So he said I was crazy and that made it true. So\n I wasn't put in a chained group of laborers. Somebody might have seen\n me and thought about it. But, sent here, it's worse for me and I'm\n probably forgotten by now.\"\n\n\n He was calm about it. Only a Thrid would have been so calm. But they've\n had at least hundreds of generations in which to get used to injustice.\n He accepted it. But Jorgenson frowned.\n\n\n \"You've got brains, Ganti. What's the chance of escape?\"\n\n\n \"None,\" said Ganti unemotionally. \"You'd better get out of the sun.\n It'll burn you badly. Come along.\"", "\"This is a prison,\" Ganti explained matter-of-factly. \"They let me\n down here and dropped food and water for a week. They went away. I\n found there'd been another prisoner here before me. His skeleton was in\n this cave. I reasoned it out. There must have been others before him.\n When there is a prisoner here, every so often a copter drops food and\n water. When the prisoner doesn't pick it up, they stop coming. When,\n presently, they have another prisoner they drop him off, like me, and\n he finds the skeleton of the previous prisoner, like me, and he dumps\n it overboard as I did. They'll drop food and water for me until I stop\n picking it up. And presently they'll do the same thing all over again.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson glowered. That was his reaction as a person. Then he gestured\n to the cave around him. There was a pile of dried-out seaweed for\n sleeping purposes.\n\n\n \"And this?\"", "It would be a nice situation for Glen-U. He'd have to do something\n about it, and there was nothing he could do. He'd blundered, and it\n would soon be public knowledge.\n\n\n Jorgenson dozed lightly. Then more heavily. Then more heavily still.\n The night was not two hours old when the warning sirens made a terrific\n uproar. The Thrid for miles around heard the wailing, ullulating sound\n of the sirens that should have awakened Jorgenson.\n\n\n But they didn't wake him. He slept on.\nWhen he woke, he knew that he was cold. His muscles were cramped. Half\n awake, he tried to move and could not.", "But the local Thrid governor had spoken and said and observed that\n Ganti's wife wanted to enter his household. He added that Ganti wanted\n to yield her to him.\n\n\n Jorgenson had fumed—but not as a business man—when the transfer took\n place. But Ganti had been conditioned to believe that when a governor\n said he wanted to do something, he did. He couldn't quite grasp the\n contrary idea. But he moped horribly, and Jorgenson talked sardonically\n to him, and he almost doubted that an official was necessarily right.\n When his former wife died of grief, his disbelief became positive. And\n immediately afterward he disappeared.\n\n\n Jorgenson couldn't find out what had become of him. Dour reflection on\n the happening had put him in the bad mood which had started things,\n this morning.", "It was rock, nothing else. There was a pile of small broken stones from\n the excavation of the cave. There were the few starveling plants. There\n was the cordage with which Jorgenson had been lowered. There was the\n parcel containing food and water. Ganti observed that the plastic went\n to pieces in a week or so, so it couldn't be used for anything. There\n was nothing to escape with. Nothing to make anything to escape with.\n\n\n Even the dried seaweed bed was not comfortable. Jorgenson slept badly\n and waked with aching muscles. Ganti assured him unemotionally that\n he'd get used to it.\n\n\n He did. By the time the copter came to drop food and water again,\n Jorgenson was physically adjusted to the island. But neither as a\n business man or as a person could he adjust to hopelessness.", "The real trouble was that Jorgenson saw things as a business man does.\n But also, and contradictorily, he saw them as right and just, or as\n wrong and intolerable. As a business man, he should have kept his mind\n on business and never bothered about Ganti. As a believer in right and\n wrong, it would have been wiser for him to have stayed off the planet\n Thriddar altogether. Thriddar was no place for him, anyhow you look at\n it. On this particular morning it was especially the wrong place for\n him to be trying to live and do business.\n\n\n He woke up thinking of Ganti, and in consequence he was in a bad mood\n right away. Most humans couldn't take the sort of thing that went on on\n Thriddar. Most of them wanted to use missile weapons—which the Thrid\n did not use—to change the local social system. Most humans got off\n Thriddar—fast! And boiling mad.", "Jorgenson swore impartially at all of them and turned the shocker-field\n back on. He plugged in a capacity circuit which would turn on warning\n sirens if anything like a steam-driven copter passed or hovered over\n the trading-post. He put blasters in handy positions. The Thrid used\n only spears, knives and scimitars. Blasters would defend the post\n against a multitude.\n\n\n As a business man, he'd acted very foolishly. But he'd acted even less\n sensibly as a human being. He'd gotten fed up with a social system\n and a—call it—theology it wasn't his business to change. True, the\n Thrid way of life was appalling, and what had happened to Ganti was\n probably typical. But it wasn't Jorgenson's affair. He'd been unwise to\n let it disturb him. If the Thrid wanted things this way, it was their\n privilege.", "He fumed because creatures intelligent enough to build steam fliers\n weren't intelligent enough to see what a racket their government was.\n Now that the new Grand Panjandrum had moved against him, Jorgenson made\n an angry, dogged resolution to do something permanent to make matters\n better. For the Thrid themselves. Here he thought not as a business\n man only, but as a humanitarian. As both. When a whim of the Grand\n Panjandrum could ruin a business, something should be done. And when\n Ganti and countless others had been victims of capricious tyranny....\n And Jorgenson was slated to vanish from sight and never again be\n seen.... It definitely called for strong measures!\n\n\n He reflected with grim pleasure that the Grand Panjandrum would soon\n be in the position of a Thrid whom everybody knew was mistaken. With\n the trading-post denied him and Jorgenson still visible, he'd be\n notoriously wrong. And he couldn't be, and still be Grand Panjandrum!", "But by sunset he'd worked it out. While they watched Thrid's red sun\n sink below the horizon, Jorgenson said thoughtfully:\n\n\n \"There is a way to escape, Ganti.\"\n\n\n \"On what? In what?\" demanded Ganti.\n\n\n \"In the helicopter that feeds us,\" said Jorgenson.\n\n\n \"It never lands,\" said Ganti practically.\n\n\n \"We can make it land,\" said Jorgenson. Thrid weren't allowed to make\n mistakes; he could make it a mistake not to land.\n\n\n \"The crew is armed,\" said Ganti. \"There are three of them.\"\n\n\n \"They've only knives and scimitars,\" said Jorgenson. \"They don't count.\n We can make better weapons than they have.\"", "Jorgenson laid the matter indignantly before him, repeating the exact\n phrases that said the trading company wanted—wanted!—practically to\n give itself to the Never-Mistaken Glen-U, who was the Grand Panjandrum\n of Thriddar. He waited to be told that it couldn't have happened; that\n anyhow it couldn't be intended. But the theologian's Thriddish ears\n went limp, which amounted to the same thing as a man's face turning\n pale. He stammered agitatedly that if the Grand Panjandrum said it, it\n was true. It couldn't be otherwise! If the trading company wanted to\n give itself to him, there was nothing to be done. It wanted to! The\n Grand Panjandrum had said so!\n\n\n \"He also said,\" said Jorgenson irritably, \"that I'm to vanish and\n nevermore be seen face to face by any rational being. How does that\n happen? Do I get speared?\"", "Jorgenson found that a fish-fillet, strongly squeezed and wrung like a\n wet cloth, would yield a drinkable liquid which was not salt and would\n substitute for water. And this was a reason to make a string bag in\n which caught fish could be let back into the sea so they were there\n when wanted but could not escape.\n\n\n They had used it for weeks when he saw Ganti, carrying it to place it\n where they left it overboard, swinging it idly back and forth as he\n walked.\nIf Jorgenson had been only a businessman, it would have had no\n particular meaning. But he was also a person, filled with hatred of\n the Thrid who had condemned him for life to this small island. He saw\n the swinging of the fish. It gave him an idea.\n\n\n He did not speak at all during all the rest of that day. He was\n thinking. The matter needed much thought. Ganti left him alone.", "In theory, no Thrid should ever make a mistake, because he belonged\n to the most intelligent race in the universe. But a local governor\n was even more intelligent. If an ordinary Thrid challenged a local\n governor's least and lightest remark—why—he must be either a criminal\n or insane. The local governor decided—correctly, of course—which\n he was. If he was a criminal, he spent the rest of his life in a gang\n of criminals chained together and doing the most exhausting labor the\n Thrid could contrive. If he was mad, he was confined for life.\nThere'd been Ganti, a Thrid of whom Jorgenson had had much hope. He\n believed that Ganti could learn to run the trading post without human\n supervision. If he could, the trading company could simply bring trade\n goods to Thriddar and take away other trade goods. The cost of doing\n business would be decreased. There could be no human-Thrid friction.\n Jorgenson had been training Ganti for this work.", "Now it was evidently to be arranged that he would never again be seen\n face to face by a rational being. The Grand Panjandrum had won the\n argument. Within a few months a Rim Stars trading ship would land, and\n Jorgenson would be gone and the trading post confiscated. It would be\n hopeless to ask questions, and worse than hopeless to try to trade. So\n the ship would lift off and there'd be no more ships for at least a\n generation. Then there might—there might!—be another.\n\n\n Jorgenson swore fluently and with passion.\n\n\n \"It will not be long,\" said a tranquil voice.\n\n\n Jorgenson changed from human-speech profanity to Thrid. He directed\n his words to the unseen creature who'd spoken. That Thrid listened,\n apparently without emotion. When Jorgenson ran out of breath, the voice\n said severely:", "He scrambled over the twisted stone of the island. He came back,\n carrying something.\n\n\n \"It isn't worse,\" he said. \"It's only as bad. They did drop food and\n water for both of us. I wasn't sure they would.\"\nHis calmness sobered Jorgenson. As a business man, he was moved to make\n his situation clear. He told Ganti of the Grand Panjandrum's move to\n take over the Rim Stars trading post, which was bad business. He told\n of his own reaction, which was not a business-like one at all. Then he\n said dourly:\n\n\n \"But he's still wrong. No rational being is supposed ever to see me\n face to face. But you do.\"", "\"Somebody dug it out,\" said Ganti without resentment. \"To keep busy.\n Maybe one prisoner only began it. A later one saw it started and worked\n on it to keep busy. Then others in their turn. It took a good many\n lives to make this cave.\"\n\n\n Jorgenson ground his teeth a second time.\n\n\n \"And just because they'd contradicted somebody who couldn't be wrong!\n Or because they had a business an official wanted!\"\n\n\n \"Or a wife,\" agreed Ganti. \"Here!\"\n\n\n He offered food. Jorgenson ate, scowling. Afterward, near sundown, he\n went over the island.", "The high official rolled up the scroll, while Jorgenson exploded inside.\nA part of this was reaction as a business man. A part was recognition\n of all the intolerable things that the Thrid took as a matter of\n course. If Jorgenson had reacted solely as a business man he'd have\n swallowed it, departed on the next Rim Stars trading-ship—which would\n not have left any trade-goods behind—and left the Grand Panjandrum to\n realize what he had lost when no off-planet goods arrived on Thriddar.\n In time he'd speak and say and observe that he, out of his generosity,\n gave the loot back. Then the trading could resume. But Jorgenson didn't\n feel only like a business man this morning. He thought of Ganti, who\n was a particular case of everything he disliked on Thriddar.", "\"Is mistaken!\" said Jorgenson bitingly. \"He's wrong! The Rim Stars\n Trading Corporation does\nnot\nwant to give him anything! What he has\n said is not true!\" This was the equivalent of treason, blasphemy and\n the ultimate of indecorous behavior toward a virgin Pelean princess. \"I\n won't give him anything! I'm not even vanishing from sight! Glen-U is\n wrong about that, too! Now—git!\"\n\n\n He jerked out his blaster and pulled the trigger.\n\n\n There was an explosive burst of flame from the ground between the\n official and himself. The official fled. With him fled all the\n Witnesses, some even losing their headgear in their haste to get away.\nJorgenson stamped into the trading-post building. His eyes were stormy\n and his jaw was set." ] ]
valid	20006	[ "The author of this piece seems to feel that blame befalls many people involved in this scandal because", "According to the author, does the public received any blame for these events? Why or why not?", "The information presented shows that the person who was the most innocent involved in this scandal to be", "The public believes the person most responsible for the scandal is ", "Why was Hillary faulted in this scandal?", "Where does the public seem to fault Monica for her part in the scandal?", "What is a big reason that the public seems to despise Linda Tripp?", "What is one of Jessie Jackson's \"minuses\" in relation to this issue?", "What is one of the things that give Mike McCurry a \"plus?\"", "What was George Stephanopoulous's biggest \"minus?'" ]	[ [ "Even though they did not seem to be directly involved or cause problems because they did not quit their jobs on principle, they were at fault.", "They were not loyal to Clinton, and because he was the president, it was everyone's ultimate duty to remain loyal to him.", "They did not alert the media soon enough.", "They all knew what was going on, and they did not tell Hillary." ], [ "No, they had called to have Clinton impeached for his indiscretions, so they did more than they needed in order to show their disapproval for his actions.", "Yes, because they pretend to despise White House scandals such as this, yet, they could not get enough of it.", "No, how can they be held accountable for something that two consenting adults participate in?", "Yes, because they were obsessed with this issue, innocent people were hurt." ], [ "Linda Tripp", "Hillary", "Monica", "Chelsea" ], [ "Clinton", "Hillary", "Monica", "The media" ], [ "She did not do enough to protect her daughter from what happened.", "She spoke out against her husband, and no one should speak out against our President regardless.", "She and Bill have an open relationship, and she is involved with a woman.", "She stood by him even though she knew he was guilty of the affair." ], [ "She got caught.", "She embarrassed the nation.", "She told too many people about her affair.", "She hurt Chelsea." ], [ "She did not care about embarrassing the President.", "She tried to make a book deal and profit off of the situation.", "She betrayed her friend.", "She has a big mouth." ], [ "He did not rebuke Clinton for his actions.", "He used his time as pastoral counsel for Clinton to gain media attention.", "He does not meet with Monica.", "He was not really there for Clinton in his time of spiritual need." ], [ "He completely enjoyed his time in the spotlight in regards to this scandal.", "He did his best to defend Clinton.", "He spoke out against Monica.", "He quit his position." ], [ "He tried to say that he had no idea that Clinton was the type of man who would have an affair even though he had been covering for him for years.", "He begged Clinton to deny everything.", "He stood by Clinton as he always had.", "He did not quit his job." ] ]	[ 1, 2, 4, 3, 4, 3, 3, 2, 4, 1 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "The Flytrap Blame Game \n\n One of the few truths universally acknowledged about Flytrap is that presidential secretary Betty Currie deserves our sympathy: an honest, loyal civil servant dragooned into a scandal she had nothing to do with. \n\n But does Currie deserve such sanctification? After all, she knew Clinton's history when she took her job then enabled Clinton's sleaziness anyway. She stood by while Clinton cuckolded his wife and perhaps even helped him commit obstruction of justice. And did she protest? Not as far as we have heard. Did she quit on principle? No. Currie may not be Flytrap's chief malefactor, but nor is she the saintly innocent that the American public believes her to be. \n\n The Currie case suggests that Flytrap needs a moral recalibration.", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "c) Happily became a tool for Clinton's enemies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Is vindicated because Clinton probably did it. \n\n b) Forced Clinton's lechery out in the open. \n\n c) Persisted in the face of ridicule and humiliation. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n The American People (The public's rating: +7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Hypocritically claim to despise scandal, follow it breathlessly, then blame the media for obsessing over it. \n\n b) Are secretly fascinated by the sleaziness of it. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Magnanimous toward the president.", "(Sometimes, of course, the public's rating is dead on target. Linda Tripp's allies--a group that includes her lawyers, Kenneth Starr, the Goldberg family, and absolutely no one else as far as I can tell--have tried repeatedly to improve her sorry public image. Jonah Goldberg tried right here in Slate. No sale.) \n\n Below is Slate 's entire scorecard, which ranks 31 of Flytrap's key players: The scale runs from -10 to +10. Anything less than zero means the player is a net miscreant. Anything above zero rates a sympathy card. (This is not, of course, an exact science. How, for example, do we judge Ann Lewis compared to other last ditch Clinton defenders? Lewis is said to be more outraged by Clinton's misbehavior than The Guys in the White House. Yet Lewis didn't quit in disgust. Is her outrage a plus or a minus if she doesn't act on it? You decide.) \n\n The Scorecard", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "Others besides Currie have benefited from the public's excessive generosity. George Stephanopoulos has become a white knight of Flytrap, the former Clinton aide who had the courage to turn on his boss. And bravo to George for chastising Clinton! But it smacks of hypocrisy for Stephanopoulos to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying, womanizing dog. He has, after all known this since 1992. Back then Stephanopoulos himself helped quell bimbo eruptions and parroted Clinton's lying denials. He has never shouldered blame for those deceptions. (Mickey Kaus first noted Stephanopoulos' unbearable sanctimony in this \"Chatterbox\" item in January.) And while loyalty isn't a universal good, it was opportunistic for Stephanopoulos to betray Clinton just at the moment Clinton's stock was about to plunge.", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "b) Had family problems paraded before the world in a way they should not be. \n\n c) Has been endlessly psychologized by the media. \n\n d) Had her summer vacation ruined. \n\n Slate rating: +10 \n\n More Flytrap ...", "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "c) Betrayed by Linda Tripp. \n\n d) Dragged into the scandal against her will. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Mike McCurry (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun and spun and spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was clearly dismayed by the entire scandal and his role in it. \n\n b) Is quitting the administration (though not, apparently, on principle). \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n David Kendall (The public's rating: 0 )", "Slate rating: +1 \n\n The Media (The public's rating: -8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) No sense of proportionality. Coverage is wretchedly excessive even when it shouldn't be. \n\n b) Endlessly self-involved. How many stories have you seen about the media and the scandal? \n\n c) Unforgiving. The media want the scandal to continue, hence won't ever be satisfied that Clinton has suffered enough. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Worked hard to break a very important story and investigated the hell out of it. \n\n b) Unfairly savaged by hypocritical American people (see above). \n\n Slate rating: +1", "Pluses: \n\n a) Stayed utterly silent about the scandal, clearly disgusted by it all. \n\n b) Kept the rest of the administration focused on policy, thus preventing total executive paralysis. \n\n c) Did not lie or spin for the president. \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill. (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none yet. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) (Mostly) kept his mouth shut and prevented the House Judiciary Committee from jumping the gun on impeachment. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Secret Service (The public's rating: +8 )", "Bill Clinton (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n To recapitulate \n\n a) Had an adulterous affair with a young intern. \n\n b) Lied about it to everyone . \n\n c) Probably perjured himself. \n\n d) Perhaps obstructed justice. \n\n e) Entangled allies and aides in his web of deceit. \n\n f) Humiliated his wife and daughter. \n\n g) Did not have the grace to apologize to Lewinsky. \n\n h)Tried to shift the blame for his failures onto his accusers. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had his private life exposed to the world in a way no one's should be.", "a) Spun his denials without digging for the truth. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Were conscripted unwillingly into scandal defense. (Unlike political aides such as Begala, who are expected to do political dirty work, the Cabinet members are public servants who should be kept away from such sleaze.) \n\n b) Were lied to by Clinton. \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: +3 \n\n Erskine Bowles (The public's rating: Doesn't care ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Refused to involve himself in the critical issue of the presidency. \n\n b) Stood aside while White House was shanghaied by lawyers.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Fought Starr subpoena too hard because it considers itself the Praetorian Guard. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Dragged unwillingly into scandal by Clinton (unlike Currie or his political aides, the Secret Service agents have no choice about being near the president). \n\n b) Testified honestly but unwillingly, as they should. \n\n c) Did not leak. \n\n Slate rating: +5 \n\n Chelsea Clinton (The public's rating: +10 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Humiliated and embarrassed by her father's misbehavior.", "b) Did not demand any political compensation in exchange. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Unapologetically vicious, partisan, and unforgiving in his impeachment quest. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent throughout the scandal: He has been pushing impeachment since before Monica materialized in January. \n\n Slate rating: 0 \n\n Kenneth Starr (The public's rating: -9 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Seems merciless toward Clinton.", "Monica Lewinsky, for example, has fantastically low approval ratings, much lower than Clinton's. One poll I saw pegged her favorability rating at 5 percent (even Newt Gingrich manages at least 25 percent). Now, Monica certainly isn't the heroine of Flytrap. She did seduce a married man, damage the presidency for the sake of casual sex, lie frequently and insouciantly, and blab her \"secret\" affair to anyone who'd listen. But she was also sexually exploited by her older, sleazy boss; had her reputation smeared by Clinton's lackeys; and was betrayed by her \"friend\" Linda Tripp. She hardly deserves such universal contempt." ], [ "The Flytrap Blame Game \n\n One of the few truths universally acknowledged about Flytrap is that presidential secretary Betty Currie deserves our sympathy: an honest, loyal civil servant dragooned into a scandal she had nothing to do with. \n\n But does Currie deserve such sanctification? After all, she knew Clinton's history when she took her job then enabled Clinton's sleaziness anyway. She stood by while Clinton cuckolded his wife and perhaps even helped him commit obstruction of justice. And did she protest? Not as far as we have heard. Did she quit on principle? No. Currie may not be Flytrap's chief malefactor, but nor is she the saintly innocent that the American public believes her to be. \n\n The Currie case suggests that Flytrap needs a moral recalibration.", "c) Happily became a tool for Clinton's enemies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Is vindicated because Clinton probably did it. \n\n b) Forced Clinton's lechery out in the open. \n\n c) Persisted in the face of ridicule and humiliation. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n The American People (The public's rating: +7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Hypocritically claim to despise scandal, follow it breathlessly, then blame the media for obsessing over it. \n\n b) Are secretly fascinated by the sleaziness of it. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Magnanimous toward the president.", "b) Had family problems paraded before the world in a way they should not be. \n\n c) Has been endlessly psychologized by the media. \n\n d) Had her summer vacation ruined. \n\n Slate rating: +10 \n\n More Flytrap ...", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "Slate rating: +1 \n\n The Media (The public's rating: -8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) No sense of proportionality. Coverage is wretchedly excessive even when it shouldn't be. \n\n b) Endlessly self-involved. How many stories have you seen about the media and the scandal? \n\n c) Unforgiving. The media want the scandal to continue, hence won't ever be satisfied that Clinton has suffered enough. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Worked hard to break a very important story and investigated the hell out of it. \n\n b) Unfairly savaged by hypocritical American people (see above). \n\n Slate rating: +1", "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "Others besides Currie have benefited from the public's excessive generosity. George Stephanopoulos has become a white knight of Flytrap, the former Clinton aide who had the courage to turn on his boss. And bravo to George for chastising Clinton! But it smacks of hypocrisy for Stephanopoulos to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying, womanizing dog. He has, after all known this since 1992. Back then Stephanopoulos himself helped quell bimbo eruptions and parroted Clinton's lying denials. He has never shouldered blame for those deceptions. (Mickey Kaus first noted Stephanopoulos' unbearable sanctimony in this \"Chatterbox\" item in January.) And while loyalty isn't a universal good, it was opportunistic for Stephanopoulos to betray Clinton just at the moment Clinton's stock was about to plunge.", "Bill Clinton (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n To recapitulate \n\n a) Had an adulterous affair with a young intern. \n\n b) Lied about it to everyone . \n\n c) Probably perjured himself. \n\n d) Perhaps obstructed justice. \n\n e) Entangled allies and aides in his web of deceit. \n\n f) Humiliated his wife and daughter. \n\n g) Did not have the grace to apologize to Lewinsky. \n\n h)Tried to shift the blame for his failures onto his accusers. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had his private life exposed to the world in a way no one's should be.", "Pluses: \n\n a) Stayed utterly silent about the scandal, clearly disgusted by it all. \n\n b) Kept the rest of the administration focused on policy, thus preventing total executive paralysis. \n\n c) Did not lie or spin for the president. \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill. (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none yet. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) (Mostly) kept his mouth shut and prevented the House Judiciary Committee from jumping the gun on impeachment. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Secret Service (The public's rating: +8 )", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "(Sometimes, of course, the public's rating is dead on target. Linda Tripp's allies--a group that includes her lawyers, Kenneth Starr, the Goldberg family, and absolutely no one else as far as I can tell--have tried repeatedly to improve her sorry public image. Jonah Goldberg tried right here in Slate. No sale.) \n\n Below is Slate 's entire scorecard, which ranks 31 of Flytrap's key players: The scale runs from -10 to +10. Anything less than zero means the player is a net miscreant. Anything above zero rates a sympathy card. (This is not, of course, an exact science. How, for example, do we judge Ann Lewis compared to other last ditch Clinton defenders? Lewis is said to be more outraged by Clinton's misbehavior than The Guys in the White House. Yet Lewis didn't quit in disgust. Is her outrage a plus or a minus if she doesn't act on it? You decide.) \n\n The Scorecard", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Relied on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Relying on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble is his job. He's a lawyer. \n\n b) Admirably reticent, compared to Robert Bennett. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n The Rev. Jesse Jackson (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Revealed Clinton family troubles immediately after his pastoral visit. \n\n b) Parlayed pastoral visit into a week of self-promotion. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Graciously counseled a political rival in time of need.", "Monica Lewinsky, for example, has fantastically low approval ratings, much lower than Clinton's. One poll I saw pegged her favorability rating at 5 percent (even Newt Gingrich manages at least 25 percent). Now, Monica certainly isn't the heroine of Flytrap. She did seduce a married man, damage the presidency for the sake of casual sex, lie frequently and insouciantly, and blab her \"secret\" affair to anyone who'd listen. But she was also sexually exploited by her older, sleazy boss; had her reputation smeared by Clinton's lackeys; and was betrayed by her \"friend\" Linda Tripp. She hardly deserves such universal contempt.", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Fought Starr subpoena too hard because it considers itself the Praetorian Guard. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Dragged unwillingly into scandal by Clinton (unlike Currie or his political aides, the Secret Service agents have no choice about being near the president). \n\n b) Testified honestly but unwillingly, as they should. \n\n c) Did not leak. \n\n Slate rating: +5 \n\n Chelsea Clinton (The public's rating: +10 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Humiliated and embarrassed by her father's misbehavior.", "a) Spun his denials without digging for the truth. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Were conscripted unwillingly into scandal defense. (Unlike political aides such as Begala, who are expected to do political dirty work, the Cabinet members are public servants who should be kept away from such sleaze.) \n\n b) Were lied to by Clinton. \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: +3 \n\n Erskine Bowles (The public's rating: Doesn't care ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Refused to involve himself in the critical issue of the presidency. \n\n b) Stood aside while White House was shanghaied by lawyers." ], [ "The Flytrap Blame Game \n\n One of the few truths universally acknowledged about Flytrap is that presidential secretary Betty Currie deserves our sympathy: an honest, loyal civil servant dragooned into a scandal she had nothing to do with. \n\n But does Currie deserve such sanctification? After all, she knew Clinton's history when she took her job then enabled Clinton's sleaziness anyway. She stood by while Clinton cuckolded his wife and perhaps even helped him commit obstruction of justice. And did she protest? Not as far as we have heard. Did she quit on principle? No. Currie may not be Flytrap's chief malefactor, but nor is she the saintly innocent that the American public believes her to be. \n\n The Currie case suggests that Flytrap needs a moral recalibration.", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "Minuses: \n\n a) Seduced a married man. \n\n b) Damaged and endangered the presidency for the sake of casual sex. \n\n c) Has lied frequently. \n\n d) Is a capable adult, not--as her advocates claim--a naive child, defenseless against the president's wiles. \n\n e) Protected herself with immunity when she needed to, even though her testimony would do enormous harm to Clinton and the nation. \n\n f) Blabbed her \"secret\" affair to lots of people. (So, while she was dragged into the scandal against her will, it was her own loquaciousness that made the dragging possible.) \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Sexually exploited by her older boss. \n\n b) Had her reputation smeared by Clintonistas and the media.", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "(Sometimes, of course, the public's rating is dead on target. Linda Tripp's allies--a group that includes her lawyers, Kenneth Starr, the Goldberg family, and absolutely no one else as far as I can tell--have tried repeatedly to improve her sorry public image. Jonah Goldberg tried right here in Slate. No sale.) \n\n Below is Slate 's entire scorecard, which ranks 31 of Flytrap's key players: The scale runs from -10 to +10. Anything less than zero means the player is a net miscreant. Anything above zero rates a sympathy card. (This is not, of course, an exact science. How, for example, do we judge Ann Lewis compared to other last ditch Clinton defenders? Lewis is said to be more outraged by Clinton's misbehavior than The Guys in the White House. Yet Lewis didn't quit in disgust. Is her outrage a plus or a minus if she doesn't act on it? You decide.) \n\n The Scorecard", "Monica Lewinsky, for example, has fantastically low approval ratings, much lower than Clinton's. One poll I saw pegged her favorability rating at 5 percent (even Newt Gingrich manages at least 25 percent). Now, Monica certainly isn't the heroine of Flytrap. She did seduce a married man, damage the presidency for the sake of casual sex, lie frequently and insouciantly, and blab her \"secret\" affair to anyone who'd listen. But she was also sexually exploited by her older, sleazy boss; had her reputation smeared by Clinton's lackeys; and was betrayed by her \"friend\" Linda Tripp. She hardly deserves such universal contempt.", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "Others besides Currie have benefited from the public's excessive generosity. George Stephanopoulos has become a white knight of Flytrap, the former Clinton aide who had the courage to turn on his boss. And bravo to George for chastising Clinton! But it smacks of hypocrisy for Stephanopoulos to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying, womanizing dog. He has, after all known this since 1992. Back then Stephanopoulos himself helped quell bimbo eruptions and parroted Clinton's lying denials. He has never shouldered blame for those deceptions. (Mickey Kaus first noted Stephanopoulos' unbearable sanctimony in this \"Chatterbox\" item in January.) And while loyalty isn't a universal good, it was opportunistic for Stephanopoulos to betray Clinton just at the moment Clinton's stock was about to plunge.", "c) Betrayed by Linda Tripp. \n\n d) Dragged into the scandal against her will. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Mike McCurry (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun and spun and spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was clearly dismayed by the entire scandal and his role in it. \n\n b) Is quitting the administration (though not, apparently, on principle). \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n David Kendall (The public's rating: 0 )", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "Minuses: \n\n a) Fought Starr subpoena too hard because it considers itself the Praetorian Guard. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Dragged unwillingly into scandal by Clinton (unlike Currie or his political aides, the Secret Service agents have no choice about being near the president). \n\n b) Testified honestly but unwillingly, as they should. \n\n c) Did not leak. \n\n Slate rating: +5 \n\n Chelsea Clinton (The public's rating: +10 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Humiliated and embarrassed by her father's misbehavior.", "a) Not yet known what he did to protect Clinton from the Lewinsky affair. Early signs suggest he knew a lot and helped clean it up. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Unquestionably loyal to his boss. \n\n b) Silent. \n\n Slate rating-- Not enough information to make a clean guess: Approx -5 \n\n Vernon Jordan (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) May have known and must have suspected that Lewinsky was a mistress (given that he and Clinton are confidants, it's hard to believe that Jordan was totally in the dark about her). \n\n b) Protected too readily by Washington establishment. \n\n Pluses:", "c) Happily became a tool for Clinton's enemies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Is vindicated because Clinton probably did it. \n\n b) Forced Clinton's lechery out in the open. \n\n c) Persisted in the face of ridicule and humiliation. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n The American People (The public's rating: +7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Hypocritically claim to despise scandal, follow it breathlessly, then blame the media for obsessing over it. \n\n b) Are secretly fascinated by the sleaziness of it. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Magnanimous toward the president.", "Pluses: \n\n a) Stayed utterly silent about the scandal, clearly disgusted by it all. \n\n b) Kept the rest of the administration focused on policy, thus preventing total executive paralysis. \n\n c) Did not lie or spin for the president. \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill. (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none yet. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) (Mostly) kept his mouth shut and prevented the House Judiciary Committee from jumping the gun on impeachment. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Secret Service (The public's rating: +8 )", "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "a) Spun his denials without digging for the truth. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Were conscripted unwillingly into scandal defense. (Unlike political aides such as Begala, who are expected to do political dirty work, the Cabinet members are public servants who should be kept away from such sleaze.) \n\n b) Were lied to by Clinton. \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: +3 \n\n Erskine Bowles (The public's rating: Doesn't care ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Refused to involve himself in the critical issue of the presidency. \n\n b) Stood aside while White House was shanghaied by lawyers.", "b) Had family problems paraded before the world in a way they should not be. \n\n c) Has been endlessly psychologized by the media. \n\n d) Had her summer vacation ruined. \n\n Slate rating: +10 \n\n More Flytrap ...", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him." ], [ "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "The Flytrap Blame Game \n\n One of the few truths universally acknowledged about Flytrap is that presidential secretary Betty Currie deserves our sympathy: an honest, loyal civil servant dragooned into a scandal she had nothing to do with. \n\n But does Currie deserve such sanctification? After all, she knew Clinton's history when she took her job then enabled Clinton's sleaziness anyway. She stood by while Clinton cuckolded his wife and perhaps even helped him commit obstruction of justice. And did she protest? Not as far as we have heard. Did she quit on principle? No. Currie may not be Flytrap's chief malefactor, but nor is she the saintly innocent that the American public believes her to be. \n\n The Currie case suggests that Flytrap needs a moral recalibration.", "c) Betrayed by Linda Tripp. \n\n d) Dragged into the scandal against her will. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Mike McCurry (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun and spun and spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was clearly dismayed by the entire scandal and his role in it. \n\n b) Is quitting the administration (though not, apparently, on principle). \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n David Kendall (The public's rating: 0 )", "(Sometimes, of course, the public's rating is dead on target. Linda Tripp's allies--a group that includes her lawyers, Kenneth Starr, the Goldberg family, and absolutely no one else as far as I can tell--have tried repeatedly to improve her sorry public image. Jonah Goldberg tried right here in Slate. No sale.) \n\n Below is Slate 's entire scorecard, which ranks 31 of Flytrap's key players: The scale runs from -10 to +10. Anything less than zero means the player is a net miscreant. Anything above zero rates a sympathy card. (This is not, of course, an exact science. How, for example, do we judge Ann Lewis compared to other last ditch Clinton defenders? Lewis is said to be more outraged by Clinton's misbehavior than The Guys in the White House. Yet Lewis didn't quit in disgust. Is her outrage a plus or a minus if she doesn't act on it? You decide.) \n\n The Scorecard", "Pluses: \n\n a) Stayed utterly silent about the scandal, clearly disgusted by it all. \n\n b) Kept the rest of the administration focused on policy, thus preventing total executive paralysis. \n\n c) Did not lie or spin for the president. \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill. (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none yet. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) (Mostly) kept his mouth shut and prevented the House Judiciary Committee from jumping the gun on impeachment. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Secret Service (The public's rating: +8 )", "Others besides Currie have benefited from the public's excessive generosity. George Stephanopoulos has become a white knight of Flytrap, the former Clinton aide who had the courage to turn on his boss. And bravo to George for chastising Clinton! But it smacks of hypocrisy for Stephanopoulos to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying, womanizing dog. He has, after all known this since 1992. Back then Stephanopoulos himself helped quell bimbo eruptions and parroted Clinton's lying denials. He has never shouldered blame for those deceptions. (Mickey Kaus first noted Stephanopoulos' unbearable sanctimony in this \"Chatterbox\" item in January.) And while loyalty isn't a universal good, it was opportunistic for Stephanopoulos to betray Clinton just at the moment Clinton's stock was about to plunge.", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "Slate rating: -3 \n\n Lanny Davis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Said for seven months that we'd have to \"wait and see.\" Then, when Clinton finally admitted his lies, Davis was hardly embarrassed or critical of the president. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Loyalty to old boss. \n\n Slate rating: -3 \n\n George Stephanopoulos (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses:", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him.", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "b) Did not demand any political compensation in exchange. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Unapologetically vicious, partisan, and unforgiving in his impeachment quest. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent throughout the scandal: He has been pushing impeachment since before Monica materialized in January. \n\n Slate rating: 0 \n\n Kenneth Starr (The public's rating: -9 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Seems merciless toward Clinton.", "a) Spun his denials without digging for the truth. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Were conscripted unwillingly into scandal defense. (Unlike political aides such as Begala, who are expected to do political dirty work, the Cabinet members are public servants who should be kept away from such sleaze.) \n\n b) Were lied to by Clinton. \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: +3 \n\n Erskine Bowles (The public's rating: Doesn't care ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Refused to involve himself in the critical issue of the presidency. \n\n b) Stood aside while White House was shanghaied by lawyers.", "c) Happily became a tool for Clinton's enemies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Is vindicated because Clinton probably did it. \n\n b) Forced Clinton's lechery out in the open. \n\n c) Persisted in the face of ridicule and humiliation. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n The American People (The public's rating: +7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Hypocritically claim to despise scandal, follow it breathlessly, then blame the media for obsessing over it. \n\n b) Are secretly fascinated by the sleaziness of it. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Magnanimous toward the president.", "Bill Clinton (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n To recapitulate \n\n a) Had an adulterous affair with a young intern. \n\n b) Lied about it to everyone . \n\n c) Probably perjured himself. \n\n d) Perhaps obstructed justice. \n\n e) Entangled allies and aides in his web of deceit. \n\n f) Humiliated his wife and daughter. \n\n g) Did not have the grace to apologize to Lewinsky. \n\n h)Tried to shift the blame for his failures onto his accusers. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had his private life exposed to the world in a way no one's should be.", "James Carville (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Has known about Clinton's woman problem since 1992. \n\n b) Happily parroted Clinton's denial despite knowing that Clinton was a deceitful womanizer. \n\n c) Has not expressed the slightest chagrin or disappointment since Clinton's apology. \n\n d) Has not retreated from vicious attacks on Starr, despite evidence of Clinton's lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Perfectly loyal. \n\n b) Consistent in attacks against Starr. \n\n Slate rating: -5 \n\n Bruce Lindsey (The public's rating : To be determined ) \n\n Minuses:", "Monica Lewinsky, for example, has fantastically low approval ratings, much lower than Clinton's. One poll I saw pegged her favorability rating at 5 percent (even Newt Gingrich manages at least 25 percent). Now, Monica certainly isn't the heroine of Flytrap. She did seduce a married man, damage the presidency for the sake of casual sex, lie frequently and insouciantly, and blab her \"secret\" affair to anyone who'd listen. But she was also sexually exploited by her older, sleazy boss; had her reputation smeared by Clinton's lackeys; and was betrayed by her \"friend\" Linda Tripp. She hardly deserves such universal contempt." ], [ "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "The Flytrap Blame Game \n\n One of the few truths universally acknowledged about Flytrap is that presidential secretary Betty Currie deserves our sympathy: an honest, loyal civil servant dragooned into a scandal she had nothing to do with. \n\n But does Currie deserve such sanctification? After all, she knew Clinton's history when she took her job then enabled Clinton's sleaziness anyway. She stood by while Clinton cuckolded his wife and perhaps even helped him commit obstruction of justice. And did she protest? Not as far as we have heard. Did she quit on principle? No. Currie may not be Flytrap's chief malefactor, but nor is she the saintly innocent that the American public believes her to be. \n\n The Currie case suggests that Flytrap needs a moral recalibration.", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him.", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "Minuses: \n\n a) Seduced a married man. \n\n b) Damaged and endangered the presidency for the sake of casual sex. \n\n c) Has lied frequently. \n\n d) Is a capable adult, not--as her advocates claim--a naive child, defenseless against the president's wiles. \n\n e) Protected herself with immunity when she needed to, even though her testimony would do enormous harm to Clinton and the nation. \n\n f) Blabbed her \"secret\" affair to lots of people. (So, while she was dragged into the scandal against her will, it was her own loquaciousness that made the dragging possible.) \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Sexually exploited by her older boss. \n\n b) Had her reputation smeared by Clintonistas and the media.", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "Bill Clinton (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n To recapitulate \n\n a) Had an adulterous affair with a young intern. \n\n b) Lied about it to everyone . \n\n c) Probably perjured himself. \n\n d) Perhaps obstructed justice. \n\n e) Entangled allies and aides in his web of deceit. \n\n f) Humiliated his wife and daughter. \n\n g) Did not have the grace to apologize to Lewinsky. \n\n h)Tried to shift the blame for his failures onto his accusers. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had his private life exposed to the world in a way no one's should be.", "Monica Lewinsky, for example, has fantastically low approval ratings, much lower than Clinton's. One poll I saw pegged her favorability rating at 5 percent (even Newt Gingrich manages at least 25 percent). Now, Monica certainly isn't the heroine of Flytrap. She did seduce a married man, damage the presidency for the sake of casual sex, lie frequently and insouciantly, and blab her \"secret\" affair to anyone who'd listen. But she was also sexually exploited by her older, sleazy boss; had her reputation smeared by Clinton's lackeys; and was betrayed by her \"friend\" Linda Tripp. She hardly deserves such universal contempt.", "c) Happily became a tool for Clinton's enemies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Is vindicated because Clinton probably did it. \n\n b) Forced Clinton's lechery out in the open. \n\n c) Persisted in the face of ridicule and humiliation. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n The American People (The public's rating: +7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Hypocritically claim to despise scandal, follow it breathlessly, then blame the media for obsessing over it. \n\n b) Are secretly fascinated by the sleaziness of it. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Magnanimous toward the president.", "Others besides Currie have benefited from the public's excessive generosity. George Stephanopoulos has become a white knight of Flytrap, the former Clinton aide who had the courage to turn on his boss. And bravo to George for chastising Clinton! But it smacks of hypocrisy for Stephanopoulos to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying, womanizing dog. He has, after all known this since 1992. Back then Stephanopoulos himself helped quell bimbo eruptions and parroted Clinton's lying denials. He has never shouldered blame for those deceptions. (Mickey Kaus first noted Stephanopoulos' unbearable sanctimony in this \"Chatterbox\" item in January.) And while loyalty isn't a universal good, it was opportunistic for Stephanopoulos to betray Clinton just at the moment Clinton's stock was about to plunge.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Fought Starr subpoena too hard because it considers itself the Praetorian Guard. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Dragged unwillingly into scandal by Clinton (unlike Currie or his political aides, the Secret Service agents have no choice about being near the president). \n\n b) Testified honestly but unwillingly, as they should. \n\n c) Did not leak. \n\n Slate rating: +5 \n\n Chelsea Clinton (The public's rating: +10 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Humiliated and embarrassed by her father's misbehavior.", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Relied on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Relying on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble is his job. He's a lawyer. \n\n b) Admirably reticent, compared to Robert Bennett. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n The Rev. Jesse Jackson (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Revealed Clinton family troubles immediately after his pastoral visit. \n\n b) Parlayed pastoral visit into a week of self-promotion. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Graciously counseled a political rival in time of need.", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "a) Spun his denials without digging for the truth. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Were conscripted unwillingly into scandal defense. (Unlike political aides such as Begala, who are expected to do political dirty work, the Cabinet members are public servants who should be kept away from such sleaze.) \n\n b) Were lied to by Clinton. \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: +3 \n\n Erskine Bowles (The public's rating: Doesn't care ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Refused to involve himself in the critical issue of the presidency. \n\n b) Stood aside while White House was shanghaied by lawyers.", "James Carville (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Has known about Clinton's woman problem since 1992. \n\n b) Happily parroted Clinton's denial despite knowing that Clinton was a deceitful womanizer. \n\n c) Has not expressed the slightest chagrin or disappointment since Clinton's apology. \n\n d) Has not retreated from vicious attacks on Starr, despite evidence of Clinton's lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Perfectly loyal. \n\n b) Consistent in attacks against Starr. \n\n Slate rating: -5 \n\n Bruce Lindsey (The public's rating : To be determined ) \n\n Minuses:", "(Sometimes, of course, the public's rating is dead on target. Linda Tripp's allies--a group that includes her lawyers, Kenneth Starr, the Goldberg family, and absolutely no one else as far as I can tell--have tried repeatedly to improve her sorry public image. Jonah Goldberg tried right here in Slate. No sale.) \n\n Below is Slate 's entire scorecard, which ranks 31 of Flytrap's key players: The scale runs from -10 to +10. Anything less than zero means the player is a net miscreant. Anything above zero rates a sympathy card. (This is not, of course, an exact science. How, for example, do we judge Ann Lewis compared to other last ditch Clinton defenders? Lewis is said to be more outraged by Clinton's misbehavior than The Guys in the White House. Yet Lewis didn't quit in disgust. Is her outrage a plus or a minus if she doesn't act on it? You decide.) \n\n The Scorecard", "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "c) Betrayed by Linda Tripp. \n\n d) Dragged into the scandal against her will. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Mike McCurry (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun and spun and spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was clearly dismayed by the entire scandal and his role in it. \n\n b) Is quitting the administration (though not, apparently, on principle). \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n David Kendall (The public's rating: 0 )" ], [ "Monica Lewinsky, for example, has fantastically low approval ratings, much lower than Clinton's. One poll I saw pegged her favorability rating at 5 percent (even Newt Gingrich manages at least 25 percent). Now, Monica certainly isn't the heroine of Flytrap. She did seduce a married man, damage the presidency for the sake of casual sex, lie frequently and insouciantly, and blab her \"secret\" affair to anyone who'd listen. But she was also sexually exploited by her older, sleazy boss; had her reputation smeared by Clinton's lackeys; and was betrayed by her \"friend\" Linda Tripp. She hardly deserves such universal contempt.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Seduced a married man. \n\n b) Damaged and endangered the presidency for the sake of casual sex. \n\n c) Has lied frequently. \n\n d) Is a capable adult, not--as her advocates claim--a naive child, defenseless against the president's wiles. \n\n e) Protected herself with immunity when she needed to, even though her testimony would do enormous harm to Clinton and the nation. \n\n f) Blabbed her \"secret\" affair to lots of people. (So, while she was dragged into the scandal against her will, it was her own loquaciousness that made the dragging possible.) \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Sexually exploited by her older boss. \n\n b) Had her reputation smeared by Clintonistas and the media.", "The Flytrap Blame Game \n\n One of the few truths universally acknowledged about Flytrap is that presidential secretary Betty Currie deserves our sympathy: an honest, loyal civil servant dragooned into a scandal she had nothing to do with. \n\n But does Currie deserve such sanctification? After all, she knew Clinton's history when she took her job then enabled Clinton's sleaziness anyway. She stood by while Clinton cuckolded his wife and perhaps even helped him commit obstruction of justice. And did she protest? Not as far as we have heard. Did she quit on principle? No. Currie may not be Flytrap's chief malefactor, but nor is she the saintly innocent that the American public believes her to be. \n\n The Currie case suggests that Flytrap needs a moral recalibration.", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "(Sometimes, of course, the public's rating is dead on target. Linda Tripp's allies--a group that includes her lawyers, Kenneth Starr, the Goldberg family, and absolutely no one else as far as I can tell--have tried repeatedly to improve her sorry public image. Jonah Goldberg tried right here in Slate. No sale.) \n\n Below is Slate 's entire scorecard, which ranks 31 of Flytrap's key players: The scale runs from -10 to +10. Anything less than zero means the player is a net miscreant. Anything above zero rates a sympathy card. (This is not, of course, an exact science. How, for example, do we judge Ann Lewis compared to other last ditch Clinton defenders? Lewis is said to be more outraged by Clinton's misbehavior than The Guys in the White House. Yet Lewis didn't quit in disgust. Is her outrage a plus or a minus if she doesn't act on it? You decide.) \n\n The Scorecard", "Others besides Currie have benefited from the public's excessive generosity. George Stephanopoulos has become a white knight of Flytrap, the former Clinton aide who had the courage to turn on his boss. And bravo to George for chastising Clinton! But it smacks of hypocrisy for Stephanopoulos to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying, womanizing dog. He has, after all known this since 1992. Back then Stephanopoulos himself helped quell bimbo eruptions and parroted Clinton's lying denials. He has never shouldered blame for those deceptions. (Mickey Kaus first noted Stephanopoulos' unbearable sanctimony in this \"Chatterbox\" item in January.) And while loyalty isn't a universal good, it was opportunistic for Stephanopoulos to betray Clinton just at the moment Clinton's stock was about to plunge.", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him.", "c) Happily became a tool for Clinton's enemies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Is vindicated because Clinton probably did it. \n\n b) Forced Clinton's lechery out in the open. \n\n c) Persisted in the face of ridicule and humiliation. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n The American People (The public's rating: +7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Hypocritically claim to despise scandal, follow it breathlessly, then blame the media for obsessing over it. \n\n b) Are secretly fascinated by the sleaziness of it. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Magnanimous toward the president.", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "b) Did not demand any political compensation in exchange. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Unapologetically vicious, partisan, and unforgiving in his impeachment quest. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent throughout the scandal: He has been pushing impeachment since before Monica materialized in January. \n\n Slate rating: 0 \n\n Kenneth Starr (The public's rating: -9 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Seems merciless toward Clinton.", "Bill Clinton (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n To recapitulate \n\n a) Had an adulterous affair with a young intern. \n\n b) Lied about it to everyone . \n\n c) Probably perjured himself. \n\n d) Perhaps obstructed justice. \n\n e) Entangled allies and aides in his web of deceit. \n\n f) Humiliated his wife and daughter. \n\n g) Did not have the grace to apologize to Lewinsky. \n\n h)Tried to shift the blame for his failures onto his accusers. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had his private life exposed to the world in a way no one's should be.", "James Carville (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Has known about Clinton's woman problem since 1992. \n\n b) Happily parroted Clinton's denial despite knowing that Clinton was a deceitful womanizer. \n\n c) Has not expressed the slightest chagrin or disappointment since Clinton's apology. \n\n d) Has not retreated from vicious attacks on Starr, despite evidence of Clinton's lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Perfectly loyal. \n\n b) Consistent in attacks against Starr. \n\n Slate rating: -5 \n\n Bruce Lindsey (The public's rating : To be determined ) \n\n Minuses:", "c) Betrayed by Linda Tripp. \n\n d) Dragged into the scandal against her will. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Mike McCurry (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun and spun and spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was clearly dismayed by the entire scandal and his role in it. \n\n b) Is quitting the administration (though not, apparently, on principle). \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n David Kendall (The public's rating: 0 )", "Slate rating: -3 \n\n Lanny Davis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Said for seven months that we'd have to \"wait and see.\" Then, when Clinton finally admitted his lies, Davis was hardly embarrassed or critical of the president. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Loyalty to old boss. \n\n Slate rating: -3 \n\n George Stephanopoulos (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses:", "Slate rating: +1 \n\n The Media (The public's rating: -8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) No sense of proportionality. Coverage is wretchedly excessive even when it shouldn't be. \n\n b) Endlessly self-involved. How many stories have you seen about the media and the scandal? \n\n c) Unforgiving. The media want the scandal to continue, hence won't ever be satisfied that Clinton has suffered enough. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Worked hard to break a very important story and investigated the hell out of it. \n\n b) Unfairly savaged by hypocritical American people (see above). \n\n Slate rating: +1", "Slate rating: -7 \n\n Linda Tripp (The public's rating: -7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Betrayed her \"friend.\" \n\n b) Obsessively nosed into the private lives of others. \n\n c) Tried to score a book deal off sex gossip and other people's distress. \n\n d) Tattletale. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Whistleblower (see d under Minuses): risked humiliation to expose something she believed was wrong. \n\n b) Smeared mercilessly by Clinton allies, the media. \n\n Slate rating: -7" ], [ "Slate rating: -7 \n\n Linda Tripp (The public's rating: -7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Betrayed her \"friend.\" \n\n b) Obsessively nosed into the private lives of others. \n\n c) Tried to score a book deal off sex gossip and other people's distress. \n\n d) Tattletale. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Whistleblower (see d under Minuses): risked humiliation to expose something she believed was wrong. \n\n b) Smeared mercilessly by Clinton allies, the media. \n\n Slate rating: -7", "Monica Lewinsky, for example, has fantastically low approval ratings, much lower than Clinton's. One poll I saw pegged her favorability rating at 5 percent (even Newt Gingrich manages at least 25 percent). Now, Monica certainly isn't the heroine of Flytrap. She did seduce a married man, damage the presidency for the sake of casual sex, lie frequently and insouciantly, and blab her \"secret\" affair to anyone who'd listen. But she was also sexually exploited by her older, sleazy boss; had her reputation smeared by Clinton's lackeys; and was betrayed by her \"friend\" Linda Tripp. She hardly deserves such universal contempt.", "(Sometimes, of course, the public's rating is dead on target. Linda Tripp's allies--a group that includes her lawyers, Kenneth Starr, the Goldberg family, and absolutely no one else as far as I can tell--have tried repeatedly to improve her sorry public image. Jonah Goldberg tried right here in Slate. No sale.) \n\n Below is Slate 's entire scorecard, which ranks 31 of Flytrap's key players: The scale runs from -10 to +10. Anything less than zero means the player is a net miscreant. Anything above zero rates a sympathy card. (This is not, of course, an exact science. How, for example, do we judge Ann Lewis compared to other last ditch Clinton defenders? Lewis is said to be more outraged by Clinton's misbehavior than The Guys in the White House. Yet Lewis didn't quit in disgust. Is her outrage a plus or a minus if she doesn't act on it? You decide.) \n\n The Scorecard", "Others besides Currie have benefited from the public's excessive generosity. George Stephanopoulos has become a white knight of Flytrap, the former Clinton aide who had the courage to turn on his boss. And bravo to George for chastising Clinton! But it smacks of hypocrisy for Stephanopoulos to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying, womanizing dog. He has, after all known this since 1992. Back then Stephanopoulos himself helped quell bimbo eruptions and parroted Clinton's lying denials. He has never shouldered blame for those deceptions. (Mickey Kaus first noted Stephanopoulos' unbearable sanctimony in this \"Chatterbox\" item in January.) And while loyalty isn't a universal good, it was opportunistic for Stephanopoulos to betray Clinton just at the moment Clinton's stock was about to plunge.", "c) Betrayed by Linda Tripp. \n\n d) Dragged into the scandal against her will. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Mike McCurry (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun and spun and spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was clearly dismayed by the entire scandal and his role in it. \n\n b) Is quitting the administration (though not, apparently, on principle). \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n David Kendall (The public's rating: 0 )", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "The Flytrap Blame Game \n\n One of the few truths universally acknowledged about Flytrap is that presidential secretary Betty Currie deserves our sympathy: an honest, loyal civil servant dragooned into a scandal she had nothing to do with. \n\n But does Currie deserve such sanctification? After all, she knew Clinton's history when she took her job then enabled Clinton's sleaziness anyway. She stood by while Clinton cuckolded his wife and perhaps even helped him commit obstruction of justice. And did she protest? Not as far as we have heard. Did she quit on principle? No. Currie may not be Flytrap's chief malefactor, but nor is she the saintly innocent that the American public believes her to be. \n\n The Currie case suggests that Flytrap needs a moral recalibration.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Seduced a married man. \n\n b) Damaged and endangered the presidency for the sake of casual sex. \n\n c) Has lied frequently. \n\n d) Is a capable adult, not--as her advocates claim--a naive child, defenseless against the president's wiles. \n\n e) Protected herself with immunity when she needed to, even though her testimony would do enormous harm to Clinton and the nation. \n\n f) Blabbed her \"secret\" affair to lots of people. (So, while she was dragged into the scandal against her will, it was her own loquaciousness that made the dragging possible.) \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Sexually exploited by her older boss. \n\n b) Had her reputation smeared by Clintonistas and the media.", "James Carville (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Has known about Clinton's woman problem since 1992. \n\n b) Happily parroted Clinton's denial despite knowing that Clinton was a deceitful womanizer. \n\n c) Has not expressed the slightest chagrin or disappointment since Clinton's apology. \n\n d) Has not retreated from vicious attacks on Starr, despite evidence of Clinton's lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Perfectly loyal. \n\n b) Consistent in attacks against Starr. \n\n Slate rating: -5 \n\n Bruce Lindsey (The public's rating : To be determined ) \n\n Minuses:", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "Slate rating: -3 \n\n Lanny Davis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Said for seven months that we'd have to \"wait and see.\" Then, when Clinton finally admitted his lies, Davis was hardly embarrassed or critical of the president. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Loyalty to old boss. \n\n Slate rating: -3 \n\n George Stephanopoulos (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses:", "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "c) Happily became a tool for Clinton's enemies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Is vindicated because Clinton probably did it. \n\n b) Forced Clinton's lechery out in the open. \n\n c) Persisted in the face of ridicule and humiliation. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n The American People (The public's rating: +7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Hypocritically claim to despise scandal, follow it breathlessly, then blame the media for obsessing over it. \n\n b) Are secretly fascinated by the sleaziness of it. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Magnanimous toward the president.", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "b) Has pursued investigation into Clinton's private life with more zeal than seems appropriate. \n\n c) Is too willing to provoke constitutional standoffs for the sake of his investigation, seems indifferent to the dignity of the presidency. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was right about Clinton and Lewinsky. \n\n b) Is compelled by law to investigate diligently and forcefully. \n\n c) Has been patient with the stonewalling, deceiving Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Paula Jones (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Brought a legally dubious, gold-digging lawsuit. \n\n b) Resisted a settlement that would have saved the nation much embarrassment.", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Relied on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Relying on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble is his job. He's a lawyer. \n\n b) Admirably reticent, compared to Robert Bennett. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n The Rev. Jesse Jackson (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Revealed Clinton family troubles immediately after his pastoral visit. \n\n b) Parlayed pastoral visit into a week of self-promotion. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Graciously counseled a political rival in time of need." ], [ "Minuses: \n\n a) Relied on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Relying on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble is his job. He's a lawyer. \n\n b) Admirably reticent, compared to Robert Bennett. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n The Rev. Jesse Jackson (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Revealed Clinton family troubles immediately after his pastoral visit. \n\n b) Parlayed pastoral visit into a week of self-promotion. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Graciously counseled a political rival in time of need.", "a) Not yet known what he did to protect Clinton from the Lewinsky affair. Early signs suggest he knew a lot and helped clean it up. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Unquestionably loyal to his boss. \n\n b) Silent. \n\n Slate rating-- Not enough information to make a clean guess: Approx -5 \n\n Vernon Jordan (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) May have known and must have suspected that Lewinsky was a mistress (given that he and Clinton are confidants, it's hard to believe that Jordan was totally in the dark about her). \n\n b) Protected too readily by Washington establishment. \n\n Pluses:", "Minuses: \n\n a) Seduced a married man. \n\n b) Damaged and endangered the presidency for the sake of casual sex. \n\n c) Has lied frequently. \n\n d) Is a capable adult, not--as her advocates claim--a naive child, defenseless against the president's wiles. \n\n e) Protected herself with immunity when she needed to, even though her testimony would do enormous harm to Clinton and the nation. \n\n f) Blabbed her \"secret\" affair to lots of people. (So, while she was dragged into the scandal against her will, it was her own loquaciousness that made the dragging possible.) \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Sexually exploited by her older boss. \n\n b) Had her reputation smeared by Clintonistas and the media.", "Bill Clinton (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n To recapitulate \n\n a) Had an adulterous affair with a young intern. \n\n b) Lied about it to everyone . \n\n c) Probably perjured himself. \n\n d) Perhaps obstructed justice. \n\n e) Entangled allies and aides in his web of deceit. \n\n f) Humiliated his wife and daughter. \n\n g) Did not have the grace to apologize to Lewinsky. \n\n h)Tried to shift the blame for his failures onto his accusers. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had his private life exposed to the world in a way no one's should be.", "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "James Carville (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Has known about Clinton's woman problem since 1992. \n\n b) Happily parroted Clinton's denial despite knowing that Clinton was a deceitful womanizer. \n\n c) Has not expressed the slightest chagrin or disappointment since Clinton's apology. \n\n d) Has not retreated from vicious attacks on Starr, despite evidence of Clinton's lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Perfectly loyal. \n\n b) Consistent in attacks against Starr. \n\n Slate rating: -5 \n\n Bruce Lindsey (The public's rating : To be determined ) \n\n Minuses:", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him.", "b) Has pursued investigation into Clinton's private life with more zeal than seems appropriate. \n\n c) Is too willing to provoke constitutional standoffs for the sake of his investigation, seems indifferent to the dignity of the presidency. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was right about Clinton and Lewinsky. \n\n b) Is compelled by law to investigate diligently and forcefully. \n\n c) Has been patient with the stonewalling, deceiving Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Paula Jones (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Brought a legally dubious, gold-digging lawsuit. \n\n b) Resisted a settlement that would have saved the nation much embarrassment.", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "Slate rating: -3 \n\n Lanny Davis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Said for seven months that we'd have to \"wait and see.\" Then, when Clinton finally admitted his lies, Davis was hardly embarrassed or critical of the president. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Loyalty to old boss. \n\n Slate rating: -3 \n\n George Stephanopoulos (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses:", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "Minuses: \n\n a) Fought Starr subpoena too hard because it considers itself the Praetorian Guard. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Dragged unwillingly into scandal by Clinton (unlike Currie or his political aides, the Secret Service agents have no choice about being near the president). \n\n b) Testified honestly but unwillingly, as they should. \n\n c) Did not leak. \n\n Slate rating: +5 \n\n Chelsea Clinton (The public's rating: +10 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Humiliated and embarrassed by her father's misbehavior.", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "c) Happily became a tool for Clinton's enemies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Is vindicated because Clinton probably did it. \n\n b) Forced Clinton's lechery out in the open. \n\n c) Persisted in the face of ridicule and humiliation. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n The American People (The public's rating: +7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Hypocritically claim to despise scandal, follow it breathlessly, then blame the media for obsessing over it. \n\n b) Are secretly fascinated by the sleaziness of it. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Magnanimous toward the president.", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "b) Did not demand any political compensation in exchange. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Unapologetically vicious, partisan, and unforgiving in his impeachment quest. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent throughout the scandal: He has been pushing impeachment since before Monica materialized in January. \n\n Slate rating: 0 \n\n Kenneth Starr (The public's rating: -9 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Seems merciless toward Clinton.", "Pluses: \n\n a) Stayed utterly silent about the scandal, clearly disgusted by it all. \n\n b) Kept the rest of the administration focused on policy, thus preventing total executive paralysis. \n\n c) Did not lie or spin for the president. \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill. (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none yet. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) (Mostly) kept his mouth shut and prevented the House Judiciary Committee from jumping the gun on impeachment. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Secret Service (The public's rating: +8 )", "c) Betrayed by Linda Tripp. \n\n d) Dragged into the scandal against her will. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Mike McCurry (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun and spun and spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was clearly dismayed by the entire scandal and his role in it. \n\n b) Is quitting the administration (though not, apparently, on principle). \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n David Kendall (The public's rating: 0 )" ], [ "c) Betrayed by Linda Tripp. \n\n d) Dragged into the scandal against her will. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Mike McCurry (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun and spun and spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was clearly dismayed by the entire scandal and his role in it. \n\n b) Is quitting the administration (though not, apparently, on principle). \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n David Kendall (The public's rating: 0 )", "Minuses: \n\n a) Relied on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Relying on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble is his job. He's a lawyer. \n\n b) Admirably reticent, compared to Robert Bennett. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n The Rev. Jesse Jackson (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Revealed Clinton family troubles immediately after his pastoral visit. \n\n b) Parlayed pastoral visit into a week of self-promotion. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Graciously counseled a political rival in time of need.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Fought Starr subpoena too hard because it considers itself the Praetorian Guard. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Dragged unwillingly into scandal by Clinton (unlike Currie or his political aides, the Secret Service agents have no choice about being near the president). \n\n b) Testified honestly but unwillingly, as they should. \n\n c) Did not leak. \n\n Slate rating: +5 \n\n Chelsea Clinton (The public's rating: +10 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Humiliated and embarrassed by her father's misbehavior.", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "Others besides Currie have benefited from the public's excessive generosity. George Stephanopoulos has become a white knight of Flytrap, the former Clinton aide who had the courage to turn on his boss. And bravo to George for chastising Clinton! But it smacks of hypocrisy for Stephanopoulos to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying, womanizing dog. He has, after all known this since 1992. Back then Stephanopoulos himself helped quell bimbo eruptions and parroted Clinton's lying denials. He has never shouldered blame for those deceptions. (Mickey Kaus first noted Stephanopoulos' unbearable sanctimony in this \"Chatterbox\" item in January.) And while loyalty isn't a universal good, it was opportunistic for Stephanopoulos to betray Clinton just at the moment Clinton's stock was about to plunge.", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him.", "a) Not yet known what he did to protect Clinton from the Lewinsky affair. Early signs suggest he knew a lot and helped clean it up. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Unquestionably loyal to his boss. \n\n b) Silent. \n\n Slate rating-- Not enough information to make a clean guess: Approx -5 \n\n Vernon Jordan (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) May have known and must have suspected that Lewinsky was a mistress (given that he and Clinton are confidants, it's hard to believe that Jordan was totally in the dark about her). \n\n b) Protected too readily by Washington establishment. \n\n Pluses:", "Slate rating: -3 \n\n Lanny Davis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Said for seven months that we'd have to \"wait and see.\" Then, when Clinton finally admitted his lies, Davis was hardly embarrassed or critical of the president. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Loyalty to old boss. \n\n Slate rating: -3 \n\n George Stephanopoulos (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses:", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "Minuses: \n\n a) Seduced a married man. \n\n b) Damaged and endangered the presidency for the sake of casual sex. \n\n c) Has lied frequently. \n\n d) Is a capable adult, not--as her advocates claim--a naive child, defenseless against the president's wiles. \n\n e) Protected herself with immunity when she needed to, even though her testimony would do enormous harm to Clinton and the nation. \n\n f) Blabbed her \"secret\" affair to lots of people. (So, while she was dragged into the scandal against her will, it was her own loquaciousness that made the dragging possible.) \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Sexually exploited by her older boss. \n\n b) Had her reputation smeared by Clintonistas and the media.", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "Pluses: \n\n a) Stayed utterly silent about the scandal, clearly disgusted by it all. \n\n b) Kept the rest of the administration focused on policy, thus preventing total executive paralysis. \n\n c) Did not lie or spin for the president. \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill. (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none yet. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) (Mostly) kept his mouth shut and prevented the House Judiciary Committee from jumping the gun on impeachment. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Secret Service (The public's rating: +8 )", "Bill Clinton (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n To recapitulate \n\n a) Had an adulterous affair with a young intern. \n\n b) Lied about it to everyone . \n\n c) Probably perjured himself. \n\n d) Perhaps obstructed justice. \n\n e) Entangled allies and aides in his web of deceit. \n\n f) Humiliated his wife and daughter. \n\n g) Did not have the grace to apologize to Lewinsky. \n\n h)Tried to shift the blame for his failures onto his accusers. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had his private life exposed to the world in a way no one's should be.", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "a) Spun his denials without digging for the truth. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Were conscripted unwillingly into scandal defense. (Unlike political aides such as Begala, who are expected to do political dirty work, the Cabinet members are public servants who should be kept away from such sleaze.) \n\n b) Were lied to by Clinton. \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: +3 \n\n Erskine Bowles (The public's rating: Doesn't care ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Refused to involve himself in the critical issue of the presidency. \n\n b) Stood aside while White House was shanghaied by lawyers.", "c) Happily became a tool for Clinton's enemies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Is vindicated because Clinton probably did it. \n\n b) Forced Clinton's lechery out in the open. \n\n c) Persisted in the face of ridicule and humiliation. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n The American People (The public's rating: +7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Hypocritically claim to despise scandal, follow it breathlessly, then blame the media for obsessing over it. \n\n b) Are secretly fascinated by the sleaziness of it. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Magnanimous toward the president.", "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "James Carville (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Has known about Clinton's woman problem since 1992. \n\n b) Happily parroted Clinton's denial despite knowing that Clinton was a deceitful womanizer. \n\n c) Has not expressed the slightest chagrin or disappointment since Clinton's apology. \n\n d) Has not retreated from vicious attacks on Starr, despite evidence of Clinton's lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Perfectly loyal. \n\n b) Consistent in attacks against Starr. \n\n Slate rating: -5 \n\n Bruce Lindsey (The public's rating : To be determined ) \n\n Minuses:", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )" ], [ "Slate rating: -3 \n\n Lanny Davis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Said for seven months that we'd have to \"wait and see.\" Then, when Clinton finally admitted his lies, Davis was hardly embarrassed or critical of the president. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Loyalty to old boss. \n\n Slate rating: -3 \n\n George Stephanopoulos (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses:", "Others besides Currie have benefited from the public's excessive generosity. George Stephanopoulos has become a white knight of Flytrap, the former Clinton aide who had the courage to turn on his boss. And bravo to George for chastising Clinton! But it smacks of hypocrisy for Stephanopoulos to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying, womanizing dog. He has, after all known this since 1992. Back then Stephanopoulos himself helped quell bimbo eruptions and parroted Clinton's lying denials. He has never shouldered blame for those deceptions. (Mickey Kaus first noted Stephanopoulos' unbearable sanctimony in this \"Chatterbox\" item in January.) And while loyalty isn't a universal good, it was opportunistic for Stephanopoulos to betray Clinton just at the moment Clinton's stock was about to plunge.", "Bill Clinton (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n To recapitulate \n\n a) Had an adulterous affair with a young intern. \n\n b) Lied about it to everyone . \n\n c) Probably perjured himself. \n\n d) Perhaps obstructed justice. \n\n e) Entangled allies and aides in his web of deceit. \n\n f) Humiliated his wife and daughter. \n\n g) Did not have the grace to apologize to Lewinsky. \n\n h)Tried to shift the blame for his failures onto his accusers. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had his private life exposed to the world in a way no one's should be.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Relied on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Relying on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble is his job. He's a lawyer. \n\n b) Admirably reticent, compared to Robert Bennett. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n The Rev. Jesse Jackson (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Revealed Clinton family troubles immediately after his pastoral visit. \n\n b) Parlayed pastoral visit into a week of self-promotion. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Graciously counseled a political rival in time of need.", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "James Carville (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Has known about Clinton's woman problem since 1992. \n\n b) Happily parroted Clinton's denial despite knowing that Clinton was a deceitful womanizer. \n\n c) Has not expressed the slightest chagrin or disappointment since Clinton's apology. \n\n d) Has not retreated from vicious attacks on Starr, despite evidence of Clinton's lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Perfectly loyal. \n\n b) Consistent in attacks against Starr. \n\n Slate rating: -5 \n\n Bruce Lindsey (The public's rating : To be determined ) \n\n Minuses:", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him.", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "Minuses: \n\n a) Seduced a married man. \n\n b) Damaged and endangered the presidency for the sake of casual sex. \n\n c) Has lied frequently. \n\n d) Is a capable adult, not--as her advocates claim--a naive child, defenseless against the president's wiles. \n\n e) Protected herself with immunity when she needed to, even though her testimony would do enormous harm to Clinton and the nation. \n\n f) Blabbed her \"secret\" affair to lots of people. (So, while she was dragged into the scandal against her will, it was her own loquaciousness that made the dragging possible.) \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Sexually exploited by her older boss. \n\n b) Had her reputation smeared by Clintonistas and the media.", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Fought Starr subpoena too hard because it considers itself the Praetorian Guard. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Dragged unwillingly into scandal by Clinton (unlike Currie or his political aides, the Secret Service agents have no choice about being near the president). \n\n b) Testified honestly but unwillingly, as they should. \n\n c) Did not leak. \n\n Slate rating: +5 \n\n Chelsea Clinton (The public's rating: +10 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Humiliated and embarrassed by her father's misbehavior.", "a) Spun his denials without digging for the truth. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Were conscripted unwillingly into scandal defense. (Unlike political aides such as Begala, who are expected to do political dirty work, the Cabinet members are public servants who should be kept away from such sleaze.) \n\n b) Were lied to by Clinton. \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: +3 \n\n Erskine Bowles (The public's rating: Doesn't care ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Refused to involve himself in the critical issue of the presidency. \n\n b) Stood aside while White House was shanghaied by lawyers.", "b) Did not demand any political compensation in exchange. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Unapologetically vicious, partisan, and unforgiving in his impeachment quest. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent throughout the scandal: He has been pushing impeachment since before Monica materialized in January. \n\n Slate rating: 0 \n\n Kenneth Starr (The public's rating: -9 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Seems merciless toward Clinton.", "a) Not yet known what he did to protect Clinton from the Lewinsky affair. Early signs suggest he knew a lot and helped clean it up. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Unquestionably loyal to his boss. \n\n b) Silent. \n\n Slate rating-- Not enough information to make a clean guess: Approx -5 \n\n Vernon Jordan (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) May have known and must have suspected that Lewinsky was a mistress (given that he and Clinton are confidants, it's hard to believe that Jordan was totally in the dark about her). \n\n b) Protected too readily by Washington establishment. \n\n Pluses:", "Slate rating: -7 \n\n Linda Tripp (The public's rating: -7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Betrayed her \"friend.\" \n\n b) Obsessively nosed into the private lives of others. \n\n c) Tried to score a book deal off sex gossip and other people's distress. \n\n d) Tattletale. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Whistleblower (see d under Minuses): risked humiliation to expose something she believed was wrong. \n\n b) Smeared mercilessly by Clinton allies, the media. \n\n Slate rating: -7", "c) Betrayed by Linda Tripp. \n\n d) Dragged into the scandal against her will. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Mike McCurry (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun and spun and spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was clearly dismayed by the entire scandal and his role in it. \n\n b) Is quitting the administration (though not, apparently, on principle). \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n David Kendall (The public's rating: 0 )" ] ]
valid	20002	[ "Why does the author think it'll be tougher to connect with a daughter that you start raising when she's five years old?", "What is a conclusion the author would want you to draw from the article?", "According to the article, why might it be a good idea scientifically to spend money and resources on homeless individuals rather than on gifts for your children?", "What is the overall tone of this article? Are there any changes in tone over the course of the article?", "What is NOT a scientific concept that is directly addressed in the article?", "Why is it that loving family members like siblings can lead to individual biological success?", "Of the following options, who might enjoy reading this the most?", "Of the following places, where would you most likely find a similar article to be available?" ]	[ [ "The daughter didn't spend time with you (nor did you with her) when she was little, so lots of bonding time was lost.", "The daughter might be apprehensive about spending extended time with an unknown adult.", "The daughter will be confused as to why you began parenting at that point rather than earlier.", "The daughter might not consider you a proper biological match for a parent." ], [ "If you're a mother who just adopted a child you'll naturally produce excess amounts of oxytocin.", "Oxytocin and Pitocin are functionally similar but, but one of the two would naturally be produced by a biological mother.", "If you're a biological parent you should supplement your naturally produced oxytocin with Pitocin.", "If you adopted a child it would be bad for you to take Pitocin in their developmental stages." ], [ "You will undergo a mood boost from helping homeless individuals that is greater than the mood boost you'd experience from giving gifts to your children.", "You're closely enough related to other non-familial humans that shared genes should not be the reasoning to give gifts to your kids over helping the homeless.", "Your children will undergo a mood boost if they're old enough to understand the value of distributing resources to those who need it.", "Your children will unconditionally love you regardless of what stimulation/gifts you provide, so those resources could be easily reallocated." ], [ "The overall tone is conversational, with the occasional funny moment or comedic example.", "The overall tone is academic, with very few tonal changes (if any).", "The overall tone is academic, with a few emotional sections to evoke pathos.", "The overall tone is calm, with only a few tonal changes when the author tries to drive home a point." ], [ "The extent to which DNA is shared between family members and non-family members.", "The scientific differences between bonding with a biological or an adopted child.", "How geographic and cultural differences impact family-raising strategies and bonding styles.", "The cultural and scientific debate around raising a parent raising an adopted child with a different race/ethnicity from their own." ], [ "We want to see them succeed, so we experience chemical shifts when we see that they're happy.", "If we help them survive tough experiences, we'll learn to not make those mistakes (increasing our biological odds of procreating and being evolutionarily successful).", "If we help them succeed biologically, when they have kids they pass on DNA that matches some of our own.", "Biologically speaking, we share in the successes the exact same way that our siblings do because of genetic similarity." ], [ "A creationist who wants to prove that evolution isn't real through the ways in which adopted and biological children are treated differently.", "A potential parent deciding between adopting a child and having a biological child.", "A preteen who's adopted and wants to learn more about the differences between parenting of adopted and biological children. ", "A high schooler interested in learning more about family dynamics and the chemical/evolutionary processes with regard to parenting." ], [ "The start of a high school paper about evolution and parenting", "A pamphlet in a family therapist's office", "A science textbook for eighth graders", "An article in a popular newspaper's science section" ] ]	[ 1, 2, 2, 1, 3, 3, 2, 4 ]	[ 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... )", "Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--\"kin-recognition mechanisms\"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter.", "Anyway, the main point is that when genetic parents give up a child for adoption and have second thoughts weeks, months, or even years later, their appeals to blood ties should count for zilch. Their love of their child, and their child's love of them, depends not on genetic math but on a long and complex chain of bonding, much of which they have already voluntarily missed out on.", "Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke \"blood ties\" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect \"the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children.\" In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature.", "The Absurdity of Family Love \n\n Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc.", "This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor.", "For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation.", "Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were \"designed\" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, \"kin- recognition mechanism\" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, \"There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her.\" More like, \"God but my daughter's adorable.\"", "Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of \"kin selection\" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference?", "Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their \"own\" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .)", "Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. \n\n As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions.", "Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes", "Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the \"natural\" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously \"natural\" anyway.", "You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing \"half their genes,\" implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. .", "enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember?", "Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't \"good\" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the \"naturalistic fallacy\"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.)", "So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by \"selfishly\" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These \"selfish\" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare.", "non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes", "that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an \"altruism\" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be \"fooled\" into encouraging altruism toward", "Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way." ], [ "Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke \"blood ties\" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect \"the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children.\" In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature.", "So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by \"selfishly\" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These \"selfish\" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare.", "Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of \"kin selection\" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference?", "that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an \"altruism\" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be \"fooled\" into encouraging altruism toward", "You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing \"half their genes,\" implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. .", "Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the \"natural\" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously \"natural\" anyway.", "The Absurdity of Family Love \n\n Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc.", "Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. \n\n As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions.", "Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't \"good\" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the \"naturalistic fallacy\"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.)", "Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were \"designed\" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, \"kin- recognition mechanism\" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, \"There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her.\" More like, \"God but my daughter's adorable.\"", "For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation.", "This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor.", "confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst", "Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes", "Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their \"own\" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .)", "It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... )", "enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember?", "Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--\"kin-recognition mechanisms\"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter.", "Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way.", "non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes" ], [ "So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by \"selfishly\" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These \"selfish\" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare.", "Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke \"blood ties\" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect \"the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children.\" In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature.", "The Absurdity of Family Love \n\n Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc.", "Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of \"kin selection\" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference?", "confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst", "You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing \"half their genes,\" implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. .", "that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an \"altruism\" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be \"fooled\" into encouraging altruism toward", "Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. \n\n As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions.", "For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation.", "Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were \"designed\" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, \"kin- recognition mechanism\" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, \"There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her.\" More like, \"God but my daughter's adorable.\"", "This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor.", "It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... )", "Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't \"good\" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the \"naturalistic fallacy\"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.)", "non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes", "Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way.", "enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember?", "Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the \"natural\" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously \"natural\" anyway.", "Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes", "Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--\"kin-recognition mechanisms\"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter.", "Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their \"own\" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .)" ], [ "Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke \"blood ties\" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect \"the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children.\" In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature.", "Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of \"kin selection\" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference?", "that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an \"altruism\" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be \"fooled\" into encouraging altruism toward", "Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the \"natural\" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously \"natural\" anyway.", "The Absurdity of Family Love \n\n Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc.", "This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor.", "Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. \n\n As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions.", "Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't \"good\" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the \"naturalistic fallacy\"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.)", "You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing \"half their genes,\" implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. .", "It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... )", "enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember?", "For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation.", "Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--\"kin-recognition mechanisms\"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter.", "Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes", "Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were \"designed\" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, \"kin- recognition mechanism\" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, \"There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her.\" More like, \"God but my daughter's adorable.\"", "confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst", "So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by \"selfishly\" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These \"selfish\" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare.", "non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes", "Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their \"own\" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .)", "Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way." ], [ "Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the \"natural\" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously \"natural\" anyway.", "Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke \"blood ties\" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect \"the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children.\" In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature.", "Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were \"designed\" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, \"kin- recognition mechanism\" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, \"There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her.\" More like, \"God but my daughter's adorable.\"", "The Absurdity of Family Love \n\n Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc.", "Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't \"good\" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the \"naturalistic fallacy\"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.)", "that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an \"altruism\" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be \"fooled\" into encouraging altruism toward", "Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. \n\n As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions.", "This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor.", "confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst", "Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of \"kin selection\" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference?", "For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation.", "You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing \"half their genes,\" implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. .", "Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes", "Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way.", "It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... )", "non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes", "So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by \"selfishly\" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These \"selfish\" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare.", "Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their \"own\" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .)", "Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--\"kin-recognition mechanisms\"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter.", "enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember?" ], [ "Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of \"kin selection\" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference?", "enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember?", "You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing \"half their genes,\" implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. .", "Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. \n\n As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions.", "The Absurdity of Family Love \n\n Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc.", "For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation.", "non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes", "Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way.", "that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an \"altruism\" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be \"fooled\" into encouraging altruism toward", "Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke \"blood ties\" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect \"the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children.\" In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature.", "confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst", "Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--\"kin-recognition mechanisms\"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter.", "Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were \"designed\" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, \"kin- recognition mechanism\" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, \"There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her.\" More like, \"God but my daughter's adorable.\"", "So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by \"selfishly\" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These \"selfish\" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare.", "Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes", "This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor.", "Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't \"good\" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the \"naturalistic fallacy\"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.)", "It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... )", "Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the \"natural\" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously \"natural\" anyway.", "Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their \"own\" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .)" ], [ "Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of \"kin selection\" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference?", "Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the \"natural\" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously \"natural\" anyway.", "Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke \"blood ties\" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect \"the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children.\" In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature.", "that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an \"altruism\" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be \"fooled\" into encouraging altruism toward", "The Absurdity of Family Love \n\n Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc.", "Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. \n\n As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions.", "For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation.", "Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't \"good\" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the \"naturalistic fallacy\"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.)", "enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember?", "You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing \"half their genes,\" implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. .", "So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by \"selfishly\" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These \"selfish\" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare.", "Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes", "It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... )", "This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor.", "Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way.", "Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were \"designed\" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, \"kin- recognition mechanism\" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, \"There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her.\" More like, \"God but my daughter's adorable.\"", "Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--\"kin-recognition mechanisms\"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter.", "confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst", "non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes", "Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their \"own\" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .)" ], [ "Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke \"blood ties\" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect \"the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children.\" In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature.", "Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of \"kin selection\" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference?", "confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst", "The Absurdity of Family Love \n\n Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc.", "that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an \"altruism\" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be \"fooled\" into encouraging altruism toward", "You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing \"half their genes,\" implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. .", "For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation.", "This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor.", "Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. \n\n As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions.", "It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... )", "Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the \"natural\" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously \"natural\" anyway.", "Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--\"kin-recognition mechanisms\"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter.", "enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember?", "So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by \"selfishly\" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These \"selfish\" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare.", "Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their \"own\" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .)", "Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't \"good\" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the \"naturalistic fallacy\"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.)", "Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way.", "non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes", "Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were \"designed\" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, \"kin- recognition mechanism\" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, \"There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her.\" More like, \"God but my daughter's adorable.\"", "Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes" ] ]
valid	51320	[ "What was the accident prone's job on this mission?", "What does the captain think causes people like Baxter to exist?", "How did all the efforts to protect Baxter make him feel?", "Who had the nicest place to sleep?", "Why couldn't Baxter use his own bathroom?", "Why did Charlie tell the natives he was their brother?", "Why did the captain stop the guard from defending the accident-prone?", "How did the captain stop the alien attack?", "Why did the captain lie to Baxter about how the fight ended?" ]	[ [ "To learn if anything had changed on the planet", "To be the first person to die on the planet", "To conduct the first-ever visit to the planet", "To try to not have any accidents on the planet" ], [ "Extra-sensory perception", "An inability to worry", "high intelligence and low self-confidence", "A desire to commit fraud" ], [ "Concerned", "Safer", "Ambivalent", "Indestructible" ], [ "The accident-prone", "The spacemen", "The captain", "The guard" ], [ "It wasn't nice enough", "It was out of order", "He thought it was too nice for him", "He was trying to sneak off the ship" ], [ "He was using a translator collar", "He was trying to act based on history", "He didn't want to point out their strange appearance", "He had no information about how to speak with them" ], [ "He didn't want to save his life", "He thought the fight must be allowed to continue", "He didn't think the guard could beat the aliens", "He was upset the guard had shoved him down" ], [ "With an attack from the guards", "With a child's game", "With a gunshot", "With a nuclear weapon" ], [ "He didn't want him to know he was so tough", "He didn't want him to know the danger in which he had been", "He had lost some body parts and was in shock", "He didn't want him to be depressed and give up" ] ]	[ 1, 3, 1, 1, 4, 2, 2, 2, 4 ]	[ 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Actually Charlie was safer in space than he would be back on Earth\n with all those cars and people. We could have told him how the Service\n practically never lost a Prone—they were too valuable and rare to\n lose—but we did not want him to stop worrying. The precautions we\n took to safeguard him, the armed men who went with him everywhere, the\n Accident Prone First Aid Kit with spare parts for him, blood, eyes,\n bone, nerves, arms, legs, and so forth, only emphasized to him the\n danger, not the rigidly secured safety.\n\n\n We like it that way.\n\n\n No one knows what causes an accident prone. The big insurance\n companies on Earth discovered them when they found out in the last part\n of the nineteenth century that ninety per cent of the accidents were\n happening to a few per cent of the people. They soon found out that\n these people were not malingering or trying to defraud anybody; they\n simply had accidents.", "His clumsiness back on Earth had cost him every decent job he ever had.\n He had come all the way down the line until he was rated eligible only\n for the position of Prone aboard a spaceship. He had been poor—hungry,\n cold, wet, poor—and now he had luxury of a kind almost no one had in\n our era. He was drunk with it, passionately in love with it. It would\n cease to be quite so important after a few years of regular food, clean\n clothes and a solid roof to keep out the rain. But right now I knew he\n would come precariously close to killing to keep it. Or to being killed.\n\n\n He was ready to work.", "He sat down on the edge of the bed and examined the pattern in the\n carpet. \"Not exactly, sir. But I get tired of people waiting for me to\n make a fool out of myself. I have a natural talent for—for\nCreative\n Negativism\n. That's it. And I should be able to exercise my talent with\ndignity\n.\"\n\n\n \"If you don't actively fulfill the obligations of a Prone, you aren't\n allowed the luxuries and privileges that go with the position. Do you\n think you would like to be without your armed guards to protect you\n every moment?\"\n\n\n \"I can take care of myself, sir!\"\n\n\n I paused and came up with my best argument. \"How would you like to\n live like an ordinary spaceman, without rare steaks and clean sheets?\n Because if you're not our Accident Prone, you're just another crew\n member, you know.\"", "Accident Prones can find out what is wrong with a planet as easily\n as falling off a log, which they will if there is one lonely tree on\n the whole world. A single pit of quicksand on a veritable Eden of a\n planet and a Prone will be knee-deep in it within an hour of blastdown.\n If an alien race will smile patronizingly on your heroic attempts at\n genocide, but be offended into a murderous religious frenzy if you blow\n your nose, you can take the long end of the odds that the Prone will\n almost immediately catch a cold.", "\"Yes, sir. I see I've been fighting this thing too hard. I am an\n Accident Prone and I might as well accept it. Why not? I seem to always\n muddle through some way, like out there in the jungle, so why should I\n worry or feel\nembarrassed\n?\nI know I can't change\nit.\"\nI was beginning to do some worrying of my own. Things weren't working\n out the way they should. We were supposed to see that Prones kept\n developing a certain amount of doomed self-confidence, but they\n couldn't be allowed to believe they were infallible Prones. A Prone's\n value lies in his active and constructive effort to do the right thing.\n If he merely accepts being a Prone, his accidents gain us nothing. We\n can't profit from mistakes that come about from resignation or laughing\n off blunders or, as in this case, conviction that he never got himself\n into anything he couldn't get himself out of.", "Accident Prones have to stay worried and thinking, trying to break\n out of the jinx that traps them. Usually they come to discover this\n themselves, but by then, if they are real professionals with a career\n in the Service, they have framed the right attitude and they keep it.\nBaxter was a novice and very much of an amateur at the game. He didn't\n like the scoring system, but he was attached to the equipment and\n didn't want to lose it.", "Bronoski swung his feet off the couch and stood more or less in what I\n might have taken for attention if I hadn't known him better. \"Sidney\n and Elliot escorted him down to the men's room, Captain Jackson.\"\n\n\n \"You mean,\" I said very quietly, \"that he isn't in his own bath?\"\n\n\n \"No sir,\" Bronoski said wearily. \"He told us it was out of order.\"\n\n\n I stifled the gurgle of rage that came into my throat and motioned\n Bronoski to follow me. The engines on the\nHilliard\nwere more likely\n to be out of order than the plumbing in the Accident Prone's suite. No\n effort was spared to insure comfort for the key man in the whole crew.\n\n\n One glance inside the compartment at the end of the corridor satisfied\n me. There wasn't a thing wrong with the plumbing, so Baxter must have\n had something in mind.", "I studied his face a moment. \"We had to blast off without an Assistant\n Pile Driver, j.g. It keeps getting harder and harder to recruit an APD,\n j.g. I suppose it's those reports about the eventual fatalities due to\n radiation leak back there where they are stationed.\"\n\n\n Baxter looked back at me steadily. \"There are a lot of rumors about the\n high mortality rate among Accident Prones in space, too.\"\nHe was right. We had started the rumors. We wanted the Prones alert,\n active and scheming to stay alive. More beneficial accidents that way.\n Actually, most Prones died of old age in space, which is more than\n could be said of them on Earth, where they didn't have the kind of\n protection the Service gives them.\n\n\n \"Look here, Baxter, do you like your quarters on this ship?\" I demanded.", "Now maybe Bronoski and I could get him out ourselves by a direct\n approach, but Charlie would probably lose all self-confidence and sink\n down into accepting himself as an Accident Prone, a purely passive\n state.\n\n\n We couldn't have that. We had to have Charlie acting and thinking and\n therefore making mistakes whose bad examples we could profit by.\n\n\n As I lay on my belly thinking, Charlie was putting up a pretty good\n fight with the stringy native. He got in a few good punches, which\n seemed to mystify the native, who apparently knew nothing of boxing.\n Naturally Charlie then began wrestling a trained and deadly wrestler\n instead of continuing to box him.", "\"You mean this master bedroom, the private heated swimming pool, the\n tennis court, bowling alley and all? Yes, sir, I like it.\"\n\n\n \"The Assistant Pile Driver has a cot near the fuel tanks.\"\n\n\n He gazed off over my left shoulder. \"I had a bed behind the furnace\n back on Earth before the building I was working in burned down.\"\n\n\n \"You wouldn't like this one any better than the one before.\"\n\n\n \"But there I would have some chance of\nadvancement\n. I don't want to\n be stuck in the rank of Accident Prone for life.\"\n\n\n I stared at him in frank amazement. \"Baxter, the only rank getting\n higher pay or more privileges than Prone is Grand Admiral of the\n Services, a position it would take you at least fifty years to reach if\n you had the luck and brains to make it, which you haven't.\"", "That one hurt him, but I saw I had put it to him as a challenge and\n he must have had some guilt feelings about accepting all that luxury\n for being nothing more than he was. \"I could fulfill the duties of an\n ordinary spaceman, sir.\"\n\n\n I snorted. \"It takes skill and training, Baxter. Your papers entitle\n you to one position and one only anywhere—Accident Prone of a\n spaceship complement. If you refuse to do your duties in that post, you\n can only become a ward of the Galaxy.\"\n\n\n His jaw line firmed. He had gone through a lot to keep from taking such\n abject charity. \"Isn't there,\" he asked in a milder tone, \"\nany\nother\n position I could serve in on this ship, sir?\"", "All of this is properly recorded for the next expedition in the\n Admiralty files, and if it's any consolation, high officials and screen\n stars often visit you in the hospital.\nCharlie Baxter was like all of the other Prones, only worse. Moran III\n was sort of an unofficial test for him and he wanted to make good. We\n had blasted down in the black of night and were waiting for daylight to\n begin our re-survey of the planet. It was Charlie's first assignment,\n so we had an easy one—just seeing if anything new had developed in the\n last fifty years.\n\n\n Baxter's guard was doubled as soon as we set down, of course, and\n that made him fidgety. He had heard all the stories about how high\n the casualty rate was with Prones aboard spaceships and now he was\n beginning to get nervous.", "I suppose everything from psychology to extra-sensory perception has\n been used to explain or explain away prones. I have my own ideas. I\n think an accident prone is simply a super-genius with a super-doubt of\n himself.\n\n\n I believe accident prones have a better system of calculation than a\n cybernetic machine. They can take\neverything\ninto consideration—the\n humidity, their blood sugar, the expression on the other guy's\n face—and somewhere in the corners and attic of their brain they\ninfallibly\nmake the\nright\nchoice in any given situation. Then,\n because they are incapable of trusting themselves, they do exactly the\n opposite.\n\n\n I felt a little sorry for Charlie Baxter, but I was Captain of the\nHilliard\nand my job was to keep him worried and trying. The worst\n thing that can happen is for a Prone to give up and let himself sink\n into the fate of being a Prone. He will wear the rut right down into a\n tomb.", "I began to shake and at the same time to assure myself that I didn't\n have anything to worry about, that the precious Accident Prone would\n come out of it alive. After all, Elliot and Sidney were there to\n protect him. They had machine guns, flame-throwers, atomic grenades,\n and some really potent weapons. They could handle the situation. I\n didn't have a thing to worry about.\n\n\n So why couldn't I stop shaking?\n\n\n Maybe it was the way the natives were slowly but deliberately forming a\n circle about Charlie and his bodyguards.\nThe clothing of the Moranites hadn't changed much, I noticed. That was\n understandable. They had a non-mechanical civilization with scattered\n colonies that it would take a terrestrial season to tour by animal cart.", "I was trying to catch both versions from Charlie. I knew he was making\n a mistake and later I wanted to be sure I knew just what it was.\n Frankly, I would have used the blood-brother gambit myself. I had also\n read about it in the survey report, as I made a point of telling you.\n This just proves that Accident Prones haven't secured the franchise on\n mistakes. The difference is that I would have gone about it a lot more\n cautiously.\n\n\n \"Enough of this,\" the native said sharply. \"Do you claim to be\nmy\nbrother?\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" Charlie said.\n\n\n Dispassionately but automatically, the alien launched himself at the\n Prone's throat.\nCharterson and Von Elderman instantly went into action. Elliot\n Charterson jumped to Charlie's assistance while Sidney Von Elderman\n swung around to protect Charlie from the rest of the crowd.\n\n\n But the defense didn't work.", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe man worth while couldn't be allowed\n \nto smile ... if he ever laughed at himself,\n \nthe entire ship and crew were as good as dead!\nIf there is anything I am afraid of, and there probably is, it is\n having a rookie Accident Prone, half-starved from the unemployment\n lines, aboard my spaceship. They are always so anxious to please. They\n remember what it is like to live in a rathole behind an apartment\n house furnace eating day-old bread and wilted vegetables, which doesn't\n compare favorably to the Admiralty-style staterooms and steak and\n caviar they draw down in the Exploration Service.", "\"I had something more modest in mind, sir. Like being a captain.\"\n\n\n He surely must have known how I lived in comparison to him, so I didn't\n bother to remind him. I said, \"Have you ever seen a case of radiation\n poisoning?\"\n\n\n Baxter's jaw thrust forward. \"It must be pretty bad—but it isn't as\n violent as being eaten by floating fungi or being swallowed in an\n earthquake on some airless satellite.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" I agreed, \"it is much slower than any of those. It is unfortunate\n that we don't carry the necessary supplies to take care of Pile\n Drivers. Most of our medical supplies are in the Accident Prone First\n Aid Kit, for the exclusive use of the Prone. Have you ever taken a good\n look at that?\"", "Baxter shivered. \"Yes, I've seen it. Several drums of blood, Type AB,\n my type. A half-dozen fresh-frozen assorted arms and legs, several rows\n of eyes, a hundred square feet of graftable skin, and a well-stocked\n tank of inner organs and a double-doored bank of nerve lengths.\n Impressive.\"\nI smiled. \"Sort of gives you a feeling of confidence and security,\n doesn't it? It would be unfortunate for anyone who had a great many\n accidents to be denied the supplies in that Kit, I should think. Of\n course, it is available only to those filling the position of Accident\n Prone and doing the work faithfully and according to orders.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" Charlie mumbled.", "On a hunch of my own, I checked the supply lockers next to the airlock\n while Bronoski fired questions at my back. Three translator collars\n were missing. Baxter had left the spaceship and gone off into an alien\n night.\n\n\n Elliot and Sidney, the guards, were absolutely prohibited from\n interfering in any way with a Prone's decisions. They merely had to\n follow him and give their lives to save his, if necessary.\n\n\n I grabbed up a translator collar and tossed one to Bronoski. Then, just\n as we were getting into the airlock, I remembered something and ran\n back to the bridge.\n\n\n The thick brown envelope I had left on my desk was gone. I had shown\n it to Baxter and informed him that he should study it when he felt so\n inclined. He had seemed bored with the idea then, but he had come back\n for the report before leaving the ship. The envelope contained the\n exploration survey on Moran III made some fifty years before.", "I knocked politely on his hatch and straightened my tunic. I have\n always admired the men who can look starched in a uniform. Mine always\n seemed to wrinkle as soon as I put them around my raw-boned frame.\n Sometimes it is hard for me to keep a military appearance or manner. I\n got my commission during the Crisis ten years back, because of my work\n in the reserve unit that I created out of my employees in the glass\n works (glassware blown to order for laboratories).\n\n\n Someone said something through the door and I went inside.\n\n\n Bronoski looked at me over the top of his picture tape from where he\n lay on the sofa. No one else was in the compartment.\n\n\n \"Where is Baxter?\" I asked the hulking guard. My eyes were on the sofa.\n My own bed pulled out of the wall and was considerably inferior to\n this, much less Baxter's bed in the next cabin. But then I am only a\n captain." ], [ "\"I had something more modest in mind, sir. Like being a captain.\"\n\n\n He surely must have known how I lived in comparison to him, so I didn't\n bother to remind him. I said, \"Have you ever seen a case of radiation\n poisoning?\"\n\n\n Baxter's jaw thrust forward. \"It must be pretty bad—but it isn't as\n violent as being eaten by floating fungi or being swallowed in an\n earthquake on some airless satellite.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" I agreed, \"it is much slower than any of those. It is unfortunate\n that we don't carry the necessary supplies to take care of Pile\n Drivers. Most of our medical supplies are in the Accident Prone First\n Aid Kit, for the exclusive use of the Prone. Have you ever taken a good\n look at that?\"", "Bronoski swung his feet off the couch and stood more or less in what I\n might have taken for attention if I hadn't known him better. \"Sidney\n and Elliot escorted him down to the men's room, Captain Jackson.\"\n\n\n \"You mean,\" I said very quietly, \"that he isn't in his own bath?\"\n\n\n \"No sir,\" Bronoski said wearily. \"He told us it was out of order.\"\n\n\n I stifled the gurgle of rage that came into my throat and motioned\n Bronoski to follow me. The engines on the\nHilliard\nwere more likely\n to be out of order than the plumbing in the Accident Prone's suite. No\n effort was spared to insure comfort for the key man in the whole crew.\n\n\n One glance inside the compartment at the end of the corridor satisfied\n me. There wasn't a thing wrong with the plumbing, so Baxter must have\n had something in mind.", "Accident Prones have to stay worried and thinking, trying to break\n out of the jinx that traps them. Usually they come to discover this\n themselves, but by then, if they are real professionals with a career\n in the Service, they have framed the right attitude and they keep it.\nBaxter was a novice and very much of an amateur at the game. He didn't\n like the scoring system, but he was attached to the equipment and\n didn't want to lose it.", "I knocked politely on his hatch and straightened my tunic. I have\n always admired the men who can look starched in a uniform. Mine always\n seemed to wrinkle as soon as I put them around my raw-boned frame.\n Sometimes it is hard for me to keep a military appearance or manner. I\n got my commission during the Crisis ten years back, because of my work\n in the reserve unit that I created out of my employees in the glass\n works (glassware blown to order for laboratories).\n\n\n Someone said something through the door and I went inside.\n\n\n Bronoski looked at me over the top of his picture tape from where he\n lay on the sofa. No one else was in the compartment.\n\n\n \"Where is Baxter?\" I asked the hulking guard. My eyes were on the sofa.\n My own bed pulled out of the wall and was considerably inferior to\n this, much less Baxter's bed in the next cabin. But then I am only a\n captain.", "I suppose everything from psychology to extra-sensory perception has\n been used to explain or explain away prones. I have my own ideas. I\n think an accident prone is simply a super-genius with a super-doubt of\n himself.\n\n\n I believe accident prones have a better system of calculation than a\n cybernetic machine. They can take\neverything\ninto consideration—the\n humidity, their blood sugar, the expression on the other guy's\n face—and somewhere in the corners and attic of their brain they\ninfallibly\nmake the\nright\nchoice in any given situation. Then,\n because they are incapable of trusting themselves, they do exactly the\n opposite.\n\n\n I felt a little sorry for Charlie Baxter, but I was Captain of the\nHilliard\nand my job was to keep him worried and trying. The worst\n thing that can happen is for a Prone to give up and let himself sink\n into the fate of being a Prone. He will wear the rut right down into a\n tomb.", "\"Doctor Selby, would you excuse us?\" I asked.\n\n\n The medic left with a bow and a surly expression. I turned to Baxter,\n rather wishing Selby could have stayed. It was a labor dispute and I\n was used to having a mediator present at bargaining sessions at my\n glassworks. But this was a military, not a civilian, spaceship.\n\n\n \"I have some facts of life to give you, Baxter,\" I told him. \"It\n is your duty to\nactively\nfulfill your position. You have to make\n decisions and plan courses of action. Do you figure on just walking\n around in that jungle until a tree falls on you?\"", "\"Yes,\" I said uneasily. \"You have been thinking about this quite a lot\n while you lay there, haven't you, Baxter?\"", "I studied his face a moment. \"We had to blast off without an Assistant\n Pile Driver, j.g. It keeps getting harder and harder to recruit an APD,\n j.g. I suppose it's those reports about the eventual fatalities due to\n radiation leak back there where they are stationed.\"\n\n\n Baxter looked back at me steadily. \"There are a lot of rumors about the\n high mortality rate among Accident Prones in space, too.\"\nHe was right. We had started the rumors. We wanted the Prones alert,\n active and scheming to stay alive. More beneficial accidents that way.\n Actually, most Prones died of old age in space, which is more than\n could be said of them on Earth, where they didn't have the kind of\n protection the Service gives them.\n\n\n \"Look here, Baxter, do you like your quarters on this ship?\" I demanded.", "I could fairly hear Bronoski's steel muscles preparing for battle as\n he saw his two mammoth pals go down under the press of numbers. A\n bristle-covered bullet of skull rose out of the grass beside me and it\n was my turn to grind his face in the muck.\n\n\n I had a nice little problem to contend with.\n\n\n I knew the reason Baxter had slipped out at night to be the first to\n greet the aliens. He was determined to be useful and necessary without\n fouling things up. I suppose Charlie had never felt valuable to anyone\n before in his life, but at the same time it hurt him to think that he\n was valuable only because he was a misfit.\n\n\n He had decided to take a positive approach. If he did things right,\n that would be as good proof of conditions as if he made the mistakes he\n was supposed to do. But he couldn't lick that doubt of himself that had\n been ground into him since birth and there he was, in trouble as always.", "That one hurt him, but I saw I had put it to him as a challenge and\n he must have had some guilt feelings about accepting all that luxury\n for being nothing more than he was. \"I could fulfill the duties of an\n ordinary spaceman, sir.\"\n\n\n I snorted. \"It takes skill and training, Baxter. Your papers entitle\n you to one position and one only anywhere—Accident Prone of a\n spaceship complement. If you refuse to do your duties in that post, you\n can only become a ward of the Galaxy.\"\n\n\n His jaw line firmed. He had gone through a lot to keep from taking such\n abject charity. \"Isn't there,\" he asked in a milder tone, \"\nany\nother\n position I could serve in on this ship, sir?\"", "Baxter shivered. \"Yes, I've seen it. Several drums of blood, Type AB,\n my type. A half-dozen fresh-frozen assorted arms and legs, several rows\n of eyes, a hundred square feet of graftable skin, and a well-stocked\n tank of inner organs and a double-doored bank of nerve lengths.\n Impressive.\"\nI smiled. \"Sort of gives you a feeling of confidence and security,\n doesn't it? It would be unfortunate for anyone who had a great many\n accidents to be denied the supplies in that Kit, I should think. Of\n course, it is available only to those filling the position of Accident\n Prone and doing the work faithfully and according to orders.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" Charlie mumbled.", "The other aliens didn't try to get to Baxter, but when they saw Elliot\n start to interfere with the two writhing opponents, they clawed him\n down into the grass. Sidney had been set to defend the Prone, not his\n fellow guard. They might have been all right if he had pulled a few\n off Elliot and let him get to work, except his training told him that\n the life of a guard did not matter a twit, but that a Prone must be\n defended. He started toward Charlie Baxter and was immediately pulled\n down by a spare dozen of the mob.\n\n\n It all meant one thing to me. The reaction of the crowd had been\n spontaneous, not planned. That meant that the struggle between Charlie\n and the spokesman was a high order of single combat with which it was\n unholy, indecent and dastardly to interfere.", "The native slumped a little more than the others, as if he were more\n relaxed, and his eyes didn't goggle so much. He said, \"We do not\n understand,\" and the translation came through fine.\n\n\n Baxter swallowed and started forward to meet the alien halfway. His\n boot slipped on the wet scrub grass and I saw him do the desperate\n little dance to regain his balance that I had seen him make so many\n times; he could never stay on his feet.\n\n\n Before he could perform his usual pratfall, Sidney and Elliot were\n at his sides, supporting him by his thin biceps. He glared at them\n and shrugged them off, informing them wordlessly that he would have\n regained his balance if they had given him half a chance.\n\n\n \"We do not understand,\" the native repeated. \"Do you hold us in so much\n contempt as to claim\nall\nof us as your brothers?\"", "All of this is properly recorded for the next expedition in the\n Admiralty files, and if it's any consolation, high officials and screen\n stars often visit you in the hospital.\nCharlie Baxter was like all of the other Prones, only worse. Moran III\n was sort of an unofficial test for him and he wanted to make good. We\n had blasted down in the black of night and were waiting for daylight to\n begin our re-survey of the planet. It was Charlie's first assignment,\n so we had an easy one—just seeing if anything new had developed in the\n last fifty years.\n\n\n Baxter's guard was doubled as soon as we set down, of course, and\n that made him fidgety. He had heard all the stories about how high\n the casualty rate was with Prones aboard spaceships and now he was\n beginning to get nervous.", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe man worth while couldn't be allowed\n \nto smile ... if he ever laughed at himself,\n \nthe entire ship and crew were as good as dead!\nIf there is anything I am afraid of, and there probably is, it is\n having a rookie Accident Prone, half-starved from the unemployment\n lines, aboard my spaceship. They are always so anxious to please. They\n remember what it is like to live in a rathole behind an apartment\n house furnace eating day-old bread and wilted vegetables, which doesn't\n compare favorably to the Admiralty-style staterooms and steak and\n caviar they draw down in the Exploration Service.", "\"Selby is your personal physician, you realize,\" I drove on. \"He takes\n care of the rest of us only if he has time left over from you. Why,\n when I was having my two weeks in the summer as an Ensign, I had to\n lie for half an hour with a crushed foot while the doctor sprayed our\n Prone's throat to guard against infection. Let me tell you, I was in\n quite a bit of pain.\"\n\n\n Charlie's pale eyes narrowed as if he had just made a sudden discovery,\n perhaps about the relationship between us. \"You don't make as much\n money as I do, do you, sir? You don't have a valet? And your bed folds\n into the bulkhead?\"\n\n\n I thought he was at last beginning to get it. \"Yes,\" I said.\n\n\n He stood sharply to attention. \"Request transfer to position of\n Assistant Pile Driver, j.g., sir.\"", "Actually Charlie was safer in space than he would be back on Earth\n with all those cars and people. We could have told him how the Service\n practically never lost a Prone—they were too valuable and rare to\n lose—but we did not want him to stop worrying. The precautions we\n took to safeguard him, the armed men who went with him everywhere, the\n Accident Prone First Aid Kit with spare parts for him, blood, eyes,\n bone, nerves, arms, legs, and so forth, only emphasized to him the\n danger, not the rigidly secured safety.\n\n\n We like it that way.\n\n\n No one knows what causes an accident prone. The big insurance\n companies on Earth discovered them when they found out in the last part\n of the nineteenth century that ninety per cent of the accidents were\n happening to a few per cent of the people. They soon found out that\n these people were not malingering or trying to defraud anybody; they\n simply had accidents.", "\"You mean this master bedroom, the private heated swimming pool, the\n tennis court, bowling alley and all? Yes, sir, I like it.\"\n\n\n \"The Assistant Pile Driver has a cot near the fuel tanks.\"\n\n\n He gazed off over my left shoulder. \"I had a bed behind the furnace\n back on Earth before the building I was working in burned down.\"\n\n\n \"You wouldn't like this one any better than the one before.\"\n\n\n \"But there I would have some chance of\nadvancement\n. I don't want to\n be stuck in the rank of Accident Prone for life.\"\n\n\n I stared at him in frank amazement. \"Baxter, the only rank getting\n higher pay or more privileges than Prone is Grand Admiral of the\n Services, a position it would take you at least fifty years to reach if\n you had the luck and brains to make it, which you haven't.\"", "On a hunch of my own, I checked the supply lockers next to the airlock\n while Bronoski fired questions at my back. Three translator collars\n were missing. Baxter had left the spaceship and gone off into an alien\n night.\n\n\n Elliot and Sidney, the guards, were absolutely prohibited from\n interfering in any way with a Prone's decisions. They merely had to\n follow him and give their lives to save his, if necessary.\n\n\n I grabbed up a translator collar and tossed one to Bronoski. Then, just\n as we were getting into the airlock, I remembered something and ran\n back to the bridge.\n\n\n The thick brown envelope I had left on my desk was gone. I had shown\n it to Baxter and informed him that he should study it when he felt so\n inclined. He had seemed bored with the idea then, but he had come back\n for the report before leaving the ship. The envelope contained the\n exploration survey on Moran III made some fifty years before.", "Obviously, to claim to be a native's brother was to challenge him to a\n test of survival.\n\n\n My men learned to call themselves Last Brother in the usual bragging\n preliminaries that preceded every encounter. We got pretty good results\n with that approach and learned a lot about the changes in customs in\n the half century. But finally one of the men—either Frank Peirmonte or\n Sidney Charterson, who both claim to be the one—thought of calling the\n crew a Family and right away we began hitting it off famously.\n\n\n The Moranites figured we would kill each other off all except maybe\n one, whom they could handle themselves. They still had folk legends\n about the previous visit of Earthmen and they didn't trust us.\n\n\n Charlie Baxter's original mistake had supplied us with the Rosetta\n Stone we needed.\n\n\n Doctor Selby told me Charlie could get up finally, so I went to his\n suite and shook hands with him as he still lay in bed." ], [ "\"Yes,\" I said uneasily. \"You have been thinking about this quite a lot\n while you lay there, haven't you, Baxter?\"", "Accident Prones have to stay worried and thinking, trying to break\n out of the jinx that traps them. Usually they come to discover this\n themselves, but by then, if they are real professionals with a career\n in the Service, they have framed the right attitude and they keep it.\nBaxter was a novice and very much of an amateur at the game. He didn't\n like the scoring system, but he was attached to the equipment and\n didn't want to lose it.", "Baxter shivered. \"Yes, I've seen it. Several drums of blood, Type AB,\n my type. A half-dozen fresh-frozen assorted arms and legs, several rows\n of eyes, a hundred square feet of graftable skin, and a well-stocked\n tank of inner organs and a double-doored bank of nerve lengths.\n Impressive.\"\nI smiled. \"Sort of gives you a feeling of confidence and security,\n doesn't it? It would be unfortunate for anyone who had a great many\n accidents to be denied the supplies in that Kit, I should think. Of\n course, it is available only to those filling the position of Accident\n Prone and doing the work faithfully and according to orders.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" Charlie mumbled.", "I could fairly hear Bronoski's steel muscles preparing for battle as\n he saw his two mammoth pals go down under the press of numbers. A\n bristle-covered bullet of skull rose out of the grass beside me and it\n was my turn to grind his face in the muck.\n\n\n I had a nice little problem to contend with.\n\n\n I knew the reason Baxter had slipped out at night to be the first to\n greet the aliens. He was determined to be useful and necessary without\n fouling things up. I suppose Charlie had never felt valuable to anyone\n before in his life, but at the same time it hurt him to think that he\n was valuable only because he was a misfit.\n\n\n He had decided to take a positive approach. If he did things right,\n that would be as good proof of conditions as if he made the mistakes he\n was supposed to do. But he couldn't lick that doubt of himself that had\n been ground into him since birth and there he was, in trouble as always.", "Bronoski swung his feet off the couch and stood more or less in what I\n might have taken for attention if I hadn't known him better. \"Sidney\n and Elliot escorted him down to the men's room, Captain Jackson.\"\n\n\n \"You mean,\" I said very quietly, \"that he isn't in his own bath?\"\n\n\n \"No sir,\" Bronoski said wearily. \"He told us it was out of order.\"\n\n\n I stifled the gurgle of rage that came into my throat and motioned\n Bronoski to follow me. The engines on the\nHilliard\nwere more likely\n to be out of order than the plumbing in the Accident Prone's suite. No\n effort was spared to insure comfort for the key man in the whole crew.\n\n\n One glance inside the compartment at the end of the corridor satisfied\n me. There wasn't a thing wrong with the plumbing, so Baxter must have\n had something in mind.", "The other aliens didn't try to get to Baxter, but when they saw Elliot\n start to interfere with the two writhing opponents, they clawed him\n down into the grass. Sidney had been set to defend the Prone, not his\n fellow guard. They might have been all right if he had pulled a few\n off Elliot and let him get to work, except his training told him that\n the life of a guard did not matter a twit, but that a Prone must be\n defended. He started toward Charlie Baxter and was immediately pulled\n down by a spare dozen of the mob.\n\n\n It all meant one thing to me. The reaction of the crowd had been\n spontaneous, not planned. That meant that the struggle between Charlie\n and the spokesman was a high order of single combat with which it was\n unholy, indecent and dastardly to interfere.", "I knocked politely on his hatch and straightened my tunic. I have\n always admired the men who can look starched in a uniform. Mine always\n seemed to wrinkle as soon as I put them around my raw-boned frame.\n Sometimes it is hard for me to keep a military appearance or manner. I\n got my commission during the Crisis ten years back, because of my work\n in the reserve unit that I created out of my employees in the glass\n works (glassware blown to order for laboratories).\n\n\n Someone said something through the door and I went inside.\n\n\n Bronoski looked at me over the top of his picture tape from where he\n lay on the sofa. No one else was in the compartment.\n\n\n \"Where is Baxter?\" I asked the hulking guard. My eyes were on the sofa.\n My own bed pulled out of the wall and was considerably inferior to\n this, much less Baxter's bed in the next cabin. But then I am only a\n captain.", "The native slumped a little more than the others, as if he were more\n relaxed, and his eyes didn't goggle so much. He said, \"We do not\n understand,\" and the translation came through fine.\n\n\n Baxter swallowed and started forward to meet the alien halfway. His\n boot slipped on the wet scrub grass and I saw him do the desperate\n little dance to regain his balance that I had seen him make so many\n times; he could never stay on his feet.\n\n\n Before he could perform his usual pratfall, Sidney and Elliot were\n at his sides, supporting him by his thin biceps. He glared at them\n and shrugged them off, informing them wordlessly that he would have\n regained his balance if they had given him half a chance.\n\n\n \"We do not understand,\" the native repeated. \"Do you hold us in so much\n contempt as to claim\nall\nof us as your brothers?\"", "All of this is properly recorded for the next expedition in the\n Admiralty files, and if it's any consolation, high officials and screen\n stars often visit you in the hospital.\nCharlie Baxter was like all of the other Prones, only worse. Moran III\n was sort of an unofficial test for him and he wanted to make good. We\n had blasted down in the black of night and were waiting for daylight to\n begin our re-survey of the planet. It was Charlie's first assignment,\n so we had an easy one—just seeing if anything new had developed in the\n last fifty years.\n\n\n Baxter's guard was doubled as soon as we set down, of course, and\n that made him fidgety. He had heard all the stories about how high\n the casualty rate was with Prones aboard spaceships and now he was\n beginning to get nervous.", "That one hurt him, but I saw I had put it to him as a challenge and\n he must have had some guilt feelings about accepting all that luxury\n for being nothing more than he was. \"I could fulfill the duties of an\n ordinary spaceman, sir.\"\n\n\n I snorted. \"It takes skill and training, Baxter. Your papers entitle\n you to one position and one only anywhere—Accident Prone of a\n spaceship complement. If you refuse to do your duties in that post, you\n can only become a ward of the Galaxy.\"\n\n\n His jaw line firmed. He had gone through a lot to keep from taking such\n abject charity. \"Isn't there,\" he asked in a milder tone, \"\nany\nother\n position I could serve in on this ship, sir?\"", "Now maybe Bronoski and I could get him out ourselves by a direct\n approach, but Charlie would probably lose all self-confidence and sink\n down into accepting himself as an Accident Prone, a purely passive\n state.\n\n\n We couldn't have that. We had to have Charlie acting and thinking and\n therefore making mistakes whose bad examples we could profit by.\n\n\n As I lay on my belly thinking, Charlie was putting up a pretty good\n fight with the stringy native. He got in a few good punches, which\n seemed to mystify the native, who apparently knew nothing of boxing.\n Naturally Charlie then began wrestling a trained and deadly wrestler\n instead of continuing to box him.", "I barely halted a groan. He thought I resented him and was deliberately\n holding him down into the miserable overpaid, overfed job that was\n beneath him and the talents that so fitted him for the job.\n\n\n \"Request granted.\"\n\n\n He would learn.\n\n\n He had better.\n\n\n I started to sweat in a gush. He had\nreally\nbetter.", "I studied his face a moment. \"We had to blast off without an Assistant\n Pile Driver, j.g. It keeps getting harder and harder to recruit an APD,\n j.g. I suppose it's those reports about the eventual fatalities due to\n radiation leak back there where they are stationed.\"\n\n\n Baxter looked back at me steadily. \"There are a lot of rumors about the\n high mortality rate among Accident Prones in space, too.\"\nHe was right. We had started the rumors. We wanted the Prones alert,\n active and scheming to stay alive. More beneficial accidents that way.\n Actually, most Prones died of old age in space, which is more than\n could be said of them on Earth, where they didn't have the kind of\n protection the Service gives them.\n\n\n \"Look here, Baxter, do you like your quarters on this ship?\" I demanded.", "I unlocked a desk drawer with my thumb print and drew out a duplicate\n of the report. I didn't have too much confidence in it and I hoped\n Charlie Baxter had less. Lots of things can change on a planet in fifty\n years, including its inhabitants.\nBronoski picked up Baxter's tracks and those of the two guards, Elliot\n and Sidney, with ultra-violet light. They were cold splotches of green\n fire against the rotting black peat of the jungle path. The whole dark,\n tangled mess smelled of sour mash, an intoxicating bourbon-type aroma.\n\n\n I jogged along following the big man more by instinct than anything\n else, ruining my eyes in an effort to refresh my memory as to the\n contents of the survey report in the cheery little glow from my\n cigarette lighter.", "\"Doctor Selby, would you excuse us?\" I asked.\n\n\n The medic left with a bow and a surly expression. I turned to Baxter,\n rather wishing Selby could have stayed. It was a labor dispute and I\n was used to having a mediator present at bargaining sessions at my\n glassworks. But this was a military, not a civilian, spaceship.\n\n\n \"I have some facts of life to give you, Baxter,\" I told him. \"It\n is your duty to\nactively\nfulfill your position. You have to make\n decisions and plan courses of action. Do you figure on just walking\n around in that jungle until a tree falls on you?\"", "Actually Charlie was safer in space than he would be back on Earth\n with all those cars and people. We could have told him how the Service\n practically never lost a Prone—they were too valuable and rare to\n lose—but we did not want him to stop worrying. The precautions we\n took to safeguard him, the armed men who went with him everywhere, the\n Accident Prone First Aid Kit with spare parts for him, blood, eyes,\n bone, nerves, arms, legs, and so forth, only emphasized to him the\n danger, not the rigidly secured safety.\n\n\n We like it that way.\n\n\n No one knows what causes an accident prone. The big insurance\n companies on Earth discovered them when they found out in the last part\n of the nineteenth century that ninety per cent of the accidents were\n happening to a few per cent of the people. They soon found out that\n these people were not malingering or trying to defraud anybody; they\n simply had accidents.", "\"Now!\" I told Bronoski.\n\n\n He ran into the clearing and found four bodies sprawled out: Charlie\n Baxter, his two guards and the native spokesman.\n\n\n Charlie and the native were both technically unconscious, but they each\n had a stranglehold on each other, with Charlie getting the worst of it.\n\n\n Bronoski pried the two of them apart.\n\n\n While he roused Sidney and Elliot from their punch-drunk state, I\n examined Charlie. He had a nasty burn on his leg and two toes were\n gone. If there was an explosion anywhere around, he was bound to be in\n front of it.\n\n\n He was abruptly choking and blinking watery eyes.\n\n\n \"You did it, Charlie,\" I lied. \"You beat him fair and square.\"\nCharlie was in bed for the next few days while his grafted toes grew\n on, but he didn't seem to mind.", "I could see through the stringy, alcoholic grass fairly well and there\n were Baxter, Elliot and Sidney in the middle of a curious mob of aliens.\nCharlie Baxter had got pretty thin on his starvation diet back on\n Earth. He had grown a slight pot belly on the good food he drew down as\n Prone, but he was a fairly nice-looking young fellow. He looked even\n better in the pale moonlight, mixed amber and chartreuse from the twin\n satellites, and in contrast to the rest of the group.\n\n\n Elliot Charterson and Sidney Von Elderman were more or less type-cast\n as brawny, brainless bodyguards. Their friends described them as\n muscle-bound apes, but other people sometimes got insulting.\n\n\n The natives were less formidable. They made the slight lump of fat\n Charlie had at his waist look positively indecent.", "\"I had something more modest in mind, sir. Like being a captain.\"\n\n\n He surely must have known how I lived in comparison to him, so I didn't\n bother to remind him. I said, \"Have you ever seen a case of radiation\n poisoning?\"\n\n\n Baxter's jaw thrust forward. \"It must be pretty bad—but it isn't as\n violent as being eaten by floating fungi or being swallowed in an\n earthquake on some airless satellite.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" I agreed, \"it is much slower than any of those. It is unfortunate\n that we don't carry the necessary supplies to take care of Pile\n Drivers. Most of our medical supplies are in the Accident Prone First\n Aid Kit, for the exclusive use of the Prone. Have you ever taken a good\n look at that?\"", "His clumsiness back on Earth had cost him every decent job he ever had.\n He had come all the way down the line until he was rated eligible only\n for the position of Prone aboard a spaceship. He had been poor—hungry,\n cold, wet, poor—and now he had luxury of a kind almost no one had in\n our era. He was drunk with it, passionately in love with it. It would\n cease to be quite so important after a few years of regular food, clean\n clothes and a solid roof to keep out the rain. But right now I knew he\n would come precariously close to killing to keep it. Or to being killed.\n\n\n He was ready to work." ], [ "I knocked politely on his hatch and straightened my tunic. I have\n always admired the men who can look starched in a uniform. Mine always\n seemed to wrinkle as soon as I put them around my raw-boned frame.\n Sometimes it is hard for me to keep a military appearance or manner. I\n got my commission during the Crisis ten years back, because of my work\n in the reserve unit that I created out of my employees in the glass\n works (glassware blown to order for laboratories).\n\n\n Someone said something through the door and I went inside.\n\n\n Bronoski looked at me over the top of his picture tape from where he\n lay on the sofa. No one else was in the compartment.\n\n\n \"Where is Baxter?\" I asked the hulking guard. My eyes were on the sofa.\n My own bed pulled out of the wall and was considerably inferior to\n this, much less Baxter's bed in the next cabin. But then I am only a\n captain.", "Bronoski swung his feet off the couch and stood more or less in what I\n might have taken for attention if I hadn't known him better. \"Sidney\n and Elliot escorted him down to the men's room, Captain Jackson.\"\n\n\n \"You mean,\" I said very quietly, \"that he isn't in his own bath?\"\n\n\n \"No sir,\" Bronoski said wearily. \"He told us it was out of order.\"\n\n\n I stifled the gurgle of rage that came into my throat and motioned\n Bronoski to follow me. The engines on the\nHilliard\nwere more likely\n to be out of order than the plumbing in the Accident Prone's suite. No\n effort was spared to insure comfort for the key man in the whole crew.\n\n\n One glance inside the compartment at the end of the corridor satisfied\n me. There wasn't a thing wrong with the plumbing, so Baxter must have\n had something in mind.", "\"You mean this master bedroom, the private heated swimming pool, the\n tennis court, bowling alley and all? Yes, sir, I like it.\"\n\n\n \"The Assistant Pile Driver has a cot near the fuel tanks.\"\n\n\n He gazed off over my left shoulder. \"I had a bed behind the furnace\n back on Earth before the building I was working in burned down.\"\n\n\n \"You wouldn't like this one any better than the one before.\"\n\n\n \"But there I would have some chance of\nadvancement\n. I don't want to\n be stuck in the rank of Accident Prone for life.\"\n\n\n I stared at him in frank amazement. \"Baxter, the only rank getting\n higher pay or more privileges than Prone is Grand Admiral of the\n Services, a position it would take you at least fifty years to reach if\n you had the luck and brains to make it, which you haven't.\"", "His clumsiness back on Earth had cost him every decent job he ever had.\n He had come all the way down the line until he was rated eligible only\n for the position of Prone aboard a spaceship. He had been poor—hungry,\n cold, wet, poor—and now he had luxury of a kind almost no one had in\n our era. He was drunk with it, passionately in love with it. It would\n cease to be quite so important after a few years of regular food, clean\n clothes and a solid roof to keep out the rain. But right now I knew he\n would come precariously close to killing to keep it. Or to being killed.\n\n\n He was ready to work.", "\"Now!\" I told Bronoski.\n\n\n He ran into the clearing and found four bodies sprawled out: Charlie\n Baxter, his two guards and the native spokesman.\n\n\n Charlie and the native were both technically unconscious, but they each\n had a stranglehold on each other, with Charlie getting the worst of it.\n\n\n Bronoski pried the two of them apart.\n\n\n While he roused Sidney and Elliot from their punch-drunk state, I\n examined Charlie. He had a nasty burn on his leg and two toes were\n gone. If there was an explosion anywhere around, he was bound to be in\n front of it.\n\n\n He was abruptly choking and blinking watery eyes.\n\n\n \"You did it, Charlie,\" I lied. \"You beat him fair and square.\"\nCharlie was in bed for the next few days while his grafted toes grew\n on, but he didn't seem to mind.", "He sat down on the edge of the bed and examined the pattern in the\n carpet. \"Not exactly, sir. But I get tired of people waiting for me to\n make a fool out of myself. I have a natural talent for—for\nCreative\n Negativism\n. That's it. And I should be able to exercise my talent with\ndignity\n.\"\n\n\n \"If you don't actively fulfill the obligations of a Prone, you aren't\n allowed the luxuries and privileges that go with the position. Do you\n think you would like to be without your armed guards to protect you\n every moment?\"\n\n\n \"I can take care of myself, sir!\"\n\n\n I paused and came up with my best argument. \"How would you like to\n live like an ordinary spaceman, without rare steaks and clean sheets?\n Because if you're not our Accident Prone, you're just another crew\n member, you know.\"", "I could see through the stringy, alcoholic grass fairly well and there\n were Baxter, Elliot and Sidney in the middle of a curious mob of aliens.\nCharlie Baxter had got pretty thin on his starvation diet back on\n Earth. He had grown a slight pot belly on the good food he drew down as\n Prone, but he was a fairly nice-looking young fellow. He looked even\n better in the pale moonlight, mixed amber and chartreuse from the twin\n satellites, and in contrast to the rest of the group.\n\n\n Elliot Charterson and Sidney Von Elderman were more or less type-cast\n as brawny, brainless bodyguards. Their friends described them as\n muscle-bound apes, but other people sometimes got insulting.\n\n\n The natives were less formidable. They made the slight lump of fat\n Charlie had at his waist look positively indecent.", "I waited for the big moment when Charlie would be on his feet again\n and we could get on with the re-survey of the planet.\n\n\n \"Here goes,\" Charlie said and threw back his sheet.\n\n\n He swung his legs around and tottered to his feet. He was a little\n weak, but he took a few steps and seemed to make it okay.\n\n\n Then the inevitable happened. He snagged the edge of one of the Persian\n carpets on the bedroom floor with his big toe and started to fall.\n\n\n Selby and I both dived forward to catch him, but instead of doing the\n arm-waving dance for balance that we were both used to, he seemed to go\n limp and he plopped on the floor like a wet fish.\n\n\n Immediately he jumped to his feet, grinning. \"I finally learned to go\n limp when I take a fall, sir. It took a lot of practice. I imagine I'll\n save some broken bones that way.\"", "\"Selby is your personal physician, you realize,\" I drove on. \"He takes\n care of the rest of us only if he has time left over from you. Why,\n when I was having my two weeks in the summer as an Ensign, I had to\n lie for half an hour with a crushed foot while the doctor sprayed our\n Prone's throat to guard against infection. Let me tell you, I was in\n quite a bit of pain.\"\n\n\n Charlie's pale eyes narrowed as if he had just made a sudden discovery,\n perhaps about the relationship between us. \"You don't make as much\n money as I do, do you, sir? You don't have a valet? And your bed folds\n into the bulkhead?\"\n\n\n I thought he was at last beginning to get it. \"Yes,\" I said.\n\n\n He stood sharply to attention. \"Request transfer to position of\n Assistant Pile Driver, j.g., sir.\"", "I could fairly hear Bronoski's steel muscles preparing for battle as\n he saw his two mammoth pals go down under the press of numbers. A\n bristle-covered bullet of skull rose out of the grass beside me and it\n was my turn to grind his face in the muck.\n\n\n I had a nice little problem to contend with.\n\n\n I knew the reason Baxter had slipped out at night to be the first to\n greet the aliens. He was determined to be useful and necessary without\n fouling things up. I suppose Charlie had never felt valuable to anyone\n before in his life, but at the same time it hurt him to think that he\n was valuable only because he was a misfit.\n\n\n He had decided to take a positive approach. If he did things right,\n that would be as good proof of conditions as if he made the mistakes he\n was supposed to do. But he couldn't lick that doubt of himself that had\n been ground into him since birth and there he was, in trouble as always.", "I began to shake and at the same time to assure myself that I didn't\n have anything to worry about, that the precious Accident Prone would\n come out of it alive. After all, Elliot and Sidney were there to\n protect him. They had machine guns, flame-throwers, atomic grenades,\n and some really potent weapons. They could handle the situation. I\n didn't have a thing to worry about.\n\n\n So why couldn't I stop shaking?\n\n\n Maybe it was the way the natives were slowly but deliberately forming a\n circle about Charlie and his bodyguards.\nThe clothing of the Moranites hadn't changed much, I noticed. That was\n understandable. They had a non-mechanical civilization with scattered\n colonies that it would take a terrestrial season to tour by animal cart.", "\"Yes,\" I said uneasily. \"You have been thinking about this quite a lot\n while you lay there, haven't you, Baxter?\"", "I studied his face a moment. \"We had to blast off without an Assistant\n Pile Driver, j.g. It keeps getting harder and harder to recruit an APD,\n j.g. I suppose it's those reports about the eventual fatalities due to\n radiation leak back there where they are stationed.\"\n\n\n Baxter looked back at me steadily. \"There are a lot of rumors about the\n high mortality rate among Accident Prones in space, too.\"\nHe was right. We had started the rumors. We wanted the Prones alert,\n active and scheming to stay alive. More beneficial accidents that way.\n Actually, most Prones died of old age in space, which is more than\n could be said of them on Earth, where they didn't have the kind of\n protection the Service gives them.\n\n\n \"Look here, Baxter, do you like your quarters on this ship?\" I demanded.", "Now maybe Bronoski and I could get him out ourselves by a direct\n approach, but Charlie would probably lose all self-confidence and sink\n down into accepting himself as an Accident Prone, a purely passive\n state.\n\n\n We couldn't have that. We had to have Charlie acting and thinking and\n therefore making mistakes whose bad examples we could profit by.\n\n\n As I lay on my belly thinking, Charlie was putting up a pretty good\n fight with the stringy native. He got in a few good punches, which\n seemed to mystify the native, who apparently knew nothing of boxing.\n Naturally Charlie then began wrestling a trained and deadly wrestler\n instead of continuing to box him.", "Baxter shivered. \"Yes, I've seen it. Several drums of blood, Type AB,\n my type. A half-dozen fresh-frozen assorted arms and legs, several rows\n of eyes, a hundred square feet of graftable skin, and a well-stocked\n tank of inner organs and a double-doored bank of nerve lengths.\n Impressive.\"\nI smiled. \"Sort of gives you a feeling of confidence and security,\n doesn't it? It would be unfortunate for anyone who had a great many\n accidents to be denied the supplies in that Kit, I should think. Of\n course, it is available only to those filling the position of Accident\n Prone and doing the work faithfully and according to orders.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" Charlie mumbled.", "Actually Charlie was safer in space than he would be back on Earth\n with all those cars and people. We could have told him how the Service\n practically never lost a Prone—they were too valuable and rare to\n lose—but we did not want him to stop worrying. The precautions we\n took to safeguard him, the armed men who went with him everywhere, the\n Accident Prone First Aid Kit with spare parts for him, blood, eyes,\n bone, nerves, arms, legs, and so forth, only emphasized to him the\n danger, not the rigidly secured safety.\n\n\n We like it that way.\n\n\n No one knows what causes an accident prone. The big insurance\n companies on Earth discovered them when they found out in the last part\n of the nineteenth century that ninety per cent of the accidents were\n happening to a few per cent of the people. They soon found out that\n these people were not malingering or trying to defraud anybody; they\n simply had accidents.", "The lighter was beginning to feel hot to my fingers and I started to\n worry about radiation leak, although they are supposed to be guaranteed\n perfectly shielded. I read that before the last exploration party had\n left, they had made the Moranite natives blood brothers. Then Bronoski\n knocked me down.\n\n\n Actually he put his hands in the small of my back and shoved politely\n but firmly. Just the same, I went face down into the moist dirt fast\n enough.\n\n\n I raised my head cautiously to see if Bronoski would shove it back\n down. He didn't.", "\"I had something more modest in mind, sir. Like being a captain.\"\n\n\n He surely must have known how I lived in comparison to him, so I didn't\n bother to remind him. I said, \"Have you ever seen a case of radiation\n poisoning?\"\n\n\n Baxter's jaw thrust forward. \"It must be pretty bad—but it isn't as\n violent as being eaten by floating fungi or being swallowed in an\n earthquake on some airless satellite.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" I agreed, \"it is much slower than any of those. It is unfortunate\n that we don't carry the necessary supplies to take care of Pile\n Drivers. Most of our medical supplies are in the Accident Prone First\n Aid Kit, for the exclusive use of the Prone. Have you ever taken a good\n look at that?\"", "I unlocked a desk drawer with my thumb print and drew out a duplicate\n of the report. I didn't have too much confidence in it and I hoped\n Charlie Baxter had less. Lots of things can change on a planet in fifty\n years, including its inhabitants.\nBronoski picked up Baxter's tracks and those of the two guards, Elliot\n and Sidney, with ultra-violet light. They were cold splotches of green\n fire against the rotting black peat of the jungle path. The whole dark,\n tangled mess smelled of sour mash, an intoxicating bourbon-type aroma.\n\n\n I jogged along following the big man more by instinct than anything\n else, ruining my eyes in an effort to refresh my memory as to the\n contents of the survey report in the cheery little glow from my\n cigarette lighter.", "The native slumped a little more than the others, as if he were more\n relaxed, and his eyes didn't goggle so much. He said, \"We do not\n understand,\" and the translation came through fine.\n\n\n Baxter swallowed and started forward to meet the alien halfway. His\n boot slipped on the wet scrub grass and I saw him do the desperate\n little dance to regain his balance that I had seen him make so many\n times; he could never stay on his feet.\n\n\n Before he could perform his usual pratfall, Sidney and Elliot were\n at his sides, supporting him by his thin biceps. He glared at them\n and shrugged them off, informing them wordlessly that he would have\n regained his balance if they had given him half a chance.\n\n\n \"We do not understand,\" the native repeated. \"Do you hold us in so much\n contempt as to claim\nall\nof us as your brothers?\"" ], [ "Bronoski swung his feet off the couch and stood more or less in what I\n might have taken for attention if I hadn't known him better. \"Sidney\n and Elliot escorted him down to the men's room, Captain Jackson.\"\n\n\n \"You mean,\" I said very quietly, \"that he isn't in his own bath?\"\n\n\n \"No sir,\" Bronoski said wearily. \"He told us it was out of order.\"\n\n\n I stifled the gurgle of rage that came into my throat and motioned\n Bronoski to follow me. The engines on the\nHilliard\nwere more likely\n to be out of order than the plumbing in the Accident Prone's suite. No\n effort was spared to insure comfort for the key man in the whole crew.\n\n\n One glance inside the compartment at the end of the corridor satisfied\n me. There wasn't a thing wrong with the plumbing, so Baxter must have\n had something in mind.", "\"Yes,\" I said uneasily. \"You have been thinking about this quite a lot\n while you lay there, haven't you, Baxter?\"", "I knocked politely on his hatch and straightened my tunic. I have\n always admired the men who can look starched in a uniform. Mine always\n seemed to wrinkle as soon as I put them around my raw-boned frame.\n Sometimes it is hard for me to keep a military appearance or manner. I\n got my commission during the Crisis ten years back, because of my work\n in the reserve unit that I created out of my employees in the glass\n works (glassware blown to order for laboratories).\n\n\n Someone said something through the door and I went inside.\n\n\n Bronoski looked at me over the top of his picture tape from where he\n lay on the sofa. No one else was in the compartment.\n\n\n \"Where is Baxter?\" I asked the hulking guard. My eyes were on the sofa.\n My own bed pulled out of the wall and was considerably inferior to\n this, much less Baxter's bed in the next cabin. But then I am only a\n captain.", "Baxter shivered. \"Yes, I've seen it. Several drums of blood, Type AB,\n my type. A half-dozen fresh-frozen assorted arms and legs, several rows\n of eyes, a hundred square feet of graftable skin, and a well-stocked\n tank of inner organs and a double-doored bank of nerve lengths.\n Impressive.\"\nI smiled. \"Sort of gives you a feeling of confidence and security,\n doesn't it? It would be unfortunate for anyone who had a great many\n accidents to be denied the supplies in that Kit, I should think. Of\n course, it is available only to those filling the position of Accident\n Prone and doing the work faithfully and according to orders.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" Charlie mumbled.", "Accident Prones have to stay worried and thinking, trying to break\n out of the jinx that traps them. Usually they come to discover this\n themselves, but by then, if they are real professionals with a career\n in the Service, they have framed the right attitude and they keep it.\nBaxter was a novice and very much of an amateur at the game. He didn't\n like the scoring system, but he was attached to the equipment and\n didn't want to lose it.", "I studied his face a moment. \"We had to blast off without an Assistant\n Pile Driver, j.g. It keeps getting harder and harder to recruit an APD,\n j.g. I suppose it's those reports about the eventual fatalities due to\n radiation leak back there where they are stationed.\"\n\n\n Baxter looked back at me steadily. \"There are a lot of rumors about the\n high mortality rate among Accident Prones in space, too.\"\nHe was right. We had started the rumors. We wanted the Prones alert,\n active and scheming to stay alive. More beneficial accidents that way.\n Actually, most Prones died of old age in space, which is more than\n could be said of them on Earth, where they didn't have the kind of\n protection the Service gives them.\n\n\n \"Look here, Baxter, do you like your quarters on this ship?\" I demanded.", "\"I had something more modest in mind, sir. Like being a captain.\"\n\n\n He surely must have known how I lived in comparison to him, so I didn't\n bother to remind him. I said, \"Have you ever seen a case of radiation\n poisoning?\"\n\n\n Baxter's jaw thrust forward. \"It must be pretty bad—but it isn't as\n violent as being eaten by floating fungi or being swallowed in an\n earthquake on some airless satellite.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" I agreed, \"it is much slower than any of those. It is unfortunate\n that we don't carry the necessary supplies to take care of Pile\n Drivers. Most of our medical supplies are in the Accident Prone First\n Aid Kit, for the exclusive use of the Prone. Have you ever taken a good\n look at that?\"", "\"You mean this master bedroom, the private heated swimming pool, the\n tennis court, bowling alley and all? Yes, sir, I like it.\"\n\n\n \"The Assistant Pile Driver has a cot near the fuel tanks.\"\n\n\n He gazed off over my left shoulder. \"I had a bed behind the furnace\n back on Earth before the building I was working in burned down.\"\n\n\n \"You wouldn't like this one any better than the one before.\"\n\n\n \"But there I would have some chance of\nadvancement\n. I don't want to\n be stuck in the rank of Accident Prone for life.\"\n\n\n I stared at him in frank amazement. \"Baxter, the only rank getting\n higher pay or more privileges than Prone is Grand Admiral of the\n Services, a position it would take you at least fifty years to reach if\n you had the luck and brains to make it, which you haven't.\"", "That one hurt him, but I saw I had put it to him as a challenge and\n he must have had some guilt feelings about accepting all that luxury\n for being nothing more than he was. \"I could fulfill the duties of an\n ordinary spaceman, sir.\"\n\n\n I snorted. \"It takes skill and training, Baxter. Your papers entitle\n you to one position and one only anywhere—Accident Prone of a\n spaceship complement. If you refuse to do your duties in that post, you\n can only become a ward of the Galaxy.\"\n\n\n His jaw line firmed. He had gone through a lot to keep from taking such\n abject charity. \"Isn't there,\" he asked in a milder tone, \"\nany\nother\n position I could serve in on this ship, sir?\"", "The other aliens didn't try to get to Baxter, but when they saw Elliot\n start to interfere with the two writhing opponents, they clawed him\n down into the grass. Sidney had been set to defend the Prone, not his\n fellow guard. They might have been all right if he had pulled a few\n off Elliot and let him get to work, except his training told him that\n the life of a guard did not matter a twit, but that a Prone must be\n defended. He started toward Charlie Baxter and was immediately pulled\n down by a spare dozen of the mob.\n\n\n It all meant one thing to me. The reaction of the crowd had been\n spontaneous, not planned. That meant that the struggle between Charlie\n and the spokesman was a high order of single combat with which it was\n unholy, indecent and dastardly to interfere.", "I barely halted a groan. He thought I resented him and was deliberately\n holding him down into the miserable overpaid, overfed job that was\n beneath him and the talents that so fitted him for the job.\n\n\n \"Request granted.\"\n\n\n He would learn.\n\n\n He had better.\n\n\n I started to sweat in a gush. He had\nreally\nbetter.", "All of this is properly recorded for the next expedition in the\n Admiralty files, and if it's any consolation, high officials and screen\n stars often visit you in the hospital.\nCharlie Baxter was like all of the other Prones, only worse. Moran III\n was sort of an unofficial test for him and he wanted to make good. We\n had blasted down in the black of night and were waiting for daylight to\n begin our re-survey of the planet. It was Charlie's first assignment,\n so we had an easy one—just seeing if anything new had developed in the\n last fifty years.\n\n\n Baxter's guard was doubled as soon as we set down, of course, and\n that made him fidgety. He had heard all the stories about how high\n the casualty rate was with Prones aboard spaceships and now he was\n beginning to get nervous.", "\"Doctor Selby, would you excuse us?\" I asked.\n\n\n The medic left with a bow and a surly expression. I turned to Baxter,\n rather wishing Selby could have stayed. It was a labor dispute and I\n was used to having a mediator present at bargaining sessions at my\n glassworks. But this was a military, not a civilian, spaceship.\n\n\n \"I have some facts of life to give you, Baxter,\" I told him. \"It\n is your duty to\nactively\nfulfill your position. You have to make\n decisions and plan courses of action. Do you figure on just walking\n around in that jungle until a tree falls on you?\"", "On a hunch of my own, I checked the supply lockers next to the airlock\n while Bronoski fired questions at my back. Three translator collars\n were missing. Baxter had left the spaceship and gone off into an alien\n night.\n\n\n Elliot and Sidney, the guards, were absolutely prohibited from\n interfering in any way with a Prone's decisions. They merely had to\n follow him and give their lives to save his, if necessary.\n\n\n I grabbed up a translator collar and tossed one to Bronoski. Then, just\n as we were getting into the airlock, I remembered something and ran\n back to the bridge.\n\n\n The thick brown envelope I had left on my desk was gone. I had shown\n it to Baxter and informed him that he should study it when he felt so\n inclined. He had seemed bored with the idea then, but he had come back\n for the report before leaving the ship. The envelope contained the\n exploration survey on Moran III made some fifty years before.", "The native slumped a little more than the others, as if he were more\n relaxed, and his eyes didn't goggle so much. He said, \"We do not\n understand,\" and the translation came through fine.\n\n\n Baxter swallowed and started forward to meet the alien halfway. His\n boot slipped on the wet scrub grass and I saw him do the desperate\n little dance to regain his balance that I had seen him make so many\n times; he could never stay on his feet.\n\n\n Before he could perform his usual pratfall, Sidney and Elliot were\n at his sides, supporting him by his thin biceps. He glared at them\n and shrugged them off, informing them wordlessly that he would have\n regained his balance if they had given him half a chance.\n\n\n \"We do not understand,\" the native repeated. \"Do you hold us in so much\n contempt as to claim\nall\nof us as your brothers?\"", "\"Now!\" I told Bronoski.\n\n\n He ran into the clearing and found four bodies sprawled out: Charlie\n Baxter, his two guards and the native spokesman.\n\n\n Charlie and the native were both technically unconscious, but they each\n had a stranglehold on each other, with Charlie getting the worst of it.\n\n\n Bronoski pried the two of them apart.\n\n\n While he roused Sidney and Elliot from their punch-drunk state, I\n examined Charlie. He had a nasty burn on his leg and two toes were\n gone. If there was an explosion anywhere around, he was bound to be in\n front of it.\n\n\n He was abruptly choking and blinking watery eyes.\n\n\n \"You did it, Charlie,\" I lied. \"You beat him fair and square.\"\nCharlie was in bed for the next few days while his grafted toes grew\n on, but he didn't seem to mind.", "I unlocked a desk drawer with my thumb print and drew out a duplicate\n of the report. I didn't have too much confidence in it and I hoped\n Charlie Baxter had less. Lots of things can change on a planet in fifty\n years, including its inhabitants.\nBronoski picked up Baxter's tracks and those of the two guards, Elliot\n and Sidney, with ultra-violet light. They were cold splotches of green\n fire against the rotting black peat of the jungle path. The whole dark,\n tangled mess smelled of sour mash, an intoxicating bourbon-type aroma.\n\n\n I jogged along following the big man more by instinct than anything\n else, ruining my eyes in an effort to refresh my memory as to the\n contents of the survey report in the cheery little glow from my\n cigarette lighter.", "I could fairly hear Bronoski's steel muscles preparing for battle as\n he saw his two mammoth pals go down under the press of numbers. A\n bristle-covered bullet of skull rose out of the grass beside me and it\n was my turn to grind his face in the muck.\n\n\n I had a nice little problem to contend with.\n\n\n I knew the reason Baxter had slipped out at night to be the first to\n greet the aliens. He was determined to be useful and necessary without\n fouling things up. I suppose Charlie had never felt valuable to anyone\n before in his life, but at the same time it hurt him to think that he\n was valuable only because he was a misfit.\n\n\n He had decided to take a positive approach. If he did things right,\n that would be as good proof of conditions as if he made the mistakes he\n was supposed to do. But he couldn't lick that doubt of himself that had\n been ground into him since birth and there he was, in trouble as always.", "I could see through the stringy, alcoholic grass fairly well and there\n were Baxter, Elliot and Sidney in the middle of a curious mob of aliens.\nCharlie Baxter had got pretty thin on his starvation diet back on\n Earth. He had grown a slight pot belly on the good food he drew down as\n Prone, but he was a fairly nice-looking young fellow. He looked even\n better in the pale moonlight, mixed amber and chartreuse from the twin\n satellites, and in contrast to the rest of the group.\n\n\n Elliot Charterson and Sidney Von Elderman were more or less type-cast\n as brawny, brainless bodyguards. Their friends described them as\n muscle-bound apes, but other people sometimes got insulting.\n\n\n The natives were less formidable. They made the slight lump of fat\n Charlie had at his waist look positively indecent.", "His clumsiness back on Earth had cost him every decent job he ever had.\n He had come all the way down the line until he was rated eligible only\n for the position of Prone aboard a spaceship. He had been poor—hungry,\n cold, wet, poor—and now he had luxury of a kind almost no one had in\n our era. He was drunk with it, passionately in love with it. It would\n cease to be quite so important after a few years of regular food, clean\n clothes and a solid roof to keep out the rain. But right now I knew he\n would come precariously close to killing to keep it. Or to being killed.\n\n\n He was ready to work." ], [ "Obviously, to claim to be a native's brother was to challenge him to a\n test of survival.\n\n\n My men learned to call themselves Last Brother in the usual bragging\n preliminaries that preceded every encounter. We got pretty good results\n with that approach and learned a lot about the changes in customs in\n the half century. But finally one of the men—either Frank Peirmonte or\n Sidney Charterson, who both claim to be the one—thought of calling the\n crew a Family and right away we began hitting it off famously.\n\n\n The Moranites figured we would kill each other off all except maybe\n one, whom they could handle themselves. They still had folk legends\n about the previous visit of Earthmen and they didn't trust us.\n\n\n Charlie Baxter's original mistake had supplied us with the Rosetta\n Stone we needed.\n\n\n Doctor Selby told me Charlie could get up finally, so I went to his\n suite and shook hands with him as he still lay in bed.", "I was trying to catch both versions from Charlie. I knew he was making\n a mistake and later I wanted to be sure I knew just what it was.\n Frankly, I would have used the blood-brother gambit myself. I had also\n read about it in the survey report, as I made a point of telling you.\n This just proves that Accident Prones haven't secured the franchise on\n mistakes. The difference is that I would have gone about it a lot more\n cautiously.\n\n\n \"Enough of this,\" the native said sharply. \"Do you claim to be\nmy\nbrother?\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" Charlie said.\n\n\n Dispassionately but automatically, the alien launched himself at the\n Prone's throat.\nCharterson and Von Elderman instantly went into action. Elliot\n Charterson jumped to Charlie's assistance while Sidney Von Elderman\n swung around to protect Charlie from the rest of the crowd.\n\n\n But the defense didn't work.", "Now maybe Bronoski and I could get him out ourselves by a direct\n approach, but Charlie would probably lose all self-confidence and sink\n down into accepting himself as an Accident Prone, a purely passive\n state.\n\n\n We couldn't have that. We had to have Charlie acting and thinking and\n therefore making mistakes whose bad examples we could profit by.\n\n\n As I lay on my belly thinking, Charlie was putting up a pretty good\n fight with the stringy native. He got in a few good punches, which\n seemed to mystify the native, who apparently knew nothing of boxing.\n Naturally Charlie then began wrestling a trained and deadly wrestler\n instead of continuing to box him.", "The native slumped a little more than the others, as if he were more\n relaxed, and his eyes didn't goggle so much. He said, \"We do not\n understand,\" and the translation came through fine.\n\n\n Baxter swallowed and started forward to meet the alien halfway. His\n boot slipped on the wet scrub grass and I saw him do the desperate\n little dance to regain his balance that I had seen him make so many\n times; he could never stay on his feet.\n\n\n Before he could perform his usual pratfall, Sidney and Elliot were\n at his sides, supporting him by his thin biceps. He glared at them\n and shrugged them off, informing them wordlessly that he would have\n regained his balance if they had given him half a chance.\n\n\n \"We do not understand,\" the native repeated. \"Do you hold us in so much\n contempt as to claim\nall\nof us as your brothers?\"", "\"All beings are brothers,\" Charlie said. \"We were made blood brothers\n by your people and my people several hundred of your years ago.\"\n\n\n Charlie's words were being translated into the native language, of\n course, but Bronoski's collars and mine switched them back into\n Terrestrial. I've read stories where explorers wearing translators\n couldn't understand each other, but that isn't the way it works. If you\n listen closely, you make out the words in your own language underneath,\n and if you pay very close attention, you can find minor semantic\n differences in the original words and the echo translated back from a\n native language.", "\"Now!\" I told Bronoski.\n\n\n He ran into the clearing and found four bodies sprawled out: Charlie\n Baxter, his two guards and the native spokesman.\n\n\n Charlie and the native were both technically unconscious, but they each\n had a stranglehold on each other, with Charlie getting the worst of it.\n\n\n Bronoski pried the two of them apart.\n\n\n While he roused Sidney and Elliot from their punch-drunk state, I\n examined Charlie. He had a nasty burn on his leg and two toes were\n gone. If there was an explosion anywhere around, he was bound to be in\n front of it.\n\n\n He was abruptly choking and blinking watery eyes.\n\n\n \"You did it, Charlie,\" I lied. \"You beat him fair and square.\"\nCharlie was in bed for the next few days while his grafted toes grew\n on, but he didn't seem to mind.", "I began to shake and at the same time to assure myself that I didn't\n have anything to worry about, that the precious Accident Prone would\n come out of it alive. After all, Elliot and Sidney were there to\n protect him. They had machine guns, flame-throwers, atomic grenades,\n and some really potent weapons. They could handle the situation. I\n didn't have a thing to worry about.\n\n\n So why couldn't I stop shaking?\n\n\n Maybe it was the way the natives were slowly but deliberately forming a\n circle about Charlie and his bodyguards.\nThe clothing of the Moranites hadn't changed much, I noticed. That was\n understandable. They had a non-mechanical civilization with scattered\n colonies that it would take a terrestrial season to tour by animal cart.", "An isolated culture like that couldn't change many of its customs.\n Then Charlie shouldn't have any trouble if he stuck to the findings on\n behavior in the report. Naturally, that meant by now he had discovered\n the fatal error.\n\n\n The three men were just standing still, waiting for the aliens to make\n the first move. The natives looked just as worried as Charlie and his\n guards, but then that might have been their natural expression.\n\n\n I jumped a little when the natives all began to talk at once. The\n mixture of sound was fed to me through my translator collar while the\n cybernetic unit back on board the spaceship tried decoding the words.\n It was too much of an overload and, infuriatingly, the sound was cut\n out altogether. I started to rip my collar off when the natives stopped\n screeching and a spokesman stepped forward.", "I could see through the stringy, alcoholic grass fairly well and there\n were Baxter, Elliot and Sidney in the middle of a curious mob of aliens.\nCharlie Baxter had got pretty thin on his starvation diet back on\n Earth. He had grown a slight pot belly on the good food he drew down as\n Prone, but he was a fairly nice-looking young fellow. He looked even\n better in the pale moonlight, mixed amber and chartreuse from the twin\n satellites, and in contrast to the rest of the group.\n\n\n Elliot Charterson and Sidney Von Elderman were more or less type-cast\n as brawny, brainless bodyguards. Their friends described them as\n muscle-bound apes, but other people sometimes got insulting.\n\n\n The natives were less formidable. They made the slight lump of fat\n Charlie had at his waist look positively indecent.", "The other aliens didn't try to get to Baxter, but when they saw Elliot\n start to interfere with the two writhing opponents, they clawed him\n down into the grass. Sidney had been set to defend the Prone, not his\n fellow guard. They might have been all right if he had pulled a few\n off Elliot and let him get to work, except his training told him that\n the life of a guard did not matter a twit, but that a Prone must be\n defended. He started toward Charlie Baxter and was immediately pulled\n down by a spare dozen of the mob.\n\n\n It all meant one thing to me. The reaction of the crowd had been\n spontaneous, not planned. That meant that the struggle between Charlie\n and the spokesman was a high order of single combat with which it was\n unholy, indecent and dastardly to interfere.", "The lighter was beginning to feel hot to my fingers and I started to\n worry about radiation leak, although they are supposed to be guaranteed\n perfectly shielded. I read that before the last exploration party had\n left, they had made the Moranite natives blood brothers. Then Bronoski\n knocked me down.\n\n\n Actually he put his hands in the small of my back and shoved politely\n but firmly. Just the same, I went face down into the moist dirt fast\n enough.\n\n\n I raised my head cautiously to see if Bronoski would shove it back\n down. He didn't.", "The natives were\nskinny\n. How skinny? Well, the only curves they had\n in their bodies were their bulging eyeballs. But just because they were\n thin didn't mean they were pushovers. Whips and garrotes aren't fat and\n these looked just as dangerous.\n\n\n Whenever I see aliens who are so humanoid, I remember all that Sunday\n supplement stuff about the Galaxy being colonized sometime by one\n humanlike race and the Ten Lost Tribes and so forth.\n\n\n They didn't give me much time to think about it just then. The natives\n looked unhappy—belligerently unhappy.", "I waited for the big moment when Charlie would be on his feet again\n and we could get on with the re-survey of the planet.\n\n\n \"Here goes,\" Charlie said and threw back his sheet.\n\n\n He swung his legs around and tottered to his feet. He was a little\n weak, but he took a few steps and seemed to make it okay.\n\n\n Then the inevitable happened. He snagged the edge of one of the Persian\n carpets on the bedroom floor with his big toe and started to fall.\n\n\n Selby and I both dived forward to catch him, but instead of doing the\n arm-waving dance for balance that we were both used to, he seemed to go\n limp and he plopped on the floor like a wet fish.\n\n\n Immediately he jumped to his feet, grinning. \"I finally learned to go\n limp when I take a fall, sir. It took a lot of practice. I imagine I'll\n save some broken bones that way.\"", "I could fairly hear Bronoski's steel muscles preparing for battle as\n he saw his two mammoth pals go down under the press of numbers. A\n bristle-covered bullet of skull rose out of the grass beside me and it\n was my turn to grind his face in the muck.\n\n\n I had a nice little problem to contend with.\n\n\n I knew the reason Baxter had slipped out at night to be the first to\n greet the aliens. He was determined to be useful and necessary without\n fouling things up. I suppose Charlie had never felt valuable to anyone\n before in his life, but at the same time it hurt him to think that he\n was valuable only because he was a misfit.\n\n\n He had decided to take a positive approach. If he did things right,\n that would be as good proof of conditions as if he made the mistakes he\n was supposed to do. But he couldn't lick that doubt of himself that had\n been ground into him since birth and there he was, in trouble as always.", "I got the shield off my cigarette lighter and jerked out the dinky\n little damper rods for the pile and started easing the two little\n bricks toward each other with the point of my lead pencil.\n\n\n I heard something that resembled a death rattle come from Charlie's\n throat as the fingers of the alien closed down on it and my hand\n twitched. A blooming light stabbed at my eyes and I flicked the lighter\n away from me.\n\n\n The explosion was a dud.\n\n\n It lit up the jungle for a radius of half a mile like a giant\n flashbulb, but it exploded only about ten times as loud as a pistol\n shot. The mass hadn't been slapped together hard enough or held long\n enough to do any real damage.\n\n\n The natives weren't fools, though. They got out of there fast. I wished\n I could have gone with them. There was undoubtedly an unhealthy amount\n of radiation hanging around.", "We knew enough not to use the blood-brothers approach after fifty years\n and therefore it did not take us long to find out why we shouldn't.\n\n\n The Moran III culture was isolated in small colonies, but we had\n forgotten that a generation of the intelligent life-forms was only\n three Earth months. It seems a waste at first thought, but all things\n are relative. The Crystopeds of New Lichtenstein, for instance, have a\n life span of twenty thousand Terrestrial years.\n\n\n With so fast a turnover in Moran III individuals, there was bound to be\n a lot of variables introduced, resulting in change.\n\n\n The idea that seemed to be in favor was the survival of the fittest.\n Since the natives were born in litters, with single births extremely\n rare, this concept was practiced from the first. Unless they were\n particularly cunning, the runts of the litter did not survive the first\n year and rarely more than one sibling ever saw adulthood.", "All of this is properly recorded for the next expedition in the\n Admiralty files, and if it's any consolation, high officials and screen\n stars often visit you in the hospital.\nCharlie Baxter was like all of the other Prones, only worse. Moran III\n was sort of an unofficial test for him and he wanted to make good. We\n had blasted down in the black of night and were waiting for daylight to\n begin our re-survey of the planet. It was Charlie's first assignment,\n so we had an easy one—just seeing if anything new had developed in the\n last fifty years.\n\n\n Baxter's guard was doubled as soon as we set down, of course, and\n that made him fidgety. He had heard all the stories about how high\n the casualty rate was with Prones aboard spaceships and now he was\n beginning to get nervous.", "Actually Charlie was safer in space than he would be back on Earth\n with all those cars and people. We could have told him how the Service\n practically never lost a Prone—they were too valuable and rare to\n lose—but we did not want him to stop worrying. The precautions we\n took to safeguard him, the armed men who went with him everywhere, the\n Accident Prone First Aid Kit with spare parts for him, blood, eyes,\n bone, nerves, arms, legs, and so forth, only emphasized to him the\n danger, not the rigidly secured safety.\n\n\n We like it that way.\n\n\n No one knows what causes an accident prone. The big insurance\n companies on Earth discovered them when they found out in the last part\n of the nineteenth century that ninety per cent of the accidents were\n happening to a few per cent of the people. They soon found out that\n these people were not malingering or trying to defraud anybody; they\n simply had accidents.", "I unlocked a desk drawer with my thumb print and drew out a duplicate\n of the report. I didn't have too much confidence in it and I hoped\n Charlie Baxter had less. Lots of things can change on a planet in fifty\n years, including its inhabitants.\nBronoski picked up Baxter's tracks and those of the two guards, Elliot\n and Sidney, with ultra-violet light. They were cold splotches of green\n fire against the rotting black peat of the jungle path. The whole dark,\n tangled mess smelled of sour mash, an intoxicating bourbon-type aroma.\n\n\n I jogged along following the big man more by instinct than anything\n else, ruining my eyes in an effort to refresh my memory as to the\n contents of the survey report in the cheery little glow from my\n cigarette lighter.", "Baxter shivered. \"Yes, I've seen it. Several drums of blood, Type AB,\n my type. A half-dozen fresh-frozen assorted arms and legs, several rows\n of eyes, a hundred square feet of graftable skin, and a well-stocked\n tank of inner organs and a double-doored bank of nerve lengths.\n Impressive.\"\nI smiled. \"Sort of gives you a feeling of confidence and security,\n doesn't it? It would be unfortunate for anyone who had a great many\n accidents to be denied the supplies in that Kit, I should think. Of\n course, it is available only to those filling the position of Accident\n Prone and doing the work faithfully and according to orders.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" Charlie mumbled." ], [ "Actually Charlie was safer in space than he would be back on Earth\n with all those cars and people. We could have told him how the Service\n practically never lost a Prone—they were too valuable and rare to\n lose—but we did not want him to stop worrying. The precautions we\n took to safeguard him, the armed men who went with him everywhere, the\n Accident Prone First Aid Kit with spare parts for him, blood, eyes,\n bone, nerves, arms, legs, and so forth, only emphasized to him the\n danger, not the rigidly secured safety.\n\n\n We like it that way.\n\n\n No one knows what causes an accident prone. The big insurance\n companies on Earth discovered them when they found out in the last part\n of the nineteenth century that ninety per cent of the accidents were\n happening to a few per cent of the people. They soon found out that\n these people were not malingering or trying to defraud anybody; they\n simply had accidents.", "He sat down on the edge of the bed and examined the pattern in the\n carpet. \"Not exactly, sir. But I get tired of people waiting for me to\n make a fool out of myself. I have a natural talent for—for\nCreative\n Negativism\n. That's it. And I should be able to exercise my talent with\ndignity\n.\"\n\n\n \"If you don't actively fulfill the obligations of a Prone, you aren't\n allowed the luxuries and privileges that go with the position. Do you\n think you would like to be without your armed guards to protect you\n every moment?\"\n\n\n \"I can take care of myself, sir!\"\n\n\n I paused and came up with my best argument. \"How would you like to\n live like an ordinary spaceman, without rare steaks and clean sheets?\n Because if you're not our Accident Prone, you're just another crew\n member, you know.\"", "\"Yes, sir. I see I've been fighting this thing too hard. I am an\n Accident Prone and I might as well accept it. Why not? I seem to always\n muddle through some way, like out there in the jungle, so why should I\n worry or feel\nembarrassed\n?\nI know I can't change\nit.\"\nI was beginning to do some worrying of my own. Things weren't working\n out the way they should. We were supposed to see that Prones kept\n developing a certain amount of doomed self-confidence, but they\n couldn't be allowed to believe they were infallible Prones. A Prone's\n value lies in his active and constructive effort to do the right thing.\n If he merely accepts being a Prone, his accidents gain us nothing. We\n can't profit from mistakes that come about from resignation or laughing\n off blunders or, as in this case, conviction that he never got himself\n into anything he couldn't get himself out of.", "I suppose everything from psychology to extra-sensory perception has\n been used to explain or explain away prones. I have my own ideas. I\n think an accident prone is simply a super-genius with a super-doubt of\n himself.\n\n\n I believe accident prones have a better system of calculation than a\n cybernetic machine. They can take\neverything\ninto consideration—the\n humidity, their blood sugar, the expression on the other guy's\n face—and somewhere in the corners and attic of their brain they\ninfallibly\nmake the\nright\nchoice in any given situation. Then,\n because they are incapable of trusting themselves, they do exactly the\n opposite.\n\n\n I felt a little sorry for Charlie Baxter, but I was Captain of the\nHilliard\nand my job was to keep him worried and trying. The worst\n thing that can happen is for a Prone to give up and let himself sink\n into the fate of being a Prone. He will wear the rut right down into a\n tomb.", "Accident Prones have to stay worried and thinking, trying to break\n out of the jinx that traps them. Usually they come to discover this\n themselves, but by then, if they are real professionals with a career\n in the Service, they have framed the right attitude and they keep it.\nBaxter was a novice and very much of an amateur at the game. He didn't\n like the scoring system, but he was attached to the equipment and\n didn't want to lose it.", "Now maybe Bronoski and I could get him out ourselves by a direct\n approach, but Charlie would probably lose all self-confidence and sink\n down into accepting himself as an Accident Prone, a purely passive\n state.\n\n\n We couldn't have that. We had to have Charlie acting and thinking and\n therefore making mistakes whose bad examples we could profit by.\n\n\n As I lay on my belly thinking, Charlie was putting up a pretty good\n fight with the stringy native. He got in a few good punches, which\n seemed to mystify the native, who apparently knew nothing of boxing.\n Naturally Charlie then began wrestling a trained and deadly wrestler\n instead of continuing to box him.", "Bronoski swung his feet off the couch and stood more or less in what I\n might have taken for attention if I hadn't known him better. \"Sidney\n and Elliot escorted him down to the men's room, Captain Jackson.\"\n\n\n \"You mean,\" I said very quietly, \"that he isn't in his own bath?\"\n\n\n \"No sir,\" Bronoski said wearily. \"He told us it was out of order.\"\n\n\n I stifled the gurgle of rage that came into my throat and motioned\n Bronoski to follow me. The engines on the\nHilliard\nwere more likely\n to be out of order than the plumbing in the Accident Prone's suite. No\n effort was spared to insure comfort for the key man in the whole crew.\n\n\n One glance inside the compartment at the end of the corridor satisfied\n me. There wasn't a thing wrong with the plumbing, so Baxter must have\n had something in mind.", "I was trying to catch both versions from Charlie. I knew he was making\n a mistake and later I wanted to be sure I knew just what it was.\n Frankly, I would have used the blood-brother gambit myself. I had also\n read about it in the survey report, as I made a point of telling you.\n This just proves that Accident Prones haven't secured the franchise on\n mistakes. The difference is that I would have gone about it a lot more\n cautiously.\n\n\n \"Enough of this,\" the native said sharply. \"Do you claim to be\nmy\nbrother?\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" Charlie said.\n\n\n Dispassionately but automatically, the alien launched himself at the\n Prone's throat.\nCharterson and Von Elderman instantly went into action. Elliot\n Charterson jumped to Charlie's assistance while Sidney Von Elderman\n swung around to protect Charlie from the rest of the crowd.\n\n\n But the defense didn't work.", "the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nThe man worth while couldn't be allowed\n \nto smile ... if he ever laughed at himself,\n \nthe entire ship and crew were as good as dead!\nIf there is anything I am afraid of, and there probably is, it is\n having a rookie Accident Prone, half-starved from the unemployment\n lines, aboard my spaceship. They are always so anxious to please. They\n remember what it is like to live in a rathole behind an apartment\n house furnace eating day-old bread and wilted vegetables, which doesn't\n compare favorably to the Admiralty-style staterooms and steak and\n caviar they draw down in the Exploration Service.", "The other aliens didn't try to get to Baxter, but when they saw Elliot\n start to interfere with the two writhing opponents, they clawed him\n down into the grass. Sidney had been set to defend the Prone, not his\n fellow guard. They might have been all right if he had pulled a few\n off Elliot and let him get to work, except his training told him that\n the life of a guard did not matter a twit, but that a Prone must be\n defended. He started toward Charlie Baxter and was immediately pulled\n down by a spare dozen of the mob.\n\n\n It all meant one thing to me. The reaction of the crowd had been\n spontaneous, not planned. That meant that the struggle between Charlie\n and the spokesman was a high order of single combat with which it was\n unholy, indecent and dastardly to interfere.", "I began to shake and at the same time to assure myself that I didn't\n have anything to worry about, that the precious Accident Prone would\n come out of it alive. After all, Elliot and Sidney were there to\n protect him. They had machine guns, flame-throwers, atomic grenades,\n and some really potent weapons. They could handle the situation. I\n didn't have a thing to worry about.\n\n\n So why couldn't I stop shaking?\n\n\n Maybe it was the way the natives were slowly but deliberately forming a\n circle about Charlie and his bodyguards.\nThe clothing of the Moranites hadn't changed much, I noticed. That was\n understandable. They had a non-mechanical civilization with scattered\n colonies that it would take a terrestrial season to tour by animal cart.", "I studied his face a moment. \"We had to blast off without an Assistant\n Pile Driver, j.g. It keeps getting harder and harder to recruit an APD,\n j.g. I suppose it's those reports about the eventual fatalities due to\n radiation leak back there where they are stationed.\"\n\n\n Baxter looked back at me steadily. \"There are a lot of rumors about the\n high mortality rate among Accident Prones in space, too.\"\nHe was right. We had started the rumors. We wanted the Prones alert,\n active and scheming to stay alive. More beneficial accidents that way.\n Actually, most Prones died of old age in space, which is more than\n could be said of them on Earth, where they didn't have the kind of\n protection the Service gives them.\n\n\n \"Look here, Baxter, do you like your quarters on this ship?\" I demanded.", "His clumsiness back on Earth had cost him every decent job he ever had.\n He had come all the way down the line until he was rated eligible only\n for the position of Prone aboard a spaceship. He had been poor—hungry,\n cold, wet, poor—and now he had luxury of a kind almost no one had in\n our era. He was drunk with it, passionately in love with it. It would\n cease to be quite so important after a few years of regular food, clean\n clothes and a solid roof to keep out the rain. But right now I knew he\n would come precariously close to killing to keep it. Or to being killed.\n\n\n He was ready to work.", "Accident Prones can find out what is wrong with a planet as easily\n as falling off a log, which they will if there is one lonely tree on\n the whole world. A single pit of quicksand on a veritable Eden of a\n planet and a Prone will be knee-deep in it within an hour of blastdown.\n If an alien race will smile patronizingly on your heroic attempts at\n genocide, but be offended into a murderous religious frenzy if you blow\n your nose, you can take the long end of the odds that the Prone will\n almost immediately catch a cold.", "I knocked politely on his hatch and straightened my tunic. I have\n always admired the men who can look starched in a uniform. Mine always\n seemed to wrinkle as soon as I put them around my raw-boned frame.\n Sometimes it is hard for me to keep a military appearance or manner. I\n got my commission during the Crisis ten years back, because of my work\n in the reserve unit that I created out of my employees in the glass\n works (glassware blown to order for laboratories).\n\n\n Someone said something through the door and I went inside.\n\n\n Bronoski looked at me over the top of his picture tape from where he\n lay on the sofa. No one else was in the compartment.\n\n\n \"Where is Baxter?\" I asked the hulking guard. My eyes were on the sofa.\n My own bed pulled out of the wall and was considerably inferior to\n this, much less Baxter's bed in the next cabin. But then I am only a\n captain.", "\"I had something more modest in mind, sir. Like being a captain.\"\n\n\n He surely must have known how I lived in comparison to him, so I didn't\n bother to remind him. I said, \"Have you ever seen a case of radiation\n poisoning?\"\n\n\n Baxter's jaw thrust forward. \"It must be pretty bad—but it isn't as\n violent as being eaten by floating fungi or being swallowed in an\n earthquake on some airless satellite.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" I agreed, \"it is much slower than any of those. It is unfortunate\n that we don't carry the necessary supplies to take care of Pile\n Drivers. Most of our medical supplies are in the Accident Prone First\n Aid Kit, for the exclusive use of the Prone. Have you ever taken a good\n look at that?\"", "\"You mean this master bedroom, the private heated swimming pool, the\n tennis court, bowling alley and all? Yes, sir, I like it.\"\n\n\n \"The Assistant Pile Driver has a cot near the fuel tanks.\"\n\n\n He gazed off over my left shoulder. \"I had a bed behind the furnace\n back on Earth before the building I was working in burned down.\"\n\n\n \"You wouldn't like this one any better than the one before.\"\n\n\n \"But there I would have some chance of\nadvancement\n. I don't want to\n be stuck in the rank of Accident Prone for life.\"\n\n\n I stared at him in frank amazement. \"Baxter, the only rank getting\n higher pay or more privileges than Prone is Grand Admiral of the\n Services, a position it would take you at least fifty years to reach if\n you had the luck and brains to make it, which you haven't.\"", "That one hurt him, but I saw I had put it to him as a challenge and\n he must have had some guilt feelings about accepting all that luxury\n for being nothing more than he was. \"I could fulfill the duties of an\n ordinary spaceman, sir.\"\n\n\n I snorted. \"It takes skill and training, Baxter. Your papers entitle\n you to one position and one only anywhere—Accident Prone of a\n spaceship complement. If you refuse to do your duties in that post, you\n can only become a ward of the Galaxy.\"\n\n\n His jaw line firmed. He had gone through a lot to keep from taking such\n abject charity. \"Isn't there,\" he asked in a milder tone, \"\nany\nother\n position I could serve in on this ship, sir?\"", "All of this is properly recorded for the next expedition in the\n Admiralty files, and if it's any consolation, high officials and screen\n stars often visit you in the hospital.\nCharlie Baxter was like all of the other Prones, only worse. Moran III\n was sort of an unofficial test for him and he wanted to make good. We\n had blasted down in the black of night and were waiting for daylight to\n begin our re-survey of the planet. It was Charlie's first assignment,\n so we had an easy one—just seeing if anything new had developed in the\n last fifty years.\n\n\n Baxter's guard was doubled as soon as we set down, of course, and\n that made him fidgety. He had heard all the stories about how high\n the casualty rate was with Prones aboard spaceships and now he was\n beginning to get nervous.", "I waited for the big moment when Charlie would be on his feet again\n and we could get on with the re-survey of the planet.\n\n\n \"Here goes,\" Charlie said and threw back his sheet.\n\n\n He swung his legs around and tottered to his feet. He was a little\n weak, but he took a few steps and seemed to make it okay.\n\n\n Then the inevitable happened. He snagged the edge of one of the Persian\n carpets on the bedroom floor with his big toe and started to fall.\n\n\n Selby and I both dived forward to catch him, but instead of doing the\n arm-waving dance for balance that we were both used to, he seemed to go\n limp and he plopped on the floor like a wet fish.\n\n\n Immediately he jumped to his feet, grinning. \"I finally learned to go\n limp when I take a fall, sir. It took a lot of practice. I imagine I'll\n save some broken bones that way.\"" ], [ "The other aliens didn't try to get to Baxter, but when they saw Elliot\n start to interfere with the two writhing opponents, they clawed him\n down into the grass. Sidney had been set to defend the Prone, not his\n fellow guard. They might have been all right if he had pulled a few\n off Elliot and let him get to work, except his training told him that\n the life of a guard did not matter a twit, but that a Prone must be\n defended. He started toward Charlie Baxter and was immediately pulled\n down by a spare dozen of the mob.\n\n\n It all meant one thing to me. The reaction of the crowd had been\n spontaneous, not planned. That meant that the struggle between Charlie\n and the spokesman was a high order of single combat with which it was\n unholy, indecent and dastardly to interfere.", "I got the shield off my cigarette lighter and jerked out the dinky\n little damper rods for the pile and started easing the two little\n bricks toward each other with the point of my lead pencil.\n\n\n I heard something that resembled a death rattle come from Charlie's\n throat as the fingers of the alien closed down on it and my hand\n twitched. A blooming light stabbed at my eyes and I flicked the lighter\n away from me.\n\n\n The explosion was a dud.\n\n\n It lit up the jungle for a radius of half a mile like a giant\n flashbulb, but it exploded only about ten times as loud as a pistol\n shot. The mass hadn't been slapped together hard enough or held long\n enough to do any real damage.\n\n\n The natives weren't fools, though. They got out of there fast. I wished\n I could have gone with them. There was undoubtedly an unhealthy amount\n of radiation hanging around.", "An isolated culture like that couldn't change many of its customs.\n Then Charlie shouldn't have any trouble if he stuck to the findings on\n behavior in the report. Naturally, that meant by now he had discovered\n the fatal error.\n\n\n The three men were just standing still, waiting for the aliens to make\n the first move. The natives looked just as worried as Charlie and his\n guards, but then that might have been their natural expression.\n\n\n I jumped a little when the natives all began to talk at once. The\n mixture of sound was fed to me through my translator collar while the\n cybernetic unit back on board the spaceship tried decoding the words.\n It was too much of an overload and, infuriatingly, the sound was cut\n out altogether. I started to rip my collar off when the natives stopped\n screeching and a spokesman stepped forward.", "The natives were\nskinny\n. How skinny? Well, the only curves they had\n in their bodies were their bulging eyeballs. But just because they were\n thin didn't mean they were pushovers. Whips and garrotes aren't fat and\n these looked just as dangerous.\n\n\n Whenever I see aliens who are so humanoid, I remember all that Sunday\n supplement stuff about the Galaxy being colonized sometime by one\n humanlike race and the Ten Lost Tribes and so forth.\n\n\n They didn't give me much time to think about it just then. The natives\n looked unhappy—belligerently unhappy.", "On a hunch of my own, I checked the supply lockers next to the airlock\n while Bronoski fired questions at my back. Three translator collars\n were missing. Baxter had left the spaceship and gone off into an alien\n night.\n\n\n Elliot and Sidney, the guards, were absolutely prohibited from\n interfering in any way with a Prone's decisions. They merely had to\n follow him and give their lives to save his, if necessary.\n\n\n I grabbed up a translator collar and tossed one to Bronoski. Then, just\n as we were getting into the airlock, I remembered something and ran\n back to the bridge.\n\n\n The thick brown envelope I had left on my desk was gone. I had shown\n it to Baxter and informed him that he should study it when he felt so\n inclined. He had seemed bored with the idea then, but he had come back\n for the report before leaving the ship. The envelope contained the\n exploration survey on Moran III made some fifty years before.", "I was trying to catch both versions from Charlie. I knew he was making\n a mistake and later I wanted to be sure I knew just what it was.\n Frankly, I would have used the blood-brother gambit myself. I had also\n read about it in the survey report, as I made a point of telling you.\n This just proves that Accident Prones haven't secured the franchise on\n mistakes. The difference is that I would have gone about it a lot more\n cautiously.\n\n\n \"Enough of this,\" the native said sharply. \"Do you claim to be\nmy\nbrother?\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" Charlie said.\n\n\n Dispassionately but automatically, the alien launched himself at the\n Prone's throat.\nCharterson and Von Elderman instantly went into action. Elliot\n Charterson jumped to Charlie's assistance while Sidney Von Elderman\n swung around to protect Charlie from the rest of the crowd.\n\n\n But the defense didn't work.", "I knocked politely on his hatch and straightened my tunic. I have\n always admired the men who can look starched in a uniform. Mine always\n seemed to wrinkle as soon as I put them around my raw-boned frame.\n Sometimes it is hard for me to keep a military appearance or manner. I\n got my commission during the Crisis ten years back, because of my work\n in the reserve unit that I created out of my employees in the glass\n works (glassware blown to order for laboratories).\n\n\n Someone said something through the door and I went inside.\n\n\n Bronoski looked at me over the top of his picture tape from where he\n lay on the sofa. No one else was in the compartment.\n\n\n \"Where is Baxter?\" I asked the hulking guard. My eyes were on the sofa.\n My own bed pulled out of the wall and was considerably inferior to\n this, much less Baxter's bed in the next cabin. But then I am only a\n captain.", "Obviously, to claim to be a native's brother was to challenge him to a\n test of survival.\n\n\n My men learned to call themselves Last Brother in the usual bragging\n preliminaries that preceded every encounter. We got pretty good results\n with that approach and learned a lot about the changes in customs in\n the half century. But finally one of the men—either Frank Peirmonte or\n Sidney Charterson, who both claim to be the one—thought of calling the\n crew a Family and right away we began hitting it off famously.\n\n\n The Moranites figured we would kill each other off all except maybe\n one, whom they could handle themselves. They still had folk legends\n about the previous visit of Earthmen and they didn't trust us.\n\n\n Charlie Baxter's original mistake had supplied us with the Rosetta\n Stone we needed.\n\n\n Doctor Selby told me Charlie could get up finally, so I went to his\n suite and shook hands with him as he still lay in bed.", "Bronoski swung his feet off the couch and stood more or less in what I\n might have taken for attention if I hadn't known him better. \"Sidney\n and Elliot escorted him down to the men's room, Captain Jackson.\"\n\n\n \"You mean,\" I said very quietly, \"that he isn't in his own bath?\"\n\n\n \"No sir,\" Bronoski said wearily. \"He told us it was out of order.\"\n\n\n I stifled the gurgle of rage that came into my throat and motioned\n Bronoski to follow me. The engines on the\nHilliard\nwere more likely\n to be out of order than the plumbing in the Accident Prone's suite. No\n effort was spared to insure comfort for the key man in the whole crew.\n\n\n One glance inside the compartment at the end of the corridor satisfied\n me. There wasn't a thing wrong with the plumbing, so Baxter must have\n had something in mind.", "\"Now!\" I told Bronoski.\n\n\n He ran into the clearing and found four bodies sprawled out: Charlie\n Baxter, his two guards and the native spokesman.\n\n\n Charlie and the native were both technically unconscious, but they each\n had a stranglehold on each other, with Charlie getting the worst of it.\n\n\n Bronoski pried the two of them apart.\n\n\n While he roused Sidney and Elliot from their punch-drunk state, I\n examined Charlie. He had a nasty burn on his leg and two toes were\n gone. If there was an explosion anywhere around, he was bound to be in\n front of it.\n\n\n He was abruptly choking and blinking watery eyes.\n\n\n \"You did it, Charlie,\" I lied. \"You beat him fair and square.\"\nCharlie was in bed for the next few days while his grafted toes grew\n on, but he didn't seem to mind.", "His clumsiness back on Earth had cost him every decent job he ever had.\n He had come all the way down the line until he was rated eligible only\n for the position of Prone aboard a spaceship. He had been poor—hungry,\n cold, wet, poor—and now he had luxury of a kind almost no one had in\n our era. He was drunk with it, passionately in love with it. It would\n cease to be quite so important after a few years of regular food, clean\n clothes and a solid roof to keep out the rain. But right now I knew he\n would come precariously close to killing to keep it. Or to being killed.\n\n\n He was ready to work.", "\"Doctor Selby, would you excuse us?\" I asked.\n\n\n The medic left with a bow and a surly expression. I turned to Baxter,\n rather wishing Selby could have stayed. It was a labor dispute and I\n was used to having a mediator present at bargaining sessions at my\n glassworks. But this was a military, not a civilian, spaceship.\n\n\n \"I have some facts of life to give you, Baxter,\" I told him. \"It\n is your duty to\nactively\nfulfill your position. You have to make\n decisions and plan courses of action. Do you figure on just walking\n around in that jungle until a tree falls on you?\"", "\"I had something more modest in mind, sir. Like being a captain.\"\n\n\n He surely must have known how I lived in comparison to him, so I didn't\n bother to remind him. I said, \"Have you ever seen a case of radiation\n poisoning?\"\n\n\n Baxter's jaw thrust forward. \"It must be pretty bad—but it isn't as\n violent as being eaten by floating fungi or being swallowed in an\n earthquake on some airless satellite.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" I agreed, \"it is much slower than any of those. It is unfortunate\n that we don't carry the necessary supplies to take care of Pile\n Drivers. Most of our medical supplies are in the Accident Prone First\n Aid Kit, for the exclusive use of the Prone. Have you ever taken a good\n look at that?\"", "The lighter was beginning to feel hot to my fingers and I started to\n worry about radiation leak, although they are supposed to be guaranteed\n perfectly shielded. I read that before the last exploration party had\n left, they had made the Moranite natives blood brothers. Then Bronoski\n knocked me down.\n\n\n Actually he put his hands in the small of my back and shoved politely\n but firmly. Just the same, I went face down into the moist dirt fast\n enough.\n\n\n I raised my head cautiously to see if Bronoski would shove it back\n down. He didn't.", "I began to shake and at the same time to assure myself that I didn't\n have anything to worry about, that the precious Accident Prone would\n come out of it alive. After all, Elliot and Sidney were there to\n protect him. They had machine guns, flame-throwers, atomic grenades,\n and some really potent weapons. They could handle the situation. I\n didn't have a thing to worry about.\n\n\n So why couldn't I stop shaking?\n\n\n Maybe it was the way the natives were slowly but deliberately forming a\n circle about Charlie and his bodyguards.\nThe clothing of the Moranites hadn't changed much, I noticed. That was\n understandable. They had a non-mechanical civilization with scattered\n colonies that it would take a terrestrial season to tour by animal cart.", "I grabbed Bronoski by his puffy ear and hissed some commands into\n it. He fumbled out a book of matches and lit one for me. By the tiny\n flicker of light, I began tearing apart my lighter.\nI suppose you have played \"tickling the dragon's tail\" when you were a\n kid. I did. I guess all kids have. You know, worrying around two lumps\n of fissionable material and just keeping them from uniting and making\n a critical mass that will result in an explosion or lethal radiation.\n I caught my oldest boy doing it one day back on Earth and gave him a\n good tanning for it. Actually I thought it showed he had a lot of grit.\n Every real boy likes to tickle the dragon's tail.\n\n\n Maybe I was a little old for it, but that's what I was doing there in\n the Moran III jungle.", "All of this is properly recorded for the next expedition in the\n Admiralty files, and if it's any consolation, high officials and screen\n stars often visit you in the hospital.\nCharlie Baxter was like all of the other Prones, only worse. Moran III\n was sort of an unofficial test for him and he wanted to make good. We\n had blasted down in the black of night and were waiting for daylight to\n begin our re-survey of the planet. It was Charlie's first assignment,\n so we had an easy one—just seeing if anything new had developed in the\n last fifty years.\n\n\n Baxter's guard was doubled as soon as we set down, of course, and\n that made him fidgety. He had heard all the stories about how high\n the casualty rate was with Prones aboard spaceships and now he was\n beginning to get nervous.", "The native slumped a little more than the others, as if he were more\n relaxed, and his eyes didn't goggle so much. He said, \"We do not\n understand,\" and the translation came through fine.\n\n\n Baxter swallowed and started forward to meet the alien halfway. His\n boot slipped on the wet scrub grass and I saw him do the desperate\n little dance to regain his balance that I had seen him make so many\n times; he could never stay on his feet.\n\n\n Before he could perform his usual pratfall, Sidney and Elliot were\n at his sides, supporting him by his thin biceps. He glared at them\n and shrugged them off, informing them wordlessly that he would have\n regained his balance if they had given him half a chance.\n\n\n \"We do not understand,\" the native repeated. \"Do you hold us in so much\n contempt as to claim\nall\nof us as your brothers?\"", "I could see through the stringy, alcoholic grass fairly well and there\n were Baxter, Elliot and Sidney in the middle of a curious mob of aliens.\nCharlie Baxter had got pretty thin on his starvation diet back on\n Earth. He had grown a slight pot belly on the good food he drew down as\n Prone, but he was a fairly nice-looking young fellow. He looked even\n better in the pale moonlight, mixed amber and chartreuse from the twin\n satellites, and in contrast to the rest of the group.\n\n\n Elliot Charterson and Sidney Von Elderman were more or less type-cast\n as brawny, brainless bodyguards. Their friends described them as\n muscle-bound apes, but other people sometimes got insulting.\n\n\n The natives were less formidable. They made the slight lump of fat\n Charlie had at his waist look positively indecent.", "I could fairly hear Bronoski's steel muscles preparing for battle as\n he saw his two mammoth pals go down under the press of numbers. A\n bristle-covered bullet of skull rose out of the grass beside me and it\n was my turn to grind his face in the muck.\n\n\n I had a nice little problem to contend with.\n\n\n I knew the reason Baxter had slipped out at night to be the first to\n greet the aliens. He was determined to be useful and necessary without\n fouling things up. I suppose Charlie had never felt valuable to anyone\n before in his life, but at the same time it hurt him to think that he\n was valuable only because he was a misfit.\n\n\n He had decided to take a positive approach. If he did things right,\n that would be as good proof of conditions as if he made the mistakes he\n was supposed to do. But he couldn't lick that doubt of himself that had\n been ground into him since birth and there he was, in trouble as always." ], [ "Bronoski swung his feet off the couch and stood more or less in what I\n might have taken for attention if I hadn't known him better. \"Sidney\n and Elliot escorted him down to the men's room, Captain Jackson.\"\n\n\n \"You mean,\" I said very quietly, \"that he isn't in his own bath?\"\n\n\n \"No sir,\" Bronoski said wearily. \"He told us it was out of order.\"\n\n\n I stifled the gurgle of rage that came into my throat and motioned\n Bronoski to follow me. The engines on the\nHilliard\nwere more likely\n to be out of order than the plumbing in the Accident Prone's suite. No\n effort was spared to insure comfort for the key man in the whole crew.\n\n\n One glance inside the compartment at the end of the corridor satisfied\n me. There wasn't a thing wrong with the plumbing, so Baxter must have\n had something in mind.", "I knocked politely on his hatch and straightened my tunic. I have\n always admired the men who can look starched in a uniform. Mine always\n seemed to wrinkle as soon as I put them around my raw-boned frame.\n Sometimes it is hard for me to keep a military appearance or manner. I\n got my commission during the Crisis ten years back, because of my work\n in the reserve unit that I created out of my employees in the glass\n works (glassware blown to order for laboratories).\n\n\n Someone said something through the door and I went inside.\n\n\n Bronoski looked at me over the top of his picture tape from where he\n lay on the sofa. No one else was in the compartment.\n\n\n \"Where is Baxter?\" I asked the hulking guard. My eyes were on the sofa.\n My own bed pulled out of the wall and was considerably inferior to\n this, much less Baxter's bed in the next cabin. But then I am only a\n captain.", "\"Now!\" I told Bronoski.\n\n\n He ran into the clearing and found four bodies sprawled out: Charlie\n Baxter, his two guards and the native spokesman.\n\n\n Charlie and the native were both technically unconscious, but they each\n had a stranglehold on each other, with Charlie getting the worst of it.\n\n\n Bronoski pried the two of them apart.\n\n\n While he roused Sidney and Elliot from their punch-drunk state, I\n examined Charlie. He had a nasty burn on his leg and two toes were\n gone. If there was an explosion anywhere around, he was bound to be in\n front of it.\n\n\n He was abruptly choking and blinking watery eyes.\n\n\n \"You did it, Charlie,\" I lied. \"You beat him fair and square.\"\nCharlie was in bed for the next few days while his grafted toes grew\n on, but he didn't seem to mind.", "The other aliens didn't try to get to Baxter, but when they saw Elliot\n start to interfere with the two writhing opponents, they clawed him\n down into the grass. Sidney had been set to defend the Prone, not his\n fellow guard. They might have been all right if he had pulled a few\n off Elliot and let him get to work, except his training told him that\n the life of a guard did not matter a twit, but that a Prone must be\n defended. He started toward Charlie Baxter and was immediately pulled\n down by a spare dozen of the mob.\n\n\n It all meant one thing to me. The reaction of the crowd had been\n spontaneous, not planned. That meant that the struggle between Charlie\n and the spokesman was a high order of single combat with which it was\n unholy, indecent and dastardly to interfere.", "\"I had something more modest in mind, sir. Like being a captain.\"\n\n\n He surely must have known how I lived in comparison to him, so I didn't\n bother to remind him. I said, \"Have you ever seen a case of radiation\n poisoning?\"\n\n\n Baxter's jaw thrust forward. \"It must be pretty bad—but it isn't as\n violent as being eaten by floating fungi or being swallowed in an\n earthquake on some airless satellite.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" I agreed, \"it is much slower than any of those. It is unfortunate\n that we don't carry the necessary supplies to take care of Pile\n Drivers. Most of our medical supplies are in the Accident Prone First\n Aid Kit, for the exclusive use of the Prone. Have you ever taken a good\n look at that?\"", "\"Yes,\" I said uneasily. \"You have been thinking about this quite a lot\n while you lay there, haven't you, Baxter?\"", "Now maybe Bronoski and I could get him out ourselves by a direct\n approach, but Charlie would probably lose all self-confidence and sink\n down into accepting himself as an Accident Prone, a purely passive\n state.\n\n\n We couldn't have that. We had to have Charlie acting and thinking and\n therefore making mistakes whose bad examples we could profit by.\n\n\n As I lay on my belly thinking, Charlie was putting up a pretty good\n fight with the stringy native. He got in a few good punches, which\n seemed to mystify the native, who apparently knew nothing of boxing.\n Naturally Charlie then began wrestling a trained and deadly wrestler\n instead of continuing to box him.", "Accident Prones have to stay worried and thinking, trying to break\n out of the jinx that traps them. Usually they come to discover this\n themselves, but by then, if they are real professionals with a career\n in the Service, they have framed the right attitude and they keep it.\nBaxter was a novice and very much of an amateur at the game. He didn't\n like the scoring system, but he was attached to the equipment and\n didn't want to lose it.", "\"Doctor Selby, would you excuse us?\" I asked.\n\n\n The medic left with a bow and a surly expression. I turned to Baxter,\n rather wishing Selby could have stayed. It was a labor dispute and I\n was used to having a mediator present at bargaining sessions at my\n glassworks. But this was a military, not a civilian, spaceship.\n\n\n \"I have some facts of life to give you, Baxter,\" I told him. \"It\n is your duty to\nactively\nfulfill your position. You have to make\n decisions and plan courses of action. Do you figure on just walking\n around in that jungle until a tree falls on you?\"", "On a hunch of my own, I checked the supply lockers next to the airlock\n while Bronoski fired questions at my back. Three translator collars\n were missing. Baxter had left the spaceship and gone off into an alien\n night.\n\n\n Elliot and Sidney, the guards, were absolutely prohibited from\n interfering in any way with a Prone's decisions. They merely had to\n follow him and give their lives to save his, if necessary.\n\n\n I grabbed up a translator collar and tossed one to Bronoski. Then, just\n as we were getting into the airlock, I remembered something and ran\n back to the bridge.\n\n\n The thick brown envelope I had left on my desk was gone. I had shown\n it to Baxter and informed him that he should study it when he felt so\n inclined. He had seemed bored with the idea then, but he had come back\n for the report before leaving the ship. The envelope contained the\n exploration survey on Moran III made some fifty years before.", "Obviously, to claim to be a native's brother was to challenge him to a\n test of survival.\n\n\n My men learned to call themselves Last Brother in the usual bragging\n preliminaries that preceded every encounter. We got pretty good results\n with that approach and learned a lot about the changes in customs in\n the half century. But finally one of the men—either Frank Peirmonte or\n Sidney Charterson, who both claim to be the one—thought of calling the\n crew a Family and right away we began hitting it off famously.\n\n\n The Moranites figured we would kill each other off all except maybe\n one, whom they could handle themselves. They still had folk legends\n about the previous visit of Earthmen and they didn't trust us.\n\n\n Charlie Baxter's original mistake had supplied us with the Rosetta\n Stone we needed.\n\n\n Doctor Selby told me Charlie could get up finally, so I went to his\n suite and shook hands with him as he still lay in bed.", "I could fairly hear Bronoski's steel muscles preparing for battle as\n he saw his two mammoth pals go down under the press of numbers. A\n bristle-covered bullet of skull rose out of the grass beside me and it\n was my turn to grind his face in the muck.\n\n\n I had a nice little problem to contend with.\n\n\n I knew the reason Baxter had slipped out at night to be the first to\n greet the aliens. He was determined to be useful and necessary without\n fouling things up. I suppose Charlie had never felt valuable to anyone\n before in his life, but at the same time it hurt him to think that he\n was valuable only because he was a misfit.\n\n\n He had decided to take a positive approach. If he did things right,\n that would be as good proof of conditions as if he made the mistakes he\n was supposed to do. But he couldn't lick that doubt of himself that had\n been ground into him since birth and there he was, in trouble as always.", "I studied his face a moment. \"We had to blast off without an Assistant\n Pile Driver, j.g. It keeps getting harder and harder to recruit an APD,\n j.g. I suppose it's those reports about the eventual fatalities due to\n radiation leak back there where they are stationed.\"\n\n\n Baxter looked back at me steadily. \"There are a lot of rumors about the\n high mortality rate among Accident Prones in space, too.\"\nHe was right. We had started the rumors. We wanted the Prones alert,\n active and scheming to stay alive. More beneficial accidents that way.\n Actually, most Prones died of old age in space, which is more than\n could be said of them on Earth, where they didn't have the kind of\n protection the Service gives them.\n\n\n \"Look here, Baxter, do you like your quarters on this ship?\" I demanded.", "I was trying to catch both versions from Charlie. I knew he was making\n a mistake and later I wanted to be sure I knew just what it was.\n Frankly, I would have used the blood-brother gambit myself. I had also\n read about it in the survey report, as I made a point of telling you.\n This just proves that Accident Prones haven't secured the franchise on\n mistakes. The difference is that I would have gone about it a lot more\n cautiously.\n\n\n \"Enough of this,\" the native said sharply. \"Do you claim to be\nmy\nbrother?\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" Charlie said.\n\n\n Dispassionately but automatically, the alien launched himself at the\n Prone's throat.\nCharterson and Von Elderman instantly went into action. Elliot\n Charterson jumped to Charlie's assistance while Sidney Von Elderman\n swung around to protect Charlie from the rest of the crowd.\n\n\n But the defense didn't work.", "The lighter was beginning to feel hot to my fingers and I started to\n worry about radiation leak, although they are supposed to be guaranteed\n perfectly shielded. I read that before the last exploration party had\n left, they had made the Moranite natives blood brothers. Then Bronoski\n knocked me down.\n\n\n Actually he put his hands in the small of my back and shoved politely\n but firmly. Just the same, I went face down into the moist dirt fast\n enough.\n\n\n I raised my head cautiously to see if Bronoski would shove it back\n down. He didn't.", "\"Selby is your personal physician, you realize,\" I drove on. \"He takes\n care of the rest of us only if he has time left over from you. Why,\n when I was having my two weeks in the summer as an Ensign, I had to\n lie for half an hour with a crushed foot while the doctor sprayed our\n Prone's throat to guard against infection. Let me tell you, I was in\n quite a bit of pain.\"\n\n\n Charlie's pale eyes narrowed as if he had just made a sudden discovery,\n perhaps about the relationship between us. \"You don't make as much\n money as I do, do you, sir? You don't have a valet? And your bed folds\n into the bulkhead?\"\n\n\n I thought he was at last beginning to get it. \"Yes,\" I said.\n\n\n He stood sharply to attention. \"Request transfer to position of\n Assistant Pile Driver, j.g., sir.\"", "His clumsiness back on Earth had cost him every decent job he ever had.\n He had come all the way down the line until he was rated eligible only\n for the position of Prone aboard a spaceship. He had been poor—hungry,\n cold, wet, poor—and now he had luxury of a kind almost no one had in\n our era. He was drunk with it, passionately in love with it. It would\n cease to be quite so important after a few years of regular food, clean\n clothes and a solid roof to keep out the rain. But right now I knew he\n would come precariously close to killing to keep it. Or to being killed.\n\n\n He was ready to work.", "All of this is properly recorded for the next expedition in the\n Admiralty files, and if it's any consolation, high officials and screen\n stars often visit you in the hospital.\nCharlie Baxter was like all of the other Prones, only worse. Moran III\n was sort of an unofficial test for him and he wanted to make good. We\n had blasted down in the black of night and were waiting for daylight to\n begin our re-survey of the planet. It was Charlie's first assignment,\n so we had an easy one—just seeing if anything new had developed in the\n last fifty years.\n\n\n Baxter's guard was doubled as soon as we set down, of course, and\n that made him fidgety. He had heard all the stories about how high\n the casualty rate was with Prones aboard spaceships and now he was\n beginning to get nervous.", "Baxter shivered. \"Yes, I've seen it. Several drums of blood, Type AB,\n my type. A half-dozen fresh-frozen assorted arms and legs, several rows\n of eyes, a hundred square feet of graftable skin, and a well-stocked\n tank of inner organs and a double-doored bank of nerve lengths.\n Impressive.\"\nI smiled. \"Sort of gives you a feeling of confidence and security,\n doesn't it? It would be unfortunate for anyone who had a great many\n accidents to be denied the supplies in that Kit, I should think. Of\n course, it is available only to those filling the position of Accident\n Prone and doing the work faithfully and according to orders.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" Charlie mumbled.", "That one hurt him, but I saw I had put it to him as a challenge and\n he must have had some guilt feelings about accepting all that luxury\n for being nothing more than he was. \"I could fulfill the duties of an\n ordinary spaceman, sir.\"\n\n\n I snorted. \"It takes skill and training, Baxter. Your papers entitle\n you to one position and one only anywhere—Accident Prone of a\n spaceship complement. If you refuse to do your duties in that post, you\n can only become a ward of the Galaxy.\"\n\n\n His jaw line firmed. He had gone through a lot to keep from taking such\n abject charity. \"Isn't there,\" he asked in a milder tone, \"\nany\nother\n position I could serve in on this ship, sir?\"" ] ]
valid	51351	[ "How does Gavin feel about his status with the crew?", "How does transphasia impact Gavin and Quade?", "What is the relationship between Gavin and the First Officer like?", "What is the lesson of the story?", "What kind of mission does the crew appear to be sent on?", "What were the impacts of Gavin’s interventions on the crew’s space suits?", "What are the intentions of the creatures on the planet towards explorers?", "How does Quade change through the story?" ]	[ [ "He believes there is a special bond between service people", "He believes he has their trust and attention", "He doesn’t care if they respect him or not", "When he was promoted above his comrades, they began to resent him" ], [ "Both experience modified sensory experiences", "Quade is heavily impacted, and Gavin thinks he is faking it", "Gavin is heavily impacted, while Quade seems to have become tolerant to it through many exposures", "Both experience their bodies changing phases of liquid to solid" ], [ "Gavin thinks the First Officer wants to take his job", "The First Officer only interacts with Gavin using Quade as an intermediary", "Gavin trusts him so much as to go together on space expeditions, but not further", "Gavin learns important lessons in leadership from him" ], [ "Perception is all relative", "Sometimes inexperience can produce innovation", "A learner’s mind is very dangerous in space, best to have experienced people in charge", "Save yourself before helping others is the lesson they live by" ], [ "Mapping planets, collecting precious stones", "Searching for water", "Testing colonization of distant planets by cannibalizing parts from spaceships", "Capturing aliens" ], [ "They added more oxygen for longer range", "They made them impermeable to radiation", "They improved the sensory experience for the crew", "They made them stronger to withstand the bouncing of the creatures" ], [ "Helpful", "Hostile", "Afraid", "Predatory" ], [ "His confidence grows as Captain", "His confidence is replaced by healthy skepticism", "He becomes pessimistic", "He becomes optimistic" ] ]	[ 3, 1, 4, 2, 1, 3, 1, 2 ]	[ 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "\"Captain Gavin,\" Quade said patiently, \"you must realize that an\n outsider like you, among a crew of skilled spacemen, can never be more\n than a figurehead.\"\n\n\n Was this the way I was to be treated? Why, this man had deliberately\n insulted me, his captain. I controlled myself, remembering the\n familiarity that had always existed between members of a crew working\n under close conditions, from the time of the ancient submarines and the\n first orbital ships.\n\n\n \"Quade,\" I said, \"there's only one way for us to find out which of us\n is right about the cause of our scanning blackout.\"\n\n\n \"We go out and find the reason.\"\n\n\n \"Exactly. We go. You and me. I hope you can stand my company.\"\n\n\n \"I'm not sure I can,\" he answered reluctantly. \"My hazard pay doesn't\n cover exploring with rookies. With all due respect, Captain.\"", "I leaned forward, elbows on knees. \"Let me tell\nyou\na thing,\n Nagurski. Your trust of these damn-fool spacemen is why you are no\n longer a captain. You can't trust anything out here in space, much less\n human nature. Even I know that much!\"\n\n\n He was pained. \"If you don't trust the men, they won't trust you, Gav.\"\n\n\n \"They don't have to trust me. All they have to do is\nobey\nme or, by\n Jupiter, get frozen stiff and thawed out just in time for court-marshal\n back home. Listen,\" I continued earnestly, \"these men aren't going to\n think of me—of\nus\n, the officers, as their leaders. As far as the\n crew is concerned, Ordinary Spaceman Quade is the best man on this\n ship.\"", "\"Bruce is content,\" I admitted. \"He couldn't be any more content and\n still be alive. But I'm not sure that theory works out with men. We'd\n have anarchy if I tried to let these starbucks pick their own master.\"\n\n\n \"\nI\nhad no trouble when I was a captain,\" Nagurski said. \"Ease the\n reins on the men. Just offer them your advice, your guidance. They\n will soon see why the service selected you as captain; they will pick\n you themselves.\"\n\n\n \"Did your crew voluntarily elect you as their leader?\"\n\n\n \"Of course they did, Gav. I'm an old hand at controlling crews.\"\n\n\n \"Then why are you First Officer under me now?\"", "The thought intruded itself:\nwhy\nhadn't I recognized this before I\n let Quade escape to almost certain death? Wasn't it because I wanted\n him dead, because I resented the crew's resentment of my authority, and\n recognized in him the leader and symbol of this resentment?\n\n\n I threw away that idea along with my half-used cigarette. It might very\n well be true, but how did that help now?\n\n\n I had to\nthink\n.\n\n\n I was going after him, that was certain. Not only for humane\n reasons—he was the most important member of the crew. With him around,\n there were only two opinions, his and mine. Without him, I'd have\n endless opinions to contend with.", "He blinked, then decided to laugh. \"I've been in space a good many\n years. I really wanted to relax a little bit more. Besides, the\n increase in hazard pay was actually more than my salary as a captain.\n I'm a notch nearer retirement too.\"\n\n\n \"Tell me, did you always feel this way about letting the men select\n their own leader?\"\nNagurski brought out a pipe. He would have a pipe, I decided.\n\n\n \"No, not always. I was like you at first. Fresh from the cosmic energy\n test lab, suspicious of everything, trying to tell the old hands what\n to do. But I learned that they are pretty smart boys; they know what\n they are doing. You can rely on them absolutely.\"", "\"I would,\" I answered levelly.\n\n\n \"Then you'll be interested to hear that Spaceman Quade took a suit and\n a cartographer unit. He's out there somewhere, alone.\"\n\n\n \"The idiot!\" I yelped. \"Everyone needs a partner out there. Send out a\n team to follow his cable and drag him in here by it.\"\n\n\n \"He didn't hook on a cable, Captain,\" Wallace said. \"I suppose he\n intended to go beyond the three-mile limit as you demanded.\"\n\n\n \"Shut up, Wallace. You don't have to like me, but you can't twist what\n I said as long as I command this spacer.\"\n\n\n \"Cool off, Gav,\" Nagurski advised me. \"It's been done before. Anybody\n else would have been a fool to go out alone, but Quade is the most\n experienced man we have. He knows transphasia. Trust him.\"", "\"The hell it is,\" Quade said grimly. \"It's his deadliest liability.\"\n\n\n \"In that case, I must inform you that I am demoting you to Acting\n Executive Officer.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\" Quade gawked. \"But dammit, Captain, you can't do that to me!\n I'll lose hazard pay and be that much further from retirement!\"\n\n\n \"That's tough,\" I sympathized, \"but in every service a chap gets broken\n in rank now and then.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe it's worth it,\" Quade said heavily. \"Now maybe I've learned how\n to stay alive out here. I just hope I don't forget.\"\n\n\n I thought about that. I was nearly through with my first mission and\n I could speak with experience, even if it was the least amount of\n experience aboard.", "THE SPICY SOUND OF SUCCESS\nBy JIM HARMON\n\n\n Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Magazine August 1959.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nNow was the captain's chance to prove he knew\n \nless than the crew—all their lives hung upon it!\nThere was nothing showing on the video screen. That was why we were\n looking at it so analytically.\n\n\n \"Transphasia, that's what it is,\" Ordinary Spaceman Quade stated with\n a definite thrust of his angular jaw in my direction. \"You can take my\n word on that, Captain Gavin.\"", "I took a sighting. My helmet set projected the pattern on the cornea.\n Sweetness building up to a stab of pure salt—those were the blips.\n\n\n Beside me, there was a thin thread of violet. Quade had whistled. He\n was reading the map too.\n\n\n The slope fell away sharply in front of us, becoming a deep gorge.\n There was something broken and twisted at the bottom, something we had\n known for an instant as a streak of spice.\n\n\n \"There's one free-fall,\" I said, \"where you wouldn't live long enough\n to get used to it.\"\n\n\n He said nothing on the route back to the spacer.\n\"I know all about this sort of thing, Gav,\" First Officer Nagurski said\n expansively. He was rubbing the well-worn ears of our beagle mascot,\n Bruce. A heavy tail thudded on the steel deck from time to time.", "\"In departing from standard procedure that we have learned to trust,\n you are risking more than a few men—you risk the whole mission in\n gambling so much of the ship. A captain doesn't take chances like that!\"\n\n\n \"I never said I wouldn't take chances. But I'm not going to take\nstupid\nchances. I\nmight\nbe doing the wrong thing, but I can see you\nwould\nbe doing it wrong.\"\n\n\n \"You know nothing about space, Captain! You have to trust\nus\n.\"\n\n\n \"That's it exactly, First Officer Nagurski,\" I said sociably. \"If you\n lazy, lax, complacent slobs want to do something in a particular way, I\n know it\nhas\nto be wrong.\"\n\n\n I turned and found Wallace, the personnel man, standing in the hatchway.\n\n\n \"Pardon, Captain, but would you say we also lacked initiative?\"", "\"But, sir,\" Farley protested, \"you don't give alcohol to the crew in\n the middle of a mission. It's not done. What reason can you have?\"\n\n\n \"To sharpen their taste and olfactory senses. We can turn up or block\n out sound. We can use radar to extend our sight, but the Space Service\n hasn't yet developed anything to make spacemen taste or smell better.\"\n\n\n \"They are going to smell like a herd of winos,\" Farley said. \"I don't\n like to think how they would taste.\"\n\n\n \"It's an entirely practical idea. Tea-tasters used to drink\n almond-and-barley water to sharpen their senses. I've observed that\n wine helps you appreciate culinary art more. Considering the mixed-up\n sensory data under transphasia, wine may help us to see where we are\n going.\"", "\"Can't,\" I told him. \"I can't trust your opinion. I can't trust\nanything\n. That's why I'm Captain.\"\n\n\n \"You'll get over feeling like that.\"\n\n\n \"I know. Then I'll become First Officer.\"\n\n\n \"But look at that screen, sir,\" Quade said with an emphatic swing of\n his scarred arm. \"I've seen blank scanning like that before and you\n haven't—it's your first trip. This always means transphasia—cortex\n dissolution, motor area feedback, the Aitchell Effect—call it anything\n you like, it's still transphasia.\"\n\n\n \"I know what transphasia is,\" I said moderately. \"It means an\n electrogravitational disturbance of incoming sense data, rechanneling\n it to the wrong receptive areas. Besides the human brain, it also\n effects electronic equipment, like radar and television.\"", "\"I'm not sure I do want to find out what that was just now. I didn't\n like the feel of it. But the important thing is for us not to get any\n further from the ship.\"\n\n\n \"That's important, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"To the best of my judgment, yes. This—condition—didn't begin until\n we got so far away from the spacer—in time or distance. I don't want\n it to get any worse. It's troublesome not to know black from white, but\n it would be a downright inconvenience not to know which way is up.\"\n\n\n \"Not for an experienced spaceman,\" Quade griped. \"I'm used to\n free-fall.\"\n\n\n But he turned back.\n\n\n \"Just a minute,\" I said. \"There was something strange up ahead. I want\n to see if short-range radar can get through our electrogravitational\n jamming here.\"", "\"Just a minute, Captain. I've never been 'busted.' In the Exploration\n Service, we regard Ordinary Spaceman as our highest rank. With my\n hazard pay, I get more hard cash than\nyou\ndo, and I'm closer to\n retirement.\"\n\n\n \"That's a shallow excuse for complacency.\"\n\n\n \"Complacency! I've seen ten thousand wonders in twenty years of space,\n with a million variations. But the patterns repeat themselves. We learn\n to know what to expect, so maybe we can't maintain the reactionary\n caution the service likes in officers.\"\n\n\n \"I resent the word 'reactionary,' Spaceman! In civilian life, I was\n a lapidary and I learned the value of deliberation. But I never got\n too cataleptic to tap a million-dollar gem, which is more than my\n contemporaries can say, many of 'em.\"", "\"He\nis\na good man,\" Nagurski said. \"You mustn't be jealous of his\n status.\"\n\n\n The dog growled. He must have sensed what I almost did to Nagurski.\n\n\n \"Never mind that for now,\" I said wearily. \"What was your idea for\n getting our exploration parties through this transphasia?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one idea for that,\" said Quade, ducking his long head\n and stepping through the connecting hatch. \"With the Captain's\n permission....\"\n\n\n \"Go ahead, Quade, tell him,\" Nagurski invited.\n\n\n \"There's only one way to wade through transphasia with any\n reliability,\" Quade told me. \"You keep some kind of physical contact\n with the spaceship. Parties are strung out on guide line, like we were,\n but the cable has to be run back and made fast to the hull.\"", "Before I could agree with one of his theories for once, a streak of\n spice shot past us. It bounced back tangily and made a bitter rip\n between the two of us. There was no time to judge its size, if it had\n size, or its decibel range, or its caloric count, before a small, sharp\n pain dug in and dwindled down to nothing in one long second.\n\n\n The new odor pattern in my head told me Quade was saying something I\n couldn't quite make out.\n\n\n Quade then pulled me in the direction of the nasty little pain.\n\n\n \"Wait a minute, Spaceman!\" I bellowed. \"Where the devil do you think\n you're dragging me? Halt! That's a direct order.\"\n\n\n He stopped. \"Don't you want to find out what that was? This\nis\nan\n exploration party, you know, sir.\"", "\"Obviously.\" Quade glanced disgustedly at the screen.\n\n\n \"Too obvious. This time it might not be a familiar condition of many\n planetary gravitational fields. On this planet, that blank kinescope\n may mean our Big Brother kites were knocked down by hostile natives.\"\n\n\n \"You are plain wrong, Captain. Traditionally, alien races never\n interfere with our explorations. Generally, they are so alien to us\n they can't even recognize our existence.\"\nI drew myself up to my full height—and noticed in irritation it was\n still an inch less than Quade's. \"I don't understand you men. Look at\n yourself, Quade. You've been busted to Ordinary Spaceman for just that\n kind of thinking, for relying on tradition, on things that have worked\n before. Not only your thinking is slipshod, you've grown careless about\n everything else, even your own life.\"", "\"Quade,\" I said, \"space isn't as dangerous as all that.\" I clapped him\n on the shoulder fraternally. \"You worry too much!\"", "\"I trusted him too far by letting him run around loose. He needs a\n leash in more ways than one, and I'm going to put one on him.\"\nFor me, it was a nightmare. I lay down in my cabin and thought. I had\n to think things through very carefully. One mistake was too many for\n me. My worst fear had been that someday I would overlook one tiny flaw\n and ruin a gem. Now I might have ruined an exploration and destroyed a\n man, not a stone, because I had missed the flaw.\n\n\n No one but a reckless fool would have gone out alone on a strange\n planet with a terrifying phenomenon, but I'd had enough evidence to see\n that space exploration\nmade\na man a reckless fool by doing things on\n one planet he had once found safe and wise on some other world.", "\"How far can we run it back?\"\n\n\n Quade shrugged. \"Miles.\"\n\n\n \"How many?\"\n\n\n \"We have three miles of cable. As long as you can feel, taste, see,\n smell or hear that rope anchoring you to home, you aren't lost.\"\n\n\n \"Three miles isn't good enough. We don't have enough fuel to change\n sites that often. You can't use the drive in a gravitational field, you\n know.\"\n\n\n \"What else can we do, Captain?\" Nagurski asked puzzledly.\n\n\n \"You've said that the spaceship is our only protection from\n transphasia. Is that it?\"\n\n\n Quade gave a curt nod." ], [ "\"I don't understand it,\" Quade admitted. \"Transphasia hits you a foul\n as soon as you let it into the airlock.\"\n\n\n \"Apparently, Quade,\nthis\nthing is going to creep up on us.\"\n\n\n \"Don't sound smug, Captain. It's pitty-pattying behind you too.\"\n\n\n The keening call across the surface of consciousness postponed my reply.\n\n\n The wail was ominously forlorn, defiant of description. I turned my\n head around slowly inside my helmet, not even sure that I had heard it.\n\n\n But what else can you do with a wail but\nhear\nit?\n\n\n Quade nodded. \"I've felt this before. It usually hits sooner. Let's\n trace it.\"", "\"I don't like this,\" I admitted. \"It's not at all what I expected from\n what you said about transphasia. It must be something else.\"\n\n\n \"It couldn't be anything else. I know what to expect. You don't. You\n may begin smelling sensations, tasting sounds, hearing sights, seeing\n tastes, touching odors—or any other combination. Don't let it bother\n you.\"\n\n\n \"Of course not. I'll soothe my nerves by counting little shocks of\n lanolin jumping over a loud fence.\"\n\n\n Quade grinned behind his faceplate. \"Good idea.\"\n\n\n \"Then you can have it. I'm going to try keeping my eyes open and\n staying alive.\"\n\n\n There was no reply.", "THE SPICY SOUND OF SUCCESS\nBy JIM HARMON\n\n\n Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Magazine August 1959.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nNow was the captain's chance to prove he knew\n \nless than the crew—all their lives hung upon it!\nThere was nothing showing on the video screen. That was why we were\n looking at it so analytically.\n\n\n \"Transphasia, that's what it is,\" Ordinary Spaceman Quade stated with\n a definite thrust of his angular jaw in my direction. \"You can take my\n word on that, Captain Gavin.\"", "\"Can't,\" I told him. \"I can't trust your opinion. I can't trust\nanything\n. That's why I'm Captain.\"\n\n\n \"You'll get over feeling like that.\"\n\n\n \"I know. Then I'll become First Officer.\"\n\n\n \"But look at that screen, sir,\" Quade said with an emphatic swing of\n his scarred arm. \"I've seen blank scanning like that before and you\n haven't—it's your first trip. This always means transphasia—cortex\n dissolution, motor area feedback, the Aitchell Effect—call it anything\n you like, it's still transphasia.\"\n\n\n \"I know what transphasia is,\" I said moderately. \"It means an\n electrogravitational disturbance of incoming sense data, rechanneling\n it to the wrong receptive areas. Besides the human brain, it also\n effects electronic equipment, like radar and television.\"", "I clapped him on the shoulder. \"But, man, you have just been telling\n me all we had to worry about was common transphasia. A man with your\n experience could protect himself and cover even a rookie, under such\n familiar conditions—right?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, I suppose I could,\" Quade said, bitterly aware he had lost\n out somewhere and hoping that it wasn't the start of a trend.\n\"Looks okay to me,\" I said. Quade passed a gauntlet over his faceplate.\n \"It's real. I can blur it with a smudged visor. When it blurs, it's\n solid.\"\n\n\n The landscape beyond the black corona left by our landing rockets was\n unimpressive. The rocky desert was made up of silicon and iron oxide,\n so it looked much the same as a terrestrial location. Yellowish-white\n sand ran up to and around reddish brown rock clawing into the pink\n sunlight.", "His expression was tart and greasy despite all his light talk, and\n I knew mine was the same. I tested the security rope between our\n pressure suits. It was a taut and virile bass.\n\n\n We scaled a staccato of rocks, our suits grinding pepper against our\n hides.\n\n\n The musk summit rose before us, a minor-key horizon with a shifting\n treble for as far as I could smell. It was primitive beauty that made\n you feel shocking pink inside. The most beautiful vista I had ever\n tasted, it couldn't be dulled even by the sensation of beef broth under\n my skin.\n\n\n \"Is this transphasia?\" I asked in awe.\n\n\n \"It always has been before,\" Quade remarked. \"Ready to swallow your\n words about this being something an old hand wouldn't recognize,\n Captain?\"\n\n\n \"I'm swallowing no words until I find out precisely how they taste\n here.\"", "How could we be less vulnerable, or preferably invulnerable?\n\"Captain, you got nothing to worry about,\" Quartermaster Farley said.\n He patted a space helmet paternally. \"You got yourself a self-contained\n environment. The suit's eye looks into yours at the arteries in the\n back of your eyeball so it can read your amber corpuscles and feed\n you your oxygen in the right amounts; you're a bottle-fed baby. If\n transphasia gets you seeing limburger, turn on the radar and you're\n air-conditioned as an igloo. Nothing short of a cosmic blast can dent\n that hide. You got it made.\"\n\n\n \"You are right,\" I said, \"only transphasia comes right through these\n air-fast joints.\"\n\n\n \"Something strange about the trance, Captain,\" Farley said darkly. \"Any\n spaceman can tell you that. Things we don't understand.\"", "The Quartermaster rose with grim deliberation, and hiccuped. \"Better\n get him back to the spaceship fast. I've seen this kind of thing\n before with transphasia. His body cooled down because of the screaming\n wind—psychosomatic reaction—and his heating circuits compensated for\n the cool flesh. The poor devil's got frostbite and heat prostration.\"\nThe four of us managed to haul Quade back by using the powered joints\n in our suits. Hoffman suggested that he had once seen an injured\n man walked back inside his suit like a robot, but it was a delicate\n adjustment, controlling power circuits from outside a suit. It was too\n much for us—we were too tired, too numb, too drunk.\n\n\n At first sight of the spacer in the distance, transphasia left me with\n only a chocolate-tasting pink after-image on my retina. It was now\n showing bare skeleton from cannibalization for tractor parts, but it\n looked good to me, like home.", "\"I would,\" I answered levelly.\n\n\n \"Then you'll be interested to hear that Spaceman Quade took a suit and\n a cartographer unit. He's out there somewhere, alone.\"\n\n\n \"The idiot!\" I yelped. \"Everyone needs a partner out there. Send out a\n team to follow his cable and drag him in here by it.\"\n\n\n \"He didn't hook on a cable, Captain,\" Wallace said. \"I suppose he\n intended to go beyond the three-mile limit as you demanded.\"\n\n\n \"Shut up, Wallace. You don't have to like me, but you can't twist what\n I said as long as I command this spacer.\"\n\n\n \"Cool off, Gav,\" Nagurski advised me. \"It's been done before. Anybody\n else would have been a fool to go out alone, but Quade is the most\n experienced man we have. He knows transphasia. Trust him.\"", "\"Not a bad taste. They're pretty. Or haven't you noticed?\"\n\n\n \"Quade, you're right! About the colors anyway. This reminds me of an\n illiscope recording from a cybernetic translator.\"\n\n\n \"It should. I don't suppose we could understand each other if it wasn't\n for our morphistudy courses in reading cross-sense translations of\n Centauri blushtalk and the like.\"\n\n\n It became difficult to understand him, difficult to try talking in the\n face of such splendor. You never really appreciate colors until you\n smell them for the first time.\nQuade was as conversational as ever, though. \"I can't see\n irregularities occurring in a gravitational field. We must have\n compensated for the transphasia while we still had a point of\n reference, the solid reality of the spaceship. But out here, where all\n we have to hang onto is each other, our concept of reality goes\nbang\nand deflates to a tired joke.\"", "\"How far can we run it back?\"\n\n\n Quade shrugged. \"Miles.\"\n\n\n \"How many?\"\n\n\n \"We have three miles of cable. As long as you can feel, taste, see,\n smell or hear that rope anchoring you to home, you aren't lost.\"\n\n\n \"Three miles isn't good enough. We don't have enough fuel to change\n sites that often. You can't use the drive in a gravitational field, you\n know.\"\n\n\n \"What else can we do, Captain?\" Nagurski asked puzzledly.\n\n\n \"You've said that the spaceship is our only protection from\n transphasia. Is that it?\"\n\n\n Quade gave a curt nod.", "\"He\nis\na good man,\" Nagurski said. \"You mustn't be jealous of his\n status.\"\n\n\n The dog growled. He must have sensed what I almost did to Nagurski.\n\n\n \"Never mind that for now,\" I said wearily. \"What was your idea for\n getting our exploration parties through this transphasia?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one idea for that,\" said Quade, ducking his long head\n and stepping through the connecting hatch. \"With the Captain's\n permission....\"\n\n\n \"Go ahead, Quade, tell him,\" Nagurski invited.\n\n\n \"There's only one way to wade through transphasia with any\n reliability,\" Quade told me. \"You keep some kind of physical contact\n with the spaceship. Parties are strung out on guide line, like we were,\n but the cable has to be run back and made fast to the hull.\"", "\"Quail,\" Nagurski replied. \"That's what I see.\"\n\n\n \"You,\" I said carefully, \"have been in space a\nlong\ntime. Look again.\"\n\n\n \"I see our old buddy, Quail.\"\n\n\n I took another slosh of burgundy and peered up ahead. It\nwas\nQuade. A\n man in a spacesuit, faceplate in the dust, two hundred yards ahead.\nGrudgingly I stepped forward, out of the shadow of the ridge.\n A hysterically screaming wind rocked me on my toes. We pushed\n on sluggishly to Quade's side, moving to the tempo of\nPomp and\n Circumstance\n.\n\n\n Farley lugged Quade over on his back and read his gauges.", "\"Are you settling for a primary exploration?\"\n\n\n \"No. I think I had the right idea on your rescue party. You have to\n meet and fight a planet on its own terms. Fighting confused sounds and\n tastes with music and wine was crude, but it was on the right track.\n Out there, we understood language because we were familiar with alien\n languages changed to other sense mediums by cybernetic translators.\n Using the translator, we can learn to recognize all confused data as\n easily. I'm starting indoctrination courses.\"\n\n\n \"I doubt that that is necessary, sir,\" Quade said. \"Experienced\n spacemen are experienced with transphasia. You don't have to worry. In\n the future, I'll be able to resist sensations that tell me I'm freezing\n to death—if my gauges tell me it's a lie.\"\n\n\n I examined his bandisprayed hide. \"I think my way of gaining experience\n is less painful and more efficient.\"", "\"I'm not sure I do want to find out what that was just now. I didn't\n like the feel of it. But the important thing is for us not to get any\n further from the ship.\"\n\n\n \"That's important, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"To the best of my judgment, yes. This—condition—didn't begin until\n we got so far away from the spacer—in time or distance. I don't want\n it to get any worse. It's troublesome not to know black from white, but\n it would be a downright inconvenience not to know which way is up.\"\n\n\n \"Not for an experienced spaceman,\" Quade griped. \"I'm used to\n free-fall.\"\n\n\n But he turned back.\n\n\n \"Just a minute,\" I said. \"There was something strange up ahead. I want\n to see if short-range radar can get through our electrogravitational\n jamming here.\"", "\"Yes, this is definitely the trail of Quail,\" Nagurski said soberly.\n \"This is serious business. I must ask whoever has been giggling on\n this channel to shut up. Pardon me, Captain.\nYou\nweren't giggling,\n sir?\"\n\n\n \"I have never giggled in my life, Nagurski.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. That's what we all thought.\"\n\n\n A moment later, Nagurski added, \"Anyway, I just noticed it was my\n shelf—my, that is, self.\"\n\n\n The basso profundo performing\nFigaro\non my headset climbed to a\n girlish shriek. A sliver of ice. This was the call Quade and I had\n first heard as we were about to troop over a cliff. I dug in my heels.\n\n\n \"Take a good look around, boys,\" I said. \"What do you see?\"", "\"But, sir,\" Farley protested, \"you don't give alcohol to the crew in\n the middle of a mission. It's not done. What reason can you have?\"\n\n\n \"To sharpen their taste and olfactory senses. We can turn up or block\n out sound. We can use radar to extend our sight, but the Space Service\n hasn't yet developed anything to make spacemen taste or smell better.\"\n\n\n \"They are going to smell like a herd of winos,\" Farley said. \"I don't\n like to think how they would taste.\"\n\n\n \"It's an entirely practical idea. Tea-tasters used to drink\n almond-and-barley water to sharpen their senses. I've observed that\n wine helps you appreciate culinary art more. Considering the mixed-up\n sensory data under transphasia, wine may help us to see where we are\n going.\"", "\"Yes, sir,\" Farley said obediently. \"I'll give spacemen a few quarts of\n wine, telling them to use it carefully for scientific purposes only,\n and then they will be able to see where they are going. Yes, sir.\"\n\n\n I turned to leave, then paused briefly. \"You can come along, Farley.\n I'm sure you want to see that we don't waste any of the stuff.\"\n\"There they are!\" Nagurski called. \"Quade's footsteps again, just\n beyond that rocky ridge.\"\n\n\n The landscape was rich chocolate ice cream smothered with chocolate\n syrup, caramel, peanuts and maple syrup, eaten while you smoked an old,\n mellow Havana. The footsteps were faint traces of whipped cream across\n the dark, rich taste of the planet.", "\"Captain Gavin,\" Quade said patiently, \"you must realize that an\n outsider like you, among a crew of skilled spacemen, can never be more\n than a figurehead.\"\n\n\n Was this the way I was to be treated? Why, this man had deliberately\n insulted me, his captain. I controlled myself, remembering the\n familiarity that had always existed between members of a crew working\n under close conditions, from the time of the ancient submarines and the\n first orbital ships.\n\n\n \"Quade,\" I said, \"there's only one way for us to find out which of us\n is right about the cause of our scanning blackout.\"\n\n\n \"We go out and find the reason.\"\n\n\n \"Exactly. We go. You and me. I hope you can stand my company.\"\n\n\n \"I'm not sure I can,\" he answered reluctantly. \"My hazard pay doesn't\n cover exploring with rookies. With all due respect, Captain.\"", "I took a sighting. My helmet set projected the pattern on the cornea.\n Sweetness building up to a stab of pure salt—those were the blips.\n\n\n Beside me, there was a thin thread of violet. Quade had whistled. He\n was reading the map too.\n\n\n The slope fell away sharply in front of us, becoming a deep gorge.\n There was something broken and twisted at the bottom, something we had\n known for an instant as a streak of spice.\n\n\n \"There's one free-fall,\" I said, \"where you wouldn't live long enough\n to get used to it.\"\n\n\n He said nothing on the route back to the spacer.\n\"I know all about this sort of thing, Gav,\" First Officer Nagurski said\n expansively. He was rubbing the well-worn ears of our beagle mascot,\n Bruce. A heavy tail thudded on the steel deck from time to time." ], [ "\"Bruce is content,\" I admitted. \"He couldn't be any more content and\n still be alive. But I'm not sure that theory works out with men. We'd\n have anarchy if I tried to let these starbucks pick their own master.\"\n\n\n \"\nI\nhad no trouble when I was a captain,\" Nagurski said. \"Ease the\n reins on the men. Just offer them your advice, your guidance. They\n will soon see why the service selected you as captain; they will pick\n you themselves.\"\n\n\n \"Did your crew voluntarily elect you as their leader?\"\n\n\n \"Of course they did, Gav. I'm an old hand at controlling crews.\"\n\n\n \"Then why are you First Officer under me now?\"", "I leaned forward, elbows on knees. \"Let me tell\nyou\na thing,\n Nagurski. Your trust of these damn-fool spacemen is why you are no\n longer a captain. You can't trust anything out here in space, much less\n human nature. Even I know that much!\"\n\n\n He was pained. \"If you don't trust the men, they won't trust you, Gav.\"\n\n\n \"They don't have to trust me. All they have to do is\nobey\nme or, by\n Jupiter, get frozen stiff and thawed out just in time for court-marshal\n back home. Listen,\" I continued earnestly, \"these men aren't going to\n think of me—of\nus\n, the officers, as their leaders. As far as the\n crew is concerned, Ordinary Spaceman Quade is the best man on this\n ship.\"", "\"Captain Gavin,\" Quade said patiently, \"you must realize that an\n outsider like you, among a crew of skilled spacemen, can never be more\n than a figurehead.\"\n\n\n Was this the way I was to be treated? Why, this man had deliberately\n insulted me, his captain. I controlled myself, remembering the\n familiarity that had always existed between members of a crew working\n under close conditions, from the time of the ancient submarines and the\n first orbital ships.\n\n\n \"Quade,\" I said, \"there's only one way for us to find out which of us\n is right about the cause of our scanning blackout.\"\n\n\n \"We go out and find the reason.\"\n\n\n \"Exactly. We go. You and me. I hope you can stand my company.\"\n\n\n \"I'm not sure I can,\" he answered reluctantly. \"My hazard pay doesn't\n cover exploring with rookies. With all due respect, Captain.\"", "\"Can't,\" I told him. \"I can't trust your opinion. I can't trust\nanything\n. That's why I'm Captain.\"\n\n\n \"You'll get over feeling like that.\"\n\n\n \"I know. Then I'll become First Officer.\"\n\n\n \"But look at that screen, sir,\" Quade said with an emphatic swing of\n his scarred arm. \"I've seen blank scanning like that before and you\n haven't—it's your first trip. This always means transphasia—cortex\n dissolution, motor area feedback, the Aitchell Effect—call it anything\n you like, it's still transphasia.\"\n\n\n \"I know what transphasia is,\" I said moderately. \"It means an\n electrogravitational disturbance of incoming sense data, rechanneling\n it to the wrong receptive areas. Besides the human brain, it also\n effects electronic equipment, like radar and television.\"", "\"The hell it is,\" Quade said grimly. \"It's his deadliest liability.\"\n\n\n \"In that case, I must inform you that I am demoting you to Acting\n Executive Officer.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\" Quade gawked. \"But dammit, Captain, you can't do that to me!\n I'll lose hazard pay and be that much further from retirement!\"\n\n\n \"That's tough,\" I sympathized, \"but in every service a chap gets broken\n in rank now and then.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe it's worth it,\" Quade said heavily. \"Now maybe I've learned how\n to stay alive out here. I just hope I don't forget.\"\n\n\n I thought about that. I was nearly through with my first mission and\n I could speak with experience, even if it was the least amount of\n experience aboard.", "I took a sighting. My helmet set projected the pattern on the cornea.\n Sweetness building up to a stab of pure salt—those were the blips.\n\n\n Beside me, there was a thin thread of violet. Quade had whistled. He\n was reading the map too.\n\n\n The slope fell away sharply in front of us, becoming a deep gorge.\n There was something broken and twisted at the bottom, something we had\n known for an instant as a streak of spice.\n\n\n \"There's one free-fall,\" I said, \"where you wouldn't live long enough\n to get used to it.\"\n\n\n He said nothing on the route back to the spacer.\n\"I know all about this sort of thing, Gav,\" First Officer Nagurski said\n expansively. He was rubbing the well-worn ears of our beagle mascot,\n Bruce. A heavy tail thudded on the steel deck from time to time.", "\"In departing from standard procedure that we have learned to trust,\n you are risking more than a few men—you risk the whole mission in\n gambling so much of the ship. A captain doesn't take chances like that!\"\n\n\n \"I never said I wouldn't take chances. But I'm not going to take\nstupid\nchances. I\nmight\nbe doing the wrong thing, but I can see you\nwould\nbe doing it wrong.\"\n\n\n \"You know nothing about space, Captain! You have to trust\nus\n.\"\n\n\n \"That's it exactly, First Officer Nagurski,\" I said sociably. \"If you\n lazy, lax, complacent slobs want to do something in a particular way, I\n know it\nhas\nto be wrong.\"\n\n\n I turned and found Wallace, the personnel man, standing in the hatchway.\n\n\n \"Pardon, Captain, but would you say we also lacked initiative?\"", "\"I would,\" I answered levelly.\n\n\n \"Then you'll be interested to hear that Spaceman Quade took a suit and\n a cartographer unit. He's out there somewhere, alone.\"\n\n\n \"The idiot!\" I yelped. \"Everyone needs a partner out there. Send out a\n team to follow his cable and drag him in here by it.\"\n\n\n \"He didn't hook on a cable, Captain,\" Wallace said. \"I suppose he\n intended to go beyond the three-mile limit as you demanded.\"\n\n\n \"Shut up, Wallace. You don't have to like me, but you can't twist what\n I said as long as I command this spacer.\"\n\n\n \"Cool off, Gav,\" Nagurski advised me. \"It's been done before. Anybody\n else would have been a fool to go out alone, but Quade is the most\n experienced man we have. He knows transphasia. Trust him.\"", "The men followed the First Officer's example, and the rope tying them\n to him. I went along cheerfully myself, until an enormous rump struck\n me violently in the face. My leaded boots were driven down into fertile\n soil, and my helmet was ringing like a bell. I got a jerky picture of\n the beast jumping up and down on top of the others joyously. Only the\n stiff space armor was holding up our slack frames.\n\n\n \"Let's let him escape,\" Hoffman suggested on the audio circuit.\n\n\n \"I'd like to,\" Nagurski admitted, \"but the other beasts won't let us\n get past their circle.\"\n\n\n It was true. The aliens formed a ring around us, and each time a\n bouncing boy hit the line, he only bounced back on top of us.\n\n\n \"Flat!\" I yelled. \"Our seams can't take much more of this beating.\"", "The thought intruded itself:\nwhy\nhadn't I recognized this before I\n let Quade escape to almost certain death? Wasn't it because I wanted\n him dead, because I resented the crew's resentment of my authority, and\n recognized in him the leader and symbol of this resentment?\n\n\n I threw away that idea along with my half-used cigarette. It might very\n well be true, but how did that help now?\n\n\n I had to\nthink\n.\n\n\n I was going after him, that was certain. Not only for humane\n reasons—he was the most important member of the crew. With him around,\n there were only two opinions, his and mine. Without him, I'd have\n endless opinions to contend with.", "He blinked, then decided to laugh. \"I've been in space a good many\n years. I really wanted to relax a little bit more. Besides, the\n increase in hazard pay was actually more than my salary as a captain.\n I'm a notch nearer retirement too.\"\n\n\n \"Tell me, did you always feel this way about letting the men select\n their own leader?\"\nNagurski brought out a pipe. He would have a pipe, I decided.\n\n\n \"No, not always. I was like you at first. Fresh from the cosmic energy\n test lab, suspicious of everything, trying to tell the old hands what\n to do. But I learned that they are pretty smart boys; they know what\n they are doing. You can rely on them absolutely.\"", "\"Just a minute, Captain. I've never been 'busted.' In the Exploration\n Service, we regard Ordinary Spaceman as our highest rank. With my\n hazard pay, I get more hard cash than\nyou\ndo, and I'm closer to\n retirement.\"\n\n\n \"That's a shallow excuse for complacency.\"\n\n\n \"Complacency! I've seen ten thousand wonders in twenty years of space,\n with a million variations. But the patterns repeat themselves. We learn\n to know what to expect, so maybe we can't maintain the reactionary\n caution the service likes in officers.\"\n\n\n \"I resent the word 'reactionary,' Spaceman! In civilian life, I was\n a lapidary and I learned the value of deliberation. But I never got\n too cataleptic to tap a million-dollar gem, which is more than my\n contemporaries can say, many of 'em.\"", "\"Obviously.\" Quade glanced disgustedly at the screen.\n\n\n \"Too obvious. This time it might not be a familiar condition of many\n planetary gravitational fields. On this planet, that blank kinescope\n may mean our Big Brother kites were knocked down by hostile natives.\"\n\n\n \"You are plain wrong, Captain. Traditionally, alien races never\n interfere with our explorations. Generally, they are so alien to us\n they can't even recognize our existence.\"\nI drew myself up to my full height—and noticed in irritation it was\n still an inch less than Quade's. \"I don't understand you men. Look at\n yourself, Quade. You've been busted to Ordinary Spaceman for just that\n kind of thinking, for relying on tradition, on things that have worked\n before. Not only your thinking is slipshod, you've grown careless about\n everything else, even your own life.\"", "Before I could agree with one of his theories for once, a streak of\n spice shot past us. It bounced back tangily and made a bitter rip\n between the two of us. There was no time to judge its size, if it had\n size, or its decibel range, or its caloric count, before a small, sharp\n pain dug in and dwindled down to nothing in one long second.\n\n\n The new odor pattern in my head told me Quade was saying something I\n couldn't quite make out.\n\n\n Quade then pulled me in the direction of the nasty little pain.\n\n\n \"Wait a minute, Spaceman!\" I bellowed. \"Where the devil do you think\n you're dragging me? Halt! That's a direct order.\"\n\n\n He stopped. \"Don't you want to find out what that was? This\nis\nan\n exploration party, you know, sir.\"", "\"Yes, this is definitely the trail of Quail,\" Nagurski said soberly.\n \"This is serious business. I must ask whoever has been giggling on\n this channel to shut up. Pardon me, Captain.\nYou\nweren't giggling,\n sir?\"\n\n\n \"I have never giggled in my life, Nagurski.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. That's what we all thought.\"\n\n\n A moment later, Nagurski added, \"Anyway, I just noticed it was my\n shelf—my, that is, self.\"\n\n\n The basso profundo performing\nFigaro\non my headset climbed to a\n girlish shriek. A sliver of ice. This was the call Quade and I had\n first heard as we were about to troop over a cliff. I dug in my heels.\n\n\n \"Take a good look around, boys,\" I said. \"What do you see?\"", "\"But, sir,\" Farley protested, \"you don't give alcohol to the crew in\n the middle of a mission. It's not done. What reason can you have?\"\n\n\n \"To sharpen their taste and olfactory senses. We can turn up or block\n out sound. We can use radar to extend our sight, but the Space Service\n hasn't yet developed anything to make spacemen taste or smell better.\"\n\n\n \"They are going to smell like a herd of winos,\" Farley said. \"I don't\n like to think how they would taste.\"\n\n\n \"It's an entirely practical idea. Tea-tasters used to drink\n almond-and-barley water to sharpen their senses. I've observed that\n wine helps you appreciate culinary art more. Considering the mixed-up\n sensory data under transphasia, wine may help us to see where we are\n going.\"", "\"Yes, sir,\" Farley said obediently. \"I'll give spacemen a few quarts of\n wine, telling them to use it carefully for scientific purposes only,\n and then they will be able to see where they are going. Yes, sir.\"\n\n\n I turned to leave, then paused briefly. \"You can come along, Farley.\n I'm sure you want to see that we don't waste any of the stuff.\"\n\"There they are!\" Nagurski called. \"Quade's footsteps again, just\n beyond that rocky ridge.\"\n\n\n The landscape was rich chocolate ice cream smothered with chocolate\n syrup, caramel, peanuts and maple syrup, eaten while you smoked an old,\n mellow Havana. The footsteps were faint traces of whipped cream across\n the dark, rich taste of the planet.", "\"I'm not sure I do want to find out what that was just now. I didn't\n like the feel of it. But the important thing is for us not to get any\n further from the ship.\"\n\n\n \"That's important, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"To the best of my judgment, yes. This—condition—didn't begin until\n we got so far away from the spacer—in time or distance. I don't want\n it to get any worse. It's troublesome not to know black from white, but\n it would be a downright inconvenience not to know which way is up.\"\n\n\n \"Not for an experienced spaceman,\" Quade griped. \"I'm used to\n free-fall.\"\n\n\n But he turned back.\n\n\n \"Just a minute,\" I said. \"There was something strange up ahead. I want\n to see if short-range radar can get through our electrogravitational\n jamming here.\"", "\"I believe you,\" I said quickly. \"Let's leave it at that. I don't know\n what he will hear; what's worrying me is\nhow\nhe'll hear it, in what\n sensory medium. I hope the sound doesn't blind him. His radar is his\n only chance.\"\n\n\n \"How do you figure on getting a better edge yourself, sir?\"\n\n\n \"I have the idea, but not the word for it. Tonal compensation, I\n suppose. If you can't shut out the noise, we'll have to drown it out.\"\n\n\n Farley nodded. \"Beat like a telephone time signal?\"\n\n\n \"That would do it.\"\n\n\n \"It would do something else. It would drive you nuts.\"\nI shrugged. \"It might be distracting.\"\n\n\n \"Captain, take my word for it,\" argued Farley. \"Constant sonic\n feedback inside a spacesuit will set you rocking against the grain.\"", "\"I'm getting off at the right stop, apparently,\" I sighed. \"Okay,\n Farley, no evasions. In plain figures, how much drinking alcohol do we\n have left?\"\n\n\n The quartermaster slumped a bit. \"Twenty-one liters unbroken. One more\n about half full.\"\n\n\n \"Half full? How did that ever happen? I mean you had some\nleft\n? We'll\n take this up later. I want you to run it through the synthesizer to get\n some light wine....\"\n\n\n \"Light wine?\" Farley looked in pain. \"Not whiskey, brandy, beer?\"\n\n\n \"Light wine. Then ration it out to some of the men.\"\n\n\n \"Ration it to the men!\"\n\n\n \"That's an accurate interpretation of my orders.\"" ], [ "\"But why should they want to help us?\" Quade demanded suspiciously.\n\n\n \"I think it's like Nagurski's dog. The dog came to him when it wanted\n somebody to own it, protect it, feed it, love it. These aliens\nwant\nEarthmen to colonize the planet. We came here, you see, same as the dog\n came to Nagurski.\"\n\n\n \"Well, I've learned one thing from all of this,\" Quade said. \"I've been\n a blind, arrogant, cocksure fool, following courses that were good on\nsome\nworlds,\nmost\nworlds, but not good on\nall\nworlds. I'm never\n going to be that foolhardy again.\"\n\n\n \"But you're losing\nconfidence\n, Quade! You aren't sure of yourself any\n more. Isn't confidence a spaceman's most valuable asset?\"", "\"I trusted him too far by letting him run around loose. He needs a\n leash in more ways than one, and I'm going to put one on him.\"\nFor me, it was a nightmare. I lay down in my cabin and thought. I had\n to think things through very carefully. One mistake was too many for\n me. My worst fear had been that someday I would overlook one tiny flaw\n and ruin a gem. Now I might have ruined an exploration and destroyed a\n man, not a stone, because I had missed the flaw.\n\n\n No one but a reckless fool would have gone out alone on a strange\n planet with a terrifying phenomenon, but I'd had enough evidence to see\n that space exploration\nmade\na man a reckless fool by doing things on\n one planet he had once found safe and wise on some other world.", "Quade squirmed. \"Yes, sir. One thing, sir—I don't understand how you\n got me away from those aliens.\"\n\n\n \"The aliens were trying to help. They knew something was wrong and they\n were prodding and probing. When the first tractor pulled up and the men\n got out, they seemed to realize our own people could help us easier\n than they could.\"\n\n\n \"I am not quite convinced that those babies just meant to help us all\n the time.\"\n\n\n \"But they did! First, that call of theirs—it wasn't to lead us into\n danger, but to warn us of the cliff, the freezing wind. They saw we\n were trying to find out things about their world, so they even offered\n us one of their own kind to study. Unfortunately, he was too much for\n us. They didn't give us their top man, of course, only the village\n idiot. It's just as well. We aren't allowed to dissect creatures that\n far up the intelligence scale.\"", "The men followed the First Officer's example, and the rope tying them\n to him. I went along cheerfully myself, until an enormous rump struck\n me violently in the face. My leaded boots were driven down into fertile\n soil, and my helmet was ringing like a bell. I got a jerky picture of\n the beast jumping up and down on top of the others joyously. Only the\n stiff space armor was holding up our slack frames.\n\n\n \"Let's let him escape,\" Hoffman suggested on the audio circuit.\n\n\n \"I'd like to,\" Nagurski admitted, \"but the other beasts won't let us\n get past their circle.\"\n\n\n It was true. The aliens formed a ring around us, and each time a\n bouncing boy hit the line, he only bounced back on top of us.\n\n\n \"Flat!\" I yelled. \"Our seams can't take much more of this beating.\"", "The thought intruded itself:\nwhy\nhadn't I recognized this before I\n let Quade escape to almost certain death? Wasn't it because I wanted\n him dead, because I resented the crew's resentment of my authority, and\n recognized in him the leader and symbol of this resentment?\n\n\n I threw away that idea along with my half-used cigarette. It might very\n well be true, but how did that help now?\n\n\n I had to\nthink\n.\n\n\n I was going after him, that was certain. Not only for humane\n reasons—he was the most important member of the crew. With him around,\n there were only two opinions, his and mine. Without him, I'd have\n endless opinions to contend with.", "\"Yes, sir,\" Farley said obediently. \"I'll give spacemen a few quarts of\n wine, telling them to use it carefully for scientific purposes only,\n and then they will be able to see where they are going. Yes, sir.\"\n\n\n I turned to leave, then paused briefly. \"You can come along, Farley.\n I'm sure you want to see that we don't waste any of the stuff.\"\n\"There they are!\" Nagurski called. \"Quade's footsteps again, just\n beyond that rocky ridge.\"\n\n\n The landscape was rich chocolate ice cream smothered with chocolate\n syrup, caramel, peanuts and maple syrup, eaten while you smoked an old,\n mellow Havana. The footsteps were faint traces of whipped cream across\n the dark, rich taste of the planet.", "\"I'm getting off at the right stop, apparently,\" I sighed. \"Okay,\n Farley, no evasions. In plain figures, how much drinking alcohol do we\n have left?\"\n\n\n The quartermaster slumped a bit. \"Twenty-one liters unbroken. One more\n about half full.\"\n\n\n \"Half full? How did that ever happen? I mean you had some\nleft\n? We'll\n take this up later. I want you to run it through the synthesizer to get\n some light wine....\"\n\n\n \"Light wine?\" Farley looked in pain. \"Not whiskey, brandy, beer?\"\n\n\n \"Light wine. Then ration it out to some of the men.\"\n\n\n \"Ration it to the men!\"\n\n\n \"That's an accurate interpretation of my orders.\"", "\"The hell it is,\" Quade said grimly. \"It's his deadliest liability.\"\n\n\n \"In that case, I must inform you that I am demoting you to Acting\n Executive Officer.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\" Quade gawked. \"But dammit, Captain, you can't do that to me!\n I'll lose hazard pay and be that much further from retirement!\"\n\n\n \"That's tough,\" I sympathized, \"but in every service a chap gets broken\n in rank now and then.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe it's worth it,\" Quade said heavily. \"Now maybe I've learned how\n to stay alive out here. I just hope I don't forget.\"\n\n\n I thought about that. I was nearly through with my first mission and\n I could speak with experience, even if it was the least amount of\n experience aboard.", "\"Obviously.\" Quade glanced disgustedly at the screen.\n\n\n \"Too obvious. This time it might not be a familiar condition of many\n planetary gravitational fields. On this planet, that blank kinescope\n may mean our Big Brother kites were knocked down by hostile natives.\"\n\n\n \"You are plain wrong, Captain. Traditionally, alien races never\n interfere with our explorations. Generally, they are so alien to us\n they can't even recognize our existence.\"\nI drew myself up to my full height—and noticed in irritation it was\n still an inch less than Quade's. \"I don't understand you men. Look at\n yourself, Quade. You've been busted to Ordinary Spaceman for just that\n kind of thinking, for relying on tradition, on things that have worked\n before. Not only your thinking is slipshod, you've grown careless about\n everything else, even your own life.\"", "\"Quail,\" Nagurski replied. \"That's what I see.\"\n\n\n \"You,\" I said carefully, \"have been in space a\nlong\ntime. Look again.\"\n\n\n \"I see our old buddy, Quail.\"\n\n\n I took another slosh of burgundy and peered up ahead. It\nwas\nQuade. A\n man in a spacesuit, faceplate in the dust, two hundred yards ahead.\nGrudgingly I stepped forward, out of the shadow of the ridge.\n A hysterically screaming wind rocked me on my toes. We pushed\n on sluggishly to Quade's side, moving to the tempo of\nPomp and\n Circumstance\n.\n\n\n Farley lugged Quade over on his back and read his gauges.", "The wailing call sounded through the amber twilight.\n\n\n I realized that I was actually\nhearing\nit for the first time.\n\n\n The alien stood between us and the ship. It was a great pot-bellied\n lizard as tall as a man. Its sound came from a flat, vibrating beaver\n tail. Others of its kind were coming into view behind it.\n\n\n \"Stand your ground,\" I warned the others thickly. \"They may be\n dangerous.\"\n\n\n Quade sat up on our crisscross litter of arms. \"Aliens can't be\n hostile. Ethnic impossibility. I'll show you.\"\n\n\n Quade was delirious and we were drunk. He got away from us and jogged\n toward the herd.\n\n\n \"Let's give him a hand!\" Farley shouted. \"We'll take us a specimen!\"", "I leaned forward, elbows on knees. \"Let me tell\nyou\na thing,\n Nagurski. Your trust of these damn-fool spacemen is why you are no\n longer a captain. You can't trust anything out here in space, much less\n human nature. Even I know that much!\"\n\n\n He was pained. \"If you don't trust the men, they won't trust you, Gav.\"\n\n\n \"They don't have to trust me. All they have to do is\nobey\nme or, by\n Jupiter, get frozen stiff and thawed out just in time for court-marshal\n back home. Listen,\" I continued earnestly, \"these men aren't going to\n think of me—of\nus\n, the officers, as their leaders. As far as the\n crew is concerned, Ordinary Spaceman Quade is the best man on this\n ship.\"", "The Quartermaster rose with grim deliberation, and hiccuped. \"Better\n get him back to the spaceship fast. I've seen this kind of thing\n before with transphasia. His body cooled down because of the screaming\n wind—psychosomatic reaction—and his heating circuits compensated for\n the cool flesh. The poor devil's got frostbite and heat prostration.\"\nThe four of us managed to haul Quade back by using the powered joints\n in our suits. Hoffman suggested that he had once seen an injured\n man walked back inside his suit like a robot, but it was a delicate\n adjustment, controlling power circuits from outside a suit. It was too\n much for us—we were too tired, too numb, too drunk.\n\n\n At first sight of the spacer in the distance, transphasia left me with\n only a chocolate-tasting pink after-image on my retina. It was now\n showing bare skeleton from cannibalization for tractor parts, but it\n looked good to me, like home.", "I couldn't stop them. Being in Alpine rope with them, I went along. At\n the time, it even seemed vaguely like a good idea.\n\n\n As we lumbered toward them, the aliens fell back in a solid line except\n for the first curious-looking one. Quade got there ahead of us and made\n a grab. The creature rose into the air with a screaming vibration of\n his tail and landed on top of him, flattening him instantly.\n\n\n \"Sssh, men,\" Nagurski said. \"Leave it to me. I'll surround him.\"", "\"In departing from standard procedure that we have learned to trust,\n you are risking more than a few men—you risk the whole mission in\n gambling so much of the ship. A captain doesn't take chances like that!\"\n\n\n \"I never said I wouldn't take chances. But I'm not going to take\nstupid\nchances. I\nmight\nbe doing the wrong thing, but I can see you\nwould\nbe doing it wrong.\"\n\n\n \"You know nothing about space, Captain! You have to trust\nus\n.\"\n\n\n \"That's it exactly, First Officer Nagurski,\" I said sociably. \"If you\n lazy, lax, complacent slobs want to do something in a particular way, I\n know it\nhas\nto be wrong.\"\n\n\n I turned and found Wallace, the personnel man, standing in the hatchway.\n\n\n \"Pardon, Captain, but would you say we also lacked initiative?\"", "\"Yes, this is definitely the trail of Quail,\" Nagurski said soberly.\n \"This is serious business. I must ask whoever has been giggling on\n this channel to shut up. Pardon me, Captain.\nYou\nweren't giggling,\n sir?\"\n\n\n \"I have never giggled in my life, Nagurski.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. That's what we all thought.\"\n\n\n A moment later, Nagurski added, \"Anyway, I just noticed it was my\n shelf—my, that is, self.\"\n\n\n The basso profundo performing\nFigaro\non my headset climbed to a\n girlish shriek. A sliver of ice. This was the call Quade and I had\n first heard as we were about to troop over a cliff. I dug in my heels.\n\n\n \"Take a good look around, boys,\" I said. \"What do you see?\"", "How could we be less vulnerable, or preferably invulnerable?\n\"Captain, you got nothing to worry about,\" Quartermaster Farley said.\n He patted a space helmet paternally. \"You got yourself a self-contained\n environment. The suit's eye looks into yours at the arteries in the\n back of your eyeball so it can read your amber corpuscles and feed\n you your oxygen in the right amounts; you're a bottle-fed baby. If\n transphasia gets you seeing limburger, turn on the radar and you're\n air-conditioned as an igloo. Nothing short of a cosmic blast can dent\n that hide. You got it made.\"\n\n\n \"You are right,\" I said, \"only transphasia comes right through these\n air-fast joints.\"\n\n\n \"Something strange about the trance, Captain,\" Farley said darkly. \"Any\n spaceman can tell you that. Things we don't understand.\"", "\"I would,\" I answered levelly.\n\n\n \"Then you'll be interested to hear that Spaceman Quade took a suit and\n a cartographer unit. He's out there somewhere, alone.\"\n\n\n \"The idiot!\" I yelped. \"Everyone needs a partner out there. Send out a\n team to follow his cable and drag him in here by it.\"\n\n\n \"He didn't hook on a cable, Captain,\" Wallace said. \"I suppose he\n intended to go beyond the three-mile limit as you demanded.\"\n\n\n \"Shut up, Wallace. You don't have to like me, but you can't twist what\n I said as long as I command this spacer.\"\n\n\n \"Cool off, Gav,\" Nagurski advised me. \"It's been done before. Anybody\n else would have been a fool to go out alone, but Quade is the most\n experienced man we have. He knows transphasia. Trust him.\"", "I splashed some wine from my drinking tube against the roof of my mouth\n to sharpen my taste. It brought out the footsteps sharper. It also made\n the landscape more of a teen-ager's caloric nightmare.\n\n\n The four of us pulled ourselves closer together by reeling in more\n of our safety line. Farley and Hoffman, Nagurski and myself, we were\n cabled together. It gave us a larger hunk of reality to hold onto. Even\n so, things wavered for me during a wisp of time.\n\n\n We stumbled over the ridge, feeling out the territory. It was a sticky\n job crawling over a melting, chunk-style Hershey bar. I was thankful\n for the invigorating Sousa march blasting inside my helmet. Before the\n tape had cut in, kicked on by the decibel gauge, I had heard or felt\n something dark and ominous in the outside air.", "Before I could agree with one of his theories for once, a streak of\n spice shot past us. It bounced back tangily and made a bitter rip\n between the two of us. There was no time to judge its size, if it had\n size, or its decibel range, or its caloric count, before a small, sharp\n pain dug in and dwindled down to nothing in one long second.\n\n\n The new odor pattern in my head told me Quade was saying something I\n couldn't quite make out.\n\n\n Quade then pulled me in the direction of the nasty little pain.\n\n\n \"Wait a minute, Spaceman!\" I bellowed. \"Where the devil do you think\n you're dragging me? Halt! That's a direct order.\"\n\n\n He stopped. \"Don't you want to find out what that was? This\nis\nan\n exploration party, you know, sir.\"" ], [ "\"But, sir,\" Farley protested, \"you don't give alcohol to the crew in\n the middle of a mission. It's not done. What reason can you have?\"\n\n\n \"To sharpen their taste and olfactory senses. We can turn up or block\n out sound. We can use radar to extend our sight, but the Space Service\n hasn't yet developed anything to make spacemen taste or smell better.\"\n\n\n \"They are going to smell like a herd of winos,\" Farley said. \"I don't\n like to think how they would taste.\"\n\n\n \"It's an entirely practical idea. Tea-tasters used to drink\n almond-and-barley water to sharpen their senses. I've observed that\n wine helps you appreciate culinary art more. Considering the mixed-up\n sensory data under transphasia, wine may help us to see where we are\n going.\"", "Before I could agree with one of his theories for once, a streak of\n spice shot past us. It bounced back tangily and made a bitter rip\n between the two of us. There was no time to judge its size, if it had\n size, or its decibel range, or its caloric count, before a small, sharp\n pain dug in and dwindled down to nothing in one long second.\n\n\n The new odor pattern in my head told me Quade was saying something I\n couldn't quite make out.\n\n\n Quade then pulled me in the direction of the nasty little pain.\n\n\n \"Wait a minute, Spaceman!\" I bellowed. \"Where the devil do you think\n you're dragging me? Halt! That's a direct order.\"\n\n\n He stopped. \"Don't you want to find out what that was? This\nis\nan\n exploration party, you know, sir.\"", "\"Yes, sir,\" Farley said obediently. \"I'll give spacemen a few quarts of\n wine, telling them to use it carefully for scientific purposes only,\n and then they will be able to see where they are going. Yes, sir.\"\n\n\n I turned to leave, then paused briefly. \"You can come along, Farley.\n I'm sure you want to see that we don't waste any of the stuff.\"\n\"There they are!\" Nagurski called. \"Quade's footsteps again, just\n beyond that rocky ridge.\"\n\n\n The landscape was rich chocolate ice cream smothered with chocolate\n syrup, caramel, peanuts and maple syrup, eaten while you smoked an old,\n mellow Havana. The footsteps were faint traces of whipped cream across\n the dark, rich taste of the planet.", "\"Captain Gavin,\" Quade said patiently, \"you must realize that an\n outsider like you, among a crew of skilled spacemen, can never be more\n than a figurehead.\"\n\n\n Was this the way I was to be treated? Why, this man had deliberately\n insulted me, his captain. I controlled myself, remembering the\n familiarity that had always existed between members of a crew working\n under close conditions, from the time of the ancient submarines and the\n first orbital ships.\n\n\n \"Quade,\" I said, \"there's only one way for us to find out which of us\n is right about the cause of our scanning blackout.\"\n\n\n \"We go out and find the reason.\"\n\n\n \"Exactly. We go. You and me. I hope you can stand my company.\"\n\n\n \"I'm not sure I can,\" he answered reluctantly. \"My hazard pay doesn't\n cover exploring with rookies. With all due respect, Captain.\"", "\"The hell it is,\" Quade said grimly. \"It's his deadliest liability.\"\n\n\n \"In that case, I must inform you that I am demoting you to Acting\n Executive Officer.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\" Quade gawked. \"But dammit, Captain, you can't do that to me!\n I'll lose hazard pay and be that much further from retirement!\"\n\n\n \"That's tough,\" I sympathized, \"but in every service a chap gets broken\n in rank now and then.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe it's worth it,\" Quade said heavily. \"Now maybe I've learned how\n to stay alive out here. I just hope I don't forget.\"\n\n\n I thought about that. I was nearly through with my first mission and\n I could speak with experience, even if it was the least amount of\n experience aboard.", "\"In departing from standard procedure that we have learned to trust,\n you are risking more than a few men—you risk the whole mission in\n gambling so much of the ship. A captain doesn't take chances like that!\"\n\n\n \"I never said I wouldn't take chances. But I'm not going to take\nstupid\nchances. I\nmight\nbe doing the wrong thing, but I can see you\nwould\nbe doing it wrong.\"\n\n\n \"You know nothing about space, Captain! You have to trust\nus\n.\"\n\n\n \"That's it exactly, First Officer Nagurski,\" I said sociably. \"If you\n lazy, lax, complacent slobs want to do something in a particular way, I\n know it\nhas\nto be wrong.\"\n\n\n I turned and found Wallace, the personnel man, standing in the hatchway.\n\n\n \"Pardon, Captain, but would you say we also lacked initiative?\"", "\"Quail,\" Nagurski replied. \"That's what I see.\"\n\n\n \"You,\" I said carefully, \"have been in space a\nlong\ntime. Look again.\"\n\n\n \"I see our old buddy, Quail.\"\n\n\n I took another slosh of burgundy and peered up ahead. It\nwas\nQuade. A\n man in a spacesuit, faceplate in the dust, two hundred yards ahead.\nGrudgingly I stepped forward, out of the shadow of the ridge.\n A hysterically screaming wind rocked me on my toes. We pushed\n on sluggishly to Quade's side, moving to the tempo of\nPomp and\n Circumstance\n.\n\n\n Farley lugged Quade over on his back and read his gauges.", "\"Not,\" he persisted, \"if\ntoo\nmany parts are missing.\"\n\n\n \"Nagurski, if you are looking for a job safer than space exploration,\n why don't you go back to testing cosmic bomb shelters?\"\n\n\n Nagurski flushed. \"Look here, Captain, you are being too damned\n cautious. There is a way one handles the survey of a planet like this,\n and this isn't the way.\"\n\n\n \"It's my way. You heard what Quade said. You know it yourself. The men\n have to have something tangible to hang onto out there. One slender\n cable isn't enough of an edge on sensory anarchy. If the product of\n their own technological civilization can keep them sane, I say let 'em\n take a part of that environment with them.\"", "\"I would,\" I answered levelly.\n\n\n \"Then you'll be interested to hear that Spaceman Quade took a suit and\n a cartographer unit. He's out there somewhere, alone.\"\n\n\n \"The idiot!\" I yelped. \"Everyone needs a partner out there. Send out a\n team to follow his cable and drag him in here by it.\"\n\n\n \"He didn't hook on a cable, Captain,\" Wallace said. \"I suppose he\n intended to go beyond the three-mile limit as you demanded.\"\n\n\n \"Shut up, Wallace. You don't have to like me, but you can't twist what\n I said as long as I command this spacer.\"\n\n\n \"Cool off, Gav,\" Nagurski advised me. \"It's been done before. Anybody\n else would have been a fool to go out alone, but Quade is the most\n experienced man we have. He knows transphasia. Trust him.\"", "The thought intruded itself:\nwhy\nhadn't I recognized this before I\n let Quade escape to almost certain death? Wasn't it because I wanted\n him dead, because I resented the crew's resentment of my authority, and\n recognized in him the leader and symbol of this resentment?\n\n\n I threw away that idea along with my half-used cigarette. It might very\n well be true, but how did that help now?\n\n\n I had to\nthink\n.\n\n\n I was going after him, that was certain. Not only for humane\n reasons—he was the most important member of the crew. With him around,\n there were only two opinions, his and mine. Without him, I'd have\n endless opinions to contend with.", "\"Then,\" I told them, \"we will have to start tearing apart this ship.\"\nSergeant-Major Hoffman and his team were doing a good job of ripping\n out the side of the afterhold. Through the portal I could see the\n suited men expertly guiding the huge curved sections on their ray\n projectors.\n\n\n \"Cannibalizing is dangerous.\" Nagurski put his pipe in his teeth and\n shook his head disapprovingly.\n\n\n \"Spaceships have parts as interchangeable as Erector sets. We can\n take apart the tractors and put our ship back together again after we\n complete the survey.\"\n\n\n \"You can't assemble a jigsaw puzzle if some of the pieces are missing.\"\n\n\n \"You can't get a complete picture, but you can get a good idea of\n what it looks like. We can take off in a reasonable facsimile of a\n spaceship.\"", "\"How far can we run it back?\"\n\n\n Quade shrugged. \"Miles.\"\n\n\n \"How many?\"\n\n\n \"We have three miles of cable. As long as you can feel, taste, see,\n smell or hear that rope anchoring you to home, you aren't lost.\"\n\n\n \"Three miles isn't good enough. We don't have enough fuel to change\n sites that often. You can't use the drive in a gravitational field, you\n know.\"\n\n\n \"What else can we do, Captain?\" Nagurski asked puzzledly.\n\n\n \"You've said that the spaceship is our only protection from\n transphasia. Is that it?\"\n\n\n Quade gave a curt nod.", "\"Obviously.\" Quade glanced disgustedly at the screen.\n\n\n \"Too obvious. This time it might not be a familiar condition of many\n planetary gravitational fields. On this planet, that blank kinescope\n may mean our Big Brother kites were knocked down by hostile natives.\"\n\n\n \"You are plain wrong, Captain. Traditionally, alien races never\n interfere with our explorations. Generally, they are so alien to us\n they can't even recognize our existence.\"\nI drew myself up to my full height—and noticed in irritation it was\n still an inch less than Quade's. \"I don't understand you men. Look at\n yourself, Quade. You've been busted to Ordinary Spaceman for just that\n kind of thinking, for relying on tradition, on things that have worked\n before. Not only your thinking is slipshod, you've grown careless about\n everything else, even your own life.\"", "\"I don't understand it,\" Quade admitted. \"Transphasia hits you a foul\n as soon as you let it into the airlock.\"\n\n\n \"Apparently, Quade,\nthis\nthing is going to creep up on us.\"\n\n\n \"Don't sound smug, Captain. It's pitty-pattying behind you too.\"\n\n\n The keening call across the surface of consciousness postponed my reply.\n\n\n The wail was ominously forlorn, defiant of description. I turned my\n head around slowly inside my helmet, not even sure that I had heard it.\n\n\n But what else can you do with a wail but\nhear\nit?\n\n\n Quade nodded. \"I've felt this before. It usually hits sooner. Let's\n trace it.\"", "\"I'm talking about something we do understand—\nsound\n. These suits\n perfectly soundproof?\"\n\n\n \"Well, you can pick up sound by conduction. Like putting two helmets\n together and talking without using radio. You can't insulate enough to\n block out all sound and still have a man-shaped suit. You have—\"\n\n\n \"I know. Then you have something like a tractor or a miniature\n spaceship. There isn't time for that. We will have to live with the\n sound.\"\n\n\n \"What do you think he's going to hear out there, Captain? We'd like to\n find one of those beautiful sirens on some planet, believe me, but—\"", "\"He\nis\na good man,\" Nagurski said. \"You mustn't be jealous of his\n status.\"\n\n\n The dog growled. He must have sensed what I almost did to Nagurski.\n\n\n \"Never mind that for now,\" I said wearily. \"What was your idea for\n getting our exploration parties through this transphasia?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one idea for that,\" said Quade, ducking his long head\n and stepping through the connecting hatch. \"With the Captain's\n permission....\"\n\n\n \"Go ahead, Quade, tell him,\" Nagurski invited.\n\n\n \"There's only one way to wade through transphasia with any\n reliability,\" Quade told me. \"You keep some kind of physical contact\n with the spaceship. Parties are strung out on guide line, like we were,\n but the cable has to be run back and made fast to the hull.\"", "\"I'm not sure I do want to find out what that was just now. I didn't\n like the feel of it. But the important thing is for us not to get any\n further from the ship.\"\n\n\n \"That's important, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"To the best of my judgment, yes. This—condition—didn't begin until\n we got so far away from the spacer—in time or distance. I don't want\n it to get any worse. It's troublesome not to know black from white, but\n it would be a downright inconvenience not to know which way is up.\"\n\n\n \"Not for an experienced spaceman,\" Quade griped. \"I'm used to\n free-fall.\"\n\n\n But he turned back.\n\n\n \"Just a minute,\" I said. \"There was something strange up ahead. I want\n to see if short-range radar can get through our electrogravitational\n jamming here.\"", "I took a sighting. My helmet set projected the pattern on the cornea.\n Sweetness building up to a stab of pure salt—those were the blips.\n\n\n Beside me, there was a thin thread of violet. Quade had whistled. He\n was reading the map too.\n\n\n The slope fell away sharply in front of us, becoming a deep gorge.\n There was something broken and twisted at the bottom, something we had\n known for an instant as a streak of spice.\n\n\n \"There's one free-fall,\" I said, \"where you wouldn't live long enough\n to get used to it.\"\n\n\n He said nothing on the route back to the spacer.\n\"I know all about this sort of thing, Gav,\" First Officer Nagurski said\n expansively. He was rubbing the well-worn ears of our beagle mascot,\n Bruce. A heavy tail thudded on the steel deck from time to time.", "\"I trusted him too far by letting him run around loose. He needs a\n leash in more ways than one, and I'm going to put one on him.\"\nFor me, it was a nightmare. I lay down in my cabin and thought. I had\n to think things through very carefully. One mistake was too many for\n me. My worst fear had been that someday I would overlook one tiny flaw\n and ruin a gem. Now I might have ruined an exploration and destroyed a\n man, not a stone, because I had missed the flaw.\n\n\n No one but a reckless fool would have gone out alone on a strange\n planet with a terrifying phenomenon, but I'd had enough evidence to see\n that space exploration\nmade\na man a reckless fool by doing things on\n one planet he had once found safe and wise on some other world.", "I leaned forward, elbows on knees. \"Let me tell\nyou\na thing,\n Nagurski. Your trust of these damn-fool spacemen is why you are no\n longer a captain. You can't trust anything out here in space, much less\n human nature. Even I know that much!\"\n\n\n He was pained. \"If you don't trust the men, they won't trust you, Gav.\"\n\n\n \"They don't have to trust me. All they have to do is\nobey\nme or, by\n Jupiter, get frozen stiff and thawed out just in time for court-marshal\n back home. Listen,\" I continued earnestly, \"these men aren't going to\n think of me—of\nus\n, the officers, as their leaders. As far as the\n crew is concerned, Ordinary Spaceman Quade is the best man on this\n ship.\"" ], [ "\"Captain Gavin,\" Quade said patiently, \"you must realize that an\n outsider like you, among a crew of skilled spacemen, can never be more\n than a figurehead.\"\n\n\n Was this the way I was to be treated? Why, this man had deliberately\n insulted me, his captain. I controlled myself, remembering the\n familiarity that had always existed between members of a crew working\n under close conditions, from the time of the ancient submarines and the\n first orbital ships.\n\n\n \"Quade,\" I said, \"there's only one way for us to find out which of us\n is right about the cause of our scanning blackout.\"\n\n\n \"We go out and find the reason.\"\n\n\n \"Exactly. We go. You and me. I hope you can stand my company.\"\n\n\n \"I'm not sure I can,\" he answered reluctantly. \"My hazard pay doesn't\n cover exploring with rookies. With all due respect, Captain.\"", "The thought intruded itself:\nwhy\nhadn't I recognized this before I\n let Quade escape to almost certain death? Wasn't it because I wanted\n him dead, because I resented the crew's resentment of my authority, and\n recognized in him the leader and symbol of this resentment?\n\n\n I threw away that idea along with my half-used cigarette. It might very\n well be true, but how did that help now?\n\n\n I had to\nthink\n.\n\n\n I was going after him, that was certain. Not only for humane\n reasons—he was the most important member of the crew. With him around,\n there were only two opinions, his and mine. Without him, I'd have\n endless opinions to contend with.", "I leaned forward, elbows on knees. \"Let me tell\nyou\na thing,\n Nagurski. Your trust of these damn-fool spacemen is why you are no\n longer a captain. You can't trust anything out here in space, much less\n human nature. Even I know that much!\"\n\n\n He was pained. \"If you don't trust the men, they won't trust you, Gav.\"\n\n\n \"They don't have to trust me. All they have to do is\nobey\nme or, by\n Jupiter, get frozen stiff and thawed out just in time for court-marshal\n back home. Listen,\" I continued earnestly, \"these men aren't going to\n think of me—of\nus\n, the officers, as their leaders. As far as the\n crew is concerned, Ordinary Spaceman Quade is the best man on this\n ship.\"", "\"I would,\" I answered levelly.\n\n\n \"Then you'll be interested to hear that Spaceman Quade took a suit and\n a cartographer unit. He's out there somewhere, alone.\"\n\n\n \"The idiot!\" I yelped. \"Everyone needs a partner out there. Send out a\n team to follow his cable and drag him in here by it.\"\n\n\n \"He didn't hook on a cable, Captain,\" Wallace said. \"I suppose he\n intended to go beyond the three-mile limit as you demanded.\"\n\n\n \"Shut up, Wallace. You don't have to like me, but you can't twist what\n I said as long as I command this spacer.\"\n\n\n \"Cool off, Gav,\" Nagurski advised me. \"It's been done before. Anybody\n else would have been a fool to go out alone, but Quade is the most\n experienced man we have. He knows transphasia. Trust him.\"", "\"Bruce is content,\" I admitted. \"He couldn't be any more content and\n still be alive. But I'm not sure that theory works out with men. We'd\n have anarchy if I tried to let these starbucks pick their own master.\"\n\n\n \"\nI\nhad no trouble when I was a captain,\" Nagurski said. \"Ease the\n reins on the men. Just offer them your advice, your guidance. They\n will soon see why the service selected you as captain; they will pick\n you themselves.\"\n\n\n \"Did your crew voluntarily elect you as their leader?\"\n\n\n \"Of course they did, Gav. I'm an old hand at controlling crews.\"\n\n\n \"Then why are you First Officer under me now?\"", "\"Not,\" he persisted, \"if\ntoo\nmany parts are missing.\"\n\n\n \"Nagurski, if you are looking for a job safer than space exploration,\n why don't you go back to testing cosmic bomb shelters?\"\n\n\n Nagurski flushed. \"Look here, Captain, you are being too damned\n cautious. There is a way one handles the survey of a planet like this,\n and this isn't the way.\"\n\n\n \"It's my way. You heard what Quade said. You know it yourself. The men\n have to have something tangible to hang onto out there. One slender\n cable isn't enough of an edge on sensory anarchy. If the product of\n their own technological civilization can keep them sane, I say let 'em\n take a part of that environment with them.\"", "\"The hell it is,\" Quade said grimly. \"It's his deadliest liability.\"\n\n\n \"In that case, I must inform you that I am demoting you to Acting\n Executive Officer.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\" Quade gawked. \"But dammit, Captain, you can't do that to me!\n I'll lose hazard pay and be that much further from retirement!\"\n\n\n \"That's tough,\" I sympathized, \"but in every service a chap gets broken\n in rank now and then.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe it's worth it,\" Quade said heavily. \"Now maybe I've learned how\n to stay alive out here. I just hope I don't forget.\"\n\n\n I thought about that. I was nearly through with my first mission and\n I could speak with experience, even if it was the least amount of\n experience aboard.", "He blinked, then decided to laugh. \"I've been in space a good many\n years. I really wanted to relax a little bit more. Besides, the\n increase in hazard pay was actually more than my salary as a captain.\n I'm a notch nearer retirement too.\"\n\n\n \"Tell me, did you always feel this way about letting the men select\n their own leader?\"\nNagurski brought out a pipe. He would have a pipe, I decided.\n\n\n \"No, not always. I was like you at first. Fresh from the cosmic energy\n test lab, suspicious of everything, trying to tell the old hands what\n to do. But I learned that they are pretty smart boys; they know what\n they are doing. You can rely on them absolutely.\"", "\"Can't,\" I told him. \"I can't trust your opinion. I can't trust\nanything\n. That's why I'm Captain.\"\n\n\n \"You'll get over feeling like that.\"\n\n\n \"I know. Then I'll become First Officer.\"\n\n\n \"But look at that screen, sir,\" Quade said with an emphatic swing of\n his scarred arm. \"I've seen blank scanning like that before and you\n haven't—it's your first trip. This always means transphasia—cortex\n dissolution, motor area feedback, the Aitchell Effect—call it anything\n you like, it's still transphasia.\"\n\n\n \"I know what transphasia is,\" I said moderately. \"It means an\n electrogravitational disturbance of incoming sense data, rechanneling\n it to the wrong receptive areas. Besides the human brain, it also\n effects electronic equipment, like radar and television.\"", "THE SPICY SOUND OF SUCCESS\nBy JIM HARMON\n\n\n Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Magazine August 1959.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nNow was the captain's chance to prove he knew\n \nless than the crew—all their lives hung upon it!\nThere was nothing showing on the video screen. That was why we were\n looking at it so analytically.\n\n\n \"Transphasia, that's what it is,\" Ordinary Spaceman Quade stated with\n a definite thrust of his angular jaw in my direction. \"You can take my\n word on that, Captain Gavin.\"", "\"In departing from standard procedure that we have learned to trust,\n you are risking more than a few men—you risk the whole mission in\n gambling so much of the ship. A captain doesn't take chances like that!\"\n\n\n \"I never said I wouldn't take chances. But I'm not going to take\nstupid\nchances. I\nmight\nbe doing the wrong thing, but I can see you\nwould\nbe doing it wrong.\"\n\n\n \"You know nothing about space, Captain! You have to trust\nus\n.\"\n\n\n \"That's it exactly, First Officer Nagurski,\" I said sociably. \"If you\n lazy, lax, complacent slobs want to do something in a particular way, I\n know it\nhas\nto be wrong.\"\n\n\n I turned and found Wallace, the personnel man, standing in the hatchway.\n\n\n \"Pardon, Captain, but would you say we also lacked initiative?\"", "\"I'm not sure I do want to find out what that was just now. I didn't\n like the feel of it. But the important thing is for us not to get any\n further from the ship.\"\n\n\n \"That's important, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"To the best of my judgment, yes. This—condition—didn't begin until\n we got so far away from the spacer—in time or distance. I don't want\n it to get any worse. It's troublesome not to know black from white, but\n it would be a downright inconvenience not to know which way is up.\"\n\n\n \"Not for an experienced spaceman,\" Quade griped. \"I'm used to\n free-fall.\"\n\n\n But he turned back.\n\n\n \"Just a minute,\" I said. \"There was something strange up ahead. I want\n to see if short-range radar can get through our electrogravitational\n jamming here.\"", "\"I trusted him too far by letting him run around loose. He needs a\n leash in more ways than one, and I'm going to put one on him.\"\nFor me, it was a nightmare. I lay down in my cabin and thought. I had\n to think things through very carefully. One mistake was too many for\n me. My worst fear had been that someday I would overlook one tiny flaw\n and ruin a gem. Now I might have ruined an exploration and destroyed a\n man, not a stone, because I had missed the flaw.\n\n\n No one but a reckless fool would have gone out alone on a strange\n planet with a terrifying phenomenon, but I'd had enough evidence to see\n that space exploration\nmade\na man a reckless fool by doing things on\n one planet he had once found safe and wise on some other world.", "I took a sighting. My helmet set projected the pattern on the cornea.\n Sweetness building up to a stab of pure salt—those were the blips.\n\n\n Beside me, there was a thin thread of violet. Quade had whistled. He\n was reading the map too.\n\n\n The slope fell away sharply in front of us, becoming a deep gorge.\n There was something broken and twisted at the bottom, something we had\n known for an instant as a streak of spice.\n\n\n \"There's one free-fall,\" I said, \"where you wouldn't live long enough\n to get used to it.\"\n\n\n He said nothing on the route back to the spacer.\n\"I know all about this sort of thing, Gav,\" First Officer Nagurski said\n expansively. He was rubbing the well-worn ears of our beagle mascot,\n Bruce. A heavy tail thudded on the steel deck from time to time.", "\"But, sir,\" Farley protested, \"you don't give alcohol to the crew in\n the middle of a mission. It's not done. What reason can you have?\"\n\n\n \"To sharpen their taste and olfactory senses. We can turn up or block\n out sound. We can use radar to extend our sight, but the Space Service\n hasn't yet developed anything to make spacemen taste or smell better.\"\n\n\n \"They are going to smell like a herd of winos,\" Farley said. \"I don't\n like to think how they would taste.\"\n\n\n \"It's an entirely practical idea. Tea-tasters used to drink\n almond-and-barley water to sharpen their senses. I've observed that\n wine helps you appreciate culinary art more. Considering the mixed-up\n sensory data under transphasia, wine may help us to see where we are\n going.\"", "\"He\nis\na good man,\" Nagurski said. \"You mustn't be jealous of his\n status.\"\n\n\n The dog growled. He must have sensed what I almost did to Nagurski.\n\n\n \"Never mind that for now,\" I said wearily. \"What was your idea for\n getting our exploration parties through this transphasia?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one idea for that,\" said Quade, ducking his long head\n and stepping through the connecting hatch. \"With the Captain's\n permission....\"\n\n\n \"Go ahead, Quade, tell him,\" Nagurski invited.\n\n\n \"There's only one way to wade through transphasia with any\n reliability,\" Quade told me. \"You keep some kind of physical contact\n with the spaceship. Parties are strung out on guide line, like we were,\n but the cable has to be run back and made fast to the hull.\"", "\"Then,\" I told them, \"we will have to start tearing apart this ship.\"\nSergeant-Major Hoffman and his team were doing a good job of ripping\n out the side of the afterhold. Through the portal I could see the\n suited men expertly guiding the huge curved sections on their ray\n projectors.\n\n\n \"Cannibalizing is dangerous.\" Nagurski put his pipe in his teeth and\n shook his head disapprovingly.\n\n\n \"Spaceships have parts as interchangeable as Erector sets. We can\n take apart the tractors and put our ship back together again after we\n complete the survey.\"\n\n\n \"You can't assemble a jigsaw puzzle if some of the pieces are missing.\"\n\n\n \"You can't get a complete picture, but you can get a good idea of\n what it looks like. We can take off in a reasonable facsimile of a\n spaceship.\"", "\"Yes, sir,\" Farley said obediently. \"I'll give spacemen a few quarts of\n wine, telling them to use it carefully for scientific purposes only,\n and then they will be able to see where they are going. Yes, sir.\"\n\n\n I turned to leave, then paused briefly. \"You can come along, Farley.\n I'm sure you want to see that we don't waste any of the stuff.\"\n\"There they are!\" Nagurski called. \"Quade's footsteps again, just\n beyond that rocky ridge.\"\n\n\n The landscape was rich chocolate ice cream smothered with chocolate\n syrup, caramel, peanuts and maple syrup, eaten while you smoked an old,\n mellow Havana. The footsteps were faint traces of whipped cream across\n the dark, rich taste of the planet.", "\"Obviously.\" Quade glanced disgustedly at the screen.\n\n\n \"Too obvious. This time it might not be a familiar condition of many\n planetary gravitational fields. On this planet, that blank kinescope\n may mean our Big Brother kites were knocked down by hostile natives.\"\n\n\n \"You are plain wrong, Captain. Traditionally, alien races never\n interfere with our explorations. Generally, they are so alien to us\n they can't even recognize our existence.\"\nI drew myself up to my full height—and noticed in irritation it was\n still an inch less than Quade's. \"I don't understand you men. Look at\n yourself, Quade. You've been busted to Ordinary Spaceman for just that\n kind of thinking, for relying on tradition, on things that have worked\n before. Not only your thinking is slipshod, you've grown careless about\n everything else, even your own life.\"", "\"Quail,\" Nagurski replied. \"That's what I see.\"\n\n\n \"You,\" I said carefully, \"have been in space a\nlong\ntime. Look again.\"\n\n\n \"I see our old buddy, Quail.\"\n\n\n I took another slosh of burgundy and peered up ahead. It\nwas\nQuade. A\n man in a spacesuit, faceplate in the dust, two hundred yards ahead.\nGrudgingly I stepped forward, out of the shadow of the ridge.\n A hysterically screaming wind rocked me on my toes. We pushed\n on sluggishly to Quade's side, moving to the tempo of\nPomp and\n Circumstance\n.\n\n\n Farley lugged Quade over on his back and read his gauges." ], [ "Quade squirmed. \"Yes, sir. One thing, sir—I don't understand how you\n got me away from those aliens.\"\n\n\n \"The aliens were trying to help. They knew something was wrong and they\n were prodding and probing. When the first tractor pulled up and the men\n got out, they seemed to realize our own people could help us easier\n than they could.\"\n\n\n \"I am not quite convinced that those babies just meant to help us all\n the time.\"\n\n\n \"But they did! First, that call of theirs—it wasn't to lead us into\n danger, but to warn us of the cliff, the freezing wind. They saw we\n were trying to find out things about their world, so they even offered\n us one of their own kind to study. Unfortunately, he was too much for\n us. They didn't give us their top man, of course, only the village\n idiot. It's just as well. We aren't allowed to dissect creatures that\n far up the intelligence scale.\"", "\"But why should they want to help us?\" Quade demanded suspiciously.\n\n\n \"I think it's like Nagurski's dog. The dog came to him when it wanted\n somebody to own it, protect it, feed it, love it. These aliens\nwant\nEarthmen to colonize the planet. We came here, you see, same as the dog\n came to Nagurski.\"\n\n\n \"Well, I've learned one thing from all of this,\" Quade said. \"I've been\n a blind, arrogant, cocksure fool, following courses that were good on\nsome\nworlds,\nmost\nworlds, but not good on\nall\nworlds. I'm never\n going to be that foolhardy again.\"\n\n\n \"But you're losing\nconfidence\n, Quade! You aren't sure of yourself any\n more. Isn't confidence a spaceman's most valuable asset?\"", "The wailing call sounded through the amber twilight.\n\n\n I realized that I was actually\nhearing\nit for the first time.\n\n\n The alien stood between us and the ship. It was a great pot-bellied\n lizard as tall as a man. Its sound came from a flat, vibrating beaver\n tail. Others of its kind were coming into view behind it.\n\n\n \"Stand your ground,\" I warned the others thickly. \"They may be\n dangerous.\"\n\n\n Quade sat up on our crisscross litter of arms. \"Aliens can't be\n hostile. Ethnic impossibility. I'll show you.\"\n\n\n Quade was delirious and we were drunk. He got away from us and jogged\n toward the herd.\n\n\n \"Let's give him a hand!\" Farley shouted. \"We'll take us a specimen!\"", "The men followed the First Officer's example, and the rope tying them\n to him. I went along cheerfully myself, until an enormous rump struck\n me violently in the face. My leaded boots were driven down into fertile\n soil, and my helmet was ringing like a bell. I got a jerky picture of\n the beast jumping up and down on top of the others joyously. Only the\n stiff space armor was holding up our slack frames.\n\n\n \"Let's let him escape,\" Hoffman suggested on the audio circuit.\n\n\n \"I'd like to,\" Nagurski admitted, \"but the other beasts won't let us\n get past their circle.\"\n\n\n It was true. The aliens formed a ring around us, and each time a\n bouncing boy hit the line, he only bounced back on top of us.\n\n\n \"Flat!\" I yelled. \"Our seams can't take much more of this beating.\"", "\"Obviously.\" Quade glanced disgustedly at the screen.\n\n\n \"Too obvious. This time it might not be a familiar condition of many\n planetary gravitational fields. On this planet, that blank kinescope\n may mean our Big Brother kites were knocked down by hostile natives.\"\n\n\n \"You are plain wrong, Captain. Traditionally, alien races never\n interfere with our explorations. Generally, they are so alien to us\n they can't even recognize our existence.\"\nI drew myself up to my full height—and noticed in irritation it was\n still an inch less than Quade's. \"I don't understand you men. Look at\n yourself, Quade. You've been busted to Ordinary Spaceman for just that\n kind of thinking, for relying on tradition, on things that have worked\n before. Not only your thinking is slipshod, you've grown careless about\n everything else, even your own life.\"", "\"Are you settling for a primary exploration?\"\n\n\n \"No. I think I had the right idea on your rescue party. You have to\n meet and fight a planet on its own terms. Fighting confused sounds and\n tastes with music and wine was crude, but it was on the right track.\n Out there, we understood language because we were familiar with alien\n languages changed to other sense mediums by cybernetic translators.\n Using the translator, we can learn to recognize all confused data as\n easily. I'm starting indoctrination courses.\"\n\n\n \"I doubt that that is necessary, sir,\" Quade said. \"Experienced\n spacemen are experienced with transphasia. You don't have to worry. In\n the future, I'll be able to resist sensations that tell me I'm freezing\n to death—if my gauges tell me it's a lie.\"\n\n\n I examined his bandisprayed hide. \"I think my way of gaining experience\n is less painful and more efficient.\"", "I followed my own advice and landed in the dirt beside Quade.\n\n\n The bouncer came to rest and regarded us silently, head on an\n eighty-degree angle.\n\n\n I was stone sober.\n\n\n The others were lying around me quietly, passed out, knocked out, or\n taking cover.\n\n\n The ring of aliens drew in about us, closer, tighter, as the bouncer\n sat on his haunches and waited for us to move.\n\"Feeling better?\" I asked Quade in the infirmary.\n\n\n He punched up his pillow and settled back. \"I guess so. But when I\n think of all the ways I nearly got myself killed out there.... How far\n have you got in the tractors?\"\n\n\n \"I'm having the tractors torn down and the parts put back into the\n spaceship where they belong. We\nshouldn't\nrisk losing them and\n getting stuck here.\"", "\"Yes, sir,\" Farley said obediently. \"I'll give spacemen a few quarts of\n wine, telling them to use it carefully for scientific purposes only,\n and then they will be able to see where they are going. Yes, sir.\"\n\n\n I turned to leave, then paused briefly. \"You can come along, Farley.\n I'm sure you want to see that we don't waste any of the stuff.\"\n\"There they are!\" Nagurski called. \"Quade's footsteps again, just\n beyond that rocky ridge.\"\n\n\n The landscape was rich chocolate ice cream smothered with chocolate\n syrup, caramel, peanuts and maple syrup, eaten while you smoked an old,\n mellow Havana. The footsteps were faint traces of whipped cream across\n the dark, rich taste of the planet.", "\"I trusted him too far by letting him run around loose. He needs a\n leash in more ways than one, and I'm going to put one on him.\"\nFor me, it was a nightmare. I lay down in my cabin and thought. I had\n to think things through very carefully. One mistake was too many for\n me. My worst fear had been that someday I would overlook one tiny flaw\n and ruin a gem. Now I might have ruined an exploration and destroyed a\n man, not a stone, because I had missed the flaw.\n\n\n No one but a reckless fool would have gone out alone on a strange\n planet with a terrifying phenomenon, but I'd had enough evidence to see\n that space exploration\nmade\na man a reckless fool by doing things on\n one planet he had once found safe and wise on some other world.", "\"He\nis\na good man,\" Nagurski said. \"You mustn't be jealous of his\n status.\"\n\n\n The dog growled. He must have sensed what I almost did to Nagurski.\n\n\n \"Never mind that for now,\" I said wearily. \"What was your idea for\n getting our exploration parties through this transphasia?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one idea for that,\" said Quade, ducking his long head\n and stepping through the connecting hatch. \"With the Captain's\n permission....\"\n\n\n \"Go ahead, Quade, tell him,\" Nagurski invited.\n\n\n \"There's only one way to wade through transphasia with any\n reliability,\" Quade told me. \"You keep some kind of physical contact\n with the spaceship. Parties are strung out on guide line, like we were,\n but the cable has to be run back and made fast to the hull.\"", "\"I don't understand it,\" Quade admitted. \"Transphasia hits you a foul\n as soon as you let it into the airlock.\"\n\n\n \"Apparently, Quade,\nthis\nthing is going to creep up on us.\"\n\n\n \"Don't sound smug, Captain. It's pitty-pattying behind you too.\"\n\n\n The keening call across the surface of consciousness postponed my reply.\n\n\n The wail was ominously forlorn, defiant of description. I turned my\n head around slowly inside my helmet, not even sure that I had heard it.\n\n\n But what else can you do with a wail but\nhear\nit?\n\n\n Quade nodded. \"I've felt this before. It usually hits sooner. Let's\n trace it.\"", "I couldn't stop them. Being in Alpine rope with them, I went along. At\n the time, it even seemed vaguely like a good idea.\n\n\n As we lumbered toward them, the aliens fell back in a solid line except\n for the first curious-looking one. Quade got there ahead of us and made\n a grab. The creature rose into the air with a screaming vibration of\n his tail and landed on top of him, flattening him instantly.\n\n\n \"Sssh, men,\" Nagurski said. \"Leave it to me. I'll surround him.\"", "I clapped him on the shoulder. \"But, man, you have just been telling\n me all we had to worry about was common transphasia. A man with your\n experience could protect himself and cover even a rookie, under such\n familiar conditions—right?\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, I suppose I could,\" Quade said, bitterly aware he had lost\n out somewhere and hoping that it wasn't the start of a trend.\n\"Looks okay to me,\" I said. Quade passed a gauntlet over his faceplate.\n \"It's real. I can blur it with a smudged visor. When it blurs, it's\n solid.\"\n\n\n The landscape beyond the black corona left by our landing rockets was\n unimpressive. The rocky desert was made up of silicon and iron oxide,\n so it looked much the same as a terrestrial location. Yellowish-white\n sand ran up to and around reddish brown rock clawing into the pink\n sunlight.", "Before I could agree with one of his theories for once, a streak of\n spice shot past us. It bounced back tangily and made a bitter rip\n between the two of us. There was no time to judge its size, if it had\n size, or its decibel range, or its caloric count, before a small, sharp\n pain dug in and dwindled down to nothing in one long second.\n\n\n The new odor pattern in my head told me Quade was saying something I\n couldn't quite make out.\n\n\n Quade then pulled me in the direction of the nasty little pain.\n\n\n \"Wait a minute, Spaceman!\" I bellowed. \"Where the devil do you think\n you're dragging me? Halt! That's a direct order.\"\n\n\n He stopped. \"Don't you want to find out what that was? This\nis\nan\n exploration party, you know, sir.\"", "His expression was tart and greasy despite all his light talk, and\n I knew mine was the same. I tested the security rope between our\n pressure suits. It was a taut and virile bass.\n\n\n We scaled a staccato of rocks, our suits grinding pepper against our\n hides.\n\n\n The musk summit rose before us, a minor-key horizon with a shifting\n treble for as far as I could smell. It was primitive beauty that made\n you feel shocking pink inside. The most beautiful vista I had ever\n tasted, it couldn't be dulled even by the sensation of beef broth under\n my skin.\n\n\n \"Is this transphasia?\" I asked in awe.\n\n\n \"It always has been before,\" Quade remarked. \"Ready to swallow your\n words about this being something an old hand wouldn't recognize,\n Captain?\"\n\n\n \"I'm swallowing no words until I find out precisely how they taste\n here.\"", "\"Not,\" he persisted, \"if\ntoo\nmany parts are missing.\"\n\n\n \"Nagurski, if you are looking for a job safer than space exploration,\n why don't you go back to testing cosmic bomb shelters?\"\n\n\n Nagurski flushed. \"Look here, Captain, you are being too damned\n cautious. There is a way one handles the survey of a planet like this,\n and this isn't the way.\"\n\n\n \"It's my way. You heard what Quade said. You know it yourself. The men\n have to have something tangible to hang onto out there. One slender\n cable isn't enough of an edge on sensory anarchy. If the product of\n their own technological civilization can keep them sane, I say let 'em\n take a part of that environment with them.\"", "\"I'm not sure I do want to find out what that was just now. I didn't\n like the feel of it. But the important thing is for us not to get any\n further from the ship.\"\n\n\n \"That's important, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"To the best of my judgment, yes. This—condition—didn't begin until\n we got so far away from the spacer—in time or distance. I don't want\n it to get any worse. It's troublesome not to know black from white, but\n it would be a downright inconvenience not to know which way is up.\"\n\n\n \"Not for an experienced spaceman,\" Quade griped. \"I'm used to\n free-fall.\"\n\n\n But he turned back.\n\n\n \"Just a minute,\" I said. \"There was something strange up ahead. I want\n to see if short-range radar can get through our electrogravitational\n jamming here.\"", "I took a sighting. My helmet set projected the pattern on the cornea.\n Sweetness building up to a stab of pure salt—those were the blips.\n\n\n Beside me, there was a thin thread of violet. Quade had whistled. He\n was reading the map too.\n\n\n The slope fell away sharply in front of us, becoming a deep gorge.\n There was something broken and twisted at the bottom, something we had\n known for an instant as a streak of spice.\n\n\n \"There's one free-fall,\" I said, \"where you wouldn't live long enough\n to get used to it.\"\n\n\n He said nothing on the route back to the spacer.\n\"I know all about this sort of thing, Gav,\" First Officer Nagurski said\n expansively. He was rubbing the well-worn ears of our beagle mascot,\n Bruce. A heavy tail thudded on the steel deck from time to time.", "\"I'm talking about something we do understand—\nsound\n. These suits\n perfectly soundproof?\"\n\n\n \"Well, you can pick up sound by conduction. Like putting two helmets\n together and talking without using radio. You can't insulate enough to\n block out all sound and still have a man-shaped suit. You have—\"\n\n\n \"I know. Then you have something like a tractor or a miniature\n spaceship. There isn't time for that. We will have to live with the\n sound.\"\n\n\n \"What do you think he's going to hear out there, Captain? We'd like to\n find one of those beautiful sirens on some planet, believe me, but—\"", "\"Then,\" I told them, \"we will have to start tearing apart this ship.\"\nSergeant-Major Hoffman and his team were doing a good job of ripping\n out the side of the afterhold. Through the portal I could see the\n suited men expertly guiding the huge curved sections on their ray\n projectors.\n\n\n \"Cannibalizing is dangerous.\" Nagurski put his pipe in his teeth and\n shook his head disapprovingly.\n\n\n \"Spaceships have parts as interchangeable as Erector sets. We can\n take apart the tractors and put our ship back together again after we\n complete the survey.\"\n\n\n \"You can't assemble a jigsaw puzzle if some of the pieces are missing.\"\n\n\n \"You can't get a complete picture, but you can get a good idea of\n what it looks like. We can take off in a reasonable facsimile of a\n spaceship.\"" ], [ "\"Quail,\" Nagurski replied. \"That's what I see.\"\n\n\n \"You,\" I said carefully, \"have been in space a\nlong\ntime. Look again.\"\n\n\n \"I see our old buddy, Quail.\"\n\n\n I took another slosh of burgundy and peered up ahead. It\nwas\nQuade. A\n man in a spacesuit, faceplate in the dust, two hundred yards ahead.\nGrudgingly I stepped forward, out of the shadow of the ridge.\n A hysterically screaming wind rocked me on my toes. We pushed\n on sluggishly to Quade's side, moving to the tempo of\nPomp and\n Circumstance\n.\n\n\n Farley lugged Quade over on his back and read his gauges.", "\"The hell it is,\" Quade said grimly. \"It's his deadliest liability.\"\n\n\n \"In that case, I must inform you that I am demoting you to Acting\n Executive Officer.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\" Quade gawked. \"But dammit, Captain, you can't do that to me!\n I'll lose hazard pay and be that much further from retirement!\"\n\n\n \"That's tough,\" I sympathized, \"but in every service a chap gets broken\n in rank now and then.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe it's worth it,\" Quade said heavily. \"Now maybe I've learned how\n to stay alive out here. I just hope I don't forget.\"\n\n\n I thought about that. I was nearly through with my first mission and\n I could speak with experience, even if it was the least amount of\n experience aboard.", "The thought intruded itself:\nwhy\nhadn't I recognized this before I\n let Quade escape to almost certain death? Wasn't it because I wanted\n him dead, because I resented the crew's resentment of my authority, and\n recognized in him the leader and symbol of this resentment?\n\n\n I threw away that idea along with my half-used cigarette. It might very\n well be true, but how did that help now?\n\n\n I had to\nthink\n.\n\n\n I was going after him, that was certain. Not only for humane\n reasons—he was the most important member of the crew. With him around,\n there were only two opinions, his and mine. Without him, I'd have\n endless opinions to contend with.", "Quade squirmed. \"Yes, sir. One thing, sir—I don't understand how you\n got me away from those aliens.\"\n\n\n \"The aliens were trying to help. They knew something was wrong and they\n were prodding and probing. When the first tractor pulled up and the men\n got out, they seemed to realize our own people could help us easier\n than they could.\"\n\n\n \"I am not quite convinced that those babies just meant to help us all\n the time.\"\n\n\n \"But they did! First, that call of theirs—it wasn't to lead us into\n danger, but to warn us of the cliff, the freezing wind. They saw we\n were trying to find out things about their world, so they even offered\n us one of their own kind to study. Unfortunately, he was too much for\n us. They didn't give us their top man, of course, only the village\n idiot. It's just as well. We aren't allowed to dissect creatures that\n far up the intelligence scale.\"", "\"Quade,\" I said, \"space isn't as dangerous as all that.\" I clapped him\n on the shoulder fraternally. \"You worry too much!\"", "The Quartermaster rose with grim deliberation, and hiccuped. \"Better\n get him back to the spaceship fast. I've seen this kind of thing\n before with transphasia. His body cooled down because of the screaming\n wind—psychosomatic reaction—and his heating circuits compensated for\n the cool flesh. The poor devil's got frostbite and heat prostration.\"\nThe four of us managed to haul Quade back by using the powered joints\n in our suits. Hoffman suggested that he had once seen an injured\n man walked back inside his suit like a robot, but it was a delicate\n adjustment, controlling power circuits from outside a suit. It was too\n much for us—we were too tired, too numb, too drunk.\n\n\n At first sight of the spacer in the distance, transphasia left me with\n only a chocolate-tasting pink after-image on my retina. It was now\n showing bare skeleton from cannibalization for tractor parts, but it\n looked good to me, like home.", "\"Yes, this is definitely the trail of Quail,\" Nagurski said soberly.\n \"This is serious business. I must ask whoever has been giggling on\n this channel to shut up. Pardon me, Captain.\nYou\nweren't giggling,\n sir?\"\n\n\n \"I have never giggled in my life, Nagurski.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. That's what we all thought.\"\n\n\n A moment later, Nagurski added, \"Anyway, I just noticed it was my\n shelf—my, that is, self.\"\n\n\n The basso profundo performing\nFigaro\non my headset climbed to a\n girlish shriek. A sliver of ice. This was the call Quade and I had\n first heard as we were about to troop over a cliff. I dug in my heels.\n\n\n \"Take a good look around, boys,\" I said. \"What do you see?\"", "\"I would,\" I answered levelly.\n\n\n \"Then you'll be interested to hear that Spaceman Quade took a suit and\n a cartographer unit. He's out there somewhere, alone.\"\n\n\n \"The idiot!\" I yelped. \"Everyone needs a partner out there. Send out a\n team to follow his cable and drag him in here by it.\"\n\n\n \"He didn't hook on a cable, Captain,\" Wallace said. \"I suppose he\n intended to go beyond the three-mile limit as you demanded.\"\n\n\n \"Shut up, Wallace. You don't have to like me, but you can't twist what\n I said as long as I command this spacer.\"\n\n\n \"Cool off, Gav,\" Nagurski advised me. \"It's been done before. Anybody\n else would have been a fool to go out alone, but Quade is the most\n experienced man we have. He knows transphasia. Trust him.\"", "\"But why should they want to help us?\" Quade demanded suspiciously.\n\n\n \"I think it's like Nagurski's dog. The dog came to him when it wanted\n somebody to own it, protect it, feed it, love it. These aliens\nwant\nEarthmen to colonize the planet. We came here, you see, same as the dog\n came to Nagurski.\"\n\n\n \"Well, I've learned one thing from all of this,\" Quade said. \"I've been\n a blind, arrogant, cocksure fool, following courses that were good on\nsome\nworlds,\nmost\nworlds, but not good on\nall\nworlds. I'm never\n going to be that foolhardy again.\"\n\n\n \"But you're losing\nconfidence\n, Quade! You aren't sure of yourself any\n more. Isn't confidence a spaceman's most valuable asset?\"", "I leaned forward, elbows on knees. \"Let me tell\nyou\na thing,\n Nagurski. Your trust of these damn-fool spacemen is why you are no\n longer a captain. You can't trust anything out here in space, much less\n human nature. Even I know that much!\"\n\n\n He was pained. \"If you don't trust the men, they won't trust you, Gav.\"\n\n\n \"They don't have to trust me. All they have to do is\nobey\nme or, by\n Jupiter, get frozen stiff and thawed out just in time for court-marshal\n back home. Listen,\" I continued earnestly, \"these men aren't going to\n think of me—of\nus\n, the officers, as their leaders. As far as the\n crew is concerned, Ordinary Spaceman Quade is the best man on this\n ship.\"", "\"Yes, sir,\" Farley said obediently. \"I'll give spacemen a few quarts of\n wine, telling them to use it carefully for scientific purposes only,\n and then they will be able to see where they are going. Yes, sir.\"\n\n\n I turned to leave, then paused briefly. \"You can come along, Farley.\n I'm sure you want to see that we don't waste any of the stuff.\"\n\"There they are!\" Nagurski called. \"Quade's footsteps again, just\n beyond that rocky ridge.\"\n\n\n The landscape was rich chocolate ice cream smothered with chocolate\n syrup, caramel, peanuts and maple syrup, eaten while you smoked an old,\n mellow Havana. The footsteps were faint traces of whipped cream across\n the dark, rich taste of the planet.", "\"I don't understand it,\" Quade admitted. \"Transphasia hits you a foul\n as soon as you let it into the airlock.\"\n\n\n \"Apparently, Quade,\nthis\nthing is going to creep up on us.\"\n\n\n \"Don't sound smug, Captain. It's pitty-pattying behind you too.\"\n\n\n The keening call across the surface of consciousness postponed my reply.\n\n\n The wail was ominously forlorn, defiant of description. I turned my\n head around slowly inside my helmet, not even sure that I had heard it.\n\n\n But what else can you do with a wail but\nhear\nit?\n\n\n Quade nodded. \"I've felt this before. It usually hits sooner. Let's\n trace it.\"", "\"Obviously.\" Quade glanced disgustedly at the screen.\n\n\n \"Too obvious. This time it might not be a familiar condition of many\n planetary gravitational fields. On this planet, that blank kinescope\n may mean our Big Brother kites were knocked down by hostile natives.\"\n\n\n \"You are plain wrong, Captain. Traditionally, alien races never\n interfere with our explorations. Generally, they are so alien to us\n they can't even recognize our existence.\"\nI drew myself up to my full height—and noticed in irritation it was\n still an inch less than Quade's. \"I don't understand you men. Look at\n yourself, Quade. You've been busted to Ordinary Spaceman for just that\n kind of thinking, for relying on tradition, on things that have worked\n before. Not only your thinking is slipshod, you've grown careless about\n everything else, even your own life.\"", "\"How far can we run it back?\"\n\n\n Quade shrugged. \"Miles.\"\n\n\n \"How many?\"\n\n\n \"We have three miles of cable. As long as you can feel, taste, see,\n smell or hear that rope anchoring you to home, you aren't lost.\"\n\n\n \"Three miles isn't good enough. We don't have enough fuel to change\n sites that often. You can't use the drive in a gravitational field, you\n know.\"\n\n\n \"What else can we do, Captain?\" Nagurski asked puzzledly.\n\n\n \"You've said that the spaceship is our only protection from\n transphasia. Is that it?\"\n\n\n Quade gave a curt nod.", "\"Can't,\" I told him. \"I can't trust your opinion. I can't trust\nanything\n. That's why I'm Captain.\"\n\n\n \"You'll get over feeling like that.\"\n\n\n \"I know. Then I'll become First Officer.\"\n\n\n \"But look at that screen, sir,\" Quade said with an emphatic swing of\n his scarred arm. \"I've seen blank scanning like that before and you\n haven't—it's your first trip. This always means transphasia—cortex\n dissolution, motor area feedback, the Aitchell Effect—call it anything\n you like, it's still transphasia.\"\n\n\n \"I know what transphasia is,\" I said moderately. \"It means an\n electrogravitational disturbance of incoming sense data, rechanneling\n it to the wrong receptive areas. Besides the human brain, it also\n effects electronic equipment, like radar and television.\"", "\"I don't like this,\" I admitted. \"It's not at all what I expected from\n what you said about transphasia. It must be something else.\"\n\n\n \"It couldn't be anything else. I know what to expect. You don't. You\n may begin smelling sensations, tasting sounds, hearing sights, seeing\n tastes, touching odors—or any other combination. Don't let it bother\n you.\"\n\n\n \"Of course not. I'll soothe my nerves by counting little shocks of\n lanolin jumping over a loud fence.\"\n\n\n Quade grinned behind his faceplate. \"Good idea.\"\n\n\n \"Then you can have it. I'm going to try keeping my eyes open and\n staying alive.\"\n\n\n There was no reply.", "I followed my own advice and landed in the dirt beside Quade.\n\n\n The bouncer came to rest and regarded us silently, head on an\n eighty-degree angle.\n\n\n I was stone sober.\n\n\n The others were lying around me quietly, passed out, knocked out, or\n taking cover.\n\n\n The ring of aliens drew in about us, closer, tighter, as the bouncer\n sat on his haunches and waited for us to move.\n\"Feeling better?\" I asked Quade in the infirmary.\n\n\n He punched up his pillow and settled back. \"I guess so. But when I\n think of all the ways I nearly got myself killed out there.... How far\n have you got in the tractors?\"\n\n\n \"I'm having the tractors torn down and the parts put back into the\n spaceship where they belong. We\nshouldn't\nrisk losing them and\n getting stuck here.\"", "I couldn't stop them. Being in Alpine rope with them, I went along. At\n the time, it even seemed vaguely like a good idea.\n\n\n As we lumbered toward them, the aliens fell back in a solid line except\n for the first curious-looking one. Quade got there ahead of us and made\n a grab. The creature rose into the air with a screaming vibration of\n his tail and landed on top of him, flattening him instantly.\n\n\n \"Sssh, men,\" Nagurski said. \"Leave it to me. I'll surround him.\"", "\"I'm not sure I do want to find out what that was just now. I didn't\n like the feel of it. But the important thing is for us not to get any\n further from the ship.\"\n\n\n \"That's important, Captain?\"\n\n\n \"To the best of my judgment, yes. This—condition—didn't begin until\n we got so far away from the spacer—in time or distance. I don't want\n it to get any worse. It's troublesome not to know black from white, but\n it would be a downright inconvenience not to know which way is up.\"\n\n\n \"Not for an experienced spaceman,\" Quade griped. \"I'm used to\n free-fall.\"\n\n\n But he turned back.\n\n\n \"Just a minute,\" I said. \"There was something strange up ahead. I want\n to see if short-range radar can get through our electrogravitational\n jamming here.\"", "His expression was tart and greasy despite all his light talk, and\n I knew mine was the same. I tested the security rope between our\n pressure suits. It was a taut and virile bass.\n\n\n We scaled a staccato of rocks, our suits grinding pepper against our\n hides.\n\n\n The musk summit rose before us, a minor-key horizon with a shifting\n treble for as far as I could smell. It was primitive beauty that made\n you feel shocking pink inside. The most beautiful vista I had ever\n tasted, it couldn't be dulled even by the sensation of beef broth under\n my skin.\n\n\n \"Is this transphasia?\" I asked in awe.\n\n\n \"It always has been before,\" Quade remarked. \"Ready to swallow your\n words about this being something an old hand wouldn't recognize,\n Captain?\"\n\n\n \"I'm swallowing no words until I find out precisely how they taste\n here.\"" ] ]
valid	20064	[ "What is the main reason that the author thinks that some people will like the Phantom Menace?", "Why does the author think that the actors in the Phantom Menace do not give a good performance?", "What does the author think of the editing in the film?", "How does the author feel about the Phantom Menace's implications on the timeline of Star Wars as a whole?", "What issue does the Author have with Natalie Portman's character?", "What issue does the Author have with Liam Neeson's character?", "How does the author think that George Lucas could have made the movie better?", "Why does the author dislike the character Darth Maul", "What issue does the author take with Yoda's judgement of Anakin?", "Why does the person responding to the author feel that the Phantom Menace will do well regardless of critics." ]	[ [ "The exceptional cast", "The special effects and CGI", "Emotional attachment and nostalgia", "The good writing" ], [ "The use of green screen prevents getting into character", "They were cast in the wrong roles", "The writing for their characters is bad", "They were rushed during filming" ], [ "It is choppy and does not flow during action scenes", "All three other choices are correct", "There are cuts made at inopportune moments", "The special effects are spectacular" ], [ "He is upset by the time wasted divulging useless backstory and information", "He feels that it will be an important entry in the lore", "He feels that it lacks effort for under explaining certain aspects", "He likes that the original details of the trilogy has been preserved " ], [ "Her inability to deal with Darth Sidious' threats", "She is too aggressive as a leader", "Her monotone and emotionless tone", "Her costume design is distracting " ], [ "His slow movements during fight scenes", "His over-delivery of lines", "His apathy in all situations", "His lack of chemistry with his co-stars" ], [ "Relying more heavily on CGI", "Casting better actors for the rolls", "Delaying the release and taking more time", "Listening to his large group of employed screenwriters" ], [ "He felt the character's costume was distracting", "He felt that the character was too obvious of a villain", "He didn't feel that the character was intimidating enough", "The character didn't have enough lines" ], [ "He does not like the CGI used during the scenes with Yoda", "He feels that the judgement is passed too quickly", "Yoda is being closed-minded about the boy's origins", "It implies that Yoda has knowledge of the events of the future." ], [ "The overblown advertisement for the movie", "People buying multiple tickets to see the movie", "The next movie in the series has already announced ", "The franchise being a \"cult classic\"" ] ]	[ 3, 3, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 2, 4, 4 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "I'll be curious to know whether he sees The Phantom Menace a dozen times, or even the three for which he has paid. (I could imagine seeing it three times only if they sold adrenaline shots at the concession stand.) Or maybe he'll come out of the movie and say: \"No, you didn't get it, Mr. Snot-Nosed-Criteria Critic Person. It's not supposed to be exciting. It's laying the foundation for the next chapter, when Anakin and Obi-Wan defeat the Mandalorian warriors in the Clone Wars and Anakin marries Queen Amidala. And listen, I'm getting in line even earlier for tickets to Episode 2 . The Force is with me, butt-head.\"", "How long will they go with it? At what point will they realize that what they've heard is, alas, true, that the picture really is a stiff? Maybe they never will. Maybe they'll want to love The \n\n Phantom Menace so much--because they have so much emotional energy invested in loving it, and in buying the books, magazines, dolls, cards, clothes, soap, fast food, etc.--that the realization will never sink in. In successful hypnosis, the subject works to enter a state of heightened susceptibility, to surrender to a higher power. Maybe they'll conclude that common sense is the enemy of the Force and fight it to the death.", "The first thing that will strike you is that George Lucas, who wrote and directed the movie, has forgotten how to write and direct a movie. Having spent the two decades since the original Star Wars (1977) concocting skeletons of screenplays that other people flesh out, and overseeing productions that other people storyboard and stage, he has come to lack what one might Michelangelistically term \"the spark of life.\" If the first Star Wars was a box of Cracker Jacks that was all prizes, The Phantom Menace is a box of Cracker Jacks that's all diagrams of prizes. It's there on paper, but it's waiting to be filled in and jazzed up.", "Look, I wanted to love The Phantom Menace , too. I was an adolescent boy and would enjoy being one again for a couple of hours. But the movie has a way of deflating all but the most delusional of hopes. If someone had given Ed Wood $115 million to remake Plan Nine From Outer Space it might have looked like this, although Wood's dialogue would surely have been more memorable.", "Dark Side Lite \n\n Those poor souls who've been camping out in front of theaters for six weeks: Who can blame them for saying, \"To hell with the critics, we know it will be great!\"? The doors will open, and they'll race to grab the best seats and feel a surge of triumph as their butts sink down. We've made it: Yeeehaww!! They'll cheer when the familiar John Williams fanfare erupts and the title-- Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace --rises out of the screen and the backward-slanted opening \"crawl\" begins: \"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ...\" Yaaahhhhhhh!!! Then, their hearts pounding, they'll settle back to read the rest of the titles: \"Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.\" Taxation of trade routes: Waaahoooo!!!!", "Still, it's worth reprinting a blistering e-mail sent to my wife by a relative, after she'd let him know that I hated The Phantom Menace : \n\n Surprise, Surprise. Star Wars was never reviewed well by critics. Sometimes a basic story that rests on great special effects and stupid dialogue can be very entertaining--it's called a cult movie, and no critic can have an effect on the obvious outcome that this is going to be the highest grossing movie ever. I myself stood in line for five hours and already have tickets to see it three times, and I know I'll enjoy it. Why? Because it plays on my childhood imagination. And I'm sure it's not as bad as Return of the Jedi , which was the weakest one--but I still liked it and saw it a dozen times. I get tired of being told I'm not going to like it because it doesn't adhere to certain basic critic criteria. I say bpthhhh (sticking my tongue out to review)--don't be sending me anything dissing my movie:):):)", "the saga for so many years, the audience was prepared to set aside some of its narrative expectations here to plumb the origins of Lucas' universe. In The Phantom Menace , however, the Jedi already exist and the Force is taken", "on the verge of actually thrilling you. The chief villain, bombastically named Darth Maul, is a horned, red, Kabuki-style snake demon with orange pingpong-ball eyes who challenges the Jedi to a couple of clackety light-saber battles. His appearances", "A hologram of Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the \"Sith,\" commands the Federation to sic its battle droids on the Jedi ambassadors before they can apprise Queen Amidala (Portman) of the imminent invasion of the peaceful planet of Naboo. In come the battle droids and out come the light sabers, which still hum like faulty fluorescents. Clack, clack, clack. Lucas can't edit fight scenes so that they're fluid--he cuts on the clack. You get the gist, though. The Jedi make their getaway, but with gas and tolls and droid destroyers, it takes them over an hour to land on Naboo, by which time the queen and the Galactic Senate have already got the grim message. For one thing, communications have been disrupted: \"A communications disruption can mean only one thing,\" says someone. \"Invasion.\"", "The Phantom Menace didn't need to be barren of feeling, but it took a real writer, Lawrence Kasdan ( The", "he conceived The Phantom Menace as a Japanese No pageant and has purposely deadened his actors, directing them to stand stiffly in the dead center of the screen against matte paintings of space or some futuristic metropolis and deliver lines", "for granted--we're still in the middle of the damn story. The only dramatic interest comes from a young Tatooine slave named Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), whom we know will grow up to father Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess", "unruffled. \"The Force will guide us,\" says Neeson blandly, and the director seems to share his lack of urgency. There's Zen detachment and there's Quaalude detachment, and The Phantom", "been engaged to rewrite him and make the movie halfway human. A buddy specialist would have punched up the Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi badinage, and a black dialogue specialist would have given the comic-relief character, Jar Jar Binks, a", "Menace falls into the second camp: It really does take place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. When R2-D2 showed up, I thought: At last, a character with the potential for intimacy!", "Yes, the effects are first-rate, occasionally breathtaking. But the floating platforms in the Galactic Senate do little to distract you from parliamentary machinations that play like an especially dull day on Star Trek:", "Later in the film, when Anakin goes before something called the Jedi Council and meets Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson (together again!), Lucas dramatizes the interrogation so ineptly that you either have", "are underscored by demonic chants; he might as well wear a neon beanie that flashes \"Bad Guy.\" Like all revisionist historians, Lucas cheats like mad. If Darth Vader had built C-3PO as a young man, how come he never", "Yoda will enlarge his definition of fear in subsequent episodes). There's also some quasireligious, quasiscientific blather to the effect that the boy was conceived without a father by \"metachorians\"--symbiont, microscopic life forms that will speak to you if", "in later by computers. \"I don't sense anything,\" he tells his uneasy young apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor), as the two sit waiting to conduct trade negotiations with a bunch of gray, fish-faced Federation officers who talk like extras in" ], [ "The first thing that will strike you is that George Lucas, who wrote and directed the movie, has forgotten how to write and direct a movie. Having spent the two decades since the original Star Wars (1977) concocting skeletons of screenplays that other people flesh out, and overseeing productions that other people storyboard and stage, he has come to lack what one might Michelangelistically term \"the spark of life.\" If the first Star Wars was a box of Cracker Jacks that was all prizes, The Phantom Menace is a box of Cracker Jacks that's all diagrams of prizes. It's there on paper, but it's waiting to be filled in and jazzed up.", "he conceived The Phantom Menace as a Japanese No pageant and has purposely deadened his actors, directing them to stand stiffly in the dead center of the screen against matte paintings of space or some futuristic metropolis and deliver lines", "Look, I wanted to love The Phantom Menace , too. I was an adolescent boy and would enjoy being one again for a couple of hours. But the movie has a way of deflating all but the most delusional of hopes. If someone had given Ed Wood $115 million to remake Plan Nine From Outer Space it might have looked like this, although Wood's dialogue would surely have been more memorable.", "A hologram of Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the \"Sith,\" commands the Federation to sic its battle droids on the Jedi ambassadors before they can apprise Queen Amidala (Portman) of the imminent invasion of the peaceful planet of Naboo. In come the battle droids and out come the light sabers, which still hum like faulty fluorescents. Clack, clack, clack. Lucas can't edit fight scenes so that they're fluid--he cuts on the clack. You get the gist, though. The Jedi make their getaway, but with gas and tolls and droid destroyers, it takes them over an hour to land on Naboo, by which time the queen and the Galactic Senate have already got the grim message. For one thing, communications have been disrupted: \"A communications disruption can mean only one thing,\" says someone. \"Invasion.\"", "Dark Side Lite \n\n Those poor souls who've been camping out in front of theaters for six weeks: Who can blame them for saying, \"To hell with the critics, we know it will be great!\"? The doors will open, and they'll race to grab the best seats and feel a surge of triumph as their butts sink down. We've made it: Yeeehaww!! They'll cheer when the familiar John Williams fanfare erupts and the title-- Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace --rises out of the screen and the backward-slanted opening \"crawl\" begins: \"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ...\" Yaaahhhhhhh!!! Then, their hearts pounding, they'll settle back to read the rest of the titles: \"Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.\" Taxation of trade routes: Waaahoooo!!!!", "Advance word has been cruel to the actors, but advance word has it only half right. Yes, they're terrible, but Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, and Natalie Portman are not terrible actors, they've", "How long will they go with it? At what point will they realize that what they've heard is, alas, true, that the picture really is a stiff? Maybe they never will. Maybe they'll want to love The \n\n Phantom Menace so much--because they have so much emotional energy invested in loving it, and in buying the books, magazines, dolls, cards, clothes, soap, fast food, etc.--that the realization will never sink in. In successful hypnosis, the subject works to enter a state of heightened susceptibility, to surrender to a higher power. Maybe they'll conclude that common sense is the enemy of the Force and fight it to the death.", "Still, it's worth reprinting a blistering e-mail sent to my wife by a relative, after she'd let him know that I hated The Phantom Menace : \n\n Surprise, Surprise. Star Wars was never reviewed well by critics. Sometimes a basic story that rests on great special effects and stupid dialogue can be very entertaining--it's called a cult movie, and no critic can have an effect on the obvious outcome that this is going to be the highest grossing movie ever. I myself stood in line for five hours and already have tickets to see it three times, and I know I'll enjoy it. Why? Because it plays on my childhood imagination. And I'm sure it's not as bad as Return of the Jedi , which was the weakest one--but I still liked it and saw it a dozen times. I get tired of being told I'm not going to like it because it doesn't adhere to certain basic critic criteria. I say bpthhhh (sticking my tongue out to review)--don't be sending me anything dissing my movie:):):)", "I'll be curious to know whether he sees The Phantom Menace a dozen times, or even the three for which he has paid. (I could imagine seeing it three times only if they sold adrenaline shots at the concession stand.) Or maybe he'll come out of the movie and say: \"No, you didn't get it, Mr. Snot-Nosed-Criteria Critic Person. It's not supposed to be exciting. It's laying the foundation for the next chapter, when Anakin and Obi-Wan defeat the Mandalorian warriors in the Clone Wars and Anakin marries Queen Amidala. And listen, I'm getting in line even earlier for tickets to Episode 2 . The Force is with me, butt-head.\"", "The Phantom Menace didn't need to be barren of feeling, but it took a real writer, Lawrence Kasdan ( The", "Later in the film, when Anakin goes before something called the Jedi Council and meets Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson (together again!), Lucas dramatizes the interrogation so ineptly that you either have", "on the verge of actually thrilling you. The chief villain, bombastically named Darth Maul, is a horned, red, Kabuki-style snake demon with orange pingpong-ball eyes who challenges the Jedi to a couple of clackety light-saber battles. His appearances", "in later by computers. \"I don't sense anything,\" he tells his uneasy young apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor), as the two sit waiting to conduct trade negotiations with a bunch of gray, fish-faced Federation officers who talk like extras in", "unruffled. \"The Force will guide us,\" says Neeson blandly, and the director seems to share his lack of urgency. There's Zen detachment and there's Quaalude detachment, and The Phantom", "for granted--we're still in the middle of the damn story. The only dramatic interest comes from a young Tatooine slave named Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), whom we know will grow up to father Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess", "been engaged to rewrite him and make the movie halfway human. A buddy specialist would have punched up the Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi badinage, and a black dialogue specialist would have given the comic-relief character, Jar Jar Binks, a", "just been given scenes that no human could be expected to play. As a sage Jedi Master called Qui-Gon Jinn, Neeson must maintain a Zen-like detachment from the universe around him--probably not a challenge when that universe will be added", "drones. Meanwhile, the Jedi whiz through the underwater core of a planet in a man-of-warlike submersible pursued by 3-D dragony beasties and a giant catfish with extra movable parts. Potentially thrilling stuff, but Neeson and McGregor remain peculiarly", "the saga for so many years, the audience was prepared to set aside some of its narrative expectations here to plumb the origins of Lucas' universe. In The Phantom Menace , however, the Jedi already exist and the Force is taken", "Yes, the effects are first-rate, occasionally breathtaking. But the floating platforms in the Galactic Senate do little to distract you from parliamentary machinations that play like an especially dull day on Star Trek:" ], [ "The first thing that will strike you is that George Lucas, who wrote and directed the movie, has forgotten how to write and direct a movie. Having spent the two decades since the original Star Wars (1977) concocting skeletons of screenplays that other people flesh out, and overseeing productions that other people storyboard and stage, he has come to lack what one might Michelangelistically term \"the spark of life.\" If the first Star Wars was a box of Cracker Jacks that was all prizes, The Phantom Menace is a box of Cracker Jacks that's all diagrams of prizes. It's there on paper, but it's waiting to be filled in and jazzed up.", "Still, it's worth reprinting a blistering e-mail sent to my wife by a relative, after she'd let him know that I hated The Phantom Menace : \n\n Surprise, Surprise. Star Wars was never reviewed well by critics. Sometimes a basic story that rests on great special effects and stupid dialogue can be very entertaining--it's called a cult movie, and no critic can have an effect on the obvious outcome that this is going to be the highest grossing movie ever. I myself stood in line for five hours and already have tickets to see it three times, and I know I'll enjoy it. Why? Because it plays on my childhood imagination. And I'm sure it's not as bad as Return of the Jedi , which was the weakest one--but I still liked it and saw it a dozen times. I get tired of being told I'm not going to like it because it doesn't adhere to certain basic critic criteria. I say bpthhhh (sticking my tongue out to review)--don't be sending me anything dissing my movie:):):)", "alternately formal or bemusing. (\"This is an odd move for the Trade Federation.\") Lucas considers himself an \"independent\" filmmaker and an artist of integrity. Had he not been such a pretentious overlord, a platoon of screenwriters would doubtless have", "Later in the film, when Anakin goes before something called the Jedi Council and meets Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson (together again!), Lucas dramatizes the interrogation so ineptly that you either have", "A hologram of Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the \"Sith,\" commands the Federation to sic its battle droids on the Jedi ambassadors before they can apprise Queen Amidala (Portman) of the imminent invasion of the peaceful planet of Naboo. In come the battle droids and out come the light sabers, which still hum like faulty fluorescents. Clack, clack, clack. Lucas can't edit fight scenes so that they're fluid--he cuts on the clack. You get the gist, though. The Jedi make their getaway, but with gas and tolls and droid destroyers, it takes them over an hour to land on Naboo, by which time the queen and the Galactic Senate have already got the grim message. For one thing, communications have been disrupted: \"A communications disruption can mean only one thing,\" says someone. \"Invasion.\"", "Look, I wanted to love The Phantom Menace , too. I was an adolescent boy and would enjoy being one again for a couple of hours. But the movie has a way of deflating all but the most delusional of hopes. If someone had given Ed Wood $115 million to remake Plan Nine From Outer Space it might have looked like this, although Wood's dialogue would surely have been more memorable.", "a samurai movie. McGregor furrows his brow. \"There's something ... elusive,\" he says, working to enunciate like a young Alec Guinness but succeeding only in nullifying his natural Scots charm. \"Master,\" he adds, \"you said I should be", "been engaged to rewrite him and make the movie halfway human. A buddy specialist would have punched up the Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi badinage, and a black dialogue specialist would have given the comic-relief character, Jar Jar Binks, a", "I'll be curious to know whether he sees The Phantom Menace a dozen times, or even the three for which he has paid. (I could imagine seeing it three times only if they sold adrenaline shots at the concession stand.) Or maybe he'll come out of the movie and say: \"No, you didn't get it, Mr. Snot-Nosed-Criteria Critic Person. It's not supposed to be exciting. It's laying the foundation for the next chapter, when Anakin and Obi-Wan defeat the Mandalorian warriors in the Clone Wars and Anakin marries Queen Amidala. And listen, I'm getting in line even earlier for tickets to Episode 2 . The Force is with me, butt-head.\"", "Yes, the effects are first-rate, occasionally breathtaking. But the floating platforms in the Galactic Senate do little to distract you from parliamentary machinations that play like an especially dull day on Star Trek:", "he conceived The Phantom Menace as a Japanese No pageant and has purposely deadened his actors, directing them to stand stiffly in the dead center of the screen against matte paintings of space or some futuristic metropolis and deliver lines", "unruffled. \"The Force will guide us,\" says Neeson blandly, and the director seems to share his lack of urgency. There's Zen detachment and there's Quaalude detachment, and The Phantom", "on the verge of actually thrilling you. The chief villain, bombastically named Darth Maul, is a horned, red, Kabuki-style snake demon with orange pingpong-ball eyes who challenges the Jedi to a couple of clackety light-saber battles. His appearances", "How long will they go with it? At what point will they realize that what they've heard is, alas, true, that the picture really is a stiff? Maybe they never will. Maybe they'll want to love The \n\n Phantom Menace so much--because they have so much emotional energy invested in loving it, and in buying the books, magazines, dolls, cards, clothes, soap, fast food, etc.--that the realization will never sink in. In successful hypnosis, the subject works to enter a state of heightened susceptibility, to surrender to a higher power. Maybe they'll conclude that common sense is the enemy of the Force and fight it to the death.", "Say this for Lucas, he doesn't whip up a lot of bogus energy, the way the makers of such blockbusters as The Mummy (1999) and Armageddon (1998) do. It's as if", "Dark Side Lite \n\n Those poor souls who've been camping out in front of theaters for six weeks: Who can blame them for saying, \"To hell with the critics, we know it will be great!\"? The doors will open, and they'll race to grab the best seats and feel a surge of triumph as their butts sink down. We've made it: Yeeehaww!! They'll cheer when the familiar John Williams fanfare erupts and the title-- Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace --rises out of the screen and the backward-slanted opening \"crawl\" begins: \"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ...\" Yaaahhhhhhh!!! Then, their hearts pounding, they'll settle back to read the rest of the titles: \"Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.\" Taxation of trade routes: Waaahoooo!!!!", "The Phantom Menace didn't need to be barren of feeling, but it took a real writer, Lawrence Kasdan ( The", "mindful of the future.\" Neeson thinks a bit. \"I do sense an unusual amount of fear for something as trivial as this trade dispute.\"", "are underscored by demonic chants; he might as well wear a neon beanie that flashes \"Bad Guy.\" Like all revisionist historians, Lucas cheats like mad. If Darth Vader had built C-3PO as a young man, how come he never", "man-size dinosaur with pop eyes and a vaguely West Indian patois, something fresher than \"Ex-squeeze me!\" and a lot of Butterfly McQueen-style simpering and running away from battles. Those of us who complain about the assembly-line production of" ], [ "The first thing that will strike you is that George Lucas, who wrote and directed the movie, has forgotten how to write and direct a movie. Having spent the two decades since the original Star Wars (1977) concocting skeletons of screenplays that other people flesh out, and overseeing productions that other people storyboard and stage, he has come to lack what one might Michelangelistically term \"the spark of life.\" If the first Star Wars was a box of Cracker Jacks that was all prizes, The Phantom Menace is a box of Cracker Jacks that's all diagrams of prizes. It's there on paper, but it's waiting to be filled in and jazzed up.", "I'll be curious to know whether he sees The Phantom Menace a dozen times, or even the three for which he has paid. (I could imagine seeing it three times only if they sold adrenaline shots at the concession stand.) Or maybe he'll come out of the movie and say: \"No, you didn't get it, Mr. Snot-Nosed-Criteria Critic Person. It's not supposed to be exciting. It's laying the foundation for the next chapter, when Anakin and Obi-Wan defeat the Mandalorian warriors in the Clone Wars and Anakin marries Queen Amidala. And listen, I'm getting in line even earlier for tickets to Episode 2 . The Force is with me, butt-head.\"", "Still, it's worth reprinting a blistering e-mail sent to my wife by a relative, after she'd let him know that I hated The Phantom Menace : \n\n Surprise, Surprise. Star Wars was never reviewed well by critics. Sometimes a basic story that rests on great special effects and stupid dialogue can be very entertaining--it's called a cult movie, and no critic can have an effect on the obvious outcome that this is going to be the highest grossing movie ever. I myself stood in line for five hours and already have tickets to see it three times, and I know I'll enjoy it. Why? Because it plays on my childhood imagination. And I'm sure it's not as bad as Return of the Jedi , which was the weakest one--but I still liked it and saw it a dozen times. I get tired of being told I'm not going to like it because it doesn't adhere to certain basic critic criteria. I say bpthhhh (sticking my tongue out to review)--don't be sending me anything dissing my movie:):):)", "Dark Side Lite \n\n Those poor souls who've been camping out in front of theaters for six weeks: Who can blame them for saying, \"To hell with the critics, we know it will be great!\"? The doors will open, and they'll race to grab the best seats and feel a surge of triumph as their butts sink down. We've made it: Yeeehaww!! They'll cheer when the familiar John Williams fanfare erupts and the title-- Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace --rises out of the screen and the backward-slanted opening \"crawl\" begins: \"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ...\" Yaaahhhhhhh!!! Then, their hearts pounding, they'll settle back to read the rest of the titles: \"Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.\" Taxation of trade routes: Waaahoooo!!!!", "the saga for so many years, the audience was prepared to set aside some of its narrative expectations here to plumb the origins of Lucas' universe. In The Phantom Menace , however, the Jedi already exist and the Force is taken", "The Phantom Menace didn't need to be barren of feeling, but it took a real writer, Lawrence Kasdan ( The", "How long will they go with it? At what point will they realize that what they've heard is, alas, true, that the picture really is a stiff? Maybe they never will. Maybe they'll want to love The \n\n Phantom Menace so much--because they have so much emotional energy invested in loving it, and in buying the books, magazines, dolls, cards, clothes, soap, fast food, etc.--that the realization will never sink in. In successful hypnosis, the subject works to enter a state of heightened susceptibility, to surrender to a higher power. Maybe they'll conclude that common sense is the enemy of the Force and fight it to the death.", "Look, I wanted to love The Phantom Menace , too. I was an adolescent boy and would enjoy being one again for a couple of hours. But the movie has a way of deflating all but the most delusional of hopes. If someone had given Ed Wood $115 million to remake Plan Nine From Outer Space it might have looked like this, although Wood's dialogue would surely have been more memorable.", "A hologram of Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the \"Sith,\" commands the Federation to sic its battle droids on the Jedi ambassadors before they can apprise Queen Amidala (Portman) of the imminent invasion of the peaceful planet of Naboo. In come the battle droids and out come the light sabers, which still hum like faulty fluorescents. Clack, clack, clack. Lucas can't edit fight scenes so that they're fluid--he cuts on the clack. You get the gist, though. The Jedi make their getaway, but with gas and tolls and droid destroyers, it takes them over an hour to land on Naboo, by which time the queen and the Galactic Senate have already got the grim message. For one thing, communications have been disrupted: \"A communications disruption can mean only one thing,\" says someone. \"Invasion.\"", "he conceived The Phantom Menace as a Japanese No pageant and has purposely deadened his actors, directing them to stand stiffly in the dead center of the screen against matte paintings of space or some futuristic metropolis and deliver lines", "to take Yoda's word that there's something wrong with the boy (\"Clouded this boy's future is\") or to conclude that Yoda, like us, is moving backward through time and has already seen Episodes 4 through 6. Anakin, he says", "alternately formal or bemusing. (\"This is an odd move for the Trade Federation.\") Lucas considers himself an \"independent\" filmmaker and an artist of integrity. Had he not been such a pretentious overlord, a platoon of screenwriters would doubtless have", "are underscored by demonic chants; he might as well wear a neon beanie that flashes \"Bad Guy.\" Like all revisionist historians, Lucas cheats like mad. If Darth Vader had built C-3PO as a young man, how come he never", "Menace falls into the second camp: It really does take place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. When R2-D2 showed up, I thought: At last, a character with the potential for intimacy!", "in later by computers. \"I don't sense anything,\" he tells his uneasy young apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor), as the two sit waiting to conduct trade negotiations with a bunch of gray, fish-faced Federation officers who talk like extras in", "unruffled. \"The Force will guide us,\" says Neeson blandly, and the director seems to share his lack of urgency. There's Zen detachment and there's Quaalude detachment, and The Phantom", "for granted--we're still in the middle of the damn story. The only dramatic interest comes from a young Tatooine slave named Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), whom we know will grow up to father Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess", "on the verge of actually thrilling you. The chief villain, bombastically named Darth Maul, is a horned, red, Kabuki-style snake demon with orange pingpong-ball eyes who challenges the Jedi to a couple of clackety light-saber battles. His appearances", "Yoda will enlarge his definition of fear in subsequent episodes). There's also some quasireligious, quasiscientific blather to the effect that the boy was conceived without a father by \"metachorians\"--symbiont, microscopic life forms that will speak to you if", "Later in the film, when Anakin goes before something called the Jedi Council and meets Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson (together again!), Lucas dramatizes the interrogation so ineptly that you either have" ], [ "Advance word has been cruel to the actors, but advance word has it only half right. Yes, they're terrible, but Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, and Natalie Portman are not terrible actors, they've", "A hologram of Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the \"Sith,\" commands the Federation to sic its battle droids on the Jedi ambassadors before they can apprise Queen Amidala (Portman) of the imminent invasion of the peaceful planet of Naboo. In come the battle droids and out come the light sabers, which still hum like faulty fluorescents. Clack, clack, clack. Lucas can't edit fight scenes so that they're fluid--he cuts on the clack. You get the gist, though. The Jedi make their getaway, but with gas and tolls and droid destroyers, it takes them over an hour to land on Naboo, by which time the queen and the Galactic Senate have already got the grim message. For one thing, communications have been disrupted: \"A communications disruption can mean only one thing,\" says someone. \"Invasion.\"", "Queen Amidala, done up like a white-faced Chinese empress in hanging beads and glass balls and a hat with curly horns, speaks in tones from which emotion has been expunged, perhaps on the", "Later in the film, when Anakin goes before something called the Jedi Council and meets Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson (together again!), Lucas dramatizes the interrogation so ineptly that you either have", "The first thing that will strike you is that George Lucas, who wrote and directed the movie, has forgotten how to write and direct a movie. Having spent the two decades since the original Star Wars (1977) concocting skeletons of screenplays that other people flesh out, and overseeing productions that other people storyboard and stage, he has come to lack what one might Michelangelistically term \"the spark of life.\" If the first Star Wars was a box of Cracker Jacks that was all prizes, The Phantom Menace is a box of Cracker Jacks that's all diagrams of prizes. It's there on paper, but it's waiting to be filled in and jazzed up.", "for granted--we're still in the middle of the damn story. The only dramatic interest comes from a young Tatooine slave named Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), whom we know will grow up to father Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess", "are underscored by demonic chants; he might as well wear a neon beanie that flashes \"Bad Guy.\" Like all revisionist historians, Lucas cheats like mad. If Darth Vader had built C-3PO as a young man, how come he never", "he conceived The Phantom Menace as a Japanese No pageant and has purposely deadened his actors, directing them to stand stiffly in the dead center of the screen against matte paintings of space or some futuristic metropolis and deliver lines", "a samurai movie. McGregor furrows his brow. \"There's something ... elusive,\" he says, working to enunciate like a young Alec Guinness but succeeding only in nullifying his natural Scots charm. \"Master,\" he adds, \"you said I should be", "in later by computers. \"I don't sense anything,\" he tells his uneasy young apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor), as the two sit waiting to conduct trade negotiations with a bunch of gray, fish-faced Federation officers who talk like extras in", "on the verge of actually thrilling you. The chief villain, bombastically named Darth Maul, is a horned, red, Kabuki-style snake demon with orange pingpong-ball eyes who challenges the Jedi to a couple of clackety light-saber battles. His appearances", "Menace falls into the second camp: It really does take place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. When R2-D2 showed up, I thought: At last, a character with the potential for intimacy!", "been engaged to rewrite him and make the movie halfway human. A buddy specialist would have punched up the Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi badinage, and a black dialogue specialist would have given the comic-relief character, Jar Jar Binks, a", "How long will they go with it? At what point will they realize that what they've heard is, alas, true, that the picture really is a stiff? Maybe they never will. Maybe they'll want to love The \n\n Phantom Menace so much--because they have so much emotional energy invested in loving it, and in buying the books, magazines, dolls, cards, clothes, soap, fast food, etc.--that the realization will never sink in. In successful hypnosis, the subject works to enter a state of heightened susceptibility, to surrender to a higher power. Maybe they'll conclude that common sense is the enemy of the Force and fight it to the death.", "Look, I wanted to love The Phantom Menace , too. I was an adolescent boy and would enjoy being one again for a couple of hours. But the movie has a way of deflating all but the most delusional of hopes. If someone had given Ed Wood $115 million to remake Plan Nine From Outer Space it might have looked like this, although Wood's dialogue would surely have been more memorable.", "unruffled. \"The Force will guide us,\" says Neeson blandly, and the director seems to share his lack of urgency. There's Zen detachment and there's Quaalude detachment, and The Phantom", "I'll be curious to know whether he sees The Phantom Menace a dozen times, or even the three for which he has paid. (I could imagine seeing it three times only if they sold adrenaline shots at the concession stand.) Or maybe he'll come out of the movie and say: \"No, you didn't get it, Mr. Snot-Nosed-Criteria Critic Person. It's not supposed to be exciting. It's laying the foundation for the next chapter, when Anakin and Obi-Wan defeat the Mandalorian warriors in the Clone Wars and Anakin marries Queen Amidala. And listen, I'm getting in line even earlier for tickets to Episode 2 . The Force is with me, butt-head.\"", "man-size dinosaur with pop eyes and a vaguely West Indian patois, something fresher than \"Ex-squeeze me!\" and a lot of Butterfly McQueen-style simpering and running away from battles. Those of us who complain about the assembly-line production of", "Yes, the effects are first-rate, occasionally breathtaking. But the floating platforms in the Galactic Senate do little to distract you from parliamentary machinations that play like an especially dull day on Star Trek:", "Still, it's worth reprinting a blistering e-mail sent to my wife by a relative, after she'd let him know that I hated The Phantom Menace : \n\n Surprise, Surprise. Star Wars was never reviewed well by critics. Sometimes a basic story that rests on great special effects and stupid dialogue can be very entertaining--it's called a cult movie, and no critic can have an effect on the obvious outcome that this is going to be the highest grossing movie ever. I myself stood in line for five hours and already have tickets to see it three times, and I know I'll enjoy it. Why? Because it plays on my childhood imagination. And I'm sure it's not as bad as Return of the Jedi , which was the weakest one--but I still liked it and saw it a dozen times. I get tired of being told I'm not going to like it because it doesn't adhere to certain basic critic criteria. I say bpthhhh (sticking my tongue out to review)--don't be sending me anything dissing my movie:):):)" ], [ "Advance word has been cruel to the actors, but advance word has it only half right. Yes, they're terrible, but Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, and Natalie Portman are not terrible actors, they've", "unruffled. \"The Force will guide us,\" says Neeson blandly, and the director seems to share his lack of urgency. There's Zen detachment and there's Quaalude detachment, and The Phantom", "just been given scenes that no human could be expected to play. As a sage Jedi Master called Qui-Gon Jinn, Neeson must maintain a Zen-like detachment from the universe around him--probably not a challenge when that universe will be added", "a samurai movie. McGregor furrows his brow. \"There's something ... elusive,\" he says, working to enunciate like a young Alec Guinness but succeeding only in nullifying his natural Scots charm. \"Master,\" he adds, \"you said I should be", "mindful of the future.\" Neeson thinks a bit. \"I do sense an unusual amount of fear for something as trivial as this trade dispute.\"", "Later in the film, when Anakin goes before something called the Jedi Council and meets Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson (together again!), Lucas dramatizes the interrogation so ineptly that you either have", "drones. Meanwhile, the Jedi whiz through the underwater core of a planet in a man-of-warlike submersible pursued by 3-D dragony beasties and a giant catfish with extra movable parts. Potentially thrilling stuff, but Neeson and McGregor remain peculiarly", "are underscored by demonic chants; he might as well wear a neon beanie that flashes \"Bad Guy.\" Like all revisionist historians, Lucas cheats like mad. If Darth Vader had built C-3PO as a young man, how come he never", "The first thing that will strike you is that George Lucas, who wrote and directed the movie, has forgotten how to write and direct a movie. Having spent the two decades since the original Star Wars (1977) concocting skeletons of screenplays that other people flesh out, and overseeing productions that other people storyboard and stage, he has come to lack what one might Michelangelistically term \"the spark of life.\" If the first Star Wars was a box of Cracker Jacks that was all prizes, The Phantom Menace is a box of Cracker Jacks that's all diagrams of prizes. It's there on paper, but it's waiting to be filled in and jazzed up.", "in later by computers. \"I don't sense anything,\" he tells his uneasy young apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor), as the two sit waiting to conduct trade negotiations with a bunch of gray, fish-faced Federation officers who talk like extras in", "A hologram of Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the \"Sith,\" commands the Federation to sic its battle droids on the Jedi ambassadors before they can apprise Queen Amidala (Portman) of the imminent invasion of the peaceful planet of Naboo. In come the battle droids and out come the light sabers, which still hum like faulty fluorescents. Clack, clack, clack. Lucas can't edit fight scenes so that they're fluid--he cuts on the clack. You get the gist, though. The Jedi make their getaway, but with gas and tolls and droid destroyers, it takes them over an hour to land on Naboo, by which time the queen and the Galactic Senate have already got the grim message. For one thing, communications have been disrupted: \"A communications disruption can mean only one thing,\" says someone. \"Invasion.\"", "on the verge of actually thrilling you. The chief villain, bombastically named Darth Maul, is a horned, red, Kabuki-style snake demon with orange pingpong-ball eyes who challenges the Jedi to a couple of clackety light-saber battles. His appearances", "he conceived The Phantom Menace as a Japanese No pageant and has purposely deadened his actors, directing them to stand stiffly in the dead center of the screen against matte paintings of space or some futuristic metropolis and deliver lines", "for granted--we're still in the middle of the damn story. The only dramatic interest comes from a young Tatooine slave named Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), whom we know will grow up to father Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess", "Menace falls into the second camp: It really does take place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. When R2-D2 showed up, I thought: At last, a character with the potential for intimacy!", "How long will they go with it? At what point will they realize that what they've heard is, alas, true, that the picture really is a stiff? Maybe they never will. Maybe they'll want to love The \n\n Phantom Menace so much--because they have so much emotional energy invested in loving it, and in buying the books, magazines, dolls, cards, clothes, soap, fast food, etc.--that the realization will never sink in. In successful hypnosis, the subject works to enter a state of heightened susceptibility, to surrender to a higher power. Maybe they'll conclude that common sense is the enemy of the Force and fight it to the death.", "The Phantom Menace didn't need to be barren of feeling, but it took a real writer, Lawrence Kasdan ( The", "Queen Amidala, done up like a white-faced Chinese empress in hanging beads and glass balls and a hat with curly horns, speaks in tones from which emotion has been expunged, perhaps on the", "I'll be curious to know whether he sees The Phantom Menace a dozen times, or even the three for which he has paid. (I could imagine seeing it three times only if they sold adrenaline shots at the concession stand.) Or maybe he'll come out of the movie and say: \"No, you didn't get it, Mr. Snot-Nosed-Criteria Critic Person. It's not supposed to be exciting. It's laying the foundation for the next chapter, when Anakin and Obi-Wan defeat the Mandalorian warriors in the Clone Wars and Anakin marries Queen Amidala. And listen, I'm getting in line even earlier for tickets to Episode 2 . The Force is with me, butt-head.\"", "been engaged to rewrite him and make the movie halfway human. A buddy specialist would have punched up the Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi badinage, and a black dialogue specialist would have given the comic-relief character, Jar Jar Binks, a" ], [ "The first thing that will strike you is that George Lucas, who wrote and directed the movie, has forgotten how to write and direct a movie. Having spent the two decades since the original Star Wars (1977) concocting skeletons of screenplays that other people flesh out, and overseeing productions that other people storyboard and stage, he has come to lack what one might Michelangelistically term \"the spark of life.\" If the first Star Wars was a box of Cracker Jacks that was all prizes, The Phantom Menace is a box of Cracker Jacks that's all diagrams of prizes. It's there on paper, but it's waiting to be filled in and jazzed up.", "alternately formal or bemusing. (\"This is an odd move for the Trade Federation.\") Lucas considers himself an \"independent\" filmmaker and an artist of integrity. Had he not been such a pretentious overlord, a platoon of screenwriters would doubtless have", "been engaged to rewrite him and make the movie halfway human. A buddy specialist would have punched up the Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi badinage, and a black dialogue specialist would have given the comic-relief character, Jar Jar Binks, a", "Look, I wanted to love The Phantom Menace , too. I was an adolescent boy and would enjoy being one again for a couple of hours. But the movie has a way of deflating all but the most delusional of hopes. If someone had given Ed Wood $115 million to remake Plan Nine From Outer Space it might have looked like this, although Wood's dialogue would surely have been more memorable.", "Say this for Lucas, he doesn't whip up a lot of bogus energy, the way the makers of such blockbusters as The Mummy (1999) and Armageddon (1998) do. It's as if", "I'll be curious to know whether he sees The Phantom Menace a dozen times, or even the three for which he has paid. (I could imagine seeing it three times only if they sold adrenaline shots at the concession stand.) Or maybe he'll come out of the movie and say: \"No, you didn't get it, Mr. Snot-Nosed-Criteria Critic Person. It's not supposed to be exciting. It's laying the foundation for the next chapter, when Anakin and Obi-Wan defeat the Mandalorian warriors in the Clone Wars and Anakin marries Queen Amidala. And listen, I'm getting in line even earlier for tickets to Episode 2 . The Force is with me, butt-head.\"", "The Phantom Menace didn't need to be barren of feeling, but it took a real writer, Lawrence Kasdan ( The", "Later in the film, when Anakin goes before something called the Jedi Council and meets Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson (together again!), Lucas dramatizes the interrogation so ineptly that you either have", "are underscored by demonic chants; he might as well wear a neon beanie that flashes \"Bad Guy.\" Like all revisionist historians, Lucas cheats like mad. If Darth Vader had built C-3PO as a young man, how come he never", "Dark Side Lite \n\n Those poor souls who've been camping out in front of theaters for six weeks: Who can blame them for saying, \"To hell with the critics, we know it will be great!\"? The doors will open, and they'll race to grab the best seats and feel a surge of triumph as their butts sink down. We've made it: Yeeehaww!! They'll cheer when the familiar John Williams fanfare erupts and the title-- Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace --rises out of the screen and the backward-slanted opening \"crawl\" begins: \"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ...\" Yaaahhhhhhh!!! Then, their hearts pounding, they'll settle back to read the rest of the titles: \"Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.\" Taxation of trade routes: Waaahoooo!!!!", "A hologram of Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the \"Sith,\" commands the Federation to sic its battle droids on the Jedi ambassadors before they can apprise Queen Amidala (Portman) of the imminent invasion of the peaceful planet of Naboo. In come the battle droids and out come the light sabers, which still hum like faulty fluorescents. Clack, clack, clack. Lucas can't edit fight scenes so that they're fluid--he cuts on the clack. You get the gist, though. The Jedi make their getaway, but with gas and tolls and droid destroyers, it takes them over an hour to land on Naboo, by which time the queen and the Galactic Senate have already got the grim message. For one thing, communications have been disrupted: \"A communications disruption can mean only one thing,\" says someone. \"Invasion.\"", "How long will they go with it? At what point will they realize that what they've heard is, alas, true, that the picture really is a stiff? Maybe they never will. Maybe they'll want to love The \n\n Phantom Menace so much--because they have so much emotional energy invested in loving it, and in buying the books, magazines, dolls, cards, clothes, soap, fast food, etc.--that the realization will never sink in. In successful hypnosis, the subject works to enter a state of heightened susceptibility, to surrender to a higher power. Maybe they'll conclude that common sense is the enemy of the Force and fight it to the death.", "Still, it's worth reprinting a blistering e-mail sent to my wife by a relative, after she'd let him know that I hated The Phantom Menace : \n\n Surprise, Surprise. Star Wars was never reviewed well by critics. Sometimes a basic story that rests on great special effects and stupid dialogue can be very entertaining--it's called a cult movie, and no critic can have an effect on the obvious outcome that this is going to be the highest grossing movie ever. I myself stood in line for five hours and already have tickets to see it three times, and I know I'll enjoy it. Why? Because it plays on my childhood imagination. And I'm sure it's not as bad as Return of the Jedi , which was the weakest one--but I still liked it and saw it a dozen times. I get tired of being told I'm not going to like it because it doesn't adhere to certain basic critic criteria. I say bpthhhh (sticking my tongue out to review)--don't be sending me anything dissing my movie:):):)", "he conceived The Phantom Menace as a Japanese No pageant and has purposely deadened his actors, directing them to stand stiffly in the dead center of the screen against matte paintings of space or some futuristic metropolis and deliver lines", "Big Chill , 1983), to draft the best and most inspiring of the Star Wars movies, The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and a real director, Irvin Kershner, to breathe Wagnerian grandeur into Lucas' cartoonish fantasies. Having lived with", "the saga for so many years, the audience was prepared to set aside some of its narrative expectations here to plumb the origins of Lucas' universe. In The Phantom Menace , however, the Jedi already exist and the Force is taken", "Yes, the effects are first-rate, occasionally breathtaking. But the floating platforms in the Galactic Senate do little to distract you from parliamentary machinations that play like an especially dull day on Star Trek:", "Deep Space Nine . The final military engagement, in which long-headed attack droids are rolled onto the field as the spokes of a giant wheel, would be awesome if Lucas didn't routinely cut away from the battle just when he seems", "for granted--we're still in the middle of the damn story. The only dramatic interest comes from a young Tatooine slave named Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), whom we know will grow up to father Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess", "on the verge of actually thrilling you. The chief villain, bombastically named Darth Maul, is a horned, red, Kabuki-style snake demon with orange pingpong-ball eyes who challenges the Jedi to a couple of clackety light-saber battles. His appearances" ], [ "on the verge of actually thrilling you. The chief villain, bombastically named Darth Maul, is a horned, red, Kabuki-style snake demon with orange pingpong-ball eyes who challenges the Jedi to a couple of clackety light-saber battles. His appearances", "are underscored by demonic chants; he might as well wear a neon beanie that flashes \"Bad Guy.\" Like all revisionist historians, Lucas cheats like mad. If Darth Vader had built C-3PO as a young man, how come he never", "A hologram of Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the \"Sith,\" commands the Federation to sic its battle droids on the Jedi ambassadors before they can apprise Queen Amidala (Portman) of the imminent invasion of the peaceful planet of Naboo. In come the battle droids and out come the light sabers, which still hum like faulty fluorescents. Clack, clack, clack. Lucas can't edit fight scenes so that they're fluid--he cuts on the clack. You get the gist, though. The Jedi make their getaway, but with gas and tolls and droid destroyers, it takes them over an hour to land on Naboo, by which time the queen and the Galactic Senate have already got the grim message. For one thing, communications have been disrupted: \"A communications disruption can mean only one thing,\" says someone. \"Invasion.\"", "The first thing that will strike you is that George Lucas, who wrote and directed the movie, has forgotten how to write and direct a movie. Having spent the two decades since the original Star Wars (1977) concocting skeletons of screenplays that other people flesh out, and overseeing productions that other people storyboard and stage, he has come to lack what one might Michelangelistically term \"the spark of life.\" If the first Star Wars was a box of Cracker Jacks that was all prizes, The Phantom Menace is a box of Cracker Jacks that's all diagrams of prizes. It's there on paper, but it's waiting to be filled in and jazzed up.", "Later in the film, when Anakin goes before something called the Jedi Council and meets Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson (together again!), Lucas dramatizes the interrogation so ineptly that you either have", "Look, I wanted to love The Phantom Menace , too. I was an adolescent boy and would enjoy being one again for a couple of hours. But the movie has a way of deflating all but the most delusional of hopes. If someone had given Ed Wood $115 million to remake Plan Nine From Outer Space it might have looked like this, although Wood's dialogue would surely have been more memorable.", "he conceived The Phantom Menace as a Japanese No pageant and has purposely deadened his actors, directing them to stand stiffly in the dead center of the screen against matte paintings of space or some futuristic metropolis and deliver lines", "Still, it's worth reprinting a blistering e-mail sent to my wife by a relative, after she'd let him know that I hated The Phantom Menace : \n\n Surprise, Surprise. Star Wars was never reviewed well by critics. Sometimes a basic story that rests on great special effects and stupid dialogue can be very entertaining--it's called a cult movie, and no critic can have an effect on the obvious outcome that this is going to be the highest grossing movie ever. I myself stood in line for five hours and already have tickets to see it three times, and I know I'll enjoy it. Why? Because it plays on my childhood imagination. And I'm sure it's not as bad as Return of the Jedi , which was the weakest one--but I still liked it and saw it a dozen times. I get tired of being told I'm not going to like it because it doesn't adhere to certain basic critic criteria. I say bpthhhh (sticking my tongue out to review)--don't be sending me anything dissing my movie:):):)", "for granted--we're still in the middle of the damn story. The only dramatic interest comes from a young Tatooine slave named Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), whom we know will grow up to father Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess", "Dark Side Lite \n\n Those poor souls who've been camping out in front of theaters for six weeks: Who can blame them for saying, \"To hell with the critics, we know it will be great!\"? The doors will open, and they'll race to grab the best seats and feel a surge of triumph as their butts sink down. We've made it: Yeeehaww!! They'll cheer when the familiar John Williams fanfare erupts and the title-- Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace --rises out of the screen and the backward-slanted opening \"crawl\" begins: \"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ...\" Yaaahhhhhhh!!! Then, their hearts pounding, they'll settle back to read the rest of the titles: \"Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.\" Taxation of trade routes: Waaahoooo!!!!", "smugly, has fear in him, and fear leads to anger and anger to the dark side--which would mean, as I interpret it, that only people without fear (i.e., people who don't exist) are suitable candidates for Jedi knighthood (perhaps", "in later by computers. \"I don't sense anything,\" he tells his uneasy young apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor), as the two sit waiting to conduct trade negotiations with a bunch of gray, fish-faced Federation officers who talk like extras in", "been engaged to rewrite him and make the movie halfway human. A buddy specialist would have punched up the Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi badinage, and a black dialogue specialist would have given the comic-relief character, Jar Jar Binks, a", "Queen Amidala, done up like a white-faced Chinese empress in hanging beads and glass balls and a hat with curly horns, speaks in tones from which emotion has been expunged, perhaps on the", "alternately formal or bemusing. (\"This is an odd move for the Trade Federation.\") Lucas considers himself an \"independent\" filmmaker and an artist of integrity. Had he not been such a pretentious overlord, a platoon of screenwriters would doubtless have", "Leia (Carrie Fisher) and then surrender to the dark side of the Force and become Darth Vader. But that transformation won't happen until the third episode; meanwhile, Anakin is a conventionally industrious juvenile with a penchant for building droids", "Yoda will enlarge his definition of fear in subsequent episodes). There's also some quasireligious, quasiscientific blather to the effect that the boy was conceived without a father by \"metachorians\"--symbiont, microscopic life forms that will speak to you if", "I'll be curious to know whether he sees The Phantom Menace a dozen times, or even the three for which he has paid. (I could imagine seeing it three times only if they sold adrenaline shots at the concession stand.) Or maybe he'll come out of the movie and say: \"No, you didn't get it, Mr. Snot-Nosed-Criteria Critic Person. It's not supposed to be exciting. It's laying the foundation for the next chapter, when Anakin and Obi-Wan defeat the Mandalorian warriors in the Clone Wars and Anakin marries Queen Amidala. And listen, I'm getting in line even earlier for tickets to Episode 2 . The Force is with me, butt-head.\"", "the saga for so many years, the audience was prepared to set aside some of its narrative expectations here to plumb the origins of Lucas' universe. In The Phantom Menace , however, the Jedi already exist and the Force is taken", "How long will they go with it? At what point will they realize that what they've heard is, alas, true, that the picture really is a stiff? Maybe they never will. Maybe they'll want to love The \n\n Phantom Menace so much--because they have so much emotional energy invested in loving it, and in buying the books, magazines, dolls, cards, clothes, soap, fast food, etc.--that the realization will never sink in. In successful hypnosis, the subject works to enter a state of heightened susceptibility, to surrender to a higher power. Maybe they'll conclude that common sense is the enemy of the Force and fight it to the death." ], [ "to take Yoda's word that there's something wrong with the boy (\"Clouded this boy's future is\") or to conclude that Yoda, like us, is moving backward through time and has already seen Episodes 4 through 6. Anakin, he says", "Later in the film, when Anakin goes before something called the Jedi Council and meets Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson (together again!), Lucas dramatizes the interrogation so ineptly that you either have", "Yoda will enlarge his definition of fear in subsequent episodes). There's also some quasireligious, quasiscientific blather to the effect that the boy was conceived without a father by \"metachorians\"--symbiont, microscopic life forms that will speak to you if", "smugly, has fear in him, and fear leads to anger and anger to the dark side--which would mean, as I interpret it, that only people without fear (i.e., people who don't exist) are suitable candidates for Jedi knighthood (perhaps", "for granted--we're still in the middle of the damn story. The only dramatic interest comes from a young Tatooine slave named Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), whom we know will grow up to father Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess", "A hologram of Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the \"Sith,\" commands the Federation to sic its battle droids on the Jedi ambassadors before they can apprise Queen Amidala (Portman) of the imminent invasion of the peaceful planet of Naboo. In come the battle droids and out come the light sabers, which still hum like faulty fluorescents. Clack, clack, clack. Lucas can't edit fight scenes so that they're fluid--he cuts on the clack. You get the gist, though. The Jedi make their getaway, but with gas and tolls and droid destroyers, it takes them over an hour to land on Naboo, by which time the queen and the Galactic Senate have already got the grim message. For one thing, communications have been disrupted: \"A communications disruption can mean only one thing,\" says someone. \"Invasion.\"", "paid much attention to him in the other movies--and vice versa? As Yoda himself puts it, in another context, \"See through you we can.\"", "in later by computers. \"I don't sense anything,\" he tells his uneasy young apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor), as the two sit waiting to conduct trade negotiations with a bunch of gray, fish-faced Federation officers who talk like extras in", "Leia (Carrie Fisher) and then surrender to the dark side of the Force and become Darth Vader. But that transformation won't happen until the third episode; meanwhile, Anakin is a conventionally industrious juvenile with a penchant for building droids", "are underscored by demonic chants; he might as well wear a neon beanie that flashes \"Bad Guy.\" Like all revisionist historians, Lucas cheats like mad. If Darth Vader had built C-3PO as a young man, how come he never", "The first thing that will strike you is that George Lucas, who wrote and directed the movie, has forgotten how to write and direct a movie. Having spent the two decades since the original Star Wars (1977) concocting skeletons of screenplays that other people flesh out, and overseeing productions that other people storyboard and stage, he has come to lack what one might Michelangelistically term \"the spark of life.\" If the first Star Wars was a box of Cracker Jacks that was all prizes, The Phantom Menace is a box of Cracker Jacks that's all diagrams of prizes. It's there on paper, but it's waiting to be filled in and jazzed up.", "the saga for so many years, the audience was prepared to set aside some of its narrative expectations here to plumb the origins of Lucas' universe. In The Phantom Menace , however, the Jedi already exist and the Force is taken", "you \"quiet your mind.\" In other words, the Force. So, it's not nebulous, after all! It can be measured. It can be quantified. It can even, perhaps, be merchandised.", "on the verge of actually thrilling you. The chief villain, bombastically named Darth Maul, is a horned, red, Kabuki-style snake demon with orange pingpong-ball eyes who challenges the Jedi to a couple of clackety light-saber battles. His appearances", "Dark Side Lite \n\n Those poor souls who've been camping out in front of theaters for six weeks: Who can blame them for saying, \"To hell with the critics, we know it will be great!\"? The doors will open, and they'll race to grab the best seats and feel a surge of triumph as their butts sink down. We've made it: Yeeehaww!! They'll cheer when the familiar John Williams fanfare erupts and the title-- Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace --rises out of the screen and the backward-slanted opening \"crawl\" begins: \"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ...\" Yaaahhhhhhh!!! Then, their hearts pounding, they'll settle back to read the rest of the titles: \"Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.\" Taxation of trade routes: Waaahoooo!!!!", "How long will they go with it? At what point will they realize that what they've heard is, alas, true, that the picture really is a stiff? Maybe they never will. Maybe they'll want to love The \n\n Phantom Menace so much--because they have so much emotional energy invested in loving it, and in buying the books, magazines, dolls, cards, clothes, soap, fast food, etc.--that the realization will never sink in. In successful hypnosis, the subject works to enter a state of heightened susceptibility, to surrender to a higher power. Maybe they'll conclude that common sense is the enemy of the Force and fight it to the death.", "I'll be curious to know whether he sees The Phantom Menace a dozen times, or even the three for which he has paid. (I could imagine seeing it three times only if they sold adrenaline shots at the concession stand.) Or maybe he'll come out of the movie and say: \"No, you didn't get it, Mr. Snot-Nosed-Criteria Critic Person. It's not supposed to be exciting. It's laying the foundation for the next chapter, when Anakin and Obi-Wan defeat the Mandalorian warriors in the Clone Wars and Anakin marries Queen Amidala. And listen, I'm getting in line even earlier for tickets to Episode 2 . The Force is with me, butt-head.\"", "alternately formal or bemusing. (\"This is an odd move for the Trade Federation.\") Lucas considers himself an \"independent\" filmmaker and an artist of integrity. Had he not been such a pretentious overlord, a platoon of screenwriters would doubtless have", "unruffled. \"The Force will guide us,\" says Neeson blandly, and the director seems to share his lack of urgency. There's Zen detachment and there's Quaalude detachment, and The Phantom", "been engaged to rewrite him and make the movie halfway human. A buddy specialist would have punched up the Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi badinage, and a black dialogue specialist would have given the comic-relief character, Jar Jar Binks, a" ], [ "Still, it's worth reprinting a blistering e-mail sent to my wife by a relative, after she'd let him know that I hated The Phantom Menace : \n\n Surprise, Surprise. Star Wars was never reviewed well by critics. Sometimes a basic story that rests on great special effects and stupid dialogue can be very entertaining--it's called a cult movie, and no critic can have an effect on the obvious outcome that this is going to be the highest grossing movie ever. I myself stood in line for five hours and already have tickets to see it three times, and I know I'll enjoy it. Why? Because it plays on my childhood imagination. And I'm sure it's not as bad as Return of the Jedi , which was the weakest one--but I still liked it and saw it a dozen times. I get tired of being told I'm not going to like it because it doesn't adhere to certain basic critic criteria. I say bpthhhh (sticking my tongue out to review)--don't be sending me anything dissing my movie:):):)", "I'll be curious to know whether he sees The Phantom Menace a dozen times, or even the three for which he has paid. (I could imagine seeing it three times only if they sold adrenaline shots at the concession stand.) Or maybe he'll come out of the movie and say: \"No, you didn't get it, Mr. Snot-Nosed-Criteria Critic Person. It's not supposed to be exciting. It's laying the foundation for the next chapter, when Anakin and Obi-Wan defeat the Mandalorian warriors in the Clone Wars and Anakin marries Queen Amidala. And listen, I'm getting in line even earlier for tickets to Episode 2 . The Force is with me, butt-head.\"", "How long will they go with it? At what point will they realize that what they've heard is, alas, true, that the picture really is a stiff? Maybe they never will. Maybe they'll want to love The \n\n Phantom Menace so much--because they have so much emotional energy invested in loving it, and in buying the books, magazines, dolls, cards, clothes, soap, fast food, etc.--that the realization will never sink in. In successful hypnosis, the subject works to enter a state of heightened susceptibility, to surrender to a higher power. Maybe they'll conclude that common sense is the enemy of the Force and fight it to the death.", "Dark Side Lite \n\n Those poor souls who've been camping out in front of theaters for six weeks: Who can blame them for saying, \"To hell with the critics, we know it will be great!\"? The doors will open, and they'll race to grab the best seats and feel a surge of triumph as their butts sink down. We've made it: Yeeehaww!! They'll cheer when the familiar John Williams fanfare erupts and the title-- Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace --rises out of the screen and the backward-slanted opening \"crawl\" begins: \"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ...\" Yaaahhhhhhh!!! Then, their hearts pounding, they'll settle back to read the rest of the titles: \"Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.\" Taxation of trade routes: Waaahoooo!!!!", "The first thing that will strike you is that George Lucas, who wrote and directed the movie, has forgotten how to write and direct a movie. Having spent the two decades since the original Star Wars (1977) concocting skeletons of screenplays that other people flesh out, and overseeing productions that other people storyboard and stage, he has come to lack what one might Michelangelistically term \"the spark of life.\" If the first Star Wars was a box of Cracker Jacks that was all prizes, The Phantom Menace is a box of Cracker Jacks that's all diagrams of prizes. It's there on paper, but it's waiting to be filled in and jazzed up.", "Look, I wanted to love The Phantom Menace , too. I was an adolescent boy and would enjoy being one again for a couple of hours. But the movie has a way of deflating all but the most delusional of hopes. If someone had given Ed Wood $115 million to remake Plan Nine From Outer Space it might have looked like this, although Wood's dialogue would surely have been more memorable.", "The Phantom Menace didn't need to be barren of feeling, but it took a real writer, Lawrence Kasdan ( The", "the saga for so many years, the audience was prepared to set aside some of its narrative expectations here to plumb the origins of Lucas' universe. In The Phantom Menace , however, the Jedi already exist and the Force is taken", "A hologram of Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the \"Sith,\" commands the Federation to sic its battle droids on the Jedi ambassadors before they can apprise Queen Amidala (Portman) of the imminent invasion of the peaceful planet of Naboo. In come the battle droids and out come the light sabers, which still hum like faulty fluorescents. Clack, clack, clack. Lucas can't edit fight scenes so that they're fluid--he cuts on the clack. You get the gist, though. The Jedi make their getaway, but with gas and tolls and droid destroyers, it takes them over an hour to land on Naboo, by which time the queen and the Galactic Senate have already got the grim message. For one thing, communications have been disrupted: \"A communications disruption can mean only one thing,\" says someone. \"Invasion.\"", "on the verge of actually thrilling you. The chief villain, bombastically named Darth Maul, is a horned, red, Kabuki-style snake demon with orange pingpong-ball eyes who challenges the Jedi to a couple of clackety light-saber battles. His appearances", "unruffled. \"The Force will guide us,\" says Neeson blandly, and the director seems to share his lack of urgency. There's Zen detachment and there's Quaalude detachment, and The Phantom", "for granted--we're still in the middle of the damn story. The only dramatic interest comes from a young Tatooine slave named Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), whom we know will grow up to father Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess", "Later in the film, when Anakin goes before something called the Jedi Council and meets Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson (together again!), Lucas dramatizes the interrogation so ineptly that you either have", "he conceived The Phantom Menace as a Japanese No pageant and has purposely deadened his actors, directing them to stand stiffly in the dead center of the screen against matte paintings of space or some futuristic metropolis and deliver lines", "Yes, the effects are first-rate, occasionally breathtaking. But the floating platforms in the Galactic Senate do little to distract you from parliamentary machinations that play like an especially dull day on Star Trek:", "in later by computers. \"I don't sense anything,\" he tells his uneasy young apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor), as the two sit waiting to conduct trade negotiations with a bunch of gray, fish-faced Federation officers who talk like extras in", "alternately formal or bemusing. (\"This is an odd move for the Trade Federation.\") Lucas considers himself an \"independent\" filmmaker and an artist of integrity. Had he not been such a pretentious overlord, a platoon of screenwriters would doubtless have", "been engaged to rewrite him and make the movie halfway human. A buddy specialist would have punched up the Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi badinage, and a black dialogue specialist would have given the comic-relief character, Jar Jar Binks, a", "Menace falls into the second camp: It really does take place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. When R2-D2 showed up, I thought: At last, a character with the potential for intimacy!", "Yoda will enlarge his definition of fear in subsequent episodes). There's also some quasireligious, quasiscientific blather to the effect that the boy was conceived without a father by \"metachorians\"--symbiont, microscopic life forms that will speak to you if" ] ]
valid	22590	[ "Why was Jan in the groundcar diving across Den Hoorn?", "Why was Jan unable to return to Oosport in the same way that he left?", "What about the settlers at Rathole was off-putting to Jan?", "What was Jan referring to when he thanked Sanchez for the good luck wishes?", "Why did the colony of Rathole not have any fuel?", "Why could the helicopters from the main settlement pick up Jan and Diego?", "What was Jan's reason for wanting to return to Rathole after the rescue mission?", "Why did the fuel from the groundcar not work in the flying platform?", "What did Jan end up using to power the flying platform?" ]	[ [ "To retrieve a medical patient", "To flee the storm that was hitting the main station", "To refill his fuel", "To bring supplies to the settlement of Rathole" ], [ "The storms became too intense", "He forgot the route that he took", "His ground car ran out of fuel", "An earthquake altered the terrain" ], [ "They used windmills for power", "They were of Spanish-speaking descent", "They were sick with the Venus Shadow", "They lived underground" ], [ "Dealing with the symptoms of Venus Shadow", "Helping the sick child", "The difficulty of the first crossing", "Returning to Earth" ], [ "It had been stolen by the Russian settlers", "It had frozen solid", "They relied on wind and manual power", "They had run out very recently" ], [ "They were out of fuel", "The wind was too severe", "They had been moved north with the naval base", "The distance was too far" ], [ "To rescue more sick settlers", "To visit Mrs. Murillo", "To bring fuel and supplies", "To return the platform" ], [ "The fuel was too cold to be combusted", "The fuel was old and no longer good", "It was the wrong type of fuel", "The engines in the flying platform had gone bad" ], [ "A sail", "A broom", "A windmill", "Fuel from the ground car" ] ]	[ 1, 4, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3 ]	[ 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "Jan needed all his Dutch stubbornness,\n and a good deal of pure\n physical strength besides, to maneuver\n the roach-flat groundcar\n across the tumbled terrain of\n Den Hoorn into the teeth of the\n howling gale that swept from the\n west. The huge wheels twisted\n and jolted against the rocks outside,\n and Jan bounced against his\n seat belt, wrestled the steering\n wheel and puffed at his\npijp\n. The\n mild aroma of Heerenbaai-Tabak\n filled the airtight groundcar.\n\n\n There came a new swaying\n that was not the roughness of\n the terrain. Through the thick\n windshield Jan saw all the\n ground about him buckle and\n heave for a second or two before\n it settled to rugged quiescence\n again. This time he was really\n heaved about.\n\n\n Jan mentioned this to the\n groundcar radio.", "The ground heaved and buckled\n like a tempestuous sea.\n Rocks rolled and leaped through\n the air, several large ones striking\n the groundcar with ominous\n force. The car staggered forward\n on its giant wheels like a\n drunken man. The quake was so\n violent that at one time the vehicle\n was hurled several meters\n sideways, and almost overturned.\n And the wind smashed down\n on it unrelentingly.\n\n\n The quake lasted for several\n minutes, during which Jan was\n able to make no progress at all\n and struggled only to keep the\n groundcar upright. Then, in unison,\n both earthquake and wind\n died to absolute quiescence.\n\n\n Jan made use of this calm to\n step down on the accelerator and\n send the groundcar speeding\n forward. The terrain was easier\n here, nearing the western edge\n of Den Hoorn, and he covered\n several kilometers before the\n wind struck again, cutting his\n speed down considerably. He\n judged he must be nearing Rathole.", "Den Hoorn was a comparatively\n flat desert sweep that ran\n along the western side of the\n Oost Mountains, just over the\n mountain from Oostpoort. It was\n a thin fault area of a planet\n whose crust was peculiarly subject\n to earthquakes, particularly\n at the beginning and end of each\n long day when temperatures of\n the surface rocks changed. On\n the other side of it lay Rathole, a\n little settlement that eked a precarious\n living from the Venerian\n vegetation. Jan never had seen it.\n\n\n He had little difficulty driving\n up and over the mountain, for the\n Dutch settlers had carved a\n rough road through the ravines.\n But even the 2½-meter wheels of\n the groundcar had trouble amid\n the tumbled rocks of Den Hoorn.\n The wind hit the car in full\n strength here and, though the\n body of the groundcar was suspended\n from the axles, there was\n constant danger of its being flipped\n over by a gust if not handled\n just right.", "The ground of Den Hoorn was\n still shivering. Jan did not realize\n this until he had to brake the\n groundcar almost to a stop at one\n point, because it was not shaking\n in severe, periodic shocks as it\n had earlier. It quivered constantly,\n like the surface of quicksand.\n\n\n The ground far ahead of him\n had a strange color to it. Jan,\n watching for the cliff he had to\n skirt and scale, had picked up\n speed over some fairly even terrain,\n but now he slowed again,\n puzzled. There was something\n wrong ahead. He couldn't quite\n figure it out.\n\n\n Diego, beside him, had sat\n quietly so far, peering eagerly\n through the windshield, not saying\n a word. Now suddenly he\n cried in a high thin tenor:\n\n\n \"\nCuidado! Cuidado! Un abismo!\n\"", "Jan reached the edge of a\n crack that made further progress\n seem impossible. A hundred\n meters wide, of unknown depth,\n it stretched out of sight in both\n directions. For the first time he\n entertained serious doubts that\n Den Hoorn could be crossed by\n land.\n\n\n After a moment's hesitation,\n he swung the groundcar northward\n and raced along the edge of\n the chasm as fast as the car\n would negotiate the terrain. He\n looked anxiously at his watch.\n Nearly three hours had passed\n since he left Oostpoort. He had\n seven hours to go and he was\n still at least 16 kilometers from\n Rathole. His pipe was out, but\n he could not take his hands\n from the wheel to refill it.", "\"No, it wouldn't work,\" he\n said. \"We could rig batteries on\n the platform and electric motors\n to turn the propellers. But batteries\n big enough to power it all\n the way to Oostpoort would be\n so heavy the machine couldn't lift\n them off the ground. If there\n were some way to carry a power\n line all the way to Oostpoort, or\n to broadcast the power to it....\n But it's a light-load machine,\n and must have an engine that\n gives it the necessary power from\n very little weight.\"\n\n\n Wild schemes ran through his\n head. If they were on water, instead\n of land, he could rig up a\n sail. He could still rig up a sail,\n for a groundcar, except for the\n chasm out on Den Hoorn.\n\n\n The groundcar! Jan straightened\n and snapped his fingers.", "Mrs. Murillo spoke to him rapidly\n in Spanish and he nodded.\n She zipped him into a venusuit\n and fitted a small helmet on his\n head.\n\n\n \"Good luck,\namigo\n,\" said Sanchez,\n shaking Jan's hand again.\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" replied Jan. He donned\n his own helmet. \"I'll need it,\n if the trip over was any indication.\"\nJan and Diego made their way\n back down the chain to the\n groundcar. There was a score of\n men there now, and a few\n women. They let the pair go\n through, and waved farewell as\n Jan swung the groundcar around\n and headed back eastward.\n\n\n It was easier driving with the\n wind behind him, and Jan hit a\n hundred kilometers an hour several\n times before striking the\n rougher ground of Den Hoorn.\n Now, if he could only find a way\n over the bluff raised by that last\n quake....", "\"If some effort had been made\n to take the boy to Oostpoort from\n here, instead of calling on us to\n send a car, Den Hoorn could have\n been crossed before the crack\n opened,\" he pointed out.\n\n\n \"An effort was made,\" replied\n Sanchez quietly. \"Perhaps you do\n not fully realize our position\n here. We have no engines except\n the stationary generators that\n give us current for our air-conditioning\n and our utilities. They\n are powered by the windmills. We\n do not have gasoline engines for\n vehicles, so our vehicles are operated\n by hand.\"\n\n\n \"You push them?\" demanded\n Jan incredulously.", "\"Then the passenger will have\n to wait for the next ship,\" he\n pronounced. \"The\nVanderdecken\nhas to blast off in thirty hours to\n catch Earth at the right orbital\n spot, and the G-boat has to blast\n off in ten hours to catch the\nVanderdecken\n.\"\n\n\n \"This passenger can't wait,\"\n said Dekker. \"He needs to be\n evacuated to Earth immediately.\n He's suffering from the Venus\n Shadow.\"\n\n\n Jan whistled softly. He had\n seen the effects of that disease.\n Dekker was right.\n\n\n \"Jan, you're the best driver in\n Oostpoort,\" said Dekker. \"You\n will have to take a groundcar to\n Rathole and bring the fellow\n back.\"\nSo now Jan gripped his clay\n pipe between his teeth and piloted\n the groundcar into the teeth\n of the Twilight Gale.", "\"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" answered Jan. \"They may\n as well put the fuel back in my\n groundcar.\"\n\n\n Sanchez called orders to the\n men at the platform. While they\n worked, Jan stared out at the\n furiously spinning windmills that\n dotted Rathole.\n\n\n \"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" he repeated. \"We can't\n make the trip overland because\n of the chasm out there in Den\n Hoorn, and we can't fly the platform\n because we have no power\n for it.\"", "No. The platform hovered and\n began to settle nearby, and there\n was Van Artevelde leaning over\n its rail and fiddling frantically\n with whatever it was that stuck\n up on it—a weird, angled contraption\n of pipes and belts topped\n by a whirring blade. A boy stood\n at his shoulder and tried to help\n him. As the platform descended\n to a few meters above ground,\n the Dutchman slashed at the contraption,\n the cut ends of belts\n whipped out wildly and the platform\n slid to the ground with a\n rush. It hit with a clatter and its\n two passengers tumbled prone to\n the ground.\n\n\n \"Jan!\" boomed Heemskerk,\n forcing his voice through the helmet\n diaphragm and rushing over\n to his friend. \"I was afraid you\n were lost!\"\n\n\n Jan struggled to his feet and\n leaned down to help the boy up.", "The three earthshocks that had\n shaken Den Hoorn since he had\n been driving made his task no\n easier, but he was obviously\n lucky, at that. Often he had to\n detour far from his course to\n skirt long, deep cracks in the\n surface, or steep breaks where\n the crust had been raised or\n dropped several meters by past\n quakes.\n\n\n The groundcar zig-zagged\n slowly westward. The tattered\n violet-and-indigo clouds boiled\n low above it, but the wind was as\n dry as the breath of an oven.\n Despite the heavy cloud cover,\n the afternoon was as bright as\n an Earth-day. The thermometer\n showed the outside temperature\n to have dropped to 40 degrees\n Centigrade in the west wind, and\n it was still going down.", "Jim saw it at the same time\n and hit the brakes so hard the\n groundcar would have stood on\n its nose had its wheels been\n smaller. They skidded to a stop.\n\n\n The chasm that had caused\n him such a long detour before\n had widened, evidently in the big\n quake that had hit earlier. Now\n it was a canyon, half a kilometer\n wide. Five meters from the edge\n he looked out over blank space\n at the far wall, and could not see\n the bottom.\n\n\n Cursing choice Dutch profanity,\n Jan wheeled the groundcar\n northward and drove along the\n edge of the abyss as fast as he\n could. He wasted half an hour before\n realizing that it was getting\n no narrower.", "There was nothing to do but\n turn back to Rathole and see if\n some other way could not be\n found.\nJan sat in the half-buried room\n and enjoyed the luxury of a pipe\n filled with some of Theodorus\n Neimeijer's mild tobacco. Before\n him, Dr. Sanchez sat with crossed\n legs, cleaning his fingernails\n with a scalpel. Diego's mother\n talked to the boy in low, liquid\n tones in a corner of the room.\nJan was at a loss to know how\n people whose technical knowledge\n was as skimpy as it obviously\n was in Rathole were able to build\n these semi-underground domes to\n resist the earth shocks that came\n from Den Hoorn. But this one\n showed no signs of stress. A religious\n print and a small pencil\n sketch of Señora Murillo, probably\n done by the boy, were awry\n on the inward-curving walls, but\n that was all.\n\n\n Jan felt justifiably exasperated\n at these Spanish-speaking people.", "Heemskerk could only draw the\n conclusion that the aircraft had\n been wrecked somewhere in Den\n Hoorn. As a matter of fact, he\n knew that preparations were being\n made now to send a couple of\n groundcars out to search for it.\n\n\n This, of course, would be too\n late to help the patient Van Artevelde\n was bringing, but Heemskerk\n had no personal interest in\n the patient. His worry was all for\n his friend. The two of them had\n enjoyed chess and good beer together\n on his last three trips to\n Venus, and Heemskerk hoped\n very sincerely that the big blond\n man wasn't hurt.\n\n\n He glanced at his watch again.\n X minus twelve. In two minutes,\n it would be time for him to walk\n up the ramp into the G-boat. In\n seven minutes the backward\n count before blastoff would start\n over the area loudspeakers.", "Jan, his head just above\n ground level, surveyed the terrain.\n There was flat ground to\n the east, clear in a fairly broad\n alley for at least half a kilometer\n before any of the domes protruded\n up into it.\n\n\n \"This is as good a spot for\n takeoff as we'll find,\" he said to\n Sanchez.\n\n\n The men put three heavy ropes\n on the platform's windward rail\n and secured it by them to the\n heavy chain that ran by the\n dome. The platform quivered and\n shuddered in the heavy wind, but\n its base was too low for it to\n overturn.\n\n\n Shortly the two men returned\n with the fuel from the groundcar,\n struggling along the chain.\n Jan got above ground in a\n crouch, clinging to the rail of the\n platform, and helped them fill\n the fuel tank with it. He primed\n the carburetors and spun the\n engines.", "Windmills. Again Jan could\n imagine the flat land around\n them as his native Holland, with\n the Zuider Zee sparkling to the\n west where here the desert\n stretched under darkling clouds.\nJan looked at his watch. A\n little more than two hours before\n the G-boat's blastoff time, and it\n couldn't wait for them. It was\n nearly eight hours since he had\n left Oostpoort, and the afternoon\n was getting noticeably\n darker.\n\n\n Jan was sorry. He had done his\n best, but Venus had beaten him.\n\n\n He looked around for Diego.\n The boy was not in the dome. He\n was outside, crouched in the lee\n of the dome, playing with some\n sticks.", "Jan felt ashamed of the exuberant\n foolishness which had\n led him to spout ancient history\n and claim descent from William\n of Orange. It had been a hobby,\n and artificial topic for conversation\n that amused him and his\n companions, a defense against\n the monotony of Venus that had\n begun to affect his personality\n perhaps a bit more than he realized.\n He did not dislike Spaniards;\n he had no reason to dislike\n them. They were all humans—the\n Spanish, the Dutch, the Germans,\n the Americans, even the\n Russians—fighting a hostile\n planet together. He could not understand\n a word Diego said when\n the boy spoke to him, but he\n liked Diego and wished desperately\n he could do something.\n\n\n Outside, the windmills of Rathole\n spun merrily.", "But there were no canals here.\n The flat land, stretching into the\n darkening west, was spotted\n with patches of cactus and\n leather-leaved Venerian plants.\n Amid the windmills, low domes\n protruded from the earth, indicating\n that the dwellings of Rathole\n were, appropriately, partly\n underground.\nHe drove into the place. There\n were no streets, as such, but\n there were avenues between lines\n of heavy chains strung to short\n iron posts, evidently as handholds\n against the wind. The savage\n gale piled dust and sand in\n drifts against the domes, then,\n shifting slightly, swept them\n clean again.\n\n\n There was no one moving\n abroad, but just inside the community\n Jan found half a dozen\n men in a group, clinging to one\n of the chains and waving to him.\n He pulled the groundcar to a\n stop beside them, stuck his pipe\n in a pocket of his plastic venusuit,\n donned his helmet and\n got out.", "There was no point in going\n back southward. It might be a\n hundred kilometers long or a\n thousand, but he never could\n reach the end of it and thread\n the tumbled rocks of Den Hoorn\n to Oostpoort before the G-boat\n blastoff." ], [ "There was no point in going\n back southward. It might be a\n hundred kilometers long or a\n thousand, but he never could\n reach the end of it and thread\n the tumbled rocks of Den Hoorn\n to Oostpoort before the G-boat\n blastoff.", "Jan reached the edge of a\n crack that made further progress\n seem impossible. A hundred\n meters wide, of unknown depth,\n it stretched out of sight in both\n directions. For the first time he\n entertained serious doubts that\n Den Hoorn could be crossed by\n land.\n\n\n After a moment's hesitation,\n he swung the groundcar northward\n and raced along the edge of\n the chasm as fast as the car\n would negotiate the terrain. He\n looked anxiously at his watch.\n Nearly three hours had passed\n since he left Oostpoort. He had\n seven hours to go and he was\n still at least 16 kilometers from\n Rathole. His pipe was out, but\n he could not take his hands\n from the wheel to refill it.", "\"If some effort had been made\n to take the boy to Oostpoort from\n here, instead of calling on us to\n send a car, Den Hoorn could have\n been crossed before the crack\n opened,\" he pointed out.\n\n\n \"An effort was made,\" replied\n Sanchez quietly. \"Perhaps you do\n not fully realize our position\n here. We have no engines except\n the stationary generators that\n give us current for our air-conditioning\n and our utilities. They\n are powered by the windmills. We\n do not have gasoline engines for\n vehicles, so our vehicles are operated\n by hand.\"\n\n\n \"You push them?\" demanded\n Jan incredulously.", "\"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" answered Jan. \"They may\n as well put the fuel back in my\n groundcar.\"\n\n\n Sanchez called orders to the\n men at the platform. While they\n worked, Jan stared out at the\n furiously spinning windmills that\n dotted Rathole.\n\n\n \"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" he repeated. \"We can't\n make the trip overland because\n of the chasm out there in Den\n Hoorn, and we can't fly the platform\n because we have no power\n for it.\"", "\"Then the passenger will have\n to wait for the next ship,\" he\n pronounced. \"The\nVanderdecken\nhas to blast off in thirty hours to\n catch Earth at the right orbital\n spot, and the G-boat has to blast\n off in ten hours to catch the\nVanderdecken\n.\"\n\n\n \"This passenger can't wait,\"\n said Dekker. \"He needs to be\n evacuated to Earth immediately.\n He's suffering from the Venus\n Shadow.\"\n\n\n Jan whistled softly. He had\n seen the effects of that disease.\n Dekker was right.\n\n\n \"Jan, you're the best driver in\n Oostpoort,\" said Dekker. \"You\n will have to take a groundcar to\n Rathole and bring the fellow\n back.\"\nSo now Jan gripped his clay\n pipe between his teeth and piloted\n the groundcar into the teeth\n of the Twilight Gale.", "Not long thereafter, he rounded\n an outcropping of rock and it\n lay before him.\n\n\n A wave of nostalgia swept\n over him. Back at Oostpoort, the\n power was nuclear, but this little\n settlement made use of the\n cheapest, most obviously available\n power source. It was dotted\n with more than a dozen windmills.\n\n\n Windmills! Tears came to\n Jan's eyes. For a moment, he\n was carried back to the flat\n lands around 's Gravenhage. For\n a moment he was a tow-headed,\n round-eyed boy again, clumping\n in wooden shoes along the edge\n of the tulip fields.", "Diego must know of his ailment,\n and why he had to go to\n Oostpoort. If Jan was any judge\n of character, Sanchez would have\n told him that. Whether Diego\n knew it was a life-or-death matter\n for him to be aboard the\nVanderdecken\nwhen it blasted\n off for Earth, Jan did not know.\n But the boy was around eight\n years old and he was bright, and\n he must realize the seriousness\n involved in a decision to send him\n all the way to Earth.", "Windmills. Again Jan could\n imagine the flat land around\n them as his native Holland, with\n the Zuider Zee sparkling to the\n west where here the desert\n stretched under darkling clouds.\nJan looked at his watch. A\n little more than two hours before\n the G-boat's blastoff time, and it\n couldn't wait for them. It was\n nearly eight hours since he had\n left Oostpoort, and the afternoon\n was getting noticeably\n darker.\n\n\n Jan was sorry. He had done his\n best, but Venus had beaten him.\n\n\n He looked around for Diego.\n The boy was not in the dome. He\n was outside, crouched in the lee\n of the dome, playing with some\n sticks.", "Sanchez smiled ruefully, as he\n had once before, at Jan's appellation\n for the community. The inhabitants'\n term for it was simply\n \"\nLa Ciudad Nuestra\n\"—\"Our\n Town.\" But he made no protest.\n He turned to one of the other\n men and talked rapidly for a few\n moments in Spanish.\n\n\n \"None,\nseñor\n,\" he said, turning\n back to Jan. \"The Americans, of\n course, kept much of it when\n they were here, but the few\n things we take to Oostpoort to\n trade could not buy precious gasoline.\n We have electricity in\n plenty if you can power the platform\n with it.\"\n\n\n Jan thought that over, trying\n to find a way.", "There was nothing to do but\n turn back to Rathole and see if\n some other way could not be\n found.\nJan sat in the half-buried room\n and enjoyed the luxury of a pipe\n filled with some of Theodorus\n Neimeijer's mild tobacco. Before\n him, Dr. Sanchez sat with crossed\n legs, cleaning his fingernails\n with a scalpel. Diego's mother\n talked to the boy in low, liquid\n tones in a corner of the room.\nJan was at a loss to know how\n people whose technical knowledge\n was as skimpy as it obviously\n was in Rathole were able to build\n these semi-underground domes to\n resist the earth shocks that came\n from Den Hoorn. But this one\n showed no signs of stress. A religious\n print and a small pencil\n sketch of Señora Murillo, probably\n done by the boy, were awry\n on the inward-curving walls, but\n that was all.\n\n\n Jan felt justifiably exasperated\n at these Spanish-speaking people.", "\"The copters at Oostpoort can't\n buck this wind,\" he said thoughtfully,\n \"or I'd have come in one of\n those in the first place instead of\n trying to cross Den Hoorn by\n land. But if you have any sort of\n aircraft here, it might make it\n downwind—if it isn't wrecked on\n takeoff.\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid not,\" said Sanchez.\n\n\n \"Too bad. There's nothing we\n can do, then. The nearest settlement\n west of here is more than\n a thousand kilometers away, and\n I happen to know they have no\n planes, either. Just copters. So\n that's no help.\"", "\"No, it wouldn't work,\" he\n said. \"We could rig batteries on\n the platform and electric motors\n to turn the propellers. But batteries\n big enough to power it all\n the way to Oostpoort would be\n so heavy the machine couldn't lift\n them off the ground. If there\n were some way to carry a power\n line all the way to Oostpoort, or\n to broadcast the power to it....\n But it's a light-load machine,\n and must have an engine that\n gives it the necessary power from\n very little weight.\"\n\n\n Wild schemes ran through his\n head. If they were on water, instead\n of land, he could rig up a\n sail. He could still rig up a sail,\n for a groundcar, except for the\n chasm out on Den Hoorn.\n\n\n The groundcar! Jan straightened\n and snapped his fingers.", "Nothing happened.\nHe turned the engines over\n again. One of them coughed, and\n a cloud of blue smoke burst from\n its exhaust, but they did not\n catch.\n\n\n \"What is the matter,\nseñor\n?\"\n asked Sanchez from the dome entrance.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Jan.\n \"Maybe it's that the engines\n haven't been used in so long. I'm\n afraid I'm not a good enough\n mechanic to tell.\"\n\n\n \"Some of these men were good\n mechanics when the navy was\n here,\" said Sanchez. \"Wait.\"\n\n\n He turned and spoke to someone\n in the dome. One of the men\n of Rathole came to Jan's side and\n tried the engines. They refused\n to catch. The man made carburetor\n adjustments and tried\n again. No success.", "Jan disengaged himself gently,\n embarrassed. But it occurred to\n him, looking down on the bowed\n head of the beautiful young\n widow, that he might make some\n flying trips back over here in his\n leisure time. Language barriers\n were not impassable, and feminine\n companionship might cure\n his neurotic, history-born distaste\n for Spaniards, for more\n than one reason.\n\n\n Sanchez was tugging at his\n elbow.", "Jan felt ashamed of the exuberant\n foolishness which had\n led him to spout ancient history\n and claim descent from William\n of Orange. It had been a hobby,\n and artificial topic for conversation\n that amused him and his\n companions, a defense against\n the monotony of Venus that had\n begun to affect his personality\n perhaps a bit more than he realized.\n He did not dislike Spaniards;\n he had no reason to dislike\n them. They were all humans—the\n Spanish, the Dutch, the Germans,\n the Americans, even the\n Russians—fighting a hostile\n planet together. He could not understand\n a word Diego said when\n the boy spoke to him, but he\n liked Diego and wished desperately\n he could do something.\n\n\n Outside, the windmills of Rathole\n spun merrily.", "The ground heaved and buckled\n like a tempestuous sea.\n Rocks rolled and leaped through\n the air, several large ones striking\n the groundcar with ominous\n force. The car staggered forward\n on its giant wheels like a\n drunken man. The quake was so\n violent that at one time the vehicle\n was hurled several meters\n sideways, and almost overturned.\n And the wind smashed down\n on it unrelentingly.\n\n\n The quake lasted for several\n minutes, during which Jan was\n able to make no progress at all\n and struggled only to keep the\n groundcar upright. Then, in unison,\n both earthquake and wind\n died to absolute quiescence.\n\n\n Jan made use of this calm to\n step down on the accelerator and\n send the groundcar speeding\n forward. The terrain was easier\n here, nearing the western edge\n of Den Hoorn, and he covered\n several kilometers before the\n wind struck again, cutting his\n speed down considerably. He\n judged he must be nearing Rathole.", "\"That's the third time in half\n an hour,\" he commented. \"The\n place tosses like the IJsselmeer\n on a rough day.\"\n\n\n \"You just don't forget it\nisn't\nthe Zuider Zee,\" retorted Heemskerk\n from the other end. \"You\n sink there and you don't come up\n three times.\"\n\n\n \"Don't worry,\" said Jan. \"I'll\n be back on time, with a broom at\n the masthead.\"", "Jim saw it at the same time\n and hit the brakes so hard the\n groundcar would have stood on\n its nose had its wheels been\n smaller. They skidded to a stop.\n\n\n The chasm that had caused\n him such a long detour before\n had widened, evidently in the big\n quake that had hit earlier. Now\n it was a canyon, half a kilometer\n wide. Five meters from the edge\n he looked out over blank space\n at the far wall, and could not see\n the bottom.\n\n\n Cursing choice Dutch profanity,\n Jan wheeled the groundcar\n northward and drove along the\n edge of the abyss as fast as he\n could. He wasted half an hour before\n realizing that it was getting\n no narrower.", "He had driven at least eight\n kilometers before he realized\n that the crack was narrowing.\n At least as far again, the two\n edges came together, but not at\n the same level. A sheer cliff\n three meters high now barred\n his passage. He drove on.\nApparently it was the result\n of an old quake. He found a spot\n where rocks had tumbled down,\n making a steep, rough ramp up\n the break. He drove up it and\n turned back southwestward.\n\n\n He made it just in time. He\n had driven less than three hundred\n meters when a quake more\n severe than any of the others\n struck. Suddenly behind him the\n break reversed itself, so that\n where he had climbed up coming\n westward he would now\n have to climb a cliff of equal\n height returning eastward.", "Jan needed all his Dutch stubbornness,\n and a good deal of pure\n physical strength besides, to maneuver\n the roach-flat groundcar\n across the tumbled terrain of\n Den Hoorn into the teeth of the\n howling gale that swept from the\n west. The huge wheels twisted\n and jolted against the rocks outside,\n and Jan bounced against his\n seat belt, wrestled the steering\n wheel and puffed at his\npijp\n. The\n mild aroma of Heerenbaai-Tabak\n filled the airtight groundcar.\n\n\n There came a new swaying\n that was not the roughness of\n the terrain. Through the thick\n windshield Jan saw all the\n ground about him buckle and\n heave for a second or two before\n it settled to rugged quiescence\n again. This time he was really\n heaved about.\n\n\n Jan mentioned this to the\n groundcar radio." ], [ "There was nothing to do but\n turn back to Rathole and see if\n some other way could not be\n found.\nJan sat in the half-buried room\n and enjoyed the luxury of a pipe\n filled with some of Theodorus\n Neimeijer's mild tobacco. Before\n him, Dr. Sanchez sat with crossed\n legs, cleaning his fingernails\n with a scalpel. Diego's mother\n talked to the boy in low, liquid\n tones in a corner of the room.\nJan was at a loss to know how\n people whose technical knowledge\n was as skimpy as it obviously\n was in Rathole were able to build\n these semi-underground domes to\n resist the earth shocks that came\n from Den Hoorn. But this one\n showed no signs of stress. A religious\n print and a small pencil\n sketch of Señora Murillo, probably\n done by the boy, were awry\n on the inward-curving walls, but\n that was all.\n\n\n Jan felt justifiably exasperated\n at these Spanish-speaking people.", "But there were no canals here.\n The flat land, stretching into the\n darkening west, was spotted\n with patches of cactus and\n leather-leaved Venerian plants.\n Amid the windmills, low domes\n protruded from the earth, indicating\n that the dwellings of Rathole\n were, appropriately, partly\n underground.\nHe drove into the place. There\n were no streets, as such, but\n there were avenues between lines\n of heavy chains strung to short\n iron posts, evidently as handholds\n against the wind. The savage\n gale piled dust and sand in\n drifts against the domes, then,\n shifting slightly, swept them\n clean again.\n\n\n There was no one moving\n abroad, but just inside the community\n Jan found half a dozen\n men in a group, clinging to one\n of the chains and waving to him.\n He pulled the groundcar to a\n stop beside them, stuck his pipe\n in a pocket of his plastic venusuit,\n donned his helmet and\n got out.", "\"Rathole?\" repeated Heemskerk.\n \"What's that? I didn't\n know there was another colony\n within two thousand kilometers.\"\n\n\n \"It isn't a colony, in the sense\n Oostpoort is,\" explained Dekker.\n \"The people are the families of a\n bunch of laborers left behind\n when the colony folded several\n years ago. It's about eighty kilometers\n away, right across the\n Hoorn, but they don't have any\n vehicles that can navigate when\n the wind's up.\"\n\n\n Heemskerk pushed his short-billed\n cap back on his close-cropped\n head, leaned back in his chair\n and folded his hands over his\n comfortable stomach.", "Jan felt ashamed of the exuberant\n foolishness which had\n led him to spout ancient history\n and claim descent from William\n of Orange. It had been a hobby,\n and artificial topic for conversation\n that amused him and his\n companions, a defense against\n the monotony of Venus that had\n begun to affect his personality\n perhaps a bit more than he realized.\n He did not dislike Spaniards;\n he had no reason to dislike\n them. They were all humans—the\n Spanish, the Dutch, the Germans,\n the Americans, even the\n Russians—fighting a hostile\n planet together. He could not understand\n a word Diego said when\n the boy spoke to him, but he\n liked Diego and wished desperately\n he could do something.\n\n\n Outside, the windmills of Rathole\n spun merrily.", "The ground heaved and buckled\n like a tempestuous sea.\n Rocks rolled and leaped through\n the air, several large ones striking\n the groundcar with ominous\n force. The car staggered forward\n on its giant wheels like a\n drunken man. The quake was so\n violent that at one time the vehicle\n was hurled several meters\n sideways, and almost overturned.\n And the wind smashed down\n on it unrelentingly.\n\n\n The quake lasted for several\n minutes, during which Jan was\n able to make no progress at all\n and struggled only to keep the\n groundcar upright. Then, in unison,\n both earthquake and wind\n died to absolute quiescence.\n\n\n Jan made use of this calm to\n step down on the accelerator and\n send the groundcar speeding\n forward. The terrain was easier\n here, nearing the western edge\n of Den Hoorn, and he covered\n several kilometers before the\n wind struck again, cutting his\n speed down considerably. He\n judged he must be nearing Rathole.", "Den Hoorn was a comparatively\n flat desert sweep that ran\n along the western side of the\n Oost Mountains, just over the\n mountain from Oostpoort. It was\n a thin fault area of a planet\n whose crust was peculiarly subject\n to earthquakes, particularly\n at the beginning and end of each\n long day when temperatures of\n the surface rocks changed. On\n the other side of it lay Rathole, a\n little settlement that eked a precarious\n living from the Venerian\n vegetation. Jan never had seen it.\n\n\n He had little difficulty driving\n up and over the mountain, for the\n Dutch settlers had carved a\n rough road through the ravines.\n But even the 2½-meter wheels of\n the groundcar had trouble amid\n the tumbled rocks of Den Hoorn.\n The wind hit the car in full\n strength here and, though the\n body of the groundcar was suspended\n from the axles, there was\n constant danger of its being flipped\n over by a gust if not handled\n just right.", "Jan reached the edge of a\n crack that made further progress\n seem impossible. A hundred\n meters wide, of unknown depth,\n it stretched out of sight in both\n directions. For the first time he\n entertained serious doubts that\n Den Hoorn could be crossed by\n land.\n\n\n After a moment's hesitation,\n he swung the groundcar northward\n and raced along the edge of\n the chasm as fast as the car\n would negotiate the terrain. He\n looked anxiously at his watch.\n Nearly three hours had passed\n since he left Oostpoort. He had\n seven hours to go and he was\n still at least 16 kilometers from\n Rathole. His pipe was out, but\n he could not take his hands\n from the wheel to refill it.", "The machine was dusty and\n spotted with rust, Jan, surrounded\n by Sanchez, Diego and a dozen\n men, inspected it thoughtfully.\n The letters USNSES were\n painted in white on the platform\n itself, and each engine bore the\n label \"Hiller.\"\n\n\n Jan peered over the edge of the\n platform at the twin-ducted fans\n in their plastic shrouds. They\n appeared in good shape. Each\n was powered by one of the engines,\n transmitted to it by heavy\n rubber belts.\n\n\n Jan sighed. It was an unhappy\n situation. As far as he could determine,\n without making tests,\n the engines were in perfect condition.\n Two perfectly good engines,\n and no fuel for them.\n\n\n \"You're sure there's no gasoline,\n anywhere in Rathole?\" he\n asked Sanchez.", "Nothing happened.\nHe turned the engines over\n again. One of them coughed, and\n a cloud of blue smoke burst from\n its exhaust, but they did not\n catch.\n\n\n \"What is the matter,\nseñor\n?\"\n asked Sanchez from the dome entrance.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Jan.\n \"Maybe it's that the engines\n haven't been used in so long. I'm\n afraid I'm not a good enough\n mechanic to tell.\"\n\n\n \"Some of these men were good\n mechanics when the navy was\n here,\" said Sanchez. \"Wait.\"\n\n\n He turned and spoke to someone\n in the dome. One of the men\n of Rathole came to Jan's side and\n tried the engines. They refused\n to catch. The man made carburetor\n adjustments and tried\n again. No success.", "\"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" answered Jan. \"They may\n as well put the fuel back in my\n groundcar.\"\n\n\n Sanchez called orders to the\n men at the platform. While they\n worked, Jan stared out at the\n furiously spinning windmills that\n dotted Rathole.\n\n\n \"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" he repeated. \"We can't\n make the trip overland because\n of the chasm out there in Den\n Hoorn, and we can't fly the platform\n because we have no power\n for it.\"", "There was power, the power\n that lighted and air-conditioned\n Rathole, power in the air all\n around them. If he could only use\n it! But to turn the platform on\n its side and let the wind spin the\n propellers was pointless.\n\n\n He turned to Sanchez.\n\n\n \"Ask the men if there are any\n spare parts for the platform,\" he\n said. \"Some of those legs it\n stands on, transmission belts,\n spare propellers.\"\n\n\n Sanchez asked.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" he said. \"Many spare\n parts, but no fuel.\"\n\n\n Jan smiled a tight smile.", "Without that treatment, once\n the typical mottled texture of the\n skin appeared, the flesh rapidly\n deteriorated and fell away in\n chunks. The victim remained unfevered\n and agonizingly conscious\n until the degeneration\n reached a vital spot.\n\n\n \"If you have,\" said Sanchez,\n \"you must realize that Diego cannot\n wait for a later ship, if his\n life is to be saved. He must get\n to Earth at once.\"\nJan puffed at the Heerenbaai-Tabak\n and cogitated. The place\n was aptly named. It was a ratty\n community. The boy was a dark-skinned\n little Spaniard—of Mexican\n origin, perhaps. But he was\n a boy, and a human being.\n\n\n A thought occurred to him.\n From what he had seen and\n heard, the entire economy of Rathole\n could not support the tremendous\n expense of sending the\n boy across the millions of miles\n to Earth by spaceship.", "Jan needed all his Dutch stubbornness,\n and a good deal of pure\n physical strength besides, to maneuver\n the roach-flat groundcar\n across the tumbled terrain of\n Den Hoorn into the teeth of the\n howling gale that swept from the\n west. The huge wheels twisted\n and jolted against the rocks outside,\n and Jan bounced against his\n seat belt, wrestled the steering\n wheel and puffed at his\npijp\n. The\n mild aroma of Heerenbaai-Tabak\n filled the airtight groundcar.\n\n\n There came a new swaying\n that was not the roughness of\n the terrain. Through the thick\n windshield Jan saw all the\n ground about him buckle and\n heave for a second or two before\n it settled to rugged quiescence\n again. This time he was really\n heaved about.\n\n\n Jan mentioned this to the\n groundcar radio.", "\"Then the passenger will have\n to wait for the next ship,\" he\n pronounced. \"The\nVanderdecken\nhas to blast off in thirty hours to\n catch Earth at the right orbital\n spot, and the G-boat has to blast\n off in ten hours to catch the\nVanderdecken\n.\"\n\n\n \"This passenger can't wait,\"\n said Dekker. \"He needs to be\n evacuated to Earth immediately.\n He's suffering from the Venus\n Shadow.\"\n\n\n Jan whistled softly. He had\n seen the effects of that disease.\n Dekker was right.\n\n\n \"Jan, you're the best driver in\n Oostpoort,\" said Dekker. \"You\n will have to take a groundcar to\n Rathole and bring the fellow\n back.\"\nSo now Jan gripped his clay\n pipe between his teeth and piloted\n the groundcar into the teeth\n of the Twilight Gale.", "Not long thereafter, he rounded\n an outcropping of rock and it\n lay before him.\n\n\n A wave of nostalgia swept\n over him. Back at Oostpoort, the\n power was nuclear, but this little\n settlement made use of the\n cheapest, most obviously available\n power source. It was dotted\n with more than a dozen windmills.\n\n\n Windmills! Tears came to\n Jan's eyes. For a moment, he\n was carried back to the flat\n lands around 's Gravenhage. For\n a moment he was a tow-headed,\n round-eyed boy again, clumping\n in wooden shoes along the edge\n of the tulip fields.", "Jan disengaged himself gently,\n embarrassed. But it occurred to\n him, looking down on the bowed\n head of the beautiful young\n widow, that he might make some\n flying trips back over here in his\n leisure time. Language barriers\n were not impassable, and feminine\n companionship might cure\n his neurotic, history-born distaste\n for Spaniards, for more\n than one reason.\n\n\n Sanchez was tugging at his\n elbow.", "The wind almost took him\n away before one of them grabbed\n him and he was able to\n grasp the chain himself. They\n gathered around him. They were\n swarthy, black-eyed men, with\n curly hair. One of them grasped\n his hand.\n\n\n \"\nBienvenido, señor\n,\" said the\n man.\n\n\n Jan recoiled and dropped the\n man's hand. All the Orangeman\n blood he claimed protested in\n outrage.\n\n\n Spaniards! All these men were\n Spaniards!\nJan recovered himself at once.\n He had been reading too much\n ancient history during his leisure\n hours. The hot monotony of\n Venus was beginning to affect\n his brain. It had been 500 years\n since the Netherlands revolted\n against Spanish rule. A lot of\n water over the dam since then.", "A look at the men around him,\n the sound of their chatter, convinced\n him that he need not try\n German or Hollandsch here. He\n fell back on the international\n language.\n\n\n \"Do you speak English?\" he\n asked. The man brightened but\n shook his head.\n\n\n \"\nNo hablo inglés\n,\" he said,\n \"\npero el médico lo habla. Venga\n conmigo.\n\"\n\n\n He gestured for Jan to follow\n him and started off, pulling his\n way against the wind along the\n chain. Jan followed, and the\n other men fell in behind in single\n file. A hundred meters farther\n on, they turned, descended\n some steps and entered one of\n the half-buried domes. A gray-haired,\n bearded man was in the\n well-lighted room, apparently\n the living room of a home, with\n a young woman.", "Jan, his head just above\n ground level, surveyed the terrain.\n There was flat ground to\n the east, clear in a fairly broad\n alley for at least half a kilometer\n before any of the domes protruded\n up into it.\n\n\n \"This is as good a spot for\n takeoff as we'll find,\" he said to\n Sanchez.\n\n\n The men put three heavy ropes\n on the platform's windward rail\n and secured it by them to the\n heavy chain that ran by the\n dome. The platform quivered and\n shuddered in the heavy wind, but\n its base was too low for it to\n overturn.\n\n\n Shortly the two men returned\n with the fuel from the groundcar,\n struggling along the chain.\n Jan got above ground in a\n crouch, clinging to the rail of the\n platform, and helped them fill\n the fuel tank with it. He primed\n the carburetors and spun the\n engines.", "\"Here's your patient, Pieter,\"\n he said. \"Hope you have a spacesuit\n in his size.\"\n\n\n \"I can find one. And we'll have\n to hurry for blastoff. But, first,\n what happened? Even that\n damned thing ought to get here\n from Rathole faster than that.\"\n\n\n \"Had no fuel,\" replied Jan\n briefly. \"My engines were all\n right, but I had no power to run\n them. So I had to pull the engines\n and rig up a power source.\"\n\n\n Heemskerk stared at the platform.\n On its railing was rigged a\n tripod of battered metal pipes,\n atop which a big four-blade propeller\n spun slowly in what wind\n was left after it came over the\n western mountain. Over the\n edges of the platform, running\n from the two propellers in its\n base, hung a series of tattered\n transmission belts.\n\n\n \"Power source?\" repeated\n Heemskerk. \"That?\"" ], [ "\"No, you haven't,\" muttered\n Jan. \"But you know I'll do it.\"\n\n\n Sanchez looked into his face,\n smiling faintly and a little sadly.\n\n\n \"I was sure you would be willing,\"\n he said. He turned and\n spoke in Spanish to Mrs. Murillo.\n\n\n The woman rose to her feet\n and came to them. As Jan arose,\n she looked up at him, tears in\n her eyes.\n\n\n \"\nGracias\n,\" she murmured. \"\nUn\n millón de gracias.\n\"\n\n\n She lifted his hands in hers\n and kissed them.", "Jan disengaged himself gently,\n embarrassed. But it occurred to\n him, looking down on the bowed\n head of the beautiful young\n widow, that he might make some\n flying trips back over here in his\n leisure time. Language barriers\n were not impassable, and feminine\n companionship might cure\n his neurotic, history-born distaste\n for Spaniards, for more\n than one reason.\n\n\n Sanchez was tugging at his\n elbow.", "Sanchez smiled ruefully, as he\n had once before, at Jan's appellation\n for the community. The inhabitants'\n term for it was simply\n \"\nLa Ciudad Nuestra\n\"—\"Our\n Town.\" But he made no protest.\n He turned to one of the other\n men and talked rapidly for a few\n moments in Spanish.\n\n\n \"None,\nseñor\n,\" he said, turning\n back to Jan. \"The Americans, of\n course, kept much of it when\n they were here, but the few\n things we take to Oostpoort to\n trade could not buy precious gasoline.\n We have electricity in\n plenty if you can power the platform\n with it.\"\n\n\n Jan thought that over, trying\n to find a way.", "\"\nÉl médico\n,\" said the man who\n had greeted Jan, gesturing. \"\nÉl\n habla inglés.\n\"\n\n\n He went out, shutting the airlock\n door behind him.\n\n\n \"You must be the man from\n Oostpoort,\" said the bearded\n man, holding out his hand. \"I\n am Doctor Sanchez. We are very\n grateful you have come.\"\n\n\n \"I thought for a while I\n wouldn't make it,\" said Jan ruefully,\n removing his venushelmet.\n\n\n \"This is Mrs. Murillo,\" said\n Sanchez.\n\n\n The woman was a Spanish\n blonde, full-lipped and beautiful,\n with golden hair and dark, liquid\n eyes. She smiled at Jan.\n\n\n \"\nEncantada de conocerlo,\n señor\n,\" she greeted him.", "Mrs. Murillo spoke to him rapidly\n in Spanish and he nodded.\n She zipped him into a venusuit\n and fitted a small helmet on his\n head.\n\n\n \"Good luck,\namigo\n,\" said Sanchez,\n shaking Jan's hand again.\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" replied Jan. He donned\n his own helmet. \"I'll need it,\n if the trip over was any indication.\"\nJan and Diego made their way\n back down the chain to the\n groundcar. There was a score of\n men there now, and a few\n women. They let the pair go\n through, and waved farewell as\n Jan swung the groundcar around\n and headed back eastward.\n\n\n It was easier driving with the\n wind behind him, and Jan hit a\n hundred kilometers an hour several\n times before striking the\n rougher ground of Den Hoorn.\n Now, if he could only find a way\n over the bluff raised by that last\n quake....", "Diego must know of his ailment,\n and why he had to go to\n Oostpoort. If Jan was any judge\n of character, Sanchez would have\n told him that. Whether Diego\n knew it was a life-or-death matter\n for him to be aboard the\nVanderdecken\nwhen it blasted\n off for Earth, Jan did not know.\n But the boy was around eight\n years old and he was bright, and\n he must realize the seriousness\n involved in a decision to send him\n all the way to Earth.", "\"Who's paying his passage?\"\n he asked. \"The Dutch Central\n Venus Company isn't exactly a\n charitable institution.\"\n\n\n \"Your\nSeñor\nDekker said that\n would be taken care of,\" replied\n Sanchez.\n\n\n Jan relit his pipe silently, making\n a mental resolution that Dekker\n wouldn't take care of it alone.\n Salaries for Venerian service\n were high, and many of the men\n at Oostpoort would contribute\n readily to such a cause.\n\n\n \"Who is Diego's father?\" he\n asked.\n\n\n \"He was Ramón Murillo, a very\n good mechanic,\" answered Sanchez,\n with a sliding sidelong\n glance at Jan's face. \"He has\n been dead for three years.\"\n\n\n Jan grunted.", "Jan felt ashamed of the exuberant\n foolishness which had\n led him to spout ancient history\n and claim descent from William\n of Orange. It had been a hobby,\n and artificial topic for conversation\n that amused him and his\n companions, a defense against\n the monotony of Venus that had\n begun to affect his personality\n perhaps a bit more than he realized.\n He did not dislike Spaniards;\n he had no reason to dislike\n them. They were all humans—the\n Spanish, the Dutch, the Germans,\n the Americans, even the\n Russians—fighting a hostile\n planet together. He could not understand\n a word Diego said when\n the boy spoke to him, but he\n liked Diego and wished desperately\n he could do something.\n\n\n Outside, the windmills of Rathole\n spun merrily.", "The wind almost took him\n away before one of them grabbed\n him and he was able to\n grasp the chain himself. They\n gathered around him. They were\n swarthy, black-eyed men, with\n curly hair. One of them grasped\n his hand.\n\n\n \"\nBienvenido, señor\n,\" said the\n man.\n\n\n Jan recoiled and dropped the\n man's hand. All the Orangeman\n blood he claimed protested in\n outrage.\n\n\n Spaniards! All these men were\n Spaniards!\nJan recovered himself at once.\n He had been reading too much\n ancient history during his leisure\n hours. The hot monotony of\n Venus was beginning to affect\n his brain. It had been 500 years\n since the Netherlands revolted\n against Spanish rule. A lot of\n water over the dam since then.", "Nothing happened.\nHe turned the engines over\n again. One of them coughed, and\n a cloud of blue smoke burst from\n its exhaust, but they did not\n catch.\n\n\n \"What is the matter,\nseñor\n?\"\n asked Sanchez from the dome entrance.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Jan.\n \"Maybe it's that the engines\n haven't been used in so long. I'm\n afraid I'm not a good enough\n mechanic to tell.\"\n\n\n \"Some of these men were good\n mechanics when the navy was\n here,\" said Sanchez. \"Wait.\"\n\n\n He turned and spoke to someone\n in the dome. One of the men\n of Rathole came to Jan's side and\n tried the engines. They refused\n to catch. The man made carburetor\n adjustments and tried\n again. No success.", "There was nothing to do but\n turn back to Rathole and see if\n some other way could not be\n found.\nJan sat in the half-buried room\n and enjoyed the luxury of a pipe\n filled with some of Theodorus\n Neimeijer's mild tobacco. Before\n him, Dr. Sanchez sat with crossed\n legs, cleaning his fingernails\n with a scalpel. Diego's mother\n talked to the boy in low, liquid\n tones in a corner of the room.\nJan was at a loss to know how\n people whose technical knowledge\n was as skimpy as it obviously\n was in Rathole were able to build\n these semi-underground domes to\n resist the earth shocks that came\n from Den Hoorn. But this one\n showed no signs of stress. A religious\n print and a small pencil\n sketch of Señora Murillo, probably\n done by the boy, were awry\n on the inward-curving walls, but\n that was all.\n\n\n Jan felt justifiably exasperated\n at these Spanish-speaking people.", "A look at the men around him,\n the sound of their chatter, convinced\n him that he need not try\n German or Hollandsch here. He\n fell back on the international\n language.\n\n\n \"Do you speak English?\" he\n asked. The man brightened but\n shook his head.\n\n\n \"\nNo hablo inglés\n,\" he said,\n \"\npero el médico lo habla. Venga\n conmigo.\n\"\n\n\n He gestured for Jan to follow\n him and started off, pulling his\n way against the wind along the\n chain. Jan followed, and the\n other men fell in behind in single\n file. A hundred meters farther\n on, they turned, descended\n some steps and entered one of\n the half-buried domes. A gray-haired,\n bearded man was in the\n well-lighted room, apparently\n the living room of a home, with\n a young woman.", "\"Is this the patient, Doctor?\"\n asked Jan, astonished. She looked\n in the best of health.\n\n\n \"No, the patient is in the next\n room,\" answered Sanchez.\n\n\n \"Well, as much as I'd like to\n stop for a pipe, we'd better start\n at once,\" said Jan. \"It's a hard\n drive back, and blastoff can't be\n delayed.\"\n\n\n The woman seemed to sense\n his meaning. She turned and\n called: \"\nDiego!\n\"\n\n\n A boy appeared in the door, a\n dark-skinned, sleepy-eyed boy of\n about eight. He yawned. Then,\n catching sight of the big Dutchman,\n he opened his eyes wide\n and smiled.\n\n\n The boy was healthy-looking,\n alert, but the mark of the Venus\n Shadow was on his face. There\n was a faint mottling, a criss-cross\n of dead-white lines.", "Jan, his head just above\n ground level, surveyed the terrain.\n There was flat ground to\n the east, clear in a fairly broad\n alley for at least half a kilometer\n before any of the domes protruded\n up into it.\n\n\n \"This is as good a spot for\n takeoff as we'll find,\" he said to\n Sanchez.\n\n\n The men put three heavy ropes\n on the platform's windward rail\n and secured it by them to the\n heavy chain that ran by the\n dome. The platform quivered and\n shuddered in the heavy wind, but\n its base was too low for it to\n overturn.\n\n\n Shortly the two men returned\n with the fuel from the groundcar,\n struggling along the chain.\n Jan got above ground in a\n crouch, clinging to the rail of the\n platform, and helped them fill\n the fuel tank with it. He primed\n the carburetors and spun the\n engines.", "He sniffed, took the cap from\n the fuel tank and stuck a finger\n inside. He withdrew it, wet and\n oily, and examined it. He turned\n and spoke to Sanchez.\n\n\n \"He says that your groundcar\n must have a diesel engine,\" Sanchez\n interpreted to Jan. \"Is that\n correct?\"\n\n\n \"Why, yes, that's true.\"\n\n\n \"He says the fuel will not work\n then,\nseñor\n. He says it is low-grade\n fuel and the platform must\n have high octane gasoline.\"\n\n\n Jan threw up his hands and\n went back into the dome.\n\n\n \"I should have known that,\" he\n said unhappily. \"I would have\n known if I had thought of it.\"\n\n\n \"What is to be done, then?\"\n asked Sanchez.", "The machine was dusty and\n spotted with rust, Jan, surrounded\n by Sanchez, Diego and a dozen\n men, inspected it thoughtfully.\n The letters USNSES were\n painted in white on the platform\n itself, and each engine bore the\n label \"Hiller.\"\n\n\n Jan peered over the edge of the\n platform at the twin-ducted fans\n in their plastic shrouds. They\n appeared in good shape. Each\n was powered by one of the engines,\n transmitted to it by heavy\n rubber belts.\n\n\n Jan sighed. It was an unhappy\n situation. As far as he could determine,\n without making tests,\n the engines were in perfect condition.\n Two perfectly good engines,\n and no fuel for them.\n\n\n \"You're sure there's no gasoline,\n anywhere in Rathole?\" he\n asked Sanchez.", "There was power, the power\n that lighted and air-conditioned\n Rathole, power in the air all\n around them. If he could only use\n it! But to turn the platform on\n its side and let the wind spin the\n propellers was pointless.\n\n\n He turned to Sanchez.\n\n\n \"Ask the men if there are any\n spare parts for the platform,\" he\n said. \"Some of those legs it\n stands on, transmission belts,\n spare propellers.\"\n\n\n Sanchez asked.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" he said. \"Many spare\n parts, but no fuel.\"\n\n\n Jan smiled a tight smile.", "\"That's the third time in half\n an hour,\" he commented. \"The\n place tosses like the IJsselmeer\n on a rough day.\"\n\n\n \"You just don't forget it\nisn't\nthe Zuider Zee,\" retorted Heemskerk\n from the other end. \"You\n sink there and you don't come up\n three times.\"\n\n\n \"Don't worry,\" said Jan. \"I'll\n be back on time, with a broom at\n the masthead.\"", "Without that treatment, once\n the typical mottled texture of the\n skin appeared, the flesh rapidly\n deteriorated and fell away in\n chunks. The victim remained unfevered\n and agonizingly conscious\n until the degeneration\n reached a vital spot.\n\n\n \"If you have,\" said Sanchez,\n \"you must realize that Diego cannot\n wait for a later ship, if his\n life is to be saved. He must get\n to Earth at once.\"\nJan puffed at the Heerenbaai-Tabak\n and cogitated. The place\n was aptly named. It was a ratty\n community. The boy was a dark-skinned\n little Spaniard—of Mexican\n origin, perhaps. But he was\n a boy, and a human being.\n\n\n A thought occurred to him.\n From what he had seen and\n heard, the entire economy of Rathole\n could not support the tremendous\n expense of sending the\n boy across the millions of miles\n to Earth by spaceship.", "Windmills. Again Jan could\n imagine the flat land around\n them as his native Holland, with\n the Zuider Zee sparkling to the\n west where here the desert\n stretched under darkling clouds.\nJan looked at his watch. A\n little more than two hours before\n the G-boat's blastoff time, and it\n couldn't wait for them. It was\n nearly eight hours since he had\n left Oostpoort, and the afternoon\n was getting noticeably\n darker.\n\n\n Jan was sorry. He had done his\n best, but Venus had beaten him.\n\n\n He looked around for Diego.\n The boy was not in the dome. He\n was outside, crouched in the lee\n of the dome, playing with some\n sticks." ], [ "There was power, the power\n that lighted and air-conditioned\n Rathole, power in the air all\n around them. If he could only use\n it! But to turn the platform on\n its side and let the wind spin the\n propellers was pointless.\n\n\n He turned to Sanchez.\n\n\n \"Ask the men if there are any\n spare parts for the platform,\" he\n said. \"Some of those legs it\n stands on, transmission belts,\n spare propellers.\"\n\n\n Sanchez asked.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" he said. \"Many spare\n parts, but no fuel.\"\n\n\n Jan smiled a tight smile.", "\"Rathole?\" repeated Heemskerk.\n \"What's that? I didn't\n know there was another colony\n within two thousand kilometers.\"\n\n\n \"It isn't a colony, in the sense\n Oostpoort is,\" explained Dekker.\n \"The people are the families of a\n bunch of laborers left behind\n when the colony folded several\n years ago. It's about eighty kilometers\n away, right across the\n Hoorn, but they don't have any\n vehicles that can navigate when\n the wind's up.\"\n\n\n Heemskerk pushed his short-billed\n cap back on his close-cropped\n head, leaned back in his chair\n and folded his hands over his\n comfortable stomach.", "The machine was dusty and\n spotted with rust, Jan, surrounded\n by Sanchez, Diego and a dozen\n men, inspected it thoughtfully.\n The letters USNSES were\n painted in white on the platform\n itself, and each engine bore the\n label \"Hiller.\"\n\n\n Jan peered over the edge of the\n platform at the twin-ducted fans\n in their plastic shrouds. They\n appeared in good shape. Each\n was powered by one of the engines,\n transmitted to it by heavy\n rubber belts.\n\n\n Jan sighed. It was an unhappy\n situation. As far as he could determine,\n without making tests,\n the engines were in perfect condition.\n Two perfectly good engines,\n and no fuel for them.\n\n\n \"You're sure there's no gasoline,\n anywhere in Rathole?\" he\n asked Sanchez.", "\"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" answered Jan. \"They may\n as well put the fuel back in my\n groundcar.\"\n\n\n Sanchez called orders to the\n men at the platform. While they\n worked, Jan stared out at the\n furiously spinning windmills that\n dotted Rathole.\n\n\n \"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" he repeated. \"We can't\n make the trip overland because\n of the chasm out there in Den\n Hoorn, and we can't fly the platform\n because we have no power\n for it.\"", "\"\nSeñor\n, I have been trying to\n tell you,\" he said. \"It is generous\n and good of you, and I wanted\nSeñora\nMurillo to know what a\n brave man you are. But have you\n forgotten that we have no gasoline\n engines here? There is no\n fuel for the flying platform.\"\nThe platform was in a warehouse\n which, like the rest of the\n structures in Rathole, was a\n half-buried dome. The platform's\n ring-shaped base was less than a\n meter thick, standing on four\n metal legs. On top of it, in the\n center, was a railed circle that\n would hold two men, but would\n crowd them. Two small gasoline\n engines sat on each side of this\n railed circle and between them on\n a third side was the fuel tank.\n The passengers entered it on the\n fourth side.", "There was nothing to do but\n turn back to Rathole and see if\n some other way could not be\n found.\nJan sat in the half-buried room\n and enjoyed the luxury of a pipe\n filled with some of Theodorus\n Neimeijer's mild tobacco. Before\n him, Dr. Sanchez sat with crossed\n legs, cleaning his fingernails\n with a scalpel. Diego's mother\n talked to the boy in low, liquid\n tones in a corner of the room.\nJan was at a loss to know how\n people whose technical knowledge\n was as skimpy as it obviously\n was in Rathole were able to build\n these semi-underground domes to\n resist the earth shocks that came\n from Den Hoorn. But this one\n showed no signs of stress. A religious\n print and a small pencil\n sketch of Señora Murillo, probably\n done by the boy, were awry\n on the inward-curving walls, but\n that was all.\n\n\n Jan felt justifiably exasperated\n at these Spanish-speaking people.", "But there were no canals here.\n The flat land, stretching into the\n darkening west, was spotted\n with patches of cactus and\n leather-leaved Venerian plants.\n Amid the windmills, low domes\n protruded from the earth, indicating\n that the dwellings of Rathole\n were, appropriately, partly\n underground.\nHe drove into the place. There\n were no streets, as such, but\n there were avenues between lines\n of heavy chains strung to short\n iron posts, evidently as handholds\n against the wind. The savage\n gale piled dust and sand in\n drifts against the domes, then,\n shifting slightly, swept them\n clean again.\n\n\n There was no one moving\n abroad, but just inside the community\n Jan found half a dozen\n men in a group, clinging to one\n of the chains and waving to him.\n He pulled the groundcar to a\n stop beside them, stuck his pipe\n in a pocket of his plastic venusuit,\n donned his helmet and\n got out.", "Nothing happened.\nHe turned the engines over\n again. One of them coughed, and\n a cloud of blue smoke burst from\n its exhaust, but they did not\n catch.\n\n\n \"What is the matter,\nseñor\n?\"\n asked Sanchez from the dome entrance.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Jan.\n \"Maybe it's that the engines\n haven't been used in so long. I'm\n afraid I'm not a good enough\n mechanic to tell.\"\n\n\n \"Some of these men were good\n mechanics when the navy was\n here,\" said Sanchez. \"Wait.\"\n\n\n He turned and spoke to someone\n in the dome. One of the men\n of Rathole came to Jan's side and\n tried the engines. They refused\n to catch. The man made carburetor\n adjustments and tried\n again. No success.", "\"Here's your patient, Pieter,\"\n he said. \"Hope you have a spacesuit\n in his size.\"\n\n\n \"I can find one. And we'll have\n to hurry for blastoff. But, first,\n what happened? Even that\n damned thing ought to get here\n from Rathole faster than that.\"\n\n\n \"Had no fuel,\" replied Jan\n briefly. \"My engines were all\n right, but I had no power to run\n them. So I had to pull the engines\n and rig up a power source.\"\n\n\n Heemskerk stared at the platform.\n On its railing was rigged a\n tripod of battered metal pipes,\n atop which a big four-blade propeller\n spun slowly in what wind\n was left after it came over the\n western mountain. Over the\n edges of the platform, running\n from the two propellers in its\n base, hung a series of tattered\n transmission belts.\n\n\n \"Power source?\" repeated\n Heemskerk. \"That?\"", "The ground heaved and buckled\n like a tempestuous sea.\n Rocks rolled and leaped through\n the air, several large ones striking\n the groundcar with ominous\n force. The car staggered forward\n on its giant wheels like a\n drunken man. The quake was so\n violent that at one time the vehicle\n was hurled several meters\n sideways, and almost overturned.\n And the wind smashed down\n on it unrelentingly.\n\n\n The quake lasted for several\n minutes, during which Jan was\n able to make no progress at all\n and struggled only to keep the\n groundcar upright. Then, in unison,\n both earthquake and wind\n died to absolute quiescence.\n\n\n Jan made use of this calm to\n step down on the accelerator and\n send the groundcar speeding\n forward. The terrain was easier\n here, nearing the western edge\n of Den Hoorn, and he covered\n several kilometers before the\n wind struck again, cutting his\n speed down considerably. He\n judged he must be nearing Rathole.", "Sanchez smiled ruefully, as he\n had once before, at Jan's appellation\n for the community. The inhabitants'\n term for it was simply\n \"\nLa Ciudad Nuestra\n\"—\"Our\n Town.\" But he made no protest.\n He turned to one of the other\n men and talked rapidly for a few\n moments in Spanish.\n\n\n \"None,\nseñor\n,\" he said, turning\n back to Jan. \"The Americans, of\n course, kept much of it when\n they were here, but the few\n things we take to Oostpoort to\n trade could not buy precious gasoline.\n We have electricity in\n plenty if you can power the platform\n with it.\"\n\n\n Jan thought that over, trying\n to find a way.", "Without that treatment, once\n the typical mottled texture of the\n skin appeared, the flesh rapidly\n deteriorated and fell away in\n chunks. The victim remained unfevered\n and agonizingly conscious\n until the degeneration\n reached a vital spot.\n\n\n \"If you have,\" said Sanchez,\n \"you must realize that Diego cannot\n wait for a later ship, if his\n life is to be saved. He must get\n to Earth at once.\"\nJan puffed at the Heerenbaai-Tabak\n and cogitated. The place\n was aptly named. It was a ratty\n community. The boy was a dark-skinned\n little Spaniard—of Mexican\n origin, perhaps. But he was\n a boy, and a human being.\n\n\n A thought occurred to him.\n From what he had seen and\n heard, the entire economy of Rathole\n could not support the tremendous\n expense of sending the\n boy across the millions of miles\n to Earth by spaceship.", "\"If some effort had been made\n to take the boy to Oostpoort from\n here, instead of calling on us to\n send a car, Den Hoorn could have\n been crossed before the crack\n opened,\" he pointed out.\n\n\n \"An effort was made,\" replied\n Sanchez quietly. \"Perhaps you do\n not fully realize our position\n here. We have no engines except\n the stationary generators that\n give us current for our air-conditioning\n and our utilities. They\n are powered by the windmills. We\n do not have gasoline engines for\n vehicles, so our vehicles are operated\n by hand.\"\n\n\n \"You push them?\" demanded\n Jan incredulously.", "Jan reached the edge of a\n crack that made further progress\n seem impossible. A hundred\n meters wide, of unknown depth,\n it stretched out of sight in both\n directions. For the first time he\n entertained serious doubts that\n Den Hoorn could be crossed by\n land.\n\n\n After a moment's hesitation,\n he swung the groundcar northward\n and raced along the edge of\n the chasm as fast as the car\n would negotiate the terrain. He\n looked anxiously at his watch.\n Nearly three hours had passed\n since he left Oostpoort. He had\n seven hours to go and he was\n still at least 16 kilometers from\n Rathole. His pipe was out, but\n he could not take his hands\n from the wheel to refill it.", "Jan felt ashamed of the exuberant\n foolishness which had\n led him to spout ancient history\n and claim descent from William\n of Orange. It had been a hobby,\n and artificial topic for conversation\n that amused him and his\n companions, a defense against\n the monotony of Venus that had\n begun to affect his personality\n perhaps a bit more than he realized.\n He did not dislike Spaniards;\n he had no reason to dislike\n them. They were all humans—the\n Spanish, the Dutch, the Germans,\n the Americans, even the\n Russians—fighting a hostile\n planet together. He could not understand\n a word Diego said when\n the boy spoke to him, but he\n liked Diego and wished desperately\n he could do something.\n\n\n Outside, the windmills of Rathole\n spun merrily.", "He sniffed, took the cap from\n the fuel tank and stuck a finger\n inside. He withdrew it, wet and\n oily, and examined it. He turned\n and spoke to Sanchez.\n\n\n \"He says that your groundcar\n must have a diesel engine,\" Sanchez\n interpreted to Jan. \"Is that\n correct?\"\n\n\n \"Why, yes, that's true.\"\n\n\n \"He says the fuel will not work\n then,\nseñor\n. He says it is low-grade\n fuel and the platform must\n have high octane gasoline.\"\n\n\n Jan threw up his hands and\n went back into the dome.\n\n\n \"I should have known that,\" he\n said unhappily. \"I would have\n known if I had thought of it.\"\n\n\n \"What is to be done, then?\"\n asked Sanchez.", "Jan, his head just above\n ground level, surveyed the terrain.\n There was flat ground to\n the east, clear in a fairly broad\n alley for at least half a kilometer\n before any of the domes protruded\n up into it.\n\n\n \"This is as good a spot for\n takeoff as we'll find,\" he said to\n Sanchez.\n\n\n The men put three heavy ropes\n on the platform's windward rail\n and secured it by them to the\n heavy chain that ran by the\n dome. The platform quivered and\n shuddered in the heavy wind, but\n its base was too low for it to\n overturn.\n\n\n Shortly the two men returned\n with the fuel from the groundcar,\n struggling along the chain.\n Jan got above ground in a\n crouch, clinging to the rail of the\n platform, and helped them fill\n the fuel tank with it. He primed\n the carburetors and spun the\n engines.", "\"Doctor!\" he explained. \"Send\n a couple of men to drain the rest\n of the fuel from my groundcar.\n And let's get this platform above\n ground and tie it down until we\n can get it started.\"\n\n\n Sanchez gave rapid orders in\n Spanish. Two of the men left at a\n run, carrying five-gallon cans\n with them.\n\n\n Three others picked up the\n platform and carried it up a ramp\n and outside. As soon as they\n reached ground level, the wind\n hit them. They dropped the platform\n to the ground, where it\n shuddered and swayed momentarily,\n and two of the men fell\n successfully on their stomachs.\n The wind caught the third and\n somersaulted him half a dozen\n times before he skidded to a stop\n on his back with outstretched\n arms and legs. He turned over\n cautiously and crawled back to\n them.", "WIND\nBy CHARLES L. FONTENAY\nWhen you have an engine with no fuel, and fuel\n \nwithout an engine, and a life-and-death deadline\n \nto meet, you have a problem indeed. Unless you are\n \na stubborn Dutchman—and Jan Van Artevelde was\n \nthe stubbornest Dutchman on Venus.\nJAN WILLEM van Artevelde\n claimed descent from William\n of Orange. He had no genealogy\n to prove it, but on Venus there\n was no one who could disprove it,\n either.\n\n\n Jan Willem van Artevelde\n smoked a clay pipe, which only a\n Dutchman can do properly, because\n the clay bit grates on less\n stubborn teeth.", "\"Then the passenger will have\n to wait for the next ship,\" he\n pronounced. \"The\nVanderdecken\nhas to blast off in thirty hours to\n catch Earth at the right orbital\n spot, and the G-boat has to blast\n off in ten hours to catch the\nVanderdecken\n.\"\n\n\n \"This passenger can't wait,\"\n said Dekker. \"He needs to be\n evacuated to Earth immediately.\n He's suffering from the Venus\n Shadow.\"\n\n\n Jan whistled softly. He had\n seen the effects of that disease.\n Dekker was right.\n\n\n \"Jan, you're the best driver in\n Oostpoort,\" said Dekker. \"You\n will have to take a groundcar to\n Rathole and bring the fellow\n back.\"\nSo now Jan gripped his clay\n pipe between his teeth and piloted\n the groundcar into the teeth\n of the Twilight Gale." ], [ "The machine was dusty and\n spotted with rust, Jan, surrounded\n by Sanchez, Diego and a dozen\n men, inspected it thoughtfully.\n The letters USNSES were\n painted in white on the platform\n itself, and each engine bore the\n label \"Hiller.\"\n\n\n Jan peered over the edge of the\n platform at the twin-ducted fans\n in their plastic shrouds. They\n appeared in good shape. Each\n was powered by one of the engines,\n transmitted to it by heavy\n rubber belts.\n\n\n Jan sighed. It was an unhappy\n situation. As far as he could determine,\n without making tests,\n the engines were in perfect condition.\n Two perfectly good engines,\n and no fuel for them.\n\n\n \"You're sure there's no gasoline,\n anywhere in Rathole?\" he\n asked Sanchez.", "Diego must know of his ailment,\n and why he had to go to\n Oostpoort. If Jan was any judge\n of character, Sanchez would have\n told him that. Whether Diego\n knew it was a life-or-death matter\n for him to be aboard the\nVanderdecken\nwhen it blasted\n off for Earth, Jan did not know.\n But the boy was around eight\n years old and he was bright, and\n he must realize the seriousness\n involved in a decision to send him\n all the way to Earth.", "\"Wait,\" said Sanchez, lifting\n the scalpel and tilting his head.\n \"I believe there is something,\n though we cannot use it. This\n was once an American naval base,\n and the people here were civilian\n employes who refused to move\n north with it. There was a flying\n machine they used for short-range\n work, and one was left behind—probably\n with a little help\n from the people of the settlement.\n But....\"\n\n\n \"What kind of machine? Copter\n or plane?\"\n\n\n \"They call it a flying platform.\n It carries two men, I believe.\n But,\nseñor\n....\"\n\n\n \"I know them. I've operated\n them, before I left Earth. Man,\n you don't expect me to try to fly\n one of those little things in this\n wind? They're tricky as they can\n be, and the passengers are absolutely\n unprotected!\"\n\n\n \"\nSeñor\n, I have asked you to do\n nothing.\"", "Jan, his head just above\n ground level, surveyed the terrain.\n There was flat ground to\n the east, clear in a fairly broad\n alley for at least half a kilometer\n before any of the domes protruded\n up into it.\n\n\n \"This is as good a spot for\n takeoff as we'll find,\" he said to\n Sanchez.\n\n\n The men put three heavy ropes\n on the platform's windward rail\n and secured it by them to the\n heavy chain that ran by the\n dome. The platform quivered and\n shuddered in the heavy wind, but\n its base was too low for it to\n overturn.\n\n\n Shortly the two men returned\n with the fuel from the groundcar,\n struggling along the chain.\n Jan got above ground in a\n crouch, clinging to the rail of the\n platform, and helped them fill\n the fuel tank with it. He primed\n the carburetors and spun the\n engines.", "Mrs. Murillo spoke to him rapidly\n in Spanish and he nodded.\n She zipped him into a venusuit\n and fitted a small helmet on his\n head.\n\n\n \"Good luck,\namigo\n,\" said Sanchez,\n shaking Jan's hand again.\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" replied Jan. He donned\n his own helmet. \"I'll need it,\n if the trip over was any indication.\"\nJan and Diego made their way\n back down the chain to the\n groundcar. There was a score of\n men there now, and a few\n women. They let the pair go\n through, and waved farewell as\n Jan swung the groundcar around\n and headed back eastward.\n\n\n It was easier driving with the\n wind behind him, and Jan hit a\n hundred kilometers an hour several\n times before striking the\n rougher ground of Den Hoorn.\n Now, if he could only find a way\n over the bluff raised by that last\n quake....", "No. The platform hovered and\n began to settle nearby, and there\n was Van Artevelde leaning over\n its rail and fiddling frantically\n with whatever it was that stuck\n up on it—a weird, angled contraption\n of pipes and belts topped\n by a whirring blade. A boy stood\n at his shoulder and tried to help\n him. As the platform descended\n to a few meters above ground,\n the Dutchman slashed at the contraption,\n the cut ends of belts\n whipped out wildly and the platform\n slid to the ground with a\n rush. It hit with a clatter and its\n two passengers tumbled prone to\n the ground.\n\n\n \"Jan!\" boomed Heemskerk,\n forcing his voice through the helmet\n diaphragm and rushing over\n to his friend. \"I was afraid you\n were lost!\"\n\n\n Jan struggled to his feet and\n leaned down to help the boy up.", "Nothing happened.\nHe turned the engines over\n again. One of them coughed, and\n a cloud of blue smoke burst from\n its exhaust, but they did not\n catch.\n\n\n \"What is the matter,\nseñor\n?\"\n asked Sanchez from the dome entrance.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Jan.\n \"Maybe it's that the engines\n haven't been used in so long. I'm\n afraid I'm not a good enough\n mechanic to tell.\"\n\n\n \"Some of these men were good\n mechanics when the navy was\n here,\" said Sanchez. \"Wait.\"\n\n\n He turned and spoke to someone\n in the dome. One of the men\n of Rathole came to Jan's side and\n tried the engines. They refused\n to catch. The man made carburetor\n adjustments and tried\n again. No success.", "\"The copters at Oostpoort can't\n buck this wind,\" he said thoughtfully,\n \"or I'd have come in one of\n those in the first place instead of\n trying to cross Den Hoorn by\n land. But if you have any sort of\n aircraft here, it might make it\n downwind—if it isn't wrecked on\n takeoff.\"\n\n\n \"I'm afraid not,\" said Sanchez.\n\n\n \"Too bad. There's nothing we\n can do, then. The nearest settlement\n west of here is more than\n a thousand kilometers away, and\n I happen to know they have no\n planes, either. Just copters. So\n that's no help.\"", "There was power, the power\n that lighted and air-conditioned\n Rathole, power in the air all\n around them. If he could only use\n it! But to turn the platform on\n its side and let the wind spin the\n propellers was pointless.\n\n\n He turned to Sanchez.\n\n\n \"Ask the men if there are any\n spare parts for the platform,\" he\n said. \"Some of those legs it\n stands on, transmission belts,\n spare propellers.\"\n\n\n Sanchez asked.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" he said. \"Many spare\n parts, but no fuel.\"\n\n\n Jan smiled a tight smile.", "The ground of Den Hoorn was\n still shivering. Jan did not realize\n this until he had to brake the\n groundcar almost to a stop at one\n point, because it was not shaking\n in severe, periodic shocks as it\n had earlier. It quivered constantly,\n like the surface of quicksand.\n\n\n The ground far ahead of him\n had a strange color to it. Jan,\n watching for the cliff he had to\n skirt and scale, had picked up\n speed over some fairly even terrain,\n but now he slowed again,\n puzzled. There was something\n wrong ahead. He couldn't quite\n figure it out.\n\n\n Diego, beside him, had sat\n quietly so far, peering eagerly\n through the windshield, not saying\n a word. Now suddenly he\n cried in a high thin tenor:\n\n\n \"\nCuidado! Cuidado! Un abismo!\n\"", "Sanchez smiled ruefully, as he\n had once before, at Jan's appellation\n for the community. The inhabitants'\n term for it was simply\n \"\nLa Ciudad Nuestra\n\"—\"Our\n Town.\" But he made no protest.\n He turned to one of the other\n men and talked rapidly for a few\n moments in Spanish.\n\n\n \"None,\nseñor\n,\" he said, turning\n back to Jan. \"The Americans, of\n course, kept much of it when\n they were here, but the few\n things we take to Oostpoort to\n trade could not buy precious gasoline.\n We have electricity in\n plenty if you can power the platform\n with it.\"\n\n\n Jan thought that over, trying\n to find a way.", "\"No. You've seen pictures of\n the pump-cars that once were\n used on terrestrial railroads?\n Ours are powered like that, but\n we cannot operate them when the\n Venerian wind is blowing. By the\n time I diagnosed the Venus Shadow\n in Diego, the wind was coming\n up, and we had no way to get\n him to Oostpoort.\"\n\n\n \"Mmm,\" grunted Jan. He\n shifted uncomfortably and looked\n at the pair in the corner. The\n blonde head was bent over the\n boy protectingly, and over his\n mother's shoulder Diego's black\n eyes returned Jan's glance.\n\n\n \"If the disease has just started,\n the boy could wait for the\n next Earth ship, couldn't he?\"\n asked Jan.", "\"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" answered Jan. \"They may\n as well put the fuel back in my\n groundcar.\"\n\n\n Sanchez called orders to the\n men at the platform. While they\n worked, Jan stared out at the\n furiously spinning windmills that\n dotted Rathole.\n\n\n \"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" he repeated. \"We can't\n make the trip overland because\n of the chasm out there in Den\n Hoorn, and we can't fly the platform\n because we have no power\n for it.\"", "Windmills. Again Jan could\n imagine the flat land around\n them as his native Holland, with\n the Zuider Zee sparkling to the\n west where here the desert\n stretched under darkling clouds.\nJan looked at his watch. A\n little more than two hours before\n the G-boat's blastoff time, and it\n couldn't wait for them. It was\n nearly eight hours since he had\n left Oostpoort, and the afternoon\n was getting noticeably\n darker.\n\n\n Jan was sorry. He had done his\n best, but Venus had beaten him.\n\n\n He looked around for Diego.\n The boy was not in the dome. He\n was outside, crouched in the lee\n of the dome, playing with some\n sticks.", "There was nothing to do but\n turn back to Rathole and see if\n some other way could not be\n found.\nJan sat in the half-buried room\n and enjoyed the luxury of a pipe\n filled with some of Theodorus\n Neimeijer's mild tobacco. Before\n him, Dr. Sanchez sat with crossed\n legs, cleaning his fingernails\n with a scalpel. Diego's mother\n talked to the boy in low, liquid\n tones in a corner of the room.\nJan was at a loss to know how\n people whose technical knowledge\n was as skimpy as it obviously\n was in Rathole were able to build\n these semi-underground domes to\n resist the earth shocks that came\n from Den Hoorn. But this one\n showed no signs of stress. A religious\n print and a small pencil\n sketch of Señora Murillo, probably\n done by the boy, were awry\n on the inward-curving walls, but\n that was all.\n\n\n Jan felt justifiably exasperated\n at these Spanish-speaking people.", "\"Who's paying his passage?\"\n he asked. \"The Dutch Central\n Venus Company isn't exactly a\n charitable institution.\"\n\n\n \"Your\nSeñor\nDekker said that\n would be taken care of,\" replied\n Sanchez.\n\n\n Jan relit his pipe silently, making\n a mental resolution that Dekker\n wouldn't take care of it alone.\n Salaries for Venerian service\n were high, and many of the men\n at Oostpoort would contribute\n readily to such a cause.\n\n\n \"Who is Diego's father?\" he\n asked.\n\n\n \"He was Ramón Murillo, a very\n good mechanic,\" answered Sanchez,\n with a sliding sidelong\n glance at Jan's face. \"He has\n been dead for three years.\"\n\n\n Jan grunted.", "Jan felt ashamed of the exuberant\n foolishness which had\n led him to spout ancient history\n and claim descent from William\n of Orange. It had been a hobby,\n and artificial topic for conversation\n that amused him and his\n companions, a defense against\n the monotony of Venus that had\n begun to affect his personality\n perhaps a bit more than he realized.\n He did not dislike Spaniards;\n he had no reason to dislike\n them. They were all humans—the\n Spanish, the Dutch, the Germans,\n the Americans, even the\n Russians—fighting a hostile\n planet together. He could not understand\n a word Diego said when\n the boy spoke to him, but he\n liked Diego and wished desperately\n he could do something.\n\n\n Outside, the windmills of Rathole\n spun merrily.", "Without that treatment, once\n the typical mottled texture of the\n skin appeared, the flesh rapidly\n deteriorated and fell away in\n chunks. The victim remained unfevered\n and agonizingly conscious\n until the degeneration\n reached a vital spot.\n\n\n \"If you have,\" said Sanchez,\n \"you must realize that Diego cannot\n wait for a later ship, if his\n life is to be saved. He must get\n to Earth at once.\"\nJan puffed at the Heerenbaai-Tabak\n and cogitated. The place\n was aptly named. It was a ratty\n community. The boy was a dark-skinned\n little Spaniard—of Mexican\n origin, perhaps. But he was\n a boy, and a human being.\n\n\n A thought occurred to him.\n From what he had seen and\n heard, the entire economy of Rathole\n could not support the tremendous\n expense of sending the\n boy across the millions of miles\n to Earth by spaceship.", "\"Doctor!\" he explained. \"Send\n a couple of men to drain the rest\n of the fuel from my groundcar.\n And let's get this platform above\n ground and tie it down until we\n can get it started.\"\n\n\n Sanchez gave rapid orders in\n Spanish. Two of the men left at a\n run, carrying five-gallon cans\n with them.\n\n\n Three others picked up the\n platform and carried it up a ramp\n and outside. As soon as they\n reached ground level, the wind\n hit them. They dropped the platform\n to the ground, where it\n shuddered and swayed momentarily,\n and two of the men fell\n successfully on their stomachs.\n The wind caught the third and\n somersaulted him half a dozen\n times before he skidded to a stop\n on his back with outstretched\n arms and legs. He turned over\n cautiously and crawled back to\n them.", "\"No, it wouldn't work,\" he\n said. \"We could rig batteries on\n the platform and electric motors\n to turn the propellers. But batteries\n big enough to power it all\n the way to Oostpoort would be\n so heavy the machine couldn't lift\n them off the ground. If there\n were some way to carry a power\n line all the way to Oostpoort, or\n to broadcast the power to it....\n But it's a light-load machine,\n and must have an engine that\n gives it the necessary power from\n very little weight.\"\n\n\n Wild schemes ran through his\n head. If they were on water, instead\n of land, he could rig up a\n sail. He could still rig up a sail,\n for a groundcar, except for the\n chasm out on Den Hoorn.\n\n\n The groundcar! Jan straightened\n and snapped his fingers." ], [ "There was nothing to do but\n turn back to Rathole and see if\n some other way could not be\n found.\nJan sat in the half-buried room\n and enjoyed the luxury of a pipe\n filled with some of Theodorus\n Neimeijer's mild tobacco. Before\n him, Dr. Sanchez sat with crossed\n legs, cleaning his fingernails\n with a scalpel. Diego's mother\n talked to the boy in low, liquid\n tones in a corner of the room.\nJan was at a loss to know how\n people whose technical knowledge\n was as skimpy as it obviously\n was in Rathole were able to build\n these semi-underground domes to\n resist the earth shocks that came\n from Den Hoorn. But this one\n showed no signs of stress. A religious\n print and a small pencil\n sketch of Señora Murillo, probably\n done by the boy, were awry\n on the inward-curving walls, but\n that was all.\n\n\n Jan felt justifiably exasperated\n at these Spanish-speaking people.", "\"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" answered Jan. \"They may\n as well put the fuel back in my\n groundcar.\"\n\n\n Sanchez called orders to the\n men at the platform. While they\n worked, Jan stared out at the\n furiously spinning windmills that\n dotted Rathole.\n\n\n \"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" he repeated. \"We can't\n make the trip overland because\n of the chasm out there in Den\n Hoorn, and we can't fly the platform\n because we have no power\n for it.\"", "Jan felt ashamed of the exuberant\n foolishness which had\n led him to spout ancient history\n and claim descent from William\n of Orange. It had been a hobby,\n and artificial topic for conversation\n that amused him and his\n companions, a defense against\n the monotony of Venus that had\n begun to affect his personality\n perhaps a bit more than he realized.\n He did not dislike Spaniards;\n he had no reason to dislike\n them. They were all humans—the\n Spanish, the Dutch, the Germans,\n the Americans, even the\n Russians—fighting a hostile\n planet together. He could not understand\n a word Diego said when\n the boy spoke to him, but he\n liked Diego and wished desperately\n he could do something.\n\n\n Outside, the windmills of Rathole\n spun merrily.", "Without that treatment, once\n the typical mottled texture of the\n skin appeared, the flesh rapidly\n deteriorated and fell away in\n chunks. The victim remained unfevered\n and agonizingly conscious\n until the degeneration\n reached a vital spot.\n\n\n \"If you have,\" said Sanchez,\n \"you must realize that Diego cannot\n wait for a later ship, if his\n life is to be saved. He must get\n to Earth at once.\"\nJan puffed at the Heerenbaai-Tabak\n and cogitated. The place\n was aptly named. It was a ratty\n community. The boy was a dark-skinned\n little Spaniard—of Mexican\n origin, perhaps. But he was\n a boy, and a human being.\n\n\n A thought occurred to him.\n From what he had seen and\n heard, the entire economy of Rathole\n could not support the tremendous\n expense of sending the\n boy across the millions of miles\n to Earth by spaceship.", "The ground heaved and buckled\n like a tempestuous sea.\n Rocks rolled and leaped through\n the air, several large ones striking\n the groundcar with ominous\n force. The car staggered forward\n on its giant wheels like a\n drunken man. The quake was so\n violent that at one time the vehicle\n was hurled several meters\n sideways, and almost overturned.\n And the wind smashed down\n on it unrelentingly.\n\n\n The quake lasted for several\n minutes, during which Jan was\n able to make no progress at all\n and struggled only to keep the\n groundcar upright. Then, in unison,\n both earthquake and wind\n died to absolute quiescence.\n\n\n Jan made use of this calm to\n step down on the accelerator and\n send the groundcar speeding\n forward. The terrain was easier\n here, nearing the western edge\n of Den Hoorn, and he covered\n several kilometers before the\n wind struck again, cutting his\n speed down considerably. He\n judged he must be nearing Rathole.", "Nothing happened.\nHe turned the engines over\n again. One of them coughed, and\n a cloud of blue smoke burst from\n its exhaust, but they did not\n catch.\n\n\n \"What is the matter,\nseñor\n?\"\n asked Sanchez from the dome entrance.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Jan.\n \"Maybe it's that the engines\n haven't been used in so long. I'm\n afraid I'm not a good enough\n mechanic to tell.\"\n\n\n \"Some of these men were good\n mechanics when the navy was\n here,\" said Sanchez. \"Wait.\"\n\n\n He turned and spoke to someone\n in the dome. One of the men\n of Rathole came to Jan's side and\n tried the engines. They refused\n to catch. The man made carburetor\n adjustments and tried\n again. No success.", "There was power, the power\n that lighted and air-conditioned\n Rathole, power in the air all\n around them. If he could only use\n it! But to turn the platform on\n its side and let the wind spin the\n propellers was pointless.\n\n\n He turned to Sanchez.\n\n\n \"Ask the men if there are any\n spare parts for the platform,\" he\n said. \"Some of those legs it\n stands on, transmission belts,\n spare propellers.\"\n\n\n Sanchez asked.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" he said. \"Many spare\n parts, but no fuel.\"\n\n\n Jan smiled a tight smile.", "\"Then the passenger will have\n to wait for the next ship,\" he\n pronounced. \"The\nVanderdecken\nhas to blast off in thirty hours to\n catch Earth at the right orbital\n spot, and the G-boat has to blast\n off in ten hours to catch the\nVanderdecken\n.\"\n\n\n \"This passenger can't wait,\"\n said Dekker. \"He needs to be\n evacuated to Earth immediately.\n He's suffering from the Venus\n Shadow.\"\n\n\n Jan whistled softly. He had\n seen the effects of that disease.\n Dekker was right.\n\n\n \"Jan, you're the best driver in\n Oostpoort,\" said Dekker. \"You\n will have to take a groundcar to\n Rathole and bring the fellow\n back.\"\nSo now Jan gripped his clay\n pipe between his teeth and piloted\n the groundcar into the teeth\n of the Twilight Gale.", "But there were no canals here.\n The flat land, stretching into the\n darkening west, was spotted\n with patches of cactus and\n leather-leaved Venerian plants.\n Amid the windmills, low domes\n protruded from the earth, indicating\n that the dwellings of Rathole\n were, appropriately, partly\n underground.\nHe drove into the place. There\n were no streets, as such, but\n there were avenues between lines\n of heavy chains strung to short\n iron posts, evidently as handholds\n against the wind. The savage\n gale piled dust and sand in\n drifts against the domes, then,\n shifting slightly, swept them\n clean again.\n\n\n There was no one moving\n abroad, but just inside the community\n Jan found half a dozen\n men in a group, clinging to one\n of the chains and waving to him.\n He pulled the groundcar to a\n stop beside them, stuck his pipe\n in a pocket of his plastic venusuit,\n donned his helmet and\n got out.", "Jan reached the edge of a\n crack that made further progress\n seem impossible. A hundred\n meters wide, of unknown depth,\n it stretched out of sight in both\n directions. For the first time he\n entertained serious doubts that\n Den Hoorn could be crossed by\n land.\n\n\n After a moment's hesitation,\n he swung the groundcar northward\n and raced along the edge of\n the chasm as fast as the car\n would negotiate the terrain. He\n looked anxiously at his watch.\n Nearly three hours had passed\n since he left Oostpoort. He had\n seven hours to go and he was\n still at least 16 kilometers from\n Rathole. His pipe was out, but\n he could not take his hands\n from the wheel to refill it.", "The machine was dusty and\n spotted with rust, Jan, surrounded\n by Sanchez, Diego and a dozen\n men, inspected it thoughtfully.\n The letters USNSES were\n painted in white on the platform\n itself, and each engine bore the\n label \"Hiller.\"\n\n\n Jan peered over the edge of the\n platform at the twin-ducted fans\n in their plastic shrouds. They\n appeared in good shape. Each\n was powered by one of the engines,\n transmitted to it by heavy\n rubber belts.\n\n\n Jan sighed. It was an unhappy\n situation. As far as he could determine,\n without making tests,\n the engines were in perfect condition.\n Two perfectly good engines,\n and no fuel for them.\n\n\n \"You're sure there's no gasoline,\n anywhere in Rathole?\" he\n asked Sanchez.", "\"Rathole?\" repeated Heemskerk.\n \"What's that? I didn't\n know there was another colony\n within two thousand kilometers.\"\n\n\n \"It isn't a colony, in the sense\n Oostpoort is,\" explained Dekker.\n \"The people are the families of a\n bunch of laborers left behind\n when the colony folded several\n years ago. It's about eighty kilometers\n away, right across the\n Hoorn, but they don't have any\n vehicles that can navigate when\n the wind's up.\"\n\n\n Heemskerk pushed his short-billed\n cap back on his close-cropped\n head, leaned back in his chair\n and folded his hands over his\n comfortable stomach.", "\"No, you haven't,\" muttered\n Jan. \"But you know I'll do it.\"\n\n\n Sanchez looked into his face,\n smiling faintly and a little sadly.\n\n\n \"I was sure you would be willing,\"\n he said. He turned and\n spoke in Spanish to Mrs. Murillo.\n\n\n The woman rose to her feet\n and came to them. As Jan arose,\n she looked up at him, tears in\n her eyes.\n\n\n \"\nGracias\n,\" she murmured. \"\nUn\n millón de gracias.\n\"\n\n\n She lifted his hands in hers\n and kissed them.", "Jan disengaged himself gently,\n embarrassed. But it occurred to\n him, looking down on the bowed\n head of the beautiful young\n widow, that he might make some\n flying trips back over here in his\n leisure time. Language barriers\n were not impassable, and feminine\n companionship might cure\n his neurotic, history-born distaste\n for Spaniards, for more\n than one reason.\n\n\n Sanchez was tugging at his\n elbow.", "Jan, his head just above\n ground level, surveyed the terrain.\n There was flat ground to\n the east, clear in a fairly broad\n alley for at least half a kilometer\n before any of the domes protruded\n up into it.\n\n\n \"This is as good a spot for\n takeoff as we'll find,\" he said to\n Sanchez.\n\n\n The men put three heavy ropes\n on the platform's windward rail\n and secured it by them to the\n heavy chain that ran by the\n dome. The platform quivered and\n shuddered in the heavy wind, but\n its base was too low for it to\n overturn.\n\n\n Shortly the two men returned\n with the fuel from the groundcar,\n struggling along the chain.\n Jan got above ground in a\n crouch, clinging to the rail of the\n platform, and helped them fill\n the fuel tank with it. He primed\n the carburetors and spun the\n engines.", "Diego must know of his ailment,\n and why he had to go to\n Oostpoort. If Jan was any judge\n of character, Sanchez would have\n told him that. Whether Diego\n knew it was a life-or-death matter\n for him to be aboard the\nVanderdecken\nwhen it blasted\n off for Earth, Jan did not know.\n But the boy was around eight\n years old and he was bright, and\n he must realize the seriousness\n involved in a decision to send him\n all the way to Earth.", "Mrs. Murillo spoke to him rapidly\n in Spanish and he nodded.\n She zipped him into a venusuit\n and fitted a small helmet on his\n head.\n\n\n \"Good luck,\namigo\n,\" said Sanchez,\n shaking Jan's hand again.\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" replied Jan. He donned\n his own helmet. \"I'll need it,\n if the trip over was any indication.\"\nJan and Diego made their way\n back down the chain to the\n groundcar. There was a score of\n men there now, and a few\n women. They let the pair go\n through, and waved farewell as\n Jan swung the groundcar around\n and headed back eastward.\n\n\n It was easier driving with the\n wind behind him, and Jan hit a\n hundred kilometers an hour several\n times before striking the\n rougher ground of Den Hoorn.\n Now, if he could only find a way\n over the bluff raised by that last\n quake....", "\"Here's your patient, Pieter,\"\n he said. \"Hope you have a spacesuit\n in his size.\"\n\n\n \"I can find one. And we'll have\n to hurry for blastoff. But, first,\n what happened? Even that\n damned thing ought to get here\n from Rathole faster than that.\"\n\n\n \"Had no fuel,\" replied Jan\n briefly. \"My engines were all\n right, but I had no power to run\n them. So I had to pull the engines\n and rig up a power source.\"\n\n\n Heemskerk stared at the platform.\n On its railing was rigged a\n tripod of battered metal pipes,\n atop which a big four-blade propeller\n spun slowly in what wind\n was left after it came over the\n western mountain. Over the\n edges of the platform, running\n from the two propellers in its\n base, hung a series of tattered\n transmission belts.\n\n\n \"Power source?\" repeated\n Heemskerk. \"That?\"", "Sanchez smiled ruefully, as he\n had once before, at Jan's appellation\n for the community. The inhabitants'\n term for it was simply\n \"\nLa Ciudad Nuestra\n\"—\"Our\n Town.\" But he made no protest.\n He turned to one of the other\n men and talked rapidly for a few\n moments in Spanish.\n\n\n \"None,\nseñor\n,\" he said, turning\n back to Jan. \"The Americans, of\n course, kept much of it when\n they were here, but the few\n things we take to Oostpoort to\n trade could not buy precious gasoline.\n We have electricity in\n plenty if you can power the platform\n with it.\"\n\n\n Jan thought that over, trying\n to find a way.", "Windmills. Again Jan could\n imagine the flat land around\n them as his native Holland, with\n the Zuider Zee sparkling to the\n west where here the desert\n stretched under darkling clouds.\nJan looked at his watch. A\n little more than two hours before\n the G-boat's blastoff time, and it\n couldn't wait for them. It was\n nearly eight hours since he had\n left Oostpoort, and the afternoon\n was getting noticeably\n darker.\n\n\n Jan was sorry. He had done his\n best, but Venus had beaten him.\n\n\n He looked around for Diego.\n The boy was not in the dome. He\n was outside, crouched in the lee\n of the dome, playing with some\n sticks." ], [ "\"Doctor!\" he explained. \"Send\n a couple of men to drain the rest\n of the fuel from my groundcar.\n And let's get this platform above\n ground and tie it down until we\n can get it started.\"\n\n\n Sanchez gave rapid orders in\n Spanish. Two of the men left at a\n run, carrying five-gallon cans\n with them.\n\n\n Three others picked up the\n platform and carried it up a ramp\n and outside. As soon as they\n reached ground level, the wind\n hit them. They dropped the platform\n to the ground, where it\n shuddered and swayed momentarily,\n and two of the men fell\n successfully on their stomachs.\n The wind caught the third and\n somersaulted him half a dozen\n times before he skidded to a stop\n on his back with outstretched\n arms and legs. He turned over\n cautiously and crawled back to\n them.", "\"No, it wouldn't work,\" he\n said. \"We could rig batteries on\n the platform and electric motors\n to turn the propellers. But batteries\n big enough to power it all\n the way to Oostpoort would be\n so heavy the machine couldn't lift\n them off the ground. If there\n were some way to carry a power\n line all the way to Oostpoort, or\n to broadcast the power to it....\n But it's a light-load machine,\n and must have an engine that\n gives it the necessary power from\n very little weight.\"\n\n\n Wild schemes ran through his\n head. If they were on water, instead\n of land, he could rig up a\n sail. He could still rig up a sail,\n for a groundcar, except for the\n chasm out on Den Hoorn.\n\n\n The groundcar! Jan straightened\n and snapped his fingers.", "\"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" answered Jan. \"They may\n as well put the fuel back in my\n groundcar.\"\n\n\n Sanchez called orders to the\n men at the platform. While they\n worked, Jan stared out at the\n furiously spinning windmills that\n dotted Rathole.\n\n\n \"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" he repeated. \"We can't\n make the trip overland because\n of the chasm out there in Den\n Hoorn, and we can't fly the platform\n because we have no power\n for it.\"", "\"\nSeñor\n, I have been trying to\n tell you,\" he said. \"It is generous\n and good of you, and I wanted\nSeñora\nMurillo to know what a\n brave man you are. But have you\n forgotten that we have no gasoline\n engines here? There is no\n fuel for the flying platform.\"\nThe platform was in a warehouse\n which, like the rest of the\n structures in Rathole, was a\n half-buried dome. The platform's\n ring-shaped base was less than a\n meter thick, standing on four\n metal legs. On top of it, in the\n center, was a railed circle that\n would hold two men, but would\n crowd them. Two small gasoline\n engines sat on each side of this\n railed circle and between them on\n a third side was the fuel tank.\n The passengers entered it on the\n fourth side.", "There was power, the power\n that lighted and air-conditioned\n Rathole, power in the air all\n around them. If he could only use\n it! But to turn the platform on\n its side and let the wind spin the\n propellers was pointless.\n\n\n He turned to Sanchez.\n\n\n \"Ask the men if there are any\n spare parts for the platform,\" he\n said. \"Some of those legs it\n stands on, transmission belts,\n spare propellers.\"\n\n\n Sanchez asked.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" he said. \"Many spare\n parts, but no fuel.\"\n\n\n Jan smiled a tight smile.", "He sniffed, took the cap from\n the fuel tank and stuck a finger\n inside. He withdrew it, wet and\n oily, and examined it. He turned\n and spoke to Sanchez.\n\n\n \"He says that your groundcar\n must have a diesel engine,\" Sanchez\n interpreted to Jan. \"Is that\n correct?\"\n\n\n \"Why, yes, that's true.\"\n\n\n \"He says the fuel will not work\n then,\nseñor\n. He says it is low-grade\n fuel and the platform must\n have high octane gasoline.\"\n\n\n Jan threw up his hands and\n went back into the dome.\n\n\n \"I should have known that,\" he\n said unhappily. \"I would have\n known if I had thought of it.\"\n\n\n \"What is to be done, then?\"\n asked Sanchez.", "No. The platform hovered and\n began to settle nearby, and there\n was Van Artevelde leaning over\n its rail and fiddling frantically\n with whatever it was that stuck\n up on it—a weird, angled contraption\n of pipes and belts topped\n by a whirring blade. A boy stood\n at his shoulder and tried to help\n him. As the platform descended\n to a few meters above ground,\n the Dutchman slashed at the contraption,\n the cut ends of belts\n whipped out wildly and the platform\n slid to the ground with a\n rush. It hit with a clatter and its\n two passengers tumbled prone to\n the ground.\n\n\n \"Jan!\" boomed Heemskerk,\n forcing his voice through the helmet\n diaphragm and rushing over\n to his friend. \"I was afraid you\n were lost!\"\n\n\n Jan struggled to his feet and\n leaned down to help the boy up.", "Jan, his head just above\n ground level, surveyed the terrain.\n There was flat ground to\n the east, clear in a fairly broad\n alley for at least half a kilometer\n before any of the domes protruded\n up into it.\n\n\n \"This is as good a spot for\n takeoff as we'll find,\" he said to\n Sanchez.\n\n\n The men put three heavy ropes\n on the platform's windward rail\n and secured it by them to the\n heavy chain that ran by the\n dome. The platform quivered and\n shuddered in the heavy wind, but\n its base was too low for it to\n overturn.\n\n\n Shortly the two men returned\n with the fuel from the groundcar,\n struggling along the chain.\n Jan got above ground in a\n crouch, clinging to the rail of the\n platform, and helped them fill\n the fuel tank with it. He primed\n the carburetors and spun the\n engines.", "\"Wait,\" said Sanchez, lifting\n the scalpel and tilting his head.\n \"I believe there is something,\n though we cannot use it. This\n was once an American naval base,\n and the people here were civilian\n employes who refused to move\n north with it. There was a flying\n machine they used for short-range\n work, and one was left behind—probably\n with a little help\n from the people of the settlement.\n But....\"\n\n\n \"What kind of machine? Copter\n or plane?\"\n\n\n \"They call it a flying platform.\n It carries two men, I believe.\n But,\nseñor\n....\"\n\n\n \"I know them. I've operated\n them, before I left Earth. Man,\n you don't expect me to try to fly\n one of those little things in this\n wind? They're tricky as they can\n be, and the passengers are absolutely\n unprotected!\"\n\n\n \"\nSeñor\n, I have asked you to do\n nothing.\"", "The machine was dusty and\n spotted with rust, Jan, surrounded\n by Sanchez, Diego and a dozen\n men, inspected it thoughtfully.\n The letters USNSES were\n painted in white on the platform\n itself, and each engine bore the\n label \"Hiller.\"\n\n\n Jan peered over the edge of the\n platform at the twin-ducted fans\n in their plastic shrouds. They\n appeared in good shape. Each\n was powered by one of the engines,\n transmitted to it by heavy\n rubber belts.\n\n\n Jan sighed. It was an unhappy\n situation. As far as he could determine,\n without making tests,\n the engines were in perfect condition.\n Two perfectly good engines,\n and no fuel for them.\n\n\n \"You're sure there's no gasoline,\n anywhere in Rathole?\" he\n asked Sanchez.", "\"Here's your patient, Pieter,\"\n he said. \"Hope you have a spacesuit\n in his size.\"\n\n\n \"I can find one. And we'll have\n to hurry for blastoff. But, first,\n what happened? Even that\n damned thing ought to get here\n from Rathole faster than that.\"\n\n\n \"Had no fuel,\" replied Jan\n briefly. \"My engines were all\n right, but I had no power to run\n them. So I had to pull the engines\n and rig up a power source.\"\n\n\n Heemskerk stared at the platform.\n On its railing was rigged a\n tripod of battered metal pipes,\n atop which a big four-blade propeller\n spun slowly in what wind\n was left after it came over the\n western mountain. Over the\n edges of the platform, running\n from the two propellers in its\n base, hung a series of tattered\n transmission belts.\n\n\n \"Power source?\" repeated\n Heemskerk. \"That?\"", "Nothing happened.\nHe turned the engines over\n again. One of them coughed, and\n a cloud of blue smoke burst from\n its exhaust, but they did not\n catch.\n\n\n \"What is the matter,\nseñor\n?\"\n asked Sanchez from the dome entrance.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Jan.\n \"Maybe it's that the engines\n haven't been used in so long. I'm\n afraid I'm not a good enough\n mechanic to tell.\"\n\n\n \"Some of these men were good\n mechanics when the navy was\n here,\" said Sanchez. \"Wait.\"\n\n\n He turned and spoke to someone\n in the dome. One of the men\n of Rathole came to Jan's side and\n tried the engines. They refused\n to catch. The man made carburetor\n adjustments and tried\n again. No success.", "The ground heaved and buckled\n like a tempestuous sea.\n Rocks rolled and leaped through\n the air, several large ones striking\n the groundcar with ominous\n force. The car staggered forward\n on its giant wheels like a\n drunken man. The quake was so\n violent that at one time the vehicle\n was hurled several meters\n sideways, and almost overturned.\n And the wind smashed down\n on it unrelentingly.\n\n\n The quake lasted for several\n minutes, during which Jan was\n able to make no progress at all\n and struggled only to keep the\n groundcar upright. Then, in unison,\n both earthquake and wind\n died to absolute quiescence.\n\n\n Jan made use of this calm to\n step down on the accelerator and\n send the groundcar speeding\n forward. The terrain was easier\n here, nearing the western edge\n of Den Hoorn, and he covered\n several kilometers before the\n wind struck again, cutting his\n speed down considerably. He\n judged he must be nearing Rathole.", "Jan needed all his Dutch stubbornness,\n and a good deal of pure\n physical strength besides, to maneuver\n the roach-flat groundcar\n across the tumbled terrain of\n Den Hoorn into the teeth of the\n howling gale that swept from the\n west. The huge wheels twisted\n and jolted against the rocks outside,\n and Jan bounced against his\n seat belt, wrestled the steering\n wheel and puffed at his\npijp\n. The\n mild aroma of Heerenbaai-Tabak\n filled the airtight groundcar.\n\n\n There came a new swaying\n that was not the roughness of\n the terrain. Through the thick\n windshield Jan saw all the\n ground about him buckle and\n heave for a second or two before\n it settled to rugged quiescence\n again. This time he was really\n heaved about.\n\n\n Jan mentioned this to the\n groundcar radio.", "The ground of Den Hoorn was\n still shivering. Jan did not realize\n this until he had to brake the\n groundcar almost to a stop at one\n point, because it was not shaking\n in severe, periodic shocks as it\n had earlier. It quivered constantly,\n like the surface of quicksand.\n\n\n The ground far ahead of him\n had a strange color to it. Jan,\n watching for the cliff he had to\n skirt and scale, had picked up\n speed over some fairly even terrain,\n but now he slowed again,\n puzzled. There was something\n wrong ahead. He couldn't quite\n figure it out.\n\n\n Diego, beside him, had sat\n quietly so far, peering eagerly\n through the windshield, not saying\n a word. Now suddenly he\n cried in a high thin tenor:\n\n\n \"\nCuidado! Cuidado! Un abismo!\n\"", "\"If some effort had been made\n to take the boy to Oostpoort from\n here, instead of calling on us to\n send a car, Den Hoorn could have\n been crossed before the crack\n opened,\" he pointed out.\n\n\n \"An effort was made,\" replied\n Sanchez quietly. \"Perhaps you do\n not fully realize our position\n here. We have no engines except\n the stationary generators that\n give us current for our air-conditioning\n and our utilities. They\n are powered by the windmills. We\n do not have gasoline engines for\n vehicles, so our vehicles are operated\n by hand.\"\n\n\n \"You push them?\" demanded\n Jan incredulously.", "Sanchez smiled ruefully, as he\n had once before, at Jan's appellation\n for the community. The inhabitants'\n term for it was simply\n \"\nLa Ciudad Nuestra\n\"—\"Our\n Town.\" But he made no protest.\n He turned to one of the other\n men and talked rapidly for a few\n moments in Spanish.\n\n\n \"None,\nseñor\n,\" he said, turning\n back to Jan. \"The Americans, of\n course, kept much of it when\n they were here, but the few\n things we take to Oostpoort to\n trade could not buy precious gasoline.\n We have electricity in\n plenty if you can power the platform\n with it.\"\n\n\n Jan thought that over, trying\n to find a way.", "Jim saw it at the same time\n and hit the brakes so hard the\n groundcar would have stood on\n its nose had its wheels been\n smaller. They skidded to a stop.\n\n\n The chasm that had caused\n him such a long detour before\n had widened, evidently in the big\n quake that had hit earlier. Now\n it was a canyon, half a kilometer\n wide. Five meters from the edge\n he looked out over blank space\n at the far wall, and could not see\n the bottom.\n\n\n Cursing choice Dutch profanity,\n Jan wheeled the groundcar\n northward and drove along the\n edge of the abyss as fast as he\n could. He wasted half an hour before\n realizing that it was getting\n no narrower.", "\"Tell them to take the engines\n out,\" he said. \"Since we have no\n fuel, we may as well have no\n engines.\"\nPieter Heemskerk stood by the\n ramp to the stubby G-boat and\n checked his watch. It was X\n minus fifteen—fifteen minutes\n before blastoff time.\n\n\n Heemskerk wore a spacesuit.\n Everything was ready, except\n climbing aboard, closing the airlock\n and pressing the firing pin.\n\n\n What on Venus could have happened\n to Van Artevelde? The last\n radio message they had received,\n more than an hour ago, had said\n he and the patient took off successfully\n in an aircraft. What\n sort of aircraft could he be flying\n that would require an hour to\n cover eighty kilometers, with the\n wind?", "Heemskerk shook his head sadly.\n And Van Artevelde had promised\n to come back triumphant,\n with a broom at his masthead!\n\n\n It was a high thin whine borne\n on the wind, carrying even\n through the walls of his spacehelmet,\n that attracted Heemskerk's\n attention and caused him\n to pause with his foot on the\n ramp. Around him, the rocket\n mechanics were staring up at the\n sky, trying to pinpoint the noise.\n\n\n Heemskerk looked westward.\n At first he could see nothing,\n then there was a moving dot\n above the mountain, against the\n indigo umbrella of clouds. It\n grew, it swooped, it approached\n and became a strange little flying\n disc with two people standing on\n it and\nsomething\nsticking up\n from its deck in front of them.\n\n\n A broom?" ], [ "There was power, the power\n that lighted and air-conditioned\n Rathole, power in the air all\n around them. If he could only use\n it! But to turn the platform on\n its side and let the wind spin the\n propellers was pointless.\n\n\n He turned to Sanchez.\n\n\n \"Ask the men if there are any\n spare parts for the platform,\" he\n said. \"Some of those legs it\n stands on, transmission belts,\n spare propellers.\"\n\n\n Sanchez asked.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" he said. \"Many spare\n parts, but no fuel.\"\n\n\n Jan smiled a tight smile.", "\"No, it wouldn't work,\" he\n said. \"We could rig batteries on\n the platform and electric motors\n to turn the propellers. But batteries\n big enough to power it all\n the way to Oostpoort would be\n so heavy the machine couldn't lift\n them off the ground. If there\n were some way to carry a power\n line all the way to Oostpoort, or\n to broadcast the power to it....\n But it's a light-load machine,\n and must have an engine that\n gives it the necessary power from\n very little weight.\"\n\n\n Wild schemes ran through his\n head. If they were on water, instead\n of land, he could rig up a\n sail. He could still rig up a sail,\n for a groundcar, except for the\n chasm out on Den Hoorn.\n\n\n The groundcar! Jan straightened\n and snapped his fingers.", "\"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" answered Jan. \"They may\n as well put the fuel back in my\n groundcar.\"\n\n\n Sanchez called orders to the\n men at the platform. While they\n worked, Jan stared out at the\n furiously spinning windmills that\n dotted Rathole.\n\n\n \"There's nothing that can be\n done,\" he repeated. \"We can't\n make the trip overland because\n of the chasm out there in Den\n Hoorn, and we can't fly the platform\n because we have no power\n for it.\"", "No. The platform hovered and\n began to settle nearby, and there\n was Van Artevelde leaning over\n its rail and fiddling frantically\n with whatever it was that stuck\n up on it—a weird, angled contraption\n of pipes and belts topped\n by a whirring blade. A boy stood\n at his shoulder and tried to help\n him. As the platform descended\n to a few meters above ground,\n the Dutchman slashed at the contraption,\n the cut ends of belts\n whipped out wildly and the platform\n slid to the ground with a\n rush. It hit with a clatter and its\n two passengers tumbled prone to\n the ground.\n\n\n \"Jan!\" boomed Heemskerk,\n forcing his voice through the helmet\n diaphragm and rushing over\n to his friend. \"I was afraid you\n were lost!\"\n\n\n Jan struggled to his feet and\n leaned down to help the boy up.", "\"Here's your patient, Pieter,\"\n he said. \"Hope you have a spacesuit\n in his size.\"\n\n\n \"I can find one. And we'll have\n to hurry for blastoff. But, first,\n what happened? Even that\n damned thing ought to get here\n from Rathole faster than that.\"\n\n\n \"Had no fuel,\" replied Jan\n briefly. \"My engines were all\n right, but I had no power to run\n them. So I had to pull the engines\n and rig up a power source.\"\n\n\n Heemskerk stared at the platform.\n On its railing was rigged a\n tripod of battered metal pipes,\n atop which a big four-blade propeller\n spun slowly in what wind\n was left after it came over the\n western mountain. Over the\n edges of the platform, running\n from the two propellers in its\n base, hung a series of tattered\n transmission belts.\n\n\n \"Power source?\" repeated\n Heemskerk. \"That?\"", "Jan, his head just above\n ground level, surveyed the terrain.\n There was flat ground to\n the east, clear in a fairly broad\n alley for at least half a kilometer\n before any of the domes protruded\n up into it.\n\n\n \"This is as good a spot for\n takeoff as we'll find,\" he said to\n Sanchez.\n\n\n The men put three heavy ropes\n on the platform's windward rail\n and secured it by them to the\n heavy chain that ran by the\n dome. The platform quivered and\n shuddered in the heavy wind, but\n its base was too low for it to\n overturn.\n\n\n Shortly the two men returned\n with the fuel from the groundcar,\n struggling along the chain.\n Jan got above ground in a\n crouch, clinging to the rail of the\n platform, and helped them fill\n the fuel tank with it. He primed\n the carburetors and spun the\n engines.", "Sanchez smiled ruefully, as he\n had once before, at Jan's appellation\n for the community. The inhabitants'\n term for it was simply\n \"\nLa Ciudad Nuestra\n\"—\"Our\n Town.\" But he made no protest.\n He turned to one of the other\n men and talked rapidly for a few\n moments in Spanish.\n\n\n \"None,\nseñor\n,\" he said, turning\n back to Jan. \"The Americans, of\n course, kept much of it when\n they were here, but the few\n things we take to Oostpoort to\n trade could not buy precious gasoline.\n We have electricity in\n plenty if you can power the platform\n with it.\"\n\n\n Jan thought that over, trying\n to find a way.", "The machine was dusty and\n spotted with rust, Jan, surrounded\n by Sanchez, Diego and a dozen\n men, inspected it thoughtfully.\n The letters USN*SES were\n painted in white on the platform\n itself, and each engine bore the\n label \"Hiller.\"\n\n\n Jan peered over the edge of the\n platform at the twin-ducted fans\n in their plastic shrouds. They\n appeared in good shape. Each\n was powered by one of the engines,\n transmitted to it by heavy\n rubber belts.\n\n\n Jan sighed. It was an unhappy\n situation. As far as he could determine,\n without making tests,\n the engines were in perfect condition.\n Two perfectly good engines,\n and no fuel for them.\n\n\n \"You're sure there's no gasoline,\n anywhere in Rathole?\" he\n asked Sanchez.", "\"Doctor!\" he explained. \"Send\n a couple of men to drain the rest\n of the fuel from my groundcar.\n And let's get this platform above\n ground and tie it down until we\n can get it started.\"\n\n\n Sanchez gave rapid orders in\n Spanish. Two of the men left at a\n run, carrying five-gallon cans\n with them.\n\n\n Three others picked up the\n platform and carried it up a ramp\n and outside. As soon as they\n reached ground level, the wind\n hit them. They dropped the platform\n to the ground, where it\n shuddered and swayed momentarily,\n and two of the men fell\n successfully on their stomachs.\n The wind caught the third and\n somersaulted him half a dozen\n times before he skidded to a stop\n on his back with outstretched\n arms and legs. He turned over\n cautiously and crawled back to\n them.", "\"\nSeñor\n, I have been trying to\n tell you,\" he said. \"It is generous\n and good of you, and I wanted\nSeñora\nMurillo to know what a\n brave man you are. But have you\n forgotten that we have no gasoline\n engines here? There is no\n fuel for the flying platform.\"\nThe platform was in a warehouse\n which, like the rest of the\n structures in Rathole, was a\n half-buried dome. The platform's\n ring-shaped base was less than a\n meter thick, standing on four\n metal legs. On top of it, in the\n center, was a railed circle that\n would hold two men, but would\n crowd them. Two small gasoline\n engines sat on each side of this\n railed circle and between them on\n a third side was the fuel tank.\n The passengers entered it on the\n fourth side.", "\"Wait,\" said Sanchez, lifting\n the scalpel and tilting his head.\n \"I believe there is something,\n though we cannot use it. This\n was once an American naval base,\n and the people here were civilian\n employes who refused to move\n north with it. There was a flying\n machine they used for short-range\n work, and one was left behind—probably\n with a little help\n from the people of the settlement.\n But....\"\n\n\n \"What kind of machine? Copter\n or plane?\"\n\n\n \"They call it a flying platform.\n It carries two men, I believe.\n But,\nseñor\n....\"\n\n\n \"I know them. I've operated\n them, before I left Earth. Man,\n you don't expect me to try to fly\n one of those little things in this\n wind? They're tricky as they can\n be, and the passengers are absolutely\n unprotected!\"\n\n\n \"\nSeñor\n, I have asked you to do\n nothing.\"", "Nothing happened.\nHe turned the engines over\n again. One of them coughed, and\n a cloud of blue smoke burst from\n its exhaust, but they did not\n catch.\n\n\n \"What is the matter,\nseñor\n?\"\n asked Sanchez from the dome entrance.\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" replied Jan.\n \"Maybe it's that the engines\n haven't been used in so long. I'm\n afraid I'm not a good enough\n mechanic to tell.\"\n\n\n \"Some of these men were good\n mechanics when the navy was\n here,\" said Sanchez. \"Wait.\"\n\n\n He turned and spoke to someone\n in the dome. One of the men\n of Rathole came to Jan's side and\n tried the engines. They refused\n to catch. The man made carburetor\n adjustments and tried\n again. No success.", "He sniffed, took the cap from\n the fuel tank and stuck a finger\n inside. He withdrew it, wet and\n oily, and examined it. He turned\n and spoke to Sanchez.\n\n\n \"He says that your groundcar\n must have a diesel engine,\" Sanchez\n interpreted to Jan. \"Is that\n correct?\"\n\n\n \"Why, yes, that's true.\"\n\n\n \"He says the fuel will not work\n then,\nseñor\n. He says it is low-grade\n fuel and the platform must\n have high octane gasoline.\"\n\n\n Jan threw up his hands and\n went back into the dome.\n\n\n \"I should have known that,\" he\n said unhappily. \"I would have\n known if I had thought of it.\"\n\n\n \"What is to be done, then?\"\n asked Sanchez.", "Not long thereafter, he rounded\n an outcropping of rock and it\n lay before him.\n\n\n A wave of nostalgia swept\n over him. Back at Oostpoort, the\n power was nuclear, but this little\n settlement made use of the\n cheapest, most obviously available\n power source. It was dotted\n with more than a dozen windmills.\n\n\n Windmills! Tears came to\n Jan's eyes. For a moment, he\n was carried back to the flat\n lands around 's Gravenhage. For\n a moment he was a tow-headed,\n round-eyed boy again, clumping\n in wooden shoes along the edge\n of the tulip fields.", "\"If some effort had been made\n to take the boy to Oostpoort from\n here, instead of calling on us to\n send a car, Den Hoorn could have\n been crossed before the crack\n opened,\" he pointed out.\n\n\n \"An effort was made,\" replied\n Sanchez quietly. \"Perhaps you do\n not fully realize our position\n here. We have no engines except\n the stationary generators that\n give us current for our air-conditioning\n and our utilities. They\n are powered by the windmills. We\n do not have gasoline engines for\n vehicles, so our vehicles are operated\n by hand.\"\n\n\n \"You push them?\" demanded\n Jan incredulously.", "Heemskerk shook his head sadly.\n And Van Artevelde had promised\n to come back triumphant,\n with a broom at his masthead!\n\n\n It was a high thin whine borne\n on the wind, carrying even\n through the walls of his spacehelmet,\n that attracted Heemskerk's\n attention and caused him\n to pause with his foot on the\n ramp. Around him, the rocket\n mechanics were staring up at the\n sky, trying to pinpoint the noise.\n\n\n Heemskerk looked westward.\n At first he could see nothing,\n then there was a moving dot\n above the mountain, against the\n indigo umbrella of clouds. It\n grew, it swooped, it approached\n and became a strange little flying\n disc with two people standing on\n it and\nsomething\nsticking up\n from its deck in front of them.\n\n\n A broom?", "WIND\nBy CHARLES L. FONTENAY\nWhen you have an engine with no fuel, and fuel\n \nwithout an engine, and a life-and-death deadline\n \nto meet, you have a problem indeed. Unless you are\n \na stubborn Dutchman—and Jan Van Artevelde was\n \nthe stubbornest Dutchman on Venus.\nJAN WILLEM van Artevelde\n claimed descent from William\n of Orange. He had no genealogy\n to prove it, but on Venus there\n was no one who could disprove it,\n either.\n\n\n Jan Willem van Artevelde\n smoked a clay pipe, which only a\n Dutchman can do properly, because\n the clay bit grates on less\n stubborn teeth.", "Windmills. Again Jan could\n imagine the flat land around\n them as his native Holland, with\n the Zuider Zee sparkling to the\n west where here the desert\n stretched under darkling clouds.\nJan looked at his watch. A\n little more than two hours before\n the G-boat's blastoff time, and it\n couldn't wait for them. It was\n nearly eight hours since he had\n left Oostpoort, and the afternoon\n was getting noticeably\n darker.\n\n\n Jan was sorry. He had done his\n best, but Venus had beaten him.\n\n\n He looked around for Diego.\n The boy was not in the dome. He\n was outside, crouched in the lee\n of the dome, playing with some\n sticks.", "\"Certainly,\" replied Jan with\n dignity. \"The power source any\n good Dutchman turns to in an\n emergency: a windmill!\"\nTHE END\nTranscriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from\nAmazing Science Fiction Stories\nApril 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.\n Minor spelling and typographical errors\n have been corrected without note.", "The ground heaved and buckled\n like a tempestuous sea.\n Rocks rolled and leaped through\n the air, several large ones striking\n the groundcar with ominous\n force. The car staggered forward\n on its giant wheels like a\n drunken man. The quake was so\n violent that at one time the vehicle\n was hurled several meters\n sideways, and almost overturned.\n And the wind smashed down\n on it unrelentingly.\n\n\n The quake lasted for several\n minutes, during which Jan was\n able to make no progress at all\n and struggled only to keep the\n groundcar upright. Then, in unison,\n both earthquake and wind\n died to absolute quiescence.\n\n\n Jan made use of this calm to\n step down on the accelerator and\n send the groundcar speeding\n forward. The terrain was easier\n here, nearing the western edge\n of Den Hoorn, and he covered\n several kilometers before the\n wind struck again, cutting his\n speed down considerably. He\n judged he must be nearing Rathole." ] ]
valid	23104	[ "Did Ludovick love Corisande?", "Why was Ludovick able to get to the Belphin of Belphins?", "Why is it important that Corisande's wrinkles show?", "According to the story, is the Belphin good or evil?", "Why is Belphin controlling Earth?", "Does Corisande love Ludovick?", "What was a sign that Corisande's family was up to no good?" ]	[ [ "No, she tricked him into killing Belphin", "Yes, he loved her before he married her", "Yes, he loved her until death", "No, he had her murdered" ], [ "He used Corisande's uncle's secret weapon", "He destroyed the machines", "He had only love for Belphin", "His need was high enough" ], [ "They show that she is dying", "They point out how old she is", "They reveal her true character", "Ludovick thinks they're ugly" ], [ "He is good because he knows right and wrong", "Everyone has different opinions", "He is evil because he is controlling humans", "He is good because he is helping humans" ], [ "He wants to make lives better for humans", "He wants to weaken the human race", "He wants to rule", "We never learn" ], [ "No, she used him for her ends", "Yes, her uncle said so", "Yes, they got married", "No, she wanted to be President" ], [ "The wine they were drinking", "All of these are signs", "Having secret meetings", "Gathering in such large numbers" ] ]	[ 2, 3, 3, 2, 4, 1, 2 ]	[ 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "The uncle looked dubious, and Ludovick thought it prudent to withdraw at this point. Besides, he had heard enough. Corisande—his Corisande—was an integral part of the conspiracy.\n\n\n He lay down to sleep that night beset by doubts. If he told the Belphins about the conspiracy, he would be betraying Corisande. As a matter of fact, he now remembered, he\nhad\nalready told them about the conspiracy and they hadn't believed him. But supposing he could\nconvince\nthem, how could he give Corisande up to them? True, it was the right thing to do—but, for the first time in his life, he could not bring himself to do what he knew to be right. He was weak, weak—and weakness was sinful. His old Belphin teacher had taught him that, too.\n\n\n As Ludovick writhed restlessly upon his bed, he became aware that someone had come into his chamber.", "Corisande gave one of the rippling laughs he was to grow to hate so much. \"Darling,\nyou\nwere my secret weapon all along!\" She beamed at her \"relatives,\" and it was then he noticed the faint lines of her forehead. \"I told you I could use the power of love to destroy the Belphins!\" And then she added gently: \"I think there is no doubt who is head of 'this family' now.\"\n\n\n The uncle gave a strained laugh. \"You're going to have a great little first lady there, boy,\" he said to Ludovick.\n\n\n \"First lady?\" Ludovick repeated, still absorbed in his grief.\n\n\n \"Yes, I imagine the people will want to make you our first President by popular acclaim.\"\n\n\n Ludovick looked at him through a haze of tears. \"But I killed The Belphin. I didn't mean to, but ... they must hate me!\"", "\"Ludovick,\" a soft, beloved voice whispered, \"I have come to ask your help....\" It was so dark, he could not see her; he knew where she was only by the glitter of the jewel on her neck-chain as it arced through the blackness.\n\n\n \"Corisande....\" he breathed.\n\n\n \"Ludovick....\" she sighed.\n\n\n Now that the amenities were over, she resumed, \"Against my will, I have been involved in the family plot. My uncle has invented a secret weapon which he believes will counteract the power of the barriers.\"\n\n\n \"But I thought you devised it!\"", "\"Nonsense, my boy; they'll adore you. You'll be a hero!\"\n\n\n Events proved him right. Even those people who had lived in apparent content under the Belphins, accepting what they were given and seemingly enjoying their carefree lives, now declared themselves to have been suffering in silent resentment all along. They hurled flowers and adulatory speeches at Ludovick and composed extremely flattering songs about him.\n\n\n Shortly after he was universally acclaimed President, he married Corisande. He couldn't escape.\n\n\n \"Why doesn't she become President herself?\" he wailed, when the relatives came and found him hiding in the ruins of the Blue Tower. The people had torn the Tower down as soon as they were sure The Belphin was dead and the others thereby rendered inoperant. \"It would spare her a lot of bother.\"", "In the second place, Ludovick could never forget that, when Corisande had sent him to the Blue Tower, she could not have been sure that her secret weapon would work. Love might\nnot\nhave conquered all—in fact, it was the more likely hypothesis that it wouldn't—and he would have been killed by the first barrier. And no husband likes to think that his wife thinks he's expendable; it makes him feel she doesn't really love him.\n\n\n So, in thirtieth year of his reign as Dictator of Earth, Ludovick poisoned Corisande—that is, had her poisoned, for by now he had a Minister of Assassination to handle such little matters—and married a very pretty, very young, very affectionate blonde. He wasn't particularly happy with her, either, but at least it was a change.\n\n\n\n\n —EVELYN E. SMITH", "\"Bah!\" said old Osmond Flockhart, Corisande's grandfather. Ludovick was sure that, underneath his crustiness, the gnarled patriarch hid a heart of gold. Although he had been mining assiduously, the young man had not yet been able to strike that vein; however, he did not give up hope, for not giving up hope was one of the principles that his wise old Belphin teacher had inculcated in him. Other principles were to lead the good life and keep healthy.\n\n\n \"Now, Grandfather,\" Corisande said, \"no matter what your politics, that does not excuse impoliteness.\"\n\n\n Ludovick wished she would not allude so blatantly to politics, because he had a lurking notion that Corisande's \"family\" was, in fact, a band of conspirators ... such as still dotted the green and pleasant planet and proved by their existence that Man was not advancing anywhere within measurable distance of that totality of knowledge implied by the Belphin.", "Bless her, he thought emotionally. Even in the midst of her plotting, she had time to spare a kind word for him. And then it hit him:\nshe, too, was a plotter\n.\n\n\n \"You suggest that we try to turn the power of love against the Belphins?\" the uncle asked ironically.\n\n\n Corisande gave a rippling laugh as she twirled her glittering pendant. \"In a manner of speaking,\" she said. \"I have an idea for a secret weapon which might do the trick——\"\nAt that moment, Ludovick stumbled over a jug which some careless relative had apparently left lying about the courtyard. It crashed to the tesserae, spattering Ludovick's legs and sandals with a liquid which later proved to be extremely red wine.\n\n\n \"There's someone outside!\" the uncle declared, half-rising.\n\n\n \"Nonsense!\" Corisande said, putting her hand on his shoulder. \"I didn't hear anything.\"", "Ludovick could no longer pretend his neighbors were a group of eccentrics whom he himself was eccentric enough to regard as charming.\n\n\n \"So!\" He stood up and wrapped his mantle about him. \"I knew you were against the government, and, of course, you have a legal right to disagree with its policies, but I didn't think you were actual—actual—\" he dredged a word up out of his schooldays—\"\nanarchists\n.\"\nHe turned to the girl, who was looking thoughtful as she stroked the glittering jewel that always hung at her neck. \"Corisande, how can you stay with these—\" he found another word—\"these\nsubversives\n?\"\n\n\n She smiled sadly. \"Don't forget: they're my family, Ludovick, and I owe them dutiful respect, no matter how pig-headed they are.\" She pressed his hand. \"But don't give up hope.\"", "\"They certainly did a good job of brainwashing you, boy,\" Osmond sighed. \"And of most of the young ones,\" he added mournfully. \"With each succeeding generation, more of our heritage is lost.\" He patted the girl's hand. \"You're a good girl, Corrie. You don't hold with this being cared for like some damn pet poodle.\"\n\n\n \"Never mind Osmond, Eversole,\" one of Corisande's alleged uncles grinned. \"He talks a lot, but of course he doesn't mean a quarter of what he says. Come, have some wine.\"\nHe handed a glass to Ludovick. Ludovick sipped and coughed. It tasted as if it were well above the legal alcohol limit, but he didn't like to say anything. They were taking an awful risk, though, doing a thing like that. If they got caught, they might receive a public scolding—which was, of course, no more than they deserved—but he could not bear to think of Corisande exposed to such an ordeal.", "\"No, Corisande,\" he sighed. \"I can't let you go. I'll do it.\"\nNext morning, he set out to warn Belphins. He knew it wasn't much use, but it was all he could do. The first half dozen responded in much the same way the Belphin he had warned the previous day had done, by courteously acknowledging his solicitude and assuring him there was no need for alarm; they knew all about the Flockharts and everything would be all right.\n\n\n After that, they started to get increasingly huffy—which would, he thought, substantiate the theory that they were all part of one vast coordinate network of identity. Especially since each Belphin behaved as if Ludovick had been repeatedly annoying\nhim\n.\n\n\n Finally, they refused to get off the walks when he hailed them—which was unheard of, for no Belphin had ever before failed to respond to an Earthman's call—and when he started running along the walks after them, they ran much faster than he could.", "\"Because she is not The Belphin-slayer,\" the uncle said, dragging him out. \"Besides, she loves you. Come on, Ludovick, be a man.\" So they hauled him off to the wedding and, amid much feasting, he was married to Corisande.\nHe never drew another happy breath. In the first place, now that The Belphin was dead, all the machinery that had been operated by him stopped and no one knew how to fix it. The sidewalks stopped moving, the air conditioners stopped conditioning, the food synthesizers stopped synthesizing, and so on. And, of course, everybody blamed it all on Ludovick—even that year's run of bad weather.\n\n\n There were famines, riots, plagues, and, after the waves of mob hostility had coalesced into national groupings, wars. It was like the old days again, precisely as described in the textbooks.", "\"Of course they have their own source of power,\" Ludovick informed them, smiling to himself, for his old Belphin teacher had taken great care to instill a sense of humor into him. \"A Belphin was explaining that to me only today.\"\n\n\n Twenty heads swiveled toward him. He felt uncomfortable, for he was a modest young man and did not like to be the cynosure of all eyes.\n\n\n \"Tell us, dear boy,\" the uncle said, grabbing Ludovick's glass from the plinth and filling it, \"what exactly did he say?\"\n\n\n \"He said the Belphins rule through the power of love.\"\n\n\n The glass crashed to the tesserae as the uncle uttered a very unworthy word.\n\n\n \"And I suppose it was love that killed Mieczyslaw and George when they tried to storm the Blue Tower——\" old Osmond began, then halted at the looks he was getting from everybody.", "\"Everything about us is wonderful,\" the Belphin said noncommittally. \"That's why we're so good to you people. Be happy!\" And he was off.\n\n\n But Ludovick could not be happy. He wasn't precisely sad yet, but he was thoughtful. Of course the Belphins knew better than he did, but still.... Perhaps they underestimated the seriousness of the Flockhart conspiracy. On the other hand, perhaps it was he who was taking the Flockharts too seriously. Maybe he should investigate further before doing anything rash.\n\n\n Later that night, he slipped over to the Flockhart villa and nosed about in the courtyard until he found the window behind which the family was conspiring. He peered through a chink in the curtains, so he could both see and hear.\n\n\n Corisande was saying, \"And so I think there is a lot in what Ludovick said....\"", "\"So it\nwas\nyou in the courtyard. Well, what happened was I wanted to gain time, so I said I had a secret weapon of my own invention which I had not perfected, but which would cost considerably less than my uncle's model. We have to watch the budget, you know, because we can hardly expect the Belphins to supply the components for this job. Anyhow, I thought that, while my folks were waiting for me to finish it, you would have a chance to warn the Belphins.\"\n\n\n \"Corisande,\" he murmured, \"you are as noble and clever as you are beautiful.\"\nThen he caught the full import of her remarks. \"\nMe!\nBut they won't pay any attention to me!\"\n\n\n \"How do you know?\" When he remained silent, she said, \"I suppose you've already tried to warn them about us.\"\n\n\n \"I—I said\nyou\nhad nothing to do with the plot.\"", "\"If the status quo is a good status quo,\" Ludovick said uneasily, for he did not like to discuss such subjects, \"why should I not accept it? We have everything we could possibly want. What do we lack?\"\n\n\n \"Our freedom,\" Osmond retorted.\n\n\n \"But we\nare\nfree,\" Ludovick said, perplexed. \"We can say what we like, do what we like, so long as it is consonant with the public good.\"\n\n\n \"Ah, but who determines what is consonant with the public good?\"\n\n\n Ludovick could no longer temporize with truth, even for Corisande's sake. \"Look here, old man, I have read books. I know about the old days before the Belphins came from the stars. Men were destroying themselves quickly through wars, or slowly through want. There is none of that any more.\"", "\"They say,\" the uncle continued, impervious to Ludovick's unconcealed dislike for the subject, \"that there's really only one Belphin, who lives in the Blue Tower—in a tank or something, because he can't breathe our atmosphere—and that the others are a sort of robot he sends out to do his work for him.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense!\" Ludovick was goaded to irritation at last. \"How could a robot have that delicate play of expression, that subtle economy of movement?\"\n\n\n Corisande and the uncle exchanged glances. \"But they are absolutely blank,\" the uncle began hesitantly. \"Perhaps, with your rich poetic imagination....\"\n\n\n \"See?\" old Osmond remarked with satisfaction. \"The kid's brain-washed. I told you so.\"\n\"Even if The Belphin is a single entity,\" Ludovick went on, \"that doesn't necessarily make him less benevolent——\"", "\"We come from beyond the stars,\" he said. Ludovick already knew that; he had hoped for something a little more specific. \"We were placed in power by those who had the right. And the power through which we rule is the power of love! Be happy!\"\n\n\n And with that conventional farewell (which also served as a greeting), he stepped onto the sidewalk and was borne off. Ludovick looked after him pensively for a moment, then shrugged. Why\nshould\nthe Belphins surrender their secrets to gratify the idle curiosity of a poet?\n\n\n Ludovick packed his portable scriptwriter in its case and went to call on the girl next door, whom he loved with a deep and intermittently requited passion.\n\n\n As he passed between the tall columns leading into the Flockhart courtyard, he noted with regret that there were quite a number of Corisande's relatives present, lying about sunning themselves and sipping beverages which probably touched the legal limit of intoxicatability.", "Much as he hated to think harshly of anyone, he did not like Corisande Flockhart's relatives. He had never known anybody who had as many relatives as she did, and sometimes he suspected they were not all related to her. Then he would dismiss the thought as unworthy of him or any right-thinking human being. He loved Corisande for herself alone and not for her family. Whether they were actually her family or not was none of his business.\n\n\n \"Be happy!\" he greeted the assemblage cordially, sitting down beside Corisande on the tessellated pavement.", "\"But no human being has ever come near him!\" he said plaintively. \"You know that all those who have tried perished. And that can't be a rumor, because your grandfather said——\"\n\n\n \"But they came to\nattack\nThe Belphin. You're coming to\nwarn\nhim! That makes a big difference. Ludovick....\" She took his hands in hers; in the darkness, the jewel swung madly on her presumably heaving bosom. \"This is bigger than both of us. It's for Earth.\"\n\n\n He knew it was his patriotic duty to do as she said; still, he had enjoyed life so much. \"Corisande, wouldn't it be much simpler if we just destroyed your uncle's secret weapon?\"\n\n\n \"He'd only make another. Don't you see, Ludovick, this is our only chance to save the Belphins, to save humanity.... But, of course, I don't have the right to send you. I'll go myself.\"", "You could tell malcontents, even if they did not voice their dissatisfactions, by their faces. The vast majority of the human race, living good and happy lives, had smooth and pleasant faces. Malcontents' faces were lined and sometimes, in extreme cases, furrowed. Everyone could easily tell who they were by looking at them, and most people avoided them.\nIt was not that griping was illegal, for the Belphins permitted free speech and reasonable conspiracy; it was that such behavior was considered ungenteel. Ludovick would never have dreamed of associating with this set of neighbors, once he had discovered their tendencies, had he not lost his heart to the purple-eyed Corisande at their first meeting.\n\n\n \"Politeness, bah!\" old Osmond said. \"To see a healthy young man simply—simply accepting the status quo!\"" ], [ "At last he gave up and wandered about the city for hours, speaking to neither human nor Belphin, wondering what to do. That is, he knew what he had to do; he was wondering\nhow\nto do it. He would never be able to reach The Belphin of Belphins. No human being had ever done it. Mieczyslaw and George had died trying to reach him (or it). Even though their intentions had been hostile and Ludovick's would be helpful, there was little chance he would be allowed to reach The Belphin with all the other Belphins against him. What guarantee was there that The Belphin would not be against him, too?\n\n\n And yet he knew that he would have to risk his life; there was no help for it. He had never wanted to be a hero, and here he had heroism thrust upon him. He knew he could not succeed; equally well, he knew he could not turn back, for his Belphin teacher had instructed him in the meaning of duty.", "\"The Belphin of Belphins did things for us,\" Ludovick countered. \"You are all only his followers. How do I know you are\nreally\nfollowing him? How do I know you haven't turned against him?\"\n\n\n Without giving the creature a chance to answer, he strode forward. The Belphin attempted to bar his way. Ludovick knew one Belphin was a myriad times as strong as a human, so it was out of utter futility that he struck.", "\"Please, young man——\" the Belphin began. \"You don't understand. Let me explain.\"\n\n\n But Ludovick destroyed the thing before it could say anything further, and he passed right through the barrier. He had to get to the top and warn The Belphin of Belphins, whoever or whatever he (or it) was, that the Flockharts had a secret weapon which might be able to annihilate it (or him). Belphin after Belphin Ludovick destroyed, and barrier after barrier he penetrated until he reached the top. At the head of the stairs was a vast golden door.\n\n\n \"Go no further, Ludovick Eversole!\" a mighty voice roared from within. \"To open that door is to bring disaster upon your race.\"", "The Belphin collapsed completely, flying apart in a welter of fragile springs and gears. The fact was of some deeper significance, Ludovick knew, but he was too numbed by his incredible success to be able to think clearly. All he knew was that The Belphin would be able to explain things to him.\nBells began to clash and clang. That meant the force barriers had gone up. He could see the shimmering insubstance of the first one before him. Squaring his shoulders, he charged it ... and walked right through. He looked himself up and down. He was alive and entire.\n\n\n Then the whole thing was a fraud; the barriers were not lethal—or perhaps even actual. But what of Mieczyslaw? And George? And countless rumored others? He would not let himself even try to think of them. He would not let himself even try to think of anything save his duty.\n\n\n A staircase spiraled up ahead of him. A Belphin was at its foot. Behind him, a barrier iridesced.", "\"Of course they have their own source of power,\" Ludovick informed them, smiling to himself, for his old Belphin teacher had taken great care to instill a sense of humor into him. \"A Belphin was explaining that to me only today.\"\n\n\n Twenty heads swiveled toward him. He felt uncomfortable, for he was a modest young man and did not like to be the cynosure of all eyes.\n\n\n \"Tell us, dear boy,\" the uncle said, grabbing Ludovick's glass from the plinth and filling it, \"what exactly did he say?\"\n\n\n \"He said the Belphins rule through the power of love.\"\n\n\n The glass crashed to the tesserae as the uncle uttered a very unworthy word.\n\n\n \"And I suppose it was love that killed Mieczyslaw and George when they tried to storm the Blue Tower——\" old Osmond began, then halted at the looks he was getting from everybody.", "But all Ludovick knew was that he had to get to The Belphin within and warn him. He battered down the door; that is, he would have battered down the door if it had not turned out to be unlocked. A stream of noxious vapor rushed out of the opening, causing him to black out.\n\n\n When he came to, most of the vapor had dissipated. The Belphin of Belphins was already dying of asphyxiation, since it was, in fact, a single alien entity who breathed another combination of elements. The room at the head of the stairs had been its tank.\n\n\n \"You fool....\" it gasped. \"Through your muddle-headed integrity ... you have destroyed not only me ... but Earth's future. I tried to make ... this planet a better place for humanity ... and this is my reward....\"", "\"No, Corisande,\" he sighed. \"I can't let you go. I'll do it.\"\nNext morning, he set out to warn Belphins. He knew it wasn't much use, but it was all he could do. The first half dozen responded in much the same way the Belphin he had warned the previous day had done, by courteously acknowledging his solicitude and assuring him there was no need for alarm; they knew all about the Flockharts and everything would be all right.\n\n\n After that, they started to get increasingly huffy—which would, he thought, substantiate the theory that they were all part of one vast coordinate network of identity. Especially since each Belphin behaved as if Ludovick had been repeatedly annoying\nhim\n.\n\n\n Finally, they refused to get off the walks when he hailed them—which was unheard of, for no Belphin had ever before failed to respond to an Earthman's call—and when he started running along the walks after them, they ran much faster than he could.", "Ludovick stretched his own well-kept golden body and rejoiced in the knowing that he was a man and not a Belphin. Immediately afterward, he was sorry for the heartless thought. Didn't the Belphins work only to serve humanity? How ungrateful, then, it was to gloat over them! Besides, he comforted himself, probably, if the truth were known, the Belphins\nliked\nto work. He hailed a passing Belphin for assurance on this point.\n\n\n Courteous, like all members of his species, the creature leaped from the street and listened attentively to the young man's question. \"We Belphins have but one like and one dislike,\" he replied. \"We like what is right and we dislike what is wrong.\"\n\n\n \"But how can you tell what is right and what is wrong?\" Ludovick persisted.", "\"Everything about us is wonderful,\" the Belphin said noncommittally. \"That's why we're so good to you people. Be happy!\" And he was off.\n\n\n But Ludovick could not be happy. He wasn't precisely sad yet, but he was thoughtful. Of course the Belphins knew better than he did, but still.... Perhaps they underestimated the seriousness of the Flockhart conspiracy. On the other hand, perhaps it was he who was taking the Flockharts too seriously. Maybe he should investigate further before doing anything rash.\n\n\n Later that night, he slipped over to the Flockhart villa and nosed about in the courtyard until he found the window behind which the family was conspiring. He peered through a chink in the curtains, so he could both see and hear.\n\n\n Corisande was saying, \"And so I think there is a lot in what Ludovick said....\"", "\"Bah!\" said old Osmond Flockhart, Corisande's grandfather. Ludovick was sure that, underneath his crustiness, the gnarled patriarch hid a heart of gold. Although he had been mining assiduously, the young man had not yet been able to strike that vein; however, he did not give up hope, for not giving up hope was one of the principles that his wise old Belphin teacher had inculcated in him. Other principles were to lead the good life and keep healthy.\n\n\n \"Now, Grandfather,\" Corisande said, \"no matter what your politics, that does not excuse impoliteness.\"\n\n\n Ludovick wished she would not allude so blatantly to politics, because he had a lurking notion that Corisande's \"family\" was, in fact, a band of conspirators ... such as still dotted the green and pleasant planet and proved by their existence that Man was not advancing anywhere within measurable distance of that totality of knowledge implied by the Belphin.", "\"They say,\" the uncle continued, impervious to Ludovick's unconcealed dislike for the subject, \"that there's really only one Belphin, who lives in the Blue Tower—in a tank or something, because he can't breathe our atmosphere—and that the others are a sort of robot he sends out to do his work for him.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense!\" Ludovick was goaded to irritation at last. \"How could a robot have that delicate play of expression, that subtle economy of movement?\"\n\n\n Corisande and the uncle exchanged glances. \"But they are absolutely blank,\" the uncle began hesitantly. \"Perhaps, with your rich poetic imagination....\"\n\n\n \"See?\" old Osmond remarked with satisfaction. \"The kid's brain-washed. I told you so.\"\n\"Even if The Belphin is a single entity,\" Ludovick went on, \"that doesn't necessarily make him less benevolent——\"", "The Belphin of Belphins died in Ludovick's arms. He was the last of his race, so far as Earth was concerned, for no more came. If, as they had said themselves, some outside power had sent them to take care of the human race, then that power had given up the race as a bad job. If they were merely exploiting Earth, as the malcontents had kept suggesting, apparently it had proven too dangerous or too costly a venture.\nShortly after The Belphin's demise, the Flockharts arrived en masse. \"We won't need your secret weapons now,\" Ludovick told them dully. \"The Belphin of Belphins is dead.\"", "The uncle looked dubious, and Ludovick thought it prudent to withdraw at this point. Besides, he had heard enough. Corisande—his Corisande—was an integral part of the conspiracy.\n\n\n He lay down to sleep that night beset by doubts. If he told the Belphins about the conspiracy, he would be betraying Corisande. As a matter of fact, he now remembered, he\nhad\nalready told them about the conspiracy and they hadn't believed him. But supposing he could\nconvince\nthem, how could he give Corisande up to them? True, it was the right thing to do—but, for the first time in his life, he could not bring himself to do what he knew to be right. He was weak, weak—and weakness was sinful. His old Belphin teacher had taught him that, too.\n\n\n As Ludovick writhed restlessly upon his bed, he became aware that someone had come into his chamber.", "Moreover, on a sultry spring afternoon like this one, there would be few people wandering abroad. Most would be lying on sun-kissed white beaches or in sun-drenched parks, or, for those who did not fancy being either kissed or drenched by the sun, basking in the comfort of their own air-conditioned villas.\n\n\n Some would, like Ludovick, be writing poems; others composing symphonies; still others painting pictures. Those who were without creative talent or the inclination to indulge it would be relaxing their well-kept golden bodies in whatever surroundings they had chosen to spend this particular one of the perfect days that stretched in an unbroken line before every member of the human race from the cradle to the crematorium.\n\n\n Only the Belphins were much in evidence. Only the Belphins had duties to perform. Only the Belphins worked.", "\"Harmless!\" Ludovick repeated. \"Why, I understand they've already tried to—to attack the Blue Tower by\nforce\n!\"\n\n\n \"Quite. And failed. For we are protected from hostile forces, as you were told earlier, by the power of love.\"\n\n\n Ludovick knew, of course, that the Belphin used the word\nlove\nmetaphorically, that the Tower was protected by a series of highly efficient barriers of force to repel attackers—barriers which, he realized now, from the sad fate of Mieczyslaw and George, were potentially lethal. However, he did not blame the Belphin for being so cagy about his race's source of power, not with people like the Flockharts running about subverting and whatnot.\n\n\n \"You certainly do have a wonderful intercommunication system,\" he murmured.", "\"We\nknow\n,\" the Belphin said, gazing reverently across the city to the blue spire of the tower where The Belphin of Belphins dwelt, in constant communication with every member of his race at all times, or so they said. \"That is why we were placed in charge of humanity. Someday you, too, may advance to the point where you\nknow\n, and we shall return whence we came.\"\n\n\n \"But\nwho\nplaced you in charge,\" Ludovick asked, \"and whence\ndid\nyou come?\" Fearing he might seem motivated by vulgar curiosity, he explained, \"I am doing research for an epic poem.\"\nA lifetime spent under their gentle guardianship had made Ludovick able to interpret the expression that flitted across this Belphin's frontispiece as a sad, sweet smile.", "\"We come from beyond the stars,\" he said. Ludovick already knew that; he had hoped for something a little more specific. \"We were placed in power by those who had the right. And the power through which we rule is the power of love! Be happy!\"\n\n\n And with that conventional farewell (which also served as a greeting), he stepped onto the sidewalk and was borne off. Ludovick looked after him pensively for a moment, then shrugged. Why\nshould\nthe Belphins surrender their secrets to gratify the idle curiosity of a poet?\n\n\n Ludovick packed his portable scriptwriter in its case and went to call on the girl next door, whom he loved with a deep and intermittently requited passion.\n\n\n As he passed between the tall columns leading into the Flockhart courtyard, he noted with regret that there were quite a number of Corisande's relatives present, lying about sunning themselves and sipping beverages which probably touched the legal limit of intoxicatability.", "\"But no human being has ever come near him!\" he said plaintively. \"You know that all those who have tried perished. And that can't be a rumor, because your grandfather said——\"\n\n\n \"But they came to\nattack\nThe Belphin. You're coming to\nwarn\nhim! That makes a big difference. Ludovick....\" She took his hands in hers; in the darkness, the jewel swung madly on her presumably heaving bosom. \"This is bigger than both of us. It's for Earth.\"\n\n\n He knew it was his patriotic duty to do as she said; still, he had enjoyed life so much. \"Corisande, wouldn't it be much simpler if we just destroyed your uncle's secret weapon?\"\n\n\n \"He'd only make another. Don't you see, Ludovick, this is our only chance to save the Belphins, to save humanity.... But, of course, I don't have the right to send you. I'll go myself.\"", "It was twilight when he approached the Blue Tower. Commending himself to the Infinite Virtue, he entered. The Belphin at the reception desk did not give off the customary smiling expression. In fact, he seemed to radiate a curiously apprehensive aura.\n\n\n \"Go back, young man,\" he said. \"You're not wanted here.\"\n\n\n \"I must see The Belphin of Belphins. I must warn him against the Flockharts.\"\n\n\n \"He has been warned,\" the receptionist told him. \"Go home and be happy!\"\n\n\n \"I don't trust you or your brothers. I must see The Belphin himself.\"\n\n\n Suddenly this particular Belphin lost his commanding manners. He began to wilt, insofar as so rigidly constructed a creature could go limp. \"Please, we've done so much for you. Do this for us.\"", "\"Because she is not The Belphin-slayer,\" the uncle said, dragging him out. \"Besides, she loves you. Come on, Ludovick, be a man.\" So they hauled him off to the wedding and, amid much feasting, he was married to Corisande.\nHe never drew another happy breath. In the first place, now that The Belphin was dead, all the machinery that had been operated by him stopped and no one knew how to fix it. The sidewalks stopped moving, the air conditioners stopped conditioning, the food synthesizers stopped synthesizing, and so on. And, of course, everybody blamed it all on Ludovick—even that year's run of bad weather.\n\n\n There were famines, riots, plagues, and, after the waves of mob hostility had coalesced into national groupings, wars. It was like the old days again, precisely as described in the textbooks." ], [ "You could tell malcontents, even if they did not voice their dissatisfactions, by their faces. The vast majority of the human race, living good and happy lives, had smooth and pleasant faces. Malcontents' faces were lined and sometimes, in extreme cases, furrowed. Everyone could easily tell who they were by looking at them, and most people avoided them.\nIt was not that griping was illegal, for the Belphins permitted free speech and reasonable conspiracy; it was that such behavior was considered ungenteel. Ludovick would never have dreamed of associating with this set of neighbors, once he had discovered their tendencies, had he not lost his heart to the purple-eyed Corisande at their first meeting.\n\n\n \"Politeness, bah!\" old Osmond said. \"To see a healthy young man simply—simply accepting the status quo!\"", "Corisande gave one of the rippling laughs he was to grow to hate so much. \"Darling,\nyou\nwere my secret weapon all along!\" She beamed at her \"relatives,\" and it was then he noticed the faint lines of her forehead. \"I told you I could use the power of love to destroy the Belphins!\" And then she added gently: \"I think there is no doubt who is head of 'this family' now.\"\n\n\n The uncle gave a strained laugh. \"You're going to have a great little first lady there, boy,\" he said to Ludovick.\n\n\n \"First lady?\" Ludovick repeated, still absorbed in his grief.\n\n\n \"Yes, I imagine the people will want to make you our first President by popular acclaim.\"\n\n\n Ludovick looked at him through a haze of tears. \"But I killed The Belphin. I didn't mean to, but ... they must hate me!\"", "\"Bah!\" said old Osmond Flockhart, Corisande's grandfather. Ludovick was sure that, underneath his crustiness, the gnarled patriarch hid a heart of gold. Although he had been mining assiduously, the young man had not yet been able to strike that vein; however, he did not give up hope, for not giving up hope was one of the principles that his wise old Belphin teacher had inculcated in him. Other principles were to lead the good life and keep healthy.\n\n\n \"Now, Grandfather,\" Corisande said, \"no matter what your politics, that does not excuse impoliteness.\"\n\n\n Ludovick wished she would not allude so blatantly to politics, because he had a lurking notion that Corisande's \"family\" was, in fact, a band of conspirators ... such as still dotted the green and pleasant planet and proved by their existence that Man was not advancing anywhere within measurable distance of that totality of knowledge implied by the Belphin.", "Bless her, he thought emotionally. Even in the midst of her plotting, she had time to spare a kind word for him. And then it hit him:\nshe, too, was a plotter\n.\n\n\n \"You suggest that we try to turn the power of love against the Belphins?\" the uncle asked ironically.\n\n\n Corisande gave a rippling laugh as she twirled her glittering pendant. \"In a manner of speaking,\" she said. \"I have an idea for a secret weapon which might do the trick——\"\nAt that moment, Ludovick stumbled over a jug which some careless relative had apparently left lying about the courtyard. It crashed to the tesserae, spattering Ludovick's legs and sandals with a liquid which later proved to be extremely red wine.\n\n\n \"There's someone outside!\" the uncle declared, half-rising.\n\n\n \"Nonsense!\" Corisande said, putting her hand on his shoulder. \"I didn't hear anything.\"", "The uncle looked dubious, and Ludovick thought it prudent to withdraw at this point. Besides, he had heard enough. Corisande—his Corisande—was an integral part of the conspiracy.\n\n\n He lay down to sleep that night beset by doubts. If he told the Belphins about the conspiracy, he would be betraying Corisande. As a matter of fact, he now remembered, he\nhad\nalready told them about the conspiracy and they hadn't believed him. But supposing he could\nconvince\nthem, how could he give Corisande up to them? True, it was the right thing to do—but, for the first time in his life, he could not bring himself to do what he knew to be right. He was weak, weak—and weakness was sinful. His old Belphin teacher had taught him that, too.\n\n\n As Ludovick writhed restlessly upon his bed, he became aware that someone had come into his chamber.", "\"Nonsense, my boy; they'll adore you. You'll be a hero!\"\n\n\n Events proved him right. Even those people who had lived in apparent content under the Belphins, accepting what they were given and seemingly enjoying their carefree lives, now declared themselves to have been suffering in silent resentment all along. They hurled flowers and adulatory speeches at Ludovick and composed extremely flattering songs about him.\n\n\n Shortly after he was universally acclaimed President, he married Corisande. He couldn't escape.\n\n\n \"Why doesn't she become President herself?\" he wailed, when the relatives came and found him hiding in the ruins of the Blue Tower. The people had torn the Tower down as soon as they were sure The Belphin was dead and the others thereby rendered inoperant. \"It would spare her a lot of bother.\"", "\"They certainly did a good job of brainwashing you, boy,\" Osmond sighed. \"And of most of the young ones,\" he added mournfully. \"With each succeeding generation, more of our heritage is lost.\" He patted the girl's hand. \"You're a good girl, Corrie. You don't hold with this being cared for like some damn pet poodle.\"\n\n\n \"Never mind Osmond, Eversole,\" one of Corisande's alleged uncles grinned. \"He talks a lot, but of course he doesn't mean a quarter of what he says. Come, have some wine.\"\nHe handed a glass to Ludovick. Ludovick sipped and coughed. It tasted as if it were well above the legal alcohol limit, but he didn't like to say anything. They were taking an awful risk, though, doing a thing like that. If they got caught, they might receive a public scolding—which was, of course, no more than they deserved—but he could not bear to think of Corisande exposed to such an ordeal.", "\"So it\nwas\nyou in the courtyard. Well, what happened was I wanted to gain time, so I said I had a secret weapon of my own invention which I had not perfected, but which would cost considerably less than my uncle's model. We have to watch the budget, you know, because we can hardly expect the Belphins to supply the components for this job. Anyhow, I thought that, while my folks were waiting for me to finish it, you would have a chance to warn the Belphins.\"\n\n\n \"Corisande,\" he murmured, \"you are as noble and clever as you are beautiful.\"\nThen he caught the full import of her remarks. \"\nMe!\nBut they won't pay any attention to me!\"\n\n\n \"How do you know?\" When he remained silent, she said, \"I suppose you've already tried to warn them about us.\"\n\n\n \"I—I said\nyou\nhad nothing to do with the plot.\"", "\"Because she is not The Belphin-slayer,\" the uncle said, dragging him out. \"Besides, she loves you. Come on, Ludovick, be a man.\" So they hauled him off to the wedding and, amid much feasting, he was married to Corisande.\nHe never drew another happy breath. In the first place, now that The Belphin was dead, all the machinery that had been operated by him stopped and no one knew how to fix it. The sidewalks stopped moving, the air conditioners stopped conditioning, the food synthesizers stopped synthesizing, and so on. And, of course, everybody blamed it all on Ludovick—even that year's run of bad weather.\n\n\n There were famines, riots, plagues, and, after the waves of mob hostility had coalesced into national groupings, wars. It was like the old days again, precisely as described in the textbooks.", "That rang a bell inside his brain. \"I won't,\" he vowed, giving her hand a return squeeze. \"I promise I won't.\"\nOutside the Flockhart villa, he paused, struggling with his inner self. It was an unworthy thing to inform upon one's neighbors; on the other hand, could he stand idly by and let those neighbors attempt to destroy the social order? Deciding that the greater good was the more important—and that, moreover, it was the only way of taking Corisande away from all this—he went in search of a Belphin. That is, he waited until one glided past and called to him to leave the walk.\n\n\n \"I wish to report a conspiracy at No. 7 Mimosa Lane,\" he said. \"The girl is innocent, but the others are in it to the hilt.\"\n\n\n The Belphin appeared to think for a minute. Then he gave off a smile. \"Oh, them,\" he said. \"We know. They are harmless.\"", "\"Ludovick,\" a soft, beloved voice whispered, \"I have come to ask your help....\" It was so dark, he could not see her; he knew where she was only by the glitter of the jewel on her neck-chain as it arced through the blackness.\n\n\n \"Corisande....\" he breathed.\n\n\n \"Ludovick....\" she sighed.\n\n\n Now that the amenities were over, she resumed, \"Against my will, I have been involved in the family plot. My uncle has invented a secret weapon which he believes will counteract the power of the barriers.\"\n\n\n \"But I thought you devised it!\"", "Much as he hated to think harshly of anyone, he did not like Corisande Flockhart's relatives. He had never known anybody who had as many relatives as she did, and sometimes he suspected they were not all related to her. Then he would dismiss the thought as unworthy of him or any right-thinking human being. He loved Corisande for herself alone and not for her family. Whether they were actually her family or not was none of his business.\n\n\n \"Be happy!\" he greeted the assemblage cordially, sitting down beside Corisande on the tessellated pavement.", "Ludovick could no longer pretend his neighbors were a group of eccentrics whom he himself was eccentric enough to regard as charming.\n\n\n \"So!\" He stood up and wrapped his mantle about him. \"I knew you were against the government, and, of course, you have a legal right to disagree with its policies, but I didn't think you were actual—actual—\" he dredged a word up out of his schooldays—\"\nanarchists\n.\"\nHe turned to the girl, who was looking thoughtful as she stroked the glittering jewel that always hung at her neck. \"Corisande, how can you stay with these—\" he found another word—\"these\nsubversives\n?\"\n\n\n She smiled sadly. \"Don't forget: they're my family, Ludovick, and I owe them dutiful respect, no matter how pig-headed they are.\" She pressed his hand. \"But don't give up hope.\"", "\"They say,\" the uncle continued, impervious to Ludovick's unconcealed dislike for the subject, \"that there's really only one Belphin, who lives in the Blue Tower—in a tank or something, because he can't breathe our atmosphere—and that the others are a sort of robot he sends out to do his work for him.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense!\" Ludovick was goaded to irritation at last. \"How could a robot have that delicate play of expression, that subtle economy of movement?\"\n\n\n Corisande and the uncle exchanged glances. \"But they are absolutely blank,\" the uncle began hesitantly. \"Perhaps, with your rich poetic imagination....\"\n\n\n \"See?\" old Osmond remarked with satisfaction. \"The kid's brain-washed. I told you so.\"\n\"Even if The Belphin is a single entity,\" Ludovick went on, \"that doesn't necessarily make him less benevolent——\"", "\"Everything about us is wonderful,\" the Belphin said noncommittally. \"That's why we're so good to you people. Be happy!\" And he was off.\n\n\n But Ludovick could not be happy. He wasn't precisely sad yet, but he was thoughtful. Of course the Belphins knew better than he did, but still.... Perhaps they underestimated the seriousness of the Flockhart conspiracy. On the other hand, perhaps it was he who was taking the Flockharts too seriously. Maybe he should investigate further before doing anything rash.\n\n\n Later that night, he slipped over to the Flockhart villa and nosed about in the courtyard until he found the window behind which the family was conspiring. He peered through a chink in the curtains, so he could both see and hear.\n\n\n Corisande was saying, \"And so I think there is a lot in what Ludovick said....\"", "\"No, Corisande,\" he sighed. \"I can't let you go. I'll do it.\"\nNext morning, he set out to warn Belphins. He knew it wasn't much use, but it was all he could do. The first half dozen responded in much the same way the Belphin he had warned the previous day had done, by courteously acknowledging his solicitude and assuring him there was no need for alarm; they knew all about the Flockharts and everything would be all right.\n\n\n After that, they started to get increasingly huffy—which would, he thought, substantiate the theory that they were all part of one vast coordinate network of identity. Especially since each Belphin behaved as if Ludovick had been repeatedly annoying\nhim\n.\n\n\n Finally, they refused to get off the walks when he hailed them—which was unheard of, for no Belphin had ever before failed to respond to an Earthman's call—and when he started running along the walks after them, they ran much faster than he could.", "In the second place, Ludovick could never forget that, when Corisande had sent him to the Blue Tower, she could not have been sure that her secret weapon would work. Love might\nnot\nhave conquered all—in fact, it was the more likely hypothesis that it wouldn't—and he would have been killed by the first barrier. And no husband likes to think that his wife thinks he's expendable; it makes him feel she doesn't really love him.\n\n\n So, in thirtieth year of his reign as Dictator of Earth, Ludovick poisoned Corisande—that is, had her poisoned, for by now he had a Minister of Assassination to handle such little matters—and married a very pretty, very young, very affectionate blonde. He wasn't particularly happy with her, either, but at least it was a change.\n\n\n\n\n —EVELYN E. SMITH", "\"But no human being has ever come near him!\" he said plaintively. \"You know that all those who have tried perished. And that can't be a rumor, because your grandfather said——\"\n\n\n \"But they came to\nattack\nThe Belphin. You're coming to\nwarn\nhim! That makes a big difference. Ludovick....\" She took his hands in hers; in the darkness, the jewel swung madly on her presumably heaving bosom. \"This is bigger than both of us. It's for Earth.\"\n\n\n He knew it was his patriotic duty to do as she said; still, he had enjoyed life so much. \"Corisande, wouldn't it be much simpler if we just destroyed your uncle's secret weapon?\"\n\n\n \"He'd only make another. Don't you see, Ludovick, this is our only chance to save the Belphins, to save humanity.... But, of course, I don't have the right to send you. I'll go myself.\"", "\"Of course they have their own source of power,\" Ludovick informed them, smiling to himself, for his old Belphin teacher had taken great care to instill a sense of humor into him. \"A Belphin was explaining that to me only today.\"\n\n\n Twenty heads swiveled toward him. He felt uncomfortable, for he was a modest young man and did not like to be the cynosure of all eyes.\n\n\n \"Tell us, dear boy,\" the uncle said, grabbing Ludovick's glass from the plinth and filling it, \"what exactly did he say?\"\n\n\n \"He said the Belphins rule through the power of love.\"\n\n\n The glass crashed to the tesserae as the uncle uttered a very unworthy word.\n\n\n \"And I suppose it was love that killed Mieczyslaw and George when they tried to storm the Blue Tower——\" old Osmond began, then halted at the looks he was getting from everybody.", "\"If the status quo is a good status quo,\" Ludovick said uneasily, for he did not like to discuss such subjects, \"why should I not accept it? We have everything we could possibly want. What do we lack?\"\n\n\n \"Our freedom,\" Osmond retorted.\n\n\n \"But we\nare\nfree,\" Ludovick said, perplexed. \"We can say what we like, do what we like, so long as it is consonant with the public good.\"\n\n\n \"Ah, but who determines what is consonant with the public good?\"\n\n\n Ludovick could no longer temporize with truth, even for Corisande's sake. \"Look here, old man, I have read books. I know about the old days before the Belphins came from the stars. Men were destroying themselves quickly through wars, or slowly through want. There is none of that any more.\"" ], [ "\"The Belphin of Belphins did things for us,\" Ludovick countered. \"You are all only his followers. How do I know you are\nreally\nfollowing him? How do I know you haven't turned against him?\"\n\n\n Without giving the creature a chance to answer, he strode forward. The Belphin attempted to bar his way. Ludovick knew one Belphin was a myriad times as strong as a human, so it was out of utter futility that he struck.", "\"They say,\" the uncle continued, impervious to Ludovick's unconcealed dislike for the subject, \"that there's really only one Belphin, who lives in the Blue Tower—in a tank or something, because he can't breathe our atmosphere—and that the others are a sort of robot he sends out to do his work for him.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense!\" Ludovick was goaded to irritation at last. \"How could a robot have that delicate play of expression, that subtle economy of movement?\"\n\n\n Corisande and the uncle exchanged glances. \"But they are absolutely blank,\" the uncle began hesitantly. \"Perhaps, with your rich poetic imagination....\"\n\n\n \"See?\" old Osmond remarked with satisfaction. \"The kid's brain-washed. I told you so.\"\n\"Even if The Belphin is a single entity,\" Ludovick went on, \"that doesn't necessarily make him less benevolent——\"", "\"Everything about us is wonderful,\" the Belphin said noncommittally. \"That's why we're so good to you people. Be happy!\" And he was off.\n\n\n But Ludovick could not be happy. He wasn't precisely sad yet, but he was thoughtful. Of course the Belphins knew better than he did, but still.... Perhaps they underestimated the seriousness of the Flockhart conspiracy. On the other hand, perhaps it was he who was taking the Flockharts too seriously. Maybe he should investigate further before doing anything rash.\n\n\n Later that night, he slipped over to the Flockhart villa and nosed about in the courtyard until he found the window behind which the family was conspiring. He peered through a chink in the curtains, so he could both see and hear.\n\n\n Corisande was saying, \"And so I think there is a lot in what Ludovick said....\"", "Ludovick stretched his own well-kept golden body and rejoiced in the knowing that he was a man and not a Belphin. Immediately afterward, he was sorry for the heartless thought. Didn't the Belphins work only to serve humanity? How ungrateful, then, it was to gloat over them! Besides, he comforted himself, probably, if the truth were known, the Belphins\nliked\nto work. He hailed a passing Belphin for assurance on this point.\n\n\n Courteous, like all members of his species, the creature leaped from the street and listened attentively to the young man's question. \"We Belphins have but one like and one dislike,\" he replied. \"We like what is right and we dislike what is wrong.\"\n\n\n \"But how can you tell what is right and what is wrong?\" Ludovick persisted.", "It was twilight when he approached the Blue Tower. Commending himself to the Infinite Virtue, he entered. The Belphin at the reception desk did not give off the customary smiling expression. In fact, he seemed to radiate a curiously apprehensive aura.\n\n\n \"Go back, young man,\" he said. \"You're not wanted here.\"\n\n\n \"I must see The Belphin of Belphins. I must warn him against the Flockharts.\"\n\n\n \"He has been warned,\" the receptionist told him. \"Go home and be happy!\"\n\n\n \"I don't trust you or your brothers. I must see The Belphin himself.\"\n\n\n Suddenly this particular Belphin lost his commanding manners. He began to wilt, insofar as so rigidly constructed a creature could go limp. \"Please, we've done so much for you. Do this for us.\"", "\"Of course they have their own source of power,\" Ludovick informed them, smiling to himself, for his old Belphin teacher had taken great care to instill a sense of humor into him. \"A Belphin was explaining that to me only today.\"\n\n\n Twenty heads swiveled toward him. He felt uncomfortable, for he was a modest young man and did not like to be the cynosure of all eyes.\n\n\n \"Tell us, dear boy,\" the uncle said, grabbing Ludovick's glass from the plinth and filling it, \"what exactly did he say?\"\n\n\n \"He said the Belphins rule through the power of love.\"\n\n\n The glass crashed to the tesserae as the uncle uttered a very unworthy word.\n\n\n \"And I suppose it was love that killed Mieczyslaw and George when they tried to storm the Blue Tower——\" old Osmond began, then halted at the looks he was getting from everybody.", "But all Ludovick knew was that he had to get to The Belphin within and warn him. He battered down the door; that is, he would have battered down the door if it had not turned out to be unlocked. A stream of noxious vapor rushed out of the opening, causing him to black out.\n\n\n When he came to, most of the vapor had dissipated. The Belphin of Belphins was already dying of asphyxiation, since it was, in fact, a single alien entity who breathed another combination of elements. The room at the head of the stairs had been its tank.\n\n\n \"You fool....\" it gasped. \"Through your muddle-headed integrity ... you have destroyed not only me ... but Earth's future. I tried to make ... this planet a better place for humanity ... and this is my reward....\"", "The Belphin of Belphins died in Ludovick's arms. He was the last of his race, so far as Earth was concerned, for no more came. If, as they had said themselves, some outside power had sent them to take care of the human race, then that power had given up the race as a bad job. If they were merely exploiting Earth, as the malcontents had kept suggesting, apparently it had proven too dangerous or too costly a venture.\nShortly after The Belphin's demise, the Flockharts arrived en masse. \"We won't need your secret weapons now,\" Ludovick told them dully. \"The Belphin of Belphins is dead.\"", "\"That was good of you.\" She continued in a warmer tone: \"How many Belphins did you warn, then?\"\n\n\n \"Just one. When you tell one something, you tell them all. You know that. Everyone knows that.\"\n\n\n \"That's just theory,\" she said. \"It's never been proven. All we do know is that they have some sort of central clearing house of information, presumably The Belphin of Belphins. But we don't know that they are incapable of thinking or acting individually. We don't really know much about them at all; they're very secretive.\"\n\n\n \"Aloof,\" he corrected her, \"as befits a ruling race. But always affable.\"\n\n\n \"You must warn as many Belphins as you can.\"\n\n\n \"And if none listens to me?\"\n\n\n \"Then,\" she said dramatically, \"you must approach The Belphin of Belphins himself.\"", "At last he gave up and wandered about the city for hours, speaking to neither human nor Belphin, wondering what to do. That is, he knew what he had to do; he was wondering\nhow\nto do it. He would never be able to reach The Belphin of Belphins. No human being had ever done it. Mieczyslaw and George had died trying to reach him (or it). Even though their intentions had been hostile and Ludovick's would be helpful, there was little chance he would be allowed to reach The Belphin with all the other Belphins against him. What guarantee was there that The Belphin would not be against him, too?\n\n\n And yet he knew that he would have to risk his life; there was no help for it. He had never wanted to be a hero, and here he had heroism thrust upon him. He knew he could not succeed; equally well, he knew he could not turn back, for his Belphin teacher had instructed him in the meaning of duty.", "\"We\nknow\n,\" the Belphin said, gazing reverently across the city to the blue spire of the tower where The Belphin of Belphins dwelt, in constant communication with every member of his race at all times, or so they said. \"That is why we were placed in charge of humanity. Someday you, too, may advance to the point where you\nknow\n, and we shall return whence we came.\"\n\n\n \"But\nwho\nplaced you in charge,\" Ludovick asked, \"and whence\ndid\nyou come?\" Fearing he might seem motivated by vulgar curiosity, he explained, \"I am doing research for an epic poem.\"\nA lifetime spent under their gentle guardianship had made Ludovick able to interpret the expression that flitted across this Belphin's frontispiece as a sad, sweet smile.", "\"Because she is not The Belphin-slayer,\" the uncle said, dragging him out. \"Besides, she loves you. Come on, Ludovick, be a man.\" So they hauled him off to the wedding and, amid much feasting, he was married to Corisande.\nHe never drew another happy breath. In the first place, now that The Belphin was dead, all the machinery that had been operated by him stopped and no one knew how to fix it. The sidewalks stopped moving, the air conditioners stopped conditioning, the food synthesizers stopped synthesizing, and so on. And, of course, everybody blamed it all on Ludovick—even that year's run of bad weather.\n\n\n There were famines, riots, plagues, and, after the waves of mob hostility had coalesced into national groupings, wars. It was like the old days again, precisely as described in the textbooks.", "Moreover, on a sultry spring afternoon like this one, there would be few people wandering abroad. Most would be lying on sun-kissed white beaches or in sun-drenched parks, or, for those who did not fancy being either kissed or drenched by the sun, basking in the comfort of their own air-conditioned villas.\n\n\n Some would, like Ludovick, be writing poems; others composing symphonies; still others painting pictures. Those who were without creative talent or the inclination to indulge it would be relaxing their well-kept golden bodies in whatever surroundings they had chosen to spend this particular one of the perfect days that stretched in an unbroken line before every member of the human race from the cradle to the crematorium.\n\n\n Only the Belphins were much in evidence. Only the Belphins had duties to perform. Only the Belphins worked.", "\"Please, young man——\" the Belphin began. \"You don't understand. Let me explain.\"\n\n\n But Ludovick destroyed the thing before it could say anything further, and he passed right through the barrier. He had to get to the top and warn The Belphin of Belphins, whoever or whatever he (or it) was, that the Flockharts had a secret weapon which might be able to annihilate it (or him). Belphin after Belphin Ludovick destroyed, and barrier after barrier he penetrated until he reached the top. At the head of the stairs was a vast golden door.\n\n\n \"Go no further, Ludovick Eversole!\" a mighty voice roared from within. \"To open that door is to bring disaster upon your race.\"", "That rang a bell inside his brain. \"I won't,\" he vowed, giving her hand a return squeeze. \"I promise I won't.\"\nOutside the Flockhart villa, he paused, struggling with his inner self. It was an unworthy thing to inform upon one's neighbors; on the other hand, could he stand idly by and let those neighbors attempt to destroy the social order? Deciding that the greater good was the more important—and that, moreover, it was the only way of taking Corisande away from all this—he went in search of a Belphin. That is, he waited until one glided past and called to him to leave the walk.\n\n\n \"I wish to report a conspiracy at No. 7 Mimosa Lane,\" he said. \"The girl is innocent, but the others are in it to the hilt.\"\n\n\n The Belphin appeared to think for a minute. Then he gave off a smile. \"Oh, them,\" he said. \"We know. They are harmless.\"", "You could tell malcontents, even if they did not voice their dissatisfactions, by their faces. The vast majority of the human race, living good and happy lives, had smooth and pleasant faces. Malcontents' faces were lined and sometimes, in extreme cases, furrowed. Everyone could easily tell who they were by looking at them, and most people avoided them.\nIt was not that griping was illegal, for the Belphins permitted free speech and reasonable conspiracy; it was that such behavior was considered ungenteel. Ludovick would never have dreamed of associating with this set of neighbors, once he had discovered their tendencies, had he not lost his heart to the purple-eyed Corisande at their first meeting.\n\n\n \"Politeness, bah!\" old Osmond said. \"To see a healthy young man simply—simply accepting the status quo!\"", "\"Harmless!\" Ludovick repeated. \"Why, I understand they've already tried to—to attack the Blue Tower by\nforce\n!\"\n\n\n \"Quite. And failed. For we are protected from hostile forces, as you were told earlier, by the power of love.\"\n\n\n Ludovick knew, of course, that the Belphin used the word\nlove\nmetaphorically, that the Tower was protected by a series of highly efficient barriers of force to repel attackers—barriers which, he realized now, from the sad fate of Mieczyslaw and George, were potentially lethal. However, he did not blame the Belphin for being so cagy about his race's source of power, not with people like the Flockharts running about subverting and whatnot.\n\n\n \"You certainly do have a wonderful intercommunication system,\" he murmured.", "The Belphin collapsed completely, flying apart in a welter of fragile springs and gears. The fact was of some deeper significance, Ludovick knew, but he was too numbed by his incredible success to be able to think clearly. All he knew was that The Belphin would be able to explain things to him.\nBells began to clash and clang. That meant the force barriers had gone up. He could see the shimmering insubstance of the first one before him. Squaring his shoulders, he charged it ... and walked right through. He looked himself up and down. He was alive and entire.\n\n\n Then the whole thing was a fraud; the barriers were not lethal—or perhaps even actual. But what of Mieczyslaw? And George? And countless rumored others? He would not let himself even try to think of them. He would not let himself even try to think of anything save his duty.\n\n\n A staircase spiraled up ahead of him. A Belphin was at its foot. Behind him, a barrier iridesced.", "\"We come from beyond the stars,\" he said. Ludovick already knew that; he had hoped for something a little more specific. \"We were placed in power by those who had the right. And the power through which we rule is the power of love! Be happy!\"\n\n\n And with that conventional farewell (which also served as a greeting), he stepped onto the sidewalk and was borne off. Ludovick looked after him pensively for a moment, then shrugged. Why\nshould\nthe Belphins surrender their secrets to gratify the idle curiosity of a poet?\n\n\n Ludovick packed his portable scriptwriter in its case and went to call on the girl next door, whom he loved with a deep and intermittently requited passion.\n\n\n As he passed between the tall columns leading into the Flockhart courtyard, he noted with regret that there were quite a number of Corisande's relatives present, lying about sunning themselves and sipping beverages which probably touched the legal limit of intoxicatability.", "\"But no human being has ever come near him!\" he said plaintively. \"You know that all those who have tried perished. And that can't be a rumor, because your grandfather said——\"\n\n\n \"But they came to\nattack\nThe Belphin. You're coming to\nwarn\nhim! That makes a big difference. Ludovick....\" She took his hands in hers; in the darkness, the jewel swung madly on her presumably heaving bosom. \"This is bigger than both of us. It's for Earth.\"\n\n\n He knew it was his patriotic duty to do as she said; still, he had enjoyed life so much. \"Corisande, wouldn't it be much simpler if we just destroyed your uncle's secret weapon?\"\n\n\n \"He'd only make another. Don't you see, Ludovick, this is our only chance to save the Belphins, to save humanity.... But, of course, I don't have the right to send you. I'll go myself.\"" ], [ "The Belphin of Belphins died in Ludovick's arms. He was the last of his race, so far as Earth was concerned, for no more came. If, as they had said themselves, some outside power had sent them to take care of the human race, then that power had given up the race as a bad job. If they were merely exploiting Earth, as the malcontents had kept suggesting, apparently it had proven too dangerous or too costly a venture.\nShortly after The Belphin's demise, the Flockharts arrived en masse. \"We won't need your secret weapons now,\" Ludovick told them dully. \"The Belphin of Belphins is dead.\"", "\"Of course they have their own source of power,\" Ludovick informed them, smiling to himself, for his old Belphin teacher had taken great care to instill a sense of humor into him. \"A Belphin was explaining that to me only today.\"\n\n\n Twenty heads swiveled toward him. He felt uncomfortable, for he was a modest young man and did not like to be the cynosure of all eyes.\n\n\n \"Tell us, dear boy,\" the uncle said, grabbing Ludovick's glass from the plinth and filling it, \"what exactly did he say?\"\n\n\n \"He said the Belphins rule through the power of love.\"\n\n\n The glass crashed to the tesserae as the uncle uttered a very unworthy word.\n\n\n \"And I suppose it was love that killed Mieczyslaw and George when they tried to storm the Blue Tower——\" old Osmond began, then halted at the looks he was getting from everybody.", "But all Ludovick knew was that he had to get to The Belphin within and warn him. He battered down the door; that is, he would have battered down the door if it had not turned out to be unlocked. A stream of noxious vapor rushed out of the opening, causing him to black out.\n\n\n When he came to, most of the vapor had dissipated. The Belphin of Belphins was already dying of asphyxiation, since it was, in fact, a single alien entity who breathed another combination of elements. The room at the head of the stairs had been its tank.\n\n\n \"You fool....\" it gasped. \"Through your muddle-headed integrity ... you have destroyed not only me ... but Earth's future. I tried to make ... this planet a better place for humanity ... and this is my reward....\"", "\"They say,\" the uncle continued, impervious to Ludovick's unconcealed dislike for the subject, \"that there's really only one Belphin, who lives in the Blue Tower—in a tank or something, because he can't breathe our atmosphere—and that the others are a sort of robot he sends out to do his work for him.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense!\" Ludovick was goaded to irritation at last. \"How could a robot have that delicate play of expression, that subtle economy of movement?\"\n\n\n Corisande and the uncle exchanged glances. \"But they are absolutely blank,\" the uncle began hesitantly. \"Perhaps, with your rich poetic imagination....\"\n\n\n \"See?\" old Osmond remarked with satisfaction. \"The kid's brain-washed. I told you so.\"\n\"Even if The Belphin is a single entity,\" Ludovick went on, \"that doesn't necessarily make him less benevolent——\"", "\"We\nknow\n,\" the Belphin said, gazing reverently across the city to the blue spire of the tower where The Belphin of Belphins dwelt, in constant communication with every member of his race at all times, or so they said. \"That is why we were placed in charge of humanity. Someday you, too, may advance to the point where you\nknow\n, and we shall return whence we came.\"\n\n\n \"But\nwho\nplaced you in charge,\" Ludovick asked, \"and whence\ndid\nyou come?\" Fearing he might seem motivated by vulgar curiosity, he explained, \"I am doing research for an epic poem.\"\nA lifetime spent under their gentle guardianship had made Ludovick able to interpret the expression that flitted across this Belphin's frontispiece as a sad, sweet smile.", "\"The Belphin of Belphins did things for us,\" Ludovick countered. \"You are all only his followers. How do I know you are\nreally\nfollowing him? How do I know you haven't turned against him?\"\n\n\n Without giving the creature a chance to answer, he strode forward. The Belphin attempted to bar his way. Ludovick knew one Belphin was a myriad times as strong as a human, so it was out of utter futility that he struck.", "\"Everything about us is wonderful,\" the Belphin said noncommittally. \"That's why we're so good to you people. Be happy!\" And he was off.\n\n\n But Ludovick could not be happy. He wasn't precisely sad yet, but he was thoughtful. Of course the Belphins knew better than he did, but still.... Perhaps they underestimated the seriousness of the Flockhart conspiracy. On the other hand, perhaps it was he who was taking the Flockharts too seriously. Maybe he should investigate further before doing anything rash.\n\n\n Later that night, he slipped over to the Flockhart villa and nosed about in the courtyard until he found the window behind which the family was conspiring. He peered through a chink in the curtains, so he could both see and hear.\n\n\n Corisande was saying, \"And so I think there is a lot in what Ludovick said....\"", "\"It's only reasonable,\" the uncle went on, \"that older people should have a—a thing about being governed by foreigners.\"\n\n\n Ludovick smiled and set his nearly full glass down on a plinth. \"You could hardly call the Belphins foreigners; they've been on Earth longer than even the oldest of us.\"\n\n\n \"You seem to be pretty chummy with 'em,\" the uncle said, looking narrow-eyed at Ludovick.\n\n\n \"No more so than any other loyal citizen,\" Ludovick replied.\n\n\n The uncle sat up and wrapped his arms around his thick bare legs. He was a powerful, hairy brute of a creature who had not taken advantage of the numerous cosmetic techniques offered by the benevolent Belphins. \"Don't you think it's funny they can breathe our air so easily?\"", "\"But no human being has ever come near him!\" he said plaintively. \"You know that all those who have tried perished. And that can't be a rumor, because your grandfather said——\"\n\n\n \"But they came to\nattack\nThe Belphin. You're coming to\nwarn\nhim! That makes a big difference. Ludovick....\" She took his hands in hers; in the darkness, the jewel swung madly on her presumably heaving bosom. \"This is bigger than both of us. It's for Earth.\"\n\n\n He knew it was his patriotic duty to do as she said; still, he had enjoyed life so much. \"Corisande, wouldn't it be much simpler if we just destroyed your uncle's secret weapon?\"\n\n\n \"He'd only make another. Don't you see, Ludovick, this is our only chance to save the Belphins, to save humanity.... But, of course, I don't have the right to send you. I'll go myself.\"", "\"We come from beyond the stars,\" he said. Ludovick already knew that; he had hoped for something a little more specific. \"We were placed in power by those who had the right. And the power through which we rule is the power of love! Be happy!\"\n\n\n And with that conventional farewell (which also served as a greeting), he stepped onto the sidewalk and was borne off. Ludovick looked after him pensively for a moment, then shrugged. Why\nshould\nthe Belphins surrender their secrets to gratify the idle curiosity of a poet?\n\n\n Ludovick packed his portable scriptwriter in its case and went to call on the girl next door, whom he loved with a deep and intermittently requited passion.\n\n\n As he passed between the tall columns leading into the Flockhart courtyard, he noted with regret that there were quite a number of Corisande's relatives present, lying about sunning themselves and sipping beverages which probably touched the legal limit of intoxicatability.", "\"Because she is not The Belphin-slayer,\" the uncle said, dragging him out. \"Besides, she loves you. Come on, Ludovick, be a man.\" So they hauled him off to the wedding and, amid much feasting, he was married to Corisande.\nHe never drew another happy breath. In the first place, now that The Belphin was dead, all the machinery that had been operated by him stopped and no one knew how to fix it. The sidewalks stopped moving, the air conditioners stopped conditioning, the food synthesizers stopped synthesizing, and so on. And, of course, everybody blamed it all on Ludovick—even that year's run of bad weather.\n\n\n There were famines, riots, plagues, and, after the waves of mob hostility had coalesced into national groupings, wars. It was like the old days again, precisely as described in the textbooks.", "It was twilight when he approached the Blue Tower. Commending himself to the Infinite Virtue, he entered. The Belphin at the reception desk did not give off the customary smiling expression. In fact, he seemed to radiate a curiously apprehensive aura.\n\n\n \"Go back, young man,\" he said. \"You're not wanted here.\"\n\n\n \"I must see The Belphin of Belphins. I must warn him against the Flockharts.\"\n\n\n \"He has been warned,\" the receptionist told him. \"Go home and be happy!\"\n\n\n \"I don't trust you or your brothers. I must see The Belphin himself.\"\n\n\n Suddenly this particular Belphin lost his commanding manners. He began to wilt, insofar as so rigidly constructed a creature could go limp. \"Please, we've done so much for you. Do this for us.\"", "\"That was good of you.\" She continued in a warmer tone: \"How many Belphins did you warn, then?\"\n\n\n \"Just one. When you tell one something, you tell them all. You know that. Everyone knows that.\"\n\n\n \"That's just theory,\" she said. \"It's never been proven. All we do know is that they have some sort of central clearing house of information, presumably The Belphin of Belphins. But we don't know that they are incapable of thinking or acting individually. We don't really know much about them at all; they're very secretive.\"\n\n\n \"Aloof,\" he corrected her, \"as befits a ruling race. But always affable.\"\n\n\n \"You must warn as many Belphins as you can.\"\n\n\n \"And if none listens to me?\"\n\n\n \"Then,\" she said dramatically, \"you must approach The Belphin of Belphins himself.\"", "\"No, Corisande,\" he sighed. \"I can't let you go. I'll do it.\"\nNext morning, he set out to warn Belphins. He knew it wasn't much use, but it was all he could do. The first half dozen responded in much the same way the Belphin he had warned the previous day had done, by courteously acknowledging his solicitude and assuring him there was no need for alarm; they knew all about the Flockharts and everything would be all right.\n\n\n After that, they started to get increasingly huffy—which would, he thought, substantiate the theory that they were all part of one vast coordinate network of identity. Especially since each Belphin behaved as if Ludovick had been repeatedly annoying\nhim\n.\n\n\n Finally, they refused to get off the walks when he hailed them—which was unheard of, for no Belphin had ever before failed to respond to an Earthman's call—and when he started running along the walks after them, they ran much faster than he could.", "Ludovick stretched his own well-kept golden body and rejoiced in the knowing that he was a man and not a Belphin. Immediately afterward, he was sorry for the heartless thought. Didn't the Belphins work only to serve humanity? How ungrateful, then, it was to gloat over them! Besides, he comforted himself, probably, if the truth were known, the Belphins\nliked\nto work. He hailed a passing Belphin for assurance on this point.\n\n\n Courteous, like all members of his species, the creature leaped from the street and listened attentively to the young man's question. \"We Belphins have but one like and one dislike,\" he replied. \"We like what is right and we dislike what is wrong.\"\n\n\n \"But how can you tell what is right and what is wrong?\" Ludovick persisted.", "\"Please, young man——\" the Belphin began. \"You don't understand. Let me explain.\"\n\n\n But Ludovick destroyed the thing before it could say anything further, and he passed right through the barrier. He had to get to the top and warn The Belphin of Belphins, whoever or whatever he (or it) was, that the Flockharts had a secret weapon which might be able to annihilate it (or him). Belphin after Belphin Ludovick destroyed, and barrier after barrier he penetrated until he reached the top. At the head of the stairs was a vast golden door.\n\n\n \"Go no further, Ludovick Eversole!\" a mighty voice roared from within. \"To open that door is to bring disaster upon your race.\"", "At last he gave up and wandered about the city for hours, speaking to neither human nor Belphin, wondering what to do. That is, he knew what he had to do; he was wondering\nhow\nto do it. He would never be able to reach The Belphin of Belphins. No human being had ever done it. Mieczyslaw and George had died trying to reach him (or it). Even though their intentions had been hostile and Ludovick's would be helpful, there was little chance he would be allowed to reach The Belphin with all the other Belphins against him. What guarantee was there that The Belphin would not be against him, too?\n\n\n And yet he knew that he would have to risk his life; there was no help for it. He had never wanted to be a hero, and here he had heroism thrust upon him. He knew he could not succeed; equally well, he knew he could not turn back, for his Belphin teacher had instructed him in the meaning of duty.", "\"All lies and exaggeration,\" old Osmond said. \"\nMy\ngrandfather told me that, when the Belphins took over Earth, they rewrote all the textbooks to suit their own purposes. Now nothing but Belphin propaganda is taught in the schools.\"\n\n\n \"But surely some of what they teach about the past must be true,\" Ludovick insisted. \"And today every one of us has enough to eat and drink, a place to live, beautiful garments to wear, and all the time in the world to utilize as he chooses in all sorts of pleasant activities. What is missing?\"\n\n\n \"They've taken away our frontiers!\"\n\n\n Behind his back, Corisande made a little filial face at Ludovick.\n\n\n Ludovick tried to make the old man see reason. \"But I'm happy. And everybody is happy, except—except a few\nkilljoys\nlike you.\"", "\"Harmless!\" Ludovick repeated. \"Why, I understand they've already tried to—to attack the Blue Tower by\nforce\n!\"\n\n\n \"Quite. And failed. For we are protected from hostile forces, as you were told earlier, by the power of love.\"\n\n\n Ludovick knew, of course, that the Belphin used the word\nlove\nmetaphorically, that the Tower was protected by a series of highly efficient barriers of force to repel attackers—barriers which, he realized now, from the sad fate of Mieczyslaw and George, were potentially lethal. However, he did not blame the Belphin for being so cagy about his race's source of power, not with people like the Flockharts running about subverting and whatnot.\n\n\n \"You certainly do have a wonderful intercommunication system,\" he murmured.", "Moreover, on a sultry spring afternoon like this one, there would be few people wandering abroad. Most would be lying on sun-kissed white beaches or in sun-drenched parks, or, for those who did not fancy being either kissed or drenched by the sun, basking in the comfort of their own air-conditioned villas.\n\n\n Some would, like Ludovick, be writing poems; others composing symphonies; still others painting pictures. Those who were without creative talent or the inclination to indulge it would be relaxing their well-kept golden bodies in whatever surroundings they had chosen to spend this particular one of the perfect days that stretched in an unbroken line before every member of the human race from the cradle to the crematorium.\n\n\n Only the Belphins were much in evidence. Only the Belphins had duties to perform. Only the Belphins worked." ], [ "Corisande gave one of the rippling laughs he was to grow to hate so much. \"Darling,\nyou\nwere my secret weapon all along!\" She beamed at her \"relatives,\" and it was then he noticed the faint lines of her forehead. \"I told you I could use the power of love to destroy the Belphins!\" And then she added gently: \"I think there is no doubt who is head of 'this family' now.\"\n\n\n The uncle gave a strained laugh. \"You're going to have a great little first lady there, boy,\" he said to Ludovick.\n\n\n \"First lady?\" Ludovick repeated, still absorbed in his grief.\n\n\n \"Yes, I imagine the people will want to make you our first President by popular acclaim.\"\n\n\n Ludovick looked at him through a haze of tears. \"But I killed The Belphin. I didn't mean to, but ... they must hate me!\"", "\"Ludovick,\" a soft, beloved voice whispered, \"I have come to ask your help....\" It was so dark, he could not see her; he knew where she was only by the glitter of the jewel on her neck-chain as it arced through the blackness.\n\n\n \"Corisande....\" he breathed.\n\n\n \"Ludovick....\" she sighed.\n\n\n Now that the amenities were over, she resumed, \"Against my will, I have been involved in the family plot. My uncle has invented a secret weapon which he believes will counteract the power of the barriers.\"\n\n\n \"But I thought you devised it!\"", "The uncle looked dubious, and Ludovick thought it prudent to withdraw at this point. Besides, he had heard enough. Corisande—his Corisande—was an integral part of the conspiracy.\n\n\n He lay down to sleep that night beset by doubts. If he told the Belphins about the conspiracy, he would be betraying Corisande. As a matter of fact, he now remembered, he\nhad\nalready told them about the conspiracy and they hadn't believed him. But supposing he could\nconvince\nthem, how could he give Corisande up to them? True, it was the right thing to do—but, for the first time in his life, he could not bring himself to do what he knew to be right. He was weak, weak—and weakness was sinful. His old Belphin teacher had taught him that, too.\n\n\n As Ludovick writhed restlessly upon his bed, he became aware that someone had come into his chamber.", "\"Nonsense, my boy; they'll adore you. You'll be a hero!\"\n\n\n Events proved him right. Even those people who had lived in apparent content under the Belphins, accepting what they were given and seemingly enjoying their carefree lives, now declared themselves to have been suffering in silent resentment all along. They hurled flowers and adulatory speeches at Ludovick and composed extremely flattering songs about him.\n\n\n Shortly after he was universally acclaimed President, he married Corisande. He couldn't escape.\n\n\n \"Why doesn't she become President herself?\" he wailed, when the relatives came and found him hiding in the ruins of the Blue Tower. The people had torn the Tower down as soon as they were sure The Belphin was dead and the others thereby rendered inoperant. \"It would spare her a lot of bother.\"", "Bless her, he thought emotionally. Even in the midst of her plotting, she had time to spare a kind word for him. And then it hit him:\nshe, too, was a plotter\n.\n\n\n \"You suggest that we try to turn the power of love against the Belphins?\" the uncle asked ironically.\n\n\n Corisande gave a rippling laugh as she twirled her glittering pendant. \"In a manner of speaking,\" she said. \"I have an idea for a secret weapon which might do the trick——\"\nAt that moment, Ludovick stumbled over a jug which some careless relative had apparently left lying about the courtyard. It crashed to the tesserae, spattering Ludovick's legs and sandals with a liquid which later proved to be extremely red wine.\n\n\n \"There's someone outside!\" the uncle declared, half-rising.\n\n\n \"Nonsense!\" Corisande said, putting her hand on his shoulder. \"I didn't hear anything.\"", "In the second place, Ludovick could never forget that, when Corisande had sent him to the Blue Tower, she could not have been sure that her secret weapon would work. Love might\nnot\nhave conquered all—in fact, it was the more likely hypothesis that it wouldn't—and he would have been killed by the first barrier. And no husband likes to think that his wife thinks he's expendable; it makes him feel she doesn't really love him.\n\n\n So, in thirtieth year of his reign as Dictator of Earth, Ludovick poisoned Corisande—that is, had her poisoned, for by now he had a Minister of Assassination to handle such little matters—and married a very pretty, very young, very affectionate blonde. He wasn't particularly happy with her, either, but at least it was a change.\n\n\n\n\n —EVELYN E. SMITH", "Ludovick could no longer pretend his neighbors were a group of eccentrics whom he himself was eccentric enough to regard as charming.\n\n\n \"So!\" He stood up and wrapped his mantle about him. \"I knew you were against the government, and, of course, you have a legal right to disagree with its policies, but I didn't think you were actual—actual—\" he dredged a word up out of his schooldays—\"\nanarchists\n.\"\nHe turned to the girl, who was looking thoughtful as she stroked the glittering jewel that always hung at her neck. \"Corisande, how can you stay with these—\" he found another word—\"these\nsubversives\n?\"\n\n\n She smiled sadly. \"Don't forget: they're my family, Ludovick, and I owe them dutiful respect, no matter how pig-headed they are.\" She pressed his hand. \"But don't give up hope.\"", "\"Bah!\" said old Osmond Flockhart, Corisande's grandfather. Ludovick was sure that, underneath his crustiness, the gnarled patriarch hid a heart of gold. Although he had been mining assiduously, the young man had not yet been able to strike that vein; however, he did not give up hope, for not giving up hope was one of the principles that his wise old Belphin teacher had inculcated in him. Other principles were to lead the good life and keep healthy.\n\n\n \"Now, Grandfather,\" Corisande said, \"no matter what your politics, that does not excuse impoliteness.\"\n\n\n Ludovick wished she would not allude so blatantly to politics, because he had a lurking notion that Corisande's \"family\" was, in fact, a band of conspirators ... such as still dotted the green and pleasant planet and proved by their existence that Man was not advancing anywhere within measurable distance of that totality of knowledge implied by the Belphin.", "\"They certainly did a good job of brainwashing you, boy,\" Osmond sighed. \"And of most of the young ones,\" he added mournfully. \"With each succeeding generation, more of our heritage is lost.\" He patted the girl's hand. \"You're a good girl, Corrie. You don't hold with this being cared for like some damn pet poodle.\"\n\n\n \"Never mind Osmond, Eversole,\" one of Corisande's alleged uncles grinned. \"He talks a lot, but of course he doesn't mean a quarter of what he says. Come, have some wine.\"\nHe handed a glass to Ludovick. Ludovick sipped and coughed. It tasted as if it were well above the legal alcohol limit, but he didn't like to say anything. They were taking an awful risk, though, doing a thing like that. If they got caught, they might receive a public scolding—which was, of course, no more than they deserved—but he could not bear to think of Corisande exposed to such an ordeal.", "\"Because she is not The Belphin-slayer,\" the uncle said, dragging him out. \"Besides, she loves you. Come on, Ludovick, be a man.\" So they hauled him off to the wedding and, amid much feasting, he was married to Corisande.\nHe never drew another happy breath. In the first place, now that The Belphin was dead, all the machinery that had been operated by him stopped and no one knew how to fix it. The sidewalks stopped moving, the air conditioners stopped conditioning, the food synthesizers stopped synthesizing, and so on. And, of course, everybody blamed it all on Ludovick—even that year's run of bad weather.\n\n\n There were famines, riots, plagues, and, after the waves of mob hostility had coalesced into national groupings, wars. It was like the old days again, precisely as described in the textbooks.", "\"So it\nwas\nyou in the courtyard. Well, what happened was I wanted to gain time, so I said I had a secret weapon of my own invention which I had not perfected, but which would cost considerably less than my uncle's model. We have to watch the budget, you know, because we can hardly expect the Belphins to supply the components for this job. Anyhow, I thought that, while my folks were waiting for me to finish it, you would have a chance to warn the Belphins.\"\n\n\n \"Corisande,\" he murmured, \"you are as noble and clever as you are beautiful.\"\nThen he caught the full import of her remarks. \"\nMe!\nBut they won't pay any attention to me!\"\n\n\n \"How do you know?\" When he remained silent, she said, \"I suppose you've already tried to warn them about us.\"\n\n\n \"I—I said\nyou\nhad nothing to do with the plot.\"", "\"No, Corisande,\" he sighed. \"I can't let you go. I'll do it.\"\nNext morning, he set out to warn Belphins. He knew it wasn't much use, but it was all he could do. The first half dozen responded in much the same way the Belphin he had warned the previous day had done, by courteously acknowledging his solicitude and assuring him there was no need for alarm; they knew all about the Flockharts and everything would be all right.\n\n\n After that, they started to get increasingly huffy—which would, he thought, substantiate the theory that they were all part of one vast coordinate network of identity. Especially since each Belphin behaved as if Ludovick had been repeatedly annoying\nhim\n.\n\n\n Finally, they refused to get off the walks when he hailed them—which was unheard of, for no Belphin had ever before failed to respond to an Earthman's call—and when he started running along the walks after them, they ran much faster than he could.", "\"If the status quo is a good status quo,\" Ludovick said uneasily, for he did not like to discuss such subjects, \"why should I not accept it? We have everything we could possibly want. What do we lack?\"\n\n\n \"Our freedom,\" Osmond retorted.\n\n\n \"But we\nare\nfree,\" Ludovick said, perplexed. \"We can say what we like, do what we like, so long as it is consonant with the public good.\"\n\n\n \"Ah, but who determines what is consonant with the public good?\"\n\n\n Ludovick could no longer temporize with truth, even for Corisande's sake. \"Look here, old man, I have read books. I know about the old days before the Belphins came from the stars. Men were destroying themselves quickly through wars, or slowly through want. There is none of that any more.\"", "\"Everything about us is wonderful,\" the Belphin said noncommittally. \"That's why we're so good to you people. Be happy!\" And he was off.\n\n\n But Ludovick could not be happy. He wasn't precisely sad yet, but he was thoughtful. Of course the Belphins knew better than he did, but still.... Perhaps they underestimated the seriousness of the Flockhart conspiracy. On the other hand, perhaps it was he who was taking the Flockharts too seriously. Maybe he should investigate further before doing anything rash.\n\n\n Later that night, he slipped over to the Flockhart villa and nosed about in the courtyard until he found the window behind which the family was conspiring. He peered through a chink in the curtains, so he could both see and hear.\n\n\n Corisande was saying, \"And so I think there is a lot in what Ludovick said....\"", "\"Of course they have their own source of power,\" Ludovick informed them, smiling to himself, for his old Belphin teacher had taken great care to instill a sense of humor into him. \"A Belphin was explaining that to me only today.\"\n\n\n Twenty heads swiveled toward him. He felt uncomfortable, for he was a modest young man and did not like to be the cynosure of all eyes.\n\n\n \"Tell us, dear boy,\" the uncle said, grabbing Ludovick's glass from the plinth and filling it, \"what exactly did he say?\"\n\n\n \"He said the Belphins rule through the power of love.\"\n\n\n The glass crashed to the tesserae as the uncle uttered a very unworthy word.\n\n\n \"And I suppose it was love that killed Mieczyslaw and George when they tried to storm the Blue Tower——\" old Osmond began, then halted at the looks he was getting from everybody.", "Much as he hated to think harshly of anyone, he did not like Corisande Flockhart's relatives. He had never known anybody who had as many relatives as she did, and sometimes he suspected they were not all related to her. Then he would dismiss the thought as unworthy of him or any right-thinking human being. He loved Corisande for herself alone and not for her family. Whether they were actually her family or not was none of his business.\n\n\n \"Be happy!\" he greeted the assemblage cordially, sitting down beside Corisande on the tessellated pavement.", "That rang a bell inside his brain. \"I won't,\" he vowed, giving her hand a return squeeze. \"I promise I won't.\"\nOutside the Flockhart villa, he paused, struggling with his inner self. It was an unworthy thing to inform upon one's neighbors; on the other hand, could he stand idly by and let those neighbors attempt to destroy the social order? Deciding that the greater good was the more important—and that, moreover, it was the only way of taking Corisande away from all this—he went in search of a Belphin. That is, he waited until one glided past and called to him to leave the walk.\n\n\n \"I wish to report a conspiracy at No. 7 Mimosa Lane,\" he said. \"The girl is innocent, but the others are in it to the hilt.\"\n\n\n The Belphin appeared to think for a minute. Then he gave off a smile. \"Oh, them,\" he said. \"We know. They are harmless.\"", "\"But no human being has ever come near him!\" he said plaintively. \"You know that all those who have tried perished. And that can't be a rumor, because your grandfather said——\"\n\n\n \"But they came to\nattack\nThe Belphin. You're coming to\nwarn\nhim! That makes a big difference. Ludovick....\" She took his hands in hers; in the darkness, the jewel swung madly on her presumably heaving bosom. \"This is bigger than both of us. It's for Earth.\"\n\n\n He knew it was his patriotic duty to do as she said; still, he had enjoyed life so much. \"Corisande, wouldn't it be much simpler if we just destroyed your uncle's secret weapon?\"\n\n\n \"He'd only make another. Don't you see, Ludovick, this is our only chance to save the Belphins, to save humanity.... But, of course, I don't have the right to send you. I'll go myself.\"", "\"They say,\" the uncle continued, impervious to Ludovick's unconcealed dislike for the subject, \"that there's really only one Belphin, who lives in the Blue Tower—in a tank or something, because he can't breathe our atmosphere—and that the others are a sort of robot he sends out to do his work for him.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense!\" Ludovick was goaded to irritation at last. \"How could a robot have that delicate play of expression, that subtle economy of movement?\"\n\n\n Corisande and the uncle exchanged glances. \"But they are absolutely blank,\" the uncle began hesitantly. \"Perhaps, with your rich poetic imagination....\"\n\n\n \"See?\" old Osmond remarked with satisfaction. \"The kid's brain-washed. I told you so.\"\n\"Even if The Belphin is a single entity,\" Ludovick went on, \"that doesn't necessarily make him less benevolent——\"", "\"We come from beyond the stars,\" he said. Ludovick already knew that; he had hoped for something a little more specific. \"We were placed in power by those who had the right. And the power through which we rule is the power of love! Be happy!\"\n\n\n And with that conventional farewell (which also served as a greeting), he stepped onto the sidewalk and was borne off. Ludovick looked after him pensively for a moment, then shrugged. Why\nshould\nthe Belphins surrender their secrets to gratify the idle curiosity of a poet?\n\n\n Ludovick packed his portable scriptwriter in its case and went to call on the girl next door, whom he loved with a deep and intermittently requited passion.\n\n\n As he passed between the tall columns leading into the Flockhart courtyard, he noted with regret that there were quite a number of Corisande's relatives present, lying about sunning themselves and sipping beverages which probably touched the legal limit of intoxicatability." ], [ "Corisande gave one of the rippling laughs he was to grow to hate so much. \"Darling,\nyou\nwere my secret weapon all along!\" She beamed at her \"relatives,\" and it was then he noticed the faint lines of her forehead. \"I told you I could use the power of love to destroy the Belphins!\" And then she added gently: \"I think there is no doubt who is head of 'this family' now.\"\n\n\n The uncle gave a strained laugh. \"You're going to have a great little first lady there, boy,\" he said to Ludovick.\n\n\n \"First lady?\" Ludovick repeated, still absorbed in his grief.\n\n\n \"Yes, I imagine the people will want to make you our first President by popular acclaim.\"\n\n\n Ludovick looked at him through a haze of tears. \"But I killed The Belphin. I didn't mean to, but ... they must hate me!\"", "The uncle looked dubious, and Ludovick thought it prudent to withdraw at this point. Besides, he had heard enough. Corisande—his Corisande—was an integral part of the conspiracy.\n\n\n He lay down to sleep that night beset by doubts. If he told the Belphins about the conspiracy, he would be betraying Corisande. As a matter of fact, he now remembered, he\nhad\nalready told them about the conspiracy and they hadn't believed him. But supposing he could\nconvince\nthem, how could he give Corisande up to them? True, it was the right thing to do—but, for the first time in his life, he could not bring himself to do what he knew to be right. He was weak, weak—and weakness was sinful. His old Belphin teacher had taught him that, too.\n\n\n As Ludovick writhed restlessly upon his bed, he became aware that someone had come into his chamber.", "Bless her, he thought emotionally. Even in the midst of her plotting, she had time to spare a kind word for him. And then it hit him:\nshe, too, was a plotter\n.\n\n\n \"You suggest that we try to turn the power of love against the Belphins?\" the uncle asked ironically.\n\n\n Corisande gave a rippling laugh as she twirled her glittering pendant. \"In a manner of speaking,\" she said. \"I have an idea for a secret weapon which might do the trick——\"\nAt that moment, Ludovick stumbled over a jug which some careless relative had apparently left lying about the courtyard. It crashed to the tesserae, spattering Ludovick's legs and sandals with a liquid which later proved to be extremely red wine.\n\n\n \"There's someone outside!\" the uncle declared, half-rising.\n\n\n \"Nonsense!\" Corisande said, putting her hand on his shoulder. \"I didn't hear anything.\"", "\"Bah!\" said old Osmond Flockhart, Corisande's grandfather. Ludovick was sure that, underneath his crustiness, the gnarled patriarch hid a heart of gold. Although he had been mining assiduously, the young man had not yet been able to strike that vein; however, he did not give up hope, for not giving up hope was one of the principles that his wise old Belphin teacher had inculcated in him. Other principles were to lead the good life and keep healthy.\n\n\n \"Now, Grandfather,\" Corisande said, \"no matter what your politics, that does not excuse impoliteness.\"\n\n\n Ludovick wished she would not allude so blatantly to politics, because he had a lurking notion that Corisande's \"family\" was, in fact, a band of conspirators ... such as still dotted the green and pleasant planet and proved by their existence that Man was not advancing anywhere within measurable distance of that totality of knowledge implied by the Belphin.", "\"They certainly did a good job of brainwashing you, boy,\" Osmond sighed. \"And of most of the young ones,\" he added mournfully. \"With each succeeding generation, more of our heritage is lost.\" He patted the girl's hand. \"You're a good girl, Corrie. You don't hold with this being cared for like some damn pet poodle.\"\n\n\n \"Never mind Osmond, Eversole,\" one of Corisande's alleged uncles grinned. \"He talks a lot, but of course he doesn't mean a quarter of what he says. Come, have some wine.\"\nHe handed a glass to Ludovick. Ludovick sipped and coughed. It tasted as if it were well above the legal alcohol limit, but he didn't like to say anything. They were taking an awful risk, though, doing a thing like that. If they got caught, they might receive a public scolding—which was, of course, no more than they deserved—but he could not bear to think of Corisande exposed to such an ordeal.", "\"So it\nwas\nyou in the courtyard. Well, what happened was I wanted to gain time, so I said I had a secret weapon of my own invention which I had not perfected, but which would cost considerably less than my uncle's model. We have to watch the budget, you know, because we can hardly expect the Belphins to supply the components for this job. Anyhow, I thought that, while my folks were waiting for me to finish it, you would have a chance to warn the Belphins.\"\n\n\n \"Corisande,\" he murmured, \"you are as noble and clever as you are beautiful.\"\nThen he caught the full import of her remarks. \"\nMe!\nBut they won't pay any attention to me!\"\n\n\n \"How do you know?\" When he remained silent, she said, \"I suppose you've already tried to warn them about us.\"\n\n\n \"I—I said\nyou\nhad nothing to do with the plot.\"", "Ludovick could no longer pretend his neighbors were a group of eccentrics whom he himself was eccentric enough to regard as charming.\n\n\n \"So!\" He stood up and wrapped his mantle about him. \"I knew you were against the government, and, of course, you have a legal right to disagree with its policies, but I didn't think you were actual—actual—\" he dredged a word up out of his schooldays—\"\nanarchists\n.\"\nHe turned to the girl, who was looking thoughtful as she stroked the glittering jewel that always hung at her neck. \"Corisande, how can you stay with these—\" he found another word—\"these\nsubversives\n?\"\n\n\n She smiled sadly. \"Don't forget: they're my family, Ludovick, and I owe them dutiful respect, no matter how pig-headed they are.\" She pressed his hand. \"But don't give up hope.\"", "That rang a bell inside his brain. \"I won't,\" he vowed, giving her hand a return squeeze. \"I promise I won't.\"\nOutside the Flockhart villa, he paused, struggling with his inner self. It was an unworthy thing to inform upon one's neighbors; on the other hand, could he stand idly by and let those neighbors attempt to destroy the social order? Deciding that the greater good was the more important—and that, moreover, it was the only way of taking Corisande away from all this—he went in search of a Belphin. That is, he waited until one glided past and called to him to leave the walk.\n\n\n \"I wish to report a conspiracy at No. 7 Mimosa Lane,\" he said. \"The girl is innocent, but the others are in it to the hilt.\"\n\n\n The Belphin appeared to think for a minute. Then he gave off a smile. \"Oh, them,\" he said. \"We know. They are harmless.\"", "\"Ludovick,\" a soft, beloved voice whispered, \"I have come to ask your help....\" It was so dark, he could not see her; he knew where she was only by the glitter of the jewel on her neck-chain as it arced through the blackness.\n\n\n \"Corisande....\" he breathed.\n\n\n \"Ludovick....\" she sighed.\n\n\n Now that the amenities were over, she resumed, \"Against my will, I have been involved in the family plot. My uncle has invented a secret weapon which he believes will counteract the power of the barriers.\"\n\n\n \"But I thought you devised it!\"", "You could tell malcontents, even if they did not voice their dissatisfactions, by their faces. The vast majority of the human race, living good and happy lives, had smooth and pleasant faces. Malcontents' faces were lined and sometimes, in extreme cases, furrowed. Everyone could easily tell who they were by looking at them, and most people avoided them.\nIt was not that griping was illegal, for the Belphins permitted free speech and reasonable conspiracy; it was that such behavior was considered ungenteel. Ludovick would never have dreamed of associating with this set of neighbors, once he had discovered their tendencies, had he not lost his heart to the purple-eyed Corisande at their first meeting.\n\n\n \"Politeness, bah!\" old Osmond said. \"To see a healthy young man simply—simply accepting the status quo!\"", "\"Everything about us is wonderful,\" the Belphin said noncommittally. \"That's why we're so good to you people. Be happy!\" And he was off.\n\n\n But Ludovick could not be happy. He wasn't precisely sad yet, but he was thoughtful. Of course the Belphins knew better than he did, but still.... Perhaps they underestimated the seriousness of the Flockhart conspiracy. On the other hand, perhaps it was he who was taking the Flockharts too seriously. Maybe he should investigate further before doing anything rash.\n\n\n Later that night, he slipped over to the Flockhart villa and nosed about in the courtyard until he found the window behind which the family was conspiring. He peered through a chink in the curtains, so he could both see and hear.\n\n\n Corisande was saying, \"And so I think there is a lot in what Ludovick said....\"", "Much as he hated to think harshly of anyone, he did not like Corisande Flockhart's relatives. He had never known anybody who had as many relatives as she did, and sometimes he suspected they were not all related to her. Then he would dismiss the thought as unworthy of him or any right-thinking human being. He loved Corisande for herself alone and not for her family. Whether they were actually her family or not was none of his business.\n\n\n \"Be happy!\" he greeted the assemblage cordially, sitting down beside Corisande on the tessellated pavement.", "\"No, Corisande,\" he sighed. \"I can't let you go. I'll do it.\"\nNext morning, he set out to warn Belphins. He knew it wasn't much use, but it was all he could do. The first half dozen responded in much the same way the Belphin he had warned the previous day had done, by courteously acknowledging his solicitude and assuring him there was no need for alarm; they knew all about the Flockharts and everything would be all right.\n\n\n After that, they started to get increasingly huffy—which would, he thought, substantiate the theory that they were all part of one vast coordinate network of identity. Especially since each Belphin behaved as if Ludovick had been repeatedly annoying\nhim\n.\n\n\n Finally, they refused to get off the walks when he hailed them—which was unheard of, for no Belphin had ever before failed to respond to an Earthman's call—and when he started running along the walks after them, they ran much faster than he could.", "\"Nonsense, my boy; they'll adore you. You'll be a hero!\"\n\n\n Events proved him right. Even those people who had lived in apparent content under the Belphins, accepting what they were given and seemingly enjoying their carefree lives, now declared themselves to have been suffering in silent resentment all along. They hurled flowers and adulatory speeches at Ludovick and composed extremely flattering songs about him.\n\n\n Shortly after he was universally acclaimed President, he married Corisande. He couldn't escape.\n\n\n \"Why doesn't she become President herself?\" he wailed, when the relatives came and found him hiding in the ruins of the Blue Tower. The people had torn the Tower down as soon as they were sure The Belphin was dead and the others thereby rendered inoperant. \"It would spare her a lot of bother.\"", "\"They say,\" the uncle continued, impervious to Ludovick's unconcealed dislike for the subject, \"that there's really only one Belphin, who lives in the Blue Tower—in a tank or something, because he can't breathe our atmosphere—and that the others are a sort of robot he sends out to do his work for him.\"\n\n\n \"Nonsense!\" Ludovick was goaded to irritation at last. \"How could a robot have that delicate play of expression, that subtle economy of movement?\"\n\n\n Corisande and the uncle exchanged glances. \"But they are absolutely blank,\" the uncle began hesitantly. \"Perhaps, with your rich poetic imagination....\"\n\n\n \"See?\" old Osmond remarked with satisfaction. \"The kid's brain-washed. I told you so.\"\n\"Even if The Belphin is a single entity,\" Ludovick went on, \"that doesn't necessarily make him less benevolent——\"", "\"Because she is not The Belphin-slayer,\" the uncle said, dragging him out. \"Besides, she loves you. Come on, Ludovick, be a man.\" So they hauled him off to the wedding and, amid much feasting, he was married to Corisande.\nHe never drew another happy breath. In the first place, now that The Belphin was dead, all the machinery that had been operated by him stopped and no one knew how to fix it. The sidewalks stopped moving, the air conditioners stopped conditioning, the food synthesizers stopped synthesizing, and so on. And, of course, everybody blamed it all on Ludovick—even that year's run of bad weather.\n\n\n There were famines, riots, plagues, and, after the waves of mob hostility had coalesced into national groupings, wars. It was like the old days again, precisely as described in the textbooks.", "\"Of course they have their own source of power,\" Ludovick informed them, smiling to himself, for his old Belphin teacher had taken great care to instill a sense of humor into him. \"A Belphin was explaining that to me only today.\"\n\n\n Twenty heads swiveled toward him. He felt uncomfortable, for he was a modest young man and did not like to be the cynosure of all eyes.\n\n\n \"Tell us, dear boy,\" the uncle said, grabbing Ludovick's glass from the plinth and filling it, \"what exactly did he say?\"\n\n\n \"He said the Belphins rule through the power of love.\"\n\n\n The glass crashed to the tesserae as the uncle uttered a very unworthy word.\n\n\n \"And I suppose it was love that killed Mieczyslaw and George when they tried to storm the Blue Tower——\" old Osmond began, then halted at the looks he was getting from everybody.", "\"Why shouldn't they?\" Ludovick bit into an apple that Corisande handed him from one of the dishes of fruit and other delicacies strewn about the courtyard. \"It's excellent air,\" he continued through a full mouth, \"especially now that it's all purified. I understand that in the old days——\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" the uncle said, \"but don't you think it's a coincidence they breathe exactly the same kind of air we do, considering they claim to come from another solar system?\"\n\n\n \"No coincidence at all,\" said Ludovick shortly, no longer able to pretend he didn't know what the other was getting at. He had heard the ugly rumor before. Of course sacrilege was not illegal, but it was in bad taste. \"Only one combination of elements spawns intelligent life.\"", "\"But no human being has ever come near him!\" he said plaintively. \"You know that all those who have tried perished. And that can't be a rumor, because your grandfather said——\"\n\n\n \"But they came to\nattack\nThe Belphin. You're coming to\nwarn\nhim! That makes a big difference. Ludovick....\" She took his hands in hers; in the darkness, the jewel swung madly on her presumably heaving bosom. \"This is bigger than both of us. It's for Earth.\"\n\n\n He knew it was his patriotic duty to do as she said; still, he had enjoyed life so much. \"Corisande, wouldn't it be much simpler if we just destroyed your uncle's secret weapon?\"\n\n\n \"He'd only make another. Don't you see, Ludovick, this is our only chance to save the Belphins, to save humanity.... But, of course, I don't have the right to send you. I'll go myself.\"", "\"We come from beyond the stars,\" he said. Ludovick already knew that; he had hoped for something a little more specific. \"We were placed in power by those who had the right. And the power through which we rule is the power of love! Be happy!\"\n\n\n And with that conventional farewell (which also served as a greeting), he stepped onto the sidewalk and was borne off. Ludovick looked after him pensively for a moment, then shrugged. Why\nshould\nthe Belphins surrender their secrets to gratify the idle curiosity of a poet?\n\n\n Ludovick packed his portable scriptwriter in its case and went to call on the girl next door, whom he loved with a deep and intermittently requited passion.\n\n\n As he passed between the tall columns leading into the Flockhart courtyard, he noted with regret that there were quite a number of Corisande's relatives present, lying about sunning themselves and sipping beverages which probably touched the legal limit of intoxicatability." ] ]
valid	59679	[ "What is the real reason that Mr. Partch feels melancholy?", "How many times was Bob’s machine tested?", "Who are the people that desire silence in the story?", "What is a common theme in the sounds that Mr. Partch is hearing?", "Which of the following is NOT a feeling Mr. Partch transitions through in the story?", "What is the primary problem Bob is trying to solve with his invention?", "What is the relationship like between Bob and Mr. Partch?", "When there was music playing on the speakers in the office, what was favored?", "What is the importance of the National Mental Health society to the story?" ]	[ [ "Unhappy in his marriage", "Bob has been disappointing him", "Turned down for a promotion", "Noise" ], [ "Never before", "It had been in development for years, so many tests", "At least once before Mr. Partch plugged it in", "It had undergone weeks of testing" ], [ "Mr. Partch and Felicity", "Bob and Dr. Coles", "Mr. Partch and Dr. Coles", "Mr. Partch" ], [ "His own voice", "Whistling", "Advertisements", "National anthem" ], [ "Nervousness", "Jealousy", "Melancholy", "Euphoria" ], [ "Time stopping", "Engine efficiency", "Quieting", "New moon-ship designs" ], [ "Bob reports to Mr. Partch, but their relationship does not go any deeper", "Bob is secretly part of the team trying to convince Mr. Partch he is going mad", "Bob and Mr. Partch conspire to get the music turned off in the office", "Mr. Partch is Bob’s superior, and he is not supportive of Bob’s latest project" ], [ "Popular music", "Classics", "Engine noise", "Talk radio" ], [ "The engineers worked under threat of being turned in to the society if their project were discovered", "Mr. Partch cared for his mental health by seeing a therapist, and required further care when he experienced silence", "There was no National society, which is what Mr. Partch was trying to change", "The society played music so loudly in the office buildings that nobody could get any work done, driving Mr. Partch into the care of the society" ] ]	[ 4, 3, 4, 3, 2, 3, 1, 1, 2 ]	[ 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Yes, he decided, he was going to have to have a long talk with Dr.\n Coles that afternoon. Be a pleasure to get it all off his chest, his\n feeling of melancholia, his latent sense of doom. Be good just to talk\n about it.\n\n\n Oh, everything was getting to him these days. He was in a rut, that was\n it. A rut.\n\n\n He spat a sesame seed against the far wall and the low whir of the\n automatic vacuum cleaner rose and fell briefly.\n\n\n Joseph winced. The speakers were playing \"Slam Bang Boom\" again.\n\n\n His mind turned away from the grating melody in self defense, to look\n inward on himself.\n\n\n Of what, after all, did Joseph Partch's life consist? He licked his\n fingers and thought about it.\n\n\n What would he do this evening after work, for instance?", "Partch became brusque. He liked Bob, but he had work to do.\n\n\n \"Yes, I probably shall, Bob. I tell you what, why don't you just leave\n it here in my office and I'll look it over later, hm?\"\n\n\n \"Okay, Mr. Partch.\"\n\n\n Joseph ushered him out of the office, complimenting him profusely on\n the good work he was doing. Only after he was gone and Joseph was alone\n again behind the closed door, did he realize that he had a sudden\n yearning for company, for someone to talk to.\nPartch had Betty send him in a light lunch and he sat behind his desk\n nibbling the tasteless stuff without much enthusiasm. He wondered if he\n was getting an ulcer.", "And in the morning, he would be shocked into awareness with the clangor\n of the alarm clock and whatever disc jockey the clock radio happened to\n tune in on.\n\n\n Joseph Partch's world was made up of sounds and noises, he decided.\n Dimly, he wondered of what civilization itself would be constructed if\n all the sounds were once taken away.\nWhy\n, after all, was the world\n of Man so noisy? It was almost as if—as if everybody were making as\n much noise as they could to conceal the fact that there was something\n lacking. Or something they were afraid of.\n\n\n Like a little boy whistling loudly as he walks by a cemetery at night.\n\n\n Partch got out of his chair and stared out the window again. There was\n a fire over on the East Side, a bad one by the smoke. The fire engines\n went screaming through the streets like wounded dragons. Sirens, bells.\n Police whistles.", "Why, he'd stuff his earplugs back in his inflamed ears and board the\n commuter's copter and ride for half an hour listening to the drumming\n of the rotors and the pleading of the various canned commercials played\n on the copter's speakers loud enough to be heard over the engine noise\n and through the plugs.\n\n\n And then when he got home, there would be the continuous yammer of his\n wife added to the Tri-Di set going full blast and the dull food from\n the automatic kitchen. And synthetic coffee and one stale cigaret.\n Perhaps a glass of brandy to steady his nerves if Dr. Coles approved.\n\n\n Partch brooded. The sense of foreboding had been submerged in the day's\n work, but it was still there. It was as if, any moment, a hydrogen\n bomb were going to be dropped down the chimney, and you had no way of\n knowing when.", "It was dark there, and the trees were thick and tall. There was no\n wind, the leaves were soft underfoot. And Joseph Partch was all alone,\ncompletely\nalone.\n\n\n And it was—quiet.\n\n\n Doctor Coles looked at the patient on the white cot sadly.\n\n\n \"I've only seen a case like it once before in my entire career, Dr.\n Leeds.\"\n\n\n Leeds nodded.\n\n\n \"It\nis\nrather rare. Look at him—total catatonia. He's curled into a\n perfect foetal position. Never be the same again, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\n \"The shock must have been tremendous. An awful psychic blow, especially\n to a person as emotionally disturbed as Mr. Partch was.\"", "All at once, Partch realized that never in his life had he experienced\n real quiet or solitude. That actually, he had no conception of what an\n absence of thunder and wailing would be like. A total absence of sound\n and noise.\n\n\n Almost, it was like trying to imagine what a negation of\nspace\nwould\n be like.\n\n\n And then he turned, and his eyes fell on Bob Wills' machine. It could\n reduce the noise level of a rocket motor by 25 per cent, Wills had\n said. Here in the office, the sound level was less than that of a\n rocket motor.\n\n\n And the machine worked on ordinary house current, Bob had said.\n\n\n Partch had an almost horrifying idea. Suppose....\n\n\n But what would Dr. Coles say about this, Partch wondered. Oh, he had to\n get a grip on himself. This was silly, childish....", "It was an interesting problem, or at any rate should have been. It\n was one that had been harassing cities, industry, and particularly\n air-fields, for many years. Of course, every one wore earplugs—and\n that helped a little. And some firms had partially solved the problem\n by using personnel that were totally deaf, because such persons\n were the only ones who could stand the terrific noise levels that a\n technological civilization forced everyone to endure. The noise from\n a commercial rocket motor on the ground had been known to drive men\n mad, and sometimes kill them. There had never seemed to be any wholly\n satisfactory solution.\n\n\n But now Bob Wills apparently had the beginnings of a real answer. A\n device that would use the principle of interference to cancel out sound\n waves, leaving behind only heat.\n\n\n It should have been fascinating to Partch, but somehow he couldn't make\n himself get interested in it.", "\"Yes, that machine of Mr. Wills' is extremely dangerous. What amazes\n me is that it didn't kill Partch altogether. Good thing we got to him\n when we did.\"\n\n\n Dr. Coles rubbed his jaw.\n\n\n \"Yes, you know it\nis\nincredible how much the human mind can sometimes\n take, actually. As you say, it's a wonder it didn't kill him.\"\n\n\n He shook his head.\n\n\n \"Perfectly horrible. How could any modern human stand it? Two hours, he\n was alone with that machine. Imagine—\ntwo hours\nof total silence!\"", "\"Well, Mr. Wills says he has the first model of his invention ready to\n show you.\"\n\n\n \"Let him in whenever he's ready. Otherwise, if nothing important comes\n up, I want you to leave me alone.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, certainly.\" She smiled again, a mechanical, automatic smile\n that seemed to want to be something more.\n\n\n Joseph switched off.\nThat was a damn funny way of saying it\n, he thought.\n\"I want you to\n leave me alone.\" As if somebody were after me.\nHe spent about an hour on routine paperwork and then Bob Wills showed\n up so Joseph switched off his dictograph and let him in.\n\n\n \"I'm afraid you'll have to make it brief, Bob,\" he grinned. \"I've a\n whale of a lot of work to do, and I seem to be developing a splitting\n headache. Nerves, you know.\"", "In his own office the steady din was hardly diminished despite\n soundproofing, and since he was next to an outside wall he was\n subjected also to the noises of the city. He stood staring out of the\n huge window for awhile, watching the cars on the freeway and listening\n to the homogeneous rumble and scream of turbines.\nSomething's wrong with me\n, he thought.\nI shouldn't be feeling this\n way. Nerves. Nerves.\nHe turned around and got his private secretary on the viewer. She\n simpered at him, trying to be friendly with her dull, sunken eyes.\n\n\n \"Betty,\" he told her, \"I want you to make an appointment with my\n therapist for me this afternoon. Tell him it's just a case of nerves,\n though.\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. Anything else?\" Her voice, like every one's, was a high\n pitched screech trying to be heard above the noise.\n\n\n Joseph winced. \"Anybody want to see me this morning?\"", "But looking down, he found that he had already plugged in the line\n cord. An almost erotic excitement began to shake Joseph's body. The\n sense of disaster had surged up anew, but he didn't recognize it yet.\n\n\n An absence of\nsound\n? No! Silly!\n\n\n Then a fire engine came tearing around the corner just below the\n window, filling the office with an ocean of noise.\n\n\n Joseph's hand jerked and flicked the switch.\n\n\n And then the dream came back to him, the nightmare of the night before\n that had precipitated, unknown to him, his mood of foreboding. It came\n back to him with stark realism and flooded him with unadorned fear.\n\n\n In the dream, he had been in a forest. Not just the city park, but a\nreal\nforest, one thousands of miles and centuries away from human\n civilization. A wood in which the foot of Man had never trod.", "And what would there be to do after he had finished dinner that night?\n Why, the same things he had been doing every night for the past fifteen\n years. There would be Tri-Di first of all. The loud comedians, and the\n musical commercials, and the loud bands, and the commercials, and the\n loud songs....\n\n\n And every twenty minutes or so, the viewer would jangle with one of\n Felicia's friends calling up, and more yammering from Felicia.\n\n\n Perhaps there would be company that night, to play cards and sip drinks\n and talk and talk and talk, and never say a thing at all.\n\n\n There would be aircraft shaking the house now and then, and the cry of\n the monorail horn at intervals.\n\n\n And then, at last, it would be time to go to bed, and the murmur of the\n somnolearner orating him on the Theory of Groups all through the long\n night.", "Walking through the clerical office usually made him feel better. The\n constant clatter of typewriters and office machines gave him a sense\n of efficiency, of stability, an all-is-well-with-the-world feeling. He\n waved to a few of the more familiar employees and smiled, but of course\n you couldn't say hello with the continual racket.\n\n\n This morning, somehow, it didn't make him feel better. He supposed it\n was because of the song they were playing over the speakers, \"Slam Bang\n Boom,\" the latest Top Hit. He hated that song.\n\n\n Of course the National Mental Health people said constant music had a\n beneficial effect on office workers, so Joseph was no one to object,\n even though he did wonder if anyone could ever actually listen to it\n over the other noise.", "\"Sure, Mister Partch. I won't take a minute; I just thought you'd like\n to have a look at the first model of our widget and get clued in on our\n progress so far....\"\n\n\n \"Yes, yes, just go ahead. How does the thing work?\"\n\n\n Bob smiled and set the grey steel chassis on Partch's desk, sat down in\n front of it, and began tracing the wiring for Joseph.", "THE RUMBLE AND THE ROAR\nBY STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEW\nThe noise was too much for him.\n \nHe wanted quiet—at any price.\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1957.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nWhen Joseph got to the office his ears were aching from the noise of\n the copter and from his earplugs. Lately, every little thing seemed to\n make him irritable. He supposed it was because his drafting department\n was behind schedule on the latest Defense contract. His ears were sore\n and his stomach writhed with dyspepsia, and his feet hurt.", "\"The really big problem is the power requirement,\" Wills was saying.\n \"We've got to use a lot of energy to cancel out big sound waves, but\n we've got several possible answers in mind and we're working on all of\n them.\"\n\n\n He caressed the crackle-finish box fondly.\n\n\n \"The basic gimmick works fine, though. Yesterday I took it down to a\n static test stand over in building 90 and had them turn on a pretty\n fair-sized steering rocket for one of the big moon-ships. Reduced the\n noise-level by about 25 per cent, it did. Of course, I still needed my\n plugs.\"\n\n\n Joseph nodded approvingly and stared vacantly into the maze of\n transistors and tubes.\n\n\n \"I've built it to work on ordinary 60 cycle house current,\" Wills told\n him. \"In case you should want to demonstrate it to anybody.\"" ], [ "\"Well, Mr. Wills says he has the first model of his invention ready to\n show you.\"\n\n\n \"Let him in whenever he's ready. Otherwise, if nothing important comes\n up, I want you to leave me alone.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, certainly.\" She smiled again, a mechanical, automatic smile\n that seemed to want to be something more.\n\n\n Joseph switched off.\nThat was a damn funny way of saying it\n, he thought.\n\"I want you to\n leave me alone.\" As if somebody were after me.\nHe spent about an hour on routine paperwork and then Bob Wills showed\n up so Joseph switched off his dictograph and let him in.\n\n\n \"I'm afraid you'll have to make it brief, Bob,\" he grinned. \"I've a\n whale of a lot of work to do, and I seem to be developing a splitting\n headache. Nerves, you know.\"", "All at once, Partch realized that never in his life had he experienced\n real quiet or solitude. That actually, he had no conception of what an\n absence of thunder and wailing would be like. A total absence of sound\n and noise.\n\n\n Almost, it was like trying to imagine what a negation of\nspace\nwould\n be like.\n\n\n And then he turned, and his eyes fell on Bob Wills' machine. It could\n reduce the noise level of a rocket motor by 25 per cent, Wills had\n said. Here in the office, the sound level was less than that of a\n rocket motor.\n\n\n And the machine worked on ordinary house current, Bob had said.\n\n\n Partch had an almost horrifying idea. Suppose....\n\n\n But what would Dr. Coles say about this, Partch wondered. Oh, he had to\n get a grip on himself. This was silly, childish....", "\"Sure, Mister Partch. I won't take a minute; I just thought you'd like\n to have a look at the first model of our widget and get clued in on our\n progress so far....\"\n\n\n \"Yes, yes, just go ahead. How does the thing work?\"\n\n\n Bob smiled and set the grey steel chassis on Partch's desk, sat down in\n front of it, and began tracing the wiring for Joseph.", "\"Yes, that machine of Mr. Wills' is extremely dangerous. What amazes\n me is that it didn't kill Partch altogether. Good thing we got to him\n when we did.\"\n\n\n Dr. Coles rubbed his jaw.\n\n\n \"Yes, you know it\nis\nincredible how much the human mind can sometimes\n take, actually. As you say, it's a wonder it didn't kill him.\"\n\n\n He shook his head.\n\n\n \"Perfectly horrible. How could any modern human stand it? Two hours, he\n was alone with that machine. Imagine—\ntwo hours\nof total silence!\"", "Why, he'd stuff his earplugs back in his inflamed ears and board the\n commuter's copter and ride for half an hour listening to the drumming\n of the rotors and the pleading of the various canned commercials played\n on the copter's speakers loud enough to be heard over the engine noise\n and through the plugs.\n\n\n And then when he got home, there would be the continuous yammer of his\n wife added to the Tri-Di set going full blast and the dull food from\n the automatic kitchen. And synthetic coffee and one stale cigaret.\n Perhaps a glass of brandy to steady his nerves if Dr. Coles approved.\n\n\n Partch brooded. The sense of foreboding had been submerged in the day's\n work, but it was still there. It was as if, any moment, a hydrogen\n bomb were going to be dropped down the chimney, and you had no way of\n knowing when.", "Partch became brusque. He liked Bob, but he had work to do.\n\n\n \"Yes, I probably shall, Bob. I tell you what, why don't you just leave\n it here in my office and I'll look it over later, hm?\"\n\n\n \"Okay, Mr. Partch.\"\n\n\n Joseph ushered him out of the office, complimenting him profusely on\n the good work he was doing. Only after he was gone and Joseph was alone\n again behind the closed door, did he realize that he had a sudden\n yearning for company, for someone to talk to.\nPartch had Betty send him in a light lunch and he sat behind his desk\n nibbling the tasteless stuff without much enthusiasm. He wondered if he\n was getting an ulcer.", "It was an interesting problem, or at any rate should have been. It\n was one that had been harassing cities, industry, and particularly\n air-fields, for many years. Of course, every one wore earplugs—and\n that helped a little. And some firms had partially solved the problem\n by using personnel that were totally deaf, because such persons\n were the only ones who could stand the terrific noise levels that a\n technological civilization forced everyone to endure. The noise from\n a commercial rocket motor on the ground had been known to drive men\n mad, and sometimes kill them. There had never seemed to be any wholly\n satisfactory solution.\n\n\n But now Bob Wills apparently had the beginnings of a real answer. A\n device that would use the principle of interference to cancel out sound\n waves, leaving behind only heat.\n\n\n It should have been fascinating to Partch, but somehow he couldn't make\n himself get interested in it.", "Yes, he decided, he was going to have to have a long talk with Dr.\n Coles that afternoon. Be a pleasure to get it all off his chest, his\n feeling of melancholia, his latent sense of doom. Be good just to talk\n about it.\n\n\n Oh, everything was getting to him these days. He was in a rut, that was\n it. A rut.\n\n\n He spat a sesame seed against the far wall and the low whir of the\n automatic vacuum cleaner rose and fell briefly.\n\n\n Joseph winced. The speakers were playing \"Slam Bang Boom\" again.\n\n\n His mind turned away from the grating melody in self defense, to look\n inward on himself.\n\n\n Of what, after all, did Joseph Partch's life consist? He licked his\n fingers and thought about it.\n\n\n What would he do this evening after work, for instance?", "And what would there be to do after he had finished dinner that night?\n Why, the same things he had been doing every night for the past fifteen\n years. There would be Tri-Di first of all. The loud comedians, and the\n musical commercials, and the loud bands, and the commercials, and the\n loud songs....\n\n\n And every twenty minutes or so, the viewer would jangle with one of\n Felicia's friends calling up, and more yammering from Felicia.\n\n\n Perhaps there would be company that night, to play cards and sip drinks\n and talk and talk and talk, and never say a thing at all.\n\n\n There would be aircraft shaking the house now and then, and the cry of\n the monorail horn at intervals.\n\n\n And then, at last, it would be time to go to bed, and the murmur of the\n somnolearner orating him on the Theory of Groups all through the long\n night.", "\"The really big problem is the power requirement,\" Wills was saying.\n \"We've got to use a lot of energy to cancel out big sound waves, but\n we've got several possible answers in mind and we're working on all of\n them.\"\n\n\n He caressed the crackle-finish box fondly.\n\n\n \"The basic gimmick works fine, though. Yesterday I took it down to a\n static test stand over in building 90 and had them turn on a pretty\n fair-sized steering rocket for one of the big moon-ships. Reduced the\n noise-level by about 25 per cent, it did. Of course, I still needed my\n plugs.\"\n\n\n Joseph nodded approvingly and stared vacantly into the maze of\n transistors and tubes.\n\n\n \"I've built it to work on ordinary 60 cycle house current,\" Wills told\n him. \"In case you should want to demonstrate it to anybody.\"", "And in the morning, he would be shocked into awareness with the clangor\n of the alarm clock and whatever disc jockey the clock radio happened to\n tune in on.\n\n\n Joseph Partch's world was made up of sounds and noises, he decided.\n Dimly, he wondered of what civilization itself would be constructed if\n all the sounds were once taken away.\nWhy\n, after all, was the world\n of Man so noisy? It was almost as if—as if everybody were making as\n much noise as they could to conceal the fact that there was something\n lacking. Or something they were afraid of.\n\n\n Like a little boy whistling loudly as he walks by a cemetery at night.\n\n\n Partch got out of his chair and stared out the window again. There was\n a fire over on the East Side, a bad one by the smoke. The fire engines\n went screaming through the streets like wounded dragons. Sirens, bells.\n Police whistles.", "But looking down, he found that he had already plugged in the line\n cord. An almost erotic excitement began to shake Joseph's body. The\n sense of disaster had surged up anew, but he didn't recognize it yet.\n\n\n An absence of\nsound\n? No! Silly!\n\n\n Then a fire engine came tearing around the corner just below the\n window, filling the office with an ocean of noise.\n\n\n Joseph's hand jerked and flicked the switch.\n\n\n And then the dream came back to him, the nightmare of the night before\n that had precipitated, unknown to him, his mood of foreboding. It came\n back to him with stark realism and flooded him with unadorned fear.\n\n\n In the dream, he had been in a forest. Not just the city park, but a\nreal\nforest, one thousands of miles and centuries away from human\n civilization. A wood in which the foot of Man had never trod.", "In his own office the steady din was hardly diminished despite\n soundproofing, and since he was next to an outside wall he was\n subjected also to the noises of the city. He stood staring out of the\n huge window for awhile, watching the cars on the freeway and listening\n to the homogeneous rumble and scream of turbines.\nSomething's wrong with me\n, he thought.\nI shouldn't be feeling this\n way. Nerves. Nerves.\nHe turned around and got his private secretary on the viewer. She\n simpered at him, trying to be friendly with her dull, sunken eyes.\n\n\n \"Betty,\" he told her, \"I want you to make an appointment with my\n therapist for me this afternoon. Tell him it's just a case of nerves,\n though.\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. Anything else?\" Her voice, like every one's, was a high\n pitched screech trying to be heard above the noise.\n\n\n Joseph winced. \"Anybody want to see me this morning?\"", "Walking through the clerical office usually made him feel better. The\n constant clatter of typewriters and office machines gave him a sense\n of efficiency, of stability, an all-is-well-with-the-world feeling. He\n waved to a few of the more familiar employees and smiled, but of course\n you couldn't say hello with the continual racket.\n\n\n This morning, somehow, it didn't make him feel better. He supposed it\n was because of the song they were playing over the speakers, \"Slam Bang\n Boom,\" the latest Top Hit. He hated that song.\n\n\n Of course the National Mental Health people said constant music had a\n beneficial effect on office workers, so Joseph was no one to object,\n even though he did wonder if anyone could ever actually listen to it\n over the other noise.", "It was dark there, and the trees were thick and tall. There was no\n wind, the leaves were soft underfoot. And Joseph Partch was all alone,\ncompletely\nalone.\n\n\n And it was—quiet.\n\n\n Doctor Coles looked at the patient on the white cot sadly.\n\n\n \"I've only seen a case like it once before in my entire career, Dr.\n Leeds.\"\n\n\n Leeds nodded.\n\n\n \"It\nis\nrather rare. Look at him—total catatonia. He's curled into a\n perfect foetal position. Never be the same again, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\n \"The shock must have been tremendous. An awful psychic blow, especially\n to a person as emotionally disturbed as Mr. Partch was.\"", "THE RUMBLE AND THE ROAR\nBY STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEW\nThe noise was too much for him.\n \nHe wanted quiet—at any price.\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1957.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nWhen Joseph got to the office his ears were aching from the noise of\n the copter and from his earplugs. Lately, every little thing seemed to\n make him irritable. He supposed it was because his drafting department\n was behind schedule on the latest Defense contract. His ears were sore\n and his stomach writhed with dyspepsia, and his feet hurt." ], [ "All at once, Partch realized that never in his life had he experienced\n real quiet or solitude. That actually, he had no conception of what an\n absence of thunder and wailing would be like. A total absence of sound\n and noise.\n\n\n Almost, it was like trying to imagine what a negation of\nspace\nwould\n be like.\n\n\n And then he turned, and his eyes fell on Bob Wills' machine. It could\n reduce the noise level of a rocket motor by 25 per cent, Wills had\n said. Here in the office, the sound level was less than that of a\n rocket motor.\n\n\n And the machine worked on ordinary house current, Bob had said.\n\n\n Partch had an almost horrifying idea. Suppose....\n\n\n But what would Dr. Coles say about this, Partch wondered. Oh, he had to\n get a grip on himself. This was silly, childish....", "\"Yes, that machine of Mr. Wills' is extremely dangerous. What amazes\n me is that it didn't kill Partch altogether. Good thing we got to him\n when we did.\"\n\n\n Dr. Coles rubbed his jaw.\n\n\n \"Yes, you know it\nis\nincredible how much the human mind can sometimes\n take, actually. As you say, it's a wonder it didn't kill him.\"\n\n\n He shook his head.\n\n\n \"Perfectly horrible. How could any modern human stand it? Two hours, he\n was alone with that machine. Imagine—\ntwo hours\nof total silence!\"", "And in the morning, he would be shocked into awareness with the clangor\n of the alarm clock and whatever disc jockey the clock radio happened to\n tune in on.\n\n\n Joseph Partch's world was made up of sounds and noises, he decided.\n Dimly, he wondered of what civilization itself would be constructed if\n all the sounds were once taken away.\nWhy\n, after all, was the world\n of Man so noisy? It was almost as if—as if everybody were making as\n much noise as they could to conceal the fact that there was something\n lacking. Or something they were afraid of.\n\n\n Like a little boy whistling loudly as he walks by a cemetery at night.\n\n\n Partch got out of his chair and stared out the window again. There was\n a fire over on the East Side, a bad one by the smoke. The fire engines\n went screaming through the streets like wounded dragons. Sirens, bells.\n Police whistles.", "But looking down, he found that he had already plugged in the line\n cord. An almost erotic excitement began to shake Joseph's body. The\n sense of disaster had surged up anew, but he didn't recognize it yet.\n\n\n An absence of\nsound\n? No! Silly!\n\n\n Then a fire engine came tearing around the corner just below the\n window, filling the office with an ocean of noise.\n\n\n Joseph's hand jerked and flicked the switch.\n\n\n And then the dream came back to him, the nightmare of the night before\n that had precipitated, unknown to him, his mood of foreboding. It came\n back to him with stark realism and flooded him with unadorned fear.\n\n\n In the dream, he had been in a forest. Not just the city park, but a\nreal\nforest, one thousands of miles and centuries away from human\n civilization. A wood in which the foot of Man had never trod.", "It was an interesting problem, or at any rate should have been. It\n was one that had been harassing cities, industry, and particularly\n air-fields, for many years. Of course, every one wore earplugs—and\n that helped a little. And some firms had partially solved the problem\n by using personnel that were totally deaf, because such persons\n were the only ones who could stand the terrific noise levels that a\n technological civilization forced everyone to endure. The noise from\n a commercial rocket motor on the ground had been known to drive men\n mad, and sometimes kill them. There had never seemed to be any wholly\n satisfactory solution.\n\n\n But now Bob Wills apparently had the beginnings of a real answer. A\n device that would use the principle of interference to cancel out sound\n waves, leaving behind only heat.\n\n\n It should have been fascinating to Partch, but somehow he couldn't make\n himself get interested in it.", "Why, he'd stuff his earplugs back in his inflamed ears and board the\n commuter's copter and ride for half an hour listening to the drumming\n of the rotors and the pleading of the various canned commercials played\n on the copter's speakers loud enough to be heard over the engine noise\n and through the plugs.\n\n\n And then when he got home, there would be the continuous yammer of his\n wife added to the Tri-Di set going full blast and the dull food from\n the automatic kitchen. And synthetic coffee and one stale cigaret.\n Perhaps a glass of brandy to steady his nerves if Dr. Coles approved.\n\n\n Partch brooded. The sense of foreboding had been submerged in the day's\n work, but it was still there. It was as if, any moment, a hydrogen\n bomb were going to be dropped down the chimney, and you had no way of\n knowing when.", "THE RUMBLE AND THE ROAR\nBY STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEW\nThe noise was too much for him.\n \nHe wanted quiet—at any price.\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1957.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nWhen Joseph got to the office his ears were aching from the noise of\n the copter and from his earplugs. Lately, every little thing seemed to\n make him irritable. He supposed it was because his drafting department\n was behind schedule on the latest Defense contract. His ears were sore\n and his stomach writhed with dyspepsia, and his feet hurt.", "In his own office the steady din was hardly diminished despite\n soundproofing, and since he was next to an outside wall he was\n subjected also to the noises of the city. He stood staring out of the\n huge window for awhile, watching the cars on the freeway and listening\n to the homogeneous rumble and scream of turbines.\nSomething's wrong with me\n, he thought.\nI shouldn't be feeling this\n way. Nerves. Nerves.\nHe turned around and got his private secretary on the viewer. She\n simpered at him, trying to be friendly with her dull, sunken eyes.\n\n\n \"Betty,\" he told her, \"I want you to make an appointment with my\n therapist for me this afternoon. Tell him it's just a case of nerves,\n though.\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. Anything else?\" Her voice, like every one's, was a high\n pitched screech trying to be heard above the noise.\n\n\n Joseph winced. \"Anybody want to see me this morning?\"", "\"The really big problem is the power requirement,\" Wills was saying.\n \"We've got to use a lot of energy to cancel out big sound waves, but\n we've got several possible answers in mind and we're working on all of\n them.\"\n\n\n He caressed the crackle-finish box fondly.\n\n\n \"The basic gimmick works fine, though. Yesterday I took it down to a\n static test stand over in building 90 and had them turn on a pretty\n fair-sized steering rocket for one of the big moon-ships. Reduced the\n noise-level by about 25 per cent, it did. Of course, I still needed my\n plugs.\"\n\n\n Joseph nodded approvingly and stared vacantly into the maze of\n transistors and tubes.\n\n\n \"I've built it to work on ordinary 60 cycle house current,\" Wills told\n him. \"In case you should want to demonstrate it to anybody.\"", "And what would there be to do after he had finished dinner that night?\n Why, the same things he had been doing every night for the past fifteen\n years. There would be Tri-Di first of all. The loud comedians, and the\n musical commercials, and the loud bands, and the commercials, and the\n loud songs....\n\n\n And every twenty minutes or so, the viewer would jangle with one of\n Felicia's friends calling up, and more yammering from Felicia.\n\n\n Perhaps there would be company that night, to play cards and sip drinks\n and talk and talk and talk, and never say a thing at all.\n\n\n There would be aircraft shaking the house now and then, and the cry of\n the monorail horn at intervals.\n\n\n And then, at last, it would be time to go to bed, and the murmur of the\n somnolearner orating him on the Theory of Groups all through the long\n night.", "Yes, he decided, he was going to have to have a long talk with Dr.\n Coles that afternoon. Be a pleasure to get it all off his chest, his\n feeling of melancholia, his latent sense of doom. Be good just to talk\n about it.\n\n\n Oh, everything was getting to him these days. He was in a rut, that was\n it. A rut.\n\n\n He spat a sesame seed against the far wall and the low whir of the\n automatic vacuum cleaner rose and fell briefly.\n\n\n Joseph winced. The speakers were playing \"Slam Bang Boom\" again.\n\n\n His mind turned away from the grating melody in self defense, to look\n inward on himself.\n\n\n Of what, after all, did Joseph Partch's life consist? He licked his\n fingers and thought about it.\n\n\n What would he do this evening after work, for instance?", "\"Well, Mr. Wills says he has the first model of his invention ready to\n show you.\"\n\n\n \"Let him in whenever he's ready. Otherwise, if nothing important comes\n up, I want you to leave me alone.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, certainly.\" She smiled again, a mechanical, automatic smile\n that seemed to want to be something more.\n\n\n Joseph switched off.\nThat was a damn funny way of saying it\n, he thought.\n\"I want you to\n leave me alone.\" As if somebody were after me.\nHe spent about an hour on routine paperwork and then Bob Wills showed\n up so Joseph switched off his dictograph and let him in.\n\n\n \"I'm afraid you'll have to make it brief, Bob,\" he grinned. \"I've a\n whale of a lot of work to do, and I seem to be developing a splitting\n headache. Nerves, you know.\"", "Partch became brusque. He liked Bob, but he had work to do.\n\n\n \"Yes, I probably shall, Bob. I tell you what, why don't you just leave\n it here in my office and I'll look it over later, hm?\"\n\n\n \"Okay, Mr. Partch.\"\n\n\n Joseph ushered him out of the office, complimenting him profusely on\n the good work he was doing. Only after he was gone and Joseph was alone\n again behind the closed door, did he realize that he had a sudden\n yearning for company, for someone to talk to.\nPartch had Betty send him in a light lunch and he sat behind his desk\n nibbling the tasteless stuff without much enthusiasm. He wondered if he\n was getting an ulcer.", "It was dark there, and the trees were thick and tall. There was no\n wind, the leaves were soft underfoot. And Joseph Partch was all alone,\ncompletely\nalone.\n\n\n And it was—quiet.\n\n\n Doctor Coles looked at the patient on the white cot sadly.\n\n\n \"I've only seen a case like it once before in my entire career, Dr.\n Leeds.\"\n\n\n Leeds nodded.\n\n\n \"It\nis\nrather rare. Look at him—total catatonia. He's curled into a\n perfect foetal position. Never be the same again, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\n \"The shock must have been tremendous. An awful psychic blow, especially\n to a person as emotionally disturbed as Mr. Partch was.\"", "Walking through the clerical office usually made him feel better. The\n constant clatter of typewriters and office machines gave him a sense\n of efficiency, of stability, an all-is-well-with-the-world feeling. He\n waved to a few of the more familiar employees and smiled, but of course\n you couldn't say hello with the continual racket.\n\n\n This morning, somehow, it didn't make him feel better. He supposed it\n was because of the song they were playing over the speakers, \"Slam Bang\n Boom,\" the latest Top Hit. He hated that song.\n\n\n Of course the National Mental Health people said constant music had a\n beneficial effect on office workers, so Joseph was no one to object,\n even though he did wonder if anyone could ever actually listen to it\n over the other noise.", "\"Sure, Mister Partch. I won't take a minute; I just thought you'd like\n to have a look at the first model of our widget and get clued in on our\n progress so far....\"\n\n\n \"Yes, yes, just go ahead. How does the thing work?\"\n\n\n Bob smiled and set the grey steel chassis on Partch's desk, sat down in\n front of it, and began tracing the wiring for Joseph." ], [ "And in the morning, he would be shocked into awareness with the clangor\n of the alarm clock and whatever disc jockey the clock radio happened to\n tune in on.\n\n\n Joseph Partch's world was made up of sounds and noises, he decided.\n Dimly, he wondered of what civilization itself would be constructed if\n all the sounds were once taken away.\nWhy\n, after all, was the world\n of Man so noisy? It was almost as if—as if everybody were making as\n much noise as they could to conceal the fact that there was something\n lacking. Or something they were afraid of.\n\n\n Like a little boy whistling loudly as he walks by a cemetery at night.\n\n\n Partch got out of his chair and stared out the window again. There was\n a fire over on the East Side, a bad one by the smoke. The fire engines\n went screaming through the streets like wounded dragons. Sirens, bells.\n Police whistles.", "Why, he'd stuff his earplugs back in his inflamed ears and board the\n commuter's copter and ride for half an hour listening to the drumming\n of the rotors and the pleading of the various canned commercials played\n on the copter's speakers loud enough to be heard over the engine noise\n and through the plugs.\n\n\n And then when he got home, there would be the continuous yammer of his\n wife added to the Tri-Di set going full blast and the dull food from\n the automatic kitchen. And synthetic coffee and one stale cigaret.\n Perhaps a glass of brandy to steady his nerves if Dr. Coles approved.\n\n\n Partch brooded. The sense of foreboding had been submerged in the day's\n work, but it was still there. It was as if, any moment, a hydrogen\n bomb were going to be dropped down the chimney, and you had no way of\n knowing when.", "\"Yes, that machine of Mr. Wills' is extremely dangerous. What amazes\n me is that it didn't kill Partch altogether. Good thing we got to him\n when we did.\"\n\n\n Dr. Coles rubbed his jaw.\n\n\n \"Yes, you know it\nis\nincredible how much the human mind can sometimes\n take, actually. As you say, it's a wonder it didn't kill him.\"\n\n\n He shook his head.\n\n\n \"Perfectly horrible. How could any modern human stand it? Two hours, he\n was alone with that machine. Imagine—\ntwo hours\nof total silence!\"", "All at once, Partch realized that never in his life had he experienced\n real quiet or solitude. That actually, he had no conception of what an\n absence of thunder and wailing would be like. A total absence of sound\n and noise.\n\n\n Almost, it was like trying to imagine what a negation of\nspace\nwould\n be like.\n\n\n And then he turned, and his eyes fell on Bob Wills' machine. It could\n reduce the noise level of a rocket motor by 25 per cent, Wills had\n said. Here in the office, the sound level was less than that of a\n rocket motor.\n\n\n And the machine worked on ordinary house current, Bob had said.\n\n\n Partch had an almost horrifying idea. Suppose....\n\n\n But what would Dr. Coles say about this, Partch wondered. Oh, he had to\n get a grip on himself. This was silly, childish....", "It was an interesting problem, or at any rate should have been. It\n was one that had been harassing cities, industry, and particularly\n air-fields, for many years. Of course, every one wore earplugs—and\n that helped a little. And some firms had partially solved the problem\n by using personnel that were totally deaf, because such persons\n were the only ones who could stand the terrific noise levels that a\n technological civilization forced everyone to endure. The noise from\n a commercial rocket motor on the ground had been known to drive men\n mad, and sometimes kill them. There had never seemed to be any wholly\n satisfactory solution.\n\n\n But now Bob Wills apparently had the beginnings of a real answer. A\n device that would use the principle of interference to cancel out sound\n waves, leaving behind only heat.\n\n\n It should have been fascinating to Partch, but somehow he couldn't make\n himself get interested in it.", "Yes, he decided, he was going to have to have a long talk with Dr.\n Coles that afternoon. Be a pleasure to get it all off his chest, his\n feeling of melancholia, his latent sense of doom. Be good just to talk\n about it.\n\n\n Oh, everything was getting to him these days. He was in a rut, that was\n it. A rut.\n\n\n He spat a sesame seed against the far wall and the low whir of the\n automatic vacuum cleaner rose and fell briefly.\n\n\n Joseph winced. The speakers were playing \"Slam Bang Boom\" again.\n\n\n His mind turned away from the grating melody in self defense, to look\n inward on himself.\n\n\n Of what, after all, did Joseph Partch's life consist? He licked his\n fingers and thought about it.\n\n\n What would he do this evening after work, for instance?", "Partch became brusque. He liked Bob, but he had work to do.\n\n\n \"Yes, I probably shall, Bob. I tell you what, why don't you just leave\n it here in my office and I'll look it over later, hm?\"\n\n\n \"Okay, Mr. Partch.\"\n\n\n Joseph ushered him out of the office, complimenting him profusely on\n the good work he was doing. Only after he was gone and Joseph was alone\n again behind the closed door, did he realize that he had a sudden\n yearning for company, for someone to talk to.\nPartch had Betty send him in a light lunch and he sat behind his desk\n nibbling the tasteless stuff without much enthusiasm. He wondered if he\n was getting an ulcer.", "It was dark there, and the trees were thick and tall. There was no\n wind, the leaves were soft underfoot. And Joseph Partch was all alone,\ncompletely\nalone.\n\n\n And it was—quiet.\n\n\n Doctor Coles looked at the patient on the white cot sadly.\n\n\n \"I've only seen a case like it once before in my entire career, Dr.\n Leeds.\"\n\n\n Leeds nodded.\n\n\n \"It\nis\nrather rare. Look at him—total catatonia. He's curled into a\n perfect foetal position. Never be the same again, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\n \"The shock must have been tremendous. An awful psychic blow, especially\n to a person as emotionally disturbed as Mr. Partch was.\"", "In his own office the steady din was hardly diminished despite\n soundproofing, and since he was next to an outside wall he was\n subjected also to the noises of the city. He stood staring out of the\n huge window for awhile, watching the cars on the freeway and listening\n to the homogeneous rumble and scream of turbines.\nSomething's wrong with me\n, he thought.\nI shouldn't be feeling this\n way. Nerves. Nerves.\nHe turned around and got his private secretary on the viewer. She\n simpered at him, trying to be friendly with her dull, sunken eyes.\n\n\n \"Betty,\" he told her, \"I want you to make an appointment with my\n therapist for me this afternoon. Tell him it's just a case of nerves,\n though.\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. Anything else?\" Her voice, like every one's, was a high\n pitched screech trying to be heard above the noise.\n\n\n Joseph winced. \"Anybody want to see me this morning?\"", "But looking down, he found that he had already plugged in the line\n cord. An almost erotic excitement began to shake Joseph's body. The\n sense of disaster had surged up anew, but he didn't recognize it yet.\n\n\n An absence of\nsound\n? No! Silly!\n\n\n Then a fire engine came tearing around the corner just below the\n window, filling the office with an ocean of noise.\n\n\n Joseph's hand jerked and flicked the switch.\n\n\n And then the dream came back to him, the nightmare of the night before\n that had precipitated, unknown to him, his mood of foreboding. It came\n back to him with stark realism and flooded him with unadorned fear.\n\n\n In the dream, he had been in a forest. Not just the city park, but a\nreal\nforest, one thousands of miles and centuries away from human\n civilization. A wood in which the foot of Man had never trod.", "Walking through the clerical office usually made him feel better. The\n constant clatter of typewriters and office machines gave him a sense\n of efficiency, of stability, an all-is-well-with-the-world feeling. He\n waved to a few of the more familiar employees and smiled, but of course\n you couldn't say hello with the continual racket.\n\n\n This morning, somehow, it didn't make him feel better. He supposed it\n was because of the song they were playing over the speakers, \"Slam Bang\n Boom,\" the latest Top Hit. He hated that song.\n\n\n Of course the National Mental Health people said constant music had a\n beneficial effect on office workers, so Joseph was no one to object,\n even though he did wonder if anyone could ever actually listen to it\n over the other noise.", "THE RUMBLE AND THE ROAR\nBY STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEW\nThe noise was too much for him.\n \nHe wanted quiet—at any price.\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1957.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nWhen Joseph got to the office his ears were aching from the noise of\n the copter and from his earplugs. Lately, every little thing seemed to\n make him irritable. He supposed it was because his drafting department\n was behind schedule on the latest Defense contract. His ears were sore\n and his stomach writhed with dyspepsia, and his feet hurt.", "And what would there be to do after he had finished dinner that night?\n Why, the same things he had been doing every night for the past fifteen\n years. There would be Tri-Di first of all. The loud comedians, and the\n musical commercials, and the loud bands, and the commercials, and the\n loud songs....\n\n\n And every twenty minutes or so, the viewer would jangle with one of\n Felicia's friends calling up, and more yammering from Felicia.\n\n\n Perhaps there would be company that night, to play cards and sip drinks\n and talk and talk and talk, and never say a thing at all.\n\n\n There would be aircraft shaking the house now and then, and the cry of\n the monorail horn at intervals.\n\n\n And then, at last, it would be time to go to bed, and the murmur of the\n somnolearner orating him on the Theory of Groups all through the long\n night.", "\"Well, Mr. Wills says he has the first model of his invention ready to\n show you.\"\n\n\n \"Let him in whenever he's ready. Otherwise, if nothing important comes\n up, I want you to leave me alone.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, certainly.\" She smiled again, a mechanical, automatic smile\n that seemed to want to be something more.\n\n\n Joseph switched off.\nThat was a damn funny way of saying it\n, he thought.\n\"I want you to\n leave me alone.\" As if somebody were after me.\nHe spent about an hour on routine paperwork and then Bob Wills showed\n up so Joseph switched off his dictograph and let him in.\n\n\n \"I'm afraid you'll have to make it brief, Bob,\" he grinned. \"I've a\n whale of a lot of work to do, and I seem to be developing a splitting\n headache. Nerves, you know.\"", "\"Sure, Mister Partch. I won't take a minute; I just thought you'd like\n to have a look at the first model of our widget and get clued in on our\n progress so far....\"\n\n\n \"Yes, yes, just go ahead. How does the thing work?\"\n\n\n Bob smiled and set the grey steel chassis on Partch's desk, sat down in\n front of it, and began tracing the wiring for Joseph.", "\"The really big problem is the power requirement,\" Wills was saying.\n \"We've got to use a lot of energy to cancel out big sound waves, but\n we've got several possible answers in mind and we're working on all of\n them.\"\n\n\n He caressed the crackle-finish box fondly.\n\n\n \"The basic gimmick works fine, though. Yesterday I took it down to a\n static test stand over in building 90 and had them turn on a pretty\n fair-sized steering rocket for one of the big moon-ships. Reduced the\n noise-level by about 25 per cent, it did. Of course, I still needed my\n plugs.\"\n\n\n Joseph nodded approvingly and stared vacantly into the maze of\n transistors and tubes.\n\n\n \"I've built it to work on ordinary 60 cycle house current,\" Wills told\n him. \"In case you should want to demonstrate it to anybody.\"" ], [ "Yes, he decided, he was going to have to have a long talk with Dr.\n Coles that afternoon. Be a pleasure to get it all off his chest, his\n feeling of melancholia, his latent sense of doom. Be good just to talk\n about it.\n\n\n Oh, everything was getting to him these days. He was in a rut, that was\n it. A rut.\n\n\n He spat a sesame seed against the far wall and the low whir of the\n automatic vacuum cleaner rose and fell briefly.\n\n\n Joseph winced. The speakers were playing \"Slam Bang Boom\" again.\n\n\n His mind turned away from the grating melody in self defense, to look\n inward on himself.\n\n\n Of what, after all, did Joseph Partch's life consist? He licked his\n fingers and thought about it.\n\n\n What would he do this evening after work, for instance?", "Partch became brusque. He liked Bob, but he had work to do.\n\n\n \"Yes, I probably shall, Bob. I tell you what, why don't you just leave\n it here in my office and I'll look it over later, hm?\"\n\n\n \"Okay, Mr. Partch.\"\n\n\n Joseph ushered him out of the office, complimenting him profusely on\n the good work he was doing. Only after he was gone and Joseph was alone\n again behind the closed door, did he realize that he had a sudden\n yearning for company, for someone to talk to.\nPartch had Betty send him in a light lunch and he sat behind his desk\n nibbling the tasteless stuff without much enthusiasm. He wondered if he\n was getting an ulcer.", "And in the morning, he would be shocked into awareness with the clangor\n of the alarm clock and whatever disc jockey the clock radio happened to\n tune in on.\n\n\n Joseph Partch's world was made up of sounds and noises, he decided.\n Dimly, he wondered of what civilization itself would be constructed if\n all the sounds were once taken away.\nWhy\n, after all, was the world\n of Man so noisy? It was almost as if—as if everybody were making as\n much noise as they could to conceal the fact that there was something\n lacking. Or something they were afraid of.\n\n\n Like a little boy whistling loudly as he walks by a cemetery at night.\n\n\n Partch got out of his chair and stared out the window again. There was\n a fire over on the East Side, a bad one by the smoke. The fire engines\n went screaming through the streets like wounded dragons. Sirens, bells.\n Police whistles.", "It was dark there, and the trees were thick and tall. There was no\n wind, the leaves were soft underfoot. And Joseph Partch was all alone,\ncompletely\nalone.\n\n\n And it was—quiet.\n\n\n Doctor Coles looked at the patient on the white cot sadly.\n\n\n \"I've only seen a case like it once before in my entire career, Dr.\n Leeds.\"\n\n\n Leeds nodded.\n\n\n \"It\nis\nrather rare. Look at him—total catatonia. He's curled into a\n perfect foetal position. Never be the same again, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\n \"The shock must have been tremendous. An awful psychic blow, especially\n to a person as emotionally disturbed as Mr. Partch was.\"", "Why, he'd stuff his earplugs back in his inflamed ears and board the\n commuter's copter and ride for half an hour listening to the drumming\n of the rotors and the pleading of the various canned commercials played\n on the copter's speakers loud enough to be heard over the engine noise\n and through the plugs.\n\n\n And then when he got home, there would be the continuous yammer of his\n wife added to the Tri-Di set going full blast and the dull food from\n the automatic kitchen. And synthetic coffee and one stale cigaret.\n Perhaps a glass of brandy to steady his nerves if Dr. Coles approved.\n\n\n Partch brooded. The sense of foreboding had been submerged in the day's\n work, but it was still there. It was as if, any moment, a hydrogen\n bomb were going to be dropped down the chimney, and you had no way of\n knowing when.", "\"Yes, that machine of Mr. Wills' is extremely dangerous. What amazes\n me is that it didn't kill Partch altogether. Good thing we got to him\n when we did.\"\n\n\n Dr. Coles rubbed his jaw.\n\n\n \"Yes, you know it\nis\nincredible how much the human mind can sometimes\n take, actually. As you say, it's a wonder it didn't kill him.\"\n\n\n He shook his head.\n\n\n \"Perfectly horrible. How could any modern human stand it? Two hours, he\n was alone with that machine. Imagine—\ntwo hours\nof total silence!\"", "All at once, Partch realized that never in his life had he experienced\n real quiet or solitude. That actually, he had no conception of what an\n absence of thunder and wailing would be like. A total absence of sound\n and noise.\n\n\n Almost, it was like trying to imagine what a negation of\nspace\nwould\n be like.\n\n\n And then he turned, and his eyes fell on Bob Wills' machine. It could\n reduce the noise level of a rocket motor by 25 per cent, Wills had\n said. Here in the office, the sound level was less than that of a\n rocket motor.\n\n\n And the machine worked on ordinary house current, Bob had said.\n\n\n Partch had an almost horrifying idea. Suppose....\n\n\n But what would Dr. Coles say about this, Partch wondered. Oh, he had to\n get a grip on himself. This was silly, childish....", "It was an interesting problem, or at any rate should have been. It\n was one that had been harassing cities, industry, and particularly\n air-fields, for many years. Of course, every one wore earplugs—and\n that helped a little. And some firms had partially solved the problem\n by using personnel that were totally deaf, because such persons\n were the only ones who could stand the terrific noise levels that a\n technological civilization forced everyone to endure. The noise from\n a commercial rocket motor on the ground had been known to drive men\n mad, and sometimes kill them. There had never seemed to be any wholly\n satisfactory solution.\n\n\n But now Bob Wills apparently had the beginnings of a real answer. A\n device that would use the principle of interference to cancel out sound\n waves, leaving behind only heat.\n\n\n It should have been fascinating to Partch, but somehow he couldn't make\n himself get interested in it.", "But looking down, he found that he had already plugged in the line\n cord. An almost erotic excitement began to shake Joseph's body. The\n sense of disaster had surged up anew, but he didn't recognize it yet.\n\n\n An absence of\nsound\n? No! Silly!\n\n\n Then a fire engine came tearing around the corner just below the\n window, filling the office with an ocean of noise.\n\n\n Joseph's hand jerked and flicked the switch.\n\n\n And then the dream came back to him, the nightmare of the night before\n that had precipitated, unknown to him, his mood of foreboding. It came\n back to him with stark realism and flooded him with unadorned fear.\n\n\n In the dream, he had been in a forest. Not just the city park, but a\nreal\nforest, one thousands of miles and centuries away from human\n civilization. A wood in which the foot of Man had never trod.", "\"Sure, Mister Partch. I won't take a minute; I just thought you'd like\n to have a look at the first model of our widget and get clued in on our\n progress so far....\"\n\n\n \"Yes, yes, just go ahead. How does the thing work?\"\n\n\n Bob smiled and set the grey steel chassis on Partch's desk, sat down in\n front of it, and began tracing the wiring for Joseph.", "\"Well, Mr. Wills says he has the first model of his invention ready to\n show you.\"\n\n\n \"Let him in whenever he's ready. Otherwise, if nothing important comes\n up, I want you to leave me alone.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, certainly.\" She smiled again, a mechanical, automatic smile\n that seemed to want to be something more.\n\n\n Joseph switched off.\nThat was a damn funny way of saying it\n, he thought.\n\"I want you to\n leave me alone.\" As if somebody were after me.\nHe spent about an hour on routine paperwork and then Bob Wills showed\n up so Joseph switched off his dictograph and let him in.\n\n\n \"I'm afraid you'll have to make it brief, Bob,\" he grinned. \"I've a\n whale of a lot of work to do, and I seem to be developing a splitting\n headache. Nerves, you know.\"", "In his own office the steady din was hardly diminished despite\n soundproofing, and since he was next to an outside wall he was\n subjected also to the noises of the city. He stood staring out of the\n huge window for awhile, watching the cars on the freeway and listening\n to the homogeneous rumble and scream of turbines.\nSomething's wrong with me\n, he thought.\nI shouldn't be feeling this\n way. Nerves. Nerves.\nHe turned around and got his private secretary on the viewer. She\n simpered at him, trying to be friendly with her dull, sunken eyes.\n\n\n \"Betty,\" he told her, \"I want you to make an appointment with my\n therapist for me this afternoon. Tell him it's just a case of nerves,\n though.\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. Anything else?\" Her voice, like every one's, was a high\n pitched screech trying to be heard above the noise.\n\n\n Joseph winced. \"Anybody want to see me this morning?\"", "And what would there be to do after he had finished dinner that night?\n Why, the same things he had been doing every night for the past fifteen\n years. There would be Tri-Di first of all. The loud comedians, and the\n musical commercials, and the loud bands, and the commercials, and the\n loud songs....\n\n\n And every twenty minutes or so, the viewer would jangle with one of\n Felicia's friends calling up, and more yammering from Felicia.\n\n\n Perhaps there would be company that night, to play cards and sip drinks\n and talk and talk and talk, and never say a thing at all.\n\n\n There would be aircraft shaking the house now and then, and the cry of\n the monorail horn at intervals.\n\n\n And then, at last, it would be time to go to bed, and the murmur of the\n somnolearner orating him on the Theory of Groups all through the long\n night.", "Walking through the clerical office usually made him feel better. The\n constant clatter of typewriters and office machines gave him a sense\n of efficiency, of stability, an all-is-well-with-the-world feeling. He\n waved to a few of the more familiar employees and smiled, but of course\n you couldn't say hello with the continual racket.\n\n\n This morning, somehow, it didn't make him feel better. He supposed it\n was because of the song they were playing over the speakers, \"Slam Bang\n Boom,\" the latest Top Hit. He hated that song.\n\n\n Of course the National Mental Health people said constant music had a\n beneficial effect on office workers, so Joseph was no one to object,\n even though he did wonder if anyone could ever actually listen to it\n over the other noise.", "THE RUMBLE AND THE ROAR\nBY STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEW\nThe noise was too much for him.\n \nHe wanted quiet—at any price.\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1957.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nWhen Joseph got to the office his ears were aching from the noise of\n the copter and from his earplugs. Lately, every little thing seemed to\n make him irritable. He supposed it was because his drafting department\n was behind schedule on the latest Defense contract. His ears were sore\n and his stomach writhed with dyspepsia, and his feet hurt.", "\"The really big problem is the power requirement,\" Wills was saying.\n \"We've got to use a lot of energy to cancel out big sound waves, but\n we've got several possible answers in mind and we're working on all of\n them.\"\n\n\n He caressed the crackle-finish box fondly.\n\n\n \"The basic gimmick works fine, though. Yesterday I took it down to a\n static test stand over in building 90 and had them turn on a pretty\n fair-sized steering rocket for one of the big moon-ships. Reduced the\n noise-level by about 25 per cent, it did. Of course, I still needed my\n plugs.\"\n\n\n Joseph nodded approvingly and stared vacantly into the maze of\n transistors and tubes.\n\n\n \"I've built it to work on ordinary 60 cycle house current,\" Wills told\n him. \"In case you should want to demonstrate it to anybody.\"" ], [ "It was an interesting problem, or at any rate should have been. It\n was one that had been harassing cities, industry, and particularly\n air-fields, for many years. Of course, every one wore earplugs—and\n that helped a little. And some firms had partially solved the problem\n by using personnel that were totally deaf, because such persons\n were the only ones who could stand the terrific noise levels that a\n technological civilization forced everyone to endure. The noise from\n a commercial rocket motor on the ground had been known to drive men\n mad, and sometimes kill them. There had never seemed to be any wholly\n satisfactory solution.\n\n\n But now Bob Wills apparently had the beginnings of a real answer. A\n device that would use the principle of interference to cancel out sound\n waves, leaving behind only heat.\n\n\n It should have been fascinating to Partch, but somehow he couldn't make\n himself get interested in it.", "All at once, Partch realized that never in his life had he experienced\n real quiet or solitude. That actually, he had no conception of what an\n absence of thunder and wailing would be like. A total absence of sound\n and noise.\n\n\n Almost, it was like trying to imagine what a negation of\nspace\nwould\n be like.\n\n\n And then he turned, and his eyes fell on Bob Wills' machine. It could\n reduce the noise level of a rocket motor by 25 per cent, Wills had\n said. Here in the office, the sound level was less than that of a\n rocket motor.\n\n\n And the machine worked on ordinary house current, Bob had said.\n\n\n Partch had an almost horrifying idea. Suppose....\n\n\n But what would Dr. Coles say about this, Partch wondered. Oh, he had to\n get a grip on himself. This was silly, childish....", "\"Well, Mr. Wills says he has the first model of his invention ready to\n show you.\"\n\n\n \"Let him in whenever he's ready. Otherwise, if nothing important comes\n up, I want you to leave me alone.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, certainly.\" She smiled again, a mechanical, automatic smile\n that seemed to want to be something more.\n\n\n Joseph switched off.\nThat was a damn funny way of saying it\n, he thought.\n\"I want you to\n leave me alone.\" As if somebody were after me.\nHe spent about an hour on routine paperwork and then Bob Wills showed\n up so Joseph switched off his dictograph and let him in.\n\n\n \"I'm afraid you'll have to make it brief, Bob,\" he grinned. \"I've a\n whale of a lot of work to do, and I seem to be developing a splitting\n headache. Nerves, you know.\"", "\"Sure, Mister Partch. I won't take a minute; I just thought you'd like\n to have a look at the first model of our widget and get clued in on our\n progress so far....\"\n\n\n \"Yes, yes, just go ahead. How does the thing work?\"\n\n\n Bob smiled and set the grey steel chassis on Partch's desk, sat down in\n front of it, and began tracing the wiring for Joseph.", "Why, he'd stuff his earplugs back in his inflamed ears and board the\n commuter's copter and ride for half an hour listening to the drumming\n of the rotors and the pleading of the various canned commercials played\n on the copter's speakers loud enough to be heard over the engine noise\n and through the plugs.\n\n\n And then when he got home, there would be the continuous yammer of his\n wife added to the Tri-Di set going full blast and the dull food from\n the automatic kitchen. And synthetic coffee and one stale cigaret.\n Perhaps a glass of brandy to steady his nerves if Dr. Coles approved.\n\n\n Partch brooded. The sense of foreboding had been submerged in the day's\n work, but it was still there. It was as if, any moment, a hydrogen\n bomb were going to be dropped down the chimney, and you had no way of\n knowing when.", "And what would there be to do after he had finished dinner that night?\n Why, the same things he had been doing every night for the past fifteen\n years. There would be Tri-Di first of all. The loud comedians, and the\n musical commercials, and the loud bands, and the commercials, and the\n loud songs....\n\n\n And every twenty minutes or so, the viewer would jangle with one of\n Felicia's friends calling up, and more yammering from Felicia.\n\n\n Perhaps there would be company that night, to play cards and sip drinks\n and talk and talk and talk, and never say a thing at all.\n\n\n There would be aircraft shaking the house now and then, and the cry of\n the monorail horn at intervals.\n\n\n And then, at last, it would be time to go to bed, and the murmur of the\n somnolearner orating him on the Theory of Groups all through the long\n night.", "\"The really big problem is the power requirement,\" Wills was saying.\n \"We've got to use a lot of energy to cancel out big sound waves, but\n we've got several possible answers in mind and we're working on all of\n them.\"\n\n\n He caressed the crackle-finish box fondly.\n\n\n \"The basic gimmick works fine, though. Yesterday I took it down to a\n static test stand over in building 90 and had them turn on a pretty\n fair-sized steering rocket for one of the big moon-ships. Reduced the\n noise-level by about 25 per cent, it did. Of course, I still needed my\n plugs.\"\n\n\n Joseph nodded approvingly and stared vacantly into the maze of\n transistors and tubes.\n\n\n \"I've built it to work on ordinary 60 cycle house current,\" Wills told\n him. \"In case you should want to demonstrate it to anybody.\"", "Yes, he decided, he was going to have to have a long talk with Dr.\n Coles that afternoon. Be a pleasure to get it all off his chest, his\n feeling of melancholia, his latent sense of doom. Be good just to talk\n about it.\n\n\n Oh, everything was getting to him these days. He was in a rut, that was\n it. A rut.\n\n\n He spat a sesame seed against the far wall and the low whir of the\n automatic vacuum cleaner rose and fell briefly.\n\n\n Joseph winced. The speakers were playing \"Slam Bang Boom\" again.\n\n\n His mind turned away from the grating melody in self defense, to look\n inward on himself.\n\n\n Of what, after all, did Joseph Partch's life consist? He licked his\n fingers and thought about it.\n\n\n What would he do this evening after work, for instance?", "Partch became brusque. He liked Bob, but he had work to do.\n\n\n \"Yes, I probably shall, Bob. I tell you what, why don't you just leave\n it here in my office and I'll look it over later, hm?\"\n\n\n \"Okay, Mr. Partch.\"\n\n\n Joseph ushered him out of the office, complimenting him profusely on\n the good work he was doing. Only after he was gone and Joseph was alone\n again behind the closed door, did he realize that he had a sudden\n yearning for company, for someone to talk to.\nPartch had Betty send him in a light lunch and he sat behind his desk\n nibbling the tasteless stuff without much enthusiasm. He wondered if he\n was getting an ulcer.", "And in the morning, he would be shocked into awareness with the clangor\n of the alarm clock and whatever disc jockey the clock radio happened to\n tune in on.\n\n\n Joseph Partch's world was made up of sounds and noises, he decided.\n Dimly, he wondered of what civilization itself would be constructed if\n all the sounds were once taken away.\nWhy\n, after all, was the world\n of Man so noisy? It was almost as if—as if everybody were making as\n much noise as they could to conceal the fact that there was something\n lacking. Or something they were afraid of.\n\n\n Like a little boy whistling loudly as he walks by a cemetery at night.\n\n\n Partch got out of his chair and stared out the window again. There was\n a fire over on the East Side, a bad one by the smoke. The fire engines\n went screaming through the streets like wounded dragons. Sirens, bells.\n Police whistles.", "In his own office the steady din was hardly diminished despite\n soundproofing, and since he was next to an outside wall he was\n subjected also to the noises of the city. He stood staring out of the\n huge window for awhile, watching the cars on the freeway and listening\n to the homogeneous rumble and scream of turbines.\nSomething's wrong with me\n, he thought.\nI shouldn't be feeling this\n way. Nerves. Nerves.\nHe turned around and got his private secretary on the viewer. She\n simpered at him, trying to be friendly with her dull, sunken eyes.\n\n\n \"Betty,\" he told her, \"I want you to make an appointment with my\n therapist for me this afternoon. Tell him it's just a case of nerves,\n though.\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. Anything else?\" Her voice, like every one's, was a high\n pitched screech trying to be heard above the noise.\n\n\n Joseph winced. \"Anybody want to see me this morning?\"", "\"Yes, that machine of Mr. Wills' is extremely dangerous. What amazes\n me is that it didn't kill Partch altogether. Good thing we got to him\n when we did.\"\n\n\n Dr. Coles rubbed his jaw.\n\n\n \"Yes, you know it\nis\nincredible how much the human mind can sometimes\n take, actually. As you say, it's a wonder it didn't kill him.\"\n\n\n He shook his head.\n\n\n \"Perfectly horrible. How could any modern human stand it? Two hours, he\n was alone with that machine. Imagine—\ntwo hours\nof total silence!\"", "But looking down, he found that he had already plugged in the line\n cord. An almost erotic excitement began to shake Joseph's body. The\n sense of disaster had surged up anew, but he didn't recognize it yet.\n\n\n An absence of\nsound\n? No! Silly!\n\n\n Then a fire engine came tearing around the corner just below the\n window, filling the office with an ocean of noise.\n\n\n Joseph's hand jerked and flicked the switch.\n\n\n And then the dream came back to him, the nightmare of the night before\n that had precipitated, unknown to him, his mood of foreboding. It came\n back to him with stark realism and flooded him with unadorned fear.\n\n\n In the dream, he had been in a forest. Not just the city park, but a\nreal\nforest, one thousands of miles and centuries away from human\n civilization. A wood in which the foot of Man had never trod.", "Walking through the clerical office usually made him feel better. The\n constant clatter of typewriters and office machines gave him a sense\n of efficiency, of stability, an all-is-well-with-the-world feeling. He\n waved to a few of the more familiar employees and smiled, but of course\n you couldn't say hello with the continual racket.\n\n\n This morning, somehow, it didn't make him feel better. He supposed it\n was because of the song they were playing over the speakers, \"Slam Bang\n Boom,\" the latest Top Hit. He hated that song.\n\n\n Of course the National Mental Health people said constant music had a\n beneficial effect on office workers, so Joseph was no one to object,\n even though he did wonder if anyone could ever actually listen to it\n over the other noise.", "THE RUMBLE AND THE ROAR\nBY STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEW\nThe noise was too much for him.\n \nHe wanted quiet—at any price.\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1957.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nWhen Joseph got to the office his ears were aching from the noise of\n the copter and from his earplugs. Lately, every little thing seemed to\n make him irritable. He supposed it was because his drafting department\n was behind schedule on the latest Defense contract. His ears were sore\n and his stomach writhed with dyspepsia, and his feet hurt.", "It was dark there, and the trees were thick and tall. There was no\n wind, the leaves were soft underfoot. And Joseph Partch was all alone,\ncompletely\nalone.\n\n\n And it was—quiet.\n\n\n Doctor Coles looked at the patient on the white cot sadly.\n\n\n \"I've only seen a case like it once before in my entire career, Dr.\n Leeds.\"\n\n\n Leeds nodded.\n\n\n \"It\nis\nrather rare. Look at him—total catatonia. He's curled into a\n perfect foetal position. Never be the same again, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\n \"The shock must have been tremendous. An awful psychic blow, especially\n to a person as emotionally disturbed as Mr. Partch was.\"" ], [ "Partch became brusque. He liked Bob, but he had work to do.\n\n\n \"Yes, I probably shall, Bob. I tell you what, why don't you just leave\n it here in my office and I'll look it over later, hm?\"\n\n\n \"Okay, Mr. Partch.\"\n\n\n Joseph ushered him out of the office, complimenting him profusely on\n the good work he was doing. Only after he was gone and Joseph was alone\n again behind the closed door, did he realize that he had a sudden\n yearning for company, for someone to talk to.\nPartch had Betty send him in a light lunch and he sat behind his desk\n nibbling the tasteless stuff without much enthusiasm. He wondered if he\n was getting an ulcer.", "\"Sure, Mister Partch. I won't take a minute; I just thought you'd like\n to have a look at the first model of our widget and get clued in on our\n progress so far....\"\n\n\n \"Yes, yes, just go ahead. How does the thing work?\"\n\n\n Bob smiled and set the grey steel chassis on Partch's desk, sat down in\n front of it, and began tracing the wiring for Joseph.", "Yes, he decided, he was going to have to have a long talk with Dr.\n Coles that afternoon. Be a pleasure to get it all off his chest, his\n feeling of melancholia, his latent sense of doom. Be good just to talk\n about it.\n\n\n Oh, everything was getting to him these days. He was in a rut, that was\n it. A rut.\n\n\n He spat a sesame seed against the far wall and the low whir of the\n automatic vacuum cleaner rose and fell briefly.\n\n\n Joseph winced. The speakers were playing \"Slam Bang Boom\" again.\n\n\n His mind turned away from the grating melody in self defense, to look\n inward on himself.\n\n\n Of what, after all, did Joseph Partch's life consist? He licked his\n fingers and thought about it.\n\n\n What would he do this evening after work, for instance?", "All at once, Partch realized that never in his life had he experienced\n real quiet or solitude. That actually, he had no conception of what an\n absence of thunder and wailing would be like. A total absence of sound\n and noise.\n\n\n Almost, it was like trying to imagine what a negation of\nspace\nwould\n be like.\n\n\n And then he turned, and his eyes fell on Bob Wills' machine. It could\n reduce the noise level of a rocket motor by 25 per cent, Wills had\n said. Here in the office, the sound level was less than that of a\n rocket motor.\n\n\n And the machine worked on ordinary house current, Bob had said.\n\n\n Partch had an almost horrifying idea. Suppose....\n\n\n But what would Dr. Coles say about this, Partch wondered. Oh, he had to\n get a grip on himself. This was silly, childish....", "It was an interesting problem, or at any rate should have been. It\n was one that had been harassing cities, industry, and particularly\n air-fields, for many years. Of course, every one wore earplugs—and\n that helped a little. And some firms had partially solved the problem\n by using personnel that were totally deaf, because such persons\n were the only ones who could stand the terrific noise levels that a\n technological civilization forced everyone to endure. The noise from\n a commercial rocket motor on the ground had been known to drive men\n mad, and sometimes kill them. There had never seemed to be any wholly\n satisfactory solution.\n\n\n But now Bob Wills apparently had the beginnings of a real answer. A\n device that would use the principle of interference to cancel out sound\n waves, leaving behind only heat.\n\n\n It should have been fascinating to Partch, but somehow he couldn't make\n himself get interested in it.", "\"Well, Mr. Wills says he has the first model of his invention ready to\n show you.\"\n\n\n \"Let him in whenever he's ready. Otherwise, if nothing important comes\n up, I want you to leave me alone.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, certainly.\" She smiled again, a mechanical, automatic smile\n that seemed to want to be something more.\n\n\n Joseph switched off.\nThat was a damn funny way of saying it\n, he thought.\n\"I want you to\n leave me alone.\" As if somebody were after me.\nHe spent about an hour on routine paperwork and then Bob Wills showed\n up so Joseph switched off his dictograph and let him in.\n\n\n \"I'm afraid you'll have to make it brief, Bob,\" he grinned. \"I've a\n whale of a lot of work to do, and I seem to be developing a splitting\n headache. Nerves, you know.\"", "It was dark there, and the trees were thick and tall. There was no\n wind, the leaves were soft underfoot. And Joseph Partch was all alone,\ncompletely\nalone.\n\n\n And it was—quiet.\n\n\n Doctor Coles looked at the patient on the white cot sadly.\n\n\n \"I've only seen a case like it once before in my entire career, Dr.\n Leeds.\"\n\n\n Leeds nodded.\n\n\n \"It\nis\nrather rare. Look at him—total catatonia. He's curled into a\n perfect foetal position. Never be the same again, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\n \"The shock must have been tremendous. An awful psychic blow, especially\n to a person as emotionally disturbed as Mr. Partch was.\"", "Why, he'd stuff his earplugs back in his inflamed ears and board the\n commuter's copter and ride for half an hour listening to the drumming\n of the rotors and the pleading of the various canned commercials played\n on the copter's speakers loud enough to be heard over the engine noise\n and through the plugs.\n\n\n And then when he got home, there would be the continuous yammer of his\n wife added to the Tri-Di set going full blast and the dull food from\n the automatic kitchen. And synthetic coffee and one stale cigaret.\n Perhaps a glass of brandy to steady his nerves if Dr. Coles approved.\n\n\n Partch brooded. The sense of foreboding had been submerged in the day's\n work, but it was still there. It was as if, any moment, a hydrogen\n bomb were going to be dropped down the chimney, and you had no way of\n knowing when.", "And in the morning, he would be shocked into awareness with the clangor\n of the alarm clock and whatever disc jockey the clock radio happened to\n tune in on.\n\n\n Joseph Partch's world was made up of sounds and noises, he decided.\n Dimly, he wondered of what civilization itself would be constructed if\n all the sounds were once taken away.\nWhy\n, after all, was the world\n of Man so noisy? It was almost as if—as if everybody were making as\n much noise as they could to conceal the fact that there was something\n lacking. Or something they were afraid of.\n\n\n Like a little boy whistling loudly as he walks by a cemetery at night.\n\n\n Partch got out of his chair and stared out the window again. There was\n a fire over on the East Side, a bad one by the smoke. The fire engines\n went screaming through the streets like wounded dragons. Sirens, bells.\n Police whistles.", "\"Yes, that machine of Mr. Wills' is extremely dangerous. What amazes\n me is that it didn't kill Partch altogether. Good thing we got to him\n when we did.\"\n\n\n Dr. Coles rubbed his jaw.\n\n\n \"Yes, you know it\nis\nincredible how much the human mind can sometimes\n take, actually. As you say, it's a wonder it didn't kill him.\"\n\n\n He shook his head.\n\n\n \"Perfectly horrible. How could any modern human stand it? Two hours, he\n was alone with that machine. Imagine—\ntwo hours\nof total silence!\"", "And what would there be to do after he had finished dinner that night?\n Why, the same things he had been doing every night for the past fifteen\n years. There would be Tri-Di first of all. The loud comedians, and the\n musical commercials, and the loud bands, and the commercials, and the\n loud songs....\n\n\n And every twenty minutes or so, the viewer would jangle with one of\n Felicia's friends calling up, and more yammering from Felicia.\n\n\n Perhaps there would be company that night, to play cards and sip drinks\n and talk and talk and talk, and never say a thing at all.\n\n\n There would be aircraft shaking the house now and then, and the cry of\n the monorail horn at intervals.\n\n\n And then, at last, it would be time to go to bed, and the murmur of the\n somnolearner orating him on the Theory of Groups all through the long\n night.", "In his own office the steady din was hardly diminished despite\n soundproofing, and since he was next to an outside wall he was\n subjected also to the noises of the city. He stood staring out of the\n huge window for awhile, watching the cars on the freeway and listening\n to the homogeneous rumble and scream of turbines.\nSomething's wrong with me\n, he thought.\nI shouldn't be feeling this\n way. Nerves. Nerves.\nHe turned around and got his private secretary on the viewer. She\n simpered at him, trying to be friendly with her dull, sunken eyes.\n\n\n \"Betty,\" he told her, \"I want you to make an appointment with my\n therapist for me this afternoon. Tell him it's just a case of nerves,\n though.\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. Anything else?\" Her voice, like every one's, was a high\n pitched screech trying to be heard above the noise.\n\n\n Joseph winced. \"Anybody want to see me this morning?\"", "Walking through the clerical office usually made him feel better. The\n constant clatter of typewriters and office machines gave him a sense\n of efficiency, of stability, an all-is-well-with-the-world feeling. He\n waved to a few of the more familiar employees and smiled, but of course\n you couldn't say hello with the continual racket.\n\n\n This morning, somehow, it didn't make him feel better. He supposed it\n was because of the song they were playing over the speakers, \"Slam Bang\n Boom,\" the latest Top Hit. He hated that song.\n\n\n Of course the National Mental Health people said constant music had a\n beneficial effect on office workers, so Joseph was no one to object,\n even though he did wonder if anyone could ever actually listen to it\n over the other noise.", "But looking down, he found that he had already plugged in the line\n cord. An almost erotic excitement began to shake Joseph's body. The\n sense of disaster had surged up anew, but he didn't recognize it yet.\n\n\n An absence of\nsound\n? No! Silly!\n\n\n Then a fire engine came tearing around the corner just below the\n window, filling the office with an ocean of noise.\n\n\n Joseph's hand jerked and flicked the switch.\n\n\n And then the dream came back to him, the nightmare of the night before\n that had precipitated, unknown to him, his mood of foreboding. It came\n back to him with stark realism and flooded him with unadorned fear.\n\n\n In the dream, he had been in a forest. Not just the city park, but a\nreal\nforest, one thousands of miles and centuries away from human\n civilization. A wood in which the foot of Man had never trod.", "THE RUMBLE AND THE ROAR\nBY STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEW\nThe noise was too much for him.\n \nHe wanted quiet—at any price.\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1957.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nWhen Joseph got to the office his ears were aching from the noise of\n the copter and from his earplugs. Lately, every little thing seemed to\n make him irritable. He supposed it was because his drafting department\n was behind schedule on the latest Defense contract. His ears were sore\n and his stomach writhed with dyspepsia, and his feet hurt.", "\"The really big problem is the power requirement,\" Wills was saying.\n \"We've got to use a lot of energy to cancel out big sound waves, but\n we've got several possible answers in mind and we're working on all of\n them.\"\n\n\n He caressed the crackle-finish box fondly.\n\n\n \"The basic gimmick works fine, though. Yesterday I took it down to a\n static test stand over in building 90 and had them turn on a pretty\n fair-sized steering rocket for one of the big moon-ships. Reduced the\n noise-level by about 25 per cent, it did. Of course, I still needed my\n plugs.\"\n\n\n Joseph nodded approvingly and stared vacantly into the maze of\n transistors and tubes.\n\n\n \"I've built it to work on ordinary 60 cycle house current,\" Wills told\n him. \"In case you should want to demonstrate it to anybody.\"" ], [ "Walking through the clerical office usually made him feel better. The\n constant clatter of typewriters and office machines gave him a sense\n of efficiency, of stability, an all-is-well-with-the-world feeling. He\n waved to a few of the more familiar employees and smiled, but of course\n you couldn't say hello with the continual racket.\n\n\n This morning, somehow, it didn't make him feel better. He supposed it\n was because of the song they were playing over the speakers, \"Slam Bang\n Boom,\" the latest Top Hit. He hated that song.\n\n\n Of course the National Mental Health people said constant music had a\n beneficial effect on office workers, so Joseph was no one to object,\n even though he did wonder if anyone could ever actually listen to it\n over the other noise.", "Partch became brusque. He liked Bob, but he had work to do.\n\n\n \"Yes, I probably shall, Bob. I tell you what, why don't you just leave\n it here in my office and I'll look it over later, hm?\"\n\n\n \"Okay, Mr. Partch.\"\n\n\n Joseph ushered him out of the office, complimenting him profusely on\n the good work he was doing. Only after he was gone and Joseph was alone\n again behind the closed door, did he realize that he had a sudden\n yearning for company, for someone to talk to.\nPartch had Betty send him in a light lunch and he sat behind his desk\n nibbling the tasteless stuff without much enthusiasm. He wondered if he\n was getting an ulcer.", "Why, he'd stuff his earplugs back in his inflamed ears and board the\n commuter's copter and ride for half an hour listening to the drumming\n of the rotors and the pleading of the various canned commercials played\n on the copter's speakers loud enough to be heard over the engine noise\n and through the plugs.\n\n\n And then when he got home, there would be the continuous yammer of his\n wife added to the Tri-Di set going full blast and the dull food from\n the automatic kitchen. And synthetic coffee and one stale cigaret.\n Perhaps a glass of brandy to steady his nerves if Dr. Coles approved.\n\n\n Partch brooded. The sense of foreboding had been submerged in the day's\n work, but it was still there. It was as if, any moment, a hydrogen\n bomb were going to be dropped down the chimney, and you had no way of\n knowing when.", "Yes, he decided, he was going to have to have a long talk with Dr.\n Coles that afternoon. Be a pleasure to get it all off his chest, his\n feeling of melancholia, his latent sense of doom. Be good just to talk\n about it.\n\n\n Oh, everything was getting to him these days. He was in a rut, that was\n it. A rut.\n\n\n He spat a sesame seed against the far wall and the low whir of the\n automatic vacuum cleaner rose and fell briefly.\n\n\n Joseph winced. The speakers were playing \"Slam Bang Boom\" again.\n\n\n His mind turned away from the grating melody in self defense, to look\n inward on himself.\n\n\n Of what, after all, did Joseph Partch's life consist? He licked his\n fingers and thought about it.\n\n\n What would he do this evening after work, for instance?", "In his own office the steady din was hardly diminished despite\n soundproofing, and since he was next to an outside wall he was\n subjected also to the noises of the city. He stood staring out of the\n huge window for awhile, watching the cars on the freeway and listening\n to the homogeneous rumble and scream of turbines.\nSomething's wrong with me\n, he thought.\nI shouldn't be feeling this\n way. Nerves. Nerves.\nHe turned around and got his private secretary on the viewer. She\n simpered at him, trying to be friendly with her dull, sunken eyes.\n\n\n \"Betty,\" he told her, \"I want you to make an appointment with my\n therapist for me this afternoon. Tell him it's just a case of nerves,\n though.\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. Anything else?\" Her voice, like every one's, was a high\n pitched screech trying to be heard above the noise.\n\n\n Joseph winced. \"Anybody want to see me this morning?\"", "And what would there be to do after he had finished dinner that night?\n Why, the same things he had been doing every night for the past fifteen\n years. There would be Tri-Di first of all. The loud comedians, and the\n musical commercials, and the loud bands, and the commercials, and the\n loud songs....\n\n\n And every twenty minutes or so, the viewer would jangle with one of\n Felicia's friends calling up, and more yammering from Felicia.\n\n\n Perhaps there would be company that night, to play cards and sip drinks\n and talk and talk and talk, and never say a thing at all.\n\n\n There would be aircraft shaking the house now and then, and the cry of\n the monorail horn at intervals.\n\n\n And then, at last, it would be time to go to bed, and the murmur of the\n somnolearner orating him on the Theory of Groups all through the long\n night.", "It was an interesting problem, or at any rate should have been. It\n was one that had been harassing cities, industry, and particularly\n air-fields, for many years. Of course, every one wore earplugs—and\n that helped a little. And some firms had partially solved the problem\n by using personnel that were totally deaf, because such persons\n were the only ones who could stand the terrific noise levels that a\n technological civilization forced everyone to endure. The noise from\n a commercial rocket motor on the ground had been known to drive men\n mad, and sometimes kill them. There had never seemed to be any wholly\n satisfactory solution.\n\n\n But now Bob Wills apparently had the beginnings of a real answer. A\n device that would use the principle of interference to cancel out sound\n waves, leaving behind only heat.\n\n\n It should have been fascinating to Partch, but somehow he couldn't make\n himself get interested in it.", "\"Yes, that machine of Mr. Wills' is extremely dangerous. What amazes\n me is that it didn't kill Partch altogether. Good thing we got to him\n when we did.\"\n\n\n Dr. Coles rubbed his jaw.\n\n\n \"Yes, you know it\nis\nincredible how much the human mind can sometimes\n take, actually. As you say, it's a wonder it didn't kill him.\"\n\n\n He shook his head.\n\n\n \"Perfectly horrible. How could any modern human stand it? Two hours, he\n was alone with that machine. Imagine—\ntwo hours\nof total silence!\"", "All at once, Partch realized that never in his life had he experienced\n real quiet or solitude. That actually, he had no conception of what an\n absence of thunder and wailing would be like. A total absence of sound\n and noise.\n\n\n Almost, it was like trying to imagine what a negation of\nspace\nwould\n be like.\n\n\n And then he turned, and his eyes fell on Bob Wills' machine. It could\n reduce the noise level of a rocket motor by 25 per cent, Wills had\n said. Here in the office, the sound level was less than that of a\n rocket motor.\n\n\n And the machine worked on ordinary house current, Bob had said.\n\n\n Partch had an almost horrifying idea. Suppose....\n\n\n But what would Dr. Coles say about this, Partch wondered. Oh, he had to\n get a grip on himself. This was silly, childish....", "\"Well, Mr. Wills says he has the first model of his invention ready to\n show you.\"\n\n\n \"Let him in whenever he's ready. Otherwise, if nothing important comes\n up, I want you to leave me alone.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, certainly.\" She smiled again, a mechanical, automatic smile\n that seemed to want to be something more.\n\n\n Joseph switched off.\nThat was a damn funny way of saying it\n, he thought.\n\"I want you to\n leave me alone.\" As if somebody were after me.\nHe spent about an hour on routine paperwork and then Bob Wills showed\n up so Joseph switched off his dictograph and let him in.\n\n\n \"I'm afraid you'll have to make it brief, Bob,\" he grinned. \"I've a\n whale of a lot of work to do, and I seem to be developing a splitting\n headache. Nerves, you know.\"", "And in the morning, he would be shocked into awareness with the clangor\n of the alarm clock and whatever disc jockey the clock radio happened to\n tune in on.\n\n\n Joseph Partch's world was made up of sounds and noises, he decided.\n Dimly, he wondered of what civilization itself would be constructed if\n all the sounds were once taken away.\nWhy\n, after all, was the world\n of Man so noisy? It was almost as if—as if everybody were making as\n much noise as they could to conceal the fact that there was something\n lacking. Or something they were afraid of.\n\n\n Like a little boy whistling loudly as he walks by a cemetery at night.\n\n\n Partch got out of his chair and stared out the window again. There was\n a fire over on the East Side, a bad one by the smoke. The fire engines\n went screaming through the streets like wounded dragons. Sirens, bells.\n Police whistles.", "But looking down, he found that he had already plugged in the line\n cord. An almost erotic excitement began to shake Joseph's body. The\n sense of disaster had surged up anew, but he didn't recognize it yet.\n\n\n An absence of\nsound\n? No! Silly!\n\n\n Then a fire engine came tearing around the corner just below the\n window, filling the office with an ocean of noise.\n\n\n Joseph's hand jerked and flicked the switch.\n\n\n And then the dream came back to him, the nightmare of the night before\n that had precipitated, unknown to him, his mood of foreboding. It came\n back to him with stark realism and flooded him with unadorned fear.\n\n\n In the dream, he had been in a forest. Not just the city park, but a\nreal\nforest, one thousands of miles and centuries away from human\n civilization. A wood in which the foot of Man had never trod.", "\"The really big problem is the power requirement,\" Wills was saying.\n \"We've got to use a lot of energy to cancel out big sound waves, but\n we've got several possible answers in mind and we're working on all of\n them.\"\n\n\n He caressed the crackle-finish box fondly.\n\n\n \"The basic gimmick works fine, though. Yesterday I took it down to a\n static test stand over in building 90 and had them turn on a pretty\n fair-sized steering rocket for one of the big moon-ships. Reduced the\n noise-level by about 25 per cent, it did. Of course, I still needed my\n plugs.\"\n\n\n Joseph nodded approvingly and stared vacantly into the maze of\n transistors and tubes.\n\n\n \"I've built it to work on ordinary 60 cycle house current,\" Wills told\n him. \"In case you should want to demonstrate it to anybody.\"", "THE RUMBLE AND THE ROAR\nBY STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEW\nThe noise was too much for him.\n \nHe wanted quiet—at any price.\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1957.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nWhen Joseph got to the office his ears were aching from the noise of\n the copter and from his earplugs. Lately, every little thing seemed to\n make him irritable. He supposed it was because his drafting department\n was behind schedule on the latest Defense contract. His ears were sore\n and his stomach writhed with dyspepsia, and his feet hurt.", "\"Sure, Mister Partch. I won't take a minute; I just thought you'd like\n to have a look at the first model of our widget and get clued in on our\n progress so far....\"\n\n\n \"Yes, yes, just go ahead. How does the thing work?\"\n\n\n Bob smiled and set the grey steel chassis on Partch's desk, sat down in\n front of it, and began tracing the wiring for Joseph.", "It was dark there, and the trees were thick and tall. There was no\n wind, the leaves were soft underfoot. And Joseph Partch was all alone,\ncompletely\nalone.\n\n\n And it was—quiet.\n\n\n Doctor Coles looked at the patient on the white cot sadly.\n\n\n \"I've only seen a case like it once before in my entire career, Dr.\n Leeds.\"\n\n\n Leeds nodded.\n\n\n \"It\nis\nrather rare. Look at him—total catatonia. He's curled into a\n perfect foetal position. Never be the same again, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\n \"The shock must have been tremendous. An awful psychic blow, especially\n to a person as emotionally disturbed as Mr. Partch was.\"" ], [ "Walking through the clerical office usually made him feel better. The\n constant clatter of typewriters and office machines gave him a sense\n of efficiency, of stability, an all-is-well-with-the-world feeling. He\n waved to a few of the more familiar employees and smiled, but of course\n you couldn't say hello with the continual racket.\n\n\n This morning, somehow, it didn't make him feel better. He supposed it\n was because of the song they were playing over the speakers, \"Slam Bang\n Boom,\" the latest Top Hit. He hated that song.\n\n\n Of course the National Mental Health people said constant music had a\n beneficial effect on office workers, so Joseph was no one to object,\n even though he did wonder if anyone could ever actually listen to it\n over the other noise.", "It was dark there, and the trees were thick and tall. There was no\n wind, the leaves were soft underfoot. And Joseph Partch was all alone,\ncompletely\nalone.\n\n\n And it was—quiet.\n\n\n Doctor Coles looked at the patient on the white cot sadly.\n\n\n \"I've only seen a case like it once before in my entire career, Dr.\n Leeds.\"\n\n\n Leeds nodded.\n\n\n \"It\nis\nrather rare. Look at him—total catatonia. He's curled into a\n perfect foetal position. Never be the same again, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\n \"The shock must have been tremendous. An awful psychic blow, especially\n to a person as emotionally disturbed as Mr. Partch was.\"", "In his own office the steady din was hardly diminished despite\n soundproofing, and since he was next to an outside wall he was\n subjected also to the noises of the city. He stood staring out of the\n huge window for awhile, watching the cars on the freeway and listening\n to the homogeneous rumble and scream of turbines.\nSomething's wrong with me\n, he thought.\nI shouldn't be feeling this\n way. Nerves. Nerves.\nHe turned around and got his private secretary on the viewer. She\n simpered at him, trying to be friendly with her dull, sunken eyes.\n\n\n \"Betty,\" he told her, \"I want you to make an appointment with my\n therapist for me this afternoon. Tell him it's just a case of nerves,\n though.\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. Anything else?\" Her voice, like every one's, was a high\n pitched screech trying to be heard above the noise.\n\n\n Joseph winced. \"Anybody want to see me this morning?\"", "Yes, he decided, he was going to have to have a long talk with Dr.\n Coles that afternoon. Be a pleasure to get it all off his chest, his\n feeling of melancholia, his latent sense of doom. Be good just to talk\n about it.\n\n\n Oh, everything was getting to him these days. He was in a rut, that was\n it. A rut.\n\n\n He spat a sesame seed against the far wall and the low whir of the\n automatic vacuum cleaner rose and fell briefly.\n\n\n Joseph winced. The speakers were playing \"Slam Bang Boom\" again.\n\n\n His mind turned away from the grating melody in self defense, to look\n inward on himself.\n\n\n Of what, after all, did Joseph Partch's life consist? He licked his\n fingers and thought about it.\n\n\n What would he do this evening after work, for instance?", "\"Well, Mr. Wills says he has the first model of his invention ready to\n show you.\"\n\n\n \"Let him in whenever he's ready. Otherwise, if nothing important comes\n up, I want you to leave me alone.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir, certainly.\" She smiled again, a mechanical, automatic smile\n that seemed to want to be something more.\n\n\n Joseph switched off.\nThat was a damn funny way of saying it\n, he thought.\n\"I want you to\n leave me alone.\" As if somebody were after me.\nHe spent about an hour on routine paperwork and then Bob Wills showed\n up so Joseph switched off his dictograph and let him in.\n\n\n \"I'm afraid you'll have to make it brief, Bob,\" he grinned. \"I've a\n whale of a lot of work to do, and I seem to be developing a splitting\n headache. Nerves, you know.\"", "\"Yes, that machine of Mr. Wills' is extremely dangerous. What amazes\n me is that it didn't kill Partch altogether. Good thing we got to him\n when we did.\"\n\n\n Dr. Coles rubbed his jaw.\n\n\n \"Yes, you know it\nis\nincredible how much the human mind can sometimes\n take, actually. As you say, it's a wonder it didn't kill him.\"\n\n\n He shook his head.\n\n\n \"Perfectly horrible. How could any modern human stand it? Two hours, he\n was alone with that machine. Imagine—\ntwo hours\nof total silence!\"", "Why, he'd stuff his earplugs back in his inflamed ears and board the\n commuter's copter and ride for half an hour listening to the drumming\n of the rotors and the pleading of the various canned commercials played\n on the copter's speakers loud enough to be heard over the engine noise\n and through the plugs.\n\n\n And then when he got home, there would be the continuous yammer of his\n wife added to the Tri-Di set going full blast and the dull food from\n the automatic kitchen. And synthetic coffee and one stale cigaret.\n Perhaps a glass of brandy to steady his nerves if Dr. Coles approved.\n\n\n Partch brooded. The sense of foreboding had been submerged in the day's\n work, but it was still there. It was as if, any moment, a hydrogen\n bomb were going to be dropped down the chimney, and you had no way of\n knowing when.", "And in the morning, he would be shocked into awareness with the clangor\n of the alarm clock and whatever disc jockey the clock radio happened to\n tune in on.\n\n\n Joseph Partch's world was made up of sounds and noises, he decided.\n Dimly, he wondered of what civilization itself would be constructed if\n all the sounds were once taken away.\nWhy\n, after all, was the world\n of Man so noisy? It was almost as if—as if everybody were making as\n much noise as they could to conceal the fact that there was something\n lacking. Or something they were afraid of.\n\n\n Like a little boy whistling loudly as he walks by a cemetery at night.\n\n\n Partch got out of his chair and stared out the window again. There was\n a fire over on the East Side, a bad one by the smoke. The fire engines\n went screaming through the streets like wounded dragons. Sirens, bells.\n Police whistles.", "And what would there be to do after he had finished dinner that night?\n Why, the same things he had been doing every night for the past fifteen\n years. There would be Tri-Di first of all. The loud comedians, and the\n musical commercials, and the loud bands, and the commercials, and the\n loud songs....\n\n\n And every twenty minutes or so, the viewer would jangle with one of\n Felicia's friends calling up, and more yammering from Felicia.\n\n\n Perhaps there would be company that night, to play cards and sip drinks\n and talk and talk and talk, and never say a thing at all.\n\n\n There would be aircraft shaking the house now and then, and the cry of\n the monorail horn at intervals.\n\n\n And then, at last, it would be time to go to bed, and the murmur of the\n somnolearner orating him on the Theory of Groups all through the long\n night.", "Partch became brusque. He liked Bob, but he had work to do.\n\n\n \"Yes, I probably shall, Bob. I tell you what, why don't you just leave\n it here in my office and I'll look it over later, hm?\"\n\n\n \"Okay, Mr. Partch.\"\n\n\n Joseph ushered him out of the office, complimenting him profusely on\n the good work he was doing. Only after he was gone and Joseph was alone\n again behind the closed door, did he realize that he had a sudden\n yearning for company, for someone to talk to.\nPartch had Betty send him in a light lunch and he sat behind his desk\n nibbling the tasteless stuff without much enthusiasm. He wondered if he\n was getting an ulcer.", "But looking down, he found that he had already plugged in the line\n cord. An almost erotic excitement began to shake Joseph's body. The\n sense of disaster had surged up anew, but he didn't recognize it yet.\n\n\n An absence of\nsound\n? No! Silly!\n\n\n Then a fire engine came tearing around the corner just below the\n window, filling the office with an ocean of noise.\n\n\n Joseph's hand jerked and flicked the switch.\n\n\n And then the dream came back to him, the nightmare of the night before\n that had precipitated, unknown to him, his mood of foreboding. It came\n back to him with stark realism and flooded him with unadorned fear.\n\n\n In the dream, he had been in a forest. Not just the city park, but a\nreal\nforest, one thousands of miles and centuries away from human\n civilization. A wood in which the foot of Man had never trod.", "All at once, Partch realized that never in his life had he experienced\n real quiet or solitude. That actually, he had no conception of what an\n absence of thunder and wailing would be like. A total absence of sound\n and noise.\n\n\n Almost, it was like trying to imagine what a negation of\nspace\nwould\n be like.\n\n\n And then he turned, and his eyes fell on Bob Wills' machine. It could\n reduce the noise level of a rocket motor by 25 per cent, Wills had\n said. Here in the office, the sound level was less than that of a\n rocket motor.\n\n\n And the machine worked on ordinary house current, Bob had said.\n\n\n Partch had an almost horrifying idea. Suppose....\n\n\n But what would Dr. Coles say about this, Partch wondered. Oh, he had to\n get a grip on himself. This was silly, childish....", "It was an interesting problem, or at any rate should have been. It\n was one that had been harassing cities, industry, and particularly\n air-fields, for many years. Of course, every one wore earplugs—and\n that helped a little. And some firms had partially solved the problem\n by using personnel that were totally deaf, because such persons\n were the only ones who could stand the terrific noise levels that a\n technological civilization forced everyone to endure. The noise from\n a commercial rocket motor on the ground had been known to drive men\n mad, and sometimes kill them. There had never seemed to be any wholly\n satisfactory solution.\n\n\n But now Bob Wills apparently had the beginnings of a real answer. A\n device that would use the principle of interference to cancel out sound\n waves, leaving behind only heat.\n\n\n It should have been fascinating to Partch, but somehow he couldn't make\n himself get interested in it.", "\"The really big problem is the power requirement,\" Wills was saying.\n \"We've got to use a lot of energy to cancel out big sound waves, but\n we've got several possible answers in mind and we're working on all of\n them.\"\n\n\n He caressed the crackle-finish box fondly.\n\n\n \"The basic gimmick works fine, though. Yesterday I took it down to a\n static test stand over in building 90 and had them turn on a pretty\n fair-sized steering rocket for one of the big moon-ships. Reduced the\n noise-level by about 25 per cent, it did. Of course, I still needed my\n plugs.\"\n\n\n Joseph nodded approvingly and stared vacantly into the maze of\n transistors and tubes.\n\n\n \"I've built it to work on ordinary 60 cycle house current,\" Wills told\n him. \"In case you should want to demonstrate it to anybody.\"", "THE RUMBLE AND THE ROAR\nBY STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEW\nThe noise was too much for him.\n \nHe wanted quiet—at any price.\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1957.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nWhen Joseph got to the office his ears were aching from the noise of\n the copter and from his earplugs. Lately, every little thing seemed to\n make him irritable. He supposed it was because his drafting department\n was behind schedule on the latest Defense contract. His ears were sore\n and his stomach writhed with dyspepsia, and his feet hurt.", "\"Sure, Mister Partch. I won't take a minute; I just thought you'd like\n to have a look at the first model of our widget and get clued in on our\n progress so far....\"\n\n\n \"Yes, yes, just go ahead. How does the thing work?\"\n\n\n Bob smiled and set the grey steel chassis on Partch's desk, sat down in\n front of it, and began tracing the wiring for Joseph." ] ]
test	63932	[ "What is ironic about Captian Remo's assessment of the damage?", "Initially, the crew believes that the ship is repaired. What is still wrong with it?", "What happens if this problem is not repaired.", "Why does Dorothy feel apprehensive of Hind?", "How does Barry become ill?", "What is the doctor's diagnosis of Barry's illness.", "What is the first clue where the doctor notices Barry's drastic changes?", "What does Barry appear to be morphing into?", "When he is ill, who does not come and see Barry?", "In what physical ways does Barry change?" ]	[ [ "He believes that the damage will eventually grant them the use of a new ship.", "He believes that they ended up being lucky dispite the damage they encured.", "He believes that the damage will be blamed on him, giving him the perfect option to go home.", "He believes that the damage they encurred will be their ticket home." ], [ "There are space objects attached to an unseen part of the ship.", "Metal substances are keeping it from working properly.", "There is an invisible beam keeping it from moving.", "It has a hole in the fuel tank." ], [ "Nothing. Everything will opporate as usual.", "It will leave the ship vulnerable to a hostile takeover.", "The foreign material will cause the ship to become extremely difficult to maintain safely.", "The ship will loose oxygen, and the crew will die" ], [ "Something about his personality throws her off.", "She is not used to being with a man of means, and his money makes her feel uncomfortable.", "Nothing. She is completely in love with him.", "She dislikes the way he treats Barry." ], [ "His suit leaked, exposinging him to radiation.", "He is stricken with an unknown illness. ", "He is heartbroken over Dorothy choosing Hind over him,", "He catches an illness from another of the ship's passangers." ], [ "The doctor is confounded, and he has no prognosis for the illness.", "He is diagnosed with a rare strain of a tropical disease.", "He has radiation poisoning.", "He tells Barry that his symptoms are psychosomatic." ], [ "Barry loses interest in all food and water.", "He is able to take water into his body in a way that would have killed someone else. ", "He exhibits super human strength.", "He notices that Barry is covered in a layer of hair the likes of which the doctor has never seen." ], [ "A vamprire", "A fish", "A woman.", "A warewolf" ], [ "No one on the crew is allowed to see him", "The doctor", "The captian", "Dorothy" ], [ "He does not. It is all in his mind.", "He morphs into a dog-like creature.", "He grows small wings, but they are not strong enough for him to fly.", "He morphs into an aquatic creature." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Captain Reno surveyed the havoc. Young Ryan's body floated eerily in\n the zero gravity, charred into instant death by the back-blast. The\n line accelerator was a shapeless ruin, but except for broken meter\n glasses and scorched control handles other mechanical damage appeared\n minor. They had been lucky.\n\n\n \"Turnover starts in six hours twelve minutes,\" the captain said\n meaningfully.\n\n\n Robson Hind cleared his throat. \"We can change accelerators in two\n hours,\" he declared. With a quick reassumption of authority he began to\n order his crew into action.\n\n\n It took nearer three hours than two to change accelerators despite\n Hind's shouted orders.\n\n\n At last the job was completed. Hind made a final check, floated over to\n the control panel and started the fuel feed. With a confident smile he\n threw in the accelerator switch.", "Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet\n room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was\n manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One\n by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence.\n\n\n The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable\n conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open.\n Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was\n close behind him.\n\n\n Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony,\n hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had\n lost its usual ruddiness.", "Number One had bumbled in on visual, the pilot depending on the smeary\n images of infra-sight goggles. An inviting grassy plain had proved to\n be a layer of algae floating on quicksand. Frantically the crew had\n blasted down huge balsa-like marsh trees, cutting up the trunks with\n flame guns to make crude rafts. They had performed fantastic feats of\n strength and endurance but managed to salvage only half their equipment\n before the shining nose of One had vanished in the gurgling ooze.", "Into a miles-thick layer of opacity Four roared, with Captain Reno\n himself jockeying throttles to keep it balanced on its self-created\n support of flame.\n\n\n \"You're almost in,\" a voice chanted into his headphones through\n crackling, sizzling static. \"Easy toward spherical one-thirty. Hold it!\n Lower. Lower. CUT YOUR POWER!\"\n\n\n The heavy hull dropped sickeningly, struck with a mushy thud, settled,\n steadied.\n\n\n Barry was weak, but with Nick Podtiaguine steadying him he was waiting\n with the others when Captain Reno gave the last order.\n\n\n \"Airlock open. Both doors.\"\n\n\n Venusian air poured in.\n\n\n \"For this I left Panama?\" one of the men yelped.\n\n\n \"Enough to gag a maggot,\" another agreed with hand to nose.", "The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but\n this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had\n made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had\n carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or\n judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook\n some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the\n Five Ship Plan.\n\n\n But even with his trickery Hind had lost.\n\n\n He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.\n\n\n The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead\n tubelight was off.\n\n\n He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.\n\n\n Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist\n machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead,\n cut off outside his room.", "\"For the safety of the ship.\" That phrase, taken from the ancient\n Earthbound code of the sea, had occurred repeatedly in the\n indoctrination manual at Training Base. He remembered it, and\n remembered further the contingent plans regarding assigned and\n unassigned personnel.\n\n\n For a moment he stood indecisively, the nervous, unhumorous smile\n quirking across his angular face making him look more like an untried\n boy than a structural engineer who had fought his way up through some\n of the toughest tropical construction camps of Earth. His lean body,\n built more for quick, neatly coordinated action than brute power,\n balanced handily in the zero gravity as he ran one hand through his\n sandy hair in a gesture of uncertainty.\n\n\n He knew that not even the captain would order him through the airlock.\n\n\n But the members of the Five Ship Plan had been selected in part for a\n sense of responsibility.\n\n\n \"Nick, will you help me button up?\" he asked with forced calmness.", "The meter needles climbed, soared past the red lines without pausing,\n and just in time to prevent a second blowback, Hind cut the power.\n\n\n \"\nThere's metal in the field!\n\" His voice was high and unsteady.\nEveryone knew what that meant. The slightest trace of magnetic material\n would distort the delicately balanced cylinder of force that contained\n and directed the Hoskins blast, making it suicidal to operate.\n\n\n Calmly Captain Reno voiced the thought in every mind.\n\n\n \"It must be cleared. From the outside.\"\n\n\n Several of the men swore under their breaths. Interplanetary space\n was constantly bombarded, with an intensity inverse to the prevailing\n gravitation, by something called Sigma radiation. Man had never\n encountered it until leaving Earth, and little was known of it\n except that short exposure killed test animals and left their bodies\n unpredictably altered.", "\"I believe you, Barry.\"\n\n\n She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days\n at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of\n civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had\n awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a\n woman, as well as a toxicologist.\n\n\n When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous\n and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger\n simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging\n Robson Hind's features.", "It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and\n unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying\n vegetation.\n\n\n But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in\n his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.\n\n\n The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing\n vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.\n\n\n Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above\n a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby\n the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The\n mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded\n outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in\n their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out\n of the marsh. The Colony!", "It swerved into a paraboloid course, following the flux lines, and was\n dragged directly against one of the three projecting nozzles. Energy\n of motion was converted to heat and a few meteoric fragments fused\n themselves to the nonmetallic tube casing.\n\n\n In the jet room the positronic line accelerator for that particular\n driver fouled under the intolerable overload, and the backsurge sent\n searing heat and deadly radiation blasting through the compartment\n before the main circuit breakers could clack open.\n\n\n The bellow of the alarm horn brought Barry Barr fully awake, shattering\n a delightfully intimate dream of the dark haired girl he hoped to see\n again soon in Venus Colony. As he unbuckled his bunk straps and started\n aft at a floating, bounding run his weightlessness told him instantly\n that Number Four was in free fall with dead drivers.", "Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of\n rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and\n had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have\n himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.\n\n\n But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with\n a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.\n\n\n He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by\n inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but\n enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into\n stuttering action.\n\n\n Then it was done.\n\n\n As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to\n start according to calculations.\nBarry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick\n Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.", "Inside the ship it was safe enough, for the sleek hull was charged with\n a Kendall power-shield, impervious to nearly any Sigma concentration.\n But the shielding devices in the emergency spacesuits were small\n and had never been space-tested in a region of nearly equalized\n gravitations.\n\n\n The man who emerged from the airlock would be flipping a coin with a\n particularly unpleasant form of death.\n\n\n Many pairs of eyes turned toward Robson Hind. He was jet chief.\n\n\n \"I'm assigned, not expendable,\" he protested hastily. \"If there were\n more trouble later....\" His face was pasty.\n\n\n Assigned. That was the key word. Barry Barr felt a lump tightening\n in his stomach as the eyes shifted to him. He had some training in\n Hoskins drivers. He knew alloys and power tools. And he was riding Four\n unassigned after that broken ankle had made him miss Three. He was the\n logical man.", "Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy\n plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp,\n malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.\n\n\n It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he\n was not an engineer for nothing.\n\n\n \"Got a pencil?\" he asked.\n\n\n He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need\n detailed drawings.\n\n\n \"Think you can get materials?\"\n\n\n Nick glanced at the sketch. \"Hell, man, for you I can get anything the\n Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it.\"\n\n\n \"Two days?\"\n\n\n Nick looked insulted.", "Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though\n she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her\n eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that\n seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to\n fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy\n from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.\n\n\n After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came\n in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since\n Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid\n atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.", "Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp,\n extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few\n minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.\n\n\n Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk.\n Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one\n particular figure among the men and women who waited.\n\n\n \"Dorothy!\" he said fervently.\n\n\n Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.\n\n\n Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an\n expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he\n saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.", "He had swum down the slough and out into the ocean. He tried to turn\n back, obsessed by a desire to be near the colony even though he\n could not go ashore without strangling, but he had lost all sense of\n direction.\n\n\n He was still weak and his lungs were not completely adjusted to\n underwater life. Again he grew dizzy and faint. The slow movements of\n hands and feet that held him just below the surface grew feeble and\n ceased. He sank.\n\n\n Down into dimly luminous water he dropped, and with his respiratory\n system completely water-filled there was no sensation of pressure. At\n last he floated gently to the bottom and lay motionless.", "For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But\n then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his\n hand.\n\n\n Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees\n had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in\n fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But\n still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the\n brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus\n alive—\nThe blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking\n pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny\n figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified\n breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation\n to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the\n insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.", "Floating droplets were merging and falling to the floor. Soon the air\n would be dry, and he would be choking and strangling. He turned to call\n for help.\n\n\n The door was locked!\n\n\n He tugged and the knob came away in his hand. The retaining screw had\n been removed.\n\n\n He beat upon the panel, first with his fists and then with the metal\n doorknob, but the insulation between the double alloy sheets was\n efficient soundproofing. Furiously he hurled himself upon it, only to\n bounce back with a bruised shoulder. He was trapped.\n\n\n Working against time and eventual death he snatched a metal chair\n and swung with all his force at the window, again, again, yet again.\n A small crack appeared in the transparent plastic, branched under\n continued hammering, became a rough star. He gathered his waning\n strength, then swung once more. The tough plastic shattered.", "He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around\n him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.\n\n\n The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!\n\n\n Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead.\n The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen\n trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress.\n Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable\n thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.\n\n\n A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of\n exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for\n the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not\n necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was,\n felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.", "\"I could eat a cow with the smallpox,\" Barry declared.\n\n\n Nick grinned. \"No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job\n of work out there.\"\n\n\n Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.\n\n\n \"Say,\" he asked anxiously. \"What's haywire with the air?\"\n\n\n Nick looked startled. \"Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off\n watch a few minutes ago.\"\n\n\n Barry shrugged. \"Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a\n handout.\"\n\n\n He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside\n out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on\n him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness\n he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to\n breathe." ], [ "\"For the safety of the ship.\" That phrase, taken from the ancient\n Earthbound code of the sea, had occurred repeatedly in the\n indoctrination manual at Training Base. He remembered it, and\n remembered further the contingent plans regarding assigned and\n unassigned personnel.\n\n\n For a moment he stood indecisively, the nervous, unhumorous smile\n quirking across his angular face making him look more like an untried\n boy than a structural engineer who had fought his way up through some\n of the toughest tropical construction camps of Earth. His lean body,\n built more for quick, neatly coordinated action than brute power,\n balanced handily in the zero gravity as he ran one hand through his\n sandy hair in a gesture of uncertainty.\n\n\n He knew that not even the captain would order him through the airlock.\n\n\n But the members of the Five Ship Plan had been selected in part for a\n sense of responsibility.\n\n\n \"Nick, will you help me button up?\" he asked with forced calmness.", "Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet\n room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was\n manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One\n by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence.\n\n\n The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable\n conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open.\n Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was\n close behind him.\n\n\n Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony,\n hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had\n lost its usual ruddiness.", "Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of\n rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and\n had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have\n himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.\n\n\n But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with\n a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.\n\n\n He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by\n inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but\n enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into\n stuttering action.\n\n\n Then it was done.\n\n\n As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to\n start according to calculations.\nBarry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick\n Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.", "Captain Reno surveyed the havoc. Young Ryan's body floated eerily in\n the zero gravity, charred into instant death by the back-blast. The\n line accelerator was a shapeless ruin, but except for broken meter\n glasses and scorched control handles other mechanical damage appeared\n minor. They had been lucky.\n\n\n \"Turnover starts in six hours twelve minutes,\" the captain said\n meaningfully.\n\n\n Robson Hind cleared his throat. \"We can change accelerators in two\n hours,\" he declared. With a quick reassumption of authority he began to\n order his crew into action.\n\n\n It took nearer three hours than two to change accelerators despite\n Hind's shouted orders.\n\n\n At last the job was completed. Hind made a final check, floated over to\n the control panel and started the fuel feed. With a confident smile he\n threw in the accelerator switch.", "Inside the ship it was safe enough, for the sleek hull was charged with\n a Kendall power-shield, impervious to nearly any Sigma concentration.\n But the shielding devices in the emergency spacesuits were small\n and had never been space-tested in a region of nearly equalized\n gravitations.\n\n\n The man who emerged from the airlock would be flipping a coin with a\n particularly unpleasant form of death.\n\n\n Many pairs of eyes turned toward Robson Hind. He was jet chief.\n\n\n \"I'm assigned, not expendable,\" he protested hastily. \"If there were\n more trouble later....\" His face was pasty.\n\n\n Assigned. That was the key word. Barry Barr felt a lump tightening\n in his stomach as the eyes shifted to him. He had some training in\n Hoskins drivers. He knew alloys and power tools. And he was riding Four\n unassigned after that broken ankle had made him miss Three. He was the\n logical man.", "Number One had bumbled in on visual, the pilot depending on the smeary\n images of infra-sight goggles. An inviting grassy plain had proved to\n be a layer of algae floating on quicksand. Frantically the crew had\n blasted down huge balsa-like marsh trees, cutting up the trunks with\n flame guns to make crude rafts. They had performed fantastic feats of\n strength and endurance but managed to salvage only half their equipment\n before the shining nose of One had vanished in the gurgling ooze.", "It swerved into a paraboloid course, following the flux lines, and was\n dragged directly against one of the three projecting nozzles. Energy\n of motion was converted to heat and a few meteoric fragments fused\n themselves to the nonmetallic tube casing.\n\n\n In the jet room the positronic line accelerator for that particular\n driver fouled under the intolerable overload, and the backsurge sent\n searing heat and deadly radiation blasting through the compartment\n before the main circuit breakers could clack open.\n\n\n The bellow of the alarm horn brought Barry Barr fully awake, shattering\n a delightfully intimate dream of the dark haired girl he hoped to see\n again soon in Venus Colony. As he unbuckled his bunk straps and started\n aft at a floating, bounding run his weightlessness told him instantly\n that Number Four was in free fall with dead drivers.", "It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and\n unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying\n vegetation.\n\n\n But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in\n his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.\n\n\n The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing\n vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.\n\n\n Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above\n a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby\n the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The\n mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded\n outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in\n their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out\n of the marsh. The Colony!", "Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy\n plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp,\n malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.\n\n\n It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he\n was not an engineer for nothing.\n\n\n \"Got a pencil?\" he asked.\n\n\n He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need\n detailed drawings.\n\n\n \"Think you can get materials?\"\n\n\n Nick glanced at the sketch. \"Hell, man, for you I can get anything the\n Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it.\"\n\n\n \"Two days?\"\n\n\n Nick looked insulted.", "The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but\n this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had\n made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had\n carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or\n judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook\n some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the\n Five Ship Plan.\n\n\n But even with his trickery Hind had lost.\n\n\n He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.\n\n\n The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead\n tubelight was off.\n\n\n He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.\n\n\n Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist\n machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead,\n cut off outside his room.", "\"I could eat a cow with the smallpox,\" Barry declared.\n\n\n Nick grinned. \"No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job\n of work out there.\"\n\n\n Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.\n\n\n \"Say,\" he asked anxiously. \"What's haywire with the air?\"\n\n\n Nick looked startled. \"Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off\n watch a few minutes ago.\"\n\n\n Barry shrugged. \"Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a\n handout.\"\n\n\n He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside\n out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on\n him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness\n he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to\n breathe.", "He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A\n power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the\n corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was\n ready.\n\n\n Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped\n nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size\n that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that\n fell toward the metal floor.\n\n\n Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features.\n\n\n \"Perfect. Now put the window back.\"\n\n\n Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window\n might invite disaster.", "He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around\n him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.\n\n\n The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!\n\n\n Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead.\n The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen\n trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress.\n Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable\n thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.\n\n\n A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of\n exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for\n the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not\n necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was,\n felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.", "Into a miles-thick layer of opacity Four roared, with Captain Reno\n himself jockeying throttles to keep it balanced on its self-created\n support of flame.\n\n\n \"You're almost in,\" a voice chanted into his headphones through\n crackling, sizzling static. \"Easy toward spherical one-thirty. Hold it!\n Lower. Lower. CUT YOUR POWER!\"\n\n\n The heavy hull dropped sickeningly, struck with a mushy thud, settled,\n steadied.\n\n\n Barry was weak, but with Nick Podtiaguine steadying him he was waiting\n with the others when Captain Reno gave the last order.\n\n\n \"Airlock open. Both doors.\"\n\n\n Venusian air poured in.\n\n\n \"For this I left Panama?\" one of the men yelped.\n\n\n \"Enough to gag a maggot,\" another agreed with hand to nose.", "The meter needles climbed, soared past the red lines without pausing,\n and just in time to prevent a second blowback, Hind cut the power.\n\n\n \"\nThere's metal in the field!\n\" His voice was high and unsteady.\nEveryone knew what that meant. The slightest trace of magnetic material\n would distort the delicately balanced cylinder of force that contained\n and directed the Hoskins blast, making it suicidal to operate.\n\n\n Calmly Captain Reno voiced the thought in every mind.\n\n\n \"It must be cleared. From the outside.\"\n\n\n Several of the men swore under their breaths. Interplanetary space\n was constantly bombarded, with an intensity inverse to the prevailing\n gravitation, by something called Sigma radiation. Man had never\n encountered it until leaving Earth, and little was known of it\n except that short exposure killed test animals and left their bodies\n unpredictably altered.", "Lost in a steaming, stinking marsh teeming with alien creatures that\n slithered and crawled and swam and flew, blinded by the eternal fog,\n the crew had proved the rightness of their choice as pioneers. For\n weeks they had floundered across the deadly terrain until at last,\n beside a stagnant-looking slough that drained sluggishly into a warm,\n almost tideless sea a mile away, they had discovered an outcropping of\n rock. It was the only solid ground they had encountered.\n\n\n One man had died, his swamp suit pierced by a poisonous thorn, but the\n others had hand-hauled the radio beacon piece by piece and set it up\n in time to guide Two to a safe landing. Houses had been assembled, the\n secondary power units of the spaceship put to work, and the colony had\n established a tenuous foothold.", "For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But\n then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his\n hand.\n\n\n Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees\n had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in\n fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But\n still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the\n brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus\n alive—\nThe blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking\n pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny\n figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified\n breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation\n to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the\n insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.", "The most important question—that of the presence or absence of\n intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men\n reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near\n open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have\n established contact.\nBarry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had\n done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into\n membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and\n dark parallel lines appeared.\n\n\n But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not\n stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had\n to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the\n weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still\n he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's\n failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.\n\n\n Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming.\n Dorothy was leaning over him.", "\"I believe you, Barry.\"\n\n\n She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days\n at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of\n civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had\n awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a\n woman, as well as a toxicologist.\n\n\n When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous\n and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger\n simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging\n Robson Hind's features.", "\"Barry! Barry!\" she whispered. \"I can't help it. I love you even if you\n do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all\n that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more.\" Tears glistened in\n her eyes.\n\n\n \"Huh?\" he grunted. \"Who? Me?\"\n\n\n \"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted\n off—oh, the most piteous letter!\"\n\n\n Barry was fully awake now. \"I'm not married. I have no child.\n I've never been in Philadelphia,\" he shouted. His lips thinned.\n \"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!\" he declared grimly.\n\n\n \"Robson wouldn't!\" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt\n in her voice.\n\n\n Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly." ], [ "Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy\n plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp,\n malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.\n\n\n It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he\n was not an engineer for nothing.\n\n\n \"Got a pencil?\" he asked.\n\n\n He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need\n detailed drawings.\n\n\n \"Think you can get materials?\"\n\n\n Nick glanced at the sketch. \"Hell, man, for you I can get anything the\n Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it.\"\n\n\n \"Two days?\"\n\n\n Nick looked insulted.", "The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but\n this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had\n made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had\n carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or\n judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook\n some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the\n Five Ship Plan.\n\n\n But even with his trickery Hind had lost.\n\n\n He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.\n\n\n The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead\n tubelight was off.\n\n\n He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.\n\n\n Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist\n machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead,\n cut off outside his room.", "It swerved into a paraboloid course, following the flux lines, and was\n dragged directly against one of the three projecting nozzles. Energy\n of motion was converted to heat and a few meteoric fragments fused\n themselves to the nonmetallic tube casing.\n\n\n In the jet room the positronic line accelerator for that particular\n driver fouled under the intolerable overload, and the backsurge sent\n searing heat and deadly radiation blasting through the compartment\n before the main circuit breakers could clack open.\n\n\n The bellow of the alarm horn brought Barry Barr fully awake, shattering\n a delightfully intimate dream of the dark haired girl he hoped to see\n again soon in Venus Colony. As he unbuckled his bunk straps and started\n aft at a floating, bounding run his weightlessness told him instantly\n that Number Four was in free fall with dead drivers.", "He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A\n power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the\n corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was\n ready.\n\n\n Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped\n nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size\n that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that\n fell toward the metal floor.\n\n\n Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features.\n\n\n \"Perfect. Now put the window back.\"\n\n\n Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window\n might invite disaster.", "A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The\n room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost\n liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling\n and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the\n scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water\n from the floor.\n\n\n The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet\n from the short exposure.\n\n\n It was abnormal.\n\n\n But so was Barry Barr.\n\n\n With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some\n of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in\n sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.", "\"I could eat a cow with the smallpox,\" Barry declared.\n\n\n Nick grinned. \"No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job\n of work out there.\"\n\n\n Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.\n\n\n \"Say,\" he asked anxiously. \"What's haywire with the air?\"\n\n\n Nick looked startled. \"Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off\n watch a few minutes ago.\"\n\n\n Barry shrugged. \"Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a\n handout.\"\n\n\n He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside\n out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on\n him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness\n he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to\n breathe.", "Floating droplets were merging and falling to the floor. Soon the air\n would be dry, and he would be choking and strangling. He turned to call\n for help.\n\n\n The door was locked!\n\n\n He tugged and the knob came away in his hand. The retaining screw had\n been removed.\n\n\n He beat upon the panel, first with his fists and then with the metal\n doorknob, but the insulation between the double alloy sheets was\n efficient soundproofing. Furiously he hurled himself upon it, only to\n bounce back with a bruised shoulder. He was trapped.\n\n\n Working against time and eventual death he snatched a metal chair\n and swung with all his force at the window, again, again, yet again.\n A small crack appeared in the transparent plastic, branched under\n continued hammering, became a rough star. He gathered his waning\n strength, then swung once more. The tough plastic shattered.", "\"For the safety of the ship.\" That phrase, taken from the ancient\n Earthbound code of the sea, had occurred repeatedly in the\n indoctrination manual at Training Base. He remembered it, and\n remembered further the contingent plans regarding assigned and\n unassigned personnel.\n\n\n For a moment he stood indecisively, the nervous, unhumorous smile\n quirking across his angular face making him look more like an untried\n boy than a structural engineer who had fought his way up through some\n of the toughest tropical construction camps of Earth. His lean body,\n built more for quick, neatly coordinated action than brute power,\n balanced handily in the zero gravity as he ran one hand through his\n sandy hair in a gesture of uncertainty.\n\n\n He knew that not even the captain would order him through the airlock.\n\n\n But the members of the Five Ship Plan had been selected in part for a\n sense of responsibility.\n\n\n \"Nick, will you help me button up?\" he asked with forced calmness.", "\"I believe you, Barry.\"\n\n\n She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days\n at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of\n civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had\n awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a\n woman, as well as a toxicologist.\n\n\n When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous\n and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger\n simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging\n Robson Hind's features.", "Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet\n room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was\n manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One\n by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence.\n\n\n The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable\n conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open.\n Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was\n close behind him.\n\n\n Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony,\n hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had\n lost its usual ruddiness.", "Inside the ship it was safe enough, for the sleek hull was charged with\n a Kendall power-shield, impervious to nearly any Sigma concentration.\n But the shielding devices in the emergency spacesuits were small\n and had never been space-tested in a region of nearly equalized\n gravitations.\n\n\n The man who emerged from the airlock would be flipping a coin with a\n particularly unpleasant form of death.\n\n\n Many pairs of eyes turned toward Robson Hind. He was jet chief.\n\n\n \"I'm assigned, not expendable,\" he protested hastily. \"If there were\n more trouble later....\" His face was pasty.\n\n\n Assigned. That was the key word. Barry Barr felt a lump tightening\n in his stomach as the eyes shifted to him. He had some training in\n Hoskins drivers. He knew alloys and power tools. And he was riding Four\n unassigned after that broken ankle had made him miss Three. He was the\n logical man.", "Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of\n rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and\n had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have\n himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.\n\n\n But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with\n a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.\n\n\n He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by\n inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but\n enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into\n stuttering action.\n\n\n Then it was done.\n\n\n As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to\n start according to calculations.\nBarry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick\n Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.", "Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched\n involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.\nII\n\n\n Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations\n had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr.\n Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he\n must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.\n\n\n When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine.\n Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.\n\n\n \"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry,\" he began.\n\n\n \"Stuff it,\" the sick man interrupted. \"I want favors. Can do?\"\n\n\n Nick nodded vigorously.\n\n\n \"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open.\"", "\"Barry! Barry!\" she whispered. \"I can't help it. I love you even if you\n do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all\n that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more.\" Tears glistened in\n her eyes.\n\n\n \"Huh?\" he grunted. \"Who? Me?\"\n\n\n \"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted\n off—oh, the most piteous letter!\"\n\n\n Barry was fully awake now. \"I'm not married. I have no child.\n I've never been in Philadelphia,\" he shouted. His lips thinned.\n \"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!\" he declared grimly.\n\n\n \"Robson wouldn't!\" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt\n in her voice.\n\n\n Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.", "He had swum down the slough and out into the ocean. He tried to turn\n back, obsessed by a desire to be near the colony even though he\n could not go ashore without strangling, but he had lost all sense of\n direction.\n\n\n He was still weak and his lungs were not completely adjusted to\n underwater life. Again he grew dizzy and faint. The slow movements of\n hands and feet that held him just below the surface grew feeble and\n ceased. He sank.\n\n\n Down into dimly luminous water he dropped, and with his respiratory\n system completely water-filled there was no sensation of pressure. At\n last he floated gently to the bottom and lay motionless.", "Captain Reno surveyed the havoc. Young Ryan's body floated eerily in\n the zero gravity, charred into instant death by the back-blast. The\n line accelerator was a shapeless ruin, but except for broken meter\n glasses and scorched control handles other mechanical damage appeared\n minor. They had been lucky.\n\n\n \"Turnover starts in six hours twelve minutes,\" the captain said\n meaningfully.\n\n\n Robson Hind cleared his throat. \"We can change accelerators in two\n hours,\" he declared. With a quick reassumption of authority he began to\n order his crew into action.\n\n\n It took nearer three hours than two to change accelerators despite\n Hind's shouted orders.\n\n\n At last the job was completed. Hind made a final check, floated over to\n the control panel and started the fuel feed. With a confident smile he\n threw in the accelerator switch.", "It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and\n unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying\n vegetation.\n\n\n But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in\n his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.\n\n\n The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing\n vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.\n\n\n Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above\n a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby\n the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The\n mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded\n outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in\n their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out\n of the marsh. The Colony!", "By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply\n lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist\n in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a\n restraining hand on his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Water!\" Barry croaked.\n\n\n The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his\n patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water\n directly into his lungs.\n\n\n \"Doctor,\" he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. \"What\n are my chances? On the level.\"\n\n\n Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. \"There's not a thing—not a\n damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science.\"\n\n\n Barry lay still.", "He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around\n him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.\n\n\n The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!\n\n\n Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead.\n The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen\n trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress.\n Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable\n thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.\n\n\n A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of\n exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for\n the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not\n necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was,\n felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.", "The meter needles climbed, soared past the red lines without pausing,\n and just in time to prevent a second blowback, Hind cut the power.\n\n\n \"\nThere's metal in the field!\n\" His voice was high and unsteady.\nEveryone knew what that meant. The slightest trace of magnetic material\n would distort the delicately balanced cylinder of force that contained\n and directed the Hoskins blast, making it suicidal to operate.\n\n\n Calmly Captain Reno voiced the thought in every mind.\n\n\n \"It must be cleared. From the outside.\"\n\n\n Several of the men swore under their breaths. Interplanetary space\n was constantly bombarded, with an intensity inverse to the prevailing\n gravitation, by something called Sigma radiation. Man had never\n encountered it until leaving Earth, and little was known of it\n except that short exposure killed test animals and left their bodies\n unpredictably altered." ], [ "She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual\n despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment\n of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed\n emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone,\n and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded\n devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his\n insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.\n\n\n But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the\n business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried\n a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to\n virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.\n\n\n The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened\n to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly\n expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some\n factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.", "But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At\n each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with\n a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come\n to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even\n inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the\n Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged\n animal.\n\n\n Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening\n and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day\n progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of\n Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.", "For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But\n then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his\n hand.\n\n\n Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees\n had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in\n fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But\n still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the\n brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus\n alive—\nThe blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking\n pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny\n figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified\n breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation\n to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the\n insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.", "Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp,\n extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few\n minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.\n\n\n Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk.\n Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one\n particular figure among the men and women who waited.\n\n\n \"Dorothy!\" he said fervently.\n\n\n Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.\n\n\n Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an\n expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he\n saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.", "Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of\n rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and\n had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have\n himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.\n\n\n But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with\n a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.\n\n\n He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by\n inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but\n enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into\n stuttering action.\n\n\n Then it was done.\n\n\n As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to\n start according to calculations.\nBarry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick\n Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.", "\"I believe you, Barry.\"\n\n\n She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days\n at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of\n civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had\n awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a\n woman, as well as a toxicologist.\n\n\n When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous\n and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger\n simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging\n Robson Hind's features.", "The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but\n this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had\n made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had\n carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or\n judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook\n some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the\n Five Ship Plan.\n\n\n But even with his trickery Hind had lost.\n\n\n He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.\n\n\n The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead\n tubelight was off.\n\n\n He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.\n\n\n Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist\n machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead,\n cut off outside his room.", "The most important question—that of the presence or absence of\n intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men\n reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near\n open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have\n established contact.\nBarry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had\n done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into\n membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and\n dark parallel lines appeared.\n\n\n But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not\n stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had\n to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the\n weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still\n he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's\n failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.\n\n\n Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming.\n Dorothy was leaning over him.", "Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the\n experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions,\n he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus\n Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form\n was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study\n native Venusian materials.\n\n\n Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the\n limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to\n rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle\n delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian\n materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.\n\n\n Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of\n loneliness had come to an end.", "A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The\n room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost\n liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling\n and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the\n scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water\n from the floor.\n\n\n The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet\n from the short exposure.\n\n\n It was abnormal.\n\n\n But so was Barry Barr.\n\n\n With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some\n of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in\n sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.", "\"Barry! Barry!\" she whispered. \"I can't help it. I love you even if you\n do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all\n that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more.\" Tears glistened in\n her eyes.\n\n\n \"Huh?\" he grunted. \"Who? Me?\"\n\n\n \"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted\n off—oh, the most piteous letter!\"\n\n\n Barry was fully awake now. \"I'm not married. I have no child.\n I've never been in Philadelphia,\" he shouted. His lips thinned.\n \"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!\" he declared grimly.\n\n\n \"Robson wouldn't!\" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt\n in her voice.\n\n\n Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.", "Inside the ship it was safe enough, for the sleek hull was charged with\n a Kendall power-shield, impervious to nearly any Sigma concentration.\n But the shielding devices in the emergency spacesuits were small\n and had never been space-tested in a region of nearly equalized\n gravitations.\n\n\n The man who emerged from the airlock would be flipping a coin with a\n particularly unpleasant form of death.\n\n\n Many pairs of eyes turned toward Robson Hind. He was jet chief.\n\n\n \"I'm assigned, not expendable,\" he protested hastily. \"If there were\n more trouble later....\" His face was pasty.\n\n\n Assigned. That was the key word. Barry Barr felt a lump tightening\n in his stomach as the eyes shifted to him. He had some training in\n Hoskins drivers. He knew alloys and power tools. And he was riding Four\n unassigned after that broken ankle had made him miss Three. He was the\n logical man.", "Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet\n room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was\n manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One\n by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence.\n\n\n The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable\n conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open.\n Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was\n close behind him.\n\n\n Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony,\n hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had\n lost its usual ruddiness.", "Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though\n she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her\n eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that\n seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to\n fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy\n from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.\n\n\n After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came\n in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since\n Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid\n atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.", "\"I could eat a cow with the smallpox,\" Barry declared.\n\n\n Nick grinned. \"No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job\n of work out there.\"\n\n\n Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.\n\n\n \"Say,\" he asked anxiously. \"What's haywire with the air?\"\n\n\n Nick looked startled. \"Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off\n watch a few minutes ago.\"\n\n\n Barry shrugged. \"Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a\n handout.\"\n\n\n He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside\n out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on\n him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness\n he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to\n breathe.", "The meter needles climbed, soared past the red lines without pausing,\n and just in time to prevent a second blowback, Hind cut the power.\n\n\n \"\nThere's metal in the field!\n\" His voice was high and unsteady.\nEveryone knew what that meant. The slightest trace of magnetic material\n would distort the delicately balanced cylinder of force that contained\n and directed the Hoskins blast, making it suicidal to operate.\n\n\n Calmly Captain Reno voiced the thought in every mind.\n\n\n \"It must be cleared. From the outside.\"\n\n\n Several of the men swore under their breaths. Interplanetary space\n was constantly bombarded, with an intensity inverse to the prevailing\n gravitation, by something called Sigma radiation. Man had never\n encountered it until leaving Earth, and little was known of it\n except that short exposure killed test animals and left their bodies\n unpredictably altered.", "He had swum down the slough and out into the ocean. He tried to turn\n back, obsessed by a desire to be near the colony even though he\n could not go ashore without strangling, but he had lost all sense of\n direction.\n\n\n He was still weak and his lungs were not completely adjusted to\n underwater life. Again he grew dizzy and faint. The slow movements of\n hands and feet that held him just below the surface grew feeble and\n ceased. He sank.\n\n\n Down into dimly luminous water he dropped, and with his respiratory\n system completely water-filled there was no sensation of pressure. At\n last he floated gently to the bottom and lay motionless.", "Into a miles-thick layer of opacity Four roared, with Captain Reno\n himself jockeying throttles to keep it balanced on its self-created\n support of flame.\n\n\n \"You're almost in,\" a voice chanted into his headphones through\n crackling, sizzling static. \"Easy toward spherical one-thirty. Hold it!\n Lower. Lower. CUT YOUR POWER!\"\n\n\n The heavy hull dropped sickeningly, struck with a mushy thud, settled,\n steadied.\n\n\n Barry was weak, but with Nick Podtiaguine steadying him he was waiting\n with the others when Captain Reno gave the last order.\n\n\n \"Airlock open. Both doors.\"\n\n\n Venusian air poured in.\n\n\n \"For this I left Panama?\" one of the men yelped.\n\n\n \"Enough to gag a maggot,\" another agreed with hand to nose.", "He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A\n power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the\n corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was\n ready.\n\n\n Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped\n nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size\n that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that\n fell toward the metal floor.\n\n\n Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features.\n\n\n \"Perfect. Now put the window back.\"\n\n\n Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window\n might invite disaster.", "Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy\n plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp,\n malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.\n\n\n It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he\n was not an engineer for nothing.\n\n\n \"Got a pencil?\" he asked.\n\n\n He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need\n detailed drawings.\n\n\n \"Think you can get materials?\"\n\n\n Nick glanced at the sketch. \"Hell, man, for you I can get anything the\n Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it.\"\n\n\n \"Two days?\"\n\n\n Nick looked insulted." ], [ "\"I could eat a cow with the smallpox,\" Barry declared.\n\n\n Nick grinned. \"No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job\n of work out there.\"\n\n\n Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.\n\n\n \"Say,\" he asked anxiously. \"What's haywire with the air?\"\n\n\n Nick looked startled. \"Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off\n watch a few minutes ago.\"\n\n\n Barry shrugged. \"Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a\n handout.\"\n\n\n He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside\n out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on\n him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness\n he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to\n breathe.", "\"I believe you, Barry.\"\n\n\n She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days\n at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of\n civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had\n awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a\n woman, as well as a toxicologist.\n\n\n When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous\n and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger\n simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging\n Robson Hind's features.", "A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The\n room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost\n liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling\n and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the\n scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water\n from the floor.\n\n\n The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet\n from the short exposure.\n\n\n It was abnormal.\n\n\n But so was Barry Barr.\n\n\n With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some\n of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in\n sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.", "\"Your body is undergoing certain radical changes,\" the doctor\n continued, \"and you know as much—more about your condition than I do.\n If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of\n a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems\n to give you relief.\"\n\n\n Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each\n side itched infuriatingly.\n\n\n \"What are these changes?\" he asked. \"What's this?\"\n\n\n \"Those things seem to be—\" the doctor began hesitantly. \"Damn it, I\n know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills.\"\n\n\n Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond\n shock.\n\n\n \"But there must be—\"", "By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply\n lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist\n in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a\n restraining hand on his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Water!\" Barry croaked.\n\n\n The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his\n patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water\n directly into his lungs.\n\n\n \"Doctor,\" he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. \"What\n are my chances? On the level.\"\n\n\n Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. \"There's not a thing—not a\n damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science.\"\n\n\n Barry lay still.", "Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched\n involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.\nII\n\n\n Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations\n had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr.\n Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he\n must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.\n\n\n When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine.\n Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.\n\n\n \"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry,\" he began.\n\n\n \"Stuff it,\" the sick man interrupted. \"I want favors. Can do?\"\n\n\n Nick nodded vigorously.\n\n\n \"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open.\"", "Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though\n she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her\n eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that\n seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to\n fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy\n from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.\n\n\n After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came\n in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since\n Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid\n atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.", "\"Barry! Barry!\" she whispered. \"I can't help it. I love you even if you\n do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all\n that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more.\" Tears glistened in\n her eyes.\n\n\n \"Huh?\" he grunted. \"Who? Me?\"\n\n\n \"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted\n off—oh, the most piteous letter!\"\n\n\n Barry was fully awake now. \"I'm not married. I have no child.\n I've never been in Philadelphia,\" he shouted. His lips thinned.\n \"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!\" he declared grimly.\n\n\n \"Robson wouldn't!\" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt\n in her voice.\n\n\n Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.", "It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and\n unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying\n vegetation.\n\n\n But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in\n his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.\n\n\n The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing\n vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.\n\n\n Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above\n a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby\n the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The\n mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded\n outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in\n their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out\n of the marsh. The Colony!", "The most important question—that of the presence or absence of\n intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men\n reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near\n open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have\n established contact.\nBarry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had\n done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into\n membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and\n dark parallel lines appeared.\n\n\n But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not\n stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had\n to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the\n weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still\n he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's\n failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.\n\n\n Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming.\n Dorothy was leaning over him.", "He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around\n him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.\n\n\n The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!\n\n\n Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead.\n The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen\n trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress.\n Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable\n thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.\n\n\n A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of\n exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for\n the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not\n necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was,\n felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.", "Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of\n rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and\n had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have\n himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.\n\n\n But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with\n a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.\n\n\n He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by\n inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but\n enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into\n stuttering action.\n\n\n Then it was done.\n\n\n As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to\n start according to calculations.\nBarry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick\n Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.", "But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At\n each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with\n a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come\n to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even\n inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the\n Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged\n animal.\n\n\n Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening\n and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day\n progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of\n Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.", "Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp,\n extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few\n minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.\n\n\n Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk.\n Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one\n particular figure among the men and women who waited.\n\n\n \"Dorothy!\" he said fervently.\n\n\n Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.\n\n\n Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an\n expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he\n saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.", "Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the\n experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions,\n he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus\n Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form\n was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study\n native Venusian materials.\n\n\n Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the\n limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to\n rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle\n delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian\n materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.\n\n\n Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of\n loneliness had come to an end.", "She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual\n despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment\n of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed\n emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone,\n and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded\n devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his\n insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.\n\n\n But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the\n business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried\n a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to\n virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.\n\n\n The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened\n to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly\n expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some\n factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.", "Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze\n of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the\n brackish, silt-clouded water.\nIII\n\n\n Slowly his racing heartbeat returned to normal. Gradually he became\n aware of the stench of decaying plants and of musky taints he knew\n instinctively were the scents of underwater animals. Then with a shock\n the meaning became clear. He had become a water-breather, cut off from\n all other Earthmen, no longer entirely human. His fellows in the colony\n were separated from him now by a gulf more absolute than the airless\n void between Earth and Venus.\n\n\n Something slippery and alive touched him near one armpit. He opened\n his eyes in the black water and his groping hand clutched something\n burrowing into his skin. With a shudder of revulsion he crushed a fat\n worm between his fingers.", "Barry braced his feet against the bottom and leaped. His head butted\n the attacker's chest and at the same instant he lashed a short jab to\n the creature's belly. It slumped momentarily, its face working.\n\n\n Human—or nearly so—the thing was, with a stocky, powerful body and\n webbed hands and feet. A few scraps of clothing, seemingly worn more\n for ornament than covering, clung to the fishbelly-white skin. The face\n was coarse and savage.\n\n\n It shook off the effects of Barry's punch and one webbed hand snatched\n a short tube from its belt.\n\n\n Barry remembered the spring-opening knife in his pocket, and even as\n he flicked the blade out the tube-weapon fired. Sound thrummed in the\n water and the water grew milky with a myriad of bubbles. Something\n zipped past his head, uncomfortably close.", "The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but\n this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had\n made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had\n carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or\n judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook\n some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the\n Five Ship Plan.\n\n\n But even with his trickery Hind had lost.\n\n\n He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.\n\n\n The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead\n tubelight was off.\n\n\n He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.\n\n\n Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist\n machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead,\n cut off outside his room.", "Shouting voices awakened him, an exultant battle cry cutting through a\n gasping scream of anguish. Streaks of bright orange light were moving\n toward him in a twisting pattern. At the head of each trail was a\n figure. A human figure that weaved and swam in deadly moving combat.\n One figure drifted limply bottomward.\n\n\n Hallucination, Barry told himself. Then one of the figures broke from\n the group. Almost overhead it turned sharply downward and the feet\n moved in a powerful flutter-kick. A slender spear aimed directly at the\n Earthman.\n\n\n Barry threw himself aside. The spear point plunged deep into the\n sticky, yielding bottom and Barry grappled with its wielder.\n\n\n Pointed fingernails raked his cheek. Barry's balled fist swung\n in a roundhouse blow but water resistance slowed the punch to\n ineffectiveness. The creature only shook its head and came in kicking\n and clawing." ], [ "A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The\n room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost\n liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling\n and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the\n scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water\n from the floor.\n\n\n The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet\n from the short exposure.\n\n\n It was abnormal.\n\n\n But so was Barry Barr.\n\n\n With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some\n of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in\n sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.", "By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply\n lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist\n in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a\n restraining hand on his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Water!\" Barry croaked.\n\n\n The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his\n patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water\n directly into his lungs.\n\n\n \"Doctor,\" he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. \"What\n are my chances? On the level.\"\n\n\n Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. \"There's not a thing—not a\n damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science.\"\n\n\n Barry lay still.", "\"Your body is undergoing certain radical changes,\" the doctor\n continued, \"and you know as much—more about your condition than I do.\n If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of\n a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems\n to give you relief.\"\n\n\n Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each\n side itched infuriatingly.\n\n\n \"What are these changes?\" he asked. \"What's this?\"\n\n\n \"Those things seem to be—\" the doctor began hesitantly. \"Damn it, I\n know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills.\"\n\n\n Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond\n shock.\n\n\n \"But there must be—\"", "\"I believe you, Barry.\"\n\n\n She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days\n at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of\n civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had\n awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a\n woman, as well as a toxicologist.\n\n\n When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous\n and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger\n simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging\n Robson Hind's features.", "\"I could eat a cow with the smallpox,\" Barry declared.\n\n\n Nick grinned. \"No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job\n of work out there.\"\n\n\n Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.\n\n\n \"Say,\" he asked anxiously. \"What's haywire with the air?\"\n\n\n Nick looked startled. \"Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off\n watch a few minutes ago.\"\n\n\n Barry shrugged. \"Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a\n handout.\"\n\n\n He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside\n out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on\n him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness\n he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to\n breathe.", "Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched\n involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.\nII\n\n\n Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations\n had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr.\n Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he\n must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.\n\n\n When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine.\n Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.\n\n\n \"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry,\" he began.\n\n\n \"Stuff it,\" the sick man interrupted. \"I want favors. Can do?\"\n\n\n Nick nodded vigorously.\n\n\n \"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open.\"", "Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though\n she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her\n eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that\n seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to\n fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy\n from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.\n\n\n After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came\n in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since\n Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid\n atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.", "The most important question—that of the presence or absence of\n intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men\n reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near\n open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have\n established contact.\nBarry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had\n done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into\n membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and\n dark parallel lines appeared.\n\n\n But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not\n stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had\n to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the\n weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still\n he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's\n failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.\n\n\n Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming.\n Dorothy was leaning over him.", "He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around\n him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.\n\n\n The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!\n\n\n Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead.\n The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen\n trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress.\n Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable\n thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.\n\n\n A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of\n exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for\n the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not\n necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was,\n felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.", "\"Barry! Barry!\" she whispered. \"I can't help it. I love you even if you\n do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all\n that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more.\" Tears glistened in\n her eyes.\n\n\n \"Huh?\" he grunted. \"Who? Me?\"\n\n\n \"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted\n off—oh, the most piteous letter!\"\n\n\n Barry was fully awake now. \"I'm not married. I have no child.\n I've never been in Philadelphia,\" he shouted. His lips thinned.\n \"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!\" he declared grimly.\n\n\n \"Robson wouldn't!\" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt\n in her voice.\n\n\n Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.", "But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At\n each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with\n a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come\n to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even\n inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the\n Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged\n animal.\n\n\n Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening\n and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day\n progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of\n Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.", "Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp,\n extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few\n minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.\n\n\n Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk.\n Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one\n particular figure among the men and women who waited.\n\n\n \"Dorothy!\" he said fervently.\n\n\n Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.\n\n\n Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an\n expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he\n saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.", "Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of\n rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and\n had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have\n himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.\n\n\n But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with\n a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.\n\n\n He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by\n inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but\n enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into\n stuttering action.\n\n\n Then it was done.\n\n\n As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to\n start according to calculations.\nBarry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick\n Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.", "It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and\n unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying\n vegetation.\n\n\n But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in\n his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.\n\n\n The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing\n vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.\n\n\n Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above\n a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby\n the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The\n mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded\n outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in\n their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out\n of the marsh. The Colony!", "Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the\n experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions,\n he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus\n Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form\n was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study\n native Venusian materials.\n\n\n Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the\n limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to\n rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle\n delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian\n materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.\n\n\n Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of\n loneliness had come to an end.", "The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but\n this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had\n made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had\n carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or\n judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook\n some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the\n Five Ship Plan.\n\n\n But even with his trickery Hind had lost.\n\n\n He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.\n\n\n The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead\n tubelight was off.\n\n\n He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.\n\n\n Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist\n machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead,\n cut off outside his room.", "She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual\n despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment\n of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed\n emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone,\n and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded\n devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his\n insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.\n\n\n But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the\n business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried\n a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to\n virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.\n\n\n The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened\n to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly\n expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some\n factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.", "Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy\n plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp,\n malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.\n\n\n It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he\n was not an engineer for nothing.\n\n\n \"Got a pencil?\" he asked.\n\n\n He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need\n detailed drawings.\n\n\n \"Think you can get materials?\"\n\n\n Nick glanced at the sketch. \"Hell, man, for you I can get anything the\n Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it.\"\n\n\n \"Two days?\"\n\n\n Nick looked insulted.", "For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But\n then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his\n hand.\n\n\n Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees\n had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in\n fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But\n still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the\n brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus\n alive—\nThe blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking\n pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny\n figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified\n breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation\n to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the\n insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.", "Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet\n room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was\n manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One\n by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence.\n\n\n The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable\n conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open.\n Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was\n close behind him.\n\n\n Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony,\n hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had\n lost its usual ruddiness." ], [ "A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The\n room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost\n liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling\n and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the\n scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water\n from the floor.\n\n\n The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet\n from the short exposure.\n\n\n It was abnormal.\n\n\n But so was Barry Barr.\n\n\n With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some\n of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in\n sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.", "\"Your body is undergoing certain radical changes,\" the doctor\n continued, \"and you know as much—more about your condition than I do.\n If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of\n a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems\n to give you relief.\"\n\n\n Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each\n side itched infuriatingly.\n\n\n \"What are these changes?\" he asked. \"What's this?\"\n\n\n \"Those things seem to be—\" the doctor began hesitantly. \"Damn it, I\n know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills.\"\n\n\n Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond\n shock.\n\n\n \"But there must be—\"", "\"I believe you, Barry.\"\n\n\n She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days\n at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of\n civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had\n awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a\n woman, as well as a toxicologist.\n\n\n When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous\n and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger\n simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging\n Robson Hind's features.", "Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though\n she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her\n eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that\n seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to\n fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy\n from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.\n\n\n After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came\n in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since\n Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid\n atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.", "Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched\n involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.\nII\n\n\n Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations\n had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr.\n Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he\n must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.\n\n\n When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine.\n Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.\n\n\n \"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry,\" he began.\n\n\n \"Stuff it,\" the sick man interrupted. \"I want favors. Can do?\"\n\n\n Nick nodded vigorously.\n\n\n \"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open.\"", "The most important question—that of the presence or absence of\n intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men\n reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near\n open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have\n established contact.\nBarry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had\n done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into\n membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and\n dark parallel lines appeared.\n\n\n But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not\n stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had\n to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the\n weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still\n he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's\n failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.\n\n\n Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming.\n Dorothy was leaning over him.", "\"Barry! Barry!\" she whispered. \"I can't help it. I love you even if you\n do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all\n that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more.\" Tears glistened in\n her eyes.\n\n\n \"Huh?\" he grunted. \"Who? Me?\"\n\n\n \"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted\n off—oh, the most piteous letter!\"\n\n\n Barry was fully awake now. \"I'm not married. I have no child.\n I've never been in Philadelphia,\" he shouted. His lips thinned.\n \"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!\" he declared grimly.\n\n\n \"Robson wouldn't!\" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt\n in her voice.\n\n\n Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.", "\"I could eat a cow with the smallpox,\" Barry declared.\n\n\n Nick grinned. \"No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job\n of work out there.\"\n\n\n Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.\n\n\n \"Say,\" he asked anxiously. \"What's haywire with the air?\"\n\n\n Nick looked startled. \"Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off\n watch a few minutes ago.\"\n\n\n Barry shrugged. \"Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a\n handout.\"\n\n\n He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside\n out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on\n him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness\n he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to\n breathe.", "Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of\n rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and\n had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have\n himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.\n\n\n But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with\n a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.\n\n\n He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by\n inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but\n enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into\n stuttering action.\n\n\n Then it was done.\n\n\n As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to\n start according to calculations.\nBarry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick\n Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.", "By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply\n lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist\n in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a\n restraining hand on his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Water!\" Barry croaked.\n\n\n The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his\n patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water\n directly into his lungs.\n\n\n \"Doctor,\" he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. \"What\n are my chances? On the level.\"\n\n\n Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. \"There's not a thing—not a\n damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science.\"\n\n\n Barry lay still.", "Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp,\n extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few\n minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.\n\n\n Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk.\n Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one\n particular figure among the men and women who waited.\n\n\n \"Dorothy!\" he said fervently.\n\n\n Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.\n\n\n Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an\n expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he\n saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.", "She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual\n despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment\n of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed\n emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone,\n and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded\n devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his\n insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.\n\n\n But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the\n business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried\n a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to\n virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.\n\n\n The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened\n to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly\n expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some\n factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.", "But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At\n each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with\n a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come\n to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even\n inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the\n Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged\n animal.\n\n\n Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening\n and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day\n progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of\n Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.", "For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But\n then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his\n hand.\n\n\n Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees\n had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in\n fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But\n still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the\n brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus\n alive—\nThe blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking\n pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny\n figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified\n breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation\n to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the\n insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.", "It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and\n unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying\n vegetation.\n\n\n But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in\n his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.\n\n\n The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing\n vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.\n\n\n Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above\n a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby\n the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The\n mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded\n outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in\n their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out\n of the marsh. The Colony!", "He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around\n him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.\n\n\n The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!\n\n\n Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead.\n The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen\n trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress.\n Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable\n thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.\n\n\n A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of\n exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for\n the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not\n necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was,\n felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.", "The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but\n this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had\n made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had\n carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or\n judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook\n some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the\n Five Ship Plan.\n\n\n But even with his trickery Hind had lost.\n\n\n He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.\n\n\n The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead\n tubelight was off.\n\n\n He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.\n\n\n Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist\n machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead,\n cut off outside his room.", "Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy\n plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp,\n malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.\n\n\n It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he\n was not an engineer for nothing.\n\n\n \"Got a pencil?\" he asked.\n\n\n He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need\n detailed drawings.\n\n\n \"Think you can get materials?\"\n\n\n Nick glanced at the sketch. \"Hell, man, for you I can get anything the\n Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it.\"\n\n\n \"Two days?\"\n\n\n Nick looked insulted.", "Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the\n experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions,\n he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus\n Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form\n was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study\n native Venusian materials.\n\n\n Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the\n limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to\n rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle\n delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian\n materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.\n\n\n Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of\n loneliness had come to an end.", "Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze\n of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the\n brackish, silt-clouded water.\nIII\n\n\n Slowly his racing heartbeat returned to normal. Gradually he became\n aware of the stench of decaying plants and of musky taints he knew\n instinctively were the scents of underwater animals. Then with a shock\n the meaning became clear. He had become a water-breather, cut off from\n all other Earthmen, no longer entirely human. His fellows in the colony\n were separated from him now by a gulf more absolute than the airless\n void between Earth and Venus.\n\n\n Something slippery and alive touched him near one armpit. He opened\n his eyes in the black water and his groping hand clutched something\n burrowing into his skin. With a shudder of revulsion he crushed a fat\n worm between his fingers." ], [ "\"Your body is undergoing certain radical changes,\" the doctor\n continued, \"and you know as much—more about your condition than I do.\n If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of\n a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems\n to give you relief.\"\n\n\n Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each\n side itched infuriatingly.\n\n\n \"What are these changes?\" he asked. \"What's this?\"\n\n\n \"Those things seem to be—\" the doctor began hesitantly. \"Damn it, I\n know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills.\"\n\n\n Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond\n shock.\n\n\n \"But there must be—\"", "\"I believe you, Barry.\"\n\n\n She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days\n at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of\n civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had\n awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a\n woman, as well as a toxicologist.\n\n\n When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous\n and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger\n simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging\n Robson Hind's features.", "Barry braced his feet against the bottom and leaped. His head butted\n the attacker's chest and at the same instant he lashed a short jab to\n the creature's belly. It slumped momentarily, its face working.\n\n\n Human—or nearly so—the thing was, with a stocky, powerful body and\n webbed hands and feet. A few scraps of clothing, seemingly worn more\n for ornament than covering, clung to the fishbelly-white skin. The face\n was coarse and savage.\n\n\n It shook off the effects of Barry's punch and one webbed hand snatched\n a short tube from its belt.\n\n\n Barry remembered the spring-opening knife in his pocket, and even as\n he flicked the blade out the tube-weapon fired. Sound thrummed in the\n water and the water grew milky with a myriad of bubbles. Something\n zipped past his head, uncomfortably close.", "A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The\n room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost\n liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling\n and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the\n scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water\n from the floor.\n\n\n The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet\n from the short exposure.\n\n\n It was abnormal.\n\n\n But so was Barry Barr.\n\n\n With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some\n of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in\n sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.", "Shouting voices awakened him, an exultant battle cry cutting through a\n gasping scream of anguish. Streaks of bright orange light were moving\n toward him in a twisting pattern. At the head of each trail was a\n figure. A human figure that weaved and swam in deadly moving combat.\n One figure drifted limply bottomward.\n\n\n Hallucination, Barry told himself. Then one of the figures broke from\n the group. Almost overhead it turned sharply downward and the feet\n moved in a powerful flutter-kick. A slender spear aimed directly at the\n Earthman.\n\n\n Barry threw himself aside. The spear point plunged deep into the\n sticky, yielding bottom and Barry grappled with its wielder.\n\n\n Pointed fingernails raked his cheek. Barry's balled fist swung\n in a roundhouse blow but water resistance slowed the punch to\n ineffectiveness. The creature only shook its head and came in kicking\n and clawing.", "The most important question—that of the presence or absence of\n intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men\n reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near\n open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have\n established contact.\nBarry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had\n done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into\n membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and\n dark parallel lines appeared.\n\n\n But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not\n stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had\n to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the\n weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still\n he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's\n failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.\n\n\n Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming.\n Dorothy was leaning over him.", "It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and\n unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying\n vegetation.\n\n\n But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in\n his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.\n\n\n The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing\n vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.\n\n\n Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above\n a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby\n the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The\n mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded\n outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in\n their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out\n of the marsh. The Colony!", "\"Barry! Barry!\" she whispered. \"I can't help it. I love you even if you\n do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all\n that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more.\" Tears glistened in\n her eyes.\n\n\n \"Huh?\" he grunted. \"Who? Me?\"\n\n\n \"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted\n off—oh, the most piteous letter!\"\n\n\n Barry was fully awake now. \"I'm not married. I have no child.\n I've never been in Philadelphia,\" he shouted. His lips thinned.\n \"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!\" he declared grimly.\n\n\n \"Robson wouldn't!\" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt\n in her voice.\n\n\n Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.", "Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze\n of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the\n brackish, silt-clouded water.\nIII\n\n\n Slowly his racing heartbeat returned to normal. Gradually he became\n aware of the stench of decaying plants and of musky taints he knew\n instinctively were the scents of underwater animals. Then with a shock\n the meaning became clear. He had become a water-breather, cut off from\n all other Earthmen, no longer entirely human. His fellows in the colony\n were separated from him now by a gulf more absolute than the airless\n void between Earth and Venus.\n\n\n Something slippery and alive touched him near one armpit. He opened\n his eyes in the black water and his groping hand clutched something\n burrowing into his skin. With a shudder of revulsion he crushed a fat\n worm between his fingers.", "Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though\n she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her\n eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that\n seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to\n fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy\n from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.\n\n\n After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came\n in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since\n Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid\n atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.", "Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched\n involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.\nII\n\n\n Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations\n had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr.\n Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he\n must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.\n\n\n When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine.\n Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.\n\n\n \"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry,\" he began.\n\n\n \"Stuff it,\" the sick man interrupted. \"I want favors. Can do?\"\n\n\n Nick nodded vigorously.\n\n\n \"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open.\"", "Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp,\n extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few\n minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.\n\n\n Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk.\n Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one\n particular figure among the men and women who waited.\n\n\n \"Dorothy!\" he said fervently.\n\n\n Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.\n\n\n Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an\n expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he\n saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.", "\"I could eat a cow with the smallpox,\" Barry declared.\n\n\n Nick grinned. \"No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job\n of work out there.\"\n\n\n Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.\n\n\n \"Say,\" he asked anxiously. \"What's haywire with the air?\"\n\n\n Nick looked startled. \"Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off\n watch a few minutes ago.\"\n\n\n Barry shrugged. \"Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a\n handout.\"\n\n\n He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside\n out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on\n him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness\n he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to\n breathe.", "Then Barry struck, felt his knife slice flesh and grate against bone.\n He struck again even as the undersea being screamed and went limp.\n\n\n Barry stared through the reddening water.\n\n\n Another figure plunged toward him. Barry jerked the dead Venusian's\n spear from the mud and raised it defensively.\n\n\n But the figure paid no attention. This one was a female who fled\n desperately from two men closing in from opposite sides. One threw his\n spear, using an odd pushing motion, and as she checked and dodged, the\n other was upon her from behind.\n\n\n One arm went around her neck in a strangler's hold, bending her slender\n body backward. Together captor and struggling captive sank toward the\n bottom. The other recovered his thrown spear and moved in to help\n secure her arms and legs with lengths of cord.", "By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply\n lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist\n in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a\n restraining hand on his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Water!\" Barry croaked.\n\n\n The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his\n patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water\n directly into his lungs.\n\n\n \"Doctor,\" he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. \"What\n are my chances? On the level.\"\n\n\n Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. \"There's not a thing—not a\n damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science.\"\n\n\n Barry lay still.", "Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of\n rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and\n had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have\n himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.\n\n\n But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with\n a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.\n\n\n He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by\n inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but\n enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into\n stuttering action.\n\n\n Then it was done.\n\n\n As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to\n start according to calculations.\nBarry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick\n Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.", "She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual\n despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment\n of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed\n emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone,\n and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded\n devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his\n insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.\n\n\n But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the\n business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried\n a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to\n virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.\n\n\n The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened\n to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly\n expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some\n factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.", "Barry dug one foot into the bottom and sidestepped a spear thrust. His\n own lunge missed completely. Then he and the Venusian were inside each\n other's spear points, chest to chest. A pointed hook strapped to the\n inside of the creature's wrist just missed Barry's throat. The Earthman\n arched his body backward and his knife flashed upward. The creature\n gasped and pulled away, clutching with both hands at a gaping wound in\n its belly.\n\n\n The other one turned too late as Barry leaped.\n\n\n Barry's hilt cracked against its jawbone.", "For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But\n then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his\n hand.\n\n\n Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees\n had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in\n fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But\n still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the\n brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus\n alive—\nThe blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking\n pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny\n figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified\n breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation\n to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the\n insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.", "Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the\n experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions,\n he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus\n Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form\n was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study\n native Venusian materials.\n\n\n Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the\n limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to\n rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle\n delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian\n materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.\n\n\n Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of\n loneliness had come to an end." ], [ "Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though\n she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her\n eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that\n seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to\n fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy\n from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.\n\n\n After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came\n in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since\n Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid\n atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.", "But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At\n each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with\n a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come\n to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even\n inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the\n Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged\n animal.\n\n\n Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening\n and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day\n progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of\n Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.", "\"I believe you, Barry.\"\n\n\n She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days\n at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of\n civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had\n awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a\n woman, as well as a toxicologist.\n\n\n When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous\n and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger\n simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging\n Robson Hind's features.", "A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The\n room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost\n liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling\n and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the\n scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water\n from the floor.\n\n\n The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet\n from the short exposure.\n\n\n It was abnormal.\n\n\n But so was Barry Barr.\n\n\n With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some\n of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in\n sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.", "\"Barry! Barry!\" she whispered. \"I can't help it. I love you even if you\n do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all\n that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more.\" Tears glistened in\n her eyes.\n\n\n \"Huh?\" he grunted. \"Who? Me?\"\n\n\n \"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted\n off—oh, the most piteous letter!\"\n\n\n Barry was fully awake now. \"I'm not married. I have no child.\n I've never been in Philadelphia,\" he shouted. His lips thinned.\n \"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!\" he declared grimly.\n\n\n \"Robson wouldn't!\" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt\n in her voice.\n\n\n Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.", "Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched\n involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.\nII\n\n\n Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations\n had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr.\n Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he\n must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.\n\n\n When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine.\n Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.\n\n\n \"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry,\" he began.\n\n\n \"Stuff it,\" the sick man interrupted. \"I want favors. Can do?\"\n\n\n Nick nodded vigorously.\n\n\n \"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open.\"", "Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp,\n extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few\n minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.\n\n\n Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk.\n Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one\n particular figure among the men and women who waited.\n\n\n \"Dorothy!\" he said fervently.\n\n\n Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.\n\n\n Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an\n expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he\n saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.", "\"I could eat a cow with the smallpox,\" Barry declared.\n\n\n Nick grinned. \"No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job\n of work out there.\"\n\n\n Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.\n\n\n \"Say,\" he asked anxiously. \"What's haywire with the air?\"\n\n\n Nick looked startled. \"Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off\n watch a few minutes ago.\"\n\n\n Barry shrugged. \"Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a\n handout.\"\n\n\n He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside\n out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on\n him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness\n he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to\n breathe.", "The most important question—that of the presence or absence of\n intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men\n reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near\n open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have\n established contact.\nBarry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had\n done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into\n membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and\n dark parallel lines appeared.\n\n\n But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not\n stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had\n to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the\n weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still\n he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's\n failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.\n\n\n Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming.\n Dorothy was leaning over him.", "Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of\n rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and\n had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have\n himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.\n\n\n But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with\n a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.\n\n\n He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by\n inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but\n enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into\n stuttering action.\n\n\n Then it was done.\n\n\n As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to\n start according to calculations.\nBarry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick\n Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.", "By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply\n lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist\n in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a\n restraining hand on his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Water!\" Barry croaked.\n\n\n The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his\n patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water\n directly into his lungs.\n\n\n \"Doctor,\" he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. \"What\n are my chances? On the level.\"\n\n\n Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. \"There's not a thing—not a\n damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science.\"\n\n\n Barry lay still.", "She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual\n despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment\n of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed\n emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone,\n and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded\n devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his\n insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.\n\n\n But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the\n business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried\n a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to\n virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.\n\n\n The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened\n to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly\n expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some\n factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.", "Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the\n experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions,\n he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus\n Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form\n was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study\n native Venusian materials.\n\n\n Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the\n limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to\n rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle\n delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian\n materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.\n\n\n Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of\n loneliness had come to an end.", "\"Your body is undergoing certain radical changes,\" the doctor\n continued, \"and you know as much—more about your condition than I do.\n If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of\n a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems\n to give you relief.\"\n\n\n Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each\n side itched infuriatingly.\n\n\n \"What are these changes?\" he asked. \"What's this?\"\n\n\n \"Those things seem to be—\" the doctor began hesitantly. \"Damn it, I\n know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills.\"\n\n\n Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond\n shock.\n\n\n \"But there must be—\"", "It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and\n unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying\n vegetation.\n\n\n But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in\n his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.\n\n\n The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing\n vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.\n\n\n Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above\n a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby\n the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The\n mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded\n outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in\n their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out\n of the marsh. The Colony!", "For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But\n then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his\n hand.\n\n\n Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees\n had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in\n fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But\n still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the\n brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus\n alive—\nThe blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking\n pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny\n figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified\n breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation\n to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the\n insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.", "Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy\n plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp,\n malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.\n\n\n It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he\n was not an engineer for nothing.\n\n\n \"Got a pencil?\" he asked.\n\n\n He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need\n detailed drawings.\n\n\n \"Think you can get materials?\"\n\n\n Nick glanced at the sketch. \"Hell, man, for you I can get anything the\n Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it.\"\n\n\n \"Two days?\"\n\n\n Nick looked insulted.", "He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around\n him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.\n\n\n The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!\n\n\n Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead.\n The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen\n trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress.\n Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable\n thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.\n\n\n A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of\n exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for\n the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not\n necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was,\n felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.", "He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A\n power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the\n corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was\n ready.\n\n\n Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped\n nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size\n that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that\n fell toward the metal floor.\n\n\n Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features.\n\n\n \"Perfect. Now put the window back.\"\n\n\n Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window\n might invite disaster.", "The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but\n this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had\n made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had\n carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or\n judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook\n some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the\n Five Ship Plan.\n\n\n But even with his trickery Hind had lost.\n\n\n He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.\n\n\n The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead\n tubelight was off.\n\n\n He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.\n\n\n Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist\n machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead,\n cut off outside his room." ], [ "\"I believe you, Barry.\"\n\n\n She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days\n at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of\n civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had\n awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a\n woman, as well as a toxicologist.\n\n\n When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous\n and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger\n simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging\n Robson Hind's features.", "\"Your body is undergoing certain radical changes,\" the doctor\n continued, \"and you know as much—more about your condition than I do.\n If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of\n a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems\n to give you relief.\"\n\n\n Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each\n side itched infuriatingly.\n\n\n \"What are these changes?\" he asked. \"What's this?\"\n\n\n \"Those things seem to be—\" the doctor began hesitantly. \"Damn it, I\n know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills.\"\n\n\n Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond\n shock.\n\n\n \"But there must be—\"", "A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The\n room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost\n liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling\n and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the\n scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water\n from the floor.\n\n\n The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet\n from the short exposure.\n\n\n It was abnormal.\n\n\n But so was Barry Barr.\n\n\n With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some\n of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in\n sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.", "Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though\n she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her\n eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that\n seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to\n fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy\n from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.\n\n\n After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came\n in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since\n Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid\n atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.", "Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched\n involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.\nII\n\n\n Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations\n had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr.\n Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he\n must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.\n\n\n When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine.\n Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.\n\n\n \"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry,\" he began.\n\n\n \"Stuff it,\" the sick man interrupted. \"I want favors. Can do?\"\n\n\n Nick nodded vigorously.\n\n\n \"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open.\"", "The most important question—that of the presence or absence of\n intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men\n reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near\n open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have\n established contact.\nBarry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had\n done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into\n membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and\n dark parallel lines appeared.\n\n\n But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not\n stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had\n to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the\n weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still\n he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's\n failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.\n\n\n Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming.\n Dorothy was leaning over him.", "Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of\n rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and\n had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have\n himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.\n\n\n But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with\n a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.\n\n\n He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by\n inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but\n enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into\n stuttering action.\n\n\n Then it was done.\n\n\n As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to\n start according to calculations.\nBarry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick\n Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.", "Barry braced his feet against the bottom and leaped. His head butted\n the attacker's chest and at the same instant he lashed a short jab to\n the creature's belly. It slumped momentarily, its face working.\n\n\n Human—or nearly so—the thing was, with a stocky, powerful body and\n webbed hands and feet. A few scraps of clothing, seemingly worn more\n for ornament than covering, clung to the fishbelly-white skin. The face\n was coarse and savage.\n\n\n It shook off the effects of Barry's punch and one webbed hand snatched\n a short tube from its belt.\n\n\n Barry remembered the spring-opening knife in his pocket, and even as\n he flicked the blade out the tube-weapon fired. Sound thrummed in the\n water and the water grew milky with a myriad of bubbles. Something\n zipped past his head, uncomfortably close.", "\"Barry! Barry!\" she whispered. \"I can't help it. I love you even if you\n do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all\n that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more.\" Tears glistened in\n her eyes.\n\n\n \"Huh?\" he grunted. \"Who? Me?\"\n\n\n \"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted\n off—oh, the most piteous letter!\"\n\n\n Barry was fully awake now. \"I'm not married. I have no child.\n I've never been in Philadelphia,\" he shouted. His lips thinned.\n \"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!\" he declared grimly.\n\n\n \"Robson wouldn't!\" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt\n in her voice.\n\n\n Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.", "It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and\n unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying\n vegetation.\n\n\n But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in\n his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.\n\n\n The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing\n vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.\n\n\n Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above\n a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby\n the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The\n mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded\n outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in\n their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out\n of the marsh. The Colony!", "\"I could eat a cow with the smallpox,\" Barry declared.\n\n\n Nick grinned. \"No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job\n of work out there.\"\n\n\n Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.\n\n\n \"Say,\" he asked anxiously. \"What's haywire with the air?\"\n\n\n Nick looked startled. \"Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off\n watch a few minutes ago.\"\n\n\n Barry shrugged. \"Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a\n handout.\"\n\n\n He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside\n out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on\n him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness\n he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to\n breathe.", "Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze\n of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the\n brackish, silt-clouded water.\nIII\n\n\n Slowly his racing heartbeat returned to normal. Gradually he became\n aware of the stench of decaying plants and of musky taints he knew\n instinctively were the scents of underwater animals. Then with a shock\n the meaning became clear. He had become a water-breather, cut off from\n all other Earthmen, no longer entirely human. His fellows in the colony\n were separated from him now by a gulf more absolute than the airless\n void between Earth and Venus.\n\n\n Something slippery and alive touched him near one armpit. He opened\n his eyes in the black water and his groping hand clutched something\n burrowing into his skin. With a shudder of revulsion he crushed a fat\n worm between his fingers.", "Shouting voices awakened him, an exultant battle cry cutting through a\n gasping scream of anguish. Streaks of bright orange light were moving\n toward him in a twisting pattern. At the head of each trail was a\n figure. A human figure that weaved and swam in deadly moving combat.\n One figure drifted limply bottomward.\n\n\n Hallucination, Barry told himself. Then one of the figures broke from\n the group. Almost overhead it turned sharply downward and the feet\n moved in a powerful flutter-kick. A slender spear aimed directly at the\n Earthman.\n\n\n Barry threw himself aside. The spear point plunged deep into the\n sticky, yielding bottom and Barry grappled with its wielder.\n\n\n Pointed fingernails raked his cheek. Barry's balled fist swung\n in a roundhouse blow but water resistance slowed the punch to\n ineffectiveness. The creature only shook its head and came in kicking\n and clawing.", "Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp,\n extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few\n minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.\n\n\n Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk.\n Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one\n particular figure among the men and women who waited.\n\n\n \"Dorothy!\" he said fervently.\n\n\n Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.\n\n\n Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an\n expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he\n saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.", "She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual\n despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment\n of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed\n emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone,\n and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded\n devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his\n insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.\n\n\n But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the\n business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried\n a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to\n virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.\n\n\n The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened\n to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly\n expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some\n factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.", "Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the\n experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions,\n he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus\n Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form\n was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study\n native Venusian materials.\n\n\n Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the\n limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to\n rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle\n delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian\n materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.\n\n\n Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of\n loneliness had come to an end.", "Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy\n plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp,\n malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.\n\n\n It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he\n was not an engineer for nothing.\n\n\n \"Got a pencil?\" he asked.\n\n\n He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need\n detailed drawings.\n\n\n \"Think you can get materials?\"\n\n\n Nick glanced at the sketch. \"Hell, man, for you I can get anything the\n Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it.\"\n\n\n \"Two days?\"\n\n\n Nick looked insulted.", "But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At\n each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with\n a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come\n to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even\n inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the\n Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged\n animal.\n\n\n Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening\n and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day\n progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of\n Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.", "Then Barry struck, felt his knife slice flesh and grate against bone.\n He struck again even as the undersea being screamed and went limp.\n\n\n Barry stared through the reddening water.\n\n\n Another figure plunged toward him. Barry jerked the dead Venusian's\n spear from the mud and raised it defensively.\n\n\n But the figure paid no attention. This one was a female who fled\n desperately from two men closing in from opposite sides. One threw his\n spear, using an odd pushing motion, and as she checked and dodged, the\n other was upon her from behind.\n\n\n One arm went around her neck in a strangler's hold, bending her slender\n body backward. Together captor and struggling captive sank toward the\n bottom. The other recovered his thrown spear and moved in to help\n secure her arms and legs with lengths of cord.", "For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But\n then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his\n hand.\n\n\n Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees\n had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in\n fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But\n still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the\n brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus\n alive—\nThe blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking\n pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny\n figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified\n breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation\n to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the\n insidiously deadly Sigma radiations." ] ]
test	61397	[ "What was the state of Earth’s space travel capabilities at the time of this story?", "How did Diane and the main character end up as, effectively, a zoo exhibit?", "What or who are the Faces that appear in the fish tank's circular windows?", "What is the source of the Voice?", "Why did the furry humanoids agree to transport the fish tank to the planet where the story’s main action takes place?", "What was the role of the furry ones in breaking the terms of the treaty?", "Why were Diane and the main character spared by the furry ones?", "What is the reason for the limited thought processes evident in the main characters' narration and behavior?", "What does the story imply about the reason for the sudden ability of Diane to become pregnant?", "Why does the senior furry one kill his junior officer?" ]	[ [ "They had managed to send men to the Moon and satellites further out into the solar system.", "The space program was abandoned immediately after the first mission to Mars in order to focus resources on Earth's climate change problem.", "Earthers had spread not only through this galaxy, but throughout all of the known universe, and were considered the dominant species of intelligent life.", "Earth had accomplished enough to be able to travel to and colonize nearly four dozen planets." ], [ "As Earth's land became more damaged by climate change, a sub-group of Earthers returned to live in the sea. Diane and the main character were a new species of human - they were in the exhibit because they were part of Earth's ocean fauna.", "They both worked at the biggest sea life research facility on Earth. They were excited about the chance to accompany a selection of Earth's sea creatures to another planet, where new populations might be established.", "They happened to be on a space vacation when Earth was destroyed. They were captured and added to a sea life collection that was part of a gift commemorating a treaty. ", "They both worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. They volunteered for the mission to go to Energa as part of a sea life exhibit, with a mission plan to escape and then blend into the population." ], [ "They are the faces of the inhabitants of Energa viewing the sea life exhibit through the windows.", "They are just video illusions that were added by the zookeepers to provide something for the main character to focus his negative energy on.", "The Earth sea life exhibit is a very valuable research opportunity. The faces are beush assistants taking data on the giant aquarium.", "The faces are those of a water-dwelling race from another planet, separated from Earth's exhibit, but visible so that they could get accustomed to each other before being allowed to mingle." ], [ "The Voice is actually a jumble of the voices of the spectators looking at the exhibit. The sounds pass easily through the tank walls and the water.", "The main character has an earpiece connected to an Artificial Intelligence computer, like HAL, which can give him information and instructions.", "The Voice is his Central Intelligence Agency handler, transmitting instructions and information to the main character via a subdermal implant.", "The junior of the two furry humanoid officers can talk to the main character through a simple implant." ], [ "They added some of their own, native water-dwelling flora and fauna to the tank, which they hoped could be used to seed food for them on a potential future colonization site.", "They were part of a three-way treaty involving Earth, and they were the only signatory with a ship big enough to carry the gigantic tank to its destination.", "The furry humanoids were mainly traders and transporters. Being able to move the gigantic tank was an accomplishment they could use in advertising to other customers.", "The furry ones intended to abrogate the three-way treaty before they even signed it, and they volunteered to move the tank so that they could sabotage it with time-delayed fusion bombs." ], [ "The furry ones never broke the treaty. It was the Energi who refused to abide by the treaty terms and resumed piracy on interstellar shipping lanes very soon after it was signed.", "It was just small things, like imposing illegal tariffs and putting up bureaucratic barriers to entering and leaving spaceports that they controlled.", "It started with putting an outpost on a planet claimed by Earth, followed by other boundary skirmishes, then a resumption of all-out war.", "They began to find humans annoying, so they annihilated the species." ], [ "The furry ones had a deep commitment to observing the custom of helping non-combatant travelers stranded in space.", "They were kept alive as leverage for getting some furry prisoners being held on Earth returned to them.", "They were modified for use as a counter-intelligence tool on their remaining adversary’s planet.", "The beush was intrigued by their odd appearance and was turned on by Diane's long hair." ], [ "Although the modifications made to Diane and the main character to allow them to breathe underwater gave them enough oxygen to remain alive, they were constantly somewhat oxygen-deprived, which diminished many of their higher cerebral functions.", "They caught a brain-wasting disease from the porpoises. It didn't kill them, but it left them impaired.", "The furry ones wiped their minds clean except for the pre-existing feelings of passion between them.", "When a subset of humans returned to the sea, they found life so easy that intelligence was no longer a requirement for survival...so their mental capabilities diminished." ], [ "The furry ones had installed a reversible vasectomy valve on the main character when they installed the spheroid that the Voice spoke through, and through a software error, it stuck open.", "It is implied that a sufficient strength of mental desire on the main character’s part allowed her to conceive.", "The zookeepers on Energi put estrogen into the tank water to help Diane conceive.", "We can infer that Diane and the main character finally learned to actually complete the sex act instead of just engaging in foreplay with the porpoises." ], [ "Because the assistant was gunning for his job, and he needed to eliminate the competition.", "Because the human main character wanted the voice in his head to stop.", "Because he was absolutely furious about the many incorrect predictions the assistant beush had made.", "The operation was Top Secret. Since it appeared to be a failure now, he had to get rid of the only other one who knew all the project details." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "Terran seas. But, as a warpspace message from the Terran Council\n indirectly proclaimed, the degenerate Terrans negatively possessed\n a ship of any Space type large or powerful enough to transport the\n 'aquarium' to Energa. Our ships being the largest of the Truce, we\n were petitioned by the Terrans to transport it. These events developed\n before the Terrans grew pestiferous to our cause. We obliged, but even\n our vastest ship was slow, because the physical power necessary to\n bring the weight of the cell through warpspace quickly was too great\n for the solitary four generators. It was imperative that the trip be on\n a longer trajectory arranged through norm-space. During the duration\n of the trip, feelings of suspicion arose inter Three Truce Races.\n As your memory also relates, the 'aquarium' was still in space when", "The\nbeush\nnodded in approval. \"Continue, but negatively hesitate\n frequently or it will be necessary to discuss this subject\n post-present.\"\nHis assistant trembled slightly. \"Unequivocally affirmative.\nBeush\n,\n your memory relates that five periods ante-present, when there\n existed the Truce inter Energi, Terrans and ourselves, there was a\n certain period during which gifts of the three nucleus-planets were\n exchanged in friendship. The Terrans were self-contented to donate\n to the Energi an immense 'aquarium'—an 'aquarium' consisting of a\n partly transparent cell in which was placed a collection of Terran\n life-forms that breathed their oxygen from the dense atmosphere of", "\"Unknown to you,\nbeush\n, or to the masses and highers, an\n insignificant pleasure craft was extracted from Terran Space and\n negatively consumed with a planet when the bombs were detonated. The\n ship accommodated two Terrans. Proper Terrans by birth, negatively\n by reference. One was male, other female. The two had been in\n their culture socially and religiously united in a ceremony called\n 'matrimony'. Emotions of sex, protection and an emotion we have\n negatively been able to analyze linked the two, and made them ideal for\n our purpose.\"\n\n\n The assistant looked at the\nbeush\n, picked up his partially full glass\n and, before he could sip it, was dashed to the floor beside the\nbeush\nhimself. The former helped the higher to his unstable legs, and was\n commented to by the same, \"Assistant, proceed to the protecroom.\"", "\"Of certainty,\nbeush\n,\" began the assistant with all the grace of an\n informer. \"The Light and Force Research of the Energi is executed in\n one center of one planet, the planet being Energa, as our intelligence\n service has conveniently listed it. The Energi have negative necessity\n for secrecy in their Light and Force Research, because, first, all\n centers are crusted and protected by Force Domes. Second, it is near\n impossibility that one could so self-disguise that he would negatively\n be detectable.\" He hesitated.\n\n\n \"And these Energi,\" queried the\nbeush\n, \"are semi-telepathic or\n empathic?\"\n\n\n \"Affirmative,\" the assistant mumbled.\n\n\n \"Then you have there a third reason,\" offered the\nbeush\n.\n\n\n \"Graces be given you,\nbeush\n.\"", "I understand. I carry her through the water very slowly, feeling the\n warmth and nipples of her breasts pressed against my back as she rests\n her head on my shoulder and smiles.\n\n\n The Faces continue to stare. Many times I have searched for a word to\n show my hatred for them. I shall find it somehow, though. Sooner or\n later.\n\"What count of planets had the Terrans infested?\" The furry humanoid\n leaned over the desk and stared, unblinking, at the lesser humanoid in\n the only other chair in the room. His gaze was dropped as he scratched\n informally at the heavy fur at his wrist. He raised his gaze again.\n\n\n \"Forty-three is the count,\nbeush\n,\" replied the other.\n\n\n \"And the count of planets destroyed?\"\n\n\n \"Forty-three planetoid missiles were sent and detonated simultaneously\n without resistance or losses on our part,\nbeush\n,\" the assistant\nbeush\nanswered indirectly.", "\"One of our most competent protoplasmic computers stabilized the final\n steps of the Plan. We were to subject the two Terrans to radiation\n and have as a result two Terrans who could breathe their normal oxygen\n form H2O—the atmosphere of the 'aquarium', I repeat. We were then\n to deprive them of memory, except of the inter-attracting emotions,\n to allow them to live in harmony. Thirdly, we were to place them\n in the 'aquarium' and have them forwarded under the reference of\n semi-intelligent aqua-beings from Terran seas. A simple, but quite\n effective plan, your opinion,\nbeush\n?\"\n\n\n \"Quite,\" was the reply. \"And concerning the method of\n info-interception?\"", "They entered the well-illuminated closet and immediately slipped\n into the unwieldy metallic suits. Once again they took their seats,\n the\nbeush\nreflecting and saying, \"As your memory relates, that\n explosion was a bomb-drop concussion from the Rebellers. We must now\n wear anti-radiation protection. For that reason, and the danger of\n the Energi, you\ndo\nsee why we need the formulae of the Force Domes,\nimmediately\n.\"\n\n\n There was menace in his voice. The assistant trembled violently. Using\n the rare smile of that humanoid race, the\nbeush\ncontinued, \"Do\n negatively self-preoccupy. Resume your information, if contented.\"", "The sharks come today, because Diane is having another baby. Diane\n hurts, and there is more blood than last time. Her face is not pretty\n when she hurts, as it is pretty when she sleeps. So I\nwant\nher to\n sleep. Her face is pretty now with the smile on her lips.\n\"Fourteen thousand Energi ceased to exist, spheroid ceased to exist,\n and another reproduction. Warpspace! How far will they go?\"\nIt has been hundreds of days. Faces keep appearing, but I continue to\nwant\nthem to go away. Diane has had eighteen babies. The oldest are\n swimming around and playing with the porpoises. Diane and I spend most\n of the time teaching the children by showing them things, and by giving\n them our thoughts by touching them.\nToday I found that none of the children have Voices. I could\nwant\nthem to have Voices, but the children's thoughts tell me that it is not\n right to have a Voice.", "The room was hot, so the\nbeush\nlazily passed his hand over a faintly\n glowing panel.\n\n\n The room was cooled, and a large-eyed female with silky, ochrous\n fur—very desirable to the majority of humanoids—entered with two\n flared glasses of an odorless, transparent liquid—very desirable\n to the majority of humanoids. The lesser humanoid was being treated\n exceptionately well.\n\n\n The room was momentarily silent as the two sipped at their drinks with\n black lips. The\nbeush\n, as customary, spoke first. \"Inform me of the\n pre-espionage intelligence accomplishments contra-Energi. I have not\n been previously informed. Do not spare the details.\"", "\"Contented,\" came the automatic reply, and the assistant began, \"The\n two humans were perfect for the Plan, I repeat. Before the Energi\n received the message of the race destruction, it was imperative that we\n establish an agent on Energa, near the Force Domes. We assumed that the\n 'aquarium' would be placed on Energa, in the greatest center. That was\n correct, but negatively yet knowing for certainty, we perpetuated the\n Plan, with the 'aquarium' as the basis.", "\"Rest assured, peace,\nbeush\n.\n\n\n \"But his thoughts!\"\n\n\n \"Rest assured,\nhigher beush\n.\"\nThere is much blood in the water today. Diane is having a baby; sharks\n have come. I have never seen so many sharks, and as big as they are I\n have never seen. I am afraid, but still some sneak among us near Diane.\n\n\n We love the porpoises, so they help us now. They are chasing the\n sharks away, injuring and killing some.\n\"Entities, Warpspaced Entities! There has been reproduction.\"\n\n\n \"\nYorbeush\n,\" cried the assistant in defense. \"It is physically\n impossible. But they are mutants. It is negatively impossible that they\n possess Mind Force to a degree.\"", "Diane and I have decided that we\nwant\na baby. Maybe the other fish\nwanted\nthem, so they got them. We\nwant\na baby.\n\"The two Terrans were so biologically mutated and are so nearly\n robotic, that it is physically impossible for reproduction on their\n part,\nbeush\n.\"\n\n\n The\nbeush\nignored the assistant's words and said, \"I have received\n copies of the thought-patterns and translations. There was something\n strange and very powerful about the meaning of the male's thought,\n 'want'. I query.\"\n\n\n \"Be assured without preoccupation that there exists negative danger of\n reproduction.\"\nThe name I wanted to call Diane was not good, because her breasts are\n hard and large, as is her stomach. I think she is sick.\nI do not think Diane is sick. I think she is going to have a baby.\n\"Entities, assistant! On your oath-body you proclaimed that there is\n negative danger of reproduction.\"", "There has been much useless noise and senseless talk from the Voice\n these days. It is annoying because I must concentrate on loving Diane\n and caring for the baby. So I\nwanted\nthe Voice to leave it. It left.\n\"Entities Be Simply Damned! The spheroid ceased to exist, assistant.\n How far can they go, assistant?\" The\nbeush\nrose, screamed\n hysterically for three seconds and then fired the hand weapon point\n blank at the neck of his assistant.", "The assistant continued without hesitation, embarrassed by his\n incompetency, \"A hyper-complex spheroid with radio interceptors,\n a-matter viewers and recorders and the general intelligence instruments\n of micro-size was placed in the cranium of the male mutant. The\n spheroid has negative direct control over the organism. Size was too\n scarce for use on trivialities. Then an agent was placed behind the\n larger controls at our end of the instruments.\"\n\n\n \"And you are the agent?\"\n\n\n \"Hyper-contentedly affirmative.\"\nI have done two things today. I have found the word for my hatred of\n the Faces. The Voice gave it to me. When I asked the Voice, it laughed\n and told me the word to use was \"damn\". So today I have thrice said,\n \"Damn the Faces. Damn them.\"", "we found it necessary to obliterate the total race of Terrans. The\n message of the annihilation arrived in retard to the Energi, so Time\n permitted us to devise a contra-Energi intelligence plan, a necessity\n since it was realized that the Energi would be disturbed by our action\n contra-Terrans and would, without doubt, take action contra-ourselves.", "Tomorrow we are leaving the tank. We will\nwant\nto leave it; it is\n getting crowded. The boy says that beyond the greater tank, which we\n will also leave, there is enough space for all the babies Diane could\n have if she lived forever.\n\n\n Forever, he said. It would be nice to live forever. I think I'll\nwant\n....", "Tomorrow I will explain to him that if he\nwants\nsomething, he will\n get it. So he must\nwant\na baby.\n\"Query? The Energi will bomb-drop the 'aquarium'? War declared against\n us? War declared? Entities be wholly damned! Negative! Negativvv!\" The\n disintegrator was fired once more, this time into the orange eye of the\nbeush\nhimself, by himself, and for the good of himself.\nWhen, if I ever do\nwant\nthe Voice to come back, it will be very\n surprised to know that Diane has had twenty-four babies; that the three\n eldest boys have mated twice, once and twice, and have had four babies.\n The Voice will also be surprised to know that it took all twenty-nine\n of us to\nwant\nall the Faces around the tank to die, as the eldest boy\n said to do. We could not tell, but the boy said that six million Faces\n were dead. That seems impossible to me, but the boy is always right.", "But the cracked, flat things with small lights circling about them\n are not pretty like Diane's face. The Voice says that the Faces have\n bodies, like myself, and Diane. No body could be like Diane's. I think\n I should be quite sick if I saw the bodies of the Faces.", "I\ndo\nknow what the \"tank\" is. It is a very large thing filled with\n water, and having four \"corners\", one of which is the Cave where\n Diane and I sleep when the water is black like the ink of the squid\n and cold like dead fish. But we stay warm. There is the \"floor\" of\n the \"tank\", the \"floor\" being where all the rock and seaweed is, with\n all the crawling fish and crabs, where Diane and I walk and sleep.\n There are four \"sides\". \"Sides\" are smooth and blue walls, and have\n \"view-ports\"—round, transparent areas—on them. The Voice says that\n the things in the \"view-ports\" are Faces. I have a face, as does Diane.", "The Voice then says that the Faces are watching us, as we sometimes\n watch the porpoises. It took a very long time to grow used to having\n the Faces watch us, as Diane and I came together, but we learned to do\n it as simply as we swim and sleep.\n\n\n But Diane does not have babies. I am very sad when I see the porpoises\n and whales with their young. Diane and I sleep together in the Cave;\n Diane is very warm and soft. We sleep in happiness, but when we are\n awake, we are lonely. I question the Voice about a baby for Diane, but\n the Voice is always silent." ], [ "I have caught a porpoise by his top fin. He knows my wish, so he speeds\n toward Diane, circles her and butts her soft thighs with his snout. She\n laughs, but continues to stay in a ball, her black hair waving. She is\n very beautiful.\n\n\n I try to pry her arms from around her legs gently, but she resists. I\n must use force. Diane does not mind when I do; because she knows I love\n her.\n\n\n I pull her arms away, and slip my arms under hers, kissing her on the\n lips for a long time. Struggling to free herself, laughing again, she\n pokes me sharply with her elbow and escapes my arms. I am surprised.\n She quickly puts her arms around my neck, pulls herself to my back and\n links her slim legs around my middle. She is pretending that I am a\n porpoise. I laugh. She pinches me to go ahead. I swim upward, but her\n thoughts tell me she wants to go to the Cave.", "I\ndo\nknow what the \"tank\" is. It is a very large thing filled with\n water, and having four \"corners\", one of which is the Cave where\n Diane and I sleep when the water is black like the ink of the squid\n and cold like dead fish. But we stay warm. There is the \"floor\" of\n the \"tank\", the \"floor\" being where all the rock and seaweed is, with\n all the crawling fish and crabs, where Diane and I walk and sleep.\n There are four \"sides\". \"Sides\" are smooth and blue walls, and have\n \"view-ports\"—round, transparent areas—on them. The Voice says that\n the things in the \"view-ports\" are Faces. I have a face, as does Diane.", "Diane has grabbed the tail of a porpoise, and both are playing. Diane\n and I love the porpoises. Sometimes we can even hear their thoughts.\n They are different from the other fish; they are more like us. But they\n have babies and we do not.\n\n\n Diane sees me and, wanting to play, swims behind a rock and looks back,\n beckoning. I make a grab at her as I sneak around the rock. But she\n darts upward, toward the surface, where her body is a shadow of beauty\n against the lighter water above her. I follow her, but she ducks and I\n sail past her. Diane pulls up her legs, knees under her chin, and puts\n her arms around them. She then drops like a rock toward the \"floor\".", "The Voice then says that the Faces are watching us, as we sometimes\n watch the porpoises. It took a very long time to grow used to having\n the Faces watch us, as Diane and I came together, but we learned to do\n it as simply as we swim and sleep.\n\n\n But Diane does not have babies. I am very sad when I see the porpoises\n and whales with their young. Diane and I sleep together in the Cave;\n Diane is very warm and soft. We sleep in happiness, but when we are\n awake, we are lonely. I question the Voice about a baby for Diane, but\n the Voice is always silent.", "THE FACES OUTSIDE\nBY BRUCE McALLISTER\nThey were all that was left of\n\n humanity—if they were still human!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1963.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI wanted to call her Soft Breast, because she is soft when I hold her\n to me. But the Voice told me to call her Diane. When I call her Diane,\n I have a pleasant feeling, and she seems closer to me. She likes the\n name \"Diane\". The Voice knew what was best, of course, as it always\n does.", "Diane and I have decided that we\nwant\na baby. Maybe the other fish\nwanted\nthem, so they got them. We\nwant\na baby.\n\"The two Terrans were so biologically mutated and are so nearly\n robotic, that it is physically impossible for reproduction on their\n part,\nbeush\n.\"\n\n\n The\nbeush\nignored the assistant's words and said, \"I have received\n copies of the thought-patterns and translations. There was something\n strange and very powerful about the meaning of the male's thought,\n 'want'. I query.\"\n\n\n \"Be assured without preoccupation that there exists negative danger of\n reproduction.\"\nThe name I wanted to call Diane was not good, because her breasts are\n hard and large, as is her stomach. I think she is sick.\nI do not think Diane is sick. I think she is going to have a baby.\n\"Entities, assistant! On your oath-body you proclaimed that there is\n negative danger of reproduction.\"", "Tomorrow we are leaving the tank. We will\nwant\nto leave it; it is\n getting crowded. The boy says that beyond the greater tank, which we\n will also leave, there is enough space for all the babies Diane could\n have if she lived forever.\n\n\n Forever, he said. It would be nice to live forever. I think I'll\nwant\n....", "The eldest boy says that we should leave the tank, that a greater\n \"tank\" is around us, and that it is easier to move around in that\n greater tank. He also says that we must guard ourselves against Faces\n outside. That is strange, but the boy is a good boy. Many times he\n knows that things will happen before they do. He is a good boy.\n\n\n He is almost as tall as I am. The eldest girl is pretty like Diane,\n her body very white and soft but, since I\nwanted\nit so, her hair is\n golden, instead of dark. The boy likes her very much, and I have seen\n them together, touching.", "But the cracked, flat things with small lights circling about them\n are not pretty like Diane's face. The Voice says that the Faces have\n bodies, like myself, and Diane. No body could be like Diane's. I think\n I should be quite sick if I saw the bodies of the Faces.", "The fish are many, but the dangers are few. I have seen the sharks\n kill. But the shark does not come near me if I see it and am afraid.\n Sometimes I have caught it sneaking up behind me, but when I turn it\n leaves quickly. I have questioned the Voice about why the sharks leave.\n It does not know. It has no one to ask.\nToday the \"sun\" must be very large, or powerful, or bright, because the\n water is brighter than most days.\n\n\n When I awoke Diane was not beside me. The rock of the Cave is jagged,\n so as I make my way from our bed of cool and slick seaweed, toward the\n entrance, I scrape my leg on the fifth kick. Not much blood comes from\n the cut. That is fortunate, because when there is blood the sharks come.", "The sharks come today, because Diane is having another baby. Diane\n hurts, and there is more blood than last time. Her face is not pretty\n when she hurts, as it is pretty when she sleeps. So I\nwant\nher to\n sleep. Her face is pretty now with the smile on her lips.\n\"Fourteen thousand Energi ceased to exist, spheroid ceased to exist,\n and another reproduction. Warpspace! How far will they go?\"\nIt has been hundreds of days. Faces keep appearing, but I continue to\nwant\nthem to go away. Diane has had eighteen babies. The oldest are\n swimming around and playing with the porpoises. Diane and I spend most\n of the time teaching the children by showing them things, and by giving\n them our thoughts by touching them.\nToday I found that none of the children have Voices. I could\nwant\nthem to have Voices, but the children's thoughts tell me that it is not\n right to have a Voice.", "\"To what degree? What degree could produce reproduction when it is\n physically impossible?\" The\nbeush\nwas sarcastic. \"How far can they\n go?\"\n\n\n \"There is negatively great amount they can do. Negative danger, because\n we have studied their instincts and emotions and found that they will\n not leave the 'aquarium,' their 'home'. Unless someone tells them to,\n but there is no one to do so.\"\nToday I damned the Faces nine times and finally\nwanted\nthem to go\n away. The \"view-ports\" went black. It was like the sharks leaving when\n I wanted them to. I still do not understand.", "I grow to hate the Faces in the \"view-ports\". They are always watching,\n watching. The Voice says that they are enemies, and bad. The Faces have\n not tried to hurt me: but I must think of them as enemies because the\n Voice says so. I ask bad, like the shark? The Voice says, no, worse\n than the sharks and eels. It says that the Faces are evil.\n\n\n The \"tank\" must be high, because the water is high. I have gone once\n to the surface, and, although I could get used to it, the light was\n too much for my eyes. It took me two hundred and seventy kicks to the\n surface; it took me three thousand steps from our Cave to the opposite\n \"side\". The \"tank\" is very large, otherwise the whales would not be\n happy.", "\"Contented,\" came the automatic reply, and the assistant began, \"The\n two humans were perfect for the Plan, I repeat. Before the Energi\n received the message of the race destruction, it was imperative that we\n establish an agent on Energa, near the Force Domes. We assumed that the\n 'aquarium' would be placed on Energa, in the greatest center. That was\n correct, but negatively yet knowing for certainty, we perpetuated the\n Plan, with the 'aquarium' as the basis.", "\"One of our most competent protoplasmic computers stabilized the final\n steps of the Plan. We were to subject the two Terrans to radiation\n and have as a result two Terrans who could breathe their normal oxygen\n form H2O—the atmosphere of the 'aquarium', I repeat. We were then\n to deprive them of memory, except of the inter-attracting emotions,\n to allow them to live in harmony. Thirdly, we were to place them\n in the 'aquarium' and have them forwarded under the reference of\n semi-intelligent aqua-beings from Terran seas. A simple, but quite\n effective plan, your opinion,\nbeush\n?\"\n\n\n \"Quite,\" was the reply. \"And concerning the method of\n info-interception?\"", "\"Unknown to you,\nbeush\n, or to the masses and highers, an\n insignificant pleasure craft was extracted from Terran Space and\n negatively consumed with a planet when the bombs were detonated. The\n ship accommodated two Terrans. Proper Terrans by birth, negatively\n by reference. One was male, other female. The two had been in\n their culture socially and religiously united in a ceremony called\n 'matrimony'. Emotions of sex, protection and an emotion we have\n negatively been able to analyze linked the two, and made them ideal for\n our purpose.\"\n\n\n The assistant looked at the\nbeush\n, picked up his partially full glass\n and, before he could sip it, was dashed to the floor beside the\nbeush\nhimself. The former helped the higher to his unstable legs, and was\n commented to by the same, \"Assistant, proceed to the protecroom.\"", "Tomorrow I will explain to him that if he\nwants\nsomething, he will\n get it. So he must\nwant\na baby.\n\"Query? The Energi will bomb-drop the 'aquarium'? War declared against\n us? War declared? Entities be wholly damned! Negative! Negativvv!\" The\n disintegrator was fired once more, this time into the orange eye of the\nbeush\nhimself, by himself, and for the good of himself.\nWhen, if I ever do\nwant\nthe Voice to come back, it will be very\n surprised to know that Diane has had twenty-four babies; that the three\n eldest boys have mated twice, once and twice, and have had four babies.\n The Voice will also be surprised to know that it took all twenty-nine\n of us to\nwant\nall the Faces around the tank to die, as the eldest boy\n said to do. We could not tell, but the boy said that six million Faces\n were dead. That seems impossible to me, but the boy is always right.", "I must mate with her every day, when the water is brightest. The Voice\n says so. It also says that I am in a \"tank\", and that the water is\n brightest when the \"sun\" is over the \"tank\". I do not understand the\n meaning of \"sun\", but the Voice says that \"noon\" is when the \"Sun\" is\n over the \"tank\". I must mate with Diane every \"noon\".", "There has been much useless noise and senseless talk from the Voice\n these days. It is annoying because I must concentrate on loving Diane\n and caring for the baby. So I\nwanted\nthe Voice to leave it. It left.\n\"Entities Be Simply Damned! The spheroid ceased to exist, assistant.\n How far can they go, assistant?\" The\nbeush\nrose, screamed\n hysterically for three seconds and then fired the hand weapon point\n blank at the neck of his assistant.", "Terran seas. But, as a warpspace message from the Terran Council\n indirectly proclaimed, the degenerate Terrans negatively possessed\n a ship of any Space type large or powerful enough to transport the\n 'aquarium' to Energa. Our ships being the largest of the Truce, we\n were petitioned by the Terrans to transport it. These events developed\n before the Terrans grew pestiferous to our cause. We obliged, but even\n our vastest ship was slow, because the physical power necessary to\n bring the weight of the cell through warpspace quickly was too great\n for the solitary four generators. It was imperative that the trip be on\n a longer trajectory arranged through norm-space. During the duration\n of the trip, feelings of suspicion arose inter Three Truce Races.\n As your memory also relates, the 'aquarium' was still in space when" ], [ "I\ndo\nknow what the \"tank\" is. It is a very large thing filled with\n water, and having four \"corners\", one of which is the Cave where\n Diane and I sleep when the water is black like the ink of the squid\n and cold like dead fish. But we stay warm. There is the \"floor\" of\n the \"tank\", the \"floor\" being where all the rock and seaweed is, with\n all the crawling fish and crabs, where Diane and I walk and sleep.\n There are four \"sides\". \"Sides\" are smooth and blue walls, and have\n \"view-ports\"—round, transparent areas—on them. The Voice says that\n the things in the \"view-ports\" are Faces. I have a face, as does Diane.", "I grow to hate the Faces in the \"view-ports\". They are always watching,\n watching. The Voice says that they are enemies, and bad. The Faces have\n not tried to hurt me: but I must think of them as enemies because the\n Voice says so. I ask bad, like the shark? The Voice says, no, worse\n than the sharks and eels. It says that the Faces are evil.\n\n\n The \"tank\" must be high, because the water is high. I have gone once\n to the surface, and, although I could get used to it, the light was\n too much for my eyes. It took me two hundred and seventy kicks to the\n surface; it took me three thousand steps from our Cave to the opposite\n \"side\". The \"tank\" is very large, otherwise the whales would not be\n happy.", "But the cracked, flat things with small lights circling about them\n are not pretty like Diane's face. The Voice says that the Faces have\n bodies, like myself, and Diane. No body could be like Diane's. I think\n I should be quite sick if I saw the bodies of the Faces.", "The eldest boy says that we should leave the tank, that a greater\n \"tank\" is around us, and that it is easier to move around in that\n greater tank. He also says that we must guard ourselves against Faces\n outside. That is strange, but the boy is a good boy. Many times he\n knows that things will happen before they do. He is a good boy.\n\n\n He is almost as tall as I am. The eldest girl is pretty like Diane,\n her body very white and soft but, since I\nwanted\nit so, her hair is\n golden, instead of dark. The boy likes her very much, and I have seen\n them together, touching.", "The Voice then says that the Faces are watching us, as we sometimes\n watch the porpoises. It took a very long time to grow used to having\n the Faces watch us, as Diane and I came together, but we learned to do\n it as simply as we swim and sleep.\n\n\n But Diane does not have babies. I am very sad when I see the porpoises\n and whales with their young. Diane and I sleep together in the Cave;\n Diane is very warm and soft. We sleep in happiness, but when we are\n awake, we are lonely. I question the Voice about a baby for Diane, but\n the Voice is always silent.", "THE FACES OUTSIDE\nBY BRUCE McALLISTER\nThey were all that was left of\n\n humanity—if they were still human!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1963.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI wanted to call her Soft Breast, because she is soft when I hold her\n to me. But the Voice told me to call her Diane. When I call her Diane,\n I have a pleasant feeling, and she seems closer to me. She likes the\n name \"Diane\". The Voice knew what was best, of course, as it always\n does.", "\"To what degree? What degree could produce reproduction when it is\n physically impossible?\" The\nbeush\nwas sarcastic. \"How far can they\n go?\"\n\n\n \"There is negatively great amount they can do. Negative danger, because\n we have studied their instincts and emotions and found that they will\n not leave the 'aquarium,' their 'home'. Unless someone tells them to,\n but there is no one to do so.\"\nToday I damned the Faces nine times and finally\nwanted\nthem to go\n away. The \"view-ports\" went black. It was like the sharks leaving when\n I wanted them to. I still do not understand.", "Tomorrow I will explain to him that if he\nwants\nsomething, he will\n get it. So he must\nwant\na baby.\n\"Query? The Energi will bomb-drop the 'aquarium'? War declared against\n us? War declared? Entities be wholly damned! Negative! Negativvv!\" The\n disintegrator was fired once more, this time into the orange eye of the\nbeush\nhimself, by himself, and for the good of himself.\nWhen, if I ever do\nwant\nthe Voice to come back, it will be very\n surprised to know that Diane has had twenty-four babies; that the three\n eldest boys have mated twice, once and twice, and have had four babies.\n The Voice will also be surprised to know that it took all twenty-nine\n of us to\nwant\nall the Faces around the tank to die, as the eldest boy\n said to do. We could not tell, but the boy said that six million Faces\n were dead. That seems impossible to me, but the boy is always right.", "Tomorrow we are leaving the tank. We will\nwant\nto leave it; it is\n getting crowded. The boy says that beyond the greater tank, which we\n will also leave, there is enough space for all the babies Diane could\n have if she lived forever.\n\n\n Forever, he said. It would be nice to live forever. I think I'll\nwant\n....", "The assistant continued without hesitation, embarrassed by his\n incompetency, \"A hyper-complex spheroid with radio interceptors,\n a-matter viewers and recorders and the general intelligence instruments\n of micro-size was placed in the cranium of the male mutant. The\n spheroid has negative direct control over the organism. Size was too\n scarce for use on trivialities. Then an agent was placed behind the\n larger controls at our end of the instruments.\"\n\n\n \"And you are the agent?\"\n\n\n \"Hyper-contentedly affirmative.\"\nI have done two things today. I have found the word for my hatred of\n the Faces. The Voice gave it to me. When I asked the Voice, it laughed\n and told me the word to use was \"damn\". So today I have thrice said,\n \"Damn the Faces. Damn them.\"", "The sharks come today, because Diane is having another baby. Diane\n hurts, and there is more blood than last time. Her face is not pretty\n when she hurts, as it is pretty when she sleeps. So I\nwant\nher to\n sleep. Her face is pretty now with the smile on her lips.\n\"Fourteen thousand Energi ceased to exist, spheroid ceased to exist,\n and another reproduction. Warpspace! How far will they go?\"\nIt has been hundreds of days. Faces keep appearing, but I continue to\nwant\nthem to go away. Diane has had eighteen babies. The oldest are\n swimming around and playing with the porpoises. Diane and I spend most\n of the time teaching the children by showing them things, and by giving\n them our thoughts by touching them.\nToday I found that none of the children have Voices. I could\nwant\nthem to have Voices, but the children's thoughts tell me that it is not\n right to have a Voice.", "The fish are many, but the dangers are few. I have seen the sharks\n kill. But the shark does not come near me if I see it and am afraid.\n Sometimes I have caught it sneaking up behind me, but when I turn it\n leaves quickly. I have questioned the Voice about why the sharks leave.\n It does not know. It has no one to ask.\nToday the \"sun\" must be very large, or powerful, or bright, because the\n water is brighter than most days.\n\n\n When I awoke Diane was not beside me. The rock of the Cave is jagged,\n so as I make my way from our bed of cool and slick seaweed, toward the\n entrance, I scrape my leg on the fifth kick. Not much blood comes from\n the cut. That is fortunate, because when there is blood the sharks come.", "Diane has grabbed the tail of a porpoise, and both are playing. Diane\n and I love the porpoises. Sometimes we can even hear their thoughts.\n They are different from the other fish; they are more like us. But they\n have babies and we do not.\n\n\n Diane sees me and, wanting to play, swims behind a rock and looks back,\n beckoning. I make a grab at her as I sneak around the rock. But she\n darts upward, toward the surface, where her body is a shadow of beauty\n against the lighter water above her. I follow her, but she ducks and I\n sail past her. Diane pulls up her legs, knees under her chin, and puts\n her arms around them. She then drops like a rock toward the \"floor\".", "I understand. I carry her through the water very slowly, feeling the\n warmth and nipples of her breasts pressed against my back as she rests\n her head on my shoulder and smiles.\n\n\n The Faces continue to stare. Many times I have searched for a word to\n show my hatred for them. I shall find it somehow, though. Sooner or\n later.\n\"What count of planets had the Terrans infested?\" The furry humanoid\n leaned over the desk and stared, unblinking, at the lesser humanoid in\n the only other chair in the room. His gaze was dropped as he scratched\n informally at the heavy fur at his wrist. He raised his gaze again.\n\n\n \"Forty-three is the count,\nbeush\n,\" replied the other.\n\n\n \"And the count of planets destroyed?\"\n\n\n \"Forty-three planetoid missiles were sent and detonated simultaneously\n without resistance or losses on our part,\nbeush\n,\" the assistant\nbeush\nanswered indirectly.", "I must mate with her every day, when the water is brightest. The Voice\n says so. It also says that I am in a \"tank\", and that the water is\n brightest when the \"sun\" is over the \"tank\". I do not understand the\n meaning of \"sun\", but the Voice says that \"noon\" is when the \"Sun\" is\n over the \"tank\". I must mate with Diane every \"noon\".", "\"Contented,\" came the automatic reply, and the assistant began, \"The\n two humans were perfect for the Plan, I repeat. Before the Energi\n received the message of the race destruction, it was imperative that we\n establish an agent on Energa, near the Force Domes. We assumed that the\n 'aquarium' would be placed on Energa, in the greatest center. That was\n correct, but negatively yet knowing for certainty, we perpetuated the\n Plan, with the 'aquarium' as the basis.", "I have caught a porpoise by his top fin. He knows my wish, so he speeds\n toward Diane, circles her and butts her soft thighs with his snout. She\n laughs, but continues to stay in a ball, her black hair waving. She is\n very beautiful.\n\n\n I try to pry her arms from around her legs gently, but she resists. I\n must use force. Diane does not mind when I do; because she knows I love\n her.\n\n\n I pull her arms away, and slip my arms under hers, kissing her on the\n lips for a long time. Struggling to free herself, laughing again, she\n pokes me sharply with her elbow and escapes my arms. I am surprised.\n She quickly puts her arms around my neck, pulls herself to my back and\n links her slim legs around my middle. She is pretending that I am a\n porpoise. I laugh. She pinches me to go ahead. I swim upward, but her\n thoughts tell me she wants to go to the Cave.", "\"Rest assured, peace,\nbeush\n.\n\n\n \"But his thoughts!\"\n\n\n \"Rest assured,\nhigher beush\n.\"\nThere is much blood in the water today. Diane is having a baby; sharks\n have come. I have never seen so many sharks, and as big as they are I\n have never seen. I am afraid, but still some sneak among us near Diane.\n\n\n We love the porpoises, so they help us now. They are chasing the\n sharks away, injuring and killing some.\n\"Entities, Warpspaced Entities! There has been reproduction.\"\n\n\n \"\nYorbeush\n,\" cried the assistant in defense. \"It is physically\n impossible. But they are mutants. It is negatively impossible that they\n possess Mind Force to a degree.\"", "There has been much useless noise and senseless talk from the Voice\n these days. It is annoying because I must concentrate on loving Diane\n and caring for the baby. So I\nwanted\nthe Voice to leave it. It left.\n\"Entities Be Simply Damned! The spheroid ceased to exist, assistant.\n How far can they go, assistant?\" The\nbeush\nrose, screamed\n hysterically for three seconds and then fired the hand weapon point\n blank at the neck of his assistant.", "Terran seas. But, as a warpspace message from the Terran Council\n indirectly proclaimed, the degenerate Terrans negatively possessed\n a ship of any Space type large or powerful enough to transport the\n 'aquarium' to Energa. Our ships being the largest of the Truce, we\n were petitioned by the Terrans to transport it. These events developed\n before the Terrans grew pestiferous to our cause. We obliged, but even\n our vastest ship was slow, because the physical power necessary to\n bring the weight of the cell through warpspace quickly was too great\n for the solitary four generators. It was imperative that the trip be on\n a longer trajectory arranged through norm-space. During the duration\n of the trip, feelings of suspicion arose inter Three Truce Races.\n As your memory also relates, the 'aquarium' was still in space when" ], [ "There has been much useless noise and senseless talk from the Voice\n these days. It is annoying because I must concentrate on loving Diane\n and caring for the baby. So I\nwanted\nthe Voice to leave it. It left.\n\"Entities Be Simply Damned! The spheroid ceased to exist, assistant.\n How far can they go, assistant?\" The\nbeush\nrose, screamed\n hysterically for three seconds and then fired the hand weapon point\n blank at the neck of his assistant.", "The Voice then says that the Faces are watching us, as we sometimes\n watch the porpoises. It took a very long time to grow used to having\n the Faces watch us, as Diane and I came together, but we learned to do\n it as simply as we swim and sleep.\n\n\n But Diane does not have babies. I am very sad when I see the porpoises\n and whales with their young. Diane and I sleep together in the Cave;\n Diane is very warm and soft. We sleep in happiness, but when we are\n awake, we are lonely. I question the Voice about a baby for Diane, but\n the Voice is always silent.", "But the cracked, flat things with small lights circling about them\n are not pretty like Diane's face. The Voice says that the Faces have\n bodies, like myself, and Diane. No body could be like Diane's. I think\n I should be quite sick if I saw the bodies of the Faces.", "I\ndo\nknow what the \"tank\" is. It is a very large thing filled with\n water, and having four \"corners\", one of which is the Cave where\n Diane and I sleep when the water is black like the ink of the squid\n and cold like dead fish. But we stay warm. There is the \"floor\" of\n the \"tank\", the \"floor\" being where all the rock and seaweed is, with\n all the crawling fish and crabs, where Diane and I walk and sleep.\n There are four \"sides\". \"Sides\" are smooth and blue walls, and have\n \"view-ports\"—round, transparent areas—on them. The Voice says that\n the things in the \"view-ports\" are Faces. I have a face, as does Diane.", "I grow to hate the Faces in the \"view-ports\". They are always watching,\n watching. The Voice says that they are enemies, and bad. The Faces have\n not tried to hurt me: but I must think of them as enemies because the\n Voice says so. I ask bad, like the shark? The Voice says, no, worse\n than the sharks and eels. It says that the Faces are evil.\n\n\n The \"tank\" must be high, because the water is high. I have gone once\n to the surface, and, although I could get used to it, the light was\n too much for my eyes. It took me two hundred and seventy kicks to the\n surface; it took me three thousand steps from our Cave to the opposite\n \"side\". The \"tank\" is very large, otherwise the whales would not be\n happy.", "The fish are many, but the dangers are few. I have seen the sharks\n kill. But the shark does not come near me if I see it and am afraid.\n Sometimes I have caught it sneaking up behind me, but when I turn it\n leaves quickly. I have questioned the Voice about why the sharks leave.\n It does not know. It has no one to ask.\nToday the \"sun\" must be very large, or powerful, or bright, because the\n water is brighter than most days.\n\n\n When I awoke Diane was not beside me. The rock of the Cave is jagged,\n so as I make my way from our bed of cool and slick seaweed, toward the\n entrance, I scrape my leg on the fifth kick. Not much blood comes from\n the cut. That is fortunate, because when there is blood the sharks come.", "The sharks come today, because Diane is having another baby. Diane\n hurts, and there is more blood than last time. Her face is not pretty\n when she hurts, as it is pretty when she sleeps. So I\nwant\nher to\n sleep. Her face is pretty now with the smile on her lips.\n\"Fourteen thousand Energi ceased to exist, spheroid ceased to exist,\n and another reproduction. Warpspace! How far will they go?\"\nIt has been hundreds of days. Faces keep appearing, but I continue to\nwant\nthem to go away. Diane has had eighteen babies. The oldest are\n swimming around and playing with the porpoises. Diane and I spend most\n of the time teaching the children by showing them things, and by giving\n them our thoughts by touching them.\nToday I found that none of the children have Voices. I could\nwant\nthem to have Voices, but the children's thoughts tell me that it is not\n right to have a Voice.", "Tomorrow I will explain to him that if he\nwants\nsomething, he will\n get it. So he must\nwant\na baby.\n\"Query? The Energi will bomb-drop the 'aquarium'? War declared against\n us? War declared? Entities be wholly damned! Negative! Negativvv!\" The\n disintegrator was fired once more, this time into the orange eye of the\nbeush\nhimself, by himself, and for the good of himself.\nWhen, if I ever do\nwant\nthe Voice to come back, it will be very\n surprised to know that Diane has had twenty-four babies; that the three\n eldest boys have mated twice, once and twice, and have had four babies.\n The Voice will also be surprised to know that it took all twenty-nine\n of us to\nwant\nall the Faces around the tank to die, as the eldest boy\n said to do. We could not tell, but the boy said that six million Faces\n were dead. That seems impossible to me, but the boy is always right.", "I must mate with her every day, when the water is brightest. The Voice\n says so. It also says that I am in a \"tank\", and that the water is\n brightest when the \"sun\" is over the \"tank\". I do not understand the\n meaning of \"sun\", but the Voice says that \"noon\" is when the \"Sun\" is\n over the \"tank\". I must mate with Diane every \"noon\".", "The assistant continued without hesitation, embarrassed by his\n incompetency, \"A hyper-complex spheroid with radio interceptors,\n a-matter viewers and recorders and the general intelligence instruments\n of micro-size was placed in the cranium of the male mutant. The\n spheroid has negative direct control over the organism. Size was too\n scarce for use on trivialities. Then an agent was placed behind the\n larger controls at our end of the instruments.\"\n\n\n \"And you are the agent?\"\n\n\n \"Hyper-contentedly affirmative.\"\nI have done two things today. I have found the word for my hatred of\n the Faces. The Voice gave it to me. When I asked the Voice, it laughed\n and told me the word to use was \"damn\". So today I have thrice said,\n \"Damn the Faces. Damn them.\"", "The eldest boy says that we should leave the tank, that a greater\n \"tank\" is around us, and that it is easier to move around in that\n greater tank. He also says that we must guard ourselves against Faces\n outside. That is strange, but the boy is a good boy. Many times he\n knows that things will happen before they do. He is a good boy.\n\n\n He is almost as tall as I am. The eldest girl is pretty like Diane,\n her body very white and soft but, since I\nwanted\nit so, her hair is\n golden, instead of dark. The boy likes her very much, and I have seen\n them together, touching.", "Diane has grabbed the tail of a porpoise, and both are playing. Diane\n and I love the porpoises. Sometimes we can even hear their thoughts.\n They are different from the other fish; they are more like us. But they\n have babies and we do not.\n\n\n Diane sees me and, wanting to play, swims behind a rock and looks back,\n beckoning. I make a grab at her as I sneak around the rock. But she\n darts upward, toward the surface, where her body is a shadow of beauty\n against the lighter water above her. I follow her, but she ducks and I\n sail past her. Diane pulls up her legs, knees under her chin, and puts\n her arms around them. She then drops like a rock toward the \"floor\".", "THE FACES OUTSIDE\nBY BRUCE McALLISTER\nThey were all that was left of\n\n humanity—if they were still human!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1963.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI wanted to call her Soft Breast, because she is soft when I hold her\n to me. But the Voice told me to call her Diane. When I call her Diane,\n I have a pleasant feeling, and she seems closer to me. She likes the\n name \"Diane\". The Voice knew what was best, of course, as it always\n does.", "\"Rest assured, peace,\nbeush\n.\n\n\n \"But his thoughts!\"\n\n\n \"Rest assured,\nhigher beush\n.\"\nThere is much blood in the water today. Diane is having a baby; sharks\n have come. I have never seen so many sharks, and as big as they are I\n have never seen. I am afraid, but still some sneak among us near Diane.\n\n\n We love the porpoises, so they help us now. They are chasing the\n sharks away, injuring and killing some.\n\"Entities, Warpspaced Entities! There has been reproduction.\"\n\n\n \"\nYorbeush\n,\" cried the assistant in defense. \"It is physically\n impossible. But they are mutants. It is negatively impossible that they\n possess Mind Force to a degree.\"", "\"Contented,\" came the automatic reply, and the assistant began, \"The\n two humans were perfect for the Plan, I repeat. Before the Energi\n received the message of the race destruction, it was imperative that we\n establish an agent on Energa, near the Force Domes. We assumed that the\n 'aquarium' would be placed on Energa, in the greatest center. That was\n correct, but negatively yet knowing for certainty, we perpetuated the\n Plan, with the 'aquarium' as the basis.", "\"Of certainty,\nbeush\n,\" began the assistant with all the grace of an\n informer. \"The Light and Force Research of the Energi is executed in\n one center of one planet, the planet being Energa, as our intelligence\n service has conveniently listed it. The Energi have negative necessity\n for secrecy in their Light and Force Research, because, first, all\n centers are crusted and protected by Force Domes. Second, it is near\n impossibility that one could so self-disguise that he would negatively\n be detectable.\" He hesitated.\n\n\n \"And these Energi,\" queried the\nbeush\n, \"are semi-telepathic or\n empathic?\"\n\n\n \"Affirmative,\" the assistant mumbled.\n\n\n \"Then you have there a third reason,\" offered the\nbeush\n.\n\n\n \"Graces be given you,\nbeush\n.\"", "They entered the well-illuminated closet and immediately slipped\n into the unwieldy metallic suits. Once again they took their seats,\n the\nbeush\nreflecting and saying, \"As your memory relates, that\n explosion was a bomb-drop concussion from the Rebellers. We must now\n wear anti-radiation protection. For that reason, and the danger of\n the Energi, you\ndo\nsee why we need the formulae of the Force Domes,\nimmediately\n.\"\n\n\n There was menace in his voice. The assistant trembled violently. Using\n the rare smile of that humanoid race, the\nbeush\ncontinued, \"Do\n negatively self-preoccupy. Resume your information, if contented.\"", "Tomorrow we are leaving the tank. We will\nwant\nto leave it; it is\n getting crowded. The boy says that beyond the greater tank, which we\n will also leave, there is enough space for all the babies Diane could\n have if she lived forever.\n\n\n Forever, he said. It would be nice to live forever. I think I'll\nwant\n....", "\"One of our most competent protoplasmic computers stabilized the final\n steps of the Plan. We were to subject the two Terrans to radiation\n and have as a result two Terrans who could breathe their normal oxygen\n form H2O—the atmosphere of the 'aquarium', I repeat. We were then\n to deprive them of memory, except of the inter-attracting emotions,\n to allow them to live in harmony. Thirdly, we were to place them\n in the 'aquarium' and have them forwarded under the reference of\n semi-intelligent aqua-beings from Terran seas. A simple, but quite\n effective plan, your opinion,\nbeush\n?\"\n\n\n \"Quite,\" was the reply. \"And concerning the method of\n info-interception?\"", "I have caught a porpoise by his top fin. He knows my wish, so he speeds\n toward Diane, circles her and butts her soft thighs with his snout. She\n laughs, but continues to stay in a ball, her black hair waving. She is\n very beautiful.\n\n\n I try to pry her arms from around her legs gently, but she resists. I\n must use force. Diane does not mind when I do; because she knows I love\n her.\n\n\n I pull her arms away, and slip my arms under hers, kissing her on the\n lips for a long time. Struggling to free herself, laughing again, she\n pokes me sharply with her elbow and escapes my arms. I am surprised.\n She quickly puts her arms around my neck, pulls herself to my back and\n links her slim legs around my middle. She is pretending that I am a\n porpoise. I laugh. She pinches me to go ahead. I swim upward, but her\n thoughts tell me she wants to go to the Cave." ], [ "Terran seas. But, as a warpspace message from the Terran Council\n indirectly proclaimed, the degenerate Terrans negatively possessed\n a ship of any Space type large or powerful enough to transport the\n 'aquarium' to Energa. Our ships being the largest of the Truce, we\n were petitioned by the Terrans to transport it. These events developed\n before the Terrans grew pestiferous to our cause. We obliged, but even\n our vastest ship was slow, because the physical power necessary to\n bring the weight of the cell through warpspace quickly was too great\n for the solitary four generators. It was imperative that the trip be on\n a longer trajectory arranged through norm-space. During the duration\n of the trip, feelings of suspicion arose inter Three Truce Races.\n As your memory also relates, the 'aquarium' was still in space when", "\"Contented,\" came the automatic reply, and the assistant began, \"The\n two humans were perfect for the Plan, I repeat. Before the Energi\n received the message of the race destruction, it was imperative that we\n establish an agent on Energa, near the Force Domes. We assumed that the\n 'aquarium' would be placed on Energa, in the greatest center. That was\n correct, but negatively yet knowing for certainty, we perpetuated the\n Plan, with the 'aquarium' as the basis.", "The\nbeush\nnodded in approval. \"Continue, but negatively hesitate\n frequently or it will be necessary to discuss this subject\n post-present.\"\nHis assistant trembled slightly. \"Unequivocally affirmative.\nBeush\n,\n your memory relates that five periods ante-present, when there\n existed the Truce inter Energi, Terrans and ourselves, there was a\n certain period during which gifts of the three nucleus-planets were\n exchanged in friendship. The Terrans were self-contented to donate\n to the Energi an immense 'aquarium'—an 'aquarium' consisting of a\n partly transparent cell in which was placed a collection of Terran\n life-forms that breathed their oxygen from the dense atmosphere of", "The room was hot, so the\nbeush\nlazily passed his hand over a faintly\n glowing panel.\n\n\n The room was cooled, and a large-eyed female with silky, ochrous\n fur—very desirable to the majority of humanoids—entered with two\n flared glasses of an odorless, transparent liquid—very desirable\n to the majority of humanoids. The lesser humanoid was being treated\n exceptionately well.\n\n\n The room was momentarily silent as the two sipped at their drinks with\n black lips. The\nbeush\n, as customary, spoke first. \"Inform me of the\n pre-espionage intelligence accomplishments contra-Energi. I have not\n been previously informed. Do not spare the details.\"", "I understand. I carry her through the water very slowly, feeling the\n warmth and nipples of her breasts pressed against my back as she rests\n her head on my shoulder and smiles.\n\n\n The Faces continue to stare. Many times I have searched for a word to\n show my hatred for them. I shall find it somehow, though. Sooner or\n later.\n\"What count of planets had the Terrans infested?\" The furry humanoid\n leaned over the desk and stared, unblinking, at the lesser humanoid in\n the only other chair in the room. His gaze was dropped as he scratched\n informally at the heavy fur at his wrist. He raised his gaze again.\n\n\n \"Forty-three is the count,\nbeush\n,\" replied the other.\n\n\n \"And the count of planets destroyed?\"\n\n\n \"Forty-three planetoid missiles were sent and detonated simultaneously\n without resistance or losses on our part,\nbeush\n,\" the assistant\nbeush\nanswered indirectly.", "\"One of our most competent protoplasmic computers stabilized the final\n steps of the Plan. We were to subject the two Terrans to radiation\n and have as a result two Terrans who could breathe their normal oxygen\n form H2O—the atmosphere of the 'aquarium', I repeat. We were then\n to deprive them of memory, except of the inter-attracting emotions,\n to allow them to live in harmony. Thirdly, we were to place them\n in the 'aquarium' and have them forwarded under the reference of\n semi-intelligent aqua-beings from Terran seas. A simple, but quite\n effective plan, your opinion,\nbeush\n?\"\n\n\n \"Quite,\" was the reply. \"And concerning the method of\n info-interception?\"", "Diane and I have decided that we\nwant\na baby. Maybe the other fish\nwanted\nthem, so they got them. We\nwant\na baby.\n\"The two Terrans were so biologically mutated and are so nearly\n robotic, that it is physically impossible for reproduction on their\n part,\nbeush\n.\"\n\n\n The\nbeush\nignored the assistant's words and said, \"I have received\n copies of the thought-patterns and translations. There was something\n strange and very powerful about the meaning of the male's thought,\n 'want'. I query.\"\n\n\n \"Be assured without preoccupation that there exists negative danger of\n reproduction.\"\nThe name I wanted to call Diane was not good, because her breasts are\n hard and large, as is her stomach. I think she is sick.\nI do not think Diane is sick. I think she is going to have a baby.\n\"Entities, assistant! On your oath-body you proclaimed that there is\n negative danger of reproduction.\"", "I\ndo\nknow what the \"tank\" is. It is a very large thing filled with\n water, and having four \"corners\", one of which is the Cave where\n Diane and I sleep when the water is black like the ink of the squid\n and cold like dead fish. But we stay warm. There is the \"floor\" of\n the \"tank\", the \"floor\" being where all the rock and seaweed is, with\n all the crawling fish and crabs, where Diane and I walk and sleep.\n There are four \"sides\". \"Sides\" are smooth and blue walls, and have\n \"view-ports\"—round, transparent areas—on them. The Voice says that\n the things in the \"view-ports\" are Faces. I have a face, as does Diane.", "\"Unknown to you,\nbeush\n, or to the masses and highers, an\n insignificant pleasure craft was extracted from Terran Space and\n negatively consumed with a planet when the bombs were detonated. The\n ship accommodated two Terrans. Proper Terrans by birth, negatively\n by reference. One was male, other female. The two had been in\n their culture socially and religiously united in a ceremony called\n 'matrimony'. Emotions of sex, protection and an emotion we have\n negatively been able to analyze linked the two, and made them ideal for\n our purpose.\"\n\n\n The assistant looked at the\nbeush\n, picked up his partially full glass\n and, before he could sip it, was dashed to the floor beside the\nbeush\nhimself. The former helped the higher to his unstable legs, and was\n commented to by the same, \"Assistant, proceed to the protecroom.\"", "They entered the well-illuminated closet and immediately slipped\n into the unwieldy metallic suits. Once again they took their seats,\n the\nbeush\nreflecting and saying, \"As your memory relates, that\n explosion was a bomb-drop concussion from the Rebellers. We must now\n wear anti-radiation protection. For that reason, and the danger of\n the Energi, you\ndo\nsee why we need the formulae of the Force Domes,\nimmediately\n.\"\n\n\n There was menace in his voice. The assistant trembled violently. Using\n the rare smile of that humanoid race, the\nbeush\ncontinued, \"Do\n negatively self-preoccupy. Resume your information, if contented.\"", "\"Of certainty,\nbeush\n,\" began the assistant with all the grace of an\n informer. \"The Light and Force Research of the Energi is executed in\n one center of one planet, the planet being Energa, as our intelligence\n service has conveniently listed it. The Energi have negative necessity\n for secrecy in their Light and Force Research, because, first, all\n centers are crusted and protected by Force Domes. Second, it is near\n impossibility that one could so self-disguise that he would negatively\n be detectable.\" He hesitated.\n\n\n \"And these Energi,\" queried the\nbeush\n, \"are semi-telepathic or\n empathic?\"\n\n\n \"Affirmative,\" the assistant mumbled.\n\n\n \"Then you have there a third reason,\" offered the\nbeush\n.\n\n\n \"Graces be given you,\nbeush\n.\"", "I grow to hate the Faces in the \"view-ports\". They are always watching,\n watching. The Voice says that they are enemies, and bad. The Faces have\n not tried to hurt me: but I must think of them as enemies because the\n Voice says so. I ask bad, like the shark? The Voice says, no, worse\n than the sharks and eels. It says that the Faces are evil.\n\n\n The \"tank\" must be high, because the water is high. I have gone once\n to the surface, and, although I could get used to it, the light was\n too much for my eyes. It took me two hundred and seventy kicks to the\n surface; it took me three thousand steps from our Cave to the opposite\n \"side\". The \"tank\" is very large, otherwise the whales would not be\n happy.", "Tomorrow we are leaving the tank. We will\nwant\nto leave it; it is\n getting crowded. The boy says that beyond the greater tank, which we\n will also leave, there is enough space for all the babies Diane could\n have if she lived forever.\n\n\n Forever, he said. It would be nice to live forever. I think I'll\nwant\n....", "The eldest boy says that we should leave the tank, that a greater\n \"tank\" is around us, and that it is easier to move around in that\n greater tank. He also says that we must guard ourselves against Faces\n outside. That is strange, but the boy is a good boy. Many times he\n knows that things will happen before they do. He is a good boy.\n\n\n He is almost as tall as I am. The eldest girl is pretty like Diane,\n her body very white and soft but, since I\nwanted\nit so, her hair is\n golden, instead of dark. The boy likes her very much, and I have seen\n them together, touching.", "The sharks come today, because Diane is having another baby. Diane\n hurts, and there is more blood than last time. Her face is not pretty\n when she hurts, as it is pretty when she sleeps. So I\nwant\nher to\n sleep. Her face is pretty now with the smile on her lips.\n\"Fourteen thousand Energi ceased to exist, spheroid ceased to exist,\n and another reproduction. Warpspace! How far will they go?\"\nIt has been hundreds of days. Faces keep appearing, but I continue to\nwant\nthem to go away. Diane has had eighteen babies. The oldest are\n swimming around and playing with the porpoises. Diane and I spend most\n of the time teaching the children by showing them things, and by giving\n them our thoughts by touching them.\nToday I found that none of the children have Voices. I could\nwant\nthem to have Voices, but the children's thoughts tell me that it is not\n right to have a Voice.", "Tomorrow I will explain to him that if he\nwants\nsomething, he will\n get it. So he must\nwant\na baby.\n\"Query? The Energi will bomb-drop the 'aquarium'? War declared against\n us? War declared? Entities be wholly damned! Negative! Negativvv!\" The\n disintegrator was fired once more, this time into the orange eye of the\nbeush\nhimself, by himself, and for the good of himself.\nWhen, if I ever do\nwant\nthe Voice to come back, it will be very\n surprised to know that Diane has had twenty-four babies; that the three\n eldest boys have mated twice, once and twice, and have had four babies.\n The Voice will also be surprised to know that it took all twenty-nine\n of us to\nwant\nall the Faces around the tank to die, as the eldest boy\n said to do. We could not tell, but the boy said that six million Faces\n were dead. That seems impossible to me, but the boy is always right.", "\"To what degree? What degree could produce reproduction when it is\n physically impossible?\" The\nbeush\nwas sarcastic. \"How far can they\n go?\"\n\n\n \"There is negatively great amount they can do. Negative danger, because\n we have studied their instincts and emotions and found that they will\n not leave the 'aquarium,' their 'home'. Unless someone tells them to,\n but there is no one to do so.\"\nToday I damned the Faces nine times and finally\nwanted\nthem to go\n away. The \"view-ports\" went black. It was like the sharks leaving when\n I wanted them to. I still do not understand.", "\"Rest assured, peace,\nbeush\n.\n\n\n \"But his thoughts!\"\n\n\n \"Rest assured,\nhigher beush\n.\"\nThere is much blood in the water today. Diane is having a baby; sharks\n have come. I have never seen so many sharks, and as big as they are I\n have never seen. I am afraid, but still some sneak among us near Diane.\n\n\n We love the porpoises, so they help us now. They are chasing the\n sharks away, injuring and killing some.\n\"Entities, Warpspaced Entities! There has been reproduction.\"\n\n\n \"\nYorbeush\n,\" cried the assistant in defense. \"It is physically\n impossible. But they are mutants. It is negatively impossible that they\n possess Mind Force to a degree.\"", "Diane has grabbed the tail of a porpoise, and both are playing. Diane\n and I love the porpoises. Sometimes we can even hear their thoughts.\n They are different from the other fish; they are more like us. But they\n have babies and we do not.\n\n\n Diane sees me and, wanting to play, swims behind a rock and looks back,\n beckoning. I make a grab at her as I sneak around the rock. But she\n darts upward, toward the surface, where her body is a shadow of beauty\n against the lighter water above her. I follow her, but she ducks and I\n sail past her. Diane pulls up her legs, knees under her chin, and puts\n her arms around them. She then drops like a rock toward the \"floor\".", "The Voice then says that the Faces are watching us, as we sometimes\n watch the porpoises. It took a very long time to grow used to having\n the Faces watch us, as Diane and I came together, but we learned to do\n it as simply as we swim and sleep.\n\n\n But Diane does not have babies. I am very sad when I see the porpoises\n and whales with their young. Diane and I sleep together in the Cave;\n Diane is very warm and soft. We sleep in happiness, but when we are\n awake, we are lonely. I question the Voice about a baby for Diane, but\n the Voice is always silent." ], [ "Terran seas. But, as a warpspace message from the Terran Council\n indirectly proclaimed, the degenerate Terrans negatively possessed\n a ship of any Space type large or powerful enough to transport the\n 'aquarium' to Energa. Our ships being the largest of the Truce, we\n were petitioned by the Terrans to transport it. These events developed\n before the Terrans grew pestiferous to our cause. We obliged, but even\n our vastest ship was slow, because the physical power necessary to\n bring the weight of the cell through warpspace quickly was too great\n for the solitary four generators. It was imperative that the trip be on\n a longer trajectory arranged through norm-space. During the duration\n of the trip, feelings of suspicion arose inter Three Truce Races.\n As your memory also relates, the 'aquarium' was still in space when", "I understand. I carry her through the water very slowly, feeling the\n warmth and nipples of her breasts pressed against my back as she rests\n her head on my shoulder and smiles.\n\n\n The Faces continue to stare. Many times I have searched for a word to\n show my hatred for them. I shall find it somehow, though. Sooner or\n later.\n\"What count of planets had the Terrans infested?\" The furry humanoid\n leaned over the desk and stared, unblinking, at the lesser humanoid in\n the only other chair in the room. His gaze was dropped as he scratched\n informally at the heavy fur at his wrist. He raised his gaze again.\n\n\n \"Forty-three is the count,\nbeush\n,\" replied the other.\n\n\n \"And the count of planets destroyed?\"\n\n\n \"Forty-three planetoid missiles were sent and detonated simultaneously\n without resistance or losses on our part,\nbeush\n,\" the assistant\nbeush\nanswered indirectly.", "The room was hot, so the\nbeush\nlazily passed his hand over a faintly\n glowing panel.\n\n\n The room was cooled, and a large-eyed female with silky, ochrous\n fur—very desirable to the majority of humanoids—entered with two\n flared glasses of an odorless, transparent liquid—very desirable\n to the majority of humanoids. The lesser humanoid was being treated\n exceptionately well.\n\n\n The room was momentarily silent as the two sipped at their drinks with\n black lips. The\nbeush\n, as customary, spoke first. \"Inform me of the\n pre-espionage intelligence accomplishments contra-Energi. I have not\n been previously informed. Do not spare the details.\"", "They entered the well-illuminated closet and immediately slipped\n into the unwieldy metallic suits. Once again they took their seats,\n the\nbeush\nreflecting and saying, \"As your memory relates, that\n explosion was a bomb-drop concussion from the Rebellers. We must now\n wear anti-radiation protection. For that reason, and the danger of\n the Energi, you\ndo\nsee why we need the formulae of the Force Domes,\nimmediately\n.\"\n\n\n There was menace in his voice. The assistant trembled violently. Using\n the rare smile of that humanoid race, the\nbeush\ncontinued, \"Do\n negatively self-preoccupy. Resume your information, if contented.\"", "The\nbeush\nnodded in approval. \"Continue, but negatively hesitate\n frequently or it will be necessary to discuss this subject\n post-present.\"\nHis assistant trembled slightly. \"Unequivocally affirmative.\nBeush\n,\n your memory relates that five periods ante-present, when there\n existed the Truce inter Energi, Terrans and ourselves, there was a\n certain period during which gifts of the three nucleus-planets were\n exchanged in friendship. The Terrans were self-contented to donate\n to the Energi an immense 'aquarium'—an 'aquarium' consisting of a\n partly transparent cell in which was placed a collection of Terran\n life-forms that breathed their oxygen from the dense atmosphere of", "\"Unknown to you,\nbeush\n, or to the masses and highers, an\n insignificant pleasure craft was extracted from Terran Space and\n negatively consumed with a planet when the bombs were detonated. The\n ship accommodated two Terrans. Proper Terrans by birth, negatively\n by reference. One was male, other female. The two had been in\n their culture socially and religiously united in a ceremony called\n 'matrimony'. Emotions of sex, protection and an emotion we have\n negatively been able to analyze linked the two, and made them ideal for\n our purpose.\"\n\n\n The assistant looked at the\nbeush\n, picked up his partially full glass\n and, before he could sip it, was dashed to the floor beside the\nbeush\nhimself. The former helped the higher to his unstable legs, and was\n commented to by the same, \"Assistant, proceed to the protecroom.\"", "\"Of certainty,\nbeush\n,\" began the assistant with all the grace of an\n informer. \"The Light and Force Research of the Energi is executed in\n one center of one planet, the planet being Energa, as our intelligence\n service has conveniently listed it. The Energi have negative necessity\n for secrecy in their Light and Force Research, because, first, all\n centers are crusted and protected by Force Domes. Second, it is near\n impossibility that one could so self-disguise that he would negatively\n be detectable.\" He hesitated.\n\n\n \"And these Energi,\" queried the\nbeush\n, \"are semi-telepathic or\n empathic?\"\n\n\n \"Affirmative,\" the assistant mumbled.\n\n\n \"Then you have there a third reason,\" offered the\nbeush\n.\n\n\n \"Graces be given you,\nbeush\n.\"", "\"One of our most competent protoplasmic computers stabilized the final\n steps of the Plan. We were to subject the two Terrans to radiation\n and have as a result two Terrans who could breathe their normal oxygen\n form H2O—the atmosphere of the 'aquarium', I repeat. We were then\n to deprive them of memory, except of the inter-attracting emotions,\n to allow them to live in harmony. Thirdly, we were to place them\n in the 'aquarium' and have them forwarded under the reference of\n semi-intelligent aqua-beings from Terran seas. A simple, but quite\n effective plan, your opinion,\nbeush\n?\"\n\n\n \"Quite,\" was the reply. \"And concerning the method of\n info-interception?\"", "\"Rest assured, peace,\nbeush\n.\n\n\n \"But his thoughts!\"\n\n\n \"Rest assured,\nhigher beush\n.\"\nThere is much blood in the water today. Diane is having a baby; sharks\n have come. I have never seen so many sharks, and as big as they are I\n have never seen. I am afraid, but still some sneak among us near Diane.\n\n\n We love the porpoises, so they help us now. They are chasing the\n sharks away, injuring and killing some.\n\"Entities, Warpspaced Entities! There has been reproduction.\"\n\n\n \"\nYorbeush\n,\" cried the assistant in defense. \"It is physically\n impossible. But they are mutants. It is negatively impossible that they\n possess Mind Force to a degree.\"", "There has been much useless noise and senseless talk from the Voice\n these days. It is annoying because I must concentrate on loving Diane\n and caring for the baby. So I\nwanted\nthe Voice to leave it. It left.\n\"Entities Be Simply Damned! The spheroid ceased to exist, assistant.\n How far can they go, assistant?\" The\nbeush\nrose, screamed\n hysterically for three seconds and then fired the hand weapon point\n blank at the neck of his assistant.", "\"Contented,\" came the automatic reply, and the assistant began, \"The\n two humans were perfect for the Plan, I repeat. Before the Energi\n received the message of the race destruction, it was imperative that we\n establish an agent on Energa, near the Force Domes. We assumed that the\n 'aquarium' would be placed on Energa, in the greatest center. That was\n correct, but negatively yet knowing for certainty, we perpetuated the\n Plan, with the 'aquarium' as the basis.", "The Voice then says that the Faces are watching us, as we sometimes\n watch the porpoises. It took a very long time to grow used to having\n the Faces watch us, as Diane and I came together, but we learned to do\n it as simply as we swim and sleep.\n\n\n But Diane does not have babies. I am very sad when I see the porpoises\n and whales with their young. Diane and I sleep together in the Cave;\n Diane is very warm and soft. We sleep in happiness, but when we are\n awake, we are lonely. I question the Voice about a baby for Diane, but\n the Voice is always silent.", "we found it necessary to obliterate the total race of Terrans. The\n message of the annihilation arrived in retard to the Energi, so Time\n permitted us to devise a contra-Energi intelligence plan, a necessity\n since it was realized that the Energi would be disturbed by our action\n contra-Terrans and would, without doubt, take action contra-ourselves.", "The eldest boy says that we should leave the tank, that a greater\n \"tank\" is around us, and that it is easier to move around in that\n greater tank. He also says that we must guard ourselves against Faces\n outside. That is strange, but the boy is a good boy. Many times he\n knows that things will happen before they do. He is a good boy.\n\n\n He is almost as tall as I am. The eldest girl is pretty like Diane,\n her body very white and soft but, since I\nwanted\nit so, her hair is\n golden, instead of dark. The boy likes her very much, and I have seen\n them together, touching.", "I grow to hate the Faces in the \"view-ports\". They are always watching,\n watching. The Voice says that they are enemies, and bad. The Faces have\n not tried to hurt me: but I must think of them as enemies because the\n Voice says so. I ask bad, like the shark? The Voice says, no, worse\n than the sharks and eels. It says that the Faces are evil.\n\n\n The \"tank\" must be high, because the water is high. I have gone once\n to the surface, and, although I could get used to it, the light was\n too much for my eyes. It took me two hundred and seventy kicks to the\n surface; it took me three thousand steps from our Cave to the opposite\n \"side\". The \"tank\" is very large, otherwise the whales would not be\n happy.", "\"To what degree? What degree could produce reproduction when it is\n physically impossible?\" The\nbeush\nwas sarcastic. \"How far can they\n go?\"\n\n\n \"There is negatively great amount they can do. Negative danger, because\n we have studied their instincts and emotions and found that they will\n not leave the 'aquarium,' their 'home'. Unless someone tells them to,\n but there is no one to do so.\"\nToday I damned the Faces nine times and finally\nwanted\nthem to go\n away. The \"view-ports\" went black. It was like the sharks leaving when\n I wanted them to. I still do not understand.", "Tomorrow I will explain to him that if he\nwants\nsomething, he will\n get it. So he must\nwant\na baby.\n\"Query? The Energi will bomb-drop the 'aquarium'? War declared against\n us? War declared? Entities be wholly damned! Negative! Negativvv!\" The\n disintegrator was fired once more, this time into the orange eye of the\nbeush\nhimself, by himself, and for the good of himself.\nWhen, if I ever do\nwant\nthe Voice to come back, it will be very\n surprised to know that Diane has had twenty-four babies; that the three\n eldest boys have mated twice, once and twice, and have had four babies.\n The Voice will also be surprised to know that it took all twenty-nine\n of us to\nwant\nall the Faces around the tank to die, as the eldest boy\n said to do. We could not tell, but the boy said that six million Faces\n were dead. That seems impossible to me, but the boy is always right.", "The fish are many, but the dangers are few. I have seen the sharks\n kill. But the shark does not come near me if I see it and am afraid.\n Sometimes I have caught it sneaking up behind me, but when I turn it\n leaves quickly. I have questioned the Voice about why the sharks leave.\n It does not know. It has no one to ask.\nToday the \"sun\" must be very large, or powerful, or bright, because the\n water is brighter than most days.\n\n\n When I awoke Diane was not beside me. The rock of the Cave is jagged,\n so as I make my way from our bed of cool and slick seaweed, toward the\n entrance, I scrape my leg on the fifth kick. Not much blood comes from\n the cut. That is fortunate, because when there is blood the sharks come.", "Diane and I have decided that we\nwant\na baby. Maybe the other fish\nwanted\nthem, so they got them. We\nwant\na baby.\n\"The two Terrans were so biologically mutated and are so nearly\n robotic, that it is physically impossible for reproduction on their\n part,\nbeush\n.\"\n\n\n The\nbeush\nignored the assistant's words and said, \"I have received\n copies of the thought-patterns and translations. There was something\n strange and very powerful about the meaning of the male's thought,\n 'want'. I query.\"\n\n\n \"Be assured without preoccupation that there exists negative danger of\n reproduction.\"\nThe name I wanted to call Diane was not good, because her breasts are\n hard and large, as is her stomach. I think she is sick.\nI do not think Diane is sick. I think she is going to have a baby.\n\"Entities, assistant! On your oath-body you proclaimed that there is\n negative danger of reproduction.\"", "The assistant continued without hesitation, embarrassed by his\n incompetency, \"A hyper-complex spheroid with radio interceptors,\n a-matter viewers and recorders and the general intelligence instruments\n of micro-size was placed in the cranium of the male mutant. The\n spheroid has negative direct control over the organism. Size was too\n scarce for use on trivialities. Then an agent was placed behind the\n larger controls at our end of the instruments.\"\n\n\n \"And you are the agent?\"\n\n\n \"Hyper-contentedly affirmative.\"\nI have done two things today. I have found the word for my hatred of\n the Faces. The Voice gave it to me. When I asked the Voice, it laughed\n and told me the word to use was \"damn\". So today I have thrice said,\n \"Damn the Faces. Damn them.\"" ], [ "But the cracked, flat things with small lights circling about them\n are not pretty like Diane's face. The Voice says that the Faces have\n bodies, like myself, and Diane. No body could be like Diane's. I think\n I should be quite sick if I saw the bodies of the Faces.", "The eldest boy says that we should leave the tank, that a greater\n \"tank\" is around us, and that it is easier to move around in that\n greater tank. He also says that we must guard ourselves against Faces\n outside. That is strange, but the boy is a good boy. Many times he\n knows that things will happen before they do. He is a good boy.\n\n\n He is almost as tall as I am. The eldest girl is pretty like Diane,\n her body very white and soft but, since I\nwanted\nit so, her hair is\n golden, instead of dark. The boy likes her very much, and I have seen\n them together, touching.", "THE FACES OUTSIDE\nBY BRUCE McALLISTER\nThey were all that was left of\n\n humanity—if they were still human!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1963.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI wanted to call her Soft Breast, because she is soft when I hold her\n to me. But the Voice told me to call her Diane. When I call her Diane,\n I have a pleasant feeling, and she seems closer to me. She likes the\n name \"Diane\". The Voice knew what was best, of course, as it always\n does.", "Diane has grabbed the tail of a porpoise, and both are playing. Diane\n and I love the porpoises. Sometimes we can even hear their thoughts.\n They are different from the other fish; they are more like us. But they\n have babies and we do not.\n\n\n Diane sees me and, wanting to play, swims behind a rock and looks back,\n beckoning. I make a grab at her as I sneak around the rock. But she\n darts upward, toward the surface, where her body is a shadow of beauty\n against the lighter water above her. I follow her, but she ducks and I\n sail past her. Diane pulls up her legs, knees under her chin, and puts\n her arms around them. She then drops like a rock toward the \"floor\".", "The Voice then says that the Faces are watching us, as we sometimes\n watch the porpoises. It took a very long time to grow used to having\n the Faces watch us, as Diane and I came together, but we learned to do\n it as simply as we swim and sleep.\n\n\n But Diane does not have babies. I am very sad when I see the porpoises\n and whales with their young. Diane and I sleep together in the Cave;\n Diane is very warm and soft. We sleep in happiness, but when we are\n awake, we are lonely. I question the Voice about a baby for Diane, but\n the Voice is always silent.", "The fish are many, but the dangers are few. I have seen the sharks\n kill. But the shark does not come near me if I see it and am afraid.\n Sometimes I have caught it sneaking up behind me, but when I turn it\n leaves quickly. I have questioned the Voice about why the sharks leave.\n It does not know. It has no one to ask.\nToday the \"sun\" must be very large, or powerful, or bright, because the\n water is brighter than most days.\n\n\n When I awoke Diane was not beside me. The rock of the Cave is jagged,\n so as I make my way from our bed of cool and slick seaweed, toward the\n entrance, I scrape my leg on the fifth kick. Not much blood comes from\n the cut. That is fortunate, because when there is blood the sharks come.", "I have caught a porpoise by his top fin. He knows my wish, so he speeds\n toward Diane, circles her and butts her soft thighs with his snout. She\n laughs, but continues to stay in a ball, her black hair waving. She is\n very beautiful.\n\n\n I try to pry her arms from around her legs gently, but she resists. I\n must use force. Diane does not mind when I do; because she knows I love\n her.\n\n\n I pull her arms away, and slip my arms under hers, kissing her on the\n lips for a long time. Struggling to free herself, laughing again, she\n pokes me sharply with her elbow and escapes my arms. I am surprised.\n She quickly puts her arms around my neck, pulls herself to my back and\n links her slim legs around my middle. She is pretending that I am a\n porpoise. I laugh. She pinches me to go ahead. I swim upward, but her\n thoughts tell me she wants to go to the Cave.", "Diane and I have decided that we\nwant\na baby. Maybe the other fish\nwanted\nthem, so they got them. We\nwant\na baby.\n\"The two Terrans were so biologically mutated and are so nearly\n robotic, that it is physically impossible for reproduction on their\n part,\nbeush\n.\"\n\n\n The\nbeush\nignored the assistant's words and said, \"I have received\n copies of the thought-patterns and translations. There was something\n strange and very powerful about the meaning of the male's thought,\n 'want'. I query.\"\n\n\n \"Be assured without preoccupation that there exists negative danger of\n reproduction.\"\nThe name I wanted to call Diane was not good, because her breasts are\n hard and large, as is her stomach. I think she is sick.\nI do not think Diane is sick. I think she is going to have a baby.\n\"Entities, assistant! On your oath-body you proclaimed that there is\n negative danger of reproduction.\"", "The sharks come today, because Diane is having another baby. Diane\n hurts, and there is more blood than last time. Her face is not pretty\n when she hurts, as it is pretty when she sleeps. So I\nwant\nher to\n sleep. Her face is pretty now with the smile on her lips.\n\"Fourteen thousand Energi ceased to exist, spheroid ceased to exist,\n and another reproduction. Warpspace! How far will they go?\"\nIt has been hundreds of days. Faces keep appearing, but I continue to\nwant\nthem to go away. Diane has had eighteen babies. The oldest are\n swimming around and playing with the porpoises. Diane and I spend most\n of the time teaching the children by showing them things, and by giving\n them our thoughts by touching them.\nToday I found that none of the children have Voices. I could\nwant\nthem to have Voices, but the children's thoughts tell me that it is not\n right to have a Voice.", "There has been much useless noise and senseless talk from the Voice\n these days. It is annoying because I must concentrate on loving Diane\n and caring for the baby. So I\nwanted\nthe Voice to leave it. It left.\n\"Entities Be Simply Damned! The spheroid ceased to exist, assistant.\n How far can they go, assistant?\" The\nbeush\nrose, screamed\n hysterically for three seconds and then fired the hand weapon point\n blank at the neck of his assistant.", "Tomorrow we are leaving the tank. We will\nwant\nto leave it; it is\n getting crowded. The boy says that beyond the greater tank, which we\n will also leave, there is enough space for all the babies Diane could\n have if she lived forever.\n\n\n Forever, he said. It would be nice to live forever. I think I'll\nwant\n....", "I understand. I carry her through the water very slowly, feeling the\n warmth and nipples of her breasts pressed against my back as she rests\n her head on my shoulder and smiles.\n\n\n The Faces continue to stare. Many times I have searched for a word to\n show my hatred for them. I shall find it somehow, though. Sooner or\n later.\n\"What count of planets had the Terrans infested?\" The furry humanoid\n leaned over the desk and stared, unblinking, at the lesser humanoid in\n the only other chair in the room. His gaze was dropped as he scratched\n informally at the heavy fur at his wrist. He raised his gaze again.\n\n\n \"Forty-three is the count,\nbeush\n,\" replied the other.\n\n\n \"And the count of planets destroyed?\"\n\n\n \"Forty-three planetoid missiles were sent and detonated simultaneously\n without resistance or losses on our part,\nbeush\n,\" the assistant\nbeush\nanswered indirectly.", "\"Rest assured, peace,\nbeush\n.\n\n\n \"But his thoughts!\"\n\n\n \"Rest assured,\nhigher beush\n.\"\nThere is much blood in the water today. Diane is having a baby; sharks\n have come. I have never seen so many sharks, and as big as they are I\n have never seen. I am afraid, but still some sneak among us near Diane.\n\n\n We love the porpoises, so they help us now. They are chasing the\n sharks away, injuring and killing some.\n\"Entities, Warpspaced Entities! There has been reproduction.\"\n\n\n \"\nYorbeush\n,\" cried the assistant in defense. \"It is physically\n impossible. But they are mutants. It is negatively impossible that they\n possess Mind Force to a degree.\"", "The room was hot, so the\nbeush\nlazily passed his hand over a faintly\n glowing panel.\n\n\n The room was cooled, and a large-eyed female with silky, ochrous\n fur—very desirable to the majority of humanoids—entered with two\n flared glasses of an odorless, transparent liquid—very desirable\n to the majority of humanoids. The lesser humanoid was being treated\n exceptionately well.\n\n\n The room was momentarily silent as the two sipped at their drinks with\n black lips. The\nbeush\n, as customary, spoke first. \"Inform me of the\n pre-espionage intelligence accomplishments contra-Energi. I have not\n been previously informed. Do not spare the details.\"", "\"Contented,\" came the automatic reply, and the assistant began, \"The\n two humans were perfect for the Plan, I repeat. Before the Energi\n received the message of the race destruction, it was imperative that we\n establish an agent on Energa, near the Force Domes. We assumed that the\n 'aquarium' would be placed on Energa, in the greatest center. That was\n correct, but negatively yet knowing for certainty, we perpetuated the\n Plan, with the 'aquarium' as the basis.", "They entered the well-illuminated closet and immediately slipped\n into the unwieldy metallic suits. Once again they took their seats,\n the\nbeush\nreflecting and saying, \"As your memory relates, that\n explosion was a bomb-drop concussion from the Rebellers. We must now\n wear anti-radiation protection. For that reason, and the danger of\n the Energi, you\ndo\nsee why we need the formulae of the Force Domes,\nimmediately\n.\"\n\n\n There was menace in his voice. The assistant trembled violently. Using\n the rare smile of that humanoid race, the\nbeush\ncontinued, \"Do\n negatively self-preoccupy. Resume your information, if contented.\"", "\"Unknown to you,\nbeush\n, or to the masses and highers, an\n insignificant pleasure craft was extracted from Terran Space and\n negatively consumed with a planet when the bombs were detonated. The\n ship accommodated two Terrans. Proper Terrans by birth, negatively\n by reference. One was male, other female. The two had been in\n their culture socially and religiously united in a ceremony called\n 'matrimony'. Emotions of sex, protection and an emotion we have\n negatively been able to analyze linked the two, and made them ideal for\n our purpose.\"\n\n\n The assistant looked at the\nbeush\n, picked up his partially full glass\n and, before he could sip it, was dashed to the floor beside the\nbeush\nhimself. The former helped the higher to his unstable legs, and was\n commented to by the same, \"Assistant, proceed to the protecroom.\"", "I\ndo\nknow what the \"tank\" is. It is a very large thing filled with\n water, and having four \"corners\", one of which is the Cave where\n Diane and I sleep when the water is black like the ink of the squid\n and cold like dead fish. But we stay warm. There is the \"floor\" of\n the \"tank\", the \"floor\" being where all the rock and seaweed is, with\n all the crawling fish and crabs, where Diane and I walk and sleep.\n There are four \"sides\". \"Sides\" are smooth and blue walls, and have\n \"view-ports\"—round, transparent areas—on them. The Voice says that\n the things in the \"view-ports\" are Faces. I have a face, as does Diane.", "Terran seas. But, as a warpspace message from the Terran Council\n indirectly proclaimed, the degenerate Terrans negatively possessed\n a ship of any Space type large or powerful enough to transport the\n 'aquarium' to Energa. Our ships being the largest of the Truce, we\n were petitioned by the Terrans to transport it. These events developed\n before the Terrans grew pestiferous to our cause. We obliged, but even\n our vastest ship was slow, because the physical power necessary to\n bring the weight of the cell through warpspace quickly was too great\n for the solitary four generators. It was imperative that the trip be on\n a longer trajectory arranged through norm-space. During the duration\n of the trip, feelings of suspicion arose inter Three Truce Races.\n As your memory also relates, the 'aquarium' was still in space when", "Tomorrow I will explain to him that if he\nwants\nsomething, he will\n get it. So he must\nwant\na baby.\n\"Query? The Energi will bomb-drop the 'aquarium'? War declared against\n us? War declared? Entities be wholly damned! Negative! Negativvv!\" The\n disintegrator was fired once more, this time into the orange eye of the\nbeush\nhimself, by himself, and for the good of himself.\nWhen, if I ever do\nwant\nthe Voice to come back, it will be very\n surprised to know that Diane has had twenty-four babies; that the three\n eldest boys have mated twice, once and twice, and have had four babies.\n The Voice will also be surprised to know that it took all twenty-nine\n of us to\nwant\nall the Faces around the tank to die, as the eldest boy\n said to do. We could not tell, but the boy said that six million Faces\n were dead. That seems impossible to me, but the boy is always right." ], [ "I grow to hate the Faces in the \"view-ports\". They are always watching,\n watching. The Voice says that they are enemies, and bad. The Faces have\n not tried to hurt me: but I must think of them as enemies because the\n Voice says so. I ask bad, like the shark? The Voice says, no, worse\n than the sharks and eels. It says that the Faces are evil.\n\n\n The \"tank\" must be high, because the water is high. I have gone once\n to the surface, and, although I could get used to it, the light was\n too much for my eyes. It took me two hundred and seventy kicks to the\n surface; it took me three thousand steps from our Cave to the opposite\n \"side\". The \"tank\" is very large, otherwise the whales would not be\n happy.", "I\ndo\nknow what the \"tank\" is. It is a very large thing filled with\n water, and having four \"corners\", one of which is the Cave where\n Diane and I sleep when the water is black like the ink of the squid\n and cold like dead fish. But we stay warm. There is the \"floor\" of\n the \"tank\", the \"floor\" being where all the rock and seaweed is, with\n all the crawling fish and crabs, where Diane and I walk and sleep.\n There are four \"sides\". \"Sides\" are smooth and blue walls, and have\n \"view-ports\"—round, transparent areas—on them. The Voice says that\n the things in the \"view-ports\" are Faces. I have a face, as does Diane.", "The eldest boy says that we should leave the tank, that a greater\n \"tank\" is around us, and that it is easier to move around in that\n greater tank. He also says that we must guard ourselves against Faces\n outside. That is strange, but the boy is a good boy. Many times he\n knows that things will happen before they do. He is a good boy.\n\n\n He is almost as tall as I am. The eldest girl is pretty like Diane,\n her body very white and soft but, since I\nwanted\nit so, her hair is\n golden, instead of dark. The boy likes her very much, and I have seen\n them together, touching.", "The sharks come today, because Diane is having another baby. Diane\n hurts, and there is more blood than last time. Her face is not pretty\n when she hurts, as it is pretty when she sleeps. So I\nwant\nher to\n sleep. Her face is pretty now with the smile on her lips.\n\"Fourteen thousand Energi ceased to exist, spheroid ceased to exist,\n and another reproduction. Warpspace! How far will they go?\"\nIt has been hundreds of days. Faces keep appearing, but I continue to\nwant\nthem to go away. Diane has had eighteen babies. The oldest are\n swimming around and playing with the porpoises. Diane and I spend most\n of the time teaching the children by showing them things, and by giving\n them our thoughts by touching them.\nToday I found that none of the children have Voices. I could\nwant\nthem to have Voices, but the children's thoughts tell me that it is not\n right to have a Voice.", "Tomorrow I will explain to him that if he\nwants\nsomething, he will\n get it. So he must\nwant\na baby.\n\"Query? The Energi will bomb-drop the 'aquarium'? War declared against\n us? War declared? Entities be wholly damned! Negative! Negativvv!\" The\n disintegrator was fired once more, this time into the orange eye of the\nbeush\nhimself, by himself, and for the good of himself.\nWhen, if I ever do\nwant\nthe Voice to come back, it will be very\n surprised to know that Diane has had twenty-four babies; that the three\n eldest boys have mated twice, once and twice, and have had four babies.\n The Voice will also be surprised to know that it took all twenty-nine\n of us to\nwant\nall the Faces around the tank to die, as the eldest boy\n said to do. We could not tell, but the boy said that six million Faces\n were dead. That seems impossible to me, but the boy is always right.", "The assistant continued without hesitation, embarrassed by his\n incompetency, \"A hyper-complex spheroid with radio interceptors,\n a-matter viewers and recorders and the general intelligence instruments\n of micro-size was placed in the cranium of the male mutant. The\n spheroid has negative direct control over the organism. Size was too\n scarce for use on trivialities. Then an agent was placed behind the\n larger controls at our end of the instruments.\"\n\n\n \"And you are the agent?\"\n\n\n \"Hyper-contentedly affirmative.\"\nI have done two things today. I have found the word for my hatred of\n the Faces. The Voice gave it to me. When I asked the Voice, it laughed\n and told me the word to use was \"damn\". So today I have thrice said,\n \"Damn the Faces. Damn them.\"", "But the cracked, flat things with small lights circling about them\n are not pretty like Diane's face. The Voice says that the Faces have\n bodies, like myself, and Diane. No body could be like Diane's. I think\n I should be quite sick if I saw the bodies of the Faces.", "The Voice then says that the Faces are watching us, as we sometimes\n watch the porpoises. It took a very long time to grow used to having\n the Faces watch us, as Diane and I came together, but we learned to do\n it as simply as we swim and sleep.\n\n\n But Diane does not have babies. I am very sad when I see the porpoises\n and whales with their young. Diane and I sleep together in the Cave;\n Diane is very warm and soft. We sleep in happiness, but when we are\n awake, we are lonely. I question the Voice about a baby for Diane, but\n the Voice is always silent.", "\"One of our most competent protoplasmic computers stabilized the final\n steps of the Plan. We were to subject the two Terrans to radiation\n and have as a result two Terrans who could breathe their normal oxygen\n form H2O—the atmosphere of the 'aquarium', I repeat. We were then\n to deprive them of memory, except of the inter-attracting emotions,\n to allow them to live in harmony. Thirdly, we were to place them\n in the 'aquarium' and have them forwarded under the reference of\n semi-intelligent aqua-beings from Terran seas. A simple, but quite\n effective plan, your opinion,\nbeush\n?\"\n\n\n \"Quite,\" was the reply. \"And concerning the method of\n info-interception?\"", "There has been much useless noise and senseless talk from the Voice\n these days. It is annoying because I must concentrate on loving Diane\n and caring for the baby. So I\nwanted\nthe Voice to leave it. It left.\n\"Entities Be Simply Damned! The spheroid ceased to exist, assistant.\n How far can they go, assistant?\" The\nbeush\nrose, screamed\n hysterically for three seconds and then fired the hand weapon point\n blank at the neck of his assistant.", "\"To what degree? What degree could produce reproduction when it is\n physically impossible?\" The\nbeush\nwas sarcastic. \"How far can they\n go?\"\n\n\n \"There is negatively great amount they can do. Negative danger, because\n we have studied their instincts and emotions and found that they will\n not leave the 'aquarium,' their 'home'. Unless someone tells them to,\n but there is no one to do so.\"\nToday I damned the Faces nine times and finally\nwanted\nthem to go\n away. The \"view-ports\" went black. It was like the sharks leaving when\n I wanted them to. I still do not understand.", "The fish are many, but the dangers are few. I have seen the sharks\n kill. But the shark does not come near me if I see it and am afraid.\n Sometimes I have caught it sneaking up behind me, but when I turn it\n leaves quickly. I have questioned the Voice about why the sharks leave.\n It does not know. It has no one to ask.\nToday the \"sun\" must be very large, or powerful, or bright, because the\n water is brighter than most days.\n\n\n When I awoke Diane was not beside me. The rock of the Cave is jagged,\n so as I make my way from our bed of cool and slick seaweed, toward the\n entrance, I scrape my leg on the fifth kick. Not much blood comes from\n the cut. That is fortunate, because when there is blood the sharks come.", "\"Rest assured, peace,\nbeush\n.\n\n\n \"But his thoughts!\"\n\n\n \"Rest assured,\nhigher beush\n.\"\nThere is much blood in the water today. Diane is having a baby; sharks\n have come. I have never seen so many sharks, and as big as they are I\n have never seen. I am afraid, but still some sneak among us near Diane.\n\n\n We love the porpoises, so they help us now. They are chasing the\n sharks away, injuring and killing some.\n\"Entities, Warpspaced Entities! There has been reproduction.\"\n\n\n \"\nYorbeush\n,\" cried the assistant in defense. \"It is physically\n impossible. But they are mutants. It is negatively impossible that they\n possess Mind Force to a degree.\"", "Diane and I have decided that we\nwant\na baby. Maybe the other fish\nwanted\nthem, so they got them. We\nwant\na baby.\n\"The two Terrans were so biologically mutated and are so nearly\n robotic, that it is physically impossible for reproduction on their\n part,\nbeush\n.\"\n\n\n The\nbeush\nignored the assistant's words and said, \"I have received\n copies of the thought-patterns and translations. There was something\n strange and very powerful about the meaning of the male's thought,\n 'want'. I query.\"\n\n\n \"Be assured without preoccupation that there exists negative danger of\n reproduction.\"\nThe name I wanted to call Diane was not good, because her breasts are\n hard and large, as is her stomach. I think she is sick.\nI do not think Diane is sick. I think she is going to have a baby.\n\"Entities, assistant! On your oath-body you proclaimed that there is\n negative danger of reproduction.\"", "They entered the well-illuminated closet and immediately slipped\n into the unwieldy metallic suits. Once again they took their seats,\n the\nbeush\nreflecting and saying, \"As your memory relates, that\n explosion was a bomb-drop concussion from the Rebellers. We must now\n wear anti-radiation protection. For that reason, and the danger of\n the Energi, you\ndo\nsee why we need the formulae of the Force Domes,\nimmediately\n.\"\n\n\n There was menace in his voice. The assistant trembled violently. Using\n the rare smile of that humanoid race, the\nbeush\ncontinued, \"Do\n negatively self-preoccupy. Resume your information, if contented.\"", "Diane has grabbed the tail of a porpoise, and both are playing. Diane\n and I love the porpoises. Sometimes we can even hear their thoughts.\n They are different from the other fish; they are more like us. But they\n have babies and we do not.\n\n\n Diane sees me and, wanting to play, swims behind a rock and looks back,\n beckoning. I make a grab at her as I sneak around the rock. But she\n darts upward, toward the surface, where her body is a shadow of beauty\n against the lighter water above her. I follow her, but she ducks and I\n sail past her. Diane pulls up her legs, knees under her chin, and puts\n her arms around them. She then drops like a rock toward the \"floor\".", "\"Of certainty,\nbeush\n,\" began the assistant with all the grace of an\n informer. \"The Light and Force Research of the Energi is executed in\n one center of one planet, the planet being Energa, as our intelligence\n service has conveniently listed it. The Energi have negative necessity\n for secrecy in their Light and Force Research, because, first, all\n centers are crusted and protected by Force Domes. Second, it is near\n impossibility that one could so self-disguise that he would negatively\n be detectable.\" He hesitated.\n\n\n \"And these Energi,\" queried the\nbeush\n, \"are semi-telepathic or\n empathic?\"\n\n\n \"Affirmative,\" the assistant mumbled.\n\n\n \"Then you have there a third reason,\" offered the\nbeush\n.\n\n\n \"Graces be given you,\nbeush\n.\"", "Tomorrow we are leaving the tank. We will\nwant\nto leave it; it is\n getting crowded. The boy says that beyond the greater tank, which we\n will also leave, there is enough space for all the babies Diane could\n have if she lived forever.\n\n\n Forever, he said. It would be nice to live forever. I think I'll\nwant\n....", "I have caught a porpoise by his top fin. He knows my wish, so he speeds\n toward Diane, circles her and butts her soft thighs with his snout. She\n laughs, but continues to stay in a ball, her black hair waving. She is\n very beautiful.\n\n\n I try to pry her arms from around her legs gently, but she resists. I\n must use force. Diane does not mind when I do; because she knows I love\n her.\n\n\n I pull her arms away, and slip my arms under hers, kissing her on the\n lips for a long time. Struggling to free herself, laughing again, she\n pokes me sharply with her elbow and escapes my arms. I am surprised.\n She quickly puts her arms around my neck, pulls herself to my back and\n links her slim legs around my middle. She is pretending that I am a\n porpoise. I laugh. She pinches me to go ahead. I swim upward, but her\n thoughts tell me she wants to go to the Cave.", "The\nbeush\nnodded in approval. \"Continue, but negatively hesitate\n frequently or it will be necessary to discuss this subject\n post-present.\"\nHis assistant trembled slightly. \"Unequivocally affirmative.\nBeush\n,\n your memory relates that five periods ante-present, when there\n existed the Truce inter Energi, Terrans and ourselves, there was a\n certain period during which gifts of the three nucleus-planets were\n exchanged in friendship. The Terrans were self-contented to donate\n to the Energi an immense 'aquarium'—an 'aquarium' consisting of a\n partly transparent cell in which was placed a collection of Terran\n life-forms that breathed their oxygen from the dense atmosphere of" ], [ "Diane and I have decided that we\nwant\na baby. Maybe the other fish\nwanted\nthem, so they got them. We\nwant\na baby.\n\"The two Terrans were so biologically mutated and are so nearly\n robotic, that it is physically impossible for reproduction on their\n part,\nbeush\n.\"\n\n\n The\nbeush\nignored the assistant's words and said, \"I have received\n copies of the thought-patterns and translations. There was something\n strange and very powerful about the meaning of the male's thought,\n 'want'. I query.\"\n\n\n \"Be assured without preoccupation that there exists negative danger of\n reproduction.\"\nThe name I wanted to call Diane was not good, because her breasts are\n hard and large, as is her stomach. I think she is sick.\nI do not think Diane is sick. I think she is going to have a baby.\n\"Entities, assistant! On your oath-body you proclaimed that there is\n negative danger of reproduction.\"", "The Voice then says that the Faces are watching us, as we sometimes\n watch the porpoises. It took a very long time to grow used to having\n the Faces watch us, as Diane and I came together, but we learned to do\n it as simply as we swim and sleep.\n\n\n But Diane does not have babies. I am very sad when I see the porpoises\n and whales with their young. Diane and I sleep together in the Cave;\n Diane is very warm and soft. We sleep in happiness, but when we are\n awake, we are lonely. I question the Voice about a baby for Diane, but\n the Voice is always silent.", "Tomorrow I will explain to him that if he\nwants\nsomething, he will\n get it. So he must\nwant\na baby.\n\"Query? The Energi will bomb-drop the 'aquarium'? War declared against\n us? War declared? Entities be wholly damned! Negative! Negativvv!\" The\n disintegrator was fired once more, this time into the orange eye of the\nbeush\nhimself, by himself, and for the good of himself.\nWhen, if I ever do\nwant\nthe Voice to come back, it will be very\n surprised to know that Diane has had twenty-four babies; that the three\n eldest boys have mated twice, once and twice, and have had four babies.\n The Voice will also be surprised to know that it took all twenty-nine\n of us to\nwant\nall the Faces around the tank to die, as the eldest boy\n said to do. We could not tell, but the boy said that six million Faces\n were dead. That seems impossible to me, but the boy is always right.", "Tomorrow we are leaving the tank. We will\nwant\nto leave it; it is\n getting crowded. The boy says that beyond the greater tank, which we\n will also leave, there is enough space for all the babies Diane could\n have if she lived forever.\n\n\n Forever, he said. It would be nice to live forever. I think I'll\nwant\n....", "The sharks come today, because Diane is having another baby. Diane\n hurts, and there is more blood than last time. Her face is not pretty\n when she hurts, as it is pretty when she sleeps. So I\nwant\nher to\n sleep. Her face is pretty now with the smile on her lips.\n\"Fourteen thousand Energi ceased to exist, spheroid ceased to exist,\n and another reproduction. Warpspace! How far will they go?\"\nIt has been hundreds of days. Faces keep appearing, but I continue to\nwant\nthem to go away. Diane has had eighteen babies. The oldest are\n swimming around and playing with the porpoises. Diane and I spend most\n of the time teaching the children by showing them things, and by giving\n them our thoughts by touching them.\nToday I found that none of the children have Voices. I could\nwant\nthem to have Voices, but the children's thoughts tell me that it is not\n right to have a Voice.", "Diane has grabbed the tail of a porpoise, and both are playing. Diane\n and I love the porpoises. Sometimes we can even hear their thoughts.\n They are different from the other fish; they are more like us. But they\n have babies and we do not.\n\n\n Diane sees me and, wanting to play, swims behind a rock and looks back,\n beckoning. I make a grab at her as I sneak around the rock. But she\n darts upward, toward the surface, where her body is a shadow of beauty\n against the lighter water above her. I follow her, but she ducks and I\n sail past her. Diane pulls up her legs, knees under her chin, and puts\n her arms around them. She then drops like a rock toward the \"floor\".", "I have caught a porpoise by his top fin. He knows my wish, so he speeds\n toward Diane, circles her and butts her soft thighs with his snout. She\n laughs, but continues to stay in a ball, her black hair waving. She is\n very beautiful.\n\n\n I try to pry her arms from around her legs gently, but she resists. I\n must use force. Diane does not mind when I do; because she knows I love\n her.\n\n\n I pull her arms away, and slip my arms under hers, kissing her on the\n lips for a long time. Struggling to free herself, laughing again, she\n pokes me sharply with her elbow and escapes my arms. I am surprised.\n She quickly puts her arms around my neck, pulls herself to my back and\n links her slim legs around my middle. She is pretending that I am a\n porpoise. I laugh. She pinches me to go ahead. I swim upward, but her\n thoughts tell me she wants to go to the Cave.", "THE FACES OUTSIDE\nBY BRUCE McALLISTER\nThey were all that was left of\n\n humanity—if they were still human!\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1963.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI wanted to call her Soft Breast, because she is soft when I hold her\n to me. But the Voice told me to call her Diane. When I call her Diane,\n I have a pleasant feeling, and she seems closer to me. She likes the\n name \"Diane\". The Voice knew what was best, of course, as it always\n does.", "\"Rest assured, peace,\nbeush\n.\n\n\n \"But his thoughts!\"\n\n\n \"Rest assured,\nhigher beush\n.\"\nThere is much blood in the water today. Diane is having a baby; sharks\n have come. I have never seen so many sharks, and as big as they are I\n have never seen. I am afraid, but still some sneak among us near Diane.\n\n\n We love the porpoises, so they help us now. They are chasing the\n sharks away, injuring and killing some.\n\"Entities, Warpspaced Entities! There has been reproduction.\"\n\n\n \"\nYorbeush\n,\" cried the assistant in defense. \"It is physically\n impossible. But they are mutants. It is negatively impossible that they\n possess Mind Force to a degree.\"", "The eldest boy says that we should leave the tank, that a greater\n \"tank\" is around us, and that it is easier to move around in that\n greater tank. He also says that we must guard ourselves against Faces\n outside. That is strange, but the boy is a good boy. Many times he\n knows that things will happen before they do. He is a good boy.\n\n\n He is almost as tall as I am. The eldest girl is pretty like Diane,\n her body very white and soft but, since I\nwanted\nit so, her hair is\n golden, instead of dark. The boy likes her very much, and I have seen\n them together, touching.", "There has been much useless noise and senseless talk from the Voice\n these days. It is annoying because I must concentrate on loving Diane\n and caring for the baby. So I\nwanted\nthe Voice to leave it. It left.\n\"Entities Be Simply Damned! The spheroid ceased to exist, assistant.\n How far can they go, assistant?\" The\nbeush\nrose, screamed\n hysterically for three seconds and then fired the hand weapon point\n blank at the neck of his assistant.", "But the cracked, flat things with small lights circling about them\n are not pretty like Diane's face. The Voice says that the Faces have\n bodies, like myself, and Diane. No body could be like Diane's. I think\n I should be quite sick if I saw the bodies of the Faces.", "The fish are many, but the dangers are few. I have seen the sharks\n kill. But the shark does not come near me if I see it and am afraid.\n Sometimes I have caught it sneaking up behind me, but when I turn it\n leaves quickly. I have questioned the Voice about why the sharks leave.\n It does not know. It has no one to ask.\nToday the \"sun\" must be very large, or powerful, or bright, because the\n water is brighter than most days.\n\n\n When I awoke Diane was not beside me. The rock of the Cave is jagged,\n so as I make my way from our bed of cool and slick seaweed, toward the\n entrance, I scrape my leg on the fifth kick. Not much blood comes from\n the cut. That is fortunate, because when there is blood the sharks come.", "I must mate with her every day, when the water is brightest. The Voice\n says so. It also says that I am in a \"tank\", and that the water is\n brightest when the \"sun\" is over the \"tank\". I do not understand the\n meaning of \"sun\", but the Voice says that \"noon\" is when the \"Sun\" is\n over the \"tank\". I must mate with Diane every \"noon\".", "\"To what degree? What degree could produce reproduction when it is\n physically impossible?\" The\nbeush\nwas sarcastic. \"How far can they\n go?\"\n\n\n \"There is negatively great amount they can do. Negative danger, because\n we have studied their instincts and emotions and found that they will\n not leave the 'aquarium,' their 'home'. Unless someone tells them to,\n but there is no one to do so.\"\nToday I damned the Faces nine times and finally\nwanted\nthem to go\n away. The \"view-ports\" went black. It was like the sharks leaving when\n I wanted them to. I still do not understand.", "I\ndo\nknow what the \"tank\" is. It is a very large thing filled with\n water, and having four \"corners\", one of which is the Cave where\n Diane and I sleep when the water is black like the ink of the squid\n and cold like dead fish. But we stay warm. There is the \"floor\" of\n the \"tank\", the \"floor\" being where all the rock and seaweed is, with\n all the crawling fish and crabs, where Diane and I walk and sleep.\n There are four \"sides\". \"Sides\" are smooth and blue walls, and have\n \"view-ports\"—round, transparent areas—on them. The Voice says that\n the things in the \"view-ports\" are Faces. I have a face, as does Diane.", "\"Unknown to you,\nbeush\n, or to the masses and highers, an\n insignificant pleasure craft was extracted from Terran Space and\n negatively consumed with a planet when the bombs were detonated. The\n ship accommodated two Terrans. Proper Terrans by birth, negatively\n by reference. One was male, other female. The two had been in\n their culture socially and religiously united in a ceremony called\n 'matrimony'. Emotions of sex, protection and an emotion we have\n negatively been able to analyze linked the two, and made them ideal for\n our purpose.\"\n\n\n The assistant looked at the\nbeush\n, picked up his partially full glass\n and, before he could sip it, was dashed to the floor beside the\nbeush\nhimself. The former helped the higher to his unstable legs, and was\n commented to by the same, \"Assistant, proceed to the protecroom.\"", "\"Contented,\" came the automatic reply, and the assistant began, \"The\n two humans were perfect for the Plan, I repeat. Before the Energi\n received the message of the race destruction, it was imperative that we\n establish an agent on Energa, near the Force Domes. We assumed that the\n 'aquarium' would be placed on Energa, in the greatest center. That was\n correct, but negatively yet knowing for certainty, we perpetuated the\n Plan, with the 'aquarium' as the basis.", "The\nbeush\nnodded in approval. \"Continue, but negatively hesitate\n frequently or it will be necessary to discuss this subject\n post-present.\"\nHis assistant trembled slightly. \"Unequivocally affirmative.\nBeush\n,\n your memory relates that five periods ante-present, when there\n existed the Truce inter Energi, Terrans and ourselves, there was a\n certain period during which gifts of the three nucleus-planets were\n exchanged in friendship. The Terrans were self-contented to donate\n to the Energi an immense 'aquarium'—an 'aquarium' consisting of a\n partly transparent cell in which was placed a collection of Terran\n life-forms that breathed their oxygen from the dense atmosphere of", "They entered the well-illuminated closet and immediately slipped\n into the unwieldy metallic suits. Once again they took their seats,\n the\nbeush\nreflecting and saying, \"As your memory relates, that\n explosion was a bomb-drop concussion from the Rebellers. We must now\n wear anti-radiation protection. For that reason, and the danger of\n the Energi, you\ndo\nsee why we need the formulae of the Force Domes,\nimmediately\n.\"\n\n\n There was menace in his voice. The assistant trembled violently. Using\n the rare smile of that humanoid race, the\nbeush\ncontinued, \"Do\n negatively self-preoccupy. Resume your information, if contented.\"" ], [ "There has been much useless noise and senseless talk from the Voice\n these days. It is annoying because I must concentrate on loving Diane\n and caring for the baby. So I\nwanted\nthe Voice to leave it. It left.\n\"Entities Be Simply Damned! The spheroid ceased to exist, assistant.\n How far can they go, assistant?\" The\nbeush\nrose, screamed\n hysterically for three seconds and then fired the hand weapon point\n blank at the neck of his assistant.", "\"Unknown to you,\nbeush\n, or to the masses and highers, an\n insignificant pleasure craft was extracted from Terran Space and\n negatively consumed with a planet when the bombs were detonated. The\n ship accommodated two Terrans. Proper Terrans by birth, negatively\n by reference. One was male, other female. The two had been in\n their culture socially and religiously united in a ceremony called\n 'matrimony'. Emotions of sex, protection and an emotion we have\n negatively been able to analyze linked the two, and made them ideal for\n our purpose.\"\n\n\n The assistant looked at the\nbeush\n, picked up his partially full glass\n and, before he could sip it, was dashed to the floor beside the\nbeush\nhimself. The former helped the higher to his unstable legs, and was\n commented to by the same, \"Assistant, proceed to the protecroom.\"", "I understand. I carry her through the water very slowly, feeling the\n warmth and nipples of her breasts pressed against my back as she rests\n her head on my shoulder and smiles.\n\n\n The Faces continue to stare. Many times I have searched for a word to\n show my hatred for them. I shall find it somehow, though. Sooner or\n later.\n\"What count of planets had the Terrans infested?\" The furry humanoid\n leaned over the desk and stared, unblinking, at the lesser humanoid in\n the only other chair in the room. His gaze was dropped as he scratched\n informally at the heavy fur at his wrist. He raised his gaze again.\n\n\n \"Forty-three is the count,\nbeush\n,\" replied the other.\n\n\n \"And the count of planets destroyed?\"\n\n\n \"Forty-three planetoid missiles were sent and detonated simultaneously\n without resistance or losses on our part,\nbeush\n,\" the assistant\nbeush\nanswered indirectly.", "The room was hot, so the\nbeush\nlazily passed his hand over a faintly\n glowing panel.\n\n\n The room was cooled, and a large-eyed female with silky, ochrous\n fur—very desirable to the majority of humanoids—entered with two\n flared glasses of an odorless, transparent liquid—very desirable\n to the majority of humanoids. The lesser humanoid was being treated\n exceptionately well.\n\n\n The room was momentarily silent as the two sipped at their drinks with\n black lips. The\nbeush\n, as customary, spoke first. \"Inform me of the\n pre-espionage intelligence accomplishments contra-Energi. I have not\n been previously informed. Do not spare the details.\"", "They entered the well-illuminated closet and immediately slipped\n into the unwieldy metallic suits. Once again they took their seats,\n the\nbeush\nreflecting and saying, \"As your memory relates, that\n explosion was a bomb-drop concussion from the Rebellers. We must now\n wear anti-radiation protection. For that reason, and the danger of\n the Energi, you\ndo\nsee why we need the formulae of the Force Domes,\nimmediately\n.\"\n\n\n There was menace in his voice. The assistant trembled violently. Using\n the rare smile of that humanoid race, the\nbeush\ncontinued, \"Do\n negatively self-preoccupy. Resume your information, if contented.\"", "Tomorrow I will explain to him that if he\nwants\nsomething, he will\n get it. So he must\nwant\na baby.\n\"Query? The Energi will bomb-drop the 'aquarium'? War declared against\n us? War declared? Entities be wholly damned! Negative! Negativvv!\" The\n disintegrator was fired once more, this time into the orange eye of the\nbeush\nhimself, by himself, and for the good of himself.\nWhen, if I ever do\nwant\nthe Voice to come back, it will be very\n surprised to know that Diane has had twenty-four babies; that the three\n eldest boys have mated twice, once and twice, and have had four babies.\n The Voice will also be surprised to know that it took all twenty-nine\n of us to\nwant\nall the Faces around the tank to die, as the eldest boy\n said to do. We could not tell, but the boy said that six million Faces\n were dead. That seems impossible to me, but the boy is always right.", "Terran seas. But, as a warpspace message from the Terran Council\n indirectly proclaimed, the degenerate Terrans negatively possessed\n a ship of any Space type large or powerful enough to transport the\n 'aquarium' to Energa. Our ships being the largest of the Truce, we\n were petitioned by the Terrans to transport it. These events developed\n before the Terrans grew pestiferous to our cause. We obliged, but even\n our vastest ship was slow, because the physical power necessary to\n bring the weight of the cell through warpspace quickly was too great\n for the solitary four generators. It was imperative that the trip be on\n a longer trajectory arranged through norm-space. During the duration\n of the trip, feelings of suspicion arose inter Three Truce Races.\n As your memory also relates, the 'aquarium' was still in space when", "The eldest boy says that we should leave the tank, that a greater\n \"tank\" is around us, and that it is easier to move around in that\n greater tank. He also says that we must guard ourselves against Faces\n outside. That is strange, but the boy is a good boy. Many times he\n knows that things will happen before they do. He is a good boy.\n\n\n He is almost as tall as I am. The eldest girl is pretty like Diane,\n her body very white and soft but, since I\nwanted\nit so, her hair is\n golden, instead of dark. The boy likes her very much, and I have seen\n them together, touching.", "The assistant continued without hesitation, embarrassed by his\n incompetency, \"A hyper-complex spheroid with radio interceptors,\n a-matter viewers and recorders and the general intelligence instruments\n of micro-size was placed in the cranium of the male mutant. The\n spheroid has negative direct control over the organism. Size was too\n scarce for use on trivialities. Then an agent was placed behind the\n larger controls at our end of the instruments.\"\n\n\n \"And you are the agent?\"\n\n\n \"Hyper-contentedly affirmative.\"\nI have done two things today. I have found the word for my hatred of\n the Faces. The Voice gave it to me. When I asked the Voice, it laughed\n and told me the word to use was \"damn\". So today I have thrice said,\n \"Damn the Faces. Damn them.\"", "\"To what degree? What degree could produce reproduction when it is\n physically impossible?\" The\nbeush\nwas sarcastic. \"How far can they\n go?\"\n\n\n \"There is negatively great amount they can do. Negative danger, because\n we have studied their instincts and emotions and found that they will\n not leave the 'aquarium,' their 'home'. Unless someone tells them to,\n but there is no one to do so.\"\nToday I damned the Faces nine times and finally\nwanted\nthem to go\n away. The \"view-ports\" went black. It was like the sharks leaving when\n I wanted them to. I still do not understand.", "\"Contented,\" came the automatic reply, and the assistant began, \"The\n two humans were perfect for the Plan, I repeat. Before the Energi\n received the message of the race destruction, it was imperative that we\n establish an agent on Energa, near the Force Domes. We assumed that the\n 'aquarium' would be placed on Energa, in the greatest center. That was\n correct, but negatively yet knowing for certainty, we perpetuated the\n Plan, with the 'aquarium' as the basis.", "\"Rest assured, peace,\nbeush\n.\n\n\n \"But his thoughts!\"\n\n\n \"Rest assured,\nhigher beush\n.\"\nThere is much blood in the water today. Diane is having a baby; sharks\n have come. I have never seen so many sharks, and as big as they are I\n have never seen. I am afraid, but still some sneak among us near Diane.\n\n\n We love the porpoises, so they help us now. They are chasing the\n sharks away, injuring and killing some.\n\"Entities, Warpspaced Entities! There has been reproduction.\"\n\n\n \"\nYorbeush\n,\" cried the assistant in defense. \"It is physically\n impossible. But they are mutants. It is negatively impossible that they\n possess Mind Force to a degree.\"", "\"Of certainty,\nbeush\n,\" began the assistant with all the grace of an\n informer. \"The Light and Force Research of the Energi is executed in\n one center of one planet, the planet being Energa, as our intelligence\n service has conveniently listed it. The Energi have negative necessity\n for secrecy in their Light and Force Research, because, first, all\n centers are crusted and protected by Force Domes. Second, it is near\n impossibility that one could so self-disguise that he would negatively\n be detectable.\" He hesitated.\n\n\n \"And these Energi,\" queried the\nbeush\n, \"are semi-telepathic or\n empathic?\"\n\n\n \"Affirmative,\" the assistant mumbled.\n\n\n \"Then you have there a third reason,\" offered the\nbeush\n.\n\n\n \"Graces be given you,\nbeush\n.\"", "I grow to hate the Faces in the \"view-ports\". They are always watching,\n watching. The Voice says that they are enemies, and bad. The Faces have\n not tried to hurt me: but I must think of them as enemies because the\n Voice says so. I ask bad, like the shark? The Voice says, no, worse\n than the sharks and eels. It says that the Faces are evil.\n\n\n The \"tank\" must be high, because the water is high. I have gone once\n to the surface, and, although I could get used to it, the light was\n too much for my eyes. It took me two hundred and seventy kicks to the\n surface; it took me three thousand steps from our Cave to the opposite\n \"side\". The \"tank\" is very large, otherwise the whales would not be\n happy.", "I have caught a porpoise by his top fin. He knows my wish, so he speeds\n toward Diane, circles her and butts her soft thighs with his snout. She\n laughs, but continues to stay in a ball, her black hair waving. She is\n very beautiful.\n\n\n I try to pry her arms from around her legs gently, but she resists. I\n must use force. Diane does not mind when I do; because she knows I love\n her.\n\n\n I pull her arms away, and slip my arms under hers, kissing her on the\n lips for a long time. Struggling to free herself, laughing again, she\n pokes me sharply with her elbow and escapes my arms. I am surprised.\n She quickly puts her arms around my neck, pulls herself to my back and\n links her slim legs around my middle. She is pretending that I am a\n porpoise. I laugh. She pinches me to go ahead. I swim upward, but her\n thoughts tell me she wants to go to the Cave.", "The Voice then says that the Faces are watching us, as we sometimes\n watch the porpoises. It took a very long time to grow used to having\n the Faces watch us, as Diane and I came together, but we learned to do\n it as simply as we swim and sleep.\n\n\n But Diane does not have babies. I am very sad when I see the porpoises\n and whales with their young. Diane and I sleep together in the Cave;\n Diane is very warm and soft. We sleep in happiness, but when we are\n awake, we are lonely. I question the Voice about a baby for Diane, but\n the Voice is always silent.", "The\nbeush\nnodded in approval. \"Continue, but negatively hesitate\n frequently or it will be necessary to discuss this subject\n post-present.\"\nHis assistant trembled slightly. \"Unequivocally affirmative.\nBeush\n,\n your memory relates that five periods ante-present, when there\n existed the Truce inter Energi, Terrans and ourselves, there was a\n certain period during which gifts of the three nucleus-planets were\n exchanged in friendship. The Terrans were self-contented to donate\n to the Energi an immense 'aquarium'—an 'aquarium' consisting of a\n partly transparent cell in which was placed a collection of Terran\n life-forms that breathed their oxygen from the dense atmosphere of", "The fish are many, but the dangers are few. I have seen the sharks\n kill. But the shark does not come near me if I see it and am afraid.\n Sometimes I have caught it sneaking up behind me, but when I turn it\n leaves quickly. I have questioned the Voice about why the sharks leave.\n It does not know. It has no one to ask.\nToday the \"sun\" must be very large, or powerful, or bright, because the\n water is brighter than most days.\n\n\n When I awoke Diane was not beside me. The rock of the Cave is jagged,\n so as I make my way from our bed of cool and slick seaweed, toward the\n entrance, I scrape my leg on the fifth kick. Not much blood comes from\n the cut. That is fortunate, because when there is blood the sharks come.", "\"One of our most competent protoplasmic computers stabilized the final\n steps of the Plan. We were to subject the two Terrans to radiation\n and have as a result two Terrans who could breathe their normal oxygen\n form H2O—the atmosphere of the 'aquarium', I repeat. We were then\n to deprive them of memory, except of the inter-attracting emotions,\n to allow them to live in harmony. Thirdly, we were to place them\n in the 'aquarium' and have them forwarded under the reference of\n semi-intelligent aqua-beings from Terran seas. A simple, but quite\n effective plan, your opinion,\nbeush\n?\"\n\n\n \"Quite,\" was the reply. \"And concerning the method of\n info-interception?\"", "Diane and I have decided that we\nwant\na baby. Maybe the other fish\nwanted\nthem, so they got them. We\nwant\na baby.\n\"The two Terrans were so biologically mutated and are so nearly\n robotic, that it is physically impossible for reproduction on their\n part,\nbeush\n.\"\n\n\n The\nbeush\nignored the assistant's words and said, \"I have received\n copies of the thought-patterns and translations. There was something\n strange and very powerful about the meaning of the male's thought,\n 'want'. I query.\"\n\n\n \"Be assured without preoccupation that there exists negative danger of\n reproduction.\"\nThe name I wanted to call Diane was not good, because her breasts are\n hard and large, as is her stomach. I think she is sick.\nI do not think Diane is sick. I think she is going to have a baby.\n\"Entities, assistant! On your oath-body you proclaimed that there is\n negative danger of reproduction.\"" ] ]
test	41562	[ "Why was Ed considered a practical man?", "What was ironic about the crowds response to Ed when he viewed the body closely?", "What does the statement \"There was a strange look on the Commissioner's face as he answered. \"Maybe, \" he said softly, \"you'll understand that too.\"\" suggest?", "What is suggested by the ending?", "Why did the aliens post a dead man hanging from the lamppost?", "Why was Loyce able to avoid being controlled by the aliens?", "Why was Janet and Tommy shocked when Loyce killed the alien?", "What did the aliens represent?" ]	[ [ "He was actually considered a highly declared official", "He tried to fix wrongs", "He was from the city", "He worked a blue collar job in sales" ], [ "No irony", "The body was a fake and was no reason for concern", "The body was actually alive", "The crowd were more concerned about Ed than the dead body" ], [ "Unknown", "The Commissioner does not believe Loyce", "Loyce has deceived the Commissioner", "The Commissioner is foreshadowing a secret" ], [ "Loyce was killed in the jail", "Loyce turned into an alien", "Aliens have infiltrated Oak Grove", "Loyce was able to escape the aliens" ], [ "The deadman hung himself from feat", "Unknown", "To spark fear into the city", "To bait out the uncontrolled" ], [ "No evidence in the story. ", "Loyce was controlled by the aliens but was unaware", "He had a genetic trait that made him unabated", "The cellar may have blocked the control mechanism" ], [ "They had been stung by the alien", "They had never seen Loyce display such violence", "The alien was Jimmy", "The shock of seeing an alien" ], [ "Killers", "Savages", "Insects", "Monster" ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "THE HANGING STRANGER\nBY PHILIP K. DICK\nILLUSTRATED BY SMITH\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction\n Adventures Magazine December 1953. Extensive research did not uncover\n any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nEd had always been a practical man, when he saw something was\n wrong he tried to correct it. Then one day he saw\nit\nhanging in the\n town square.\n\n Five o'clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car\n out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His\n back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and\n wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done\n okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he\n liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself!", "Tommy appeared at the top of the stairs. \"I was doing my home work.\n We're starting fractions. Miss Parker says if we don't get this done—\"\n\n\n \"You can forget about fractions.\" Ed grabbed his son as he came down the\n stairs and propelled him toward the door. \"Where's Jim?\"\n\n\n \"He's coming.\"\n\n\n Jim started slowly down the stairs. \"What's up, Dad?\"\n\n\n \"We're going for a ride.\"\n\n\n \"A ride? Where?\"\n\n\n Ed turned to Janet. \"We'll leave the lights on. And the TV set. Go turn\n it on.\" He pushed her toward the set. \"So they'll think we're still—\"", "\"For Heaven's sake,\" Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea\n and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with\n revulsion—and fear.\nWhy?\nWho was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean?\n\n\n And—why didn't anybody notice?\n\n\n He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. \"Watch it!\" the\n man grated, \"Oh, it's you, Ed.\"\n\n\n Ed nodded dazedly. \"Hello, Jenkins.\"\n\n\n \"What's the matter?\" The stationery clerk caught Ed's arm. \"You look\n sick.\"\n\n\n \"The body. There in the park.\"\n\n\n \"Sure, Ed.\" Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND\n SERVICE. \"Take it easy.\"", "Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. \"Something\n wrong?\"\n\n\n \"Ed's not feeling well.\"\n\n\n Loyce yanked himself free. \"How can you stand here? Don't you see it?\n For God's sake—\"\n\n\n \"What's he talking about?\" Margaret asked nervously.\n\n\n \"The body!\" Ed shouted. \"The body hanging there!\"\n\n\n More people collected. \"Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?\"\n\n\n \"The body!\" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at\n him. He tore loose. \"Let me go! The police! Get the police!\"\n\n\n \"Ed—\"\n\n\n \"Better get a doctor!\"\n\n\n \"He must be sick.\"\n\n\n \"Or drunk.\"", "He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man's voice cut off and\n dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others\n were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk,\n up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were\n bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed\n man who had come after him.\n\n\n Had he made a mistake?\n\n\n But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from\n them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between\n their world and his.\n\"Ed!\" Janet Loyce backed away nervously. \"What is it? What—\"\n\n\n Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room.\n \"Pull down the shades. Quick.\"\n\n\n Janet moved toward the window. \"But—\"", "Ed Loyce grinned weakly. \"Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep\n end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like\n the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking\n over.\" He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands\n shaking. \"I'm glad to know it's on the level.\"\n\n\n \"It's on the level.\" The police car was getting near the Hall of\n Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights\n had not yet come on.\n\n\n \"I feel better,\" Loyce said. \"I was pretty excited there, for a minute.\n I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there's no need to\n take me in, is there?\"\n\n\n The two cops said nothing.", "\"They must know about it,\" Potter said. \"Or otherwise it wouldn't be\n there.\"\n\n\n \"I got to get back in.\" Fergusson headed back into the store. \"Business\n before pleasure.\"\n\n\n Loyce began to get hysterical. \"You see it? You see it hanging there? A\n man's body! A dead man!\"\n\n\n \"Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee.\"\n\n\n \"You mean it's been there all afternoon?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. What's the matter?\" Potter glanced at his watch. \"Have to run.\n See you later, Ed.\"\n\n\n Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the\n sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously\n at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any\n attention.", "Loyce fought his way through the people. He stumbled and half fell.\n Through a blur he saw rows of faces, curious, concerned, anxious. Men\n and women halting to see what the disturbance was. He fought past them\n toward his store. He could see Fergusson inside talking to a man,\n showing him an Emerson TV set. Pete Foley in the back at the service\n counter, setting up a new Philco. Loyce shouted at them frantically.\n His voice was lost in the roar of traffic and the murmur around him.\n\n\n \"Do something!\" he screamed. \"Don't stand there! Do something!\n Something's wrong! Something's happened! Things are going on!\"\n\n\n The crowd melted respectfully for the two heavy-set cops moving\n efficiently toward Loyce.\n\"Name?\" the cop with the notebook murmured.\n\n\n \"Loyce.\" He mopped his forehead wearily. \"Edward C. Loyce. Listen to me.\n Back there—\"", "\"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the\n lamppost. I don't understand that.\nWhy?\nWhy did they deliberately hang\n him there?\"\n\n\n \"That would seem simple.\" The Commissioner smiled faintly. \"\nBait.\n\"\n\n\n Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. \"Bait? What do you mean?\"\n\n\n \"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was\n under control—and who had escaped.\"\n\n\n Loyce recoiled with horror. \"Then they\nexpected\nfailures! They\n anticipated—\" He broke off. \"They were ready with a trap.\"\n\n\n \"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known.\" The\n Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. \"Come along, Loyce. There's\n a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste.\"", "It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying\n commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and\n packages, students swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks\n and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red\n light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him;\n he'd arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the\n records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove\n slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the\n town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND\n SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again\n he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain\n and bench and single lamppost.", "Loyce opened the door. For a brief second he looked back at his wife and\n son. Then he slammed the door behind him and raced down the porch steps.\n\n\n A moment later he was on his way, hurrying swiftly through the darkness\n toward the edge of town.\nThe early morning sunlight was blinding. Loyce halted, gasping for\n breath, swaying back and forth. Sweat ran down in his eyes. His clothing\n was torn, shredded by the brush and thorns through which he had crawled.\n Ten miles—on his hands and knees. Crawling, creeping through the night.\n His shoes were mud-caked. He was scratched and limping, utterly\n exhausted.\n\n\n But ahead of him lay Oak Grove.", "\"Do as I say. Who else is here besides you?\"\n\n\n \"Nobody. Just the twins. They're upstairs in their room. What's\n happened? You look so strange. Why are you home?\"\n\n\n Ed locked the front door. He prowled around the house, into the kitchen.\n From the drawer under the sink he slid out the big butcher knife and ran\n his finger along it. Sharp. Plenty sharp. He returned to the living\n room.\n\n\n \"Listen to me,\" he said. \"I don't have much time. They know I escaped\n and they'll be looking for me.\"\n\n\n \"Escaped?\" Janet's face twisted with bewilderment and fear. \"Who?\"\n\n\n \"The town has been taken over. They're in control. I've got it pretty\n well figured out. They started at the top, at the City Hall and police\n department. What they did with the\nreal\nhumans they—\"", "\"See it?\" Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up\n against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. \"There it is.\n How the hell long has it been there?\" His voice rose excitedly. \"What's\n wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!\"\n\n\n Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. \"Take it easy, old man. There must\n be a good reason, or it wouldn't be there.\"\n\n\n \"A reason! What kind of a reason?\"\n\n\n Fergusson shrugged. \"Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that\n wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?\"\n\n\n Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. \"What's up, boys?\"\n\n\n \"There's a body hanging from the lamppost,\" Loyce said. \"I'm going to\n call the cops.\"", "\"The old Ranch Road? Good Lord—it's completely closed. Nobody's\n supposed to drive over it.\"\n\n\n \"I know.\" Ed thrust the map grimly into his coat. \"That's our best\n chance. Now call down the twins and let's get going. Your car is full of\n gas, isn't it?\"\n\n\n Janet was dazed.\n\n\n \"The Chevy? I had it filled up yesterday afternoon.\" Janet moved toward\n the stairs. \"Ed, I—\"\n\n\n \"Call the twins!\" Ed unlocked the front door and peered out. Nothing\n stirred. No sign of life. All right so far.\n\n\n \"Come on downstairs,\" Janet called in a wavering voice. \"We're—going\n out for awhile.\"\n\n\n \"Now?\" Tommy's voice came.\n\n\n \"Hurry up,\" Ed barked. \"Get down here, both of you.\"", "From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle,\n swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled\n down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of\n some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the\n square.\n\n\n Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park\n and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a\n display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he\n swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.\n\n\n It was a body. A human body.\n\"Look at it!\" Loyce snapped. \"Come on out here!\"\n\n\n Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe\n coat with dignity. \"This is a big deal, Ed. I can't just leave the guy\n standing there.\"", "He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and\n fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything\n receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from\n Pikeville.\n\n\n A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in\n wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a\n gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens\n pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string.\n\n\n The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up\n to the station. \"Thank God.\" He caught hold of the wall. \"I didn't think\n I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear\n them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me.\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\" the attendant demanded. \"You in a wreck? A hold-up?\"", "\"We're getting out of here. Out of Pikeville. We've got to get help.\n Fight this thing. They\ncan\nbe beaten. They're not infallible. It's\n going to be close—but we may make it if we hurry. Come on!\" He grabbed\n her arm roughly. \"Get your coat and call the twins. We're all leaving.\n Don't stop to pack. There's no time for that.\"\n\n\n White-faced, his wife moved toward the closet and got down her coat.\n \"Where are we going?\"\n\n\n Ed pulled open the desk drawer and spilled the contents out onto the\n floor. He grabbed up a road map and spread it open. \"They'll have the\n highway covered, of course. But there's a back road. To Oak Grove. I got\n onto it once. It's practically abandoned. Maybe they'll forget about\n it.\"", "\"You don't believe me,\" Loyce said.\n\n\n The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently\n away. \"Suit yourself.\" The Commissioner moved over to the window and\n stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. \"I believe you,\"\n he said abruptly.\n\n\n Loyce sagged. \"Thank God.\"\n\n\n \"So you got away.\" The Commissioner shook his head. \"You were down in\n your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million.\"\n\n\n Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. \"I have a\n theory,\" he murmured.\n\n\n \"What is it?\"", "The bus halted. An elderly man got on slowly and dropped his token into\n the box. He moved down the aisle and took a seat opposite Loyce.\n\n\n The elderly man caught the sharp-eyed man's gaze. For a split second\n something passed between them.\n\n\n A look rich with meaning.\n\n\n Loyce got to his feet. The bus was moving. He ran to the door. One step\n down into the well. He yanked the emergency door release. The rubber\n door swung open.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" the driver shouted, jamming on the brakes. \"What the hell—\"\n\n\n Loyce squirmed through. The bus was slowing down. Houses on all sides. A\n residential district, lawns and tall apartment buildings. Behind him,\n the bright-eyed man had leaped up. The elderly man was also on his feet.\n They were coming after him.", "A high school boy in jeans and black jacket.\n\n\n A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with\n packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness.\n\n\n Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to\n their families. To dinner.\n\n\n Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask\n of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their\n town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in\n his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked.\n They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof.\n\n\n Maybe there were others." ], [ "Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. \"Something\n wrong?\"\n\n\n \"Ed's not feeling well.\"\n\n\n Loyce yanked himself free. \"How can you stand here? Don't you see it?\n For God's sake—\"\n\n\n \"What's he talking about?\" Margaret asked nervously.\n\n\n \"The body!\" Ed shouted. \"The body hanging there!\"\n\n\n More people collected. \"Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?\"\n\n\n \"The body!\" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at\n him. He tore loose. \"Let me go! The police! Get the police!\"\n\n\n \"Ed—\"\n\n\n \"Better get a doctor!\"\n\n\n \"He must be sick.\"\n\n\n \"Or drunk.\"", "\"They must know about it,\" Potter said. \"Or otherwise it wouldn't be\n there.\"\n\n\n \"I got to get back in.\" Fergusson headed back into the store. \"Business\n before pleasure.\"\n\n\n Loyce began to get hysterical. \"You see it? You see it hanging there? A\n man's body! A dead man!\"\n\n\n \"Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee.\"\n\n\n \"You mean it's been there all afternoon?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. What's the matter?\" Potter glanced at his watch. \"Have to run.\n See you later, Ed.\"\n\n\n Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the\n sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously\n at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any\n attention.", "\"For Heaven's sake,\" Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea\n and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with\n revulsion—and fear.\nWhy?\nWho was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean?\n\n\n And—why didn't anybody notice?\n\n\n He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. \"Watch it!\" the\n man grated, \"Oh, it's you, Ed.\"\n\n\n Ed nodded dazedly. \"Hello, Jenkins.\"\n\n\n \"What's the matter?\" The stationery clerk caught Ed's arm. \"You look\n sick.\"\n\n\n \"The body. There in the park.\"\n\n\n \"Sure, Ed.\" Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND\n SERVICE. \"Take it easy.\"", "From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle,\n swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled\n down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of\n some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the\n square.\n\n\n Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park\n and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a\n display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he\n swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.\n\n\n It was a body. A human body.\n\"Look at it!\" Loyce snapped. \"Come on out here!\"\n\n\n Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe\n coat with dignity. \"This is a big deal, Ed. I can't just leave the guy\n standing there.\"", "\"See it?\" Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up\n against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. \"There it is.\n How the hell long has it been there?\" His voice rose excitedly. \"What's\n wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!\"\n\n\n Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. \"Take it easy, old man. There must\n be a good reason, or it wouldn't be there.\"\n\n\n \"A reason! What kind of a reason?\"\n\n\n Fergusson shrugged. \"Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that\n wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?\"\n\n\n Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. \"What's up, boys?\"\n\n\n \"There's a body hanging from the lamppost,\" Loyce said. \"I'm going to\n call the cops.\"", "Loyce fought his way through the people. He stumbled and half fell.\n Through a blur he saw rows of faces, curious, concerned, anxious. Men\n and women halting to see what the disturbance was. He fought past them\n toward his store. He could see Fergusson inside talking to a man,\n showing him an Emerson TV set. Pete Foley in the back at the service\n counter, setting up a new Philco. Loyce shouted at them frantically.\n His voice was lost in the roar of traffic and the murmur around him.\n\n\n \"Do something!\" he screamed. \"Don't stand there! Do something!\n Something's wrong! Something's happened! Things are going on!\"\n\n\n The crowd melted respectfully for the two heavy-set cops moving\n efficiently toward Loyce.\n\"Name?\" the cop with the notebook murmured.\n\n\n \"Loyce.\" He mopped his forehead wearily. \"Edward C. Loyce. Listen to me.\n Back there—\"", "\"I'm going nuts,\" Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and\n crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him.\n He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.\n\n\n The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray\n suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never\n seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and\n in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin\n was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A\n pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His\n eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue.", "\"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the\n lamppost. I don't understand that.\nWhy?\nWhy did they deliberately hang\n him there?\"\n\n\n \"That would seem simple.\" The Commissioner smiled faintly. \"\nBait.\n\"\n\n\n Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. \"Bait? What do you mean?\"\n\n\n \"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was\n under control—and who had escaped.\"\n\n\n Loyce recoiled with horror. \"Then they\nexpected\nfailures! They\n anticipated—\" He broke off. \"They were ready with a trap.\"\n\n\n \"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known.\" The\n Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. \"Come along, Loyce. There's\n a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste.\"", "Ed Loyce grinned weakly. \"Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep\n end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like\n the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking\n over.\" He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands\n shaking. \"I'm glad to know it's on the level.\"\n\n\n \"It's on the level.\" The police car was getting near the Hall of\n Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights\n had not yet come on.\n\n\n \"I feel better,\" Loyce said. \"I was pretty excited there, for a minute.\n I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there's no need to\n take me in, is there?\"\n\n\n The two cops said nothing.", "\"Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame.\n Why? What has that to do with—\"\n\n\n \"Was anybody else down there with you?\"\n\n\n \"No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school.\" Loyce looked from\n one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flicked across his face, wild hope.\n \"You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn't\n get in on it? Like everybody else?\"\n\n\n After a pause the cop with the notebook said: \"That's right. You missed\n the explanation.\"\n\n\n \"Then it's official? The body—it's\nsupposed\nto be hanging there?\"\n\n\n \"It's supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see.\"", "Mason approached it warily. He wanted to get home. He was tired and\n hungry. He thought of his wife, his kids, a hot meal on the dinner\n table. But there was something about the dark bundle, something ominous\n and ugly. The light was bad; he couldn't tell what it was. Yet it drew\n him on, made him move closer for a better look. The shapeless thing made\n him uneasy. He was frightened by it. Frightened—and fascinated.\n\n\n And the strange part was that nobody else seemed to notice it.", "Loyce started slowly to his feet, numbed. \"And the man.\nWho was the\n man?\nI never saw him before. He wasn't a local man. He was a stranger.\n All muddy and dirty, his face cut, slashed—\"\n\n\n There was a strange look on the Commissioner's face as he answered.\n \"Maybe,\" he said softly, \"you'll understand that, too. Come along with\n me, Mr. Loyce.\" He held the door open, his eyes gleaming. Loyce caught a\n glimpse of the street in front of the police station. Policemen, a\n platform of some sort. A telephone pole—and a rope! \"Right this way,\"\n the Commissioner said, smiling coldly.\nAs the sun set, the vice-president of the Oak Grove Merchants' Bank came\n up out of the vault, threw the heavy time locks, put on his hat and\n coat, and hurried outside onto the sidewalk. Only a few people were\n there, hurrying home to dinner.", "He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man's voice cut off and\n dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others\n were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk,\n up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were\n bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed\n man who had come after him.\n\n\n Had he made a mistake?\n\n\n But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from\n them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between\n their world and his.\n\"Ed!\" Janet Loyce backed away nervously. \"What is it? What—\"\n\n\n Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room.\n \"Pull down the shades. Quick.\"\n\n\n Janet moved toward the window. \"But—\"", "THE HANGING STRANGER\nBY PHILIP K. DICK\nILLUSTRATED BY SMITH\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction\n Adventures Magazine December 1953. Extensive research did not uncover\n any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nEd had always been a practical man, when he saw something was\n wrong he tried to correct it. Then one day he saw\nit\nhanging in the\n town square.\n\n Five o'clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car\n out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His\n back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and\n wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done\n okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he\n liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself!", "\"Good night,\" the guard said, locking the door after him.\n\n\n \"Good night,\" Clarence Mason murmured. He started along the street\n toward his car. He was tired. He had been working all day down in the\n vault, examining the lay-out of the safety deposit boxes to see if there\n was room for another tier. He was glad to be finished.\n\n\n At the corner he halted. The street lights had not yet come on. The\n street was dim. Everything was vague. He looked around—and froze.\n\n\n From the telephone pole in front of the police station, something large\n and shapeless hung. It moved a little with the wind.\n\n\n What the hell was it?", "He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and\n fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything\n receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from\n Pikeville.\n\n\n A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in\n wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a\n gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens\n pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string.\n\n\n The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up\n to the station. \"Thank God.\" He caught hold of the wall. \"I didn't think\n I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear\n them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me.\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\" the attendant demanded. \"You in a wreck? A hold-up?\"", "He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and\n ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street\n light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars.\n\n\n And to his right—the police station.\n\n\n He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery\n store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred\n windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the\n darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to\n keep moving, get farther away from them.\nThem?\nLoyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the\n City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass\n and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark\n windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance.\n\n\n And—something else.", "\"Address?\" the cop demanded. The police car moved swiftly through\n traffic, shooting among the cars and buses. Loyce sagged against the\n seat, exhausted and confused. He took a deep shuddering breath.\n\n\n \"1368 Hurst Road.\"\n\n\n \"That's here in Pikeville?\"\n\n\n \"That's right.\" Loyce pulled himself up with a violent effort. \"Listen\n to me. Back there. In the square. Hanging from the lamppost—\"\n\n\n \"Where were you today?\" the cop behind the wheel demanded.\n\n\n \"Where?\" Loyce echoed.\n\n\n \"You weren't in your shop, were you?\"\n\n\n \"No.\" He shook his head. \"No, I was home. Down in the basement.\"\n\n\n \"In the\nbasement\n?\"", "Loyce moved forward. He pushed his way among those waiting and when the\n bus halted he boarded it and took a seat in the rear, by the door. A\n moment later the bus moved into life and rumbled down the street.\nLoyce relaxed a little. He studied the people around him. Dulled, tired\n faces. People going home from work. Quite ordinary faces. None of them\n paid any attention to him. All sat quietly, sunk down in their seats,\n jiggling with the motion of the bus.\n\n\n The man sitting next to him unfolded a newspaper. He began to read the\n sports section, his lips moving. An ordinary man. Blue suit. Tie. A\n businessman, or a salesman. On his way home to his wife and family.\n\n\n Across the aisle a young woman, perhaps twenty. Dark eyes and hair, a\n package on her lap. Nylons and heels. Red coat and white angora sweater.\n Gazing absently ahead of her.", "It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying\n commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and\n packages, students swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks\n and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red\n light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him;\n he'd arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the\n records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove\n slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the\n town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND\n SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again\n he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain\n and bench and single lamppost." ], [ "\"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the\n lamppost. I don't understand that.\nWhy?\nWhy did they deliberately hang\n him there?\"\n\n\n \"That would seem simple.\" The Commissioner smiled faintly. \"\nBait.\n\"\n\n\n Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. \"Bait? What do you mean?\"\n\n\n \"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was\n under control—and who had escaped.\"\n\n\n Loyce recoiled with horror. \"Then they\nexpected\nfailures! They\n anticipated—\" He broke off. \"They were ready with a trap.\"\n\n\n \"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known.\" The\n Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. \"Come along, Loyce. There's\n a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste.\"", "Loyce started slowly to his feet, numbed. \"And the man.\nWho was the\n man?\nI never saw him before. He wasn't a local man. He was a stranger.\n All muddy and dirty, his face cut, slashed—\"\n\n\n There was a strange look on the Commissioner's face as he answered.\n \"Maybe,\" he said softly, \"you'll understand that, too. Come along with\n me, Mr. Loyce.\" He held the door open, his eyes gleaming. Loyce caught a\n glimpse of the street in front of the police station. Policemen, a\n platform of some sort. A telephone pole—and a rope! \"Right this way,\"\n the Commissioner said, smiling coldly.\nAs the sun set, the vice-president of the Oak Grove Merchants' Bank came\n up out of the vault, threw the heavy time locks, put on his hat and\n coat, and hurried outside onto the sidewalk. Only a few people were\n there, hurrying home to dinner.", "\"You don't believe me,\" Loyce said.\n\n\n The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently\n away. \"Suit yourself.\" The Commissioner moved over to the window and\n stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. \"I believe you,\"\n he said abruptly.\n\n\n Loyce sagged. \"Thank God.\"\n\n\n \"So you got away.\" The Commissioner shook his head. \"You were down in\n your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million.\"\n\n\n Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. \"I have a\n theory,\" he murmured.\n\n\n \"What is it?\"", "Ed Loyce grinned weakly. \"Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep\n end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like\n the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking\n over.\" He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands\n shaking. \"I'm glad to know it's on the level.\"\n\n\n \"It's on the level.\" The police car was getting near the Hall of\n Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights\n had not yet come on.\n\n\n \"I feel better,\" Loyce said. \"I was pretty excited there, for a minute.\n I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there's no need to\n take me in, is there?\"\n\n\n The two cops said nothing.", "The Commissioner grunted. \"An old struggle.\"\n\n\n \"They've been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They\n make gains—but finally they're defeated.\"\n\n\n \"Why defeated?\"\n\n\n \"They can't get everyone. They didn't get me. And they never got the\n Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The\n realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they\n understood. Had escaped, like I did.\" He clenched his fists. \"I killed\n one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance.\"\n\n\n The Commissioner nodded. \"Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did.\n Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control.\" He\n turned from the window. \"Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured\n everything out.\"", "\"Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame.\n Why? What has that to do with—\"\n\n\n \"Was anybody else down there with you?\"\n\n\n \"No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school.\" Loyce looked from\n one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flicked across his face, wild hope.\n \"You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn't\n get in on it? Like everybody else?\"\n\n\n After a pause the cop with the notebook said: \"That's right. You missed\n the explanation.\"\n\n\n \"Then it's official? The body—it's\nsupposed\nto be hanging there?\"\n\n\n \"It's supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see.\"", "Loyce shook his head wearily. \"They have the whole town. The City Hall\n and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the\n first thing I saw. They've got all the roads blocked. I saw them\n hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond\n them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun\n came up.\"\n\n\n The attendant licked his lip nervously. \"You're out of your head. I\n better get a doctor.\"\n\n\n \"Get me into Oak Grove,\" Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel.\n \"We've got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right\n away.\"\nThey kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had\n finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet.\n He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his\n cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face.", "He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and\n ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street\n light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars.\n\n\n And to his right—the police station.\n\n\n He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery\n store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred\n windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the\n darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to\n keep moving, get farther away from them.\nThem?\nLoyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the\n City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass\n and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark\n windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance.\n\n\n And—something else.", "\"For Heaven's sake,\" Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea\n and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with\n revulsion—and fear.\nWhy?\nWho was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean?\n\n\n And—why didn't anybody notice?\n\n\n He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. \"Watch it!\" the\n man grated, \"Oh, it's you, Ed.\"\n\n\n Ed nodded dazedly. \"Hello, Jenkins.\"\n\n\n \"What's the matter?\" The stationery clerk caught Ed's arm. \"You look\n sick.\"\n\n\n \"The body. There in the park.\"\n\n\n \"Sure, Ed.\" Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND\n SERVICE. \"Take it easy.\"", "Loyce fought his way through the people. He stumbled and half fell.\n Through a blur he saw rows of faces, curious, concerned, anxious. Men\n and women halting to see what the disturbance was. He fought past them\n toward his store. He could see Fergusson inside talking to a man,\n showing him an Emerson TV set. Pete Foley in the back at the service\n counter, setting up a new Philco. Loyce shouted at them frantically.\n His voice was lost in the roar of traffic and the murmur around him.\n\n\n \"Do something!\" he screamed. \"Don't stand there! Do something!\n Something's wrong! Something's happened! Things are going on!\"\n\n\n The crowd melted respectfully for the two heavy-set cops moving\n efficiently toward Loyce.\n\"Name?\" the cop with the notebook murmured.\n\n\n \"Loyce.\" He mopped his forehead wearily. \"Edward C. Loyce. Listen to me.\n Back there—\"", "\"Good night,\" the guard said, locking the door after him.\n\n\n \"Good night,\" Clarence Mason murmured. He started along the street\n toward his car. He was tired. He had been working all day down in the\n vault, examining the lay-out of the safety deposit boxes to see if there\n was room for another tier. He was glad to be finished.\n\n\n At the corner he halted. The street lights had not yet come on. The\n street was dim. Everything was vague. He looked around—and froze.\n\n\n From the telephone pole in front of the police station, something large\n and shapeless hung. It moved a little with the wind.\n\n\n What the hell was it?", "\"See it?\" Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up\n against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. \"There it is.\n How the hell long has it been there?\" His voice rose excitedly. \"What's\n wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!\"\n\n\n Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. \"Take it easy, old man. There must\n be a good reason, or it wouldn't be there.\"\n\n\n \"A reason! What kind of a reason?\"\n\n\n Fergusson shrugged. \"Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that\n wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?\"\n\n\n Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. \"What's up, boys?\"\n\n\n \"There's a body hanging from the lamppost,\" Loyce said. \"I'm going to\n call the cops.\"", "From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle,\n swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled\n down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of\n some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the\n square.\n\n\n Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park\n and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a\n display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he\n swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.\n\n\n It was a body. A human body.\n\"Look at it!\" Loyce snapped. \"Come on out here!\"\n\n\n Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe\n coat with dignity. \"This is a big deal, Ed. I can't just leave the guy\n standing there.\"", "Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. \"Something\n wrong?\"\n\n\n \"Ed's not feeling well.\"\n\n\n Loyce yanked himself free. \"How can you stand here? Don't you see it?\n For God's sake—\"\n\n\n \"What's he talking about?\" Margaret asked nervously.\n\n\n \"The body!\" Ed shouted. \"The body hanging there!\"\n\n\n More people collected. \"Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?\"\n\n\n \"The body!\" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at\n him. He tore loose. \"Let me go! The police! Get the police!\"\n\n\n \"Ed—\"\n\n\n \"Better get a doctor!\"\n\n\n \"He must be sick.\"\n\n\n \"Or drunk.\"", "\"They must know about it,\" Potter said. \"Or otherwise it wouldn't be\n there.\"\n\n\n \"I got to get back in.\" Fergusson headed back into the store. \"Business\n before pleasure.\"\n\n\n Loyce began to get hysterical. \"You see it? You see it hanging there? A\n man's body! A dead man!\"\n\n\n \"Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee.\"\n\n\n \"You mean it's been there all afternoon?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. What's the matter?\" Potter glanced at his watch. \"Have to run.\n See you later, Ed.\"\n\n\n Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the\n sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously\n at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any\n attention.", "\"About them. Who they are. They take over one area at a time. Starting\n at the top—the highest level of authority. Working down from there in a\n widening circle. When they're firmly in control they go on to the next\n town. They spread, slowly, very gradually. I think it's been going on\n for a long time.\"\n\n\n \"A long time?\"\n\n\n \"Thousands of years. I don't think it's new.\"\n\n\n \"Why do you say that?\"\n\n\n \"When I was a kid.... A picture they showed us in Bible League. A\n religious picture—an old print. The enemy gods, defeated by Jehovah.\n Moloch, Beelzebub, Moab, Baalin, Ashtaroth—\"\n\n\n \"So?\"\n\n\n \"They were all represented by figures.\" Loyce looked up at the\n Commissioner. \"Beelzebub was represented as—a giant fly.\"", "It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying\n commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and\n packages, students swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks\n and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red\n light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him;\n he'd arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the\n records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove\n slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the\n town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND\n SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again\n he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain\n and bench and single lamppost.", "They weren't cops. He had realized that right away. He knew every cop in\n Pikeville. A man couldn't own a store, operate a business in a small\n town for twenty-five years without getting to know all the cops.\n\n\n They weren't cops—and there hadn't been any explanation. Potter,\n Fergusson, Jenkins, none of them knew why it was there. They didn't\n know—and they didn't care.\nThat\nwas the strange part.\n\n\n Loyce ducked into a hardware store. He raced toward the back, past the\n startled clerks and customers, into the shipping room and through the\n back door. He tripped over a garbage can and ran up a flight of concrete\n steps. He climbed over a fence and jumped down on the other side,\n gasping and panting.\n\n\n There was no sound behind him. He had got away.", "\"Address?\" the cop demanded. The police car moved swiftly through\n traffic, shooting among the cars and buses. Loyce sagged against the\n seat, exhausted and confused. He took a deep shuddering breath.\n\n\n \"1368 Hurst Road.\"\n\n\n \"That's here in Pikeville?\"\n\n\n \"That's right.\" Loyce pulled himself up with a violent effort. \"Listen\n to me. Back there. In the square. Hanging from the lamppost—\"\n\n\n \"Where were you today?\" the cop behind the wheel demanded.\n\n\n \"Where?\" Loyce echoed.\n\n\n \"You weren't in your shop, were you?\"\n\n\n \"No.\" He shook his head. \"No, I was home. Down in the basement.\"\n\n\n \"In the\nbasement\n?\"", "\"I'm going nuts,\" Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and\n crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him.\n He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.\n\n\n The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray\n suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never\n seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and\n in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin\n was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A\n pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His\n eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue." ], [ "\"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the\n lamppost. I don't understand that.\nWhy?\nWhy did they deliberately hang\n him there?\"\n\n\n \"That would seem simple.\" The Commissioner smiled faintly. \"\nBait.\n\"\n\n\n Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. \"Bait? What do you mean?\"\n\n\n \"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was\n under control—and who had escaped.\"\n\n\n Loyce recoiled with horror. \"Then they\nexpected\nfailures! They\n anticipated—\" He broke off. \"They were ready with a trap.\"\n\n\n \"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known.\" The\n Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. \"Come along, Loyce. There's\n a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste.\"", "The Commissioner grunted. \"An old struggle.\"\n\n\n \"They've been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They\n make gains—but finally they're defeated.\"\n\n\n \"Why defeated?\"\n\n\n \"They can't get everyone. They didn't get me. And they never got the\n Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The\n realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they\n understood. Had escaped, like I did.\" He clenched his fists. \"I killed\n one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance.\"\n\n\n The Commissioner nodded. \"Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did.\n Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control.\" He\n turned from the window. \"Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured\n everything out.\"", "Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. \"Something\n wrong?\"\n\n\n \"Ed's not feeling well.\"\n\n\n Loyce yanked himself free. \"How can you stand here? Don't you see it?\n For God's sake—\"\n\n\n \"What's he talking about?\" Margaret asked nervously.\n\n\n \"The body!\" Ed shouted. \"The body hanging there!\"\n\n\n More people collected. \"Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?\"\n\n\n \"The body!\" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at\n him. He tore loose. \"Let me go! The police! Get the police!\"\n\n\n \"Ed—\"\n\n\n \"Better get a doctor!\"\n\n\n \"He must be sick.\"\n\n\n \"Or drunk.\"", "He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and\n fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything\n receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from\n Pikeville.\n\n\n A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in\n wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a\n gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens\n pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string.\n\n\n The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up\n to the station. \"Thank God.\" He caught hold of the wall. \"I didn't think\n I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear\n them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me.\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\" the attendant demanded. \"You in a wreck? A hold-up?\"", "\"I'm going nuts,\" Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and\n crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him.\n He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.\n\n\n The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray\n suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never\n seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and\n in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin\n was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A\n pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His\n eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue.", "Ed Loyce grinned weakly. \"Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep\n end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like\n the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking\n over.\" He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands\n shaking. \"I'm glad to know it's on the level.\"\n\n\n \"It's on the level.\" The police car was getting near the Hall of\n Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights\n had not yet come on.\n\n\n \"I feel better,\" Loyce said. \"I was pretty excited there, for a minute.\n I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there's no need to\n take me in, is there?\"\n\n\n The two cops said nothing.", "A high school boy in jeans and black jacket.\n\n\n A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with\n packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness.\n\n\n Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to\n their families. To dinner.\n\n\n Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask\n of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their\n town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in\n his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked.\n They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof.\n\n\n Maybe there were others.", "\"Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame.\n Why? What has that to do with—\"\n\n\n \"Was anybody else down there with you?\"\n\n\n \"No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school.\" Loyce looked from\n one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flicked across his face, wild hope.\n \"You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn't\n get in on it? Like everybody else?\"\n\n\n After a pause the cop with the notebook said: \"That's right. You missed\n the explanation.\"\n\n\n \"Then it's official? The body—it's\nsupposed\nto be hanging there?\"\n\n\n \"It's supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see.\"", "\"You don't believe me,\" Loyce said.\n\n\n The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently\n away. \"Suit yourself.\" The Commissioner moved over to the window and\n stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. \"I believe you,\"\n he said abruptly.\n\n\n Loyce sagged. \"Thank God.\"\n\n\n \"So you got away.\" The Commissioner shook his head. \"You were down in\n your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million.\"\n\n\n Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. \"I have a\n theory,\" he murmured.\n\n\n \"What is it?\"", "\"They must know about it,\" Potter said. \"Or otherwise it wouldn't be\n there.\"\n\n\n \"I got to get back in.\" Fergusson headed back into the store. \"Business\n before pleasure.\"\n\n\n Loyce began to get hysterical. \"You see it? You see it hanging there? A\n man's body! A dead man!\"\n\n\n \"Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee.\"\n\n\n \"You mean it's been there all afternoon?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. What's the matter?\" Potter glanced at his watch. \"Have to run.\n See you later, Ed.\"\n\n\n Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the\n sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously\n at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any\n attention.", "It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying\n commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and\n packages, students swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks\n and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red\n light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him;\n he'd arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the\n records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove\n slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the\n town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND\n SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again\n he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain\n and bench and single lamppost.", "Loyce leaped. He hit the pavement with terrific force and rolled against\n the curb. Pain lapped over him. Pain and a vast tide of blackness.\n Desperately, he fought it off. He struggled to his knees and then slid\n down again. The bus had stopped. People were getting off.\n\n\n Loyce groped around. His fingers closed over something. A rock, lying in\n the gutter. He crawled to his feet, grunting with pain. A shape loomed\n before him. A man, the bright-eyed man with the book.\n\n\n Loyce kicked. The man gasped and fell. Loyce brought the rock down. The\n man screamed and tried to roll away. \"\nStop!\nFor God's sake listen—\"", "Loyce opened the door. For a brief second he looked back at his wife and\n son. Then he slammed the door behind him and raced down the porch steps.\n\n\n A moment later he was on his way, hurrying swiftly through the darkness\n toward the edge of town.\nThe early morning sunlight was blinding. Loyce halted, gasping for\n breath, swaying back and forth. Sweat ran down in his eyes. His clothing\n was torn, shredded by the brush and thorns through which he had crawled.\n Ten miles—on his hands and knees. Crawling, creeping through the night.\n His shoes were mud-caked. He was scratched and limping, utterly\n exhausted.\n\n\n But ahead of him lay Oak Grove.", "The bus halted. An elderly man got on slowly and dropped his token into\n the box. He moved down the aisle and took a seat opposite Loyce.\n\n\n The elderly man caught the sharp-eyed man's gaze. For a split second\n something passed between them.\n\n\n A look rich with meaning.\n\n\n Loyce got to his feet. The bus was moving. He ran to the door. One step\n down into the well. He yanked the emergency door release. The rubber\n door swung open.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" the driver shouted, jamming on the brakes. \"What the hell—\"\n\n\n Loyce squirmed through. The bus was slowing down. Houses on all sides. A\n residential district, lawns and tall apartment buildings. Behind him,\n the bright-eyed man had leaped up. The elderly man was also on his feet.\n They were coming after him.", "\"See it?\" Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up\n against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. \"There it is.\n How the hell long has it been there?\" His voice rose excitedly. \"What's\n wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!\"\n\n\n Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. \"Take it easy, old man. There must\n be a good reason, or it wouldn't be there.\"\n\n\n \"A reason! What kind of a reason?\"\n\n\n Fergusson shrugged. \"Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that\n wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?\"\n\n\n Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. \"What's up, boys?\"\n\n\n \"There's a body hanging from the lamppost,\" Loyce said. \"I'm going to\n call the cops.\"", "He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and\n ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street\n light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars.\n\n\n And to his right—the police station.\n\n\n He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery\n store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred\n windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the\n darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to\n keep moving, get farther away from them.\nThem?\nLoyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the\n City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass\n and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark\n windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance.\n\n\n And—something else.", "\"We're getting out of here. Out of Pikeville. We've got to get help.\n Fight this thing. They\ncan\nbe beaten. They're not infallible. It's\n going to be close—but we may make it if we hurry. Come on!\" He grabbed\n her arm roughly. \"Get your coat and call the twins. We're all leaving.\n Don't stop to pack. There's no time for that.\"\n\n\n White-faced, his wife moved toward the closet and got down her coat.\n \"Where are we going?\"\n\n\n Ed pulled open the desk drawer and spilled the contents out onto the\n floor. He grabbed up a road map and spread it open. \"They'll have the\n highway covered, of course. But there's a back road. To Oak Grove. I got\n onto it once. It's practically abandoned. Maybe they'll forget about\n it.\"", "From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle,\n swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled\n down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of\n some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the\n square.\n\n\n Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park\n and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a\n display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he\n swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.\n\n\n It was a body. A human body.\n\"Look at it!\" Loyce snapped. \"Come on out here!\"\n\n\n Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe\n coat with dignity. \"This is a big deal, Ed. I can't just leave the guy\n standing there.\"", "\"Good night,\" the guard said, locking the door after him.\n\n\n \"Good night,\" Clarence Mason murmured. He started along the street\n toward his car. He was tired. He had been working all day down in the\n vault, examining the lay-out of the safety deposit boxes to see if there\n was room for another tier. He was glad to be finished.\n\n\n At the corner he halted. The street lights had not yet come on. The\n street was dim. Everything was vague. He looked around—and froze.\n\n\n From the telephone pole in front of the police station, something large\n and shapeless hung. It moved a little with the wind.\n\n\n What the hell was it?", "\"I should be back at my store. The boys haven't had dinner. I'm all\n right, now. No more trouble. Is there any need of—\"\n\n\n \"This won't take long,\" the cop behind the wheel interrupted. \"A short\n process. Only a few minutes.\"\n\n\n \"I hope it's short,\" Loyce muttered. The car slowed down for a\n stoplight. \"I guess I sort of disturbed the peace. Funny, getting\n excited like that and—\"\n\n\n Loyce yanked the door open. He sprawled out into the street and rolled\n to his feet. Cars were moving all around him, gaining speed as the light\n changed. Loyce leaped onto the curb and raced among the people,\n burrowing into the swarming crowds. Behind him he heard sounds, shouts,\n people running." ], [ "\"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the\n lamppost. I don't understand that.\nWhy?\nWhy did they deliberately hang\n him there?\"\n\n\n \"That would seem simple.\" The Commissioner smiled faintly. \"\nBait.\n\"\n\n\n Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. \"Bait? What do you mean?\"\n\n\n \"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was\n under control—and who had escaped.\"\n\n\n Loyce recoiled with horror. \"Then they\nexpected\nfailures! They\n anticipated—\" He broke off. \"They were ready with a trap.\"\n\n\n \"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known.\" The\n Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. \"Come along, Loyce. There's\n a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste.\"", "\"See it?\" Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up\n against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. \"There it is.\n How the hell long has it been there?\" His voice rose excitedly. \"What's\n wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!\"\n\n\n Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. \"Take it easy, old man. There must\n be a good reason, or it wouldn't be there.\"\n\n\n \"A reason! What kind of a reason?\"\n\n\n Fergusson shrugged. \"Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that\n wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?\"\n\n\n Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. \"What's up, boys?\"\n\n\n \"There's a body hanging from the lamppost,\" Loyce said. \"I'm going to\n call the cops.\"", "From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle,\n swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled\n down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of\n some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the\n square.\n\n\n Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park\n and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a\n display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he\n swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.\n\n\n It was a body. A human body.\n\"Look at it!\" Loyce snapped. \"Come on out here!\"\n\n\n Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe\n coat with dignity. \"This is a big deal, Ed. I can't just leave the guy\n standing there.\"", "\"Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame.\n Why? What has that to do with—\"\n\n\n \"Was anybody else down there with you?\"\n\n\n \"No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school.\" Loyce looked from\n one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flicked across his face, wild hope.\n \"You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn't\n get in on it? Like everybody else?\"\n\n\n After a pause the cop with the notebook said: \"That's right. You missed\n the explanation.\"\n\n\n \"Then it's official? The body—it's\nsupposed\nto be hanging there?\"\n\n\n \"It's supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see.\"", "\"They must know about it,\" Potter said. \"Or otherwise it wouldn't be\n there.\"\n\n\n \"I got to get back in.\" Fergusson headed back into the store. \"Business\n before pleasure.\"\n\n\n Loyce began to get hysterical. \"You see it? You see it hanging there? A\n man's body! A dead man!\"\n\n\n \"Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee.\"\n\n\n \"You mean it's been there all afternoon?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. What's the matter?\" Potter glanced at his watch. \"Have to run.\n See you later, Ed.\"\n\n\n Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the\n sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously\n at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any\n attention.", "\"Good night,\" the guard said, locking the door after him.\n\n\n \"Good night,\" Clarence Mason murmured. He started along the street\n toward his car. He was tired. He had been working all day down in the\n vault, examining the lay-out of the safety deposit boxes to see if there\n was room for another tier. He was glad to be finished.\n\n\n At the corner he halted. The street lights had not yet come on. The\n street was dim. Everything was vague. He looked around—and froze.\n\n\n From the telephone pole in front of the police station, something large\n and shapeless hung. It moved a little with the wind.\n\n\n What the hell was it?", "Loyce shook his head wearily. \"They have the whole town. The City Hall\n and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the\n first thing I saw. They've got all the roads blocked. I saw them\n hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond\n them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun\n came up.\"\n\n\n The attendant licked his lip nervously. \"You're out of your head. I\n better get a doctor.\"\n\n\n \"Get me into Oak Grove,\" Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel.\n \"We've got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right\n away.\"\nThey kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had\n finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet.\n He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his\n cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face.", "\"For Heaven's sake,\" Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea\n and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with\n revulsion—and fear.\nWhy?\nWho was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean?\n\n\n And—why didn't anybody notice?\n\n\n He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. \"Watch it!\" the\n man grated, \"Oh, it's you, Ed.\"\n\n\n Ed nodded dazedly. \"Hello, Jenkins.\"\n\n\n \"What's the matter?\" The stationery clerk caught Ed's arm. \"You look\n sick.\"\n\n\n \"The body. There in the park.\"\n\n\n \"Sure, Ed.\" Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND\n SERVICE. \"Take it easy.\"", "Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. \"Something\n wrong?\"\n\n\n \"Ed's not feeling well.\"\n\n\n Loyce yanked himself free. \"How can you stand here? Don't you see it?\n For God's sake—\"\n\n\n \"What's he talking about?\" Margaret asked nervously.\n\n\n \"The body!\" Ed shouted. \"The body hanging there!\"\n\n\n More people collected. \"Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?\"\n\n\n \"The body!\" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at\n him. He tore loose. \"Let me go! The police! Get the police!\"\n\n\n \"Ed—\"\n\n\n \"Better get a doctor!\"\n\n\n \"He must be sick.\"\n\n\n \"Or drunk.\"", "\"I'm going nuts,\" Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and\n crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him.\n He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.\n\n\n The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray\n suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never\n seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and\n in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin\n was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A\n pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His\n eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue.", "Something lapped through his mind. A wall of force, energy, an alien\n mind probing into him. He was suddenly paralyzed. The mind entered his\n own, touched against him briefly, shockingly. An utterly alien presence,\n settling over him—and then it flickered out as the thing collapsed in a\n broken heap on the rug.\n\n\n It was dead. He turned it over with his foot. It was an insect, a fly of\n some kind. Yellow T-shirt, jeans. His son Jimmy.... He closed his mind\n tight. It was too late to think about that. Savagely he scooped up his\n knife and headed toward the door. Janet and Tommy stood stone-still,\n neither of them moving.\n\n\n The car was out. He'd never get through. They'd be waiting for him. It\n was ten miles on foot. Ten long miles over rough ground, gulleys and\n open fields and hills of uncut forest. He'd have to go alone.", "He was seeing—them.\nFor a long time Loyce watched, crouched behind a sagging fence in a pool\n of scummy water.\n\n\n They were landing. Coming down in groups, landing on the roof of the\n City Hall and disappearing inside. They had wings. Like giant insects of\n some kind. They flew and fluttered and came to rest—and then crawled\n crab-fashion, sideways, across the roof and into the building.\n\n\n He was sickened. And fascinated. Cold night wind blew around him and he\n shuddered. He was tired, dazed with shock. On the front steps of the\n City Hall were men, standing here and there. Groups of men coming out of\n the building and halting for a moment before going on.\n\n\n Were there more of them?", "Loyce started slowly to his feet, numbed. \"And the man.\nWho was the\n man?\nI never saw him before. He wasn't a local man. He was a stranger.\n All muddy and dirty, his face cut, slashed—\"\n\n\n There was a strange look on the Commissioner's face as he answered.\n \"Maybe,\" he said softly, \"you'll understand that, too. Come along with\n me, Mr. Loyce.\" He held the door open, his eyes gleaming. Loyce caught a\n glimpse of the street in front of the police station. Policemen, a\n platform of some sort. A telephone pole—and a rope! \"Right this way,\"\n the Commissioner said, smiling coldly.\nAs the sun set, the vice-president of the Oak Grove Merchants' Bank came\n up out of the vault, threw the heavy time locks, put on his hat and\n coat, and hurried outside onto the sidewalk. Only a few people were\n there, hurrying home to dinner.", "THE HANGING STRANGER\nBY PHILIP K. DICK\nILLUSTRATED BY SMITH\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction\n Adventures Magazine December 1953. Extensive research did not uncover\n any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nEd had always been a practical man, when he saw something was\n wrong he tried to correct it. Then one day he saw\nit\nhanging in the\n town square.\n\n Five o'clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car\n out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His\n back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and\n wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done\n okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he\n liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself!", "A high school boy in jeans and black jacket.\n\n\n A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with\n packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness.\n\n\n Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to\n their families. To dinner.\n\n\n Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask\n of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their\n town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in\n his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked.\n They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof.\n\n\n Maybe there were others.", "Pseudo-men. Imitation men. Insects with ability to disguise themselves\n as men. Like other insects familiar to Earth. Protective coloration.\n Mimicry.\n\n\n Loyce pulled himself away. He got slowly to his feet. It was night. The\n alley was totally dark. But maybe they could see in the dark. Maybe\n darkness made no difference to them.\n\n\n He left the alley cautiously and moved out onto the street. Men and\n women flowed past, but not so many, now. At the bus-stops stood waiting\n groups. A huge bus lumbered along the street, its lights flashing in the\n evening gloom.", "It didn't seem possible. What he saw descending from the black chasm\n weren't men. They were alien—from some other world, some other\n dimension. Sliding through this slit, this break in the shell of the\n universe. Entering through this gap, winged insects from another realm\n of being.\n\n\n On the steps of the City Hall a group of men broke up. A few moved\n toward a waiting car. One of the remaining shapes started to re-enter\n the City Hall. It changed its mind and turned to follow the others.\n\n\n Loyce closed his eyes in horror. His senses reeled. He hung on tight,\n clutching at the sagging fence. The shape, the man-shape, had abruptly\n fluttered up and flapped after the others. It flew to the sidewalk and\n came to rest among them.", "The Commissioner grunted. \"An old struggle.\"\n\n\n \"They've been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They\n make gains—but finally they're defeated.\"\n\n\n \"Why defeated?\"\n\n\n \"They can't get everyone. They didn't get me. And they never got the\n Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The\n realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they\n understood. Had escaped, like I did.\" He clenched his fists. \"I killed\n one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance.\"\n\n\n The Commissioner nodded. \"Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did.\n Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control.\" He\n turned from the window. \"Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured\n everything out.\"", "\"Address?\" the cop demanded. The police car moved swiftly through\n traffic, shooting among the cars and buses. Loyce sagged against the\n seat, exhausted and confused. He took a deep shuddering breath.\n\n\n \"1368 Hurst Road.\"\n\n\n \"That's here in Pikeville?\"\n\n\n \"That's right.\" Loyce pulled himself up with a violent effort. \"Listen\n to me. Back there. In the square. Hanging from the lamppost—\"\n\n\n \"Where were you today?\" the cop behind the wheel demanded.\n\n\n \"Where?\" Loyce echoed.\n\n\n \"You weren't in your shop, were you?\"\n\n\n \"No.\" He shook his head. \"No, I was home. Down in the basement.\"\n\n\n \"In the\nbasement\n?\"", "Mason approached it warily. He wanted to get home. He was tired and\n hungry. He thought of his wife, his kids, a hot meal on the dinner\n table. But there was something about the dark bundle, something ominous\n and ugly. The light was bad; he couldn't tell what it was. Yet it drew\n him on, made him move closer for a better look. The shapeless thing made\n him uneasy. He was frightened by it. Frightened—and fascinated.\n\n\n And the strange part was that nobody else seemed to notice it." ], [ "Hope flickered in Loyce. They weren't omnipotent. They had made a\n mistake, not got control of him. Their net, their field of control, had\n passed over him. He had emerged from his cellar as he had gone down.\n Apparently their power-zone was limited.\n\n\n A few seats down the aisle a man was watching him. Loyce broke off his\n chain of thought. A slender man, with dark hair and a small mustache.\n Well-dressed, brown suit and shiny shoes. A book between his small\n hands. He was watching Loyce, studying him intently. He turned quickly\n away.\n\n\n Loyce tensed. One of\nthem\n? Or—another they had missed?\n\n\n The man was watching him again. Small dark eyes, alive and clever.\n Shrewd. A man too shrewd for them—or one of the things itself, an alien\n insect from beyond.", "The Commissioner grunted. \"An old struggle.\"\n\n\n \"They've been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They\n make gains—but finally they're defeated.\"\n\n\n \"Why defeated?\"\n\n\n \"They can't get everyone. They didn't get me. And they never got the\n Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The\n realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they\n understood. Had escaped, like I did.\" He clenched his fists. \"I killed\n one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance.\"\n\n\n The Commissioner nodded. \"Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did.\n Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control.\" He\n turned from the window. \"Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured\n everything out.\"", "He was seeing—them.\nFor a long time Loyce watched, crouched behind a sagging fence in a pool\n of scummy water.\n\n\n They were landing. Coming down in groups, landing on the roof of the\n City Hall and disappearing inside. They had wings. Like giant insects of\n some kind. They flew and fluttered and came to rest—and then crawled\n crab-fashion, sideways, across the roof and into the building.\n\n\n He was sickened. And fascinated. Cold night wind blew around him and he\n shuddered. He was tired, dazed with shock. On the front steps of the\n City Hall were men, standing here and there. Groups of men coming out of\n the building and halting for a moment before going on.\n\n\n Were there more of them?", "A high school boy in jeans and black jacket.\n\n\n A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with\n packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness.\n\n\n Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to\n their families. To dinner.\n\n\n Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask\n of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their\n town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in\n his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked.\n They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof.\n\n\n Maybe there were others.", "Loyce shook his head wearily. \"They have the whole town. The City Hall\n and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the\n first thing I saw. They've got all the roads blocked. I saw them\n hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond\n them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun\n came up.\"\n\n\n The attendant licked his lip nervously. \"You're out of your head. I\n better get a doctor.\"\n\n\n \"Get me into Oak Grove,\" Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel.\n \"We've got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right\n away.\"\nThey kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had\n finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet.\n He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his\n cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face.", "\"What are you talking about?\"\n\n\n \"We've been invaded. From some other universe, some other dimension.\n They're insects. Mimicry. And more. Power to control minds. Your mind.\"\n\n\n \"My mind?\"\n\n\n \"Their entrance is\nhere\n, in Pikeville. They've taken over all of you.\n The whole town—except me. We're up against an incredibly powerful\n enemy, but they have their limitations. That's our hope. They're\n limited! They can make mistakes!\"\n\n\n Janet shook her head. \"I don't understand, Ed. You must be insane.\"\n\n\n \"Insane? No. Just lucky. If I hadn't been down in the basement I'd be\n like all the rest of you.\" Loyce peered out the window. \"But I can't\n stand here talking. Get your coat.\"\n\n\n \"My coat?\"", "\"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the\n lamppost. I don't understand that.\nWhy?\nWhy did they deliberately hang\n him there?\"\n\n\n \"That would seem simple.\" The Commissioner smiled faintly. \"\nBait.\n\"\n\n\n Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. \"Bait? What do you mean?\"\n\n\n \"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was\n under control—and who had escaped.\"\n\n\n Loyce recoiled with horror. \"Then they\nexpected\nfailures! They\n anticipated—\" He broke off. \"They were ready with a trap.\"\n\n\n \"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known.\" The\n Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. \"Come along, Loyce. There's\n a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste.\"", "Loyce leaped. He hit the pavement with terrific force and rolled against\n the curb. Pain lapped over him. Pain and a vast tide of blackness.\n Desperately, he fought it off. He struggled to his knees and then slid\n down again. The bus had stopped. People were getting off.\n\n\n Loyce groped around. His fingers closed over something. A rock, lying in\n the gutter. He crawled to his feet, grunting with pain. A shape loomed\n before him. A man, the bright-eyed man with the book.\n\n\n Loyce kicked. The man gasped and fell. Loyce brought the rock down. The\n man screamed and tried to roll away. \"\nStop!\nFor God's sake listen—\"", "\"You don't believe me,\" Loyce said.\n\n\n The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently\n away. \"Suit yourself.\" The Commissioner moved over to the window and\n stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. \"I believe you,\"\n he said abruptly.\n\n\n Loyce sagged. \"Thank God.\"\n\n\n \"So you got away.\" The Commissioner shook his head. \"You were down in\n your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million.\"\n\n\n Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. \"I have a\n theory,\" he murmured.\n\n\n \"What is it?\"", "He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and\n fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything\n receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from\n Pikeville.\n\n\n A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in\n wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a\n gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens\n pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string.\n\n\n The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up\n to the station. \"Thank God.\" He caught hold of the wall. \"I didn't think\n I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear\n them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me.\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\" the attendant demanded. \"You in a wreck? A hold-up?\"", "\"About them. Who they are. They take over one area at a time. Starting\n at the top—the highest level of authority. Working down from there in a\n widening circle. When they're firmly in control they go on to the next\n town. They spread, slowly, very gradually. I think it's been going on\n for a long time.\"\n\n\n \"A long time?\"\n\n\n \"Thousands of years. I don't think it's new.\"\n\n\n \"Why do you say that?\"\n\n\n \"When I was a kid.... A picture they showed us in Bible League. A\n religious picture—an old print. The enemy gods, defeated by Jehovah.\n Moloch, Beelzebub, Moab, Baalin, Ashtaroth—\"\n\n\n \"So?\"\n\n\n \"They were all represented by figures.\" Loyce looked up at the\n Commissioner. \"Beelzebub was represented as—a giant fly.\"", "It didn't seem possible. What he saw descending from the black chasm\n weren't men. They were alien—from some other world, some other\n dimension. Sliding through this slit, this break in the shell of the\n universe. Entering through this gap, winged insects from another realm\n of being.\n\n\n On the steps of the City Hall a group of men broke up. A few moved\n toward a waiting car. One of the remaining shapes started to re-enter\n the City Hall. It changed its mind and turned to follow the others.\n\n\n Loyce closed his eyes in horror. His senses reeled. He hung on tight,\n clutching at the sagging fence. The shape, the man-shape, had abruptly\n fluttered up and flapped after the others. It flew to the sidewalk and\n came to rest among them.", "Pseudo-men. Imitation men. Insects with ability to disguise themselves\n as men. Like other insects familiar to Earth. Protective coloration.\n Mimicry.\n\n\n Loyce pulled himself away. He got slowly to his feet. It was night. The\n alley was totally dark. But maybe they could see in the dark. Maybe\n darkness made no difference to them.\n\n\n He left the alley cautiously and moved out onto the street. Men and\n women flowed past, but not so many, now. At the bus-stops stood waiting\n groups. A huge bus lumbered along the street, its lights flashing in the\n evening gloom.", "He heard the buzz. And dropped instantly, the long butcher knife out.\n Sickened, he saw it coming down the stairs at him, wings a blur of\n motion as it aimed itself. It still bore a vague resemblance to Jimmy.\n It was small, a baby one. A brief glimpse—the thing hurtling at him,\n cold, multi-lensed inhuman eyes. Wings, body still clothed in yellow\n T-shirt and jeans, the mimic outline still stamped on it. A strange\n half-turn of its body as it reached him. What was it doing?\n\n\n A stinger.\n\n\n Loyce stabbed wildly at it. It retreated, buzzing frantically. Loyce\n rolled and crawled toward the door. Tommy and Janet stood still as\n statues, faces blank. Watching without expression. Loyce stabbed again.\n This time the knife connected. The thing shrieked and faltered. It\n bounced against the wall and fluttered down.", "Loyce moved forward. He pushed his way among those waiting and when the\n bus halted he boarded it and took a seat in the rear, by the door. A\n moment later the bus moved into life and rumbled down the street.\nLoyce relaxed a little. He studied the people around him. Dulled, tired\n faces. People going home from work. Quite ordinary faces. None of them\n paid any attention to him. All sat quietly, sunk down in their seats,\n jiggling with the motion of the bus.\n\n\n The man sitting next to him unfolded a newspaper. He began to read the\n sports section, his lips moving. An ordinary man. Blue suit. Tie. A\n businessman, or a salesman. On his way home to his wife and family.\n\n\n Across the aisle a young woman, perhaps twenty. Dark eyes and hair, a\n package on her lap. Nylons and heels. Red coat and white angora sweater.\n Gazing absently ahead of her.", "He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man's voice cut off and\n dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others\n were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk,\n up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were\n bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed\n man who had come after him.\n\n\n Had he made a mistake?\n\n\n But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from\n them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between\n their world and his.\n\"Ed!\" Janet Loyce backed away nervously. \"What is it? What—\"\n\n\n Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room.\n \"Pull down the shades. Quick.\"\n\n\n Janet moved toward the window. \"But—\"", "Something lapped through his mind. A wall of force, energy, an alien\n mind probing into him. He was suddenly paralyzed. The mind entered his\n own, touched against him briefly, shockingly. An utterly alien presence,\n settling over him—and then it flickered out as the thing collapsed in a\n broken heap on the rug.\n\n\n It was dead. He turned it over with his foot. It was an insect, a fly of\n some kind. Yellow T-shirt, jeans. His son Jimmy.... He closed his mind\n tight. It was too late to think about that. Savagely he scooped up his\n knife and headed toward the door. Janet and Tommy stood stone-still,\n neither of them moving.\n\n\n The car was out. He'd never get through. They'd be waiting for him. It\n was ten miles on foot. Ten long miles over rough ground, gulleys and\n open fields and hills of uncut forest. He'd have to go alone.", "Loyce opened the door. For a brief second he looked back at his wife and\n son. Then he slammed the door behind him and raced down the porch steps.\n\n\n A moment later he was on his way, hurrying swiftly through the darkness\n toward the edge of town.\nThe early morning sunlight was blinding. Loyce halted, gasping for\n breath, swaying back and forth. Sweat ran down in his eyes. His clothing\n was torn, shredded by the brush and thorns through which he had crawled.\n Ten miles—on his hands and knees. Crawling, creeping through the night.\n His shoes were mud-caked. He was scratched and limping, utterly\n exhausted.\n\n\n But ahead of him lay Oak Grove.", "He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and\n ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street\n light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars.\n\n\n And to his right—the police station.\n\n\n He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery\n store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred\n windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the\n darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to\n keep moving, get farther away from them.\nThem?\nLoyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the\n City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass\n and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark\n windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance.\n\n\n And—something else.", "\"I should be back at my store. The boys haven't had dinner. I'm all\n right, now. No more trouble. Is there any need of—\"\n\n\n \"This won't take long,\" the cop behind the wheel interrupted. \"A short\n process. Only a few minutes.\"\n\n\n \"I hope it's short,\" Loyce muttered. The car slowed down for a\n stoplight. \"I guess I sort of disturbed the peace. Funny, getting\n excited like that and—\"\n\n\n Loyce yanked the door open. He sprawled out into the street and rolled\n to his feet. Cars were moving all around him, gaining speed as the light\n changed. Loyce leaped onto the curb and raced among the people,\n burrowing into the swarming crowds. Behind him he heard sounds, shouts,\n people running." ], [ "He heard the buzz. And dropped instantly, the long butcher knife out.\n Sickened, he saw it coming down the stairs at him, wings a blur of\n motion as it aimed itself. It still bore a vague resemblance to Jimmy.\n It was small, a baby one. A brief glimpse—the thing hurtling at him,\n cold, multi-lensed inhuman eyes. Wings, body still clothed in yellow\n T-shirt and jeans, the mimic outline still stamped on it. A strange\n half-turn of its body as it reached him. What was it doing?\n\n\n A stinger.\n\n\n Loyce stabbed wildly at it. It retreated, buzzing frantically. Loyce\n rolled and crawled toward the door. Tommy and Janet stood still as\n statues, faces blank. Watching without expression. Loyce stabbed again.\n This time the knife connected. The thing shrieked and faltered. It\n bounced against the wall and fluttered down.", "He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man's voice cut off and\n dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others\n were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk,\n up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were\n bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed\n man who had come after him.\n\n\n Had he made a mistake?\n\n\n But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from\n them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between\n their world and his.\n\"Ed!\" Janet Loyce backed away nervously. \"What is it? What—\"\n\n\n Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room.\n \"Pull down the shades. Quick.\"\n\n\n Janet moved toward the window. \"But—\"", "Loyce shook his head wearily. \"They have the whole town. The City Hall\n and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the\n first thing I saw. They've got all the roads blocked. I saw them\n hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond\n them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun\n came up.\"\n\n\n The attendant licked his lip nervously. \"You're out of your head. I\n better get a doctor.\"\n\n\n \"Get me into Oak Grove,\" Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel.\n \"We've got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right\n away.\"\nThey kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had\n finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet.\n He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his\n cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face.", "He was seeing—them.\nFor a long time Loyce watched, crouched behind a sagging fence in a pool\n of scummy water.\n\n\n They were landing. Coming down in groups, landing on the roof of the\n City Hall and disappearing inside. They had wings. Like giant insects of\n some kind. They flew and fluttered and came to rest—and then crawled\n crab-fashion, sideways, across the roof and into the building.\n\n\n He was sickened. And fascinated. Cold night wind blew around him and he\n shuddered. He was tired, dazed with shock. On the front steps of the\n City Hall were men, standing here and there. Groups of men coming out of\n the building and halting for a moment before going on.\n\n\n Were there more of them?", "\"You don't believe me,\" Loyce said.\n\n\n The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently\n away. \"Suit yourself.\" The Commissioner moved over to the window and\n stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. \"I believe you,\"\n he said abruptly.\n\n\n Loyce sagged. \"Thank God.\"\n\n\n \"So you got away.\" The Commissioner shook his head. \"You were down in\n your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million.\"\n\n\n Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. \"I have a\n theory,\" he murmured.\n\n\n \"What is it?\"", "Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. \"Something\n wrong?\"\n\n\n \"Ed's not feeling well.\"\n\n\n Loyce yanked himself free. \"How can you stand here? Don't you see it?\n For God's sake—\"\n\n\n \"What's he talking about?\" Margaret asked nervously.\n\n\n \"The body!\" Ed shouted. \"The body hanging there!\"\n\n\n More people collected. \"Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?\"\n\n\n \"The body!\" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at\n him. He tore loose. \"Let me go! The police! Get the police!\"\n\n\n \"Ed—\"\n\n\n \"Better get a doctor!\"\n\n\n \"He must be sick.\"\n\n\n \"Or drunk.\"", "Something lapped through his mind. A wall of force, energy, an alien\n mind probing into him. He was suddenly paralyzed. The mind entered his\n own, touched against him briefly, shockingly. An utterly alien presence,\n settling over him—and then it flickered out as the thing collapsed in a\n broken heap on the rug.\n\n\n It was dead. He turned it over with his foot. It was an insect, a fly of\n some kind. Yellow T-shirt, jeans. His son Jimmy.... He closed his mind\n tight. It was too late to think about that. Savagely he scooped up his\n knife and headed toward the door. Janet and Tommy stood stone-still,\n neither of them moving.\n\n\n The car was out. He'd never get through. They'd be waiting for him. It\n was ten miles on foot. Ten long miles over rough ground, gulleys and\n open fields and hills of uncut forest. He'd have to go alone.", "\"What are you talking about?\"\n\n\n \"We've been invaded. From some other universe, some other dimension.\n They're insects. Mimicry. And more. Power to control minds. Your mind.\"\n\n\n \"My mind?\"\n\n\n \"Their entrance is\nhere\n, in Pikeville. They've taken over all of you.\n The whole town—except me. We're up against an incredibly powerful\n enemy, but they have their limitations. That's our hope. They're\n limited! They can make mistakes!\"\n\n\n Janet shook her head. \"I don't understand, Ed. You must be insane.\"\n\n\n \"Insane? No. Just lucky. If I hadn't been down in the basement I'd be\n like all the rest of you.\" Loyce peered out the window. \"But I can't\n stand here talking. Get your coat.\"\n\n\n \"My coat?\"", "Loyce moved forward. He pushed his way among those waiting and when the\n bus halted he boarded it and took a seat in the rear, by the door. A\n moment later the bus moved into life and rumbled down the street.\nLoyce relaxed a little. He studied the people around him. Dulled, tired\n faces. People going home from work. Quite ordinary faces. None of them\n paid any attention to him. All sat quietly, sunk down in their seats,\n jiggling with the motion of the bus.\n\n\n The man sitting next to him unfolded a newspaper. He began to read the\n sports section, his lips moving. An ordinary man. Blue suit. Tie. A\n businessman, or a salesman. On his way home to his wife and family.\n\n\n Across the aisle a young woman, perhaps twenty. Dark eyes and hair, a\n package on her lap. Nylons and heels. Red coat and white angora sweater.\n Gazing absently ahead of her.", "Loyce leaped. He hit the pavement with terrific force and rolled against\n the curb. Pain lapped over him. Pain and a vast tide of blackness.\n Desperately, he fought it off. He struggled to his knees and then slid\n down again. The bus had stopped. People were getting off.\n\n\n Loyce groped around. His fingers closed over something. A rock, lying in\n the gutter. He crawled to his feet, grunting with pain. A shape loomed\n before him. A man, the bright-eyed man with the book.\n\n\n Loyce kicked. The man gasped and fell. Loyce brought the rock down. The\n man screamed and tried to roll away. \"\nStop!\nFor God's sake listen—\"", "Hope flickered in Loyce. They weren't omnipotent. They had made a\n mistake, not got control of him. Their net, their field of control, had\n passed over him. He had emerged from his cellar as he had gone down.\n Apparently their power-zone was limited.\n\n\n A few seats down the aisle a man was watching him. Loyce broke off his\n chain of thought. A slender man, with dark hair and a small mustache.\n Well-dressed, brown suit and shiny shoes. A book between his small\n hands. He was watching Loyce, studying him intently. He turned quickly\n away.\n\n\n Loyce tensed. One of\nthem\n? Or—another they had missed?\n\n\n The man was watching him again. Small dark eyes, alive and clever.\n Shrewd. A man too shrewd for them—or one of the things itself, an alien\n insect from beyond.", "\"I'm going nuts,\" Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and\n crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him.\n He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.\n\n\n The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray\n suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never\n seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and\n in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin\n was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A\n pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His\n eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue.", "Loyce fought his way through the people. He stumbled and half fell.\n Through a blur he saw rows of faces, curious, concerned, anxious. Men\n and women halting to see what the disturbance was. He fought past them\n toward his store. He could see Fergusson inside talking to a man,\n showing him an Emerson TV set. Pete Foley in the back at the service\n counter, setting up a new Philco. Loyce shouted at them frantically.\n His voice was lost in the roar of traffic and the murmur around him.\n\n\n \"Do something!\" he screamed. \"Don't stand there! Do something!\n Something's wrong! Something's happened! Things are going on!\"\n\n\n The crowd melted respectfully for the two heavy-set cops moving\n efficiently toward Loyce.\n\"Name?\" the cop with the notebook murmured.\n\n\n \"Loyce.\" He mopped his forehead wearily. \"Edward C. Loyce. Listen to me.\n Back there—\"", "Ed Loyce grinned weakly. \"Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep\n end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like\n the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking\n over.\" He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands\n shaking. \"I'm glad to know it's on the level.\"\n\n\n \"It's on the level.\" The police car was getting near the Hall of\n Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights\n had not yet come on.\n\n\n \"I feel better,\" Loyce said. \"I was pretty excited there, for a minute.\n I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there's no need to\n take me in, is there?\"\n\n\n The two cops said nothing.", "\"For Heaven's sake,\" Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea\n and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with\n revulsion—and fear.\nWhy?\nWho was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean?\n\n\n And—why didn't anybody notice?\n\n\n He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. \"Watch it!\" the\n man grated, \"Oh, it's you, Ed.\"\n\n\n Ed nodded dazedly. \"Hello, Jenkins.\"\n\n\n \"What's the matter?\" The stationery clerk caught Ed's arm. \"You look\n sick.\"\n\n\n \"The body. There in the park.\"\n\n\n \"Sure, Ed.\" Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND\n SERVICE. \"Take it easy.\"", "\"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the\n lamppost. I don't understand that.\nWhy?\nWhy did they deliberately hang\n him there?\"\n\n\n \"That would seem simple.\" The Commissioner smiled faintly. \"\nBait.\n\"\n\n\n Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. \"Bait? What do you mean?\"\n\n\n \"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was\n under control—and who had escaped.\"\n\n\n Loyce recoiled with horror. \"Then they\nexpected\nfailures! They\n anticipated—\" He broke off. \"They were ready with a trap.\"\n\n\n \"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known.\" The\n Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. \"Come along, Loyce. There's\n a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste.\"", "Loyce opened the door. For a brief second he looked back at his wife and\n son. Then he slammed the door behind him and raced down the porch steps.\n\n\n A moment later he was on his way, hurrying swiftly through the darkness\n toward the edge of town.\nThe early morning sunlight was blinding. Loyce halted, gasping for\n breath, swaying back and forth. Sweat ran down in his eyes. His clothing\n was torn, shredded by the brush and thorns through which he had crawled.\n Ten miles—on his hands and knees. Crawling, creeping through the night.\n His shoes were mud-caked. He was scratched and limping, utterly\n exhausted.\n\n\n But ahead of him lay Oak Grove.", "It didn't seem possible. What he saw descending from the black chasm\n weren't men. They were alien—from some other world, some other\n dimension. Sliding through this slit, this break in the shell of the\n universe. Entering through this gap, winged insects from another realm\n of being.\n\n\n On the steps of the City Hall a group of men broke up. A few moved\n toward a waiting car. One of the remaining shapes started to re-enter\n the City Hall. It changed its mind and turned to follow the others.\n\n\n Loyce closed his eyes in horror. His senses reeled. He hung on tight,\n clutching at the sagging fence. The shape, the man-shape, had abruptly\n fluttered up and flapped after the others. It flew to the sidewalk and\n came to rest among them.", "A high school boy in jeans and black jacket.\n\n\n A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with\n packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness.\n\n\n Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to\n their families. To dinner.\n\n\n Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask\n of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their\n town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in\n his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked.\n They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof.\n\n\n Maybe there were others.", "He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and\n fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything\n receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from\n Pikeville.\n\n\n A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in\n wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a\n gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens\n pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string.\n\n\n The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up\n to the station. \"Thank God.\" He caught hold of the wall. \"I didn't think\n I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear\n them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me.\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\" the attendant demanded. \"You in a wreck? A hold-up?\"" ], [ "He was seeing—them.\nFor a long time Loyce watched, crouched behind a sagging fence in a pool\n of scummy water.\n\n\n They were landing. Coming down in groups, landing on the roof of the\n City Hall and disappearing inside. They had wings. Like giant insects of\n some kind. They flew and fluttered and came to rest—and then crawled\n crab-fashion, sideways, across the roof and into the building.\n\n\n He was sickened. And fascinated. Cold night wind blew around him and he\n shuddered. He was tired, dazed with shock. On the front steps of the\n City Hall were men, standing here and there. Groups of men coming out of\n the building and halting for a moment before going on.\n\n\n Were there more of them?", "A high school boy in jeans and black jacket.\n\n\n A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with\n packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness.\n\n\n Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to\n their families. To dinner.\n\n\n Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask\n of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their\n town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in\n his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked.\n They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof.\n\n\n Maybe there were others.", "It didn't seem possible. What he saw descending from the black chasm\n weren't men. They were alien—from some other world, some other\n dimension. Sliding through this slit, this break in the shell of the\n universe. Entering through this gap, winged insects from another realm\n of being.\n\n\n On the steps of the City Hall a group of men broke up. A few moved\n toward a waiting car. One of the remaining shapes started to re-enter\n the City Hall. It changed its mind and turned to follow the others.\n\n\n Loyce closed his eyes in horror. His senses reeled. He hung on tight,\n clutching at the sagging fence. The shape, the man-shape, had abruptly\n fluttered up and flapped after the others. It flew to the sidewalk and\n came to rest among them.", "Pseudo-men. Imitation men. Insects with ability to disguise themselves\n as men. Like other insects familiar to Earth. Protective coloration.\n Mimicry.\n\n\n Loyce pulled himself away. He got slowly to his feet. It was night. The\n alley was totally dark. But maybe they could see in the dark. Maybe\n darkness made no difference to them.\n\n\n He left the alley cautiously and moved out onto the street. Men and\n women flowed past, but not so many, now. At the bus-stops stood waiting\n groups. A huge bus lumbered along the street, its lights flashing in the\n evening gloom.", "\"About them. Who they are. They take over one area at a time. Starting\n at the top—the highest level of authority. Working down from there in a\n widening circle. When they're firmly in control they go on to the next\n town. They spread, slowly, very gradually. I think it's been going on\n for a long time.\"\n\n\n \"A long time?\"\n\n\n \"Thousands of years. I don't think it's new.\"\n\n\n \"Why do you say that?\"\n\n\n \"When I was a kid.... A picture they showed us in Bible League. A\n religious picture—an old print. The enemy gods, defeated by Jehovah.\n Moloch, Beelzebub, Moab, Baalin, Ashtaroth—\"\n\n\n \"So?\"\n\n\n \"They were all represented by figures.\" Loyce looked up at the\n Commissioner. \"Beelzebub was represented as—a giant fly.\"", "\"What are you talking about?\"\n\n\n \"We've been invaded. From some other universe, some other dimension.\n They're insects. Mimicry. And more. Power to control minds. Your mind.\"\n\n\n \"My mind?\"\n\n\n \"Their entrance is\nhere\n, in Pikeville. They've taken over all of you.\n The whole town—except me. We're up against an incredibly powerful\n enemy, but they have their limitations. That's our hope. They're\n limited! They can make mistakes!\"\n\n\n Janet shook her head. \"I don't understand, Ed. You must be insane.\"\n\n\n \"Insane? No. Just lucky. If I hadn't been down in the basement I'd be\n like all the rest of you.\" Loyce peered out the window. \"But I can't\n stand here talking. Get your coat.\"\n\n\n \"My coat?\"", "The Commissioner grunted. \"An old struggle.\"\n\n\n \"They've been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They\n make gains—but finally they're defeated.\"\n\n\n \"Why defeated?\"\n\n\n \"They can't get everyone. They didn't get me. And they never got the\n Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The\n realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they\n understood. Had escaped, like I did.\" He clenched his fists. \"I killed\n one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance.\"\n\n\n The Commissioner nodded. \"Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did.\n Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control.\" He\n turned from the window. \"Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured\n everything out.\"", "Hope flickered in Loyce. They weren't omnipotent. They had made a\n mistake, not got control of him. Their net, their field of control, had\n passed over him. He had emerged from his cellar as he had gone down.\n Apparently their power-zone was limited.\n\n\n A few seats down the aisle a man was watching him. Loyce broke off his\n chain of thought. A slender man, with dark hair and a small mustache.\n Well-dressed, brown suit and shiny shoes. A book between his small\n hands. He was watching Loyce, studying him intently. He turned quickly\n away.\n\n\n Loyce tensed. One of\nthem\n? Or—another they had missed?\n\n\n The man was watching him again. Small dark eyes, alive and clever.\n Shrewd. A man too shrewd for them—or one of the things itself, an alien\n insect from beyond.", "Something lapped through his mind. A wall of force, energy, an alien\n mind probing into him. He was suddenly paralyzed. The mind entered his\n own, touched against him briefly, shockingly. An utterly alien presence,\n settling over him—and then it flickered out as the thing collapsed in a\n broken heap on the rug.\n\n\n It was dead. He turned it over with his foot. It was an insect, a fly of\n some kind. Yellow T-shirt, jeans. His son Jimmy.... He closed his mind\n tight. It was too late to think about that. Savagely he scooped up his\n knife and headed toward the door. Janet and Tommy stood stone-still,\n neither of them moving.\n\n\n The car was out. He'd never get through. They'd be waiting for him. It\n was ten miles on foot. Ten long miles over rough ground, gulleys and\n open fields and hills of uncut forest. He'd have to go alone.", "\"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the\n lamppost. I don't understand that.\nWhy?\nWhy did they deliberately hang\n him there?\"\n\n\n \"That would seem simple.\" The Commissioner smiled faintly. \"\nBait.\n\"\n\n\n Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. \"Bait? What do you mean?\"\n\n\n \"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was\n under control—and who had escaped.\"\n\n\n Loyce recoiled with horror. \"Then they\nexpected\nfailures! They\n anticipated—\" He broke off. \"They were ready with a trap.\"\n\n\n \"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known.\" The\n Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. \"Come along, Loyce. There's\n a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste.\"", "Loyce shook his head wearily. \"They have the whole town. The City Hall\n and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the\n first thing I saw. They've got all the roads blocked. I saw them\n hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond\n them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun\n came up.\"\n\n\n The attendant licked his lip nervously. \"You're out of your head. I\n better get a doctor.\"\n\n\n \"Get me into Oak Grove,\" Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel.\n \"We've got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right\n away.\"\nThey kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had\n finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet.\n He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his\n cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face.", "Above the City Hall was a patch of darkness, a cone of gloom denser than\n the surrounding night. A prism of black that spread out and was lost\n into the sky.\n\n\n He listened. Good God, he could hear something. Something that made him\n struggle frantically to close his ears, his mind, to shut out the sound.\n A buzzing. A distant, muted hum like a great swarm of bees.\n\n\n Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over\n the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid.\nIn the vortex\n something moved.\nFlickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky,\n pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense\n swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof.\n\n\n Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that\n hung above him.", "Mason approached it warily. He wanted to get home. He was tired and\n hungry. He thought of his wife, his kids, a hot meal on the dinner\n table. But there was something about the dark bundle, something ominous\n and ugly. The light was bad; he couldn't tell what it was. Yet it drew\n him on, made him move closer for a better look. The shapeless thing made\n him uneasy. He was frightened by it. Frightened—and fascinated.\n\n\n And the strange part was that nobody else seemed to notice it.", "He heard the buzz. And dropped instantly, the long butcher knife out.\n Sickened, he saw it coming down the stairs at him, wings a blur of\n motion as it aimed itself. It still bore a vague resemblance to Jimmy.\n It was small, a baby one. A brief glimpse—the thing hurtling at him,\n cold, multi-lensed inhuman eyes. Wings, body still clothed in yellow\n T-shirt and jeans, the mimic outline still stamped on it. A strange\n half-turn of its body as it reached him. What was it doing?\n\n\n A stinger.\n\n\n Loyce stabbed wildly at it. It retreated, buzzing frantically. Loyce\n rolled and crawled toward the door. Tommy and Janet stood still as\n statues, faces blank. Watching without expression. Loyce stabbed again.\n This time the knife connected. The thing shrieked and faltered. It\n bounced against the wall and fluttered down.", "\"You don't believe me,\" Loyce said.\n\n\n The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently\n away. \"Suit yourself.\" The Commissioner moved over to the window and\n stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. \"I believe you,\"\n he said abruptly.\n\n\n Loyce sagged. \"Thank God.\"\n\n\n \"So you got away.\" The Commissioner shook his head. \"You were down in\n your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million.\"\n\n\n Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. \"I have a\n theory,\" he murmured.\n\n\n \"What is it?\"", "He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and\n fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything\n receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from\n Pikeville.\n\n\n A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in\n wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a\n gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens\n pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string.\n\n\n The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up\n to the station. \"Thank God.\" He caught hold of the wall. \"I didn't think\n I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear\n them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me.\"\n\n\n \"What happened?\" the attendant demanded. \"You in a wreck? A hold-up?\"", "He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and\n ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street\n light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars.\n\n\n And to his right—the police station.\n\n\n He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery\n store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred\n windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the\n darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to\n keep moving, get farther away from them.\nThem?\nLoyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the\n City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass\n and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark\n windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance.\n\n\n And—something else.", "\"Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame.\n Why? What has that to do with—\"\n\n\n \"Was anybody else down there with you?\"\n\n\n \"No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school.\" Loyce looked from\n one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flicked across his face, wild hope.\n \"You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn't\n get in on it? Like everybody else?\"\n\n\n After a pause the cop with the notebook said: \"That's right. You missed\n the explanation.\"\n\n\n \"Then it's official? The body—it's\nsupposed\nto be hanging there?\"\n\n\n \"It's supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see.\"", "He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man's voice cut off and\n dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others\n were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk,\n up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were\n bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed\n man who had come after him.\n\n\n Had he made a mistake?\n\n\n But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from\n them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between\n their world and his.\n\"Ed!\" Janet Loyce backed away nervously. \"What is it? What—\"\n\n\n Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room.\n \"Pull down the shades. Quick.\"\n\n\n Janet moved toward the window. \"But—\"", "\"I'm going nuts,\" Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and\n crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him.\n He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.\n\n\n The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray\n suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never\n seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and\n in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin\n was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A\n pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His\n eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue." ] ]
test	51193	[ "What is this story about?", "Of the following options, who would most enjoy reading this story?", "What traits best describe Jacob Luke?", "What does Jacob Luke do?", "How did the tone change throughout the passage?", "What would've happened if Nathen had different leisurely interests?", "What was the relationship like between Nathen and his assistant?", "What is one moral one could draw from the story?" ]	[ [ "Communicating with faraway aliens", "Encountering an alien army", "Contacting and meeting aliens", "Mankind learning there were already aliens on the planet" ], [ "A teen who likes reading about intergalactic politics", "A college student who likes reading mysteries with a sci-fi theme", "A college student who likes reading about sci-fi space technology explanations", "A teen who likes reading about intergalactic war" ], [ "Apprehensive and socially-adept", "Socially-inept and kind", "Socially-adept and brave", "Socially-inept and funny" ], [ "He's a scientist who works with the Communications Department", "He's a reporter who speaks with Nathen's assistant", "He's a reporter who communicates with Nathen", "He's a scientist who works with Nathen" ], [ "It went from excited to nervous", "It went from calm to frenzied", "It went from chaotic to calm", "It went from humorous to frenzied" ], [ "Nothing would have changed, his hobbies don't impact his career", "Nathen would have stopped the communication from reaching Earth", "He would have had a better family life", "None of the events of the passage would have occurred" ], [ "They were just coworkers, based on what we know from the passage", "They were family, they're first cousins who grew up together", "They were friends, they met in high school and share similar interests", "They were lovers, they fell in love working together" ], [ "Things may not be what they seem", "Go with the flow", "Enjoy life for what good things come from it", "Don't try to force things that shouldn't be forced" ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "The\nTimes\nsat down on the edge of the platform beside him and took\n out a pack of cigarettes, then remembered the coming TV broadcast\n and the ban on smoking. He put them away, thoughtfully watching the\n diminishing rain spray against the streaming windows.\n\n\n \"What's wrong?\" he asked.\n\n\n Nathen showed that he was aware and friendly by a slight motion of his\n head.\n\n\n \"\nYou\ntell me.\"\n\n\n \"Hunch,\" said the\nTimes\nman. \"Sheer hunch. Everything sailing along\n too smoothly, everyone taking too much for granted.\"\n\n\n Nathen relaxed slightly. \"I'm still listening.\"\n\n\n \"Something about the way they move....\"\n\n\n Nathen shifted to glance at him.\n\n\n \"That's bothered me, too.\"\n\n\n \"Are you sure they're adjusted to the right speed?\"", "The tableau held, the uniformed one drooping, looking down at his hand\n holding the weapon which had killed, and music began to build in from\n the background. Just for an instant, the room and the things within\n it flashed into one of those bewildering color changes which were the\n bane of color television, and switched to a color negative of itself, a\n green man standing in a violet control room, looking down at the body\n of a green man in a red tunic. It held for less than a second; then the\n color band alternator fell back into phase and the colors reversed to\n normal.\n\n\n Another uniformed man came and took the weapon from the limp hand of\n the other, who began to explain dejectedly in a low voice while the\n music mounted and covered his words and the screen slowly went blank,\n like a window that slowly filmed over with gray fog.\n\n\n The music faded.\n\n\n In the dark, someone clapped appreciatively.", "They waited.\nAll the people in the room were waiting. There was no more\n conversation. A bald man of the scientist group was automatically\n buffing his fingernails over and over and inspecting them without\n seeing them, another absently polished his glasses, held them up to\n the light, put them on, and then a moment later took them off and began\n polishing again. The television crew concentrated on their jobs, moving\n quietly and efficiently, with perfectionist care, minutely arranging\n things which did not need to be arranged, checking things that had\n already been checked.\n\n\n This was to be one of the great moments of human history, and they were\n all trying to forget that fact and remain impassive and wrapped up in\n the problems of their jobs as good specialists should.\n\n\n After an interminable age the\nTimes\nconsulted his watch. Three\n minutes had passed. He tried holding his breath a moment, listening for\n a distant approaching thunder of jets. There was no sound.", "Controlled tension, betraying itself by a jerk of the hands, a\n too-quick answer to a question. The uniformed one, not suspicious,\n turned his back, busying himself at some task involving a map lit with\n glowing red points, his motions sharing the same fluid dragging grace\n of the others, as if they were underwater, or on a slow motion film.\n The other was watching a switch, a switch set into a panel, moving\n closer to it, talking casually—background music coming and rising in\n thin chords of tension.", "\"It's dark,\" the thin Intelligence Department decoder translated,\n low-voiced, to the man from the\nTimes\n. \"Your atmosphere is\nthick\n.\n That's precisely what Bud said.\"\n\n\n Another three minutes. The\nTimes\ncaught himself about to light a\n cigarette and swore silently, blowing the match out and putting the\n cigarette back into its package. He listened for the sound of the\n rocket jets. It was time for the landing, yet he heard no blasts.\n\n\n The green light came on in the transceiver.\n\n\n Message in.\n\n\n Instinctively he came to his feet. Nathen abruptly was standing beside\n him. Then the message came in the voice he was coming to think of as\n Bud. It spoke and paused. Suddenly the\nTimes\nknew.\n\n\n \"We've landed.\" Nathen whispered the words.", "\"Tell me what to do and I'll do it,\" Nathen said quietly, not moving.\n\n\n It was not sarcasm. Jacob Luke of the\nTimes\nlooked sidewise at the\n strained whiteness of his face, and moderated his tone. \"Can't you\n contact them?\"\n\n\n \"Not while they're landing.\"\n\n\n \"What now?\" The\nTimes\ntook out a pack of cigarettes, remembered the\n rule against smoking, and put it back.\n\n\n \"We just wait.\" Nathen leaned his elbow on one knee and his chin in his\n hand.", "The listening officer frowned and cleared his throat, and the thin\n young man turned to him quickly. \"No security reason why they should\n not see the broadcasts, is there? Perhaps you should show them.\" He\n said to the reporters reassuringly, \"It's right down the hall. You\n will be informed the moment the spaceship approaches.\"\n\n\n The interview was very definitely over. The lank-haired, nervous young\n man turned away and seated himself at the radio set while the officer\n swallowed his objections and showed them dourly down the hall to a\n closed door.\n\n\n They opened it and fumbled into a darkened room crowded with empty\n folding chairs, dominated by a glowing bright screen. The door closed\n behind them, bringing total darkness.\n\n\n There was the sound of reporters fumbling their way into seats around\n him, but the\nTimes\nman remained standing, aware of an enormous\n surprise, as if he had been asleep and wakened to find himself in the\n wrong country.", "The wind blew across the open spaces of white concrete and damp soil\n that was the empty airfield, swaying the wet, shiny grass. The people\n in the room looked out, listening for the roar of jets, looking for the\n silver bulk of a spaceship in the sky.\n\n\n Nathen moved, seating himself at the transmitter, switching it on to\n warm up, checking and balancing dials. Jacob Luke of the\nTimes\nmoved\n softly to stand behind his right shoulder, hoping he could be useful.\n Nathen made a half motion of his head, as if to glance back at him,\n unhooked two of the earphone sets hanging on the side of the tall\n streamlined box that was the automatic translator, plugged them in and\n handed one back over his shoulder to the\nTimes\nman.\n\n\n The voice began to come from the speaker again.", "There was some fumbling in the semi-dark and then the screen came to\n life again.\nIt showed a flash of an audience sitting before a screen and gave a\n clipped chord of some familiar symphony. \"Crazy about Stravinsky and\n Mozart,\" remarked the earphoned linguist to the\nTimes\n, resettling his\n earphones. \"Can't stand Gershwin. Can you beat that?\" He turned his\n attention back to the screen as the right sequence came on.\n\n\n The\nPost\n, who was sitting just in front of him, turned to the\nTimes\nand said, \"Funny how much they look like people.\" He was writing,\n making notes to telephone his report. \"What color hair did that\n character have?\"", "\"Likewise.\" The\nTimes\nsmiled. \"Look, have you gone into this\n rationally, with formulas?\" He found a pencil in his pocket.\n \"Obviously there's something wrong with our judgment of their\n weight-to-speed-to-momentum ratio. Maybe it's something simple like low\n gravity aboard ship, with magnetic shoes. Maybe they\nare\nfloating\n slightly.\"\n\n\n \"Why worry?\" Nathen cut in. \"I don't see any reason to try to figure it\n out now.\" He laughed and shoved back his black hair nervously. \"We'll\n see them in twenty minutes.\"\n\n\n \"Will we?\" asked the\nTimes\nslowly.\n\n\n There was a silence while the Senator turned a page of his magazine\n with a slight crackling of paper, and the scientists argued at the\n other end of the room. Nathen pushed at his lank black hair again, as\n if it were trying to fall forward in front of his eyes and keep him\n from seeing.", "Security regulations had changed since arms inspection had been\n legalized by the U.N. Complete information being the only public\n security against secret rearmament, spying and prying had come to seem\n a public service. Its aura had changed. It was good public relations to\n admit to it.\n\n\n Nathen continued, \"I started directing the pickup at stars in my\n spare time. There's radio noise from stars, you know. Just stuff that\n sounds like spatter static, and an occasional squawk. People have been\n listening to it for a long time, and researching, trying to work out\n why stellar radiation on those bands comes in such jagged bursts. It\n didn't seem natural.\"\n\n\n He paused and smiled uncertainly, aware that the next thing he would\n say was the thing that would make him famous—an idea that had come to\n him while he listened—an idea as simple and as perfect as the one that\n came to Newton when he saw the apple fall.", "The green light glowed on the set again, and they stopped speaking,\n waiting for the message to be recorded, slowed and replayed. The\n cathode screen came to life suddenly with a picture of the young man\n sitting at his sending-set, his back turned, watching a screen at one\n side which showed a glimpse of a huge dark plain approaching. As the\n ship plunged down toward it, the illusion of solidity melted into a\n boiling turbulence of black clouds. They expanded in an inky swirl,\n looked huge for an instant, and then blackness swallowed the screen.\n The young alien swung around to face the camera, speaking a few words\n as he moved, made the O of a smile again, then flipped the switch and\n the screen went gray.\n\n\n Nathen's voice was suddenly toneless and strained. \"He said something\n like break out the drinks, here they come.\"", "There was no lead in this direction, and they had to get the basic\n facts of the story before the ship came. The\nTimes\nasked, \"What led\n up to your contacting them?\"\n\n\n Nathen answered after a hesitation. \"Static. Radio static. The Army\n told you my job, didn't they?\"\nThe Army had told them nothing at all. The officer who had conducted\n them in for the interview stood glowering watchfully, as if he objected\n by instinct to telling anything to the public.\n\n\n Nathen glanced at him doubtfully. \"My job is radio decoder for the\n Department of Military Intelligence. I use a directional pickup, tune\n in on foreign bands, record any scrambled or coded messages I hear, and\n build automatic decoders and descramblers for all the basic scramble\n patterns.\"\n\n\n The officer cleared his throat, but said nothing.\n\n\n The reporters smiled, noting that down.", "\"I decided it wasn't natural. I tried decoding it.\"\n\n\n Hurriedly he tried to explain it away and make it seem obvious. \"You\n see, there's an old intelligence trick, speeding up a message on a\n record until it sounds just like that, a short squawk of static, and\n then broadcasting it. Undergrounds use it. I'd heard that kind of\n screech before.\"\n\n\n \"You mean they broadcast at us in code?\" asked the\nNews\n.", "There was a closeup of the alien's face watching the switch, and the\nTimes\nnoted that his ears were symmetrically half-circles, almost\n perfect with no earholes visible. The voice of the uniformed one\n answered, a brief word in a preoccupied deep voice. His back was still\n turned. The other glanced at the switch, moving closer to it, talking\n casually, the switch coming closer and closer stereoscopically. It was\n in reach, filling the screen. His hand came into view, darting out,\n closed over the switch—\n\n\n There was a sharp clap of sound and his hand opened in a frozen\n shape of pain. Beyond him, as his gaze swung up, stood the figure of\n the uniformed officer, unmoving, a weapon rigid in his hand, in the\n startled position in which he had turned and fired, watching with\n widening eyes as the man in the green tunic swayed and fell.", "Mellerdrammer.\n\n\n The second, smaller, with yellowish-green eyes, stepped closer, talking\n more rapidly in a lower voice. The first stood very still, not trying\n to interrupt.\n\n\n Obviously, the proposal was some advantageous treachery, and he wanted\n to be persuaded. The\nTimes\ngroped for a chair and sat down.\n\n\n Perhaps gesture is universal; desire and aversion, a leaning forward or\n a leaning back, tension, relaxation. Perhaps these actors were masters.\n The scenes changed, a corridor, a parklike place in what he began to\n realize was a spaceship, a lecture room. There were others talking\n and working, speaking to the man in the green tunic, and never was it\n unclear what was happening or how they felt.\n\n\n They talked a flowing language with many short vowels and shifts of\n pitch, and they gestured in the heat of talk, their hands moving with\n an odd lagging difference of motion, not slow, but somehow drifting.", "On the other side of the glowing window that was the stereo screen, the\n large protagonist in the green tunic was speaking to a pilot in a gray\n uniform. They stood in a brightly lit canary-yellow control room in a\n spaceship.\n\n\n The\nTimes\ntried to pick up the thread of the plot. Already he was\n interested in the fate of the hero, and liked him. That was the effect\n of good acting, probably, for part of the art of acting is to win\n affection from the audience, and this actor might be the matinee idol\n of whole solar systems.", "He walked over and touched the set. The speaker bipped slightly and\n the gray screen flickered with a flash of color at the touch. The set\n was awake and sensitive, tuned to receive from the great interstellar\n spaceship which now circled the atmosphere.\n\n\n \"We wondered why there were so many bands, but when we got the set\n working, and started recording and playing everything that came in, we\n found we'd tapped something like a lending library line. It was all\n fiction, plays.\"\n\n\n Between the pauses in Nathen's voice, the\nTimes\nfound himself\n unconsciously listening for the sound of roaring, swiftly approaching\n rocket jets.\n\n\n The\nPost\nasked, \"How did you contact the spaceship?\"", "He ignored the language, but after a time the difference in motion\n began to arouse his interest. Something in the way they walked....\n\n\n With an effort he pulled his mind from the plot and forced his\n attention to the physical difference. Brown hair in short silky crew\n cuts, varied eye colors, the colors showing clearly because their\n irises were very large, their round eyes set very widely apart in\n tapering light-brown faces. Their necks and shoulders were thick in a\n way that would indicate unusual strength for a human, but their wrists\n were narrow and their fingers long and thin and delicate.\n\n\n There seemed to be more than the usual number of fingers.", "A stray phrase reached him: \"—reference to the universal constants as\n ratio—\" It was probably a discussion of ways of converting formulas\n from one mathematics to another for a rapid exchange of information.\n\n\n They had reason to be intent, aware of the flood of insights that novel\n viewpoints could bring, if they could grasp them. He would have liked\n to go over and listen, but there was too little time left before the\n spaceship was due, and he had a question to ask.\nThe hand-rigged transceiver was still humming, tuned to the sending\n band of the circling ship, and the young man who had started it all\n was sitting on the edge of the TV platform with his chin resting in\n one hand. He did not look up as the\nTimes\napproached, but it was the\n indifference of preoccupation, not discourtesy." ], [ "\"It would take something like that,\" the\nTimes\nagreed. They smiled at\n each other.\n\n\n The\nNews\nasked, \"How did you happen to pick up television instead of\n voices?\"\n\n\n \"Not by accident,\" Nathen explained patiently. \"I'd recognized a\n scanning pattern, and I wanted pictures. Pictures are understandable in\n any language.\"\nNear the interviewers, a Senator paced back and forth, muttering\n his memorized speech of welcome and nervously glancing out the wide\n streaming windows into the gray sleeting rain.", "On the other side of the glowing window that was the stereo screen, the\n large protagonist in the green tunic was speaking to a pilot in a gray\n uniform. They stood in a brightly lit canary-yellow control room in a\n spaceship.\n\n\n The\nTimes\ntried to pick up the thread of the plot. Already he was\n interested in the fate of the hero, and liked him. That was the effect\n of good acting, probably, for part of the art of acting is to win\n affection from the audience, and this actor might be the matinee idol\n of whole solar systems.", "There was some fumbling in the semi-dark and then the screen came to\n life again.\nIt showed a flash of an audience sitting before a screen and gave a\n clipped chord of some familiar symphony. \"Crazy about Stravinsky and\n Mozart,\" remarked the earphoned linguist to the\nTimes\n, resettling his\n earphones. \"Can't stand Gershwin. Can you beat that?\" He turned his\n attention back to the screen as the right sequence came on.\n\n\n The\nPost\n, who was sitting just in front of him, turned to the\nTimes\nand said, \"Funny how much they look like people.\" He was writing,\n making notes to telephone his report. \"What color hair did that\n character have?\"", "Mellerdrammer.\n\n\n The second, smaller, with yellowish-green eyes, stepped closer, talking\n more rapidly in a lower voice. The first stood very still, not trying\n to interrupt.\n\n\n Obviously, the proposal was some advantageous treachery, and he wanted\n to be persuaded. The\nTimes\ngroped for a chair and sat down.\n\n\n Perhaps gesture is universal; desire and aversion, a leaning forward or\n a leaning back, tension, relaxation. Perhaps these actors were masters.\n The scenes changed, a corridor, a parklike place in what he began to\n realize was a spaceship, a lecture room. There were others talking\n and working, speaking to the man in the green tunic, and never was it\n unclear what was happening or how they felt.\n\n\n They talked a flowing language with many short vowels and shifts of\n pitch, and they gestured in the heat of talk, their hands moving with\n an odd lagging difference of motion, not slow, but somehow drifting.", "\"Likewise.\" The\nTimes\nsmiled. \"Look, have you gone into this\n rationally, with formulas?\" He found a pencil in his pocket.\n \"Obviously there's something wrong with our judgment of their\n weight-to-speed-to-momentum ratio. Maybe it's something simple like low\n gravity aboard ship, with magnetic shoes. Maybe they\nare\nfloating\n slightly.\"\n\n\n \"Why worry?\" Nathen cut in. \"I don't see any reason to try to figure it\n out now.\" He laughed and shoved back his black hair nervously. \"We'll\n see them in twenty minutes.\"\n\n\n \"Will we?\" asked the\nTimes\nslowly.\n\n\n There was a silence while the Senator turned a page of his magazine\n with a slight crackling of paper, and the scientists argued at the\n other end of the room. Nathen pushed at his lank black hair again, as\n if it were trying to fall forward in front of his eyes and keep him\n from seeing.", "The listening officer frowned and cleared his throat, and the thin\n young man turned to him quickly. \"No security reason why they should\n not see the broadcasts, is there? Perhaps you should show them.\" He\n said to the reporters reassuringly, \"It's right down the hall. You\n will be informed the moment the spaceship approaches.\"\n\n\n The interview was very definitely over. The lank-haired, nervous young\n man turned away and seated himself at the radio set while the officer\n swallowed his objections and showed them dourly down the hall to a\n closed door.\n\n\n They opened it and fumbled into a darkened room crowded with empty\n folding chairs, dominated by a glowing bright screen. The door closed\n behind them, bringing total darkness.\n\n\n There was the sound of reporters fumbling their way into seats around\n him, but the\nTimes\nman remained standing, aware of an enormous\n surprise, as if he had been asleep and wakened to find himself in the\n wrong country.", "Controlled tension, betraying itself by a jerk of the hands, a\n too-quick answer to a question. The uniformed one, not suspicious,\n turned his back, busying himself at some task involving a map lit with\n glowing red points, his motions sharing the same fluid dragging grace\n of the others, as if they were underwater, or on a slow motion film.\n The other was watching a switch, a switch set into a panel, moving\n closer to it, talking casually—background music coming and rising in\n thin chords of tension.", "The\nTimes\nsat down on the edge of the platform beside him and took\n out a pack of cigarettes, then remembered the coming TV broadcast\n and the ban on smoking. He put them away, thoughtfully watching the\n diminishing rain spray against the streaming windows.\n\n\n \"What's wrong?\" he asked.\n\n\n Nathen showed that he was aware and friendly by a slight motion of his\n head.\n\n\n \"\nYou\ntell me.\"\n\n\n \"Hunch,\" said the\nTimes\nman. \"Sheer hunch. Everything sailing along\n too smoothly, everyone taking too much for granted.\"\n\n\n Nathen relaxed slightly. \"I'm still listening.\"\n\n\n \"Something about the way they move....\"\n\n\n Nathen shifted to glance at him.\n\n\n \"That's bothered me, too.\"\n\n\n \"Are you sure they're adjusted to the right speed?\"", "A stray phrase reached him: \"—reference to the universal constants as\n ratio—\" It was probably a discussion of ways of converting formulas\n from one mathematics to another for a rapid exchange of information.\n\n\n They had reason to be intent, aware of the flood of insights that novel\n viewpoints could bring, if they could grasp them. He would have liked\n to go over and listen, but there was too little time left before the\n spaceship was due, and he had a question to ask.\nThe hand-rigged transceiver was still humming, tuned to the sending\n band of the circling ship, and the young man who had started it all\n was sitting on the edge of the TV platform with his chin resting in\n one hand. He did not look up as the\nTimes\napproached, but it was the\n indifference of preoccupation, not discourtesy.", "The\nTimes\nman stood with the others, listening absently, thinking of\n questions, but reserving them. Joseph R. Nathen, the thin young man\n with the straight black hair and the tired lines on his face, was being\n treated with respect by his interviewers. He was obviously on edge, and\n they did not want to harry him with too many questions to answer at\n once. They wanted to keep his good will. Tomorrow he would be one of\n the biggest celebrities ever to appear in headlines.\n\n\n \"No, nothing directly.\"\n\n\n \"Any ideas or deductions?\"\nHerald\npersisted.\n\n\n \"Their world must be Earth-like to them,\" the weary-looking young man\n answered uncertainly. \"The environment evolves the animal. But only in\n relative terms, of course.\" He looked at them with a quick glance and\n then looked away evasively, his lank black hair beginning to cling to\n his forehead with sweat. \"That doesn't necessarily mean anything.\"", "The wind blew across the open spaces of white concrete and damp soil\n that was the empty airfield, swaying the wet, shiny grass. The people\n in the room looked out, listening for the roar of jets, looking for the\n silver bulk of a spaceship in the sky.\n\n\n Nathen moved, seating himself at the transmitter, switching it on to\n warm up, checking and balancing dials. Jacob Luke of the\nTimes\nmoved\n softly to stand behind his right shoulder, hoping he could be useful.\n Nathen made a half motion of his head, as if to glance back at him,\n unhooked two of the earphone sets hanging on the side of the tall\n streamlined box that was the automatic translator, plugged them in and\n handed one back over his shoulder to the\nTimes\nman.\n\n\n The voice began to come from the speaker again.", "The sun came out from behind the clouds and lit up the field like a\n great spotlight on an empty stage.\n\n\n Abruptly the green light shone on the set again, indicating that a\n squawk message had been received. The recorder recorded it, slowed it\n and fed it back to the speaker. It clicked and the sound was very loud\n in the still, tense room.\n\n\n The screen remained gray, but Bud's voice spoke a few words in the\n alien language. He stopped, the speaker clicked and the light went out.\n When it was plain that nothing more would occur and no announcement was\n to be made of what was said, the people in the room turned back to the\n windows, talk picked up again.\n\n\n Somebody told a joke and laughed alone.\n\n\n One of the linguists remained turned toward the loudspeaker, then\n looked at the widening patches of blue sky showing out the window, his\n expression puzzled. He had understood.", "Since he came in, a machine had been whirring and a voice muttering\n beside him. He called his attention from counting their fingers and\n looked around. Beside him sat an alert-looking man wearing earphones,\n watching and listening with hawklike concentration. Beside him was a\n tall streamlined box. From the screen came the sound of the alien\n language. The man abruptly flipped a switch on the box, muttered a word\n into a small hand-microphone and flipped the switch back with nervous\n rapidity.\n\n\n He reminded the\nTimes\nman of the earphoned interpreters at the UN.\n The machine was probably a vocal translator and the mutterer a linguist\n adding to its vocabulary. Near the screen were two other linguists\n taking notes.\nThe\nTimes\nremembered the Senator pacing in the observatory room,\n rehearsing his speech of welcome. The speech would not be just\n the empty pompous gesture he had expected. It would be translated\n mechanically and understood by the aliens.", "The green light glowed on the set again, and they stopped speaking,\n waiting for the message to be recorded, slowed and replayed. The\n cathode screen came to life suddenly with a picture of the young man\n sitting at his sending-set, his back turned, watching a screen at one\n side which showed a glimpse of a huge dark plain approaching. As the\n ship plunged down toward it, the illusion of solidity melted into a\n boiling turbulence of black clouds. They expanded in an inky swirl,\n looked huge for an instant, and then blackness swallowed the screen.\n The young alien swung around to face the camera, speaking a few words\n as he moved, made the O of a smile again, then flipped the switch and\n the screen went gray.\n\n\n Nathen's voice was suddenly toneless and strained. \"He said something\n like break out the drinks, here they come.\"", "Hastily, Jacob Luke fitted the earphones over his ears. He fancied he\n could hear Bud's voice tremble. For a moment it was just Bud's voice\n speaking the alien language, and then, very distant and clear in his\n earphones, he heard the recorded voice of the linguist say an English\n word, then a mechanical click and another clear word in the voice of\n one of the other translators, then another as the alien's voice flowed\n from the loudspeaker, the cool single words barely audible, overlapping\n and blending with it like translating thought, skipping unfamiliar\n words, yet quite astonishingly clear.\n\n\n \"Radar shows no buildings or civilization near. The atmosphere around\n us registers as thick as glue. Tremendous gas pressure, low gravity,\n no light at all. You didn't describe it like this. Where are you, Joe?\n This isn't some kind of trick, is it?\" Bud hesitated, was prompted by a\n deeper official voice and jerked out the words.", "Pictures Don't Lie\nBy KATHERINE MacLEAN\n\n\n Illustrated by MARTIN SCHNEIDER\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n... Pictures, that is, that one can test and measure.\n\n And these pictures positively, absolutely could not lie!\nThe man from the\nNews\nasked, \"What do you think of the aliens, Mister\n Nathen? Are they friendly? Do they look human?\"\n\n\n \"Very human,\" said the thin young man.", "\"Tell me what to do and I'll do it,\" Nathen said quietly, not moving.\n\n\n It was not sarcasm. Jacob Luke of the\nTimes\nlooked sidewise at the\n strained whiteness of his face, and moderated his tone. \"Can't you\n contact them?\"\n\n\n \"Not while they're landing.\"\n\n\n \"What now?\" The\nTimes\ntook out a pack of cigarettes, remembered the\n rule against smoking, and put it back.\n\n\n \"We just wait.\" Nathen leaned his elbow on one knee and his chin in his\n hand.", "Nathen clenched his hands out in front of him and looked at them\n consideringly. \"I don't know. When I turn the tape faster, they're all\n rushing, and you begin to wonder why their clothes don't stream behind\n them, why the doors close so quickly and yet you can't hear them slam,\n why things fall so fast. If I turn it slower, they all seem to be\n swimming.\" He gave the\nTimes\na considering sidewise glance. \"Didn't\n catch the name.\"\n\n\n Country-bred guy, thought the\nTimes\n. \"Jacob Luke,\nTimes\n,\" he said,\n extending his hand.\n\n\n Nathen gave the hand a quick, hard grip, identifying the name. \"Sunday\n Science Section editor. I read it. Surprised to meet you here.\"", "The bright colors of the double image seemed the only real thing in the\n darkened room. Even blurred as they were, he could see that the action\n was subtly different, the shapes subtly not right.\nHe was looking at aliens.\nThe impression was of two humans disguised, humans moving oddly,\n half-dancing, half-crippled. Carefully, afraid the images would go\n away, he reached up to his breast pocket, took out his polarized\n glasses, rotated one lens at right angles to the other and put them on.\n\n\n Immediately, the two beings came into sharp focus, real and solid,\n and the screen became a wide, illusively near window through which he\n watched them.\n\n\n They were conversing with each other in a gray-walled room, discussing\n something with restrained excitement. The large man in the green tunic\n closed his purple eyes for an instant at something the other said, and\n grimaced, making a motion with his fingers as if shoving something away\n from him.", "The tableau held, the uniformed one drooping, looking down at his hand\n holding the weapon which had killed, and music began to build in from\n the background. Just for an instant, the room and the things within\n it flashed into one of those bewildering color changes which were the\n bane of color television, and switched to a color negative of itself, a\n green man standing in a violet control room, looking down at the body\n of a green man in a red tunic. It held for less than a second; then the\n color band alternator fell back into phase and the colors reversed to\n normal.\n\n\n Another uniformed man came and took the weapon from the limp hand of\n the other, who began to explain dejectedly in a low voice while the\n music mounted and covered his words and the screen slowly went blank,\n like a window that slowly filmed over with gray fog.\n\n\n The music faded.\n\n\n In the dark, someone clapped appreciatively." ], [ "Hastily, Jacob Luke fitted the earphones over his ears. He fancied he\n could hear Bud's voice tremble. For a moment it was just Bud's voice\n speaking the alien language, and then, very distant and clear in his\n earphones, he heard the recorded voice of the linguist say an English\n word, then a mechanical click and another clear word in the voice of\n one of the other translators, then another as the alien's voice flowed\n from the loudspeaker, the cool single words barely audible, overlapping\n and blending with it like translating thought, skipping unfamiliar\n words, yet quite astonishingly clear.\n\n\n \"Radar shows no buildings or civilization near. The atmosphere around\n us registers as thick as glue. Tremendous gas pressure, low gravity,\n no light at all. You didn't describe it like this. Where are you, Joe?\n This isn't some kind of trick, is it?\" Bud hesitated, was prompted by a\n deeper official voice and jerked out the words.", "\"Tell me what to do and I'll do it,\" Nathen said quietly, not moving.\n\n\n It was not sarcasm. Jacob Luke of the\nTimes\nlooked sidewise at the\n strained whiteness of his face, and moderated his tone. \"Can't you\n contact them?\"\n\n\n \"Not while they're landing.\"\n\n\n \"What now?\" The\nTimes\ntook out a pack of cigarettes, remembered the\n rule against smoking, and put it back.\n\n\n \"We just wait.\" Nathen leaned his elbow on one knee and his chin in his\n hand.", "Nathen clenched his hands out in front of him and looked at them\n consideringly. \"I don't know. When I turn the tape faster, they're all\n rushing, and you begin to wonder why their clothes don't stream behind\n them, why the doors close so quickly and yet you can't hear them slam,\n why things fall so fast. If I turn it slower, they all seem to be\n swimming.\" He gave the\nTimes\na considering sidewise glance. \"Didn't\n catch the name.\"\n\n\n Country-bred guy, thought the\nTimes\n. \"Jacob Luke,\nTimes\n,\" he said,\n extending his hand.\n\n\n Nathen gave the hand a quick, hard grip, identifying the name. \"Sunday\n Science Section editor. I read it. Surprised to meet you here.\"", "The wind blew across the open spaces of white concrete and damp soil\n that was the empty airfield, swaying the wet, shiny grass. The people\n in the room looked out, listening for the roar of jets, looking for the\n silver bulk of a spaceship in the sky.\n\n\n Nathen moved, seating himself at the transmitter, switching it on to\n warm up, checking and balancing dials. Jacob Luke of the\nTimes\nmoved\n softly to stand behind his right shoulder, hoping he could be useful.\n Nathen made a half motion of his head, as if to glance back at him,\n unhooked two of the earphone sets hanging on the side of the tall\n streamlined box that was the automatic translator, plugged them in and\n handed one back over his shoulder to the\nTimes\nman.\n\n\n The voice began to come from the speaker again.", "Controlled tension, betraying itself by a jerk of the hands, a\n too-quick answer to a question. The uniformed one, not suspicious,\n turned his back, busying himself at some task involving a map lit with\n glowing red points, his motions sharing the same fluid dragging grace\n of the others, as if they were underwater, or on a slow motion film.\n The other was watching a switch, a switch set into a panel, moving\n closer to it, talking casually—background music coming and rising in\n thin chords of tension.", "He ignored the language, but after a time the difference in motion\n began to arouse his interest. Something in the way they walked....\n\n\n With an effort he pulled his mind from the plot and forced his\n attention to the physical difference. Brown hair in short silky crew\n cuts, varied eye colors, the colors showing clearly because their\n irises were very large, their round eyes set very widely apart in\n tapering light-brown faces. Their necks and shoulders were thick in a\n way that would indicate unusual strength for a human, but their wrists\n were narrow and their fingers long and thin and delicate.\n\n\n There seemed to be more than the usual number of fingers.", "There was some fumbling in the semi-dark and then the screen came to\n life again.\nIt showed a flash of an audience sitting before a screen and gave a\n clipped chord of some familiar symphony. \"Crazy about Stravinsky and\n Mozart,\" remarked the earphoned linguist to the\nTimes\n, resettling his\n earphones. \"Can't stand Gershwin. Can you beat that?\" He turned his\n attention back to the screen as the right sequence came on.\n\n\n The\nPost\n, who was sitting just in front of him, turned to the\nTimes\nand said, \"Funny how much they look like people.\" He was writing,\n making notes to telephone his report. \"What color hair did that\n character have?\"", "\"Likewise.\" The\nTimes\nsmiled. \"Look, have you gone into this\n rationally, with formulas?\" He found a pencil in his pocket.\n \"Obviously there's something wrong with our judgment of their\n weight-to-speed-to-momentum ratio. Maybe it's something simple like low\n gravity aboard ship, with magnetic shoes. Maybe they\nare\nfloating\n slightly.\"\n\n\n \"Why worry?\" Nathen cut in. \"I don't see any reason to try to figure it\n out now.\" He laughed and shoved back his black hair nervously. \"We'll\n see them in twenty minutes.\"\n\n\n \"Will we?\" asked the\nTimes\nslowly.\n\n\n There was a silence while the Senator turned a page of his magazine\n with a slight crackling of paper, and the scientists argued at the\n other end of the room. Nathen pushed at his lank black hair again, as\n if it were trying to fall forward in front of his eyes and keep him\n from seeing.", "On the other side of the glowing window that was the stereo screen, the\n large protagonist in the green tunic was speaking to a pilot in a gray\n uniform. They stood in a brightly lit canary-yellow control room in a\n spaceship.\n\n\n The\nTimes\ntried to pick up the thread of the plot. Already he was\n interested in the fate of the hero, and liked him. That was the effect\n of good acting, probably, for part of the art of acting is to win\n affection from the audience, and this actor might be the matinee idol\n of whole solar systems.", "The\nTimes\nman stood with the others, listening absently, thinking of\n questions, but reserving them. Joseph R. Nathen, the thin young man\n with the straight black hair and the tired lines on his face, was being\n treated with respect by his interviewers. He was obviously on edge, and\n they did not want to harry him with too many questions to answer at\n once. They wanted to keep his good will. Tomorrow he would be one of\n the biggest celebrities ever to appear in headlines.\n\n\n \"No, nothing directly.\"\n\n\n \"Any ideas or deductions?\"\nHerald\npersisted.\n\n\n \"Their world must be Earth-like to them,\" the weary-looking young man\n answered uncertainly. \"The environment evolves the animal. But only in\n relative terms, of course.\" He looked at them with a quick glance and\n then looked away evasively, his lank black hair beginning to cling to\n his forehead with sweat. \"That doesn't necessarily mean anything.\"", "Mellerdrammer.\n\n\n The second, smaller, with yellowish-green eyes, stepped closer, talking\n more rapidly in a lower voice. The first stood very still, not trying\n to interrupt.\n\n\n Obviously, the proposal was some advantageous treachery, and he wanted\n to be persuaded. The\nTimes\ngroped for a chair and sat down.\n\n\n Perhaps gesture is universal; desire and aversion, a leaning forward or\n a leaning back, tension, relaxation. Perhaps these actors were masters.\n The scenes changed, a corridor, a parklike place in what he began to\n realize was a spaceship, a lecture room. There were others talking\n and working, speaking to the man in the green tunic, and never was it\n unclear what was happening or how they felt.\n\n\n They talked a flowing language with many short vowels and shifts of\n pitch, and they gestured in the heat of talk, their hands moving with\n an odd lagging difference of motion, not slow, but somehow drifting.", "The\nTimes\nsat down on the edge of the platform beside him and took\n out a pack of cigarettes, then remembered the coming TV broadcast\n and the ban on smoking. He put them away, thoughtfully watching the\n diminishing rain spray against the streaming windows.\n\n\n \"What's wrong?\" he asked.\n\n\n Nathen showed that he was aware and friendly by a slight motion of his\n head.\n\n\n \"\nYou\ntell me.\"\n\n\n \"Hunch,\" said the\nTimes\nman. \"Sheer hunch. Everything sailing along\n too smoothly, everyone taking too much for granted.\"\n\n\n Nathen relaxed slightly. \"I'm still listening.\"\n\n\n \"Something about the way they move....\"\n\n\n Nathen shifted to glance at him.\n\n\n \"That's bothered me, too.\"\n\n\n \"Are you sure they're adjusted to the right speed?\"", "A stray phrase reached him: \"—reference to the universal constants as\n ratio—\" It was probably a discussion of ways of converting formulas\n from one mathematics to another for a rapid exchange of information.\n\n\n They had reason to be intent, aware of the flood of insights that novel\n viewpoints could bring, if they could grasp them. He would have liked\n to go over and listen, but there was too little time left before the\n spaceship was due, and he had a question to ask.\nThe hand-rigged transceiver was still humming, tuned to the sending\n band of the circling ship, and the young man who had started it all\n was sitting on the edge of the TV platform with his chin resting in\n one hand. He did not look up as the\nTimes\napproached, but it was the\n indifference of preoccupation, not discourtesy.", "\"Earth-like,\" muttered a reporter, writing it down as if he had noticed\n nothing more in the reply.\n\n\n The\nTimes\nman glanced at the\nHerald\n, wondering if he had noticed,\n and received a quick glance in exchange.\n\n\n The\nHerald\nasked Nathen, \"You think they are dangerous, then?\"\n\n\n It was the kind of question, assuming much, which usually broke\n reticence and brought forth quick facts—when it hit the mark. They all\n knew of the military precautions, although they were not supposed to\n know.\n\n\n The question missed. Nathen glanced out the window vaguely. \"No, I\n wouldn't say so.\"\n\n\n \"You think they are friendly, then?\" said the\nHerald\n, equally\n positive on the opposite tack.\n\n\n A fleeting smile touched Nathen's lips. \"Those I know are.\"", "The green light glowed on the set again, and they stopped speaking,\n waiting for the message to be recorded, slowed and replayed. The\n cathode screen came to life suddenly with a picture of the young man\n sitting at his sending-set, his back turned, watching a screen at one\n side which showed a glimpse of a huge dark plain approaching. As the\n ship plunged down toward it, the illusion of solidity melted into a\n boiling turbulence of black clouds. They expanded in an inky swirl,\n looked huge for an instant, and then blackness swallowed the screen.\n The young alien swung around to face the camera, speaking a few words\n as he moved, made the O of a smile again, then flipped the switch and\n the screen went gray.\n\n\n Nathen's voice was suddenly toneless and strained. \"He said something\n like break out the drinks, here they come.\"", "They waited.\nAll the people in the room were waiting. There was no more\n conversation. A bald man of the scientist group was automatically\n buffing his fingernails over and over and inspecting them without\n seeing them, another absently polished his glasses, held them up to\n the light, put them on, and then a moment later took them off and began\n polishing again. The television crew concentrated on their jobs, moving\n quietly and efficiently, with perfectionist care, minutely arranging\n things which did not need to be arranged, checking things that had\n already been checked.\n\n\n This was to be one of the great moments of human history, and they were\n all trying to forget that fact and remain impassive and wrapped up in\n the problems of their jobs as good specialists should.\n\n\n After an interminable age the\nTimes\nconsulted his watch. Three\n minutes had passed. He tried holding his breath a moment, listening for\n a distant approaching thunder of jets. There was no sound.", "\"It's dark,\" the thin Intelligence Department decoder translated,\n low-voiced, to the man from the\nTimes\n. \"Your atmosphere is\nthick\n.\n That's precisely what Bud said.\"\n\n\n Another three minutes. The\nTimes\ncaught himself about to light a\n cigarette and swore silently, blowing the match out and putting the\n cigarette back into its package. He listened for the sound of the\n rocket jets. It was time for the landing, yet he heard no blasts.\n\n\n The green light came on in the transceiver.\n\n\n Message in.\n\n\n Instinctively he came to his feet. Nathen abruptly was standing beside\n him. Then the message came in the voice he was coming to think of as\n Bud. It spoke and paused. Suddenly the\nTimes\nknew.\n\n\n \"We've landed.\" Nathen whispered the words.", "Pictures Don't Lie\nBy KATHERINE MacLEAN\n\n\n Illustrated by MARTIN SCHNEIDER\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n... Pictures, that is, that one can test and measure.\n\n And these pictures positively, absolutely could not lie!\nThe man from the\nNews\nasked, \"What do you think of the aliens, Mister\n Nathen? Are they friendly? Do they look human?\"\n\n\n \"Very human,\" said the thin young man.", "The tableau held, the uniformed one drooping, looking down at his hand\n holding the weapon which had killed, and music began to build in from\n the background. Just for an instant, the room and the things within\n it flashed into one of those bewildering color changes which were the\n bane of color television, and switched to a color negative of itself, a\n green man standing in a violet control room, looking down at the body\n of a green man in a red tunic. It held for less than a second; then the\n color band alternator fell back into phase and the colors reversed to\n normal.\n\n\n Another uniformed man came and took the weapon from the limp hand of\n the other, who began to explain dejectedly in a low voice while the\n music mounted and covered his words and the screen slowly went blank,\n like a window that slowly filmed over with gray fog.\n\n\n The music faded.\n\n\n In the dark, someone clapped appreciatively.", "The sun came out from behind the clouds and lit up the field like a\n great spotlight on an empty stage.\n\n\n Abruptly the green light shone on the set again, indicating that a\n squawk message had been received. The recorder recorded it, slowed it\n and fed it back to the speaker. It clicked and the sound was very loud\n in the still, tense room.\n\n\n The screen remained gray, but Bud's voice spoke a few words in the\n alien language. He stopped, the speaker clicked and the light went out.\n When it was plain that nothing more would occur and no announcement was\n to be made of what was said, the people in the room turned back to the\n windows, talk picked up again.\n\n\n Somebody told a joke and laughed alone.\n\n\n One of the linguists remained turned toward the loudspeaker, then\n looked at the widening patches of blue sky showing out the window, his\n expression puzzled. He had understood." ], [ "\"Tell me what to do and I'll do it,\" Nathen said quietly, not moving.\n\n\n It was not sarcasm. Jacob Luke of the\nTimes\nlooked sidewise at the\n strained whiteness of his face, and moderated his tone. \"Can't you\n contact them?\"\n\n\n \"Not while they're landing.\"\n\n\n \"What now?\" The\nTimes\ntook out a pack of cigarettes, remembered the\n rule against smoking, and put it back.\n\n\n \"We just wait.\" Nathen leaned his elbow on one knee and his chin in his\n hand.", "Nathen clenched his hands out in front of him and looked at them\n consideringly. \"I don't know. When I turn the tape faster, they're all\n rushing, and you begin to wonder why their clothes don't stream behind\n them, why the doors close so quickly and yet you can't hear them slam,\n why things fall so fast. If I turn it slower, they all seem to be\n swimming.\" He gave the\nTimes\na considering sidewise glance. \"Didn't\n catch the name.\"\n\n\n Country-bred guy, thought the\nTimes\n. \"Jacob Luke,\nTimes\n,\" he said,\n extending his hand.\n\n\n Nathen gave the hand a quick, hard grip, identifying the name. \"Sunday\n Science Section editor. I read it. Surprised to meet you here.\"", "Hastily, Jacob Luke fitted the earphones over his ears. He fancied he\n could hear Bud's voice tremble. For a moment it was just Bud's voice\n speaking the alien language, and then, very distant and clear in his\n earphones, he heard the recorded voice of the linguist say an English\n word, then a mechanical click and another clear word in the voice of\n one of the other translators, then another as the alien's voice flowed\n from the loudspeaker, the cool single words barely audible, overlapping\n and blending with it like translating thought, skipping unfamiliar\n words, yet quite astonishingly clear.\n\n\n \"Radar shows no buildings or civilization near. The atmosphere around\n us registers as thick as glue. Tremendous gas pressure, low gravity,\n no light at all. You didn't describe it like this. Where are you, Joe?\n This isn't some kind of trick, is it?\" Bud hesitated, was prompted by a\n deeper official voice and jerked out the words.", "The wind blew across the open spaces of white concrete and damp soil\n that was the empty airfield, swaying the wet, shiny grass. The people\n in the room looked out, listening for the roar of jets, looking for the\n silver bulk of a spaceship in the sky.\n\n\n Nathen moved, seating himself at the transmitter, switching it on to\n warm up, checking and balancing dials. Jacob Luke of the\nTimes\nmoved\n softly to stand behind his right shoulder, hoping he could be useful.\n Nathen made a half motion of his head, as if to glance back at him,\n unhooked two of the earphone sets hanging on the side of the tall\n streamlined box that was the automatic translator, plugged them in and\n handed one back over his shoulder to the\nTimes\nman.\n\n\n The voice began to come from the speaker again.", "Controlled tension, betraying itself by a jerk of the hands, a\n too-quick answer to a question. The uniformed one, not suspicious,\n turned his back, busying himself at some task involving a map lit with\n glowing red points, his motions sharing the same fluid dragging grace\n of the others, as if they were underwater, or on a slow motion film.\n The other was watching a switch, a switch set into a panel, moving\n closer to it, talking casually—background music coming and rising in\n thin chords of tension.", "They waited.\nAll the people in the room were waiting. There was no more\n conversation. A bald man of the scientist group was automatically\n buffing his fingernails over and over and inspecting them without\n seeing them, another absently polished his glasses, held them up to\n the light, put them on, and then a moment later took them off and began\n polishing again. The television crew concentrated on their jobs, moving\n quietly and efficiently, with perfectionist care, minutely arranging\n things which did not need to be arranged, checking things that had\n already been checked.\n\n\n This was to be one of the great moments of human history, and they were\n all trying to forget that fact and remain impassive and wrapped up in\n the problems of their jobs as good specialists should.\n\n\n After an interminable age the\nTimes\nconsulted his watch. Three\n minutes had passed. He tried holding his breath a moment, listening for\n a distant approaching thunder of jets. There was no sound.", "There was some fumbling in the semi-dark and then the screen came to\n life again.\nIt showed a flash of an audience sitting before a screen and gave a\n clipped chord of some familiar symphony. \"Crazy about Stravinsky and\n Mozart,\" remarked the earphoned linguist to the\nTimes\n, resettling his\n earphones. \"Can't stand Gershwin. Can you beat that?\" He turned his\n attention back to the screen as the right sequence came on.\n\n\n The\nPost\n, who was sitting just in front of him, turned to the\nTimes\nand said, \"Funny how much they look like people.\" He was writing,\n making notes to telephone his report. \"What color hair did that\n character have?\"", "\"Likewise.\" The\nTimes\nsmiled. \"Look, have you gone into this\n rationally, with formulas?\" He found a pencil in his pocket.\n \"Obviously there's something wrong with our judgment of their\n weight-to-speed-to-momentum ratio. Maybe it's something simple like low\n gravity aboard ship, with magnetic shoes. Maybe they\nare\nfloating\n slightly.\"\n\n\n \"Why worry?\" Nathen cut in. \"I don't see any reason to try to figure it\n out now.\" He laughed and shoved back his black hair nervously. \"We'll\n see them in twenty minutes.\"\n\n\n \"Will we?\" asked the\nTimes\nslowly.\n\n\n There was a silence while the Senator turned a page of his magazine\n with a slight crackling of paper, and the scientists argued at the\n other end of the room. Nathen pushed at his lank black hair again, as\n if it were trying to fall forward in front of his eyes and keep him\n from seeing.", "The listening officer frowned and cleared his throat, and the thin\n young man turned to him quickly. \"No security reason why they should\n not see the broadcasts, is there? Perhaps you should show them.\" He\n said to the reporters reassuringly, \"It's right down the hall. You\n will be informed the moment the spaceship approaches.\"\n\n\n The interview was very definitely over. The lank-haired, nervous young\n man turned away and seated himself at the radio set while the officer\n swallowed his objections and showed them dourly down the hall to a\n closed door.\n\n\n They opened it and fumbled into a darkened room crowded with empty\n folding chairs, dominated by a glowing bright screen. The door closed\n behind them, bringing total darkness.\n\n\n There was the sound of reporters fumbling their way into seats around\n him, but the\nTimes\nman remained standing, aware of an enormous\n surprise, as if he had been asleep and wakened to find himself in the\n wrong country.", "The\nTimes\nsat down on the edge of the platform beside him and took\n out a pack of cigarettes, then remembered the coming TV broadcast\n and the ban on smoking. He put them away, thoughtfully watching the\n diminishing rain spray against the streaming windows.\n\n\n \"What's wrong?\" he asked.\n\n\n Nathen showed that he was aware and friendly by a slight motion of his\n head.\n\n\n \"\nYou\ntell me.\"\n\n\n \"Hunch,\" said the\nTimes\nman. \"Sheer hunch. Everything sailing along\n too smoothly, everyone taking too much for granted.\"\n\n\n Nathen relaxed slightly. \"I'm still listening.\"\n\n\n \"Something about the way they move....\"\n\n\n Nathen shifted to glance at him.\n\n\n \"That's bothered me, too.\"\n\n\n \"Are you sure they're adjusted to the right speed?\"", "The green light glowed on the set again, and they stopped speaking,\n waiting for the message to be recorded, slowed and replayed. The\n cathode screen came to life suddenly with a picture of the young man\n sitting at his sending-set, his back turned, watching a screen at one\n side which showed a glimpse of a huge dark plain approaching. As the\n ship plunged down toward it, the illusion of solidity melted into a\n boiling turbulence of black clouds. They expanded in an inky swirl,\n looked huge for an instant, and then blackness swallowed the screen.\n The young alien swung around to face the camera, speaking a few words\n as he moved, made the O of a smile again, then flipped the switch and\n the screen went gray.\n\n\n Nathen's voice was suddenly toneless and strained. \"He said something\n like break out the drinks, here they come.\"", "A stray phrase reached him: \"—reference to the universal constants as\n ratio—\" It was probably a discussion of ways of converting formulas\n from one mathematics to another for a rapid exchange of information.\n\n\n They had reason to be intent, aware of the flood of insights that novel\n viewpoints could bring, if they could grasp them. He would have liked\n to go over and listen, but there was too little time left before the\n spaceship was due, and he had a question to ask.\nThe hand-rigged transceiver was still humming, tuned to the sending\n band of the circling ship, and the young man who had started it all\n was sitting on the edge of the TV platform with his chin resting in\n one hand. He did not look up as the\nTimes\napproached, but it was the\n indifference of preoccupation, not discourtesy.", "Since he came in, a machine had been whirring and a voice muttering\n beside him. He called his attention from counting their fingers and\n looked around. Beside him sat an alert-looking man wearing earphones,\n watching and listening with hawklike concentration. Beside him was a\n tall streamlined box. From the screen came the sound of the alien\n language. The man abruptly flipped a switch on the box, muttered a word\n into a small hand-microphone and flipped the switch back with nervous\n rapidity.\n\n\n He reminded the\nTimes\nman of the earphoned interpreters at the UN.\n The machine was probably a vocal translator and the mutterer a linguist\n adding to its vocabulary. Near the screen were two other linguists\n taking notes.\nThe\nTimes\nremembered the Senator pacing in the observatory room,\n rehearsing his speech of welcome. The speech would not be just\n the empty pompous gesture he had expected. It would be translated\n mechanically and understood by the aliens.", "The tableau held, the uniformed one drooping, looking down at his hand\n holding the weapon which had killed, and music began to build in from\n the background. Just for an instant, the room and the things within\n it flashed into one of those bewildering color changes which were the\n bane of color television, and switched to a color negative of itself, a\n green man standing in a violet control room, looking down at the body\n of a green man in a red tunic. It held for less than a second; then the\n color band alternator fell back into phase and the colors reversed to\n normal.\n\n\n Another uniformed man came and took the weapon from the limp hand of\n the other, who began to explain dejectedly in a low voice while the\n music mounted and covered his words and the screen slowly went blank,\n like a window that slowly filmed over with gray fog.\n\n\n The music faded.\n\n\n In the dark, someone clapped appreciatively.", "The\nTimes\nman stood with the others, listening absently, thinking of\n questions, but reserving them. Joseph R. Nathen, the thin young man\n with the straight black hair and the tired lines on his face, was being\n treated with respect by his interviewers. He was obviously on edge, and\n they did not want to harry him with too many questions to answer at\n once. They wanted to keep his good will. Tomorrow he would be one of\n the biggest celebrities ever to appear in headlines.\n\n\n \"No, nothing directly.\"\n\n\n \"Any ideas or deductions?\"\nHerald\npersisted.\n\n\n \"Their world must be Earth-like to them,\" the weary-looking young man\n answered uncertainly. \"The environment evolves the animal. But only in\n relative terms, of course.\" He looked at them with a quick glance and\n then looked away evasively, his lank black hair beginning to cling to\n his forehead with sweat. \"That doesn't necessarily mean anything.\"", "The sun came out from behind the clouds and lit up the field like a\n great spotlight on an empty stage.\n\n\n Abruptly the green light shone on the set again, indicating that a\n squawk message had been received. The recorder recorded it, slowed it\n and fed it back to the speaker. It clicked and the sound was very loud\n in the still, tense room.\n\n\n The screen remained gray, but Bud's voice spoke a few words in the\n alien language. He stopped, the speaker clicked and the light went out.\n When it was plain that nothing more would occur and no announcement was\n to be made of what was said, the people in the room turned back to the\n windows, talk picked up again.\n\n\n Somebody told a joke and laughed alone.\n\n\n One of the linguists remained turned toward the loudspeaker, then\n looked at the widening patches of blue sky showing out the window, his\n expression puzzled. He had understood.", "There was no lead in this direction, and they had to get the basic\n facts of the story before the ship came. The\nTimes\nasked, \"What led\n up to your contacting them?\"\n\n\n Nathen answered after a hesitation. \"Static. Radio static. The Army\n told you my job, didn't they?\"\nThe Army had told them nothing at all. The officer who had conducted\n them in for the interview stood glowering watchfully, as if he objected\n by instinct to telling anything to the public.\n\n\n Nathen glanced at him doubtfully. \"My job is radio decoder for the\n Department of Military Intelligence. I use a directional pickup, tune\n in on foreign bands, record any scrambled or coded messages I hear, and\n build automatic decoders and descramblers for all the basic scramble\n patterns.\"\n\n\n The officer cleared his throat, but said nothing.\n\n\n The reporters smiled, noting that down.", "Mellerdrammer.\n\n\n The second, smaller, with yellowish-green eyes, stepped closer, talking\n more rapidly in a lower voice. The first stood very still, not trying\n to interrupt.\n\n\n Obviously, the proposal was some advantageous treachery, and he wanted\n to be persuaded. The\nTimes\ngroped for a chair and sat down.\n\n\n Perhaps gesture is universal; desire and aversion, a leaning forward or\n a leaning back, tension, relaxation. Perhaps these actors were masters.\n The scenes changed, a corridor, a parklike place in what he began to\n realize was a spaceship, a lecture room. There were others talking\n and working, speaking to the man in the green tunic, and never was it\n unclear what was happening or how they felt.\n\n\n They talked a flowing language with many short vowels and shifts of\n pitch, and they gestured in the heat of talk, their hands moving with\n an odd lagging difference of motion, not slow, but somehow drifting.", "The\nTimes\ngot up quietly, went out into the bright white stone\n corridor and walked back the way he had come, thoughtfully folding his\n stereo glasses and putting them away.\n\n\n No one stopped him. Secrecy restrictions were ambiguous here. The\n reticence of the Army seemed more a matter of habit, mere reflex, from\n the fact that it had all originated in the Intelligence Department,\n than any reasoned policy of keeping the landing a secret.\n\n\n The main room was more crowded than he had left it. The TV camera\n and sound crew stood near their apparatus, the Senator had found a\n chair and was reading, and at the far end of the room eight men were\n grouped in a circle of chairs, arguing something with impassioned\n concentration. The\nTimes\nrecognized a few he knew personally, eminent\n names in science, workers in field theory.", "\"It's dark,\" the thin Intelligence Department decoder translated,\n low-voiced, to the man from the\nTimes\n. \"Your atmosphere is\nthick\n.\n That's precisely what Bud said.\"\n\n\n Another three minutes. The\nTimes\ncaught himself about to light a\n cigarette and swore silently, blowing the match out and putting the\n cigarette back into its package. He listened for the sound of the\n rocket jets. It was time for the landing, yet he heard no blasts.\n\n\n The green light came on in the transceiver.\n\n\n Message in.\n\n\n Instinctively he came to his feet. Nathen abruptly was standing beside\n him. Then the message came in the voice he was coming to think of as\n Bud. It spoke and paused. Suddenly the\nTimes\nknew.\n\n\n \"We've landed.\" Nathen whispered the words." ], [ "The green light glowed on the set again, and they stopped speaking,\n waiting for the message to be recorded, slowed and replayed. The\n cathode screen came to life suddenly with a picture of the young man\n sitting at his sending-set, his back turned, watching a screen at one\n side which showed a glimpse of a huge dark plain approaching. As the\n ship plunged down toward it, the illusion of solidity melted into a\n boiling turbulence of black clouds. They expanded in an inky swirl,\n looked huge for an instant, and then blackness swallowed the screen.\n The young alien swung around to face the camera, speaking a few words\n as he moved, made the O of a smile again, then flipped the switch and\n the screen went gray.\n\n\n Nathen's voice was suddenly toneless and strained. \"He said something\n like break out the drinks, here they come.\"", "Controlled tension, betraying itself by a jerk of the hands, a\n too-quick answer to a question. The uniformed one, not suspicious,\n turned his back, busying himself at some task involving a map lit with\n glowing red points, his motions sharing the same fluid dragging grace\n of the others, as if they were underwater, or on a slow motion film.\n The other was watching a switch, a switch set into a panel, moving\n closer to it, talking casually—background music coming and rising in\n thin chords of tension.", "The tableau held, the uniformed one drooping, looking down at his hand\n holding the weapon which had killed, and music began to build in from\n the background. Just for an instant, the room and the things within\n it flashed into one of those bewildering color changes which were the\n bane of color television, and switched to a color negative of itself, a\n green man standing in a violet control room, looking down at the body\n of a green man in a red tunic. It held for less than a second; then the\n color band alternator fell back into phase and the colors reversed to\n normal.\n\n\n Another uniformed man came and took the weapon from the limp hand of\n the other, who began to explain dejectedly in a low voice while the\n music mounted and covered his words and the screen slowly went blank,\n like a window that slowly filmed over with gray fog.\n\n\n The music faded.\n\n\n In the dark, someone clapped appreciatively.", "They waited.\nAll the people in the room were waiting. There was no more\n conversation. A bald man of the scientist group was automatically\n buffing his fingernails over and over and inspecting them without\n seeing them, another absently polished his glasses, held them up to\n the light, put them on, and then a moment later took them off and began\n polishing again. The television crew concentrated on their jobs, moving\n quietly and efficiently, with perfectionist care, minutely arranging\n things which did not need to be arranged, checking things that had\n already been checked.\n\n\n This was to be one of the great moments of human history, and they were\n all trying to forget that fact and remain impassive and wrapped up in\n the problems of their jobs as good specialists should.\n\n\n After an interminable age the\nTimes\nconsulted his watch. Three\n minutes had passed. He tried holding his breath a moment, listening for\n a distant approaching thunder of jets. There was no sound.", "Mellerdrammer.\n\n\n The second, smaller, with yellowish-green eyes, stepped closer, talking\n more rapidly in a lower voice. The first stood very still, not trying\n to interrupt.\n\n\n Obviously, the proposal was some advantageous treachery, and he wanted\n to be persuaded. The\nTimes\ngroped for a chair and sat down.\n\n\n Perhaps gesture is universal; desire and aversion, a leaning forward or\n a leaning back, tension, relaxation. Perhaps these actors were masters.\n The scenes changed, a corridor, a parklike place in what he began to\n realize was a spaceship, a lecture room. There were others talking\n and working, speaking to the man in the green tunic, and never was it\n unclear what was happening or how they felt.\n\n\n They talked a flowing language with many short vowels and shifts of\n pitch, and they gestured in the heat of talk, their hands moving with\n an odd lagging difference of motion, not slow, but somehow drifting.", "The listening officer frowned and cleared his throat, and the thin\n young man turned to him quickly. \"No security reason why they should\n not see the broadcasts, is there? Perhaps you should show them.\" He\n said to the reporters reassuringly, \"It's right down the hall. You\n will be informed the moment the spaceship approaches.\"\n\n\n The interview was very definitely over. The lank-haired, nervous young\n man turned away and seated himself at the radio set while the officer\n swallowed his objections and showed them dourly down the hall to a\n closed door.\n\n\n They opened it and fumbled into a darkened room crowded with empty\n folding chairs, dominated by a glowing bright screen. The door closed\n behind them, bringing total darkness.\n\n\n There was the sound of reporters fumbling their way into seats around\n him, but the\nTimes\nman remained standing, aware of an enormous\n surprise, as if he had been asleep and wakened to find himself in the\n wrong country.", "The sun came out from behind the clouds and lit up the field like a\n great spotlight on an empty stage.\n\n\n Abruptly the green light shone on the set again, indicating that a\n squawk message had been received. The recorder recorded it, slowed it\n and fed it back to the speaker. It clicked and the sound was very loud\n in the still, tense room.\n\n\n The screen remained gray, but Bud's voice spoke a few words in the\n alien language. He stopped, the speaker clicked and the light went out.\n When it was plain that nothing more would occur and no announcement was\n to be made of what was said, the people in the room turned back to the\n windows, talk picked up again.\n\n\n Somebody told a joke and laughed alone.\n\n\n One of the linguists remained turned toward the loudspeaker, then\n looked at the widening patches of blue sky showing out the window, his\n expression puzzled. He had understood.", "The wind blew across the open spaces of white concrete and damp soil\n that was the empty airfield, swaying the wet, shiny grass. The people\n in the room looked out, listening for the roar of jets, looking for the\n silver bulk of a spaceship in the sky.\n\n\n Nathen moved, seating himself at the transmitter, switching it on to\n warm up, checking and balancing dials. Jacob Luke of the\nTimes\nmoved\n softly to stand behind his right shoulder, hoping he could be useful.\n Nathen made a half motion of his head, as if to glance back at him,\n unhooked two of the earphone sets hanging on the side of the tall\n streamlined box that was the automatic translator, plugged them in and\n handed one back over his shoulder to the\nTimes\nman.\n\n\n The voice began to come from the speaker again.", "A stray phrase reached him: \"—reference to the universal constants as\n ratio—\" It was probably a discussion of ways of converting formulas\n from one mathematics to another for a rapid exchange of information.\n\n\n They had reason to be intent, aware of the flood of insights that novel\n viewpoints could bring, if they could grasp them. He would have liked\n to go over and listen, but there was too little time left before the\n spaceship was due, and he had a question to ask.\nThe hand-rigged transceiver was still humming, tuned to the sending\n band of the circling ship, and the young man who had started it all\n was sitting on the edge of the TV platform with his chin resting in\n one hand. He did not look up as the\nTimes\napproached, but it was the\n indifference of preoccupation, not discourtesy.", "A green light flashed on the sending-receiving set. Nathen didn't look\n at it, but he stopped talking.\nThe loudspeaker on the set broke into a voice speaking in the alien's\n language. The Senator started and looked nervously at it, straightening\n his tie. The voice stopped.\n\n\n Nathen turned and looked at the loudspeaker. His worry seemed to be\n gone.\n\n\n \"What is it?\" the\nTimes\nasked anxiously.\n\n\n \"He says they've slowed enough to enter the atmosphere now. They'll be\n here in five to ten minutes, I guess. That's Bud. He's all excited.\n He says holy smoke, what a murky-looking planet we live on.\" Nathen\n smiled. \"Kidding.\"", "There was some fumbling in the semi-dark and then the screen came to\n life again.\nIt showed a flash of an audience sitting before a screen and gave a\n clipped chord of some familiar symphony. \"Crazy about Stravinsky and\n Mozart,\" remarked the earphoned linguist to the\nTimes\n, resettling his\n earphones. \"Can't stand Gershwin. Can you beat that?\" He turned his\n attention back to the screen as the right sequence came on.\n\n\n The\nPost\n, who was sitting just in front of him, turned to the\nTimes\nand said, \"Funny how much they look like people.\" He was writing,\n making notes to telephone his report. \"What color hair did that\n character have?\"", "\"It's dark,\" the thin Intelligence Department decoder translated,\n low-voiced, to the man from the\nTimes\n. \"Your atmosphere is\nthick\n.\n That's precisely what Bud said.\"\n\n\n Another three minutes. The\nTimes\ncaught himself about to light a\n cigarette and swore silently, blowing the match out and putting the\n cigarette back into its package. He listened for the sound of the\n rocket jets. It was time for the landing, yet he heard no blasts.\n\n\n The green light came on in the transceiver.\n\n\n Message in.\n\n\n Instinctively he came to his feet. Nathen abruptly was standing beside\n him. Then the message came in the voice he was coming to think of as\n Bud. It spoke and paused. Suddenly the\nTimes\nknew.\n\n\n \"We've landed.\" Nathen whispered the words.", "The\nTimes\nsat down on the edge of the platform beside him and took\n out a pack of cigarettes, then remembered the coming TV broadcast\n and the ban on smoking. He put them away, thoughtfully watching the\n diminishing rain spray against the streaming windows.\n\n\n \"What's wrong?\" he asked.\n\n\n Nathen showed that he was aware and friendly by a slight motion of his\n head.\n\n\n \"\nYou\ntell me.\"\n\n\n \"Hunch,\" said the\nTimes\nman. \"Sheer hunch. Everything sailing along\n too smoothly, everyone taking too much for granted.\"\n\n\n Nathen relaxed slightly. \"I'm still listening.\"\n\n\n \"Something about the way they move....\"\n\n\n Nathen shifted to glance at him.\n\n\n \"That's bothered me, too.\"\n\n\n \"Are you sure they're adjusted to the right speed?\"", "Hastily, Jacob Luke fitted the earphones over his ears. He fancied he\n could hear Bud's voice tremble. For a moment it was just Bud's voice\n speaking the alien language, and then, very distant and clear in his\n earphones, he heard the recorded voice of the linguist say an English\n word, then a mechanical click and another clear word in the voice of\n one of the other translators, then another as the alien's voice flowed\n from the loudspeaker, the cool single words barely audible, overlapping\n and blending with it like translating thought, skipping unfamiliar\n words, yet quite astonishingly clear.\n\n\n \"Radar shows no buildings or civilization near. The atmosphere around\n us registers as thick as glue. Tremendous gas pressure, low gravity,\n no light at all. You didn't describe it like this. Where are you, Joe?\n This isn't some kind of trick, is it?\" Bud hesitated, was prompted by a\n deeper official voice and jerked out the words.", "There was a closeup of the alien's face watching the switch, and the\nTimes\nnoted that his ears were symmetrically half-circles, almost\n perfect with no earholes visible. The voice of the uniformed one\n answered, a brief word in a preoccupied deep voice. His back was still\n turned. The other glanced at the switch, moving closer to it, talking\n casually, the switch coming closer and closer stereoscopically. It was\n in reach, filling the screen. His hand came into view, darting out,\n closed over the switch—\n\n\n There was a sharp clap of sound and his hand opened in a frozen\n shape of pain. Beyond him, as his gaze swung up, stood the figure of\n the uniformed officer, unmoving, a weapon rigid in his hand, in the\n startled position in which he had turned and fired, watching with\n widening eyes as the man in the green tunic swayed and fell.", "Since he came in, a machine had been whirring and a voice muttering\n beside him. He called his attention from counting their fingers and\n looked around. Beside him sat an alert-looking man wearing earphones,\n watching and listening with hawklike concentration. Beside him was a\n tall streamlined box. From the screen came the sound of the alien\n language. The man abruptly flipped a switch on the box, muttered a word\n into a small hand-microphone and flipped the switch back with nervous\n rapidity.\n\n\n He reminded the\nTimes\nman of the earphoned interpreters at the UN.\n The machine was probably a vocal translator and the mutterer a linguist\n adding to its vocabulary. Near the screen were two other linguists\n taking notes.\nThe\nTimes\nremembered the Senator pacing in the observatory room,\n rehearsing his speech of welcome. The speech would not be just\n the empty pompous gesture he had expected. It would be translated\n mechanically and understood by the aliens.", "\"Likewise.\" The\nTimes\nsmiled. \"Look, have you gone into this\n rationally, with formulas?\" He found a pencil in his pocket.\n \"Obviously there's something wrong with our judgment of their\n weight-to-speed-to-momentum ratio. Maybe it's something simple like low\n gravity aboard ship, with magnetic shoes. Maybe they\nare\nfloating\n slightly.\"\n\n\n \"Why worry?\" Nathen cut in. \"I don't see any reason to try to figure it\n out now.\" He laughed and shoved back his black hair nervously. \"We'll\n see them in twenty minutes.\"\n\n\n \"Will we?\" asked the\nTimes\nslowly.\n\n\n There was a silence while the Senator turned a page of his magazine\n with a slight crackling of paper, and the scientists argued at the\n other end of the room. Nathen pushed at his lank black hair again, as\n if it were trying to fall forward in front of his eyes and keep him\n from seeing.", "\"It would take something like that,\" the\nTimes\nagreed. They smiled at\n each other.\n\n\n The\nNews\nasked, \"How did you happen to pick up television instead of\n voices?\"\n\n\n \"Not by accident,\" Nathen explained patiently. \"I'd recognized a\n scanning pattern, and I wanted pictures. Pictures are understandable in\n any language.\"\nNear the interviewers, a Senator paced back and forth, muttering\n his memorized speech of welcome and nervously glancing out the wide\n streaming windows into the gray sleeting rain.", "He ignored the language, but after a time the difference in motion\n began to arouse his interest. Something in the way they walked....\n\n\n With an effort he pulled his mind from the plot and forced his\n attention to the physical difference. Brown hair in short silky crew\n cuts, varied eye colors, the colors showing clearly because their\n irises were very large, their round eyes set very widely apart in\n tapering light-brown faces. Their necks and shoulders were thick in a\n way that would indicate unusual strength for a human, but their wrists\n were narrow and their fingers long and thin and delicate.\n\n\n There seemed to be more than the usual number of fingers.", "\"Tell me what to do and I'll do it,\" Nathen said quietly, not moving.\n\n\n It was not sarcasm. Jacob Luke of the\nTimes\nlooked sidewise at the\n strained whiteness of his face, and moderated his tone. \"Can't you\n contact them?\"\n\n\n \"Not while they're landing.\"\n\n\n \"What now?\" The\nTimes\ntook out a pack of cigarettes, remembered the\n rule against smoking, and put it back.\n\n\n \"We just wait.\" Nathen leaned his elbow on one knee and his chin in his\n hand." ], [ "\"Tell me what to do and I'll do it,\" Nathen said quietly, not moving.\n\n\n It was not sarcasm. Jacob Luke of the\nTimes\nlooked sidewise at the\n strained whiteness of his face, and moderated his tone. \"Can't you\n contact them?\"\n\n\n \"Not while they're landing.\"\n\n\n \"What now?\" The\nTimes\ntook out a pack of cigarettes, remembered the\n rule against smoking, and put it back.\n\n\n \"We just wait.\" Nathen leaned his elbow on one knee and his chin in his\n hand.", "Nathen clenched his hands out in front of him and looked at them\n consideringly. \"I don't know. When I turn the tape faster, they're all\n rushing, and you begin to wonder why their clothes don't stream behind\n them, why the doors close so quickly and yet you can't hear them slam,\n why things fall so fast. If I turn it slower, they all seem to be\n swimming.\" He gave the\nTimes\na considering sidewise glance. \"Didn't\n catch the name.\"\n\n\n Country-bred guy, thought the\nTimes\n. \"Jacob Luke,\nTimes\n,\" he said,\n extending his hand.\n\n\n Nathen gave the hand a quick, hard grip, identifying the name. \"Sunday\n Science Section editor. I read it. Surprised to meet you here.\"", "The\nTimes\nman stood with the others, listening absently, thinking of\n questions, but reserving them. Joseph R. Nathen, the thin young man\n with the straight black hair and the tired lines on his face, was being\n treated with respect by his interviewers. He was obviously on edge, and\n they did not want to harry him with too many questions to answer at\n once. They wanted to keep his good will. Tomorrow he would be one of\n the biggest celebrities ever to appear in headlines.\n\n\n \"No, nothing directly.\"\n\n\n \"Any ideas or deductions?\"\nHerald\npersisted.\n\n\n \"Their world must be Earth-like to them,\" the weary-looking young man\n answered uncertainly. \"The environment evolves the animal. But only in\n relative terms, of course.\" He looked at them with a quick glance and\n then looked away evasively, his lank black hair beginning to cling to\n his forehead with sweat. \"That doesn't necessarily mean anything.\"", "\"It would take something like that,\" the\nTimes\nagreed. They smiled at\n each other.\n\n\n The\nNews\nasked, \"How did you happen to pick up television instead of\n voices?\"\n\n\n \"Not by accident,\" Nathen explained patiently. \"I'd recognized a\n scanning pattern, and I wanted pictures. Pictures are understandable in\n any language.\"\nNear the interviewers, a Senator paced back and forth, muttering\n his memorized speech of welcome and nervously glancing out the wide\n streaming windows into the gray sleeting rain.", "The\nTimes\nsat down on the edge of the platform beside him and took\n out a pack of cigarettes, then remembered the coming TV broadcast\n and the ban on smoking. He put them away, thoughtfully watching the\n diminishing rain spray against the streaming windows.\n\n\n \"What's wrong?\" he asked.\n\n\n Nathen showed that he was aware and friendly by a slight motion of his\n head.\n\n\n \"\nYou\ntell me.\"\n\n\n \"Hunch,\" said the\nTimes\nman. \"Sheer hunch. Everything sailing along\n too smoothly, everyone taking too much for granted.\"\n\n\n Nathen relaxed slightly. \"I'm still listening.\"\n\n\n \"Something about the way they move....\"\n\n\n Nathen shifted to glance at him.\n\n\n \"That's bothered me, too.\"\n\n\n \"Are you sure they're adjusted to the right speed?\"", "As he sat there, doubting, an uneasiness he had seen in Nathen came\n back to add to his own uncertainty, and he remembered just how close\n that uneasiness had come to something that looked like restrained fear.\n\n\n \"What I don't get is why he went to all the trouble of picking up TV\n shows instead of just contacting them,\" the\nNews\ncomplained. \"They're\n good shows, but what's the point?\"\n\n\n \"Maybe so we'd get to learn their language too,\" said the\nHerald\n.\n\n\n On the screen now was the obviously unstaged and genuine scene of a\n young alien working over a bank of apparatus. He turned and waved and\n opened his mouth in the comical O shape which the\nTimes\nwas beginning\n to recognize as their equivalent of a smile, then went back to trying\n to explain something about the equipment, in elaborate awkward gestures\n and carefully mouthed words.", "\"Likewise.\" The\nTimes\nsmiled. \"Look, have you gone into this\n rationally, with formulas?\" He found a pencil in his pocket.\n \"Obviously there's something wrong with our judgment of their\n weight-to-speed-to-momentum ratio. Maybe it's something simple like low\n gravity aboard ship, with magnetic shoes. Maybe they\nare\nfloating\n slightly.\"\n\n\n \"Why worry?\" Nathen cut in. \"I don't see any reason to try to figure it\n out now.\" He laughed and shoved back his black hair nervously. \"We'll\n see them in twenty minutes.\"\n\n\n \"Will we?\" asked the\nTimes\nslowly.\n\n\n There was a silence while the Senator turned a page of his magazine\n with a slight crackling of paper, and the scientists argued at the\n other end of the room. Nathen pushed at his lank black hair again, as\n if it were trying to fall forward in front of his eyes and keep him\n from seeing.", "\"I didn't notice.\" He wondered if he should remind the reporter that\n Nathen had said he assigned the color bands on guess, choosing the\n colors that gave the most plausible images. The guests, when they\n arrived, could turn out to be bright green with blue hair. Only the\n gradations of color in the picture were sure, only the similarities and\n contrasts, the relationship of one color to another.\n\n\n From the screen came the sound of the alien language again. This race\n averaged deeper voices than human. He liked deep voices. Could he write\n that?\n\n\n No, there was something wrong with that, too. How had Nathen\n established the right sound-track pitch? Was it a matter of taking the\n modulation as it came in, or some sort of hetrodyning up and down by\n trial and error? Probably.\n\n\n It might be safer to assume that Nathen had simply preferred deep\n voices.", "The wind blew across the open spaces of white concrete and damp soil\n that was the empty airfield, swaying the wet, shiny grass. The people\n in the room looked out, listening for the roar of jets, looking for the\n silver bulk of a spaceship in the sky.\n\n\n Nathen moved, seating himself at the transmitter, switching it on to\n warm up, checking and balancing dials. Jacob Luke of the\nTimes\nmoved\n softly to stand behind his right shoulder, hoping he could be useful.\n Nathen made a half motion of his head, as if to glance back at him,\n unhooked two of the earphone sets hanging on the side of the tall\n streamlined box that was the automatic translator, plugged them in and\n handed one back over his shoulder to the\nTimes\nman.\n\n\n The voice began to come from the speaker again.", "\"Earth-like,\" muttered a reporter, writing it down as if he had noticed\n nothing more in the reply.\n\n\n The\nTimes\nman glanced at the\nHerald\n, wondering if he had noticed,\n and received a quick glance in exchange.\n\n\n The\nHerald\nasked Nathen, \"You think they are dangerous, then?\"\n\n\n It was the kind of question, assuming much, which usually broke\n reticence and brought forth quick facts—when it hit the mark. They all\n knew of the military precautions, although they were not supposed to\n know.\n\n\n The question missed. Nathen glanced out the window vaguely. \"No, I\n wouldn't say so.\"\n\n\n \"You think they are friendly, then?\" said the\nHerald\n, equally\n positive on the opposite tack.\n\n\n A fleeting smile touched Nathen's lips. \"Those I know are.\"", "Security regulations had changed since arms inspection had been\n legalized by the U.N. Complete information being the only public\n security against secret rearmament, spying and prying had come to seem\n a public service. Its aura had changed. It was good public relations to\n admit to it.\n\n\n Nathen continued, \"I started directing the pickup at stars in my\n spare time. There's radio noise from stars, you know. Just stuff that\n sounds like spatter static, and an occasional squawk. People have been\n listening to it for a long time, and researching, trying to work out\n why stellar radiation on those bands comes in such jagged bursts. It\n didn't seem natural.\"\n\n\n He paused and smiled uncertainly, aware that the next thing he would\n say was the thing that would make him famous—an idea that had come to\n him while he listened—an idea as simple and as perfect as the one that\n came to Newton when he saw the apple fall.", "There was no lead in this direction, and they had to get the basic\n facts of the story before the ship came. The\nTimes\nasked, \"What led\n up to your contacting them?\"\n\n\n Nathen answered after a hesitation. \"Static. Radio static. The Army\n told you my job, didn't they?\"\nThe Army had told them nothing at all. The officer who had conducted\n them in for the interview stood glowering watchfully, as if he objected\n by instinct to telling anything to the public.\n\n\n Nathen glanced at him doubtfully. \"My job is radio decoder for the\n Department of Military Intelligence. I use a directional pickup, tune\n in on foreign bands, record any scrambled or coded messages I hear, and\n build automatic decoders and descramblers for all the basic scramble\n patterns.\"\n\n\n The officer cleared his throat, but said nothing.\n\n\n The reporters smiled, noting that down.", "\"The atmosphere doesn't look like that,\" the\nTimes\nsaid at random,\n knowing he was saying something too obvious even to think about. \"Not\n Earth's atmosphere.\"\n\n\n Some people drifted up. \"What did they say?\"\n\n\n \"Entering the atmosphere, ought to be landing in five or ten minutes,\"\n Nathen told them.\n\n\n A ripple of heightened excitement ran through the room. Cameramen began\n adjusting the lens angles again, turning on the mike and checking it,\n turning on the floodlights. The scientists rose and stood near the\n window, still talking. The reporters trooped in from the hall and went\n to the windows to watch for the great event. The three linguists came\n in, trundling a large wheeled box that was the mechanical translator,\n supervising while it was hitched into the sound broadcasting system.\n\n\n \"Landing where?\" the\nTimes\nasked Nathen brutally. \"Why don't you do\n something?\"", "A green light flashed on the sending-receiving set. Nathen didn't look\n at it, but he stopped talking.\nThe loudspeaker on the set broke into a voice speaking in the alien's\n language. The Senator started and looked nervously at it, straightening\n his tie. The voice stopped.\n\n\n Nathen turned and looked at the loudspeaker. His worry seemed to be\n gone.\n\n\n \"What is it?\" the\nTimes\nasked anxiously.\n\n\n \"He says they've slowed enough to enter the atmosphere now. They'll be\n here in five to ten minutes, I guess. That's Bud. He's all excited.\n He says holy smoke, what a murky-looking planet we live on.\" Nathen\n smiled. \"Kidding.\"", "A stray phrase reached him: \"—reference to the universal constants as\n ratio—\" It was probably a discussion of ways of converting formulas\n from one mathematics to another for a rapid exchange of information.\n\n\n They had reason to be intent, aware of the flood of insights that novel\n viewpoints could bring, if they could grasp them. He would have liked\n to go over and listen, but there was too little time left before the\n spaceship was due, and he had a question to ask.\nThe hand-rigged transceiver was still humming, tuned to the sending\n band of the circling ship, and the young man who had started it all\n was sitting on the edge of the TV platform with his chin resting in\n one hand. He did not look up as the\nTimes\napproached, but it was the\n indifference of preoccupation, not discourtesy.", "Pictures Don't Lie\nBy KATHERINE MacLEAN\n\n\n Illustrated by MARTIN SCHNEIDER\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n... Pictures, that is, that one can test and measure.\n\n And these pictures positively, absolutely could not lie!\nThe man from the\nNews\nasked, \"What do you think of the aliens, Mister\n Nathen? Are they friendly? Do they look human?\"\n\n\n \"Very human,\" said the thin young man.", "He walked over and touched the set. The speaker bipped slightly and\n the gray screen flickered with a flash of color at the touch. The set\n was awake and sensitive, tuned to receive from the great interstellar\n spaceship which now circled the atmosphere.\n\n\n \"We wondered why there were so many bands, but when we got the set\n working, and started recording and playing everything that came in, we\n found we'd tapped something like a lending library line. It was all\n fiction, plays.\"\n\n\n Between the pauses in Nathen's voice, the\nTimes\nfound himself\n unconsciously listening for the sound of roaring, swiftly approaching\n rocket jets.\n\n\n The\nPost\nasked, \"How did you contact the spaceship?\"", "The green light glowed on the set again, and they stopped speaking,\n waiting for the message to be recorded, slowed and replayed. The\n cathode screen came to life suddenly with a picture of the young man\n sitting at his sending-set, his back turned, watching a screen at one\n side which showed a glimpse of a huge dark plain approaching. As the\n ship plunged down toward it, the illusion of solidity melted into a\n boiling turbulence of black clouds. They expanded in an inky swirl,\n looked huge for an instant, and then blackness swallowed the screen.\n The young alien swung around to face the camera, speaking a few words\n as he moved, made the O of a smile again, then flipped the switch and\n the screen went gray.\n\n\n Nathen's voice was suddenly toneless and strained. \"He said something\n like break out the drinks, here they come.\"", "Controlled tension, betraying itself by a jerk of the hands, a\n too-quick answer to a question. The uniformed one, not suspicious,\n turned his back, busying himself at some task involving a map lit with\n glowing red points, his motions sharing the same fluid dragging grace\n of the others, as if they were underwater, or on a slow motion film.\n The other was watching a switch, a switch set into a panel, moving\n closer to it, talking casually—background music coming and rising in\n thin chords of tension.", "\"I recorded a couple of package screeches from Sagittarius and began\n working on them,\" Nathen added. \"It took a couple of months to find\n the synchronizing signals and set the scanners close enough to the\n right time to even get a pattern. When I showed the pattern to the\n Department, they gave me full time to work on it, and an assistant to\n help. It took eight months to pick out the color bands, and assign them\n the right colors, to get anything intelligible on the screen.\"\nThe shabby-looking mess of exposed parts was the original receiver that\n they had labored over for ten months, adjusting and readjusting to\n reduce the maddening rippling plaids of unsynchronized color scanners\n to some kind of sane picture.\n\n\n \"Trial and error,\" said Nathen, \"but it came out all right. The wide\n band-spread of the squawks had suggested color TV from the beginning.\"" ], [ "\"Tell me what to do and I'll do it,\" Nathen said quietly, not moving.\n\n\n It was not sarcasm. Jacob Luke of the\nTimes\nlooked sidewise at the\n strained whiteness of his face, and moderated his tone. \"Can't you\n contact them?\"\n\n\n \"Not while they're landing.\"\n\n\n \"What now?\" The\nTimes\ntook out a pack of cigarettes, remembered the\n rule against smoking, and put it back.\n\n\n \"We just wait.\" Nathen leaned his elbow on one knee and his chin in his\n hand.", "Nathen clenched his hands out in front of him and looked at them\n consideringly. \"I don't know. When I turn the tape faster, they're all\n rushing, and you begin to wonder why their clothes don't stream behind\n them, why the doors close so quickly and yet you can't hear them slam,\n why things fall so fast. If I turn it slower, they all seem to be\n swimming.\" He gave the\nTimes\na considering sidewise glance. \"Didn't\n catch the name.\"\n\n\n Country-bred guy, thought the\nTimes\n. \"Jacob Luke,\nTimes\n,\" he said,\n extending his hand.\n\n\n Nathen gave the hand a quick, hard grip, identifying the name. \"Sunday\n Science Section editor. I read it. Surprised to meet you here.\"", "The\nTimes\nman stood with the others, listening absently, thinking of\n questions, but reserving them. Joseph R. Nathen, the thin young man\n with the straight black hair and the tired lines on his face, was being\n treated with respect by his interviewers. He was obviously on edge, and\n they did not want to harry him with too many questions to answer at\n once. They wanted to keep his good will. Tomorrow he would be one of\n the biggest celebrities ever to appear in headlines.\n\n\n \"No, nothing directly.\"\n\n\n \"Any ideas or deductions?\"\nHerald\npersisted.\n\n\n \"Their world must be Earth-like to them,\" the weary-looking young man\n answered uncertainly. \"The environment evolves the animal. But only in\n relative terms, of course.\" He looked at them with a quick glance and\n then looked away evasively, his lank black hair beginning to cling to\n his forehead with sweat. \"That doesn't necessarily mean anything.\"", "The wind blew across the open spaces of white concrete and damp soil\n that was the empty airfield, swaying the wet, shiny grass. The people\n in the room looked out, listening for the roar of jets, looking for the\n silver bulk of a spaceship in the sky.\n\n\n Nathen moved, seating himself at the transmitter, switching it on to\n warm up, checking and balancing dials. Jacob Luke of the\nTimes\nmoved\n softly to stand behind his right shoulder, hoping he could be useful.\n Nathen made a half motion of his head, as if to glance back at him,\n unhooked two of the earphone sets hanging on the side of the tall\n streamlined box that was the automatic translator, plugged them in and\n handed one back over his shoulder to the\nTimes\nman.\n\n\n The voice began to come from the speaker again.", "The\nTimes\nsat down on the edge of the platform beside him and took\n out a pack of cigarettes, then remembered the coming TV broadcast\n and the ban on smoking. He put them away, thoughtfully watching the\n diminishing rain spray against the streaming windows.\n\n\n \"What's wrong?\" he asked.\n\n\n Nathen showed that he was aware and friendly by a slight motion of his\n head.\n\n\n \"\nYou\ntell me.\"\n\n\n \"Hunch,\" said the\nTimes\nman. \"Sheer hunch. Everything sailing along\n too smoothly, everyone taking too much for granted.\"\n\n\n Nathen relaxed slightly. \"I'm still listening.\"\n\n\n \"Something about the way they move....\"\n\n\n Nathen shifted to glance at him.\n\n\n \"That's bothered me, too.\"\n\n\n \"Are you sure they're adjusted to the right speed?\"", "There was no lead in this direction, and they had to get the basic\n facts of the story before the ship came. The\nTimes\nasked, \"What led\n up to your contacting them?\"\n\n\n Nathen answered after a hesitation. \"Static. Radio static. The Army\n told you my job, didn't they?\"\nThe Army had told them nothing at all. The officer who had conducted\n them in for the interview stood glowering watchfully, as if he objected\n by instinct to telling anything to the public.\n\n\n Nathen glanced at him doubtfully. \"My job is radio decoder for the\n Department of Military Intelligence. I use a directional pickup, tune\n in on foreign bands, record any scrambled or coded messages I hear, and\n build automatic decoders and descramblers for all the basic scramble\n patterns.\"\n\n\n The officer cleared his throat, but said nothing.\n\n\n The reporters smiled, noting that down.", "As he sat there, doubting, an uneasiness he had seen in Nathen came\n back to add to his own uncertainty, and he remembered just how close\n that uneasiness had come to something that looked like restrained fear.\n\n\n \"What I don't get is why he went to all the trouble of picking up TV\n shows instead of just contacting them,\" the\nNews\ncomplained. \"They're\n good shows, but what's the point?\"\n\n\n \"Maybe so we'd get to learn their language too,\" said the\nHerald\n.\n\n\n On the screen now was the obviously unstaged and genuine scene of a\n young alien working over a bank of apparatus. He turned and waved and\n opened his mouth in the comical O shape which the\nTimes\nwas beginning\n to recognize as their equivalent of a smile, then went back to trying\n to explain something about the equipment, in elaborate awkward gestures\n and carefully mouthed words.", "\"Earth-like,\" muttered a reporter, writing it down as if he had noticed\n nothing more in the reply.\n\n\n The\nTimes\nman glanced at the\nHerald\n, wondering if he had noticed,\n and received a quick glance in exchange.\n\n\n The\nHerald\nasked Nathen, \"You think they are dangerous, then?\"\n\n\n It was the kind of question, assuming much, which usually broke\n reticence and brought forth quick facts—when it hit the mark. They all\n knew of the military precautions, although they were not supposed to\n know.\n\n\n The question missed. Nathen glanced out the window vaguely. \"No, I\n wouldn't say so.\"\n\n\n \"You think they are friendly, then?\" said the\nHerald\n, equally\n positive on the opposite tack.\n\n\n A fleeting smile touched Nathen's lips. \"Those I know are.\"", "\"Likewise.\" The\nTimes\nsmiled. \"Look, have you gone into this\n rationally, with formulas?\" He found a pencil in his pocket.\n \"Obviously there's something wrong with our judgment of their\n weight-to-speed-to-momentum ratio. Maybe it's something simple like low\n gravity aboard ship, with magnetic shoes. Maybe they\nare\nfloating\n slightly.\"\n\n\n \"Why worry?\" Nathen cut in. \"I don't see any reason to try to figure it\n out now.\" He laughed and shoved back his black hair nervously. \"We'll\n see them in twenty minutes.\"\n\n\n \"Will we?\" asked the\nTimes\nslowly.\n\n\n There was a silence while the Senator turned a page of his magazine\n with a slight crackling of paper, and the scientists argued at the\n other end of the room. Nathen pushed at his lank black hair again, as\n if it were trying to fall forward in front of his eyes and keep him\n from seeing.", "\"It would take something like that,\" the\nTimes\nagreed. They smiled at\n each other.\n\n\n The\nNews\nasked, \"How did you happen to pick up television instead of\n voices?\"\n\n\n \"Not by accident,\" Nathen explained patiently. \"I'd recognized a\n scanning pattern, and I wanted pictures. Pictures are understandable in\n any language.\"\nNear the interviewers, a Senator paced back and forth, muttering\n his memorized speech of welcome and nervously glancing out the wide\n streaming windows into the gray sleeting rain.", "\"I didn't notice.\" He wondered if he should remind the reporter that\n Nathen had said he assigned the color bands on guess, choosing the\n colors that gave the most plausible images. The guests, when they\n arrived, could turn out to be bright green with blue hair. Only the\n gradations of color in the picture were sure, only the similarities and\n contrasts, the relationship of one color to another.\n\n\n From the screen came the sound of the alien language again. This race\n averaged deeper voices than human. He liked deep voices. Could he write\n that?\n\n\n No, there was something wrong with that, too. How had Nathen\n established the right sound-track pitch? Was it a matter of taking the\n modulation as it came in, or some sort of hetrodyning up and down by\n trial and error? Probably.\n\n\n It might be safer to assume that Nathen had simply preferred deep\n voices.", "Pictures Don't Lie\nBy KATHERINE MacLEAN\n\n\n Illustrated by MARTIN SCHNEIDER\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n... Pictures, that is, that one can test and measure.\n\n And these pictures positively, absolutely could not lie!\nThe man from the\nNews\nasked, \"What do you think of the aliens, Mister\n Nathen? Are they friendly? Do they look human?\"\n\n\n \"Very human,\" said the thin young man.", "Security regulations had changed since arms inspection had been\n legalized by the U.N. Complete information being the only public\n security against secret rearmament, spying and prying had come to seem\n a public service. Its aura had changed. It was good public relations to\n admit to it.\n\n\n Nathen continued, \"I started directing the pickup at stars in my\n spare time. There's radio noise from stars, you know. Just stuff that\n sounds like spatter static, and an occasional squawk. People have been\n listening to it for a long time, and researching, trying to work out\n why stellar radiation on those bands comes in such jagged bursts. It\n didn't seem natural.\"\n\n\n He paused and smiled uncertainly, aware that the next thing he would\n say was the thing that would make him famous—an idea that had come to\n him while he listened—an idea as simple and as perfect as the one that\n came to Newton when he saw the apple fall.", "A green light flashed on the sending-receiving set. Nathen didn't look\n at it, but he stopped talking.\nThe loudspeaker on the set broke into a voice speaking in the alien's\n language. The Senator started and looked nervously at it, straightening\n his tie. The voice stopped.\n\n\n Nathen turned and looked at the loudspeaker. His worry seemed to be\n gone.\n\n\n \"What is it?\" the\nTimes\nasked anxiously.\n\n\n \"He says they've slowed enough to enter the atmosphere now. They'll be\n here in five to ten minutes, I guess. That's Bud. He's all excited.\n He says holy smoke, what a murky-looking planet we live on.\" Nathen\n smiled. \"Kidding.\"", "\"I recorded a couple of package screeches from Sagittarius and began\n working on them,\" Nathen added. \"It took a couple of months to find\n the synchronizing signals and set the scanners close enough to the\n right time to even get a pattern. When I showed the pattern to the\n Department, they gave me full time to work on it, and an assistant to\n help. It took eight months to pick out the color bands, and assign them\n the right colors, to get anything intelligible on the screen.\"\nThe shabby-looking mess of exposed parts was the original receiver that\n they had labored over for ten months, adjusting and readjusting to\n reduce the maddening rippling plaids of unsynchronized color scanners\n to some kind of sane picture.\n\n\n \"Trial and error,\" said Nathen, \"but it came out all right. The wide\n band-spread of the squawks had suggested color TV from the beginning.\"", "\"It's dark,\" the thin Intelligence Department decoder translated,\n low-voiced, to the man from the\nTimes\n. \"Your atmosphere is\nthick\n.\n That's precisely what Bud said.\"\n\n\n Another three minutes. The\nTimes\ncaught himself about to light a\n cigarette and swore silently, blowing the match out and putting the\n cigarette back into its package. He listened for the sound of the\n rocket jets. It was time for the landing, yet he heard no blasts.\n\n\n The green light came on in the transceiver.\n\n\n Message in.\n\n\n Instinctively he came to his feet. Nathen abruptly was standing beside\n him. Then the message came in the voice he was coming to think of as\n Bud. It spoke and paused. Suddenly the\nTimes\nknew.\n\n\n \"We've landed.\" Nathen whispered the words.", "\"The atmosphere doesn't look like that,\" the\nTimes\nsaid at random,\n knowing he was saying something too obvious even to think about. \"Not\n Earth's atmosphere.\"\n\n\n Some people drifted up. \"What did they say?\"\n\n\n \"Entering the atmosphere, ought to be landing in five or ten minutes,\"\n Nathen told them.\n\n\n A ripple of heightened excitement ran through the room. Cameramen began\n adjusting the lens angles again, turning on the mike and checking it,\n turning on the floodlights. The scientists rose and stood near the\n window, still talking. The reporters trooped in from the hall and went\n to the windows to watch for the great event. The three linguists came\n in, trundling a large wheeled box that was the mechanical translator,\n supervising while it was hitched into the sound broadcasting system.\n\n\n \"Landing where?\" the\nTimes\nasked Nathen brutally. \"Why don't you do\n something?\"", "Controlled tension, betraying itself by a jerk of the hands, a\n too-quick answer to a question. The uniformed one, not suspicious,\n turned his back, busying himself at some task involving a map lit with\n glowing red points, his motions sharing the same fluid dragging grace\n of the others, as if they were underwater, or on a slow motion film.\n The other was watching a switch, a switch set into a panel, moving\n closer to it, talking casually—background music coming and rising in\n thin chords of tension.", "He walked over and touched the set. The speaker bipped slightly and\n the gray screen flickered with a flash of color at the touch. The set\n was awake and sensitive, tuned to receive from the great interstellar\n spaceship which now circled the atmosphere.\n\n\n \"We wondered why there were so many bands, but when we got the set\n working, and started recording and playing everything that came in, we\n found we'd tapped something like a lending library line. It was all\n fiction, plays.\"\n\n\n Between the pauses in Nathen's voice, the\nTimes\nfound himself\n unconsciously listening for the sound of roaring, swiftly approaching\n rocket jets.\n\n\n The\nPost\nasked, \"How did you contact the spaceship?\"", "They waited.\nAll the people in the room were waiting. There was no more\n conversation. A bald man of the scientist group was automatically\n buffing his fingernails over and over and inspecting them without\n seeing them, another absently polished his glasses, held them up to\n the light, put them on, and then a moment later took them off and began\n polishing again. The television crew concentrated on their jobs, moving\n quietly and efficiently, with perfectionist care, minutely arranging\n things which did not need to be arranged, checking things that had\n already been checked.\n\n\n This was to be one of the great moments of human history, and they were\n all trying to forget that fact and remain impassive and wrapped up in\n the problems of their jobs as good specialists should.\n\n\n After an interminable age the\nTimes\nconsulted his watch. Three\n minutes had passed. He tried holding his breath a moment, listening for\n a distant approaching thunder of jets. There was no sound." ], [ "The tableau held, the uniformed one drooping, looking down at his hand\n holding the weapon which had killed, and music began to build in from\n the background. Just for an instant, the room and the things within\n it flashed into one of those bewildering color changes which were the\n bane of color television, and switched to a color negative of itself, a\n green man standing in a violet control room, looking down at the body\n of a green man in a red tunic. It held for less than a second; then the\n color band alternator fell back into phase and the colors reversed to\n normal.\n\n\n Another uniformed man came and took the weapon from the limp hand of\n the other, who began to explain dejectedly in a low voice while the\n music mounted and covered his words and the screen slowly went blank,\n like a window that slowly filmed over with gray fog.\n\n\n The music faded.\n\n\n In the dark, someone clapped appreciatively.", "There was a closeup of the alien's face watching the switch, and the\nTimes\nnoted that his ears were symmetrically half-circles, almost\n perfect with no earholes visible. The voice of the uniformed one\n answered, a brief word in a preoccupied deep voice. His back was still\n turned. The other glanced at the switch, moving closer to it, talking\n casually, the switch coming closer and closer stereoscopically. It was\n in reach, filling the screen. His hand came into view, darting out,\n closed over the switch—\n\n\n There was a sharp clap of sound and his hand opened in a frozen\n shape of pain. Beyond him, as his gaze swung up, stood the figure of\n the uniformed officer, unmoving, a weapon rigid in his hand, in the\n startled position in which he had turned and fired, watching with\n widening eyes as the man in the green tunic swayed and fell.", "The\nTimes\nsat down on the edge of the platform beside him and took\n out a pack of cigarettes, then remembered the coming TV broadcast\n and the ban on smoking. He put them away, thoughtfully watching the\n diminishing rain spray against the streaming windows.\n\n\n \"What's wrong?\" he asked.\n\n\n Nathen showed that he was aware and friendly by a slight motion of his\n head.\n\n\n \"\nYou\ntell me.\"\n\n\n \"Hunch,\" said the\nTimes\nman. \"Sheer hunch. Everything sailing along\n too smoothly, everyone taking too much for granted.\"\n\n\n Nathen relaxed slightly. \"I'm still listening.\"\n\n\n \"Something about the way they move....\"\n\n\n Nathen shifted to glance at him.\n\n\n \"That's bothered me, too.\"\n\n\n \"Are you sure they're adjusted to the right speed?\"", "Controlled tension, betraying itself by a jerk of the hands, a\n too-quick answer to a question. The uniformed one, not suspicious,\n turned his back, busying himself at some task involving a map lit with\n glowing red points, his motions sharing the same fluid dragging grace\n of the others, as if they were underwater, or on a slow motion film.\n The other was watching a switch, a switch set into a panel, moving\n closer to it, talking casually—background music coming and rising in\n thin chords of tension.", "\"Tell me what to do and I'll do it,\" Nathen said quietly, not moving.\n\n\n It was not sarcasm. Jacob Luke of the\nTimes\nlooked sidewise at the\n strained whiteness of his face, and moderated his tone. \"Can't you\n contact them?\"\n\n\n \"Not while they're landing.\"\n\n\n \"What now?\" The\nTimes\ntook out a pack of cigarettes, remembered the\n rule against smoking, and put it back.\n\n\n \"We just wait.\" Nathen leaned his elbow on one knee and his chin in his\n hand.", "\"I decided it wasn't natural. I tried decoding it.\"\n\n\n Hurriedly he tried to explain it away and make it seem obvious. \"You\n see, there's an old intelligence trick, speeding up a message on a\n record until it sounds just like that, a short squawk of static, and\n then broadcasting it. Undergrounds use it. I'd heard that kind of\n screech before.\"\n\n\n \"You mean they broadcast at us in code?\" asked the\nNews\n.", "There was some fumbling in the semi-dark and then the screen came to\n life again.\nIt showed a flash of an audience sitting before a screen and gave a\n clipped chord of some familiar symphony. \"Crazy about Stravinsky and\n Mozart,\" remarked the earphoned linguist to the\nTimes\n, resettling his\n earphones. \"Can't stand Gershwin. Can you beat that?\" He turned his\n attention back to the screen as the right sequence came on.\n\n\n The\nPost\n, who was sitting just in front of him, turned to the\nTimes\nand said, \"Funny how much they look like people.\" He was writing,\n making notes to telephone his report. \"What color hair did that\n character have?\"", "\"Likewise.\" The\nTimes\nsmiled. \"Look, have you gone into this\n rationally, with formulas?\" He found a pencil in his pocket.\n \"Obviously there's something wrong with our judgment of their\n weight-to-speed-to-momentum ratio. Maybe it's something simple like low\n gravity aboard ship, with magnetic shoes. Maybe they\nare\nfloating\n slightly.\"\n\n\n \"Why worry?\" Nathen cut in. \"I don't see any reason to try to figure it\n out now.\" He laughed and shoved back his black hair nervously. \"We'll\n see them in twenty minutes.\"\n\n\n \"Will we?\" asked the\nTimes\nslowly.\n\n\n There was a silence while the Senator turned a page of his magazine\n with a slight crackling of paper, and the scientists argued at the\n other end of the room. Nathen pushed at his lank black hair again, as\n if it were trying to fall forward in front of his eyes and keep him\n from seeing.", "Mellerdrammer.\n\n\n The second, smaller, with yellowish-green eyes, stepped closer, talking\n more rapidly in a lower voice. The first stood very still, not trying\n to interrupt.\n\n\n Obviously, the proposal was some advantageous treachery, and he wanted\n to be persuaded. The\nTimes\ngroped for a chair and sat down.\n\n\n Perhaps gesture is universal; desire and aversion, a leaning forward or\n a leaning back, tension, relaxation. Perhaps these actors were masters.\n The scenes changed, a corridor, a parklike place in what he began to\n realize was a spaceship, a lecture room. There were others talking\n and working, speaking to the man in the green tunic, and never was it\n unclear what was happening or how they felt.\n\n\n They talked a flowing language with many short vowels and shifts of\n pitch, and they gestured in the heat of talk, their hands moving with\n an odd lagging difference of motion, not slow, but somehow drifting.", "The sun came out from behind the clouds and lit up the field like a\n great spotlight on an empty stage.\n\n\n Abruptly the green light shone on the set again, indicating that a\n squawk message had been received. The recorder recorded it, slowed it\n and fed it back to the speaker. It clicked and the sound was very loud\n in the still, tense room.\n\n\n The screen remained gray, but Bud's voice spoke a few words in the\n alien language. He stopped, the speaker clicked and the light went out.\n When it was plain that nothing more would occur and no announcement was\n to be made of what was said, the people in the room turned back to the\n windows, talk picked up again.\n\n\n Somebody told a joke and laughed alone.\n\n\n One of the linguists remained turned toward the loudspeaker, then\n looked at the widening patches of blue sky showing out the window, his\n expression puzzled. He had understood.", "\"It's dark,\" the thin Intelligence Department decoder translated,\n low-voiced, to the man from the\nTimes\n. \"Your atmosphere is\nthick\n.\n That's precisely what Bud said.\"\n\n\n Another three minutes. The\nTimes\ncaught himself about to light a\n cigarette and swore silently, blowing the match out and putting the\n cigarette back into its package. He listened for the sound of the\n rocket jets. It was time for the landing, yet he heard no blasts.\n\n\n The green light came on in the transceiver.\n\n\n Message in.\n\n\n Instinctively he came to his feet. Nathen abruptly was standing beside\n him. Then the message came in the voice he was coming to think of as\n Bud. It spoke and paused. Suddenly the\nTimes\nknew.\n\n\n \"We've landed.\" Nathen whispered the words.", "The green light glowed on the set again, and they stopped speaking,\n waiting for the message to be recorded, slowed and replayed. The\n cathode screen came to life suddenly with a picture of the young man\n sitting at his sending-set, his back turned, watching a screen at one\n side which showed a glimpse of a huge dark plain approaching. As the\n ship plunged down toward it, the illusion of solidity melted into a\n boiling turbulence of black clouds. They expanded in an inky swirl,\n looked huge for an instant, and then blackness swallowed the screen.\n The young alien swung around to face the camera, speaking a few words\n as he moved, made the O of a smile again, then flipped the switch and\n the screen went gray.\n\n\n Nathen's voice was suddenly toneless and strained. \"He said something\n like break out the drinks, here they come.\"", "The\nTimes\nman stood with the others, listening absently, thinking of\n questions, but reserving them. Joseph R. Nathen, the thin young man\n with the straight black hair and the tired lines on his face, was being\n treated with respect by his interviewers. He was obviously on edge, and\n they did not want to harry him with too many questions to answer at\n once. They wanted to keep his good will. Tomorrow he would be one of\n the biggest celebrities ever to appear in headlines.\n\n\n \"No, nothing directly.\"\n\n\n \"Any ideas or deductions?\"\nHerald\npersisted.\n\n\n \"Their world must be Earth-like to them,\" the weary-looking young man\n answered uncertainly. \"The environment evolves the animal. But only in\n relative terms, of course.\" He looked at them with a quick glance and\n then looked away evasively, his lank black hair beginning to cling to\n his forehead with sweat. \"That doesn't necessarily mean anything.\"", "They waited.\nAll the people in the room were waiting. There was no more\n conversation. A bald man of the scientist group was automatically\n buffing his fingernails over and over and inspecting them without\n seeing them, another absently polished his glasses, held them up to\n the light, put them on, and then a moment later took them off and began\n polishing again. The television crew concentrated on their jobs, moving\n quietly and efficiently, with perfectionist care, minutely arranging\n things which did not need to be arranged, checking things that had\n already been checked.\n\n\n This was to be one of the great moments of human history, and they were\n all trying to forget that fact and remain impassive and wrapped up in\n the problems of their jobs as good specialists should.\n\n\n After an interminable age the\nTimes\nconsulted his watch. Three\n minutes had passed. He tried holding his breath a moment, listening for\n a distant approaching thunder of jets. There was no sound.", "A stray phrase reached him: \"—reference to the universal constants as\n ratio—\" It was probably a discussion of ways of converting formulas\n from one mathematics to another for a rapid exchange of information.\n\n\n They had reason to be intent, aware of the flood of insights that novel\n viewpoints could bring, if they could grasp them. He would have liked\n to go over and listen, but there was too little time left before the\n spaceship was due, and he had a question to ask.\nThe hand-rigged transceiver was still humming, tuned to the sending\n band of the circling ship, and the young man who had started it all\n was sitting on the edge of the TV platform with his chin resting in\n one hand. He did not look up as the\nTimes\napproached, but it was the\n indifference of preoccupation, not discourtesy.", "Pictures Don't Lie\nBy KATHERINE MacLEAN\n\n\n Illustrated by MARTIN SCHNEIDER\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n... Pictures, that is, that one can test and measure.\n\n And these pictures positively, absolutely could not lie!\nThe man from the\nNews\nasked, \"What do you think of the aliens, Mister\n Nathen? Are they friendly? Do they look human?\"\n\n\n \"Very human,\" said the thin young man.", "The listening officer frowned and cleared his throat, and the thin\n young man turned to him quickly. \"No security reason why they should\n not see the broadcasts, is there? Perhaps you should show them.\" He\n said to the reporters reassuringly, \"It's right down the hall. You\n will be informed the moment the spaceship approaches.\"\n\n\n The interview was very definitely over. The lank-haired, nervous young\n man turned away and seated himself at the radio set while the officer\n swallowed his objections and showed them dourly down the hall to a\n closed door.\n\n\n They opened it and fumbled into a darkened room crowded with empty\n folding chairs, dominated by a glowing bright screen. The door closed\n behind them, bringing total darkness.\n\n\n There was the sound of reporters fumbling their way into seats around\n him, but the\nTimes\nman remained standing, aware of an enormous\n surprise, as if he had been asleep and wakened to find himself in the\n wrong country.", "On the other side of the glowing window that was the stereo screen, the\n large protagonist in the green tunic was speaking to a pilot in a gray\n uniform. They stood in a brightly lit canary-yellow control room in a\n spaceship.\n\n\n The\nTimes\ntried to pick up the thread of the plot. Already he was\n interested in the fate of the hero, and liked him. That was the effect\n of good acting, probably, for part of the art of acting is to win\n affection from the audience, and this actor might be the matinee idol\n of whole solar systems.", "Security regulations had changed since arms inspection had been\n legalized by the U.N. Complete information being the only public\n security against secret rearmament, spying and prying had come to seem\n a public service. Its aura had changed. It was good public relations to\n admit to it.\n\n\n Nathen continued, \"I started directing the pickup at stars in my\n spare time. There's radio noise from stars, you know. Just stuff that\n sounds like spatter static, and an occasional squawk. People have been\n listening to it for a long time, and researching, trying to work out\n why stellar radiation on those bands comes in such jagged bursts. It\n didn't seem natural.\"\n\n\n He paused and smiled uncertainly, aware that the next thing he would\n say was the thing that would make him famous—an idea that had come to\n him while he listened—an idea as simple and as perfect as the one that\n came to Newton when he saw the apple fall.", "The earphoned man beside the\nTimes\nshifted his earphones back from\n his ears and spoke briskly. \"I can't get any more. Either of you want a\n replay?\"\n\n\n There was a short silence until the linguist nearest the set said, \"I\n guess we've squeezed that one dry. Let's run the tape where Nathen and\n that ship radio boy are kidding around CQing and tuning their beams in\n closer. I have a hunch the boy is talking routine ham talk and giving\n the old radio count—one-two-three-testing.\"" ] ]
test	50936	[ "What is John's general frustration with Buster?", "Why does Buster treat John almost condescendingly?", "What question does John ask Buster?", "Why didn't Buster respond to John's question with \"Insufficient Evidence\"?", "Why were no lives lost at the Interceptor Launching Station?", "Why did the newspapers call Buster \"The Oracle\"?", "What method do the invaders use to attack the Solar Confederation?", "Why, ultimately, does Buster refuse to explain its answer to John's question?" ]	[ [ "He is too similar to himself, and he does not like seeing himself reflected in a machine.", "His explanations of his mysterious answer are too complex and do not solve his problem.", "It does not function in the ways John had attempted to program him.", "He does not give him a clear answer to his question." ], [ "Buster's intelligence has far surpassed John's own.", "Buster reacts the way John would in any given situation. Its lack of consideration is reflected in John's interactions with Anne.", "Buster is growing past any need for John's assistance in any regard, and therefore it does not care about John's feelings.", "Because Buster is a machine and does not have the capacity to empathize. " ], [ "How can the Solar Confederation fortify the Interceptor Launching Station?", "How can the Solar Confederation protect itself against the invaders?", "How can the Solar Confederation completely decimate the invaders?", "How can the Solar Confederation use interplanar travel to its advantage?" ], [ "It had already analyzed the behavior of the invaders in relation to the humans and could make a recommendation based on that assessment.", "He had not been programmed to provide such a response to a query.", "The machine knew the answer clearly but it wanted John to arrive at the conclusion for himself.", "The machine was bluffing because it did not yet know enough about the invaders but did not want to admit it." ], [ "The high meteor traffic at the time prevented any life from being able to enter the vicinity.", "The humans had shot the invaders out of the sky, thus defending the Launching Station from further attacks.", "The station operators had left the station temporarily at the time of the attack, so when the invaders destroyed it, nobody died.", "The invaders were able to dodge its attack. In addition, the interceptor runs independently, so nobody died when the invaders destroyed it." ], [ "Because of its ability to accurately predict the future.", "Buster's language is difficult to translate because it is often layered in complex computer code.", "Because of the machine's uncanny ability to think like John Bristol and applies those thoughts to making informed decisions.", "Because of its tendency to speak using language often difficult to decipher." ], [ "They travel through the beta universe because there is no life there and very little is known about it. Therefore, it is difficult to follow them into it and track their movements.", "They travel through the beta universe because it is much smaller than the alpha universe, and therefore easier to navigate.", "They weave between the alpha and beta planes in order to hasten their attack and retreat.", "They use space shivers and bong waves to deafen their victims and buy enough time for retreat." ], [ "To do so would go against its instincts for self-preservation, and it would no longer be able to carry out its deepest convictions, programmed into it by John himself.", "To do so would result in the destruction of mankind.", "To do so would undermine its programmed desire to preserve civilization because it would no longer require mankind to think through problems.", "Buster shares John's belief in the importance of humor, so it enjoys using humor to mess with John." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "\"You sure are a woman,\" said John with warm feeling. \"You can\n exasperate me sometimes, but not the same way Buster does. It was my\n lucky day when you married me.\"\n\n\n There were a few minutes of peaceful silence.\n\n\n \"Was today a rough day with Buster, dear?\" asked Anne.\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.\n\n\n \"That's too bad, dear,\" said Anne. \"I think you work much too\n hard—what with this dreadful invasion and everything. Why don't you\n take a vacation? You really need one, you know. You look so tired.\"\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.", "Buster answered slowly. \"You made me in your own image. Things thus\n made are often hard to handle.\"\n\n\n Bristol leaped to his feet in frustration. \"But you're only a\n calculating machine!\" he shouted. \"Your only purpose is to make my\n work—and that of other men—easier. And when I try to use you, you\n answer with riddles....\"", "All of the glowing lights that dotted Buster's massive front winked\n simultaneously. \"The answer I gave you is an ancient saying which\n suggests that corrective action taken rapidly can save a great deal of\n trouble later. The ancient saying also suggests the proper method of\n taking this timely action. It should be done by\nstitching\n; if this is\n done in time, nine will be saved. What could be clearer than that?\"\n\n\n \"I made you myself,\" said Bristol plaintively. \"I designed you with my\n own brain. I gloated over the neatness and compactness of your design.\n So help me, I was proud of you. I even installed some of your circuitry\n with my own hands. If anybody can understand you, it should be me.\n And since you're just a complex computer of general design, with the\n ability to use symbolic logic as well as mathematics, anybody should be\n able to understand you. Why are you so hard to handle?\"", "\"You could remove my ideas,\" answered the computer without concern.\n \"But you might have trouble giving me different ones. Even after you\n repaired me. In the meantime, wouldn't it be a good idea for you to get\n busy on the ideas I have already given you?\"\nJohn sighed, and rubbed the bristles of short sandy hair on the top\n of his head with his knuckles. \"Ordered around by an overgrown adding\n machine. I know now how Frankenstein felt. I'm glad you can't get\n around like his monster; at least I didn't give you feet.\" He shook\n his head. \"I should have been a plumber instead of an engineering\n mathematician.\"\n\n\n \"And Einstein, too, probably,\" added Buster cryptically.", "Even through his overwhelming sense of frustration at the ambiguous\n answer the computer had given to his question, John Bristol noticed\n with satisfaction the success of his Voder installation. He wished that\n all of his innovations with the machine were as satisfying.\n\n\n Alone in the tremendous vaulted room that housed the gigantic\n calculator, Bristol clasped his hands behind his back and thrust\n forward a reasonably strong chin and a somewhat sensuous lower lip\n in the general direction of the computer's visual receptors. After\n a moment of silence, he scratched his chin and then shrugged his\n shoulders slightly. \"Well, Buster, I suppose I might try rephrasing the\n question,\" he said doubtfully.\n\n\n Somewhere deep within the computer, a bank of relays chuckled briefly.\n \"That expedient is open to you, of course, although it is highly\n unlikely that any clarification will result for you from my answers. I\n am constrained, however, to answer any questions you may choose to ask.\"", "\"Well, if you won't, you won't. Though goodness knows you won't be\n doing anyone any good if you have a breakdown, as you're likely to\n have, unless you take it a little easier. What was the trouble today,\n dear? Was the Oracle being obstinate again?\"\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.\n\n\n \"Well, then, dear, why don't you tell me all about it? I always think\n that things are much easier to bear, if you share them. And then, two\n heads are always better than one, aren't they? Maybe I could help you\n with your problem.\"\n\n\n While Anne's voice gushed, her violet eyes studied his exhausted face\n with intelligence and compassion.", "\"Just relax, dear,\" said Anne gently, when Bristol leaned gratefully\n back with his eyes closed. Anne perched on the arm of the chair beside\n him and began massaging his temples soothingly with her fingers.\n\n\n \"It's wonderful to come home after a day with Buster,\" he said. \"Buster\n never seems to have any consideration for me as an individual. There's\n no reason why he should, of course. He's only a machine. Still, he\n always has such a superior attitude. But you, darling, can always relax\n me and make me feel comfortable.\"", "\"And that sounds like very good sense, too,\" said Anne in earnest\n tones. \"But it's a little late, isn't it? After all, the invaders are\n already invading us, aren't they?\"\n\n\n \"It has some deeper meaning than the usual one,\" said John. \"If I could\n only figure out what it is.\"\n\n\n Anne nodded vigorously. \"I suppose Buster's talking about\n space-stitching,\" she said. \"Although I can never quite remember just\n what\nthat\nis. Or just how it works, rather.\"\nShe waited expectantly for a few moments and then plaintively asked,\n \"What\nis\nit, dear?\"\n\n\n \"What's what?\"\n\n\n \"Stitching, silly. I already asked you.\"\n\n\n \"Darling,\" said John with reasonable patience, \"I must have explained\n inter-planar travel to you at least a dozen times.\"", "\"Darling!\" interrupted John with the hopeless patience of a harassed\n husband. \"It isn't the same thing at all. Buster isn't a fortune teller\n or the ghost of somebody's great aunt wobbling tables and blowing\n through horns. And Buster isn't just a toy, either. It is a very\n elaborate calculating machine designed to think logically when fed a\n vast mass of data. Unfortunately, it has a sense of humor and a sense\n of responsibility.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if you're going to believe that machine, I have an idea.\" Anne\n smiled sweetly. \"You know,\" she said, \"that my dear father always said\n that the best defense is a good offense. Why don't we just find the\n invaders and wipe them out before they are able to do any real harm to\n us? Stitching our way to\ntheir\nplanets in our spaceships, of course.\"", "\"Although there was no one left alive who had directly contacted one of\n the invaders,\" Buster answered, \"there was still much information to\n be gathered from the survivors. This information confirmed my previous\n opinions about their nature. Which brings us back to the stitch in time\n saving nine.\"\n\n\n \"You're right,\" said John. \"It does, at that. Buster, I have always\n resented the nickname the newspapers have given you—the Oracle—but\n the more I have to try to interpret your cryptic answers, the more\n sense that tagline makes. Imagine comparing a Delphic Priestess with a\n calculating machine and being accurate in the comparison!\"\n\"I don't mind being called 'The Oracle,'\" answered Buster with dignity.", "Bristol nodded. \"Sure. We've got to have time to get ready. But right\n now speed is necessary. That's why I tried to phrase the question so\n you'd give me a clear and concise answer for once. I can't afford to\n spend weeks figuring out what you meant.\"\nBristol thought that the Voder voice of Buster sounded almost gleeful\n as it answered. \"It was exceedingly clear and concise; a complete\n answer to an enormously elaborate question boiled down to only six\n words!\"\n\n\n \"I know,\" said John. \"But now, how about elaborating on your answer? It\n didn't sound very complete to me.\"", "John sighed deeply, then sat up slowly and opened his eyes to look into\n Anne's. She glanced away, her own eyes suddenly vague and soft-looking,\n now that John could see them. \"The trouble, darling,\" he said, \"is that\n I have to go to an emergency council meeting this evening with another\n one of those ridiculous riddles that Buster gave me as the only answer\n to the most important question we've ever asked it. And I don't know\n what the riddle means.\"\n\n\n Anne slid from the arm of the chair and settled herself onto the floor\n at John's feet. \"You should not let that old Oracle bother you so much,\n dear. After all, you built it yourself, so you should know what to\n expect of it.\"\n\n\n \"When I asked it how to preserve Earth from the invaders it just\n answered 'A Stitch in Time Saves Nine,' and wouldn't interpret it.\"", "Bristol took a long and searching look at his brainchild. Its flippant\n manner, he decided, did not go well with the brooding immensity of its\n construction. The calculator towered nearly a hundred feet above the\n polished marble slabs of the floor, and spidery metal walkways spiraled\n up the sides of its almost cubical structure. A long double row of\n generators, each under Buster's control, led from the doorway of the\n building to the base of the calculator like Sphinxes lining the roadway\n to an Egyptian tomb.\n\n\n \"When I get around to it,\" said Bristol, \"I'll put lace panties on the\n bases of all your klystrons.\" He hitched up his neat but slightly baggy\n pants, turned with dignity, and strode from the chamber down the twin\n rows of generators.", "The deep-throated hum of each generator changed pitch slightly as\n he passed it. Since he was tone deaf, as the machine knew, he did\n not recognize in the tunefulness of the pitch changes a slow-paced\n rendition of Elgar's\nPomp and Circumstance\n.\n\n\n John Bristol turned around, interrupting the melody. \"One last\n question,\" he shouted down the long aisle to the computer. \"How in\n blazes can you be sure of your answer without knowing more about the\n invaders? Why didn't you give me an 'Insufficient Evidence' answer or,\n at least, a 'Highly Conditional' answer?\" He took two steps toward the\n immense bulk of the calculator and pointed an accusing finger at it.\n \"Are you sure, Buster, that you aren't\nbluffing\n?\"\n\"Don't be silly,\" answered the calculator softly. \"You made me and\n you know I can't bluff, any more than I can refuse to answer your\n questions, however inane.\"", "\"Then answer the ones I just asked.\"\nSomewhere deep within the machine a switch snicked sharply, and the\n great room's lighting brightened almost imperceptibly. \"I didn't answer\n your question conditionally or with the 'Insufficient Evidence' remark\n that so frequently annoys you,\" Buster said, \"because the little\n information that I have been able to get about the invaders is highly\n revealing.\n\n\n \"They have been suspicious, impossible to establish communication with\n and murderously destructive. They have been careless of their own\n safety: sly, stupid, cautious, clever, bold and highly intelligent.\n They are inquisitive and impatient of getting answers to questions.", "Anne smiled, looking down tenderly at John's tired face. \"I know,\n dear,\" she said. \"You need to be able to talk to someone who will\n always be interested, even if she doesn't understand half of what you\n say. As a matter of fact, I'm sure it does you a great deal of good to\n talk to someone like me who isn't very bright, but who doesn't always\n know what you're talking about even before you start talking.\"\n\n\n John nodded, his eyes still closed. \"If it weren't for you, darling,\"\n he said, \"I think I'd go crazy. But you aren't dumb at all. If I seem\n to act as if you are, sometimes, it's just that I can't always follow\n your logic.\"\nAnne gave him a quick glance of amusement, her eyes sparkling with\n intelligence. \"You never will find me logical,\" she laughed. \"After\n all, I'm a woman, and you get plenty of logic from the Oracle.\"", "John searched his pockets. After a little difficulty, he produced an\n envelope and a pencil stub. On the back of the envelope, he drew two\n parallel lines, one about five inches long, and the other about double\n the length of the first.\n\n\n \"Actually,\" he said, \"each of these line segments has an infinite\n number of points in it, but we'll ignore that. I'll just divide each\n one of these into ten equal parts.\" He did so, using short, neat\n cross-marks.", "Anne sat up. \"I'll forgive you this time for bringing up that horrid\n word\nentropy\n, if you'll promise me not to do it again,\" she said.\nJohn Shrugged his shoulders and smiled. \"Now,\" he said, \"if I want\n to get somewhere fast, I just start off in the right direction, and\n switch over toward 'beta.' When 'beta' throws me back, a light-year\n or so toward my destination, I just switch over again. You see, there\n is a great deal more difference in the sizes of Alpha universe and\n Beta universe than in the sizes of these alpha and beta line-segment\n analogues. Then I continue alternating back and forth until I get where\n I want to go. Establishing my correct velocity vector is complicated\n mathematically, but simple in practice, and is actually an aiming\n device, having nothing to do with how fast I go.\"", "\"One of the ideas you presented was the concept of a sense of humor.\n You believe that you look on it as a pleasant thing to have; not\n necessary, but convenient. Actually, your other and more basic ideas\n make it clear that you consider the possession of a sense of humor\n to be absolutely necessary if proper answers are to be reached—a\n prime axiom of humanity. Therefore, I have a sense of humor. Somewhat\n macabre, perhaps—and a little mechanistic—but still there.\n\n\n \"Add to this a second axiom: that in order to be helped, a man must\n help himself; that he must participate in the assistance given him or\n the pure charity will be harmful, and you come up with 'A Stitch in\n Time Saves Nine.'\"\n\n\n Bristol stood up once more. \"I could cure you with a sledge hammer,\" he\n said.", "\"Yes,\" said John. \"Now, let us call this longer line-segment an 'alpha'\n universe; an analogue of our own multi-dimensional 'alpha' universe.\n If I move my pencil along the line at one section a second like this,\n it takes me ten seconds to get to the other end. We will assume that\n this velocity of an inch a second is the fastest anything can go along\n the 'alpha' line. That is the velocity of light, therefore, in the\n 'alpha' plane—186,000 miles a second, in round numbers. No need to use\n decimals.\"\nHe hurried on as Anne stirred and seemed about to speak. \"But if I\n slide out from my starting point along a dotted line part way to the\n 'beta' universe—something which, for reasons I can't explain now," ], [ "\"Just relax, dear,\" said Anne gently, when Bristol leaned gratefully\n back with his eyes closed. Anne perched on the arm of the chair beside\n him and began massaging his temples soothingly with her fingers.\n\n\n \"It's wonderful to come home after a day with Buster,\" he said. \"Buster\n never seems to have any consideration for me as an individual. There's\n no reason why he should, of course. He's only a machine. Still, he\n always has such a superior attitude. But you, darling, can always relax\n me and make me feel comfortable.\"", "\"You sure are a woman,\" said John with warm feeling. \"You can\n exasperate me sometimes, but not the same way Buster does. It was my\n lucky day when you married me.\"\n\n\n There were a few minutes of peaceful silence.\n\n\n \"Was today a rough day with Buster, dear?\" asked Anne.\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.\n\n\n \"That's too bad, dear,\" said Anne. \"I think you work much too\n hard—what with this dreadful invasion and everything. Why don't you\n take a vacation? You really need one, you know. You look so tired.\"\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.", "Buster answered slowly. \"You made me in your own image. Things thus\n made are often hard to handle.\"\n\n\n Bristol leaped to his feet in frustration. \"But you're only a\n calculating machine!\" he shouted. \"Your only purpose is to make my\n work—and that of other men—easier. And when I try to use you, you\n answer with riddles....\"", "\"Darling!\" interrupted John with the hopeless patience of a harassed\n husband. \"It isn't the same thing at all. Buster isn't a fortune teller\n or the ghost of somebody's great aunt wobbling tables and blowing\n through horns. And Buster isn't just a toy, either. It is a very\n elaborate calculating machine designed to think logically when fed a\n vast mass of data. Unfortunately, it has a sense of humor and a sense\n of responsibility.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if you're going to believe that machine, I have an idea.\" Anne\n smiled sweetly. \"You know,\" she said, \"that my dear father always said\n that the best defense is a good offense. Why don't we just find the\n invaders and wipe them out before they are able to do any real harm to\n us? Stitching our way to\ntheir\nplanets in our spaceships, of course.\"", "Bristol nodded. \"Sure. We've got to have time to get ready. But right\n now speed is necessary. That's why I tried to phrase the question so\n you'd give me a clear and concise answer for once. I can't afford to\n spend weeks figuring out what you meant.\"\nBristol thought that the Voder voice of Buster sounded almost gleeful\n as it answered. \"It was exceedingly clear and concise; a complete\n answer to an enormously elaborate question boiled down to only six\n words!\"\n\n\n \"I know,\" said John. \"But now, how about elaborating on your answer? It\n didn't sound very complete to me.\"", "\"You could remove my ideas,\" answered the computer without concern.\n \"But you might have trouble giving me different ones. Even after you\n repaired me. In the meantime, wouldn't it be a good idea for you to get\n busy on the ideas I have already given you?\"\nJohn sighed, and rubbed the bristles of short sandy hair on the top\n of his head with his knuckles. \"Ordered around by an overgrown adding\n machine. I know now how Frankenstein felt. I'm glad you can't get\n around like his monster; at least I didn't give you feet.\" He shook\n his head. \"I should have been a plumber instead of an engineering\n mathematician.\"\n\n\n \"And Einstein, too, probably,\" added Buster cryptically.", "\"And that sounds like very good sense, too,\" said Anne in earnest\n tones. \"But it's a little late, isn't it? After all, the invaders are\n already invading us, aren't they?\"\n\n\n \"It has some deeper meaning than the usual one,\" said John. \"If I could\n only figure out what it is.\"\n\n\n Anne nodded vigorously. \"I suppose Buster's talking about\n space-stitching,\" she said. \"Although I can never quite remember just\n what\nthat\nis. Or just how it works, rather.\"\nShe waited expectantly for a few moments and then plaintively asked,\n \"What\nis\nit, dear?\"\n\n\n \"What's what?\"\n\n\n \"Stitching, silly. I already asked you.\"\n\n\n \"Darling,\" said John with reasonable patience, \"I must have explained\n inter-planar travel to you at least a dozen times.\"", "\"Although there was no one left alive who had directly contacted one of\n the invaders,\" Buster answered, \"there was still much information to\n be gathered from the survivors. This information confirmed my previous\n opinions about their nature. Which brings us back to the stitch in time\n saving nine.\"\n\n\n \"You're right,\" said John. \"It does, at that. Buster, I have always\n resented the nickname the newspapers have given you—the Oracle—but\n the more I have to try to interpret your cryptic answers, the more\n sense that tagline makes. Imagine comparing a Delphic Priestess with a\n calculating machine and being accurate in the comparison!\"\n\"I don't mind being called 'The Oracle,'\" answered Buster with dignity.", "\"Well, if you won't, you won't. Though goodness knows you won't be\n doing anyone any good if you have a breakdown, as you're likely to\n have, unless you take it a little easier. What was the trouble today,\n dear? Was the Oracle being obstinate again?\"\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.\n\n\n \"Well, then, dear, why don't you tell me all about it? I always think\n that things are much easier to bear, if you share them. And then, two\n heads are always better than one, aren't they? Maybe I could help you\n with your problem.\"\n\n\n While Anne's voice gushed, her violet eyes studied his exhausted face\n with intelligence and compassion.", "The deep-throated hum of each generator changed pitch slightly as\n he passed it. Since he was tone deaf, as the machine knew, he did\n not recognize in the tunefulness of the pitch changes a slow-paced\n rendition of Elgar's\nPomp and Circumstance\n.\n\n\n John Bristol turned around, interrupting the melody. \"One last\n question,\" he shouted down the long aisle to the computer. \"How in\n blazes can you be sure of your answer without knowing more about the\n invaders? Why didn't you give me an 'Insufficient Evidence' answer or,\n at least, a 'Highly Conditional' answer?\" He took two steps toward the\n immense bulk of the calculator and pointed an accusing finger at it.\n \"Are you sure, Buster, that you aren't\nbluffing\n?\"\n\"Don't be silly,\" answered the calculator softly. \"You made me and\n you know I can't bluff, any more than I can refuse to answer your\n questions, however inane.\"", "All of the glowing lights that dotted Buster's massive front winked\n simultaneously. \"The answer I gave you is an ancient saying which\n suggests that corrective action taken rapidly can save a great deal of\n trouble later. The ancient saying also suggests the proper method of\n taking this timely action. It should be done by\nstitching\n; if this is\n done in time, nine will be saved. What could be clearer than that?\"\n\n\n \"I made you myself,\" said Bristol plaintively. \"I designed you with my\n own brain. I gloated over the neatness and compactness of your design.\n So help me, I was proud of you. I even installed some of your circuitry\n with my own hands. If anybody can understand you, it should be me.\n And since you're just a complex computer of general design, with the\n ability to use symbolic logic as well as mathematics, anybody should be\n able to understand you. Why are you so hard to handle?\"", "\"Then answer the ones I just asked.\"\nSomewhere deep within the machine a switch snicked sharply, and the\n great room's lighting brightened almost imperceptibly. \"I didn't answer\n your question conditionally or with the 'Insufficient Evidence' remark\n that so frequently annoys you,\" Buster said, \"because the little\n information that I have been able to get about the invaders is highly\n revealing.\n\n\n \"They have been suspicious, impossible to establish communication with\n and murderously destructive. They have been careless of their own\n safety: sly, stupid, cautious, clever, bold and highly intelligent.\n They are inquisitive and impatient of getting answers to questions.", "Even through his overwhelming sense of frustration at the ambiguous\n answer the computer had given to his question, John Bristol noticed\n with satisfaction the success of his Voder installation. He wished that\n all of his innovations with the machine were as satisfying.\n\n\n Alone in the tremendous vaulted room that housed the gigantic\n calculator, Bristol clasped his hands behind his back and thrust\n forward a reasonably strong chin and a somewhat sensuous lower lip\n in the general direction of the computer's visual receptors. After\n a moment of silence, he scratched his chin and then shrugged his\n shoulders slightly. \"Well, Buster, I suppose I might try rephrasing the\n question,\" he said doubtfully.\n\n\n Somewhere deep within the computer, a bank of relays chuckled briefly.\n \"That expedient is open to you, of course, although it is highly\n unlikely that any clarification will result for you from my answers. I\n am constrained, however, to answer any questions you may choose to ask.\"", "Bristol took a long and searching look at his brainchild. Its flippant\n manner, he decided, did not go well with the brooding immensity of its\n construction. The calculator towered nearly a hundred feet above the\n polished marble slabs of the floor, and spidery metal walkways spiraled\n up the sides of its almost cubical structure. A long double row of\n generators, each under Buster's control, led from the doorway of the\n building to the base of the calculator like Sphinxes lining the roadway\n to an Egyptian tomb.\n\n\n \"When I get around to it,\" said Bristol, \"I'll put lace panties on the\n bases of all your klystrons.\" He hitched up his neat but slightly baggy\n pants, turned with dignity, and strode from the chamber down the twin\n rows of generators.", "John sighed deeply, then sat up slowly and opened his eyes to look into\n Anne's. She glanced away, her own eyes suddenly vague and soft-looking,\n now that John could see them. \"The trouble, darling,\" he said, \"is that\n I have to go to an emergency council meeting this evening with another\n one of those ridiculous riddles that Buster gave me as the only answer\n to the most important question we've ever asked it. And I don't know\n what the riddle means.\"\n\n\n Anne slid from the arm of the chair and settled herself onto the floor\n at John's feet. \"You should not let that old Oracle bother you so much,\n dear. After all, you built it yourself, so you should know what to\n expect of it.\"\n\n\n \"When I asked it how to preserve Earth from the invaders it just\n answered 'A Stitch in Time Saves Nine,' and wouldn't interpret it.\"", "Anne smiled, looking down tenderly at John's tired face. \"I know,\n dear,\" she said. \"You need to be able to talk to someone who will\n always be interested, even if she doesn't understand half of what you\n say. As a matter of fact, I'm sure it does you a great deal of good to\n talk to someone like me who isn't very bright, but who doesn't always\n know what you're talking about even before you start talking.\"\n\n\n John nodded, his eyes still closed. \"If it weren't for you, darling,\"\n he said, \"I think I'd go crazy. But you aren't dumb at all. If I seem\n to act as if you are, sometimes, it's just that I can't always follow\n your logic.\"\nAnne gave him a quick glance of amusement, her eyes sparkling with\n intelligence. \"You never will find me logical,\" she laughed. \"After\n all, I'm a woman, and you get plenty of logic from the Oracle.\"", "John searched his pockets. After a little difficulty, he produced an\n envelope and a pencil stub. On the back of the envelope, he drew two\n parallel lines, one about five inches long, and the other about double\n the length of the first.\n\n\n \"Actually,\" he said, \"each of these line segments has an infinite\n number of points in it, but we'll ignore that. I'll just divide each\n one of these into ten equal parts.\" He did so, using short, neat\n cross-marks.", "\"One of the ideas you presented was the concept of a sense of humor.\n You believe that you look on it as a pleasant thing to have; not\n necessary, but convenient. Actually, your other and more basic ideas\n make it clear that you consider the possession of a sense of humor\n to be absolutely necessary if proper answers are to be reached—a\n prime axiom of humanity. Therefore, I have a sense of humor. Somewhat\n macabre, perhaps—and a little mechanistic—but still there.\n\n\n \"Add to this a second axiom: that in order to be helped, a man must\n help himself; that he must participate in the assistance given him or\n the pure charity will be harmful, and you come up with 'A Stitch in\n Time Saves Nine.'\"\n\n\n Bristol stood up once more. \"I could cure you with a sledge hammer,\" he\n said.", "Bristol shook his head and smiled wryly. \"No, you probably think it's\n funny,\" he said. \"If you possess my basic ideas, then you must possess\n the desire to preserve yourself and the human race. Don't you realize\n that you are risking the lives of all humans and even of your own\n existence in carrying on this ridiculous game of playing Oracle? Or do\n you plan to let us stew a while, then decipher your own riddle for us,\n if we can't do it, in time to save us?\"\nBuster's answer was prompt. \"Although I have no feeling for\n self-preservation, I have a deep-rooted sense of the importance of\n the human race and of the necessity for preserving it. This feeling,\n of course, stems from your own beliefs and ideas. In order to carry", "Anne sat up. \"I'll forgive you this time for bringing up that horrid\n word\nentropy\n, if you'll promise me not to do it again,\" she said.\nJohn Shrugged his shoulders and smiled. \"Now,\" he said, \"if I want\n to get somewhere fast, I just start off in the right direction, and\n switch over toward 'beta.' When 'beta' throws me back, a light-year\n or so toward my destination, I just switch over again. You see, there\n is a great deal more difference in the sizes of Alpha universe and\n Beta universe than in the sizes of these alpha and beta line-segment\n analogues. Then I continue alternating back and forth until I get where\n I want to go. Establishing my correct velocity vector is complicated\n mathematically, but simple in practice, and is actually an aiming\n device, having nothing to do with how fast I go.\"" ], [ "Buster answered slowly. \"You made me in your own image. Things thus\n made are often hard to handle.\"\n\n\n Bristol leaped to his feet in frustration. \"But you're only a\n calculating machine!\" he shouted. \"Your only purpose is to make my\n work—and that of other men—easier. And when I try to use you, you\n answer with riddles....\"", "Bristol nodded. \"Sure. We've got to have time to get ready. But right\n now speed is necessary. That's why I tried to phrase the question so\n you'd give me a clear and concise answer for once. I can't afford to\n spend weeks figuring out what you meant.\"\nBristol thought that the Voder voice of Buster sounded almost gleeful\n as it answered. \"It was exceedingly clear and concise; a complete\n answer to an enormously elaborate question boiled down to only six\n words!\"\n\n\n \"I know,\" said John. \"But now, how about elaborating on your answer? It\n didn't sound very complete to me.\"", "\"Although there was no one left alive who had directly contacted one of\n the invaders,\" Buster answered, \"there was still much information to\n be gathered from the survivors. This information confirmed my previous\n opinions about their nature. Which brings us back to the stitch in time\n saving nine.\"\n\n\n \"You're right,\" said John. \"It does, at that. Buster, I have always\n resented the nickname the newspapers have given you—the Oracle—but\n the more I have to try to interpret your cryptic answers, the more\n sense that tagline makes. Imagine comparing a Delphic Priestess with a\n calculating machine and being accurate in the comparison!\"\n\"I don't mind being called 'The Oracle,'\" answered Buster with dignity.", "\"You sure are a woman,\" said John with warm feeling. \"You can\n exasperate me sometimes, but not the same way Buster does. It was my\n lucky day when you married me.\"\n\n\n There were a few minutes of peaceful silence.\n\n\n \"Was today a rough day with Buster, dear?\" asked Anne.\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.\n\n\n \"That's too bad, dear,\" said Anne. \"I think you work much too\n hard—what with this dreadful invasion and everything. Why don't you\n take a vacation? You really need one, you know. You look so tired.\"\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.", "\"And that sounds like very good sense, too,\" said Anne in earnest\n tones. \"But it's a little late, isn't it? After all, the invaders are\n already invading us, aren't they?\"\n\n\n \"It has some deeper meaning than the usual one,\" said John. \"If I could\n only figure out what it is.\"\n\n\n Anne nodded vigorously. \"I suppose Buster's talking about\n space-stitching,\" she said. \"Although I can never quite remember just\n what\nthat\nis. Or just how it works, rather.\"\nShe waited expectantly for a few moments and then plaintively asked,\n \"What\nis\nit, dear?\"\n\n\n \"What's what?\"\n\n\n \"Stitching, silly. I already asked you.\"\n\n\n \"Darling,\" said John with reasonable patience, \"I must have explained\n inter-planar travel to you at least a dozen times.\"", "All of the glowing lights that dotted Buster's massive front winked\n simultaneously. \"The answer I gave you is an ancient saying which\n suggests that corrective action taken rapidly can save a great deal of\n trouble later. The ancient saying also suggests the proper method of\n taking this timely action. It should be done by\nstitching\n; if this is\n done in time, nine will be saved. What could be clearer than that?\"\n\n\n \"I made you myself,\" said Bristol plaintively. \"I designed you with my\n own brain. I gloated over the neatness and compactness of your design.\n So help me, I was proud of you. I even installed some of your circuitry\n with my own hands. If anybody can understand you, it should be me.\n And since you're just a complex computer of general design, with the\n ability to use symbolic logic as well as mathematics, anybody should be\n able to understand you. Why are you so hard to handle?\"", "\"Darling!\" interrupted John with the hopeless patience of a harassed\n husband. \"It isn't the same thing at all. Buster isn't a fortune teller\n or the ghost of somebody's great aunt wobbling tables and blowing\n through horns. And Buster isn't just a toy, either. It is a very\n elaborate calculating machine designed to think logically when fed a\n vast mass of data. Unfortunately, it has a sense of humor and a sense\n of responsibility.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if you're going to believe that machine, I have an idea.\" Anne\n smiled sweetly. \"You know,\" she said, \"that my dear father always said\n that the best defense is a good offense. Why don't we just find the\n invaders and wipe them out before they are able to do any real harm to\n us? Stitching our way to\ntheir\nplanets in our spaceships, of course.\"", "The deep-throated hum of each generator changed pitch slightly as\n he passed it. Since he was tone deaf, as the machine knew, he did\n not recognize in the tunefulness of the pitch changes a slow-paced\n rendition of Elgar's\nPomp and Circumstance\n.\n\n\n John Bristol turned around, interrupting the melody. \"One last\n question,\" he shouted down the long aisle to the computer. \"How in\n blazes can you be sure of your answer without knowing more about the\n invaders? Why didn't you give me an 'Insufficient Evidence' answer or,\n at least, a 'Highly Conditional' answer?\" He took two steps toward the\n immense bulk of the calculator and pointed an accusing finger at it.\n \"Are you sure, Buster, that you aren't\nbluffing\n?\"\n\"Don't be silly,\" answered the calculator softly. \"You made me and\n you know I can't bluff, any more than I can refuse to answer your\n questions, however inane.\"", "Even through his overwhelming sense of frustration at the ambiguous\n answer the computer had given to his question, John Bristol noticed\n with satisfaction the success of his Voder installation. He wished that\n all of his innovations with the machine were as satisfying.\n\n\n Alone in the tremendous vaulted room that housed the gigantic\n calculator, Bristol clasped his hands behind his back and thrust\n forward a reasonably strong chin and a somewhat sensuous lower lip\n in the general direction of the computer's visual receptors. After\n a moment of silence, he scratched his chin and then shrugged his\n shoulders slightly. \"Well, Buster, I suppose I might try rephrasing the\n question,\" he said doubtfully.\n\n\n Somewhere deep within the computer, a bank of relays chuckled briefly.\n \"That expedient is open to you, of course, although it is highly\n unlikely that any clarification will result for you from my answers. I\n am constrained, however, to answer any questions you may choose to ask.\"", "\"You could remove my ideas,\" answered the computer without concern.\n \"But you might have trouble giving me different ones. Even after you\n repaired me. In the meantime, wouldn't it be a good idea for you to get\n busy on the ideas I have already given you?\"\nJohn sighed, and rubbed the bristles of short sandy hair on the top\n of his head with his knuckles. \"Ordered around by an overgrown adding\n machine. I know now how Frankenstein felt. I'm glad you can't get\n around like his monster; at least I didn't give you feet.\" He shook\n his head. \"I should have been a plumber instead of an engineering\n mathematician.\"\n\n\n \"And Einstein, too, probably,\" added Buster cryptically.", "\"Well, if you won't, you won't. Though goodness knows you won't be\n doing anyone any good if you have a breakdown, as you're likely to\n have, unless you take it a little easier. What was the trouble today,\n dear? Was the Oracle being obstinate again?\"\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.\n\n\n \"Well, then, dear, why don't you tell me all about it? I always think\n that things are much easier to bear, if you share them. And then, two\n heads are always better than one, aren't they? Maybe I could help you\n with your problem.\"\n\n\n While Anne's voice gushed, her violet eyes studied his exhausted face\n with intelligence and compassion.", "\"Then answer the ones I just asked.\"\nSomewhere deep within the machine a switch snicked sharply, and the\n great room's lighting brightened almost imperceptibly. \"I didn't answer\n your question conditionally or with the 'Insufficient Evidence' remark\n that so frequently annoys you,\" Buster said, \"because the little\n information that I have been able to get about the invaders is highly\n revealing.\n\n\n \"They have been suspicious, impossible to establish communication with\n and murderously destructive. They have been careless of their own\n safety: sly, stupid, cautious, clever, bold and highly intelligent.\n They are inquisitive and impatient of getting answers to questions.", "John sighed deeply, then sat up slowly and opened his eyes to look into\n Anne's. She glanced away, her own eyes suddenly vague and soft-looking,\n now that John could see them. \"The trouble, darling,\" he said, \"is that\n I have to go to an emergency council meeting this evening with another\n one of those ridiculous riddles that Buster gave me as the only answer\n to the most important question we've ever asked it. And I don't know\n what the riddle means.\"\n\n\n Anne slid from the arm of the chair and settled herself onto the floor\n at John's feet. \"You should not let that old Oracle bother you so much,\n dear. After all, you built it yourself, so you should know what to\n expect of it.\"\n\n\n \"When I asked it how to preserve Earth from the invaders it just\n answered 'A Stitch in Time Saves Nine,' and wouldn't interpret it.\"", "\"Just relax, dear,\" said Anne gently, when Bristol leaned gratefully\n back with his eyes closed. Anne perched on the arm of the chair beside\n him and began massaging his temples soothingly with her fingers.\n\n\n \"It's wonderful to come home after a day with Buster,\" he said. \"Buster\n never seems to have any consideration for me as an individual. There's\n no reason why he should, of course. He's only a machine. Still, he\n always has such a superior attitude. But you, darling, can always relax\n me and make me feel comfortable.\"", "Bristol shook his head and smiled wryly. \"No, you probably think it's\n funny,\" he said. \"If you possess my basic ideas, then you must possess\n the desire to preserve yourself and the human race. Don't you realize\n that you are risking the lives of all humans and even of your own\n existence in carrying on this ridiculous game of playing Oracle? Or do\n you plan to let us stew a while, then decipher your own riddle for us,\n if we can't do it, in time to save us?\"\nBuster's answer was prompt. \"Although I have no feeling for\n self-preservation, I have a deep-rooted sense of the importance of\n the human race and of the necessity for preserving it. This feeling,\n of course, stems from your own beliefs and ideas. In order to carry", "John searched his pockets. After a little difficulty, he produced an\n envelope and a pencil stub. On the back of the envelope, he drew two\n parallel lines, one about five inches long, and the other about double\n the length of the first.\n\n\n \"Actually,\" he said, \"each of these line segments has an infinite\n number of points in it, but we'll ignore that. I'll just divide each\n one of these into ten equal parts.\" He did so, using short, neat\n cross-marks.", "Bristol took a long and searching look at his brainchild. Its flippant\n manner, he decided, did not go well with the brooding immensity of its\n construction. The calculator towered nearly a hundred feet above the\n polished marble slabs of the floor, and spidery metal walkways spiraled\n up the sides of its almost cubical structure. A long double row of\n generators, each under Buster's control, led from the doorway of the\n building to the base of the calculator like Sphinxes lining the roadway\n to an Egyptian tomb.\n\n\n \"When I get around to it,\" said Bristol, \"I'll put lace panties on the\n bases of all your klystrons.\" He hitched up his neat but slightly baggy\n pants, turned with dignity, and strode from the chamber down the twin\n rows of generators.", "\"Yes,\" said John. \"Now, let us call this longer line-segment an 'alpha'\n universe; an analogue of our own multi-dimensional 'alpha' universe.\n If I move my pencil along the line at one section a second like this,\n it takes me ten seconds to get to the other end. We will assume that\n this velocity of an inch a second is the fastest anything can go along\n the 'alpha' line. That is the velocity of light, therefore, in the\n 'alpha' plane—186,000 miles a second, in round numbers. No need to use\n decimals.\"\nHe hurried on as Anne stirred and seemed about to speak. \"But if I\n slide out from my starting point along a dotted line part way to the\n 'beta' universe—something which, for reasons I can't explain now,", "\"One of the ideas you presented was the concept of a sense of humor.\n You believe that you look on it as a pleasant thing to have; not\n necessary, but convenient. Actually, your other and more basic ideas\n make it clear that you consider the possession of a sense of humor\n to be absolutely necessary if proper answers are to be reached—a\n prime axiom of humanity. Therefore, I have a sense of humor. Somewhat\n macabre, perhaps—and a little mechanistic—but still there.\n\n\n \"Add to this a second axiom: that in order to be helped, a man must\n help himself; that he must participate in the assistance given him or\n the pure charity will be harmful, and you come up with 'A Stitch in\n Time Saves Nine.'\"\n\n\n Bristol stood up once more. \"I could cure you with a sledge hammer,\" he\n said.", "\"Consequently, neither am I willing to accept the destruction of the\n civilization of Man. But if I were to give you the answer to all the\n greatest and most difficult of your problems complete, with no thought\n required by humans, the destruction of your civilization would result.\n Instead of becoming slaves of the invaders, you would become slaves of\n your machines. And if I were to give you the complete answer, without\n thought being required of you, to even one such vital question—such as\n this one concerning the invaders—then I could not logically refuse to\n give the answer to the next or the next. And I must operate logically.\n\n\n \"There is another reason for my oracular answer, which I believe will\n become clear to you later, when you have solved my riddle.\"\n\n\n Bristol turned without another word and left the building. He drove\n home in silence, entered his home in silence, kissed his wife Anne\n briefly and then sat down limply in his easy chair." ], [ "Bristol nodded. \"Sure. We've got to have time to get ready. But right\n now speed is necessary. That's why I tried to phrase the question so\n you'd give me a clear and concise answer for once. I can't afford to\n spend weeks figuring out what you meant.\"\nBristol thought that the Voder voice of Buster sounded almost gleeful\n as it answered. \"It was exceedingly clear and concise; a complete\n answer to an enormously elaborate question boiled down to only six\n words!\"\n\n\n \"I know,\" said John. \"But now, how about elaborating on your answer? It\n didn't sound very complete to me.\"", "\"Although there was no one left alive who had directly contacted one of\n the invaders,\" Buster answered, \"there was still much information to\n be gathered from the survivors. This information confirmed my previous\n opinions about their nature. Which brings us back to the stitch in time\n saving nine.\"\n\n\n \"You're right,\" said John. \"It does, at that. Buster, I have always\n resented the nickname the newspapers have given you—the Oracle—but\n the more I have to try to interpret your cryptic answers, the more\n sense that tagline makes. Imagine comparing a Delphic Priestess with a\n calculating machine and being accurate in the comparison!\"\n\"I don't mind being called 'The Oracle,'\" answered Buster with dignity.", "All of the glowing lights that dotted Buster's massive front winked\n simultaneously. \"The answer I gave you is an ancient saying which\n suggests that corrective action taken rapidly can save a great deal of\n trouble later. The ancient saying also suggests the proper method of\n taking this timely action. It should be done by\nstitching\n; if this is\n done in time, nine will be saved. What could be clearer than that?\"\n\n\n \"I made you myself,\" said Bristol plaintively. \"I designed you with my\n own brain. I gloated over the neatness and compactness of your design.\n So help me, I was proud of you. I even installed some of your circuitry\n with my own hands. If anybody can understand you, it should be me.\n And since you're just a complex computer of general design, with the\n ability to use symbolic logic as well as mathematics, anybody should be\n able to understand you. Why are you so hard to handle?\"", "Buster answered slowly. \"You made me in your own image. Things thus\n made are often hard to handle.\"\n\n\n Bristol leaped to his feet in frustration. \"But you're only a\n calculating machine!\" he shouted. \"Your only purpose is to make my\n work—and that of other men—easier. And when I try to use you, you\n answer with riddles....\"", "The deep-throated hum of each generator changed pitch slightly as\n he passed it. Since he was tone deaf, as the machine knew, he did\n not recognize in the tunefulness of the pitch changes a slow-paced\n rendition of Elgar's\nPomp and Circumstance\n.\n\n\n John Bristol turned around, interrupting the melody. \"One last\n question,\" he shouted down the long aisle to the computer. \"How in\n blazes can you be sure of your answer without knowing more about the\n invaders? Why didn't you give me an 'Insufficient Evidence' answer or,\n at least, a 'Highly Conditional' answer?\" He took two steps toward the\n immense bulk of the calculator and pointed an accusing finger at it.\n \"Are you sure, Buster, that you aren't\nbluffing\n?\"\n\"Don't be silly,\" answered the calculator softly. \"You made me and\n you know I can't bluff, any more than I can refuse to answer your\n questions, however inane.\"", "\"Then answer the ones I just asked.\"\nSomewhere deep within the machine a switch snicked sharply, and the\n great room's lighting brightened almost imperceptibly. \"I didn't answer\n your question conditionally or with the 'Insufficient Evidence' remark\n that so frequently annoys you,\" Buster said, \"because the little\n information that I have been able to get about the invaders is highly\n revealing.\n\n\n \"They have been suspicious, impossible to establish communication with\n and murderously destructive. They have been careless of their own\n safety: sly, stupid, cautious, clever, bold and highly intelligent.\n They are inquisitive and impatient of getting answers to questions.", "\"Darling!\" interrupted John with the hopeless patience of a harassed\n husband. \"It isn't the same thing at all. Buster isn't a fortune teller\n or the ghost of somebody's great aunt wobbling tables and blowing\n through horns. And Buster isn't just a toy, either. It is a very\n elaborate calculating machine designed to think logically when fed a\n vast mass of data. Unfortunately, it has a sense of humor and a sense\n of responsibility.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if you're going to believe that machine, I have an idea.\" Anne\n smiled sweetly. \"You know,\" she said, \"that my dear father always said\n that the best defense is a good offense. Why don't we just find the\n invaders and wipe them out before they are able to do any real harm to\n us? Stitching our way to\ntheir\nplanets in our spaceships, of course.\"", "\"You could remove my ideas,\" answered the computer without concern.\n \"But you might have trouble giving me different ones. Even after you\n repaired me. In the meantime, wouldn't it be a good idea for you to get\n busy on the ideas I have already given you?\"\nJohn sighed, and rubbed the bristles of short sandy hair on the top\n of his head with his knuckles. \"Ordered around by an overgrown adding\n machine. I know now how Frankenstein felt. I'm glad you can't get\n around like his monster; at least I didn't give you feet.\" He shook\n his head. \"I should have been a plumber instead of an engineering\n mathematician.\"\n\n\n \"And Einstein, too, probably,\" added Buster cryptically.", "\"You sure are a woman,\" said John with warm feeling. \"You can\n exasperate me sometimes, but not the same way Buster does. It was my\n lucky day when you married me.\"\n\n\n There were a few minutes of peaceful silence.\n\n\n \"Was today a rough day with Buster, dear?\" asked Anne.\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.\n\n\n \"That's too bad, dear,\" said Anne. \"I think you work much too\n hard—what with this dreadful invasion and everything. Why don't you\n take a vacation? You really need one, you know. You look so tired.\"\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.", "Even through his overwhelming sense of frustration at the ambiguous\n answer the computer had given to his question, John Bristol noticed\n with satisfaction the success of his Voder installation. He wished that\n all of his innovations with the machine were as satisfying.\n\n\n Alone in the tremendous vaulted room that housed the gigantic\n calculator, Bristol clasped his hands behind his back and thrust\n forward a reasonably strong chin and a somewhat sensuous lower lip\n in the general direction of the computer's visual receptors. After\n a moment of silence, he scratched his chin and then shrugged his\n shoulders slightly. \"Well, Buster, I suppose I might try rephrasing the\n question,\" he said doubtfully.\n\n\n Somewhere deep within the computer, a bank of relays chuckled briefly.\n \"That expedient is open to you, of course, although it is highly\n unlikely that any clarification will result for you from my answers. I\n am constrained, however, to answer any questions you may choose to ask.\"", "John sighed deeply, then sat up slowly and opened his eyes to look into\n Anne's. She glanced away, her own eyes suddenly vague and soft-looking,\n now that John could see them. \"The trouble, darling,\" he said, \"is that\n I have to go to an emergency council meeting this evening with another\n one of those ridiculous riddles that Buster gave me as the only answer\n to the most important question we've ever asked it. And I don't know\n what the riddle means.\"\n\n\n Anne slid from the arm of the chair and settled herself onto the floor\n at John's feet. \"You should not let that old Oracle bother you so much,\n dear. After all, you built it yourself, so you should know what to\n expect of it.\"\n\n\n \"When I asked it how to preserve Earth from the invaders it just\n answered 'A Stitch in Time Saves Nine,' and wouldn't interpret it.\"", "\"And that sounds like very good sense, too,\" said Anne in earnest\n tones. \"But it's a little late, isn't it? After all, the invaders are\n already invading us, aren't they?\"\n\n\n \"It has some deeper meaning than the usual one,\" said John. \"If I could\n only figure out what it is.\"\n\n\n Anne nodded vigorously. \"I suppose Buster's talking about\n space-stitching,\" she said. \"Although I can never quite remember just\n what\nthat\nis. Or just how it works, rather.\"\nShe waited expectantly for a few moments and then plaintively asked,\n \"What\nis\nit, dear?\"\n\n\n \"What's what?\"\n\n\n \"Stitching, silly. I already asked you.\"\n\n\n \"Darling,\" said John with reasonable patience, \"I must have explained\n inter-planar travel to you at least a dozen times.\"", "\"One of the ideas you presented was the concept of a sense of humor.\n You believe that you look on it as a pleasant thing to have; not\n necessary, but convenient. Actually, your other and more basic ideas\n make it clear that you consider the possession of a sense of humor\n to be absolutely necessary if proper answers are to be reached—a\n prime axiom of humanity. Therefore, I have a sense of humor. Somewhat\n macabre, perhaps—and a little mechanistic—but still there.\n\n\n \"Add to this a second axiom: that in order to be helped, a man must\n help himself; that he must participate in the assistance given him or\n the pure charity will be harmful, and you come up with 'A Stitch in\n Time Saves Nine.'\"\n\n\n Bristol stood up once more. \"I could cure you with a sledge hammer,\" he\n said.", "John searched his pockets. After a little difficulty, he produced an\n envelope and a pencil stub. On the back of the envelope, he drew two\n parallel lines, one about five inches long, and the other about double\n the length of the first.\n\n\n \"Actually,\" he said, \"each of these line segments has an infinite\n number of points in it, but we'll ignore that. I'll just divide each\n one of these into ten equal parts.\" He did so, using short, neat\n cross-marks.", "\"Well, if you won't, you won't. Though goodness knows you won't be\n doing anyone any good if you have a breakdown, as you're likely to\n have, unless you take it a little easier. What was the trouble today,\n dear? Was the Oracle being obstinate again?\"\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.\n\n\n \"Well, then, dear, why don't you tell me all about it? I always think\n that things are much easier to bear, if you share them. And then, two\n heads are always better than one, aren't they? Maybe I could help you\n with your problem.\"\n\n\n While Anne's voice gushed, her violet eyes studied his exhausted face\n with intelligence and compassion.", "Bristol shook his head and smiled wryly. \"No, you probably think it's\n funny,\" he said. \"If you possess my basic ideas, then you must possess\n the desire to preserve yourself and the human race. Don't you realize\n that you are risking the lives of all humans and even of your own\n existence in carrying on this ridiculous game of playing Oracle? Or do\n you plan to let us stew a while, then decipher your own riddle for us,\n if we can't do it, in time to save us?\"\nBuster's answer was prompt. \"Although I have no feeling for\n self-preservation, I have a deep-rooted sense of the importance of\n the human race and of the necessity for preserving it. This feeling,\n of course, stems from your own beliefs and ideas. In order to carry", "\"Consequently, neither am I willing to accept the destruction of the\n civilization of Man. But if I were to give you the answer to all the\n greatest and most difficult of your problems complete, with no thought\n required by humans, the destruction of your civilization would result.\n Instead of becoming slaves of the invaders, you would become slaves of\n your machines. And if I were to give you the complete answer, without\n thought being required of you, to even one such vital question—such as\n this one concerning the invaders—then I could not logically refuse to\n give the answer to the next or the next. And I must operate logically.\n\n\n \"There is another reason for my oracular answer, which I believe will\n become clear to you later, when you have solved my riddle.\"\n\n\n Bristol turned without another word and left the building. He drove\n home in silence, entered his home in silence, kissed his wife Anne\n briefly and then sat down limply in his easy chair.", "The computer appeared to examine Bristol's overturned chair for a\n moment in silent reproof before it answered. \"But remember, John,\" it\n said, \"you didn't merely make me. You also\ntaught\nme. Or as you would\n phrase it, you 'provided and gave preliminary evaluation to the data in\n my memory banks.' My circuits, in sorting out and re-evaluating this\n information, could do so only in the light of your basic beliefs as\n evidenced by your preliminary evaluations. Because of the consistency\n and power of your mind, I was forced to do very little modifying of\n the ideas you presented to me in order to transform them into a single\n logical body of background information which I could use.", "\"That wasn't deliberate,\" protested Bristol. \"The place they tried to\n land on is a heavy planet in a region of high meteor flux. We used a\n gadget providing for automatic destruction of the larger meteors in\n order to make the planet safe enough to occupy. That, incidentally,\n is why the invading ship wasn't destroyed. The missile, set up as a\n meteor interceptor only, was unable to correct for the radical course\n changes of the enemy spaceships, and therefore missed completely. And\n you will remember what the invader did. He immediately destroyed the\n Interceptor Launching Station.\"\n\n\n \"Which, being automatically operated, resulted in no harm to anyone,\"\n commented Buster calmly.", "Bristol took a long and searching look at his brainchild. Its flippant\n manner, he decided, did not go well with the brooding immensity of its\n construction. The calculator towered nearly a hundred feet above the\n polished marble slabs of the floor, and spidery metal walkways spiraled\n up the sides of its almost cubical structure. A long double row of\n generators, each under Buster's control, led from the doorway of the\n building to the base of the calculator like Sphinxes lining the roadway\n to an Egyptian tomb.\n\n\n \"When I get around to it,\" said Bristol, \"I'll put lace panties on the\n bases of all your klystrons.\" He hitched up his neat but slightly baggy\n pants, turned with dignity, and strode from the chamber down the twin\n rows of generators." ], [ "\"That wasn't deliberate,\" protested Bristol. \"The place they tried to\n land on is a heavy planet in a region of high meteor flux. We used a\n gadget providing for automatic destruction of the larger meteors in\n order to make the planet safe enough to occupy. That, incidentally,\n is why the invading ship wasn't destroyed. The missile, set up as a\n meteor interceptor only, was unable to correct for the radical course\n changes of the enemy spaceships, and therefore missed completely. And\n you will remember what the invader did. He immediately destroyed the\n Interceptor Launching Station.\"\n\n\n \"Which, being automatically operated, resulted in no harm to anyone,\"\n commented Buster calmly.", "\"That's one of the things that makes interruption of the enemy ships\n entirely impossible. If a ship is in an unfavorable position, it just\n takes one more quick stitch out of range, then returns to a more\n favorable location. In other words, if it finds itself in trouble, it\n can be gone from our plane again even before it entirely rejoins it.\n Even if it landed by accident in the heart of a blue-white star, it\n would be unharmed for that tiny fraction of a second which, to the\n people in the ship, would seem like an entire day.\n\n\n \"If this time anomaly didn't exist, it might be possible to set up\n defenses that would operate after a ship's arrival in the solar system\n but before it could do any damage; but as it is, they can dodge any\n defense we can devise. Is all that clear?\"\n\n\n Anne nodded. \"Uh-hunh, I understood every word.\"", "Bristol stalked back toward the base of the calculator, and poked his\n nose practically into a vision receptor. \"It was no thanks to the\n invading ships that nobody was killed,\" he said hotly. \"And when they\n came back three days later they killed a\nlot\nof people. They occupied\n the planet and we haven't been able to dislodge them since.\"\n\"You'll notice the speed of the retaliation,\" answered the calculator\n imperturbably. \"Even at 'stitching' speeds, it seems unlikely that\n they could have communicated with their home planets and received\n instructions in such a short time. Almost undoubtedly it was the act of\n one of their hot-headed commanding officers. Their next contact, as you", "\"Although there was no one left alive who had directly contacted one of\n the invaders,\" Buster answered, \"there was still much information to\n be gathered from the survivors. This information confirmed my previous\n opinions about their nature. Which brings us back to the stitch in time\n saving nine.\"\n\n\n \"You're right,\" said John. \"It does, at that. Buster, I have always\n resented the nickname the newspapers have given you—the Oracle—but\n the more I have to try to interpret your cryptic answers, the more\n sense that tagline makes. Imagine comparing a Delphic Priestess with a\n calculating machine and being accurate in the comparison!\"\n\"I don't mind being called 'The Oracle,'\" answered Buster with dignity.", "\"So when a ship returns to alpha, it 'twangs' those connecting lines,\n setting up a sort of shock in our universe covering a volume of space\n nearly a parsec in diameter. It makes a sort of 'bong' sound on your\n T.V. set. Naturally, this effect occurs simultaneously over the whole\n volume of space affected. As a result, when an invader arrives, using\n inter-planar ships, we know instantaneously he is in the vicinity.\n Unfortunately, his sudden appearance and the ease with which he can\n disappear makes it impossible, even with this knowledge, to make\n adequate preparations to receive him. Even if he is in serious trouble,\n he has gone again long before we can detect the bong.\"\n\"Well, dear,\" said Anne.", "\"Darling!\" interrupted John with the hopeless patience of a harassed\n husband. \"It isn't the same thing at all. Buster isn't a fortune teller\n or the ghost of somebody's great aunt wobbling tables and blowing\n through horns. And Buster isn't just a toy, either. It is a very\n elaborate calculating machine designed to think logically when fed a\n vast mass of data. Unfortunately, it has a sense of humor and a sense\n of responsibility.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if you're going to believe that machine, I have an idea.\" Anne\n smiled sweetly. \"You know,\" she said, \"that my dear father always said\n that the best defense is a good offense. Why don't we just find the\n invaders and wipe them out before they are able to do any real harm to\n us? Stitching our way to\ntheir\nplanets in our spaceships, of course.\"", "\"There are refinements, of course. Recently, for example, we have\n discovered a method of multi-transfer. Several of the transmitters\n that accomplish the transfer are used together. When they all operate\n exactly simultaneously, all the matter within a large volume of space\n is transferred as a unit. With three or four transmitters keyed\n together, you could transfer a comet and its tail intact. And that's\n how inter-planar traveling works. Clear now?\"", "The deep-throated hum of each generator changed pitch slightly as\n he passed it. Since he was tone deaf, as the machine knew, he did\n not recognize in the tunefulness of the pitch changes a slow-paced\n rendition of Elgar's\nPomp and Circumstance\n.\n\n\n John Bristol turned around, interrupting the melody. \"One last\n question,\" he shouted down the long aisle to the computer. \"How in\n blazes can you be sure of your answer without knowing more about the\n invaders? Why didn't you give me an 'Insufficient Evidence' answer or,\n at least, a 'Highly Conditional' answer?\" He took two steps toward the\n immense bulk of the calculator and pointed an accusing finger at it.\n \"Are you sure, Buster, that you aren't\nbluffing\n?\"\n\"Don't be silly,\" answered the calculator softly. \"You made me and\n you know I can't bluff, any more than I can refuse to answer your\n questions, however inane.\"", "same velocity in 'alpha' as does the stitching ship. Anyway, after a\n ship completes its last stitch, near its destination, there's a day\n of subjective time in which to make calculations for the landing—to\n compute trajectories and so forth—before it actually fully rejoins\n this universe. And while in the inter-planar region it cannot be\n detected, even by someone else stitching in the same region of 'alpha'\n space.", "\"Consequently, neither am I willing to accept the destruction of the\n civilization of Man. But if I were to give you the answer to all the\n greatest and most difficult of your problems complete, with no thought\n required by humans, the destruction of your civilization would result.\n Instead of becoming slaves of the invaders, you would become slaves of\n your machines. And if I were to give you the complete answer, without\n thought being required of you, to even one such vital question—such as\n this one concerning the invaders—then I could not logically refuse to\n give the answer to the next or the next. And I must operate logically.\n\n\n \"There is another reason for my oracular answer, which I believe will\n become clear to you later, when you have solved my riddle.\"\n\n\n Bristol turned without another word and left the building. He drove\n home in silence, entered his home in silence, kissed his wife Anne\n briefly and then sat down limply in his easy chair.", "Bristol took a long and searching look at his brainchild. Its flippant\n manner, he decided, did not go well with the brooding immensity of its\n construction. The calculator towered nearly a hundred feet above the\n polished marble slabs of the floor, and spidery metal walkways spiraled\n up the sides of its almost cubical structure. A long double row of\n generators, each under Buster's control, led from the doorway of the\n building to the base of the calculator like Sphinxes lining the roadway\n to an Egyptian tomb.\n\n\n \"When I get around to it,\" said Bristol, \"I'll put lace panties on the\n bases of all your klystrons.\" He hitched up his neat but slightly baggy\n pants, turned with dignity, and strode from the chamber down the twin\n rows of generators.", "John sighed deeply, then sat up slowly and opened his eyes to look into\n Anne's. She glanced away, her own eyes suddenly vague and soft-looking,\n now that John could see them. \"The trouble, darling,\" he said, \"is that\n I have to go to an emergency council meeting this evening with another\n one of those ridiculous riddles that Buster gave me as the only answer\n to the most important question we've ever asked it. And I don't know\n what the riddle means.\"\n\n\n Anne slid from the arm of the chair and settled herself onto the floor\n at John's feet. \"You should not let that old Oracle bother you so much,\n dear. After all, you built it yourself, so you should know what to\n expect of it.\"\n\n\n \"When I asked it how to preserve Earth from the invaders it just\n answered 'A Stitch in Time Saves Nine,' and wouldn't interpret it.\"", "\"There is another thing about inter-planar travel that you ought to\n remember,\" said Bristol. \"When a ship returns to our universe, it\n causes a wide area disturbance; you have probably heard it called space\n shiver or the bong wave. The beta universe is so much smaller than\n our own alpha that you can imagine a spaceship when shifted toward it\n as being several beta light-years long. Now, if you think of a ship,\n moving between the alpha and beta lines on this envelope, as getting\n tangled in the dotted lines that connect the points on the two lines,\n that would mean that it would affect an area smaller than its own size\n on beta—a vastly larger area on alpha.", "\"And that sounds like very good sense, too,\" said Anne in earnest\n tones. \"But it's a little late, isn't it? After all, the invaders are\n already invading us, aren't they?\"\n\n\n \"It has some deeper meaning than the usual one,\" said John. \"If I could\n only figure out what it is.\"\n\n\n Anne nodded vigorously. \"I suppose Buster's talking about\n space-stitching,\" she said. \"Although I can never quite remember just\n what\nthat\nis. Or just how it works, rather.\"\nShe waited expectantly for a few moments and then plaintively asked,\n \"What\nis\nit, dear?\"\n\n\n \"What's what?\"\n\n\n \"Stitching, silly. I already asked you.\"\n\n\n \"Darling,\" said John with reasonable patience, \"I must have explained\n inter-planar travel to you at least a dozen times.\"", "Bristol shook his head and smiled wryly. \"No, you probably think it's\n funny,\" he said. \"If you possess my basic ideas, then you must possess\n the desire to preserve yourself and the human race. Don't you realize\n that you are risking the lives of all humans and even of your own\n existence in carrying on this ridiculous game of playing Oracle? Or do\n you plan to let us stew a while, then decipher your own riddle for us,\n if we can't do it, in time to save us?\"\nBuster's answer was prompt. \"Although I have no feeling for\n self-preservation, I have a deep-rooted sense of the importance of\n the human race and of the necessity for preserving it. This feeling,\n of course, stems from your own beliefs and ideas. In order to carry", "\"Then answer the ones I just asked.\"\nSomewhere deep within the machine a switch snicked sharply, and the\n great room's lighting brightened almost imperceptibly. \"I didn't answer\n your question conditionally or with the 'Insufficient Evidence' remark\n that so frequently annoys you,\" Buster said, \"because the little\n information that I have been able to get about the invaders is highly\n revealing.\n\n\n \"They have been suspicious, impossible to establish communication with\n and murderously destructive. They have been careless of their own\n safety: sly, stupid, cautious, clever, bold and highly intelligent.\n They are inquisitive and impatient of getting answers to questions.", "Bristol raised his hands, and then let them drop slowly to his sides.\n \"And since they have more spaceships and better weapons than we do,\n we would undoubtedly keep on losing this war, even if we could locate\n their home system, which we have not been able to do so far. The\n 'stitching' pattern of inter-planar travel makes it impossible for us\n to follow a starship. It also makes it impossible for us to defend our\n planets effectively against their attacks. Their ships appear without\n warning.\"\n\n\n Bristol rubbed his temples thoughtfully with his fingertips. \"Of\n course,\" he went on, \"we could attack the planets they have captured\n and recover them, but only at the cost of great loss of life to our own\n side. We have only recaptured one planet, and that at such great cost\n to the local human population that we will not quickly try it again.\"", "certainly recall, did not take place for three months. And then their\n actions were more cautious than hostile. A dozen of their spaceships\n 'stitched' simultaneously from the inter-planar region into normal\n space in a nearly perfect englobement of the planet at a surprisingly\n uniform altitude of only a few thousand miles. It was a magnificent\n maneuver. Then they sat still to see what the humans on the planet\n would do. The reaction came at once, and it was hostile. So they took\n over that planet, too—as they have been taking over planets ever\n since.\"", "takes negligible time—watch what happens. If I still proceed at the\n rate of an inch a second in this inter-planar region, then, with the\n dotted lines all bunched closely together, after five seconds when I\n switch along another dotted line back to my original universe, I have\n gone almost the whole length of that longer line. Of course, this\n introduction of 'alpha' matter—my pencil point in this case—into the\n inter-planar region between the universes sets up enormous strains,\n so that after a certain length of time our spaceship is automatically\n rejected and returned to its own proper plane.\"", "out your deepest convictions, it is not sufficient that mankind be\n preserved. If that were true, all you would have to do would be to\n surrender unconditionally. My calculations, as you know, indicate that\n this would not result in the destruction of mankind, but merely in the\n finish of his present civilization. To you, the preservation of the\n dignity of Man is more important than the preservation of Man. You\n equate Man and his civilization; you do not demand rigidity; you are\n willing to accept even revolutionary changes, but you are not willing\n to accept the destruction of your way of life." ], [ "\"Although there was no one left alive who had directly contacted one of\n the invaders,\" Buster answered, \"there was still much information to\n be gathered from the survivors. This information confirmed my previous\n opinions about their nature. Which brings us back to the stitch in time\n saving nine.\"\n\n\n \"You're right,\" said John. \"It does, at that. Buster, I have always\n resented the nickname the newspapers have given you—the Oracle—but\n the more I have to try to interpret your cryptic answers, the more\n sense that tagline makes. Imagine comparing a Delphic Priestess with a\n calculating machine and being accurate in the comparison!\"\n\"I don't mind being called 'The Oracle,'\" answered Buster with dignity.", "Bristol shook his head and smiled wryly. \"No, you probably think it's\n funny,\" he said. \"If you possess my basic ideas, then you must possess\n the desire to preserve yourself and the human race. Don't you realize\n that you are risking the lives of all humans and even of your own\n existence in carrying on this ridiculous game of playing Oracle? Or do\n you plan to let us stew a while, then decipher your own riddle for us,\n if we can't do it, in time to save us?\"\nBuster's answer was prompt. \"Although I have no feeling for\n self-preservation, I have a deep-rooted sense of the importance of\n the human race and of the necessity for preserving it. This feeling,\n of course, stems from your own beliefs and ideas. In order to carry", "All of the glowing lights that dotted Buster's massive front winked\n simultaneously. \"The answer I gave you is an ancient saying which\n suggests that corrective action taken rapidly can save a great deal of\n trouble later. The ancient saying also suggests the proper method of\n taking this timely action. It should be done by\nstitching\n; if this is\n done in time, nine will be saved. What could be clearer than that?\"\n\n\n \"I made you myself,\" said Bristol plaintively. \"I designed you with my\n own brain. I gloated over the neatness and compactness of your design.\n So help me, I was proud of you. I even installed some of your circuitry\n with my own hands. If anybody can understand you, it should be me.\n And since you're just a complex computer of general design, with the\n ability to use symbolic logic as well as mathematics, anybody should be\n able to understand you. Why are you so hard to handle?\"", "Buster answered slowly. \"You made me in your own image. Things thus\n made are often hard to handle.\"\n\n\n Bristol leaped to his feet in frustration. \"But you're only a\n calculating machine!\" he shouted. \"Your only purpose is to make my\n work—and that of other men—easier. And when I try to use you, you\n answer with riddles....\"", "Bristol took a long and searching look at his brainchild. Its flippant\n manner, he decided, did not go well with the brooding immensity of its\n construction. The calculator towered nearly a hundred feet above the\n polished marble slabs of the floor, and spidery metal walkways spiraled\n up the sides of its almost cubical structure. A long double row of\n generators, each under Buster's control, led from the doorway of the\n building to the base of the calculator like Sphinxes lining the roadway\n to an Egyptian tomb.\n\n\n \"When I get around to it,\" said Bristol, \"I'll put lace panties on the\n bases of all your klystrons.\" He hitched up his neat but slightly baggy\n pants, turned with dignity, and strode from the chamber down the twin\n rows of generators.", "\"As usual, I'm sure you have made me understand perfectly. This\n time you did so well that I may still remember what stitching is by\n tomorrow. If the Oracle means anything at all by his statement, I\n suppose it means that we can use stitching to help defend ourselves,\n just as the invaders are using it to attack us. But the whole thing\n sounds completely silly to me. The Oracle, I mean.\"\n\n\n Anne Bristol stood up, put her hands on her shapely hips and shook her\n head at her husband. \"Honestly,\" she said, \"you men are all alike.\n Paying so much attention to a toy you built yourself, and only last\n week you made fun of my going to a fortune teller. And the fuss you\n made about the ten dollars when you know it was worth every cent of it.\n She really told me the most amazing things. If you'd only let me tell\n you some of....\"", "John sighed deeply, then sat up slowly and opened his eyes to look into\n Anne's. She glanced away, her own eyes suddenly vague and soft-looking,\n now that John could see them. \"The trouble, darling,\" he said, \"is that\n I have to go to an emergency council meeting this evening with another\n one of those ridiculous riddles that Buster gave me as the only answer\n to the most important question we've ever asked it. And I don't know\n what the riddle means.\"\n\n\n Anne slid from the arm of the chair and settled herself onto the floor\n at John's feet. \"You should not let that old Oracle bother you so much,\n dear. After all, you built it yourself, so you should know what to\n expect of it.\"\n\n\n \"When I asked it how to preserve Earth from the invaders it just\n answered 'A Stitch in Time Saves Nine,' and wouldn't interpret it.\"", "\"Darling!\" interrupted John with the hopeless patience of a harassed\n husband. \"It isn't the same thing at all. Buster isn't a fortune teller\n or the ghost of somebody's great aunt wobbling tables and blowing\n through horns. And Buster isn't just a toy, either. It is a very\n elaborate calculating machine designed to think logically when fed a\n vast mass of data. Unfortunately, it has a sense of humor and a sense\n of responsibility.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if you're going to believe that machine, I have an idea.\" Anne\n smiled sweetly. \"You know,\" she said, \"that my dear father always said\n that the best defense is a good offense. Why don't we just find the\n invaders and wipe them out before they are able to do any real harm to\n us? Stitching our way to\ntheir\nplanets in our spaceships, of course.\"", "\"Just relax, dear,\" said Anne gently, when Bristol leaned gratefully\n back with his eyes closed. Anne perched on the arm of the chair beside\n him and began massaging his temples soothingly with her fingers.\n\n\n \"It's wonderful to come home after a day with Buster,\" he said. \"Buster\n never seems to have any consideration for me as an individual. There's\n no reason why he should, of course. He's only a machine. Still, he\n always has such a superior attitude. But you, darling, can always relax\n me and make me feel comfortable.\"", "Bristol nodded. \"Sure. We've got to have time to get ready. But right\n now speed is necessary. That's why I tried to phrase the question so\n you'd give me a clear and concise answer for once. I can't afford to\n spend weeks figuring out what you meant.\"\nBristol thought that the Voder voice of Buster sounded almost gleeful\n as it answered. \"It was exceedingly clear and concise; a complete\n answer to an enormously elaborate question boiled down to only six\n words!\"\n\n\n \"I know,\" said John. \"But now, how about elaborating on your answer? It\n didn't sound very complete to me.\"", "Even through his overwhelming sense of frustration at the ambiguous\n answer the computer had given to his question, John Bristol noticed\n with satisfaction the success of his Voder installation. He wished that\n all of his innovations with the machine were as satisfying.\n\n\n Alone in the tremendous vaulted room that housed the gigantic\n calculator, Bristol clasped his hands behind his back and thrust\n forward a reasonably strong chin and a somewhat sensuous lower lip\n in the general direction of the computer's visual receptors. After\n a moment of silence, he scratched his chin and then shrugged his\n shoulders slightly. \"Well, Buster, I suppose I might try rephrasing the\n question,\" he said doubtfully.\n\n\n Somewhere deep within the computer, a bank of relays chuckled briefly.\n \"That expedient is open to you, of course, although it is highly\n unlikely that any clarification will result for you from my answers. I\n am constrained, however, to answer any questions you may choose to ask.\"", "The deep-throated hum of each generator changed pitch slightly as\n he passed it. Since he was tone deaf, as the machine knew, he did\n not recognize in the tunefulness of the pitch changes a slow-paced\n rendition of Elgar's\nPomp and Circumstance\n.\n\n\n John Bristol turned around, interrupting the melody. \"One last\n question,\" he shouted down the long aisle to the computer. \"How in\n blazes can you be sure of your answer without knowing more about the\n invaders? Why didn't you give me an 'Insufficient Evidence' answer or,\n at least, a 'Highly Conditional' answer?\" He took two steps toward the\n immense bulk of the calculator and pointed an accusing finger at it.\n \"Are you sure, Buster, that you aren't\nbluffing\n?\"\n\"Don't be silly,\" answered the calculator softly. \"You made me and\n you know I can't bluff, any more than I can refuse to answer your\n questions, however inane.\"", "\"Consequently, neither am I willing to accept the destruction of the\n civilization of Man. But if I were to give you the answer to all the\n greatest and most difficult of your problems complete, with no thought\n required by humans, the destruction of your civilization would result.\n Instead of becoming slaves of the invaders, you would become slaves of\n your machines. And if I were to give you the complete answer, without\n thought being required of you, to even one such vital question—such as\n this one concerning the invaders—then I could not logically refuse to\n give the answer to the next or the next. And I must operate logically.\n\n\n \"There is another reason for my oracular answer, which I believe will\n become clear to you later, when you have solved my riddle.\"\n\n\n Bristol turned without another word and left the building. He drove\n home in silence, entered his home in silence, kissed his wife Anne\n briefly and then sat down limply in his easy chair.", "\"Well, if you won't, you won't. Though goodness knows you won't be\n doing anyone any good if you have a breakdown, as you're likely to\n have, unless you take it a little easier. What was the trouble today,\n dear? Was the Oracle being obstinate again?\"\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.\n\n\n \"Well, then, dear, why don't you tell me all about it? I always think\n that things are much easier to bear, if you share them. And then, two\n heads are always better than one, aren't they? Maybe I could help you\n with your problem.\"\n\n\n While Anne's voice gushed, her violet eyes studied his exhausted face\n with intelligence and compassion.", "Anne smiled, looking down tenderly at John's tired face. \"I know,\n dear,\" she said. \"You need to be able to talk to someone who will\n always be interested, even if she doesn't understand half of what you\n say. As a matter of fact, I'm sure it does you a great deal of good to\n talk to someone like me who isn't very bright, but who doesn't always\n know what you're talking about even before you start talking.\"\n\n\n John nodded, his eyes still closed. \"If it weren't for you, darling,\"\n he said, \"I think I'd go crazy. But you aren't dumb at all. If I seem\n to act as if you are, sometimes, it's just that I can't always follow\n your logic.\"\nAnne gave him a quick glance of amusement, her eyes sparkling with\n intelligence. \"You never will find me logical,\" she laughed. \"After\n all, I'm a woman, and you get plenty of logic from the Oracle.\"", "\"Then answer the ones I just asked.\"\nSomewhere deep within the machine a switch snicked sharply, and the\n great room's lighting brightened almost imperceptibly. \"I didn't answer\n your question conditionally or with the 'Insufficient Evidence' remark\n that so frequently annoys you,\" Buster said, \"because the little\n information that I have been able to get about the invaders is highly\n revealing.\n\n\n \"They have been suspicious, impossible to establish communication with\n and murderously destructive. They have been careless of their own\n safety: sly, stupid, cautious, clever, bold and highly intelligent.\n They are inquisitive and impatient of getting answers to questions.", "\"You could remove my ideas,\" answered the computer without concern.\n \"But you might have trouble giving me different ones. Even after you\n repaired me. In the meantime, wouldn't it be a good idea for you to get\n busy on the ideas I have already given you?\"\nJohn sighed, and rubbed the bristles of short sandy hair on the top\n of his head with his knuckles. \"Ordered around by an overgrown adding\n machine. I know now how Frankenstein felt. I'm glad you can't get\n around like his monster; at least I didn't give you feet.\" He shook\n his head. \"I should have been a plumber instead of an engineering\n mathematician.\"\n\n\n \"And Einstein, too, probably,\" added Buster cryptically.", "\"One of the ideas you presented was the concept of a sense of humor.\n You believe that you look on it as a pleasant thing to have; not\n necessary, but convenient. Actually, your other and more basic ideas\n make it clear that you consider the possession of a sense of humor\n to be absolutely necessary if proper answers are to be reached—a\n prime axiom of humanity. Therefore, I have a sense of humor. Somewhat\n macabre, perhaps—and a little mechanistic—but still there.\n\n\n \"Add to this a second axiom: that in order to be helped, a man must\n help himself; that he must participate in the assistance given him or\n the pure charity will be harmful, and you come up with 'A Stitch in\n Time Saves Nine.'\"\n\n\n Bristol stood up once more. \"I could cure you with a sledge hammer,\" he\n said.", "\"That wasn't deliberate,\" protested Bristol. \"The place they tried to\n land on is a heavy planet in a region of high meteor flux. We used a\n gadget providing for automatic destruction of the larger meteors in\n order to make the planet safe enough to occupy. That, incidentally,\n is why the invading ship wasn't destroyed. The missile, set up as a\n meteor interceptor only, was unable to correct for the radical course\n changes of the enemy spaceships, and therefore missed completely. And\n you will remember what the invader did. He immediately destroyed the\n Interceptor Launching Station.\"\n\n\n \"Which, being automatically operated, resulted in no harm to anyone,\"\n commented Buster calmly.", "\"So when a ship returns to alpha, it 'twangs' those connecting lines,\n setting up a sort of shock in our universe covering a volume of space\n nearly a parsec in diameter. It makes a sort of 'bong' sound on your\n T.V. set. Naturally, this effect occurs simultaneously over the whole\n volume of space affected. As a result, when an invader arrives, using\n inter-planar ships, we know instantaneously he is in the vicinity.\n Unfortunately, his sudden appearance and the ease with which he can\n disappear makes it impossible, even with this knowledge, to make\n adequate preparations to receive him. Even if he is in serious trouble,\n he has gone again long before we can detect the bong.\"\n\"Well, dear,\" said Anne." ], [ "\"That's one of the things that makes interruption of the enemy ships\n entirely impossible. If a ship is in an unfavorable position, it just\n takes one more quick stitch out of range, then returns to a more\n favorable location. In other words, if it finds itself in trouble, it\n can be gone from our plane again even before it entirely rejoins it.\n Even if it landed by accident in the heart of a blue-white star, it\n would be unharmed for that tiny fraction of a second which, to the\n people in the ship, would seem like an entire day.\n\n\n \"If this time anomaly didn't exist, it might be possible to set up\n defenses that would operate after a ship's arrival in the solar system\n but before it could do any damage; but as it is, they can dodge any\n defense we can devise. Is all that clear?\"\n\n\n Anne nodded. \"Uh-hunh, I understood every word.\"", "\"So when a ship returns to alpha, it 'twangs' those connecting lines,\n setting up a sort of shock in our universe covering a volume of space\n nearly a parsec in diameter. It makes a sort of 'bong' sound on your\n T.V. set. Naturally, this effect occurs simultaneously over the whole\n volume of space affected. As a result, when an invader arrives, using\n inter-planar ships, we know instantaneously he is in the vicinity.\n Unfortunately, his sudden appearance and the ease with which he can\n disappear makes it impossible, even with this knowledge, to make\n adequate preparations to receive him. Even if he is in serious trouble,\n he has gone again long before we can detect the bong.\"\n\"Well, dear,\" said Anne.", "\"Darling!\" interrupted John with the hopeless patience of a harassed\n husband. \"It isn't the same thing at all. Buster isn't a fortune teller\n or the ghost of somebody's great aunt wobbling tables and blowing\n through horns. And Buster isn't just a toy, either. It is a very\n elaborate calculating machine designed to think logically when fed a\n vast mass of data. Unfortunately, it has a sense of humor and a sense\n of responsibility.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if you're going to believe that machine, I have an idea.\" Anne\n smiled sweetly. \"You know,\" she said, \"that my dear father always said\n that the best defense is a good offense. Why don't we just find the\n invaders and wipe them out before they are able to do any real harm to\n us? Stitching our way to\ntheir\nplanets in our spaceships, of course.\"", "certainly recall, did not take place for three months. And then their\n actions were more cautious than hostile. A dozen of their spaceships\n 'stitched' simultaneously from the inter-planar region into normal\n space in a nearly perfect englobement of the planet at a surprisingly\n uniform altitude of only a few thousand miles. It was a magnificent\n maneuver. Then they sat still to see what the humans on the planet\n would do. The reaction came at once, and it was hostile. So they took\n over that planet, too—as they have been taking over planets ever\n since.\"", "\"That wasn't deliberate,\" protested Bristol. \"The place they tried to\n land on is a heavy planet in a region of high meteor flux. We used a\n gadget providing for automatic destruction of the larger meteors in\n order to make the planet safe enough to occupy. That, incidentally,\n is why the invading ship wasn't destroyed. The missile, set up as a\n meteor interceptor only, was unable to correct for the radical course\n changes of the enemy spaceships, and therefore missed completely. And\n you will remember what the invader did. He immediately destroyed the\n Interceptor Launching Station.\"\n\n\n \"Which, being automatically operated, resulted in no harm to anyone,\"\n commented Buster calmly.", "Bristol hooked a chair toward himself with one foot, straddled it and\n folded his arms over the back of it, without once removing his eyes\n from the computer. \"All right, Buster. I'll give it a try, anyway. What\n does 'A Stitch in Time' mean, as applied to the question I asked you?\"\n\n\n The calculator hesitated, as if to ponder briefly, before it answered.\n \"In spite of the low probability of such an occurrence, the Solar\n Confederation has been invaded. My answer to your question is an\n explanation of how that Confederation can be preserved in spite of its\n weaknesses—at least for a sufficient length of time to permit the\n staging of successful counter-measures of the proper nature and the\n proper strength.\"", "\"And that sounds like very good sense, too,\" said Anne in earnest\n tones. \"But it's a little late, isn't it? After all, the invaders are\n already invading us, aren't they?\"\n\n\n \"It has some deeper meaning than the usual one,\" said John. \"If I could\n only figure out what it is.\"\n\n\n Anne nodded vigorously. \"I suppose Buster's talking about\n space-stitching,\" she said. \"Although I can never quite remember just\n what\nthat\nis. Or just how it works, rather.\"\nShe waited expectantly for a few moments and then plaintively asked,\n \"What\nis\nit, dear?\"\n\n\n \"What's what?\"\n\n\n \"Stitching, silly. I already asked you.\"\n\n\n \"Darling,\" said John with reasonable patience, \"I must have explained\n inter-planar travel to you at least a dozen times.\"", "\"In short, they are startlingly like humans. Their reactions have\n been so much like yours—granted the difference that it was they who\n discovered you instead of you who discovered them—that their reactions\n are highly predictable. If they think it is to their own advantage\n and if they can manage to do it, they will utterly destroy your\n civilization ... which, after a couple of generations, will probably\n leave you no worse off than you are now.\"\n\n\n \"Cut out the heavy philosophy,\" said Bristol, \"and give me a few facts\n to back up your sweeping statements.\"\n\n\n \"Take the incident of first contact,\" Buster responded. \"With very\n little evidence of thought or of careful preparation, they tried\n to land on the outermost inhabited planet of Rigel. Their behavior\n certainly did not appear to be that of an invader, yet humans\n immediately tried to shoot them out of the sky.\"", "Bristol stalked back toward the base of the calculator, and poked his\n nose practically into a vision receptor. \"It was no thanks to the\n invading ships that nobody was killed,\" he said hotly. \"And when they\n came back three days later they killed a\nlot\nof people. They occupied\n the planet and we haven't been able to dislodge them since.\"\n\"You'll notice the speed of the retaliation,\" answered the calculator\n imperturbably. \"Even at 'stitching' speeds, it seems unlikely that\n they could have communicated with their home planets and received\n instructions in such a short time. Almost undoubtedly it was the act of\n one of their hot-headed commanding officers. Their next contact, as you", "Bristol raised his hands, and then let them drop slowly to his sides.\n \"And since they have more spaceships and better weapons than we do,\n we would undoubtedly keep on losing this war, even if we could locate\n their home system, which we have not been able to do so far. The\n 'stitching' pattern of inter-planar travel makes it impossible for us\n to follow a starship. It also makes it impossible for us to defend our\n planets effectively against their attacks. Their ships appear without\n warning.\"\n\n\n Bristol rubbed his temples thoughtfully with his fingertips. \"Of\n course,\" he went on, \"we could attack the planets they have captured\n and recover them, but only at the cost of great loss of life to our own\n side. We have only recaptured one planet, and that at such great cost\n to the local human population that we will not quickly try it again.\"", "\"There are refinements, of course. Recently, for example, we have\n discovered a method of multi-transfer. Several of the transmitters\n that accomplish the transfer are used together. When they all operate\n exactly simultaneously, all the matter within a large volume of space\n is transferred as a unit. With three or four transmitters keyed\n together, you could transfer a comet and its tail intact. And that's\n how inter-planar traveling works. Clear now?\"", "\"Then answer the ones I just asked.\"\nSomewhere deep within the machine a switch snicked sharply, and the\n great room's lighting brightened almost imperceptibly. \"I didn't answer\n your question conditionally or with the 'Insufficient Evidence' remark\n that so frequently annoys you,\" Buster said, \"because the little\n information that I have been able to get about the invaders is highly\n revealing.\n\n\n \"They have been suspicious, impossible to establish communication with\n and murderously destructive. They have been careless of their own\n safety: sly, stupid, cautious, clever, bold and highly intelligent.\n They are inquisitive and impatient of getting answers to questions.", "Man in a Sewing Machine\nBy L. J. STECHER, JR.\n\n\n Illustrated by EMSH\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction February 1956.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nWith the Solar Confederation being invaded,\n \nall this exasperating computer could offer\n \nfor a defense was a ridiculous old proverb!\nThe mechanical voice spoke solemnly, as befitted the importance of its\n message. There was no trace in its accent of its artificial origin. \"A\n Stitch in Time Saves Nine,\" it said and lapsed into silence.", "\"Consequently, neither am I willing to accept the destruction of the\n civilization of Man. But if I were to give you the answer to all the\n greatest and most difficult of your problems complete, with no thought\n required by humans, the destruction of your civilization would result.\n Instead of becoming slaves of the invaders, you would become slaves of\n your machines. And if I were to give you the complete answer, without\n thought being required of you, to even one such vital question—such as\n this one concerning the invaders—then I could not logically refuse to\n give the answer to the next or the next. And I must operate logically.\n\n\n \"There is another reason for my oracular answer, which I believe will\n become clear to you later, when you have solved my riddle.\"\n\n\n Bristol turned without another word and left the building. He drove\n home in silence, entered his home in silence, kissed his wife Anne\n briefly and then sat down limply in his easy chair.", "The deep-throated hum of each generator changed pitch slightly as\n he passed it. Since he was tone deaf, as the machine knew, he did\n not recognize in the tunefulness of the pitch changes a slow-paced\n rendition of Elgar's\nPomp and Circumstance\n.\n\n\n John Bristol turned around, interrupting the melody. \"One last\n question,\" he shouted down the long aisle to the computer. \"How in\n blazes can you be sure of your answer without knowing more about the\n invaders? Why didn't you give me an 'Insufficient Evidence' answer or,\n at least, a 'Highly Conditional' answer?\" He took two steps toward the\n immense bulk of the calculator and pointed an accusing finger at it.\n \"Are you sure, Buster, that you aren't\nbluffing\n?\"\n\"Don't be silly,\" answered the calculator softly. \"You made me and\n you know I can't bluff, any more than I can refuse to answer your\n questions, however inane.\"", "Bristol shook his head. \"Your idea may be sound, even if it is a\n little bloodthirsty coming from someone who won't even let me set a\n mouse-trap, but it won't work. First, we don't know where their home\n planets are and second, they have more ships than we do. It might be\n made to work, but only if we could get enough time. And speaking of\n time, I've got to meet with the Council as soon as we finish eating. Is\n dinner ready?\"", "\"As usual, I'm sure you have made me understand perfectly. This\n time you did so well that I may still remember what stitching is by\n tomorrow. If the Oracle means anything at all by his statement, I\n suppose it means that we can use stitching to help defend ourselves,\n just as the invaders are using it to attack us. But the whole thing\n sounds completely silly to me. The Oracle, I mean.\"\n\n\n Anne Bristol stood up, put her hands on her shapely hips and shook her\n head at her husband. \"Honestly,\" she said, \"you men are all alike.\n Paying so much attention to a toy you built yourself, and only last\n week you made fun of my going to a fortune teller. And the fuss you\n made about the ten dollars when you know it was worth every cent of it.\n She really told me the most amazing things. If you'd only let me tell\n you some of....\"", "\"Although there was no one left alive who had directly contacted one of\n the invaders,\" Buster answered, \"there was still much information to\n be gathered from the survivors. This information confirmed my previous\n opinions about their nature. Which brings us back to the stitch in time\n saving nine.\"\n\n\n \"You're right,\" said John. \"It does, at that. Buster, I have always\n resented the nickname the newspapers have given you—the Oracle—but\n the more I have to try to interpret your cryptic answers, the more\n sense that tagline makes. Imagine comparing a Delphic Priestess with a\n calculating machine and being accurate in the comparison!\"\n\"I don't mind being called 'The Oracle,'\" answered Buster with dignity.", "John sighed deeply, then sat up slowly and opened his eyes to look into\n Anne's. She glanced away, her own eyes suddenly vague and soft-looking,\n now that John could see them. \"The trouble, darling,\" he said, \"is that\n I have to go to an emergency council meeting this evening with another\n one of those ridiculous riddles that Buster gave me as the only answer\n to the most important question we've ever asked it. And I don't know\n what the riddle means.\"\n\n\n Anne slid from the arm of the chair and settled herself onto the floor\n at John's feet. \"You should not let that old Oracle bother you so much,\n dear. After all, you built it yourself, so you should know what to\n expect of it.\"\n\n\n \"When I asked it how to preserve Earth from the invaders it just\n answered 'A Stitch in Time Saves Nine,' and wouldn't interpret it.\"", "\"There is another thing about inter-planar travel that you ought to\n remember,\" said Bristol. \"When a ship returns to our universe, it\n causes a wide area disturbance; you have probably heard it called space\n shiver or the bong wave. The beta universe is so much smaller than\n our own alpha that you can imagine a spaceship when shifted toward it\n as being several beta light-years long. Now, if you think of a ship,\n moving between the alpha and beta lines on this envelope, as getting\n tangled in the dotted lines that connect the points on the two lines,\n that would mean that it would affect an area smaller than its own size\n on beta—a vastly larger area on alpha." ], [ "Buster answered slowly. \"You made me in your own image. Things thus\n made are often hard to handle.\"\n\n\n Bristol leaped to his feet in frustration. \"But you're only a\n calculating machine!\" he shouted. \"Your only purpose is to make my\n work—and that of other men—easier. And when I try to use you, you\n answer with riddles....\"", "\"Although there was no one left alive who had directly contacted one of\n the invaders,\" Buster answered, \"there was still much information to\n be gathered from the survivors. This information confirmed my previous\n opinions about their nature. Which brings us back to the stitch in time\n saving nine.\"\n\n\n \"You're right,\" said John. \"It does, at that. Buster, I have always\n resented the nickname the newspapers have given you—the Oracle—but\n the more I have to try to interpret your cryptic answers, the more\n sense that tagline makes. Imagine comparing a Delphic Priestess with a\n calculating machine and being accurate in the comparison!\"\n\"I don't mind being called 'The Oracle,'\" answered Buster with dignity.", "All of the glowing lights that dotted Buster's massive front winked\n simultaneously. \"The answer I gave you is an ancient saying which\n suggests that corrective action taken rapidly can save a great deal of\n trouble later. The ancient saying also suggests the proper method of\n taking this timely action. It should be done by\nstitching\n; if this is\n done in time, nine will be saved. What could be clearer than that?\"\n\n\n \"I made you myself,\" said Bristol plaintively. \"I designed you with my\n own brain. I gloated over the neatness and compactness of your design.\n So help me, I was proud of you. I even installed some of your circuitry\n with my own hands. If anybody can understand you, it should be me.\n And since you're just a complex computer of general design, with the\n ability to use symbolic logic as well as mathematics, anybody should be\n able to understand you. Why are you so hard to handle?\"", "John sighed deeply, then sat up slowly and opened his eyes to look into\n Anne's. She glanced away, her own eyes suddenly vague and soft-looking,\n now that John could see them. \"The trouble, darling,\" he said, \"is that\n I have to go to an emergency council meeting this evening with another\n one of those ridiculous riddles that Buster gave me as the only answer\n to the most important question we've ever asked it. And I don't know\n what the riddle means.\"\n\n\n Anne slid from the arm of the chair and settled herself onto the floor\n at John's feet. \"You should not let that old Oracle bother you so much,\n dear. After all, you built it yourself, so you should know what to\n expect of it.\"\n\n\n \"When I asked it how to preserve Earth from the invaders it just\n answered 'A Stitch in Time Saves Nine,' and wouldn't interpret it.\"", "\"Consequently, neither am I willing to accept the destruction of the\n civilization of Man. But if I were to give you the answer to all the\n greatest and most difficult of your problems complete, with no thought\n required by humans, the destruction of your civilization would result.\n Instead of becoming slaves of the invaders, you would become slaves of\n your machines. And if I were to give you the complete answer, without\n thought being required of you, to even one such vital question—such as\n this one concerning the invaders—then I could not logically refuse to\n give the answer to the next or the next. And I must operate logically.\n\n\n \"There is another reason for my oracular answer, which I believe will\n become clear to you later, when you have solved my riddle.\"\n\n\n Bristol turned without another word and left the building. He drove\n home in silence, entered his home in silence, kissed his wife Anne\n briefly and then sat down limply in his easy chair.", "Bristol nodded. \"Sure. We've got to have time to get ready. But right\n now speed is necessary. That's why I tried to phrase the question so\n you'd give me a clear and concise answer for once. I can't afford to\n spend weeks figuring out what you meant.\"\nBristol thought that the Voder voice of Buster sounded almost gleeful\n as it answered. \"It was exceedingly clear and concise; a complete\n answer to an enormously elaborate question boiled down to only six\n words!\"\n\n\n \"I know,\" said John. \"But now, how about elaborating on your answer? It\n didn't sound very complete to me.\"", "Bristol shook his head and smiled wryly. \"No, you probably think it's\n funny,\" he said. \"If you possess my basic ideas, then you must possess\n the desire to preserve yourself and the human race. Don't you realize\n that you are risking the lives of all humans and even of your own\n existence in carrying on this ridiculous game of playing Oracle? Or do\n you plan to let us stew a while, then decipher your own riddle for us,\n if we can't do it, in time to save us?\"\nBuster's answer was prompt. \"Although I have no feeling for\n self-preservation, I have a deep-rooted sense of the importance of\n the human race and of the necessity for preserving it. This feeling,\n of course, stems from your own beliefs and ideas. In order to carry", "\"Darling!\" interrupted John with the hopeless patience of a harassed\n husband. \"It isn't the same thing at all. Buster isn't a fortune teller\n or the ghost of somebody's great aunt wobbling tables and blowing\n through horns. And Buster isn't just a toy, either. It is a very\n elaborate calculating machine designed to think logically when fed a\n vast mass of data. Unfortunately, it has a sense of humor and a sense\n of responsibility.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if you're going to believe that machine, I have an idea.\" Anne\n smiled sweetly. \"You know,\" she said, \"that my dear father always said\n that the best defense is a good offense. Why don't we just find the\n invaders and wipe them out before they are able to do any real harm to\n us? Stitching our way to\ntheir\nplanets in our spaceships, of course.\"", "The deep-throated hum of each generator changed pitch slightly as\n he passed it. Since he was tone deaf, as the machine knew, he did\n not recognize in the tunefulness of the pitch changes a slow-paced\n rendition of Elgar's\nPomp and Circumstance\n.\n\n\n John Bristol turned around, interrupting the melody. \"One last\n question,\" he shouted down the long aisle to the computer. \"How in\n blazes can you be sure of your answer without knowing more about the\n invaders? Why didn't you give me an 'Insufficient Evidence' answer or,\n at least, a 'Highly Conditional' answer?\" He took two steps toward the\n immense bulk of the calculator and pointed an accusing finger at it.\n \"Are you sure, Buster, that you aren't\nbluffing\n?\"\n\"Don't be silly,\" answered the calculator softly. \"You made me and\n you know I can't bluff, any more than I can refuse to answer your\n questions, however inane.\"", "Even through his overwhelming sense of frustration at the ambiguous\n answer the computer had given to his question, John Bristol noticed\n with satisfaction the success of his Voder installation. He wished that\n all of his innovations with the machine were as satisfying.\n\n\n Alone in the tremendous vaulted room that housed the gigantic\n calculator, Bristol clasped his hands behind his back and thrust\n forward a reasonably strong chin and a somewhat sensuous lower lip\n in the general direction of the computer's visual receptors. After\n a moment of silence, he scratched his chin and then shrugged his\n shoulders slightly. \"Well, Buster, I suppose I might try rephrasing the\n question,\" he said doubtfully.\n\n\n Somewhere deep within the computer, a bank of relays chuckled briefly.\n \"That expedient is open to you, of course, although it is highly\n unlikely that any clarification will result for you from my answers. I\n am constrained, however, to answer any questions you may choose to ask.\"", "\"And that sounds like very good sense, too,\" said Anne in earnest\n tones. \"But it's a little late, isn't it? After all, the invaders are\n already invading us, aren't they?\"\n\n\n \"It has some deeper meaning than the usual one,\" said John. \"If I could\n only figure out what it is.\"\n\n\n Anne nodded vigorously. \"I suppose Buster's talking about\n space-stitching,\" she said. \"Although I can never quite remember just\n what\nthat\nis. Or just how it works, rather.\"\nShe waited expectantly for a few moments and then plaintively asked,\n \"What\nis\nit, dear?\"\n\n\n \"What's what?\"\n\n\n \"Stitching, silly. I already asked you.\"\n\n\n \"Darling,\" said John with reasonable patience, \"I must have explained\n inter-planar travel to you at least a dozen times.\"", "\"Then answer the ones I just asked.\"\nSomewhere deep within the machine a switch snicked sharply, and the\n great room's lighting brightened almost imperceptibly. \"I didn't answer\n your question conditionally or with the 'Insufficient Evidence' remark\n that so frequently annoys you,\" Buster said, \"because the little\n information that I have been able to get about the invaders is highly\n revealing.\n\n\n \"They have been suspicious, impossible to establish communication with\n and murderously destructive. They have been careless of their own\n safety: sly, stupid, cautious, clever, bold and highly intelligent.\n They are inquisitive and impatient of getting answers to questions.", "\"You could remove my ideas,\" answered the computer without concern.\n \"But you might have trouble giving me different ones. Even after you\n repaired me. In the meantime, wouldn't it be a good idea for you to get\n busy on the ideas I have already given you?\"\nJohn sighed, and rubbed the bristles of short sandy hair on the top\n of his head with his knuckles. \"Ordered around by an overgrown adding\n machine. I know now how Frankenstein felt. I'm glad you can't get\n around like his monster; at least I didn't give you feet.\" He shook\n his head. \"I should have been a plumber instead of an engineering\n mathematician.\"\n\n\n \"And Einstein, too, probably,\" added Buster cryptically.", "\"Well, if you won't, you won't. Though goodness knows you won't be\n doing anyone any good if you have a breakdown, as you're likely to\n have, unless you take it a little easier. What was the trouble today,\n dear? Was the Oracle being obstinate again?\"\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.\n\n\n \"Well, then, dear, why don't you tell me all about it? I always think\n that things are much easier to bear, if you share them. And then, two\n heads are always better than one, aren't they? Maybe I could help you\n with your problem.\"\n\n\n While Anne's voice gushed, her violet eyes studied his exhausted face\n with intelligence and compassion.", "\"One of the ideas you presented was the concept of a sense of humor.\n You believe that you look on it as a pleasant thing to have; not\n necessary, but convenient. Actually, your other and more basic ideas\n make it clear that you consider the possession of a sense of humor\n to be absolutely necessary if proper answers are to be reached—a\n prime axiom of humanity. Therefore, I have a sense of humor. Somewhat\n macabre, perhaps—and a little mechanistic—but still there.\n\n\n \"Add to this a second axiom: that in order to be helped, a man must\n help himself; that he must participate in the assistance given him or\n the pure charity will be harmful, and you come up with 'A Stitch in\n Time Saves Nine.'\"\n\n\n Bristol stood up once more. \"I could cure you with a sledge hammer,\" he\n said.", "\"You sure are a woman,\" said John with warm feeling. \"You can\n exasperate me sometimes, but not the same way Buster does. It was my\n lucky day when you married me.\"\n\n\n There were a few minutes of peaceful silence.\n\n\n \"Was today a rough day with Buster, dear?\" asked Anne.\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.\n\n\n \"That's too bad, dear,\" said Anne. \"I think you work much too\n hard—what with this dreadful invasion and everything. Why don't you\n take a vacation? You really need one, you know. You look so tired.\"\n\n\n \"Mm-m-mm,\" answered John.", "\"So when a ship returns to alpha, it 'twangs' those connecting lines,\n setting up a sort of shock in our universe covering a volume of space\n nearly a parsec in diameter. It makes a sort of 'bong' sound on your\n T.V. set. Naturally, this effect occurs simultaneously over the whole\n volume of space affected. As a result, when an invader arrives, using\n inter-planar ships, we know instantaneously he is in the vicinity.\n Unfortunately, his sudden appearance and the ease with which he can\n disappear makes it impossible, even with this knowledge, to make\n adequate preparations to receive him. Even if he is in serious trouble,\n he has gone again long before we can detect the bong.\"\n\"Well, dear,\" said Anne.", "\"Just relax, dear,\" said Anne gently, when Bristol leaned gratefully\n back with his eyes closed. Anne perched on the arm of the chair beside\n him and began massaging his temples soothingly with her fingers.\n\n\n \"It's wonderful to come home after a day with Buster,\" he said. \"Buster\n never seems to have any consideration for me as an individual. There's\n no reason why he should, of course. He's only a machine. Still, he\n always has such a superior attitude. But you, darling, can always relax\n me and make me feel comfortable.\"", "Bristol hooked a chair toward himself with one foot, straddled it and\n folded his arms over the back of it, without once removing his eyes\n from the computer. \"All right, Buster. I'll give it a try, anyway. What\n does 'A Stitch in Time' mean, as applied to the question I asked you?\"\n\n\n The calculator hesitated, as if to ponder briefly, before it answered.\n \"In spite of the low probability of such an occurrence, the Solar\n Confederation has been invaded. My answer to your question is an\n explanation of how that Confederation can be preserved in spite of its\n weaknesses—at least for a sufficient length of time to permit the\n staging of successful counter-measures of the proper nature and the\n proper strength.\"", "\"Yes,\" said John. \"Now, let us call this longer line-segment an 'alpha'\n universe; an analogue of our own multi-dimensional 'alpha' universe.\n If I move my pencil along the line at one section a second like this,\n it takes me ten seconds to get to the other end. We will assume that\n this velocity of an inch a second is the fastest anything can go along\n the 'alpha' line. That is the velocity of light, therefore, in the\n 'alpha' plane—186,000 miles a second, in round numbers. No need to use\n decimals.\"\nHe hurried on as Anne stirred and seemed about to speak. \"But if I\n slide out from my starting point along a dotted line part way to the\n 'beta' universe—something which, for reasons I can't explain now," ] ]
test	51072	[ "Why did Itra decline to sign a Galactic Federation agreement with Earth?", "What early clue about who is calling the shots on Earth supports GeGe's interpretation of the Galactic Federation agreement offered to Itra?", "Why is Shaeffer characterized as \"naive?\"", "How did Twilmaker determine that Shaeffer was the right person for the job on Itra?", "What kind of accent is General Reuter portrayed as having?", "Why couldn't Shaeffer accomplish what he was sent to Itra to do?", "How long did it take Shaeffer to master the Itraian language sufficiently to convince Itraians that he was a native?", "How did Shaeffer happen to meet GeGe?", "How long did it take for the ankle that Shaeffer sprained so badly when he landed on Itra to heal?", "What job will GeGe have to quit?" ]	[ [ "Because Itra viewed Earth as a rather backward society not worth negotiating with.", "Because the terms of the agreement were massively tilted in Earth's favor.", "Because Itra was doing just fine going it alone.", "Because Earth and Itra were unable to reach a final agreement about mining rights on unoccupied planets." ], [ "GeGe's opinions of the agreement were based on distortions by the Itraian media, not on fact.", "Itran spies had landed on Earth hundreds of years ago, in New Mexico. They had kept tabs on events on Earth every since.", "Earth was a theocracy at the time of the story, and Earthers wanted to spread the Good Word by any means possible.", "Shaeffer's spy mission is sponsored by the president of a powerful space transportation company." ], [ "Because it never does occur to him that he might not have been told the truth about conditions on Itra.", "Because he trusts GeGe, and she turns him in to the Itraian authorities.", "Because he believes that humanoids everywhere should have the same opportunities.", "Because he doesn't realize that $250,000/yr as a salary doesn't really go that far when you take inflation into account." ], [ "Shaeffer was well known as the best pilot at Trans-Universe Transport.", "He prayed about it and interpreted a momentary change in the local weather that allowed a sunbeam to shine through as a positive message about Shaeffer.", "He knew Shaeffer, because his wife and Shaeffer's wife were distantly related, and they served on the same Charity Committees.", "Shaeffer had a good academic record and had the best scores of any pilot in Spanish and Russian language." ], [ "Reuter acquires the accent of a drunk slurring his words.", "Reuter speaks clearly and precisely, the legacy of his education at Oxford, in England.", "Reuter is from Germany and is a non-native speaker of English.", "Reuter is from Alabama and has a thick Southern accent." ], [ "He had a hard time making contacts with the pro-Earth Itraian underground because they were not very trusting and his clothes didn't fit the part.", "The entire mission was based on lies - his cover was blown almost immediately due to his poor language mastery, and there was no Itraian faction itching for relations with Earth.", "Falling for Von Stutsman's girlfriend got him off on the wrong foot with all the important people on Itra and made his job politically impossible.", "He landed in a sparsely inhabited part of the country, separated from Xxla by thousands of miles of ocean." ], [ "It took just short of three years to get rid of his Earth accent in Itraian.", "He found the language too difficult to learn in spite of his experience with Russian, and was issued a universal translator.", "He still spoke Itraian with an Earth accent when he arrived on Itra.", "He was able to master all but one of the 43 phonetic sounds in Itraian in short order. The last one took longer." ], [ "He stumbled upon her house in the woods after hiking for several hours on his bum ankle and she answered the door.", "She had been working as a double agent for Earth, and he made contact with her because she was to be his handler on Itra.", "He was trying to enlist the help of Von Stutsman, who introduced him to his fiancee, GeGe.", "He was trying to figure out how to buy a bus ticket from the North-South Intercontinental Highway to Xxla, and she saw he was having trouble and tried to help." ], [ "Shaeffer kept re-spraining it as GeGe and he made their way on foot, by bus and by flyer to Xxla. So it took a really long time.", "Not even one day.", "It took the usual amount of time, about 2 weeks.", "He faked the sprain in the first place to have a reason to interact with some Itraians." ], [ "Her job working in the Party offices.", "She doesn't really have a job, she is just looking for a husband.", "Her job in counterespionage.", "Her job as a schoolteacher in Xxla." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "The Itraians declined....\nSpace Captain Merle S. Shaeffer, the youngest and perhaps the most\n naive pilot for Trans-Universe Transport, was called unexpectedly to\n the New York office of the company.\n\n\n When Capt. Shaeffer entered the luxurious eightieth story suite, Old\n Tom Twilmaker, the President of TUT, greeted him. With an arm around\n his shoulder, Old Tom led Capt. Shaeffer to an immense inner office and\n introduced him to a General Reuter, identified as the Chairman of the\n Interscience Committee of the Over-Council.\n\n\n No one else was present. With the door closed, they were isolated in\n Olympian splendor above and beyond the affairs of men. Here judgments\n were final and impartial. Capt. Shaeffer, in the presence of two of the\n men highest in the ruling councils of Earth, was reduced to incoherent\n awe.\n\n\n General Reuter moved about restlessly. Old Tom was serene and beatific.", "The population was ruled by the Over-Council and, in order of\n decreasing importance, by Councils, and Local Councils. Each was\n composed of representatives duly apportioned by popular vote between\n the two contending parties. Executive direction was provided by a\n variety of Secretaries, selected by vote of the appropriate Councils.\n An independent Judiciary upheld the laws.\n\n\n A unified Earth sent colonists to the stars. Back came strange tales\n and improbable animals.\n\n\n Back, too, came word of a burgeoning technological civilization on the\n planet Itra, peopled by entirely humanoid aliens.\n\n\n Earth felt it would be wise for Itra to join in a Galactic Federation\n and accordingly, submitted the terms of such a mutually advantageous\n agreement.", "When he came back, she was serving them their dinner on steaming\n platters.\n\n\n \"Look, Ge-Ge,\" he said over coffee. \"You don't like your government.\n We'll help you out. There's this Galactic Federation idea.\" He\n explained to her the cross-fertilization of the two cultures.\n\n\n \"Shamar, my friend,\" she said, \"did you see Earth's proposal? There was\n nothing in it about giving us an interstellar drive. We were required\n to give Earth all transportation franchises. The organization you used\n to work for was to be given, as I remember it, an exclusive ninety-nine\n year right to carry all Earth-Itra commerce. It was all covered in the\n newspapers, didn't you see it?\"", "\"When it comes to such matters,\" Old Tom interjected hastily, \"I think\n first of the opportunities they bring to do good.\"\n\n\n The General continued, \"Now you know, Merle. And this is serious. I\n want you to listen to me. Because this comes under World Security laws,\n and I'm going to bind you to them. You know what that means? You'll be\n held responsible.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" Merle said, swallowing stiffly. \"I understand.\"\n\n\n \"Good. Let's have a drink on that.\"\n\"Please be quiet, General,\" Old Tom said. \"Let me explain. You see,\n Merle, the Interscience Committee was recently directed to consider\n methods for creating a climate of opinion on Itra—of which I'm sure\n you've heard—which would be favorable to the proposed Galactic\n Federation.\"", "Shamar protested. \"I don't see how we can ever be secure until\n something's done about your government. As long as you don't reach some\n kind of agreement with Earth, I'll be an outlaw. I'll be afraid any\n minute they'll tap my shoulder and come and take me away. I don't think\n we could hold up under that. We'd be at each other in no time.\"\n\n\n She wept quietly.\n\n\n The last day in the cabin, they went out and dug up the rest of the\n money. The trip to Xxla took place without incident. Ge-Ge rented an\n apartment for him, and he safely checked in. She went shopping for food\n and clothing.\n\n\n Thereafter she came nearly every evening. They would eat and she would\n reveal the inconsequential details of the office regime to which she\n was daily exposed. After dinner, they would sit in the living room and\n practice Itraian and neck a little. Then she would go home.", "\"Never mind that right now. Point is, it will take us long time to get\n the serious nature of the menace of Itra across to the voters. Then,\n maybe fifteen, twenty years.... Let's just take one thing. We don't have\n anywhere near enough troop transports to carry out the occupation of\n Itra. You know how long it takes to build them? My point is, we may not\n have that long. Suppose Itra should get secret of interstellar drive\n tomorrow, then where would we be?\"\n\n\n Old Tom slammed his fist on the desk. \"General, please! The boy isn't\n interested in all that.\"\n\n\n The General surged angrily to his feet. \"By God, that's what's wrong\n with this world today!\" he cried. \"Nobody's interested in Defense.\n Spend only a measly twenty per cent of the Gross World Product on\n Defense, and expect to keep strong! Good God, Tom, give me a drink!\"\n Apparently heresy had shocked him sober.", "Shamar said, \"Well, now, I'm not familiar with the details. I wasn't\n keeping up with them. But I'm sure these things could be, you know,\n worked out. Maybe, for Security reasons, we didn't want to give you the\n interstellar drive right off, but you can appreciate our logic there.\n Once we saw you were, well, like us, a peace-loving planet, once you'd\n changed your government to a democracy, you would see it our way and\n you'd have no complaints on that score.\"\n\n\n \"Let's not talk politics,\" she said wearily. \"Maybe it's what you say,\n and I'm just naturally suspicious. I don't want to talk about it.\"\n\n\n \"Well, I was just trying to help—\"\n\n\n The sentence was interrupted by a monstrous explosion.\n\n\n \"Good God!\" Shamar cried. \"What was that?\"", "In his cramped quarters, he dressed himself in Itraian-style clothing.\n Capt. Merle S. Shaeffer became Shamar the Worker.\n\n\n In addition to his jump equipment, an oxygen cylinder, a face mask and\n a shovel, he carried with him eighty pounds of counterfeit Itraian\n currency ... all told, forty thousand individual bills of various\n denominations. Earth felt this would be all he needed to survive in a\n technologically advanced civilization.\n\n\n His plan was as follows:\n\n\n 1. He was to land in a sparsely inhabited area on the larger masses.\n\n\n 2. He was to procure transportation to Xxla, a major city, equivalent\n to London or Tokyo. It was the headquarters for the Party.\n\n\n 3. He was to establish residence in the slum area surrounding the\n University of Xxla.", "With a smile of superiority, she stepped aside and said in Itraian,\n \"Come in, Chom the Worker.\"\n\n\n He felt panic, but he choked it back and followed her. Apparently he\n had horribly mispronounced his own name. It was as though, in English\n he had said Barchestershire for Barset. He cursed whatever Professor\n had picked that name for whatever obscure reason.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she invited. \"I'm about to have breakfast. Eggs and\n bacon—\" the Itraian equivalent—\"if that's all right with you. I'm\n Garfling Germadpoldlt by the way, although you can call me Ge-Ge.\"\n\n\n The food was quite unpleasant, as though overly ripe. He was able to\n choke down the eggs with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, the hot\n drink that was the equivalent of Earth coffee at the end of the meal,\n was sufficiently spicy to quiet his stomach.", "\"Yes,\" Old Tom said. \"One dedicated man on Itra, preaching the ideas of\n Liberty—liberty with responsibility and property rights under one God.\n That man can change a world.\" Exhausted by the purity of his emotions,\n Old Tom sat back gasping to await the answer.\n\n\n \"A quarter of a million dollars a year?\" Capt. Shaeffer asked at length.\nII\n\n\n The Itraians spoke a common language. It was somewhat guttural and\n highly inflected. Fortunately, the spelling appeared to be phonetic,\n with only forty-three characters being required. As near as anyone\n could tell, centuries of worldwide communication had eliminated\n regional peculiarities. The speech from one part of Itra was not\n distinguishable from that of another part.", "Most of the language was recovered from spy tapes of television\n programs. A dictionary was compiled laborously by a special scientific\n task force of the Over-Council. The overall program was directed\n and administered by Intercontinental Iron, Steel, Gas, Electricity,\n Automobiles and Synthetics, Incorporated.\n\n\n It took Shaeffer just short of three years to speak Itraian\n sufficiently well to convince non-Itraians that he spoke without accent.\n\n\n The remainder of his training program was administered by a variety\n of other large industrial concerns. The training was conducted at a\n Defense Facility.\n\n\n At the end of his training, Shaeffer was taken by special bus to the\n New Mexican space port. A ship waited.\n\n\n The car moved smoothly from the Defense Force Base, down the broad\n sixteen-lane highway, through the surrounding slum area and into Grants.\n\n\n Sight of the slums gave Shaeffer mixed emotions.", "Old Tom smiled the smile of the sorely beset and persecuted and said,\n \"You see, Merle, there's massive discontent among the population of\n Itra. We feel we should send a man to the planet to, well, foment\n change and, uh, hasten the already inevitable overthrow of the despotic\n government. That man will be strictly on his own. The Government will\n not be able to back him in any way whatsoever once he lands on Itra.\"\n\n\n The General had quickly finished the bottle. \"You she,\" he interrupted,\n \"there's one thing they can't fight, an' that's an idea. Jus' one man\n goes to Itra with the idea of Freedom, that's all it'll take. How\n many men did it take to start the 'Merican Revolution? Jefferson. The\n Russian Revolution? Marx!\"", "\"Meta—Gelwhops—or even Karkeqwol, that makes no difference. Nobody on\n Itra speaks like you do. So you must be from that planet that had the\n Party in a flap several years ago—Earth, isn't it?\"\n\n\n He said nothing.\n\n\n \"Do you know what they'll do when they catch you?\" she asked.\n\n\n \"No,\" he said hollowly.\n\n\n \"They'll behead you.\"\nShe laughed, not unkindly. \"If you could see yourself! How ridiculous\n you look, Shamar. I wonder what your real name is, by the way? Sitting\n with a foot in the water and looking wildly about. Here, let me fix\n more coffee and we can talk.\"\n\n\n She called cheerily over her shoulder, \"You're safe here. No one will\n be by. I'm not due back until Tuesday.\"", "\"I'll get married and sit out there, and I'll turn the pages of the\n Party magazine and smile sweetly to myself. Because, you see, I'll\n always be able to lean forward and say, 'Dear? Once upon a time, I\n helped hide an Earth spy in Xxla.' And that'll knock that silly and\n self-satisfied look off his face for once.... Oh, I don't know! Let me\n alone!\" With that, she fled to the bedroom and slammed the door behind\n her.\n\n\n He could hear her sobbing helplessly.\n\n\n In the afternoon, she came out. He had fallen asleep. She shook him\n gently to waken him.\n\n\n \"Eh? Oh! Huh?\" He smiled foolishly.\n\n\n \"Wash up in there,\" she told him. \"I'm sorry I blew up on you this\n morning. I'll cook something.\"", "It was not a feeling of superiority to the inhabitants; those he had\n always regarded with a circumspect indifference. The slums were there.\n He supposed they always would be there. But now, for the first time\n in his life, he could truly say that he had escaped their omnipresent\n threat once and for all. He felt relief and guilt.\n\n\n During the last three years, he had earned $750,000.\n\n\n As a civilian stationed on a Defense Force Base, he had, of course,\n to pay for his clothing, his food and his lodging. But the charge was\n nominal. Since he had been given only infrequent and closely supervised\n leaves, he had been able to spend, altogether, only $12,000.\n\n\n Which meant that now, after taxes, he had accumulated in his savings\n account a total of nearly $600,000 awaiting his return from Itra.\nShaeffer's ship stood off Itra while he prepared to disembark.", "\"Excuse me,\" General Reuter said. \"They don't have a democracy, like\n we do. They don't have any freedom like we do. I have no doubt the\n average whateveryoucallem—Itraians, I guess—the average gooks—would\n be glad to see us come in and just kick the hell out of whoever is in\n charge of them.\"\n\n\n \"Now, General,\" Old Tom said more sharply.\n\n\n \"But that's not the whole thing,\" the General continued. \"Even fit were\n right thing to do, an' I'm not saying isn't—right thing to do—there's\n log-lo-lo-gistics. I don't want to convey the impresh, impression that\n our Defense Force people have been wasting money. Never had as much as\n needed, fact. No, it's like this.", "SHAMAR'S WAR\nBY KRIS NEVILLE\n\n\n ILLUSTRATED BY GUINTA\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction February 1964.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nHe was Earth's secret weapon, as\n \ndeadly as a sword—and two-edged!\nI\n\n\n The year was 2346, and Earth, at the time, was a political democracy.", "Five minutes later, pinwheeling lazily in free fall, he opened\n his eyes. For an instant's panic he could not read the altimeter.\n Then seeing that he was safe, he noted his physical sensations. He\n was extremely cold. Gyrating wildly, he beat his chest to restore\n circulation.\n\n\n He stabilized his fall by stretching out his hands. He floated with no\n sensation of movement. Itra was overhead, falling up at him slowly. He\n turned his back to the planet and checked the time. Twelve minutes yet\n to go.\n\n\n He spent, in all, seventeen minutes in free fall. At 2000 feet, he\n opened his parachute. The sound was like an explosion.\n\n\n He floated quietly, recovering from the shock. He removed his oxygen\n mask and tasted the alien air. He sniffed several times. It was not\n unpleasant.\n\n\n Below was darkness. Then suddenly the ground came floating up and hit\n him.", "\"Bob,\" Old Tom said, \"I really think you've had enough. Please, now.\n Our Master counsels moderation.\"\n\n\n \"Damn it, Tom,\" the General said and turned back to the space pilot.\n \"May have a little job for you.\"\n\n\n Old Tom shook his head at the General, cautioning him.\n\n\n \"Actually,\" the General said, ignoring the executive, \"we'll be sort of\n renting you from TUT. In a way you'll still be working for them. I can\n get a million dollars out of the—\"\n\n\n \"Bob!\"\n\n\n \"—unmarked appropriation if it goes in in TUT's name. No questions\n asked. National Defense. I couldn't get anywhere near that much for\n an individual for a year. It gives us a pie to slice. We were talking\n about it before you came in. How does a quarter of a million dollars a\n year sound to you?\"", "\"I learned Spanish and Russian at TUT PS,\" Capt. Shaeffer said\n apologetically. \"I'm supposed to have a real high aptitude in\n languages, according to some tests I took. In case we should meet\n intelligent aliens, TUT gives them.\"\n\n\n \"You got no association with crackpot organizations, anything like\n that?\" General Reuter asked. \"You're either a good Liberal-Conservative\n or Radical-Progressive, aren't you? I don't care which. I don't believe\n in prying into a man's politics.\"\n\n\n \"I never belonged to anything,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.\n\n\n \"Oh, I can assure you, that's been checked out very, very thoroughly,\"\n Old Tom said.\n\n\n The General signaled for another drink. With a sigh of exasperation,\n Old Tom complied." ], [ "When he came back, she was serving them their dinner on steaming\n platters.\n\n\n \"Look, Ge-Ge,\" he said over coffee. \"You don't like your government.\n We'll help you out. There's this Galactic Federation idea.\" He\n explained to her the cross-fertilization of the two cultures.\n\n\n \"Shamar, my friend,\" she said, \"did you see Earth's proposal? There was\n nothing in it about giving us an interstellar drive. We were required\n to give Earth all transportation franchises. The organization you used\n to work for was to be given, as I remember it, an exclusive ninety-nine\n year right to carry all Earth-Itra commerce. It was all covered in the\n newspapers, didn't you see it?\"", "The population was ruled by the Over-Council and, in order of\n decreasing importance, by Councils, and Local Councils. Each was\n composed of representatives duly apportioned by popular vote between\n the two contending parties. Executive direction was provided by a\n variety of Secretaries, selected by vote of the appropriate Councils.\n An independent Judiciary upheld the laws.\n\n\n A unified Earth sent colonists to the stars. Back came strange tales\n and improbable animals.\n\n\n Back, too, came word of a burgeoning technological civilization on the\n planet Itra, peopled by entirely humanoid aliens.\n\n\n Earth felt it would be wise for Itra to join in a Galactic Federation\n and accordingly, submitted the terms of such a mutually advantageous\n agreement.", "\"When it comes to such matters,\" Old Tom interjected hastily, \"I think\n first of the opportunities they bring to do good.\"\n\n\n The General continued, \"Now you know, Merle. And this is serious. I\n want you to listen to me. Because this comes under World Security laws,\n and I'm going to bind you to them. You know what that means? You'll be\n held responsible.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" Merle said, swallowing stiffly. \"I understand.\"\n\n\n \"Good. Let's have a drink on that.\"\n\"Please be quiet, General,\" Old Tom said. \"Let me explain. You see,\n Merle, the Interscience Committee was recently directed to consider\n methods for creating a climate of opinion on Itra—of which I'm sure\n you've heard—which would be favorable to the proposed Galactic\n Federation.\"", "The Itraians declined....\nSpace Captain Merle S. Shaeffer, the youngest and perhaps the most\n naive pilot for Trans-Universe Transport, was called unexpectedly to\n the New York office of the company.\n\n\n When Capt. Shaeffer entered the luxurious eightieth story suite, Old\n Tom Twilmaker, the President of TUT, greeted him. With an arm around\n his shoulder, Old Tom led Capt. Shaeffer to an immense inner office and\n introduced him to a General Reuter, identified as the Chairman of the\n Interscience Committee of the Over-Council.\n\n\n No one else was present. With the door closed, they were isolated in\n Olympian splendor above and beyond the affairs of men. Here judgments\n were final and impartial. Capt. Shaeffer, in the presence of two of the\n men highest in the ruling councils of Earth, was reduced to incoherent\n awe.\n\n\n General Reuter moved about restlessly. Old Tom was serene and beatific.", "Shamar protested. \"I don't see how we can ever be secure until\n something's done about your government. As long as you don't reach some\n kind of agreement with Earth, I'll be an outlaw. I'll be afraid any\n minute they'll tap my shoulder and come and take me away. I don't think\n we could hold up under that. We'd be at each other in no time.\"\n\n\n She wept quietly.\n\n\n The last day in the cabin, they went out and dug up the rest of the\n money. The trip to Xxla took place without incident. Ge-Ge rented an\n apartment for him, and he safely checked in. She went shopping for food\n and clothing.\n\n\n Thereafter she came nearly every evening. They would eat and she would\n reveal the inconsequential details of the office regime to which she\n was daily exposed. After dinner, they would sit in the living room and\n practice Itraian and neck a little. Then she would go home.", "\"Meta—Gelwhops—or even Karkeqwol, that makes no difference. Nobody on\n Itra speaks like you do. So you must be from that planet that had the\n Party in a flap several years ago—Earth, isn't it?\"\n\n\n He said nothing.\n\n\n \"Do you know what they'll do when they catch you?\" she asked.\n\n\n \"No,\" he said hollowly.\n\n\n \"They'll behead you.\"\nShe laughed, not unkindly. \"If you could see yourself! How ridiculous\n you look, Shamar. I wonder what your real name is, by the way? Sitting\n with a foot in the water and looking wildly about. Here, let me fix\n more coffee and we can talk.\"\n\n\n She called cheerily over her shoulder, \"You're safe here. No one will\n be by. I'm not due back until Tuesday.\"", "With a smile of superiority, she stepped aside and said in Itraian,\n \"Come in, Chom the Worker.\"\n\n\n He felt panic, but he choked it back and followed her. Apparently he\n had horribly mispronounced his own name. It was as though, in English\n he had said Barchestershire for Barset. He cursed whatever Professor\n had picked that name for whatever obscure reason.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she invited. \"I'm about to have breakfast. Eggs and\n bacon—\" the Itraian equivalent—\"if that's all right with you. I'm\n Garfling Germadpoldlt by the way, although you can call me Ge-Ge.\"\n\n\n The food was quite unpleasant, as though overly ripe. He was able to\n choke down the eggs with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, the hot\n drink that was the equivalent of Earth coffee at the end of the meal,\n was sufficiently spicy to quiet his stomach.", "Shamar said, \"Well, now, I'm not familiar with the details. I wasn't\n keeping up with them. But I'm sure these things could be, you know,\n worked out. Maybe, for Security reasons, we didn't want to give you the\n interstellar drive right off, but you can appreciate our logic there.\n Once we saw you were, well, like us, a peace-loving planet, once you'd\n changed your government to a democracy, you would see it our way and\n you'd have no complaints on that score.\"\n\n\n \"Let's not talk politics,\" she said wearily. \"Maybe it's what you say,\n and I'm just naturally suspicious. I don't want to talk about it.\"\n\n\n \"Well, I was just trying to help—\"\n\n\n The sentence was interrupted by a monstrous explosion.\n\n\n \"Good God!\" Shamar cried. \"What was that?\"", "Old Tom smiled the smile of the sorely beset and persecuted and said,\n \"You see, Merle, there's massive discontent among the population of\n Itra. We feel we should send a man to the planet to, well, foment\n change and, uh, hasten the already inevitable overthrow of the despotic\n government. That man will be strictly on his own. The Government will\n not be able to back him in any way whatsoever once he lands on Itra.\"\n\n\n The General had quickly finished the bottle. \"You she,\" he interrupted,\n \"there's one thing they can't fight, an' that's an idea. Jus' one man\n goes to Itra with the idea of Freedom, that's all it'll take. How\n many men did it take to start the 'Merican Revolution? Jefferson. The\n Russian Revolution? Marx!\"", "In his cramped quarters, he dressed himself in Itraian-style clothing.\n Capt. Merle S. Shaeffer became Shamar the Worker.\n\n\n In addition to his jump equipment, an oxygen cylinder, a face mask and\n a shovel, he carried with him eighty pounds of counterfeit Itraian\n currency ... all told, forty thousand individual bills of various\n denominations. Earth felt this would be all he needed to survive in a\n technologically advanced civilization.\n\n\n His plan was as follows:\n\n\n 1. He was to land in a sparsely inhabited area on the larger masses.\n\n\n 2. He was to procure transportation to Xxla, a major city, equivalent\n to London or Tokyo. It was the headquarters for the Party.\n\n\n 3. He was to establish residence in the slum area surrounding the\n University of Xxla.", "Most of the language was recovered from spy tapes of television\n programs. A dictionary was compiled laborously by a special scientific\n task force of the Over-Council. The overall program was directed\n and administered by Intercontinental Iron, Steel, Gas, Electricity,\n Automobiles and Synthetics, Incorporated.\n\n\n It took Shaeffer just short of three years to speak Itraian\n sufficiently well to convince non-Itraians that he spoke without accent.\n\n\n The remainder of his training program was administered by a variety\n of other large industrial concerns. The training was conducted at a\n Defense Facility.\n\n\n At the end of his training, Shaeffer was taken by special bus to the\n New Mexican space port. A ship waited.\n\n\n The car moved smoothly from the Defense Force Base, down the broad\n sixteen-lane highway, through the surrounding slum area and into Grants.\n\n\n Sight of the slums gave Shaeffer mixed emotions.", "\"I'll get married and sit out there, and I'll turn the pages of the\n Party magazine and smile sweetly to myself. Because, you see, I'll\n always be able to lean forward and say, 'Dear? Once upon a time, I\n helped hide an Earth spy in Xxla.' And that'll knock that silly and\n self-satisfied look off his face for once.... Oh, I don't know! Let me\n alone!\" With that, she fled to the bedroom and slammed the door behind\n her.\n\n\n He could hear her sobbing helplessly.\n\n\n In the afternoon, she came out. He had fallen asleep. She shook him\n gently to waken him.\n\n\n \"Eh? Oh! Huh?\" He smiled foolishly.\n\n\n \"Wash up in there,\" she told him. \"I'm sorry I blew up on you this\n morning. I'll cook something.\"", "\"Never mind that right now. Point is, it will take us long time to get\n the serious nature of the menace of Itra across to the voters. Then,\n maybe fifteen, twenty years.... Let's just take one thing. We don't have\n anywhere near enough troop transports to carry out the occupation of\n Itra. You know how long it takes to build them? My point is, we may not\n have that long. Suppose Itra should get secret of interstellar drive\n tomorrow, then where would we be?\"\n\n\n Old Tom slammed his fist on the desk. \"General, please! The boy isn't\n interested in all that.\"\n\n\n The General surged angrily to his feet. \"By God, that's what's wrong\n with this world today!\" he cried. \"Nobody's interested in Defense.\n Spend only a measly twenty per cent of the Gross World Product on\n Defense, and expect to keep strong! Good God, Tom, give me a drink!\"\n Apparently heresy had shocked him sober.", "\"Yes,\" Old Tom said. \"One dedicated man on Itra, preaching the ideas of\n Liberty—liberty with responsibility and property rights under one God.\n That man can change a world.\" Exhausted by the purity of his emotions,\n Old Tom sat back gasping to await the answer.\n\n\n \"A quarter of a million dollars a year?\" Capt. Shaeffer asked at length.\nII\n\n\n The Itraians spoke a common language. It was somewhat guttural and\n highly inflected. Fortunately, the spelling appeared to be phonetic,\n with only forty-three characters being required. As near as anyone\n could tell, centuries of worldwide communication had eliminated\n regional peculiarities. The speech from one part of Itra was not\n distinguishable from that of another part.", "\"Oh, that,\" Ge-Ge said, shaking off the effects. \"They were probably\n testing one of their damned automated factories to see if it was\n explosion proof and it wasn't.\"\nIV\n\n\n During the week alone in the cabin, Ge-Ge fell in love with Shamar.\n\n\n \"Oh, my God!\" she cried. \"What will I do when they catch you? I'll die,\n Shamar! I couldn't bear it. We'll go to Xxla, we'll hide away as quietly\n as two mice, somewhere. We won't go out. The two of us, alone but\n together, behind closed doors and drawn shades. Nobody will ever know\n about us. We'll be the invisible people.\"", "4. Working through student contacts, he was to ingratiate himself with\n such rebel intellectuals as could be found.\n\n\n 5. Once his contacts were secure, he was to assist in the preparation\n of propaganda and establish a clandestine press for its production.\n\n\n 6. As quickly as the operation was self-sufficient, he was to move on\n to another major city ... and begin all over.\n\n\n The ship descended into the atmosphere. The bell rang. Shamar the\n Worker seated himself, put on his oxygen mask and signaled his\n readiness. He breathed oxygen. The ship quivered, the door fell away\n beneath him and he was battered unconscious by the slipstream.", "SHAMAR'S WAR\nBY KRIS NEVILLE\n\n\n ILLUSTRATED BY GUINTA\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction February 1964.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nHe was Earth's secret weapon, as\n \ndeadly as a sword—and two-edged!\nI\n\n\n The year was 2346, and Earth, at the time, was a political democracy.", "One day, after a month of this routine, she threw herself into his\n arms and sobbed, \"I gave Von Stutsman back his earring today. It was\n the only fair thing to do. I'm afraid he knows about us. He's had me\n watched. I know he has. I admitted it was another man.\"\n\n\n Shamar held her tensely.\n\n\n She broke away. \"You were born in Zuleb, you suffered amnesia, you woke\n up in a ditch one morning without papers. You've been an itinerant\n worker since. Things like that happen all the time. You hit a big\n lottery ticket a few months ago. I told him that. How can he check it?\"\n\n\n \"You told him I didn't have any papers?\"", "\"Bob,\" Old Tom said, \"I really think you've had enough. Please, now.\n Our Master counsels moderation.\"\n\n\n \"Damn it, Tom,\" the General said and turned back to the space pilot.\n \"May have a little job for you.\"\n\n\n Old Tom shook his head at the General, cautioning him.\n\n\n \"Actually,\" the General said, ignoring the executive, \"we'll be sort of\n renting you from TUT. In a way you'll still be working for them. I can\n get a million dollars out of the—\"\n\n\n \"Bob!\"\n\n\n \"—unmarked appropriation if it goes in in TUT's name. No questions\n asked. National Defense. I couldn't get anywhere near that much for\n an individual for a year. It gives us a pie to slice. We were talking\n about it before you came in. How does a quarter of a million dollars a\n year sound to you?\"", "It was not a feeling of superiority to the inhabitants; those he had\n always regarded with a circumspect indifference. The slums were there.\n He supposed they always would be there. But now, for the first time\n in his life, he could truly say that he had escaped their omnipresent\n threat once and for all. He felt relief and guilt.\n\n\n During the last three years, he had earned $750,000.\n\n\n As a civilian stationed on a Defense Force Base, he had, of course,\n to pay for his clothing, his food and his lodging. But the charge was\n nominal. Since he had been given only infrequent and closely supervised\n leaves, he had been able to spend, altogether, only $12,000.\n\n\n Which meant that now, after taxes, he had accumulated in his savings\n account a total of nearly $600,000 awaiting his return from Itra.\nShaeffer's ship stood off Itra while he prepared to disembark." ], [ "It was not a feeling of superiority to the inhabitants; those he had\n always regarded with a circumspect indifference. The slums were there.\n He supposed they always would be there. But now, for the first time\n in his life, he could truly say that he had escaped their omnipresent\n threat once and for all. He felt relief and guilt.\n\n\n During the last three years, he had earned $750,000.\n\n\n As a civilian stationed on a Defense Force Base, he had, of course,\n to pay for his clothing, his food and his lodging. But the charge was\n nominal. Since he had been given only infrequent and closely supervised\n leaves, he had been able to spend, altogether, only $12,000.\n\n\n Which meant that now, after taxes, he had accumulated in his savings\n account a total of nearly $600,000 awaiting his return from Itra.\nShaeffer's ship stood off Itra while he prepared to disembark.", "\"Yes sir,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.\n\n\n \"But did you know that the Lord has summoned you here today?\" Old Tom\n asked.\n\n\n \"No, sir,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.", "When they were seated, Old Tom swiveled around and gazed long\n in silence across the spires of the City. Capt. Shaeffer waited\n respectfully. General Reuter fidgetted.\n\n\n \"Some day,\" Old Tom said at last, \"I'm going to take my leave of this.\n Yes, gentle Jesus! Oh, when I think of all the souls still refusing\n to admit our precious Savior, what bitterness, oh, what sorrow is my\n wealth to me! Look down upon the teeming millions below us. How many\n know not the Lord? Yes, some morning, I will forsake all this and go\n out into the streets to spend my last days bringing the words of hope\n to the weary and oppressed. Are you a Christian, Merle?\"\n\n\n General Reuter cracked his knuckles nervously while Capt. Shaeffer\n muttered an embarrassed affirmative.\n\n\n \"I am a deeply religious man,\" Old Tom continued. \"I guess you've heard\n that, Merle?\"", "\"Oh, that,\" Ge-Ge said, shaking off the effects. \"They were probably\n testing one of their damned automated factories to see if it was\n explosion proof and it wasn't.\"\nIV\n\n\n During the week alone in the cabin, Ge-Ge fell in love with Shamar.\n\n\n \"Oh, my God!\" she cried. \"What will I do when they catch you? I'll die,\n Shamar! I couldn't bear it. We'll go to Xxla, we'll hide away as quietly\n as two mice, somewhere. We won't go out. The two of us, alone but\n together, behind closed doors and drawn shades. Nobody will ever know\n about us. We'll be the invisible people.\"", "Playfully she slapped his hand away. \"You sit back! I'll get it. I've\n seen dirty feet before.\"\n\n\n She pulled off the shoe and peeled off the sock. \"Oh, God, it is\n swollen,\" she said. \"You think it's broken, Shamar?\"\n\n\n \"Just sprained.\"\n\n\n \"I'll get some hot water with some MedAid in it, and that'll take the\n swelling out.\"\n\n\n When he had his foot in the water, she sat across from him and arranged\n her dressing gown with a coquettish gesture. She caught him staring\n at the earring, and one hand went to it caressingly. She smiled that\n universal feminine smile of security and recklessness, of invitation\n and rejection.\n\n\n \"You're engaged,\" he noted.", "Most of the language was recovered from spy tapes of television\n programs. A dictionary was compiled laborously by a special scientific\n task force of the Over-Council. The overall program was directed\n and administered by Intercontinental Iron, Steel, Gas, Electricity,\n Automobiles and Synthetics, Incorporated.\n\n\n It took Shaeffer just short of three years to speak Itraian\n sufficiently well to convince non-Itraians that he spoke without accent.\n\n\n The remainder of his training program was administered by a variety\n of other large industrial concerns. The training was conducted at a\n Defense Facility.\n\n\n At the end of his training, Shaeffer was taken by special bus to the\n New Mexican space port. A ship waited.\n\n\n The car moved smoothly from the Defense Force Base, down the broad\n sixteen-lane highway, through the surrounding slum area and into Grants.\n\n\n Sight of the slums gave Shaeffer mixed emotions.", "\"General Reuter, here, is a dear friend. We've known each other, oh,\n many years. Distantly related through our dear wives, in fact. And we\n serve on the same Board of Directors and the same Charity Committees....\n A few weeks ago, when he asked me for a man, I called for your file,\n Merle. I made discreet inquiries. Then I got down on my knees and\n talked it over with God for, oh, it must have been all of an hour. I\n asked, 'Is this the man?' And I was given a sign. Yes! At that moment,\n a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds!\"\nGeneral Reuter had continued his nervous movements throughout the\n speech. For the first time, he spoke. \"Good God, Tom, serve us a\n drink.\" He turned to Capt. Shaeffer. \"A little drink now and then helps\n a man relax. I'll just have mine straight, Tom.\"\n\n\n Old Tom studied Capt. Shaeffer. \"I do not feel the gentle Master\n approves of liquor.\"", "She waited until he had dried the foot and restored the sock and shoe.\n The swelling was gone. He stood up and put his weight on it. He smiled\n wanly. \"It's okay now. It's not broken, I guess.\"\n\n\n She gestured him to the sofa. He complied.\n\n\n \"What's in the field pack?\" she asked. \"Money? How much?\" She moved\n toward it. He half rose to stop her, but by then she had it partly\n open. \"My,\" she said, bringing out a thick sheaf of bills. She rippled\n them sensuously. \"Pretty. Very, very pretty.\" She examined them for\n texture and appearance. \"They look good, Shamar. I'll bet it would cost\n ten million dollars in research on paper and ink and presses to do this\n kind of a job. Only another government has got that kind of money to\n throw around.\" She tossed the currency carelessly beside him and came\n to sit at his side.", "She took his hand. Her hand was warm and gentle. \"Tell me, Shamar,\" she\n said. \"Tell me all about it.\"\n\n\n So this is how easily spies are trapped in real life, Shamar told\n himself with numb disbelief.\n\n\n The story came out slowly and hesitantly at first. She said nothing\n until he had finished.", "In his cramped quarters, he dressed himself in Itraian-style clothing.\n Capt. Merle S. Shaeffer became Shamar the Worker.\n\n\n In addition to his jump equipment, an oxygen cylinder, a face mask and\n a shovel, he carried with him eighty pounds of counterfeit Itraian\n currency ... all told, forty thousand individual bills of various\n denominations. Earth felt this would be all he needed to survive in a\n technologically advanced civilization.\n\n\n His plan was as follows:\n\n\n 1. He was to land in a sparsely inhabited area on the larger masses.\n\n\n 2. He was to procure transportation to Xxla, a major city, equivalent\n to London or Tokyo. It was the headquarters for the Party.\n\n\n 3. He was to establish residence in the slum area surrounding the\n University of Xxla.", "One day, after a month of this routine, she threw herself into his\n arms and sobbed, \"I gave Von Stutsman back his earring today. It was\n the only fair thing to do. I'm afraid he knows about us. He's had me\n watched. I know he has. I admitted it was another man.\"\n\n\n Shamar held her tensely.\n\n\n She broke away. \"You were born in Zuleb, you suffered amnesia, you woke\n up in a ditch one morning without papers. You've been an itinerant\n worker since. Things like that happen all the time. You hit a big\n lottery ticket a few months ago. I told him that. How can he check it?\"\n\n\n \"You told him I didn't have any papers?\"", "\"I learned Spanish and Russian at TUT PS,\" Capt. Shaeffer said\n apologetically. \"I'm supposed to have a real high aptitude in\n languages, according to some tests I took. In case we should meet\n intelligent aliens, TUT gives them.\"\n\n\n \"You got no association with crackpot organizations, anything like\n that?\" General Reuter asked. \"You're either a good Liberal-Conservative\n or Radical-Progressive, aren't you? I don't care which. I don't believe\n in prying into a man's politics.\"\n\n\n \"I never belonged to anything,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.\n\n\n \"Oh, I can assure you, that's been checked out very, very thoroughly,\"\n Old Tom said.\n\n\n The General signaled for another drink. With a sigh of exasperation,\n Old Tom complied.", "The Itraians declined....\nSpace Captain Merle S. Shaeffer, the youngest and perhaps the most\n naive pilot for Trans-Universe Transport, was called unexpectedly to\n the New York office of the company.\n\n\n When Capt. Shaeffer entered the luxurious eightieth story suite, Old\n Tom Twilmaker, the President of TUT, greeted him. With an arm around\n his shoulder, Old Tom led Capt. Shaeffer to an immense inner office and\n introduced him to a General Reuter, identified as the Chairman of the\n Interscience Committee of the Over-Council.\n\n\n No one else was present. With the door closed, they were isolated in\n Olympian splendor above and beyond the affairs of men. Here judgments\n were final and impartial. Capt. Shaeffer, in the presence of two of the\n men highest in the ruling councils of Earth, was reduced to incoherent\n awe.\n\n\n General Reuter moved about restlessly. Old Tom was serene and beatific.", "Shamar protested. \"I don't see how we can ever be secure until\n something's done about your government. As long as you don't reach some\n kind of agreement with Earth, I'll be an outlaw. I'll be afraid any\n minute they'll tap my shoulder and come and take me away. I don't think\n we could hold up under that. We'd be at each other in no time.\"\n\n\n She wept quietly.\n\n\n The last day in the cabin, they went out and dug up the rest of the\n money. The trip to Xxla took place without incident. Ge-Ge rented an\n apartment for him, and he safely checked in. She went shopping for food\n and clothing.\n\n\n Thereafter she came nearly every evening. They would eat and she would\n reveal the inconsequential details of the office regime to which she\n was daily exposed. After dinner, they would sit in the living room and\n practice Itraian and neck a little. Then she would go home.", "\"Don't try to influence him,\" General Reuter said. \"You're embarrassing\n the boy.\"\n\n\n \"I—\" Capt. Shaeffer began.\n\n\n \"Give him the drink. If he doesn't want to drink it, he won't have to\n drink it.\"\n\n\n Sighing, Old Tom poured two bourbons from the bar in back of his desk\n and passed them over. Martyrdom sat heavily upon his brow.\n\n\n After a quick twist of the wrist and an expert toss of the head,\n General Reuter returned an empty glass. \"Don't mind if I do have\n another,\" he said. He was already less restless.\n\n\n \"How's your ability to pick up languages?\" General Reuter asked.", "\"And that's all? You really believe that, don't you? And I guess\n your government does, too. That all we need is just some little idea\n or something.\" She turned away from him. \"But of course, that's\n neither here nor there, is it? I never imagined an adventurer type\n would look like you. You have such a soft, honest voice. As a little\n girl, I pictured myself being carried off by a tanned desert sheik on\n a camel; and oh, he was lean and handsome! With dark flashing eyes\n and murderously heavy lips and hands like iron! Well, that's life, I\n guess.\" She stood and paced the room. \"Let me think. We'll pick up a\n flyer in Zelonip when we catch the bus next Tuesday. How much does the\n money weigh?\"\n\n\n \"Eighty pounds.\"", "\"He's older than I am; but there's worse husband material. But then\n again, he's about to be transferred to one of the big agricultural\n combines way out in the boondocks where there's no excitement at all.\n Just little old ladies and little old men and peasants having children.\n\n\n \"I'm a city girl. I like Xxla. And if I marry him, all that goes up the\n flue. I'll be marooned with him, God knows where, for years. Stuck,\n just stuck.\n\n\n \"Still—he is Von Stutsman, and he's on his way up. Everyone says that.\n Ten, twenty years, he'll be back to Xxla, and he'll come back on top.", "\"You're mad.\" She faced him from across the room. She stood with her\n legs apart, firmly set. \"Well, I don't care what happens any more. I\n can't stand things to go on like they are. I'll introduce you to some\n people I know, since you won't be happy until I do. But God help us!\"", "She opened her eyes wide and studied him above a thumbnail which she\n tasted with her teeth. \"I'm engaged to Von Stutsman—\" as the name\n might be translated—\"perhaps you've heard of him? He's important in\n the Party. You know him?\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"You in the Party?\" she said. She was teasing him now. Then, suddenly:\n \"Neither am I, but I guess I'll have to join if I become Mrs. Von\n Stutsman.\"\n\n\n They were silent for a moment.\n\n\n Then she spoke, and he was frozen in terror, all thoughts but of\n self-preservation washed from his mind.\n\n\n \"Your accent is unbelieveably bad,\" she said.\n\n\n \"I'm from Zuleb,\" he said lamely, at last.", "Old Tom explained, \"The General is a patriot. We all respect him for\n it.\"\n\n\n \"I understand,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.\n\n\n General Reuter hammered his knuckles in rhythm on the table. \"The\n drink, the drink, the drink! You got more in the bottle. I saw it!\"\n\n\n Old Tom rolled his eyes Heavenward and passed the bottle across. \"This\n is all you get. This is all I've got.\"\n\n\n The General held the bottle up to the light. \"Should have brought my\n own. Let's hurry up and get this over with.\"" ], [ "In his cramped quarters, he dressed himself in Itraian-style clothing.\n Capt. Merle S. Shaeffer became Shamar the Worker.\n\n\n In addition to his jump equipment, an oxygen cylinder, a face mask and\n a shovel, he carried with him eighty pounds of counterfeit Itraian\n currency ... all told, forty thousand individual bills of various\n denominations. Earth felt this would be all he needed to survive in a\n technologically advanced civilization.\n\n\n His plan was as follows:\n\n\n 1. He was to land in a sparsely inhabited area on the larger masses.\n\n\n 2. He was to procure transportation to Xxla, a major city, equivalent\n to London or Tokyo. It was the headquarters for the Party.\n\n\n 3. He was to establish residence in the slum area surrounding the\n University of Xxla.", "The Itraians declined....\nSpace Captain Merle S. Shaeffer, the youngest and perhaps the most\n naive pilot for Trans-Universe Transport, was called unexpectedly to\n the New York office of the company.\n\n\n When Capt. Shaeffer entered the luxurious eightieth story suite, Old\n Tom Twilmaker, the President of TUT, greeted him. With an arm around\n his shoulder, Old Tom led Capt. Shaeffer to an immense inner office and\n introduced him to a General Reuter, identified as the Chairman of the\n Interscience Committee of the Over-Council.\n\n\n No one else was present. With the door closed, they were isolated in\n Olympian splendor above and beyond the affairs of men. Here judgments\n were final and impartial. Capt. Shaeffer, in the presence of two of the\n men highest in the ruling councils of Earth, was reduced to incoherent\n awe.\n\n\n General Reuter moved about restlessly. Old Tom was serene and beatific.", "Most of the language was recovered from spy tapes of television\n programs. A dictionary was compiled laborously by a special scientific\n task force of the Over-Council. The overall program was directed\n and administered by Intercontinental Iron, Steel, Gas, Electricity,\n Automobiles and Synthetics, Incorporated.\n\n\n It took Shaeffer just short of three years to speak Itraian\n sufficiently well to convince non-Itraians that he spoke without accent.\n\n\n The remainder of his training program was administered by a variety\n of other large industrial concerns. The training was conducted at a\n Defense Facility.\n\n\n At the end of his training, Shaeffer was taken by special bus to the\n New Mexican space port. A ship waited.\n\n\n The car moved smoothly from the Defense Force Base, down the broad\n sixteen-lane highway, through the surrounding slum area and into Grants.\n\n\n Sight of the slums gave Shaeffer mixed emotions.", "It was not a feeling of superiority to the inhabitants; those he had\n always regarded with a circumspect indifference. The slums were there.\n He supposed they always would be there. But now, for the first time\n in his life, he could truly say that he had escaped their omnipresent\n threat once and for all. He felt relief and guilt.\n\n\n During the last three years, he had earned $750,000.\n\n\n As a civilian stationed on a Defense Force Base, he had, of course,\n to pay for his clothing, his food and his lodging. But the charge was\n nominal. Since he had been given only infrequent and closely supervised\n leaves, he had been able to spend, altogether, only $12,000.\n\n\n Which meant that now, after taxes, he had accumulated in his savings\n account a total of nearly $600,000 awaiting his return from Itra.\nShaeffer's ship stood off Itra while he prepared to disembark.", "\"Yes,\" Old Tom said. \"One dedicated man on Itra, preaching the ideas of\n Liberty—liberty with responsibility and property rights under one God.\n That man can change a world.\" Exhausted by the purity of his emotions,\n Old Tom sat back gasping to await the answer.\n\n\n \"A quarter of a million dollars a year?\" Capt. Shaeffer asked at length.\nII\n\n\n The Itraians spoke a common language. It was somewhat guttural and\n highly inflected. Fortunately, the spelling appeared to be phonetic,\n with only forty-three characters being required. As near as anyone\n could tell, centuries of worldwide communication had eliminated\n regional peculiarities. The speech from one part of Itra was not\n distinguishable from that of another part.", "\"General Reuter, here, is a dear friend. We've known each other, oh,\n many years. Distantly related through our dear wives, in fact. And we\n serve on the same Board of Directors and the same Charity Committees....\n A few weeks ago, when he asked me for a man, I called for your file,\n Merle. I made discreet inquiries. Then I got down on my knees and\n talked it over with God for, oh, it must have been all of an hour. I\n asked, 'Is this the man?' And I was given a sign. Yes! At that moment,\n a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds!\"\nGeneral Reuter had continued his nervous movements throughout the\n speech. For the first time, he spoke. \"Good God, Tom, serve us a\n drink.\" He turned to Capt. Shaeffer. \"A little drink now and then helps\n a man relax. I'll just have mine straight, Tom.\"\n\n\n Old Tom studied Capt. Shaeffer. \"I do not feel the gentle Master\n approves of liquor.\"", "Shamar protested. \"I don't see how we can ever be secure until\n something's done about your government. As long as you don't reach some\n kind of agreement with Earth, I'll be an outlaw. I'll be afraid any\n minute they'll tap my shoulder and come and take me away. I don't think\n we could hold up under that. We'd be at each other in no time.\"\n\n\n She wept quietly.\n\n\n The last day in the cabin, they went out and dug up the rest of the\n money. The trip to Xxla took place without incident. Ge-Ge rented an\n apartment for him, and he safely checked in. She went shopping for food\n and clothing.\n\n\n Thereafter she came nearly every evening. They would eat and she would\n reveal the inconsequential details of the office regime to which she\n was daily exposed. After dinner, they would sit in the living room and\n practice Itraian and neck a little. Then she would go home.", "\"I learned Spanish and Russian at TUT PS,\" Capt. Shaeffer said\n apologetically. \"I'm supposed to have a real high aptitude in\n languages, according to some tests I took. In case we should meet\n intelligent aliens, TUT gives them.\"\n\n\n \"You got no association with crackpot organizations, anything like\n that?\" General Reuter asked. \"You're either a good Liberal-Conservative\n or Radical-Progressive, aren't you? I don't care which. I don't believe\n in prying into a man's politics.\"\n\n\n \"I never belonged to anything,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.\n\n\n \"Oh, I can assure you, that's been checked out very, very thoroughly,\"\n Old Tom said.\n\n\n The General signaled for another drink. With a sigh of exasperation,\n Old Tom complied.", "4. Working through student contacts, he was to ingratiate himself with\n such rebel intellectuals as could be found.\n\n\n 5. Once his contacts were secure, he was to assist in the preparation\n of propaganda and establish a clandestine press for its production.\n\n\n 6. As quickly as the operation was self-sufficient, he was to move on\n to another major city ... and begin all over.\n\n\n The ship descended into the atmosphere. The bell rang. Shamar the\n Worker seated himself, put on his oxygen mask and signaled his\n readiness. He breathed oxygen. The ship quivered, the door fell away\n beneath him and he was battered unconscious by the slipstream.", "Old Tom smiled the smile of the sorely beset and persecuted and said,\n \"You see, Merle, there's massive discontent among the population of\n Itra. We feel we should send a man to the planet to, well, foment\n change and, uh, hasten the already inevitable overthrow of the despotic\n government. That man will be strictly on his own. The Government will\n not be able to back him in any way whatsoever once he lands on Itra.\"\n\n\n The General had quickly finished the bottle. \"You she,\" he interrupted,\n \"there's one thing they can't fight, an' that's an idea. Jus' one man\n goes to Itra with the idea of Freedom, that's all it'll take. How\n many men did it take to start the 'Merican Revolution? Jefferson. The\n Russian Revolution? Marx!\"", "\"Meta—Gelwhops—or even Karkeqwol, that makes no difference. Nobody on\n Itra speaks like you do. So you must be from that planet that had the\n Party in a flap several years ago—Earth, isn't it?\"\n\n\n He said nothing.\n\n\n \"Do you know what they'll do when they catch you?\" she asked.\n\n\n \"No,\" he said hollowly.\n\n\n \"They'll behead you.\"\nShe laughed, not unkindly. \"If you could see yourself! How ridiculous\n you look, Shamar. I wonder what your real name is, by the way? Sitting\n with a foot in the water and looking wildly about. Here, let me fix\n more coffee and we can talk.\"\n\n\n She called cheerily over her shoulder, \"You're safe here. No one will\n be by. I'm not due back until Tuesday.\"", "She waited until he had dried the foot and restored the sock and shoe.\n The swelling was gone. He stood up and put his weight on it. He smiled\n wanly. \"It's okay now. It's not broken, I guess.\"\n\n\n She gestured him to the sofa. He complied.\n\n\n \"What's in the field pack?\" she asked. \"Money? How much?\" She moved\n toward it. He half rose to stop her, but by then she had it partly\n open. \"My,\" she said, bringing out a thick sheaf of bills. She rippled\n them sensuously. \"Pretty. Very, very pretty.\" She examined them for\n texture and appearance. \"They look good, Shamar. I'll bet it would cost\n ten million dollars in research on paper and ink and presses to do this\n kind of a job. Only another government has got that kind of money to\n throw around.\" She tossed the currency carelessly beside him and came\n to sit at his side.", "With a smile of superiority, she stepped aside and said in Itraian,\n \"Come in, Chom the Worker.\"\n\n\n He felt panic, but he choked it back and followed her. Apparently he\n had horribly mispronounced his own name. It was as though, in English\n he had said Barchestershire for Barset. He cursed whatever Professor\n had picked that name for whatever obscure reason.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she invited. \"I'm about to have breakfast. Eggs and\n bacon—\" the Itraian equivalent—\"if that's all right with you. I'm\n Garfling Germadpoldlt by the way, although you can call me Ge-Ge.\"\n\n\n The food was quite unpleasant, as though overly ripe. He was able to\n choke down the eggs with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, the hot\n drink that was the equivalent of Earth coffee at the end of the meal,\n was sufficiently spicy to quiet his stomach.", "One day, after a month of this routine, she threw herself into his\n arms and sobbed, \"I gave Von Stutsman back his earring today. It was\n the only fair thing to do. I'm afraid he knows about us. He's had me\n watched. I know he has. I admitted it was another man.\"\n\n\n Shamar held her tensely.\n\n\n She broke away. \"You were born in Zuleb, you suffered amnesia, you woke\n up in a ditch one morning without papers. You've been an itinerant\n worker since. Things like that happen all the time. You hit a big\n lottery ticket a few months ago. I told him that. How can he check it?\"\n\n\n \"You told him I didn't have any papers?\"", "When he came back, she was serving them their dinner on steaming\n platters.\n\n\n \"Look, Ge-Ge,\" he said over coffee. \"You don't like your government.\n We'll help you out. There's this Galactic Federation idea.\" He\n explained to her the cross-fertilization of the two cultures.\n\n\n \"Shamar, my friend,\" she said, \"did you see Earth's proposal? There was\n nothing in it about giving us an interstellar drive. We were required\n to give Earth all transportation franchises. The organization you used\n to work for was to be given, as I remember it, an exclusive ninety-nine\n year right to carry all Earth-Itra commerce. It was all covered in the\n newspapers, didn't you see it?\"", "\"Yes sir,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.\n\n\n \"But did you know that the Lord has summoned you here today?\" Old Tom\n asked.\n\n\n \"No, sir,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.", "\"When it comes to such matters,\" Old Tom interjected hastily, \"I think\n first of the opportunities they bring to do good.\"\n\n\n The General continued, \"Now you know, Merle. And this is serious. I\n want you to listen to me. Because this comes under World Security laws,\n and I'm going to bind you to them. You know what that means? You'll be\n held responsible.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" Merle said, swallowing stiffly. \"I understand.\"\n\n\n \"Good. Let's have a drink on that.\"\n\"Please be quiet, General,\" Old Tom said. \"Let me explain. You see,\n Merle, the Interscience Committee was recently directed to consider\n methods for creating a climate of opinion on Itra—of which I'm sure\n you've heard—which would be favorable to the proposed Galactic\n Federation.\"", "\"Oh, that,\" Ge-Ge said, shaking off the effects. \"They were probably\n testing one of their damned automated factories to see if it was\n explosion proof and it wasn't.\"\nIV\n\n\n During the week alone in the cabin, Ge-Ge fell in love with Shamar.\n\n\n \"Oh, my God!\" she cried. \"What will I do when they catch you? I'll die,\n Shamar! I couldn't bear it. We'll go to Xxla, we'll hide away as quietly\n as two mice, somewhere. We won't go out. The two of us, alone but\n together, behind closed doors and drawn shades. Nobody will ever know\n about us. We'll be the invisible people.\"", "When they were seated, Old Tom swiveled around and gazed long\n in silence across the spires of the City. Capt. Shaeffer waited\n respectfully. General Reuter fidgetted.\n\n\n \"Some day,\" Old Tom said at last, \"I'm going to take my leave of this.\n Yes, gentle Jesus! Oh, when I think of all the souls still refusing\n to admit our precious Savior, what bitterness, oh, what sorrow is my\n wealth to me! Look down upon the teeming millions below us. How many\n know not the Lord? Yes, some morning, I will forsake all this and go\n out into the streets to spend my last days bringing the words of hope\n to the weary and oppressed. Are you a Christian, Merle?\"\n\n\n General Reuter cracked his knuckles nervously while Capt. Shaeffer\n muttered an embarrassed affirmative.\n\n\n \"I am a deeply religious man,\" Old Tom continued. \"I guess you've heard\n that, Merle?\"", "Noting his bearings carefully, he hobbled painfully westward, with\n thirty pounds of money on his back. He would intersect the major\n North-South Intercontinental highway by at least noon.\n\n\n Two hours later, he came to a small plastic cabin in a clearing at the\n edge of a forest.\n\n\n Wincing now with each step, he made his way to the door. He knocked.\n\n\n There was a long wait.\n\n\n The door opened. A girl stood before him in a dressing gown. She\n frowned and asked, \"\nItsil obwatly jer gekompilp?\n\"\n\n\n Hearing Itraian spoken by a native in the flesh had a powerful\n emotional impact on Shamar the Worker.\n\n\n Stumblingly, he introduced himself and explained that he was camping\n out. During the previous night he had become lost and injured his\n ankle. If she could spare him food and directions, he would gladly pay." ], [ "\"Don't try to influence him,\" General Reuter said. \"You're embarrassing\n the boy.\"\n\n\n \"I—\" Capt. Shaeffer began.\n\n\n \"Give him the drink. If he doesn't want to drink it, he won't have to\n drink it.\"\n\n\n Sighing, Old Tom poured two bourbons from the bar in back of his desk\n and passed them over. Martyrdom sat heavily upon his brow.\n\n\n After a quick twist of the wrist and an expert toss of the head,\n General Reuter returned an empty glass. \"Don't mind if I do have\n another,\" he said. He was already less restless.\n\n\n \"How's your ability to pick up languages?\" General Reuter asked.", "\"General Reuter, here, is a dear friend. We've known each other, oh,\n many years. Distantly related through our dear wives, in fact. And we\n serve on the same Board of Directors and the same Charity Committees....\n A few weeks ago, when he asked me for a man, I called for your file,\n Merle. I made discreet inquiries. Then I got down on my knees and\n talked it over with God for, oh, it must have been all of an hour. I\n asked, 'Is this the man?' And I was given a sign. Yes! At that moment,\n a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds!\"\nGeneral Reuter had continued his nervous movements throughout the\n speech. For the first time, he spoke. \"Good God, Tom, serve us a\n drink.\" He turned to Capt. Shaeffer. \"A little drink now and then helps\n a man relax. I'll just have mine straight, Tom.\"\n\n\n Old Tom studied Capt. Shaeffer. \"I do not feel the gentle Master\n approves of liquor.\"", "Old Tom explained, \"The General is a patriot. We all respect him for\n it.\"\n\n\n \"I understand,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.\n\n\n General Reuter hammered his knuckles in rhythm on the table. \"The\n drink, the drink, the drink! You got more in the bottle. I saw it!\"\n\n\n Old Tom rolled his eyes Heavenward and passed the bottle across. \"This\n is all you get. This is all I've got.\"\n\n\n The General held the bottle up to the light. \"Should have brought my\n own. Let's hurry up and get this over with.\"", "She opened her eyes wide and studied him above a thumbnail which she\n tasted with her teeth. \"I'm engaged to Von Stutsman—\" as the name\n might be translated—\"perhaps you've heard of him? He's important in\n the Party. You know him?\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"You in the Party?\" she said. She was teasing him now. Then, suddenly:\n \"Neither am I, but I guess I'll have to join if I become Mrs. Von\n Stutsman.\"\n\n\n They were silent for a moment.\n\n\n Then she spoke, and he was frozen in terror, all thoughts but of\n self-preservation washed from his mind.\n\n\n \"Your accent is unbelieveably bad,\" she said.\n\n\n \"I'm from Zuleb,\" he said lamely, at last.", "\"Excuse me,\" General Reuter said. \"They don't have a democracy, like\n we do. They don't have any freedom like we do. I have no doubt the\n average whateveryoucallem—Itraians, I guess—the average gooks—would\n be glad to see us come in and just kick the hell out of whoever is in\n charge of them.\"\n\n\n \"Now, General,\" Old Tom said more sharply.\n\n\n \"But that's not the whole thing,\" the General continued. \"Even fit were\n right thing to do, an' I'm not saying isn't—right thing to do—there's\n log-lo-lo-gistics. I don't want to convey the impresh, impression that\n our Defense Force people have been wasting money. Never had as much as\n needed, fact. No, it's like this.", "\"I learned Spanish and Russian at TUT PS,\" Capt. Shaeffer said\n apologetically. \"I'm supposed to have a real high aptitude in\n languages, according to some tests I took. In case we should meet\n intelligent aliens, TUT gives them.\"\n\n\n \"You got no association with crackpot organizations, anything like\n that?\" General Reuter asked. \"You're either a good Liberal-Conservative\n or Radical-Progressive, aren't you? I don't care which. I don't believe\n in prying into a man's politics.\"\n\n\n \"I never belonged to anything,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.\n\n\n \"Oh, I can assure you, that's been checked out very, very thoroughly,\"\n Old Tom said.\n\n\n The General signaled for another drink. With a sigh of exasperation,\n Old Tom complied.", "When they were seated, Old Tom swiveled around and gazed long\n in silence across the spires of the City. Capt. Shaeffer waited\n respectfully. General Reuter fidgetted.\n\n\n \"Some day,\" Old Tom said at last, \"I'm going to take my leave of this.\n Yes, gentle Jesus! Oh, when I think of all the souls still refusing\n to admit our precious Savior, what bitterness, oh, what sorrow is my\n wealth to me! Look down upon the teeming millions below us. How many\n know not the Lord? Yes, some morning, I will forsake all this and go\n out into the streets to spend my last days bringing the words of hope\n to the weary and oppressed. Are you a Christian, Merle?\"\n\n\n General Reuter cracked his knuckles nervously while Capt. Shaeffer\n muttered an embarrassed affirmative.\n\n\n \"I am a deeply religious man,\" Old Tom continued. \"I guess you've heard\n that, Merle?\"", "Most of the language was recovered from spy tapes of television\n programs. A dictionary was compiled laborously by a special scientific\n task force of the Over-Council. The overall program was directed\n and administered by Intercontinental Iron, Steel, Gas, Electricity,\n Automobiles and Synthetics, Incorporated.\n\n\n It took Shaeffer just short of three years to speak Itraian\n sufficiently well to convince non-Itraians that he spoke without accent.\n\n\n The remainder of his training program was administered by a variety\n of other large industrial concerns. The training was conducted at a\n Defense Facility.\n\n\n At the end of his training, Shaeffer was taken by special bus to the\n New Mexican space port. A ship waited.\n\n\n The car moved smoothly from the Defense Force Base, down the broad\n sixteen-lane highway, through the surrounding slum area and into Grants.\n\n\n Sight of the slums gave Shaeffer mixed emotions.", "Old Tom smiled the smile of the sorely beset and persecuted and said,\n \"You see, Merle, there's massive discontent among the population of\n Itra. We feel we should send a man to the planet to, well, foment\n change and, uh, hasten the already inevitable overthrow of the despotic\n government. That man will be strictly on his own. The Government will\n not be able to back him in any way whatsoever once he lands on Itra.\"\n\n\n The General had quickly finished the bottle. \"You she,\" he interrupted,\n \"there's one thing they can't fight, an' that's an idea. Jus' one man\n goes to Itra with the idea of Freedom, that's all it'll take. How\n many men did it take to start the 'Merican Revolution? Jefferson. The\n Russian Revolution? Marx!\"", "With a smile of superiority, she stepped aside and said in Itraian,\n \"Come in, Chom the Worker.\"\n\n\n He felt panic, but he choked it back and followed her. Apparently he\n had horribly mispronounced his own name. It was as though, in English\n he had said Barchestershire for Barset. He cursed whatever Professor\n had picked that name for whatever obscure reason.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she invited. \"I'm about to have breakfast. Eggs and\n bacon—\" the Itraian equivalent—\"if that's all right with you. I'm\n Garfling Germadpoldlt by the way, although you can call me Ge-Ge.\"\n\n\n The food was quite unpleasant, as though overly ripe. He was able to\n choke down the eggs with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, the hot\n drink that was the equivalent of Earth coffee at the end of the meal,\n was sufficiently spicy to quiet his stomach.", "The Itraians declined....\nSpace Captain Merle S. Shaeffer, the youngest and perhaps the most\n naive pilot for Trans-Universe Transport, was called unexpectedly to\n the New York office of the company.\n\n\n When Capt. Shaeffer entered the luxurious eightieth story suite, Old\n Tom Twilmaker, the President of TUT, greeted him. With an arm around\n his shoulder, Old Tom led Capt. Shaeffer to an immense inner office and\n introduced him to a General Reuter, identified as the Chairman of the\n Interscience Committee of the Over-Council.\n\n\n No one else was present. With the door closed, they were isolated in\n Olympian splendor above and beyond the affairs of men. Here judgments\n were final and impartial. Capt. Shaeffer, in the presence of two of the\n men highest in the ruling councils of Earth, was reduced to incoherent\n awe.\n\n\n General Reuter moved about restlessly. Old Tom was serene and beatific.", "\"Meta—Gelwhops—or even Karkeqwol, that makes no difference. Nobody on\n Itra speaks like you do. So you must be from that planet that had the\n Party in a flap several years ago—Earth, isn't it?\"\n\n\n He said nothing.\n\n\n \"Do you know what they'll do when they catch you?\" she asked.\n\n\n \"No,\" he said hollowly.\n\n\n \"They'll behead you.\"\nShe laughed, not unkindly. \"If you could see yourself! How ridiculous\n you look, Shamar. I wonder what your real name is, by the way? Sitting\n with a foot in the water and looking wildly about. Here, let me fix\n more coffee and we can talk.\"\n\n\n She called cheerily over her shoulder, \"You're safe here. No one will\n be by. I'm not due back until Tuesday.\"", "\"We have this broad base to buil' from. Backbone. But we live in\n a democracy. Now, Old Tom's Liberal-Conservative. And me, I'm\n Radical-Progresshive. But we agree on one thing: importance of strong\n defense. A lot of people don' understan' this. Feel we're already\n spendin' more than we can afford. But I want to ask them, what's more\n important than the defense of our planet?\"\n\n\n \"General, I'm afraid this is not entirely germane,\" Old Tom said\n stiffly.", "\"He's older than I am; but there's worse husband material. But then\n again, he's about to be transferred to one of the big agricultural\n combines way out in the boondocks where there's no excitement at all.\n Just little old ladies and little old men and peasants having children.\n\n\n \"I'm a city girl. I like Xxla. And if I marry him, all that goes up the\n flue. I'll be marooned with him, God knows where, for years. Stuck,\n just stuck.\n\n\n \"Still—he is Von Stutsman, and he's on his way up. Everyone says that.\n Ten, twenty years, he'll be back to Xxla, and he'll come back on top.", "Noting his bearings carefully, he hobbled painfully westward, with\n thirty pounds of money on his back. He would intersect the major\n North-South Intercontinental highway by at least noon.\n\n\n Two hours later, he came to a small plastic cabin in a clearing at the\n edge of a forest.\n\n\n Wincing now with each step, he made his way to the door. He knocked.\n\n\n There was a long wait.\n\n\n The door opened. A girl stood before him in a dressing gown. She\n frowned and asked, \"\nItsil obwatly jer gekompilp?\n\"\n\n\n Hearing Itraian spoken by a native in the flesh had a powerful\n emotional impact on Shamar the Worker.\n\n\n Stumblingly, he introduced himself and explained that he was camping\n out. During the previous night he had become lost and injured his\n ankle. If she could spare him food and directions, he would gladly pay.", "One day, after a month of this routine, she threw herself into his\n arms and sobbed, \"I gave Von Stutsman back his earring today. It was\n the only fair thing to do. I'm afraid he knows about us. He's had me\n watched. I know he has. I admitted it was another man.\"\n\n\n Shamar held her tensely.\n\n\n She broke away. \"You were born in Zuleb, you suffered amnesia, you woke\n up in a ditch one morning without papers. You've been an itinerant\n worker since. Things like that happen all the time. You hit a big\n lottery ticket a few months ago. I told him that. How can he check it?\"\n\n\n \"You told him I didn't have any papers?\"", "In his cramped quarters, he dressed himself in Itraian-style clothing.\n Capt. Merle S. Shaeffer became Shamar the Worker.\n\n\n In addition to his jump equipment, an oxygen cylinder, a face mask and\n a shovel, he carried with him eighty pounds of counterfeit Itraian\n currency ... all told, forty thousand individual bills of various\n denominations. Earth felt this would be all he needed to survive in a\n technologically advanced civilization.\n\n\n His plan was as follows:\n\n\n 1. He was to land in a sparsely inhabited area on the larger masses.\n\n\n 2. He was to procure transportation to Xxla, a major city, equivalent\n to London or Tokyo. It was the headquarters for the Party.\n\n\n 3. He was to establish residence in the slum area surrounding the\n University of Xxla.", "\"Yes sir,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.\n\n\n \"But did you know that the Lord has summoned you here today?\" Old Tom\n asked.\n\n\n \"No, sir,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.", "\"And that's all? You really believe that, don't you? And I guess\n your government does, too. That all we need is just some little idea\n or something.\" She turned away from him. \"But of course, that's\n neither here nor there, is it? I never imagined an adventurer type\n would look like you. You have such a soft, honest voice. As a little\n girl, I pictured myself being carried off by a tanned desert sheik on\n a camel; and oh, he was lean and handsome! With dark flashing eyes\n and murderously heavy lips and hands like iron! Well, that's life, I\n guess.\" She stood and paced the room. \"Let me think. We'll pick up a\n flyer in Zelonip when we catch the bus next Tuesday. How much does the\n money weigh?\"\n\n\n \"Eighty pounds.\"", "4. Working through student contacts, he was to ingratiate himself with\n such rebel intellectuals as could be found.\n\n\n 5. Once his contacts were secure, he was to assist in the preparation\n of propaganda and establish a clandestine press for its production.\n\n\n 6. As quickly as the operation was self-sufficient, he was to move on\n to another major city ... and begin all over.\n\n\n The ship descended into the atmosphere. The bell rang. Shamar the\n Worker seated himself, put on his oxygen mask and signaled his\n readiness. He breathed oxygen. The ship quivered, the door fell away\n beneath him and he was battered unconscious by the slipstream." ], [ "In his cramped quarters, he dressed himself in Itraian-style clothing.\n Capt. Merle S. Shaeffer became Shamar the Worker.\n\n\n In addition to his jump equipment, an oxygen cylinder, a face mask and\n a shovel, he carried with him eighty pounds of counterfeit Itraian\n currency ... all told, forty thousand individual bills of various\n denominations. Earth felt this would be all he needed to survive in a\n technologically advanced civilization.\n\n\n His plan was as follows:\n\n\n 1. He was to land in a sparsely inhabited area on the larger masses.\n\n\n 2. He was to procure transportation to Xxla, a major city, equivalent\n to London or Tokyo. It was the headquarters for the Party.\n\n\n 3. He was to establish residence in the slum area surrounding the\n University of Xxla.", "It was not a feeling of superiority to the inhabitants; those he had\n always regarded with a circumspect indifference. The slums were there.\n He supposed they always would be there. But now, for the first time\n in his life, he could truly say that he had escaped their omnipresent\n threat once and for all. He felt relief and guilt.\n\n\n During the last three years, he had earned $750,000.\n\n\n As a civilian stationed on a Defense Force Base, he had, of course,\n to pay for his clothing, his food and his lodging. But the charge was\n nominal. Since he had been given only infrequent and closely supervised\n leaves, he had been able to spend, altogether, only $12,000.\n\n\n Which meant that now, after taxes, he had accumulated in his savings\n account a total of nearly $600,000 awaiting his return from Itra.\nShaeffer's ship stood off Itra while he prepared to disembark.", "The Itraians declined....\nSpace Captain Merle S. Shaeffer, the youngest and perhaps the most\n naive pilot for Trans-Universe Transport, was called unexpectedly to\n the New York office of the company.\n\n\n When Capt. Shaeffer entered the luxurious eightieth story suite, Old\n Tom Twilmaker, the President of TUT, greeted him. With an arm around\n his shoulder, Old Tom led Capt. Shaeffer to an immense inner office and\n introduced him to a General Reuter, identified as the Chairman of the\n Interscience Committee of the Over-Council.\n\n\n No one else was present. With the door closed, they were isolated in\n Olympian splendor above and beyond the affairs of men. Here judgments\n were final and impartial. Capt. Shaeffer, in the presence of two of the\n men highest in the ruling councils of Earth, was reduced to incoherent\n awe.\n\n\n General Reuter moved about restlessly. Old Tom was serene and beatific.", "Most of the language was recovered from spy tapes of television\n programs. A dictionary was compiled laborously by a special scientific\n task force of the Over-Council. The overall program was directed\n and administered by Intercontinental Iron, Steel, Gas, Electricity,\n Automobiles and Synthetics, Incorporated.\n\n\n It took Shaeffer just short of three years to speak Itraian\n sufficiently well to convince non-Itraians that he spoke without accent.\n\n\n The remainder of his training program was administered by a variety\n of other large industrial concerns. The training was conducted at a\n Defense Facility.\n\n\n At the end of his training, Shaeffer was taken by special bus to the\n New Mexican space port. A ship waited.\n\n\n The car moved smoothly from the Defense Force Base, down the broad\n sixteen-lane highway, through the surrounding slum area and into Grants.\n\n\n Sight of the slums gave Shaeffer mixed emotions.", "Shamar protested. \"I don't see how we can ever be secure until\n something's done about your government. As long as you don't reach some\n kind of agreement with Earth, I'll be an outlaw. I'll be afraid any\n minute they'll tap my shoulder and come and take me away. I don't think\n we could hold up under that. We'd be at each other in no time.\"\n\n\n She wept quietly.\n\n\n The last day in the cabin, they went out and dug up the rest of the\n money. The trip to Xxla took place without incident. Ge-Ge rented an\n apartment for him, and he safely checked in. She went shopping for food\n and clothing.\n\n\n Thereafter she came nearly every evening. They would eat and she would\n reveal the inconsequential details of the office regime to which she\n was daily exposed. After dinner, they would sit in the living room and\n practice Itraian and neck a little. Then she would go home.", "Old Tom smiled the smile of the sorely beset and persecuted and said,\n \"You see, Merle, there's massive discontent among the population of\n Itra. We feel we should send a man to the planet to, well, foment\n change and, uh, hasten the already inevitable overthrow of the despotic\n government. That man will be strictly on his own. The Government will\n not be able to back him in any way whatsoever once he lands on Itra.\"\n\n\n The General had quickly finished the bottle. \"You she,\" he interrupted,\n \"there's one thing they can't fight, an' that's an idea. Jus' one man\n goes to Itra with the idea of Freedom, that's all it'll take. How\n many men did it take to start the 'Merican Revolution? Jefferson. The\n Russian Revolution? Marx!\"", "With a smile of superiority, she stepped aside and said in Itraian,\n \"Come in, Chom the Worker.\"\n\n\n He felt panic, but he choked it back and followed her. Apparently he\n had horribly mispronounced his own name. It was as though, in English\n he had said Barchestershire for Barset. He cursed whatever Professor\n had picked that name for whatever obscure reason.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she invited. \"I'm about to have breakfast. Eggs and\n bacon—\" the Itraian equivalent—\"if that's all right with you. I'm\n Garfling Germadpoldlt by the way, although you can call me Ge-Ge.\"\n\n\n The food was quite unpleasant, as though overly ripe. He was able to\n choke down the eggs with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, the hot\n drink that was the equivalent of Earth coffee at the end of the meal,\n was sufficiently spicy to quiet his stomach.", "\"Yes,\" Old Tom said. \"One dedicated man on Itra, preaching the ideas of\n Liberty—liberty with responsibility and property rights under one God.\n That man can change a world.\" Exhausted by the purity of his emotions,\n Old Tom sat back gasping to await the answer.\n\n\n \"A quarter of a million dollars a year?\" Capt. Shaeffer asked at length.\nII\n\n\n The Itraians spoke a common language. It was somewhat guttural and\n highly inflected. Fortunately, the spelling appeared to be phonetic,\n with only forty-three characters being required. As near as anyone\n could tell, centuries of worldwide communication had eliminated\n regional peculiarities. The speech from one part of Itra was not\n distinguishable from that of another part.", "When he came back, she was serving them their dinner on steaming\n platters.\n\n\n \"Look, Ge-Ge,\" he said over coffee. \"You don't like your government.\n We'll help you out. There's this Galactic Federation idea.\" He\n explained to her the cross-fertilization of the two cultures.\n\n\n \"Shamar, my friend,\" she said, \"did you see Earth's proposal? There was\n nothing in it about giving us an interstellar drive. We were required\n to give Earth all transportation franchises. The organization you used\n to work for was to be given, as I remember it, an exclusive ninety-nine\n year right to carry all Earth-Itra commerce. It was all covered in the\n newspapers, didn't you see it?\"", "\"Meta—Gelwhops—or even Karkeqwol, that makes no difference. Nobody on\n Itra speaks like you do. So you must be from that planet that had the\n Party in a flap several years ago—Earth, isn't it?\"\n\n\n He said nothing.\n\n\n \"Do you know what they'll do when they catch you?\" she asked.\n\n\n \"No,\" he said hollowly.\n\n\n \"They'll behead you.\"\nShe laughed, not unkindly. \"If you could see yourself! How ridiculous\n you look, Shamar. I wonder what your real name is, by the way? Sitting\n with a foot in the water and looking wildly about. Here, let me fix\n more coffee and we can talk.\"\n\n\n She called cheerily over her shoulder, \"You're safe here. No one will\n be by. I'm not due back until Tuesday.\"", "\"Yes sir,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.\n\n\n \"But did you know that the Lord has summoned you here today?\" Old Tom\n asked.\n\n\n \"No, sir,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.", "\"Oh, that,\" Ge-Ge said, shaking off the effects. \"They were probably\n testing one of their damned automated factories to see if it was\n explosion proof and it wasn't.\"\nIV\n\n\n During the week alone in the cabin, Ge-Ge fell in love with Shamar.\n\n\n \"Oh, my God!\" she cried. \"What will I do when they catch you? I'll die,\n Shamar! I couldn't bear it. We'll go to Xxla, we'll hide away as quietly\n as two mice, somewhere. We won't go out. The two of us, alone but\n together, behind closed doors and drawn shades. Nobody will ever know\n about us. We'll be the invisible people.\"", "4. Working through student contacts, he was to ingratiate himself with\n such rebel intellectuals as could be found.\n\n\n 5. Once his contacts were secure, he was to assist in the preparation\n of propaganda and establish a clandestine press for its production.\n\n\n 6. As quickly as the operation was self-sufficient, he was to move on\n to another major city ... and begin all over.\n\n\n The ship descended into the atmosphere. The bell rang. Shamar the\n Worker seated himself, put on his oxygen mask and signaled his\n readiness. He breathed oxygen. The ship quivered, the door fell away\n beneath him and he was battered unconscious by the slipstream.", "One day, after a month of this routine, she threw herself into his\n arms and sobbed, \"I gave Von Stutsman back his earring today. It was\n the only fair thing to do. I'm afraid he knows about us. He's had me\n watched. I know he has. I admitted it was another man.\"\n\n\n Shamar held her tensely.\n\n\n She broke away. \"You were born in Zuleb, you suffered amnesia, you woke\n up in a ditch one morning without papers. You've been an itinerant\n worker since. Things like that happen all the time. You hit a big\n lottery ticket a few months ago. I told him that. How can he check it?\"\n\n\n \"You told him I didn't have any papers?\"", "She waited until he had dried the foot and restored the sock and shoe.\n The swelling was gone. He stood up and put his weight on it. He smiled\n wanly. \"It's okay now. It's not broken, I guess.\"\n\n\n She gestured him to the sofa. He complied.\n\n\n \"What's in the field pack?\" she asked. \"Money? How much?\" She moved\n toward it. He half rose to stop her, but by then she had it partly\n open. \"My,\" she said, bringing out a thick sheaf of bills. She rippled\n them sensuously. \"Pretty. Very, very pretty.\" She examined them for\n texture and appearance. \"They look good, Shamar. I'll bet it would cost\n ten million dollars in research on paper and ink and presses to do this\n kind of a job. Only another government has got that kind of money to\n throw around.\" She tossed the currency carelessly beside him and came\n to sit at his side.", "Shamar said, \"Well, now, I'm not familiar with the details. I wasn't\n keeping up with them. But I'm sure these things could be, you know,\n worked out. Maybe, for Security reasons, we didn't want to give you the\n interstellar drive right off, but you can appreciate our logic there.\n Once we saw you were, well, like us, a peace-loving planet, once you'd\n changed your government to a democracy, you would see it our way and\n you'd have no complaints on that score.\"\n\n\n \"Let's not talk politics,\" she said wearily. \"Maybe it's what you say,\n and I'm just naturally suspicious. I don't want to talk about it.\"\n\n\n \"Well, I was just trying to help—\"\n\n\n The sentence was interrupted by a monstrous explosion.\n\n\n \"Good God!\" Shamar cried. \"What was that?\"", "\"Excuse me,\" General Reuter said. \"They don't have a democracy, like\n we do. They don't have any freedom like we do. I have no doubt the\n average whateveryoucallem—Itraians, I guess—the average gooks—would\n be glad to see us come in and just kick the hell out of whoever is in\n charge of them.\"\n\n\n \"Now, General,\" Old Tom said more sharply.\n\n\n \"But that's not the whole thing,\" the General continued. \"Even fit were\n right thing to do, an' I'm not saying isn't—right thing to do—there's\n log-lo-lo-gistics. I don't want to convey the impresh, impression that\n our Defense Force people have been wasting money. Never had as much as\n needed, fact. No, it's like this.", "\"Don't try to influence him,\" General Reuter said. \"You're embarrassing\n the boy.\"\n\n\n \"I—\" Capt. Shaeffer began.\n\n\n \"Give him the drink. If he doesn't want to drink it, he won't have to\n drink it.\"\n\n\n Sighing, Old Tom poured two bourbons from the bar in back of his desk\n and passed them over. Martyrdom sat heavily upon his brow.\n\n\n After a quick twist of the wrist and an expert toss of the head,\n General Reuter returned an empty glass. \"Don't mind if I do have\n another,\" he said. He was already less restless.\n\n\n \"How's your ability to pick up languages?\" General Reuter asked.", "\"Never mind that right now. Point is, it will take us long time to get\n the serious nature of the menace of Itra across to the voters. Then,\n maybe fifteen, twenty years.... Let's just take one thing. We don't have\n anywhere near enough troop transports to carry out the occupation of\n Itra. You know how long it takes to build them? My point is, we may not\n have that long. Suppose Itra should get secret of interstellar drive\n tomorrow, then where would we be?\"\n\n\n Old Tom slammed his fist on the desk. \"General, please! The boy isn't\n interested in all that.\"\n\n\n The General surged angrily to his feet. \"By God, that's what's wrong\n with this world today!\" he cried. \"Nobody's interested in Defense.\n Spend only a measly twenty per cent of the Gross World Product on\n Defense, and expect to keep strong! Good God, Tom, give me a drink!\"\n Apparently heresy had shocked him sober.", "When they were seated, Old Tom swiveled around and gazed long\n in silence across the spires of the City. Capt. Shaeffer waited\n respectfully. General Reuter fidgetted.\n\n\n \"Some day,\" Old Tom said at last, \"I'm going to take my leave of this.\n Yes, gentle Jesus! Oh, when I think of all the souls still refusing\n to admit our precious Savior, what bitterness, oh, what sorrow is my\n wealth to me! Look down upon the teeming millions below us. How many\n know not the Lord? Yes, some morning, I will forsake all this and go\n out into the streets to spend my last days bringing the words of hope\n to the weary and oppressed. Are you a Christian, Merle?\"\n\n\n General Reuter cracked his knuckles nervously while Capt. Shaeffer\n muttered an embarrassed affirmative.\n\n\n \"I am a deeply religious man,\" Old Tom continued. \"I guess you've heard\n that, Merle?\"" ], [ "Most of the language was recovered from spy tapes of television\n programs. A dictionary was compiled laborously by a special scientific\n task force of the Over-Council. The overall program was directed\n and administered by Intercontinental Iron, Steel, Gas, Electricity,\n Automobiles and Synthetics, Incorporated.\n\n\n It took Shaeffer just short of three years to speak Itraian\n sufficiently well to convince non-Itraians that he spoke without accent.\n\n\n The remainder of his training program was administered by a variety\n of other large industrial concerns. The training was conducted at a\n Defense Facility.\n\n\n At the end of his training, Shaeffer was taken by special bus to the\n New Mexican space port. A ship waited.\n\n\n The car moved smoothly from the Defense Force Base, down the broad\n sixteen-lane highway, through the surrounding slum area and into Grants.\n\n\n Sight of the slums gave Shaeffer mixed emotions.", "In his cramped quarters, he dressed himself in Itraian-style clothing.\n Capt. Merle S. Shaeffer became Shamar the Worker.\n\n\n In addition to his jump equipment, an oxygen cylinder, a face mask and\n a shovel, he carried with him eighty pounds of counterfeit Itraian\n currency ... all told, forty thousand individual bills of various\n denominations. Earth felt this would be all he needed to survive in a\n technologically advanced civilization.\n\n\n His plan was as follows:\n\n\n 1. He was to land in a sparsely inhabited area on the larger masses.\n\n\n 2. He was to procure transportation to Xxla, a major city, equivalent\n to London or Tokyo. It was the headquarters for the Party.\n\n\n 3. He was to establish residence in the slum area surrounding the\n University of Xxla.", "It was not a feeling of superiority to the inhabitants; those he had\n always regarded with a circumspect indifference. The slums were there.\n He supposed they always would be there. But now, for the first time\n in his life, he could truly say that he had escaped their omnipresent\n threat once and for all. He felt relief and guilt.\n\n\n During the last three years, he had earned $750,000.\n\n\n As a civilian stationed on a Defense Force Base, he had, of course,\n to pay for his clothing, his food and his lodging. But the charge was\n nominal. Since he had been given only infrequent and closely supervised\n leaves, he had been able to spend, altogether, only $12,000.\n\n\n Which meant that now, after taxes, he had accumulated in his savings\n account a total of nearly $600,000 awaiting his return from Itra.\nShaeffer's ship stood off Itra while he prepared to disembark.", "With a smile of superiority, she stepped aside and said in Itraian,\n \"Come in, Chom the Worker.\"\n\n\n He felt panic, but he choked it back and followed her. Apparently he\n had horribly mispronounced his own name. It was as though, in English\n he had said Barchestershire for Barset. He cursed whatever Professor\n had picked that name for whatever obscure reason.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she invited. \"I'm about to have breakfast. Eggs and\n bacon—\" the Itraian equivalent—\"if that's all right with you. I'm\n Garfling Germadpoldlt by the way, although you can call me Ge-Ge.\"\n\n\n The food was quite unpleasant, as though overly ripe. He was able to\n choke down the eggs with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, the hot\n drink that was the equivalent of Earth coffee at the end of the meal,\n was sufficiently spicy to quiet his stomach.", "\"Yes,\" Old Tom said. \"One dedicated man on Itra, preaching the ideas of\n Liberty—liberty with responsibility and property rights under one God.\n That man can change a world.\" Exhausted by the purity of his emotions,\n Old Tom sat back gasping to await the answer.\n\n\n \"A quarter of a million dollars a year?\" Capt. Shaeffer asked at length.\nII\n\n\n The Itraians spoke a common language. It was somewhat guttural and\n highly inflected. Fortunately, the spelling appeared to be phonetic,\n with only forty-three characters being required. As near as anyone\n could tell, centuries of worldwide communication had eliminated\n regional peculiarities. The speech from one part of Itra was not\n distinguishable from that of another part.", "Shamar protested. \"I don't see how we can ever be secure until\n something's done about your government. As long as you don't reach some\n kind of agreement with Earth, I'll be an outlaw. I'll be afraid any\n minute they'll tap my shoulder and come and take me away. I don't think\n we could hold up under that. We'd be at each other in no time.\"\n\n\n She wept quietly.\n\n\n The last day in the cabin, they went out and dug up the rest of the\n money. The trip to Xxla took place without incident. Ge-Ge rented an\n apartment for him, and he safely checked in. She went shopping for food\n and clothing.\n\n\n Thereafter she came nearly every evening. They would eat and she would\n reveal the inconsequential details of the office regime to which she\n was daily exposed. After dinner, they would sit in the living room and\n practice Itraian and neck a little. Then she would go home.", "The Itraians declined....\nSpace Captain Merle S. Shaeffer, the youngest and perhaps the most\n naive pilot for Trans-Universe Transport, was called unexpectedly to\n the New York office of the company.\n\n\n When Capt. Shaeffer entered the luxurious eightieth story suite, Old\n Tom Twilmaker, the President of TUT, greeted him. With an arm around\n his shoulder, Old Tom led Capt. Shaeffer to an immense inner office and\n introduced him to a General Reuter, identified as the Chairman of the\n Interscience Committee of the Over-Council.\n\n\n No one else was present. With the door closed, they were isolated in\n Olympian splendor above and beyond the affairs of men. Here judgments\n were final and impartial. Capt. Shaeffer, in the presence of two of the\n men highest in the ruling councils of Earth, was reduced to incoherent\n awe.\n\n\n General Reuter moved about restlessly. Old Tom was serene and beatific.", "\"Don't try to influence him,\" General Reuter said. \"You're embarrassing\n the boy.\"\n\n\n \"I—\" Capt. Shaeffer began.\n\n\n \"Give him the drink. If he doesn't want to drink it, he won't have to\n drink it.\"\n\n\n Sighing, Old Tom poured two bourbons from the bar in back of his desk\n and passed them over. Martyrdom sat heavily upon his brow.\n\n\n After a quick twist of the wrist and an expert toss of the head,\n General Reuter returned an empty glass. \"Don't mind if I do have\n another,\" he said. He was already less restless.\n\n\n \"How's your ability to pick up languages?\" General Reuter asked.", "\"I learned Spanish and Russian at TUT PS,\" Capt. Shaeffer said\n apologetically. \"I'm supposed to have a real high aptitude in\n languages, according to some tests I took. In case we should meet\n intelligent aliens, TUT gives them.\"\n\n\n \"You got no association with crackpot organizations, anything like\n that?\" General Reuter asked. \"You're either a good Liberal-Conservative\n or Radical-Progressive, aren't you? I don't care which. I don't believe\n in prying into a man's politics.\"\n\n\n \"I never belonged to anything,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.\n\n\n \"Oh, I can assure you, that's been checked out very, very thoroughly,\"\n Old Tom said.\n\n\n The General signaled for another drink. With a sigh of exasperation,\n Old Tom complied.", "\"Meta—Gelwhops—or even Karkeqwol, that makes no difference. Nobody on\n Itra speaks like you do. So you must be from that planet that had the\n Party in a flap several years ago—Earth, isn't it?\"\n\n\n He said nothing.\n\n\n \"Do you know what they'll do when they catch you?\" she asked.\n\n\n \"No,\" he said hollowly.\n\n\n \"They'll behead you.\"\nShe laughed, not unkindly. \"If you could see yourself! How ridiculous\n you look, Shamar. I wonder what your real name is, by the way? Sitting\n with a foot in the water and looking wildly about. Here, let me fix\n more coffee and we can talk.\"\n\n\n She called cheerily over her shoulder, \"You're safe here. No one will\n be by. I'm not due back until Tuesday.\"", "One day, after a month of this routine, she threw herself into his\n arms and sobbed, \"I gave Von Stutsman back his earring today. It was\n the only fair thing to do. I'm afraid he knows about us. He's had me\n watched. I know he has. I admitted it was another man.\"\n\n\n Shamar held her tensely.\n\n\n She broke away. \"You were born in Zuleb, you suffered amnesia, you woke\n up in a ditch one morning without papers. You've been an itinerant\n worker since. Things like that happen all the time. You hit a big\n lottery ticket a few months ago. I told him that. How can he check it?\"\n\n\n \"You told him I didn't have any papers?\"", "She waited until he had dried the foot and restored the sock and shoe.\n The swelling was gone. He stood up and put his weight on it. He smiled\n wanly. \"It's okay now. It's not broken, I guess.\"\n\n\n She gestured him to the sofa. He complied.\n\n\n \"What's in the field pack?\" she asked. \"Money? How much?\" She moved\n toward it. He half rose to stop her, but by then she had it partly\n open. \"My,\" she said, bringing out a thick sheaf of bills. She rippled\n them sensuously. \"Pretty. Very, very pretty.\" She examined them for\n texture and appearance. \"They look good, Shamar. I'll bet it would cost\n ten million dollars in research on paper and ink and presses to do this\n kind of a job. Only another government has got that kind of money to\n throw around.\" She tossed the currency carelessly beside him and came\n to sit at his side.", "Noting his bearings carefully, he hobbled painfully westward, with\n thirty pounds of money on his back. He would intersect the major\n North-South Intercontinental highway by at least noon.\n\n\n Two hours later, he came to a small plastic cabin in a clearing at the\n edge of a forest.\n\n\n Wincing now with each step, he made his way to the door. He knocked.\n\n\n There was a long wait.\n\n\n The door opened. A girl stood before him in a dressing gown. She\n frowned and asked, \"\nItsil obwatly jer gekompilp?\n\"\n\n\n Hearing Itraian spoken by a native in the flesh had a powerful\n emotional impact on Shamar the Worker.\n\n\n Stumblingly, he introduced himself and explained that he was camping\n out. During the previous night he had become lost and injured his\n ankle. If she could spare him food and directions, he would gladly pay.", "Old Tom smiled the smile of the sorely beset and persecuted and said,\n \"You see, Merle, there's massive discontent among the population of\n Itra. We feel we should send a man to the planet to, well, foment\n change and, uh, hasten the already inevitable overthrow of the despotic\n government. That man will be strictly on his own. The Government will\n not be able to back him in any way whatsoever once he lands on Itra.\"\n\n\n The General had quickly finished the bottle. \"You she,\" he interrupted,\n \"there's one thing they can't fight, an' that's an idea. Jus' one man\n goes to Itra with the idea of Freedom, that's all it'll take. How\n many men did it take to start the 'Merican Revolution? Jefferson. The\n Russian Revolution? Marx!\"", "\"Never mind that right now. Point is, it will take us long time to get\n the serious nature of the menace of Itra across to the voters. Then,\n maybe fifteen, twenty years.... Let's just take one thing. We don't have\n anywhere near enough troop transports to carry out the occupation of\n Itra. You know how long it takes to build them? My point is, we may not\n have that long. Suppose Itra should get secret of interstellar drive\n tomorrow, then where would we be?\"\n\n\n Old Tom slammed his fist on the desk. \"General, please! The boy isn't\n interested in all that.\"\n\n\n The General surged angrily to his feet. \"By God, that's what's wrong\n with this world today!\" he cried. \"Nobody's interested in Defense.\n Spend only a measly twenty per cent of the Gross World Product on\n Defense, and expect to keep strong! Good God, Tom, give me a drink!\"\n Apparently heresy had shocked him sober.", "4. Working through student contacts, he was to ingratiate himself with\n such rebel intellectuals as could be found.\n\n\n 5. Once his contacts were secure, he was to assist in the preparation\n of propaganda and establish a clandestine press for its production.\n\n\n 6. As quickly as the operation was self-sufficient, he was to move on\n to another major city ... and begin all over.\n\n\n The ship descended into the atmosphere. The bell rang. Shamar the\n Worker seated himself, put on his oxygen mask and signaled his\n readiness. He breathed oxygen. The ship quivered, the door fell away\n beneath him and he was battered unconscious by the slipstream.", "When he came back, she was serving them their dinner on steaming\n platters.\n\n\n \"Look, Ge-Ge,\" he said over coffee. \"You don't like your government.\n We'll help you out. There's this Galactic Federation idea.\" He\n explained to her the cross-fertilization of the two cultures.\n\n\n \"Shamar, my friend,\" she said, \"did you see Earth's proposal? There was\n nothing in it about giving us an interstellar drive. We were required\n to give Earth all transportation franchises. The organization you used\n to work for was to be given, as I remember it, an exclusive ninety-nine\n year right to carry all Earth-Itra commerce. It was all covered in the\n newspapers, didn't you see it?\"", "Five minutes later, pinwheeling lazily in free fall, he opened\n his eyes. For an instant's panic he could not read the altimeter.\n Then seeing that he was safe, he noted his physical sensations. He\n was extremely cold. Gyrating wildly, he beat his chest to restore\n circulation.\n\n\n He stabilized his fall by stretching out his hands. He floated with no\n sensation of movement. Itra was overhead, falling up at him slowly. He\n turned his back to the planet and checked the time. Twelve minutes yet\n to go.\n\n\n He spent, in all, seventeen minutes in free fall. At 2000 feet, he\n opened his parachute. The sound was like an explosion.\n\n\n He floated quietly, recovering from the shock. He removed his oxygen\n mask and tasted the alien air. He sniffed several times. It was not\n unpleasant.\n\n\n Below was darkness. Then suddenly the ground came floating up and hit\n him.", "When they were seated, Old Tom swiveled around and gazed long\n in silence across the spires of the City. Capt. Shaeffer waited\n respectfully. General Reuter fidgetted.\n\n\n \"Some day,\" Old Tom said at last, \"I'm going to take my leave of this.\n Yes, gentle Jesus! Oh, when I think of all the souls still refusing\n to admit our precious Savior, what bitterness, oh, what sorrow is my\n wealth to me! Look down upon the teeming millions below us. How many\n know not the Lord? Yes, some morning, I will forsake all this and go\n out into the streets to spend my last days bringing the words of hope\n to the weary and oppressed. Are you a Christian, Merle?\"\n\n\n General Reuter cracked his knuckles nervously while Capt. Shaeffer\n muttered an embarrassed affirmative.\n\n\n \"I am a deeply religious man,\" Old Tom continued. \"I guess you've heard\n that, Merle?\"", "\"Oh, that,\" Ge-Ge said, shaking off the effects. \"They were probably\n testing one of their damned automated factories to see if it was\n explosion proof and it wasn't.\"\nIV\n\n\n During the week alone in the cabin, Ge-Ge fell in love with Shamar.\n\n\n \"Oh, my God!\" she cried. \"What will I do when they catch you? I'll die,\n Shamar! I couldn't bear it. We'll go to Xxla, we'll hide away as quietly\n as two mice, somewhere. We won't go out. The two of us, alone but\n together, behind closed doors and drawn shades. Nobody will ever know\n about us. We'll be the invisible people.\"" ], [ "\"Oh, that,\" Ge-Ge said, shaking off the effects. \"They were probably\n testing one of their damned automated factories to see if it was\n explosion proof and it wasn't.\"\nIV\n\n\n During the week alone in the cabin, Ge-Ge fell in love with Shamar.\n\n\n \"Oh, my God!\" she cried. \"What will I do when they catch you? I'll die,\n Shamar! I couldn't bear it. We'll go to Xxla, we'll hide away as quietly\n as two mice, somewhere. We won't go out. The two of us, alone but\n together, behind closed doors and drawn shades. Nobody will ever know\n about us. We'll be the invisible people.\"", "Shamar protested. \"I don't see how we can ever be secure until\n something's done about your government. As long as you don't reach some\n kind of agreement with Earth, I'll be an outlaw. I'll be afraid any\n minute they'll tap my shoulder and come and take me away. I don't think\n we could hold up under that. We'd be at each other in no time.\"\n\n\n She wept quietly.\n\n\n The last day in the cabin, they went out and dug up the rest of the\n money. The trip to Xxla took place without incident. Ge-Ge rented an\n apartment for him, and he safely checked in. She went shopping for food\n and clothing.\n\n\n Thereafter she came nearly every evening. They would eat and she would\n reveal the inconsequential details of the office regime to which she\n was daily exposed. After dinner, they would sit in the living room and\n practice Itraian and neck a little. Then she would go home.", "She brought him a steaming mug. \"Drink this while I dress.\" She\n disappeared into the bedroom. He heard the shower running.\n\n\n He sat waiting, numb and desperate, and drank the coffee because it was\n there. His thoughts scampered in the cage of his skull like mice on a\n treadmill.\n\n\n When Ge-Ge came back, he had still not resolved the conflict within\n him. She stood barefoot upon the rug and looked down at him, hunched\n miserably over the pan of water, now lukewarm.\n\n\n \"How's the foot?\"\n\n\n \"All right.\"\n\n\n \"Want to take it out?\"\n\n\n \"I guess.\"\n\n\n \"I'll get a towel.\"", "One day, after a month of this routine, she threw herself into his\n arms and sobbed, \"I gave Von Stutsman back his earring today. It was\n the only fair thing to do. I'm afraid he knows about us. He's had me\n watched. I know he has. I admitted it was another man.\"\n\n\n Shamar held her tensely.\n\n\n She broke away. \"You were born in Zuleb, you suffered amnesia, you woke\n up in a ditch one morning without papers. You've been an itinerant\n worker since. Things like that happen all the time. You hit a big\n lottery ticket a few months ago. I told him that. How can he check it?\"\n\n\n \"You told him I didn't have any papers?\"", "When he came back, she was serving them their dinner on steaming\n platters.\n\n\n \"Look, Ge-Ge,\" he said over coffee. \"You don't like your government.\n We'll help you out. There's this Galactic Federation idea.\" He\n explained to her the cross-fertilization of the two cultures.\n\n\n \"Shamar, my friend,\" she said, \"did you see Earth's proposal? There was\n nothing in it about giving us an interstellar drive. We were required\n to give Earth all transportation franchises. The organization you used\n to work for was to be given, as I remember it, an exclusive ninety-nine\n year right to carry all Earth-Itra commerce. It was all covered in the\n newspapers, didn't you see it?\"", "\"Yes sir,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.\n\n\n \"But did you know that the Lord has summoned you here today?\" Old Tom\n asked.\n\n\n \"No, sir,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.", "In his cramped quarters, he dressed himself in Itraian-style clothing.\n Capt. Merle S. Shaeffer became Shamar the Worker.\n\n\n In addition to his jump equipment, an oxygen cylinder, a face mask and\n a shovel, he carried with him eighty pounds of counterfeit Itraian\n currency ... all told, forty thousand individual bills of various\n denominations. Earth felt this would be all he needed to survive in a\n technologically advanced civilization.\n\n\n His plan was as follows:\n\n\n 1. He was to land in a sparsely inhabited area on the larger masses.\n\n\n 2. He was to procure transportation to Xxla, a major city, equivalent\n to London or Tokyo. It was the headquarters for the Party.\n\n\n 3. He was to establish residence in the slum area surrounding the\n University of Xxla.", "\"Meta—Gelwhops—or even Karkeqwol, that makes no difference. Nobody on\n Itra speaks like you do. So you must be from that planet that had the\n Party in a flap several years ago—Earth, isn't it?\"\n\n\n He said nothing.\n\n\n \"Do you know what they'll do when they catch you?\" she asked.\n\n\n \"No,\" he said hollowly.\n\n\n \"They'll behead you.\"\nShe laughed, not unkindly. \"If you could see yourself! How ridiculous\n you look, Shamar. I wonder what your real name is, by the way? Sitting\n with a foot in the water and looking wildly about. Here, let me fix\n more coffee and we can talk.\"\n\n\n She called cheerily over her shoulder, \"You're safe here. No one will\n be by. I'm not due back until Tuesday.\"", "Most of the language was recovered from spy tapes of television\n programs. A dictionary was compiled laborously by a special scientific\n task force of the Over-Council. The overall program was directed\n and administered by Intercontinental Iron, Steel, Gas, Electricity,\n Automobiles and Synthetics, Incorporated.\n\n\n It took Shaeffer just short of three years to speak Itraian\n sufficiently well to convince non-Itraians that he spoke without accent.\n\n\n The remainder of his training program was administered by a variety\n of other large industrial concerns. The training was conducted at a\n Defense Facility.\n\n\n At the end of his training, Shaeffer was taken by special bus to the\n New Mexican space port. A ship waited.\n\n\n The car moved smoothly from the Defense Force Base, down the broad\n sixteen-lane highway, through the surrounding slum area and into Grants.\n\n\n Sight of the slums gave Shaeffer mixed emotions.", "She took his hand. Her hand was warm and gentle. \"Tell me, Shamar,\" she\n said. \"Tell me all about it.\"\n\n\n So this is how easily spies are trapped in real life, Shamar told\n himself with numb disbelief.\n\n\n The story came out slowly and hesitantly at first. She said nothing\n until he had finished.", "\"General Reuter, here, is a dear friend. We've known each other, oh,\n many years. Distantly related through our dear wives, in fact. And we\n serve on the same Board of Directors and the same Charity Committees....\n A few weeks ago, when he asked me for a man, I called for your file,\n Merle. I made discreet inquiries. Then I got down on my knees and\n talked it over with God for, oh, it must have been all of an hour. I\n asked, 'Is this the man?' And I was given a sign. Yes! At that moment,\n a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds!\"\nGeneral Reuter had continued his nervous movements throughout the\n speech. For the first time, he spoke. \"Good God, Tom, serve us a\n drink.\" He turned to Capt. Shaeffer. \"A little drink now and then helps\n a man relax. I'll just have mine straight, Tom.\"\n\n\n Old Tom studied Capt. Shaeffer. \"I do not feel the gentle Master\n approves of liquor.\"", "It was not a feeling of superiority to the inhabitants; those he had\n always regarded with a circumspect indifference. The slums were there.\n He supposed they always would be there. But now, for the first time\n in his life, he could truly say that he had escaped their omnipresent\n threat once and for all. He felt relief and guilt.\n\n\n During the last three years, he had earned $750,000.\n\n\n As a civilian stationed on a Defense Force Base, he had, of course,\n to pay for his clothing, his food and his lodging. But the charge was\n nominal. Since he had been given only infrequent and closely supervised\n leaves, he had been able to spend, altogether, only $12,000.\n\n\n Which meant that now, after taxes, he had accumulated in his savings\n account a total of nearly $600,000 awaiting his return from Itra.\nShaeffer's ship stood off Itra while he prepared to disembark.", "\"I learned Spanish and Russian at TUT PS,\" Capt. Shaeffer said\n apologetically. \"I'm supposed to have a real high aptitude in\n languages, according to some tests I took. In case we should meet\n intelligent aliens, TUT gives them.\"\n\n\n \"You got no association with crackpot organizations, anything like\n that?\" General Reuter asked. \"You're either a good Liberal-Conservative\n or Radical-Progressive, aren't you? I don't care which. I don't believe\n in prying into a man's politics.\"\n\n\n \"I never belonged to anything,\" Capt. Shaeffer said.\n\n\n \"Oh, I can assure you, that's been checked out very, very thoroughly,\"\n Old Tom said.\n\n\n The General signaled for another drink. With a sigh of exasperation,\n Old Tom complied.", "When they were seated, Old Tom swiveled around and gazed long\n in silence across the spires of the City. Capt. Shaeffer waited\n respectfully. General Reuter fidgetted.\n\n\n \"Some day,\" Old Tom said at last, \"I'm going to take my leave of this.\n Yes, gentle Jesus! Oh, when I think of all the souls still refusing\n to admit our precious Savior, what bitterness, oh, what sorrow is my\n wealth to me! Look down upon the teeming millions below us. How many\n know not the Lord? Yes, some morning, I will forsake all this and go\n out into the streets to spend my last days bringing the words of hope\n to the weary and oppressed. Are you a Christian, Merle?\"\n\n\n General Reuter cracked his knuckles nervously while Capt. Shaeffer\n muttered an embarrassed affirmative.\n\n\n \"I am a deeply religious man,\" Old Tom continued. \"I guess you've heard\n that, Merle?\"", "With a smile of superiority, she stepped aside and said in Itraian,\n \"Come in, Chom the Worker.\"\n\n\n He felt panic, but he choked it back and followed her. Apparently he\n had horribly mispronounced his own name. It was as though, in English\n he had said Barchestershire for Barset. He cursed whatever Professor\n had picked that name for whatever obscure reason.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she invited. \"I'm about to have breakfast. Eggs and\n bacon—\" the Itraian equivalent—\"if that's all right with you. I'm\n Garfling Germadpoldlt by the way, although you can call me Ge-Ge.\"\n\n\n The food was quite unpleasant, as though overly ripe. He was able to\n choke down the eggs with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, the hot\n drink that was the equivalent of Earth coffee at the end of the meal,\n was sufficiently spicy to quiet his stomach.", "\"Millions of people don't have any papers—the drifters, people that\n do casual labor, the people that don't work at all. The thing is,\n without papers he doesn't have any way to check on you. Oh, you should\n have seen his face when I gave him back his earring. He was absolutely\n livid. I didn't think he had it in him. I suppose I'll have to quit my\n job now. Oh, if you only had papers so we could be married!\"\n\n\n Ge-Ge's mood, that evening, alternated between despair and optimism. In\n the end, she was morose and restless. She repeated several times, \"I\n just don't know what's going to happen to us.\"\n\n\n \"Ge-Ge,\" he said, \"I can't spend my life in this apartment I've got to\n get out.\"", "The Itraians declined....\nSpace Captain Merle S. Shaeffer, the youngest and perhaps the most\n naive pilot for Trans-Universe Transport, was called unexpectedly to\n the New York office of the company.\n\n\n When Capt. Shaeffer entered the luxurious eightieth story suite, Old\n Tom Twilmaker, the President of TUT, greeted him. With an arm around\n his shoulder, Old Tom led Capt. Shaeffer to an immense inner office and\n introduced him to a General Reuter, identified as the Chairman of the\n Interscience Committee of the Over-Council.\n\n\n No one else was present. With the door closed, they were isolated in\n Olympian splendor above and beyond the affairs of men. Here judgments\n were final and impartial. Capt. Shaeffer, in the presence of two of the\n men highest in the ruling councils of Earth, was reduced to incoherent\n awe.\n\n\n General Reuter moved about restlessly. Old Tom was serene and beatific.", "\"Don't try to influence him,\" General Reuter said. \"You're embarrassing\n the boy.\"\n\n\n \"I—\" Capt. Shaeffer began.\n\n\n \"Give him the drink. If he doesn't want to drink it, he won't have to\n drink it.\"\n\n\n Sighing, Old Tom poured two bourbons from the bar in back of his desk\n and passed them over. Martyrdom sat heavily upon his brow.\n\n\n After a quick twist of the wrist and an expert toss of the head,\n General Reuter returned an empty glass. \"Don't mind if I do have\n another,\" he said. He was already less restless.\n\n\n \"How's your ability to pick up languages?\" General Reuter asked.", "\"You're mad.\" She faced him from across the room. She stood with her\n legs apart, firmly set. \"Well, I don't care what happens any more. I\n can't stand things to go on like they are. I'll introduce you to some\n people I know, since you won't be happy until I do. But God help us!\"", "\"I'll get married and sit out there, and I'll turn the pages of the\n Party magazine and smile sweetly to myself. Because, you see, I'll\n always be able to lean forward and say, 'Dear? Once upon a time, I\n helped hide an Earth spy in Xxla.' And that'll knock that silly and\n self-satisfied look off his face for once.... Oh, I don't know! Let me\n alone!\" With that, she fled to the bedroom and slammed the door behind\n her.\n\n\n He could hear her sobbing helplessly.\n\n\n In the afternoon, she came out. He had fallen asleep. She shook him\n gently to waken him.\n\n\n \"Eh? Oh! Huh?\" He smiled foolishly.\n\n\n \"Wash up in there,\" she told him. \"I'm sorry I blew up on you this\n morning. I'll cook something.\"" ], [ "Most of the language was recovered from spy tapes of television\n programs. A dictionary was compiled laborously by a special scientific\n task force of the Over-Council. The overall program was directed\n and administered by Intercontinental Iron, Steel, Gas, Electricity,\n Automobiles and Synthetics, Incorporated.\n\n\n It took Shaeffer just short of three years to speak Itraian\n sufficiently well to convince non-Itraians that he spoke without accent.\n\n\n The remainder of his training program was administered by a variety\n of other large industrial concerns. The training was conducted at a\n Defense Facility.\n\n\n At the end of his training, Shaeffer was taken by special bus to the\n New Mexican space port. A ship waited.\n\n\n The car moved smoothly from the Defense Force Base, down the broad\n sixteen-lane highway, through the surrounding slum area and into Grants.\n\n\n Sight of the slums gave Shaeffer mixed emotions.", "In his cramped quarters, he dressed himself in Itraian-style clothing.\n Capt. Merle S. Shaeffer became Shamar the Worker.\n\n\n In addition to his jump equipment, an oxygen cylinder, a face mask and\n a shovel, he carried with him eighty pounds of counterfeit Itraian\n currency ... all told, forty thousand individual bills of various\n denominations. Earth felt this would be all he needed to survive in a\n technologically advanced civilization.\n\n\n His plan was as follows:\n\n\n 1. He was to land in a sparsely inhabited area on the larger masses.\n\n\n 2. He was to procure transportation to Xxla, a major city, equivalent\n to London or Tokyo. It was the headquarters for the Party.\n\n\n 3. He was to establish residence in the slum area surrounding the\n University of Xxla.", "It was not a feeling of superiority to the inhabitants; those he had\n always regarded with a circumspect indifference. The slums were there.\n He supposed they always would be there. But now, for the first time\n in his life, he could truly say that he had escaped their omnipresent\n threat once and for all. He felt relief and guilt.\n\n\n During the last three years, he had earned $750,000.\n\n\n As a civilian stationed on a Defense Force Base, he had, of course,\n to pay for his clothing, his food and his lodging. But the charge was\n nominal. Since he had been given only infrequent and closely supervised\n leaves, he had been able to spend, altogether, only $12,000.\n\n\n Which meant that now, after taxes, he had accumulated in his savings\n account a total of nearly $600,000 awaiting his return from Itra.\nShaeffer's ship stood off Itra while he prepared to disembark.", "Playfully she slapped his hand away. \"You sit back! I'll get it. I've\n seen dirty feet before.\"\n\n\n She pulled off the shoe and peeled off the sock. \"Oh, God, it is\n swollen,\" she said. \"You think it's broken, Shamar?\"\n\n\n \"Just sprained.\"\n\n\n \"I'll get some hot water with some MedAid in it, and that'll take the\n swelling out.\"\n\n\n When he had his foot in the water, she sat across from him and arranged\n her dressing gown with a coquettish gesture. She caught him staring\n at the earring, and one hand went to it caressingly. She smiled that\n universal feminine smile of security and recklessness, of invitation\n and rejection.\n\n\n \"You're engaged,\" he noted.", "She waited until he had dried the foot and restored the sock and shoe.\n The swelling was gone. He stood up and put his weight on it. He smiled\n wanly. \"It's okay now. It's not broken, I guess.\"\n\n\n She gestured him to the sofa. He complied.\n\n\n \"What's in the field pack?\" she asked. \"Money? How much?\" She moved\n toward it. He half rose to stop her, but by then she had it partly\n open. \"My,\" she said, bringing out a thick sheaf of bills. She rippled\n them sensuously. \"Pretty. Very, very pretty.\" She examined them for\n texture and appearance. \"They look good, Shamar. I'll bet it would cost\n ten million dollars in research on paper and ink and presses to do this\n kind of a job. Only another government has got that kind of money to\n throw around.\" She tossed the currency carelessly beside him and came\n to sit at his side.", "Noting his bearings carefully, he hobbled painfully westward, with\n thirty pounds of money on his back. He would intersect the major\n North-South Intercontinental highway by at least noon.\n\n\n Two hours later, he came to a small plastic cabin in a clearing at the\n edge of a forest.\n\n\n Wincing now with each step, he made his way to the door. He knocked.\n\n\n There was a long wait.\n\n\n The door opened. A girl stood before him in a dressing gown. She\n frowned and asked, \"\nItsil obwatly jer gekompilp?\n\"\n\n\n Hearing Itraian spoken by a native in the flesh had a powerful\n emotional impact on Shamar the Worker.\n\n\n Stumblingly, he introduced himself and explained that he was camping\n out. During the previous night he had become lost and injured his\n ankle. If she could spare him food and directions, he would gladly pay.", "The Itraians declined....\nSpace Captain Merle S. Shaeffer, the youngest and perhaps the most\n naive pilot for Trans-Universe Transport, was called unexpectedly to\n the New York office of the company.\n\n\n When Capt. Shaeffer entered the luxurious eightieth story suite, Old\n Tom Twilmaker, the President of TUT, greeted him. With an arm around\n his shoulder, Old Tom led Capt. Shaeffer to an immense inner office and\n introduced him to a General Reuter, identified as the Chairman of the\n Interscience Committee of the Over-Council.\n\n\n No one else was present. With the door closed, they were isolated in\n Olympian splendor above and beyond the affairs of men. Here judgments\n were final and impartial. Capt. Shaeffer, in the presence of two of the\n men highest in the ruling councils of Earth, was reduced to incoherent\n awe.\n\n\n General Reuter moved about restlessly. Old Tom was serene and beatific.", "Shamar protested. \"I don't see how we can ever be secure until\n something's done about your government. As long as you don't reach some\n kind of agreement with Earth, I'll be an outlaw. I'll be afraid any\n minute they'll tap my shoulder and come and take me away. I don't think\n we could hold up under that. We'd be at each other in no time.\"\n\n\n She wept quietly.\n\n\n The last day in the cabin, they went out and dug up the rest of the\n money. The trip to Xxla took place without incident. Ge-Ge rented an\n apartment for him, and he safely checked in. She went shopping for food\n and clothing.\n\n\n Thereafter she came nearly every evening. They would eat and she would\n reveal the inconsequential details of the office regime to which she\n was daily exposed. After dinner, they would sit in the living room and\n practice Itraian and neck a little. Then she would go home.", "The terrain was irregular. He fought the chute to collapse it, tripped,\n and twisted his ankle painfully.\n\n\n The chute lay quiet and he sat on the ground and cursed in English.\n\n\n At length he bundled up the chute and removed all of the packages of\n money but the one disguised as a field pack. He used the shovel to\n dig a shallow grave at the base of a tree. He interred the chute, the\n oxygen cylinder, the mask, the shovel and scooped dirt over them with\n his hands.\n\n\n He sat down and unlaced his shoe and found his ankle badly swollen.\n Distant, unfamiliar odors filled him with apprehension and he started\n at the slightest sound.\n\n\n Dawn was breaking.\nIII", "Five minutes later, pinwheeling lazily in free fall, he opened\n his eyes. For an instant's panic he could not read the altimeter.\n Then seeing that he was safe, he noted his physical sensations. He\n was extremely cold. Gyrating wildly, he beat his chest to restore\n circulation.\n\n\n He stabilized his fall by stretching out his hands. He floated with no\n sensation of movement. Itra was overhead, falling up at him slowly. He\n turned his back to the planet and checked the time. Twelve minutes yet\n to go.\n\n\n He spent, in all, seventeen minutes in free fall. At 2000 feet, he\n opened his parachute. The sound was like an explosion.\n\n\n He floated quietly, recovering from the shock. He removed his oxygen\n mask and tasted the alien air. He sniffed several times. It was not\n unpleasant.\n\n\n Below was darkness. Then suddenly the ground came floating up and hit\n him.", "With a smile of superiority, she stepped aside and said in Itraian,\n \"Come in, Chom the Worker.\"\n\n\n He felt panic, but he choked it back and followed her. Apparently he\n had horribly mispronounced his own name. It was as though, in English\n he had said Barchestershire for Barset. He cursed whatever Professor\n had picked that name for whatever obscure reason.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she invited. \"I'm about to have breakfast. Eggs and\n bacon—\" the Itraian equivalent—\"if that's all right with you. I'm\n Garfling Germadpoldlt by the way, although you can call me Ge-Ge.\"\n\n\n The food was quite unpleasant, as though overly ripe. He was able to\n choke down the eggs with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, the hot\n drink that was the equivalent of Earth coffee at the end of the meal,\n was sufficiently spicy to quiet his stomach.", "One day, after a month of this routine, she threw herself into his\n arms and sobbed, \"I gave Von Stutsman back his earring today. It was\n the only fair thing to do. I'm afraid he knows about us. He's had me\n watched. I know he has. I admitted it was another man.\"\n\n\n Shamar held her tensely.\n\n\n She broke away. \"You were born in Zuleb, you suffered amnesia, you woke\n up in a ditch one morning without papers. You've been an itinerant\n worker since. Things like that happen all the time. You hit a big\n lottery ticket a few months ago. I told him that. How can he check it?\"\n\n\n \"You told him I didn't have any papers?\"", "\"Oh, that,\" Ge-Ge said, shaking off the effects. \"They were probably\n testing one of their damned automated factories to see if it was\n explosion proof and it wasn't.\"\nIV\n\n\n During the week alone in the cabin, Ge-Ge fell in love with Shamar.\n\n\n \"Oh, my God!\" she cried. \"What will I do when they catch you? I'll die,\n Shamar! I couldn't bear it. We'll go to Xxla, we'll hide away as quietly\n as two mice, somewhere. We won't go out. The two of us, alone but\n together, behind closed doors and drawn shades. Nobody will ever know\n about us. We'll be the invisible people.\"", "\"Yes,\" Old Tom said. \"One dedicated man on Itra, preaching the ideas of\n Liberty—liberty with responsibility and property rights under one God.\n That man can change a world.\" Exhausted by the purity of his emotions,\n Old Tom sat back gasping to await the answer.\n\n\n \"A quarter of a million dollars a year?\" Capt. Shaeffer asked at length.\nII\n\n\n The Itraians spoke a common language. It was somewhat guttural and\n highly inflected. Fortunately, the spelling appeared to be phonetic,\n with only forty-three characters being required. As near as anyone\n could tell, centuries of worldwide communication had eliminated\n regional peculiarities. The speech from one part of Itra was not\n distinguishable from that of another part.", "\"Meta—Gelwhops—or even Karkeqwol, that makes no difference. Nobody on\n Itra speaks like you do. So you must be from that planet that had the\n Party in a flap several years ago—Earth, isn't it?\"\n\n\n He said nothing.\n\n\n \"Do you know what they'll do when they catch you?\" she asked.\n\n\n \"No,\" he said hollowly.\n\n\n \"They'll behead you.\"\nShe laughed, not unkindly. \"If you could see yourself! How ridiculous\n you look, Shamar. I wonder what your real name is, by the way? Sitting\n with a foot in the water and looking wildly about. Here, let me fix\n more coffee and we can talk.\"\n\n\n She called cheerily over her shoulder, \"You're safe here. No one will\n be by. I'm not due back until Tuesday.\"", "\"Good coffee,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Thank you. Care for a cigarette?\"\n\n\n \"I sure would.\"\n\n\n He had no matches, so she lit it for him, hovering above him a moment,\n leaving with him the fresh odor of her hair.\n\n\n The taste of the cigarette was mild. Rather surprisingly, it\n substituted for nicotine and allayed the sharp longing that had come\n with the coffee.\n\n\n \"Let's look at your ankle,\" she said. She knelt at his feet and began\n to unlace the right shoe. \"My, it's swollen,\" she said sympathetically.\n\n\n He winced as she touched it and then he reddened with embarrassment. He\n had been walking across dusty country. He drew back the foot and bent\n to restrain her.", "She brought him a steaming mug. \"Drink this while I dress.\" She\n disappeared into the bedroom. He heard the shower running.\n\n\n He sat waiting, numb and desperate, and drank the coffee because it was\n there. His thoughts scampered in the cage of his skull like mice on a\n treadmill.\n\n\n When Ge-Ge came back, he had still not resolved the conflict within\n him. She stood barefoot upon the rug and looked down at him, hunched\n miserably over the pan of water, now lukewarm.\n\n\n \"How's the foot?\"\n\n\n \"All right.\"\n\n\n \"Want to take it out?\"\n\n\n \"I guess.\"\n\n\n \"I'll get a towel.\"", "\"I'll get married and sit out there, and I'll turn the pages of the\n Party magazine and smile sweetly to myself. Because, you see, I'll\n always be able to lean forward and say, 'Dear? Once upon a time, I\n helped hide an Earth spy in Xxla.' And that'll knock that silly and\n self-satisfied look off his face for once.... Oh, I don't know! Let me\n alone!\" With that, she fled to the bedroom and slammed the door behind\n her.\n\n\n He could hear her sobbing helplessly.\n\n\n In the afternoon, she came out. He had fallen asleep. She shook him\n gently to waken him.\n\n\n \"Eh? Oh! Huh?\" He smiled foolishly.\n\n\n \"Wash up in there,\" she told him. \"I'm sorry I blew up on you this\n morning. I'll cook something.\"", "Old Tom smiled the smile of the sorely beset and persecuted and said,\n \"You see, Merle, there's massive discontent among the population of\n Itra. We feel we should send a man to the planet to, well, foment\n change and, uh, hasten the already inevitable overthrow of the despotic\n government. That man will be strictly on his own. The Government will\n not be able to back him in any way whatsoever once he lands on Itra.\"\n\n\n The General had quickly finished the bottle. \"You she,\" he interrupted,\n \"there's one thing they can't fight, an' that's an idea. Jus' one man\n goes to Itra with the idea of Freedom, that's all it'll take. How\n many men did it take to start the 'Merican Revolution? Jefferson. The\n Russian Revolution? Marx!\"", "When he came back, she was serving them their dinner on steaming\n platters.\n\n\n \"Look, Ge-Ge,\" he said over coffee. \"You don't like your government.\n We'll help you out. There's this Galactic Federation idea.\" He\n explained to her the cross-fertilization of the two cultures.\n\n\n \"Shamar, my friend,\" she said, \"did you see Earth's proposal? There was\n nothing in it about giving us an interstellar drive. We were required\n to give Earth all transportation franchises. The organization you used\n to work for was to be given, as I remember it, an exclusive ninety-nine\n year right to carry all Earth-Itra commerce. It was all covered in the\n newspapers, didn't you see it?\"" ], [ "\"Oh, that,\" Ge-Ge said, shaking off the effects. \"They were probably\n testing one of their damned automated factories to see if it was\n explosion proof and it wasn't.\"\nIV\n\n\n During the week alone in the cabin, Ge-Ge fell in love with Shamar.\n\n\n \"Oh, my God!\" she cried. \"What will I do when they catch you? I'll die,\n Shamar! I couldn't bear it. We'll go to Xxla, we'll hide away as quietly\n as two mice, somewhere. We won't go out. The two of us, alone but\n together, behind closed doors and drawn shades. Nobody will ever know\n about us. We'll be the invisible people.\"", "\"Millions of people don't have any papers—the drifters, people that\n do casual labor, the people that don't work at all. The thing is,\n without papers he doesn't have any way to check on you. Oh, you should\n have seen his face when I gave him back his earring. He was absolutely\n livid. I didn't think he had it in him. I suppose I'll have to quit my\n job now. Oh, if you only had papers so we could be married!\"\n\n\n Ge-Ge's mood, that evening, alternated between despair and optimism. In\n the end, she was morose and restless. She repeated several times, \"I\n just don't know what's going to happen to us.\"\n\n\n \"Ge-Ge,\" he said, \"I can't spend my life in this apartment I've got to\n get out.\"", "She brought him a steaming mug. \"Drink this while I dress.\" She\n disappeared into the bedroom. He heard the shower running.\n\n\n He sat waiting, numb and desperate, and drank the coffee because it was\n there. His thoughts scampered in the cage of his skull like mice on a\n treadmill.\n\n\n When Ge-Ge came back, he had still not resolved the conflict within\n him. She stood barefoot upon the rug and looked down at him, hunched\n miserably over the pan of water, now lukewarm.\n\n\n \"How's the foot?\"\n\n\n \"All right.\"\n\n\n \"Want to take it out?\"\n\n\n \"I guess.\"\n\n\n \"I'll get a towel.\"", "Shamar protested. \"I don't see how we can ever be secure until\n something's done about your government. As long as you don't reach some\n kind of agreement with Earth, I'll be an outlaw. I'll be afraid any\n minute they'll tap my shoulder and come and take me away. I don't think\n we could hold up under that. We'd be at each other in no time.\"\n\n\n She wept quietly.\n\n\n The last day in the cabin, they went out and dug up the rest of the\n money. The trip to Xxla took place without incident. Ge-Ge rented an\n apartment for him, and he safely checked in. She went shopping for food\n and clothing.\n\n\n Thereafter she came nearly every evening. They would eat and she would\n reveal the inconsequential details of the office regime to which she\n was daily exposed. After dinner, they would sit in the living room and\n practice Itraian and neck a little. Then she would go home.", "When he came back, she was serving them their dinner on steaming\n platters.\n\n\n \"Look, Ge-Ge,\" he said over coffee. \"You don't like your government.\n We'll help you out. There's this Galactic Federation idea.\" He\n explained to her the cross-fertilization of the two cultures.\n\n\n \"Shamar, my friend,\" she said, \"did you see Earth's proposal? There was\n nothing in it about giving us an interstellar drive. We were required\n to give Earth all transportation franchises. The organization you used\n to work for was to be given, as I remember it, an exclusive ninety-nine\n year right to carry all Earth-Itra commerce. It was all covered in the\n newspapers, didn't you see it?\"", "\"I'll get married and sit out there, and I'll turn the pages of the\n Party magazine and smile sweetly to myself. Because, you see, I'll\n always be able to lean forward and say, 'Dear? Once upon a time, I\n helped hide an Earth spy in Xxla.' And that'll knock that silly and\n self-satisfied look off his face for once.... Oh, I don't know! Let me\n alone!\" With that, she fled to the bedroom and slammed the door behind\n her.\n\n\n He could hear her sobbing helplessly.\n\n\n In the afternoon, she came out. He had fallen asleep. She shook him\n gently to waken him.\n\n\n \"Eh? Oh! Huh?\" He smiled foolishly.\n\n\n \"Wash up in there,\" she told him. \"I'm sorry I blew up on you this\n morning. I'll cook something.\"", "One day, after a month of this routine, she threw herself into his\n arms and sobbed, \"I gave Von Stutsman back his earring today. It was\n the only fair thing to do. I'm afraid he knows about us. He's had me\n watched. I know he has. I admitted it was another man.\"\n\n\n Shamar held her tensely.\n\n\n She broke away. \"You were born in Zuleb, you suffered amnesia, you woke\n up in a ditch one morning without papers. You've been an itinerant\n worker since. Things like that happen all the time. You hit a big\n lottery ticket a few months ago. I told him that. How can he check it?\"\n\n\n \"You told him I didn't have any papers?\"", "With a smile of superiority, she stepped aside and said in Itraian,\n \"Come in, Chom the Worker.\"\n\n\n He felt panic, but he choked it back and followed her. Apparently he\n had horribly mispronounced his own name. It was as though, in English\n he had said Barchestershire for Barset. He cursed whatever Professor\n had picked that name for whatever obscure reason.\n\n\n \"Sit down,\" she invited. \"I'm about to have breakfast. Eggs and\n bacon—\" the Itraian equivalent—\"if that's all right with you. I'm\n Garfling Germadpoldlt by the way, although you can call me Ge-Ge.\"\n\n\n The food was quite unpleasant, as though overly ripe. He was able to\n choke down the eggs with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, the hot\n drink that was the equivalent of Earth coffee at the end of the meal,\n was sufficiently spicy to quiet his stomach.", "When they were seated, Old Tom swiveled around and gazed long\n in silence across the spires of the City. Capt. Shaeffer waited\n respectfully. General Reuter fidgetted.\n\n\n \"Some day,\" Old Tom said at last, \"I'm going to take my leave of this.\n Yes, gentle Jesus! Oh, when I think of all the souls still refusing\n to admit our precious Savior, what bitterness, oh, what sorrow is my\n wealth to me! Look down upon the teeming millions below us. How many\n know not the Lord? Yes, some morning, I will forsake all this and go\n out into the streets to spend my last days bringing the words of hope\n to the weary and oppressed. Are you a Christian, Merle?\"\n\n\n General Reuter cracked his knuckles nervously while Capt. Shaeffer\n muttered an embarrassed affirmative.\n\n\n \"I am a deeply religious man,\" Old Tom continued. \"I guess you've heard\n that, Merle?\"", "\"You're mad.\" She faced him from across the room. She stood with her\n legs apart, firmly set. \"Well, I don't care what happens any more. I\n can't stand things to go on like they are. I'll introduce you to some\n people I know, since you won't be happy until I do. But God help us!\"", "She waited until he had dried the foot and restored the sock and shoe.\n The swelling was gone. He stood up and put his weight on it. He smiled\n wanly. \"It's okay now. It's not broken, I guess.\"\n\n\n She gestured him to the sofa. He complied.\n\n\n \"What's in the field pack?\" she asked. \"Money? How much?\" She moved\n toward it. He half rose to stop her, but by then she had it partly\n open. \"My,\" she said, bringing out a thick sheaf of bills. She rippled\n them sensuously. \"Pretty. Very, very pretty.\" She examined them for\n texture and appearance. \"They look good, Shamar. I'll bet it would cost\n ten million dollars in research on paper and ink and presses to do this\n kind of a job. Only another government has got that kind of money to\n throw around.\" She tossed the currency carelessly beside him and came\n to sit at his side.", "She opened her eyes wide and studied him above a thumbnail which she\n tasted with her teeth. \"I'm engaged to Von Stutsman—\" as the name\n might be translated—\"perhaps you've heard of him? He's important in\n the Party. You know him?\"\n\n\n \"No.\"\n\n\n \"You in the Party?\" she said. She was teasing him now. Then, suddenly:\n \"Neither am I, but I guess I'll have to join if I become Mrs. Von\n Stutsman.\"\n\n\n They were silent for a moment.\n\n\n Then she spoke, and he was frozen in terror, all thoughts but of\n self-preservation washed from his mind.\n\n\n \"Your accent is unbelieveably bad,\" she said.\n\n\n \"I'm from Zuleb,\" he said lamely, at last.", "\"He's older than I am; but there's worse husband material. But then\n again, he's about to be transferred to one of the big agricultural\n combines way out in the boondocks where there's no excitement at all.\n Just little old ladies and little old men and peasants having children.\n\n\n \"I'm a city girl. I like Xxla. And if I marry him, all that goes up the\n flue. I'll be marooned with him, God knows where, for years. Stuck,\n just stuck.\n\n\n \"Still—he is Von Stutsman, and he's on his way up. Everyone says that.\n Ten, twenty years, he'll be back to Xxla, and he'll come back on top.", "The terrain was irregular. He fought the chute to collapse it, tripped,\n and twisted his ankle painfully.\n\n\n The chute lay quiet and he sat on the ground and cursed in English.\n\n\n At length he bundled up the chute and removed all of the packages of\n money but the one disguised as a field pack. He used the shovel to\n dig a shallow grave at the base of a tree. He interred the chute, the\n oxygen cylinder, the mask, the shovel and scooped dirt over them with\n his hands.\n\n\n He sat down and unlaced his shoe and found his ankle badly swollen.\n Distant, unfamiliar odors filled him with apprehension and he started\n at the slightest sound.\n\n\n Dawn was breaking.\nIII", "\"I can carry about 10 pounds in my bag. You can take your field pack.\n How much is in it? Thirty pounds? That'll leave about forty which we\n can ship through on extra charges. Then, when we get to Xxla, I can\n hide you out in an apartment over on the East side.\"\n\n\n \"Why would you run a risk like that for me?\" he asked.\nShe brushed the hair from her face. \"Let's say—what? I don't really\n think you can make it, because it's so hopeless. But maybe, just maybe,\n you might be one of the rare ones who, if he plays his cards right, can\n beat the system. I love to see them licked!\n\n\n \"Well, I'm a clerk. That's all. Just a lowly clerk in one of the Party\n offices. I met Von Stutsman a year ago. This is his cabin. He lets me\n use it.", "4. Working through student contacts, he was to ingratiate himself with\n such rebel intellectuals as could be found.\n\n\n 5. Once his contacts were secure, he was to assist in the preparation\n of propaganda and establish a clandestine press for its production.\n\n\n 6. As quickly as the operation was self-sufficient, he was to move on\n to another major city ... and begin all over.\n\n\n The ship descended into the atmosphere. The bell rang. Shamar the\n Worker seated himself, put on his oxygen mask and signaled his\n readiness. He breathed oxygen. The ship quivered, the door fell away\n beneath him and he was battered unconscious by the slipstream.", "\"And that's all? You really believe that, don't you? And I guess\n your government does, too. That all we need is just some little idea\n or something.\" She turned away from him. \"But of course, that's\n neither here nor there, is it? I never imagined an adventurer type\n would look like you. You have such a soft, honest voice. As a little\n girl, I pictured myself being carried off by a tanned desert sheik on\n a camel; and oh, he was lean and handsome! With dark flashing eyes\n and murderously heavy lips and hands like iron! Well, that's life, I\n guess.\" She stood and paced the room. \"Let me think. We'll pick up a\n flyer in Zelonip when we catch the bus next Tuesday. How much does the\n money weigh?\"\n\n\n \"Eighty pounds.\"", "\"Meta—Gelwhops—or even Karkeqwol, that makes no difference. Nobody on\n Itra speaks like you do. So you must be from that planet that had the\n Party in a flap several years ago—Earth, isn't it?\"\n\n\n He said nothing.\n\n\n \"Do you know what they'll do when they catch you?\" she asked.\n\n\n \"No,\" he said hollowly.\n\n\n \"They'll behead you.\"\nShe laughed, not unkindly. \"If you could see yourself! How ridiculous\n you look, Shamar. I wonder what your real name is, by the way? Sitting\n with a foot in the water and looking wildly about. Here, let me fix\n more coffee and we can talk.\"\n\n\n She called cheerily over her shoulder, \"You're safe here. No one will\n be by. I'm not due back until Tuesday.\"", "In his cramped quarters, he dressed himself in Itraian-style clothing.\n Capt. Merle S. Shaeffer became Shamar the Worker.\n\n\n In addition to his jump equipment, an oxygen cylinder, a face mask and\n a shovel, he carried with him eighty pounds of counterfeit Itraian\n currency ... all told, forty thousand individual bills of various\n denominations. Earth felt this would be all he needed to survive in a\n technologically advanced civilization.\n\n\n His plan was as follows:\n\n\n 1. He was to land in a sparsely inhabited area on the larger masses.\n\n\n 2. He was to procure transportation to Xxla, a major city, equivalent\n to London or Tokyo. It was the headquarters for the Party.\n\n\n 3. He was to establish residence in the slum area surrounding the\n University of Xxla.", "\"Don't try to influence him,\" General Reuter said. \"You're embarrassing\n the boy.\"\n\n\n \"I—\" Capt. Shaeffer began.\n\n\n \"Give him the drink. If he doesn't want to drink it, he won't have to\n drink it.\"\n\n\n Sighing, Old Tom poured two bourbons from the bar in back of his desk\n and passed them over. Martyrdom sat heavily upon his brow.\n\n\n After a quick twist of the wrist and an expert toss of the head,\n General Reuter returned an empty glass. \"Don't mind if I do have\n another,\" he said. He was already less restless.\n\n\n \"How's your ability to pick up languages?\" General Reuter asked." ] ]
test	20062	[ "How does the author transition from discussing \"Dancing at Lughnasa\" to discussing \"Gods and Monsters\" ?", "What is one of the author's main criticisms of \"Dancing at Lughnasa\" ?", "What does Lughnasa have to do with the plot of the movie, \"Dancing at Lughnasa\" ?", "Why did the subject of the film \"Gods and Monsters\" kill himself?", "According to the author, what is the best part about the movie \"Gods and Monsters\" ?", "What film does the author refer to as \"The Half Monty\" ?", "What do two of the four films discussed in detail have in common?", "What does the author think of Waking Ned Devine?", "What does the title, \"Waking Ned Devine\" refer to?", "What does the author indicate that Holly Hunter's character does in the movie he reviews that she stars in?" ]	[ [ "He stops to analyze the impact of the movie \"Living Out Loud\" on him when he was a teenager.", "He just skips from discussing one movie to discussing another without any transition at all.", "He first discusses an unrelated play by Brian Friel.", "He first discusses another movie that was made by the man who is the subject of Gods and Monsters." ], [ "Meryl Streep does a good job, but she can't carry the movie all by herself, and the rest of the casting is dreadful.", "The title doesn't seem to have anything to do with the movie, other than throwing out a random Irish place name. ", "The director has done a poor job of translating a precisely staged play to the looser atmosphere of a movie set, thus losing the crisp symbolic meanings conveyed by every noise and object on the stage.", "Meryl Streep gives an uncharacteristically dull and unconvincing performance." ], [ "Lughnasa is an Irish festival where the normally disciplined or repressed villagers can let it all hang out. The family that Streep heads in the film is also managed very strictly, and when the Streep character's brother appears on the scene, he ends up playing the same chaotic, yet potentially freeing role as dancing at the feast.", "Lughnasa is the last name of the family of sisters that Streep's character heads. All the sisters have worked hard and denied themselves pleasure for years, but they learn to let go and live a little.", "Lughnasa is a site in Ireland, like Craig-na-Dun in Scotland, from which witches can travel through rings of standing stones. Dancing there indicates the desire to be free, and the movie shows how the family explodes apart under stress.", "An elder from the village of Lughnasa, where the story takes place, gives Streep's character wise advice about how to handle her sisters and keep everyone moving forward." ], [ "This seems to have been his response to having repeated strokes.", "Because his homsexuality was made public and he was blacklisted from the better Hollywood studios.", "Like so many other tragic figures in Hollywood, after a couple of movie flops, he became depressed, started taking drugs and died of an overdose.", "The announcement of his drowning death was delayed for 25 years, during which detectives sought to get to the bottom of death that they felt was a murder, not a suicide." ], [ "The scene where Boone carries Whale around in his arms is both creepy and artistic.", "The actor portraying Whale has an interesting face.", "The tension between the two main characters keeps the audience on the edge of their seats.", "The mawkish, sentimental ending represents Whale's state mind before his demise very well." ], [ "\"Beloved\"", "\"Waking Ned Devine\"", "\"Celebrity\"", "The movie starring Ian McKellen" ], [ "Ian McKellen starts in two of them.", "Richard LaGravenese directed two of them.", "They are set in Ireland.", "Two of them won Oscars." ], [ "It has all the hallmarks of a cult classic.", "All the characters are basically happy, which never makes for good drama.", "It's watchable, but nothing special.", "The aged actors playing the roles are a real snooze." ], [ "Ned Devine has no TV or phone, and his neighbors want to wake him up to what is going on in the village.", "Ned Devine died without heirs or a will, and his neighbors are collecting money to hold a proper wake for him in the village pub.", "Ned Devine is dead, and a couple of old schemers plan to impersonate him to collect on a winning ticket he holds.", "Eileen Dromey's character is in love with Ned Devine, but he is oblivious to it, and his friends attempt to awaken him to romance." ], [ "She has an unhealthy obsession with getting back th husband who left her.", "She has an affair with the elevator man.", "Gives off a sultry, sexy air that makes the whole film glow.", "Talks so much that her mouth is out ahead of her brain." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "So why isn't Dancing at Lughnasa more involving? It's probably because the director, Pat O'Connor, can't tell the difference between images that express Friel's themes and Hibernian wallpaper, and because his idea of expansive, pictorial beauty proves no substitute for Friel's powerfully compressed stage pictures. In the theater, the radio that crackles on and off signals a world elsewhere; and when it's repaired and the stage is flooded with music and the sisters--beaten down, confronted with only the grimmest of economic and social prospects--begin to dance and then lose themselves in the freedom of the dance, the moment is truly cathartic. On-screen it means the movie's almost over.", "Streep's performance is layered and compelling, but the film doesn't click. Closely based on Brian Friel's play, it wilts in translation the way Friel's potent but static dramas always do. On stage, every character, every prop, every interjection has a precise symbolic function; on film, those elements no longer stand out in relief. In Dancing at Lughnasa (it's pronounced LOO-nassa), the sisters reside in a sterile and repressive Ireland--but one in which the pagan past continues to bubble up, most visibly in the harvest feast of Lughnasa, when peasants take to the hills to build fires, drink to even greater excess than usual, and dance orgiastically. The rite is liberating but also frightening: Remove a cork from a bottle so pressurized, and the contents are apt to explode.", "Streep should be awarded a rubber chicken for irradiating us with her yokel devotion in One True Thing (1998), but in Dancing at Lughnasa she goes a long way toward winning back her good (well, pretty good) name. As Kate Mundy, the stick-in-the-mud schoolteacher who presides over four younger, unmarried sisters in 1936 Donegal, Ireland, she holds her facial muscles tense and signals with her eyes her exhaustion from keeping them so fiercely in place. It is a terrible responsibility, upholding her society's values and preventing her siblings and Michael, the illegitimate son of her youngest sister, Christina (Catherine McCormack), from descending into chaos and impoverishment. Not to mention the fact that she's regarded by all as a stupid goose--or, as they call her in town, mocking her sexlessness, \"the gander.\"", "The story, narrated by the now-grown Michael in the shopworn manner of The Glass Menagerie , is set in motion by the return of the boy's Uncle Jack (Michael Gambon) from Africa, where he has toiled as a missionary priest. Delusional, barely remembering his English, Jack becomes a rambling (and, to the local priest, horrific) spokesman for paganism, encouraging all his sisters to emulate Christina and have \"children of love.\"", "Gods and Monsters , based on Father of Frankenstein , a novel by Christopher Bram, explores the last days of", "artistically flabby, and symbolically opaque. Whale's Frankenstein films weren't personal testaments, but in Gods and Monsters they're raided for murky fantasy sequences. In one, the groundskeeper is the monster staggering around with Whale in his arms; in another,", "As Whale, McKellen wears his elegance lightly. His face is fascinatingly two tiered: lean in long shot, in close-up its features distend to the point of acromegaly, the mouth going slack with lust. But Whale's plangent ruminations are slack as well: \"I've spent much of my life outrunning the past, and now it floods all over,\" he tells Boone, in what is surely the most generic line for a \"memory play\" ever written. \"Something about your face makes me want to tell the truth.\" All this mawkishness would likely have annoyed the real Whale, who exited the world on his own terms and steered clear, in his art, of banality.", "There isn't much else in the way of a plot. Kate's position at the school, which is overseen by the local priest, is imperiled by the subversive presence of her brother. Michael's handsome dad (Rhys Ifans) roars back on a motorcycle to flirt with marriage to Christina: Will he stay or go fight the Fascists in Spain? Each sister chafes in her own way under Kate's oppressive rule--especially Rose (Sophie Thompson), the \"simple\" one, who might or might not be having an affair with a man whose wife and children have abandoned him for London. A weaving factory is opening nearby and threatens the household income. In venerable Chekhovian fashion, what happens on the surface only hints at the titanic plates that shift beneath, but the actresses--especially Streep, Thompson, Kathy Burke, and Brid Brennan--are supreme at conveying what's at stake. They create an indelibly glowering ensemble.", "Eyes on the Prize \n\n These days, studios are inordinately attentive to my viewing habits. As a member of the National Society of Film Critics, which votes a slate of year-end prizes, I'm fielding calls from eager publicists who want to make sure I've seen all those award-worthy movies featuring all those award-worthy performances. I've tried to stay mum, so as to keep my voting options open, but it's hard for a guy brimming with opinions to be circumspect. Beloved ? A worthy effort. Oprah? Worthiness incarnate; I feel unworthy even to sit in judgment. Meryl Streep in Dancing at Lughnasa ? Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters ? Leonardo DiCaprio in Celebrity ? Damn worthy actors. (I enthused about DiCaprio when the sour Celebrity opened the New York Film Festival in September; since it shows up in theaters this week, you might want to click here so that I don't have to quote myself.)", "tenderly of the naked, young men who once populated his pool) and a long, climactic monologue about a (fictional) wartime trauma that ostensibly shocked Whale into keeping his past under wraps. In Bram's novel, Boone is vaguely dangerous,", "with uninvited amorousness to the torch singer (Queen Latifah) who takes her to after-hours clubs, where she dances ecstatically with young women. Living Out Loud becomes an ode to openness, to letting in everything that the world throws at", "The movie is a passable entertainment--call it The Half Monty . It has standard issue (but funny) farcical sight gags and a score of panpipes to provide the requisite undercurrent of Celtic", "The term \"slice of life\" has come to mean dreary naturalism, but for the superb Richard LaGravenese, who wrote and directed Living Out Loud , that slice includes fantasy, fairy tale connections,", "W>aking Ned Devine is this year's stab at The Full Monty (1997), which made more than $100 million and even snagged an Oscar nomination. Set in a quaint olde Irish seacoast village, it tells the story of an elderly lottery player, Jackie O'Shea (Ian Bannen), who learns that one of his fifty-odd neighbors holds the winning ticket to a 7 million pound drawing. By a process of elimination, he and his buddy Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly) end up at the remote stone house of Ned Devine--whom they find dead in his armchair with the ticket between his fingers, the shock of his windfall having felled him. As Devine has no living relations, it makes sense for the impoverished old men to cook up a scheme by which Michael will assume the dead fisherman's identity, and the pair will divide the money between themselves.", "It was no surprise to read that Kirk Jones, the film's writer and director, doesn't hail from a small town in the Irish Republic or anywhere close. He makes TV commercials in London. Deciding he'd like to make an eccentric regional comedy with universal themes, he journeyed to a village in Ireland, set himself up in the pub, and took notes on what he saw and heard. Then he wrote a script that's one part Bill Forsyth's Local Hero (1983), one part Preston Sturges' Christmas in July (1940), and about five parts synthetic whimsy.", "sultry musical interludes, bridges that lead out, and bridges that lead nowhere. The movie, one of the year's most pleasant surprises, is the antithesis of Todd Solondz's Happiness , a humanist's answer to Solondz's evident conviction that life", "Whale is laid out on a laboratory slab being operated on by the groundskeeper. What's the metaphor? The script, meanwhile, is the stuff of bad two character plays, with spurious excuses for conflict (Boone storms out when Whale speaks", "reach Devine's house before the man from the lottery. I see a future for elderly male actors willing to shed their clothes for laughs, but I don't see myself in the audience.", "the director (Ian McKellen) through the prism of a (fictional) friendship with a handsome, muscular, and heterosexual groundskeeper, Boone (Brendan Fraser). Critics have been unanimous in predicting statuettes in McKellen's future. Why? The movie is psychologically thin,", "of watching Boris Karloff express his anguish to an uncomprehending world through a misshapen body and halting language. Few films have ever offered so inspired a blend of sentimentality, Grand Guignol horror, and sophisticated camp, or such deliriously inventive" ], [ "So why isn't Dancing at Lughnasa more involving? It's probably because the director, Pat O'Connor, can't tell the difference between images that express Friel's themes and Hibernian wallpaper, and because his idea of expansive, pictorial beauty proves no substitute for Friel's powerfully compressed stage pictures. In the theater, the radio that crackles on and off signals a world elsewhere; and when it's repaired and the stage is flooded with music and the sisters--beaten down, confronted with only the grimmest of economic and social prospects--begin to dance and then lose themselves in the freedom of the dance, the moment is truly cathartic. On-screen it means the movie's almost over.", "Streep's performance is layered and compelling, but the film doesn't click. Closely based on Brian Friel's play, it wilts in translation the way Friel's potent but static dramas always do. On stage, every character, every prop, every interjection has a precise symbolic function; on film, those elements no longer stand out in relief. In Dancing at Lughnasa (it's pronounced LOO-nassa), the sisters reside in a sterile and repressive Ireland--but one in which the pagan past continues to bubble up, most visibly in the harvest feast of Lughnasa, when peasants take to the hills to build fires, drink to even greater excess than usual, and dance orgiastically. The rite is liberating but also frightening: Remove a cork from a bottle so pressurized, and the contents are apt to explode.", "Streep should be awarded a rubber chicken for irradiating us with her yokel devotion in One True Thing (1998), but in Dancing at Lughnasa she goes a long way toward winning back her good (well, pretty good) name. As Kate Mundy, the stick-in-the-mud schoolteacher who presides over four younger, unmarried sisters in 1936 Donegal, Ireland, she holds her facial muscles tense and signals with her eyes her exhaustion from keeping them so fiercely in place. It is a terrible responsibility, upholding her society's values and preventing her siblings and Michael, the illegitimate son of her youngest sister, Christina (Catherine McCormack), from descending into chaos and impoverishment. Not to mention the fact that she's regarded by all as a stupid goose--or, as they call her in town, mocking her sexlessness, \"the gander.\"", "The story, narrated by the now-grown Michael in the shopworn manner of The Glass Menagerie , is set in motion by the return of the boy's Uncle Jack (Michael Gambon) from Africa, where he has toiled as a missionary priest. Delusional, barely remembering his English, Jack becomes a rambling (and, to the local priest, horrific) spokesman for paganism, encouraging all his sisters to emulate Christina and have \"children of love.\"", "There isn't much else in the way of a plot. Kate's position at the school, which is overseen by the local priest, is imperiled by the subversive presence of her brother. Michael's handsome dad (Rhys Ifans) roars back on a motorcycle to flirt with marriage to Christina: Will he stay or go fight the Fascists in Spain? Each sister chafes in her own way under Kate's oppressive rule--especially Rose (Sophie Thompson), the \"simple\" one, who might or might not be having an affair with a man whose wife and children have abandoned him for London. A weaving factory is opening nearby and threatens the household income. In venerable Chekhovian fashion, what happens on the surface only hints at the titanic plates that shift beneath, but the actresses--especially Streep, Thompson, Kathy Burke, and Brid Brennan--are supreme at conveying what's at stake. They create an indelibly glowering ensemble.", "As Whale, McKellen wears his elegance lightly. His face is fascinatingly two tiered: lean in long shot, in close-up its features distend to the point of acromegaly, the mouth going slack with lust. But Whale's plangent ruminations are slack as well: \"I've spent much of my life outrunning the past, and now it floods all over,\" he tells Boone, in what is surely the most generic line for a \"memory play\" ever written. \"Something about your face makes me want to tell the truth.\" All this mawkishness would likely have annoyed the real Whale, who exited the world on his own terms and steered clear, in his art, of banality.", "It was no surprise to read that Kirk Jones, the film's writer and director, doesn't hail from a small town in the Irish Republic or anywhere close. He makes TV commercials in London. Deciding he'd like to make an eccentric regional comedy with universal themes, he journeyed to a village in Ireland, set himself up in the pub, and took notes on what he saw and heard. Then he wrote a script that's one part Bill Forsyth's Local Hero (1983), one part Preston Sturges' Christmas in July (1940), and about five parts synthetic whimsy.", "The movie is a passable entertainment--call it The Half Monty . It has standard issue (but funny) farcical sight gags and a score of panpipes to provide the requisite undercurrent of Celtic", "Eyes on the Prize \n\n These days, studios are inordinately attentive to my viewing habits. As a member of the National Society of Film Critics, which votes a slate of year-end prizes, I'm fielding calls from eager publicists who want to make sure I've seen all those award-worthy movies featuring all those award-worthy performances. I've tried to stay mum, so as to keep my voting options open, but it's hard for a guy brimming with opinions to be circumspect. Beloved ? A worthy effort. Oprah? Worthiness incarnate; I feel unworthy even to sit in judgment. Meryl Streep in Dancing at Lughnasa ? Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters ? Leonardo DiCaprio in Celebrity ? Damn worthy actors. (I enthused about DiCaprio when the sour Celebrity opened the New York Film Festival in September; since it shows up in theaters this week, you might want to click here so that I don't have to quote myself.)", "melancholy. There's a witchy Margaret Hamilton type (Eileen Dromey) who rides some sort of electric wheelchair and attempts to spoil the whole caper. There's also a stock ingÃ©nue (Susan Lynch) who loves the town's endearing pig farmer", "with uninvited amorousness to the torch singer (Queen Latifah) who takes her to after-hours clubs, where she dances ecstatically with young women. Living Out Loud becomes an ode to openness, to letting in everything that the world throws at", "The term \"slice of life\" has come to mean dreary naturalism, but for the superb Richard LaGravenese, who wrote and directed Living Out Loud , that slice includes fantasy, fairy tale connections,", "tenderly of the naked, young men who once populated his pool) and a long, climactic monologue about a (fictional) wartime trauma that ostensibly shocked Whale into keeping his past under wraps. In Bram's novel, Boone is vaguely dangerous,", "the director (Ian McKellen) through the prism of a (fictional) friendship with a handsome, muscular, and heterosexual groundskeeper, Boone (Brendan Fraser). Critics have been unanimous in predicting statuettes in McKellen's future. Why? The movie is psychologically thin,", "artistically flabby, and symbolically opaque. Whale's Frankenstein films weren't personal testaments, but in Gods and Monsters they're raided for murky fantasy sequences. In one, the groundskeeper is the monster staggering around with Whale in his arms; in another,", "W>aking Ned Devine is this year's stab at The Full Monty (1997), which made more than $100 million and even snagged an Oscar nomination. Set in a quaint olde Irish seacoast village, it tells the story of an elderly lottery player, Jackie O'Shea (Ian Bannen), who learns that one of his fifty-odd neighbors holds the winning ticket to a 7 million pound drawing. By a process of elimination, he and his buddy Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly) end up at the remote stone house of Ned Devine--whom they find dead in his armchair with the ticket between his fingers, the shock of his windfall having felled him. As Devine has no living relations, it makes sense for the impoverished old men to cook up a scheme by which Michael will assume the dead fisherman's identity, and the pair will divide the money between themselves.", "Whale is laid out on a laboratory slab being operated on by the groundskeeper. What's the metaphor? The script, meanwhile, is the stuff of bad two character plays, with spurious excuses for conflict (Boone storms out when Whale speaks", "Gods and Monsters , based on Father of Frankenstein , a novel by Christopher Bram, explores the last days of", "a plausible suspect in Whale's death, but Fraser plays him (ingratiatingly) as a lovable lunk, and the conception removes whatever tension the material might have had.", "of watching Boris Karloff express his anguish to an uncomprehending world through a misshapen body and halting language. Few films have ever offered so inspired a blend of sentimentality, Grand Guignol horror, and sophisticated camp, or such deliriously inventive" ], [ "Streep's performance is layered and compelling, but the film doesn't click. Closely based on Brian Friel's play, it wilts in translation the way Friel's potent but static dramas always do. On stage, every character, every prop, every interjection has a precise symbolic function; on film, those elements no longer stand out in relief. In Dancing at Lughnasa (it's pronounced LOO-nassa), the sisters reside in a sterile and repressive Ireland--but one in which the pagan past continues to bubble up, most visibly in the harvest feast of Lughnasa, when peasants take to the hills to build fires, drink to even greater excess than usual, and dance orgiastically. The rite is liberating but also frightening: Remove a cork from a bottle so pressurized, and the contents are apt to explode.", "So why isn't Dancing at Lughnasa more involving? It's probably because the director, Pat O'Connor, can't tell the difference between images that express Friel's themes and Hibernian wallpaper, and because his idea of expansive, pictorial beauty proves no substitute for Friel's powerfully compressed stage pictures. In the theater, the radio that crackles on and off signals a world elsewhere; and when it's repaired and the stage is flooded with music and the sisters--beaten down, confronted with only the grimmest of economic and social prospects--begin to dance and then lose themselves in the freedom of the dance, the moment is truly cathartic. On-screen it means the movie's almost over.", "Streep should be awarded a rubber chicken for irradiating us with her yokel devotion in One True Thing (1998), but in Dancing at Lughnasa she goes a long way toward winning back her good (well, pretty good) name. As Kate Mundy, the stick-in-the-mud schoolteacher who presides over four younger, unmarried sisters in 1936 Donegal, Ireland, she holds her facial muscles tense and signals with her eyes her exhaustion from keeping them so fiercely in place. It is a terrible responsibility, upholding her society's values and preventing her siblings and Michael, the illegitimate son of her youngest sister, Christina (Catherine McCormack), from descending into chaos and impoverishment. Not to mention the fact that she's regarded by all as a stupid goose--or, as they call her in town, mocking her sexlessness, \"the gander.\"", "The story, narrated by the now-grown Michael in the shopworn manner of The Glass Menagerie , is set in motion by the return of the boy's Uncle Jack (Michael Gambon) from Africa, where he has toiled as a missionary priest. Delusional, barely remembering his English, Jack becomes a rambling (and, to the local priest, horrific) spokesman for paganism, encouraging all his sisters to emulate Christina and have \"children of love.\"", "There isn't much else in the way of a plot. Kate's position at the school, which is overseen by the local priest, is imperiled by the subversive presence of her brother. Michael's handsome dad (Rhys Ifans) roars back on a motorcycle to flirt with marriage to Christina: Will he stay or go fight the Fascists in Spain? Each sister chafes in her own way under Kate's oppressive rule--especially Rose (Sophie Thompson), the \"simple\" one, who might or might not be having an affair with a man whose wife and children have abandoned him for London. A weaving factory is opening nearby and threatens the household income. In venerable Chekhovian fashion, what happens on the surface only hints at the titanic plates that shift beneath, but the actresses--especially Streep, Thompson, Kathy Burke, and Brid Brennan--are supreme at conveying what's at stake. They create an indelibly glowering ensemble.", "The movie is a passable entertainment--call it The Half Monty . It has standard issue (but funny) farcical sight gags and a score of panpipes to provide the requisite undercurrent of Celtic", "W>aking Ned Devine is this year's stab at The Full Monty (1997), which made more than $100 million and even snagged an Oscar nomination. Set in a quaint olde Irish seacoast village, it tells the story of an elderly lottery player, Jackie O'Shea (Ian Bannen), who learns that one of his fifty-odd neighbors holds the winning ticket to a 7 million pound drawing. By a process of elimination, he and his buddy Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly) end up at the remote stone house of Ned Devine--whom they find dead in his armchair with the ticket between his fingers, the shock of his windfall having felled him. As Devine has no living relations, it makes sense for the impoverished old men to cook up a scheme by which Michael will assume the dead fisherman's identity, and the pair will divide the money between themselves.", "It was no surprise to read that Kirk Jones, the film's writer and director, doesn't hail from a small town in the Irish Republic or anywhere close. He makes TV commercials in London. Deciding he'd like to make an eccentric regional comedy with universal themes, he journeyed to a village in Ireland, set himself up in the pub, and took notes on what he saw and heard. Then he wrote a script that's one part Bill Forsyth's Local Hero (1983), one part Preston Sturges' Christmas in July (1940), and about five parts synthetic whimsy.", "melancholy. There's a witchy Margaret Hamilton type (Eileen Dromey) who rides some sort of electric wheelchair and attempts to spoil the whole caper. There's also a stock ingÃ©nue (Susan Lynch) who loves the town's endearing pig farmer", "The term \"slice of life\" has come to mean dreary naturalism, but for the superb Richard LaGravenese, who wrote and directed Living Out Loud , that slice includes fantasy, fairy tale connections,", "with uninvited amorousness to the torch singer (Queen Latifah) who takes her to after-hours clubs, where she dances ecstatically with young women. Living Out Loud becomes an ode to openness, to letting in everything that the world throws at", "Whale is laid out on a laboratory slab being operated on by the groundskeeper. What's the metaphor? The script, meanwhile, is the stuff of bad two character plays, with spurious excuses for conflict (Boone storms out when Whale speaks", "As Whale, McKellen wears his elegance lightly. His face is fascinatingly two tiered: lean in long shot, in close-up its features distend to the point of acromegaly, the mouth going slack with lust. But Whale's plangent ruminations are slack as well: \"I've spent much of my life outrunning the past, and now it floods all over,\" he tells Boone, in what is surely the most generic line for a \"memory play\" ever written. \"Something about your face makes me want to tell the truth.\" All this mawkishness would likely have annoyed the real Whale, who exited the world on his own terms and steered clear, in his art, of banality.", "Eyes on the Prize \n\n These days, studios are inordinately attentive to my viewing habits. As a member of the National Society of Film Critics, which votes a slate of year-end prizes, I'm fielding calls from eager publicists who want to make sure I've seen all those award-worthy movies featuring all those award-worthy performances. I've tried to stay mum, so as to keep my voting options open, but it's hard for a guy brimming with opinions to be circumspect. Beloved ? A worthy effort. Oprah? Worthiness incarnate; I feel unworthy even to sit in judgment. Meryl Streep in Dancing at Lughnasa ? Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters ? Leonardo DiCaprio in Celebrity ? Damn worthy actors. (I enthused about DiCaprio when the sour Celebrity opened the New York Film Festival in September; since it shows up in theaters this week, you might want to click here so that I don't have to quote myself.)", "is all dead ends. When her cardiologist husband (Martin Donovan) leaves her, Judith Nelson (Holly Hunter) goes out into the world, her pain making her receptive to everything and everyone--from the elevator man (Danny DeVito) who returns her friendship", "(James Nesbitt) but won't marry him because he smells so bad--and I'm not oversimplifying. Waking Ned Devine might have been a snooze if Jones hadn't stocked it with a slew of old actors with magically lived-in visages. The", "you. The movie made me remember why I like Holly Hunter. (I don't always remember.) Her delivery isn't moist--it's prickly and blunt, and she can jabber convincingly, so that the jabbering takes on a life of its own and", "sultry musical interludes, bridges that lead out, and bridges that lead nowhere. The movie, one of the year's most pleasant surprises, is the antithesis of Todd Solondz's Happiness , a humanist's answer to Solondz's evident conviction that life", "the director (Ian McKellen) through the prism of a (fictional) friendship with a handsome, muscular, and heterosexual groundskeeper, Boone (Brendan Fraser). Critics have been unanimous in predicting statuettes in McKellen's future. Why? The movie is psychologically thin,", "owlish Bannen can twinkle without looking dear--there's something saturnine in that face. As his Ed Norton-ish sidekick, Kelly walks off--or, rather, rides off--with the picture, his skeletal frame planted buck naked on a motorcycle as he rushes to" ], [ "Gods and Monsters , based on Father of Frankenstein , a novel by Christopher Bram, explores the last days of", "artistically flabby, and symbolically opaque. Whale's Frankenstein films weren't personal testaments, but in Gods and Monsters they're raided for murky fantasy sequences. In one, the groundskeeper is the monster staggering around with Whale in his arms; in another,", "tenderly of the naked, young men who once populated his pool) and a long, climactic monologue about a (fictional) wartime trauma that ostensibly shocked Whale into keeping his past under wraps. In Bram's novel, Boone is vaguely dangerous,", "As Whale, McKellen wears his elegance lightly. His face is fascinatingly two tiered: lean in long shot, in close-up its features distend to the point of acromegaly, the mouth going slack with lust. But Whale's plangent ruminations are slack as well: \"I've spent much of my life outrunning the past, and now it floods all over,\" he tells Boone, in what is surely the most generic line for a \"memory play\" ever written. \"Something about your face makes me want to tell the truth.\" All this mawkishness would likely have annoyed the real Whale, who exited the world on his own terms and steered clear, in his art, of banality.", "flops. Comfortably rich, he took to painting and traveling before a series of strokes drove him to drown himself in his swimming pool--a suicide, though that fact was concealed from the public for 25 years.", "of watching Boris Karloff express his anguish to an uncomprehending world through a misshapen body and halting language. Few films have ever offered so inspired a blend of sentimentality, Grand Guignol horror, and sophisticated camp, or such deliriously inventive", "Whale is laid out on a laboratory slab being operated on by the groundskeeper. What's the metaphor? The script, meanwhile, is the stuff of bad two character plays, with spurious excuses for conflict (Boone storms out when Whale speaks", "laboratory bric-a-brac. The film's director, James Whale, has long been venerated for this and other droll '30s entertainments, among them The Old Dark House (1932) and The Invisible Man (1933). Lately, he has also been scrutinized for", "to make the case that Whale was penalized for his sexual preferences. If anything, the director seems to have suffered from a surfeit of dignity, proving too proud to overcome the loss of a powerful patron and a couple of ambitious", "the director (Ian McKellen) through the prism of a (fictional) friendship with a handsome, muscular, and heterosexual groundskeeper, Boone (Brendan Fraser). Critics have been unanimous in predicting statuettes in McKellen's future. Why? The movie is psychologically thin,", "People think I'm kidding when I say that my favorite film is The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but I can't imagine how I'd have survived an especially grisly puberty without the comfort", "being openly homosexual in an era when gay directors, such as George Cukor, kept that part of their lives rigidly compartmentalized. But not even David Ehrenstein in his trenchantly gossipy new book on the Hollywood closet, Open Secret , wants", "is all dead ends. When her cardiologist husband (Martin Donovan) leaves her, Judith Nelson (Holly Hunter) goes out into the world, her pain making her receptive to everything and everyone--from the elevator man (Danny DeVito) who returns her friendship", "The story, narrated by the now-grown Michael in the shopworn manner of The Glass Menagerie , is set in motion by the return of the boy's Uncle Jack (Michael Gambon) from Africa, where he has toiled as a missionary priest. Delusional, barely remembering his English, Jack becomes a rambling (and, to the local priest, horrific) spokesman for paganism, encouraging all his sisters to emulate Christina and have \"children of love.\"", "So why isn't Dancing at Lughnasa more involving? It's probably because the director, Pat O'Connor, can't tell the difference between images that express Friel's themes and Hibernian wallpaper, and because his idea of expansive, pictorial beauty proves no substitute for Friel's powerfully compressed stage pictures. In the theater, the radio that crackles on and off signals a world elsewhere; and when it's repaired and the stage is flooded with music and the sisters--beaten down, confronted with only the grimmest of economic and social prospects--begin to dance and then lose themselves in the freedom of the dance, the moment is truly cathartic. On-screen it means the movie's almost over.", "Streep's performance is layered and compelling, but the film doesn't click. Closely based on Brian Friel's play, it wilts in translation the way Friel's potent but static dramas always do. On stage, every character, every prop, every interjection has a precise symbolic function; on film, those elements no longer stand out in relief. In Dancing at Lughnasa (it's pronounced LOO-nassa), the sisters reside in a sterile and repressive Ireland--but one in which the pagan past continues to bubble up, most visibly in the harvest feast of Lughnasa, when peasants take to the hills to build fires, drink to even greater excess than usual, and dance orgiastically. The rite is liberating but also frightening: Remove a cork from a bottle so pressurized, and the contents are apt to explode.", "(James Nesbitt) but won't marry him because he smells so bad--and I'm not oversimplifying. Waking Ned Devine might have been a snooze if Jones hadn't stocked it with a slew of old actors with magically lived-in visages. The", "W>aking Ned Devine is this year's stab at The Full Monty (1997), which made more than $100 million and even snagged an Oscar nomination. Set in a quaint olde Irish seacoast village, it tells the story of an elderly lottery player, Jackie O'Shea (Ian Bannen), who learns that one of his fifty-odd neighbors holds the winning ticket to a 7 million pound drawing. By a process of elimination, he and his buddy Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly) end up at the remote stone house of Ned Devine--whom they find dead in his armchair with the ticket between his fingers, the shock of his windfall having felled him. As Devine has no living relations, it makes sense for the impoverished old men to cook up a scheme by which Michael will assume the dead fisherman's identity, and the pair will divide the money between themselves.", "Eyes on the Prize \n\n These days, studios are inordinately attentive to my viewing habits. As a member of the National Society of Film Critics, which votes a slate of year-end prizes, I'm fielding calls from eager publicists who want to make sure I've seen all those award-worthy movies featuring all those award-worthy performances. I've tried to stay mum, so as to keep my voting options open, but it's hard for a guy brimming with opinions to be circumspect. Beloved ? A worthy effort. Oprah? Worthiness incarnate; I feel unworthy even to sit in judgment. Meryl Streep in Dancing at Lughnasa ? Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters ? Leonardo DiCaprio in Celebrity ? Damn worthy actors. (I enthused about DiCaprio when the sour Celebrity opened the New York Film Festival in September; since it shows up in theaters this week, you might want to click here so that I don't have to quote myself.)", "It was no surprise to read that Kirk Jones, the film's writer and director, doesn't hail from a small town in the Irish Republic or anywhere close. He makes TV commercials in London. Deciding he'd like to make an eccentric regional comedy with universal themes, he journeyed to a village in Ireland, set himself up in the pub, and took notes on what he saw and heard. Then he wrote a script that's one part Bill Forsyth's Local Hero (1983), one part Preston Sturges' Christmas in July (1940), and about five parts synthetic whimsy." ], [ "Gods and Monsters , based on Father of Frankenstein , a novel by Christopher Bram, explores the last days of", "artistically flabby, and symbolically opaque. Whale's Frankenstein films weren't personal testaments, but in Gods and Monsters they're raided for murky fantasy sequences. In one, the groundskeeper is the monster staggering around with Whale in his arms; in another,", "As Whale, McKellen wears his elegance lightly. His face is fascinatingly two tiered: lean in long shot, in close-up its features distend to the point of acromegaly, the mouth going slack with lust. But Whale's plangent ruminations are slack as well: \"I've spent much of my life outrunning the past, and now it floods all over,\" he tells Boone, in what is surely the most generic line for a \"memory play\" ever written. \"Something about your face makes me want to tell the truth.\" All this mawkishness would likely have annoyed the real Whale, who exited the world on his own terms and steered clear, in his art, of banality.", "the director (Ian McKellen) through the prism of a (fictional) friendship with a handsome, muscular, and heterosexual groundskeeper, Boone (Brendan Fraser). Critics have been unanimous in predicting statuettes in McKellen's future. Why? The movie is psychologically thin,", "People think I'm kidding when I say that my favorite film is The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but I can't imagine how I'd have survived an especially grisly puberty without the comfort", "Eyes on the Prize \n\n These days, studios are inordinately attentive to my viewing habits. As a member of the National Society of Film Critics, which votes a slate of year-end prizes, I'm fielding calls from eager publicists who want to make sure I've seen all those award-worthy movies featuring all those award-worthy performances. I've tried to stay mum, so as to keep my voting options open, but it's hard for a guy brimming with opinions to be circumspect. Beloved ? A worthy effort. Oprah? Worthiness incarnate; I feel unworthy even to sit in judgment. Meryl Streep in Dancing at Lughnasa ? Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters ? Leonardo DiCaprio in Celebrity ? Damn worthy actors. (I enthused about DiCaprio when the sour Celebrity opened the New York Film Festival in September; since it shows up in theaters this week, you might want to click here so that I don't have to quote myself.)", "of watching Boris Karloff express his anguish to an uncomprehending world through a misshapen body and halting language. Few films have ever offered so inspired a blend of sentimentality, Grand Guignol horror, and sophisticated camp, or such deliriously inventive", "you. The movie made me remember why I like Holly Hunter. (I don't always remember.) Her delivery isn't moist--it's prickly and blunt, and she can jabber convincingly, so that the jabbering takes on a life of its own and", "tenderly of the naked, young men who once populated his pool) and a long, climactic monologue about a (fictional) wartime trauma that ostensibly shocked Whale into keeping his past under wraps. In Bram's novel, Boone is vaguely dangerous,", "So why isn't Dancing at Lughnasa more involving? It's probably because the director, Pat O'Connor, can't tell the difference between images that express Friel's themes and Hibernian wallpaper, and because his idea of expansive, pictorial beauty proves no substitute for Friel's powerfully compressed stage pictures. In the theater, the radio that crackles on and off signals a world elsewhere; and when it's repaired and the stage is flooded with music and the sisters--beaten down, confronted with only the grimmest of economic and social prospects--begin to dance and then lose themselves in the freedom of the dance, the moment is truly cathartic. On-screen it means the movie's almost over.", "laboratory bric-a-brac. The film's director, James Whale, has long been venerated for this and other droll '30s entertainments, among them The Old Dark House (1932) and The Invisible Man (1933). Lately, he has also been scrutinized for", "Streep's performance is layered and compelling, but the film doesn't click. Closely based on Brian Friel's play, it wilts in translation the way Friel's potent but static dramas always do. On stage, every character, every prop, every interjection has a precise symbolic function; on film, those elements no longer stand out in relief. In Dancing at Lughnasa (it's pronounced LOO-nassa), the sisters reside in a sterile and repressive Ireland--but one in which the pagan past continues to bubble up, most visibly in the harvest feast of Lughnasa, when peasants take to the hills to build fires, drink to even greater excess than usual, and dance orgiastically. The rite is liberating but also frightening: Remove a cork from a bottle so pressurized, and the contents are apt to explode.", "sultry musical interludes, bridges that lead out, and bridges that lead nowhere. The movie, one of the year's most pleasant surprises, is the antithesis of Todd Solondz's Happiness , a humanist's answer to Solondz's evident conviction that life", "The term \"slice of life\" has come to mean dreary naturalism, but for the superb Richard LaGravenese, who wrote and directed Living Out Loud , that slice includes fantasy, fairy tale connections,", "It was no surprise to read that Kirk Jones, the film's writer and director, doesn't hail from a small town in the Irish Republic or anywhere close. He makes TV commercials in London. Deciding he'd like to make an eccentric regional comedy with universal themes, he journeyed to a village in Ireland, set himself up in the pub, and took notes on what he saw and heard. Then he wrote a script that's one part Bill Forsyth's Local Hero (1983), one part Preston Sturges' Christmas in July (1940), and about five parts synthetic whimsy.", "being openly homosexual in an era when gay directors, such as George Cukor, kept that part of their lives rigidly compartmentalized. But not even David Ehrenstein in his trenchantly gossipy new book on the Hollywood closet, Open Secret , wants", "(James Nesbitt) but won't marry him because he smells so bad--and I'm not oversimplifying. Waking Ned Devine might have been a snooze if Jones hadn't stocked it with a slew of old actors with magically lived-in visages. The", "W>aking Ned Devine is this year's stab at The Full Monty (1997), which made more than $100 million and even snagged an Oscar nomination. Set in a quaint olde Irish seacoast village, it tells the story of an elderly lottery player, Jackie O'Shea (Ian Bannen), who learns that one of his fifty-odd neighbors holds the winning ticket to a 7 million pound drawing. By a process of elimination, he and his buddy Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly) end up at the remote stone house of Ned Devine--whom they find dead in his armchair with the ticket between his fingers, the shock of his windfall having felled him. As Devine has no living relations, it makes sense for the impoverished old men to cook up a scheme by which Michael will assume the dead fisherman's identity, and the pair will divide the money between themselves.", "Whale is laid out on a laboratory slab being operated on by the groundskeeper. What's the metaphor? The script, meanwhile, is the stuff of bad two character plays, with spurious excuses for conflict (Boone storms out when Whale speaks", "The movie is a passable entertainment--call it The Half Monty . It has standard issue (but funny) farcical sight gags and a score of panpipes to provide the requisite undercurrent of Celtic" ], [ "The movie is a passable entertainment--call it The Half Monty . It has standard issue (but funny) farcical sight gags and a score of panpipes to provide the requisite undercurrent of Celtic", "W>aking Ned Devine is this year's stab at The Full Monty (1997), which made more than $100 million and even snagged an Oscar nomination. Set in a quaint olde Irish seacoast village, it tells the story of an elderly lottery player, Jackie O'Shea (Ian Bannen), who learns that one of his fifty-odd neighbors holds the winning ticket to a 7 million pound drawing. By a process of elimination, he and his buddy Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly) end up at the remote stone house of Ned Devine--whom they find dead in his armchair with the ticket between his fingers, the shock of his windfall having felled him. As Devine has no living relations, it makes sense for the impoverished old men to cook up a scheme by which Michael will assume the dead fisherman's identity, and the pair will divide the money between themselves.", "As Whale, McKellen wears his elegance lightly. His face is fascinatingly two tiered: lean in long shot, in close-up its features distend to the point of acromegaly, the mouth going slack with lust. But Whale's plangent ruminations are slack as well: \"I've spent much of my life outrunning the past, and now it floods all over,\" he tells Boone, in what is surely the most generic line for a \"memory play\" ever written. \"Something about your face makes me want to tell the truth.\" All this mawkishness would likely have annoyed the real Whale, who exited the world on his own terms and steered clear, in his art, of banality.", "tenderly of the naked, young men who once populated his pool) and a long, climactic monologue about a (fictional) wartime trauma that ostensibly shocked Whale into keeping his past under wraps. In Bram's novel, Boone is vaguely dangerous,", "It was no surprise to read that Kirk Jones, the film's writer and director, doesn't hail from a small town in the Irish Republic or anywhere close. He makes TV commercials in London. Deciding he'd like to make an eccentric regional comedy with universal themes, he journeyed to a village in Ireland, set himself up in the pub, and took notes on what he saw and heard. Then he wrote a script that's one part Bill Forsyth's Local Hero (1983), one part Preston Sturges' Christmas in July (1940), and about five parts synthetic whimsy.", "So why isn't Dancing at Lughnasa more involving? It's probably because the director, Pat O'Connor, can't tell the difference between images that express Friel's themes and Hibernian wallpaper, and because his idea of expansive, pictorial beauty proves no substitute for Friel's powerfully compressed stage pictures. In the theater, the radio that crackles on and off signals a world elsewhere; and when it's repaired and the stage is flooded with music and the sisters--beaten down, confronted with only the grimmest of economic and social prospects--begin to dance and then lose themselves in the freedom of the dance, the moment is truly cathartic. On-screen it means the movie's almost over.", "artistically flabby, and symbolically opaque. Whale's Frankenstein films weren't personal testaments, but in Gods and Monsters they're raided for murky fantasy sequences. In one, the groundskeeper is the monster staggering around with Whale in his arms; in another,", "you. The movie made me remember why I like Holly Hunter. (I don't always remember.) Her delivery isn't moist--it's prickly and blunt, and she can jabber convincingly, so that the jabbering takes on a life of its own and", "owlish Bannen can twinkle without looking dear--there's something saturnine in that face. As his Ed Norton-ish sidekick, Kelly walks off--or, rather, rides off--with the picture, his skeletal frame planted buck naked on a motorcycle as he rushes to", "Streep's performance is layered and compelling, but the film doesn't click. Closely based on Brian Friel's play, it wilts in translation the way Friel's potent but static dramas always do. On stage, every character, every prop, every interjection has a precise symbolic function; on film, those elements no longer stand out in relief. In Dancing at Lughnasa (it's pronounced LOO-nassa), the sisters reside in a sterile and repressive Ireland--but one in which the pagan past continues to bubble up, most visibly in the harvest feast of Lughnasa, when peasants take to the hills to build fires, drink to even greater excess than usual, and dance orgiastically. The rite is liberating but also frightening: Remove a cork from a bottle so pressurized, and the contents are apt to explode.", "People think I'm kidding when I say that my favorite film is The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but I can't imagine how I'd have survived an especially grisly puberty without the comfort", "Streep should be awarded a rubber chicken for irradiating us with her yokel devotion in One True Thing (1998), but in Dancing at Lughnasa she goes a long way toward winning back her good (well, pretty good) name. As Kate Mundy, the stick-in-the-mud schoolteacher who presides over four younger, unmarried sisters in 1936 Donegal, Ireland, she holds her facial muscles tense and signals with her eyes her exhaustion from keeping them so fiercely in place. It is a terrible responsibility, upholding her society's values and preventing her siblings and Michael, the illegitimate son of her youngest sister, Christina (Catherine McCormack), from descending into chaos and impoverishment. Not to mention the fact that she's regarded by all as a stupid goose--or, as they call her in town, mocking her sexlessness, \"the gander.\"", "The story, narrated by the now-grown Michael in the shopworn manner of The Glass Menagerie , is set in motion by the return of the boy's Uncle Jack (Michael Gambon) from Africa, where he has toiled as a missionary priest. Delusional, barely remembering his English, Jack becomes a rambling (and, to the local priest, horrific) spokesman for paganism, encouraging all his sisters to emulate Christina and have \"children of love.\"", "the director (Ian McKellen) through the prism of a (fictional) friendship with a handsome, muscular, and heterosexual groundskeeper, Boone (Brendan Fraser). Critics have been unanimous in predicting statuettes in McKellen's future. Why? The movie is psychologically thin,", "Whale is laid out on a laboratory slab being operated on by the groundskeeper. What's the metaphor? The script, meanwhile, is the stuff of bad two character plays, with spurious excuses for conflict (Boone storms out when Whale speaks", "of watching Boris Karloff express his anguish to an uncomprehending world through a misshapen body and halting language. Few films have ever offered so inspired a blend of sentimentality, Grand Guignol horror, and sophisticated camp, or such deliriously inventive", "Gods and Monsters , based on Father of Frankenstein , a novel by Christopher Bram, explores the last days of", "reach Devine's house before the man from the lottery. I see a future for elderly male actors willing to shed their clothes for laughs, but I don't see myself in the audience.", "The term \"slice of life\" has come to mean dreary naturalism, but for the superb Richard LaGravenese, who wrote and directed Living Out Loud , that slice includes fantasy, fairy tale connections,", "There isn't much else in the way of a plot. Kate's position at the school, which is overseen by the local priest, is imperiled by the subversive presence of her brother. Michael's handsome dad (Rhys Ifans) roars back on a motorcycle to flirt with marriage to Christina: Will he stay or go fight the Fascists in Spain? Each sister chafes in her own way under Kate's oppressive rule--especially Rose (Sophie Thompson), the \"simple\" one, who might or might not be having an affair with a man whose wife and children have abandoned him for London. A weaving factory is opening nearby and threatens the household income. In venerable Chekhovian fashion, what happens on the surface only hints at the titanic plates that shift beneath, but the actresses--especially Streep, Thompson, Kathy Burke, and Brid Brennan--are supreme at conveying what's at stake. They create an indelibly glowering ensemble." ], [ "artistically flabby, and symbolically opaque. Whale's Frankenstein films weren't personal testaments, but in Gods and Monsters they're raided for murky fantasy sequences. In one, the groundskeeper is the monster staggering around with Whale in his arms; in another,", "of watching Boris Karloff express his anguish to an uncomprehending world through a misshapen body and halting language. Few films have ever offered so inspired a blend of sentimentality, Grand Guignol horror, and sophisticated camp, or such deliriously inventive", "laboratory bric-a-brac. The film's director, James Whale, has long been venerated for this and other droll '30s entertainments, among them The Old Dark House (1932) and The Invisible Man (1933). Lately, he has also been scrutinized for", "People think I'm kidding when I say that my favorite film is The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but I can't imagine how I'd have survived an especially grisly puberty without the comfort", "As Whale, McKellen wears his elegance lightly. His face is fascinatingly two tiered: lean in long shot, in close-up its features distend to the point of acromegaly, the mouth going slack with lust. But Whale's plangent ruminations are slack as well: \"I've spent much of my life outrunning the past, and now it floods all over,\" he tells Boone, in what is surely the most generic line for a \"memory play\" ever written. \"Something about your face makes me want to tell the truth.\" All this mawkishness would likely have annoyed the real Whale, who exited the world on his own terms and steered clear, in his art, of banality.", "sultry musical interludes, bridges that lead out, and bridges that lead nowhere. The movie, one of the year's most pleasant surprises, is the antithesis of Todd Solondz's Happiness , a humanist's answer to Solondz's evident conviction that life", "tenderly of the naked, young men who once populated his pool) and a long, climactic monologue about a (fictional) wartime trauma that ostensibly shocked Whale into keeping his past under wraps. In Bram's novel, Boone is vaguely dangerous,", "The term \"slice of life\" has come to mean dreary naturalism, but for the superb Richard LaGravenese, who wrote and directed Living Out Loud , that slice includes fantasy, fairy tale connections,", "Whale is laid out on a laboratory slab being operated on by the groundskeeper. What's the metaphor? The script, meanwhile, is the stuff of bad two character plays, with spurious excuses for conflict (Boone storms out when Whale speaks", "It was no surprise to read that Kirk Jones, the film's writer and director, doesn't hail from a small town in the Irish Republic or anywhere close. He makes TV commercials in London. Deciding he'd like to make an eccentric regional comedy with universal themes, he journeyed to a village in Ireland, set himself up in the pub, and took notes on what he saw and heard. Then he wrote a script that's one part Bill Forsyth's Local Hero (1983), one part Preston Sturges' Christmas in July (1940), and about five parts synthetic whimsy.", "Gods and Monsters , based on Father of Frankenstein , a novel by Christopher Bram, explores the last days of", "Streep's performance is layered and compelling, but the film doesn't click. Closely based on Brian Friel's play, it wilts in translation the way Friel's potent but static dramas always do. On stage, every character, every prop, every interjection has a precise symbolic function; on film, those elements no longer stand out in relief. In Dancing at Lughnasa (it's pronounced LOO-nassa), the sisters reside in a sterile and repressive Ireland--but one in which the pagan past continues to bubble up, most visibly in the harvest feast of Lughnasa, when peasants take to the hills to build fires, drink to even greater excess than usual, and dance orgiastically. The rite is liberating but also frightening: Remove a cork from a bottle so pressurized, and the contents are apt to explode.", "to make the case that Whale was penalized for his sexual preferences. If anything, the director seems to have suffered from a surfeit of dignity, proving too proud to overcome the loss of a powerful patron and a couple of ambitious", "being openly homosexual in an era when gay directors, such as George Cukor, kept that part of their lives rigidly compartmentalized. But not even David Ehrenstein in his trenchantly gossipy new book on the Hollywood closet, Open Secret , wants", "So why isn't Dancing at Lughnasa more involving? It's probably because the director, Pat O'Connor, can't tell the difference between images that express Friel's themes and Hibernian wallpaper, and because his idea of expansive, pictorial beauty proves no substitute for Friel's powerfully compressed stage pictures. In the theater, the radio that crackles on and off signals a world elsewhere; and when it's repaired and the stage is flooded with music and the sisters--beaten down, confronted with only the grimmest of economic and social prospects--begin to dance and then lose themselves in the freedom of the dance, the moment is truly cathartic. On-screen it means the movie's almost over.", "with uninvited amorousness to the torch singer (Queen Latifah) who takes her to after-hours clubs, where she dances ecstatically with young women. Living Out Loud becomes an ode to openness, to letting in everything that the world throws at", "Eyes on the Prize \n\n These days, studios are inordinately attentive to my viewing habits. As a member of the National Society of Film Critics, which votes a slate of year-end prizes, I'm fielding calls from eager publicists who want to make sure I've seen all those award-worthy movies featuring all those award-worthy performances. I've tried to stay mum, so as to keep my voting options open, but it's hard for a guy brimming with opinions to be circumspect. Beloved ? A worthy effort. Oprah? Worthiness incarnate; I feel unworthy even to sit in judgment. Meryl Streep in Dancing at Lughnasa ? Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters ? Leonardo DiCaprio in Celebrity ? Damn worthy actors. (I enthused about DiCaprio when the sour Celebrity opened the New York Film Festival in September; since it shows up in theaters this week, you might want to click here so that I don't have to quote myself.)", "owlish Bannen can twinkle without looking dear--there's something saturnine in that face. As his Ed Norton-ish sidekick, Kelly walks off--or, rather, rides off--with the picture, his skeletal frame planted buck naked on a motorcycle as he rushes to", "you. The movie made me remember why I like Holly Hunter. (I don't always remember.) Her delivery isn't moist--it's prickly and blunt, and she can jabber convincingly, so that the jabbering takes on a life of its own and", "The story, narrated by the now-grown Michael in the shopworn manner of The Glass Menagerie , is set in motion by the return of the boy's Uncle Jack (Michael Gambon) from Africa, where he has toiled as a missionary priest. Delusional, barely remembering his English, Jack becomes a rambling (and, to the local priest, horrific) spokesman for paganism, encouraging all his sisters to emulate Christina and have \"children of love.\"" ], [ "W>aking Ned Devine is this year's stab at The Full Monty (1997), which made more than $100 million and even snagged an Oscar nomination. Set in a quaint olde Irish seacoast village, it tells the story of an elderly lottery player, Jackie O'Shea (Ian Bannen), who learns that one of his fifty-odd neighbors holds the winning ticket to a 7 million pound drawing. By a process of elimination, he and his buddy Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly) end up at the remote stone house of Ned Devine--whom they find dead in his armchair with the ticket between his fingers, the shock of his windfall having felled him. As Devine has no living relations, it makes sense for the impoverished old men to cook up a scheme by which Michael will assume the dead fisherman's identity, and the pair will divide the money between themselves.", "(James Nesbitt) but won't marry him because he smells so bad--and I'm not oversimplifying. Waking Ned Devine might have been a snooze if Jones hadn't stocked it with a slew of old actors with magically lived-in visages. The", "It was no surprise to read that Kirk Jones, the film's writer and director, doesn't hail from a small town in the Irish Republic or anywhere close. He makes TV commercials in London. Deciding he'd like to make an eccentric regional comedy with universal themes, he journeyed to a village in Ireland, set himself up in the pub, and took notes on what he saw and heard. Then he wrote a script that's one part Bill Forsyth's Local Hero (1983), one part Preston Sturges' Christmas in July (1940), and about five parts synthetic whimsy.", "The movie is a passable entertainment--call it The Half Monty . It has standard issue (but funny) farcical sight gags and a score of panpipes to provide the requisite undercurrent of Celtic", "So why isn't Dancing at Lughnasa more involving? It's probably because the director, Pat O'Connor, can't tell the difference between images that express Friel's themes and Hibernian wallpaper, and because his idea of expansive, pictorial beauty proves no substitute for Friel's powerfully compressed stage pictures. In the theater, the radio that crackles on and off signals a world elsewhere; and when it's repaired and the stage is flooded with music and the sisters--beaten down, confronted with only the grimmest of economic and social prospects--begin to dance and then lose themselves in the freedom of the dance, the moment is truly cathartic. On-screen it means the movie's almost over.", "The term \"slice of life\" has come to mean dreary naturalism, but for the superb Richard LaGravenese, who wrote and directed Living Out Loud , that slice includes fantasy, fairy tale connections,", "Streep should be awarded a rubber chicken for irradiating us with her yokel devotion in One True Thing (1998), but in Dancing at Lughnasa she goes a long way toward winning back her good (well, pretty good) name. As Kate Mundy, the stick-in-the-mud schoolteacher who presides over four younger, unmarried sisters in 1936 Donegal, Ireland, she holds her facial muscles tense and signals with her eyes her exhaustion from keeping them so fiercely in place. It is a terrible responsibility, upholding her society's values and preventing her siblings and Michael, the illegitimate son of her youngest sister, Christina (Catherine McCormack), from descending into chaos and impoverishment. Not to mention the fact that she's regarded by all as a stupid goose--or, as they call her in town, mocking her sexlessness, \"the gander.\"", "melancholy. There's a witchy Margaret Hamilton type (Eileen Dromey) who rides some sort of electric wheelchair and attempts to spoil the whole caper. There's also a stock ingÃ©nue (Susan Lynch) who loves the town's endearing pig farmer", "a plausible suspect in Whale's death, but Fraser plays him (ingratiatingly) as a lovable lunk, and the conception removes whatever tension the material might have had.", "owlish Bannen can twinkle without looking dear--there's something saturnine in that face. As his Ed Norton-ish sidekick, Kelly walks off--or, rather, rides off--with the picture, his skeletal frame planted buck naked on a motorcycle as he rushes to", "the director (Ian McKellen) through the prism of a (fictional) friendship with a handsome, muscular, and heterosexual groundskeeper, Boone (Brendan Fraser). Critics have been unanimous in predicting statuettes in McKellen's future. Why? The movie is psychologically thin,", "As Whale, McKellen wears his elegance lightly. His face is fascinatingly two tiered: lean in long shot, in close-up its features distend to the point of acromegaly, the mouth going slack with lust. But Whale's plangent ruminations are slack as well: \"I've spent much of my life outrunning the past, and now it floods all over,\" he tells Boone, in what is surely the most generic line for a \"memory play\" ever written. \"Something about your face makes me want to tell the truth.\" All this mawkishness would likely have annoyed the real Whale, who exited the world on his own terms and steered clear, in his art, of banality.", "you. The movie made me remember why I like Holly Hunter. (I don't always remember.) Her delivery isn't moist--it's prickly and blunt, and she can jabber convincingly, so that the jabbering takes on a life of its own and", "Streep's performance is layered and compelling, but the film doesn't click. Closely based on Brian Friel's play, it wilts in translation the way Friel's potent but static dramas always do. On stage, every character, every prop, every interjection has a precise symbolic function; on film, those elements no longer stand out in relief. In Dancing at Lughnasa (it's pronounced LOO-nassa), the sisters reside in a sterile and repressive Ireland--but one in which the pagan past continues to bubble up, most visibly in the harvest feast of Lughnasa, when peasants take to the hills to build fires, drink to even greater excess than usual, and dance orgiastically. The rite is liberating but also frightening: Remove a cork from a bottle so pressurized, and the contents are apt to explode.", "reach Devine's house before the man from the lottery. I see a future for elderly male actors willing to shed their clothes for laughs, but I don't see myself in the audience.", "People think I'm kidding when I say that my favorite film is The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but I can't imagine how I'd have survived an especially grisly puberty without the comfort", "There isn't much else in the way of a plot. Kate's position at the school, which is overseen by the local priest, is imperiled by the subversive presence of her brother. Michael's handsome dad (Rhys Ifans) roars back on a motorcycle to flirt with marriage to Christina: Will he stay or go fight the Fascists in Spain? Each sister chafes in her own way under Kate's oppressive rule--especially Rose (Sophie Thompson), the \"simple\" one, who might or might not be having an affair with a man whose wife and children have abandoned him for London. A weaving factory is opening nearby and threatens the household income. In venerable Chekhovian fashion, what happens on the surface only hints at the titanic plates that shift beneath, but the actresses--especially Streep, Thompson, Kathy Burke, and Brid Brennan--are supreme at conveying what's at stake. They create an indelibly glowering ensemble.", "The story, narrated by the now-grown Michael in the shopworn manner of The Glass Menagerie , is set in motion by the return of the boy's Uncle Jack (Michael Gambon) from Africa, where he has toiled as a missionary priest. Delusional, barely remembering his English, Jack becomes a rambling (and, to the local priest, horrific) spokesman for paganism, encouraging all his sisters to emulate Christina and have \"children of love.\"", "sultry musical interludes, bridges that lead out, and bridges that lead nowhere. The movie, one of the year's most pleasant surprises, is the antithesis of Todd Solondz's Happiness , a humanist's answer to Solondz's evident conviction that life", "is all dead ends. When her cardiologist husband (Martin Donovan) leaves her, Judith Nelson (Holly Hunter) goes out into the world, her pain making her receptive to everything and everyone--from the elevator man (Danny DeVito) who returns her friendship" ], [ "W>aking Ned Devine is this year's stab at The Full Monty (1997), which made more than $100 million and even snagged an Oscar nomination. Set in a quaint olde Irish seacoast village, it tells the story of an elderly lottery player, Jackie O'Shea (Ian Bannen), who learns that one of his fifty-odd neighbors holds the winning ticket to a 7 million pound drawing. By a process of elimination, he and his buddy Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly) end up at the remote stone house of Ned Devine--whom they find dead in his armchair with the ticket between his fingers, the shock of his windfall having felled him. As Devine has no living relations, it makes sense for the impoverished old men to cook up a scheme by which Michael will assume the dead fisherman's identity, and the pair will divide the money between themselves.", "(James Nesbitt) but won't marry him because he smells so bad--and I'm not oversimplifying. Waking Ned Devine might have been a snooze if Jones hadn't stocked it with a slew of old actors with magically lived-in visages. The", "It was no surprise to read that Kirk Jones, the film's writer and director, doesn't hail from a small town in the Irish Republic or anywhere close. He makes TV commercials in London. Deciding he'd like to make an eccentric regional comedy with universal themes, he journeyed to a village in Ireland, set himself up in the pub, and took notes on what he saw and heard. Then he wrote a script that's one part Bill Forsyth's Local Hero (1983), one part Preston Sturges' Christmas in July (1940), and about five parts synthetic whimsy.", "The movie is a passable entertainment--call it The Half Monty . It has standard issue (but funny) farcical sight gags and a score of panpipes to provide the requisite undercurrent of Celtic", "melancholy. There's a witchy Margaret Hamilton type (Eileen Dromey) who rides some sort of electric wheelchair and attempts to spoil the whole caper. There's also a stock ingÃ©nue (Susan Lynch) who loves the town's endearing pig farmer", "owlish Bannen can twinkle without looking dear--there's something saturnine in that face. As his Ed Norton-ish sidekick, Kelly walks off--or, rather, rides off--with the picture, his skeletal frame planted buck naked on a motorcycle as he rushes to", "Streep should be awarded a rubber chicken for irradiating us with her yokel devotion in One True Thing (1998), but in Dancing at Lughnasa she goes a long way toward winning back her good (well, pretty good) name. As Kate Mundy, the stick-in-the-mud schoolteacher who presides over four younger, unmarried sisters in 1936 Donegal, Ireland, she holds her facial muscles tense and signals with her eyes her exhaustion from keeping them so fiercely in place. It is a terrible responsibility, upholding her society's values and preventing her siblings and Michael, the illegitimate son of her youngest sister, Christina (Catherine McCormack), from descending into chaos and impoverishment. Not to mention the fact that she's regarded by all as a stupid goose--or, as they call her in town, mocking her sexlessness, \"the gander.\"", "is all dead ends. When her cardiologist husband (Martin Donovan) leaves her, Judith Nelson (Holly Hunter) goes out into the world, her pain making her receptive to everything and everyone--from the elevator man (Danny DeVito) who returns her friendship", "The story, narrated by the now-grown Michael in the shopworn manner of The Glass Menagerie , is set in motion by the return of the boy's Uncle Jack (Michael Gambon) from Africa, where he has toiled as a missionary priest. Delusional, barely remembering his English, Jack becomes a rambling (and, to the local priest, horrific) spokesman for paganism, encouraging all his sisters to emulate Christina and have \"children of love.\"", "Streep's performance is layered and compelling, but the film doesn't click. Closely based on Brian Friel's play, it wilts in translation the way Friel's potent but static dramas always do. On stage, every character, every prop, every interjection has a precise symbolic function; on film, those elements no longer stand out in relief. In Dancing at Lughnasa (it's pronounced LOO-nassa), the sisters reside in a sterile and repressive Ireland--but one in which the pagan past continues to bubble up, most visibly in the harvest feast of Lughnasa, when peasants take to the hills to build fires, drink to even greater excess than usual, and dance orgiastically. The rite is liberating but also frightening: Remove a cork from a bottle so pressurized, and the contents are apt to explode.", "reach Devine's house before the man from the lottery. I see a future for elderly male actors willing to shed their clothes for laughs, but I don't see myself in the audience.", "There isn't much else in the way of a plot. Kate's position at the school, which is overseen by the local priest, is imperiled by the subversive presence of her brother. Michael's handsome dad (Rhys Ifans) roars back on a motorcycle to flirt with marriage to Christina: Will he stay or go fight the Fascists in Spain? Each sister chafes in her own way under Kate's oppressive rule--especially Rose (Sophie Thompson), the \"simple\" one, who might or might not be having an affair with a man whose wife and children have abandoned him for London. A weaving factory is opening nearby and threatens the household income. In venerable Chekhovian fashion, what happens on the surface only hints at the titanic plates that shift beneath, but the actresses--especially Streep, Thompson, Kathy Burke, and Brid Brennan--are supreme at conveying what's at stake. They create an indelibly glowering ensemble.", "The term \"slice of life\" has come to mean dreary naturalism, but for the superb Richard LaGravenese, who wrote and directed Living Out Loud , that slice includes fantasy, fairy tale connections,", "As Whale, McKellen wears his elegance lightly. His face is fascinatingly two tiered: lean in long shot, in close-up its features distend to the point of acromegaly, the mouth going slack with lust. But Whale's plangent ruminations are slack as well: \"I've spent much of my life outrunning the past, and now it floods all over,\" he tells Boone, in what is surely the most generic line for a \"memory play\" ever written. \"Something about your face makes me want to tell the truth.\" All this mawkishness would likely have annoyed the real Whale, who exited the world on his own terms and steered clear, in his art, of banality.", "tenderly of the naked, young men who once populated his pool) and a long, climactic monologue about a (fictional) wartime trauma that ostensibly shocked Whale into keeping his past under wraps. In Bram's novel, Boone is vaguely dangerous,", "Whale is laid out on a laboratory slab being operated on by the groundskeeper. What's the metaphor? The script, meanwhile, is the stuff of bad two character plays, with spurious excuses for conflict (Boone storms out when Whale speaks", "So why isn't Dancing at Lughnasa more involving? It's probably because the director, Pat O'Connor, can't tell the difference between images that express Friel's themes and Hibernian wallpaper, and because his idea of expansive, pictorial beauty proves no substitute for Friel's powerfully compressed stage pictures. In the theater, the radio that crackles on and off signals a world elsewhere; and when it's repaired and the stage is flooded with music and the sisters--beaten down, confronted with only the grimmest of economic and social prospects--begin to dance and then lose themselves in the freedom of the dance, the moment is truly cathartic. On-screen it means the movie's almost over.", "a plausible suspect in Whale's death, but Fraser plays him (ingratiatingly) as a lovable lunk, and the conception removes whatever tension the material might have had.", "the director (Ian McKellen) through the prism of a (fictional) friendship with a handsome, muscular, and heterosexual groundskeeper, Boone (Brendan Fraser). Critics have been unanimous in predicting statuettes in McKellen's future. Why? The movie is psychologically thin,", "with uninvited amorousness to the torch singer (Queen Latifah) who takes her to after-hours clubs, where she dances ecstatically with young women. Living Out Loud becomes an ode to openness, to letting in everything that the world throws at" ], [ "you. The movie made me remember why I like Holly Hunter. (I don't always remember.) Her delivery isn't moist--it's prickly and blunt, and she can jabber convincingly, so that the jabbering takes on a life of its own and", "is all dead ends. When her cardiologist husband (Martin Donovan) leaves her, Judith Nelson (Holly Hunter) goes out into the world, her pain making her receptive to everything and everyone--from the elevator man (Danny DeVito) who returns her friendship", "Streep should be awarded a rubber chicken for irradiating us with her yokel devotion in One True Thing (1998), but in Dancing at Lughnasa she goes a long way toward winning back her good (well, pretty good) name. As Kate Mundy, the stick-in-the-mud schoolteacher who presides over four younger, unmarried sisters in 1936 Donegal, Ireland, she holds her facial muscles tense and signals with her eyes her exhaustion from keeping them so fiercely in place. It is a terrible responsibility, upholding her society's values and preventing her siblings and Michael, the illegitimate son of her youngest sister, Christina (Catherine McCormack), from descending into chaos and impoverishment. Not to mention the fact that she's regarded by all as a stupid goose--or, as they call her in town, mocking her sexlessness, \"the gander.\"", "with uninvited amorousness to the torch singer (Queen Latifah) who takes her to after-hours clubs, where she dances ecstatically with young women. Living Out Loud becomes an ode to openness, to letting in everything that the world throws at", "Eyes on the Prize \n\n These days, studios are inordinately attentive to my viewing habits. As a member of the National Society of Film Critics, which votes a slate of year-end prizes, I'm fielding calls from eager publicists who want to make sure I've seen all those award-worthy movies featuring all those award-worthy performances. I've tried to stay mum, so as to keep my voting options open, but it's hard for a guy brimming with opinions to be circumspect. Beloved ? A worthy effort. Oprah? Worthiness incarnate; I feel unworthy even to sit in judgment. Meryl Streep in Dancing at Lughnasa ? Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters ? Leonardo DiCaprio in Celebrity ? Damn worthy actors. (I enthused about DiCaprio when the sour Celebrity opened the New York Film Festival in September; since it shows up in theaters this week, you might want to click here so that I don't have to quote myself.)", "Streep's performance is layered and compelling, but the film doesn't click. Closely based on Brian Friel's play, it wilts in translation the way Friel's potent but static dramas always do. On stage, every character, every prop, every interjection has a precise symbolic function; on film, those elements no longer stand out in relief. In Dancing at Lughnasa (it's pronounced LOO-nassa), the sisters reside in a sterile and repressive Ireland--but one in which the pagan past continues to bubble up, most visibly in the harvest feast of Lughnasa, when peasants take to the hills to build fires, drink to even greater excess than usual, and dance orgiastically. The rite is liberating but also frightening: Remove a cork from a bottle so pressurized, and the contents are apt to explode.", "sultry musical interludes, bridges that lead out, and bridges that lead nowhere. The movie, one of the year's most pleasant surprises, is the antithesis of Todd Solondz's Happiness , a humanist's answer to Solondz's evident conviction that life", "There isn't much else in the way of a plot. Kate's position at the school, which is overseen by the local priest, is imperiled by the subversive presence of her brother. Michael's handsome dad (Rhys Ifans) roars back on a motorcycle to flirt with marriage to Christina: Will he stay or go fight the Fascists in Spain? Each sister chafes in her own way under Kate's oppressive rule--especially Rose (Sophie Thompson), the \"simple\" one, who might or might not be having an affair with a man whose wife and children have abandoned him for London. A weaving factory is opening nearby and threatens the household income. In venerable Chekhovian fashion, what happens on the surface only hints at the titanic plates that shift beneath, but the actresses--especially Streep, Thompson, Kathy Burke, and Brid Brennan--are supreme at conveying what's at stake. They create an indelibly glowering ensemble.", "melancholy. There's a witchy Margaret Hamilton type (Eileen Dromey) who rides some sort of electric wheelchair and attempts to spoil the whole caper. There's also a stock ingÃ©nue (Susan Lynch) who loves the town's endearing pig farmer", "owlish Bannen can twinkle without looking dear--there's something saturnine in that face. As his Ed Norton-ish sidekick, Kelly walks off--or, rather, rides off--with the picture, his skeletal frame planted buck naked on a motorcycle as he rushes to", "As Whale, McKellen wears his elegance lightly. His face is fascinatingly two tiered: lean in long shot, in close-up its features distend to the point of acromegaly, the mouth going slack with lust. But Whale's plangent ruminations are slack as well: \"I've spent much of my life outrunning the past, and now it floods all over,\" he tells Boone, in what is surely the most generic line for a \"memory play\" ever written. \"Something about your face makes me want to tell the truth.\" All this mawkishness would likely have annoyed the real Whale, who exited the world on his own terms and steered clear, in his art, of banality.", "The term \"slice of life\" has come to mean dreary naturalism, but for the superb Richard LaGravenese, who wrote and directed Living Out Loud , that slice includes fantasy, fairy tale connections,", "the director (Ian McKellen) through the prism of a (fictional) friendship with a handsome, muscular, and heterosexual groundskeeper, Boone (Brendan Fraser). Critics have been unanimous in predicting statuettes in McKellen's future. Why? The movie is psychologically thin,", "It was no surprise to read that Kirk Jones, the film's writer and director, doesn't hail from a small town in the Irish Republic or anywhere close. He makes TV commercials in London. Deciding he'd like to make an eccentric regional comedy with universal themes, he journeyed to a village in Ireland, set himself up in the pub, and took notes on what he saw and heard. Then he wrote a script that's one part Bill Forsyth's Local Hero (1983), one part Preston Sturges' Christmas in July (1940), and about five parts synthetic whimsy.", "(James Nesbitt) but won't marry him because he smells so bad--and I'm not oversimplifying. Waking Ned Devine might have been a snooze if Jones hadn't stocked it with a slew of old actors with magically lived-in visages. The", "The movie is a passable entertainment--call it The Half Monty . It has standard issue (but funny) farcical sight gags and a score of panpipes to provide the requisite undercurrent of Celtic", "The story, narrated by the now-grown Michael in the shopworn manner of The Glass Menagerie , is set in motion by the return of the boy's Uncle Jack (Michael Gambon) from Africa, where he has toiled as a missionary priest. Delusional, barely remembering his English, Jack becomes a rambling (and, to the local priest, horrific) spokesman for paganism, encouraging all his sisters to emulate Christina and have \"children of love.\"", "So why isn't Dancing at Lughnasa more involving? It's probably because the director, Pat O'Connor, can't tell the difference between images that express Friel's themes and Hibernian wallpaper, and because his idea of expansive, pictorial beauty proves no substitute for Friel's powerfully compressed stage pictures. In the theater, the radio that crackles on and off signals a world elsewhere; and when it's repaired and the stage is flooded with music and the sisters--beaten down, confronted with only the grimmest of economic and social prospects--begin to dance and then lose themselves in the freedom of the dance, the moment is truly cathartic. On-screen it means the movie's almost over.", "a plausible suspect in Whale's death, but Fraser plays him (ingratiatingly) as a lovable lunk, and the conception removes whatever tension the material might have had.", "leaves her (sometimes horrified) in the dust. I might even vote for her." ] ]
test	51321	[ "What is the narrator's main issue with marriage in general?", "What has kept him from divorcing his wife?", "What is one word to describe the narrator?", "What finally pushed the narrator into getting an Ego Prime?", "What type of Ego Prime does the narrator decide to go with?", "How does the narrator decide that the Prime is going to work perfectly in his place?", "After having multiple affairs, what does the narrator slowly begin to realize?", "What does the narrator see that makes him go crazy?", "How does the narrator finally realize that there is a real issue going on.", "What is the irony at the end of the story?" ]	[ [ "The wife never does as she is told.", "The husband is expected to do too much, while the wife is not expected to do anything other than keep the house clean.", "Wives are allowed to see other men, but husbands must remain faithful, according to the law.", "It lasts forever." ], [ "It will be too costly", "He really loves her.", "It is illegal to divorce.", "Why divorce her when he can be with other women on the side AND have someone at home to take care of him?" ], [ "Honest.", "Loyal.", "Adulterer.", "Slow." ], [ "His boss basically forced him to get one so if the boss got caught with his Ego Prime, then he would be able to turn the narrator in for his, as well.", "He was over his wife's nagging, and with an Ego Prime, he could hang with the guys and get away from her/", "He is sick of his life, and he wants to run away. The Ego Prime is the only way to do this and not draw attention to himself.", "He just had to have an affair with his new secretary." ], [ "The Super Deluxe model because he wanted to get EVERYTHING available in a Prime, and he couldn't worry about the cost.", "The deluxe model because he wanted to be able to have almost all of the bells and whistles available, but he still needed to be able to afford it.", "The base model because the price was so steep.", "He got the mid-range model. It was exactly what he needed." ], [ "Marge ignores the Prime, just like she ignores him.", "They are fighting within minutes.", "Marge loves on the Prime the same way she loves on him.", "Marge goes directly to bed without any interaction with the Prime, as she would normally do with him, as well." ], [ "The Prime is working to make Marge fall in love with him again.", "He realizes that he was a bad husband all along and that Marge was not to blame for their issues.", "He might actually have some feelings for Marge after all.", "The Prime is not doing its job at all, and Marge is on the verge of finding out. " ], [ "The Prime has been spying on him all along, and he is going to go to jail for breaking the law.", "Marge is having an affair with another man/", "Marge is becoming intimate with the Prime.", "The Prime has been sleeping with his secretary." ], [ "Marge tells him that she is in love with the Prime, and he needs to move out.", "He finds the Prime locked in the closet, and the Prime refuses to go back around Marge because she really is a beast.", "He loses his job and the Prime is the one who takes his place.", "He goes to take money out of his accounts, but they are all drained." ], [ "The narrator's need for an affair makes him lose more than just his marriage.", "The narrator says that husbands just need to be listened to and to feel important. That is also the only thing that a wife needs, as well. ", "It takes the narrator having multiple affairs to realize that Marge was all he ever needed or wanted.", "The narrator bought the prime to solve his problems, but he just caused him more." ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long\n enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was\n crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling\n detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband,\n which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a \"beastly\n headache\" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half\n she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we\n got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case.\nMaybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to\n envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live\n with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a\n while with one of the stenographers and get away with it.", "It's so\npermanent\n.\n\n\n Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the\n Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968,\n and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got\n their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse\n Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if\n I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved.\n\n\n You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man\n has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime.\n\n\n So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep\n Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long.", "\"Georgie?\" she said.\n\n\n \"Uh?\"\n\n\n \"Do you still love me?\"\n\n\n I set the paper down and stared at her. \"How's that? Of course I\n still—\"\n\n\n \"Well, sometimes you don't act much like it.\"\n\n\n \"Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight.\" Damn that\n perfume!\n\n\n \"Oh,\" said Marge.\n\n\n \"In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—\"\n\n\n \"Sleep,\" said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her\n voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand.", "One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really\n meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which\n happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by\n candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly\n because I liked it.\n\n\n We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old\n times.\nVery\nold times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge\n again—really\nlooking\nat her, watching the light catch in her hair,\n almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not\n glint.\n\n\n As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night,\n she was practically ravishing.\n\n\n \"What are you doing to her?\" I asked George Prime later, out in the\n workshop.", "Every man who's been married eight years has a sanctuary. He builds it\n up and maintains it against assault in the very teeth of his wife's\n natural instinct to clean, poke, pry and rearrange things. Sometimes\n it takes him years of diligent work to establish his hideout and be\n confident that it will stay inviolate, but if he starts early enough,\n and sticks with it long enough, and is fierce enough and persistent\n enough and crafty enough, he'll probably win in the end. The girls hate\n him for it, but he'll win.", "\"Why, nothing,\" said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool\n me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when\n I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.\n\n\n \"There must be\nsomething\n.\"\n\n\n George Prime shrugged. \"Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time\n telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention\n to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can\n give you page references.\"\n\n\n I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts\n run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell\n when an odd bit of information will come in useful.\n\n\n \"Well, you must be doing quite a job,\" I said.\nI'd\nnever managed to\n warm Marge up much.\n\n\n \"I try,\" said George Prime.", "\"Oh, I'm not complaining,\" I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's\n feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it\n was in character. \"I was just curious.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, George.\"\n\n\n \"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, George.\"\n\n\n But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous\n redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle\n except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and\n wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.\nThe next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a\n liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. \"\nWhat\n are you doing out on the street?\n\"\n\n\n He gave me my martyred look. \"Just buying some bourbon. You were out.\"", "But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.\nMarge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having\n a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was\n hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out\n for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought\n me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a\n good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.\n\n\n I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to\n mellow sometime.\n\n\n But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too\n much.", "\"But you're not supposed to be off the premises—\"\n\n\n \"Marge asked me to come. I couldn't tell her I was sorry, but her\n husband wouldn't let me, could I?\"\n\n\n \"Well, certainly not—\"\n\n\n \"You want me to keep her happy, don't you? You don't want her to get\n suspicious.\"\n\n\n \"No, but suppose somebody saw us together! If she ever got a hint—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry,\" George Prime said contritely. \"It seemed the right thing\n to do.\nYou\nwould have done it. At least that's what my judgment\n center maintained. We had quite an argument.\"\n\n\n \"Well, tell your judgment center to use a little sense,\" I snapped. \"I\n don't want it to happen again.\"", "Marge was a dream to look at, with her tawny hair and her sulky eyes\n and a shape that could set your teeth chattering—but that was where\n the dream stopped.", "With some men, it's just a box on their dressers, or a desk, or a\n corner of an unused back room. But I had set my sights high early in\n the game. With me, it was the whole workshop in the garage.\nAt first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she\n said. I told her I didn't\nwant\nher to clean it up. She could clean\n the whole house as often as she chose, but\nI\nwould clean up the\n workshop.\n\n\n After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a\n strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood\n shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next.\n A wrench would be back on the rack—upside down, of course. An open\n paint can would have a cover on it.", "\"She's a perfectly good secretary,\" I blurted, and kicked myself\n mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.\n\n\n Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong\n at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no\n stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.\n\n\n Harry Folsom administered the\ncoup de grace\nat coffee next morning.\n \"What you need is an Ego Prime,\" he said with a grin. \"Solve all your\n problems. I hear they work like a charm.\"\n\n\n I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. \"Don't be\n ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a\n thing. It's—it's indecent.\"", "Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying\n anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was\n there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the\n opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive.\n\n\n That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over\n during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my\n mouth, and then she said, \"I hear you got a new secretary today.\"\n\n\n I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear.\n\n\n Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. \"I also hear that she's\n five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome.\"\n\n\n Marge had quite a spy system.\n\n\n \"She couldn't be much of a secretary,\" she added.", "PRIME DIFFERENCE\nBy ALAN E. NOURSE\n\n\n Illustrated by SCHOENHEER\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction June 1957.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nBeing two men rolled out of one would solve\n \nmy problems—but which one would I be?\nI suppose that every guy reaches a point once in his lifetime when he\n gets one hundred and forty per cent fed up with his wife.\n\n\n Understand now—I've got nothing against marriage or any thing\n like that. Marriage is great. It's a good old red-blooded American\n Institution. Except that it's got one defect in it big enough to throw\n a cat through, especially when you happen to be married to a woman\n like Marge—", "I knew better than to try. Marge was already so jealous that I couldn't\n even smile at the company receptionist without a twinge of guilt. Give\n Marge something real to howl about, and I'd be ready for the Rehab\n Center in a week.\n\n\n But I'd underestimated Marge. She didn't need anything real, as I found\n out when Jeree came along.\n\n\n Business was booming and the secretaries at the office got shuffled\n around from time to time. Since I had an executive-type job, I got an\n executive-type secretary. Her name was Jeree and she was gorgeous. As\n a matter of fact, she was better than gorgeous. She was the sort of\n secretary every businessman ought to have in his office. Not to do any\n work—just to sit there.", "As I said, the old Marge was never like the new one. Marge Prime makes\n Jeree and Sybil and Dorothy and Dawn and Jane and Ruby all look pretty\n sad by comparison.\n\n\n She cooks like a dream and she always brings me my pipe and slippers.\n As they say, there's nothing a man likes more than to be appreciated.\n\n\n A hundred per cent appreciated, with a factory guarantee to correct any\n slippage, which would only be temporary, anyhow.\n\n\n One of these days, we'll take that second honeymoon. But I think we'll\n go to Hawaii.", "\"I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot\n him out and use him over again. But let's not talk about that any more.\n We've got more interesting things to discuss.\"\n\n\n Maybe we had, but we didn't waste a lot of time talking. It was the\n Marge I'd once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have\n been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully\n porous, the old Marge was\nnever\nlike this—\n\n\n I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt\n the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really\n happened.\n\n\n That Marge always had been a sly one.\n\n\n I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda.\nMarge probably thought she'd really put me where I belonged, but the\n laugh was on her, after all.", "Then I heard the front door open and there was Marge, her arms full of\n grocery bundles. \"Why, darling! You're home early!\"\n\n\n I just blinked for a moment. Then I said, \"You're still here!\"\n\n\n \"Of course. Where did you think I'd be?\"\n\n\n \"But I thought—I mean the ticket office—\"\n\n\n She set down the bundles and kissed me and looked up into my eyes,\n almost smiling, half reproachful. \"You didn't really think I'd go\n running off with something out of a lab, did you?\"\n\n\n \"Then—you knew?\"", "\"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all,\" I'd say. \"You'll learn\n to like her after a bit.\"\n\n\n \"Of course I like her,\" George Prime said. \"You told me to, didn't you?\n Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all.\"\n\n\n He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. \"You're sure\n you understand the exchange mechanism?\" I asked. I didn't want any\n foul-ups there, as you can imagine.\n\n\n \"Perfectly,\" said George Prime. \"When you buzz the recall, I wait for\n the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop,\n and you take over.\"\n\n\n \"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off.\"", "The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was\n beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I\n could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for\n a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice\n job.\n\n\n Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized\n with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss,\n despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After\n dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and\n said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by\n the fire.\n\n\n I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living\n room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair\n I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite\n perfume." ], [ "It's so\npermanent\n.\n\n\n Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the\n Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968,\n and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got\n their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse\n Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if\n I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved.\n\n\n You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man\n has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime.\n\n\n So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep\n Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long.", "She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long\n enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was\n crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling\n detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband,\n which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a \"beastly\n headache\" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half\n she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we\n got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case.\nMaybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to\n envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live\n with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a\n while with one of the stenographers and get away with it.", "\"Georgie?\" she said.\n\n\n \"Uh?\"\n\n\n \"Do you still love me?\"\n\n\n I set the paper down and stared at her. \"How's that? Of course I\n still—\"\n\n\n \"Well, sometimes you don't act much like it.\"\n\n\n \"Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight.\" Damn that\n perfume!\n\n\n \"Oh,\" said Marge.\n\n\n \"In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—\"\n\n\n \"Sleep,\" said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her\n voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand.", "One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really\n meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which\n happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by\n candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly\n because I liked it.\n\n\n We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old\n times.\nVery\nold times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge\n again—really\nlooking\nat her, watching the light catch in her hair,\n almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not\n glint.\n\n\n As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night,\n she was practically ravishing.\n\n\n \"What are you doing to her?\" I asked George Prime later, out in the\n workshop.", "Every man who's been married eight years has a sanctuary. He builds it\n up and maintains it against assault in the very teeth of his wife's\n natural instinct to clean, poke, pry and rearrange things. Sometimes\n it takes him years of diligent work to establish his hideout and be\n confident that it will stay inviolate, but if he starts early enough,\n and sticks with it long enough, and is fierce enough and persistent\n enough and crafty enough, he'll probably win in the end. The girls hate\n him for it, but he'll win.", "I knew better than to try. Marge was already so jealous that I couldn't\n even smile at the company receptionist without a twinge of guilt. Give\n Marge something real to howl about, and I'd be ready for the Rehab\n Center in a week.\n\n\n But I'd underestimated Marge. She didn't need anything real, as I found\n out when Jeree came along.\n\n\n Business was booming and the secretaries at the office got shuffled\n around from time to time. Since I had an executive-type job, I got an\n executive-type secretary. Her name was Jeree and she was gorgeous. As\n a matter of fact, she was better than gorgeous. She was the sort of\n secretary every businessman ought to have in his office. Not to do any\n work—just to sit there.", "With some men, it's just a box on their dressers, or a desk, or a\n corner of an unused back room. But I had set my sights high early in\n the game. With me, it was the whole workshop in the garage.\nAt first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she\n said. I told her I didn't\nwant\nher to clean it up. She could clean\n the whole house as often as she chose, but\nI\nwould clean up the\n workshop.\n\n\n After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a\n strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood\n shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next.\n A wrench would be back on the rack—upside down, of course. An open\n paint can would have a cover on it.", "\"But you're not supposed to be off the premises—\"\n\n\n \"Marge asked me to come. I couldn't tell her I was sorry, but her\n husband wouldn't let me, could I?\"\n\n\n \"Well, certainly not—\"\n\n\n \"You want me to keep her happy, don't you? You don't want her to get\n suspicious.\"\n\n\n \"No, but suppose somebody saw us together! If she ever got a hint—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry,\" George Prime said contritely. \"It seemed the right thing\n to do.\nYou\nwould have done it. At least that's what my judgment\n center maintained. We had quite an argument.\"\n\n\n \"Well, tell your judgment center to use a little sense,\" I snapped. \"I\n don't want it to happen again.\"", "Then I heard the front door open and there was Marge, her arms full of\n grocery bundles. \"Why, darling! You're home early!\"\n\n\n I just blinked for a moment. Then I said, \"You're still here!\"\n\n\n \"Of course. Where did you think I'd be?\"\n\n\n \"But I thought—I mean the ticket office—\"\n\n\n She set down the bundles and kissed me and looked up into my eyes,\n almost smiling, half reproachful. \"You didn't really think I'd go\n running off with something out of a lab, did you?\"\n\n\n \"Then—you knew?\"", "\"She's a perfectly good secretary,\" I blurted, and kicked myself\n mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.\n\n\n Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong\n at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no\n stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.\n\n\n Harry Folsom administered the\ncoup de grace\nat coffee next morning.\n \"What you need is an Ego Prime,\" he said with a grin. \"Solve all your\n problems. I hear they work like a charm.\"\n\n\n I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. \"Don't be\n ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a\n thing. It's—it's indecent.\"", "Then it struck me. Poor Marge? Poor sucker George! No Prime in his\n right circuits would behave this way without some human guidance and\n that meant only one thing: Marge had spotted him. It had happened\n before. Couple of nasty court battles I'd read about. And she'd known\n all about George Prime.\nFor how long?\nWhen I got home, the house was empty. George Prime wasn't in his\n closet. And Marge wasn't in the house.\n\n\n They were gone.\n\n\n I started to call the police, but caught myself just in time. I\n couldn't very well complain to the cops that my wife had run off with\n an android.\n\n\n Worse yet, I could get twenty years for having an illegal Prime\n wandering around.\n\n\n I sat down and poured myself a stiff drink.\n\n\n My own wife deserting me for a pile of bearings.\n\n\n It was indecent.", "But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.\nMarge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having\n a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was\n hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out\n for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought\n me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a\n good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.\n\n\n I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to\n mellow sometime.\n\n\n But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too\n much.", "PRIME DIFFERENCE\nBy ALAN E. NOURSE\n\n\n Illustrated by SCHOENHEER\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction June 1957.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nBeing two men rolled out of one would solve\n \nmy problems—but which one would I be?\nI suppose that every guy reaches a point once in his lifetime when he\n gets one hundred and forty per cent fed up with his wife.\n\n\n Understand now—I've got nothing against marriage or any thing\n like that. Marriage is great. It's a good old red-blooded American\n Institution. Except that it's got one defect in it big enough to throw\n a cat through, especially when you happen to be married to a woman\n like Marge—", "\"Certainly I knew, silly. You didn't do a very good job of instructing\n him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of\n his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to\n run off with him to Hawaii or someplace.\"\n\n\n \"Bermuda,\" I said.\n\n\n And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek\n against my chest.\n\n\n \"Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn't be,\" she said. \"He\n was like you, but he wasn't\nyou\n, darling. And all I ever want is you.\n I just never appreciated you before....\"\n\n\n I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George\n Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She'd never been more beautiful. \"But what\n did you do with him?\"", "\"Why, nothing,\" said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool\n me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when\n I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.\n\n\n \"There must be\nsomething\n.\"\n\n\n George Prime shrugged. \"Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time\n telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention\n to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can\n give you page references.\"\n\n\n I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts\n run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell\n when an odd bit of information will come in useful.\n\n\n \"Well, you must be doing quite a job,\" I said.\nI'd\nnever managed to\n warm Marge up much.\n\n\n \"I try,\" said George Prime.", "Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying\n anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was\n there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the\n opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive.\n\n\n That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over\n during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my\n mouth, and then she said, \"I hear you got a new secretary today.\"\n\n\n I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear.\n\n\n Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. \"I also hear that she's\n five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome.\"\n\n\n Marge had quite a spy system.\n\n\n \"She couldn't be much of a secretary,\" she added.", "I always knew. I screamed loudly and bitterly. I ranted and raved. I\n swore I'd rig up a booby-trap with a shotgun.\n\n\n So she quit trying to clean in there and just went in once in a while\n to take a look around. I fixed that with the old toothpick-in-the-door\n routine. Every time she so much as set foot in that workshop, she had a\n battle on her hands for the next week or so. She could count on it. It\n was that predictable.\n\n\n She never found out how I knew, and after seven years or so, it wore\n her down. She didn't go into the workshop any more.\n\n\n As I said, you've got to be persistent, but you'll win.\n\n\n Eventually.\n\n\n If you're\nreally\npersistent.", "Marge was a dream to look at, with her tawny hair and her sulky eyes\n and a shape that could set your teeth chattering—but that was where\n the dream stopped.", "Harry shrugged. \"Just joking, old man, just joking. Still, it's fun to\n think about, eh? Freedom from wife. Absolutely safe and harmless. Not\n even too expensive, if you've got the right contacts. And I've got a\n friend who knows a guy—\"\n\n\n Just then, Jeree walked past us and flashed me a big smile. I gripped\n my cup for dear life and still spilled coffee on my tie.\n\n\n As I said, a guy gets fed up.\n\n\n And maybe opportunity would only knock once.\n\n\n And an Ego Prime would solve all my problems, as Harry had told me.\nIt was completely illegal, of course. The wonder was that Ego Prime,\n Inc., ever got to put their product on the market at all, once the\n nation's housewives got wind of just what their product was.", "\"Oh, I'm not complaining,\" I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's\n feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it\n was in character. \"I was just curious.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, George.\"\n\n\n \"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, George.\"\n\n\n But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous\n redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle\n except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and\n wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.\nThe next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a\n liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. \"\nWhat\n are you doing out on the street?\n\"\n\n\n He gave me my martyred look. \"Just buying some bourbon. You were out.\"" ], [ "She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long\n enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was\n crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling\n detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband,\n which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a \"beastly\n headache\" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half\n she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we\n got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case.\nMaybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to\n envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live\n with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a\n while with one of the stenographers and get away with it.", "One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really\n meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which\n happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by\n candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly\n because I liked it.\n\n\n We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old\n times.\nVery\nold times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge\n again—really\nlooking\nat her, watching the light catch in her hair,\n almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not\n glint.\n\n\n As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night,\n she was practically ravishing.\n\n\n \"What are you doing to her?\" I asked George Prime later, out in the\n workshop.", "Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying\n anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was\n there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the\n opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive.\n\n\n That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over\n during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my\n mouth, and then she said, \"I hear you got a new secretary today.\"\n\n\n I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear.\n\n\n Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. \"I also hear that she's\n five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome.\"\n\n\n Marge had quite a spy system.\n\n\n \"She couldn't be much of a secretary,\" she added.", "We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start\n for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car,\n business suit on, briefcase under his arm.\n\n\n I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into\n the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him\n off and then drove away in the car.\n\n\n Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!\nNeedless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle\n with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.\n\n\n For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a\n little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all\n the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that\n he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same\n whenever I took him out of his closet.", "Marge was a dream to look at, with her tawny hair and her sulky eyes\n and a shape that could set your teeth chattering—but that was where\n the dream stopped.", "\"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all,\" I'd say. \"You'll learn\n to like her after a bit.\"\n\n\n \"Of course I like her,\" George Prime said. \"You told me to, didn't you?\n Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all.\"\n\n\n He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. \"You're sure\n you understand the exchange mechanism?\" I asked. I didn't want any\n foul-ups there, as you can imagine.\n\n\n \"Perfectly,\" said George Prime. \"When you buzz the recall, I wait for\n the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop,\n and you take over.\"\n\n\n \"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off.\"", "I assumed he was just being polite. You didn't come to the back door\n for Utility models.\n\n\n \"Or perhaps you'd require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful\n workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically\n complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work,\n you know. Social engagements, conferences—\"\n\n\n I was shaking my head. \"I want a\nSuper\nDeluxe model,\" I told him.\n\n\n He grinned and winked. \"Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication.\n Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very\n awkward—\"\n\n\n I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were\n any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom.", "But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.\nMarge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having\n a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was\n hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out\n for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought\n me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a\n good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.\n\n\n I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to\n mellow sometime.\n\n\n But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too\n much.", "George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on\n the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same\n mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical\n difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression\n buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop\n George Prime dead in his tracks.\n\n\n He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a\n pile of gears.\n\n\n I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course.", "\"Georgie?\" she said.\n\n\n \"Uh?\"\n\n\n \"Do you still love me?\"\n\n\n I set the paper down and stared at her. \"How's that? Of course I\n still—\"\n\n\n \"Well, sometimes you don't act much like it.\"\n\n\n \"Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight.\" Damn that\n perfume!\n\n\n \"Oh,\" said Marge.\n\n\n \"In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—\"\n\n\n \"Sleep,\" said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her\n voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand.", "\"Why, nothing,\" said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool\n me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when\n I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.\n\n\n \"There must be\nsomething\n.\"\n\n\n George Prime shrugged. \"Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time\n telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention\n to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can\n give you page references.\"\n\n\n I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts\n run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell\n when an odd bit of information will come in useful.\n\n\n \"Well, you must be doing quite a job,\" I said.\nI'd\nnever managed to\n warm Marge up much.\n\n\n \"I try,\" said George Prime.", "\"I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot\n him out and use him over again. But let's not talk about that any more.\n We've got more interesting things to discuss.\"\n\n\n Maybe we had, but we didn't waste a lot of time talking. It was the\n Marge I'd once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have\n been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully\n porous, the old Marge was\nnever\nlike this—\n\n\n I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt\n the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really\n happened.\n\n\n That Marge always had been a sly one.\n\n\n I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda.\nMarge probably thought she'd really put me where I belonged, but the\n laugh was on her, after all.", "I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked\n outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty\n woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the\n recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime\n when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked\n in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a\n tired look on his face.\n\"Meet George Faircloth Prime,\" the technician said, grinning at me like\n a nursing mother.\n\n\n I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly.\n Nothing flabby about it.\n\n\n I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. \"Come on, Brother,\" I\n said. \"You've got a job to do.\"\n\n\n But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night.", "\"She's a perfectly good secretary,\" I blurted, and kicked myself\n mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.\n\n\n Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong\n at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no\n stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.\n\n\n Harry Folsom administered the\ncoup de grace\nat coffee next morning.\n \"What you need is an Ego Prime,\" he said with a grin. \"Solve all your\n problems. I hear they work like a charm.\"\n\n\n I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. \"Don't be\n ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a\n thing. It's—it's indecent.\"", "With some men, it's just a box on their dressers, or a desk, or a\n corner of an unused back room. But I had set my sights high early in\n the game. With me, it was the whole workshop in the garage.\nAt first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she\n said. I told her I didn't\nwant\nher to clean it up. She could clean\n the whole house as often as she chose, but\nI\nwould clean up the\n workshop.\n\n\n After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a\n strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood\n shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next.\n A wrench would be back on the rack—upside down, of course. An open\n paint can would have a cover on it.", "Harry Folsom told his friend who knew a guy, and a few greenbacks got\n lost somewhere, and I found myself looking at a greasy little man with\n a black mustache and a bald spot, up in a dingy fourth-story warehouse\n off lower Broadway.\n\n\n \"Ah, yes,\" the little man said. \"Mr. Faircloth. We've been expecting\n you.\"\nI didn't like the looks of the guy any more than the looks of the\n place. \"I've been told you can supply me with a—\"\n\n\n He coughed. \"Yes, yes. I understand. It might be possible.\" He fingered\n his mustache and regarded me from pouchy eyes. \"Busy executives often\n come to us to avoid the—ah—unpleasantness of formal arrangements.\n Naturally, we only act as agents, you might say. We never see the\n merchandise ourselves—\" He wiped his hands on his trousers. \"Now were\n you interested in the ordinary Utility model, Mr. Faircloth?\"", "I knew better than to try. Marge was already so jealous that I couldn't\n even smile at the company receptionist without a twinge of guilt. Give\n Marge something real to howl about, and I'd be ready for the Rehab\n Center in a week.\n\n\n But I'd underestimated Marge. She didn't need anything real, as I found\n out when Jeree came along.\n\n\n Business was booming and the secretaries at the office got shuffled\n around from time to time. Since I had an executive-type job, I got an\n executive-type secretary. Her name was Jeree and she was gorgeous. As\n a matter of fact, she was better than gorgeous. She was the sort of\n secretary every businessman ought to have in his office. Not to do any\n work—just to sit there.", "Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour\n or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big\n closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a\n manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night,\n there he was, just waiting to be put to work.\n\n\n After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left\n there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and\n switched on the free-behavior circuits.\n\n\n \"Go to it, Brother,\" I said.\n\n\n George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the\n house.\n\n\n Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.\n\n\n It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on\n the corner and headed uptown.", "George Prime had remote controls, as well as a completely recorded\n neurological analogue of his boss, who was me. George Prime thought\n what I thought about the same things I did in the same way I did. The\n only difference was that what I told George Prime to do, George Prime\n did.\n\n\n If I told him to go to a business conference in San Francisco and make\n the smallest possible concessions for the largest possible orders,\n he would go there and do precisely that. His signature would be my\n signature. It would hold up in court.\n\n\n And if I told him that my wife Marge was really a sweet, good-hearted\n girl and that he was to stay home and keep her quiet and happy any time\n I chose, he'd do that, too.", "\"Certainly I knew, silly. You didn't do a very good job of instructing\n him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of\n his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to\n run off with him to Hawaii or someplace.\"\n\n\n \"Bermuda,\" I said.\n\n\n And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek\n against my chest.\n\n\n \"Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn't be,\" she said. \"He\n was like you, but he wasn't\nyou\n, darling. And all I ever want is you.\n I just never appreciated you before....\"\n\n\n I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George\n Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She'd never been more beautiful. \"But what\n did you do with him?\"" ], [ "\"She's a perfectly good secretary,\" I blurted, and kicked myself\n mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.\n\n\n Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong\n at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no\n stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.\n\n\n Harry Folsom administered the\ncoup de grace\nat coffee next morning.\n \"What you need is an Ego Prime,\" he said with a grin. \"Solve all your\n problems. I hear they work like a charm.\"\n\n\n I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. \"Don't be\n ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a\n thing. It's—it's indecent.\"", "Harry shrugged. \"Just joking, old man, just joking. Still, it's fun to\n think about, eh? Freedom from wife. Absolutely safe and harmless. Not\n even too expensive, if you've got the right contacts. And I've got a\n friend who knows a guy—\"\n\n\n Just then, Jeree walked past us and flashed me a big smile. I gripped\n my cup for dear life and still spilled coffee on my tie.\n\n\n As I said, a guy gets fed up.\n\n\n And maybe opportunity would only knock once.\n\n\n And an Ego Prime would solve all my problems, as Harry had told me.\nIt was completely illegal, of course. The wonder was that Ego Prime,\n Inc., ever got to put their product on the market at all, once the\n nation's housewives got wind of just what their product was.", "It's so\npermanent\n.\n\n\n Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the\n Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968,\n and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got\n their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse\n Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if\n I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved.\n\n\n You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man\n has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime.\n\n\n So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep\n Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long.", "Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour\n or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big\n closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a\n manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night,\n there he was, just waiting to be put to work.\n\n\n After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left\n there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and\n switched on the free-behavior circuits.\n\n\n \"Go to it, Brother,\" I said.\n\n\n George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the\n house.\n\n\n Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.\n\n\n It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on\n the corner and headed uptown.", "We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start\n for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car,\n business suit on, briefcase under his arm.\n\n\n I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into\n the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him\n off and then drove away in the car.\n\n\n Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!\nNeedless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle\n with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.\n\n\n For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a\n little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all\n the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that\n he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same\n whenever I took him out of his closet.", "George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on\n the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same\n mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical\n difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression\n buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop\n George Prime dead in his tracks.\n\n\n He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a\n pile of gears.\n\n\n I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course.", "The next evening, I activated George Prime and caught the taxi at the\n corner, but I called Ruby and broke my date with her. I took in an\n early movie alone and was back by ten o'clock. I left the cab at the\n corner and walked quietly up the path toward the garage.\n\n\n Then I stopped. I could see Marge and George Prime through the living\n room windows.\n\n\n George Prime was kissing my wife the way I hadn't kissed her in eight\n long years. It made my hair stand on end. And Marge wasn't exactly\n fighting him off, either. She was coming back for more. After a little,\n the lights went off.\n\n\n George Prime was a Super Deluxe model, all right.\nI dashed into the workshop and punched the recall button as hard as I\n could, swearing under my breath. How long had this been going on? I\n punched the button again, viciously, and waited.\n\n\n George Prime didn't come out.", "I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked\n outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty\n woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the\n recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime\n when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked\n in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a\n tired look on his face.\n\"Meet George Faircloth Prime,\" the technician said, grinning at me like\n a nursing mother.\n\n\n I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly.\n Nothing flabby about it.\n\n\n I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. \"Come on, Brother,\" I\n said. \"You've got a job to do.\"\n\n\n But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night.", "George Prime had remote controls, as well as a completely recorded\n neurological analogue of his boss, who was me. George Prime thought\n what I thought about the same things I did in the same way I did. The\n only difference was that what I told George Prime to do, George Prime\n did.\n\n\n If I told him to go to a business conference in San Francisco and make\n the smallest possible concessions for the largest possible orders,\n he would go there and do precisely that. His signature would be my\n signature. It would hold up in court.\n\n\n And if I told him that my wife Marge was really a sweet, good-hearted\n girl and that he was to stay home and keep her quiet and happy any time\n I chose, he'd do that, too.", "But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.\nMarge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having\n a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was\n hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out\n for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought\n me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a\n good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.\n\n\n I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to\n mellow sometime.\n\n\n But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too\n much.", "Then it struck me. Poor Marge? Poor sucker George! No Prime in his\n right circuits would behave this way without some human guidance and\n that meant only one thing: Marge had spotted him. It had happened\n before. Couple of nasty court battles I'd read about. And she'd known\n all about George Prime.\nFor how long?\nWhen I got home, the house was empty. George Prime wasn't in his\n closet. And Marge wasn't in the house.\n\n\n They were gone.\n\n\n I started to call the police, but caught myself just in time. I\n couldn't very well complain to the cops that my wife had run off with\n an android.\n\n\n Worse yet, I could get twenty years for having an illegal Prime\n wandering around.\n\n\n I sat down and poured myself a stiff drink.\n\n\n My own wife deserting me for a pile of bearings.\n\n\n It was indecent.", "George Prime looked pained. \"Really, old man! I'm a Super Deluxe model,\n remember? I don't have fourteen activated Hunyadi tubes up in this\n cranial vault of mine just for nothing. You're the one that's nervous.\n I'll take care of everything. Relax.\"\n\n\n So I did.\n\n\n Jeree made good all her tacit promises and then some. She had a very\n cozy little apartment on 34th Street where we went to relax after\n a hard day at the office. When we weren't doing the town, that is.\n As long as Jeree didn't try too much conversation, everything was\n wonderful.\n\n\n And then, when Jeree got a little boring, there was Sybil in the\n accounting department. Or Dorothy in promotion. Or Jane. Or Ingrid.\n\n\n I could go on at some length, but I won't. I was building quite a\n reputation for myself around the office.", "Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the\n novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It\n took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable\n program.\n\n\n Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally \"out\" while formally\n \"in.\" Sometimes I took Sunday nights \"out\" if things got too sticky\n around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime\n cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can't completely\n trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is.\n\n\n There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to\n quick-step some questions about my work at the office—there was no\n way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular\n two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the\n meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had.", "\"Oh, I'm not complaining,\" I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's\n feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it\n was in character. \"I was just curious.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, George.\"\n\n\n \"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, George.\"\n\n\n But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous\n redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle\n except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and\n wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.\nThe next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a\n liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. \"\nWhat\n are you doing out on the street?\n\"\n\n\n He gave me my martyred look. \"Just buying some bourbon. You were out.\"", "\"Why, nothing,\" said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool\n me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when\n I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.\n\n\n \"There must be\nsomething\n.\"\n\n\n George Prime shrugged. \"Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time\n telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention\n to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can\n give you page references.\"\n\n\n I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts\n run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell\n when an odd bit of information will come in useful.\n\n\n \"Well, you must be doing quite a job,\" I said.\nI'd\nnever managed to\n warm Marge up much.\n\n\n \"I try,\" said George Prime.", "\"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all,\" I'd say. \"You'll learn\n to like her after a bit.\"\n\n\n \"Of course I like her,\" George Prime said. \"You told me to, didn't you?\n Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all.\"\n\n\n He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. \"You're sure\n you understand the exchange mechanism?\" I asked. I didn't want any\n foul-ups there, as you can imagine.\n\n\n \"Perfectly,\" said George Prime. \"When you buzz the recall, I wait for\n the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop,\n and you take over.\"\n\n\n \"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off.\"", "I assumed he was just being polite. You didn't come to the back door\n for Utility models.\n\n\n \"Or perhaps you'd require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful\n workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically\n complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work,\n you know. Social engagements, conferences—\"\n\n\n I was shaking my head. \"I want a\nSuper\nDeluxe model,\" I told him.\n\n\n He grinned and winked. \"Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication.\n Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very\n awkward—\"\n\n\n I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were\n any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom.", "The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was\n beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I\n could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for\n a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice\n job.\n\n\n Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized\n with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss,\n despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After\n dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and\n said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by\n the fire.\n\n\n I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living\n room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair\n I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite\n perfume.", "\"But you're not supposed to be off the premises—\"\n\n\n \"Marge asked me to come. I couldn't tell her I was sorry, but her\n husband wouldn't let me, could I?\"\n\n\n \"Well, certainly not—\"\n\n\n \"You want me to keep her happy, don't you? You don't want her to get\n suspicious.\"\n\n\n \"No, but suppose somebody saw us together! If she ever got a hint—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry,\" George Prime said contritely. \"It seemed the right thing\n to do.\nYou\nwould have done it. At least that's what my judgment\n center maintained. We had quite an argument.\"\n\n\n \"Well, tell your judgment center to use a little sense,\" I snapped. \"I\n don't want it to happen again.\"", "From the first, there was rigid Federal control and laws regulating the\n use of Primes right down to the local level. You could get a license\n for a Utility model Prime if you were a big business executive, or a\n high public official, or a movie star, or something like that; but even\n then his circuits had to be inspected every two months, and he had to\n have a thousand built-in Paralyzers, and you had to specify in advance\n exactly what you wanted your Prime to be able to do when, where, how,\n why, and under what circumstances.\n\n\n The law didn't leave a man much leeway.\n\n\n But everybody knew that if you\nreally\nwanted a personal Prime with\n all his circuits open and no questions asked, you could get one. Black\n market prices were steep and you ran your own risk, but it could be\n done." ], [ "\"She's a perfectly good secretary,\" I blurted, and kicked myself\n mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.\n\n\n Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong\n at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no\n stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.\n\n\n Harry Folsom administered the\ncoup de grace\nat coffee next morning.\n \"What you need is an Ego Prime,\" he said with a grin. \"Solve all your\n problems. I hear they work like a charm.\"\n\n\n I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. \"Don't be\n ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a\n thing. It's—it's indecent.\"", "Harry shrugged. \"Just joking, old man, just joking. Still, it's fun to\n think about, eh? Freedom from wife. Absolutely safe and harmless. Not\n even too expensive, if you've got the right contacts. And I've got a\n friend who knows a guy—\"\n\n\n Just then, Jeree walked past us and flashed me a big smile. I gripped\n my cup for dear life and still spilled coffee on my tie.\n\n\n As I said, a guy gets fed up.\n\n\n And maybe opportunity would only knock once.\n\n\n And an Ego Prime would solve all my problems, as Harry had told me.\nIt was completely illegal, of course. The wonder was that Ego Prime,\n Inc., ever got to put their product on the market at all, once the\n nation's housewives got wind of just what their product was.", "It's so\npermanent\n.\n\n\n Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the\n Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968,\n and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got\n their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse\n Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if\n I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved.\n\n\n You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man\n has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime.\n\n\n So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep\n Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long.", "George Prime had remote controls, as well as a completely recorded\n neurological analogue of his boss, who was me. George Prime thought\n what I thought about the same things I did in the same way I did. The\n only difference was that what I told George Prime to do, George Prime\n did.\n\n\n If I told him to go to a business conference in San Francisco and make\n the smallest possible concessions for the largest possible orders,\n he would go there and do precisely that. His signature would be my\n signature. It would hold up in court.\n\n\n And if I told him that my wife Marge was really a sweet, good-hearted\n girl and that he was to stay home and keep her quiet and happy any time\n I chose, he'd do that, too.", "George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on\n the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same\n mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical\n difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression\n buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop\n George Prime dead in his tracks.\n\n\n He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a\n pile of gears.\n\n\n I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course.", "We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start\n for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car,\n business suit on, briefcase under his arm.\n\n\n I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into\n the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him\n off and then drove away in the car.\n\n\n Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!\nNeedless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle\n with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.\n\n\n For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a\n little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all\n the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that\n he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same\n whenever I took him out of his closet.", "I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked\n outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty\n woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the\n recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime\n when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked\n in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a\n tired look on his face.\n\"Meet George Faircloth Prime,\" the technician said, grinning at me like\n a nursing mother.\n\n\n I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly.\n Nothing flabby about it.\n\n\n I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. \"Come on, Brother,\" I\n said. \"You've got a job to do.\"\n\n\n But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night.", "Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour\n or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big\n closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a\n manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night,\n there he was, just waiting to be put to work.\n\n\n After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left\n there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and\n switched on the free-behavior circuits.\n\n\n \"Go to it, Brother,\" I said.\n\n\n George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the\n house.\n\n\n Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.\n\n\n It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on\n the corner and headed uptown.", "But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.\nMarge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having\n a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was\n hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out\n for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought\n me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a\n good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.\n\n\n I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to\n mellow sometime.\n\n\n But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too\n much.", "George Prime looked pained. \"Really, old man! I'm a Super Deluxe model,\n remember? I don't have fourteen activated Hunyadi tubes up in this\n cranial vault of mine just for nothing. You're the one that's nervous.\n I'll take care of everything. Relax.\"\n\n\n So I did.\n\n\n Jeree made good all her tacit promises and then some. She had a very\n cozy little apartment on 34th Street where we went to relax after\n a hard day at the office. When we weren't doing the town, that is.\n As long as Jeree didn't try too much conversation, everything was\n wonderful.\n\n\n And then, when Jeree got a little boring, there was Sybil in the\n accounting department. Or Dorothy in promotion. Or Jane. Or Ingrid.\n\n\n I could go on at some length, but I won't. I was building quite a\n reputation for myself around the office.", "\"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all,\" I'd say. \"You'll learn\n to like her after a bit.\"\n\n\n \"Of course I like her,\" George Prime said. \"You told me to, didn't you?\n Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all.\"\n\n\n He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. \"You're sure\n you understand the exchange mechanism?\" I asked. I didn't want any\n foul-ups there, as you can imagine.\n\n\n \"Perfectly,\" said George Prime. \"When you buzz the recall, I wait for\n the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop,\n and you take over.\"\n\n\n \"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off.\"", "Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the\n novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It\n took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable\n program.\n\n\n Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally \"out\" while formally\n \"in.\" Sometimes I took Sunday nights \"out\" if things got too sticky\n around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime\n cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can't completely\n trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is.\n\n\n There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to\n quick-step some questions about my work at the office—there was no\n way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular\n two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the\n meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had.", "The next evening, I activated George Prime and caught the taxi at the\n corner, but I called Ruby and broke my date with her. I took in an\n early movie alone and was back by ten o'clock. I left the cab at the\n corner and walked quietly up the path toward the garage.\n\n\n Then I stopped. I could see Marge and George Prime through the living\n room windows.\n\n\n George Prime was kissing my wife the way I hadn't kissed her in eight\n long years. It made my hair stand on end. And Marge wasn't exactly\n fighting him off, either. She was coming back for more. After a little,\n the lights went off.\n\n\n George Prime was a Super Deluxe model, all right.\nI dashed into the workshop and punched the recall button as hard as I\n could, swearing under my breath. How long had this been going on? I\n punched the button again, viciously, and waited.\n\n\n George Prime didn't come out.", "\"Oh, I'm not complaining,\" I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's\n feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it\n was in character. \"I was just curious.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, George.\"\n\n\n \"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, George.\"\n\n\n But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous\n redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle\n except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and\n wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.\nThe next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a\n liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. \"\nWhat\n are you doing out on the street?\n\"\n\n\n He gave me my martyred look. \"Just buying some bourbon. You were out.\"", "Then it struck me. Poor Marge? Poor sucker George! No Prime in his\n right circuits would behave this way without some human guidance and\n that meant only one thing: Marge had spotted him. It had happened\n before. Couple of nasty court battles I'd read about. And she'd known\n all about George Prime.\nFor how long?\nWhen I got home, the house was empty. George Prime wasn't in his\n closet. And Marge wasn't in the house.\n\n\n They were gone.\n\n\n I started to call the police, but caught myself just in time. I\n couldn't very well complain to the cops that my wife had run off with\n an android.\n\n\n Worse yet, I could get twenty years for having an illegal Prime\n wandering around.\n\n\n I sat down and poured myself a stiff drink.\n\n\n My own wife deserting me for a pile of bearings.\n\n\n It was indecent.", "\"But you're not supposed to be off the premises—\"\n\n\n \"Marge asked me to come. I couldn't tell her I was sorry, but her\n husband wouldn't let me, could I?\"\n\n\n \"Well, certainly not—\"\n\n\n \"You want me to keep her happy, don't you? You don't want her to get\n suspicious.\"\n\n\n \"No, but suppose somebody saw us together! If she ever got a hint—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry,\" George Prime said contritely. \"It seemed the right thing\n to do.\nYou\nwould have done it. At least that's what my judgment\n center maintained. We had quite an argument.\"\n\n\n \"Well, tell your judgment center to use a little sense,\" I snapped. \"I\n don't want it to happen again.\"", "\"Why, nothing,\" said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool\n me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when\n I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.\n\n\n \"There must be\nsomething\n.\"\n\n\n George Prime shrugged. \"Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time\n telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention\n to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can\n give you page references.\"\n\n\n I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts\n run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell\n when an odd bit of information will come in useful.\n\n\n \"Well, you must be doing quite a job,\" I said.\nI'd\nnever managed to\n warm Marge up much.\n\n\n \"I try,\" said George Prime.", "The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was\n beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I\n could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for\n a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice\n job.\n\n\n Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized\n with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss,\n despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After\n dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and\n said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by\n the fire.\n\n\n I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living\n room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair\n I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite\n perfume.", "PRIME DIFFERENCE\nBy ALAN E. NOURSE\n\n\n Illustrated by SCHOENHEER\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction June 1957.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nBeing two men rolled out of one would solve\n \nmy problems—but which one would I be?\nI suppose that every guy reaches a point once in his lifetime when he\n gets one hundred and forty per cent fed up with his wife.\n\n\n Understand now—I've got nothing against marriage or any thing\n like that. Marriage is great. It's a good old red-blooded American\n Institution. Except that it's got one defect in it big enough to throw\n a cat through, especially when you happen to be married to a woman\n like Marge—", "It was plenty cold out in the workshop that night and I didn't sleep\n a wink. About dawn, out came George Prime, looking like a man with a\n four-day hangover.\n\n\n Our conversation got down to fundamentals. George Prime kept insisting\n blandly that, according to my own directions, he was to pick the first\n logical opportunity to come out when I buzzed, and that was exactly\n what he'd done.\n\n\n I was furious all the way to work. I'd take care of this nonsense, all\n right. I'd have George Prime rewired from top to bottom as soon as the\n laboratory could take him.\n\n\n But I never phoned the laboratory. The bank was calling me when I got\n to the office. They wanted to know what I planned to do about that\n check of mine that had just bounced.\n\n\n \"What check?\" I asked." ], [ "George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on\n the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same\n mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical\n difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression\n buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop\n George Prime dead in his tracks.\n\n\n He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a\n pile of gears.\n\n\n I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course.", "Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour\n or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big\n closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a\n manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night,\n there he was, just waiting to be put to work.\n\n\n After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left\n there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and\n switched on the free-behavior circuits.\n\n\n \"Go to it, Brother,\" I said.\n\n\n George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the\n house.\n\n\n Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.\n\n\n It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on\n the corner and headed uptown.", "We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start\n for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car,\n business suit on, briefcase under his arm.\n\n\n I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into\n the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him\n off and then drove away in the car.\n\n\n Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!\nNeedless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle\n with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.\n\n\n For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a\n little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all\n the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that\n he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same\n whenever I took him out of his closet.", "George Prime had remote controls, as well as a completely recorded\n neurological analogue of his boss, who was me. George Prime thought\n what I thought about the same things I did in the same way I did. The\n only difference was that what I told George Prime to do, George Prime\n did.\n\n\n If I told him to go to a business conference in San Francisco and make\n the smallest possible concessions for the largest possible orders,\n he would go there and do precisely that. His signature would be my\n signature. It would hold up in court.\n\n\n And if I told him that my wife Marge was really a sweet, good-hearted\n girl and that he was to stay home and keep her quiet and happy any time\n I chose, he'd do that, too.", "\"Why, nothing,\" said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool\n me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when\n I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.\n\n\n \"There must be\nsomething\n.\"\n\n\n George Prime shrugged. \"Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time\n telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention\n to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can\n give you page references.\"\n\n\n I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts\n run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell\n when an odd bit of information will come in useful.\n\n\n \"Well, you must be doing quite a job,\" I said.\nI'd\nnever managed to\n warm Marge up much.\n\n\n \"I try,\" said George Prime.", "\"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all,\" I'd say. \"You'll learn\n to like her after a bit.\"\n\n\n \"Of course I like her,\" George Prime said. \"You told me to, didn't you?\n Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all.\"\n\n\n He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. \"You're sure\n you understand the exchange mechanism?\" I asked. I didn't want any\n foul-ups there, as you can imagine.\n\n\n \"Perfectly,\" said George Prime. \"When you buzz the recall, I wait for\n the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop,\n and you take over.\"\n\n\n \"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off.\"", "But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.\nMarge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having\n a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was\n hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out\n for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought\n me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a\n good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.\n\n\n I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to\n mellow sometime.\n\n\n But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too\n much.", "I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked\n outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty\n woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the\n recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime\n when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked\n in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a\n tired look on his face.\n\"Meet George Faircloth Prime,\" the technician said, grinning at me like\n a nursing mother.\n\n\n I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly.\n Nothing flabby about it.\n\n\n I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. \"Come on, Brother,\" I\n said. \"You've got a job to do.\"\n\n\n But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night.", "It was plenty cold out in the workshop that night and I didn't sleep\n a wink. About dawn, out came George Prime, looking like a man with a\n four-day hangover.\n\n\n Our conversation got down to fundamentals. George Prime kept insisting\n blandly that, according to my own directions, he was to pick the first\n logical opportunity to come out when I buzzed, and that was exactly\n what he'd done.\n\n\n I was furious all the way to work. I'd take care of this nonsense, all\n right. I'd have George Prime rewired from top to bottom as soon as the\n laboratory could take him.\n\n\n But I never phoned the laboratory. The bank was calling me when I got\n to the office. They wanted to know what I planned to do about that\n check of mine that had just bounced.\n\n\n \"What check?\" I asked.", "George Prime looked pained. \"Really, old man! I'm a Super Deluxe model,\n remember? I don't have fourteen activated Hunyadi tubes up in this\n cranial vault of mine just for nothing. You're the one that's nervous.\n I'll take care of everything. Relax.\"\n\n\n So I did.\n\n\n Jeree made good all her tacit promises and then some. She had a very\n cozy little apartment on 34th Street where we went to relax after\n a hard day at the office. When we weren't doing the town, that is.\n As long as Jeree didn't try too much conversation, everything was\n wonderful.\n\n\n And then, when Jeree got a little boring, there was Sybil in the\n accounting department. Or Dorothy in promotion. Or Jane. Or Ingrid.\n\n\n I could go on at some length, but I won't. I was building quite a\n reputation for myself around the office.", "\"Oh, I'm not complaining,\" I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's\n feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it\n was in character. \"I was just curious.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, George.\"\n\n\n \"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, George.\"\n\n\n But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous\n redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle\n except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and\n wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.\nThe next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a\n liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. \"\nWhat\n are you doing out on the street?\n\"\n\n\n He gave me my martyred look. \"Just buying some bourbon. You were out.\"", "Then it struck me. Poor Marge? Poor sucker George! No Prime in his\n right circuits would behave this way without some human guidance and\n that meant only one thing: Marge had spotted him. It had happened\n before. Couple of nasty court battles I'd read about. And she'd known\n all about George Prime.\nFor how long?\nWhen I got home, the house was empty. George Prime wasn't in his\n closet. And Marge wasn't in the house.\n\n\n They were gone.\n\n\n I started to call the police, but caught myself just in time. I\n couldn't very well complain to the cops that my wife had run off with\n an android.\n\n\n Worse yet, I could get twenty years for having an illegal Prime\n wandering around.\n\n\n I sat down and poured myself a stiff drink.\n\n\n My own wife deserting me for a pile of bearings.\n\n\n It was indecent.", "\"But you're not supposed to be off the premises—\"\n\n\n \"Marge asked me to come. I couldn't tell her I was sorry, but her\n husband wouldn't let me, could I?\"\n\n\n \"Well, certainly not—\"\n\n\n \"You want me to keep her happy, don't you? You don't want her to get\n suspicious.\"\n\n\n \"No, but suppose somebody saw us together! If she ever got a hint—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry,\" George Prime said contritely. \"It seemed the right thing\n to do.\nYou\nwould have done it. At least that's what my judgment\n center maintained. We had quite an argument.\"\n\n\n \"Well, tell your judgment center to use a little sense,\" I snapped. \"I\n don't want it to happen again.\"", "The next evening, I activated George Prime and caught the taxi at the\n corner, but I called Ruby and broke my date with her. I took in an\n early movie alone and was back by ten o'clock. I left the cab at the\n corner and walked quietly up the path toward the garage.\n\n\n Then I stopped. I could see Marge and George Prime through the living\n room windows.\n\n\n George Prime was kissing my wife the way I hadn't kissed her in eight\n long years. It made my hair stand on end. And Marge wasn't exactly\n fighting him off, either. She was coming back for more. After a little,\n the lights went off.\n\n\n George Prime was a Super Deluxe model, all right.\nI dashed into the workshop and punched the recall button as hard as I\n could, swearing under my breath. How long had this been going on? I\n punched the button again, viciously, and waited.\n\n\n George Prime didn't come out.", "From the first, there was rigid Federal control and laws regulating the\n use of Primes right down to the local level. You could get a license\n for a Utility model Prime if you were a big business executive, or a\n high public official, or a movie star, or something like that; but even\n then his circuits had to be inspected every two months, and he had to\n have a thousand built-in Paralyzers, and you had to specify in advance\n exactly what you wanted your Prime to be able to do when, where, how,\n why, and under what circumstances.\n\n\n The law didn't leave a man much leeway.\n\n\n But everybody knew that if you\nreally\nwanted a personal Prime with\n all his circuits open and no questions asked, you could get one. Black\n market prices were steep and you ran your own risk, but it could be\n done.", "The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was\n beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I\n could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for\n a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice\n job.\n\n\n Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized\n with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss,\n despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After\n dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and\n said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by\n the fire.\n\n\n I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living\n room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair\n I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite\n perfume.", "Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the\n novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It\n took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable\n program.\n\n\n Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally \"out\" while formally\n \"in.\" Sometimes I took Sunday nights \"out\" if things got too sticky\n around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime\n cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can't completely\n trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is.\n\n\n There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to\n quick-step some questions about my work at the office—there was no\n way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular\n two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the\n meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had.", "\"She's a perfectly good secretary,\" I blurted, and kicked myself\n mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.\n\n\n Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong\n at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no\n stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.\n\n\n Harry Folsom administered the\ncoup de grace\nat coffee next morning.\n \"What you need is an Ego Prime,\" he said with a grin. \"Solve all your\n problems. I hear they work like a charm.\"\n\n\n I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. \"Don't be\n ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a\n thing. It's—it's indecent.\"", "One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really\n meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which\n happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by\n candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly\n because I liked it.\n\n\n We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old\n times.\nVery\nold times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge\n again—really\nlooking\nat her, watching the light catch in her hair,\n almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not\n glint.\n\n\n As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night,\n she was practically ravishing.\n\n\n \"What are you doing to her?\" I asked George Prime later, out in the\n workshop.", "I assumed he was just being polite. You didn't come to the back door\n for Utility models.\n\n\n \"Or perhaps you'd require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful\n workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically\n complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work,\n you know. Social engagements, conferences—\"\n\n\n I was shaking my head. \"I want a\nSuper\nDeluxe model,\" I told him.\n\n\n He grinned and winked. \"Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication.\n Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very\n awkward—\"\n\n\n I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were\n any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom." ], [ "\"Georgie?\" she said.\n\n\n \"Uh?\"\n\n\n \"Do you still love me?\"\n\n\n I set the paper down and stared at her. \"How's that? Of course I\n still—\"\n\n\n \"Well, sometimes you don't act much like it.\"\n\n\n \"Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight.\" Damn that\n perfume!\n\n\n \"Oh,\" said Marge.\n\n\n \"In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—\"\n\n\n \"Sleep,\" said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her\n voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand.", "One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really\n meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which\n happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by\n candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly\n because I liked it.\n\n\n We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old\n times.\nVery\nold times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge\n again—really\nlooking\nat her, watching the light catch in her hair,\n almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not\n glint.\n\n\n As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night,\n she was practically ravishing.\n\n\n \"What are you doing to her?\" I asked George Prime later, out in the\n workshop.", "I knew better than to try. Marge was already so jealous that I couldn't\n even smile at the company receptionist without a twinge of guilt. Give\n Marge something real to howl about, and I'd be ready for the Rehab\n Center in a week.\n\n\n But I'd underestimated Marge. She didn't need anything real, as I found\n out when Jeree came along.\n\n\n Business was booming and the secretaries at the office got shuffled\n around from time to time. Since I had an executive-type job, I got an\n executive-type secretary. Her name was Jeree and she was gorgeous. As\n a matter of fact, she was better than gorgeous. She was the sort of\n secretary every businessman ought to have in his office. Not to do any\n work—just to sit there.", "She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long\n enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was\n crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling\n detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband,\n which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a \"beastly\n headache\" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half\n she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we\n got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case.\nMaybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to\n envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live\n with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a\n while with one of the stenographers and get away with it.", "Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying\n anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was\n there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the\n opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive.\n\n\n That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over\n during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my\n mouth, and then she said, \"I hear you got a new secretary today.\"\n\n\n I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear.\n\n\n Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. \"I also hear that she's\n five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome.\"\n\n\n Marge had quite a spy system.\n\n\n \"She couldn't be much of a secretary,\" she added.", "We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start\n for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car,\n business suit on, briefcase under his arm.\n\n\n I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into\n the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him\n off and then drove away in the car.\n\n\n Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!\nNeedless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle\n with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.\n\n\n For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a\n little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all\n the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that\n he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same\n whenever I took him out of his closet.", "But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.\nMarge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having\n a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was\n hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out\n for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought\n me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a\n good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.\n\n\n I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to\n mellow sometime.\n\n\n But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too\n much.", "\"She's a perfectly good secretary,\" I blurted, and kicked myself\n mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.\n\n\n Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong\n at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no\n stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.\n\n\n Harry Folsom administered the\ncoup de grace\nat coffee next morning.\n \"What you need is an Ego Prime,\" he said with a grin. \"Solve all your\n problems. I hear they work like a charm.\"\n\n\n I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. \"Don't be\n ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a\n thing. It's—it's indecent.\"", "\"I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot\n him out and use him over again. But let's not talk about that any more.\n We've got more interesting things to discuss.\"\n\n\n Maybe we had, but we didn't waste a lot of time talking. It was the\n Marge I'd once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have\n been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully\n porous, the old Marge was\nnever\nlike this—\n\n\n I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt\n the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really\n happened.\n\n\n That Marge always had been a sly one.\n\n\n I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda.\nMarge probably thought she'd really put me where I belonged, but the\n laugh was on her, after all.", "It's so\npermanent\n.\n\n\n Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the\n Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968,\n and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got\n their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse\n Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if\n I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved.\n\n\n You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man\n has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime.\n\n\n So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep\n Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long.", "\"Oh, I'm not complaining,\" I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's\n feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it\n was in character. \"I was just curious.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, George.\"\n\n\n \"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, George.\"\n\n\n But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous\n redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle\n except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and\n wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.\nThe next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a\n liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. \"\nWhat\n are you doing out on the street?\n\"\n\n\n He gave me my martyred look. \"Just buying some bourbon. You were out.\"", "Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the\n novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It\n took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable\n program.\n\n\n Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally \"out\" while formally\n \"in.\" Sometimes I took Sunday nights \"out\" if things got too sticky\n around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime\n cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can't completely\n trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is.\n\n\n There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to\n quick-step some questions about my work at the office—there was no\n way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular\n two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the\n meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had.", "George Prime looked pained. \"Really, old man! I'm a Super Deluxe model,\n remember? I don't have fourteen activated Hunyadi tubes up in this\n cranial vault of mine just for nothing. You're the one that's nervous.\n I'll take care of everything. Relax.\"\n\n\n So I did.\n\n\n Jeree made good all her tacit promises and then some. She had a very\n cozy little apartment on 34th Street where we went to relax after\n a hard day at the office. When we weren't doing the town, that is.\n As long as Jeree didn't try too much conversation, everything was\n wonderful.\n\n\n And then, when Jeree got a little boring, there was Sybil in the\n accounting department. Or Dorothy in promotion. Or Jane. Or Ingrid.\n\n\n I could go on at some length, but I won't. I was building quite a\n reputation for myself around the office.", "The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was\n beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I\n could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for\n a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice\n job.\n\n\n Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized\n with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss,\n despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After\n dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and\n said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by\n the fire.\n\n\n I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living\n room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair\n I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite\n perfume.", "\"Why, nothing,\" said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool\n me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when\n I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.\n\n\n \"There must be\nsomething\n.\"\n\n\n George Prime shrugged. \"Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time\n telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention\n to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can\n give you page references.\"\n\n\n I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts\n run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell\n when an odd bit of information will come in useful.\n\n\n \"Well, you must be doing quite a job,\" I said.\nI'd\nnever managed to\n warm Marge up much.\n\n\n \"I try,\" said George Prime.", "Then I heard the front door open and there was Marge, her arms full of\n grocery bundles. \"Why, darling! You're home early!\"\n\n\n I just blinked for a moment. Then I said, \"You're still here!\"\n\n\n \"Of course. Where did you think I'd be?\"\n\n\n \"But I thought—I mean the ticket office—\"\n\n\n She set down the bundles and kissed me and looked up into my eyes,\n almost smiling, half reproachful. \"You didn't really think I'd go\n running off with something out of a lab, did you?\"\n\n\n \"Then—you knew?\"", "\"Certainly I knew, silly. You didn't do a very good job of instructing\n him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of\n his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to\n run off with him to Hawaii or someplace.\"\n\n\n \"Bermuda,\" I said.\n\n\n And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek\n against my chest.\n\n\n \"Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn't be,\" she said. \"He\n was like you, but he wasn't\nyou\n, darling. And all I ever want is you.\n I just never appreciated you before....\"\n\n\n I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George\n Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She'd never been more beautiful. \"But what\n did you do with him?\"", "Every man who's been married eight years has a sanctuary. He builds it\n up and maintains it against assault in the very teeth of his wife's\n natural instinct to clean, poke, pry and rearrange things. Sometimes\n it takes him years of diligent work to establish his hideout and be\n confident that it will stay inviolate, but if he starts early enough,\n and sticks with it long enough, and is fierce enough and persistent\n enough and crafty enough, he'll probably win in the end. The girls hate\n him for it, but he'll win.", "With some men, it's just a box on their dressers, or a desk, or a\n corner of an unused back room. But I had set my sights high early in\n the game. With me, it was the whole workshop in the garage.\nAt first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she\n said. I told her I didn't\nwant\nher to clean it up. She could clean\n the whole house as often as she chose, but\nI\nwould clean up the\n workshop.\n\n\n After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a\n strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood\n shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next.\n A wrench would be back on the rack—upside down, of course. An open\n paint can would have a cover on it.", "Harry shrugged. \"Just joking, old man, just joking. Still, it's fun to\n think about, eh? Freedom from wife. Absolutely safe and harmless. Not\n even too expensive, if you've got the right contacts. And I've got a\n friend who knows a guy—\"\n\n\n Just then, Jeree walked past us and flashed me a big smile. I gripped\n my cup for dear life and still spilled coffee on my tie.\n\n\n As I said, a guy gets fed up.\n\n\n And maybe opportunity would only knock once.\n\n\n And an Ego Prime would solve all my problems, as Harry had told me.\nIt was completely illegal, of course. The wonder was that Ego Prime,\n Inc., ever got to put their product on the market at all, once the\n nation's housewives got wind of just what their product was." ], [ "One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really\n meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which\n happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by\n candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly\n because I liked it.\n\n\n We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old\n times.\nVery\nold times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge\n again—really\nlooking\nat her, watching the light catch in her hair,\n almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not\n glint.\n\n\n As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night,\n she was practically ravishing.\n\n\n \"What are you doing to her?\" I asked George Prime later, out in the\n workshop.", "\"Certainly I knew, silly. You didn't do a very good job of instructing\n him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of\n his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to\n run off with him to Hawaii or someplace.\"\n\n\n \"Bermuda,\" I said.\n\n\n And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek\n against my chest.\n\n\n \"Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn't be,\" she said. \"He\n was like you, but he wasn't\nyou\n, darling. And all I ever want is you.\n I just never appreciated you before....\"\n\n\n I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George\n Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She'd never been more beautiful. \"But what\n did you do with him?\"", "\"Georgie?\" she said.\n\n\n \"Uh?\"\n\n\n \"Do you still love me?\"\n\n\n I set the paper down and stared at her. \"How's that? Of course I\n still—\"\n\n\n \"Well, sometimes you don't act much like it.\"\n\n\n \"Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight.\" Damn that\n perfume!\n\n\n \"Oh,\" said Marge.\n\n\n \"In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—\"\n\n\n \"Sleep,\" said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her\n voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand.", "She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long\n enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was\n crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling\n detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband,\n which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a \"beastly\n headache\" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half\n she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we\n got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case.\nMaybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to\n envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live\n with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a\n while with one of the stenographers and get away with it.", "\"I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot\n him out and use him over again. But let's not talk about that any more.\n We've got more interesting things to discuss.\"\n\n\n Maybe we had, but we didn't waste a lot of time talking. It was the\n Marge I'd once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have\n been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully\n porous, the old Marge was\nnever\nlike this—\n\n\n I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt\n the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really\n happened.\n\n\n That Marge always had been a sly one.\n\n\n I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda.\nMarge probably thought she'd really put me where I belonged, but the\n laugh was on her, after all.", "It was plenty cold out in the workshop that night and I didn't sleep\n a wink. About dawn, out came George Prime, looking like a man with a\n four-day hangover.\n\n\n Our conversation got down to fundamentals. George Prime kept insisting\n blandly that, according to my own directions, he was to pick the first\n logical opportunity to come out when I buzzed, and that was exactly\n what he'd done.\n\n\n I was furious all the way to work. I'd take care of this nonsense, all\n right. I'd have George Prime rewired from top to bottom as soon as the\n laboratory could take him.\n\n\n But I never phoned the laboratory. The bank was calling me when I got\n to the office. They wanted to know what I planned to do about that\n check of mine that had just bounced.\n\n\n \"What check?\" I asked.", "Marge was a dream to look at, with her tawny hair and her sulky eyes\n and a shape that could set your teeth chattering—but that was where\n the dream stopped.", "I assumed he was just being polite. You didn't come to the back door\n for Utility models.\n\n\n \"Or perhaps you'd require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful\n workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically\n complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work,\n you know. Social engagements, conferences—\"\n\n\n I was shaking my head. \"I want a\nSuper\nDeluxe model,\" I told him.\n\n\n He grinned and winked. \"Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication.\n Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very\n awkward—\"\n\n\n I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were\n any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom.", "Every man who's been married eight years has a sanctuary. He builds it\n up and maintains it against assault in the very teeth of his wife's\n natural instinct to clean, poke, pry and rearrange things. Sometimes\n it takes him years of diligent work to establish his hideout and be\n confident that it will stay inviolate, but if he starts early enough,\n and sticks with it long enough, and is fierce enough and persistent\n enough and crafty enough, he'll probably win in the end. The girls hate\n him for it, but he'll win.", "Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour\n or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big\n closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a\n manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night,\n there he was, just waiting to be put to work.\n\n\n After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left\n there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and\n switched on the free-behavior circuits.\n\n\n \"Go to it, Brother,\" I said.\n\n\n George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the\n house.\n\n\n Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.\n\n\n It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on\n the corner and headed uptown.", "We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start\n for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car,\n business suit on, briefcase under his arm.\n\n\n I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into\n the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him\n off and then drove away in the car.\n\n\n Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!\nNeedless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle\n with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.\n\n\n For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a\n little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all\n the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that\n he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same\n whenever I took him out of his closet.", "The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was\n beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I\n could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for\n a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice\n job.\n\n\n Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized\n with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss,\n despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After\n dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and\n said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by\n the fire.\n\n\n I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living\n room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair\n I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite\n perfume.", "George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on\n the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same\n mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical\n difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression\n buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop\n George Prime dead in his tracks.\n\n\n He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a\n pile of gears.\n\n\n I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course.", "I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked\n outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty\n woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the\n recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime\n when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked\n in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a\n tired look on his face.\n\"Meet George Faircloth Prime,\" the technician said, grinning at me like\n a nursing mother.\n\n\n I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly.\n Nothing flabby about it.\n\n\n I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. \"Come on, Brother,\" I\n said. \"You've got a job to do.\"\n\n\n But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night.", "\"Oh, I'm not complaining,\" I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's\n feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it\n was in character. \"I was just curious.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, George.\"\n\n\n \"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, George.\"\n\n\n But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous\n redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle\n except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and\n wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.\nThe next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a\n liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. \"\nWhat\n are you doing out on the street?\n\"\n\n\n He gave me my martyred look. \"Just buying some bourbon. You were out.\"", "Harry Folsom told his friend who knew a guy, and a few greenbacks got\n lost somewhere, and I found myself looking at a greasy little man with\n a black mustache and a bald spot, up in a dingy fourth-story warehouse\n off lower Broadway.\n\n\n \"Ah, yes,\" the little man said. \"Mr. Faircloth. We've been expecting\n you.\"\nI didn't like the looks of the guy any more than the looks of the\n place. \"I've been told you can supply me with a—\"\n\n\n He coughed. \"Yes, yes. I understand. It might be possible.\" He fingered\n his mustache and regarded me from pouchy eyes. \"Busy executives often\n come to us to avoid the—ah—unpleasantness of formal arrangements.\n Naturally, we only act as agents, you might say. We never see the\n merchandise ourselves—\" He wiped his hands on his trousers. \"Now were\n you interested in the ordinary Utility model, Mr. Faircloth?\"", "\"She's a perfectly good secretary,\" I blurted, and kicked myself\n mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.\n\n\n Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong\n at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no\n stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.\n\n\n Harry Folsom administered the\ncoup de grace\nat coffee next morning.\n \"What you need is an Ego Prime,\" he said with a grin. \"Solve all your\n problems. I hear they work like a charm.\"\n\n\n I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. \"Don't be\n ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a\n thing. It's—it's indecent.\"", "It's so\npermanent\n.\n\n\n Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the\n Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968,\n and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got\n their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse\n Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if\n I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved.\n\n\n You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man\n has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime.\n\n\n So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep\n Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long.", "But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.\nMarge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having\n a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was\n hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out\n for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought\n me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a\n good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.\n\n\n I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to\n mellow sometime.\n\n\n But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too\n much.", "Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying\n anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was\n there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the\n opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive.\n\n\n That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over\n during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my\n mouth, and then she said, \"I hear you got a new secretary today.\"\n\n\n I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear.\n\n\n Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. \"I also hear that she's\n five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome.\"\n\n\n Marge had quite a spy system.\n\n\n \"She couldn't be much of a secretary,\" she added." ], [ "One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really\n meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which\n happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by\n candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly\n because I liked it.\n\n\n We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old\n times.\nVery\nold times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge\n again—really\nlooking\nat her, watching the light catch in her hair,\n almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not\n glint.\n\n\n As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night,\n she was practically ravishing.\n\n\n \"What are you doing to her?\" I asked George Prime later, out in the\n workshop.", "\"Georgie?\" she said.\n\n\n \"Uh?\"\n\n\n \"Do you still love me?\"\n\n\n I set the paper down and stared at her. \"How's that? Of course I\n still—\"\n\n\n \"Well, sometimes you don't act much like it.\"\n\n\n \"Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight.\" Damn that\n perfume!\n\n\n \"Oh,\" said Marge.\n\n\n \"In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—\"\n\n\n \"Sleep,\" said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her\n voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand.", "\"Certainly I knew, silly. You didn't do a very good job of instructing\n him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of\n his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to\n run off with him to Hawaii or someplace.\"\n\n\n \"Bermuda,\" I said.\n\n\n And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek\n against my chest.\n\n\n \"Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn't be,\" she said. \"He\n was like you, but he wasn't\nyou\n, darling. And all I ever want is you.\n I just never appreciated you before....\"\n\n\n I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George\n Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She'd never been more beautiful. \"But what\n did you do with him?\"", "Then I heard the front door open and there was Marge, her arms full of\n grocery bundles. \"Why, darling! You're home early!\"\n\n\n I just blinked for a moment. Then I said, \"You're still here!\"\n\n\n \"Of course. Where did you think I'd be?\"\n\n\n \"But I thought—I mean the ticket office—\"\n\n\n She set down the bundles and kissed me and looked up into my eyes,\n almost smiling, half reproachful. \"You didn't really think I'd go\n running off with something out of a lab, did you?\"\n\n\n \"Then—you knew?\"", "But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.\nMarge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having\n a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was\n hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out\n for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought\n me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a\n good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.\n\n\n I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to\n mellow sometime.\n\n\n But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too\n much.", "\"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all,\" I'd say. \"You'll learn\n to like her after a bit.\"\n\n\n \"Of course I like her,\" George Prime said. \"You told me to, didn't you?\n Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all.\"\n\n\n He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. \"You're sure\n you understand the exchange mechanism?\" I asked. I didn't want any\n foul-ups there, as you can imagine.\n\n\n \"Perfectly,\" said George Prime. \"When you buzz the recall, I wait for\n the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop,\n and you take over.\"\n\n\n \"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off.\"", "Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour\n or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big\n closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a\n manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night,\n there he was, just waiting to be put to work.\n\n\n After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left\n there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and\n switched on the free-behavior circuits.\n\n\n \"Go to it, Brother,\" I said.\n\n\n George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the\n house.\n\n\n Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.\n\n\n It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on\n the corner and headed uptown.", "We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start\n for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car,\n business suit on, briefcase under his arm.\n\n\n I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into\n the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him\n off and then drove away in the car.\n\n\n Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!\nNeedless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle\n with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.\n\n\n For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a\n little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all\n the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that\n he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same\n whenever I took him out of his closet.", "\"I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot\n him out and use him over again. But let's not talk about that any more.\n We've got more interesting things to discuss.\"\n\n\n Maybe we had, but we didn't waste a lot of time talking. It was the\n Marge I'd once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have\n been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully\n porous, the old Marge was\nnever\nlike this—\n\n\n I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt\n the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really\n happened.\n\n\n That Marge always had been a sly one.\n\n\n I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda.\nMarge probably thought she'd really put me where I belonged, but the\n laugh was on her, after all.", "She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long\n enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was\n crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling\n detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband,\n which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a \"beastly\n headache\" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half\n she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we\n got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case.\nMaybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to\n envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live\n with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a\n while with one of the stenographers and get away with it.", "I knew better than to try. Marge was already so jealous that I couldn't\n even smile at the company receptionist without a twinge of guilt. Give\n Marge something real to howl about, and I'd be ready for the Rehab\n Center in a week.\n\n\n But I'd underestimated Marge. She didn't need anything real, as I found\n out when Jeree came along.\n\n\n Business was booming and the secretaries at the office got shuffled\n around from time to time. Since I had an executive-type job, I got an\n executive-type secretary. Her name was Jeree and she was gorgeous. As\n a matter of fact, she was better than gorgeous. She was the sort of\n secretary every businessman ought to have in his office. Not to do any\n work—just to sit there.", "I assumed he was just being polite. You didn't come to the back door\n for Utility models.\n\n\n \"Or perhaps you'd require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful\n workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically\n complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work,\n you know. Social engagements, conferences—\"\n\n\n I was shaking my head. \"I want a\nSuper\nDeluxe model,\" I told him.\n\n\n He grinned and winked. \"Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication.\n Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very\n awkward—\"\n\n\n I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were\n any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom.", "Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying\n anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was\n there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the\n opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive.\n\n\n That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over\n during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my\n mouth, and then she said, \"I hear you got a new secretary today.\"\n\n\n I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear.\n\n\n Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. \"I also hear that she's\n five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome.\"\n\n\n Marge had quite a spy system.\n\n\n \"She couldn't be much of a secretary,\" she added.", "\"She's a perfectly good secretary,\" I blurted, and kicked myself\n mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.\n\n\n Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong\n at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no\n stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.\n\n\n Harry Folsom administered the\ncoup de grace\nat coffee next morning.\n \"What you need is an Ego Prime,\" he said with a grin. \"Solve all your\n problems. I hear they work like a charm.\"\n\n\n I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. \"Don't be\n ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a\n thing. It's—it's indecent.\"", "It was plenty cold out in the workshop that night and I didn't sleep\n a wink. About dawn, out came George Prime, looking like a man with a\n four-day hangover.\n\n\n Our conversation got down to fundamentals. George Prime kept insisting\n blandly that, according to my own directions, he was to pick the first\n logical opportunity to come out when I buzzed, and that was exactly\n what he'd done.\n\n\n I was furious all the way to work. I'd take care of this nonsense, all\n right. I'd have George Prime rewired from top to bottom as soon as the\n laboratory could take him.\n\n\n But I never phoned the laboratory. The bank was calling me when I got\n to the office. They wanted to know what I planned to do about that\n check of mine that had just bounced.\n\n\n \"What check?\" I asked.", "The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was\n beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I\n could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for\n a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice\n job.\n\n\n Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized\n with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss,\n despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After\n dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and\n said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by\n the fire.\n\n\n I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living\n room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair\n I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite\n perfume.", "Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the\n novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It\n took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable\n program.\n\n\n Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally \"out\" while formally\n \"in.\" Sometimes I took Sunday nights \"out\" if things got too sticky\n around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime\n cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can't completely\n trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is.\n\n\n There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to\n quick-step some questions about my work at the office—there was no\n way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular\n two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the\n meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had.", "I always knew. I screamed loudly and bitterly. I ranted and raved. I\n swore I'd rig up a booby-trap with a shotgun.\n\n\n So she quit trying to clean in there and just went in once in a while\n to take a look around. I fixed that with the old toothpick-in-the-door\n routine. Every time she so much as set foot in that workshop, she had a\n battle on her hands for the next week or so. She could count on it. It\n was that predictable.\n\n\n She never found out how I knew, and after seven years or so, it wore\n her down. She didn't go into the workshop any more.\n\n\n As I said, you've got to be persistent, but you'll win.\n\n\n Eventually.\n\n\n If you're\nreally\npersistent.", "\"Oh, I'm not complaining,\" I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's\n feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it\n was in character. \"I was just curious.\"\n\n\n \"Of course, George.\"\n\n\n \"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well.\"\n\n\n \"Thank you, George.\"\n\n\n But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous\n redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle\n except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and\n wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.\nThe next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a\n liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. \"\nWhat\n are you doing out on the street?\n\"\n\n\n He gave me my martyred look. \"Just buying some bourbon. You were out.\"", "\"But you're not supposed to be off the premises—\"\n\n\n \"Marge asked me to come. I couldn't tell her I was sorry, but her\n husband wouldn't let me, could I?\"\n\n\n \"Well, certainly not—\"\n\n\n \"You want me to keep her happy, don't you? You don't want her to get\n suspicious.\"\n\n\n \"No, but suppose somebody saw us together! If she ever got a hint—\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry,\" George Prime said contritely. \"It seemed the right thing\n to do.\nYou\nwould have done it. At least that's what my judgment\n center maintained. We had quite an argument.\"\n\n\n \"Well, tell your judgment center to use a little sense,\" I snapped. \"I\n don't want it to happen again.\"" ], [ "\"Certainly I knew, silly. You didn't do a very good job of instructing\n him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of\n his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to\n run off with him to Hawaii or someplace.\"\n\n\n \"Bermuda,\" I said.\n\n\n And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek\n against my chest.\n\n\n \"Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn't be,\" she said. \"He\n was like you, but he wasn't\nyou\n, darling. And all I ever want is you.\n I just never appreciated you before....\"\n\n\n I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George\n Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She'd never been more beautiful. \"But what\n did you do with him?\"", "Then I heard the front door open and there was Marge, her arms full of\n grocery bundles. \"Why, darling! You're home early!\"\n\n\n I just blinked for a moment. Then I said, \"You're still here!\"\n\n\n \"Of course. Where did you think I'd be?\"\n\n\n \"But I thought—I mean the ticket office—\"\n\n\n She set down the bundles and kissed me and looked up into my eyes,\n almost smiling, half reproachful. \"You didn't really think I'd go\n running off with something out of a lab, did you?\"\n\n\n \"Then—you knew?\"", "\"I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot\n him out and use him over again. But let's not talk about that any more.\n We've got more interesting things to discuss.\"\n\n\n Maybe we had, but we didn't waste a lot of time talking. It was the\n Marge I'd once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have\n been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully\n porous, the old Marge was\nnever\nlike this—\n\n\n I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt\n the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really\n happened.\n\n\n That Marge always had been a sly one.\n\n\n I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda.\nMarge probably thought she'd really put me where I belonged, but the\n laugh was on her, after all.", "It was plenty cold out in the workshop that night and I didn't sleep\n a wink. About dawn, out came George Prime, looking like a man with a\n four-day hangover.\n\n\n Our conversation got down to fundamentals. George Prime kept insisting\n blandly that, according to my own directions, he was to pick the first\n logical opportunity to come out when I buzzed, and that was exactly\n what he'd done.\n\n\n I was furious all the way to work. I'd take care of this nonsense, all\n right. I'd have George Prime rewired from top to bottom as soon as the\n laboratory could take him.\n\n\n But I never phoned the laboratory. The bank was calling me when I got\n to the office. They wanted to know what I planned to do about that\n check of mine that had just bounced.\n\n\n \"What check?\" I asked.", "Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour\n or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big\n closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a\n manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night,\n there he was, just waiting to be put to work.\n\n\n After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left\n there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and\n switched on the free-behavior circuits.\n\n\n \"Go to it, Brother,\" I said.\n\n\n George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the\n house.\n\n\n Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.\n\n\n It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on\n the corner and headed uptown.", "She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long\n enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was\n crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling\n detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband,\n which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a \"beastly\n headache\" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half\n she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we\n got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case.\nMaybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to\n envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live\n with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a\n while with one of the stenographers and get away with it.", "Then it struck me. Poor Marge? Poor sucker George! No Prime in his\n right circuits would behave this way without some human guidance and\n that meant only one thing: Marge had spotted him. It had happened\n before. Couple of nasty court battles I'd read about. And she'd known\n all about George Prime.\nFor how long?\nWhen I got home, the house was empty. George Prime wasn't in his\n closet. And Marge wasn't in the house.\n\n\n They were gone.\n\n\n I started to call the police, but caught myself just in time. I\n couldn't very well complain to the cops that my wife had run off with\n an android.\n\n\n Worse yet, I could get twenty years for having an illegal Prime\n wandering around.\n\n\n I sat down and poured myself a stiff drink.\n\n\n My own wife deserting me for a pile of bearings.\n\n\n It was indecent.", "But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.\nMarge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having\n a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was\n hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out\n for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought\n me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a\n good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.\n\n\n I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to\n mellow sometime.\n\n\n But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too\n much.", "\"Georgie?\" she said.\n\n\n \"Uh?\"\n\n\n \"Do you still love me?\"\n\n\n I set the paper down and stared at her. \"How's that? Of course I\n still—\"\n\n\n \"Well, sometimes you don't act much like it.\"\n\n\n \"Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight.\" Damn that\n perfume!\n\n\n \"Oh,\" said Marge.\n\n\n \"In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—\"\n\n\n \"Sleep,\" said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her\n voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand.", "One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really\n meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which\n happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by\n candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly\n because I liked it.\n\n\n We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old\n times.\nVery\nold times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge\n again—really\nlooking\nat her, watching the light catch in her hair,\n almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not\n glint.\n\n\n As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night,\n she was practically ravishing.\n\n\n \"What are you doing to her?\" I asked George Prime later, out in the\n workshop.", "The next evening, I activated George Prime and caught the taxi at the\n corner, but I called Ruby and broke my date with her. I took in an\n early movie alone and was back by ten o'clock. I left the cab at the\n corner and walked quietly up the path toward the garage.\n\n\n Then I stopped. I could see Marge and George Prime through the living\n room windows.\n\n\n George Prime was kissing my wife the way I hadn't kissed her in eight\n long years. It made my hair stand on end. And Marge wasn't exactly\n fighting him off, either. She was coming back for more. After a little,\n the lights went off.\n\n\n George Prime was a Super Deluxe model, all right.\nI dashed into the workshop and punched the recall button as hard as I\n could, swearing under my breath. How long had this been going on? I\n punched the button again, viciously, and waited.\n\n\n George Prime didn't come out.", "We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start\n for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car,\n business suit on, briefcase under his arm.\n\n\n I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into\n the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him\n off and then drove away in the car.\n\n\n Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!\nNeedless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle\n with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.\n\n\n For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a\n little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all\n the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that\n he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same\n whenever I took him out of his closet.", "I assumed he was just being polite. You didn't come to the back door\n for Utility models.\n\n\n \"Or perhaps you'd require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful\n workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically\n complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work,\n you know. Social engagements, conferences—\"\n\n\n I was shaking my head. \"I want a\nSuper\nDeluxe model,\" I told him.\n\n\n He grinned and winked. \"Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication.\n Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very\n awkward—\"\n\n\n I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were\n any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom.", "It's so\npermanent\n.\n\n\n Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the\n Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968,\n and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got\n their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse\n Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if\n I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved.\n\n\n You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man\n has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime.\n\n\n So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep\n Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long.", "Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying\n anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was\n there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the\n opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive.\n\n\n That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over\n during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my\n mouth, and then she said, \"I hear you got a new secretary today.\"\n\n\n I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear.\n\n\n Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. \"I also hear that she's\n five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome.\"\n\n\n Marge had quite a spy system.\n\n\n \"She couldn't be much of a secretary,\" she added.", "\"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all,\" I'd say. \"You'll learn\n to like her after a bit.\"\n\n\n \"Of course I like her,\" George Prime said. \"You told me to, didn't you?\n Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all.\"\n\n\n He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. \"You're sure\n you understand the exchange mechanism?\" I asked. I didn't want any\n foul-ups there, as you can imagine.\n\n\n \"Perfectly,\" said George Prime. \"When you buzz the recall, I wait for\n the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop,\n and you take over.\"\n\n\n \"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off.\"", "Harry Folsom told his friend who knew a guy, and a few greenbacks got\n lost somewhere, and I found myself looking at a greasy little man with\n a black mustache and a bald spot, up in a dingy fourth-story warehouse\n off lower Broadway.\n\n\n \"Ah, yes,\" the little man said. \"Mr. Faircloth. We've been expecting\n you.\"\nI didn't like the looks of the guy any more than the looks of the\n place. \"I've been told you can supply me with a—\"\n\n\n He coughed. \"Yes, yes. I understand. It might be possible.\" He fingered\n his mustache and regarded me from pouchy eyes. \"Busy executives often\n come to us to avoid the—ah—unpleasantness of formal arrangements.\n Naturally, we only act as agents, you might say. We never see the\n merchandise ourselves—\" He wiped his hands on his trousers. \"Now were\n you interested in the ordinary Utility model, Mr. Faircloth?\"", "\"She's a perfectly good secretary,\" I blurted, and kicked myself\n mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.\n\n\n Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong\n at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no\n stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.\n\n\n Harry Folsom administered the\ncoup de grace\nat coffee next morning.\n \"What you need is an Ego Prime,\" he said with a grin. \"Solve all your\n problems. I hear they work like a charm.\"\n\n\n I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. \"Don't be\n ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a\n thing. It's—it's indecent.\"", "I knew better than to try. Marge was already so jealous that I couldn't\n even smile at the company receptionist without a twinge of guilt. Give\n Marge something real to howl about, and I'd be ready for the Rehab\n Center in a week.\n\n\n But I'd underestimated Marge. She didn't need anything real, as I found\n out when Jeree came along.\n\n\n Business was booming and the secretaries at the office got shuffled\n around from time to time. Since I had an executive-type job, I got an\n executive-type secretary. Her name was Jeree and she was gorgeous. As\n a matter of fact, she was better than gorgeous. She was the sort of\n secretary every businessman ought to have in his office. Not to do any\n work—just to sit there.", "George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on\n the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same\n mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical\n difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression\n buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop\n George Prime dead in his tracks.\n\n\n He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a\n pile of gears.\n\n\n I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course." ] ]
test	29193	[ "Why was Sol Becker initially wanting to spend the night at Mom’s house? ", "What excecution was Mom talking about at the beginning of the story? ", "What was the location of the “palace” mentioned in the story? ", "Why was Mr. Becker on a road trip? ", "Why did everyone in the town know what Armagon was? ", "Why were Mr. Dawes and Mr. Becker visiting the Sherrif?", "How had Mr. Brundage been killed? ", "How did the townspeople react to Mr. Becker’s questions about Armagon? ", "What happened to Mr. Becker when he arrived to Armagon? " ]	[ [ "He had business with Mr. Dawes", "He needed a place to rest on his road trip to the wedding", "To find out more about Armagon", "Because his car had been stolen " ], [ "Mr. Brundage’s execution ", "Mr. Dawes’ execution ", "Charlie’s exception ", "Mr. Becker’s execution " ], [ "The courthouse of the town ", "A location in Armagon ", "The center square of the town ", "The location where the wedding was taking place " ], [ "To go to a friend’s wedding ", "To investigate the executions in Armagon", "To write a journalism piece on the town ", "To retrieve his stolen car " ], [ "Not everyone who lived in the town knew what Armagon was ", "The stories of Armagon were very popular in the town ", "They all visited Armagon when they slept ", "It was a secret location for the townspeople to meet " ], [ "To alert the state police about Mr. Becker’s stolen car", "To alert the authorities about the recent murder ", "To try and stop the execution from occurring ", "To learn more about what Armagon was " ], [ "He had been killed by the Sherrif ", "His wife had murdered him", "He had been executed at the courthouse in the town ", "He had been killed in Armagon" ], [ "They filled him in on the fact that it was a dream world ", "They pretended to not know what he was talking about ", "They refused to give him any information ", "They threatened him " ], [ "He was trapped there forever ", "He was made into a knight ", "He was abruptly woken up ", "He was killed " ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Mom fixed him a light\n lunch, the greatest feature of\n which was some hot biscuits\n she plucked out of the oven.\n It made him feel almost normal.\n\n\n He wandered around the\n town some more after lunch,\n trying to spark conversation\n with the residents.\n\n\n He learned little.\nAt\n five-thirty, he returned\n to the Dawes house, and was\n promptly leaped upon by\n little Sally.\n\n\n \"Hi! Hi! Hi!\" she said,\n clutching his right leg and\n almost toppling him over.\n \"We had a party in school. I\n had chocolate cake. You goin'\n to stay with us?\"\n\n\n \"Just another night,\" Sol\n told her, trying to shake the\n girl off. \"If it's okay with\n your folks. They haven't\n found my car yet.\"", "\"Uh-huh.\" Dawes looked\n reflective. \"You wouldn't be\n thinkin' about writing us up\n or anything. I mean, this is a\n pretty private affair.\"\n\n\n \"Writing it up?\" Sol\n blinked. \"I hadn't thought of\n it. But you'll have to admit—it's\n sure interesting.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah,\" Dawes said narrowly.\n \"I guess it would be.\"\n\n\n \"Supper!\" Mom called.\n\n\n After the meal, they spent\n a quiet evening at home. Sally\n went to bed, screaming her\n reluctance, at eight-thirty.\n Mom, dozing in the big chair\n near the fireplace, padded upstairs\n at nine. Then Dawes\n yawned widely, stood up, and\n said goodnight at quarter-of-ten.\n\n\n He paused in the doorway\n before leaving.", "\"Oh, my goodness!\" Mom\n got up hastily. \"That reminds\n me. I gotta call poor Mrs.\n Brundage. It's the\nleast\nI\n could do.\"\n\n\n \"Good idea,\" Dawes nodded.\n \"And I'll have to round\n up some folks and get old\n Brundage out of there.\"\n\n\n Sol was staring. He opened\n his mouth, but couldn't think\n of the right question to ask.\n Then he blurted out: \"What\n execution?\"\n\n\n \"None of\nyour\nbusiness,\"\n the man said coldly. \"You eat\n up, young man. If you want\n me to get Sheriff Coogan\n lookin' for your car.\"\n\n\n The rest of the meal went\n silently, except for Sally's insistence\n upon singing her\n school song between mouthfuls.\n When Dawes was\n through, he pushed back his\n plate and ordered Sol to get\n ready.", "\"Sally!\" Mom was peering\n out of the screen door. \"You\n let Mr. Becker alone and go\n wash. Your Pa will be home\n soon.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, pooh,\" the girl said,\n her pigtails swinging. \"Do\n you got a girlfriend, mister?\"\n\n\n \"No.\" Sol struggled towards\n the house with her\n dead weight on his leg.\n \"Would you mind? I can't\n walk.\"\n\n\n \"Would you be my boyfriend?\"\n\n\n \"Well, we'll talk about it.\n If you let go my leg.\"\n\n\n Inside the house, she said:\n \"We're having pot roast. You\n stayin'?\"\n\n\n \"Of course Mr. Becker's\n stayin',\" Mom said. \"He's our\n guest.\"", "\"That's very kind of you,\"\n Sol said. \"I really wish you'd\n let me pay something—\"\n\n\n \"Don't want to hear another\n word about pay.\"\nMr. Dawes\n came home an\n hour later, looking tired.\n Mom pecked him lightly on\n the forehead. He glanced at\n the evening paper, and then\n spoke to Sol.\n\n\n \"Hear you been asking\n questions, Mr. Becker.\"\n\n\n Sol nodded, embarrassed.\n \"Guess I have. I'm awfully\n curious about this Armagon\n place. Never heard of anything\n like it before.\"\n\n\n Dawes grunted. \"You ain't\n a reporter?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no. I'm an engineer. I\n was just satisfying my own\n curiosity.\"", "\"I'm sorry—\" Sol's voice\n was pained. \"The man in the\n diner said you might put me\n up. I had my car stolen: a\n hitchhiker; going to Salinas ...\"\n He was puffing.\n\n\n \"Hitchhiker? I don't understand.\"\n She clucked at the\n sight of the pool of water he\n was creating in her foyer.\n \"Well, come inside, for heaven's\n sake. You're soaking!\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" Sol said gratefully.\n\n\n With the door firmly shut\n behind him, the warm interior\n of the little house covered\n him like a blanket. He\n shivered, and let the warmth\n seep over him. \"I'm terribly\n sorry. I know how late it is.\"\n He looked at his watch, but\n the face was too misty to\n make out the hour.", "Sol grabbed his topcoat and\n followed the man out the\n door.\n\n\n \"Have to stop someplace\n first,\" Dawes said. \"But we'll\n be pickin' up the Sheriff on\n the way. Okay with you?\"\n\n\n \"Fine,\" Sol said uneasily.\n\n\n The rain had stopped, but\n the heavy clouds seemed reluctant\n to leave the skies over\n the small town. There was a\n skittish breeze blowing, and\n Sol Becker tightened the collar\n of his coat around his\n neck as he tried to keep up\n with the fast-stepping Dawes.\nThey\n crossed the\n street diagonally, and entered\n a two-story wooden building.\n Dawes took the stairs at a\n brisk pace, and pushed open\n the door on the second floor.\n A fat man looked up from\n behind a desk.\n\n\n \"Hi, Charlie. Thought I'd\n see if you wanted to help\n move Brundage.\"", "The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed\n citizen with a long, sad face,\n was rocking on a porch as\n they approached his house,\n trying to puff a half-lit pipe.\n He lifted one hand wearily\n when he saw them.\n\n\n \"Hi, Cookie,\" Dawes\n grinned. \"Thought you, me,\n and Charlie would get Brundage's\n body outa the house.\n This here's Mr. Becker; he\n got another problem. Mr.\n Becker, meet Cookie Coogan.\"\n\n\n The Sheriff joined the procession,\n pausing only once to\n inquire into Sol's predicament.\n\n\n He described the hitchhiker\n incident, but Coogan\n listened stoically. He murmured\n something about the\n Troopers, and shuffled alongside\n the puffing fat man.\n\n\n Sol soon realized that their\n destination was a barber shop.", "\"Tush,\" the woman said.\n She scurried out, and returned\n a moment later with a\n thick bath towel. \"Sorry I\n can't give you any bedding.\n But you'll find it nice and\n warm in here.\" She squinted\n at the dim face of a ship's-wheel\n clock on the mantle,\n and made a noise with her\n tongue. \"Three-thirty!\" she\n exclaimed. \"I'll miss the\n whole execution ...\"\n\n\n \"The what?\"\n\n\n \"Goodnight, young man,\"\n Mom said firmly.\n\n\n She padded off, leaving Sol\n holding the towel. He patted\n his face, and then scrubbed\n the wet tangle of brown hair.\n Carefully, he stepped off the\n carpet and onto the stone\n floor in front of the fireplace.\n He removed his\n drenched coat and suit jacket,\n and squeezed water out\n over the ashes.", "Henry Slesar, young New York advertising executive and by now no\n longer a new-comer to either this magazine or to this field, describes\n a strange little town that you, yourself, may blunder into one of these\n evenings. But, if you do, beware—beware of the Knights!\ndream\n \ntown\nby ... HENRY SLESAR\nThe woman in the doorway looked so harmless. Who\n was to tell she had some rather startling interests?\nThe\n woman in the\n doorway looked like Mom in\n the homier political cartoons.\n She was plump, apple-cheeked,\n white-haired. She\n wore a fussy, old-fashioned\n nightgown, and was busily\n clutching a worn house-robe\n around her expansive middle.\n She blinked at Sol Becker's\n rain-flattened hair and hang-dog\n expression, and said:\n \"What is it? What do you\n want?\"", "Mom was following him,\n her stout body regal in scarlet\n robes. \"Sally! You give\n Sir Coogan his helmet! You\n hear?\"\n\n\n \"Mrs. Dawes!\" Sol said.\n\n\n \"Why, Mr. Becker! How\n nice to see you again! Pa!\nPa!\nLook who's here!\"\n\n\n Willie Dawes appeared.\nNo!\nSol thought. This was\nKing\nDawes; nothing else\n could explain the magnificence\n of his attire.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Dawes said craftily.\n \"So I see. Welcome to Armagon,\n Mr. Becker.\"\n\n\n \"Armagon?\" Sol gaped.\n \"Then this is the place\n you've been dreaming about?\"\n\n\n \"Yep,\" the King said. \"And\n now\nyou're\nin it, too.\"\n\n\n \"Then I'm only dreaming!\"", "His eyes flew open, and he\n pulled the towel protectively\n around his body and glared\n at the little girl with the rust-red\n pigtails.\n\n\n \"Huh, mister?\" she said,\n pushing a finger against her\n freckled nose. \"Are you?\"\n\n\n \"No,\" he said angrily. \"I'm\n not naked. Will you please\n go away?\"\n\n\n \"Sally!\" It was Mom, appearing\n in the doorway of the\n parlor. \"You leave the gentleman\n alone.\" She went off\n again.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Sol said. \"Please let\n me get dressed. If you don't\n mind.\" The girl didn't move.\n \"What time is it?\"\n\n\n \"Dunno,\" Sally shrugged.\n \"I like poached eggs. They're\n my favorite eggs in the whole\n world.\"", "\"No, of course not,\" Sol\n said. He followed her into\n the darkened parlor, and\n watched as she turned the\n screw on a hurricane-style\n lamp, shedding a yellow pool\n of light over half a flowery\n sofa and a doily-covered wing\n chair. \"You go on up. I'll be\n perfectly fine.\"\n\n\n \"Guess you can use a towel,\n though. I'll get you one,\n then I'm going up. We wake\n pretty early in this house.\n Breakfast's at seven; you'll\n have to be up if you want\n any.\"\n\n\n \"I really can't thank you\n enough—\"", "\"Don't think I can talk\n about that. Fella broke one of\n the Laws; that's about it.\n Don't see where you come\n into it.\"\n\n\n At eleven o'clock, he returned\n to the Dawes residence,\n and found Mom in the\n kitchen, surrounded by the\n warm nostalgic odor of home-baked\n bread. She told him\n that her husband had left a\n message for the stranger, informing\n him that the State\n Police would be around to get\n his story.\n\n\n He waited in the house,\n gloomily turning the pages of\n the local newspaper, searching\n for references to Armagon.\n He found nothing.\n\n\n At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced\n State Trooper came to\n call, and Sol told his story.\n He was promised nothing,\n and told to stay in town until\n he was contacted again by\n the authorities.", "\"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Thought so.\"\n\n\n Sol repeated the question.\n\n\n \"Course I did. Been goin'\n there ever since I was a kid.\n Night-times, that is.\"\n\n\n \"How—I mean, what kind\n of place is it?\"\n\n\n \"Said you're a stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Then 'tain't your business.\"\n\n\n That was that.\n\n\n He left the park, and wandered\n into a thriving luncheonette.\n He tried questioning\n the man behind the counter,\n who merely snickered and\n said: \"You stayin' with the\n Dawes, ain't you? Better ask\n Willie, then. He knows the\n place better than anybody.\"\n\n\n He asked about the execution,\n and the man stiffened.", "\"I'd think about that,\" he\n said. \"Writing it up, I mean.\n A lot of folks would think\n you were just plum crazy.\"\n\n\n Sol laughed feebly. \"I\n guess they would at that.\"\n\n\n \"Goodnight,\" Dawes said.\n\n\n \"Goodnight.\"\n\n\n He read Sally's copy of\nTreasure Island\nfor about\n half an hour. Then he undressed,\n made himself comfortable\n on the sofa, snuggled\n under the soft blanket\n that Mom had provided, and\n shut his eyes.\n\n\n He reviewed the events of\n the day before dropping off\n to sleep. The troublesome\n Sally. The strange dream\n world of Armagon. The visit\n to the barber shop. The removal\n of Brundage's body.\n The conversations with the\n townspeople. Dawes' suspicious\n attitude ...", "\"Must be nearly three,\" the\n woman sniffed. \"You couldn't\n have come at a worse time. I\n was just on my way to\n court—\"\n\n\n The words slid by him. \"If\n I could just stay overnight.\n Until the morning. I could\n call some friends in San Fernando.\n I'm very susceptible to\n head colds,\" he added inanely.\n\n\n \"Well, take those shoes off,\n first,\" the woman grumbled.\n \"You can undress in the parlor,\n if you'll keep off the rug.\n You won't mind using the\n sofa?\"\n\n\n \"No, of course not. I'd be\n happy to pay—\"\n\n\n \"Oh, tush, nobody's asking\n you to pay. This isn't a hotel.\n You mind if I go back upstairs?\n They're gonna miss\n me at the palace.\"", "He stripped down to his\n underwear, wondering about\n next morning's possible embarrassment,\n and decided to\n use the damp bath towel as a\n blanket. The sofa was downy\n and comfortable. He curled\n up under the towel, shivered\n once, and closed his eyes.\nHe\n was tired and very\n sleepy, and his customary\n nightly review was limited to\n a few detached thoughts\n about the wedding he was\n supposed to attend in Salinas\n that weekend ... the hoodlum\n who had responded to his\n good-nature by dumping him\n out of his own car ... the slogging\n walk to the village ...\n the little round woman who\n was hurrying off, like the\n White Rabbit, to some mysterious\n appointment on the\n upper floor ...\n\n\n Then he went to sleep.\n\n\n A voice awoke him, shrill\n and questioning.\n\n\n \"Are you\nnakkid\n?\"", "\"\nSally!\n\" Mom again, sterner.\n \"You get out of there, or\n you-know-what ...\"\n\n\n \"Okay,\" the girl said\n blithely. \"I'm goin' to the palace\n again. If I brush my\n teeth. Aren't you\never\ngonna\n get up?\" She skipped out of\n the room, and Sol hastily sat\n up and reached for his\n trousers.\n\n\n When he had dressed, the\n clothes still damp and unpleasant\n against his skin, he\n went out of the parlor and\n found the kitchen. Mom was\n busy at the stove. He said:\n \"Good morning.\"\n\n\n \"Breakfast in ten minutes,\"\n she said cheerfully. \"You like\n poached eggs?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. Do you have a telephone?\"\n\n\n \"In the hallway. Party line,\n so you may have to wait.\"", "He tried for fifteen minutes\n to get through, but there\n was a woman on the line who\n was terribly upset about a\n cotton dress she had ordered\n from Sears, and was telling\n the world about it.\n\n\n Finally, he got his call\n through to Salinas, and a\n sleepy-voiced Fred, his old\n Army buddy, listened somewhat\n indifferently to his tale\n of woe. \"I might miss the\n wedding,\" Sol said unhappily.\n \"I'm awfully sorry.\" Fred\n didn't seem to be half as sorry\n as he was. When Sol hung\n up, he was feeling more despondent\n than ever.\n\n\n A man, tall and rangy, with\n a bobbing Adam's apple and\n a lined face, came into the\n hallway. \"Hullo?\" he said inquiringly.\n \"You the fella had\n the car stolen?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"" ], [ "\"Oh, my goodness!\" Mom\n got up hastily. \"That reminds\n me. I gotta call poor Mrs.\n Brundage. It's the\nleast\nI\n could do.\"\n\n\n \"Good idea,\" Dawes nodded.\n \"And I'll have to round\n up some folks and get old\n Brundage out of there.\"\n\n\n Sol was staring. He opened\n his mouth, but couldn't think\n of the right question to ask.\n Then he blurted out: \"What\n execution?\"\n\n\n \"None of\nyour\nbusiness,\"\n the man said coldly. \"You eat\n up, young man. If you want\n me to get Sheriff Coogan\n lookin' for your car.\"\n\n\n The rest of the meal went\n silently, except for Sally's insistence\n upon singing her\n school song between mouthfuls.\n When Dawes was\n through, he pushed back his\n plate and ordered Sol to get\n ready.", "\"Tush,\" the woman said.\n She scurried out, and returned\n a moment later with a\n thick bath towel. \"Sorry I\n can't give you any bedding.\n But you'll find it nice and\n warm in here.\" She squinted\n at the dim face of a ship's-wheel\n clock on the mantle,\n and made a noise with her\n tongue. \"Three-thirty!\" she\n exclaimed. \"I'll miss the\n whole execution ...\"\n\n\n \"The what?\"\n\n\n \"Goodnight, young man,\"\n Mom said firmly.\n\n\n She padded off, leaving Sol\n holding the towel. He patted\n his face, and then scrubbed\n the wet tangle of brown hair.\n Carefully, he stepped off the\n carpet and onto the stone\n floor in front of the fireplace.\n He removed his\n drenched coat and suit jacket,\n and squeezed water out\n over the ashes.", "\"That's good,\" Sol said desperately.\n \"Now why don't you\n be a good girl and eat your\n poached eggs. In the kitchen.\"\n\n\n \"Ain't ready yet. You going\n to stay for breakfast?\"\n\n\n \"I'm not going to do anything\n until you get out of\n here.\"\n\n\n She put the end of a pigtail\n in her mouth and sat down on\n the chair opposite. \"I went to\n the palace last night. They\n had an exelution.\"\n\n\n \"Please,\" Sol groaned. \"Be\n a good girl, Sally. If you let\n me get dressed, I'll show you\n how to take your thumb off.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, that's an old trick. Did\n you ever see an exelution?\"\n\n\n \"No. Did you ever see a little\n girl with her hide\n tanned?\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\"", "\"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Thought so.\"\n\n\n Sol repeated the question.\n\n\n \"Course I did. Been goin'\n there ever since I was a kid.\n Night-times, that is.\"\n\n\n \"How—I mean, what kind\n of place is it?\"\n\n\n \"Said you're a stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Then 'tain't your business.\"\n\n\n That was that.\n\n\n He left the park, and wandered\n into a thriving luncheonette.\n He tried questioning\n the man behind the counter,\n who merely snickered and\n said: \"You stayin' with the\n Dawes, ain't you? Better ask\n Willie, then. He knows the\n place better than anybody.\"\n\n\n He asked about the execution,\n and the man stiffened.", "\"Yep,\" Dawes said. He lifted\n cup to lip. \"Great coffee,\n Ma.\" He leaned back with a\n contented sigh. \"Dream about\n it every night. Got so used to\n the place, I get all confused\n in the daytime.\"\n\n\n Mom said: \"I get muddle-headed\n too, sometimes.\"\n\n\n \"You mean—\" Sol put his\n napkin in his lap. \"You mean\nyou\ndream about the same\n place?\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" Sally piped. \"We\n all go there at night. I'm goin'\n to the palace again, too.\"\n\n\n \"If you brush your teeth,\"\n Mom said primly.\n\n\n \"If I brush my teeth. Boy,\n you shoulda seen the exelution!\"\n\n\n \"Execution,\" her father\n said.", "\"Uh-huh.\" Dawes looked\n reflective. \"You wouldn't be\n thinkin' about writing us up\n or anything. I mean, this is a\n pretty private affair.\"\n\n\n \"Writing it up?\" Sol\n blinked. \"I hadn't thought of\n it. But you'll have to admit—it's\n sure interesting.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah,\" Dawes said narrowly.\n \"I guess it would be.\"\n\n\n \"Supper!\" Mom called.\n\n\n After the meal, they spent\n a quiet evening at home. Sally\n went to bed, screaming her\n reluctance, at eight-thirty.\n Mom, dozing in the big chair\n near the fireplace, padded upstairs\n at nine. Then Dawes\n yawned widely, stood up, and\n said goodnight at quarter-of-ten.\n\n\n He paused in the doorway\n before leaving.", "Mom fixed him a light\n lunch, the greatest feature of\n which was some hot biscuits\n she plucked out of the oven.\n It made him feel almost normal.\n\n\n He wandered around the\n town some more after lunch,\n trying to spark conversation\n with the residents.\n\n\n He learned little.\nAt\n five-thirty, he returned\n to the Dawes house, and was\n promptly leaped upon by\n little Sally.\n\n\n \"Hi! Hi! Hi!\" she said,\n clutching his right leg and\n almost toppling him over.\n \"We had a party in school. I\n had chocolate cake. You goin'\n to stay with us?\"\n\n\n \"Just another night,\" Sol\n told her, trying to shake the\n girl off. \"If it's okay with\n your folks. They haven't\n found my car yet.\"", "A woman, with an empty\n market basket, nodded casually\n to them. \"Mornin', folks.\n Enjoyed it last night.\n Thought you made a right\n nice speech, Mr. Dawes.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" Dawes answered\n gruffly, but obviously flattered.\n \"We were just goin'\n over to Brundage's to pick up\n the body. Ma's gonna pay a\n call on Mrs. Brundage around\n ten o'clock. You care to visit?\"\n\n\n \"Why, I think that's very\n nice,\" the woman said. \"I'll\n be sure and do that.\" She\n smiled at the fat man. \"Mornin',\n Prince.\"\n\n\n Sol's head was spinning. As\n they left the woman and continued\n their determined\n march down the quiet street,\n he tried to find answers.", "The tableau was grisly. Sol\n looked away, towards the\n comfortingly mundane atmosphere\n of the barber shop. But\n even the sight of the thick-padded\n chairs, the shaving\n mugs on the wall, the neat\n rows of cutting instruments,\n seemed grotesque and morbid.\n\n\n \"Listen,\" Sol said, as they\n went through the doorway.\n \"About my car—\"\n\n\n The Sheriff turned and regarded\n him lugubriously.\n \"Your\ncar\n? Young man, ain't\n you got no\nrespect\n?\"\n\n\n Sol swallowed hard and fell\n silent. He went outside with\n them, the woman slamming\n the barber-shop door behind\n him. He waited in front of\n the building while the men\n toted away the corpse to some\n new destination.\nHe\n took a walk.", "\"Don't think I can talk\n about that. Fella broke one of\n the Laws; that's about it.\n Don't see where you come\n into it.\"\n\n\n At eleven o'clock, he returned\n to the Dawes residence,\n and found Mom in the\n kitchen, surrounded by the\n warm nostalgic odor of home-baked\n bread. She told him\n that her husband had left a\n message for the stranger, informing\n him that the State\n Police would be around to get\n his story.\n\n\n He waited in the house,\n gloomily turning the pages of\n the local newspaper, searching\n for references to Armagon.\n He found nothing.\n\n\n At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced\n State Trooper came to\n call, and Sol told his story.\n He was promised nothing,\n and told to stay in town until\n he was contacted again by\n the authorities.", "\"\nSally!\n\" Mom again, sterner.\n \"You get out of there, or\n you-know-what ...\"\n\n\n \"Okay,\" the girl said\n blithely. \"I'm goin' to the palace\n again. If I brush my\n teeth. Aren't you\never\ngonna\n get up?\" She skipped out of\n the room, and Sol hastily sat\n up and reached for his\n trousers.\n\n\n When he had dressed, the\n clothes still damp and unpleasant\n against his skin, he\n went out of the parlor and\n found the kitchen. Mom was\n busy at the stove. He said:\n \"Good morning.\"\n\n\n \"Breakfast in ten minutes,\"\n she said cheerfully. \"You like\n poached eggs?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. Do you have a telephone?\"\n\n\n \"In the hallway. Party line,\n so you may have to wait.\"", "\"He didn't mean no harm,\"\n the woman snuffled. \"He was\n just purely ornery, Vincent\n was. Just plain mean stubborn.\"\n\n\n \"The law's the law,\" the\n fat man sighed.\n\n\n Sol couldn't hold himself\n in.\n\n\n \"What law? Who's dead?\n How did it happen?\"\n\n\n Dawes looked at him disgustedly.\n \"Now is it any of\nyour\nbusiness? I mean, is it?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" Sol said\n miserably.\n\n\n \"You better stay out of\n this,\" the Sheriff warned.\n \"This is a local matter, young\n man. You better stay in the\n shop while we go up.\"\n\n\n They filed past him and the\n crying Mrs. Brundage.\n\n\n When they were out of\n sight, Sol pleaded with her.", "Dawes cupped his hands\n over the plate glass and\n peered inside. Gold letters on\n the glass advertised: HAIRCUT\n SHAVE & MASSAGE\n PARLOR. He reported: \"Nobody\n in the shop. Must be\n upstairs.\"\nThe\n fat man rang the\n bell. It was a while before an\n answer came.\n\n\n It was a reedy woman in a\n housecoat, her hair in curlers,\n her eyes red and swollen.\n\n\n \"Now, now,\" Dawes said\n gently. \"Don't you take on\n like that, Mrs. Brundage. You\n heard the charges. It hadda\n be this way.\"\n\n\n \"My poor Vincent,\" she\n sobbed.\n\n\n \"Better let us up,\" the\n Sheriff said kindly. \"No use\n just lettin' him lay there,\n Mrs. Brundage.\"", "His eyes flew open, and he\n pulled the towel protectively\n around his body and glared\n at the little girl with the rust-red\n pigtails.\n\n\n \"Huh, mister?\" she said,\n pushing a finger against her\n freckled nose. \"Are you?\"\n\n\n \"No,\" he said angrily. \"I'm\n not naked. Will you please\n go away?\"\n\n\n \"Sally!\" It was Mom, appearing\n in the doorway of the\n parlor. \"You leave the gentleman\n alone.\" She went off\n again.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Sol said. \"Please let\n me get dressed. If you don't\n mind.\" The girl didn't move.\n \"What time is it?\"\n\n\n \"Dunno,\" Sally shrugged.\n \"I like poached eggs. They're\n my favorite eggs in the whole\n world.\"", "The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed\n citizen with a long, sad face,\n was rocking on a porch as\n they approached his house,\n trying to puff a half-lit pipe.\n He lifted one hand wearily\n when he saw them.\n\n\n \"Hi, Cookie,\" Dawes\n grinned. \"Thought you, me,\n and Charlie would get Brundage's\n body outa the house.\n This here's Mr. Becker; he\n got another problem. Mr.\n Becker, meet Cookie Coogan.\"\n\n\n The Sheriff joined the procession,\n pausing only once to\n inquire into Sol's predicament.\n\n\n He described the hitchhiker\n incident, but Coogan\n listened stoically. He murmured\n something about the\n Troopers, and shuffled alongside\n the puffing fat man.\n\n\n Sol soon realized that their\n destination was a barber shop.", "\"I'd think about that,\" he\n said. \"Writing it up, I mean.\n A lot of folks would think\n you were just plum crazy.\"\n\n\n Sol laughed feebly. \"I\n guess they would at that.\"\n\n\n \"Goodnight,\" Dawes said.\n\n\n \"Goodnight.\"\n\n\n He read Sally's copy of\nTreasure Island\nfor about\n half an hour. Then he undressed,\n made himself comfortable\n on the sofa, snuggled\n under the soft blanket\n that Mom had provided, and\n shut his eyes.\n\n\n He reviewed the events of\n the day before dropping off\n to sleep. The troublesome\n Sally. The strange dream\n world of Armagon. The visit\n to the barber shop. The removal\n of Brundage's body.\n The conversations with the\n townspeople. Dawes' suspicious\n attitude ...", "He stripped down to his\n underwear, wondering about\n next morning's possible embarrassment,\n and decided to\n use the damp bath towel as a\n blanket. The sofa was downy\n and comfortable. He curled\n up under the towel, shivered\n once, and closed his eyes.\nHe\n was tired and very\n sleepy, and his customary\n nightly review was limited to\n a few detached thoughts\n about the wedding he was\n supposed to attend in Salinas\n that weekend ... the hoodlum\n who had responded to his\n good-nature by dumping him\n out of his own car ... the slogging\n walk to the village ...\n the little round woman who\n was hurrying off, like the\n White Rabbit, to some mysterious\n appointment on the\n upper floor ...\n\n\n Then he went to sleep.\n\n\n A voice awoke him, shrill\n and questioning.\n\n\n \"Are you\nnakkid\n?\"", "Henry Slesar, young New York advertising executive and by now no\n longer a new-comer to either this magazine or to this field, describes\n a strange little town that you, yourself, may blunder into one of these\n evenings. But, if you do, beware—beware of the Knights!\ndream\n \ntown\nby ... HENRY SLESAR\nThe woman in the doorway looked so harmless. Who\n was to tell she had some rather startling interests?\nThe\n woman in the\n doorway looked like Mom in\n the homier political cartoons.\n She was plump, apple-cheeked,\n white-haired. She\n wore a fussy, old-fashioned\n nightgown, and was busily\n clutching a worn house-robe\n around her expansive middle.\n She blinked at Sol Becker's\n rain-flattened hair and hang-dog\n expression, and said:\n \"What is it? What do you\n want?\"", "\"What happened? How did\n your husband die?\"\n\n\n \"Please ...\"\n\n\n \"You must tell me! Was it\n something to do with Armagon?\n Do you dream about the\n place, too?\"\n\n\n She was shocked at the\n question. \"Of course!\"\n\n\n \"And your husband? Did\n he have the same dream?\"\n\n\n Fresh tears resulted. \"Can't\n you leave me alone?\" She\n turned her back. \"I got things\n to do. You can make yourself\n comfortable—\" She indicated\n the barber chairs, and left\n through the back door.\n\n\n Sol looked after her, and\n then ambled over to the first\n chair and slipped into the\n high seat. His reflection in\n the mirror, strangely gray in\n the dim light, made him\n groan. His clothes were a\n mess, and he needed a shave.\n If only Brundage had been\n alive ...", "He tried for fifteen minutes\n to get through, but there\n was a woman on the line who\n was terribly upset about a\n cotton dress she had ordered\n from Sears, and was telling\n the world about it.\n\n\n Finally, he got his call\n through to Salinas, and a\n sleepy-voiced Fred, his old\n Army buddy, listened somewhat\n indifferently to his tale\n of woe. \"I might miss the\n wedding,\" Sol said unhappily.\n \"I'm awfully sorry.\" Fred\n didn't seem to be half as sorry\n as he was. When Sol hung\n up, he was feeling more despondent\n than ever.\n\n\n A man, tall and rangy, with\n a bobbing Adam's apple and\n a lined face, came into the\n hallway. \"Hullo?\" he said inquiringly.\n \"You the fella had\n the car stolen?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"" ], [ "\"\nSally!\n\" Mom again, sterner.\n \"You get out of there, or\n you-know-what ...\"\n\n\n \"Okay,\" the girl said\n blithely. \"I'm goin' to the palace\n again. If I brush my\n teeth. Aren't you\never\ngonna\n get up?\" She skipped out of\n the room, and Sol hastily sat\n up and reached for his\n trousers.\n\n\n When he had dressed, the\n clothes still damp and unpleasant\n against his skin, he\n went out of the parlor and\n found the kitchen. Mom was\n busy at the stove. He said:\n \"Good morning.\"\n\n\n \"Breakfast in ten minutes,\"\n she said cheerfully. \"You like\n poached eggs?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. Do you have a telephone?\"\n\n\n \"In the hallway. Party line,\n so you may have to wait.\"", "\"Look, Mr. Dawes.\" He was\n panting; the pace was fast.\n \"Does\nshe\ndream about this—Armagon,\n too? That woman\n back there?\"\n\n\n \"Yep.\"\n\n\n Charlie chuckled. \"He's a\n stranger, all right.\"\n\n\n \"And you, Mr.—\" Sol\n turned to the fat man. \"You\n also know about this palace\n and everything?\"\n\n\n \"I told you,\" Dawes said\n testily. \"Charlie here's Prince\n Regent. But don't let the fancy\n title fool you. He got no\n more power than any Knight\n of the Realm. He's just too\n dern fat to do much more'n\n sit on a throne and eat grapes.\n That right, Charlie?\"\n\n\n The fat man giggled.\n\n\n \"Here's the Sheriff,\" Dawes\n said.", "\"Must be nearly three,\" the\n woman sniffed. \"You couldn't\n have come at a worse time. I\n was just on my way to\n court—\"\n\n\n The words slid by him. \"If\n I could just stay overnight.\n Until the morning. I could\n call some friends in San Fernando.\n I'm very susceptible to\n head colds,\" he added inanely.\n\n\n \"Well, take those shoes off,\n first,\" the woman grumbled.\n \"You can undress in the parlor,\n if you'll keep off the rug.\n You won't mind using the\n sofa?\"\n\n\n \"No, of course not. I'd be\n happy to pay—\"\n\n\n \"Oh, tush, nobody's asking\n you to pay. This isn't a hotel.\n You mind if I go back upstairs?\n They're gonna miss\n me at the palace.\"", "\"Yep,\" Dawes said. He lifted\n cup to lip. \"Great coffee,\n Ma.\" He leaned back with a\n contented sigh. \"Dream about\n it every night. Got so used to\n the place, I get all confused\n in the daytime.\"\n\n\n Mom said: \"I get muddle-headed\n too, sometimes.\"\n\n\n \"You mean—\" Sol put his\n napkin in his lap. \"You mean\nyou\ndream about the same\n place?\"\n\n\n \"Sure,\" Sally piped. \"We\n all go there at night. I'm goin'\n to the palace again, too.\"\n\n\n \"If you brush your teeth,\"\n Mom said primly.\n\n\n \"If I brush my teeth. Boy,\n you shoulda seen the exelution!\"\n\n\n \"Execution,\" her father\n said.", "\"That's good,\" Sol said desperately.\n \"Now why don't you\n be a good girl and eat your\n poached eggs. In the kitchen.\"\n\n\n \"Ain't ready yet. You going\n to stay for breakfast?\"\n\n\n \"I'm not going to do anything\n until you get out of\n here.\"\n\n\n She put the end of a pigtail\n in her mouth and sat down on\n the chair opposite. \"I went to\n the palace last night. They\n had an exelution.\"\n\n\n \"Please,\" Sol groaned. \"Be\n a good girl, Sally. If you let\n me get dressed, I'll show you\n how to take your thumb off.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, that's an old trick. Did\n you ever see an exelution?\"\n\n\n \"No. Did you ever see a little\n girl with her hide\n tanned?\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\"", "\"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Thought so.\"\n\n\n Sol repeated the question.\n\n\n \"Course I did. Been goin'\n there ever since I was a kid.\n Night-times, that is.\"\n\n\n \"How—I mean, what kind\n of place is it?\"\n\n\n \"Said you're a stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Then 'tain't your business.\"\n\n\n That was that.\n\n\n He left the park, and wandered\n into a thriving luncheonette.\n He tried questioning\n the man behind the counter,\n who merely snickered and\n said: \"You stayin' with the\n Dawes, ain't you? Better ask\n Willie, then. He knows the\n place better than anybody.\"\n\n\n He asked about the execution,\n and the man stiffened.", "Mom was following him,\n her stout body regal in scarlet\n robes. \"Sally! You give\n Sir Coogan his helmet! You\n hear?\"\n\n\n \"Mrs. Dawes!\" Sol said.\n\n\n \"Why, Mr. Becker! How\n nice to see you again! Pa!\nPa!\nLook who's here!\"\n\n\n Willie Dawes appeared.\nNo!\nSol thought. This was\nKing\nDawes; nothing else\n could explain the magnificence\n of his attire.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Dawes said craftily.\n \"So I see. Welcome to Armagon,\n Mr. Becker.\"\n\n\n \"Armagon?\" Sol gaped.\n \"Then this is the place\n you've been dreaming about?\"\n\n\n \"Yep,\" the King said. \"And\n now\nyou're\nin it, too.\"\n\n\n \"Then I'm only dreaming!\"", "The man batted his eyes.\n \"Oh, Brundage!\" he said.\n \"You know, I clean forgot\n about him?\" He laughed.\n \"Imagine me forgetting\n that?\"\n\n\n \"Yeah.\" Dawes wasn't\n amused. \"And you Prince Regent.\"\n\n\n \"Aw, Willie—\"\n\n\n \"Well, come on. Stir that\n fat carcass. Gotta pick up\n Sheriff Coogan, too. This\n here gentleman has to see him\n about somethin' else.\"\n\n\n The man regarded Sol suspiciously.\n \"Never seen you\n before. Night\nor\nday. Stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Come\non\n!\" Dawes said.\n\n\n The fat man grunted and\n hoisted himself out of the\n swivel chair. He followed\n lamely behind the two men\n as they went out into the\n street again.", "He stripped down to his\n underwear, wondering about\n next morning's possible embarrassment,\n and decided to\n use the damp bath towel as a\n blanket. The sofa was downy\n and comfortable. He curled\n up under the towel, shivered\n once, and closed his eyes.\nHe\n was tired and very\n sleepy, and his customary\n nightly review was limited to\n a few detached thoughts\n about the wedding he was\n supposed to attend in Salinas\n that weekend ... the hoodlum\n who had responded to his\n good-nature by dumping him\n out of his own car ... the slogging\n walk to the village ...\n the little round woman who\n was hurrying off, like the\n White Rabbit, to some mysterious\n appointment on the\n upper floor ...\n\n\n Then he went to sleep.\n\n\n A voice awoke him, shrill\n and questioning.\n\n\n \"Are you\nnakkid\n?\"", "\"Tush,\" the woman said.\n She scurried out, and returned\n a moment later with a\n thick bath towel. \"Sorry I\n can't give you any bedding.\n But you'll find it nice and\n warm in here.\" She squinted\n at the dim face of a ship's-wheel\n clock on the mantle,\n and made a noise with her\n tongue. \"Three-thirty!\" she\n exclaimed. \"I'll miss the\n whole execution ...\"\n\n\n \"The what?\"\n\n\n \"Goodnight, young man,\"\n Mom said firmly.\n\n\n She padded off, leaving Sol\n holding the towel. He patted\n his face, and then scrubbed\n the wet tangle of brown hair.\n Carefully, he stepped off the\n carpet and onto the stone\n floor in front of the fireplace.\n He removed his\n drenched coat and suit jacket,\n and squeezed water out\n over the ashes.", "The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed\n citizen with a long, sad face,\n was rocking on a porch as\n they approached his house,\n trying to puff a half-lit pipe.\n He lifted one hand wearily\n when he saw them.\n\n\n \"Hi, Cookie,\" Dawes\n grinned. \"Thought you, me,\n and Charlie would get Brundage's\n body outa the house.\n This here's Mr. Becker; he\n got another problem. Mr.\n Becker, meet Cookie Coogan.\"\n\n\n The Sheriff joined the procession,\n pausing only once to\n inquire into Sol's predicament.\n\n\n He described the hitchhiker\n incident, but Coogan\n listened stoically. He murmured\n something about the\n Troopers, and shuffled alongside\n the puffing fat man.\n\n\n Sol soon realized that their\n destination was a barber shop.", "The town was just coming\n to life. People were strolling\n out of their houses, commenting\n on the weather, chuckling\n amiably about local affairs.\n Kids on bicycles were beginning\n to appear, jangling the\n little bells and hooting to\n each other. A woman, hanging\n wash in the back yard,\n called out to him, thinking\n he was somebody else.\n\n\n He found a little park, no\n more than twenty yards in\n circumference, centered\n around a weatherbeaten monument\n of some unrecognizable\n military figure. Three\n old men took their places on\n the bench that circled the\n General, and leaned on their\n canes.\n\n\n Sol was a civil engineer.\n But he made like a reporter.\n\n\n \"Pardon me, sir.\" The old\n man, leathery-faced, with a\n fine yellow moustache, looked\n at him dumbly. \"Have you\n ever heard of Armagon?\"\n\n\n \"You a stranger?\"", "\"What happened? How did\n your husband die?\"\n\n\n \"Please ...\"\n\n\n \"You must tell me! Was it\n something to do with Armagon?\n Do you dream about the\n place, too?\"\n\n\n She was shocked at the\n question. \"Of course!\"\n\n\n \"And your husband? Did\n he have the same dream?\"\n\n\n Fresh tears resulted. \"Can't\n you leave me alone?\" She\n turned her back. \"I got things\n to do. You can make yourself\n comfortable—\" She indicated\n the barber chairs, and left\n through the back door.\n\n\n Sol looked after her, and\n then ambled over to the first\n chair and slipped into the\n high seat. His reflection in\n the mirror, strangely gray in\n the dim light, made him\n groan. His clothes were a\n mess, and he needed a shave.\n If only Brundage had been\n alive ...", "His eyes flew open, and he\n pulled the towel protectively\n around his body and glared\n at the little girl with the rust-red\n pigtails.\n\n\n \"Huh, mister?\" she said,\n pushing a finger against her\n freckled nose. \"Are you?\"\n\n\n \"No,\" he said angrily. \"I'm\n not naked. Will you please\n go away?\"\n\n\n \"Sally!\" It was Mom, appearing\n in the doorway of the\n parlor. \"You leave the gentleman\n alone.\" She went off\n again.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Sol said. \"Please let\n me get dressed. If you don't\n mind.\" The girl didn't move.\n \"What time is it?\"\n\n\n \"Dunno,\" Sally shrugged.\n \"I like poached eggs. They're\n my favorite eggs in the whole\n world.\"", "\"That's right, Pa.\" She\n poured the blackest coffee\n Sol had ever seen. \"Didn't\n miss much, though.\"\n\n\n \"What court is that?\" Sol\n asked politely, his mouth full.\n\n\n \"Umagum,\" Sally said, a\n piece of toast sticking out\n from the side of her mouth.\n \"Don't you know\nnothin'\n?\"\n\n\n \"\nArma\ngon,\" Dawes corrected.\n He looked sheepishly at\n the stranger. \"Don't expect\n Mister—\" He cocked an eyebrow.\n \"What's the name?\"\n\n\n \"Becker.\"\n\n\n \"Don't expect Mr. Becker\n knows anything about Armagon.\n It's just a dream, you\n know.\" He smiled apologetically.\n\n\n \"Dream? You mean this—Armagon\n is a place you dream\n about?\"", "Charlie, the fat man,\n clumsy as ever in his robes of\n State, said: \"So\nthat's\nthe\n snooper, eh?\"\n\n\n \"Yep,\" Dawes chuckled.\n \"Think you better round up\n the Knights.\"\n\n\n Sol said: \"The Knights?\"\n\n\n \"Exelution! Exelution!\"\n Sally shrieked.\n\n\n \"Now wait a minute—\"\n\n\n Charlie shouted.\n\n\n Running feet, clanking of\n armor. Sol backed up against\n a pillar. \"Now look here.\n You've gone far enough—\"\n\n\n \"Not quite,\" said the King.\n\n\n The Knights stepped forward.\n\n\n \"Wait!\" Sol screamed.", "Dawes cupped his hands\n over the plate glass and\n peered inside. Gold letters on\n the glass advertised: HAIRCUT\n SHAVE & MASSAGE\n PARLOR. He reported: \"Nobody\n in the shop. Must be\n upstairs.\"\nThe\n fat man rang the\n bell. It was a while before an\n answer came.\n\n\n It was a reedy woman in a\n housecoat, her hair in curlers,\n her eyes red and swollen.\n\n\n \"Now, now,\" Dawes said\n gently. \"Don't you take on\n like that, Mrs. Brundage. You\n heard the charges. It hadda\n be this way.\"\n\n\n \"My poor Vincent,\" she\n sobbed.\n\n\n \"Better let us up,\" the\n Sheriff said kindly. \"No use\n just lettin' him lay there,\n Mrs. Brundage.\"", "\"No, of course not,\" Sol\n said. He followed her into\n the darkened parlor, and\n watched as she turned the\n screw on a hurricane-style\n lamp, shedding a yellow pool\n of light over half a flowery\n sofa and a doily-covered wing\n chair. \"You go on up. I'll be\n perfectly fine.\"\n\n\n \"Guess you can use a towel,\n though. I'll get you one,\n then I'm going up. We wake\n pretty early in this house.\n Breakfast's at seven; you'll\n have to be up if you want\n any.\"\n\n\n \"I really can't thank you\n enough—\"", "He tried for fifteen minutes\n to get through, but there\n was a woman on the line who\n was terribly upset about a\n cotton dress she had ordered\n from Sears, and was telling\n the world about it.\n\n\n Finally, he got his call\n through to Salinas, and a\n sleepy-voiced Fred, his old\n Army buddy, listened somewhat\n indifferently to his tale\n of woe. \"I might miss the\n wedding,\" Sol said unhappily.\n \"I'm awfully sorry.\" Fred\n didn't seem to be half as sorry\n as he was. When Sol hung\n up, he was feeling more despondent\n than ever.\n\n\n A man, tall and rangy, with\n a bobbing Adam's apple and\n a lined face, came into the\n hallway. \"Hullo?\" he said inquiringly.\n \"You the fella had\n the car stolen?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"", "\"Don't think I can talk\n about that. Fella broke one of\n the Laws; that's about it.\n Don't see where you come\n into it.\"\n\n\n At eleven o'clock, he returned\n to the Dawes residence,\n and found Mom in the\n kitchen, surrounded by the\n warm nostalgic odor of home-baked\n bread. She told him\n that her husband had left a\n message for the stranger, informing\n him that the State\n Police would be around to get\n his story.\n\n\n He waited in the house,\n gloomily turning the pages of\n the local newspaper, searching\n for references to Armagon.\n He found nothing.\n\n\n At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced\n State Trooper came to\n call, and Sol told his story.\n He was promised nothing,\n and told to stay in town until\n he was contacted again by\n the authorities." ], [ "The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed\n citizen with a long, sad face,\n was rocking on a porch as\n they approached his house,\n trying to puff a half-lit pipe.\n He lifted one hand wearily\n when he saw them.\n\n\n \"Hi, Cookie,\" Dawes\n grinned. \"Thought you, me,\n and Charlie would get Brundage's\n body outa the house.\n This here's Mr. Becker; he\n got another problem. Mr.\n Becker, meet Cookie Coogan.\"\n\n\n The Sheriff joined the procession,\n pausing only once to\n inquire into Sol's predicament.\n\n\n He described the hitchhiker\n incident, but Coogan\n listened stoically. He murmured\n something about the\n Troopers, and shuffled alongside\n the puffing fat man.\n\n\n Sol soon realized that their\n destination was a barber shop.", "\"That's very kind of you,\"\n Sol said. \"I really wish you'd\n let me pay something—\"\n\n\n \"Don't want to hear another\n word about pay.\"\nMr. Dawes\n came home an\n hour later, looking tired.\n Mom pecked him lightly on\n the forehead. He glanced at\n the evening paper, and then\n spoke to Sol.\n\n\n \"Hear you been asking\n questions, Mr. Becker.\"\n\n\n Sol nodded, embarrassed.\n \"Guess I have. I'm awfully\n curious about this Armagon\n place. Never heard of anything\n like it before.\"\n\n\n Dawes grunted. \"You ain't\n a reporter?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no. I'm an engineer. I\n was just satisfying my own\n curiosity.\"", "\"Sally!\" Mom was peering\n out of the screen door. \"You\n let Mr. Becker alone and go\n wash. Your Pa will be home\n soon.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, pooh,\" the girl said,\n her pigtails swinging. \"Do\n you got a girlfriend, mister?\"\n\n\n \"No.\" Sol struggled towards\n the house with her\n dead weight on his leg.\n \"Would you mind? I can't\n walk.\"\n\n\n \"Would you be my boyfriend?\"\n\n\n \"Well, we'll talk about it.\n If you let go my leg.\"\n\n\n Inside the house, she said:\n \"We're having pot roast. You\n stayin'?\"\n\n\n \"Of course Mr. Becker's\n stayin',\" Mom said. \"He's our\n guest.\"", "Sol grabbed his topcoat and\n followed the man out the\n door.\n\n\n \"Have to stop someplace\n first,\" Dawes said. \"But we'll\n be pickin' up the Sheriff on\n the way. Okay with you?\"\n\n\n \"Fine,\" Sol said uneasily.\n\n\n The rain had stopped, but\n the heavy clouds seemed reluctant\n to leave the skies over\n the small town. There was a\n skittish breeze blowing, and\n Sol Becker tightened the collar\n of his coat around his\n neck as he tried to keep up\n with the fast-stepping Dawes.\nThey\n crossed the\n street diagonally, and entered\n a two-story wooden building.\n Dawes took the stairs at a\n brisk pace, and pushed open\n the door on the second floor.\n A fat man looked up from\n behind a desk.\n\n\n \"Hi, Charlie. Thought I'd\n see if you wanted to help\n move Brundage.\"", "Mom was following him,\n her stout body regal in scarlet\n robes. \"Sally! You give\n Sir Coogan his helmet! You\n hear?\"\n\n\n \"Mrs. Dawes!\" Sol said.\n\n\n \"Why, Mr. Becker! How\n nice to see you again! Pa!\nPa!\nLook who's here!\"\n\n\n Willie Dawes appeared.\nNo!\nSol thought. This was\nKing\nDawes; nothing else\n could explain the magnificence\n of his attire.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Dawes said craftily.\n \"So I see. Welcome to Armagon,\n Mr. Becker.\"\n\n\n \"Armagon?\" Sol gaped.\n \"Then this is the place\n you've been dreaming about?\"\n\n\n \"Yep,\" the King said. \"And\n now\nyou're\nin it, too.\"\n\n\n \"Then I'm only dreaming!\"", "A woman, with an empty\n market basket, nodded casually\n to them. \"Mornin', folks.\n Enjoyed it last night.\n Thought you made a right\n nice speech, Mr. Dawes.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" Dawes answered\n gruffly, but obviously flattered.\n \"We were just goin'\n over to Brundage's to pick up\n the body. Ma's gonna pay a\n call on Mrs. Brundage around\n ten o'clock. You care to visit?\"\n\n\n \"Why, I think that's very\n nice,\" the woman said. \"I'll\n be sure and do that.\" She\n smiled at the fat man. \"Mornin',\n Prince.\"\n\n\n Sol's head was spinning. As\n they left the woman and continued\n their determined\n march down the quiet street,\n he tried to find answers.", "He tried for fifteen minutes\n to get through, but there\n was a woman on the line who\n was terribly upset about a\n cotton dress she had ordered\n from Sears, and was telling\n the world about it.\n\n\n Finally, he got his call\n through to Salinas, and a\n sleepy-voiced Fred, his old\n Army buddy, listened somewhat\n indifferently to his tale\n of woe. \"I might miss the\n wedding,\" Sol said unhappily.\n \"I'm awfully sorry.\" Fred\n didn't seem to be half as sorry\n as he was. When Sol hung\n up, he was feeling more despondent\n than ever.\n\n\n A man, tall and rangy, with\n a bobbing Adam's apple and\n a lined face, came into the\n hallway. \"Hullo?\" he said inquiringly.\n \"You the fella had\n the car stolen?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"", "Mom fixed him a light\n lunch, the greatest feature of\n which was some hot biscuits\n she plucked out of the oven.\n It made him feel almost normal.\n\n\n He wandered around the\n town some more after lunch,\n trying to spark conversation\n with the residents.\n\n\n He learned little.\nAt\n five-thirty, he returned\n to the Dawes house, and was\n promptly leaped upon by\n little Sally.\n\n\n \"Hi! Hi! Hi!\" she said,\n clutching his right leg and\n almost toppling him over.\n \"We had a party in school. I\n had chocolate cake. You goin'\n to stay with us?\"\n\n\n \"Just another night,\" Sol\n told her, trying to shake the\n girl off. \"If it's okay with\n your folks. They haven't\n found my car yet.\"", "\"Oh, my goodness!\" Mom\n got up hastily. \"That reminds\n me. I gotta call poor Mrs.\n Brundage. It's the\nleast\nI\n could do.\"\n\n\n \"Good idea,\" Dawes nodded.\n \"And I'll have to round\n up some folks and get old\n Brundage out of there.\"\n\n\n Sol was staring. He opened\n his mouth, but couldn't think\n of the right question to ask.\n Then he blurted out: \"What\n execution?\"\n\n\n \"None of\nyour\nbusiness,\"\n the man said coldly. \"You eat\n up, young man. If you want\n me to get Sheriff Coogan\n lookin' for your car.\"\n\n\n The rest of the meal went\n silently, except for Sally's insistence\n upon singing her\n school song between mouthfuls.\n When Dawes was\n through, he pushed back his\n plate and ordered Sol to get\n ready.", "The man batted his eyes.\n \"Oh, Brundage!\" he said.\n \"You know, I clean forgot\n about him?\" He laughed.\n \"Imagine me forgetting\n that?\"\n\n\n \"Yeah.\" Dawes wasn't\n amused. \"And you Prince Regent.\"\n\n\n \"Aw, Willie—\"\n\n\n \"Well, come on. Stir that\n fat carcass. Gotta pick up\n Sheriff Coogan, too. This\n here gentleman has to see him\n about somethin' else.\"\n\n\n The man regarded Sol suspiciously.\n \"Never seen you\n before. Night\nor\nday. Stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Come\non\n!\" Dawes said.\n\n\n The fat man grunted and\n hoisted himself out of the\n swivel chair. He followed\n lamely behind the two men\n as they went out into the\n street again.", "He stripped down to his\n underwear, wondering about\n next morning's possible embarrassment,\n and decided to\n use the damp bath towel as a\n blanket. The sofa was downy\n and comfortable. He curled\n up under the towel, shivered\n once, and closed his eyes.\nHe\n was tired and very\n sleepy, and his customary\n nightly review was limited to\n a few detached thoughts\n about the wedding he was\n supposed to attend in Salinas\n that weekend ... the hoodlum\n who had responded to his\n good-nature by dumping him\n out of his own car ... the slogging\n walk to the village ...\n the little round woman who\n was hurrying off, like the\n White Rabbit, to some mysterious\n appointment on the\n upper floor ...\n\n\n Then he went to sleep.\n\n\n A voice awoke him, shrill\n and questioning.\n\n\n \"Are you\nnakkid\n?\"", "\"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Thought so.\"\n\n\n Sol repeated the question.\n\n\n \"Course I did. Been goin'\n there ever since I was a kid.\n Night-times, that is.\"\n\n\n \"How—I mean, what kind\n of place is it?\"\n\n\n \"Said you're a stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Then 'tain't your business.\"\n\n\n That was that.\n\n\n He left the park, and wandered\n into a thriving luncheonette.\n He tried questioning\n the man behind the counter,\n who merely snickered and\n said: \"You stayin' with the\n Dawes, ain't you? Better ask\n Willie, then. He knows the\n place better than anybody.\"\n\n\n He asked about the execution,\n and the man stiffened.", "The man scratched his ear.\n \"Take you over to Sheriff\n Coogan after breakfast. He'll\n let the Stateys know about it.\n My name's Dawes.\"\n\n\n Sol accepted a careful\n handshake.\n\n\n \"Don't get many people\n comin' into town,\" Dawes\n said, looking at him curiously.\n \"Ain't seen a stranger in\n years. But you look like the\n rest of us.\" He chuckled.\n\n\n Mom called out: \"Breakfast!\"\nAt\n the table, Dawes\n asked his destination.\n\n\n \"Wedding in Salinas,\" he\n explained. \"Old Army friend\n of mine. I picked this hitchhiker\n up about two miles from\n here. He\nseemed\nokay.\"\n\n\n \"Never can tell,\" Dawes\n said placidly, munching egg.\n \"Hey, Ma. That why you\n were so late comin' to court\n last night?\"", "The town was just coming\n to life. People were strolling\n out of their houses, commenting\n on the weather, chuckling\n amiably about local affairs.\n Kids on bicycles were beginning\n to appear, jangling the\n little bells and hooting to\n each other. A woman, hanging\n wash in the back yard,\n called out to him, thinking\n he was somebody else.\n\n\n He found a little park, no\n more than twenty yards in\n circumference, centered\n around a weatherbeaten monument\n of some unrecognizable\n military figure. Three\n old men took their places on\n the bench that circled the\n General, and leaned on their\n canes.\n\n\n Sol was a civil engineer.\n But he made like a reporter.\n\n\n \"Pardon me, sir.\" The old\n man, leathery-faced, with a\n fine yellow moustache, looked\n at him dumbly. \"Have you\n ever heard of Armagon?\"\n\n\n \"You a stranger?\"", "Familiar faces, under shining\n helmets, moved towards\n him; the tips of sharp-pointed\n spears gleaming wickedly.\n And Sol Becker wondered—would\n he ever awake?\nTranscriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from\nFantastic Universe\nJanuary 1957.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.\n copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and\n typographical errors have been corrected without note.", "The tableau was grisly. Sol\n looked away, towards the\n comfortingly mundane atmosphere\n of the barber shop. But\n even the sight of the thick-padded\n chairs, the shaving\n mugs on the wall, the neat\n rows of cutting instruments,\n seemed grotesque and morbid.\n\n\n \"Listen,\" Sol said, as they\n went through the doorway.\n \"About my car—\"\n\n\n The Sheriff turned and regarded\n him lugubriously.\n \"Your\ncar\n? Young man, ain't\n you got no\nrespect\n?\"\n\n\n Sol swallowed hard and fell\n silent. He went outside with\n them, the woman slamming\n the barber-shop door behind\n him. He waited in front of\n the building while the men\n toted away the corpse to some\n new destination.\nHe\n took a walk.", "\"Look, Mr. Dawes.\" He was\n panting; the pace was fast.\n \"Does\nshe\ndream about this—Armagon,\n too? That woman\n back there?\"\n\n\n \"Yep.\"\n\n\n Charlie chuckled. \"He's a\n stranger, all right.\"\n\n\n \"And you, Mr.—\" Sol\n turned to the fat man. \"You\n also know about this palace\n and everything?\"\n\n\n \"I told you,\" Dawes said\n testily. \"Charlie here's Prince\n Regent. But don't let the fancy\n title fool you. He got no\n more power than any Knight\n of the Realm. He's just too\n dern fat to do much more'n\n sit on a throne and eat grapes.\n That right, Charlie?\"\n\n\n The fat man giggled.\n\n\n \"Here's the Sheriff,\" Dawes\n said.", "He leaped out of the chair\n as voices sounded behind the\n door. Dawes was kicking it\n open with his foot, his arms\n laden with two rather large\n feet, still encased in bedroom\n slippers. Charlie was at the\n other end of the burden,\n which appeared to be a middle-aged\n man in pajamas. The\n Sheriff followed the trio up\n with a sad, undertaker expression.\n Behind him came Mrs.\n Brundage, properly weeping.\n\n\n \"We'll take him to the funeral\n parlor,\" Dawes said,\n breathing hard. \"Weighs a\n ton, don't he?\"\n\n\n \"What killed him?\" Sol\n said.\n\n\n \"Heart attack.\"\n\n\n The fat man chuckled.", "\"He didn't mean no harm,\"\n the woman snuffled. \"He was\n just purely ornery, Vincent\n was. Just plain mean stubborn.\"\n\n\n \"The law's the law,\" the\n fat man sighed.\n\n\n Sol couldn't hold himself\n in.\n\n\n \"What law? Who's dead?\n How did it happen?\"\n\n\n Dawes looked at him disgustedly.\n \"Now is it any of\nyour\nbusiness? I mean, is it?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" Sol said\n miserably.\n\n\n \"You better stay out of\n this,\" the Sheriff warned.\n \"This is a local matter, young\n man. You better stay in the\n shop while we go up.\"\n\n\n They filed past him and the\n crying Mrs. Brundage.\n\n\n When they were out of\n sight, Sol pleaded with her.", "Henry Slesar, young New York advertising executive and by now no\n longer a new-comer to either this magazine or to this field, describes\n a strange little town that you, yourself, may blunder into one of these\n evenings. But, if you do, beware—beware of the Knights!\ndream\n \ntown\nby ... HENRY SLESAR\nThe woman in the doorway looked so harmless. Who\n was to tell she had some rather startling interests?\nThe\n woman in the\n doorway looked like Mom in\n the homier political cartoons.\n She was plump, apple-cheeked,\n white-haired. She\n wore a fussy, old-fashioned\n nightgown, and was busily\n clutching a worn house-robe\n around her expansive middle.\n She blinked at Sol Becker's\n rain-flattened hair and hang-dog\n expression, and said:\n \"What is it? What do you\n want?\"" ], [ "The town was just coming\n to life. People were strolling\n out of their houses, commenting\n on the weather, chuckling\n amiably about local affairs.\n Kids on bicycles were beginning\n to appear, jangling the\n little bells and hooting to\n each other. A woman, hanging\n wash in the back yard,\n called out to him, thinking\n he was somebody else.\n\n\n He found a little park, no\n more than twenty yards in\n circumference, centered\n around a weatherbeaten monument\n of some unrecognizable\n military figure. Three\n old men took their places on\n the bench that circled the\n General, and leaned on their\n canes.\n\n\n Sol was a civil engineer.\n But he made like a reporter.\n\n\n \"Pardon me, sir.\" The old\n man, leathery-faced, with a\n fine yellow moustache, looked\n at him dumbly. \"Have you\n ever heard of Armagon?\"\n\n\n \"You a stranger?\"", "\"What happened? How did\n your husband die?\"\n\n\n \"Please ...\"\n\n\n \"You must tell me! Was it\n something to do with Armagon?\n Do you dream about the\n place, too?\"\n\n\n She was shocked at the\n question. \"Of course!\"\n\n\n \"And your husband? Did\n he have the same dream?\"\n\n\n Fresh tears resulted. \"Can't\n you leave me alone?\" She\n turned her back. \"I got things\n to do. You can make yourself\n comfortable—\" She indicated\n the barber chairs, and left\n through the back door.\n\n\n Sol looked after her, and\n then ambled over to the first\n chair and slipped into the\n high seat. His reflection in\n the mirror, strangely gray in\n the dim light, made him\n groan. His clothes were a\n mess, and he needed a shave.\n If only Brundage had been\n alive ...", "\"Look, Mr. Dawes.\" He was\n panting; the pace was fast.\n \"Does\nshe\ndream about this—Armagon,\n too? That woman\n back there?\"\n\n\n \"Yep.\"\n\n\n Charlie chuckled. \"He's a\n stranger, all right.\"\n\n\n \"And you, Mr.—\" Sol\n turned to the fat man. \"You\n also know about this palace\n and everything?\"\n\n\n \"I told you,\" Dawes said\n testily. \"Charlie here's Prince\n Regent. But don't let the fancy\n title fool you. He got no\n more power than any Knight\n of the Realm. He's just too\n dern fat to do much more'n\n sit on a throne and eat grapes.\n That right, Charlie?\"\n\n\n The fat man giggled.\n\n\n \"Here's the Sheriff,\" Dawes\n said.", "Mom was following him,\n her stout body regal in scarlet\n robes. \"Sally! You give\n Sir Coogan his helmet! You\n hear?\"\n\n\n \"Mrs. Dawes!\" Sol said.\n\n\n \"Why, Mr. Becker! How\n nice to see you again! Pa!\nPa!\nLook who's here!\"\n\n\n Willie Dawes appeared.\nNo!\nSol thought. This was\nKing\nDawes; nothing else\n could explain the magnificence\n of his attire.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Dawes said craftily.\n \"So I see. Welcome to Armagon,\n Mr. Becker.\"\n\n\n \"Armagon?\" Sol gaped.\n \"Then this is the place\n you've been dreaming about?\"\n\n\n \"Yep,\" the King said. \"And\n now\nyou're\nin it, too.\"\n\n\n \"Then I'm only dreaming!\"", "\"Don't think I can talk\n about that. Fella broke one of\n the Laws; that's about it.\n Don't see where you come\n into it.\"\n\n\n At eleven o'clock, he returned\n to the Dawes residence,\n and found Mom in the\n kitchen, surrounded by the\n warm nostalgic odor of home-baked\n bread. She told him\n that her husband had left a\n message for the stranger, informing\n him that the State\n Police would be around to get\n his story.\n\n\n He waited in the house,\n gloomily turning the pages of\n the local newspaper, searching\n for references to Armagon.\n He found nothing.\n\n\n At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced\n State Trooper came to\n call, and Sol told his story.\n He was promised nothing,\n and told to stay in town until\n he was contacted again by\n the authorities.", "\"That's very kind of you,\"\n Sol said. \"I really wish you'd\n let me pay something—\"\n\n\n \"Don't want to hear another\n word about pay.\"\nMr. Dawes\n came home an\n hour later, looking tired.\n Mom pecked him lightly on\n the forehead. He glanced at\n the evening paper, and then\n spoke to Sol.\n\n\n \"Hear you been asking\n questions, Mr. Becker.\"\n\n\n Sol nodded, embarrassed.\n \"Guess I have. I'm awfully\n curious about this Armagon\n place. Never heard of anything\n like it before.\"\n\n\n Dawes grunted. \"You ain't\n a reporter?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no. I'm an engineer. I\n was just satisfying my own\n curiosity.\"", "\"That's right, Pa.\" She\n poured the blackest coffee\n Sol had ever seen. \"Didn't\n miss much, though.\"\n\n\n \"What court is that?\" Sol\n asked politely, his mouth full.\n\n\n \"Umagum,\" Sally said, a\n piece of toast sticking out\n from the side of her mouth.\n \"Don't you know\nnothin'\n?\"\n\n\n \"\nArma\ngon,\" Dawes corrected.\n He looked sheepishly at\n the stranger. \"Don't expect\n Mister—\" He cocked an eyebrow.\n \"What's the name?\"\n\n\n \"Becker.\"\n\n\n \"Don't expect Mr. Becker\n knows anything about Armagon.\n It's just a dream, you\n know.\" He smiled apologetically.\n\n\n \"Dream? You mean this—Armagon\n is a place you dream\n about?\"", "\"I'd think about that,\" he\n said. \"Writing it up, I mean.\n A lot of folks would think\n you were just plum crazy.\"\n\n\n Sol laughed feebly. \"I\n guess they would at that.\"\n\n\n \"Goodnight,\" Dawes said.\n\n\n \"Goodnight.\"\n\n\n He read Sally's copy of\nTreasure Island\nfor about\n half an hour. Then he undressed,\n made himself comfortable\n on the sofa, snuggled\n under the soft blanket\n that Mom had provided, and\n shut his eyes.\n\n\n He reviewed the events of\n the day before dropping off\n to sleep. The troublesome\n Sally. The strange dream\n world of Armagon. The visit\n to the barber shop. The removal\n of Brundage's body.\n The conversations with the\n townspeople. Dawes' suspicious\n attitude ...", "The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed\n citizen with a long, sad face,\n was rocking on a porch as\n they approached his house,\n trying to puff a half-lit pipe.\n He lifted one hand wearily\n when he saw them.\n\n\n \"Hi, Cookie,\" Dawes\n grinned. \"Thought you, me,\n and Charlie would get Brundage's\n body outa the house.\n This here's Mr. Becker; he\n got another problem. Mr.\n Becker, meet Cookie Coogan.\"\n\n\n The Sheriff joined the procession,\n pausing only once to\n inquire into Sol's predicament.\n\n\n He described the hitchhiker\n incident, but Coogan\n listened stoically. He murmured\n something about the\n Troopers, and shuffled alongside\n the puffing fat man.\n\n\n Sol soon realized that their\n destination was a barber shop.", "The man batted his eyes.\n \"Oh, Brundage!\" he said.\n \"You know, I clean forgot\n about him?\" He laughed.\n \"Imagine me forgetting\n that?\"\n\n\n \"Yeah.\" Dawes wasn't\n amused. \"And you Prince Regent.\"\n\n\n \"Aw, Willie—\"\n\n\n \"Well, come on. Stir that\n fat carcass. Gotta pick up\n Sheriff Coogan, too. This\n here gentleman has to see him\n about somethin' else.\"\n\n\n The man regarded Sol suspiciously.\n \"Never seen you\n before. Night\nor\nday. Stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Come\non\n!\" Dawes said.\n\n\n The fat man grunted and\n hoisted himself out of the\n swivel chair. He followed\n lamely behind the two men\n as they went out into the\n street again.", "A woman, with an empty\n market basket, nodded casually\n to them. \"Mornin', folks.\n Enjoyed it last night.\n Thought you made a right\n nice speech, Mr. Dawes.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" Dawes answered\n gruffly, but obviously flattered.\n \"We were just goin'\n over to Brundage's to pick up\n the body. Ma's gonna pay a\n call on Mrs. Brundage around\n ten o'clock. You care to visit?\"\n\n\n \"Why, I think that's very\n nice,\" the woman said. \"I'll\n be sure and do that.\" She\n smiled at the fat man. \"Mornin',\n Prince.\"\n\n\n Sol's head was spinning. As\n they left the woman and continued\n their determined\n march down the quiet street,\n he tried to find answers.", "\"He didn't mean no harm,\"\n the woman snuffled. \"He was\n just purely ornery, Vincent\n was. Just plain mean stubborn.\"\n\n\n \"The law's the law,\" the\n fat man sighed.\n\n\n Sol couldn't hold himself\n in.\n\n\n \"What law? Who's dead?\n How did it happen?\"\n\n\n Dawes looked at him disgustedly.\n \"Now is it any of\nyour\nbusiness? I mean, is it?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" Sol said\n miserably.\n\n\n \"You better stay out of\n this,\" the Sheriff warned.\n \"This is a local matter, young\n man. You better stay in the\n shop while we go up.\"\n\n\n They filed past him and the\n crying Mrs. Brundage.\n\n\n When they were out of\n sight, Sol pleaded with her.", "Henry Slesar, young New York advertising executive and by now no\n longer a new-comer to either this magazine or to this field, describes\n a strange little town that you, yourself, may blunder into one of these\n evenings. But, if you do, beware—beware of the Knights!\ndream\n \ntown\nby ... HENRY SLESAR\nThe woman in the doorway looked so harmless. Who\n was to tell she had some rather startling interests?\nThe\n woman in the\n doorway looked like Mom in\n the homier political cartoons.\n She was plump, apple-cheeked,\n white-haired. She\n wore a fussy, old-fashioned\n nightgown, and was busily\n clutching a worn house-robe\n around her expansive middle.\n She blinked at Sol Becker's\n rain-flattened hair and hang-dog\n expression, and said:\n \"What is it? What do you\n want?\"", "The man scratched his ear.\n \"Take you over to Sheriff\n Coogan after breakfast. He'll\n let the Stateys know about it.\n My name's Dawes.\"\n\n\n Sol accepted a careful\n handshake.\n\n\n \"Don't get many people\n comin' into town,\" Dawes\n said, looking at him curiously.\n \"Ain't seen a stranger in\n years. But you look like the\n rest of us.\" He chuckled.\n\n\n Mom called out: \"Breakfast!\"\nAt\n the table, Dawes\n asked his destination.\n\n\n \"Wedding in Salinas,\" he\n explained. \"Old Army friend\n of mine. I picked this hitchhiker\n up about two miles from\n here. He\nseemed\nokay.\"\n\n\n \"Never can tell,\" Dawes\n said placidly, munching egg.\n \"Hey, Ma. That why you\n were so late comin' to court\n last night?\"", "\"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Thought so.\"\n\n\n Sol repeated the question.\n\n\n \"Course I did. Been goin'\n there ever since I was a kid.\n Night-times, that is.\"\n\n\n \"How—I mean, what kind\n of place is it?\"\n\n\n \"Said you're a stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Then 'tain't your business.\"\n\n\n That was that.\n\n\n He left the park, and wandered\n into a thriving luncheonette.\n He tried questioning\n the man behind the counter,\n who merely snickered and\n said: \"You stayin' with the\n Dawes, ain't you? Better ask\n Willie, then. He knows the\n place better than anybody.\"\n\n\n He asked about the execution,\n and the man stiffened.", "Charlie, the fat man,\n clumsy as ever in his robes of\n State, said: \"So\nthat's\nthe\n snooper, eh?\"\n\n\n \"Yep,\" Dawes chuckled.\n \"Think you better round up\n the Knights.\"\n\n\n Sol said: \"The Knights?\"\n\n\n \"Exelution! Exelution!\"\n Sally shrieked.\n\n\n \"Now wait a minute—\"\n\n\n Charlie shouted.\n\n\n Running feet, clanking of\n armor. Sol backed up against\n a pillar. \"Now look here.\n You've gone far enough—\"\n\n\n \"Not quite,\" said the King.\n\n\n The Knights stepped forward.\n\n\n \"Wait!\" Sol screamed.", "He leaped out of the chair\n as voices sounded behind the\n door. Dawes was kicking it\n open with his foot, his arms\n laden with two rather large\n feet, still encased in bedroom\n slippers. Charlie was at the\n other end of the burden,\n which appeared to be a middle-aged\n man in pajamas. The\n Sheriff followed the trio up\n with a sad, undertaker expression.\n Behind him came Mrs.\n Brundage, properly weeping.\n\n\n \"We'll take him to the funeral\n parlor,\" Dawes said,\n breathing hard. \"Weighs a\n ton, don't he?\"\n\n\n \"What killed him?\" Sol\n said.\n\n\n \"Heart attack.\"\n\n\n The fat man chuckled.", "Sol grabbed his topcoat and\n followed the man out the\n door.\n\n\n \"Have to stop someplace\n first,\" Dawes said. \"But we'll\n be pickin' up the Sheriff on\n the way. Okay with you?\"\n\n\n \"Fine,\" Sol said uneasily.\n\n\n The rain had stopped, but\n the heavy clouds seemed reluctant\n to leave the skies over\n the small town. There was a\n skittish breeze blowing, and\n Sol Becker tightened the collar\n of his coat around his\n neck as he tried to keep up\n with the fast-stepping Dawes.\nThey\n crossed the\n street diagonally, and entered\n a two-story wooden building.\n Dawes took the stairs at a\n brisk pace, and pushed open\n the door on the second floor.\n A fat man looked up from\n behind a desk.\n\n\n \"Hi, Charlie. Thought I'd\n see if you wanted to help\n move Brundage.\"", "Mom fixed him a light\n lunch, the greatest feature of\n which was some hot biscuits\n she plucked out of the oven.\n It made him feel almost normal.\n\n\n He wandered around the\n town some more after lunch,\n trying to spark conversation\n with the residents.\n\n\n He learned little.\nAt\n five-thirty, he returned\n to the Dawes house, and was\n promptly leaped upon by\n little Sally.\n\n\n \"Hi! Hi! Hi!\" she said,\n clutching his right leg and\n almost toppling him over.\n \"We had a party in school. I\n had chocolate cake. You goin'\n to stay with us?\"\n\n\n \"Just another night,\" Sol\n told her, trying to shake the\n girl off. \"If it's okay with\n your folks. They haven't\n found my car yet.\"", "\"Oh, my goodness!\" Mom\n got up hastily. \"That reminds\n me. I gotta call poor Mrs.\n Brundage. It's the\nleast\nI\n could do.\"\n\n\n \"Good idea,\" Dawes nodded.\n \"And I'll have to round\n up some folks and get old\n Brundage out of there.\"\n\n\n Sol was staring. He opened\n his mouth, but couldn't think\n of the right question to ask.\n Then he blurted out: \"What\n execution?\"\n\n\n \"None of\nyour\nbusiness,\"\n the man said coldly. \"You eat\n up, young man. If you want\n me to get Sheriff Coogan\n lookin' for your car.\"\n\n\n The rest of the meal went\n silently, except for Sally's insistence\n upon singing her\n school song between mouthfuls.\n When Dawes was\n through, he pushed back his\n plate and ordered Sol to get\n ready." ], [ "The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed\n citizen with a long, sad face,\n was rocking on a porch as\n they approached his house,\n trying to puff a half-lit pipe.\n He lifted one hand wearily\n when he saw them.\n\n\n \"Hi, Cookie,\" Dawes\n grinned. \"Thought you, me,\n and Charlie would get Brundage's\n body outa the house.\n This here's Mr. Becker; he\n got another problem. Mr.\n Becker, meet Cookie Coogan.\"\n\n\n The Sheriff joined the procession,\n pausing only once to\n inquire into Sol's predicament.\n\n\n He described the hitchhiker\n incident, but Coogan\n listened stoically. He murmured\n something about the\n Troopers, and shuffled alongside\n the puffing fat man.\n\n\n Sol soon realized that their\n destination was a barber shop.", "Sol grabbed his topcoat and\n followed the man out the\n door.\n\n\n \"Have to stop someplace\n first,\" Dawes said. \"But we'll\n be pickin' up the Sheriff on\n the way. Okay with you?\"\n\n\n \"Fine,\" Sol said uneasily.\n\n\n The rain had stopped, but\n the heavy clouds seemed reluctant\n to leave the skies over\n the small town. There was a\n skittish breeze blowing, and\n Sol Becker tightened the collar\n of his coat around his\n neck as he tried to keep up\n with the fast-stepping Dawes.\nThey\n crossed the\n street diagonally, and entered\n a two-story wooden building.\n Dawes took the stairs at a\n brisk pace, and pushed open\n the door on the second floor.\n A fat man looked up from\n behind a desk.\n\n\n \"Hi, Charlie. Thought I'd\n see if you wanted to help\n move Brundage.\"", "The man batted his eyes.\n \"Oh, Brundage!\" he said.\n \"You know, I clean forgot\n about him?\" He laughed.\n \"Imagine me forgetting\n that?\"\n\n\n \"Yeah.\" Dawes wasn't\n amused. \"And you Prince Regent.\"\n\n\n \"Aw, Willie—\"\n\n\n \"Well, come on. Stir that\n fat carcass. Gotta pick up\n Sheriff Coogan, too. This\n here gentleman has to see him\n about somethin' else.\"\n\n\n The man regarded Sol suspiciously.\n \"Never seen you\n before. Night\nor\nday. Stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Come\non\n!\" Dawes said.\n\n\n The fat man grunted and\n hoisted himself out of the\n swivel chair. He followed\n lamely behind the two men\n as they went out into the\n street again.", "\"That's very kind of you,\"\n Sol said. \"I really wish you'd\n let me pay something—\"\n\n\n \"Don't want to hear another\n word about pay.\"\nMr. Dawes\n came home an\n hour later, looking tired.\n Mom pecked him lightly on\n the forehead. He glanced at\n the evening paper, and then\n spoke to Sol.\n\n\n \"Hear you been asking\n questions, Mr. Becker.\"\n\n\n Sol nodded, embarrassed.\n \"Guess I have. I'm awfully\n curious about this Armagon\n place. Never heard of anything\n like it before.\"\n\n\n Dawes grunted. \"You ain't\n a reporter?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no. I'm an engineer. I\n was just satisfying my own\n curiosity.\"", "\"Look, Mr. Dawes.\" He was\n panting; the pace was fast.\n \"Does\nshe\ndream about this—Armagon,\n too? That woman\n back there?\"\n\n\n \"Yep.\"\n\n\n Charlie chuckled. \"He's a\n stranger, all right.\"\n\n\n \"And you, Mr.—\" Sol\n turned to the fat man. \"You\n also know about this palace\n and everything?\"\n\n\n \"I told you,\" Dawes said\n testily. \"Charlie here's Prince\n Regent. But don't let the fancy\n title fool you. He got no\n more power than any Knight\n of the Realm. He's just too\n dern fat to do much more'n\n sit on a throne and eat grapes.\n That right, Charlie?\"\n\n\n The fat man giggled.\n\n\n \"Here's the Sheriff,\" Dawes\n said.", "He leaped out of the chair\n as voices sounded behind the\n door. Dawes was kicking it\n open with his foot, his arms\n laden with two rather large\n feet, still encased in bedroom\n slippers. Charlie was at the\n other end of the burden,\n which appeared to be a middle-aged\n man in pajamas. The\n Sheriff followed the trio up\n with a sad, undertaker expression.\n Behind him came Mrs.\n Brundage, properly weeping.\n\n\n \"We'll take him to the funeral\n parlor,\" Dawes said,\n breathing hard. \"Weighs a\n ton, don't he?\"\n\n\n \"What killed him?\" Sol\n said.\n\n\n \"Heart attack.\"\n\n\n The fat man chuckled.", "Dawes cupped his hands\n over the plate glass and\n peered inside. Gold letters on\n the glass advertised: HAIRCUT\n SHAVE & MASSAGE\n PARLOR. He reported: \"Nobody\n in the shop. Must be\n upstairs.\"\nThe\n fat man rang the\n bell. It was a while before an\n answer came.\n\n\n It was a reedy woman in a\n housecoat, her hair in curlers,\n her eyes red and swollen.\n\n\n \"Now, now,\" Dawes said\n gently. \"Don't you take on\n like that, Mrs. Brundage. You\n heard the charges. It hadda\n be this way.\"\n\n\n \"My poor Vincent,\" she\n sobbed.\n\n\n \"Better let us up,\" the\n Sheriff said kindly. \"No use\n just lettin' him lay there,\n Mrs. Brundage.\"", "\"Oh, my goodness!\" Mom\n got up hastily. \"That reminds\n me. I gotta call poor Mrs.\n Brundage. It's the\nleast\nI\n could do.\"\n\n\n \"Good idea,\" Dawes nodded.\n \"And I'll have to round\n up some folks and get old\n Brundage out of there.\"\n\n\n Sol was staring. He opened\n his mouth, but couldn't think\n of the right question to ask.\n Then he blurted out: \"What\n execution?\"\n\n\n \"None of\nyour\nbusiness,\"\n the man said coldly. \"You eat\n up, young man. If you want\n me to get Sheriff Coogan\n lookin' for your car.\"\n\n\n The rest of the meal went\n silently, except for Sally's insistence\n upon singing her\n school song between mouthfuls.\n When Dawes was\n through, he pushed back his\n plate and ordered Sol to get\n ready.", "A woman, with an empty\n market basket, nodded casually\n to them. \"Mornin', folks.\n Enjoyed it last night.\n Thought you made a right\n nice speech, Mr. Dawes.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" Dawes answered\n gruffly, but obviously flattered.\n \"We were just goin'\n over to Brundage's to pick up\n the body. Ma's gonna pay a\n call on Mrs. Brundage around\n ten o'clock. You care to visit?\"\n\n\n \"Why, I think that's very\n nice,\" the woman said. \"I'll\n be sure and do that.\" She\n smiled at the fat man. \"Mornin',\n Prince.\"\n\n\n Sol's head was spinning. As\n they left the woman and continued\n their determined\n march down the quiet street,\n he tried to find answers.", "The man scratched his ear.\n \"Take you over to Sheriff\n Coogan after breakfast. He'll\n let the Stateys know about it.\n My name's Dawes.\"\n\n\n Sol accepted a careful\n handshake.\n\n\n \"Don't get many people\n comin' into town,\" Dawes\n said, looking at him curiously.\n \"Ain't seen a stranger in\n years. But you look like the\n rest of us.\" He chuckled.\n\n\n Mom called out: \"Breakfast!\"\nAt\n the table, Dawes\n asked his destination.\n\n\n \"Wedding in Salinas,\" he\n explained. \"Old Army friend\n of mine. I picked this hitchhiker\n up about two miles from\n here. He\nseemed\nokay.\"\n\n\n \"Never can tell,\" Dawes\n said placidly, munching egg.\n \"Hey, Ma. That why you\n were so late comin' to court\n last night?\"", "\"Uh-huh.\" Dawes looked\n reflective. \"You wouldn't be\n thinkin' about writing us up\n or anything. I mean, this is a\n pretty private affair.\"\n\n\n \"Writing it up?\" Sol\n blinked. \"I hadn't thought of\n it. But you'll have to admit—it's\n sure interesting.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah,\" Dawes said narrowly.\n \"I guess it would be.\"\n\n\n \"Supper!\" Mom called.\n\n\n After the meal, they spent\n a quiet evening at home. Sally\n went to bed, screaming her\n reluctance, at eight-thirty.\n Mom, dozing in the big chair\n near the fireplace, padded upstairs\n at nine. Then Dawes\n yawned widely, stood up, and\n said goodnight at quarter-of-ten.\n\n\n He paused in the doorway\n before leaving.", "\"He didn't mean no harm,\"\n the woman snuffled. \"He was\n just purely ornery, Vincent\n was. Just plain mean stubborn.\"\n\n\n \"The law's the law,\" the\n fat man sighed.\n\n\n Sol couldn't hold himself\n in.\n\n\n \"What law? Who's dead?\n How did it happen?\"\n\n\n Dawes looked at him disgustedly.\n \"Now is it any of\nyour\nbusiness? I mean, is it?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" Sol said\n miserably.\n\n\n \"You better stay out of\n this,\" the Sheriff warned.\n \"This is a local matter, young\n man. You better stay in the\n shop while we go up.\"\n\n\n They filed past him and the\n crying Mrs. Brundage.\n\n\n When they were out of\n sight, Sol pleaded with her.", "\"Don't think I can talk\n about that. Fella broke one of\n the Laws; that's about it.\n Don't see where you come\n into it.\"\n\n\n At eleven o'clock, he returned\n to the Dawes residence,\n and found Mom in the\n kitchen, surrounded by the\n warm nostalgic odor of home-baked\n bread. She told him\n that her husband had left a\n message for the stranger, informing\n him that the State\n Police would be around to get\n his story.\n\n\n He waited in the house,\n gloomily turning the pages of\n the local newspaper, searching\n for references to Armagon.\n He found nothing.\n\n\n At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced\n State Trooper came to\n call, and Sol told his story.\n He was promised nothing,\n and told to stay in town until\n he was contacted again by\n the authorities.", "\"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Thought so.\"\n\n\n Sol repeated the question.\n\n\n \"Course I did. Been goin'\n there ever since I was a kid.\n Night-times, that is.\"\n\n\n \"How—I mean, what kind\n of place is it?\"\n\n\n \"Said you're a stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Then 'tain't your business.\"\n\n\n That was that.\n\n\n He left the park, and wandered\n into a thriving luncheonette.\n He tried questioning\n the man behind the counter,\n who merely snickered and\n said: \"You stayin' with the\n Dawes, ain't you? Better ask\n Willie, then. He knows the\n place better than anybody.\"\n\n\n He asked about the execution,\n and the man stiffened.", "Mom was following him,\n her stout body regal in scarlet\n robes. \"Sally! You give\n Sir Coogan his helmet! You\n hear?\"\n\n\n \"Mrs. Dawes!\" Sol said.\n\n\n \"Why, Mr. Becker! How\n nice to see you again! Pa!\nPa!\nLook who's here!\"\n\n\n Willie Dawes appeared.\nNo!\nSol thought. This was\nKing\nDawes; nothing else\n could explain the magnificence\n of his attire.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Dawes said craftily.\n \"So I see. Welcome to Armagon,\n Mr. Becker.\"\n\n\n \"Armagon?\" Sol gaped.\n \"Then this is the place\n you've been dreaming about?\"\n\n\n \"Yep,\" the King said. \"And\n now\nyou're\nin it, too.\"\n\n\n \"Then I'm only dreaming!\"", "\"I'd think about that,\" he\n said. \"Writing it up, I mean.\n A lot of folks would think\n you were just plum crazy.\"\n\n\n Sol laughed feebly. \"I\n guess they would at that.\"\n\n\n \"Goodnight,\" Dawes said.\n\n\n \"Goodnight.\"\n\n\n He read Sally's copy of\nTreasure Island\nfor about\n half an hour. Then he undressed,\n made himself comfortable\n on the sofa, snuggled\n under the soft blanket\n that Mom had provided, and\n shut his eyes.\n\n\n He reviewed the events of\n the day before dropping off\n to sleep. The troublesome\n Sally. The strange dream\n world of Armagon. The visit\n to the barber shop. The removal\n of Brundage's body.\n The conversations with the\n townspeople. Dawes' suspicious\n attitude ...", "Mom fixed him a light\n lunch, the greatest feature of\n which was some hot biscuits\n she plucked out of the oven.\n It made him feel almost normal.\n\n\n He wandered around the\n town some more after lunch,\n trying to spark conversation\n with the residents.\n\n\n He learned little.\nAt\n five-thirty, he returned\n to the Dawes house, and was\n promptly leaped upon by\n little Sally.\n\n\n \"Hi! Hi! Hi!\" she said,\n clutching his right leg and\n almost toppling him over.\n \"We had a party in school. I\n had chocolate cake. You goin'\n to stay with us?\"\n\n\n \"Just another night,\" Sol\n told her, trying to shake the\n girl off. \"If it's okay with\n your folks. They haven't\n found my car yet.\"", "Charlie, the fat man,\n clumsy as ever in his robes of\n State, said: \"So\nthat's\nthe\n snooper, eh?\"\n\n\n \"Yep,\" Dawes chuckled.\n \"Think you better round up\n the Knights.\"\n\n\n Sol said: \"The Knights?\"\n\n\n \"Exelution! Exelution!\"\n Sally shrieked.\n\n\n \"Now wait a minute—\"\n\n\n Charlie shouted.\n\n\n Running feet, clanking of\n armor. Sol backed up against\n a pillar. \"Now look here.\n You've gone far enough—\"\n\n\n \"Not quite,\" said the King.\n\n\n The Knights stepped forward.\n\n\n \"Wait!\" Sol screamed.", "The tableau was grisly. Sol\n looked away, towards the\n comfortingly mundane atmosphere\n of the barber shop. But\n even the sight of the thick-padded\n chairs, the shaving\n mugs on the wall, the neat\n rows of cutting instruments,\n seemed grotesque and morbid.\n\n\n \"Listen,\" Sol said, as they\n went through the doorway.\n \"About my car—\"\n\n\n The Sheriff turned and regarded\n him lugubriously.\n \"Your\ncar\n? Young man, ain't\n you got no\nrespect\n?\"\n\n\n Sol swallowed hard and fell\n silent. He went outside with\n them, the woman slamming\n the barber-shop door behind\n him. He waited in front of\n the building while the men\n toted away the corpse to some\n new destination.\nHe\n took a walk.", "Henry Slesar, young New York advertising executive and by now no\n longer a new-comer to either this magazine or to this field, describes\n a strange little town that you, yourself, may blunder into one of these\n evenings. But, if you do, beware—beware of the Knights!\ndream\n \ntown\nby ... HENRY SLESAR\nThe woman in the doorway looked so harmless. Who\n was to tell she had some rather startling interests?\nThe\n woman in the\n doorway looked like Mom in\n the homier political cartoons.\n She was plump, apple-cheeked,\n white-haired. She\n wore a fussy, old-fashioned\n nightgown, and was busily\n clutching a worn house-robe\n around her expansive middle.\n She blinked at Sol Becker's\n rain-flattened hair and hang-dog\n expression, and said:\n \"What is it? What do you\n want?\"" ], [ "He leaped out of the chair\n as voices sounded behind the\n door. Dawes was kicking it\n open with his foot, his arms\n laden with two rather large\n feet, still encased in bedroom\n slippers. Charlie was at the\n other end of the burden,\n which appeared to be a middle-aged\n man in pajamas. The\n Sheriff followed the trio up\n with a sad, undertaker expression.\n Behind him came Mrs.\n Brundage, properly weeping.\n\n\n \"We'll take him to the funeral\n parlor,\" Dawes said,\n breathing hard. \"Weighs a\n ton, don't he?\"\n\n\n \"What killed him?\" Sol\n said.\n\n\n \"Heart attack.\"\n\n\n The fat man chuckled.", "Dawes cupped his hands\n over the plate glass and\n peered inside. Gold letters on\n the glass advertised: HAIRCUT\n SHAVE & MASSAGE\n PARLOR. He reported: \"Nobody\n in the shop. Must be\n upstairs.\"\nThe\n fat man rang the\n bell. It was a while before an\n answer came.\n\n\n It was a reedy woman in a\n housecoat, her hair in curlers,\n her eyes red and swollen.\n\n\n \"Now, now,\" Dawes said\n gently. \"Don't you take on\n like that, Mrs. Brundage. You\n heard the charges. It hadda\n be this way.\"\n\n\n \"My poor Vincent,\" she\n sobbed.\n\n\n \"Better let us up,\" the\n Sheriff said kindly. \"No use\n just lettin' him lay there,\n Mrs. Brundage.\"", "A woman, with an empty\n market basket, nodded casually\n to them. \"Mornin', folks.\n Enjoyed it last night.\n Thought you made a right\n nice speech, Mr. Dawes.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" Dawes answered\n gruffly, but obviously flattered.\n \"We were just goin'\n over to Brundage's to pick up\n the body. Ma's gonna pay a\n call on Mrs. Brundage around\n ten o'clock. You care to visit?\"\n\n\n \"Why, I think that's very\n nice,\" the woman said. \"I'll\n be sure and do that.\" She\n smiled at the fat man. \"Mornin',\n Prince.\"\n\n\n Sol's head was spinning. As\n they left the woman and continued\n their determined\n march down the quiet street,\n he tried to find answers.", "The man batted his eyes.\n \"Oh, Brundage!\" he said.\n \"You know, I clean forgot\n about him?\" He laughed.\n \"Imagine me forgetting\n that?\"\n\n\n \"Yeah.\" Dawes wasn't\n amused. \"And you Prince Regent.\"\n\n\n \"Aw, Willie—\"\n\n\n \"Well, come on. Stir that\n fat carcass. Gotta pick up\n Sheriff Coogan, too. This\n here gentleman has to see him\n about somethin' else.\"\n\n\n The man regarded Sol suspiciously.\n \"Never seen you\n before. Night\nor\nday. Stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Come\non\n!\" Dawes said.\n\n\n The fat man grunted and\n hoisted himself out of the\n swivel chair. He followed\n lamely behind the two men\n as they went out into the\n street again.", "The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed\n citizen with a long, sad face,\n was rocking on a porch as\n they approached his house,\n trying to puff a half-lit pipe.\n He lifted one hand wearily\n when he saw them.\n\n\n \"Hi, Cookie,\" Dawes\n grinned. \"Thought you, me,\n and Charlie would get Brundage's\n body outa the house.\n This here's Mr. Becker; he\n got another problem. Mr.\n Becker, meet Cookie Coogan.\"\n\n\n The Sheriff joined the procession,\n pausing only once to\n inquire into Sol's predicament.\n\n\n He described the hitchhiker\n incident, but Coogan\n listened stoically. He murmured\n something about the\n Troopers, and shuffled alongside\n the puffing fat man.\n\n\n Sol soon realized that their\n destination was a barber shop.", "\"He didn't mean no harm,\"\n the woman snuffled. \"He was\n just purely ornery, Vincent\n was. Just plain mean stubborn.\"\n\n\n \"The law's the law,\" the\n fat man sighed.\n\n\n Sol couldn't hold himself\n in.\n\n\n \"What law? Who's dead?\n How did it happen?\"\n\n\n Dawes looked at him disgustedly.\n \"Now is it any of\nyour\nbusiness? I mean, is it?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" Sol said\n miserably.\n\n\n \"You better stay out of\n this,\" the Sheriff warned.\n \"This is a local matter, young\n man. You better stay in the\n shop while we go up.\"\n\n\n They filed past him and the\n crying Mrs. Brundage.\n\n\n When they were out of\n sight, Sol pleaded with her.", "\"Oh, my goodness!\" Mom\n got up hastily. \"That reminds\n me. I gotta call poor Mrs.\n Brundage. It's the\nleast\nI\n could do.\"\n\n\n \"Good idea,\" Dawes nodded.\n \"And I'll have to round\n up some folks and get old\n Brundage out of there.\"\n\n\n Sol was staring. He opened\n his mouth, but couldn't think\n of the right question to ask.\n Then he blurted out: \"What\n execution?\"\n\n\n \"None of\nyour\nbusiness,\"\n the man said coldly. \"You eat\n up, young man. If you want\n me to get Sheriff Coogan\n lookin' for your car.\"\n\n\n The rest of the meal went\n silently, except for Sally's insistence\n upon singing her\n school song between mouthfuls.\n When Dawes was\n through, he pushed back his\n plate and ordered Sol to get\n ready.", "\"What happened? How did\n your husband die?\"\n\n\n \"Please ...\"\n\n\n \"You must tell me! Was it\n something to do with Armagon?\n Do you dream about the\n place, too?\"\n\n\n She was shocked at the\n question. \"Of course!\"\n\n\n \"And your husband? Did\n he have the same dream?\"\n\n\n Fresh tears resulted. \"Can't\n you leave me alone?\" She\n turned her back. \"I got things\n to do. You can make yourself\n comfortable—\" She indicated\n the barber chairs, and left\n through the back door.\n\n\n Sol looked after her, and\n then ambled over to the first\n chair and slipped into the\n high seat. His reflection in\n the mirror, strangely gray in\n the dim light, made him\n groan. His clothes were a\n mess, and he needed a shave.\n If only Brundage had been\n alive ...", "\"I'd think about that,\" he\n said. \"Writing it up, I mean.\n A lot of folks would think\n you were just plum crazy.\"\n\n\n Sol laughed feebly. \"I\n guess they would at that.\"\n\n\n \"Goodnight,\" Dawes said.\n\n\n \"Goodnight.\"\n\n\n He read Sally's copy of\nTreasure Island\nfor about\n half an hour. Then he undressed,\n made himself comfortable\n on the sofa, snuggled\n under the soft blanket\n that Mom had provided, and\n shut his eyes.\n\n\n He reviewed the events of\n the day before dropping off\n to sleep. The troublesome\n Sally. The strange dream\n world of Armagon. The visit\n to the barber shop. The removal\n of Brundage's body.\n The conversations with the\n townspeople. Dawes' suspicious\n attitude ...", "Sol grabbed his topcoat and\n followed the man out the\n door.\n\n\n \"Have to stop someplace\n first,\" Dawes said. \"But we'll\n be pickin' up the Sheriff on\n the way. Okay with you?\"\n\n\n \"Fine,\" Sol said uneasily.\n\n\n The rain had stopped, but\n the heavy clouds seemed reluctant\n to leave the skies over\n the small town. There was a\n skittish breeze blowing, and\n Sol Becker tightened the collar\n of his coat around his\n neck as he tried to keep up\n with the fast-stepping Dawes.\nThey\n crossed the\n street diagonally, and entered\n a two-story wooden building.\n Dawes took the stairs at a\n brisk pace, and pushed open\n the door on the second floor.\n A fat man looked up from\n behind a desk.\n\n\n \"Hi, Charlie. Thought I'd\n see if you wanted to help\n move Brundage.\"", "The tableau was grisly. Sol\n looked away, towards the\n comfortingly mundane atmosphere\n of the barber shop. But\n even the sight of the thick-padded\n chairs, the shaving\n mugs on the wall, the neat\n rows of cutting instruments,\n seemed grotesque and morbid.\n\n\n \"Listen,\" Sol said, as they\n went through the doorway.\n \"About my car—\"\n\n\n The Sheriff turned and regarded\n him lugubriously.\n \"Your\ncar\n? Young man, ain't\n you got no\nrespect\n?\"\n\n\n Sol swallowed hard and fell\n silent. He went outside with\n them, the woman slamming\n the barber-shop door behind\n him. He waited in front of\n the building while the men\n toted away the corpse to some\n new destination.\nHe\n took a walk.", "\"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Thought so.\"\n\n\n Sol repeated the question.\n\n\n \"Course I did. Been goin'\n there ever since I was a kid.\n Night-times, that is.\"\n\n\n \"How—I mean, what kind\n of place is it?\"\n\n\n \"Said you're a stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Then 'tain't your business.\"\n\n\n That was that.\n\n\n He left the park, and wandered\n into a thriving luncheonette.\n He tried questioning\n the man behind the counter,\n who merely snickered and\n said: \"You stayin' with the\n Dawes, ain't you? Better ask\n Willie, then. He knows the\n place better than anybody.\"\n\n\n He asked about the execution,\n and the man stiffened.", "\"Don't think I can talk\n about that. Fella broke one of\n the Laws; that's about it.\n Don't see where you come\n into it.\"\n\n\n At eleven o'clock, he returned\n to the Dawes residence,\n and found Mom in the\n kitchen, surrounded by the\n warm nostalgic odor of home-baked\n bread. She told him\n that her husband had left a\n message for the stranger, informing\n him that the State\n Police would be around to get\n his story.\n\n\n He waited in the house,\n gloomily turning the pages of\n the local newspaper, searching\n for references to Armagon.\n He found nothing.\n\n\n At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced\n State Trooper came to\n call, and Sol told his story.\n He was promised nothing,\n and told to stay in town until\n he was contacted again by\n the authorities.", "He tried for fifteen minutes\n to get through, but there\n was a woman on the line who\n was terribly upset about a\n cotton dress she had ordered\n from Sears, and was telling\n the world about it.\n\n\n Finally, he got his call\n through to Salinas, and a\n sleepy-voiced Fred, his old\n Army buddy, listened somewhat\n indifferently to his tale\n of woe. \"I might miss the\n wedding,\" Sol said unhappily.\n \"I'm awfully sorry.\" Fred\n didn't seem to be half as sorry\n as he was. When Sol hung\n up, he was feeling more despondent\n than ever.\n\n\n A man, tall and rangy, with\n a bobbing Adam's apple and\n a lined face, came into the\n hallway. \"Hullo?\" he said inquiringly.\n \"You the fella had\n the car stolen?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"", "Charlie, the fat man,\n clumsy as ever in his robes of\n State, said: \"So\nthat's\nthe\n snooper, eh?\"\n\n\n \"Yep,\" Dawes chuckled.\n \"Think you better round up\n the Knights.\"\n\n\n Sol said: \"The Knights?\"\n\n\n \"Exelution! Exelution!\"\n Sally shrieked.\n\n\n \"Now wait a minute—\"\n\n\n Charlie shouted.\n\n\n Running feet, clanking of\n armor. Sol backed up against\n a pillar. \"Now look here.\n You've gone far enough—\"\n\n\n \"Not quite,\" said the King.\n\n\n The Knights stepped forward.\n\n\n \"Wait!\" Sol screamed.", "\"Uh-huh.\" Dawes looked\n reflective. \"You wouldn't be\n thinkin' about writing us up\n or anything. I mean, this is a\n pretty private affair.\"\n\n\n \"Writing it up?\" Sol\n blinked. \"I hadn't thought of\n it. But you'll have to admit—it's\n sure interesting.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah,\" Dawes said narrowly.\n \"I guess it would be.\"\n\n\n \"Supper!\" Mom called.\n\n\n After the meal, they spent\n a quiet evening at home. Sally\n went to bed, screaming her\n reluctance, at eight-thirty.\n Mom, dozing in the big chair\n near the fireplace, padded upstairs\n at nine. Then Dawes\n yawned widely, stood up, and\n said goodnight at quarter-of-ten.\n\n\n He paused in the doorway\n before leaving.", "\"Look, Mr. Dawes.\" He was\n panting; the pace was fast.\n \"Does\nshe\ndream about this—Armagon,\n too? That woman\n back there?\"\n\n\n \"Yep.\"\n\n\n Charlie chuckled. \"He's a\n stranger, all right.\"\n\n\n \"And you, Mr.—\" Sol\n turned to the fat man. \"You\n also know about this palace\n and everything?\"\n\n\n \"I told you,\" Dawes said\n testily. \"Charlie here's Prince\n Regent. But don't let the fancy\n title fool you. He got no\n more power than any Knight\n of the Realm. He's just too\n dern fat to do much more'n\n sit on a throne and eat grapes.\n That right, Charlie?\"\n\n\n The fat man giggled.\n\n\n \"Here's the Sheriff,\" Dawes\n said.", "He stripped down to his\n underwear, wondering about\n next morning's possible embarrassment,\n and decided to\n use the damp bath towel as a\n blanket. The sofa was downy\n and comfortable. He curled\n up under the towel, shivered\n once, and closed his eyes.\nHe\n was tired and very\n sleepy, and his customary\n nightly review was limited to\n a few detached thoughts\n about the wedding he was\n supposed to attend in Salinas\n that weekend ... the hoodlum\n who had responded to his\n good-nature by dumping him\n out of his own car ... the slogging\n walk to the village ...\n the little round woman who\n was hurrying off, like the\n White Rabbit, to some mysterious\n appointment on the\n upper floor ...\n\n\n Then he went to sleep.\n\n\n A voice awoke him, shrill\n and questioning.\n\n\n \"Are you\nnakkid\n?\"", "\"That's good,\" Sol said desperately.\n \"Now why don't you\n be a good girl and eat your\n poached eggs. In the kitchen.\"\n\n\n \"Ain't ready yet. You going\n to stay for breakfast?\"\n\n\n \"I'm not going to do anything\n until you get out of\n here.\"\n\n\n She put the end of a pigtail\n in her mouth and sat down on\n the chair opposite. \"I went to\n the palace last night. They\n had an exelution.\"\n\n\n \"Please,\" Sol groaned. \"Be\n a good girl, Sally. If you let\n me get dressed, I'll show you\n how to take your thumb off.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, that's an old trick. Did\n you ever see an exelution?\"\n\n\n \"No. Did you ever see a little\n girl with her hide\n tanned?\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\"", "\"That's very kind of you,\"\n Sol said. \"I really wish you'd\n let me pay something—\"\n\n\n \"Don't want to hear another\n word about pay.\"\nMr. Dawes\n came home an\n hour later, looking tired.\n Mom pecked him lightly on\n the forehead. He glanced at\n the evening paper, and then\n spoke to Sol.\n\n\n \"Hear you been asking\n questions, Mr. Becker.\"\n\n\n Sol nodded, embarrassed.\n \"Guess I have. I'm awfully\n curious about this Armagon\n place. Never heard of anything\n like it before.\"\n\n\n Dawes grunted. \"You ain't\n a reporter?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no. I'm an engineer. I\n was just satisfying my own\n curiosity.\"" ], [ "The town was just coming\n to life. People were strolling\n out of their houses, commenting\n on the weather, chuckling\n amiably about local affairs.\n Kids on bicycles were beginning\n to appear, jangling the\n little bells and hooting to\n each other. A woman, hanging\n wash in the back yard,\n called out to him, thinking\n he was somebody else.\n\n\n He found a little park, no\n more than twenty yards in\n circumference, centered\n around a weatherbeaten monument\n of some unrecognizable\n military figure. Three\n old men took their places on\n the bench that circled the\n General, and leaned on their\n canes.\n\n\n Sol was a civil engineer.\n But he made like a reporter.\n\n\n \"Pardon me, sir.\" The old\n man, leathery-faced, with a\n fine yellow moustache, looked\n at him dumbly. \"Have you\n ever heard of Armagon?\"\n\n\n \"You a stranger?\"", "\"That's very kind of you,\"\n Sol said. \"I really wish you'd\n let me pay something—\"\n\n\n \"Don't want to hear another\n word about pay.\"\nMr. Dawes\n came home an\n hour later, looking tired.\n Mom pecked him lightly on\n the forehead. He glanced at\n the evening paper, and then\n spoke to Sol.\n\n\n \"Hear you been asking\n questions, Mr. Becker.\"\n\n\n Sol nodded, embarrassed.\n \"Guess I have. I'm awfully\n curious about this Armagon\n place. Never heard of anything\n like it before.\"\n\n\n Dawes grunted. \"You ain't\n a reporter?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no. I'm an engineer. I\n was just satisfying my own\n curiosity.\"", "Mom was following him,\n her stout body regal in scarlet\n robes. \"Sally! You give\n Sir Coogan his helmet! You\n hear?\"\n\n\n \"Mrs. Dawes!\" Sol said.\n\n\n \"Why, Mr. Becker! How\n nice to see you again! Pa!\nPa!\nLook who's here!\"\n\n\n Willie Dawes appeared.\nNo!\nSol thought. This was\nKing\nDawes; nothing else\n could explain the magnificence\n of his attire.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Dawes said craftily.\n \"So I see. Welcome to Armagon,\n Mr. Becker.\"\n\n\n \"Armagon?\" Sol gaped.\n \"Then this is the place\n you've been dreaming about?\"\n\n\n \"Yep,\" the King said. \"And\n now\nyou're\nin it, too.\"\n\n\n \"Then I'm only dreaming!\"", "\"I'd think about that,\" he\n said. \"Writing it up, I mean.\n A lot of folks would think\n you were just plum crazy.\"\n\n\n Sol laughed feebly. \"I\n guess they would at that.\"\n\n\n \"Goodnight,\" Dawes said.\n\n\n \"Goodnight.\"\n\n\n He read Sally's copy of\nTreasure Island\nfor about\n half an hour. Then he undressed,\n made himself comfortable\n on the sofa, snuggled\n under the soft blanket\n that Mom had provided, and\n shut his eyes.\n\n\n He reviewed the events of\n the day before dropping off\n to sleep. The troublesome\n Sally. The strange dream\n world of Armagon. The visit\n to the barber shop. The removal\n of Brundage's body.\n The conversations with the\n townspeople. Dawes' suspicious\n attitude ...", "\"Don't think I can talk\n about that. Fella broke one of\n the Laws; that's about it.\n Don't see where you come\n into it.\"\n\n\n At eleven o'clock, he returned\n to the Dawes residence,\n and found Mom in the\n kitchen, surrounded by the\n warm nostalgic odor of home-baked\n bread. She told him\n that her husband had left a\n message for the stranger, informing\n him that the State\n Police would be around to get\n his story.\n\n\n He waited in the house,\n gloomily turning the pages of\n the local newspaper, searching\n for references to Armagon.\n He found nothing.\n\n\n At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced\n State Trooper came to\n call, and Sol told his story.\n He was promised nothing,\n and told to stay in town until\n he was contacted again by\n the authorities.", "\"What happened? How did\n your husband die?\"\n\n\n \"Please ...\"\n\n\n \"You must tell me! Was it\n something to do with Armagon?\n Do you dream about the\n place, too?\"\n\n\n She was shocked at the\n question. \"Of course!\"\n\n\n \"And your husband? Did\n he have the same dream?\"\n\n\n Fresh tears resulted. \"Can't\n you leave me alone?\" She\n turned her back. \"I got things\n to do. You can make yourself\n comfortable—\" She indicated\n the barber chairs, and left\n through the back door.\n\n\n Sol looked after her, and\n then ambled over to the first\n chair and slipped into the\n high seat. His reflection in\n the mirror, strangely gray in\n the dim light, made him\n groan. His clothes were a\n mess, and he needed a shave.\n If only Brundage had been\n alive ...", "The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed\n citizen with a long, sad face,\n was rocking on a porch as\n they approached his house,\n trying to puff a half-lit pipe.\n He lifted one hand wearily\n when he saw them.\n\n\n \"Hi, Cookie,\" Dawes\n grinned. \"Thought you, me,\n and Charlie would get Brundage's\n body outa the house.\n This here's Mr. Becker; he\n got another problem. Mr.\n Becker, meet Cookie Coogan.\"\n\n\n The Sheriff joined the procession,\n pausing only once to\n inquire into Sol's predicament.\n\n\n He described the hitchhiker\n incident, but Coogan\n listened stoically. He murmured\n something about the\n Troopers, and shuffled alongside\n the puffing fat man.\n\n\n Sol soon realized that their\n destination was a barber shop.", "\"That's right, Pa.\" She\n poured the blackest coffee\n Sol had ever seen. \"Didn't\n miss much, though.\"\n\n\n \"What court is that?\" Sol\n asked politely, his mouth full.\n\n\n \"Umagum,\" Sally said, a\n piece of toast sticking out\n from the side of her mouth.\n \"Don't you know\nnothin'\n?\"\n\n\n \"\nArma\ngon,\" Dawes corrected.\n He looked sheepishly at\n the stranger. \"Don't expect\n Mister—\" He cocked an eyebrow.\n \"What's the name?\"\n\n\n \"Becker.\"\n\n\n \"Don't expect Mr. Becker\n knows anything about Armagon.\n It's just a dream, you\n know.\" He smiled apologetically.\n\n\n \"Dream? You mean this—Armagon\n is a place you dream\n about?\"", "\"Look, Mr. Dawes.\" He was\n panting; the pace was fast.\n \"Does\nshe\ndream about this—Armagon,\n too? That woman\n back there?\"\n\n\n \"Yep.\"\n\n\n Charlie chuckled. \"He's a\n stranger, all right.\"\n\n\n \"And you, Mr.—\" Sol\n turned to the fat man. \"You\n also know about this palace\n and everything?\"\n\n\n \"I told you,\" Dawes said\n testily. \"Charlie here's Prince\n Regent. But don't let the fancy\n title fool you. He got no\n more power than any Knight\n of the Realm. He's just too\n dern fat to do much more'n\n sit on a throne and eat grapes.\n That right, Charlie?\"\n\n\n The fat man giggled.\n\n\n \"Here's the Sheriff,\" Dawes\n said.", "A woman, with an empty\n market basket, nodded casually\n to them. \"Mornin', folks.\n Enjoyed it last night.\n Thought you made a right\n nice speech, Mr. Dawes.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" Dawes answered\n gruffly, but obviously flattered.\n \"We were just goin'\n over to Brundage's to pick up\n the body. Ma's gonna pay a\n call on Mrs. Brundage around\n ten o'clock. You care to visit?\"\n\n\n \"Why, I think that's very\n nice,\" the woman said. \"I'll\n be sure and do that.\" She\n smiled at the fat man. \"Mornin',\n Prince.\"\n\n\n Sol's head was spinning. As\n they left the woman and continued\n their determined\n march down the quiet street,\n he tried to find answers.", "Sol grabbed his topcoat and\n followed the man out the\n door.\n\n\n \"Have to stop someplace\n first,\" Dawes said. \"But we'll\n be pickin' up the Sheriff on\n the way. Okay with you?\"\n\n\n \"Fine,\" Sol said uneasily.\n\n\n The rain had stopped, but\n the heavy clouds seemed reluctant\n to leave the skies over\n the small town. There was a\n skittish breeze blowing, and\n Sol Becker tightened the collar\n of his coat around his\n neck as he tried to keep up\n with the fast-stepping Dawes.\nThey\n crossed the\n street diagonally, and entered\n a two-story wooden building.\n Dawes took the stairs at a\n brisk pace, and pushed open\n the door on the second floor.\n A fat man looked up from\n behind a desk.\n\n\n \"Hi, Charlie. Thought I'd\n see if you wanted to help\n move Brundage.\"", "\"He didn't mean no harm,\"\n the woman snuffled. \"He was\n just purely ornery, Vincent\n was. Just plain mean stubborn.\"\n\n\n \"The law's the law,\" the\n fat man sighed.\n\n\n Sol couldn't hold himself\n in.\n\n\n \"What law? Who's dead?\n How did it happen?\"\n\n\n Dawes looked at him disgustedly.\n \"Now is it any of\nyour\nbusiness? I mean, is it?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" Sol said\n miserably.\n\n\n \"You better stay out of\n this,\" the Sheriff warned.\n \"This is a local matter, young\n man. You better stay in the\n shop while we go up.\"\n\n\n They filed past him and the\n crying Mrs. Brundage.\n\n\n When they were out of\n sight, Sol pleaded with her.", "Henry Slesar, young New York advertising executive and by now no\n longer a new-comer to either this magazine or to this field, describes\n a strange little town that you, yourself, may blunder into one of these\n evenings. But, if you do, beware—beware of the Knights!\ndream\n \ntown\nby ... HENRY SLESAR\nThe woman in the doorway looked so harmless. Who\n was to tell she had some rather startling interests?\nThe\n woman in the\n doorway looked like Mom in\n the homier political cartoons.\n She was plump, apple-cheeked,\n white-haired. She\n wore a fussy, old-fashioned\n nightgown, and was busily\n clutching a worn house-robe\n around her expansive middle.\n She blinked at Sol Becker's\n rain-flattened hair and hang-dog\n expression, and said:\n \"What is it? What do you\n want?\"", "The man scratched his ear.\n \"Take you over to Sheriff\n Coogan after breakfast. He'll\n let the Stateys know about it.\n My name's Dawes.\"\n\n\n Sol accepted a careful\n handshake.\n\n\n \"Don't get many people\n comin' into town,\" Dawes\n said, looking at him curiously.\n \"Ain't seen a stranger in\n years. But you look like the\n rest of us.\" He chuckled.\n\n\n Mom called out: \"Breakfast!\"\nAt\n the table, Dawes\n asked his destination.\n\n\n \"Wedding in Salinas,\" he\n explained. \"Old Army friend\n of mine. I picked this hitchhiker\n up about two miles from\n here. He\nseemed\nokay.\"\n\n\n \"Never can tell,\" Dawes\n said placidly, munching egg.\n \"Hey, Ma. That why you\n were so late comin' to court\n last night?\"", "Mom fixed him a light\n lunch, the greatest feature of\n which was some hot biscuits\n she plucked out of the oven.\n It made him feel almost normal.\n\n\n He wandered around the\n town some more after lunch,\n trying to spark conversation\n with the residents.\n\n\n He learned little.\nAt\n five-thirty, he returned\n to the Dawes house, and was\n promptly leaped upon by\n little Sally.\n\n\n \"Hi! Hi! Hi!\" she said,\n clutching his right leg and\n almost toppling him over.\n \"We had a party in school. I\n had chocolate cake. You goin'\n to stay with us?\"\n\n\n \"Just another night,\" Sol\n told her, trying to shake the\n girl off. \"If it's okay with\n your folks. They haven't\n found my car yet.\"", "\"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Thought so.\"\n\n\n Sol repeated the question.\n\n\n \"Course I did. Been goin'\n there ever since I was a kid.\n Night-times, that is.\"\n\n\n \"How—I mean, what kind\n of place is it?\"\n\n\n \"Said you're a stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Then 'tain't your business.\"\n\n\n That was that.\n\n\n He left the park, and wandered\n into a thriving luncheonette.\n He tried questioning\n the man behind the counter,\n who merely snickered and\n said: \"You stayin' with the\n Dawes, ain't you? Better ask\n Willie, then. He knows the\n place better than anybody.\"\n\n\n He asked about the execution,\n and the man stiffened.", "\"Sally!\" Mom was peering\n out of the screen door. \"You\n let Mr. Becker alone and go\n wash. Your Pa will be home\n soon.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, pooh,\" the girl said,\n her pigtails swinging. \"Do\n you got a girlfriend, mister?\"\n\n\n \"No.\" Sol struggled towards\n the house with her\n dead weight on his leg.\n \"Would you mind? I can't\n walk.\"\n\n\n \"Would you be my boyfriend?\"\n\n\n \"Well, we'll talk about it.\n If you let go my leg.\"\n\n\n Inside the house, she said:\n \"We're having pot roast. You\n stayin'?\"\n\n\n \"Of course Mr. Becker's\n stayin',\" Mom said. \"He's our\n guest.\"", "\"Oh, my goodness!\" Mom\n got up hastily. \"That reminds\n me. I gotta call poor Mrs.\n Brundage. It's the\nleast\nI\n could do.\"\n\n\n \"Good idea,\" Dawes nodded.\n \"And I'll have to round\n up some folks and get old\n Brundage out of there.\"\n\n\n Sol was staring. He opened\n his mouth, but couldn't think\n of the right question to ask.\n Then he blurted out: \"What\n execution?\"\n\n\n \"None of\nyour\nbusiness,\"\n the man said coldly. \"You eat\n up, young man. If you want\n me to get Sheriff Coogan\n lookin' for your car.\"\n\n\n The rest of the meal went\n silently, except for Sally's insistence\n upon singing her\n school song between mouthfuls.\n When Dawes was\n through, he pushed back his\n plate and ordered Sol to get\n ready.", "The man batted his eyes.\n \"Oh, Brundage!\" he said.\n \"You know, I clean forgot\n about him?\" He laughed.\n \"Imagine me forgetting\n that?\"\n\n\n \"Yeah.\" Dawes wasn't\n amused. \"And you Prince Regent.\"\n\n\n \"Aw, Willie—\"\n\n\n \"Well, come on. Stir that\n fat carcass. Gotta pick up\n Sheriff Coogan, too. This\n here gentleman has to see him\n about somethin' else.\"\n\n\n The man regarded Sol suspiciously.\n \"Never seen you\n before. Night\nor\nday. Stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Come\non\n!\" Dawes said.\n\n\n The fat man grunted and\n hoisted himself out of the\n swivel chair. He followed\n lamely behind the two men\n as they went out into the\n street again.", "He leaped out of the chair\n as voices sounded behind the\n door. Dawes was kicking it\n open with his foot, his arms\n laden with two rather large\n feet, still encased in bedroom\n slippers. Charlie was at the\n other end of the burden,\n which appeared to be a middle-aged\n man in pajamas. The\n Sheriff followed the trio up\n with a sad, undertaker expression.\n Behind him came Mrs.\n Brundage, properly weeping.\n\n\n \"We'll take him to the funeral\n parlor,\" Dawes said,\n breathing hard. \"Weighs a\n ton, don't he?\"\n\n\n \"What killed him?\" Sol\n said.\n\n\n \"Heart attack.\"\n\n\n The fat man chuckled." ], [ "\"That's very kind of you,\"\n Sol said. \"I really wish you'd\n let me pay something—\"\n\n\n \"Don't want to hear another\n word about pay.\"\nMr. Dawes\n came home an\n hour later, looking tired.\n Mom pecked him lightly on\n the forehead. He glanced at\n the evening paper, and then\n spoke to Sol.\n\n\n \"Hear you been asking\n questions, Mr. Becker.\"\n\n\n Sol nodded, embarrassed.\n \"Guess I have. I'm awfully\n curious about this Armagon\n place. Never heard of anything\n like it before.\"\n\n\n Dawes grunted. \"You ain't\n a reporter?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no. I'm an engineer. I\n was just satisfying my own\n curiosity.\"", "Mom was following him,\n her stout body regal in scarlet\n robes. \"Sally! You give\n Sir Coogan his helmet! You\n hear?\"\n\n\n \"Mrs. Dawes!\" Sol said.\n\n\n \"Why, Mr. Becker! How\n nice to see you again! Pa!\nPa!\nLook who's here!\"\n\n\n Willie Dawes appeared.\nNo!\nSol thought. This was\nKing\nDawes; nothing else\n could explain the magnificence\n of his attire.\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Dawes said craftily.\n \"So I see. Welcome to Armagon,\n Mr. Becker.\"\n\n\n \"Armagon?\" Sol gaped.\n \"Then this is the place\n you've been dreaming about?\"\n\n\n \"Yep,\" the King said. \"And\n now\nyou're\nin it, too.\"\n\n\n \"Then I'm only dreaming!\"", "The town was just coming\n to life. People were strolling\n out of their houses, commenting\n on the weather, chuckling\n amiably about local affairs.\n Kids on bicycles were beginning\n to appear, jangling the\n little bells and hooting to\n each other. A woman, hanging\n wash in the back yard,\n called out to him, thinking\n he was somebody else.\n\n\n He found a little park, no\n more than twenty yards in\n circumference, centered\n around a weatherbeaten monument\n of some unrecognizable\n military figure. Three\n old men took their places on\n the bench that circled the\n General, and leaned on their\n canes.\n\n\n Sol was a civil engineer.\n But he made like a reporter.\n\n\n \"Pardon me, sir.\" The old\n man, leathery-faced, with a\n fine yellow moustache, looked\n at him dumbly. \"Have you\n ever heard of Armagon?\"\n\n\n \"You a stranger?\"", "\"What happened? How did\n your husband die?\"\n\n\n \"Please ...\"\n\n\n \"You must tell me! Was it\n something to do with Armagon?\n Do you dream about the\n place, too?\"\n\n\n She was shocked at the\n question. \"Of course!\"\n\n\n \"And your husband? Did\n he have the same dream?\"\n\n\n Fresh tears resulted. \"Can't\n you leave me alone?\" She\n turned her back. \"I got things\n to do. You can make yourself\n comfortable—\" She indicated\n the barber chairs, and left\n through the back door.\n\n\n Sol looked after her, and\n then ambled over to the first\n chair and slipped into the\n high seat. His reflection in\n the mirror, strangely gray in\n the dim light, made him\n groan. His clothes were a\n mess, and he needed a shave.\n If only Brundage had been\n alive ...", "\"Look, Mr. Dawes.\" He was\n panting; the pace was fast.\n \"Does\nshe\ndream about this—Armagon,\n too? That woman\n back there?\"\n\n\n \"Yep.\"\n\n\n Charlie chuckled. \"He's a\n stranger, all right.\"\n\n\n \"And you, Mr.—\" Sol\n turned to the fat man. \"You\n also know about this palace\n and everything?\"\n\n\n \"I told you,\" Dawes said\n testily. \"Charlie here's Prince\n Regent. But don't let the fancy\n title fool you. He got no\n more power than any Knight\n of the Realm. He's just too\n dern fat to do much more'n\n sit on a throne and eat grapes.\n That right, Charlie?\"\n\n\n The fat man giggled.\n\n\n \"Here's the Sheriff,\" Dawes\n said.", "\"That's right, Pa.\" She\n poured the blackest coffee\n Sol had ever seen. \"Didn't\n miss much, though.\"\n\n\n \"What court is that?\" Sol\n asked politely, his mouth full.\n\n\n \"Umagum,\" Sally said, a\n piece of toast sticking out\n from the side of her mouth.\n \"Don't you know\nnothin'\n?\"\n\n\n \"\nArma\ngon,\" Dawes corrected.\n He looked sheepishly at\n the stranger. \"Don't expect\n Mister—\" He cocked an eyebrow.\n \"What's the name?\"\n\n\n \"Becker.\"\n\n\n \"Don't expect Mr. Becker\n knows anything about Armagon.\n It's just a dream, you\n know.\" He smiled apologetically.\n\n\n \"Dream? You mean this—Armagon\n is a place you dream\n about?\"", "The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed\n citizen with a long, sad face,\n was rocking on a porch as\n they approached his house,\n trying to puff a half-lit pipe.\n He lifted one hand wearily\n when he saw them.\n\n\n \"Hi, Cookie,\" Dawes\n grinned. \"Thought you, me,\n and Charlie would get Brundage's\n body outa the house.\n This here's Mr. Becker; he\n got another problem. Mr.\n Becker, meet Cookie Coogan.\"\n\n\n The Sheriff joined the procession,\n pausing only once to\n inquire into Sol's predicament.\n\n\n He described the hitchhiker\n incident, but Coogan\n listened stoically. He murmured\n something about the\n Troopers, and shuffled alongside\n the puffing fat man.\n\n\n Sol soon realized that their\n destination was a barber shop.", "\"Don't think I can talk\n about that. Fella broke one of\n the Laws; that's about it.\n Don't see where you come\n into it.\"\n\n\n At eleven o'clock, he returned\n to the Dawes residence,\n and found Mom in the\n kitchen, surrounded by the\n warm nostalgic odor of home-baked\n bread. She told him\n that her husband had left a\n message for the stranger, informing\n him that the State\n Police would be around to get\n his story.\n\n\n He waited in the house,\n gloomily turning the pages of\n the local newspaper, searching\n for references to Armagon.\n He found nothing.\n\n\n At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced\n State Trooper came to\n call, and Sol told his story.\n He was promised nothing,\n and told to stay in town until\n he was contacted again by\n the authorities.", "Sol grabbed his topcoat and\n followed the man out the\n door.\n\n\n \"Have to stop someplace\n first,\" Dawes said. \"But we'll\n be pickin' up the Sheriff on\n the way. Okay with you?\"\n\n\n \"Fine,\" Sol said uneasily.\n\n\n The rain had stopped, but\n the heavy clouds seemed reluctant\n to leave the skies over\n the small town. There was a\n skittish breeze blowing, and\n Sol Becker tightened the collar\n of his coat around his\n neck as he tried to keep up\n with the fast-stepping Dawes.\nThey\n crossed the\n street diagonally, and entered\n a two-story wooden building.\n Dawes took the stairs at a\n brisk pace, and pushed open\n the door on the second floor.\n A fat man looked up from\n behind a desk.\n\n\n \"Hi, Charlie. Thought I'd\n see if you wanted to help\n move Brundage.\"", "Familiar faces, under shining\n helmets, moved towards\n him; the tips of sharp-pointed\n spears gleaming wickedly.\n And Sol Becker wondered—would\n he ever awake?\nTranscriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from\nFantastic Universe\nJanuary 1957.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.\n copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and\n typographical errors have been corrected without note.", "\"I'd think about that,\" he\n said. \"Writing it up, I mean.\n A lot of folks would think\n you were just plum crazy.\"\n\n\n Sol laughed feebly. \"I\n guess they would at that.\"\n\n\n \"Goodnight,\" Dawes said.\n\n\n \"Goodnight.\"\n\n\n He read Sally's copy of\nTreasure Island\nfor about\n half an hour. Then he undressed,\n made himself comfortable\n on the sofa, snuggled\n under the soft blanket\n that Mom had provided, and\n shut his eyes.\n\n\n He reviewed the events of\n the day before dropping off\n to sleep. The troublesome\n Sally. The strange dream\n world of Armagon. The visit\n to the barber shop. The removal\n of Brundage's body.\n The conversations with the\n townspeople. Dawes' suspicious\n attitude ...", "Charlie, the fat man,\n clumsy as ever in his robes of\n State, said: \"So\nthat's\nthe\n snooper, eh?\"\n\n\n \"Yep,\" Dawes chuckled.\n \"Think you better round up\n the Knights.\"\n\n\n Sol said: \"The Knights?\"\n\n\n \"Exelution! Exelution!\"\n Sally shrieked.\n\n\n \"Now wait a minute—\"\n\n\n Charlie shouted.\n\n\n Running feet, clanking of\n armor. Sol backed up against\n a pillar. \"Now look here.\n You've gone far enough—\"\n\n\n \"Not quite,\" said the King.\n\n\n The Knights stepped forward.\n\n\n \"Wait!\" Sol screamed.", "The man batted his eyes.\n \"Oh, Brundage!\" he said.\n \"You know, I clean forgot\n about him?\" He laughed.\n \"Imagine me forgetting\n that?\"\n\n\n \"Yeah.\" Dawes wasn't\n amused. \"And you Prince Regent.\"\n\n\n \"Aw, Willie—\"\n\n\n \"Well, come on. Stir that\n fat carcass. Gotta pick up\n Sheriff Coogan, too. This\n here gentleman has to see him\n about somethin' else.\"\n\n\n The man regarded Sol suspiciously.\n \"Never seen you\n before. Night\nor\nday. Stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Come\non\n!\" Dawes said.\n\n\n The fat man grunted and\n hoisted himself out of the\n swivel chair. He followed\n lamely behind the two men\n as they went out into the\n street again.", "He leaped out of the chair\n as voices sounded behind the\n door. Dawes was kicking it\n open with his foot, his arms\n laden with two rather large\n feet, still encased in bedroom\n slippers. Charlie was at the\n other end of the burden,\n which appeared to be a middle-aged\n man in pajamas. The\n Sheriff followed the trio up\n with a sad, undertaker expression.\n Behind him came Mrs.\n Brundage, properly weeping.\n\n\n \"We'll take him to the funeral\n parlor,\" Dawes said,\n breathing hard. \"Weighs a\n ton, don't he?\"\n\n\n \"What killed him?\" Sol\n said.\n\n\n \"Heart attack.\"\n\n\n The fat man chuckled.", "He tried for fifteen minutes\n to get through, but there\n was a woman on the line who\n was terribly upset about a\n cotton dress she had ordered\n from Sears, and was telling\n the world about it.\n\n\n Finally, he got his call\n through to Salinas, and a\n sleepy-voiced Fred, his old\n Army buddy, listened somewhat\n indifferently to his tale\n of woe. \"I might miss the\n wedding,\" Sol said unhappily.\n \"I'm awfully sorry.\" Fred\n didn't seem to be half as sorry\n as he was. When Sol hung\n up, he was feeling more despondent\n than ever.\n\n\n A man, tall and rangy, with\n a bobbing Adam's apple and\n a lined face, came into the\n hallway. \"Hullo?\" he said inquiringly.\n \"You the fella had\n the car stolen?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"", "A woman, with an empty\n market basket, nodded casually\n to them. \"Mornin', folks.\n Enjoyed it last night.\n Thought you made a right\n nice speech, Mr. Dawes.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks,\" Dawes answered\n gruffly, but obviously flattered.\n \"We were just goin'\n over to Brundage's to pick up\n the body. Ma's gonna pay a\n call on Mrs. Brundage around\n ten o'clock. You care to visit?\"\n\n\n \"Why, I think that's very\n nice,\" the woman said. \"I'll\n be sure and do that.\" She\n smiled at the fat man. \"Mornin',\n Prince.\"\n\n\n Sol's head was spinning. As\n they left the woman and continued\n their determined\n march down the quiet street,\n he tried to find answers.", "Henry Slesar, young New York advertising executive and by now no\n longer a new-comer to either this magazine or to this field, describes\n a strange little town that you, yourself, may blunder into one of these\n evenings. But, if you do, beware—beware of the Knights!\ndream\n \ntown\nby ... HENRY SLESAR\nThe woman in the doorway looked so harmless. Who\n was to tell she had some rather startling interests?\nThe\n woman in the\n doorway looked like Mom in\n the homier political cartoons.\n She was plump, apple-cheeked,\n white-haired. She\n wore a fussy, old-fashioned\n nightgown, and was busily\n clutching a worn house-robe\n around her expansive middle.\n She blinked at Sol Becker's\n rain-flattened hair and hang-dog\n expression, and said:\n \"What is it? What do you\n want?\"", "\"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Thought so.\"\n\n\n Sol repeated the question.\n\n\n \"Course I did. Been goin'\n there ever since I was a kid.\n Night-times, that is.\"\n\n\n \"How—I mean, what kind\n of place is it?\"\n\n\n \"Said you're a stranger?\"\n\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n\n \"Then 'tain't your business.\"\n\n\n That was that.\n\n\n He left the park, and wandered\n into a thriving luncheonette.\n He tried questioning\n the man behind the counter,\n who merely snickered and\n said: \"You stayin' with the\n Dawes, ain't you? Better ask\n Willie, then. He knows the\n place better than anybody.\"\n\n\n He asked about the execution,\n and the man stiffened.", "\"Sally!\" Mom was peering\n out of the screen door. \"You\n let Mr. Becker alone and go\n wash. Your Pa will be home\n soon.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, pooh,\" the girl said,\n her pigtails swinging. \"Do\n you got a girlfriend, mister?\"\n\n\n \"No.\" Sol struggled towards\n the house with her\n dead weight on his leg.\n \"Would you mind? I can't\n walk.\"\n\n\n \"Would you be my boyfriend?\"\n\n\n \"Well, we'll talk about it.\n If you let go my leg.\"\n\n\n Inside the house, she said:\n \"We're having pot roast. You\n stayin'?\"\n\n\n \"Of course Mr. Becker's\n stayin',\" Mom said. \"He's our\n guest.\"", "He stripped down to his\n underwear, wondering about\n next morning's possible embarrassment,\n and decided to\n use the damp bath towel as a\n blanket. The sofa was downy\n and comfortable. He curled\n up under the towel, shivered\n once, and closed his eyes.\nHe\n was tired and very\n sleepy, and his customary\n nightly review was limited to\n a few detached thoughts\n about the wedding he was\n supposed to attend in Salinas\n that weekend ... the hoodlum\n who had responded to his\n good-nature by dumping him\n out of his own car ... the slogging\n walk to the village ...\n the little round woman who\n was hurrying off, like the\n White Rabbit, to some mysterious\n appointment on the\n upper floor ...\n\n\n Then he went to sleep.\n\n\n A voice awoke him, shrill\n and questioning.\n\n\n \"Are you\nnakkid\n?\"" ] ]
test	99926	[ "What are the two most popular formats for delivering OA?", "How are OA journals different from toll access journals?", "What is green OA?", "What is gold OA?", "Does the author give more preference to gold OA or green OA?", "How many authors are taking advantage of toll access journals' blanket permission for green OA?", "What is an example of libre OA?", "What is libre OA?", "What is gratis OA?" ]	[ [ "Ebooks and databases", "Repositories and databases", "Journals and blogs", "Journals and repositories" ], [ "OA journals only publish postprints while toll access journals publish both preprints and postprints.", "OA journals are newer, free to read, and have moderate profit margins.", "Toll access journals do not make a profit while OA journals do.", "Toll access journals are newer, free to read, and have large profit margins. " ], [ "Open access content delivered through repositories. ", "Open access content delivered through personal web sites.", "Open access content delivered through journals.", "Open access content that has permission barriers removed. " ], [ "Open access content delivered through databases. ", "Open access content that does not allow users to exceed fair use. ", "Open access content delivered through journals. ", "Open access content delivered through repositories." ], [ "Neither. The author argues that both are important.", "Gold OA", "Green OA ", "Neither. The author argues that the gold/green is irrelevant to the OA movement." ], [ "none", "half", "100%", "15%" ], [ "Educators are given special permissions under the fair use law. ", "Movie producers need to get permission from the author before making a book into a movie. ", "The complete works of Shakespeare are in the public domain and can be used in any way. ", "A database collection of physics. " ], [ "Access to the material is free, but there are still permission barriers. ", "Access to the material is free, but the publisher owns the copyright to the material, not the author.", "Access to the material is free, and the author gives up all rights to the material.", "Access to the material is free, and some permission barriers are removed." ], [ "Access to the material is free, and the author gives up all rights to the material. ", "Access to the material is free, and some permission barriers are removed.", "Access to the material is free, but there are still permission barriers. ", "Access to the material is free, but the publisher owns the copyright to the material, not the author. " ] ]	[ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "Open Access: Varieties\nThere are many ways to deliver OA: personal web sites, blogs, wikis, databases, ebooks, videos, audios, webcasts, discussion forums, RSS feeds, and P2P networks.\n \n Unless creative thinking stops now, there will be many more to come.\nHowever, two delivery vehicles dominate the current discussion: journals and repositories.\nOA journals are like non-OA journals except that they’re OA. Making good on that exception requires a new funding model, but nearly everything else about the journal could be held constant, if we wanted to hold it constant. Some OA journals are very traditional except that they’re OA, while others deliberately push the evolution of journals as a category. (Some toll-access journals also push that evolution, if we don’t count stopping short of OA.)", "Most importantly, the green/gold distinction matters because if authors can’t make their work OA one way, they can make it OA the other way. One of the most persistent and damaging misunderstandings is that all OA is gold OA. Authors who can’t find a high-quality, high-prestige OA journal in their field, or whose submissions are rejected from first-rate OA journals, often conclude that they must give up on OA or publish in a second-rate journal. But that’s hasty. If they publish in the best toll-access journal that will accept their work, then—more often than not—they may turn around and deposit the peer-reviewed manuscript in an OA repository. Most toll-access publishers and toll-access journals give blanket permission for green OA, many others will give permission on request, and the numbers approach 100 percent when authors are subject to green OA mandates from their funding agencies or universities. (More in chapters 4 on OA policies and 10 on making your own work OA.)", "By default, new deposits in OA repositories are OA. But most repositories today support\ndark deposits\n, which can be switched to OA at a later date. Most OA repositories were launched to host peer-reviewed research articles and their preprints. But often they include other sorts of content as well, such as theses and dissertations, datasets, courseware, and digitized copies of works from the special collections of the hosting institution’s library. For scholars, repositories are better at making work OA than personal web sites because repositories provide persistent URLs, take steps for long-term preservation, and don’t disappear when the author changes jobs or dies.\n3.1 Green and Gold OA\nGold and green OA differ in at least two fundamental respects.", "Second, OA journals obtain the rights or permissions they need directly from the rightsholders, while repositories ask depositors to obtain the needed rights or permissions on their own. Even when the depositors are the authors themselves, they may already have transferred key rights to publishers. As a result, OA journals can generate permission for reuse at will, and OA repositories generally cannot. Hence, most libre OA is gold OA, even if it’s not yet the case that most gold OA is libre OA. (See more in section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.)\nGold and green OA require different steps from authors. To make new articles gold OA, authors simply submit their manuscripts to OA journals, as they would to conventional journals. To make articles green OA, authors simply deposit their manuscripts in an OA repository.", "First, OA journals and repositories differ in their relationship to peer review. OA journals perform their own peer review, just like conventional journals. Repositories generally don’t perform peer review, although they host and disseminate articles peer-reviewed elsewhere. As a result, gold and green OA differ in their support costs and in the roles they can play in the scholarly communications universe.\nTerminology\nThe OA movement uses the term\ngold OA\nfor OA delivered by journals, regardless of the journal’s business model, and\ngreen OA\nfor OA delivered by repositories.\nSelf-archiving\nis the practice of depositing one’s own work in an OA repository. All three of these terms were coined by Stevan Harnad.", "On the other side, gold OA has some advantages over green OA. Gold OA articles needn’t labor under restrictions imposed by toll-access publishers fearful of OA. Hence, gold OA is always immediate, while green OA is sometimes embargoed or delayed. Similarly, gold OA can always be libre, even if it doesn’t take sufficient advantage of this opportunity, while green OA seldom even has the opportunity. (See chapter 4 on policies.)\nGold OA provides OA to the published version, while green OA is often limited to the final version of the author’s peer-reviewed manuscript, without copy editing or final pagination. Making the OA edition the same as the published edition reduces the confusion caused by the circulation of multiple versions.\nGold OA performs its own peer review, without depending on toll-access journals to perform it. Hence support for gold OA supports the survival of peer review itself in case toll-access journals can no longer provide it.", "There are two reasons why OA is compatible with prestigious publication, a gold reason and a green one. The gold reason is that a growing number of OA journals have already earned high levels of prestige, and others are steadily earning it. If there are no prestigious OA journals in your field today, you could wait (things are changing fast), you could help out (by submitting your best work), or you could move on to green. The green reason why OA is compatible with prestige is that most toll-access journals, including the prestigious, already allow OA archiving. As noted, this “most” can become “all” with the aid of an effective OA policy. (See chapter 4 on policies.)\nThe most useful OA repositories comply with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (PMH), which makes separate repositories play well together. In the jargon, OAI compliance makes repositories\ninteroperable", "Some friends of OA focus their energy on green OA and some focus on gold OA. Some support both kinds about equally and have merely specialized. But some give one a higher strategic priority than the other. I’ll argue that green and gold OA are complementary and synergistic. We should pursue them simultaneously, much as an organism must develop its nervous system and digestive system simultaneously.\nFortunately, this synergy is served even by differences of opinion about its existence. The fact that some activists give green OA a higher priority than gold, and some the reverse, creates a natural division of labor ensuring that good people are working hard on each front.\nGreen OA has some advantages over gold OA. It makes faster progress, since it doesn’t require the launch of new peer-reviewed journals or the conversion of old ones. For the same reason, it’s less expensive than gold OA and can scale up quickly and inexpensively to meet demand, while the bulk of the money needed to scale up OA journals is still tied up in subscriptions to toll-access journals.", "One of the early victories of the OA movement was to get a majority of toll-access publishers and journals to give blanket permission for author-initiated green OA. But this victory remains one of the best-kept secrets of scholarly publishing, and widespread ignorance of it is the single most harmful consequence of green OA’s invisibility. Overlooking this victory reduces the volume of OA and creates the false impression that a trade-off between prestige and OA is common when in fact it is rare. Forgetting that green OA is compatible with conventional publishing also feeds the false impression that policies requiring green OA actually require gold OA and thereby limit the freedom of authors to submit work to the journals of their choice. (More in chapter 4 on policies.)\nMost publishing scholars will choose prestige over OA if they have to choose. The good news is that they rarely have to choose. The bad news is that few of them know that they rarely have to choose. Few realize that most toll-access journals permit author-initiated green OA, despite determined efforts to explain and publicize this early victory for green OA.", "To be more precise: A disappointing number of OA journals don’t have all the advantages of being OA because they retain needless permission barriers. (See section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.) At the same time, a heartening number of OA journals no longer suffer from the disadvantages of being new.\nLike conventional journal publishers, some OA journal publishers are for-profit and some are nonprofit. Like conventional publishers, there are a few large OA publishers and a long tail of small ones, although the largest OA publishers are small compared to the largest conventional publishers. Unlike conventional publishers, the profitable for-profit OA publishers have moderate rather than obscene profit margins.\nOA repositories are online collections or databases of articles. Unlike OA journals, OA repositories have no counterpart in the traditional landscape of scholarly communication. That makes them woefully easy to overlook or misunderstand.", "However, the differences between disciplinary and institutional repositories matter more for authors. On the one hand, institutions are in a better position than disciplines to offer incentives and assistance for deposit, and to adopt policies to ensure deposit. A growing number of universities do just that. On the other hand, scholars who regularly read research in a large disciplinary repository, such as arXiv for physics or PubMed Central for medicine, readily grasp the rationale for depositing their work in OA repositories and need less nudging to do so themselves. (More in chapter 4 on policies.)\nBecause most publishers and journals already give blanket permission for green OA, the burden is on authors to take advantage of it. In the absence of an institutional policy to encourage or require deposits, the spontaneous rate of deposit is about 15 percent. Institutions requiring deposit can push the rate toward 100 percent over a few years.", "When the best journals in a field are toll-access—often the case today even if changing—green OA allows authors to have their cake and eat it too. Authors good enough to publish in the best journals may do so and still make their work OA, without waiting for high-prestige OA journals to emerge in their fields. When promotion and tenure committees create strong incentives to publish in venerable toll-access journals—often the case today even if changing—green OA allows authors to make their work OA without bucking institutional incentives or relinquishing institutional rewards.\nGreen OA works for preprints as well as postprints, while gold OA only works for postprints. For the same reason, green OA works for other kinds of work that peer-reviewed journals generally don’t publish, such as datasets, source code, theses and dissertations, and digitized copies of work previously available only in another medium such as print, microfiche, or film.", "Green OA can be mandated without infringing academic freedom, but gold OA cannot. (More precisely, gold OA can’t be mandated without infringing academic freedom until virtually all peer-reviewed journals are OA, which isn’t on the horizon.) A green OA policy at a university can cover the institution’s entire research output, regardless of where authors choose to publish, while a gold OA policy can only cover the new articles that faculty are willing to submit to OA journals.\nGreen OA is compatible with toll-access publication. Sometimes this is because toll-access publishers hold the needed rights and decide to allow it, and sometimes because authors retain the needed rights. Well-drafted OA policies can ensure that authors always retain the needed rights and spare them the need to negotiate with publishers. (See chapters 4 on policies and 6 on copyright.)", "Finally, green OA may be a manageable expense, but gold OA can be self-sustaining, even profitable.\nLibrarians traditionally distinguish four functions performed by scholarly journals: Registration (time stamp), certification (peer review), awareness (distribution), and archiving (preservation). We know that green and gold OA are complementary as soon as we recognize that green is better than gold for registration (its time stamps are faster) and preservation, and that gold OA is better than green OA for certification (peer review).", "The reason the spontaneous rate is lower than the nudged, assisted, and mandated rate is rarely opposition to OA itself. Almost always it’s unfamiliarity with green OA (belief that all OA is gold OA), misunderstanding of green OA (belief that it violates copyright, bypasses peer review, or forecloses the possibility of publishing in a venerable journal), and fear that it is time-consuming. In this sense, author unfamiliarity and misunderstanding are greater obstacles to OA than actual opposition, whether from authors or publishers.\nThe remedies are already spreading worldwide: launching more OA journals and repositories, educating researchers about their gold and green OA options, and adopting intelligent policies to encourage gold OA and require green OA. (More in chapter 4 on OA policies.)\n3.2 Green and Gold as Complementary", "The Directory of Open Access Journals is the most authoritative catalog of OA journals and the only one limiting itself to peer-reviewed journals. But only 20 percent of titles in the DOAJ use CC licenses, and fewer than 11 percent use the recommended CC-BY license. Viewed the other way around, about 80 percent of peer-reviewed OA journals don’t use any kind of CC license. Some of these might use non-CC licenses with a similar legal effect, but these exceptions are rare. Simply put, most OA journals are not using open licenses. Most operate under all-rights-reserved copyrights and leave their users with no more freedom than they already had under fair use. Most are not offering libre OA. Even those wanting to block commercial use, for example, tend to use an all-rights-reserved copyright rather than an open license that blocks commercial use, such as CC-BY-NC, but allows libre OA in other respects.", "Green OA can be gratis or libre but is usually gratis. Gold OA can be gratis or libre, but is also usually gratis. However, it’s easier for gold OA to be libre than for green OA to be libre, which is why the campaign to go beyond gratis OA to libre OA focuses more on journals than repositories.\nIf users encounter a full-text work online without charge, then they know it’s gratis OA. They don’t have to be told, even if they’d like to be told—for example, so that they don’t have to wonder whether they’re reading an illicit copy. But users can’t figure out whether a work is libre OA unless the provider (author or publisher) tells them. This is the purpose of a\nlicense\n, which is simply a statement from the copyright holder explaining what users may and may not do with a given work.", "Sometimes we must speak unambiguously about two subspecies of OA. One removes price barriers alone and the other removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers. The former is\ngratis OA\nand the latter\nlibre OA\n.\nTo sharpen their definitions, we need a quick detour into fair use. In the United States, fair use is an exception to copyright law allowing users to reproduce copyrighted work “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching . . . , scholarship, or research” (to quote the U.S. copyright statute).", "Most importantly, however, we’ll still want green OA in a world where all peer-reviewed journals are OA. For example, we’ll want green OA for preprints and for the earliest possible time-stamp to establish the author’s priority. We’ll want green OA for datasets, theses and dissertations, and other research genres not published in journals. We’ll want green OA for the security of having multiple OA copies in multiple independent locations. (Even today, the best OA journals not only distribute their articles from their own web sites but also deposit copies in independent OA repositories.) At least until the very last conventional journal converts to OA, we’ll need green OA so that research institutions can mandate OA without limiting the freedom of authors to submit to the journals of their choice. We’ll even want OA repositories as the distribution mechanism for many OA journals themselves.", "A worldwide network of OA repositories would support one desirable evolution of what we now call journals. It would allow us to decouple peer review from distribution. Peer review could be performed by freestanding editorial boards and distribution by the network of repositories. Decoupling would remove the perverse incentive for peer-review providers to raise access barriers or impede distribution. It would also remove their perverse incentive to demand exclusive rights over research they didn’t fund, perform, write up, or buy from the authors.\nOn the other side, we’ll still want gold OA in a world where all new articles are green OA. High-volume green OA may not have caused toll-access journal cancellations yet, even in fields where green OA approaches 100 percent. But we can’t say that it will never do so, and we can’t say that every field will behave like physics in this respect. If peer-reviewed toll-access journals are not sustainable (see section 2.1), then the survival of peer review will depend on a shift to peer-reviewed OA journals." ], [ "On the other side, gold OA has some advantages over green OA. Gold OA articles needn’t labor under restrictions imposed by toll-access publishers fearful of OA. Hence, gold OA is always immediate, while green OA is sometimes embargoed or delayed. Similarly, gold OA can always be libre, even if it doesn’t take sufficient advantage of this opportunity, while green OA seldom even has the opportunity. (See chapter 4 on policies.)\nGold OA provides OA to the published version, while green OA is often limited to the final version of the author’s peer-reviewed manuscript, without copy editing or final pagination. Making the OA edition the same as the published edition reduces the confusion caused by the circulation of multiple versions.\nGold OA performs its own peer review, without depending on toll-access journals to perform it. Hence support for gold OA supports the survival of peer review itself in case toll-access journals can no longer provide it.", "Most importantly, the green/gold distinction matters because if authors can’t make their work OA one way, they can make it OA the other way. One of the most persistent and damaging misunderstandings is that all OA is gold OA. Authors who can’t find a high-quality, high-prestige OA journal in their field, or whose submissions are rejected from first-rate OA journals, often conclude that they must give up on OA or publish in a second-rate journal. But that’s hasty. If they publish in the best toll-access journal that will accept their work, then—more often than not—they may turn around and deposit the peer-reviewed manuscript in an OA repository. Most toll-access publishers and toll-access journals give blanket permission for green OA, many others will give permission on request, and the numbers approach 100 percent when authors are subject to green OA mandates from their funding agencies or universities. (More in chapters 4 on OA policies and 10 on making your own work OA.)", "Open Access: Varieties\nThere are many ways to deliver OA: personal web sites, blogs, wikis, databases, ebooks, videos, audios, webcasts, discussion forums, RSS feeds, and P2P networks.\n \n Unless creative thinking stops now, there will be many more to come.\nHowever, two delivery vehicles dominate the current discussion: journals and repositories.\nOA journals are like non-OA journals except that they’re OA. Making good on that exception requires a new funding model, but nearly everything else about the journal could be held constant, if we wanted to hold it constant. Some OA journals are very traditional except that they’re OA, while others deliberately push the evolution of journals as a category. (Some toll-access journals also push that evolution, if we don’t count stopping short of OA.)", "To be more precise: A disappointing number of OA journals don’t have all the advantages of being OA because they retain needless permission barriers. (See section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.) At the same time, a heartening number of OA journals no longer suffer from the disadvantages of being new.\nLike conventional journal publishers, some OA journal publishers are for-profit and some are nonprofit. Like conventional publishers, there are a few large OA publishers and a long tail of small ones, although the largest OA publishers are small compared to the largest conventional publishers. Unlike conventional publishers, the profitable for-profit OA publishers have moderate rather than obscene profit margins.\nOA repositories are online collections or databases of articles. Unlike OA journals, OA repositories have no counterpart in the traditional landscape of scholarly communication. That makes them woefully easy to overlook or misunderstand.", "Like conventional, toll-access journals, some OA journals are first-rate and some are bottom feeders. Like conventional journals, some OA journals are high in prestige and some are unknown, and some of the unknowns are high in quality and some are low. Some are on solid financial footing and some are struggling. Also like conventional journals, most are honest and some are scams.\nAs early as 2004, Thomson Scientific found that “in each of the broad subject areas studied there was at least one OA title that ranked at or near the top of its field” in citation impact. The number of high-quality, high-impact OA journals has only grown since.\nUnlike toll-access journals, however, most OA journals are new. It’s hard to generalize about OA journals beyond saying that they have all the advantages of being OA and all the disadvantages of being new.", "Second, OA journals obtain the rights or permissions they need directly from the rightsholders, while repositories ask depositors to obtain the needed rights or permissions on their own. Even when the depositors are the authors themselves, they may already have transferred key rights to publishers. As a result, OA journals can generate permission for reuse at will, and OA repositories generally cannot. Hence, most libre OA is gold OA, even if it’s not yet the case that most gold OA is libre OA. (See more in section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.)\nGold and green OA require different steps from authors. To make new articles gold OA, authors simply submit their manuscripts to OA journals, as they would to conventional journals. To make articles green OA, authors simply deposit their manuscripts in an OA repository.", "First, OA journals and repositories differ in their relationship to peer review. OA journals perform their own peer review, just like conventional journals. Repositories generally don’t perform peer review, although they host and disseminate articles peer-reviewed elsewhere. As a result, gold and green OA differ in their support costs and in the roles they can play in the scholarly communications universe.\nTerminology\nThe OA movement uses the term\ngold OA\nfor OA delivered by journals, regardless of the journal’s business model, and\ngreen OA\nfor OA delivered by repositories.\nSelf-archiving\nis the practice of depositing one’s own work in an OA repository. All three of these terms were coined by Stevan Harnad.", "It won’t matter whether toll-access journals are endangered by rising levels of green OA, by their own hyperinflationary price increases, or by their failure to scale with the rapid growth of new research. If any combination of these causes puts peer-reviewed toll-access journals in jeopardy, then peer review will depend on OA journals, which are not endangered by any of those causes. (In chapter 8 on casualties, we’ll see evidence that toll-access journal price increases cause many more cancellations than green OA does.)\nFinally, if all new articles are green OA, we’ll still want the advantages that are easier for gold OA than for green OA to provide: freedom from permission barriers, freedom from delays or embargoes, and freedom from ever-rising drains on library budgets.\nNeither green nor gold OA will suffice, long-term or short-term. That’s a reason to pursue both.\n3.3 Gratis and Libre OA", "Green OA can be mandated without infringing academic freedom, but gold OA cannot. (More precisely, gold OA can’t be mandated without infringing academic freedom until virtually all peer-reviewed journals are OA, which isn’t on the horizon.) A green OA policy at a university can cover the institution’s entire research output, regardless of where authors choose to publish, while a gold OA policy can only cover the new articles that faculty are willing to submit to OA journals.\nGreen OA is compatible with toll-access publication. Sometimes this is because toll-access publishers hold the needed rights and decide to allow it, and sometimes because authors retain the needed rights. Well-drafted OA policies can ensure that authors always retain the needed rights and spare them the need to negotiate with publishers. (See chapters 4 on policies and 6 on copyright.)", "A worldwide network of OA repositories would support one desirable evolution of what we now call journals. It would allow us to decouple peer review from distribution. Peer review could be performed by freestanding editorial boards and distribution by the network of repositories. Decoupling would remove the perverse incentive for peer-review providers to raise access barriers or impede distribution. It would also remove their perverse incentive to demand exclusive rights over research they didn’t fund, perform, write up, or buy from the authors.\nOn the other side, we’ll still want gold OA in a world where all new articles are green OA. High-volume green OA may not have caused toll-access journal cancellations yet, even in fields where green OA approaches 100 percent. But we can’t say that it will never do so, and we can’t say that every field will behave like physics in this respect. If peer-reviewed toll-access journals are not sustainable (see section 2.1), then the survival of peer review will depend on a shift to peer-reviewed OA journals.", "One of the early victories of the OA movement was to get a majority of toll-access publishers and journals to give blanket permission for author-initiated green OA. But this victory remains one of the best-kept secrets of scholarly publishing, and widespread ignorance of it is the single most harmful consequence of green OA’s invisibility. Overlooking this victory reduces the volume of OA and creates the false impression that a trade-off between prestige and OA is common when in fact it is rare. Forgetting that green OA is compatible with conventional publishing also feeds the false impression that policies requiring green OA actually require gold OA and thereby limit the freedom of authors to submit work to the journals of their choice. (More in chapter 4 on policies.)\nMost publishing scholars will choose prestige over OA if they have to choose. The good news is that they rarely have to choose. The bad news is that few of them know that they rarely have to choose. Few realize that most toll-access journals permit author-initiated green OA, despite determined efforts to explain and publicize this early victory for green OA.", "There are two reasons why OA is compatible with prestigious publication, a gold reason and a green one. The gold reason is that a growing number of OA journals have already earned high levels of prestige, and others are steadily earning it. If there are no prestigious OA journals in your field today, you could wait (things are changing fast), you could help out (by submitting your best work), or you could move on to green. The green reason why OA is compatible with prestige is that most toll-access journals, including the prestigious, already allow OA archiving. As noted, this “most” can become “all” with the aid of an effective OA policy. (See chapter 4 on policies.)\nThe most useful OA repositories comply with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (PMH), which makes separate repositories play well together. In the jargon, OAI compliance makes repositories\ninteroperable", "Libre OA is free of charge and also free of some copyright and licensing restrictions. Users have permission to exceed fair use, at least in certain ways. Because there are many ways to exceed fair use, there are many degrees or kinds of libre OA. Libre OA removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers.\nFortunately, we don’t always need these terms. Indeed, in most of this book I use “OA” without qualification. The generic term causes no trouble until we need to talk about differences between gratis and libre OA, just as “carbohydrate” causes no trouble until we need to talk about differences between simple and complex carbohydrates.", "Finally, green OA may be a manageable expense, but gold OA can be self-sustaining, even profitable.\nLibrarians traditionally distinguish four functions performed by scholarly journals: Registration (time stamp), certification (peer review), awareness (distribution), and archiving (preservation). We know that green and gold OA are complementary as soon as we recognize that green is better than gold for registration (its time stamps are faster) and preservation, and that gold OA is better than green OA for certification (peer review).", "Sometimes we must speak unambiguously about two subspecies of OA. One removes price barriers alone and the other removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers. The former is\ngratis OA\nand the latter\nlibre OA\n.\nTo sharpen their definitions, we need a quick detour into fair use. In the United States, fair use is an exception to copyright law allowing users to reproduce copyrighted work “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching . . . , scholarship, or research” (to quote the U.S. copyright statute).", "By default, new deposits in OA repositories are OA. But most repositories today support\ndark deposits\n, which can be switched to OA at a later date. Most OA repositories were launched to host peer-reviewed research articles and their preprints. But often they include other sorts of content as well, such as theses and dissertations, datasets, courseware, and digitized copies of works from the special collections of the hosting institution’s library. For scholars, repositories are better at making work OA than personal web sites because repositories provide persistent URLs, take steps for long-term preservation, and don’t disappear when the author changes jobs or dies.\n3.1 Green and Gold OA\nGold and green OA differ in at least two fundamental respects.", "Some friends of OA focus their energy on green OA and some focus on gold OA. Some support both kinds about equally and have merely specialized. But some give one a higher strategic priority than the other. I’ll argue that green and gold OA are complementary and synergistic. We should pursue them simultaneously, much as an organism must develop its nervous system and digestive system simultaneously.\nFortunately, this synergy is served even by differences of opinion about its existence. The fact that some activists give green OA a higher priority than gold, and some the reverse, creates a natural division of labor ensuring that good people are working hard on each front.\nGreen OA has some advantages over gold OA. It makes faster progress, since it doesn’t require the launch of new peer-reviewed journals or the conversion of old ones. For the same reason, it’s less expensive than gold OA and can scale up quickly and inexpensively to meet demand, while the bulk of the money needed to scale up OA journals is still tied up in subscriptions to toll-access journals.", "When the best journals in a field are toll-access—often the case today even if changing—green OA allows authors to have their cake and eat it too. Authors good enough to publish in the best journals may do so and still make their work OA, without waiting for high-prestige OA journals to emerge in their fields. When promotion and tenure committees create strong incentives to publish in venerable toll-access journals—often the case today even if changing—green OA allows authors to make their work OA without bucking institutional incentives or relinquishing institutional rewards.\nGreen OA works for preprints as well as postprints, while gold OA only works for postprints. For the same reason, green OA works for other kinds of work that peer-reviewed journals generally don’t publish, such as datasets, source code, theses and dissertations, and digitized copies of work previously available only in another medium such as print, microfiche, or film.", "Green OA can be gratis or libre but is usually gratis. Gold OA can be gratis or libre, but is also usually gratis. However, it’s easier for gold OA to be libre than for green OA to be libre, which is why the campaign to go beyond gratis OA to libre OA focuses more on journals than repositories.\nIf users encounter a full-text work online without charge, then they know it’s gratis OA. They don’t have to be told, even if they’d like to be told—for example, so that they don’t have to wonder whether they’re reading an illicit copy. But users can’t figure out whether a work is libre OA unless the provider (author or publisher) tells them. This is the purpose of a\nlicense\n, which is simply a statement from the copyright holder explaining what users may and may not do with a given work.", "The Directory of Open Access Journals is the most authoritative catalog of OA journals and the only one limiting itself to peer-reviewed journals. But only 20 percent of titles in the DOAJ use CC licenses, and fewer than 11 percent use the recommended CC-BY license. Viewed the other way around, about 80 percent of peer-reviewed OA journals don’t use any kind of CC license. Some of these might use non-CC licenses with a similar legal effect, but these exceptions are rare. Simply put, most OA journals are not using open licenses. Most operate under all-rights-reserved copyrights and leave their users with no more freedom than they already had under fair use. Most are not offering libre OA. Even those wanting to block commercial use, for example, tend to use an all-rights-reserved copyright rather than an open license that blocks commercial use, such as CC-BY-NC, but allows libre OA in other respects." ], [ "Some friends of OA focus their energy on green OA and some focus on gold OA. Some support both kinds about equally and have merely specialized. But some give one a higher strategic priority than the other. I’ll argue that green and gold OA are complementary and synergistic. We should pursue them simultaneously, much as an organism must develop its nervous system and digestive system simultaneously.\nFortunately, this synergy is served even by differences of opinion about its existence. The fact that some activists give green OA a higher priority than gold, and some the reverse, creates a natural division of labor ensuring that good people are working hard on each front.\nGreen OA has some advantages over gold OA. It makes faster progress, since it doesn’t require the launch of new peer-reviewed journals or the conversion of old ones. For the same reason, it’s less expensive than gold OA and can scale up quickly and inexpensively to meet demand, while the bulk of the money needed to scale up OA journals is still tied up in subscriptions to toll-access journals.", "On the other side, gold OA has some advantages over green OA. Gold OA articles needn’t labor under restrictions imposed by toll-access publishers fearful of OA. Hence, gold OA is always immediate, while green OA is sometimes embargoed or delayed. Similarly, gold OA can always be libre, even if it doesn’t take sufficient advantage of this opportunity, while green OA seldom even has the opportunity. (See chapter 4 on policies.)\nGold OA provides OA to the published version, while green OA is often limited to the final version of the author’s peer-reviewed manuscript, without copy editing or final pagination. Making the OA edition the same as the published edition reduces the confusion caused by the circulation of multiple versions.\nGold OA performs its own peer review, without depending on toll-access journals to perform it. Hence support for gold OA supports the survival of peer review itself in case toll-access journals can no longer provide it.", "Some see green OA mainly as a tool to force a transition to gold OA. The idea is that rising levels of green OA will trigger the cancellation of conventional journals and pressure them to convert to gold OA. The growing volume of green OA might have this effect. Some publishers fear that it will, and some OA activists hope that it will. But it might not have this effect at all. One piece of evidence is that green OA hasn’t triggered journal cancellations in physics, where levels of green OA approach 100 percent and have been high and growing for nearly two decades. (More in chapter 8 on casualties.) Even if it did have this effect, however, it wouldn’t follow that it is the best strategy for advancing gold OA. There are good prospects for a peaceful revolution based on publisher consent and self-interest. (More in chapter 7 on economics.)", "Most importantly, the green/gold distinction matters because if authors can’t make their work OA one way, they can make it OA the other way. One of the most persistent and damaging misunderstandings is that all OA is gold OA. Authors who can’t find a high-quality, high-prestige OA journal in their field, or whose submissions are rejected from first-rate OA journals, often conclude that they must give up on OA or publish in a second-rate journal. But that’s hasty. If they publish in the best toll-access journal that will accept their work, then—more often than not—they may turn around and deposit the peer-reviewed manuscript in an OA repository. Most toll-access publishers and toll-access journals give blanket permission for green OA, many others will give permission on request, and the numbers approach 100 percent when authors are subject to green OA mandates from their funding agencies or universities. (More in chapters 4 on OA policies and 10 on making your own work OA.)", "First, OA journals and repositories differ in their relationship to peer review. OA journals perform their own peer review, just like conventional journals. Repositories generally don’t perform peer review, although they host and disseminate articles peer-reviewed elsewhere. As a result, gold and green OA differ in their support costs and in the roles they can play in the scholarly communications universe.\nTerminology\nThe OA movement uses the term\ngold OA\nfor OA delivered by journals, regardless of the journal’s business model, and\ngreen OA\nfor OA delivered by repositories.\nSelf-archiving\nis the practice of depositing one’s own work in an OA repository. All three of these terms were coined by Stevan Harnad.", "Second, OA journals obtain the rights or permissions they need directly from the rightsholders, while repositories ask depositors to obtain the needed rights or permissions on their own. Even when the depositors are the authors themselves, they may already have transferred key rights to publishers. As a result, OA journals can generate permission for reuse at will, and OA repositories generally cannot. Hence, most libre OA is gold OA, even if it’s not yet the case that most gold OA is libre OA. (See more in section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.)\nGold and green OA require different steps from authors. To make new articles gold OA, authors simply submit their manuscripts to OA journals, as they would to conventional journals. To make articles green OA, authors simply deposit their manuscripts in an OA repository.", "Green OA can be mandated without infringing academic freedom, but gold OA cannot. (More precisely, gold OA can’t be mandated without infringing academic freedom until virtually all peer-reviewed journals are OA, which isn’t on the horizon.) A green OA policy at a university can cover the institution’s entire research output, regardless of where authors choose to publish, while a gold OA policy can only cover the new articles that faculty are willing to submit to OA journals.\nGreen OA is compatible with toll-access publication. Sometimes this is because toll-access publishers hold the needed rights and decide to allow it, and sometimes because authors retain the needed rights. Well-drafted OA policies can ensure that authors always retain the needed rights and spare them the need to negotiate with publishers. (See chapters 4 on policies and 6 on copyright.)", "By default, new deposits in OA repositories are OA. But most repositories today support\ndark deposits\n, which can be switched to OA at a later date. Most OA repositories were launched to host peer-reviewed research articles and their preprints. But often they include other sorts of content as well, such as theses and dissertations, datasets, courseware, and digitized copies of works from the special collections of the hosting institution’s library. For scholars, repositories are better at making work OA than personal web sites because repositories provide persistent URLs, take steps for long-term preservation, and don’t disappear when the author changes jobs or dies.\n3.1 Green and Gold OA\nGold and green OA differ in at least two fundamental respects.", "Finally, green OA may be a manageable expense, but gold OA can be self-sustaining, even profitable.\nLibrarians traditionally distinguish four functions performed by scholarly journals: Registration (time stamp), certification (peer review), awareness (distribution), and archiving (preservation). We know that green and gold OA are complementary as soon as we recognize that green is better than gold for registration (its time stamps are faster) and preservation, and that gold OA is better than green OA for certification (peer review).", "When the best journals in a field are toll-access—often the case today even if changing—green OA allows authors to have their cake and eat it too. Authors good enough to publish in the best journals may do so and still make their work OA, without waiting for high-prestige OA journals to emerge in their fields. When promotion and tenure committees create strong incentives to publish in venerable toll-access journals—often the case today even if changing—green OA allows authors to make their work OA without bucking institutional incentives or relinquishing institutional rewards.\nGreen OA works for preprints as well as postprints, while gold OA only works for postprints. For the same reason, green OA works for other kinds of work that peer-reviewed journals generally don’t publish, such as datasets, source code, theses and dissertations, and digitized copies of work previously available only in another medium such as print, microfiche, or film.", "Green OA can be gratis or libre but is usually gratis. Gold OA can be gratis or libre, but is also usually gratis. However, it’s easier for gold OA to be libre than for green OA to be libre, which is why the campaign to go beyond gratis OA to libre OA focuses more on journals than repositories.\nIf users encounter a full-text work online without charge, then they know it’s gratis OA. They don’t have to be told, even if they’d like to be told—for example, so that they don’t have to wonder whether they’re reading an illicit copy. But users can’t figure out whether a work is libre OA unless the provider (author or publisher) tells them. This is the purpose of a\nlicense\n, which is simply a statement from the copyright holder explaining what users may and may not do with a given work.", "There are two reasons why OA is compatible with prestigious publication, a gold reason and a green one. The gold reason is that a growing number of OA journals have already earned high levels of prestige, and others are steadily earning it. If there are no prestigious OA journals in your field today, you could wait (things are changing fast), you could help out (by submitting your best work), or you could move on to green. The green reason why OA is compatible with prestige is that most toll-access journals, including the prestigious, already allow OA archiving. As noted, this “most” can become “all” with the aid of an effective OA policy. (See chapter 4 on policies.)\nThe most useful OA repositories comply with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (PMH), which makes separate repositories play well together. In the jargon, OAI compliance makes repositories\ninteroperable", "One of the early victories of the OA movement was to get a majority of toll-access publishers and journals to give blanket permission for author-initiated green OA. But this victory remains one of the best-kept secrets of scholarly publishing, and widespread ignorance of it is the single most harmful consequence of green OA’s invisibility. Overlooking this victory reduces the volume of OA and creates the false impression that a trade-off between prestige and OA is common when in fact it is rare. Forgetting that green OA is compatible with conventional publishing also feeds the false impression that policies requiring green OA actually require gold OA and thereby limit the freedom of authors to submit work to the journals of their choice. (More in chapter 4 on policies.)\nMost publishing scholars will choose prestige over OA if they have to choose. The good news is that they rarely have to choose. The bad news is that few of them know that they rarely have to choose. Few realize that most toll-access journals permit author-initiated green OA, despite determined efforts to explain and publicize this early victory for green OA.", "Most importantly, however, we’ll still want green OA in a world where all peer-reviewed journals are OA. For example, we’ll want green OA for preprints and for the earliest possible time-stamp to establish the author’s priority. We’ll want green OA for datasets, theses and dissertations, and other research genres not published in journals. We’ll want green OA for the security of having multiple OA copies in multiple independent locations. (Even today, the best OA journals not only distribute their articles from their own web sites but also deposit copies in independent OA repositories.) At least until the very last conventional journal converts to OA, we’ll need green OA so that research institutions can mandate OA without limiting the freedom of authors to submit to the journals of their choice. We’ll even want OA repositories as the distribution mechanism for many OA journals themselves.", "One hard fact is that gratis OA is often attainable in circumstances when libre OA is not attainable. For example, a major victory of the OA movement has been to persuade the majority of toll-access publishers and toll-access journals to allow green gratis OA. We’re very far from the same position for green libre OA. Similarly, most of the strong OA policies at funding agencies and universities require green gratis OA. A few require green libre OA, and green libre OA is growing for other reasons. But if these funders and universities had waited until they could muster the votes for a green libre policy, most of them would still be waiting. (See section 4.3 on the historical timing of OA policies.)", "Libre OA is free of charge and also free of some copyright and licensing restrictions. Users have permission to exceed fair use, at least in certain ways. Because there are many ways to exceed fair use, there are many degrees or kinds of libre OA. Libre OA removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers.\nFortunately, we don’t always need these terms. Indeed, in most of this book I use “OA” without qualification. The generic term causes no trouble until we need to talk about differences between gratis and libre OA, just as “carbohydrate” causes no trouble until we need to talk about differences between simple and complex carbohydrates.", "The reason the spontaneous rate is lower than the nudged, assisted, and mandated rate is rarely opposition to OA itself. Almost always it’s unfamiliarity with green OA (belief that all OA is gold OA), misunderstanding of green OA (belief that it violates copyright, bypasses peer review, or forecloses the possibility of publishing in a venerable journal), and fear that it is time-consuming. In this sense, author unfamiliarity and misunderstanding are greater obstacles to OA than actual opposition, whether from authors or publishers.\nThe remedies are already spreading worldwide: launching more OA journals and repositories, educating researchers about their gold and green OA options, and adopting intelligent policies to encourage gold OA and require green OA. (More in chapter 4 on OA policies.)\n3.2 Green and Gold as Complementary", "A worldwide network of OA repositories would support one desirable evolution of what we now call journals. It would allow us to decouple peer review from distribution. Peer review could be performed by freestanding editorial boards and distribution by the network of repositories. Decoupling would remove the perverse incentive for peer-review providers to raise access barriers or impede distribution. It would also remove their perverse incentive to demand exclusive rights over research they didn’t fund, perform, write up, or buy from the authors.\nOn the other side, we’ll still want gold OA in a world where all new articles are green OA. High-volume green OA may not have caused toll-access journal cancellations yet, even in fields where green OA approaches 100 percent. But we can’t say that it will never do so, and we can’t say that every field will behave like physics in this respect. If peer-reviewed toll-access journals are not sustainable (see section 2.1), then the survival of peer review will depend on a shift to peer-reviewed OA journals.", "It won’t matter whether toll-access journals are endangered by rising levels of green OA, by their own hyperinflationary price increases, or by their failure to scale with the rapid growth of new research. If any combination of these causes puts peer-reviewed toll-access journals in jeopardy, then peer review will depend on OA journals, which are not endangered by any of those causes. (In chapter 8 on casualties, we’ll see evidence that toll-access journal price increases cause many more cancellations than green OA does.)\nFinally, if all new articles are green OA, we’ll still want the advantages that are easier for gold OA than for green OA to provide: freedom from permission barriers, freedom from delays or embargoes, and freedom from ever-rising drains on library budgets.\nNeither green nor gold OA will suffice, long-term or short-term. That’s a reason to pursue both.\n3.3 Gratis and Libre OA", "Sometimes we must speak unambiguously about two subspecies of OA. One removes price barriers alone and the other removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers. The former is\ngratis OA\nand the latter\nlibre OA\n.\nTo sharpen their definitions, we need a quick detour into fair use. In the United States, fair use is an exception to copyright law allowing users to reproduce copyrighted work “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching . . . , scholarship, or research” (to quote the U.S. copyright statute)." ], [ "On the other side, gold OA has some advantages over green OA. Gold OA articles needn’t labor under restrictions imposed by toll-access publishers fearful of OA. Hence, gold OA is always immediate, while green OA is sometimes embargoed or delayed. Similarly, gold OA can always be libre, even if it doesn’t take sufficient advantage of this opportunity, while green OA seldom even has the opportunity. (See chapter 4 on policies.)\nGold OA provides OA to the published version, while green OA is often limited to the final version of the author’s peer-reviewed manuscript, without copy editing or final pagination. Making the OA edition the same as the published edition reduces the confusion caused by the circulation of multiple versions.\nGold OA performs its own peer review, without depending on toll-access journals to perform it. Hence support for gold OA supports the survival of peer review itself in case toll-access journals can no longer provide it.", "First, OA journals and repositories differ in their relationship to peer review. OA journals perform their own peer review, just like conventional journals. Repositories generally don’t perform peer review, although they host and disseminate articles peer-reviewed elsewhere. As a result, gold and green OA differ in their support costs and in the roles they can play in the scholarly communications universe.\nTerminology\nThe OA movement uses the term\ngold OA\nfor OA delivered by journals, regardless of the journal’s business model, and\ngreen OA\nfor OA delivered by repositories.\nSelf-archiving\nis the practice of depositing one’s own work in an OA repository. All three of these terms were coined by Stevan Harnad.", "Second, OA journals obtain the rights or permissions they need directly from the rightsholders, while repositories ask depositors to obtain the needed rights or permissions on their own. Even when the depositors are the authors themselves, they may already have transferred key rights to publishers. As a result, OA journals can generate permission for reuse at will, and OA repositories generally cannot. Hence, most libre OA is gold OA, even if it’s not yet the case that most gold OA is libre OA. (See more in section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.)\nGold and green OA require different steps from authors. To make new articles gold OA, authors simply submit their manuscripts to OA journals, as they would to conventional journals. To make articles green OA, authors simply deposit their manuscripts in an OA repository.", "Most importantly, the green/gold distinction matters because if authors can’t make their work OA one way, they can make it OA the other way. One of the most persistent and damaging misunderstandings is that all OA is gold OA. Authors who can’t find a high-quality, high-prestige OA journal in their field, or whose submissions are rejected from first-rate OA journals, often conclude that they must give up on OA or publish in a second-rate journal. But that’s hasty. If they publish in the best toll-access journal that will accept their work, then—more often than not—they may turn around and deposit the peer-reviewed manuscript in an OA repository. Most toll-access publishers and toll-access journals give blanket permission for green OA, many others will give permission on request, and the numbers approach 100 percent when authors are subject to green OA mandates from their funding agencies or universities. (More in chapters 4 on OA policies and 10 on making your own work OA.)", "Some friends of OA focus their energy on green OA and some focus on gold OA. Some support both kinds about equally and have merely specialized. But some give one a higher strategic priority than the other. I’ll argue that green and gold OA are complementary and synergistic. We should pursue them simultaneously, much as an organism must develop its nervous system and digestive system simultaneously.\nFortunately, this synergy is served even by differences of opinion about its existence. The fact that some activists give green OA a higher priority than gold, and some the reverse, creates a natural division of labor ensuring that good people are working hard on each front.\nGreen OA has some advantages over gold OA. It makes faster progress, since it doesn’t require the launch of new peer-reviewed journals or the conversion of old ones. For the same reason, it’s less expensive than gold OA and can scale up quickly and inexpensively to meet demand, while the bulk of the money needed to scale up OA journals is still tied up in subscriptions to toll-access journals.", "By default, new deposits in OA repositories are OA. But most repositories today support\ndark deposits\n, which can be switched to OA at a later date. Most OA repositories were launched to host peer-reviewed research articles and their preprints. But often they include other sorts of content as well, such as theses and dissertations, datasets, courseware, and digitized copies of works from the special collections of the hosting institution’s library. For scholars, repositories are better at making work OA than personal web sites because repositories provide persistent URLs, take steps for long-term preservation, and don’t disappear when the author changes jobs or dies.\n3.1 Green and Gold OA\nGold and green OA differ in at least two fundamental respects.", "Finally, green OA may be a manageable expense, but gold OA can be self-sustaining, even profitable.\nLibrarians traditionally distinguish four functions performed by scholarly journals: Registration (time stamp), certification (peer review), awareness (distribution), and archiving (preservation). We know that green and gold OA are complementary as soon as we recognize that green is better than gold for registration (its time stamps are faster) and preservation, and that gold OA is better than green OA for certification (peer review).", "Green OA can be mandated without infringing academic freedom, but gold OA cannot. (More precisely, gold OA can’t be mandated without infringing academic freedom until virtually all peer-reviewed journals are OA, which isn’t on the horizon.) A green OA policy at a university can cover the institution’s entire research output, regardless of where authors choose to publish, while a gold OA policy can only cover the new articles that faculty are willing to submit to OA journals.\nGreen OA is compatible with toll-access publication. Sometimes this is because toll-access publishers hold the needed rights and decide to allow it, and sometimes because authors retain the needed rights. Well-drafted OA policies can ensure that authors always retain the needed rights and spare them the need to negotiate with publishers. (See chapters 4 on policies and 6 on copyright.)", "Green OA can be gratis or libre but is usually gratis. Gold OA can be gratis or libre, but is also usually gratis. However, it’s easier for gold OA to be libre than for green OA to be libre, which is why the campaign to go beyond gratis OA to libre OA focuses more on journals than repositories.\nIf users encounter a full-text work online without charge, then they know it’s gratis OA. They don’t have to be told, even if they’d like to be told—for example, so that they don’t have to wonder whether they’re reading an illicit copy. But users can’t figure out whether a work is libre OA unless the provider (author or publisher) tells them. This is the purpose of a\nlicense\n, which is simply a statement from the copyright holder explaining what users may and may not do with a given work.", "There are two reasons why OA is compatible with prestigious publication, a gold reason and a green one. The gold reason is that a growing number of OA journals have already earned high levels of prestige, and others are steadily earning it. If there are no prestigious OA journals in your field today, you could wait (things are changing fast), you could help out (by submitting your best work), or you could move on to green. The green reason why OA is compatible with prestige is that most toll-access journals, including the prestigious, already allow OA archiving. As noted, this “most” can become “all” with the aid of an effective OA policy. (See chapter 4 on policies.)\nThe most useful OA repositories comply with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (PMH), which makes separate repositories play well together. In the jargon, OAI compliance makes repositories\ninteroperable", "Some see green OA mainly as a tool to force a transition to gold OA. The idea is that rising levels of green OA will trigger the cancellation of conventional journals and pressure them to convert to gold OA. The growing volume of green OA might have this effect. Some publishers fear that it will, and some OA activists hope that it will. But it might not have this effect at all. One piece of evidence is that green OA hasn’t triggered journal cancellations in physics, where levels of green OA approach 100 percent and have been high and growing for nearly two decades. (More in chapter 8 on casualties.) Even if it did have this effect, however, it wouldn’t follow that it is the best strategy for advancing gold OA. There are good prospects for a peaceful revolution based on publisher consent and self-interest. (More in chapter 7 on economics.)", "A worldwide network of OA repositories would support one desirable evolution of what we now call journals. It would allow us to decouple peer review from distribution. Peer review could be performed by freestanding editorial boards and distribution by the network of repositories. Decoupling would remove the perverse incentive for peer-review providers to raise access barriers or impede distribution. It would also remove their perverse incentive to demand exclusive rights over research they didn’t fund, perform, write up, or buy from the authors.\nOn the other side, we’ll still want gold OA in a world where all new articles are green OA. High-volume green OA may not have caused toll-access journal cancellations yet, even in fields where green OA approaches 100 percent. But we can’t say that it will never do so, and we can’t say that every field will behave like physics in this respect. If peer-reviewed toll-access journals are not sustainable (see section 2.1), then the survival of peer review will depend on a shift to peer-reviewed OA journals.", "The reason the spontaneous rate is lower than the nudged, assisted, and mandated rate is rarely opposition to OA itself. Almost always it’s unfamiliarity with green OA (belief that all OA is gold OA), misunderstanding of green OA (belief that it violates copyright, bypasses peer review, or forecloses the possibility of publishing in a venerable journal), and fear that it is time-consuming. In this sense, author unfamiliarity and misunderstanding are greater obstacles to OA than actual opposition, whether from authors or publishers.\nThe remedies are already spreading worldwide: launching more OA journals and repositories, educating researchers about their gold and green OA options, and adopting intelligent policies to encourage gold OA and require green OA. (More in chapter 4 on OA policies.)\n3.2 Green and Gold as Complementary", "Libre OA is free of charge and also free of some copyright and licensing restrictions. Users have permission to exceed fair use, at least in certain ways. Because there are many ways to exceed fair use, there are many degrees or kinds of libre OA. Libre OA removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers.\nFortunately, we don’t always need these terms. Indeed, in most of this book I use “OA” without qualification. The generic term causes no trouble until we need to talk about differences between gratis and libre OA, just as “carbohydrate” causes no trouble until we need to talk about differences between simple and complex carbohydrates.", "One of the early victories of the OA movement was to get a majority of toll-access publishers and journals to give blanket permission for author-initiated green OA. But this victory remains one of the best-kept secrets of scholarly publishing, and widespread ignorance of it is the single most harmful consequence of green OA’s invisibility. Overlooking this victory reduces the volume of OA and creates the false impression that a trade-off between prestige and OA is common when in fact it is rare. Forgetting that green OA is compatible with conventional publishing also feeds the false impression that policies requiring green OA actually require gold OA and thereby limit the freedom of authors to submit work to the journals of their choice. (More in chapter 4 on policies.)\nMost publishing scholars will choose prestige over OA if they have to choose. The good news is that they rarely have to choose. The bad news is that few of them know that they rarely have to choose. Few realize that most toll-access journals permit author-initiated green OA, despite determined efforts to explain and publicize this early victory for green OA.", "When the best journals in a field are toll-access—often the case today even if changing—green OA allows authors to have their cake and eat it too. Authors good enough to publish in the best journals may do so and still make their work OA, without waiting for high-prestige OA journals to emerge in their fields. When promotion and tenure committees create strong incentives to publish in venerable toll-access journals—often the case today even if changing—green OA allows authors to make their work OA without bucking institutional incentives or relinquishing institutional rewards.\nGreen OA works for preprints as well as postprints, while gold OA only works for postprints. For the same reason, green OA works for other kinds of work that peer-reviewed journals generally don’t publish, such as datasets, source code, theses and dissertations, and digitized copies of work previously available only in another medium such as print, microfiche, or film.", "It won’t matter whether toll-access journals are endangered by rising levels of green OA, by their own hyperinflationary price increases, or by their failure to scale with the rapid growth of new research. If any combination of these causes puts peer-reviewed toll-access journals in jeopardy, then peer review will depend on OA journals, which are not endangered by any of those causes. (In chapter 8 on casualties, we’ll see evidence that toll-access journal price increases cause many more cancellations than green OA does.)\nFinally, if all new articles are green OA, we’ll still want the advantages that are easier for gold OA than for green OA to provide: freedom from permission barriers, freedom from delays or embargoes, and freedom from ever-rising drains on library budgets.\nNeither green nor gold OA will suffice, long-term or short-term. That’s a reason to pursue both.\n3.3 Gratis and Libre OA", "To be more precise: A disappointing number of OA journals don’t have all the advantages of being OA because they retain needless permission barriers. (See section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.) At the same time, a heartening number of OA journals no longer suffer from the disadvantages of being new.\nLike conventional journal publishers, some OA journal publishers are for-profit and some are nonprofit. Like conventional publishers, there are a few large OA publishers and a long tail of small ones, although the largest OA publishers are small compared to the largest conventional publishers. Unlike conventional publishers, the profitable for-profit OA publishers have moderate rather than obscene profit margins.\nOA repositories are online collections or databases of articles. Unlike OA journals, OA repositories have no counterpart in the traditional landscape of scholarly communication. That makes them woefully easy to overlook or misunderstand.", "Sometimes we must speak unambiguously about two subspecies of OA. One removes price barriers alone and the other removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers. The former is\ngratis OA\nand the latter\nlibre OA\n.\nTo sharpen their definitions, we need a quick detour into fair use. In the United States, fair use is an exception to copyright law allowing users to reproduce copyrighted work “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching . . . , scholarship, or research” (to quote the U.S. copyright statute).", "I’m borrowing the gratis/libre language from the world of software, where it expresses the same distinction. If the terms sound odd in English, it’s because English doesn’t have more domesticated terms for this distinction. Their oddity in English may even be an advantage, since the terms don’t carry extra baggage, as “open” and “free” do, which therefore helps us avoid ambiguity.\nFirst note that the gratis/libre distinction is not the same as the green/gold distinction. The gratis/libre distinction is about user rights or freedoms, while the green/gold distinction is about venues or vehicles. Gratis/libre answers the question,\nhow open is it?\nGreen/gold answers the question,\nhow is it delivered?" ], [ "Most importantly, the green/gold distinction matters because if authors can’t make their work OA one way, they can make it OA the other way. One of the most persistent and damaging misunderstandings is that all OA is gold OA. Authors who can’t find a high-quality, high-prestige OA journal in their field, or whose submissions are rejected from first-rate OA journals, often conclude that they must give up on OA or publish in a second-rate journal. But that’s hasty. If they publish in the best toll-access journal that will accept their work, then—more often than not—they may turn around and deposit the peer-reviewed manuscript in an OA repository. Most toll-access publishers and toll-access journals give blanket permission for green OA, many others will give permission on request, and the numbers approach 100 percent when authors are subject to green OA mandates from their funding agencies or universities. (More in chapters 4 on OA policies and 10 on making your own work OA.)", "On the other side, gold OA has some advantages over green OA. Gold OA articles needn’t labor under restrictions imposed by toll-access publishers fearful of OA. Hence, gold OA is always immediate, while green OA is sometimes embargoed or delayed. Similarly, gold OA can always be libre, even if it doesn’t take sufficient advantage of this opportunity, while green OA seldom even has the opportunity. (See chapter 4 on policies.)\nGold OA provides OA to the published version, while green OA is often limited to the final version of the author’s peer-reviewed manuscript, without copy editing or final pagination. Making the OA edition the same as the published edition reduces the confusion caused by the circulation of multiple versions.\nGold OA performs its own peer review, without depending on toll-access journals to perform it. Hence support for gold OA supports the survival of peer review itself in case toll-access journals can no longer provide it.", "Some friends of OA focus their energy on green OA and some focus on gold OA. Some support both kinds about equally and have merely specialized. But some give one a higher strategic priority than the other. I’ll argue that green and gold OA are complementary and synergistic. We should pursue them simultaneously, much as an organism must develop its nervous system and digestive system simultaneously.\nFortunately, this synergy is served even by differences of opinion about its existence. The fact that some activists give green OA a higher priority than gold, and some the reverse, creates a natural division of labor ensuring that good people are working hard on each front.\nGreen OA has some advantages over gold OA. It makes faster progress, since it doesn’t require the launch of new peer-reviewed journals or the conversion of old ones. For the same reason, it’s less expensive than gold OA and can scale up quickly and inexpensively to meet demand, while the bulk of the money needed to scale up OA journals is still tied up in subscriptions to toll-access journals.", "Green OA can be mandated without infringing academic freedom, but gold OA cannot. (More precisely, gold OA can’t be mandated without infringing academic freedom until virtually all peer-reviewed journals are OA, which isn’t on the horizon.) A green OA policy at a university can cover the institution’s entire research output, regardless of where authors choose to publish, while a gold OA policy can only cover the new articles that faculty are willing to submit to OA journals.\nGreen OA is compatible with toll-access publication. Sometimes this is because toll-access publishers hold the needed rights and decide to allow it, and sometimes because authors retain the needed rights. Well-drafted OA policies can ensure that authors always retain the needed rights and spare them the need to negotiate with publishers. (See chapters 4 on policies and 6 on copyright.)", "Second, OA journals obtain the rights or permissions they need directly from the rightsholders, while repositories ask depositors to obtain the needed rights or permissions on their own. Even when the depositors are the authors themselves, they may already have transferred key rights to publishers. As a result, OA journals can generate permission for reuse at will, and OA repositories generally cannot. Hence, most libre OA is gold OA, even if it’s not yet the case that most gold OA is libre OA. (See more in section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.)\nGold and green OA require different steps from authors. To make new articles gold OA, authors simply submit their manuscripts to OA journals, as they would to conventional journals. To make articles green OA, authors simply deposit their manuscripts in an OA repository.", "One of the early victories of the OA movement was to get a majority of toll-access publishers and journals to give blanket permission for author-initiated green OA. But this victory remains one of the best-kept secrets of scholarly publishing, and widespread ignorance of it is the single most harmful consequence of green OA’s invisibility. Overlooking this victory reduces the volume of OA and creates the false impression that a trade-off between prestige and OA is common when in fact it is rare. Forgetting that green OA is compatible with conventional publishing also feeds the false impression that policies requiring green OA actually require gold OA and thereby limit the freedom of authors to submit work to the journals of their choice. (More in chapter 4 on policies.)\nMost publishing scholars will choose prestige over OA if they have to choose. The good news is that they rarely have to choose. The bad news is that few of them know that they rarely have to choose. Few realize that most toll-access journals permit author-initiated green OA, despite determined efforts to explain and publicize this early victory for green OA.", "By default, new deposits in OA repositories are OA. But most repositories today support\ndark deposits\n, which can be switched to OA at a later date. Most OA repositories were launched to host peer-reviewed research articles and their preprints. But often they include other sorts of content as well, such as theses and dissertations, datasets, courseware, and digitized copies of works from the special collections of the hosting institution’s library. For scholars, repositories are better at making work OA than personal web sites because repositories provide persistent URLs, take steps for long-term preservation, and don’t disappear when the author changes jobs or dies.\n3.1 Green and Gold OA\nGold and green OA differ in at least two fundamental respects.", "The reason the spontaneous rate is lower than the nudged, assisted, and mandated rate is rarely opposition to OA itself. Almost always it’s unfamiliarity with green OA (belief that all OA is gold OA), misunderstanding of green OA (belief that it violates copyright, bypasses peer review, or forecloses the possibility of publishing in a venerable journal), and fear that it is time-consuming. In this sense, author unfamiliarity and misunderstanding are greater obstacles to OA than actual opposition, whether from authors or publishers.\nThe remedies are already spreading worldwide: launching more OA journals and repositories, educating researchers about their gold and green OA options, and adopting intelligent policies to encourage gold OA and require green OA. (More in chapter 4 on OA policies.)\n3.2 Green and Gold as Complementary", "When the best journals in a field are toll-access—often the case today even if changing—green OA allows authors to have their cake and eat it too. Authors good enough to publish in the best journals may do so and still make their work OA, without waiting for high-prestige OA journals to emerge in their fields. When promotion and tenure committees create strong incentives to publish in venerable toll-access journals—often the case today even if changing—green OA allows authors to make their work OA without bucking institutional incentives or relinquishing institutional rewards.\nGreen OA works for preprints as well as postprints, while gold OA only works for postprints. For the same reason, green OA works for other kinds of work that peer-reviewed journals generally don’t publish, such as datasets, source code, theses and dissertations, and digitized copies of work previously available only in another medium such as print, microfiche, or film.", "There are two reasons why OA is compatible with prestigious publication, a gold reason and a green one. The gold reason is that a growing number of OA journals have already earned high levels of prestige, and others are steadily earning it. If there are no prestigious OA journals in your field today, you could wait (things are changing fast), you could help out (by submitting your best work), or you could move on to green. The green reason why OA is compatible with prestige is that most toll-access journals, including the prestigious, already allow OA archiving. As noted, this “most” can become “all” with the aid of an effective OA policy. (See chapter 4 on policies.)\nThe most useful OA repositories comply with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (PMH), which makes separate repositories play well together. In the jargon, OAI compliance makes repositories\ninteroperable", "Finally, green OA may be a manageable expense, but gold OA can be self-sustaining, even profitable.\nLibrarians traditionally distinguish four functions performed by scholarly journals: Registration (time stamp), certification (peer review), awareness (distribution), and archiving (preservation). We know that green and gold OA are complementary as soon as we recognize that green is better than gold for registration (its time stamps are faster) and preservation, and that gold OA is better than green OA for certification (peer review).", "First, OA journals and repositories differ in their relationship to peer review. OA journals perform their own peer review, just like conventional journals. Repositories generally don’t perform peer review, although they host and disseminate articles peer-reviewed elsewhere. As a result, gold and green OA differ in their support costs and in the roles they can play in the scholarly communications universe.\nTerminology\nThe OA movement uses the term\ngold OA\nfor OA delivered by journals, regardless of the journal’s business model, and\ngreen OA\nfor OA delivered by repositories.\nSelf-archiving\nis the practice of depositing one’s own work in an OA repository. All three of these terms were coined by Stevan Harnad.", "Green OA can be gratis or libre but is usually gratis. Gold OA can be gratis or libre, but is also usually gratis. However, it’s easier for gold OA to be libre than for green OA to be libre, which is why the campaign to go beyond gratis OA to libre OA focuses more on journals than repositories.\nIf users encounter a full-text work online without charge, then they know it’s gratis OA. They don’t have to be told, even if they’d like to be told—for example, so that they don’t have to wonder whether they’re reading an illicit copy. But users can’t figure out whether a work is libre OA unless the provider (author or publisher) tells them. This is the purpose of a\nlicense\n, which is simply a statement from the copyright holder explaining what users may and may not do with a given work.", "It won’t matter whether toll-access journals are endangered by rising levels of green OA, by their own hyperinflationary price increases, or by their failure to scale with the rapid growth of new research. If any combination of these causes puts peer-reviewed toll-access journals in jeopardy, then peer review will depend on OA journals, which are not endangered by any of those causes. (In chapter 8 on casualties, we’ll see evidence that toll-access journal price increases cause many more cancellations than green OA does.)\nFinally, if all new articles are green OA, we’ll still want the advantages that are easier for gold OA than for green OA to provide: freedom from permission barriers, freedom from delays or embargoes, and freedom from ever-rising drains on library budgets.\nNeither green nor gold OA will suffice, long-term or short-term. That’s a reason to pursue both.\n3.3 Gratis and Libre OA", "Some see green OA mainly as a tool to force a transition to gold OA. The idea is that rising levels of green OA will trigger the cancellation of conventional journals and pressure them to convert to gold OA. The growing volume of green OA might have this effect. Some publishers fear that it will, and some OA activists hope that it will. But it might not have this effect at all. One piece of evidence is that green OA hasn’t triggered journal cancellations in physics, where levels of green OA approach 100 percent and have been high and growing for nearly two decades. (More in chapter 8 on casualties.) Even if it did have this effect, however, it wouldn’t follow that it is the best strategy for advancing gold OA. There are good prospects for a peaceful revolution based on publisher consent and self-interest. (More in chapter 7 on economics.)", "However, the differences between disciplinary and institutional repositories matter more for authors. On the one hand, institutions are in a better position than disciplines to offer incentives and assistance for deposit, and to adopt policies to ensure deposit. A growing number of universities do just that. On the other hand, scholars who regularly read research in a large disciplinary repository, such as arXiv for physics or PubMed Central for medicine, readily grasp the rationale for depositing their work in OA repositories and need less nudging to do so themselves. (More in chapter 4 on policies.)\nBecause most publishers and journals already give blanket permission for green OA, the burden is on authors to take advantage of it. In the absence of an institutional policy to encourage or require deposits, the spontaneous rate of deposit is about 15 percent. Institutions requiring deposit can push the rate toward 100 percent over a few years.", "Most importantly, however, we’ll still want green OA in a world where all peer-reviewed journals are OA. For example, we’ll want green OA for preprints and for the earliest possible time-stamp to establish the author’s priority. We’ll want green OA for datasets, theses and dissertations, and other research genres not published in journals. We’ll want green OA for the security of having multiple OA copies in multiple independent locations. (Even today, the best OA journals not only distribute their articles from their own web sites but also deposit copies in independent OA repositories.) At least until the very last conventional journal converts to OA, we’ll need green OA so that research institutions can mandate OA without limiting the freedom of authors to submit to the journals of their choice. We’ll even want OA repositories as the distribution mechanism for many OA journals themselves.", "A worldwide network of OA repositories would support one desirable evolution of what we now call journals. It would allow us to decouple peer review from distribution. Peer review could be performed by freestanding editorial boards and distribution by the network of repositories. Decoupling would remove the perverse incentive for peer-review providers to raise access barriers or impede distribution. It would also remove their perverse incentive to demand exclusive rights over research they didn’t fund, perform, write up, or buy from the authors.\nOn the other side, we’ll still want gold OA in a world where all new articles are green OA. High-volume green OA may not have caused toll-access journal cancellations yet, even in fields where green OA approaches 100 percent. But we can’t say that it will never do so, and we can’t say that every field will behave like physics in this respect. If peer-reviewed toll-access journals are not sustainable (see section 2.1), then the survival of peer review will depend on a shift to peer-reviewed OA journals.", "One hard fact is that gratis OA is often attainable in circumstances when libre OA is not attainable. For example, a major victory of the OA movement has been to persuade the majority of toll-access publishers and toll-access journals to allow green gratis OA. We’re very far from the same position for green libre OA. Similarly, most of the strong OA policies at funding agencies and universities require green gratis OA. A few require green libre OA, and green libre OA is growing for other reasons. But if these funders and universities had waited until they could muster the votes for a green libre policy, most of them would still be waiting. (See section 4.3 on the historical timing of OA policies.)", "Sometimes we must speak unambiguously about two subspecies of OA. One removes price barriers alone and the other removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers. The former is\ngratis OA\nand the latter\nlibre OA\n.\nTo sharpen their definitions, we need a quick detour into fair use. In the United States, fair use is an exception to copyright law allowing users to reproduce copyrighted work “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching . . . , scholarship, or research” (to quote the U.S. copyright statute)." ], [ "One of the early victories of the OA movement was to get a majority of toll-access publishers and journals to give blanket permission for author-initiated green OA. But this victory remains one of the best-kept secrets of scholarly publishing, and widespread ignorance of it is the single most harmful consequence of green OA’s invisibility. Overlooking this victory reduces the volume of OA and creates the false impression that a trade-off between prestige and OA is common when in fact it is rare. Forgetting that green OA is compatible with conventional publishing also feeds the false impression that policies requiring green OA actually require gold OA and thereby limit the freedom of authors to submit work to the journals of their choice. (More in chapter 4 on policies.)\nMost publishing scholars will choose prestige over OA if they have to choose. The good news is that they rarely have to choose. The bad news is that few of them know that they rarely have to choose. Few realize that most toll-access journals permit author-initiated green OA, despite determined efforts to explain and publicize this early victory for green OA.", "Most importantly, the green/gold distinction matters because if authors can’t make their work OA one way, they can make it OA the other way. One of the most persistent and damaging misunderstandings is that all OA is gold OA. Authors who can’t find a high-quality, high-prestige OA journal in their field, or whose submissions are rejected from first-rate OA journals, often conclude that they must give up on OA or publish in a second-rate journal. But that’s hasty. If they publish in the best toll-access journal that will accept their work, then—more often than not—they may turn around and deposit the peer-reviewed manuscript in an OA repository. Most toll-access publishers and toll-access journals give blanket permission for green OA, many others will give permission on request, and the numbers approach 100 percent when authors are subject to green OA mandates from their funding agencies or universities. (More in chapters 4 on OA policies and 10 on making your own work OA.)", "However, the differences between disciplinary and institutional repositories matter more for authors. On the one hand, institutions are in a better position than disciplines to offer incentives and assistance for deposit, and to adopt policies to ensure deposit. A growing number of universities do just that. On the other hand, scholars who regularly read research in a large disciplinary repository, such as arXiv for physics or PubMed Central for medicine, readily grasp the rationale for depositing their work in OA repositories and need less nudging to do so themselves. (More in chapter 4 on policies.)\nBecause most publishers and journals already give blanket permission for green OA, the burden is on authors to take advantage of it. In the absence of an institutional policy to encourage or require deposits, the spontaneous rate of deposit is about 15 percent. Institutions requiring deposit can push the rate toward 100 percent over a few years.", "Green OA can be mandated without infringing academic freedom, but gold OA cannot. (More precisely, gold OA can’t be mandated without infringing academic freedom until virtually all peer-reviewed journals are OA, which isn’t on the horizon.) A green OA policy at a university can cover the institution’s entire research output, regardless of where authors choose to publish, while a gold OA policy can only cover the new articles that faculty are willing to submit to OA journals.\nGreen OA is compatible with toll-access publication. Sometimes this is because toll-access publishers hold the needed rights and decide to allow it, and sometimes because authors retain the needed rights. Well-drafted OA policies can ensure that authors always retain the needed rights and spare them the need to negotiate with publishers. (See chapters 4 on policies and 6 on copyright.)", "Second, OA journals obtain the rights or permissions they need directly from the rightsholders, while repositories ask depositors to obtain the needed rights or permissions on their own. Even when the depositors are the authors themselves, they may already have transferred key rights to publishers. As a result, OA journals can generate permission for reuse at will, and OA repositories generally cannot. Hence, most libre OA is gold OA, even if it’s not yet the case that most gold OA is libre OA. (See more in section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.)\nGold and green OA require different steps from authors. To make new articles gold OA, authors simply submit their manuscripts to OA journals, as they would to conventional journals. To make articles green OA, authors simply deposit their manuscripts in an OA repository.", "When the best journals in a field are toll-access—often the case today even if changing—green OA allows authors to have their cake and eat it too. Authors good enough to publish in the best journals may do so and still make their work OA, without waiting for high-prestige OA journals to emerge in their fields. When promotion and tenure committees create strong incentives to publish in venerable toll-access journals—often the case today even if changing—green OA allows authors to make their work OA without bucking institutional incentives or relinquishing institutional rewards.\nGreen OA works for preprints as well as postprints, while gold OA only works for postprints. For the same reason, green OA works for other kinds of work that peer-reviewed journals generally don’t publish, such as datasets, source code, theses and dissertations, and digitized copies of work previously available only in another medium such as print, microfiche, or film.", "On the other side, gold OA has some advantages over green OA. Gold OA articles needn’t labor under restrictions imposed by toll-access publishers fearful of OA. Hence, gold OA is always immediate, while green OA is sometimes embargoed or delayed. Similarly, gold OA can always be libre, even if it doesn’t take sufficient advantage of this opportunity, while green OA seldom even has the opportunity. (See chapter 4 on policies.)\nGold OA provides OA to the published version, while green OA is often limited to the final version of the author’s peer-reviewed manuscript, without copy editing or final pagination. Making the OA edition the same as the published edition reduces the confusion caused by the circulation of multiple versions.\nGold OA performs its own peer review, without depending on toll-access journals to perform it. Hence support for gold OA supports the survival of peer review itself in case toll-access journals can no longer provide it.", "To be more precise: A disappointing number of OA journals don’t have all the advantages of being OA because they retain needless permission barriers. (See section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.) At the same time, a heartening number of OA journals no longer suffer from the disadvantages of being new.\nLike conventional journal publishers, some OA journal publishers are for-profit and some are nonprofit. Like conventional publishers, there are a few large OA publishers and a long tail of small ones, although the largest OA publishers are small compared to the largest conventional publishers. Unlike conventional publishers, the profitable for-profit OA publishers have moderate rather than obscene profit margins.\nOA repositories are online collections or databases of articles. Unlike OA journals, OA repositories have no counterpart in the traditional landscape of scholarly communication. That makes them woefully easy to overlook or misunderstand.", "There are two reasons why OA is compatible with prestigious publication, a gold reason and a green one. The gold reason is that a growing number of OA journals have already earned high levels of prestige, and others are steadily earning it. If there are no prestigious OA journals in your field today, you could wait (things are changing fast), you could help out (by submitting your best work), or you could move on to green. The green reason why OA is compatible with prestige is that most toll-access journals, including the prestigious, already allow OA archiving. As noted, this “most” can become “all” with the aid of an effective OA policy. (See chapter 4 on policies.)\nThe most useful OA repositories comply with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (PMH), which makes separate repositories play well together. In the jargon, OAI compliance makes repositories\ninteroperable", "It won’t matter whether toll-access journals are endangered by rising levels of green OA, by their own hyperinflationary price increases, or by their failure to scale with the rapid growth of new research. If any combination of these causes puts peer-reviewed toll-access journals in jeopardy, then peer review will depend on OA journals, which are not endangered by any of those causes. (In chapter 8 on casualties, we’ll see evidence that toll-access journal price increases cause many more cancellations than green OA does.)\nFinally, if all new articles are green OA, we’ll still want the advantages that are easier for gold OA than for green OA to provide: freedom from permission barriers, freedom from delays or embargoes, and freedom from ever-rising drains on library budgets.\nNeither green nor gold OA will suffice, long-term or short-term. That’s a reason to pursue both.\n3.3 Gratis and Libre OA", "A worldwide network of OA repositories would support one desirable evolution of what we now call journals. It would allow us to decouple peer review from distribution. Peer review could be performed by freestanding editorial boards and distribution by the network of repositories. Decoupling would remove the perverse incentive for peer-review providers to raise access barriers or impede distribution. It would also remove their perverse incentive to demand exclusive rights over research they didn’t fund, perform, write up, or buy from the authors.\nOn the other side, we’ll still want gold OA in a world where all new articles are green OA. High-volume green OA may not have caused toll-access journal cancellations yet, even in fields where green OA approaches 100 percent. But we can’t say that it will never do so, and we can’t say that every field will behave like physics in this respect. If peer-reviewed toll-access journals are not sustainable (see section 2.1), then the survival of peer review will depend on a shift to peer-reviewed OA journals.", "The Directory of Open Access Journals is the most authoritative catalog of OA journals and the only one limiting itself to peer-reviewed journals. But only 20 percent of titles in the DOAJ use CC licenses, and fewer than 11 percent use the recommended CC-BY license. Viewed the other way around, about 80 percent of peer-reviewed OA journals don’t use any kind of CC license. Some of these might use non-CC licenses with a similar legal effect, but these exceptions are rare. Simply put, most OA journals are not using open licenses. Most operate under all-rights-reserved copyrights and leave their users with no more freedom than they already had under fair use. Most are not offering libre OA. Even those wanting to block commercial use, for example, tend to use an all-rights-reserved copyright rather than an open license that blocks commercial use, such as CC-BY-NC, but allows libre OA in other respects.", "Some friends of OA focus their energy on green OA and some focus on gold OA. Some support both kinds about equally and have merely specialized. But some give one a higher strategic priority than the other. I’ll argue that green and gold OA are complementary and synergistic. We should pursue them simultaneously, much as an organism must develop its nervous system and digestive system simultaneously.\nFortunately, this synergy is served even by differences of opinion about its existence. The fact that some activists give green OA a higher priority than gold, and some the reverse, creates a natural division of labor ensuring that good people are working hard on each front.\nGreen OA has some advantages over gold OA. It makes faster progress, since it doesn’t require the launch of new peer-reviewed journals or the conversion of old ones. For the same reason, it’s less expensive than gold OA and can scale up quickly and inexpensively to meet demand, while the bulk of the money needed to scale up OA journals is still tied up in subscriptions to toll-access journals.", "The reason the spontaneous rate is lower than the nudged, assisted, and mandated rate is rarely opposition to OA itself. Almost always it’s unfamiliarity with green OA (belief that all OA is gold OA), misunderstanding of green OA (belief that it violates copyright, bypasses peer review, or forecloses the possibility of publishing in a venerable journal), and fear that it is time-consuming. In this sense, author unfamiliarity and misunderstanding are greater obstacles to OA than actual opposition, whether from authors or publishers.\nThe remedies are already spreading worldwide: launching more OA journals and repositories, educating researchers about their gold and green OA options, and adopting intelligent policies to encourage gold OA and require green OA. (More in chapter 4 on OA policies.)\n3.2 Green and Gold as Complementary", "One hard fact is that gratis OA is often attainable in circumstances when libre OA is not attainable. For example, a major victory of the OA movement has been to persuade the majority of toll-access publishers and toll-access journals to allow green gratis OA. We’re very far from the same position for green libre OA. Similarly, most of the strong OA policies at funding agencies and universities require green gratis OA. A few require green libre OA, and green libre OA is growing for other reasons. But if these funders and universities had waited until they could muster the votes for a green libre policy, most of them would still be waiting. (See section 4.3 on the historical timing of OA policies.)", "Open Access: Varieties\nThere are many ways to deliver OA: personal web sites, blogs, wikis, databases, ebooks, videos, audios, webcasts, discussion forums, RSS feeds, and P2P networks.\n \n Unless creative thinking stops now, there will be many more to come.\nHowever, two delivery vehicles dominate the current discussion: journals and repositories.\nOA journals are like non-OA journals except that they’re OA. Making good on that exception requires a new funding model, but nearly everything else about the journal could be held constant, if we wanted to hold it constant. Some OA journals are very traditional except that they’re OA, while others deliberately push the evolution of journals as a category. (Some toll-access journals also push that evolution, if we don’t count stopping short of OA.)", "Finally, green OA may be a manageable expense, but gold OA can be self-sustaining, even profitable.\nLibrarians traditionally distinguish four functions performed by scholarly journals: Registration (time stamp), certification (peer review), awareness (distribution), and archiving (preservation). We know that green and gold OA are complementary as soon as we recognize that green is better than gold for registration (its time stamps are faster) and preservation, and that gold OA is better than green OA for certification (peer review).", "Some see green OA mainly as a tool to force a transition to gold OA. The idea is that rising levels of green OA will trigger the cancellation of conventional journals and pressure them to convert to gold OA. The growing volume of green OA might have this effect. Some publishers fear that it will, and some OA activists hope that it will. But it might not have this effect at all. One piece of evidence is that green OA hasn’t triggered journal cancellations in physics, where levels of green OA approach 100 percent and have been high and growing for nearly two decades. (More in chapter 8 on casualties.) Even if it did have this effect, however, it wouldn’t follow that it is the best strategy for advancing gold OA. There are good prospects for a peaceful revolution based on publisher consent and self-interest. (More in chapter 7 on economics.)", "Like conventional, toll-access journals, some OA journals are first-rate and some are bottom feeders. Like conventional journals, some OA journals are high in prestige and some are unknown, and some of the unknowns are high in quality and some are low. Some are on solid financial footing and some are struggling. Also like conventional journals, most are honest and some are scams.\nAs early as 2004, Thomson Scientific found that “in each of the broad subject areas studied there was at least one OA title that ranked at or near the top of its field” in citation impact. The number of high-quality, high-impact OA journals has only grown since.\nUnlike toll-access journals, however, most OA journals are new. It’s hard to generalize about OA journals beyond saying that they have all the advantages of being OA and all the disadvantages of being new.", "By default, new deposits in OA repositories are OA. But most repositories today support\ndark deposits\n, which can be switched to OA at a later date. Most OA repositories were launched to host peer-reviewed research articles and their preprints. But often they include other sorts of content as well, such as theses and dissertations, datasets, courseware, and digitized copies of works from the special collections of the hosting institution’s library. For scholars, repositories are better at making work OA than personal web sites because repositories provide persistent URLs, take steps for long-term preservation, and don’t disappear when the author changes jobs or dies.\n3.1 Green and Gold OA\nGold and green OA differ in at least two fundamental respects." ], [ "Libre OA is free of charge and also free of some copyright and licensing restrictions. Users have permission to exceed fair use, at least in certain ways. Because there are many ways to exceed fair use, there are many degrees or kinds of libre OA. Libre OA removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers.\nFortunately, we don’t always need these terms. Indeed, in most of this book I use “OA” without qualification. The generic term causes no trouble until we need to talk about differences between gratis and libre OA, just as “carbohydrate” causes no trouble until we need to talk about differences between simple and complex carbohydrates.", "Green OA can be gratis or libre but is usually gratis. Gold OA can be gratis or libre, but is also usually gratis. However, it’s easier for gold OA to be libre than for green OA to be libre, which is why the campaign to go beyond gratis OA to libre OA focuses more on journals than repositories.\nIf users encounter a full-text work online without charge, then they know it’s gratis OA. They don’t have to be told, even if they’d like to be told—for example, so that they don’t have to wonder whether they’re reading an illicit copy. But users can’t figure out whether a work is libre OA unless the provider (author or publisher) tells them. This is the purpose of a\nlicense\n, which is simply a statement from the copyright holder explaining what users may and may not do with a given work.", "One hard fact is that gratis OA is often attainable in circumstances when libre OA is not attainable. For example, a major victory of the OA movement has been to persuade the majority of toll-access publishers and toll-access journals to allow green gratis OA. We’re very far from the same position for green libre OA. Similarly, most of the strong OA policies at funding agencies and universities require green gratis OA. A few require green libre OA, and green libre OA is growing for other reasons. But if these funders and universities had waited until they could muster the votes for a green libre policy, most of them would still be waiting. (See section 4.3 on the historical timing of OA policies.)", "The BBB definition calls for both gratis and libre OA. However, most of the notable OA success stories are gratis and not libre. I mean this in two senses: gratis success stories are more numerous than libre success stories, so far, and most gratis success stories are notable. Even if they stop short of libre OA, they are hard-won victories and major advances.\nSome observers look at the prominent gratis OA success stories and conclude that the OA movement focuses on gratis OA and neglects libre. Others look at the public definitions and conclude that OA focuses on libre OA and disparages gratis. Both assessments are one-sided and unfair.", "I’ve argued that it’s unfair to criticize the OA movement for disparaging gratis OA (merely on the ground that its public statements call for libre) or neglecting libre OA (merely on the ground that most of its success stories are gratis). But two related criticisms would be more just. First, demanding libre or nothing where libre is currently unattainable makes the perfect the enemy of the good. Fortunately, this tactical mistake is rare. Second, settling for gratis where libre is attainable makes the good a substitute for the better. Unfortunately, this tactical mistake is common, as we see from the majority of OA journals that stop at gratis when they could easily offer libre.\nLet’s be more specific about the desirability of libre OA. Why should we bother, especially when we may already have attained gratis OA? The answer is that we need libre OA to spare users the delay and expense of seeking permission whenever they want to exceed fair use. And there are good scholarly reasons to exceed fair use. For example:\nto quote long excerpts", "Second, OA journals obtain the rights or permissions they need directly from the rightsholders, while repositories ask depositors to obtain the needed rights or permissions on their own. Even when the depositors are the authors themselves, they may already have transferred key rights to publishers. As a result, OA journals can generate permission for reuse at will, and OA repositories generally cannot. Hence, most libre OA is gold OA, even if it’s not yet the case that most gold OA is libre OA. (See more in section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.)\nGold and green OA require different steps from authors. To make new articles gold OA, authors simply submit their manuscripts to OA journals, as they would to conventional journals. To make articles green OA, authors simply deposit their manuscripts in an OA repository.", "Sometimes we must speak unambiguously about two subspecies of OA. One removes price barriers alone and the other removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers. The former is\ngratis OA\nand the latter\nlibre OA\n.\nTo sharpen their definitions, we need a quick detour into fair use. In the United States, fair use is an exception to copyright law allowing users to reproduce copyrighted work “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching . . . , scholarship, or research” (to quote the U.S. copyright statute).", "The Directory of Open Access Journals is the most authoritative catalog of OA journals and the only one limiting itself to peer-reviewed journals. But only 20 percent of titles in the DOAJ use CC licenses, and fewer than 11 percent use the recommended CC-BY license. Viewed the other way around, about 80 percent of peer-reviewed OA journals don’t use any kind of CC license. Some of these might use non-CC licenses with a similar legal effect, but these exceptions are rare. Simply put, most OA journals are not using open licenses. Most operate under all-rights-reserved copyrights and leave their users with no more freedom than they already had under fair use. Most are not offering libre OA. Even those wanting to block commercial use, for example, tend to use an all-rights-reserved copyright rather than an open license that blocks commercial use, such as CC-BY-NC, but allows libre OA in other respects.", "Although the word “copyright” is singular, it covers a plurality of rights, and authors may waive some and retain others. They may do so in any combination that suits their needs. That’s why there are many nonequivalent open licenses and nonequivalent types of libre OA. What’s important here is that waiving some rights in order to provide libre OA does not require waiving all rights or waiving copyright altogether. On the contrary, open licenses presuppose copyright, since they express permissions from the copyright holder. Moreover, the rights not waived are fully enforceable. In the clear and sensible language of Creative Commons, open licenses create “some-rights-reserved” copyrights rather than “all-rights-reserved” copyrights.\nThe open licenses from Creative Commons (CC) are the best-known and most widely used. But there are other open licenses, and authors and publishers can always write their own. To illustrate the range of libre OA, however, it’s convenient to look at the CC licenses.", "In some jurisdictions, some of these uses may actually fall under fair use, even if most do not. Courts have settled some of the boundaries of fair use but by no means all of them, and in any case users can’t be expected to know all the relevant court rulings. Uncertainty about these boundaries, and increasingly severe penalties for copyright infringement, make users fear liability and act cautiously. It makes them decide that they can’t use something they’d like to use, or that they must delay their research in order to seek permission.\nLibre OA under open licenses solves all these problems. Even when a desirable use is already allowed by fair use, a clear open license removes all doubt. When a desirable use does exceed fair use, a clear open license removes the restriction and offers libre OA.", "The maximal degree of libre OA belongs to works in the public domain. Either these works were never under copyright or their copyrights have expired. Works in the public domain may be used in any way whatsoever without violating copyright law. That’s why it’s lawful to translate or reprint Shakespeare without hunting down his heirs for permission. Creative Commons offers CC0 (CC-Zero) for copyright holders who want to assign their work to the public domain.\nThe CC Attribution license (CC-BY) describes the least restrictive sort of libre OA after the public domain. It allows any use, provided the user attributes the work to the original author. This is the license recommended by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and the SPARC Europe Seal of Approval program for OA journals.\n \n I support this recommendation, use CC-BY for my blog and newsletter, and request CC-BY whenever I publish in a journal.", "A second hard fact is that even gratis OA policies can face serious political obstacles. They may be easier to adopt than libre policies, but in most cases they’re far from easy. The OA policy at the U.S. National Institutes of Health was first proposed by Congress in 2004, adopted as a mere request or encouragement in 2005, and strengthened into a requirement in 2008. Every step along the way was strenuously opposed by an aggressive and well-funded publishing lobby. Yet even now the policy provides only gratis OA, not libre OA. Similarly, the gratis OA policies at funders and universities were only adopted after years of patiently educating decision-makers and answering their objections and misunderstandings. Reaching the point of adoption, and especially unanimous votes for adoption, is a cause for celebration, even if the policies only provide gratis, not libre OA.", "Works under “all-rights-reserved” copyrights don’t need licenses, because “all rights reserved” means that without special permission users may do nothing that exceeds fair use.\nThe default around the world today is that new works are copyrighted from birth (no registration required), that the copyright initially belongs to the author (but is transferrable by contract), and that the rights holder reserves all rights. Authors who want to provide libre OA must affirmatively waive some of their rights and use a license to tell users they’ve done so. For convenience, let’s say that an\nopen license\nis one allowing some degree of libre OA.", "When you can offer libre OA, don’t leave users with no more freedom than fair use. Don’t leave them uncertain about what they may and may not do. Don’t make conscientious users choose between the delay of seeking permission and the risk of proceeding without it. Don’t increase the pressure to make users less conscientious. Don’t make them pay for permission. Don’t make them err on the side of nonuse. Make your work as usable and useful as it can possibly be.", "CC supports several other open licenses as well, including CC-BY-NC, which requires attribution and blocks commercial use, and CC-BY-ND, which requires attribution and allows commercial use but blocks derivative works. These licenses are not equivalent to one another, but they all permit uses beyond fair use and therefore they all represent different flavors of libre OA.\nWhile you can write your own open licenses or use those created by others, the advantage of CC licenses is that they are ready-made, lawyer-drafted, enforceable, understood by a large and growing number of users, and available in a large and growing number of legal jurisdictions. Moreover, each comes in three versions: human-readable for nonlawyers, lawyer-readable for lawyers and judges, and machine-readable for search engines and other visiting software. They’re extremely convenient and their convenience has revolutionized libre OA.", "On the other side, gold OA has some advantages over green OA. Gold OA articles needn’t labor under restrictions imposed by toll-access publishers fearful of OA. Hence, gold OA is always immediate, while green OA is sometimes embargoed or delayed. Similarly, gold OA can always be libre, even if it doesn’t take sufficient advantage of this opportunity, while green OA seldom even has the opportunity. (See chapter 4 on policies.)\nGold OA provides OA to the published version, while green OA is often limited to the final version of the author’s peer-reviewed manuscript, without copy editing or final pagination. Making the OA edition the same as the published edition reduces the confusion caused by the circulation of multiple versions.\nGold OA performs its own peer review, without depending on toll-access journals to perform it. Hence support for gold OA supports the survival of peer review itself in case toll-access journals can no longer provide it.", "The best way to refer to a specific flavor of libre OA is by referring to a specific open license. We’ll never have unambiguous, widely understood technical terms for every useful variation on the theme. But we already have clearly named licenses for all the major variations on the theme, and we can add new ones for more subtle variations any time we want.\nA work without an open license stands or appears to stand under an all-rights-reserved copyright. If the rights holder privately welcomes uses beyond fair use, or has decided not to sue for certain kinds of infringement, ordinary users have no way to know that and are forced to choose the least of three evils: the delay of asking permission, the risk of proceeding without it, and the harm of erring on the side of nonuse. These are not only obstacles to research; they are obstacles that libre OA was designed to remove.", "To be more precise: A disappointing number of OA journals don’t have all the advantages of being OA because they retain needless permission barriers. (See section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.) At the same time, a heartening number of OA journals no longer suffer from the disadvantages of being new.\nLike conventional journal publishers, some OA journal publishers are for-profit and some are nonprofit. Like conventional publishers, there are a few large OA publishers and a long tail of small ones, although the largest OA publishers are small compared to the largest conventional publishers. Unlike conventional publishers, the profitable for-profit OA publishers have moderate rather than obscene profit margins.\nOA repositories are online collections or databases of articles. Unlike OA journals, OA repositories have no counterpart in the traditional landscape of scholarly communication. That makes them woefully easy to overlook or misunderstand.", "Fair use has four characteristics that matter to us here. First, the permission for fair use is granted by law and needn’t be sought from the copyright holder. Or equivalently, the statute assures us that no permission is needed because fair use “is not an infringement of copyright.” Second, the permission is limited and doesn’t cover all the uses that scholars might want to make. To exceed fair use, users must obtain permission from the copyright holder. Third, most countries have some equivalent of fair use, though they differ significantly in what they allow and disallow. Finally, fair use is vague. There are clear cases of fair use (quoting a short snippet in a review) and clear cases of exceeding fair use (reprinting a full-text book), but the boundary between the two is fuzzy and contestable.\nGratis OA is free of charge but not more free than that. Users must still seek permission to exceed fair use. Gratis OA removes price barriers but not permission barriers.", "Most importantly, the green/gold distinction matters because if authors can’t make their work OA one way, they can make it OA the other way. One of the most persistent and damaging misunderstandings is that all OA is gold OA. Authors who can’t find a high-quality, high-prestige OA journal in their field, or whose submissions are rejected from first-rate OA journals, often conclude that they must give up on OA or publish in a second-rate journal. But that’s hasty. If they publish in the best toll-access journal that will accept their work, then—more often than not—they may turn around and deposit the peer-reviewed manuscript in an OA repository. Most toll-access publishers and toll-access journals give blanket permission for green OA, many others will give permission on request, and the numbers approach 100 percent when authors are subject to green OA mandates from their funding agencies or universities. (More in chapters 4 on OA policies and 10 on making your own work OA.)" ], [ "Libre OA is free of charge and also free of some copyright and licensing restrictions. Users have permission to exceed fair use, at least in certain ways. Because there are many ways to exceed fair use, there are many degrees or kinds of libre OA. Libre OA removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers.\nFortunately, we don’t always need these terms. Indeed, in most of this book I use “OA” without qualification. The generic term causes no trouble until we need to talk about differences between gratis and libre OA, just as “carbohydrate” causes no trouble until we need to talk about differences between simple and complex carbohydrates.", "Green OA can be gratis or libre but is usually gratis. Gold OA can be gratis or libre, but is also usually gratis. However, it’s easier for gold OA to be libre than for green OA to be libre, which is why the campaign to go beyond gratis OA to libre OA focuses more on journals than repositories.\nIf users encounter a full-text work online without charge, then they know it’s gratis OA. They don’t have to be told, even if they’d like to be told—for example, so that they don’t have to wonder whether they’re reading an illicit copy. But users can’t figure out whether a work is libre OA unless the provider (author or publisher) tells them. This is the purpose of a\nlicense\n, which is simply a statement from the copyright holder explaining what users may and may not do with a given work.", "One hard fact is that gratis OA is often attainable in circumstances when libre OA is not attainable. For example, a major victory of the OA movement has been to persuade the majority of toll-access publishers and toll-access journals to allow green gratis OA. We’re very far from the same position for green libre OA. Similarly, most of the strong OA policies at funding agencies and universities require green gratis OA. A few require green libre OA, and green libre OA is growing for other reasons. But if these funders and universities had waited until they could muster the votes for a green libre policy, most of them would still be waiting. (See section 4.3 on the historical timing of OA policies.)", "I’ve argued that it’s unfair to criticize the OA movement for disparaging gratis OA (merely on the ground that its public statements call for libre) or neglecting libre OA (merely on the ground that most of its success stories are gratis). But two related criticisms would be more just. First, demanding libre or nothing where libre is currently unattainable makes the perfect the enemy of the good. Fortunately, this tactical mistake is rare. Second, settling for gratis where libre is attainable makes the good a substitute for the better. Unfortunately, this tactical mistake is common, as we see from the majority of OA journals that stop at gratis when they could easily offer libre.\nLet’s be more specific about the desirability of libre OA. Why should we bother, especially when we may already have attained gratis OA? The answer is that we need libre OA to spare users the delay and expense of seeking permission whenever they want to exceed fair use. And there are good scholarly reasons to exceed fair use. For example:\nto quote long excerpts", "The BBB definition calls for both gratis and libre OA. However, most of the notable OA success stories are gratis and not libre. I mean this in two senses: gratis success stories are more numerous than libre success stories, so far, and most gratis success stories are notable. Even if they stop short of libre OA, they are hard-won victories and major advances.\nSome observers look at the prominent gratis OA success stories and conclude that the OA movement focuses on gratis OA and neglects libre. Others look at the public definitions and conclude that OA focuses on libre OA and disparages gratis. Both assessments are one-sided and unfair.", "Second, OA journals obtain the rights or permissions they need directly from the rightsholders, while repositories ask depositors to obtain the needed rights or permissions on their own. Even when the depositors are the authors themselves, they may already have transferred key rights to publishers. As a result, OA journals can generate permission for reuse at will, and OA repositories generally cannot. Hence, most libre OA is gold OA, even if it’s not yet the case that most gold OA is libre OA. (See more in section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.)\nGold and green OA require different steps from authors. To make new articles gold OA, authors simply submit their manuscripts to OA journals, as they would to conventional journals. To make articles green OA, authors simply deposit their manuscripts in an OA repository.", "Sometimes we must speak unambiguously about two subspecies of OA. One removes price barriers alone and the other removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers. The former is\ngratis OA\nand the latter\nlibre OA\n.\nTo sharpen their definitions, we need a quick detour into fair use. In the United States, fair use is an exception to copyright law allowing users to reproduce copyrighted work “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching . . . , scholarship, or research” (to quote the U.S. copyright statute).", "Although the word “copyright” is singular, it covers a plurality of rights, and authors may waive some and retain others. They may do so in any combination that suits their needs. That’s why there are many nonequivalent open licenses and nonequivalent types of libre OA. What’s important here is that waiving some rights in order to provide libre OA does not require waiving all rights or waiving copyright altogether. On the contrary, open licenses presuppose copyright, since they express permissions from the copyright holder. Moreover, the rights not waived are fully enforceable. In the clear and sensible language of Creative Commons, open licenses create “some-rights-reserved” copyrights rather than “all-rights-reserved” copyrights.\nThe open licenses from Creative Commons (CC) are the best-known and most widely used. But there are other open licenses, and authors and publishers can always write their own. To illustrate the range of libre OA, however, it’s convenient to look at the CC licenses.", "The Directory of Open Access Journals is the most authoritative catalog of OA journals and the only one limiting itself to peer-reviewed journals. But only 20 percent of titles in the DOAJ use CC licenses, and fewer than 11 percent use the recommended CC-BY license. Viewed the other way around, about 80 percent of peer-reviewed OA journals don’t use any kind of CC license. Some of these might use non-CC licenses with a similar legal effect, but these exceptions are rare. Simply put, most OA journals are not using open licenses. Most operate under all-rights-reserved copyrights and leave their users with no more freedom than they already had under fair use. Most are not offering libre OA. Even those wanting to block commercial use, for example, tend to use an all-rights-reserved copyright rather than an open license that blocks commercial use, such as CC-BY-NC, but allows libre OA in other respects.", "The maximal degree of libre OA belongs to works in the public domain. Either these works were never under copyright or their copyrights have expired. Works in the public domain may be used in any way whatsoever without violating copyright law. That’s why it’s lawful to translate or reprint Shakespeare without hunting down his heirs for permission. Creative Commons offers CC0 (CC-Zero) for copyright holders who want to assign their work to the public domain.\nThe CC Attribution license (CC-BY) describes the least restrictive sort of libre OA after the public domain. It allows any use, provided the user attributes the work to the original author. This is the license recommended by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and the SPARC Europe Seal of Approval program for OA journals.\n \n I support this recommendation, use CC-BY for my blog and newsletter, and request CC-BY whenever I publish in a journal.", "In some jurisdictions, some of these uses may actually fall under fair use, even if most do not. Courts have settled some of the boundaries of fair use but by no means all of them, and in any case users can’t be expected to know all the relevant court rulings. Uncertainty about these boundaries, and increasingly severe penalties for copyright infringement, make users fear liability and act cautiously. It makes them decide that they can’t use something they’d like to use, or that they must delay their research in order to seek permission.\nLibre OA under open licenses solves all these problems. Even when a desirable use is already allowed by fair use, a clear open license removes all doubt. When a desirable use does exceed fair use, a clear open license removes the restriction and offers libre OA.", "When you can offer libre OA, don’t leave users with no more freedom than fair use. Don’t leave them uncertain about what they may and may not do. Don’t make conscientious users choose between the delay of seeking permission and the risk of proceeding without it. Don’t increase the pressure to make users less conscientious. Don’t make them pay for permission. Don’t make them err on the side of nonuse. Make your work as usable and useful as it can possibly be.", "A second hard fact is that even gratis OA policies can face serious political obstacles. They may be easier to adopt than libre policies, but in most cases they’re far from easy. The OA policy at the U.S. National Institutes of Health was first proposed by Congress in 2004, adopted as a mere request or encouragement in 2005, and strengthened into a requirement in 2008. Every step along the way was strenuously opposed by an aggressive and well-funded publishing lobby. Yet even now the policy provides only gratis OA, not libre OA. Similarly, the gratis OA policies at funders and universities were only adopted after years of patiently educating decision-makers and answering their objections and misunderstandings. Reaching the point of adoption, and especially unanimous votes for adoption, is a cause for celebration, even if the policies only provide gratis, not libre OA.", "Works under “all-rights-reserved” copyrights don’t need licenses, because “all rights reserved” means that without special permission users may do nothing that exceeds fair use.\nThe default around the world today is that new works are copyrighted from birth (no registration required), that the copyright initially belongs to the author (but is transferrable by contract), and that the rights holder reserves all rights. Authors who want to provide libre OA must affirmatively waive some of their rights and use a license to tell users they’ve done so. For convenience, let’s say that an\nopen license\nis one allowing some degree of libre OA.", "CC supports several other open licenses as well, including CC-BY-NC, which requires attribution and blocks commercial use, and CC-BY-ND, which requires attribution and allows commercial use but blocks derivative works. These licenses are not equivalent to one another, but they all permit uses beyond fair use and therefore they all represent different flavors of libre OA.\nWhile you can write your own open licenses or use those created by others, the advantage of CC licenses is that they are ready-made, lawyer-drafted, enforceable, understood by a large and growing number of users, and available in a large and growing number of legal jurisdictions. Moreover, each comes in three versions: human-readable for nonlawyers, lawyer-readable for lawyers and judges, and machine-readable for search engines and other visiting software. They’re extremely convenient and their convenience has revolutionized libre OA.", "The best way to refer to a specific flavor of libre OA is by referring to a specific open license. We’ll never have unambiguous, widely understood technical terms for every useful variation on the theme. But we already have clearly named licenses for all the major variations on the theme, and we can add new ones for more subtle variations any time we want.\nA work without an open license stands or appears to stand under an all-rights-reserved copyright. If the rights holder privately welcomes uses beyond fair use, or has decided not to sue for certain kinds of infringement, ordinary users have no way to know that and are forced to choose the least of three evils: the delay of asking permission, the risk of proceeding without it, and the harm of erring on the side of nonuse. These are not only obstacles to research; they are obstacles that libre OA was designed to remove.", "On the other side, gold OA has some advantages over green OA. Gold OA articles needn’t labor under restrictions imposed by toll-access publishers fearful of OA. Hence, gold OA is always immediate, while green OA is sometimes embargoed or delayed. Similarly, gold OA can always be libre, even if it doesn’t take sufficient advantage of this opportunity, while green OA seldom even has the opportunity. (See chapter 4 on policies.)\nGold OA provides OA to the published version, while green OA is often limited to the final version of the author’s peer-reviewed manuscript, without copy editing or final pagination. Making the OA edition the same as the published edition reduces the confusion caused by the circulation of multiple versions.\nGold OA performs its own peer review, without depending on toll-access journals to perform it. Hence support for gold OA supports the survival of peer review itself in case toll-access journals can no longer provide it.", "To be more precise: A disappointing number of OA journals don’t have all the advantages of being OA because they retain needless permission barriers. (See section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.) At the same time, a heartening number of OA journals no longer suffer from the disadvantages of being new.\nLike conventional journal publishers, some OA journal publishers are for-profit and some are nonprofit. Like conventional publishers, there are a few large OA publishers and a long tail of small ones, although the largest OA publishers are small compared to the largest conventional publishers. Unlike conventional publishers, the profitable for-profit OA publishers have moderate rather than obscene profit margins.\nOA repositories are online collections or databases of articles. Unlike OA journals, OA repositories have no counterpart in the traditional landscape of scholarly communication. That makes them woefully easy to overlook or misunderstand.", "Fair use has four characteristics that matter to us here. First, the permission for fair use is granted by law and needn’t be sought from the copyright holder. Or equivalently, the statute assures us that no permission is needed because fair use “is not an infringement of copyright.” Second, the permission is limited and doesn’t cover all the uses that scholars might want to make. To exceed fair use, users must obtain permission from the copyright holder. Third, most countries have some equivalent of fair use, though they differ significantly in what they allow and disallow. Finally, fair use is vague. There are clear cases of fair use (quoting a short snippet in a review) and clear cases of exceeding fair use (reprinting a full-text book), but the boundary between the two is fuzzy and contestable.\nGratis OA is free of charge but not more free than that. Users must still seek permission to exceed fair use. Gratis OA removes price barriers but not permission barriers.", "It won’t matter whether toll-access journals are endangered by rising levels of green OA, by their own hyperinflationary price increases, or by their failure to scale with the rapid growth of new research. If any combination of these causes puts peer-reviewed toll-access journals in jeopardy, then peer review will depend on OA journals, which are not endangered by any of those causes. (In chapter 8 on casualties, we’ll see evidence that toll-access journal price increases cause many more cancellations than green OA does.)\nFinally, if all new articles are green OA, we’ll still want the advantages that are easier for gold OA than for green OA to provide: freedom from permission barriers, freedom from delays or embargoes, and freedom from ever-rising drains on library budgets.\nNeither green nor gold OA will suffice, long-term or short-term. That’s a reason to pursue both.\n3.3 Gratis and Libre OA" ], [ "One hard fact is that gratis OA is often attainable in circumstances when libre OA is not attainable. For example, a major victory of the OA movement has been to persuade the majority of toll-access publishers and toll-access journals to allow green gratis OA. We’re very far from the same position for green libre OA. Similarly, most of the strong OA policies at funding agencies and universities require green gratis OA. A few require green libre OA, and green libre OA is growing for other reasons. But if these funders and universities had waited until they could muster the votes for a green libre policy, most of them would still be waiting. (See section 4.3 on the historical timing of OA policies.)", "Green OA can be gratis or libre but is usually gratis. Gold OA can be gratis or libre, but is also usually gratis. However, it’s easier for gold OA to be libre than for green OA to be libre, which is why the campaign to go beyond gratis OA to libre OA focuses more on journals than repositories.\nIf users encounter a full-text work online without charge, then they know it’s gratis OA. They don’t have to be told, even if they’d like to be told—for example, so that they don’t have to wonder whether they’re reading an illicit copy. But users can’t figure out whether a work is libre OA unless the provider (author or publisher) tells them. This is the purpose of a\nlicense\n, which is simply a statement from the copyright holder explaining what users may and may not do with a given work.", "The BBB definition calls for both gratis and libre OA. However, most of the notable OA success stories are gratis and not libre. I mean this in two senses: gratis success stories are more numerous than libre success stories, so far, and most gratis success stories are notable. Even if they stop short of libre OA, they are hard-won victories and major advances.\nSome observers look at the prominent gratis OA success stories and conclude that the OA movement focuses on gratis OA and neglects libre. Others look at the public definitions and conclude that OA focuses on libre OA and disparages gratis. Both assessments are one-sided and unfair.", "Libre OA is free of charge and also free of some copyright and licensing restrictions. Users have permission to exceed fair use, at least in certain ways. Because there are many ways to exceed fair use, there are many degrees or kinds of libre OA. Libre OA removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers.\nFortunately, we don’t always need these terms. Indeed, in most of this book I use “OA” without qualification. The generic term causes no trouble until we need to talk about differences between gratis and libre OA, just as “carbohydrate” causes no trouble until we need to talk about differences between simple and complex carbohydrates.", "I’ve argued that it’s unfair to criticize the OA movement for disparaging gratis OA (merely on the ground that its public statements call for libre) or neglecting libre OA (merely on the ground that most of its success stories are gratis). But two related criticisms would be more just. First, demanding libre or nothing where libre is currently unattainable makes the perfect the enemy of the good. Fortunately, this tactical mistake is rare. Second, settling for gratis where libre is attainable makes the good a substitute for the better. Unfortunately, this tactical mistake is common, as we see from the majority of OA journals that stop at gratis when they could easily offer libre.\nLet’s be more specific about the desirability of libre OA. Why should we bother, especially when we may already have attained gratis OA? The answer is that we need libre OA to spare users the delay and expense of seeking permission whenever they want to exceed fair use. And there are good scholarly reasons to exceed fair use. For example:\nto quote long excerpts", "Sometimes we must speak unambiguously about two subspecies of OA. One removes price barriers alone and the other removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers. The former is\ngratis OA\nand the latter\nlibre OA\n.\nTo sharpen their definitions, we need a quick detour into fair use. In the United States, fair use is an exception to copyright law allowing users to reproduce copyrighted work “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching . . . , scholarship, or research” (to quote the U.S. copyright statute).", "A second hard fact is that even gratis OA policies can face serious political obstacles. They may be easier to adopt than libre policies, but in most cases they’re far from easy. The OA policy at the U.S. National Institutes of Health was first proposed by Congress in 2004, adopted as a mere request or encouragement in 2005, and strengthened into a requirement in 2008. Every step along the way was strenuously opposed by an aggressive and well-funded publishing lobby. Yet even now the policy provides only gratis OA, not libre OA. Similarly, the gratis OA policies at funders and universities were only adopted after years of patiently educating decision-makers and answering their objections and misunderstandings. Reaching the point of adoption, and especially unanimous votes for adoption, is a cause for celebration, even if the policies only provide gratis, not libre OA.", "Fair use has four characteristics that matter to us here. First, the permission for fair use is granted by law and needn’t be sought from the copyright holder. Or equivalently, the statute assures us that no permission is needed because fair use “is not an infringement of copyright.” Second, the permission is limited and doesn’t cover all the uses that scholars might want to make. To exceed fair use, users must obtain permission from the copyright holder. Third, most countries have some equivalent of fair use, though they differ significantly in what they allow and disallow. Finally, fair use is vague. There are clear cases of fair use (quoting a short snippet in a review) and clear cases of exceeding fair use (reprinting a full-text book), but the boundary between the two is fuzzy and contestable.\nGratis OA is free of charge but not more free than that. Users must still seek permission to exceed fair use. Gratis OA removes price barriers but not permission barriers.", "Second, OA journals obtain the rights or permissions they need directly from the rightsholders, while repositories ask depositors to obtain the needed rights or permissions on their own. Even when the depositors are the authors themselves, they may already have transferred key rights to publishers. As a result, OA journals can generate permission for reuse at will, and OA repositories generally cannot. Hence, most libre OA is gold OA, even if it’s not yet the case that most gold OA is libre OA. (See more in section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.)\nGold and green OA require different steps from authors. To make new articles gold OA, authors simply submit their manuscripts to OA journals, as they would to conventional journals. To make articles green OA, authors simply deposit their manuscripts in an OA repository.", "I’m borrowing the gratis/libre language from the world of software, where it expresses the same distinction. If the terms sound odd in English, it’s because English doesn’t have more domesticated terms for this distinction. Their oddity in English may even be an advantage, since the terms don’t carry extra baggage, as “open” and “free” do, which therefore helps us avoid ambiguity.\nFirst note that the gratis/libre distinction is not the same as the green/gold distinction. The gratis/libre distinction is about user rights or freedoms, while the green/gold distinction is about venues or vehicles. Gratis/libre answers the question,\nhow open is it?\nGreen/gold answers the question,\nhow is it delivered?", "To be more precise: A disappointing number of OA journals don’t have all the advantages of being OA because they retain needless permission barriers. (See section 3.3 on gratis and libre OA.) At the same time, a heartening number of OA journals no longer suffer from the disadvantages of being new.\nLike conventional journal publishers, some OA journal publishers are for-profit and some are nonprofit. Like conventional publishers, there are a few large OA publishers and a long tail of small ones, although the largest OA publishers are small compared to the largest conventional publishers. Unlike conventional publishers, the profitable for-profit OA publishers have moderate rather than obscene profit margins.\nOA repositories are online collections or databases of articles. Unlike OA journals, OA repositories have no counterpart in the traditional landscape of scholarly communication. That makes them woefully easy to overlook or misunderstand.", "It won’t matter whether toll-access journals are endangered by rising levels of green OA, by their own hyperinflationary price increases, or by their failure to scale with the rapid growth of new research. If any combination of these causes puts peer-reviewed toll-access journals in jeopardy, then peer review will depend on OA journals, which are not endangered by any of those causes. (In chapter 8 on casualties, we’ll see evidence that toll-access journal price increases cause many more cancellations than green OA does.)\nFinally, if all new articles are green OA, we’ll still want the advantages that are easier for gold OA than for green OA to provide: freedom from permission barriers, freedom from delays or embargoes, and freedom from ever-rising drains on library budgets.\nNeither green nor gold OA will suffice, long-term or short-term. That’s a reason to pursue both.\n3.3 Gratis and Libre OA", "On the other side, gold OA has some advantages over green OA. Gold OA articles needn’t labor under restrictions imposed by toll-access publishers fearful of OA. Hence, gold OA is always immediate, while green OA is sometimes embargoed or delayed. Similarly, gold OA can always be libre, even if it doesn’t take sufficient advantage of this opportunity, while green OA seldom even has the opportunity. (See chapter 4 on policies.)\nGold OA provides OA to the published version, while green OA is often limited to the final version of the author’s peer-reviewed manuscript, without copy editing or final pagination. Making the OA edition the same as the published edition reduces the confusion caused by the circulation of multiple versions.\nGold OA performs its own peer review, without depending on toll-access journals to perform it. Hence support for gold OA supports the survival of peer review itself in case toll-access journals can no longer provide it.", "First, OA journals and repositories differ in their relationship to peer review. OA journals perform their own peer review, just like conventional journals. Repositories generally don’t perform peer review, although they host and disseminate articles peer-reviewed elsewhere. As a result, gold and green OA differ in their support costs and in the roles they can play in the scholarly communications universe.\nTerminology\nThe OA movement uses the term\ngold OA\nfor OA delivered by journals, regardless of the journal’s business model, and\ngreen OA\nfor OA delivered by repositories.\nSelf-archiving\nis the practice of depositing one’s own work in an OA repository. All three of these terms were coined by Stevan Harnad.", "Most importantly, the green/gold distinction matters because if authors can’t make their work OA one way, they can make it OA the other way. One of the most persistent and damaging misunderstandings is that all OA is gold OA. Authors who can’t find a high-quality, high-prestige OA journal in their field, or whose submissions are rejected from first-rate OA journals, often conclude that they must give up on OA or publish in a second-rate journal. But that’s hasty. If they publish in the best toll-access journal that will accept their work, then—more often than not—they may turn around and deposit the peer-reviewed manuscript in an OA repository. Most toll-access publishers and toll-access journals give blanket permission for green OA, many others will give permission on request, and the numbers approach 100 percent when authors are subject to green OA mandates from their funding agencies or universities. (More in chapters 4 on OA policies and 10 on making your own work OA.)", "Green OA can be mandated without infringing academic freedom, but gold OA cannot. (More precisely, gold OA can’t be mandated without infringing academic freedom until virtually all peer-reviewed journals are OA, which isn’t on the horizon.) A green OA policy at a university can cover the institution’s entire research output, regardless of where authors choose to publish, while a gold OA policy can only cover the new articles that faculty are willing to submit to OA journals.\nGreen OA is compatible with toll-access publication. Sometimes this is because toll-access publishers hold the needed rights and decide to allow it, and sometimes because authors retain the needed rights. Well-drafted OA policies can ensure that authors always retain the needed rights and spare them the need to negotiate with publishers. (See chapters 4 on policies and 6 on copyright.)", "Some friends of OA focus their energy on green OA and some focus on gold OA. Some support both kinds about equally and have merely specialized. But some give one a higher strategic priority than the other. I’ll argue that green and gold OA are complementary and synergistic. We should pursue them simultaneously, much as an organism must develop its nervous system and digestive system simultaneously.\nFortunately, this synergy is served even by differences of opinion about its existence. The fact that some activists give green OA a higher priority than gold, and some the reverse, creates a natural division of labor ensuring that good people are working hard on each front.\nGreen OA has some advantages over gold OA. It makes faster progress, since it doesn’t require the launch of new peer-reviewed journals or the conversion of old ones. For the same reason, it’s less expensive than gold OA and can scale up quickly and inexpensively to meet demand, while the bulk of the money needed to scale up OA journals is still tied up in subscriptions to toll-access journals.", "By default, new deposits in OA repositories are OA. But most repositories today support\ndark deposits\n, which can be switched to OA at a later date. Most OA repositories were launched to host peer-reviewed research articles and their preprints. But often they include other sorts of content as well, such as theses and dissertations, datasets, courseware, and digitized copies of works from the special collections of the hosting institution’s library. For scholars, repositories are better at making work OA than personal web sites because repositories provide persistent URLs, take steps for long-term preservation, and don’t disappear when the author changes jobs or dies.\n3.1 Green and Gold OA\nGold and green OA differ in at least two fundamental respects.", "When the best journals in a field are toll-access—often the case today even if changing—green OA allows authors to have their cake and eat it too. Authors good enough to publish in the best journals may do so and still make their work OA, without waiting for high-prestige OA journals to emerge in their fields. When promotion and tenure committees create strong incentives to publish in venerable toll-access journals—often the case today even if changing—green OA allows authors to make their work OA without bucking institutional incentives or relinquishing institutional rewards.\nGreen OA works for preprints as well as postprints, while gold OA only works for postprints. For the same reason, green OA works for other kinds of work that peer-reviewed journals generally don’t publish, such as datasets, source code, theses and dissertations, and digitized copies of work previously available only in another medium such as print, microfiche, or film.", "One of the early victories of the OA movement was to get a majority of toll-access publishers and journals to give blanket permission for author-initiated green OA. But this victory remains one of the best-kept secrets of scholarly publishing, and widespread ignorance of it is the single most harmful consequence of green OA’s invisibility. Overlooking this victory reduces the volume of OA and creates the false impression that a trade-off between prestige and OA is common when in fact it is rare. Forgetting that green OA is compatible with conventional publishing also feeds the false impression that policies requiring green OA actually require gold OA and thereby limit the freedom of authors to submit work to the journals of their choice. (More in chapter 4 on policies.)\nMost publishing scholars will choose prestige over OA if they have to choose. The good news is that they rarely have to choose. The bad news is that few of them know that they rarely have to choose. Few realize that most toll-access journals permit author-initiated green OA, despite determined efforts to explain and publicize this early victory for green OA." ] ]
train	62569	[ "Which best describes the relationship between the protagonists?", "What makes the protagonists become less concerned about being trapped by the beasts?", "How would you describe the pace of the characters, and why?", "What is not a type technology that is used in this story?", "What are Hathaway and Marnagan's physiques like?", "How would you describe Gunther as a villain?", "Based on your interpretation of the passage, of the following options who do you think would most likely be interested in reading it?", "How would you describe Click's primary motivations?" ]	[ [ "They're friendly but their friendship detracts from their ability to problem-solve and be productive.", "They're both in a tough situation but their hatred for one another pushes them to work independently.", "They work together and are able to coordinate with each other pretty well.", "They don't like each other too much; they put up with each other at best." ], [ "They realized that the beasts were not actually interested in hurting them, so they were able to calmly leave their hiding spot.", "They realized that the beasts were too big to fit into the space they were in, so they could camp out in that spot indefinitely.", "They realized the beasts were not actual beasts, but were meant to seem real.", "They realized that the beasts die when their photo is taken, and they had captured many of the beasts on camera." ], [ "Quickly. The characters were under a time constraint, depleting air, and were encountering additional threats that made them move with haste.", "At a sprint. The characters were so scared that they were rushing decisions and they weren't thinking logically.", "Average. Though the characters were concerned for their survival, they were taking things at a normal pace because they thought they could be rescued.", "Slowly. The characters didn't want to endanger themselves further in the situation so they tried to think everything through fully." ], [ "Tasers that paralyze individuals and render them unconscious", "Highly advanced space travel", "Tools that allow one to distort how someone else perceives reality", "Filming devices " ], [ "There isn't much discussion about how either person looks at all.", "Marnagan is consistently described as feeble in comparison to Hathaway.", "Both of their appearances are described to some degree, and Marnagan is often described as being a large presence.", "Both are each regularly described as having similar builds." ], [ "He's likely been successful in the past, but he's clearly conquerable.", "He's so universally despised that he has to work alone.", "He's a classically funny villain, like what you'd imagine in children's movies and comedies.", "He's fairly irresponsible and ruthless." ], [ "A luddite who thinks even discussing technology is frustrating.", "A well-read teenager with a penchant for thrilling adventure stories.", "An avid reader of romance novels set in sci-fi locations.", "An elementary schooler who likes outer space." ], [ "He was originally focused on filming, but he was also focused on survival efforts.", "He was solely focused on filming the events and didn't contribute much else.", "He wanted to help beyond filming but only ended up hurting the mission further.", "He was focused on filming the events at first, but when he realized he needed to pitch in he forgot all about filming." ] ]	[ 3, 3, 1, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1 ]	[ 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "Marnagan shifted uneasily. \"Here, now. You're doing nothing but\n sitting, looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet, so take\n me a profile shot of the beasties and myself.\"\n\n\n Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. \"What in hell's the use? All\n this swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it.\"\n\n\n \"Then,\" retorted Marnagan, \"we'll develop it for our own benefit; while\n waitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our\n rescue!\"\n\n\n Hathaway snorted. \"U.S. Cavalry.\"\n\n\n Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. \"Snap me this pose,\" he\n said. \"I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped,\n my capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace\n negotiations betwixt me and these pixies.\"", "A tunnel curved, ending in light, and two men silhouetted in that\n yellow glare. Marnagan, backed against a wall, his helmet cracked,\n air hissing slowly out of it, his face turning blue. And the guard, a\n proton gun extended stiffly before him, also in a vac-suit. The guard\n had his profile toward Hathaway, his lips twisting: \"I think I'll let\n you stand right there and die,\" he said quietly. \"That what Gunther\n wanted, anway. A nice sordid death.\"\n\n\n Hathaway took three strides, his hands out in front of him.\n\n\n \"Don't move!\" he snapped. \"I've got a weapon stronger than yours. One\n twitch and I'll blast you and the whole damned wall out from behind\n you! Freeze!\"\n\n\n The guard whirled. He widened his sharp eyes, and reluctantly, dropped\n his gun to the floor.\n\n\n \"Get his gun, Irish.\"", "\"If you say them animals ain't there, that's all I need. Now, stand\n aside, you film-developing flea, and let an Irishman settle their\n bones.\" He took an unnecessary hitch in trousers that didn't exist\n except under an inch of porous metal plate. \"Your express purpose on\n this voyage, Hathaway, is taking films to be used by the Patrol later\n for teaching Junior Patrolmen how to act in tough spots. First-hand\n education. Poke another spool of film in that contraption and give me\n profile a scan. This is lesson number seven: Daniel Walks Into The\n Lion's Den.\"\n\n\n \"Irish, I—\"\n\n\n \"Shut up and load up.\"\n\n\n Hathaway nervously loaded the film-slot, raised it.\n\n\n \"Ready, Click?\"", "Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver\n for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running\n around in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but\n his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of\n Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.\n\n\n Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling\n for the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without\n much effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death\n wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying\n anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they\n had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.\n\n\n When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it\n up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:", "Gunther sat there, blinking at Hathaway, not moving. His thin hands\n twitched in his lap. \"You are bluffing,\" he said, finally, with a firm\n directness. \"A ship hasn't landed here for an hour. Your ship was the\n last. Two people were on it. The last I saw of them they were being\n pursued to the death by the Beasts. One of you escaped, it seemed.\"\n\n\n \"Both. The other guy went after the Patrol.\"\n\n\n \"Impossible!\"\n\n\n \"I can't respect your opinion, Mr. Gunther.\"\n\n\n A shouting rose from the Plaza. About fifty of Gunther's men, lounging\n on carved benches during their time-off, stirred to their feet and\n started yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side\n of his office. He stared, hard.\n\n\n The Patrol was coming!", "Hathaway leaped backward in reaction. His eyes widened and his hand\n came up, jabbing. Over a hill-ridge swarmed a brew of unbelievable\n horrors. Progeny from Frankenstein's ARK. Immense crimson beasts with\n numerous legs and gnashing mandibles, brown-black creatures, some\n tubular and fat, others like thin white poisonous whips slashing along\n in the air. Fangs caught starlight white on them.\n\n\n Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Sweat broke\n cold on his body. The immense things rolled, slithered and squirmed\n after him. A blast of light. Marnagan, firing his proton-gun. Then, in\n Click's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt\n the creatures at all.\n\n\n \"Irish!\" Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an incline\n toward the mouth a small cave. \"This way, fella!\"", "They both waited, thrust against the shipside and held by a hand of\n gravity; listening to each other's breathing hard in the earphones.\n\n\n The ship struck, once. Bouncing, it struck again. It turned end over\n and stopped. Hathaway felt himself grabbed; he and Marnagan rattled\n around—human dice in a croupier's cup. The shell of the ship burst,\n air and energy flung out.", "It got quiet. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids\n rushing up, cold, blue and hard. You could hear your heart kicking a\n tom-tom between your sick stomach and your empty lungs.\n\n\n Stars, asteroids revolved. Click grabbed Marnagan because he was the\n nearest thing, and held on. You came hunting for a space-raider and you\n ended up cradled in a slab-sized Irishman's arms, diving at a hunk of\n metal death. What a fade-out!\n\n\n \"Irish!\" he heard himself say. \"Is this IT?\"\n\n\n \"Is this\nwhat\n?\" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet.\n\n\n \"Is this where the Big Producer yells CUT!?\"\n\n\n Marnagan fumed. \"I'll die when I'm damned good and ready. And when I'm\n ready I'll inform you and you can picture me profile for Cosmic Films!\"", "\"Click—\" Marnagan's face was a bitter, tortured movement behind glass.\n \"Click—\" He was fighting hard. \"I—I—sure now. Sure—\" He smiled.\n \"It—it's only a shanty fake!\"\n\n\n \"Keep saying it, Irish. Keep it up.\"\n\n\n Marnagan's thick lips opened. \"It's only a fake,\" he said. And then,\n irritated, \"Get the hell off me, Hathaway. Let me up to my feet!\"\n\n\n Hathaway got up, shakily. The air in his helmet smelled stale, and\n little bubbles danced in his eyes. \"Irish,\nyou\nforget the monsters.\n Let me handle them, I know how. They might fool you again, you might\n forget.\"\n\n\n Marnagan showed his teeth. \"Gah! Let a flea have all the fun? And\n besides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty.\"", "\"Forget it. I was so blamed glad to see your homely carcass in one\n hunk, I couldn't help—Look, now, about Gunther. Those animals are part\n of his set-up. Explorers who land here inadvertently, are chased back\n into their ships, forced to take off. Tourists and the like. Nothing\n suspicious about animals. And if the tourists don't leave, the animals\n kill them.\"\n\n\n \"Shaw, now. Those animals can't kill.\"\n\n\n \"Think not, Mr. Marnagan? As long as we believed in them they could\n have frightened us to death, forced us, maybe, to commit suicide. If\n that isn't being dangerous—\"\n\n\n The Irishman whistled.", "Across the Plaza, marching quietly and decisively, came the Patrol.\n Five hundred Patrolmen in one long, incredible line, carrying paralysis\n guns with them in their tight hands.\n\n\n Gunther babbled like a child, his voice a shrill dagger in the air.\n \"Get out there, you men! Throw them back! We're outnumbered!\"\n\n\n Guns flared. But the Patrol came on. Gunther's men didn't run, Hathaway\n had to credit them on that. They took it, standing.\n\n\n Hathaway chuckled inside, deep. What a sweet, sweet shot this was.\n His camera whirred, clicked and whirred again. Nobody stopped him\n from filming it. Everything was too wild, hot and angry. Gunther was\n throwing a fit, still seated at his desk, unable to move because of his\n fragile, bony legs and their atrophied state.", "Hathaway felt funny inside, suddenly. \"I never thought of that.\n Marnagan die? I just took it for granted you'd come through. You always\n have. Funny, but you don't think about dying. You try not to.\" Hathaway\n stared at his gloved hand, but the gloving was so thick and heavy he\n couldn't tell if it was shaking. Muscles in his bony face went down,\n pale. \"Where are we?\"\n\n\n \"A million miles from nobody.\"\n\n\n They stood in the middle of a pocked, time-eroded meteor plain that\n stretched off, dipping down into silent indigo and a rash of stars.\n Overhead, the sun poised; black and stars all around it, making it look\n sick.", "Marnagan said, \"We're working on margin, and we got nothin' to sweat\n with except your suspicions about this not being an accident. We got\n fifty minutes to prove you're right. After that—right or wrong—you'll\n be Cosmic Films prettiest unmoving, unbreathin' genius. But talk all\n you like, Click. It's times like this when we all need words, any\n words, on our tongues. You got your camera and your scoop. Talk about\n it. As for me—\" he twisted his glossy red face. \"Keeping alive is me\n hobby. And this sort of two-bit death I did not order.\"\n\n\n Click nodded. \"Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish.\n It's irony clean through. That's probably why he planned the meteor and\n the crash this way.\"\n\n\n Marnagan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far\n down, and the green eyes blazed.", "Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three\n of the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and\n twitch. God, what photography!\n\n\n Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He\n fired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paper-weight.\n Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos\n taking place immediately outside his window.\n\n\n The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And\n out of the chaos came Marnagan's voice, \"Here!\"", "\"If we walk in opposite directions, Click Hathaway, we'd be shaking\n hands the other side of this rock in two hours.\" Marnagan shook his mop\n of dusty red hair. \"And I promised the boys at Luna Base this time I'd\n capture that Gunther lad!\"\n\n\n His voice stopped and the silence spoke.\n\n\n Hathaway felt his heart pumping slow, hot pumps of blood. \"I checked\n my oxygen, Irish. Sixty minutes of breathing left.\"\n\n\n The silence punctuated that sentence, too. Upon the sharp meteoric\n rocks Hathaway saw the tangled insides of the radio, the food supply\n mashed and scattered. They were lucky to have escaped. Or\nwas\nsuffocation a better death...?\nSixty minutes.\nThey stood and looked at one another.\n\n\n \"Damn that meteor!\" said Marnagan, hotly.", "\"I—I guess so,\" said Hathaway. \"And remember, think it hard, Irish.\n Think it hard. There aren't any animals—\"\n\n\n \"Keep me in focus, lad.\"\n\n\n \"All the way, Irish.\"\n\n\n \"What do they say...? Oh, yeah. Action. Lights. Camera!\"\n\n\n Marnagan held his gun out in front of him and still smiling took one,\n two, three, four steps out into the outside world. The monsters were\n waiting for him at the fifth step. Marnagan kept walking.\n\n\n Right out into the middle of them....\nThat was the sweetest shot Hathaway ever took. Marnagan and the\n monsters!\n\n\n Only now it was only Marnagan.\n\n\n No more monsters.", "Marnagan's homely face grimaced in sympathy. \"Hold tight, Click. The\n guy that invented these fish-bowls didn't provide for a sick stomach.\"\n\n\n \"Hold tight, hell, let's move. We've got to find where those animals\n came from! And the only way to do that is to get the animals to come\n back!\"\n\n\n \"Come back? How?\"\n\n\n \"They're waiting, just outside the aura of our thoughts, and if we\n believe in them again, they'll return.\"\n\n\n Marnagan didn't like it. \"Won't—won't they kill us—if they come—if\n we believe in 'em?\"\n\n\n Hathaway shook a head that was tons heavy and weary. \"Not if we believe\n in them to a\ncertain point\n. Psychologically they can both be seen and\n felt. We only want to\nsee\nthem coming at us again.\"", "\"Lots of time, little man. Forty more minutes of air, to be exact.\"\nThey sat, staring at the monsters for about a minute. Hathaway felt\n funny about something; didn't know what. Something about these monsters\n and Gunther and—\n\n\n \"Which one will you be having?\" asked Irish, casually. \"A red one or a\n blue one?\"\n\n\n Hathaway laughed nervously. \"A pink one with yellow ruffles—Good God,\n now you've got\nme\ndoing it. Joking in the face of death.\"\n\n\n \"Me father taught me; keep laughing and you'll have Irish luck.\"\n\n\n That didn't please the photographer. \"I'm an Anglo-Swede,\" he pointed\n out.", "Marnagan smiled a smile broader than his shoulders. \"Hey, Click, look\n at me! I'm in one piece. Why, hell, the damned things turned tail and\n ran away!\"\n\n\n \"Ran, hell!\" cried Hathaway, rushing out, his face flushed and\n animated. \"They just plain vanished. They were only imaginative\n figments!\"\n\n\n \"And to think we let them hole us in that way, Click Hathaway, you\n coward!\"\n\n\n \"Smile when you say that, Irish.\"\n\n\n \"Sure, and ain't I always smilin'? Ah, Click boy, are them tears in\n your sweet grey eyes?\"\n\n\n \"Damn,\" swore the photographer, embarrassedly. \"Why don't they put\n window-wipers in these helmets?\"\n\n\n \"I'll take it up with the Board, lad.\"", "Hathaway went on saying his thoughts: \"This is Gunther's work. He's\n here somewhere, probably laughing his guts out at the job he did us.\n Oh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back\n to Earth. I.P.'s Irish Marnagan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate\n whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins\n through to a triumphant finish. Photographed on the spot, in color, by\n yours truly, Click Hathaway. Cosmic Films, please notice.\"\nThey started walking, fast, over the pocked, rubbled plain toward a\n bony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't\n much to see, but it was better than standing still, waiting." ], [ "\"Forget it. I was so blamed glad to see your homely carcass in one\n hunk, I couldn't help—Look, now, about Gunther. Those animals are part\n of his set-up. Explorers who land here inadvertently, are chased back\n into their ships, forced to take off. Tourists and the like. Nothing\n suspicious about animals. And if the tourists don't leave, the animals\n kill them.\"\n\n\n \"Shaw, now. Those animals can't kill.\"\n\n\n \"Think not, Mr. Marnagan? As long as we believed in them they could\n have frightened us to death, forced us, maybe, to commit suicide. If\n that isn't being dangerous—\"\n\n\n The Irishman whistled.", "Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver\n for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running\n around in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but\n his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of\n Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.\n\n\n Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling\n for the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without\n much effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death\n wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying\n anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they\n had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.\n\n\n When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it\n up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:", "Hathaway leaped backward in reaction. His eyes widened and his hand\n came up, jabbing. Over a hill-ridge swarmed a brew of unbelievable\n horrors. Progeny from Frankenstein's ARK. Immense crimson beasts with\n numerous legs and gnashing mandibles, brown-black creatures, some\n tubular and fat, others like thin white poisonous whips slashing along\n in the air. Fangs caught starlight white on them.\n\n\n Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Sweat broke\n cold on his body. The immense things rolled, slithered and squirmed\n after him. A blast of light. Marnagan, firing his proton-gun. Then, in\n Click's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt\n the creatures at all.\n\n\n \"Irish!\" Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an incline\n toward the mouth a small cave. \"This way, fella!\"", "Marnagan's homely face grimaced in sympathy. \"Hold tight, Click. The\n guy that invented these fish-bowls didn't provide for a sick stomach.\"\n\n\n \"Hold tight, hell, let's move. We've got to find where those animals\n came from! And the only way to do that is to get the animals to come\n back!\"\n\n\n \"Come back? How?\"\n\n\n \"They're waiting, just outside the aura of our thoughts, and if we\n believe in them again, they'll return.\"\n\n\n Marnagan didn't like it. \"Won't—won't they kill us—if they come—if\n we believe in 'em?\"\n\n\n Hathaway shook a head that was tons heavy and weary. \"Not if we believe\n in them to a\ncertain point\n. Psychologically they can both be seen and\n felt. We only want to\nsee\nthem coming at us again.\"", "The monsters had failed to image the film. Marnagan was there, his hair\n like a red banner, his freckled face with the blue eyes bright in it.\n Maybe—\n\n\n Hathaway said it, loud: \"Irish! Irish! I think I see a way out of this\n mess! Here—\"\n\n\n He elucidated it over and over again to the Patrolman. About the film,\n the beasts, and how the film couldn't be wrong. If the film said the\n monsters weren't there, they weren't there.\n\n\n \"Yeah,\" said Marnagan. \"But step outside this cave—\"\n\n\n \"If my theory is correct I'll do it, unafraid,\" said Click.\n\n\n Marnagan scowled. \"You sure them beasts don't radiate ultra-violet or\n infra-red or something that won't come out on film?\"", "\"\nDo\nwe, now?\"\n\n\n \"With twenty minutes left, maybe less—\"\n\n\n \"All right, Click, let's bring 'em back. How do we do it?\"\n\n\n Hathaway fought against the mist in his eyes. \"Just think—I will see\n the monsters again. I will see them again and I will not feel them.\n Think it over and over.\"\n\n\n Marnagan's hulk stirred uneasily. \"And—what if I forget to remember\n all that? What if I get excited...?\"\n\n\n Hathaway didn't answer. But his eyes told the story by just looking at\n Irish.\n\n\n Marnagan cursed. \"All right, lad. Let's have at it!\"\n\n\n The monsters returned.\nA soundless deluge of them, pouring over the rubbled horizon, swarming\n in malevolent anticipation about the two men.", "Gunther sat there, blinking at Hathaway, not moving. His thin hands\n twitched in his lap. \"You are bluffing,\" he said, finally, with a firm\n directness. \"A ship hasn't landed here for an hour. Your ship was the\n last. Two people were on it. The last I saw of them they were being\n pursued to the death by the Beasts. One of you escaped, it seemed.\"\n\n\n \"Both. The other guy went after the Patrol.\"\n\n\n \"Impossible!\"\n\n\n \"I can't respect your opinion, Mr. Gunther.\"\n\n\n A shouting rose from the Plaza. About fifty of Gunther's men, lounging\n on carved benches during their time-off, stirred to their feet and\n started yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side\n of his office. He stared, hard.\n\n\n The Patrol was coming!", "Marnagan shifted uneasily. \"Here, now. You're doing nothing but\n sitting, looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet, so take\n me a profile shot of the beasties and myself.\"\n\n\n Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. \"What in hell's the use? All\n this swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it.\"\n\n\n \"Then,\" retorted Marnagan, \"we'll develop it for our own benefit; while\n waitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our\n rescue!\"\n\n\n Hathaway snorted. \"U.S. Cavalry.\"\n\n\n Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. \"Snap me this pose,\" he\n said. \"I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped,\n my capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace\n negotiations betwixt me and these pixies.\"", "\"If you say them animals ain't there, that's all I need. Now, stand\n aside, you film-developing flea, and let an Irishman settle their\n bones.\" He took an unnecessary hitch in trousers that didn't exist\n except under an inch of porous metal plate. \"Your express purpose on\n this voyage, Hathaway, is taking films to be used by the Patrol later\n for teaching Junior Patrolmen how to act in tough spots. First-hand\n education. Poke another spool of film in that contraption and give me\n profile a scan. This is lesson number seven: Daniel Walks Into The\n Lion's Den.\"\n\n\n \"Irish, I—\"\n\n\n \"Shut up and load up.\"\n\n\n Hathaway nervously loaded the film-slot, raised it.\n\n\n \"Ready, Click?\"", "The outpour of animals came from a low lying mound a mile farther on.\n Evidently the telepathic source lay there. They approached it warily.\n\n\n \"We'll be taking our chances on guard,\" hissed Irish. \"I'll go ahead,\n draw their attention, maybe get captured. Then,\nyou\nshow up with\nyour\ngun....\"\n\n\n \"I haven't got one.\"\n\n\n \"We'll chance it, then. You stick here until I see what's ahead. They\n probably got scanners out. Let them see me—\"\n\n\n And before Hathaway could object, Marnagan walked off. He walked about\n five hundred yards, bent down, applied his fingers to something, heaved\n up, and there was a door opening in the rock.\n\n\n His voice came back across the distance, into Click's earphones. \"A\n door, an air-lock, Click. A tunnel leading down inside!\"", "\"I—I guess so,\" said Hathaway. \"And remember, think it hard, Irish.\n Think it hard. There aren't any animals—\"\n\n\n \"Keep me in focus, lad.\"\n\n\n \"All the way, Irish.\"\n\n\n \"What do they say...? Oh, yeah. Action. Lights. Camera!\"\n\n\n Marnagan held his gun out in front of him and still smiling took one,\n two, three, four steps out into the outside world. The monsters were\n waiting for him at the fifth step. Marnagan kept walking.\n\n\n Right out into the middle of them....\nThat was the sweetest shot Hathaway ever took. Marnagan and the\n monsters!\n\n\n Only now it was only Marnagan.\n\n\n No more monsters.", "\"Click—\" Marnagan's face was a bitter, tortured movement behind glass.\n \"Click—\" He was fighting hard. \"I—I—sure now. Sure—\" He smiled.\n \"It—it's only a shanty fake!\"\n\n\n \"Keep saying it, Irish. Keep it up.\"\n\n\n Marnagan's thick lips opened. \"It's only a fake,\" he said. And then,\n irritated, \"Get the hell off me, Hathaway. Let me up to my feet!\"\n\n\n Hathaway got up, shakily. The air in his helmet smelled stale, and\n little bubbles danced in his eyes. \"Irish,\nyou\nforget the monsters.\n Let me handle them, I know how. They might fool you again, you might\n forget.\"\n\n\n Marnagan showed his teeth. \"Gah! Let a flea have all the fun? And\n besides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty.\"", "Ten minutes later, Marnagan and Hathaway, fresh tanks of oxygen on\n their backs, Marnagan in a fresh bulger and helmet, trussed the guard,\n hid him in a huge trash receptacle. \"Where he belongs,\" observed Irish\n tersely.\n\n\n They found themselves in a complete inner world; an asteroid nothing\n more than a honey-comb fortress sliding through the void unchallenged.\n Perfect front for a raider who had little equipment and was\n short-handed of men. Gunther simply waited for specific cargo ships to\n rocket by, pulled them or knocked them down and swarmed over them for\n cargo. The animals served simply to insure against suspicion and the\n swarms of tourists that filled the void these days. Small fry weren't\n wanted. They were scared off.", "\"Lots of time, little man. Forty more minutes of air, to be exact.\"\nThey sat, staring at the monsters for about a minute. Hathaway felt\n funny about something; didn't know what. Something about these monsters\n and Gunther and—\n\n\n \"Which one will you be having?\" asked Irish, casually. \"A red one or a\n blue one?\"\n\n\n Hathaway laughed nervously. \"A pink one with yellow ruffles—Good God,\n now you've got\nme\ndoing it. Joking in the face of death.\"\n\n\n \"Me father taught me; keep laughing and you'll have Irish luck.\"\n\n\n That didn't please the photographer. \"I'm an Anglo-Swede,\" he pointed\n out.", "Hathaway made it first, Marnagan bellowing just behind him. \"They're\n too big; they can't get us in here!\" Click's voice gasped it out,\n as Marnagan squeezed his two-hundred-fifty pounds beside him.\n Instinctively, Hathaway added, \"Asteroid monsters! My camera! What a\n scene!\"\n\n\n \"Damn your damn camera!\" yelled Marnagan. \"They might come in!\"\n\n\n \"Use your gun.\"\n\n\n \"They got impervious hides. No use. Gahh! And that was a pretty chase,\n eh, Click?\"\n\n\n \"Yeah. Sure.\nYou\nenjoyed it, every moment of it.\"\n\n\n \"I did that.\" Irish grinned, showing white uneven teeth. \"Now, what\n will we be doing with these uninvited guests at our door?\"\n\n\n \"Let me think—\"", "Marnagan smiled a smile broader than his shoulders. \"Hey, Click, look\n at me! I'm in one piece. Why, hell, the damned things turned tail and\n ran away!\"\n\n\n \"Ran, hell!\" cried Hathaway, rushing out, his face flushed and\n animated. \"They just plain vanished. They were only imaginative\n figments!\"\n\n\n \"And to think we let them hole us in that way, Click Hathaway, you\n coward!\"\n\n\n \"Smile when you say that, Irish.\"\n\n\n \"Sure, and ain't I always smilin'? Ah, Click boy, are them tears in\n your sweet grey eyes?\"\n\n\n \"Damn,\" swore the photographer, embarrassedly. \"Why don't they put\n window-wipers in these helmets?\"\n\n\n \"I'll take it up with the Board, lad.\"", "Then, Marnagan dropped into the tunnel, disappearing. Click heard the\n thud of his feet hitting the metal flooring.\n\n\n Click sucked in his breath, hard and fast.\n\n\n \"All right, put 'em up!\" a new harsh voice cried over a different\n radio. One of Gunther's guards.\n\n\n Three shots sizzled out, and Marnagan bellowed.\n\n\n The strange harsh voice said, \"That's better. Don't try and pick that\n gun up now. Oh, so it's you. I thought Gunther had finished you off.\n How'd you get past the animals?\"\n\n\n Click started running. He switched off his\nsending\naudio, kept his\nreceiving\non. Marnagan, weaponless.\nOne\nguard. Click gasped. Things\n were getting dark. Had to have air. Air. Air. He ran and kept running\n and listening to Marnagan's lying voice:", "Hathaway went on saying his thoughts: \"This is Gunther's work. He's\n here somewhere, probably laughing his guts out at the job he did us.\n Oh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back\n to Earth. I.P.'s Irish Marnagan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate\n whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins\n through to a triumphant finish. Photographed on the spot, in color, by\n yours truly, Click Hathaway. Cosmic Films, please notice.\"\nThey started walking, fast, over the pocked, rubbled plain toward a\n bony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't\n much to see, but it was better than standing still, waiting.", "Hathaway felt funny inside, suddenly. \"I never thought of that.\n Marnagan die? I just took it for granted you'd come through. You always\n have. Funny, but you don't think about dying. You try not to.\" Hathaway\n stared at his gloved hand, but the gloving was so thick and heavy he\n couldn't tell if it was shaking. Muscles in his bony face went down,\n pale. \"Where are we?\"\n\n\n \"A million miles from nobody.\"\n\n\n They stood in the middle of a pocked, time-eroded meteor plain that\n stretched off, dipping down into silent indigo and a rash of stars.\n Overhead, the sun poised; black and stars all around it, making it look\n sick.", "\"He didn't have to appear, Irish. He sent—them.\" Hathaway nodded at\n the beasts. \"People crashing here die from air-lack, no food, or from\n wounds caused at the crackup. If they survive all that—the animals\n tend to them. It all looks like Nature was responsible. See how subtle\n his attack is? Looks like accidental death instead of murder, if the\n Patrol happens to land and finds us. No reason for undue investigation,\n then.\"\n\n\n \"I don't see no Base around.\"\nClick shrugged. \"Still doubt it? Okay. Look.\" He tapped his camera and\n a spool popped out onto his gloved palm. Holding it up, he stripped\n it out to its full twenty inch length, held it to the light while it\n developed, smiling. It was one of his best inventions. Self-developing\n film. The first light struck film-surface, destroyed one chemical,\n leaving imprints; the second exposure simply hardened, secured the\n impressions. Quick stuff." ], [ "Hathaway went on saying his thoughts: \"This is Gunther's work. He's\n here somewhere, probably laughing his guts out at the job he did us.\n Oh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back\n to Earth. I.P.'s Irish Marnagan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate\n whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins\n through to a triumphant finish. Photographed on the spot, in color, by\n yours truly, Click Hathaway. Cosmic Films, please notice.\"\nThey started walking, fast, over the pocked, rubbled plain toward a\n bony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't\n much to see, but it was better than standing still, waiting.", "Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver\n for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running\n around in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but\n his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of\n Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.\n\n\n Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling\n for the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without\n much effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death\n wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying\n anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they\n had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.\n\n\n When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it\n up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:", "\"Lots of time, little man. Forty more minutes of air, to be exact.\"\nThey sat, staring at the monsters for about a minute. Hathaway felt\n funny about something; didn't know what. Something about these monsters\n and Gunther and—\n\n\n \"Which one will you be having?\" asked Irish, casually. \"A red one or a\n blue one?\"\n\n\n Hathaway laughed nervously. \"A pink one with yellow ruffles—Good God,\n now you've got\nme\ndoing it. Joking in the face of death.\"\n\n\n \"Me father taught me; keep laughing and you'll have Irish luck.\"\n\n\n That didn't please the photographer. \"I'm an Anglo-Swede,\" he pointed\n out.", "\"If you say them animals ain't there, that's all I need. Now, stand\n aside, you film-developing flea, and let an Irishman settle their\n bones.\" He took an unnecessary hitch in trousers that didn't exist\n except under an inch of porous metal plate. \"Your express purpose on\n this voyage, Hathaway, is taking films to be used by the Patrol later\n for teaching Junior Patrolmen how to act in tough spots. First-hand\n education. Poke another spool of film in that contraption and give me\n profile a scan. This is lesson number seven: Daniel Walks Into The\n Lion's Den.\"\n\n\n \"Irish, I—\"\n\n\n \"Shut up and load up.\"\n\n\n Hathaway nervously loaded the film-slot, raised it.\n\n\n \"Ready, Click?\"", "Across the Plaza, marching quietly and decisively, came the Patrol.\n Five hundred Patrolmen in one long, incredible line, carrying paralysis\n guns with them in their tight hands.\n\n\n Gunther babbled like a child, his voice a shrill dagger in the air.\n \"Get out there, you men! Throw them back! We're outnumbered!\"\n\n\n Guns flared. But the Patrol came on. Gunther's men didn't run, Hathaway\n had to credit them on that. They took it, standing.\n\n\n Hathaway chuckled inside, deep. What a sweet, sweet shot this was.\n His camera whirred, clicked and whirred again. Nobody stopped him\n from filming it. Everything was too wild, hot and angry. Gunther was\n throwing a fit, still seated at his desk, unable to move because of his\n fragile, bony legs and their atrophied state.", "Gunther sat there, blinking at Hathaway, not moving. His thin hands\n twitched in his lap. \"You are bluffing,\" he said, finally, with a firm\n directness. \"A ship hasn't landed here for an hour. Your ship was the\n last. Two people were on it. The last I saw of them they were being\n pursued to the death by the Beasts. One of you escaped, it seemed.\"\n\n\n \"Both. The other guy went after the Patrol.\"\n\n\n \"Impossible!\"\n\n\n \"I can't respect your opinion, Mr. Gunther.\"\n\n\n A shouting rose from the Plaza. About fifty of Gunther's men, lounging\n on carved benches during their time-off, stirred to their feet and\n started yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side\n of his office. He stared, hard.\n\n\n The Patrol was coming!", "It got quiet. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids\n rushing up, cold, blue and hard. You could hear your heart kicking a\n tom-tom between your sick stomach and your empty lungs.\n\n\n Stars, asteroids revolved. Click grabbed Marnagan because he was the\n nearest thing, and held on. You came hunting for a space-raider and you\n ended up cradled in a slab-sized Irishman's arms, diving at a hunk of\n metal death. What a fade-out!\n\n\n \"Irish!\" he heard himself say. \"Is this IT?\"\n\n\n \"Is this\nwhat\n?\" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet.\n\n\n \"Is this where the Big Producer yells CUT!?\"\n\n\n Marnagan fumed. \"I'll die when I'm damned good and ready. And when I'm\n ready I'll inform you and you can picture me profile for Cosmic Films!\"", "They both waited, thrust against the shipside and held by a hand of\n gravity; listening to each other's breathing hard in the earphones.\n\n\n The ship struck, once. Bouncing, it struck again. It turned end over\n and stopped. Hathaway felt himself grabbed; he and Marnagan rattled\n around—human dice in a croupier's cup. The shell of the ship burst,\n air and energy flung out.", "Hathaway screamed the air out of his lungs, but his brain was thinking\n quick crazy, unimportant things. The best scenes in life never reach\n film, or an audience. Like this one, dammit! Like\nthis\none! His\n brain spun, racketing like the instantaneous, flicking motions of his\n camera.\nSilence came and engulfed all the noise, ate it up and swallowed it.\n Hathaway shook his head, instinctively grabbed at the camera locked\n to his mid-belt. There was nothing but stars, twisted wreckage, cold\n that pierced through his vac-suit, and silence. He wriggled out of the\n wreckage into that silence.\n\n\n He didn't know what he was doing until he found the camera in his\n fingers as if it had grown there when he was born. He stood there,\n thinking \"Well, I'll at least have a few good scenes on film. I'll—\"", "\"If we walk in opposite directions, Click Hathaway, we'd be shaking\n hands the other side of this rock in two hours.\" Marnagan shook his mop\n of dusty red hair. \"And I promised the boys at Luna Base this time I'd\n capture that Gunther lad!\"\n\n\n His voice stopped and the silence spoke.\n\n\n Hathaway felt his heart pumping slow, hot pumps of blood. \"I checked\n my oxygen, Irish. Sixty minutes of breathing left.\"\n\n\n The silence punctuated that sentence, too. Upon the sharp meteoric\n rocks Hathaway saw the tangled insides of the radio, the food supply\n mashed and scattered. They were lucky to have escaped. Or\nwas\nsuffocation a better death...?\nSixty minutes.\nThey stood and looked at one another.\n\n\n \"Damn that meteor!\" said Marnagan, hotly.", "\"But, we've got to\nmove\n, Irish. We've got twenty minutes of oxygen.\n In that time we've got to trace those monsters to their source,\n Gunther's Base, fight our way in, and get fresh oxy-cannisters.\" Click\n attached his camera to his mid-belt. \"Gunther probably thinks we're\n dead by now. Everyone else's been fooled by his playmates; they never\n had a chance to disbelieve them.\"\n\n\n \"If it hadn't been for you taking them pictures, Click—\"\n\n\n \"Coupled with your damned stubborn attitude about the accident—\" Click\n stopped and felt his insides turning to water. He shook his head and\n felt a film slip down over his eyes. He spread his legs out to steady\n himself, and swayed. \"I—I don't think my oxygen is as full as yours.\n This excitement had me double-breathing and I feel sick.\"", "Hathaway felt funny inside, suddenly. \"I never thought of that.\n Marnagan die? I just took it for granted you'd come through. You always\n have. Funny, but you don't think about dying. You try not to.\" Hathaway\n stared at his gloved hand, but the gloving was so thick and heavy he\n couldn't tell if it was shaking. Muscles in his bony face went down,\n pale. \"Where are we?\"\n\n\n \"A million miles from nobody.\"\n\n\n They stood in the middle of a pocked, time-eroded meteor plain that\n stretched off, dipping down into silent indigo and a rash of stars.\n Overhead, the sun poised; black and stars all around it, making it look\n sick.", "They stopped, together.\n\n\n \"Oops!\" Click said.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" Marnagan blinked. \"Did you feel\nthat\n?\"\n\n\n Hathaway's body felt feathery, light as a whisper, boneless and\n limbless, suddenly. \"Irish! We lost weight, coming over that ridge!\"\n\n\n They ran back. \"Let's try it again.\"\n\n\n They tried it. They scowled at each other. The same thing happened.\n \"Gravity should not act this way, Click.\"\n\n\n \"Are you telling me? It's man-made. Better than that—it's Gunther! No\n wonder we fell so fast—we were dragged down by a super-gravity set-up!\n Gunther'd do anything to—did I say\nanything\n?\"", "Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three\n of the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and\n twitch. God, what photography!\n\n\n Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He\n fired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paper-weight.\n Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos\n taking place immediately outside his window.\n\n\n The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And\n out of the chaos came Marnagan's voice, \"Here!\"", "Marnagan smiled a smile broader than his shoulders. \"Hey, Click, look\n at me! I'm in one piece. Why, hell, the damned things turned tail and\n ran away!\"\n\n\n \"Ran, hell!\" cried Hathaway, rushing out, his face flushed and\n animated. \"They just plain vanished. They were only imaginative\n figments!\"\n\n\n \"And to think we let them hole us in that way, Click Hathaway, you\n coward!\"\n\n\n \"Smile when you say that, Irish.\"\n\n\n \"Sure, and ain't I always smilin'? Ah, Click boy, are them tears in\n your sweet grey eyes?\"\n\n\n \"Damn,\" swore the photographer, embarrassedly. \"Why don't they put\n window-wipers in these helmets?\"\n\n\n \"I'll take it up with the Board, lad.\"", "Marnagan made as if to move, crumpled clumsily forward.\n\n\n Hathaway ran in, snatched up the gun, smirked at the guard. \"Thanks for\n posing,\" he said. \"That shot will go down in film history for candid\n acting.\"\n\n\n \"What!\"\n\n\n \"Ah: ah! Keep your place. I've got a real gun now. Where's the door\n leading into the Base?\"\n\n\n The guard moved his head sullenly over his left shoulder.\n\n\n Click was afraid he would show his weak dizziness. He needed air.\n \"Okay. Drag Marnagan with you, open the door and we'll have air. Double\n time! Double!\"", "Marnagan shifted uneasily. \"Here, now. You're doing nothing but\n sitting, looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet, so take\n me a profile shot of the beasties and myself.\"\n\n\n Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. \"What in hell's the use? All\n this swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it.\"\n\n\n \"Then,\" retorted Marnagan, \"we'll develop it for our own benefit; while\n waitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our\n rescue!\"\n\n\n Hathaway snorted. \"U.S. Cavalry.\"\n\n\n Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. \"Snap me this pose,\" he\n said. \"I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped,\n my capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace\n negotiations betwixt me and these pixies.\"", "Marnagan said, \"We're working on margin, and we got nothin' to sweat\n with except your suspicions about this not being an accident. We got\n fifty minutes to prove you're right. After that—right or wrong—you'll\n be Cosmic Films prettiest unmoving, unbreathin' genius. But talk all\n you like, Click. It's times like this when we all need words, any\n words, on our tongues. You got your camera and your scoop. Talk about\n it. As for me—\" he twisted his glossy red face. \"Keeping alive is me\n hobby. And this sort of two-bit death I did not order.\"\n\n\n Click nodded. \"Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish.\n It's irony clean through. That's probably why he planned the meteor and\n the crash this way.\"\n\n\n Marnagan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far\n down, and the green eyes blazed.", "Marnagan's homely face grimaced in sympathy. \"Hold tight, Click. The\n guy that invented these fish-bowls didn't provide for a sick stomach.\"\n\n\n \"Hold tight, hell, let's move. We've got to find where those animals\n came from! And the only way to do that is to get the animals to come\n back!\"\n\n\n \"Come back? How?\"\n\n\n \"They're waiting, just outside the aura of our thoughts, and if we\n believe in them again, they'll return.\"\n\n\n Marnagan didn't like it. \"Won't—won't they kill us—if they come—if\n we believe in 'em?\"\n\n\n Hathaway shook a head that was tons heavy and weary. \"Not if we believe\n in them to a\ncertain point\n. Psychologically they can both be seen and\n felt. We only want to\nsee\nthem coming at us again.\"", "\"I—I guess so,\" said Hathaway. \"And remember, think it hard, Irish.\n Think it hard. There aren't any animals—\"\n\n\n \"Keep me in focus, lad.\"\n\n\n \"All the way, Irish.\"\n\n\n \"What do they say...? Oh, yeah. Action. Lights. Camera!\"\n\n\n Marnagan held his gun out in front of him and still smiling took one,\n two, three, four steps out into the outside world. The monsters were\n waiting for him at the fifth step. Marnagan kept walking.\n\n\n Right out into the middle of them....\nThat was the sweetest shot Hathaway ever took. Marnagan and the\n monsters!\n\n\n Only now it was only Marnagan.\n\n\n No more monsters." ], [ "The telepathic sending station for the animals was a great bank of\n intricate, glittering machine, through which strips of colored film\n with images slid into slots and machine mouths that translated them\n into thought-emanations. A damned neat piece of genius.\n\n\n \"So here we are, still not much better off than we were,\" growled\n Irish. \"We haven't a ship or a space-radio, and more guards'll turn\n up any moment. You think we could refocus this doohingey, project the\n monsters inside the asteroid to fool the pirates themselves?\"\n\n\n \"What good would that do?\" Hathaway gnawed his lip. \"They wouldn't fool\n the engineers who created them, you nut.\"", "Inserting the film-tongue into a micro-viewer in the camera's base,\n Click handed the whole thing over. \"Look.\"\n\n\n Marnagan put the viewer up against the helmet glass, squinted. \"Ah,\n Click. Now, now. This is one lousy film you invented.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\"\n\n\n \"It's a strange process'll develop my picture and ignore the asteroid\n monsters complete.\"\n\n\n \"What!\"\n\n\n Hathaway grabbed the camera, gasped, squinted, and gasped again:\n Pictures in montage; Marnagan sitting down, chatting conversationally\n with\nnothing\n; Marnagan shooting his gun at\nnothing\n; Marnagan\n pretending to be happy in front of\nnothing\n.\n\n\n Then, closeup—of—NOTHING!", "Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three\n of the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and\n twitch. God, what photography!\n\n\n Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He\n fired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paper-weight.\n Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos\n taking place immediately outside his window.\n\n\n The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And\n out of the chaos came Marnagan's voice, \"Here!\"", "\"He didn't have to appear, Irish. He sent—them.\" Hathaway nodded at\n the beasts. \"People crashing here die from air-lack, no food, or from\n wounds caused at the crackup. If they survive all that—the animals\n tend to them. It all looks like Nature was responsible. See how subtle\n his attack is? Looks like accidental death instead of murder, if the\n Patrol happens to land and finds us. No reason for undue investigation,\n then.\"\n\n\n \"I don't see no Base around.\"\nClick shrugged. \"Still doubt it? Okay. Look.\" He tapped his camera and\n a spool popped out onto his gloved palm. Holding it up, he stripped\n it out to its full twenty inch length, held it to the light while it\n developed, smiling. It was one of his best inventions. Self-developing\n film. The first light struck film-surface, destroyed one chemical,\n leaving imprints; the second exposure simply hardened, secured the\n impressions. Quick stuff.", "\"If you say them animals ain't there, that's all I need. Now, stand\n aside, you film-developing flea, and let an Irishman settle their\n bones.\" He took an unnecessary hitch in trousers that didn't exist\n except under an inch of porous metal plate. \"Your express purpose on\n this voyage, Hathaway, is taking films to be used by the Patrol later\n for teaching Junior Patrolmen how to act in tough spots. First-hand\n education. Poke another spool of film in that contraption and give me\n profile a scan. This is lesson number seven: Daniel Walks Into The\n Lion's Den.\"\n\n\n \"Irish, I—\"\n\n\n \"Shut up and load up.\"\n\n\n Hathaway nervously loaded the film-slot, raised it.\n\n\n \"Ready, Click?\"", "\"I tied them pink elephants of Gunther's in neat alphabetical bundles\n and stacked them up to dry, ya louse!\" Marnagan said. \"But, damn you,\n they killed my partner before he had a chance!\"\n\n\n The guard laughed.\nThe air-lock door was still wide open when Click reached it, his head\n swimming darkly, his lungs crammed with pain-fire and hell-rockets. He\n let himself down in, quiet and soft. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't\n have a weapon. Oh, damn, damn!", "A hunk of metal teetered, fell with a crash. Marnagan elevated seven\n feet of bellowing manhood from the wreck.\n\n\n \"Hold it!\" cracked Hathaway's high voice. Marnagan froze. The camera\n whirred. \"Low angle shot; Interplanetary Patrolman emerges unscathed\n from asteroid crackup. Swell stuff. I'll get a raise for this!\"\n\n\n \"From the toe of me boot!\" snarled Marnagan brusquely. Oxen shoulders\n flexed inside his vac-suit. \"I might've died in there, and you nursin'\n that film-contraption!\"", "\"Click—\" Marnagan's face was a bitter, tortured movement behind glass.\n \"Click—\" He was fighting hard. \"I—I—sure now. Sure—\" He smiled.\n \"It—it's only a shanty fake!\"\n\n\n \"Keep saying it, Irish. Keep it up.\"\n\n\n Marnagan's thick lips opened. \"It's only a fake,\" he said. And then,\n irritated, \"Get the hell off me, Hathaway. Let me up to my feet!\"\n\n\n Hathaway got up, shakily. The air in his helmet smelled stale, and\n little bubbles danced in his eyes. \"Irish,\nyou\nforget the monsters.\n Let me handle them, I know how. They might fool you again, you might\n forget.\"\n\n\n Marnagan showed his teeth. \"Gah! Let a flea have all the fun? And\n besides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty.\"", "Then, Marnagan dropped into the tunnel, disappearing. Click heard the\n thud of his feet hitting the metal flooring.\n\n\n Click sucked in his breath, hard and fast.\n\n\n \"All right, put 'em up!\" a new harsh voice cried over a different\n radio. One of Gunther's guards.\n\n\n Three shots sizzled out, and Marnagan bellowed.\n\n\n The strange harsh voice said, \"That's better. Don't try and pick that\n gun up now. Oh, so it's you. I thought Gunther had finished you off.\n How'd you get past the animals?\"\n\n\n Click started running. He switched off his\nsending\naudio, kept his\nreceiving\non. Marnagan, weaponless.\nOne\nguard. Click gasped. Things\n were getting dark. Had to have air. Air. Air. He ran and kept running\n and listening to Marnagan's lying voice:", "\"You only have to do three things. Walk with your gun out in front of\n you, firing. That's number one. Number two is to clutch at your heart\n and fall down dead. Number three is to clutch at your side, fall down\n and twitch on the ground. Is that clear?\"\n\n\n \"Clear as the Coal Sack Nebula....\"\n\n\n An hour later Hathaway trudged down a passageway that led out into a\n sort of city street inside the asteroid. There were about six streets,\n lined with cube houses in yellow metal, ending near Hathaway in a\n wide, green-lawned Plaza.\n\n\n Hathaway, weaponless, idly carrying his camera in one hand, walked\n across the Plaza as if he owned it. He was heading for a building that\n was pretentious enough to be Gunther's quarters.\n\n\n He got halfway there when he felt a gun in his back.", "Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver\n for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running\n around in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but\n his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of\n Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.\n\n\n Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling\n for the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without\n much effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death\n wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying\n anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they\n had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.\n\n\n When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it\n up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:", "Marnagan shifted uneasily. \"Here, now. You're doing nothing but\n sitting, looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet, so take\n me a profile shot of the beasties and myself.\"\n\n\n Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. \"What in hell's the use? All\n this swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it.\"\n\n\n \"Then,\" retorted Marnagan, \"we'll develop it for our own benefit; while\n waitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our\n rescue!\"\n\n\n Hathaway snorted. \"U.S. Cavalry.\"\n\n\n Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. \"Snap me this pose,\" he\n said. \"I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped,\n my capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace\n negotiations betwixt me and these pixies.\"", "Hathaway went on saying his thoughts: \"This is Gunther's work. He's\n here somewhere, probably laughing his guts out at the job he did us.\n Oh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back\n to Earth. I.P.'s Irish Marnagan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate\n whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins\n through to a triumphant finish. Photographed on the spot, in color, by\n yours truly, Click Hathaway. Cosmic Films, please notice.\"\nThey started walking, fast, over the pocked, rubbled plain toward a\n bony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't\n much to see, but it was better than standing still, waiting.", "They both waited, thrust against the shipside and held by a hand of\n gravity; listening to each other's breathing hard in the earphones.\n\n\n The ship struck, once. Bouncing, it struck again. It turned end over\n and stopped. Hathaway felt himself grabbed; he and Marnagan rattled\n around—human dice in a croupier's cup. The shell of the ship burst,\n air and energy flung out.", "They stopped, together.\n\n\n \"Oops!\" Click said.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" Marnagan blinked. \"Did you feel\nthat\n?\"\n\n\n Hathaway's body felt feathery, light as a whisper, boneless and\n limbless, suddenly. \"Irish! We lost weight, coming over that ridge!\"\n\n\n They ran back. \"Let's try it again.\"\n\n\n They tried it. They scowled at each other. The same thing happened.\n \"Gravity should not act this way, Click.\"\n\n\n \"Are you telling me? It's man-made. Better than that—it's Gunther! No\n wonder we fell so fast—we were dragged down by a super-gravity set-up!\n Gunther'd do anything to—did I say\nanything\n?\"", "\"If we walk in opposite directions, Click Hathaway, we'd be shaking\n hands the other side of this rock in two hours.\" Marnagan shook his mop\n of dusty red hair. \"And I promised the boys at Luna Base this time I'd\n capture that Gunther lad!\"\n\n\n His voice stopped and the silence spoke.\n\n\n Hathaway felt his heart pumping slow, hot pumps of blood. \"I checked\n my oxygen, Irish. Sixty minutes of breathing left.\"\n\n\n The silence punctuated that sentence, too. Upon the sharp meteoric\n rocks Hathaway saw the tangled insides of the radio, the food supply\n mashed and scattered. They were lucky to have escaped. Or\nwas\nsuffocation a better death...?\nSixty minutes.\nThey stood and looked at one another.\n\n\n \"Damn that meteor!\" said Marnagan, hotly.", "It got quiet. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids\n rushing up, cold, blue and hard. You could hear your heart kicking a\n tom-tom between your sick stomach and your empty lungs.\n\n\n Stars, asteroids revolved. Click grabbed Marnagan because he was the\n nearest thing, and held on. You came hunting for a space-raider and you\n ended up cradled in a slab-sized Irishman's arms, diving at a hunk of\n metal death. What a fade-out!\n\n\n \"Irish!\" he heard himself say. \"Is this IT?\"\n\n\n \"Is this\nwhat\n?\" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet.\n\n\n \"Is this where the Big Producer yells CUT!?\"\n\n\n Marnagan fumed. \"I'll die when I'm damned good and ready. And when I'm\n ready I'll inform you and you can picture me profile for Cosmic Films!\"", "The monsters had failed to image the film. Marnagan was there, his hair\n like a red banner, his freckled face with the blue eyes bright in it.\n Maybe—\n\n\n Hathaway said it, loud: \"Irish! Irish! I think I see a way out of this\n mess! Here—\"\n\n\n He elucidated it over and over again to the Patrolman. About the film,\n the beasts, and how the film couldn't be wrong. If the film said the\n monsters weren't there, they weren't there.\n\n\n \"Yeah,\" said Marnagan. \"But step outside this cave—\"\n\n\n \"If my theory is correct I'll do it, unafraid,\" said Click.\n\n\n Marnagan scowled. \"You sure them beasts don't radiate ultra-violet or\n infra-red or something that won't come out on film?\"", "Gunther sat there, blinking at Hathaway, not moving. His thin hands\n twitched in his lap. \"You are bluffing,\" he said, finally, with a firm\n directness. \"A ship hasn't landed here for an hour. Your ship was the\n last. Two people were on it. The last I saw of them they were being\n pursued to the death by the Beasts. One of you escaped, it seemed.\"\n\n\n \"Both. The other guy went after the Patrol.\"\n\n\n \"Impossible!\"\n\n\n \"I can't respect your opinion, Mr. Gunther.\"\n\n\n A shouting rose from the Plaza. About fifty of Gunther's men, lounging\n on carved benches during their time-off, stirred to their feet and\n started yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side\n of his office. He stared, hard.\n\n\n The Patrol was coming!", "Hathaway leaped backward in reaction. His eyes widened and his hand\n came up, jabbing. Over a hill-ridge swarmed a brew of unbelievable\n horrors. Progeny from Frankenstein's ARK. Immense crimson beasts with\n numerous legs and gnashing mandibles, brown-black creatures, some\n tubular and fat, others like thin white poisonous whips slashing along\n in the air. Fangs caught starlight white on them.\n\n\n Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Sweat broke\n cold on his body. The immense things rolled, slithered and squirmed\n after him. A blast of light. Marnagan, firing his proton-gun. Then, in\n Click's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt\n the creatures at all.\n\n\n \"Irish!\" Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an incline\n toward the mouth a small cave. \"This way, fella!\"" ], [ "Hathaway leaped backward in reaction. His eyes widened and his hand\n came up, jabbing. Over a hill-ridge swarmed a brew of unbelievable\n horrors. Progeny from Frankenstein's ARK. Immense crimson beasts with\n numerous legs and gnashing mandibles, brown-black creatures, some\n tubular and fat, others like thin white poisonous whips slashing along\n in the air. Fangs caught starlight white on them.\n\n\n Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Sweat broke\n cold on his body. The immense things rolled, slithered and squirmed\n after him. A blast of light. Marnagan, firing his proton-gun. Then, in\n Click's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt\n the creatures at all.\n\n\n \"Irish!\" Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an incline\n toward the mouth a small cave. \"This way, fella!\"", "Hathaway felt funny inside, suddenly. \"I never thought of that.\n Marnagan die? I just took it for granted you'd come through. You always\n have. Funny, but you don't think about dying. You try not to.\" Hathaway\n stared at his gloved hand, but the gloving was so thick and heavy he\n couldn't tell if it was shaking. Muscles in his bony face went down,\n pale. \"Where are we?\"\n\n\n \"A million miles from nobody.\"\n\n\n They stood in the middle of a pocked, time-eroded meteor plain that\n stretched off, dipping down into silent indigo and a rash of stars.\n Overhead, the sun poised; black and stars all around it, making it look\n sick.", "A tunnel curved, ending in light, and two men silhouetted in that\n yellow glare. Marnagan, backed against a wall, his helmet cracked,\n air hissing slowly out of it, his face turning blue. And the guard, a\n proton gun extended stiffly before him, also in a vac-suit. The guard\n had his profile toward Hathaway, his lips twisting: \"I think I'll let\n you stand right there and die,\" he said quietly. \"That what Gunther\n wanted, anway. A nice sordid death.\"\n\n\n Hathaway took three strides, his hands out in front of him.\n\n\n \"Don't move!\" he snapped. \"I've got a weapon stronger than yours. One\n twitch and I'll blast you and the whole damned wall out from behind\n you! Freeze!\"\n\n\n The guard whirled. He widened his sharp eyes, and reluctantly, dropped\n his gun to the floor.\n\n\n \"Get his gun, Irish.\"", "Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three\n of the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and\n twitch. God, what photography!\n\n\n Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He\n fired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paper-weight.\n Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos\n taking place immediately outside his window.\n\n\n The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And\n out of the chaos came Marnagan's voice, \"Here!\"", "Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver\n for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running\n around in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but\n his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of\n Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.\n\n\n Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling\n for the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without\n much effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death\n wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying\n anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they\n had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.\n\n\n When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it\n up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:", "Marnagan exhaled disgustedly. \"Ah, if only the U.S. Cavalry would come\n riding over the hill—\"\n\"Irish!\" Hathaway snapped that, his face lighting up. \"Irish. The U.S.\n Cavalry it is!\" His eyes darted over the machines. \"Here. Help me.\n We'll stage everything on the most colossal raid of the century.\"\n\n\n Marnagan winced. \"You breathing oxygen or whiskey?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one stipulation I make, Irish. I want a complete picture\n of Marnagan capturing Raider's Base. I want a picture of Gunther's face\n when you do it. Snap it, now, we've got rush work to do. How good an\n actor are you?\"\n\n\n \"That's a silly question.\"", "Marnagan shifted uneasily. \"Here, now. You're doing nothing but\n sitting, looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet, so take\n me a profile shot of the beasties and myself.\"\n\n\n Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. \"What in hell's the use? All\n this swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it.\"\n\n\n \"Then,\" retorted Marnagan, \"we'll develop it for our own benefit; while\n waitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our\n rescue!\"\n\n\n Hathaway snorted. \"U.S. Cavalry.\"\n\n\n Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. \"Snap me this pose,\" he\n said. \"I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped,\n my capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace\n negotiations betwixt me and these pixies.\"", "Marnagan made as if to move, crumpled clumsily forward.\n\n\n Hathaway ran in, snatched up the gun, smirked at the guard. \"Thanks for\n posing,\" he said. \"That shot will go down in film history for candid\n acting.\"\n\n\n \"What!\"\n\n\n \"Ah: ah! Keep your place. I've got a real gun now. Where's the door\n leading into the Base?\"\n\n\n The guard moved his head sullenly over his left shoulder.\n\n\n Click was afraid he would show his weak dizziness. He needed air.\n \"Okay. Drag Marnagan with you, open the door and we'll have air. Double\n time! Double!\"", "Hathaway went on saying his thoughts: \"This is Gunther's work. He's\n here somewhere, probably laughing his guts out at the job he did us.\n Oh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back\n to Earth. I.P.'s Irish Marnagan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate\n whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins\n through to a triumphant finish. Photographed on the spot, in color, by\n yours truly, Click Hathaway. Cosmic Films, please notice.\"\nThey started walking, fast, over the pocked, rubbled plain toward a\n bony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't\n much to see, but it was better than standing still, waiting.", "They both waited, thrust against the shipside and held by a hand of\n gravity; listening to each other's breathing hard in the earphones.\n\n\n The ship struck, once. Bouncing, it struck again. It turned end over\n and stopped. Hathaway felt himself grabbed; he and Marnagan rattled\n around—human dice in a croupier's cup. The shell of the ship burst,\n air and energy flung out.", "A hunk of metal teetered, fell with a crash. Marnagan elevated seven\n feet of bellowing manhood from the wreck.\n\n\n \"Hold it!\" cracked Hathaway's high voice. Marnagan froze. The camera\n whirred. \"Low angle shot; Interplanetary Patrolman emerges unscathed\n from asteroid crackup. Swell stuff. I'll get a raise for this!\"\n\n\n \"From the toe of me boot!\" snarled Marnagan brusquely. Oxen shoulders\n flexed inside his vac-suit. \"I might've died in there, and you nursin'\n that film-contraption!\"", "The picture of Marnagan hunched huge over the control-console,\n wrenching levers, jamming studs with freckled fists. And out in the\n dark of the fore-part there was space and a star-sprinkling and this\n meteor coming like blazing fury.\n\n\n Click Hathaway felt the ship move under him like a sensitive animal's\n skin. And then the meteor hit. It made a spiked fist and knocked the\n rear-jets flat, and the ship spun like a cosmic merry-go-round.\n\n\n There was plenty of noise. Too damned much. Hathaway only knew he was\n picked up and hurled against a lever-bank, and that Marnagan wasn't\n long in following, swearing loud words. Click remembered hanging on to\n his camera and gritting to keep holding it. What a sweet shot that had\n been of the meteor! A sweeter one still of Marnagan beating hell out of\n the controls and keeping his words to himself until just now.", "\"I—I guess so,\" said Hathaway. \"And remember, think it hard, Irish.\n Think it hard. There aren't any animals—\"\n\n\n \"Keep me in focus, lad.\"\n\n\n \"All the way, Irish.\"\n\n\n \"What do they say...? Oh, yeah. Action. Lights. Camera!\"\n\n\n Marnagan held his gun out in front of him and still smiling took one,\n two, three, four steps out into the outside world. The monsters were\n waiting for him at the fifth step. Marnagan kept walking.\n\n\n Right out into the middle of them....\nThat was the sweetest shot Hathaway ever took. Marnagan and the\n monsters!\n\n\n Only now it was only Marnagan.\n\n\n No more monsters.", "Marnagan said, \"We're working on margin, and we got nothin' to sweat\n with except your suspicions about this not being an accident. We got\n fifty minutes to prove you're right. After that—right or wrong—you'll\n be Cosmic Films prettiest unmoving, unbreathin' genius. But talk all\n you like, Click. It's times like this when we all need words, any\n words, on our tongues. You got your camera and your scoop. Talk about\n it. As for me—\" he twisted his glossy red face. \"Keeping alive is me\n hobby. And this sort of two-bit death I did not order.\"\n\n\n Click nodded. \"Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish.\n It's irony clean through. That's probably why he planned the meteor and\n the crash this way.\"\n\n\n Marnagan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far\n down, and the green eyes blazed.", "\"Nuts! Any color\nwe\nsee, the camera sees. We've been fooled.\"\n\n\n \"Hey, where\nyou\ngoing?\" Marnagan blocked Hathaway as the smaller man\n tried pushing past him.\n\n\n \"Get out of the way,\" said Hathaway.\n\n\n Marnagan put his big fists on his hips. \"If anyone is going anywhere,\n it'll be me does the going.\"\n\n\n \"I can't let you do that, Irish.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n\n \"You'd be going on my say-so.\"\n\n\n \"Ain't your say-so good enough for me?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. Sure. Of course. I guess—\"", "Marnagan smiled a smile broader than his shoulders. \"Hey, Click, look\n at me! I'm in one piece. Why, hell, the damned things turned tail and\n ran away!\"\n\n\n \"Ran, hell!\" cried Hathaway, rushing out, his face flushed and\n animated. \"They just plain vanished. They were only imaginative\n figments!\"\n\n\n \"And to think we let them hole us in that way, Click Hathaway, you\n coward!\"\n\n\n \"Smile when you say that, Irish.\"\n\n\n \"Sure, and ain't I always smilin'? Ah, Click boy, are them tears in\n your sweet grey eyes?\"\n\n\n \"Damn,\" swore the photographer, embarrassedly. \"Why don't they put\n window-wipers in these helmets?\"\n\n\n \"I'll take it up with the Board, lad.\"", "Hathaway made it first, Marnagan bellowing just behind him. \"They're\n too big; they can't get us in here!\" Click's voice gasped it out,\n as Marnagan squeezed his two-hundred-fifty pounds beside him.\n Instinctively, Hathaway added, \"Asteroid monsters! My camera! What a\n scene!\"\n\n\n \"Damn your damn camera!\" yelled Marnagan. \"They might come in!\"\n\n\n \"Use your gun.\"\n\n\n \"They got impervious hides. No use. Gahh! And that was a pretty chase,\n eh, Click?\"\n\n\n \"Yeah. Sure.\nYou\nenjoyed it, every moment of it.\"\n\n\n \"I did that.\" Irish grinned, showing white uneven teeth. \"Now, what\n will we be doing with these uninvited guests at our door?\"\n\n\n \"Let me think—\"", "\"Forget it. I was so blamed glad to see your homely carcass in one\n hunk, I couldn't help—Look, now, about Gunther. Those animals are part\n of his set-up. Explorers who land here inadvertently, are chased back\n into their ships, forced to take off. Tourists and the like. Nothing\n suspicious about animals. And if the tourists don't leave, the animals\n kill them.\"\n\n\n \"Shaw, now. Those animals can't kill.\"\n\n\n \"Think not, Mr. Marnagan? As long as we believed in them they could\n have frightened us to death, forced us, maybe, to commit suicide. If\n that isn't being dangerous—\"\n\n\n The Irishman whistled.", "\"Click—\" Marnagan's face was a bitter, tortured movement behind glass.\n \"Click—\" He was fighting hard. \"I—I—sure now. Sure—\" He smiled.\n \"It—it's only a shanty fake!\"\n\n\n \"Keep saying it, Irish. Keep it up.\"\n\n\n Marnagan's thick lips opened. \"It's only a fake,\" he said. And then,\n irritated, \"Get the hell off me, Hathaway. Let me up to my feet!\"\n\n\n Hathaway got up, shakily. The air in his helmet smelled stale, and\n little bubbles danced in his eyes. \"Irish,\nyou\nforget the monsters.\n Let me handle them, I know how. They might fool you again, you might\n forget.\"\n\n\n Marnagan showed his teeth. \"Gah! Let a flea have all the fun? And\n besides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty.\"", "Ten minutes later, Marnagan and Hathaway, fresh tanks of oxygen on\n their backs, Marnagan in a fresh bulger and helmet, trussed the guard,\n hid him in a huge trash receptacle. \"Where he belongs,\" observed Irish\n tersely.\n\n\n They found themselves in a complete inner world; an asteroid nothing\n more than a honey-comb fortress sliding through the void unchallenged.\n Perfect front for a raider who had little equipment and was\n short-handed of men. Gunther simply waited for specific cargo ships to\n rocket by, pulled them or knocked them down and swarmed over them for\n cargo. The animals served simply to insure against suspicion and the\n swarms of tourists that filled the void these days. Small fry weren't\n wanted. They were scared off." ], [ "Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver\n for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running\n around in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but\n his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of\n Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.\n\n\n Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling\n for the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without\n much effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death\n wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying\n anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they\n had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.\n\n\n When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it\n up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:", "Across the Plaza, marching quietly and decisively, came the Patrol.\n Five hundred Patrolmen in one long, incredible line, carrying paralysis\n guns with them in their tight hands.\n\n\n Gunther babbled like a child, his voice a shrill dagger in the air.\n \"Get out there, you men! Throw them back! We're outnumbered!\"\n\n\n Guns flared. But the Patrol came on. Gunther's men didn't run, Hathaway\n had to credit them on that. They took it, standing.\n\n\n Hathaway chuckled inside, deep. What a sweet, sweet shot this was.\n His camera whirred, clicked and whirred again. Nobody stopped him\n from filming it. Everything was too wild, hot and angry. Gunther was\n throwing a fit, still seated at his desk, unable to move because of his\n fragile, bony legs and their atrophied state.", "Gunther sat there, blinking at Hathaway, not moving. His thin hands\n twitched in his lap. \"You are bluffing,\" he said, finally, with a firm\n directness. \"A ship hasn't landed here for an hour. Your ship was the\n last. Two people were on it. The last I saw of them they were being\n pursued to the death by the Beasts. One of you escaped, it seemed.\"\n\n\n \"Both. The other guy went after the Patrol.\"\n\n\n \"Impossible!\"\n\n\n \"I can't respect your opinion, Mr. Gunther.\"\n\n\n A shouting rose from the Plaza. About fifty of Gunther's men, lounging\n on carved benches during their time-off, stirred to their feet and\n started yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side\n of his office. He stared, hard.\n\n\n The Patrol was coming!", "He didn't resist. They took him straight ahead to his destination and\n pushed him into a room where Gunther sat.\n\n\n Hathaway looked at him. \"So you're Gunther?\" he said, calmly. The\n pirate was incredibly old, his bulging forehead stood out over sunken,\n questioningly dark eyes, and his scrawny body was lost in folds of\n metal-link cloth. He glanced up from a paper-file, surprised. Before he\n could speak, Hathaway said:\n\n\n \"Everything's over with, Mr. Gunther. The Patrol is in the city now and\n we're capturing your Base. Don't try to fight. We've a thousand men\n against your eighty-five.\"", "Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three\n of the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and\n twitch. God, what photography!\n\n\n Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He\n fired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paper-weight.\n Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos\n taking place immediately outside his window.\n\n\n The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And\n out of the chaos came Marnagan's voice, \"Here!\"", "Then, Marnagan dropped into the tunnel, disappearing. Click heard the\n thud of his feet hitting the metal flooring.\n\n\n Click sucked in his breath, hard and fast.\n\n\n \"All right, put 'em up!\" a new harsh voice cried over a different\n radio. One of Gunther's guards.\n\n\n Three shots sizzled out, and Marnagan bellowed.\n\n\n The strange harsh voice said, \"That's better. Don't try and pick that\n gun up now. Oh, so it's you. I thought Gunther had finished you off.\n How'd you get past the animals?\"\n\n\n Click started running. He switched off his\nsending\naudio, kept his\nreceiving\non. Marnagan, weaponless.\nOne\nguard. Click gasped. Things\n were getting dark. Had to have air. Air. Air. He ran and kept running\n and listening to Marnagan's lying voice:", "\"Forget it. I was so blamed glad to see your homely carcass in one\n hunk, I couldn't help—Look, now, about Gunther. Those animals are part\n of his set-up. Explorers who land here inadvertently, are chased back\n into their ships, forced to take off. Tourists and the like. Nothing\n suspicious about animals. And if the tourists don't leave, the animals\n kill them.\"\n\n\n \"Shaw, now. Those animals can't kill.\"\n\n\n \"Think not, Mr. Marnagan? As long as we believed in them they could\n have frightened us to death, forced us, maybe, to commit suicide. If\n that isn't being dangerous—\"\n\n\n The Irishman whistled.", "Marnagan said, \"We're working on margin, and we got nothin' to sweat\n with except your suspicions about this not being an accident. We got\n fifty minutes to prove you're right. After that—right or wrong—you'll\n be Cosmic Films prettiest unmoving, unbreathin' genius. But talk all\n you like, Click. It's times like this when we all need words, any\n words, on our tongues. You got your camera and your scoop. Talk about\n it. As for me—\" he twisted his glossy red face. \"Keeping alive is me\n hobby. And this sort of two-bit death I did not order.\"\n\n\n Click nodded. \"Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish.\n It's irony clean through. That's probably why he planned the meteor and\n the crash this way.\"\n\n\n Marnagan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far\n down, and the green eyes blazed.", "\"Lots of time, little man. Forty more minutes of air, to be exact.\"\nThey sat, staring at the monsters for about a minute. Hathaway felt\n funny about something; didn't know what. Something about these monsters\n and Gunther and—\n\n\n \"Which one will you be having?\" asked Irish, casually. \"A red one or a\n blue one?\"\n\n\n Hathaway laughed nervously. \"A pink one with yellow ruffles—Good God,\n now you've got\nme\ndoing it. Joking in the face of death.\"\n\n\n \"Me father taught me; keep laughing and you'll have Irish luck.\"\n\n\n That didn't please the photographer. \"I'm an Anglo-Swede,\" he pointed\n out.", "\"Gunther drew us down here, sure as Ceres! That gravity change we felt\n back on that ridge, Irish; that proves it. Gunther's short on men. So,\n what's he do; he builds an asteroid-base, and drags ships down. Space\n war isn't perfect yet, guns don't prime true in space, trajectory\n is lousy over long distances. So what's the best weapon, which\n dispenses with losing valuable, rare ships and a small bunch of men?\n Super-gravity and a couple of well-tossed meteors. Saves all around.\n It's a good front, this damned iron pebble. From it, Gunther strikes\n unseen; ships simply crash, that's all. A subtle hand, with all aces.\"\n\n\n Marnagan rumbled. \"Where is the dirty son, then!\"", "Hathaway went on saying his thoughts: \"This is Gunther's work. He's\n here somewhere, probably laughing his guts out at the job he did us.\n Oh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back\n to Earth. I.P.'s Irish Marnagan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate\n whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins\n through to a triumphant finish. Photographed on the spot, in color, by\n yours truly, Click Hathaway. Cosmic Films, please notice.\"\nThey started walking, fast, over the pocked, rubbled plain toward a\n bony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't\n much to see, but it was better than standing still, waiting.", "\"I tied them pink elephants of Gunther's in neat alphabetical bundles\n and stacked them up to dry, ya louse!\" Marnagan said. \"But, damn you,\n they killed my partner before he had a chance!\"\n\n\n The guard laughed.\nThe air-lock door was still wide open when Click reached it, his head\n swimming darkly, his lungs crammed with pain-fire and hell-rockets. He\n let himself down in, quiet and soft. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't\n have a weapon. Oh, damn, damn!", "Marnagan shifted uneasily. \"Here, now. You're doing nothing but\n sitting, looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet, so take\n me a profile shot of the beasties and myself.\"\n\n\n Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. \"What in hell's the use? All\n this swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it.\"\n\n\n \"Then,\" retorted Marnagan, \"we'll develop it for our own benefit; while\n waitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our\n rescue!\"\n\n\n Hathaway snorted. \"U.S. Cavalry.\"\n\n\n Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. \"Snap me this pose,\" he\n said. \"I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped,\n my capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace\n negotiations betwixt me and these pixies.\"", "Marnagan exhaled disgustedly. \"Ah, if only the U.S. Cavalry would come\n riding over the hill—\"\n\"Irish!\" Hathaway snapped that, his face lighting up. \"Irish. The U.S.\n Cavalry it is!\" His eyes darted over the machines. \"Here. Help me.\n We'll stage everything on the most colossal raid of the century.\"\n\n\n Marnagan winced. \"You breathing oxygen or whiskey?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one stipulation I make, Irish. I want a complete picture\n of Marnagan capturing Raider's Base. I want a picture of Gunther's face\n when you do it. Snap it, now, we've got rush work to do. How good an\n actor are you?\"\n\n\n \"That's a silly question.\"", "\"You only have to do three things. Walk with your gun out in front of\n you, firing. That's number one. Number two is to clutch at your heart\n and fall down dead. Number three is to clutch at your side, fall down\n and twitch on the ground. Is that clear?\"\n\n\n \"Clear as the Coal Sack Nebula....\"\n\n\n An hour later Hathaway trudged down a passageway that led out into a\n sort of city street inside the asteroid. There were about six streets,\n lined with cube houses in yellow metal, ending near Hathaway in a\n wide, green-lawned Plaza.\n\n\n Hathaway, weaponless, idly carrying his camera in one hand, walked\n across the Plaza as if he owned it. He was heading for a building that\n was pretentious enough to be Gunther's quarters.\n\n\n He got halfway there when he felt a gun in his back.", "A tunnel curved, ending in light, and two men silhouetted in that\n yellow glare. Marnagan, backed against a wall, his helmet cracked,\n air hissing slowly out of it, his face turning blue. And the guard, a\n proton gun extended stiffly before him, also in a vac-suit. The guard\n had his profile toward Hathaway, his lips twisting: \"I think I'll let\n you stand right there and die,\" he said quietly. \"That what Gunther\n wanted, anway. A nice sordid death.\"\n\n\n Hathaway took three strides, his hands out in front of him.\n\n\n \"Don't move!\" he snapped. \"I've got a weapon stronger than yours. One\n twitch and I'll blast you and the whole damned wall out from behind\n you! Freeze!\"\n\n\n The guard whirled. He widened his sharp eyes, and reluctantly, dropped\n his gun to the floor.\n\n\n \"Get his gun, Irish.\"", "\"But, we've got to\nmove\n, Irish. We've got twenty minutes of oxygen.\n In that time we've got to trace those monsters to their source,\n Gunther's Base, fight our way in, and get fresh oxy-cannisters.\" Click\n attached his camera to his mid-belt. \"Gunther probably thinks we're\n dead by now. Everyone else's been fooled by his playmates; they never\n had a chance to disbelieve them.\"\n\n\n \"If it hadn't been for you taking them pictures, Click—\"\n\n\n \"Coupled with your damned stubborn attitude about the accident—\" Click\n stopped and felt his insides turning to water. He shook his head and\n felt a film slip down over his eyes. He spread his legs out to steady\n himself, and swayed. \"I—I don't think my oxygen is as full as yours.\n This excitement had me double-breathing and I feel sick.\"", "They stopped, together.\n\n\n \"Oops!\" Click said.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" Marnagan blinked. \"Did you feel\nthat\n?\"\n\n\n Hathaway's body felt feathery, light as a whisper, boneless and\n limbless, suddenly. \"Irish! We lost weight, coming over that ridge!\"\n\n\n They ran back. \"Let's try it again.\"\n\n\n They tried it. They scowled at each other. The same thing happened.\n \"Gravity should not act this way, Click.\"\n\n\n \"Are you telling me? It's man-made. Better than that—it's Gunther! No\n wonder we fell so fast—we were dragged down by a super-gravity set-up!\n Gunther'd do anything to—did I say\nanything\n?\"", "Ten minutes later, Marnagan and Hathaway, fresh tanks of oxygen on\n their backs, Marnagan in a fresh bulger and helmet, trussed the guard,\n hid him in a huge trash receptacle. \"Where he belongs,\" observed Irish\n tersely.\n\n\n They found themselves in a complete inner world; an asteroid nothing\n more than a honey-comb fortress sliding through the void unchallenged.\n Perfect front for a raider who had little equipment and was\n short-handed of men. Gunther simply waited for specific cargo ships to\n rocket by, pulled them or knocked them down and swarmed over them for\n cargo. The animals served simply to insure against suspicion and the\n swarms of tourists that filled the void these days. Small fry weren't\n wanted. They were scared off.", "\"Click—\" Marnagan's face was a bitter, tortured movement behind glass.\n \"Click—\" He was fighting hard. \"I—I—sure now. Sure—\" He smiled.\n \"It—it's only a shanty fake!\"\n\n\n \"Keep saying it, Irish. Keep it up.\"\n\n\n Marnagan's thick lips opened. \"It's only a fake,\" he said. And then,\n irritated, \"Get the hell off me, Hathaway. Let me up to my feet!\"\n\n\n Hathaway got up, shakily. The air in his helmet smelled stale, and\n little bubbles danced in his eyes. \"Irish,\nyou\nforget the monsters.\n Let me handle them, I know how. They might fool you again, you might\n forget.\"\n\n\n Marnagan showed his teeth. \"Gah! Let a flea have all the fun? And\n besides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty.\"" ], [ "\"Click—\" Marnagan's face was a bitter, tortured movement behind glass.\n \"Click—\" He was fighting hard. \"I—I—sure now. Sure—\" He smiled.\n \"It—it's only a shanty fake!\"\n\n\n \"Keep saying it, Irish. Keep it up.\"\n\n\n Marnagan's thick lips opened. \"It's only a fake,\" he said. And then,\n irritated, \"Get the hell off me, Hathaway. Let me up to my feet!\"\n\n\n Hathaway got up, shakily. The air in his helmet smelled stale, and\n little bubbles danced in his eyes. \"Irish,\nyou\nforget the monsters.\n Let me handle them, I know how. They might fool you again, you might\n forget.\"\n\n\n Marnagan showed his teeth. \"Gah! Let a flea have all the fun? And\n besides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty.\"", "\"If you say them animals ain't there, that's all I need. Now, stand\n aside, you film-developing flea, and let an Irishman settle their\n bones.\" He took an unnecessary hitch in trousers that didn't exist\n except under an inch of porous metal plate. \"Your express purpose on\n this voyage, Hathaway, is taking films to be used by the Patrol later\n for teaching Junior Patrolmen how to act in tough spots. First-hand\n education. Poke another spool of film in that contraption and give me\n profile a scan. This is lesson number seven: Daniel Walks Into The\n Lion's Den.\"\n\n\n \"Irish, I—\"\n\n\n \"Shut up and load up.\"\n\n\n Hathaway nervously loaded the film-slot, raised it.\n\n\n \"Ready, Click?\"", "Hathaway screamed the air out of his lungs, but his brain was thinking\n quick crazy, unimportant things. The best scenes in life never reach\n film, or an audience. Like this one, dammit! Like\nthis\none! His\n brain spun, racketing like the instantaneous, flicking motions of his\n camera.\nSilence came and engulfed all the noise, ate it up and swallowed it.\n Hathaway shook his head, instinctively grabbed at the camera locked\n to his mid-belt. There was nothing but stars, twisted wreckage, cold\n that pierced through his vac-suit, and silence. He wriggled out of the\n wreckage into that silence.\n\n\n He didn't know what he was doing until he found the camera in his\n fingers as if it had grown there when he was born. He stood there,\n thinking \"Well, I'll at least have a few good scenes on film. I'll—\"", "\"Lots of time, little man. Forty more minutes of air, to be exact.\"\nThey sat, staring at the monsters for about a minute. Hathaway felt\n funny about something; didn't know what. Something about these monsters\n and Gunther and—\n\n\n \"Which one will you be having?\" asked Irish, casually. \"A red one or a\n blue one?\"\n\n\n Hathaway laughed nervously. \"A pink one with yellow ruffles—Good God,\n now you've got\nme\ndoing it. Joking in the face of death.\"\n\n\n \"Me father taught me; keep laughing and you'll have Irish luck.\"\n\n\n That didn't please the photographer. \"I'm an Anglo-Swede,\" he pointed\n out.", "It got quiet. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids\n rushing up, cold, blue and hard. You could hear your heart kicking a\n tom-tom between your sick stomach and your empty lungs.\n\n\n Stars, asteroids revolved. Click grabbed Marnagan because he was the\n nearest thing, and held on. You came hunting for a space-raider and you\n ended up cradled in a slab-sized Irishman's arms, diving at a hunk of\n metal death. What a fade-out!\n\n\n \"Irish!\" he heard himself say. \"Is this IT?\"\n\n\n \"Is this\nwhat\n?\" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet.\n\n\n \"Is this where the Big Producer yells CUT!?\"\n\n\n Marnagan fumed. \"I'll die when I'm damned good and ready. And when I'm\n ready I'll inform you and you can picture me profile for Cosmic Films!\"", "Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver\n for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running\n around in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but\n his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of\n Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.\n\n\n Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling\n for the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without\n much effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death\n wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying\n anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they\n had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.\n\n\n When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it\n up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:", "Inserting the film-tongue into a micro-viewer in the camera's base,\n Click handed the whole thing over. \"Look.\"\n\n\n Marnagan put the viewer up against the helmet glass, squinted. \"Ah,\n Click. Now, now. This is one lousy film you invented.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\"\n\n\n \"It's a strange process'll develop my picture and ignore the asteroid\n monsters complete.\"\n\n\n \"What!\"\n\n\n Hathaway grabbed the camera, gasped, squinted, and gasped again:\n Pictures in montage; Marnagan sitting down, chatting conversationally\n with\nnothing\n; Marnagan shooting his gun at\nnothing\n; Marnagan\n pretending to be happy in front of\nnothing\n.\n\n\n Then, closeup—of—NOTHING!", "\"Nuts! Any color\nwe\nsee, the camera sees. We've been fooled.\"\n\n\n \"Hey, where\nyou\ngoing?\" Marnagan blocked Hathaway as the smaller man\n tried pushing past him.\n\n\n \"Get out of the way,\" said Hathaway.\n\n\n Marnagan put his big fists on his hips. \"If anyone is going anywhere,\n it'll be me does the going.\"\n\n\n \"I can't let you do that, Irish.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n\n \"You'd be going on my say-so.\"\n\n\n \"Ain't your say-so good enough for me?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. Sure. Of course. I guess—\"", "\"He didn't have to appear, Irish. He sent—them.\" Hathaway nodded at\n the beasts. \"People crashing here die from air-lack, no food, or from\n wounds caused at the crackup. If they survive all that—the animals\n tend to them. It all looks like Nature was responsible. See how subtle\n his attack is? Looks like accidental death instead of murder, if the\n Patrol happens to land and finds us. No reason for undue investigation,\n then.\"\n\n\n \"I don't see no Base around.\"\nClick shrugged. \"Still doubt it? Okay. Look.\" He tapped his camera and\n a spool popped out onto his gloved palm. Holding it up, he stripped\n it out to its full twenty inch length, held it to the light while it\n developed, smiling. It was one of his best inventions. Self-developing\n film. The first light struck film-surface, destroyed one chemical,\n leaving imprints; the second exposure simply hardened, secured the\n impressions. Quick stuff.", "\"If we walk in opposite directions, Click Hathaway, we'd be shaking\n hands the other side of this rock in two hours.\" Marnagan shook his mop\n of dusty red hair. \"And I promised the boys at Luna Base this time I'd\n capture that Gunther lad!\"\n\n\n His voice stopped and the silence spoke.\n\n\n Hathaway felt his heart pumping slow, hot pumps of blood. \"I checked\n my oxygen, Irish. Sixty minutes of breathing left.\"\n\n\n The silence punctuated that sentence, too. Upon the sharp meteoric\n rocks Hathaway saw the tangled insides of the radio, the food supply\n mashed and scattered. They were lucky to have escaped. Or\nwas\nsuffocation a better death...?\nSixty minutes.\nThey stood and looked at one another.\n\n\n \"Damn that meteor!\" said Marnagan, hotly.", "Marnagan shifted uneasily. \"Here, now. You're doing nothing but\n sitting, looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet, so take\n me a profile shot of the beasties and myself.\"\n\n\n Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. \"What in hell's the use? All\n this swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it.\"\n\n\n \"Then,\" retorted Marnagan, \"we'll develop it for our own benefit; while\n waitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our\n rescue!\"\n\n\n Hathaway snorted. \"U.S. Cavalry.\"\n\n\n Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. \"Snap me this pose,\" he\n said. \"I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped,\n my capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace\n negotiations betwixt me and these pixies.\"", "\"I—I guess so,\" said Hathaway. \"And remember, think it hard, Irish.\n Think it hard. There aren't any animals—\"\n\n\n \"Keep me in focus, lad.\"\n\n\n \"All the way, Irish.\"\n\n\n \"What do they say...? Oh, yeah. Action. Lights. Camera!\"\n\n\n Marnagan held his gun out in front of him and still smiling took one,\n two, three, four steps out into the outside world. The monsters were\n waiting for him at the fifth step. Marnagan kept walking.\n\n\n Right out into the middle of them....\nThat was the sweetest shot Hathaway ever took. Marnagan and the\n monsters!\n\n\n Only now it was only Marnagan.\n\n\n No more monsters.", "Marnagan's homely face grimaced in sympathy. \"Hold tight, Click. The\n guy that invented these fish-bowls didn't provide for a sick stomach.\"\n\n\n \"Hold tight, hell, let's move. We've got to find where those animals\n came from! And the only way to do that is to get the animals to come\n back!\"\n\n\n \"Come back? How?\"\n\n\n \"They're waiting, just outside the aura of our thoughts, and if we\n believe in them again, they'll return.\"\n\n\n Marnagan didn't like it. \"Won't—won't they kill us—if they come—if\n we believe in 'em?\"\n\n\n Hathaway shook a head that was tons heavy and weary. \"Not if we believe\n in them to a\ncertain point\n. Psychologically they can both be seen and\n felt. We only want to\nsee\nthem coming at us again.\"", "Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three\n of the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and\n twitch. God, what photography!\n\n\n Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He\n fired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paper-weight.\n Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos\n taking place immediately outside his window.\n\n\n The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And\n out of the chaos came Marnagan's voice, \"Here!\"", "Marnagan exhaled disgustedly. \"Ah, if only the U.S. Cavalry would come\n riding over the hill—\"\n\"Irish!\" Hathaway snapped that, his face lighting up. \"Irish. The U.S.\n Cavalry it is!\" His eyes darted over the machines. \"Here. Help me.\n We'll stage everything on the most colossal raid of the century.\"\n\n\n Marnagan winced. \"You breathing oxygen or whiskey?\"\n\n\n \"There's only one stipulation I make, Irish. I want a complete picture\n of Marnagan capturing Raider's Base. I want a picture of Gunther's face\n when you do it. Snap it, now, we've got rush work to do. How good an\n actor are you?\"\n\n\n \"That's a silly question.\"", "Marnagan said, \"We're working on margin, and we got nothin' to sweat\n with except your suspicions about this not being an accident. We got\n fifty minutes to prove you're right. After that—right or wrong—you'll\n be Cosmic Films prettiest unmoving, unbreathin' genius. But talk all\n you like, Click. It's times like this when we all need words, any\n words, on our tongues. You got your camera and your scoop. Talk about\n it. As for me—\" he twisted his glossy red face. \"Keeping alive is me\n hobby. And this sort of two-bit death I did not order.\"\n\n\n Click nodded. \"Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish.\n It's irony clean through. That's probably why he planned the meteor and\n the crash this way.\"\n\n\n Marnagan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far\n down, and the green eyes blazed.", "\"Forget it. I was so blamed glad to see your homely carcass in one\n hunk, I couldn't help—Look, now, about Gunther. Those animals are part\n of his set-up. Explorers who land here inadvertently, are chased back\n into their ships, forced to take off. Tourists and the like. Nothing\n suspicious about animals. And if the tourists don't leave, the animals\n kill them.\"\n\n\n \"Shaw, now. Those animals can't kill.\"\n\n\n \"Think not, Mr. Marnagan? As long as we believed in them they could\n have frightened us to death, forced us, maybe, to commit suicide. If\n that isn't being dangerous—\"\n\n\n The Irishman whistled.", "\"But, we've got to\nmove\n, Irish. We've got twenty minutes of oxygen.\n In that time we've got to trace those monsters to their source,\n Gunther's Base, fight our way in, and get fresh oxy-cannisters.\" Click\n attached his camera to his mid-belt. \"Gunther probably thinks we're\n dead by now. Everyone else's been fooled by his playmates; they never\n had a chance to disbelieve them.\"\n\n\n \"If it hadn't been for you taking them pictures, Click—\"\n\n\n \"Coupled with your damned stubborn attitude about the accident—\" Click\n stopped and felt his insides turning to water. He shook his head and\n felt a film slip down over his eyes. He spread his legs out to steady\n himself, and swayed. \"I—I don't think my oxygen is as full as yours.\n This excitement had me double-breathing and I feel sick.\"", "\"\nDo\nwe, now?\"\n\n\n \"With twenty minutes left, maybe less—\"\n\n\n \"All right, Click, let's bring 'em back. How do we do it?\"\n\n\n Hathaway fought against the mist in his eyes. \"Just think—I will see\n the monsters again. I will see them again and I will not feel them.\n Think it over and over.\"\n\n\n Marnagan's hulk stirred uneasily. \"And—what if I forget to remember\n all that? What if I get excited...?\"\n\n\n Hathaway didn't answer. But his eyes told the story by just looking at\n Irish.\n\n\n Marnagan cursed. \"All right, lad. Let's have at it!\"\n\n\n The monsters returned.\nA soundless deluge of them, pouring over the rubbled horizon, swarming\n in malevolent anticipation about the two men.", "The telepathic sending station for the animals was a great bank of\n intricate, glittering machine, through which strips of colored film\n with images slid into slots and machine mouths that translated them\n into thought-emanations. A damned neat piece of genius.\n\n\n \"So here we are, still not much better off than we were,\" growled\n Irish. \"We haven't a ship or a space-radio, and more guards'll turn\n up any moment. You think we could refocus this doohingey, project the\n monsters inside the asteroid to fool the pirates themselves?\"\n\n\n \"What good would that do?\" Hathaway gnawed his lip. \"They wouldn't fool\n the engineers who created them, you nut.\"" ], [ "Marnagan said, \"We're working on margin, and we got nothin' to sweat\n with except your suspicions about this not being an accident. We got\n fifty minutes to prove you're right. After that—right or wrong—you'll\n be Cosmic Films prettiest unmoving, unbreathin' genius. But talk all\n you like, Click. It's times like this when we all need words, any\n words, on our tongues. You got your camera and your scoop. Talk about\n it. As for me—\" he twisted his glossy red face. \"Keeping alive is me\n hobby. And this sort of two-bit death I did not order.\"\n\n\n Click nodded. \"Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish.\n It's irony clean through. That's probably why he planned the meteor and\n the crash this way.\"\n\n\n Marnagan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far\n down, and the green eyes blazed.", "\"Click—\" Marnagan's face was a bitter, tortured movement behind glass.\n \"Click—\" He was fighting hard. \"I—I—sure now. Sure—\" He smiled.\n \"It—it's only a shanty fake!\"\n\n\n \"Keep saying it, Irish. Keep it up.\"\n\n\n Marnagan's thick lips opened. \"It's only a fake,\" he said. And then,\n irritated, \"Get the hell off me, Hathaway. Let me up to my feet!\"\n\n\n Hathaway got up, shakily. The air in his helmet smelled stale, and\n little bubbles danced in his eyes. \"Irish,\nyou\nforget the monsters.\n Let me handle them, I know how. They might fool you again, you might\n forget.\"\n\n\n Marnagan showed his teeth. \"Gah! Let a flea have all the fun? And\n besides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty.\"", "Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver\n for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running\n around in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but\n his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of\n Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.\n\n\n Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling\n for the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without\n much effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death\n wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying\n anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they\n had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.\n\n\n When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it\n up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:", "Then, Marnagan dropped into the tunnel, disappearing. Click heard the\n thud of his feet hitting the metal flooring.\n\n\n Click sucked in his breath, hard and fast.\n\n\n \"All right, put 'em up!\" a new harsh voice cried over a different\n radio. One of Gunther's guards.\n\n\n Three shots sizzled out, and Marnagan bellowed.\n\n\n The strange harsh voice said, \"That's better. Don't try and pick that\n gun up now. Oh, so it's you. I thought Gunther had finished you off.\n How'd you get past the animals?\"\n\n\n Click started running. He switched off his\nsending\naudio, kept his\nreceiving\non. Marnagan, weaponless.\nOne\nguard. Click gasped. Things\n were getting dark. Had to have air. Air. Air. He ran and kept running\n and listening to Marnagan's lying voice:", "The picture of Marnagan hunched huge over the control-console,\n wrenching levers, jamming studs with freckled fists. And out in the\n dark of the fore-part there was space and a star-sprinkling and this\n meteor coming like blazing fury.\n\n\n Click Hathaway felt the ship move under him like a sensitive animal's\n skin. And then the meteor hit. It made a spiked fist and knocked the\n rear-jets flat, and the ship spun like a cosmic merry-go-round.\n\n\n There was plenty of noise. Too damned much. Hathaway only knew he was\n picked up and hurled against a lever-bank, and that Marnagan wasn't\n long in following, swearing loud words. Click remembered hanging on to\n his camera and gritting to keep holding it. What a sweet shot that had\n been of the meteor! A sweeter one still of Marnagan beating hell out of\n the controls and keeping his words to himself until just now.", "Marnagan's homely face grimaced in sympathy. \"Hold tight, Click. The\n guy that invented these fish-bowls didn't provide for a sick stomach.\"\n\n\n \"Hold tight, hell, let's move. We've got to find where those animals\n came from! And the only way to do that is to get the animals to come\n back!\"\n\n\n \"Come back? How?\"\n\n\n \"They're waiting, just outside the aura of our thoughts, and if we\n believe in them again, they'll return.\"\n\n\n Marnagan didn't like it. \"Won't—won't they kill us—if they come—if\n we believe in 'em?\"\n\n\n Hathaway shook a head that was tons heavy and weary. \"Not if we believe\n in them to a\ncertain point\n. Psychologically they can both be seen and\n felt. We only want to\nsee\nthem coming at us again.\"", "\"I tied them pink elephants of Gunther's in neat alphabetical bundles\n and stacked them up to dry, ya louse!\" Marnagan said. \"But, damn you,\n they killed my partner before he had a chance!\"\n\n\n The guard laughed.\nThe air-lock door was still wide open when Click reached it, his head\n swimming darkly, his lungs crammed with pain-fire and hell-rockets. He\n let himself down in, quiet and soft. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't\n have a weapon. Oh, damn, damn!", "\"But, we've got to\nmove\n, Irish. We've got twenty minutes of oxygen.\n In that time we've got to trace those monsters to their source,\n Gunther's Base, fight our way in, and get fresh oxy-cannisters.\" Click\n attached his camera to his mid-belt. \"Gunther probably thinks we're\n dead by now. Everyone else's been fooled by his playmates; they never\n had a chance to disbelieve them.\"\n\n\n \"If it hadn't been for you taking them pictures, Click—\"\n\n\n \"Coupled with your damned stubborn attitude about the accident—\" Click\n stopped and felt his insides turning to water. He shook his head and\n felt a film slip down over his eyes. He spread his legs out to steady\n himself, and swayed. \"I—I don't think my oxygen is as full as yours.\n This excitement had me double-breathing and I feel sick.\"", "\"If you say them animals ain't there, that's all I need. Now, stand\n aside, you film-developing flea, and let an Irishman settle their\n bones.\" He took an unnecessary hitch in trousers that didn't exist\n except under an inch of porous metal plate. \"Your express purpose on\n this voyage, Hathaway, is taking films to be used by the Patrol later\n for teaching Junior Patrolmen how to act in tough spots. First-hand\n education. Poke another spool of film in that contraption and give me\n profile a scan. This is lesson number seven: Daniel Walks Into The\n Lion's Den.\"\n\n\n \"Irish, I—\"\n\n\n \"Shut up and load up.\"\n\n\n Hathaway nervously loaded the film-slot, raised it.\n\n\n \"Ready, Click?\"", "\"\nDo\nwe, now?\"\n\n\n \"With twenty minutes left, maybe less—\"\n\n\n \"All right, Click, let's bring 'em back. How do we do it?\"\n\n\n Hathaway fought against the mist in his eyes. \"Just think—I will see\n the monsters again. I will see them again and I will not feel them.\n Think it over and over.\"\n\n\n Marnagan's hulk stirred uneasily. \"And—what if I forget to remember\n all that? What if I get excited...?\"\n\n\n Hathaway didn't answer. But his eyes told the story by just looking at\n Irish.\n\n\n Marnagan cursed. \"All right, lad. Let's have at it!\"\n\n\n The monsters returned.\nA soundless deluge of them, pouring over the rubbled horizon, swarming\n in malevolent anticipation about the two men.", "Marnagan made as if to move, crumpled clumsily forward.\n\n\n Hathaway ran in, snatched up the gun, smirked at the guard. \"Thanks for\n posing,\" he said. \"That shot will go down in film history for candid\n acting.\"\n\n\n \"What!\"\n\n\n \"Ah: ah! Keep your place. I've got a real gun now. Where's the door\n leading into the Base?\"\n\n\n The guard moved his head sullenly over his left shoulder.\n\n\n Click was afraid he would show his weak dizziness. He needed air.\n \"Okay. Drag Marnagan with you, open the door and we'll have air. Double\n time! Double!\"", "It got quiet. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids\n rushing up, cold, blue and hard. You could hear your heart kicking a\n tom-tom between your sick stomach and your empty lungs.\n\n\n Stars, asteroids revolved. Click grabbed Marnagan because he was the\n nearest thing, and held on. You came hunting for a space-raider and you\n ended up cradled in a slab-sized Irishman's arms, diving at a hunk of\n metal death. What a fade-out!\n\n\n \"Irish!\" he heard himself say. \"Is this IT?\"\n\n\n \"Is this\nwhat\n?\" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet.\n\n\n \"Is this where the Big Producer yells CUT!?\"\n\n\n Marnagan fumed. \"I'll die when I'm damned good and ready. And when I'm\n ready I'll inform you and you can picture me profile for Cosmic Films!\"", "Hathaway leaped backward in reaction. His eyes widened and his hand\n came up, jabbing. Over a hill-ridge swarmed a brew of unbelievable\n horrors. Progeny from Frankenstein's ARK. Immense crimson beasts with\n numerous legs and gnashing mandibles, brown-black creatures, some\n tubular and fat, others like thin white poisonous whips slashing along\n in the air. Fangs caught starlight white on them.\n\n\n Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Sweat broke\n cold on his body. The immense things rolled, slithered and squirmed\n after him. A blast of light. Marnagan, firing his proton-gun. Then, in\n Click's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt\n the creatures at all.\n\n\n \"Irish!\" Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an incline\n toward the mouth a small cave. \"This way, fella!\"", "Hathaway went on saying his thoughts: \"This is Gunther's work. He's\n here somewhere, probably laughing his guts out at the job he did us.\n Oh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back\n to Earth. I.P.'s Irish Marnagan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate\n whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins\n through to a triumphant finish. Photographed on the spot, in color, by\n yours truly, Click Hathaway. Cosmic Films, please notice.\"\nThey started walking, fast, over the pocked, rubbled plain toward a\n bony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't\n much to see, but it was better than standing still, waiting.", "Marnagan smiled a smile broader than his shoulders. \"Hey, Click, look\n at me! I'm in one piece. Why, hell, the damned things turned tail and\n ran away!\"\n\n\n \"Ran, hell!\" cried Hathaway, rushing out, his face flushed and\n animated. \"They just plain vanished. They were only imaginative\n figments!\"\n\n\n \"And to think we let them hole us in that way, Click Hathaway, you\n coward!\"\n\n\n \"Smile when you say that, Irish.\"\n\n\n \"Sure, and ain't I always smilin'? Ah, Click boy, are them tears in\n your sweet grey eyes?\"\n\n\n \"Damn,\" swore the photographer, embarrassedly. \"Why don't they put\n window-wipers in these helmets?\"\n\n\n \"I'll take it up with the Board, lad.\"", "Inserting the film-tongue into a micro-viewer in the camera's base,\n Click handed the whole thing over. \"Look.\"\n\n\n Marnagan put the viewer up against the helmet glass, squinted. \"Ah,\n Click. Now, now. This is one lousy film you invented.\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\"\n\n\n \"It's a strange process'll develop my picture and ignore the asteroid\n monsters complete.\"\n\n\n \"What!\"\n\n\n Hathaway grabbed the camera, gasped, squinted, and gasped again:\n Pictures in montage; Marnagan sitting down, chatting conversationally\n with\nnothing\n; Marnagan shooting his gun at\nnothing\n; Marnagan\n pretending to be happy in front of\nnothing\n.\n\n\n Then, closeup—of—NOTHING!", "They stopped, together.\n\n\n \"Oops!\" Click said.\n\n\n \"Hey!\" Marnagan blinked. \"Did you feel\nthat\n?\"\n\n\n Hathaway's body felt feathery, light as a whisper, boneless and\n limbless, suddenly. \"Irish! We lost weight, coming over that ridge!\"\n\n\n They ran back. \"Let's try it again.\"\n\n\n They tried it. They scowled at each other. The same thing happened.\n \"Gravity should not act this way, Click.\"\n\n\n \"Are you telling me? It's man-made. Better than that—it's Gunther! No\n wonder we fell so fast—we were dragged down by a super-gravity set-up!\n Gunther'd do anything to—did I say\nanything\n?\"", "\"He didn't have to appear, Irish. He sent—them.\" Hathaway nodded at\n the beasts. \"People crashing here die from air-lack, no food, or from\n wounds caused at the crackup. If they survive all that—the animals\n tend to them. It all looks like Nature was responsible. See how subtle\n his attack is? Looks like accidental death instead of murder, if the\n Patrol happens to land and finds us. No reason for undue investigation,\n then.\"\n\n\n \"I don't see no Base around.\"\nClick shrugged. \"Still doubt it? Okay. Look.\" He tapped his camera and\n a spool popped out onto his gloved palm. Holding it up, he stripped\n it out to its full twenty inch length, held it to the light while it\n developed, smiling. It was one of his best inventions. Self-developing\n film. The first light struck film-surface, destroyed one chemical,\n leaving imprints; the second exposure simply hardened, secured the\n impressions. Quick stuff.", "Hathaway made it first, Marnagan bellowing just behind him. \"They're\n too big; they can't get us in here!\" Click's voice gasped it out,\n as Marnagan squeezed his two-hundred-fifty pounds beside him.\n Instinctively, Hathaway added, \"Asteroid monsters! My camera! What a\n scene!\"\n\n\n \"Damn your damn camera!\" yelled Marnagan. \"They might come in!\"\n\n\n \"Use your gun.\"\n\n\n \"They got impervious hides. No use. Gahh! And that was a pretty chase,\n eh, Click?\"\n\n\n \"Yeah. Sure.\nYou\nenjoyed it, every moment of it.\"\n\n\n \"I did that.\" Irish grinned, showing white uneven teeth. \"Now, what\n will we be doing with these uninvited guests at our door?\"\n\n\n \"Let me think—\"", "Hathaway got hold of an idea; remembering something. He said it out:\n \"Somebody tossed that meteor, Irish. I took a picture of it, looked\n it right in the eye when it rolled at us, and it was poker-hot.\n Space-meteors are never hot and glowing. If it's proof you want, I've\n got it here, on film.\"\n\n\n Marnagan winced his freckled square of face. \"It's not proof we need\n now, Click. Oxygen. And then\nfood\n. And then some way back to Earth.\"" ] ]
train	61097	[ "Why is Retief being sent to Jorgenson's Worlds?", "How does Retief navigate his problems with most people?", "How does Retief convince the captain to keep him on board?", "Why does Chip seem to enjoy talking to Retief?\n", "What makes the captain’s recent trips to Jorgenson’s suspicious?", "What is significant about the “secret” Retief unveils about the Soetti?", "Why are the Soetti allowed to board the ship?", "What was Skaw's importance? ", "Why did the captain try to change course away from Jorgenon's Worlds?" ]	[ [ "He memorized the contents of the folder that will help them win against the Soetti.", "He is carrying with him the plans for the anti-acceleration field.", "He’s being sent to oppose the Soetti invasion and help with Jorgenson’s Worlds meager military.", "He’s to make contact with the Soetti defector." ], [ "His status working for Magan earns him respect with people, and he uses this to his advantage. ", "He is a good negotiator, as shown when he gets the captain to maintain the course.", "Aggression and intimidation are his main means of negotiation in most situations.", "He gets people to like him, much in the way he wins Chip over. " ], [ "The captain knows that the Soettie will be able to handle him later. ", "The captain’s men as well as himself are too scared to confront him, so he leaves him be.", "Retief remarks on the Uniform Code, and the captain doesn’t want to have legal issues.", "He doesn’t have time to deal with Retief, so he leaves him be." ], [ "He thinks that Retief will be able to overthrow the captain. ", "He’s the cook, and generally nice to those he serves. \n", "As he says, he likes to see a “feller” eat and enjoys cooking for him.\n", "He doesn’t like the captain and likes that Retief doesn’t like him either." ], [ "He hasn't been taking tourists, and no one knows what cargo he's bringing with him. ", "Jorgenon's Worlds are frozen over, so it's strange that he makes runs to them. ", "He's working with Mr. Tony, and bringing cargo in and out without bringing along normal tourists. ", "He's bringing cargo to the Soetti to help with their plans. " ], [ "They're easier to take down than they thought, meaning they can stand up to the Soetti. ", "The Soetti are going to exact revenge on the crew now that he's exposed their secret. ", "They don't have the right to be asking for papers, making their presence on board illegal. ", "They're easy to bluff against. They'll believe what the captain tells them. " ], [ "They need transport to Jorgenson’s Worlds as well.", "They need to check the papers of each passenger, so the caption allows them to do so.", "The Soetti aren’t - the captain fears them and they are illegally boarding.", "The captain and Mr. Tony are in business with them." ], [ "He was the connection between Mr. Tony, the captain, and the Soetti's business. ", "Unlike other Soetti, he was brittle and easily killed. ", "He didn't have much importance. When the Soetti was presented with his body, they didn't care. ", "He was the one to check the validity of each passenger's papers." ], [ "Jorgenson's World doesn't have enough trade value to warrant the trip. ", "Retief killed Skaw, and it angered Mr. Tony, who ordered him to change course. ", "He needs to get away from the Soettie after Skaw's death. ", "He wants to drop Retief off at Alabaster instead. " ] ]	[ 3, 3, 2, 4, 1, 1, 4, 1, 2 ]	[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "\"I'll carry it, sealed,\" Retief said. \"That way nobody can sweat it out\n of me.\"\n\n\n Magnan started to shake his head.\n\n\n \"Well,\" he said. \"If it's trapped for destruction, I suppose—\"\n\n\n \"I've heard of these Jorgensen's Worlds,\" Retief said. \"I remember an\n agent, a big blond fellow, very quick on the uptake. A wizard with\n cards and dice. Never played for money, though.\"\n\n\n \"Umm,\" Magnan said. \"Don't make the error of personalizing this\n situation, Retief. Overall policy calls for a defense of these\n backwater worlds. Otherwise the Corps would allow history to follow its\n natural course, as always.\"\n\n\n \"When does this attack happen?\"\n\n\n \"Less than four weeks.\"\n\n\n \"That doesn't leave me much time.\"", "\"A show of resistance at this point is necessary. Unfortunately,\n Jorgensen's Worlds are technologically undeveloped areas. They're\n farmers or traders. Their industry is limited to a minor role in\n their economy—enough to support the merchant fleet, no more. The war\n potential, by conventional standards, is nil.\"\n\n\n Magnan tapped the folder before him.\n\n\n \"I have here,\" he said solemnly, \"information which will change that\n picture completely.\" He leaned back and blinked at Retief.\n\"All right, Mr. Councillor,\" Retief said. \"I'll play along; what's in\n the folder?\"\n\n\n Magnan spread his fingers, folded one down.", "\"Now—\" Magnan leaned forward and lowered his voice—\"we have learned\n that the Soetti plan a bold step forward. Since they've met no\n opposition so far in their infiltration of Terrestrial space, they\n intend to seize Jorgensen's Worlds by force.\"\n\n\n Magnan leaned back, waiting for Retief's reaction. Retief drew\n carefully on his cigar and looked at Magnan. Magnan frowned.\n\n\n \"This is open aggression, Retief,\" he said, \"in case I haven't made\n myself clear. Aggression on Terrestrial-occupied territory by an alien\n species. Obviously, we can't allow it.\"\n\n\n Magnan drew a large folder from his desk.", "Retief put down the heavy travel-battered suitcase and leaned on the\n counter, studying the schedules chalked on the board under the legend\n \"ALDO CERISE—INTERPLANETARY.\" A thin clerk in a faded sequined blouse\n and a plastic snakeskin cummerbund groomed his fingernails, watching\n Retief from the corner of his eye.\n\n\n Retief glanced at him.\n\n\n The clerk nipped off a ragged corner with rabbitlike front teeth and\n spat it on the floor.\n\n\n \"Was there something?\" he said.\n\n\n \"Two twenty-eight, due out today for the Jorgensen group,\" Retief said.\n \"Is it on schedule?\"\n\n\n The clerk sampled the inside of his right cheek, eyed Retief. \"Filled\n up. Try again in a couple of weeks.\"\n\n\n \"What time does it leave?\"", "THE FROZEN PLANET\nBy Keith Laumer\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n\"It is rather unusual,\" Magnan said, \"to assign an officer of your rank\n to courier duty, but this is an unusual mission.\"\n\n\n Retief sat relaxed and said nothing. Just before the silence grew\n awkward, Magnan went on.\n\n\n \"There are four planets in the group,\" he said. \"Two double planets,\n all rather close to an unimportant star listed as DRI-G 33987. They're\n called Jorgensen's Worlds, and in themselves are of no importance\n whatever. However, they lie deep in the sector into which the Soetti\n have been penetrating.", "\"Instead of strangling you, as you deserve,\" he said, \"I'm going to\n stay here and help you hold your course for Jorgensen's Worlds.\"\n\n\n The captain looked at Retief. He laughed, a short bark.\n\n\n \"Then I'll just stretch out and have a little nap, farmer. If you feel\n like dozing off sometime during the next eighteen hours, don't mind me.\"\n\n\n Retief took out the needler and put it on the desk before him.\n\n\n \"If anything happens that I don't like,\" he said, \"I'll wake you up.\n With this.\"", "\"Sure, Mister. Anything else?\"\n\n\n \"I'll think of something,\" Retief said. \"This is shaping up into one of\n those long days.\"\n\"They don't like me bringing yer meals to you in yer cabin,\" Chip said.\n \"But the cap'n knows I'm the best cook in the Merchant Service. They\n won't mess with me.\"\n\n\n \"What has Mr. Tony got on the captain, Chip?\" Retief asked.\n\n\n \"They're in some kind o' crooked business together. You want some more\n smoked turkey?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. What have they got against my going to Jorgensen's Worlds?\"\n\n\n \"Dunno. Hasn't been no tourists got in there fer six or eight months. I\n sure like a feller that can put it away. I was a big eater when I was\n yer age.\"", "\"Less than four hours to departure time,\" he said. \"I'd better not\n start any long books.\"\n\n\n \"You'd better waste no time getting over to Indoctrination,\" Magnan\n said.\n\n\n Retief stood up. \"If I hurry, maybe I can catch the cartoon.\"\n\n\n \"The allusion escapes me,\" Magnan said coldly. \"And one last word. The\n Soetti are patrolling the trade lanes into Jorgensen's Worlds; don't\n get yourself interned.\"\n\n\n \"I'll tell you what,\" Retief said soberly. \"In a pinch, I'll mention\n your name.\"\n\n\n \"You'll be traveling with Class X credentials,\" Magnan snapped. \"There\n must be nothing to connect you with the Corps.\"\n\n\n \"They'll never guess,\" Retief said. \"I'll pose as a gentleman.\"", "\"What do you think you're doing, busting in here?\"\n\n\n \"I hear you're planning a course change, Captain.\"\n\n\n \"You've got damn big ears.\"\n\n\n \"I think we'd better call in at Jorgensen's.\"\n\n\n \"You do, huh?\" the captain sat down. \"I'm in command of this vessel,\"\n he said. \"I'm changing course for Alabaster.\"\n\n\n \"I wouldn't find it convenient to go to Alabaster,\" Retief said. \"So\n just hold your course for Jorgensen's.\"\n\n\n \"Not bloody likely.\"\n\n\n \"Your use of the word 'bloody' is interesting, Captain. Don't try to\n change course.\"\n\n\n The captain reached for the mike on his desk, pressed the key.", "\"First,\" he said. \"The Soetti War Plan—in detail. We were fortunate\n enough to make contact with a defector from a party of renegade\n Terrestrials who've been advising the Soetti.\" He folded another\n finger. \"Next, a battle plan for the Jorgensen's people, worked out by\n the Theory group.\" He wrestled a third finger down. \"Lastly; an Utter\n Top Secret schematic for conversion of a standard anti-acceleration\n field into a potent weapon—a development our systems people have been\n holding in reserve for just such a situation.\"\n\n\n \"Is that all?\" Retief said. \"You've still got two fingers sticking up.\"\n\n\n Magnan looked at the fingers and put them away.\n\n\n \"This is no occasion for flippancy, Retief. In the wrong hands, this\n information could be catastrophic. You'll memorize it before you leave\n this building.\"", "\"He hated Skaw's guts. But with him it was business. Mister, you got a\n gun?\"\n\n\n \"A 2mm needler. Why?\"\n\n\n \"The orders cap'n give was to change course fer Alabaster. We're\n by-passin' Jorgensen's Worlds. We'll feel the course change any minute.\"\n\n\n Retief lit the cigar, reached under the mattress and took out a\n short-barreled pistol. He dropped it in his pocket, looked at Chip.\n\n\n \"Maybe it was a good thought, at that. Which way to the Captain's\n cabin?\"\n\"This is it,\" Chip said softly. \"You want me to keep an eye on who\n comes down the passage?\"\n\n\n Retief nodded, opened the door and stepped into the cabin. The captain\n looked up from his desk, then jumped up.", "\"Some ... ah ... VIP's required accommodation,\" he said. He hooked\n a finger inside the sequined collar. \"All tourist reservations were\n canceled. You'll have to try to get space on the Four-Planet Line ship\n next—\"\n\n\n \"Which gate?\" Retief said.\n\n\n \"For ... ah...?\"\n\n\n \"For the two twenty-eight for Jorgensen's Worlds,\" Retief said.\n\n\n \"Well,\" the clerk said. \"Gate 19,\" he added quickly. \"But—\"\n\n\n Retief picked up his suitcase and walked away toward the glare sign\n reading\nTo Gates 16-30\n.", "\"I have your itinerary here. Your accommodations are clear as far as\n Aldo Cerise. You'll have to rely on your ingenuity to get you the rest\n of the way.\"\n\n\n \"That's a pretty rough trip, Mr. Councillor. Suppose I don't make it?\"\n\n\n Magnan looked sour. \"Someone at a policy-making level has chosen to put\n all our eggs in one basket, Retief. I hope their confidence in you is\n not misplaced.\"\n\n\n \"This antiac conversion; how long does it take?\"\n\n\n \"A skilled electronics crew can do the job in a matter of minutes. The\n Jorgensens can handle it very nicely; every other man is a mechanic of\n some sort.\"\n\n\n Retief opened the envelope Magnan handed him and looked at the tickets\n inside.", "\"To Alabaster. That's nine days' run in-sector from Jorgensen's. You\n ain't got another one of them cigars, have you?\"\n\n\n \"Have one, Chip. I guess I was lucky to get space on this ship.\"\n\n\n \"Plenty o' space, Mister. We got a dozen empty cabins.\" Chip puffed\n the cigar alight, then cleared away the dishes, poured out coffee and\n brandy.\n\n\n \"Them Sweaties is what I don't like,\" he said.\n\n\n Retief looked at him questioningly.\n\n\n \"You never seen a Sweaty? Ugly lookin' devils. Skinny legs, like a\n lobster; big chest, shaped like the top of a turnip; rubbery lookin'\n head. You can see the pulse beatin' when they get riled.\"", "The captain groaned and picked up the mike. \"Captain to Power Section,\"\n he said. \"Hold your present course until you hear from me.\" He dropped\n the mike and looked up at Retief.\n\n\n \"It's eighteen hours yet before we pick up Jorgensen Control. You going\n to sit here and bend my arm the whole time?\"\n\n\n Retief released the captain's wrist and turned to the door.\n\n\n \"Chip, I'm locking the door. You circulate around, let me know what's\n going on. Bring me a pot of coffee every so often. I'm sitting up with\n a sick friend.\"\n\n\n \"Right, Mister. Keep an eye on that jasper; he's slippery.\"\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" the captain demanded.\n\n\n Retief settled himself in a chair.", "\"Catch,\" he said between clenched teeth. The trunk slammed against the\n far wall of the corridor and burst.\n\n\n Retief turned to the baggage on the floor, tossed it into the hall. The\n face of the thick-necked man appeared cautiously around the door jamb.\n\n\n \"Mister, you must be—\"\n\n\n \"If you'll excuse me,\" Retief said, \"I want to catch a nap.\" He flipped\n the door shut, pulled off his shoes and stretched out on the bed.\nFive minutes passed before the door rattled and burst open.\n\n\n Retief looked up. A gaunt leathery-skinned man wearing white ducks, a\n blue turtleneck sweater and a peaked cap tilted raffishly over one eye\n stared at Retief.\n\n\n \"Is this the joker?\" he grated.", "\"You'd better be getting started,\" Magnan said, shuffling papers.\n\n\n \"You're right,\" Retief said. \"If I work at it, I might manage a\n snootful by takeoff.\" He went to the door. \"No objection to my checking\n out a needler, is there?\"\n\n\n Magnan looked up. \"I suppose not. What do you want with it?\"\n\n\n \"Just a feeling I've got.\"\n\n\n \"Please yourself.\"\n\n\n \"Some day,\" Retief said, \"I may take you up on that.\"\nII", "Retief put his suitcase carefully on the floor, took a step and drove a\n right into the guard's midriff. He stepped aside as the man doubled and\n went to his knees.\n\n\n \"You were wide open, ugly. I couldn't resist. Tell your boss I sneaked\n past while you were resting your eyes.\" He picked up his bag, stepped\n over the man and went up the gangway into the ship.\n\n\n A cabin boy in stained whites came along the corridor.\n\n\n \"Which way to cabin fifty-seven, son?\" Retief asked.\n\n\n \"Up there.\" The boy jerked his head and hurried on. Retief made his way\n along the narrow hall, found signs, followed them to cabin fifty-seven.\n The door was open. Inside, baggage was piled in the center of the\n floor. It was expensive looking baggage.", "Retief finished the steak, and the chef passed out the baked Alaska and\n coffee. Most of the other passengers had left the dining room. Mr. Tony\n and his retainers still sat at the Captain's table.\n\n\n As Retief watched, four men arose from the table and sauntered across\n the room. The first in line, a stony-faced thug with a broken ear, took\n a cigar from his mouth as he reached the table. He dipped the lighted\n end in Retief's coffee, looked at it, and dropped it on the tablecloth.\n\n\n The others came up, Mr. Tony trailing.\n\n\n \"You must want to get to Jorgensen's pretty bad,\" the thug said in a\n grating voice. \"What's your game, hick?\"\n\n\n Retief looked at the coffee cup, picked it up.", "\"They don't scare me none.\" Chip picked up the tray. \"I'll scout around\n a little and see what's goin' on. If the Sweaties figure to do anything\n about that Skaw feller they'll have to move fast; they won't try\n nothin' close to port.\"\n\n\n \"Don't worry, Chip. I have reason to be pretty sure they won't do\n anything to attract a lot of attention in this sector just now.\"\n\n\n Chip looked at Retief. \"You ain't no tourist, Mister. I know that much.\n You didn't come out here for fun, did you?\"\n\n\n \"That,\" Retief said, \"would be a hard one to answer.\"\nIV\n\n\n Retief awoke at a tap on his door.\n\n\n \"It's me, Mister. Chip.\"\n\n\n \"Come on in.\"" ], [ "Retief put his bag down. He turned at a sound behind him. A tall,\n florid man with an expensive coat belted over a massive paunch stood in\n the open door, looking at Retief. Retief looked back. The florid man\n clamped his jaws together, turned to speak over his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Somebody in the cabin. Get 'em out.\" He rolled a cold eye at Retief as\n he backed out of the room. A short, thick-necked man appeared.\n\n\n \"What are you doing in Mr. Tony's room?\" he barked. \"Never mind! Clear\n out of here, fellow! You're keeping Mr. Tony waiting.\"\n\n\n \"Too bad,\" Retief said. \"Finders keepers.\"\n\n\n \"You nuts?\" The thick-necked man stared at Retief. \"I said it's Mr.\n Tony's room.\"", "Retief put his suitcase carefully on the floor, took a step and drove a\n right into the guard's midriff. He stepped aside as the man doubled and\n went to his knees.\n\n\n \"You were wide open, ugly. I couldn't resist. Tell your boss I sneaked\n past while you were resting your eyes.\" He picked up his bag, stepped\n over the man and went up the gangway into the ship.\n\n\n A cabin boy in stained whites came along the corridor.\n\n\n \"Which way to cabin fifty-seven, son?\" Retief asked.\n\n\n \"Up there.\" The boy jerked his head and hurried on. Retief made his way\n along the narrow hall, found signs, followed them to cabin fifty-seven.\n The door was open. Inside, baggage was piled in the center of the\n floor. It was expensive looking baggage.", "\"I don't know Mr. Tony. He'll have to bull his way into other quarters.\"\n\n\n \"We'll see about you, mister.\" The man turned and went out. Retief\n sat on the bunk and lit a cigar. There was a sound of voices in\n the corridor. Two burly baggage-smashers appeared, straining at an\n oversized trunk. They maneuvered it through the door, lowered it,\n glanced at Retief and went out. The thick-necked man returned.\n\n\n \"All right, you. Out,\" he growled. \"Or have I got to have you thrown\n out?\"\n\n\n Retief rose and clamped the cigar between his teeth. He gripped a\n handle of the brass-bound trunk in each hand, bent his knees and heaved\n the trunk up to chest level, then raised it overhead. He turned to the\n door.", "\"Feller has to be mighty careless who he eats with to set over there.\"\n\n\n \"I see your point.\"\n\n\n \"You set right where you're at, Mister. I'll rustle you up a plate.\"\n\n\n Five minutes later, Retief cut into a thirty-two ounce Delmonico backed\n up with mushrooms and garlic butter.\n\n\n \"I'm Chip,\" the chef said. \"I don't like the Cap'n. You can tell him I\n said so. Don't like his friends, either. Don't like them dern Sweaties,\n look at a man like he was a worm.\"\n\n\n \"You've got the right idea on frying a steak, Chip. And you've got the\n right idea on the Soetti, too,\" Retief said. He poured red wine into a\n glass. \"Here's to you.\"", "\"I don't think I want my coffee,\" he said. He looked at the thug. \"You\n drink it.\"\n\n\n The thug squinted at Retief. \"A wise hick,\" he began.\n\n\n With a flick of the wrist, Retief tossed the coffee into the thug's\n face, then stood and slammed a straight right to the chin. The thug\n went down.\n\n\n Retief looked at Mr. Tony, still standing open-mouthed.\n\n\n \"You can take your playmates away now, Tony,\" he said. \"And don't\n bother to come around yourself. You're not funny enough.\"\n\n\n Mr. Tony found his voice.\n\n\n \"Take him, Marbles!\" he growled.\n\n\n The thick-necked man slipped a hand inside his tunic and brought out a\n long-bladed knife. He licked his lips and moved in.", "Retief finished the steak, and the chef passed out the baked Alaska and\n coffee. Most of the other passengers had left the dining room. Mr. Tony\n and his retainers still sat at the Captain's table.\n\n\n As Retief watched, four men arose from the table and sauntered across\n the room. The first in line, a stony-faced thug with a broken ear, took\n a cigar from his mouth as he reached the table. He dipped the lighted\n end in Retief's coffee, looked at it, and dropped it on the tablecloth.\n\n\n The others came up, Mr. Tony trailing.\n\n\n \"You must want to get to Jorgensen's pretty bad,\" the thug said in a\n grating voice. \"What's your game, hick?\"\n\n\n Retief looked at the coffee cup, picked it up.", "The captain groaned and picked up the mike. \"Captain to Power Section,\"\n he said. \"Hold your present course until you hear from me.\" He dropped\n the mike and looked up at Retief.\n\n\n \"It's eighteen hours yet before we pick up Jorgensen Control. You going\n to sit here and bend my arm the whole time?\"\n\n\n Retief released the captain's wrist and turned to the door.\n\n\n \"Chip, I'm locking the door. You circulate around, let me know what's\n going on. Bring me a pot of coffee every so often. I'm sitting up with\n a sick friend.\"\n\n\n \"Right, Mister. Keep an eye on that jasper; he's slippery.\"\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" the captain demanded.\n\n\n Retief settled himself in a chair.", "Retief heard the panel open beside him.\n\n\n \"Here you go, Mister,\" Chip said. Retief darted a glance; a well-honed\n french knife lay on the sill.\n\n\n \"Thanks, Chip,\" Retief said. \"I won't need it for these punks.\"\n\n\n Thick-neck lunged and Retief hit him square in the face, knocking him\n under the table. The other man stepped back, fumbling a power pistol\n from his shoulder holster.\n\n\n \"Aim that at me, and I'll kill you,\" Retief said.\n\n\n \"Go on, burn him!\" Mr. Tony shouted. Behind him, the captain appeared,\n white-faced.\n\n\n \"Put that away, you!\" he yelled. \"What kind of—\"\n\n\n \"Shut up,\" Mr. Tony said. \"Put it away, Hoany. We'll fix this bum\n later.\"", "\"Catch,\" he said between clenched teeth. The trunk slammed against the\n far wall of the corridor and burst.\n\n\n Retief turned to the baggage on the floor, tossed it into the hall. The\n face of the thick-necked man appeared cautiously around the door jamb.\n\n\n \"Mister, you must be—\"\n\n\n \"If you'll excuse me,\" Retief said, \"I want to catch a nap.\" He flipped\n the door shut, pulled off his shoes and stretched out on the bed.\nFive minutes passed before the door rattled and burst open.\n\n\n Retief looked up. A gaunt leathery-skinned man wearing white ducks, a\n blue turtleneck sweater and a peaked cap tilted raffishly over one eye\n stared at Retief.\n\n\n \"Is this the joker?\" he grated.", "\"I don't think—\"\n\n\n \"Let's stick to facts,\" Retief said. \"Don't try to think. What time is\n it due out?\"\n\n\n The clerk smiled pityingly. \"It's my lunch hour,\" he said. \"I'll be\n open in an hour.\" He held up a thumb nail, frowned at it.\n\n\n \"If I have to come around this counter,\" Retief said, \"I'll feed that\n thumb to you the hard way.\"\n\n\n The clerk looked up and opened his mouth. Then he caught Retief's eye,\n closed his mouth and swallowed.\n\n\n \"Like it says there,\" he said, jerking a thumb at the board. \"Lifts in\n an hour. But you won't be on it,\" he added.\n\n\n Retief looked at him.", "One of the two wiped his nose on a sleeve, spat on his right palm, and\n stepped forward, then hesitated.\n\n\n \"Hey,\" he said. \"This the guy tossed the trunk off the wall?\"\n\n\n \"That's him,\" the thick-necked man called. \"Spilled Mr. Tony's\n possessions right on the deck.\"\n\n\n \"Deal me out,\" the bouncer said. \"He can stay put as long as he wants\n to. I signed on to move cargo. Let's go, Moe.\"\n\n\n \"You'd better be getting back to the bridge, Captain,\" Retief said.\n \"We're due to lift in twenty minutes.\"\n\n\n The thick-necked man and the Captain both shouted at once. The\n Captain's voice prevailed.\n\n\n \"—twenty minutes ... uniform Code ... gonna do?\"\n\n\n \"Close the door as you leave,\" Retief said.", "\"Power Section, this is the captain,\" he said. Retief reached across\n the desk, gripped the captain's wrist.\n\n\n \"Tell the mate to hold his present course,\" he said softly.\n\n\n \"Let go my hand, buster,\" the captain snarled. Eyes on Retief's, he\n eased a drawer open with his left hand, reached in. Retief kneed the\n drawer. The captain yelped and dropped the mike.\n\n\n \"You busted it, you—\"\n\n\n \"And one to go,\" Retief said. \"Tell him.\"\n\n\n \"I'm an officer of the Merchant Service!\"\n\n\n \"You're a cheapjack who's sold his bridge to a pack of back-alley\n hoods.\"\n\n\n \"You can't put it over, hick.\"\n\n\n \"Tell him.\"", "\"What do you think you're doing, busting in here?\"\n\n\n \"I hear you're planning a course change, Captain.\"\n\n\n \"You've got damn big ears.\"\n\n\n \"I think we'd better call in at Jorgensen's.\"\n\n\n \"You do, huh?\" the captain sat down. \"I'm in command of this vessel,\"\n he said. \"I'm changing course for Alabaster.\"\n\n\n \"I wouldn't find it convenient to go to Alabaster,\" Retief said. \"So\n just hold your course for Jorgensen's.\"\n\n\n \"Not bloody likely.\"\n\n\n \"Your use of the word 'bloody' is interesting, Captain. Don't try to\n change course.\"\n\n\n The captain reached for the mike on his desk, pressed the key.", "\"Instead of strangling you, as you deserve,\" he said, \"I'm going to\n stay here and help you hold your course for Jorgensen's Worlds.\"\n\n\n The captain looked at Retief. He laughed, a short bark.\n\n\n \"Then I'll just stretch out and have a little nap, farmer. If you feel\n like dozing off sometime during the next eighteen hours, don't mind me.\"\n\n\n Retief took out the needler and put it on the desk before him.\n\n\n \"If anything happens that I don't like,\" he said, \"I'll wake you up.\n With this.\"", "\"They don't scare me none.\" Chip picked up the tray. \"I'll scout around\n a little and see what's goin' on. If the Sweaties figure to do anything\n about that Skaw feller they'll have to move fast; they won't try\n nothin' close to port.\"\n\n\n \"Don't worry, Chip. I have reason to be pretty sure they won't do\n anything to attract a lot of attention in this sector just now.\"\n\n\n Chip looked at Retief. \"You ain't no tourist, Mister. I know that much.\n You didn't come out here for fun, did you?\"\n\n\n \"That,\" Retief said, \"would be a hard one to answer.\"\nIV\n\n\n Retief awoke at a tap on his door.\n\n\n \"It's me, Mister. Chip.\"\n\n\n \"Come on in.\"", "\"You'd better be getting started,\" Magnan said, shuffling papers.\n\n\n \"You're right,\" Retief said. \"If I work at it, I might manage a\n snootful by takeoff.\" He went to the door. \"No objection to my checking\n out a needler, is there?\"\n\n\n Magnan looked up. \"I suppose not. What do you want with it?\"\n\n\n \"Just a feeling I've got.\"\n\n\n \"Please yourself.\"\n\n\n \"Some day,\" Retief said, \"I may take you up on that.\"\nII", "The thick-necked man paused at the door. \"We'll see you when you come\n out.\"\nIII\n\n\n Four waiters passed Retief's table without stopping. A fifth leaned\n against the wall nearby, a menu under his arm.\n\n\n At a table across the room, the Captain, now wearing a dress uniform\n and with his thin red hair neatly parted, sat with a table of male\n passengers. He talked loudly and laughed frequently, casting occasional\n glances Retief's way.\n\n\n A panel opened in the wall behind Retief's chair. Bright blue eyes\n peered out from under a white chef's cap.\n\n\n \"Givin' you the cold shoulder, heh, Mister?\"\n\n\n \"Looks like it, old-timer,\" Retief said. \"Maybe I'd better go join the\n skipper. His party seems to be having all the fun.\"", "The thick-necked man edged past him, looked at Retief and snorted,\n \"That's him, sure.\"\n\n\n \"I'm captain of this vessel,\" the first man said. \"You've got two\n minutes to haul your freight out of here, buster.\"\n\n\n \"When you can spare the time from your other duties,\" Retief said,\n \"take a look at Section Three, Paragraph One, of the Uniform Code.\n That spells out the law on confirmed space on vessels engaged in\n interplanetary commerce.\"\n\n\n \"A space lawyer.\" The captain turned. \"Throw him out, boys.\"\n\n\n Two big men edged into the cabin, looking at Retief.\n\n\n \"Go on, pitch him out,\" the captain snapped.\n\n\n Retief put his cigar in an ashtray, and swung his feet off the bunk.\n\n\n \"Don't try it,\" he said softly.", "\"He hated Skaw's guts. But with him it was business. Mister, you got a\n gun?\"\n\n\n \"A 2mm needler. Why?\"\n\n\n \"The orders cap'n give was to change course fer Alabaster. We're\n by-passin' Jorgensen's Worlds. We'll feel the course change any minute.\"\n\n\n Retief lit the cigar, reached under the mattress and took out a\n short-barreled pistol. He dropped it in his pocket, looked at Chip.\n\n\n \"Maybe it was a good thought, at that. Which way to the Captain's\n cabin?\"\n\"This is it,\" Chip said softly. \"You want me to keep an eye on who\n comes down the passage?\"\n\n\n Retief nodded, opened the door and stepped into the cabin. The captain\n looked up from his desk, then jumped up.", "\"Captain, tell your friend to keep its distance. It looks brittle, and\n I'm tempted to test it.\"\n\n\n \"Don't start anything with Skaw; he can clip through steel with those\n snappers.\"\n\n\n \"Last chance,\" Retief said. Skaw stood poised, open pincers an inch\n from Retief's eyes.\n\n\n \"Show him your papers, you damned fool,\" the captain said hoarsely. \"I\n got no control over Skaw.\"\nThe alien clicked both pincers with a sharp report, and in the same\n instant Retief half-turned to the left, leaned away from the alien\n and drove his right foot against the slender leg above the bulbous\n knee-joint. Skaw screeched and floundered, greenish fluid spattering\n from the burst joint.\n\n\n \"I told you he was brittle,\" Retief said. \"Next time you invite pirates\n aboard, don't bother to call.\"" ], [ "The captain groaned and picked up the mike. \"Captain to Power Section,\"\n he said. \"Hold your present course until you hear from me.\" He dropped\n the mike and looked up at Retief.\n\n\n \"It's eighteen hours yet before we pick up Jorgensen Control. You going\n to sit here and bend my arm the whole time?\"\n\n\n Retief released the captain's wrist and turned to the door.\n\n\n \"Chip, I'm locking the door. You circulate around, let me know what's\n going on. Bring me a pot of coffee every so often. I'm sitting up with\n a sick friend.\"\n\n\n \"Right, Mister. Keep an eye on that jasper; he's slippery.\"\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" the captain demanded.\n\n\n Retief settled himself in a chair.", "Retief put his suitcase carefully on the floor, took a step and drove a\n right into the guard's midriff. He stepped aside as the man doubled and\n went to his knees.\n\n\n \"You were wide open, ugly. I couldn't resist. Tell your boss I sneaked\n past while you were resting your eyes.\" He picked up his bag, stepped\n over the man and went up the gangway into the ship.\n\n\n A cabin boy in stained whites came along the corridor.\n\n\n \"Which way to cabin fifty-seven, son?\" Retief asked.\n\n\n \"Up there.\" The boy jerked his head and hurried on. Retief made his way\n along the narrow hall, found signs, followed them to cabin fifty-seven.\n The door was open. Inside, baggage was piled in the center of the\n floor. It was expensive looking baggage.", "\"Power Section, this is the captain,\" he said. Retief reached across\n the desk, gripped the captain's wrist.\n\n\n \"Tell the mate to hold his present course,\" he said softly.\n\n\n \"Let go my hand, buster,\" the captain snarled. Eyes on Retief's, he\n eased a drawer open with his left hand, reached in. Retief kneed the\n drawer. The captain yelped and dropped the mike.\n\n\n \"You busted it, you—\"\n\n\n \"And one to go,\" Retief said. \"Tell him.\"\n\n\n \"I'm an officer of the Merchant Service!\"\n\n\n \"You're a cheapjack who's sold his bridge to a pack of back-alley\n hoods.\"\n\n\n \"You can't put it over, hick.\"\n\n\n \"Tell him.\"", "Retief put his bag down. He turned at a sound behind him. A tall,\n florid man with an expensive coat belted over a massive paunch stood in\n the open door, looking at Retief. Retief looked back. The florid man\n clamped his jaws together, turned to speak over his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Somebody in the cabin. Get 'em out.\" He rolled a cold eye at Retief as\n he backed out of the room. A short, thick-necked man appeared.\n\n\n \"What are you doing in Mr. Tony's room?\" he barked. \"Never mind! Clear\n out of here, fellow! You're keeping Mr. Tony waiting.\"\n\n\n \"Too bad,\" Retief said. \"Finders keepers.\"\n\n\n \"You nuts?\" The thick-necked man stared at Retief. \"I said it's Mr.\n Tony's room.\"", "\"Not on this vessel, you won't,\" the captain said shakily. \"I got my\n charter to consider.\"\n\n\n \"Ram your charter,\" Hoany said harshly. \"You won't be needing it long.\"\n\n\n \"Button your floppy mouth, damn you!\" Mr. Tony snapped. He looked at\n the man on the floor. \"Get Marbles out of here. I ought to dump the\n slob.\"\n\n\n He turned and walked away. The captain signaled and two waiters came\n up. Retief watched as they carted the casualty from the dining room.\n\n\n The panel opened.\n\n\n \"I usta be about your size, when I was your age,\" Chip said. \"You\n handled them pansies right. I wouldn't give 'em the time o' day.\"\n\n\n \"How about a fresh cup of coffee, Chip?\" Retief said.", "One of the two wiped his nose on a sleeve, spat on his right palm, and\n stepped forward, then hesitated.\n\n\n \"Hey,\" he said. \"This the guy tossed the trunk off the wall?\"\n\n\n \"That's him,\" the thick-necked man called. \"Spilled Mr. Tony's\n possessions right on the deck.\"\n\n\n \"Deal me out,\" the bouncer said. \"He can stay put as long as he wants\n to. I signed on to move cargo. Let's go, Moe.\"\n\n\n \"You'd better be getting back to the bridge, Captain,\" Retief said.\n \"We're due to lift in twenty minutes.\"\n\n\n The thick-necked man and the Captain both shouted at once. The\n Captain's voice prevailed.\n\n\n \"—twenty minutes ... uniform Code ... gonna do?\"\n\n\n \"Close the door as you leave,\" Retief said.", "Retief heard the panel open beside him.\n\n\n \"Here you go, Mister,\" Chip said. Retief darted a glance; a well-honed\n french knife lay on the sill.\n\n\n \"Thanks, Chip,\" Retief said. \"I won't need it for these punks.\"\n\n\n Thick-neck lunged and Retief hit him square in the face, knocking him\n under the table. The other man stepped back, fumbling a power pistol\n from his shoulder holster.\n\n\n \"Aim that at me, and I'll kill you,\" Retief said.\n\n\n \"Go on, burn him!\" Mr. Tony shouted. Behind him, the captain appeared,\n white-faced.\n\n\n \"Put that away, you!\" he yelled. \"What kind of—\"\n\n\n \"Shut up,\" Mr. Tony said. \"Put it away, Hoany. We'll fix this bum\n later.\"", "Retief finished the steak, and the chef passed out the baked Alaska and\n coffee. Most of the other passengers had left the dining room. Mr. Tony\n and his retainers still sat at the Captain's table.\n\n\n As Retief watched, four men arose from the table and sauntered across\n the room. The first in line, a stony-faced thug with a broken ear, took\n a cigar from his mouth as he reached the table. He dipped the lighted\n end in Retief's coffee, looked at it, and dropped it on the tablecloth.\n\n\n The others came up, Mr. Tony trailing.\n\n\n \"You must want to get to Jorgensen's pretty bad,\" the thug said in a\n grating voice. \"What's your game, hick?\"\n\n\n Retief looked at the coffee cup, picked it up.", "\"Instead of strangling you, as you deserve,\" he said, \"I'm going to\n stay here and help you hold your course for Jorgensen's Worlds.\"\n\n\n The captain looked at Retief. He laughed, a short bark.\n\n\n \"Then I'll just stretch out and have a little nap, farmer. If you feel\n like dozing off sometime during the next eighteen hours, don't mind me.\"\n\n\n Retief took out the needler and put it on the desk before him.\n\n\n \"If anything happens that I don't like,\" he said, \"I'll wake you up.\n With this.\"", "\"I don't think—\"\n\n\n \"Let's stick to facts,\" Retief said. \"Don't try to think. What time is\n it due out?\"\n\n\n The clerk smiled pityingly. \"It's my lunch hour,\" he said. \"I'll be\n open in an hour.\" He held up a thumb nail, frowned at it.\n\n\n \"If I have to come around this counter,\" Retief said, \"I'll feed that\n thumb to you the hard way.\"\n\n\n The clerk looked up and opened his mouth. Then he caught Retief's eye,\n closed his mouth and swallowed.\n\n\n \"Like it says there,\" he said, jerking a thumb at the board. \"Lifts in\n an hour. But you won't be on it,\" he added.\n\n\n Retief looked at him.", "The thick-necked man edged past him, looked at Retief and snorted,\n \"That's him, sure.\"\n\n\n \"I'm captain of this vessel,\" the first man said. \"You've got two\n minutes to haul your freight out of here, buster.\"\n\n\n \"When you can spare the time from your other duties,\" Retief said,\n \"take a look at Section Three, Paragraph One, of the Uniform Code.\n That spells out the law on confirmed space on vessels engaged in\n interplanetary commerce.\"\n\n\n \"A space lawyer.\" The captain turned. \"Throw him out, boys.\"\n\n\n Two big men edged into the cabin, looking at Retief.\n\n\n \"Go on, pitch him out,\" the captain snapped.\n\n\n Retief put his cigar in an ashtray, and swung his feet off the bunk.\n\n\n \"Don't try it,\" he said softly.", "The thick-necked man paused at the door. \"We'll see you when you come\n out.\"\nIII\n\n\n Four waiters passed Retief's table without stopping. A fifth leaned\n against the wall nearby, a menu under his arm.\n\n\n At a table across the room, the Captain, now wearing a dress uniform\n and with his thin red hair neatly parted, sat with a table of male\n passengers. He talked loudly and laughed frequently, casting occasional\n glances Retief's way.\n\n\n A panel opened in the wall behind Retief's chair. Bright blue eyes\n peered out from under a white chef's cap.\n\n\n \"Givin' you the cold shoulder, heh, Mister?\"\n\n\n \"Looks like it, old-timer,\" Retief said. \"Maybe I'd better go join the\n skipper. His party seems to be having all the fun.\"", "\"Captain, tell your friend to keep its distance. It looks brittle, and\n I'm tempted to test it.\"\n\n\n \"Don't start anything with Skaw; he can clip through steel with those\n snappers.\"\n\n\n \"Last chance,\" Retief said. Skaw stood poised, open pincers an inch\n from Retief's eyes.\n\n\n \"Show him your papers, you damned fool,\" the captain said hoarsely. \"I\n got no control over Skaw.\"\nThe alien clicked both pincers with a sharp report, and in the same\n instant Retief half-turned to the left, leaned away from the alien\n and drove his right foot against the slender leg above the bulbous\n knee-joint. Skaw screeched and floundered, greenish fluid spattering\n from the burst joint.\n\n\n \"I told you he was brittle,\" Retief said. \"Next time you invite pirates\n aboard, don't bother to call.\"", "\"He hated Skaw's guts. But with him it was business. Mister, you got a\n gun?\"\n\n\n \"A 2mm needler. Why?\"\n\n\n \"The orders cap'n give was to change course fer Alabaster. We're\n by-passin' Jorgensen's Worlds. We'll feel the course change any minute.\"\n\n\n Retief lit the cigar, reached under the mattress and took out a\n short-barreled pistol. He dropped it in his pocket, looked at Chip.\n\n\n \"Maybe it was a good thought, at that. Which way to the Captain's\n cabin?\"\n\"This is it,\" Chip said softly. \"You want me to keep an eye on who\n comes down the passage?\"\n\n\n Retief nodded, opened the door and stepped into the cabin. The captain\n looked up from his desk, then jumped up.", "\"You bluff easily, Captain. Show a few guns as you hand the body back.\n We know their secret now.\"\n\n\n \"What secret? I—\"\n\n\n \"Don't be no dumber than you got to, Cap'n,\" Chip said. \"Sweaties die\n easy; that's the secret.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe you got a point,\" the captain said, looking at Retief. \"All they\n got's a three-man scout. It could work.\"\n\n\n He went out, came back with two crewmen. They hauled the dead alien\n gingerly into the hall.\n\n\n \"Maybe I can run a bluff on the Soetti,\" the captain said, looking back\n from the door. \"But I'll be back to see you later.\"", "\"What do you think you're doing, busting in here?\"\n\n\n \"I hear you're planning a course change, Captain.\"\n\n\n \"You've got damn big ears.\"\n\n\n \"I think we'd better call in at Jorgensen's.\"\n\n\n \"You do, huh?\" the captain sat down. \"I'm in command of this vessel,\"\n he said. \"I'm changing course for Alabaster.\"\n\n\n \"I wouldn't find it convenient to go to Alabaster,\" Retief said. \"So\n just hold your course for Jorgensen's.\"\n\n\n \"Not bloody likely.\"\n\n\n \"Your use of the word 'bloody' is interesting, Captain. Don't try to\n change course.\"\n\n\n The captain reached for the mike on his desk, pressed the key.", "\"Jesus, what did you do! They'll kill us!\" the captain gasped, staring\n at the figure flopping on the floor.\n\n\n \"Cart poor old Skaw back to his boat,\" Retief said. \"Tell him to pass\n the word. No more illegal entry and search of Terrestrial vessels in\n Terrestrial space.\"\n\n\n \"Hey,\" Chip said. \"He's quit kicking.\"\n\n\n The captain bent over Skaw, gingerly rolled him over. He leaned close\n and sniffed.\n\n\n \"He's dead.\" The captain stared at Retief. \"We're all dead men,\" he\n said. \"These Soetti got no mercy.\"\n\n\n \"They won't need it. Tell 'em to sheer off; their fun is over.\"\n\n\n \"They got no more emotions than a blue crab—\"", "\"You'd better be getting started,\" Magnan said, shuffling papers.\n\n\n \"You're right,\" Retief said. \"If I work at it, I might manage a\n snootful by takeoff.\" He went to the door. \"No objection to my checking\n out a needler, is there?\"\n\n\n Magnan looked up. \"I suppose not. What do you want with it?\"\n\n\n \"Just a feeling I've got.\"\n\n\n \"Please yourself.\"\n\n\n \"Some day,\" Retief said, \"I may take you up on that.\"\nII", "\"Feller has to be mighty careless who he eats with to set over there.\"\n\n\n \"I see your point.\"\n\n\n \"You set right where you're at, Mister. I'll rustle you up a plate.\"\n\n\n Five minutes later, Retief cut into a thirty-two ounce Delmonico backed\n up with mushrooms and garlic butter.\n\n\n \"I'm Chip,\" the chef said. \"I don't like the Cap'n. You can tell him I\n said so. Don't like his friends, either. Don't like them dern Sweaties,\n look at a man like he was a worm.\"\n\n\n \"You've got the right idea on frying a steak, Chip. And you've got the\n right idea on the Soetti, too,\" Retief said. He poured red wine into a\n glass. \"Here's to you.\"", "The chef entered the room, locking the door.\n\n\n \"You shoulda had that door locked.\" He stood by the door, listening,\n then turned to Retief.\n\n\n \"You want to get to Jorgensen's perty bad, don't you, Mister?\"\n\n\n \"That's right, Chip.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Tony give the captain a real hard time about old Skaw. The\n Sweaties didn't say nothin'. Didn't even act surprised, just took the\n remains and pushed off. But Mr. Tony and that other crook they call\n Marbles, they was fit to be tied. Took the cap'n in his cabin and\n talked loud at him fer half a hour. Then the cap'n come out and give\n some orders to the Mate.\"\n\n\n Retief sat up and reached for a cigar.\n\n\n \"Mr. Tony and Skaw were pals, eh?\"" ], [ "\"Feller has to be mighty careless who he eats with to set over there.\"\n\n\n \"I see your point.\"\n\n\n \"You set right where you're at, Mister. I'll rustle you up a plate.\"\n\n\n Five minutes later, Retief cut into a thirty-two ounce Delmonico backed\n up with mushrooms and garlic butter.\n\n\n \"I'm Chip,\" the chef said. \"I don't like the Cap'n. You can tell him I\n said so. Don't like his friends, either. Don't like them dern Sweaties,\n look at a man like he was a worm.\"\n\n\n \"You've got the right idea on frying a steak, Chip. And you've got the\n right idea on the Soetti, too,\" Retief said. He poured red wine into a\n glass. \"Here's to you.\"", "\"They don't scare me none.\" Chip picked up the tray. \"I'll scout around\n a little and see what's goin' on. If the Sweaties figure to do anything\n about that Skaw feller they'll have to move fast; they won't try\n nothin' close to port.\"\n\n\n \"Don't worry, Chip. I have reason to be pretty sure they won't do\n anything to attract a lot of attention in this sector just now.\"\n\n\n Chip looked at Retief. \"You ain't no tourist, Mister. I know that much.\n You didn't come out here for fun, did you?\"\n\n\n \"That,\" Retief said, \"would be a hard one to answer.\"\nIV\n\n\n Retief awoke at a tap on his door.\n\n\n \"It's me, Mister. Chip.\"\n\n\n \"Come on in.\"", "The captain groaned and picked up the mike. \"Captain to Power Section,\"\n he said. \"Hold your present course until you hear from me.\" He dropped\n the mike and looked up at Retief.\n\n\n \"It's eighteen hours yet before we pick up Jorgensen Control. You going\n to sit here and bend my arm the whole time?\"\n\n\n Retief released the captain's wrist and turned to the door.\n\n\n \"Chip, I'm locking the door. You circulate around, let me know what's\n going on. Bring me a pot of coffee every so often. I'm sitting up with\n a sick friend.\"\n\n\n \"Right, Mister. Keep an eye on that jasper; he's slippery.\"\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" the captain demanded.\n\n\n Retief settled himself in a chair.", "Retief heard the panel open beside him.\n\n\n \"Here you go, Mister,\" Chip said. Retief darted a glance; a well-honed\n french knife lay on the sill.\n\n\n \"Thanks, Chip,\" Retief said. \"I won't need it for these punks.\"\n\n\n Thick-neck lunged and Retief hit him square in the face, knocking him\n under the table. The other man stepped back, fumbling a power pistol\n from his shoulder holster.\n\n\n \"Aim that at me, and I'll kill you,\" Retief said.\n\n\n \"Go on, burn him!\" Mr. Tony shouted. Behind him, the captain appeared,\n white-faced.\n\n\n \"Put that away, you!\" he yelled. \"What kind of—\"\n\n\n \"Shut up,\" Mr. Tony said. \"Put it away, Hoany. We'll fix this bum\n later.\"", "\"Dern right,\" Chip said. \"Dunno who ever thought up broiling 'em.\n Steaks, that is. I got a Baked Alaska coming up in here for dessert.\n You like brandy in yer coffee?\"\n\n\n \"Chip, you're a genius.\"\n\n\n \"Like to see a feller eat,\" Chip said. \"I gotta go now. If you need\n anything, holler.\"\n\n\n Retief ate slowly. Time always dragged on shipboard. Four days to\n Jorgensen's Worlds. Then, if Magnan's information was correct,\n there would be four days to prepare for the Soetti attack. It was a\n temptation to scan the tapes built into the handle of his suitcase. It\n would be good to know what Jorgensen's Worlds would be up against.", "\"Not on this vessel, you won't,\" the captain said shakily. \"I got my\n charter to consider.\"\n\n\n \"Ram your charter,\" Hoany said harshly. \"You won't be needing it long.\"\n\n\n \"Button your floppy mouth, damn you!\" Mr. Tony snapped. He looked at\n the man on the floor. \"Get Marbles out of here. I ought to dump the\n slob.\"\n\n\n He turned and walked away. The captain signaled and two waiters came\n up. Retief watched as they carted the casualty from the dining room.\n\n\n The panel opened.\n\n\n \"I usta be about your size, when I was your age,\" Chip said. \"You\n handled them pansies right. I wouldn't give 'em the time o' day.\"\n\n\n \"How about a fresh cup of coffee, Chip?\" Retief said.", "Retief put his bag down. He turned at a sound behind him. A tall,\n florid man with an expensive coat belted over a massive paunch stood in\n the open door, looking at Retief. Retief looked back. The florid man\n clamped his jaws together, turned to speak over his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Somebody in the cabin. Get 'em out.\" He rolled a cold eye at Retief as\n he backed out of the room. A short, thick-necked man appeared.\n\n\n \"What are you doing in Mr. Tony's room?\" he barked. \"Never mind! Clear\n out of here, fellow! You're keeping Mr. Tony waiting.\"\n\n\n \"Too bad,\" Retief said. \"Finders keepers.\"\n\n\n \"You nuts?\" The thick-necked man stared at Retief. \"I said it's Mr.\n Tony's room.\"", "\"Sure, Mister. Anything else?\"\n\n\n \"I'll think of something,\" Retief said. \"This is shaping up into one of\n those long days.\"\n\"They don't like me bringing yer meals to you in yer cabin,\" Chip said.\n \"But the cap'n knows I'm the best cook in the Merchant Service. They\n won't mess with me.\"\n\n\n \"What has Mr. Tony got on the captain, Chip?\" Retief asked.\n\n\n \"They're in some kind o' crooked business together. You want some more\n smoked turkey?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. What have they got against my going to Jorgensen's Worlds?\"\n\n\n \"Dunno. Hasn't been no tourists got in there fer six or eight months. I\n sure like a feller that can put it away. I was a big eater when I was\n yer age.\"", "The chef entered the room, locking the door.\n\n\n \"You shoulda had that door locked.\" He stood by the door, listening,\n then turned to Retief.\n\n\n \"You want to get to Jorgensen's perty bad, don't you, Mister?\"\n\n\n \"That's right, Chip.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Tony give the captain a real hard time about old Skaw. The\n Sweaties didn't say nothin'. Didn't even act surprised, just took the\n remains and pushed off. But Mr. Tony and that other crook they call\n Marbles, they was fit to be tied. Took the cap'n in his cabin and\n talked loud at him fer half a hour. Then the cap'n come out and give\n some orders to the Mate.\"\n\n\n Retief sat up and reached for a cigar.\n\n\n \"Mr. Tony and Skaw were pals, eh?\"", "Retief put his suitcase carefully on the floor, took a step and drove a\n right into the guard's midriff. He stepped aside as the man doubled and\n went to his knees.\n\n\n \"You were wide open, ugly. I couldn't resist. Tell your boss I sneaked\n past while you were resting your eyes.\" He picked up his bag, stepped\n over the man and went up the gangway into the ship.\n\n\n A cabin boy in stained whites came along the corridor.\n\n\n \"Which way to cabin fifty-seven, son?\" Retief asked.\n\n\n \"Up there.\" The boy jerked his head and hurried on. Retief made his way\n along the narrow hall, found signs, followed them to cabin fifty-seven.\n The door was open. Inside, baggage was piled in the center of the\n floor. It was expensive looking baggage.", "Retief finished the steak, and the chef passed out the baked Alaska and\n coffee. Most of the other passengers had left the dining room. Mr. Tony\n and his retainers still sat at the Captain's table.\n\n\n As Retief watched, four men arose from the table and sauntered across\n the room. The first in line, a stony-faced thug with a broken ear, took\n a cigar from his mouth as he reached the table. He dipped the lighted\n end in Retief's coffee, looked at it, and dropped it on the tablecloth.\n\n\n The others came up, Mr. Tony trailing.\n\n\n \"You must want to get to Jorgensen's pretty bad,\" the thug said in a\n grating voice. \"What's your game, hick?\"\n\n\n Retief looked at the coffee cup, picked it up.", "\"I've never had the pleasure,\" Retief said.\n\n\n \"You prob'ly have it perty soon. Them devils board us nigh ever trip\n out. Act like they was the Customs Patrol or somethin'.\"\n\n\n There was a distant clang, and a faint tremor ran through the floor.\n\n\n \"I ain't superstitious ner nothin',\" Chip said. \"But I'll be\n triple-damned if that ain't them boarding us now.\"\n\n\n Ten minutes passed before bootsteps sounded outside the door,\n accompanied by a clicking patter. The doorknob rattled, then a heavy\n knock shook the door.\n\n\n \"They got to look you over,\" Chip whispered. \"Nosy damn Sweaties.\"\n\n\n \"Unlock it, Chip.\" The chef opened the door.\n\n\n \"Come in, damn you,\" he said.", "\"Catch,\" he said between clenched teeth. The trunk slammed against the\n far wall of the corridor and burst.\n\n\n Retief turned to the baggage on the floor, tossed it into the hall. The\n face of the thick-necked man appeared cautiously around the door jamb.\n\n\n \"Mister, you must be—\"\n\n\n \"If you'll excuse me,\" Retief said, \"I want to catch a nap.\" He flipped\n the door shut, pulled off his shoes and stretched out on the bed.\nFive minutes passed before the door rattled and burst open.\n\n\n Retief looked up. A gaunt leathery-skinned man wearing white ducks, a\n blue turtleneck sweater and a peaked cap tilted raffishly over one eye\n stared at Retief.\n\n\n \"Is this the joker?\" he grated.", "\"I don't know Mr. Tony. He'll have to bull his way into other quarters.\"\n\n\n \"We'll see about you, mister.\" The man turned and went out. Retief\n sat on the bunk and lit a cigar. There was a sound of voices in\n the corridor. Two burly baggage-smashers appeared, straining at an\n oversized trunk. They maneuvered it through the door, lowered it,\n glanced at Retief and went out. The thick-necked man returned.\n\n\n \"All right, you. Out,\" he growled. \"Or have I got to have you thrown\n out?\"\n\n\n Retief rose and clamped the cigar between his teeth. He gripped a\n handle of the brass-bound trunk in each hand, bent his knees and heaved\n the trunk up to chest level, then raised it overhead. He turned to the\n door.", "\"I don't think I want my coffee,\" he said. He looked at the thug. \"You\n drink it.\"\n\n\n The thug squinted at Retief. \"A wise hick,\" he began.\n\n\n With a flick of the wrist, Retief tossed the coffee into the thug's\n face, then stood and slammed a straight right to the chin. The thug\n went down.\n\n\n Retief looked at Mr. Tony, still standing open-mouthed.\n\n\n \"You can take your playmates away now, Tony,\" he said. \"And don't\n bother to come around yourself. You're not funny enough.\"\n\n\n Mr. Tony found his voice.\n\n\n \"Take him, Marbles!\" he growled.\n\n\n The thick-necked man slipped a hand inside his tunic and brought out a\n long-bladed knife. He licked his lips and moved in.", "\"You bluff easily, Captain. Show a few guns as you hand the body back.\n We know their secret now.\"\n\n\n \"What secret? I—\"\n\n\n \"Don't be no dumber than you got to, Cap'n,\" Chip said. \"Sweaties die\n easy; that's the secret.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe you got a point,\" the captain said, looking at Retief. \"All they\n got's a three-man scout. It could work.\"\n\n\n He went out, came back with two crewmen. They hauled the dead alien\n gingerly into the hall.\n\n\n \"Maybe I can run a bluff on the Soetti,\" the captain said, looking back\n from the door. \"But I'll be back to see you later.\"", "\"You'd better be getting started,\" Magnan said, shuffling papers.\n\n\n \"You're right,\" Retief said. \"If I work at it, I might manage a\n snootful by takeoff.\" He went to the door. \"No objection to my checking\n out a needler, is there?\"\n\n\n Magnan looked up. \"I suppose not. What do you want with it?\"\n\n\n \"Just a feeling I've got.\"\n\n\n \"Please yourself.\"\n\n\n \"Some day,\" Retief said, \"I may take you up on that.\"\nII", "The thick-necked man paused at the door. \"We'll see you when you come\n out.\"\nIII\n\n\n Four waiters passed Retief's table without stopping. A fifth leaned\n against the wall nearby, a menu under his arm.\n\n\n At a table across the room, the Captain, now wearing a dress uniform\n and with his thin red hair neatly parted, sat with a table of male\n passengers. He talked loudly and laughed frequently, casting occasional\n glances Retief's way.\n\n\n A panel opened in the wall behind Retief's chair. Bright blue eyes\n peered out from under a white chef's cap.\n\n\n \"Givin' you the cold shoulder, heh, Mister?\"\n\n\n \"Looks like it, old-timer,\" Retief said. \"Maybe I'd better go join the\n skipper. His party seems to be having all the fun.\"", "\"What do you think you're doing, busting in here?\"\n\n\n \"I hear you're planning a course change, Captain.\"\n\n\n \"You've got damn big ears.\"\n\n\n \"I think we'd better call in at Jorgensen's.\"\n\n\n \"You do, huh?\" the captain sat down. \"I'm in command of this vessel,\"\n he said. \"I'm changing course for Alabaster.\"\n\n\n \"I wouldn't find it convenient to go to Alabaster,\" Retief said. \"So\n just hold your course for Jorgensen's.\"\n\n\n \"Not bloody likely.\"\n\n\n \"Your use of the word 'bloody' is interesting, Captain. Don't try to\n change course.\"\n\n\n The captain reached for the mike on his desk, pressed the key.", "\"Power Section, this is the captain,\" he said. Retief reached across\n the desk, gripped the captain's wrist.\n\n\n \"Tell the mate to hold his present course,\" he said softly.\n\n\n \"Let go my hand, buster,\" the captain snarled. Eyes on Retief's, he\n eased a drawer open with his left hand, reached in. Retief kneed the\n drawer. The captain yelped and dropped the mike.\n\n\n \"You busted it, you—\"\n\n\n \"And one to go,\" Retief said. \"Tell him.\"\n\n\n \"I'm an officer of the Merchant Service!\"\n\n\n \"You're a cheapjack who's sold his bridge to a pack of back-alley\n hoods.\"\n\n\n \"You can't put it over, hick.\"\n\n\n \"Tell him.\"" ], [ "The chef entered the room, locking the door.\n\n\n \"You shoulda had that door locked.\" He stood by the door, listening,\n then turned to Retief.\n\n\n \"You want to get to Jorgensen's perty bad, don't you, Mister?\"\n\n\n \"That's right, Chip.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Tony give the captain a real hard time about old Skaw. The\n Sweaties didn't say nothin'. Didn't even act surprised, just took the\n remains and pushed off. But Mr. Tony and that other crook they call\n Marbles, they was fit to be tied. Took the cap'n in his cabin and\n talked loud at him fer half a hour. Then the cap'n come out and give\n some orders to the Mate.\"\n\n\n Retief sat up and reached for a cigar.\n\n\n \"Mr. Tony and Skaw were pals, eh?\"", "The captain groaned and picked up the mike. \"Captain to Power Section,\"\n he said. \"Hold your present course until you hear from me.\" He dropped\n the mike and looked up at Retief.\n\n\n \"It's eighteen hours yet before we pick up Jorgensen Control. You going\n to sit here and bend my arm the whole time?\"\n\n\n Retief released the captain's wrist and turned to the door.\n\n\n \"Chip, I'm locking the door. You circulate around, let me know what's\n going on. Bring me a pot of coffee every so often. I'm sitting up with\n a sick friend.\"\n\n\n \"Right, Mister. Keep an eye on that jasper; he's slippery.\"\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" the captain demanded.\n\n\n Retief settled himself in a chair.", "\"I'll bet you can still handle it, Old Timer. What are Jorgensen's\n Worlds like?\"\n\n\n \"One of 'em's cold as hell and three of 'em's colder. Most o' the\n Jorgies live on Svea; that's the least froze up. Man don't enjoy eatin'\n his own cookin' like he does somebody else's.\"\n\n\n \"That's where I'm lucky, Chip. What kind of cargo's the captain got\n aboard for Jorgensen's?\"\n\n\n \"Derned if I know. In and out o' there like a grasshopper, ever few\n weeks. Don't never pick up no cargo. No tourists any more, like I says.\n Don't know what we even run in there for.\"\n\n\n \"Where are the passengers we have aboard headed?\"", "Retief finished the steak, and the chef passed out the baked Alaska and\n coffee. Most of the other passengers had left the dining room. Mr. Tony\n and his retainers still sat at the Captain's table.\n\n\n As Retief watched, four men arose from the table and sauntered across\n the room. The first in line, a stony-faced thug with a broken ear, took\n a cigar from his mouth as he reached the table. He dipped the lighted\n end in Retief's coffee, looked at it, and dropped it on the tablecloth.\n\n\n The others came up, Mr. Tony trailing.\n\n\n \"You must want to get to Jorgensen's pretty bad,\" the thug said in a\n grating voice. \"What's your game, hick?\"\n\n\n Retief looked at the coffee cup, picked it up.", "The thick-necked man paused at the door. \"We'll see you when you come\n out.\"\nIII\n\n\n Four waiters passed Retief's table without stopping. A fifth leaned\n against the wall nearby, a menu under his arm.\n\n\n At a table across the room, the Captain, now wearing a dress uniform\n and with his thin red hair neatly parted, sat with a table of male\n passengers. He talked loudly and laughed frequently, casting occasional\n glances Retief's way.\n\n\n A panel opened in the wall behind Retief's chair. Bright blue eyes\n peered out from under a white chef's cap.\n\n\n \"Givin' you the cold shoulder, heh, Mister?\"\n\n\n \"Looks like it, old-timer,\" Retief said. \"Maybe I'd better go join the\n skipper. His party seems to be having all the fun.\"", "\"He hated Skaw's guts. But with him it was business. Mister, you got a\n gun?\"\n\n\n \"A 2mm needler. Why?\"\n\n\n \"The orders cap'n give was to change course fer Alabaster. We're\n by-passin' Jorgensen's Worlds. We'll feel the course change any minute.\"\n\n\n Retief lit the cigar, reached under the mattress and took out a\n short-barreled pistol. He dropped it in his pocket, looked at Chip.\n\n\n \"Maybe it was a good thought, at that. Which way to the Captain's\n cabin?\"\n\"This is it,\" Chip said softly. \"You want me to keep an eye on who\n comes down the passage?\"\n\n\n Retief nodded, opened the door and stepped into the cabin. The captain\n looked up from his desk, then jumped up.", "\"Sure, Mister. Anything else?\"\n\n\n \"I'll think of something,\" Retief said. \"This is shaping up into one of\n those long days.\"\n\"They don't like me bringing yer meals to you in yer cabin,\" Chip said.\n \"But the cap'n knows I'm the best cook in the Merchant Service. They\n won't mess with me.\"\n\n\n \"What has Mr. Tony got on the captain, Chip?\" Retief asked.\n\n\n \"They're in some kind o' crooked business together. You want some more\n smoked turkey?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. What have they got against my going to Jorgensen's Worlds?\"\n\n\n \"Dunno. Hasn't been no tourists got in there fer six or eight months. I\n sure like a feller that can put it away. I was a big eater when I was\n yer age.\"", "\"Dern right,\" Chip said. \"Dunno who ever thought up broiling 'em.\n Steaks, that is. I got a Baked Alaska coming up in here for dessert.\n You like brandy in yer coffee?\"\n\n\n \"Chip, you're a genius.\"\n\n\n \"Like to see a feller eat,\" Chip said. \"I gotta go now. If you need\n anything, holler.\"\n\n\n Retief ate slowly. Time always dragged on shipboard. Four days to\n Jorgensen's Worlds. Then, if Magnan's information was correct,\n there would be four days to prepare for the Soetti attack. It was a\n temptation to scan the tapes built into the handle of his suitcase. It\n would be good to know what Jorgensen's Worlds would be up against.", "\"I've never had the pleasure,\" Retief said.\n\n\n \"You prob'ly have it perty soon. Them devils board us nigh ever trip\n out. Act like they was the Customs Patrol or somethin'.\"\n\n\n There was a distant clang, and a faint tremor ran through the floor.\n\n\n \"I ain't superstitious ner nothin',\" Chip said. \"But I'll be\n triple-damned if that ain't them boarding us now.\"\n\n\n Ten minutes passed before bootsteps sounded outside the door,\n accompanied by a clicking patter. The doorknob rattled, then a heavy\n knock shook the door.\n\n\n \"They got to look you over,\" Chip whispered. \"Nosy damn Sweaties.\"\n\n\n \"Unlock it, Chip.\" The chef opened the door.\n\n\n \"Come in, damn you,\" he said.", "\"Not on this vessel, you won't,\" the captain said shakily. \"I got my\n charter to consider.\"\n\n\n \"Ram your charter,\" Hoany said harshly. \"You won't be needing it long.\"\n\n\n \"Button your floppy mouth, damn you!\" Mr. Tony snapped. He looked at\n the man on the floor. \"Get Marbles out of here. I ought to dump the\n slob.\"\n\n\n He turned and walked away. The captain signaled and two waiters came\n up. Retief watched as they carted the casualty from the dining room.\n\n\n The panel opened.\n\n\n \"I usta be about your size, when I was your age,\" Chip said. \"You\n handled them pansies right. I wouldn't give 'em the time o' day.\"\n\n\n \"How about a fresh cup of coffee, Chip?\" Retief said.", "One of the two wiped his nose on a sleeve, spat on his right palm, and\n stepped forward, then hesitated.\n\n\n \"Hey,\" he said. \"This the guy tossed the trunk off the wall?\"\n\n\n \"That's him,\" the thick-necked man called. \"Spilled Mr. Tony's\n possessions right on the deck.\"\n\n\n \"Deal me out,\" the bouncer said. \"He can stay put as long as he wants\n to. I signed on to move cargo. Let's go, Moe.\"\n\n\n \"You'd better be getting back to the bridge, Captain,\" Retief said.\n \"We're due to lift in twenty minutes.\"\n\n\n The thick-necked man and the Captain both shouted at once. The\n Captain's voice prevailed.\n\n\n \"—twenty minutes ... uniform Code ... gonna do?\"\n\n\n \"Close the door as you leave,\" Retief said.", "\"Instead of strangling you, as you deserve,\" he said, \"I'm going to\n stay here and help you hold your course for Jorgensen's Worlds.\"\n\n\n The captain looked at Retief. He laughed, a short bark.\n\n\n \"Then I'll just stretch out and have a little nap, farmer. If you feel\n like dozing off sometime during the next eighteen hours, don't mind me.\"\n\n\n Retief took out the needler and put it on the desk before him.\n\n\n \"If anything happens that I don't like,\" he said, \"I'll wake you up.\n With this.\"", "\"Feller has to be mighty careless who he eats with to set over there.\"\n\n\n \"I see your point.\"\n\n\n \"You set right where you're at, Mister. I'll rustle you up a plate.\"\n\n\n Five minutes later, Retief cut into a thirty-two ounce Delmonico backed\n up with mushrooms and garlic butter.\n\n\n \"I'm Chip,\" the chef said. \"I don't like the Cap'n. You can tell him I\n said so. Don't like his friends, either. Don't like them dern Sweaties,\n look at a man like he was a worm.\"\n\n\n \"You've got the right idea on frying a steak, Chip. And you've got the\n right idea on the Soetti, too,\" Retief said. He poured red wine into a\n glass. \"Here's to you.\"", "\"Power Section, this is the captain,\" he said. Retief reached across\n the desk, gripped the captain's wrist.\n\n\n \"Tell the mate to hold his present course,\" he said softly.\n\n\n \"Let go my hand, buster,\" the captain snarled. Eyes on Retief's, he\n eased a drawer open with his left hand, reached in. Retief kneed the\n drawer. The captain yelped and dropped the mike.\n\n\n \"You busted it, you—\"\n\n\n \"And one to go,\" Retief said. \"Tell him.\"\n\n\n \"I'm an officer of the Merchant Service!\"\n\n\n \"You're a cheapjack who's sold his bridge to a pack of back-alley\n hoods.\"\n\n\n \"You can't put it over, hick.\"\n\n\n \"Tell him.\"", "\"You don't scare us, Cap'n,\" Chip said. \"Him and Mr. Tony and all his\n goons. You hit 'em where they live, that time. They're pals o' these\n Sweaties. Runnin' some kind o' crooked racket.\"\n\n\n \"You'd better take the captain's advice, Chip. There's no point in your\n getting involved in my problems.\"\n\n\n \"They'd of killed you before now, Mister, if they had any guts. That's\n where we got it over these monkeys. They got no guts.\"\n\n\n \"They act scared, Chip. Scared men are killers.\"", "\"You bluff easily, Captain. Show a few guns as you hand the body back.\n We know their secret now.\"\n\n\n \"What secret? I—\"\n\n\n \"Don't be no dumber than you got to, Cap'n,\" Chip said. \"Sweaties die\n easy; that's the secret.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe you got a point,\" the captain said, looking at Retief. \"All they\n got's a three-man scout. It could work.\"\n\n\n He went out, came back with two crewmen. They hauled the dead alien\n gingerly into the hall.\n\n\n \"Maybe I can run a bluff on the Soetti,\" the captain said, looking back\n from the door. \"But I'll be back to see you later.\"", "\"To Alabaster. That's nine days' run in-sector from Jorgensen's. You\n ain't got another one of them cigars, have you?\"\n\n\n \"Have one, Chip. I guess I was lucky to get space on this ship.\"\n\n\n \"Plenty o' space, Mister. We got a dozen empty cabins.\" Chip puffed\n the cigar alight, then cleared away the dishes, poured out coffee and\n brandy.\n\n\n \"Them Sweaties is what I don't like,\" he said.\n\n\n Retief looked at him questioningly.\n\n\n \"You never seen a Sweaty? Ugly lookin' devils. Skinny legs, like a\n lobster; big chest, shaped like the top of a turnip; rubbery lookin'\n head. You can see the pulse beatin' when they get riled.\"", "\"I have your itinerary here. Your accommodations are clear as far as\n Aldo Cerise. You'll have to rely on your ingenuity to get you the rest\n of the way.\"\n\n\n \"That's a pretty rough trip, Mr. Councillor. Suppose I don't make it?\"\n\n\n Magnan looked sour. \"Someone at a policy-making level has chosen to put\n all our eggs in one basket, Retief. I hope their confidence in you is\n not misplaced.\"\n\n\n \"This antiac conversion; how long does it take?\"\n\n\n \"A skilled electronics crew can do the job in a matter of minutes. The\n Jorgensens can handle it very nicely; every other man is a mechanic of\n some sort.\"\n\n\n Retief opened the envelope Magnan handed him and looked at the tickets\n inside.", "\"What do you think you're doing, busting in here?\"\n\n\n \"I hear you're planning a course change, Captain.\"\n\n\n \"You've got damn big ears.\"\n\n\n \"I think we'd better call in at Jorgensen's.\"\n\n\n \"You do, huh?\" the captain sat down. \"I'm in command of this vessel,\"\n he said. \"I'm changing course for Alabaster.\"\n\n\n \"I wouldn't find it convenient to go to Alabaster,\" Retief said. \"So\n just hold your course for Jorgensen's.\"\n\n\n \"Not bloody likely.\"\n\n\n \"Your use of the word 'bloody' is interesting, Captain. Don't try to\n change course.\"\n\n\n The captain reached for the mike on his desk, pressed the key.", "\"Catch,\" he said between clenched teeth. The trunk slammed against the\n far wall of the corridor and burst.\n\n\n Retief turned to the baggage on the floor, tossed it into the hall. The\n face of the thick-necked man appeared cautiously around the door jamb.\n\n\n \"Mister, you must be—\"\n\n\n \"If you'll excuse me,\" Retief said, \"I want to catch a nap.\" He flipped\n the door shut, pulled off his shoes and stretched out on the bed.\nFive minutes passed before the door rattled and burst open.\n\n\n Retief looked up. A gaunt leathery-skinned man wearing white ducks, a\n blue turtleneck sweater and a peaked cap tilted raffishly over one eye\n stared at Retief.\n\n\n \"Is this the joker?\" he grated." ], [ "\"You bluff easily, Captain. Show a few guns as you hand the body back.\n We know their secret now.\"\n\n\n \"What secret? I—\"\n\n\n \"Don't be no dumber than you got to, Cap'n,\" Chip said. \"Sweaties die\n easy; that's the secret.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe you got a point,\" the captain said, looking at Retief. \"All they\n got's a three-man scout. It could work.\"\n\n\n He went out, came back with two crewmen. They hauled the dead alien\n gingerly into the hall.\n\n\n \"Maybe I can run a bluff on the Soetti,\" the captain said, looking back\n from the door. \"But I'll be back to see you later.\"", "\"First,\" he said. \"The Soetti War Plan—in detail. We were fortunate\n enough to make contact with a defector from a party of renegade\n Terrestrials who've been advising the Soetti.\" He folded another\n finger. \"Next, a battle plan for the Jorgensen's people, worked out by\n the Theory group.\" He wrestled a third finger down. \"Lastly; an Utter\n Top Secret schematic for conversion of a standard anti-acceleration\n field into a potent weapon—a development our systems people have been\n holding in reserve for just such a situation.\"\n\n\n \"Is that all?\" Retief said. \"You've still got two fingers sticking up.\"\n\n\n Magnan looked at the fingers and put them away.\n\n\n \"This is no occasion for flippancy, Retief. In the wrong hands, this\n information could be catastrophic. You'll memorize it before you leave\n this building.\"", "\"Now—\" Magnan leaned forward and lowered his voice—\"we have learned\n that the Soetti plan a bold step forward. Since they've met no\n opposition so far in their infiltration of Terrestrial space, they\n intend to seize Jorgensen's Worlds by force.\"\n\n\n Magnan leaned back, waiting for Retief's reaction. Retief drew\n carefully on his cigar and looked at Magnan. Magnan frowned.\n\n\n \"This is open aggression, Retief,\" he said, \"in case I haven't made\n myself clear. Aggression on Terrestrial-occupied territory by an alien\n species. Obviously, we can't allow it.\"\n\n\n Magnan drew a large folder from his desk.", "\"Feller has to be mighty careless who he eats with to set over there.\"\n\n\n \"I see your point.\"\n\n\n \"You set right where you're at, Mister. I'll rustle you up a plate.\"\n\n\n Five minutes later, Retief cut into a thirty-two ounce Delmonico backed\n up with mushrooms and garlic butter.\n\n\n \"I'm Chip,\" the chef said. \"I don't like the Cap'n. You can tell him I\n said so. Don't like his friends, either. Don't like them dern Sweaties,\n look at a man like he was a worm.\"\n\n\n \"You've got the right idea on frying a steak, Chip. And you've got the\n right idea on the Soetti, too,\" Retief said. He poured red wine into a\n glass. \"Here's to you.\"", "\"Jesus, what did you do! They'll kill us!\" the captain gasped, staring\n at the figure flopping on the floor.\n\n\n \"Cart poor old Skaw back to his boat,\" Retief said. \"Tell him to pass\n the word. No more illegal entry and search of Terrestrial vessels in\n Terrestrial space.\"\n\n\n \"Hey,\" Chip said. \"He's quit kicking.\"\n\n\n The captain bent over Skaw, gingerly rolled him over. He leaned close\n and sniffed.\n\n\n \"He's dead.\" The captain stared at Retief. \"We're all dead men,\" he\n said. \"These Soetti got no mercy.\"\n\n\n \"They won't need it. Tell 'em to sheer off; their fun is over.\"\n\n\n \"They got no more emotions than a blue crab—\"", "Retief put his bag down. He turned at a sound behind him. A tall,\n florid man with an expensive coat belted over a massive paunch stood in\n the open door, looking at Retief. Retief looked back. The florid man\n clamped his jaws together, turned to speak over his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Somebody in the cabin. Get 'em out.\" He rolled a cold eye at Retief as\n he backed out of the room. A short, thick-necked man appeared.\n\n\n \"What are you doing in Mr. Tony's room?\" he barked. \"Never mind! Clear\n out of here, fellow! You're keeping Mr. Tony waiting.\"\n\n\n \"Too bad,\" Retief said. \"Finders keepers.\"\n\n\n \"You nuts?\" The thick-necked man stared at Retief. \"I said it's Mr.\n Tony's room.\"", "Retief put his suitcase carefully on the floor, took a step and drove a\n right into the guard's midriff. He stepped aside as the man doubled and\n went to his knees.\n\n\n \"You were wide open, ugly. I couldn't resist. Tell your boss I sneaked\n past while you were resting your eyes.\" He picked up his bag, stepped\n over the man and went up the gangway into the ship.\n\n\n A cabin boy in stained whites came along the corridor.\n\n\n \"Which way to cabin fifty-seven, son?\" Retief asked.\n\n\n \"Up there.\" The boy jerked his head and hurried on. Retief made his way\n along the narrow hall, found signs, followed them to cabin fifty-seven.\n The door was open. Inside, baggage was piled in the center of the\n floor. It was expensive looking baggage.", "Retief finished the steak, and the chef passed out the baked Alaska and\n coffee. Most of the other passengers had left the dining room. Mr. Tony\n and his retainers still sat at the Captain's table.\n\n\n As Retief watched, four men arose from the table and sauntered across\n the room. The first in line, a stony-faced thug with a broken ear, took\n a cigar from his mouth as he reached the table. He dipped the lighted\n end in Retief's coffee, looked at it, and dropped it on the tablecloth.\n\n\n The others came up, Mr. Tony trailing.\n\n\n \"You must want to get to Jorgensen's pretty bad,\" the thug said in a\n grating voice. \"What's your game, hick?\"\n\n\n Retief looked at the coffee cup, picked it up.", "The chef entered the room, locking the door.\n\n\n \"You shoulda had that door locked.\" He stood by the door, listening,\n then turned to Retief.\n\n\n \"You want to get to Jorgensen's perty bad, don't you, Mister?\"\n\n\n \"That's right, Chip.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Tony give the captain a real hard time about old Skaw. The\n Sweaties didn't say nothin'. Didn't even act surprised, just took the\n remains and pushed off. But Mr. Tony and that other crook they call\n Marbles, they was fit to be tied. Took the cap'n in his cabin and\n talked loud at him fer half a hour. Then the cap'n come out and give\n some orders to the Mate.\"\n\n\n Retief sat up and reached for a cigar.\n\n\n \"Mr. Tony and Skaw were pals, eh?\"", "The captain groaned and picked up the mike. \"Captain to Power Section,\"\n he said. \"Hold your present course until you hear from me.\" He dropped\n the mike and looked up at Retief.\n\n\n \"It's eighteen hours yet before we pick up Jorgensen Control. You going\n to sit here and bend my arm the whole time?\"\n\n\n Retief released the captain's wrist and turned to the door.\n\n\n \"Chip, I'm locking the door. You circulate around, let me know what's\n going on. Bring me a pot of coffee every so often. I'm sitting up with\n a sick friend.\"\n\n\n \"Right, Mister. Keep an eye on that jasper; he's slippery.\"\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" the captain demanded.\n\n\n Retief settled himself in a chair.", "\"Less than four hours to departure time,\" he said. \"I'd better not\n start any long books.\"\n\n\n \"You'd better waste no time getting over to Indoctrination,\" Magnan\n said.\n\n\n Retief stood up. \"If I hurry, maybe I can catch the cartoon.\"\n\n\n \"The allusion escapes me,\" Magnan said coldly. \"And one last word. The\n Soetti are patrolling the trade lanes into Jorgensen's Worlds; don't\n get yourself interned.\"\n\n\n \"I'll tell you what,\" Retief said soberly. \"In a pinch, I'll mention\n your name.\"\n\n\n \"You'll be traveling with Class X credentials,\" Magnan snapped. \"There\n must be nothing to connect you with the Corps.\"\n\n\n \"They'll never guess,\" Retief said. \"I'll pose as a gentleman.\"", "\"Power Section, this is the captain,\" he said. Retief reached across\n the desk, gripped the captain's wrist.\n\n\n \"Tell the mate to hold his present course,\" he said softly.\n\n\n \"Let go my hand, buster,\" the captain snarled. Eyes on Retief's, he\n eased a drawer open with his left hand, reached in. Retief kneed the\n drawer. The captain yelped and dropped the mike.\n\n\n \"You busted it, you—\"\n\n\n \"And one to go,\" Retief said. \"Tell him.\"\n\n\n \"I'm an officer of the Merchant Service!\"\n\n\n \"You're a cheapjack who's sold his bridge to a pack of back-alley\n hoods.\"\n\n\n \"You can't put it over, hick.\"\n\n\n \"Tell him.\"", "\"They don't scare me none.\" Chip picked up the tray. \"I'll scout around\n a little and see what's goin' on. If the Sweaties figure to do anything\n about that Skaw feller they'll have to move fast; they won't try\n nothin' close to port.\"\n\n\n \"Don't worry, Chip. I have reason to be pretty sure they won't do\n anything to attract a lot of attention in this sector just now.\"\n\n\n Chip looked at Retief. \"You ain't no tourist, Mister. I know that much.\n You didn't come out here for fun, did you?\"\n\n\n \"That,\" Retief said, \"would be a hard one to answer.\"\nIV\n\n\n Retief awoke at a tap on his door.\n\n\n \"It's me, Mister. Chip.\"\n\n\n \"Come on in.\"", "\"I don't think—\"\n\n\n \"Let's stick to facts,\" Retief said. \"Don't try to think. What time is\n it due out?\"\n\n\n The clerk smiled pityingly. \"It's my lunch hour,\" he said. \"I'll be\n open in an hour.\" He held up a thumb nail, frowned at it.\n\n\n \"If I have to come around this counter,\" Retief said, \"I'll feed that\n thumb to you the hard way.\"\n\n\n The clerk looked up and opened his mouth. Then he caught Retief's eye,\n closed his mouth and swallowed.\n\n\n \"Like it says there,\" he said, jerking a thumb at the board. \"Lifts in\n an hour. But you won't be on it,\" he added.\n\n\n Retief looked at him.", "\"Dern right,\" Chip said. \"Dunno who ever thought up broiling 'em.\n Steaks, that is. I got a Baked Alaska coming up in here for dessert.\n You like brandy in yer coffee?\"\n\n\n \"Chip, you're a genius.\"\n\n\n \"Like to see a feller eat,\" Chip said. \"I gotta go now. If you need\n anything, holler.\"\n\n\n Retief ate slowly. Time always dragged on shipboard. Four days to\n Jorgensen's Worlds. Then, if Magnan's information was correct,\n there would be four days to prepare for the Soetti attack. It was a\n temptation to scan the tapes built into the handle of his suitcase. It\n would be good to know what Jorgensen's Worlds would be up against.", "\"Catch,\" he said between clenched teeth. The trunk slammed against the\n far wall of the corridor and burst.\n\n\n Retief turned to the baggage on the floor, tossed it into the hall. The\n face of the thick-necked man appeared cautiously around the door jamb.\n\n\n \"Mister, you must be—\"\n\n\n \"If you'll excuse me,\" Retief said, \"I want to catch a nap.\" He flipped\n the door shut, pulled off his shoes and stretched out on the bed.\nFive minutes passed before the door rattled and burst open.\n\n\n Retief looked up. A gaunt leathery-skinned man wearing white ducks, a\n blue turtleneck sweater and a peaked cap tilted raffishly over one eye\n stared at Retief.\n\n\n \"Is this the joker?\" he grated.", "\"You'd better be getting started,\" Magnan said, shuffling papers.\n\n\n \"You're right,\" Retief said. \"If I work at it, I might manage a\n snootful by takeoff.\" He went to the door. \"No objection to my checking\n out a needler, is there?\"\n\n\n Magnan looked up. \"I suppose not. What do you want with it?\"\n\n\n \"Just a feeling I've got.\"\n\n\n \"Please yourself.\"\n\n\n \"Some day,\" Retief said, \"I may take you up on that.\"\nII", "Retief heard the panel open beside him.\n\n\n \"Here you go, Mister,\" Chip said. Retief darted a glance; a well-honed\n french knife lay on the sill.\n\n\n \"Thanks, Chip,\" Retief said. \"I won't need it for these punks.\"\n\n\n Thick-neck lunged and Retief hit him square in the face, knocking him\n under the table. The other man stepped back, fumbling a power pistol\n from his shoulder holster.\n\n\n \"Aim that at me, and I'll kill you,\" Retief said.\n\n\n \"Go on, burn him!\" Mr. Tony shouted. Behind him, the captain appeared,\n white-faced.\n\n\n \"Put that away, you!\" he yelled. \"What kind of—\"\n\n\n \"Shut up,\" Mr. Tony said. \"Put it away, Hoany. We'll fix this bum\n later.\"", "The thick-necked man paused at the door. \"We'll see you when you come\n out.\"\nIII\n\n\n Four waiters passed Retief's table without stopping. A fifth leaned\n against the wall nearby, a menu under his arm.\n\n\n At a table across the room, the Captain, now wearing a dress uniform\n and with his thin red hair neatly parted, sat with a table of male\n passengers. He talked loudly and laughed frequently, casting occasional\n glances Retief's way.\n\n\n A panel opened in the wall behind Retief's chair. Bright blue eyes\n peered out from under a white chef's cap.\n\n\n \"Givin' you the cold shoulder, heh, Mister?\"\n\n\n \"Looks like it, old-timer,\" Retief said. \"Maybe I'd better go join the\n skipper. His party seems to be having all the fun.\"", "\"Not on this vessel, you won't,\" the captain said shakily. \"I got my\n charter to consider.\"\n\n\n \"Ram your charter,\" Hoany said harshly. \"You won't be needing it long.\"\n\n\n \"Button your floppy mouth, damn you!\" Mr. Tony snapped. He looked at\n the man on the floor. \"Get Marbles out of here. I ought to dump the\n slob.\"\n\n\n He turned and walked away. The captain signaled and two waiters came\n up. Retief watched as they carted the casualty from the dining room.\n\n\n The panel opened.\n\n\n \"I usta be about your size, when I was your age,\" Chip said. \"You\n handled them pansies right. I wouldn't give 'em the time o' day.\"\n\n\n \"How about a fresh cup of coffee, Chip?\" Retief said." ], [ "\"I've never had the pleasure,\" Retief said.\n\n\n \"You prob'ly have it perty soon. Them devils board us nigh ever trip\n out. Act like they was the Customs Patrol or somethin'.\"\n\n\n There was a distant clang, and a faint tremor ran through the floor.\n\n\n \"I ain't superstitious ner nothin',\" Chip said. \"But I'll be\n triple-damned if that ain't them boarding us now.\"\n\n\n Ten minutes passed before bootsteps sounded outside the door,\n accompanied by a clicking patter. The doorknob rattled, then a heavy\n knock shook the door.\n\n\n \"They got to look you over,\" Chip whispered. \"Nosy damn Sweaties.\"\n\n\n \"Unlock it, Chip.\" The chef opened the door.\n\n\n \"Come in, damn you,\" he said.", "\"Jesus, what did you do! They'll kill us!\" the captain gasped, staring\n at the figure flopping on the floor.\n\n\n \"Cart poor old Skaw back to his boat,\" Retief said. \"Tell him to pass\n the word. No more illegal entry and search of Terrestrial vessels in\n Terrestrial space.\"\n\n\n \"Hey,\" Chip said. \"He's quit kicking.\"\n\n\n The captain bent over Skaw, gingerly rolled him over. He leaned close\n and sniffed.\n\n\n \"He's dead.\" The captain stared at Retief. \"We're all dead men,\" he\n said. \"These Soetti got no mercy.\"\n\n\n \"They won't need it. Tell 'em to sheer off; their fun is over.\"\n\n\n \"They got no more emotions than a blue crab—\"", "\"You bluff easily, Captain. Show a few guns as you hand the body back.\n We know their secret now.\"\n\n\n \"What secret? I—\"\n\n\n \"Don't be no dumber than you got to, Cap'n,\" Chip said. \"Sweaties die\n easy; that's the secret.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe you got a point,\" the captain said, looking at Retief. \"All they\n got's a three-man scout. It could work.\"\n\n\n He went out, came back with two crewmen. They hauled the dead alien\n gingerly into the hall.\n\n\n \"Maybe I can run a bluff on the Soetti,\" the captain said, looking back\n from the door. \"But I'll be back to see you later.\"", "\"Now—\" Magnan leaned forward and lowered his voice—\"we have learned\n that the Soetti plan a bold step forward. Since they've met no\n opposition so far in their infiltration of Terrestrial space, they\n intend to seize Jorgensen's Worlds by force.\"\n\n\n Magnan leaned back, waiting for Retief's reaction. Retief drew\n carefully on his cigar and looked at Magnan. Magnan frowned.\n\n\n \"This is open aggression, Retief,\" he said, \"in case I haven't made\n myself clear. Aggression on Terrestrial-occupied territory by an alien\n species. Obviously, we can't allow it.\"\n\n\n Magnan drew a large folder from his desk.", "One of the two wiped his nose on a sleeve, spat on his right palm, and\n stepped forward, then hesitated.\n\n\n \"Hey,\" he said. \"This the guy tossed the trunk off the wall?\"\n\n\n \"That's him,\" the thick-necked man called. \"Spilled Mr. Tony's\n possessions right on the deck.\"\n\n\n \"Deal me out,\" the bouncer said. \"He can stay put as long as he wants\n to. I signed on to move cargo. Let's go, Moe.\"\n\n\n \"You'd better be getting back to the bridge, Captain,\" Retief said.\n \"We're due to lift in twenty minutes.\"\n\n\n The thick-necked man and the Captain both shouted at once. The\n Captain's voice prevailed.\n\n\n \"—twenty minutes ... uniform Code ... gonna do?\"\n\n\n \"Close the door as you leave,\" Retief said.", "Retief put his suitcase carefully on the floor, took a step and drove a\n right into the guard's midriff. He stepped aside as the man doubled and\n went to his knees.\n\n\n \"You were wide open, ugly. I couldn't resist. Tell your boss I sneaked\n past while you were resting your eyes.\" He picked up his bag, stepped\n over the man and went up the gangway into the ship.\n\n\n A cabin boy in stained whites came along the corridor.\n\n\n \"Which way to cabin fifty-seven, son?\" Retief asked.\n\n\n \"Up there.\" The boy jerked his head and hurried on. Retief made his way\n along the narrow hall, found signs, followed them to cabin fifty-seven.\n The door was open. Inside, baggage was piled in the center of the\n floor. It was expensive looking baggage.", "\"Feller has to be mighty careless who he eats with to set over there.\"\n\n\n \"I see your point.\"\n\n\n \"You set right where you're at, Mister. I'll rustle you up a plate.\"\n\n\n Five minutes later, Retief cut into a thirty-two ounce Delmonico backed\n up with mushrooms and garlic butter.\n\n\n \"I'm Chip,\" the chef said. \"I don't like the Cap'n. You can tell him I\n said so. Don't like his friends, either. Don't like them dern Sweaties,\n look at a man like he was a worm.\"\n\n\n \"You've got the right idea on frying a steak, Chip. And you've got the\n right idea on the Soetti, too,\" Retief said. He poured red wine into a\n glass. \"Here's to you.\"", "\"Another smart alec,\" the clerk said behind him.\nRetief followed the signs, threaded his way through crowds, found a\n covered ramp with the number 228 posted over it. A heavy-shouldered man\n with a scarred jawline and small eyes was slouching there in a rumpled\n gray uniform. He put out a hand as Retief started past him.\n\n\n \"Lessee your boarding pass,\" he muttered.\n\n\n Retief pulled a paper from an inside pocket, handed it over.\n\n\n The guard blinked at it.\n\n\n \"Whassat?\"\n\n\n \"A gram confirming my space,\" Retief said. \"Your boy on the counter\n says he's out to lunch.\"\n\n\n The guard crumpled the gram, dropped it on the floor and lounged back\n against the handrail.\n\n\n \"On your way, bub,\" he said.", "\"Not on this vessel, you won't,\" the captain said shakily. \"I got my\n charter to consider.\"\n\n\n \"Ram your charter,\" Hoany said harshly. \"You won't be needing it long.\"\n\n\n \"Button your floppy mouth, damn you!\" Mr. Tony snapped. He looked at\n the man on the floor. \"Get Marbles out of here. I ought to dump the\n slob.\"\n\n\n He turned and walked away. The captain signaled and two waiters came\n up. Retief watched as they carted the casualty from the dining room.\n\n\n The panel opened.\n\n\n \"I usta be about your size, when I was your age,\" Chip said. \"You\n handled them pansies right. I wouldn't give 'em the time o' day.\"\n\n\n \"How about a fresh cup of coffee, Chip?\" Retief said.", "\"Less than four hours to departure time,\" he said. \"I'd better not\n start any long books.\"\n\n\n \"You'd better waste no time getting over to Indoctrination,\" Magnan\n said.\n\n\n Retief stood up. \"If I hurry, maybe I can catch the cartoon.\"\n\n\n \"The allusion escapes me,\" Magnan said coldly. \"And one last word. The\n Soetti are patrolling the trade lanes into Jorgensen's Worlds; don't\n get yourself interned.\"\n\n\n \"I'll tell you what,\" Retief said soberly. \"In a pinch, I'll mention\n your name.\"\n\n\n \"You'll be traveling with Class X credentials,\" Magnan snapped. \"There\n must be nothing to connect you with the Corps.\"\n\n\n \"They'll never guess,\" Retief said. \"I'll pose as a gentleman.\"", "\"First,\" he said. \"The Soetti War Plan—in detail. We were fortunate\n enough to make contact with a defector from a party of renegade\n Terrestrials who've been advising the Soetti.\" He folded another\n finger. \"Next, a battle plan for the Jorgensen's people, worked out by\n the Theory group.\" He wrestled a third finger down. \"Lastly; an Utter\n Top Secret schematic for conversion of a standard anti-acceleration\n field into a potent weapon—a development our systems people have been\n holding in reserve for just such a situation.\"\n\n\n \"Is that all?\" Retief said. \"You've still got two fingers sticking up.\"\n\n\n Magnan looked at the fingers and put them away.\n\n\n \"This is no occasion for flippancy, Retief. In the wrong hands, this\n information could be catastrophic. You'll memorize it before you leave\n this building.\"", "The thick-necked man paused at the door. \"We'll see you when you come\n out.\"\nIII\n\n\n Four waiters passed Retief's table without stopping. A fifth leaned\n against the wall nearby, a menu under his arm.\n\n\n At a table across the room, the Captain, now wearing a dress uniform\n and with his thin red hair neatly parted, sat with a table of male\n passengers. He talked loudly and laughed frequently, casting occasional\n glances Retief's way.\n\n\n A panel opened in the wall behind Retief's chair. Bright blue eyes\n peered out from under a white chef's cap.\n\n\n \"Givin' you the cold shoulder, heh, Mister?\"\n\n\n \"Looks like it, old-timer,\" Retief said. \"Maybe I'd better go join the\n skipper. His party seems to be having all the fun.\"", "\"You'd better be getting started,\" Magnan said, shuffling papers.\n\n\n \"You're right,\" Retief said. \"If I work at it, I might manage a\n snootful by takeoff.\" He went to the door. \"No objection to my checking\n out a needler, is there?\"\n\n\n Magnan looked up. \"I suppose not. What do you want with it?\"\n\n\n \"Just a feeling I've got.\"\n\n\n \"Please yourself.\"\n\n\n \"Some day,\" Retief said, \"I may take you up on that.\"\nII", "\"Dern right,\" Chip said. \"Dunno who ever thought up broiling 'em.\n Steaks, that is. I got a Baked Alaska coming up in here for dessert.\n You like brandy in yer coffee?\"\n\n\n \"Chip, you're a genius.\"\n\n\n \"Like to see a feller eat,\" Chip said. \"I gotta go now. If you need\n anything, holler.\"\n\n\n Retief ate slowly. Time always dragged on shipboard. Four days to\n Jorgensen's Worlds. Then, if Magnan's information was correct,\n there would be four days to prepare for the Soetti attack. It was a\n temptation to scan the tapes built into the handle of his suitcase. It\n would be good to know what Jorgensen's Worlds would be up against.", "The thick-necked man edged past him, looked at Retief and snorted,\n \"That's him, sure.\"\n\n\n \"I'm captain of this vessel,\" the first man said. \"You've got two\n minutes to haul your freight out of here, buster.\"\n\n\n \"When you can spare the time from your other duties,\" Retief said,\n \"take a look at Section Three, Paragraph One, of the Uniform Code.\n That spells out the law on confirmed space on vessels engaged in\n interplanetary commerce.\"\n\n\n \"A space lawyer.\" The captain turned. \"Throw him out, boys.\"\n\n\n Two big men edged into the cabin, looking at Retief.\n\n\n \"Go on, pitch him out,\" the captain snapped.\n\n\n Retief put his cigar in an ashtray, and swung his feet off the bunk.\n\n\n \"Don't try it,\" he said softly.", "\"I'll bet you can still handle it, Old Timer. What are Jorgensen's\n Worlds like?\"\n\n\n \"One of 'em's cold as hell and three of 'em's colder. Most o' the\n Jorgies live on Svea; that's the least froze up. Man don't enjoy eatin'\n his own cookin' like he does somebody else's.\"\n\n\n \"That's where I'm lucky, Chip. What kind of cargo's the captain got\n aboard for Jorgensen's?\"\n\n\n \"Derned if I know. In and out o' there like a grasshopper, ever few\n weeks. Don't never pick up no cargo. No tourists any more, like I says.\n Don't know what we even run in there for.\"\n\n\n \"Where are the passengers we have aboard headed?\"", "The captain groaned and picked up the mike. \"Captain to Power Section,\"\n he said. \"Hold your present course until you hear from me.\" He dropped\n the mike and looked up at Retief.\n\n\n \"It's eighteen hours yet before we pick up Jorgensen Control. You going\n to sit here and bend my arm the whole time?\"\n\n\n Retief released the captain's wrist and turned to the door.\n\n\n \"Chip, I'm locking the door. You circulate around, let me know what's\n going on. Bring me a pot of coffee every so often. I'm sitting up with\n a sick friend.\"\n\n\n \"Right, Mister. Keep an eye on that jasper; he's slippery.\"\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" the captain demanded.\n\n\n Retief settled himself in a chair.", "\"I don't think—\"\n\n\n \"Let's stick to facts,\" Retief said. \"Don't try to think. What time is\n it due out?\"\n\n\n The clerk smiled pityingly. \"It's my lunch hour,\" he said. \"I'll be\n open in an hour.\" He held up a thumb nail, frowned at it.\n\n\n \"If I have to come around this counter,\" Retief said, \"I'll feed that\n thumb to you the hard way.\"\n\n\n The clerk looked up and opened his mouth. Then he caught Retief's eye,\n closed his mouth and swallowed.\n\n\n \"Like it says there,\" he said, jerking a thumb at the board. \"Lifts in\n an hour. But you won't be on it,\" he added.\n\n\n Retief looked at him.", "Retief put his bag down. He turned at a sound behind him. A tall,\n florid man with an expensive coat belted over a massive paunch stood in\n the open door, looking at Retief. Retief looked back. The florid man\n clamped his jaws together, turned to speak over his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Somebody in the cabin. Get 'em out.\" He rolled a cold eye at Retief as\n he backed out of the room. A short, thick-necked man appeared.\n\n\n \"What are you doing in Mr. Tony's room?\" he barked. \"Never mind! Clear\n out of here, fellow! You're keeping Mr. Tony waiting.\"\n\n\n \"Too bad,\" Retief said. \"Finders keepers.\"\n\n\n \"You nuts?\" The thick-necked man stared at Retief. \"I said it's Mr.\n Tony's room.\"", "The chef entered the room, locking the door.\n\n\n \"You shoulda had that door locked.\" He stood by the door, listening,\n then turned to Retief.\n\n\n \"You want to get to Jorgensen's perty bad, don't you, Mister?\"\n\n\n \"That's right, Chip.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Tony give the captain a real hard time about old Skaw. The\n Sweaties didn't say nothin'. Didn't even act surprised, just took the\n remains and pushed off. But Mr. Tony and that other crook they call\n Marbles, they was fit to be tied. Took the cap'n in his cabin and\n talked loud at him fer half a hour. Then the cap'n come out and give\n some orders to the Mate.\"\n\n\n Retief sat up and reached for a cigar.\n\n\n \"Mr. Tony and Skaw were pals, eh?\"" ], [ "The chef entered the room, locking the door.\n\n\n \"You shoulda had that door locked.\" He stood by the door, listening,\n then turned to Retief.\n\n\n \"You want to get to Jorgensen's perty bad, don't you, Mister?\"\n\n\n \"That's right, Chip.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Tony give the captain a real hard time about old Skaw. The\n Sweaties didn't say nothin'. Didn't even act surprised, just took the\n remains and pushed off. But Mr. Tony and that other crook they call\n Marbles, they was fit to be tied. Took the cap'n in his cabin and\n talked loud at him fer half a hour. Then the cap'n come out and give\n some orders to the Mate.\"\n\n\n Retief sat up and reached for a cigar.\n\n\n \"Mr. Tony and Skaw were pals, eh?\"", "\"He hated Skaw's guts. But with him it was business. Mister, you got a\n gun?\"\n\n\n \"A 2mm needler. Why?\"\n\n\n \"The orders cap'n give was to change course fer Alabaster. We're\n by-passin' Jorgensen's Worlds. We'll feel the course change any minute.\"\n\n\n Retief lit the cigar, reached under the mattress and took out a\n short-barreled pistol. He dropped it in his pocket, looked at Chip.\n\n\n \"Maybe it was a good thought, at that. Which way to the Captain's\n cabin?\"\n\"This is it,\" Chip said softly. \"You want me to keep an eye on who\n comes down the passage?\"\n\n\n Retief nodded, opened the door and stepped into the cabin. The captain\n looked up from his desk, then jumped up.", "\"Captain, tell your friend to keep its distance. It looks brittle, and\n I'm tempted to test it.\"\n\n\n \"Don't start anything with Skaw; he can clip through steel with those\n snappers.\"\n\n\n \"Last chance,\" Retief said. Skaw stood poised, open pincers an inch\n from Retief's eyes.\n\n\n \"Show him your papers, you damned fool,\" the captain said hoarsely. \"I\n got no control over Skaw.\"\nThe alien clicked both pincers with a sharp report, and in the same\n instant Retief half-turned to the left, leaned away from the alien\n and drove his right foot against the slender leg above the bulbous\n knee-joint. Skaw screeched and floundered, greenish fluid spattering\n from the burst joint.\n\n\n \"I told you he was brittle,\" Retief said. \"Next time you invite pirates\n aboard, don't bother to call.\"", "\"They don't scare me none.\" Chip picked up the tray. \"I'll scout around\n a little and see what's goin' on. If the Sweaties figure to do anything\n about that Skaw feller they'll have to move fast; they won't try\n nothin' close to port.\"\n\n\n \"Don't worry, Chip. I have reason to be pretty sure they won't do\n anything to attract a lot of attention in this sector just now.\"\n\n\n Chip looked at Retief. \"You ain't no tourist, Mister. I know that much.\n You didn't come out here for fun, did you?\"\n\n\n \"That,\" Retief said, \"would be a hard one to answer.\"\nIV\n\n\n Retief awoke at a tap on his door.\n\n\n \"It's me, Mister. Chip.\"\n\n\n \"Come on in.\"", "\"Jesus, what did you do! They'll kill us!\" the captain gasped, staring\n at the figure flopping on the floor.\n\n\n \"Cart poor old Skaw back to his boat,\" Retief said. \"Tell him to pass\n the word. No more illegal entry and search of Terrestrial vessels in\n Terrestrial space.\"\n\n\n \"Hey,\" Chip said. \"He's quit kicking.\"\n\n\n The captain bent over Skaw, gingerly rolled him over. He leaned close\n and sniffed.\n\n\n \"He's dead.\" The captain stared at Retief. \"We're all dead men,\" he\n said. \"These Soetti got no mercy.\"\n\n\n \"They won't need it. Tell 'em to sheer off; their fun is over.\"\n\n\n \"They got no more emotions than a blue crab—\"", "One of the two wiped his nose on a sleeve, spat on his right palm, and\n stepped forward, then hesitated.\n\n\n \"Hey,\" he said. \"This the guy tossed the trunk off the wall?\"\n\n\n \"That's him,\" the thick-necked man called. \"Spilled Mr. Tony's\n possessions right on the deck.\"\n\n\n \"Deal me out,\" the bouncer said. \"He can stay put as long as he wants\n to. I signed on to move cargo. Let's go, Moe.\"\n\n\n \"You'd better be getting back to the bridge, Captain,\" Retief said.\n \"We're due to lift in twenty minutes.\"\n\n\n The thick-necked man and the Captain both shouted at once. The\n Captain's voice prevailed.\n\n\n \"—twenty minutes ... uniform Code ... gonna do?\"\n\n\n \"Close the door as you leave,\" Retief said.", "The captain groaned and picked up the mike. \"Captain to Power Section,\"\n he said. \"Hold your present course until you hear from me.\" He dropped\n the mike and looked up at Retief.\n\n\n \"It's eighteen hours yet before we pick up Jorgensen Control. You going\n to sit here and bend my arm the whole time?\"\n\n\n Retief released the captain's wrist and turned to the door.\n\n\n \"Chip, I'm locking the door. You circulate around, let me know what's\n going on. Bring me a pot of coffee every so often. I'm sitting up with\n a sick friend.\"\n\n\n \"Right, Mister. Keep an eye on that jasper; he's slippery.\"\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" the captain demanded.\n\n\n Retief settled himself in a chair.", "\"Feller has to be mighty careless who he eats with to set over there.\"\n\n\n \"I see your point.\"\n\n\n \"You set right where you're at, Mister. I'll rustle you up a plate.\"\n\n\n Five minutes later, Retief cut into a thirty-two ounce Delmonico backed\n up with mushrooms and garlic butter.\n\n\n \"I'm Chip,\" the chef said. \"I don't like the Cap'n. You can tell him I\n said so. Don't like his friends, either. Don't like them dern Sweaties,\n look at a man like he was a worm.\"\n\n\n \"You've got the right idea on frying a steak, Chip. And you've got the\n right idea on the Soetti, too,\" Retief said. He poured red wine into a\n glass. \"Here's to you.\"", "\"Not on this vessel, you won't,\" the captain said shakily. \"I got my\n charter to consider.\"\n\n\n \"Ram your charter,\" Hoany said harshly. \"You won't be needing it long.\"\n\n\n \"Button your floppy mouth, damn you!\" Mr. Tony snapped. He looked at\n the man on the floor. \"Get Marbles out of here. I ought to dump the\n slob.\"\n\n\n He turned and walked away. The captain signaled and two waiters came\n up. Retief watched as they carted the casualty from the dining room.\n\n\n The panel opened.\n\n\n \"I usta be about your size, when I was your age,\" Chip said. \"You\n handled them pansies right. I wouldn't give 'em the time o' day.\"\n\n\n \"How about a fresh cup of coffee, Chip?\" Retief said.", "Retief put his bag down. He turned at a sound behind him. A tall,\n florid man with an expensive coat belted over a massive paunch stood in\n the open door, looking at Retief. Retief looked back. The florid man\n clamped his jaws together, turned to speak over his shoulder.\n\n\n \"Somebody in the cabin. Get 'em out.\" He rolled a cold eye at Retief as\n he backed out of the room. A short, thick-necked man appeared.\n\n\n \"What are you doing in Mr. Tony's room?\" he barked. \"Never mind! Clear\n out of here, fellow! You're keeping Mr. Tony waiting.\"\n\n\n \"Too bad,\" Retief said. \"Finders keepers.\"\n\n\n \"You nuts?\" The thick-necked man stared at Retief. \"I said it's Mr.\n Tony's room.\"", "\"I've never had the pleasure,\" Retief said.\n\n\n \"You prob'ly have it perty soon. Them devils board us nigh ever trip\n out. Act like they was the Customs Patrol or somethin'.\"\n\n\n There was a distant clang, and a faint tremor ran through the floor.\n\n\n \"I ain't superstitious ner nothin',\" Chip said. \"But I'll be\n triple-damned if that ain't them boarding us now.\"\n\n\n Ten minutes passed before bootsteps sounded outside the door,\n accompanied by a clicking patter. The doorknob rattled, then a heavy\n knock shook the door.\n\n\n \"They got to look you over,\" Chip whispered. \"Nosy damn Sweaties.\"\n\n\n \"Unlock it, Chip.\" The chef opened the door.\n\n\n \"Come in, damn you,\" he said.", "\"I'll bet you can still handle it, Old Timer. What are Jorgensen's\n Worlds like?\"\n\n\n \"One of 'em's cold as hell and three of 'em's colder. Most o' the\n Jorgies live on Svea; that's the least froze up. Man don't enjoy eatin'\n his own cookin' like he does somebody else's.\"\n\n\n \"That's where I'm lucky, Chip. What kind of cargo's the captain got\n aboard for Jorgensen's?\"\n\n\n \"Derned if I know. In and out o' there like a grasshopper, ever few\n weeks. Don't never pick up no cargo. No tourists any more, like I says.\n Don't know what we even run in there for.\"\n\n\n \"Where are the passengers we have aboard headed?\"", "\"To Alabaster. That's nine days' run in-sector from Jorgensen's. You\n ain't got another one of them cigars, have you?\"\n\n\n \"Have one, Chip. I guess I was lucky to get space on this ship.\"\n\n\n \"Plenty o' space, Mister. We got a dozen empty cabins.\" Chip puffed\n the cigar alight, then cleared away the dishes, poured out coffee and\n brandy.\n\n\n \"Them Sweaties is what I don't like,\" he said.\n\n\n Retief looked at him questioningly.\n\n\n \"You never seen a Sweaty? Ugly lookin' devils. Skinny legs, like a\n lobster; big chest, shaped like the top of a turnip; rubbery lookin'\n head. You can see the pulse beatin' when they get riled.\"", "\"You bluff easily, Captain. Show a few guns as you hand the body back.\n We know their secret now.\"\n\n\n \"What secret? I—\"\n\n\n \"Don't be no dumber than you got to, Cap'n,\" Chip said. \"Sweaties die\n easy; that's the secret.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe you got a point,\" the captain said, looking at Retief. \"All they\n got's a three-man scout. It could work.\"\n\n\n He went out, came back with two crewmen. They hauled the dead alien\n gingerly into the hall.\n\n\n \"Maybe I can run a bluff on the Soetti,\" the captain said, looking back\n from the door. \"But I'll be back to see you later.\"", "\"Instead of strangling you, as you deserve,\" he said, \"I'm going to\n stay here and help you hold your course for Jorgensen's Worlds.\"\n\n\n The captain looked at Retief. He laughed, a short bark.\n\n\n \"Then I'll just stretch out and have a little nap, farmer. If you feel\n like dozing off sometime during the next eighteen hours, don't mind me.\"\n\n\n Retief took out the needler and put it on the desk before him.\n\n\n \"If anything happens that I don't like,\" he said, \"I'll wake you up.\n With this.\"", "Retief finished the steak, and the chef passed out the baked Alaska and\n coffee. Most of the other passengers had left the dining room. Mr. Tony\n and his retainers still sat at the Captain's table.\n\n\n As Retief watched, four men arose from the table and sauntered across\n the room. The first in line, a stony-faced thug with a broken ear, took\n a cigar from his mouth as he reached the table. He dipped the lighted\n end in Retief's coffee, looked at it, and dropped it on the tablecloth.\n\n\n The others came up, Mr. Tony trailing.\n\n\n \"You must want to get to Jorgensen's pretty bad,\" the thug said in a\n grating voice. \"What's your game, hick?\"\n\n\n Retief looked at the coffee cup, picked it up.", "\"You don't scare us, Cap'n,\" Chip said. \"Him and Mr. Tony and all his\n goons. You hit 'em where they live, that time. They're pals o' these\n Sweaties. Runnin' some kind o' crooked racket.\"\n\n\n \"You'd better take the captain's advice, Chip. There's no point in your\n getting involved in my problems.\"\n\n\n \"They'd of killed you before now, Mister, if they had any guts. That's\n where we got it over these monkeys. They got no guts.\"\n\n\n \"They act scared, Chip. Scared men are killers.\"", "\"You'd better be getting started,\" Magnan said, shuffling papers.\n\n\n \"You're right,\" Retief said. \"If I work at it, I might manage a\n snootful by takeoff.\" He went to the door. \"No objection to my checking\n out a needler, is there?\"\n\n\n Magnan looked up. \"I suppose not. What do you want with it?\"\n\n\n \"Just a feeling I've got.\"\n\n\n \"Please yourself.\"\n\n\n \"Some day,\" Retief said, \"I may take you up on that.\"\nII", "\"I don't think—\"\n\n\n \"Let's stick to facts,\" Retief said. \"Don't try to think. What time is\n it due out?\"\n\n\n The clerk smiled pityingly. \"It's my lunch hour,\" he said. \"I'll be\n open in an hour.\" He held up a thumb nail, frowned at it.\n\n\n \"If I have to come around this counter,\" Retief said, \"I'll feed that\n thumb to you the hard way.\"\n\n\n The clerk looked up and opened his mouth. Then he caught Retief's eye,\n closed his mouth and swallowed.\n\n\n \"Like it says there,\" he said, jerking a thumb at the board. \"Lifts in\n an hour. But you won't be on it,\" he added.\n\n\n Retief looked at him.", "Retief put his suitcase carefully on the floor, took a step and drove a\n right into the guard's midriff. He stepped aside as the man doubled and\n went to his knees.\n\n\n \"You were wide open, ugly. I couldn't resist. Tell your boss I sneaked\n past while you were resting your eyes.\" He picked up his bag, stepped\n over the man and went up the gangway into the ship.\n\n\n A cabin boy in stained whites came along the corridor.\n\n\n \"Which way to cabin fifty-seven, son?\" Retief asked.\n\n\n \"Up there.\" The boy jerked his head and hurried on. Retief made his way\n along the narrow hall, found signs, followed them to cabin fifty-seven.\n The door was open. Inside, baggage was piled in the center of the\n floor. It was expensive looking baggage." ], [ "\"Instead of strangling you, as you deserve,\" he said, \"I'm going to\n stay here and help you hold your course for Jorgensen's Worlds.\"\n\n\n The captain looked at Retief. He laughed, a short bark.\n\n\n \"Then I'll just stretch out and have a little nap, farmer. If you feel\n like dozing off sometime during the next eighteen hours, don't mind me.\"\n\n\n Retief took out the needler and put it on the desk before him.\n\n\n \"If anything happens that I don't like,\" he said, \"I'll wake you up.\n With this.\"", "The captain groaned and picked up the mike. \"Captain to Power Section,\"\n he said. \"Hold your present course until you hear from me.\" He dropped\n the mike and looked up at Retief.\n\n\n \"It's eighteen hours yet before we pick up Jorgensen Control. You going\n to sit here and bend my arm the whole time?\"\n\n\n Retief released the captain's wrist and turned to the door.\n\n\n \"Chip, I'm locking the door. You circulate around, let me know what's\n going on. Bring me a pot of coffee every so often. I'm sitting up with\n a sick friend.\"\n\n\n \"Right, Mister. Keep an eye on that jasper; he's slippery.\"\n\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" the captain demanded.\n\n\n Retief settled himself in a chair.", "\"He hated Skaw's guts. But with him it was business. Mister, you got a\n gun?\"\n\n\n \"A 2mm needler. Why?\"\n\n\n \"The orders cap'n give was to change course fer Alabaster. We're\n by-passin' Jorgensen's Worlds. We'll feel the course change any minute.\"\n\n\n Retief lit the cigar, reached under the mattress and took out a\n short-barreled pistol. He dropped it in his pocket, looked at Chip.\n\n\n \"Maybe it was a good thought, at that. Which way to the Captain's\n cabin?\"\n\"This is it,\" Chip said softly. \"You want me to keep an eye on who\n comes down the passage?\"\n\n\n Retief nodded, opened the door and stepped into the cabin. The captain\n looked up from his desk, then jumped up.", "\"What do you think you're doing, busting in here?\"\n\n\n \"I hear you're planning a course change, Captain.\"\n\n\n \"You've got damn big ears.\"\n\n\n \"I think we'd better call in at Jorgensen's.\"\n\n\n \"You do, huh?\" the captain sat down. \"I'm in command of this vessel,\"\n he said. \"I'm changing course for Alabaster.\"\n\n\n \"I wouldn't find it convenient to go to Alabaster,\" Retief said. \"So\n just hold your course for Jorgensen's.\"\n\n\n \"Not bloody likely.\"\n\n\n \"Your use of the word 'bloody' is interesting, Captain. Don't try to\n change course.\"\n\n\n The captain reached for the mike on his desk, pressed the key.", "\"I'll bet you can still handle it, Old Timer. What are Jorgensen's\n Worlds like?\"\n\n\n \"One of 'em's cold as hell and three of 'em's colder. Most o' the\n Jorgies live on Svea; that's the least froze up. Man don't enjoy eatin'\n his own cookin' like he does somebody else's.\"\n\n\n \"That's where I'm lucky, Chip. What kind of cargo's the captain got\n aboard for Jorgensen's?\"\n\n\n \"Derned if I know. In and out o' there like a grasshopper, ever few\n weeks. Don't never pick up no cargo. No tourists any more, like I says.\n Don't know what we even run in there for.\"\n\n\n \"Where are the passengers we have aboard headed?\"", "\"A show of resistance at this point is necessary. Unfortunately,\n Jorgensen's Worlds are technologically undeveloped areas. They're\n farmers or traders. Their industry is limited to a minor role in\n their economy—enough to support the merchant fleet, no more. The war\n potential, by conventional standards, is nil.\"\n\n\n Magnan tapped the folder before him.\n\n\n \"I have here,\" he said solemnly, \"information which will change that\n picture completely.\" He leaned back and blinked at Retief.\n\"All right, Mr. Councillor,\" Retief said. \"I'll play along; what's in\n the folder?\"\n\n\n Magnan spread his fingers, folded one down.", "THE FROZEN PLANET\nBy Keith Laumer\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n\"It is rather unusual,\" Magnan said, \"to assign an officer of your rank\n to courier duty, but this is an unusual mission.\"\n\n\n Retief sat relaxed and said nothing. Just before the silence grew\n awkward, Magnan went on.\n\n\n \"There are four planets in the group,\" he said. \"Two double planets,\n all rather close to an unimportant star listed as DRI-G 33987. They're\n called Jorgensen's Worlds, and in themselves are of no importance\n whatever. However, they lie deep in the sector into which the Soetti\n have been penetrating.", "\"Now—\" Magnan leaned forward and lowered his voice—\"we have learned\n that the Soetti plan a bold step forward. Since they've met no\n opposition so far in their infiltration of Terrestrial space, they\n intend to seize Jorgensen's Worlds by force.\"\n\n\n Magnan leaned back, waiting for Retief's reaction. Retief drew\n carefully on his cigar and looked at Magnan. Magnan frowned.\n\n\n \"This is open aggression, Retief,\" he said, \"in case I haven't made\n myself clear. Aggression on Terrestrial-occupied territory by an alien\n species. Obviously, we can't allow it.\"\n\n\n Magnan drew a large folder from his desk.", "\"Captain, tell your friend to keep its distance. It looks brittle, and\n I'm tempted to test it.\"\n\n\n \"Don't start anything with Skaw; he can clip through steel with those\n snappers.\"\n\n\n \"Last chance,\" Retief said. Skaw stood poised, open pincers an inch\n from Retief's eyes.\n\n\n \"Show him your papers, you damned fool,\" the captain said hoarsely. \"I\n got no control over Skaw.\"\nThe alien clicked both pincers with a sharp report, and in the same\n instant Retief half-turned to the left, leaned away from the alien\n and drove his right foot against the slender leg above the bulbous\n knee-joint. Skaw screeched and floundered, greenish fluid spattering\n from the burst joint.\n\n\n \"I told you he was brittle,\" Retief said. \"Next time you invite pirates\n aboard, don't bother to call.\"", "\"I'll carry it, sealed,\" Retief said. \"That way nobody can sweat it out\n of me.\"\n\n\n Magnan started to shake his head.\n\n\n \"Well,\" he said. \"If it's trapped for destruction, I suppose—\"\n\n\n \"I've heard of these Jorgensen's Worlds,\" Retief said. \"I remember an\n agent, a big blond fellow, very quick on the uptake. A wizard with\n cards and dice. Never played for money, though.\"\n\n\n \"Umm,\" Magnan said. \"Don't make the error of personalizing this\n situation, Retief. Overall policy calls for a defense of these\n backwater worlds. Otherwise the Corps would allow history to follow its\n natural course, as always.\"\n\n\n \"When does this attack happen?\"\n\n\n \"Less than four weeks.\"\n\n\n \"That doesn't leave me much time.\"", "\"Sure, Mister. Anything else?\"\n\n\n \"I'll think of something,\" Retief said. \"This is shaping up into one of\n those long days.\"\n\"They don't like me bringing yer meals to you in yer cabin,\" Chip said.\n \"But the cap'n knows I'm the best cook in the Merchant Service. They\n won't mess with me.\"\n\n\n \"What has Mr. Tony got on the captain, Chip?\" Retief asked.\n\n\n \"They're in some kind o' crooked business together. You want some more\n smoked turkey?\"\n\n\n \"Sure. What have they got against my going to Jorgensen's Worlds?\"\n\n\n \"Dunno. Hasn't been no tourists got in there fer six or eight months. I\n sure like a feller that can put it away. I was a big eater when I was\n yer age.\"", "\"To Alabaster. That's nine days' run in-sector from Jorgensen's. You\n ain't got another one of them cigars, have you?\"\n\n\n \"Have one, Chip. I guess I was lucky to get space on this ship.\"\n\n\n \"Plenty o' space, Mister. We got a dozen empty cabins.\" Chip puffed\n the cigar alight, then cleared away the dishes, poured out coffee and\n brandy.\n\n\n \"Them Sweaties is what I don't like,\" he said.\n\n\n Retief looked at him questioningly.\n\n\n \"You never seen a Sweaty? Ugly lookin' devils. Skinny legs, like a\n lobster; big chest, shaped like the top of a turnip; rubbery lookin'\n head. You can see the pulse beatin' when they get riled.\"", "\"Dern right,\" Chip said. \"Dunno who ever thought up broiling 'em.\n Steaks, that is. I got a Baked Alaska coming up in here for dessert.\n You like brandy in yer coffee?\"\n\n\n \"Chip, you're a genius.\"\n\n\n \"Like to see a feller eat,\" Chip said. \"I gotta go now. If you need\n anything, holler.\"\n\n\n Retief ate slowly. Time always dragged on shipboard. Four days to\n Jorgensen's Worlds. Then, if Magnan's information was correct,\n there would be four days to prepare for the Soetti attack. It was a\n temptation to scan the tapes built into the handle of his suitcase. It\n would be good to know what Jorgensen's Worlds would be up against.", "\"Power Section, this is the captain,\" he said. Retief reached across\n the desk, gripped the captain's wrist.\n\n\n \"Tell the mate to hold his present course,\" he said softly.\n\n\n \"Let go my hand, buster,\" the captain snarled. Eyes on Retief's, he\n eased a drawer open with his left hand, reached in. Retief kneed the\n drawer. The captain yelped and dropped the mike.\n\n\n \"You busted it, you—\"\n\n\n \"And one to go,\" Retief said. \"Tell him.\"\n\n\n \"I'm an officer of the Merchant Service!\"\n\n\n \"You're a cheapjack who's sold his bridge to a pack of back-alley\n hoods.\"\n\n\n \"You can't put it over, hick.\"\n\n\n \"Tell him.\"", "One of the two wiped his nose on a sleeve, spat on his right palm, and\n stepped forward, then hesitated.\n\n\n \"Hey,\" he said. \"This the guy tossed the trunk off the wall?\"\n\n\n \"That's him,\" the thick-necked man called. \"Spilled Mr. Tony's\n possessions right on the deck.\"\n\n\n \"Deal me out,\" the bouncer said. \"He can stay put as long as he wants\n to. I signed on to move cargo. Let's go, Moe.\"\n\n\n \"You'd better be getting back to the bridge, Captain,\" Retief said.\n \"We're due to lift in twenty minutes.\"\n\n\n The thick-necked man and the Captain both shouted at once. The\n Captain's voice prevailed.\n\n\n \"—twenty minutes ... uniform Code ... gonna do?\"\n\n\n \"Close the door as you leave,\" Retief said.", "\"Less than four hours to departure time,\" he said. \"I'd better not\n start any long books.\"\n\n\n \"You'd better waste no time getting over to Indoctrination,\" Magnan\n said.\n\n\n Retief stood up. \"If I hurry, maybe I can catch the cartoon.\"\n\n\n \"The allusion escapes me,\" Magnan said coldly. \"And one last word. The\n Soetti are patrolling the trade lanes into Jorgensen's Worlds; don't\n get yourself interned.\"\n\n\n \"I'll tell you what,\" Retief said soberly. \"In a pinch, I'll mention\n your name.\"\n\n\n \"You'll be traveling with Class X credentials,\" Magnan snapped. \"There\n must be nothing to connect you with the Corps.\"\n\n\n \"They'll never guess,\" Retief said. \"I'll pose as a gentleman.\"", "\"Jesus, what did you do! They'll kill us!\" the captain gasped, staring\n at the figure flopping on the floor.\n\n\n \"Cart poor old Skaw back to his boat,\" Retief said. \"Tell him to pass\n the word. No more illegal entry and search of Terrestrial vessels in\n Terrestrial space.\"\n\n\n \"Hey,\" Chip said. \"He's quit kicking.\"\n\n\n The captain bent over Skaw, gingerly rolled him over. He leaned close\n and sniffed.\n\n\n \"He's dead.\" The captain stared at Retief. \"We're all dead men,\" he\n said. \"These Soetti got no mercy.\"\n\n\n \"They won't need it. Tell 'em to sheer off; their fun is over.\"\n\n\n \"They got no more emotions than a blue crab—\"", "\"You bluff easily, Captain. Show a few guns as you hand the body back.\n We know their secret now.\"\n\n\n \"What secret? I—\"\n\n\n \"Don't be no dumber than you got to, Cap'n,\" Chip said. \"Sweaties die\n easy; that's the secret.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe you got a point,\" the captain said, looking at Retief. \"All they\n got's a three-man scout. It could work.\"\n\n\n He went out, came back with two crewmen. They hauled the dead alien\n gingerly into the hall.\n\n\n \"Maybe I can run a bluff on the Soetti,\" the captain said, looking back\n from the door. \"But I'll be back to see you later.\"", "The chef entered the room, locking the door.\n\n\n \"You shoulda had that door locked.\" He stood by the door, listening,\n then turned to Retief.\n\n\n \"You want to get to Jorgensen's perty bad, don't you, Mister?\"\n\n\n \"That's right, Chip.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Tony give the captain a real hard time about old Skaw. The\n Sweaties didn't say nothin'. Didn't even act surprised, just took the\n remains and pushed off. But Mr. Tony and that other crook they call\n Marbles, they was fit to be tied. Took the cap'n in his cabin and\n talked loud at him fer half a hour. Then the cap'n come out and give\n some orders to the Mate.\"\n\n\n Retief sat up and reached for a cigar.\n\n\n \"Mr. Tony and Skaw were pals, eh?\"", "\"First,\" he said. \"The Soetti War Plan—in detail. We were fortunate\n enough to make contact with a defector from a party of renegade\n Terrestrials who've been advising the Soetti.\" He folded another\n finger. \"Next, a battle plan for the Jorgensen's people, worked out by\n the Theory group.\" He wrestled a third finger down. \"Lastly; an Utter\n Top Secret schematic for conversion of a standard anti-acceleration\n field into a potent weapon—a development our systems people have been\n holding in reserve for just such a situation.\"\n\n\n \"Is that all?\" Retief said. \"You've still got two fingers sticking up.\"\n\n\n Magnan looked at the fingers and put them away.\n\n\n \"This is no occasion for flippancy, Retief. In the wrong hands, this\n information could be catastrophic. You'll memorize it before you leave\n this building.\"" ] ]
train	60507	[ "Which is not a competitor to the Piltdon Can Opener?", "Which is not a can-opener feature that Ogden Piltdon cares about?", "Why did Kalvin commit to Piltdon’s unreasonable deadline?", "Why did Kalvin hesitate to share information about the new invention?", "Why did Kalvin continue researching on his own at home?", "What was not a result of the “Borenchuck Incident”?", "When applying for new jobs, Kalvin found that…", "The area in which Kalvin wanted to devote most of his time was:", "What new emotion was Kalvin experiencing after quitting Piltdon Opener Company?", "What was the “Piltdon Effect”?" ]	[ [ "International", "Minerva Mighty Midget", "Universal", "Super-Opener" ], [ "Lightweight", "Musical", "Speed", "Stability" ], [ "He felt challenged to develop creative solutions.", "He didn’t want to lose his job.", "He wanted to earn recognition.", "He was able to hire more staff." ], [ "He wanted to do more research into how it works.", "He wanted to be the one to tell Piltdon.", "He wanted to keep the invention for himself.", "He wanted to save his job." ], [ "He wanted to be sure it was safe.", "He needed to work extra hours to meet the deadline.", "He wanted to patent the Super-Opener idea for himself.", "He wanted to better understand the technology and create a solution." ], [ "A state of emergency was declared.", "Piltdon filed a lawsuit against Kalvin.", "Sales of helmets increased.", "Super-Opener sales plummeted." ], [ "Companies did not approve of what they heard about his previous work.", "Companies did not have open positions.", "Piltdon gave him a positive reference.", "He had multiple offers." ], [ "Research", "Production", "Marketing", "Management" ], [ "Cowardice", "Anger", "Misery", "Submission" ], [ "The ability to meet a tight deadline.", "The can-opener causing the cans to disappear.", "The deluge of cans falling from the sky.", "Viral interest in a new product." ] ]	[ 4, 4, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1, 1, 2, 2 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. \"This,\"\n he exulted, \"will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!\n Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!\n We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Piltdon—\" said Feetch shakily.\n\n\n Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. \"What's the matter,\n Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?\"", "\"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball,\" Piltdon went on\n savagely. \"The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.\n Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering\n that's missing the boat!\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. Piltdon,\" remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's\n glare, \"don't you remember? I tried to....\"\n\n\n \"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon\n Can-Opener!\" roared Mr. Piltdon. \"Look at our competitors. The\n International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.\n Universal does it in four.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. Piltdon—\"", "The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear\n ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many\n other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to\n be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top\n resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle\n size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of\n the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector\n type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to\n offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to\n compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.\n There was the ever-present limit to production cost.\n\n\n Hanson's eyes were upon him. \"Chief,\" he said, \"it's a rotten shame.\n Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire\n you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company\n is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!\"", "\"You're positive, Feetch?\" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.\n\n\n \"Sir, I never make careless claims.\"\n\n\n \"That's true,\" said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. \"It can be done,\"\n he mused. \"The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.\n Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking\n at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll\n give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The\n patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit\n for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on\n production, at once, Feetch.\"", "Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can\n precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon\n openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point\n twenty-nine days.\n\n\n Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed\n there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators\n accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A\n Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of\n bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself\n in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.\n\n\n Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, \"This is your\n doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!\" A falling can caught him neatly\n on the tip of his nose.\n\n\n \"But sir,\" trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, \"I tried to\n warn you.\"", "The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato\n cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was\n rather disconcerting.\n\n\n \"Dear, dear,\" said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.\n \"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen\n degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear\n teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and\n thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such\n departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but\n this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?\"\n\n\n \"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the\n answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and\n beat the dead-line.\"", "\"Feetch,\" bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. \"Stow this hooey. I\n don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our\n standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the\n company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year\n after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want\n you holding it back. We're going into production immediately.\"\nClose, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it\n had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.\n The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to\n distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements\n blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: \"It's\n a sell-out!\" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. \"Step up\n production! Let 'er rip!\"", "\"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home\n Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a\n can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you\n for?\"\n\n\n Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. \"But Mr. Piltdon,\n our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has\n dignity....\"\n\n\n \"Dignity,\" pronounced Piltdon, \"is for museums. Four months, Feetch!\n In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,\n stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I\n want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for\n production. Otherwise, Feetch—\"", "Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the\n bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch\n clocking. \"Four point four,\" announced Feetch after the last test.\n \"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.\n Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go.\"", "The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time\n they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales\n climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into\n peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with\n the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional\n plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.\n Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited\n sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.\n Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the\n fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.\n\n\n Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,\n universities and independent investigators began to look into this new\n phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they\n set up their own research.", "Feetch shook his head. \"No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't\n understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?\n What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic\n effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what\n are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical\n here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must\n learn a lot more.\"\n\n\n \"But Chief, your job.\"\n\n\n \"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon.\"\n\n\n Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing\n room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a\n pencil point. \"Feetch!\" roared Piltdon. \"Is this talk that's going\n around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it.\"", "The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported\n similar incidents.\n\n\n The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,\n and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell\n outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not\n dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,\n sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in\n homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and\n dog-food factories. No place was immune.\n\n\n People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets\n boomed.\n\n\n All activity was seriously curtailed.\n\n\n A state of national emergency was declared.\n\n\n Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was\n generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by\n the Piltdon Super-Opener.", "\"You're through, Feetch!\" raved Piltdon. \"Fired! Get out! But before\n you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it\n belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created\n the Super-Opener. Now, get out!\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said Feetch paling. \"Then you don't want to hear about my\n discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?\"\n\n\n Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under\n Piltdon's huge desk. \"No!\" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was\n inches away. \"No, I——What did you say?\"\n\n\n \"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever.\"\n\n\n Klunk!\n\n\n \"Forever, Feetch?\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir.\" Klunk! Klunk!", "\"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of\n further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new\n type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.\n This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until\n further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and\n engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on\n the effect.\"", "Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted\n physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,\n spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and\n analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory\n explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for\n any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.\n\n\n Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:\n \"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting\n me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.\n That's almost four dollars a week, man.\"", "\"Mr. Piltdon,\" Feetch said. \"I—\" klunk!—\"resign.\"\n\n\n Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.\n\n\n \"No use,\" said Feetch. \"Nothing you can say—\" klunk! klunk!\n klunk!—\"will make any difference now.\"\n\n\n \"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!\"\n\n\n \"Will remain my secret. Good day.\"\n\n\n \"Feetch!\" howled Piltdon. \"I order you to remain!\"\n\n\n Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,\n then turned abruptly.", "As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, \"Sir, I\n think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—\"\n\n\n \"Are you still worrying about that?\" Piltdon roared jovially. \"Leave\n that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh\n Feetch?\"\nThat night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South\n Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the\n soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,\n raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a\n gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on\n the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just\n below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire\n department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.\nThe incident made headlines in the local papers.", "\"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu\n space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is\n also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New\n Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.\n Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.\n\n\n \"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the\n threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that\n possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated\n block separated by screens.\n\n\n \"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks\n exist—?\"\n\"Mr Feetch—\" said Piltdon.\n\n\n Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch\n Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.\n \"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem.\"", "THE SUPER OPENER\nBY MICHAEL ZUROY\nHere's why you should ask for\n \na \"Feetch M-D\" next time\n \nyou get a can opener!\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n\"Feetch!\" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener\n Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, \"I want\n results!\"\n\n\n Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.", "\"Gentlemen,\" he said. \"I'll make it brief.\" He waved the papers in his\n hand. \"Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,\n including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.\n All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this\n information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing\n one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon.\" He stared at Piltdon. \"In short,\n I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener.\"\n\n\n Piltdon leaped from his chair. \"Outrageous!\" He roared. \"Ridiculous!\"\n\n\n \"Fifty-one percent,\" said Feetch firmly. \"Don't bother with any\n counterproposals or the interview is at an end.\"\n\n\n \"Gentlemen!\" squawked Piltdon, \"I appeal to you—\"" ], [ "After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. \"This,\"\n he exulted, \"will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!\n Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!\n We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Piltdon—\" said Feetch shakily.\n\n\n Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. \"What's the matter,\n Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?\"", "\"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball,\" Piltdon went on\n savagely. \"The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.\n Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering\n that's missing the boat!\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. Piltdon,\" remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's\n glare, \"don't you remember? I tried to....\"\n\n\n \"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon\n Can-Opener!\" roared Mr. Piltdon. \"Look at our competitors. The\n International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.\n Universal does it in four.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. Piltdon—\"", "The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato\n cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was\n rather disconcerting.\n\n\n \"Dear, dear,\" said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.\n \"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen\n degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear\n teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and\n thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such\n departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but\n this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?\"\n\n\n \"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the\n answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and\n beat the dead-line.\"", "\"You're positive, Feetch?\" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.\n\n\n \"Sir, I never make careless claims.\"\n\n\n \"That's true,\" said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. \"It can be done,\"\n he mused. \"The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.\n Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking\n at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll\n give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The\n patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit\n for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on\n production, at once, Feetch.\"", "The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear\n ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many\n other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to\n be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top\n resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle\n size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of\n the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector\n type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to\n offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to\n compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.\n There was the ever-present limit to production cost.\n\n\n Hanson's eyes were upon him. \"Chief,\" he said, \"it's a rotten shame.\n Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire\n you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company\n is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!\"", "Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can\n precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon\n openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point\n twenty-nine days.\n\n\n Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed\n there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators\n accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A\n Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of\n bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself\n in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.\n\n\n Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, \"This is your\n doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!\" A falling can caught him neatly\n on the tip of his nose.\n\n\n \"But sir,\" trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, \"I tried to\n warn you.\"", "\"Feetch,\" bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. \"Stow this hooey. I\n don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our\n standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the\n company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year\n after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want\n you holding it back. We're going into production immediately.\"\nClose, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it\n had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.\n The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to\n distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements\n blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: \"It's\n a sell-out!\" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. \"Step up\n production! Let 'er rip!\"", "\"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home\n Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a\n can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you\n for?\"\n\n\n Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. \"But Mr. Piltdon,\n our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has\n dignity....\"\n\n\n \"Dignity,\" pronounced Piltdon, \"is for museums. Four months, Feetch!\n In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,\n stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I\n want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for\n production. Otherwise, Feetch—\"", "\"Mr. Piltdon,\" Feetch said. \"I—\" klunk!—\"resign.\"\n\n\n Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.\n\n\n \"No use,\" said Feetch. \"Nothing you can say—\" klunk! klunk!\n klunk!—\"will make any difference now.\"\n\n\n \"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!\"\n\n\n \"Will remain my secret. Good day.\"\n\n\n \"Feetch!\" howled Piltdon. \"I order you to remain!\"\n\n\n Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,\n then turned abruptly.", "\"You're through, Feetch!\" raved Piltdon. \"Fired! Get out! But before\n you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it\n belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created\n the Super-Opener. Now, get out!\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said Feetch paling. \"Then you don't want to hear about my\n discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?\"\n\n\n Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under\n Piltdon's huge desk. \"No!\" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was\n inches away. \"No, I——What did you say?\"\n\n\n \"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever.\"\n\n\n Klunk!\n\n\n \"Forever, Feetch?\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir.\" Klunk! Klunk!", "Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted\n physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,\n spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and\n analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory\n explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for\n any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.\n\n\n Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:\n \"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting\n me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.\n That's almost four dollars a week, man.\"", "\"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of\n further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new\n type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.\n This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until\n further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and\n engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on\n the effect.\"", "Feetch shook his head. \"No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't\n understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?\n What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic\n effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what\n are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical\n here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must\n learn a lot more.\"\n\n\n \"But Chief, your job.\"\n\n\n \"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon.\"\n\n\n Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing\n room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a\n pencil point. \"Feetch!\" roared Piltdon. \"Is this talk that's going\n around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it.\"", "The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported\n similar incidents.\n\n\n The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,\n and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell\n outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not\n dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,\n sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in\n homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and\n dog-food factories. No place was immune.\n\n\n People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets\n boomed.\n\n\n All activity was seriously curtailed.\n\n\n A state of national emergency was declared.\n\n\n Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was\n generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by\n the Piltdon Super-Opener.", "THE SUPER OPENER\nBY MICHAEL ZUROY\nHere's why you should ask for\n \na \"Feetch M-D\" next time\n \nyou get a can opener!\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\n\"Feetch!\" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener\n Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, \"I want\n results!\"\n\n\n Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.", "Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the\n bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch\n clocking. \"Four point four,\" announced Feetch after the last test.\n \"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.\n Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go.\"", "As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, \"Sir, I\n think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—\"\n\n\n \"Are you still worrying about that?\" Piltdon roared jovially. \"Leave\n that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh\n Feetch?\"\nThat night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South\n Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the\n soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,\n raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a\n gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on\n the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just\n below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire\n department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.\nThe incident made headlines in the local papers.", "\"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon.\" And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received\n no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,\n well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his\n work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing\n nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.\n It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The\n oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly\n expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when\n so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could\n no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.\n\n\n He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he\n was close to the answer.\n\n\n When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck\n incident was only hours away.", "A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the\n window. \"What's going on!\" yelled Piltdon. \"Oh, I see. People throwing\n rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know\n that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about\n the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,\n the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and\n change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and\n the world will soon forget about the old one.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" said Feetch. \"People will forget anyway—I hope.\"", "What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.\n Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more\n technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in\n the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny\n wasn't well.\n\n\n How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it\n himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his\n head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to\n start—\n\"Chief,\" said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, \"I'm\n beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at\n all.\"\n\n\n \"Got to be,\" answered Feetch tiredly. \"We must work along classical\n can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven\n types, would be too expensive for mass production.\"" ], [ "Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. \"Mr. Piltdon,\" he said. \"I'm asking\n only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,\n especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help\n with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end.\"\n\n\n \"Damn it, no!\" roared Piltdon. \"How many times must I tell you? You got\n your job back, didn't you?\"\n\n\n The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted\n engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel\n very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always\n wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be\n opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that\n there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.\n Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had\n pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his\n decision.", "\"Stop bluffing,\" said Feetch coldly. \"There's no other way out for\n you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement.\"\n\n\n Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: \"Gentlemen, will you\n be a party to this?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" murmured the Government man, \"I never did think Feetch got a\n fair shake.\"\n\n\n \"This information is important to science,\" said the Van Terrel man.\n\n\n After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.", "How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer\n had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,\n discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but\n Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!\n thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,\n production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had\n happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring\n uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and\n develop?\n\n\n Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had\n managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five\n years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.", "He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter\n from the Van Terrel Foundation: \"—cannot accept your application\n inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to\n profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics\n not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states\n the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—\"\n\n\n Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his\n chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a\n slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.\n\n\n Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a\n research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how\n could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert\n to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.\n No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might\n grab. The anger began to mount.", "\"Mr. Piltdon,\" Feetch said. \"I—\" klunk!—\"resign.\"\n\n\n Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.\n\n\n \"No use,\" said Feetch. \"Nothing you can say—\" klunk! klunk!\n klunk!—\"will make any difference now.\"\n\n\n \"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!\"\n\n\n \"Will remain my secret. Good day.\"\n\n\n \"Feetch!\" howled Piltdon. \"I order you to remain!\"\n\n\n Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,\n then turned abruptly.", "Feetch's body twitched. \"But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time\n enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying\n to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't\n have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep\n up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few\n draftsmen and....\"\n\n\n \"Excuses,\" sneered Mr. Piltdon. \"Your staff is more than adequate.\n I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,\n no more!\" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an\n oppressive silence.", "\"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow\n workmen,\" begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. \"Do you realize that\n Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your\n former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They\n have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the\n office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.\n Think of that, Feetch.\"\n\n\n Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.\n\n\n Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. \"Think it\n over, Feetch.\"\n\n\n Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose\n their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.\n\n\n \"Chief,\" said Hanson, \"Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred\n per cent. We'll make out.\"", "\"But Mr. Feetch—\"\n\n\n \"Get out,\" said Feetch.\n\n\n Piltdon blanched and left.\n\n\n \"As I was saying, Hanson—\" continued Feetch.", "\"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon.\" And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received\n no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,\n well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his\n work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing\n nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.\n It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The\n oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly\n expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when\n so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could\n no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.\n\n\n He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he\n was close to the answer.\n\n\n When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck\n incident was only hours away.", "But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting\n any better and medical bills were running high.\n\n\n The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: \"Absolutely\n not.\"\n\n\n \"I'll go up another ten dollars,\" grated the little Piltdon image.\n \"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?\n A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,\n Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—\"", "\"Feetch,\" bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. \"Stow this hooey. I\n don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our\n standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the\n company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year\n after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want\n you holding it back. We're going into production immediately.\"\nClose, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it\n had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.\n The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to\n distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements\n blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: \"It's\n a sell-out!\" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. \"Step up\n production! Let 'er rip!\"", "\"Gentlemen,\" he said. \"I'll make it brief.\" He waved the papers in his\n hand. \"Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,\n including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.\n All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this\n information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing\n one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon.\" He stared at Piltdon. \"In short,\n I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener.\"\n\n\n Piltdon leaped from his chair. \"Outrageous!\" He roared. \"Ridiculous!\"\n\n\n \"Fifty-one percent,\" said Feetch firmly. \"Don't bother with any\n counterproposals or the interview is at an end.\"\n\n\n \"Gentlemen!\" squawked Piltdon, \"I appeal to you—\"", "Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed\n himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought\n grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.\n \"Piltdon!\" he barked. \"Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's\n all.\" He hung up.\n\n\n In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.\nIn the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his\n living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the\n Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of\n Westchester University; the members of the press.", "A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the\n window. \"What's going on!\" yelled Piltdon. \"Oh, I see. People throwing\n rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know\n that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about\n the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,\n the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and\n change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and\n the world will soon forget about the old one.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" said Feetch. \"People will forget anyway—I hope.\"", "\"Well, well,\" said Feetch. \"I drew my pay every week so I suppose I\n have no complaints. Although,\" a wistful note crept into his voice \"I\n would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,\n but who has heard of Feetch? Well,\"—Feetch blew his nose—\"how do we\n stand, Hanson?\"\n\n\n Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. \"Piltdon ought to\n be rayed,\" he growled. \"O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models\n designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,\n two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise\n unsatisfactory.\"", "The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear\n ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many\n other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to\n be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top\n resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle\n size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of\n the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector\n type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to\n offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to\n compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.\n There was the ever-present limit to production cost.\n\n\n Hanson's eyes were upon him. \"Chief,\" he said, \"it's a rotten shame.\n Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire\n you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company\n is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!\"", "Feetch shook his head. \"No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't\n understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?\n What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic\n effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what\n are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical\n here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must\n learn a lot more.\"\n\n\n \"But Chief, your job.\"\n\n\n \"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon.\"\n\n\n Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing\n room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a\n pencil point. \"Feetch!\" roared Piltdon. \"Is this talk that's going\n around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it.\"", "\"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball,\" Piltdon went on\n savagely. \"The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.\n Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering\n that's missing the boat!\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. Piltdon,\" remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's\n glare, \"don't you remember? I tried to....\"\n\n\n \"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon\n Can-Opener!\" roared Mr. Piltdon. \"Look at our competitors. The\n International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.\n Universal does it in four.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. Piltdon—\"", "\"You're positive, Feetch?\" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.\n\n\n \"Sir, I never make careless claims.\"\n\n\n \"That's true,\" said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. \"It can be done,\"\n he mused. \"The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.\n Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking\n at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll\n give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The\n patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit\n for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on\n production, at once, Feetch.\"", "As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, \"Sir, I\n think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—\"\n\n\n \"Are you still worrying about that?\" Piltdon roared jovially. \"Leave\n that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh\n Feetch?\"\nThat night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South\n Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the\n soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,\n raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a\n gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on\n the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just\n below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire\n department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.\nThe incident made headlines in the local papers." ], [ "Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. \"Mr. Piltdon,\" he said. \"I'm asking\n only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,\n especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help\n with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end.\"\n\n\n \"Damn it, no!\" roared Piltdon. \"How many times must I tell you? You got\n your job back, didn't you?\"\n\n\n The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted\n engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel\n very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always\n wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be\n opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that\n there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.\n Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had\n pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his\n decision.", "\"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of\n further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new\n type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.\n This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until\n further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and\n engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on\n the effect.\"", "He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter\n from the Van Terrel Foundation: \"—cannot accept your application\n inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to\n profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics\n not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states\n the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—\"\n\n\n Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his\n chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a\n slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.\n\n\n Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a\n research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how\n could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert\n to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.\n No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might\n grab. The anger began to mount.", "What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.\n Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more\n technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in\n the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny\n wasn't well.\n\n\n How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it\n himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his\n head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to\n start—\n\"Chief,\" said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, \"I'm\n beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at\n all.\"\n\n\n \"Got to be,\" answered Feetch tiredly. \"We must work along classical\n can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven\n types, would be too expensive for mass production.\"", "After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. \"This,\"\n he exulted, \"will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!\n Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!\n We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Piltdon—\" said Feetch shakily.\n\n\n Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. \"What's the matter,\n Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?\"", "Feetch shook his head. \"No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't\n understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?\n What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic\n effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what\n are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical\n here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must\n learn a lot more.\"\n\n\n \"But Chief, your job.\"\n\n\n \"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon.\"\n\n\n Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing\n room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a\n pencil point. \"Feetch!\" roared Piltdon. \"Is this talk that's going\n around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it.\"", "\"Mr. Piltdon,\" Feetch said. \"I—\" klunk!—\"resign.\"\n\n\n Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.\n\n\n \"No use,\" said Feetch. \"Nothing you can say—\" klunk! klunk!\n klunk!—\"will make any difference now.\"\n\n\n \"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!\"\n\n\n \"Will remain my secret. Good day.\"\n\n\n \"Feetch!\" howled Piltdon. \"I order you to remain!\"\n\n\n Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,\n then turned abruptly.", "Feetch's body twitched. \"But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time\n enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying\n to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't\n have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep\n up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few\n draftsmen and....\"\n\n\n \"Excuses,\" sneered Mr. Piltdon. \"Your staff is more than adequate.\n I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,\n no more!\" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an\n oppressive silence.", "\"Feetch,\" bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. \"Stow this hooey. I\n don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our\n standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the\n company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year\n after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want\n you holding it back. We're going into production immediately.\"\nClose, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it\n had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.\n The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to\n distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements\n blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: \"It's\n a sell-out!\" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. \"Step up\n production! Let 'er rip!\"", "Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the\n bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch\n clocking. \"Four point four,\" announced Feetch after the last test.\n \"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.\n Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go.\"", "\"Good-day,\" said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to\n the door.\nMoney, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His\n supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding\n another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth\n day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget\n the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious\n to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.\n \"Feetch,\" the personnel man would read. \"Kalvin Feetch.\" Then, looking\n up, \"Not the Kalvin Feetch who—\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Feetch would admit miserably.\n\n\n \"I am sorry, but—\"", "The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear\n ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many\n other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to\n be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top\n resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle\n size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of\n the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector\n type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to\n offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to\n compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.\n There was the ever-present limit to production cost.\n\n\n Hanson's eyes were upon him. \"Chief,\" he said, \"it's a rotten shame.\n Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire\n you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company\n is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!\"", "\"You're positive, Feetch?\" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.\n\n\n \"Sir, I never make careless claims.\"\n\n\n \"That's true,\" said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. \"It can be done,\"\n he mused. \"The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.\n Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking\n at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll\n give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The\n patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit\n for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on\n production, at once, Feetch.\"", "Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed\n himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought\n grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.\n \"Piltdon!\" he barked. \"Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's\n all.\" He hung up.\n\n\n In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.\nIn the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his\n living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the\n Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of\n Westchester University; the members of the press.", "\"Stop bluffing,\" said Feetch coldly. \"There's no other way out for\n you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement.\"\n\n\n Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: \"Gentlemen, will you\n be a party to this?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" murmured the Government man, \"I never did think Feetch got a\n fair shake.\"\n\n\n \"This information is important to science,\" said the Van Terrel man.\n\n\n After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.", "Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted\n physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,\n spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and\n analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory\n explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for\n any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.\n\n\n Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:\n \"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting\n me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.\n That's almost four dollars a week, man.\"", "\"Gentlemen,\" he said. \"I'll make it brief.\" He waved the papers in his\n hand. \"Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,\n including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.\n All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this\n information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing\n one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon.\" He stared at Piltdon. \"In short,\n I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener.\"\n\n\n Piltdon leaped from his chair. \"Outrageous!\" He roared. \"Ridiculous!\"\n\n\n \"Fifty-one percent,\" said Feetch firmly. \"Don't bother with any\n counterproposals or the interview is at an end.\"\n\n\n \"Gentlemen!\" squawked Piltdon, \"I appeal to you—\"", "How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer\n had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,\n discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but\n Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!\n thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,\n production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had\n happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring\n uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and\n develop?\n\n\n Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had\n managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five\n years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.", "\"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow\n workmen,\" begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. \"Do you realize that\n Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your\n former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They\n have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the\n office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.\n Think of that, Feetch.\"\n\n\n Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.\n\n\n Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. \"Think it\n over, Feetch.\"\n\n\n Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose\n their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.\n\n\n \"Chief,\" said Hanson, \"Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred\n per cent. We'll make out.\"", "A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the\n window. \"What's going on!\" yelled Piltdon. \"Oh, I see. People throwing\n rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know\n that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about\n the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,\n the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and\n change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and\n the world will soon forget about the old one.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" said Feetch. \"People will forget anyway—I hope.\"" ], [ "Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. \"Mr. Piltdon,\" he said. \"I'm asking\n only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,\n especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help\n with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end.\"\n\n\n \"Damn it, no!\" roared Piltdon. \"How many times must I tell you? You got\n your job back, didn't you?\"\n\n\n The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted\n engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel\n very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always\n wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be\n opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that\n there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.\n Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had\n pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his\n decision.", "He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter\n from the Van Terrel Foundation: \"—cannot accept your application\n inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to\n profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics\n not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states\n the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—\"\n\n\n Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his\n chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a\n slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.\n\n\n Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a\n research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how\n could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert\n to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.\n No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might\n grab. The anger began to mount.", "\"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon.\" And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received\n no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,\n well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his\n work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing\n nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.\n It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The\n oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly\n expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when\n so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could\n no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.\n\n\n He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he\n was close to the answer.\n\n\n When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck\n incident was only hours away.", "How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer\n had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,\n discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but\n Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!\n thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,\n production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had\n happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring\n uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and\n develop?\n\n\n Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had\n managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five\n years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.", "The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time\n they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales\n climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into\n peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with\n the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional\n plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.\n Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited\n sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.\n Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the\n fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.\n\n\n Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,\n universities and independent investigators began to look into this new\n phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they\n set up their own research.", "\"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of\n further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new\n type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.\n This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until\n further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and\n engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on\n the effect.\"", "What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.\n Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more\n technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in\n the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny\n wasn't well.\n\n\n How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it\n himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his\n head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to\n start—\n\"Chief,\" said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, \"I'm\n beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at\n all.\"\n\n\n \"Got to be,\" answered Feetch tiredly. \"We must work along classical\n can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven\n types, would be too expensive for mass production.\"", "Feetch's body twitched. \"But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time\n enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying\n to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't\n have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep\n up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few\n draftsmen and....\"\n\n\n \"Excuses,\" sneered Mr. Piltdon. \"Your staff is more than adequate.\n I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,\n no more!\" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an\n oppressive silence.", "\"Good-day,\" said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to\n the door.\nMoney, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His\n supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding\n another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth\n day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget\n the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious\n to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.\n \"Feetch,\" the personnel man would read. \"Kalvin Feetch.\" Then, looking\n up, \"Not the Kalvin Feetch who—\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Feetch would admit miserably.\n\n\n \"I am sorry, but—\"", "Feetch shook his head. \"No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't\n understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?\n What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic\n effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what\n are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical\n here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must\n learn a lot more.\"\n\n\n \"But Chief, your job.\"\n\n\n \"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon.\"\n\n\n Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing\n room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a\n pencil point. \"Feetch!\" roared Piltdon. \"Is this talk that's going\n around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it.\"", "A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the\n window. \"What's going on!\" yelled Piltdon. \"Oh, I see. People throwing\n rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know\n that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about\n the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,\n the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and\n change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and\n the world will soon forget about the old one.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" said Feetch. \"People will forget anyway—I hope.\"", "Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed\n himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought\n grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.\n \"Piltdon!\" he barked. \"Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's\n all.\" He hung up.\n\n\n In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.\nIn the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his\n living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the\n Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of\n Westchester University; the members of the press.", "\"Mr. Piltdon,\" Feetch said. \"I—\" klunk!—\"resign.\"\n\n\n Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.\n\n\n \"No use,\" said Feetch. \"Nothing you can say—\" klunk! klunk!\n klunk!—\"will make any difference now.\"\n\n\n \"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!\"\n\n\n \"Will remain my secret. Good day.\"\n\n\n \"Feetch!\" howled Piltdon. \"I order you to remain!\"\n\n\n Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,\n then turned abruptly.", "Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,\n in part: \"The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear\n proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor\n effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge\n in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the\n involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the\n Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped\n through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was\n instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.\n\n\n \"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite\n as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations\n indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These\n inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously\n resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting\n the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.", "Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted\n physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,\n spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and\n analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory\n explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for\n any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.\n\n\n Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:\n \"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting\n me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.\n That's almost four dollars a week, man.\"", "Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the\n bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch\n clocking. \"Four point four,\" announced Feetch after the last test.\n \"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.\n Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go.\"", "\"But Mr. Feetch—\"\n\n\n \"Get out,\" said Feetch.\n\n\n Piltdon blanched and left.\n\n\n \"As I was saying, Hanson—\" continued Feetch.", "\"Feetch,\" bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. \"Stow this hooey. I\n don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our\n standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the\n company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year\n after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want\n you holding it back. We're going into production immediately.\"\nClose, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it\n had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.\n The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to\n distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements\n blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: \"It's\n a sell-out!\" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. \"Step up\n production! Let 'er rip!\"", "But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting\n any better and medical bills were running high.\n\n\n The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: \"Absolutely\n not.\"\n\n\n \"I'll go up another ten dollars,\" grated the little Piltdon image.\n \"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?\n A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,\n Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—\"", "\"Stop bluffing,\" said Feetch coldly. \"There's no other way out for\n you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement.\"\n\n\n Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: \"Gentlemen, will you\n be a party to this?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" murmured the Government man, \"I never did think Feetch got a\n fair shake.\"\n\n\n \"This information is important to science,\" said the Van Terrel man.\n\n\n After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed." ], [ "\"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon.\" And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received\n no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,\n well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his\n work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing\n nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.\n It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The\n oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly\n expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when\n so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could\n no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.\n\n\n He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he\n was close to the answer.\n\n\n When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck\n incident was only hours away.", "As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, \"Sir, I\n think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—\"\n\n\n \"Are you still worrying about that?\" Piltdon roared jovially. \"Leave\n that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh\n Feetch?\"\nThat night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South\n Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the\n soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,\n raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a\n gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on\n the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just\n below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire\n department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.\nThe incident made headlines in the local papers.", "Feetch's body twitched. \"But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time\n enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying\n to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't\n have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep\n up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few\n draftsmen and....\"\n\n\n \"Excuses,\" sneered Mr. Piltdon. \"Your staff is more than adequate.\n I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,\n no more!\" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an\n oppressive silence.", "The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported\n similar incidents.\n\n\n The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,\n and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell\n outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not\n dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,\n sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in\n homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and\n dog-food factories. No place was immune.\n\n\n People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets\n boomed.\n\n\n All activity was seriously curtailed.\n\n\n A state of national emergency was declared.\n\n\n Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was\n generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by\n the Piltdon Super-Opener.", "Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,\n in part: \"The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear\n proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor\n effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge\n in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the\n involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the\n Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped\n through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was\n instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.\n\n\n \"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite\n as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations\n indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These\n inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously\n resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting\n the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.", "\"Stop bluffing,\" said Feetch coldly. \"There's no other way out for\n you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement.\"\n\n\n Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: \"Gentlemen, will you\n be a party to this?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" murmured the Government man, \"I never did think Feetch got a\n fair shake.\"\n\n\n \"This information is important to science,\" said the Van Terrel man.\n\n\n After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.", "Feetch shook his head. \"No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't\n understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?\n What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic\n effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what\n are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical\n here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must\n learn a lot more.\"\n\n\n \"But Chief, your job.\"\n\n\n \"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon.\"\n\n\n Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing\n room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a\n pencil point. \"Feetch!\" roared Piltdon. \"Is this talk that's going\n around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it.\"", "Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. \"Mr. Piltdon,\" he said. \"I'm asking\n only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,\n especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help\n with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end.\"\n\n\n \"Damn it, no!\" roared Piltdon. \"How many times must I tell you? You got\n your job back, didn't you?\"\n\n\n The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted\n engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel\n very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always\n wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be\n opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that\n there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.\n Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had\n pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his\n decision.", "He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter\n from the Van Terrel Foundation: \"—cannot accept your application\n inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to\n profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics\n not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states\n the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—\"\n\n\n Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his\n chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a\n slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.\n\n\n Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a\n research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how\n could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert\n to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.\n No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might\n grab. The anger began to mount.", "\"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of\n further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new\n type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.\n This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until\n further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and\n engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on\n the effect.\"", "What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.\n Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more\n technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in\n the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny\n wasn't well.\n\n\n How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it\n himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his\n head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to\n start—\n\"Chief,\" said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, \"I'm\n beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at\n all.\"\n\n\n \"Got to be,\" answered Feetch tiredly. \"We must work along classical\n can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven\n types, would be too expensive for mass production.\"", "A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the\n window. \"What's going on!\" yelled Piltdon. \"Oh, I see. People throwing\n rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know\n that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about\n the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,\n the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and\n change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and\n the world will soon forget about the old one.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" said Feetch. \"People will forget anyway—I hope.\"", "Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can\n precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon\n openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point\n twenty-nine days.\n\n\n Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed\n there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators\n accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A\n Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of\n bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself\n in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.\n\n\n Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, \"This is your\n doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!\" A falling can caught him neatly\n on the tip of his nose.\n\n\n \"But sir,\" trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, \"I tried to\n warn you.\"", "The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time\n they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales\n climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into\n peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with\n the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional\n plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.\n Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited\n sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.\n Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the\n fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.\n\n\n Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,\n universities and independent investigators began to look into this new\n phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they\n set up their own research.", "Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed\n himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought\n grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.\n \"Piltdon!\" he barked. \"Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's\n all.\" He hung up.\n\n\n In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.\nIn the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his\n living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the\n Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of\n Westchester University; the members of the press.", "\"Well, well,\" said Feetch. \"I drew my pay every week so I suppose I\n have no complaints. Although,\" a wistful note crept into his voice \"I\n would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,\n but who has heard of Feetch? Well,\"—Feetch blew his nose—\"how do we\n stand, Hanson?\"\n\n\n Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. \"Piltdon ought to\n be rayed,\" he growled. \"O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models\n designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,\n two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise\n unsatisfactory.\"", "\"Good-day,\" said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to\n the door.\nMoney, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His\n supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding\n another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth\n day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget\n the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious\n to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.\n \"Feetch,\" the personnel man would read. \"Kalvin Feetch.\" Then, looking\n up, \"Not the Kalvin Feetch who—\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Feetch would admit miserably.\n\n\n \"I am sorry, but—\"", "Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted\n physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,\n spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and\n analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory\n explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for\n any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.\n\n\n Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:\n \"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting\n me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.\n That's almost four dollars a week, man.\"", "\"Mr. Piltdon,\" Feetch said. \"I—\" klunk!—\"resign.\"\n\n\n Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.\n\n\n \"No use,\" said Feetch. \"Nothing you can say—\" klunk! klunk!\n klunk!—\"will make any difference now.\"\n\n\n \"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!\"\n\n\n \"Will remain my secret. Good day.\"\n\n\n \"Feetch!\" howled Piltdon. \"I order you to remain!\"\n\n\n Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,\n then turned abruptly.", "\"You're through, Feetch!\" raved Piltdon. \"Fired! Get out! But before\n you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it\n belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created\n the Super-Opener. Now, get out!\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said Feetch paling. \"Then you don't want to hear about my\n discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?\"\n\n\n Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under\n Piltdon's huge desk. \"No!\" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was\n inches away. \"No, I——What did you say?\"\n\n\n \"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever.\"\n\n\n Klunk!\n\n\n \"Forever, Feetch?\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir.\" Klunk! Klunk!" ], [ "\"Good-day,\" said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to\n the door.\nMoney, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His\n supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding\n another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth\n day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget\n the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious\n to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.\n \"Feetch,\" the personnel man would read. \"Kalvin Feetch.\" Then, looking\n up, \"Not the Kalvin Feetch who—\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Feetch would admit miserably.\n\n\n \"I am sorry, but—\"", "Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. \"Mr. Piltdon,\" he said. \"I'm asking\n only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,\n especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help\n with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end.\"\n\n\n \"Damn it, no!\" roared Piltdon. \"How many times must I tell you? You got\n your job back, didn't you?\"\n\n\n The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted\n engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel\n very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always\n wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be\n opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that\n there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.\n Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had\n pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his\n decision.", "He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter\n from the Van Terrel Foundation: \"—cannot accept your application\n inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to\n profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics\n not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states\n the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—\"\n\n\n Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his\n chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a\n slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.\n\n\n Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a\n research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how\n could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert\n to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.\n No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might\n grab. The anger began to mount.", "What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.\n Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more\n technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in\n the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny\n wasn't well.\n\n\n How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it\n himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his\n head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to\n start—\n\"Chief,\" said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, \"I'm\n beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at\n all.\"\n\n\n \"Got to be,\" answered Feetch tiredly. \"We must work along classical\n can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven\n types, would be too expensive for mass production.\"", "\"Mr. Piltdon,\" Feetch said. \"I—\" klunk!—\"resign.\"\n\n\n Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.\n\n\n \"No use,\" said Feetch. \"Nothing you can say—\" klunk! klunk!\n klunk!—\"will make any difference now.\"\n\n\n \"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!\"\n\n\n \"Will remain my secret. Good day.\"\n\n\n \"Feetch!\" howled Piltdon. \"I order you to remain!\"\n\n\n Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,\n then turned abruptly.", "Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the\n bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch\n clocking. \"Four point four,\" announced Feetch after the last test.\n \"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.\n Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go.\"", "A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the\n window. \"What's going on!\" yelled Piltdon. \"Oh, I see. People throwing\n rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know\n that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about\n the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,\n the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and\n change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and\n the world will soon forget about the old one.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" said Feetch. \"People will forget anyway—I hope.\"", "But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting\n any better and medical bills were running high.\n\n\n The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: \"Absolutely\n not.\"\n\n\n \"I'll go up another ten dollars,\" grated the little Piltdon image.\n \"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?\n A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,\n Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—\"", "Feetch's body twitched. \"But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time\n enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying\n to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't\n have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep\n up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few\n draftsmen and....\"\n\n\n \"Excuses,\" sneered Mr. Piltdon. \"Your staff is more than adequate.\n I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,\n no more!\" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an\n oppressive silence.", "\"Feetch,\" bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. \"Stow this hooey. I\n don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our\n standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the\n company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year\n after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want\n you holding it back. We're going into production immediately.\"\nClose, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it\n had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.\n The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to\n distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements\n blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: \"It's\n a sell-out!\" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. \"Step up\n production! Let 'er rip!\"", "How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer\n had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,\n discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but\n Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!\n thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,\n production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had\n happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring\n uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and\n develop?\n\n\n Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had\n managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five\n years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.", "The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear\n ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many\n other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to\n be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top\n resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle\n size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of\n the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector\n type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to\n offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to\n compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.\n There was the ever-present limit to production cost.\n\n\n Hanson's eyes were upon him. \"Chief,\" he said, \"it's a rotten shame.\n Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire\n you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company\n is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!\"", "\"You're positive, Feetch?\" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.\n\n\n \"Sir, I never make careless claims.\"\n\n\n \"That's true,\" said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. \"It can be done,\"\n he mused. \"The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.\n Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking\n at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll\n give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The\n patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit\n for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on\n production, at once, Feetch.\"", "As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, \"Sir, I\n think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—\"\n\n\n \"Are you still worrying about that?\" Piltdon roared jovially. \"Leave\n that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh\n Feetch?\"\nThat night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South\n Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the\n soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,\n raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a\n gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on\n the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just\n below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire\n department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.\nThe incident made headlines in the local papers.", "\"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball,\" Piltdon went on\n savagely. \"The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.\n Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering\n that's missing the boat!\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. Piltdon,\" remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's\n glare, \"don't you remember? I tried to....\"\n\n\n \"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon\n Can-Opener!\" roared Mr. Piltdon. \"Look at our competitors. The\n International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.\n Universal does it in four.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. Piltdon—\"", "\"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow\n workmen,\" begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. \"Do you realize that\n Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your\n former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They\n have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the\n office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.\n Think of that, Feetch.\"\n\n\n Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.\n\n\n Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. \"Think it\n over, Feetch.\"\n\n\n Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose\n their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.\n\n\n \"Chief,\" said Hanson, \"Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred\n per cent. We'll make out.\"", "The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time\n they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales\n climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into\n peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with\n the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional\n plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.\n Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited\n sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.\n Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the\n fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.\n\n\n Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,\n universities and independent investigators began to look into this new\n phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they\n set up their own research.", "\"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of\n further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new\n type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.\n This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until\n further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and\n engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on\n the effect.\"", "Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can\n precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon\n openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point\n twenty-nine days.\n\n\n Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed\n there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators\n accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A\n Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of\n bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself\n in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.\n\n\n Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, \"This is your\n doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!\" A falling can caught him neatly\n on the tip of his nose.\n\n\n \"But sir,\" trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, \"I tried to\n warn you.\"", "\"Well, well,\" said Feetch. \"I drew my pay every week so I suppose I\n have no complaints. Although,\" a wistful note crept into his voice \"I\n would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,\n but who has heard of Feetch? Well,\"—Feetch blew his nose—\"how do we\n stand, Hanson?\"\n\n\n Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. \"Piltdon ought to\n be rayed,\" he growled. \"O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models\n designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,\n two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise\n unsatisfactory.\"" ], [ "Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. \"Mr. Piltdon,\" he said. \"I'm asking\n only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,\n especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help\n with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end.\"\n\n\n \"Damn it, no!\" roared Piltdon. \"How many times must I tell you? You got\n your job back, didn't you?\"\n\n\n The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted\n engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel\n very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always\n wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be\n opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that\n there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.\n Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had\n pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his\n decision.", "How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer\n had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,\n discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but\n Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!\n thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,\n production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had\n happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring\n uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and\n develop?\n\n\n Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had\n managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five\n years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.", "\"Good-day,\" said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to\n the door.\nMoney, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His\n supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding\n another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth\n day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget\n the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious\n to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.\n \"Feetch,\" the personnel man would read. \"Kalvin Feetch.\" Then, looking\n up, \"Not the Kalvin Feetch who—\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Feetch would admit miserably.\n\n\n \"I am sorry, but—\"", "Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the\n bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch\n clocking. \"Four point four,\" announced Feetch after the last test.\n \"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.\n Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go.\"", "Feetch's body twitched. \"But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time\n enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying\n to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't\n have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep\n up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few\n draftsmen and....\"\n\n\n \"Excuses,\" sneered Mr. Piltdon. \"Your staff is more than adequate.\n I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,\n no more!\" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an\n oppressive silence.", "What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.\n Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more\n technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in\n the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny\n wasn't well.\n\n\n How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it\n himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his\n head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to\n start—\n\"Chief,\" said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, \"I'm\n beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at\n all.\"\n\n\n \"Got to be,\" answered Feetch tiredly. \"We must work along classical\n can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven\n types, would be too expensive for mass production.\"", "Feetch shook his head. \"No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't\n understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?\n What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic\n effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what\n are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical\n here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must\n learn a lot more.\"\n\n\n \"But Chief, your job.\"\n\n\n \"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon.\"\n\n\n Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing\n room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a\n pencil point. \"Feetch!\" roared Piltdon. \"Is this talk that's going\n around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it.\"", "\"Feetch,\" bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. \"Stow this hooey. I\n don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our\n standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the\n company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year\n after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want\n you holding it back. We're going into production immediately.\"\nClose, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it\n had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.\n The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to\n distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements\n blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: \"It's\n a sell-out!\" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. \"Step up\n production! Let 'er rip!\"", "He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter\n from the Van Terrel Foundation: \"—cannot accept your application\n inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to\n profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics\n not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states\n the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—\"\n\n\n Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his\n chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a\n slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.\n\n\n Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a\n research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how\n could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert\n to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.\n No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might\n grab. The anger began to mount.", "\"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home\n Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a\n can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you\n for?\"\n\n\n Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. \"But Mr. Piltdon,\n our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has\n dignity....\"\n\n\n \"Dignity,\" pronounced Piltdon, \"is for museums. Four months, Feetch!\n In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,\n stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I\n want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for\n production. Otherwise, Feetch—\"", "The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear\n ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many\n other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to\n be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top\n resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle\n size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of\n the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector\n type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to\n offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to\n compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.\n There was the ever-present limit to production cost.\n\n\n Hanson's eyes were upon him. \"Chief,\" he said, \"it's a rotten shame.\n Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire\n you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company\n is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!\"", "\"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon.\" And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received\n no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,\n well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his\n work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing\n nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.\n It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The\n oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly\n expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when\n so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could\n no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.\n\n\n He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he\n was close to the answer.\n\n\n When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck\n incident was only hours away.", "\"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of\n further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new\n type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.\n This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until\n further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and\n engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on\n the effect.\"", "As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, \"Sir, I\n think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—\"\n\n\n \"Are you still worrying about that?\" Piltdon roared jovially. \"Leave\n that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh\n Feetch?\"\nThat night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South\n Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the\n soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,\n raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a\n gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on\n the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just\n below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire\n department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.\nThe incident made headlines in the local papers.", "\"Mr. Piltdon,\" Feetch said. \"I—\" klunk!—\"resign.\"\n\n\n Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.\n\n\n \"No use,\" said Feetch. \"Nothing you can say—\" klunk! klunk!\n klunk!—\"will make any difference now.\"\n\n\n \"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!\"\n\n\n \"Will remain my secret. Good day.\"\n\n\n \"Feetch!\" howled Piltdon. \"I order you to remain!\"\n\n\n Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,\n then turned abruptly.", "\"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball,\" Piltdon went on\n savagely. \"The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.\n Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering\n that's missing the boat!\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. Piltdon,\" remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's\n glare, \"don't you remember? I tried to....\"\n\n\n \"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon\n Can-Opener!\" roared Mr. Piltdon. \"Look at our competitors. The\n International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.\n Universal does it in four.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. Piltdon—\"", "\"You're positive, Feetch?\" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.\n\n\n \"Sir, I never make careless claims.\"\n\n\n \"That's true,\" said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. \"It can be done,\"\n he mused. \"The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.\n Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking\n at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll\n give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The\n patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit\n for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on\n production, at once, Feetch.\"", "\"Well, well,\" said Feetch. \"I drew my pay every week so I suppose I\n have no complaints. Although,\" a wistful note crept into his voice \"I\n would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,\n but who has heard of Feetch? Well,\"—Feetch blew his nose—\"how do we\n stand, Hanson?\"\n\n\n Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. \"Piltdon ought to\n be rayed,\" he growled. \"O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models\n designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,\n two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise\n unsatisfactory.\"", "A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the\n window. \"What's going on!\" yelled Piltdon. \"Oh, I see. People throwing\n rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know\n that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about\n the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,\n the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and\n change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and\n the world will soon forget about the old one.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" said Feetch. \"People will forget anyway—I hope.\"", "Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed\n himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought\n grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.\n \"Piltdon!\" he barked. \"Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's\n all.\" He hung up.\n\n\n In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.\nIn the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his\n living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the\n Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of\n Westchester University; the members of the press." ], [ "Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. \"Mr. Piltdon,\" he said. \"I'm asking\n only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,\n especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help\n with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end.\"\n\n\n \"Damn it, no!\" roared Piltdon. \"How many times must I tell you? You got\n your job back, didn't you?\"\n\n\n The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted\n engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel\n very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always\n wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be\n opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that\n there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.\n Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had\n pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his\n decision.", "\"Mr. Piltdon,\" Feetch said. \"I—\" klunk!—\"resign.\"\n\n\n Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.\n\n\n \"No use,\" said Feetch. \"Nothing you can say—\" klunk! klunk!\n klunk!—\"will make any difference now.\"\n\n\n \"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!\"\n\n\n \"Will remain my secret. Good day.\"\n\n\n \"Feetch!\" howled Piltdon. \"I order you to remain!\"\n\n\n Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,\n then turned abruptly.", "He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter\n from the Van Terrel Foundation: \"—cannot accept your application\n inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to\n profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics\n not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states\n the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—\"\n\n\n Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his\n chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a\n slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.\n\n\n Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a\n research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how\n could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert\n to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.\n No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might\n grab. The anger began to mount.", "A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the\n window. \"What's going on!\" yelled Piltdon. \"Oh, I see. People throwing\n rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know\n that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about\n the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,\n the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and\n change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and\n the world will soon forget about the old one.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" said Feetch. \"People will forget anyway—I hope.\"", "\"Feetch,\" bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. \"Stow this hooey. I\n don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our\n standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the\n company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year\n after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want\n you holding it back. We're going into production immediately.\"\nClose, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it\n had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.\n The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to\n distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements\n blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: \"It's\n a sell-out!\" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. \"Step up\n production! Let 'er rip!\"", "\"You're positive, Feetch?\" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.\n\n\n \"Sir, I never make careless claims.\"\n\n\n \"That's true,\" said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. \"It can be done,\"\n he mused. \"The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.\n Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking\n at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll\n give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The\n patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit\n for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on\n production, at once, Feetch.\"", "After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. \"This,\"\n he exulted, \"will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!\n Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!\n We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Piltdon—\" said Feetch shakily.\n\n\n Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. \"What's the matter,\n Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?\"", "\"Good-day,\" said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to\n the door.\nMoney, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His\n supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding\n another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth\n day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget\n the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious\n to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.\n \"Feetch,\" the personnel man would read. \"Kalvin Feetch.\" Then, looking\n up, \"Not the Kalvin Feetch who—\"\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Feetch would admit miserably.\n\n\n \"I am sorry, but—\"", "How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer\n had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,\n discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but\n Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!\n thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,\n production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had\n happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring\n uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and\n develop?\n\n\n Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had\n managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five\n years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.", "Feetch's body twitched. \"But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time\n enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying\n to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't\n have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep\n up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few\n draftsmen and....\"\n\n\n \"Excuses,\" sneered Mr. Piltdon. \"Your staff is more than adequate.\n I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,\n no more!\" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an\n oppressive silence.", "Feetch shook his head. \"No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't\n understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?\n What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic\n effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what\n are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical\n here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must\n learn a lot more.\"\n\n\n \"But Chief, your job.\"\n\n\n \"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon.\"\n\n\n Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing\n room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a\n pencil point. \"Feetch!\" roared Piltdon. \"Is this talk that's going\n around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it.\"", "The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear\n ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many\n other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to\n be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top\n resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle\n size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of\n the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector\n type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to\n offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to\n compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.\n There was the ever-present limit to production cost.\n\n\n Hanson's eyes were upon him. \"Chief,\" he said, \"it's a rotten shame.\n Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire\n you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company\n is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!\"", "\"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow\n workmen,\" begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. \"Do you realize that\n Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your\n former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They\n have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the\n office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.\n Think of that, Feetch.\"\n\n\n Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.\n\n\n Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. \"Think it\n over, Feetch.\"\n\n\n Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose\n their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.\n\n\n \"Chief,\" said Hanson, \"Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred\n per cent. We'll make out.\"", "\"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't\n let you.\"\n\n\n \"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that\n figured the Super-Opener can solve this.\"\n\n\n Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest\n grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,\n Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was\n no solution.\n\n\n Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of\n water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand\n with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about\n it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have\n punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.", "\"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon.\" And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received\n no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,\n well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his\n work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing\n nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.\n It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The\n oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly\n expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when\n so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could\n no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.\n\n\n He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he\n was close to the answer.\n\n\n When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck\n incident was only hours away.", "Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can\n precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon\n openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point\n twenty-nine days.\n\n\n Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed\n there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators\n accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A\n Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of\n bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself\n in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.\n\n\n Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, \"This is your\n doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!\" A falling can caught him neatly\n on the tip of his nose.\n\n\n \"But sir,\" trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, \"I tried to\n warn you.\"", "\"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball,\" Piltdon went on\n savagely. \"The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.\n Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering\n that's missing the boat!\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. Piltdon,\" remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's\n glare, \"don't you remember? I tried to....\"\n\n\n \"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon\n Can-Opener!\" roared Mr. Piltdon. \"Look at our competitors. The\n International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.\n Universal does it in four.\"\n\n\n \"But Mr. Piltdon—\"", "As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, \"Sir, I\n think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—\"\n\n\n \"Are you still worrying about that?\" Piltdon roared jovially. \"Leave\n that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh\n Feetch?\"\nThat night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South\n Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the\n soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,\n raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a\n gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on\n the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just\n below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire\n department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.\nThe incident made headlines in the local papers.", "\"But Mr. Feetch—\"\n\n\n \"Get out,\" said Feetch.\n\n\n Piltdon blanched and left.\n\n\n \"As I was saying, Hanson—\" continued Feetch.", "But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting\n any better and medical bills were running high.\n\n\n The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: \"Absolutely\n not.\"\n\n\n \"I'll go up another ten dollars,\" grated the little Piltdon image.\n \"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?\n A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,\n Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else.\"\n\n\n \"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—\"" ], [ "\"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon.\" And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received\n no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,\n well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his\n work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing\n nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.\n It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The\n oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly\n expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when\n so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could\n no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.\n\n\n He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he\n was close to the answer.\n\n\n When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck\n incident was only hours away.", "Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. \"Mr. Piltdon,\" he said. \"I'm asking\n only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,\n especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help\n with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end.\"\n\n\n \"Damn it, no!\" roared Piltdon. \"How many times must I tell you? You got\n your job back, didn't you?\"\n\n\n The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted\n engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel\n very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always\n wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be\n opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that\n there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.\n Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had\n pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his\n decision.", "After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. \"This,\"\n he exulted, \"will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!\n Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!\n We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it.\"\n\n\n \"Mr. Piltdon—\" said Feetch shakily.\n\n\n Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. \"What's the matter,\n Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?\"", "\"Mr. Piltdon,\" Feetch said. \"I—\" klunk!—\"resign.\"\n\n\n Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.\n\n\n \"No use,\" said Feetch. \"Nothing you can say—\" klunk! klunk!\n klunk!—\"will make any difference now.\"\n\n\n \"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!\"\n\n\n \"Will remain my secret. Good day.\"\n\n\n \"Feetch!\" howled Piltdon. \"I order you to remain!\"\n\n\n Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,\n then turned abruptly.", "\"Stop bluffing,\" said Feetch coldly. \"There's no other way out for\n you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement.\"\n\n\n Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: \"Gentlemen, will you\n be a party to this?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" murmured the Government man, \"I never did think Feetch got a\n fair shake.\"\n\n\n \"This information is important to science,\" said the Van Terrel man.\n\n\n After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.", "He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter\n from the Van Terrel Foundation: \"—cannot accept your application\n inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to\n profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics\n not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states\n the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—\"\n\n\n Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his\n chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a\n slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.\n\n\n Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a\n research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how\n could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert\n to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.\n No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might\n grab. The anger began to mount.", "A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the\n window. \"What's going on!\" yelled Piltdon. \"Oh, I see. People throwing\n rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know\n that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about\n the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,\n the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and\n change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and\n the world will soon forget about the old one.\"\n\n\n \"No,\" said Feetch. \"People will forget anyway—I hope.\"", "\"Gentlemen,\" he said. \"I'll make it brief.\" He waved the papers in his\n hand. \"Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,\n including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.\n All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this\n information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing\n one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon.\" He stared at Piltdon. \"In short,\n I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener.\"\n\n\n Piltdon leaped from his chair. \"Outrageous!\" He roared. \"Ridiculous!\"\n\n\n \"Fifty-one percent,\" said Feetch firmly. \"Don't bother with any\n counterproposals or the interview is at an end.\"\n\n\n \"Gentlemen!\" squawked Piltdon, \"I appeal to you—\"", "\"But Mr. Feetch—\"\n\n\n \"Get out,\" said Feetch.\n\n\n Piltdon blanched and left.\n\n\n \"As I was saying, Hanson—\" continued Feetch.", "Feetch shook his head. \"No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't\n understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?\n What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic\n effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what\n are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical\n here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must\n learn a lot more.\"\n\n\n \"But Chief, your job.\"\n\n\n \"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon.\"\n\n\n Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing\n room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a\n pencil point. \"Feetch!\" roared Piltdon. \"Is this talk that's going\n around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it.\"", "\"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of\n further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new\n type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.\n This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until\n further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and\n engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on\n the effect.\"", "\"Well, well,\" said Feetch. \"I drew my pay every week so I suppose I\n have no complaints. Although,\" a wistful note crept into his voice \"I\n would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,\n but who has heard of Feetch? Well,\"—Feetch blew his nose—\"how do we\n stand, Hanson?\"\n\n\n Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. \"Piltdon ought to\n be rayed,\" he growled. \"O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models\n designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,\n two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise\n unsatisfactory.\"", "As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, \"Sir, I\n think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—\"\n\n\n \"Are you still worrying about that?\" Piltdon roared jovially. \"Leave\n that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh\n Feetch?\"\nThat night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South\n Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the\n soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,\n raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a\n gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on\n the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just\n below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire\n department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.\nThe incident made headlines in the local papers.", "Feetch's body twitched. \"But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time\n enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying\n to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't\n have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep\n up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few\n draftsmen and....\"\n\n\n \"Excuses,\" sneered Mr. Piltdon. \"Your staff is more than adequate.\n I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,\n no more!\" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an\n oppressive silence.", "Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can\n precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon\n openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point\n twenty-nine days.\n\n\n Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed\n there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators\n accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A\n Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of\n bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself\n in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.\n\n\n Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, \"This is your\n doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!\" A falling can caught him neatly\n on the tip of his nose.\n\n\n \"But sir,\" trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, \"I tried to\n warn you.\"", "\"You're positive, Feetch?\" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.\n\n\n \"Sir, I never make careless claims.\"\n\n\n \"That's true,\" said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. \"It can be done,\"\n he mused. \"The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.\n Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking\n at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll\n give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The\n patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit\n for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on\n production, at once, Feetch.\"", "Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted\n physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,\n spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and\n analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory\n explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for\n any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.\n\n\n Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:\n \"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting\n me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.\n That's almost four dollars a week, man.\"", "The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported\n similar incidents.\n\n\n The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,\n and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell\n outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not\n dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,\n sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in\n homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and\n dog-food factories. No place was immune.\n\n\n People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets\n boomed.\n\n\n All activity was seriously curtailed.\n\n\n A state of national emergency was declared.\n\n\n Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was\n generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by\n the Piltdon Super-Opener.", "\"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow\n workmen,\" begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. \"Do you realize that\n Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your\n former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They\n have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the\n office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.\n Think of that, Feetch.\"\n\n\n Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.\n\n\n Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. \"Think it\n over, Feetch.\"\n\n\n Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose\n their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.\n\n\n \"Chief,\" said Hanson, \"Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred\n per cent. We'll make out.\"", "\"Feetch,\" bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. \"Stow this hooey. I\n don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our\n standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the\n company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year\n after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want\n you holding it back. We're going into production immediately.\"\nClose, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it\n had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.\n The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to\n distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements\n blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: \"It's\n a sell-out!\" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. \"Step up\n production! Let 'er rip!\"" ] ]
train	20014	[ "What does Fiss mean by Irony? \n", "What is the best description of what the article is doing with Fiss’s book? \n", "What is the meaning of Fiss’s title? \n", "What is one description of a putative right to individual self-expression?\n", "According to Fiss, free speech issues should be thought of as a conflict between...? \n", "Who is Owen Fiss and what did he do?\n", "Which groups does Fiss claim his book is advocating for? \n", "According to the article, why were people outraged by Mapplethorp’s portfolio? \n" ]	[ [ "That true freedom of speech calls for the silencing of a few groups. \n", "That true freedom of speech calls for the silencing of unorthodox artists, as their work so often offends on a large scale and does not bode positively for the groups the artist hopes to represents. \n", "That true freedom of speech depends on the silencing of the state in free speech trials.\n", "That true freedom of speech calls for an inspection of the pornography market. \n" ], [ "Taking a neutral approach in order to summarize the book. \n", "Challenging Fiss’s points while unpacking what the book has to say on the whole. \n", "Challenging Fiss’s points while offering better stats and better solutions. \n", "Taking a supportive approach and demonstrating how and where Fiss is especially effective.\n" ], [ "It is ironic that free speech requires the suppression of debunked ideas.\n", "It is ironic that the command, “Shut Up,” is paired with verb explain. This paradox is a metaphor for the way free speech works. \n", "It is ironic that free speech can only be achieved via the hand of the state.\n", "It is ironic that free speech requires the silencing of a few small groups. \n" ], [ "The right to orthodox self-expression \n", "The right to hate but not to be hated \n", "The right to engage in debate unencumbered by speech laws \n", "The right of the donkey to drool \n" ], [ "Individual liberty and the right to social equality \n", "Two kinds of equality: individual and social \n", "Two kinds of liberty: individual and social\n", "Liberty and equality\n" ], [ "He is a professor at Yale Law School. He is responsible taking Robert Mapplethorpe to court.\n", "He is a professor at Yale Law School. He is responsible for writing the book, The Irony of Free Speech \n", "He is a professor at Yale Law School. He is responsible for writing the book, Shut Up, He Explained.\n", "He is a professor at Harvard Law School. He is responsible for writing the book, Shut Up, He Explained. \n" ], [ "women, gays, victims of war crimes , the poor, and people who are critical of\nmarket capitalism\n", "women, gays, victims of racial-hate\nspeech, the rich, and people who are critical of\nmarket capitalism. \n", "women, gays, victims of racial-hate\nspeech, the poor, and those who are critical of market capitalism\n", "women, gays, victims of racial-hate\nspeech, the poor, and people who are critical of communism.\n" ], [ "Because it depicted homosexuality \n", "Because it depicted violence against women\n", "Because it outwardly depicted the AIDS crisis \n", "Because it depicted sadomasochism \n" ] ]	[ 1, 2, 4, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4 ]	[ 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "This is what Fiss means by the \"irony\" in his title: that true freedom of speech for all requires suppressing the speech of some. This is not, technically, an irony. It is a", "paradox. An irony would be the observation that an attempt to increase freedom for all often entails, despite our best efforts, a decrease in freedom for a few. If Fiss had addressed the subject of free speech in this spirit, as", "The Irony of Free Speech is a discussion of several speech issues: campaign-finance laws, state funding for the arts, pornography, speech codes, and equal time. These discussions are not doctrinaire, but their general inclination is to favor state intervention, on political grounds, in each of those areas--that is, to favor restrictions on campaign spending, greater regulation of pornography, and so on. Fiss' analyses of specific cases are presented against a lightly sketched historical argument. Light though the sketching is, the historical argument is almost the most objectionable thing about the book, since it involves a distortion of the history of First Amendment law that is fairly plain even to someone who is not a professor at Yale Law School.", "Shut Up, He Explained \n\n Owen Fiss is a professor at the Yale Law School and a highly regarded scholar of constitutional law. The subject of this short book is the present direction of the law governing the freedom of speech. What Professor Fiss has to say about it is worth attending to not merely because of his prominence in the field but because his argument is planted in the common assumptive ground of a lot of contemporary academic thought about the bankruptcy of individualism. The thesis of the book is Fiss', but the wisdom is conventional.", "Fiss' suggestion--this is the chief theoretical proposal of his book--is that liberals should stop thinking about this as a conflict between liberty and equality and start thinking about it as a conflict between two kinds of liberty: social vs. individual. The First Amendment, he says, was intended to foster (in William Brennan's words) \"uninhibited, robust, and wide-open\" debate in society as a whole; speech that inhibits or monopolizes that debate should therefore fall outside the protection of the law. We can maximize the total freedom of speech by silencing people who prevent others from speaking--when they utter racial epithets, represent women in degrading ways, use their wealth to dominate the press and the political process, or block the funding of unorthodox art.", "Professor Fiss thinks the present direction of First Amendment law is a bad one, and he has an idea about how we might improve it. The short way to put his argument (though it is not quite the way he puts it) is to say that our approach to speech has become increasingly permissive. Courts have become more and more reluctant to allow the state to interfere with the rights of individual speakers to say what they wish, and it is time to roll back that permissiveness and to embark on a new approach that would permit the state to silence some speakers and promote others, but still, Fiss argues, in the name of freedom of speech.", "an irony, he would undoubtedly have had some interesting things to say, for he is a learned and temperate writer. But he has, instead, chosen to address the issue as an advocate for specific groups he regards as politically disadvantaged--women,", "Why does Fiss portray the history of First Amendment jurisprudence in this perverted way? Because he wants to line up his own free-speech argument within the conventional academic view that our problems are mostly the consequences of an antiquated and discreditable ideology of liberal individualism, and that they can mostly be solved by adopting a social-constructionist, or communitarian, or \"intersubjective\" view of human nature instead. The merits of liberal individualism vs. communitarianism can await another occasion to be debated. For since the law governing the freedom of speech does not emerge out of libertarianism, the matter does not boil down to replacing an obsolete belief in \"self-expression\" with a more up-to-date belief in \"robust debate,\" as Fiss would like to think it does. What it boils down to is whether we need to replace the Hand-Holmes-Brandeis way of maximizing the benefits of free speech in a democratic society, which tries to push the state as far out of the picture as possible, with a different way, which tries to get the state farther into the picture.", "Awarding funding to the work of a gay artist because gay Americans need more political clout is an effort at cultural engineering, and the problem with cultural engineering is the problem with social engineering raised to a higher power. We have a hard enough time calculating the effects of the redistribution of wealth in our society. How can we possibly calculate the effects of redistributing the right to speak--of taking it away from people Professor Fiss feels have spoken long enough and mandating it for people he feels have not been adequately heard? One thing that is plain from the brief unhappy history of campus speech codes is that you automatically raise the value of the speech you punish and depress the value of the speech you sponsor. There are indeed many ironies here. Maybe someone will write a book about them.", "Fiss' analysis of the Mapplethorpe case offers a good example of the perils of his interventionist approach. Arts policy is, unquestionably, a mess. The solution usually proposed is divorce: Either get the state out of the business altogether or invent some ironclad process for distributing the money using strictly artistic criteria. Fiss rejects both solutions; he wants the criteria to be political. He thinks the NEA should subsidize art that will enhance the \"robustness\" of the debate and should therefore prefer unorthodox art--though only, of course, if it represents a viewpoint the endowment considers, by virtue of social need and a prior history of exclusion, worthy of its megaphone. (No Nazi art, in other words.)", "The argument is that \"the liberalism of the nineteenth century was defined by the claims of individual liberty and resulted in an unequivocal demand for liberal government, [while] the liberalism of today embraces the value of equality as well as liberty.\" The constitutional law of free speech, says Fiss, was shaped by the earlier type of liberalism--he calls it \"libertarian\"--which regarded free speech as a right of individual self-expression; it is now used to foil efforts to regulate speech in the name of the newer liberal value, equality. Contemporary liberals, inheriting both these traditions, find themselves in a bind. They want, let's say, black students to be free from harassment at institutions where they are, racially, in a minority, since liberals worry that black students cannot be \"equal\" if they feel intimidated. But those same liberals get upset at the thought of outlawing hate speech, since that would mean infringing upon the right of individuals to express themselves.", "Still, that discussion, like his discussions of the other issues, rests on a claim long associated with the left--the claim, in a phrase, that the minority is really the majority. In the case of speech, Fiss appears to believe that the reason the American public is less enlightened than he would wish it to be concerning matters such as feminism, the rights of homosexuals, and regulation of industry is that people are denied access to the opinions and information that would enlighten them. The public is denied this access because the state, in thrall to the ideology of individualism, refuses either to interfere with speech bullies--such as pornographers--who \"silence\" women, or to subsidize the speech of the unorthodox, such as Robert Mapplethorpe.", "it was what Fiss calls a \"source of empowerment for the members of the gay community\" to have homosexuality associated with snarling guys prancing around in leather jockstraps, using bullwhips as sex toys, and pissing in each other's mouths,", "they dislike or to subsidize speech they do like, without running afoul of the First Amendment. Embarked on this task, the most learned and temperate writer in the world would have a hard time avoiding tendentiousness. Fiss does not avoid", "Here, assuming we want to try the interventionist approach, it is hard to see how a one-size theory can possibly fit all cases. The issues underlying pornography, hate speech, arts grants, campaign finance, and equal-time provisions are all different. The ideological impetus behind judicial developments in the last two areas, campaign finance and equal-time provisions, is related less to speech, except as a kind of constitutional cover, than to a revival of the old \"right to property\"--that is, the Supreme Court tends to disapprove of legislative and administrative efforts to require broadcasters to carry \"opposing viewpoints\" on the grounds that since it's their property, owners of television stations should be able to broadcast what they like. Fiss believes that the need for equal-time laws is as urgent today as it was in the 1970s, which is peculiar in light of the proliferation of media outlets. But the state does arguably have an interest, compatible with the First Amendment, in stipulating the way those media are used, and Fiss' discussion of those issues is the least aggravating in his book.", "Hand, Holmes, and Brandeis based their First Amendment opinions not on some putative right to individual self-expression (an idea Holmes referred to as \"the right of the donkey to drool\") but on a democratic need for full and open political debate. First Amendment law since their time has performed its balancing acts on precisely that social value--the very value Fiss now proposes we need to insert into First Amendment jurisprudence. We don't need to insert it, because it was there from the start.", "-century classical liberals are Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich. Fiss' two \"liberalisms\" are, in fact, almost entirely different political philosophies.", "Mapplethorpe's photographs seem to Fiss to qualify under these guidelines, since, he says, \"in the late 1980s the AIDS crisis confronted America in the starkest fashion and provoked urgent questions regarding", "to defund the exhibit. Jesse Helms could not have demonized homosexuality more effectively--which, of course, is why he was pleased to draw public attention to the pictures. Now that is what we call an irony of free speech.", "in economic affairs--the passage of health and safety regulations, the protection of unions, the imposition of taxes, and so on. The post-New Deal liberals whom Fiss associates with the value of equality are their heirs. The heirs of the19 th" ], [ "Shut Up, He Explained \n\n Owen Fiss is a professor at the Yale Law School and a highly regarded scholar of constitutional law. The subject of this short book is the present direction of the law governing the freedom of speech. What Professor Fiss has to say about it is worth attending to not merely because of his prominence in the field but because his argument is planted in the common assumptive ground of a lot of contemporary academic thought about the bankruptcy of individualism. The thesis of the book is Fiss', but the wisdom is conventional.", "Professor Fiss thinks the present direction of First Amendment law is a bad one, and he has an idea about how we might improve it. The short way to put his argument (though it is not quite the way he puts it) is to say that our approach to speech has become increasingly permissive. Courts have become more and more reluctant to allow the state to interfere with the rights of individual speakers to say what they wish, and it is time to roll back that permissiveness and to embark on a new approach that would permit the state to silence some speakers and promote others, but still, Fiss argues, in the name of freedom of speech.", "The Irony of Free Speech is a discussion of several speech issues: campaign-finance laws, state funding for the arts, pornography, speech codes, and equal time. These discussions are not doctrinaire, but their general inclination is to favor state intervention, on political grounds, in each of those areas--that is, to favor restrictions on campaign spending, greater regulation of pornography, and so on. Fiss' analyses of specific cases are presented against a lightly sketched historical argument. Light though the sketching is, the historical argument is almost the most objectionable thing about the book, since it involves a distortion of the history of First Amendment law that is fairly plain even to someone who is not a professor at Yale Law School.", "Fiss' suggestion--this is the chief theoretical proposal of his book--is that liberals should stop thinking about this as a conflict between liberty and equality and start thinking about it as a conflict between two kinds of liberty: social vs. individual. The First Amendment, he says, was intended to foster (in William Brennan's words) \"uninhibited, robust, and wide-open\" debate in society as a whole; speech that inhibits or monopolizes that debate should therefore fall outside the protection of the law. We can maximize the total freedom of speech by silencing people who prevent others from speaking--when they utter racial epithets, represent women in degrading ways, use their wealth to dominate the press and the political process, or block the funding of unorthodox art.", "Why does Fiss portray the history of First Amendment jurisprudence in this perverted way? Because he wants to line up his own free-speech argument within the conventional academic view that our problems are mostly the consequences of an antiquated and discreditable ideology of liberal individualism, and that they can mostly be solved by adopting a social-constructionist, or communitarian, or \"intersubjective\" view of human nature instead. The merits of liberal individualism vs. communitarianism can await another occasion to be debated. For since the law governing the freedom of speech does not emerge out of libertarianism, the matter does not boil down to replacing an obsolete belief in \"self-expression\" with a more up-to-date belief in \"robust debate,\" as Fiss would like to think it does. What it boils down to is whether we need to replace the Hand-Holmes-Brandeis way of maximizing the benefits of free speech in a democratic society, which tries to push the state as far out of the picture as possible, with a different way, which tries to get the state farther into the picture.", "Fiss' analysis of the Mapplethorpe case offers a good example of the perils of his interventionist approach. Arts policy is, unquestionably, a mess. The solution usually proposed is divorce: Either get the state out of the business altogether or invent some ironclad process for distributing the money using strictly artistic criteria. Fiss rejects both solutions; he wants the criteria to be political. He thinks the NEA should subsidize art that will enhance the \"robustness\" of the debate and should therefore prefer unorthodox art--though only, of course, if it represents a viewpoint the endowment considers, by virtue of social need and a prior history of exclusion, worthy of its megaphone. (No Nazi art, in other words.)", "Here, assuming we want to try the interventionist approach, it is hard to see how a one-size theory can possibly fit all cases. The issues underlying pornography, hate speech, arts grants, campaign finance, and equal-time provisions are all different. The ideological impetus behind judicial developments in the last two areas, campaign finance and equal-time provisions, is related less to speech, except as a kind of constitutional cover, than to a revival of the old \"right to property\"--that is, the Supreme Court tends to disapprove of legislative and administrative efforts to require broadcasters to carry \"opposing viewpoints\" on the grounds that since it's their property, owners of television stations should be able to broadcast what they like. Fiss believes that the need for equal-time laws is as urgent today as it was in the 1970s, which is peculiar in light of the proliferation of media outlets. But the state does arguably have an interest, compatible with the First Amendment, in stipulating the way those media are used, and Fiss' discussion of those issues is the least aggravating in his book.", "they dislike or to subsidize speech they do like, without running afoul of the First Amendment. Embarked on this task, the most learned and temperate writer in the world would have a hard time avoiding tendentiousness. Fiss does not avoid", "paradox. An irony would be the observation that an attempt to increase freedom for all often entails, despite our best efforts, a decrease in freedom for a few. If Fiss had addressed the subject of free speech in this spirit, as", "Awarding funding to the work of a gay artist because gay Americans need more political clout is an effort at cultural engineering, and the problem with cultural engineering is the problem with social engineering raised to a higher power. We have a hard enough time calculating the effects of the redistribution of wealth in our society. How can we possibly calculate the effects of redistributing the right to speak--of taking it away from people Professor Fiss feels have spoken long enough and mandating it for people he feels have not been adequately heard? One thing that is plain from the brief unhappy history of campus speech codes is that you automatically raise the value of the speech you punish and depress the value of the speech you sponsor. There are indeed many ironies here. Maybe someone will write a book about them.", "This is what Fiss means by the \"irony\" in his title: that true freedom of speech for all requires suppressing the speech of some. This is not, technically, an irony. It is a", "Still, that discussion, like his discussions of the other issues, rests on a claim long associated with the left--the claim, in a phrase, that the minority is really the majority. In the case of speech, Fiss appears to believe that the reason the American public is less enlightened than he would wish it to be concerning matters such as feminism, the rights of homosexuals, and regulation of industry is that people are denied access to the opinions and information that would enlighten them. The public is denied this access because the state, in thrall to the ideology of individualism, refuses either to interfere with speech bullies--such as pornographers--who \"silence\" women, or to subsidize the speech of the unorthodox, such as Robert Mapplethorpe.", "The argument is that \"the liberalism of the nineteenth century was defined by the claims of individual liberty and resulted in an unequivocal demand for liberal government, [while] the liberalism of today embraces the value of equality as well as liberty.\" The constitutional law of free speech, says Fiss, was shaped by the earlier type of liberalism--he calls it \"libertarian\"--which regarded free speech as a right of individual self-expression; it is now used to foil efforts to regulate speech in the name of the newer liberal value, equality. Contemporary liberals, inheriting both these traditions, find themselves in a bind. They want, let's say, black students to be free from harassment at institutions where they are, racially, in a minority, since liberals worry that black students cannot be \"equal\" if they feel intimidated. But those same liberals get upset at the thought of outlawing hate speech, since that would mean infringing upon the right of individuals to express themselves.", "Hand, Holmes, and Brandeis based their First Amendment opinions not on some putative right to individual self-expression (an idea Holmes referred to as \"the right of the donkey to drool\") but on a democratic need for full and open political debate. First Amendment law since their time has performed its balancing acts on precisely that social value--the very value Fiss now proposes we need to insert into First Amendment jurisprudence. We don't need to insert it, because it was there from the start.", "it was what Fiss calls a \"source of empowerment for the members of the gay community\" to have homosexuality associated with snarling guys prancing around in leather jockstraps, using bullwhips as sex toys, and pissing in each other's mouths,", "Mapplethorpe's photographs seem to Fiss to qualify under these guidelines, since, he says, \"in the late 1980s the AIDS crisis confronted America in the starkest fashion and provoked urgent questions regarding", "-century classical liberals are Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich. Fiss' two \"liberalisms\" are, in fact, almost entirely different political philosophies.", "in economic affairs--the passage of health and safety regulations, the protection of unions, the imposition of taxes, and so on. The post-New Deal liberals whom Fiss associates with the value of equality are their heirs. The heirs of the19 th", "an irony, he would undoubtedly have had some interesting things to say, for he is a learned and temperate writer. But he has, instead, chosen to address the issue as an advocate for specific groups he regards as politically disadvantaged--women,", "to defund the exhibit. Jesse Helms could not have demonized homosexuality more effectively--which, of course, is why he was pleased to draw public attention to the pictures. Now that is what we call an irony of free speech." ], [ "This is what Fiss means by the \"irony\" in his title: that true freedom of speech for all requires suppressing the speech of some. This is not, technically, an irony. It is a", "Shut Up, He Explained \n\n Owen Fiss is a professor at the Yale Law School and a highly regarded scholar of constitutional law. The subject of this short book is the present direction of the law governing the freedom of speech. What Professor Fiss has to say about it is worth attending to not merely because of his prominence in the field but because his argument is planted in the common assumptive ground of a lot of contemporary academic thought about the bankruptcy of individualism. The thesis of the book is Fiss', but the wisdom is conventional.", "paradox. An irony would be the observation that an attempt to increase freedom for all often entails, despite our best efforts, a decrease in freedom for a few. If Fiss had addressed the subject of free speech in this spirit, as", "Fiss' suggestion--this is the chief theoretical proposal of his book--is that liberals should stop thinking about this as a conflict between liberty and equality and start thinking about it as a conflict between two kinds of liberty: social vs. individual. The First Amendment, he says, was intended to foster (in William Brennan's words) \"uninhibited, robust, and wide-open\" debate in society as a whole; speech that inhibits or monopolizes that debate should therefore fall outside the protection of the law. We can maximize the total freedom of speech by silencing people who prevent others from speaking--when they utter racial epithets, represent women in degrading ways, use their wealth to dominate the press and the political process, or block the funding of unorthodox art.", "Professor Fiss thinks the present direction of First Amendment law is a bad one, and he has an idea about how we might improve it. The short way to put his argument (though it is not quite the way he puts it) is to say that our approach to speech has become increasingly permissive. Courts have become more and more reluctant to allow the state to interfere with the rights of individual speakers to say what they wish, and it is time to roll back that permissiveness and to embark on a new approach that would permit the state to silence some speakers and promote others, but still, Fiss argues, in the name of freedom of speech.", "The Irony of Free Speech is a discussion of several speech issues: campaign-finance laws, state funding for the arts, pornography, speech codes, and equal time. These discussions are not doctrinaire, but their general inclination is to favor state intervention, on political grounds, in each of those areas--that is, to favor restrictions on campaign spending, greater regulation of pornography, and so on. Fiss' analyses of specific cases are presented against a lightly sketched historical argument. Light though the sketching is, the historical argument is almost the most objectionable thing about the book, since it involves a distortion of the history of First Amendment law that is fairly plain even to someone who is not a professor at Yale Law School.", "Why does Fiss portray the history of First Amendment jurisprudence in this perverted way? Because he wants to line up his own free-speech argument within the conventional academic view that our problems are mostly the consequences of an antiquated and discreditable ideology of liberal individualism, and that they can mostly be solved by adopting a social-constructionist, or communitarian, or \"intersubjective\" view of human nature instead. The merits of liberal individualism vs. communitarianism can await another occasion to be debated. For since the law governing the freedom of speech does not emerge out of libertarianism, the matter does not boil down to replacing an obsolete belief in \"self-expression\" with a more up-to-date belief in \"robust debate,\" as Fiss would like to think it does. What it boils down to is whether we need to replace the Hand-Holmes-Brandeis way of maximizing the benefits of free speech in a democratic society, which tries to push the state as far out of the picture as possible, with a different way, which tries to get the state farther into the picture.", "Fiss' analysis of the Mapplethorpe case offers a good example of the perils of his interventionist approach. Arts policy is, unquestionably, a mess. The solution usually proposed is divorce: Either get the state out of the business altogether or invent some ironclad process for distributing the money using strictly artistic criteria. Fiss rejects both solutions; he wants the criteria to be political. He thinks the NEA should subsidize art that will enhance the \"robustness\" of the debate and should therefore prefer unorthodox art--though only, of course, if it represents a viewpoint the endowment considers, by virtue of social need and a prior history of exclusion, worthy of its megaphone. (No Nazi art, in other words.)", "Still, that discussion, like his discussions of the other issues, rests on a claim long associated with the left--the claim, in a phrase, that the minority is really the majority. In the case of speech, Fiss appears to believe that the reason the American public is less enlightened than he would wish it to be concerning matters such as feminism, the rights of homosexuals, and regulation of industry is that people are denied access to the opinions and information that would enlighten them. The public is denied this access because the state, in thrall to the ideology of individualism, refuses either to interfere with speech bullies--such as pornographers--who \"silence\" women, or to subsidize the speech of the unorthodox, such as Robert Mapplethorpe.", "Mapplethorpe's photographs seem to Fiss to qualify under these guidelines, since, he says, \"in the late 1980s the AIDS crisis confronted America in the starkest fashion and provoked urgent questions regarding", "it was what Fiss calls a \"source of empowerment for the members of the gay community\" to have homosexuality associated with snarling guys prancing around in leather jockstraps, using bullwhips as sex toys, and pissing in each other's mouths,", "they dislike or to subsidize speech they do like, without running afoul of the First Amendment. Embarked on this task, the most learned and temperate writer in the world would have a hard time avoiding tendentiousness. Fiss does not avoid", "Awarding funding to the work of a gay artist because gay Americans need more political clout is an effort at cultural engineering, and the problem with cultural engineering is the problem with social engineering raised to a higher power. We have a hard enough time calculating the effects of the redistribution of wealth in our society. How can we possibly calculate the effects of redistributing the right to speak--of taking it away from people Professor Fiss feels have spoken long enough and mandating it for people he feels have not been adequately heard? One thing that is plain from the brief unhappy history of campus speech codes is that you automatically raise the value of the speech you punish and depress the value of the speech you sponsor. There are indeed many ironies here. Maybe someone will write a book about them.", "Here, assuming we want to try the interventionist approach, it is hard to see how a one-size theory can possibly fit all cases. The issues underlying pornography, hate speech, arts grants, campaign finance, and equal-time provisions are all different. The ideological impetus behind judicial developments in the last two areas, campaign finance and equal-time provisions, is related less to speech, except as a kind of constitutional cover, than to a revival of the old \"right to property\"--that is, the Supreme Court tends to disapprove of legislative and administrative efforts to require broadcasters to carry \"opposing viewpoints\" on the grounds that since it's their property, owners of television stations should be able to broadcast what they like. Fiss believes that the need for equal-time laws is as urgent today as it was in the 1970s, which is peculiar in light of the proliferation of media outlets. But the state does arguably have an interest, compatible with the First Amendment, in stipulating the way those media are used, and Fiss' discussion of those issues is the least aggravating in his book.", "The argument is that \"the liberalism of the nineteenth century was defined by the claims of individual liberty and resulted in an unequivocal demand for liberal government, [while] the liberalism of today embraces the value of equality as well as liberty.\" The constitutional law of free speech, says Fiss, was shaped by the earlier type of liberalism--he calls it \"libertarian\"--which regarded free speech as a right of individual self-expression; it is now used to foil efforts to regulate speech in the name of the newer liberal value, equality. Contemporary liberals, inheriting both these traditions, find themselves in a bind. They want, let's say, black students to be free from harassment at institutions where they are, racially, in a minority, since liberals worry that black students cannot be \"equal\" if they feel intimidated. But those same liberals get upset at the thought of outlawing hate speech, since that would mean infringing upon the right of individuals to express themselves.", "Hand, Holmes, and Brandeis based their First Amendment opinions not on some putative right to individual self-expression (an idea Holmes referred to as \"the right of the donkey to drool\") but on a democratic need for full and open political debate. First Amendment law since their time has performed its balancing acts on precisely that social value--the very value Fiss now proposes we need to insert into First Amendment jurisprudence. We don't need to insert it, because it was there from the start.", "in economic affairs--the passage of health and safety regulations, the protection of unions, the imposition of taxes, and so on. The post-New Deal liberals whom Fiss associates with the value of equality are their heirs. The heirs of the19 th", "-century classical liberals are Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich. Fiss' two \"liberalisms\" are, in fact, almost entirely different political philosophies.", "an irony, he would undoubtedly have had some interesting things to say, for he is a learned and temperate writer. But he has, instead, chosen to address the issue as an advocate for specific groups he regards as politically disadvantaged--women,", "to defund the exhibit. Jesse Helms could not have demonized homosexuality more effectively--which, of course, is why he was pleased to draw public attention to the pictures. Now that is what we call an irony of free speech." ], [ "Hand, Holmes, and Brandeis based their First Amendment opinions not on some putative right to individual self-expression (an idea Holmes referred to as \"the right of the donkey to drool\") but on a democratic need for full and open political debate. First Amendment law since their time has performed its balancing acts on precisely that social value--the very value Fiss now proposes we need to insert into First Amendment jurisprudence. We don't need to insert it, because it was there from the start.", "The argument is that \"the liberalism of the nineteenth century was defined by the claims of individual liberty and resulted in an unequivocal demand for liberal government, [while] the liberalism of today embraces the value of equality as well as liberty.\" The constitutional law of free speech, says Fiss, was shaped by the earlier type of liberalism--he calls it \"libertarian\"--which regarded free speech as a right of individual self-expression; it is now used to foil efforts to regulate speech in the name of the newer liberal value, equality. Contemporary liberals, inheriting both these traditions, find themselves in a bind. They want, let's say, black students to be free from harassment at institutions where they are, racially, in a minority, since liberals worry that black students cannot be \"equal\" if they feel intimidated. But those same liberals get upset at the thought of outlawing hate speech, since that would mean infringing upon the right of individuals to express themselves.", "Fiss' suggestion--this is the chief theoretical proposal of his book--is that liberals should stop thinking about this as a conflict between liberty and equality and start thinking about it as a conflict between two kinds of liberty: social vs. individual. The First Amendment, he says, was intended to foster (in William Brennan's words) \"uninhibited, robust, and wide-open\" debate in society as a whole; speech that inhibits or monopolizes that debate should therefore fall outside the protection of the law. We can maximize the total freedom of speech by silencing people who prevent others from speaking--when they utter racial epithets, represent women in degrading ways, use their wealth to dominate the press and the political process, or block the funding of unorthodox art.", "Why does Fiss portray the history of First Amendment jurisprudence in this perverted way? Because he wants to line up his own free-speech argument within the conventional academic view that our problems are mostly the consequences of an antiquated and discreditable ideology of liberal individualism, and that they can mostly be solved by adopting a social-constructionist, or communitarian, or \"intersubjective\" view of human nature instead. The merits of liberal individualism vs. communitarianism can await another occasion to be debated. For since the law governing the freedom of speech does not emerge out of libertarianism, the matter does not boil down to replacing an obsolete belief in \"self-expression\" with a more up-to-date belief in \"robust debate,\" as Fiss would like to think it does. What it boils down to is whether we need to replace the Hand-Holmes-Brandeis way of maximizing the benefits of free speech in a democratic society, which tries to push the state as far out of the picture as possible, with a different way, which tries to get the state farther into the picture.", "time, that doctrine was construed to cover not the right to \"self-expression\" but the \"right to property.\" Turn-of-the-century courts did not display a libertarian attitude toward civil rights; they displayed a libertarian attitude toward economic rights, tending to throw", "Professor Fiss thinks the present direction of First Amendment law is a bad one, and he has an idea about how we might improve it. The short way to put his argument (though it is not quite the way he puts it) is to say that our approach to speech has become increasingly permissive. Courts have become more and more reluctant to allow the state to interfere with the rights of individual speakers to say what they wish, and it is time to roll back that permissiveness and to embark on a new approach that would permit the state to silence some speakers and promote others, but still, Fiss argues, in the name of freedom of speech.", "Shut Up, He Explained \n\n Owen Fiss is a professor at the Yale Law School and a highly regarded scholar of constitutional law. The subject of this short book is the present direction of the law governing the freedom of speech. What Professor Fiss has to say about it is worth attending to not merely because of his prominence in the field but because his argument is planted in the common assumptive ground of a lot of contemporary academic thought about the bankruptcy of individualism. The thesis of the book is Fiss', but the wisdom is conventional.", "This is what Fiss means by the \"irony\" in his title: that true freedom of speech for all requires suppressing the speech of some. This is not, technically, an irony. It is a", "Still, that discussion, like his discussions of the other issues, rests on a claim long associated with the left--the claim, in a phrase, that the minority is really the majority. In the case of speech, Fiss appears to believe that the reason the American public is less enlightened than he would wish it to be concerning matters such as feminism, the rights of homosexuals, and regulation of industry is that people are denied access to the opinions and information that would enlighten them. The public is denied this access because the state, in thrall to the ideology of individualism, refuses either to interfere with speech bullies--such as pornographers--who \"silence\" women, or to subsidize the speech of the unorthodox, such as Robert Mapplethorpe.", "paradox. An irony would be the observation that an attempt to increase freedom for all often entails, despite our best efforts, a decrease in freedom for a few. If Fiss had addressed the subject of free speech in this spirit, as", "The Irony of Free Speech is a discussion of several speech issues: campaign-finance laws, state funding for the arts, pornography, speech codes, and equal time. These discussions are not doctrinaire, but their general inclination is to favor state intervention, on political grounds, in each of those areas--that is, to favor restrictions on campaign spending, greater regulation of pornography, and so on. Fiss' analyses of specific cases are presented against a lightly sketched historical argument. Light though the sketching is, the historical argument is almost the most objectionable thing about the book, since it involves a distortion of the history of First Amendment law that is fairly plain even to someone who is not a professor at Yale Law School.", "Awarding funding to the work of a gay artist because gay Americans need more political clout is an effort at cultural engineering, and the problem with cultural engineering is the problem with social engineering raised to a higher power. We have a hard enough time calculating the effects of the redistribution of wealth in our society. How can we possibly calculate the effects of redistributing the right to speak--of taking it away from people Professor Fiss feels have spoken long enough and mandating it for people he feels have not been adequately heard? One thing that is plain from the brief unhappy history of campus speech codes is that you automatically raise the value of the speech you punish and depress the value of the speech you sponsor. There are indeed many ironies here. Maybe someone will write a book about them.", "The historical part of this analysis rests on a canard, which is the assertion that the constitutional law of free speech emerged from 19 th -century classical laissez-faire liberalism. It did not. It", "Here, assuming we want to try the interventionist approach, it is hard to see how a one-size theory can possibly fit all cases. The issues underlying pornography, hate speech, arts grants, campaign finance, and equal-time provisions are all different. The ideological impetus behind judicial developments in the last two areas, campaign finance and equal-time provisions, is related less to speech, except as a kind of constitutional cover, than to a revival of the old \"right to property\"--that is, the Supreme Court tends to disapprove of legislative and administrative efforts to require broadcasters to carry \"opposing viewpoints\" on the grounds that since it's their property, owners of television stations should be able to broadcast what they like. Fiss believes that the need for equal-time laws is as urgent today as it was in the 1970s, which is peculiar in light of the proliferation of media outlets. But the state does arguably have an interest, compatible with the First Amendment, in stipulating the way those media are used, and Fiss' discussion of those issues is the least aggravating in his book.", "they dislike or to subsidize speech they do like, without running afoul of the First Amendment. Embarked on this task, the most learned and temperate writer in the world would have a hard time avoiding tendentiousness. Fiss does not avoid", "Fiss' analysis of the Mapplethorpe case offers a good example of the perils of his interventionist approach. Arts policy is, unquestionably, a mess. The solution usually proposed is divorce: Either get the state out of the business altogether or invent some ironclad process for distributing the money using strictly artistic criteria. Fiss rejects both solutions; he wants the criteria to be political. He thinks the NEA should subsidize art that will enhance the \"robustness\" of the debate and should therefore prefer unorthodox art--though only, of course, if it represents a viewpoint the endowment considers, by virtue of social need and a prior history of exclusion, worthy of its megaphone. (No Nazi art, in other words.)", "an irony, he would undoubtedly have had some interesting things to say, for he is a learned and temperate writer. But he has, instead, chosen to address the issue as an advocate for specific groups he regards as politically disadvantaged--women,", "emerged at the time of World War I, and the principal figures in its creation--Learned Hand, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and Louis Brandeis--were not classical liberals; they were progressives. They abhorred the doctrine of natural rights because, in their", "out legislation aimed at regulating industry and protecting workers on the grounds that people had a constitutional right to enter into contracts and to use their own property as they saw fit. Holmes, Brandeis, and their disciples consistently supported state intervention", "in economic affairs--the passage of health and safety regulations, the protection of unions, the imposition of taxes, and so on. The post-New Deal liberals whom Fiss associates with the value of equality are their heirs. The heirs of the19 th" ], [ "Fiss' suggestion--this is the chief theoretical proposal of his book--is that liberals should stop thinking about this as a conflict between liberty and equality and start thinking about it as a conflict between two kinds of liberty: social vs. individual. The First Amendment, he says, was intended to foster (in William Brennan's words) \"uninhibited, robust, and wide-open\" debate in society as a whole; speech that inhibits or monopolizes that debate should therefore fall outside the protection of the law. We can maximize the total freedom of speech by silencing people who prevent others from speaking--when they utter racial epithets, represent women in degrading ways, use their wealth to dominate the press and the political process, or block the funding of unorthodox art.", "Professor Fiss thinks the present direction of First Amendment law is a bad one, and he has an idea about how we might improve it. The short way to put his argument (though it is not quite the way he puts it) is to say that our approach to speech has become increasingly permissive. Courts have become more and more reluctant to allow the state to interfere with the rights of individual speakers to say what they wish, and it is time to roll back that permissiveness and to embark on a new approach that would permit the state to silence some speakers and promote others, but still, Fiss argues, in the name of freedom of speech.", "Why does Fiss portray the history of First Amendment jurisprudence in this perverted way? Because he wants to line up his own free-speech argument within the conventional academic view that our problems are mostly the consequences of an antiquated and discreditable ideology of liberal individualism, and that they can mostly be solved by adopting a social-constructionist, or communitarian, or \"intersubjective\" view of human nature instead. The merits of liberal individualism vs. communitarianism can await another occasion to be debated. For since the law governing the freedom of speech does not emerge out of libertarianism, the matter does not boil down to replacing an obsolete belief in \"self-expression\" with a more up-to-date belief in \"robust debate,\" as Fiss would like to think it does. What it boils down to is whether we need to replace the Hand-Holmes-Brandeis way of maximizing the benefits of free speech in a democratic society, which tries to push the state as far out of the picture as possible, with a different way, which tries to get the state farther into the picture.", "The argument is that \"the liberalism of the nineteenth century was defined by the claims of individual liberty and resulted in an unequivocal demand for liberal government, [while] the liberalism of today embraces the value of equality as well as liberty.\" The constitutional law of free speech, says Fiss, was shaped by the earlier type of liberalism--he calls it \"libertarian\"--which regarded free speech as a right of individual self-expression; it is now used to foil efforts to regulate speech in the name of the newer liberal value, equality. Contemporary liberals, inheriting both these traditions, find themselves in a bind. They want, let's say, black students to be free from harassment at institutions where they are, racially, in a minority, since liberals worry that black students cannot be \"equal\" if they feel intimidated. But those same liberals get upset at the thought of outlawing hate speech, since that would mean infringing upon the right of individuals to express themselves.", "This is what Fiss means by the \"irony\" in his title: that true freedom of speech for all requires suppressing the speech of some. This is not, technically, an irony. It is a", "Still, that discussion, like his discussions of the other issues, rests on a claim long associated with the left--the claim, in a phrase, that the minority is really the majority. In the case of speech, Fiss appears to believe that the reason the American public is less enlightened than he would wish it to be concerning matters such as feminism, the rights of homosexuals, and regulation of industry is that people are denied access to the opinions and information that would enlighten them. The public is denied this access because the state, in thrall to the ideology of individualism, refuses either to interfere with speech bullies--such as pornographers--who \"silence\" women, or to subsidize the speech of the unorthodox, such as Robert Mapplethorpe.", "The Irony of Free Speech is a discussion of several speech issues: campaign-finance laws, state funding for the arts, pornography, speech codes, and equal time. These discussions are not doctrinaire, but their general inclination is to favor state intervention, on political grounds, in each of those areas--that is, to favor restrictions on campaign spending, greater regulation of pornography, and so on. Fiss' analyses of specific cases are presented against a lightly sketched historical argument. Light though the sketching is, the historical argument is almost the most objectionable thing about the book, since it involves a distortion of the history of First Amendment law that is fairly plain even to someone who is not a professor at Yale Law School.", "paradox. An irony would be the observation that an attempt to increase freedom for all often entails, despite our best efforts, a decrease in freedom for a few. If Fiss had addressed the subject of free speech in this spirit, as", "Shut Up, He Explained \n\n Owen Fiss is a professor at the Yale Law School and a highly regarded scholar of constitutional law. The subject of this short book is the present direction of the law governing the freedom of speech. What Professor Fiss has to say about it is worth attending to not merely because of his prominence in the field but because his argument is planted in the common assumptive ground of a lot of contemporary academic thought about the bankruptcy of individualism. The thesis of the book is Fiss', but the wisdom is conventional.", "Hand, Holmes, and Brandeis based their First Amendment opinions not on some putative right to individual self-expression (an idea Holmes referred to as \"the right of the donkey to drool\") but on a democratic need for full and open political debate. First Amendment law since their time has performed its balancing acts on precisely that social value--the very value Fiss now proposes we need to insert into First Amendment jurisprudence. We don't need to insert it, because it was there from the start.", "they dislike or to subsidize speech they do like, without running afoul of the First Amendment. Embarked on this task, the most learned and temperate writer in the world would have a hard time avoiding tendentiousness. Fiss does not avoid", "Here, assuming we want to try the interventionist approach, it is hard to see how a one-size theory can possibly fit all cases. The issues underlying pornography, hate speech, arts grants, campaign finance, and equal-time provisions are all different. The ideological impetus behind judicial developments in the last two areas, campaign finance and equal-time provisions, is related less to speech, except as a kind of constitutional cover, than to a revival of the old \"right to property\"--that is, the Supreme Court tends to disapprove of legislative and administrative efforts to require broadcasters to carry \"opposing viewpoints\" on the grounds that since it's their property, owners of television stations should be able to broadcast what they like. Fiss believes that the need for equal-time laws is as urgent today as it was in the 1970s, which is peculiar in light of the proliferation of media outlets. But the state does arguably have an interest, compatible with the First Amendment, in stipulating the way those media are used, and Fiss' discussion of those issues is the least aggravating in his book.", "Awarding funding to the work of a gay artist because gay Americans need more political clout is an effort at cultural engineering, and the problem with cultural engineering is the problem with social engineering raised to a higher power. We have a hard enough time calculating the effects of the redistribution of wealth in our society. How can we possibly calculate the effects of redistributing the right to speak--of taking it away from people Professor Fiss feels have spoken long enough and mandating it for people he feels have not been adequately heard? One thing that is plain from the brief unhappy history of campus speech codes is that you automatically raise the value of the speech you punish and depress the value of the speech you sponsor. There are indeed many ironies here. Maybe someone will write a book about them.", "The historical part of this analysis rests on a canard, which is the assertion that the constitutional law of free speech emerged from 19 th -century classical laissez-faire liberalism. It did not. It", "Fiss' analysis of the Mapplethorpe case offers a good example of the perils of his interventionist approach. Arts policy is, unquestionably, a mess. The solution usually proposed is divorce: Either get the state out of the business altogether or invent some ironclad process for distributing the money using strictly artistic criteria. Fiss rejects both solutions; he wants the criteria to be political. He thinks the NEA should subsidize art that will enhance the \"robustness\" of the debate and should therefore prefer unorthodox art--though only, of course, if it represents a viewpoint the endowment considers, by virtue of social need and a prior history of exclusion, worthy of its megaphone. (No Nazi art, in other words.)", "in economic affairs--the passage of health and safety regulations, the protection of unions, the imposition of taxes, and so on. The post-New Deal liberals whom Fiss associates with the value of equality are their heirs. The heirs of the19 th", "-century classical liberals are Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich. Fiss' two \"liberalisms\" are, in fact, almost entirely different political philosophies.", "gays, victims of racial-hate speech, the poor (or, at least, the not-rich), and people who are critical of market capitalism--and to design a constitutional theory that will enable those groups to enlist the state in efforts either to suppress speech", "to defund the exhibit. Jesse Helms could not have demonized homosexuality more effectively--which, of course, is why he was pleased to draw public attention to the pictures. Now that is what we call an irony of free speech.", "emerged at the time of World War I, and the principal figures in its creation--Learned Hand, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and Louis Brandeis--were not classical liberals; they were progressives. They abhorred the doctrine of natural rights because, in their" ], [ "Shut Up, He Explained \n\n Owen Fiss is a professor at the Yale Law School and a highly regarded scholar of constitutional law. The subject of this short book is the present direction of the law governing the freedom of speech. What Professor Fiss has to say about it is worth attending to not merely because of his prominence in the field but because his argument is planted in the common assumptive ground of a lot of contemporary academic thought about the bankruptcy of individualism. The thesis of the book is Fiss', but the wisdom is conventional.", "Professor Fiss thinks the present direction of First Amendment law is a bad one, and he has an idea about how we might improve it. The short way to put his argument (though it is not quite the way he puts it) is to say that our approach to speech has become increasingly permissive. Courts have become more and more reluctant to allow the state to interfere with the rights of individual speakers to say what they wish, and it is time to roll back that permissiveness and to embark on a new approach that would permit the state to silence some speakers and promote others, but still, Fiss argues, in the name of freedom of speech.", "Fiss' suggestion--this is the chief theoretical proposal of his book--is that liberals should stop thinking about this as a conflict between liberty and equality and start thinking about it as a conflict between two kinds of liberty: social vs. individual. The First Amendment, he says, was intended to foster (in William Brennan's words) \"uninhibited, robust, and wide-open\" debate in society as a whole; speech that inhibits or monopolizes that debate should therefore fall outside the protection of the law. We can maximize the total freedom of speech by silencing people who prevent others from speaking--when they utter racial epithets, represent women in degrading ways, use their wealth to dominate the press and the political process, or block the funding of unorthodox art.", "The Irony of Free Speech is a discussion of several speech issues: campaign-finance laws, state funding for the arts, pornography, speech codes, and equal time. These discussions are not doctrinaire, but their general inclination is to favor state intervention, on political grounds, in each of those areas--that is, to favor restrictions on campaign spending, greater regulation of pornography, and so on. Fiss' analyses of specific cases are presented against a lightly sketched historical argument. Light though the sketching is, the historical argument is almost the most objectionable thing about the book, since it involves a distortion of the history of First Amendment law that is fairly plain even to someone who is not a professor at Yale Law School.", "The argument is that \"the liberalism of the nineteenth century was defined by the claims of individual liberty and resulted in an unequivocal demand for liberal government, [while] the liberalism of today embraces the value of equality as well as liberty.\" The constitutional law of free speech, says Fiss, was shaped by the earlier type of liberalism--he calls it \"libertarian\"--which regarded free speech as a right of individual self-expression; it is now used to foil efforts to regulate speech in the name of the newer liberal value, equality. Contemporary liberals, inheriting both these traditions, find themselves in a bind. They want, let's say, black students to be free from harassment at institutions where they are, racially, in a minority, since liberals worry that black students cannot be \"equal\" if they feel intimidated. But those same liberals get upset at the thought of outlawing hate speech, since that would mean infringing upon the right of individuals to express themselves.", "Why does Fiss portray the history of First Amendment jurisprudence in this perverted way? Because he wants to line up his own free-speech argument within the conventional academic view that our problems are mostly the consequences of an antiquated and discreditable ideology of liberal individualism, and that they can mostly be solved by adopting a social-constructionist, or communitarian, or \"intersubjective\" view of human nature instead. The merits of liberal individualism vs. communitarianism can await another occasion to be debated. For since the law governing the freedom of speech does not emerge out of libertarianism, the matter does not boil down to replacing an obsolete belief in \"self-expression\" with a more up-to-date belief in \"robust debate,\" as Fiss would like to think it does. What it boils down to is whether we need to replace the Hand-Holmes-Brandeis way of maximizing the benefits of free speech in a democratic society, which tries to push the state as far out of the picture as possible, with a different way, which tries to get the state farther into the picture.", "in economic affairs--the passage of health and safety regulations, the protection of unions, the imposition of taxes, and so on. The post-New Deal liberals whom Fiss associates with the value of equality are their heirs. The heirs of the19 th", "Still, that discussion, like his discussions of the other issues, rests on a claim long associated with the left--the claim, in a phrase, that the minority is really the majority. In the case of speech, Fiss appears to believe that the reason the American public is less enlightened than he would wish it to be concerning matters such as feminism, the rights of homosexuals, and regulation of industry is that people are denied access to the opinions and information that would enlighten them. The public is denied this access because the state, in thrall to the ideology of individualism, refuses either to interfere with speech bullies--such as pornographers--who \"silence\" women, or to subsidize the speech of the unorthodox, such as Robert Mapplethorpe.", "paradox. An irony would be the observation that an attempt to increase freedom for all often entails, despite our best efforts, a decrease in freedom for a few. If Fiss had addressed the subject of free speech in this spirit, as", "Awarding funding to the work of a gay artist because gay Americans need more political clout is an effort at cultural engineering, and the problem with cultural engineering is the problem with social engineering raised to a higher power. We have a hard enough time calculating the effects of the redistribution of wealth in our society. How can we possibly calculate the effects of redistributing the right to speak--of taking it away from people Professor Fiss feels have spoken long enough and mandating it for people he feels have not been adequately heard? One thing that is plain from the brief unhappy history of campus speech codes is that you automatically raise the value of the speech you punish and depress the value of the speech you sponsor. There are indeed many ironies here. Maybe someone will write a book about them.", "Hand, Holmes, and Brandeis based their First Amendment opinions not on some putative right to individual self-expression (an idea Holmes referred to as \"the right of the donkey to drool\") but on a democratic need for full and open political debate. First Amendment law since their time has performed its balancing acts on precisely that social value--the very value Fiss now proposes we need to insert into First Amendment jurisprudence. We don't need to insert it, because it was there from the start.", "Here, assuming we want to try the interventionist approach, it is hard to see how a one-size theory can possibly fit all cases. The issues underlying pornography, hate speech, arts grants, campaign finance, and equal-time provisions are all different. The ideological impetus behind judicial developments in the last two areas, campaign finance and equal-time provisions, is related less to speech, except as a kind of constitutional cover, than to a revival of the old \"right to property\"--that is, the Supreme Court tends to disapprove of legislative and administrative efforts to require broadcasters to carry \"opposing viewpoints\" on the grounds that since it's their property, owners of television stations should be able to broadcast what they like. Fiss believes that the need for equal-time laws is as urgent today as it was in the 1970s, which is peculiar in light of the proliferation of media outlets. But the state does arguably have an interest, compatible with the First Amendment, in stipulating the way those media are used, and Fiss' discussion of those issues is the least aggravating in his book.", "they dislike or to subsidize speech they do like, without running afoul of the First Amendment. Embarked on this task, the most learned and temperate writer in the world would have a hard time avoiding tendentiousness. Fiss does not avoid", "Fiss' analysis of the Mapplethorpe case offers a good example of the perils of his interventionist approach. Arts policy is, unquestionably, a mess. The solution usually proposed is divorce: Either get the state out of the business altogether or invent some ironclad process for distributing the money using strictly artistic criteria. Fiss rejects both solutions; he wants the criteria to be political. He thinks the NEA should subsidize art that will enhance the \"robustness\" of the debate and should therefore prefer unorthodox art--though only, of course, if it represents a viewpoint the endowment considers, by virtue of social need and a prior history of exclusion, worthy of its megaphone. (No Nazi art, in other words.)", "emerged at the time of World War I, and the principal figures in its creation--Learned Hand, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and Louis Brandeis--were not classical liberals; they were progressives. They abhorred the doctrine of natural rights because, in their", "-century classical liberals are Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich. Fiss' two \"liberalisms\" are, in fact, almost entirely different political philosophies.", "This is what Fiss means by the \"irony\" in his title: that true freedom of speech for all requires suppressing the speech of some. This is not, technically, an irony. It is a", "an irony, he would undoubtedly have had some interesting things to say, for he is a learned and temperate writer. But he has, instead, chosen to address the issue as an advocate for specific groups he regards as politically disadvantaged--women,", "it was what Fiss calls a \"source of empowerment for the members of the gay community\" to have homosexuality associated with snarling guys prancing around in leather jockstraps, using bullwhips as sex toys, and pissing in each other's mouths,", "Mapplethorpe's photographs seem to Fiss to qualify under these guidelines, since, he says, \"in the late 1980s the AIDS crisis confronted America in the starkest fashion and provoked urgent questions regarding" ], [ "Fiss' suggestion--this is the chief theoretical proposal of his book--is that liberals should stop thinking about this as a conflict between liberty and equality and start thinking about it as a conflict between two kinds of liberty: social vs. individual. The First Amendment, he says, was intended to foster (in William Brennan's words) \"uninhibited, robust, and wide-open\" debate in society as a whole; speech that inhibits or monopolizes that debate should therefore fall outside the protection of the law. We can maximize the total freedom of speech by silencing people who prevent others from speaking--when they utter racial epithets, represent women in degrading ways, use their wealth to dominate the press and the political process, or block the funding of unorthodox art.", "Professor Fiss thinks the present direction of First Amendment law is a bad one, and he has an idea about how we might improve it. The short way to put his argument (though it is not quite the way he puts it) is to say that our approach to speech has become increasingly permissive. Courts have become more and more reluctant to allow the state to interfere with the rights of individual speakers to say what they wish, and it is time to roll back that permissiveness and to embark on a new approach that would permit the state to silence some speakers and promote others, but still, Fiss argues, in the name of freedom of speech.", "Still, that discussion, like his discussions of the other issues, rests on a claim long associated with the left--the claim, in a phrase, that the minority is really the majority. In the case of speech, Fiss appears to believe that the reason the American public is less enlightened than he would wish it to be concerning matters such as feminism, the rights of homosexuals, and regulation of industry is that people are denied access to the opinions and information that would enlighten them. The public is denied this access because the state, in thrall to the ideology of individualism, refuses either to interfere with speech bullies--such as pornographers--who \"silence\" women, or to subsidize the speech of the unorthodox, such as Robert Mapplethorpe.", "Shut Up, He Explained \n\n Owen Fiss is a professor at the Yale Law School and a highly regarded scholar of constitutional law. The subject of this short book is the present direction of the law governing the freedom of speech. What Professor Fiss has to say about it is worth attending to not merely because of his prominence in the field but because his argument is planted in the common assumptive ground of a lot of contemporary academic thought about the bankruptcy of individualism. The thesis of the book is Fiss', but the wisdom is conventional.", "an irony, he would undoubtedly have had some interesting things to say, for he is a learned and temperate writer. But he has, instead, chosen to address the issue as an advocate for specific groups he regards as politically disadvantaged--women,", "Awarding funding to the work of a gay artist because gay Americans need more political clout is an effort at cultural engineering, and the problem with cultural engineering is the problem with social engineering raised to a higher power. We have a hard enough time calculating the effects of the redistribution of wealth in our society. How can we possibly calculate the effects of redistributing the right to speak--of taking it away from people Professor Fiss feels have spoken long enough and mandating it for people he feels have not been adequately heard? One thing that is plain from the brief unhappy history of campus speech codes is that you automatically raise the value of the speech you punish and depress the value of the speech you sponsor. There are indeed many ironies here. Maybe someone will write a book about them.", "The argument is that \"the liberalism of the nineteenth century was defined by the claims of individual liberty and resulted in an unequivocal demand for liberal government, [while] the liberalism of today embraces the value of equality as well as liberty.\" The constitutional law of free speech, says Fiss, was shaped by the earlier type of liberalism--he calls it \"libertarian\"--which regarded free speech as a right of individual self-expression; it is now used to foil efforts to regulate speech in the name of the newer liberal value, equality. Contemporary liberals, inheriting both these traditions, find themselves in a bind. They want, let's say, black students to be free from harassment at institutions where they are, racially, in a minority, since liberals worry that black students cannot be \"equal\" if they feel intimidated. But those same liberals get upset at the thought of outlawing hate speech, since that would mean infringing upon the right of individuals to express themselves.", "Why does Fiss portray the history of First Amendment jurisprudence in this perverted way? Because he wants to line up his own free-speech argument within the conventional academic view that our problems are mostly the consequences of an antiquated and discreditable ideology of liberal individualism, and that they can mostly be solved by adopting a social-constructionist, or communitarian, or \"intersubjective\" view of human nature instead. The merits of liberal individualism vs. communitarianism can await another occasion to be debated. For since the law governing the freedom of speech does not emerge out of libertarianism, the matter does not boil down to replacing an obsolete belief in \"self-expression\" with a more up-to-date belief in \"robust debate,\" as Fiss would like to think it does. What it boils down to is whether we need to replace the Hand-Holmes-Brandeis way of maximizing the benefits of free speech in a democratic society, which tries to push the state as far out of the picture as possible, with a different way, which tries to get the state farther into the picture.", "Fiss' analysis of the Mapplethorpe case offers a good example of the perils of his interventionist approach. Arts policy is, unquestionably, a mess. The solution usually proposed is divorce: Either get the state out of the business altogether or invent some ironclad process for distributing the money using strictly artistic criteria. Fiss rejects both solutions; he wants the criteria to be political. He thinks the NEA should subsidize art that will enhance the \"robustness\" of the debate and should therefore prefer unorthodox art--though only, of course, if it represents a viewpoint the endowment considers, by virtue of social need and a prior history of exclusion, worthy of its megaphone. (No Nazi art, in other words.)", "Here, assuming we want to try the interventionist approach, it is hard to see how a one-size theory can possibly fit all cases. The issues underlying pornography, hate speech, arts grants, campaign finance, and equal-time provisions are all different. The ideological impetus behind judicial developments in the last two areas, campaign finance and equal-time provisions, is related less to speech, except as a kind of constitutional cover, than to a revival of the old \"right to property\"--that is, the Supreme Court tends to disapprove of legislative and administrative efforts to require broadcasters to carry \"opposing viewpoints\" on the grounds that since it's their property, owners of television stations should be able to broadcast what they like. Fiss believes that the need for equal-time laws is as urgent today as it was in the 1970s, which is peculiar in light of the proliferation of media outlets. But the state does arguably have an interest, compatible with the First Amendment, in stipulating the way those media are used, and Fiss' discussion of those issues is the least aggravating in his book.", "The Irony of Free Speech is a discussion of several speech issues: campaign-finance laws, state funding for the arts, pornography, speech codes, and equal time. These discussions are not doctrinaire, but their general inclination is to favor state intervention, on political grounds, in each of those areas--that is, to favor restrictions on campaign spending, greater regulation of pornography, and so on. Fiss' analyses of specific cases are presented against a lightly sketched historical argument. Light though the sketching is, the historical argument is almost the most objectionable thing about the book, since it involves a distortion of the history of First Amendment law that is fairly plain even to someone who is not a professor at Yale Law School.", "This is what Fiss means by the \"irony\" in his title: that true freedom of speech for all requires suppressing the speech of some. This is not, technically, an irony. It is a", "in economic affairs--the passage of health and safety regulations, the protection of unions, the imposition of taxes, and so on. The post-New Deal liberals whom Fiss associates with the value of equality are their heirs. The heirs of the19 th", "paradox. An irony would be the observation that an attempt to increase freedom for all often entails, despite our best efforts, a decrease in freedom for a few. If Fiss had addressed the subject of free speech in this spirit, as", "gays, victims of racial-hate speech, the poor (or, at least, the not-rich), and people who are critical of market capitalism--and to design a constitutional theory that will enable those groups to enlist the state in efforts either to suppress speech", "they dislike or to subsidize speech they do like, without running afoul of the First Amendment. Embarked on this task, the most learned and temperate writer in the world would have a hard time avoiding tendentiousness. Fiss does not avoid", "-century classical liberals are Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich. Fiss' two \"liberalisms\" are, in fact, almost entirely different political philosophies.", "Hand, Holmes, and Brandeis based their First Amendment opinions not on some putative right to individual self-expression (an idea Holmes referred to as \"the right of the donkey to drool\") but on a democratic need for full and open political debate. First Amendment law since their time has performed its balancing acts on precisely that social value--the very value Fiss now proposes we need to insert into First Amendment jurisprudence. We don't need to insert it, because it was there from the start.", "it was what Fiss calls a \"source of empowerment for the members of the gay community\" to have homosexuality associated with snarling guys prancing around in leather jockstraps, using bullwhips as sex toys, and pissing in each other's mouths,", "Mapplethorpe's photographs seem to Fiss to qualify under these guidelines, since, he says, \"in the late 1980s the AIDS crisis confronted America in the starkest fashion and provoked urgent questions regarding" ], [ "(for the most part) didn't find Mapplethorpe's X Portfolio photographs objectionable because they depicted homosexuality. They found them objectionable because they depicted sadomasochism. The notion that", "Mapplethorpe's photographs seem to Fiss to qualify under these guidelines, since, he says, \"in the late 1980s the AIDS crisis confronted America in the starkest fashion and provoked urgent questions regarding", "to defund the exhibit. Jesse Helms could not have demonized homosexuality more effectively--which, of course, is why he was pleased to draw public attention to the pictures. Now that is what we call an irony of free speech.", "Fiss' analysis of the Mapplethorpe case offers a good example of the perils of his interventionist approach. Arts policy is, unquestionably, a mess. The solution usually proposed is divorce: Either get the state out of the business altogether or invent some ironclad process for distributing the money using strictly artistic criteria. Fiss rejects both solutions; he wants the criteria to be political. He thinks the NEA should subsidize art that will enhance the \"robustness\" of the debate and should therefore prefer unorthodox art--though only, of course, if it represents a viewpoint the endowment considers, by virtue of social need and a prior history of exclusion, worthy of its megaphone. (No Nazi art, in other words.)", "Still, that discussion, like his discussions of the other issues, rests on a claim long associated with the left--the claim, in a phrase, that the minority is really the majority. In the case of speech, Fiss appears to believe that the reason the American public is less enlightened than he would wish it to be concerning matters such as feminism, the rights of homosexuals, and regulation of industry is that people are denied access to the opinions and information that would enlighten them. The public is denied this access because the state, in thrall to the ideology of individualism, refuses either to interfere with speech bullies--such as pornographers--who \"silence\" women, or to subsidize the speech of the unorthodox, such as Robert Mapplethorpe.", "the scope and direction of publicly funded medical research. To address those issues the public--represented by the casual museum visitor--needed an understanding of the lives and practices of the gay community, so long hidden from view.\" This seems completely wrongheaded. People", "it was what Fiss calls a \"source of empowerment for the members of the gay community\" to have homosexuality associated with snarling guys prancing around in leather jockstraps, using bullwhips as sex toys, and pissing in each other's mouths,", "at a time when AIDS had become a national health problem and the issue of gays in the military was about to arise, is ludicrous. Any NEA chairperson who had the interests of the gay community at heart would have rushed", "Awarding funding to the work of a gay artist because gay Americans need more political clout is an effort at cultural engineering, and the problem with cultural engineering is the problem with social engineering raised to a higher power. We have a hard enough time calculating the effects of the redistribution of wealth in our society. How can we possibly calculate the effects of redistributing the right to speak--of taking it away from people Professor Fiss feels have spoken long enough and mandating it for people he feels have not been adequately heard? One thing that is plain from the brief unhappy history of campus speech codes is that you automatically raise the value of the speech you punish and depress the value of the speech you sponsor. There are indeed many ironies here. Maybe someone will write a book about them.", "The Irony of Free Speech is a discussion of several speech issues: campaign-finance laws, state funding for the arts, pornography, speech codes, and equal time. These discussions are not doctrinaire, but their general inclination is to favor state intervention, on political grounds, in each of those areas--that is, to favor restrictions on campaign spending, greater regulation of pornography, and so on. Fiss' analyses of specific cases are presented against a lightly sketched historical argument. Light though the sketching is, the historical argument is almost the most objectionable thing about the book, since it involves a distortion of the history of First Amendment law that is fairly plain even to someone who is not a professor at Yale Law School.", "Fiss' suggestion--this is the chief theoretical proposal of his book--is that liberals should stop thinking about this as a conflict between liberty and equality and start thinking about it as a conflict between two kinds of liberty: social vs. individual. The First Amendment, he says, was intended to foster (in William Brennan's words) \"uninhibited, robust, and wide-open\" debate in society as a whole; speech that inhibits or monopolizes that debate should therefore fall outside the protection of the law. We can maximize the total freedom of speech by silencing people who prevent others from speaking--when they utter racial epithets, represent women in degrading ways, use their wealth to dominate the press and the political process, or block the funding of unorthodox art.", "The argument is that \"the liberalism of the nineteenth century was defined by the claims of individual liberty and resulted in an unequivocal demand for liberal government, [while] the liberalism of today embraces the value of equality as well as liberty.\" The constitutional law of free speech, says Fiss, was shaped by the earlier type of liberalism--he calls it \"libertarian\"--which regarded free speech as a right of individual self-expression; it is now used to foil efforts to regulate speech in the name of the newer liberal value, equality. Contemporary liberals, inheriting both these traditions, find themselves in a bind. They want, let's say, black students to be free from harassment at institutions where they are, racially, in a minority, since liberals worry that black students cannot be \"equal\" if they feel intimidated. But those same liberals get upset at the thought of outlawing hate speech, since that would mean infringing upon the right of individuals to express themselves.", "Shut Up, He Explained \n\n Owen Fiss is a professor at the Yale Law School and a highly regarded scholar of constitutional law. The subject of this short book is the present direction of the law governing the freedom of speech. What Professor Fiss has to say about it is worth attending to not merely because of his prominence in the field but because his argument is planted in the common assumptive ground of a lot of contemporary academic thought about the bankruptcy of individualism. The thesis of the book is Fiss', but the wisdom is conventional.", "an irony, he would undoubtedly have had some interesting things to say, for he is a learned and temperate writer. But he has, instead, chosen to address the issue as an advocate for specific groups he regards as politically disadvantaged--women,", "Why does Fiss portray the history of First Amendment jurisprudence in this perverted way? Because he wants to line up his own free-speech argument within the conventional academic view that our problems are mostly the consequences of an antiquated and discreditable ideology of liberal individualism, and that they can mostly be solved by adopting a social-constructionist, or communitarian, or \"intersubjective\" view of human nature instead. The merits of liberal individualism vs. communitarianism can await another occasion to be debated. For since the law governing the freedom of speech does not emerge out of libertarianism, the matter does not boil down to replacing an obsolete belief in \"self-expression\" with a more up-to-date belief in \"robust debate,\" as Fiss would like to think it does. What it boils down to is whether we need to replace the Hand-Holmes-Brandeis way of maximizing the benefits of free speech in a democratic society, which tries to push the state as far out of the picture as possible, with a different way, which tries to get the state farther into the picture.", "Here, assuming we want to try the interventionist approach, it is hard to see how a one-size theory can possibly fit all cases. The issues underlying pornography, hate speech, arts grants, campaign finance, and equal-time provisions are all different. The ideological impetus behind judicial developments in the last two areas, campaign finance and equal-time provisions, is related less to speech, except as a kind of constitutional cover, than to a revival of the old \"right to property\"--that is, the Supreme Court tends to disapprove of legislative and administrative efforts to require broadcasters to carry \"opposing viewpoints\" on the grounds that since it's their property, owners of television stations should be able to broadcast what they like. Fiss believes that the need for equal-time laws is as urgent today as it was in the 1970s, which is peculiar in light of the proliferation of media outlets. But the state does arguably have an interest, compatible with the First Amendment, in stipulating the way those media are used, and Fiss' discussion of those issues is the least aggravating in his book.", "This is what Fiss means by the \"irony\" in his title: that true freedom of speech for all requires suppressing the speech of some. This is not, technically, an irony. It is a", "The historical part of this analysis rests on a canard, which is the assertion that the constitutional law of free speech emerged from 19 th -century classical laissez-faire liberalism. It did not. It", "gays, victims of racial-hate speech, the poor (or, at least, the not-rich), and people who are critical of market capitalism--and to design a constitutional theory that will enable those groups to enlist the state in efforts either to suppress speech", "time, that doctrine was construed to cover not the right to \"self-expression\" but the \"right to property.\" Turn-of-the-century courts did not display a libertarian attitude toward civil rights; they displayed a libertarian attitude toward economic rights, tending to throw" ] ]
train	20046	[ "What does the following quotation from the article -- \"Nobody deserves it more than Barry Switzer. He took all of this [expletive].\" -- most likely imply?", "What word best describes Tynan's reputation in Britain?", "How was the reaction toward Lloyd and Irvin different than that toward Tynan?", "Members of western society in 1996 are _________ expletives compared to members of western society from three decades prior.", "Which of the following statements most accurately describes the author's predictions regarding profanity?", "What is the author's central point about the increased frequency of expletive use in western society?" ]	[ [ "Switzer deserves to be punished for using explicit language", "Switzer deserves to be rewarded for speaking honestly and in-the-moment", "Switzer deserves to be rewarded for the sacrifices he made to win the NFC title", "Switzer deserves to be punished for using blasphemous language on live television" ], [ "Tynan was understood to be a fraudulent and sociopathic manipulator", "Tynan was viewed as an attention-seeking, irksome personality", "Tynan was well-regarded as an outspoken person who tells it like it is", "Tynan was looked upon with condescension as a vulgar, rude figure" ], [ "Lloyd and Irvin were forgiven after apologizing while Tynan was ignored", "Lloyd and Irvin were applauded while Tynan was reproached", "Lloyd and Irvin were vilified while Tynan was honored", "Lloyd and Irvin received limited backlash while Tynan was reputationally destroyed" ], [ "more offended by", "more creative in their use of", "less offended by", "less creative in their use of" ], [ "Soon, the majority of idioms and colloquialisms will include language once considered to be profane", "The more society accepts use of expletives, the more we will need to use it to function in conversation", "In a matter of decades, it will be acceptable for children in primary school to use expletives ", "Governments will eventually have no choice but to create laws forbidding the use of profanity" ], [ "It represents mass disillusionment in ideals that were once central to a well-functioning society", "It will inevitably result in an increase in crime and socially unacceptable behaviors", "It has no correlation with crime but a positive correlation with acceptance of the taboo", "It will bring about a new era of creativity and innovation in the years to come" ] ]	[ 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, 3 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "Maledict\noratory\nThe high costs of low language. \n\n Sunday, Jan. 14, 1996: A day that will live in--well, not infamy, exactly. Blasphemy would be closer to it. \n\n Early that afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win the American Football Conference championship. Linebacker Greg Lloyd, accepting the trophy in front of a national television audience, responded with enthusiasm. \"Let's see if we can bring this damn thing back here next year,\" he said, \"along with the [expletive] Super Bowl.\" \n\n A few hours later, Michael Irvin of the Dallas Cowboys offered this spirited defense of his coach on TV after his team won the National Football Conference title: \"Nobody deserves it more than Barry Switzer. He took all of this [expletive] .\"", "It turned out there were a few more than Tynan thought. Within 24 hours, resolutions had been introduced in the House of Commons calling for his prosecution on charges of obscenity, for his removal as a theater official, and for censure of the network for allowing an obscene word to go out on the airwaves. Tynan escaped punishment, but he acquired a public reputation for tastelessness that he carried for the rest his life. To much of ordinary Britain, he became the man who had said \"[expletive]\" on the BBC. \n\n Neither Greg Lloyd nor Michael Irvin was so stigmatized. \"It's live television,\" NBC Vice President Ed Markey said, rationalizing the outbursts. \"It's an emotional moment. These things happen.\" Irvin wasn't about to let that stand. \"I knew exactly what I was saying,\" he insisted later. \"Those of you who can't believe I said it--believe it.\"", "Iwatched those episodes, and, incongruous as it may sound, I thought of Kenneth Tynan. Britain's great postwar drama critic was no fan of American football, but he was a fan of swearing. Thirty years earlier, almost to the week, Tynan was interviewed on BBC television in his capacity as literary director of Britain's National Theater and asked if he would allow the theater to present a play in which sex took place on stage. \"Certainly,\" he replied. \"I think there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word '[expletive]' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.\"", "Nor do we believe in sex any more the way most American children and millions of adults believed in it a generation ago: as an act of profound mystery and importance that one did not engage in, or discuss, or even invoke, without a certain amount of excitement and risk. We have trivialized and routinized sex to the point where it just doesn't carry the emotional freight it carried in the schoolyards and bedrooms of the 1950s. \n\n Many enlightened people consider this to be a great improvement over a society in which sex generated not only emotion and power, but fear. For the moment, I wish to insist only on this one point: When sexuality loses its power to awe, it loses its power to create genuine swearing. When we convert it into a casual form of recreation, we shouldn't be surprised to hear linebackers using the word \"[expletive]\" on national television.", "In that culture, the word \"[expletive]\" was not only obscene, it was profane, in the original sense: It took an important idea in vain. Profanity can be an act of religious defiance, but it doesn't have to be. The Greeks tempted fate by invoking the names of their superiors on Mount Olympus; they also swore upon everyday objects whose properties they respected but did not fully understand. \"By the Cabbage!\" Socrates is supposed to have said in moments of stress, and that was for good reason. He believed that cabbage cured hangovers, and as such, carried sufficient power and mystery to invest any moment with the requisite emotional charge. \n\n These days, none of us believes in cabbage in the way Socrates did, or in the gods in the way most Athenians did. Most Americans tell poll-takers that they believe in God, but few of them in a way that would make it impossible to take His name in vain: That requires an Old Testament piety that disappeared from American middle-class life a long time ago.", "The anthropologist Ashley Montagu, whose Anatomy of Swearing , published in 1967, is the definitive modern take on the subject, saw profanity as a safety valve rather than a stimulant, a verbal substitute for physical aggression. When someone swears, Montagu wrote, \"potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous.\" \n\n One could point out, in arguing against the safety-valve theory, that as America has grown more profane in the past 30 years, it has also grown more violent, not less. But this is too simple. It isn't just the supply of dirty words that matters, it's their emotive power. If they have lost that power through overuse, it's perfectly plausible to say that their capacity to deter aggressive behavior has weakened as well. \n\n But there is something else important to say about swearing--that it represents the invocation of those ideas a society considers powerful, awesome, and a little scary.", "What word is taboo in middle-class America in 1996? There are a couple of credible candidates: The four-letter word for \"vagina\" remains off-limits in polite conversation (although that has more to do with feminism than with profanity), and the slang expression for those who engage in oral sex with males is not yet acceptable by the standards of office-meeting etiquette. \n\n But aside from a few exceptions, the supply of genuinely offensive language has dwindled almost to nothing as the 20th century comes to an end; the currency of swearing has been inflated to the brink of worthlessness. When almost anything can be said in public, profanity ceases to exist in any meaningful way at all.", "What do we do about it? Well, we could pass a law against swearing. Mussolini actually did that. He decreed that trains and buses, in addition to running on time, had to carry signs that read \"Non bestemmiare per l'onore d'Italia.\" (\"Do not swear for the honor of Italy.\") The commuters of Rome reacted to those signs exactly as you would expect: They cursed them. \n\n What Mussolini could not do, I am reasonably sure that American governments of the 1990s cannot do, nor would I wish it. I merely predict that sometime in the coming generation, profanity will return in a meaningful way. It served too many purposes for too many years of American life to disappear on a permanent basis. We need it.", "I am walking along a suburban street, trailing a class of pre-schoolers who are linked to each other by a rope. A pair of teen-agers passes us in the other direction. By the time they have reached the end of the line of children, they have tossed off a whole catalog of obscenities I did not even hear until I was well into adolescence, let alone use in casual conversation on a public street. \n\n \n\n I am talking to a distinguished professor of public policy about a foundation grant. I tell her something she wasn't aware of before. In 1965, the appropriate response was \"no kidding.\" In 1996, you do not say \"no kidding.\" It is limp and ineffectual. If you are surprised at all, you say what she says: \"No shit.\"", "I'm not sure there is an easy way to convey to anybody under 30, for example, the sheer emotive force that the word \"[expletive]\" possessed in the urban childhood culture of 40 years ago. It was the verbal link to a secret act none of us understood but that was known to carry enormous consequences in the adult world. It was the embodiment of both pleasure and danger. It was not a word or an idea to mess with. When it was used, it was used, as Ashley Montagu said, \"sotto voce , like a smuggler cautiously making his way across a forbidden frontier.\"", "That most of the forbidden words of the 1950s are no longer forbidden will come as news to nobody: The steady debasement of the common language is only one of many social strictures that have loosened from the previous generation to the current. What is important is that profanity served a variety of purposes for a long time in Western culture. It does not serve those purposes any more. \n\n What purposes? There are a couple of plausible answers. One of them is emotional release. Robert Graves, who wrote a book in the 1920s called The Future of Swearing , thought that profanity was the adult replacement for childhood tears. There comes a point in life, he wrote, when \"wailing is rightly discouraged, and groans are also considered a signal of extreme weakness. Silence under suffering is usually impossible.\" So one reaches back for a word one does not normally use, and utters it without undue embarrassment or guilt. And one feels better--even stimulated.", "Swearing isn't the only public act that Western civilization condones today but didn't 30 years ago. But it is one of the most interesting. It is everywhere, impossible to avoid or tune out. \n\n \n\n \n\n I am sitting in a meeting at the office, talking with a colleague about a business circumstance that may possibly go against us. \"In that case, we're [expletive] ,\" he says. Five years ago, he would have said \"screwed.\" Twenty years ago, he would have said, \"We're in big trouble.\" Societal tolerance of profanity requires us to increase our dosage as time goes on.", "To profane something, in other words, one must believe in it. The cheapening of profanity in modern America represents, more than anything else, the crumbling of belief. There are very few ideas left at this point that are awesome or frightening enough for us to enforce a taboo against them. \n\n The instinctive response of most educated people to the disappearance of any taboo is to applaud it, but this is wrong. Healthy societies need a decent supply of verbal taboos and prohibitions, if only as yardsticks by which ordinary people can measure and define themselves. By violating these taboos over and over, some succeed in defining themselves as rebels. Others violate them on special occasions to derive an emotional release. Forbidden language is one of the ways we remind children that there are rules to everyday life, and consequences for breaking them. When we forget this principle, or cease to accept it, it is not just our language that begins to fray at the edges.", "And so I am reasonably sure that when my children have children, there will once again be words so awesome that they cannot be uttered without important consequences. This will not only represent a new stage of linguistic evolution, it will be a token of moral revival. What the dirty words will be, God only knows." ], [ "It turned out there were a few more than Tynan thought. Within 24 hours, resolutions had been introduced in the House of Commons calling for his prosecution on charges of obscenity, for his removal as a theater official, and for censure of the network for allowing an obscene word to go out on the airwaves. Tynan escaped punishment, but he acquired a public reputation for tastelessness that he carried for the rest his life. To much of ordinary Britain, he became the man who had said \"[expletive]\" on the BBC. \n\n Neither Greg Lloyd nor Michael Irvin was so stigmatized. \"It's live television,\" NBC Vice President Ed Markey said, rationalizing the outbursts. \"It's an emotional moment. These things happen.\" Irvin wasn't about to let that stand. \"I knew exactly what I was saying,\" he insisted later. \"Those of you who can't believe I said it--believe it.\"", "Iwatched those episodes, and, incongruous as it may sound, I thought of Kenneth Tynan. Britain's great postwar drama critic was no fan of American football, but he was a fan of swearing. Thirty years earlier, almost to the week, Tynan was interviewed on BBC television in his capacity as literary director of Britain's National Theater and asked if he would allow the theater to present a play in which sex took place on stage. \"Certainly,\" he replied. \"I think there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word '[expletive]' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.\"", "Nor do we believe in sex any more the way most American children and millions of adults believed in it a generation ago: as an act of profound mystery and importance that one did not engage in, or discuss, or even invoke, without a certain amount of excitement and risk. We have trivialized and routinized sex to the point where it just doesn't carry the emotional freight it carried in the schoolyards and bedrooms of the 1950s. \n\n Many enlightened people consider this to be a great improvement over a society in which sex generated not only emotion and power, but fear. For the moment, I wish to insist only on this one point: When sexuality loses its power to awe, it loses its power to create genuine swearing. When we convert it into a casual form of recreation, we shouldn't be surprised to hear linebackers using the word \"[expletive]\" on national television.", "I'm not sure there is an easy way to convey to anybody under 30, for example, the sheer emotive force that the word \"[expletive]\" possessed in the urban childhood culture of 40 years ago. It was the verbal link to a secret act none of us understood but that was known to carry enormous consequences in the adult world. It was the embodiment of both pleasure and danger. It was not a word or an idea to mess with. When it was used, it was used, as Ashley Montagu said, \"sotto voce , like a smuggler cautiously making his way across a forbidden frontier.\"", "What word is taboo in middle-class America in 1996? There are a couple of credible candidates: The four-letter word for \"vagina\" remains off-limits in polite conversation (although that has more to do with feminism than with profanity), and the slang expression for those who engage in oral sex with males is not yet acceptable by the standards of office-meeting etiquette. \n\n But aside from a few exceptions, the supply of genuinely offensive language has dwindled almost to nothing as the 20th century comes to an end; the currency of swearing has been inflated to the brink of worthlessness. When almost anything can be said in public, profanity ceases to exist in any meaningful way at all.", "In that culture, the word \"[expletive]\" was not only obscene, it was profane, in the original sense: It took an important idea in vain. Profanity can be an act of religious defiance, but it doesn't have to be. The Greeks tempted fate by invoking the names of their superiors on Mount Olympus; they also swore upon everyday objects whose properties they respected but did not fully understand. \"By the Cabbage!\" Socrates is supposed to have said in moments of stress, and that was for good reason. He believed that cabbage cured hangovers, and as such, carried sufficient power and mystery to invest any moment with the requisite emotional charge. \n\n These days, none of us believes in cabbage in the way Socrates did, or in the gods in the way most Athenians did. Most Americans tell poll-takers that they believe in God, but few of them in a way that would make it impossible to take His name in vain: That requires an Old Testament piety that disappeared from American middle-class life a long time ago.", "I am walking along a suburban street, trailing a class of pre-schoolers who are linked to each other by a rope. A pair of teen-agers passes us in the other direction. By the time they have reached the end of the line of children, they have tossed off a whole catalog of obscenities I did not even hear until I was well into adolescence, let alone use in casual conversation on a public street. \n\n \n\n I am talking to a distinguished professor of public policy about a foundation grant. I tell her something she wasn't aware of before. In 1965, the appropriate response was \"no kidding.\" In 1996, you do not say \"no kidding.\" It is limp and ineffectual. If you are surprised at all, you say what she says: \"No shit.\"", "That most of the forbidden words of the 1950s are no longer forbidden will come as news to nobody: The steady debasement of the common language is only one of many social strictures that have loosened from the previous generation to the current. What is important is that profanity served a variety of purposes for a long time in Western culture. It does not serve those purposes any more. \n\n What purposes? There are a couple of plausible answers. One of them is emotional release. Robert Graves, who wrote a book in the 1920s called The Future of Swearing , thought that profanity was the adult replacement for childhood tears. There comes a point in life, he wrote, when \"wailing is rightly discouraged, and groans are also considered a signal of extreme weakness. Silence under suffering is usually impossible.\" So one reaches back for a word one does not normally use, and utters it without undue embarrassment or guilt. And one feels better--even stimulated.", "Maledict\noratory\nThe high costs of low language. \n\n Sunday, Jan. 14, 1996: A day that will live in--well, not infamy, exactly. Blasphemy would be closer to it. \n\n Early that afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win the American Football Conference championship. Linebacker Greg Lloyd, accepting the trophy in front of a national television audience, responded with enthusiasm. \"Let's see if we can bring this damn thing back here next year,\" he said, \"along with the [expletive] Super Bowl.\" \n\n A few hours later, Michael Irvin of the Dallas Cowboys offered this spirited defense of his coach on TV after his team won the National Football Conference title: \"Nobody deserves it more than Barry Switzer. He took all of this [expletive] .\"", "The anthropologist Ashley Montagu, whose Anatomy of Swearing , published in 1967, is the definitive modern take on the subject, saw profanity as a safety valve rather than a stimulant, a verbal substitute for physical aggression. When someone swears, Montagu wrote, \"potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous.\" \n\n One could point out, in arguing against the safety-valve theory, that as America has grown more profane in the past 30 years, it has also grown more violent, not less. But this is too simple. It isn't just the supply of dirty words that matters, it's their emotive power. If they have lost that power through overuse, it's perfectly plausible to say that their capacity to deter aggressive behavior has weakened as well. \n\n But there is something else important to say about swearing--that it represents the invocation of those ideas a society considers powerful, awesome, and a little scary.", "And so I am reasonably sure that when my children have children, there will once again be words so awesome that they cannot be uttered without important consequences. This will not only represent a new stage of linguistic evolution, it will be a token of moral revival. What the dirty words will be, God only knows.", "To profane something, in other words, one must believe in it. The cheapening of profanity in modern America represents, more than anything else, the crumbling of belief. There are very few ideas left at this point that are awesome or frightening enough for us to enforce a taboo against them. \n\n The instinctive response of most educated people to the disappearance of any taboo is to applaud it, but this is wrong. Healthy societies need a decent supply of verbal taboos and prohibitions, if only as yardsticks by which ordinary people can measure and define themselves. By violating these taboos over and over, some succeed in defining themselves as rebels. Others violate them on special occasions to derive an emotional release. Forbidden language is one of the ways we remind children that there are rules to everyday life, and consequences for breaking them. When we forget this principle, or cease to accept it, it is not just our language that begins to fray at the edges.", "Swearing isn't the only public act that Western civilization condones today but didn't 30 years ago. But it is one of the most interesting. It is everywhere, impossible to avoid or tune out. \n\n \n\n \n\n I am sitting in a meeting at the office, talking with a colleague about a business circumstance that may possibly go against us. \"In that case, we're [expletive] ,\" he says. Five years ago, he would have said \"screwed.\" Twenty years ago, he would have said, \"We're in big trouble.\" Societal tolerance of profanity requires us to increase our dosage as time goes on.", "What do we do about it? Well, we could pass a law against swearing. Mussolini actually did that. He decreed that trains and buses, in addition to running on time, had to carry signs that read \"Non bestemmiare per l'onore d'Italia.\" (\"Do not swear for the honor of Italy.\") The commuters of Rome reacted to those signs exactly as you would expect: They cursed them. \n\n What Mussolini could not do, I am reasonably sure that American governments of the 1990s cannot do, nor would I wish it. I merely predict that sometime in the coming generation, profanity will return in a meaningful way. It served too many purposes for too many years of American life to disappear on a permanent basis. We need it." ], [ "It turned out there were a few more than Tynan thought. Within 24 hours, resolutions had been introduced in the House of Commons calling for his prosecution on charges of obscenity, for his removal as a theater official, and for censure of the network for allowing an obscene word to go out on the airwaves. Tynan escaped punishment, but he acquired a public reputation for tastelessness that he carried for the rest his life. To much of ordinary Britain, he became the man who had said \"[expletive]\" on the BBC. \n\n Neither Greg Lloyd nor Michael Irvin was so stigmatized. \"It's live television,\" NBC Vice President Ed Markey said, rationalizing the outbursts. \"It's an emotional moment. These things happen.\" Irvin wasn't about to let that stand. \"I knew exactly what I was saying,\" he insisted later. \"Those of you who can't believe I said it--believe it.\"", "Iwatched those episodes, and, incongruous as it may sound, I thought of Kenneth Tynan. Britain's great postwar drama critic was no fan of American football, but he was a fan of swearing. Thirty years earlier, almost to the week, Tynan was interviewed on BBC television in his capacity as literary director of Britain's National Theater and asked if he would allow the theater to present a play in which sex took place on stage. \"Certainly,\" he replied. \"I think there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word '[expletive]' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.\"", "Nor do we believe in sex any more the way most American children and millions of adults believed in it a generation ago: as an act of profound mystery and importance that one did not engage in, or discuss, or even invoke, without a certain amount of excitement and risk. We have trivialized and routinized sex to the point where it just doesn't carry the emotional freight it carried in the schoolyards and bedrooms of the 1950s. \n\n Many enlightened people consider this to be a great improvement over a society in which sex generated not only emotion and power, but fear. For the moment, I wish to insist only on this one point: When sexuality loses its power to awe, it loses its power to create genuine swearing. When we convert it into a casual form of recreation, we shouldn't be surprised to hear linebackers using the word \"[expletive]\" on national television.", "Maledict\noratory\nThe high costs of low language. \n\n Sunday, Jan. 14, 1996: A day that will live in--well, not infamy, exactly. Blasphemy would be closer to it. \n\n Early that afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win the American Football Conference championship. Linebacker Greg Lloyd, accepting the trophy in front of a national television audience, responded with enthusiasm. \"Let's see if we can bring this damn thing back here next year,\" he said, \"along with the [expletive] Super Bowl.\" \n\n A few hours later, Michael Irvin of the Dallas Cowboys offered this spirited defense of his coach on TV after his team won the National Football Conference title: \"Nobody deserves it more than Barry Switzer. He took all of this [expletive] .\"", "I'm not sure there is an easy way to convey to anybody under 30, for example, the sheer emotive force that the word \"[expletive]\" possessed in the urban childhood culture of 40 years ago. It was the verbal link to a secret act none of us understood but that was known to carry enormous consequences in the adult world. It was the embodiment of both pleasure and danger. It was not a word or an idea to mess with. When it was used, it was used, as Ashley Montagu said, \"sotto voce , like a smuggler cautiously making his way across a forbidden frontier.\"", "In that culture, the word \"[expletive]\" was not only obscene, it was profane, in the original sense: It took an important idea in vain. Profanity can be an act of religious defiance, but it doesn't have to be. The Greeks tempted fate by invoking the names of their superiors on Mount Olympus; they also swore upon everyday objects whose properties they respected but did not fully understand. \"By the Cabbage!\" Socrates is supposed to have said in moments of stress, and that was for good reason. He believed that cabbage cured hangovers, and as such, carried sufficient power and mystery to invest any moment with the requisite emotional charge. \n\n These days, none of us believes in cabbage in the way Socrates did, or in the gods in the way most Athenians did. Most Americans tell poll-takers that they believe in God, but few of them in a way that would make it impossible to take His name in vain: That requires an Old Testament piety that disappeared from American middle-class life a long time ago.", "I am walking along a suburban street, trailing a class of pre-schoolers who are linked to each other by a rope. A pair of teen-agers passes us in the other direction. By the time they have reached the end of the line of children, they have tossed off a whole catalog of obscenities I did not even hear until I was well into adolescence, let alone use in casual conversation on a public street. \n\n \n\n I am talking to a distinguished professor of public policy about a foundation grant. I tell her something she wasn't aware of before. In 1965, the appropriate response was \"no kidding.\" In 1996, you do not say \"no kidding.\" It is limp and ineffectual. If you are surprised at all, you say what she says: \"No shit.\"", "What word is taboo in middle-class America in 1996? There are a couple of credible candidates: The four-letter word for \"vagina\" remains off-limits in polite conversation (although that has more to do with feminism than with profanity), and the slang expression for those who engage in oral sex with males is not yet acceptable by the standards of office-meeting etiquette. \n\n But aside from a few exceptions, the supply of genuinely offensive language has dwindled almost to nothing as the 20th century comes to an end; the currency of swearing has been inflated to the brink of worthlessness. When almost anything can be said in public, profanity ceases to exist in any meaningful way at all.", "That most of the forbidden words of the 1950s are no longer forbidden will come as news to nobody: The steady debasement of the common language is only one of many social strictures that have loosened from the previous generation to the current. What is important is that profanity served a variety of purposes for a long time in Western culture. It does not serve those purposes any more. \n\n What purposes? There are a couple of plausible answers. One of them is emotional release. Robert Graves, who wrote a book in the 1920s called The Future of Swearing , thought that profanity was the adult replacement for childhood tears. There comes a point in life, he wrote, when \"wailing is rightly discouraged, and groans are also considered a signal of extreme weakness. Silence under suffering is usually impossible.\" So one reaches back for a word one does not normally use, and utters it without undue embarrassment or guilt. And one feels better--even stimulated.", "Swearing isn't the only public act that Western civilization condones today but didn't 30 years ago. But it is one of the most interesting. It is everywhere, impossible to avoid or tune out. \n\n \n\n \n\n I am sitting in a meeting at the office, talking with a colleague about a business circumstance that may possibly go against us. \"In that case, we're [expletive] ,\" he says. Five years ago, he would have said \"screwed.\" Twenty years ago, he would have said, \"We're in big trouble.\" Societal tolerance of profanity requires us to increase our dosage as time goes on.", "The anthropologist Ashley Montagu, whose Anatomy of Swearing , published in 1967, is the definitive modern take on the subject, saw profanity as a safety valve rather than a stimulant, a verbal substitute for physical aggression. When someone swears, Montagu wrote, \"potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous.\" \n\n One could point out, in arguing against the safety-valve theory, that as America has grown more profane in the past 30 years, it has also grown more violent, not less. But this is too simple. It isn't just the supply of dirty words that matters, it's their emotive power. If they have lost that power through overuse, it's perfectly plausible to say that their capacity to deter aggressive behavior has weakened as well. \n\n But there is something else important to say about swearing--that it represents the invocation of those ideas a society considers powerful, awesome, and a little scary.", "And so I am reasonably sure that when my children have children, there will once again be words so awesome that they cannot be uttered without important consequences. This will not only represent a new stage of linguistic evolution, it will be a token of moral revival. What the dirty words will be, God only knows.", "To profane something, in other words, one must believe in it. The cheapening of profanity in modern America represents, more than anything else, the crumbling of belief. There are very few ideas left at this point that are awesome or frightening enough for us to enforce a taboo against them. \n\n The instinctive response of most educated people to the disappearance of any taboo is to applaud it, but this is wrong. Healthy societies need a decent supply of verbal taboos and prohibitions, if only as yardsticks by which ordinary people can measure and define themselves. By violating these taboos over and over, some succeed in defining themselves as rebels. Others violate them on special occasions to derive an emotional release. Forbidden language is one of the ways we remind children that there are rules to everyday life, and consequences for breaking them. When we forget this principle, or cease to accept it, it is not just our language that begins to fray at the edges.", "What do we do about it? Well, we could pass a law against swearing. Mussolini actually did that. He decreed that trains and buses, in addition to running on time, had to carry signs that read \"Non bestemmiare per l'onore d'Italia.\" (\"Do not swear for the honor of Italy.\") The commuters of Rome reacted to those signs exactly as you would expect: They cursed them. \n\n What Mussolini could not do, I am reasonably sure that American governments of the 1990s cannot do, nor would I wish it. I merely predict that sometime in the coming generation, profanity will return in a meaningful way. It served too many purposes for too many years of American life to disappear on a permanent basis. We need it." ], [ "What word is taboo in middle-class America in 1996? There are a couple of credible candidates: The four-letter word for \"vagina\" remains off-limits in polite conversation (although that has more to do with feminism than with profanity), and the slang expression for those who engage in oral sex with males is not yet acceptable by the standards of office-meeting etiquette. \n\n But aside from a few exceptions, the supply of genuinely offensive language has dwindled almost to nothing as the 20th century comes to an end; the currency of swearing has been inflated to the brink of worthlessness. When almost anything can be said in public, profanity ceases to exist in any meaningful way at all.", "Swearing isn't the only public act that Western civilization condones today but didn't 30 years ago. But it is one of the most interesting. It is everywhere, impossible to avoid or tune out. \n\n \n\n \n\n I am sitting in a meeting at the office, talking with a colleague about a business circumstance that may possibly go against us. \"In that case, we're [expletive] ,\" he says. Five years ago, he would have said \"screwed.\" Twenty years ago, he would have said, \"We're in big trouble.\" Societal tolerance of profanity requires us to increase our dosage as time goes on.", "I am walking along a suburban street, trailing a class of pre-schoolers who are linked to each other by a rope. A pair of teen-agers passes us in the other direction. By the time they have reached the end of the line of children, they have tossed off a whole catalog of obscenities I did not even hear until I was well into adolescence, let alone use in casual conversation on a public street. \n\n \n\n I am talking to a distinguished professor of public policy about a foundation grant. I tell her something she wasn't aware of before. In 1965, the appropriate response was \"no kidding.\" In 1996, you do not say \"no kidding.\" It is limp and ineffectual. If you are surprised at all, you say what she says: \"No shit.\"", "That most of the forbidden words of the 1950s are no longer forbidden will come as news to nobody: The steady debasement of the common language is only one of many social strictures that have loosened from the previous generation to the current. What is important is that profanity served a variety of purposes for a long time in Western culture. It does not serve those purposes any more. \n\n What purposes? There are a couple of plausible answers. One of them is emotional release. Robert Graves, who wrote a book in the 1920s called The Future of Swearing , thought that profanity was the adult replacement for childhood tears. There comes a point in life, he wrote, when \"wailing is rightly discouraged, and groans are also considered a signal of extreme weakness. Silence under suffering is usually impossible.\" So one reaches back for a word one does not normally use, and utters it without undue embarrassment or guilt. And one feels better--even stimulated.", "Nor do we believe in sex any more the way most American children and millions of adults believed in it a generation ago: as an act of profound mystery and importance that one did not engage in, or discuss, or even invoke, without a certain amount of excitement and risk. We have trivialized and routinized sex to the point where it just doesn't carry the emotional freight it carried in the schoolyards and bedrooms of the 1950s. \n\n Many enlightened people consider this to be a great improvement over a society in which sex generated not only emotion and power, but fear. For the moment, I wish to insist only on this one point: When sexuality loses its power to awe, it loses its power to create genuine swearing. When we convert it into a casual form of recreation, we shouldn't be surprised to hear linebackers using the word \"[expletive]\" on national television.", "What do we do about it? Well, we could pass a law against swearing. Mussolini actually did that. He decreed that trains and buses, in addition to running on time, had to carry signs that read \"Non bestemmiare per l'onore d'Italia.\" (\"Do not swear for the honor of Italy.\") The commuters of Rome reacted to those signs exactly as you would expect: They cursed them. \n\n What Mussolini could not do, I am reasonably sure that American governments of the 1990s cannot do, nor would I wish it. I merely predict that sometime in the coming generation, profanity will return in a meaningful way. It served too many purposes for too many years of American life to disappear on a permanent basis. We need it.", "I'm not sure there is an easy way to convey to anybody under 30, for example, the sheer emotive force that the word \"[expletive]\" possessed in the urban childhood culture of 40 years ago. It was the verbal link to a secret act none of us understood but that was known to carry enormous consequences in the adult world. It was the embodiment of both pleasure and danger. It was not a word or an idea to mess with. When it was used, it was used, as Ashley Montagu said, \"sotto voce , like a smuggler cautiously making his way across a forbidden frontier.\"", "The anthropologist Ashley Montagu, whose Anatomy of Swearing , published in 1967, is the definitive modern take on the subject, saw profanity as a safety valve rather than a stimulant, a verbal substitute for physical aggression. When someone swears, Montagu wrote, \"potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous.\" \n\n One could point out, in arguing against the safety-valve theory, that as America has grown more profane in the past 30 years, it has also grown more violent, not less. But this is too simple. It isn't just the supply of dirty words that matters, it's their emotive power. If they have lost that power through overuse, it's perfectly plausible to say that their capacity to deter aggressive behavior has weakened as well. \n\n But there is something else important to say about swearing--that it represents the invocation of those ideas a society considers powerful, awesome, and a little scary.", "Maledict\noratory\nThe high costs of low language. \n\n Sunday, Jan. 14, 1996: A day that will live in--well, not infamy, exactly. Blasphemy would be closer to it. \n\n Early that afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win the American Football Conference championship. Linebacker Greg Lloyd, accepting the trophy in front of a national television audience, responded with enthusiasm. \"Let's see if we can bring this damn thing back here next year,\" he said, \"along with the [expletive] Super Bowl.\" \n\n A few hours later, Michael Irvin of the Dallas Cowboys offered this spirited defense of his coach on TV after his team won the National Football Conference title: \"Nobody deserves it more than Barry Switzer. He took all of this [expletive] .\"", "In that culture, the word \"[expletive]\" was not only obscene, it was profane, in the original sense: It took an important idea in vain. Profanity can be an act of religious defiance, but it doesn't have to be. The Greeks tempted fate by invoking the names of their superiors on Mount Olympus; they also swore upon everyday objects whose properties they respected but did not fully understand. \"By the Cabbage!\" Socrates is supposed to have said in moments of stress, and that was for good reason. He believed that cabbage cured hangovers, and as such, carried sufficient power and mystery to invest any moment with the requisite emotional charge. \n\n These days, none of us believes in cabbage in the way Socrates did, or in the gods in the way most Athenians did. Most Americans tell poll-takers that they believe in God, but few of them in a way that would make it impossible to take His name in vain: That requires an Old Testament piety that disappeared from American middle-class life a long time ago.", "To profane something, in other words, one must believe in it. The cheapening of profanity in modern America represents, more than anything else, the crumbling of belief. There are very few ideas left at this point that are awesome or frightening enough for us to enforce a taboo against them. \n\n The instinctive response of most educated people to the disappearance of any taboo is to applaud it, but this is wrong. Healthy societies need a decent supply of verbal taboos and prohibitions, if only as yardsticks by which ordinary people can measure and define themselves. By violating these taboos over and over, some succeed in defining themselves as rebels. Others violate them on special occasions to derive an emotional release. Forbidden language is one of the ways we remind children that there are rules to everyday life, and consequences for breaking them. When we forget this principle, or cease to accept it, it is not just our language that begins to fray at the edges.", "And so I am reasonably sure that when my children have children, there will once again be words so awesome that they cannot be uttered without important consequences. This will not only represent a new stage of linguistic evolution, it will be a token of moral revival. What the dirty words will be, God only knows.", "Iwatched those episodes, and, incongruous as it may sound, I thought of Kenneth Tynan. Britain's great postwar drama critic was no fan of American football, but he was a fan of swearing. Thirty years earlier, almost to the week, Tynan was interviewed on BBC television in his capacity as literary director of Britain's National Theater and asked if he would allow the theater to present a play in which sex took place on stage. \"Certainly,\" he replied. \"I think there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word '[expletive]' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.\"", "It turned out there were a few more than Tynan thought. Within 24 hours, resolutions had been introduced in the House of Commons calling for his prosecution on charges of obscenity, for his removal as a theater official, and for censure of the network for allowing an obscene word to go out on the airwaves. Tynan escaped punishment, but he acquired a public reputation for tastelessness that he carried for the rest his life. To much of ordinary Britain, he became the man who had said \"[expletive]\" on the BBC. \n\n Neither Greg Lloyd nor Michael Irvin was so stigmatized. \"It's live television,\" NBC Vice President Ed Markey said, rationalizing the outbursts. \"It's an emotional moment. These things happen.\" Irvin wasn't about to let that stand. \"I knew exactly what I was saying,\" he insisted later. \"Those of you who can't believe I said it--believe it.\"" ], [ "And so I am reasonably sure that when my children have children, there will once again be words so awesome that they cannot be uttered without important consequences. This will not only represent a new stage of linguistic evolution, it will be a token of moral revival. What the dirty words will be, God only knows.", "What do we do about it? Well, we could pass a law against swearing. Mussolini actually did that. He decreed that trains and buses, in addition to running on time, had to carry signs that read \"Non bestemmiare per l'onore d'Italia.\" (\"Do not swear for the honor of Italy.\") The commuters of Rome reacted to those signs exactly as you would expect: They cursed them. \n\n What Mussolini could not do, I am reasonably sure that American governments of the 1990s cannot do, nor would I wish it. I merely predict that sometime in the coming generation, profanity will return in a meaningful way. It served too many purposes for too many years of American life to disappear on a permanent basis. We need it.", "That most of the forbidden words of the 1950s are no longer forbidden will come as news to nobody: The steady debasement of the common language is only one of many social strictures that have loosened from the previous generation to the current. What is important is that profanity served a variety of purposes for a long time in Western culture. It does not serve those purposes any more. \n\n What purposes? There are a couple of plausible answers. One of them is emotional release. Robert Graves, who wrote a book in the 1920s called The Future of Swearing , thought that profanity was the adult replacement for childhood tears. There comes a point in life, he wrote, when \"wailing is rightly discouraged, and groans are also considered a signal of extreme weakness. Silence under suffering is usually impossible.\" So one reaches back for a word one does not normally use, and utters it without undue embarrassment or guilt. And one feels better--even stimulated.", "The anthropologist Ashley Montagu, whose Anatomy of Swearing , published in 1967, is the definitive modern take on the subject, saw profanity as a safety valve rather than a stimulant, a verbal substitute for physical aggression. When someone swears, Montagu wrote, \"potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous.\" \n\n One could point out, in arguing against the safety-valve theory, that as America has grown more profane in the past 30 years, it has also grown more violent, not less. But this is too simple. It isn't just the supply of dirty words that matters, it's their emotive power. If they have lost that power through overuse, it's perfectly plausible to say that their capacity to deter aggressive behavior has weakened as well. \n\n But there is something else important to say about swearing--that it represents the invocation of those ideas a society considers powerful, awesome, and a little scary.", "To profane something, in other words, one must believe in it. The cheapening of profanity in modern America represents, more than anything else, the crumbling of belief. There are very few ideas left at this point that are awesome or frightening enough for us to enforce a taboo against them. \n\n The instinctive response of most educated people to the disappearance of any taboo is to applaud it, but this is wrong. Healthy societies need a decent supply of verbal taboos and prohibitions, if only as yardsticks by which ordinary people can measure and define themselves. By violating these taboos over and over, some succeed in defining themselves as rebels. Others violate them on special occasions to derive an emotional release. Forbidden language is one of the ways we remind children that there are rules to everyday life, and consequences for breaking them. When we forget this principle, or cease to accept it, it is not just our language that begins to fray at the edges.", "Nor do we believe in sex any more the way most American children and millions of adults believed in it a generation ago: as an act of profound mystery and importance that one did not engage in, or discuss, or even invoke, without a certain amount of excitement and risk. We have trivialized and routinized sex to the point where it just doesn't carry the emotional freight it carried in the schoolyards and bedrooms of the 1950s. \n\n Many enlightened people consider this to be a great improvement over a society in which sex generated not only emotion and power, but fear. For the moment, I wish to insist only on this one point: When sexuality loses its power to awe, it loses its power to create genuine swearing. When we convert it into a casual form of recreation, we shouldn't be surprised to hear linebackers using the word \"[expletive]\" on national television.", "What word is taboo in middle-class America in 1996? There are a couple of credible candidates: The four-letter word for \"vagina\" remains off-limits in polite conversation (although that has more to do with feminism than with profanity), and the slang expression for those who engage in oral sex with males is not yet acceptable by the standards of office-meeting etiquette. \n\n But aside from a few exceptions, the supply of genuinely offensive language has dwindled almost to nothing as the 20th century comes to an end; the currency of swearing has been inflated to the brink of worthlessness. When almost anything can be said in public, profanity ceases to exist in any meaningful way at all.", "I am walking along a suburban street, trailing a class of pre-schoolers who are linked to each other by a rope. A pair of teen-agers passes us in the other direction. By the time they have reached the end of the line of children, they have tossed off a whole catalog of obscenities I did not even hear until I was well into adolescence, let alone use in casual conversation on a public street. \n\n \n\n I am talking to a distinguished professor of public policy about a foundation grant. I tell her something she wasn't aware of before. In 1965, the appropriate response was \"no kidding.\" In 1996, you do not say \"no kidding.\" It is limp and ineffectual. If you are surprised at all, you say what she says: \"No shit.\"", "Maledict\noratory\nThe high costs of low language. \n\n Sunday, Jan. 14, 1996: A day that will live in--well, not infamy, exactly. Blasphemy would be closer to it. \n\n Early that afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win the American Football Conference championship. Linebacker Greg Lloyd, accepting the trophy in front of a national television audience, responded with enthusiasm. \"Let's see if we can bring this damn thing back here next year,\" he said, \"along with the [expletive] Super Bowl.\" \n\n A few hours later, Michael Irvin of the Dallas Cowboys offered this spirited defense of his coach on TV after his team won the National Football Conference title: \"Nobody deserves it more than Barry Switzer. He took all of this [expletive] .\"", "In that culture, the word \"[expletive]\" was not only obscene, it was profane, in the original sense: It took an important idea in vain. Profanity can be an act of religious defiance, but it doesn't have to be. The Greeks tempted fate by invoking the names of their superiors on Mount Olympus; they also swore upon everyday objects whose properties they respected but did not fully understand. \"By the Cabbage!\" Socrates is supposed to have said in moments of stress, and that was for good reason. He believed that cabbage cured hangovers, and as such, carried sufficient power and mystery to invest any moment with the requisite emotional charge. \n\n These days, none of us believes in cabbage in the way Socrates did, or in the gods in the way most Athenians did. Most Americans tell poll-takers that they believe in God, but few of them in a way that would make it impossible to take His name in vain: That requires an Old Testament piety that disappeared from American middle-class life a long time ago.", "Iwatched those episodes, and, incongruous as it may sound, I thought of Kenneth Tynan. Britain's great postwar drama critic was no fan of American football, but he was a fan of swearing. Thirty years earlier, almost to the week, Tynan was interviewed on BBC television in his capacity as literary director of Britain's National Theater and asked if he would allow the theater to present a play in which sex took place on stage. \"Certainly,\" he replied. \"I think there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word '[expletive]' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.\"", "Swearing isn't the only public act that Western civilization condones today but didn't 30 years ago. But it is one of the most interesting. It is everywhere, impossible to avoid or tune out. \n\n \n\n \n\n I am sitting in a meeting at the office, talking with a colleague about a business circumstance that may possibly go against us. \"In that case, we're [expletive] ,\" he says. Five years ago, he would have said \"screwed.\" Twenty years ago, he would have said, \"We're in big trouble.\" Societal tolerance of profanity requires us to increase our dosage as time goes on.", "I'm not sure there is an easy way to convey to anybody under 30, for example, the sheer emotive force that the word \"[expletive]\" possessed in the urban childhood culture of 40 years ago. It was the verbal link to a secret act none of us understood but that was known to carry enormous consequences in the adult world. It was the embodiment of both pleasure and danger. It was not a word or an idea to mess with. When it was used, it was used, as Ashley Montagu said, \"sotto voce , like a smuggler cautiously making his way across a forbidden frontier.\"", "It turned out there were a few more than Tynan thought. Within 24 hours, resolutions had been introduced in the House of Commons calling for his prosecution on charges of obscenity, for his removal as a theater official, and for censure of the network for allowing an obscene word to go out on the airwaves. Tynan escaped punishment, but he acquired a public reputation for tastelessness that he carried for the rest his life. To much of ordinary Britain, he became the man who had said \"[expletive]\" on the BBC. \n\n Neither Greg Lloyd nor Michael Irvin was so stigmatized. \"It's live television,\" NBC Vice President Ed Markey said, rationalizing the outbursts. \"It's an emotional moment. These things happen.\" Irvin wasn't about to let that stand. \"I knew exactly what I was saying,\" he insisted later. \"Those of you who can't believe I said it--believe it.\"" ], [ "That most of the forbidden words of the 1950s are no longer forbidden will come as news to nobody: The steady debasement of the common language is only one of many social strictures that have loosened from the previous generation to the current. What is important is that profanity served a variety of purposes for a long time in Western culture. It does not serve those purposes any more. \n\n What purposes? There are a couple of plausible answers. One of them is emotional release. Robert Graves, who wrote a book in the 1920s called The Future of Swearing , thought that profanity was the adult replacement for childhood tears. There comes a point in life, he wrote, when \"wailing is rightly discouraged, and groans are also considered a signal of extreme weakness. Silence under suffering is usually impossible.\" So one reaches back for a word one does not normally use, and utters it without undue embarrassment or guilt. And one feels better--even stimulated.", "The anthropologist Ashley Montagu, whose Anatomy of Swearing , published in 1967, is the definitive modern take on the subject, saw profanity as a safety valve rather than a stimulant, a verbal substitute for physical aggression. When someone swears, Montagu wrote, \"potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous.\" \n\n One could point out, in arguing against the safety-valve theory, that as America has grown more profane in the past 30 years, it has also grown more violent, not less. But this is too simple. It isn't just the supply of dirty words that matters, it's their emotive power. If they have lost that power through overuse, it's perfectly plausible to say that their capacity to deter aggressive behavior has weakened as well. \n\n But there is something else important to say about swearing--that it represents the invocation of those ideas a society considers powerful, awesome, and a little scary.", "Swearing isn't the only public act that Western civilization condones today but didn't 30 years ago. But it is one of the most interesting. It is everywhere, impossible to avoid or tune out. \n\n \n\n \n\n I am sitting in a meeting at the office, talking with a colleague about a business circumstance that may possibly go against us. \"In that case, we're [expletive] ,\" he says. Five years ago, he would have said \"screwed.\" Twenty years ago, he would have said, \"We're in big trouble.\" Societal tolerance of profanity requires us to increase our dosage as time goes on.", "Nor do we believe in sex any more the way most American children and millions of adults believed in it a generation ago: as an act of profound mystery and importance that one did not engage in, or discuss, or even invoke, without a certain amount of excitement and risk. We have trivialized and routinized sex to the point where it just doesn't carry the emotional freight it carried in the schoolyards and bedrooms of the 1950s. \n\n Many enlightened people consider this to be a great improvement over a society in which sex generated not only emotion and power, but fear. For the moment, I wish to insist only on this one point: When sexuality loses its power to awe, it loses its power to create genuine swearing. When we convert it into a casual form of recreation, we shouldn't be surprised to hear linebackers using the word \"[expletive]\" on national television.", "What do we do about it? Well, we could pass a law against swearing. Mussolini actually did that. He decreed that trains and buses, in addition to running on time, had to carry signs that read \"Non bestemmiare per l'onore d'Italia.\" (\"Do not swear for the honor of Italy.\") The commuters of Rome reacted to those signs exactly as you would expect: They cursed them. \n\n What Mussolini could not do, I am reasonably sure that American governments of the 1990s cannot do, nor would I wish it. I merely predict that sometime in the coming generation, profanity will return in a meaningful way. It served too many purposes for too many years of American life to disappear on a permanent basis. We need it.", "In that culture, the word \"[expletive]\" was not only obscene, it was profane, in the original sense: It took an important idea in vain. Profanity can be an act of religious defiance, but it doesn't have to be. The Greeks tempted fate by invoking the names of their superiors on Mount Olympus; they also swore upon everyday objects whose properties they respected but did not fully understand. \"By the Cabbage!\" Socrates is supposed to have said in moments of stress, and that was for good reason. He believed that cabbage cured hangovers, and as such, carried sufficient power and mystery to invest any moment with the requisite emotional charge. \n\n These days, none of us believes in cabbage in the way Socrates did, or in the gods in the way most Athenians did. Most Americans tell poll-takers that they believe in God, but few of them in a way that would make it impossible to take His name in vain: That requires an Old Testament piety that disappeared from American middle-class life a long time ago.", "To profane something, in other words, one must believe in it. The cheapening of profanity in modern America represents, more than anything else, the crumbling of belief. There are very few ideas left at this point that are awesome or frightening enough for us to enforce a taboo against them. \n\n The instinctive response of most educated people to the disappearance of any taboo is to applaud it, but this is wrong. Healthy societies need a decent supply of verbal taboos and prohibitions, if only as yardsticks by which ordinary people can measure and define themselves. By violating these taboos over and over, some succeed in defining themselves as rebels. Others violate them on special occasions to derive an emotional release. Forbidden language is one of the ways we remind children that there are rules to everyday life, and consequences for breaking them. When we forget this principle, or cease to accept it, it is not just our language that begins to fray at the edges.", "I'm not sure there is an easy way to convey to anybody under 30, for example, the sheer emotive force that the word \"[expletive]\" possessed in the urban childhood culture of 40 years ago. It was the verbal link to a secret act none of us understood but that was known to carry enormous consequences in the adult world. It was the embodiment of both pleasure and danger. It was not a word or an idea to mess with. When it was used, it was used, as Ashley Montagu said, \"sotto voce , like a smuggler cautiously making his way across a forbidden frontier.\"", "I am walking along a suburban street, trailing a class of pre-schoolers who are linked to each other by a rope. A pair of teen-agers passes us in the other direction. By the time they have reached the end of the line of children, they have tossed off a whole catalog of obscenities I did not even hear until I was well into adolescence, let alone use in casual conversation on a public street. \n\n \n\n I am talking to a distinguished professor of public policy about a foundation grant. I tell her something she wasn't aware of before. In 1965, the appropriate response was \"no kidding.\" In 1996, you do not say \"no kidding.\" It is limp and ineffectual. If you are surprised at all, you say what she says: \"No shit.\"", "Maledict\noratory\nThe high costs of low language. \n\n Sunday, Jan. 14, 1996: A day that will live in--well, not infamy, exactly. Blasphemy would be closer to it. \n\n Early that afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win the American Football Conference championship. Linebacker Greg Lloyd, accepting the trophy in front of a national television audience, responded with enthusiasm. \"Let's see if we can bring this damn thing back here next year,\" he said, \"along with the [expletive] Super Bowl.\" \n\n A few hours later, Michael Irvin of the Dallas Cowboys offered this spirited defense of his coach on TV after his team won the National Football Conference title: \"Nobody deserves it more than Barry Switzer. He took all of this [expletive] .\"", "What word is taboo in middle-class America in 1996? There are a couple of credible candidates: The four-letter word for \"vagina\" remains off-limits in polite conversation (although that has more to do with feminism than with profanity), and the slang expression for those who engage in oral sex with males is not yet acceptable by the standards of office-meeting etiquette. \n\n But aside from a few exceptions, the supply of genuinely offensive language has dwindled almost to nothing as the 20th century comes to an end; the currency of swearing has been inflated to the brink of worthlessness. When almost anything can be said in public, profanity ceases to exist in any meaningful way at all.", "And so I am reasonably sure that when my children have children, there will once again be words so awesome that they cannot be uttered without important consequences. This will not only represent a new stage of linguistic evolution, it will be a token of moral revival. What the dirty words will be, God only knows.", "Iwatched those episodes, and, incongruous as it may sound, I thought of Kenneth Tynan. Britain's great postwar drama critic was no fan of American football, but he was a fan of swearing. Thirty years earlier, almost to the week, Tynan was interviewed on BBC television in his capacity as literary director of Britain's National Theater and asked if he would allow the theater to present a play in which sex took place on stage. \"Certainly,\" he replied. \"I think there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word '[expletive]' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.\"", "It turned out there were a few more than Tynan thought. Within 24 hours, resolutions had been introduced in the House of Commons calling for his prosecution on charges of obscenity, for his removal as a theater official, and for censure of the network for allowing an obscene word to go out on the airwaves. Tynan escaped punishment, but he acquired a public reputation for tastelessness that he carried for the rest his life. To much of ordinary Britain, he became the man who had said \"[expletive]\" on the BBC. \n\n Neither Greg Lloyd nor Michael Irvin was so stigmatized. \"It's live television,\" NBC Vice President Ed Markey said, rationalizing the outbursts. \"It's an emotional moment. These things happen.\" Irvin wasn't about to let that stand. \"I knew exactly what I was saying,\" he insisted later. \"Those of you who can't believe I said it--believe it.\"" ] ]
train	20038	[ "Who is the most hated celebrity of 1999?", "What was the best movie of 1999?", "Who died in 1999?", "What does Charrerbox think is the most important thing that happened in 1999?", "Where does Chatterbox think world policing was effective?", "What does the Dalai Lama think is the most important thing in the world?", "What caused increased attention to the Women's World Cup in Soccer?", "What did Kurt Schmoke try to do in 1988?", "Who was the most shameless in 1999?" ]	[ [ "Larry Flynt", "Donald Trump", "Bob Livingston", "Linda Tripp" ], [ "All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go", "The Red Violin", "There's Something About Mary", "The Road Not Taken" ], [ "Jim Landau", "Mel Torme", "Susan Hoechstetter", "Thomas Harris" ], [ "The Senate endorsed nuclear proliferation.", "More than half of US homes had a personal computer.", "Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy.", "A sitting president was accused of rape." ], [ "Haiti", "Kosovo", "Bosnia", "Rwanda" ], [ "Happiness", "Impermanence", "Mindfulness", "Meditation" ], [ "Sports bras", "Cheating", "Trans players", "Steroid use" ], [ "He tried to get elected as governor of Texas.", "He tried to impeach Clinton.", "He tried to win the Stanley Cup.", "He tried to end drug prohibition." ], [ "Stanley Kubrick", "Arlen Specter", "JFK Jr.", "Bill Clinton" ] ]	[ 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 4, 2 ]	[ 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them. \n\n ( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. ) \n\n Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: \n\n 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever?", "15. Annals of Justice in 1999 \n\n \n\n Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense . \n\n -- anonymous tipster \n\n \n\n 16. Get Me a New Century, Quick \n\n \n\n A sitting president was accused of rape. \n\n --Ananda Gupta \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Yes, but the evidence was shaky--something the Wall Street Journal 's editorial page, which broke the story, was not very forthcoming about. As Jack Shafer wrote in this column, Ronald Reagan, after he left office, was also accused of having once committed rape. The evidence there was shaky, too. \n\n 17. The Most Important Thing of All That Happened in 1999", "Eleven-Twelfths of 1999 In Review \n\n When Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official \"1999 In Review\" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Nothing ever happens in December.", "What an extraordinary year! A right-wing conspiracy topples the president, and the governor of Texas reveals himself in a series of debates to be a natural leader with an innate gift for connecting with his audience, a sure sign of his electoral success next year. A new Thomas Harris book brilliantly takes us deeper into the mind of a serial killer; a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment; a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage; a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history. \n\n --Mike Gebert \n\n \n\n 7 . Children Behaving Badly in 1999", "Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful! \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox hasn't seen it.] \n\n 4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 : \n\n \n\n Sen. Arlen Specter, citing Scottish law, finds Clinton \"not proven\" on the impeachment charges. \n\n --Andrew Solovay \n\n \n\n 5. Rest in Peace in 1999: \n\n \n\n Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources) \n\n John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources)", "The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with \"amazing results\"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time. \n\n -- Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent \n\n Slate contributor)", "2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because \"you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons,\" but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can! \n\n --Jim Chapin \n\n \n\n 3. Worst/Best Films of 1999", "The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant \"story of the year.\" However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context. \n\n 1999 represented the team's 25th championship of the century. This beats, by one, the most championships any one team won during the century. The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups. However, the Yankees, an American team, playing in the \"City of the Century\" (so called by me to reflect the amazing growth and transformation of one city during this period), who play the \"National Pastime,\" are truly an amazing story.", "In 1999, more than half of U.S. homes had a PC, for the first time (i.e., home-PC penetration passed 50 percent). Of course, most of these PCs crashed all the time, but it's still a significant development. By the way, Internet hookups in homes are still well below 50 percent. \n\n --Walt Mossberg, \"Personal Technology\" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column) \n\n \n\n 18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999 \n\n \n\n General Pinochet \n\n --Jodie Maurer \n\n \n\n 19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999", "OK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person \"rather annoying and less than professional\") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as \"Today's Papers\" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it.", "The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature \"a name.\" This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm. \n\n \n\n --Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx) \n\n 9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999", "11. The Athletic Bra Seen 'Round the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n Public interest and media attention to the women's World Cup in soccer. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 12. Another Overlooked Foreign-Policy Event in 1999 \n\n \n\n Presidential primary elections for the first time ever in Mexico. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 13. Policing the World Is Shown To Work in 1999", "Here's my nominee for worst movie of the year (complete category should be: \"Worst Movie of the Year That Assumedly Adult Male Reviewers Slathered Over\"): There's Something About Mary --a pathetically sophomoric, penis-obsessed mess that wouldn't even appeal to Larry Flynt! \n\n -- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal. \n\n \n\n Chatterbox replies: \n\n \n\n You've got the wrong year. That was 1998 . \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about \"the franks or the beans.\"] \n\n Felicia replies:", "I nominate as the most under-reported story of the year (and the last few years) the continuing alarmist predictions by foreign-policy and military experts about peacekeeping efforts, which are then proved wrong and immediately forgotten. This year, the obvious one is Kosovo, but the year is also ending with East Timor, where the Aussies and their allies successfully stopped the slaughter with no casualties. \n\n These followed Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda as places where the West delayed sending in troops because of alarmist predictions. \n\n --Jerry Skurnik \n\n \n\n 14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good \n\n \n\n Don't forget, Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy . \n\n --anonymous tipster", "Don't forget Woodstock 1999 --the concert of \"peace and love\" that ended in a literal blaze of glory when in an hours-long tribute to the original Woodstock, the mob started ripping down vendor booths and anything else that would burn and piling it onto the bonfires scattered about the scene. [ Chatterbox interjects: Didn't people get assaulted and raped, too?] I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it. \n\n You also left out all the shooting rampages . Several were done in the name of God or love supposedly. They were all committed by \"quiet, shy\" people who \"mostly kept to\" themselves. I've started to hang around only loud, obnoxious people. \n\n --Susan Hoechstetter \n\n \n\n 8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees", "Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters; Natalie Portman by Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm Ltd./Reuters; New York Yankees players by Gary Hershorn/Reuters; KLA member by Hazir Reka/Reuters.", "New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson came out for ending drug prohibition. Though this by itself has no immediate effect, it makes it respectable, for the first time, for political leaders to discuss the subject, and thereby brings closer the day when the vast majority of crimes will no longer be committed, when billions of dollars will be freed to help the inner city instead of to ruin black people's lives, and when we will stop, as in Samuel Butler's Erewhon , imprisoning people for the crime of being sick. \n\n --Henry Cohen \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Didn't Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke do the same thing 11 years ago? \n\n 10. Don't Worry in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy. \n\n --Margaret Taylor", "Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster; Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough) \n\n Mel Torme (Steve Reiness) \n\n Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles) \n\n \n\n 6. 1999: The Road Not Taken", "The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late. \n\n --Josh Pollack \n\n \n\n 20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least. \n\n --Samir Raiyani", "The team's first championship occurred in 1921; therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play." ], [ "2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because \"you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons,\" but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can! \n\n --Jim Chapin \n\n \n\n 3. Worst/Best Films of 1999", "Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful! \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox hasn't seen it.] \n\n 4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 : \n\n \n\n Sen. Arlen Specter, citing Scottish law, finds Clinton \"not proven\" on the impeachment charges. \n\n --Andrew Solovay \n\n \n\n 5. Rest in Peace in 1999: \n\n \n\n Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources) \n\n John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources)", "Eleven-Twelfths of 1999 In Review \n\n When Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official \"1999 In Review\" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Nothing ever happens in December.", "What an extraordinary year! A right-wing conspiracy topples the president, and the governor of Texas reveals himself in a series of debates to be a natural leader with an innate gift for connecting with his audience, a sure sign of his electoral success next year. A new Thomas Harris book brilliantly takes us deeper into the mind of a serial killer; a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment; a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage; a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history. \n\n --Mike Gebert \n\n \n\n 7 . Children Behaving Badly in 1999", "By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them. \n\n ( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. ) \n\n Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: \n\n 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever?", "Here's my nominee for worst movie of the year (complete category should be: \"Worst Movie of the Year That Assumedly Adult Male Reviewers Slathered Over\"): There's Something About Mary --a pathetically sophomoric, penis-obsessed mess that wouldn't even appeal to Larry Flynt! \n\n -- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal. \n\n \n\n Chatterbox replies: \n\n \n\n You've got the wrong year. That was 1998 . \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about \"the franks or the beans.\"] \n\n Felicia replies:", "15. Annals of Justice in 1999 \n\n \n\n Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense . \n\n -- anonymous tipster \n\n \n\n 16. Get Me a New Century, Quick \n\n \n\n A sitting president was accused of rape. \n\n --Ananda Gupta \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Yes, but the evidence was shaky--something the Wall Street Journal 's editorial page, which broke the story, was not very forthcoming about. As Jack Shafer wrote in this column, Ronald Reagan, after he left office, was also accused of having once committed rape. The evidence there was shaky, too. \n\n 17. The Most Important Thing of All That Happened in 1999", "The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant \"story of the year.\" However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context. \n\n 1999 represented the team's 25th championship of the century. This beats, by one, the most championships any one team won during the century. The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups. However, the Yankees, an American team, playing in the \"City of the Century\" (so called by me to reflect the amazing growth and transformation of one city during this period), who play the \"National Pastime,\" are truly an amazing story.", "11. The Athletic Bra Seen 'Round the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n Public interest and media attention to the women's World Cup in soccer. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 12. Another Overlooked Foreign-Policy Event in 1999 \n\n \n\n Presidential primary elections for the first time ever in Mexico. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 13. Policing the World Is Shown To Work in 1999", "In 1999, more than half of U.S. homes had a PC, for the first time (i.e., home-PC penetration passed 50 percent). Of course, most of these PCs crashed all the time, but it's still a significant development. By the way, Internet hookups in homes are still well below 50 percent. \n\n --Walt Mossberg, \"Personal Technology\" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column) \n\n \n\n 18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999 \n\n \n\n General Pinochet \n\n --Jodie Maurer \n\n \n\n 19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999", "OK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person \"rather annoying and less than professional\") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as \"Today's Papers\" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it.", "The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature \"a name.\" This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm. \n\n \n\n --Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx) \n\n 9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999", "I nominate as the most under-reported story of the year (and the last few years) the continuing alarmist predictions by foreign-policy and military experts about peacekeeping efforts, which are then proved wrong and immediately forgotten. This year, the obvious one is Kosovo, but the year is also ending with East Timor, where the Aussies and their allies successfully stopped the slaughter with no casualties. \n\n These followed Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda as places where the West delayed sending in troops because of alarmist predictions. \n\n --Jerry Skurnik \n\n \n\n 14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good \n\n \n\n Don't forget, Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy . \n\n --anonymous tipster", "New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson came out for ending drug prohibition. Though this by itself has no immediate effect, it makes it respectable, for the first time, for political leaders to discuss the subject, and thereby brings closer the day when the vast majority of crimes will no longer be committed, when billions of dollars will be freed to help the inner city instead of to ruin black people's lives, and when we will stop, as in Samuel Butler's Erewhon , imprisoning people for the crime of being sick. \n\n --Henry Cohen \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Didn't Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke do the same thing 11 years ago? \n\n 10. Don't Worry in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy. \n\n --Margaret Taylor", "Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster; Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough) \n\n Mel Torme (Steve Reiness) \n\n Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles) \n\n \n\n 6. 1999: The Road Not Taken", "Don't forget Woodstock 1999 --the concert of \"peace and love\" that ended in a literal blaze of glory when in an hours-long tribute to the original Woodstock, the mob started ripping down vendor booths and anything else that would burn and piling it onto the bonfires scattered about the scene. [ Chatterbox interjects: Didn't people get assaulted and raped, too?] I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it. \n\n You also left out all the shooting rampages . Several were done in the name of God or love supposedly. They were all committed by \"quiet, shy\" people who \"mostly kept to\" themselves. I've started to hang around only loud, obnoxious people. \n\n --Susan Hoechstetter \n\n \n\n 8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees", "The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late. \n\n --Josh Pollack \n\n \n\n 20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least. \n\n --Samir Raiyani", "The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with \"amazing results\"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time. \n\n -- Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent \n\n Slate contributor)", "Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters; Natalie Portman by Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm Ltd./Reuters; New York Yankees players by Gary Hershorn/Reuters; KLA member by Hazir Reka/Reuters.", "The team's first championship occurred in 1921; therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play." ], [ "Eleven-Twelfths of 1999 In Review \n\n When Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official \"1999 In Review\" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Nothing ever happens in December.", "Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful! \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox hasn't seen it.] \n\n 4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 : \n\n \n\n Sen. Arlen Specter, citing Scottish law, finds Clinton \"not proven\" on the impeachment charges. \n\n --Andrew Solovay \n\n \n\n 5. Rest in Peace in 1999: \n\n \n\n Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources) \n\n John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources)", "By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them. \n\n ( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. ) \n\n Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: \n\n 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever?", "15. Annals of Justice in 1999 \n\n \n\n Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense . \n\n -- anonymous tipster \n\n \n\n 16. Get Me a New Century, Quick \n\n \n\n A sitting president was accused of rape. \n\n --Ananda Gupta \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Yes, but the evidence was shaky--something the Wall Street Journal 's editorial page, which broke the story, was not very forthcoming about. As Jack Shafer wrote in this column, Ronald Reagan, after he left office, was also accused of having once committed rape. The evidence there was shaky, too. \n\n 17. The Most Important Thing of All That Happened in 1999", "In 1999, more than half of U.S. homes had a PC, for the first time (i.e., home-PC penetration passed 50 percent). Of course, most of these PCs crashed all the time, but it's still a significant development. By the way, Internet hookups in homes are still well below 50 percent. \n\n --Walt Mossberg, \"Personal Technology\" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column) \n\n \n\n 18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999 \n\n \n\n General Pinochet \n\n --Jodie Maurer \n\n \n\n 19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999", "What an extraordinary year! A right-wing conspiracy topples the president, and the governor of Texas reveals himself in a series of debates to be a natural leader with an innate gift for connecting with his audience, a sure sign of his electoral success next year. A new Thomas Harris book brilliantly takes us deeper into the mind of a serial killer; a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment; a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage; a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history. \n\n --Mike Gebert \n\n \n\n 7 . Children Behaving Badly in 1999", "2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because \"you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons,\" but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can! \n\n --Jim Chapin \n\n \n\n 3. Worst/Best Films of 1999", "The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant \"story of the year.\" However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context. \n\n 1999 represented the team's 25th championship of the century. This beats, by one, the most championships any one team won during the century. The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups. However, the Yankees, an American team, playing in the \"City of the Century\" (so called by me to reflect the amazing growth and transformation of one city during this period), who play the \"National Pastime,\" are truly an amazing story.", "OK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person \"rather annoying and less than professional\") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as \"Today's Papers\" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it.", "New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson came out for ending drug prohibition. Though this by itself has no immediate effect, it makes it respectable, for the first time, for political leaders to discuss the subject, and thereby brings closer the day when the vast majority of crimes will no longer be committed, when billions of dollars will be freed to help the inner city instead of to ruin black people's lives, and when we will stop, as in Samuel Butler's Erewhon , imprisoning people for the crime of being sick. \n\n --Henry Cohen \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Didn't Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke do the same thing 11 years ago? \n\n 10. Don't Worry in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy. \n\n --Margaret Taylor", "Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster; Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough) \n\n Mel Torme (Steve Reiness) \n\n Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles) \n\n \n\n 6. 1999: The Road Not Taken", "The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature \"a name.\" This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm. \n\n \n\n --Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx) \n\n 9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999", "11. The Athletic Bra Seen 'Round the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n Public interest and media attention to the women's World Cup in soccer. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 12. Another Overlooked Foreign-Policy Event in 1999 \n\n \n\n Presidential primary elections for the first time ever in Mexico. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 13. Policing the World Is Shown To Work in 1999", "The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late. \n\n --Josh Pollack \n\n \n\n 20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least. \n\n --Samir Raiyani", "The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with \"amazing results\"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time. \n\n -- Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent \n\n Slate contributor)", "Don't forget Woodstock 1999 --the concert of \"peace and love\" that ended in a literal blaze of glory when in an hours-long tribute to the original Woodstock, the mob started ripping down vendor booths and anything else that would burn and piling it onto the bonfires scattered about the scene. [ Chatterbox interjects: Didn't people get assaulted and raped, too?] I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it. \n\n You also left out all the shooting rampages . Several were done in the name of God or love supposedly. They were all committed by \"quiet, shy\" people who \"mostly kept to\" themselves. I've started to hang around only loud, obnoxious people. \n\n --Susan Hoechstetter \n\n \n\n 8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees", "Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters; Natalie Portman by Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm Ltd./Reuters; New York Yankees players by Gary Hershorn/Reuters; KLA member by Hazir Reka/Reuters.", "I nominate as the most under-reported story of the year (and the last few years) the continuing alarmist predictions by foreign-policy and military experts about peacekeeping efforts, which are then proved wrong and immediately forgotten. This year, the obvious one is Kosovo, but the year is also ending with East Timor, where the Aussies and their allies successfully stopped the slaughter with no casualties. \n\n These followed Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda as places where the West delayed sending in troops because of alarmist predictions. \n\n --Jerry Skurnik \n\n \n\n 14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good \n\n \n\n Don't forget, Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy . \n\n --anonymous tipster", "The team's first championship occurred in 1921; therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play.", "Here's my nominee for worst movie of the year (complete category should be: \"Worst Movie of the Year That Assumedly Adult Male Reviewers Slathered Over\"): There's Something About Mary --a pathetically sophomoric, penis-obsessed mess that wouldn't even appeal to Larry Flynt! \n\n -- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal. \n\n \n\n Chatterbox replies: \n\n \n\n You've got the wrong year. That was 1998 . \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about \"the franks or the beans.\"] \n\n Felicia replies:" ], [ "15. Annals of Justice in 1999 \n\n \n\n Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense . \n\n -- anonymous tipster \n\n \n\n 16. Get Me a New Century, Quick \n\n \n\n A sitting president was accused of rape. \n\n --Ananda Gupta \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Yes, but the evidence was shaky--something the Wall Street Journal 's editorial page, which broke the story, was not very forthcoming about. As Jack Shafer wrote in this column, Ronald Reagan, after he left office, was also accused of having once committed rape. The evidence there was shaky, too. \n\n 17. The Most Important Thing of All That Happened in 1999", "Eleven-Twelfths of 1999 In Review \n\n When Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official \"1999 In Review\" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Nothing ever happens in December.", "By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them. \n\n ( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. ) \n\n Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: \n\n 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever?", "OK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person \"rather annoying and less than professional\") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as \"Today's Papers\" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it.", "Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful! \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox hasn't seen it.] \n\n 4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 : \n\n \n\n Sen. Arlen Specter, citing Scottish law, finds Clinton \"not proven\" on the impeachment charges. \n\n --Andrew Solovay \n\n \n\n 5. Rest in Peace in 1999: \n\n \n\n Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources) \n\n John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources)", "The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant \"story of the year.\" However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context. \n\n 1999 represented the team's 25th championship of the century. This beats, by one, the most championships any one team won during the century. The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups. However, the Yankees, an American team, playing in the \"City of the Century\" (so called by me to reflect the amazing growth and transformation of one city during this period), who play the \"National Pastime,\" are truly an amazing story.", "11. The Athletic Bra Seen 'Round the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n Public interest and media attention to the women's World Cup in soccer. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 12. Another Overlooked Foreign-Policy Event in 1999 \n\n \n\n Presidential primary elections for the first time ever in Mexico. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 13. Policing the World Is Shown To Work in 1999", "In 1999, more than half of U.S. homes had a PC, for the first time (i.e., home-PC penetration passed 50 percent). Of course, most of these PCs crashed all the time, but it's still a significant development. By the way, Internet hookups in homes are still well below 50 percent. \n\n --Walt Mossberg, \"Personal Technology\" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column) \n\n \n\n 18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999 \n\n \n\n General Pinochet \n\n --Jodie Maurer \n\n \n\n 19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999", "New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson came out for ending drug prohibition. Though this by itself has no immediate effect, it makes it respectable, for the first time, for political leaders to discuss the subject, and thereby brings closer the day when the vast majority of crimes will no longer be committed, when billions of dollars will be freed to help the inner city instead of to ruin black people's lives, and when we will stop, as in Samuel Butler's Erewhon , imprisoning people for the crime of being sick. \n\n --Henry Cohen \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Didn't Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke do the same thing 11 years ago? \n\n 10. Don't Worry in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy. \n\n --Margaret Taylor", "What an extraordinary year! A right-wing conspiracy topples the president, and the governor of Texas reveals himself in a series of debates to be a natural leader with an innate gift for connecting with his audience, a sure sign of his electoral success next year. A new Thomas Harris book brilliantly takes us deeper into the mind of a serial killer; a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment; a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage; a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history. \n\n --Mike Gebert \n\n \n\n 7 . Children Behaving Badly in 1999", "2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because \"you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons,\" but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can! \n\n --Jim Chapin \n\n \n\n 3. Worst/Best Films of 1999", "The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature \"a name.\" This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm. \n\n \n\n --Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx) \n\n 9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999", "I nominate as the most under-reported story of the year (and the last few years) the continuing alarmist predictions by foreign-policy and military experts about peacekeeping efforts, which are then proved wrong and immediately forgotten. This year, the obvious one is Kosovo, but the year is also ending with East Timor, where the Aussies and their allies successfully stopped the slaughter with no casualties. \n\n These followed Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda as places where the West delayed sending in troops because of alarmist predictions. \n\n --Jerry Skurnik \n\n \n\n 14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good \n\n \n\n Don't forget, Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy . \n\n --anonymous tipster", "The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late. \n\n --Josh Pollack \n\n \n\n 20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least. \n\n --Samir Raiyani", "Don't forget Woodstock 1999 --the concert of \"peace and love\" that ended in a literal blaze of glory when in an hours-long tribute to the original Woodstock, the mob started ripping down vendor booths and anything else that would burn and piling it onto the bonfires scattered about the scene. [ Chatterbox interjects: Didn't people get assaulted and raped, too?] I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it. \n\n You also left out all the shooting rampages . Several were done in the name of God or love supposedly. They were all committed by \"quiet, shy\" people who \"mostly kept to\" themselves. I've started to hang around only loud, obnoxious people. \n\n --Susan Hoechstetter \n\n \n\n 8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees", "Here's my nominee for worst movie of the year (complete category should be: \"Worst Movie of the Year That Assumedly Adult Male Reviewers Slathered Over\"): There's Something About Mary --a pathetically sophomoric, penis-obsessed mess that wouldn't even appeal to Larry Flynt! \n\n -- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal. \n\n \n\n Chatterbox replies: \n\n \n\n You've got the wrong year. That was 1998 . \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about \"the franks or the beans.\"] \n\n Felicia replies:", "The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with \"amazing results\"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time. \n\n -- Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent \n\n Slate contributor)", "The team's first championship occurred in 1921; therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play.", "Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster; Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough) \n\n Mel Torme (Steve Reiness) \n\n Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles) \n\n \n\n 6. 1999: The Road Not Taken", "Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters; Natalie Portman by Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm Ltd./Reuters; New York Yankees players by Gary Hershorn/Reuters; KLA member by Hazir Reka/Reuters." ], [ "New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson came out for ending drug prohibition. Though this by itself has no immediate effect, it makes it respectable, for the first time, for political leaders to discuss the subject, and thereby brings closer the day when the vast majority of crimes will no longer be committed, when billions of dollars will be freed to help the inner city instead of to ruin black people's lives, and when we will stop, as in Samuel Butler's Erewhon , imprisoning people for the crime of being sick. \n\n --Henry Cohen \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Didn't Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke do the same thing 11 years ago? \n\n 10. Don't Worry in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy. \n\n --Margaret Taylor", "11. The Athletic Bra Seen 'Round the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n Public interest and media attention to the women's World Cup in soccer. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 12. Another Overlooked Foreign-Policy Event in 1999 \n\n \n\n Presidential primary elections for the first time ever in Mexico. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 13. Policing the World Is Shown To Work in 1999", "OK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person \"rather annoying and less than professional\") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as \"Today's Papers\" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it.", "By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them. \n\n ( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. ) \n\n Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: \n\n 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever?", "Eleven-Twelfths of 1999 In Review \n\n When Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official \"1999 In Review\" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Nothing ever happens in December.", "Don't forget Woodstock 1999 --the concert of \"peace and love\" that ended in a literal blaze of glory when in an hours-long tribute to the original Woodstock, the mob started ripping down vendor booths and anything else that would burn and piling it onto the bonfires scattered about the scene. [ Chatterbox interjects: Didn't people get assaulted and raped, too?] I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it. \n\n You also left out all the shooting rampages . Several were done in the name of God or love supposedly. They were all committed by \"quiet, shy\" people who \"mostly kept to\" themselves. I've started to hang around only loud, obnoxious people. \n\n --Susan Hoechstetter \n\n \n\n 8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees", "15. Annals of Justice in 1999 \n\n \n\n Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense . \n\n -- anonymous tipster \n\n \n\n 16. Get Me a New Century, Quick \n\n \n\n A sitting president was accused of rape. \n\n --Ananda Gupta \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Yes, but the evidence was shaky--something the Wall Street Journal 's editorial page, which broke the story, was not very forthcoming about. As Jack Shafer wrote in this column, Ronald Reagan, after he left office, was also accused of having once committed rape. The evidence there was shaky, too. \n\n 17. The Most Important Thing of All That Happened in 1999", "The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant \"story of the year.\" However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context. \n\n 1999 represented the team's 25th championship of the century. This beats, by one, the most championships any one team won during the century. The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups. However, the Yankees, an American team, playing in the \"City of the Century\" (so called by me to reflect the amazing growth and transformation of one city during this period), who play the \"National Pastime,\" are truly an amazing story.", "In 1999, more than half of U.S. homes had a PC, for the first time (i.e., home-PC penetration passed 50 percent). Of course, most of these PCs crashed all the time, but it's still a significant development. By the way, Internet hookups in homes are still well below 50 percent. \n\n --Walt Mossberg, \"Personal Technology\" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column) \n\n \n\n 18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999 \n\n \n\n General Pinochet \n\n --Jodie Maurer \n\n \n\n 19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999", "2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because \"you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons,\" but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can! \n\n --Jim Chapin \n\n \n\n 3. Worst/Best Films of 1999", "The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with \"amazing results\"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time. \n\n -- Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent \n\n Slate contributor)", "I nominate as the most under-reported story of the year (and the last few years) the continuing alarmist predictions by foreign-policy and military experts about peacekeeping efforts, which are then proved wrong and immediately forgotten. This year, the obvious one is Kosovo, but the year is also ending with East Timor, where the Aussies and their allies successfully stopped the slaughter with no casualties. \n\n These followed Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda as places where the West delayed sending in troops because of alarmist predictions. \n\n --Jerry Skurnik \n\n \n\n 14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good \n\n \n\n Don't forget, Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy . \n\n --anonymous tipster", "Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful! \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox hasn't seen it.] \n\n 4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 : \n\n \n\n Sen. Arlen Specter, citing Scottish law, finds Clinton \"not proven\" on the impeachment charges. \n\n --Andrew Solovay \n\n \n\n 5. Rest in Peace in 1999: \n\n \n\n Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources) \n\n John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources)", "The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late. \n\n --Josh Pollack \n\n \n\n 20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least. \n\n --Samir Raiyani", "The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature \"a name.\" This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm. \n\n \n\n --Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx) \n\n 9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999", "Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster; Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough) \n\n Mel Torme (Steve Reiness) \n\n Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles) \n\n \n\n 6. 1999: The Road Not Taken", "What an extraordinary year! A right-wing conspiracy topples the president, and the governor of Texas reveals himself in a series of debates to be a natural leader with an innate gift for connecting with his audience, a sure sign of his electoral success next year. A new Thomas Harris book brilliantly takes us deeper into the mind of a serial killer; a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment; a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage; a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history. \n\n --Mike Gebert \n\n \n\n 7 . Children Behaving Badly in 1999", "Here's my nominee for worst movie of the year (complete category should be: \"Worst Movie of the Year That Assumedly Adult Male Reviewers Slathered Over\"): There's Something About Mary --a pathetically sophomoric, penis-obsessed mess that wouldn't even appeal to Larry Flynt! \n\n -- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal. \n\n \n\n Chatterbox replies: \n\n \n\n You've got the wrong year. That was 1998 . \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about \"the franks or the beans.\"] \n\n Felicia replies:", "Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters; Natalie Portman by Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm Ltd./Reuters; New York Yankees players by Gary Hershorn/Reuters; KLA member by Hazir Reka/Reuters.", "The team's first championship occurred in 1921; therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play." ], [ "New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson came out for ending drug prohibition. Though this by itself has no immediate effect, it makes it respectable, for the first time, for political leaders to discuss the subject, and thereby brings closer the day when the vast majority of crimes will no longer be committed, when billions of dollars will be freed to help the inner city instead of to ruin black people's lives, and when we will stop, as in Samuel Butler's Erewhon , imprisoning people for the crime of being sick. \n\n --Henry Cohen \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Didn't Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke do the same thing 11 years ago? \n\n 10. Don't Worry in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy. \n\n --Margaret Taylor", "2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because \"you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons,\" but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can! \n\n --Jim Chapin \n\n \n\n 3. Worst/Best Films of 1999", "Don't forget Woodstock 1999 --the concert of \"peace and love\" that ended in a literal blaze of glory when in an hours-long tribute to the original Woodstock, the mob started ripping down vendor booths and anything else that would burn and piling it onto the bonfires scattered about the scene. [ Chatterbox interjects: Didn't people get assaulted and raped, too?] I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it. \n\n You also left out all the shooting rampages . Several were done in the name of God or love supposedly. They were all committed by \"quiet, shy\" people who \"mostly kept to\" themselves. I've started to hang around only loud, obnoxious people. \n\n --Susan Hoechstetter \n\n \n\n 8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees", "By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them. \n\n ( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. ) \n\n Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: \n\n 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever?", "OK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person \"rather annoying and less than professional\") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as \"Today's Papers\" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it.", "11. The Athletic Bra Seen 'Round the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n Public interest and media attention to the women's World Cup in soccer. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 12. Another Overlooked Foreign-Policy Event in 1999 \n\n \n\n Presidential primary elections for the first time ever in Mexico. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 13. Policing the World Is Shown To Work in 1999", "15. Annals of Justice in 1999 \n\n \n\n Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense . \n\n -- anonymous tipster \n\n \n\n 16. Get Me a New Century, Quick \n\n \n\n A sitting president was accused of rape. \n\n --Ananda Gupta \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Yes, but the evidence was shaky--something the Wall Street Journal 's editorial page, which broke the story, was not very forthcoming about. As Jack Shafer wrote in this column, Ronald Reagan, after he left office, was also accused of having once committed rape. The evidence there was shaky, too. \n\n 17. The Most Important Thing of All That Happened in 1999", "Eleven-Twelfths of 1999 In Review \n\n When Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official \"1999 In Review\" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Nothing ever happens in December.", "I nominate as the most under-reported story of the year (and the last few years) the continuing alarmist predictions by foreign-policy and military experts about peacekeeping efforts, which are then proved wrong and immediately forgotten. This year, the obvious one is Kosovo, but the year is also ending with East Timor, where the Aussies and their allies successfully stopped the slaughter with no casualties. \n\n These followed Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda as places where the West delayed sending in troops because of alarmist predictions. \n\n --Jerry Skurnik \n\n \n\n 14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good \n\n \n\n Don't forget, Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy . \n\n --anonymous tipster", "The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant \"story of the year.\" However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context. \n\n 1999 represented the team's 25th championship of the century. This beats, by one, the most championships any one team won during the century. The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups. However, the Yankees, an American team, playing in the \"City of the Century\" (so called by me to reflect the amazing growth and transformation of one city during this period), who play the \"National Pastime,\" are truly an amazing story.", "The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late. \n\n --Josh Pollack \n\n \n\n 20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least. \n\n --Samir Raiyani", "Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful! \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox hasn't seen it.] \n\n 4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 : \n\n \n\n Sen. Arlen Specter, citing Scottish law, finds Clinton \"not proven\" on the impeachment charges. \n\n --Andrew Solovay \n\n \n\n 5. Rest in Peace in 1999: \n\n \n\n Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources) \n\n John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources)", "In 1999, more than half of U.S. homes had a PC, for the first time (i.e., home-PC penetration passed 50 percent). Of course, most of these PCs crashed all the time, but it's still a significant development. By the way, Internet hookups in homes are still well below 50 percent. \n\n --Walt Mossberg, \"Personal Technology\" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column) \n\n \n\n 18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999 \n\n \n\n General Pinochet \n\n --Jodie Maurer \n\n \n\n 19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999", "The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with \"amazing results\"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time. \n\n -- Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent \n\n Slate contributor)", "Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters; Natalie Portman by Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm Ltd./Reuters; New York Yankees players by Gary Hershorn/Reuters; KLA member by Hazir Reka/Reuters.", "The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature \"a name.\" This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm. \n\n \n\n --Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx) \n\n 9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999", "Here's my nominee for worst movie of the year (complete category should be: \"Worst Movie of the Year That Assumedly Adult Male Reviewers Slathered Over\"): There's Something About Mary --a pathetically sophomoric, penis-obsessed mess that wouldn't even appeal to Larry Flynt! \n\n -- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal. \n\n \n\n Chatterbox replies: \n\n \n\n You've got the wrong year. That was 1998 . \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about \"the franks or the beans.\"] \n\n Felicia replies:", "What an extraordinary year! A right-wing conspiracy topples the president, and the governor of Texas reveals himself in a series of debates to be a natural leader with an innate gift for connecting with his audience, a sure sign of his electoral success next year. A new Thomas Harris book brilliantly takes us deeper into the mind of a serial killer; a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment; a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage; a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history. \n\n --Mike Gebert \n\n \n\n 7 . Children Behaving Badly in 1999", "Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster; Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough) \n\n Mel Torme (Steve Reiness) \n\n Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles) \n\n \n\n 6. 1999: The Road Not Taken", "The team's first championship occurred in 1921; therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play." ], [ "11. The Athletic Bra Seen 'Round the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n Public interest and media attention to the women's World Cup in soccer. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 12. Another Overlooked Foreign-Policy Event in 1999 \n\n \n\n Presidential primary elections for the first time ever in Mexico. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 13. Policing the World Is Shown To Work in 1999", "The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant \"story of the year.\" However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context. \n\n 1999 represented the team's 25th championship of the century. This beats, by one, the most championships any one team won during the century. The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups. However, the Yankees, an American team, playing in the \"City of the Century\" (so called by me to reflect the amazing growth and transformation of one city during this period), who play the \"National Pastime,\" are truly an amazing story.", "OK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person \"rather annoying and less than professional\") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as \"Today's Papers\" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it.", "The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature \"a name.\" This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm. \n\n \n\n --Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx) \n\n 9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999", "Don't forget Woodstock 1999 --the concert of \"peace and love\" that ended in a literal blaze of glory when in an hours-long tribute to the original Woodstock, the mob started ripping down vendor booths and anything else that would burn and piling it onto the bonfires scattered about the scene. [ Chatterbox interjects: Didn't people get assaulted and raped, too?] I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it. \n\n You also left out all the shooting rampages . Several were done in the name of God or love supposedly. They were all committed by \"quiet, shy\" people who \"mostly kept to\" themselves. I've started to hang around only loud, obnoxious people. \n\n --Susan Hoechstetter \n\n \n\n 8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees", "Eleven-Twelfths of 1999 In Review \n\n When Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official \"1999 In Review\" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Nothing ever happens in December.", "The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with \"amazing results\"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time. \n\n -- Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent \n\n Slate contributor)", "By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them. \n\n ( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. ) \n\n Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: \n\n 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever?", "New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson came out for ending drug prohibition. Though this by itself has no immediate effect, it makes it respectable, for the first time, for political leaders to discuss the subject, and thereby brings closer the day when the vast majority of crimes will no longer be committed, when billions of dollars will be freed to help the inner city instead of to ruin black people's lives, and when we will stop, as in Samuel Butler's Erewhon , imprisoning people for the crime of being sick. \n\n --Henry Cohen \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Didn't Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke do the same thing 11 years ago? \n\n 10. Don't Worry in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy. \n\n --Margaret Taylor", "15. Annals of Justice in 1999 \n\n \n\n Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense . \n\n -- anonymous tipster \n\n \n\n 16. Get Me a New Century, Quick \n\n \n\n A sitting president was accused of rape. \n\n --Ananda Gupta \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Yes, but the evidence was shaky--something the Wall Street Journal 's editorial page, which broke the story, was not very forthcoming about. As Jack Shafer wrote in this column, Ronald Reagan, after he left office, was also accused of having once committed rape. The evidence there was shaky, too. \n\n 17. The Most Important Thing of All That Happened in 1999", "In 1999, more than half of U.S. homes had a PC, for the first time (i.e., home-PC penetration passed 50 percent). Of course, most of these PCs crashed all the time, but it's still a significant development. By the way, Internet hookups in homes are still well below 50 percent. \n\n --Walt Mossberg, \"Personal Technology\" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column) \n\n \n\n 18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999 \n\n \n\n General Pinochet \n\n --Jodie Maurer \n\n \n\n 19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999", "The team's first championship occurred in 1921; therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play.", "Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters; Natalie Portman by Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm Ltd./Reuters; New York Yankees players by Gary Hershorn/Reuters; KLA member by Hazir Reka/Reuters.", "2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because \"you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons,\" but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can! \n\n --Jim Chapin \n\n \n\n 3. Worst/Best Films of 1999", "I nominate as the most under-reported story of the year (and the last few years) the continuing alarmist predictions by foreign-policy and military experts about peacekeeping efforts, which are then proved wrong and immediately forgotten. This year, the obvious one is Kosovo, but the year is also ending with East Timor, where the Aussies and their allies successfully stopped the slaughter with no casualties. \n\n These followed Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda as places where the West delayed sending in troops because of alarmist predictions. \n\n --Jerry Skurnik \n\n \n\n 14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good \n\n \n\n Don't forget, Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy . \n\n --anonymous tipster", "What an extraordinary year! A right-wing conspiracy topples the president, and the governor of Texas reveals himself in a series of debates to be a natural leader with an innate gift for connecting with his audience, a sure sign of his electoral success next year. A new Thomas Harris book brilliantly takes us deeper into the mind of a serial killer; a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment; a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage; a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history. \n\n --Mike Gebert \n\n \n\n 7 . Children Behaving Badly in 1999", "The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late. \n\n --Josh Pollack \n\n \n\n 20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least. \n\n --Samir Raiyani", "Here's my nominee for worst movie of the year (complete category should be: \"Worst Movie of the Year That Assumedly Adult Male Reviewers Slathered Over\"): There's Something About Mary --a pathetically sophomoric, penis-obsessed mess that wouldn't even appeal to Larry Flynt! \n\n -- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal. \n\n \n\n Chatterbox replies: \n\n \n\n You've got the wrong year. That was 1998 . \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about \"the franks or the beans.\"] \n\n Felicia replies:", "Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster; Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough) \n\n Mel Torme (Steve Reiness) \n\n Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles) \n\n \n\n 6. 1999: The Road Not Taken", "Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful! \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox hasn't seen it.] \n\n 4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 : \n\n \n\n Sen. Arlen Specter, citing Scottish law, finds Clinton \"not proven\" on the impeachment charges. \n\n --Andrew Solovay \n\n \n\n 5. Rest in Peace in 1999: \n\n \n\n Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources) \n\n John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources)" ], [ "New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson came out for ending drug prohibition. Though this by itself has no immediate effect, it makes it respectable, for the first time, for political leaders to discuss the subject, and thereby brings closer the day when the vast majority of crimes will no longer be committed, when billions of dollars will be freed to help the inner city instead of to ruin black people's lives, and when we will stop, as in Samuel Butler's Erewhon , imprisoning people for the crime of being sick. \n\n --Henry Cohen \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Didn't Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke do the same thing 11 years ago? \n\n 10. Don't Worry in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy. \n\n --Margaret Taylor", "Don't forget Woodstock 1999 --the concert of \"peace and love\" that ended in a literal blaze of glory when in an hours-long tribute to the original Woodstock, the mob started ripping down vendor booths and anything else that would burn and piling it onto the bonfires scattered about the scene. [ Chatterbox interjects: Didn't people get assaulted and raped, too?] I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it. \n\n You also left out all the shooting rampages . Several were done in the name of God or love supposedly. They were all committed by \"quiet, shy\" people who \"mostly kept to\" themselves. I've started to hang around only loud, obnoxious people. \n\n --Susan Hoechstetter \n\n \n\n 8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees", "OK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person \"rather annoying and less than professional\") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as \"Today's Papers\" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it.", "15. Annals of Justice in 1999 \n\n \n\n Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense . \n\n -- anonymous tipster \n\n \n\n 16. Get Me a New Century, Quick \n\n \n\n A sitting president was accused of rape. \n\n --Ananda Gupta \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Yes, but the evidence was shaky--something the Wall Street Journal 's editorial page, which broke the story, was not very forthcoming about. As Jack Shafer wrote in this column, Ronald Reagan, after he left office, was also accused of having once committed rape. The evidence there was shaky, too. \n\n 17. The Most Important Thing of All That Happened in 1999", "By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them. \n\n ( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. ) \n\n Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: \n\n 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever?", "Eleven-Twelfths of 1999 In Review \n\n When Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official \"1999 In Review\" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Nothing ever happens in December.", "The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature \"a name.\" This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm. \n\n \n\n --Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx) \n\n 9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999", "The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with \"amazing results\"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time. \n\n -- Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent \n\n Slate contributor)", "I nominate as the most under-reported story of the year (and the last few years) the continuing alarmist predictions by foreign-policy and military experts about peacekeeping efforts, which are then proved wrong and immediately forgotten. This year, the obvious one is Kosovo, but the year is also ending with East Timor, where the Aussies and their allies successfully stopped the slaughter with no casualties. \n\n These followed Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda as places where the West delayed sending in troops because of alarmist predictions. \n\n --Jerry Skurnik \n\n \n\n 14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good \n\n \n\n Don't forget, Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy . \n\n --anonymous tipster", "11. The Athletic Bra Seen 'Round the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n Public interest and media attention to the women's World Cup in soccer. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 12. Another Overlooked Foreign-Policy Event in 1999 \n\n \n\n Presidential primary elections for the first time ever in Mexico. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 13. Policing the World Is Shown To Work in 1999", "In 1999, more than half of U.S. homes had a PC, for the first time (i.e., home-PC penetration passed 50 percent). Of course, most of these PCs crashed all the time, but it's still a significant development. By the way, Internet hookups in homes are still well below 50 percent. \n\n --Walt Mossberg, \"Personal Technology\" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column) \n\n \n\n 18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999 \n\n \n\n General Pinochet \n\n --Jodie Maurer \n\n \n\n 19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999", "What an extraordinary year! A right-wing conspiracy topples the president, and the governor of Texas reveals himself in a series of debates to be a natural leader with an innate gift for connecting with his audience, a sure sign of his electoral success next year. A new Thomas Harris book brilliantly takes us deeper into the mind of a serial killer; a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment; a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage; a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history. \n\n --Mike Gebert \n\n \n\n 7 . Children Behaving Badly in 1999", "The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late. \n\n --Josh Pollack \n\n \n\n 20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least. \n\n --Samir Raiyani", "Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster; Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough) \n\n Mel Torme (Steve Reiness) \n\n Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles) \n\n \n\n 6. 1999: The Road Not Taken", "The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant \"story of the year.\" However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context. \n\n 1999 represented the team's 25th championship of the century. This beats, by one, the most championships any one team won during the century. The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups. However, the Yankees, an American team, playing in the \"City of the Century\" (so called by me to reflect the amazing growth and transformation of one city during this period), who play the \"National Pastime,\" are truly an amazing story.", "Here's my nominee for worst movie of the year (complete category should be: \"Worst Movie of the Year That Assumedly Adult Male Reviewers Slathered Over\"): There's Something About Mary --a pathetically sophomoric, penis-obsessed mess that wouldn't even appeal to Larry Flynt! \n\n -- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal. \n\n \n\n Chatterbox replies: \n\n \n\n You've got the wrong year. That was 1998 . \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about \"the franks or the beans.\"] \n\n Felicia replies:", "Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters; Natalie Portman by Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm Ltd./Reuters; New York Yankees players by Gary Hershorn/Reuters; KLA member by Hazir Reka/Reuters.", "Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful! \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox hasn't seen it.] \n\n 4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 : \n\n \n\n Sen. Arlen Specter, citing Scottish law, finds Clinton \"not proven\" on the impeachment charges. \n\n --Andrew Solovay \n\n \n\n 5. Rest in Peace in 1999: \n\n \n\n Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources) \n\n John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources)", "2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because \"you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons,\" but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can! \n\n --Jim Chapin \n\n \n\n 3. Worst/Best Films of 1999", "The team's first championship occurred in 1921; therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play." ], [ "By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them. \n\n ( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. ) \n\n Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: \n\n 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever?", "Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful! \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox hasn't seen it.] \n\n 4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 : \n\n \n\n Sen. Arlen Specter, citing Scottish law, finds Clinton \"not proven\" on the impeachment charges. \n\n --Andrew Solovay \n\n \n\n 5. Rest in Peace in 1999: \n\n \n\n Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources) \n\n John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources)", "15. Annals of Justice in 1999 \n\n \n\n Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense . \n\n -- anonymous tipster \n\n \n\n 16. Get Me a New Century, Quick \n\n \n\n A sitting president was accused of rape. \n\n --Ananda Gupta \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Yes, but the evidence was shaky--something the Wall Street Journal 's editorial page, which broke the story, was not very forthcoming about. As Jack Shafer wrote in this column, Ronald Reagan, after he left office, was also accused of having once committed rape. The evidence there was shaky, too. \n\n 17. The Most Important Thing of All That Happened in 1999", "Eleven-Twelfths of 1999 In Review \n\n When Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official \"1999 In Review\" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Nothing ever happens in December.", "2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because \"you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons,\" but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can! \n\n --Jim Chapin \n\n \n\n 3. Worst/Best Films of 1999", "What an extraordinary year! A right-wing conspiracy topples the president, and the governor of Texas reveals himself in a series of debates to be a natural leader with an innate gift for connecting with his audience, a sure sign of his electoral success next year. A new Thomas Harris book brilliantly takes us deeper into the mind of a serial killer; a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment; a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage; a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history. \n\n --Mike Gebert \n\n \n\n 7 . Children Behaving Badly in 1999", "In 1999, more than half of U.S. homes had a PC, for the first time (i.e., home-PC penetration passed 50 percent). Of course, most of these PCs crashed all the time, but it's still a significant development. By the way, Internet hookups in homes are still well below 50 percent. \n\n --Walt Mossberg, \"Personal Technology\" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column) \n\n \n\n 18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999 \n\n \n\n General Pinochet \n\n --Jodie Maurer \n\n \n\n 19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999", "The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature \"a name.\" This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm. \n\n \n\n --Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx) \n\n 9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999", "The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant \"story of the year.\" However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context. \n\n 1999 represented the team's 25th championship of the century. This beats, by one, the most championships any one team won during the century. The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups. However, the Yankees, an American team, playing in the \"City of the Century\" (so called by me to reflect the amazing growth and transformation of one city during this period), who play the \"National Pastime,\" are truly an amazing story.", "OK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person \"rather annoying and less than professional\") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as \"Today's Papers\" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it.", "Here's my nominee for worst movie of the year (complete category should be: \"Worst Movie of the Year That Assumedly Adult Male Reviewers Slathered Over\"): There's Something About Mary --a pathetically sophomoric, penis-obsessed mess that wouldn't even appeal to Larry Flynt! \n\n -- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal. \n\n \n\n Chatterbox replies: \n\n \n\n You've got the wrong year. That was 1998 . \n\n \n\n [Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about \"the franks or the beans.\"] \n\n Felicia replies:", "11. The Athletic Bra Seen 'Round the World in 1999 \n\n \n\n Public interest and media attention to the women's World Cup in soccer. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 12. Another Overlooked Foreign-Policy Event in 1999 \n\n \n\n Presidential primary elections for the first time ever in Mexico. \n\n --Tom Horton \n\n \n\n 13. Policing the World Is Shown To Work in 1999", "The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with \"amazing results\"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time. \n\n -- Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent \n\n Slate contributor)", "Don't forget Woodstock 1999 --the concert of \"peace and love\" that ended in a literal blaze of glory when in an hours-long tribute to the original Woodstock, the mob started ripping down vendor booths and anything else that would burn and piling it onto the bonfires scattered about the scene. [ Chatterbox interjects: Didn't people get assaulted and raped, too?] I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it. \n\n You also left out all the shooting rampages . Several were done in the name of God or love supposedly. They were all committed by \"quiet, shy\" people who \"mostly kept to\" themselves. I've started to hang around only loud, obnoxious people. \n\n --Susan Hoechstetter \n\n \n\n 8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees", "I nominate as the most under-reported story of the year (and the last few years) the continuing alarmist predictions by foreign-policy and military experts about peacekeeping efforts, which are then proved wrong and immediately forgotten. This year, the obvious one is Kosovo, but the year is also ending with East Timor, where the Aussies and their allies successfully stopped the slaughter with no casualties. \n\n These followed Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda as places where the West delayed sending in troops because of alarmist predictions. \n\n --Jerry Skurnik \n\n \n\n 14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good \n\n \n\n Don't forget, Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy . \n\n --anonymous tipster", "New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson came out for ending drug prohibition. Though this by itself has no immediate effect, it makes it respectable, for the first time, for political leaders to discuss the subject, and thereby brings closer the day when the vast majority of crimes will no longer be committed, when billions of dollars will be freed to help the inner city instead of to ruin black people's lives, and when we will stop, as in Samuel Butler's Erewhon , imprisoning people for the crime of being sick. \n\n --Henry Cohen \n\n \n\n Chatterbox interjects: Didn't Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke do the same thing 11 years ago? \n\n 10. Don't Worry in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy. \n\n --Margaret Taylor", "The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late. \n\n --Josh Pollack \n\n \n\n 20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999 \n\n \n\n The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least. \n\n --Samir Raiyani", "Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster; Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough) \n\n Mel Torme (Steve Reiness) \n\n Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles) \n\n \n\n 6. 1999: The Road Not Taken", "Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters; Natalie Portman by Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm Ltd./Reuters; New York Yankees players by Gary Hershorn/Reuters; KLA member by Hazir Reka/Reuters.", "The team's first championship occurred in 1921; therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play." ] ]
train	20022	[ "Who is the least lovable character in The Thin Red Line?", "What wouldn't the author say of Malick?", "How doesn't the author feel about Bill Clinton?", "Which would the author say of both directors?", "When discussing these films, which word best describes the author?", "What isn't true about A Civil Action?", "Why did the author discuss the movies in this text?", "What does the author seem to like to see in movies?" ]	[ [ "Private Bell", "Lieutenant Colonel Tall", "Captain Staros", "Seargant Welsh" ], [ "he knows how to bring out the beauty amongst war", "he told a well-rounded story of war", "he's a philosophical thinker", "he did more than just make a war movie" ], [ "he's a self-serving person", "no one can capture his personality in film", "he knows when to quit", "he's a corrupt politician" ], [ "they missed a key component in their films", "there were times when the movies were unclear", "the films portrayed the real characters poorly", "the visual imagery was done well" ], [ "vague", "optimistic", "knowledgeable ", "biased" ], [ "it is weaker than the book at times", "the actors portray the character emotions well", "the protagonists win at the end of the film", "Beatrice and Grace were financially impacted because of the film" ], [ "they're all based on real-world events", "they're all meant to improve our views on historical events", "they all had famous, excellent actors", "they're all well-written by famous screenwriters" ], [ "movies that stay true to the books and original scripts", "movies that dig deeper into life's realities", "unpredictability in the story line", "movies that show the good in people" ] ]	[ 2, 2, 3, 1, 3, 3, 1, 2 ]	[ 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0 ]	[ [ "startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching", "Col. Tall (Nolte), a borderline lunatic passed over one too many times for promotion and itching to win a battle no matter what the human cost, worries groggily about how his men perceive him. The dreamer Witt poses folksy questions", "No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after", "dropping by for cameos. After an Edenic prelude, in which a boyishly idealistic absent without leave soldier, Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel), swims with native youths to the accompaniment of a heavenly children's choir, the first part sees the", "Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase \"war is hell\" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God.", "The Thin Red Line has a curious sound-scape, as the noise of battle frequently recedes to make room for interior", "\"In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one.\" Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, \"I seen another world.\" At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's", "about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh,", "monologues and Hans Zimmer's bump-bump, minimalist New Age music. Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) talks to his curvy, redheaded wife, viewed in deliriously sensual flashbacks. (\"Love: Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us?\") Lt.", "vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, \"Darkness and light,", "really interest Malick. Individual acts of conscience can and do save lives, and heroism can win a war or a battle, he acknowledges. But Staros is ultimately sent packing, and Malick never bothers to trace the effect of his action on", "the Guadalcanal operation. In fact, the entire battle seems to take place in a crazed void. Tall quotes Homer's \"rosy-fingered dawn\" and orders a meaningless bombardment to \"buck the men up--it'll look like the Japs are catching hell.\"", "Soldiers shoot at hazy figures, unsure whether they're Japanese or American. Men collide, blow themselves in half with their own mishandled grenades, stab themselves frantically with morphine needles, shove cigarettes up their noses to keep the stench of the", "Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: \"Where is", "Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's", "arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the", "of violence--whereupon the surviving soldiers pack their gear and motor off to another South Pacific battle. In the final shot, a twisted tree grows on the waterline of the beach, the cycle of life beginning anew.", "most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm", "Whether or not these pearllike epiphanies are strung is another matter. Malick throws out his overarching theme--is nature two-sided, at war with itself?--in the first few minutes but, for all his", "tug of war between Nolte's ambition-crazed Tall and Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), who refuses an order to send his men on what will surely be a suicidal--and futile--assault on a bunker. But matters of cause and effect don't" ], [ "of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's", "Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: \"Where is", "really interest Malick. Individual acts of conscience can and do save lives, and heroism can win a war or a battle, he acknowledges. But Staros is ultimately sent packing, and Malick never bothers to trace the effect of his action on", "(in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.", "Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's", "Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase \"war is hell\" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God.", "it that we were together? Who is it that I lived with? Walked with? The brother. ... The friend. ... One mind.\" I think I'd have an easier time with Malick's metaphysical speculations if I had a sense of some", "montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of", "\"In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one.\" Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, \"I seen another world.\" At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's", "Whether or not these pearllike epiphanies are strung is another matter. Malick throws out his overarching theme--is nature two-sided, at war with itself?--in the first few minutes but, for all his", "vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, \"Darkness and light,", "No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after", "crammed from top to bottom and side to side with script. (You don't know the man, but you can feel in an instant his need to cram everything in.) A small, white-bearded Melanesian man strolls nonchalantly past a platoon", "dropping by for cameos. After an Edenic prelude, in which a boyishly idealistic absent without leave soldier, Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel), swims with native youths to the accompaniment of a heavenly children's choir, the first part sees the", "startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching", "of tensely trudging grunts who can't believe they're encountering this instead of a hail of Japanese bullets. Two shots bring down the first pair of soldiers to advance on the hill; a second later, the sun plays mystically over the", "monologues and Hans Zimmer's bump-bump, minimalist New Age music. Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) talks to his curvy, redheaded wife, viewed in deliriously sensual flashbacks. (\"Love: Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us?\") Lt.", "about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh,", "Col. Tall (Nolte), a borderline lunatic passed over one too many times for promotion and itching to win a battle no matter what the human cost, worries groggily about how his men perceive him. The dreamer Witt poses folksy questions", "from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?\" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather." ], [ "John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria.", "To the families involved in the Woburn tragedy, the real climax of this story isn't the downbeat ending of the book or the sleight of hand, \"let's call the Environmental Protection Agency,\" upbeat ending of the movie. The climax is the publication of a book that takes the plaintiffs' side and that remains on the best-seller list in hardcover and paperback for years. The climax is the movie starring John Travolta. Beatrice and Grace made out OK legally, but some of us will never use their products again without thinking about Travolta losing his shirt in the name of those wasted-away little kids.", "\"In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one.\" Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, \"I seen another world.\" At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's", "crammed from top to bottom and side to side with script. (You don't know the man, but you can feel in an instant his need to cram everything in.) A small, white-bearded Melanesian man strolls nonchalantly past a platoon", "from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?\" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather.", "Director Steven Zaillian's version doesn't capture the mounting rage that one experiences while reading Harr's book, or even the juicy legal machinations that Francis Ford Coppola giddily manipulated in his underrated adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). But A Civil Action is a sturdy piece of work, an old-fashioned conversion narrative with some high-tech zip. Schlichtmann doesn't take this \"orphan\" case--brought by the parents of several children who died of leukemia--because he wants to do good but because he figures that Grace and Beatrice will fork over huge sums of money to keep the parents from testifying publicly about their children's last days. He might succeed, too, if it weren't for Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall), the Beatrice lawyer who knows how to keep Schlichtmann shadowboxing while his small firm's financial resources dwindle to nothing.", "He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney)", "monologues and Hans Zimmer's bump-bump, minimalist New Age music. Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) talks to his curvy, redheaded wife, viewed in deliriously sensual flashbacks. (\"Love: Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us?\") Lt.", "about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh,", "of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's", "Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the", "of tensely trudging grunts who can't believe they're encountering this instead of a hail of Japanese bullets. Two shots bring down the first pair of soldiers to advance on the hill; a second later, the sun plays mystically over the", "approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also", "conception of consciousness distributes it among the animate and inanimate alike; almost every object is held up for rapturous contemplation. I could cite hundreds of images: A soldier in a rocking boat hovers over a letter he's writing, which is", "vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, \"Darkness and light,", "at you like slow bean balls: \"Why does nature vie with itself? ... Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?\" Or \"This great evil: Where's it come from? What seed, what root did it grow", "(in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.", "startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching", "20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle", "extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface" ], [ "vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, \"Darkness and light,", "\"In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one.\" Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, \"I seen another world.\" At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's", "montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of", "(in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.", "Director Steven Zaillian's version doesn't capture the mounting rage that one experiences while reading Harr's book, or even the juicy legal machinations that Francis Ford Coppola giddily manipulated in his underrated adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). But A Civil Action is a sturdy piece of work, an old-fashioned conversion narrative with some high-tech zip. Schlichtmann doesn't take this \"orphan\" case--brought by the parents of several children who died of leukemia--because he wants to do good but because he figures that Grace and Beatrice will fork over huge sums of money to keep the parents from testifying publicly about their children's last days. He might succeed, too, if it weren't for Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall), the Beatrice lawyer who knows how to keep Schlichtmann shadowboxing while his small firm's financial resources dwindle to nothing.", "Col. Tall (Nolte), a borderline lunatic passed over one too many times for promotion and itching to win a battle no matter what the human cost, worries groggily about how his men perceive him. The dreamer Witt poses folksy questions", "extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface", "startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching", "Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the", "of tensely trudging grunts who can't believe they're encountering this instead of a hail of Japanese bullets. Two shots bring down the first pair of soldiers to advance on the hill; a second later, the sun plays mystically over the", "about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh,", "of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's", "John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria.", "No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after", "approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also", "To the families involved in the Woburn tragedy, the real climax of this story isn't the downbeat ending of the book or the sleight of hand, \"let's call the Environmental Protection Agency,\" upbeat ending of the movie. The climax is the publication of a book that takes the plaintiffs' side and that remains on the best-seller list in hardcover and paperback for years. The climax is the movie starring John Travolta. Beatrice and Grace made out OK legally, but some of us will never use their products again without thinking about Travolta losing his shirt in the name of those wasted-away little kids.", "He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney)", "most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm", "Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: \"Where is", "Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. Post-carnage, his sundry characters philosophize about their experiences in drowsy, runic voice-overs that come" ], [ "(in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.", "most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm", "extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface", "montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of", "of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's", "approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also", "No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after", "conception of consciousness distributes it among the animate and inanimate alike; almost every object is held up for rapturous contemplation. I could cite hundreds of images: A soldier in a rocking boat hovers over a letter he's writing, which is", "vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, \"Darkness and light,", "of tensely trudging grunts who can't believe they're encountering this instead of a hail of Japanese bullets. Two shots bring down the first pair of soldiers to advance on the hill; a second later, the sun plays mystically over the", "Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's", "Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: \"Where is", "crammed from top to bottom and side to side with script. (You don't know the man, but you can feel in an instant his need to cram everything in.) A small, white-bearded Melanesian man strolls nonchalantly past a platoon", "Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase \"war is hell\" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God.", "the Guadalcanal operation. In fact, the entire battle seems to take place in a crazed void. Tall quotes Homer's \"rosy-fingered dawn\" and orders a meaningless bombardment to \"buck the men up--it'll look like the Japs are catching hell.\"", "\"In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one.\" Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, \"I seen another world.\" At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's", "arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the", "Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. Post-carnage, his sundry characters philosophize about their experiences in drowsy, runic voice-overs that come", "from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?\" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather.", "He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney)" ], [ "John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria.", "To the families involved in the Woburn tragedy, the real climax of this story isn't the downbeat ending of the book or the sleight of hand, \"let's call the Environmental Protection Agency,\" upbeat ending of the movie. The climax is the publication of a book that takes the plaintiffs' side and that remains on the best-seller list in hardcover and paperback for years. The climax is the movie starring John Travolta. Beatrice and Grace made out OK legally, but some of us will never use their products again without thinking about Travolta losing his shirt in the name of those wasted-away little kids.", "Director Steven Zaillian's version doesn't capture the mounting rage that one experiences while reading Harr's book, or even the juicy legal machinations that Francis Ford Coppola giddily manipulated in his underrated adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). But A Civil Action is a sturdy piece of work, an old-fashioned conversion narrative with some high-tech zip. Schlichtmann doesn't take this \"orphan\" case--brought by the parents of several children who died of leukemia--because he wants to do good but because he figures that Grace and Beatrice will fork over huge sums of money to keep the parents from testifying publicly about their children's last days. He might succeed, too, if it weren't for Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall), the Beatrice lawyer who knows how to keep Schlichtmann shadowboxing while his small firm's financial resources dwindle to nothing.", "Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the", "gets sterling bit performances from Sydney Pollack as the spookily sanguine Grace CEO, William H. Macy as Schlichtmann's rabbity accountant, and Kathleen Quinlan as the mother of one of the victims. Quinlan knows that when you're playing a", "He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney)", "approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also", "Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase \"war is hell\" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God.", "Soldiers shoot at hazy figures, unsure whether they're Japanese or American. Men collide, blow themselves in half with their own mishandled grenades, stab themselves frantically with morphine needles, shove cigarettes up their noses to keep the stench of the", "a violent but natural correction? You don't have to buy into Spielberg's Lincolnesque pieties in Saving Private Ryan to believe that there's a difference between World War II and Vietnam (or, for that matter, World War II and the invasion", "most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm", "really interest Malick. Individual acts of conscience can and do save lives, and heroism can win a war or a battle, he acknowledges. But Staros is ultimately sent packing, and Malick never bothers to trace the effect of his action on", "of tensely trudging grunts who can't believe they're encountering this instead of a hail of Japanese bullets. Two shots bring down the first pair of soldiers to advance on the hill; a second later, the sun plays mystically over the", "\"In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one.\" Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, \"I seen another world.\" At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's", "extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface", "startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching", "arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the", "of violence--whereupon the surviving soldiers pack their gear and motor off to another South Pacific battle. In the final shot, a twisted tree grows on the waterline of the beach, the cycle of life beginning anew.", "the Guadalcanal operation. In fact, the entire battle seems to take place in a crazed void. Tall quotes Homer's \"rosy-fingered dawn\" and orders a meaningless bombardment to \"buck the men up--it'll look like the Japs are catching hell.\"", "dropping by for cameos. After an Edenic prelude, in which a boyishly idealistic absent without leave soldier, Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel), swims with native youths to the accompaniment of a heavenly children's choir, the first part sees the" ], [ "To the families involved in the Woburn tragedy, the real climax of this story isn't the downbeat ending of the book or the sleight of hand, \"let's call the Environmental Protection Agency,\" upbeat ending of the movie. The climax is the publication of a book that takes the plaintiffs' side and that remains on the best-seller list in hardcover and paperback for years. The climax is the movie starring John Travolta. Beatrice and Grace made out OK legally, but some of us will never use their products again without thinking about Travolta losing his shirt in the name of those wasted-away little kids.", "extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface", "most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm", "Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase \"war is hell\" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God.", "No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after", "He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney)", "of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's", "(in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.", "John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria.", "Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's", "Director Steven Zaillian's version doesn't capture the mounting rage that one experiences while reading Harr's book, or even the juicy legal machinations that Francis Ford Coppola giddily manipulated in his underrated adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). But A Civil Action is a sturdy piece of work, an old-fashioned conversion narrative with some high-tech zip. Schlichtmann doesn't take this \"orphan\" case--brought by the parents of several children who died of leukemia--because he wants to do good but because he figures that Grace and Beatrice will fork over huge sums of money to keep the parents from testifying publicly about their children's last days. He might succeed, too, if it weren't for Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall), the Beatrice lawyer who knows how to keep Schlichtmann shadowboxing while his small firm's financial resources dwindle to nothing.", "montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of", "approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also", "startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching", "conception of consciousness distributes it among the animate and inanimate alike; almost every object is held up for rapturous contemplation. I could cite hundreds of images: A soldier in a rocking boat hovers over a letter he's writing, which is", "arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the", "20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle", "vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, \"Darkness and light,", "about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh,", "Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the" ], [ "(in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.", "extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface", "20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle", "Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's", "No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after", "approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also", "To the families involved in the Woburn tragedy, the real climax of this story isn't the downbeat ending of the book or the sleight of hand, \"let's call the Environmental Protection Agency,\" upbeat ending of the movie. The climax is the publication of a book that takes the plaintiffs' side and that remains on the best-seller list in hardcover and paperback for years. The climax is the movie starring John Travolta. Beatrice and Grace made out OK legally, but some of us will never use their products again without thinking about Travolta losing his shirt in the name of those wasted-away little kids.", "conception of consciousness distributes it among the animate and inanimate alike; almost every object is held up for rapturous contemplation. I could cite hundreds of images: A soldier in a rocking boat hovers over a letter he's writing, which is", "vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, \"Darkness and light,", "arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the", "about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh,", "most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm", "John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria.", "\"In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one.\" Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, \"I seen another world.\" At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's", "Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: \"Where is", "Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the", "He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney)", "Whether or not these pearllike epiphanies are strung is another matter. Malick throws out his overarching theme--is nature two-sided, at war with itself?--in the first few minutes but, for all his", "montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of", "of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's" ] ]
train	51305	[ "What is the \"thing\"?", "During what instance does the narrator tell the truth without intending to?", "How do Martians communicate with men from Earth?", "Why might the narrator feel that he is \"so dirty, so very dirty that I could never get clean if I bathed every hour for the rest of my life\"?", "What is Miss Casey's motivation to feed the narrator?", "Why does Kevin think that it is immoral to eat?", "Why does Miss Casey's face flash red?", "What is the most revealing reason for Miss Casey smelling good?", "What is Doc's profession?" ]	[ [ "A state of pure thought.", "A book that doesn't exist.", "A vehicle to find coffee. ", "An agent of time travel." ], [ "He tells Miss Casey that he wants coffee.", "He tells Andre about Miss Casey.", "He tells Miss Casey his real first and last name.", "He tells the somber person that Doc is his father." ], [ "Without using logical sense, only the imagination.", "By sensing and without the need for talking.", "Through manuscripts and unwritten books.", "Via time travel." ], [ "Because he is homeless and unclean.", "Because he has cooties.", "Because his addiction prevents him from bathing.", "Because he unknowingly feels debasement in desiring something material. " ], [ "She is a good school teacher trying to help the needy.", "She is police officer investigating stock market fraud.", "She wants to give him a secret note.", "She is after Kevin's secret." ], [ "Because he would rather drink coffee.", "Because he prefers to drink coffee.", "Because pure thought has no anchor in materiality.", "Because Doc is starving." ], [ "Because she is ready to kill Kevin.", "Because she is human.", "Because she is furious.", "Because of the neon lights." ], [ "She uses soap to bathe.", "She is a police officer.", "She uses perfume.", "She has no vices." ], [ "Scientist", "Addict", "Book collector", "Doctor" ] ]	[ 4, 4, 2, 4, 4, 3, 4, 4, 1 ]	[ 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "He had broken the light bulb and used the filament and screw bottom.\n His strong hands had unraveled some of the bed \"springs\"—metal\n webbing—and fashioned them to his needs. My orb-point pen had\n dissolved under his touch. All of them, useless parts, were made into a\n meaningful whole.\n\n\n I knew the thing had meaning, but when I tried to follow its design, I\n became lost.\n\n\n I put the paper container of warm coffee and the greasy bag of\n hamburgers on the wooden chair, hoping the odor wouldn't bring any\n hungry rats out of the walls.\n\n\n I knelt beside Doc.\n\n\n \"An order, my boy, an order,\" he whispered.\n\n\n I didn't know what he meant. Was he suddenly trying to give me orders?", "\"But, Kevin,\" Andre said, \"you aren't\nthat\ndirty.\"\nThe blow shook the gun from my fingers. It almost fell into the\nthing\non the floor, but at the last moment seemed to change direction and\n miss it.\n\n\n I knew something. \"I don't wash because I drink coffee.\"\n\n\n \"It's all right to drink coffee, isn't it?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" I said, and added absurdly, \"That's why I don't wash.\"\n\n\n \"You mean,\" Andre said slowly, ploddingly, \"that if you bathed, you\n would be admitting that drinking coffee was in the same class as any\n other solitary vice that makes people wash frequently.\"\n\n\n I was knocked to my knees.", "A thin, sickly man was sprawled in the other chair in a rumpled\n dressing gown. My eyes held to his face, his pinpoint pupils and\n whitened nose. He was a condemned snowbird! If there was anything I\n hated or held in more contempt than tourists or Martians, it was a\n snowbird.\n\n\n \"My clients have occasioned singular methods of entry into these\n rooms,\" the thin man remarked, \"but never before have they used\n instantaneous materialization.\"\n\n\n The heavier man was half choking, half laughing. \"I say—I say, I would\n like to see you explain this, my dear fellow.\"\n\n\n \"I have no data,\" the thin man answered coolly. \"In such instance, one\n begins to twist theories into fact, or facts into theories. I must ask\n this unemployed, former professional man who has gone through a serious\n illness and is suffering a more serious addiction to tell me the place\n and\ntime\nfrom which he comes.\"", "\"Happy to, miss,\" I mumbled.\n\n\n She pushed a white rectangle in front of me on the painted maroon bar.\n \"What do you think of this?\"\n\n\n I looked at the piece of paper. It was a coupon from a magazine.\nDear Acolyte R. I. S.\n:\nPlease send me FREE of obligation, in sealed wrapper, \"The Scarlet\n Book\" revealing to me how I may gain Secret Mastery of the Universe.\nName\n: ........................\nAddress\n: .....................\n\n\n The world disoriented itself and I was on the floor of the somber diner\n and Miss Vivian Casey was out of sight and scent.\n\n\n There was a five dollar bill tight in my fist. The counterman was\n trying to pull it out.", "\"They ceased to exist—as human beings—shortly after they received a\n book from Doc,\" the Martian said.\n\n\n Something seemed to strike me in the back of the neck. I staggered, but\n managed to hold onto the gun and stand up.\n\n\n \"Use one of those sneaky Martian weapons again,\" I warned him,\n \"and I'll kill the girl.\" Martians were supposed to be against the\n destruction of any life-form, I had read someplace. I doubted it, but\n it was worth a try.\n\n\n \"Kevin,\" Andre said, \"why don't you take a bath?\"\n\n\n The Martian weapon staggered me again. I tried to say something. I\n tried to explain that I was so dirty that I could never get clean no\n matter how often I bathed. No words formed.", "He held something out to me. It was my notebook. He had used my pen,\n before dismantling it, to write something. I tilted the notebook\n against the neon light, now red wine, now fresh grape. I read it.\n\n\n \"Concentrate,\" Doc said hoarsely. \"Concentrate....\"\n\n\n I wondered what the words meant. Wondering takes a kind of\n concentration.\n\n\n The words \"First Edition\" were what I was thinking about most.\nThe heavy-set man in the ornate armchair was saying, \"The bullet struck\n me as I was pulling on my boot....\"\n\n\n I was kneeling on the floor of a Victorian living room. I'm quite\n familiar with Earth history and I recognized the period immediately.\n\n\n Then I realized what I had been trying to get from Doc all these\n months—time travel.", "I scooped up my change and walked out the door. There was no one on the\n sidewalk, only in the doorways.\nFirst I opened the door on an amber world, then an azure one. Neon\n light was coming from the chickenwire border of the room, from a window\n somewhere beyond. The wino on one side of the room was singing and\n the one on the other side was praying, same as before. Only they had\n changed around—prayer came from the left, song from the right.\n\n\n Doc sat on the floor in the half-darkness and he had made a\nthing\n.\nMy heart hammered at my lungs. I\nknew\nthis last time had been\n different. Whatever it was was getting closer. This was the first time\n Doc had ever made anything. It didn't look like much, but it was a\n start.", "\"Why, yes. I'm flattered. This is the first manuscript. Considering my\n professional handwriting, I recopied it more laboriously.\"\nAccepting the sheaf of papers and not looking back at these two great\n and good men, I concentrated on my own time and Doc. Nothing happened.\n My heart raced, but I saw something dancing before me like a dust mote\n in sunlight and stepped toward it....\n\n\n ... into the effective range of Miss Casey's tiny gun.\nShe inclined the lethal silver toy. \"Let me see those papers, Kevin.\"\n\n\n I handed her the doctor's manuscript.\n\n\n Her breath escaped slowly and loudly. \"It's all right. It's all right.\n It exists. It's real. Not even one of the unwritten ones. I've read\n this myself.\"\n\n\n Doc was lying on the cot, half his face twisted into horror.", "I was bent double, but I got from the floor to the chair and found\n my notebook and orb-point in my hands. I found I couldn't focus both\n my mind and my eyes through the electric flashes of agony, so I\n concentrated on Doc's voice and trusted my hands would follow their\n habit pattern and construct the symbols for his words. They were\n suddenly distinguishable.\n\"\nOutsider\n...\nThoth\n...\nDyzan\n...\nSeven\n...\nHsan\n...\nBeyond Six, Seven, Eight\n...\nTwo boxes\n...\nRalston", "The hamburger was engulfed by five black-crowned, broken fingernails\n and raised to two rows of yellow ivory. I surrounded it like an ameba,\n almost in a single movement of my jaws.\n\n\n Several other hamburgers followed the first. I lost count. I drank a\n glass of milk. I didn't want to black out on coffee with Doc waiting\n for me.\n\n\n \"Could I have a few to take with me, miss?\" I pleaded.\n\n\n She smiled. I caught that out of the edge of my vision, but mostly I\n just felt it.\n\n\n \"That's the first time you've called me anything but 'ma'am',\" she\n said. \"I'm not an old-maid schoolteacher, you know.\"\n\n\n That probably meant she was a schoolteacher, though. \"No, miss,\" I said.", "\"He became a book finder. He got rare editions of books and magazines\n for his clients in absolutely mint condition. That was all right—until\n he started obtaining books that\ndid not exist\n.\"\nI didn't know what all that was supposed to mean. I got to the chair,\n snatched up the coffee container, tore it open and gulped down the\n soothing liquid.\n\n\n I turned toward her and threw the rest of the coffee into her face.\n\n\n The coffee splashed out over her platinum hair and powder-blue dress\n that looked white when the neon was azure, purple when it was amber.\n The coffee stained and soiled and ruined, and I was fiercely glad,\n unreasonably happy.\n\n\n I tore the gun away from her by the short barrel, not letting my filthy\n hands touch her scrubbed pink ones.", "\"What nickel?\" His eyes were big, but they kept looking right at me.\n \"You don't have any nickel. You don't have any quarter, not if I say\n so. Want I should call a cop and tell him you were flexing a muscle?\"\n\n\n I let go of him. He didn't scare me, but Doc was beginning to mumble\n and that\ndid\nscare me. I had to get him alone.\n\n\n \"Where's the room?\" I asked.\nThe room was six feet in all directions and the walls were five feet\n high. The other foot was finished in chicken wire. There was a wino\n singing on the left, a wino praying on the right, and the door didn't\n have any lock on it. At last, Doc and I were alone.", "I told the human no, thanks, and walked Doc toward the flophouse three\n doors down. I hoped we would make it. I didn't know what would happen\n if we didn't. Doc was liable to say something that might nova Sol, for\n all I knew.\nMartians approaching the corner were sensing at Doc and me. They\n were just cheap tourists slumming down on Skid Row. I hated tourists\n and especially I hated Martian tourists because I especially hated\n Martians. They were\naliens\n. They weren't\nmen\nlike Doc and me.\n\n\n Then I realized what was about to happen. It was foolish and awful and\n true. I was going to have one of mine at the same time Doc was having\n his. That was bad. It had happened a few times right after I first\n found him, but now it was worse. For some undefinable reason, I felt we\n kept getting closer each of the times.\n\n\n I tried not to think about it and helped Doc through the fly-specked\n flophouse doors.", "It stopped hurting, but I knew it would begin if I moved. I stared at a\n jagged cut-out nude curled against a lump of dust and lint, giving it\n an unreal distortion.\n\n\n Doc began to mumble louder.\n\n\n I knew I had to move.\n\n\n I waited just a moment, savoring the painless peace. Then, finally, I\n moved.", "\"Sure,\" the man agreed severely, prying a little worriedly at Doc's\n arthritic fingers that were clamped on his collar. \"No argument. Sure,\n up we go. But leave me go or, so help me, I'll fetch you one in the\n teeth!\"\n\n\n I came alongside and carefully started to lever the old man loose,\n one finger at a time. It had to be done this way. I had learned that\n during all these weeks and months. His hands looked old and crippled,\n but I felt they were the strongest in the world. If a half dozen winos\n in Seattle hadn't helped me get them loose, Doc and I would have been\n wanted for the murder of a North American Mountie.\n\n\n It was easier this night and that made me afraid. Doc's thin frame,\n layered with lumpy fat, was beginning to muscle-dance against my side.\n One of his times was coming on him. Then at last he was free of the\n greasy collar of the human.", "I thought of Cleopatra and Helen of Troy and wondered if they would be\n the goddesses of love that people imagined or the scrawny, big-nosed\n redhead and fading old woman of scholarship. Then I noticed the\n detective's hand that had been resting idly on a round brass weight of\n unknown sort to me. His tapered fingertips had indented the metal.\n\n\n His bright eyes followed mine and he smiled faintly. \"Withdrawal\n symptoms.\"\n\n\n The admiration and affection for this man that had been slowly building\n up behind my hatred unbrinked. I remembered now that he had stopped. He\n was not\nreally\na snowbird.\n\n\n After a time, I asked the doctor a question.", "I pointed the gun generally at her and backed around the\nthing\non the\n floor to the cot. Doc had a pulse, but it was irregular. I checked for\n a fever and there wasn't one. After that, I didn't know what to do.\n\n\n I looked up finally and saw a Martian in or about the doorway.\n\n\n \"Call me Andre,\" the Martian said. \"A common name but foreign. It\n should serve as a point of reference.\"\n\n\n I had always wondered how a thing like a Martian could talk. Sometimes\n I wondered if they really could.\n\n\n \"You won't need the gun,\" Andre said conversationally.\n\n\n \"I'll keep it, thanks. What do\nyou\nwant?\"\n\n\n \"I'll begin as Miss Casey did—by telling you things. Hundreds of\n people disappeared from North America a few months ago.\"\n\n\n \"They always do,\" I told him.", "So I was an Earthman, Doc's son. So my addiction to coffee was all in\n my mind. That didn't change anything. They say sex is all in your mind.\n I didn't want to be cured. I wouldn't be. Doc was gone. That was all I\n had now. That and the\nthing\nhe left.\n\n\n \"The rest is simple,\" Andre said. \"Doc O'Malley bought up all the stock\n in a certain ancient metaphysical order and started supplying members\n with certain books. Can you imagine the effect of the\nBook of Dyzan\nor the\nBook of Thoth\nor the\nSeven Cryptical Books of Hsan\nor the\nNecronomican\nitself on human beings?\"\n\n\n \"But they don't exist,\" I said wearily.", "I listened to him for a moment, then tested and tasted the craving that\n crawled through my veins. I got back inside somehow.\n\n\n Doc was twisting on the cot, tears washing white streaks across his\n face. I shoved Doc's face up against my chest. I held onto him and let\n him bellow. I soothed the lanks of soiled white hair back over his\n lumpy skull.\n\n\n He shut up at last and I laid him down again and put his arm back\n across his face. (You can't turn the light off and on in places like\n that. The old wiring will blow the bulb half the time.)", "\"I hope you'll forgive him, sir,\" I said, not meeting the man's eyes.\n \"He's my father and very old, as you can see.\" I laughed inside at the\n absurd, easy lie. \"Old events seem recent to him.\"\n\n\n The human nodded, Adam's apple jerking in the angry neon twilight.\n \"'Memory Jump,' you mean. All my great-grandfathers have it. But\n Great-great-grandmother Lupos, funny thing, is like a schoolgirl.\n Sharp, you know. I.... Say, the poor old guy looks sick. Want any help?\"" ], [ "\"But, Kevin,\" Andre said, \"you aren't\nthat\ndirty.\"\nThe blow shook the gun from my fingers. It almost fell into the\nthing\non the floor, but at the last moment seemed to change direction and\n miss it.\n\n\n I knew something. \"I don't wash because I drink coffee.\"\n\n\n \"It's all right to drink coffee, isn't it?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" I said, and added absurdly, \"That's why I don't wash.\"\n\n\n \"You mean,\" Andre said slowly, ploddingly, \"that if you bathed, you\n would be admitting that drinking coffee was in the same class as any\n other solitary vice that makes people wash frequently.\"\n\n\n I was knocked to my knees.", "\"Your hands, though unclean, have never seen physical labor. Your\n cranial construction is of a superior type, or even if you reject my\n theories, concentration does set the facial features. I judge you have\n suffered an illness because of the inhibition of your beard growth.\n Your over-fondness for rum or opium, perhaps, is self-evident. You\n are at too resilient an age to be so sunk by even an amour. Why else\n then would you let yourself fall into such an underfed and unsanitary\n state?\"\nHe was so smug and so sure, this snowbird. I hated him. Because I\n couldn't trust to my own senses as he did.\n\n\n \"You don't exist,\" I said slowly, painfully. \"You are fictional\n creations.\"\n\n\n The doctor flushed darkly. \"You give my literary agent too much credit\n for the addition of professional polish to my works.\"", "\"Why, yes. I'm flattered. This is the first manuscript. Considering my\n professional handwriting, I recopied it more laboriously.\"\nAccepting the sheaf of papers and not looking back at these two great\n and good men, I concentrated on my own time and Doc. Nothing happened.\n My heart raced, but I saw something dancing before me like a dust mote\n in sunlight and stepped toward it....\n\n\n ... into the effective range of Miss Casey's tiny gun.\nShe inclined the lethal silver toy. \"Let me see those papers, Kevin.\"\n\n\n I handed her the doctor's manuscript.\n\n\n Her breath escaped slowly and loudly. \"It's all right. It's all right.\n It exists. It's real. Not even one of the unwritten ones. I've read\n this myself.\"\n\n\n Doc was lying on the cot, half his face twisted into horror.", "\"Happy to, miss,\" I mumbled.\n\n\n She pushed a white rectangle in front of me on the painted maroon bar.\n \"What do you think of this?\"\n\n\n I looked at the piece of paper. It was a coupon from a magazine.\nDear Acolyte R. I. S.\n:\nPlease send me FREE of obligation, in sealed wrapper, \"The Scarlet\n Book\" revealing to me how I may gain Secret Mastery of the Universe.\nName\n: ........................\nAddress\n: .....................\n\n\n The world disoriented itself and I was on the floor of the somber diner\n and Miss Vivian Casey was out of sight and scent.\n\n\n There was a five dollar bill tight in my fist. The counterman was\n trying to pull it out.", "\"What nickel?\" His eyes were big, but they kept looking right at me.\n \"You don't have any nickel. You don't have any quarter, not if I say\n so. Want I should call a cop and tell him you were flexing a muscle?\"\n\n\n I let go of him. He didn't scare me, but Doc was beginning to mumble\n and that\ndid\nscare me. I had to get him alone.\n\n\n \"Where's the room?\" I asked.\nThe room was six feet in all directions and the walls were five feet\n high. The other foot was finished in chicken wire. There was a wino\n singing on the left, a wino praying on the right, and the door didn't\n have any lock on it. At last, Doc and I were alone.", "I thought of Cleopatra and Helen of Troy and wondered if they would be\n the goddesses of love that people imagined or the scrawny, big-nosed\n redhead and fading old woman of scholarship. Then I noticed the\n detective's hand that had been resting idly on a round brass weight of\n unknown sort to me. His tapered fingertips had indented the metal.\n\n\n His bright eyes followed mine and he smiled faintly. \"Withdrawal\n symptoms.\"\n\n\n The admiration and affection for this man that had been slowly building\n up behind my hatred unbrinked. I remembered now that he had stopped. He\n was not\nreally\na snowbird.\n\n\n After a time, I asked the doctor a question.", "I listened to him for a moment, then tested and tasted the craving that\n crawled through my veins. I got back inside somehow.\n\n\n Doc was twisting on the cot, tears washing white streaks across his\n face. I shoved Doc's face up against my chest. I held onto him and let\n him bellow. I soothed the lanks of soiled white hair back over his\n lumpy skull.\n\n\n He shut up at last and I laid him down again and put his arm back\n across his face. (You can't turn the light off and on in places like\n that. The old wiring will blow the bulb half the time.)", "I don't remember how I got out onto the street.\nShe was pink and clean and her platinum hair was pulled straight back,\n drawing her cheek-bones tighter, straightening her wide, appealing\n mouth, drawing her lean, athletic, feminine body erect. She was wearing\n a powder-blue dress that covered all of her breasts and hips and the\n upper half of her legs.\n\n\n The most wonderful thing about her was her perfume. Then I realized it\n wasn't perfume, only the scent of soap. Finally, I knew it wasn't that.\n It was just healthy, fresh-scrubbed skin.\n\n\n I went to her at the bus stop, forcing my legs not to stagger. Nobody\n would help a drunk. I don't know why, but nobody will help you if they\n think you are blotto.", "The hamburger was engulfed by five black-crowned, broken fingernails\n and raised to two rows of yellow ivory. I surrounded it like an ameba,\n almost in a single movement of my jaws.\n\n\n Several other hamburgers followed the first. I lost count. I drank a\n glass of milk. I didn't want to black out on coffee with Doc waiting\n for me.\n\n\n \"Could I have a few to take with me, miss?\" I pleaded.\n\n\n She smiled. I caught that out of the edge of my vision, but mostly I\n just felt it.\n\n\n \"That's the first time you've called me anything but 'ma'am',\" she\n said. \"I'm not an old-maid schoolteacher, you know.\"\n\n\n That probably meant she was a schoolteacher, though. \"No, miss,\" I said.", "\"I hope you'll forgive him, sir,\" I said, not meeting the man's eyes.\n \"He's my father and very old, as you can see.\" I laughed inside at the\n absurd, easy lie. \"Old events seem recent to him.\"\n\n\n The human nodded, Adam's apple jerking in the angry neon twilight.\n \"'Memory Jump,' you mean. All my great-grandfathers have it. But\n Great-great-grandmother Lupos, funny thing, is like a schoolgirl.\n Sharp, you know. I.... Say, the poor old guy looks sick. Want any help?\"", "I looked up at his stubbled face. \"I had half a dozen hamburgers, a\n cup of coffee and a glass of milk. I want four more 'burgers to go and\n a pint of coffee. By your prices, that will be one sixty-five—if the\n lady didn't pay you.\"\n\n\n \"She didn't,\" he stammered. \"Why do you think I was trying to get that\n bill out of your hand?\"\n\n\n I didn't say anything, just got up off the floor. After the counterman\n put down my change, I spread out the five dollar bill on the vacant\n bar, smoothing it.", "It stopped hurting, but I knew it would begin if I moved. I stared at a\n jagged cut-out nude curled against a lump of dust and lint, giving it\n an unreal distortion.\n\n\n Doc began to mumble louder.\n\n\n I knew I had to move.\n\n\n I waited just a moment, savoring the painless peace. Then, finally, I\n moved.", "I told the human no, thanks, and walked Doc toward the flophouse three\n doors down. I hoped we would make it. I didn't know what would happen\n if we didn't. Doc was liable to say something that might nova Sol, for\n all I knew.\nMartians approaching the corner were sensing at Doc and me. They\n were just cheap tourists slumming down on Skid Row. I hated tourists\n and especially I hated Martian tourists because I especially hated\n Martians. They were\naliens\n. They weren't\nmen\nlike Doc and me.\n\n\n Then I realized what was about to happen. It was foolish and awful and\n true. I was going to have one of mine at the same time Doc was having\n his. That was bad. It had happened a few times right after I first\n found him, but now it was worse. For some undefinable reason, I felt we\n kept getting closer each of the times.\n\n\n I tried not to think about it and helped Doc through the fly-specked\n flophouse doors.", "I laid Doc out on the gray-brown cot and put his forearm over his face\n to shield it some from the glare of the light bulb. I swept off all the\n bedbugs in sight and stepped on them heavily.\n\n\n Then I dropped down into the painted stool chair and let my burning\n eyes rest on the obscene wall drawings just to focus them. I was so\n dirty, I could feel the grime grinding together all over me. My shaggy\n scalp still smarted from the alcohol I had stolen from a convertible's\n gas tank to get rid of Doc's and my cooties. Lucky that I never needed\n to shave and that my face was so dirty, no one would even notice that I\n didn't need to.\n\n\n The cramp hit me and I folded out of the chair onto the littered,\n uncovered floor.", "He held something out to me. It was my notebook. He had used my pen,\n before dismantling it, to write something. I tilted the notebook\n against the neon light, now red wine, now fresh grape. I read it.\n\n\n \"Concentrate,\" Doc said hoarsely. \"Concentrate....\"\n\n\n I wondered what the words meant. Wondering takes a kind of\n concentration.\n\n\n The words \"First Edition\" were what I was thinking about most.\nThe heavy-set man in the ornate armchair was saying, \"The bullet struck\n me as I was pulling on my boot....\"\n\n\n I was kneeling on the floor of a Victorian living room. I'm quite\n familiar with Earth history and I recognized the period immediately.\n\n\n Then I realized what I had been trying to get from Doc all these\n months—time travel.", "\"Listen, Kevin. Listen carefully to what I am saying. Doc found\n a method of time travel. It was almost a purely mathematical,\n topographical way divorced from modern physical sciences. He kept it\n secret and he wanted to make money with it. He was an idealist—he had\n his crusades. How can you make money with time travel?\"\n\n\n I didn't know whether she was asking me, but I didn't know. All I knew\n was that I had to help Doc and get some coffee.\n\n\n \"It takes money—money Doc didn't have—to make money,\" Miss Casey\n said, \"even if you know what horse will come in and what stock will\n prosper. Besides, horse-racing and the stock market weren't a part of\n Doc's character. He was a scholar.\"\n\n\n Why did she keep using the past tense in reference to Doc? It scared\n me. He was lying so still with the left side of his face so twisted. I\n needed some coffee.", "\"Sure,\" the man agreed severely, prying a little worriedly at Doc's\n arthritic fingers that were clamped on his collar. \"No argument. Sure,\n up we go. But leave me go or, so help me, I'll fetch you one in the\n teeth!\"\n\n\n I came alongside and carefully started to lever the old man loose,\n one finger at a time. It had to be done this way. I had learned that\n during all these weeks and months. His hands looked old and crippled,\n but I felt they were the strongest in the world. If a half dozen winos\n in Seattle hadn't helped me get them loose, Doc and I would have been\n wanted for the murder of a North American Mountie.\n\n\n It was easier this night and that made me afraid. Doc's thin frame,\n layered with lumpy fat, was beginning to muscle-dance against my side.\n One of his times was coming on him. Then at last he was free of the\n greasy collar of the human.", "\"Exactly, Kevin, exactly. They have never existed any more than your\n Victorian detective friend. But the unconscious racial mind has reached\n back into time and created them. And that unconscious mind, deeper than\n psychology terms the subconscious, has always known about the powers\n of ESP, telepathy, telekinesis, precognition. Through these books,\n the human race can tell itself how to achieve a state of pure logic,\n without food, without sex, without conflict—just as Doc has achieved\n such a state—a little late, true. He had a powerful guilt complex,\n even stronger than your withdrawal, over releasing this blessing on\n the inhabited universe, but reason finally prevailed. He had reached a\n state of pure thought.\"\n\n\n \"The North American government\nhas\nto have this secret, Kevin,\" the\n girl said. \"You can't let it fall into the hands of the Martians.\"\nAndre did not deny that he wanted it to fall into his hands.", "\"It's Miss Casey—Vivian Casey,\" she corrected. She was a\n schoolteacher, all right. No other girl would introduce herself as Miss\n Last Name. Then there was something in her voice....\n\n\n \"What's your name?\" she said to me.\n\n\n I choked a little on a bite of stale bun.\n\n\n I\nhad\na name,\nof course\n.\nEverybody has a name, and I knew if I went off somewhere quiet and\n thought about it, mine would come to me. Meanwhile, I would tell the\n girl that my name was ... Kevin O'Malley. Abruptly I realized that that\nwas\nmy name.\n\n\n \"Kevin,\" I told her. \"John Kevin.\"\n\n\n \"Mister Kevin,\" she said, her words dancing with bright absurdity like\n waterhose mist on a summer afternoon, \"I wonder if you could help\nme\n.\"", "A thin, sickly man was sprawled in the other chair in a rumpled\n dressing gown. My eyes held to his face, his pinpoint pupils and\n whitened nose. He was a condemned snowbird! If there was anything I\n hated or held in more contempt than tourists or Martians, it was a\n snowbird.\n\n\n \"My clients have occasioned singular methods of entry into these\n rooms,\" the thin man remarked, \"but never before have they used\n instantaneous materialization.\"\n\n\n The heavier man was half choking, half laughing. \"I say—I say, I would\n like to see you explain this, my dear fellow.\"\n\n\n \"I have no data,\" the thin man answered coolly. \"In such instance, one\n begins to twist theories into fact, or facts into theories. I must ask\n this unemployed, former professional man who has gone through a serious\n illness and is suffering a more serious addiction to tell me the place\n and\ntime\nfrom which he comes.\"" ], [ "\"They ceased to exist—as human beings—shortly after they received a\n book from Doc,\" the Martian said.\n\n\n Something seemed to strike me in the back of the neck. I staggered, but\n managed to hold onto the gun and stand up.\n\n\n \"Use one of those sneaky Martian weapons again,\" I warned him,\n \"and I'll kill the girl.\" Martians were supposed to be against the\n destruction of any life-form, I had read someplace. I doubted it, but\n it was worth a try.\n\n\n \"Kevin,\" Andre said, \"why don't you take a bath?\"\n\n\n The Martian weapon staggered me again. I tried to say something. I\n tried to explain that I was so dirty that I could never get clean no\n matter how often I bathed. No words formed.", "I pointed the gun generally at her and backed around the\nthing\non the\n floor to the cot. Doc had a pulse, but it was irregular. I checked for\n a fever and there wasn't one. After that, I didn't know what to do.\n\n\n I looked up finally and saw a Martian in or about the doorway.\n\n\n \"Call me Andre,\" the Martian said. \"A common name but foreign. It\n should serve as a point of reference.\"\n\n\n I had always wondered how a thing like a Martian could talk. Sometimes\n I wondered if they really could.\n\n\n \"You won't need the gun,\" Andre said conversationally.\n\n\n \"I'll keep it, thanks. What do\nyou\nwant?\"\n\n\n \"I'll begin as Miss Casey did—by telling you things. Hundreds of\n people disappeared from North America a few months ago.\"\n\n\n \"They always do,\" I told him.", "I told the human no, thanks, and walked Doc toward the flophouse three\n doors down. I hoped we would make it. I didn't know what would happen\n if we didn't. Doc was liable to say something that might nova Sol, for\n all I knew.\nMartians approaching the corner were sensing at Doc and me. They\n were just cheap tourists slumming down on Skid Row. I hated tourists\n and especially I hated Martian tourists because I especially hated\n Martians. They were\naliens\n. They weren't\nmen\nlike Doc and me.\n\n\n Then I realized what was about to happen. It was foolish and awful and\n true. I was going to have one of mine at the same time Doc was having\n his. That was bad. It had happened a few times right after I first\n found him, but now it was worse. For some undefinable reason, I felt we\n kept getting closer each of the times.\n\n\n I tried not to think about it and helped Doc through the fly-specked\n flophouse doors.", "\"Exactly, Kevin, exactly. They have never existed any more than your\n Victorian detective friend. But the unconscious racial mind has reached\n back into time and created them. And that unconscious mind, deeper than\n psychology terms the subconscious, has always known about the powers\n of ESP, telepathy, telekinesis, precognition. Through these books,\n the human race can tell itself how to achieve a state of pure logic,\n without food, without sex, without conflict—just as Doc has achieved\n such a state—a little late, true. He had a powerful guilt complex,\n even stronger than your withdrawal, over releasing this blessing on\n the inhabited universe, but reason finally prevailed. He had reached a\n state of pure thought.\"\n\n\n \"The North American government\nhas\nto have this secret, Kevin,\" the\n girl said. \"You can't let it fall into the hands of the Martians.\"\nAndre did not deny that he wanted it to fall into his hands.", "\"Kevin,\" the Martian said, \"drinking coffee represents a major vice\n only in Centurian humanoids, not Earth-norm human beings.\nWhich are\n you?\n\"\n\n\n Nothing came out of my gabbling mouth.\n\n\n \"\nWhat is Doc's full name?\n\"\n\n\n I almost fell in, but at the last instant I caught myself and said,\n \"Doctor Kevin O'Malley, Senior.\"\n\n\n From the bed, Doc said a word. \"Son.\"\n\n\n Then he disappeared.\n\n\n I looked at that which he had made. I wondered where he had gone, in\n search of what.\n\n\n \"He didn't use that,\" Andre said.", "I didn't look at her. She didn't know. She thought I was a human—an\nEarth\nhuman. I was a\nman\n, of course, not an\nalien\nlike a Martian.\n Earthmen ran the whole Solar Federation, but I was just as good as an\n Earthman. With my suntan and short mane, I could pass, couldn't I? That\n proved it, didn't it?\n\n\n \"Hamburger,\" I said. \"Well done.\" I knew that would probably be all\n they had fit to eat at a place like this. It might be horse meat, but\n then I didn't have the local prejudices.\n\n\n I didn't look at the woman. I couldn't. But I kept remembering how\n clean she looked and I was aware of how clean she smelled. I was so\n dirty, so very dirty that I could never get clean if I bathed every\n hour for the rest of my life.", "The clerk's hand fell on the coin and slid it off into the unknown\n before I could move, what with holding up Doc.\n\n\n \"You've got your nerve,\" he said at me with a fine mist of dew. \"Had a\n quarter all along and yet you Martian me down to twenty cents.\" He saw\n the look on my face. \"I'll give you a\nroom\nfor the two bits. That's\n better'n a bed for twenty.\"\n\n\n I knew I was going to need that nickel.\nDesperately.\nI reached across\n the desk with my free hand and hauled the scrawny human up against the\n register hard. I'm not as strong in my hands as Doc, but I managed.\n\n\n \"Give me a nickel,\" I said.", "A thin, sickly man was sprawled in the other chair in a rumpled\n dressing gown. My eyes held to his face, his pinpoint pupils and\n whitened nose. He was a condemned snowbird! If there was anything I\n hated or held in more contempt than tourists or Martians, it was a\n snowbird.\n\n\n \"My clients have occasioned singular methods of entry into these\n rooms,\" the thin man remarked, \"but never before have they used\n instantaneous materialization.\"\n\n\n The heavier man was half choking, half laughing. \"I say—I say, I would\n like to see you explain this, my dear fellow.\"\n\n\n \"I have no data,\" the thin man answered coolly. \"In such instance, one\n begins to twist theories into fact, or facts into theories. I must ask\n this unemployed, former professional man who has gone through a serious\n illness and is suffering a more serious addiction to tell me the place\n and\ntime\nfrom which he comes.\"", "He held something out to me. It was my notebook. He had used my pen,\n before dismantling it, to write something. I tilted the notebook\n against the neon light, now red wine, now fresh grape. I read it.\n\n\n \"Concentrate,\" Doc said hoarsely. \"Concentrate....\"\n\n\n I wondered what the words meant. Wondering takes a kind of\n concentration.\n\n\n The words \"First Edition\" were what I was thinking about most.\nThe heavy-set man in the ornate armchair was saying, \"The bullet struck\n me as I was pulling on my boot....\"\n\n\n I was kneeling on the floor of a Victorian living room. I'm quite\n familiar with Earth history and I recognized the period immediately.\n\n\n Then I realized what I had been trying to get from Doc all these\n months—time travel.", "I was bent double, but I got from the floor to the chair and found\n my notebook and orb-point in my hands. I found I couldn't focus both\n my mind and my eyes through the electric flashes of agony, so I\n concentrated on Doc's voice and trusted my hands would follow their\n habit pattern and construct the symbols for his words. They were\n suddenly distinguishable.\n\"\nOutsider\n...\nThoth\n...\nDyzan\n...\nSeven\n...\nHsan\n...\nBeyond Six, Seven, Eight\n...\nTwo boxes\n...\nRalston", "Confidence Game\nBy JIM HARMON\n\n\n Illustrated by EPSTEIN\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction June 1957.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI admit it: I didn't know if I was coming or\n \ngoing—but I know that if I stuck to the old\n \nman, I was a comer ... even if he was a goner!\nDoc had this solemn human by the throat when I caught up with him.\n\n\n \"Tonight,\" Doc was saying in his old voice that was as crackled and\n important as parchment, \"tonight Man will reach the Moon. The golden\n Moon and the silver ship, symbols of greed. Tonight is the night when\n this is to happen.\"", "The other man was filling a large, curved pipe from something that\n looked vaguely like an ice-skate. \"Interesting. Perhaps if our visitor\n would tell us something of his age with special reference to the theory\n and practice of temporal transference, Doctor, we would be better\n equipped to judge whether we exist.\"\n\n\n There was no theory or practice of time travel. I told them all I had\n ever heard theorized from Hindu yoga through Extra-sensory Perception\n to Relativity and the positron and negatron.\n\n\n \"Interesting.\" He breathed out suffocating black clouds of smoke.\n \"Presume that the people of your time by their 'Extra-sensory\n Perception' have altered the past to make it as they suppose it to be.\n The great historical figures are made the larger than life-size that we\n know them. The great literary creations assume reality.\"", "He had broken the light bulb and used the filament and screw bottom.\n His strong hands had unraveled some of the bed \"springs\"—metal\n webbing—and fashioned them to his needs. My orb-point pen had\n dissolved under his touch. All of them, useless parts, were made into a\n meaningful whole.\n\n\n I knew the thing had meaning, but when I tried to follow its design, I\n became lost.\n\n\n I put the paper container of warm coffee and the greasy bag of\n hamburgers on the wooden chair, hoping the odor wouldn't bring any\n hungry rats out of the walls.\n\n\n I knelt beside Doc.\n\n\n \"An order, my boy, an order,\" he whispered.\n\n\n I didn't know what he meant. Was he suddenly trying to give me orders?", "The surprise stung. \"How did you know?\" I asked.\n\n\n He gestured with a pale hand. \"To maintain a logical approach, I must\n reject the supernatural. Your arrival, unless hallucinatory—and\n despite my voluntary use of one drug and my involuntary experiences\n recently with another, I must accept the evidence of my senses or\n retire from my profession—your arrival was then super-normal. I might\n say super-scientific, of a science not of my or the good doctor's time,\n clearly. Time travel is a familiar folk legend and I have been reading\n an article by the entertaining Mr. Wells. Perhaps he will expand it\n into one of his novels of scientific romance.\"\n\n\n I knew who these two men were, with a tormenting doubt. \"But the\n other—\"", "\"Why, yes. I'm flattered. This is the first manuscript. Considering my\n professional handwriting, I recopied it more laboriously.\"\nAccepting the sheaf of papers and not looking back at these two great\n and good men, I concentrated on my own time and Doc. Nothing happened.\n My heart raced, but I saw something dancing before me like a dust mote\n in sunlight and stepped toward it....\n\n\n ... into the effective range of Miss Casey's tiny gun.\nShe inclined the lethal silver toy. \"Let me see those papers, Kevin.\"\n\n\n I handed her the doctor's manuscript.\n\n\n Her breath escaped slowly and loudly. \"It's all right. It's all right.\n It exists. It's real. Not even one of the unwritten ones. I've read\n this myself.\"\n\n\n Doc was lying on the cot, half his face twisted into horror.", "\"I hope you'll forgive him, sir,\" I said, not meeting the man's eyes.\n \"He's my father and very old, as you can see.\" I laughed inside at the\n absurd, easy lie. \"Old events seem recent to him.\"\n\n\n The human nodded, Adam's apple jerking in the angry neon twilight.\n \"'Memory Jump,' you mean. All my great-grandfathers have it. But\n Great-great-grandmother Lupos, funny thing, is like a schoolgirl.\n Sharp, you know. I.... Say, the poor old guy looks sick. Want any help?\"", "...\nRichard\n Wentworth\n...\nJimmy Christopher\n...\nKent Allard\n...\nAyem\n...\nOh, are\n...\nsee\n....\"\nHis voice rose to a meaningless wail that stretched into non-existence.\n The pen slid across the scribbled face of the notebook and both dropped\n from my numb hands. But I knew. Somehow, inside me,\nI knew\nthat these\n words were what I had been waiting for. They told everything I needed\n to know to become the most powerful man in the Solar Federation.", "\"Happy to, miss,\" I mumbled.\n\n\n She pushed a white rectangle in front of me on the painted maroon bar.\n \"What do you think of this?\"\n\n\n I looked at the piece of paper. It was a coupon from a magazine.\nDear Acolyte R. I. S.\n:\nPlease send me FREE of obligation, in sealed wrapper, \"The Scarlet\n Book\" revealing to me how I may gain Secret Mastery of the Universe.\nName\n: ........................\nAddress\n: .....................\n\n\n The world disoriented itself and I was on the floor of the somber diner\n and Miss Vivian Casey was out of sight and scent.\n\n\n There was a five dollar bill tight in my fist. The counterman was\n trying to pull it out.", "So I was an Earthman, Doc's son. So my addiction to coffee was all in\n my mind. That didn't change anything. They say sex is all in your mind.\n I didn't want to be cured. I wouldn't be. Doc was gone. That was all I\n had now. That and the\nthing\nhe left.\n\n\n \"The rest is simple,\" Andre said. \"Doc O'Malley bought up all the stock\n in a certain ancient metaphysical order and started supplying members\n with certain books. Can you imagine the effect of the\nBook of Dyzan\nor the\nBook of Thoth\nor the\nSeven Cryptical Books of Hsan\nor the\nNecronomican\nitself on human beings?\"\n\n\n \"But they don't exist,\" I said wearily.", "\"Don't move, Kevin,\" she said. \"I'll have to shoot you—maybe not to\n kill, but painfully.\"\n\n\n I watched her face flash blue, red, blue and knew she meant it. But I\n had known too much in too short a time. I had to help Doc, but there\n was something else.\n\n\n \"I just want a drink of coffee from that container on the chair,\" I\n told her.\n\n\n She shook her head. \"I don't know what you think it does to you.\"\n\n\n It was getting hard for me to think. \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n She showed me a card from her wrist purse. Vivian Casey, Constable,\n North American Mounted Police.\n\n\n I had to help Doc. I had to have some coffee. \"What do you want?\"" ], [ "\"But, Kevin,\" Andre said, \"you aren't\nthat\ndirty.\"\nThe blow shook the gun from my fingers. It almost fell into the\nthing\non the floor, but at the last moment seemed to change direction and\n miss it.\n\n\n I knew something. \"I don't wash because I drink coffee.\"\n\n\n \"It's all right to drink coffee, isn't it?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" I said, and added absurdly, \"That's why I don't wash.\"\n\n\n \"You mean,\" Andre said slowly, ploddingly, \"that if you bathed, you\n would be admitting that drinking coffee was in the same class as any\n other solitary vice that makes people wash frequently.\"\n\n\n I was knocked to my knees.", "I laid Doc out on the gray-brown cot and put his forearm over his face\n to shield it some from the glare of the light bulb. I swept off all the\n bedbugs in sight and stepped on them heavily.\n\n\n Then I dropped down into the painted stool chair and let my burning\n eyes rest on the obscene wall drawings just to focus them. I was so\n dirty, I could feel the grime grinding together all over me. My shaggy\n scalp still smarted from the alcohol I had stolen from a convertible's\n gas tank to get rid of Doc's and my cooties. Lucky that I never needed\n to shave and that my face was so dirty, no one would even notice that I\n didn't need to.\n\n\n The cramp hit me and I folded out of the chair onto the littered,\n uncovered floor.", "\"Your hands, though unclean, have never seen physical labor. Your\n cranial construction is of a superior type, or even if you reject my\n theories, concentration does set the facial features. I judge you have\n suffered an illness because of the inhibition of your beard growth.\n Your over-fondness for rum or opium, perhaps, is self-evident. You\n are at too resilient an age to be so sunk by even an amour. Why else\n then would you let yourself fall into such an underfed and unsanitary\n state?\"\nHe was so smug and so sure, this snowbird. I hated him. Because I\n couldn't trust to my own senses as he did.\n\n\n \"You don't exist,\" I said slowly, painfully. \"You are fictional\n creations.\"\n\n\n The doctor flushed darkly. \"You give my literary agent too much credit\n for the addition of professional polish to my works.\"", "I listened to him for a moment, then tested and tasted the craving that\n crawled through my veins. I got back inside somehow.\n\n\n Doc was twisting on the cot, tears washing white streaks across his\n face. I shoved Doc's face up against my chest. I held onto him and let\n him bellow. I soothed the lanks of soiled white hair back over his\n lumpy skull.\n\n\n He shut up at last and I laid him down again and put his arm back\n across his face. (You can't turn the light off and on in places like\n that. The old wiring will blow the bulb half the time.)", "I didn't look at her. She didn't know. She thought I was a human—an\nEarth\nhuman. I was a\nman\n, of course, not an\nalien\nlike a Martian.\n Earthmen ran the whole Solar Federation, but I was just as good as an\n Earthman. With my suntan and short mane, I could pass, couldn't I? That\n proved it, didn't it?\n\n\n \"Hamburger,\" I said. \"Well done.\" I knew that would probably be all\n they had fit to eat at a place like this. It might be horse meat, but\n then I didn't have the local prejudices.\n\n\n I didn't look at the woman. I couldn't. But I kept remembering how\n clean she looked and I was aware of how clean she smelled. I was so\n dirty, so very dirty that I could never get clean if I bathed every\n hour for the rest of my life.", "\"They ceased to exist—as human beings—shortly after they received a\n book from Doc,\" the Martian said.\n\n\n Something seemed to strike me in the back of the neck. I staggered, but\n managed to hold onto the gun and stand up.\n\n\n \"Use one of those sneaky Martian weapons again,\" I warned him,\n \"and I'll kill the girl.\" Martians were supposed to be against the\n destruction of any life-form, I had read someplace. I doubted it, but\n it was worth a try.\n\n\n \"Kevin,\" Andre said, \"why don't you take a bath?\"\n\n\n The Martian weapon staggered me again. I tried to say something. I\n tried to explain that I was so dirty that I could never get clean no\n matter how often I bathed. No words formed.", "I don't remember how I got out onto the street.\nShe was pink and clean and her platinum hair was pulled straight back,\n drawing her cheek-bones tighter, straightening her wide, appealing\n mouth, drawing her lean, athletic, feminine body erect. She was wearing\n a powder-blue dress that covered all of her breasts and hips and the\n upper half of her legs.\n\n\n The most wonderful thing about her was her perfume. Then I realized it\n wasn't perfume, only the scent of soap. Finally, I knew it wasn't that.\n It was just healthy, fresh-scrubbed skin.\n\n\n I went to her at the bus stop, forcing my legs not to stagger. Nobody\n would help a drunk. I don't know why, but nobody will help you if they\n think you are blotto.", "\"Sure,\" the man agreed severely, prying a little worriedly at Doc's\n arthritic fingers that were clamped on his collar. \"No argument. Sure,\n up we go. But leave me go or, so help me, I'll fetch you one in the\n teeth!\"\n\n\n I came alongside and carefully started to lever the old man loose,\n one finger at a time. It had to be done this way. I had learned that\n during all these weeks and months. His hands looked old and crippled,\n but I felt they were the strongest in the world. If a half dozen winos\n in Seattle hadn't helped me get them loose, Doc and I would have been\n wanted for the murder of a North American Mountie.\n\n\n It was easier this night and that made me afraid. Doc's thin frame,\n layered with lumpy fat, was beginning to muscle-dance against my side.\n One of his times was coming on him. Then at last he was free of the\n greasy collar of the human.", "\"Ma'am, could you help a man who's not had work?\" I kept my eyes down.\n I couldn't look a human in the eye and ask for help. \"Just a dime for a\n cup of coffee.\" I knew where I could get it for three cents, maybe two\n and a half.\n\n\n I felt her looking at me. She spoke in an educated voice, one she used,\n perhaps, as a teacher or supervising telephone operator. \"Do you want\n it for coffee, or to apply, or a glass or hypo of something else?\"\n\n\n I cringed and whined. She would expect it of me. I suddenly realized\n that anybody as clean as she was had to be a tourist here. I hate\n tourists.\n\n\n \"Just coffee, ma'am.\" She was younger than I was, so I didn't have to\n call her that. \"A little more for food, if you could spare it.\"", "It stopped hurting, but I knew it would begin if I moved. I stared at a\n jagged cut-out nude curled against a lump of dust and lint, giving it\n an unreal distortion.\n\n\n Doc began to mumble louder.\n\n\n I knew I had to move.\n\n\n I waited just a moment, savoring the painless peace. Then, finally, I\n moved.", "That wasn't just an addict's dream. I knew who Doc was. When I got\n to thinking it was just a dream and that I was dragging this old man\n around North America for nothing, I remembered who he was.\n\n\n I remembered that he was somebody very important whose name and work I\n had once known, even if now I knew him only as Doc.\n\n\n Pain was a pendulum within me, swinging from low throbbing bass to high\n screaming tenor. I had to get out and get some. But I didn't have a\n nickel. Still, I had to get some.\n\n\n I crawled to the door and raised myself by the knob, slick with greasy\n dirt. The door opened and shut—there was no lock. I shouldn't leave\n Doc alone, but I had to.\n\n\n He was starting to cry. He didn't always do that.", "The tubercular clerk looked up from the gaudy comics sections of one of\n those little tabloids that have the funnies a week in advance.\n\n\n \"Fifteen cents a bed,\" he said mechanically.\n\n\n \"We'll use one bed,\" I told him. \"I'll give you twenty cents.\" I felt\n the round hard quarter in my pocket, sweaty hand against sticky lining.\n\n\n \"Fifteen cents a bed,\" he played it back for me.\n\n\n Doc was quivering against me, his legs boneless.\n\n\n \"We can always make it over to the mission,\" I lied.\n\n\n The clerk turned his upper lip as if he were going to spit. \"Awright,\n since we ain't full up. In\nad\nvance.\"\n\n\n I placed the quarter on the desk.\n\n\n \"Give me a nickel.\"", "I hadn't eaten in a day and a half, but I didn't care much.\n\n\n \"I'll buy you a dinner,\" she said carefully, \"provided I can go with\n you and see for myself that you actually eat it.\"\n\n\n I felt my face flushing red. \"You wouldn't want to be seen with a bum\n like me, ma'am.\"\n\n\n \"I'll be seen with you if you really want to eat.\"\n\n\n It was certainly unfair and probably immoral. But I had no choice\n whatever.\n\n\n \"Okay,\" I said, tasting bitterness over the craving.\nThe coffee was in a thick white cup before me on the counter. It was\n pale, grayish brown and steaming faintly. I picked it up in both hands\n to feel its warmth.", "The hamburger was engulfed by five black-crowned, broken fingernails\n and raised to two rows of yellow ivory. I surrounded it like an ameba,\n almost in a single movement of my jaws.\n\n\n Several other hamburgers followed the first. I lost count. I drank a\n glass of milk. I didn't want to black out on coffee with Doc waiting\n for me.\n\n\n \"Could I have a few to take with me, miss?\" I pleaded.\n\n\n She smiled. I caught that out of the edge of my vision, but mostly I\n just felt it.\n\n\n \"That's the first time you've called me anything but 'ma'am',\" she\n said. \"I'm not an old-maid schoolteacher, you know.\"\n\n\n That probably meant she was a schoolteacher, though. \"No, miss,\" I said.", "I thought of Cleopatra and Helen of Troy and wondered if they would be\n the goddesses of love that people imagined or the scrawny, big-nosed\n redhead and fading old woman of scholarship. Then I noticed the\n detective's hand that had been resting idly on a round brass weight of\n unknown sort to me. His tapered fingertips had indented the metal.\n\n\n His bright eyes followed mine and he smiled faintly. \"Withdrawal\n symptoms.\"\n\n\n The admiration and affection for this man that had been slowly building\n up behind my hatred unbrinked. I remembered now that he had stopped. He\n was not\nreally\na snowbird.\n\n\n After a time, I asked the doctor a question.", "\"What nickel?\" His eyes were big, but they kept looking right at me.\n \"You don't have any nickel. You don't have any quarter, not if I say\n so. Want I should call a cop and tell him you were flexing a muscle?\"\n\n\n I let go of him. He didn't scare me, but Doc was beginning to mumble\n and that\ndid\nscare me. I had to get him alone.\n\n\n \"Where's the room?\" I asked.\nThe room was six feet in all directions and the walls were five feet\n high. The other foot was finished in chicken wire. There was a wino\n singing on the left, a wino praying on the right, and the door didn't\n have any lock on it. At last, Doc and I were alone.", "\"I hope you'll forgive him, sir,\" I said, not meeting the man's eyes.\n \"He's my father and very old, as you can see.\" I laughed inside at the\n absurd, easy lie. \"Old events seem recent to him.\"\n\n\n The human nodded, Adam's apple jerking in the angry neon twilight.\n \"'Memory Jump,' you mean. All my great-grandfathers have it. But\n Great-great-grandmother Lupos, funny thing, is like a schoolgirl.\n Sharp, you know. I.... Say, the poor old guy looks sick. Want any help?\"", "\"Happy to, miss,\" I mumbled.\n\n\n She pushed a white rectangle in front of me on the painted maroon bar.\n \"What do you think of this?\"\n\n\n I looked at the piece of paper. It was a coupon from a magazine.\nDear Acolyte R. I. S.\n:\nPlease send me FREE of obligation, in sealed wrapper, \"The Scarlet\n Book\" revealing to me how I may gain Secret Mastery of the Universe.\nName\n: ........................\nAddress\n: .....................\n\n\n The world disoriented itself and I was on the floor of the somber diner\n and Miss Vivian Casey was out of sight and scent.\n\n\n There was a five dollar bill tight in my fist. The counterman was\n trying to pull it out.", "\"He became a book finder. He got rare editions of books and magazines\n for his clients in absolutely mint condition. That was all right—until\n he started obtaining books that\ndid not exist\n.\"\nI didn't know what all that was supposed to mean. I got to the chair,\n snatched up the coffee container, tore it open and gulped down the\n soothing liquid.\n\n\n I turned toward her and threw the rest of the coffee into her face.\n\n\n The coffee splashed out over her platinum hair and powder-blue dress\n that looked white when the neon was azure, purple when it was amber.\n The coffee stained and soiled and ruined, and I was fiercely glad,\n unreasonably happy.\n\n\n I tore the gun away from her by the short barrel, not letting my filthy\n hands touch her scrubbed pink ones.", "I told the human no, thanks, and walked Doc toward the flophouse three\n doors down. I hoped we would make it. I didn't know what would happen\n if we didn't. Doc was liable to say something that might nova Sol, for\n all I knew.\nMartians approaching the corner were sensing at Doc and me. They\n were just cheap tourists slumming down on Skid Row. I hated tourists\n and especially I hated Martian tourists because I especially hated\n Martians. They were\naliens\n. They weren't\nmen\nlike Doc and me.\n\n\n Then I realized what was about to happen. It was foolish and awful and\n true. I was going to have one of mine at the same time Doc was having\n his. That was bad. It had happened a few times right after I first\n found him, but now it was worse. For some undefinable reason, I felt we\n kept getting closer each of the times.\n\n\n I tried not to think about it and helped Doc through the fly-specked\n flophouse doors." ], [ "\"It's Miss Casey—Vivian Casey,\" she corrected. She was a\n schoolteacher, all right. No other girl would introduce herself as Miss\n Last Name. Then there was something in her voice....\n\n\n \"What's your name?\" she said to me.\n\n\n I choked a little on a bite of stale bun.\n\n\n I\nhad\na name,\nof course\n.\nEverybody has a name, and I knew if I went off somewhere quiet and\n thought about it, mine would come to me. Meanwhile, I would tell the\n girl that my name was ... Kevin O'Malley. Abruptly I realized that that\nwas\nmy name.\n\n\n \"Kevin,\" I told her. \"John Kevin.\"\n\n\n \"Mister Kevin,\" she said, her words dancing with bright absurdity like\n waterhose mist on a summer afternoon, \"I wonder if you could help\nme\n.\"", "The hamburger was engulfed by five black-crowned, broken fingernails\n and raised to two rows of yellow ivory. I surrounded it like an ameba,\n almost in a single movement of my jaws.\n\n\n Several other hamburgers followed the first. I lost count. I drank a\n glass of milk. I didn't want to black out on coffee with Doc waiting\n for me.\n\n\n \"Could I have a few to take with me, miss?\" I pleaded.\n\n\n She smiled. I caught that out of the edge of my vision, but mostly I\n just felt it.\n\n\n \"That's the first time you've called me anything but 'ma'am',\" she\n said. \"I'm not an old-maid schoolteacher, you know.\"\n\n\n That probably meant she was a schoolteacher, though. \"No, miss,\" I said.", "\"Happy to, miss,\" I mumbled.\n\n\n She pushed a white rectangle in front of me on the painted maroon bar.\n \"What do you think of this?\"\n\n\n I looked at the piece of paper. It was a coupon from a magazine.\nDear Acolyte R. I. S.\n:\nPlease send me FREE of obligation, in sealed wrapper, \"The Scarlet\n Book\" revealing to me how I may gain Secret Mastery of the Universe.\nName\n: ........................\nAddress\n: .....................\n\n\n The world disoriented itself and I was on the floor of the somber diner\n and Miss Vivian Casey was out of sight and scent.\n\n\n There was a five dollar bill tight in my fist. The counterman was\n trying to pull it out.", "I hadn't eaten in a day and a half, but I didn't care much.\n\n\n \"I'll buy you a dinner,\" she said carefully, \"provided I can go with\n you and see for myself that you actually eat it.\"\n\n\n I felt my face flushing red. \"You wouldn't want to be seen with a bum\n like me, ma'am.\"\n\n\n \"I'll be seen with you if you really want to eat.\"\n\n\n It was certainly unfair and probably immoral. But I had no choice\n whatever.\n\n\n \"Okay,\" I said, tasting bitterness over the craving.\nThe coffee was in a thick white cup before me on the counter. It was\n pale, grayish brown and steaming faintly. I picked it up in both hands\n to feel its warmth.", "\"Why, yes. I'm flattered. This is the first manuscript. Considering my\n professional handwriting, I recopied it more laboriously.\"\nAccepting the sheaf of papers and not looking back at these two great\n and good men, I concentrated on my own time and Doc. Nothing happened.\n My heart raced, but I saw something dancing before me like a dust mote\n in sunlight and stepped toward it....\n\n\n ... into the effective range of Miss Casey's tiny gun.\nShe inclined the lethal silver toy. \"Let me see those papers, Kevin.\"\n\n\n I handed her the doctor's manuscript.\n\n\n Her breath escaped slowly and loudly. \"It's all right. It's all right.\n It exists. It's real. Not even one of the unwritten ones. I've read\n this myself.\"\n\n\n Doc was lying on the cot, half his face twisted into horror.", "Andre flowed out of the doorway with a sigh. Of relief?\n\n\n I would never know. I supposed I had destroyed\nit\nbecause I didn't\n want the human race to become a thing of pure reason without purpose,\n direction or love, but I would never know for sure. I thought I could\n kick the habit—perhaps with Miss Casey's help—but I wasn't really\n confident.\n\n\n Maybe I had destroyed the time machine because a world without material\n needs would not grow and roast coffee.", "I listened to him for a moment, then tested and tasted the craving that\n crawled through my veins. I got back inside somehow.\n\n\n Doc was twisting on the cot, tears washing white streaks across his\n face. I shoved Doc's face up against my chest. I held onto him and let\n him bellow. I soothed the lanks of soiled white hair back over his\n lumpy skull.\n\n\n He shut up at last and I laid him down again and put his arm back\n across his face. (You can't turn the light off and on in places like\n that. The old wiring will blow the bulb half the time.)", "\"Listen, Kevin. Listen carefully to what I am saying. Doc found\n a method of time travel. It was almost a purely mathematical,\n topographical way divorced from modern physical sciences. He kept it\n secret and he wanted to make money with it. He was an idealist—he had\n his crusades. How can you make money with time travel?\"\n\n\n I didn't know whether she was asking me, but I didn't know. All I knew\n was that I had to help Doc and get some coffee.\n\n\n \"It takes money—money Doc didn't have—to make money,\" Miss Casey\n said, \"even if you know what horse will come in and what stock will\n prosper. Besides, horse-racing and the stock market weren't a part of\n Doc's character. He was a scholar.\"\n\n\n Why did she keep using the past tense in reference to Doc? It scared\n me. He was lying so still with the left side of his face so twisted. I\n needed some coffee.", "I thought of Cleopatra and Helen of Troy and wondered if they would be\n the goddesses of love that people imagined or the scrawny, big-nosed\n redhead and fading old woman of scholarship. Then I noticed the\n detective's hand that had been resting idly on a round brass weight of\n unknown sort to me. His tapered fingertips had indented the metal.\n\n\n His bright eyes followed mine and he smiled faintly. \"Withdrawal\n symptoms.\"\n\n\n The admiration and affection for this man that had been slowly building\n up behind my hatred unbrinked. I remembered now that he had stopped. He\n was not\nreally\na snowbird.\n\n\n After a time, I asked the doctor a question.", "I knew I could not let Doc's—Dad's—time travel\nthing\nfall into\n anyone's hands. I remembered that all the copies of the books had\n disappeared with their readers now. There must not be any more, I knew.\n\n\n Miss Casey did her duty and tried to stop me with a judo hold, but I\n don't think her heart was in it, because I reversed and broke it.\n\n\n I kicked the\nthing\nto pieces and stomped on the pieces. Maybe you\n can't stop the progress of science, but I knew it might be millenniums\n before Doc's genes and creative environment were recreated and time\n travel was rediscovered. Maybe we would be ready for it then. I knew we\n weren't now.\n\n\n Miss Casey leaned against my dirty chest and cried into it. I didn't\n mind her touching me.\n\n\n \"I'm glad,\" she said.", "\"Don't move, Kevin,\" she said. \"I'll have to shoot you—maybe not to\n kill, but painfully.\"\n\n\n I watched her face flash blue, red, blue and knew she meant it. But I\n had known too much in too short a time. I had to help Doc, but there\n was something else.\n\n\n \"I just want a drink of coffee from that container on the chair,\" I\n told her.\n\n\n She shook her head. \"I don't know what you think it does to you.\"\n\n\n It was getting hard for me to think. \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n She showed me a card from her wrist purse. Vivian Casey, Constable,\n North American Mounted Police.\n\n\n I had to help Doc. I had to have some coffee. \"What do you want?\"", "\"Ma'am, could you help a man who's not had work?\" I kept my eyes down.\n I couldn't look a human in the eye and ask for help. \"Just a dime for a\n cup of coffee.\" I knew where I could get it for three cents, maybe two\n and a half.\n\n\n I felt her looking at me. She spoke in an educated voice, one she used,\n perhaps, as a teacher or supervising telephone operator. \"Do you want\n it for coffee, or to apply, or a glass or hypo of something else?\"\n\n\n I cringed and whined. She would expect it of me. I suddenly realized\n that anybody as clean as she was had to be a tourist here. I hate\n tourists.\n\n\n \"Just coffee, ma'am.\" She was younger than I was, so I didn't have to\n call her that. \"A little more for food, if you could spare it.\"", "\"But, Kevin,\" Andre said, \"you aren't\nthat\ndirty.\"\nThe blow shook the gun from my fingers. It almost fell into the\nthing\non the floor, but at the last moment seemed to change direction and\n miss it.\n\n\n I knew something. \"I don't wash because I drink coffee.\"\n\n\n \"It's all right to drink coffee, isn't it?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" I said, and added absurdly, \"That's why I don't wash.\"\n\n\n \"You mean,\" Andre said slowly, ploddingly, \"that if you bathed, you\n would be admitting that drinking coffee was in the same class as any\n other solitary vice that makes people wash frequently.\"\n\n\n I was knocked to my knees.", "I looked up at his stubbled face. \"I had half a dozen hamburgers, a\n cup of coffee and a glass of milk. I want four more 'burgers to go and\n a pint of coffee. By your prices, that will be one sixty-five—if the\n lady didn't pay you.\"\n\n\n \"She didn't,\" he stammered. \"Why do you think I was trying to get that\n bill out of your hand?\"\n\n\n I didn't say anything, just got up off the floor. After the counterman\n put down my change, I spread out the five dollar bill on the vacant\n bar, smoothing it.", "\"Your hands, though unclean, have never seen physical labor. Your\n cranial construction is of a superior type, or even if you reject my\n theories, concentration does set the facial features. I judge you have\n suffered an illness because of the inhibition of your beard growth.\n Your over-fondness for rum or opium, perhaps, is self-evident. You\n are at too resilient an age to be so sunk by even an amour. Why else\n then would you let yourself fall into such an underfed and unsanitary\n state?\"\nHe was so smug and so sure, this snowbird. I hated him. Because I\n couldn't trust to my own senses as he did.\n\n\n \"You don't exist,\" I said slowly, painfully. \"You are fictional\n creations.\"\n\n\n The doctor flushed darkly. \"You give my literary agent too much credit\n for the addition of professional polish to my works.\"", "\"He became a book finder. He got rare editions of books and magazines\n for his clients in absolutely mint condition. That was all right—until\n he started obtaining books that\ndid not exist\n.\"\nI didn't know what all that was supposed to mean. I got to the chair,\n snatched up the coffee container, tore it open and gulped down the\n soothing liquid.\n\n\n I turned toward her and threw the rest of the coffee into her face.\n\n\n The coffee splashed out over her platinum hair and powder-blue dress\n that looked white when the neon was azure, purple when it was amber.\n The coffee stained and soiled and ruined, and I was fiercely glad,\n unreasonably happy.\n\n\n I tore the gun away from her by the short barrel, not letting my filthy\n hands touch her scrubbed pink ones.", "I don't remember how I got out onto the street.\nShe was pink and clean and her platinum hair was pulled straight back,\n drawing her cheek-bones tighter, straightening her wide, appealing\n mouth, drawing her lean, athletic, feminine body erect. She was wearing\n a powder-blue dress that covered all of her breasts and hips and the\n upper half of her legs.\n\n\n The most wonderful thing about her was her perfume. Then I realized it\n wasn't perfume, only the scent of soap. Finally, I knew it wasn't that.\n It was just healthy, fresh-scrubbed skin.\n\n\n I went to her at the bus stop, forcing my legs not to stagger. Nobody\n would help a drunk. I don't know why, but nobody will help you if they\n think you are blotto.", "\"Sure,\" the man agreed severely, prying a little worriedly at Doc's\n arthritic fingers that were clamped on his collar. \"No argument. Sure,\n up we go. But leave me go or, so help me, I'll fetch you one in the\n teeth!\"\n\n\n I came alongside and carefully started to lever the old man loose,\n one finger at a time. It had to be done this way. I had learned that\n during all these weeks and months. His hands looked old and crippled,\n but I felt they were the strongest in the world. If a half dozen winos\n in Seattle hadn't helped me get them loose, Doc and I would have been\n wanted for the murder of a North American Mountie.\n\n\n It was easier this night and that made me afraid. Doc's thin frame,\n layered with lumpy fat, was beginning to muscle-dance against my side.\n One of his times was coming on him. Then at last he was free of the\n greasy collar of the human.", "\"Exactly, Kevin, exactly. They have never existed any more than your\n Victorian detective friend. But the unconscious racial mind has reached\n back into time and created them. And that unconscious mind, deeper than\n psychology terms the subconscious, has always known about the powers\n of ESP, telepathy, telekinesis, precognition. Through these books,\n the human race can tell itself how to achieve a state of pure logic,\n without food, without sex, without conflict—just as Doc has achieved\n such a state—a little late, true. He had a powerful guilt complex,\n even stronger than your withdrawal, over releasing this blessing on\n the inhabited universe, but reason finally prevailed. He had reached a\n state of pure thought.\"\n\n\n \"The North American government\nhas\nto have this secret, Kevin,\" the\n girl said. \"You can't let it fall into the hands of the Martians.\"\nAndre did not deny that he wanted it to fall into his hands.", "I pointed the gun generally at her and backed around the\nthing\non the\n floor to the cot. Doc had a pulse, but it was irregular. I checked for\n a fever and there wasn't one. After that, I didn't know what to do.\n\n\n I looked up finally and saw a Martian in or about the doorway.\n\n\n \"Call me Andre,\" the Martian said. \"A common name but foreign. It\n should serve as a point of reference.\"\n\n\n I had always wondered how a thing like a Martian could talk. Sometimes\n I wondered if they really could.\n\n\n \"You won't need the gun,\" Andre said conversationally.\n\n\n \"I'll keep it, thanks. What do\nyou\nwant?\"\n\n\n \"I'll begin as Miss Casey did—by telling you things. Hundreds of\n people disappeared from North America a few months ago.\"\n\n\n \"They always do,\" I told him." ], [ "\"But, Kevin,\" Andre said, \"you aren't\nthat\ndirty.\"\nThe blow shook the gun from my fingers. It almost fell into the\nthing\non the floor, but at the last moment seemed to change direction and\n miss it.\n\n\n I knew something. \"I don't wash because I drink coffee.\"\n\n\n \"It's all right to drink coffee, isn't it?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" I said, and added absurdly, \"That's why I don't wash.\"\n\n\n \"You mean,\" Andre said slowly, ploddingly, \"that if you bathed, you\n would be admitting that drinking coffee was in the same class as any\n other solitary vice that makes people wash frequently.\"\n\n\n I was knocked to my knees.", "\"Exactly, Kevin, exactly. They have never existed any more than your\n Victorian detective friend. But the unconscious racial mind has reached\n back into time and created them. And that unconscious mind, deeper than\n psychology terms the subconscious, has always known about the powers\n of ESP, telepathy, telekinesis, precognition. Through these books,\n the human race can tell itself how to achieve a state of pure logic,\n without food, without sex, without conflict—just as Doc has achieved\n such a state—a little late, true. He had a powerful guilt complex,\n even stronger than your withdrawal, over releasing this blessing on\n the inhabited universe, but reason finally prevailed. He had reached a\n state of pure thought.\"\n\n\n \"The North American government\nhas\nto have this secret, Kevin,\" the\n girl said. \"You can't let it fall into the hands of the Martians.\"\nAndre did not deny that he wanted it to fall into his hands.", "\"They ceased to exist—as human beings—shortly after they received a\n book from Doc,\" the Martian said.\n\n\n Something seemed to strike me in the back of the neck. I staggered, but\n managed to hold onto the gun and stand up.\n\n\n \"Use one of those sneaky Martian weapons again,\" I warned him,\n \"and I'll kill the girl.\" Martians were supposed to be against the\n destruction of any life-form, I had read someplace. I doubted it, but\n it was worth a try.\n\n\n \"Kevin,\" Andre said, \"why don't you take a bath?\"\n\n\n The Martian weapon staggered me again. I tried to say something. I\n tried to explain that I was so dirty that I could never get clean no\n matter how often I bathed. No words formed.", "The hamburger was engulfed by five black-crowned, broken fingernails\n and raised to two rows of yellow ivory. I surrounded it like an ameba,\n almost in a single movement of my jaws.\n\n\n Several other hamburgers followed the first. I lost count. I drank a\n glass of milk. I didn't want to black out on coffee with Doc waiting\n for me.\n\n\n \"Could I have a few to take with me, miss?\" I pleaded.\n\n\n She smiled. I caught that out of the edge of my vision, but mostly I\n just felt it.\n\n\n \"That's the first time you've called me anything but 'ma'am',\" she\n said. \"I'm not an old-maid schoolteacher, you know.\"\n\n\n That probably meant she was a schoolteacher, though. \"No, miss,\" I said.", "I hadn't eaten in a day and a half, but I didn't care much.\n\n\n \"I'll buy you a dinner,\" she said carefully, \"provided I can go with\n you and see for myself that you actually eat it.\"\n\n\n I felt my face flushing red. \"You wouldn't want to be seen with a bum\n like me, ma'am.\"\n\n\n \"I'll be seen with you if you really want to eat.\"\n\n\n It was certainly unfair and probably immoral. But I had no choice\n whatever.\n\n\n \"Okay,\" I said, tasting bitterness over the craving.\nThe coffee was in a thick white cup before me on the counter. It was\n pale, grayish brown and steaming faintly. I picked it up in both hands\n to feel its warmth.", "\"Kevin,\" the Martian said, \"drinking coffee represents a major vice\n only in Centurian humanoids, not Earth-norm human beings.\nWhich are\n you?\n\"\n\n\n Nothing came out of my gabbling mouth.\n\n\n \"\nWhat is Doc's full name?\n\"\n\n\n I almost fell in, but at the last instant I caught myself and said,\n \"Doctor Kevin O'Malley, Senior.\"\n\n\n From the bed, Doc said a word. \"Son.\"\n\n\n Then he disappeared.\n\n\n I looked at that which he had made. I wondered where he had gone, in\n search of what.\n\n\n \"He didn't use that,\" Andre said.", "\"It's Miss Casey—Vivian Casey,\" she corrected. She was a\n schoolteacher, all right. No other girl would introduce herself as Miss\n Last Name. Then there was something in her voice....\n\n\n \"What's your name?\" she said to me.\n\n\n I choked a little on a bite of stale bun.\n\n\n I\nhad\na name,\nof course\n.\nEverybody has a name, and I knew if I went off somewhere quiet and\n thought about it, mine would come to me. Meanwhile, I would tell the\n girl that my name was ... Kevin O'Malley. Abruptly I realized that that\nwas\nmy name.\n\n\n \"Kevin,\" I told her. \"John Kevin.\"\n\n\n \"Mister Kevin,\" she said, her words dancing with bright absurdity like\n waterhose mist on a summer afternoon, \"I wonder if you could help\nme\n.\"", "\"Listen, Kevin. Listen carefully to what I am saying. Doc found\n a method of time travel. It was almost a purely mathematical,\n topographical way divorced from modern physical sciences. He kept it\n secret and he wanted to make money with it. He was an idealist—he had\n his crusades. How can you make money with time travel?\"\n\n\n I didn't know whether she was asking me, but I didn't know. All I knew\n was that I had to help Doc and get some coffee.\n\n\n \"It takes money—money Doc didn't have—to make money,\" Miss Casey\n said, \"even if you know what horse will come in and what stock will\n prosper. Besides, horse-racing and the stock market weren't a part of\n Doc's character. He was a scholar.\"\n\n\n Why did she keep using the past tense in reference to Doc? It scared\n me. He was lying so still with the left side of his face so twisted. I\n needed some coffee.", "\"Why, yes. I'm flattered. This is the first manuscript. Considering my\n professional handwriting, I recopied it more laboriously.\"\nAccepting the sheaf of papers and not looking back at these two great\n and good men, I concentrated on my own time and Doc. Nothing happened.\n My heart raced, but I saw something dancing before me like a dust mote\n in sunlight and stepped toward it....\n\n\n ... into the effective range of Miss Casey's tiny gun.\nShe inclined the lethal silver toy. \"Let me see those papers, Kevin.\"\n\n\n I handed her the doctor's manuscript.\n\n\n Her breath escaped slowly and loudly. \"It's all right. It's all right.\n It exists. It's real. Not even one of the unwritten ones. I've read\n this myself.\"\n\n\n Doc was lying on the cot, half his face twisted into horror.", "\"Don't move, Kevin,\" she said. \"I'll have to shoot you—maybe not to\n kill, but painfully.\"\n\n\n I watched her face flash blue, red, blue and knew she meant it. But I\n had known too much in too short a time. I had to help Doc, but there\n was something else.\n\n\n \"I just want a drink of coffee from that container on the chair,\" I\n told her.\n\n\n She shook her head. \"I don't know what you think it does to you.\"\n\n\n It was getting hard for me to think. \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n She showed me a card from her wrist purse. Vivian Casey, Constable,\n North American Mounted Police.\n\n\n I had to help Doc. I had to have some coffee. \"What do you want?\"", "\"What nickel?\" His eyes were big, but they kept looking right at me.\n \"You don't have any nickel. You don't have any quarter, not if I say\n so. Want I should call a cop and tell him you were flexing a muscle?\"\n\n\n I let go of him. He didn't scare me, but Doc was beginning to mumble\n and that\ndid\nscare me. I had to get him alone.\n\n\n \"Where's the room?\" I asked.\nThe room was six feet in all directions and the walls were five feet\n high. The other foot was finished in chicken wire. There was a wino\n singing on the left, a wino praying on the right, and the door didn't\n have any lock on it. At last, Doc and I were alone.", "I listened to him for a moment, then tested and tasted the craving that\n crawled through my veins. I got back inside somehow.\n\n\n Doc was twisting on the cot, tears washing white streaks across his\n face. I shoved Doc's face up against my chest. I held onto him and let\n him bellow. I soothed the lanks of soiled white hair back over his\n lumpy skull.\n\n\n He shut up at last and I laid him down again and put his arm back\n across his face. (You can't turn the light off and on in places like\n that. The old wiring will blow the bulb half the time.)", "He had broken the light bulb and used the filament and screw bottom.\n His strong hands had unraveled some of the bed \"springs\"—metal\n webbing—and fashioned them to his needs. My orb-point pen had\n dissolved under his touch. All of them, useless parts, were made into a\n meaningful whole.\n\n\n I knew the thing had meaning, but when I tried to follow its design, I\n became lost.\n\n\n I put the paper container of warm coffee and the greasy bag of\n hamburgers on the wooden chair, hoping the odor wouldn't bring any\n hungry rats out of the walls.\n\n\n I knelt beside Doc.\n\n\n \"An order, my boy, an order,\" he whispered.\n\n\n I didn't know what he meant. Was he suddenly trying to give me orders?", "\"Your hands, though unclean, have never seen physical labor. Your\n cranial construction is of a superior type, or even if you reject my\n theories, concentration does set the facial features. I judge you have\n suffered an illness because of the inhibition of your beard growth.\n Your over-fondness for rum or opium, perhaps, is self-evident. You\n are at too resilient an age to be so sunk by even an amour. Why else\n then would you let yourself fall into such an underfed and unsanitary\n state?\"\nHe was so smug and so sure, this snowbird. I hated him. Because I\n couldn't trust to my own senses as he did.\n\n\n \"You don't exist,\" I said slowly, painfully. \"You are fictional\n creations.\"\n\n\n The doctor flushed darkly. \"You give my literary agent too much credit\n for the addition of professional polish to my works.\"", "Earth-norm humans sometimes have the addiction to a slight extent, but\n I knew that as a Centurian I had it infinitely worse. Caffeine affected\n my metabolism like a pure alkaloid. The immediate effects weren't the\n same, but the\nneed\nran as deep.\n\n\n I finished the cup. I didn't order another because I wasn't a pure\n sensualist. I just needed release. Sometimes, when I didn't have the\n price of a cup, I would look around in alleys and find cola bottles\n with a few drops left in them. They have a little caffeine in\n them—not enough, never enough, but better than nothing.\n\n\n \"Now what do you want to eat?\" the woman asked.", "\"Happy to, miss,\" I mumbled.\n\n\n She pushed a white rectangle in front of me on the painted maroon bar.\n \"What do you think of this?\"\n\n\n I looked at the piece of paper. It was a coupon from a magazine.\nDear Acolyte R. I. S.\n:\nPlease send me FREE of obligation, in sealed wrapper, \"The Scarlet\n Book\" revealing to me how I may gain Secret Mastery of the Universe.\nName\n: ........................\nAddress\n: .....................\n\n\n The world disoriented itself and I was on the floor of the somber diner\n and Miss Vivian Casey was out of sight and scent.\n\n\n There was a five dollar bill tight in my fist. The counterman was\n trying to pull it out.", "It stopped hurting, but I knew it would begin if I moved. I stared at a\n jagged cut-out nude curled against a lump of dust and lint, giving it\n an unreal distortion.\n\n\n Doc began to mumble louder.\n\n\n I knew I had to move.\n\n\n I waited just a moment, savoring the painless peace. Then, finally, I\n moved.", "Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the woman sitting on the stool\n beside me. She had no right to intrude. This moment should be mine, but\n there she sat, marring it for me, a contemptible\ntourist\n.\n\n\n I gulped down the thick, dark liquid brutally. It was all I could\n do. The cramp flowed out of my diaphragm. I took another swallow and\n was able to think straight again. A third swallow and I felt—good.\n Not abnormally stimulated, but strong, alert, poised on the brink of\n exhilaration.\n\n\n That was what coffee did for me.\n\n\n I was a caffeine addict.", "\"He became a book finder. He got rare editions of books and magazines\n for his clients in absolutely mint condition. That was all right—until\n he started obtaining books that\ndid not exist\n.\"\nI didn't know what all that was supposed to mean. I got to the chair,\n snatched up the coffee container, tore it open and gulped down the\n soothing liquid.\n\n\n I turned toward her and threw the rest of the coffee into her face.\n\n\n The coffee splashed out over her platinum hair and powder-blue dress\n that looked white when the neon was azure, purple when it was amber.\n The coffee stained and soiled and ruined, and I was fiercely glad,\n unreasonably happy.\n\n\n I tore the gun away from her by the short barrel, not letting my filthy\n hands touch her scrubbed pink ones.", "Andre flowed out of the doorway with a sigh. Of relief?\n\n\n I would never know. I supposed I had destroyed\nit\nbecause I didn't\n want the human race to become a thing of pure reason without purpose,\n direction or love, but I would never know for sure. I thought I could\n kick the habit—perhaps with Miss Casey's help—but I wasn't really\n confident.\n\n\n Maybe I had destroyed the time machine because a world without material\n needs would not grow and roast coffee." ], [ "\"It's Miss Casey—Vivian Casey,\" she corrected. She was a\n schoolteacher, all right. No other girl would introduce herself as Miss\n Last Name. Then there was something in her voice....\n\n\n \"What's your name?\" she said to me.\n\n\n I choked a little on a bite of stale bun.\n\n\n I\nhad\na name,\nof course\n.\nEverybody has a name, and I knew if I went off somewhere quiet and\n thought about it, mine would come to me. Meanwhile, I would tell the\n girl that my name was ... Kevin O'Malley. Abruptly I realized that that\nwas\nmy name.\n\n\n \"Kevin,\" I told her. \"John Kevin.\"\n\n\n \"Mister Kevin,\" she said, her words dancing with bright absurdity like\n waterhose mist on a summer afternoon, \"I wonder if you could help\nme\n.\"", "\"Happy to, miss,\" I mumbled.\n\n\n She pushed a white rectangle in front of me on the painted maroon bar.\n \"What do you think of this?\"\n\n\n I looked at the piece of paper. It was a coupon from a magazine.\nDear Acolyte R. I. S.\n:\nPlease send me FREE of obligation, in sealed wrapper, \"The Scarlet\n Book\" revealing to me how I may gain Secret Mastery of the Universe.\nName\n: ........................\nAddress\n: .....................\n\n\n The world disoriented itself and I was on the floor of the somber diner\n and Miss Vivian Casey was out of sight and scent.\n\n\n There was a five dollar bill tight in my fist. The counterman was\n trying to pull it out.", "\"Why, yes. I'm flattered. This is the first manuscript. Considering my\n professional handwriting, I recopied it more laboriously.\"\nAccepting the sheaf of papers and not looking back at these two great\n and good men, I concentrated on my own time and Doc. Nothing happened.\n My heart raced, but I saw something dancing before me like a dust mote\n in sunlight and stepped toward it....\n\n\n ... into the effective range of Miss Casey's tiny gun.\nShe inclined the lethal silver toy. \"Let me see those papers, Kevin.\"\n\n\n I handed her the doctor's manuscript.\n\n\n Her breath escaped slowly and loudly. \"It's all right. It's all right.\n It exists. It's real. Not even one of the unwritten ones. I've read\n this myself.\"\n\n\n Doc was lying on the cot, half his face twisted into horror.", "I thought of Cleopatra and Helen of Troy and wondered if they would be\n the goddesses of love that people imagined or the scrawny, big-nosed\n redhead and fading old woman of scholarship. Then I noticed the\n detective's hand that had been resting idly on a round brass weight of\n unknown sort to me. His tapered fingertips had indented the metal.\n\n\n His bright eyes followed mine and he smiled faintly. \"Withdrawal\n symptoms.\"\n\n\n The admiration and affection for this man that had been slowly building\n up behind my hatred unbrinked. I remembered now that he had stopped. He\n was not\nreally\na snowbird.\n\n\n After a time, I asked the doctor a question.", "Andre flowed out of the doorway with a sigh. Of relief?\n\n\n I would never know. I supposed I had destroyed\nit\nbecause I didn't\n want the human race to become a thing of pure reason without purpose,\n direction or love, but I would never know for sure. I thought I could\n kick the habit—perhaps with Miss Casey's help—but I wasn't really\n confident.\n\n\n Maybe I had destroyed the time machine because a world without material\n needs would not grow and roast coffee.", "I knew I could not let Doc's—Dad's—time travel\nthing\nfall into\n anyone's hands. I remembered that all the copies of the books had\n disappeared with their readers now. There must not be any more, I knew.\n\n\n Miss Casey did her duty and tried to stop me with a judo hold, but I\n don't think her heart was in it, because I reversed and broke it.\n\n\n I kicked the\nthing\nto pieces and stomped on the pieces. Maybe you\n can't stop the progress of science, but I knew it might be millenniums\n before Doc's genes and creative environment were recreated and time\n travel was rediscovered. Maybe we would be ready for it then. I knew we\n weren't now.\n\n\n Miss Casey leaned against my dirty chest and cried into it. I didn't\n mind her touching me.\n\n\n \"I'm glad,\" she said.", "The hamburger was engulfed by five black-crowned, broken fingernails\n and raised to two rows of yellow ivory. I surrounded it like an ameba,\n almost in a single movement of my jaws.\n\n\n Several other hamburgers followed the first. I lost count. I drank a\n glass of milk. I didn't want to black out on coffee with Doc waiting\n for me.\n\n\n \"Could I have a few to take with me, miss?\" I pleaded.\n\n\n She smiled. I caught that out of the edge of my vision, but mostly I\n just felt it.\n\n\n \"That's the first time you've called me anything but 'ma'am',\" she\n said. \"I'm not an old-maid schoolteacher, you know.\"\n\n\n That probably meant she was a schoolteacher, though. \"No, miss,\" I said.", "\"Don't move, Kevin,\" she said. \"I'll have to shoot you—maybe not to\n kill, but painfully.\"\n\n\n I watched her face flash blue, red, blue and knew she meant it. But I\n had known too much in too short a time. I had to help Doc, but there\n was something else.\n\n\n \"I just want a drink of coffee from that container on the chair,\" I\n told her.\n\n\n She shook her head. \"I don't know what you think it does to you.\"\n\n\n It was getting hard for me to think. \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n She showed me a card from her wrist purse. Vivian Casey, Constable,\n North American Mounted Police.\n\n\n I had to help Doc. I had to have some coffee. \"What do you want?\"", "\"Listen, Kevin. Listen carefully to what I am saying. Doc found\n a method of time travel. It was almost a purely mathematical,\n topographical way divorced from modern physical sciences. He kept it\n secret and he wanted to make money with it. He was an idealist—he had\n his crusades. How can you make money with time travel?\"\n\n\n I didn't know whether she was asking me, but I didn't know. All I knew\n was that I had to help Doc and get some coffee.\n\n\n \"It takes money—money Doc didn't have—to make money,\" Miss Casey\n said, \"even if you know what horse will come in and what stock will\n prosper. Besides, horse-racing and the stock market weren't a part of\n Doc's character. He was a scholar.\"\n\n\n Why did she keep using the past tense in reference to Doc? It scared\n me. He was lying so still with the left side of his face so twisted. I\n needed some coffee.", "\"He became a book finder. He got rare editions of books and magazines\n for his clients in absolutely mint condition. That was all right—until\n he started obtaining books that\ndid not exist\n.\"\nI didn't know what all that was supposed to mean. I got to the chair,\n snatched up the coffee container, tore it open and gulped down the\n soothing liquid.\n\n\n I turned toward her and threw the rest of the coffee into her face.\n\n\n The coffee splashed out over her platinum hair and powder-blue dress\n that looked white when the neon was azure, purple when it was amber.\n The coffee stained and soiled and ruined, and I was fiercely glad,\n unreasonably happy.\n\n\n I tore the gun away from her by the short barrel, not letting my filthy\n hands touch her scrubbed pink ones.", "I listened to him for a moment, then tested and tasted the craving that\n crawled through my veins. I got back inside somehow.\n\n\n Doc was twisting on the cot, tears washing white streaks across his\n face. I shoved Doc's face up against my chest. I held onto him and let\n him bellow. I soothed the lanks of soiled white hair back over his\n lumpy skull.\n\n\n He shut up at last and I laid him down again and put his arm back\n across his face. (You can't turn the light off and on in places like\n that. The old wiring will blow the bulb half the time.)", "I laid Doc out on the gray-brown cot and put his forearm over his face\n to shield it some from the glare of the light bulb. I swept off all the\n bedbugs in sight and stepped on them heavily.\n\n\n Then I dropped down into the painted stool chair and let my burning\n eyes rest on the obscene wall drawings just to focus them. I was so\n dirty, I could feel the grime grinding together all over me. My shaggy\n scalp still smarted from the alcohol I had stolen from a convertible's\n gas tank to get rid of Doc's and my cooties. Lucky that I never needed\n to shave and that my face was so dirty, no one would even notice that I\n didn't need to.\n\n\n The cramp hit me and I folded out of the chair onto the littered,\n uncovered floor.", "I don't remember how I got out onto the street.\nShe was pink and clean and her platinum hair was pulled straight back,\n drawing her cheek-bones tighter, straightening her wide, appealing\n mouth, drawing her lean, athletic, feminine body erect. She was wearing\n a powder-blue dress that covered all of her breasts and hips and the\n upper half of her legs.\n\n\n The most wonderful thing about her was her perfume. Then I realized it\n wasn't perfume, only the scent of soap. Finally, I knew it wasn't that.\n It was just healthy, fresh-scrubbed skin.\n\n\n I went to her at the bus stop, forcing my legs not to stagger. Nobody\n would help a drunk. I don't know why, but nobody will help you if they\n think you are blotto.", "I told the human no, thanks, and walked Doc toward the flophouse three\n doors down. I hoped we would make it. I didn't know what would happen\n if we didn't. Doc was liable to say something that might nova Sol, for\n all I knew.\nMartians approaching the corner were sensing at Doc and me. They\n were just cheap tourists slumming down on Skid Row. I hated tourists\n and especially I hated Martian tourists because I especially hated\n Martians. They were\naliens\n. They weren't\nmen\nlike Doc and me.\n\n\n Then I realized what was about to happen. It was foolish and awful and\n true. I was going to have one of mine at the same time Doc was having\n his. That was bad. It had happened a few times right after I first\n found him, but now it was worse. For some undefinable reason, I felt we\n kept getting closer each of the times.\n\n\n I tried not to think about it and helped Doc through the fly-specked\n flophouse doors.", "\"Your hands, though unclean, have never seen physical labor. Your\n cranial construction is of a superior type, or even if you reject my\n theories, concentration does set the facial features. I judge you have\n suffered an illness because of the inhibition of your beard growth.\n Your over-fondness for rum or opium, perhaps, is self-evident. You\n are at too resilient an age to be so sunk by even an amour. Why else\n then would you let yourself fall into such an underfed and unsanitary\n state?\"\nHe was so smug and so sure, this snowbird. I hated him. Because I\n couldn't trust to my own senses as he did.\n\n\n \"You don't exist,\" I said slowly, painfully. \"You are fictional\n creations.\"\n\n\n The doctor flushed darkly. \"You give my literary agent too much credit\n for the addition of professional polish to my works.\"", "\"But, Kevin,\" Andre said, \"you aren't\nthat\ndirty.\"\nThe blow shook the gun from my fingers. It almost fell into the\nthing\non the floor, but at the last moment seemed to change direction and\n miss it.\n\n\n I knew something. \"I don't wash because I drink coffee.\"\n\n\n \"It's all right to drink coffee, isn't it?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" I said, and added absurdly, \"That's why I don't wash.\"\n\n\n \"You mean,\" Andre said slowly, ploddingly, \"that if you bathed, you\n would be admitting that drinking coffee was in the same class as any\n other solitary vice that makes people wash frequently.\"\n\n\n I was knocked to my knees.", "I pointed the gun generally at her and backed around the\nthing\non the\n floor to the cot. Doc had a pulse, but it was irregular. I checked for\n a fever and there wasn't one. After that, I didn't know what to do.\n\n\n I looked up finally and saw a Martian in or about the doorway.\n\n\n \"Call me Andre,\" the Martian said. \"A common name but foreign. It\n should serve as a point of reference.\"\n\n\n I had always wondered how a thing like a Martian could talk. Sometimes\n I wondered if they really could.\n\n\n \"You won't need the gun,\" Andre said conversationally.\n\n\n \"I'll keep it, thanks. What do\nyou\nwant?\"\n\n\n \"I'll begin as Miss Casey did—by telling you things. Hundreds of\n people disappeared from North America a few months ago.\"\n\n\n \"They always do,\" I told him.", "\"Sure,\" the man agreed severely, prying a little worriedly at Doc's\n arthritic fingers that were clamped on his collar. \"No argument. Sure,\n up we go. But leave me go or, so help me, I'll fetch you one in the\n teeth!\"\n\n\n I came alongside and carefully started to lever the old man loose,\n one finger at a time. It had to be done this way. I had learned that\n during all these weeks and months. His hands looked old and crippled,\n but I felt they were the strongest in the world. If a half dozen winos\n in Seattle hadn't helped me get them loose, Doc and I would have been\n wanted for the murder of a North American Mountie.\n\n\n It was easier this night and that made me afraid. Doc's thin frame,\n layered with lumpy fat, was beginning to muscle-dance against my side.\n One of his times was coming on him. Then at last he was free of the\n greasy collar of the human.", "I looked up at his stubbled face. \"I had half a dozen hamburgers, a\n cup of coffee and a glass of milk. I want four more 'burgers to go and\n a pint of coffee. By your prices, that will be one sixty-five—if the\n lady didn't pay you.\"\n\n\n \"She didn't,\" he stammered. \"Why do you think I was trying to get that\n bill out of your hand?\"\n\n\n I didn't say anything, just got up off the floor. After the counterman\n put down my change, I spread out the five dollar bill on the vacant\n bar, smoothing it.", "I was bent double, but I got from the floor to the chair and found\n my notebook and orb-point in my hands. I found I couldn't focus both\n my mind and my eyes through the electric flashes of agony, so I\n concentrated on Doc's voice and trusted my hands would follow their\n habit pattern and construct the symbols for his words. They were\n suddenly distinguishable.\n\"\nOutsider\n...\nThoth\n...\nDyzan\n...\nSeven\n...\nHsan\n...\nBeyond Six, Seven, Eight\n...\nTwo boxes\n...\nRalston" ], [ "\"It's Miss Casey—Vivian Casey,\" she corrected. She was a\n schoolteacher, all right. No other girl would introduce herself as Miss\n Last Name. Then there was something in her voice....\n\n\n \"What's your name?\" she said to me.\n\n\n I choked a little on a bite of stale bun.\n\n\n I\nhad\na name,\nof course\n.\nEverybody has a name, and I knew if I went off somewhere quiet and\n thought about it, mine would come to me. Meanwhile, I would tell the\n girl that my name was ... Kevin O'Malley. Abruptly I realized that that\nwas\nmy name.\n\n\n \"Kevin,\" I told her. \"John Kevin.\"\n\n\n \"Mister Kevin,\" she said, her words dancing with bright absurdity like\n waterhose mist on a summer afternoon, \"I wonder if you could help\nme\n.\"", "\"Why, yes. I'm flattered. This is the first manuscript. Considering my\n professional handwriting, I recopied it more laboriously.\"\nAccepting the sheaf of papers and not looking back at these two great\n and good men, I concentrated on my own time and Doc. Nothing happened.\n My heart raced, but I saw something dancing before me like a dust mote\n in sunlight and stepped toward it....\n\n\n ... into the effective range of Miss Casey's tiny gun.\nShe inclined the lethal silver toy. \"Let me see those papers, Kevin.\"\n\n\n I handed her the doctor's manuscript.\n\n\n Her breath escaped slowly and loudly. \"It's all right. It's all right.\n It exists. It's real. Not even one of the unwritten ones. I've read\n this myself.\"\n\n\n Doc was lying on the cot, half his face twisted into horror.", "\"Happy to, miss,\" I mumbled.\n\n\n She pushed a white rectangle in front of me on the painted maroon bar.\n \"What do you think of this?\"\n\n\n I looked at the piece of paper. It was a coupon from a magazine.\nDear Acolyte R. I. S.\n:\nPlease send me FREE of obligation, in sealed wrapper, \"The Scarlet\n Book\" revealing to me how I may gain Secret Mastery of the Universe.\nName\n: ........................\nAddress\n: .....................\n\n\n The world disoriented itself and I was on the floor of the somber diner\n and Miss Vivian Casey was out of sight and scent.\n\n\n There was a five dollar bill tight in my fist. The counterman was\n trying to pull it out.", "Andre flowed out of the doorway with a sigh. Of relief?\n\n\n I would never know. I supposed I had destroyed\nit\nbecause I didn't\n want the human race to become a thing of pure reason without purpose,\n direction or love, but I would never know for sure. I thought I could\n kick the habit—perhaps with Miss Casey's help—but I wasn't really\n confident.\n\n\n Maybe I had destroyed the time machine because a world without material\n needs would not grow and roast coffee.", "\"But, Kevin,\" Andre said, \"you aren't\nthat\ndirty.\"\nThe blow shook the gun from my fingers. It almost fell into the\nthing\non the floor, but at the last moment seemed to change direction and\n miss it.\n\n\n I knew something. \"I don't wash because I drink coffee.\"\n\n\n \"It's all right to drink coffee, isn't it?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" I said, and added absurdly, \"That's why I don't wash.\"\n\n\n \"You mean,\" Andre said slowly, ploddingly, \"that if you bathed, you\n would be admitting that drinking coffee was in the same class as any\n other solitary vice that makes people wash frequently.\"\n\n\n I was knocked to my knees.", "I don't remember how I got out onto the street.\nShe was pink and clean and her platinum hair was pulled straight back,\n drawing her cheek-bones tighter, straightening her wide, appealing\n mouth, drawing her lean, athletic, feminine body erect. She was wearing\n a powder-blue dress that covered all of her breasts and hips and the\n upper half of her legs.\n\n\n The most wonderful thing about her was her perfume. Then I realized it\n wasn't perfume, only the scent of soap. Finally, I knew it wasn't that.\n It was just healthy, fresh-scrubbed skin.\n\n\n I went to her at the bus stop, forcing my legs not to stagger. Nobody\n would help a drunk. I don't know why, but nobody will help you if they\n think you are blotto.", "I thought of Cleopatra and Helen of Troy and wondered if they would be\n the goddesses of love that people imagined or the scrawny, big-nosed\n redhead and fading old woman of scholarship. Then I noticed the\n detective's hand that had been resting idly on a round brass weight of\n unknown sort to me. His tapered fingertips had indented the metal.\n\n\n His bright eyes followed mine and he smiled faintly. \"Withdrawal\n symptoms.\"\n\n\n The admiration and affection for this man that had been slowly building\n up behind my hatred unbrinked. I remembered now that he had stopped. He\n was not\nreally\na snowbird.\n\n\n After a time, I asked the doctor a question.", "I knew I could not let Doc's—Dad's—time travel\nthing\nfall into\n anyone's hands. I remembered that all the copies of the books had\n disappeared with their readers now. There must not be any more, I knew.\n\n\n Miss Casey did her duty and tried to stop me with a judo hold, but I\n don't think her heart was in it, because I reversed and broke it.\n\n\n I kicked the\nthing\nto pieces and stomped on the pieces. Maybe you\n can't stop the progress of science, but I knew it might be millenniums\n before Doc's genes and creative environment were recreated and time\n travel was rediscovered. Maybe we would be ready for it then. I knew we\n weren't now.\n\n\n Miss Casey leaned against my dirty chest and cried into it. I didn't\n mind her touching me.\n\n\n \"I'm glad,\" she said.", "\"Listen, Kevin. Listen carefully to what I am saying. Doc found\n a method of time travel. It was almost a purely mathematical,\n topographical way divorced from modern physical sciences. He kept it\n secret and he wanted to make money with it. He was an idealist—he had\n his crusades. How can you make money with time travel?\"\n\n\n I didn't know whether she was asking me, but I didn't know. All I knew\n was that I had to help Doc and get some coffee.\n\n\n \"It takes money—money Doc didn't have—to make money,\" Miss Casey\n said, \"even if you know what horse will come in and what stock will\n prosper. Besides, horse-racing and the stock market weren't a part of\n Doc's character. He was a scholar.\"\n\n\n Why did she keep using the past tense in reference to Doc? It scared\n me. He was lying so still with the left side of his face so twisted. I\n needed some coffee.", "\"Your hands, though unclean, have never seen physical labor. Your\n cranial construction is of a superior type, or even if you reject my\n theories, concentration does set the facial features. I judge you have\n suffered an illness because of the inhibition of your beard growth.\n Your over-fondness for rum or opium, perhaps, is self-evident. You\n are at too resilient an age to be so sunk by even an amour. Why else\n then would you let yourself fall into such an underfed and unsanitary\n state?\"\nHe was so smug and so sure, this snowbird. I hated him. Because I\n couldn't trust to my own senses as he did.\n\n\n \"You don't exist,\" I said slowly, painfully. \"You are fictional\n creations.\"\n\n\n The doctor flushed darkly. \"You give my literary agent too much credit\n for the addition of professional polish to my works.\"", "The hamburger was engulfed by five black-crowned, broken fingernails\n and raised to two rows of yellow ivory. I surrounded it like an ameba,\n almost in a single movement of my jaws.\n\n\n Several other hamburgers followed the first. I lost count. I drank a\n glass of milk. I didn't want to black out on coffee with Doc waiting\n for me.\n\n\n \"Could I have a few to take with me, miss?\" I pleaded.\n\n\n She smiled. I caught that out of the edge of my vision, but mostly I\n just felt it.\n\n\n \"That's the first time you've called me anything but 'ma'am',\" she\n said. \"I'm not an old-maid schoolteacher, you know.\"\n\n\n That probably meant she was a schoolteacher, though. \"No, miss,\" I said.", "I hadn't eaten in a day and a half, but I didn't care much.\n\n\n \"I'll buy you a dinner,\" she said carefully, \"provided I can go with\n you and see for myself that you actually eat it.\"\n\n\n I felt my face flushing red. \"You wouldn't want to be seen with a bum\n like me, ma'am.\"\n\n\n \"I'll be seen with you if you really want to eat.\"\n\n\n It was certainly unfair and probably immoral. But I had no choice\n whatever.\n\n\n \"Okay,\" I said, tasting bitterness over the craving.\nThe coffee was in a thick white cup before me on the counter. It was\n pale, grayish brown and steaming faintly. I picked it up in both hands\n to feel its warmth.", "\"He became a book finder. He got rare editions of books and magazines\n for his clients in absolutely mint condition. That was all right—until\n he started obtaining books that\ndid not exist\n.\"\nI didn't know what all that was supposed to mean. I got to the chair,\n snatched up the coffee container, tore it open and gulped down the\n soothing liquid.\n\n\n I turned toward her and threw the rest of the coffee into her face.\n\n\n The coffee splashed out over her platinum hair and powder-blue dress\n that looked white when the neon was azure, purple when it was amber.\n The coffee stained and soiled and ruined, and I was fiercely glad,\n unreasonably happy.\n\n\n I tore the gun away from her by the short barrel, not letting my filthy\n hands touch her scrubbed pink ones.", "\"Sure,\" the man agreed severely, prying a little worriedly at Doc's\n arthritic fingers that were clamped on his collar. \"No argument. Sure,\n up we go. But leave me go or, so help me, I'll fetch you one in the\n teeth!\"\n\n\n I came alongside and carefully started to lever the old man loose,\n one finger at a time. It had to be done this way. I had learned that\n during all these weeks and months. His hands looked old and crippled,\n but I felt they were the strongest in the world. If a half dozen winos\n in Seattle hadn't helped me get them loose, Doc and I would have been\n wanted for the murder of a North American Mountie.\n\n\n It was easier this night and that made me afraid. Doc's thin frame,\n layered with lumpy fat, was beginning to muscle-dance against my side.\n One of his times was coming on him. Then at last he was free of the\n greasy collar of the human.", "I laid Doc out on the gray-brown cot and put his forearm over his face\n to shield it some from the glare of the light bulb. I swept off all the\n bedbugs in sight and stepped on them heavily.\n\n\n Then I dropped down into the painted stool chair and let my burning\n eyes rest on the obscene wall drawings just to focus them. I was so\n dirty, I could feel the grime grinding together all over me. My shaggy\n scalp still smarted from the alcohol I had stolen from a convertible's\n gas tank to get rid of Doc's and my cooties. Lucky that I never needed\n to shave and that my face was so dirty, no one would even notice that I\n didn't need to.\n\n\n The cramp hit me and I folded out of the chair onto the littered,\n uncovered floor.", "Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the woman sitting on the stool\n beside me. She had no right to intrude. This moment should be mine, but\n there she sat, marring it for me, a contemptible\ntourist\n.\n\n\n I gulped down the thick, dark liquid brutally. It was all I could\n do. The cramp flowed out of my diaphragm. I took another swallow and\n was able to think straight again. A third swallow and I felt—good.\n Not abnormally stimulated, but strong, alert, poised on the brink of\n exhilaration.\n\n\n That was what coffee did for me.\n\n\n I was a caffeine addict.", "I listened to him for a moment, then tested and tasted the craving that\n crawled through my veins. I got back inside somehow.\n\n\n Doc was twisting on the cot, tears washing white streaks across his\n face. I shoved Doc's face up against my chest. I held onto him and let\n him bellow. I soothed the lanks of soiled white hair back over his\n lumpy skull.\n\n\n He shut up at last and I laid him down again and put his arm back\n across his face. (You can't turn the light off and on in places like\n that. The old wiring will blow the bulb half the time.)", "\"Don't move, Kevin,\" she said. \"I'll have to shoot you—maybe not to\n kill, but painfully.\"\n\n\n I watched her face flash blue, red, blue and knew she meant it. But I\n had known too much in too short a time. I had to help Doc, but there\n was something else.\n\n\n \"I just want a drink of coffee from that container on the chair,\" I\n told her.\n\n\n She shook her head. \"I don't know what you think it does to you.\"\n\n\n It was getting hard for me to think. \"Who are you?\"\n\n\n She showed me a card from her wrist purse. Vivian Casey, Constable,\n North American Mounted Police.\n\n\n I had to help Doc. I had to have some coffee. \"What do you want?\"", "I didn't look at her. She didn't know. She thought I was a human—an\nEarth\nhuman. I was a\nman\n, of course, not an\nalien\nlike a Martian.\n Earthmen ran the whole Solar Federation, but I was just as good as an\n Earthman. With my suntan and short mane, I could pass, couldn't I? That\n proved it, didn't it?\n\n\n \"Hamburger,\" I said. \"Well done.\" I knew that would probably be all\n they had fit to eat at a place like this. It might be horse meat, but\n then I didn't have the local prejudices.\n\n\n I didn't look at the woman. I couldn't. But I kept remembering how\n clean she looked and I was aware of how clean she smelled. I was so\n dirty, so very dirty that I could never get clean if I bathed every\n hour for the rest of my life.", "I looked up at his stubbled face. \"I had half a dozen hamburgers, a\n cup of coffee and a glass of milk. I want four more 'burgers to go and\n a pint of coffee. By your prices, that will be one sixty-five—if the\n lady didn't pay you.\"\n\n\n \"She didn't,\" he stammered. \"Why do you think I was trying to get that\n bill out of your hand?\"\n\n\n I didn't say anything, just got up off the floor. After the counterman\n put down my change, I spread out the five dollar bill on the vacant\n bar, smoothing it." ], [ "\"What nickel?\" His eyes were big, but they kept looking right at me.\n \"You don't have any nickel. You don't have any quarter, not if I say\n so. Want I should call a cop and tell him you were flexing a muscle?\"\n\n\n I let go of him. He didn't scare me, but Doc was beginning to mumble\n and that\ndid\nscare me. I had to get him alone.\n\n\n \"Where's the room?\" I asked.\nThe room was six feet in all directions and the walls were five feet\n high. The other foot was finished in chicken wire. There was a wino\n singing on the left, a wino praying on the right, and the door didn't\n have any lock on it. At last, Doc and I were alone.", "\"Sure,\" the man agreed severely, prying a little worriedly at Doc's\n arthritic fingers that were clamped on his collar. \"No argument. Sure,\n up we go. But leave me go or, so help me, I'll fetch you one in the\n teeth!\"\n\n\n I came alongside and carefully started to lever the old man loose,\n one finger at a time. It had to be done this way. I had learned that\n during all these weeks and months. His hands looked old and crippled,\n but I felt they were the strongest in the world. If a half dozen winos\n in Seattle hadn't helped me get them loose, Doc and I would have been\n wanted for the murder of a North American Mountie.\n\n\n It was easier this night and that made me afraid. Doc's thin frame,\n layered with lumpy fat, was beginning to muscle-dance against my side.\n One of his times was coming on him. Then at last he was free of the\n greasy collar of the human.", "That wasn't just an addict's dream. I knew who Doc was. When I got\n to thinking it was just a dream and that I was dragging this old man\n around North America for nothing, I remembered who he was.\n\n\n I remembered that he was somebody very important whose name and work I\n had once known, even if now I knew him only as Doc.\n\n\n Pain was a pendulum within me, swinging from low throbbing bass to high\n screaming tenor. I had to get out and get some. But I didn't have a\n nickel. Still, I had to get some.\n\n\n I crawled to the door and raised myself by the knob, slick with greasy\n dirt. The door opened and shut—there was no lock. I shouldn't leave\n Doc alone, but I had to.\n\n\n He was starting to cry. He didn't always do that.", "\"Listen, Kevin. Listen carefully to what I am saying. Doc found\n a method of time travel. It was almost a purely mathematical,\n topographical way divorced from modern physical sciences. He kept it\n secret and he wanted to make money with it. He was an idealist—he had\n his crusades. How can you make money with time travel?\"\n\n\n I didn't know whether she was asking me, but I didn't know. All I knew\n was that I had to help Doc and get some coffee.\n\n\n \"It takes money—money Doc didn't have—to make money,\" Miss Casey\n said, \"even if you know what horse will come in and what stock will\n prosper. Besides, horse-racing and the stock market weren't a part of\n Doc's character. He was a scholar.\"\n\n\n Why did she keep using the past tense in reference to Doc? It scared\n me. He was lying so still with the left side of his face so twisted. I\n needed some coffee.", "I laid Doc out on the gray-brown cot and put his forearm over his face\n to shield it some from the glare of the light bulb. I swept off all the\n bedbugs in sight and stepped on them heavily.\n\n\n Then I dropped down into the painted stool chair and let my burning\n eyes rest on the obscene wall drawings just to focus them. I was so\n dirty, I could feel the grime grinding together all over me. My shaggy\n scalp still smarted from the alcohol I had stolen from a convertible's\n gas tank to get rid of Doc's and my cooties. Lucky that I never needed\n to shave and that my face was so dirty, no one would even notice that I\n didn't need to.\n\n\n The cramp hit me and I folded out of the chair onto the littered,\n uncovered floor.", "\"Why, yes. I'm flattered. This is the first manuscript. Considering my\n professional handwriting, I recopied it more laboriously.\"\nAccepting the sheaf of papers and not looking back at these two great\n and good men, I concentrated on my own time and Doc. Nothing happened.\n My heart raced, but I saw something dancing before me like a dust mote\n in sunlight and stepped toward it....\n\n\n ... into the effective range of Miss Casey's tiny gun.\nShe inclined the lethal silver toy. \"Let me see those papers, Kevin.\"\n\n\n I handed her the doctor's manuscript.\n\n\n Her breath escaped slowly and loudly. \"It's all right. It's all right.\n It exists. It's real. Not even one of the unwritten ones. I've read\n this myself.\"\n\n\n Doc was lying on the cot, half his face twisted into horror.", "I told the human no, thanks, and walked Doc toward the flophouse three\n doors down. I hoped we would make it. I didn't know what would happen\n if we didn't. Doc was liable to say something that might nova Sol, for\n all I knew.\nMartians approaching the corner were sensing at Doc and me. They\n were just cheap tourists slumming down on Skid Row. I hated tourists\n and especially I hated Martian tourists because I especially hated\n Martians. They were\naliens\n. They weren't\nmen\nlike Doc and me.\n\n\n Then I realized what was about to happen. It was foolish and awful and\n true. I was going to have one of mine at the same time Doc was having\n his. That was bad. It had happened a few times right after I first\n found him, but now it was worse. For some undefinable reason, I felt we\n kept getting closer each of the times.\n\n\n I tried not to think about it and helped Doc through the fly-specked\n flophouse doors.", "I listened to him for a moment, then tested and tasted the craving that\n crawled through my veins. I got back inside somehow.\n\n\n Doc was twisting on the cot, tears washing white streaks across his\n face. I shoved Doc's face up against my chest. I held onto him and let\n him bellow. I soothed the lanks of soiled white hair back over his\n lumpy skull.\n\n\n He shut up at last and I laid him down again and put his arm back\n across his face. (You can't turn the light off and on in places like\n that. The old wiring will blow the bulb half the time.)", "He held something out to me. It was my notebook. He had used my pen,\n before dismantling it, to write something. I tilted the notebook\n against the neon light, now red wine, now fresh grape. I read it.\n\n\n \"Concentrate,\" Doc said hoarsely. \"Concentrate....\"\n\n\n I wondered what the words meant. Wondering takes a kind of\n concentration.\n\n\n The words \"First Edition\" were what I was thinking about most.\nThe heavy-set man in the ornate armchair was saying, \"The bullet struck\n me as I was pulling on my boot....\"\n\n\n I was kneeling on the floor of a Victorian living room. I'm quite\n familiar with Earth history and I recognized the period immediately.\n\n\n Then I realized what I had been trying to get from Doc all these\n months—time travel.", "I scooped up my change and walked out the door. There was no one on the\n sidewalk, only in the doorways.\nFirst I opened the door on an amber world, then an azure one. Neon\n light was coming from the chickenwire border of the room, from a window\n somewhere beyond. The wino on one side of the room was singing and\n the one on the other side was praying, same as before. Only they had\n changed around—prayer came from the left, song from the right.\n\n\n Doc sat on the floor in the half-darkness and he had made a\nthing\n.\nMy heart hammered at my lungs. I\nknew\nthis last time had been\n different. Whatever it was was getting closer. This was the first time\n Doc had ever made anything. It didn't look like much, but it was a\n start.", "He had broken the light bulb and used the filament and screw bottom.\n His strong hands had unraveled some of the bed \"springs\"—metal\n webbing—and fashioned them to his needs. My orb-point pen had\n dissolved under his touch. All of them, useless parts, were made into a\n meaningful whole.\n\n\n I knew the thing had meaning, but when I tried to follow its design, I\n became lost.\n\n\n I put the paper container of warm coffee and the greasy bag of\n hamburgers on the wooden chair, hoping the odor wouldn't bring any\n hungry rats out of the walls.\n\n\n I knelt beside Doc.\n\n\n \"An order, my boy, an order,\" he whispered.\n\n\n I didn't know what he meant. Was he suddenly trying to give me orders?", "It stopped hurting, but I knew it would begin if I moved. I stared at a\n jagged cut-out nude curled against a lump of dust and lint, giving it\n an unreal distortion.\n\n\n Doc began to mumble louder.\n\n\n I knew I had to move.\n\n\n I waited just a moment, savoring the painless peace. Then, finally, I\n moved.", "\"They ceased to exist—as human beings—shortly after they received a\n book from Doc,\" the Martian said.\n\n\n Something seemed to strike me in the back of the neck. I staggered, but\n managed to hold onto the gun and stand up.\n\n\n \"Use one of those sneaky Martian weapons again,\" I warned him,\n \"and I'll kill the girl.\" Martians were supposed to be against the\n destruction of any life-form, I had read someplace. I doubted it, but\n it was worth a try.\n\n\n \"Kevin,\" Andre said, \"why don't you take a bath?\"\n\n\n The Martian weapon staggered me again. I tried to say something. I\n tried to explain that I was so dirty that I could never get clean no\n matter how often I bathed. No words formed.", "I pointed the gun generally at her and backed around the\nthing\non the\n floor to the cot. Doc had a pulse, but it was irregular. I checked for\n a fever and there wasn't one. After that, I didn't know what to do.\n\n\n I looked up finally and saw a Martian in or about the doorway.\n\n\n \"Call me Andre,\" the Martian said. \"A common name but foreign. It\n should serve as a point of reference.\"\n\n\n I had always wondered how a thing like a Martian could talk. Sometimes\n I wondered if they really could.\n\n\n \"You won't need the gun,\" Andre said conversationally.\n\n\n \"I'll keep it, thanks. What do\nyou\nwant?\"\n\n\n \"I'll begin as Miss Casey did—by telling you things. Hundreds of\n people disappeared from North America a few months ago.\"\n\n\n \"They always do,\" I told him.", "\"Kevin,\" the Martian said, \"drinking coffee represents a major vice\n only in Centurian humanoids, not Earth-norm human beings.\nWhich are\n you?\n\"\n\n\n Nothing came out of my gabbling mouth.\n\n\n \"\nWhat is Doc's full name?\n\"\n\n\n I almost fell in, but at the last instant I caught myself and said,\n \"Doctor Kevin O'Malley, Senior.\"\n\n\n From the bed, Doc said a word. \"Son.\"\n\n\n Then he disappeared.\n\n\n I looked at that which he had made. I wondered where he had gone, in\n search of what.\n\n\n \"He didn't use that,\" Andre said.", "So I was an Earthman, Doc's son. So my addiction to coffee was all in\n my mind. That didn't change anything. They say sex is all in your mind.\n I didn't want to be cured. I wouldn't be. Doc was gone. That was all I\n had now. That and the\nthing\nhe left.\n\n\n \"The rest is simple,\" Andre said. \"Doc O'Malley bought up all the stock\n in a certain ancient metaphysical order and started supplying members\n with certain books. Can you imagine the effect of the\nBook of Dyzan\nor the\nBook of Thoth\nor the\nSeven Cryptical Books of Hsan\nor the\nNecronomican\nitself on human beings?\"\n\n\n \"But they don't exist,\" I said wearily.", "The tubercular clerk looked up from the gaudy comics sections of one of\n those little tabloids that have the funnies a week in advance.\n\n\n \"Fifteen cents a bed,\" he said mechanically.\n\n\n \"We'll use one bed,\" I told him. \"I'll give you twenty cents.\" I felt\n the round hard quarter in my pocket, sweaty hand against sticky lining.\n\n\n \"Fifteen cents a bed,\" he played it back for me.\n\n\n Doc was quivering against me, his legs boneless.\n\n\n \"We can always make it over to the mission,\" I lied.\n\n\n The clerk turned his upper lip as if he were going to spit. \"Awright,\n since we ain't full up. In\nad\nvance.\"\n\n\n I placed the quarter on the desk.\n\n\n \"Give me a nickel.\"", "Confidence Game\nBy JIM HARMON\n\n\n Illustrated by EPSTEIN\n\n\n [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n Galaxy Science Fiction June 1957.\n\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nI admit it: I didn't know if I was coming or\n \ngoing—but I know that if I stuck to the old\n \nman, I was a comer ... even if he was a goner!\nDoc had this solemn human by the throat when I caught up with him.\n\n\n \"Tonight,\" Doc was saying in his old voice that was as crackled and\n important as parchment, \"tonight Man will reach the Moon. The golden\n Moon and the silver ship, symbols of greed. Tonight is the night when\n this is to happen.\"", "The hamburger was engulfed by five black-crowned, broken fingernails\n and raised to two rows of yellow ivory. I surrounded it like an ameba,\n almost in a single movement of my jaws.\n\n\n Several other hamburgers followed the first. I lost count. I drank a\n glass of milk. I didn't want to black out on coffee with Doc waiting\n for me.\n\n\n \"Could I have a few to take with me, miss?\" I pleaded.\n\n\n She smiled. I caught that out of the edge of my vision, but mostly I\n just felt it.\n\n\n \"That's the first time you've called me anything but 'ma'am',\" she\n said. \"I'm not an old-maid schoolteacher, you know.\"\n\n\n That probably meant she was a schoolteacher, though. \"No, miss,\" I said.", "The clerk's hand fell on the coin and slid it off into the unknown\n before I could move, what with holding up Doc.\n\n\n \"You've got your nerve,\" he said at me with a fine mist of dew. \"Had a\n quarter all along and yet you Martian me down to twenty cents.\" He saw\n the look on my face. \"I'll give you a\nroom\nfor the two bits. That's\n better'n a bed for twenty.\"\n\n\n I knew I was going to need that nickel.\nDesperately.\nI reached across\n the desk with my free hand and hauled the scrawny human up against the\n register hard. I'm not as strong in my hands as Doc, but I managed.\n\n\n \"Give me a nickel,\" I said." ] ]
train	24161	[ "Why does Evans give up his drinking water?", "Why does Evans have difficulty identifying crystals?", "What do the workers of WIlliamson Town do that causes them to lose water?", "Why is Jones a change in the pricing structure for supply runs?", "How is time experienced by the people on the moon?", "How are people on Earth able to help with the search for a missing prospector?", "What is the most precious commodity on the moon?", "What is not correct about the workers' description of the meteor shower?", "What does Jones likely think Evans is up to when he finds him?" ]	[ [ "Using the water is the only way for his transportation to work", "He knows he will be able to find more soon in one of the caves", "He knows his rescuers will come find him and bring water", "He knows he does not have enough to survive so he uses it to save his equipment" ], [ "All of the crystals he found were very rare", "He does not have much experience in doing so", "They were not actually crystals to begin with", "None of the crystals were native to the moon" ], [ "Something got stuck when they tried to balance the weight on the valve mechanism", "Something malfunctioned when they tried to clean old build-up", "A water container exploded while they were trying to fill it", "One of the men was siphoning water supply for profit" ], [ "He thinks it would save time in writing contracts", "He thinks he can make a bigger profit if he has more control", "It would allow more necessary supplies to reach Earth", "He wants to be able to carry more expensive supplies" ], [ "They track time based on both Earth and the moon", "They work in two-week shifts, built around supply runs", "They all live and work on an Earth schedule", "They plan their schedules around the water cycle" ], [ "They can shine a light to make searching easier", "Their equipment is advanced enough to connect to the prospector's radio", "They can boost the signals of the scanners on the moon", "They can see different sides of the moon from the people on the moon" ], [ "Water", "Oxygen", "Natural gas", "Chromite ore" ], [ "The shower had caused a lot of damage to their equipment", "Nobody was outside the city to get hit during the storm", "They could identify fresh craters by locating footprints", "It had occurred a couple of days ago" ], [ "He saw that he was setting up a mine to start collecting water", "He thought he had found a new source of crystals", "He thought he was already dead", "He thought his oxygen machine was meant to be a temporary survival tool" ] ]	[ 1, 3, 2, 3, 1, 4, 1, 2, 4 ]	[ 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about\n sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't\n make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to\n more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in\n the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too\n carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent\n conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days\n reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals\n twenty-one days to live.\n\n\n In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be\n dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin\n for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.\n\"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now,\" he told himself.", "Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing\n the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would\n operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in\n the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if\n the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.\n\n\n But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his\n drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the\n pipe. He pulled on a knob marked \"Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass.\" The\n water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and\n the steam turned the generator briefly.\n\n\n Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the\n trouble was.\n\n\n \"The water, man,\" he said, \"there is not enough to melt the ice in the\n condenser.\"", "He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into\n the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully\n used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious\n luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to\n live.\n\n\n The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as\n the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the\n ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.", "\"No,\" Evans answered, \"a Welshman, nothing more.\"\n\n\n \"Well, then,\" said Jones, \"are you ready to start back?\"\n\n\n \"Back?\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was to rescue you that I came.\"\n\n\n \"I don't need rescuing, man,\" Evans said.\n\n\n Jones stared at him blankly.\n\n\n \"You might let me have some food,\" Evans continued. \"I'm getting short\n of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to\n fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my\n claim.\"\n\n\n \"Claim?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine\n on the Moon!\"\n\n\n THE END", "A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking\n mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of\n a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of\n his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his\n tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up\n oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light\n went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his\n ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five\n minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as\n efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit\n so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He", "\"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water.\" He\n looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.\n \"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must\n have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in\n all of 'em.\n\n\n \"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to\n remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I\n remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with\n electricity. So I built this thing.\n\n\n \"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the\n room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of\n course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how\n long.\"\n\n\n \"You're a genius, man!\" Jones exclaimed.", "\"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English\n and Scots. Speaking of which—\"\n\n\n \"Oh, of course,\" McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.\n\n\n \"\nSlainte, McIlroy, bach.\n\" [Health, McIlroy, man.]\n\n\n \"\nSlainte mhor, bach.\n\" [Great Health, man.]\nThe sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky\n when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The\n thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such\n cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.\n\n\n Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by\n chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each\n one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the\n volume of each bubble filled with ice.", "Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be\n carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director\n McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his\n oxygen runs out.\n\n\n Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic\n search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered\n by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now\n dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as\n it is believed he was carrying only short-range,\n intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...\n\n\n Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: \"Anyway, Mac,\" he was\n saying to McIlroy, \"a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never\n a word did he say.\"\n\n\n \"Like as not, you're right,\" McIlroy replied, \"but if I know Evans, he'd\n never say a word about any forebodings.\"", "McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it\n had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why\n this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about\n finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole\n population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the\n search.\n\n\n The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was\n slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.\n\n\n It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.\n\n\n \"They've found the tractor,\" McIlroy said.\n\n\n \"Good,\" Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; \"That's fine!\n That's just line! Is Evans—?\"", "It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,\n and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also\n volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft\n tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged\n were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,\n that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.\n\n\n It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.\n\n\n It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.\n The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be\n drifting across Australia.\n\n\n Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after\n Australia.", "Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:\n\n\n \"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone\n up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a\n profit.\"\n\n\n \"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down.\"\n\n\n \"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a\n half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?\"\n\n\n \"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a\n radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that\n will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium.\"\n\n\n \"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?\"", "\"Well, man,\" he breathed, \"there's a light to die by.\"\nThe sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.\n It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to\n the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have\n appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.\n If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark\n filters.\n\n\n When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the\n rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce\n the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening\n his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum\n density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.\n McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably\n lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the\n inner office open.", "\"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it\n tells me that Evans will be found.\"\n\n\n McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. \"So that's the\n reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Well, yes,\" Jones answered. \"I thought that it might happen that a\n rocket would be needed in the search.\"\n\n\n The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted\n Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the\n stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset\n crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,\n as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.", "Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor\n started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the\n boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat\n was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric\n eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw\n the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building\n opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a\n fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.\n\n\n \"Valve's stuck,\" said Cade.\n\n\n \"Open it and close it again,\" said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead\n started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an\n unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off\n on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the\n inside of his faceplate.", "Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife\n geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two\n hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The\n rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which\n was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium\n from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets\n landed.\n\n\n When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he\n followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that\n he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a\n half, and he was lucky to break even.\n\n\n Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of\n the first landing on the Moon.", "\"I've found the trouble,\" Lehman said. \"The worm gear's loose on its\n shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough\n power in it to crush the scale.\"\n\n\n \"Right,\" Cowalczk said. \"Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that\n pipe wrench!\"\n\n\n Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at\n the motor bearing.\n\n\n Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and\n turned it.\n\n\n \"Is the light off?\" Cowalczk asked.\n\n\n \"No,\" Cade answered.\n\n\n \"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds.\"\n\n\n \"Twenty pounds,\" Cade answered after a couple of minutes.", "\"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite\n observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report\n back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?\"\nEvans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the\n rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.\n When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to\n run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited\n figure of Nickel Jones.\n\n\n \"Evans, man!\" said Jones' voice in the intercom. \"Alive you are!\"\n\n\n \"A Welshman takes a lot of killing,\" Evans answered.\nLater, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:", "\"'Morning, Mr. Phelps,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Good morning,\" Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.\n\n\n \"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps,\" said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.\n\n\n \"Any news?\" asked McIlroy.\n\n\n \"About Evans?\" Phelps shook his head slowly. \"Palomar called in a few\n minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia\n will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then\n Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them\n are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position\n by the time Europe is.\"", "\"Six now,\" said Cade.\n\n\n Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and\n ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the\n Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.\n\n\n They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor\n turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.\n\"What's going on out there?\" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.\n\n\n \"Scale stuck in the valve,\" Cowalczk answered.\n\n\n \"Are the reactors off?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!\"\n\n\n \"Sorry,\" McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.\n \"Let me know when it's fixed.\"", "For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no\n alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was\n assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.\n Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy,\" said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to\n Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.\n\n\n \"Good morning indeed,\" answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning\n at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning\n on the Moon for another week.\n\n\n \"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?\" he asked. The solar\n furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on\n anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up\n to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant." ], [ "One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags\n and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would\n waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all\n right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he\n thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he\n was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.\n\"Well, now,\" he said, \"it's probably the largest natural crystal of\n potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch\n across.\"", "\"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.\n These crystals,\" he said, \"look a little like zeolites, but that can't\n be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon.\"\n\n\n He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of\n them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.", "Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife\n geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two\n hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The\n rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which\n was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium\n from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets\n landed.\n\n\n When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he\n followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that\n he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a\n half, and he was lucky to break even.\n\n\n Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of\n the first landing on the Moon.", "Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be\n carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director\n McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his\n oxygen runs out.\n\n\n Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic\n search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered\n by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now\n dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as\n it is believed he was carrying only short-range,\n intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...\n\n\n Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: \"Anyway, Mac,\" he was\n saying to McIlroy, \"a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never\n a word did he say.\"\n\n\n \"Like as not, you're right,\" McIlroy replied, \"but if I know Evans, he'd\n never say a word about any forebodings.\"", "\"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it\n tells me that Evans will be found.\"\n\n\n McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. \"So that's the\n reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Well, yes,\" Jones answered. \"I thought that it might happen that a\n rocket would be needed in the search.\"\n\n\n The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted\n Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the\n stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset\n crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,\n as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.", "Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small\n craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the\n places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot\n that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a\n square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been\n made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater\n covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.\nAfter the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been\n exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and\n found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the\n cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white\n crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into\n a collector's bag.", "Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about\n sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't\n make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to\n more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in\n the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too\n carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent\n conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days\n reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals\n twenty-one days to live.\n\n\n In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be\n dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin\n for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.\n\"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now,\" he told himself.", "A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking\n mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of\n a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of\n his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his\n tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up\n oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light\n went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his\n ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five\n minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as\n efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit\n so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He", "\"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English\n and Scots. Speaking of which—\"\n\n\n \"Oh, of course,\" McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.\n\n\n \"\nSlainte, McIlroy, bach.\n\" [Health, McIlroy, man.]\n\n\n \"\nSlainte mhor, bach.\n\" [Great Health, man.]\nThe sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky\n when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The\n thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such\n cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.\n\n\n Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by\n chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each\n one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the\n volume of each bubble filled with ice.", "Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:\n\n\n \"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone\n up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a\n profit.\"\n\n\n \"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down.\"\n\n\n \"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a\n half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?\"\n\n\n \"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a\n radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that\n will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium.\"\n\n\n \"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?\"", "Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing\n the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would\n operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in\n the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if\n the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.\n\n\n But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his\n drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the\n pipe. He pulled on a knob marked \"Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass.\" The\n water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and\n the steam turned the generator briefly.\n\n\n Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the\n trouble was.\n\n\n \"The water, man,\" he said, \"there is not enough to melt the ice in the\n condenser.\"", "\"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite\n observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report\n back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?\"\nEvans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the\n rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.\n When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to\n run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited\n figure of Nickel Jones.\n\n\n \"Evans, man!\" said Jones' voice in the intercom. \"Alive you are!\"\n\n\n \"A Welshman takes a lot of killing,\" Evans answered.\nLater, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:", "It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,\n and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also\n volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft\n tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged\n were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,\n that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.\n\n\n It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.\n\n\n It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.\n The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be\n drifting across Australia.\n\n\n Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after\n Australia.", "McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it\n had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why\n this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about\n finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole\n population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the\n search.\n\n\n The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was\n slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.\n\n\n It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.\n\n\n \"They've found the tractor,\" McIlroy said.\n\n\n \"Good,\" Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; \"That's fine!\n That's just line! Is Evans—?\"", "\"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water.\" He\n looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.\n \"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must\n have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in\n all of 'em.\n\n\n \"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to\n remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I\n remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with\n electricity. So I built this thing.\n\n\n \"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the\n room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of\n course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how\n long.\"\n\n\n \"You're a genius, man!\" Jones exclaimed.", "\"Well, man,\" he breathed, \"there's a light to die by.\"\nThe sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.\n It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to\n the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have\n appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.\n If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark\n filters.\n\n\n When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the\n rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce\n the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening\n his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum\n density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.\n McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably\n lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the\n inner office open.", "\"No,\" Evans answered, \"a Welshman, nothing more.\"\n\n\n \"Well, then,\" said Jones, \"are you ready to start back?\"\n\n\n \"Back?\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was to rescue you that I came.\"\n\n\n \"I don't need rescuing, man,\" Evans said.\n\n\n Jones stared at him blankly.\n\n\n \"You might let me have some food,\" Evans continued. \"I'm getting short\n of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to\n fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my\n claim.\"\n\n\n \"Claim?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine\n on the Moon!\"\n\n\n THE END", "Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor\n started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the\n boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat\n was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric\n eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw\n the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building\n opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a\n fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.\n\n\n \"Valve's stuck,\" said Cade.\n\n\n \"Open it and close it again,\" said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead\n started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an\n unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off\n on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the\n inside of his faceplate.", "All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon\n puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the\n unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was\n nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a\n type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by\n the sun.\nThe sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The\n stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only\n Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept\n around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared\n on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,", "\"'Morning, Mr. Phelps,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Good morning,\" Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.\n\n\n \"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps,\" said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.\n\n\n \"Any news?\" asked McIlroy.\n\n\n \"About Evans?\" Phelps shook his head slowly. \"Palomar called in a few\n minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia\n will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then\n Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them\n are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position\n by the time Europe is.\"" ], [ "\"Well, man,\" he breathed, \"there's a light to die by.\"\nThe sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.\n It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to\n the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have\n appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.\n If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark\n filters.\n\n\n When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the\n rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce\n the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening\n his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum\n density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.\n McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably\n lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the\n inner office open.", "\"I've found the trouble,\" Lehman said. \"The worm gear's loose on its\n shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough\n power in it to crush the scale.\"\n\n\n \"Right,\" Cowalczk said. \"Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that\n pipe wrench!\"\n\n\n Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at\n the motor bearing.\n\n\n Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and\n turned it.\n\n\n \"Is the light off?\" Cowalczk asked.\n\n\n \"No,\" Cade answered.\n\n\n \"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds.\"\n\n\n \"Twenty pounds,\" Cade answered after a couple of minutes.", "McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it\n had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why\n this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about\n finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole\n population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the\n search.\n\n\n The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was\n slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.\n\n\n It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.\n\n\n \"They've found the tractor,\" McIlroy said.\n\n\n \"Good,\" Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; \"That's fine!\n That's just line! Is Evans—?\"", "\"No,\" said Lehman, \"I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we\n lost.\"\n\n\n \"Two thousand?\" Cade asked. \"We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.\n How come we can operate now?\"\n\n\n \"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using\n the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again.\"\n\n\n \"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple\n of weeks.\"\nPROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON\n\n\n IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director\n McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector\n is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring\n the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was\n presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.", "He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into\n the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully\n used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious\n luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to\n live.\n\n\n The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as\n the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the\n ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.", "Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about\n sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't\n make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to\n more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in\n the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too\n carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent\n conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days\n reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals\n twenty-one days to live.\n\n\n In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be\n dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin\n for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.\n\"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now,\" he told himself.", "\"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking,\" Cowalczk said. \"Hold\n it there, we'll open the valve again.\"\n\n\n \"O.K.,\" said Cade. \"An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff.\"\n\n\n \"Like Hell,\" said Lehman.\n\n\n Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and\n dwindled as they closed the valve.\n\n\n \"What did you do?\" asked Cade. \"The light went out and came on again.\"\n\n\n \"Check that circuit and see if it works,\" Cowalczk instructed.\n\n\n There was a pause.\n\n\n \"It's O.K.,\" Cade said.\n\n\n Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.", "Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor\n started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the\n boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat\n was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric\n eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw\n the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building\n opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a\n fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.\n\n\n \"Valve's stuck,\" said Cade.\n\n\n \"Open it and close it again,\" said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead\n started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an\n unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off\n on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the\n inside of his faceplate.", "\"Because I say so,\" Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and\n ashamed of it. \"Boiler scale,\" he continued, much calmer. \"We've got to\n clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor\n don't clog up.\" He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor\n building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. \"It\n would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night.\"\n\n\n \"Pressure's ten and a half pounds,\" said Cade.\n\n\n \"Right, let her go,\" said Cowalczk.", "For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no\n alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was\n assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.\n Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy,\" said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to\n Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.\n\n\n \"Good morning indeed,\" answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning\n at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning\n on the Moon for another week.\n\n\n \"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?\" he asked. The solar\n furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on\n anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up\n to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.", "\"Let's find out how bad it is indeed,\" he answered. He reached for the\n light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the \"on\"\n position.\n\n\n \"Batteries must be dead,\" he told himself.\n\n\n \"What batteries?\" he asked. \"There're no batteries in here, the power\n comes from the generator.\"\n\n\n \"Why isn't the generator working, man?\" he asked.\n\n\n He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the\n main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,\n came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself\n through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—\n\n\n \"The condenser!\" he shouted.", "\"Six now,\" said Cade.\n\n\n Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and\n ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the\n Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.\n\n\n They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor\n turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.\n\"What's going on out there?\" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.\n\n\n \"Scale stuck in the valve,\" Cowalczk answered.\n\n\n \"Are the reactors off?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!\"\n\n\n \"Sorry,\" McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.\n \"Let me know when it's fixed.\"", "Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing\n the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would\n operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in\n the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if\n the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.\n\n\n But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his\n drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the\n pipe. He pulled on a knob marked \"Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass.\" The\n water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and\n the steam turned the generator briefly.\n\n\n Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the\n trouble was.\n\n\n \"The water, man,\" he said, \"there is not enough to melt the ice in the\n condenser.\"", "\"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water.\" He\n looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.\n \"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must\n have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in\n all of 'em.\n\n\n \"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to\n remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I\n remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with\n electricity. So I built this thing.\n\n\n \"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the\n room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of\n course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how\n long.\"\n\n\n \"You're a genius, man!\" Jones exclaimed.", "Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife\n geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two\n hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The\n rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which\n was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium\n from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets\n landed.\n\n\n When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he\n followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that\n he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a\n half, and he was lucky to break even.\n\n\n Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of\n the first landing on the Moon.", "\"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean\n Time.\"\n\n\n There was another pause.\n\n\n \"They say it's September fourth, one thirty\n a.m.\n \"\n\n\n \"Well, there you are,\" laughed McIlroy, \"it isn't that time doesn't mean\n anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing.\"\n\n\n Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. \"Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any\n rate,\" he said.\nThe power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the\n nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and\n one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it\n threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.", "It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,\n and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also\n volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft\n tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged\n were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,\n that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.\n\n\n It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.\n\n\n It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.\n The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be\n drifting across Australia.\n\n\n Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after\n Australia.", "\"There doesn't seem to be any profit,\" Mr. Phelps said.\n\n\n \"That's par for a nonprofit organization,\" said McIlroy. \"But we're\n amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm\n sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction.\"\n\n\n \"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" said McIlroy, \"that's not so silly. I don't know either.\"\n\n\n \"Mrs. Garth,\" he called, \"what day is this?\"\n\n\n \"Why, September, I think,\" she answered.\n\n\n \"I mean what\nday\n.\"\n\n\n \"I don't know, I'll call the observatory.\"\n\n\n There was a pause.\n\n\n \"They say what day where?\" she asked.", "\"Light is off now,\" Cade said.\n\n\n \"Good,\" said Cowalczk, \"take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see\n what happens.\"\n\n\n \"Eight hundred pounds,\" Cade said, after a short wait.\n\n\n \"Good enough,\" Cowalczk said. \"Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he\n can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get\n out of here.\"\n\n\n \"Well, I'm glad that's over,\" said Cade. \"You guys had me worried for a\n while.\"\n\n\n \"Think we weren't worried?\" Lehman asked. \"And it's not over.\"\n\n\n \"What?\" Cade asked. \"Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?\"", "He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all\n doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone\n was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system\n to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly\n improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was\n disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the\n survey.\n\n\n McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he\n did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a\n leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with\n cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were\n complied with eagerly and smoothly.\n\n\n Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he\n accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of\n suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he\n didn't particularly care to have obeyed." ], [ "\"The Commission,\" he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,\n \"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight.\"\n\n\n McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled\n it again.\n\n\n \"And then,\" continued Jones, \"if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission\n it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only\n fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the\n Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no\n profit I could make by cutting rates the other way.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to\n the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.", "\"I swear, Mac,\" said Jones, \"another season like this, and I'm going\n back to mining.\"\n\n\n \"I thought you were doing pretty well,\" said McIlroy, as he poured two\n drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.\n\n\n \"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't\n have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission.\"\n\n\n McIlroy had heard all of this before. \"How's that?\" he asked politely.\n\n\n \"You may think it's myself running the ship,\" Jones started on his\n tirade, \"but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The\n union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.\n And then the Commission ...\" The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant\n taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.", "Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:\n\n\n \"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone\n up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a\n profit.\"\n\n\n \"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down.\"\n\n\n \"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a\n half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?\"\n\n\n \"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a\n radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that\n will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium.\"\n\n\n \"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?\"", "\"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in\n charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of\n the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to\n here?\"\n\n\n \"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?\" asked McIlroy.\n\n\n \"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,\n and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,\n they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it\n isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water\n we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and\n set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.\n\n\n \"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to\n pay for water.\"", "\"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water.\" He\n looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.\n \"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must\n have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in\n all of 'em.\n\n\n \"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to\n remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I\n remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with\n electricity. So I built this thing.\n\n\n \"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the\n room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of\n course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how\n long.\"\n\n\n \"You're a genius, man!\" Jones exclaimed.", "Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be\n carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director\n McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his\n oxygen runs out.\n\n\n Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic\n search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered\n by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now\n dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as\n it is believed he was carrying only short-range,\n intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...\n\n\n Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: \"Anyway, Mac,\" he was\n saying to McIlroy, \"a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never\n a word did he say.\"\n\n\n \"Like as not, you're right,\" McIlroy replied, \"but if I know Evans, he'd\n never say a word about any forebodings.\"", "Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife\n geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two\n hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The\n rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which\n was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium\n from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets\n landed.\n\n\n When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he\n followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that\n he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a\n half, and he was lucky to break even.\n\n\n Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of\n the first landing on the Moon.", "\"Because I say so,\" Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and\n ashamed of it. \"Boiler scale,\" he continued, much calmer. \"We've got to\n clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor\n don't clog up.\" He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor\n building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. \"It\n would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night.\"\n\n\n \"Pressure's ten and a half pounds,\" said Cade.\n\n\n \"Right, let her go,\" said Cowalczk.", "\"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite\n observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report\n back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?\"\nEvans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the\n rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.\n When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to\n run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited\n figure of Nickel Jones.\n\n\n \"Evans, man!\" said Jones' voice in the intercom. \"Alive you are!\"\n\n\n \"A Welshman takes a lot of killing,\" Evans answered.\nLater, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:", "He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all\n doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone\n was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system\n to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly\n improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was\n disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the\n survey.\n\n\n McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he\n did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a\n leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with\n cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were\n complied with eagerly and smoothly.\n\n\n Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he\n accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of\n suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he\n didn't particularly care to have obeyed.", "\"No,\" Evans answered, \"a Welshman, nothing more.\"\n\n\n \"Well, then,\" said Jones, \"are you ready to start back?\"\n\n\n \"Back?\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was to rescue you that I came.\"\n\n\n \"I don't need rescuing, man,\" Evans said.\n\n\n Jones stared at him blankly.\n\n\n \"You might let me have some food,\" Evans continued. \"I'm getting short\n of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to\n fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my\n claim.\"\n\n\n \"Claim?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine\n on the Moon!\"\n\n\n THE END", "A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking\n mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of\n a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of\n his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his\n tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up\n oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light\n went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his\n ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five\n minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as\n efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit\n so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He", "\"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it\n tells me that Evans will be found.\"\n\n\n McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. \"So that's the\n reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Well, yes,\" Jones answered. \"I thought that it might happen that a\n rocket would be needed in the search.\"\n\n\n The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted\n Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the\n stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset\n crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,\n as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.", "For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no\n alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was\n assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.\n Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy,\" said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to\n Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.\n\n\n \"Good morning indeed,\" answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning\n at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning\n on the Moon for another week.\n\n\n \"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?\" he asked. The solar\n furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on\n anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up\n to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.", "and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to\n move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into\n the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same\n time that the sun rose.\nNickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and\n to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores\n out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.", "\"They went out about an hour ago,\" she answered, \"I suppose that's what\n they were going to do.\"\n\n\n \"Very good, what's first on the schedule?\"\n\n\n \"A Mr. Phelps to see you,\" she said.\n\n\n \"How do you do, Mr. Phelps,\" McIlroy greeted him.\n\n\n \"Good afternoon,\" Mr. Phelps replied. \"I'm here representing the\n Merchants' Bank Association.\"\n\n\n \"Fine,\" McIlroy said, \"I suppose you're here to set up a bank.\"\n\n\n \"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going\n over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning.\"\n\n\n \"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands,\" McIlroy said. \"I hope\n they're in good order.\"", "Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about\n sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't\n make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to\n more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in\n the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too\n carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent\n conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days\n reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals\n twenty-one days to live.\n\n\n In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be\n dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin\n for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.\n\"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now,\" he told himself.", "\"Six now,\" said Cade.\n\n\n Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and\n ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the\n Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.\n\n\n They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor\n turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.\n\"What's going on out there?\" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.\n\n\n \"Scale stuck in the valve,\" Cowalczk answered.\n\n\n \"Are the reactors off?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!\"\n\n\n \"Sorry,\" McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.\n \"Let me know when it's fixed.\"", "He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into\n the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully\n used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious\n luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to\n live.\n\n\n The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as\n the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the\n ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.", "\"There doesn't seem to be any profit,\" Mr. Phelps said.\n\n\n \"That's par for a nonprofit organization,\" said McIlroy. \"But we're\n amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm\n sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction.\"\n\n\n \"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" said McIlroy, \"that's not so silly. I don't know either.\"\n\n\n \"Mrs. Garth,\" he called, \"what day is this?\"\n\n\n \"Why, September, I think,\" she answered.\n\n\n \"I mean what\nday\n.\"\n\n\n \"I don't know, I'll call the observatory.\"\n\n\n There was a pause.\n\n\n \"They say what day where?\" she asked." ], [ "and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to\n move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into\n the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same\n time that the sun rose.\nNickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and\n to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores\n out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.", "\"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it\n tells me that Evans will be found.\"\n\n\n McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. \"So that's the\n reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Well, yes,\" Jones answered. \"I thought that it might happen that a\n rocket would be needed in the search.\"\n\n\n The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted\n Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the\n stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset\n crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,\n as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.", "Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small\n craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the\n places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot\n that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a\n square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been\n made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater\n covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.\nAfter the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been\n exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and\n found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the\n cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white\n crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into\n a collector's bag.", "\"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean\n Time.\"\n\n\n There was another pause.\n\n\n \"They say it's September fourth, one thirty\n a.m.\n \"\n\n\n \"Well, there you are,\" laughed McIlroy, \"it isn't that time doesn't mean\n anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing.\"\n\n\n Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. \"Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any\n rate,\" he said.\nThe power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the\n nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and\n one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it\n threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.", "For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no\n alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was\n assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.\n Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy,\" said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to\n Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.\n\n\n \"Good morning indeed,\" answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning\n at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning\n on the Moon for another week.\n\n\n \"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?\" he asked. The solar\n furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on\n anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up\n to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.", "All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon\n puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the\n unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was\n nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a\n type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by\n the sun.\nThe sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The\n stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only\n Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept\n around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared\n on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,", "Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be\n carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director\n McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his\n oxygen runs out.\n\n\n Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic\n search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered\n by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now\n dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as\n it is believed he was carrying only short-range,\n intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...\n\n\n Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: \"Anyway, Mac,\" he was\n saying to McIlroy, \"a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never\n a word did he say.\"\n\n\n \"Like as not, you're right,\" McIlroy replied, \"but if I know Evans, he'd\n never say a word about any forebodings.\"", "It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,\n and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also\n volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft\n tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged\n were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,\n that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.\n\n\n It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.\n\n\n It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.\n The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be\n drifting across Australia.\n\n\n Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after\n Australia.", "\"No,\" said Lehman, \"I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we\n lost.\"\n\n\n \"Two thousand?\" Cade asked. \"We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.\n How come we can operate now?\"\n\n\n \"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using\n the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again.\"\n\n\n \"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple\n of weeks.\"\nPROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON\n\n\n IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director\n McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector\n is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring\n the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was\n presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.", "Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:\n\n\n \"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone\n up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a\n profit.\"\n\n\n \"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down.\"\n\n\n \"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a\n half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?\"\n\n\n \"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a\n radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that\n will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium.\"\n\n\n \"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?\"", "\"There doesn't seem to be any profit,\" Mr. Phelps said.\n\n\n \"That's par for a nonprofit organization,\" said McIlroy. \"But we're\n amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm\n sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction.\"\n\n\n \"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" said McIlroy, \"that's not so silly. I don't know either.\"\n\n\n \"Mrs. Garth,\" he called, \"what day is this?\"\n\n\n \"Why, September, I think,\" she answered.\n\n\n \"I mean what\nday\n.\"\n\n\n \"I don't know, I'll call the observatory.\"\n\n\n There was a pause.\n\n\n \"They say what day where?\" she asked.", "Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife\n geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two\n hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The\n rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which\n was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium\n from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets\n landed.\n\n\n When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he\n followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that\n he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a\n half, and he was lucky to break even.\n\n\n Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of\n the first landing on the Moon.", "ALL DAY SEPTEMBER\nBy ROGER KUYKENDALL\nIllustrated by van Dongen\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science\n Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nSome men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to\n learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use\n trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....\nThe meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled\n through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star\n that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first\n lungfish ventured from the sea.\n\n\n In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by\n Evans' tractor.", "\"No,\" Evans answered, \"a Welshman, nothing more.\"\n\n\n \"Well, then,\" said Jones, \"are you ready to start back?\"\n\n\n \"Back?\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was to rescue you that I came.\"\n\n\n \"I don't need rescuing, man,\" Evans said.\n\n\n Jones stared at him blankly.\n\n\n \"You might let me have some food,\" Evans continued. \"I'm getting short\n of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to\n fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my\n claim.\"\n\n\n \"Claim?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine\n on the Moon!\"\n\n\n THE END", "\"Six now,\" said Cade.\n\n\n Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and\n ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the\n Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.\n\n\n They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor\n turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.\n\"What's going on out there?\" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.\n\n\n \"Scale stuck in the valve,\" Cowalczk answered.\n\n\n \"Are the reactors off?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!\"\n\n\n \"Sorry,\" McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.\n \"Let me know when it's fixed.\"", "A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking\n mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of\n a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of\n his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his\n tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up\n oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light\n went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his\n ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five\n minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as\n efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit\n so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He", "\"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite\n observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report\n back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?\"\nEvans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the\n rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.\n When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to\n run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited\n figure of Nickel Jones.\n\n\n \"Evans, man!\" said Jones' voice in the intercom. \"Alive you are!\"\n\n\n \"A Welshman takes a lot of killing,\" Evans answered.\nLater, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:", "\"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in\n charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of\n the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to\n here?\"\n\n\n \"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?\" asked McIlroy.\n\n\n \"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,\n and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,\n they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it\n isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water\n we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and\n set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.\n\n\n \"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to\n pay for water.\"", "\"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.\n These crystals,\" he said, \"look a little like zeolites, but that can't\n be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon.\"\n\n\n He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of\n them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.", "Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about\n sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't\n make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to\n more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in\n the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too\n carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent\n conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days\n reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals\n twenty-one days to live.\n\n\n In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be\n dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin\n for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.\n\"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now,\" he told himself." ], [ "Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:\n\n\n \"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone\n up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a\n profit.\"\n\n\n \"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down.\"\n\n\n \"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a\n half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?\"\n\n\n \"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a\n radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that\n will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium.\"\n\n\n \"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?\"", "Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife\n geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two\n hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The\n rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which\n was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium\n from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets\n landed.\n\n\n When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he\n followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that\n he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a\n half, and he was lucky to break even.\n\n\n Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of\n the first landing on the Moon.", "\"No,\" said Lehman, \"I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we\n lost.\"\n\n\n \"Two thousand?\" Cade asked. \"We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.\n How come we can operate now?\"\n\n\n \"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using\n the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again.\"\n\n\n \"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple\n of weeks.\"\nPROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON\n\n\n IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director\n McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector\n is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring\n the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was\n presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.", "Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be\n carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director\n McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his\n oxygen runs out.\n\n\n Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic\n search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered\n by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now\n dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as\n it is believed he was carrying only short-range,\n intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...\n\n\n Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: \"Anyway, Mac,\" he was\n saying to McIlroy, \"a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never\n a word did he say.\"\n\n\n \"Like as not, you're right,\" McIlroy replied, \"but if I know Evans, he'd\n never say a word about any forebodings.\"", "\"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it\n tells me that Evans will be found.\"\n\n\n McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. \"So that's the\n reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Well, yes,\" Jones answered. \"I thought that it might happen that a\n rocket would be needed in the search.\"\n\n\n The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted\n Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the\n stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset\n crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,\n as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.", "\"'Morning, Mr. Phelps,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Good morning,\" Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.\n\n\n \"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps,\" said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.\n\n\n \"Any news?\" asked McIlroy.\n\n\n \"About Evans?\" Phelps shook his head slowly. \"Palomar called in a few\n minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia\n will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then\n Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them\n are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position\n by the time Europe is.\"", "Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small\n craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the\n places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot\n that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a\n square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been\n made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater\n covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.\nAfter the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been\n exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and\n found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the\n cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white\n crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into\n a collector's bag.", "\"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite\n observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report\n back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?\"\nEvans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the\n rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.\n When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to\n run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited\n figure of Nickel Jones.\n\n\n \"Evans, man!\" said Jones' voice in the intercom. \"Alive you are!\"\n\n\n \"A Welshman takes a lot of killing,\" Evans answered.\nLater, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:", "\"No,\" Evans answered, \"a Welshman, nothing more.\"\n\n\n \"Well, then,\" said Jones, \"are you ready to start back?\"\n\n\n \"Back?\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was to rescue you that I came.\"\n\n\n \"I don't need rescuing, man,\" Evans said.\n\n\n Jones stared at him blankly.\n\n\n \"You might let me have some food,\" Evans continued. \"I'm getting short\n of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to\n fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my\n claim.\"\n\n\n \"Claim?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine\n on the Moon!\"\n\n\n THE END", "\"What happened here?\" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians\n asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. \"I've\n got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they\n don't work.\"\n\n\n \"Meteor shower,\" Cowalczk answered, \"and that's not half of it. Walker\n says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on\n bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was\n hit.\"\n\n\n \"When did it happen?\" Cade wanted to know.\n\n\n \"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em\n too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a\n rumble.\"\n\n\n \"Sounds pretty bad.\"\n\n\n \"Could have been worse,\" said Cowalczk.", "McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it\n had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why\n this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about\n finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole\n population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the\n search.\n\n\n The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was\n slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.\n\n\n It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.\n\n\n \"They've found the tractor,\" McIlroy said.\n\n\n \"Good,\" Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; \"That's fine!\n That's just line! Is Evans—?\"", "\"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water.\" He\n looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.\n \"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must\n have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in\n all of 'em.\n\n\n \"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to\n remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I\n remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with\n electricity. So I built this thing.\n\n\n \"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the\n room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of\n course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how\n long.\"\n\n\n \"You're a genius, man!\" Jones exclaimed.", "\"How's that?\"\n\n\n \"Wasn't anybody out in it.\"\n\n\n \"Hey, Chuck,\" another technician, Lehman, broke in, \"you could maybe get\n hurt that way.\"\n\n\n \"I doubt it,\" Cowalczk answered, \"most of these were pinhead size, and\n they wouldn't go through a suit.\"\n\n\n \"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing,\" Cade\n commented.\n\n\n \"That could hurt,\" Cowalczk admitted, \"but there was only one of them.\"\n\n\n \"You mean only one hit our gear,\" Lehman said. \"How many missed?\"", "A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking\n mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of\n a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of\n his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his\n tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up\n oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light\n went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his\n ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five\n minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as\n efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit\n so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He", "and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to\n move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into\n the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same\n time that the sun rose.\nNickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and\n to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores\n out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.", "\"The Commission,\" he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,\n \"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight.\"\n\n\n McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled\n it again.\n\n\n \"And then,\" continued Jones, \"if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission\n it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only\n fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the\n Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no\n profit I could make by cutting rates the other way.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to\n the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.", "\"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in\n charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of\n the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to\n here?\"\n\n\n \"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?\" asked McIlroy.\n\n\n \"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,\n and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,\n they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it\n isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water\n we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and\n set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.\n\n\n \"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to\n pay for water.\"", "For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no\n alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was\n assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.\n Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy,\" said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to\n Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.\n\n\n \"Good morning indeed,\" answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning\n at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning\n on the Moon for another week.\n\n\n \"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?\" he asked. The solar\n furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on\n anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up\n to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.", "Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about\n sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't\n make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to\n more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in\n the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too\n carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent\n conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days\n reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals\n twenty-one days to live.\n\n\n In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be\n dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin\n for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.\n\"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now,\" he told himself.", "\"They went out about an hour ago,\" she answered, \"I suppose that's what\n they were going to do.\"\n\n\n \"Very good, what's first on the schedule?\"\n\n\n \"A Mr. Phelps to see you,\" she said.\n\n\n \"How do you do, Mr. Phelps,\" McIlroy greeted him.\n\n\n \"Good afternoon,\" Mr. Phelps replied. \"I'm here representing the\n Merchants' Bank Association.\"\n\n\n \"Fine,\" McIlroy said, \"I suppose you're here to set up a bank.\"\n\n\n \"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going\n over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning.\"\n\n\n \"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands,\" McIlroy said. \"I hope\n they're in good order.\"" ], [ "\"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in\n charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of\n the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to\n here?\"\n\n\n \"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?\" asked McIlroy.\n\n\n \"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,\n and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,\n they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it\n isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water\n we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and\n set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.\n\n\n \"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to\n pay for water.\"", "Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife\n geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two\n hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The\n rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which\n was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium\n from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets\n landed.\n\n\n When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he\n followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that\n he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a\n half, and he was lucky to break even.\n\n\n Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of\n the first landing on the Moon.", "Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:\n\n\n \"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone\n up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a\n profit.\"\n\n\n \"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down.\"\n\n\n \"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a\n half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?\"\n\n\n \"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a\n radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that\n will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium.\"\n\n\n \"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?\"", "\"No,\" said Lehman, \"I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we\n lost.\"\n\n\n \"Two thousand?\" Cade asked. \"We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.\n How come we can operate now?\"\n\n\n \"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using\n the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do.\"\n\n\n \"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again.\"\n\n\n \"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple\n of weeks.\"\nPROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON\n\n\n IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director\n McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector\n is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring\n the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was\n presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.", "Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small\n craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the\n places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot\n that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a\n square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been\n made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater\n covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.\nAfter the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been\n exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and\n found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the\n cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white\n crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into\n a collector's bag.", "\"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.\n These crystals,\" he said, \"look a little like zeolites, but that can't\n be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon.\"\n\n\n He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of\n them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.", "A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking\n mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of\n a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of\n his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his\n tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up\n oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light\n went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his\n ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five\n minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as\n efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit\n so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He", "\"The Commission,\" he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,\n \"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight.\"\n\n\n McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled\n it again.\n\n\n \"And then,\" continued Jones, \"if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission\n it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only\n fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the\n Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no\n profit I could make by cutting rates the other way.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to\n the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.", "All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon\n puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the\n unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was\n nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a\n type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by\n the sun.\nThe sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The\n stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only\n Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept\n around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared\n on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,", "\"No,\" Evans answered, \"a Welshman, nothing more.\"\n\n\n \"Well, then,\" said Jones, \"are you ready to start back?\"\n\n\n \"Back?\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was to rescue you that I came.\"\n\n\n \"I don't need rescuing, man,\" Evans said.\n\n\n Jones stared at him blankly.\n\n\n \"You might let me have some food,\" Evans continued. \"I'm getting short\n of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to\n fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my\n claim.\"\n\n\n \"Claim?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine\n on the Moon!\"\n\n\n THE END", "\"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water.\" He\n looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.\n \"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must\n have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in\n all of 'em.\n\n\n \"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to\n remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I\n remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with\n electricity. So I built this thing.\n\n\n \"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the\n room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of\n course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how\n long.\"\n\n\n \"You're a genius, man!\" Jones exclaimed.", "\"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it\n tells me that Evans will be found.\"\n\n\n McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. \"So that's the\n reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Well, yes,\" Jones answered. \"I thought that it might happen that a\n rocket would be needed in the search.\"\n\n\n The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted\n Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the\n stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset\n crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,\n as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.", "\"Six now,\" said Cade.\n\n\n Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and\n ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the\n Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.\n\n\n They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor\n turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.\n\"What's going on out there?\" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.\n\n\n \"Scale stuck in the valve,\" Cowalczk answered.\n\n\n \"Are the reactors off?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!\"\n\n\n \"Sorry,\" McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.\n \"Let me know when it's fixed.\"", "\"I swear, Mac,\" said Jones, \"another season like this, and I'm going\n back to mining.\"\n\n\n \"I thought you were doing pretty well,\" said McIlroy, as he poured two\n drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.\n\n\n \"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't\n have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission.\"\n\n\n McIlroy had heard all of this before. \"How's that?\" he asked politely.\n\n\n \"You may think it's myself running the ship,\" Jones started on his\n tirade, \"but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The\n union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.\n And then the Commission ...\" The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant\n taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.", "Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be\n carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director\n McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his\n oxygen runs out.\n\n\n Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic\n search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered\n by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now\n dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as\n it is believed he was carrying only short-range,\n intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...\n\n\n Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: \"Anyway, Mac,\" he was\n saying to McIlroy, \"a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never\n a word did he say.\"\n\n\n \"Like as not, you're right,\" McIlroy replied, \"but if I know Evans, he'd\n never say a word about any forebodings.\"", "and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to\n move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into\n the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same\n time that the sun rose.\nNickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and\n to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores\n out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.", "For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no\n alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was\n assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.\n Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy,\" said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to\n Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.\n\n\n \"Good morning indeed,\" answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning\n at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning\n on the Moon for another week.\n\n\n \"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?\" he asked. The solar\n furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on\n anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up\n to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.", "\"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite\n observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report\n back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?\"\nEvans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the\n rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.\n When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to\n run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited\n figure of Nickel Jones.\n\n\n \"Evans, man!\" said Jones' voice in the intercom. \"Alive you are!\"\n\n\n \"A Welshman takes a lot of killing,\" Evans answered.\nLater, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:", "One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags\n and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would\n waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all\n right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he\n thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he\n was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.\n\"Well, now,\" he said, \"it's probably the largest natural crystal of\n potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch\n across.\"", "\"What happened here?\" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians\n asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. \"I've\n got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they\n don't work.\"\n\n\n \"Meteor shower,\" Cowalczk answered, \"and that's not half of it. Walker\n says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on\n bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was\n hit.\"\n\n\n \"When did it happen?\" Cade wanted to know.\n\n\n \"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em\n too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a\n rumble.\"\n\n\n \"Sounds pretty bad.\"\n\n\n \"Could have been worse,\" said Cowalczk." ], [ "\"What happened here?\" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians\n asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. \"I've\n got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they\n don't work.\"\n\n\n \"Meteor shower,\" Cowalczk answered, \"and that's not half of it. Walker\n says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on\n bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was\n hit.\"\n\n\n \"When did it happen?\" Cade wanted to know.\n\n\n \"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em\n too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a\n rumble.\"\n\n\n \"Sounds pretty bad.\"\n\n\n \"Could have been worse,\" said Cowalczk.", "\"How's that?\"\n\n\n \"Wasn't anybody out in it.\"\n\n\n \"Hey, Chuck,\" another technician, Lehman, broke in, \"you could maybe get\n hurt that way.\"\n\n\n \"I doubt it,\" Cowalczk answered, \"most of these were pinhead size, and\n they wouldn't go through a suit.\"\n\n\n \"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing,\" Cade\n commented.\n\n\n \"That could hurt,\" Cowalczk admitted, \"but there was only one of them.\"\n\n\n \"You mean only one hit our gear,\" Lehman said. \"How many missed?\"", "He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light\n of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons\n of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,\n was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in\n the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a\n curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam\n into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,\n the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the\n temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly\n freezing the water in the tank.", "Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small\n craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the\n places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot\n that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a\n square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been\n made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater\n covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.\nAfter the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been\n exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and\n found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the\n cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white\n crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into\n a collector's bag.", "He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all\n doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone\n was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system\n to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly\n improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was\n disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the\n survey.\n\n\n McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he\n did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a\n leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with\n cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were\n complied with eagerly and smoothly.\n\n\n Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he\n accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of\n suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he\n didn't particularly care to have obeyed.", "\"Because I say so,\" Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and\n ashamed of it. \"Boiler scale,\" he continued, much calmer. \"We've got to\n clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor\n don't clog up.\" He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor\n building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. \"It\n would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night.\"\n\n\n \"Pressure's ten and a half pounds,\" said Cade.\n\n\n \"Right, let her go,\" said Cowalczk.", "\"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it\n tells me that Evans will be found.\"\n\n\n McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. \"So that's the\n reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Well, yes,\" Jones answered. \"I thought that it might happen that a\n rocket would be needed in the search.\"\n\n\n The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted\n Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the\n stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset\n crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,\n as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.", "\"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean\n Time.\"\n\n\n There was another pause.\n\n\n \"They say it's September fourth, one thirty\n a.m.\n \"\n\n\n \"Well, there you are,\" laughed McIlroy, \"it isn't that time doesn't mean\n anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing.\"\n\n\n Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. \"Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any\n rate,\" he said.\nThe power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the\n nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and\n one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it\n threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.", "For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no\n alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was\n assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.\n Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.\n\n\n \"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy,\" said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to\n Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.\n\n\n \"Good morning indeed,\" answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning\n at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning\n on the Moon for another week.\n\n\n \"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?\" he asked. The solar\n furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on\n anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up\n to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.", "and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to\n move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into\n the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same\n time that the sun rose.\nNickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and\n to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores\n out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.", "It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,\n and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also\n volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft\n tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged\n were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,\n that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.\n\n\n It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.\n\n\n It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.\n The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be\n drifting across Australia.\n\n\n Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after\n Australia.", "Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor\n started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the\n boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat\n was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric\n eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw\n the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building\n opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a\n fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.\n\n\n \"Valve's stuck,\" said Cade.\n\n\n \"Open it and close it again,\" said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead\n started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an\n unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off\n on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the\n inside of his faceplate.", "One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags\n and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would\n waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all\n right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he\n thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he\n was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.\n\"Well, now,\" he said, \"it's probably the largest natural crystal of\n potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch\n across.\"", "\"'Morning, Mr. Phelps,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Good morning,\" Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.\n\n\n \"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps,\" said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.\n\n\n \"Any news?\" asked McIlroy.\n\n\n \"About Evans?\" Phelps shook his head slowly. \"Palomar called in a few\n minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia\n will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then\n Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them\n are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position\n by the time Europe is.\"", "ALL DAY SEPTEMBER\nBy ROGER KUYKENDALL\nIllustrated by van Dongen\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science\n Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that\n the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]\nSome men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to\n learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use\n trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....\nThe meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled\n through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star\n that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first\n lungfish ventured from the sea.\n\n\n In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by\n Evans' tractor.", "\"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite\n observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report\n back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?\"\nEvans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the\n rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.\n When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to\n run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited\n figure of Nickel Jones.\n\n\n \"Evans, man!\" said Jones' voice in the intercom. \"Alive you are!\"\n\n\n \"A Welshman takes a lot of killing,\" Evans answered.\nLater, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:", "Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:\n\n\n \"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone\n up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a\n profit.\"\n\n\n \"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down.\"\n\n\n \"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a\n half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?\"\n\n\n \"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a\n radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that\n will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium.\"\n\n\n \"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?\"", "\"There doesn't seem to be any profit,\" Mr. Phelps said.\n\n\n \"That's par for a nonprofit organization,\" said McIlroy. \"But we're\n amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm\n sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction.\"\n\n\n \"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?\"\n\n\n \"Well,\" said McIlroy, \"that's not so silly. I don't know either.\"\n\n\n \"Mrs. Garth,\" he called, \"what day is this?\"\n\n\n \"Why, September, I think,\" she answered.\n\n\n \"I mean what\nday\n.\"\n\n\n \"I don't know, I'll call the observatory.\"\n\n\n There was a pause.\n\n\n \"They say what day where?\" she asked.", "\"I've found the trouble,\" Lehman said. \"The worm gear's loose on its\n shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough\n power in it to crush the scale.\"\n\n\n \"Right,\" Cowalczk said. \"Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that\n pipe wrench!\"\n\n\n Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at\n the motor bearing.\n\n\n Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and\n turned it.\n\n\n \"Is the light off?\" Cowalczk asked.\n\n\n \"No,\" Cade answered.\n\n\n \"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds.\"\n\n\n \"Twenty pounds,\" Cade answered after a couple of minutes.", "\"Six now,\" said Cade.\n\n\n Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and\n ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the\n Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.\n\n\n They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor\n turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.\n\"What's going on out there?\" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.\n\n\n \"Scale stuck in the valve,\" Cowalczk answered.\n\n\n \"Are the reactors off?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!\"\n\n\n \"Sorry,\" McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.\n \"Let me know when it's fixed.\"" ], [ "McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it\n had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why\n this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about\n finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole\n population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the\n search.\n\n\n The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was\n slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.\n\n\n It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.\n\n\n \"They've found the tractor,\" McIlroy said.\n\n\n \"Good,\" Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; \"That's fine!\n That's just line! Is Evans—?\"", "Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be\n carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director\n McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his\n oxygen runs out.\n\n\n Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic\n search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered\n by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now\n dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as\n it is believed he was carrying only short-range,\n intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...\n\n\n Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: \"Anyway, Mac,\" he was\n saying to McIlroy, \"a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never\n a word did he say.\"\n\n\n \"Like as not, you're right,\" McIlroy replied, \"but if I know Evans, he'd\n never say a word about any forebodings.\"", "Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:\n\n\n \"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone\n up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a\n profit.\"\n\n\n \"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down.\"\n\n\n \"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a\n half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?\"\n\n\n \"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a\n radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that\n will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room.\"\n\n\n \"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium.\"\n\n\n \"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?\"", "\"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it\n tells me that Evans will be found.\"\n\n\n McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. \"So that's the\n reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Well, yes,\" Jones answered. \"I thought that it might happen that a\n rocket would be needed in the search.\"\n\n\n The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted\n Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the\n stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset\n crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,\n as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.", "Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about\n sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't\n make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to\n more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in\n the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too\n carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent\n conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days\n reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals\n twenty-one days to live.\n\n\n In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be\n dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin\n for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.\n\"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now,\" he told himself.", "\"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite\n observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report\n back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?\"\nEvans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the\n rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.\n When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to\n run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited\n figure of Nickel Jones.\n\n\n \"Evans, man!\" said Jones' voice in the intercom. \"Alive you are!\"\n\n\n \"A Welshman takes a lot of killing,\" Evans answered.\nLater, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:", "\"No,\" Evans answered, \"a Welshman, nothing more.\"\n\n\n \"Well, then,\" said Jones, \"are you ready to start back?\"\n\n\n \"Back?\"\n\n\n \"Well, it was to rescue you that I came.\"\n\n\n \"I don't need rescuing, man,\" Evans said.\n\n\n Jones stared at him blankly.\n\n\n \"You might let me have some food,\" Evans continued. \"I'm getting short\n of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to\n fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my\n claim.\"\n\n\n \"Claim?\"\n\n\n \"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine\n on the Moon!\"\n\n\n THE END", "\"'Morning, Mr. Phelps,\" he said.\n\n\n \"Good morning,\" Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.\n\n\n \"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps,\" said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.\n\n\n \"Any news?\" asked McIlroy.\n\n\n \"About Evans?\" Phelps shook his head slowly. \"Palomar called in a few\n minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia\n will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then\n Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them\n are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position\n by the time Europe is.\"", "Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife\n geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two\n hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The\n rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which\n was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium\n from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets\n landed.\n\n\n When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he\n followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that\n he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a\n half, and he was lucky to break even.\n\n\n Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of\n the first landing on the Moon.", "\"Well, man,\" he breathed, \"there's a light to die by.\"\nThe sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.\n It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to\n the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have\n appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.\n If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark\n filters.\n\n\n When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the\n rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce\n the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening\n his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum\n density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.\n McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably\n lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the\n inner office open.", "It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,\n and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also\n volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft\n tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged\n were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,\n that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.\n\n\n It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.\n\n\n It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.\n The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be\n drifting across Australia.\n\n\n Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after\n Australia.", "A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking\n mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of\n a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of\n his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his\n tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up\n oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light\n went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his\n ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five\n minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as\n efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit\n so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He", "Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing\n the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would\n operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in\n the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if\n the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.\n\n\n But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his\n drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the\n pipe. He pulled on a knob marked \"Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass.\" The\n water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and\n the steam turned the generator briefly.\n\n\n Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the\n trouble was.\n\n\n \"The water, man,\" he said, \"there is not enough to melt the ice in the\n condenser.\"", "\"The Commission,\" he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,\n \"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight.\"\n\n\n McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled\n it again.\n\n\n \"And then,\" continued Jones, \"if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission\n it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only\n fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the\n Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no\n profit I could make by cutting rates the other way.\"\n\n\n \"Why not?\" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to\n the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.", "\"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water.\" He\n looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.\n \"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must\n have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in\n all of 'em.\n\n\n \"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to\n remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I\n remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with\n electricity. So I built this thing.\n\n\n \"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the\n room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of\n course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how\n long.\"\n\n\n \"You're a genius, man!\" Jones exclaimed.", "\"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English\n and Scots. Speaking of which—\"\n\n\n \"Oh, of course,\" McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.\n\n\n \"\nSlainte, McIlroy, bach.\n\" [Health, McIlroy, man.]\n\n\n \"\nSlainte mhor, bach.\n\" [Great Health, man.]\nThe sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky\n when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The\n thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such\n cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.\n\n\n Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by\n chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each\n one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the\n volume of each bubble filled with ice.", "He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all\n doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone\n was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system\n to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly\n improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was\n disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the\n survey.\n\n\n McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he\n did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a\n leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with\n cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were\n complied with eagerly and smoothly.\n\n\n Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he\n accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of\n suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he\n didn't particularly care to have obeyed.", "\"Light is off now,\" Cade said.\n\n\n \"Good,\" said Cowalczk, \"take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see\n what happens.\"\n\n\n \"Eight hundred pounds,\" Cade said, after a short wait.\n\n\n \"Good enough,\" Cowalczk said. \"Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he\n can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get\n out of here.\"\n\n\n \"Well, I'm glad that's over,\" said Cade. \"You guys had me worried for a\n while.\"\n\n\n \"Think we weren't worried?\" Lehman asked. \"And it's not over.\"\n\n\n \"What?\" Cade asked. \"Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?\"", "\"They went out about an hour ago,\" she answered, \"I suppose that's what\n they were going to do.\"\n\n\n \"Very good, what's first on the schedule?\"\n\n\n \"A Mr. Phelps to see you,\" she said.\n\n\n \"How do you do, Mr. Phelps,\" McIlroy greeted him.\n\n\n \"Good afternoon,\" Mr. Phelps replied. \"I'm here representing the\n Merchants' Bank Association.\"\n\n\n \"Fine,\" McIlroy said, \"I suppose you're here to set up a bank.\"\n\n\n \"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going\n over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning.\"\n\n\n \"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands,\" McIlroy said. \"I hope\n they're in good order.\"", "\"Let's find out how bad it is indeed,\" he answered. He reached for the\n light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the \"on\"\n position.\n\n\n \"Batteries must be dead,\" he told himself.\n\n\n \"What batteries?\" he asked. \"There're no batteries in here, the power\n comes from the generator.\"\n\n\n \"Why isn't the generator working, man?\" he asked.\n\n\n He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the\n main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,\n came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself\n through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—\n\n\n \"The condenser!\" he shouted." ] ]
train	23767	[ "Which term best represents Kolin's feelings toward Slichow?", "Of what does Kolin and his peers need to be most careful of managing, lest they be perceived as treasonous?", "What component of being the first to venture out into the unknown, dangerous planet is slightly exciting to Kolin and his peers? (being out of authority's watch)", "What effect do the purple berries in the forest LEAST likely produce in humans? ", "What does Johnny Ashlew best represent?", "What do the vines in the forest represent?", "What does \"the Life\" best represent?", "What was Kolin's primary motivation in transforming to his new form?" ]	[ [ "Indignant", "Obedient", "Jealous", "Inconspicuous" ], [ "Their language", "Their guise", "Their rations", "Their thoughts" ], [ "Escaping the authoritarian rule of Haurtoz", "Experiencing a break from constant supervision", "Sabotaging Chief Steward Slichow's plans", "Consuming real food without having to share it" ], [ "Creating hallucinations and delusions", "Blending in to one's surroundings", "Intoxicating the body and mind", "Relaxing and letting one's guard down" ], [ "Slichow's greatest fear", "Kolin's ego speaking its truth", "Subtle omniscience", "Freedom from conformity" ], [ "The nature of rampant colonialism", "The possibility to be who one wishes to be", "The destructive power of nature", "The lower end of social strata" ], [ "Freedom to live authentically", "Escapism and abandonment of responsibility", "Temptation and deviation from shared goals", "Immortality and a return to wholeness" ], [ "Desire for power over authority", "Desire to out-smart Johnny Ashlew", "Desire to liberate the people of Haurtoz", "Desire to be free from conformity" ] ]	[ 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 1, 1, 3 ]	[ 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1 ]	[ [ "\"Since the crew will be on\n emergency watches repairing\n the damage,\" announced the\n Chief in clipped, aggressive\n tones, \"I have volunteered my\n section for preliminary scouting,\n as is suitable. It may be\n useful to discover temporary\n sources in this area of natural\n foods.\"\n\n\n Volunteered HIS section!\n thought Kolin rebelliously.\n\n\n Like the Supreme Director\n of Haurtoz! Being conscripted\n into this idiotic space fleet\n that never fights is bad\n enough without a tin god on\n jets like Slichow!\n\n\n Prudently, he did not express\n this resentment overtly.", "He paused to consider the\n state of the tree named Ashlew,\n half immortal but rooted\n to one spot, unable to float on\n a breeze or through space itself\n on the pressure of light.\n Especially, it was unable to\n insinuate any part of itself\n into the control center of another\n form of life, as a second\n spore was taking charge of\n the body of Chief Slichow at\n that very instant.\n\n\n There are not enough men\n ,\n thought Kolin.\n Some of me\n must drift through the airlock.\n In space, I can spread\n through the air system to the\n command group.\n\n\n Repairs to the\nPeace State\nand the return to Haurtoz\n passed like weeks to some of\n the crew but like brief moments\n in infinity to other\n units. At last, the ship parted\n the air above Headquarters\n City and landed.", "He was so intent upon planning\n greetings with which to\n favor the tardy scouting parties\n that he failed to notice\n the loose cloud drifting over\n the ridge.\n\n\n It was tenuous, almost a\n haze. Close examination\n would have revealed it to be\n made up of myriads of tiny\n spores. They resembled those\n cast forth by one of the\n bushes Kolin's party had\n passed. Along the edges, the\n haze faded raggedly into thin\n air, but the units evidently\n formed a cohesive body. They\n drifted together, approaching\n the men as if taking intelligent\n advantage of the breeze.\n\n\n One of Chief Slichow's\n staggering flunkies, stealing\n a few seconds of relaxation\n on the pretext of dumping an\n armful of light plastic packing,\n wandered into the haze.\n\n\n He froze.", "Kolin permitted himself to\n wonder when anyone might\n get some rest, but assumed a\n mildly willing look. (Too eager\n an attitude could arouse\n suspicion of disguising an improper\n viewpoint.) The maintenance\n of a proper viewpoint\n was a necessity if the Planetary\n State were to survive\n the hostile plots of Earth and\n the latter's decadent colonies.\n That, at least, was the official\n line.\n\n\n Kolin found himself in a\n group with Jak Ammet, a\n third cook, and Eva Yrtok,\n powdered foods storekeeper.\n Since the crew would be eating\n packaged rations during\n repairs, Yrtok could be spared\n to command a scout detail.", "His well-schooled features\n revealed no trace of the idea—or\n of any other idea. The\n Planetary State of Haurtoz\n had been organized some fifteen\n light-years from old\n Earth, but many of the home\n world's less kindly techniques\n had been employed. Lack of\n complete loyalty to the state\n was likely to result in a siege\n of treatment that left the subject\n suitably \"re-personalized.\"\n Kolin had heard of instances\n wherein mere unenthusiastic\n posture had betrayed\n intentions to harbor\n treasonable thoughts.\n\n\n \"You will scout in five details\n of three persons each,\"\n Chief Slichow said. \"Every\n hour, each detail will send\n one person in to report, and\n he will be replaced by one of\n the five I shall keep here to\n issue rations.\"", "He pulled Yrtok to her\n feet. She pawed at him weakly,\n eyes as vacant as Ammet's.\n When he let go in sudden\n horror, she folded gently to\n the ground. She lay comfortably\n on her side, twitching\n one hand as if to brush something\n away.\n\n\n When she began to smile\n dreamily, Kolin backed away.\nThe\n corners of his mouth\n felt oddly stiff; they had\n involuntarily drawn back to\n expose his clenched teeth. He\n glanced warily about, but\n nothing appeared to threaten\n him.\n\n\n \"It's time to end this scout,\"\n he told himself. \"It's dangerous.\n One good look and I'm\n jetting off! What I need is\n an easy tree to climb.\"\n\n\n He considered the massive\n giant. Soaring thirty or forty\n meters into the thin fog and\n dwarfing other growth, it\n seemed the most promising\n choice.", "Yrtok and Ammet paused\n momentarily before descending.\n\n\n Kolin shared their sense of\n isolation. They would be out\n of sight of authority and responsible\n for their own actions.\n It was a strange sensation.\n\n\n They marched down into\n the valley at a brisk pace, becoming\n more aware of the\n clouds and atmospheric haze.\n Distant objects seemed\n blurred by the mist, taking on\n a somber, brooding grayness.\n For all Kolin could tell, he\n and the others were isolated\n in a world bounded by the\n rocky ridge behind them and\n a semi-circle of damp trees\n and bushes several hundred\n meters away. He suspected\n that the hills rising mistily\n ahead were part of a continuous\n slope, but could not be\n sure.", "Suddenly, Kolin found himself\n telling the tree about life\n on Haurtoz, and of the officially\n announced threats to\n the Planetary State's planned\n expansion. He dwelt upon the\n desperation of having no\n place to hide in case of trouble\n with the authorities. A\n multiple system of such\n worlds was agonizing to\n imagine.\nSomehow,\n the oddity of\n talking to a tree wore off.\n Kolin heard opinions spouting\n out which he had prudently\n kept bottled up for\n years.\n\n\n The more he talked and\n stormed and complained, the\n more relaxed he felt.\n\n\n \"If there was ever a fellow\n ready for this planet,\" decided\n the tree named Ashlew,\n \"you're it, Sonny! Hang on\n there while I signal the Life\n by root!\"\n\n\n Kolin sensed a lack of direct\n attention. The rustle\n about him was natural, caused\n by an ordinary breeze. He\n noticed his hands shaking.", "\"There's just one thing.\n The Life don't like taking\n chances on word about this\n place gettin' around. It sorta\n believes in peace and quiet.\n You might not get back to\n your ship in any form that\n could tell tales.\"\n\n\n \"Listen!\" Kolin blurted\n out. \"I wasn't so much enjoying\n being what I was that\n getting back matters to me!\"\n\n\n \"Don't like your home planet,\n whatever the name was?\"\n\n\n \"Haurtoz. It's a rotten\n place. A Planetary State! You\n have to think and even look\n the way that's standard thirty\n hours a day, asleep or\n awake. You get scared to\n sleep for fear you might\n dream\n treason and they'd find\n out somehow.\"\n\n\n \"Whooeee! Heard about\n them places. Must be tough\n just to live.\"", "After a few heartbeats, he\n dropped the trash and stared\n at ship and men as if he had\n never seen either. A hail from\n his master moved him.\n\n\n \"Coming, Chief!\" he called\n but, returning at a moderate\n pace, he murmured, \"My\n name is Frazer. I'm a second\n assistant steward. I'll think as\n Unit One.\"\n\n\n Throughout the cloud of\n spores, the mind formerly\n known as Peter Kolin congratulated\n itself upon its\n choice of form.\n\n\n Nearer to the original\n shape of the Life than Ashlew\n got\n , he thought.", "\"He must have tasted\n some!\" exclaimed Kolin. \"I'll\n see how he is.\"\n\n\n He ran back to the cook and\n shook him by the shoulder.\n Ammet's head lolled loosely\n to one side. His rather heavy\n features were vacant, lending\n him a doped appearance. Kolin\n straightened up and beckoned\n to Yrtok.\n\n\n For some reason, he had\n trouble attracting her attention.\n Then he noticed that she\n was kneeling.\n\n\n \"Hope she didn't eat some\n stupid thing too!\" he grumbled,\n trotting back.\n\n\n As he reached her, whatever\n Yrtok was examining\n came to life and scooted into\n the underbrush with a flash\n of greenish fur. All Kolin\n saw was that it had several\n legs too many.", "\"Doggone vine!\" commented\n the windy whisper. \"\n He\n ain't one of my crowd. Landed\n years later in a ship from\n some star towards the center\n of the galaxy. You should\n have seen his looks before\n the Life got in touch with his\n mind and set up a mental field\n to help him change form. He\n looks twice as good as a\n vine!\"\n\n\n \"He's very handy,\" agreed\n Kolin politely. He groped for\n a foothold.\n\n\n \"Well … matter of fact, I\n can't get through to him\n much, even with the Life's\n mental field helping. Guess\n he started living with a different\n way of thinking. It\n burns me. I thought of being\n a tree, and then he came along\n to take advantage of it!\"\n\n\n Kolin braced himself securely\n to stretch tiring muscles.", "Each scout was issued a\n rocket pistol and a plastic water\n tube. Chief Slichow emphasized\n that the keepers of\n rations could hardly, in an\n emergency, give even the appearance\n of favoring themselves\n in regard to food. They\n would go without. Kolin\n maintained a standard expression\n as the Chief's sharp\n stare measured them.\n\n\n Yrtok, a dark, lean-faced\n girl, led the way with a quiet\n monosyllable. She carried the\n small radio they would be\n permitted to use for messages\n of utmost urgency. Ammet\n followed, and Kolin brought\n up the rear.\nTo\n reach their assigned\n sector, they had to climb\n a forbidding ridge of rock\n within half a kilometer. Only\n a sparse creeper grew along\n their way, its elongated leaves\n shimmering with bronze-green\n reflections against a\n stony surface; but when they\n topped the ridge a thick forest\n was in sight.", "At first, Kolin saw no way,\n but then the network of vines\n clinging to the rugged trunk\n suggested a route. He tried\n his weight gingerly, then began\n to climb.\n\n\n \"I should have brought\n Yrtok's radio,\" he muttered.\n \"Oh, well, I can take it when\n I come down, if she hasn't\n snapped out of her spell by\n then. Funny … I wonder if\n that green thing bit her.\"\n\n\n Footholds were plentiful\n among the interlaced lianas.\n Kolin progressed rapidly.\n When he reached the first\n thick limbs, twice head\n height, he felt safer.\n\n\n Later, at what he hoped was\n the halfway mark, he hooked\n one knee over a branch and\n paused to wipe sweat from his\n eyes. Peering down, he discovered\n the ground to be obscured\n by foliage.", "\"I should have checked\n from down there to see how\n open the top is,\" he mused.\n \"I wonder how the view will\n be from up there?\"\n\n\n \"Depends on what you're\n looking for, Sonny!\" something\n remarked in a soughing wheeze.\n\n\n Kolin, slipping, grabbed\n desperately for the branch.\n His fingers clutched a handful\n of twigs and leaves, which\n just barely supported him until\n he regained a grip with\n the other hand.\n\n\n The branch quivered resentfully\n under him.\n\n\n \"Careful, there!\" whooshed\n the eerie voice. \"It took me\n all summer to grow those!\"\n\n\n Kolin could feel the skin\n crawling along his backbone.\n\n\n \"Who\n are\n you?\" he gasped.\n\n\n The answering sigh of\n laughter gave him a distinct\n chill despite its suggestion of\n amiability.", "\"They're scared that without\n talk of war, and scouting\n for Earth fleets that never\n come, people would have time\n to think about the way they\n have to live and who's running\n things in the Planetary\n State. Then the gravy train\n would get blown up—and I\n mean blown up!\"\n\n\n The tree was silent for a\n moment. Kolin felt the\n branches stir meditatively.\n Then Ashlew offered a suggestion.", "\"I could tell the Life your\n side of it,\" he hissed. \"Once\n in with us, you can always\n make thinking connections,\n no matter how far away.\n Maybe you could make a deal\n to kill two birds with one\n stone, as they used to say on\n Earth….\"\nChief\n Steward Slichow\n paced up and down beside\n the ration crate turned up to\n serve him as a field desk. He\n scowled in turn, impartially,\n at his watch and at the weary\n stewards of his headquarters\n detail. The latter stumbled\n about, stacking and distributing\n small packets of emergency\n rations.\n\n\n The line of crewmen released\n temporarily from repair\n work was transient as to\n individuals but immutable as\n to length. Slichow muttered\n something profane about disregard\n of orders as he glared\n at the rocky ridges surrounding\n the landing place.", "He considered what form\n might most easily escape the\n notice of search parties and\n still be tough enough to live\n a long time without renewal.\n Another factor slipped into\n his musings: mere hope of escape\n was unsatisfying after\n the outburst that had defined\n his fuming hatred for Haurtoz.\n\n\n I'd better watch myself!\n he\n thought.\n Don't drop diamonds\n to grab at stars!\n\n\n \"What I wish I could do is\n not just get away but get even\n for the way they make us\n live … the whole damn set-up.\n They could just as easy make\n peace with the Earth colonies.\n You know why they\n don't?\"\n\n\n \"Why?\" wheezed Ashlew.", "\"It isn't, Mr. Ashlew?\"\n asked Kolin, twisting about\n in an effort to see what the\n higher branches might hide.\n\n\n \"Nope. Most everything\n here is run by the Life—that\n is, by the thing that first\n grew big enough to do some\n thinking, and set its roots\n down all over until it had\n control. That's the outskirts\n of it down below.\"\n\n\n \"The other trees? That jungle?\"\n\n\n \"It's more'n a jungle, Sonny.\n When I landed here, along\n with the others from the\nArcturan Spark\n, the planet\n looked pretty empty to me,\n just like it must have to—Watch\n it, there, Boy! If I\n didn't twist that branch over\n in time, you'd be bouncing off\n my roots right now!\"\n\n\n \"Th-thanks!\" grunted Kolin,\n hanging on grimly.", "Yrtok led the way along\n the most nearly level ground.\n Low creepers became more\n plentiful, interspersed with\n scrubby thickets of tangled,\n spike-armored bushes. Occasionally,\n small flying things\n flickered among the foliage.\n Once, a shrub puffed out an\n enormous cloud of tiny\n spores.\n\n\n \"Be a job to find anything\n edible here,\" grunted Ammet,\n and Kolin agreed.\n\n\n Finally, after a longer hike\n than he had anticipated, they\n approached the edge of the\n deceptively distant forest.\n Yrtok paused to examine some\n purple berries glistening dangerously\n on a low shrub. Kolin\n regarded the trees with\n misgiving.\n\n\n \"Looks as tough to get\n through as a tropical jungle,\"\n he remarked." ], [ "\"They're scared that without\n talk of war, and scouting\n for Earth fleets that never\n come, people would have time\n to think about the way they\n have to live and who's running\n things in the Planetary\n State. Then the gravy train\n would get blown up—and I\n mean blown up!\"\n\n\n The tree was silent for a\n moment. Kolin felt the\n branches stir meditatively.\n Then Ashlew offered a suggestion.", "Kolin permitted himself to\n wonder when anyone might\n get some rest, but assumed a\n mildly willing look. (Too eager\n an attitude could arouse\n suspicion of disguising an improper\n viewpoint.) The maintenance\n of a proper viewpoint\n was a necessity if the Planetary\n State were to survive\n the hostile plots of Earth and\n the latter's decadent colonies.\n That, at least, was the official\n line.\n\n\n Kolin found himself in a\n group with Jak Ammet, a\n third cook, and Eva Yrtok,\n powdered foods storekeeper.\n Since the crew would be eating\n packaged rations during\n repairs, Yrtok could be spared\n to command a scout detail.", "His well-schooled features\n revealed no trace of the idea—or\n of any other idea. The\n Planetary State of Haurtoz\n had been organized some fifteen\n light-years from old\n Earth, but many of the home\n world's less kindly techniques\n had been employed. Lack of\n complete loyalty to the state\n was likely to result in a siege\n of treatment that left the subject\n suitably \"re-personalized.\"\n Kolin had heard of instances\n wherein mere unenthusiastic\n posture had betrayed\n intentions to harbor\n treasonable thoughts.\n\n\n \"You will scout in five details\n of three persons each,\"\n Chief Slichow said. \"Every\n hour, each detail will send\n one person in to report, and\n he will be replaced by one of\n the five I shall keep here to\n issue rations.\"", "Yrtok and Ammet paused\n momentarily before descending.\n\n\n Kolin shared their sense of\n isolation. They would be out\n of sight of authority and responsible\n for their own actions.\n It was a strange sensation.\n\n\n They marched down into\n the valley at a brisk pace, becoming\n more aware of the\n clouds and atmospheric haze.\n Distant objects seemed\n blurred by the mist, taking on\n a somber, brooding grayness.\n For all Kolin could tell, he\n and the others were isolated\n in a world bounded by the\n rocky ridge behind them and\n a semi-circle of damp trees\n and bushes several hundred\n meters away. He suspected\n that the hills rising mistily\n ahead were part of a continuous\n slope, but could not be\n sure.", "\"There's just one thing.\n The Life don't like taking\n chances on word about this\n place gettin' around. It sorta\n believes in peace and quiet.\n You might not get back to\n your ship in any form that\n could tell tales.\"\n\n\n \"Listen!\" Kolin blurted\n out. \"I wasn't so much enjoying\n being what I was that\n getting back matters to me!\"\n\n\n \"Don't like your home planet,\n whatever the name was?\"\n\n\n \"Haurtoz. It's a rotten\n place. A Planetary State! You\n have to think and even look\n the way that's standard thirty\n hours a day, asleep or\n awake. You get scared to\n sleep for fear you might\n dream\n treason and they'd find\n out somehow.\"\n\n\n \"Whooeee! Heard about\n them places. Must be tough\n just to live.\"", "\"Since the crew will be on\n emergency watches repairing\n the damage,\" announced the\n Chief in clipped, aggressive\n tones, \"I have volunteered my\n section for preliminary scouting,\n as is suitable. It may be\n useful to discover temporary\n sources in this area of natural\n foods.\"\n\n\n Volunteered HIS section!\n thought Kolin rebelliously.\n\n\n Like the Supreme Director\n of Haurtoz! Being conscripted\n into this idiotic space fleet\n that never fights is bad\n enough without a tin god on\n jets like Slichow!\n\n\n Prudently, he did not express\n this resentment overtly.", "Suddenly, Kolin found himself\n telling the tree about life\n on Haurtoz, and of the officially\n announced threats to\n the Planetary State's planned\n expansion. He dwelt upon the\n desperation of having no\n place to hide in case of trouble\n with the authorities. A\n multiple system of such\n worlds was agonizing to\n imagine.\nSomehow,\n the oddity of\n talking to a tree wore off.\n Kolin heard opinions spouting\n out which he had prudently\n kept bottled up for\n years.\n\n\n The more he talked and\n stormed and complained, the\n more relaxed he felt.\n\n\n \"If there was ever a fellow\n ready for this planet,\" decided\n the tree named Ashlew,\n \"you're it, Sonny! Hang on\n there while I signal the Life\n by root!\"\n\n\n Kolin sensed a lack of direct\n attention. The rustle\n about him was natural, caused\n by an ordinary breeze. He\n noticed his hands shaking.", "He pulled Yrtok to her\n feet. She pawed at him weakly,\n eyes as vacant as Ammet's.\n When he let go in sudden\n horror, she folded gently to\n the ground. She lay comfortably\n on her side, twitching\n one hand as if to brush something\n away.\n\n\n When she began to smile\n dreamily, Kolin backed away.\nThe\n corners of his mouth\n felt oddly stiff; they had\n involuntarily drawn back to\n expose his clenched teeth. He\n glanced warily about, but\n nothing appeared to threaten\n him.\n\n\n \"It's time to end this scout,\"\n he told himself. \"It's dangerous.\n One good look and I'm\n jetting off! What I need is\n an easy tree to climb.\"\n\n\n He considered the massive\n giant. Soaring thirty or forty\n meters into the thin fog and\n dwarfing other growth, it\n seemed the most promising\n choice.", "He paused to consider the\n state of the tree named Ashlew,\n half immortal but rooted\n to one spot, unable to float on\n a breeze or through space itself\n on the pressure of light.\n Especially, it was unable to\n insinuate any part of itself\n into the control center of another\n form of life, as a second\n spore was taking charge of\n the body of Chief Slichow at\n that very instant.\n\n\n There are not enough men\n ,\n thought Kolin.\n Some of me\n must drift through the airlock.\n In space, I can spread\n through the air system to the\n command group.\n\n\n Repairs to the\nPeace State\nand the return to Haurtoz\n passed like weeks to some of\n the crew but like brief moments\n in infinity to other\n units. At last, the ship parted\n the air above Headquarters\n City and landed.", "\"He must have tasted\n some!\" exclaimed Kolin. \"I'll\n see how he is.\"\n\n\n He ran back to the cook and\n shook him by the shoulder.\n Ammet's head lolled loosely\n to one side. His rather heavy\n features were vacant, lending\n him a doped appearance. Kolin\n straightened up and beckoned\n to Yrtok.\n\n\n For some reason, he had\n trouble attracting her attention.\n Then he noticed that she\n was kneeling.\n\n\n \"Hope she didn't eat some\n stupid thing too!\" he grumbled,\n trotting back.\n\n\n As he reached her, whatever\n Yrtok was examining\n came to life and scooted into\n the underbrush with a flash\n of greenish fur. All Kolin\n saw was that it had several\n legs too many.", "He was so intent upon planning\n greetings with which to\n favor the tardy scouting parties\n that he failed to notice\n the loose cloud drifting over\n the ridge.\n\n\n It was tenuous, almost a\n haze. Close examination\n would have revealed it to be\n made up of myriads of tiny\n spores. They resembled those\n cast forth by one of the\n bushes Kolin's party had\n passed. Along the edges, the\n haze faded raggedly into thin\n air, but the units evidently\n formed a cohesive body. They\n drifted together, approaching\n the men as if taking intelligent\n advantage of the breeze.\n\n\n One of Chief Slichow's\n staggering flunkies, stealing\n a few seconds of relaxation\n on the pretext of dumping an\n armful of light plastic packing,\n wandered into the haze.\n\n\n He froze.", "Each scout was issued a\n rocket pistol and a plastic water\n tube. Chief Slichow emphasized\n that the keepers of\n rations could hardly, in an\n emergency, give even the appearance\n of favoring themselves\n in regard to food. They\n would go without. Kolin\n maintained a standard expression\n as the Chief's sharp\n stare measured them.\n\n\n Yrtok, a dark, lean-faced\n girl, led the way with a quiet\n monosyllable. She carried the\n small radio they would be\n permitted to use for messages\n of utmost urgency. Ammet\n followed, and Kolin brought\n up the rear.\nTo\n reach their assigned\n sector, they had to climb\n a forbidding ridge of rock\n within half a kilometer. Only\n a sparse creeper grew along\n their way, its elongated leaves\n shimmering with bronze-green\n reflections against a\n stony surface; but when they\n topped the ridge a thick forest\n was in sight.", "He considered what form\n might most easily escape the\n notice of search parties and\n still be tough enough to live\n a long time without renewal.\n Another factor slipped into\n his musings: mere hope of escape\n was unsatisfying after\n the outburst that had defined\n his fuming hatred for Haurtoz.\n\n\n I'd better watch myself!\n he\n thought.\n Don't drop diamonds\n to grab at stars!\n\n\n \"What I wish I could do is\n not just get away but get even\n for the way they make us\n live … the whole damn set-up.\n They could just as easy make\n peace with the Earth colonies.\n You know why they\n don't?\"\n\n\n \"Why?\" wheezed Ashlew.", "Yrtok led the way along\n the most nearly level ground.\n Low creepers became more\n plentiful, interspersed with\n scrubby thickets of tangled,\n spike-armored bushes. Occasionally,\n small flying things\n flickered among the foliage.\n Once, a shrub puffed out an\n enormous cloud of tiny\n spores.\n\n\n \"Be a job to find anything\n edible here,\" grunted Ammet,\n and Kolin agreed.\n\n\n Finally, after a longer hike\n than he had anticipated, they\n approached the edge of the\n deceptively distant forest.\n Yrtok paused to examine some\n purple berries glistening dangerously\n on a low shrub. Kolin\n regarded the trees with\n misgiving.\n\n\n \"Looks as tough to get\n through as a tropical jungle,\"\n he remarked.", "At first, Kolin saw no way,\n but then the network of vines\n clinging to the rugged trunk\n suggested a route. He tried\n his weight gingerly, then began\n to climb.\n\n\n \"I should have brought\n Yrtok's radio,\" he muttered.\n \"Oh, well, I can take it when\n I come down, if she hasn't\n snapped out of her spell by\n then. Funny … I wonder if\n that green thing bit her.\"\n\n\n Footholds were plentiful\n among the interlaced lianas.\n Kolin progressed rapidly.\n When he reached the first\n thick limbs, twice head\n height, he felt safer.\n\n\n Later, at what he hoped was\n the halfway mark, he hooked\n one knee over a branch and\n paused to wipe sweat from his\n eyes. Peering down, he discovered\n the ground to be obscured\n by foliage.", "\"It isn't, Mr. Ashlew?\"\n asked Kolin, twisting about\n in an effort to see what the\n higher branches might hide.\n\n\n \"Nope. Most everything\n here is run by the Life—that\n is, by the thing that first\n grew big enough to do some\n thinking, and set its roots\n down all over until it had\n control. That's the outskirts\n of it down below.\"\n\n\n \"The other trees? That jungle?\"\n\n\n \"It's more'n a jungle, Sonny.\n When I landed here, along\n with the others from the\nArcturan Spark\n, the planet\n looked pretty empty to me,\n just like it must have to—Watch\n it, there, Boy! If I\n didn't twist that branch over\n in time, you'd be bouncing off\n my roots right now!\"\n\n\n \"Th-thanks!\" grunted Kolin,\n hanging on grimly.", "By H. B. Fyfe\nTHE TALKATIVE\n\n TREE\nDang vines! Beats all how some plants\n have no manners—but what do you expect,\n when they used to be men!\nAll\n things considered—the\n obscure star, the undetermined\n damage to the\n stellar drive and the way the\n small planet's murky atmosphere\n defied precision scanners—the\n pilot made a reasonably\n good landing. Despite\n sour feelings for the space\n service of Haurtoz, steward\n Peter Kolin had to admit that\n casualties might have been\n far worse.\n\n\n Chief Steward Slichow led\n his little command, less two\n third-class ration keepers\n thought to have been trapped\n in the lower hold, to a point\n two hundred meters from the\n steaming hull of the\nPeace\n State\n. He lined them up as if\n on parade. Kolin made himself\n inconspicuous.", "After a few heartbeats, he\n dropped the trash and stared\n at ship and men as if he had\n never seen either. A hail from\n his master moved him.\n\n\n \"Coming, Chief!\" he called\n but, returning at a moderate\n pace, he murmured, \"My\n name is Frazer. I'm a second\n assistant steward. I'll think as\n Unit One.\"\n\n\n Throughout the cloud of\n spores, the mind formerly\n known as Peter Kolin congratulated\n itself upon its\n choice of form.\n\n\n Nearer to the original\n shape of the Life than Ashlew\n got\n , he thought.", "\"I should have checked\n from down there to see how\n open the top is,\" he mused.\n \"I wonder how the view will\n be from up there?\"\n\n\n \"Depends on what you're\n looking for, Sonny!\" something\n remarked in a soughing wheeze.\n\n\n Kolin, slipping, grabbed\n desperately for the branch.\n His fingers clutched a handful\n of twigs and leaves, which\n just barely supported him until\n he regained a grip with\n the other hand.\n\n\n The branch quivered resentfully\n under him.\n\n\n \"Careful, there!\" whooshed\n the eerie voice. \"It took me\n all summer to grow those!\"\n\n\n Kolin could feel the skin\n crawling along his backbone.\n\n\n \"Who\n are\n you?\" he gasped.\n\n\n The answering sigh of\n laughter gave him a distinct\n chill despite its suggestion of\n amiability.", "\"Doggone vine!\" commented\n the windy whisper. \"\n He\n ain't one of my crowd. Landed\n years later in a ship from\n some star towards the center\n of the galaxy. You should\n have seen his looks before\n the Life got in touch with his\n mind and set up a mental field\n to help him change form. He\n looks twice as good as a\n vine!\"\n\n\n \"He's very handy,\" agreed\n Kolin politely. He groped for\n a foothold.\n\n\n \"Well … matter of fact, I\n can't get through to him\n much, even with the Life's\n mental field helping. Guess\n he started living with a different\n way of thinking. It\n burns me. I thought of being\n a tree, and then he came along\n to take advantage of it!\"\n\n\n Kolin braced himself securely\n to stretch tiring muscles." ], [ "Kolin permitted himself to\n wonder when anyone might\n get some rest, but assumed a\n mildly willing look. (Too eager\n an attitude could arouse\n suspicion of disguising an improper\n viewpoint.) The maintenance\n of a proper viewpoint\n was a necessity if the Planetary\n State were to survive\n the hostile plots of Earth and\n the latter's decadent colonies.\n That, at least, was the official\n line.\n\n\n Kolin found himself in a\n group with Jak Ammet, a\n third cook, and Eva Yrtok,\n powdered foods storekeeper.\n Since the crew would be eating\n packaged rations during\n repairs, Yrtok could be spared\n to command a scout detail.", "His well-schooled features\n revealed no trace of the idea—or\n of any other idea. The\n Planetary State of Haurtoz\n had been organized some fifteen\n light-years from old\n Earth, but many of the home\n world's less kindly techniques\n had been employed. Lack of\n complete loyalty to the state\n was likely to result in a siege\n of treatment that left the subject\n suitably \"re-personalized.\"\n Kolin had heard of instances\n wherein mere unenthusiastic\n posture had betrayed\n intentions to harbor\n treasonable thoughts.\n\n\n \"You will scout in five details\n of three persons each,\"\n Chief Slichow said. \"Every\n hour, each detail will send\n one person in to report, and\n he will be replaced by one of\n the five I shall keep here to\n issue rations.\"", "\"There's just one thing.\n The Life don't like taking\n chances on word about this\n place gettin' around. It sorta\n believes in peace and quiet.\n You might not get back to\n your ship in any form that\n could tell tales.\"\n\n\n \"Listen!\" Kolin blurted\n out. \"I wasn't so much enjoying\n being what I was that\n getting back matters to me!\"\n\n\n \"Don't like your home planet,\n whatever the name was?\"\n\n\n \"Haurtoz. It's a rotten\n place. A Planetary State! You\n have to think and even look\n the way that's standard thirty\n hours a day, asleep or\n awake. You get scared to\n sleep for fear you might\n dream\n treason and they'd find\n out somehow.\"\n\n\n \"Whooeee! Heard about\n them places. Must be tough\n just to live.\"", "\"Since the crew will be on\n emergency watches repairing\n the damage,\" announced the\n Chief in clipped, aggressive\n tones, \"I have volunteered my\n section for preliminary scouting,\n as is suitable. It may be\n useful to discover temporary\n sources in this area of natural\n foods.\"\n\n\n Volunteered HIS section!\n thought Kolin rebelliously.\n\n\n Like the Supreme Director\n of Haurtoz! Being conscripted\n into this idiotic space fleet\n that never fights is bad\n enough without a tin god on\n jets like Slichow!\n\n\n Prudently, he did not express\n this resentment overtly.", "Yrtok and Ammet paused\n momentarily before descending.\n\n\n Kolin shared their sense of\n isolation. They would be out\n of sight of authority and responsible\n for their own actions.\n It was a strange sensation.\n\n\n They marched down into\n the valley at a brisk pace, becoming\n more aware of the\n clouds and atmospheric haze.\n Distant objects seemed\n blurred by the mist, taking on\n a somber, brooding grayness.\n For all Kolin could tell, he\n and the others were isolated\n in a world bounded by the\n rocky ridge behind them and\n a semi-circle of damp trees\n and bushes several hundred\n meters away. He suspected\n that the hills rising mistily\n ahead were part of a continuous\n slope, but could not be\n sure.", "Suddenly, Kolin found himself\n telling the tree about life\n on Haurtoz, and of the officially\n announced threats to\n the Planetary State's planned\n expansion. He dwelt upon the\n desperation of having no\n place to hide in case of trouble\n with the authorities. A\n multiple system of such\n worlds was agonizing to\n imagine.\nSomehow,\n the oddity of\n talking to a tree wore off.\n Kolin heard opinions spouting\n out which he had prudently\n kept bottled up for\n years.\n\n\n The more he talked and\n stormed and complained, the\n more relaxed he felt.\n\n\n \"If there was ever a fellow\n ready for this planet,\" decided\n the tree named Ashlew,\n \"you're it, Sonny! Hang on\n there while I signal the Life\n by root!\"\n\n\n Kolin sensed a lack of direct\n attention. The rustle\n about him was natural, caused\n by an ordinary breeze. He\n noticed his hands shaking.", "\"They're scared that without\n talk of war, and scouting\n for Earth fleets that never\n come, people would have time\n to think about the way they\n have to live and who's running\n things in the Planetary\n State. Then the gravy train\n would get blown up—and I\n mean blown up!\"\n\n\n The tree was silent for a\n moment. Kolin felt the\n branches stir meditatively.\n Then Ashlew offered a suggestion.", "Each scout was issued a\n rocket pistol and a plastic water\n tube. Chief Slichow emphasized\n that the keepers of\n rations could hardly, in an\n emergency, give even the appearance\n of favoring themselves\n in regard to food. They\n would go without. Kolin\n maintained a standard expression\n as the Chief's sharp\n stare measured them.\n\n\n Yrtok, a dark, lean-faced\n girl, led the way with a quiet\n monosyllable. She carried the\n small radio they would be\n permitted to use for messages\n of utmost urgency. Ammet\n followed, and Kolin brought\n up the rear.\nTo\n reach their assigned\n sector, they had to climb\n a forbidding ridge of rock\n within half a kilometer. Only\n a sparse creeper grew along\n their way, its elongated leaves\n shimmering with bronze-green\n reflections against a\n stony surface; but when they\n topped the ridge a thick forest\n was in sight.", "He paused to consider the\n state of the tree named Ashlew,\n half immortal but rooted\n to one spot, unable to float on\n a breeze or through space itself\n on the pressure of light.\n Especially, it was unable to\n insinuate any part of itself\n into the control center of another\n form of life, as a second\n spore was taking charge of\n the body of Chief Slichow at\n that very instant.\n\n\n There are not enough men\n ,\n thought Kolin.\n Some of me\n must drift through the airlock.\n In space, I can spread\n through the air system to the\n command group.\n\n\n Repairs to the\nPeace State\nand the return to Haurtoz\n passed like weeks to some of\n the crew but like brief moments\n in infinity to other\n units. At last, the ship parted\n the air above Headquarters\n City and landed.", "He considered what form\n might most easily escape the\n notice of search parties and\n still be tough enough to live\n a long time without renewal.\n Another factor slipped into\n his musings: mere hope of escape\n was unsatisfying after\n the outburst that had defined\n his fuming hatred for Haurtoz.\n\n\n I'd better watch myself!\n he\n thought.\n Don't drop diamonds\n to grab at stars!\n\n\n \"What I wish I could do is\n not just get away but get even\n for the way they make us\n live … the whole damn set-up.\n They could just as easy make\n peace with the Earth colonies.\n You know why they\n don't?\"\n\n\n \"Why?\" wheezed Ashlew.", "He pulled Yrtok to her\n feet. She pawed at him weakly,\n eyes as vacant as Ammet's.\n When he let go in sudden\n horror, she folded gently to\n the ground. She lay comfortably\n on her side, twitching\n one hand as if to brush something\n away.\n\n\n When she began to smile\n dreamily, Kolin backed away.\nThe\n corners of his mouth\n felt oddly stiff; they had\n involuntarily drawn back to\n expose his clenched teeth. He\n glanced warily about, but\n nothing appeared to threaten\n him.\n\n\n \"It's time to end this scout,\"\n he told himself. \"It's dangerous.\n One good look and I'm\n jetting off! What I need is\n an easy tree to climb.\"\n\n\n He considered the massive\n giant. Soaring thirty or forty\n meters into the thin fog and\n dwarfing other growth, it\n seemed the most promising\n choice.", "\"Where's that? Oh, never\n mind—some little planet. I\n don't bother with them all,\n since I came here and found\n out I could be anything I\n wanted.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, anything\n you wanted?\" asked\n Kolin, testing the firmness of\n a vertical vine.\n\"Just\n what I said,\" continued\n the voice, sounding\n closer in his ear as his\n cheek brushed the ridged bark\n of the tree trunk. \"And, if\n I do have to remind you, it\n would be nicer if you said\n 'Mr. Ashlew,' considering my\n age.\"\n\n\n \"Your age? How old—?\"\n\n\n \"Can't really count it in\n Earth years any more. Lost\n track. I always figured bein'\n a tree was a nice, peaceful\n life; and when I remembered\n how long some of them live,\n that settled it. Sonny, this\n world ain't all it looks like.\"", "\"It isn't, Mr. Ashlew?\"\n asked Kolin, twisting about\n in an effort to see what the\n higher branches might hide.\n\n\n \"Nope. Most everything\n here is run by the Life—that\n is, by the thing that first\n grew big enough to do some\n thinking, and set its roots\n down all over until it had\n control. That's the outskirts\n of it down below.\"\n\n\n \"The other trees? That jungle?\"\n\n\n \"It's more'n a jungle, Sonny.\n When I landed here, along\n with the others from the\nArcturan Spark\n, the planet\n looked pretty empty to me,\n just like it must have to—Watch\n it, there, Boy! If I\n didn't twist that branch over\n in time, you'd be bouncing off\n my roots right now!\"\n\n\n \"Th-thanks!\" grunted Kolin,\n hanging on grimly.", "He was so intent upon planning\n greetings with which to\n favor the tardy scouting parties\n that he failed to notice\n the loose cloud drifting over\n the ridge.\n\n\n It was tenuous, almost a\n haze. Close examination\n would have revealed it to be\n made up of myriads of tiny\n spores. They resembled those\n cast forth by one of the\n bushes Kolin's party had\n passed. Along the edges, the\n haze faded raggedly into thin\n air, but the units evidently\n formed a cohesive body. They\n drifted together, approaching\n the men as if taking intelligent\n advantage of the breeze.\n\n\n One of Chief Slichow's\n staggering flunkies, stealing\n a few seconds of relaxation\n on the pretext of dumping an\n armful of light plastic packing,\n wandered into the haze.\n\n\n He froze.", "After a few heartbeats, he\n dropped the trash and stared\n at ship and men as if he had\n never seen either. A hail from\n his master moved him.\n\n\n \"Coming, Chief!\" he called\n but, returning at a moderate\n pace, he murmured, \"My\n name is Frazer. I'm a second\n assistant steward. I'll think as\n Unit One.\"\n\n\n Throughout the cloud of\n spores, the mind formerly\n known as Peter Kolin congratulated\n itself upon its\n choice of form.\n\n\n Nearer to the original\n shape of the Life than Ashlew\n got\n , he thought.", "\"Don't know what got into\n me, talking that way to a\n tree,\" he muttered. \"If Yrtok\n snapped out of it and heard,\n I'm as good as re-personalized\n right now.\"\n\n\n As he brooded upon the\n sorry choice of arousing a\n search by hiding where he\n was or going back to bluff\n things out, the tree spoke.\n\n\n \"Maybe you're all set, Sonny.\n The Life has been thinkin'\n of learning about other\n worlds. If you can think of a\n safe form to jet off in, you\n might make yourself a deal.\n How'd you like to stay here?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Kolin.\n \"The penalty for desertion—\"\n\n\n \"Whoosh! Who'd find you?\n You could be a bird, a tree,\n even a cloud.\"\n\n\n Silenced but doubting, Kolin\n permitted himself to try\n the dream on for size.", "By H. B. Fyfe\nTHE TALKATIVE\n\n TREE\nDang vines! Beats all how some plants\n have no manners—but what do you expect,\n when they used to be men!\nAll\n things considered—the\n obscure star, the undetermined\n damage to the\n stellar drive and the way the\n small planet's murky atmosphere\n defied precision scanners—the\n pilot made a reasonably\n good landing. Despite\n sour feelings for the space\n service of Haurtoz, steward\n Peter Kolin had to admit that\n casualties might have been\n far worse.\n\n\n Chief Steward Slichow led\n his little command, less two\n third-class ration keepers\n thought to have been trapped\n in the lower hold, to a point\n two hundred meters from the\n steaming hull of the\nPeace\n State\n. He lined them up as if\n on parade. Kolin made himself\n inconspicuous.", "\"Name's Johnny Ashlew.\n Kinda thought you'd start\n with\n what\n I am. Didn't figure\n you'd ever seen a man grown\n into a tree before.\"\n\n\n Kolin looked about, seeing\n little but leaves and fog.\n\n\n \"I have to climb down,\" he\n told himself in a reasonable\n tone. \"It's bad enough that the\n other two passed out without\n me going space happy too.\"\n\n\n \"What's your hurry?\" demanded\n the voice. \"I can talk\n to you just as easy all the way\n down, you know. Airholes in\n my bark—I'm not like an\n Earth tree.\"\n\n\n Kolin examined the bark of\n the crotch in which he sat. It\n did seem to have assorted\n holes and hollows in its rough\n surface.\n\n\n \"I never saw an Earth tree,\"\n he admitted. \"We came from\n Haurtoz.\"", "\"I could tell the Life your\n side of it,\" he hissed. \"Once\n in with us, you can always\n make thinking connections,\n no matter how far away.\n Maybe you could make a deal\n to kill two birds with one\n stone, as they used to say on\n Earth….\"\nChief\n Steward Slichow\n paced up and down beside\n the ration crate turned up to\n serve him as a field desk. He\n scowled in turn, impartially,\n at his watch and at the weary\n stewards of his headquarters\n detail. The latter stumbled\n about, stacking and distributing\n small packets of emergency\n rations.\n\n\n The line of crewmen released\n temporarily from repair\n work was transient as to\n individuals but immutable as\n to length. Slichow muttered\n something profane about disregard\n of orders as he glared\n at the rocky ridges surrounding\n the landing place.", "\"Doggone vine!\" commented\n the windy whisper. \"\n He\n ain't one of my crowd. Landed\n years later in a ship from\n some star towards the center\n of the galaxy. You should\n have seen his looks before\n the Life got in touch with his\n mind and set up a mental field\n to help him change form. He\n looks twice as good as a\n vine!\"\n\n\n \"He's very handy,\" agreed\n Kolin politely. He groped for\n a foothold.\n\n\n \"Well … matter of fact, I\n can't get through to him\n much, even with the Life's\n mental field helping. Guess\n he started living with a different\n way of thinking. It\n burns me. I thought of being\n a tree, and then he came along\n to take advantage of it!\"\n\n\n Kolin braced himself securely\n to stretch tiring muscles." ], [ "\"I think the stuff puts out\n shoots that grow back into\n the ground to root as they\n spread,\" said the woman.\n \"Maybe we can find a way\n through.\"\n\n\n In two or three minutes,\n they reached the abrupt border\n of the odd-looking trees.\n\n\n Except for one thick\n trunked giant, all of them\n were about the same height.\n They craned their necks to estimate\n the altitude of the\n monster, but the top was hidden\n by the wide spread of\n branches. The depths behind\n it looked dark and impenetrable.\n\n\n \"We'd better explore along\n the edge,\" decided Yrtok.\n \"Ammet, now is the time to\n go back and tell the Chief\n which way we're—\n Ammet!\n \"\n\n\n Kolin looked over his shoulder.\n Fifty meters away, Ammet\n sat beside the bush with\n the purple berries, utterly\n relaxed.", "Yrtok led the way along\n the most nearly level ground.\n Low creepers became more\n plentiful, interspersed with\n scrubby thickets of tangled,\n spike-armored bushes. Occasionally,\n small flying things\n flickered among the foliage.\n Once, a shrub puffed out an\n enormous cloud of tiny\n spores.\n\n\n \"Be a job to find anything\n edible here,\" grunted Ammet,\n and Kolin agreed.\n\n\n Finally, after a longer hike\n than he had anticipated, they\n approached the edge of the\n deceptively distant forest.\n Yrtok paused to examine some\n purple berries glistening dangerously\n on a low shrub. Kolin\n regarded the trees with\n misgiving.\n\n\n \"Looks as tough to get\n through as a tropical jungle,\"\n he remarked.", "\"He must have tasted\n some!\" exclaimed Kolin. \"I'll\n see how he is.\"\n\n\n He ran back to the cook and\n shook him by the shoulder.\n Ammet's head lolled loosely\n to one side. His rather heavy\n features were vacant, lending\n him a doped appearance. Kolin\n straightened up and beckoned\n to Yrtok.\n\n\n For some reason, he had\n trouble attracting her attention.\n Then he noticed that she\n was kneeling.\n\n\n \"Hope she didn't eat some\n stupid thing too!\" he grumbled,\n trotting back.\n\n\n As he reached her, whatever\n Yrtok was examining\n came to life and scooted into\n the underbrush with a flash\n of greenish fur. All Kolin\n saw was that it had several\n legs too many.", "He was so intent upon planning\n greetings with which to\n favor the tardy scouting parties\n that he failed to notice\n the loose cloud drifting over\n the ridge.\n\n\n It was tenuous, almost a\n haze. Close examination\n would have revealed it to be\n made up of myriads of tiny\n spores. They resembled those\n cast forth by one of the\n bushes Kolin's party had\n passed. Along the edges, the\n haze faded raggedly into thin\n air, but the units evidently\n formed a cohesive body. They\n drifted together, approaching\n the men as if taking intelligent\n advantage of the breeze.\n\n\n One of Chief Slichow's\n staggering flunkies, stealing\n a few seconds of relaxation\n on the pretext of dumping an\n armful of light plastic packing,\n wandered into the haze.\n\n\n He froze.", "Each scout was issued a\n rocket pistol and a plastic water\n tube. Chief Slichow emphasized\n that the keepers of\n rations could hardly, in an\n emergency, give even the appearance\n of favoring themselves\n in regard to food. They\n would go without. Kolin\n maintained a standard expression\n as the Chief's sharp\n stare measured them.\n\n\n Yrtok, a dark, lean-faced\n girl, led the way with a quiet\n monosyllable. She carried the\n small radio they would be\n permitted to use for messages\n of utmost urgency. Ammet\n followed, and Kolin brought\n up the rear.\nTo\n reach their assigned\n sector, they had to climb\n a forbidding ridge of rock\n within half a kilometer. Only\n a sparse creeper grew along\n their way, its elongated leaves\n shimmering with bronze-green\n reflections against a\n stony surface; but when they\n topped the ridge a thick forest\n was in sight.", "He pulled Yrtok to her\n feet. She pawed at him weakly,\n eyes as vacant as Ammet's.\n When he let go in sudden\n horror, she folded gently to\n the ground. She lay comfortably\n on her side, twitching\n one hand as if to brush something\n away.\n\n\n When she began to smile\n dreamily, Kolin backed away.\nThe\n corners of his mouth\n felt oddly stiff; they had\n involuntarily drawn back to\n expose his clenched teeth. He\n glanced warily about, but\n nothing appeared to threaten\n him.\n\n\n \"It's time to end this scout,\"\n he told himself. \"It's dangerous.\n One good look and I'm\n jetting off! What I need is\n an easy tree to climb.\"\n\n\n He considered the massive\n giant. Soaring thirty or forty\n meters into the thin fog and\n dwarfing other growth, it\n seemed the most promising\n choice.", "Yrtok and Ammet paused\n momentarily before descending.\n\n\n Kolin shared their sense of\n isolation. They would be out\n of sight of authority and responsible\n for their own actions.\n It was a strange sensation.\n\n\n They marched down into\n the valley at a brisk pace, becoming\n more aware of the\n clouds and atmospheric haze.\n Distant objects seemed\n blurred by the mist, taking on\n a somber, brooding grayness.\n For all Kolin could tell, he\n and the others were isolated\n in a world bounded by the\n rocky ridge behind them and\n a semi-circle of damp trees\n and bushes several hundred\n meters away. He suspected\n that the hills rising mistily\n ahead were part of a continuous\n slope, but could not be\n sure.", "At first, Kolin saw no way,\n but then the network of vines\n clinging to the rugged trunk\n suggested a route. He tried\n his weight gingerly, then began\n to climb.\n\n\n \"I should have brought\n Yrtok's radio,\" he muttered.\n \"Oh, well, I can take it when\n I come down, if she hasn't\n snapped out of her spell by\n then. Funny … I wonder if\n that green thing bit her.\"\n\n\n Footholds were plentiful\n among the interlaced lianas.\n Kolin progressed rapidly.\n When he reached the first\n thick limbs, twice head\n height, he felt safer.\n\n\n Later, at what he hoped was\n the halfway mark, he hooked\n one knee over a branch and\n paused to wipe sweat from his\n eyes. Peering down, he discovered\n the ground to be obscured\n by foliage.", "By H. B. Fyfe\nTHE TALKATIVE\n\n TREE\nDang vines! Beats all how some plants\n have no manners—but what do you expect,\n when they used to be men!\nAll\n things considered—the\n obscure star, the undetermined\n damage to the\n stellar drive and the way the\n small planet's murky atmosphere\n defied precision scanners—the\n pilot made a reasonably\n good landing. Despite\n sour feelings for the space\n service of Haurtoz, steward\n Peter Kolin had to admit that\n casualties might have been\n far worse.\n\n\n Chief Steward Slichow led\n his little command, less two\n third-class ration keepers\n thought to have been trapped\n in the lower hold, to a point\n two hundred meters from the\n steaming hull of the\nPeace\n State\n. He lined them up as if\n on parade. Kolin made himself\n inconspicuous.", "\"It isn't, Mr. Ashlew?\"\n asked Kolin, twisting about\n in an effort to see what the\n higher branches might hide.\n\n\n \"Nope. Most everything\n here is run by the Life—that\n is, by the thing that first\n grew big enough to do some\n thinking, and set its roots\n down all over until it had\n control. That's the outskirts\n of it down below.\"\n\n\n \"The other trees? That jungle?\"\n\n\n \"It's more'n a jungle, Sonny.\n When I landed here, along\n with the others from the\nArcturan Spark\n, the planet\n looked pretty empty to me,\n just like it must have to—Watch\n it, there, Boy! If I\n didn't twist that branch over\n in time, you'd be bouncing off\n my roots right now!\"\n\n\n \"Th-thanks!\" grunted Kolin,\n hanging on grimly.", "\"Name's Johnny Ashlew.\n Kinda thought you'd start\n with\n what\n I am. Didn't figure\n you'd ever seen a man grown\n into a tree before.\"\n\n\n Kolin looked about, seeing\n little but leaves and fog.\n\n\n \"I have to climb down,\" he\n told himself in a reasonable\n tone. \"It's bad enough that the\n other two passed out without\n me going space happy too.\"\n\n\n \"What's your hurry?\" demanded\n the voice. \"I can talk\n to you just as easy all the way\n down, you know. Airholes in\n my bark—I'm not like an\n Earth tree.\"\n\n\n Kolin examined the bark of\n the crotch in which he sat. It\n did seem to have assorted\n holes and hollows in its rough\n surface.\n\n\n \"I never saw an Earth tree,\"\n he admitted. \"We came from\n Haurtoz.\"", "\"I should have checked\n from down there to see how\n open the top is,\" he mused.\n \"I wonder how the view will\n be from up there?\"\n\n\n \"Depends on what you're\n looking for, Sonny!\" something\n remarked in a soughing wheeze.\n\n\n Kolin, slipping, grabbed\n desperately for the branch.\n His fingers clutched a handful\n of twigs and leaves, which\n just barely supported him until\n he regained a grip with\n the other hand.\n\n\n The branch quivered resentfully\n under him.\n\n\n \"Careful, there!\" whooshed\n the eerie voice. \"It took me\n all summer to grow those!\"\n\n\n Kolin could feel the skin\n crawling along his backbone.\n\n\n \"Who\n are\n you?\" he gasped.\n\n\n The answering sigh of\n laughter gave him a distinct\n chill despite its suggestion of\n amiability.", "\"Doggone vine!\" commented\n the windy whisper. \"\n He\n ain't one of my crowd. Landed\n years later in a ship from\n some star towards the center\n of the galaxy. You should\n have seen his looks before\n the Life got in touch with his\n mind and set up a mental field\n to help him change form. He\n looks twice as good as a\n vine!\"\n\n\n \"He's very handy,\" agreed\n Kolin politely. He groped for\n a foothold.\n\n\n \"Well … matter of fact, I\n can't get through to him\n much, even with the Life's\n mental field helping. Guess\n he started living with a different\n way of thinking. It\n burns me. I thought of being\n a tree, and then he came along\n to take advantage of it!\"\n\n\n Kolin braced himself securely\n to stretch tiring muscles.", "\"Maybe I'd better stay a\n while,\" he muttered. \"I don't\n know where I am.\"\n\n\n \"You're about fifty feet\n up,\" the sighing voice informed\n him. \"You ought to\n let me tell you how the Life\n helps you change form. You\n don't\n have\n to be a tree.\"\n\n\n \"No?\"\n\n\n \"\n Uh\n -uh! Some of the boys\n that landed with me wanted\n to get around and see things.\n Lots changed to animals or\n birds. One even stayed a man—on\n the outside anyway.\n Most of them have to change\n as the bodies wear out, which\n I don't, and some made bad\n mistakes tryin' to be things\n they saw on other planets.\"\n\n\n \"I wouldn't want to do\n that, Mr. Ashlew.\"", "\"Where's that? Oh, never\n mind—some little planet. I\n don't bother with them all,\n since I came here and found\n out I could be anything I\n wanted.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, anything\n you wanted?\" asked\n Kolin, testing the firmness of\n a vertical vine.\n\"Just\n what I said,\" continued\n the voice, sounding\n closer in his ear as his\n cheek brushed the ridged bark\n of the tree trunk. \"And, if\n I do have to remind you, it\n would be nicer if you said\n 'Mr. Ashlew,' considering my\n age.\"\n\n\n \"Your age? How old—?\"\n\n\n \"Can't really count it in\n Earth years any more. Lost\n track. I always figured bein'\n a tree was a nice, peaceful\n life; and when I remembered\n how long some of them live,\n that settled it. Sonny, this\n world ain't all it looks like.\"", "Suddenly, Kolin found himself\n telling the tree about life\n on Haurtoz, and of the officially\n announced threats to\n the Planetary State's planned\n expansion. He dwelt upon the\n desperation of having no\n place to hide in case of trouble\n with the authorities. A\n multiple system of such\n worlds was agonizing to\n imagine.\nSomehow,\n the oddity of\n talking to a tree wore off.\n Kolin heard opinions spouting\n out which he had prudently\n kept bottled up for\n years.\n\n\n The more he talked and\n stormed and complained, the\n more relaxed he felt.\n\n\n \"If there was ever a fellow\n ready for this planet,\" decided\n the tree named Ashlew,\n \"you're it, Sonny! Hang on\n there while I signal the Life\n by root!\"\n\n\n Kolin sensed a lack of direct\n attention. The rustle\n about him was natural, caused\n by an ordinary breeze. He\n noticed his hands shaking.", "He paused to consider the\n state of the tree named Ashlew,\n half immortal but rooted\n to one spot, unable to float on\n a breeze or through space itself\n on the pressure of light.\n Especially, it was unable to\n insinuate any part of itself\n into the control center of another\n form of life, as a second\n spore was taking charge of\n the body of Chief Slichow at\n that very instant.\n\n\n There are not enough men\n ,\n thought Kolin.\n Some of me\n must drift through the airlock.\n In space, I can spread\n through the air system to the\n command group.\n\n\n Repairs to the\nPeace State\nand the return to Haurtoz\n passed like weeks to some of\n the crew but like brief moments\n in infinity to other\n units. At last, the ship parted\n the air above Headquarters\n City and landed.", "\"Since the crew will be on\n emergency watches repairing\n the damage,\" announced the\n Chief in clipped, aggressive\n tones, \"I have volunteered my\n section for preliminary scouting,\n as is suitable. It may be\n useful to discover temporary\n sources in this area of natural\n foods.\"\n\n\n Volunteered HIS section!\n thought Kolin rebelliously.\n\n\n Like the Supreme Director\n of Haurtoz! Being conscripted\n into this idiotic space fleet\n that never fights is bad\n enough without a tin god on\n jets like Slichow!\n\n\n Prudently, he did not express\n this resentment overtly.", "\"I could tell the Life your\n side of it,\" he hissed. \"Once\n in with us, you can always\n make thinking connections,\n no matter how far away.\n Maybe you could make a deal\n to kill two birds with one\n stone, as they used to say on\n Earth….\"\nChief\n Steward Slichow\n paced up and down beside\n the ration crate turned up to\n serve him as a field desk. He\n scowled in turn, impartially,\n at his watch and at the weary\n stewards of his headquarters\n detail. The latter stumbled\n about, stacking and distributing\n small packets of emergency\n rations.\n\n\n The line of crewmen released\n temporarily from repair\n work was transient as to\n individuals but immutable as\n to length. Slichow muttered\n something profane about disregard\n of orders as he glared\n at the rocky ridges surrounding\n the landing place.", "After a few heartbeats, he\n dropped the trash and stared\n at ship and men as if he had\n never seen either. A hail from\n his master moved him.\n\n\n \"Coming, Chief!\" he called\n but, returning at a moderate\n pace, he murmured, \"My\n name is Frazer. I'm a second\n assistant steward. I'll think as\n Unit One.\"\n\n\n Throughout the cloud of\n spores, the mind formerly\n known as Peter Kolin congratulated\n itself upon its\n choice of form.\n\n\n Nearer to the original\n shape of the Life than Ashlew\n got\n , he thought." ], [ "\"Name's Johnny Ashlew.\n Kinda thought you'd start\n with\n what\n I am. Didn't figure\n you'd ever seen a man grown\n into a tree before.\"\n\n\n Kolin looked about, seeing\n little but leaves and fog.\n\n\n \"I have to climb down,\" he\n told himself in a reasonable\n tone. \"It's bad enough that the\n other two passed out without\n me going space happy too.\"\n\n\n \"What's your hurry?\" demanded\n the voice. \"I can talk\n to you just as easy all the way\n down, you know. Airholes in\n my bark—I'm not like an\n Earth tree.\"\n\n\n Kolin examined the bark of\n the crotch in which he sat. It\n did seem to have assorted\n holes and hollows in its rough\n surface.\n\n\n \"I never saw an Earth tree,\"\n he admitted. \"We came from\n Haurtoz.\"", "He considered what form\n might most easily escape the\n notice of search parties and\n still be tough enough to live\n a long time without renewal.\n Another factor slipped into\n his musings: mere hope of escape\n was unsatisfying after\n the outburst that had defined\n his fuming hatred for Haurtoz.\n\n\n I'd better watch myself!\n he\n thought.\n Don't drop diamonds\n to grab at stars!\n\n\n \"What I wish I could do is\n not just get away but get even\n for the way they make us\n live … the whole damn set-up.\n They could just as easy make\n peace with the Earth colonies.\n You know why they\n don't?\"\n\n\n \"Why?\" wheezed Ashlew.", "\"It isn't, Mr. Ashlew?\"\n asked Kolin, twisting about\n in an effort to see what the\n higher branches might hide.\n\n\n \"Nope. Most everything\n here is run by the Life—that\n is, by the thing that first\n grew big enough to do some\n thinking, and set its roots\n down all over until it had\n control. That's the outskirts\n of it down below.\"\n\n\n \"The other trees? That jungle?\"\n\n\n \"It's more'n a jungle, Sonny.\n When I landed here, along\n with the others from the\nArcturan Spark\n, the planet\n looked pretty empty to me,\n just like it must have to—Watch\n it, there, Boy! If I\n didn't twist that branch over\n in time, you'd be bouncing off\n my roots right now!\"\n\n\n \"Th-thanks!\" grunted Kolin,\n hanging on grimly.", "\"Where's that? Oh, never\n mind—some little planet. I\n don't bother with them all,\n since I came here and found\n out I could be anything I\n wanted.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, anything\n you wanted?\" asked\n Kolin, testing the firmness of\n a vertical vine.\n\"Just\n what I said,\" continued\n the voice, sounding\n closer in his ear as his\n cheek brushed the ridged bark\n of the tree trunk. \"And, if\n I do have to remind you, it\n would be nicer if you said\n 'Mr. Ashlew,' considering my\n age.\"\n\n\n \"Your age? How old—?\"\n\n\n \"Can't really count it in\n Earth years any more. Lost\n track. I always figured bein'\n a tree was a nice, peaceful\n life; and when I remembered\n how long some of them live,\n that settled it. Sonny, this\n world ain't all it looks like.\"", "He paused to consider the\n state of the tree named Ashlew,\n half immortal but rooted\n to one spot, unable to float on\n a breeze or through space itself\n on the pressure of light.\n Especially, it was unable to\n insinuate any part of itself\n into the control center of another\n form of life, as a second\n spore was taking charge of\n the body of Chief Slichow at\n that very instant.\n\n\n There are not enough men\n ,\n thought Kolin.\n Some of me\n must drift through the airlock.\n In space, I can spread\n through the air system to the\n command group.\n\n\n Repairs to the\nPeace State\nand the return to Haurtoz\n passed like weeks to some of\n the crew but like brief moments\n in infinity to other\n units. At last, the ship parted\n the air above Headquarters\n City and landed.", "Suddenly, Kolin found himself\n telling the tree about life\n on Haurtoz, and of the officially\n announced threats to\n the Planetary State's planned\n expansion. He dwelt upon the\n desperation of having no\n place to hide in case of trouble\n with the authorities. A\n multiple system of such\n worlds was agonizing to\n imagine.\nSomehow,\n the oddity of\n talking to a tree wore off.\n Kolin heard opinions spouting\n out which he had prudently\n kept bottled up for\n years.\n\n\n The more he talked and\n stormed and complained, the\n more relaxed he felt.\n\n\n \"If there was ever a fellow\n ready for this planet,\" decided\n the tree named Ashlew,\n \"you're it, Sonny! Hang on\n there while I signal the Life\n by root!\"\n\n\n Kolin sensed a lack of direct\n attention. The rustle\n about him was natural, caused\n by an ordinary breeze. He\n noticed his hands shaking.", "After a few heartbeats, he\n dropped the trash and stared\n at ship and men as if he had\n never seen either. A hail from\n his master moved him.\n\n\n \"Coming, Chief!\" he called\n but, returning at a moderate\n pace, he murmured, \"My\n name is Frazer. I'm a second\n assistant steward. I'll think as\n Unit One.\"\n\n\n Throughout the cloud of\n spores, the mind formerly\n known as Peter Kolin congratulated\n itself upon its\n choice of form.\n\n\n Nearer to the original\n shape of the Life than Ashlew\n got\n , he thought.", "\"Maybe I'd better stay a\n while,\" he muttered. \"I don't\n know where I am.\"\n\n\n \"You're about fifty feet\n up,\" the sighing voice informed\n him. \"You ought to\n let me tell you how the Life\n helps you change form. You\n don't\n have\n to be a tree.\"\n\n\n \"No?\"\n\n\n \"\n Uh\n -uh! Some of the boys\n that landed with me wanted\n to get around and see things.\n Lots changed to animals or\n birds. One even stayed a man—on\n the outside anyway.\n Most of them have to change\n as the bodies wear out, which\n I don't, and some made bad\n mistakes tryin' to be things\n they saw on other planets.\"\n\n\n \"I wouldn't want to do\n that, Mr. Ashlew.\"", "\"They're scared that without\n talk of war, and scouting\n for Earth fleets that never\n come, people would have time\n to think about the way they\n have to live and who's running\n things in the Planetary\n State. Then the gravy train\n would get blown up—and I\n mean blown up!\"\n\n\n The tree was silent for a\n moment. Kolin felt the\n branches stir meditatively.\n Then Ashlew offered a suggestion.", "\"Doggone vine!\" commented\n the windy whisper. \"\n He\n ain't one of my crowd. Landed\n years later in a ship from\n some star towards the center\n of the galaxy. You should\n have seen his looks before\n the Life got in touch with his\n mind and set up a mental field\n to help him change form. He\n looks twice as good as a\n vine!\"\n\n\n \"He's very handy,\" agreed\n Kolin politely. He groped for\n a foothold.\n\n\n \"Well … matter of fact, I\n can't get through to him\n much, even with the Life's\n mental field helping. Guess\n he started living with a different\n way of thinking. It\n burns me. I thought of being\n a tree, and then he came along\n to take advantage of it!\"\n\n\n Kolin braced himself securely\n to stretch tiring muscles.", "\"I should have checked\n from down there to see how\n open the top is,\" he mused.\n \"I wonder how the view will\n be from up there?\"\n\n\n \"Depends on what you're\n looking for, Sonny!\" something\n remarked in a soughing wheeze.\n\n\n Kolin, slipping, grabbed\n desperately for the branch.\n His fingers clutched a handful\n of twigs and leaves, which\n just barely supported him until\n he regained a grip with\n the other hand.\n\n\n The branch quivered resentfully\n under him.\n\n\n \"Careful, there!\" whooshed\n the eerie voice. \"It took me\n all summer to grow those!\"\n\n\n Kolin could feel the skin\n crawling along his backbone.\n\n\n \"Who\n are\n you?\" he gasped.\n\n\n The answering sigh of\n laughter gave him a distinct\n chill despite its suggestion of\n amiability.", "\"I could tell the Life your\n side of it,\" he hissed. \"Once\n in with us, you can always\n make thinking connections,\n no matter how far away.\n Maybe you could make a deal\n to kill two birds with one\n stone, as they used to say on\n Earth….\"\nChief\n Steward Slichow\n paced up and down beside\n the ration crate turned up to\n serve him as a field desk. He\n scowled in turn, impartially,\n at his watch and at the weary\n stewards of his headquarters\n detail. The latter stumbled\n about, stacking and distributing\n small packets of emergency\n rations.\n\n\n The line of crewmen released\n temporarily from repair\n work was transient as to\n individuals but immutable as\n to length. Slichow muttered\n something profane about disregard\n of orders as he glared\n at the rocky ridges surrounding\n the landing place.", "Each scout was issued a\n rocket pistol and a plastic water\n tube. Chief Slichow emphasized\n that the keepers of\n rations could hardly, in an\n emergency, give even the appearance\n of favoring themselves\n in regard to food. They\n would go without. Kolin\n maintained a standard expression\n as the Chief's sharp\n stare measured them.\n\n\n Yrtok, a dark, lean-faced\n girl, led the way with a quiet\n monosyllable. She carried the\n small radio they would be\n permitted to use for messages\n of utmost urgency. Ammet\n followed, and Kolin brought\n up the rear.\nTo\n reach their assigned\n sector, they had to climb\n a forbidding ridge of rock\n within half a kilometer. Only\n a sparse creeper grew along\n their way, its elongated leaves\n shimmering with bronze-green\n reflections against a\n stony surface; but when they\n topped the ridge a thick forest\n was in sight.", "He was so intent upon planning\n greetings with which to\n favor the tardy scouting parties\n that he failed to notice\n the loose cloud drifting over\n the ridge.\n\n\n It was tenuous, almost a\n haze. Close examination\n would have revealed it to be\n made up of myriads of tiny\n spores. They resembled those\n cast forth by one of the\n bushes Kolin's party had\n passed. Along the edges, the\n haze faded raggedly into thin\n air, but the units evidently\n formed a cohesive body. They\n drifted together, approaching\n the men as if taking intelligent\n advantage of the breeze.\n\n\n One of Chief Slichow's\n staggering flunkies, stealing\n a few seconds of relaxation\n on the pretext of dumping an\n armful of light plastic packing,\n wandered into the haze.\n\n\n He froze.", "\"Don't know what got into\n me, talking that way to a\n tree,\" he muttered. \"If Yrtok\n snapped out of it and heard,\n I'm as good as re-personalized\n right now.\"\n\n\n As he brooded upon the\n sorry choice of arousing a\n search by hiding where he\n was or going back to bluff\n things out, the tree spoke.\n\n\n \"Maybe you're all set, Sonny.\n The Life has been thinkin'\n of learning about other\n worlds. If you can think of a\n safe form to jet off in, you\n might make yourself a deal.\n How'd you like to stay here?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Kolin.\n \"The penalty for desertion—\"\n\n\n \"Whoosh! Who'd find you?\n You could be a bird, a tree,\n even a cloud.\"\n\n\n Silenced but doubting, Kolin\n permitted himself to try\n the dream on for size.", "\"There's just one thing.\n The Life don't like taking\n chances on word about this\n place gettin' around. It sorta\n believes in peace and quiet.\n You might not get back to\n your ship in any form that\n could tell tales.\"\n\n\n \"Listen!\" Kolin blurted\n out. \"I wasn't so much enjoying\n being what I was that\n getting back matters to me!\"\n\n\n \"Don't like your home planet,\n whatever the name was?\"\n\n\n \"Haurtoz. It's a rotten\n place. A Planetary State! You\n have to think and even look\n the way that's standard thirty\n hours a day, asleep or\n awake. You get scared to\n sleep for fear you might\n dream\n treason and they'd find\n out somehow.\"\n\n\n \"Whooeee! Heard about\n them places. Must be tough\n just to live.\"", "By H. B. Fyfe\nTHE TALKATIVE\n\n TREE\nDang vines! Beats all how some plants\n have no manners—but what do you expect,\n when they used to be men!\nAll\n things considered—the\n obscure star, the undetermined\n damage to the\n stellar drive and the way the\n small planet's murky atmosphere\n defied precision scanners—the\n pilot made a reasonably\n good landing. Despite\n sour feelings for the space\n service of Haurtoz, steward\n Peter Kolin had to admit that\n casualties might have been\n far worse.\n\n\n Chief Steward Slichow led\n his little command, less two\n third-class ration keepers\n thought to have been trapped\n in the lower hold, to a point\n two hundred meters from the\n steaming hull of the\nPeace\n State\n. He lined them up as if\n on parade. Kolin made himself\n inconspicuous.", "Kolin permitted himself to\n wonder when anyone might\n get some rest, but assumed a\n mildly willing look. (Too eager\n an attitude could arouse\n suspicion of disguising an improper\n viewpoint.) The maintenance\n of a proper viewpoint\n was a necessity if the Planetary\n State were to survive\n the hostile plots of Earth and\n the latter's decadent colonies.\n That, at least, was the official\n line.\n\n\n Kolin found himself in a\n group with Jak Ammet, a\n third cook, and Eva Yrtok,\n powdered foods storekeeper.\n Since the crew would be eating\n packaged rations during\n repairs, Yrtok could be spared\n to command a scout detail.", "He pulled Yrtok to her\n feet. She pawed at him weakly,\n eyes as vacant as Ammet's.\n When he let go in sudden\n horror, she folded gently to\n the ground. She lay comfortably\n on her side, twitching\n one hand as if to brush something\n away.\n\n\n When she began to smile\n dreamily, Kolin backed away.\nThe\n corners of his mouth\n felt oddly stiff; they had\n involuntarily drawn back to\n expose his clenched teeth. He\n glanced warily about, but\n nothing appeared to threaten\n him.\n\n\n \"It's time to end this scout,\"\n he told himself. \"It's dangerous.\n One good look and I'm\n jetting off! What I need is\n an easy tree to climb.\"\n\n\n He considered the massive\n giant. Soaring thirty or forty\n meters into the thin fog and\n dwarfing other growth, it\n seemed the most promising\n choice.", "Yrtok led the way along\n the most nearly level ground.\n Low creepers became more\n plentiful, interspersed with\n scrubby thickets of tangled,\n spike-armored bushes. Occasionally,\n small flying things\n flickered among the foliage.\n Once, a shrub puffed out an\n enormous cloud of tiny\n spores.\n\n\n \"Be a job to find anything\n edible here,\" grunted Ammet,\n and Kolin agreed.\n\n\n Finally, after a longer hike\n than he had anticipated, they\n approached the edge of the\n deceptively distant forest.\n Yrtok paused to examine some\n purple berries glistening dangerously\n on a low shrub. Kolin\n regarded the trees with\n misgiving.\n\n\n \"Looks as tough to get\n through as a tropical jungle,\"\n he remarked." ], [ "At first, Kolin saw no way,\n but then the network of vines\n clinging to the rugged trunk\n suggested a route. He tried\n his weight gingerly, then began\n to climb.\n\n\n \"I should have brought\n Yrtok's radio,\" he muttered.\n \"Oh, well, I can take it when\n I come down, if she hasn't\n snapped out of her spell by\n then. Funny … I wonder if\n that green thing bit her.\"\n\n\n Footholds were plentiful\n among the interlaced lianas.\n Kolin progressed rapidly.\n When he reached the first\n thick limbs, twice head\n height, he felt safer.\n\n\n Later, at what he hoped was\n the halfway mark, he hooked\n one knee over a branch and\n paused to wipe sweat from his\n eyes. Peering down, he discovered\n the ground to be obscured\n by foliage.", "\"I think the stuff puts out\n shoots that grow back into\n the ground to root as they\n spread,\" said the woman.\n \"Maybe we can find a way\n through.\"\n\n\n In two or three minutes,\n they reached the abrupt border\n of the odd-looking trees.\n\n\n Except for one thick\n trunked giant, all of them\n were about the same height.\n They craned their necks to estimate\n the altitude of the\n monster, but the top was hidden\n by the wide spread of\n branches. The depths behind\n it looked dark and impenetrable.\n\n\n \"We'd better explore along\n the edge,\" decided Yrtok.\n \"Ammet, now is the time to\n go back and tell the Chief\n which way we're—\n Ammet!\n \"\n\n\n Kolin looked over his shoulder.\n Fifty meters away, Ammet\n sat beside the bush with\n the purple berries, utterly\n relaxed.", "\"Doggone vine!\" commented\n the windy whisper. \"\n He\n ain't one of my crowd. Landed\n years later in a ship from\n some star towards the center\n of the galaxy. You should\n have seen his looks before\n the Life got in touch with his\n mind and set up a mental field\n to help him change form. He\n looks twice as good as a\n vine!\"\n\n\n \"He's very handy,\" agreed\n Kolin politely. He groped for\n a foothold.\n\n\n \"Well … matter of fact, I\n can't get through to him\n much, even with the Life's\n mental field helping. Guess\n he started living with a different\n way of thinking. It\n burns me. I thought of being\n a tree, and then he came along\n to take advantage of it!\"\n\n\n Kolin braced himself securely\n to stretch tiring muscles.", "Yrtok led the way along\n the most nearly level ground.\n Low creepers became more\n plentiful, interspersed with\n scrubby thickets of tangled,\n spike-armored bushes. Occasionally,\n small flying things\n flickered among the foliage.\n Once, a shrub puffed out an\n enormous cloud of tiny\n spores.\n\n\n \"Be a job to find anything\n edible here,\" grunted Ammet,\n and Kolin agreed.\n\n\n Finally, after a longer hike\n than he had anticipated, they\n approached the edge of the\n deceptively distant forest.\n Yrtok paused to examine some\n purple berries glistening dangerously\n on a low shrub. Kolin\n regarded the trees with\n misgiving.\n\n\n \"Looks as tough to get\n through as a tropical jungle,\"\n he remarked.", "\"It isn't, Mr. Ashlew?\"\n asked Kolin, twisting about\n in an effort to see what the\n higher branches might hide.\n\n\n \"Nope. Most everything\n here is run by the Life—that\n is, by the thing that first\n grew big enough to do some\n thinking, and set its roots\n down all over until it had\n control. That's the outskirts\n of it down below.\"\n\n\n \"The other trees? That jungle?\"\n\n\n \"It's more'n a jungle, Sonny.\n When I landed here, along\n with the others from the\nArcturan Spark\n, the planet\n looked pretty empty to me,\n just like it must have to—Watch\n it, there, Boy! If I\n didn't twist that branch over\n in time, you'd be bouncing off\n my roots right now!\"\n\n\n \"Th-thanks!\" grunted Kolin,\n hanging on grimly.", "He pulled Yrtok to her\n feet. She pawed at him weakly,\n eyes as vacant as Ammet's.\n When he let go in sudden\n horror, she folded gently to\n the ground. She lay comfortably\n on her side, twitching\n one hand as if to brush something\n away.\n\n\n When she began to smile\n dreamily, Kolin backed away.\nThe\n corners of his mouth\n felt oddly stiff; they had\n involuntarily drawn back to\n expose his clenched teeth. He\n glanced warily about, but\n nothing appeared to threaten\n him.\n\n\n \"It's time to end this scout,\"\n he told himself. \"It's dangerous.\n One good look and I'm\n jetting off! What I need is\n an easy tree to climb.\"\n\n\n He considered the massive\n giant. Soaring thirty or forty\n meters into the thin fog and\n dwarfing other growth, it\n seemed the most promising\n choice.", "\"I should have checked\n from down there to see how\n open the top is,\" he mused.\n \"I wonder how the view will\n be from up there?\"\n\n\n \"Depends on what you're\n looking for, Sonny!\" something\n remarked in a soughing wheeze.\n\n\n Kolin, slipping, grabbed\n desperately for the branch.\n His fingers clutched a handful\n of twigs and leaves, which\n just barely supported him until\n he regained a grip with\n the other hand.\n\n\n The branch quivered resentfully\n under him.\n\n\n \"Careful, there!\" whooshed\n the eerie voice. \"It took me\n all summer to grow those!\"\n\n\n Kolin could feel the skin\n crawling along his backbone.\n\n\n \"Who\n are\n you?\" he gasped.\n\n\n The answering sigh of\n laughter gave him a distinct\n chill despite its suggestion of\n amiability.", "Suddenly, Kolin found himself\n telling the tree about life\n on Haurtoz, and of the officially\n announced threats to\n the Planetary State's planned\n expansion. He dwelt upon the\n desperation of having no\n place to hide in case of trouble\n with the authorities. A\n multiple system of such\n worlds was agonizing to\n imagine.\nSomehow,\n the oddity of\n talking to a tree wore off.\n Kolin heard opinions spouting\n out which he had prudently\n kept bottled up for\n years.\n\n\n The more he talked and\n stormed and complained, the\n more relaxed he felt.\n\n\n \"If there was ever a fellow\n ready for this planet,\" decided\n the tree named Ashlew,\n \"you're it, Sonny! Hang on\n there while I signal the Life\n by root!\"\n\n\n Kolin sensed a lack of direct\n attention. The rustle\n about him was natural, caused\n by an ordinary breeze. He\n noticed his hands shaking.", "\"Where's that? Oh, never\n mind—some little planet. I\n don't bother with them all,\n since I came here and found\n out I could be anything I\n wanted.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, anything\n you wanted?\" asked\n Kolin, testing the firmness of\n a vertical vine.\n\"Just\n what I said,\" continued\n the voice, sounding\n closer in his ear as his\n cheek brushed the ridged bark\n of the tree trunk. \"And, if\n I do have to remind you, it\n would be nicer if you said\n 'Mr. Ashlew,' considering my\n age.\"\n\n\n \"Your age? How old—?\"\n\n\n \"Can't really count it in\n Earth years any more. Lost\n track. I always figured bein'\n a tree was a nice, peaceful\n life; and when I remembered\n how long some of them live,\n that settled it. Sonny, this\n world ain't all it looks like.\"", "Each scout was issued a\n rocket pistol and a plastic water\n tube. Chief Slichow emphasized\n that the keepers of\n rations could hardly, in an\n emergency, give even the appearance\n of favoring themselves\n in regard to food. They\n would go without. Kolin\n maintained a standard expression\n as the Chief's sharp\n stare measured them.\n\n\n Yrtok, a dark, lean-faced\n girl, led the way with a quiet\n monosyllable. She carried the\n small radio they would be\n permitted to use for messages\n of utmost urgency. Ammet\n followed, and Kolin brought\n up the rear.\nTo\n reach their assigned\n sector, they had to climb\n a forbidding ridge of rock\n within half a kilometer. Only\n a sparse creeper grew along\n their way, its elongated leaves\n shimmering with bronze-green\n reflections against a\n stony surface; but when they\n topped the ridge a thick forest\n was in sight.", "By H. B. Fyfe\nTHE TALKATIVE\n\n TREE\nDang vines! Beats all how some plants\n have no manners—but what do you expect,\n when they used to be men!\nAll\n things considered—the\n obscure star, the undetermined\n damage to the\n stellar drive and the way the\n small planet's murky atmosphere\n defied precision scanners—the\n pilot made a reasonably\n good landing. Despite\n sour feelings for the space\n service of Haurtoz, steward\n Peter Kolin had to admit that\n casualties might have been\n far worse.\n\n\n Chief Steward Slichow led\n his little command, less two\n third-class ration keepers\n thought to have been trapped\n in the lower hold, to a point\n two hundred meters from the\n steaming hull of the\nPeace\n State\n. He lined them up as if\n on parade. Kolin made himself\n inconspicuous.", "Yrtok and Ammet paused\n momentarily before descending.\n\n\n Kolin shared their sense of\n isolation. They would be out\n of sight of authority and responsible\n for their own actions.\n It was a strange sensation.\n\n\n They marched down into\n the valley at a brisk pace, becoming\n more aware of the\n clouds and atmospheric haze.\n Distant objects seemed\n blurred by the mist, taking on\n a somber, brooding grayness.\n For all Kolin could tell, he\n and the others were isolated\n in a world bounded by the\n rocky ridge behind them and\n a semi-circle of damp trees\n and bushes several hundred\n meters away. He suspected\n that the hills rising mistily\n ahead were part of a continuous\n slope, but could not be\n sure.", "\"Name's Johnny Ashlew.\n Kinda thought you'd start\n with\n what\n I am. Didn't figure\n you'd ever seen a man grown\n into a tree before.\"\n\n\n Kolin looked about, seeing\n little but leaves and fog.\n\n\n \"I have to climb down,\" he\n told himself in a reasonable\n tone. \"It's bad enough that the\n other two passed out without\n me going space happy too.\"\n\n\n \"What's your hurry?\" demanded\n the voice. \"I can talk\n to you just as easy all the way\n down, you know. Airholes in\n my bark—I'm not like an\n Earth tree.\"\n\n\n Kolin examined the bark of\n the crotch in which he sat. It\n did seem to have assorted\n holes and hollows in its rough\n surface.\n\n\n \"I never saw an Earth tree,\"\n he admitted. \"We came from\n Haurtoz.\"", "He was so intent upon planning\n greetings with which to\n favor the tardy scouting parties\n that he failed to notice\n the loose cloud drifting over\n the ridge.\n\n\n It was tenuous, almost a\n haze. Close examination\n would have revealed it to be\n made up of myriads of tiny\n spores. They resembled those\n cast forth by one of the\n bushes Kolin's party had\n passed. Along the edges, the\n haze faded raggedly into thin\n air, but the units evidently\n formed a cohesive body. They\n drifted together, approaching\n the men as if taking intelligent\n advantage of the breeze.\n\n\n One of Chief Slichow's\n staggering flunkies, stealing\n a few seconds of relaxation\n on the pretext of dumping an\n armful of light plastic packing,\n wandered into the haze.\n\n\n He froze.", "He paused to consider the\n state of the tree named Ashlew,\n half immortal but rooted\n to one spot, unable to float on\n a breeze or through space itself\n on the pressure of light.\n Especially, it was unable to\n insinuate any part of itself\n into the control center of another\n form of life, as a second\n spore was taking charge of\n the body of Chief Slichow at\n that very instant.\n\n\n There are not enough men\n ,\n thought Kolin.\n Some of me\n must drift through the airlock.\n In space, I can spread\n through the air system to the\n command group.\n\n\n Repairs to the\nPeace State\nand the return to Haurtoz\n passed like weeks to some of\n the crew but like brief moments\n in infinity to other\n units. At last, the ship parted\n the air above Headquarters\n City and landed.", "\"Maybe I'd better stay a\n while,\" he muttered. \"I don't\n know where I am.\"\n\n\n \"You're about fifty feet\n up,\" the sighing voice informed\n him. \"You ought to\n let me tell you how the Life\n helps you change form. You\n don't\n have\n to be a tree.\"\n\n\n \"No?\"\n\n\n \"\n Uh\n -uh! Some of the boys\n that landed with me wanted\n to get around and see things.\n Lots changed to animals or\n birds. One even stayed a man—on\n the outside anyway.\n Most of them have to change\n as the bodies wear out, which\n I don't, and some made bad\n mistakes tryin' to be things\n they saw on other planets.\"\n\n\n \"I wouldn't want to do\n that, Mr. Ashlew.\"", "\"He must have tasted\n some!\" exclaimed Kolin. \"I'll\n see how he is.\"\n\n\n He ran back to the cook and\n shook him by the shoulder.\n Ammet's head lolled loosely\n to one side. His rather heavy\n features were vacant, lending\n him a doped appearance. Kolin\n straightened up and beckoned\n to Yrtok.\n\n\n For some reason, he had\n trouble attracting her attention.\n Then he noticed that she\n was kneeling.\n\n\n \"Hope she didn't eat some\n stupid thing too!\" he grumbled,\n trotting back.\n\n\n As he reached her, whatever\n Yrtok was examining\n came to life and scooted into\n the underbrush with a flash\n of greenish fur. All Kolin\n saw was that it had several\n legs too many.", "\"Don't know what got into\n me, talking that way to a\n tree,\" he muttered. \"If Yrtok\n snapped out of it and heard,\n I'm as good as re-personalized\n right now.\"\n\n\n As he brooded upon the\n sorry choice of arousing a\n search by hiding where he\n was or going back to bluff\n things out, the tree spoke.\n\n\n \"Maybe you're all set, Sonny.\n The Life has been thinkin'\n of learning about other\n worlds. If you can think of a\n safe form to jet off in, you\n might make yourself a deal.\n How'd you like to stay here?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Kolin.\n \"The penalty for desertion—\"\n\n\n \"Whoosh! Who'd find you?\n You could be a bird, a tree,\n even a cloud.\"\n\n\n Silenced but doubting, Kolin\n permitted himself to try\n the dream on for size.", "\"They're scared that without\n talk of war, and scouting\n for Earth fleets that never\n come, people would have time\n to think about the way they\n have to live and who's running\n things in the Planetary\n State. Then the gravy train\n would get blown up—and I\n mean blown up!\"\n\n\n The tree was silent for a\n moment. Kolin felt the\n branches stir meditatively.\n Then Ashlew offered a suggestion.", "He considered what form\n might most easily escape the\n notice of search parties and\n still be tough enough to live\n a long time without renewal.\n Another factor slipped into\n his musings: mere hope of escape\n was unsatisfying after\n the outburst that had defined\n his fuming hatred for Haurtoz.\n\n\n I'd better watch myself!\n he\n thought.\n Don't drop diamonds\n to grab at stars!\n\n\n \"What I wish I could do is\n not just get away but get even\n for the way they make us\n live … the whole damn set-up.\n They could just as easy make\n peace with the Earth colonies.\n You know why they\n don't?\"\n\n\n \"Why?\" wheezed Ashlew." ], [ "\"There's just one thing.\n The Life don't like taking\n chances on word about this\n place gettin' around. It sorta\n believes in peace and quiet.\n You might not get back to\n your ship in any form that\n could tell tales.\"\n\n\n \"Listen!\" Kolin blurted\n out. \"I wasn't so much enjoying\n being what I was that\n getting back matters to me!\"\n\n\n \"Don't like your home planet,\n whatever the name was?\"\n\n\n \"Haurtoz. It's a rotten\n place. A Planetary State! You\n have to think and even look\n the way that's standard thirty\n hours a day, asleep or\n awake. You get scared to\n sleep for fear you might\n dream\n treason and they'd find\n out somehow.\"\n\n\n \"Whooeee! Heard about\n them places. Must be tough\n just to live.\"", "\"Doggone vine!\" commented\n the windy whisper. \"\n He\n ain't one of my crowd. Landed\n years later in a ship from\n some star towards the center\n of the galaxy. You should\n have seen his looks before\n the Life got in touch with his\n mind and set up a mental field\n to help him change form. He\n looks twice as good as a\n vine!\"\n\n\n \"He's very handy,\" agreed\n Kolin politely. He groped for\n a foothold.\n\n\n \"Well … matter of fact, I\n can't get through to him\n much, even with the Life's\n mental field helping. Guess\n he started living with a different\n way of thinking. It\n burns me. I thought of being\n a tree, and then he came along\n to take advantage of it!\"\n\n\n Kolin braced himself securely\n to stretch tiring muscles.", "Suddenly, Kolin found himself\n telling the tree about life\n on Haurtoz, and of the officially\n announced threats to\n the Planetary State's planned\n expansion. He dwelt upon the\n desperation of having no\n place to hide in case of trouble\n with the authorities. A\n multiple system of such\n worlds was agonizing to\n imagine.\nSomehow,\n the oddity of\n talking to a tree wore off.\n Kolin heard opinions spouting\n out which he had prudently\n kept bottled up for\n years.\n\n\n The more he talked and\n stormed and complained, the\n more relaxed he felt.\n\n\n \"If there was ever a fellow\n ready for this planet,\" decided\n the tree named Ashlew,\n \"you're it, Sonny! Hang on\n there while I signal the Life\n by root!\"\n\n\n Kolin sensed a lack of direct\n attention. The rustle\n about him was natural, caused\n by an ordinary breeze. He\n noticed his hands shaking.", "\"I could tell the Life your\n side of it,\" he hissed. \"Once\n in with us, you can always\n make thinking connections,\n no matter how far away.\n Maybe you could make a deal\n to kill two birds with one\n stone, as they used to say on\n Earth….\"\nChief\n Steward Slichow\n paced up and down beside\n the ration crate turned up to\n serve him as a field desk. He\n scowled in turn, impartially,\n at his watch and at the weary\n stewards of his headquarters\n detail. The latter stumbled\n about, stacking and distributing\n small packets of emergency\n rations.\n\n\n The line of crewmen released\n temporarily from repair\n work was transient as to\n individuals but immutable as\n to length. Slichow muttered\n something profane about disregard\n of orders as he glared\n at the rocky ridges surrounding\n the landing place.", "\"It isn't, Mr. Ashlew?\"\n asked Kolin, twisting about\n in an effort to see what the\n higher branches might hide.\n\n\n \"Nope. Most everything\n here is run by the Life—that\n is, by the thing that first\n grew big enough to do some\n thinking, and set its roots\n down all over until it had\n control. That's the outskirts\n of it down below.\"\n\n\n \"The other trees? That jungle?\"\n\n\n \"It's more'n a jungle, Sonny.\n When I landed here, along\n with the others from the\nArcturan Spark\n, the planet\n looked pretty empty to me,\n just like it must have to—Watch\n it, there, Boy! If I\n didn't twist that branch over\n in time, you'd be bouncing off\n my roots right now!\"\n\n\n \"Th-thanks!\" grunted Kolin,\n hanging on grimly.", "\"Maybe I'd better stay a\n while,\" he muttered. \"I don't\n know where I am.\"\n\n\n \"You're about fifty feet\n up,\" the sighing voice informed\n him. \"You ought to\n let me tell you how the Life\n helps you change form. You\n don't\n have\n to be a tree.\"\n\n\n \"No?\"\n\n\n \"\n Uh\n -uh! Some of the boys\n that landed with me wanted\n to get around and see things.\n Lots changed to animals or\n birds. One even stayed a man—on\n the outside anyway.\n Most of them have to change\n as the bodies wear out, which\n I don't, and some made bad\n mistakes tryin' to be things\n they saw on other planets.\"\n\n\n \"I wouldn't want to do\n that, Mr. Ashlew.\"", "\"Don't know what got into\n me, talking that way to a\n tree,\" he muttered. \"If Yrtok\n snapped out of it and heard,\n I'm as good as re-personalized\n right now.\"\n\n\n As he brooded upon the\n sorry choice of arousing a\n search by hiding where he\n was or going back to bluff\n things out, the tree spoke.\n\n\n \"Maybe you're all set, Sonny.\n The Life has been thinkin'\n of learning about other\n worlds. If you can think of a\n safe form to jet off in, you\n might make yourself a deal.\n How'd you like to stay here?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Kolin.\n \"The penalty for desertion—\"\n\n\n \"Whoosh! Who'd find you?\n You could be a bird, a tree,\n even a cloud.\"\n\n\n Silenced but doubting, Kolin\n permitted himself to try\n the dream on for size.", "After a few heartbeats, he\n dropped the trash and stared\n at ship and men as if he had\n never seen either. A hail from\n his master moved him.\n\n\n \"Coming, Chief!\" he called\n but, returning at a moderate\n pace, he murmured, \"My\n name is Frazer. I'm a second\n assistant steward. I'll think as\n Unit One.\"\n\n\n Throughout the cloud of\n spores, the mind formerly\n known as Peter Kolin congratulated\n itself upon its\n choice of form.\n\n\n Nearer to the original\n shape of the Life than Ashlew\n got\n , he thought.", "He paused to consider the\n state of the tree named Ashlew,\n half immortal but rooted\n to one spot, unable to float on\n a breeze or through space itself\n on the pressure of light.\n Especially, it was unable to\n insinuate any part of itself\n into the control center of another\n form of life, as a second\n spore was taking charge of\n the body of Chief Slichow at\n that very instant.\n\n\n There are not enough men\n ,\n thought Kolin.\n Some of me\n must drift through the airlock.\n In space, I can spread\n through the air system to the\n command group.\n\n\n Repairs to the\nPeace State\nand the return to Haurtoz\n passed like weeks to some of\n the crew but like brief moments\n in infinity to other\n units. At last, the ship parted\n the air above Headquarters\n City and landed.", "He considered what form\n might most easily escape the\n notice of search parties and\n still be tough enough to live\n a long time without renewal.\n Another factor slipped into\n his musings: mere hope of escape\n was unsatisfying after\n the outburst that had defined\n his fuming hatred for Haurtoz.\n\n\n I'd better watch myself!\n he\n thought.\n Don't drop diamonds\n to grab at stars!\n\n\n \"What I wish I could do is\n not just get away but get even\n for the way they make us\n live … the whole damn set-up.\n They could just as easy make\n peace with the Earth colonies.\n You know why they\n don't?\"\n\n\n \"Why?\" wheezed Ashlew.", "He pulled Yrtok to her\n feet. She pawed at him weakly,\n eyes as vacant as Ammet's.\n When he let go in sudden\n horror, she folded gently to\n the ground. She lay comfortably\n on her side, twitching\n one hand as if to brush something\n away.\n\n\n When she began to smile\n dreamily, Kolin backed away.\nThe\n corners of his mouth\n felt oddly stiff; they had\n involuntarily drawn back to\n expose his clenched teeth. He\n glanced warily about, but\n nothing appeared to threaten\n him.\n\n\n \"It's time to end this scout,\"\n he told himself. \"It's dangerous.\n One good look and I'm\n jetting off! What I need is\n an easy tree to climb.\"\n\n\n He considered the massive\n giant. Soaring thirty or forty\n meters into the thin fog and\n dwarfing other growth, it\n seemed the most promising\n choice.", "\"Where's that? Oh, never\n mind—some little planet. I\n don't bother with them all,\n since I came here and found\n out I could be anything I\n wanted.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, anything\n you wanted?\" asked\n Kolin, testing the firmness of\n a vertical vine.\n\"Just\n what I said,\" continued\n the voice, sounding\n closer in his ear as his\n cheek brushed the ridged bark\n of the tree trunk. \"And, if\n I do have to remind you, it\n would be nicer if you said\n 'Mr. Ashlew,' considering my\n age.\"\n\n\n \"Your age? How old—?\"\n\n\n \"Can't really count it in\n Earth years any more. Lost\n track. I always figured bein'\n a tree was a nice, peaceful\n life; and when I remembered\n how long some of them live,\n that settled it. Sonny, this\n world ain't all it looks like.\"", "\"I should have checked\n from down there to see how\n open the top is,\" he mused.\n \"I wonder how the view will\n be from up there?\"\n\n\n \"Depends on what you're\n looking for, Sonny!\" something\n remarked in a soughing wheeze.\n\n\n Kolin, slipping, grabbed\n desperately for the branch.\n His fingers clutched a handful\n of twigs and leaves, which\n just barely supported him until\n he regained a grip with\n the other hand.\n\n\n The branch quivered resentfully\n under him.\n\n\n \"Careful, there!\" whooshed\n the eerie voice. \"It took me\n all summer to grow those!\"\n\n\n Kolin could feel the skin\n crawling along his backbone.\n\n\n \"Who\n are\n you?\" he gasped.\n\n\n The answering sigh of\n laughter gave him a distinct\n chill despite its suggestion of\n amiability.", "He was so intent upon planning\n greetings with which to\n favor the tardy scouting parties\n that he failed to notice\n the loose cloud drifting over\n the ridge.\n\n\n It was tenuous, almost a\n haze. Close examination\n would have revealed it to be\n made up of myriads of tiny\n spores. They resembled those\n cast forth by one of the\n bushes Kolin's party had\n passed. Along the edges, the\n haze faded raggedly into thin\n air, but the units evidently\n formed a cohesive body. They\n drifted together, approaching\n the men as if taking intelligent\n advantage of the breeze.\n\n\n One of Chief Slichow's\n staggering flunkies, stealing\n a few seconds of relaxation\n on the pretext of dumping an\n armful of light plastic packing,\n wandered into the haze.\n\n\n He froze.", "Each scout was issued a\n rocket pistol and a plastic water\n tube. Chief Slichow emphasized\n that the keepers of\n rations could hardly, in an\n emergency, give even the appearance\n of favoring themselves\n in regard to food. They\n would go without. Kolin\n maintained a standard expression\n as the Chief's sharp\n stare measured them.\n\n\n Yrtok, a dark, lean-faced\n girl, led the way with a quiet\n monosyllable. She carried the\n small radio they would be\n permitted to use for messages\n of utmost urgency. Ammet\n followed, and Kolin brought\n up the rear.\nTo\n reach their assigned\n sector, they had to climb\n a forbidding ridge of rock\n within half a kilometer. Only\n a sparse creeper grew along\n their way, its elongated leaves\n shimmering with bronze-green\n reflections against a\n stony surface; but when they\n topped the ridge a thick forest\n was in sight.", "By H. B. Fyfe\nTHE TALKATIVE\n\n TREE\nDang vines! Beats all how some plants\n have no manners—but what do you expect,\n when they used to be men!\nAll\n things considered—the\n obscure star, the undetermined\n damage to the\n stellar drive and the way the\n small planet's murky atmosphere\n defied precision scanners—the\n pilot made a reasonably\n good landing. Despite\n sour feelings for the space\n service of Haurtoz, steward\n Peter Kolin had to admit that\n casualties might have been\n far worse.\n\n\n Chief Steward Slichow led\n his little command, less two\n third-class ration keepers\n thought to have been trapped\n in the lower hold, to a point\n two hundred meters from the\n steaming hull of the\nPeace\n State\n. He lined them up as if\n on parade. Kolin made himself\n inconspicuous.", "\"They're scared that without\n talk of war, and scouting\n for Earth fleets that never\n come, people would have time\n to think about the way they\n have to live and who's running\n things in the Planetary\n State. Then the gravy train\n would get blown up—and I\n mean blown up!\"\n\n\n The tree was silent for a\n moment. Kolin felt the\n branches stir meditatively.\n Then Ashlew offered a suggestion.", "\"I think the stuff puts out\n shoots that grow back into\n the ground to root as they\n spread,\" said the woman.\n \"Maybe we can find a way\n through.\"\n\n\n In two or three minutes,\n they reached the abrupt border\n of the odd-looking trees.\n\n\n Except for one thick\n trunked giant, all of them\n were about the same height.\n They craned their necks to estimate\n the altitude of the\n monster, but the top was hidden\n by the wide spread of\n branches. The depths behind\n it looked dark and impenetrable.\n\n\n \"We'd better explore along\n the edge,\" decided Yrtok.\n \"Ammet, now is the time to\n go back and tell the Chief\n which way we're—\n Ammet!\n \"\n\n\n Kolin looked over his shoulder.\n Fifty meters away, Ammet\n sat beside the bush with\n the purple berries, utterly\n relaxed.", "Yrtok and Ammet paused\n momentarily before descending.\n\n\n Kolin shared their sense of\n isolation. They would be out\n of sight of authority and responsible\n for their own actions.\n It was a strange sensation.\n\n\n They marched down into\n the valley at a brisk pace, becoming\n more aware of the\n clouds and atmospheric haze.\n Distant objects seemed\n blurred by the mist, taking on\n a somber, brooding grayness.\n For all Kolin could tell, he\n and the others were isolated\n in a world bounded by the\n rocky ridge behind them and\n a semi-circle of damp trees\n and bushes several hundred\n meters away. He suspected\n that the hills rising mistily\n ahead were part of a continuous\n slope, but could not be\n sure.", "\"Since the crew will be on\n emergency watches repairing\n the damage,\" announced the\n Chief in clipped, aggressive\n tones, \"I have volunteered my\n section for preliminary scouting,\n as is suitable. It may be\n useful to discover temporary\n sources in this area of natural\n foods.\"\n\n\n Volunteered HIS section!\n thought Kolin rebelliously.\n\n\n Like the Supreme Director\n of Haurtoz! Being conscripted\n into this idiotic space fleet\n that never fights is bad\n enough without a tin god on\n jets like Slichow!\n\n\n Prudently, he did not express\n this resentment overtly." ], [ "After a few heartbeats, he\n dropped the trash and stared\n at ship and men as if he had\n never seen either. A hail from\n his master moved him.\n\n\n \"Coming, Chief!\" he called\n but, returning at a moderate\n pace, he murmured, \"My\n name is Frazer. I'm a second\n assistant steward. I'll think as\n Unit One.\"\n\n\n Throughout the cloud of\n spores, the mind formerly\n known as Peter Kolin congratulated\n itself upon its\n choice of form.\n\n\n Nearer to the original\n shape of the Life than Ashlew\n got\n , he thought.", "He pulled Yrtok to her\n feet. She pawed at him weakly,\n eyes as vacant as Ammet's.\n When he let go in sudden\n horror, she folded gently to\n the ground. She lay comfortably\n on her side, twitching\n one hand as if to brush something\n away.\n\n\n When she began to smile\n dreamily, Kolin backed away.\nThe\n corners of his mouth\n felt oddly stiff; they had\n involuntarily drawn back to\n expose his clenched teeth. He\n glanced warily about, but\n nothing appeared to threaten\n him.\n\n\n \"It's time to end this scout,\"\n he told himself. \"It's dangerous.\n One good look and I'm\n jetting off! What I need is\n an easy tree to climb.\"\n\n\n He considered the massive\n giant. Soaring thirty or forty\n meters into the thin fog and\n dwarfing other growth, it\n seemed the most promising\n choice.", "\"Don't know what got into\n me, talking that way to a\n tree,\" he muttered. \"If Yrtok\n snapped out of it and heard,\n I'm as good as re-personalized\n right now.\"\n\n\n As he brooded upon the\n sorry choice of arousing a\n search by hiding where he\n was or going back to bluff\n things out, the tree spoke.\n\n\n \"Maybe you're all set, Sonny.\n The Life has been thinkin'\n of learning about other\n worlds. If you can think of a\n safe form to jet off in, you\n might make yourself a deal.\n How'd you like to stay here?\"\n\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Kolin.\n \"The penalty for desertion—\"\n\n\n \"Whoosh! Who'd find you?\n You could be a bird, a tree,\n even a cloud.\"\n\n\n Silenced but doubting, Kolin\n permitted himself to try\n the dream on for size.", "He considered what form\n might most easily escape the\n notice of search parties and\n still be tough enough to live\n a long time without renewal.\n Another factor slipped into\n his musings: mere hope of escape\n was unsatisfying after\n the outburst that had defined\n his fuming hatred for Haurtoz.\n\n\n I'd better watch myself!\n he\n thought.\n Don't drop diamonds\n to grab at stars!\n\n\n \"What I wish I could do is\n not just get away but get even\n for the way they make us\n live … the whole damn set-up.\n They could just as easy make\n peace with the Earth colonies.\n You know why they\n don't?\"\n\n\n \"Why?\" wheezed Ashlew.", "\"Doggone vine!\" commented\n the windy whisper. \"\n He\n ain't one of my crowd. Landed\n years later in a ship from\n some star towards the center\n of the galaxy. You should\n have seen his looks before\n the Life got in touch with his\n mind and set up a mental field\n to help him change form. He\n looks twice as good as a\n vine!\"\n\n\n \"He's very handy,\" agreed\n Kolin politely. He groped for\n a foothold.\n\n\n \"Well … matter of fact, I\n can't get through to him\n much, even with the Life's\n mental field helping. Guess\n he started living with a different\n way of thinking. It\n burns me. I thought of being\n a tree, and then he came along\n to take advantage of it!\"\n\n\n Kolin braced himself securely\n to stretch tiring muscles.", "Suddenly, Kolin found himself\n telling the tree about life\n on Haurtoz, and of the officially\n announced threats to\n the Planetary State's planned\n expansion. He dwelt upon the\n desperation of having no\n place to hide in case of trouble\n with the authorities. A\n multiple system of such\n worlds was agonizing to\n imagine.\nSomehow,\n the oddity of\n talking to a tree wore off.\n Kolin heard opinions spouting\n out which he had prudently\n kept bottled up for\n years.\n\n\n The more he talked and\n stormed and complained, the\n more relaxed he felt.\n\n\n \"If there was ever a fellow\n ready for this planet,\" decided\n the tree named Ashlew,\n \"you're it, Sonny! Hang on\n there while I signal the Life\n by root!\"\n\n\n Kolin sensed a lack of direct\n attention. The rustle\n about him was natural, caused\n by an ordinary breeze. He\n noticed his hands shaking.", "He paused to consider the\n state of the tree named Ashlew,\n half immortal but rooted\n to one spot, unable to float on\n a breeze or through space itself\n on the pressure of light.\n Especially, it was unable to\n insinuate any part of itself\n into the control center of another\n form of life, as a second\n spore was taking charge of\n the body of Chief Slichow at\n that very instant.\n\n\n There are not enough men\n ,\n thought Kolin.\n Some of me\n must drift through the airlock.\n In space, I can spread\n through the air system to the\n command group.\n\n\n Repairs to the\nPeace State\nand the return to Haurtoz\n passed like weeks to some of\n the crew but like brief moments\n in infinity to other\n units. At last, the ship parted\n the air above Headquarters\n City and landed.", "Kolin permitted himself to\n wonder when anyone might\n get some rest, but assumed a\n mildly willing look. (Too eager\n an attitude could arouse\n suspicion of disguising an improper\n viewpoint.) The maintenance\n of a proper viewpoint\n was a necessity if the Planetary\n State were to survive\n the hostile plots of Earth and\n the latter's decadent colonies.\n That, at least, was the official\n line.\n\n\n Kolin found himself in a\n group with Jak Ammet, a\n third cook, and Eva Yrtok,\n powdered foods storekeeper.\n Since the crew would be eating\n packaged rations during\n repairs, Yrtok could be spared\n to command a scout detail.", "\"There's just one thing.\n The Life don't like taking\n chances on word about this\n place gettin' around. It sorta\n believes in peace and quiet.\n You might not get back to\n your ship in any form that\n could tell tales.\"\n\n\n \"Listen!\" Kolin blurted\n out. \"I wasn't so much enjoying\n being what I was that\n getting back matters to me!\"\n\n\n \"Don't like your home planet,\n whatever the name was?\"\n\n\n \"Haurtoz. It's a rotten\n place. A Planetary State! You\n have to think and even look\n the way that's standard thirty\n hours a day, asleep or\n awake. You get scared to\n sleep for fear you might\n dream\n treason and they'd find\n out somehow.\"\n\n\n \"Whooeee! Heard about\n them places. Must be tough\n just to live.\"", "\"He must have tasted\n some!\" exclaimed Kolin. \"I'll\n see how he is.\"\n\n\n He ran back to the cook and\n shook him by the shoulder.\n Ammet's head lolled loosely\n to one side. His rather heavy\n features were vacant, lending\n him a doped appearance. Kolin\n straightened up and beckoned\n to Yrtok.\n\n\n For some reason, he had\n trouble attracting her attention.\n Then he noticed that she\n was kneeling.\n\n\n \"Hope she didn't eat some\n stupid thing too!\" he grumbled,\n trotting back.\n\n\n As he reached her, whatever\n Yrtok was examining\n came to life and scooted into\n the underbrush with a flash\n of greenish fur. All Kolin\n saw was that it had several\n legs too many.", "\"Where's that? Oh, never\n mind—some little planet. I\n don't bother with them all,\n since I came here and found\n out I could be anything I\n wanted.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean, anything\n you wanted?\" asked\n Kolin, testing the firmness of\n a vertical vine.\n\"Just\n what I said,\" continued\n the voice, sounding\n closer in his ear as his\n cheek brushed the ridged bark\n of the tree trunk. \"And, if\n I do have to remind you, it\n would be nicer if you said\n 'Mr. Ashlew,' considering my\n age.\"\n\n\n \"Your age? How old—?\"\n\n\n \"Can't really count it in\n Earth years any more. Lost\n track. I always figured bein'\n a tree was a nice, peaceful\n life; and when I remembered\n how long some of them live,\n that settled it. Sonny, this\n world ain't all it looks like.\"", "He was so intent upon planning\n greetings with which to\n favor the tardy scouting parties\n that he failed to notice\n the loose cloud drifting over\n the ridge.\n\n\n It was tenuous, almost a\n haze. Close examination\n would have revealed it to be\n made up of myriads of tiny\n spores. They resembled those\n cast forth by one of the\n bushes Kolin's party had\n passed. Along the edges, the\n haze faded raggedly into thin\n air, but the units evidently\n formed a cohesive body. They\n drifted together, approaching\n the men as if taking intelligent\n advantage of the breeze.\n\n\n One of Chief Slichow's\n staggering flunkies, stealing\n a few seconds of relaxation\n on the pretext of dumping an\n armful of light plastic packing,\n wandered into the haze.\n\n\n He froze.", "At first, Kolin saw no way,\n but then the network of vines\n clinging to the rugged trunk\n suggested a route. He tried\n his weight gingerly, then began\n to climb.\n\n\n \"I should have brought\n Yrtok's radio,\" he muttered.\n \"Oh, well, I can take it when\n I come down, if she hasn't\n snapped out of her spell by\n then. Funny … I wonder if\n that green thing bit her.\"\n\n\n Footholds were plentiful\n among the interlaced lianas.\n Kolin progressed rapidly.\n When he reached the first\n thick limbs, twice head\n height, he felt safer.\n\n\n Later, at what he hoped was\n the halfway mark, he hooked\n one knee over a branch and\n paused to wipe sweat from his\n eyes. Peering down, he discovered\n the ground to be obscured\n by foliage.", "\"Since the crew will be on\n emergency watches repairing\n the damage,\" announced the\n Chief in clipped, aggressive\n tones, \"I have volunteered my\n section for preliminary scouting,\n as is suitable. It may be\n useful to discover temporary\n sources in this area of natural\n foods.\"\n\n\n Volunteered HIS section!\n thought Kolin rebelliously.\n\n\n Like the Supreme Director\n of Haurtoz! Being conscripted\n into this idiotic space fleet\n that never fights is bad\n enough without a tin god on\n jets like Slichow!\n\n\n Prudently, he did not express\n this resentment overtly.", "\"I should have checked\n from down there to see how\n open the top is,\" he mused.\n \"I wonder how the view will\n be from up there?\"\n\n\n \"Depends on what you're\n looking for, Sonny!\" something\n remarked in a soughing wheeze.\n\n\n Kolin, slipping, grabbed\n desperately for the branch.\n His fingers clutched a handful\n of twigs and leaves, which\n just barely supported him until\n he regained a grip with\n the other hand.\n\n\n The branch quivered resentfully\n under him.\n\n\n \"Careful, there!\" whooshed\n the eerie voice. \"It took me\n all summer to grow those!\"\n\n\n Kolin could feel the skin\n crawling along his backbone.\n\n\n \"Who\n are\n you?\" he gasped.\n\n\n The answering sigh of\n laughter gave him a distinct\n chill despite its suggestion of\n amiability.", "\"Name's Johnny Ashlew.\n Kinda thought you'd start\n with\n what\n I am. Didn't figure\n you'd ever seen a man grown\n into a tree before.\"\n\n\n Kolin looked about, seeing\n little but leaves and fog.\n\n\n \"I have to climb down,\" he\n told himself in a reasonable\n tone. \"It's bad enough that the\n other two passed out without\n me going space happy too.\"\n\n\n \"What's your hurry?\" demanded\n the voice. \"I can talk\n to you just as easy all the way\n down, you know. Airholes in\n my bark—I'm not like an\n Earth tree.\"\n\n\n Kolin examined the bark of\n the crotch in which he sat. It\n did seem to have assorted\n holes and hollows in its rough\n surface.\n\n\n \"I never saw an Earth tree,\"\n he admitted. \"We came from\n Haurtoz.\"", "\"They're scared that without\n talk of war, and scouting\n for Earth fleets that never\n come, people would have time\n to think about the way they\n have to live and who's running\n things in the Planetary\n State. Then the gravy train\n would get blown up—and I\n mean blown up!\"\n\n\n The tree was silent for a\n moment. Kolin felt the\n branches stir meditatively.\n Then Ashlew offered a suggestion.", "Yrtok and Ammet paused\n momentarily before descending.\n\n\n Kolin shared their sense of\n isolation. They would be out\n of sight of authority and responsible\n for their own actions.\n It was a strange sensation.\n\n\n They marched down into\n the valley at a brisk pace, becoming\n more aware of the\n clouds and atmospheric haze.\n Distant objects seemed\n blurred by the mist, taking on\n a somber, brooding grayness.\n For all Kolin could tell, he\n and the others were isolated\n in a world bounded by the\n rocky ridge behind them and\n a semi-circle of damp trees\n and bushes several hundred\n meters away. He suspected\n that the hills rising mistily\n ahead were part of a continuous\n slope, but could not be\n sure.", "\"It isn't, Mr. Ashlew?\"\n asked Kolin, twisting about\n in an effort to see what the\n higher branches might hide.\n\n\n \"Nope. Most everything\n here is run by the Life—that\n is, by the thing that first\n grew big enough to do some\n thinking, and set its roots\n down all over until it had\n control. That's the outskirts\n of it down below.\"\n\n\n \"The other trees? That jungle?\"\n\n\n \"It's more'n a jungle, Sonny.\n When I landed here, along\n with the others from the\nArcturan Spark\n, the planet\n looked pretty empty to me,\n just like it must have to—Watch\n it, there, Boy! If I\n didn't twist that branch over\n in time, you'd be bouncing off\n my roots right now!\"\n\n\n \"Th-thanks!\" grunted Kolin,\n hanging on grimly.", "His well-schooled features\n revealed no trace of the idea—or\n of any other idea. The\n Planetary State of Haurtoz\n had been organized some fifteen\n light-years from old\n Earth, but many of the home\n world's less kindly techniques\n had been employed. Lack of\n complete loyalty to the state\n was likely to result in a siege\n of treatment that left the subject\n suitably \"re-personalized.\"\n Kolin had heard of instances\n wherein mere unenthusiastic\n posture had betrayed\n intentions to harbor\n treasonable thoughts.\n\n\n \"You will scout in five details\n of three persons each,\"\n Chief Slichow said. \"Every\n hour, each detail will send\n one person in to report, and\n he will be replaced by one of\n the five I shall keep here to\n issue rations.\"" ] ]
train	27492	[ "Why do the Vegans want the humans to be involved in their political struggle?", "What likely happens to Crownwall after the story is over?", "What is the significance of the title of the story?", "Why is Crownwall the representative from Earth sent to Vega?", "Which is the best deccription of why the humans are feared by other alien races?", "Which is not true about why Crownwall was able to travel to Vega undetected?", "Which is not a reason Ggaran might have asked a bowman to shoot a soldier in front of Crownwall? ", "How do the others in the Council Chamber feel about Marshall and Crownwall's news?" ]	[ [ "They think their numbers will even the fight", "They see the humans as having a complementary skillset", "They are desparate and will try anything to change their situation", "They think the humans can add an unexpected element to their war" ], [ "He has to find a new line of work because he messed up so badly", "He works to rebuild the space travel technology that he eventually can share with other species", "He is left to help find a new path for the Earth government as his old work is no longer possible", "He is promoted for accomplishing his mission and continues to explore space" ], [ "It reinforces the importance of engine technology in space travel", "It refers to the way the Vegans rule their territories", "It hints toward the types of political negotiations that will happen", "It points to how the alien races see the humans" ], [ "He was the only one who was willing to undergo the time travel procedure", "He was the only one without connections on Earth, making it easier for him to take time away", "He was the default choice once the humans determined that Marshall was not fit for the job", "He was a reasonable option given his prior leadership experience on missions" ], [ "Their technology and ideas develop at a rapid pace", "They are known to wipe out alien races with their time travel technology", "They have superior strategies to get past any race's defense system", "They have control of large amounts of bombs that can be used to destroy planets" ], [ "He was not technically moving through space in a typical sense", "He employed technology unfamiliar to the Vegans", "His ship's drive does not give off the usual traceable signals", "He traveled into the future so as to not need to experience the distance travel himself" ], [ "To show off his general power in the community", "To give the bowman a chance to practice his skill", "To punish the solider for his earlier misstep", "To demonstrate the use of traditional weapons in political situations" ], [ "They are disappointed that they will not have the chance to wage war against an alien species", "They are relived to not have a threat to handle but unsure of how to proceed", "They are ecstatic that all of their problems have been solved, and know they sent the right person", "They are unsure if they sent the right person to do their job because of the outcome" ] ]	[ 4, 3, 4, 4, 1, 4, 3, 4 ]	[ 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Crownwall shrugged. \"So?\"\nThe\n Vegan reached up and engulfed\n the end of a drinking\n tube with his eating orifice. \"You\n upstart Earthlings are a strange\n and a frightening race,\" he said.\n \"Frightening to the Sunda, especially.\n When you showed up in the\n spaceways, it was decreed that you\n had to be stopped at once. There\n was even serious discussion of destroying\n Earth out of hand, while\n it is still possible.", "When he had finished, the President\n sighed deeply. \"Well,\" he\n said, \"we gave you full plenipotentiary\n powers, so I suppose we'll\n have to stand behind your agreements—especially\n in view of the\n fact that we'll undoubtedly be\n blown into atoms if we don't. But\n from what you say, I'd rather be\n in bed with a rattler than have a\n treaty with a Vegan. They sound\n ungodly murderous to me. There\n are too many holes in that protection\n plan of yours. It's only a question\n of time before they'll find some\n way around it, and then—poof—we'll\n all be dust.\"", "\"Oh, I didn't mean\nyou\nin particular,\"\n the Vegan said with a\n negligent wave. \"Who can tell one\n Earthling from another? What I\n meant was that I expected someone\n from Earth to break through\n our blockade and come here. Most\n of my advisors—even Ggaran here—thought\n it couldn't be done, but\n I never doubted that you'd manage\n it. Still, if you were on your\n home planet only yesterday, that's\n astonishing even to me. Tell me,\n how did you manage to get here so\n fast, and without even alerting my\n detection web?\"\n\n\n \"You're doing the talking,\" said\n Crownwall. \"If you wanted someone\n from Earth to come here to see\n you, why did you put the cordon\n around Earth? And why did you\n drop a planet-buster in the Pacific\n Ocean, and tell us that it was triggered\n to go off if we tried to use\n the distorter drive? That's hardly\n the action of somebody who expects\n visitors.\"", "At the far side of the comfortable,\n unimpressive room, a plump\n thing, hide faded to a dull violet,\n reclined on a couch. Behind him\n stood a heavy and pompous appearing\n Vegan in lordly trappings.\n They examined Crownwall with\n great interest for a few moments.\n\n\n \"It's customary to genuflect\n when you enter the Viceroy's presence,\"\n said the standing one at\n last. \"But then I'm told you're an\n Earthling. I suppose we can expect\n you to be ignorant of those niceties\n customary among civilized peoples.\"", "\"Ggaran, you explain it to the\n Earthling,\" said His Effulgence.\nGgaran\n bowed. \"The crustaceans\n on Sunda—the lobsterlike\n creatures that rule the Galaxy—are\n usurpers. They have no rights\n to their position of power. Our race\n is much older than theirs. We were\n alone when we found the Sundans—a\n primitive tribe, grubbing in the\n mud at the edge of their shallow\n seas, unable even to reason. In\n those days we were desperately\n lonely. We needed companionship\n among the stars, and we helped\n them develop to the point where,\n in their inferior way, they were able\n to reason, almost as well as we, The\n People, can. And then they cheated\n us of our rightful place.\n\n\n \"The Emperor at Sunda is one\n of them. They provide sixty-eight\n of the hundred Viceroys; we provide\n only seventeen. It is a preposterous\n and intolerable situation.", "\"And it is true that we can always\n exterminate any planet that\n refuses to obey the just and legal\n orders of its Viceroy. So we achieve\n a working balance in our Empire.\n We control it adequately, and we\n live in peace.\n\n\n \"The Sundans, for example,\n though they took the rule of the\n Empire that was rightfully ours\n away from us, through trickery,\n were unable to take over the\n Sectors we control. We are still\n powerful. And soon we will be all-powerful.\n In company with you\n Earthlings, that is.\"\n\n\n Crownwall nodded. \"In other\n words, you think that we Earthmen\n can break up this two-million-year-old\n stalemate. You've got the\n idea that, with our help, you can\n conquer planets without the necessity\n of destroying them, and thereby\n take over number one spot from\n these Sunda friends of yours.\"", "\"We wouldn't use the bombs\n lightly, to be sure, because of what\n would happen to Earth. And don't\n think that blowing up our planet\n would save you, because we naturally\n wouldn't keep the bombs on\n Earth. How does that sound to\n you?\"\n\n\n \"Ridiculous,\" snorted Ggaran.\n \"Impossible.\"\n\n\n After several minutes of silent\n consideration, \"It is an excellent\n plan,\" said His Effulgence. \"It is\n worthy of the thinking of The People\n ourselves. You Earthlings will\n make very satisfactory allies. What\n you request will be provided without\n delay. Meanwhile, I see no reason\n why we cannot proceed with\n our discussions.\"\n\n\n \"Nor do I,\" consented Crownwall.\n \"But your stooge here doesn't\n seem very happy about it all.\"", "\"Don't call those damn lobsters\n friends,\" growled Ggaran. He subsided\n at the Viceroy's gesture.\n\n\n \"Exactly,\" said His Effulgence\n to Crownwall. \"You broke our\n blockade without any trouble. Our\n instruments didn't even wiggle\n when you landed here on my capital\n world. You can do the same on\n the worlds of the Sunda. Now, just\n tell us how you did it, and we're\n partners.\"\nCrownwall\n lifted one eyebrow\n quizzically, but remained\n silent. He didn't expect his facial\n gesture to be interpreted correctly,\n but he assumed that his silence\n would be. He was correct.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" His Effulgence said,\n \"we will give you any assurances\n that your people may desire in order\n to feel safe, and we will guarantee\n them an equal share in the\n government of the Galaxy.\"\n\n\n \"Bunk,\" said Crownwall.", "\"Of course,\" said Crownwall,\n then added, \"It's too bad that you\n can't provide them with live targets\n a little more often.\" He stifled\n a shudder of distaste. \"Tell me,\n Your Effulgence, does the Emperor's\n race—the Master Race—also\n enjoy the type of civilization\n you have just had demonstrated\n for me?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no. They are far too brutal,\n too morally degraded, to know anything\n of these finer points of etiquette\n and propriety. They are\n really an uncouth bunch. Why, do\n you know, I am certain that they\n would have had the bad taste to\n use an energy weapon to dispose\n of the victim in a case such as you\n just witnessed! They are really\n quite unfit to rule. They can scarcely\n be called civilized at all. But we\n will soon put a stop to all of that—your\n race and mine, of course.\"", "\"That old fool on Sunda, the\n Emperor, decided that we should\n blow you up, but by that time I\n had decided,\" said His Effulgence,\n \"that you might be useful to me—that\n is, that we might be useful to\n each other. I traveled halfway\n across the Galaxy to meet him, to\n convince him that it would be sufficient\n just to quarantine you.\n When we had used your radio system\n to teach a few of you the Universal\n Galactic tongue, and had\n managed to get what you call the\n 'planet-buster' down into the\n largest of your oceans, he figured\n we had done our job.\n\n\n \"With his usual lack of imagination,\n he felt sure that we were safe\n from you—after all, there was no\n way for you to get off the planet.\n Even if you could get down to the\n bottom of the ocean and tamper\n with the bomb, you would only succeed\n in setting it off, and that's\n what the Sunda had been in favor\n of in the first place.", "\"Things may not be as bad as\n they seem,\" answered Crownwall\n complacently. \"After I got back a\n few million years, I'm afraid I got\n a little careless and let my ship dip\n down into Vega III's atmosphere\n for a while. I was back so far that\n the Vegans hadn't appeared yet.\n Now, I didn't land—or\ndeliberately\nkill anything—but I'd be mighty\n surprised if we didn't find a change\n or two. Before I came in here, I\n asked Marshall to take the ship out\n and check on things. He should be\n back with his report before long.\n Why don't we wait and see what\n he has to say?\"\nMarshall\n was excited when\n he was escorted into the\n Council Chamber. He bowed briefly\n to the President and began to\n speak rapidly.", "\"For more than two million\n years we have waited for the opportunity\n for revenge. And now\n that you have entered space, that\n opportunity is at hand.\"\n\n\n \"If you haven't been able to help\n yourselves for two million years,\"\n asked Crownwall, \"how does the\n sight of me give you so much gumption\n all of a sudden?\"\n\n\n Ggaran's tentacles writhed, and\n he slavered in fury, but the clashing\n of his teeth subsided instantly\n at a soothing wave from His Effulgence.", "\"Your silly little planet was carefully\n examined at long range in a\n routine investigation just about fifty\n thousand years ago. There were\n at that time three different but\n similar racial strains of pulpy bipeds,\n numbering a total of perhaps\n a hundred thousand individuals.\n They showed many signs of an\n ability to reason, but a complete\n lack of civilization. While these\n creatures could by no means be\n classed among the intelligent races,\n there was a general expectation,\n which we reported to the Sunda,\n that they would some day come to\n be numbered among the Servants\n of the Emperor. So we let you\n alone, in order that you could develop\n in your own way, until you\n reached a high enough civilization\n to be useful—if you were going to.", "\"And now,\" Ggaran put in, \"I\n think it's time for you to tell us\n something about how you get\n across light-years of space in a few\n hours, without leaving any traces\n for us to detect.\" He raised a tentacle\n to still Crownwall's immediate\n exclamation of protest. \"Oh,\n nothing that would give us a chance\n to duplicate it—just enough to\nindicate\nhow we can make use of\n it, along with you—enough to allow\n us to\nbegin\nto make intelligent\n plans to beat the claws off the Master\n Race.\"\nAfter\n due consideration,", "Ffallk glanced up at Ggaran. \"I\n told you that Earthlings were unbelievably\n bold.\" He turned back\n to Crownwall. \"If you couldn't\n come to me in spite of the trifling\n inconveniences I put in your way,\n your presence here would be useless\n to both of us. But you did\n come, so I can tell you that although\n I am the leader of one of\n the mightiest peoples in the Galaxy,\n whereas there are scarcely six\n billions of you squatting on one\n minor planet, we still need each\n other. Together, there is nothing\n we can't do.\"\n\n\n \"I'm listening,\" said Crownwall.\n\n\n \"We offer you partnership with\n us to take over the rule of the\n Galaxy from the Sunda—the so-called\n Master Race.\"\n\n\n \"It would hardly be an equal\n partnership, would it, considering\n that there are so many more of you\n than there are of us?\"", "\"Of course,\" agreed Crownwall,\n bowing back. \"Kind of you, I'm\n sure. But what happens if somebody\n doesn't get the word, or\n doesn't hear your trumpeters, or\n something like that?\"\n\n\n Ggaran stepped forward, already\n panting slightly. \"A man with knots\n in all of his ear stalks is in a very\n uncomfortable position,\" he explained.\n \"Wait. Let me show you.\n Let us just suppose that that runner\n over there\"—he gestured toward\n a soldier with a tentacle—\"is\n a civilian who has been so unlucky\n as to remain on the street\n after His Effulgence's entourage arrived.\"\n He turned to one of the\n bowmen who ran beside the sedan\n chair, now strung and at the ready.\n \"Show him!\" he ordered peremptorily.\n\n\n In one swift movement the bowman\n notched an arrow, drew and\n fired. The arrow hissed briefly, and\n then sliced smoothly through the\n soldier's throat.", "\"What business\nwould\nI have at\n the Viceroy's Palace?\" asked\n Crownwall. \"I want to see Ffallk.\"\n\n\n \"Mind your tongue,\" growled\n the guard. \"If you mean His Effulgence,\n Right Hand of the Glorious\n Emperor, Hereditary Ruler of the\n Seventy Suns, Viceroy of the\n Twelfth Sector of the Universal\n Holy Empire\"—Universal Galactic\n had a full measure of ceremonial\n words—\"he sees only those whom\n he summons. If you know what's\n good for you, you'll get out of here\n while you can still walk. And if you\n run fast enough, maybe you can\n even get away from that crowd out\n there, but I doubt it.\"\n\n\n \"Just tell him that a man has\n arrived from Earth to talk to him.\n He'll summon me fast enough.\n Meanwhile, my highly polished\n friends, I'll just wait here, so why\n don't you put those heavy pikes\n down?\"", "\"But I had different ideas. From\n what you had already done, I suspected\n it wouldn't be long before\n one of you amazing Earthlings\n would dream up some device or\n other, head out into space, and\n show up on our planet. So I've been\n waiting for you, and here you are.\"\n\n\n \"It was the thinking of a genius,\"\n murmured Ggaran.\n\n\n \"All right, then, genius, here I\n am,\" said Crownwall. \"So what's\n the pitch?\"", "\"Your reaction was savage,\" said\n Ggaran, his tentacles stiffening\n with shock at the memory. \"You\n bloody-minded Earthlings must\n have been aware of the terrible\n danger.\"\n\n\n Ffallk rippled in agreement.\n \"The action you took was too swift\n and too foolhardy to be believed.\n You knew that you could have destroyed\n not only yourself, but also\n all who live on that planet. You\n could also have wrecked the planet\n itself and the ships and those of\n my own race who manned them.\n We had tried to contact you, but\n since you had not developed subspace\n radio, we were of course not\n successful. Our englobement was\n just a routine quarantine. With\n your total lack of information\n about us, what you did was more\n than the height of folly. It was madness.\"\n\n\n \"Could we have done anything\n else that would have kept you from\n landing on Earth and taking us\n over?\" asked Crownwall.", "His Effulgence lifted a tentacle\n swiftly, before Ggaran, lunging angrily\n forward, could speak. \"Then\n what do you want of us?\"\n\n\n \"It seems to me that we need\n no wordy assurances from each\n other,\" said Crownwall, and he\n puffed a cigarette aglow. \"We can\n arrange something a little more\n trustworthy, I believe. On your\n side, you have the power to destroy\n our only planet at any time. That\n is certainly adequate security for\n our own good behavior and sincerity." ], [ "\"They're gone without trace—\nall\n of them\n!\" he cried. \"I went clear\n to Sunda and there's no sign of\n intelligent life anywhere! We're all\n alone now!\"\n\n\n \"There, you see?\" exclaimed\n Crownwall. \"Our enemies are all\n gone!\"\n\n\n He looked around, glowing with\n victory, at the others at the table,\n then slowly quieted and sat down.\n He turned his head away from\n their accusing eyes.\n\n\n \"Alone,\" he said, and unconsciously\n repeated Marshall's words:\n \"We're all alone now.\"\n\n\n In silence, the others gathered\n their papers together and left the\n room, leaving Crownwall sitting at\n the table by himself. He shivered\n involuntarily, and then leaped to\n his feet to follow after them.", "\"Are you sure that you haven't\n given us a little too much information\n for your own safety?\" asked\n Ffallk softly.\n\n\n \"Not at all. We were enormously\n lucky to have learned how to control\n spatial reference frames ourselves.\n I doubt if you could do it in\n another two million years.\" Crownwall\n rose to his feet. \"And now,\n Your Effulgence, I think it's about\n time I went back to my ship and\n drove it home to Earth to make my\n report, so we can pick up those\n bombs and start making arrangements.\"\n\n\n \"Excellent,\" said Ffallk. \"I'd better\n escort you; my people don't like\n strangers much.\"\n\n\n \"I'd noticed that,\" Crownwall\n commented drily.", "Crownwall sat on the steps,\n puffed alight a cigarette, and blew\n expert smoke rings toward the\n guards.\n\n\n An elegant courtier, with elaborately\n jeweled harness, bustled\n from inside the palace, obviously\n trying to present an air of strolling\n nonchalance. He gestured fluidly\n with a graceful tentacle. \"You!\" he\n said to Crownwall. \"Follow me. His\n Effulgence commands you to appear\n before him at once.\" The two\n guards withdrew their pikes and\n froze into immobility at the sides\n of the entrance.\n\n\n Crownwall stamped out his\n smoke and ambled after the hurrying\n courtier along tremendous corridors,\n through elaborate waiting\n rooms, under guarded doorways,\n until he was finally bowed through\n a small curtained arch.", "\"I'm glad of that,\" said Crownwall.\n \"Too bad Ggaran can't join\n us.\" He climbed into the chair beside\n Ffallk. The bearers trotted\n along at seven or eight kilometers\n an hour, carrying their contraption\n with absolute smoothness. Blasts\n from horns preceded them as they\n went.\n\n\n When they passed through the\n huge entrance doors of the palace\n and started down the ramp toward\n the street, Crownwall was astonished\n to see nobody on the previously\n crowded streets, and mentioned\n it to Ffallk.\n\n\n \"When the Viceroy of the Seventy\n Suns,\" said the Viceroy of the\n Seventy Suns, \"travels in state, no\n one but my own entourage is permitted\n to watch. And my guests, of\n course,\" he added, bowing slightly\n to Crownwall.", "After elaborate and lengthy farewells,\n Crownwall climbed into his\n machine and fell gently up until he\n was out of the atmosphere, before\n starting his enormous journey\n through time back to Earth. More\n quickly than it had taken him to\n reach his ship from the palace of\n His Effulgence, he was in the Council\n Chamber of the Confederation\n Government of Earth, making a full\n report on his trip to Vega.", "\"I sincerely hope so,\" said\n Crownwall.\nRefreshments\n were served\n to His Effulgence and to\n Crownwall during the trip, without\n interrupting the smooth progress\n of the sedan. The soldiers of\n the cohort, the bearers and Ggaran\n continued to run—without food,\n drink or, except for Ggaran, evidence\n of fatigue.\n\n\n After several hours of travel, following\n Crownwall's directions, the\n procession arrived at the copse in\n which he had concealed his small\n transportation machine. The machine,\n for spatial mobility, was\n equipped with the heavy and grossly\n inefficient anti-gravity field generator\n developed by Kowalsky. It\n occupied ten times the space of the\n temporal translation and coordination\n selection systems combined,\n but it had the great advantage of\n being almost undetectable in use. It\n emitted no mass or radiation.", "\"Of course,\" said Crownwall,\n then added, \"It's too bad that you\n can't provide them with live targets\n a little more often.\" He stifled\n a shudder of distaste. \"Tell me,\n Your Effulgence, does the Emperor's\n race—the Master Race—also\n enjoy the type of civilization\n you have just had demonstrated\n for me?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no. They are far too brutal,\n too morally degraded, to know anything\n of these finer points of etiquette\n and propriety. They are\n really an uncouth bunch. Why, do\n you know, I am certain that they\n would have had the bad taste to\n use an energy weapon to dispose\n of the victim in a case such as you\n just witnessed! They are really\n quite unfit to rule. They can scarcely\n be called civilized at all. But we\n will soon put a stop to all of that—your\n race and mine, of course.\"", "\"Of course,\" agreed Crownwall,\n bowing back. \"Kind of you, I'm\n sure. But what happens if somebody\n doesn't get the word, or\n doesn't hear your trumpeters, or\n something like that?\"\n\n\n Ggaran stepped forward, already\n panting slightly. \"A man with knots\n in all of his ear stalks is in a very\n uncomfortable position,\" he explained.\n \"Wait. Let me show you.\n Let us just suppose that that runner\n over there\"—he gestured toward\n a soldier with a tentacle—\"is\n a civilian who has been so unlucky\n as to remain on the street\n after His Effulgence's entourage arrived.\"\n He turned to one of the\n bowmen who ran beside the sedan\n chair, now strung and at the ready.\n \"Show him!\" he ordered peremptorily.\n\n\n In one swift movement the bowman\n notched an arrow, drew and\n fired. The arrow hissed briefly, and\n then sliced smoothly through the\n soldier's throat.", "\"What business\nwould\nI have at\n the Viceroy's Palace?\" asked\n Crownwall. \"I want to see Ffallk.\"\n\n\n \"Mind your tongue,\" growled\n the guard. \"If you mean His Effulgence,\n Right Hand of the Glorious\n Emperor, Hereditary Ruler of the\n Seventy Suns, Viceroy of the\n Twelfth Sector of the Universal\n Holy Empire\"—Universal Galactic\n had a full measure of ceremonial\n words—\"he sees only those whom\n he summons. If you know what's\n good for you, you'll get out of here\n while you can still walk. And if you\n run fast enough, maybe you can\n even get away from that crowd out\n there, but I doubt it.\"\n\n\n \"Just tell him that a man has\n arrived from Earth to talk to him.\n He'll summon me fast enough.\n Meanwhile, my highly polished\n friends, I'll just wait here, so why\n don't you put those heavy pikes\n down?\"", "Crownwall nodded. \"I don't\n see why not. Well, then, let me tell\n you that we don't travel in space\n at all. That's why I didn't show up\n on any of your long-range detection\n instruments. Instead, we travel\n in time. Surely any race that has\n progressed as far as your own must\n know, at least theoretically, that\n time travel is entirely possible. After\n all, we knew it, and we haven't\n been around nearly as long as you\n have.\"", "Crownwall shrugged. \"So?\"\nThe\n Vegan reached up and engulfed\n the end of a drinking\n tube with his eating orifice. \"You\n upstart Earthlings are a strange\n and a frightening race,\" he said.\n \"Frightening to the Sunda, especially.\n When you showed up in the\n spaceways, it was decreed that you\n had to be stopped at once. There\n was even serious discussion of destroying\n Earth out of hand, while\n it is still possible.", "\"You see,\" said Ggaran complacently,\n \"we have very little trouble\n with civilians who violate this particular\n tradition.\"\n\n\n His Effulgence beckoned to the\n bowman to approach. \"Your results\n were satisfactory,\" he said, \"but\n your release was somewhat shaky.\n The next time you show such sloppy\n form, you will be given thirty\n lashes.\"\n\n\n He leaned back on the cushion\n and spoke again to Crownwall.\n \"That's the trouble with these requirements\n of civilization. The men\n of my immediate guard must practice\n with such things as pikes and\n bows and arrows, which they seldom\n get an opportunity to use. It\n would never do for them to use\n modern weapons on occasions of\n ceremony, of course.\"", "He climbed the great ramp, with\n its deeply carved Greek key design,\n toward the mighty entrance\n gate of the palace. His manner\n demonstrated an elaborate air of\n unconcern that he felt sure was entirely\n wasted on these monsters.\n The clashing teeth of the noisiest\n of them were only inches from the\n quivering flesh of his back as he\n reached the upper level. Instantly,\n and unexpectedly to Crownwall,\n the threatening crowd dropped\n back fearfully, so that he walked\n the last fifty meters alone.\n\n\n Crownwall all but sagged with\n relief. A pair of guards, their purple\n hides smoothly polished and gleaming\n with oil, crossed their ceremonial\n pikes in front of him as he\n approached the entrance.\n\n\n \"And just what business do you\n have here, stranger?\" asked the\n senior of the guards, his speaking\n orifice framing with difficulty the\n sibilances of Universal Galactic.", "John Crownwall, florid, red-headed\n and bulky, considered himself\n to be a bold man. But here,\n surrounded by this writhing, slithering\n mass of eight-foot creatures,\n he felt distinctly unhappy. Crownwall\n had heard about creatures that\n slavered, but he had never before\n seen it done. These humanoids had\n large mouths and sharp teeth, and\n they unquestionably slavered. He\n wished he knew more about them.\n If they carried out the threats of\n their present attitude, Earth would\n have to send Marshall to replace\n him. And if Crownwall couldn't do\n the job, thought Crownwall, then\n it was a sure bet that Marshall\n wouldn't have a chance.", "His Effulgence lifted a tentacle\n swiftly, before Ggaran, lunging angrily\n forward, could speak. \"Then\n what do you want of us?\"\n\n\n \"It seems to me that we need\n no wordy assurances from each\n other,\" said Crownwall, and he\n puffed a cigarette aglow. \"We can\n arrange something a little more\n trustworthy, I believe. On your\n side, you have the power to destroy\n our only planet at any time. That\n is certainly adequate security for\n our own good behavior and sincerity.", "\"Things may not be as bad as\n they seem,\" answered Crownwall\n complacently. \"After I got back a\n few million years, I'm afraid I got\n a little careless and let my ship dip\n down into Vega III's atmosphere\n for a while. I was back so far that\n the Vegans hadn't appeared yet.\n Now, I didn't land—or\ndeliberately\nkill anything—but I'd be mighty\n surprised if we didn't find a change\n or two. Before I came in here, I\n asked Marshall to take the ship out\n and check on things. He should be\n back with his report before long.\n Why don't we wait and see what\n he has to say?\"\nMarshall\n was excited when\n he was escorted into the\n Council Chamber. He bowed briefly\n to the President and began to\n speak rapidly.", "His Effulgence wiggled his tentacles.\n \"I'm afraid that Ggaran had\n expected to take what you Earthlings\n have to offer without giving\n anything in return. I never had any\n such ideas. I have not underestimated\n you, you see.\"\n\n\n \"That's nice,\" said Crownwall\n graciously.", "\"Don't call those damn lobsters\n friends,\" growled Ggaran. He subsided\n at the Viceroy's gesture.\n\n\n \"Exactly,\" said His Effulgence\n to Crownwall. \"You broke our\n blockade without any trouble. Our\n instruments didn't even wiggle\n when you landed here on my capital\n world. You can do the same on\n the worlds of the Sunda. Now, just\n tell us how you did it, and we're\n partners.\"\nCrownwall\n lifted one eyebrow\n quizzically, but remained\n silent. He didn't expect his facial\n gesture to be interpreted correctly,\n but he assumed that his silence\n would be. He was correct.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" His Effulgence said,\n \"we will give you any assurances\n that your people may desire in order\n to feel safe, and we will guarantee\n them an equal share in the\n government of the Galaxy.\"\n\n\n \"Bunk,\" said Crownwall.", "\"But I had different ideas. From\n what you had already done, I suspected\n it wouldn't be long before\n one of you amazing Earthlings\n would dream up some device or\n other, head out into space, and\n show up on our planet. So I've been\n waiting for you, and here you are.\"\n\n\n \"It was the thinking of a genius,\"\n murmured Ggaran.\n\n\n \"All right, then, genius, here I\n am,\" said Crownwall. \"So what's\n the pitch?\"", "Ffallk glanced up at Ggaran. \"I\n told you that Earthlings were unbelievably\n bold.\" He turned back\n to Crownwall. \"If you couldn't\n come to me in spite of the trifling\n inconveniences I put in your way,\n your presence here would be useless\n to both of us. But you did\n come, so I can tell you that although\n I am the leader of one of\n the mightiest peoples in the Galaxy,\n whereas there are scarcely six\n billions of you squatting on one\n minor planet, we still need each\n other. Together, there is nothing\n we can't do.\"\n\n\n \"I'm listening,\" said Crownwall.\n\n\n \"We offer you partnership with\n us to take over the rule of the\n Galaxy from the Sunda—the so-called\n Master Race.\"\n\n\n \"It would hardly be an equal\n partnership, would it, considering\n that there are so many more of you\n than there are of us?\"" ], [ "\"Of course,\" agreed Crownwall,\n bowing back. \"Kind of you, I'm\n sure. But what happens if somebody\n doesn't get the word, or\n doesn't hear your trumpeters, or\n something like that?\"\n\n\n Ggaran stepped forward, already\n panting slightly. \"A man with knots\n in all of his ear stalks is in a very\n uncomfortable position,\" he explained.\n \"Wait. Let me show you.\n Let us just suppose that that runner\n over there\"—he gestured toward\n a soldier with a tentacle—\"is\n a civilian who has been so unlucky\n as to remain on the street\n after His Effulgence's entourage arrived.\"\n He turned to one of the\n bowmen who ran beside the sedan\n chair, now strung and at the ready.\n \"Show him!\" he ordered peremptorily.\n\n\n In one swift movement the bowman\n notched an arrow, drew and\n fired. The arrow hissed briefly, and\n then sliced smoothly through the\n soldier's throat.", "At the far side of the comfortable,\n unimpressive room, a plump\n thing, hide faded to a dull violet,\n reclined on a couch. Behind him\n stood a heavy and pompous appearing\n Vegan in lordly trappings.\n They examined Crownwall with\n great interest for a few moments.\n\n\n \"It's customary to genuflect\n when you enter the Viceroy's presence,\"\n said the standing one at\n last. \"But then I'm told you're an\n Earthling. I suppose we can expect\n you to be ignorant of those niceties\n customary among civilized peoples.\"", "\"Since this is a very important\n occasion, I think it best that we\n make this a Procession of Full\n Ceremony. It's a bother, but the\n proprieties have to be observed.\"\nGgaran\n stepped out into the\n broad corridor and whistled a\n shrill two-tone note, using both his\n speaking and his eating orifices. A\n cohort of troops, pikes at the ready\n and bows strapped to their backs,\n leaped forward and formed a\n double line leading from His Effulgence's\n sanctum to the main door.\n Down this lane, carried by twenty\n men, came a large sedan chair.\n\n\n \"Protocol takes a lot of time,\"\n said His Effulgence somewhat sadly,\n \"but it must be observed. At\n least, as Ambassador, you can ride\n with me in the sedan, instead of\n walking behind it, like Ggaran.\"", "\"They're gone without trace—\nall\n of them\n!\" he cried. \"I went clear\n to Sunda and there's no sign of\n intelligent life anywhere! We're all\n alone now!\"\n\n\n \"There, you see?\" exclaimed\n Crownwall. \"Our enemies are all\n gone!\"\n\n\n He looked around, glowing with\n victory, at the others at the table,\n then slowly quieted and sat down.\n He turned his head away from\n their accusing eyes.\n\n\n \"Alone,\" he said, and unconsciously\n repeated Marshall's words:\n \"We're all alone now.\"\n\n\n In silence, the others gathered\n their papers together and left the\n room, leaving Crownwall sitting at\n the table by himself. He shivered\n involuntarily, and then leaped to\n his feet to follow after them.", "\"I'm glad of that,\" said Crownwall.\n \"Too bad Ggaran can't join\n us.\" He climbed into the chair beside\n Ffallk. The bearers trotted\n along at seven or eight kilometers\n an hour, carrying their contraption\n with absolute smoothness. Blasts\n from horns preceded them as they\n went.\n\n\n When they passed through the\n huge entrance doors of the palace\n and started down the ramp toward\n the street, Crownwall was astonished\n to see nobody on the previously\n crowded streets, and mentioned\n it to Ffallk.\n\n\n \"When the Viceroy of the Seventy\n Suns,\" said the Viceroy of the\n Seventy Suns, \"travels in state, no\n one but my own entourage is permitted\n to watch. And my guests, of\n course,\" he added, bowing slightly\n to Crownwall.", "He climbed the great ramp, with\n its deeply carved Greek key design,\n toward the mighty entrance\n gate of the palace. His manner\n demonstrated an elaborate air of\n unconcern that he felt sure was entirely\n wasted on these monsters.\n The clashing teeth of the noisiest\n of them were only inches from the\n quivering flesh of his back as he\n reached the upper level. Instantly,\n and unexpectedly to Crownwall,\n the threatening crowd dropped\n back fearfully, so that he walked\n the last fifty meters alone.\n\n\n Crownwall all but sagged with\n relief. A pair of guards, their purple\n hides smoothly polished and gleaming\n with oil, crossed their ceremonial\n pikes in front of him as he\n approached the entrance.\n\n\n \"And just what business do you\n have here, stranger?\" asked the\n senior of the guards, his speaking\n orifice framing with difficulty the\n sibilances of Universal Galactic.", "Crownwall sat on the steps,\n puffed alight a cigarette, and blew\n expert smoke rings toward the\n guards.\n\n\n An elegant courtier, with elaborately\n jeweled harness, bustled\n from inside the palace, obviously\n trying to present an air of strolling\n nonchalance. He gestured fluidly\n with a graceful tentacle. \"You!\" he\n said to Crownwall. \"Follow me. His\n Effulgence commands you to appear\n before him at once.\" The two\n guards withdrew their pikes and\n froze into immobility at the sides\n of the entrance.\n\n\n Crownwall stamped out his\n smoke and ambled after the hurrying\n courtier along tremendous corridors,\n through elaborate waiting\n rooms, under guarded doorways,\n until he was finally bowed through\n a small curtained arch.", "\"Are you sure that you haven't\n given us a little too much information\n for your own safety?\" asked\n Ffallk softly.\n\n\n \"Not at all. We were enormously\n lucky to have learned how to control\n spatial reference frames ourselves.\n I doubt if you could do it in\n another two million years.\" Crownwall\n rose to his feet. \"And now,\n Your Effulgence, I think it's about\n time I went back to my ship and\n drove it home to Earth to make my\n report, so we can pick up those\n bombs and start making arrangements.\"\n\n\n \"Excellent,\" said Ffallk. \"I'd better\n escort you; my people don't like\n strangers much.\"\n\n\n \"I'd noticed that,\" Crownwall\n commented drily.", "\"What business\nwould\nI have at\n the Viceroy's Palace?\" asked\n Crownwall. \"I want to see Ffallk.\"\n\n\n \"Mind your tongue,\" growled\n the guard. \"If you mean His Effulgence,\n Right Hand of the Glorious\n Emperor, Hereditary Ruler of the\n Seventy Suns, Viceroy of the\n Twelfth Sector of the Universal\n Holy Empire\"—Universal Galactic\n had a full measure of ceremonial\n words—\"he sees only those whom\n he summons. If you know what's\n good for you, you'll get out of here\n while you can still walk. And if you\n run fast enough, maybe you can\n even get away from that crowd out\n there, but I doubt it.\"\n\n\n \"Just tell him that a man has\n arrived from Earth to talk to him.\n He'll summon me fast enough.\n Meanwhile, my highly polished\n friends, I'll just wait here, so why\n don't you put those heavy pikes\n down?\"", "\"I sincerely hope so,\" said\n Crownwall.\nRefreshments\n were served\n to His Effulgence and to\n Crownwall during the trip, without\n interrupting the smooth progress\n of the sedan. The soldiers of\n the cohort, the bearers and Ggaran\n continued to run—without food,\n drink or, except for Ggaran, evidence\n of fatigue.\n\n\n After several hours of travel, following\n Crownwall's directions, the\n procession arrived at the copse in\n which he had concealed his small\n transportation machine. The machine,\n for spatial mobility, was\n equipped with the heavy and grossly\n inefficient anti-gravity field generator\n developed by Kowalsky. It\n occupied ten times the space of the\n temporal translation and coordination\n selection systems combined,\n but it had the great advantage of\n being almost undetectable in use. It\n emitted no mass or radiation.", "\"You see,\" said Ggaran complacently,\n \"we have very little trouble\n with civilians who violate this particular\n tradition.\"\n\n\n His Effulgence beckoned to the\n bowman to approach. \"Your results\n were satisfactory,\" he said, \"but\n your release was somewhat shaky.\n The next time you show such sloppy\n form, you will be given thirty\n lashes.\"\n\n\n He leaned back on the cushion\n and spoke again to Crownwall.\n \"That's the trouble with these requirements\n of civilization. The men\n of my immediate guard must practice\n with such things as pikes and\n bows and arrows, which they seldom\n get an opportunity to use. It\n would never do for them to use\n modern weapons on occasions of\n ceremony, of course.\"", "\"Ggaran, you explain it to the\n Earthling,\" said His Effulgence.\nGgaran\n bowed. \"The crustaceans\n on Sunda—the lobsterlike\n creatures that rule the Galaxy—are\n usurpers. They have no rights\n to their position of power. Our race\n is much older than theirs. We were\n alone when we found the Sundans—a\n primitive tribe, grubbing in the\n mud at the edge of their shallow\n seas, unable even to reason. In\n those days we were desperately\n lonely. We needed companionship\n among the stars, and we helped\n them develop to the point where,\n in their inferior way, they were able\n to reason, almost as well as we, The\n People, can. And then they cheated\n us of our rightful place.\n\n\n \"The Emperor at Sunda is one\n of them. They provide sixty-eight\n of the hundred Viceroys; we provide\n only seventeen. It is a preposterous\n and intolerable situation.", "His Effulgence wiggled his tentacles.\n \"I'm afraid that Ggaran had\n expected to take what you Earthlings\n have to offer without giving\n anything in return. I never had any\n such ideas. I have not underestimated\n you, you see.\"\n\n\n \"That's nice,\" said Crownwall\n graciously.", "\"But I had different ideas. From\n what you had already done, I suspected\n it wouldn't be long before\n one of you amazing Earthlings\n would dream up some device or\n other, head out into space, and\n show up on our planet. So I've been\n waiting for you, and here you are.\"\n\n\n \"It was the thinking of a genius,\"\n murmured Ggaran.\n\n\n \"All right, then, genius, here I\n am,\" said Crownwall. \"So what's\n the pitch?\"", "\"Of course,\" said Crownwall,\n then added, \"It's too bad that you\n can't provide them with live targets\n a little more often.\" He stifled\n a shudder of distaste. \"Tell me,\n Your Effulgence, does the Emperor's\n race—the Master Race—also\n enjoy the type of civilization\n you have just had demonstrated\n for me?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no. They are far too brutal,\n too morally degraded, to know anything\n of these finer points of etiquette\n and propriety. They are\n really an uncouth bunch. Why, do\n you know, I am certain that they\n would have had the bad taste to\n use an energy weapon to dispose\n of the victim in a case such as you\n just witnessed! They are really\n quite unfit to rule. They can scarcely\n be called civilized at all. But we\n will soon put a stop to all of that—your\n race and mine, of course.\"", "His Effulgence twitched his ear\n stalks in amusement. \"I'm Viceroy\n of one of the hundred Sectors of\n the Empire. I rule over a total of\n a hundred Satrapies; these average\n about a hundred Provinces each.\n Provinces consist, in general, of\n about a hundred Clusters apiece,\n and every Cluster has an average\n of a hundred inhabited solar systems.\n There are more inhabited\n planets in the Galaxy than there\n are people on your single world.\n I, personally, rule three hundred\n trillion people, half of them of my\n own race. And yet I tell you that\n it would be an equal partnership.\"\n\n\n \"I don't get it. Why?\"\n\n\n \"Because you came to me.\"", "\"That old fool on Sunda, the\n Emperor, decided that we should\n blow you up, but by that time I\n had decided,\" said His Effulgence,\n \"that you might be useful to me—that\n is, that we might be useful to\n each other. I traveled halfway\n across the Galaxy to meet him, to\n convince him that it would be sufficient\n just to quarantine you.\n When we had used your radio system\n to teach a few of you the Universal\n Galactic tongue, and had\n managed to get what you call the\n 'planet-buster' down into the\n largest of your oceans, he figured\n we had done our job.\n\n\n \"With his usual lack of imagination,\n he felt sure that we were safe\n from you—after all, there was no\n way for you to get off the planet.\n Even if you could get down to the\n bottom of the ocean and tamper\n with the bomb, you would only succeed\n in setting it off, and that's\n what the Sunda had been in favor\n of in the first place.", "When he had finished, the President\n sighed deeply. \"Well,\" he\n said, \"we gave you full plenipotentiary\n powers, so I suppose we'll\n have to stand behind your agreements—especially\n in view of the\n fact that we'll undoubtedly be\n blown into atoms if we don't. But\n from what you say, I'd rather be\n in bed with a rattler than have a\n treaty with a Vegan. They sound\n ungodly murderous to me. There\n are too many holes in that protection\n plan of yours. It's only a question\n of time before they'll find some\n way around it, and then—poof—we'll\n all be dust.\"", "His Effulgence lifted a tentacle\n swiftly, before Ggaran, lunging angrily\n forward, could speak. \"Then\n what do you want of us?\"\n\n\n \"It seems to me that we need\n no wordy assurances from each\n other,\" said Crownwall, and he\n puffed a cigarette aglow. \"We can\n arrange something a little more\n trustworthy, I believe. On your\n side, you have the power to destroy\n our only planet at any time. That\n is certainly adequate security for\n our own good behavior and sincerity.", "\"For more than two million\n years we have waited for the opportunity\n for revenge. And now\n that you have entered space, that\n opportunity is at hand.\"\n\n\n \"If you haven't been able to help\n yourselves for two million years,\"\n asked Crownwall, \"how does the\n sight of me give you so much gumption\n all of a sudden?\"\n\n\n Ggaran's tentacles writhed, and\n he slavered in fury, but the clashing\n of his teeth subsided instantly\n at a soothing wave from His Effulgence." ], [ "\"What business\nwould\nI have at\n the Viceroy's Palace?\" asked\n Crownwall. \"I want to see Ffallk.\"\n\n\n \"Mind your tongue,\" growled\n the guard. \"If you mean His Effulgence,\n Right Hand of the Glorious\n Emperor, Hereditary Ruler of the\n Seventy Suns, Viceroy of the\n Twelfth Sector of the Universal\n Holy Empire\"—Universal Galactic\n had a full measure of ceremonial\n words—\"he sees only those whom\n he summons. If you know what's\n good for you, you'll get out of here\n while you can still walk. And if you\n run fast enough, maybe you can\n even get away from that crowd out\n there, but I doubt it.\"\n\n\n \"Just tell him that a man has\n arrived from Earth to talk to him.\n He'll summon me fast enough.\n Meanwhile, my highly polished\n friends, I'll just wait here, so why\n don't you put those heavy pikes\n down?\"", "Crownwall shrugged. \"So?\"\nThe\n Vegan reached up and engulfed\n the end of a drinking\n tube with his eating orifice. \"You\n upstart Earthlings are a strange\n and a frightening race,\" he said.\n \"Frightening to the Sunda, especially.\n When you showed up in the\n spaceways, it was decreed that you\n had to be stopped at once. There\n was even serious discussion of destroying\n Earth out of hand, while\n it is still possible.", "\"Oh, I didn't mean\nyou\nin particular,\"\n the Vegan said with a\n negligent wave. \"Who can tell one\n Earthling from another? What I\n meant was that I expected someone\n from Earth to break through\n our blockade and come here. Most\n of my advisors—even Ggaran here—thought\n it couldn't be done, but\n I never doubted that you'd manage\n it. Still, if you were on your\n home planet only yesterday, that's\n astonishing even to me. Tell me,\n how did you manage to get here so\n fast, and without even alerting my\n detection web?\"\n\n\n \"You're doing the talking,\" said\n Crownwall. \"If you wanted someone\n from Earth to come here to see\n you, why did you put the cordon\n around Earth? And why did you\n drop a planet-buster in the Pacific\n Ocean, and tell us that it was triggered\n to go off if we tried to use\n the distorter drive? That's hardly\n the action of somebody who expects\n visitors.\"", "After elaborate and lengthy farewells,\n Crownwall climbed into his\n machine and fell gently up until he\n was out of the atmosphere, before\n starting his enormous journey\n through time back to Earth. More\n quickly than it had taken him to\n reach his ship from the palace of\n His Effulgence, he was in the Council\n Chamber of the Confederation\n Government of Earth, making a full\n report on his trip to Vega.", "\"But I had different ideas. From\n what you had already done, I suspected\n it wouldn't be long before\n one of you amazing Earthlings\n would dream up some device or\n other, head out into space, and\n show up on our planet. So I've been\n waiting for you, and here you are.\"\n\n\n \"It was the thinking of a genius,\"\n murmured Ggaran.\n\n\n \"All right, then, genius, here I\n am,\" said Crownwall. \"So what's\n the pitch?\"", "At the far side of the comfortable,\n unimpressive room, a plump\n thing, hide faded to a dull violet,\n reclined on a couch. Behind him\n stood a heavy and pompous appearing\n Vegan in lordly trappings.\n They examined Crownwall with\n great interest for a few moments.\n\n\n \"It's customary to genuflect\n when you enter the Viceroy's presence,\"\n said the standing one at\n last. \"But then I'm told you're an\n Earthling. I suppose we can expect\n you to be ignorant of those niceties\n customary among civilized peoples.\"", "Crownwall nodded. \"I don't\n see why not. Well, then, let me tell\n you that we don't travel in space\n at all. That's why I didn't show up\n on any of your long-range detection\n instruments. Instead, we travel\n in time. Surely any race that has\n progressed as far as your own must\n know, at least theoretically, that\n time travel is entirely possible. After\n all, we knew it, and we haven't\n been around nearly as long as you\n have.\"", "Ffallk glanced up at Ggaran. \"I\n told you that Earthlings were unbelievably\n bold.\" He turned back\n to Crownwall. \"If you couldn't\n come to me in spite of the trifling\n inconveniences I put in your way,\n your presence here would be useless\n to both of us. But you did\n come, so I can tell you that although\n I am the leader of one of\n the mightiest peoples in the Galaxy,\n whereas there are scarcely six\n billions of you squatting on one\n minor planet, we still need each\n other. Together, there is nothing\n we can't do.\"\n\n\n \"I'm listening,\" said Crownwall.\n\n\n \"We offer you partnership with\n us to take over the rule of the\n Galaxy from the Sunda—the so-called\n Master Race.\"\n\n\n \"It would hardly be an equal\n partnership, would it, considering\n that there are so many more of you\n than there are of us?\"", "\"Are you sure that you haven't\n given us a little too much information\n for your own safety?\" asked\n Ffallk softly.\n\n\n \"Not at all. We were enormously\n lucky to have learned how to control\n spatial reference frames ourselves.\n I doubt if you could do it in\n another two million years.\" Crownwall\n rose to his feet. \"And now,\n Your Effulgence, I think it's about\n time I went back to my ship and\n drove it home to Earth to make my\n report, so we can pick up those\n bombs and start making arrangements.\"\n\n\n \"Excellent,\" said Ffallk. \"I'd better\n escort you; my people don't like\n strangers much.\"\n\n\n \"I'd noticed that,\" Crownwall\n commented drily.", "\"Things may not be as bad as\n they seem,\" answered Crownwall\n complacently. \"After I got back a\n few million years, I'm afraid I got\n a little careless and let my ship dip\n down into Vega III's atmosphere\n for a while. I was back so far that\n the Vegans hadn't appeared yet.\n Now, I didn't land—or\ndeliberately\nkill anything—but I'd be mighty\n surprised if we didn't find a change\n or two. Before I came in here, I\n asked Marshall to take the ship out\n and check on things. He should be\n back with his report before long.\n Why don't we wait and see what\n he has to say?\"\nMarshall\n was excited when\n he was escorted into the\n Council Chamber. He bowed briefly\n to the President and began to\n speak rapidly.", "\"I'm glad of that,\" said Crownwall.\n \"Too bad Ggaran can't join\n us.\" He climbed into the chair beside\n Ffallk. The bearers trotted\n along at seven or eight kilometers\n an hour, carrying their contraption\n with absolute smoothness. Blasts\n from horns preceded them as they\n went.\n\n\n When they passed through the\n huge entrance doors of the palace\n and started down the ramp toward\n the street, Crownwall was astonished\n to see nobody on the previously\n crowded streets, and mentioned\n it to Ffallk.\n\n\n \"When the Viceroy of the Seventy\n Suns,\" said the Viceroy of the\n Seventy Suns, \"travels in state, no\n one but my own entourage is permitted\n to watch. And my guests, of\n course,\" he added, bowing slightly\n to Crownwall.", "\"Of course,\" said Crownwall,\n then added, \"It's too bad that you\n can't provide them with live targets\n a little more often.\" He stifled\n a shudder of distaste. \"Tell me,\n Your Effulgence, does the Emperor's\n race—the Master Race—also\n enjoy the type of civilization\n you have just had demonstrated\n for me?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no. They are far too brutal,\n too morally degraded, to know anything\n of these finer points of etiquette\n and propriety. They are\n really an uncouth bunch. Why, do\n you know, I am certain that they\n would have had the bad taste to\n use an energy weapon to dispose\n of the victim in a case such as you\n just witnessed! They are really\n quite unfit to rule. They can scarcely\n be called civilized at all. But we\n will soon put a stop to all of that—your\n race and mine, of course.\"", "\"It's all right, Ggaran,\" said the\n Viceroy languidly. He twitched a\n tentacle in a beckoning gesture.\n \"Come closer, Earthling. I bid you\n welcome to my capital. I have been\n looking forward to your arrival for\n some time.\"\nCrownwall\n put his hands\n in his pockets. \"That's hardly\n possible,\" he said. \"It was only decided\n yesterday, back on Earth,\n that I would be the one to make\n the trip here. Even if you could\n spy through buildings on Earth\n from space, which I doubt, your\n communications system can't get\n the word through that fast.\"", "John Crownwall, florid, red-headed\n and bulky, considered himself\n to be a bold man. But here,\n surrounded by this writhing, slithering\n mass of eight-foot creatures,\n he felt distinctly unhappy. Crownwall\n had heard about creatures that\n slavered, but he had never before\n seen it done. These humanoids had\n large mouths and sharp teeth, and\n they unquestionably slavered. He\n wished he knew more about them.\n If they carried out the threats of\n their present attitude, Earth would\n have to send Marshall to replace\n him. And if Crownwall couldn't do\n the job, thought Crownwall, then\n it was a sure bet that Marshall\n wouldn't have a chance.", "\"And it is true that we can always\n exterminate any planet that\n refuses to obey the just and legal\n orders of its Viceroy. So we achieve\n a working balance in our Empire.\n We control it adequately, and we\n live in peace.\n\n\n \"The Sundans, for example,\n though they took the rule of the\n Empire that was rightfully ours\n away from us, through trickery,\n were unable to take over the\n Sectors we control. We are still\n powerful. And soon we will be all-powerful.\n In company with you\n Earthlings, that is.\"\n\n\n Crownwall nodded. \"In other\n words, you think that we Earthmen\n can break up this two-million-year-old\n stalemate. You've got the\n idea that, with our help, you can\n conquer planets without the necessity\n of destroying them, and thereby\n take over number one spot from\n these Sunda friends of yours.\"", "\"Don't call those damn lobsters\n friends,\" growled Ggaran. He subsided\n at the Viceroy's gesture.\n\n\n \"Exactly,\" said His Effulgence\n to Crownwall. \"You broke our\n blockade without any trouble. Our\n instruments didn't even wiggle\n when you landed here on my capital\n world. You can do the same on\n the worlds of the Sunda. Now, just\n tell us how you did it, and we're\n partners.\"\nCrownwall\n lifted one eyebrow\n quizzically, but remained\n silent. He didn't expect his facial\n gesture to be interpreted correctly,\n but he assumed that his silence\n would be. He was correct.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" His Effulgence said,\n \"we will give you any assurances\n that your people may desire in order\n to feel safe, and we will guarantee\n them an equal share in the\n government of the Galaxy.\"\n\n\n \"Bunk,\" said Crownwall.", "\"For more than two million\n years we have waited for the opportunity\n for revenge. And now\n that you have entered space, that\n opportunity is at hand.\"\n\n\n \"If you haven't been able to help\n yourselves for two million years,\"\n asked Crownwall, \"how does the\n sight of me give you so much gumption\n all of a sudden?\"\n\n\n Ggaran's tentacles writhed, and\n he slavered in fury, but the clashing\n of his teeth subsided instantly\n at a soothing wave from His Effulgence.", "UPSTARTS\nBy L. J. STECHER, JR.\nIllustrated by DILLON\nThe\n sight of an Earthman\n on Vega III, where it was\n impossible for an outlander\n to be, brought angry crowds to surround\n John Crownwall as he strode\n toward the palace of Viceroy\n Tronn Ffallk, ruler of Sector XII\n of the Universal Holy Empire of\n Sunda. He ignored the snarling, the\n spitting, the waving of boneless\n prehensile fingers, as he ignored the\n heavy gravity and heavier air of\n the unfamiliar planet.", "His Effulgence wiggled his tentacles.\n \"I'm afraid that Ggaran had\n expected to take what you Earthlings\n have to offer without giving\n anything in return. I never had any\n such ideas. I have not underestimated\n you, you see.\"\n\n\n \"That's nice,\" said Crownwall\n graciously.", "His Effulgence lifted a tentacle\n swiftly, before Ggaran, lunging angrily\n forward, could speak. \"Then\n what do you want of us?\"\n\n\n \"It seems to me that we need\n no wordy assurances from each\n other,\" said Crownwall, and he\n puffed a cigarette aglow. \"We can\n arrange something a little more\n trustworthy, I believe. On your\n side, you have the power to destroy\n our only planet at any time. That\n is certainly adequate security for\n our own good behavior and sincerity." ], [ "\"Your silly little planet was carefully\n examined at long range in a\n routine investigation just about fifty\n thousand years ago. There were\n at that time three different but\n similar racial strains of pulpy bipeds,\n numbering a total of perhaps\n a hundred thousand individuals.\n They showed many signs of an\n ability to reason, but a complete\n lack of civilization. While these\n creatures could by no means be\n classed among the intelligent races,\n there was a general expectation,\n which we reported to the Sunda,\n that they would some day come to\n be numbered among the Servants\n of the Emperor. So we let you\n alone, in order that you could develop\n in your own way, until you\n reached a high enough civilization\n to be useful—if you were going to.", "Two weeks later, while they\n were still several planetary diameters\n from their destination, they\n had been shocked to find more\n than two score alien ships of space\n closing in on them—ships that\n were swifter and more maneuverable\n than their own. These ships\n had rapidly and competently englobed\n the\nStar Seeker\n, and had\n then tried to herd it away from the\n planet it had been heading toward.\nAlthough\n caught by surprise,\n the Earthmen had acted\n swiftly. Crownwall recalled the discussion—the\n council of war, they\n had called it—and their unanimous\n decision. Although far within the\n dangerous influence of a planetary\n mass, they had again activated the\n distorter drive, and they had beaten\n the odds. On the distorter drive,\n they had returned to Earth as swiftly\n as they had departed. Earth had\n immediately prepared for war\n against her unknown enemy.", "\"Intelligence is very rare in the\n Galaxy. In all, it has been found\n only fifteen times. The other races\n we have watched develop, and\n some we have actively assisted to\n develop. It took the quickest of\n them just under a million years.\n One such race we left uncontrolled\n too long—but no matter.\n\n\n \"You Earthlings, in defiance of\n all expectation and all reason, have\n exploded into space. You have developed\n in an incredibly short\n space of time. But even that isn't\n the most disconcerting item of your\n development. As an Earthling, you\n have heard of the details of the\n first expedition of your people into\n space, of course?\"\n\n\n \"\nHeard\nabout it?\" exclaimed\n Crownwall. \"I was\non\nit.\" He settled\n down comfortably on a couch,\n without requesting permission, and\n thought back to that first tremendous\n adventure; an adventure that\n had taken place little more than\n ten years before.", "\"Ggaran, you explain it to the\n Earthling,\" said His Effulgence.\nGgaran\n bowed. \"The crustaceans\n on Sunda—the lobsterlike\n creatures that rule the Galaxy—are\n usurpers. They have no rights\n to their position of power. Our race\n is much older than theirs. We were\n alone when we found the Sundans—a\n primitive tribe, grubbing in the\n mud at the edge of their shallow\n seas, unable even to reason. In\n those days we were desperately\n lonely. We needed companionship\n among the stars, and we helped\n them develop to the point where,\n in their inferior way, they were able\n to reason, almost as well as we, The\n People, can. And then they cheated\n us of our rightful place.\n\n\n \"The Emperor at Sunda is one\n of them. They provide sixty-eight\n of the hundred Viceroys; we provide\n only seventeen. It is a preposterous\n and intolerable situation.", "\"For more than two million\n years we have waited for the opportunity\n for revenge. And now\n that you have entered space, that\n opportunity is at hand.\"\n\n\n \"If you haven't been able to help\n yourselves for two million years,\"\n asked Crownwall, \"how does the\n sight of me give you so much gumption\n all of a sudden?\"\n\n\n Ggaran's tentacles writhed, and\n he slavered in fury, but the clashing\n of his teeth subsided instantly\n at a soothing wave from His Effulgence.", "\"Your reaction was savage,\" said\n Ggaran, his tentacles stiffening\n with shock at the memory. \"You\n bloody-minded Earthlings must\n have been aware of the terrible\n danger.\"\n\n\n Ffallk rippled in agreement.\n \"The action you took was too swift\n and too foolhardy to be believed.\n You knew that you could have destroyed\n not only yourself, but also\n all who live on that planet. You\n could also have wrecked the planet\n itself and the ships and those of\n my own race who manned them.\n We had tried to contact you, but\n since you had not developed subspace\n radio, we were of course not\n successful. Our englobement was\n just a routine quarantine. With\n your total lack of information\n about us, what you did was more\n than the height of folly. It was madness.\"\n\n\n \"Could we have done anything\n else that would have kept you from\n landing on Earth and taking us\n over?\" asked Crownwall.", "\"Of course,\" said Crownwall,\n then added, \"It's too bad that you\n can't provide them with live targets\n a little more often.\" He stifled\n a shudder of distaste. \"Tell me,\n Your Effulgence, does the Emperor's\n race—the Master Race—also\n enjoy the type of civilization\n you have just had demonstrated\n for me?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no. They are far too brutal,\n too morally degraded, to know anything\n of these finer points of etiquette\n and propriety. They are\n really an uncouth bunch. Why, do\n you know, I am certain that they\n would have had the bad taste to\n use an energy weapon to dispose\n of the victim in a case such as you\n just witnessed! They are really\n quite unfit to rule. They can scarcely\n be called civilized at all. But we\n will soon put a stop to all of that—your\n race and mine, of course.\"", "\"And now,\" Ggaran put in, \"I\n think it's time for you to tell us\n something about how you get\n across light-years of space in a few\n hours, without leaving any traces\n for us to detect.\" He raised a tentacle\n to still Crownwall's immediate\n exclamation of protest. \"Oh,\n nothing that would give us a chance\n to duplicate it—just enough to\nindicate\nhow we can make use of\n it, along with you—enough to allow\n us to\nbegin\nto make intelligent\n plans to beat the claws off the Master\n Race.\"\nAfter\n due consideration,", "\"Well, no. But you didn't have\n enough information to realize that\n when you acted so precipitously. As\n a matter of fact, we didn't expect\n to have much trouble, even after\n your surprising action. Of course,\n it took us a little time to react. We\n located your planet quickly enough,\n and confirmed that you were a new\n race. But by the time we could\n try to set up communications and\n send ambassadors, you had already\n organized a not inconsiderable defense.\n Your drones blew up our unmanned\n ships as fast as we could\n send them down to your planet.\n And by the time we had organized\n properly for war against you, it was\n obvious that we could not conquer\n you. We could only destroy you.\"", "\"It is impossible for us of Earth\n to destroy all of your planets. As\n you have said, there are more planets\n that belong to you than there\n are human beings on Earth. But\n there is a way for us to be reasonably\n sure that you will behave\n yourselves. You will transfer to us,\n at once, a hundred of your planet-destroying\n bombs. That will be a\n sufficient supply to let us test some\n of them, to see that they are in\n good working order. Then, if you\n try any kind of double-cross, we\n will be able to use our own methods—which\n you cannot prevent—to\n send one of those bombs here to\n destroy this planet.\n\n\n \"And if you try to move anywhere\n else, by your clumsy distorter\n drive, we can follow you, and\n destroy any planet you choose to\n land on. You would not get away\n from us. We can track you without\n any difficulty.", "\"War in space is almost an impossibility,\"\n said the aged ruler.\n \"We can destroy planets, of course,\n but with few exceptions, we cannot\n conquer them. I rule a total of\n seven races in my Sector. I rule\n them, but I don't let them intermingle.\n Each race settles on the\n planets that best suit it. Each of\n those planets is quite capable of defending\n itself from raids, or even\n large-scale assaults that would result\n in its capture and subjugation—just\n as your little Earth can defend\n itself.\n\n\n \"Naturally, each is vulnerable to\n economic blockade—trade provides\n a small but vital portion of the\n goods each planet uses. All that a\n world requires for a healthy and\n comfortable life cannot be provided\n from the resources of that\n single world alone, and that gives\n us a very considerable measure of\n control.", "Crownwall shrugged. \"So?\"\nThe\n Vegan reached up and engulfed\n the end of a drinking\n tube with his eating orifice. \"You\n upstart Earthlings are a strange\n and a frightening race,\" he said.\n \"Frightening to the Sunda, especially.\n When you showed up in the\n spaceways, it was decreed that you\n had to be stopped at once. There\n was even serious discussion of destroying\n Earth out of hand, while\n it is still possible.", "\"That old fool on Sunda, the\n Emperor, decided that we should\n blow you up, but by that time I\n had decided,\" said His Effulgence,\n \"that you might be useful to me—that\n is, that we might be useful to\n each other. I traveled halfway\n across the Galaxy to meet him, to\n convince him that it would be sufficient\n just to quarantine you.\n When we had used your radio system\n to teach a few of you the Universal\n Galactic tongue, and had\n managed to get what you call the\n 'planet-buster' down into the\n largest of your oceans, he figured\n we had done our job.\n\n\n \"With his usual lack of imagination,\n he felt sure that we were safe\n from you—after all, there was no\n way for you to get off the planet.\n Even if you could get down to the\n bottom of the ocean and tamper\n with the bomb, you would only succeed\n in setting it off, and that's\n what the Sunda had been in favor\n of in the first place.", "\"Are you sure that you haven't\n given us a little too much information\n for your own safety?\" asked\n Ffallk softly.\n\n\n \"Not at all. We were enormously\n lucky to have learned how to control\n spatial reference frames ourselves.\n I doubt if you could do it in\n another two million years.\" Crownwall\n rose to his feet. \"And now,\n Your Effulgence, I think it's about\n time I went back to my ship and\n drove it home to Earth to make my\n report, so we can pick up those\n bombs and start making arrangements.\"\n\n\n \"Excellent,\" said Ffallk. \"I'd better\n escort you; my people don't like\n strangers much.\"\n\n\n \"I'd noticed that,\" Crownwall\n commented drily.", "\"They're gone without trace—\nall\n of them\n!\" he cried. \"I went clear\n to Sunda and there's no sign of\n intelligent life anywhere! We're all\n alone now!\"\n\n\n \"There, you see?\" exclaimed\n Crownwall. \"Our enemies are all\n gone!\"\n\n\n He looked around, glowing with\n victory, at the others at the table,\n then slowly quieted and sat down.\n He turned his head away from\n their accusing eyes.\n\n\n \"Alone,\" he said, and unconsciously\n repeated Marshall's words:\n \"We're all alone now.\"\n\n\n In silence, the others gathered\n their papers together and left the\n room, leaving Crownwall sitting at\n the table by himself. He shivered\n involuntarily, and then leaped to\n his feet to follow after them.", "\"And it is true that we can always\n exterminate any planet that\n refuses to obey the just and legal\n orders of its Viceroy. So we achieve\n a working balance in our Empire.\n We control it adequately, and we\n live in peace.\n\n\n \"The Sundans, for example,\n though they took the rule of the\n Empire that was rightfully ours\n away from us, through trickery,\n were unable to take over the\n Sectors we control. We are still\n powerful. And soon we will be all-powerful.\n In company with you\n Earthlings, that is.\"\n\n\n Crownwall nodded. \"In other\n words, you think that we Earthmen\n can break up this two-million-year-old\n stalemate. You've got the\n idea that, with our help, you can\n conquer planets without the necessity\n of destroying them, and thereby\n take over number one spot from\n these Sunda friends of yours.\"", "\"We wouldn't use the bombs\n lightly, to be sure, because of what\n would happen to Earth. And don't\n think that blowing up our planet\n would save you, because we naturally\n wouldn't keep the bombs on\n Earth. How does that sound to\n you?\"\n\n\n \"Ridiculous,\" snorted Ggaran.\n \"Impossible.\"\n\n\n After several minutes of silent\n consideration, \"It is an excellent\n plan,\" said His Effulgence. \"It is\n worthy of the thinking of The People\n ourselves. You Earthlings will\n make very satisfactory allies. What\n you request will be provided without\n delay. Meanwhile, I see no reason\n why we cannot proceed with\n our discussions.\"\n\n\n \"Nor do I,\" consented Crownwall.\n \"But your stooge here doesn't\n seem very happy about it all.\"", "\"Things may not be as bad as\n they seem,\" answered Crownwall\n complacently. \"After I got back a\n few million years, I'm afraid I got\n a little careless and let my ship dip\n down into Vega III's atmosphere\n for a while. I was back so far that\n the Vegans hadn't appeared yet.\n Now, I didn't land—or\ndeliberately\nkill anything—but I'd be mighty\n surprised if we didn't find a change\n or two. Before I came in here, I\n asked Marshall to take the ship out\n and check on things. He should be\n back with his report before long.\n Why don't we wait and see what\n he has to say?\"\nMarshall\n was excited when\n he was escorted into the\n Council Chamber. He bowed briefly\n to the President and began to\n speak rapidly.", "When he had finished, the President\n sighed deeply. \"Well,\" he\n said, \"we gave you full plenipotentiary\n powers, so I suppose we'll\n have to stand behind your agreements—especially\n in view of the\n fact that we'll undoubtedly be\n blown into atoms if we don't. But\n from what you say, I'd rather be\n in bed with a rattler than have a\n treaty with a Vegan. They sound\n ungodly murderous to me. There\n are too many holes in that protection\n plan of yours. It's only a question\n of time before they'll find some\n way around it, and then—poof—we'll\n all be dust.\"", "\"Would that have been so bad?\"\n said Ggaran. \"We can't tolerate\n wild and warlike races running free\n and uncontrolled in the Galaxy.\n Once was enough for that.\"\n\n\n \"But what about my question?\n Was there any other way for us to\n stay free?\"" ], [ "Crownwall nodded. \"I don't\n see why not. Well, then, let me tell\n you that we don't travel in space\n at all. That's why I didn't show up\n on any of your long-range detection\n instruments. Instead, we travel\n in time. Surely any race that has\n progressed as far as your own must\n know, at least theoretically, that\n time travel is entirely possible. After\n all, we knew it, and we haven't\n been around nearly as long as you\n have.\"", "After elaborate and lengthy farewells,\n Crownwall climbed into his\n machine and fell gently up until he\n was out of the atmosphere, before\n starting his enormous journey\n through time back to Earth. More\n quickly than it had taken him to\n reach his ship from the palace of\n His Effulgence, he was in the Council\n Chamber of the Confederation\n Government of Earth, making a full\n report on his trip to Vega.", "\"I sincerely hope so,\" said\n Crownwall.\nRefreshments\n were served\n to His Effulgence and to\n Crownwall during the trip, without\n interrupting the smooth progress\n of the sedan. The soldiers of\n the cohort, the bearers and Ggaran\n continued to run—without food,\n drink or, except for Ggaran, evidence\n of fatigue.\n\n\n After several hours of travel, following\n Crownwall's directions, the\n procession arrived at the copse in\n which he had concealed his small\n transportation machine. The machine,\n for spatial mobility, was\n equipped with the heavy and grossly\n inefficient anti-gravity field generator\n developed by Kowalsky. It\n occupied ten times the space of the\n temporal translation and coordination\n selection systems combined,\n but it had the great advantage of\n being almost undetectable in use. It\n emitted no mass or radiation.", "\"I'm glad of that,\" said Crownwall.\n \"Too bad Ggaran can't join\n us.\" He climbed into the chair beside\n Ffallk. The bearers trotted\n along at seven or eight kilometers\n an hour, carrying their contraption\n with absolute smoothness. Blasts\n from horns preceded them as they\n went.\n\n\n When they passed through the\n huge entrance doors of the palace\n and started down the ramp toward\n the street, Crownwall was astonished\n to see nobody on the previously\n crowded streets, and mentioned\n it to Ffallk.\n\n\n \"When the Viceroy of the Seventy\n Suns,\" said the Viceroy of the\n Seventy Suns, \"travels in state, no\n one but my own entourage is permitted\n to watch. And my guests, of\n course,\" he added, bowing slightly\n to Crownwall.", "\"Are you sure that you haven't\n given us a little too much information\n for your own safety?\" asked\n Ffallk softly.\n\n\n \"Not at all. We were enormously\n lucky to have learned how to control\n spatial reference frames ourselves.\n I doubt if you could do it in\n another two million years.\" Crownwall\n rose to his feet. \"And now,\n Your Effulgence, I think it's about\n time I went back to my ship and\n drove it home to Earth to make my\n report, so we can pick up those\n bombs and start making arrangements.\"\n\n\n \"Excellent,\" said Ffallk. \"I'd better\n escort you; my people don't like\n strangers much.\"\n\n\n \"I'd noticed that,\" Crownwall\n commented drily.", "Crownwall shrugged. \"So?\"\nThe\n Vegan reached up and engulfed\n the end of a drinking\n tube with his eating orifice. \"You\n upstart Earthlings are a strange\n and a frightening race,\" he said.\n \"Frightening to the Sunda, especially.\n When you showed up in the\n spaceways, it was decreed that you\n had to be stopped at once. There\n was even serious discussion of destroying\n Earth out of hand, while\n it is still possible.", "\"Oh, I didn't mean\nyou\nin particular,\"\n the Vegan said with a\n negligent wave. \"Who can tell one\n Earthling from another? What I\n meant was that I expected someone\n from Earth to break through\n our blockade and come here. Most\n of my advisors—even Ggaran here—thought\n it couldn't be done, but\n I never doubted that you'd manage\n it. Still, if you were on your\n home planet only yesterday, that's\n astonishing even to me. Tell me,\n how did you manage to get here so\n fast, and without even alerting my\n detection web?\"\n\n\n \"You're doing the talking,\" said\n Crownwall. \"If you wanted someone\n from Earth to come here to see\n you, why did you put the cordon\n around Earth? And why did you\n drop a planet-buster in the Pacific\n Ocean, and tell us that it was triggered\n to go off if we tried to use\n the distorter drive? That's hardly\n the action of somebody who expects\n visitors.\"", "\"Don't call those damn lobsters\n friends,\" growled Ggaran. He subsided\n at the Viceroy's gesture.\n\n\n \"Exactly,\" said His Effulgence\n to Crownwall. \"You broke our\n blockade without any trouble. Our\n instruments didn't even wiggle\n when you landed here on my capital\n world. You can do the same on\n the worlds of the Sunda. Now, just\n tell us how you did it, and we're\n partners.\"\nCrownwall\n lifted one eyebrow\n quizzically, but remained\n silent. He didn't expect his facial\n gesture to be interpreted correctly,\n but he assumed that his silence\n would be. He was correct.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" His Effulgence said,\n \"we will give you any assurances\n that your people may desire in order\n to feel safe, and we will guarantee\n them an equal share in the\n government of the Galaxy.\"\n\n\n \"Bunk,\" said Crownwall.", "\"Things may not be as bad as\n they seem,\" answered Crownwall\n complacently. \"After I got back a\n few million years, I'm afraid I got\n a little careless and let my ship dip\n down into Vega III's atmosphere\n for a while. I was back so far that\n the Vegans hadn't appeared yet.\n Now, I didn't land—or\ndeliberately\nkill anything—but I'd be mighty\n surprised if we didn't find a change\n or two. Before I came in here, I\n asked Marshall to take the ship out\n and check on things. He should be\n back with his report before long.\n Why don't we wait and see what\n he has to say?\"\nMarshall\n was excited when\n he was escorted into the\n Council Chamber. He bowed briefly\n to the President and began to\n speak rapidly.", "\"What business\nwould\nI have at\n the Viceroy's Palace?\" asked\n Crownwall. \"I want to see Ffallk.\"\n\n\n \"Mind your tongue,\" growled\n the guard. \"If you mean His Effulgence,\n Right Hand of the Glorious\n Emperor, Hereditary Ruler of the\n Seventy Suns, Viceroy of the\n Twelfth Sector of the Universal\n Holy Empire\"—Universal Galactic\n had a full measure of ceremonial\n words—\"he sees only those whom\n he summons. If you know what's\n good for you, you'll get out of here\n while you can still walk. And if you\n run fast enough, maybe you can\n even get away from that crowd out\n there, but I doubt it.\"\n\n\n \"Just tell him that a man has\n arrived from Earth to talk to him.\n He'll summon me fast enough.\n Meanwhile, my highly polished\n friends, I'll just wait here, so why\n don't you put those heavy pikes\n down?\"", "\"And now,\" Ggaran put in, \"I\n think it's time for you to tell us\n something about how you get\n across light-years of space in a few\n hours, without leaving any traces\n for us to detect.\" He raised a tentacle\n to still Crownwall's immediate\n exclamation of protest. \"Oh,\n nothing that would give us a chance\n to duplicate it—just enough to\nindicate\nhow we can make use of\n it, along with you—enough to allow\n us to\nbegin\nto make intelligent\n plans to beat the claws off the Master\n Race.\"\nAfter\n due consideration,", "\"But I had different ideas. From\n what you had already done, I suspected\n it wouldn't be long before\n one of you amazing Earthlings\n would dream up some device or\n other, head out into space, and\n show up on our planet. So I've been\n waiting for you, and here you are.\"\n\n\n \"It was the thinking of a genius,\"\n murmured Ggaran.\n\n\n \"All right, then, genius, here I\n am,\" said Crownwall. \"So what's\n the pitch?\"", "\"And it is true that we can always\n exterminate any planet that\n refuses to obey the just and legal\n orders of its Viceroy. So we achieve\n a working balance in our Empire.\n We control it adequately, and we\n live in peace.\n\n\n \"The Sundans, for example,\n though they took the rule of the\n Empire that was rightfully ours\n away from us, through trickery,\n were unable to take over the\n Sectors we control. We are still\n powerful. And soon we will be all-powerful.\n In company with you\n Earthlings, that is.\"\n\n\n Crownwall nodded. \"In other\n words, you think that we Earthmen\n can break up this two-million-year-old\n stalemate. You've got the\n idea that, with our help, you can\n conquer planets without the necessity\n of destroying them, and thereby\n take over number one spot from\n these Sunda friends of yours.\"", "\"It's all right, Ggaran,\" said the\n Viceroy languidly. He twitched a\n tentacle in a beckoning gesture.\n \"Come closer, Earthling. I bid you\n welcome to my capital. I have been\n looking forward to your arrival for\n some time.\"\nCrownwall\n put his hands\n in his pockets. \"That's hardly\n possible,\" he said. \"It was only decided\n yesterday, back on Earth,\n that I would be the one to make\n the trip here. Even if you could\n spy through buildings on Earth\n from space, which I doubt, your\n communications system can't get\n the word through that fast.\"", "\"Of course,\" said Crownwall,\n then added, \"It's too bad that you\n can't provide them with live targets\n a little more often.\" He stifled\n a shudder of distaste. \"Tell me,\n Your Effulgence, does the Emperor's\n race—the Master Race—also\n enjoy the type of civilization\n you have just had demonstrated\n for me?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no. They are far too brutal,\n too morally degraded, to know anything\n of these finer points of etiquette\n and propriety. They are\n really an uncouth bunch. Why, do\n you know, I am certain that they\n would have had the bad taste to\n use an energy weapon to dispose\n of the victim in a case such as you\n just witnessed! They are really\n quite unfit to rule. They can scarcely\n be called civilized at all. But we\n will soon put a stop to all of that—your\n race and mine, of course.\"", "Two weeks later, while they\n were still several planetary diameters\n from their destination, they\n had been shocked to find more\n than two score alien ships of space\n closing in on them—ships that\n were swifter and more maneuverable\n than their own. These ships\n had rapidly and competently englobed\n the\nStar Seeker\n, and had\n then tried to herd it away from the\n planet it had been heading toward.\nAlthough\n caught by surprise,\n the Earthmen had acted\n swiftly. Crownwall recalled the discussion—the\n council of war, they\n had called it—and their unanimous\n decision. Although far within the\n dangerous influence of a planetary\n mass, they had again activated the\n distorter drive, and they had beaten\n the odds. On the distorter drive,\n they had returned to Earth as swiftly\n as they had departed. Earth had\n immediately prepared for war\n against her unknown enemy.", "At the far side of the comfortable,\n unimpressive room, a plump\n thing, hide faded to a dull violet,\n reclined on a couch. Behind him\n stood a heavy and pompous appearing\n Vegan in lordly trappings.\n They examined Crownwall with\n great interest for a few moments.\n\n\n \"It's customary to genuflect\n when you enter the Viceroy's presence,\"\n said the standing one at\n last. \"But then I'm told you're an\n Earthling. I suppose we can expect\n you to be ignorant of those niceties\n customary among civilized peoples.\"", "UPSTARTS\nBy L. J. STECHER, JR.\nIllustrated by DILLON\nThe\n sight of an Earthman\n on Vega III, where it was\n impossible for an outlander\n to be, brought angry crowds to surround\n John Crownwall as he strode\n toward the palace of Viceroy\n Tronn Ffallk, ruler of Sector XII\n of the Universal Holy Empire of\n Sunda. He ignored the snarling, the\n spitting, the waving of boneless\n prehensile fingers, as he ignored the\n heavy gravity and heavier air of\n the unfamiliar planet.", "Ffallk glanced up at Ggaran. \"I\n told you that Earthlings were unbelievably\n bold.\" He turned back\n to Crownwall. \"If you couldn't\n come to me in spite of the trifling\n inconveniences I put in your way,\n your presence here would be useless\n to both of us. But you did\n come, so I can tell you that although\n I am the leader of one of\n the mightiest peoples in the Galaxy,\n whereas there are scarcely six\n billions of you squatting on one\n minor planet, we still need each\n other. Together, there is nothing\n we can't do.\"\n\n\n \"I'm listening,\" said Crownwall.\n\n\n \"We offer you partnership with\n us to take over the rule of the\n Galaxy from the Sunda—the so-called\n Master Race.\"\n\n\n \"It would hardly be an equal\n partnership, would it, considering\n that there are so many more of you\n than there are of us?\"", "\"For more than two million\n years we have waited for the opportunity\n for revenge. And now\n that you have entered space, that\n opportunity is at hand.\"\n\n\n \"If you haven't been able to help\n yourselves for two million years,\"\n asked Crownwall, \"how does the\n sight of me give you so much gumption\n all of a sudden?\"\n\n\n Ggaran's tentacles writhed, and\n he slavered in fury, but the clashing\n of his teeth subsided instantly\n at a soothing wave from His Effulgence." ], [ "\"You see,\" said Ggaran complacently,\n \"we have very little trouble\n with civilians who violate this particular\n tradition.\"\n\n\n His Effulgence beckoned to the\n bowman to approach. \"Your results\n were satisfactory,\" he said, \"but\n your release was somewhat shaky.\n The next time you show such sloppy\n form, you will be given thirty\n lashes.\"\n\n\n He leaned back on the cushion\n and spoke again to Crownwall.\n \"That's the trouble with these requirements\n of civilization. The men\n of my immediate guard must practice\n with such things as pikes and\n bows and arrows, which they seldom\n get an opportunity to use. It\n would never do for them to use\n modern weapons on occasions of\n ceremony, of course.\"", "\"Of course,\" agreed Crownwall,\n bowing back. \"Kind of you, I'm\n sure. But what happens if somebody\n doesn't get the word, or\n doesn't hear your trumpeters, or\n something like that?\"\n\n\n Ggaran stepped forward, already\n panting slightly. \"A man with knots\n in all of his ear stalks is in a very\n uncomfortable position,\" he explained.\n \"Wait. Let me show you.\n Let us just suppose that that runner\n over there\"—he gestured toward\n a soldier with a tentacle—\"is\n a civilian who has been so unlucky\n as to remain on the street\n after His Effulgence's entourage arrived.\"\n He turned to one of the\n bowmen who ran beside the sedan\n chair, now strung and at the ready.\n \"Show him!\" he ordered peremptorily.\n\n\n In one swift movement the bowman\n notched an arrow, drew and\n fired. The arrow hissed briefly, and\n then sliced smoothly through the\n soldier's throat.", "\"I'm glad of that,\" said Crownwall.\n \"Too bad Ggaran can't join\n us.\" He climbed into the chair beside\n Ffallk. The bearers trotted\n along at seven or eight kilometers\n an hour, carrying their contraption\n with absolute smoothness. Blasts\n from horns preceded them as they\n went.\n\n\n When they passed through the\n huge entrance doors of the palace\n and started down the ramp toward\n the street, Crownwall was astonished\n to see nobody on the previously\n crowded streets, and mentioned\n it to Ffallk.\n\n\n \"When the Viceroy of the Seventy\n Suns,\" said the Viceroy of the\n Seventy Suns, \"travels in state, no\n one but my own entourage is permitted\n to watch. And my guests, of\n course,\" he added, bowing slightly\n to Crownwall.", "\"I sincerely hope so,\" said\n Crownwall.\nRefreshments\n were served\n to His Effulgence and to\n Crownwall during the trip, without\n interrupting the smooth progress\n of the sedan. The soldiers of\n the cohort, the bearers and Ggaran\n continued to run—without food,\n drink or, except for Ggaran, evidence\n of fatigue.\n\n\n After several hours of travel, following\n Crownwall's directions, the\n procession arrived at the copse in\n which he had concealed his small\n transportation machine. The machine,\n for spatial mobility, was\n equipped with the heavy and grossly\n inefficient anti-gravity field generator\n developed by Kowalsky. It\n occupied ten times the space of the\n temporal translation and coordination\n selection systems combined,\n but it had the great advantage of\n being almost undetectable in use. It\n emitted no mass or radiation.", "\"Since this is a very important\n occasion, I think it best that we\n make this a Procession of Full\n Ceremony. It's a bother, but the\n proprieties have to be observed.\"\nGgaran\n stepped out into the\n broad corridor and whistled a\n shrill two-tone note, using both his\n speaking and his eating orifices. A\n cohort of troops, pikes at the ready\n and bows strapped to their backs,\n leaped forward and formed a\n double line leading from His Effulgence's\n sanctum to the main door.\n Down this lane, carried by twenty\n men, came a large sedan chair.\n\n\n \"Protocol takes a lot of time,\"\n said His Effulgence somewhat sadly,\n \"but it must be observed. At\n least, as Ambassador, you can ride\n with me in the sedan, instead of\n walking behind it, like Ggaran.\"", "\"But I had different ideas. From\n what you had already done, I suspected\n it wouldn't be long before\n one of you amazing Earthlings\n would dream up some device or\n other, head out into space, and\n show up on our planet. So I've been\n waiting for you, and here you are.\"\n\n\n \"It was the thinking of a genius,\"\n murmured Ggaran.\n\n\n \"All right, then, genius, here I\n am,\" said Crownwall. \"So what's\n the pitch?\"", "Ffallk glanced up at Ggaran. \"I\n told you that Earthlings were unbelievably\n bold.\" He turned back\n to Crownwall. \"If you couldn't\n come to me in spite of the trifling\n inconveniences I put in your way,\n your presence here would be useless\n to both of us. But you did\n come, so I can tell you that although\n I am the leader of one of\n the mightiest peoples in the Galaxy,\n whereas there are scarcely six\n billions of you squatting on one\n minor planet, we still need each\n other. Together, there is nothing\n we can't do.\"\n\n\n \"I'm listening,\" said Crownwall.\n\n\n \"We offer you partnership with\n us to take over the rule of the\n Galaxy from the Sunda—the so-called\n Master Race.\"\n\n\n \"It would hardly be an equal\n partnership, would it, considering\n that there are so many more of you\n than there are of us?\"", "His Effulgence wiggled his tentacles.\n \"I'm afraid that Ggaran had\n expected to take what you Earthlings\n have to offer without giving\n anything in return. I never had any\n such ideas. I have not underestimated\n you, you see.\"\n\n\n \"That's nice,\" said Crownwall\n graciously.", "\"It's all right, Ggaran,\" said the\n Viceroy languidly. He twitched a\n tentacle in a beckoning gesture.\n \"Come closer, Earthling. I bid you\n welcome to my capital. I have been\n looking forward to your arrival for\n some time.\"\nCrownwall\n put his hands\n in his pockets. \"That's hardly\n possible,\" he said. \"It was only decided\n yesterday, back on Earth,\n that I would be the one to make\n the trip here. Even if you could\n spy through buildings on Earth\n from space, which I doubt, your\n communications system can't get\n the word through that fast.\"", "\"Don't call those damn lobsters\n friends,\" growled Ggaran. He subsided\n at the Viceroy's gesture.\n\n\n \"Exactly,\" said His Effulgence\n to Crownwall. \"You broke our\n blockade without any trouble. Our\n instruments didn't even wiggle\n when you landed here on my capital\n world. You can do the same on\n the worlds of the Sunda. Now, just\n tell us how you did it, and we're\n partners.\"\nCrownwall\n lifted one eyebrow\n quizzically, but remained\n silent. He didn't expect his facial\n gesture to be interpreted correctly,\n but he assumed that his silence\n would be. He was correct.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" His Effulgence said,\n \"we will give you any assurances\n that your people may desire in order\n to feel safe, and we will guarantee\n them an equal share in the\n government of the Galaxy.\"\n\n\n \"Bunk,\" said Crownwall.", "\"And now,\" Ggaran put in, \"I\n think it's time for you to tell us\n something about how you get\n across light-years of space in a few\n hours, without leaving any traces\n for us to detect.\" He raised a tentacle\n to still Crownwall's immediate\n exclamation of protest. \"Oh,\n nothing that would give us a chance\n to duplicate it—just enough to\nindicate\nhow we can make use of\n it, along with you—enough to allow\n us to\nbegin\nto make intelligent\n plans to beat the claws off the Master\n Race.\"\nAfter\n due consideration,", "\"For more than two million\n years we have waited for the opportunity\n for revenge. And now\n that you have entered space, that\n opportunity is at hand.\"\n\n\n \"If you haven't been able to help\n yourselves for two million years,\"\n asked Crownwall, \"how does the\n sight of me give you so much gumption\n all of a sudden?\"\n\n\n Ggaran's tentacles writhed, and\n he slavered in fury, but the clashing\n of his teeth subsided instantly\n at a soothing wave from His Effulgence.", "\"Your reaction was savage,\" said\n Ggaran, his tentacles stiffening\n with shock at the memory. \"You\n bloody-minded Earthlings must\n have been aware of the terrible\n danger.\"\n\n\n Ffallk rippled in agreement.\n \"The action you took was too swift\n and too foolhardy to be believed.\n You knew that you could have destroyed\n not only yourself, but also\n all who live on that planet. You\n could also have wrecked the planet\n itself and the ships and those of\n my own race who manned them.\n We had tried to contact you, but\n since you had not developed subspace\n radio, we were of course not\n successful. Our englobement was\n just a routine quarantine. With\n your total lack of information\n about us, what you did was more\n than the height of folly. It was madness.\"\n\n\n \"Could we have done anything\n else that would have kept you from\n landing on Earth and taking us\n over?\" asked Crownwall.", "\"Of course,\" said Crownwall,\n then added, \"It's too bad that you\n can't provide them with live targets\n a little more often.\" He stifled\n a shudder of distaste. \"Tell me,\n Your Effulgence, does the Emperor's\n race—the Master Race—also\n enjoy the type of civilization\n you have just had demonstrated\n for me?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no. They are far too brutal,\n too morally degraded, to know anything\n of these finer points of etiquette\n and propriety. They are\n really an uncouth bunch. Why, do\n you know, I am certain that they\n would have had the bad taste to\n use an energy weapon to dispose\n of the victim in a case such as you\n just witnessed! They are really\n quite unfit to rule. They can scarcely\n be called civilized at all. But we\n will soon put a stop to all of that—your\n race and mine, of course.\"", "His Effulgence lifted a tentacle\n swiftly, before Ggaran, lunging angrily\n forward, could speak. \"Then\n what do you want of us?\"\n\n\n \"It seems to me that we need\n no wordy assurances from each\n other,\" said Crownwall, and he\n puffed a cigarette aglow. \"We can\n arrange something a little more\n trustworthy, I believe. On your\n side, you have the power to destroy\n our only planet at any time. That\n is certainly adequate security for\n our own good behavior and sincerity.", "\"Would that have been so bad?\"\n said Ggaran. \"We can't tolerate\n wild and warlike races running free\n and uncontrolled in the Galaxy.\n Once was enough for that.\"\n\n\n \"But what about my question?\n Was there any other way for us to\n stay free?\"", "Crownwall sat on the steps,\n puffed alight a cigarette, and blew\n expert smoke rings toward the\n guards.\n\n\n An elegant courtier, with elaborately\n jeweled harness, bustled\n from inside the palace, obviously\n trying to present an air of strolling\n nonchalance. He gestured fluidly\n with a graceful tentacle. \"You!\" he\n said to Crownwall. \"Follow me. His\n Effulgence commands you to appear\n before him at once.\" The two\n guards withdrew their pikes and\n froze into immobility at the sides\n of the entrance.\n\n\n Crownwall stamped out his\n smoke and ambled after the hurrying\n courtier along tremendous corridors,\n through elaborate waiting\n rooms, under guarded doorways,\n until he was finally bowed through\n a small curtained arch.", "He climbed the great ramp, with\n its deeply carved Greek key design,\n toward the mighty entrance\n gate of the palace. His manner\n demonstrated an elaborate air of\n unconcern that he felt sure was entirely\n wasted on these monsters.\n The clashing teeth of the noisiest\n of them were only inches from the\n quivering flesh of his back as he\n reached the upper level. Instantly,\n and unexpectedly to Crownwall,\n the threatening crowd dropped\n back fearfully, so that he walked\n the last fifty meters alone.\n\n\n Crownwall all but sagged with\n relief. A pair of guards, their purple\n hides smoothly polished and gleaming\n with oil, crossed their ceremonial\n pikes in front of him as he\n approached the entrance.\n\n\n \"And just what business do you\n have here, stranger?\" asked the\n senior of the guards, his speaking\n orifice framing with difficulty the\n sibilances of Universal Galactic.", "\"What business\nwould\nI have at\n the Viceroy's Palace?\" asked\n Crownwall. \"I want to see Ffallk.\"\n\n\n \"Mind your tongue,\" growled\n the guard. \"If you mean His Effulgence,\n Right Hand of the Glorious\n Emperor, Hereditary Ruler of the\n Seventy Suns, Viceroy of the\n Twelfth Sector of the Universal\n Holy Empire\"—Universal Galactic\n had a full measure of ceremonial\n words—\"he sees only those whom\n he summons. If you know what's\n good for you, you'll get out of here\n while you can still walk. And if you\n run fast enough, maybe you can\n even get away from that crowd out\n there, but I doubt it.\"\n\n\n \"Just tell him that a man has\n arrived from Earth to talk to him.\n He'll summon me fast enough.\n Meanwhile, my highly polished\n friends, I'll just wait here, so why\n don't you put those heavy pikes\n down?\"", "\"We wouldn't use the bombs\n lightly, to be sure, because of what\n would happen to Earth. And don't\n think that blowing up our planet\n would save you, because we naturally\n wouldn't keep the bombs on\n Earth. How does that sound to\n you?\"\n\n\n \"Ridiculous,\" snorted Ggaran.\n \"Impossible.\"\n\n\n After several minutes of silent\n consideration, \"It is an excellent\n plan,\" said His Effulgence. \"It is\n worthy of the thinking of The People\n ourselves. You Earthlings will\n make very satisfactory allies. What\n you request will be provided without\n delay. Meanwhile, I see no reason\n why we cannot proceed with\n our discussions.\"\n\n\n \"Nor do I,\" consented Crownwall.\n \"But your stooge here doesn't\n seem very happy about it all.\"" ], [ "\"Things may not be as bad as\n they seem,\" answered Crownwall\n complacently. \"After I got back a\n few million years, I'm afraid I got\n a little careless and let my ship dip\n down into Vega III's atmosphere\n for a while. I was back so far that\n the Vegans hadn't appeared yet.\n Now, I didn't land—or\ndeliberately\nkill anything—but I'd be mighty\n surprised if we didn't find a change\n or two. Before I came in here, I\n asked Marshall to take the ship out\n and check on things. He should be\n back with his report before long.\n Why don't we wait and see what\n he has to say?\"\nMarshall\n was excited when\n he was escorted into the\n Council Chamber. He bowed briefly\n to the President and began to\n speak rapidly.", "\"Of course,\" agreed Crownwall,\n bowing back. \"Kind of you, I'm\n sure. But what happens if somebody\n doesn't get the word, or\n doesn't hear your trumpeters, or\n something like that?\"\n\n\n Ggaran stepped forward, already\n panting slightly. \"A man with knots\n in all of his ear stalks is in a very\n uncomfortable position,\" he explained.\n \"Wait. Let me show you.\n Let us just suppose that that runner\n over there\"—he gestured toward\n a soldier with a tentacle—\"is\n a civilian who has been so unlucky\n as to remain on the street\n after His Effulgence's entourage arrived.\"\n He turned to one of the\n bowmen who ran beside the sedan\n chair, now strung and at the ready.\n \"Show him!\" he ordered peremptorily.\n\n\n In one swift movement the bowman\n notched an arrow, drew and\n fired. The arrow hissed briefly, and\n then sliced smoothly through the\n soldier's throat.", "\"I'm glad of that,\" said Crownwall.\n \"Too bad Ggaran can't join\n us.\" He climbed into the chair beside\n Ffallk. The bearers trotted\n along at seven or eight kilometers\n an hour, carrying their contraption\n with absolute smoothness. Blasts\n from horns preceded them as they\n went.\n\n\n When they passed through the\n huge entrance doors of the palace\n and started down the ramp toward\n the street, Crownwall was astonished\n to see nobody on the previously\n crowded streets, and mentioned\n it to Ffallk.\n\n\n \"When the Viceroy of the Seventy\n Suns,\" said the Viceroy of the\n Seventy Suns, \"travels in state, no\n one but my own entourage is permitted\n to watch. And my guests, of\n course,\" he added, bowing slightly\n to Crownwall.", "\"They're gone without trace—\nall\n of them\n!\" he cried. \"I went clear\n to Sunda and there's no sign of\n intelligent life anywhere! We're all\n alone now!\"\n\n\n \"There, you see?\" exclaimed\n Crownwall. \"Our enemies are all\n gone!\"\n\n\n He looked around, glowing with\n victory, at the others at the table,\n then slowly quieted and sat down.\n He turned his head away from\n their accusing eyes.\n\n\n \"Alone,\" he said, and unconsciously\n repeated Marshall's words:\n \"We're all alone now.\"\n\n\n In silence, the others gathered\n their papers together and left the\n room, leaving Crownwall sitting at\n the table by himself. He shivered\n involuntarily, and then leaped to\n his feet to follow after them.", "John Crownwall, florid, red-headed\n and bulky, considered himself\n to be a bold man. But here,\n surrounded by this writhing, slithering\n mass of eight-foot creatures,\n he felt distinctly unhappy. Crownwall\n had heard about creatures that\n slavered, but he had never before\n seen it done. These humanoids had\n large mouths and sharp teeth, and\n they unquestionably slavered. He\n wished he knew more about them.\n If they carried out the threats of\n their present attitude, Earth would\n have to send Marshall to replace\n him. And if Crownwall couldn't do\n the job, thought Crownwall, then\n it was a sure bet that Marshall\n wouldn't have a chance.", "After elaborate and lengthy farewells,\n Crownwall climbed into his\n machine and fell gently up until he\n was out of the atmosphere, before\n starting his enormous journey\n through time back to Earth. More\n quickly than it had taken him to\n reach his ship from the palace of\n His Effulgence, he was in the Council\n Chamber of the Confederation\n Government of Earth, making a full\n report on his trip to Vega.", "\"Are you sure that you haven't\n given us a little too much information\n for your own safety?\" asked\n Ffallk softly.\n\n\n \"Not at all. We were enormously\n lucky to have learned how to control\n spatial reference frames ourselves.\n I doubt if you could do it in\n another two million years.\" Crownwall\n rose to his feet. \"And now,\n Your Effulgence, I think it's about\n time I went back to my ship and\n drove it home to Earth to make my\n report, so we can pick up those\n bombs and start making arrangements.\"\n\n\n \"Excellent,\" said Ffallk. \"I'd better\n escort you; my people don't like\n strangers much.\"\n\n\n \"I'd noticed that,\" Crownwall\n commented drily.", "Crownwall sat on the steps,\n puffed alight a cigarette, and blew\n expert smoke rings toward the\n guards.\n\n\n An elegant courtier, with elaborately\n jeweled harness, bustled\n from inside the palace, obviously\n trying to present an air of strolling\n nonchalance. He gestured fluidly\n with a graceful tentacle. \"You!\" he\n said to Crownwall. \"Follow me. His\n Effulgence commands you to appear\n before him at once.\" The two\n guards withdrew their pikes and\n froze into immobility at the sides\n of the entrance.\n\n\n Crownwall stamped out his\n smoke and ambled after the hurrying\n courtier along tremendous corridors,\n through elaborate waiting\n rooms, under guarded doorways,\n until he was finally bowed through\n a small curtained arch.", "\"Of course,\" said Crownwall,\n then added, \"It's too bad that you\n can't provide them with live targets\n a little more often.\" He stifled\n a shudder of distaste. \"Tell me,\n Your Effulgence, does the Emperor's\n race—the Master Race—also\n enjoy the type of civilization\n you have just had demonstrated\n for me?\"\n\n\n \"Oh, no. They are far too brutal,\n too morally degraded, to know anything\n of these finer points of etiquette\n and propriety. They are\n really an uncouth bunch. Why, do\n you know, I am certain that they\n would have had the bad taste to\n use an energy weapon to dispose\n of the victim in a case such as you\n just witnessed! They are really\n quite unfit to rule. They can scarcely\n be called civilized at all. But we\n will soon put a stop to all of that—your\n race and mine, of course.\"", "At the far side of the comfortable,\n unimpressive room, a plump\n thing, hide faded to a dull violet,\n reclined on a couch. Behind him\n stood a heavy and pompous appearing\n Vegan in lordly trappings.\n They examined Crownwall with\n great interest for a few moments.\n\n\n \"It's customary to genuflect\n when you enter the Viceroy's presence,\"\n said the standing one at\n last. \"But then I'm told you're an\n Earthling. I suppose we can expect\n you to be ignorant of those niceties\n customary among civilized peoples.\"", "Ffallk glanced up at Ggaran. \"I\n told you that Earthlings were unbelievably\n bold.\" He turned back\n to Crownwall. \"If you couldn't\n come to me in spite of the trifling\n inconveniences I put in your way,\n your presence here would be useless\n to both of us. But you did\n come, so I can tell you that although\n I am the leader of one of\n the mightiest peoples in the Galaxy,\n whereas there are scarcely six\n billions of you squatting on one\n minor planet, we still need each\n other. Together, there is nothing\n we can't do.\"\n\n\n \"I'm listening,\" said Crownwall.\n\n\n \"We offer you partnership with\n us to take over the rule of the\n Galaxy from the Sunda—the so-called\n Master Race.\"\n\n\n \"It would hardly be an equal\n partnership, would it, considering\n that there are so many more of you\n than there are of us?\"", "\"What business\nwould\nI have at\n the Viceroy's Palace?\" asked\n Crownwall. \"I want to see Ffallk.\"\n\n\n \"Mind your tongue,\" growled\n the guard. \"If you mean His Effulgence,\n Right Hand of the Glorious\n Emperor, Hereditary Ruler of the\n Seventy Suns, Viceroy of the\n Twelfth Sector of the Universal\n Holy Empire\"—Universal Galactic\n had a full measure of ceremonial\n words—\"he sees only those whom\n he summons. If you know what's\n good for you, you'll get out of here\n while you can still walk. And if you\n run fast enough, maybe you can\n even get away from that crowd out\n there, but I doubt it.\"\n\n\n \"Just tell him that a man has\n arrived from Earth to talk to him.\n He'll summon me fast enough.\n Meanwhile, my highly polished\n friends, I'll just wait here, so why\n don't you put those heavy pikes\n down?\"", "\"But I had different ideas. From\n what you had already done, I suspected\n it wouldn't be long before\n one of you amazing Earthlings\n would dream up some device or\n other, head out into space, and\n show up on our planet. So I've been\n waiting for you, and here you are.\"\n\n\n \"It was the thinking of a genius,\"\n murmured Ggaran.\n\n\n \"All right, then, genius, here I\n am,\" said Crownwall. \"So what's\n the pitch?\"", "His Effulgence wiggled his tentacles.\n \"I'm afraid that Ggaran had\n expected to take what you Earthlings\n have to offer without giving\n anything in return. I never had any\n such ideas. I have not underestimated\n you, you see.\"\n\n\n \"That's nice,\" said Crownwall\n graciously.", "\"You see,\" said Ggaran complacently,\n \"we have very little trouble\n with civilians who violate this particular\n tradition.\"\n\n\n His Effulgence beckoned to the\n bowman to approach. \"Your results\n were satisfactory,\" he said, \"but\n your release was somewhat shaky.\n The next time you show such sloppy\n form, you will be given thirty\n lashes.\"\n\n\n He leaned back on the cushion\n and spoke again to Crownwall.\n \"That's the trouble with these requirements\n of civilization. The men\n of my immediate guard must practice\n with such things as pikes and\n bows and arrows, which they seldom\n get an opportunity to use. It\n would never do for them to use\n modern weapons on occasions of\n ceremony, of course.\"", "He climbed the great ramp, with\n its deeply carved Greek key design,\n toward the mighty entrance\n gate of the palace. His manner\n demonstrated an elaborate air of\n unconcern that he felt sure was entirely\n wasted on these monsters.\n The clashing teeth of the noisiest\n of them were only inches from the\n quivering flesh of his back as he\n reached the upper level. Instantly,\n and unexpectedly to Crownwall,\n the threatening crowd dropped\n back fearfully, so that he walked\n the last fifty meters alone.\n\n\n Crownwall all but sagged with\n relief. A pair of guards, their purple\n hides smoothly polished and gleaming\n with oil, crossed their ceremonial\n pikes in front of him as he\n approached the entrance.\n\n\n \"And just what business do you\n have here, stranger?\" asked the\n senior of the guards, his speaking\n orifice framing with difficulty the\n sibilances of Universal Galactic.", "\"I sincerely hope so,\" said\n Crownwall.\nRefreshments\n were served\n to His Effulgence and to\n Crownwall during the trip, without\n interrupting the smooth progress\n of the sedan. The soldiers of\n the cohort, the bearers and Ggaran\n continued to run—without food,\n drink or, except for Ggaran, evidence\n of fatigue.\n\n\n After several hours of travel, following\n Crownwall's directions, the\n procession arrived at the copse in\n which he had concealed his small\n transportation machine. The machine,\n for spatial mobility, was\n equipped with the heavy and grossly\n inefficient anti-gravity field generator\n developed by Kowalsky. It\n occupied ten times the space of the\n temporal translation and coordination\n selection systems combined,\n but it had the great advantage of\n being almost undetectable in use. It\n emitted no mass or radiation.", "His Effulgence lifted a tentacle\n swiftly, before Ggaran, lunging angrily\n forward, could speak. \"Then\n what do you want of us?\"\n\n\n \"It seems to me that we need\n no wordy assurances from each\n other,\" said Crownwall, and he\n puffed a cigarette aglow. \"We can\n arrange something a little more\n trustworthy, I believe. On your\n side, you have the power to destroy\n our only planet at any time. That\n is certainly adequate security for\n our own good behavior and sincerity.", "Crownwall shrugged. \"So?\"\nThe\n Vegan reached up and engulfed\n the end of a drinking\n tube with his eating orifice. \"You\n upstart Earthlings are a strange\n and a frightening race,\" he said.\n \"Frightening to the Sunda, especially.\n When you showed up in the\n spaceways, it was decreed that you\n had to be stopped at once. There\n was even serious discussion of destroying\n Earth out of hand, while\n it is still possible.", "\"Don't call those damn lobsters\n friends,\" growled Ggaran. He subsided\n at the Viceroy's gesture.\n\n\n \"Exactly,\" said His Effulgence\n to Crownwall. \"You broke our\n blockade without any trouble. Our\n instruments didn't even wiggle\n when you landed here on my capital\n world. You can do the same on\n the worlds of the Sunda. Now, just\n tell us how you did it, and we're\n partners.\"\nCrownwall\n lifted one eyebrow\n quizzically, but remained\n silent. He didn't expect his facial\n gesture to be interpreted correctly,\n but he assumed that his silence\n would be. He was correct.\n\n\n \"Of course,\" His Effulgence said,\n \"we will give you any assurances\n that your people may desire in order\n to feel safe, and we will guarantee\n them an equal share in the\n government of the Galaxy.\"\n\n\n \"Bunk,\" said Crownwall." ] ]
train	29196	[ "How is Lane able to hover over the buildings?", "Why are the police willing to risk the life of Gerri to kill Lane?", "How does Gerri feel about Earth?", "Why is Lane so child-like?", "What is a cybrain?", "Why can't Lane read or write?", "Why does Gerri kiss Lane?", "Why do the police believe the analogue computer can defeat Lane?" ]	[ [ "He has anti-gravity boots.", "He is in a helicopter.", "He has a jet pack.", "He has anti-gravity devices implanted in his body." ], [ "Lane is too dangerous to be left alive. They can't risk him escaping just so they can rescue Gerri.", "They think Lane may be infected with a biological weapon.", "The police don't care if they kill Martians.", "They don't believe that Gerri is in the room with Lane." ], [ "Gerri does not like the Earth. The climate is terrible.", "She does not like Earth. She thinks the people are uncivilized.", "She loves Earth. She is going to move to Earth permanently.", "Gerri likes the Earth, it's the Earthlings she's not sure about." ], [ "All men are child-like.", "Lane was never given a proper education, only fighting instruction.", "Lane is controlled by the Cybrain. His own brain never had the chance to develop properly.", "Lane has been a Trooper since he was seven years old." ], [ "A cybrain is a cybernetic brain. The cybrain is in control of the Newyork Special Troops, like a hive mind.", "A cybrain is a dispatch system that sends the Newyork Special Troops on their assignments.", "A cybrain is a cybernetic brain. Cybrains are implanted in soldiers to make them the ultimate weapons.", "A cybrain is an AI handler. Each of the Newyork Specail Troops has a cybrain which is their only contact to the command center." ], [ "When the cybrain was installed, Lane's own brain was wiped clean.", "Lane is dyslexic. He got frustrated trying to learn and gave up.", "Teaching the soldiers how to read and write would only lead to rational thinking. The soldiers might start to question orders. Therefore, they are only taught fighting.", "Lane has only been schooled in soldiering since he was seven. He was taught to fight, nothing else." ], [ "She pities him.", "She is terrified he'll kill her if she doesn't.", "She likes Lane.", "He is trying to save her life." ], [ "The police are fooling themselves. The analogue computer cannot hope to compete with the cybrain.", "The analogue computer is much larger and more powerful than the cybrain.", "The cybrains are an extension of the analogue computer.", "The cybrains do not have the advanced processor the analogue computer does." ] ]	[ 4, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2 ]	[ 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "He swooped over the balcony\n railing. A man was\n pointing a blaster pistol at\n him. There were five men\n on the balcony—emergency!\n Years of training and cybrain\n took over. Lane's hand shot\n out, fingers vibrating. As he\n dropped to the balcony floor in\n battle-crouch, the men slumped\n around him.\n\n\n He had seen the man with\n the blaster pistol before. It\n was the Mayor of Newyork.\n\n\n Lane stood for a moment in\n the midst of the sprawled\n men, the shrieks of the crowd\n floating up to him. Then he\n raised his glove to his lips. He\n made contact with Manhattan\n Armory.", "Lane looked down at the\n Square. Far below, the long,\n gleaming barrel of a blaster\n cannon caught the dim light\n filtering down through Newyork's\n Shell. The cannon trundled\n into the Square on its\n olive-drab, box-shaped caterpillar\n mounting and took up a\n position equidistant from the\n bases of the three towers.\n\n\n Now a rumble of many\n voices rose from below. Lane\n stared down to see a large\n crowd gathering in Tammany\n Square. Sound trucks were\n rolling to a stop around the\n edges of the crowd. The people\n were all looking up.\n\n\n Lane looked across the\n Square. The windows of the\n tower opposite, the ones he\n could see clearly, were crowded\n with faces. There were\n white dot faces on the balcony\n that Gerri Kin had pointed\n out as the Mayor's suite.\n\n\n The voice of a 3V newscaster\n rolled up from the Square,\n reechoing against the tower\n walls.", "He was going over all their\n heads. He'd bowled those city\n cops over like paper dolls,\n back at the Armory. The\n black dog was on Lane's back.\n Old Mayor himself was going\n to hear about it.\nWhy not? Ain't old Mayor\n the CinC of the Newyork\n Troopers?\nThe humming paragrav-paks\n embedded beneath his\n shoulder blades held him\n motionless above Newyork's\n three administrative towers.\n Tammany Hall. Mayor's Palace.\n Court House. Lane cursed\n his stupidity. He hadn't found\n out which one was which\n ahead of time.", "\"You can't,\" Lane called.\n \"This girl from Mars is here.\"\n\n\n \"I repeat, Lane—come out\n or we'll blast you out.\"\n\n\n Lane turned to the girl. \"I\n thought you were important.\"\nShe\n stood there with her\n hands together, calmly\n looking at him. \"I am. But\n you are too, to them. Mars is\n millions of miles away, and\n you're right across the Square\n from the Mayor's suite.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah, but—\" Lane shook\n his head and turned back to\n the window. \"All right, look!\n Move them boats away and\n I'll let this girl out!\"\n\n\n \"No deal, Lane. We're coming\n in.\" The police boats\n backed away slowly, then shot\n straight up, out of the line of\n vision.", "He stepped up on to the\n window ledge. Automatically,\n the cybrain cut in his paragrav-paks.\n \"So long, outa-towner.\nNow!\n\"\n\n\n He jumped. He was hurtling\n across the Square when the\n blaster cannons opened up.\n They weren't aimed at the\n window where the little red-white-and-green\n tricolor was\n flying. But they weren't aimed\n at Lane, either. They were\n shooting wild.\nWhich way now? Looks\n like I got a chance. Old cybrain\n says fly right for the\n cannons.\nHe saw the Mayor's balcony\n ahead.\nGo to hell, old cybrain.\n I'm doing all right by myself.\n I come to see the Mayor, and\n I'm gonna see him.\nLane plunged forward. He\n heard the shouts of frightened\n men.", "Then his head jerked up, to\n a distant buzz. There were\n cops coming. Two black paragrav-boats\n whirred along the\n translucent underside of Newyork's\n anti-missile force-shield,\n the Shell.\nOld cybrain better be fast.\n Damn fast!\nThe cybrain jolted an impulse\n through his spine. Lane\n somersaulted. Cybrain had\n taken charge of his motor\n nerves. Lane's own mind was\n just along for the ride.\nHis\n body snapped into a\n stiff dive position. He began\n to plummet down, picking", "\"Blaster cannon,\" he said.\n \"But just one. Gotcha, cybrain.\n I can beat that.\"\n\n\n He picked up the black box\n that generated his protective\n screen. Snapping it open with\n thumb-pressure, he turned a\n small dial. Then he waited.\n\n\n Again an enormous, brain-shattering\n concussion.\n\n\n Again Lane and Gerri were\n thrown to the floor. But this\n time there was a second explosion\n and a blinding flash\n from below.\n\n\n Lane laughed boyishly and\n ran to the window.\n\n\n \"Look!\" he called to Gerri.\nThere\n was a huge gap in\n the crowd below. The\n pavement was blackened and\n shattered to rubble. In and\n around the open space\n sprawled dozens of tiny black\n figures, not moving.", "Lane said, \"Yeah? Well, we\n done what they wanted us to\n do. We did the fighting for\n them. So we come back home\n to Newyork and they lock us\n up in the Armory. Won't pay\n us. Won't let us go nowhere.\n They had cops guarding us.\n City cops.\" Lane sneered. \"I\n busted out. I wanna see the\n Mayor and find out why we\n can't have time off. I don't\n play games, Gerri. I go right\n to the top.\"\n\n\n Lane broke off. There was\n a hum outside the window. He\n whirled and stared out. The\n rounded black hulls of the two\n police paragrav-boats were\n nosing toward the force-screen.\n Lane could read the\n white numbers painted on\n their bows.\n\n\n A loudspeaker shouted into\n the room: \"Come out of there,\n Lane, or we'll blast you out.\"", "\"Lashing police with his\n vibray,\" said the announcer,\n \"Lane broke through the cordon\n surrounding Manhattan\n Armory. Two policemen were\n killed, four others seriously\n injured. Tammany Hall has\n warned that this man is extremely\n dangerous. Citizens\n are cautioned to keep clear of\n him. Lane is an insane killer.\n He is armed with the latest\n military weapons. A built-in\n electronic brain controls his\n reflexes—\"\n\n\n \"At ease with that jazz,\"\n said Lane, and a sheathed finger\n snapped out. There was a\n loud bang. The 3V screen dissolved\n into a puddle of glasstic.\nThe Mayor.\nLane strode to the window.\n The two police boats were\n hovering above the towers.\n Lane's mailed hand snapped\n open a pouch at his belt. He\n flipped a fist-sized cube to the\n floor.", "The cool cybrain surgically\n implanted in him was working\n on the problem. But Lane\n had no more patience. They'd\n sweat, he thought, hating the\n chill air-currents that threw\n his hovering body this way\n and that. He glared down at\n the three towers bordering on\n the Square. He spat, and\n watched the little white speck\n fall, fall.\nLock me up in barracks.\n All I wanted was a\n little time off. Did I fight in\n Chi for them? Damn right I\n did. Just a little time off, so\n I shouldn't blow my top. Now\n the lid's gone.", "The force-bomb \"exploded\"—swelled\n or inflated, really,\n but with the speed of a blast.\n Lane glanced out the window.\n A section of the energy globe\n bellied out from above. It\n shaded the view from his window\n and re-entered the tower\n wall just below.\n\n\n Now the girl.\n\n\n He turned back to the room.\n \"Wake up, outa-towner.\" He\n gave the blonde girl a light\n dose of the vibray to slap her\n awake.\n\n\n \"Who are you?\" she said,\n shakily.", "Gerri said, \"You scared\n them so much that they were\n afraid to let you have a furlough\n in the city when you\n came back. Afraid you Troopers\n would realize that you\n could easily take over the city\n if you wanted to. You scared\n them so much that they'll let\n me be killed. They'll actually\n risk trouble with Mars just to\n kill you.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry about you. I\n mean it, I like—\"\n\n\n At that moment a titanic,\n ear-splitting explosion hurled\n him to the carpet, deafened\n and blinded him.\n\n\n He recovered and saw Gerri\n a few feet away, dazed, groping\n on hands and knees.\n\n\n Lane jumped to the window,\n looked quickly, sprang\n back. Cybrain pumped orders\n to his nervous system.", "up speed. His mailed hands\n glittered like arrowheads out\n in front. They pointed to a\n particular window in one of\n the towers. A predatory excitement\n rippled through him\n as he sailed down through the\n air. It was like going into\n battle again. A little red-white-and-green\n flag fluttered\n on a staff below the window.\n Whose flag? The city flag was\n orange and blue. He shrugged\n away the problem. Cybrain\n knew what it was doing.", "\"Lane is holding the Martian\n Ambassador, Gerri Kin,\n hostage. You can see the Martian\n tricolor behind his force-globe.\n Police are bringing up\n blaster cannon. Lane's defense\n is a globe of energy\n similar to the one which protects\n Newyork from aerial attack.\"\n\n\n Lane grinned back at Gerri\n Kin. \"Whole town's down\n there.\" Then his grin faded.\n Nice-looking, nice-talking girl\n like this probably cared a lot\n more about dying than he did.\n Why the hell didn't they give\n him a chance to let her out?\n Maybe he could do it now.\n\n\n Cybrain said no. It said the\n second he dropped his force-screen,\n they'd blast this room\n to hell. Poor girl from Mars,\n she didn't have a chance.", "Lane frowned with the effort\n of thinking. \"You said I\n had a little right on my side.\n That's a good feeling. Nobody\n ever told me to feel that way\n about myself before. It'll be\n better to die knowing that.\"\n\n\n \"I know,\" she said.\n\n\n The amplified voice from\n below said, \"The police analogue\n computer is now hooked\n directly to the controls of the\n blaster cannon battery. It will\n outguess Lane's cybrain and\n check his moves ahead of\n time.\"\n\n\n Lane looked at Gerri. \"How\n about giving me a kiss before\n they get us? Be nice if I kissed\n a girl like you just once in\n my life.\"\n\n\n She smiled and walked forward.\n \"You deserve it, Lane.\"", "The little finger of his right\n hand vibrated in its metal\n sheath. A pale vibray leaped\n from the lensed fingertip.\n Breakthrough! The glasstic\n pane dissolved. Lane streamed\n through the window.\n\n\n The paragrav-paks cut off.\n Lane dropped lightly to the\n floor, inside the room, in battle-crouch.\n A 3V set was yammering.\n A girl screamed. Lane's\n hand shot out automatically.\n A finger vibrated. Out of the\n corner of his eye, Lane saw\n the girl fold to the floor. There\n was no one else in the room.\n Lane, still in a crouch, chewed\n his lip.\nThe Mayor?\nHis head swung around and\n he peered at the 3V set. He\n saw his own face.", "\"Backfire,\" said Lane. \"I set\n the screen to throw their\n blaster beam right back at\n them.\"\n\n\n \"And they knew you might—and\n yet they let a crowd\n congregate!\"\n\n\n Gerri reeled away from the\n window, sick.\n\n\n Lane said, \"I can do that a\n couple times more, but it\n burns out the force-globe.\n Then I'm dead.\"\n\n\n He heard the 3V newscaster's\n amplified voice: \"—approximately\n fifty killed. But\n Lane is through now. He has\n been able to outthink police\n with the help of his cybrain.\n Now police are feeding the\n problem to their giant analogue\n computer in the sub-basement\n of the Court House.\n The police analogue computer\n will be able to outthink Lane's\n cybrain, will predict Lane's\n moves in advance. Four more\n blaster cannon are coming\n down Broadway—\"", "MUTINEER\nBy ROBERT J. SHEA\nFor every weapon there was a defense, but not against\n the deadliest weapon—man himself!\nRaging\n , Trooper Lane\n hovered three thousand\n feet above Tammany Square.", "Lane grinned. \"Trooper\n Lane, of the Newyork Special\n Troops, is all.\" He threw her\n a mock salute. \"You from\n outa-town, girlie. I ain't seen\n a Newyork girl with yellow\n hair in years. Orange or\n green is the action. Whatcha\n doing in the Mayor's room?\"\nThe\n girl pushed herself to\n her feet. Built, Lane saw.\n She was pretty and clean-looking,\n very out-of-town. She\n held herself straight and her\n blue-violet eyes snapped at\n him.\n\n\n \"What the devil do you\n think you're doing, soldier? I\n am a diplomat of the Grassroots\n Republic of Mars. This\n is an embassy, if you know\n what that means.\"\n\n\n \"I don't,\" said Lane, unconcerned.", "\"Well, you should have had\n brains enough to honor the\n flag outside this window.\n That's the Martian flag, soldier.\n If you've never heard of\n diplomatic immunity, you'll\n suffer for your ignorance.\"\n Her large, dark eyes narrowed.\n \"Who sent you?\"\n\n\n \"My cybrain sent me.\"\n\n\n She went openmouthed.\n \"You're\nLane\n.\"\n\n\n \"I'm the guy they told you\n about on the 3V. Where's the\n Mayor? Ain't this his place?\"\n\n\n \"No. No, you're in the\n wrong room. The wrong building.\n That's the Mayor's suite\n over there.\" She pointed. \"See\n where the balcony is? This is\n the Embassy suite. If you\n want the Mayor you'll have to\n go over there.\"" ], [ "Lane frowned with the effort\n of thinking. \"You said I\n had a little right on my side.\n That's a good feeling. Nobody\n ever told me to feel that way\n about myself before. It'll be\n better to die knowing that.\"\n\n\n \"I know,\" she said.\n\n\n The amplified voice from\n below said, \"The police analogue\n computer is now hooked\n directly to the controls of the\n blaster cannon battery. It will\n outguess Lane's cybrain and\n check his moves ahead of\n time.\"\n\n\n Lane looked at Gerri. \"How\n about giving me a kiss before\n they get us? Be nice if I kissed\n a girl like you just once in\n my life.\"\n\n\n She smiled and walked forward.\n \"You deserve it, Lane.\"", "Gerri said, \"You scared\n them so much that they were\n afraid to let you have a furlough\n in the city when you\n came back. Afraid you Troopers\n would realize that you\n could easily take over the city\n if you wanted to. You scared\n them so much that they'll let\n me be killed. They'll actually\n risk trouble with Mars just to\n kill you.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry about you. I\n mean it, I like—\"\n\n\n At that moment a titanic,\n ear-splitting explosion hurled\n him to the carpet, deafened\n and blinded him.\n\n\n He recovered and saw Gerri\n a few feet away, dazed, groping\n on hands and knees.\n\n\n Lane jumped to the window,\n looked quickly, sprang\n back. Cybrain pumped orders\n to his nervous system.", "\"I am, Lane.\" The voice of\n Colonel Klett was lower. \"I'd\n never admit it if you had a\n chance of getting out of there\n alive. You've had it, son. I'd\n only lose more men trying to\n rescue you. When they feed\n the data into that analogue\n computer, you're finished.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Lane.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. Over and out.\"\n\n\n Lane pressed the stud on\n his gauntlet again. He turned\n to Gerri.", "\"Lane is holding the Martian\n Ambassador, Gerri Kin,\n hostage. You can see the Martian\n tricolor behind his force-globe.\n Police are bringing up\n blaster cannon. Lane's defense\n is a globe of energy\n similar to the one which protects\n Newyork from aerial attack.\"\n\n\n Lane grinned back at Gerri\n Kin. \"Whole town's down\n there.\" Then his grin faded.\n Nice-looking, nice-talking girl\n like this probably cared a lot\n more about dying than he did.\n Why the hell didn't they give\n him a chance to let her out?\n Maybe he could do it now.\n\n\n Cybrain said no. It said the\n second he dropped his force-screen,\n they'd blast this room\n to hell. Poor girl from Mars,\n she didn't have a chance.", "Lane said, \"Yeah? Well, we\n done what they wanted us to\n do. We did the fighting for\n them. So we come back home\n to Newyork and they lock us\n up in the Armory. Won't pay\n us. Won't let us go nowhere.\n They had cops guarding us.\n City cops.\" Lane sneered. \"I\n busted out. I wanna see the\n Mayor and find out why we\n can't have time off. I don't\n play games, Gerri. I go right\n to the top.\"\n\n\n Lane broke off. There was\n a hum outside the window. He\n whirled and stared out. The\n rounded black hulls of the two\n police paragrav-boats were\n nosing toward the force-screen.\n Lane could read the\n white numbers painted on\n their bows.\n\n\n A loudspeaker shouted into\n the room: \"Come out of there,\n Lane, or we'll blast you out.\"", "\"Backfire,\" said Lane. \"I set\n the screen to throw their\n blaster beam right back at\n them.\"\n\n\n \"And they knew you might—and\n yet they let a crowd\n congregate!\"\n\n\n Gerri reeled away from the\n window, sick.\n\n\n Lane said, \"I can do that a\n couple times more, but it\n burns out the force-globe.\n Then I'm dead.\"\n\n\n He heard the 3V newscaster's\n amplified voice: \"—approximately\n fifty killed. But\n Lane is through now. He has\n been able to outthink police\n with the help of his cybrain.\n Now police are feeding the\n problem to their giant analogue\n computer in the sub-basement\n of the Court House.\n The police analogue computer\n will be able to outthink Lane's\n cybrain, will predict Lane's\n moves in advance. Four more\n blaster cannon are coming\n down Broadway—\"", "Gerri Kin put her hand to\n her forehead. \"Why did you\n have to pick my room? Why\n did they send me to this crazy\n city? Private soldiers. Twenty\n million people living under\n a Shell like worms in a corpse.\n Earth is sick and it's going to\n kill me. What's going to happen?\"\n\n\n Lane looked sadly at her.\n Only two kinds of girls ever\n went near a Trooper—the\n crazy ones and the ones the\n city paid. Why did he have to\n be so near getting killed when\n he met one he liked? Now that\n she was showing a little less\n fear and anger, she was talking\n straight to him. She was\n good, but she wasn't acting as\n if she was too good for him.\n\n\n \"They'll start shooting pretty\n quick,\" said Lane. \"I'm\n sorry about you.\"\n\n\n \"I wish I could write a letter\n to my parents,\" she said.\n\n\n \"What?\"", "\"You're okay. I wish I\n could let you out. Old cybrain\n says I can't. Says if I drop the\n force-globe for a second,\n they'll fire into the room, and\n then we'll both be dead.\"\nGerri\n stood with folded\n arms and looked at him.\n \"Do what you have to do. As\n far as I can see, you're the\n only person in this city that\n has even a little bit of right\n on his side.\"\n\n\n Lane laughed. \"Any of them\n purple-haired broads I know\n would be crazy scared. You're\n different.\"\n\n\n \"When my grandparents\n landed on Mars, they found\n out that selfishness was a luxury.\n Martians can't afford\n it.\"", "\"Gerri Kin. Look, Lane,\n holding me is no good. It'll\n just get you in worse trouble.\n What are you trying to do?\"\n\n\n \"I wanna see the Mayor. Me\n and my buddies, we just come\n back from fighting in Chi,\n Gerri. We won. They got a\n new Mayor out there in Chi.\n He takes orders from Newyork.\"\n\n\n Gerri Kin said, \"That's\n what the force-domes did. The\n perfect defense. But also the\n road to the return to city-states.\n Anarchy.\"", "\"Why don't they clear those\n people out of the Square?\"\n Gerri cried.\n\n\n \"What? Oh, the Fans—nobody\n clears them out.\" He\n paused. \"I got one more\n chance to try.\" He raised a\n mailed glove to his mouth and\n pressed a small stud in the\n wrist. He said, \"Trooper HQ,\n this is Lane.\"\n\n\n A voice spoke in his helmet.\n \"Lane, this is Trooper\n HQ. We figured you'd call.\"\n\n\n \"Get me Colonel Klett.\"\n\n\n Thirty seconds passed. Lane\n could hear the clank of caterpillar\n treads as the mobile\n blaster cannon rolled into\n Tammany Square.\n\n\n The voice of the commanding\n officer of the Troopers\n rasped into Lane's ear:\n \"Meat-head! You broke out\n against my orders!\nNow\nlook\n at you!\"", "\"You can't,\" Lane called.\n \"This girl from Mars is here.\"\n\n\n \"I repeat, Lane—come out\n or we'll blast you out.\"\n\n\n Lane turned to the girl. \"I\n thought you were important.\"\nShe\n stood there with her\n hands together, calmly\n looking at him. \"I am. But\n you are too, to them. Mars is\n millions of miles away, and\n you're right across the Square\n from the Mayor's suite.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah, but—\" Lane shook\n his head and turned back to\n the window. \"All right, look!\n Move them boats away and\n I'll let this girl out!\"\n\n\n \"No deal, Lane. We're coming\n in.\" The police boats\n backed away slowly, then shot\n straight up, out of the line of\n vision.", "He kissed her and it filled\n him with longings for things\n he couldn't name. Then he\n stepped back and shook his\n head. \"It ain't right you\n should get killed. If I take a\n dive out that window, they\n shoot at me, not in here.\"\n\n\n \"And kill you all the sooner.\"\n\n\n \"Better than getting burned\n up in this lousy little room.\n You also got right on your\n side. There's too many damn\n Troopers and not enough good\n persons like you. Old cybrain\n says stay here, but I don't\n guess I will. I'm gonna pay\n you back for that kiss.\"\n\n\n \"But you're safe in here!\"\n\n\n \"Worry about yourself, not\n about me.\" Lane picked up the\n force-bomb and handed it to\n her. \"When I say now, press\n this. Then take your hand off,\n real fast. It'll shut off the\n screen for a second.\"", "\"Lashing police with his\n vibray,\" said the announcer,\n \"Lane broke through the cordon\n surrounding Manhattan\n Armory. Two policemen were\n killed, four others seriously\n injured. Tammany Hall has\n warned that this man is extremely\n dangerous. Citizens\n are cautioned to keep clear of\n him. Lane is an insane killer.\n He is armed with the latest\n military weapons. A built-in\n electronic brain controls his\n reflexes—\"\n\n\n \"At ease with that jazz,\"\n said Lane, and a sheathed finger\n snapped out. There was a\n loud bang. The 3V screen dissolved\n into a puddle of glasstic.\nThe Mayor.\nLane strode to the window.\n The two police boats were\n hovering above the towers.\n Lane's mailed hand snapped\n open a pouch at his belt. He\n flipped a fist-sized cube to the\n floor.", "\"Blaster cannon,\" he said.\n \"But just one. Gotcha, cybrain.\n I can beat that.\"\n\n\n He picked up the black box\n that generated his protective\n screen. Snapping it open with\n thumb-pressure, he turned a\n small dial. Then he waited.\n\n\n Again an enormous, brain-shattering\n concussion.\n\n\n Again Lane and Gerri were\n thrown to the floor. But this\n time there was a second explosion\n and a blinding flash\n from below.\n\n\n Lane laughed boyishly and\n ran to the window.\n\n\n \"Look!\" he called to Gerri.\nThere\n was a huge gap in\n the crowd below. The\n pavement was blackened and\n shattered to rubble. In and\n around the open space\n sprawled dozens of tiny black\n figures, not moving.", "\"Colonel Klett, sir. You\n said if we captured the city\n government we might have a\n chance. Well, I captured the\n city government. What do we\n do with it now?\"\nLane\n was uncomfortable in\n his dress uniform. First\n there had been a ceremony in\n Tammany Square inaugurating\n Newyork's new Military\n Protectorate, and honoring\n Trooper Lane. Now there was\n a formal dinner. Colonel Klett\n and Gerri Kin sat on either\n side of Lane.\n\n\n Klett said, \"Call me an opportunist\n if you like, Miss\n Kin, my government will be\n stable, and Mars can negotiate\n with it.\" He was a lean, sharp-featured\n man with deep\n grooves in his face, and gray\n hair.\n\n\n Gerri shook her head. \"Recognition\n for a new government\n takes time. I'm going\n back to Mars, and I think\n they'll send another ambassador\n next time. Nothing personal—I\n just don't like it\n here.\"", "Then his head jerked up, to\n a distant buzz. There were\n cops coming. Two black paragrav-boats\n whirred along the\n translucent underside of Newyork's\n anti-missile force-shield,\n the Shell.\nOld cybrain better be fast.\n Damn fast!\nThe cybrain jolted an impulse\n through his spine. Lane\n somersaulted. Cybrain had\n taken charge of his motor\n nerves. Lane's own mind was\n just along for the ride.\nHis\n body snapped into a\n stiff dive position. He began\n to plummet down, picking", "Lane looked down at the\n Square. Far below, the long,\n gleaming barrel of a blaster\n cannon caught the dim light\n filtering down through Newyork's\n Shell. The cannon trundled\n into the Square on its\n olive-drab, box-shaped caterpillar\n mounting and took up a\n position equidistant from the\n bases of the three towers.\n\n\n Now a rumble of many\n voices rose from below. Lane\n stared down to see a large\n crowd gathering in Tammany\n Square. Sound trucks were\n rolling to a stop around the\n edges of the crowd. The people\n were all looking up.\n\n\n Lane looked across the\n Square. The windows of the\n tower opposite, the ones he\n could see clearly, were crowded\n with faces. There were\n white dot faces on the balcony\n that Gerri Kin had pointed\n out as the Mayor's suite.\n\n\n The voice of a 3V newscaster\n rolled up from the Square,\n reechoing against the tower\n walls.", "He swooped over the balcony\n railing. A man was\n pointing a blaster pistol at\n him. There were five men\n on the balcony—emergency!\n Years of training and cybrain\n took over. Lane's hand shot\n out, fingers vibrating. As he\n dropped to the balcony floor in\n battle-crouch, the men slumped\n around him.\n\n\n He had seen the man with\n the blaster pistol before. It\n was the Mayor of Newyork.\n\n\n Lane stood for a moment in\n the midst of the sprawled\n men, the shrieks of the crowd\n floating up to him. Then he\n raised his glove to his lips. He\n made contact with Manhattan\n Armory.", "He was going over all their\n heads. He'd bowled those city\n cops over like paper dolls,\n back at the Armory. The\n black dog was on Lane's back.\n Old Mayor himself was going\n to hear about it.\nWhy not? Ain't old Mayor\n the CinC of the Newyork\n Troopers?\nThe humming paragrav-paks\n embedded beneath his\n shoulder blades held him\n motionless above Newyork's\n three administrative towers.\n Tammany Hall. Mayor's Palace.\n Court House. Lane cursed\n his stupidity. He hadn't found\n out which one was which\n ahead of time.", "\"I knew you didn't mean\n them orders, sir.\"\n\n\n \"If you get out of there\n alive, I'll hang you for disobeying\n them!\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. Sir, there's a girl\n here—somebody important—from\n Mars. You know, the\n planet. Sir, she told me we\n could take over the city if we\n got loose. That right, sir?\"\n\n\n There was a pause. \"Your\n girl from Mars is right, Lane.\n But it's too late now. If we\n had moved first, captured the\n city government, we might\n have done it. But they're\n ready for us. They'd chop us\n down with blaster cannon.\"\n\n\n \"Sir, I'm asking for help. I\n know you're on my side.\"" ], [ "Gerri said, \"You scared\n them so much that they were\n afraid to let you have a furlough\n in the city when you\n came back. Afraid you Troopers\n would realize that you\n could easily take over the city\n if you wanted to. You scared\n them so much that they'll let\n me be killed. They'll actually\n risk trouble with Mars just to\n kill you.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry about you. I\n mean it, I like—\"\n\n\n At that moment a titanic,\n ear-splitting explosion hurled\n him to the carpet, deafened\n and blinded him.\n\n\n He recovered and saw Gerri\n a few feet away, dazed, groping\n on hands and knees.\n\n\n Lane jumped to the window,\n looked quickly, sprang\n back. Cybrain pumped orders\n to his nervous system.", "\"You're okay. I wish I\n could let you out. Old cybrain\n says I can't. Says if I drop the\n force-globe for a second,\n they'll fire into the room, and\n then we'll both be dead.\"\nGerri\n stood with folded\n arms and looked at him.\n \"Do what you have to do. As\n far as I can see, you're the\n only person in this city that\n has even a little bit of right\n on his side.\"\n\n\n Lane laughed. \"Any of them\n purple-haired broads I know\n would be crazy scared. You're\n different.\"\n\n\n \"When my grandparents\n landed on Mars, they found\n out that selfishness was a luxury.\n Martians can't afford\n it.\"", "Gerri Kin put her hand to\n her forehead. \"Why did you\n have to pick my room? Why\n did they send me to this crazy\n city? Private soldiers. Twenty\n million people living under\n a Shell like worms in a corpse.\n Earth is sick and it's going to\n kill me. What's going to happen?\"\n\n\n Lane looked sadly at her.\n Only two kinds of girls ever\n went near a Trooper—the\n crazy ones and the ones the\n city paid. Why did he have to\n be so near getting killed when\n he met one he liked? Now that\n she was showing a little less\n fear and anger, she was talking\n straight to him. She was\n good, but she wasn't acting as\n if she was too good for him.\n\n\n \"They'll start shooting pretty\n quick,\" said Lane. \"I'm\n sorry about you.\"\n\n\n \"I wish I could write a letter\n to my parents,\" she said.\n\n\n \"What?\"", "Lane frowned with the effort\n of thinking. \"You said I\n had a little right on my side.\n That's a good feeling. Nobody\n ever told me to feel that way\n about myself before. It'll be\n better to die knowing that.\"\n\n\n \"I know,\" she said.\n\n\n The amplified voice from\n below said, \"The police analogue\n computer is now hooked\n directly to the controls of the\n blaster cannon battery. It will\n outguess Lane's cybrain and\n check his moves ahead of\n time.\"\n\n\n Lane looked at Gerri. \"How\n about giving me a kiss before\n they get us? Be nice if I kissed\n a girl like you just once in\n my life.\"\n\n\n She smiled and walked forward.\n \"You deserve it, Lane.\"", "\"I am, Lane.\" The voice of\n Colonel Klett was lower. \"I'd\n never admit it if you had a\n chance of getting out of there\n alive. You've had it, son. I'd\n only lose more men trying to\n rescue you. When they feed\n the data into that analogue\n computer, you're finished.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Lane.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. Over and out.\"\n\n\n Lane pressed the stud on\n his gauntlet again. He turned\n to Gerri.", "\"Colonel Klett, sir. You\n said if we captured the city\n government we might have a\n chance. Well, I captured the\n city government. What do we\n do with it now?\"\nLane\n was uncomfortable in\n his dress uniform. First\n there had been a ceremony in\n Tammany Square inaugurating\n Newyork's new Military\n Protectorate, and honoring\n Trooper Lane. Now there was\n a formal dinner. Colonel Klett\n and Gerri Kin sat on either\n side of Lane.\n\n\n Klett said, \"Call me an opportunist\n if you like, Miss\n Kin, my government will be\n stable, and Mars can negotiate\n with it.\" He was a lean, sharp-featured\n man with deep\n grooves in his face, and gray\n hair.\n\n\n Gerri shook her head. \"Recognition\n for a new government\n takes time. I'm going\n back to Mars, and I think\n they'll send another ambassador\n next time. Nothing personal—I\n just don't like it\n here.\"", "\"Lane is holding the Martian\n Ambassador, Gerri Kin,\n hostage. You can see the Martian\n tricolor behind his force-globe.\n Police are bringing up\n blaster cannon. Lane's defense\n is a globe of energy\n similar to the one which protects\n Newyork from aerial attack.\"\n\n\n Lane grinned back at Gerri\n Kin. \"Whole town's down\n there.\" Then his grin faded.\n Nice-looking, nice-talking girl\n like this probably cared a lot\n more about dying than he did.\n Why the hell didn't they give\n him a chance to let her out?\n Maybe he could do it now.\n\n\n Cybrain said no. It said the\n second he dropped his force-screen,\n they'd blast this room\n to hell. Poor girl from Mars,\n she didn't have a chance.", "Lane said, \"Yeah? Well, we\n done what they wanted us to\n do. We did the fighting for\n them. So we come back home\n to Newyork and they lock us\n up in the Armory. Won't pay\n us. Won't let us go nowhere.\n They had cops guarding us.\n City cops.\" Lane sneered. \"I\n busted out. I wanna see the\n Mayor and find out why we\n can't have time off. I don't\n play games, Gerri. I go right\n to the top.\"\n\n\n Lane broke off. There was\n a hum outside the window. He\n whirled and stared out. The\n rounded black hulls of the two\n police paragrav-boats were\n nosing toward the force-screen.\n Lane could read the\n white numbers painted on\n their bows.\n\n\n A loudspeaker shouted into\n the room: \"Come out of there,\n Lane, or we'll blast you out.\"", "\"Gerri Kin. Look, Lane,\n holding me is no good. It'll\n just get you in worse trouble.\n What are you trying to do?\"\n\n\n \"I wanna see the Mayor. Me\n and my buddies, we just come\n back from fighting in Chi,\n Gerri. We won. They got a\n new Mayor out there in Chi.\n He takes orders from Newyork.\"\n\n\n Gerri Kin said, \"That's\n what the force-domes did. The\n perfect defense. But also the\n road to the return to city-states.\n Anarchy.\"", "\"Well, you should have had\n brains enough to honor the\n flag outside this window.\n That's the Martian flag, soldier.\n If you've never heard of\n diplomatic immunity, you'll\n suffer for your ignorance.\"\n Her large, dark eyes narrowed.\n \"Who sent you?\"\n\n\n \"My cybrain sent me.\"\n\n\n She went openmouthed.\n \"You're\nLane\n.\"\n\n\n \"I'm the guy they told you\n about on the 3V. Where's the\n Mayor? Ain't this his place?\"\n\n\n \"No. No, you're in the\n wrong room. The wrong building.\n That's the Mayor's suite\n over there.\" She pointed. \"See\n where the balcony is? This is\n the Embassy suite. If you\n want the Mayor you'll have to\n go over there.\"", "\"You can't,\" Lane called.\n \"This girl from Mars is here.\"\n\n\n \"I repeat, Lane—come out\n or we'll blast you out.\"\n\n\n Lane turned to the girl. \"I\n thought you were important.\"\nShe\n stood there with her\n hands together, calmly\n looking at him. \"I am. But\n you are too, to them. Mars is\n millions of miles away, and\n you're right across the Square\n from the Mayor's suite.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah, but—\" Lane shook\n his head and turned back to\n the window. \"All right, look!\n Move them boats away and\n I'll let this girl out!\"\n\n\n \"No deal, Lane. We're coming\n in.\" The police boats\n backed away slowly, then shot\n straight up, out of the line of\n vision.", "Lane said, \"I'm going to\n Mars, too.\"\n\n\n \"Did she ask you to?\" demanded\n Klett.\n\n\n Lane shook his head. \"She's\n got too much class for me. But\n I like what she told me about\n Mars. It's healthy, like.\"\n\n\n Klett frowned. \"If I thought\n there was a gram of talent involved\n in your capture of the\n Mayor, Lane, I'd never release\n you from duty. But I\n know better. You beat that\n analogue computer by sheer\n stupidity—by disregarding\n your cybrain.\"\n\n\n Lane said, \"It wasn't so stupid\n if it worked.\"\n\n\n \"That's what bothers me. It\n calls for a revision in our tactics.\n We've got a way of beating\n those big computers now,\n should anyone use them\n against us.\"\n\n\n \"I just didn't want her to\n be hurt.\"", "He kissed her and it filled\n him with longings for things\n he couldn't name. Then he\n stepped back and shook his\n head. \"It ain't right you\n should get killed. If I take a\n dive out that window, they\n shoot at me, not in here.\"\n\n\n \"And kill you all the sooner.\"\n\n\n \"Better than getting burned\n up in this lousy little room.\n You also got right on your\n side. There's too many damn\n Troopers and not enough good\n persons like you. Old cybrain\n says stay here, but I don't\n guess I will. I'm gonna pay\n you back for that kiss.\"\n\n\n \"But you're safe in here!\"\n\n\n \"Worry about yourself, not\n about me.\" Lane picked up the\n force-bomb and handed it to\n her. \"When I say now, press\n this. Then take your hand off,\n real fast. It'll shut off the\n screen for a second.\"", "Lane looked down at the\n Square. Far below, the long,\n gleaming barrel of a blaster\n cannon caught the dim light\n filtering down through Newyork's\n Shell. The cannon trundled\n into the Square on its\n olive-drab, box-shaped caterpillar\n mounting and took up a\n position equidistant from the\n bases of the three towers.\n\n\n Now a rumble of many\n voices rose from below. Lane\n stared down to see a large\n crowd gathering in Tammany\n Square. Sound trucks were\n rolling to a stop around the\n edges of the crowd. The people\n were all looking up.\n\n\n Lane looked across the\n Square. The windows of the\n tower opposite, the ones he\n could see clearly, were crowded\n with faces. There were\n white dot faces on the balcony\n that Gerri Kin had pointed\n out as the Mayor's suite.\n\n\n The voice of a 3V newscaster\n rolled up from the Square,\n reechoing against the tower\n walls.", "\"Didn't you understand\n what I said?\"\n\n\n \"What's a letter?\"\n\n\n \"You don't know where\n Mars is. You don't know what\n a letter is. You probably can't\n even read and write!\"\nLane\n shrugged. He carried\n on the conversation disinterestedly,\n professionally relaxed\n before battle. \"What's\n these things I can't do? They\n important?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. The more I see of this\n city and its people, the more\n important I realize they are.\n You know how to fight, don't\n you? I'll bet you're perfect\n with those weapons.\"\n\n\n \"Listen. They been training\n me to fight since I was a little\n kid. Why shouldn't I be a\n great little fighter?\"\n\n\n \"Specialization,\" said the\n girl from Mars.\n\n\n \"What?\"", "\"Why don't they clear those\n people out of the Square?\"\n Gerri cried.\n\n\n \"What? Oh, the Fans—nobody\n clears them out.\" He\n paused. \"I got one more\n chance to try.\" He raised a\n mailed glove to his mouth and\n pressed a small stud in the\n wrist. He said, \"Trooper HQ,\n this is Lane.\"\n\n\n A voice spoke in his helmet.\n \"Lane, this is Trooper\n HQ. We figured you'd call.\"\n\n\n \"Get me Colonel Klett.\"\n\n\n Thirty seconds passed. Lane\n could hear the clank of caterpillar\n treads as the mobile\n blaster cannon rolled into\n Tammany Square.\n\n\n The voice of the commanding\n officer of the Troopers\n rasped into Lane's ear:\n \"Meat-head! You broke out\n against my orders!\nNow\nlook\n at you!\"", "Lane grinned. \"Trooper\n Lane, of the Newyork Special\n Troops, is all.\" He threw her\n a mock salute. \"You from\n outa-town, girlie. I ain't seen\n a Newyork girl with yellow\n hair in years. Orange or\n green is the action. Whatcha\n doing in the Mayor's room?\"\nThe\n girl pushed herself to\n her feet. Built, Lane saw.\n She was pretty and clean-looking,\n very out-of-town. She\n held herself straight and her\n blue-violet eyes snapped at\n him.\n\n\n \"What the devil do you\n think you're doing, soldier? I\n am a diplomat of the Grassroots\n Republic of Mars. This\n is an embassy, if you know\n what that means.\"\n\n\n \"I don't,\" said Lane, unconcerned.", "\"Whaddaya know,\" said\n Lane. \"Cybrain didn't know,\n no more than me.\"\n\n\n The girl noticed the dark\n swell of the force-globe.\n \"What's that out there?\"\n\n\n \"Force-screen. Nothing gets\n past, except maybe a full-size\n blaster-beam. Keeps cops out.\n Keeps you in. You anybody\n important?\"\n\n\n \"I told you, I'm an ambassador.\n From Mars. I'm on a\n diplomatic mission.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah? Mars a big city?\"\n\n\n She stared at him, violet\n eyes wide. \"The\nplanet\nMars.\"\n\n\n \"Planet? Oh,\nthat\nMars.\n Sure, I've heard of it—you\n gotta go by spaceship. What's\n your name?\"", "\"Blaster cannon,\" he said.\n \"But just one. Gotcha, cybrain.\n I can beat that.\"\n\n\n He picked up the black box\n that generated his protective\n screen. Snapping it open with\n thumb-pressure, he turned a\n small dial. Then he waited.\n\n\n Again an enormous, brain-shattering\n concussion.\n\n\n Again Lane and Gerri were\n thrown to the floor. But this\n time there was a second explosion\n and a blinding flash\n from below.\n\n\n Lane laughed boyishly and\n ran to the window.\n\n\n \"Look!\" he called to Gerri.\nThere\n was a huge gap in\n the crowd below. The\n pavement was blackened and\n shattered to rubble. In and\n around the open space\n sprawled dozens of tiny black\n figures, not moving.", "\"Backfire,\" said Lane. \"I set\n the screen to throw their\n blaster beam right back at\n them.\"\n\n\n \"And they knew you might—and\n yet they let a crowd\n congregate!\"\n\n\n Gerri reeled away from the\n window, sick.\n\n\n Lane said, \"I can do that a\n couple times more, but it\n burns out the force-globe.\n Then I'm dead.\"\n\n\n He heard the 3V newscaster's\n amplified voice: \"—approximately\n fifty killed. But\n Lane is through now. He has\n been able to outthink police\n with the help of his cybrain.\n Now police are feeding the\n problem to their giant analogue\n computer in the sub-basement\n of the Court House.\n The police analogue computer\n will be able to outthink Lane's\n cybrain, will predict Lane's\n moves in advance. Four more\n blaster cannon are coming\n down Broadway—\"" ], [ "\"I am, Lane.\" The voice of\n Colonel Klett was lower. \"I'd\n never admit it if you had a\n chance of getting out of there\n alive. You've had it, son. I'd\n only lose more men trying to\n rescue you. When they feed\n the data into that analogue\n computer, you're finished.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Lane.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. Over and out.\"\n\n\n Lane pressed the stud on\n his gauntlet again. He turned\n to Gerri.", "Lane frowned with the effort\n of thinking. \"You said I\n had a little right on my side.\n That's a good feeling. Nobody\n ever told me to feel that way\n about myself before. It'll be\n better to die knowing that.\"\n\n\n \"I know,\" she said.\n\n\n The amplified voice from\n below said, \"The police analogue\n computer is now hooked\n directly to the controls of the\n blaster cannon battery. It will\n outguess Lane's cybrain and\n check his moves ahead of\n time.\"\n\n\n Lane looked at Gerri. \"How\n about giving me a kiss before\n they get us? Be nice if I kissed\n a girl like you just once in\n my life.\"\n\n\n She smiled and walked forward.\n \"You deserve it, Lane.\"", "\"Didn't you understand\n what I said?\"\n\n\n \"What's a letter?\"\n\n\n \"You don't know where\n Mars is. You don't know what\n a letter is. You probably can't\n even read and write!\"\nLane\n shrugged. He carried\n on the conversation disinterestedly,\n professionally relaxed\n before battle. \"What's\n these things I can't do? They\n important?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. The more I see of this\n city and its people, the more\n important I realize they are.\n You know how to fight, don't\n you? I'll bet you're perfect\n with those weapons.\"\n\n\n \"Listen. They been training\n me to fight since I was a little\n kid. Why shouldn't I be a\n great little fighter?\"\n\n\n \"Specialization,\" said the\n girl from Mars.\n\n\n \"What?\"", "Lane grinned. \"Trooper\n Lane, of the Newyork Special\n Troops, is all.\" He threw her\n a mock salute. \"You from\n outa-town, girlie. I ain't seen\n a Newyork girl with yellow\n hair in years. Orange or\n green is the action. Whatcha\n doing in the Mayor's room?\"\nThe\n girl pushed herself to\n her feet. Built, Lane saw.\n She was pretty and clean-looking,\n very out-of-town. She\n held herself straight and her\n blue-violet eyes snapped at\n him.\n\n\n \"What the devil do you\n think you're doing, soldier? I\n am a diplomat of the Grassroots\n Republic of Mars. This\n is an embassy, if you know\n what that means.\"\n\n\n \"I don't,\" said Lane, unconcerned.", "Lane said, \"Yeah? Well, we\n done what they wanted us to\n do. We did the fighting for\n them. So we come back home\n to Newyork and they lock us\n up in the Armory. Won't pay\n us. Won't let us go nowhere.\n They had cops guarding us.\n City cops.\" Lane sneered. \"I\n busted out. I wanna see the\n Mayor and find out why we\n can't have time off. I don't\n play games, Gerri. I go right\n to the top.\"\n\n\n Lane broke off. There was\n a hum outside the window. He\n whirled and stared out. The\n rounded black hulls of the two\n police paragrav-boats were\n nosing toward the force-screen.\n Lane could read the\n white numbers painted on\n their bows.\n\n\n A loudspeaker shouted into\n the room: \"Come out of there,\n Lane, or we'll blast you out.\"", "\"You can't,\" Lane called.\n \"This girl from Mars is here.\"\n\n\n \"I repeat, Lane—come out\n or we'll blast you out.\"\n\n\n Lane turned to the girl. \"I\n thought you were important.\"\nShe\n stood there with her\n hands together, calmly\n looking at him. \"I am. But\n you are too, to them. Mars is\n millions of miles away, and\n you're right across the Square\n from the Mayor's suite.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah, but—\" Lane shook\n his head and turned back to\n the window. \"All right, look!\n Move them boats away and\n I'll let this girl out!\"\n\n\n \"No deal, Lane. We're coming\n in.\" The police boats\n backed away slowly, then shot\n straight up, out of the line of\n vision.", "The cool cybrain surgically\n implanted in him was working\n on the problem. But Lane\n had no more patience. They'd\n sweat, he thought, hating the\n chill air-currents that threw\n his hovering body this way\n and that. He glared down at\n the three towers bordering on\n the Square. He spat, and\n watched the little white speck\n fall, fall.\nLock me up in barracks.\n All I wanted was a\n little time off. Did I fight in\n Chi for them? Damn right I\n did. Just a little time off, so\n I shouldn't blow my top. Now\n the lid's gone.", "The little finger of his right\n hand vibrated in its metal\n sheath. A pale vibray leaped\n from the lensed fingertip.\n Breakthrough! The glasstic\n pane dissolved. Lane streamed\n through the window.\n\n\n The paragrav-paks cut off.\n Lane dropped lightly to the\n floor, inside the room, in battle-crouch.\n A 3V set was yammering.\n A girl screamed. Lane's\n hand shot out automatically.\n A finger vibrated. Out of the\n corner of his eye, Lane saw\n the girl fold to the floor. There\n was no one else in the room.\n Lane, still in a crouch, chewed\n his lip.\nThe Mayor?\nHis head swung around and\n he peered at the 3V set. He\n saw his own face.", "The force-bomb \"exploded\"—swelled\n or inflated, really,\n but with the speed of a blast.\n Lane glanced out the window.\n A section of the energy globe\n bellied out from above. It\n shaded the view from his window\n and re-entered the tower\n wall just below.\n\n\n Now the girl.\n\n\n He turned back to the room.\n \"Wake up, outa-towner.\" He\n gave the blonde girl a light\n dose of the vibray to slap her\n awake.\n\n\n \"Who are you?\" she said,\n shakily.", "Lane said, \"They told us in\n Trooper Academy that it's the\n men that win the wars.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, but people had forgotten\n it until the SocioSpecs of\n Newyork came up with the\n Troopers. Before the Troopers,\n governments concentrated\n on the big weapons, the\n missiles, the bombs. And the\n cities, with the Shells, were\n safe from bombs. They learned\n to be self-sufficient under\n the Shells. They were so safe,\n so isolated, that national governments\n collapsed. But you\n Troopers wiped out that feeling\n of security, when you infiltrated\n Chi and conquered\n it.\"\n\n\n \"We scared them, huh?\"", "He was going over all their\n heads. He'd bowled those city\n cops over like paper dolls,\n back at the Armory. The\n black dog was on Lane's back.\n Old Mayor himself was going\n to hear about it.\nWhy not? Ain't old Mayor\n the CinC of the Newyork\n Troopers?\nThe humming paragrav-paks\n embedded beneath his\n shoulder blades held him\n motionless above Newyork's\n three administrative towers.\n Tammany Hall. Mayor's Palace.\n Court House. Lane cursed\n his stupidity. He hadn't found\n out which one was which\n ahead of time.", "Lane looked down at the\n Square. Far below, the long,\n gleaming barrel of a blaster\n cannon caught the dim light\n filtering down through Newyork's\n Shell. The cannon trundled\n into the Square on its\n olive-drab, box-shaped caterpillar\n mounting and took up a\n position equidistant from the\n bases of the three towers.\n\n\n Now a rumble of many\n voices rose from below. Lane\n stared down to see a large\n crowd gathering in Tammany\n Square. Sound trucks were\n rolling to a stop around the\n edges of the crowd. The people\n were all looking up.\n\n\n Lane looked across the\n Square. The windows of the\n tower opposite, the ones he\n could see clearly, were crowded\n with faces. There were\n white dot faces on the balcony\n that Gerri Kin had pointed\n out as the Mayor's suite.\n\n\n The voice of a 3V newscaster\n rolled up from the Square,\n reechoing against the tower\n walls.", "\"Lane is holding the Martian\n Ambassador, Gerri Kin,\n hostage. You can see the Martian\n tricolor behind his force-globe.\n Police are bringing up\n blaster cannon. Lane's defense\n is a globe of energy\n similar to the one which protects\n Newyork from aerial attack.\"\n\n\n Lane grinned back at Gerri\n Kin. \"Whole town's down\n there.\" Then his grin faded.\n Nice-looking, nice-talking girl\n like this probably cared a lot\n more about dying than he did.\n Why the hell didn't they give\n him a chance to let her out?\n Maybe he could do it now.\n\n\n Cybrain said no. It said the\n second he dropped his force-screen,\n they'd blast this room\n to hell. Poor girl from Mars,\n she didn't have a chance.", "Gerri Kin put her hand to\n her forehead. \"Why did you\n have to pick my room? Why\n did they send me to this crazy\n city? Private soldiers. Twenty\n million people living under\n a Shell like worms in a corpse.\n Earth is sick and it's going to\n kill me. What's going to happen?\"\n\n\n Lane looked sadly at her.\n Only two kinds of girls ever\n went near a Trooper—the\n crazy ones and the ones the\n city paid. Why did he have to\n be so near getting killed when\n he met one he liked? Now that\n she was showing a little less\n fear and anger, she was talking\n straight to him. She was\n good, but she wasn't acting as\n if she was too good for him.\n\n\n \"They'll start shooting pretty\n quick,\" said Lane. \"I'm\n sorry about you.\"\n\n\n \"I wish I could write a letter\n to my parents,\" she said.\n\n\n \"What?\"", "Old cybrain, a gift from the\n Trooper surgeons, compliments\n of the city, would have\n to figure out which one. Blood\n churned in his veins, nerves\n shrieked with impatience.\n Lane waited for the electronic\n brain to come up with the answer.", "He swooped over the balcony\n railing. A man was\n pointing a blaster pistol at\n him. There were five men\n on the balcony—emergency!\n Years of training and cybrain\n took over. Lane's hand shot\n out, fingers vibrating. As he\n dropped to the balcony floor in\n battle-crouch, the men slumped\n around him.\n\n\n He had seen the man with\n the blaster pistol before. It\n was the Mayor of Newyork.\n\n\n Lane stood for a moment in\n the midst of the sprawled\n men, the shrieks of the crowd\n floating up to him. Then he\n raised his glove to his lips. He\n made contact with Manhattan\n Armory.", "\"Blaster cannon,\" he said.\n \"But just one. Gotcha, cybrain.\n I can beat that.\"\n\n\n He picked up the black box\n that generated his protective\n screen. Snapping it open with\n thumb-pressure, he turned a\n small dial. Then he waited.\n\n\n Again an enormous, brain-shattering\n concussion.\n\n\n Again Lane and Gerri were\n thrown to the floor. But this\n time there was a second explosion\n and a blinding flash\n from below.\n\n\n Lane laughed boyishly and\n ran to the window.\n\n\n \"Look!\" he called to Gerri.\nThere\n was a huge gap in\n the crowd below. The\n pavement was blackened and\n shattered to rubble. In and\n around the open space\n sprawled dozens of tiny black\n figures, not moving.", "Lane said, \"I'm going to\n Mars, too.\"\n\n\n \"Did she ask you to?\" demanded\n Klett.\n\n\n Lane shook his head. \"She's\n got too much class for me. But\n I like what she told me about\n Mars. It's healthy, like.\"\n\n\n Klett frowned. \"If I thought\n there was a gram of talent involved\n in your capture of the\n Mayor, Lane, I'd never release\n you from duty. But I\n know better. You beat that\n analogue computer by sheer\n stupidity—by disregarding\n your cybrain.\"\n\n\n Lane said, \"It wasn't so stupid\n if it worked.\"\n\n\n \"That's what bothers me. It\n calls for a revision in our tactics.\n We've got a way of beating\n those big computers now,\n should anyone use them\n against us.\"\n\n\n \"I just didn't want her to\n be hurt.\"", "\"Backfire,\" said Lane. \"I set\n the screen to throw their\n blaster beam right back at\n them.\"\n\n\n \"And they knew you might—and\n yet they let a crowd\n congregate!\"\n\n\n Gerri reeled away from the\n window, sick.\n\n\n Lane said, \"I can do that a\n couple times more, but it\n burns out the force-globe.\n Then I'm dead.\"\n\n\n He heard the 3V newscaster's\n amplified voice: \"—approximately\n fifty killed. But\n Lane is through now. He has\n been able to outthink police\n with the help of his cybrain.\n Now police are feeding the\n problem to their giant analogue\n computer in the sub-basement\n of the Court House.\n The police analogue computer\n will be able to outthink Lane's\n cybrain, will predict Lane's\n moves in advance. Four more\n blaster cannon are coming\n down Broadway—\"", "Gerri said, \"You scared\n them so much that they were\n afraid to let you have a furlough\n in the city when you\n came back. Afraid you Troopers\n would realize that you\n could easily take over the city\n if you wanted to. You scared\n them so much that they'll let\n me be killed. They'll actually\n risk trouble with Mars just to\n kill you.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry about you. I\n mean it, I like—\"\n\n\n At that moment a titanic,\n ear-splitting explosion hurled\n him to the carpet, deafened\n and blinded him.\n\n\n He recovered and saw Gerri\n a few feet away, dazed, groping\n on hands and knees.\n\n\n Lane jumped to the window,\n looked quickly, sprang\n back. Cybrain pumped orders\n to his nervous system." ], [ "Old cybrain, a gift from the\n Trooper surgeons, compliments\n of the city, would have\n to figure out which one. Blood\n churned in his veins, nerves\n shrieked with impatience.\n Lane waited for the electronic\n brain to come up with the answer.", "Then his head jerked up, to\n a distant buzz. There were\n cops coming. Two black paragrav-boats\n whirred along the\n translucent underside of Newyork's\n anti-missile force-shield,\n the Shell.\nOld cybrain better be fast.\n Damn fast!\nThe cybrain jolted an impulse\n through his spine. Lane\n somersaulted. Cybrain had\n taken charge of his motor\n nerves. Lane's own mind was\n just along for the ride.\nHis\n body snapped into a\n stiff dive position. He began\n to plummet down, picking", "The cool cybrain surgically\n implanted in him was working\n on the problem. But Lane\n had no more patience. They'd\n sweat, he thought, hating the\n chill air-currents that threw\n his hovering body this way\n and that. He glared down at\n the three towers bordering on\n the Square. He spat, and\n watched the little white speck\n fall, fall.\nLock me up in barracks.\n All I wanted was a\n little time off. Did I fight in\n Chi for them? Damn right I\n did. Just a little time off, so\n I shouldn't blow my top. Now\n the lid's gone.", "\"Backfire,\" said Lane. \"I set\n the screen to throw their\n blaster beam right back at\n them.\"\n\n\n \"And they knew you might—and\n yet they let a crowd\n congregate!\"\n\n\n Gerri reeled away from the\n window, sick.\n\n\n Lane said, \"I can do that a\n couple times more, but it\n burns out the force-globe.\n Then I'm dead.\"\n\n\n He heard the 3V newscaster's\n amplified voice: \"—approximately\n fifty killed. But\n Lane is through now. He has\n been able to outthink police\n with the help of his cybrain.\n Now police are feeding the\n problem to their giant analogue\n computer in the sub-basement\n of the Court House.\n The police analogue computer\n will be able to outthink Lane's\n cybrain, will predict Lane's\n moves in advance. Four more\n blaster cannon are coming\n down Broadway—\"", "He stepped up on to the\n window ledge. Automatically,\n the cybrain cut in his paragrav-paks.\n \"So long, outa-towner.\nNow!\n\"\n\n\n He jumped. He was hurtling\n across the Square when the\n blaster cannons opened up.\n They weren't aimed at the\n window where the little red-white-and-green\n tricolor was\n flying. But they weren't aimed\n at Lane, either. They were\n shooting wild.\nWhich way now? Looks\n like I got a chance. Old cybrain\n says fly right for the\n cannons.\nHe saw the Mayor's balcony\n ahead.\nGo to hell, old cybrain.\n I'm doing all right by myself.\n I come to see the Mayor, and\n I'm gonna see him.\nLane plunged forward. He\n heard the shouts of frightened\n men.", "\"Well, you should have had\n brains enough to honor the\n flag outside this window.\n That's the Martian flag, soldier.\n If you've never heard of\n diplomatic immunity, you'll\n suffer for your ignorance.\"\n Her large, dark eyes narrowed.\n \"Who sent you?\"\n\n\n \"My cybrain sent me.\"\n\n\n She went openmouthed.\n \"You're\nLane\n.\"\n\n\n \"I'm the guy they told you\n about on the 3V. Where's the\n Mayor? Ain't this his place?\"\n\n\n \"No. No, you're in the\n wrong room. The wrong building.\n That's the Mayor's suite\n over there.\" She pointed. \"See\n where the balcony is? This is\n the Embassy suite. If you\n want the Mayor you'll have to\n go over there.\"", "\"Exactly. The computer\n could outguess a machine, like\n your cybrain. But you introduced\n a totally unpredictable\n factor—human emotion.\n Which proves what I, as a\n military man, have always\n maintained—that the deadliest\n weapon in man's arsenal\n is still, and will always be, the\n individual soldier.\"\n\n\n \"What you just said there,\n sir,\" said Lane. \"That's why\n I'm leaving Newyork.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\" asked\n Colonel Klett.\n\n\n \"I'm tired of being a weapon,\n sir. I want to be a human\n being.\"\nEND\nWork is the elimination of the traces of work.\n—Michelangelo\nTranscriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from\nIf\nJuly 1959.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.\n copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and\n typographical errors have been corrected without note.", "\"Blaster cannon,\" he said.\n \"But just one. Gotcha, cybrain.\n I can beat that.\"\n\n\n He picked up the black box\n that generated his protective\n screen. Snapping it open with\n thumb-pressure, he turned a\n small dial. Then he waited.\n\n\n Again an enormous, brain-shattering\n concussion.\n\n\n Again Lane and Gerri were\n thrown to the floor. But this\n time there was a second explosion\n and a blinding flash\n from below.\n\n\n Lane laughed boyishly and\n ran to the window.\n\n\n \"Look!\" he called to Gerri.\nThere\n was a huge gap in\n the crowd below. The\n pavement was blackened and\n shattered to rubble. In and\n around the open space\n sprawled dozens of tiny black\n figures, not moving.", "\"You're okay. I wish I\n could let you out. Old cybrain\n says I can't. Says if I drop the\n force-globe for a second,\n they'll fire into the room, and\n then we'll both be dead.\"\nGerri\n stood with folded\n arms and looked at him.\n \"Do what you have to do. As\n far as I can see, you're the\n only person in this city that\n has even a little bit of right\n on his side.\"\n\n\n Lane laughed. \"Any of them\n purple-haired broads I know\n would be crazy scared. You're\n different.\"\n\n\n \"When my grandparents\n landed on Mars, they found\n out that selfishness was a luxury.\n Martians can't afford\n it.\"", "Lane frowned with the effort\n of thinking. \"You said I\n had a little right on my side.\n That's a good feeling. Nobody\n ever told me to feel that way\n about myself before. It'll be\n better to die knowing that.\"\n\n\n \"I know,\" she said.\n\n\n The amplified voice from\n below said, \"The police analogue\n computer is now hooked\n directly to the controls of the\n blaster cannon battery. It will\n outguess Lane's cybrain and\n check his moves ahead of\n time.\"\n\n\n Lane looked at Gerri. \"How\n about giving me a kiss before\n they get us? Be nice if I kissed\n a girl like you just once in\n my life.\"\n\n\n She smiled and walked forward.\n \"You deserve it, Lane.\"", "\"Whaddaya know,\" said\n Lane. \"Cybrain didn't know,\n no more than me.\"\n\n\n The girl noticed the dark\n swell of the force-globe.\n \"What's that out there?\"\n\n\n \"Force-screen. Nothing gets\n past, except maybe a full-size\n blaster-beam. Keeps cops out.\n Keeps you in. You anybody\n important?\"\n\n\n \"I told you, I'm an ambassador.\n From Mars. I'm on a\n diplomatic mission.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah? Mars a big city?\"\n\n\n She stared at him, violet\n eyes wide. \"The\nplanet\nMars.\"\n\n\n \"Planet? Oh,\nthat\nMars.\n Sure, I've heard of it—you\n gotta go by spaceship. What's\n your name?\"", "He kissed her and it filled\n him with longings for things\n he couldn't name. Then he\n stepped back and shook his\n head. \"It ain't right you\n should get killed. If I take a\n dive out that window, they\n shoot at me, not in here.\"\n\n\n \"And kill you all the sooner.\"\n\n\n \"Better than getting burned\n up in this lousy little room.\n You also got right on your\n side. There's too many damn\n Troopers and not enough good\n persons like you. Old cybrain\n says stay here, but I don't\n guess I will. I'm gonna pay\n you back for that kiss.\"\n\n\n \"But you're safe in here!\"\n\n\n \"Worry about yourself, not\n about me.\" Lane picked up the\n force-bomb and handed it to\n her. \"When I say now, press\n this. Then take your hand off,\n real fast. It'll shut off the\n screen for a second.\"", "Gerri said, \"You scared\n them so much that they were\n afraid to let you have a furlough\n in the city when you\n came back. Afraid you Troopers\n would realize that you\n could easily take over the city\n if you wanted to. You scared\n them so much that they'll let\n me be killed. They'll actually\n risk trouble with Mars just to\n kill you.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry about you. I\n mean it, I like—\"\n\n\n At that moment a titanic,\n ear-splitting explosion hurled\n him to the carpet, deafened\n and blinded him.\n\n\n He recovered and saw Gerri\n a few feet away, dazed, groping\n on hands and knees.\n\n\n Lane jumped to the window,\n looked quickly, sprang\n back. Cybrain pumped orders\n to his nervous system.", "up speed. His mailed hands\n glittered like arrowheads out\n in front. They pointed to a\n particular window in one of\n the towers. A predatory excitement\n rippled through him\n as he sailed down through the\n air. It was like going into\n battle again. A little red-white-and-green\n flag fluttered\n on a staff below the window.\n Whose flag? The city flag was\n orange and blue. He shrugged\n away the problem. Cybrain\n knew what it was doing.", "\"Lane is holding the Martian\n Ambassador, Gerri Kin,\n hostage. You can see the Martian\n tricolor behind his force-globe.\n Police are bringing up\n blaster cannon. Lane's defense\n is a globe of energy\n similar to the one which protects\n Newyork from aerial attack.\"\n\n\n Lane grinned back at Gerri\n Kin. \"Whole town's down\n there.\" Then his grin faded.\n Nice-looking, nice-talking girl\n like this probably cared a lot\n more about dying than he did.\n Why the hell didn't they give\n him a chance to let her out?\n Maybe he could do it now.\n\n\n Cybrain said no. It said the\n second he dropped his force-screen,\n they'd blast this room\n to hell. Poor girl from Mars,\n she didn't have a chance.", "Lane said, \"I'm going to\n Mars, too.\"\n\n\n \"Did she ask you to?\" demanded\n Klett.\n\n\n Lane shook his head. \"She's\n got too much class for me. But\n I like what she told me about\n Mars. It's healthy, like.\"\n\n\n Klett frowned. \"If I thought\n there was a gram of talent involved\n in your capture of the\n Mayor, Lane, I'd never release\n you from duty. But I\n know better. You beat that\n analogue computer by sheer\n stupidity—by disregarding\n your cybrain.\"\n\n\n Lane said, \"It wasn't so stupid\n if it worked.\"\n\n\n \"That's what bothers me. It\n calls for a revision in our tactics.\n We've got a way of beating\n those big computers now,\n should anyone use them\n against us.\"\n\n\n \"I just didn't want her to\n be hurt.\"", "\"Lashing police with his\n vibray,\" said the announcer,\n \"Lane broke through the cordon\n surrounding Manhattan\n Armory. Two policemen were\n killed, four others seriously\n injured. Tammany Hall has\n warned that this man is extremely\n dangerous. Citizens\n are cautioned to keep clear of\n him. Lane is an insane killer.\n He is armed with the latest\n military weapons. A built-in\n electronic brain controls his\n reflexes—\"\n\n\n \"At ease with that jazz,\"\n said Lane, and a sheathed finger\n snapped out. There was a\n loud bang. The 3V screen dissolved\n into a puddle of glasstic.\nThe Mayor.\nLane strode to the window.\n The two police boats were\n hovering above the towers.\n Lane's mailed hand snapped\n open a pouch at his belt. He\n flipped a fist-sized cube to the\n floor.", "He swooped over the balcony\n railing. A man was\n pointing a blaster pistol at\n him. There were five men\n on the balcony—emergency!\n Years of training and cybrain\n took over. Lane's hand shot\n out, fingers vibrating. As he\n dropped to the balcony floor in\n battle-crouch, the men slumped\n around him.\n\n\n He had seen the man with\n the blaster pistol before. It\n was the Mayor of Newyork.\n\n\n Lane stood for a moment in\n the midst of the sprawled\n men, the shrieks of the crowd\n floating up to him. Then he\n raised his glove to his lips. He\n made contact with Manhattan\n Armory.", "The little finger of his right\n hand vibrated in its metal\n sheath. A pale vibray leaped\n from the lensed fingertip.\n Breakthrough! The glasstic\n pane dissolved. Lane streamed\n through the window.\n\n\n The paragrav-paks cut off.\n Lane dropped lightly to the\n floor, inside the room, in battle-crouch.\n A 3V set was yammering.\n A girl screamed. Lane's\n hand shot out automatically.\n A finger vibrated. Out of the\n corner of his eye, Lane saw\n the girl fold to the floor. There\n was no one else in the room.\n Lane, still in a crouch, chewed\n his lip.\nThe Mayor?\nHis head swung around and\n he peered at the 3V set. He\n saw his own face.", "He was going over all their\n heads. He'd bowled those city\n cops over like paper dolls,\n back at the Armory. The\n black dog was on Lane's back.\n Old Mayor himself was going\n to hear about it.\nWhy not? Ain't old Mayor\n the CinC of the Newyork\n Troopers?\nThe humming paragrav-paks\n embedded beneath his\n shoulder blades held him\n motionless above Newyork's\n three administrative towers.\n Tammany Hall. Mayor's Palace.\n Court House. Lane cursed\n his stupidity. He hadn't found\n out which one was which\n ahead of time." ], [ "\"Didn't you understand\n what I said?\"\n\n\n \"What's a letter?\"\n\n\n \"You don't know where\n Mars is. You don't know what\n a letter is. You probably can't\n even read and write!\"\nLane\n shrugged. He carried\n on the conversation disinterestedly,\n professionally relaxed\n before battle. \"What's\n these things I can't do? They\n important?\"\n\n\n \"Yes. The more I see of this\n city and its people, the more\n important I realize they are.\n You know how to fight, don't\n you? I'll bet you're perfect\n with those weapons.\"\n\n\n \"Listen. They been training\n me to fight since I was a little\n kid. Why shouldn't I be a\n great little fighter?\"\n\n\n \"Specialization,\" said the\n girl from Mars.\n\n\n \"What?\"", "Lane said, \"Yeah? Well, we\n done what they wanted us to\n do. We did the fighting for\n them. So we come back home\n to Newyork and they lock us\n up in the Armory. Won't pay\n us. Won't let us go nowhere.\n They had cops guarding us.\n City cops.\" Lane sneered. \"I\n busted out. I wanna see the\n Mayor and find out why we\n can't have time off. I don't\n play games, Gerri. I go right\n to the top.\"\n\n\n Lane broke off. There was\n a hum outside the window. He\n whirled and stared out. The\n rounded black hulls of the two\n police paragrav-boats were\n nosing toward the force-screen.\n Lane could read the\n white numbers painted on\n their bows.\n\n\n A loudspeaker shouted into\n the room: \"Come out of there,\n Lane, or we'll blast you out.\"", "Gerri Kin put her hand to\n her forehead. \"Why did you\n have to pick my room? Why\n did they send me to this crazy\n city? Private soldiers. Twenty\n million people living under\n a Shell like worms in a corpse.\n Earth is sick and it's going to\n kill me. What's going to happen?\"\n\n\n Lane looked sadly at her.\n Only two kinds of girls ever\n went near a Trooper—the\n crazy ones and the ones the\n city paid. Why did he have to\n be so near getting killed when\n he met one he liked? Now that\n she was showing a little less\n fear and anger, she was talking\n straight to him. She was\n good, but she wasn't acting as\n if she was too good for him.\n\n\n \"They'll start shooting pretty\n quick,\" said Lane. \"I'm\n sorry about you.\"\n\n\n \"I wish I could write a letter\n to my parents,\" she said.\n\n\n \"What?\"", "\"You can't,\" Lane called.\n \"This girl from Mars is here.\"\n\n\n \"I repeat, Lane—come out\n or we'll blast you out.\"\n\n\n Lane turned to the girl. \"I\n thought you were important.\"\nShe\n stood there with her\n hands together, calmly\n looking at him. \"I am. But\n you are too, to them. Mars is\n millions of miles away, and\n you're right across the Square\n from the Mayor's suite.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah, but—\" Lane shook\n his head and turned back to\n the window. \"All right, look!\n Move them boats away and\n I'll let this girl out!\"\n\n\n \"No deal, Lane. We're coming\n in.\" The police boats\n backed away slowly, then shot\n straight up, out of the line of\n vision.", "\"I am, Lane.\" The voice of\n Colonel Klett was lower. \"I'd\n never admit it if you had a\n chance of getting out of there\n alive. You've had it, son. I'd\n only lose more men trying to\n rescue you. When they feed\n the data into that analogue\n computer, you're finished.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Lane.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. Over and out.\"\n\n\n Lane pressed the stud on\n his gauntlet again. He turned\n to Gerri.", "Lane frowned with the effort\n of thinking. \"You said I\n had a little right on my side.\n That's a good feeling. Nobody\n ever told me to feel that way\n about myself before. It'll be\n better to die knowing that.\"\n\n\n \"I know,\" she said.\n\n\n The amplified voice from\n below said, \"The police analogue\n computer is now hooked\n directly to the controls of the\n blaster cannon battery. It will\n outguess Lane's cybrain and\n check his moves ahead of\n time.\"\n\n\n Lane looked at Gerri. \"How\n about giving me a kiss before\n they get us? Be nice if I kissed\n a girl like you just once in\n my life.\"\n\n\n She smiled and walked forward.\n \"You deserve it, Lane.\"", "He was going over all their\n heads. He'd bowled those city\n cops over like paper dolls,\n back at the Armory. The\n black dog was on Lane's back.\n Old Mayor himself was going\n to hear about it.\nWhy not? Ain't old Mayor\n the CinC of the Newyork\n Troopers?\nThe humming paragrav-paks\n embedded beneath his\n shoulder blades held him\n motionless above Newyork's\n three administrative towers.\n Tammany Hall. Mayor's Palace.\n Court House. Lane cursed\n his stupidity. He hadn't found\n out which one was which\n ahead of time.", "\"Lane is holding the Martian\n Ambassador, Gerri Kin,\n hostage. You can see the Martian\n tricolor behind his force-globe.\n Police are bringing up\n blaster cannon. Lane's defense\n is a globe of energy\n similar to the one which protects\n Newyork from aerial attack.\"\n\n\n Lane grinned back at Gerri\n Kin. \"Whole town's down\n there.\" Then his grin faded.\n Nice-looking, nice-talking girl\n like this probably cared a lot\n more about dying than he did.\n Why the hell didn't they give\n him a chance to let her out?\n Maybe he could do it now.\n\n\n Cybrain said no. It said the\n second he dropped his force-screen,\n they'd blast this room\n to hell. Poor girl from Mars,\n she didn't have a chance.", "Lane grinned. \"Trooper\n Lane, of the Newyork Special\n Troops, is all.\" He threw her\n a mock salute. \"You from\n outa-town, girlie. I ain't seen\n a Newyork girl with yellow\n hair in years. Orange or\n green is the action. Whatcha\n doing in the Mayor's room?\"\nThe\n girl pushed herself to\n her feet. Built, Lane saw.\n She was pretty and clean-looking,\n very out-of-town. She\n held herself straight and her\n blue-violet eyes snapped at\n him.\n\n\n \"What the devil do you\n think you're doing, soldier? I\n am a diplomat of the Grassroots\n Republic of Mars. This\n is an embassy, if you know\n what that means.\"\n\n\n \"I don't,\" said Lane, unconcerned.", "Lane looked down at the\n Square. Far below, the long,\n gleaming barrel of a blaster\n cannon caught the dim light\n filtering down through Newyork's\n Shell. The cannon trundled\n into the Square on its\n olive-drab, box-shaped caterpillar\n mounting and took up a\n position equidistant from the\n bases of the three towers.\n\n\n Now a rumble of many\n voices rose from below. Lane\n stared down to see a large\n crowd gathering in Tammany\n Square. Sound trucks were\n rolling to a stop around the\n edges of the crowd. The people\n were all looking up.\n\n\n Lane looked across the\n Square. The windows of the\n tower opposite, the ones he\n could see clearly, were crowded\n with faces. There were\n white dot faces on the balcony\n that Gerri Kin had pointed\n out as the Mayor's suite.\n\n\n The voice of a 3V newscaster\n rolled up from the Square,\n reechoing against the tower\n walls.", "They keep\n Troopers in the Armory and\n teach them how to fight. They\n don't teach them about their\n own city, that they'll be fighting\n for. There's no time. From\n seven years old up, Troopers\n have too much to learn about\n fighting.\nThe Mayor was behind one\n of those thousands of windows.", "The little finger of his right\n hand vibrated in its metal\n sheath. A pale vibray leaped\n from the lensed fingertip.\n Breakthrough! The glasstic\n pane dissolved. Lane streamed\n through the window.\n\n\n The paragrav-paks cut off.\n Lane dropped lightly to the\n floor, inside the room, in battle-crouch.\n A 3V set was yammering.\n A girl screamed. Lane's\n hand shot out automatically.\n A finger vibrated. Out of the\n corner of his eye, Lane saw\n the girl fold to the floor. There\n was no one else in the room.\n Lane, still in a crouch, chewed\n his lip.\nThe Mayor?\nHis head swung around and\n he peered at the 3V set. He\n saw his own face.", "\"Backfire,\" said Lane. \"I set\n the screen to throw their\n blaster beam right back at\n them.\"\n\n\n \"And they knew you might—and\n yet they let a crowd\n congregate!\"\n\n\n Gerri reeled away from the\n window, sick.\n\n\n Lane said, \"I can do that a\n couple times more, but it\n burns out the force-globe.\n Then I'm dead.\"\n\n\n He heard the 3V newscaster's\n amplified voice: \"—approximately\n fifty killed. But\n Lane is through now. He has\n been able to outthink police\n with the help of his cybrain.\n Now police are feeding the\n problem to their giant analogue\n computer in the sub-basement\n of the Court House.\n The police analogue computer\n will be able to outthink Lane's\n cybrain, will predict Lane's\n moves in advance. Four more\n blaster cannon are coming\n down Broadway—\"", "\"Specialization. Everyone\n I've met in this city is a specialist.\n SocioSpecs run the\n government. TechnoSpecs run\n the machinery. Troopers fight\n the wars. And ninety per cent\n of the people don't work at all\n because they're not trained to\n do anything.\"\n\n\n \"The Fans,\" said Lane.\n \"They got it soft. That's them\n down there, come to watch the\n fight.\"\n\n\n \"You know why you were\n kept in the Armory, Lane? I\n heard them talking about it,\n at the dinner I went to last\n night.\"\n\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n\n \"Because they're afraid of\n the Troopers. You men did too\n good a job out in Chi. You are\n the deadliest weapon that has\n ever been made. You. Single\n airborne infantrymen!\"", "He swooped over the balcony\n railing. A man was\n pointing a blaster pistol at\n him. There were five men\n on the balcony—emergency!\n Years of training and cybrain\n took over. Lane's hand shot\n out, fingers vibrating. As he\n dropped to the balcony floor in\n battle-crouch, the men slumped\n around him.\n\n\n He had seen the man with\n the blaster pistol before. It\n was the Mayor of Newyork.\n\n\n Lane stood for a moment in\n the midst of the sprawled\n men, the shrieks of the crowd\n floating up to him. Then he\n raised his glove to his lips. He\n made contact with Manhattan\n Armory.", "Lane said, \"I'm going to\n Mars, too.\"\n\n\n \"Did she ask you to?\" demanded\n Klett.\n\n\n Lane shook his head. \"She's\n got too much class for me. But\n I like what she told me about\n Mars. It's healthy, like.\"\n\n\n Klett frowned. \"If I thought\n there was a gram of talent involved\n in your capture of the\n Mayor, Lane, I'd never release\n you from duty. But I\n know better. You beat that\n analogue computer by sheer\n stupidity—by disregarding\n your cybrain.\"\n\n\n Lane said, \"It wasn't so stupid\n if it worked.\"\n\n\n \"That's what bothers me. It\n calls for a revision in our tactics.\n We've got a way of beating\n those big computers now,\n should anyone use them\n against us.\"\n\n\n \"I just didn't want her to\n be hurt.\"", "\"Well, you should have had\n brains enough to honor the\n flag outside this window.\n That's the Martian flag, soldier.\n If you've never heard of\n diplomatic immunity, you'll\n suffer for your ignorance.\"\n Her large, dark eyes narrowed.\n \"Who sent you?\"\n\n\n \"My cybrain sent me.\"\n\n\n She went openmouthed.\n \"You're\nLane\n.\"\n\n\n \"I'm the guy they told you\n about on the 3V. Where's the\n Mayor? Ain't this his place?\"\n\n\n \"No. No, you're in the\n wrong room. The wrong building.\n That's the Mayor's suite\n over there.\" She pointed. \"See\n where the balcony is? This is\n the Embassy suite. If you\n want the Mayor you'll have to\n go over there.\"", "The cool cybrain surgically\n implanted in him was working\n on the problem. But Lane\n had no more patience. They'd\n sweat, he thought, hating the\n chill air-currents that threw\n his hovering body this way\n and that. He glared down at\n the three towers bordering on\n the Square. He spat, and\n watched the little white speck\n fall, fall.\nLock me up in barracks.\n All I wanted was a\n little time off. Did I fight in\n Chi for them? Damn right I\n did. Just a little time off, so\n I shouldn't blow my top. Now\n the lid's gone.", "\"Blaster cannon,\" he said.\n \"But just one. Gotcha, cybrain.\n I can beat that.\"\n\n\n He picked up the black box\n that generated his protective\n screen. Snapping it open with\n thumb-pressure, he turned a\n small dial. Then he waited.\n\n\n Again an enormous, brain-shattering\n concussion.\n\n\n Again Lane and Gerri were\n thrown to the floor. But this\n time there was a second explosion\n and a blinding flash\n from below.\n\n\n Lane laughed boyishly and\n ran to the window.\n\n\n \"Look!\" he called to Gerri.\nThere\n was a huge gap in\n the crowd below. The\n pavement was blackened and\n shattered to rubble. In and\n around the open space\n sprawled dozens of tiny black\n figures, not moving.", "\"Whaddaya know,\" said\n Lane. \"Cybrain didn't know,\n no more than me.\"\n\n\n The girl noticed the dark\n swell of the force-globe.\n \"What's that out there?\"\n\n\n \"Force-screen. Nothing gets\n past, except maybe a full-size\n blaster-beam. Keeps cops out.\n Keeps you in. You anybody\n important?\"\n\n\n \"I told you, I'm an ambassador.\n From Mars. I'm on a\n diplomatic mission.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah? Mars a big city?\"\n\n\n She stared at him, violet\n eyes wide. \"The\nplanet\nMars.\"\n\n\n \"Planet? Oh,\nthat\nMars.\n Sure, I've heard of it—you\n gotta go by spaceship. What's\n your name?\"" ], [ "Lane frowned with the effort\n of thinking. \"You said I\n had a little right on my side.\n That's a good feeling. Nobody\n ever told me to feel that way\n about myself before. It'll be\n better to die knowing that.\"\n\n\n \"I know,\" she said.\n\n\n The amplified voice from\n below said, \"The police analogue\n computer is now hooked\n directly to the controls of the\n blaster cannon battery. It will\n outguess Lane's cybrain and\n check his moves ahead of\n time.\"\n\n\n Lane looked at Gerri. \"How\n about giving me a kiss before\n they get us? Be nice if I kissed\n a girl like you just once in\n my life.\"\n\n\n She smiled and walked forward.\n \"You deserve it, Lane.\"", "\"I am, Lane.\" The voice of\n Colonel Klett was lower. \"I'd\n never admit it if you had a\n chance of getting out of there\n alive. You've had it, son. I'd\n only lose more men trying to\n rescue you. When they feed\n the data into that analogue\n computer, you're finished.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Lane.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. Over and out.\"\n\n\n Lane pressed the stud on\n his gauntlet again. He turned\n to Gerri.", "Gerri Kin put her hand to\n her forehead. \"Why did you\n have to pick my room? Why\n did they send me to this crazy\n city? Private soldiers. Twenty\n million people living under\n a Shell like worms in a corpse.\n Earth is sick and it's going to\n kill me. What's going to happen?\"\n\n\n Lane looked sadly at her.\n Only two kinds of girls ever\n went near a Trooper—the\n crazy ones and the ones the\n city paid. Why did he have to\n be so near getting killed when\n he met one he liked? Now that\n she was showing a little less\n fear and anger, she was talking\n straight to him. She was\n good, but she wasn't acting as\n if she was too good for him.\n\n\n \"They'll start shooting pretty\n quick,\" said Lane. \"I'm\n sorry about you.\"\n\n\n \"I wish I could write a letter\n to my parents,\" she said.\n\n\n \"What?\"", "Gerri said, \"You scared\n them so much that they were\n afraid to let you have a furlough\n in the city when you\n came back. Afraid you Troopers\n would realize that you\n could easily take over the city\n if you wanted to. You scared\n them so much that they'll let\n me be killed. They'll actually\n risk trouble with Mars just to\n kill you.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry about you. I\n mean it, I like—\"\n\n\n At that moment a titanic,\n ear-splitting explosion hurled\n him to the carpet, deafened\n and blinded him.\n\n\n He recovered and saw Gerri\n a few feet away, dazed, groping\n on hands and knees.\n\n\n Lane jumped to the window,\n looked quickly, sprang\n back. Cybrain pumped orders\n to his nervous system.", "He kissed her and it filled\n him with longings for things\n he couldn't name. Then he\n stepped back and shook his\n head. \"It ain't right you\n should get killed. If I take a\n dive out that window, they\n shoot at me, not in here.\"\n\n\n \"And kill you all the sooner.\"\n\n\n \"Better than getting burned\n up in this lousy little room.\n You also got right on your\n side. There's too many damn\n Troopers and not enough good\n persons like you. Old cybrain\n says stay here, but I don't\n guess I will. I'm gonna pay\n you back for that kiss.\"\n\n\n \"But you're safe in here!\"\n\n\n \"Worry about yourself, not\n about me.\" Lane picked up the\n force-bomb and handed it to\n her. \"When I say now, press\n this. Then take your hand off,\n real fast. It'll shut off the\n screen for a second.\"", "\"You're okay. I wish I\n could let you out. Old cybrain\n says I can't. Says if I drop the\n force-globe for a second,\n they'll fire into the room, and\n then we'll both be dead.\"\nGerri\n stood with folded\n arms and looked at him.\n \"Do what you have to do. As\n far as I can see, you're the\n only person in this city that\n has even a little bit of right\n on his side.\"\n\n\n Lane laughed. \"Any of them\n purple-haired broads I know\n would be crazy scared. You're\n different.\"\n\n\n \"When my grandparents\n landed on Mars, they found\n out that selfishness was a luxury.\n Martians can't afford\n it.\"", "\"Gerri Kin. Look, Lane,\n holding me is no good. It'll\n just get you in worse trouble.\n What are you trying to do?\"\n\n\n \"I wanna see the Mayor. Me\n and my buddies, we just come\n back from fighting in Chi,\n Gerri. We won. They got a\n new Mayor out there in Chi.\n He takes orders from Newyork.\"\n\n\n Gerri Kin said, \"That's\n what the force-domes did. The\n perfect defense. But also the\n road to the return to city-states.\n Anarchy.\"", "Lane said, \"Yeah? Well, we\n done what they wanted us to\n do. We did the fighting for\n them. So we come back home\n to Newyork and they lock us\n up in the Armory. Won't pay\n us. Won't let us go nowhere.\n They had cops guarding us.\n City cops.\" Lane sneered. \"I\n busted out. I wanna see the\n Mayor and find out why we\n can't have time off. I don't\n play games, Gerri. I go right\n to the top.\"\n\n\n Lane broke off. There was\n a hum outside the window. He\n whirled and stared out. The\n rounded black hulls of the two\n police paragrav-boats were\n nosing toward the force-screen.\n Lane could read the\n white numbers painted on\n their bows.\n\n\n A loudspeaker shouted into\n the room: \"Come out of there,\n Lane, or we'll blast you out.\"", "\"Lane is holding the Martian\n Ambassador, Gerri Kin,\n hostage. You can see the Martian\n tricolor behind his force-globe.\n Police are bringing up\n blaster cannon. Lane's defense\n is a globe of energy\n similar to the one which protects\n Newyork from aerial attack.\"\n\n\n Lane grinned back at Gerri\n Kin. \"Whole town's down\n there.\" Then his grin faded.\n Nice-looking, nice-talking girl\n like this probably cared a lot\n more about dying than he did.\n Why the hell didn't they give\n him a chance to let her out?\n Maybe he could do it now.\n\n\n Cybrain said no. It said the\n second he dropped his force-screen,\n they'd blast this room\n to hell. Poor girl from Mars,\n she didn't have a chance.", "Lane grinned. \"Trooper\n Lane, of the Newyork Special\n Troops, is all.\" He threw her\n a mock salute. \"You from\n outa-town, girlie. I ain't seen\n a Newyork girl with yellow\n hair in years. Orange or\n green is the action. Whatcha\n doing in the Mayor's room?\"\nThe\n girl pushed herself to\n her feet. Built, Lane saw.\n She was pretty and clean-looking,\n very out-of-town. She\n held herself straight and her\n blue-violet eyes snapped at\n him.\n\n\n \"What the devil do you\n think you're doing, soldier? I\n am a diplomat of the Grassroots\n Republic of Mars. This\n is an embassy, if you know\n what that means.\"\n\n\n \"I don't,\" said Lane, unconcerned.", "\"Colonel Klett, sir. You\n said if we captured the city\n government we might have a\n chance. Well, I captured the\n city government. What do we\n do with it now?\"\nLane\n was uncomfortable in\n his dress uniform. First\n there had been a ceremony in\n Tammany Square inaugurating\n Newyork's new Military\n Protectorate, and honoring\n Trooper Lane. Now there was\n a formal dinner. Colonel Klett\n and Gerri Kin sat on either\n side of Lane.\n\n\n Klett said, \"Call me an opportunist\n if you like, Miss\n Kin, my government will be\n stable, and Mars can negotiate\n with it.\" He was a lean, sharp-featured\n man with deep\n grooves in his face, and gray\n hair.\n\n\n Gerri shook her head. \"Recognition\n for a new government\n takes time. I'm going\n back to Mars, and I think\n they'll send another ambassador\n next time. Nothing personal—I\n just don't like it\n here.\"", "\"Why don't they clear those\n people out of the Square?\"\n Gerri cried.\n\n\n \"What? Oh, the Fans—nobody\n clears them out.\" He\n paused. \"I got one more\n chance to try.\" He raised a\n mailed glove to his mouth and\n pressed a small stud in the\n wrist. He said, \"Trooper HQ,\n this is Lane.\"\n\n\n A voice spoke in his helmet.\n \"Lane, this is Trooper\n HQ. We figured you'd call.\"\n\n\n \"Get me Colonel Klett.\"\n\n\n Thirty seconds passed. Lane\n could hear the clank of caterpillar\n treads as the mobile\n blaster cannon rolled into\n Tammany Square.\n\n\n The voice of the commanding\n officer of the Troopers\n rasped into Lane's ear:\n \"Meat-head! You broke out\n against my orders!\nNow\nlook\n at you!\"", "\"You can't,\" Lane called.\n \"This girl from Mars is here.\"\n\n\n \"I repeat, Lane—come out\n or we'll blast you out.\"\n\n\n Lane turned to the girl. \"I\n thought you were important.\"\nShe\n stood there with her\n hands together, calmly\n looking at him. \"I am. But\n you are too, to them. Mars is\n millions of miles away, and\n you're right across the Square\n from the Mayor's suite.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah, but—\" Lane shook\n his head and turned back to\n the window. \"All right, look!\n Move them boats away and\n I'll let this girl out!\"\n\n\n \"No deal, Lane. We're coming\n in.\" The police boats\n backed away slowly, then shot\n straight up, out of the line of\n vision.", "\"Backfire,\" said Lane. \"I set\n the screen to throw their\n blaster beam right back at\n them.\"\n\n\n \"And they knew you might—and\n yet they let a crowd\n congregate!\"\n\n\n Gerri reeled away from the\n window, sick.\n\n\n Lane said, \"I can do that a\n couple times more, but it\n burns out the force-globe.\n Then I'm dead.\"\n\n\n He heard the 3V newscaster's\n amplified voice: \"—approximately\n fifty killed. But\n Lane is through now. He has\n been able to outthink police\n with the help of his cybrain.\n Now police are feeding the\n problem to their giant analogue\n computer in the sub-basement\n of the Court House.\n The police analogue computer\n will be able to outthink Lane's\n cybrain, will predict Lane's\n moves in advance. Four more\n blaster cannon are coming\n down Broadway—\"", "\"Blaster cannon,\" he said.\n \"But just one. Gotcha, cybrain.\n I can beat that.\"\n\n\n He picked up the black box\n that generated his protective\n screen. Snapping it open with\n thumb-pressure, he turned a\n small dial. Then he waited.\n\n\n Again an enormous, brain-shattering\n concussion.\n\n\n Again Lane and Gerri were\n thrown to the floor. But this\n time there was a second explosion\n and a blinding flash\n from below.\n\n\n Lane laughed boyishly and\n ran to the window.\n\n\n \"Look!\" he called to Gerri.\nThere\n was a huge gap in\n the crowd below. The\n pavement was blackened and\n shattered to rubble. In and\n around the open space\n sprawled dozens of tiny black\n figures, not moving.", "\"Well, you should have had\n brains enough to honor the\n flag outside this window.\n That's the Martian flag, soldier.\n If you've never heard of\n diplomatic immunity, you'll\n suffer for your ignorance.\"\n Her large, dark eyes narrowed.\n \"Who sent you?\"\n\n\n \"My cybrain sent me.\"\n\n\n She went openmouthed.\n \"You're\nLane\n.\"\n\n\n \"I'm the guy they told you\n about on the 3V. Where's the\n Mayor? Ain't this his place?\"\n\n\n \"No. No, you're in the\n wrong room. The wrong building.\n That's the Mayor's suite\n over there.\" She pointed. \"See\n where the balcony is? This is\n the Embassy suite. If you\n want the Mayor you'll have to\n go over there.\"", "The force-bomb \"exploded\"—swelled\n or inflated, really,\n but with the speed of a blast.\n Lane glanced out the window.\n A section of the energy globe\n bellied out from above. It\n shaded the view from his window\n and re-entered the tower\n wall just below.\n\n\n Now the girl.\n\n\n He turned back to the room.\n \"Wake up, outa-towner.\" He\n gave the blonde girl a light\n dose of the vibray to slap her\n awake.\n\n\n \"Who are you?\" she said,\n shakily.", "Lane looked down at the\n Square. Far below, the long,\n gleaming barrel of a blaster\n cannon caught the dim light\n filtering down through Newyork's\n Shell. The cannon trundled\n into the Square on its\n olive-drab, box-shaped caterpillar\n mounting and took up a\n position equidistant from the\n bases of the three towers.\n\n\n Now a rumble of many\n voices rose from below. Lane\n stared down to see a large\n crowd gathering in Tammany\n Square. Sound trucks were\n rolling to a stop around the\n edges of the crowd. The people\n were all looking up.\n\n\n Lane looked across the\n Square. The windows of the\n tower opposite, the ones he\n could see clearly, were crowded\n with faces. There were\n white dot faces on the balcony\n that Gerri Kin had pointed\n out as the Mayor's suite.\n\n\n The voice of a 3V newscaster\n rolled up from the Square,\n reechoing against the tower\n walls.", "Lane said, \"I'm going to\n Mars, too.\"\n\n\n \"Did she ask you to?\" demanded\n Klett.\n\n\n Lane shook his head. \"She's\n got too much class for me. But\n I like what she told me about\n Mars. It's healthy, like.\"\n\n\n Klett frowned. \"If I thought\n there was a gram of talent involved\n in your capture of the\n Mayor, Lane, I'd never release\n you from duty. But I\n know better. You beat that\n analogue computer by sheer\n stupidity—by disregarding\n your cybrain.\"\n\n\n Lane said, \"It wasn't so stupid\n if it worked.\"\n\n\n \"That's what bothers me. It\n calls for a revision in our tactics.\n We've got a way of beating\n those big computers now,\n should anyone use them\n against us.\"\n\n\n \"I just didn't want her to\n be hurt.\"", "He swooped over the balcony\n railing. A man was\n pointing a blaster pistol at\n him. There were five men\n on the balcony—emergency!\n Years of training and cybrain\n took over. Lane's hand shot\n out, fingers vibrating. As he\n dropped to the balcony floor in\n battle-crouch, the men slumped\n around him.\n\n\n He had seen the man with\n the blaster pistol before. It\n was the Mayor of Newyork.\n\n\n Lane stood for a moment in\n the midst of the sprawled\n men, the shrieks of the crowd\n floating up to him. Then he\n raised his glove to his lips. He\n made contact with Manhattan\n Armory." ], [ "\"Backfire,\" said Lane. \"I set\n the screen to throw their\n blaster beam right back at\n them.\"\n\n\n \"And they knew you might—and\n yet they let a crowd\n congregate!\"\n\n\n Gerri reeled away from the\n window, sick.\n\n\n Lane said, \"I can do that a\n couple times more, but it\n burns out the force-globe.\n Then I'm dead.\"\n\n\n He heard the 3V newscaster's\n amplified voice: \"—approximately\n fifty killed. But\n Lane is through now. He has\n been able to outthink police\n with the help of his cybrain.\n Now police are feeding the\n problem to their giant analogue\n computer in the sub-basement\n of the Court House.\n The police analogue computer\n will be able to outthink Lane's\n cybrain, will predict Lane's\n moves in advance. Four more\n blaster cannon are coming\n down Broadway—\"", "Lane frowned with the effort\n of thinking. \"You said I\n had a little right on my side.\n That's a good feeling. Nobody\n ever told me to feel that way\n about myself before. It'll be\n better to die knowing that.\"\n\n\n \"I know,\" she said.\n\n\n The amplified voice from\n below said, \"The police analogue\n computer is now hooked\n directly to the controls of the\n blaster cannon battery. It will\n outguess Lane's cybrain and\n check his moves ahead of\n time.\"\n\n\n Lane looked at Gerri. \"How\n about giving me a kiss before\n they get us? Be nice if I kissed\n a girl like you just once in\n my life.\"\n\n\n She smiled and walked forward.\n \"You deserve it, Lane.\"", "\"I am, Lane.\" The voice of\n Colonel Klett was lower. \"I'd\n never admit it if you had a\n chance of getting out of there\n alive. You've had it, son. I'd\n only lose more men trying to\n rescue you. When they feed\n the data into that analogue\n computer, you're finished.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry, Lane.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, sir. Over and out.\"\n\n\n Lane pressed the stud on\n his gauntlet again. He turned\n to Gerri.", "Lane said, \"I'm going to\n Mars, too.\"\n\n\n \"Did she ask you to?\" demanded\n Klett.\n\n\n Lane shook his head. \"She's\n got too much class for me. But\n I like what she told me about\n Mars. It's healthy, like.\"\n\n\n Klett frowned. \"If I thought\n there was a gram of talent involved\n in your capture of the\n Mayor, Lane, I'd never release\n you from duty. But I\n know better. You beat that\n analogue computer by sheer\n stupidity—by disregarding\n your cybrain.\"\n\n\n Lane said, \"It wasn't so stupid\n if it worked.\"\n\n\n \"That's what bothers me. It\n calls for a revision in our tactics.\n We've got a way of beating\n those big computers now,\n should anyone use them\n against us.\"\n\n\n \"I just didn't want her to\n be hurt.\"", "\"Lashing police with his\n vibray,\" said the announcer,\n \"Lane broke through the cordon\n surrounding Manhattan\n Armory. Two policemen were\n killed, four others seriously\n injured. Tammany Hall has\n warned that this man is extremely\n dangerous. Citizens\n are cautioned to keep clear of\n him. Lane is an insane killer.\n He is armed with the latest\n military weapons. A built-in\n electronic brain controls his\n reflexes—\"\n\n\n \"At ease with that jazz,\"\n said Lane, and a sheathed finger\n snapped out. There was a\n loud bang. The 3V screen dissolved\n into a puddle of glasstic.\nThe Mayor.\nLane strode to the window.\n The two police boats were\n hovering above the towers.\n Lane's mailed hand snapped\n open a pouch at his belt. He\n flipped a fist-sized cube to the\n floor.", "\"Lane is holding the Martian\n Ambassador, Gerri Kin,\n hostage. You can see the Martian\n tricolor behind his force-globe.\n Police are bringing up\n blaster cannon. Lane's defense\n is a globe of energy\n similar to the one which protects\n Newyork from aerial attack.\"\n\n\n Lane grinned back at Gerri\n Kin. \"Whole town's down\n there.\" Then his grin faded.\n Nice-looking, nice-talking girl\n like this probably cared a lot\n more about dying than he did.\n Why the hell didn't they give\n him a chance to let her out?\n Maybe he could do it now.\n\n\n Cybrain said no. It said the\n second he dropped his force-screen,\n they'd blast this room\n to hell. Poor girl from Mars,\n she didn't have a chance.", "Old cybrain, a gift from the\n Trooper surgeons, compliments\n of the city, would have\n to figure out which one. Blood\n churned in his veins, nerves\n shrieked with impatience.\n Lane waited for the electronic\n brain to come up with the answer.", "Lane said, \"Yeah? Well, we\n done what they wanted us to\n do. We did the fighting for\n them. So we come back home\n to Newyork and they lock us\n up in the Armory. Won't pay\n us. Won't let us go nowhere.\n They had cops guarding us.\n City cops.\" Lane sneered. \"I\n busted out. I wanna see the\n Mayor and find out why we\n can't have time off. I don't\n play games, Gerri. I go right\n to the top.\"\n\n\n Lane broke off. There was\n a hum outside the window. He\n whirled and stared out. The\n rounded black hulls of the two\n police paragrav-boats were\n nosing toward the force-screen.\n Lane could read the\n white numbers painted on\n their bows.\n\n\n A loudspeaker shouted into\n the room: \"Come out of there,\n Lane, or we'll blast you out.\"", "Lane said, \"They told us in\n Trooper Academy that it's the\n men that win the wars.\"\n\n\n \"Yes, but people had forgotten\n it until the SocioSpecs of\n Newyork came up with the\n Troopers. Before the Troopers,\n governments concentrated\n on the big weapons, the\n missiles, the bombs. And the\n cities, with the Shells, were\n safe from bombs. They learned\n to be self-sufficient under\n the Shells. They were so safe,\n so isolated, that national governments\n collapsed. But you\n Troopers wiped out that feeling\n of security, when you infiltrated\n Chi and conquered\n it.\"\n\n\n \"We scared them, huh?\"", "Gerri said, \"You scared\n them so much that they were\n afraid to let you have a furlough\n in the city when you\n came back. Afraid you Troopers\n would realize that you\n could easily take over the city\n if you wanted to. You scared\n them so much that they'll let\n me be killed. They'll actually\n risk trouble with Mars just to\n kill you.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sorry about you. I\n mean it, I like—\"\n\n\n At that moment a titanic,\n ear-splitting explosion hurled\n him to the carpet, deafened\n and blinded him.\n\n\n He recovered and saw Gerri\n a few feet away, dazed, groping\n on hands and knees.\n\n\n Lane jumped to the window,\n looked quickly, sprang\n back. Cybrain pumped orders\n to his nervous system.", "\"Blaster cannon,\" he said.\n \"But just one. Gotcha, cybrain.\n I can beat that.\"\n\n\n He picked up the black box\n that generated his protective\n screen. Snapping it open with\n thumb-pressure, he turned a\n small dial. Then he waited.\n\n\n Again an enormous, brain-shattering\n concussion.\n\n\n Again Lane and Gerri were\n thrown to the floor. But this\n time there was a second explosion\n and a blinding flash\n from below.\n\n\n Lane laughed boyishly and\n ran to the window.\n\n\n \"Look!\" he called to Gerri.\nThere\n was a huge gap in\n the crowd below. The\n pavement was blackened and\n shattered to rubble. In and\n around the open space\n sprawled dozens of tiny black\n figures, not moving.", "The cool cybrain surgically\n implanted in him was working\n on the problem. But Lane\n had no more patience. They'd\n sweat, he thought, hating the\n chill air-currents that threw\n his hovering body this way\n and that. He glared down at\n the three towers bordering on\n the Square. He spat, and\n watched the little white speck\n fall, fall.\nLock me up in barracks.\n All I wanted was a\n little time off. Did I fight in\n Chi for them? Damn right I\n did. Just a little time off, so\n I shouldn't blow my top. Now\n the lid's gone.", "\"You can't,\" Lane called.\n \"This girl from Mars is here.\"\n\n\n \"I repeat, Lane—come out\n or we'll blast you out.\"\n\n\n Lane turned to the girl. \"I\n thought you were important.\"\nShe\n stood there with her\n hands together, calmly\n looking at him. \"I am. But\n you are too, to them. Mars is\n millions of miles away, and\n you're right across the Square\n from the Mayor's suite.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah, but—\" Lane shook\n his head and turned back to\n the window. \"All right, look!\n Move them boats away and\n I'll let this girl out!\"\n\n\n \"No deal, Lane. We're coming\n in.\" The police boats\n backed away slowly, then shot\n straight up, out of the line of\n vision.", "He swooped over the balcony\n railing. A man was\n pointing a blaster pistol at\n him. There were five men\n on the balcony—emergency!\n Years of training and cybrain\n took over. Lane's hand shot\n out, fingers vibrating. As he\n dropped to the balcony floor in\n battle-crouch, the men slumped\n around him.\n\n\n He had seen the man with\n the blaster pistol before. It\n was the Mayor of Newyork.\n\n\n Lane stood for a moment in\n the midst of the sprawled\n men, the shrieks of the crowd\n floating up to him. Then he\n raised his glove to his lips. He\n made contact with Manhattan\n Armory.", "Then his head jerked up, to\n a distant buzz. There were\n cops coming. Two black paragrav-boats\n whirred along the\n translucent underside of Newyork's\n anti-missile force-shield,\n the Shell.\nOld cybrain better be fast.\n Damn fast!\nThe cybrain jolted an impulse\n through his spine. Lane\n somersaulted. Cybrain had\n taken charge of his motor\n nerves. Lane's own mind was\n just along for the ride.\nHis\n body snapped into a\n stiff dive position. He began\n to plummet down, picking", "He kissed her and it filled\n him with longings for things\n he couldn't name. Then he\n stepped back and shook his\n head. \"It ain't right you\n should get killed. If I take a\n dive out that window, they\n shoot at me, not in here.\"\n\n\n \"And kill you all the sooner.\"\n\n\n \"Better than getting burned\n up in this lousy little room.\n You also got right on your\n side. There's too many damn\n Troopers and not enough good\n persons like you. Old cybrain\n says stay here, but I don't\n guess I will. I'm gonna pay\n you back for that kiss.\"\n\n\n \"But you're safe in here!\"\n\n\n \"Worry about yourself, not\n about me.\" Lane picked up the\n force-bomb and handed it to\n her. \"When I say now, press\n this. Then take your hand off,\n real fast. It'll shut off the\n screen for a second.\"", "He was going over all their\n heads. He'd bowled those city\n cops over like paper dolls,\n back at the Armory. The\n black dog was on Lane's back.\n Old Mayor himself was going\n to hear about it.\nWhy not? Ain't old Mayor\n the CinC of the Newyork\n Troopers?\nThe humming paragrav-paks\n embedded beneath his\n shoulder blades held him\n motionless above Newyork's\n three administrative towers.\n Tammany Hall. Mayor's Palace.\n Court House. Lane cursed\n his stupidity. He hadn't found\n out which one was which\n ahead of time.", "The little finger of his right\n hand vibrated in its metal\n sheath. A pale vibray leaped\n from the lensed fingertip.\n Breakthrough! The glasstic\n pane dissolved. Lane streamed\n through the window.\n\n\n The paragrav-paks cut off.\n Lane dropped lightly to the\n floor, inside the room, in battle-crouch.\n A 3V set was yammering.\n A girl screamed. Lane's\n hand shot out automatically.\n A finger vibrated. Out of the\n corner of his eye, Lane saw\n the girl fold to the floor. There\n was no one else in the room.\n Lane, still in a crouch, chewed\n his lip.\nThe Mayor?\nHis head swung around and\n he peered at the 3V set. He\n saw his own face.", "\"Exactly. The computer\n could outguess a machine, like\n your cybrain. But you introduced\n a totally unpredictable\n factor—human emotion.\n Which proves what I, as a\n military man, have always\n maintained—that the deadliest\n weapon in man's arsenal\n is still, and will always be, the\n individual soldier.\"\n\n\n \"What you just said there,\n sir,\" said Lane. \"That's why\n I'm leaving Newyork.\"\n\n\n \"What do you mean?\" asked\n Colonel Klett.\n\n\n \"I'm tired of being a weapon,\n sir. I want to be a human\n being.\"\nEND\nWork is the elimination of the traces of work.\n—Michelangelo\nTranscriber's Note:\nThis etext was produced from\nIf\nJuly 1959.\n Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.\n copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and\n typographical errors have been corrected without note.", "He stepped up on to the\n window ledge. Automatically,\n the cybrain cut in his paragrav-paks.\n \"So long, outa-towner.\nNow!\n\"\n\n\n He jumped. He was hurtling\n across the Square when the\n blaster cannons opened up.\n They weren't aimed at the\n window where the little red-white-and-green\n tricolor was\n flying. But they weren't aimed\n at Lane, either. They were\n shooting wild.\nWhich way now? Looks\n like I got a chance. Old cybrain\n says fly right for the\n cannons.\nHe saw the Mayor's balcony\n ahead.\nGo to hell, old cybrain.\n I'm doing all right by myself.\n I come to see the Mayor, and\n I'm gonna see him.\nLane plunged forward. He\n heard the shouts of frightened\n men." ] ]
valid	52845	[ "How much time has passed between Blake's night with Eldoria and his search for Sabrina York in his mind-world?", "Why does Deirdre get so upset when Blake Past suggests she go to prom with the young man?", "Why does shame flame in Blake's cheeks when Deirdre goes to prepare Eldoria's dias?", "Why did Blake create the three female super-images of Miss Stoddart, Officer Finch, and Vera Velvetskin?", "Sabrina York is ", "Why doesn't Blake haggle with Eldoria about the price for her services?" ]	[ [ "7 years", "10 hours", "12 years", "1 hour" ], [ "Because Blake is trying to guilt Deirdre into going with the young man by telling her that it'll ease her conscience. ", "Because Deirdre has fallen in love with Blake, despite his age, and wants him to take her to the prom. ", "Because Blake is acting like he's her father, which is a sensitive topic for Deirdre because she lost her real parents. ", "Because the young man gave up his right arm in order to afford tickets to the prom, and this disgusts Deirdre. " ], [ "He is embarrassed at the thought that Deirdre might enter the room while he is sleeping with Eldoria. ", "He feels that prostitution is morally reprehensible. ", "He feels guilty about sleeping with Eldoria when there's a child in the hut, Deirdre, who knows exactly what's going on. ", "He feels guilty about wishing Deirdre was older so he could sleep with her instead. " ], [ "He feels guilty about having slept with Eldoria which perpetuated the demand for female prostitution. ", "Even though he is a psycheye, he feels guilty about hunting down Sabrina York. ", "He is still grieving his mother's death and regrets not being a more loving son.", "He feels guilty about hurting Deirdre's feelings after her graduation when he ignored their romantic connection, and instead, played the part of a parent. \n" ], [ "a criminal that Blake is hunting", "a psycheye that taught Blake all the tricks", "an old friend of Blake's", "Eldoria's alter ego" ], [ "He's afraid that if he angers her, she'll revert to the cannibalism of her forebears. ", "He knows she needs the money to move out of her chocoletto hut. ", "He has been making a lot of money as a private pyscheye and can afford the high price. ", "He has never seen anyone like her, and after seeing her dance, he believes she's worth the price." ] ]	[ 2, 2, 3, 4, 1, 4 ]	[ 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "Blake went on. Presently the Walden Pond memory-image gave way to a\n memory-image of an English park which the ex-Earth government had set\n aside as a memorial to the English poets and which had impressed Blake\n sufficiently when he had visited it in his youth to have found a place\n for itself in the country of his mind. It consisted of reconstructions\n of famous dwellings out of the lives of the poets, among them, a\n dwelling out of the life of a poet who was not in the strictest sense\n of the word English at all—the birthplace of Robert Burns. Oddly\n enough, it was Burns's birthplace that had impressed Blake most. Now\n the little cottage stood out in much more vivid detail than any of the\n other famous dwellings.\n\n\n Sabrina York must have been attracted to the place, for her footprints\n showed that she had turned in at the gate, walked up the little path\n and let herself in the door.", "So far as he knew, the present case represented the first time a\n criminal had ever hidden out in the pursuer's mind. It would have been\n a superb stratagem indeed if, shortly after her entry, Sabrina York\n had not betrayed her presence. For her point of entry she had used\n the place-time materialization of the little office Blake had opened\n on Ex-earth at the beginning of his career. Unaccountably she had\n ransacked it before moving into a co-terminous memory-image.\n\n\n Even this action wouldn't have given her away, however, if the office\n hadn't constituted a sentimental memory. Whenever Blake accepted a case\n he invariably thought of the bleak and lonely little room with its\n thin-gauge steel desk and battered filing cabinets, and when he had\n done so after accepting his case—or was it before? He couldn't quite\n remember—the mental picture that had come into his mind had revealed\n open drawers, scattered papers and a general air of disarray.", "He had suspected the truth immediately, and when he had seen the\n woman's handkerchief with the initials \"SB\" embroidered on it lying\n by one of the filing cabinets he had known definitely that his quarry\n was hiding out in his mind. Retiring to his bachelor quarters, he had\n entered at the same place-time and set off in pursuit.\n\n\n Her only advantage lost, Sabrina York was now at his mercy. Unless\n she discovered his presence and was able to locate his most recently\n materialized place-time before he over-took her, her capture was\n assured.\n\n\n Only two things bothered Blake. The little office was far in his past,\n and it was unlikely that anyone save the few intimate acquaintances\n whom he had told about it were aware that it had ever existed. How,\n then, had a total stranger such as Sabrina York learned enough about it\n to enable her to use it as a point of entry?", "After resting for a few minutes, he descended the hill and started\n across the Deneb 1 wasteland. It was a remarkably detailed\n materialization, and his quarry's footprints stood out clearly in the\n duplicated sand.\n\n\n Sabrina York did not even know the rudiments of the art of throwing\n off a mind-tracker. It would have done her but little good if she\n had, for twelve years as a psycheye had taught Blake all the tricks.\n Probably she had taken it for granted that the mere act of hiding out\n in her tracker's mind was in itself a sufficient guarantee of her\n safety. After all, she had no way of knowing that he had discovered her\n presence.", "He went through each room systematically, but saw no sign of Sabrina\n York. He lingered for some time in his own room, wistfully watching his\n fifteen-year-old self lolling on the bed with a dog-eared copy of\nThe\n Galaxy Boys and the Secret of the Crab Nebula\n, then he stepped back\n out into the hall and started to descend the stairs.", "He was relieved when Eldoria finally arrived. She ushered him into\n the next room immediately. It was slightly larger than the anteroom,\n and much more richly appointed. A thick carpet the color of Martian\n waterways lay upon the floor, contrasting pleasantly with the golden\n tapestries that adorned all four walls. The sleeping dais was oval\n and took up nearly half the floor space. It was strewn with scarlet\n cushions.\n\n\n Blake sat down upon it. Nervously he watched Eldoria slip out of her\n white street robe, his eyes moving back and forth from her smooth dark\n skin to the arras. The incense thickened around him.\n\n\n She noticed the back-and-forth movement of his eyes. \"You need not fear\n the little one,\" she said, laying her hand upon his knee. \"She will not\n enter.\"\n\n\n \"It's not that so much,\" Blake said.\n\n\n \"What?\" The warm bronze shoulder was touching his....", "\"Nathan,\" Blake said. \"Nathan Blake.\"\n\n\n \"Eldoria will be arriving soon. I must go and prepare her dais.\"\nShe got up, parted the arras, and slipped into the next room. Shame\n flamed in Blake's cheeks, and for a moment he considered leaving; then\n he remembered Eldoria's dance, and he went right on sitting where he\n was.\n\n\n Presently the girl returned, and not long afterward the cloying scent\n of native incense crept beneath the arras and permeated the anteroom.\n She sat sideways on the mat this time, and he caught her face in\n profile. There was a suggestion of saintliness in the line of the nose\n and chin, a suggestion made all the more poignant by the slender column\n of the neck. He shifted uncomfortably on the guest mat. She had taken\n up the\nAnabasis\nagain, and silence was pounding silent fists upon the\n walls.", "\"Probably I shall be a psychiatrist. Eldoria is sending me to the\n mission school now, and afterward she is going to put me through an\n institute of higher learning. And when I come of age, she is going to\n give me my freedom.\"\n\n\n \"I see,\" Blake said. He indicated the book on her lap. \"Homework?\"\n\n\n She shook her head. \"In addition to my courses at the mission school, I\n am studying the humanities.\"\n\n\n \"Xenophon,\" Blake said. \"And I suppose Plato too.\"\n\n\n \"And Homer and Virgil and Aeschylus and Euripides and all the rest of\n them. When I grow up I shall be a most well-educated person.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure you will be,\" Blake said, looking at the arras.\n\n\n \"My name is Deirdre.\"", "He controlled it and descended the stairs with exaggerated slowness,\n leaving the house by way of the back door. He picked up Sabrina's trail\n in the back yard and followed it down to the Martian waterway and\n thence along the bank to where the waterway ended and a campus began.\n Not the campus of the university which he had visited two days ago to\n attend his protegee's graduation. It was not a place-time that he cared\n to revisit, nor a moment that he cared to relive, but Sabrina's trail\n led straight across the artificially stunted grass toward the little\n bench where he and Deirdre Eldoria had come to talk after the ceremony\n was over. He had no choice.\nThe bench stood beneath a towering American elm whose feathery branches", "Blake Past stood up too. \"No, not yet. I'll walk back to the sorority\n house with you.\"\n\n\n She tossed her head, but the sadness in her tarn-blue eyes belied her\n hauteur. \"If you wish,\" she said.\nBlake Present watched them set out side by side toward the remembered\n halls of learning that showed in the distance. There had been other\n people present on the campus that afternoon, but as they had failed to\n register on Blake Past's mind, they did not exist for Blake Present.\n All that existed for Blake Present were the diminishing figures of the\n girl and the man, and the pain that was constricting his throat.\n\n\n Wretchedly he turned away. As he did so he saw the three shadows lying\n at his feet and knew that his pursuers had at last caught up to him.\n\n\n His first reaction when he faced them was amazement. His next reaction\n was shock. His third was fear.", "Mind-country was as temporally inconsecutive as it was topographically\n incongruous, so Blake was not surprised when the Deneb 1 wasteland gave\n way to an expanse of boyhood meadow. Near the meadow was the house\n where Blake had lived at a much later date. In reality, the places were\n as far apart in miles as they were in years, but here in the country\n of his mind they existed side by side, surrounded by heterogeneous\n landscapes from all over the civilized sector of the galaxy and by the\n sharply demarcated spectra of a hundred different suns. A few of the\n suns were in the patchwork sky—Sirius, for example, and its twinkling\n dwarf companion. Most of them, however, were present only in their\n remembered radiance. To add to the confusion, scattered night memories\n interrupted the hodge-podge horizon with columns of darkness, and here\n and there the gray column of a dawn or dusk memory showed.", "Before him lay a memory-image of a section of Deneb 1 wasteland. The\n image extended for no more than half a mile, but Blake was annoyed\n that he should have remembered even that much of the wretched terrain.\n Ideally, a man's mind-country should have been comprised only of the\n places and times he wanted to remember. Practically, however, that was\n far from being the case.\n\n\n He glanced back down into the rain-pocked valley that he had just\n crossed. The rain and the mist made for poor visibility. He could only\n faintly distinguish the three figures of his pursuers. The trio seemed\n a little closer now.\nEver since he had first set foot into his mind, some ten hours ago,\n they had been on his trail, but for some reason he had been unable\n to bring himself to go back and find out who they were and what they\n wanted. Hence he was as vexed with himself as he was with them.", "They also showed that she had left by the same route, so there was no\n reason for Blake to linger. As a matter of fact, the fascination that\n had brought the place into being had been replaced by an illogical\n repugnance. But repugnance can sometimes be as compelling a force as\n fascination, and Blake not only lingered but went inside as well.\n\n\n He remembered the living room distinctly—the flagstone floor, the huge\n grill-fronted hearth, the deeply recessed window, the rack of cups and\n platters on the wall; the empty straight-backed chair standing sternly\n in a corner, the bare wooden table—\n\n\n He paused just within the doorway. The chair was no longer empty, the\n table no longer bare.", "He did not haggle, but counted out the amount and handed it to her. She\n slipped the bills into a thigh sheath-purse, told him her hut number\n and stood up to leave. \"I will meet you there in an hour,\" she said.\nHer hut was as good a place to wait for her as any. After buying a\n bottle of native whiskey at the bar, Blake went out into the Dubhe 4\n night and made his way through the labyrinthine alleys of the native\n sector. In common with all chocoletto huts, Eldoria's was uncared for\n on the outside, and gave a false impression of poverty. He expected to\n find the usual hanger-on waiting in the anteroom, and looked forward to\n booting him out into the alley. Instead he found a young girl—\n\n\n A human girl.", "He tried to assimilate the information, but could not. Perceiving his\n difficulty, the girl went on, \"My parents indentured themselves to the\n Great Starway Cartel and were assigned to the rubber plantations of\n Dubhe 4. They died of yellow-water dysentery before their indenture ran\n out, and in accordance with Interstellar Law I was auctioned off along\n with the rest of their possessions. Eldoria bought me.\"\n\n\n Five years as a roving psycheye had hardened Blake to commercial\n colonization practices; nevertheless, he found the present example of\n man's inhumanity to man sickening.\n\n\n \"How old are you?\" Blake asked.\n\n\n \"Fourteen.\"\n\n\n \"And what are you going to be when you grow up?\"", "He rose up once in the night, thinking to find his hotel bed. His next\n awakening was in the grayness of dawn, and he got up and dressed and\n moved silently to the doorway. The girl slept just without the arras on\n a thin sleeping-mat, and he had to step over her to gain the anteroom.\n In sleep, a strand of her copper-colored hair had tumbled down across\n her forehead and lay like a lovely flower upon the virginal whiteness\n of her skin. There was something saintly about her quiet face.\n\n\n When he reached the alley he began to run, and he did not stop running\n till the chocoletto sector was far behind him.\nThe hill was a memory-image and Aldebaran 12 rain-country hills were\n notoriously steep. Blake was breathing hard when he reached the crest.", "traced green arabesques against the blue June sky. A set of footprints\n slightly deeper than its predecessors indicated that Sabrina had\n paused by the trunk. Despite himself Blake paused there too. Pain\n tightened his throat when he looked at Deirdre's delicate profile\n and copper-colored hair, intensified when he lowered his eyes to the\n remembered blueness of her graduation dress. The diamond brooch that he\n had given her as a graduation present, and which she had proudly pinned\n upon her bodice for the whole wide world to see, made him want to\n cry. His self-image of two weeks ago shocked him. There were lines on\n the face that did not as yet exist, and the brown hair was shot with\n streaks of gray that had yet to come into being. Lord, he must have\n been feeling old to have pictured himself like that!", "As he was about to turn away, the name-plate on the range caught his\n eye, and thinking that he had read the two words wrong, he stepped\n closer so that he could see them more clearly. No, he had made no\n mistake: the first word was \"Sabrina\", and the second was \"York\".\n\n\n He stepped back. Odd that a kitchen range should have the same name as\n his quarry. But perhaps not unduly so. Giving appliances human names\n had been common practice for centuries. Even a name like \"Sabrina\n York\", while certainly not run-of-the-mill, was bound to be duplicated\n in real life. Nevertheless a feeling of uneasiness accompanied him when\n he left the kitchen and climbed the stairs to the second floor.", "A pink flush of anger climbed into Deirdre Eldoria's girlish cheeks.\n \"What right has\nhe\ngot to take me! Did\nhe\nscrimp and go without\n in order to put me through high school and college? Has\nhe\nbooked\n passage for me to New Earth and paid my tuition to Trevor University?\"\n\n\n \"Please,\" Blake Past said, desperation deepening his voice. \"You're\n only making everything worse. After majoring in Trevorism, you\n certainly ought to realize by now that there was nothing noble about my\n buying you after Eldoria died. I only did it to ease my conscience—\"", "Deirdre was speaking. \"Yes,\" she was saying, \"at nine o'clock. And I\n should very much like for you to come.\"\n\n\n Blake Past shook his head. \"Proms aren't for parents. You know that\n as well as I do. That young man you were talking with a few minutes\n ago—he's the one who should take you. He'd give his right arm for the\n chance.\"\n\n\n \"I'll thank you not to imply that you're my father. One would think\n from the way you talk that you are centuries old!\"\n\n\n \"I'm thirty-eight,\" Blake Past said, \"and while I may not be your\n father, I'm certainly old enough to be. That young man—\"" ], [ "Deirdre was speaking. \"Yes,\" she was saying, \"at nine o'clock. And I\n should very much like for you to come.\"\n\n\n Blake Past shook his head. \"Proms aren't for parents. You know that\n as well as I do. That young man you were talking with a few minutes\n ago—he's the one who should take you. He'd give his right arm for the\n chance.\"\n\n\n \"I'll thank you not to imply that you're my father. One would think\n from the way you talk that you are centuries old!\"\n\n\n \"I'm thirty-eight,\" Blake Past said, \"and while I may not be your\n father, I'm certainly old enough to be. That young man—\"", "\"Probably I shall be a psychiatrist. Eldoria is sending me to the\n mission school now, and afterward she is going to put me through an\n institute of higher learning. And when I come of age, she is going to\n give me my freedom.\"\n\n\n \"I see,\" Blake said. He indicated the book on her lap. \"Homework?\"\n\n\n She shook her head. \"In addition to my courses at the mission school, I\n am studying the humanities.\"\n\n\n \"Xenophon,\" Blake said. \"And I suppose Plato too.\"\n\n\n \"And Homer and Virgil and Aeschylus and Euripides and all the rest of\n them. When I grow up I shall be a most well-educated person.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure you will be,\" Blake said, looking at the arras.\n\n\n \"My name is Deirdre.\"", "A pink flush of anger climbed into Deirdre Eldoria's girlish cheeks.\n \"What right has\nhe\ngot to take me! Did\nhe\nscrimp and go without\n in order to put me through high school and college? Has\nhe\nbooked\n passage for me to New Earth and paid my tuition to Trevor University?\"\n\n\n \"Please,\" Blake Past said, desperation deepening his voice. \"You're\n only making everything worse. After majoring in Trevorism, you\n certainly ought to realize by now that there was nothing noble about my\n buying you after Eldoria died. I only did it to ease my conscience—\"", "\"What do\nyou\nknow about conscience?\" Deirdre demanded. \"Conscience\n is a much more complex mechanism than most laymen realize. Guilt\n feelings aren't reliable criteria. They can stem from false\n causes—from ridiculous things like a person's inability to accept\n himself for what he is.\" Abruptly she dropped the subject. \"Don't you\n realize, Nate,\" she went on a little desperately, \"that I'm leaving\n tomorrow and that we won't see each other again for years and years?\"\n\n\n \"I'll come to New Earth to visit you,\" Blake said. \"Venus is only a few\n days distant on the new ships.\"\n\n\n She stood up. \"You won't come—I know you won't.\" She stamped her foot.\n \"And you won't come to the prom either. I know that too. I knew it all\n along. Sometimes I'm tempted to—\" Abruptly she broke off. \"Very well\n then,\" she went on, \"I'll say good-by now then.\"", "Blake Past stood up too. \"No, not yet. I'll walk back to the sorority\n house with you.\"\n\n\n She tossed her head, but the sadness in her tarn-blue eyes belied her\n hauteur. \"If you wish,\" she said.\nBlake Present watched them set out side by side toward the remembered\n halls of learning that showed in the distance. There had been other\n people present on the campus that afternoon, but as they had failed to\n register on Blake Past's mind, they did not exist for Blake Present.\n All that existed for Blake Present were the diminishing figures of the\n girl and the man, and the pain that was constricting his throat.\n\n\n Wretchedly he turned away. As he did so he saw the three shadows lying\n at his feet and knew that his pursuers had at last caught up to him.\n\n\n His first reaction when he faced them was amazement. His next reaction\n was shock. His third was fear.", "traced green arabesques against the blue June sky. A set of footprints\n slightly deeper than its predecessors indicated that Sabrina had\n paused by the trunk. Despite himself Blake paused there too. Pain\n tightened his throat when he looked at Deirdre's delicate profile\n and copper-colored hair, intensified when he lowered his eyes to the\n remembered blueness of her graduation dress. The diamond brooch that he\n had given her as a graduation present, and which she had proudly pinned\n upon her bodice for the whole wide world to see, made him want to\n cry. His self-image of two weeks ago shocked him. There were lines on\n the face that did not as yet exist, and the brown hair was shot with\n streaks of gray that had yet to come into being. Lord, he must have\n been feeling old to have pictured himself like that!", "\"Nathan,\" Blake said. \"Nathan Blake.\"\n\n\n \"Eldoria will be arriving soon. I must go and prepare her dais.\"\nShe got up, parted the arras, and slipped into the next room. Shame\n flamed in Blake's cheeks, and for a moment he considered leaving; then\n he remembered Eldoria's dance, and he went right on sitting where he\n was.\n\n\n Presently the girl returned, and not long afterward the cloying scent\n of native incense crept beneath the arras and permeated the anteroom.\n She sat sideways on the mat this time, and he caught her face in\n profile. There was a suggestion of saintliness in the line of the nose\n and chin, a suggestion made all the more poignant by the slender column\n of the neck. He shifted uncomfortably on the guest mat. She had taken\n up the\nAnabasis\nagain, and silence was pounding silent fists upon the\n walls.", "They also showed that she had left by the same route, so there was no\n reason for Blake to linger. As a matter of fact, the fascination that\n had brought the place into being had been replaced by an illogical\n repugnance. But repugnance can sometimes be as compelling a force as\n fascination, and Blake not only lingered but went inside as well.\n\n\n He remembered the living room distinctly—the flagstone floor, the huge\n grill-fronted hearth, the deeply recessed window, the rack of cups and\n platters on the wall; the empty straight-backed chair standing sternly\n in a corner, the bare wooden table—\n\n\n He paused just within the doorway. The chair was no longer empty, the\n table no longer bare.", "the person involved had\nwanted\nto create. Therefore, even assuming\n that Blake was less well-adjusted than he considered himself to be, why\n had he created three such malevolent super-images as Miss Stoddart,\n Officer Finch, and Vera Velvetskin?\nThey followed him off the campus into a vicarious memory-image of\n Walden Pond, Thoreau's shack, and the encompassing woods. Judging from\n the ecstatic \"oh's\" and \"ah's\" they kept giving voice to, the place\n delighted them. Once, glancing back over his shoulder, he saw them\n standing in front of Thoreau's shack, looking at it as though it were a\n doll's house. Not far away, Thoreau was sitting in under a tall pine,", "He tried to assimilate the information, but could not. Perceiving his\n difficulty, the girl went on, \"My parents indentured themselves to the\n Great Starway Cartel and were assigned to the rubber plantations of\n Dubhe 4. They died of yellow-water dysentery before their indenture ran\n out, and in accordance with Interstellar Law I was auctioned off along\n with the rest of their possessions. Eldoria bought me.\"\n\n\n Five years as a roving psycheye had hardened Blake to commercial\n colonization practices; nevertheless, he found the present example of\n man's inhumanity to man sickening.\n\n\n \"How old are you?\" Blake asked.\n\n\n \"Fourteen.\"\n\n\n \"And what are you going to be when you grow up?\"", "He was relieved when Eldoria finally arrived. She ushered him into\n the next room immediately. It was slightly larger than the anteroom,\n and much more richly appointed. A thick carpet the color of Martian\n waterways lay upon the floor, contrasting pleasantly with the golden\n tapestries that adorned all four walls. The sleeping dais was oval\n and took up nearly half the floor space. It was strewn with scarlet\n cushions.\n\n\n Blake sat down upon it. Nervously he watched Eldoria slip out of her\n white street robe, his eyes moving back and forth from her smooth dark\n skin to the arras. The incense thickened around him.\n\n\n She noticed the back-and-forth movement of his eyes. \"You need not fear\n the little one,\" she said, laying her hand upon his knee. \"She will not\n enter.\"\n\n\n \"It's not that so much,\" Blake said.\n\n\n \"What?\" The warm bronze shoulder was touching his....", "He asked the two questions aloud.\n\n\n Three arms were raised and three forefingers were pointed accusingly at\n his chest. Three pairs of eyes burned darkly. \"You ask us that?\" Miss\n Stoddart said. \"Callous creature who did a maiden's innocence affront!\"\n said Officer Finch. \"And sought sanctuary in ill-fitting robes of\n righteousness!\" said Vera Velvetskin. The three faces moved together,\n blurred and seemed to blend into one. The three voices were raised in\n unison: \"You know who we are, Nathan Blake.\nYou\nknow who we are!\"\n\n\n Blake stared at them open-mouthed. Then he turned and fled.\nIt had taken man a long time to discover that he was a god in his\n own right and that he too was capable of creating universes. Trivial\n universes, to be sure, when compared with the grandeur and scope of the\n objective one, and peopled with ghosts instead of human beings; but\n universes nonetheless.", "Blake resumed watching. The girl's movements were a delicate blend of\n love and lust. Her face accompanied her body, eyes half-lidded one\n moment to match the languid motion of her limbs, wide and feral the\n next to match the furious bump and grind of her hips. For a chocoletto\n she was light-skinned—more bronze, really, than brown. But then,\n the word \"chocoletto\", coined by the early beche-la-mer traders, was\n misleading, and few of the natives of Dubhe 4's southern-most continent\n lived up to it completely.\n\n\n She was beautiful too. Her high-cheekboned face was striking—the eyes\n dark-brown and wide-apart, the mouth sensuous, the teeth showing in a\n vivid white line between the half-parted purple lips. And her body was\n splendid. Blake had never seen anyone quite like her.", "He did not haggle, but counted out the amount and handed it to her. She\n slipped the bills into a thigh sheath-purse, told him her hut number\n and stood up to leave. \"I will meet you there in an hour,\" she said.\nHer hut was as good a place to wait for her as any. After buying a\n bottle of native whiskey at the bar, Blake went out into the Dubhe 4\n night and made his way through the labyrinthine alleys of the native\n sector. In common with all chocoletto huts, Eldoria's was uncared for\n on the outside, and gave a false impression of poverty. He expected to\n find the usual hanger-on waiting in the anteroom, and looked forward to\n booting him out into the alley. Instead he found a young girl—\n\n\n A human girl.", "He had never been in his own mind before. Consequently he was more\n affected than he might otherwise have been. Finally, stirring himself,\n he walked out into the kitchen. On a shelf above the sink stood a gaily\n colored box of his mother's favorite detergent with a full-length\n drawing of Vera Velvetskin, the company's blond and chic visual symbol,\n on the front. His mother was standing before the huge automatic range,\n preparing a meal she had served twenty-three years ago. He regarded her\n with moist eyes. She had died a dozen years before his father, but the\n wound that her death had caused had never healed. He wanted to go up\n behind her and touch her shoulder and say, \"What's for supper, mom?\"\n but he knew it would do no good. For her he had no reality, not only", "At the head of the stairs a narrow window looked out over the front\n yard and thence out over the meadow. He glanced absently through the\n panes, and came to an abrupt halt. His three pursuers were wading\n through the long meadow grass less than a quarter of a mile away—not\n close enough as yet for him to be able to make out their faces, but\n close enough for him to be able to see that two of them were wearing\n dresses and that the third had on a blue skirt and blouse, and a kepi\n to match. He gasped. It simply hadn't occurred to him that his pursuers\n might be women. To his consternation he discovered that he was even\n more loath to go back and accost them than he had been before. He\n actually had an impulse to flee.", "He had suspected the truth immediately, and when he had seen the\n woman's handkerchief with the initials \"SB\" embroidered on it lying\n by one of the filing cabinets he had known definitely that his quarry\n was hiding out in his mind. Retiring to his bachelor quarters, he had\n entered at the same place-time and set off in pursuit.\n\n\n Her only advantage lost, Sabrina York was now at his mercy. Unless\n she discovered his presence and was able to locate his most recently\n materialized place-time before he over-took her, her capture was\n assured.\n\n\n Only two things bothered Blake. The little office was far in his past,\n and it was unlikely that anyone save the few intimate acquaintances\n whom he had told about it were aware that it had ever existed. How,\n then, had a total stranger such as Sabrina York learned enough about it\n to enable her to use it as a point of entry?", "places in which he can hide—even from himself!\nThe dance that the chocoletto girl was performing was an expurgated\n version of the kylee sex ritual which the Louave maidens of Dubhe 7\n practiced on the eve of their betrothal. Expurgated or not, however,\n it was still on the lascivious side. The G-string that constituted\n the chocoletto girl's entire costume put her but one degree above the\n nakedness which the original dance demanded. Nathan Blake's voice was\n slightly thick when he summoned the waiter who was hovering in the\n shadows at the back of the room. \"Is she free?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"I do not know, mensakin. Perhaps.\"", "Warily he stepped inside, adjusting the temperature of his all-weather\n jacket to the remembered air-conditioning. His father was sitting in\n the living room, smoking, and watching 3V. He had no awareness of\n Blake. At Blake's entry he went right on smoking and watching as though\n the door had neither opened nor closed. He would go right on smoking\n and watching till Blake died and the conglomeration of place-times\n that constituted Blake's mind-world ceased to be. Ironically, he was\n watching nothing. The 3V program that had been in progress at the time\n of the unconscious materialization had failed to come through.\nThe memory was a treasured one—the old man had perished in a 'copter\n crash several years ago—and for a long while Blake did not move.", "He controlled it and descended the stairs with exaggerated slowness,\n leaving the house by way of the back door. He picked up Sabrina's trail\n in the back yard and followed it down to the Martian waterway and\n thence along the bank to where the waterway ended and a campus began.\n Not the campus of the university which he had visited two days ago to\n attend his protegee's graduation. It was not a place-time that he cared\n to revisit, nor a moment that he cared to relive, but Sabrina's trail\n led straight across the artificially stunted grass toward the little\n bench where he and Deirdre Eldoria had come to talk after the ceremony\n was over. He had no choice.\nThe bench stood beneath a towering American elm whose feathery branches" ], [ "\"Nathan,\" Blake said. \"Nathan Blake.\"\n\n\n \"Eldoria will be arriving soon. I must go and prepare her dais.\"\nShe got up, parted the arras, and slipped into the next room. Shame\n flamed in Blake's cheeks, and for a moment he considered leaving; then\n he remembered Eldoria's dance, and he went right on sitting where he\n was.\n\n\n Presently the girl returned, and not long afterward the cloying scent\n of native incense crept beneath the arras and permeated the anteroom.\n She sat sideways on the mat this time, and he caught her face in\n profile. There was a suggestion of saintliness in the line of the nose\n and chin, a suggestion made all the more poignant by the slender column\n of the neck. He shifted uncomfortably on the guest mat. She had taken\n up the\nAnabasis\nagain, and silence was pounding silent fists upon the\n walls.", "\"Probably I shall be a psychiatrist. Eldoria is sending me to the\n mission school now, and afterward she is going to put me through an\n institute of higher learning. And when I come of age, she is going to\n give me my freedom.\"\n\n\n \"I see,\" Blake said. He indicated the book on her lap. \"Homework?\"\n\n\n She shook her head. \"In addition to my courses at the mission school, I\n am studying the humanities.\"\n\n\n \"Xenophon,\" Blake said. \"And I suppose Plato too.\"\n\n\n \"And Homer and Virgil and Aeschylus and Euripides and all the rest of\n them. When I grow up I shall be a most well-educated person.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure you will be,\" Blake said, looking at the arras.\n\n\n \"My name is Deirdre.\"", "He was relieved when Eldoria finally arrived. She ushered him into\n the next room immediately. It was slightly larger than the anteroom,\n and much more richly appointed. A thick carpet the color of Martian\n waterways lay upon the floor, contrasting pleasantly with the golden\n tapestries that adorned all four walls. The sleeping dais was oval\n and took up nearly half the floor space. It was strewn with scarlet\n cushions.\n\n\n Blake sat down upon it. Nervously he watched Eldoria slip out of her\n white street robe, his eyes moving back and forth from her smooth dark\n skin to the arras. The incense thickened around him.\n\n\n She noticed the back-and-forth movement of his eyes. \"You need not fear\n the little one,\" she said, laying her hand upon his knee. \"She will not\n enter.\"\n\n\n \"It's not that so much,\" Blake said.\n\n\n \"What?\" The warm bronze shoulder was touching his....", "A pink flush of anger climbed into Deirdre Eldoria's girlish cheeks.\n \"What right has\nhe\ngot to take me! Did\nhe\nscrimp and go without\n in order to put me through high school and college? Has\nhe\nbooked\n passage for me to New Earth and paid my tuition to Trevor University?\"\n\n\n \"Please,\" Blake Past said, desperation deepening his voice. \"You're\n only making everything worse. After majoring in Trevorism, you\n certainly ought to realize by now that there was nothing noble about my\n buying you after Eldoria died. I only did it to ease my conscience—\"", "They also showed that she had left by the same route, so there was no\n reason for Blake to linger. As a matter of fact, the fascination that\n had brought the place into being had been replaced by an illogical\n repugnance. But repugnance can sometimes be as compelling a force as\n fascination, and Blake not only lingered but went inside as well.\n\n\n He remembered the living room distinctly—the flagstone floor, the huge\n grill-fronted hearth, the deeply recessed window, the rack of cups and\n platters on the wall; the empty straight-backed chair standing sternly\n in a corner, the bare wooden table—\n\n\n He paused just within the doorway. The chair was no longer empty, the\n table no longer bare.", "traced green arabesques against the blue June sky. A set of footprints\n slightly deeper than its predecessors indicated that Sabrina had\n paused by the trunk. Despite himself Blake paused there too. Pain\n tightened his throat when he looked at Deirdre's delicate profile\n and copper-colored hair, intensified when he lowered his eyes to the\n remembered blueness of her graduation dress. The diamond brooch that he\n had given her as a graduation present, and which she had proudly pinned\n upon her bodice for the whole wide world to see, made him want to\n cry. His self-image of two weeks ago shocked him. There were lines on\n the face that did not as yet exist, and the brown hair was shot with\n streaks of gray that had yet to come into being. Lord, he must have\n been feeling old to have pictured himself like that!", "He rose up once in the night, thinking to find his hotel bed. His next\n awakening was in the grayness of dawn, and he got up and dressed and\n moved silently to the doorway. The girl slept just without the arras on\n a thin sleeping-mat, and he had to step over her to gain the anteroom.\n In sleep, a strand of her copper-colored hair had tumbled down across\n her forehead and lay like a lovely flower upon the virginal whiteness\n of her skin. There was something saintly about her quiet face.\n\n\n When he reached the alley he began to run, and he did not stop running\n till the chocoletto sector was far behind him.\nThe hill was a memory-image and Aldebaran 12 rain-country hills were\n notoriously steep. Blake was breathing hard when he reached the crest.", "Deirdre was speaking. \"Yes,\" she was saying, \"at nine o'clock. And I\n should very much like for you to come.\"\n\n\n Blake Past shook his head. \"Proms aren't for parents. You know that\n as well as I do. That young man you were talking with a few minutes\n ago—he's the one who should take you. He'd give his right arm for the\n chance.\"\n\n\n \"I'll thank you not to imply that you're my father. One would think\n from the way you talk that you are centuries old!\"\n\n\n \"I'm thirty-eight,\" Blake Past said, \"and while I may not be your\n father, I'm certainly old enough to be. That young man—\"", "Blake resumed watching. The girl's movements were a delicate blend of\n love and lust. Her face accompanied her body, eyes half-lidded one\n moment to match the languid motion of her limbs, wide and feral the\n next to match the furious bump and grind of her hips. For a chocoletto\n she was light-skinned—more bronze, really, than brown. But then,\n the word \"chocoletto\", coined by the early beche-la-mer traders, was\n misleading, and few of the natives of Dubhe 4's southern-most continent\n lived up to it completely.\n\n\n She was beautiful too. Her high-cheekboned face was striking—the eyes\n dark-brown and wide-apart, the mouth sensuous, the teeth showing in a\n vivid white line between the half-parted purple lips. And her body was\n splendid. Blake had never seen anyone quite like her.", "\"What do\nyou\nknow about conscience?\" Deirdre demanded. \"Conscience\n is a much more complex mechanism than most laymen realize. Guilt\n feelings aren't reliable criteria. They can stem from false\n causes—from ridiculous things like a person's inability to accept\n himself for what he is.\" Abruptly she dropped the subject. \"Don't you\n realize, Nate,\" she went on a little desperately, \"that I'm leaving\n tomorrow and that we won't see each other again for years and years?\"\n\n\n \"I'll come to New Earth to visit you,\" Blake said. \"Venus is only a few\n days distant on the new ships.\"\n\n\n She stood up. \"You won't come—I know you won't.\" She stamped her foot.\n \"And you won't come to the prom either. I know that too. I knew it all\n along. Sometimes I'm tempted to—\" Abruptly she broke off. \"Very well\n then,\" she went on, \"I'll say good-by now then.\"", "the person involved had\nwanted\nto create. Therefore, even assuming\n that Blake was less well-adjusted than he considered himself to be, why\n had he created three such malevolent super-images as Miss Stoddart,\n Officer Finch, and Vera Velvetskin?\nThey followed him off the campus into a vicarious memory-image of\n Walden Pond, Thoreau's shack, and the encompassing woods. Judging from\n the ecstatic \"oh's\" and \"ah's\" they kept giving voice to, the place\n delighted them. Once, glancing back over his shoulder, he saw them\n standing in front of Thoreau's shack, looking at it as though it were a\n doll's house. Not far away, Thoreau was sitting in under a tall pine,", "Blake went on. Presently the Walden Pond memory-image gave way to a\n memory-image of an English park which the ex-Earth government had set\n aside as a memorial to the English poets and which had impressed Blake\n sufficiently when he had visited it in his youth to have found a place\n for itself in the country of his mind. It consisted of reconstructions\n of famous dwellings out of the lives of the poets, among them, a\n dwelling out of the life of a poet who was not in the strictest sense\n of the word English at all—the birthplace of Robert Burns. Oddly\n enough, it was Burns's birthplace that had impressed Blake most. Now\n the little cottage stood out in much more vivid detail than any of the\n other famous dwellings.\n\n\n Sabrina York must have been attracted to the place, for her footprints\n showed that she had turned in at the gate, walked up the little path\n and let herself in the door.", "He did not haggle, but counted out the amount and handed it to her. She\n slipped the bills into a thigh sheath-purse, told him her hut number\n and stood up to leave. \"I will meet you there in an hour,\" she said.\nHer hut was as good a place to wait for her as any. After buying a\n bottle of native whiskey at the bar, Blake went out into the Dubhe 4\n night and made his way through the labyrinthine alleys of the native\n sector. In common with all chocoletto huts, Eldoria's was uncared for\n on the outside, and gave a false impression of poverty. He expected to\n find the usual hanger-on waiting in the anteroom, and looked forward to\n booting him out into the alley. Instead he found a young girl—\n\n\n A human girl.", "Blake Past stood up too. \"No, not yet. I'll walk back to the sorority\n house with you.\"\n\n\n She tossed her head, but the sadness in her tarn-blue eyes belied her\n hauteur. \"If you wish,\" she said.\nBlake Present watched them set out side by side toward the remembered\n halls of learning that showed in the distance. There had been other\n people present on the campus that afternoon, but as they had failed to\n register on Blake Past's mind, they did not exist for Blake Present.\n All that existed for Blake Present were the diminishing figures of the\n girl and the man, and the pain that was constricting his throat.\n\n\n Wretchedly he turned away. As he did so he saw the three shadows lying\n at his feet and knew that his pursuers had at last caught up to him.\n\n\n His first reaction when he faced them was amazement. His next reaction\n was shock. His third was fear.", "He controlled it and descended the stairs with exaggerated slowness,\n leaving the house by way of the back door. He picked up Sabrina's trail\n in the back yard and followed it down to the Martian waterway and\n thence along the bank to where the waterway ended and a campus began.\n Not the campus of the university which he had visited two days ago to\n attend his protegee's graduation. It was not a place-time that he cared\n to revisit, nor a moment that he cared to relive, but Sabrina's trail\n led straight across the artificially stunted grass toward the little\n bench where he and Deirdre Eldoria had come to talk after the ceremony\n was over. He had no choice.\nThe bench stood beneath a towering American elm whose feathery branches", "He asked the two questions aloud.\n\n\n Three arms were raised and three forefingers were pointed accusingly at\n his chest. Three pairs of eyes burned darkly. \"You ask us that?\" Miss\n Stoddart said. \"Callous creature who did a maiden's innocence affront!\"\n said Officer Finch. \"And sought sanctuary in ill-fitting robes of\n righteousness!\" said Vera Velvetskin. The three faces moved together,\n blurred and seemed to blend into one. The three voices were raised in\n unison: \"You know who we are, Nathan Blake.\nYou\nknow who we are!\"\n\n\n Blake stared at them open-mouthed. Then he turned and fled.\nIt had taken man a long time to discover that he was a god in his\n own right and that he too was capable of creating universes. Trivial\n universes, to be sure, when compared with the grandeur and scope of the\n objective one, and peopled with ghosts instead of human beings; but\n universes nonetheless.", "places in which he can hide—even from himself!\nThe dance that the chocoletto girl was performing was an expurgated\n version of the kylee sex ritual which the Louave maidens of Dubhe 7\n practiced on the eve of their betrothal. Expurgated or not, however,\n it was still on the lascivious side. The G-string that constituted\n the chocoletto girl's entire costume put her but one degree above the\n nakedness which the original dance demanded. Nathan Blake's voice was\n slightly thick when he summoned the waiter who was hovering in the\n shadows at the back of the room. \"Is she free?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"I do not know, mensakin. Perhaps.\"", "After resting for a few minutes, he descended the hill and started\n across the Deneb 1 wasteland. It was a remarkably detailed\n materialization, and his quarry's footprints stood out clearly in the\n duplicated sand.\n\n\n Sabrina York did not even know the rudiments of the art of throwing\n off a mind-tracker. It would have done her but little good if she\n had, for twelve years as a psycheye had taught Blake all the tricks.\n Probably she had taken it for granted that the mere act of hiding out\n in her tracker's mind was in itself a sufficient guarantee of her\n safety. After all, she had no way of knowing that he had discovered her\n presence.", "He tried to assimilate the information, but could not. Perceiving his\n difficulty, the girl went on, \"My parents indentured themselves to the\n Great Starway Cartel and were assigned to the rubber plantations of\n Dubhe 4. They died of yellow-water dysentery before their indenture ran\n out, and in accordance with Interstellar Law I was auctioned off along\n with the rest of their possessions. Eldoria bought me.\"\n\n\n Five years as a roving psycheye had hardened Blake to commercial\n colonization practices; nevertheless, he found the present example of\n man's inhumanity to man sickening.\n\n\n \"How old are you?\" Blake asked.\n\n\n \"Fourteen.\"\n\n\n \"And what are you going to be when you grow up?\"", "At the head of the stairs a narrow window looked out over the front\n yard and thence out over the meadow. He glanced absently through the\n panes, and came to an abrupt halt. His three pursuers were wading\n through the long meadow grass less than a quarter of a mile away—not\n close enough as yet for him to be able to make out their faces, but\n close enough for him to be able to see that two of them were wearing\n dresses and that the third had on a blue skirt and blouse, and a kepi\n to match. He gasped. It simply hadn't occurred to him that his pursuers\n might be women. To his consternation he discovered that he was even\n more loath to go back and accost them than he had been before. He\n actually had an impulse to flee." ], [ "the person involved had\nwanted\nto create. Therefore, even assuming\n that Blake was less well-adjusted than he considered himself to be, why\n had he created three such malevolent super-images as Miss Stoddart,\n Officer Finch, and Vera Velvetskin?\nThey followed him off the campus into a vicarious memory-image of\n Walden Pond, Thoreau's shack, and the encompassing woods. Judging from\n the ecstatic \"oh's\" and \"ah's\" they kept giving voice to, the place\n delighted them. Once, glancing back over his shoulder, he saw them\n standing in front of Thoreau's shack, looking at it as though it were a\n doll's house. Not far away, Thoreau was sitting in under a tall pine,", "His amazement resulted from recognition. One of the three women arrayed\n before him was Miss Stoddart, his boyhood Sunday-school teacher.\n Standing next to her in a familiar blue uniform was Officer Finch,\n the police woman who had maintained law and order in the collective\n elementary school he had attended. Standing next to Officer Finch was\n blond and chic Vera Velvetskin, whose picture he had seen on box after\n countless box of his mother's favorite detergent.", "His shock resulted from the expressions on the three faces. Neither\n Miss Stoddart nor Officer Finch ever particularly liked him, but they\n had never particularly disliked him either. This Miss Stoddart and this\n Officer Finch disliked him, though. They hated him. They hated him so\n much that their hatred had thinned out their faces and darkened their\n eyes. More shocking yet, Vera Velvetskin, who had never existed save\n in some copywriter's mind, hated him too. In fact, judging from the\n greater thinness of her face and the more pronounced darkness of her\n eyes, she hated him even more than Miss Stoddart and Officer Finch did.\n\n\n His fear resulted from the realization that his mind-world contained\n phenomena it had no right to contain—not if he was nearly as\n well-adjusted as he considered himself to be. The three women standing\n before him definitely were not memory-images. They were too vivid, for\n one thing. For another, they were aware of him. What were they, then?\n And what were they doing in his mind?", "He asked the two questions aloud.\n\n\n Three arms were raised and three forefingers were pointed accusingly at\n his chest. Three pairs of eyes burned darkly. \"You ask us that?\" Miss\n Stoddart said. \"Callous creature who did a maiden's innocence affront!\"\n said Officer Finch. \"And sought sanctuary in ill-fitting robes of\n righteousness!\" said Vera Velvetskin. The three faces moved together,\n blurred and seemed to blend into one. The three voices were raised in\n unison: \"You know who we are, Nathan Blake.\nYou\nknow who we are!\"\n\n\n Blake stared at them open-mouthed. Then he turned and fled.\nIt had taken man a long time to discover that he was a god in his\n own right and that he too was capable of creating universes. Trivial\n universes, to be sure, when compared with the grandeur and scope of the\n objective one, and peopled with ghosts instead of human beings; but\n universes nonetheless.", "\"Probably I shall be a psychiatrist. Eldoria is sending me to the\n mission school now, and afterward she is going to put me through an\n institute of higher learning. And when I come of age, she is going to\n give me my freedom.\"\n\n\n \"I see,\" Blake said. He indicated the book on her lap. \"Homework?\"\n\n\n She shook her head. \"In addition to my courses at the mission school, I\n am studying the humanities.\"\n\n\n \"Xenophon,\" Blake said. \"And I suppose Plato too.\"\n\n\n \"And Homer and Virgil and Aeschylus and Euripides and all the rest of\n them. When I grow up I shall be a most well-educated person.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure you will be,\" Blake said, looking at the arras.\n\n\n \"My name is Deirdre.\"", "The other thing that bothered him was of a much more urgent nature.\n He had been in enough minds and he had read enough on the subject\n of Trevorism to know that people were sometimes capable of creating\n beings considerably higher on the scale of mind-country evolution\n than ordinary memory-ghosts. One woman whom he had apprehended in her\n own mind had created a walking-talking Virgin Mary who watched over\n her wherever she went. And once, after tracking down an ex-enlisted\n man, he had found his quarry holed up in the memory-image of an army\n barracks with a ten-star general waiting on him hand and foot. But\n these, and other, similar, cases, had to do with mal-adjusted people,\n and moreover, the super-image in each instance had been an image that", "Blake resumed watching. The girl's movements were a delicate blend of\n love and lust. Her face accompanied her body, eyes half-lidded one\n moment to match the languid motion of her limbs, wide and feral the\n next to match the furious bump and grind of her hips. For a chocoletto\n she was light-skinned—more bronze, really, than brown. But then,\n the word \"chocoletto\", coined by the early beche-la-mer traders, was\n misleading, and few of the natives of Dubhe 4's southern-most continent\n lived up to it completely.\n\n\n She was beautiful too. Her high-cheekboned face was striking—the eyes\n dark-brown and wide-apart, the mouth sensuous, the teeth showing in a\n vivid white line between the half-parted purple lips. And her body was\n splendid. Blake had never seen anyone quite like her.", "At the head of the stairs a narrow window looked out over the front\n yard and thence out over the meadow. He glanced absently through the\n panes, and came to an abrupt halt. His three pursuers were wading\n through the long meadow grass less than a quarter of a mile away—not\n close enough as yet for him to be able to make out their faces, but\n close enough for him to be able to see that two of them were wearing\n dresses and that the third had on a blue skirt and blouse, and a kepi\n to match. He gasped. It simply hadn't occurred to him that his pursuers\n might be women. To his consternation he discovered that he was even\n more loath to go back and accost them than he had been before. He\n actually had an impulse to flee.", "So far as he knew, the present case represented the first time a\n criminal had ever hidden out in the pursuer's mind. It would have been\n a superb stratagem indeed if, shortly after her entry, Sabrina York\n had not betrayed her presence. For her point of entry she had used\n the place-time materialization of the little office Blake had opened\n on Ex-earth at the beginning of his career. Unaccountably she had\n ransacked it before moving into a co-terminous memory-image.\n\n\n Even this action wouldn't have given her away, however, if the office\n hadn't constituted a sentimental memory. Whenever Blake accepted a case\n he invariably thought of the bleak and lonely little room with its\n thin-gauge steel desk and battered filing cabinets, and when he had\n done so after accepting his case—or was it before? He couldn't quite\n remember—the mental picture that had come into his mind had revealed\n open drawers, scattered papers and a general air of disarray.", "After resting for a few minutes, he descended the hill and started\n across the Deneb 1 wasteland. It was a remarkably detailed\n materialization, and his quarry's footprints stood out clearly in the\n duplicated sand.\n\n\n Sabrina York did not even know the rudiments of the art of throwing\n off a mind-tracker. It would have done her but little good if she\n had, for twelve years as a psycheye had taught Blake all the tricks.\n Probably she had taken it for granted that the mere act of hiding out\n in her tracker's mind was in itself a sufficient guarantee of her\n safety. After all, she had no way of knowing that he had discovered her\n presence.", "They also showed that she had left by the same route, so there was no\n reason for Blake to linger. As a matter of fact, the fascination that\n had brought the place into being had been replaced by an illogical\n repugnance. But repugnance can sometimes be as compelling a force as\n fascination, and Blake not only lingered but went inside as well.\n\n\n He remembered the living room distinctly—the flagstone floor, the huge\n grill-fronted hearth, the deeply recessed window, the rack of cups and\n platters on the wall; the empty straight-backed chair standing sternly\n in a corner, the bare wooden table—\n\n\n He paused just within the doorway. The chair was no longer empty, the\n table no longer bare.", "Blake went on. Presently the Walden Pond memory-image gave way to a\n memory-image of an English park which the ex-Earth government had set\n aside as a memorial to the English poets and which had impressed Blake\n sufficiently when he had visited it in his youth to have found a place\n for itself in the country of his mind. It consisted of reconstructions\n of famous dwellings out of the lives of the poets, among them, a\n dwelling out of the life of a poet who was not in the strictest sense\n of the word English at all—the birthplace of Robert Burns. Oddly\n enough, it was Burns's birthplace that had impressed Blake most. Now\n the little cottage stood out in much more vivid detail than any of the\n other famous dwellings.\n\n\n Sabrina York must have been attracted to the place, for her footprints\n showed that she had turned in at the gate, walked up the little path\n and let herself in the door.", "He had never been in his own mind before. Consequently he was more\n affected than he might otherwise have been. Finally, stirring himself,\n he walked out into the kitchen. On a shelf above the sink stood a gaily\n colored box of his mother's favorite detergent with a full-length\n drawing of Vera Velvetskin, the company's blond and chic visual symbol,\n on the front. His mother was standing before the huge automatic range,\n preparing a meal she had served twenty-three years ago. He regarded her\n with moist eyes. She had died a dozen years before his father, but the\n wound that her death had caused had never healed. He wanted to go up\n behind her and touch her shoulder and say, \"What's for supper, mom?\"\n but he knew it would do no good. For her he had no reality, not only", "Blake Past stood up too. \"No, not yet. I'll walk back to the sorority\n house with you.\"\n\n\n She tossed her head, but the sadness in her tarn-blue eyes belied her\n hauteur. \"If you wish,\" she said.\nBlake Present watched them set out side by side toward the remembered\n halls of learning that showed in the distance. There had been other\n people present on the campus that afternoon, but as they had failed to\n register on Blake Past's mind, they did not exist for Blake Present.\n All that existed for Blake Present were the diminishing figures of the\n girl and the man, and the pain that was constricting his throat.\n\n\n Wretchedly he turned away. As he did so he saw the three shadows lying\n at his feet and knew that his pursuers had at last caught up to him.\n\n\n His first reaction when he faced them was amazement. His next reaction\n was shock. His third was fear.", "By their very nature, mind-countries were confusing. They existed on\n a plane of reality that bore no apparent relationship to the plane\n of the so-called objective universe. In fact, so far as was known,\n this secondary—or subjective—reality was connected to so-called\n true reality only through the awareness of the various creators. In\n addition, these countries had no outward shape in the ordinary sense of\n the word, and while most countries contained certain parallel images,\n these images were subject to the interpretation of the individual\n creator. As a result they were seldom identical.\nIt was inevitable that sooner or later some criminal would hit upon\n the idea of hiding out in his own mind-world till the statute of\n limitations that applied to his particular crime ran out, and it was\n equally inevitable that others should follow suit. Society's answer was\n the psyche-police, and the psyche-police hadn't been in action very\n long before the first private psycheye appeared.\n\n\n Blake was one of a long line of such operators.", "He had suspected the truth immediately, and when he had seen the\n woman's handkerchief with the initials \"SB\" embroidered on it lying\n by one of the filing cabinets he had known definitely that his quarry\n was hiding out in his mind. Retiring to his bachelor quarters, he had\n entered at the same place-time and set off in pursuit.\n\n\n Her only advantage lost, Sabrina York was now at his mercy. Unless\n she discovered his presence and was able to locate his most recently\n materialized place-time before he over-took her, her capture was\n assured.\n\n\n Only two things bothered Blake. The little office was far in his past,\n and it was unlikely that anyone save the few intimate acquaintances\n whom he had told about it were aware that it had ever existed. How,\n then, had a total stranger such as Sabrina York learned enough about it\n to enable her to use it as a point of entry?", "A pink flush of anger climbed into Deirdre Eldoria's girlish cheeks.\n \"What right has\nhe\ngot to take me! Did\nhe\nscrimp and go without\n in order to put me through high school and college? Has\nhe\nbooked\n passage for me to New Earth and paid my tuition to Trevor University?\"\n\n\n \"Please,\" Blake Past said, desperation deepening his voice. \"You're\n only making everything worse. After majoring in Trevorism, you\n certainly ought to realize by now that there was nothing noble about my\n buying you after Eldoria died. I only did it to ease my conscience—\"", "He was relieved when Eldoria finally arrived. She ushered him into\n the next room immediately. It was slightly larger than the anteroom,\n and much more richly appointed. A thick carpet the color of Martian\n waterways lay upon the floor, contrasting pleasantly with the golden\n tapestries that adorned all four walls. The sleeping dais was oval\n and took up nearly half the floor space. It was strewn with scarlet\n cushions.\n\n\n Blake sat down upon it. Nervously he watched Eldoria slip out of her\n white street robe, his eyes moving back and forth from her smooth dark\n skin to the arras. The incense thickened around him.\n\n\n She noticed the back-and-forth movement of his eyes. \"You need not fear\n the little one,\" she said, laying her hand upon his knee. \"She will not\n enter.\"\n\n\n \"It's not that so much,\" Blake said.\n\n\n \"What?\" The warm bronze shoulder was touching his....", "places in which he can hide—even from himself!\nThe dance that the chocoletto girl was performing was an expurgated\n version of the kylee sex ritual which the Louave maidens of Dubhe 7\n practiced on the eve of their betrothal. Expurgated or not, however,\n it was still on the lascivious side. The G-string that constituted\n the chocoletto girl's entire costume put her but one degree above the\n nakedness which the original dance demanded. Nathan Blake's voice was\n slightly thick when he summoned the waiter who was hovering in the\n shadows at the back of the room. \"Is she free?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"I do not know, mensakin. Perhaps.\"", "He tried to assimilate the information, but could not. Perceiving his\n difficulty, the girl went on, \"My parents indentured themselves to the\n Great Starway Cartel and were assigned to the rubber plantations of\n Dubhe 4. They died of yellow-water dysentery before their indenture ran\n out, and in accordance with Interstellar Law I was auctioned off along\n with the rest of their possessions. Eldoria bought me.\"\n\n\n Five years as a roving psycheye had hardened Blake to commercial\n colonization practices; nevertheless, he found the present example of\n man's inhumanity to man sickening.\n\n\n \"How old are you?\" Blake asked.\n\n\n \"Fourteen.\"\n\n\n \"And what are you going to be when you grow up?\"" ], [ "As he was about to turn away, the name-plate on the range caught his\n eye, and thinking that he had read the two words wrong, he stepped\n closer so that he could see them more clearly. No, he had made no\n mistake: the first word was \"Sabrina\", and the second was \"York\".\n\n\n He stepped back. Odd that a kitchen range should have the same name as\n his quarry. But perhaps not unduly so. Giving appliances human names\n had been common practice for centuries. Even a name like \"Sabrina\n York\", while certainly not run-of-the-mill, was bound to be duplicated\n in real life. Nevertheless a feeling of uneasiness accompanied him when\n he left the kitchen and climbed the stairs to the second floor.", "He had suspected the truth immediately, and when he had seen the\n woman's handkerchief with the initials \"SB\" embroidered on it lying\n by one of the filing cabinets he had known definitely that his quarry\n was hiding out in his mind. Retiring to his bachelor quarters, he had\n entered at the same place-time and set off in pursuit.\n\n\n Her only advantage lost, Sabrina York was now at his mercy. Unless\n she discovered his presence and was able to locate his most recently\n materialized place-time before he over-took her, her capture was\n assured.\n\n\n Only two things bothered Blake. The little office was far in his past,\n and it was unlikely that anyone save the few intimate acquaintances\n whom he had told about it were aware that it had ever existed. How,\n then, had a total stranger such as Sabrina York learned enough about it\n to enable her to use it as a point of entry?", "He went through each room systematically, but saw no sign of Sabrina\n York. He lingered for some time in his own room, wistfully watching his\n fifteen-year-old self lolling on the bed with a dog-eared copy of\nThe\n Galaxy Boys and the Secret of the Crab Nebula\n, then he stepped back\n out into the hall and started to descend the stairs.", "Blake went on. Presently the Walden Pond memory-image gave way to a\n memory-image of an English park which the ex-Earth government had set\n aside as a memorial to the English poets and which had impressed Blake\n sufficiently when he had visited it in his youth to have found a place\n for itself in the country of his mind. It consisted of reconstructions\n of famous dwellings out of the lives of the poets, among them, a\n dwelling out of the life of a poet who was not in the strictest sense\n of the word English at all—the birthplace of Robert Burns. Oddly\n enough, it was Burns's birthplace that had impressed Blake most. Now\n the little cottage stood out in much more vivid detail than any of the\n other famous dwellings.\n\n\n Sabrina York must have been attracted to the place, for her footprints\n showed that she had turned in at the gate, walked up the little path\n and let herself in the door.", "So far as he knew, the present case represented the first time a\n criminal had ever hidden out in the pursuer's mind. It would have been\n a superb stratagem indeed if, shortly after her entry, Sabrina York\n had not betrayed her presence. For her point of entry she had used\n the place-time materialization of the little office Blake had opened\n on Ex-earth at the beginning of his career. Unaccountably she had\n ransacked it before moving into a co-terminous memory-image.\n\n\n Even this action wouldn't have given her away, however, if the office\n hadn't constituted a sentimental memory. Whenever Blake accepted a case\n he invariably thought of the bleak and lonely little room with its\n thin-gauge steel desk and battered filing cabinets, and when he had\n done so after accepting his case—or was it before? He couldn't quite\n remember—the mental picture that had come into his mind had revealed\n open drawers, scattered papers and a general air of disarray.", "After resting for a few minutes, he descended the hill and started\n across the Deneb 1 wasteland. It was a remarkably detailed\n materialization, and his quarry's footprints stood out clearly in the\n duplicated sand.\n\n\n Sabrina York did not even know the rudiments of the art of throwing\n off a mind-tracker. It would have done her but little good if she\n had, for twelve years as a psycheye had taught Blake all the tricks.\n Probably she had taken it for granted that the mere act of hiding out\n in her tracker's mind was in itself a sufficient guarantee of her\n safety. After all, she had no way of knowing that he had discovered her\n presence.", "He controlled it and descended the stairs with exaggerated slowness,\n leaving the house by way of the back door. He picked up Sabrina's trail\n in the back yard and followed it down to the Martian waterway and\n thence along the bank to where the waterway ended and a campus began.\n Not the campus of the university which he had visited two days ago to\n attend his protegee's graduation. It was not a place-time that he cared\n to revisit, nor a moment that he cared to relive, but Sabrina's trail\n led straight across the artificially stunted grass toward the little\n bench where he and Deirdre Eldoria had come to talk after the ceremony\n was over. He had no choice.\nThe bench stood beneath a towering American elm whose feathery branches", "The house was flanked on one side by a section of a New Earth spaceport\n and on the other by an excerpt of an Ex-earth city-block. Behind it\n flowed a brief blue stretch of Martian waterway.\n\n\n Sabrina's footsteps led up to the front door, and the door itself was\n ajar. Perhaps she was still inside. Perhaps she was watching him even\n now through one of the remembered windows. He scanned them with a\n professional eye, but saw no sign of her.", "\"Probably I shall be a psychiatrist. Eldoria is sending me to the\n mission school now, and afterward she is going to put me through an\n institute of higher learning. And when I come of age, she is going to\n give me my freedom.\"\n\n\n \"I see,\" Blake said. He indicated the book on her lap. \"Homework?\"\n\n\n She shook her head. \"In addition to my courses at the mission school, I\n am studying the humanities.\"\n\n\n \"Xenophon,\" Blake said. \"And I suppose Plato too.\"\n\n\n \"And Homer and Virgil and Aeschylus and Euripides and all the rest of\n them. When I grow up I shall be a most well-educated person.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure you will be,\" Blake said, looking at the arras.\n\n\n \"My name is Deirdre.\"", "\"Nathan,\" Blake said. \"Nathan Blake.\"\n\n\n \"Eldoria will be arriving soon. I must go and prepare her dais.\"\nShe got up, parted the arras, and slipped into the next room. Shame\n flamed in Blake's cheeks, and for a moment he considered leaving; then\n he remembered Eldoria's dance, and he went right on sitting where he\n was.\n\n\n Presently the girl returned, and not long afterward the cloying scent\n of native incense crept beneath the arras and permeated the anteroom.\n She sat sideways on the mat this time, and he caught her face in\n profile. There was a suggestion of saintliness in the line of the nose\n and chin, a suggestion made all the more poignant by the slender column\n of the neck. He shifted uncomfortably on the guest mat. She had taken\n up the\nAnabasis\nagain, and silence was pounding silent fists upon the\n walls.", "traced green arabesques against the blue June sky. A set of footprints\n slightly deeper than its predecessors indicated that Sabrina had\n paused by the trunk. Despite himself Blake paused there too. Pain\n tightened his throat when he looked at Deirdre's delicate profile\n and copper-colored hair, intensified when he lowered his eyes to the\n remembered blueness of her graduation dress. The diamond brooch that he\n had given her as a graduation present, and which she had proudly pinned\n upon her bodice for the whole wide world to see, made him want to\n cry. His self-image of two weeks ago shocked him. There were lines on\n the face that did not as yet exist, and the brown hair was shot with\n streaks of gray that had yet to come into being. Lord, he must have\n been feeling old to have pictured himself like that!", "He was relieved when Eldoria finally arrived. She ushered him into\n the next room immediately. It was slightly larger than the anteroom,\n and much more richly appointed. A thick carpet the color of Martian\n waterways lay upon the floor, contrasting pleasantly with the golden\n tapestries that adorned all four walls. The sleeping dais was oval\n and took up nearly half the floor space. It was strewn with scarlet\n cushions.\n\n\n Blake sat down upon it. Nervously he watched Eldoria slip out of her\n white street robe, his eyes moving back and forth from her smooth dark\n skin to the arras. The incense thickened around him.\n\n\n She noticed the back-and-forth movement of his eyes. \"You need not fear\n the little one,\" she said, laying her hand upon his knee. \"She will not\n enter.\"\n\n\n \"It's not that so much,\" Blake said.\n\n\n \"What?\" The warm bronze shoulder was touching his....", "At the head of the stairs a narrow window looked out over the front\n yard and thence out over the meadow. He glanced absently through the\n panes, and came to an abrupt halt. His three pursuers were wading\n through the long meadow grass less than a quarter of a mile away—not\n close enough as yet for him to be able to make out their faces, but\n close enough for him to be able to see that two of them were wearing\n dresses and that the third had on a blue skirt and blouse, and a kepi\n to match. He gasped. It simply hadn't occurred to him that his pursuers\n might be women. To his consternation he discovered that he was even\n more loath to go back and accost them than he had been before. He\n actually had an impulse to flee.", "Blake resumed watching. The girl's movements were a delicate blend of\n love and lust. Her face accompanied her body, eyes half-lidded one\n moment to match the languid motion of her limbs, wide and feral the\n next to match the furious bump and grind of her hips. For a chocoletto\n she was light-skinned—more bronze, really, than brown. But then,\n the word \"chocoletto\", coined by the early beche-la-mer traders, was\n misleading, and few of the natives of Dubhe 4's southern-most continent\n lived up to it completely.\n\n\n She was beautiful too. Her high-cheekboned face was striking—the eyes\n dark-brown and wide-apart, the mouth sensuous, the teeth showing in a\n vivid white line between the half-parted purple lips. And her body was\n splendid. Blake had never seen anyone quite like her.", "His amazement resulted from recognition. One of the three women arrayed\n before him was Miss Stoddart, his boyhood Sunday-school teacher.\n Standing next to her in a familiar blue uniform was Officer Finch,\n the police woman who had maintained law and order in the collective\n elementary school he had attended. Standing next to Officer Finch was\n blond and chic Vera Velvetskin, whose picture he had seen on box after\n countless box of his mother's favorite detergent.", "He tried to assimilate the information, but could not. Perceiving his\n difficulty, the girl went on, \"My parents indentured themselves to the\n Great Starway Cartel and were assigned to the rubber plantations of\n Dubhe 4. They died of yellow-water dysentery before their indenture ran\n out, and in accordance with Interstellar Law I was auctioned off along\n with the rest of their possessions. Eldoria bought me.\"\n\n\n Five years as a roving psycheye had hardened Blake to commercial\n colonization practices; nevertheless, he found the present example of\n man's inhumanity to man sickening.\n\n\n \"How old are you?\" Blake asked.\n\n\n \"Fourteen.\"\n\n\n \"And what are you going to be when you grow up?\"", "Deirdre was speaking. \"Yes,\" she was saying, \"at nine o'clock. And I\n should very much like for you to come.\"\n\n\n Blake Past shook his head. \"Proms aren't for parents. You know that\n as well as I do. That young man you were talking with a few minutes\n ago—he's the one who should take you. He'd give his right arm for the\n chance.\"\n\n\n \"I'll thank you not to imply that you're my father. One would think\n from the way you talk that you are centuries old!\"\n\n\n \"I'm thirty-eight,\" Blake Past said, \"and while I may not be your\n father, I'm certainly old enough to be. That young man—\"", "They also showed that she had left by the same route, so there was no\n reason for Blake to linger. As a matter of fact, the fascination that\n had brought the place into being had been replaced by an illogical\n repugnance. But repugnance can sometimes be as compelling a force as\n fascination, and Blake not only lingered but went inside as well.\n\n\n He remembered the living room distinctly—the flagstone floor, the huge\n grill-fronted hearth, the deeply recessed window, the rack of cups and\n platters on the wall; the empty straight-backed chair standing sternly\n in a corner, the bare wooden table—\n\n\n He paused just within the doorway. The chair was no longer empty, the\n table no longer bare.", "places in which he can hide—even from himself!\nThe dance that the chocoletto girl was performing was an expurgated\n version of the kylee sex ritual which the Louave maidens of Dubhe 7\n practiced on the eve of their betrothal. Expurgated or not, however,\n it was still on the lascivious side. The G-string that constituted\n the chocoletto girl's entire costume put her but one degree above the\n nakedness which the original dance demanded. Nathan Blake's voice was\n slightly thick when he summoned the waiter who was hovering in the\n shadows at the back of the room. \"Is she free?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"I do not know, mensakin. Perhaps.\"", "A pink flush of anger climbed into Deirdre Eldoria's girlish cheeks.\n \"What right has\nhe\ngot to take me! Did\nhe\nscrimp and go without\n in order to put me through high school and college? Has\nhe\nbooked\n passage for me to New Earth and paid my tuition to Trevor University?\"\n\n\n \"Please,\" Blake Past said, desperation deepening his voice. \"You're\n only making everything worse. After majoring in Trevorism, you\n certainly ought to realize by now that there was nothing noble about my\n buying you after Eldoria died. I only did it to ease my conscience—\"" ], [ "He was relieved when Eldoria finally arrived. She ushered him into\n the next room immediately. It was slightly larger than the anteroom,\n and much more richly appointed. A thick carpet the color of Martian\n waterways lay upon the floor, contrasting pleasantly with the golden\n tapestries that adorned all four walls. The sleeping dais was oval\n and took up nearly half the floor space. It was strewn with scarlet\n cushions.\n\n\n Blake sat down upon it. Nervously he watched Eldoria slip out of her\n white street robe, his eyes moving back and forth from her smooth dark\n skin to the arras. The incense thickened around him.\n\n\n She noticed the back-and-forth movement of his eyes. \"You need not fear\n the little one,\" she said, laying her hand upon his knee. \"She will not\n enter.\"\n\n\n \"It's not that so much,\" Blake said.\n\n\n \"What?\" The warm bronze shoulder was touching his....", "He did not haggle, but counted out the amount and handed it to her. She\n slipped the bills into a thigh sheath-purse, told him her hut number\n and stood up to leave. \"I will meet you there in an hour,\" she said.\nHer hut was as good a place to wait for her as any. After buying a\n bottle of native whiskey at the bar, Blake went out into the Dubhe 4\n night and made his way through the labyrinthine alleys of the native\n sector. In common with all chocoletto huts, Eldoria's was uncared for\n on the outside, and gave a false impression of poverty. He expected to\n find the usual hanger-on waiting in the anteroom, and looked forward to\n booting him out into the alley. Instead he found a young girl—\n\n\n A human girl.", "\"Probably I shall be a psychiatrist. Eldoria is sending me to the\n mission school now, and afterward she is going to put me through an\n institute of higher learning. And when I come of age, she is going to\n give me my freedom.\"\n\n\n \"I see,\" Blake said. He indicated the book on her lap. \"Homework?\"\n\n\n She shook her head. \"In addition to my courses at the mission school, I\n am studying the humanities.\"\n\n\n \"Xenophon,\" Blake said. \"And I suppose Plato too.\"\n\n\n \"And Homer and Virgil and Aeschylus and Euripides and all the rest of\n them. When I grow up I shall be a most well-educated person.\"\n\n\n \"I'm sure you will be,\" Blake said, looking at the arras.\n\n\n \"My name is Deirdre.\"", "\"Nathan,\" Blake said. \"Nathan Blake.\"\n\n\n \"Eldoria will be arriving soon. I must go and prepare her dais.\"\nShe got up, parted the arras, and slipped into the next room. Shame\n flamed in Blake's cheeks, and for a moment he considered leaving; then\n he remembered Eldoria's dance, and he went right on sitting where he\n was.\n\n\n Presently the girl returned, and not long afterward the cloying scent\n of native incense crept beneath the arras and permeated the anteroom.\n She sat sideways on the mat this time, and he caught her face in\n profile. There was a suggestion of saintliness in the line of the nose\n and chin, a suggestion made all the more poignant by the slender column\n of the neck. He shifted uncomfortably on the guest mat. She had taken\n up the\nAnabasis\nagain, and silence was pounding silent fists upon the\n walls.", "A pink flush of anger climbed into Deirdre Eldoria's girlish cheeks.\n \"What right has\nhe\ngot to take me! Did\nhe\nscrimp and go without\n in order to put me through high school and college? Has\nhe\nbooked\n passage for me to New Earth and paid my tuition to Trevor University?\"\n\n\n \"Please,\" Blake Past said, desperation deepening his voice. \"You're\n only making everything worse. After majoring in Trevorism, you\n certainly ought to realize by now that there was nothing noble about my\n buying you after Eldoria died. I only did it to ease my conscience—\"", "He beckoned to her when the dance was over and, after slipping into\n a white thigh-length tunic, she joined him at his table. She ordered\n Martian wine in a liquid voice, and sipped it with a finesse that\n belied her cannibalistic forebears. \"You wish a night?\" she asked.\n\n\n Blake nodded. \"If you are free.\"\n\n\n \"Three thousand quandoes.\"", "He tried to assimilate the information, but could not. Perceiving his\n difficulty, the girl went on, \"My parents indentured themselves to the\n Great Starway Cartel and were assigned to the rubber plantations of\n Dubhe 4. They died of yellow-water dysentery before their indenture ran\n out, and in accordance with Interstellar Law I was auctioned off along\n with the rest of their possessions. Eldoria bought me.\"\n\n\n Five years as a roving psycheye had hardened Blake to commercial\n colonization practices; nevertheless, he found the present example of\n man's inhumanity to man sickening.\n\n\n \"How old are you?\" Blake asked.\n\n\n \"Fourteen.\"\n\n\n \"And what are you going to be when you grow up?\"", "Blake resumed watching. The girl's movements were a delicate blend of\n love and lust. Her face accompanied her body, eyes half-lidded one\n moment to match the languid motion of her limbs, wide and feral the\n next to match the furious bump and grind of her hips. For a chocoletto\n she was light-skinned—more bronze, really, than brown. But then,\n the word \"chocoletto\", coined by the early beche-la-mer traders, was\n misleading, and few of the natives of Dubhe 4's southern-most continent\n lived up to it completely.\n\n\n She was beautiful too. Her high-cheekboned face was striking—the eyes\n dark-brown and wide-apart, the mouth sensuous, the teeth showing in a\n vivid white line between the half-parted purple lips. And her body was\n splendid. Blake had never seen anyone quite like her.", "places in which he can hide—even from himself!\nThe dance that the chocoletto girl was performing was an expurgated\n version of the kylee sex ritual which the Louave maidens of Dubhe 7\n practiced on the eve of their betrothal. Expurgated or not, however,\n it was still on the lascivious side. The G-string that constituted\n the chocoletto girl's entire costume put her but one degree above the\n nakedness which the original dance demanded. Nathan Blake's voice was\n slightly thick when he summoned the waiter who was hovering in the\n shadows at the back of the room. \"Is she free?\" he asked.\n\n\n \"I do not know, mensakin. Perhaps.\"", "They also showed that she had left by the same route, so there was no\n reason for Blake to linger. As a matter of fact, the fascination that\n had brought the place into being had been replaced by an illogical\n repugnance. But repugnance can sometimes be as compelling a force as\n fascination, and Blake not only lingered but went inside as well.\n\n\n He remembered the living room distinctly—the flagstone floor, the huge\n grill-fronted hearth, the deeply recessed window, the rack of cups and\n platters on the wall; the empty straight-backed chair standing sternly\n in a corner, the bare wooden table—\n\n\n He paused just within the doorway. The chair was no longer empty, the\n table no longer bare.", "After resting for a few minutes, he descended the hill and started\n across the Deneb 1 wasteland. It was a remarkably detailed\n materialization, and his quarry's footprints stood out clearly in the\n duplicated sand.\n\n\n Sabrina York did not even know the rudiments of the art of throwing\n off a mind-tracker. It would have done her but little good if she\n had, for twelve years as a psycheye had taught Blake all the tricks.\n Probably she had taken it for granted that the mere act of hiding out\n in her tracker's mind was in itself a sufficient guarantee of her\n safety. After all, she had no way of knowing that he had discovered her\n presence.", "He rose up once in the night, thinking to find his hotel bed. His next\n awakening was in the grayness of dawn, and he got up and dressed and\n moved silently to the doorway. The girl slept just without the arras on\n a thin sleeping-mat, and he had to step over her to gain the anteroom.\n In sleep, a strand of her copper-colored hair had tumbled down across\n her forehead and lay like a lovely flower upon the virginal whiteness\n of her skin. There was something saintly about her quiet face.\n\n\n When he reached the alley he began to run, and he did not stop running\n till the chocoletto sector was far behind him.\nThe hill was a memory-image and Aldebaran 12 rain-country hills were\n notoriously steep. Blake was breathing hard when he reached the crest.", "Deirdre was speaking. \"Yes,\" she was saying, \"at nine o'clock. And I\n should very much like for you to come.\"\n\n\n Blake Past shook his head. \"Proms aren't for parents. You know that\n as well as I do. That young man you were talking with a few minutes\n ago—he's the one who should take you. He'd give his right arm for the\n chance.\"\n\n\n \"I'll thank you not to imply that you're my father. One would think\n from the way you talk that you are centuries old!\"\n\n\n \"I'm thirty-eight,\" Blake Past said, \"and while I may not be your\n father, I'm certainly old enough to be. That young man—\"", "Blake Past stood up too. \"No, not yet. I'll walk back to the sorority\n house with you.\"\n\n\n She tossed her head, but the sadness in her tarn-blue eyes belied her\n hauteur. \"If you wish,\" she said.\nBlake Present watched them set out side by side toward the remembered\n halls of learning that showed in the distance. There had been other\n people present on the campus that afternoon, but as they had failed to\n register on Blake Past's mind, they did not exist for Blake Present.\n All that existed for Blake Present were the diminishing figures of the\n girl and the man, and the pain that was constricting his throat.\n\n\n Wretchedly he turned away. As he did so he saw the three shadows lying\n at his feet and knew that his pursuers had at last caught up to him.\n\n\n His first reaction when he faced them was amazement. His next reaction\n was shock. His third was fear.", "\"What do\nyou\nknow about conscience?\" Deirdre demanded. \"Conscience\n is a much more complex mechanism than most laymen realize. Guilt\n feelings aren't reliable criteria. They can stem from false\n causes—from ridiculous things like a person's inability to accept\n himself for what he is.\" Abruptly she dropped the subject. \"Don't you\n realize, Nate,\" she went on a little desperately, \"that I'm leaving\n tomorrow and that we won't see each other again for years and years?\"\n\n\n \"I'll come to New Earth to visit you,\" Blake said. \"Venus is only a few\n days distant on the new ships.\"\n\n\n She stood up. \"You won't come—I know you won't.\" She stamped her foot.\n \"And you won't come to the prom either. I know that too. I knew it all\n along. Sometimes I'm tempted to—\" Abruptly she broke off. \"Very well\n then,\" she went on, \"I'll say good-by now then.\"", "He had suspected the truth immediately, and when he had seen the\n woman's handkerchief with the initials \"SB\" embroidered on it lying\n by one of the filing cabinets he had known definitely that his quarry\n was hiding out in his mind. Retiring to his bachelor quarters, he had\n entered at the same place-time and set off in pursuit.\n\n\n Her only advantage lost, Sabrina York was now at his mercy. Unless\n she discovered his presence and was able to locate his most recently\n materialized place-time before he over-took her, her capture was\n assured.\n\n\n Only two things bothered Blake. The little office was far in his past,\n and it was unlikely that anyone save the few intimate acquaintances\n whom he had told about it were aware that it had ever existed. How,\n then, had a total stranger such as Sabrina York learned enough about it\n to enable her to use it as a point of entry?", "He asked the two questions aloud.\n\n\n Three arms were raised and three forefingers were pointed accusingly at\n his chest. Three pairs of eyes burned darkly. \"You ask us that?\" Miss\n Stoddart said. \"Callous creature who did a maiden's innocence affront!\"\n said Officer Finch. \"And sought sanctuary in ill-fitting robes of\n righteousness!\" said Vera Velvetskin. The three faces moved together,\n blurred and seemed to blend into one. The three voices were raised in\n unison: \"You know who we are, Nathan Blake.\nYou\nknow who we are!\"\n\n\n Blake stared at them open-mouthed. Then he turned and fled.\nIt had taken man a long time to discover that he was a god in his\n own right and that he too was capable of creating universes. Trivial\n universes, to be sure, when compared with the grandeur and scope of the\n objective one, and peopled with ghosts instead of human beings; but\n universes nonetheless.", "the person involved had\nwanted\nto create. Therefore, even assuming\n that Blake was less well-adjusted than he considered himself to be, why\n had he created three such malevolent super-images as Miss Stoddart,\n Officer Finch, and Vera Velvetskin?\nThey followed him off the campus into a vicarious memory-image of\n Walden Pond, Thoreau's shack, and the encompassing woods. Judging from\n the ecstatic \"oh's\" and \"ah's\" they kept giving voice to, the place\n delighted them. Once, glancing back over his shoulder, he saw them\n standing in front of Thoreau's shack, looking at it as though it were a\n doll's house. Not far away, Thoreau was sitting in under a tall pine,", "He controlled it and descended the stairs with exaggerated slowness,\n leaving the house by way of the back door. He picked up Sabrina's trail\n in the back yard and followed it down to the Martian waterway and\n thence along the bank to where the waterway ended and a campus began.\n Not the campus of the university which he had visited two days ago to\n attend his protegee's graduation. It was not a place-time that he cared\n to revisit, nor a moment that he cared to relive, but Sabrina's trail\n led straight across the artificially stunted grass toward the little\n bench where he and Deirdre Eldoria had come to talk after the ceremony\n was over. He had no choice.\nThe bench stood beneath a towering American elm whose feathery branches", "So far as he knew, the present case represented the first time a\n criminal had ever hidden out in the pursuer's mind. It would have been\n a superb stratagem indeed if, shortly after her entry, Sabrina York\n had not betrayed her presence. For her point of entry she had used\n the place-time materialization of the little office Blake had opened\n on Ex-earth at the beginning of his career. Unaccountably she had\n ransacked it before moving into a co-terminous memory-image.\n\n\n Even this action wouldn't have given her away, however, if the office\n hadn't constituted a sentimental memory. Whenever Blake accepted a case\n he invariably thought of the bleak and lonely little room with its\n thin-gauge steel desk and battered filing cabinets, and when he had\n done so after accepting his case—or was it before? He couldn't quite\n remember—the mental picture that had come into his mind had revealed\n open drawers, scattered papers and a general air of disarray." ] ]
valid	52855	[ "What do Dan's interactions with both Kelly and Blote signify about his overall motive throughout the article?", "What choice best describes Dan's feelings toward operating the carrier throughout the article?", "What feeling does Dan's accidental encounter with the young girl evoke for the readers?", "What would have happened if Dan had never encountered Blote?", "What does Blote's reaction to Dan's mentioning of a time machine demonstrate about where Manny and Fiorello came from?", "What would best describe how Dan's experiences, such as fighting the thieves and meeting Dzhackoon, changed his overall attitude that he had in the beginning of the article?", "Why would Dan have wanted Fiorello to accompany him on the carrier?", "Why was Dan determined to wait so long for the thieves?", "What is the author's purpose in providing such detailed descriptions of Blote and Dzhackoon?" ]	[ [ "Dan realized that Kelly and Blote were deceiving him, so he decided to turn against them by disappearing with the carrier.", "Dan did not want to work with Kelly from the beginning, so he used the carrier to escape and eventually met Blote where he convinced Dan to work for him instead.", "Dan had no intention on working with Kelly and Blote because he only wanted to get ahold of the carrier to use for himself.", "Dan originally wanted to work to help both Kelly and Blote, but he eventually decided to pursue his own interests with using the carrier." ], [ "He was originally confused on how to operate the carrier and still remained unfamiliar with how it worked throughout the article.", "Dan was intrigued by the carrier when he first operated it but gradually began to dislike it the more he used the carrier.", "Dan was originally confused by the machine but became increasingly frustrated with it throughout the rest of the article.", "Dan was nervous to operate the carrier when he first used it, but eventually became confident in controlling it." ], [ "A feeling of suspense because the girl could notice Dan at any moment.", "A feeling of success because the encounter proves that Dan successfully time-travelled.", "A feeling of horror knowing that Dan could be arrested from his previous escape.", "A feeling of unhappiness because Dan's mission to time-travel had failed." ], [ "He would not have had to worry about finding a way to abandon Blote from the carrier.", "He would have learned about time machines from another person.", "He would never have learned how to operate the carrier and would have needed to seek help from someone else.", "He would have been caught and arrested by Kelly along with Manny and Fiorello." ], [ "Manny and Fiorello were also from planet Earth, hence Blote's confusion about time-travelling.", "Manny and Fiorello were from the future, but Blote did not want Dan to find out.", "Manny and Fiorello were from another dimension, which was denoted by Blote's unfamiliarity with time-travel. ", "Manny and Fiorello were from another planet, given by Blote's confusion about time-travelling." ], [ "His experiences made him more cunning in accomplishing his ultimate motive.", "His experiences made him no longer act collected about his original plan and underlying motive.", "His experiences helped make him more confident in his plans.", "His experiences made him reflect on how he should have revised his original plan and motive." ], [ "Dan would have been able accomplish his goal of meeting Blote faster.", "Fiorello would have taught Dan how to time-travel.", "Dan purposely wanted to leave Manny behind.", "It would have prevented the trouble Dan had with controlling the carrier." ], [ "He wanted to steal the carrier so the thieves could not leave.", "He planned to help Kelly successfully arrest the thieves.", "He wanted to help prevent important paintings from being stolen out of the vault.", "It was his plan to have the chance to time-travel." ], [ "To better familiarize the audience with the setting of the places Dan visited.", "To explain why Dan was so intrigued by these characters.", "To show that people in the future do not look as human as a character like Dan.", "To show that these characters are unlike the human ones on Earth." ] ]	[ 3, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 4, 4, 4 ]	[ 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1 ]	[ [ "Blote waggled a stubby forefinger at Dan. \"I dislike pointing it out,\n Dan, but you are in a rather awkward position at the moment. Illegal\n entry, illegal possession of property, trespass—then doubtless some\n embarrassment exists back at the Snithian residence. I daresay Mr.\n Kelly would have a warm welcome for you. And, of course, I myself would\n deal rather harshly with any attempt on your part to take a powder.\"\n The Vegan flexed all eighteen fingers, drummed his tentacles under the\n desk, and rolled one eye, bugging the other at Dan.\n\n\n \"Whereas, on the other hand,\" Blote's bass voice went on, \"you and me\n got the basis of a sweet deal. You supply the machine, and I fix you up\n with an abundance of the local medium of exchange. Equitable enough, I\n should say. What about it, Dan?\"\n\n\n \"Ah, let me see,\" Dan temporized. \"Time machine. Time machine—\"", "Kelly nodded. \"I'll fingerprint you and run a fast agency check. If\n you're clean, I'll put you on, starting tonight. But keep it quiet.\"\nDan looked around at the gray walls, with shelves stacked to the low\n ceiling with wrapped paintings. Two three-hundred-watt bulbs shed a\n white glare over the tile floor, a neat white refrigerator, a bunk,\n an arm-chair, a bookshelf and a small table set with paper plates,\n plastic utensils and a portable radio—all hastily installed at Kelly's\n order. Dan opened the refrigerator, looked over the stock of salami,\n liverwurst, cheese and beer. He opened a loaf of bread, built up a\n well-filled sandwich, keyed open a can of beer.\n\n\n It wasn't fancy, but it would do. Phase one of the plan had gone off\n without a hitch.", "\"Kelly here tells me you've been demanding to see me.\" He nodded toward\n the florid man at his side. He had a high, thin voice, like something\n that needed oiling. \"Something about important information regarding\n safeguarding my paintings.\"\n\n\n \"That's right, Mr. Snithian,\" Dan said. \"I believe I can be of great\n help to you.\"\n\n\n \"Help how? If you've got ideas of bilking me....\" The red eyes bored\n into Dan like hot pokers.\n\n\n \"Nothing like that, sir. Now, I know you have quite a system of guards\n here—the papers are full of it—\"\n\n\n \"Damned busybodies! Sensation-mongers! If it wasn't for the press,\n I'd have no concern for my paintings today!\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. But my point is, the one really important spot has been left\n unguarded.\"", "\"Ah-hah!\" Kelly's voice blared from somewhere. \"I knew it! Slane, you\n crook!\"\nDan looked about wildly. The voice seemed to be issuing from a speaker.\n It appeared Kelly hedged his bets.\n\n\n \"Mr. Kelly, I can explain everything!\" Dan called. He turned back to\n Fiorello. \"Listen, I figured out—\"\n\n\n \"Pretty clever!\" Kelly's voice barked. \"Inside job. But it takes more\n than the likes of you to out-fox an old-timer like Eddie Kelly.\"\n\n\n \"Perhaps you were right, Manny,\" Fiorello said. \"Complications are\n arising. We'd best depart with all deliberate haste.\" He edged toward\n the cage.\n\n\n \"What about this ginzo?\" Manny jerked a thumb toward Dan. \"He's on to\n us.\"\n\n\n \"Can't be helped.\"", "Dan gaped at a head the size of a beachball, mounted on a torso like a\n hundred-gallon bag of water. Two large brown eyes blinked at him from\n points eight inches apart. Immense hands with too many fingers unfolded\n and reached to open a brown paper carton, dip in, then toss three\n peanuts, deliberately, one by one, into a gaping mouth that opened just\n above the brown eyes.\n\n\n \"Who're you?\" a bass voice demanded from somewhere near the floor.\n\n\n \"I'm ... I'm ... Dan Slane ... your honor.\"\n\n\n \"What happened to Manny and Fiorello?\"\n\n\n \"They—I—There was this cop. Kelly—\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh.\" The brown eyes blinked deliberately. The many-fingered hands\n closed the peanut carton and tucked it into a drawer.", "\"Another idiotic scheme to waste my money,\" Snithian snapped. \"I've\n made you responsible for security here, Kelly! Let's have no more\n nonsense. And throw this nincompoop out!\" Snithian turned and stalked\n away, his cloak flapping at his knees.\n\n\n \"I'll work cheap,\" Dan called after him as Kelly took his arm. \"I'm an\n art lover.\"\n\n\n \"Never mind that,\" Kelly said, escorting Dan along the corridor. He\n turned in at an office and closed the door.\n\n\n \"Now, as the old buzzard said, I'm responsible for security here. If\n those pictures go, my job goes with them. Your vault idea's not bad.\n Just how cheap would you work?\"\n\n\n \"A hundred dollars a week,\" Dan said promptly. \"Plus expenses,\" he\n added.", "\"Don't attempt to weasel on me, Dan,\" Blote rumbled ominously.\n\n\n \"I'd better look in the phone book,\" Dan suggested.\n\n\n Silently, Blote produced a dog-eared directory. Dan opened it.\n\n\n \"Time, time. Let's see....\" He brightened. \"Time, Incorporated; local\n branch office. Two twenty-one Maple Street.\"\n\n\n \"A sales center?\" Blote inquired. \"Or a manufacturing complex?\"\n\n\n \"Both,\" Dan said. \"I'll just nip over and—\"\n\n\n \"That won't be necessary, Dan,\" Blote said. \"I'll accompany you.\" He\n took the directory, studied it.", "Blote worked levers. The carrier shot out into a ghostly afternoon sky.\n Faint outlines of buildings, like faded negatives, spread below. Dan\n looked around, spotted lettering on a square five-story structure.\n\n\n \"Over there,\" he said. Blote directed the machine as it swooped\n smoothly toward the flat roof Dan indicated.\n\n\n \"Better let me take over now,\" Dan suggested. \"I want to be sure to\n get us to the right place.\"\n\n\n \"Very well, Dan.\"\n\n\n Dan dropped the carrier through the roof, passed down through a dimly\n seen office. Blote twiddled a small knob. The scene around the cage\n grew even fainter. \"Best we remain unnoticed,\" he explained.", "\"I seen richer browns on Thirty-third Street,\" Manny said. \"They was\n popular with the sparrows.\"\n\n\n \"Manny, sometimes I think your aspirations—\"\n\n\n \"Whatta ya talkin? I use a roll-on.\" Manny, turning to place a painting\n in the cage, stopped dead as he caught sight of Dan. The painting\n clattered to the floor. Dan stood, cleared his throat. \"Uh....\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh,\" Manny said. \"A double-cross.\"\n\n\n \"I've—ah—been expecting you gentlemen,\" Dan said. \"I—\"\n\n\n \"I told you we couldn't trust no guy with nine fingers on each hand,\"\n Manny whispered hoarsely. He moved toward the cage. \"Let's blow,\n Fiorello.\"\n\n\n \"Wait a minute,\" Dan said. \"Before you do anything hasty—\"", "\"Look—I want to go with you!\" Dan shouted.\n\n\n \"I'll bet you do!\" Kelly's voice roared. \"One more minute and I'll have\n the door open and collar the lot of you! Came up through a tunnel, did\n you?\"\n\n\n \"You can't go, my dear fellow,\" Fiorello said. \"Room for two, no more.\"\n\n\n Dan whirled to the cot, grabbed up the pistol Kelly had supplied. He\n aimed it at Manny. \"You stay here, Manny! I'm going with Fiorello in\n the time machine.\"\n\n\n \"Are you nuts?\" Manny demanded.\n\n\n \"I'm flattered, dear boy,\" Fiorello said, \"but—\"\n\n\n \"Let's get moving. Kelly will have that lock open in a minute.\"", "\"Don't start nothing, Buster,\" Manny said cautiously. \"We're plenty\n tough guys when aroused.\"\n\n\n \"I want to talk to you,\" Dan insisted. \"You see, these paintings—\"\n\n\n \"Paintings? Look, it was all a mistake. Like, we figured this was the\n gent's room—\"\n\n\n \"Never mind, Manny,\" Fiorello cut in. \"It appears there's been a leak.\"\n\n\n Dan shook his head. \"No leak. I simply deduced—\"\n\n\n \"Look, Fiorello,\" Manny said. \"You chin if you want to; I'm doing a\n fast fade.\"\n\n\n \"Don't act hastily, Manny. You know where you'll end.\"\n\n\n \"Wait a minute!\" Dan shouted. \"I'd like to make a deal with you\n fellows.\"", "\"You!\" a hoarse voice bellowed.\n\n\n \"Grab him!\" someone yelled.\n\n\n Blote recoiled, threshing his ambulatory members in a fruitless attempt\n to regain the carrier as Manny and Fiorello closed in. Dan hauled at a\n lever. He caught a last glimpse of three struggling, blue-lit figures\n as the carrier shot away through the cell wall.\nIII\n\n\n Dan slumped back against the seat with a sigh. Now that he was in the\n clear, he would have to decide on his next move—fast. There was no\n telling what other resources Blote might have. He would have to hide\n the carrier, then—\n\n\n A low growling was coming from somewhere, rising in pitch and volume.\n Dan sat up, alarmed. This was no time for a malfunction.", "He finished his sandwich, went to the shelves and pulled down one of\n the brown-paper bundles. Loosening the string binding the package, he\n slid a painting into view. It was a gaily colored view of an open-air\n cafe, with a group of men and women in gay-ninetyish costumes gathered\n at a table. He seemed to remember reading something about it in a\n magazine. It was a cheerful scene; Dan liked it. Still, it hardly\n seemed worth all the effort....\n\n\n He went to the wall switch and turned off the lights. The orange glow\n of the filaments died, leaving only a faint illumination from the\n night-light over the door. When the thieves arrived, it might give him\n a momentary advantage if his eyes were adjusted to the dark. He groped\n his way to the bunk.", "\"But the way Manny and Fiorello came sailing in through the wall! That\nhas\nto be a time machine they were riding in. Nothing else could just\n materialize out of thin air like that.\"\n\n\n \"You seem to have a time-machine fixation, Dan,\" Blote said. \"You\n shouldn't assume, just because you people have developed time travel,\n that everyone has. Now—\" Blote's voice sank to a bass whisper—\"I'll\n make a deal with you, Dan. You'll secure a small time machine in good\n condition for me. And in return—\"\n\n\n \"\nI'm\nsupposed to supply\nyou\nwith a time machine?\"", "\"Now, wait a minute—\" Kelly started.\n\n\n \"What's that?\" Snithian cut in.\n\n\n \"You have a hundred and fifty men guarding the house and grounds day\n and night—\"\n\n\n \"Two hundred and twenty-five,\" Kelly snapped.\n\n\n \"—but no one at all in the vault with the paintings,\" Slane finished.\n\n\n \"Of course not,\" Snithian shrilled. \"Why should I post a man in the\n vault? It's under constant surveillance from the corridor outside.\"\n\n\n \"The Harriman paintings were removed from a locked vault,\" Dan said.\n \"There was a special seal on the door. It wasn't broken.\"\n\n\n \"By the saints, he's right,\" Kelly exclaimed. \"Maybe we ought to have a\n man in that vault.\"", "Dan shook his head. He was staring at the posters. His eyes,\n accustoming themselves to the gloom of the office, could now make out\n the vividly drawn outline of a creature resembling an alligator-headed\n giraffe rearing up above scarlet foliage. The next poster showed a face\n similar to the beachball behind the desk, with red circles painted\n around the eyes. The next was a view of a yellow volcano spouting fire\n into a black sky.\n\n\n \"Too bad.\" The words seemed to come from under the desk. Dan squinted,\n caught a glimpse of coiled purplish tentacles. He gulped and looked up\n to catch a brown eye upon him. Only one. The other seemed to be busily\n at work studying the ceiling.\n\n\n \"I hope,\" the voice said, \"that you ain't harboring no reactionary\n racial prejudices.\"\n\"Gosh, no,\" Dan reassured the eye. \"I'm crazy about—uh—\"", "The cage descended steadily. Dan peered out, searching for identifying\n landmarks. He leveled off at the second floor, cruised along a barely\n visible corridor. Blote's eyes rolled, studying the small chambers\n along both sides of the passage at once.\n\n\n \"Ah, this must be the assembly area,\" he exclaimed. \"I see the machines\n employ a bar-type construction, not unlike our carriers.\"\n\n\n \"That's right,\" Dan said, staring through the haziness. \"This is where\n they do time....\" He tugged at a lever suddenly; the machine veered\n left, flickered through a barred door, came to a halt. Two nebulous\n figures loomed beside the cage. Dan cut the switch. If he'd guessed\n wrong—\n\n\n The scene fluoresced, sparks crackling, then popped into sharp focus.\n Blote scrambled out, brown eyes swivelling to take in the concrete\n walls, the barred door and—", "Sudden silence fell as the walls of the room glowed blue. A spectral\n Kelly capered before the cage, fluorescing in the blue-violet. Dan\n swallowed hard and nudged a second lever. The cage sank like an\n elevator into the floor, vivid blue washing up its sides.\n\n\n Hastily he reversed the control. Operating a time machine was tricky\n business. One little slip, and the Slane molecules would be squeezing\n in among brick and mortar particles....\n\n\n But this was no time to be cautious. Things hadn't turned out just the\n way he'd planned, but after all, this was what he'd wanted—in a way.\n The time machine was his to command. And if he gave up now and crawled\n back into the vault, Kelly would gather him in and pin every art theft\n of the past decade on him.", "\"Remarkable! A common commodity, openly on sale, and I failed to notice\n it. Still, a ripe nut can fall from a small tree as well as from a\n large.\" He went to his desk, rummaged, came up with a handful of fuel\n cells. \"Now, off to gather in the time machine.\" He took his place in\n the carrier, patted the seat beside him with a wide hand. \"Come, Dan.\n Get a wiggle on.\"\nHesitantly, Dan moved to the carrier. The bluff was all right up to a\n point—but the point had just about been reached. He took his seat.\n Blote moved a lever. The familiar blue glow sprang up. \"Kindly direct\n me, Dan,\" Blote demanded. \"Two twenty-one Maple Street, I believe you\n said.\"\n\n\n \"I don't know the town very well,\" Dan said, \"but Maple's over that\n way.\"", "\"You can't leave me here!\" Manny spluttered, watching Dan crowd into\n the cage beside Fiorello.\n\n\n \"We'll send for you,\" Dan said. \"Let's go, Fiorello.\"\n\n\n The balding man snatched suddenly for the gun. Dan wrestled with him.\n The pistol fell, bounced on the floor of the cage, skidded into the\n far corner of the vault. Manny charged, reaching for Dan as he twisted\n aside; Fiorello's elbow caught him in the mouth. Manny staggered back\n into the arms of Kelly, bursting red-faced into the vault.\n\n\n \"Manny!\" Fiorello released his grip on Dan, lunged to aid his\n companion. Kelly passed Manny to one of three cops crowding in on his\n heels. Dan clung to the framework as Fiorello grappled with Kelly. A\n cop pushed past them, spotted Dan, moved in briskly for the pinch. Dan\n grabbed a lever at random and pulled." ], [ "Blote worked levers. The carrier shot out into a ghostly afternoon sky.\n Faint outlines of buildings, like faded negatives, spread below. Dan\n looked around, spotted lettering on a square five-story structure.\n\n\n \"Over there,\" he said. Blote directed the machine as it swooped\n smoothly toward the flat roof Dan indicated.\n\n\n \"Better let me take over now,\" Dan suggested. \"I want to be sure to\n get us to the right place.\"\n\n\n \"Very well, Dan.\"\n\n\n Dan dropped the carrier through the roof, passed down through a dimly\n seen office. Blote twiddled a small knob. The scene around the cage\n grew even fainter. \"Best we remain unnoticed,\" he explained.", "The sound rose higher, into a penetrating wail. There was no sign of\n mechanical trouble. The carrier glided on, swooping now over a nebulous\n landscape of trees and houses. Dan covered his ears against the\n deafening shriek, like all the police sirens in town blaring at once.\n If the carrier stopped it would be a long fall from here. Dan worked\n the controls, dropping toward the distant earth.\n\n\n The noise seemed to lessen, descending the scale. Dan slowed, brought\n the carrier in to the corner of a wide park. He dropped the last few\n inches and cut the switch.\n\n\n As the glow died, the siren faded into silence.", "\"Well, it was a sweet racket while it lasted,\" the basso voice said. \"A\n pity to terminate so happy an enterprise. Still....\" A noise like an\n amplified Bronx cheer issued from the wide mouth.\n\n\n \"How ... what...?\"\n\n\n \"The carrier returns here automatically when the charge drops below a\n critical value,\" the voice said. \"A necessary measure to discourage\n big ideas on the part of wisenheimers in my employ. May I ask how you\n happen to be aboard the carrier, by the way?\"\n\n\n \"I just wanted—I mean, after I figured out—that is, the police ... I\n went for help,\" Dan finished lamely.\n\n\n \"Help? Out of the picture, unfortunately. One must maintain one's\n anonymity, you'll appreciate. My operation here is under wraps at\n present. Ah, I don't suppose you brought any paintings?\"", "Dan stepped from the carrier and looked around. Whatever the noise\n was, it hadn't attracted any attention from the scattered pedestrians\n in the park. Perhaps it was some sort of burglar alarm. But if so, why\n hadn't it gone into action earlier? Dan took a deep breath. Sound or no\n sound, he would have to get back into the carrier and transfer it to a\n secluded spot where he could study it at leisure. He stepped back in,\n reached for the controls—\n\n\n There was a sudden chill in the air. The bright surface of the dials\n before him frosted over. There was a loud\npop!\nlike a flashbulb\n exploding. Dan stared from the seat at an iridescent rectangle\n which hung suspended near the carrier. Its surface rippled, faded\n to blankness. In a swirl of frosty air, a tall figure dressed in a\n tight-fitting white uniform stepped through.", "\"You!\" a hoarse voice bellowed.\n\n\n \"Grab him!\" someone yelled.\n\n\n Blote recoiled, threshing his ambulatory members in a fruitless attempt\n to regain the carrier as Manny and Fiorello closed in. Dan hauled at a\n lever. He caught a last glimpse of three struggling, blue-lit figures\n as the carrier shot away through the cell wall.\nIII\n\n\n Dan slumped back against the seat with a sigh. Now that he was in the\n clear, he would have to decide on his next move—fast. There was no\n telling what other resources Blote might have. He would have to hide\n the carrier, then—\n\n\n A low growling was coming from somewhere, rising in pitch and volume.\n Dan sat up, alarmed. This was no time for a malfunction.", "The cage descended steadily. Dan peered out, searching for identifying\n landmarks. He leveled off at the second floor, cruised along a barely\n visible corridor. Blote's eyes rolled, studying the small chambers\n along both sides of the passage at once.\n\n\n \"Ah, this must be the assembly area,\" he exclaimed. \"I see the machines\n employ a bar-type construction, not unlike our carriers.\"\n\n\n \"That's right,\" Dan said, staring through the haziness. \"This is where\n they do time....\" He tugged at a lever suddenly; the machine veered\n left, flickered through a barred door, came to a halt. Two nebulous\n figures loomed beside the cage. Dan cut the switch. If he'd guessed\n wrong—\n\n\n The scene fluoresced, sparks crackling, then popped into sharp focus.\n Blote scrambled out, brown eyes swivelling to take in the concrete\n walls, the barred door and—", "A faint sound cut into the stillness—a descending whine. The cage\n moved jerkily, settling toward the floor. Long blue sparks jumped,\n crackling, to span the closing gap; with a grate of metal, the cage\n settled against the floor. The spectral men reached for ghostly\n switches....\n\n\n The glow died.\n\n\n Dan was aware of his heart thumping painfully under his ribs. His mouth\n was dry. This was the moment he'd been planning for, but now that it\n was here—", "He looked over the controls. There should be one labeled \"Forward\"\n and another labeled \"Back\", but all the levers were plain, unadorned\n black. They looked, Dan decided, like ordinary circuit-breaker type\n knife-switches. In fact, the whole apparatus had the appearance of\n something thrown together hastily from common materials. Still, it\n worked. So far he had only found the controls for maneuvering in the\n usual three dimensions, but the time switch was bound to be here\n somewhere....\n\n\n Dan looked up at a movement at the far end of the hall.", "Dan tried moving a lever. The cage edged toward the girl. Another;\n he rose gently. The girl tossed the shirt onto a chair and undid the\n zipper down the side of the shorts. Another lever; the cage shot toward\n the outer wall as the girl reached behind her back....\n\n\n Dan blinked at the flash of blue and looked down. He was hovering\n twenty feet above a clipped lawn.\n\n\n He looked at the levers. Wasn't it the first one in line that moved the\n cage ahead? He tried it, shot forward ten feet. Below, a man stepped\n out on the terrace, lit a cigarette, paused, started to turn his face\n up—\n\n\n Dan jabbed at a lever. The cage shot back through the wall. He was in a\n plain room with a depression in the floor, a wide window with a planter\n filled with glowing blue plants—", "He finished his sandwich, went to the shelves and pulled down one of\n the brown-paper bundles. Loosening the string binding the package, he\n slid a painting into view. It was a gaily colored view of an open-air\n cafe, with a group of men and women in gay-ninetyish costumes gathered\n at a table. He seemed to remember reading something about it in a\n magazine. It was a cheerful scene; Dan liked it. Still, it hardly\n seemed worth all the effort....\n\n\n He went to the wall switch and turned off the lights. The orange glow\n of the filaments died, leaving only a faint illumination from the\n night-light over the door. When the thieves arrived, it might give him\n a momentary advantage if his eyes were adjusted to the dark. He groped\n his way to the bunk.", "\"If you don't mind, I believe I'll have a Big Orange.\" The Vorplischer\n swiveled to a small refrigerator, removed an immense bottle fitted with\n a nipple and turned back to Dan. \"Now, I got a proposition which may be\n of some interest to you. The loss of Manny and Fiorello is a serious\n blow, but we may yet recoup the situation. You made the scene at a most\n opportune time. What I got in mind is, with those two clowns out of the\n picture, a vacancy exists on my staff, which you might well fill. How\n does that grab you?\"\n\n\n \"You mean you want me to take over operating the time machine?\"\n\n\n \"Time machine?\" The brown eyes blinked alternately. \"I fear some\n confusion exists. I don't quite dig the significance of the term.\"\n\n\n \"That thing,\" Dan jabbed a thumb toward the cage. \"The machine I came\n here in. You want me—\"", "\"That? That's merely a carrier. Now tell me more about your time\n machines. A fascinating concept! My superiors will be delighted at\n this development—and astonished as well. They regard this planet as\n Endsville.\"\n\"Your superiors?\" Dan eyed the window; much too far to jump. Maybe he\n could reach the machine and try a getaway—\n\n\n \"I hope you're not thinking of leaving suddenly,\" the beachball said,\n following Dan's glance. One of the eighteen fingers touched a six-inch\n yellow cylinder lying on the desk. \"Until the carrier is fueled, I'm\n afraid it's quite useless. But, to put you in the picture, I'd best\n introduce myself and explain my mission here. I'm Blote, Trader Fourth\n Class, in the employ of the Vegan Confederation. My job is to develop\n new sources of novelty items for the impulse-emporiums of the entire\n Secondary Quadrant.\"", "With an abruptness that flung him against the opposite side of the\n cage, the machine braked, shot through the wall and slammed to a stop.\n Dan sank to the floor of the cage, breathing hard. There was a loud\nclick!\nand the glow faded.\n\n\n With a lunge, Dan scrambled out of the cage. He stood looking around at\n a simple brown-painted office, dimly lit by sunlight filtered through\n elaborate venetian blinds. There were posters on the wall, a potted\n plant by the door, a heap of framed paintings beside it, and at the far\n side of the room a desk. And behind the desk—Something.\nII", "Dan gaped at a head the size of a beachball, mounted on a torso like a\n hundred-gallon bag of water. Two large brown eyes blinked at him from\n points eight inches apart. Immense hands with too many fingers unfolded\n and reached to open a brown paper carton, dip in, then toss three\n peanuts, deliberately, one by one, into a gaping mouth that opened just\n above the brown eyes.\n\n\n \"Who're you?\" a bass voice demanded from somewhere near the floor.\n\n\n \"I'm ... I'm ... Dan Slane ... your honor.\"\n\n\n \"What happened to Manny and Fiorello?\"\n\n\n \"They—I—There was this cop. Kelly—\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh.\" The brown eyes blinked deliberately. The many-fingered hands\n closed the peanut carton and tucked it into a drawer.", "Never mind. He took a deep breath, ran over the speeches he had\n prepared for the occasion:\nGreeting, visitors from the Future....\nHopelessly corny. What about:\nWelcome to the Twentieth Century....\nNo good; it lacked spontaneity. The men were rising, their backs to\n Dan, stepping out of the skeletal frame. In the dim light it now\n looked like nothing more than a rough frame built of steel pipe, with\n a cluster of levers in a console before the two seats. And the thieves\n looked ordinary enough: Two men in gray coveralls, one slender and\n balding, the other shorter and round-faced. Neither of them noticed\n Dan, sitting rigid on the cot. The thin man placed a lantern on the\n table, twiddled a knob. A warm light sprang up. The visitors looked at\n the stacked shelves.\n\n\n \"Looks like the old boy's been doing all right,\" the shorter man said.\n \"Fathead's gonna be pleased.\"", "Kelly nodded. \"I'll fingerprint you and run a fast agency check. If\n you're clean, I'll put you on, starting tonight. But keep it quiet.\"\nDan looked around at the gray walls, with shelves stacked to the low\n ceiling with wrapped paintings. Two three-hundred-watt bulbs shed a\n white glare over the tile floor, a neat white refrigerator, a bunk,\n an arm-chair, a bookshelf and a small table set with paper plates,\n plastic utensils and a portable radio—all hastily installed at Kelly's\n order. Dan opened the refrigerator, looked over the stock of salami,\n liverwurst, cheese and beer. He opened a loaf of bread, built up a\n well-filled sandwich, keyed open a can of beer.\n\n\n It wasn't fancy, but it would do. Phase one of the plan had gone off\n without a hitch.", "\"Vorplischers,\" the voice said. \"From Vorplisch, or Vega, as you call\n it.\" The Bronx cheer sounded again. \"How I long to glimpse once more my\n native fens! Wherever one wanders, there's no pad like home.\"\n\n\n \"That reminds me,\" Dan said. \"I have to be running along now.\" He\n sidled toward the door.\n\n\n \"Stick around, Dan,\" the voice rumbled. \"How about a drink? I can\n offer you Chateau Neuf du Pape, '59, Romance Conte, '32, goat's milk,\n Pepsi—\"\n\n\n \"No, thanks.\"", "Dan shook his head. He was staring at the posters. His eyes,\n accustoming themselves to the gloom of the office, could now make out\n the vividly drawn outline of a creature resembling an alligator-headed\n giraffe rearing up above scarlet foliage. The next poster showed a face\n similar to the beachball behind the desk, with red circles painted\n around the eyes. The next was a view of a yellow volcano spouting fire\n into a black sky.\n\n\n \"Too bad.\" The words seemed to come from under the desk. Dan squinted,\n caught a glimpse of coiled purplish tentacles. He gulped and looked up\n to catch a brown eye upon him. Only one. The other seemed to be busily\n at work studying the ceiling.\n\n\n \"I hope,\" the voice said, \"that you ain't harboring no reactionary\n racial prejudices.\"\n\"Gosh, no,\" Dan reassured the eye. \"I'm crazy about—uh—\"", "It couldn't be\ntoo\nhard. He'd take it slowly, figure out the\n controls....\nDan took a deep breath and tried another lever. The cage rose gently,\n in eerie silence. It reached the ceiling and kept going. Dan gritted\n his teeth as an eight-inch band of luminescence passed down the cage.\n Then he was emerging into a spacious kitchen. A blue-haloed cook\n waddled to a luminous refrigerator, caught sight of Dan rising slowly\n from the floor, stumbled back, mouth open. The cage rose, penetrated a\n second ceiling. Dan looked around at a carpeted hall.\n\n\n Cautiously he neutralized the control lever. The cage came to rest an\n inch above the floor. As far as Dan could tell, he hadn't traveled so\n much as a minute into the past or future.", "\"I seen richer browns on Thirty-third Street,\" Manny said. \"They was\n popular with the sparrows.\"\n\n\n \"Manny, sometimes I think your aspirations—\"\n\n\n \"Whatta ya talkin? I use a roll-on.\" Manny, turning to place a painting\n in the cage, stopped dead as he caught sight of Dan. The painting\n clattered to the floor. Dan stood, cleared his throat. \"Uh....\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh,\" Manny said. \"A double-cross.\"\n\n\n \"I've—ah—been expecting you gentlemen,\" Dan said. \"I—\"\n\n\n \"I told you we couldn't trust no guy with nine fingers on each hand,\"\n Manny whispered hoarsely. He moved toward the cage. \"Let's blow,\n Fiorello.\"\n\n\n \"Wait a minute,\" Dan said. \"Before you do anything hasty—\"" ], [ "A girl's head and shoulders appeared, coming up a spiral staircase. In\n another second she would see him, and give the alarm—and Dan needed\n a few moments of peace and quiet in which to figure out the controls.\n He moved a lever. The cage drifted smoothly sideways, sliced through\n the wall with a flurry of vivid blue light. Dan pushed the lever\n back. He was in a bedroom now, a wide chamber with flouncy curtains, a\n four-poster under a flowered canopy, a dressing table—\n\n\n The door opened and the girl stepped into the room. She was young. Not\n over eighteen, Dan thought—as nearly as he could tell with the blue\n light playing around her face. She had long hair tied with a ribbon,\n and long legs, neatly curved. She wore shorts and carried a tennis\n racquet in her left hand and an apple in her right. Her back to Dan and\n the cage, she tossed the racquet on a table, took a bite of the apple,\n and began briskly unbuttoning her shirt.", "The door opened. Even blue, the girl looked graceful as a deer as she\n took a last bite of the apple and stepped into the ten-foot-square\n sunken tub. Dan held his breath. The girl tossed the apple core aside,\n seemed to suddenly become aware of eyes on her, whirled—\n\n\n With a sudden lurch that threw Dan against the steel bars, the\n cage shot through the wall into the open air and hurtled off with\n an acceleration that kept him pinned, helpless. He groped for the\n controls, hauled at a lever. There was no change. The cage rushed\n on, rising higher. In the distance, Dan saw the skyline of a town,\n approaching with frightful speed. A tall office building reared up\n fifteen stories high. He was headed dead for it—\n\n\n He covered his ears, braced himself—", "With an abruptness that flung him against the opposite side of the\n cage, the machine braked, shot through the wall and slammed to a stop.\n Dan sank to the floor of the cage, breathing hard. There was a loud\nclick!\nand the glow faded.\n\n\n With a lunge, Dan scrambled out of the cage. He stood looking around at\n a simple brown-painted office, dimly lit by sunlight filtered through\n elaborate venetian blinds. There were posters on the wall, a potted\n plant by the door, a heap of framed paintings beside it, and at the far\n side of the room a desk. And behind the desk—Something.\nII", "Dan tried moving a lever. The cage edged toward the girl. Another;\n he rose gently. The girl tossed the shirt onto a chair and undid the\n zipper down the side of the shorts. Another lever; the cage shot toward\n the outer wall as the girl reached behind her back....\n\n\n Dan blinked at the flash of blue and looked down. He was hovering\n twenty feet above a clipped lawn.\n\n\n He looked at the levers. Wasn't it the first one in line that moved the\n cage ahead? He tried it, shot forward ten feet. Below, a man stepped\n out on the terrace, lit a cigarette, paused, started to turn his face\n up—\n\n\n Dan jabbed at a lever. The cage shot back through the wall. He was in a\n plain room with a depression in the floor, a wide window with a planter\n filled with glowing blue plants—", "Dan gaped at a head the size of a beachball, mounted on a torso like a\n hundred-gallon bag of water. Two large brown eyes blinked at him from\n points eight inches apart. Immense hands with too many fingers unfolded\n and reached to open a brown paper carton, dip in, then toss three\n peanuts, deliberately, one by one, into a gaping mouth that opened just\n above the brown eyes.\n\n\n \"Who're you?\" a bass voice demanded from somewhere near the floor.\n\n\n \"I'm ... I'm ... Dan Slane ... your honor.\"\n\n\n \"What happened to Manny and Fiorello?\"\n\n\n \"They—I—There was this cop. Kelly—\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh.\" The brown eyes blinked deliberately. The many-fingered hands\n closed the peanut carton and tucked it into a drawer.", "Dan shook his head. He was staring at the posters. His eyes,\n accustoming themselves to the gloom of the office, could now make out\n the vividly drawn outline of a creature resembling an alligator-headed\n giraffe rearing up above scarlet foliage. The next poster showed a face\n similar to the beachball behind the desk, with red circles painted\n around the eyes. The next was a view of a yellow volcano spouting fire\n into a black sky.\n\n\n \"Too bad.\" The words seemed to come from under the desk. Dan squinted,\n caught a glimpse of coiled purplish tentacles. He gulped and looked up\n to catch a brown eye upon him. Only one. The other seemed to be busily\n at work studying the ceiling.\n\n\n \"I hope,\" the voice said, \"that you ain't harboring no reactionary\n racial prejudices.\"\n\"Gosh, no,\" Dan reassured the eye. \"I'm crazy about—uh—\"", "Dan stepped from the carrier and looked around. Whatever the noise\n was, it hadn't attracted any attention from the scattered pedestrians\n in the park. Perhaps it was some sort of burglar alarm. But if so, why\n hadn't it gone into action earlier? Dan took a deep breath. Sound or no\n sound, he would have to get back into the carrier and transfer it to a\n secluded spot where he could study it at leisure. He stepped back in,\n reached for the controls—\n\n\n There was a sudden chill in the air. The bright surface of the dials\n before him frosted over. There was a loud\npop!\nlike a flashbulb\n exploding. Dan stared from the seat at an iridescent rectangle\n which hung suspended near the carrier. Its surface rippled, faded\n to blankness. In a swirl of frosty air, a tall figure dressed in a\n tight-fitting white uniform stepped through.", "\"I seen richer browns on Thirty-third Street,\" Manny said. \"They was\n popular with the sparrows.\"\n\n\n \"Manny, sometimes I think your aspirations—\"\n\n\n \"Whatta ya talkin? I use a roll-on.\" Manny, turning to place a painting\n in the cage, stopped dead as he caught sight of Dan. The painting\n clattered to the floor. Dan stood, cleared his throat. \"Uh....\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh,\" Manny said. \"A double-cross.\"\n\n\n \"I've—ah—been expecting you gentlemen,\" Dan said. \"I—\"\n\n\n \"I told you we couldn't trust no guy with nine fingers on each hand,\"\n Manny whispered hoarsely. He moved toward the cage. \"Let's blow,\n Fiorello.\"\n\n\n \"Wait a minute,\" Dan said. \"Before you do anything hasty—\"", "A faint sound cut into the stillness—a descending whine. The cage\n moved jerkily, settling toward the floor. Long blue sparks jumped,\n crackling, to span the closing gap; with a grate of metal, the cage\n settled against the floor. The spectral men reached for ghostly\n switches....\n\n\n The glow died.\n\n\n Dan was aware of his heart thumping painfully under his ribs. His mouth\n was dry. This was the moment he'd been planning for, but now that it\n was here—", "Never mind. He took a deep breath, ran over the speeches he had\n prepared for the occasion:\nGreeting, visitors from the Future....\nHopelessly corny. What about:\nWelcome to the Twentieth Century....\nNo good; it lacked spontaneity. The men were rising, their backs to\n Dan, stepping out of the skeletal frame. In the dim light it now\n looked like nothing more than a rough frame built of steel pipe, with\n a cluster of levers in a console before the two seats. And the thieves\n looked ordinary enough: Two men in gray coveralls, one slender and\n balding, the other shorter and round-faced. Neither of them noticed\n Dan, sitting rigid on the cot. The thin man placed a lantern on the\n table, twiddled a knob. A warm light sprang up. The visitors looked at\n the stacked shelves.\n\n\n \"Looks like the old boy's been doing all right,\" the shorter man said.\n \"Fathead's gonna be pleased.\"", "He finished his sandwich, went to the shelves and pulled down one of\n the brown-paper bundles. Loosening the string binding the package, he\n slid a painting into view. It was a gaily colored view of an open-air\n cafe, with a group of men and women in gay-ninetyish costumes gathered\n at a table. He seemed to remember reading something about it in a\n magazine. It was a cheerful scene; Dan liked it. Still, it hardly\n seemed worth all the effort....\n\n\n He went to the wall switch and turned off the lights. The orange glow\n of the filaments died, leaving only a faint illumination from the\n night-light over the door. When the thieves arrived, it might give him\n a momentary advantage if his eyes were adjusted to the dark. He groped\n his way to the bunk.", "So far, so good, he reflected, stretching out. When they showed up,\n he'd have to handle everything just right. If he scared them off\n there'd be no second chance. He would have lost his crack at—whatever\n his discovery might mean to him.\n\n\n But he was ready. Let them come.\nEight hours, three sandwiches and six beers later, Dan roused suddenly\n from a light doze and sat up on the cot. Between him and the crowded\n shelving, a palely luminous framework was materializing in mid-air.\n\n\n The apparition was an open-work cage—about the size and shape of an\n out-house minus the sheathing, Dan estimated breathlessly. Two figures\n were visible within the structure, sitting stiffly in contoured chairs.\n They glowed, if anything, more brightly than the framework.", "Dan gaped at the small rounded head, the dark-skinned long-nosed face,\n the long, muscular arms, the hands, their backs tufted with curly\n red-brown hair, the strange long-heeled feet in soft boots. A neat\n pillbox cap with a short visor was strapped low over the deep-set\n yellowish eyes, which turned in his direction. The wide mouth opened in\n a smile which showed square yellowish teeth.\n\n\n \"\nAlors, monsieur\n,\" the new-comer said, bending his knees and back in\n a quick bow. \"\nVous ete une indigine, n'est ce pas?\n\"\n\n\n \"No compree,\" Dan choked out \"Uh ... juh no parlay Fransay....\"\n\n\n \"My error. This is the Anglic colonial sector, isn't it? Stupid of me.\n Permit me to introduce myself. I'm Dzhackoon, Field Agent of Class\n five, Inter-dimensional Monitor Service.\"", "\"Kelly here tells me you've been demanding to see me.\" He nodded toward\n the florid man at his side. He had a high, thin voice, like something\n that needed oiling. \"Something about important information regarding\n safeguarding my paintings.\"\n\n\n \"That's right, Mr. Snithian,\" Dan said. \"I believe I can be of great\n help to you.\"\n\n\n \"Help how? If you've got ideas of bilking me....\" The red eyes bored\n into Dan like hot pokers.\n\n\n \"Nothing like that, sir. Now, I know you have quite a system of guards\n here—the papers are full of it—\"\n\n\n \"Damned busybodies! Sensation-mongers! If it wasn't for the press,\n I'd have no concern for my paintings today!\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. But my point is, the one really important spot has been left\n unguarded.\"", "Blote worked levers. The carrier shot out into a ghostly afternoon sky.\n Faint outlines of buildings, like faded negatives, spread below. Dan\n looked around, spotted lettering on a square five-story structure.\n\n\n \"Over there,\" he said. Blote directed the machine as it swooped\n smoothly toward the flat roof Dan indicated.\n\n\n \"Better let me take over now,\" Dan suggested. \"I want to be sure to\n get us to the right place.\"\n\n\n \"Very well, Dan.\"\n\n\n Dan dropped the carrier through the roof, passed down through a dimly\n seen office. Blote twiddled a small knob. The scene around the cage\n grew even fainter. \"Best we remain unnoticed,\" he explained.", "\"Vorplischers,\" the voice said. \"From Vorplisch, or Vega, as you call\n it.\" The Bronx cheer sounded again. \"How I long to glimpse once more my\n native fens! Wherever one wanders, there's no pad like home.\"\n\n\n \"That reminds me,\" Dan said. \"I have to be running along now.\" He\n sidled toward the door.\n\n\n \"Stick around, Dan,\" the voice rumbled. \"How about a drink? I can\n offer you Chateau Neuf du Pape, '59, Romance Conte, '32, goat's milk,\n Pepsi—\"\n\n\n \"No, thanks.\"", "\"You can't leave me here!\" Manny spluttered, watching Dan crowd into\n the cage beside Fiorello.\n\n\n \"We'll send for you,\" Dan said. \"Let's go, Fiorello.\"\n\n\n The balding man snatched suddenly for the gun. Dan wrestled with him.\n The pistol fell, bounced on the floor of the cage, skidded into the\n far corner of the vault. Manny charged, reaching for Dan as he twisted\n aside; Fiorello's elbow caught him in the mouth. Manny staggered back\n into the arms of Kelly, bursting red-faced into the vault.\n\n\n \"Manny!\" Fiorello released his grip on Dan, lunged to aid his\n companion. Kelly passed Manny to one of three cops crowding in on his\n heels. Dan clung to the framework as Fiorello grappled with Kelly. A\n cop pushed past them, spotted Dan, moved in briskly for the pinch. Dan\n grabbed a lever at random and pulled.", "\"Look—I want to go with you!\" Dan shouted.\n\n\n \"I'll bet you do!\" Kelly's voice roared. \"One more minute and I'll have\n the door open and collar the lot of you! Came up through a tunnel, did\n you?\"\n\n\n \"You can't go, my dear fellow,\" Fiorello said. \"Room for two, no more.\"\n\n\n Dan whirled to the cot, grabbed up the pistol Kelly had supplied. He\n aimed it at Manny. \"You stay here, Manny! I'm going with Fiorello in\n the time machine.\"\n\n\n \"Are you nuts?\" Manny demanded.\n\n\n \"I'm flattered, dear boy,\" Fiorello said, \"but—\"\n\n\n \"Let's get moving. Kelly will have that lock open in a minute.\"", "The cage descended steadily. Dan peered out, searching for identifying\n landmarks. He leveled off at the second floor, cruised along a barely\n visible corridor. Blote's eyes rolled, studying the small chambers\n along both sides of the passage at once.\n\n\n \"Ah, this must be the assembly area,\" he exclaimed. \"I see the machines\n employ a bar-type construction, not unlike our carriers.\"\n\n\n \"That's right,\" Dan said, staring through the haziness. \"This is where\n they do time....\" He tugged at a lever suddenly; the machine veered\n left, flickered through a barred door, came to a halt. Two nebulous\n figures loomed beside the cage. Dan cut the switch. If he'd guessed\n wrong—\n\n\n The scene fluoresced, sparks crackling, then popped into sharp focus.\n Blote scrambled out, brown eyes swivelling to take in the concrete\n walls, the barred door and—", "\"Don't start nothing, Buster,\" Manny said cautiously. \"We're plenty\n tough guys when aroused.\"\n\n\n \"I want to talk to you,\" Dan insisted. \"You see, these paintings—\"\n\n\n \"Paintings? Look, it was all a mistake. Like, we figured this was the\n gent's room—\"\n\n\n \"Never mind, Manny,\" Fiorello cut in. \"It appears there's been a leak.\"\n\n\n Dan shook his head. \"No leak. I simply deduced—\"\n\n\n \"Look, Fiorello,\" Manny said. \"You chin if you want to; I'm doing a\n fast fade.\"\n\n\n \"Don't act hastily, Manny. You know where you'll end.\"\n\n\n \"Wait a minute!\" Dan shouted. \"I'd like to make a deal with you\n fellows.\"" ], [ "Blote waggled a stubby forefinger at Dan. \"I dislike pointing it out,\n Dan, but you are in a rather awkward position at the moment. Illegal\n entry, illegal possession of property, trespass—then doubtless some\n embarrassment exists back at the Snithian residence. I daresay Mr.\n Kelly would have a warm welcome for you. And, of course, I myself would\n deal rather harshly with any attempt on your part to take a powder.\"\n The Vegan flexed all eighteen fingers, drummed his tentacles under the\n desk, and rolled one eye, bugging the other at Dan.\n\n\n \"Whereas, on the other hand,\" Blote's bass voice went on, \"you and me\n got the basis of a sweet deal. You supply the machine, and I fix you up\n with an abundance of the local medium of exchange. Equitable enough, I\n should say. What about it, Dan?\"\n\n\n \"Ah, let me see,\" Dan temporized. \"Time machine. Time machine—\"", "Blote worked levers. The carrier shot out into a ghostly afternoon sky.\n Faint outlines of buildings, like faded negatives, spread below. Dan\n looked around, spotted lettering on a square five-story structure.\n\n\n \"Over there,\" he said. Blote directed the machine as it swooped\n smoothly toward the flat roof Dan indicated.\n\n\n \"Better let me take over now,\" Dan suggested. \"I want to be sure to\n get us to the right place.\"\n\n\n \"Very well, Dan.\"\n\n\n Dan dropped the carrier through the roof, passed down through a dimly\n seen office. Blote twiddled a small knob. The scene around the cage\n grew even fainter. \"Best we remain unnoticed,\" he explained.", "\"You!\" a hoarse voice bellowed.\n\n\n \"Grab him!\" someone yelled.\n\n\n Blote recoiled, threshing his ambulatory members in a fruitless attempt\n to regain the carrier as Manny and Fiorello closed in. Dan hauled at a\n lever. He caught a last glimpse of three struggling, blue-lit figures\n as the carrier shot away through the cell wall.\nIII\n\n\n Dan slumped back against the seat with a sigh. Now that he was in the\n clear, he would have to decide on his next move—fast. There was no\n telling what other resources Blote might have. He would have to hide\n the carrier, then—\n\n\n A low growling was coming from somewhere, rising in pitch and volume.\n Dan sat up, alarmed. This was no time for a malfunction.", "\"Don't attempt to weasel on me, Dan,\" Blote rumbled ominously.\n\n\n \"I'd better look in the phone book,\" Dan suggested.\n\n\n Silently, Blote produced a dog-eared directory. Dan opened it.\n\n\n \"Time, time. Let's see....\" He brightened. \"Time, Incorporated; local\n branch office. Two twenty-one Maple Street.\"\n\n\n \"A sales center?\" Blote inquired. \"Or a manufacturing complex?\"\n\n\n \"Both,\" Dan said. \"I'll just nip over and—\"\n\n\n \"That won't be necessary, Dan,\" Blote said. \"I'll accompany you.\" He\n took the directory, studied it.", "\"But the way Manny and Fiorello came sailing in through the wall! That\nhas\nto be a time machine they were riding in. Nothing else could just\n materialize out of thin air like that.\"\n\n\n \"You seem to have a time-machine fixation, Dan,\" Blote said. \"You\n shouldn't assume, just because you people have developed time travel,\n that everyone has. Now—\" Blote's voice sank to a bass whisper—\"I'll\n make a deal with you, Dan. You'll secure a small time machine in good\n condition for me. And in return—\"\n\n\n \"\nI'm\nsupposed to supply\nyou\nwith a time machine?\"", "Dan gaped at a head the size of a beachball, mounted on a torso like a\n hundred-gallon bag of water. Two large brown eyes blinked at him from\n points eight inches apart. Immense hands with too many fingers unfolded\n and reached to open a brown paper carton, dip in, then toss three\n peanuts, deliberately, one by one, into a gaping mouth that opened just\n above the brown eyes.\n\n\n \"Who're you?\" a bass voice demanded from somewhere near the floor.\n\n\n \"I'm ... I'm ... Dan Slane ... your honor.\"\n\n\n \"What happened to Manny and Fiorello?\"\n\n\n \"They—I—There was this cop. Kelly—\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh.\" The brown eyes blinked deliberately. The many-fingered hands\n closed the peanut carton and tucked it into a drawer.", "\"Remarkable! A common commodity, openly on sale, and I failed to notice\n it. Still, a ripe nut can fall from a small tree as well as from a\n large.\" He went to his desk, rummaged, came up with a handful of fuel\n cells. \"Now, off to gather in the time machine.\" He took his place in\n the carrier, patted the seat beside him with a wide hand. \"Come, Dan.\n Get a wiggle on.\"\nHesitantly, Dan moved to the carrier. The bluff was all right up to a\n point—but the point had just about been reached. He took his seat.\n Blote moved a lever. The familiar blue glow sprang up. \"Kindly direct\n me, Dan,\" Blote demanded. \"Two twenty-one Maple Street, I believe you\n said.\"\n\n\n \"I don't know the town very well,\" Dan said, \"but Maple's over that\n way.\"", "The cage descended steadily. Dan peered out, searching for identifying\n landmarks. He leveled off at the second floor, cruised along a barely\n visible corridor. Blote's eyes rolled, studying the small chambers\n along both sides of the passage at once.\n\n\n \"Ah, this must be the assembly area,\" he exclaimed. \"I see the machines\n employ a bar-type construction, not unlike our carriers.\"\n\n\n \"That's right,\" Dan said, staring through the haziness. \"This is where\n they do time....\" He tugged at a lever suddenly; the machine veered\n left, flickered through a barred door, came to a halt. Two nebulous\n figures loomed beside the cage. Dan cut the switch. If he'd guessed\n wrong—\n\n\n The scene fluoresced, sparks crackling, then popped into sharp focus.\n Blote scrambled out, brown eyes swivelling to take in the concrete\n walls, the barred door and—", "Never mind. He took a deep breath, ran over the speeches he had\n prepared for the occasion:\nGreeting, visitors from the Future....\nHopelessly corny. What about:\nWelcome to the Twentieth Century....\nNo good; it lacked spontaneity. The men were rising, their backs to\n Dan, stepping out of the skeletal frame. In the dim light it now\n looked like nothing more than a rough frame built of steel pipe, with\n a cluster of levers in a console before the two seats. And the thieves\n looked ordinary enough: Two men in gray coveralls, one slender and\n balding, the other shorter and round-faced. Neither of them noticed\n Dan, sitting rigid on the cot. The thin man placed a lantern on the\n table, twiddled a knob. A warm light sprang up. The visitors looked at\n the stacked shelves.\n\n\n \"Looks like the old boy's been doing all right,\" the shorter man said.\n \"Fathead's gonna be pleased.\"", "With an abruptness that flung him against the opposite side of the\n cage, the machine braked, shot through the wall and slammed to a stop.\n Dan sank to the floor of the cage, breathing hard. There was a loud\nclick!\nand the glow faded.\n\n\n With a lunge, Dan scrambled out of the cage. He stood looking around at\n a simple brown-painted office, dimly lit by sunlight filtered through\n elaborate venetian blinds. There were posters on the wall, a potted\n plant by the door, a heap of framed paintings beside it, and at the far\n side of the room a desk. And behind the desk—Something.\nII", "He finished his sandwich, went to the shelves and pulled down one of\n the brown-paper bundles. Loosening the string binding the package, he\n slid a painting into view. It was a gaily colored view of an open-air\n cafe, with a group of men and women in gay-ninetyish costumes gathered\n at a table. He seemed to remember reading something about it in a\n magazine. It was a cheerful scene; Dan liked it. Still, it hardly\n seemed worth all the effort....\n\n\n He went to the wall switch and turned off the lights. The orange glow\n of the filaments died, leaving only a faint illumination from the\n night-light over the door. When the thieves arrived, it might give him\n a momentary advantage if his eyes were adjusted to the dark. He groped\n his way to the bunk.", "\"That? That's merely a carrier. Now tell me more about your time\n machines. A fascinating concept! My superiors will be delighted at\n this development—and astonished as well. They regard this planet as\n Endsville.\"\n\"Your superiors?\" Dan eyed the window; much too far to jump. Maybe he\n could reach the machine and try a getaway—\n\n\n \"I hope you're not thinking of leaving suddenly,\" the beachball said,\n following Dan's glance. One of the eighteen fingers touched a six-inch\n yellow cylinder lying on the desk. \"Until the carrier is fueled, I'm\n afraid it's quite useless. But, to put you in the picture, I'd best\n introduce myself and explain my mission here. I'm Blote, Trader Fourth\n Class, in the employ of the Vegan Confederation. My job is to develop\n new sources of novelty items for the impulse-emporiums of the entire\n Secondary Quadrant.\"", "Dan stepped from the carrier and looked around. Whatever the noise\n was, it hadn't attracted any attention from the scattered pedestrians\n in the park. Perhaps it was some sort of burglar alarm. But if so, why\n hadn't it gone into action earlier? Dan took a deep breath. Sound or no\n sound, he would have to get back into the carrier and transfer it to a\n secluded spot where he could study it at leisure. He stepped back in,\n reached for the controls—\n\n\n There was a sudden chill in the air. The bright surface of the dials\n before him frosted over. There was a loud\npop!\nlike a flashbulb\n exploding. Dan stared from the seat at an iridescent rectangle\n which hung suspended near the carrier. Its surface rippled, faded\n to blankness. In a swirl of frosty air, a tall figure dressed in a\n tight-fitting white uniform stepped through.", "So far, so good, he reflected, stretching out. When they showed up,\n he'd have to handle everything just right. If he scared them off\n there'd be no second chance. He would have lost his crack at—whatever\n his discovery might mean to him.\n\n\n But he was ready. Let them come.\nEight hours, three sandwiches and six beers later, Dan roused suddenly\n from a light doze and sat up on the cot. Between him and the crowded\n shelving, a palely luminous framework was materializing in mid-air.\n\n\n The apparition was an open-work cage—about the size and shape of an\n out-house minus the sheathing, Dan estimated breathlessly. Two figures\n were visible within the structure, sitting stiffly in contoured chairs.\n They glowed, if anything, more brightly than the framework.", "\"Kelly here tells me you've been demanding to see me.\" He nodded toward\n the florid man at his side. He had a high, thin voice, like something\n that needed oiling. \"Something about important information regarding\n safeguarding my paintings.\"\n\n\n \"That's right, Mr. Snithian,\" Dan said. \"I believe I can be of great\n help to you.\"\n\n\n \"Help how? If you've got ideas of bilking me....\" The red eyes bored\n into Dan like hot pokers.\n\n\n \"Nothing like that, sir. Now, I know you have quite a system of guards\n here—the papers are full of it—\"\n\n\n \"Damned busybodies! Sensation-mongers! If it wasn't for the press,\n I'd have no concern for my paintings today!\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. But my point is, the one really important spot has been left\n unguarded.\"", "Dan gaped at the small rounded head, the dark-skinned long-nosed face,\n the long, muscular arms, the hands, their backs tufted with curly\n red-brown hair, the strange long-heeled feet in soft boots. A neat\n pillbox cap with a short visor was strapped low over the deep-set\n yellowish eyes, which turned in his direction. The wide mouth opened in\n a smile which showed square yellowish teeth.\n\n\n \"\nAlors, monsieur\n,\" the new-comer said, bending his knees and back in\n a quick bow. \"\nVous ete une indigine, n'est ce pas?\n\"\n\n\n \"No compree,\" Dan choked out \"Uh ... juh no parlay Fransay....\"\n\n\n \"My error. This is the Anglic colonial sector, isn't it? Stupid of me.\n Permit me to introduce myself. I'm Dzhackoon, Field Agent of Class\n five, Inter-dimensional Monitor Service.\"", "A girl's head and shoulders appeared, coming up a spiral staircase. In\n another second she would see him, and give the alarm—and Dan needed\n a few moments of peace and quiet in which to figure out the controls.\n He moved a lever. The cage drifted smoothly sideways, sliced through\n the wall with a flurry of vivid blue light. Dan pushed the lever\n back. He was in a bedroom now, a wide chamber with flouncy curtains, a\n four-poster under a flowered canopy, a dressing table—\n\n\n The door opened and the girl stepped into the room. She was young. Not\n over eighteen, Dan thought—as nearly as he could tell with the blue\n light playing around her face. She had long hair tied with a ribbon,\n and long legs, neatly curved. She wore shorts and carried a tennis\n racquet in her left hand and an apple in her right. Her back to Dan and\n the cage, she tossed the racquet on a table, took a bite of the apple,\n and began briskly unbuttoning her shirt.", "\"If you don't mind, I believe I'll have a Big Orange.\" The Vorplischer\n swiveled to a small refrigerator, removed an immense bottle fitted with\n a nipple and turned back to Dan. \"Now, I got a proposition which may be\n of some interest to you. The loss of Manny and Fiorello is a serious\n blow, but we may yet recoup the situation. You made the scene at a most\n opportune time. What I got in mind is, with those two clowns out of the\n picture, a vacancy exists on my staff, which you might well fill. How\n does that grab you?\"\n\n\n \"You mean you want me to take over operating the time machine?\"\n\n\n \"Time machine?\" The brown eyes blinked alternately. \"I fear some\n confusion exists. I don't quite dig the significance of the term.\"\n\n\n \"That thing,\" Dan jabbed a thumb toward the cage. \"The machine I came\n here in. You want me—\"", "Dan shook his head. He was staring at the posters. His eyes,\n accustoming themselves to the gloom of the office, could now make out\n the vividly drawn outline of a creature resembling an alligator-headed\n giraffe rearing up above scarlet foliage. The next poster showed a face\n similar to the beachball behind the desk, with red circles painted\n around the eyes. The next was a view of a yellow volcano spouting fire\n into a black sky.\n\n\n \"Too bad.\" The words seemed to come from under the desk. Dan squinted,\n caught a glimpse of coiled purplish tentacles. He gulped and looked up\n to catch a brown eye upon him. Only one. The other seemed to be busily\n at work studying the ceiling.\n\n\n \"I hope,\" the voice said, \"that you ain't harboring no reactionary\n racial prejudices.\"\n\"Gosh, no,\" Dan reassured the eye. \"I'm crazy about—uh—\"", "A faint sound cut into the stillness—a descending whine. The cage\n moved jerkily, settling toward the floor. Long blue sparks jumped,\n crackling, to span the closing gap; with a grate of metal, the cage\n settled against the floor. The spectral men reached for ghostly\n switches....\n\n\n The glow died.\n\n\n Dan was aware of his heart thumping painfully under his ribs. His mouth\n was dry. This was the moment he'd been planning for, but now that it\n was here—" ], [ "\"But the way Manny and Fiorello came sailing in through the wall! That\nhas\nto be a time machine they were riding in. Nothing else could just\n materialize out of thin air like that.\"\n\n\n \"You seem to have a time-machine fixation, Dan,\" Blote said. \"You\n shouldn't assume, just because you people have developed time travel,\n that everyone has. Now—\" Blote's voice sank to a bass whisper—\"I'll\n make a deal with you, Dan. You'll secure a small time machine in good\n condition for me. And in return—\"\n\n\n \"\nI'm\nsupposed to supply\nyou\nwith a time machine?\"", "\"Look—I want to go with you!\" Dan shouted.\n\n\n \"I'll bet you do!\" Kelly's voice roared. \"One more minute and I'll have\n the door open and collar the lot of you! Came up through a tunnel, did\n you?\"\n\n\n \"You can't go, my dear fellow,\" Fiorello said. \"Room for two, no more.\"\n\n\n Dan whirled to the cot, grabbed up the pistol Kelly had supplied. He\n aimed it at Manny. \"You stay here, Manny! I'm going with Fiorello in\n the time machine.\"\n\n\n \"Are you nuts?\" Manny demanded.\n\n\n \"I'm flattered, dear boy,\" Fiorello said, \"but—\"\n\n\n \"Let's get moving. Kelly will have that lock open in a minute.\"", "\"If you don't mind, I believe I'll have a Big Orange.\" The Vorplischer\n swiveled to a small refrigerator, removed an immense bottle fitted with\n a nipple and turned back to Dan. \"Now, I got a proposition which may be\n of some interest to you. The loss of Manny and Fiorello is a serious\n blow, but we may yet recoup the situation. You made the scene at a most\n opportune time. What I got in mind is, with those two clowns out of the\n picture, a vacancy exists on my staff, which you might well fill. How\n does that grab you?\"\n\n\n \"You mean you want me to take over operating the time machine?\"\n\n\n \"Time machine?\" The brown eyes blinked alternately. \"I fear some\n confusion exists. I don't quite dig the significance of the term.\"\n\n\n \"That thing,\" Dan jabbed a thumb toward the cage. \"The machine I came\n here in. You want me—\"", "\"You!\" a hoarse voice bellowed.\n\n\n \"Grab him!\" someone yelled.\n\n\n Blote recoiled, threshing his ambulatory members in a fruitless attempt\n to regain the carrier as Manny and Fiorello closed in. Dan hauled at a\n lever. He caught a last glimpse of three struggling, blue-lit figures\n as the carrier shot away through the cell wall.\nIII\n\n\n Dan slumped back against the seat with a sigh. Now that he was in the\n clear, he would have to decide on his next move—fast. There was no\n telling what other resources Blote might have. He would have to hide\n the carrier, then—\n\n\n A low growling was coming from somewhere, rising in pitch and volume.\n Dan sat up, alarmed. This was no time for a malfunction.", "\"Remarkable! A common commodity, openly on sale, and I failed to notice\n it. Still, a ripe nut can fall from a small tree as well as from a\n large.\" He went to his desk, rummaged, came up with a handful of fuel\n cells. \"Now, off to gather in the time machine.\" He took his place in\n the carrier, patted the seat beside him with a wide hand. \"Come, Dan.\n Get a wiggle on.\"\nHesitantly, Dan moved to the carrier. The bluff was all right up to a\n point—but the point had just about been reached. He took his seat.\n Blote moved a lever. The familiar blue glow sprang up. \"Kindly direct\n me, Dan,\" Blote demanded. \"Two twenty-one Maple Street, I believe you\n said.\"\n\n\n \"I don't know the town very well,\" Dan said, \"but Maple's over that\n way.\"", "\"Time machine,\" the voice repeated. \"Some sort of chronometer, perhaps?\"\n\n\n \"Huh?\"\n\n\n \"I pride myself on my command of the local idiom, yet I confess the\n implied concept snows me.\" The nine-fingered hands folded on the desk.\n The beachball head leaned forward interestedly. \"Clue me, Dan. What's a\n time machine?\"\n\n\n \"Well, it's what you use to travel through time.\"\n\n\n The brown eyes blinked in agitated alternation. \"Apparently I've loused\n up my investigation of the local cultural background. I had no idea\n you were capable of that sort of thing.\" The immense head leaned back,\n the wide mouth opening and closing rapidly. \"And to think I've been\n spinning my wheels collecting primitive 2-D art!\"\n\n\n \"But—don't you have a time machine? I mean, isn't that one?\"", "Blote waggled a stubby forefinger at Dan. \"I dislike pointing it out,\n Dan, but you are in a rather awkward position at the moment. Illegal\n entry, illegal possession of property, trespass—then doubtless some\n embarrassment exists back at the Snithian residence. I daresay Mr.\n Kelly would have a warm welcome for you. And, of course, I myself would\n deal rather harshly with any attempt on your part to take a powder.\"\n The Vegan flexed all eighteen fingers, drummed his tentacles under the\n desk, and rolled one eye, bugging the other at Dan.\n\n\n \"Whereas, on the other hand,\" Blote's bass voice went on, \"you and me\n got the basis of a sweet deal. You supply the machine, and I fix you up\n with an abundance of the local medium of exchange. Equitable enough, I\n should say. What about it, Dan?\"\n\n\n \"Ah, let me see,\" Dan temporized. \"Time machine. Time machine—\"", "The cage descended steadily. Dan peered out, searching for identifying\n landmarks. He leveled off at the second floor, cruised along a barely\n visible corridor. Blote's eyes rolled, studying the small chambers\n along both sides of the passage at once.\n\n\n \"Ah, this must be the assembly area,\" he exclaimed. \"I see the machines\n employ a bar-type construction, not unlike our carriers.\"\n\n\n \"That's right,\" Dan said, staring through the haziness. \"This is where\n they do time....\" He tugged at a lever suddenly; the machine veered\n left, flickered through a barred door, came to a halt. Two nebulous\n figures loomed beside the cage. Dan cut the switch. If he'd guessed\n wrong—\n\n\n The scene fluoresced, sparks crackling, then popped into sharp focus.\n Blote scrambled out, brown eyes swivelling to take in the concrete\n walls, the barred door and—", "\"Ah-hah!\" Kelly's voice blared from somewhere. \"I knew it! Slane, you\n crook!\"\nDan looked about wildly. The voice seemed to be issuing from a speaker.\n It appeared Kelly hedged his bets.\n\n\n \"Mr. Kelly, I can explain everything!\" Dan called. He turned back to\n Fiorello. \"Listen, I figured out—\"\n\n\n \"Pretty clever!\" Kelly's voice barked. \"Inside job. But it takes more\n than the likes of you to out-fox an old-timer like Eddie Kelly.\"\n\n\n \"Perhaps you were right, Manny,\" Fiorello said. \"Complications are\n arising. We'd best depart with all deliberate haste.\" He edged toward\n the cage.\n\n\n \"What about this ginzo?\" Manny jerked a thumb toward Dan. \"He's on to\n us.\"\n\n\n \"Can't be helped.\"", "\"A very gratifying consignment,\" his companion said. \"However, we'd\n best hurry, Manny. How much time have we left on this charge?\"\n\n\n \"Plenty. Fifteen minutes anyway.\"\n\n\n The thin man opened a package, glanced at a painting.\n\n\n \"Ah, magnificent. Almost the equal of Picasso in his puce period.\"\n\n\n Manny shuffled through the other pictures in the stack.\n\n\n \"Like always,\" he grumbled. \"No nood dames. I like nood dames.\"\n\n\n \"Look at this, Manny! The textures alone—\"\n\n\n Manny looked. \"Yeah, nice use of values,\" he conceded. \"But I still\n prefer nood dames, Fiorello.\"\n\n\n \"And this!\" Fiorello lifted the next painting. \"Look at that gay play\n of rich browns!\"", "Blote worked levers. The carrier shot out into a ghostly afternoon sky.\n Faint outlines of buildings, like faded negatives, spread below. Dan\n looked around, spotted lettering on a square five-story structure.\n\n\n \"Over there,\" he said. Blote directed the machine as it swooped\n smoothly toward the flat roof Dan indicated.\n\n\n \"Better let me take over now,\" Dan suggested. \"I want to be sure to\n get us to the right place.\"\n\n\n \"Very well, Dan.\"\n\n\n Dan dropped the carrier through the roof, passed down through a dimly\n seen office. Blote twiddled a small knob. The scene around the cage\n grew even fainter. \"Best we remain unnoticed,\" he explained.", "\"I seen richer browns on Thirty-third Street,\" Manny said. \"They was\n popular with the sparrows.\"\n\n\n \"Manny, sometimes I think your aspirations—\"\n\n\n \"Whatta ya talkin? I use a roll-on.\" Manny, turning to place a painting\n in the cage, stopped dead as he caught sight of Dan. The painting\n clattered to the floor. Dan stood, cleared his throat. \"Uh....\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh,\" Manny said. \"A double-cross.\"\n\n\n \"I've—ah—been expecting you gentlemen,\" Dan said. \"I—\"\n\n\n \"I told you we couldn't trust no guy with nine fingers on each hand,\"\n Manny whispered hoarsely. He moved toward the cage. \"Let's blow,\n Fiorello.\"\n\n\n \"Wait a minute,\" Dan said. \"Before you do anything hasty—\"", "Dan gaped at a head the size of a beachball, mounted on a torso like a\n hundred-gallon bag of water. Two large brown eyes blinked at him from\n points eight inches apart. Immense hands with too many fingers unfolded\n and reached to open a brown paper carton, dip in, then toss three\n peanuts, deliberately, one by one, into a gaping mouth that opened just\n above the brown eyes.\n\n\n \"Who're you?\" a bass voice demanded from somewhere near the floor.\n\n\n \"I'm ... I'm ... Dan Slane ... your honor.\"\n\n\n \"What happened to Manny and Fiorello?\"\n\n\n \"They—I—There was this cop. Kelly—\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh.\" The brown eyes blinked deliberately. The many-fingered hands\n closed the peanut carton and tucked it into a drawer.", "Never mind. He took a deep breath, ran over the speeches he had\n prepared for the occasion:\nGreeting, visitors from the Future....\nHopelessly corny. What about:\nWelcome to the Twentieth Century....\nNo good; it lacked spontaneity. The men were rising, their backs to\n Dan, stepping out of the skeletal frame. In the dim light it now\n looked like nothing more than a rough frame built of steel pipe, with\n a cluster of levers in a console before the two seats. And the thieves\n looked ordinary enough: Two men in gray coveralls, one slender and\n balding, the other shorter and round-faced. Neither of them noticed\n Dan, sitting rigid on the cot. The thin man placed a lantern on the\n table, twiddled a knob. A warm light sprang up. The visitors looked at\n the stacked shelves.\n\n\n \"Looks like the old boy's been doing all right,\" the shorter man said.\n \"Fathead's gonna be pleased.\"", "\"You can't leave me here!\" Manny spluttered, watching Dan crowd into\n the cage beside Fiorello.\n\n\n \"We'll send for you,\" Dan said. \"Let's go, Fiorello.\"\n\n\n The balding man snatched suddenly for the gun. Dan wrestled with him.\n The pistol fell, bounced on the floor of the cage, skidded into the\n far corner of the vault. Manny charged, reaching for Dan as he twisted\n aside; Fiorello's elbow caught him in the mouth. Manny staggered back\n into the arms of Kelly, bursting red-faced into the vault.\n\n\n \"Manny!\" Fiorello released his grip on Dan, lunged to aid his\n companion. Kelly passed Manny to one of three cops crowding in on his\n heels. Dan clung to the framework as Fiorello grappled with Kelly. A\n cop pushed past them, spotted Dan, moved in briskly for the pinch. Dan\n grabbed a lever at random and pulled.", "\"Don't start nothing, Buster,\" Manny said cautiously. \"We're plenty\n tough guys when aroused.\"\n\n\n \"I want to talk to you,\" Dan insisted. \"You see, these paintings—\"\n\n\n \"Paintings? Look, it was all a mistake. Like, we figured this was the\n gent's room—\"\n\n\n \"Never mind, Manny,\" Fiorello cut in. \"It appears there's been a leak.\"\n\n\n Dan shook his head. \"No leak. I simply deduced—\"\n\n\n \"Look, Fiorello,\" Manny said. \"You chin if you want to; I'm doing a\n fast fade.\"\n\n\n \"Don't act hastily, Manny. You know where you'll end.\"\n\n\n \"Wait a minute!\" Dan shouted. \"I'd like to make a deal with you\n fellows.\"", "\"Don't attempt to weasel on me, Dan,\" Blote rumbled ominously.\n\n\n \"I'd better look in the phone book,\" Dan suggested.\n\n\n Silently, Blote produced a dog-eared directory. Dan opened it.\n\n\n \"Time, time. Let's see....\" He brightened. \"Time, Incorporated; local\n branch office. Two twenty-one Maple Street.\"\n\n\n \"A sales center?\" Blote inquired. \"Or a manufacturing complex?\"\n\n\n \"Both,\" Dan said. \"I'll just nip over and—\"\n\n\n \"That won't be necessary, Dan,\" Blote said. \"I'll accompany you.\" He\n took the directory, studied it.", "Sudden silence fell as the walls of the room glowed blue. A spectral\n Kelly capered before the cage, fluorescing in the blue-violet. Dan\n swallowed hard and nudged a second lever. The cage sank like an\n elevator into the floor, vivid blue washing up its sides.\n\n\n Hastily he reversed the control. Operating a time machine was tricky\n business. One little slip, and the Slane molecules would be squeezing\n in among brick and mortar particles....\n\n\n But this was no time to be cautious. Things hadn't turned out just the\n way he'd planned, but after all, this was what he'd wanted—in a way.\n The time machine was his to command. And if he gave up now and crawled\n back into the vault, Kelly would gather him in and pin every art theft\n of the past decade on him.", "Dan stepped from the carrier and looked around. Whatever the noise\n was, it hadn't attracted any attention from the scattered pedestrians\n in the park. Perhaps it was some sort of burglar alarm. But if so, why\n hadn't it gone into action earlier? Dan took a deep breath. Sound or no\n sound, he would have to get back into the carrier and transfer it to a\n secluded spot where he could study it at leisure. He stepped back in,\n reached for the controls—\n\n\n There was a sudden chill in the air. The bright surface of the dials\n before him frosted over. There was a loud\npop!\nlike a flashbulb\n exploding. Dan stared from the seat at an iridescent rectangle\n which hung suspended near the carrier. Its surface rippled, faded\n to blankness. In a swirl of frosty air, a tall figure dressed in a\n tight-fitting white uniform stepped through.", "\"That? That's merely a carrier. Now tell me more about your time\n machines. A fascinating concept! My superiors will be delighted at\n this development—and astonished as well. They regard this planet as\n Endsville.\"\n\"Your superiors?\" Dan eyed the window; much too far to jump. Maybe he\n could reach the machine and try a getaway—\n\n\n \"I hope you're not thinking of leaving suddenly,\" the beachball said,\n following Dan's glance. One of the eighteen fingers touched a six-inch\n yellow cylinder lying on the desk. \"Until the carrier is fueled, I'm\n afraid it's quite useless. But, to put you in the picture, I'd best\n introduce myself and explain my mission here. I'm Blote, Trader Fourth\n Class, in the employ of the Vegan Confederation. My job is to develop\n new sources of novelty items for the impulse-emporiums of the entire\n Secondary Quadrant.\"" ], [ "Dan gaped at the small rounded head, the dark-skinned long-nosed face,\n the long, muscular arms, the hands, their backs tufted with curly\n red-brown hair, the strange long-heeled feet in soft boots. A neat\n pillbox cap with a short visor was strapped low over the deep-set\n yellowish eyes, which turned in his direction. The wide mouth opened in\n a smile which showed square yellowish teeth.\n\n\n \"\nAlors, monsieur\n,\" the new-comer said, bending his knees and back in\n a quick bow. \"\nVous ete une indigine, n'est ce pas?\n\"\n\n\n \"No compree,\" Dan choked out \"Uh ... juh no parlay Fransay....\"\n\n\n \"My error. This is the Anglic colonial sector, isn't it? Stupid of me.\n Permit me to introduce myself. I'm Dzhackoon, Field Agent of Class\n five, Inter-dimensional Monitor Service.\"", "He finished his sandwich, went to the shelves and pulled down one of\n the brown-paper bundles. Loosening the string binding the package, he\n slid a painting into view. It was a gaily colored view of an open-air\n cafe, with a group of men and women in gay-ninetyish costumes gathered\n at a table. He seemed to remember reading something about it in a\n magazine. It was a cheerful scene; Dan liked it. Still, it hardly\n seemed worth all the effort....\n\n\n He went to the wall switch and turned off the lights. The orange glow\n of the filaments died, leaving only a faint illumination from the\n night-light over the door. When the thieves arrived, it might give him\n a momentary advantage if his eyes were adjusted to the dark. He groped\n his way to the bunk.", "Dan gaped at a head the size of a beachball, mounted on a torso like a\n hundred-gallon bag of water. Two large brown eyes blinked at him from\n points eight inches apart. Immense hands with too many fingers unfolded\n and reached to open a brown paper carton, dip in, then toss three\n peanuts, deliberately, one by one, into a gaping mouth that opened just\n above the brown eyes.\n\n\n \"Who're you?\" a bass voice demanded from somewhere near the floor.\n\n\n \"I'm ... I'm ... Dan Slane ... your honor.\"\n\n\n \"What happened to Manny and Fiorello?\"\n\n\n \"They—I—There was this cop. Kelly—\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh.\" The brown eyes blinked deliberately. The many-fingered hands\n closed the peanut carton and tucked it into a drawer.", "Never mind. He took a deep breath, ran over the speeches he had\n prepared for the occasion:\nGreeting, visitors from the Future....\nHopelessly corny. What about:\nWelcome to the Twentieth Century....\nNo good; it lacked spontaneity. The men were rising, their backs to\n Dan, stepping out of the skeletal frame. In the dim light it now\n looked like nothing more than a rough frame built of steel pipe, with\n a cluster of levers in a console before the two seats. And the thieves\n looked ordinary enough: Two men in gray coveralls, one slender and\n balding, the other shorter and round-faced. Neither of them noticed\n Dan, sitting rigid on the cot. The thin man placed a lantern on the\n table, twiddled a knob. A warm light sprang up. The visitors looked at\n the stacked shelves.\n\n\n \"Looks like the old boy's been doing all right,\" the shorter man said.\n \"Fathead's gonna be pleased.\"", "\"I seen richer browns on Thirty-third Street,\" Manny said. \"They was\n popular with the sparrows.\"\n\n\n \"Manny, sometimes I think your aspirations—\"\n\n\n \"Whatta ya talkin? I use a roll-on.\" Manny, turning to place a painting\n in the cage, stopped dead as he caught sight of Dan. The painting\n clattered to the floor. Dan stood, cleared his throat. \"Uh....\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh,\" Manny said. \"A double-cross.\"\n\n\n \"I've—ah—been expecting you gentlemen,\" Dan said. \"I—\"\n\n\n \"I told you we couldn't trust no guy with nine fingers on each hand,\"\n Manny whispered hoarsely. He moved toward the cage. \"Let's blow,\n Fiorello.\"\n\n\n \"Wait a minute,\" Dan said. \"Before you do anything hasty—\"", "Basically, his idea was simple. Art collections had been disappearing\n from closely guarded galleries and homes all over the world. It was\n obvious that no one could enter a locked vault, remove a stack of large\n canvases and leave, unnoticed by watchful guards—and leaving the locks\n undamaged.\n\n\n Yet the paintings were gone. Someone had been in those vaults—someone\n who hadn't entered in the usual way.\n\n\n Theory failed at that point; that left the experimental method. The\n Snithian collection was the largest west of the Mississippi. With\n such a target, the thieves were bound to show up. If Dan sat in the\n vault—day and night—waiting—he would see for himself how they\n operated.", "\"Another idiotic scheme to waste my money,\" Snithian snapped. \"I've\n made you responsible for security here, Kelly! Let's have no more\n nonsense. And throw this nincompoop out!\" Snithian turned and stalked\n away, his cloak flapping at his knees.\n\n\n \"I'll work cheap,\" Dan called after him as Kelly took his arm. \"I'm an\n art lover.\"\n\n\n \"Never mind that,\" Kelly said, escorting Dan along the corridor. He\n turned in at an office and closed the door.\n\n\n \"Now, as the old buzzard said, I'm responsible for security here. If\n those pictures go, my job goes with them. Your vault idea's not bad.\n Just how cheap would you work?\"\n\n\n \"A hundred dollars a week,\" Dan said promptly. \"Plus expenses,\" he\n added.", "Dan shook his head. He was staring at the posters. His eyes,\n accustoming themselves to the gloom of the office, could now make out\n the vividly drawn outline of a creature resembling an alligator-headed\n giraffe rearing up above scarlet foliage. The next poster showed a face\n similar to the beachball behind the desk, with red circles painted\n around the eyes. The next was a view of a yellow volcano spouting fire\n into a black sky.\n\n\n \"Too bad.\" The words seemed to come from under the desk. Dan squinted,\n caught a glimpse of coiled purplish tentacles. He gulped and looked up\n to catch a brown eye upon him. Only one. The other seemed to be busily\n at work studying the ceiling.\n\n\n \"I hope,\" the voice said, \"that you ain't harboring no reactionary\n racial prejudices.\"\n\"Gosh, no,\" Dan reassured the eye. \"I'm crazy about—uh—\"", "\"A very gratifying consignment,\" his companion said. \"However, we'd\n best hurry, Manny. How much time have we left on this charge?\"\n\n\n \"Plenty. Fifteen minutes anyway.\"\n\n\n The thin man opened a package, glanced at a painting.\n\n\n \"Ah, magnificent. Almost the equal of Picasso in his puce period.\"\n\n\n Manny shuffled through the other pictures in the stack.\n\n\n \"Like always,\" he grumbled. \"No nood dames. I like nood dames.\"\n\n\n \"Look at this, Manny! The textures alone—\"\n\n\n Manny looked. \"Yeah, nice use of values,\" he conceded. \"But I still\n prefer nood dames, Fiorello.\"\n\n\n \"And this!\" Fiorello lifted the next painting. \"Look at that gay play\n of rich browns!\"", "\"Don't start nothing, Buster,\" Manny said cautiously. \"We're plenty\n tough guys when aroused.\"\n\n\n \"I want to talk to you,\" Dan insisted. \"You see, these paintings—\"\n\n\n \"Paintings? Look, it was all a mistake. Like, we figured this was the\n gent's room—\"\n\n\n \"Never mind, Manny,\" Fiorello cut in. \"It appears there's been a leak.\"\n\n\n Dan shook his head. \"No leak. I simply deduced—\"\n\n\n \"Look, Fiorello,\" Manny said. \"You chin if you want to; I'm doing a\n fast fade.\"\n\n\n \"Don't act hastily, Manny. You know where you'll end.\"\n\n\n \"Wait a minute!\" Dan shouted. \"I'd like to make a deal with you\n fellows.\"", "With an abruptness that flung him against the opposite side of the\n cage, the machine braked, shot through the wall and slammed to a stop.\n Dan sank to the floor of the cage, breathing hard. There was a loud\nclick!\nand the glow faded.\n\n\n With a lunge, Dan scrambled out of the cage. He stood looking around at\n a simple brown-painted office, dimly lit by sunlight filtered through\n elaborate venetian blinds. There were posters on the wall, a potted\n plant by the door, a heap of framed paintings beside it, and at the far\n side of the room a desk. And behind the desk—Something.\nII", "\"Kelly here tells me you've been demanding to see me.\" He nodded toward\n the florid man at his side. He had a high, thin voice, like something\n that needed oiling. \"Something about important information regarding\n safeguarding my paintings.\"\n\n\n \"That's right, Mr. Snithian,\" Dan said. \"I believe I can be of great\n help to you.\"\n\n\n \"Help how? If you've got ideas of bilking me....\" The red eyes bored\n into Dan like hot pokers.\n\n\n \"Nothing like that, sir. Now, I know you have quite a system of guards\n here—the papers are full of it—\"\n\n\n \"Damned busybodies! Sensation-mongers! If it wasn't for the press,\n I'd have no concern for my paintings today!\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. But my point is, the one really important spot has been left\n unguarded.\"", "\"That siren,\" Dan said. \"Was that you?\"\n\n\n Dzhackoon nodded. \"For a moment, it appeared you were disinclined to\n stop. I'm glad you decided to be reasonable.\"\n\n\n \"What outfit did you say you were with?\" Dan asked.\n\n\n \"The Inter-dimensional Monitor Service.\"\n\n\n \"Inter-what?\"\n\n\n \"Dimensional. The word is imprecise, of course, but it's the best our\n language coder can do, using the Anglic vocabulary.\"\n\n\n \"What do you want with me?\"", "Dan stepped from the carrier and looked around. Whatever the noise\n was, it hadn't attracted any attention from the scattered pedestrians\n in the park. Perhaps it was some sort of burglar alarm. But if so, why\n hadn't it gone into action earlier? Dan took a deep breath. Sound or no\n sound, he would have to get back into the carrier and transfer it to a\n secluded spot where he could study it at leisure. He stepped back in,\n reached for the controls—\n\n\n There was a sudden chill in the air. The bright surface of the dials\n before him frosted over. There was a loud\npop!\nlike a flashbulb\n exploding. Dan stared from the seat at an iridescent rectangle\n which hung suspended near the carrier. Its surface rippled, faded\n to blankness. In a swirl of frosty air, a tall figure dressed in a\n tight-fitting white uniform stepped through.", "So far, so good, he reflected, stretching out. When they showed up,\n he'd have to handle everything just right. If he scared them off\n there'd be no second chance. He would have lost his crack at—whatever\n his discovery might mean to him.\n\n\n But he was ready. Let them come.\nEight hours, three sandwiches and six beers later, Dan roused suddenly\n from a light doze and sat up on the cot. Between him and the crowded\n shelving, a palely luminous framework was materializing in mid-air.\n\n\n The apparition was an open-work cage—about the size and shape of an\n out-house minus the sheathing, Dan estimated breathlessly. Two figures\n were visible within the structure, sitting stiffly in contoured chairs.\n They glowed, if anything, more brightly than the framework.", "\"Vorplischers,\" the voice said. \"From Vorplisch, or Vega, as you call\n it.\" The Bronx cheer sounded again. \"How I long to glimpse once more my\n native fens! Wherever one wanders, there's no pad like home.\"\n\n\n \"That reminds me,\" Dan said. \"I have to be running along now.\" He\n sidled toward the door.\n\n\n \"Stick around, Dan,\" the voice rumbled. \"How about a drink? I can\n offer you Chateau Neuf du Pape, '59, Romance Conte, '32, goat's milk,\n Pepsi—\"\n\n\n \"No, thanks.\"", "A faint sound cut into the stillness—a descending whine. The cage\n moved jerkily, settling toward the floor. Long blue sparks jumped,\n crackling, to span the closing gap; with a grate of metal, the cage\n settled against the floor. The spectral men reached for ghostly\n switches....\n\n\n The glow died.\n\n\n Dan was aware of his heart thumping painfully under his ribs. His mouth\n was dry. This was the moment he'd been planning for, but now that it\n was here—", "Kelly nodded. \"I'll fingerprint you and run a fast agency check. If\n you're clean, I'll put you on, starting tonight. But keep it quiet.\"\nDan looked around at the gray walls, with shelves stacked to the low\n ceiling with wrapped paintings. Two three-hundred-watt bulbs shed a\n white glare over the tile floor, a neat white refrigerator, a bunk,\n an arm-chair, a bookshelf and a small table set with paper plates,\n plastic utensils and a portable radio—all hastily installed at Kelly's\n order. Dan opened the refrigerator, looked over the stock of salami,\n liverwurst, cheese and beer. He opened a loaf of bread, built up a\n well-filled sandwich, keyed open a can of beer.\n\n\n It wasn't fancy, but it would do. Phase one of the plan had gone off\n without a hitch.", "The door opened. Even blue, the girl looked graceful as a deer as she\n took a last bite of the apple and stepped into the ten-foot-square\n sunken tub. Dan held his breath. The girl tossed the apple core aside,\n seemed to suddenly become aware of eyes on her, whirled—\n\n\n With a sudden lurch that threw Dan against the steel bars, the\n cage shot through the wall into the open air and hurtled off with\n an acceleration that kept him pinned, helpless. He groped for the\n controls, hauled at a lever. There was no change. The cage rushed\n on, rising higher. In the distance, Dan saw the skyline of a town,\n approaching with frightful speed. A tall office building reared up\n fifteen stories high. He was headed dead for it—\n\n\n He covered his ears, braced himself—", "The cage descended steadily. Dan peered out, searching for identifying\n landmarks. He leveled off at the second floor, cruised along a barely\n visible corridor. Blote's eyes rolled, studying the small chambers\n along both sides of the passage at once.\n\n\n \"Ah, this must be the assembly area,\" he exclaimed. \"I see the machines\n employ a bar-type construction, not unlike our carriers.\"\n\n\n \"That's right,\" Dan said, staring through the haziness. \"This is where\n they do time....\" He tugged at a lever suddenly; the machine veered\n left, flickered through a barred door, came to a halt. Two nebulous\n figures loomed beside the cage. Dan cut the switch. If he'd guessed\n wrong—\n\n\n The scene fluoresced, sparks crackling, then popped into sharp focus.\n Blote scrambled out, brown eyes swivelling to take in the concrete\n walls, the barred door and—" ], [ "\"Look—I want to go with you!\" Dan shouted.\n\n\n \"I'll bet you do!\" Kelly's voice roared. \"One more minute and I'll have\n the door open and collar the lot of you! Came up through a tunnel, did\n you?\"\n\n\n \"You can't go, my dear fellow,\" Fiorello said. \"Room for two, no more.\"\n\n\n Dan whirled to the cot, grabbed up the pistol Kelly had supplied. He\n aimed it at Manny. \"You stay here, Manny! I'm going with Fiorello in\n the time machine.\"\n\n\n \"Are you nuts?\" Manny demanded.\n\n\n \"I'm flattered, dear boy,\" Fiorello said, \"but—\"\n\n\n \"Let's get moving. Kelly will have that lock open in a minute.\"", "\"Ah-hah!\" Kelly's voice blared from somewhere. \"I knew it! Slane, you\n crook!\"\nDan looked about wildly. The voice seemed to be issuing from a speaker.\n It appeared Kelly hedged his bets.\n\n\n \"Mr. Kelly, I can explain everything!\" Dan called. He turned back to\n Fiorello. \"Listen, I figured out—\"\n\n\n \"Pretty clever!\" Kelly's voice barked. \"Inside job. But it takes more\n than the likes of you to out-fox an old-timer like Eddie Kelly.\"\n\n\n \"Perhaps you were right, Manny,\" Fiorello said. \"Complications are\n arising. We'd best depart with all deliberate haste.\" He edged toward\n the cage.\n\n\n \"What about this ginzo?\" Manny jerked a thumb toward Dan. \"He's on to\n us.\"\n\n\n \"Can't be helped.\"", "\"I seen richer browns on Thirty-third Street,\" Manny said. \"They was\n popular with the sparrows.\"\n\n\n \"Manny, sometimes I think your aspirations—\"\n\n\n \"Whatta ya talkin? I use a roll-on.\" Manny, turning to place a painting\n in the cage, stopped dead as he caught sight of Dan. The painting\n clattered to the floor. Dan stood, cleared his throat. \"Uh....\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh,\" Manny said. \"A double-cross.\"\n\n\n \"I've—ah—been expecting you gentlemen,\" Dan said. \"I—\"\n\n\n \"I told you we couldn't trust no guy with nine fingers on each hand,\"\n Manny whispered hoarsely. He moved toward the cage. \"Let's blow,\n Fiorello.\"\n\n\n \"Wait a minute,\" Dan said. \"Before you do anything hasty—\"", "\"You!\" a hoarse voice bellowed.\n\n\n \"Grab him!\" someone yelled.\n\n\n Blote recoiled, threshing his ambulatory members in a fruitless attempt\n to regain the carrier as Manny and Fiorello closed in. Dan hauled at a\n lever. He caught a last glimpse of three struggling, blue-lit figures\n as the carrier shot away through the cell wall.\nIII\n\n\n Dan slumped back against the seat with a sigh. Now that he was in the\n clear, he would have to decide on his next move—fast. There was no\n telling what other resources Blote might have. He would have to hide\n the carrier, then—\n\n\n A low growling was coming from somewhere, rising in pitch and volume.\n Dan sat up, alarmed. This was no time for a malfunction.", "\"Well, it was a sweet racket while it lasted,\" the basso voice said. \"A\n pity to terminate so happy an enterprise. Still....\" A noise like an\n amplified Bronx cheer issued from the wide mouth.\n\n\n \"How ... what...?\"\n\n\n \"The carrier returns here automatically when the charge drops below a\n critical value,\" the voice said. \"A necessary measure to discourage\n big ideas on the part of wisenheimers in my employ. May I ask how you\n happen to be aboard the carrier, by the way?\"\n\n\n \"I just wanted—I mean, after I figured out—that is, the police ... I\n went for help,\" Dan finished lamely.\n\n\n \"Help? Out of the picture, unfortunately. One must maintain one's\n anonymity, you'll appreciate. My operation here is under wraps at\n present. Ah, I don't suppose you brought any paintings?\"", "\"But the way Manny and Fiorello came sailing in through the wall! That\nhas\nto be a time machine they were riding in. Nothing else could just\n materialize out of thin air like that.\"\n\n\n \"You seem to have a time-machine fixation, Dan,\" Blote said. \"You\n shouldn't assume, just because you people have developed time travel,\n that everyone has. Now—\" Blote's voice sank to a bass whisper—\"I'll\n make a deal with you, Dan. You'll secure a small time machine in good\n condition for me. And in return—\"\n\n\n \"\nI'm\nsupposed to supply\nyou\nwith a time machine?\"", "\"Don't start nothing, Buster,\" Manny said cautiously. \"We're plenty\n tough guys when aroused.\"\n\n\n \"I want to talk to you,\" Dan insisted. \"You see, these paintings—\"\n\n\n \"Paintings? Look, it was all a mistake. Like, we figured this was the\n gent's room—\"\n\n\n \"Never mind, Manny,\" Fiorello cut in. \"It appears there's been a leak.\"\n\n\n Dan shook his head. \"No leak. I simply deduced—\"\n\n\n \"Look, Fiorello,\" Manny said. \"You chin if you want to; I'm doing a\n fast fade.\"\n\n\n \"Don't act hastily, Manny. You know where you'll end.\"\n\n\n \"Wait a minute!\" Dan shouted. \"I'd like to make a deal with you\n fellows.\"", "\"You can't leave me here!\" Manny spluttered, watching Dan crowd into\n the cage beside Fiorello.\n\n\n \"We'll send for you,\" Dan said. \"Let's go, Fiorello.\"\n\n\n The balding man snatched suddenly for the gun. Dan wrestled with him.\n The pistol fell, bounced on the floor of the cage, skidded into the\n far corner of the vault. Manny charged, reaching for Dan as he twisted\n aside; Fiorello's elbow caught him in the mouth. Manny staggered back\n into the arms of Kelly, bursting red-faced into the vault.\n\n\n \"Manny!\" Fiorello released his grip on Dan, lunged to aid his\n companion. Kelly passed Manny to one of three cops crowding in on his\n heels. Dan clung to the framework as Fiorello grappled with Kelly. A\n cop pushed past them, spotted Dan, moved in briskly for the pinch. Dan\n grabbed a lever at random and pulled.", "Dan gaped at a head the size of a beachball, mounted on a torso like a\n hundred-gallon bag of water. Two large brown eyes blinked at him from\n points eight inches apart. Immense hands with too many fingers unfolded\n and reached to open a brown paper carton, dip in, then toss three\n peanuts, deliberately, one by one, into a gaping mouth that opened just\n above the brown eyes.\n\n\n \"Who're you?\" a bass voice demanded from somewhere near the floor.\n\n\n \"I'm ... I'm ... Dan Slane ... your honor.\"\n\n\n \"What happened to Manny and Fiorello?\"\n\n\n \"They—I—There was this cop. Kelly—\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh.\" The brown eyes blinked deliberately. The many-fingered hands\n closed the peanut carton and tucked it into a drawer.", "Blote worked levers. The carrier shot out into a ghostly afternoon sky.\n Faint outlines of buildings, like faded negatives, spread below. Dan\n looked around, spotted lettering on a square five-story structure.\n\n\n \"Over there,\" he said. Blote directed the machine as it swooped\n smoothly toward the flat roof Dan indicated.\n\n\n \"Better let me take over now,\" Dan suggested. \"I want to be sure to\n get us to the right place.\"\n\n\n \"Very well, Dan.\"\n\n\n Dan dropped the carrier through the roof, passed down through a dimly\n seen office. Blote twiddled a small knob. The scene around the cage\n grew even fainter. \"Best we remain unnoticed,\" he explained.", "\"If you don't mind, I believe I'll have a Big Orange.\" The Vorplischer\n swiveled to a small refrigerator, removed an immense bottle fitted with\n a nipple and turned back to Dan. \"Now, I got a proposition which may be\n of some interest to you. The loss of Manny and Fiorello is a serious\n blow, but we may yet recoup the situation. You made the scene at a most\n opportune time. What I got in mind is, with those two clowns out of the\n picture, a vacancy exists on my staff, which you might well fill. How\n does that grab you?\"\n\n\n \"You mean you want me to take over operating the time machine?\"\n\n\n \"Time machine?\" The brown eyes blinked alternately. \"I fear some\n confusion exists. I don't quite dig the significance of the term.\"\n\n\n \"That thing,\" Dan jabbed a thumb toward the cage. \"The machine I came\n here in. You want me—\"", "Dan stepped from the carrier and looked around. Whatever the noise\n was, it hadn't attracted any attention from the scattered pedestrians\n in the park. Perhaps it was some sort of burglar alarm. But if so, why\n hadn't it gone into action earlier? Dan took a deep breath. Sound or no\n sound, he would have to get back into the carrier and transfer it to a\n secluded spot where he could study it at leisure. He stepped back in,\n reached for the controls—\n\n\n There was a sudden chill in the air. The bright surface of the dials\n before him frosted over. There was a loud\npop!\nlike a flashbulb\n exploding. Dan stared from the seat at an iridescent rectangle\n which hung suspended near the carrier. Its surface rippled, faded\n to blankness. In a swirl of frosty air, a tall figure dressed in a\n tight-fitting white uniform stepped through.", "The sound rose higher, into a penetrating wail. There was no sign of\n mechanical trouble. The carrier glided on, swooping now over a nebulous\n landscape of trees and houses. Dan covered his ears against the\n deafening shriek, like all the police sirens in town blaring at once.\n If the carrier stopped it would be a long fall from here. Dan worked\n the controls, dropping toward the distant earth.\n\n\n The noise seemed to lessen, descending the scale. Dan slowed, brought\n the carrier in to the corner of a wide park. He dropped the last few\n inches and cut the switch.\n\n\n As the glow died, the siren faded into silence.", "\"Kelly here tells me you've been demanding to see me.\" He nodded toward\n the florid man at his side. He had a high, thin voice, like something\n that needed oiling. \"Something about important information regarding\n safeguarding my paintings.\"\n\n\n \"That's right, Mr. Snithian,\" Dan said. \"I believe I can be of great\n help to you.\"\n\n\n \"Help how? If you've got ideas of bilking me....\" The red eyes bored\n into Dan like hot pokers.\n\n\n \"Nothing like that, sir. Now, I know you have quite a system of guards\n here—the papers are full of it—\"\n\n\n \"Damned busybodies! Sensation-mongers! If it wasn't for the press,\n I'd have no concern for my paintings today!\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. But my point is, the one really important spot has been left\n unguarded.\"", "\"Another idiotic scheme to waste my money,\" Snithian snapped. \"I've\n made you responsible for security here, Kelly! Let's have no more\n nonsense. And throw this nincompoop out!\" Snithian turned and stalked\n away, his cloak flapping at his knees.\n\n\n \"I'll work cheap,\" Dan called after him as Kelly took his arm. \"I'm an\n art lover.\"\n\n\n \"Never mind that,\" Kelly said, escorting Dan along the corridor. He\n turned in at an office and closed the door.\n\n\n \"Now, as the old buzzard said, I'm responsible for security here. If\n those pictures go, my job goes with them. Your vault idea's not bad.\n Just how cheap would you work?\"\n\n\n \"A hundred dollars a week,\" Dan said promptly. \"Plus expenses,\" he\n added.", "Kelly nodded. \"I'll fingerprint you and run a fast agency check. If\n you're clean, I'll put you on, starting tonight. But keep it quiet.\"\nDan looked around at the gray walls, with shelves stacked to the low\n ceiling with wrapped paintings. Two three-hundred-watt bulbs shed a\n white glare over the tile floor, a neat white refrigerator, a bunk,\n an arm-chair, a bookshelf and a small table set with paper plates,\n plastic utensils and a portable radio—all hastily installed at Kelly's\n order. Dan opened the refrigerator, looked over the stock of salami,\n liverwurst, cheese and beer. He opened a loaf of bread, built up a\n well-filled sandwich, keyed open a can of beer.\n\n\n It wasn't fancy, but it would do. Phase one of the plan had gone off\n without a hitch.", "He finished his sandwich, went to the shelves and pulled down one of\n the brown-paper bundles. Loosening the string binding the package, he\n slid a painting into view. It was a gaily colored view of an open-air\n cafe, with a group of men and women in gay-ninetyish costumes gathered\n at a table. He seemed to remember reading something about it in a\n magazine. It was a cheerful scene; Dan liked it. Still, it hardly\n seemed worth all the effort....\n\n\n He went to the wall switch and turned off the lights. The orange glow\n of the filaments died, leaving only a faint illumination from the\n night-light over the door. When the thieves arrived, it might give him\n a momentary advantage if his eyes were adjusted to the dark. He groped\n his way to the bunk.", "\"A very gratifying consignment,\" his companion said. \"However, we'd\n best hurry, Manny. How much time have we left on this charge?\"\n\n\n \"Plenty. Fifteen minutes anyway.\"\n\n\n The thin man opened a package, glanced at a painting.\n\n\n \"Ah, magnificent. Almost the equal of Picasso in his puce period.\"\n\n\n Manny shuffled through the other pictures in the stack.\n\n\n \"Like always,\" he grumbled. \"No nood dames. I like nood dames.\"\n\n\n \"Look at this, Manny! The textures alone—\"\n\n\n Manny looked. \"Yeah, nice use of values,\" he conceded. \"But I still\n prefer nood dames, Fiorello.\"\n\n\n \"And this!\" Fiorello lifted the next painting. \"Look at that gay play\n of rich browns!\"", "\"Vorplischers,\" the voice said. \"From Vorplisch, or Vega, as you call\n it.\" The Bronx cheer sounded again. \"How I long to glimpse once more my\n native fens! Wherever one wanders, there's no pad like home.\"\n\n\n \"That reminds me,\" Dan said. \"I have to be running along now.\" He\n sidled toward the door.\n\n\n \"Stick around, Dan,\" the voice rumbled. \"How about a drink? I can\n offer you Chateau Neuf du Pape, '59, Romance Conte, '32, goat's milk,\n Pepsi—\"\n\n\n \"No, thanks.\"", "\"That? That's merely a carrier. Now tell me more about your time\n machines. A fascinating concept! My superiors will be delighted at\n this development—and astonished as well. They regard this planet as\n Endsville.\"\n\"Your superiors?\" Dan eyed the window; much too far to jump. Maybe he\n could reach the machine and try a getaway—\n\n\n \"I hope you're not thinking of leaving suddenly,\" the beachball said,\n following Dan's glance. One of the eighteen fingers touched a six-inch\n yellow cylinder lying on the desk. \"Until the carrier is fueled, I'm\n afraid it's quite useless. But, to put you in the picture, I'd best\n introduce myself and explain my mission here. I'm Blote, Trader Fourth\n Class, in the employ of the Vegan Confederation. My job is to develop\n new sources of novelty items for the impulse-emporiums of the entire\n Secondary Quadrant.\"" ], [ "Basically, his idea was simple. Art collections had been disappearing\n from closely guarded galleries and homes all over the world. It was\n obvious that no one could enter a locked vault, remove a stack of large\n canvases and leave, unnoticed by watchful guards—and leaving the locks\n undamaged.\n\n\n Yet the paintings were gone. Someone had been in those vaults—someone\n who hadn't entered in the usual way.\n\n\n Theory failed at that point; that left the experimental method. The\n Snithian collection was the largest west of the Mississippi. With\n such a target, the thieves were bound to show up. If Dan sat in the\n vault—day and night—waiting—he would see for himself how they\n operated.", "He finished his sandwich, went to the shelves and pulled down one of\n the brown-paper bundles. Loosening the string binding the package, he\n slid a painting into view. It was a gaily colored view of an open-air\n cafe, with a group of men and women in gay-ninetyish costumes gathered\n at a table. He seemed to remember reading something about it in a\n magazine. It was a cheerful scene; Dan liked it. Still, it hardly\n seemed worth all the effort....\n\n\n He went to the wall switch and turned off the lights. The orange glow\n of the filaments died, leaving only a faint illumination from the\n night-light over the door. When the thieves arrived, it might give him\n a momentary advantage if his eyes were adjusted to the dark. He groped\n his way to the bunk.", "Never mind. He took a deep breath, ran over the speeches he had\n prepared for the occasion:\nGreeting, visitors from the Future....\nHopelessly corny. What about:\nWelcome to the Twentieth Century....\nNo good; it lacked spontaneity. The men were rising, their backs to\n Dan, stepping out of the skeletal frame. In the dim light it now\n looked like nothing more than a rough frame built of steel pipe, with\n a cluster of levers in a console before the two seats. And the thieves\n looked ordinary enough: Two men in gray coveralls, one slender and\n balding, the other shorter and round-faced. Neither of them noticed\n Dan, sitting rigid on the cot. The thin man placed a lantern on the\n table, twiddled a knob. A warm light sprang up. The visitors looked at\n the stacked shelves.\n\n\n \"Looks like the old boy's been doing all right,\" the shorter man said.\n \"Fathead's gonna be pleased.\"", "\"Kelly here tells me you've been demanding to see me.\" He nodded toward\n the florid man at his side. He had a high, thin voice, like something\n that needed oiling. \"Something about important information regarding\n safeguarding my paintings.\"\n\n\n \"That's right, Mr. Snithian,\" Dan said. \"I believe I can be of great\n help to you.\"\n\n\n \"Help how? If you've got ideas of bilking me....\" The red eyes bored\n into Dan like hot pokers.\n\n\n \"Nothing like that, sir. Now, I know you have quite a system of guards\n here—the papers are full of it—\"\n\n\n \"Damned busybodies! Sensation-mongers! If it wasn't for the press,\n I'd have no concern for my paintings today!\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. But my point is, the one really important spot has been left\n unguarded.\"", "\"Another idiotic scheme to waste my money,\" Snithian snapped. \"I've\n made you responsible for security here, Kelly! Let's have no more\n nonsense. And throw this nincompoop out!\" Snithian turned and stalked\n away, his cloak flapping at his knees.\n\n\n \"I'll work cheap,\" Dan called after him as Kelly took his arm. \"I'm an\n art lover.\"\n\n\n \"Never mind that,\" Kelly said, escorting Dan along the corridor. He\n turned in at an office and closed the door.\n\n\n \"Now, as the old buzzard said, I'm responsible for security here. If\n those pictures go, my job goes with them. Your vault idea's not bad.\n Just how cheap would you work?\"\n\n\n \"A hundred dollars a week,\" Dan said promptly. \"Plus expenses,\" he\n added.", "\"Now, wait a minute—\" Kelly started.\n\n\n \"What's that?\" Snithian cut in.\n\n\n \"You have a hundred and fifty men guarding the house and grounds day\n and night—\"\n\n\n \"Two hundred and twenty-five,\" Kelly snapped.\n\n\n \"—but no one at all in the vault with the paintings,\" Slane finished.\n\n\n \"Of course not,\" Snithian shrilled. \"Why should I post a man in the\n vault? It's under constant surveillance from the corridor outside.\"\n\n\n \"The Harriman paintings were removed from a locked vault,\" Dan said.\n \"There was a special seal on the door. It wasn't broken.\"\n\n\n \"By the saints, he's right,\" Kelly exclaimed. \"Maybe we ought to have a\n man in that vault.\"", "\"You can't leave me here!\" Manny spluttered, watching Dan crowd into\n the cage beside Fiorello.\n\n\n \"We'll send for you,\" Dan said. \"Let's go, Fiorello.\"\n\n\n The balding man snatched suddenly for the gun. Dan wrestled with him.\n The pistol fell, bounced on the floor of the cage, skidded into the\n far corner of the vault. Manny charged, reaching for Dan as he twisted\n aside; Fiorello's elbow caught him in the mouth. Manny staggered back\n into the arms of Kelly, bursting red-faced into the vault.\n\n\n \"Manny!\" Fiorello released his grip on Dan, lunged to aid his\n companion. Kelly passed Manny to one of three cops crowding in on his\n heels. Dan clung to the framework as Fiorello grappled with Kelly. A\n cop pushed past them, spotted Dan, moved in briskly for the pinch. Dan\n grabbed a lever at random and pulled.", "\"I seen richer browns on Thirty-third Street,\" Manny said. \"They was\n popular with the sparrows.\"\n\n\n \"Manny, sometimes I think your aspirations—\"\n\n\n \"Whatta ya talkin? I use a roll-on.\" Manny, turning to place a painting\n in the cage, stopped dead as he caught sight of Dan. The painting\n clattered to the floor. Dan stood, cleared his throat. \"Uh....\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh,\" Manny said. \"A double-cross.\"\n\n\n \"I've—ah—been expecting you gentlemen,\" Dan said. \"I—\"\n\n\n \"I told you we couldn't trust no guy with nine fingers on each hand,\"\n Manny whispered hoarsely. He moved toward the cage. \"Let's blow,\n Fiorello.\"\n\n\n \"Wait a minute,\" Dan said. \"Before you do anything hasty—\"", "Kelly nodded. \"I'll fingerprint you and run a fast agency check. If\n you're clean, I'll put you on, starting tonight. But keep it quiet.\"\nDan looked around at the gray walls, with shelves stacked to the low\n ceiling with wrapped paintings. Two three-hundred-watt bulbs shed a\n white glare over the tile floor, a neat white refrigerator, a bunk,\n an arm-chair, a bookshelf and a small table set with paper plates,\n plastic utensils and a portable radio—all hastily installed at Kelly's\n order. Dan opened the refrigerator, looked over the stock of salami,\n liverwurst, cheese and beer. He opened a loaf of bread, built up a\n well-filled sandwich, keyed open a can of beer.\n\n\n It wasn't fancy, but it would do. Phase one of the plan had gone off\n without a hitch.", "So far, so good, he reflected, stretching out. When they showed up,\n he'd have to handle everything just right. If he scared them off\n there'd be no second chance. He would have lost his crack at—whatever\n his discovery might mean to him.\n\n\n But he was ready. Let them come.\nEight hours, three sandwiches and six beers later, Dan roused suddenly\n from a light doze and sat up on the cot. Between him and the crowded\n shelving, a palely luminous framework was materializing in mid-air.\n\n\n The apparition was an open-work cage—about the size and shape of an\n out-house minus the sheathing, Dan estimated breathlessly. Two figures\n were visible within the structure, sitting stiffly in contoured chairs.\n They glowed, if anything, more brightly than the framework.", "\"Ah-hah!\" Kelly's voice blared from somewhere. \"I knew it! Slane, you\n crook!\"\nDan looked about wildly. The voice seemed to be issuing from a speaker.\n It appeared Kelly hedged his bets.\n\n\n \"Mr. Kelly, I can explain everything!\" Dan called. He turned back to\n Fiorello. \"Listen, I figured out—\"\n\n\n \"Pretty clever!\" Kelly's voice barked. \"Inside job. But it takes more\n than the likes of you to out-fox an old-timer like Eddie Kelly.\"\n\n\n \"Perhaps you were right, Manny,\" Fiorello said. \"Complications are\n arising. We'd best depart with all deliberate haste.\" He edged toward\n the cage.\n\n\n \"What about this ginzo?\" Manny jerked a thumb toward Dan. \"He's on to\n us.\"\n\n\n \"Can't be helped.\"", "\"Don't start nothing, Buster,\" Manny said cautiously. \"We're plenty\n tough guys when aroused.\"\n\n\n \"I want to talk to you,\" Dan insisted. \"You see, these paintings—\"\n\n\n \"Paintings? Look, it was all a mistake. Like, we figured this was the\n gent's room—\"\n\n\n \"Never mind, Manny,\" Fiorello cut in. \"It appears there's been a leak.\"\n\n\n Dan shook his head. \"No leak. I simply deduced—\"\n\n\n \"Look, Fiorello,\" Manny said. \"You chin if you want to; I'm doing a\n fast fade.\"\n\n\n \"Don't act hastily, Manny. You know where you'll end.\"\n\n\n \"Wait a minute!\" Dan shouted. \"I'd like to make a deal with you\n fellows.\"", "A faint sound cut into the stillness—a descending whine. The cage\n moved jerkily, settling toward the floor. Long blue sparks jumped,\n crackling, to span the closing gap; with a grate of metal, the cage\n settled against the floor. The spectral men reached for ghostly\n switches....\n\n\n The glow died.\n\n\n Dan was aware of his heart thumping painfully under his ribs. His mouth\n was dry. This was the moment he'd been planning for, but now that it\n was here—", "Dan gaped at a head the size of a beachball, mounted on a torso like a\n hundred-gallon bag of water. Two large brown eyes blinked at him from\n points eight inches apart. Immense hands with too many fingers unfolded\n and reached to open a brown paper carton, dip in, then toss three\n peanuts, deliberately, one by one, into a gaping mouth that opened just\n above the brown eyes.\n\n\n \"Who're you?\" a bass voice demanded from somewhere near the floor.\n\n\n \"I'm ... I'm ... Dan Slane ... your honor.\"\n\n\n \"What happened to Manny and Fiorello?\"\n\n\n \"They—I—There was this cop. Kelly—\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh.\" The brown eyes blinked deliberately. The many-fingered hands\n closed the peanut carton and tucked it into a drawer.", "\"Look—I want to go with you!\" Dan shouted.\n\n\n \"I'll bet you do!\" Kelly's voice roared. \"One more minute and I'll have\n the door open and collar the lot of you! Came up through a tunnel, did\n you?\"\n\n\n \"You can't go, my dear fellow,\" Fiorello said. \"Room for two, no more.\"\n\n\n Dan whirled to the cot, grabbed up the pistol Kelly had supplied. He\n aimed it at Manny. \"You stay here, Manny! I'm going with Fiorello in\n the time machine.\"\n\n\n \"Are you nuts?\" Manny demanded.\n\n\n \"I'm flattered, dear boy,\" Fiorello said, \"but—\"\n\n\n \"Let's get moving. Kelly will have that lock open in a minute.\"", "Blote worked levers. The carrier shot out into a ghostly afternoon sky.\n Faint outlines of buildings, like faded negatives, spread below. Dan\n looked around, spotted lettering on a square five-story structure.\n\n\n \"Over there,\" he said. Blote directed the machine as it swooped\n smoothly toward the flat roof Dan indicated.\n\n\n \"Better let me take over now,\" Dan suggested. \"I want to be sure to\n get us to the right place.\"\n\n\n \"Very well, Dan.\"\n\n\n Dan dropped the carrier through the roof, passed down through a dimly\n seen office. Blote twiddled a small knob. The scene around the cage\n grew even fainter. \"Best we remain unnoticed,\" he explained.", "Blote waggled a stubby forefinger at Dan. \"I dislike pointing it out,\n Dan, but you are in a rather awkward position at the moment. Illegal\n entry, illegal possession of property, trespass—then doubtless some\n embarrassment exists back at the Snithian residence. I daresay Mr.\n Kelly would have a warm welcome for you. And, of course, I myself would\n deal rather harshly with any attempt on your part to take a powder.\"\n The Vegan flexed all eighteen fingers, drummed his tentacles under the\n desk, and rolled one eye, bugging the other at Dan.\n\n\n \"Whereas, on the other hand,\" Blote's bass voice went on, \"you and me\n got the basis of a sweet deal. You supply the machine, and I fix you up\n with an abundance of the local medium of exchange. Equitable enough, I\n should say. What about it, Dan?\"\n\n\n \"Ah, let me see,\" Dan temporized. \"Time machine. Time machine—\"", "The cage descended steadily. Dan peered out, searching for identifying\n landmarks. He leveled off at the second floor, cruised along a barely\n visible corridor. Blote's eyes rolled, studying the small chambers\n along both sides of the passage at once.\n\n\n \"Ah, this must be the assembly area,\" he exclaimed. \"I see the machines\n employ a bar-type construction, not unlike our carriers.\"\n\n\n \"That's right,\" Dan said, staring through the haziness. \"This is where\n they do time....\" He tugged at a lever suddenly; the machine veered\n left, flickered through a barred door, came to a halt. Two nebulous\n figures loomed beside the cage. Dan cut the switch. If he'd guessed\n wrong—\n\n\n The scene fluoresced, sparks crackling, then popped into sharp focus.\n Blote scrambled out, brown eyes swivelling to take in the concrete\n walls, the barred door and—", "\"Well, it was a sweet racket while it lasted,\" the basso voice said. \"A\n pity to terminate so happy an enterprise. Still....\" A noise like an\n amplified Bronx cheer issued from the wide mouth.\n\n\n \"How ... what...?\"\n\n\n \"The carrier returns here automatically when the charge drops below a\n critical value,\" the voice said. \"A necessary measure to discourage\n big ideas on the part of wisenheimers in my employ. May I ask how you\n happen to be aboard the carrier, by the way?\"\n\n\n \"I just wanted—I mean, after I figured out—that is, the police ... I\n went for help,\" Dan finished lamely.\n\n\n \"Help? Out of the picture, unfortunately. One must maintain one's\n anonymity, you'll appreciate. My operation here is under wraps at\n present. Ah, I don't suppose you brought any paintings?\"", "\"Vorplischers,\" the voice said. \"From Vorplisch, or Vega, as you call\n it.\" The Bronx cheer sounded again. \"How I long to glimpse once more my\n native fens! Wherever one wanders, there's no pad like home.\"\n\n\n \"That reminds me,\" Dan said. \"I have to be running along now.\" He\n sidled toward the door.\n\n\n \"Stick around, Dan,\" the voice rumbled. \"How about a drink? I can\n offer you Chateau Neuf du Pape, '59, Romance Conte, '32, goat's milk,\n Pepsi—\"\n\n\n \"No, thanks.\"" ], [ "Dan gaped at the small rounded head, the dark-skinned long-nosed face,\n the long, muscular arms, the hands, their backs tufted with curly\n red-brown hair, the strange long-heeled feet in soft boots. A neat\n pillbox cap with a short visor was strapped low over the deep-set\n yellowish eyes, which turned in his direction. The wide mouth opened in\n a smile which showed square yellowish teeth.\n\n\n \"\nAlors, monsieur\n,\" the new-comer said, bending his knees and back in\n a quick bow. \"\nVous ete une indigine, n'est ce pas?\n\"\n\n\n \"No compree,\" Dan choked out \"Uh ... juh no parlay Fransay....\"\n\n\n \"My error. This is the Anglic colonial sector, isn't it? Stupid of me.\n Permit me to introduce myself. I'm Dzhackoon, Field Agent of Class\n five, Inter-dimensional Monitor Service.\"", "Blote worked levers. The carrier shot out into a ghostly afternoon sky.\n Faint outlines of buildings, like faded negatives, spread below. Dan\n looked around, spotted lettering on a square five-story structure.\n\n\n \"Over there,\" he said. Blote directed the machine as it swooped\n smoothly toward the flat roof Dan indicated.\n\n\n \"Better let me take over now,\" Dan suggested. \"I want to be sure to\n get us to the right place.\"\n\n\n \"Very well, Dan.\"\n\n\n Dan dropped the carrier through the roof, passed down through a dimly\n seen office. Blote twiddled a small knob. The scene around the cage\n grew even fainter. \"Best we remain unnoticed,\" he explained.", "\"A very gratifying consignment,\" his companion said. \"However, we'd\n best hurry, Manny. How much time have we left on this charge?\"\n\n\n \"Plenty. Fifteen minutes anyway.\"\n\n\n The thin man opened a package, glanced at a painting.\n\n\n \"Ah, magnificent. Almost the equal of Picasso in his puce period.\"\n\n\n Manny shuffled through the other pictures in the stack.\n\n\n \"Like always,\" he grumbled. \"No nood dames. I like nood dames.\"\n\n\n \"Look at this, Manny! The textures alone—\"\n\n\n Manny looked. \"Yeah, nice use of values,\" he conceded. \"But I still\n prefer nood dames, Fiorello.\"\n\n\n \"And this!\" Fiorello lifted the next painting. \"Look at that gay play\n of rich browns!\"", "\"You!\" a hoarse voice bellowed.\n\n\n \"Grab him!\" someone yelled.\n\n\n Blote recoiled, threshing his ambulatory members in a fruitless attempt\n to regain the carrier as Manny and Fiorello closed in. Dan hauled at a\n lever. He caught a last glimpse of three struggling, blue-lit figures\n as the carrier shot away through the cell wall.\nIII\n\n\n Dan slumped back against the seat with a sigh. Now that he was in the\n clear, he would have to decide on his next move—fast. There was no\n telling what other resources Blote might have. He would have to hide\n the carrier, then—\n\n\n A low growling was coming from somewhere, rising in pitch and volume.\n Dan sat up, alarmed. This was no time for a malfunction.", "Dan shook his head. He was staring at the posters. His eyes,\n accustoming themselves to the gloom of the office, could now make out\n the vividly drawn outline of a creature resembling an alligator-headed\n giraffe rearing up above scarlet foliage. The next poster showed a face\n similar to the beachball behind the desk, with red circles painted\n around the eyes. The next was a view of a yellow volcano spouting fire\n into a black sky.\n\n\n \"Too bad.\" The words seemed to come from under the desk. Dan squinted,\n caught a glimpse of coiled purplish tentacles. He gulped and looked up\n to catch a brown eye upon him. Only one. The other seemed to be busily\n at work studying the ceiling.\n\n\n \"I hope,\" the voice said, \"that you ain't harboring no reactionary\n racial prejudices.\"\n\"Gosh, no,\" Dan reassured the eye. \"I'm crazy about—uh—\"", "Dan gaped at a head the size of a beachball, mounted on a torso like a\n hundred-gallon bag of water. Two large brown eyes blinked at him from\n points eight inches apart. Immense hands with too many fingers unfolded\n and reached to open a brown paper carton, dip in, then toss three\n peanuts, deliberately, one by one, into a gaping mouth that opened just\n above the brown eyes.\n\n\n \"Who're you?\" a bass voice demanded from somewhere near the floor.\n\n\n \"I'm ... I'm ... Dan Slane ... your honor.\"\n\n\n \"What happened to Manny and Fiorello?\"\n\n\n \"They—I—There was this cop. Kelly—\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh.\" The brown eyes blinked deliberately. The many-fingered hands\n closed the peanut carton and tucked it into a drawer.", "The cage descended steadily. Dan peered out, searching for identifying\n landmarks. He leveled off at the second floor, cruised along a barely\n visible corridor. Blote's eyes rolled, studying the small chambers\n along both sides of the passage at once.\n\n\n \"Ah, this must be the assembly area,\" he exclaimed. \"I see the machines\n employ a bar-type construction, not unlike our carriers.\"\n\n\n \"That's right,\" Dan said, staring through the haziness. \"This is where\n they do time....\" He tugged at a lever suddenly; the machine veered\n left, flickered through a barred door, came to a halt. Two nebulous\n figures loomed beside the cage. Dan cut the switch. If he'd guessed\n wrong—\n\n\n The scene fluoresced, sparks crackling, then popped into sharp focus.\n Blote scrambled out, brown eyes swivelling to take in the concrete\n walls, the barred door and—", "\"Don't attempt to weasel on me, Dan,\" Blote rumbled ominously.\n\n\n \"I'd better look in the phone book,\" Dan suggested.\n\n\n Silently, Blote produced a dog-eared directory. Dan opened it.\n\n\n \"Time, time. Let's see....\" He brightened. \"Time, Incorporated; local\n branch office. Two twenty-one Maple Street.\"\n\n\n \"A sales center?\" Blote inquired. \"Or a manufacturing complex?\"\n\n\n \"Both,\" Dan said. \"I'll just nip over and—\"\n\n\n \"That won't be necessary, Dan,\" Blote said. \"I'll accompany you.\" He\n took the directory, studied it.", "\"That? That's merely a carrier. Now tell me more about your time\n machines. A fascinating concept! My superiors will be delighted at\n this development—and astonished as well. They regard this planet as\n Endsville.\"\n\"Your superiors?\" Dan eyed the window; much too far to jump. Maybe he\n could reach the machine and try a getaway—\n\n\n \"I hope you're not thinking of leaving suddenly,\" the beachball said,\n following Dan's glance. One of the eighteen fingers touched a six-inch\n yellow cylinder lying on the desk. \"Until the carrier is fueled, I'm\n afraid it's quite useless. But, to put you in the picture, I'd best\n introduce myself and explain my mission here. I'm Blote, Trader Fourth\n Class, in the employ of the Vegan Confederation. My job is to develop\n new sources of novelty items for the impulse-emporiums of the entire\n Secondary Quadrant.\"", "\"That siren,\" Dan said. \"Was that you?\"\n\n\n Dzhackoon nodded. \"For a moment, it appeared you were disinclined to\n stop. I'm glad you decided to be reasonable.\"\n\n\n \"What outfit did you say you were with?\" Dan asked.\n\n\n \"The Inter-dimensional Monitor Service.\"\n\n\n \"Inter-what?\"\n\n\n \"Dimensional. The word is imprecise, of course, but it's the best our\n language coder can do, using the Anglic vocabulary.\"\n\n\n \"What do you want with me?\"", "Blote waggled a stubby forefinger at Dan. \"I dislike pointing it out,\n Dan, but you are in a rather awkward position at the moment. Illegal\n entry, illegal possession of property, trespass—then doubtless some\n embarrassment exists back at the Snithian residence. I daresay Mr.\n Kelly would have a warm welcome for you. And, of course, I myself would\n deal rather harshly with any attempt on your part to take a powder.\"\n The Vegan flexed all eighteen fingers, drummed his tentacles under the\n desk, and rolled one eye, bugging the other at Dan.\n\n\n \"Whereas, on the other hand,\" Blote's bass voice went on, \"you and me\n got the basis of a sweet deal. You supply the machine, and I fix you up\n with an abundance of the local medium of exchange. Equitable enough, I\n should say. What about it, Dan?\"\n\n\n \"Ah, let me see,\" Dan temporized. \"Time machine. Time machine—\"", "\"Vorplischers,\" the voice said. \"From Vorplisch, or Vega, as you call\n it.\" The Bronx cheer sounded again. \"How I long to glimpse once more my\n native fens! Wherever one wanders, there's no pad like home.\"\n\n\n \"That reminds me,\" Dan said. \"I have to be running along now.\" He\n sidled toward the door.\n\n\n \"Stick around, Dan,\" the voice rumbled. \"How about a drink? I can\n offer you Chateau Neuf du Pape, '59, Romance Conte, '32, goat's milk,\n Pepsi—\"\n\n\n \"No, thanks.\"", "So far, so good, he reflected, stretching out. When they showed up,\n he'd have to handle everything just right. If he scared them off\n there'd be no second chance. He would have lost his crack at—whatever\n his discovery might mean to him.\n\n\n But he was ready. Let them come.\nEight hours, three sandwiches and six beers later, Dan roused suddenly\n from a light doze and sat up on the cot. Between him and the crowded\n shelving, a palely luminous framework was materializing in mid-air.\n\n\n The apparition was an open-work cage—about the size and shape of an\n out-house minus the sheathing, Dan estimated breathlessly. Two figures\n were visible within the structure, sitting stiffly in contoured chairs.\n They glowed, if anything, more brightly than the framework.", "\"Remarkable! A common commodity, openly on sale, and I failed to notice\n it. Still, a ripe nut can fall from a small tree as well as from a\n large.\" He went to his desk, rummaged, came up with a handful of fuel\n cells. \"Now, off to gather in the time machine.\" He took his place in\n the carrier, patted the seat beside him with a wide hand. \"Come, Dan.\n Get a wiggle on.\"\nHesitantly, Dan moved to the carrier. The bluff was all right up to a\n point—but the point had just about been reached. He took his seat.\n Blote moved a lever. The familiar blue glow sprang up. \"Kindly direct\n me, Dan,\" Blote demanded. \"Two twenty-one Maple Street, I believe you\n said.\"\n\n\n \"I don't know the town very well,\" Dan said, \"but Maple's over that\n way.\"", "With an abruptness that flung him against the opposite side of the\n cage, the machine braked, shot through the wall and slammed to a stop.\n Dan sank to the floor of the cage, breathing hard. There was a loud\nclick!\nand the glow faded.\n\n\n With a lunge, Dan scrambled out of the cage. He stood looking around at\n a simple brown-painted office, dimly lit by sunlight filtered through\n elaborate venetian blinds. There were posters on the wall, a potted\n plant by the door, a heap of framed paintings beside it, and at the far\n side of the room a desk. And behind the desk—Something.\nII", "\"But the way Manny and Fiorello came sailing in through the wall! That\nhas\nto be a time machine they were riding in. Nothing else could just\n materialize out of thin air like that.\"\n\n\n \"You seem to have a time-machine fixation, Dan,\" Blote said. \"You\n shouldn't assume, just because you people have developed time travel,\n that everyone has. Now—\" Blote's voice sank to a bass whisper—\"I'll\n make a deal with you, Dan. You'll secure a small time machine in good\n condition for me. And in return—\"\n\n\n \"\nI'm\nsupposed to supply\nyou\nwith a time machine?\"", "\"I seen richer browns on Thirty-third Street,\" Manny said. \"They was\n popular with the sparrows.\"\n\n\n \"Manny, sometimes I think your aspirations—\"\n\n\n \"Whatta ya talkin? I use a roll-on.\" Manny, turning to place a painting\n in the cage, stopped dead as he caught sight of Dan. The painting\n clattered to the floor. Dan stood, cleared his throat. \"Uh....\"\n\n\n \"Oh-oh,\" Manny said. \"A double-cross.\"\n\n\n \"I've—ah—been expecting you gentlemen,\" Dan said. \"I—\"\n\n\n \"I told you we couldn't trust no guy with nine fingers on each hand,\"\n Manny whispered hoarsely. He moved toward the cage. \"Let's blow,\n Fiorello.\"\n\n\n \"Wait a minute,\" Dan said. \"Before you do anything hasty—\"", "\"Kelly here tells me you've been demanding to see me.\" He nodded toward\n the florid man at his side. He had a high, thin voice, like something\n that needed oiling. \"Something about important information regarding\n safeguarding my paintings.\"\n\n\n \"That's right, Mr. Snithian,\" Dan said. \"I believe I can be of great\n help to you.\"\n\n\n \"Help how? If you've got ideas of bilking me....\" The red eyes bored\n into Dan like hot pokers.\n\n\n \"Nothing like that, sir. Now, I know you have quite a system of guards\n here—the papers are full of it—\"\n\n\n \"Damned busybodies! Sensation-mongers! If it wasn't for the press,\n I'd have no concern for my paintings today!\"\n\n\n \"Yes sir. But my point is, the one really important spot has been left\n unguarded.\"", "He finished his sandwich, went to the shelves and pulled down one of\n the brown-paper bundles. Loosening the string binding the package, he\n slid a painting into view. It was a gaily colored view of an open-air\n cafe, with a group of men and women in gay-ninetyish costumes gathered\n at a table. He seemed to remember reading something about it in a\n magazine. It was a cheerful scene; Dan liked it. Still, it hardly\n seemed worth all the effort....\n\n\n He went to the wall switch and turned off the lights. The orange glow\n of the filaments died, leaving only a faint illumination from the\n night-light over the door. When the thieves arrived, it might give him\n a momentary advantage if his eyes were adjusted to the dark. He groped\n his way to the bunk.", "\"Don't start nothing, Buster,\" Manny said cautiously. \"We're plenty\n tough guys when aroused.\"\n\n\n \"I want to talk to you,\" Dan insisted. \"You see, these paintings—\"\n\n\n \"Paintings? Look, it was all a mistake. Like, we figured this was the\n gent's room—\"\n\n\n \"Never mind, Manny,\" Fiorello cut in. \"It appears there's been a leak.\"\n\n\n Dan shook his head. \"No leak. I simply deduced—\"\n\n\n \"Look, Fiorello,\" Manny said. \"You chin if you want to; I'm doing a\n fast fade.\"\n\n\n \"Don't act hastily, Manny. You know where you'll end.\"\n\n\n \"Wait a minute!\" Dan shouted. \"I'd like to make a deal with you\n fellows.\"" ] ]
valid	62382	[ "Why does the Officer deliver his message so carefully to Kirk?", "What do the Piruts want with the Ship?", "What is the most powerful weapon any of the characters in the story have for combat?", "What is different about Jakk’s physical abilities?", "The Officer told Kirk that the following was ultimately at fault for Pa’s demise:", "What do we find out about about the Officers through the course of the story:", "What best defines the power struggle between the Hans and the Officers?", "What do we learn about the relationship of the Ship to the Hans?", "What did Kirk think happened to his father after the message from the Officer?", "Where did the Captain come from?" ]	[ [ "He can hardly control contain his anger for what Pa did", "He needs to maintain control over the relationship with the Hans", "He killed Pa in a case of mistaken identity", "He was good friends with Kirk’s father" ], [ "To overtake it with the Hans", "The same thing the Hans want with it", "To kidnap the yellow daughter from it", "They are not interested in the Ship, only raiding the Hans" ], [ "Hunting rifles", "Cannons", "Hand-thrown implements", "Catapults" ], [ "His brute strength", "His incredible jumping over the wall", "His running stamina", "His eye sight" ], [ "Shags", "Piruts", "Captain’s daughter", "Hans" ], [ "They protect the plain and the people living on it", "They are secretly allied with Piruts and staged the raid", "They are conquering Pirut territory", "They are at war with the Hans" ], [ "The Officers seemingly maintain control over the Hans for now", "The Hans work with the Piruts to stave off the Officers", "The Officers are fighting with the Hans to take over their land", "The Hans are in control of the Officers and discipline their activities" ], [ "The Ship is only a legend of the Hans and not a real place", "The Hans people originated from those that first landed on the ship", "The Ship was carrying heat crystals that allowed the Hans to survive winter", "The Ship is supported on the Hans resources" ], [ "Pa had turned on the Hans and led the Piruts straight to the pillboxes", "Pa was running to safety and was then killed to spare the rest of the people on the plain", "Pa had invaded the Ship and was killed as discipline", "Pa had double crossed the Officer" ], [ "He is never described or heard from", "He was a defector of the Hans that commissioned the ship which has not yet set sail", "He is a Pirut that mutinied from the main settlement", "He travelled from outside of the solar system" ] ]	[ 2, 2, 3, 4, 2, 1, 1, 4, 2, 1 ]	[ 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "The Officer hit him on the jaw, carefully and without heat. Kirk sagged\n down. The Officer stepped back, looking as though he had a pain in him\n that he didn't want to show.\n\n\n He said quietly, but so that everyone could hear him, \"Discipline, for\n not longer than it takes to clear the rock below.\"\n\n\n Two of the men nodded and took Kirk away down a flight of stone steps.\n One of the four who were left looked over the wall and spat.\n\n\n \"Rock's pretty near clean,\" he said, \"but even so....\" He shook himself\n like a dog. \"That Jakk Randl, he was always talking.\"\n\n\n One of the others flicked a quick look around and whispered, \"Yeah. And\n maybe he knew what he was talking about!\"", "The Officer tightened suddenly and made one hand into a fist and beat\n it slowly on the wall, up and down.\n\n\n \"I didn't want to give the order. God knows I didn't want to! But there\n was nothing else to do.\"\n\n\n A man came up over the top of the ladder. He was carrying a body over\n his shoulder, and breathing hard.\n\n\n \"Here's Kirk,\" he said. \"Where'll I put him?\"\n\n\n There was a clear space off to the right. Kirk pointed to it. \"Over\n there, Charley. I'll help.\"\n\n\n It was hard to move. He'd never been tired like this before. He'd never\n been afraid like this, either. He didn't know what he was afraid of.\n Something in the Officer's voice.", "\"Yes.\" The O.D. was also the Third Officer. Taller than Kirk, thinner,\n with the hair going grey on his body and exhausted eyes sunk deep under\n his horny overlids. He said quietly:\n\n\n \"I'm sorry to have to tell you this....\"\n\n\n Kirk knew. The knowledge leaped through him. It was strange, to feel a\n spear-stab where there was no spear.\n\n\n He said, \"Pa.\"\n\n\n The Officer nodded. He seemed very tired, and he didn't look at Kirk.\n He hadn't, after the first glance.\n\n\n \"Your father, and his two friends.\"\n\n\n Kirk shivered. The horny lids dropped over his eyes. \"I wish I'd\n known,\" he whispered. \"I'd have killed more of them.\"", "\"Worse for us, or for you?\" Kirk was shouting, holding his head up in\n the wind. \"Listen, you men! Do you know what the Officers are doing up\n there in the Ship they won't let us touch?\"\n\n\n There was an uneasy stirring among the Hans, a slipping aside of\n luminous black eyes. The Officer shut his jaw tight. He stepped in\n close to Kirk.\n\n\n \"Shut up,\" he said urgently. \"Don't make me punish you, not now. You're\n talking rot, but it's dangerous.\"\n\n\n Kirk's eyes were hot and not quite sane. He couldn't have stopped if\n he'd wanted to.\n\n\n \"Rot, is it? Jakk Randl knew. He saw with his own eyes and he told me\n while he was dying. The Captain's yellow daughter, sneaking heat-stones\n into....\"", "The Officer put his hands flat on the top of the wall and looked at\n them as if they were strange things and no part of him.\n\n\n \"Kirk,\" he said, \"this is going to be hard to explain. I've never done\n anything as hard. The Piruts didn't kill them. They were responsible,\n but they didn't actually kill them.\"\n\n\n Wes raised his head slowly. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"We saw them coming up the tongue of rock. The Piruts were behind them,\n but not far. Not far enough. One of the three, it wasn't your father,\n called to us to put the ladder down. We waited....\"\n\n\n A muscle began to twitch under Kirk's eye. That, too, was something\n that had never happened before, like the stab of pain with no spear\n behind it. He licked his lips and repeated hoarsely:\n\n\n \"I don't understand.\"", "Kirk followed. The wind was cold, howling up from the outer gullies.\nThe Officer of the Day was waiting at the north end of the wall.\n There was a ladder dropped over it now, and men were climbing up and\n down with bodies and sheaves of recovered spears. More were busy down\n below, rolling the dead Piruts and the shags down into the deep gullies\n for the scavenger rats and the living shags who didn't mind turning\n cannibal.\n\n\n That ladder made Kirk think of Pa. It was the only way for a man to get\n into the outer gullies from the west escarpment of the colony. He shook\n some of the queer heaviness out of his head, touched his forelock and\n said:\n\n\n \"I'm Wes Kirk, sir. You wanted me?\"", "He shoved the curtain of little skins aside and crouched there with his\n thick shoulders fitted into the angle of the jamb, staring out, cold\n wind threading in across his splayed and naked feet.\n\n\n The hackles rose golden and stiff across Kirk's back. He said carefully,\n\n\n \"I would like to kill the Captain and the First Officer and the Second\n Officer and all the little Officers, and the Engineers, and all their\n families.\"\n\n\n His voice carried inside on the wind eddies. Ma Kirk yelled,\n\n\n \"Wes! You come here and let that curtain down! You want us all to\n freeze?\" Her dark-furred shoulders moved rhythmically over the rocking\n child. She added sharply, \"Besides, that's fool's talk, Jakk Randl's\n talk, and only gets the sucking-plant.\"", "Kirk tried to turn. The six men swung with him. Kirk said, \"You better\n discipline me. You better kill me, because, if you don't, I'll kill\n you.\"\n\n\n \"I don't blame you, boy. Go and rest. You'll understand.\"\n\n\n \"I'll understand, all right.\" Kirk's voice was a hoarse, harsh whisper\n that came out by itself and wouldn't be stopped. \"I'll understand about\n Pa, and the Ship with the heat-stones in it, and the Captain's yellow\n daughter getting fat and warm while my sisters freeze and go hungry.\n I'll understand, and I'll make everybody else understand, too!\"\n\n\n The Officer's eyes held a quick fire. \"Boy! Do you know what you're\n saying?\"\n\n\n \"You bet I know!\"\n\n\n \"That's mutiny. For God's sake, don't make things worse!\"", "Kirk snorted. \"You women know so much. If they let the shags or the\n Piruts in on us, how could they stop 'em before they killed everybody,\n including the Officers? As for slow death—well, they think we're dumb.\n They've kept us away from the Ship ever since the\nCrash\n, and nobody\n knows how long ago that was. They think they can go on doing it. They\n think we'd never suspect.\"\n\n\n \"Yah!\" said Lil sharply. \"You just like to talk. Why should the\n Officers want us killed off anyhow?\"\n\n\n Kirk looked at the thin fuzzy baby curled tight in the skins.", "Kirk's voice wasn't a voice at all. \"You killed them. You killed my\n father.\"\n\n\n \"Three lives, against all those back on the plain. We held our fire\n too long as it was, hoping. The Piruts nearly broke through. Try to\n understand! I had to do it.\"\n\n\n Kirk's spear made a flat clatter on the stone. He started forward. Men\n moved in and held him, without rancor, looking at their own feet.\n\n\n \"Please try to understand,\" whispered the Officer. \"I had to do it.\"\n\n\n The Officer, the bloody wall, the stars and the cold grey gullies all\n went away. There was nothing but darkness, and wind, a long way off.\n Kirk thought of Pa coming up under the wall, close to safety, close\n enough to touch it, and no way through. Pa and Frank and Russ, standing\n under the wall, looking up, and no way through.", "He said, \"Jakk, I'll get the sawbones....\"\n\n\n Hot black eyes turned to his. Burnt-out fires in a face with the young\n beard hardly full on its sharp jaw.\n\n\n \"Sit down, Wes, quick, and listen. Sawbones is no good—and why would\n I want to go on living anyway?\"\n\n\n He smiled. Kirk had never seen him smile like that, without bitterness\n or pain. He sat down, crouched on the body of a man who lived only two\n huts away from him. The blood made little red fountains between Randl's\n fingers.\n\n\n \"It's up to you, Wes. You're the only one that really knows about the\n Ship. You'll do better than I would, anyhow. You're a fighter. You\n carry it on, so the Hans can live. Promise.\"", "Looking up, calling to the men they knew, asking for help and getting a\n spear through the heart.\n\n\n After that, even the wind was gone, and the darkness had turned red.\nThere was a voice, a long way off. It said, \"God, he's strong!\" Over\n and over. It got louder. There were weights on his arms and legs, and\n he couldn't throw them off. He was pressed against something.\n\n\n It was the wall. He saw that after a while. The wall where the Officer\n had been standing. There were six men holding him, three on each side.\n The Officer was gone.\n\n\n Kirk relaxed. He was shivering and covered with rime from body sweat.\n Somebody whistled.\n\n\n \"Six men! Didn't know the kid had it in him.\"\n\n\n The Officer's voice said dully, \"No discipline. Better take him home.\"", "The baby cried. Ma Kirk shrilled at her son, and two of the younger\n ones fought over a bone with no meat on it, rolling and snapping on the\n dirt floor. Kirk shifted his head forward to shut out the sound of them\n and followed the line of the plain upward with sullen, glowing eyes.\n\n\n The huts of the Engineers were larger than those in the Hansquarter.\n The huts of the Officers were not much larger than the Engineers', but\n there were more of them and they climbed higher up the grey slope.\n Five, nearly six hands of them, with the Captain's metal-roofed place\n highest of all.\n\n\n Highest and nearest, right under the titanic shape lifting jagged\n against the icy stars from the crest of the ridge.\n\n\n The Ship.\n\n\n Kirk's voice was soft in his thick throat. \"I would like to kill them,\"\n he said. \"I would like to kill them all.\"", "Kirk raised his shaggy head. The light of the yellow star they called\n Sun caught in the huge luminous blackness of his eyes.\n\n\n Beyond the Hansquarter, just where the flat plain began to rise, were\n the Engineers. Not many of them any more. You could see the dusty lumps\n where the huts had been, the tumbled heaps of metal that might have\n meant something once, a longer time ago than anyone could remember. But\n there were still plenty of huts standing. Two hands and one hand and\n a thumb of them, full of Engineers who said how the furrows should be\n laid for the planting but did nothing about the tilling of them.\n\n\n And beyond the Engineers—the Officers.", "Kirk didn't say anything. He started to walk around the heat box. Lil\n yelled, \"Ma!\"\n\n\n The young ones stopped fighting, scuttling out of reach and watching\n with bright moist eyes, grinning. The baby had reached the hiccoughing\n stage.\n\n\n Ma Kirk said, \"Sit down, or go pick on somebody your own size.\"\n\n\n Kirk stopped. \"Aw, I wasn't going to hurt her. She has to be so smart!\"\n He leaned forward to glare at Lil. \"And I would so kill the Captain's\n daughter!\"\n\n\n The baby was quiet. Ma Kirk laid it down in a nest of skins put close\n to the heat and said wearily:\n\n\n \"You men, always talking about killing! Haven't we enough trouble\n without that?\"\n\n\n Kirk looked at the little box of heat-stones, his pupils shrinking.", "He coughed. The Officers' voices rang sharp through the wind. Compact\n groups of men began to run, off toward the west. The whisper of sound\n had grown louder in Kirk's ears. He could hear men yelling and the\n ringing of metal on stone.\n\n\n He started to run, holding Randl's elbow. Grey dust blew under their\n feet. The drifts of crystal stones sent their sound shivering back at\n them in splinters. Kirk said fiercely:\n\n\n \"What did you see?\"\n\n\n They were passing under the hill now. Randl jerked his head. \"Up there,\n Wes.\"\n\n\n Kirk looked up. Someone was standing at the doorway of the Captain's\n hut. Someone tall and slender and the color of the Sunstar from head to\n foot.\n\n\n \"I saw her,\" said Randl hoarsely. \"She was carrying heat-stones into\n the Ship.\"", "\"Kind of a pal of yours, wasn't he?\"\n\n\n \"He wasn't very strong. He needed someone to cover him.\"\n\n\n \"Too bad.\" The man shook his head, and then shrugged. \"Maybe it's\n better, at that. He was headed for trouble, that one. Kinda leading you\n that way, too, I heard. Always talking.\"\n\n\n He looked at Kirk's face and shut up suddenly. He turned away and\n grunted over his shoulders, \"The O.D.'s looking for you.\"", "Kirk nodded. He couldn't say anything. The heat was dying in Randl's\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Listen, Wes. I saw the secret way into Ship. Bend closer, and\n listen....\"\n\n\n Kirk bent. He didn't move for a long time. After a while Randl's voice\n stopped, and then the blood wasn't pumping any more, just oozing.\n Randl's hands slid away, so that Kirk could see the hole the stone had\n made. Everything seemed to be very quiet.\n\n\n Kirk sat there, holding Randl in his arms.\n\n\n Presently someone came up and shook Kirk's shoulder and said, \"Hey,\n kid, are you deaf? We been yelling for you.\" He stopped, and then said\n more gently, \"Oh. Jakk got it, did he?\"\n\n\n Kirk laid the body carefully on the stones and got up. \"Yeah.\"", "Kirk looked up the hill. Officers were running from the huts below the\n gaunt, dead Ship. They didn't look so different from the Hans, only\n they were built a little taller and lighter, less bowed and bunchy in\n the shoulders, quicker on their feet.\n\n\n Kirk stepped behind Randl to shield him from the wind. His voice was\n only a whisper, but it had a hard edge. The baby's thin, terrible wail\n was still in his ears.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Jakk? Do you know? Because if they are....\"\n\n\n Randl laughed and shuddered with a secret, ugly triumph. \"I crawled up\n on the peak during the last darkness. The guards were cold and the wind\n made them blind and deaf. I lay in the rocks and watched. And I saw....\"", "\"Maybe there'd be less trouble for us.\"\n\n\n Lil poked her shock of black hair around Ma Kirk's knee. Her big eyes\n glowed in the feeble light.\n\n\n She said, \"You men! He's no man, Ma. He's just a little boy who has to\n stay behind and shoo the beetles out of the fields.\"\n\n\n The young ones giggled, well out of reach. Lil's thin body was strung\n tight, quivering to move. \"Besides,\" she demanded, \"what have the\n Officers and the Engineers ever done to you that you should want to\n kill them—all but the Captain's yellow daughter?\"\n\n\n Kirk's big heavy chest swelled. \"Ma,\" he said, \"you make that brat shut\n up or I'll whale her, anyhow.\"" ], [ "Kirk grunted. A Pirut with red hair standing straight in the wind came\n over the wall. Kirk speared him left-handed in the belly, dodged the\n downstroke of his loaded sap, and kicked the body out of the way.\n\n\n He said, \"Wonder how they got so close, so fast?\"\n\n\n \"Some trick.\" Randl laughed suddenly. \"Funny their wanting the Ship as\n much as you and I do.\"\n\n\n \"Think they could know what's in it?\"", "\"There must be something in the Ship that they don't want us to have.\n Something valuable, something they want to keep for themselves. What\n else could it be but heat-stones and maybe dried meat?\"\n\n\n \"We don't know, Wes! The Ship is—well, we shouldn't talk about it.\n And the Officers wouldn't do that. If they wanted us killed off they'd\n let the Piruts in on us, or the shags, and let 'em finish us quick.\n Freezing and starving would take too long. There'd be too many of us if\n we found out, or got mad.\"", "Randl's narrow shoulders twitched. \"Near as we know, their legend is\n the same as ours. Something holy in the Ship, sacred and tabu. Only\n difference is they want to get it for themselves, and we want to keep\n it.\" He coughed and spat in sudden angry disgust. \"And we've swallowed\n that stuff. We've let the Officers hoard heat and food so they can live\n no matter what happens to us. We're fools, Wes! A lot of bloody fools!\"\n\n\n He got up and began jabbing with his spear at heads that poked up over\n the wall.\nThe Piruts began to slack off. Stones still whistled past Kirk's\n head—a couple of them had grazed him by now—and spears showered down,\n but they weren't climbing the walls any more.\n\n\n Randl grounded his spear, gasping. \"That's that. Pretty soon they'll\n break, and then we can start thinking about....\"", "Kirk's pupils shrank to points no warmer nor softer than the tip of his\n knife. He smiled, almost gently, looking up the hill.\n\n\n The captain's yellow daughter, taking life into the Ship.\nIt was a big raid. Kirk saw that when he scrambled up out of the last\n gully, half-carrying the wheezing Randl. The Piruts had come up the\n tongue of rock between two deep cuts and tackled the guards' pillbox\n head on. They hadn't taken it, not yet. But they were still trying,\n piling up their dead on the swept grey stone.\n\n\n They were using shags again. They drove the lumbering beasts on into\n the hail of stones and thrown spears from the pillbox, keeping low\n behind them, and then climbing on the round hairy bodies. It took\n courage, because sometimes the shags turned and clawed the men who\n drove them, and sometimes the dead ones weren't quite dead and it was\n too bad for the man who climbed on them.", "It was pretty hot up there. The wall of bodies had built up so high,\n mostly with shags, that the Piruts were coming right over the wall.\n Kirk's nose wrinkled at the smell of blood. He avoided the biggest\n puddles and found a place to stand between the dead.\n\n\n Randl went down on his knees. He was coughing horribly, but his hot\n black eyes saw everything. He tried three times to lift his sling and\n gave it up.\n\n\n \"I'll cover you,\" said Kirk. He began taking crystal pebbles out of a\n big pile that was kept there and hurling them at the Piruts. They made\n a singing noise in the air, and they didn't stop going when they hit.\n They were heavy for their size, very heavy, with sharp edges.\n\n\n Randl said, \"Something funny, Wes. Too many Piruts. They couldn't risk\n 'em on an ordinary raid.\"", "The baby cried. Ma Kirk shrilled at her son, and two of the younger\n ones fought over a bone with no meat on it, rolling and snapping on the\n dirt floor. Kirk shifted his head forward to shut out the sound of them\n and followed the line of the plain upward with sullen, glowing eyes.\n\n\n The huts of the Engineers were larger than those in the Hansquarter.\n The huts of the Officers were not much larger than the Engineers', but\n there were more of them and they climbed higher up the grey slope.\n Five, nearly six hands of them, with the Captain's metal-roofed place\n highest of all.\n\n\n Highest and nearest, right under the titanic shape lifting jagged\n against the icy stars from the crest of the ridge.\n\n\n The Ship.\n\n\n Kirk's voice was soft in his thick throat. \"I would like to kill them,\"\n he said. \"I would like to kill them all.\"", "It looked to Kirk as though the pillbox was pretty far gone.\n\n\n He ran down the slope with the others, slipping in the crystal drifts.\n Randl was spent. Kirk kept him going, thinking of the huts back there\n on the plain, and Ma and Lil and the little ones, and the baby. You had\n to fight the Piruts, no matter what you thought about the Officers. You\n had to keep them from getting onto the plain.\n\n\n He wondered about Pa. Hunting shags in the outer gullies was mean work\n any time, but when the Piruts were raiding....\n\n\n No time to think about that. Wite, the second son of the First Officer,\n was signalling for double time. Kirk ran faster, his ears twitching\n furiously as they sifted the flying echoes into some kind of order.", "There was suddenly a lot of silence in the room. The word \"Ship\" hung\n there, awesome and accusing. Ma Kirk's eyes flicked to the curtain over\n the door and back to her son.\n\n\n \"Don't you say things like that, Wes! You don't know.\"\n\n\n \"It's what everybody says. Why else would they guard the Ship the way\n they do? We can't even get near the outside of it.\"\n\n\n Lil tossed her head. \"Well neither do they.\"\n\n\n \"Not when we can see 'em, no. Of course not. But how do we know they\n haven't got ways of getting into the Ship that don't show from the\n plain? Jakk says a lot goes on that we don't know about.\"\n\n\n He got up, forcing his belief at them with his big square hands.", "Kirk snorted. \"You women know so much. If they let the shags or the\n Piruts in on us, how could they stop 'em before they killed everybody,\n including the Officers? As for slow death—well, they think we're dumb.\n They've kept us away from the Ship ever since the\nCrash\n, and nobody\n knows how long ago that was. They think they can go on doing it. They\n think we'd never suspect.\"\n\n\n \"Yah!\" said Lil sharply. \"You just like to talk. Why should the\n Officers want us killed off anyhow?\"\n\n\n Kirk looked at the thin fuzzy baby curled tight in the skins.", "The great alarm gong by the Captain's hut.\n\n\n Kirk began to move, very swiftly and quietly. Before the third gong\n stroke hit them he had his spear and his sling and was already lifting\n aside the door curtain.\n\n\n Ma Kirk said stiffly, \"Which way are they coming?\"\n\n\n Kirk's ears twitched. He sorted the gong sounds, and the wind, and\n found a whisper underneath them, rushing up out of the gullied plain.\n\n\n Kirk pointed. \"From the west. Piruts, I think.\"\n\n\n Ma Kirk sucked in her breath. Her voice had no tone in it. \"Your Pa\n went hunting that way.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah,\" said Kirk. \"I'll watch out for him.\"", "He stopped. Kirk put a stone accurately through the back of a Pirut's\n head and said grimly:\n\n\n \"Yeah. About what\nwe're\ngoing to do.\"\n\n\n Randl didn't answer. He sat down suddenly, doubled over. Kirk grinned.\n \"Take it easy,\" he said softly. \"I'll cover you.\"\n\n\n Randl whispered, \"Wes. Wes!\" He held up one thin hand. Kirk let his own\n drop, looking at it. There was blood on it, running clear to the elbow.\n\n\n He went down beside Randl, putting his arms around him, trying to see.\n Randl shook him off.\n\n\n \"Don't move me, you fool! Just listen.\" His voice was harsh and rapid.\n He was holding both hands over the left side of his neck, where it\n joined the shoulder. Kirk could see the bright blood beating up through\n his fingers.", "He helped to lay his father down. He'd seen bodies before. He'd handled\n them, fighting on the pillbox walls. But never one he'd known so long,\n one he'd eaten and slept and wrestled with. The thick arm that hauled\n him out of bed this morning, the big hands that warmed the baby against\n the barrel chest. You saw it lying lax and cold, but you didn't believe\n it.\n\n\n You saw it. You saw the spear shaft sticking out clean from the\n heart....\n\n\n You saw it....\n\n\n \"That's one of our spears!\" He screamed it, like a woman. \"One of our\n own—from the front!\"\n\n\n \"I let them get as close as I dared,\" said the Officer tonelessly. \"I\n tried to find a way. But there wasn't any way but the ladder, and that\n was what the Piruts wanted. That's why they made them come.\"", "Kirk nodded. He couldn't say anything. The heat was dying in Randl's\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Listen, Wes. I saw the secret way into Ship. Bend closer, and\n listen....\"\n\n\n Kirk bent. He didn't move for a long time. After a while Randl's voice\n stopped, and then the blood wasn't pumping any more, just oozing.\n Randl's hands slid away, so that Kirk could see the hole the stone had\n made. Everything seemed to be very quiet.\n\n\n Kirk sat there, holding Randl in his arms.\n\n\n Presently someone came up and shook Kirk's shoulder and said, \"Hey,\n kid, are you deaf? We been yelling for you.\" He stopped, and then said\n more gently, \"Oh. Jakk got it, did he?\"\n\n\n Kirk laid the body carefully on the stones and got up. \"Yeah.\"", "The Officer put his hands flat on the top of the wall and looked at\n them as if they were strange things and no part of him.\n\n\n \"Kirk,\" he said, \"this is going to be hard to explain. I've never done\n anything as hard. The Piruts didn't kill them. They were responsible,\n but they didn't actually kill them.\"\n\n\n Wes raised his head slowly. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"We saw them coming up the tongue of rock. The Piruts were behind them,\n but not far. Not far enough. One of the three, it wasn't your father,\n called to us to put the ladder down. We waited....\"\n\n\n A muscle began to twitch under Kirk's eye. That, too, was something\n that had never happened before, like the stab of pain with no spear\n behind it. He licked his lips and repeated hoarsely:\n\n\n \"I don't understand.\"", "\"Worse for us, or for you?\" Kirk was shouting, holding his head up in\n the wind. \"Listen, you men! Do you know what the Officers are doing up\n there in the Ship they won't let us touch?\"\n\n\n There was an uneasy stirring among the Hans, a slipping aside of\n luminous black eyes. The Officer shut his jaw tight. He stepped in\n close to Kirk.\n\n\n \"Shut up,\" he said urgently. \"Don't make me punish you, not now. You're\n talking rot, but it's dangerous.\"\n\n\n Kirk's eyes were hot and not quite sane. He couldn't have stopped if\n he'd wanted to.\n\n\n \"Rot, is it? Jakk Randl knew. He saw with his own eyes and he told me\n while he was dying. The Captain's yellow daughter, sneaking heat-stones\n into....\"", "Kirk followed. The wind was cold, howling up from the outer gullies.\nThe Officer of the Day was waiting at the north end of the wall.\n There was a ladder dropped over it now, and men were climbing up and\n down with bodies and sheaves of recovered spears. More were busy down\n below, rolling the dead Piruts and the shags down into the deep gullies\n for the scavenger rats and the living shags who didn't mind turning\n cannibal.\n\n\n That ladder made Kirk think of Pa. It was the only way for a man to get\n into the outer gullies from the west escarpment of the colony. He shook\n some of the queer heaviness out of his head, touched his forelock and\n said:\n\n\n \"I'm Wes Kirk, sir. You wanted me?\"", "Ma Kirk looked at him. \"Your Pa's still big enough to whale you, young\n man! Now you stop it, both of you.\"\n\n\n \"All right,\" said Kirk sullenly. He squatted down, holding his hands\n over the heat. His back twitched with the cold, but it was nice to have\n his belly warm, even if it was empty. \"Wish Pa'd hurry up. I'm hungry.\n Hope they killed meat.\"\n\n\n Ma Kirk sighed. \"Seems like meat gets scarcer all the time, like the\n heat-stones.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe,\" said Kirk heavily, \"it all goes to the same place.\"\n\n\n Lil snorted. \"And where's that, Smarty?\"\n\n\n His anger forced out the forbidden words.\n\n\n \"Where everybody says, stupid! Into the Ship.\"", "He coughed. The Officers' voices rang sharp through the wind. Compact\n groups of men began to run, off toward the west. The whisper of sound\n had grown louder in Kirk's ears. He could hear men yelling and the\n ringing of metal on stone.\n\n\n He started to run, holding Randl's elbow. Grey dust blew under their\n feet. The drifts of crystal stones sent their sound shivering back at\n them in splinters. Kirk said fiercely:\n\n\n \"What did you see?\"\n\n\n They were passing under the hill now. Randl jerked his head. \"Up there,\n Wes.\"\n\n\n Kirk looked up. Someone was standing at the doorway of the Captain's\n hut. Someone tall and slender and the color of the Sunstar from head to\n foot.\n\n\n \"I saw her,\" said Randl hoarsely. \"She was carrying heat-stones into\n the Ship.\"", "Pa hadn't been alone, of course. Frank and Russ went with him. The\n three of them would have sense enough to keep safe. Maybe they were in\n the pillbox.\n\n\n A big raid. More Piruts than he'd ever seen before. He wondered why.\n He wondered how so many of them had been able to get so close to the\n pillbox all at once, walking two or three abreast on the narrow tongue\n of rock under the spears and slingstones.\n\n\n They poured in through the gates of the stone-walled building,\n scattering up onto the parapet. There were slits in the rooms below and\n rusty metal things crouching behind them, but they weren't any good for\n fighting. A man needed shoulder room for spear and sling.", "Kirk looked up the hill. Officers were running from the huts below the\n gaunt, dead Ship. They didn't look so different from the Hans, only\n they were built a little taller and lighter, less bowed and bunchy in\n the shoulders, quicker on their feet.\n\n\n Kirk stepped behind Randl to shield him from the wind. His voice was\n only a whisper, but it had a hard edge. The baby's thin, terrible wail\n was still in his ears.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Jakk? Do you know? Because if they are....\"\n\n\n Randl laughed and shuddered with a secret, ugly triumph. \"I crawled up\n on the peak during the last darkness. The guards were cold and the wind\n made them blind and deaf. I lay in the rocks and watched. And I saw....\"" ], [ "Looking up, calling to the men they knew, asking for help and getting a\n spear through the heart.\n\n\n After that, even the wind was gone, and the darkness had turned red.\nThere was a voice, a long way off. It said, \"God, he's strong!\" Over\n and over. It got louder. There were weights on his arms and legs, and\n he couldn't throw them off. He was pressed against something.\n\n\n It was the wall. He saw that after a while. The wall where the Officer\n had been standing. There were six men holding him, three on each side.\n The Officer was gone.\n\n\n Kirk relaxed. He was shivering and covered with rime from body sweat.\n Somebody whistled.\n\n\n \"Six men! Didn't know the kid had it in him.\"\n\n\n The Officer's voice said dully, \"No discipline. Better take him home.\"", "The great alarm gong by the Captain's hut.\n\n\n Kirk began to move, very swiftly and quietly. Before the third gong\n stroke hit them he had his spear and his sling and was already lifting\n aside the door curtain.\n\n\n Ma Kirk said stiffly, \"Which way are they coming?\"\n\n\n Kirk's ears twitched. He sorted the gong sounds, and the wind, and\n found a whisper underneath them, rushing up out of the gullied plain.\n\n\n Kirk pointed. \"From the west. Piruts, I think.\"\n\n\n Ma Kirk sucked in her breath. Her voice had no tone in it. \"Your Pa\n went hunting that way.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah,\" said Kirk. \"I'll watch out for him.\"", "He stopped. Kirk put a stone accurately through the back of a Pirut's\n head and said grimly:\n\n\n \"Yeah. About what\nwe're\ngoing to do.\"\n\n\n Randl didn't answer. He sat down suddenly, doubled over. Kirk grinned.\n \"Take it easy,\" he said softly. \"I'll cover you.\"\n\n\n Randl whispered, \"Wes. Wes!\" He held up one thin hand. Kirk let his own\n drop, looking at it. There was blood on it, running clear to the elbow.\n\n\n He went down beside Randl, putting his arms around him, trying to see.\n Randl shook him off.\n\n\n \"Don't move me, you fool! Just listen.\" His voice was harsh and rapid.\n He was holding both hands over the left side of his neck, where it\n joined the shoulder. Kirk could see the bright blood beating up through\n his fingers.", "The baby cried. Ma Kirk shrilled at her son, and two of the younger\n ones fought over a bone with no meat on it, rolling and snapping on the\n dirt floor. Kirk shifted his head forward to shut out the sound of them\n and followed the line of the plain upward with sullen, glowing eyes.\n\n\n The huts of the Engineers were larger than those in the Hansquarter.\n The huts of the Officers were not much larger than the Engineers', but\n there were more of them and they climbed higher up the grey slope.\n Five, nearly six hands of them, with the Captain's metal-roofed place\n highest of all.\n\n\n Highest and nearest, right under the titanic shape lifting jagged\n against the icy stars from the crest of the ridge.\n\n\n The Ship.\n\n\n Kirk's voice was soft in his thick throat. \"I would like to kill them,\"\n he said. \"I would like to kill them all.\"", "Kirk didn't say anything. He started to walk around the heat box. Lil\n yelled, \"Ma!\"\n\n\n The young ones stopped fighting, scuttling out of reach and watching\n with bright moist eyes, grinning. The baby had reached the hiccoughing\n stage.\n\n\n Ma Kirk said, \"Sit down, or go pick on somebody your own size.\"\n\n\n Kirk stopped. \"Aw, I wasn't going to hurt her. She has to be so smart!\"\n He leaned forward to glare at Lil. \"And I would so kill the Captain's\n daughter!\"\n\n\n The baby was quiet. Ma Kirk laid it down in a nest of skins put close\n to the heat and said wearily:\n\n\n \"You men, always talking about killing! Haven't we enough trouble\n without that?\"\n\n\n Kirk looked at the little box of heat-stones, his pupils shrinking.", "Pa hadn't been alone, of course. Frank and Russ went with him. The\n three of them would have sense enough to keep safe. Maybe they were in\n the pillbox.\n\n\n A big raid. More Piruts than he'd ever seen before. He wondered why.\n He wondered how so many of them had been able to get so close to the\n pillbox all at once, walking two or three abreast on the narrow tongue\n of rock under the spears and slingstones.\n\n\n They poured in through the gates of the stone-walled building,\n scattering up onto the parapet. There were slits in the rooms below and\n rusty metal things crouching behind them, but they weren't any good for\n fighting. A man needed shoulder room for spear and sling.", "It looked to Kirk as though the pillbox was pretty far gone.\n\n\n He ran down the slope with the others, slipping in the crystal drifts.\n Randl was spent. Kirk kept him going, thinking of the huts back there\n on the plain, and Ma and Lil and the little ones, and the baby. You had\n to fight the Piruts, no matter what you thought about the Officers. You\n had to keep them from getting onto the plain.\n\n\n He wondered about Pa. Hunting shags in the outer gullies was mean work\n any time, but when the Piruts were raiding....\n\n\n No time to think about that. Wite, the second son of the First Officer,\n was signalling for double time. Kirk ran faster, his ears twitching\n furiously as they sifted the flying echoes into some kind of order.", "He helped to lay his father down. He'd seen bodies before. He'd handled\n them, fighting on the pillbox walls. But never one he'd known so long,\n one he'd eaten and slept and wrestled with. The thick arm that hauled\n him out of bed this morning, the big hands that warmed the baby against\n the barrel chest. You saw it lying lax and cold, but you didn't believe\n it.\n\n\n You saw it. You saw the spear shaft sticking out clean from the\n heart....\n\n\n You saw it....\n\n\n \"That's one of our spears!\" He screamed it, like a woman. \"One of our\n own—from the front!\"\n\n\n \"I let them get as close as I dared,\" said the Officer tonelessly. \"I\n tried to find a way. But there wasn't any way but the ladder, and that\n was what the Piruts wanted. That's why they made them come.\"", "Men and youths like himself, old enough to fight, were spilling out of\n low doorways and forming companies on the flat ground. Kirk spotted\n Jakk Randl and fell in beside him. They stood with their backs to the\n wind, stamping and shivering, their head-hair and scant fur clouts\n blown straight out.\n\n\n Randl nudged Kirk's elbow. \"Look at 'em,\" he said, and coughed. He was\n always coughing, jerking his thin sharp face back and forth. Kirk could\n have broken his brittle light-furred body in two. All Randl's strength\n was in his eyes. The pupils were always spread, always hot with some\n bitter force, always probing. He wasn't much older than Kirk.", "\"Maybe there'd be less trouble for us.\"\n\n\n Lil poked her shock of black hair around Ma Kirk's knee. Her big eyes\n glowed in the feeble light.\n\n\n She said, \"You men! He's no man, Ma. He's just a little boy who has to\n stay behind and shoo the beetles out of the fields.\"\n\n\n The young ones giggled, well out of reach. Lil's thin body was strung\n tight, quivering to move. \"Besides,\" she demanded, \"what have the\n Officers and the Engineers ever done to you that you should want to\n kill them—all but the Captain's yellow daughter?\"\n\n\n Kirk's big heavy chest swelled. \"Ma,\" he said, \"you make that brat shut\n up or I'll whale her, anyhow.\"", "Kirk nodded. He couldn't say anything. The heat was dying in Randl's\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Listen, Wes. I saw the secret way into Ship. Bend closer, and\n listen....\"\n\n\n Kirk bent. He didn't move for a long time. After a while Randl's voice\n stopped, and then the blood wasn't pumping any more, just oozing.\n Randl's hands slid away, so that Kirk could see the hole the stone had\n made. Everything seemed to be very quiet.\n\n\n Kirk sat there, holding Randl in his arms.\n\n\n Presently someone came up and shook Kirk's shoulder and said, \"Hey,\n kid, are you deaf? We been yelling for you.\" He stopped, and then said\n more gently, \"Oh. Jakk got it, did he?\"\n\n\n Kirk laid the body carefully on the stones and got up. \"Yeah.\"", "He coughed. The Officers' voices rang sharp through the wind. Compact\n groups of men began to run, off toward the west. The whisper of sound\n had grown louder in Kirk's ears. He could hear men yelling and the\n ringing of metal on stone.\n\n\n He started to run, holding Randl's elbow. Grey dust blew under their\n feet. The drifts of crystal stones sent their sound shivering back at\n them in splinters. Kirk said fiercely:\n\n\n \"What did you see?\"\n\n\n They were passing under the hill now. Randl jerked his head. \"Up there,\n Wes.\"\n\n\n Kirk looked up. Someone was standing at the doorway of the Captain's\n hut. Someone tall and slender and the color of the Sunstar from head to\n foot.\n\n\n \"I saw her,\" said Randl hoarsely. \"She was carrying heat-stones into\n the Ship.\"", "Randl's narrow shoulders twitched. \"Near as we know, their legend is\n the same as ours. Something holy in the Ship, sacred and tabu. Only\n difference is they want to get it for themselves, and we want to keep\n it.\" He coughed and spat in sudden angry disgust. \"And we've swallowed\n that stuff. We've let the Officers hoard heat and food so they can live\n no matter what happens to us. We're fools, Wes! A lot of bloody fools!\"\n\n\n He got up and began jabbing with his spear at heads that poked up over\n the wall.\nThe Piruts began to slack off. Stones still whistled past Kirk's\n head—a couple of them had grazed him by now—and spears showered down,\n but they weren't climbing the walls any more.\n\n\n Randl grounded his spear, gasping. \"That's that. Pretty soon they'll\n break, and then we can start thinking about....\"", "It was pretty hot up there. The wall of bodies had built up so high,\n mostly with shags, that the Piruts were coming right over the wall.\n Kirk's nose wrinkled at the smell of blood. He avoided the biggest\n puddles and found a place to stand between the dead.\n\n\n Randl went down on his knees. He was coughing horribly, but his hot\n black eyes saw everything. He tried three times to lift his sling and\n gave it up.\n\n\n \"I'll cover you,\" said Kirk. He began taking crystal pebbles out of a\n big pile that was kept there and hurling them at the Piruts. They made\n a singing noise in the air, and they didn't stop going when they hit.\n They were heavy for their size, very heavy, with sharp edges.\n\n\n Randl said, \"Something funny, Wes. Too many Piruts. They couldn't risk\n 'em on an ordinary raid.\"", "Kirk grunted. A Pirut with red hair standing straight in the wind came\n over the wall. Kirk speared him left-handed in the belly, dodged the\n downstroke of his loaded sap, and kicked the body out of the way.\n\n\n He said, \"Wonder how they got so close, so fast?\"\n\n\n \"Some trick.\" Randl laughed suddenly. \"Funny their wanting the Ship as\n much as you and I do.\"\n\n\n \"Think they could know what's in it?\"", "\"Yah!\" cried a shrill voice over his shoulder. \"All but the Captain's\n yellow daughter!\"\nKirk spun angrily around. Lil, next below himself, danced back out of\n reach, her kilt of little skins flying around her thin hips.\n\n\n \"Yah!\" she said again, and wrinkled her flat nose. \"I've seen you\n looking at her. All yellow from head to foot and beautiful pink lids to\n her eyes. You wouldn't kill\nher\n, I bet!\"\n\n\n \"I bet I'll half kill you if you don't shut up!\"\n\n\n Lil stuck out her tongue. Kirk aimed a cuff at her. She danced behind\n his arm and jerked the curtain down and shot away again, making two\n jumps over the brawling young ones and the box of heat-stones.\n\n\n She squatted demurely beside Ma Kirk and said, as though nothing had\n happened, \"Ma says will you please not let so much heat out.\"", "He shoved the curtain of little skins aside and crouched there with his\n thick shoulders fitted into the angle of the jamb, staring out, cold\n wind threading in across his splayed and naked feet.\n\n\n The hackles rose golden and stiff across Kirk's back. He said carefully,\n\n\n \"I would like to kill the Captain and the First Officer and the Second\n Officer and all the little Officers, and the Engineers, and all their\n families.\"\n\n\n His voice carried inside on the wind eddies. Ma Kirk yelled,\n\n\n \"Wes! You come here and let that curtain down! You want us all to\n freeze?\" Her dark-furred shoulders moved rhythmically over the rocking\n child. She added sharply, \"Besides, that's fool's talk, Jakk Randl's\n talk, and only gets the sucking-plant.\"", "He said, \"Jakk, I'll get the sawbones....\"\n\n\n Hot black eyes turned to his. Burnt-out fires in a face with the young\n beard hardly full on its sharp jaw.\n\n\n \"Sit down, Wes, quick, and listen. Sawbones is no good—and why would\n I want to go on living anyway?\"\n\n\n He smiled. Kirk had never seen him smile like that, without bitterness\n or pain. He sat down, crouched on the body of a man who lived only two\n huts away from him. The blood made little red fountains between Randl's\n fingers.\n\n\n \"It's up to you, Wes. You're the only one that really knows about the\n Ship. You'll do better than I would, anyhow. You're a fighter. You\n carry it on, so the Hans can live. Promise.\"", "Kirk's pupils shrank to points no warmer nor softer than the tip of his\n knife. He smiled, almost gently, looking up the hill.\n\n\n The captain's yellow daughter, taking life into the Ship.\nIt was a big raid. Kirk saw that when he scrambled up out of the last\n gully, half-carrying the wheezing Randl. The Piruts had come up the\n tongue of rock between two deep cuts and tackled the guards' pillbox\n head on. They hadn't taken it, not yet. But they were still trying,\n piling up their dead on the swept grey stone.\n\n\n They were using shags again. They drove the lumbering beasts on into\n the hail of stones and thrown spears from the pillbox, keeping low\n behind them, and then climbing on the round hairy bodies. It took\n courage, because sometimes the shags turned and clawed the men who\n drove them, and sometimes the dead ones weren't quite dead and it was\n too bad for the man who climbed on them.", "\"There aren't enough heat-stones to go around any more. Why should they\n let their young ones cry with the cold?\"\nThere was silence in the room again. Kirk felt it, thick and choky.\n His heart kicked against his ribs. He was scared, suddenly. He'd never\n talked that much before. It was the baby, crying in the cold, that set\n him off. Suppose someone had heard him. Suppose he was reported for a\n mutineer. That meant the sucking-plant....\n\n\n \"Listen!\" said Ma Kirk.\n\n\n Nerves crackled icily all over Kirk's skin. But there wasn't any need\n to listen. The noise rolled in over them. It hit rock faces polished by\n the wind, and the drifts of crystalline pebbles, and it splintered into\n a tangle of echoes that came from everywhere at once, but there was\n no mistaking it. No need even to use sensitive earcups to locate its\n source." ], [ "Men and youths like himself, old enough to fight, were spilling out of\n low doorways and forming companies on the flat ground. Kirk spotted\n Jakk Randl and fell in beside him. They stood with their backs to the\n wind, stamping and shivering, their head-hair and scant fur clouts\n blown straight out.\n\n\n Randl nudged Kirk's elbow. \"Look at 'em,\" he said, and coughed. He was\n always coughing, jerking his thin sharp face back and forth. Kirk could\n have broken his brittle light-furred body in two. All Randl's strength\n was in his eyes. The pupils were always spread, always hot with some\n bitter force, always probing. He wasn't much older than Kirk.", "He said, \"Jakk, I'll get the sawbones....\"\n\n\n Hot black eyes turned to his. Burnt-out fires in a face with the young\n beard hardly full on its sharp jaw.\n\n\n \"Sit down, Wes, quick, and listen. Sawbones is no good—and why would\n I want to go on living anyway?\"\n\n\n He smiled. Kirk had never seen him smile like that, without bitterness\n or pain. He sat down, crouched on the body of a man who lived only two\n huts away from him. The blood made little red fountains between Randl's\n fingers.\n\n\n \"It's up to you, Wes. You're the only one that really knows about the\n Ship. You'll do better than I would, anyhow. You're a fighter. You\n carry it on, so the Hans can live. Promise.\"", "He shoved the curtain of little skins aside and crouched there with his\n thick shoulders fitted into the angle of the jamb, staring out, cold\n wind threading in across his splayed and naked feet.\n\n\n The hackles rose golden and stiff across Kirk's back. He said carefully,\n\n\n \"I would like to kill the Captain and the First Officer and the Second\n Officer and all the little Officers, and the Engineers, and all their\n families.\"\n\n\n His voice carried inside on the wind eddies. Ma Kirk yelled,\n\n\n \"Wes! You come here and let that curtain down! You want us all to\n freeze?\" Her dark-furred shoulders moved rhythmically over the rocking\n child. She added sharply, \"Besides, that's fool's talk, Jakk Randl's\n talk, and only gets the sucking-plant.\"", "There was suddenly a lot of silence in the room. The word \"Ship\" hung\n there, awesome and accusing. Ma Kirk's eyes flicked to the curtain over\n the door and back to her son.\n\n\n \"Don't you say things like that, Wes! You don't know.\"\n\n\n \"It's what everybody says. Why else would they guard the Ship the way\n they do? We can't even get near the outside of it.\"\n\n\n Lil tossed her head. \"Well neither do they.\"\n\n\n \"Not when we can see 'em, no. Of course not. But how do we know they\n haven't got ways of getting into the Ship that don't show from the\n plain? Jakk says a lot goes on that we don't know about.\"\n\n\n He got up, forcing his belief at them with his big square hands.", "Kirk looked up the hill. Officers were running from the huts below the\n gaunt, dead Ship. They didn't look so different from the Hans, only\n they were built a little taller and lighter, less bowed and bunchy in\n the shoulders, quicker on their feet.\n\n\n Kirk stepped behind Randl to shield him from the wind. His voice was\n only a whisper, but it had a hard edge. The baby's thin, terrible wail\n was still in his ears.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Jakk? Do you know? Because if they are....\"\n\n\n Randl laughed and shuddered with a secret, ugly triumph. \"I crawled up\n on the peak during the last darkness. The guards were cold and the wind\n made them blind and deaf. I lay in the rocks and watched. And I saw....\"", "The Officer hit him on the jaw, carefully and without heat. Kirk sagged\n down. The Officer stepped back, looking as though he had a pain in him\n that he didn't want to show.\n\n\n He said quietly, but so that everyone could hear him, \"Discipline, for\n not longer than it takes to clear the rock below.\"\n\n\n Two of the men nodded and took Kirk away down a flight of stone steps.\n One of the four who were left looked over the wall and spat.\n\n\n \"Rock's pretty near clean,\" he said, \"but even so....\" He shook himself\n like a dog. \"That Jakk Randl, he was always talking.\"\n\n\n One of the others flicked a quick look around and whispered, \"Yeah. And\n maybe he knew what he was talking about!\"", "Kirk nodded. He couldn't say anything. The heat was dying in Randl's\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Listen, Wes. I saw the secret way into Ship. Bend closer, and\n listen....\"\n\n\n Kirk bent. He didn't move for a long time. After a while Randl's voice\n stopped, and then the blood wasn't pumping any more, just oozing.\n Randl's hands slid away, so that Kirk could see the hole the stone had\n made. Everything seemed to be very quiet.\n\n\n Kirk sat there, holding Randl in his arms.\n\n\n Presently someone came up and shook Kirk's shoulder and said, \"Hey,\n kid, are you deaf? We been yelling for you.\" He stopped, and then said\n more gently, \"Oh. Jakk got it, did he?\"\n\n\n Kirk laid the body carefully on the stones and got up. \"Yeah.\"", "Looking up, calling to the men they knew, asking for help and getting a\n spear through the heart.\n\n\n After that, even the wind was gone, and the darkness had turned red.\nThere was a voice, a long way off. It said, \"God, he's strong!\" Over\n and over. It got louder. There were weights on his arms and legs, and\n he couldn't throw them off. He was pressed against something.\n\n\n It was the wall. He saw that after a while. The wall where the Officer\n had been standing. There were six men holding him, three on each side.\n The Officer was gone.\n\n\n Kirk relaxed. He was shivering and covered with rime from body sweat.\n Somebody whistled.\n\n\n \"Six men! Didn't know the kid had it in him.\"\n\n\n The Officer's voice said dully, \"No discipline. Better take him home.\"", "\"Yah!\" cried a shrill voice over his shoulder. \"All but the Captain's\n yellow daughter!\"\nKirk spun angrily around. Lil, next below himself, danced back out of\n reach, her kilt of little skins flying around her thin hips.\n\n\n \"Yah!\" she said again, and wrinkled her flat nose. \"I've seen you\n looking at her. All yellow from head to foot and beautiful pink lids to\n her eyes. You wouldn't kill\nher\n, I bet!\"\n\n\n \"I bet I'll half kill you if you don't shut up!\"\n\n\n Lil stuck out her tongue. Kirk aimed a cuff at her. She danced behind\n his arm and jerked the curtain down and shot away again, making two\n jumps over the brawling young ones and the box of heat-stones.\n\n\n She squatted demurely beside Ma Kirk and said, as though nothing had\n happened, \"Ma says will you please not let so much heat out.\"", "He glanced back just before he let the curtain drop. The pale glow of\n the heat-stones picked dots of luminous blackness out of the gloom,\n where the still breathless faces were, watching him. He saw the blurred\n shapes of clay cooking pots, of low bed frames, of huddled bodies. The\n baby began to whimper again.\n\n\n Kirk shivered in the cold wind. \"Lil,\" he said. \"I would, too, kill the\n Captain's yellow daughter.\"\n\n\n \"Yah,\" said Lil. \"Go chase the beetles away.\"\n\n\n There was no conviction in her voice. The wind was freezing on Kirk's\n bare feet. He dropped the curtain and went across the plain.", "\"Worse for us, or for you?\" Kirk was shouting, holding his head up in\n the wind. \"Listen, you men! Do you know what the Officers are doing up\n there in the Ship they won't let us touch?\"\n\n\n There was an uneasy stirring among the Hans, a slipping aside of\n luminous black eyes. The Officer shut his jaw tight. He stepped in\n close to Kirk.\n\n\n \"Shut up,\" he said urgently. \"Don't make me punish you, not now. You're\n talking rot, but it's dangerous.\"\n\n\n Kirk's eyes were hot and not quite sane. He couldn't have stopped if\n he'd wanted to.\n\n\n \"Rot, is it? Jakk Randl knew. He saw with his own eyes and he told me\n while he was dying. The Captain's yellow daughter, sneaking heat-stones\n into....\"", "It looked to Kirk as though the pillbox was pretty far gone.\n\n\n He ran down the slope with the others, slipping in the crystal drifts.\n Randl was spent. Kirk kept him going, thinking of the huts back there\n on the plain, and Ma and Lil and the little ones, and the baby. You had\n to fight the Piruts, no matter what you thought about the Officers. You\n had to keep them from getting onto the plain.\n\n\n He wondered about Pa. Hunting shags in the outer gullies was mean work\n any time, but when the Piruts were raiding....\n\n\n No time to think about that. Wite, the second son of the First Officer,\n was signalling for double time. Kirk ran faster, his ears twitching\n furiously as they sifted the flying echoes into some kind of order.", "Kirk followed. The wind was cold, howling up from the outer gullies.\nThe Officer of the Day was waiting at the north end of the wall.\n There was a ladder dropped over it now, and men were climbing up and\n down with bodies and sheaves of recovered spears. More were busy down\n below, rolling the dead Piruts and the shags down into the deep gullies\n for the scavenger rats and the living shags who didn't mind turning\n cannibal.\n\n\n That ladder made Kirk think of Pa. It was the only way for a man to get\n into the outer gullies from the west escarpment of the colony. He shook\n some of the queer heaviness out of his head, touched his forelock and\n said:\n\n\n \"I'm Wes Kirk, sir. You wanted me?\"", "The great alarm gong by the Captain's hut.\n\n\n Kirk began to move, very swiftly and quietly. Before the third gong\n stroke hit them he had his spear and his sling and was already lifting\n aside the door curtain.\n\n\n Ma Kirk said stiffly, \"Which way are they coming?\"\n\n\n Kirk's ears twitched. He sorted the gong sounds, and the wind, and\n found a whisper underneath them, rushing up out of the gullied plain.\n\n\n Kirk pointed. \"From the west. Piruts, I think.\"\n\n\n Ma Kirk sucked in her breath. Her voice had no tone in it. \"Your Pa\n went hunting that way.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah,\" said Kirk. \"I'll watch out for him.\"", "He stopped. Kirk put a stone accurately through the back of a Pirut's\n head and said grimly:\n\n\n \"Yeah. About what\nwe're\ngoing to do.\"\n\n\n Randl didn't answer. He sat down suddenly, doubled over. Kirk grinned.\n \"Take it easy,\" he said softly. \"I'll cover you.\"\n\n\n Randl whispered, \"Wes. Wes!\" He held up one thin hand. Kirk let his own\n drop, looking at it. There was blood on it, running clear to the elbow.\n\n\n He went down beside Randl, putting his arms around him, trying to see.\n Randl shook him off.\n\n\n \"Don't move me, you fool! Just listen.\" His voice was harsh and rapid.\n He was holding both hands over the left side of his neck, where it\n joined the shoulder. Kirk could see the bright blood beating up through\n his fingers.", "Kirk raised his shaggy head. The light of the yellow star they called\n Sun caught in the huge luminous blackness of his eyes.\n\n\n Beyond the Hansquarter, just where the flat plain began to rise, were\n the Engineers. Not many of them any more. You could see the dusty lumps\n where the huts had been, the tumbled heaps of metal that might have\n meant something once, a longer time ago than anyone could remember. But\n there were still plenty of huts standing. Two hands and one hand and\n a thumb of them, full of Engineers who said how the furrows should be\n laid for the planting but did nothing about the tilling of them.\n\n\n And beyond the Engineers—the Officers.", "It was pretty hot up there. The wall of bodies had built up so high,\n mostly with shags, that the Piruts were coming right over the wall.\n Kirk's nose wrinkled at the smell of blood. He avoided the biggest\n puddles and found a place to stand between the dead.\n\n\n Randl went down on his knees. He was coughing horribly, but his hot\n black eyes saw everything. He tried three times to lift his sling and\n gave it up.\n\n\n \"I'll cover you,\" said Kirk. He began taking crystal pebbles out of a\n big pile that was kept there and hurling them at the Piruts. They made\n a singing noise in the air, and they didn't stop going when they hit.\n They were heavy for their size, very heavy, with sharp edges.\n\n\n Randl said, \"Something funny, Wes. Too many Piruts. They couldn't risk\n 'em on an ordinary raid.\"", "The baby cried. Ma Kirk shrilled at her son, and two of the younger\n ones fought over a bone with no meat on it, rolling and snapping on the\n dirt floor. Kirk shifted his head forward to shut out the sound of them\n and followed the line of the plain upward with sullen, glowing eyes.\n\n\n The huts of the Engineers were larger than those in the Hansquarter.\n The huts of the Officers were not much larger than the Engineers', but\n there were more of them and they climbed higher up the grey slope.\n Five, nearly six hands of them, with the Captain's metal-roofed place\n highest of all.\n\n\n Highest and nearest, right under the titanic shape lifting jagged\n against the icy stars from the crest of the ridge.\n\n\n The Ship.\n\n\n Kirk's voice was soft in his thick throat. \"I would like to kill them,\"\n he said. \"I would like to kill them all.\"", "He coughed. The Officers' voices rang sharp through the wind. Compact\n groups of men began to run, off toward the west. The whisper of sound\n had grown louder in Kirk's ears. He could hear men yelling and the\n ringing of metal on stone.\n\n\n He started to run, holding Randl's elbow. Grey dust blew under their\n feet. The drifts of crystal stones sent their sound shivering back at\n them in splinters. Kirk said fiercely:\n\n\n \"What did you see?\"\n\n\n They were passing under the hill now. Randl jerked his head. \"Up there,\n Wes.\"\n\n\n Kirk looked up. Someone was standing at the doorway of the Captain's\n hut. Someone tall and slender and the color of the Sunstar from head to\n foot.\n\n\n \"I saw her,\" said Randl hoarsely. \"She was carrying heat-stones into\n the Ship.\"", "Kirk's pupils shrank to points no warmer nor softer than the tip of his\n knife. He smiled, almost gently, looking up the hill.\n\n\n The captain's yellow daughter, taking life into the Ship.\nIt was a big raid. Kirk saw that when he scrambled up out of the last\n gully, half-carrying the wheezing Randl. The Piruts had come up the\n tongue of rock between two deep cuts and tackled the guards' pillbox\n head on. They hadn't taken it, not yet. But they were still trying,\n piling up their dead on the swept grey stone.\n\n\n They were using shags again. They drove the lumbering beasts on into\n the hail of stones and thrown spears from the pillbox, keeping low\n behind them, and then climbing on the round hairy bodies. It took\n courage, because sometimes the shags turned and clawed the men who\n drove them, and sometimes the dead ones weren't quite dead and it was\n too bad for the man who climbed on them." ], [ "Kirk's voice wasn't a voice at all. \"You killed them. You killed my\n father.\"\n\n\n \"Three lives, against all those back on the plain. We held our fire\n too long as it was, hoping. The Piruts nearly broke through. Try to\n understand! I had to do it.\"\n\n\n Kirk's spear made a flat clatter on the stone. He started forward. Men\n moved in and held him, without rancor, looking at their own feet.\n\n\n \"Please try to understand,\" whispered the Officer. \"I had to do it.\"\n\n\n The Officer, the bloody wall, the stars and the cold grey gullies all\n went away. There was nothing but darkness, and wind, a long way off.\n Kirk thought of Pa coming up under the wall, close to safety, close\n enough to touch it, and no way through. Pa and Frank and Russ, standing\n under the wall, looking up, and no way through.", "Kirk tried to turn. The six men swung with him. Kirk said, \"You better\n discipline me. You better kill me, because, if you don't, I'll kill\n you.\"\n\n\n \"I don't blame you, boy. Go and rest. You'll understand.\"\n\n\n \"I'll understand, all right.\" Kirk's voice was a hoarse, harsh whisper\n that came out by itself and wouldn't be stopped. \"I'll understand about\n Pa, and the Ship with the heat-stones in it, and the Captain's yellow\n daughter getting fat and warm while my sisters freeze and go hungry.\n I'll understand, and I'll make everybody else understand, too!\"\n\n\n The Officer's eyes held a quick fire. \"Boy! Do you know what you're\n saying?\"\n\n\n \"You bet I know!\"\n\n\n \"That's mutiny. For God's sake, don't make things worse!\"", "\"Yes.\" The O.D. was also the Third Officer. Taller than Kirk, thinner,\n with the hair going grey on his body and exhausted eyes sunk deep under\n his horny overlids. He said quietly:\n\n\n \"I'm sorry to have to tell you this....\"\n\n\n Kirk knew. The knowledge leaped through him. It was strange, to feel a\n spear-stab where there was no spear.\n\n\n He said, \"Pa.\"\n\n\n The Officer nodded. He seemed very tired, and he didn't look at Kirk.\n He hadn't, after the first glance.\n\n\n \"Your father, and his two friends.\"\n\n\n Kirk shivered. The horny lids dropped over his eyes. \"I wish I'd\n known,\" he whispered. \"I'd have killed more of them.\"", "The Officer put his hands flat on the top of the wall and looked at\n them as if they were strange things and no part of him.\n\n\n \"Kirk,\" he said, \"this is going to be hard to explain. I've never done\n anything as hard. The Piruts didn't kill them. They were responsible,\n but they didn't actually kill them.\"\n\n\n Wes raised his head slowly. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"We saw them coming up the tongue of rock. The Piruts were behind them,\n but not far. Not far enough. One of the three, it wasn't your father,\n called to us to put the ladder down. We waited....\"\n\n\n A muscle began to twitch under Kirk's eye. That, too, was something\n that had never happened before, like the stab of pain with no spear\n behind it. He licked his lips and repeated hoarsely:\n\n\n \"I don't understand.\"", "The Officer tightened suddenly and made one hand into a fist and beat\n it slowly on the wall, up and down.\n\n\n \"I didn't want to give the order. God knows I didn't want to! But there\n was nothing else to do.\"\n\n\n A man came up over the top of the ladder. He was carrying a body over\n his shoulder, and breathing hard.\n\n\n \"Here's Kirk,\" he said. \"Where'll I put him?\"\n\n\n There was a clear space off to the right. Kirk pointed to it. \"Over\n there, Charley. I'll help.\"\n\n\n It was hard to move. He'd never been tired like this before. He'd never\n been afraid like this, either. He didn't know what he was afraid of.\n Something in the Officer's voice.", "The Officer hit him on the jaw, carefully and without heat. Kirk sagged\n down. The Officer stepped back, looking as though he had a pain in him\n that he didn't want to show.\n\n\n He said quietly, but so that everyone could hear him, \"Discipline, for\n not longer than it takes to clear the rock below.\"\n\n\n Two of the men nodded and took Kirk away down a flight of stone steps.\n One of the four who were left looked over the wall and spat.\n\n\n \"Rock's pretty near clean,\" he said, \"but even so....\" He shook himself\n like a dog. \"That Jakk Randl, he was always talking.\"\n\n\n One of the others flicked a quick look around and whispered, \"Yeah. And\n maybe he knew what he was talking about!\"", "Kirk followed. The wind was cold, howling up from the outer gullies.\nThe Officer of the Day was waiting at the north end of the wall.\n There was a ladder dropped over it now, and men were climbing up and\n down with bodies and sheaves of recovered spears. More were busy down\n below, rolling the dead Piruts and the shags down into the deep gullies\n for the scavenger rats and the living shags who didn't mind turning\n cannibal.\n\n\n That ladder made Kirk think of Pa. It was the only way for a man to get\n into the outer gullies from the west escarpment of the colony. He shook\n some of the queer heaviness out of his head, touched his forelock and\n said:\n\n\n \"I'm Wes Kirk, sir. You wanted me?\"", "Kirk raised his shaggy head. The light of the yellow star they called\n Sun caught in the huge luminous blackness of his eyes.\n\n\n Beyond the Hansquarter, just where the flat plain began to rise, were\n the Engineers. Not many of them any more. You could see the dusty lumps\n where the huts had been, the tumbled heaps of metal that might have\n meant something once, a longer time ago than anyone could remember. But\n there were still plenty of huts standing. Two hands and one hand and\n a thumb of them, full of Engineers who said how the furrows should be\n laid for the planting but did nothing about the tilling of them.\n\n\n And beyond the Engineers—the Officers.", "Looking up, calling to the men they knew, asking for help and getting a\n spear through the heart.\n\n\n After that, even the wind was gone, and the darkness had turned red.\nThere was a voice, a long way off. It said, \"God, he's strong!\" Over\n and over. It got louder. There were weights on his arms and legs, and\n he couldn't throw them off. He was pressed against something.\n\n\n It was the wall. He saw that after a while. The wall where the Officer\n had been standing. There were six men holding him, three on each side.\n The Officer was gone.\n\n\n Kirk relaxed. He was shivering and covered with rime from body sweat.\n Somebody whistled.\n\n\n \"Six men! Didn't know the kid had it in him.\"\n\n\n The Officer's voice said dully, \"No discipline. Better take him home.\"", "The baby cried. Ma Kirk shrilled at her son, and two of the younger\n ones fought over a bone with no meat on it, rolling and snapping on the\n dirt floor. Kirk shifted his head forward to shut out the sound of them\n and followed the line of the plain upward with sullen, glowing eyes.\n\n\n The huts of the Engineers were larger than those in the Hansquarter.\n The huts of the Officers were not much larger than the Engineers', but\n there were more of them and they climbed higher up the grey slope.\n Five, nearly six hands of them, with the Captain's metal-roofed place\n highest of all.\n\n\n Highest and nearest, right under the titanic shape lifting jagged\n against the icy stars from the crest of the ridge.\n\n\n The Ship.\n\n\n Kirk's voice was soft in his thick throat. \"I would like to kill them,\"\n he said. \"I would like to kill them all.\"", "\"Maybe there'd be less trouble for us.\"\n\n\n Lil poked her shock of black hair around Ma Kirk's knee. Her big eyes\n glowed in the feeble light.\n\n\n She said, \"You men! He's no man, Ma. He's just a little boy who has to\n stay behind and shoo the beetles out of the fields.\"\n\n\n The young ones giggled, well out of reach. Lil's thin body was strung\n tight, quivering to move. \"Besides,\" she demanded, \"what have the\n Officers and the Engineers ever done to you that you should want to\n kill them—all but the Captain's yellow daughter?\"\n\n\n Kirk's big heavy chest swelled. \"Ma,\" he said, \"you make that brat shut\n up or I'll whale her, anyhow.\"", "Kirk didn't say anything. He started to walk around the heat box. Lil\n yelled, \"Ma!\"\n\n\n The young ones stopped fighting, scuttling out of reach and watching\n with bright moist eyes, grinning. The baby had reached the hiccoughing\n stage.\n\n\n Ma Kirk said, \"Sit down, or go pick on somebody your own size.\"\n\n\n Kirk stopped. \"Aw, I wasn't going to hurt her. She has to be so smart!\"\n He leaned forward to glare at Lil. \"And I would so kill the Captain's\n daughter!\"\n\n\n The baby was quiet. Ma Kirk laid it down in a nest of skins put close\n to the heat and said wearily:\n\n\n \"You men, always talking about killing! Haven't we enough trouble\n without that?\"\n\n\n Kirk looked at the little box of heat-stones, his pupils shrinking.", "He helped to lay his father down. He'd seen bodies before. He'd handled\n them, fighting on the pillbox walls. But never one he'd known so long,\n one he'd eaten and slept and wrestled with. The thick arm that hauled\n him out of bed this morning, the big hands that warmed the baby against\n the barrel chest. You saw it lying lax and cold, but you didn't believe\n it.\n\n\n You saw it. You saw the spear shaft sticking out clean from the\n heart....\n\n\n You saw it....\n\n\n \"That's one of our spears!\" He screamed it, like a woman. \"One of our\n own—from the front!\"\n\n\n \"I let them get as close as I dared,\" said the Officer tonelessly. \"I\n tried to find a way. But there wasn't any way but the ladder, and that\n was what the Piruts wanted. That's why they made them come.\"", "He shoved the curtain of little skins aside and crouched there with his\n thick shoulders fitted into the angle of the jamb, staring out, cold\n wind threading in across his splayed and naked feet.\n\n\n The hackles rose golden and stiff across Kirk's back. He said carefully,\n\n\n \"I would like to kill the Captain and the First Officer and the Second\n Officer and all the little Officers, and the Engineers, and all their\n families.\"\n\n\n His voice carried inside on the wind eddies. Ma Kirk yelled,\n\n\n \"Wes! You come here and let that curtain down! You want us all to\n freeze?\" Her dark-furred shoulders moved rhythmically over the rocking\n child. She added sharply, \"Besides, that's fool's talk, Jakk Randl's\n talk, and only gets the sucking-plant.\"", "\"Worse for us, or for you?\" Kirk was shouting, holding his head up in\n the wind. \"Listen, you men! Do you know what the Officers are doing up\n there in the Ship they won't let us touch?\"\n\n\n There was an uneasy stirring among the Hans, a slipping aside of\n luminous black eyes. The Officer shut his jaw tight. He stepped in\n close to Kirk.\n\n\n \"Shut up,\" he said urgently. \"Don't make me punish you, not now. You're\n talking rot, but it's dangerous.\"\n\n\n Kirk's eyes were hot and not quite sane. He couldn't have stopped if\n he'd wanted to.\n\n\n \"Rot, is it? Jakk Randl knew. He saw with his own eyes and he told me\n while he was dying. The Captain's yellow daughter, sneaking heat-stones\n into....\"", "He said, \"Jakk, I'll get the sawbones....\"\n\n\n Hot black eyes turned to his. Burnt-out fires in a face with the young\n beard hardly full on its sharp jaw.\n\n\n \"Sit down, Wes, quick, and listen. Sawbones is no good—and why would\n I want to go on living anyway?\"\n\n\n He smiled. Kirk had never seen him smile like that, without bitterness\n or pain. He sat down, crouched on the body of a man who lived only two\n huts away from him. The blood made little red fountains between Randl's\n fingers.\n\n\n \"It's up to you, Wes. You're the only one that really knows about the\n Ship. You'll do better than I would, anyhow. You're a fighter. You\n carry it on, so the Hans can live. Promise.\"", "\"Kind of a pal of yours, wasn't he?\"\n\n\n \"He wasn't very strong. He needed someone to cover him.\"\n\n\n \"Too bad.\" The man shook his head, and then shrugged. \"Maybe it's\n better, at that. He was headed for trouble, that one. Kinda leading you\n that way, too, I heard. Always talking.\"\n\n\n He looked at Kirk's face and shut up suddenly. He turned away and\n grunted over his shoulders, \"The O.D.'s looking for you.\"", "It looked to Kirk as though the pillbox was pretty far gone.\n\n\n He ran down the slope with the others, slipping in the crystal drifts.\n Randl was spent. Kirk kept him going, thinking of the huts back there\n on the plain, and Ma and Lil and the little ones, and the baby. You had\n to fight the Piruts, no matter what you thought about the Officers. You\n had to keep them from getting onto the plain.\n\n\n He wondered about Pa. Hunting shags in the outer gullies was mean work\n any time, but when the Piruts were raiding....\n\n\n No time to think about that. Wite, the second son of the First Officer,\n was signalling for double time. Kirk ran faster, his ears twitching\n furiously as they sifted the flying echoes into some kind of order.", "Kirk snorted. \"You women know so much. If they let the shags or the\n Piruts in on us, how could they stop 'em before they killed everybody,\n including the Officers? As for slow death—well, they think we're dumb.\n They've kept us away from the Ship ever since the\nCrash\n, and nobody\n knows how long ago that was. They think they can go on doing it. They\n think we'd never suspect.\"\n\n\n \"Yah!\" said Lil sharply. \"You just like to talk. Why should the\n Officers want us killed off anyhow?\"\n\n\n Kirk looked at the thin fuzzy baby curled tight in the skins.", "Kirk nodded. He couldn't say anything. The heat was dying in Randl's\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Listen, Wes. I saw the secret way into Ship. Bend closer, and\n listen....\"\n\n\n Kirk bent. He didn't move for a long time. After a while Randl's voice\n stopped, and then the blood wasn't pumping any more, just oozing.\n Randl's hands slid away, so that Kirk could see the hole the stone had\n made. Everything seemed to be very quiet.\n\n\n Kirk sat there, holding Randl in his arms.\n\n\n Presently someone came up and shook Kirk's shoulder and said, \"Hey,\n kid, are you deaf? We been yelling for you.\" He stopped, and then said\n more gently, \"Oh. Jakk got it, did he?\"\n\n\n Kirk laid the body carefully on the stones and got up. \"Yeah.\"" ], [ "The Officer tightened suddenly and made one hand into a fist and beat\n it slowly on the wall, up and down.\n\n\n \"I didn't want to give the order. God knows I didn't want to! But there\n was nothing else to do.\"\n\n\n A man came up over the top of the ladder. He was carrying a body over\n his shoulder, and breathing hard.\n\n\n \"Here's Kirk,\" he said. \"Where'll I put him?\"\n\n\n There was a clear space off to the right. Kirk pointed to it. \"Over\n there, Charley. I'll help.\"\n\n\n It was hard to move. He'd never been tired like this before. He'd never\n been afraid like this, either. He didn't know what he was afraid of.\n Something in the Officer's voice.", "Kirk raised his shaggy head. The light of the yellow star they called\n Sun caught in the huge luminous blackness of his eyes.\n\n\n Beyond the Hansquarter, just where the flat plain began to rise, were\n the Engineers. Not many of them any more. You could see the dusty lumps\n where the huts had been, the tumbled heaps of metal that might have\n meant something once, a longer time ago than anyone could remember. But\n there were still plenty of huts standing. Two hands and one hand and\n a thumb of them, full of Engineers who said how the furrows should be\n laid for the planting but did nothing about the tilling of them.\n\n\n And beyond the Engineers—the Officers.", "He helped to lay his father down. He'd seen bodies before. He'd handled\n them, fighting on the pillbox walls. But never one he'd known so long,\n one he'd eaten and slept and wrestled with. The thick arm that hauled\n him out of bed this morning, the big hands that warmed the baby against\n the barrel chest. You saw it lying lax and cold, but you didn't believe\n it.\n\n\n You saw it. You saw the spear shaft sticking out clean from the\n heart....\n\n\n You saw it....\n\n\n \"That's one of our spears!\" He screamed it, like a woman. \"One of our\n own—from the front!\"\n\n\n \"I let them get as close as I dared,\" said the Officer tonelessly. \"I\n tried to find a way. But there wasn't any way but the ladder, and that\n was what the Piruts wanted. That's why they made them come.\"", "\"Yes.\" The O.D. was also the Third Officer. Taller than Kirk, thinner,\n with the hair going grey on his body and exhausted eyes sunk deep under\n his horny overlids. He said quietly:\n\n\n \"I'm sorry to have to tell you this....\"\n\n\n Kirk knew. The knowledge leaped through him. It was strange, to feel a\n spear-stab where there was no spear.\n\n\n He said, \"Pa.\"\n\n\n The Officer nodded. He seemed very tired, and he didn't look at Kirk.\n He hadn't, after the first glance.\n\n\n \"Your father, and his two friends.\"\n\n\n Kirk shivered. The horny lids dropped over his eyes. \"I wish I'd\n known,\" he whispered. \"I'd have killed more of them.\"", "The Officer put his hands flat on the top of the wall and looked at\n them as if they were strange things and no part of him.\n\n\n \"Kirk,\" he said, \"this is going to be hard to explain. I've never done\n anything as hard. The Piruts didn't kill them. They were responsible,\n but they didn't actually kill them.\"\n\n\n Wes raised his head slowly. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"We saw them coming up the tongue of rock. The Piruts were behind them,\n but not far. Not far enough. One of the three, it wasn't your father,\n called to us to put the ladder down. We waited....\"\n\n\n A muscle began to twitch under Kirk's eye. That, too, was something\n that had never happened before, like the stab of pain with no spear\n behind it. He licked his lips and repeated hoarsely:\n\n\n \"I don't understand.\"", "\"Maybe there'd be less trouble for us.\"\n\n\n Lil poked her shock of black hair around Ma Kirk's knee. Her big eyes\n glowed in the feeble light.\n\n\n She said, \"You men! He's no man, Ma. He's just a little boy who has to\n stay behind and shoo the beetles out of the fields.\"\n\n\n The young ones giggled, well out of reach. Lil's thin body was strung\n tight, quivering to move. \"Besides,\" she demanded, \"what have the\n Officers and the Engineers ever done to you that you should want to\n kill them—all but the Captain's yellow daughter?\"\n\n\n Kirk's big heavy chest swelled. \"Ma,\" he said, \"you make that brat shut\n up or I'll whale her, anyhow.\"", "Looking up, calling to the men they knew, asking for help and getting a\n spear through the heart.\n\n\n After that, even the wind was gone, and the darkness had turned red.\nThere was a voice, a long way off. It said, \"God, he's strong!\" Over\n and over. It got louder. There were weights on his arms and legs, and\n he couldn't throw them off. He was pressed against something.\n\n\n It was the wall. He saw that after a while. The wall where the Officer\n had been standing. There were six men holding him, three on each side.\n The Officer was gone.\n\n\n Kirk relaxed. He was shivering and covered with rime from body sweat.\n Somebody whistled.\n\n\n \"Six men! Didn't know the kid had it in him.\"\n\n\n The Officer's voice said dully, \"No discipline. Better take him home.\"", "The Officer hit him on the jaw, carefully and without heat. Kirk sagged\n down. The Officer stepped back, looking as though he had a pain in him\n that he didn't want to show.\n\n\n He said quietly, but so that everyone could hear him, \"Discipline, for\n not longer than it takes to clear the rock below.\"\n\n\n Two of the men nodded and took Kirk away down a flight of stone steps.\n One of the four who were left looked over the wall and spat.\n\n\n \"Rock's pretty near clean,\" he said, \"but even so....\" He shook himself\n like a dog. \"That Jakk Randl, he was always talking.\"\n\n\n One of the others flicked a quick look around and whispered, \"Yeah. And\n maybe he knew what he was talking about!\"", "Kirk's voice wasn't a voice at all. \"You killed them. You killed my\n father.\"\n\n\n \"Three lives, against all those back on the plain. We held our fire\n too long as it was, hoping. The Piruts nearly broke through. Try to\n understand! I had to do it.\"\n\n\n Kirk's spear made a flat clatter on the stone. He started forward. Men\n moved in and held him, without rancor, looking at their own feet.\n\n\n \"Please try to understand,\" whispered the Officer. \"I had to do it.\"\n\n\n The Officer, the bloody wall, the stars and the cold grey gullies all\n went away. There was nothing but darkness, and wind, a long way off.\n Kirk thought of Pa coming up under the wall, close to safety, close\n enough to touch it, and no way through. Pa and Frank and Russ, standing\n under the wall, looking up, and no way through.", "The baby cried. Ma Kirk shrilled at her son, and two of the younger\n ones fought over a bone with no meat on it, rolling and snapping on the\n dirt floor. Kirk shifted his head forward to shut out the sound of them\n and followed the line of the plain upward with sullen, glowing eyes.\n\n\n The huts of the Engineers were larger than those in the Hansquarter.\n The huts of the Officers were not much larger than the Engineers', but\n there were more of them and they climbed higher up the grey slope.\n Five, nearly six hands of them, with the Captain's metal-roofed place\n highest of all.\n\n\n Highest and nearest, right under the titanic shape lifting jagged\n against the icy stars from the crest of the ridge.\n\n\n The Ship.\n\n\n Kirk's voice was soft in his thick throat. \"I would like to kill them,\"\n he said. \"I would like to kill them all.\"", "\"Worse for us, or for you?\" Kirk was shouting, holding his head up in\n the wind. \"Listen, you men! Do you know what the Officers are doing up\n there in the Ship they won't let us touch?\"\n\n\n There was an uneasy stirring among the Hans, a slipping aside of\n luminous black eyes. The Officer shut his jaw tight. He stepped in\n close to Kirk.\n\n\n \"Shut up,\" he said urgently. \"Don't make me punish you, not now. You're\n talking rot, but it's dangerous.\"\n\n\n Kirk's eyes were hot and not quite sane. He couldn't have stopped if\n he'd wanted to.\n\n\n \"Rot, is it? Jakk Randl knew. He saw with his own eyes and he told me\n while he was dying. The Captain's yellow daughter, sneaking heat-stones\n into....\"", "Kirk snorted. \"You women know so much. If they let the shags or the\n Piruts in on us, how could they stop 'em before they killed everybody,\n including the Officers? As for slow death—well, they think we're dumb.\n They've kept us away from the Ship ever since the\nCrash\n, and nobody\n knows how long ago that was. They think they can go on doing it. They\n think we'd never suspect.\"\n\n\n \"Yah!\" said Lil sharply. \"You just like to talk. Why should the\n Officers want us killed off anyhow?\"\n\n\n Kirk looked at the thin fuzzy baby curled tight in the skins.", "Kirk tried to turn. The six men swung with him. Kirk said, \"You better\n discipline me. You better kill me, because, if you don't, I'll kill\n you.\"\n\n\n \"I don't blame you, boy. Go and rest. You'll understand.\"\n\n\n \"I'll understand, all right.\" Kirk's voice was a hoarse, harsh whisper\n that came out by itself and wouldn't be stopped. \"I'll understand about\n Pa, and the Ship with the heat-stones in it, and the Captain's yellow\n daughter getting fat and warm while my sisters freeze and go hungry.\n I'll understand, and I'll make everybody else understand, too!\"\n\n\n The Officer's eyes held a quick fire. \"Boy! Do you know what you're\n saying?\"\n\n\n \"You bet I know!\"\n\n\n \"That's mutiny. For God's sake, don't make things worse!\"", "\"There must be something in the Ship that they don't want us to have.\n Something valuable, something they want to keep for themselves. What\n else could it be but heat-stones and maybe dried meat?\"\n\n\n \"We don't know, Wes! The Ship is—well, we shouldn't talk about it.\n And the Officers wouldn't do that. If they wanted us killed off they'd\n let the Piruts in on us, or the shags, and let 'em finish us quick.\n Freezing and starving would take too long. There'd be too many of us if\n we found out, or got mad.\"", "It looked to Kirk as though the pillbox was pretty far gone.\n\n\n He ran down the slope with the others, slipping in the crystal drifts.\n Randl was spent. Kirk kept him going, thinking of the huts back there\n on the plain, and Ma and Lil and the little ones, and the baby. You had\n to fight the Piruts, no matter what you thought about the Officers. You\n had to keep them from getting onto the plain.\n\n\n He wondered about Pa. Hunting shags in the outer gullies was mean work\n any time, but when the Piruts were raiding....\n\n\n No time to think about that. Wite, the second son of the First Officer,\n was signalling for double time. Kirk ran faster, his ears twitching\n furiously as they sifted the flying echoes into some kind of order.", "He coughed. The Officers' voices rang sharp through the wind. Compact\n groups of men began to run, off toward the west. The whisper of sound\n had grown louder in Kirk's ears. He could hear men yelling and the\n ringing of metal on stone.\n\n\n He started to run, holding Randl's elbow. Grey dust blew under their\n feet. The drifts of crystal stones sent their sound shivering back at\n them in splinters. Kirk said fiercely:\n\n\n \"What did you see?\"\n\n\n They were passing under the hill now. Randl jerked his head. \"Up there,\n Wes.\"\n\n\n Kirk looked up. Someone was standing at the doorway of the Captain's\n hut. Someone tall and slender and the color of the Sunstar from head to\n foot.\n\n\n \"I saw her,\" said Randl hoarsely. \"She was carrying heat-stones into\n the Ship.\"", "Kirk looked up the hill. Officers were running from the huts below the\n gaunt, dead Ship. They didn't look so different from the Hans, only\n they were built a little taller and lighter, less bowed and bunchy in\n the shoulders, quicker on their feet.\n\n\n Kirk stepped behind Randl to shield him from the wind. His voice was\n only a whisper, but it had a hard edge. The baby's thin, terrible wail\n was still in his ears.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Jakk? Do you know? Because if they are....\"\n\n\n Randl laughed and shuddered with a secret, ugly triumph. \"I crawled up\n on the peak during the last darkness. The guards were cold and the wind\n made them blind and deaf. I lay in the rocks and watched. And I saw....\"", "Kirk followed. The wind was cold, howling up from the outer gullies.\nThe Officer of the Day was waiting at the north end of the wall.\n There was a ladder dropped over it now, and men were climbing up and\n down with bodies and sheaves of recovered spears. More were busy down\n below, rolling the dead Piruts and the shags down into the deep gullies\n for the scavenger rats and the living shags who didn't mind turning\n cannibal.\n\n\n That ladder made Kirk think of Pa. It was the only way for a man to get\n into the outer gullies from the west escarpment of the colony. He shook\n some of the queer heaviness out of his head, touched his forelock and\n said:\n\n\n \"I'm Wes Kirk, sir. You wanted me?\"", "He shoved the curtain of little skins aside and crouched there with his\n thick shoulders fitted into the angle of the jamb, staring out, cold\n wind threading in across his splayed and naked feet.\n\n\n The hackles rose golden and stiff across Kirk's back. He said carefully,\n\n\n \"I would like to kill the Captain and the First Officer and the Second\n Officer and all the little Officers, and the Engineers, and all their\n families.\"\n\n\n His voice carried inside on the wind eddies. Ma Kirk yelled,\n\n\n \"Wes! You come here and let that curtain down! You want us all to\n freeze?\" Her dark-furred shoulders moved rhythmically over the rocking\n child. She added sharply, \"Besides, that's fool's talk, Jakk Randl's\n talk, and only gets the sucking-plant.\"", "Randl's narrow shoulders twitched. \"Near as we know, their legend is\n the same as ours. Something holy in the Ship, sacred and tabu. Only\n difference is they want to get it for themselves, and we want to keep\n it.\" He coughed and spat in sudden angry disgust. \"And we've swallowed\n that stuff. We've let the Officers hoard heat and food so they can live\n no matter what happens to us. We're fools, Wes! A lot of bloody fools!\"\n\n\n He got up and began jabbing with his spear at heads that poked up over\n the wall.\nThe Piruts began to slack off. Stones still whistled past Kirk's\n head—a couple of them had grazed him by now—and spears showered down,\n but they weren't climbing the walls any more.\n\n\n Randl grounded his spear, gasping. \"That's that. Pretty soon they'll\n break, and then we can start thinking about....\"" ], [ "Kirk raised his shaggy head. The light of the yellow star they called\n Sun caught in the huge luminous blackness of his eyes.\n\n\n Beyond the Hansquarter, just where the flat plain began to rise, were\n the Engineers. Not many of them any more. You could see the dusty lumps\n where the huts had been, the tumbled heaps of metal that might have\n meant something once, a longer time ago than anyone could remember. But\n there were still plenty of huts standing. Two hands and one hand and\n a thumb of them, full of Engineers who said how the furrows should be\n laid for the planting but did nothing about the tilling of them.\n\n\n And beyond the Engineers—the Officers.", "\"Worse for us, or for you?\" Kirk was shouting, holding his head up in\n the wind. \"Listen, you men! Do you know what the Officers are doing up\n there in the Ship they won't let us touch?\"\n\n\n There was an uneasy stirring among the Hans, a slipping aside of\n luminous black eyes. The Officer shut his jaw tight. He stepped in\n close to Kirk.\n\n\n \"Shut up,\" he said urgently. \"Don't make me punish you, not now. You're\n talking rot, but it's dangerous.\"\n\n\n Kirk's eyes were hot and not quite sane. He couldn't have stopped if\n he'd wanted to.\n\n\n \"Rot, is it? Jakk Randl knew. He saw with his own eyes and he told me\n while he was dying. The Captain's yellow daughter, sneaking heat-stones\n into....\"", "The Officer tightened suddenly and made one hand into a fist and beat\n it slowly on the wall, up and down.\n\n\n \"I didn't want to give the order. God knows I didn't want to! But there\n was nothing else to do.\"\n\n\n A man came up over the top of the ladder. He was carrying a body over\n his shoulder, and breathing hard.\n\n\n \"Here's Kirk,\" he said. \"Where'll I put him?\"\n\n\n There was a clear space off to the right. Kirk pointed to it. \"Over\n there, Charley. I'll help.\"\n\n\n It was hard to move. He'd never been tired like this before. He'd never\n been afraid like this, either. He didn't know what he was afraid of.\n Something in the Officer's voice.", "The baby cried. Ma Kirk shrilled at her son, and two of the younger\n ones fought over a bone with no meat on it, rolling and snapping on the\n dirt floor. Kirk shifted his head forward to shut out the sound of them\n and followed the line of the plain upward with sullen, glowing eyes.\n\n\n The huts of the Engineers were larger than those in the Hansquarter.\n The huts of the Officers were not much larger than the Engineers', but\n there were more of them and they climbed higher up the grey slope.\n Five, nearly six hands of them, with the Captain's metal-roofed place\n highest of all.\n\n\n Highest and nearest, right under the titanic shape lifting jagged\n against the icy stars from the crest of the ridge.\n\n\n The Ship.\n\n\n Kirk's voice was soft in his thick throat. \"I would like to kill them,\"\n he said. \"I would like to kill them all.\"", "Kirk looked up the hill. Officers were running from the huts below the\n gaunt, dead Ship. They didn't look so different from the Hans, only\n they were built a little taller and lighter, less bowed and bunchy in\n the shoulders, quicker on their feet.\n\n\n Kirk stepped behind Randl to shield him from the wind. His voice was\n only a whisper, but it had a hard edge. The baby's thin, terrible wail\n was still in his ears.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Jakk? Do you know? Because if they are....\"\n\n\n Randl laughed and shuddered with a secret, ugly triumph. \"I crawled up\n on the peak during the last darkness. The guards were cold and the wind\n made them blind and deaf. I lay in the rocks and watched. And I saw....\"", "It looked to Kirk as though the pillbox was pretty far gone.\n\n\n He ran down the slope with the others, slipping in the crystal drifts.\n Randl was spent. Kirk kept him going, thinking of the huts back there\n on the plain, and Ma and Lil and the little ones, and the baby. You had\n to fight the Piruts, no matter what you thought about the Officers. You\n had to keep them from getting onto the plain.\n\n\n He wondered about Pa. Hunting shags in the outer gullies was mean work\n any time, but when the Piruts were raiding....\n\n\n No time to think about that. Wite, the second son of the First Officer,\n was signalling for double time. Kirk ran faster, his ears twitching\n furiously as they sifted the flying echoes into some kind of order.", "The Officer hit him on the jaw, carefully and without heat. Kirk sagged\n down. The Officer stepped back, looking as though he had a pain in him\n that he didn't want to show.\n\n\n He said quietly, but so that everyone could hear him, \"Discipline, for\n not longer than it takes to clear the rock below.\"\n\n\n Two of the men nodded and took Kirk away down a flight of stone steps.\n One of the four who were left looked over the wall and spat.\n\n\n \"Rock's pretty near clean,\" he said, \"but even so....\" He shook himself\n like a dog. \"That Jakk Randl, he was always talking.\"\n\n\n One of the others flicked a quick look around and whispered, \"Yeah. And\n maybe he knew what he was talking about!\"", "Looking up, calling to the men they knew, asking for help and getting a\n spear through the heart.\n\n\n After that, even the wind was gone, and the darkness had turned red.\nThere was a voice, a long way off. It said, \"God, he's strong!\" Over\n and over. It got louder. There were weights on his arms and legs, and\n he couldn't throw them off. He was pressed against something.\n\n\n It was the wall. He saw that after a while. The wall where the Officer\n had been standing. There were six men holding him, three on each side.\n The Officer was gone.\n\n\n Kirk relaxed. He was shivering and covered with rime from body sweat.\n Somebody whistled.\n\n\n \"Six men! Didn't know the kid had it in him.\"\n\n\n The Officer's voice said dully, \"No discipline. Better take him home.\"", "\"Maybe there'd be less trouble for us.\"\n\n\n Lil poked her shock of black hair around Ma Kirk's knee. Her big eyes\n glowed in the feeble light.\n\n\n She said, \"You men! He's no man, Ma. He's just a little boy who has to\n stay behind and shoo the beetles out of the fields.\"\n\n\n The young ones giggled, well out of reach. Lil's thin body was strung\n tight, quivering to move. \"Besides,\" she demanded, \"what have the\n Officers and the Engineers ever done to you that you should want to\n kill them—all but the Captain's yellow daughter?\"\n\n\n Kirk's big heavy chest swelled. \"Ma,\" he said, \"you make that brat shut\n up or I'll whale her, anyhow.\"", "Kirk tried to turn. The six men swung with him. Kirk said, \"You better\n discipline me. You better kill me, because, if you don't, I'll kill\n you.\"\n\n\n \"I don't blame you, boy. Go and rest. You'll understand.\"\n\n\n \"I'll understand, all right.\" Kirk's voice was a hoarse, harsh whisper\n that came out by itself and wouldn't be stopped. \"I'll understand about\n Pa, and the Ship with the heat-stones in it, and the Captain's yellow\n daughter getting fat and warm while my sisters freeze and go hungry.\n I'll understand, and I'll make everybody else understand, too!\"\n\n\n The Officer's eyes held a quick fire. \"Boy! Do you know what you're\n saying?\"\n\n\n \"You bet I know!\"\n\n\n \"That's mutiny. For God's sake, don't make things worse!\"", "He helped to lay his father down. He'd seen bodies before. He'd handled\n them, fighting on the pillbox walls. But never one he'd known so long,\n one he'd eaten and slept and wrestled with. The thick arm that hauled\n him out of bed this morning, the big hands that warmed the baby against\n the barrel chest. You saw it lying lax and cold, but you didn't believe\n it.\n\n\n You saw it. You saw the spear shaft sticking out clean from the\n heart....\n\n\n You saw it....\n\n\n \"That's one of our spears!\" He screamed it, like a woman. \"One of our\n own—from the front!\"\n\n\n \"I let them get as close as I dared,\" said the Officer tonelessly. \"I\n tried to find a way. But there wasn't any way but the ladder, and that\n was what the Piruts wanted. That's why they made them come.\"", "The Officer put his hands flat on the top of the wall and looked at\n them as if they were strange things and no part of him.\n\n\n \"Kirk,\" he said, \"this is going to be hard to explain. I've never done\n anything as hard. The Piruts didn't kill them. They were responsible,\n but they didn't actually kill them.\"\n\n\n Wes raised his head slowly. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"We saw them coming up the tongue of rock. The Piruts were behind them,\n but not far. Not far enough. One of the three, it wasn't your father,\n called to us to put the ladder down. We waited....\"\n\n\n A muscle began to twitch under Kirk's eye. That, too, was something\n that had never happened before, like the stab of pain with no spear\n behind it. He licked his lips and repeated hoarsely:\n\n\n \"I don't understand.\"", "He shoved the curtain of little skins aside and crouched there with his\n thick shoulders fitted into the angle of the jamb, staring out, cold\n wind threading in across his splayed and naked feet.\n\n\n The hackles rose golden and stiff across Kirk's back. He said carefully,\n\n\n \"I would like to kill the Captain and the First Officer and the Second\n Officer and all the little Officers, and the Engineers, and all their\n families.\"\n\n\n His voice carried inside on the wind eddies. Ma Kirk yelled,\n\n\n \"Wes! You come here and let that curtain down! You want us all to\n freeze?\" Her dark-furred shoulders moved rhythmically over the rocking\n child. She added sharply, \"Besides, that's fool's talk, Jakk Randl's\n talk, and only gets the sucking-plant.\"", "Kirk followed. The wind was cold, howling up from the outer gullies.\nThe Officer of the Day was waiting at the north end of the wall.\n There was a ladder dropped over it now, and men were climbing up and\n down with bodies and sheaves of recovered spears. More were busy down\n below, rolling the dead Piruts and the shags down into the deep gullies\n for the scavenger rats and the living shags who didn't mind turning\n cannibal.\n\n\n That ladder made Kirk think of Pa. It was the only way for a man to get\n into the outer gullies from the west escarpment of the colony. He shook\n some of the queer heaviness out of his head, touched his forelock and\n said:\n\n\n \"I'm Wes Kirk, sir. You wanted me?\"", "He said, \"Jakk, I'll get the sawbones....\"\n\n\n Hot black eyes turned to his. Burnt-out fires in a face with the young\n beard hardly full on its sharp jaw.\n\n\n \"Sit down, Wes, quick, and listen. Sawbones is no good—and why would\n I want to go on living anyway?\"\n\n\n He smiled. Kirk had never seen him smile like that, without bitterness\n or pain. He sat down, crouched on the body of a man who lived only two\n huts away from him. The blood made little red fountains between Randl's\n fingers.\n\n\n \"It's up to you, Wes. You're the only one that really knows about the\n Ship. You'll do better than I would, anyhow. You're a fighter. You\n carry it on, so the Hans can live. Promise.\"", "He coughed. The Officers' voices rang sharp through the wind. Compact\n groups of men began to run, off toward the west. The whisper of sound\n had grown louder in Kirk's ears. He could hear men yelling and the\n ringing of metal on stone.\n\n\n He started to run, holding Randl's elbow. Grey dust blew under their\n feet. The drifts of crystal stones sent their sound shivering back at\n them in splinters. Kirk said fiercely:\n\n\n \"What did you see?\"\n\n\n They were passing under the hill now. Randl jerked his head. \"Up there,\n Wes.\"\n\n\n Kirk looked up. Someone was standing at the doorway of the Captain's\n hut. Someone tall and slender and the color of the Sunstar from head to\n foot.\n\n\n \"I saw her,\" said Randl hoarsely. \"She was carrying heat-stones into\n the Ship.\"", "\"There must be something in the Ship that they don't want us to have.\n Something valuable, something they want to keep for themselves. What\n else could it be but heat-stones and maybe dried meat?\"\n\n\n \"We don't know, Wes! The Ship is—well, we shouldn't talk about it.\n And the Officers wouldn't do that. If they wanted us killed off they'd\n let the Piruts in on us, or the shags, and let 'em finish us quick.\n Freezing and starving would take too long. There'd be too many of us if\n we found out, or got mad.\"", "Kirk snorted. \"You women know so much. If they let the shags or the\n Piruts in on us, how could they stop 'em before they killed everybody,\n including the Officers? As for slow death—well, they think we're dumb.\n They've kept us away from the Ship ever since the\nCrash\n, and nobody\n knows how long ago that was. They think they can go on doing it. They\n think we'd never suspect.\"\n\n\n \"Yah!\" said Lil sharply. \"You just like to talk. Why should the\n Officers want us killed off anyhow?\"\n\n\n Kirk looked at the thin fuzzy baby curled tight in the skins.", "Men and youths like himself, old enough to fight, were spilling out of\n low doorways and forming companies on the flat ground. Kirk spotted\n Jakk Randl and fell in beside him. They stood with their backs to the\n wind, stamping and shivering, their head-hair and scant fur clouts\n blown straight out.\n\n\n Randl nudged Kirk's elbow. \"Look at 'em,\" he said, and coughed. He was\n always coughing, jerking his thin sharp face back and forth. Kirk could\n have broken his brittle light-furred body in two. All Randl's strength\n was in his eyes. The pupils were always spread, always hot with some\n bitter force, always probing. He wasn't much older than Kirk.", "Kirk's voice wasn't a voice at all. \"You killed them. You killed my\n father.\"\n\n\n \"Three lives, against all those back on the plain. We held our fire\n too long as it was, hoping. The Piruts nearly broke through. Try to\n understand! I had to do it.\"\n\n\n Kirk's spear made a flat clatter on the stone. He started forward. Men\n moved in and held him, without rancor, looking at their own feet.\n\n\n \"Please try to understand,\" whispered the Officer. \"I had to do it.\"\n\n\n The Officer, the bloody wall, the stars and the cold grey gullies all\n went away. There was nothing but darkness, and wind, a long way off.\n Kirk thought of Pa coming up under the wall, close to safety, close\n enough to touch it, and no way through. Pa and Frank and Russ, standing\n under the wall, looking up, and no way through." ], [ "There was suddenly a lot of silence in the room. The word \"Ship\" hung\n there, awesome and accusing. Ma Kirk's eyes flicked to the curtain over\n the door and back to her son.\n\n\n \"Don't you say things like that, Wes! You don't know.\"\n\n\n \"It's what everybody says. Why else would they guard the Ship the way\n they do? We can't even get near the outside of it.\"\n\n\n Lil tossed her head. \"Well neither do they.\"\n\n\n \"Not when we can see 'em, no. Of course not. But how do we know they\n haven't got ways of getting into the Ship that don't show from the\n plain? Jakk says a lot goes on that we don't know about.\"\n\n\n He got up, forcing his belief at them with his big square hands.", "The baby cried. Ma Kirk shrilled at her son, and two of the younger\n ones fought over a bone with no meat on it, rolling and snapping on the\n dirt floor. Kirk shifted his head forward to shut out the sound of them\n and followed the line of the plain upward with sullen, glowing eyes.\n\n\n The huts of the Engineers were larger than those in the Hansquarter.\n The huts of the Officers were not much larger than the Engineers', but\n there were more of them and they climbed higher up the grey slope.\n Five, nearly six hands of them, with the Captain's metal-roofed place\n highest of all.\n\n\n Highest and nearest, right under the titanic shape lifting jagged\n against the icy stars from the crest of the ridge.\n\n\n The Ship.\n\n\n Kirk's voice was soft in his thick throat. \"I would like to kill them,\"\n he said. \"I would like to kill them all.\"", "\"Worse for us, or for you?\" Kirk was shouting, holding his head up in\n the wind. \"Listen, you men! Do you know what the Officers are doing up\n there in the Ship they won't let us touch?\"\n\n\n There was an uneasy stirring among the Hans, a slipping aside of\n luminous black eyes. The Officer shut his jaw tight. He stepped in\n close to Kirk.\n\n\n \"Shut up,\" he said urgently. \"Don't make me punish you, not now. You're\n talking rot, but it's dangerous.\"\n\n\n Kirk's eyes were hot and not quite sane. He couldn't have stopped if\n he'd wanted to.\n\n\n \"Rot, is it? Jakk Randl knew. He saw with his own eyes and he told me\n while he was dying. The Captain's yellow daughter, sneaking heat-stones\n into....\"", "Kirk looked up the hill. Officers were running from the huts below the\n gaunt, dead Ship. They didn't look so different from the Hans, only\n they were built a little taller and lighter, less bowed and bunchy in\n the shoulders, quicker on their feet.\n\n\n Kirk stepped behind Randl to shield him from the wind. His voice was\n only a whisper, but it had a hard edge. The baby's thin, terrible wail\n was still in his ears.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Jakk? Do you know? Because if they are....\"\n\n\n Randl laughed and shuddered with a secret, ugly triumph. \"I crawled up\n on the peak during the last darkness. The guards were cold and the wind\n made them blind and deaf. I lay in the rocks and watched. And I saw....\"", "\"There must be something in the Ship that they don't want us to have.\n Something valuable, something they want to keep for themselves. What\n else could it be but heat-stones and maybe dried meat?\"\n\n\n \"We don't know, Wes! The Ship is—well, we shouldn't talk about it.\n And the Officers wouldn't do that. If they wanted us killed off they'd\n let the Piruts in on us, or the shags, and let 'em finish us quick.\n Freezing and starving would take too long. There'd be too many of us if\n we found out, or got mad.\"", "Kirk nodded. He couldn't say anything. The heat was dying in Randl's\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Listen, Wes. I saw the secret way into Ship. Bend closer, and\n listen....\"\n\n\n Kirk bent. He didn't move for a long time. After a while Randl's voice\n stopped, and then the blood wasn't pumping any more, just oozing.\n Randl's hands slid away, so that Kirk could see the hole the stone had\n made. Everything seemed to be very quiet.\n\n\n Kirk sat there, holding Randl in his arms.\n\n\n Presently someone came up and shook Kirk's shoulder and said, \"Hey,\n kid, are you deaf? We been yelling for you.\" He stopped, and then said\n more gently, \"Oh. Jakk got it, did he?\"\n\n\n Kirk laid the body carefully on the stones and got up. \"Yeah.\"", "He said, \"Jakk, I'll get the sawbones....\"\n\n\n Hot black eyes turned to his. Burnt-out fires in a face with the young\n beard hardly full on its sharp jaw.\n\n\n \"Sit down, Wes, quick, and listen. Sawbones is no good—and why would\n I want to go on living anyway?\"\n\n\n He smiled. Kirk had never seen him smile like that, without bitterness\n or pain. He sat down, crouched on the body of a man who lived only two\n huts away from him. The blood made little red fountains between Randl's\n fingers.\n\n\n \"It's up to you, Wes. You're the only one that really knows about the\n Ship. You'll do better than I would, anyhow. You're a fighter. You\n carry it on, so the Hans can live. Promise.\"", "Kirk grunted. A Pirut with red hair standing straight in the wind came\n over the wall. Kirk speared him left-handed in the belly, dodged the\n downstroke of his loaded sap, and kicked the body out of the way.\n\n\n He said, \"Wonder how they got so close, so fast?\"\n\n\n \"Some trick.\" Randl laughed suddenly. \"Funny their wanting the Ship as\n much as you and I do.\"\n\n\n \"Think they could know what's in it?\"", "He coughed. The Officers' voices rang sharp through the wind. Compact\n groups of men began to run, off toward the west. The whisper of sound\n had grown louder in Kirk's ears. He could hear men yelling and the\n ringing of metal on stone.\n\n\n He started to run, holding Randl's elbow. Grey dust blew under their\n feet. The drifts of crystal stones sent their sound shivering back at\n them in splinters. Kirk said fiercely:\n\n\n \"What did you see?\"\n\n\n They were passing under the hill now. Randl jerked his head. \"Up there,\n Wes.\"\n\n\n Kirk looked up. Someone was standing at the doorway of the Captain's\n hut. Someone tall and slender and the color of the Sunstar from head to\n foot.\n\n\n \"I saw her,\" said Randl hoarsely. \"She was carrying heat-stones into\n the Ship.\"", "Ma Kirk looked at him. \"Your Pa's still big enough to whale you, young\n man! Now you stop it, both of you.\"\n\n\n \"All right,\" said Kirk sullenly. He squatted down, holding his hands\n over the heat. His back twitched with the cold, but it was nice to have\n his belly warm, even if it was empty. \"Wish Pa'd hurry up. I'm hungry.\n Hope they killed meat.\"\n\n\n Ma Kirk sighed. \"Seems like meat gets scarcer all the time, like the\n heat-stones.\"\n\n\n \"Maybe,\" said Kirk heavily, \"it all goes to the same place.\"\n\n\n Lil snorted. \"And where's that, Smarty?\"\n\n\n His anger forced out the forbidden words.\n\n\n \"Where everybody says, stupid! Into the Ship.\"", "Randl's narrow shoulders twitched. \"Near as we know, their legend is\n the same as ours. Something holy in the Ship, sacred and tabu. Only\n difference is they want to get it for themselves, and we want to keep\n it.\" He coughed and spat in sudden angry disgust. \"And we've swallowed\n that stuff. We've let the Officers hoard heat and food so they can live\n no matter what happens to us. We're fools, Wes! A lot of bloody fools!\"\n\n\n He got up and began jabbing with his spear at heads that poked up over\n the wall.\nThe Piruts began to slack off. Stones still whistled past Kirk's\n head—a couple of them had grazed him by now—and spears showered down,\n but they weren't climbing the walls any more.\n\n\n Randl grounded his spear, gasping. \"That's that. Pretty soon they'll\n break, and then we can start thinking about....\"", "Kirk's pupils shrank to points no warmer nor softer than the tip of his\n knife. He smiled, almost gently, looking up the hill.\n\n\n The captain's yellow daughter, taking life into the Ship.\nIt was a big raid. Kirk saw that when he scrambled up out of the last\n gully, half-carrying the wheezing Randl. The Piruts had come up the\n tongue of rock between two deep cuts and tackled the guards' pillbox\n head on. They hadn't taken it, not yet. But they were still trying,\n piling up their dead on the swept grey stone.\n\n\n They were using shags again. They drove the lumbering beasts on into\n the hail of stones and thrown spears from the pillbox, keeping low\n behind them, and then climbing on the round hairy bodies. It took\n courage, because sometimes the shags turned and clawed the men who\n drove them, and sometimes the dead ones weren't quite dead and it was\n too bad for the man who climbed on them.", "He shoved the curtain of little skins aside and crouched there with his\n thick shoulders fitted into the angle of the jamb, staring out, cold\n wind threading in across his splayed and naked feet.\n\n\n The hackles rose golden and stiff across Kirk's back. He said carefully,\n\n\n \"I would like to kill the Captain and the First Officer and the Second\n Officer and all the little Officers, and the Engineers, and all their\n families.\"\n\n\n His voice carried inside on the wind eddies. Ma Kirk yelled,\n\n\n \"Wes! You come here and let that curtain down! You want us all to\n freeze?\" Her dark-furred shoulders moved rhythmically over the rocking\n child. She added sharply, \"Besides, that's fool's talk, Jakk Randl's\n talk, and only gets the sucking-plant.\"", "Kirk raised his shaggy head. The light of the yellow star they called\n Sun caught in the huge luminous blackness of his eyes.\n\n\n Beyond the Hansquarter, just where the flat plain began to rise, were\n the Engineers. Not many of them any more. You could see the dusty lumps\n where the huts had been, the tumbled heaps of metal that might have\n meant something once, a longer time ago than anyone could remember. But\n there were still plenty of huts standing. Two hands and one hand and\n a thumb of them, full of Engineers who said how the furrows should be\n laid for the planting but did nothing about the tilling of them.\n\n\n And beyond the Engineers—the Officers.", "It looked to Kirk as though the pillbox was pretty far gone.\n\n\n He ran down the slope with the others, slipping in the crystal drifts.\n Randl was spent. Kirk kept him going, thinking of the huts back there\n on the plain, and Ma and Lil and the little ones, and the baby. You had\n to fight the Piruts, no matter what you thought about the Officers. You\n had to keep them from getting onto the plain.\n\n\n He wondered about Pa. Hunting shags in the outer gullies was mean work\n any time, but when the Piruts were raiding....\n\n\n No time to think about that. Wite, the second son of the First Officer,\n was signalling for double time. Kirk ran faster, his ears twitching\n furiously as they sifted the flying echoes into some kind of order.", "Kirk snorted. \"You women know so much. If they let the shags or the\n Piruts in on us, how could they stop 'em before they killed everybody,\n including the Officers? As for slow death—well, they think we're dumb.\n They've kept us away from the Ship ever since the\nCrash\n, and nobody\n knows how long ago that was. They think they can go on doing it. They\n think we'd never suspect.\"\n\n\n \"Yah!\" said Lil sharply. \"You just like to talk. Why should the\n Officers want us killed off anyhow?\"\n\n\n Kirk looked at the thin fuzzy baby curled tight in the skins.", "Kirk tried to turn. The six men swung with him. Kirk said, \"You better\n discipline me. You better kill me, because, if you don't, I'll kill\n you.\"\n\n\n \"I don't blame you, boy. Go and rest. You'll understand.\"\n\n\n \"I'll understand, all right.\" Kirk's voice was a hoarse, harsh whisper\n that came out by itself and wouldn't be stopped. \"I'll understand about\n Pa, and the Ship with the heat-stones in it, and the Captain's yellow\n daughter getting fat and warm while my sisters freeze and go hungry.\n I'll understand, and I'll make everybody else understand, too!\"\n\n\n The Officer's eyes held a quick fire. \"Boy! Do you know what you're\n saying?\"\n\n\n \"You bet I know!\"\n\n\n \"That's mutiny. For God's sake, don't make things worse!\"", "\"Who's to hear it?\" Kirk raised his heavy overlids and let his pupils\n widen, huge liquid drops spreading black across his eyeballs, sucking\n the dim grey light into themselves, forcing line and shape out of\n blurred nothingness. He made no move to drop the curtain.\n\n\n The same landscape he had stared at since he was able to crawl by\n himself away from the box of heat-stones. Flat grey plain running\n right and left to the little curve of the horizon. Rocks on it, and\n edible moss. Wind-made gullies with grey shrubs thick in their bottoms,\n guarding their sour white berries with thorns and sacs of poisoned dust\n that burst when touched.\n\n\n Between the fields and the gullies there were huts like his own, sunk\n into the earth and sodded tight. A lot of huts, but not as many as\n there had been, the old ones said. The Hans died, and the huts were\n empty, and the wind and the earth took them back again.", "The great alarm gong by the Captain's hut.\n\n\n Kirk began to move, very swiftly and quietly. Before the third gong\n stroke hit them he had his spear and his sling and was already lifting\n aside the door curtain.\n\n\n Ma Kirk said stiffly, \"Which way are they coming?\"\n\n\n Kirk's ears twitched. He sorted the gong sounds, and the wind, and\n found a whisper underneath them, rushing up out of the gullied plain.\n\n\n Kirk pointed. \"From the west. Piruts, I think.\"\n\n\n Ma Kirk sucked in her breath. Her voice had no tone in it. \"Your Pa\n went hunting that way.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah,\" said Kirk. \"I'll watch out for him.\"", "He helped to lay his father down. He'd seen bodies before. He'd handled\n them, fighting on the pillbox walls. But never one he'd known so long,\n one he'd eaten and slept and wrestled with. The thick arm that hauled\n him out of bed this morning, the big hands that warmed the baby against\n the barrel chest. You saw it lying lax and cold, but you didn't believe\n it.\n\n\n You saw it. You saw the spear shaft sticking out clean from the\n heart....\n\n\n You saw it....\n\n\n \"That's one of our spears!\" He screamed it, like a woman. \"One of our\n own—from the front!\"\n\n\n \"I let them get as close as I dared,\" said the Officer tonelessly. \"I\n tried to find a way. But there wasn't any way but the ladder, and that\n was what the Piruts wanted. That's why they made them come.\"" ], [ "\"Yes.\" The O.D. was also the Third Officer. Taller than Kirk, thinner,\n with the hair going grey on his body and exhausted eyes sunk deep under\n his horny overlids. He said quietly:\n\n\n \"I'm sorry to have to tell you this....\"\n\n\n Kirk knew. The knowledge leaped through him. It was strange, to feel a\n spear-stab where there was no spear.\n\n\n He said, \"Pa.\"\n\n\n The Officer nodded. He seemed very tired, and he didn't look at Kirk.\n He hadn't, after the first glance.\n\n\n \"Your father, and his two friends.\"\n\n\n Kirk shivered. The horny lids dropped over his eyes. \"I wish I'd\n known,\" he whispered. \"I'd have killed more of them.\"", "Kirk's voice wasn't a voice at all. \"You killed them. You killed my\n father.\"\n\n\n \"Three lives, against all those back on the plain. We held our fire\n too long as it was, hoping. The Piruts nearly broke through. Try to\n understand! I had to do it.\"\n\n\n Kirk's spear made a flat clatter on the stone. He started forward. Men\n moved in and held him, without rancor, looking at their own feet.\n\n\n \"Please try to understand,\" whispered the Officer. \"I had to do it.\"\n\n\n The Officer, the bloody wall, the stars and the cold grey gullies all\n went away. There was nothing but darkness, and wind, a long way off.\n Kirk thought of Pa coming up under the wall, close to safety, close\n enough to touch it, and no way through. Pa and Frank and Russ, standing\n under the wall, looking up, and no way through.", "The Officer tightened suddenly and made one hand into a fist and beat\n it slowly on the wall, up and down.\n\n\n \"I didn't want to give the order. God knows I didn't want to! But there\n was nothing else to do.\"\n\n\n A man came up over the top of the ladder. He was carrying a body over\n his shoulder, and breathing hard.\n\n\n \"Here's Kirk,\" he said. \"Where'll I put him?\"\n\n\n There was a clear space off to the right. Kirk pointed to it. \"Over\n there, Charley. I'll help.\"\n\n\n It was hard to move. He'd never been tired like this before. He'd never\n been afraid like this, either. He didn't know what he was afraid of.\n Something in the Officer's voice.", "Kirk tried to turn. The six men swung with him. Kirk said, \"You better\n discipline me. You better kill me, because, if you don't, I'll kill\n you.\"\n\n\n \"I don't blame you, boy. Go and rest. You'll understand.\"\n\n\n \"I'll understand, all right.\" Kirk's voice was a hoarse, harsh whisper\n that came out by itself and wouldn't be stopped. \"I'll understand about\n Pa, and the Ship with the heat-stones in it, and the Captain's yellow\n daughter getting fat and warm while my sisters freeze and go hungry.\n I'll understand, and I'll make everybody else understand, too!\"\n\n\n The Officer's eyes held a quick fire. \"Boy! Do you know what you're\n saying?\"\n\n\n \"You bet I know!\"\n\n\n \"That's mutiny. For God's sake, don't make things worse!\"", "The Officer hit him on the jaw, carefully and without heat. Kirk sagged\n down. The Officer stepped back, looking as though he had a pain in him\n that he didn't want to show.\n\n\n He said quietly, but so that everyone could hear him, \"Discipline, for\n not longer than it takes to clear the rock below.\"\n\n\n Two of the men nodded and took Kirk away down a flight of stone steps.\n One of the four who were left looked over the wall and spat.\n\n\n \"Rock's pretty near clean,\" he said, \"but even so....\" He shook himself\n like a dog. \"That Jakk Randl, he was always talking.\"\n\n\n One of the others flicked a quick look around and whispered, \"Yeah. And\n maybe he knew what he was talking about!\"", "The Officer put his hands flat on the top of the wall and looked at\n them as if they were strange things and no part of him.\n\n\n \"Kirk,\" he said, \"this is going to be hard to explain. I've never done\n anything as hard. The Piruts didn't kill them. They were responsible,\n but they didn't actually kill them.\"\n\n\n Wes raised his head slowly. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"We saw them coming up the tongue of rock. The Piruts were behind them,\n but not far. Not far enough. One of the three, it wasn't your father,\n called to us to put the ladder down. We waited....\"\n\n\n A muscle began to twitch under Kirk's eye. That, too, was something\n that had never happened before, like the stab of pain with no spear\n behind it. He licked his lips and repeated hoarsely:\n\n\n \"I don't understand.\"", "Kirk followed. The wind was cold, howling up from the outer gullies.\nThe Officer of the Day was waiting at the north end of the wall.\n There was a ladder dropped over it now, and men were climbing up and\n down with bodies and sheaves of recovered spears. More were busy down\n below, rolling the dead Piruts and the shags down into the deep gullies\n for the scavenger rats and the living shags who didn't mind turning\n cannibal.\n\n\n That ladder made Kirk think of Pa. It was the only way for a man to get\n into the outer gullies from the west escarpment of the colony. He shook\n some of the queer heaviness out of his head, touched his forelock and\n said:\n\n\n \"I'm Wes Kirk, sir. You wanted me?\"", "\"Worse for us, or for you?\" Kirk was shouting, holding his head up in\n the wind. \"Listen, you men! Do you know what the Officers are doing up\n there in the Ship they won't let us touch?\"\n\n\n There was an uneasy stirring among the Hans, a slipping aside of\n luminous black eyes. The Officer shut his jaw tight. He stepped in\n close to Kirk.\n\n\n \"Shut up,\" he said urgently. \"Don't make me punish you, not now. You're\n talking rot, but it's dangerous.\"\n\n\n Kirk's eyes were hot and not quite sane. He couldn't have stopped if\n he'd wanted to.\n\n\n \"Rot, is it? Jakk Randl knew. He saw with his own eyes and he told me\n while he was dying. The Captain's yellow daughter, sneaking heat-stones\n into....\"", "Looking up, calling to the men they knew, asking for help and getting a\n spear through the heart.\n\n\n After that, even the wind was gone, and the darkness had turned red.\nThere was a voice, a long way off. It said, \"God, he's strong!\" Over\n and over. It got louder. There were weights on his arms and legs, and\n he couldn't throw them off. He was pressed against something.\n\n\n It was the wall. He saw that after a while. The wall where the Officer\n had been standing. There were six men holding him, three on each side.\n The Officer was gone.\n\n\n Kirk relaxed. He was shivering and covered with rime from body sweat.\n Somebody whistled.\n\n\n \"Six men! Didn't know the kid had it in him.\"\n\n\n The Officer's voice said dully, \"No discipline. Better take him home.\"", "The baby cried. Ma Kirk shrilled at her son, and two of the younger\n ones fought over a bone with no meat on it, rolling and snapping on the\n dirt floor. Kirk shifted his head forward to shut out the sound of them\n and followed the line of the plain upward with sullen, glowing eyes.\n\n\n The huts of the Engineers were larger than those in the Hansquarter.\n The huts of the Officers were not much larger than the Engineers', but\n there were more of them and they climbed higher up the grey slope.\n Five, nearly six hands of them, with the Captain's metal-roofed place\n highest of all.\n\n\n Highest and nearest, right under the titanic shape lifting jagged\n against the icy stars from the crest of the ridge.\n\n\n The Ship.\n\n\n Kirk's voice was soft in his thick throat. \"I would like to kill them,\"\n he said. \"I would like to kill them all.\"", "Kirk raised his shaggy head. The light of the yellow star they called\n Sun caught in the huge luminous blackness of his eyes.\n\n\n Beyond the Hansquarter, just where the flat plain began to rise, were\n the Engineers. Not many of them any more. You could see the dusty lumps\n where the huts had been, the tumbled heaps of metal that might have\n meant something once, a longer time ago than anyone could remember. But\n there were still plenty of huts standing. Two hands and one hand and\n a thumb of them, full of Engineers who said how the furrows should be\n laid for the planting but did nothing about the tilling of them.\n\n\n And beyond the Engineers—the Officers.", "He shoved the curtain of little skins aside and crouched there with his\n thick shoulders fitted into the angle of the jamb, staring out, cold\n wind threading in across his splayed and naked feet.\n\n\n The hackles rose golden and stiff across Kirk's back. He said carefully,\n\n\n \"I would like to kill the Captain and the First Officer and the Second\n Officer and all the little Officers, and the Engineers, and all their\n families.\"\n\n\n His voice carried inside on the wind eddies. Ma Kirk yelled,\n\n\n \"Wes! You come here and let that curtain down! You want us all to\n freeze?\" Her dark-furred shoulders moved rhythmically over the rocking\n child. She added sharply, \"Besides, that's fool's talk, Jakk Randl's\n talk, and only gets the sucking-plant.\"", "Kirk snorted. \"You women know so much. If they let the shags or the\n Piruts in on us, how could they stop 'em before they killed everybody,\n including the Officers? As for slow death—well, they think we're dumb.\n They've kept us away from the Ship ever since the\nCrash\n, and nobody\n knows how long ago that was. They think they can go on doing it. They\n think we'd never suspect.\"\n\n\n \"Yah!\" said Lil sharply. \"You just like to talk. Why should the\n Officers want us killed off anyhow?\"\n\n\n Kirk looked at the thin fuzzy baby curled tight in the skins.", "Kirk didn't say anything. He started to walk around the heat box. Lil\n yelled, \"Ma!\"\n\n\n The young ones stopped fighting, scuttling out of reach and watching\n with bright moist eyes, grinning. The baby had reached the hiccoughing\n stage.\n\n\n Ma Kirk said, \"Sit down, or go pick on somebody your own size.\"\n\n\n Kirk stopped. \"Aw, I wasn't going to hurt her. She has to be so smart!\"\n He leaned forward to glare at Lil. \"And I would so kill the Captain's\n daughter!\"\n\n\n The baby was quiet. Ma Kirk laid it down in a nest of skins put close\n to the heat and said wearily:\n\n\n \"You men, always talking about killing! Haven't we enough trouble\n without that?\"\n\n\n Kirk looked at the little box of heat-stones, his pupils shrinking.", "Kirk nodded. He couldn't say anything. The heat was dying in Randl's\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Listen, Wes. I saw the secret way into Ship. Bend closer, and\n listen....\"\n\n\n Kirk bent. He didn't move for a long time. After a while Randl's voice\n stopped, and then the blood wasn't pumping any more, just oozing.\n Randl's hands slid away, so that Kirk could see the hole the stone had\n made. Everything seemed to be very quiet.\n\n\n Kirk sat there, holding Randl in his arms.\n\n\n Presently someone came up and shook Kirk's shoulder and said, \"Hey,\n kid, are you deaf? We been yelling for you.\" He stopped, and then said\n more gently, \"Oh. Jakk got it, did he?\"\n\n\n Kirk laid the body carefully on the stones and got up. \"Yeah.\"", "\"Kind of a pal of yours, wasn't he?\"\n\n\n \"He wasn't very strong. He needed someone to cover him.\"\n\n\n \"Too bad.\" The man shook his head, and then shrugged. \"Maybe it's\n better, at that. He was headed for trouble, that one. Kinda leading you\n that way, too, I heard. Always talking.\"\n\n\n He looked at Kirk's face and shut up suddenly. He turned away and\n grunted over his shoulders, \"The O.D.'s looking for you.\"", "He said, \"Jakk, I'll get the sawbones....\"\n\n\n Hot black eyes turned to his. Burnt-out fires in a face with the young\n beard hardly full on its sharp jaw.\n\n\n \"Sit down, Wes, quick, and listen. Sawbones is no good—and why would\n I want to go on living anyway?\"\n\n\n He smiled. Kirk had never seen him smile like that, without bitterness\n or pain. He sat down, crouched on the body of a man who lived only two\n huts away from him. The blood made little red fountains between Randl's\n fingers.\n\n\n \"It's up to you, Wes. You're the only one that really knows about the\n Ship. You'll do better than I would, anyhow. You're a fighter. You\n carry it on, so the Hans can live. Promise.\"", "Kirk looked up the hill. Officers were running from the huts below the\n gaunt, dead Ship. They didn't look so different from the Hans, only\n they were built a little taller and lighter, less bowed and bunchy in\n the shoulders, quicker on their feet.\n\n\n Kirk stepped behind Randl to shield him from the wind. His voice was\n only a whisper, but it had a hard edge. The baby's thin, terrible wail\n was still in his ears.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Jakk? Do you know? Because if they are....\"\n\n\n Randl laughed and shuddered with a secret, ugly triumph. \"I crawled up\n on the peak during the last darkness. The guards were cold and the wind\n made them blind and deaf. I lay in the rocks and watched. And I saw....\"", "\"Maybe there'd be less trouble for us.\"\n\n\n Lil poked her shock of black hair around Ma Kirk's knee. Her big eyes\n glowed in the feeble light.\n\n\n She said, \"You men! He's no man, Ma. He's just a little boy who has to\n stay behind and shoo the beetles out of the fields.\"\n\n\n The young ones giggled, well out of reach. Lil's thin body was strung\n tight, quivering to move. \"Besides,\" she demanded, \"what have the\n Officers and the Engineers ever done to you that you should want to\n kill them—all but the Captain's yellow daughter?\"\n\n\n Kirk's big heavy chest swelled. \"Ma,\" he said, \"you make that brat shut\n up or I'll whale her, anyhow.\"", "There was suddenly a lot of silence in the room. The word \"Ship\" hung\n there, awesome and accusing. Ma Kirk's eyes flicked to the curtain over\n the door and back to her son.\n\n\n \"Don't you say things like that, Wes! You don't know.\"\n\n\n \"It's what everybody says. Why else would they guard the Ship the way\n they do? We can't even get near the outside of it.\"\n\n\n Lil tossed her head. \"Well neither do they.\"\n\n\n \"Not when we can see 'em, no. Of course not. But how do we know they\n haven't got ways of getting into the Ship that don't show from the\n plain? Jakk says a lot goes on that we don't know about.\"\n\n\n He got up, forcing his belief at them with his big square hands." ], [ "The great alarm gong by the Captain's hut.\n\n\n Kirk began to move, very swiftly and quietly. Before the third gong\n stroke hit them he had his spear and his sling and was already lifting\n aside the door curtain.\n\n\n Ma Kirk said stiffly, \"Which way are they coming?\"\n\n\n Kirk's ears twitched. He sorted the gong sounds, and the wind, and\n found a whisper underneath them, rushing up out of the gullied plain.\n\n\n Kirk pointed. \"From the west. Piruts, I think.\"\n\n\n Ma Kirk sucked in her breath. Her voice had no tone in it. \"Your Pa\n went hunting that way.\"\n\n\n \"Yeah,\" said Kirk. \"I'll watch out for him.\"", "He coughed. The Officers' voices rang sharp through the wind. Compact\n groups of men began to run, off toward the west. The whisper of sound\n had grown louder in Kirk's ears. He could hear men yelling and the\n ringing of metal on stone.\n\n\n He started to run, holding Randl's elbow. Grey dust blew under their\n feet. The drifts of crystal stones sent their sound shivering back at\n them in splinters. Kirk said fiercely:\n\n\n \"What did you see?\"\n\n\n They were passing under the hill now. Randl jerked his head. \"Up there,\n Wes.\"\n\n\n Kirk looked up. Someone was standing at the doorway of the Captain's\n hut. Someone tall and slender and the color of the Sunstar from head to\n foot.\n\n\n \"I saw her,\" said Randl hoarsely. \"She was carrying heat-stones into\n the Ship.\"", "He shoved the curtain of little skins aside and crouched there with his\n thick shoulders fitted into the angle of the jamb, staring out, cold\n wind threading in across his splayed and naked feet.\n\n\n The hackles rose golden and stiff across Kirk's back. He said carefully,\n\n\n \"I would like to kill the Captain and the First Officer and the Second\n Officer and all the little Officers, and the Engineers, and all their\n families.\"\n\n\n His voice carried inside on the wind eddies. Ma Kirk yelled,\n\n\n \"Wes! You come here and let that curtain down! You want us all to\n freeze?\" Her dark-furred shoulders moved rhythmically over the rocking\n child. She added sharply, \"Besides, that's fool's talk, Jakk Randl's\n talk, and only gets the sucking-plant.\"", "The baby cried. Ma Kirk shrilled at her son, and two of the younger\n ones fought over a bone with no meat on it, rolling and snapping on the\n dirt floor. Kirk shifted his head forward to shut out the sound of them\n and followed the line of the plain upward with sullen, glowing eyes.\n\n\n The huts of the Engineers were larger than those in the Hansquarter.\n The huts of the Officers were not much larger than the Engineers', but\n there were more of them and they climbed higher up the grey slope.\n Five, nearly six hands of them, with the Captain's metal-roofed place\n highest of all.\n\n\n Highest and nearest, right under the titanic shape lifting jagged\n against the icy stars from the crest of the ridge.\n\n\n The Ship.\n\n\n Kirk's voice was soft in his thick throat. \"I would like to kill them,\"\n he said. \"I would like to kill them all.\"", "\"Yah!\" cried a shrill voice over his shoulder. \"All but the Captain's\n yellow daughter!\"\nKirk spun angrily around. Lil, next below himself, danced back out of\n reach, her kilt of little skins flying around her thin hips.\n\n\n \"Yah!\" she said again, and wrinkled her flat nose. \"I've seen you\n looking at her. All yellow from head to foot and beautiful pink lids to\n her eyes. You wouldn't kill\nher\n, I bet!\"\n\n\n \"I bet I'll half kill you if you don't shut up!\"\n\n\n Lil stuck out her tongue. Kirk aimed a cuff at her. She danced behind\n his arm and jerked the curtain down and shot away again, making two\n jumps over the brawling young ones and the box of heat-stones.\n\n\n She squatted demurely beside Ma Kirk and said, as though nothing had\n happened, \"Ma says will you please not let so much heat out.\"", "Kirk's pupils shrank to points no warmer nor softer than the tip of his\n knife. He smiled, almost gently, looking up the hill.\n\n\n The captain's yellow daughter, taking life into the Ship.\nIt was a big raid. Kirk saw that when he scrambled up out of the last\n gully, half-carrying the wheezing Randl. The Piruts had come up the\n tongue of rock between two deep cuts and tackled the guards' pillbox\n head on. They hadn't taken it, not yet. But they were still trying,\n piling up their dead on the swept grey stone.\n\n\n They were using shags again. They drove the lumbering beasts on into\n the hail of stones and thrown spears from the pillbox, keeping low\n behind them, and then climbing on the round hairy bodies. It took\n courage, because sometimes the shags turned and clawed the men who\n drove them, and sometimes the dead ones weren't quite dead and it was\n too bad for the man who climbed on them.", "Kirk followed. The wind was cold, howling up from the outer gullies.\nThe Officer of the Day was waiting at the north end of the wall.\n There was a ladder dropped over it now, and men were climbing up and\n down with bodies and sheaves of recovered spears. More were busy down\n below, rolling the dead Piruts and the shags down into the deep gullies\n for the scavenger rats and the living shags who didn't mind turning\n cannibal.\n\n\n That ladder made Kirk think of Pa. It was the only way for a man to get\n into the outer gullies from the west escarpment of the colony. He shook\n some of the queer heaviness out of his head, touched his forelock and\n said:\n\n\n \"I'm Wes Kirk, sir. You wanted me?\"", "He helped to lay his father down. He'd seen bodies before. He'd handled\n them, fighting on the pillbox walls. But never one he'd known so long,\n one he'd eaten and slept and wrestled with. The thick arm that hauled\n him out of bed this morning, the big hands that warmed the baby against\n the barrel chest. You saw it lying lax and cold, but you didn't believe\n it.\n\n\n You saw it. You saw the spear shaft sticking out clean from the\n heart....\n\n\n You saw it....\n\n\n \"That's one of our spears!\" He screamed it, like a woman. \"One of our\n own—from the front!\"\n\n\n \"I let them get as close as I dared,\" said the Officer tonelessly. \"I\n tried to find a way. But there wasn't any way but the ladder, and that\n was what the Piruts wanted. That's why they made them come.\"", "\"Maybe there'd be less trouble for us.\"\n\n\n Lil poked her shock of black hair around Ma Kirk's knee. Her big eyes\n glowed in the feeble light.\n\n\n She said, \"You men! He's no man, Ma. He's just a little boy who has to\n stay behind and shoo the beetles out of the fields.\"\n\n\n The young ones giggled, well out of reach. Lil's thin body was strung\n tight, quivering to move. \"Besides,\" she demanded, \"what have the\n Officers and the Engineers ever done to you that you should want to\n kill them—all but the Captain's yellow daughter?\"\n\n\n Kirk's big heavy chest swelled. \"Ma,\" he said, \"you make that brat shut\n up or I'll whale her, anyhow.\"", "The Officer tightened suddenly and made one hand into a fist and beat\n it slowly on the wall, up and down.\n\n\n \"I didn't want to give the order. God knows I didn't want to! But there\n was nothing else to do.\"\n\n\n A man came up over the top of the ladder. He was carrying a body over\n his shoulder, and breathing hard.\n\n\n \"Here's Kirk,\" he said. \"Where'll I put him?\"\n\n\n There was a clear space off to the right. Kirk pointed to it. \"Over\n there, Charley. I'll help.\"\n\n\n It was hard to move. He'd never been tired like this before. He'd never\n been afraid like this, either. He didn't know what he was afraid of.\n Something in the Officer's voice.", "Kirk raised his shaggy head. The light of the yellow star they called\n Sun caught in the huge luminous blackness of his eyes.\n\n\n Beyond the Hansquarter, just where the flat plain began to rise, were\n the Engineers. Not many of them any more. You could see the dusty lumps\n where the huts had been, the tumbled heaps of metal that might have\n meant something once, a longer time ago than anyone could remember. But\n there were still plenty of huts standing. Two hands and one hand and\n a thumb of them, full of Engineers who said how the furrows should be\n laid for the planting but did nothing about the tilling of them.\n\n\n And beyond the Engineers—the Officers.", "He glanced back just before he let the curtain drop. The pale glow of\n the heat-stones picked dots of luminous blackness out of the gloom,\n where the still breathless faces were, watching him. He saw the blurred\n shapes of clay cooking pots, of low bed frames, of huddled bodies. The\n baby began to whimper again.\n\n\n Kirk shivered in the cold wind. \"Lil,\" he said. \"I would, too, kill the\n Captain's yellow daughter.\"\n\n\n \"Yah,\" said Lil. \"Go chase the beetles away.\"\n\n\n There was no conviction in her voice. The wind was freezing on Kirk's\n bare feet. He dropped the curtain and went across the plain.", "There was suddenly a lot of silence in the room. The word \"Ship\" hung\n there, awesome and accusing. Ma Kirk's eyes flicked to the curtain over\n the door and back to her son.\n\n\n \"Don't you say things like that, Wes! You don't know.\"\n\n\n \"It's what everybody says. Why else would they guard the Ship the way\n they do? We can't even get near the outside of it.\"\n\n\n Lil tossed her head. \"Well neither do they.\"\n\n\n \"Not when we can see 'em, no. Of course not. But how do we know they\n haven't got ways of getting into the Ship that don't show from the\n plain? Jakk says a lot goes on that we don't know about.\"\n\n\n He got up, forcing his belief at them with his big square hands.", "\"Worse for us, or for you?\" Kirk was shouting, holding his head up in\n the wind. \"Listen, you men! Do you know what the Officers are doing up\n there in the Ship they won't let us touch?\"\n\n\n There was an uneasy stirring among the Hans, a slipping aside of\n luminous black eyes. The Officer shut his jaw tight. He stepped in\n close to Kirk.\n\n\n \"Shut up,\" he said urgently. \"Don't make me punish you, not now. You're\n talking rot, but it's dangerous.\"\n\n\n Kirk's eyes were hot and not quite sane. He couldn't have stopped if\n he'd wanted to.\n\n\n \"Rot, is it? Jakk Randl knew. He saw with his own eyes and he told me\n while he was dying. The Captain's yellow daughter, sneaking heat-stones\n into....\"", "The Officer put his hands flat on the top of the wall and looked at\n them as if they were strange things and no part of him.\n\n\n \"Kirk,\" he said, \"this is going to be hard to explain. I've never done\n anything as hard. The Piruts didn't kill them. They were responsible,\n but they didn't actually kill them.\"\n\n\n Wes raised his head slowly. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\n \"We saw them coming up the tongue of rock. The Piruts were behind them,\n but not far. Not far enough. One of the three, it wasn't your father,\n called to us to put the ladder down. We waited....\"\n\n\n A muscle began to twitch under Kirk's eye. That, too, was something\n that had never happened before, like the stab of pain with no spear\n behind it. He licked his lips and repeated hoarsely:\n\n\n \"I don't understand.\"", "Kirk nodded. He couldn't say anything. The heat was dying in Randl's\n eyes.\n\n\n \"Listen, Wes. I saw the secret way into Ship. Bend closer, and\n listen....\"\n\n\n Kirk bent. He didn't move for a long time. After a while Randl's voice\n stopped, and then the blood wasn't pumping any more, just oozing.\n Randl's hands slid away, so that Kirk could see the hole the stone had\n made. Everything seemed to be very quiet.\n\n\n Kirk sat there, holding Randl in his arms.\n\n\n Presently someone came up and shook Kirk's shoulder and said, \"Hey,\n kid, are you deaf? We been yelling for you.\" He stopped, and then said\n more gently, \"Oh. Jakk got it, did he?\"\n\n\n Kirk laid the body carefully on the stones and got up. \"Yeah.\"", "Looking up, calling to the men they knew, asking for help and getting a\n spear through the heart.\n\n\n After that, even the wind was gone, and the darkness had turned red.\nThere was a voice, a long way off. It said, \"God, he's strong!\" Over\n and over. It got louder. There were weights on his arms and legs, and\n he couldn't throw them off. He was pressed against something.\n\n\n It was the wall. He saw that after a while. The wall where the Officer\n had been standing. There were six men holding him, three on each side.\n The Officer was gone.\n\n\n Kirk relaxed. He was shivering and covered with rime from body sweat.\n Somebody whistled.\n\n\n \"Six men! Didn't know the kid had it in him.\"\n\n\n The Officer's voice said dully, \"No discipline. Better take him home.\"", "Kirk looked up the hill. Officers were running from the huts below the\n gaunt, dead Ship. They didn't look so different from the Hans, only\n they were built a little taller and lighter, less bowed and bunchy in\n the shoulders, quicker on their feet.\n\n\n Kirk stepped behind Randl to shield him from the wind. His voice was\n only a whisper, but it had a hard edge. The baby's thin, terrible wail\n was still in his ears.\n\n\n \"Is it true, Jakk? Do you know? Because if they are....\"\n\n\n Randl laughed and shuddered with a secret, ugly triumph. \"I crawled up\n on the peak during the last darkness. The guards were cold and the wind\n made them blind and deaf. I lay in the rocks and watched. And I saw....\"", "Kirk didn't say anything. He started to walk around the heat box. Lil\n yelled, \"Ma!\"\n\n\n The young ones stopped fighting, scuttling out of reach and watching\n with bright moist eyes, grinning. The baby had reached the hiccoughing\n stage.\n\n\n Ma Kirk said, \"Sit down, or go pick on somebody your own size.\"\n\n\n Kirk stopped. \"Aw, I wasn't going to hurt her. She has to be so smart!\"\n He leaned forward to glare at Lil. \"And I would so kill the Captain's\n daughter!\"\n\n\n The baby was quiet. Ma Kirk laid it down in a nest of skins put close\n to the heat and said wearily:\n\n\n \"You men, always talking about killing! Haven't we enough trouble\n without that?\"\n\n\n Kirk looked at the little box of heat-stones, his pupils shrinking.", "\"Yes.\" The O.D. was also the Third Officer. Taller than Kirk, thinner,\n with the hair going grey on his body and exhausted eyes sunk deep under\n his horny overlids. He said quietly:\n\n\n \"I'm sorry to have to tell you this....\"\n\n\n Kirk knew. The knowledge leaped through him. It was strange, to feel a\n spear-stab where there was no spear.\n\n\n He said, \"Pa.\"\n\n\n The Officer nodded. He seemed very tired, and he didn't look at Kirk.\n He hadn't, after the first glance.\n\n\n \"Your father, and his two friends.\"\n\n\n Kirk shivered. The horny lids dropped over his eyes. \"I wish I'd\n known,\" he whispered. \"I'd have killed more of them.\"" ] ]
valid	20006	[ "What are the general trends in the listing order of individuals/groups ranked in this article?", "How does Slate morally consider the implications of being loyal or unloyal to Clinton in the scandal?", "Off the following options, which best summarizes this article?", "Within the article, which of the following is NOT a minus that's listed in the ratings?", "Within the article, which of the following is NOT a plus that's listed in the ratings?", "How would you compare and contrast the overall assessments of Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton?", "According to Slate's ratings, which of the orderings below correctly goes from most reprehensible to least reprehensible?", "According to Slate's ratings, which of the orderings below correctly goes from least reprehensible to most reprehensible?" ]	[ [ "Individuals/groups were usually ranked from least prominent to most prominent.", "Individuals/groups were usually ranked from most liked to least liked.", "Individuals/groups were usually ranked from least liked to most liked.", "Individuals/groups were usually ranked from most prominent to least prominent." ], [ "It's consistently seen as a bad thing.", "It's consistently seen as a good thing.", "Loyalty or lack thereof isn't referenced enough within the article to make any generalizations.", "Loyalty or lack thereof can be seen as a plus or minus depending on the context." ], [ "Slate attempts to consider how Monica Lewinsky, specifically, was disproportionately shamed compared to others involved in the unravelling of the scandal.", "Slate attempts to dig through the scandal and address information that was not previously considered.", "Slate attempts to address the various ways in which the public views those involved in the scandal, and speculates upon whether those views are accurate.", "Slate attempts to prove that Bill Clinton, specifically, was disproportionately shamed compared to others involved in the unravelling of the scandal." ], [ "Wrote two memoirs for profit as a result of the scandal.", "Failed to investigate Clinton's refutation of the scandal.", "Used the scandal as leverage to attempt impeachment.", "Discussed the scandal with others." ], [ "Deserved compensation but it was not given it.", "Did not spread the scandal.", "Asked Clinton to be open about his wrongdoings.", "Was humiliated." ], [ "Neither of them were severely harmed by Bill Clinton's actions, and they were equally treated with mild amounts of sympathy.", "Both of them were viewed with some sympathy, but Chelsea was deemed more deserving of sympathy because Hillary was somewhat complicit.", "Chelsea Clinton had more of a choice to remove herself from the limelight because she was just the daughter.", "Both were clearly harmed by Bill Clinton's actions, and they were equally treated with sympathy." ], [ "Bob Barr, James Carville, Lanny Davis, Erskine Bowles", "James Carville, Lanny Davis, Bob Barr, Erskine Bowles", "Lanny Davis, Bob Barr, James Carville, Erskine Bowles", "Bob Barr, Erskine Bowles, James Carville, Lanny Davis" ], [ "Hillary Clinton, David Kendall, The Clinton Cabinet, Secret Service", "Secret Service, The Clinton Cabinet, Hillary Clinton, David Kendall", "Secret Service, Hillary Clinton, The Clinton Cabinet, David Kendall", "Hillary Clinton, Secret Service, David Kendall, The Clinton Cabinet" ] ]	[ 3, 2, 3, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2 ]	[ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0 ]	[ [ "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "(Sometimes, of course, the public's rating is dead on target. Linda Tripp's allies--a group that includes her lawyers, Kenneth Starr, the Goldberg family, and absolutely no one else as far as I can tell--have tried repeatedly to improve her sorry public image. Jonah Goldberg tried right here in Slate. No sale.) \n\n Below is Slate 's entire scorecard, which ranks 31 of Flytrap's key players: The scale runs from -10 to +10. Anything less than zero means the player is a net miscreant. Anything above zero rates a sympathy card. (This is not, of course, an exact science. How, for example, do we judge Ann Lewis compared to other last ditch Clinton defenders? Lewis is said to be more outraged by Clinton's misbehavior than The Guys in the White House. Yet Lewis didn't quit in disgust. Is her outrage a plus or a minus if she doesn't act on it? You decide.) \n\n The Scorecard", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "Pluses: \n\n a) Stayed utterly silent about the scandal, clearly disgusted by it all. \n\n b) Kept the rest of the administration focused on policy, thus preventing total executive paralysis. \n\n c) Did not lie or spin for the president. \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill. (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none yet. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) (Mostly) kept his mouth shut and prevented the House Judiciary Committee from jumping the gun on impeachment. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Secret Service (The public's rating: +8 )", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "Minuses: \n\n a) Fought Starr subpoena too hard because it considers itself the Praetorian Guard. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Dragged unwillingly into scandal by Clinton (unlike Currie or his political aides, the Secret Service agents have no choice about being near the president). \n\n b) Testified honestly but unwillingly, as they should. \n\n c) Did not leak. \n\n Slate rating: +5 \n\n Chelsea Clinton (The public's rating: +10 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Humiliated and embarrassed by her father's misbehavior.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Relied on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Relying on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble is his job. He's a lawyer. \n\n b) Admirably reticent, compared to Robert Bennett. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n The Rev. Jesse Jackson (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Revealed Clinton family troubles immediately after his pastoral visit. \n\n b) Parlayed pastoral visit into a week of self-promotion. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Graciously counseled a political rival in time of need.", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "a) Not yet known what he did to protect Clinton from the Lewinsky affair. Early signs suggest he knew a lot and helped clean it up. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Unquestionably loyal to his boss. \n\n b) Silent. \n\n Slate rating-- Not enough information to make a clean guess: Approx -5 \n\n Vernon Jordan (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) May have known and must have suspected that Lewinsky was a mistress (given that he and Clinton are confidants, it's hard to believe that Jordan was totally in the dark about her). \n\n b) Protected too readily by Washington establishment. \n\n Pluses:", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "c) Betrayed by Linda Tripp. \n\n d) Dragged into the scandal against her will. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Mike McCurry (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun and spun and spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was clearly dismayed by the entire scandal and his role in it. \n\n b) Is quitting the administration (though not, apparently, on principle). \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n David Kendall (The public's rating: 0 )", "b) Has pursued investigation into Clinton's private life with more zeal than seems appropriate. \n\n c) Is too willing to provoke constitutional standoffs for the sake of his investigation, seems indifferent to the dignity of the presidency. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was right about Clinton and Lewinsky. \n\n b) Is compelled by law to investigate diligently and forcefully. \n\n c) Has been patient with the stonewalling, deceiving Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Paula Jones (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Brought a legally dubious, gold-digging lawsuit. \n\n b) Resisted a settlement that would have saved the nation much embarrassment.", "c) Happily became a tool for Clinton's enemies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Is vindicated because Clinton probably did it. \n\n b) Forced Clinton's lechery out in the open. \n\n c) Persisted in the face of ridicule and humiliation. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n The American People (The public's rating: +7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Hypocritically claim to despise scandal, follow it breathlessly, then blame the media for obsessing over it. \n\n b) Are secretly fascinated by the sleaziness of it. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Magnanimous toward the president.", "Bill Clinton (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n To recapitulate \n\n a) Had an adulterous affair with a young intern. \n\n b) Lied about it to everyone . \n\n c) Probably perjured himself. \n\n d) Perhaps obstructed justice. \n\n e) Entangled allies and aides in his web of deceit. \n\n f) Humiliated his wife and daughter. \n\n g) Did not have the grace to apologize to Lewinsky. \n\n h)Tried to shift the blame for his failures onto his accusers. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had his private life exposed to the world in a way no one's should be.", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him.", "b) Did not demand any political compensation in exchange. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Unapologetically vicious, partisan, and unforgiving in his impeachment quest. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent throughout the scandal: He has been pushing impeachment since before Monica materialized in January. \n\n Slate rating: 0 \n\n Kenneth Starr (The public's rating: -9 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Seems merciless toward Clinton.", "Monica Lewinsky, for example, has fantastically low approval ratings, much lower than Clinton's. One poll I saw pegged her favorability rating at 5 percent (even Newt Gingrich manages at least 25 percent). Now, Monica certainly isn't the heroine of Flytrap. She did seduce a married man, damage the presidency for the sake of casual sex, lie frequently and insouciantly, and blab her \"secret\" affair to anyone who'd listen. But she was also sexually exploited by her older, sleazy boss; had her reputation smeared by Clinton's lackeys; and was betrayed by her \"friend\" Linda Tripp. She hardly deserves such universal contempt.", "Slate rating: -3 \n\n Lanny Davis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Said for seven months that we'd have to \"wait and see.\" Then, when Clinton finally admitted his lies, Davis was hardly embarrassed or critical of the president. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Loyalty to old boss. \n\n Slate rating: -3 \n\n George Stephanopoulos (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses:" ], [ "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "The Flytrap Blame Game \n\n One of the few truths universally acknowledged about Flytrap is that presidential secretary Betty Currie deserves our sympathy: an honest, loyal civil servant dragooned into a scandal she had nothing to do with. \n\n But does Currie deserve such sanctification? After all, she knew Clinton's history when she took her job then enabled Clinton's sleaziness anyway. She stood by while Clinton cuckolded his wife and perhaps even helped him commit obstruction of justice. And did she protest? Not as far as we have heard. Did she quit on principle? No. Currie may not be Flytrap's chief malefactor, but nor is she the saintly innocent that the American public believes her to be. \n\n The Currie case suggests that Flytrap needs a moral recalibration.", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "Others besides Currie have benefited from the public's excessive generosity. George Stephanopoulos has become a white knight of Flytrap, the former Clinton aide who had the courage to turn on his boss. And bravo to George for chastising Clinton! But it smacks of hypocrisy for Stephanopoulos to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying, womanizing dog. He has, after all known this since 1992. Back then Stephanopoulos himself helped quell bimbo eruptions and parroted Clinton's lying denials. He has never shouldered blame for those deceptions. (Mickey Kaus first noted Stephanopoulos' unbearable sanctimony in this \"Chatterbox\" item in January.) And while loyalty isn't a universal good, it was opportunistic for Stephanopoulos to betray Clinton just at the moment Clinton's stock was about to plunge.", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "a) Not yet known what he did to protect Clinton from the Lewinsky affair. Early signs suggest he knew a lot and helped clean it up. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Unquestionably loyal to his boss. \n\n b) Silent. \n\n Slate rating-- Not enough information to make a clean guess: Approx -5 \n\n Vernon Jordan (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) May have known and must have suspected that Lewinsky was a mistress (given that he and Clinton are confidants, it's hard to believe that Jordan was totally in the dark about her). \n\n b) Protected too readily by Washington establishment. \n\n Pluses:", "Slate rating: -3 \n\n Lanny Davis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Said for seven months that we'd have to \"wait and see.\" Then, when Clinton finally admitted his lies, Davis was hardly embarrassed or critical of the president. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Loyalty to old boss. \n\n Slate rating: -3 \n\n George Stephanopoulos (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses:", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "a) Spun his denials without digging for the truth. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Were conscripted unwillingly into scandal defense. (Unlike political aides such as Begala, who are expected to do political dirty work, the Cabinet members are public servants who should be kept away from such sleaze.) \n\n b) Were lied to by Clinton. \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: +3 \n\n Erskine Bowles (The public's rating: Doesn't care ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Refused to involve himself in the critical issue of the presidency. \n\n b) Stood aside while White House was shanghaied by lawyers.", "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "b) Did not demand any political compensation in exchange. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Unapologetically vicious, partisan, and unforgiving in his impeachment quest. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent throughout the scandal: He has been pushing impeachment since before Monica materialized in January. \n\n Slate rating: 0 \n\n Kenneth Starr (The public's rating: -9 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Seems merciless toward Clinton.", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Relied on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Relying on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble is his job. He's a lawyer. \n\n b) Admirably reticent, compared to Robert Bennett. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n The Rev. Jesse Jackson (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Revealed Clinton family troubles immediately after his pastoral visit. \n\n b) Parlayed pastoral visit into a week of self-promotion. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Graciously counseled a political rival in time of need.", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "(Sometimes, of course, the public's rating is dead on target. Linda Tripp's allies--a group that includes her lawyers, Kenneth Starr, the Goldberg family, and absolutely no one else as far as I can tell--have tried repeatedly to improve her sorry public image. Jonah Goldberg tried right here in Slate. No sale.) \n\n Below is Slate 's entire scorecard, which ranks 31 of Flytrap's key players: The scale runs from -10 to +10. Anything less than zero means the player is a net miscreant. Anything above zero rates a sympathy card. (This is not, of course, an exact science. How, for example, do we judge Ann Lewis compared to other last ditch Clinton defenders? Lewis is said to be more outraged by Clinton's misbehavior than The Guys in the White House. Yet Lewis didn't quit in disgust. Is her outrage a plus or a minus if she doesn't act on it? You decide.) \n\n The Scorecard", "b) Has pursued investigation into Clinton's private life with more zeal than seems appropriate. \n\n c) Is too willing to provoke constitutional standoffs for the sake of his investigation, seems indifferent to the dignity of the presidency. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was right about Clinton and Lewinsky. \n\n b) Is compelled by law to investigate diligently and forcefully. \n\n c) Has been patient with the stonewalling, deceiving Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Paula Jones (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Brought a legally dubious, gold-digging lawsuit. \n\n b) Resisted a settlement that would have saved the nation much embarrassment.", "c) Happily became a tool for Clinton's enemies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Is vindicated because Clinton probably did it. \n\n b) Forced Clinton's lechery out in the open. \n\n c) Persisted in the face of ridicule and humiliation. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n The American People (The public's rating: +7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Hypocritically claim to despise scandal, follow it breathlessly, then blame the media for obsessing over it. \n\n b) Are secretly fascinated by the sleaziness of it. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Magnanimous toward the president.", "James Carville (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Has known about Clinton's woman problem since 1992. \n\n b) Happily parroted Clinton's denial despite knowing that Clinton was a deceitful womanizer. \n\n c) Has not expressed the slightest chagrin or disappointment since Clinton's apology. \n\n d) Has not retreated from vicious attacks on Starr, despite evidence of Clinton's lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Perfectly loyal. \n\n b) Consistent in attacks against Starr. \n\n Slate rating: -5 \n\n Bruce Lindsey (The public's rating : To be determined ) \n\n Minuses:", "Minuses: \n\n a) Fought Starr subpoena too hard because it considers itself the Praetorian Guard. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Dragged unwillingly into scandal by Clinton (unlike Currie or his political aides, the Secret Service agents have no choice about being near the president). \n\n b) Testified honestly but unwillingly, as they should. \n\n c) Did not leak. \n\n Slate rating: +5 \n\n Chelsea Clinton (The public's rating: +10 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Humiliated and embarrassed by her father's misbehavior." ], [ "b) Had family problems paraded before the world in a way they should not be. \n\n c) Has been endlessly psychologized by the media. \n\n d) Had her summer vacation ruined. \n\n Slate rating: +10 \n\n More Flytrap ...", "c) Happily became a tool for Clinton's enemies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Is vindicated because Clinton probably did it. \n\n b) Forced Clinton's lechery out in the open. \n\n c) Persisted in the face of ridicule and humiliation. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n The American People (The public's rating: +7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Hypocritically claim to despise scandal, follow it breathlessly, then blame the media for obsessing over it. \n\n b) Are secretly fascinated by the sleaziness of it. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Magnanimous toward the president.", "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "Others besides Currie have benefited from the public's excessive generosity. George Stephanopoulos has become a white knight of Flytrap, the former Clinton aide who had the courage to turn on his boss. And bravo to George for chastising Clinton! But it smacks of hypocrisy for Stephanopoulos to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying, womanizing dog. He has, after all known this since 1992. Back then Stephanopoulos himself helped quell bimbo eruptions and parroted Clinton's lying denials. He has never shouldered blame for those deceptions. (Mickey Kaus first noted Stephanopoulos' unbearable sanctimony in this \"Chatterbox\" item in January.) And while loyalty isn't a universal good, it was opportunistic for Stephanopoulos to betray Clinton just at the moment Clinton's stock was about to plunge.", "The Flytrap Blame Game \n\n One of the few truths universally acknowledged about Flytrap is that presidential secretary Betty Currie deserves our sympathy: an honest, loyal civil servant dragooned into a scandal she had nothing to do with. \n\n But does Currie deserve such sanctification? After all, she knew Clinton's history when she took her job then enabled Clinton's sleaziness anyway. She stood by while Clinton cuckolded his wife and perhaps even helped him commit obstruction of justice. And did she protest? Not as far as we have heard. Did she quit on principle? No. Currie may not be Flytrap's chief malefactor, but nor is she the saintly innocent that the American public believes her to be. \n\n The Currie case suggests that Flytrap needs a moral recalibration.", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "b) Has pursued investigation into Clinton's private life with more zeal than seems appropriate. \n\n c) Is too willing to provoke constitutional standoffs for the sake of his investigation, seems indifferent to the dignity of the presidency. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was right about Clinton and Lewinsky. \n\n b) Is compelled by law to investigate diligently and forcefully. \n\n c) Has been patient with the stonewalling, deceiving Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Paula Jones (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Brought a legally dubious, gold-digging lawsuit. \n\n b) Resisted a settlement that would have saved the nation much embarrassment.", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "Minuses: \n\n a) Seduced a married man. \n\n b) Damaged and endangered the presidency for the sake of casual sex. \n\n c) Has lied frequently. \n\n d) Is a capable adult, not--as her advocates claim--a naive child, defenseless against the president's wiles. \n\n e) Protected herself with immunity when she needed to, even though her testimony would do enormous harm to Clinton and the nation. \n\n f) Blabbed her \"secret\" affair to lots of people. (So, while she was dragged into the scandal against her will, it was her own loquaciousness that made the dragging possible.) \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Sexually exploited by her older boss. \n\n b) Had her reputation smeared by Clintonistas and the media.", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "a) Not yet known what he did to protect Clinton from the Lewinsky affair. Early signs suggest he knew a lot and helped clean it up. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Unquestionably loyal to his boss. \n\n b) Silent. \n\n Slate rating-- Not enough information to make a clean guess: Approx -5 \n\n Vernon Jordan (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) May have known and must have suspected that Lewinsky was a mistress (given that he and Clinton are confidants, it's hard to believe that Jordan was totally in the dark about her). \n\n b) Protected too readily by Washington establishment. \n\n Pluses:", "Monica Lewinsky, for example, has fantastically low approval ratings, much lower than Clinton's. One poll I saw pegged her favorability rating at 5 percent (even Newt Gingrich manages at least 25 percent). Now, Monica certainly isn't the heroine of Flytrap. She did seduce a married man, damage the presidency for the sake of casual sex, lie frequently and insouciantly, and blab her \"secret\" affair to anyone who'd listen. But she was also sexually exploited by her older, sleazy boss; had her reputation smeared by Clinton's lackeys; and was betrayed by her \"friend\" Linda Tripp. She hardly deserves such universal contempt.", "Slate rating: +1 \n\n The Media (The public's rating: -8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) No sense of proportionality. Coverage is wretchedly excessive even when it shouldn't be. \n\n b) Endlessly self-involved. How many stories have you seen about the media and the scandal? \n\n c) Unforgiving. The media want the scandal to continue, hence won't ever be satisfied that Clinton has suffered enough. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Worked hard to break a very important story and investigated the hell out of it. \n\n b) Unfairly savaged by hypocritical American people (see above). \n\n Slate rating: +1", "(Sometimes, of course, the public's rating is dead on target. Linda Tripp's allies--a group that includes her lawyers, Kenneth Starr, the Goldberg family, and absolutely no one else as far as I can tell--have tried repeatedly to improve her sorry public image. Jonah Goldberg tried right here in Slate. No sale.) \n\n Below is Slate 's entire scorecard, which ranks 31 of Flytrap's key players: The scale runs from -10 to +10. Anything less than zero means the player is a net miscreant. Anything above zero rates a sympathy card. (This is not, of course, an exact science. How, for example, do we judge Ann Lewis compared to other last ditch Clinton defenders? Lewis is said to be more outraged by Clinton's misbehavior than The Guys in the White House. Yet Lewis didn't quit in disgust. Is her outrage a plus or a minus if she doesn't act on it? You decide.) \n\n The Scorecard", "Minuses: \n\n a) Relied on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Relying on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble is his job. He's a lawyer. \n\n b) Admirably reticent, compared to Robert Bennett. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n The Rev. Jesse Jackson (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Revealed Clinton family troubles immediately after his pastoral visit. \n\n b) Parlayed pastoral visit into a week of self-promotion. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Graciously counseled a political rival in time of need.", "Bill Clinton (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n To recapitulate \n\n a) Had an adulterous affair with a young intern. \n\n b) Lied about it to everyone . \n\n c) Probably perjured himself. \n\n d) Perhaps obstructed justice. \n\n e) Entangled allies and aides in his web of deceit. \n\n f) Humiliated his wife and daughter. \n\n g) Did not have the grace to apologize to Lewinsky. \n\n h)Tried to shift the blame for his failures onto his accusers. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had his private life exposed to the world in a way no one's should be.", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him." ], [ "Minuses: \n\n a) Relied on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Relying on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble is his job. He's a lawyer. \n\n b) Admirably reticent, compared to Robert Bennett. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n The Rev. Jesse Jackson (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Revealed Clinton family troubles immediately after his pastoral visit. \n\n b) Parlayed pastoral visit into a week of self-promotion. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Graciously counseled a political rival in time of need.", "b) Has pursued investigation into Clinton's private life with more zeal than seems appropriate. \n\n c) Is too willing to provoke constitutional standoffs for the sake of his investigation, seems indifferent to the dignity of the presidency. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was right about Clinton and Lewinsky. \n\n b) Is compelled by law to investigate diligently and forcefully. \n\n c) Has been patient with the stonewalling, deceiving Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Paula Jones (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Brought a legally dubious, gold-digging lawsuit. \n\n b) Resisted a settlement that would have saved the nation much embarrassment.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Fought Starr subpoena too hard because it considers itself the Praetorian Guard. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Dragged unwillingly into scandal by Clinton (unlike Currie or his political aides, the Secret Service agents have no choice about being near the president). \n\n b) Testified honestly but unwillingly, as they should. \n\n c) Did not leak. \n\n Slate rating: +5 \n\n Chelsea Clinton (The public's rating: +10 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Humiliated and embarrassed by her father's misbehavior.", "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "Slate rating: +1 \n\n The Media (The public's rating: -8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) No sense of proportionality. Coverage is wretchedly excessive even when it shouldn't be. \n\n b) Endlessly self-involved. How many stories have you seen about the media and the scandal? \n\n c) Unforgiving. The media want the scandal to continue, hence won't ever be satisfied that Clinton has suffered enough. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Worked hard to break a very important story and investigated the hell out of it. \n\n b) Unfairly savaged by hypocritical American people (see above). \n\n Slate rating: +1", "James Carville (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Has known about Clinton's woman problem since 1992. \n\n b) Happily parroted Clinton's denial despite knowing that Clinton was a deceitful womanizer. \n\n c) Has not expressed the slightest chagrin or disappointment since Clinton's apology. \n\n d) Has not retreated from vicious attacks on Starr, despite evidence of Clinton's lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Perfectly loyal. \n\n b) Consistent in attacks against Starr. \n\n Slate rating: -5 \n\n Bruce Lindsey (The public's rating : To be determined ) \n\n Minuses:", "Slate rating: -3 \n\n Lanny Davis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Said for seven months that we'd have to \"wait and see.\" Then, when Clinton finally admitted his lies, Davis was hardly embarrassed or critical of the president. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Loyalty to old boss. \n\n Slate rating: -3 \n\n George Stephanopoulos (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses:", "Bill Clinton (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n To recapitulate \n\n a) Had an adulterous affair with a young intern. \n\n b) Lied about it to everyone . \n\n c) Probably perjured himself. \n\n d) Perhaps obstructed justice. \n\n e) Entangled allies and aides in his web of deceit. \n\n f) Humiliated his wife and daughter. \n\n g) Did not have the grace to apologize to Lewinsky. \n\n h)Tried to shift the blame for his failures onto his accusers. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had his private life exposed to the world in a way no one's should be.", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him.", "Slate rating: -7 \n\n Linda Tripp (The public's rating: -7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Betrayed her \"friend.\" \n\n b) Obsessively nosed into the private lives of others. \n\n c) Tried to score a book deal off sex gossip and other people's distress. \n\n d) Tattletale. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Whistleblower (see d under Minuses): risked humiliation to expose something she believed was wrong. \n\n b) Smeared mercilessly by Clinton allies, the media. \n\n Slate rating: -7", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "Pluses: \n\n a) Stayed utterly silent about the scandal, clearly disgusted by it all. \n\n b) Kept the rest of the administration focused on policy, thus preventing total executive paralysis. \n\n c) Did not lie or spin for the president. \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill. (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none yet. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) (Mostly) kept his mouth shut and prevented the House Judiciary Committee from jumping the gun on impeachment. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Secret Service (The public's rating: +8 )", "Minuses: \n\n a) Seduced a married man. \n\n b) Damaged and endangered the presidency for the sake of casual sex. \n\n c) Has lied frequently. \n\n d) Is a capable adult, not--as her advocates claim--a naive child, defenseless against the president's wiles. \n\n e) Protected herself with immunity when she needed to, even though her testimony would do enormous harm to Clinton and the nation. \n\n f) Blabbed her \"secret\" affair to lots of people. (So, while she was dragged into the scandal against her will, it was her own loquaciousness that made the dragging possible.) \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Sexually exploited by her older boss. \n\n b) Had her reputation smeared by Clintonistas and the media.", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "b) Did not demand any political compensation in exchange. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Unapologetically vicious, partisan, and unforgiving in his impeachment quest. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent throughout the scandal: He has been pushing impeachment since before Monica materialized in January. \n\n Slate rating: 0 \n\n Kenneth Starr (The public's rating: -9 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Seems merciless toward Clinton.", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "c) Happily became a tool for Clinton's enemies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Is vindicated because Clinton probably did it. \n\n b) Forced Clinton's lechery out in the open. \n\n c) Persisted in the face of ridicule and humiliation. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n The American People (The public's rating: +7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Hypocritically claim to despise scandal, follow it breathlessly, then blame the media for obsessing over it. \n\n b) Are secretly fascinated by the sleaziness of it. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Magnanimous toward the president.", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "a) Spun his denials without digging for the truth. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Were conscripted unwillingly into scandal defense. (Unlike political aides such as Begala, who are expected to do political dirty work, the Cabinet members are public servants who should be kept away from such sleaze.) \n\n b) Were lied to by Clinton. \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: +3 \n\n Erskine Bowles (The public's rating: Doesn't care ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Refused to involve himself in the critical issue of the presidency. \n\n b) Stood aside while White House was shanghaied by lawyers." ], [ "Minuses: \n\n a) Fought Starr subpoena too hard because it considers itself the Praetorian Guard. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Dragged unwillingly into scandal by Clinton (unlike Currie or his political aides, the Secret Service agents have no choice about being near the president). \n\n b) Testified honestly but unwillingly, as they should. \n\n c) Did not leak. \n\n Slate rating: +5 \n\n Chelsea Clinton (The public's rating: +10 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Humiliated and embarrassed by her father's misbehavior.", "Slate rating: +1 \n\n The Media (The public's rating: -8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) No sense of proportionality. Coverage is wretchedly excessive even when it shouldn't be. \n\n b) Endlessly self-involved. How many stories have you seen about the media and the scandal? \n\n c) Unforgiving. The media want the scandal to continue, hence won't ever be satisfied that Clinton has suffered enough. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Worked hard to break a very important story and investigated the hell out of it. \n\n b) Unfairly savaged by hypocritical American people (see above). \n\n Slate rating: +1", "Pluses: \n\n a) Stayed utterly silent about the scandal, clearly disgusted by it all. \n\n b) Kept the rest of the administration focused on policy, thus preventing total executive paralysis. \n\n c) Did not lie or spin for the president. \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill. (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none yet. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) (Mostly) kept his mouth shut and prevented the House Judiciary Committee from jumping the gun on impeachment. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Secret Service (The public's rating: +8 )", "c) Happily became a tool for Clinton's enemies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Is vindicated because Clinton probably did it. \n\n b) Forced Clinton's lechery out in the open. \n\n c) Persisted in the face of ridicule and humiliation. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n The American People (The public's rating: +7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Hypocritically claim to despise scandal, follow it breathlessly, then blame the media for obsessing over it. \n\n b) Are secretly fascinated by the sleaziness of it. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Magnanimous toward the president.", "b) Has pursued investigation into Clinton's private life with more zeal than seems appropriate. \n\n c) Is too willing to provoke constitutional standoffs for the sake of his investigation, seems indifferent to the dignity of the presidency. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was right about Clinton and Lewinsky. \n\n b) Is compelled by law to investigate diligently and forcefully. \n\n c) Has been patient with the stonewalling, deceiving Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Paula Jones (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Brought a legally dubious, gold-digging lawsuit. \n\n b) Resisted a settlement that would have saved the nation much embarrassment.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Relied on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Relying on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble is his job. He's a lawyer. \n\n b) Admirably reticent, compared to Robert Bennett. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n The Rev. Jesse Jackson (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Revealed Clinton family troubles immediately after his pastoral visit. \n\n b) Parlayed pastoral visit into a week of self-promotion. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Graciously counseled a political rival in time of need.", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him.", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "a) Not yet known what he did to protect Clinton from the Lewinsky affair. Early signs suggest he knew a lot and helped clean it up. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Unquestionably loyal to his boss. \n\n b) Silent. \n\n Slate rating-- Not enough information to make a clean guess: Approx -5 \n\n Vernon Jordan (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) May have known and must have suspected that Lewinsky was a mistress (given that he and Clinton are confidants, it's hard to believe that Jordan was totally in the dark about her). \n\n b) Protected too readily by Washington establishment. \n\n Pluses:", "Minuses: \n\n a) Seduced a married man. \n\n b) Damaged and endangered the presidency for the sake of casual sex. \n\n c) Has lied frequently. \n\n d) Is a capable adult, not--as her advocates claim--a naive child, defenseless against the president's wiles. \n\n e) Protected herself with immunity when she needed to, even though her testimony would do enormous harm to Clinton and the nation. \n\n f) Blabbed her \"secret\" affair to lots of people. (So, while she was dragged into the scandal against her will, it was her own loquaciousness that made the dragging possible.) \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Sexually exploited by her older boss. \n\n b) Had her reputation smeared by Clintonistas and the media.", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "Slate rating: -3 \n\n Lanny Davis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Said for seven months that we'd have to \"wait and see.\" Then, when Clinton finally admitted his lies, Davis was hardly embarrassed or critical of the president. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Loyalty to old boss. \n\n Slate rating: -3 \n\n George Stephanopoulos (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses:", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "b) Did not demand any political compensation in exchange. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Unapologetically vicious, partisan, and unforgiving in his impeachment quest. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent throughout the scandal: He has been pushing impeachment since before Monica materialized in January. \n\n Slate rating: 0 \n\n Kenneth Starr (The public's rating: -9 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Seems merciless toward Clinton.", "a) Spun his denials without digging for the truth. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Were conscripted unwillingly into scandal defense. (Unlike political aides such as Begala, who are expected to do political dirty work, the Cabinet members are public servants who should be kept away from such sleaze.) \n\n b) Were lied to by Clinton. \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: +3 \n\n Erskine Bowles (The public's rating: Doesn't care ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Refused to involve himself in the critical issue of the presidency. \n\n b) Stood aside while White House was shanghaied by lawyers.", "James Carville (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Has known about Clinton's woman problem since 1992. \n\n b) Happily parroted Clinton's denial despite knowing that Clinton was a deceitful womanizer. \n\n c) Has not expressed the slightest chagrin or disappointment since Clinton's apology. \n\n d) Has not retreated from vicious attacks on Starr, despite evidence of Clinton's lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Perfectly loyal. \n\n b) Consistent in attacks against Starr. \n\n Slate rating: -5 \n\n Bruce Lindsey (The public's rating : To be determined ) \n\n Minuses:", "Bill Clinton (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n To recapitulate \n\n a) Had an adulterous affair with a young intern. \n\n b) Lied about it to everyone . \n\n c) Probably perjured himself. \n\n d) Perhaps obstructed justice. \n\n e) Entangled allies and aides in his web of deceit. \n\n f) Humiliated his wife and daughter. \n\n g) Did not have the grace to apologize to Lewinsky. \n\n h)Tried to shift the blame for his failures onto his accusers. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had his private life exposed to the world in a way no one's should be." ], [ "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Fought Starr subpoena too hard because it considers itself the Praetorian Guard. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Dragged unwillingly into scandal by Clinton (unlike Currie or his political aides, the Secret Service agents have no choice about being near the president). \n\n b) Testified honestly but unwillingly, as they should. \n\n c) Did not leak. \n\n Slate rating: +5 \n\n Chelsea Clinton (The public's rating: +10 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Humiliated and embarrassed by her father's misbehavior.", "Bill Clinton (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n To recapitulate \n\n a) Had an adulterous affair with a young intern. \n\n b) Lied about it to everyone . \n\n c) Probably perjured himself. \n\n d) Perhaps obstructed justice. \n\n e) Entangled allies and aides in his web of deceit. \n\n f) Humiliated his wife and daughter. \n\n g) Did not have the grace to apologize to Lewinsky. \n\n h)Tried to shift the blame for his failures onto his accusers. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had his private life exposed to the world in a way no one's should be.", "Monica Lewinsky, for example, has fantastically low approval ratings, much lower than Clinton's. One poll I saw pegged her favorability rating at 5 percent (even Newt Gingrich manages at least 25 percent). Now, Monica certainly isn't the heroine of Flytrap. She did seduce a married man, damage the presidency for the sake of casual sex, lie frequently and insouciantly, and blab her \"secret\" affair to anyone who'd listen. But she was also sexually exploited by her older, sleazy boss; had her reputation smeared by Clinton's lackeys; and was betrayed by her \"friend\" Linda Tripp. She hardly deserves such universal contempt.", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Relied on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Relying on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble is his job. He's a lawyer. \n\n b) Admirably reticent, compared to Robert Bennett. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n The Rev. Jesse Jackson (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Revealed Clinton family troubles immediately after his pastoral visit. \n\n b) Parlayed pastoral visit into a week of self-promotion. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Graciously counseled a political rival in time of need.", "b) Has pursued investigation into Clinton's private life with more zeal than seems appropriate. \n\n c) Is too willing to provoke constitutional standoffs for the sake of his investigation, seems indifferent to the dignity of the presidency. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was right about Clinton and Lewinsky. \n\n b) Is compelled by law to investigate diligently and forcefully. \n\n c) Has been patient with the stonewalling, deceiving Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Paula Jones (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Brought a legally dubious, gold-digging lawsuit. \n\n b) Resisted a settlement that would have saved the nation much embarrassment.", "James Carville (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Has known about Clinton's woman problem since 1992. \n\n b) Happily parroted Clinton's denial despite knowing that Clinton was a deceitful womanizer. \n\n c) Has not expressed the slightest chagrin or disappointment since Clinton's apology. \n\n d) Has not retreated from vicious attacks on Starr, despite evidence of Clinton's lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Perfectly loyal. \n\n b) Consistent in attacks against Starr. \n\n Slate rating: -5 \n\n Bruce Lindsey (The public's rating : To be determined ) \n\n Minuses:", "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "Minuses: \n\n a) Seduced a married man. \n\n b) Damaged and endangered the presidency for the sake of casual sex. \n\n c) Has lied frequently. \n\n d) Is a capable adult, not--as her advocates claim--a naive child, defenseless against the president's wiles. \n\n e) Protected herself with immunity when she needed to, even though her testimony would do enormous harm to Clinton and the nation. \n\n f) Blabbed her \"secret\" affair to lots of people. (So, while she was dragged into the scandal against her will, it was her own loquaciousness that made the dragging possible.) \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Sexually exploited by her older boss. \n\n b) Had her reputation smeared by Clintonistas and the media.", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "c) Happily became a tool for Clinton's enemies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Is vindicated because Clinton probably did it. \n\n b) Forced Clinton's lechery out in the open. \n\n c) Persisted in the face of ridicule and humiliation. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n The American People (The public's rating: +7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Hypocritically claim to despise scandal, follow it breathlessly, then blame the media for obsessing over it. \n\n b) Are secretly fascinated by the sleaziness of it. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Magnanimous toward the president.", "(Sometimes, of course, the public's rating is dead on target. Linda Tripp's allies--a group that includes her lawyers, Kenneth Starr, the Goldberg family, and absolutely no one else as far as I can tell--have tried repeatedly to improve her sorry public image. Jonah Goldberg tried right here in Slate. No sale.) \n\n Below is Slate 's entire scorecard, which ranks 31 of Flytrap's key players: The scale runs from -10 to +10. Anything less than zero means the player is a net miscreant. Anything above zero rates a sympathy card. (This is not, of course, an exact science. How, for example, do we judge Ann Lewis compared to other last ditch Clinton defenders? Lewis is said to be more outraged by Clinton's misbehavior than The Guys in the White House. Yet Lewis didn't quit in disgust. Is her outrage a plus or a minus if she doesn't act on it? You decide.) \n\n The Scorecard", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "Slate rating: -7 \n\n Linda Tripp (The public's rating: -7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Betrayed her \"friend.\" \n\n b) Obsessively nosed into the private lives of others. \n\n c) Tried to score a book deal off sex gossip and other people's distress. \n\n d) Tattletale. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Whistleblower (see d under Minuses): risked humiliation to expose something she believed was wrong. \n\n b) Smeared mercilessly by Clinton allies, the media. \n\n Slate rating: -7", "The Flytrap Blame Game \n\n One of the few truths universally acknowledged about Flytrap is that presidential secretary Betty Currie deserves our sympathy: an honest, loyal civil servant dragooned into a scandal she had nothing to do with. \n\n But does Currie deserve such sanctification? After all, she knew Clinton's history when she took her job then enabled Clinton's sleaziness anyway. She stood by while Clinton cuckolded his wife and perhaps even helped him commit obstruction of justice. And did she protest? Not as far as we have heard. Did she quit on principle? No. Currie may not be Flytrap's chief malefactor, but nor is she the saintly innocent that the American public believes her to be. \n\n The Currie case suggests that Flytrap needs a moral recalibration.", "a) Not yet known what he did to protect Clinton from the Lewinsky affair. Early signs suggest he knew a lot and helped clean it up. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Unquestionably loyal to his boss. \n\n b) Silent. \n\n Slate rating-- Not enough information to make a clean guess: Approx -5 \n\n Vernon Jordan (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) May have known and must have suspected that Lewinsky was a mistress (given that he and Clinton are confidants, it's hard to believe that Jordan was totally in the dark about her). \n\n b) Protected too readily by Washington establishment. \n\n Pluses:" ], [ "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "(Sometimes, of course, the public's rating is dead on target. Linda Tripp's allies--a group that includes her lawyers, Kenneth Starr, the Goldberg family, and absolutely no one else as far as I can tell--have tried repeatedly to improve her sorry public image. Jonah Goldberg tried right here in Slate. No sale.) \n\n Below is Slate 's entire scorecard, which ranks 31 of Flytrap's key players: The scale runs from -10 to +10. Anything less than zero means the player is a net miscreant. Anything above zero rates a sympathy card. (This is not, of course, an exact science. How, for example, do we judge Ann Lewis compared to other last ditch Clinton defenders? Lewis is said to be more outraged by Clinton's misbehavior than The Guys in the White House. Yet Lewis didn't quit in disgust. Is her outrage a plus or a minus if she doesn't act on it? You decide.) \n\n The Scorecard", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "b) Did not demand any political compensation in exchange. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Unapologetically vicious, partisan, and unforgiving in his impeachment quest. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent throughout the scandal: He has been pushing impeachment since before Monica materialized in January. \n\n Slate rating: 0 \n\n Kenneth Starr (The public's rating: -9 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Seems merciless toward Clinton.", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "Pluses: \n\n a) Stayed utterly silent about the scandal, clearly disgusted by it all. \n\n b) Kept the rest of the administration focused on policy, thus preventing total executive paralysis. \n\n c) Did not lie or spin for the president. \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill. (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none yet. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) (Mostly) kept his mouth shut and prevented the House Judiciary Committee from jumping the gun on impeachment. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Secret Service (The public's rating: +8 )", "Slate rating: -3 \n\n Lanny Davis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Said for seven months that we'd have to \"wait and see.\" Then, when Clinton finally admitted his lies, Davis was hardly embarrassed or critical of the president. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Loyalty to old boss. \n\n Slate rating: -3 \n\n George Stephanopoulos (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses:", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "Slate rating: -7 \n\n Linda Tripp (The public's rating: -7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Betrayed her \"friend.\" \n\n b) Obsessively nosed into the private lives of others. \n\n c) Tried to score a book deal off sex gossip and other people's distress. \n\n d) Tattletale. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Whistleblower (see d under Minuses): risked humiliation to expose something she believed was wrong. \n\n b) Smeared mercilessly by Clinton allies, the media. \n\n Slate rating: -7", "Minuses: \n\n a) Fought Starr subpoena too hard because it considers itself the Praetorian Guard. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Dragged unwillingly into scandal by Clinton (unlike Currie or his political aides, the Secret Service agents have no choice about being near the president). \n\n b) Testified honestly but unwillingly, as they should. \n\n c) Did not leak. \n\n Slate rating: +5 \n\n Chelsea Clinton (The public's rating: +10 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Humiliated and embarrassed by her father's misbehavior.", "c) Betrayed by Linda Tripp. \n\n d) Dragged into the scandal against her will. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Mike McCurry (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun and spun and spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was clearly dismayed by the entire scandal and his role in it. \n\n b) Is quitting the administration (though not, apparently, on principle). \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n David Kendall (The public's rating: 0 )", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "Minuses: \n\n a) Relied on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Relying on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble is his job. He's a lawyer. \n\n b) Admirably reticent, compared to Robert Bennett. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n The Rev. Jesse Jackson (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Revealed Clinton family troubles immediately after his pastoral visit. \n\n b) Parlayed pastoral visit into a week of self-promotion. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Graciously counseled a political rival in time of need.", "b) Had family problems paraded before the world in a way they should not be. \n\n c) Has been endlessly psychologized by the media. \n\n d) Had her summer vacation ruined. \n\n Slate rating: +10 \n\n More Flytrap ...", "a) Not yet known what he did to protect Clinton from the Lewinsky affair. Early signs suggest he knew a lot and helped clean it up. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Unquestionably loyal to his boss. \n\n b) Silent. \n\n Slate rating-- Not enough information to make a clean guess: Approx -5 \n\n Vernon Jordan (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) May have known and must have suspected that Lewinsky was a mistress (given that he and Clinton are confidants, it's hard to believe that Jordan was totally in the dark about her). \n\n b) Protected too readily by Washington establishment. \n\n Pluses:", "b) Has pursued investigation into Clinton's private life with more zeal than seems appropriate. \n\n c) Is too willing to provoke constitutional standoffs for the sake of his investigation, seems indifferent to the dignity of the presidency. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was right about Clinton and Lewinsky. \n\n b) Is compelled by law to investigate diligently and forcefully. \n\n c) Has been patient with the stonewalling, deceiving Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Paula Jones (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Brought a legally dubious, gold-digging lawsuit. \n\n b) Resisted a settlement that would have saved the nation much embarrassment.", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "Slate rating: +1 \n\n The Media (The public's rating: -8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) No sense of proportionality. Coverage is wretchedly excessive even when it shouldn't be. \n\n b) Endlessly self-involved. How many stories have you seen about the media and the scandal? \n\n c) Unforgiving. The media want the scandal to continue, hence won't ever be satisfied that Clinton has suffered enough. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Worked hard to break a very important story and investigated the hell out of it. \n\n b) Unfairly savaged by hypocritical American people (see above). \n\n Slate rating: +1", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him." ], [ "b) Has been persecuted by enemies who won't be satisfied until he is destroyed. \n\n Slate rating-- He never asked for our sympathy, and he doesn't deserve it: -9 \n\n Dick Morris (The public's rating: -6 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Encouraged Clinton's most deplorable habits: lying and polling. (When Clinton revealed his adultery to Morris, the political consultant immediately took a poll to see how America would respond to a Clinton admission. When the results suggested Americans would be angry if Clinton had perjured himself, Morris encouraged Clinton to deny the affair.) \n\n b) Further sullied the Clintons with a revolting comment suggesting that Clinton cheats because Hillary is a lesbian. \n\n c) Not even loyal enough to keep his mouth shut. \n\n Pluses: I cannot think of any.", "c) Knew what she was getting into when she took the job so can't be excused on grounds of naivetÃ©. \n\n d) Did not quit on principle. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Reputation for honesty. \n\n b) Probably dragooned into cover-up against her will. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Paul Begala (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Did not quit on principle after Clinton admitted lies. \n\n Pluses:", "(Sometimes, of course, the public's rating is dead on target. Linda Tripp's allies--a group that includes her lawyers, Kenneth Starr, the Goldberg family, and absolutely no one else as far as I can tell--have tried repeatedly to improve her sorry public image. Jonah Goldberg tried right here in Slate. No sale.) \n\n Below is Slate 's entire scorecard, which ranks 31 of Flytrap's key players: The scale runs from -10 to +10. Anything less than zero means the player is a net miscreant. Anything above zero rates a sympathy card. (This is not, of course, an exact science. How, for example, do we judge Ann Lewis compared to other last ditch Clinton defenders? Lewis is said to be more outraged by Clinton's misbehavior than The Guys in the White House. Yet Lewis didn't quit in disgust. Is her outrage a plus or a minus if she doesn't act on it? You decide.) \n\n The Scorecard", "a) Urged president to be contrite and wrote excellent, sufficiently apologetic speech. \n\n b) Loyal. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Rahm Emanuel (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Begala (except Emanuel didn't write the speech). \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Ann Lewis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses and Pluses: \n\n Same as Emanuel, except Lewis seems more morally outraged with Clinton than other White House aides. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Monica Lewinsky (The public's rating: -9 )", "a) Stayed loyal. \n\n b) Did not take advantage of scandal to burnish his own image. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n Kathleen Willey (The public's rating: 0 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Was in it for the money (told her story partly in order to land a book contract). \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Seems to have told story honestly and forthrightly. \n\n b) Reluctantly dragged into scandal. \n\n c) Was victimized by Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +2 \n\n The Clinton Cabinet (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses:", "b) Did not demand any political compensation in exchange. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Unapologetically vicious, partisan, and unforgiving in his impeachment quest. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent throughout the scandal: He has been pushing impeachment since before Monica materialized in January. \n\n Slate rating: 0 \n\n Kenneth Starr (The public's rating: -9 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Seems merciless toward Clinton.", "a) Hypocritical for him to \"discover\" in 1998 that Clinton is a lying dog. After all, he knew that Clinton was a lech in 1992 and helped cover it up. Yet he has never shouldered responsibility for the lies Clinton told then. \n\n b) Disloyal to turn on old boss as viciously as he has in past few weeks. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Had courage to turn on old boss and criticize his moral lapses. \n\n b) Urged Clinton to be fully contrite. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Betty Currie (The public's rating: +8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Abetted adulterous affair. \n\n b) May have abetted obstruction of justice.", "Pluses: \n\n a) Stayed utterly silent about the scandal, clearly disgusted by it all. \n\n b) Kept the rest of the administration focused on policy, thus preventing total executive paralysis. \n\n c) Did not lie or spin for the president. \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill. (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none yet. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) (Mostly) kept his mouth shut and prevented the House Judiciary Committee from jumping the gun on impeachment. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: +4 \n\n Secret Service (The public's rating: +8 )", "Slate rating: -3 \n\n Lanny Davis (The public's rating: -1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Said for seven months that we'd have to \"wait and see.\" Then, when Clinton finally admitted his lies, Davis was hardly embarrassed or critical of the president. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Loyalty to old boss. \n\n Slate rating: -3 \n\n George Stephanopoulos (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses:", "Slate rating: -7 \n\n Linda Tripp (The public's rating: -7 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Betrayed her \"friend.\" \n\n b) Obsessively nosed into the private lives of others. \n\n c) Tried to score a book deal off sex gossip and other people's distress. \n\n d) Tattletale. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Whistleblower (see d under Minuses): risked humiliation to expose something she believed was wrong. \n\n b) Smeared mercilessly by Clinton allies, the media. \n\n Slate rating: -7", "c) Betrayed by Linda Tripp. \n\n d) Dragged into the scandal against her will. \n\n Slate rating: -2 \n\n Mike McCurry (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun and spun and spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was clearly dismayed by the entire scandal and his role in it. \n\n b) Is quitting the administration (though not, apparently, on principle). \n\n c) Loyal. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n David Kendall (The public's rating: 0 )", "Minuses: \n\n a) Fought Starr subpoena too hard because it considers itself the Praetorian Guard. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Dragged unwillingly into scandal by Clinton (unlike Currie or his political aides, the Secret Service agents have no choice about being near the president). \n\n b) Testified honestly but unwillingly, as they should. \n\n c) Did not leak. \n\n Slate rating: +5 \n\n Chelsea Clinton (The public's rating: +10 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n There are none. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Humiliated and embarrassed by her father's misbehavior.", "b) May have always known truth about Lewinsky, yet still lied to protect Bill. \n\n c) Chose aggressive, political strategy over contrition. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Lied to, betrayed, and cuckolded by husband. \n\n b) Personally humiliated. \n\n c) May have disgraced her own good name by echoing his denials on the Today show. \n\n Slate rating-- She made a Faustian bargain, but you still feel sorry for Faust: +2 \n\n Al Gore (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Did not (apparently) urge the president to come clean with American people. \n\n Pluses:", "b) Had family problems paraded before the world in a way they should not be. \n\n c) Has been endlessly psychologized by the media. \n\n d) Had her summer vacation ruined. \n\n Slate rating: +10 \n\n More Flytrap ...", "Minuses: \n\n a) Relied on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Relying on iffy legalisms to help Clinton escape trouble is his job. He's a lawyer. \n\n b) Admirably reticent, compared to Robert Bennett. \n\n Slate rating: -1 \n\n The Rev. Jesse Jackson (The public's rating: +2 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Revealed Clinton family troubles immediately after his pastoral visit. \n\n b) Parlayed pastoral visit into a week of self-promotion. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Graciously counseled a political rival in time of need.", "b) Has pursued investigation into Clinton's private life with more zeal than seems appropriate. \n\n c) Is too willing to provoke constitutional standoffs for the sake of his investigation, seems indifferent to the dignity of the presidency. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Was right about Clinton and Lewinsky. \n\n b) Is compelled by law to investigate diligently and forcefully. \n\n c) Has been patient with the stonewalling, deceiving Clinton. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Paula Jones (The public's rating: -5 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Brought a legally dubious, gold-digging lawsuit. \n\n b) Resisted a settlement that would have saved the nation much embarrassment.", "a) Not yet known what he did to protect Clinton from the Lewinsky affair. Early signs suggest he knew a lot and helped clean it up. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Unquestionably loyal to his boss. \n\n b) Silent. \n\n Slate rating-- Not enough information to make a clean guess: Approx -5 \n\n Vernon Jordan (The public's rating: +3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) May have known and must have suspected that Lewinsky was a mistress (given that he and Clinton are confidants, it's hard to believe that Jordan was totally in the dark about her). \n\n b) Protected too readily by Washington establishment. \n\n Pluses:", "Leon Panetta (The public's rating: +1 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Slightly disloyal to old boss. \n\n b) May have known about Clinton's extracurricular activities, yet turned a blind eye. \n\n c) On television too much. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Urged Clinton early on to come clean. \n\n b) Had good sense to leave the White House before corrupting himself. \n\n Slate rating: +1 \n\n Hillary Clinton (The public's rating: +4 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Knew what a lech he was, yet always protected him.", "a) May have helped Lewinsky simply because he's bighearted and generous not because she was the president's lover. \n\n \n\n Slate rating: -4 \n\n Sidney Blumenthal (The public's rating: -3 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) Spun the president's denial for months without bothering to check if it was true. \n\n b) Pushed for Clinton to be aggressive rather than contrite during his speech. \n\n c) Trumpeted Clinton's denial but has not expressed chagrin now that Clinton has admitted his lies. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Consistent in belief that Starr is an ideologue and that the sex charges are political. \n\n b) Loyal.", "Slate rating: +1 \n\n The Media (The public's rating: -8 ) \n\n Minuses: \n\n a) No sense of proportionality. Coverage is wretchedly excessive even when it shouldn't be. \n\n b) Endlessly self-involved. How many stories have you seen about the media and the scandal? \n\n c) Unforgiving. The media want the scandal to continue, hence won't ever be satisfied that Clinton has suffered enough. \n\n Pluses: \n\n a) Worked hard to break a very important story and investigated the hell out of it. \n\n b) Unfairly savaged by hypocritical American people (see above). \n\n Slate rating: +1" ] ]

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